An exquisite of exhibition “mourning” statues at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, have a beauty and realism that give us something to cry about, a phrase Michelangelo used to describe Flemish painting.
In the 15th century, Flanders was ruled by the Duke of Burgundy and similarities to the Flemish style of painting can be are apparent in the style of sculptors Jean de la Huerta and Antoine de la Moiturier. They learned their art from the great Claus Sluter, a Netherlandish sculptor who worked in Burgundy. The Dukes of Burgundy had one of Europe’s richest courts, in rivalry with the King of France to the west and Holy Roman Empire to the east.
The 40 statues line up as if in a funeral procession. At the exhibition, viewers have a chance to see the statues in more completeness and in a more realistic way than in the location they were originally placed, below the bodies of Duke John the Fearless (Jean sans Peur) and his wife, Marguerite. In the current display, the alabaster figures are seen as they move in space, without the elaborate decorative Gothic frames that confine them. They represent the clergy and family members who had been part of Jean the Fearless’ funeral procession in 1424. The statues are on loan from Dijon, France, while the Musee des Beaux Art is undergoing renovation.
Cowls and hoods identify these figures as mourners in the funeral procession.They are alabaster white with details such as books and belts painted. Larger effigies of the duke and duchess were painted in bright colors to look real.
Like Rogier van Weyden or the Master of Dreux Budé , these sculptors drew on both realism and emotionalism in a style that is on the cusp between the late Middle Ages and the Renaissance. The figures are white with a few painted color details, although mourners and even horses, in the funerary procession actually wore black, hooded robes. A tomb of Philippe Pot, Seneschal of Burgundy, from about 1480 has life-size, hooded black figures which hold up the tomb and give an even more realistic version of a funeral.
Life-sized, hooded, black pallbearers were carved anonymously c. 1480 for the tomb of Philippe Pot, Seneschal of Burgundy. They have a greater sense of actuality but less individual, emotional pathos of the group in traveling exhibition.
The small white, alabaster figures, however, are full of passionate emotion, and they move into a a variety of different positions. Their angular cuts of drapery are Gothic in style, but when seen in the round, as on display now, the statues have a 3-dimensional spatial conception of the Renaissance. Fortunately the artists carved them in the round, even though they are not seen this way in the Gothic niches underneath the life-sized, reclining duke and duchess. (In 1793, French revolutionaries damaged the effigies of the duke and duchess who represented the repression of the aristocracy, but left the mourners largely unharmed.)
The statuettes are part of the funerary sarcophagus of Jean sans Peur and Marguerite of Bavaria in the fine arts museum of Dijon. The small mourners walk in a funerary procession but are covered by gothic canopies.
These figures call to mind all the mourning figure in art history who accompany the processions and burials of important historical people, and remind us of the processions like those of Roman emperors. Certainly “mourners” were part of the history of art going back more than 5,000 years. However, I couldn’t think of any mourners from early Medieval art because the Early Christians felt death as triumphant and not a matter of earthly pain.
Although the Burgundian court was probably aware of ancient Roman sarcophagii depicting mourners in the funerary procession, the classical Greek-style Sarcophagus of the Mourning Women has a comparable format. This coffin of c. 350 BC was for a king of Sidon, Lebanon, and the women on bottom were probably part of his harem. Each mourner is carved in relief, standing separately between half-columns, while a chariots travel in a frieze above, perhaps the funerary procession or the rulers trip into afterlife. The women twist and turn and cry to show their various expressionsof grief after the death of a leader. As usual, these mourners serve a god-like ruler, not ordinary citizens. Eighteen women adorn the bottom of a sarcophagus of c. 350 BC, on view at that archeological museum in Istanbul
Early Greek funerary art attempts to show profound emotion. Both the ancient Greeks and Egyptians had elaborate burial ceremonies for their heroes or rulers that could last weeks or months. Mourners accompany pharoahs in their tombs, as the women below.
To the right, female “professional” mourners with raised arms who accompanied the great Ramses in his funerary procession are painted in his tomb.
Detail from a Greek vase in the Metropolitan Museum of Art has rows of mourning figures on either side of the funerary bier. Similar vases come from a cemetery in Athens and they date to 800-700 BC.
The lives of fallen Greek heroes were celebrated with elaborate games, chariot races and processions, as in the funeral sponsored by Achilles for the death of his friend Patrokles. Geometric style vases, from the 8th century BC, are decorated with scenes from funeral procession. Schematic, stick-like figures raise their arms to show they are grieving for the deceased. The figural design is a composite type: frontal torso, profile face and a single, huge eye.
Even older than Greek and Egyptian representations are two small terra cotta statues from Cernavoda, Romania, c. 4,000 BC. Found in a burial close to the Danube River, these statues could be mourning figures. The man’s arms are raised while the woman’s arm is on her knee, her shape suggesting fertility and hope for continuity. I can’t help but think these little figurines were made by the ancestors of Mycenaean or Dorian Greeks who in a later era migrated down into Greece.
The male figure is sometimes called “The Thinker,” but these clay figures from Cernavoda, Romania may be mourners who accompany an important person in burial. The raised arms to show grief was later used by Greeks. They also remind me of Brancusi and Henry Moore.
The exhibition stays until April 15 in Richmond, the last destination in a 2-year, 7-city tour in the United States, including the New York Metropolitan Museum. Next they will go to the Cluny Museum on Paris before returning home. It will be interesting to see how they are displayed when they go home to Dijon.
St Anthony Torment by the Demons, c. 1487, was painted by Michelangelo when he was only 13. The panel, 18 x 12 inches, is warped as happens to many panels over time.
The Torment of Saint Anthony is a small panel painting which was recently discovered to have been painted by Michelangelo in 1487/88. Intensive cleaning in 2008/9 led experts to believe that Michelangelo painted it when he was 12 or 13 years of age. Only four easel paintings by Michelangelo are known, and this one of is in North America, at Fort Worth’s Kimbell Art Museum.
Michelangelo’s St. Anthony looks remarkably calm despite the demons who are scratching him
St. Anthony was an early Christian of the 4th century who lived as a hermit for many years. According to his biographer, the rigorous asceticism practiced by St Anthony in the Egyptian desert allowed him to float in the air, where he was attacked by devils trying to beat him to the ground. Anthony defeated these demons on more than one occasion, but not without a big struggle. It is not at all surprising that a young Michelangelo would have been attracted to this subject, because the artist always seemed to be battling his own internal demons, as the poetry he wrote and certain sculptures of slaves he made later in life would suggest.
Schongauer’s masterly engraving, St. Anthony Tormented by Demons, c. 1480, gave inspiration to the young Michelangelo
Michelangelo copied an engraving by a French-German artist, Martin Schongauer, who was Europe’s greatest practitioner of printmaking at that time. Schongauer used a vivid imagination and great technical ability to show light, shadow and texture. These beasts are composite creatures of fanciful reptiles, fish and flying monsters, who scratch, pull and club the holy man. Schongauer left the landscape minimal, a small edge of rocks in the lower right-hand corner which describe the mountain he lived on in isolation. Saint Anthony seems to be suspended in the air, in a radiating, circular composition. Schongauer used short dots or stipples to get his deepest shadows into the small metal plate used for engraving.
We don’t know the date of Schongauer’s engraving–perhaps about 1480–but we know that his prints traveled throughout Europe. Michelangelo’s biographers said that he made a painting after a Schongauer print when he was 13, and this new attribution fulfills that void in our knowledge. This connection also shows the important role of prints in spreading artistic ideas and iconography, with the engraving passed into Italy from Germany.I have seen the Schongauer original in the print room of the National Gallery and its details are incredible. No wonder the young genius was impressed.
Although Michelangelo borrowed many details from the great German engraver, he went to the fish market to observe. According to the Kimball Art Museum, Michelangelo scraped away lines of paint in the body of the fish-like creature, revealing the primer beneath the paint in the parallel lines of hatching.
When Michelangelo copied Schongauer, he was equally adept at detail. He straightened Saint Anthony’s head, gave him a shorter beard and added an interesting landscape background. The brown-gray foreground is rocky and craggy, and in pristine detail. Critics of the Michelangelo attribution do not like the background. The painting has a high viewpoint just like St. Anthony who lived on a mountain near the Nile when the demons attacked and lifted him. So this landscape is a bird’s eye view of river, hills and sky with a low horizon line. Using aerial perspective, it gets more and more indistinct as it goes back into space and turns nearly white as it hits the horizon. The cool colors of the background and the low horizon line allow the figures to come forward and stand out with warm colors. This setting may be more reminiscent of the Arno in Florence than the Nile River, but European artists of the time were not familiar with the desert.
Photos above and right were taken by the Kimball to AP. This demon was painted in tempera and oil with magnificent detail. Color changes and the meticulous line technique are visible. His mouth is ferocious.
St Anthony Torment by the Demons, c. 1487, was painted by Michelangelo when he was only 13. The panel, 18 x 12 inches, is warped as happens to many panels over time.
The Torment of Saint Anthony is a small panel painting which was recently discovered to have been painted by Michelangelo in 1487/88. Intensive cleaning in 2008/9 led experts to believe that Michelangelo painted it when he was 12 or 13 years of age. Only four easel paintings by Michelangelo are known, and this one of is in North America, at Fort Worth’s Kimbell Art Museum.
Michelangelo’s St. Anthony looks remarkably calm despite the demons who are scratching him
St. Anthony was an early Christian of the 4th century who lived as a hermit for many years. According to his biographer, the rigorous asceticism practiced by St Anthony in the Egyptian desert allowed him to float in the air, where he was attacked by devils trying to beat him to the ground. Anthony defeated these demons on more than one occasion, but not without a big struggle. It is not at all surprising that a young Michelangelo would have been attracted to this subject, because the artist always seemed to be battling his own internal demons, as the poetry he wrote and certain sculptures of slaves he made later in life would suggest.
Schongauer’s, masterly engraving, St. Anthony Tormented by Demons, c. 1480, gave inspiration to the young Michelangelo
Michelangelo copied an engraving by a German artist, Martin Schongauer, who was Europe’s greatest practitioner of printmaking at that time. Schongauer used a vivid imagination and great technical ability to show light, shadow and texture. These beasts are composite creatures of fanciful reptiles, fish and flying monsters, who scratch, pull and club the holy man. Schongauer left the landscape minimal, a small edge of rocks in the lower right-hand corner which describe the mountain he lived on in isolation. Saint Anthony seems to be suspended in the air, in a radiating, circular composition. Schongauer used short dots or stipples to get his deepest shadows into the small metal plate used for engraving.
We don’t know the date of Schongauer’s engraving–perhaps about 1480–but we know that his prints traveled throughout Europe. Michelangelo’s biographers said that he made a painting after a Schongauer print when he was 13, and this new attribution fulfills that void in our knowledge. This connection also shows the important role of prints in spreading artistic ideas and iconography, with the engraving passed into Italy from Germany.I have seen the Schongauer original in the print room of the National Gallery and its details are incredible. No wonder the young genius was impressed.
Although Michelangelo borrowed many details from the great German engraver, he went to the fish market to observe. According to the Kimball Art Museum, Michelangelo scraped away lines of paint in the body of the fish-like creature, revealing the primer beneath the paint in the parallel lines of hatching.
When Michelangelo copied Schongauer, he was equally adept at detail. He straightened Saint Anthony’s head, gave him a shorter beard and added an interesting landscape background. The brown-gray foreground is rocky and craggy, and in pristine detail. Critics of the Michelangelo attribution do not like the background. The painting has a high viewpoint just like St. Anthony who lived on a mountain near the Nile when the demons attacked and lifted him. So this landscape is a bird’s eye view of river, hills and sky with a low horizon line. Using aerial perspective, it gets more and more indistinct as it goes back into space and turns nearly white as it hits the horizon. The cool colors of the background and the low horizon line allow the figures to come forward and stand out with warm colors. This setting may be more reminiscent of the Arno in Florence than the Nile River, but European artists of the time were not familiar with the desert.
Photos above and right were taken by the Kimball to AP. This demon was painted in tempera and oil with magnificent detail. Color changes and the meticulous line technique are visible. His mouth is ferocious.
This Crucifixion from the Getty Museum is the center of a 3-part altarpiece which can be seen at the Art Institute in its original format until May 30th. The unknown master used saturated colors in oil paint, while packing an incredible amount of detail into a panel 19 x 28 inches. Click on the photo to see an enlargement.
The Art Institute of Chicago is currently showing a major exhibition of French Renaissance painting, Kings, Queens and Courtiers. To me, the most impressive and interesting piece is by an unknown painter, the Master of Dreux Budé. It dates to about 1450.
One of the values of this type of scholarly exhibition is the opportunity to find and gather lost or separated parts of paintings. Here, we view the original pieces of what was once formed a triptych, three panels connected by hinges to tell a concise history of Christian Salvation. The largest painting was in center; it’s a Crucifixion from the Getty Museum in Los Angeles. The Resurrection, from the Musée Fabre in Montpellier, France, was once a wing on the right side.
It’s a special treat to see the left panel, The Kiss of Judas or Betrayal of Christ, which starts this Passion, Death and Resurrection story. (The painting is in private hands, therefore rarely seen and photographed.) This artist’s conception is very original; Judas’ kiss of betrayal is set in the darkness of night with moon, stars and faces as the light which heightens the drama of Christ’s arrest. Suddenly we notice a crowd of soldiers that is emerging from behind. The Crucifixion in center continues the story in a daytime landscape and tells multiple episodes as well, including the Harrowing of Hell on the far right.
Each panel of the painting is a masterpiece by itself but more complete when grouped together. The unknown painter is a vivid and imaginative storyteller.
A few suggestions for the identity of this painter have been made: Andre d’Ypres or Colin d’Amiens. We know of the patrons: Dreux Budé, a wine merchant, and his wife, Jeanne Peschard. The three-part painting, called a triptych, was for the altar in the Budé family chapel of Saint Gervais, Paris. A Crucifixion in the Louvre, Paris, is by the same painter, who may have learned from Rogier and/or Robert Campin in the guild of Tournai.
A double-mouth demon and sinners in a cauldron, above left. In the bottom left of the Crucifixion is a demon in Hell whom Jesus encountered while going there to rescue Adam and Eve. The photo is courtesy of Dawn Pedersen of Blue Lobster Art & Design.
“Vertumnus,” 1590, is a portrait of a Habsburg ruler, the Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II. Arcimboldo betrays a knowledge of plants from the New World: corn and pumpkins. This painting may suggest Rudolf II’s worldliness and the bounty of his reign.
In the tradition of Leonardo da Vinci and Albrecht Durer, 16th century painter Giuseppe Arcimboldo used his artistic skills to record his knowledge of the animals, plants, birds and fish, and he combined the seemingly opposite disciplines of art and science in a unexpected way.The National Gallery exhibition of his paintings is called Arcimboldo 1526-1593: Nature and Fantasy. The paintings on display are primarily portraits. But instead of recognizable faces with traditional features, he composed his portrait heads of painted vegetables, fruits, flowers, fire, fowl, fish and frogs. Hishuman beings are a rich composite of the natural world.
Arcimboldo worked in Vienna as the court painter for the Holy Roman Emperor, first Maximilian II and then his son, Rudolf, II. When Rudolf II moved the capital to Prague, the artist followed. However, his life began in Milan, where Leonardo da Vinci had spent 17 years and had defined the artistic legacy of the region with its special interest in naturalism. Both Arcimboldo and his father made designs for the stained-glass windows of Milan Cathedral.Emperor Maximilian II was known for his interest in scientific studies, botanical gardens and zoological habitats with exotic creatures, and it is likely that Arcimboldo was already recognized for his drawings of the animal and plant worlds when the Emperor summoned him to Vienna in 1562.
Shortly after arriving in Vienna, Arcimboldo did a series of the Four seasons. ” Spring,” right, contains some 80 variety of flowering plants. Fruits and vegetables make up the bounty of “Summer,” below.
In 1563, Arcimboldo made his first set of paintings: four profile portrait heads to personify the Four Seasons. Spring is the most beautiful, comprised of eighty varieties of flowering plants to form a man’s head and shoulders.
Summer shows a profile of fruits and vegetables facing the opposite direction. There’s a cucumber nose, teeth made of peas, a big apple cheek (or peach?), an ear of corn and a cloak woven of wheat.
It’s interesting to compare these depictions of the seasons next to Pieter Bruegel’s paintings of the months, a series of perhaps six landscapes (only 5 exist) painted in 1565, around nearly the same time. Bruegel’s The Harvesters depicts a late summer landscape of men and women working and living in nature. Bruegel’s peasants are in harmony with nature, but Arcimboldo’s man has become nature.One of my favorite paintings in the Metropolitan Museum, New York, is Pieter Bruegel’s “The Harvesters,” a late summer scene that is part of a series, also. It dates two years later than Arcimboldo’s Four Seasons.Shortly after Arcimboldo painted the Four Seasons, he painted a group of the Four Elements. Earth, Air, Fire and Water contain creatures found in the sources from which all matter was believed to have originated. Although Air has not survived, it was made entirely of birds and prominently featured the peacock and eagle, symbols of the Habsburgs. Fire‘s hair is aflame, his lips made of matches and his tongue is the light of an oil lamp. Earth and Water are the most complex, formed out of myriads of creatures. The species were portrayed accurately, although the artist distorted sizes to fit into facial features. These men, personifications of earth and water, are hideously ugly! (See the picture of Water in part II)
The National Gallery of Art in Washington has acquired a fascinating portrait, “The Four Seasons in One Head,” now on view with the Arcimboldo exhibition.
The artist painted this composite of the seasons in 1590, while still in service to the emperor but after he had returned to Milan. He chose a naked, gnarled tree stump of winter for the man’s head, but draped it in spring flowers for a necklace. Further up the head are branches holding summer wheat, then several branches that translate into horns. Cherries hang over the left ear, while apples and autumn grapes poke through the branches for his headdress. Curiously, this ugly creature smirks at us with crooked eyes in a 3/4 view.
A closer look at this allegorical head shows that Arcimboldo peeled away the bark of one branch growing out of the head and signed his name on the exposed wood, perhaps indicating it is a self-portrait. The artist gave this painting to a friend. Experts have suggested that the painting reflects the subject in his state of decay; Arcimboldo was in the late season of his life at this time. He died three years after completing this portrait. Certainly it took a fine sense of humor to see mankind the way Arcimboldo did.
What are we to think of him describing human nature in such unflattering terms? It is a far cry from the idealized portraits of Raphael (see The Veiled Woman, Parts I & II, January 2010 of this blog). Leonardo da Vinci painted the Mona Lisa and other beautiful, benignant figures. Surprisingly, he also did drawings of extremely ugly men and women, with disfigured or exaggerated features too large or too small. A few of these tiny drawings are on view in the same exhibition.
Alcimboldo was familiar with Leonardo’s grotesque portraits and chose to make his portraits in that vein rather than in the beautiful manner of the High Renaissance. High Renaissance artists had used outward beauty to symbolize inner virtue.
If the earlier artists saw truth in perfection, Arcimboldo suggests he saw truth in something quite opposite. In his men (and sometimes women), exquisitely painted images of fish, fruit, lizards or frogs make up the small details of their faces. These creatures are part of us and we are made of them. We’re an ugly conglomerate. Arcimboldo exposes our human nature, a nature made no better than the natural world. Is our own ugliness his truth?
“Water” from the Four Elements series. Kunsthistorische Museum, Vienna
Cowls and hoods identify these figures as mourners in the funeral procession. They are alabaster white with details such as books and belts painted. Larger effigies of the duke and duchess were painted in bright colors to look real.
Life-sized, hooded, black pallbearers were carved anonymously c. 1480 for the tomb of Philippe Pot, Seneschal of Burgundy. They have a greater sense of actuality but less individual, emotional pathos of the group in traveling exhibition.
turn and cry to show their various expressions of grief after the death of a leader. As usual, these mourners serve a god-like ruler, not ordinary citizens.
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