Category: Italian artists

The Transfiguration by Raphael

The Transfiguration by Raphael (1520)

In my last blog I looked at The Raising of Lazarus by Sebastiano del Piombo and talked about how this and a painting by Raphael, entitled Transfiguration, had been commissioned in 1517 by Cardinal Giulio de’ Medici as a high end altarpiece for the French Cathedral of S. Giusto Narbonne.  Raphael was, at the time, busy on other commissions.  He had been summoned to Rome by Pope Julius II to paint frescoes on the rooms of his private Vatican apartment, the Stanza della Segnatura and the Stanza di Eliodor and at the same time he was busy working on portraits and altarpieces as well as working alongside Sebastiano del Piombo on frescoes for Agostino Chigi’s Villa Farnesina.   It is thought that Giulio de Medici was so concerned with the time it was taking Raphael to complete The Transfiguration altarpiece that he commissioned Sebastiano di Piombo to paint the Raising of Lazarus for the cathedral in an effort to stimulate Raphael to work faster on his commission.

Today I am featuring Raphael’s work, The Transfiguration, which was considered the last painting by the Italian High Renaissance master.  Giorgio Vasari, the sixteenth century Italian painter, writer, historian, and who is famous today for his biographies of Renaissance artists, called Raphael a mortal God and of today’s painting, he described it as:

“…the most famous, the most beautiful and most divine…”

Although Raphael Sanzio was only thirty-four years of age when he was given the commission, bad health prevented him from finishing it. It was left unfinished by Raphael, and is believed to have been completed by his pupils, Giulio Romano and Giovanni Francesco Penni, shortly after his death on Good Friday 1520.

If we look closely at this work of art we can see two things going on simultaneously both of which are described in successive episodes of the Gospel of Matthew.   In the upper part of the painting we have the Transfiguration, which is described in Matthew’s Gospel (Matthew 17: 1-7):

“…After six days Jesus took with him Peter, James and John the brother of James, and led them up a high mountain by themselves.  There he was transfigured before them. His face shone like the sun, and his clothes became as white as the light.  Just then there appeared before them Moses and Elijah, talking with Jesus.   Peter said to Jesus, “Lord, it is good for us to be here. If you wish, I will put up three shelters—one for you, one for Moses and one for Elijah.”    While he was still speaking, a bright cloud covered them, and a voice from the cloud said, “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased. Listen to him!”   When the disciples heard this, they fell facedown to the ground, terrified.  But Jesus came and touched them. “Get up,” he said. “Don’t be afraid…”

We see the transfigured Christ floating aloft, bathed in a blue/white aura of light and clouds.  To his left and right are the figures of the prophets, Moses and Elijah.  Below Christ we see the three disciples on the mountain top shielding their eyes from the radiance and maybe because of their own fear of what is happening above them.   The two figures kneeling to the left of the mountain top are said to be the martyrs Saint Felicissimus and Saint Agapitus of Palestrina.

 In the lower part of the painting we have a depiction by Raphael of the Apostles trying, with little success, to liberate the possessed boy from his demonic possession. The Apostles fail in their attempts to save the ailing child until the recently-transfigured Christ arrives and performs a miracle.  Matthew’s Gospel (Mathew 17:14-21) recounts the happening:

“…When they came to the crowd, a man approached Jesus and knelt before him.  “Lord, have mercy on my son,” he said. “He has seizures and is suffering greatly. He often falls into the fire or into the water.  I brought him to your disciples, but they could not heal him.”    “You unbelieving and perverse generation,” Jesus replied, “how long shall I stay with you? How long shall I put up with you?  Bring the boy here to me.”   Jesus rebuked the demon, and it came out of the boy, and he was healed at that moment.   Then the disciples came to Jesus in private and asked, “Why couldn’t we drive it out?”   He replied, “Because you have so little faith. Truly I tell you, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you…”

Observe this lower scene.  The young boy, with arms outstretched and distorted in a combination of fear and pain, is possessed by some sort of demonic spirit.   He is being led forward by his elders towards Christ who is about to descend from the mountain.   The boy is crying and rolling his eyes heavenwards.   His body is contorted as he is unable to control his movement.   The old man behind the boy struggles to control him.  The old man, with his wrinkled brow has his eyes wide open in fear as to what is happening to his young charge.  He looks directly at the Apostles, visually pleading with them to help the young boy.    See how Raphael has depicted the boy’s naked upper body.  We can see the pain the boy is enduring in the way the artist has portrayed the pale colour of his flesh, and his veins, as he makes those violent and fearsome gestures.   The raised arms of the people below pointing to Christ, who is descending, links the two stories within the painting.  A woman in the central foreground of the painting kneels before the Apostles.  She points to the boy in desperation, pleading with them to help alleviate his suffering.

Contrapposto

The contorted poses of some of the figures at the bottom of the painting along with the torsion of the woman in what Vasari calls a contrapposto pose were in some way precursors to the Mannerist style that would follow after Raphael’s death.   Vasari believed that this woman was the focal point of the painting.     She has her back to us.  She kneels in a twisted contrapposto pose. Her right knee is thrust forward whilst she thrusts her right shoulder back.   Her left knee is positioned slightly behind the right and her left shoulder forward.  Thus her arms are directed to the right whilst her face and gaze are turned to the left.  Raphael gives her skin and drapery much cooler tones than those he uses for the figures in heavy chiaroscuro in the lower scene and by doing so illuminates her pink garment.  The way he paints her garment puts emphasis on her pose.  She and her clothes are brilliantly illuminated so that they almost shine as bright as the robes of the transfigured Christ and the two Old Testament Prophets who accompany him.   There is an element about her depiction which seems to isolate from the others in the crowd at the lower part of the painting and this makes her stand out more.

The unfinished painting was hung over the couch in Raphael’s studio in the Borgo district of Rome for a couple of days while he was lying in state, and when his body was taken for its burial, the picture was carried by its side.   Cardinal Giulio de’ Medici kept the painting for himself, rather than send it to Narbonne and it was placed above Raphael’s tomb in the Pantheon.   In 1523, three years after the death of Raphael, the cardinal donated the painting to the church of San Pietro in Montorio, Rome. In 1797, following the end of the war in which Napoleon’s Revolutionary French defeated the Papal States; a Treaty of Tolentino was signed.    By the terms of this treaty, a number of artistic treasures, including Raphael’s Transfiguration, were confiscated from the Vatican by the victorious French.   Over a hundred paintings and other works of art were moved to the Louvre in Paris.   The French commissioners reserved the right to enter any building, public, religious or private, to make their choice and assessment of what was to be taken back to France. This part of the treaty was extended to apply to all of Italy in 1798 by treaties with other Italian states.   It was not until 1815, after the fall of Napoleon, that the painting was returned to Rome. It then became part of the Pinacoteca Vaticana of Pius VII where it remains today.

Portrait of Laura Battiferri, wife of the sculptor Bartolomeo Ammannati by Agnolo Bronzino

Portrait of Laura Battiferri by Agnolo Bronzino (c.1560)

My featured painting bears a strange resemblance to the painting I looked at in my last blog although they were painted about thirty years apart by two different Italian artists.  It is not unusual to see paintings featuring the same sitter or views of certain buildings or particular landscapes painted by different artists but it is somewhat unusual to look upon two portraits of two different women featuring a similar gesture towards a certain object which has been included in both of the works of art.  Sounds a little confusing?  Ok let me say that if you have just stumbled on to this page without looking at my previous blog (June 25th  Portrait of a Woman with a Volume of Petrarch by Andrea del Sarto) then go to that one first and read about that particular painting before you read more about today’s offering.

I am sure having now looked at the two paintings you can see the unusual similarity – the book and the pointing fingers.   My featured work of art today is a portrait completed by Agnolo Bronzino around 1560 and is entitled Ritratto di Laura Battiferri, moglie dello scultore Bartolomeo Ammannati  (Portrait of Laura Battiferri, wife of the sculptor Bartolomeo Ammannati) and is housed in the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence.  It is part of the Loeser Bequest of Palazzo Vecchio which comprises of over thirty works of art that the American collector Charles Alexander Loeser bequeathed to the Florence City Council on his death in 1928.  The idea behind his bequest was that he felt it would play a part in the enhancement and reconstruction of the ancient atmosphere of Palazzo Vecchio, which the Florentine Council was carrying out at that time.   One of the conditions Loeser made was that he laid down procedures for the layout of his bequest, which was to be displayed in several rooms in Palazzo Vecchio, and that they were to be kept united in perpetuity, in an arrangement that would give the area not the habitual appearance of a museum but as he put it, it would  make each room appear “simply beautiful for the repose and enjoyment of the visitor”.

Before we look at the painting in detail I suppose the first question one asks when we look at this work of art is, who was Laura Battiferri and why would the great Italain Mannerist painter, Bronzino,  depict her in the portrait pointing at a book?  To find the answer to those questions one needs to look at the life of both the artist and his sitter.

Bronzino, whose real name was Agnolo di Cosimo, but was was probably given the nickname Il Bronzino (the little bronze) because of his relatively dark skin.  He was born in 1503 in Monticelli, a suburb of Florence.  His first artistic training was under the tutorship of the Florentine painter, Raffellino del Garbo and this lasted several years before he became an apprentice at the studio of Jacopo Carrucci, better known as, Pontormo, named as such after the Tuscan town where he was born.  Pontormo is now recognised as one of the founder of Florentine Mannerism.  Despite Pontormo being nine years older than Bronzino they became great friends and artistic collaborators and in some ways Pontormo acted as a father-figure for the young Bronzino.

In 1522 the plague struck Florence and Pontormo and Bronzino left the Tuscan city and headed for the Certosa del Galluzzo which is prominently situated on a hillside just south of Florence.  Here Pontormo, with Bronzino as his apprentice, worked together on a commission to paint a series of frescoes.   This was a very important time for Bronzino as he began to gain a reputation for the beauty of his work.   Bronzino returned to Florence in 1532 and worked on his frescos, as well as a number of portraits.    Seven years later in 1539, Bronzino had a major breakthrough with his artistic career when he received the patronage of the Medicis and was commissioned to carry out the elaborate decorations for the wedding of Cosimo I de’ Medici to Eleonora di Toledo who was the daughter of the Viceroy of Naples.   From that moment in time he became the official court painter to the Medici court and over time would paint a large number of portraits of the Medici clan and members of the royal court.  His portraits of the royal couple, Cosimo and Eleonora, and other figures of the Duke’s court, revealed a delicate coldness, almost an aloofness.  This was to define Bronzino’s portraiture style.  It was a portraiture technique which showed no emotion whilst always remaining stylish. The works were well received by the sitters and Bronzino’s portraiture style went on to influence a century of European court portraiture.

It is now we have our first connection between Bronzino and the sitter in today’s painting, Laura Battiferri, because she was a close friend of Eleanora di Toledo, Cosimo’s di Medici’s wife and there is no doubt that the artist and sitter met at the Medici court.  Another thing the artist and sitter had in common was poetry.   Although we are well aware that Bronzino was an artist he was also, like Laura Battiferri, an accomplished poet. Besides the portraits of members of the Medici family and some of the favoured royal courtiers he would paint portraits of his fellow poets, one of which was Laura Battiferri.   Laura Battiferri  came from Urbino.  She was born illegitimately to a pre-Reformation churchman Giovanni Battiferri, and his concubine. Her wealthy father, a Vatican cleric, provided her with a humanist education. As a well regarded and well respected poet she mixed with the most distinguished poets and artists of her day and lived all her life in court circles. She was the wife of the renowned architect and sculptor Bartolomeo Ammannati, who was a close confidant and adviser to Cosimo di Medici.

And so to the painting.    I would ask you to look at today’s work in conjunction with Andrea del Sarto’s  Portrait of a Woman with a Volume of Petrarch which I featured in my last blog (June 24th).  Both are female portraits but Bronzino has unusually reverted to the type of female portraiture of the Quattrocento (the art of 15th century Italy).   In those days, in female portraiture, the sitter was seen in profile view.  These works were traditionally painted by male artists for male patrons.  Graham Smith commented on why female portraits in those days were painted in profile view in his 1996 book Bronzino’s Portrait of Laura Battiferri.  He wrote:

 “…the profile portrait allowed the suitor to explore his lover’s face ardently, while simultaneously attesting to the woman’s chastity and female virtue…”

As we look at the portrait of Laura are we immediately struck by her beauty?  I think not.  There is a remoteness about this lady as she looks straight ahead avoiding our eyes.  It is if she has turned away from us showing her disdain for us.   Or could it be that she is exhibiting a sense of modesty, and it is this which makes her avert her eyes?   Whatever the reason, it has in some way, added a majestic aura to her character.   There is a sense that she is untouchable and unattainable which of course would please her husband who is thought to have commissioned the work.  Laura was also recorded by historians as being a devout Catholic and a very pious person.  It is known that she was a great supporter of the Jesuitical Counter-Reformation also known as the Catholic Reformation which was the period of  Catholic revival beginning with the Council of Trent (1545-63)and which historians now look upon as a response to the Protestant Reformation. Therefore Bronzino’s portrayal of her is a very fitting one and it could well be that the artist wanted to indicate this piety in the way he depicted her.

Laura Battiferri

Look at her closely.  Her neck and fingers have been elongated in a Mannerist style.  The upper part of her body is now completely out of proportion in relation to her small head and the way in which Bronzino has depicted her forehead in some ways draws attention to her long and slightly hooked nose.  She is wearing a transparent veil, which hangs down from the shell-shaped, calotte-style bonnet covering her tightly combed-back hair onto her goffered shawl and puffed sleeves.  Her one and only gesture, as she ignores us, is to point to a page in an open book which she is holding.  Her elongated thin fingers frame a certain passage of the prose.  It is a book of sonnets by the Italian poet Petrarch.  Compare this with Andrea del Sarto’s woman who is also pointing to a book of his sonnets.  So similar and yet so different.  The woman in del Sarto’s portrait connects with us.  We have eye contact with her.  We can almost know what she is thinking but with Laura Battiferri she is an enigma.  With no eye contact, her thoughts remain her own.

The passage in the book

In both portraits we see the women pointing to a passage in Petrarch’s book in which the central theme is the poet’s love for a woman he met when he was in his early twenties. Her name was Laura de Noves.   In this painting, Laura Battiferri points to a passage in the book where Petrarch talks about “his Laura” and maybe Battiferri identifies herself with Petrarch’s Laura and empathizes with the poet’s words as he describes the love of his life:

“….she is an unapproachable, unattainable beauty… as chaste as the adored mistress of a troubadour, as modest and devout as a ‘Stilnovismo Beatrice'”. “Laura’s personality is even more elusive than her external appearance. She remains the incarnation of chaste and noble beauty.”

Bronzino had already painted a number of portraits which featured the sitter pointing to pages in a book.  Around 1540 he completed his portrait entitled Portrait of Lucrezia Panciatichi in which the young lady points to a page in a book which rests on her knee.   Eight years earlier he painted a portrait entitled Lorenzo Lenzi, in which the young son of a prominent Florentine family holds an open book inscribed with sonnets by Petrarch and so when he completed his portrait of Laura Battiferri around 1560 showing the sitter pointing at pages in a book it was not a unique depiction and of course as we know Andrea del Sarto’s painting was completed about thirty years earlier.

I end with a question to any females reading this blog.  If you were to commission an artist to paint your portrait would you go for the Bronzino-profile style in which the artist would probably depict you as modest and unattainable or would you choose the del Sarto-style in which you look out at the us, the viewer and from your facial expression maybe we are able to read your thoughts?

Portrait of a Woman with a Volume of Petrarch by Andrea del Sarto

Portrait of a Woman with a Volume of Perarch
by Andrea del Sarto (c.1528)

My blog today centres around three women, an artist and a poet.  The artist in question, and the painter of today’s featured painting, is the Italian artist, Andrea del Sarto.

Andrea del Sarto was born in Florence in 1486 and was one of four children.  His real name was Andrea d’Agnolo di Francesco but the epithet “del Sarto” means “of the tailor” and that was the profession of his father, Agnolo.  At the age of eight, his parents took him out of his normal school where he had been learning to read and write and arranged for him to become an apprentice to a local goldsmith but he didn’t like the work although he did spend time at this early age drawing from his master’s models.  A local Florentine painter and woodcarver, Gian Barile, noticed his drawings and took him under his wing and gave him his first artistic lessons.  Andrea was now doing something he enjoyed and in a very short time had become quite a talented artist for someone his age.  At the age of twelve, Barile realising Andrea would, with the correct training, become a great artist had words with the great Florentine artist of the time Piero di Cosimo and persuaded him to take Andrea on as an apprentice.  Soon Piero di Cosimo realised that despite his age Andrea del Sarto was a greater draughtsman and painter than most of the other aspiring artists in Florence.

Andrea del Sarto remained with Piero di Cosimo for four years.  In 1505 he became great friends with another young Italian painter, Franciabigio, who was four years his senior and apprenticed to the Italian painter, Mariotto Albertinelli.  A year later in 1506, Andrea wanted to move on from his apprenticeship with Piero di Cosimo and because Franciabigio  apprenticeship had ended with Albertinelli, Andrea del Sarto persuaded him to embark on a shared venture with him and open up a joint workshop in Piazza del Grano.  It was here that they worked and lived and where they worked jointly on painting commissions.  One of their collaborations was for frescos for the Basilica della Santissima Annunziata di Firenze, (Basilica of the Most Holy Annunciation). The work they produced was highly regarded by the Church’s patrons, The Brotherhood of the Servites Order, who referred to Andrea del Sarto, as Andrea senza errori, or Andrea the perfect. From 1509 to 1514, he went on to complete many more frescos for the church.  One of the unfortunate aspects of these commissions was that due to the connivance of patrons, Andrea del Sarto and Franciabigio were from being working partners pitted against each other on some of the later commissions.  This eventually led to the breakup of the partnership of the two artists.

These works enhanced Andre del Sarto’s reputation and soon he became one of the leading Florentine painters.  Aged twenty-three, Andre del Sarto was regarded as the best fresco painter of central Italy, barely rivalled by Rafaello Sanzio di Urbino (Raphael), who was four years older.  It should also be remembered that Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel frescoes were at this time, only in a preliminary stage.

During the time of the friendship between del Sarto and Franciabigio and before they split up, they would often go out socialising and it was on one of these occasions that Andre came across Lucrezia del Fede, who, at the time, was the wife of the hatter, Carlo Recanati.  It was love at first sight.    When her husband died at the end of 1512, Andrea married Lucrezia.  Andrea was besotted by this beautiful woman and would paint her portraits on many occasions and often portraits he did of other women had the hint of Lucrezia in them.  This liaison between man and wife was to have an effect on the course of his life.

In 1516 two of his paintings were sent to the court of the French king, Francois I.  He was very impressed with del Sarto’s work and in 1518 invited the artist to visit him in Paris.  In June that year, Andrea del Sarto, without his beloved wife, went to the French capital, along with his apprentice, Andrea Sguazzella.  He worked at the court and received sizeable remunerations for his time.  At last he was earning a good wage for his work and so everything was perfect.  Actually no, it was not,  as there was one major problem – his wife, whom he had abandoned in Florence.  She became more and more discontented and demanded her husband’s return.  Reluctantly Andrea approached the king and asked if he could return to Florence on a brief visit to see his wife.  King Francois reluctantly agreed on condition that Andreas’ visit home was only for a short period.  Maybe to ensure Andrea del Sarto’s return, he gave the artist some money in order to buy and bring back some Italian works of art.

Andrea took the money but instead of purchasing paintings and probably to placate his wife, used it to buy himself a house in Florence.  His love for his wife and Florence, his birthplace, had too much of a hold on him and he decided not to keep to his part of the bargain he had with the French king.  This act of betrayal meant that he could never return to France and in some ways tarnished his reputation.  For the next ten years he remained in Florence and continued with his art.  In October 1529 the city of Florence came under siege from a large Imperial and Spanish army which had surrounded the city.  The siege lasted for ten months before it was captured and Alessandro de’ Medici was proclaimed the new ruler of the captured city.

Andrea del Sarto had remained in the city during the siege but the following year he died at age 43 during a pandemic of Bubonic Plague which it is thought could have been brought to the city by the invading armies. He was buried in the church of the Servites.  The great biographer of Italian artists, Giorgio Vasari, claimed Andrea received no attention at all from his wife during his terminal illness but one should remember how contagious the Plague was and maybe she was simply scared in case she too contracted the often-fatal disease.   Vasari did not have a kind word for Lucrezia.  According to him, she was faithless, jealous, overbearing and vixenish with her husband’s apprentices. Lucrezia del Fede survived her husband by 40 years.

My featured oil on wood painting today by Andrea del Sarto is entitled Portrait of a Woman with a Volume of Petrarch and was completed by him around 1528 and is now housed in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence.   The woman in the painting is thought to be Maria del Berrettaio, who was born in 1513, and was Andrea del Sarto’s stepdaughter, the daughter from his wife, Lucrezia’s first marriage.  This early sixteenth century portrait is an interesting mix of the High Renaissance and the idealization of Mannerism.   Portraiture was very popular with the middle classes going back a hundred years from the time of this painting.  In those early days,  portraits of women would normally show the sitter in profile.  In those earlier portraits the sitter would look straight ahead with no eye contact with the viewer which in the majority of cases would be a person of the opposite sex.  The averting of the sitter’s eyes from us, the viewer,  enabled the female sitter to retain her modesty.  However by the end of the fifteenth century things began to change and artists would show women in three-quarter or even full face and by doing so would be able to capture the full beauty of the woman and highlight her facial qualities.   To retain a modicum of modesty however, the female sitter would often avert her eyes or look downwards.

Andrea del Sarto’s portrait is different.  What can we make of his sitter from this portrait?    The fact that the artist has chosen a very dark and plain background accentuates the facial expression of the young woman.  She is seated in a semi-circular chair.  Her clothes are somewhat plain and lack the opulence we see in other female portraits who wish to convey their wealth of that of their family.  Her blouse with its high neck has a chaste feeling to it.  Her blue over garment is heavy and full enough to hide the contours of her body.  The only fashionable aspect to her clothing is the popular slashed sleeves of her dress.  Her hair is long, simply fashioned and kept in place with a simple clasp.  The girl looks directly out at us.  She smiles weakly.   It is a demure and shy smile.   This is not an idealized portrait of a woman.  Andrea del Sarto has not shown any inclination to “beautify” his sitter.  She has an olive skin and not the fair skin of an idealized beauty of the time.  Her face is plump and does not have the delicate bone structure of contemporary beauties.  In those days beauty in a woman was fair skin, long neck, and bright oval shaped eyes.  Our sitter has none of these attributes.

At the beginning of this blog I said the painting today was all about an artist, a poet and three women.  I have given you the artist, Andrea del Sarto, talked about his wife Lucrezia and now we have identified his sitter, Maria del Berrettaio but where do the poet and the third woman come into the story?  The answer lies in the portrait itself and the title of the painting.  Our sitter has hold of a book which she has presumably been reading and she is pointing her Mannerist-styled fingers towards a point in the text.  The book she is holding is the Petrarchino and at the time was a popular work of the fourteenth century Italian scholar and poet Francesco Petrarca, who was known in English simply as Petrarch.  Petrarch is often referred to as the “Father of Humanism”.

The Petrarchino was part of a book of sonnets, entitled Il Canzoniere, whose central theme was Petrarch’s love for a woman he met when he was in his early twenties.  Her name was Laura de Noves, the wife of Count Hugues de Sade, an ancestor of the Marquis de Sade.   She was six years younger than Petrarch having been born in Avignon in 1310.  The story goes that Petrarch first saw her on Good Friday 1327 at Easter mass in the church of Sainte-Claire d’Avignon.  In current terminology we may look upon Pertrarch as a stalker as for the next three years whilst living in Avignon he haunted Laura in church and on her walks.   He eventually moved away from Avignon but returns ten years later and it was then that he began to write numerous sonnets in her praise.

The sitter in today’s featured painting points to a page of the book of sonnets which has been recognised as sonnets number 153 and 154.  So what is she coyly pointing to on this page ?  What are the words of the two sonnets?  All will be revealed in this English translation…………

ENGLISH

Sonnet 153

Go, warm sighs, to her frozen   heart,
shatter the ice that chokes her pity,
and if mortal prayers rise to heaven,
let death or mercy end my sorrow.

Go, sweet thoughts, and speak to her
of what her lovely gaze does not include:
so if her harshness or my stars still hurt me,
I shall be free of hope and free of error.

Through you it can be said, perhaps not fully,
how troubled and gloomy is my state,
as hers is both peaceful and serene.

Go safely now that Love goes with you:
and you may lead fortune smiling here,
if I can read the weather by my sun.

Sonnet 154

The stars, the sky, the   elements employed
all their art, and all their deepest care,

 to set in place this living light, where Nature
is mirrored, and a Sun without compare.

The work, so noble, graceful and rare
is such that mortal gaze cannot grasp it:
such is the measure of beauty in her eyes
that Love rains down in grace and sweetness.

The air struck by those sweet rays
is inflamed with virtue, and becomes
such as to conquer all our speech and thought.

There no unworthy desire can be felt,
but honour and virtue: now where
was ill will ever so quenched by noble beauty?

So there you have it – a story about a poet, an artist and three women.

Portrait of a Woman by Bartolomeo Veneto

Portrait of a Woman by Bartolomeo Veneto (c.1525)

I have over the past blogs featured paintings of a women whose facial beauty I find quite stunning and have commented at length on their great beauty.  Two especially come to mind, Jeunesse Dorée by Gerard Brockhurst (My Daily Art Display May 16th 2011) and Virgin Annunciate by Antonello da Messina (My Daily Art Display May 1st 2012).  I mention this because today I am featuring another such painting which is a portrait of an exceptionally beautiful woman.  The title of the painting is simply, Portrait of a Woman and the artist is Bartolomeo Veneto.  I will look at the painting in detail later and explore the mystery of whose portrait it might be but first let me tell you a little about the artist.

Bartolomeo Veneto was born at the end of the fifteenth century but little is known of his early upbringing and family life.  The first time his signature was found on a painting, was on his work entitled Virgin and Child and it was dated 1502.  The signature itself gives an insight into his early days as he signed it:

“… bartolamio mezo mezo cremonexe venizian e…”

which when roughly translated means:

“…Bartolomeo half-Venetian and half Cremonese…”

In his early days he worked in Veneto, in North East Italy, Venice itself and Lombardy, which has its border to the west of Veneto.  Whilst in Venice he trained under Gentile Bellini, who was the most prestigious painter in Venice in the early sixteenth century.  Bartolomeo Veneto concentrated most of his art on portraiture and for that he received many commissions.

It is thought that around 1507 Bartolomeo worked at the Este court in Ferrara, which was ruled by the Duke of Ferrara, Alfonso I d’Este who in 1502 married for the second time.  His new wife was none other than Lucrezia Borgia and Alfonso was her third husband.  During his time at the court Bartolomeo gilded frames and made carnival decorations and completed a painting depicting the Virgin and Saints.  After three years at the court Bartolomeo moved on and he is reported to have been in Padua in 1512 and Milan eight years later and it was here that his portraiture became influenced by the portraits by Leonardo da Vinci who had been in this Italian city some years earlier.

Today’s featured painting by Bartolomeo Veneto, which he completed around 1525, is entitled Portrait of a Woman and is now housed in the Städel Museum in Frankfurt.  I suppose the first question one asks when looking at this beautiful half-naked woman is who is she?   There is no degree of certainty as to the answer but it is thought to be a portrait of Lucrezia Borgia.  What makes her stand out is the fact that the artist has placed her, in three-quarter profile, dressed in a white tunic against a black background and he would use this black background technique in other portraits.

The staring eyes

Although she has turned to the left she keeps eye contact with us.  Although her left breast is bared, it is her gaze that catches our attention.  As we look at her we are almost mesmerized by that stare.  The way she looks at us is in some ways unnerving.  She has captured our attention.

Observe the ringlets of her golden hair as it cascades down her shoulders.  See how Bartolomeo has painted each strand of it in detail.  It is this extraordinary attention to detail that made his portraits so popular and led to many commissions from wealthy patrons.  This tempera and oil on wood panel bears the name of the ancient goddess of spring, Flora and she was often a character portrayed in Renaissance art.   In her right hand, she delicately holds up to us, between her slim index finger and thumb, a small posy of wild flowers consisting of daisies, anemones and buttercups,.  These three flowers are attributes of Zephyr’s wife Flora, the goddess who ushered in spring.  This is her offering to us.

A lavish jewel adorns her forehead.   Above the jewel is a blue silk band and her hair is covered in a veil which is crowned with myrtle, all of which lead us to believe that this woman is married.  Another jewel hangs between her breasts on a pendant, the placing of which adds to the sensuality of the portrait.  Having said that, I believe there is also chasteness in the way the artist has portrayed the woman.  Could this then be a portrait of Lucrezia Borgia?  The same Lucrezia Borgia who was one of the daughters of Cardinal Rodrigo Borgia, later to become Pope Alexander VI, and his mistress Vannozza Cattanei?  Could this be the portrait of a woman who was accused of incest with both her father and her brother Cesare?  Could this beautiful and delicate-looking woman be the infamous female who was accused of poisoning many of her adversaries and who had a string of extra-marital affairs?

So, are we looking at a beauty or a beast and is this a true likeness of Lucrezia Borgia?

River Landscape with Apollo and the Cumaean Sibyl by Salvator Rosa

River Landscape with Apollo and the Cumaen Sibyl by Salvator Rosa (c.1655)

My featured artist today is the 17th century Italian Baroque painter Salvator Rosa.  He was born in 1615 in the small hill town of Arenella above the outskirts of Naples.  His father Vito Antonio was a land surveyor and had great ambitions for his son wanting him to become either a lawyer or take holy orders in the church and become a priest.  With this in mind he decided that his son should be afforded the best education and had him enter the convent of the Somaschi Fathers, a holy order of priests and brothers.  As we have seen in many biographies of artists, what the parents want for their children often differs from what the children themselves want and so it was the case for Salvator Rosa.  During his studies he had developed a love of art and with the support of his maternal uncle, Paolo Greco, he secretly began to learn to paint.  Rosa began his artistic training in Naples, under the tutelage of his future brother-in-law, Francesco Francanzano, who had trained under the influential Spanish painter, Jusepe de Ribera.  It is also believed that after this initial training, Rosa trained with the Naples painter, Aniello Falcone, who was also at one time apprenticed to Ribera.  Rosa greatly admired the works of Ribera and was influenced by them.

His father died when he was seventeen years old and, as he had been the breadwinner to Rosa’s large family, his mother struggled to feed her children let alone financially support her son Salvator with his artistic ambitions.  After his father’s death, Salvator Rosa continued to work as an apprentice with Falcone until 1634 when he relocated to Rome where he stayed for two years before returning home.

In 1638, aged 23 he went back to Rome where he was given accommodation by the Bishop of Viterbo, Francesco Brancaccio who treated him as his protégé and received commissions from the Catholic Church.  It was whilst in Rome that Rosa further developed his multi-talented skills, not just as an artist but as a musician, a writer and a comic actor.  He founded a company of actors in which he regularly participated.   He wrote and often acted in his own satirical plays, often political in nature and often lampooned the wealthy and powerful, and it was his devilish satire which gained him the reputation of a rebel, pitting himself against these influential people.  However his viperish-tongued satires made him some powerful enemies including Gian Lorenzo Bernini, the famous and powerful architect and who was at that time, the most powerful artist in Rome.  He, like Rosa, was also an amateur playwright and it was during the Carnival in 1639 that Rosa ridiculed Bernini’s plays and his stature as a playwright.  Eventually Rosa had made too many enemies in the Italian capital and decided it was just too dangerous to remain there.

From Rome he travelled to Florence where he was to remain for the next eight years.   One of his most influential Florentine patrons was Cardinal Giancarlo de’ Medici, himself a great lover and supporter of the Arts. Rosa worked for the Cardinal at his palace but was still allowed the freedom to paint his own landscapes and would go off and spend the summers in the Tuscan countryside around Monterufoli and Barbiano.    It was whilst living in Florence that Rosa did some work for Giovanni Carlo who was at the centre of the literary and theatrical life of Florence and Rosa soon became part of Carlo’s circle of friends.  Rosa used his own house as a meeting place for local writers, musicians and artists and it became known as the Accademia dei Percossi, or Academy of the Stricken.

He left Florence in 1646 being unhappy with the ever increasing restrictions put on him and his artistic and literary work by the Medici court  He went first back to Naples where he remained for three years before returning to Rome in 1649  where he believed his writings and paintings would win him even greater fame.  One of the problems Salvator Rosa had was his ever tempestuous relationship with his patrons and their demands.  He often refused to paint on commission or to agree a price beforehand.  He rejected interference from his patrons in his choice of subject.  In Francis Haskell’s book entitled, Patrons and Painters: Study in the Relations Between Italian Art and Society in the Age of the Baroque, he quotes from a letter Rosa wrote to one of his patrons, Antonio Ruffo, explaining his thoughts on his art and commissions:

“…I do not paint to enrich myself but purely for my own satisfaction.  I must allow myself to be carried away by the transports of enthusiasm and use my brushes only when I feel myself rapt…”

The 17th century Florentine art historian Filippo Baldinucci could not believe Rosa’s attitude to his patrons and wrote:

“…I can find few, in fact, I cannot find any, artists either before or after him or among his contemporaries, who can be said to have maintained the status of art as high as he did… No one could ever make him agree a fixed price before a picture was finished and he used to give a very interesting reason for this: he could not instruct his brush to produce paintings worth a particular sum but, when they were completed, he would appraise them on their merits and would then leave it to his friend’s judgement to take them or leave them….”

In his later years he spent much time on satirical portraiture, history paintings and works of art featuring tales from mythology.  In 1672 he contracted dropsy and died six months later.  Whilst on his deathbed he married Lucrezia, his mistress of thirty years, who had borne him two sons.   He died in March 1673 just a few months short of his fifty-eighth birthday.  After his father’s death forty years earlier Rosa had struggled financially but at the time of his death he had accumulated a moderate fortune.

Landscape painting had been regarded as a relatively lesser genre of painting in Italy at the time. But two French artists based in Rome, Claude Lorraine, who Rosa had befriended, and Nicholas Poussin, had done much to raise its status by setting scenes drawn from classical myth or biblical legend in grand Arcadian landscapes inspired by the nearby countryside. Rosa continued their tradition but with one subtle difference.  His landscape scenes depicted scenes of stormy desolation rather than calm pastoral beauty scenes of Claude and Poussin.  For My Daily Art Display today I am going to look at a painting by Salvator Rosa, which is a landscape but based on Roman mythology and Ovid’s book Metamorphoses.  It is the story of Apollo (often known as Phoebus) and the Cumaean Sibyl.   Cumae, which was the location of Italy’s earliest Greek colony, is on the Gulf of Gaeta near Naples and this location was probably known to Rosa.  The basis of the painting harks back to a conversation Aeneas had with the Cumaean Sibyl, who was a guide to the underworld of Hades, the entrance to which was the volcanic crater of Avernus.  Aeneas wanted to enter the underworld in order to visit his dead father Anchises.  Aeneas, with the help of his guide, the Cumaean Sibyl, found the aged ghost of his father.  It was at this time that the Sibyl recounted the story of her barter with the god Apollo, how she reneged on her promise and why she had become old and haggard:

“…“I am no goddess,” she replied, “nor is it well to honour any mortal head with tribute of the holy frankincense. And, that you may not err through ignorance, I tell you life eternal without end was offered to me, if I would but yield virginity to Phoebus for his love. And, while he hoped for this and in desire offered to bribe me for my virtue, first with gifts, he said, ‘Maiden of Cumae choose whatever you may wish, and you shall gain all that you wish.’ I pointed to a heap of dust collected there, and foolishly replied, `As many birthdays must be given to me as there are particles of sand.’  For I forgot to wish them days of changeless youth. He gave long life and offered youth besides, if I would grant his wish. This I refused, I live unwedded still. My happier time has fled away, now comes with tottering step infirm old age, which I shall long endure…”

The making of the bargain

Her mistake had been not only to ask Apollo for eternal life but also to ask for everlasting youth and beauty.  She aged over time.  Her body grew smaller with age and eventually was kept in an ampulla, a small nearly globular flask or bottle, with two handles.   Eventually only her voice was left.

The painting, entitled River Landscape with Apollo and the Cumaean Sibyl, depicting the meeting of the Cumaean Sibyl and Apollo, was painted by Salvator Rosa around 1655.  This is one of his finest works and highlights his ability as a landscape painter.  It is a desolate landscape scene.  Before us we have an isolated inlet of the sea, surrounded by towering cliffs of rough and rugged stone. On the right hand side of the painting we have a dark crag which towers against a stormy summer sunset.  From this jagged rock there are spindly trees sprouting from it at strange angles. In the foreground of the painting we see the god Apollo, seated on a tree stump with his lyre at his side, propositioning the beautiful Cumaean Sibyl, the turbaned woman who stands before him.    His hand is raised almost as if he is blessing the woman but it is his demonstrative act of granting her wish that she might live for as many years as there are grains of dust in the earth she holds out to him in her hand.   In return for the granting of her wish she would become his lover.   The Sibyl having been granted her wish, changes her mind, and refuses to surrender to Apollo’s advances.  Apollo cannot take back what he had given the young woman, but he was still able to punish the fickle girl, for, in devising her wish, she forgot to ask for eternal youth, and by refusing to grant her this he condemned her to grow older and older until at last she wasted away and only her voice was left.

The scene before us, depicted by Rosa, is purely imaginary, Rosa has included the cavern from which the Sibyl uttered her famous prophecies and which still exists in the dark, rocky area at the top right of the picture.  In the background we can see the inaccessible citadel perched high on a cliff.  The other characters we see in the scene are the nine muses, the goddesses of creative inspiration who were the handmaidens of Apollo. The painting is illuminated by the last rays of the setting sun light which light up the stormy sky in the distance. Look at how Rosa has managed to portray an aura of an ominous premonition.   The dramatic use of dark tones and chiaroscuro adds a feeling of foreboding about the scene.  The way he has depicted the wild landscape of bare rocks, splintered trees and a threatening stormy sky goes hand in hand with the story of retribution about to be dealt to the Cumaen Sibyl by Apollo for reneging on her promise to him.

Notwithstanding the darkness of the scene, it is still a beautiful landscape painting.  It is currently housed at the Wallace Collection, London.

La Vucciria by Renato Guttuso

La Vucirria by Renato Guttuso (1974)

I am leaving the final part of My Daily Art Display’s look at the life of Paul Gaugin until my next blog and thought I would feature a painting I came across the other day when I was watching an art/ travelogue/cooking programme, which looked at the artistic treasures of the Sicily whilst the presenters sampled the local dishes.  In the first of three programmes they visited Palermo and in one section we were shown the manic hustle and bustle of La Vucciria, the popular market of the town.  When I was researching this blog I came across a description of this marketplace given by a resident of the town.

“…There are no words in any language to accurately describe this place. It is a mix of heaven and hell in one place! The mix of smells and people and cultures all in one market. You can glimpse into the life of the real people of the city. I go there almost every day because I can’t get enough…”

What fascinated me the most about the market was a painting of it by one of Sicily’s most famous artists, Renato Guttuso, and so I have made him my artist of the day and his painting simply entitled La Vucciria the featured painting for today’s blog.

Renato Guttuso was born on 26 December 1911 at Bagheria, a small town on the north west coast of Sicily, some ten kilometres east of Palermo. His father Gioacchino was a land-surveyor and also an amateur watercolourist.  His mother was Giuseppina d’Amico.  Probably due to his father, Guttuso learnt to paint at a very early age.   At the age of thirteen he began signing and dating his paintings and drawings which at the time were, in the main, copies of nineteenth century landscapes.  He went to high school in Palermo and then on to the university, where he studied European art, from Courbet to Van Goghand to Picasso.
In 1931, when he was twenty years of age he had two of his paintings accepted for the Prima Quadriennale d’Arte Nazionale in Rome and this gave him the chance to attend the exhibition and see the works of the greatest Italian artists. The following year his works appeared in an exhibition in Milan.  To supplement his income as a painter he worked as a picture restorer for the Picture Gallery of Perugia and the Borghese Gallery in Rome.  He was also interested in commenting and writing articles on art and the trends of modern art.  However the first article he contributed to the left-wing Palermo newspaper, L’Ora,  fell foul of Fascist censorship.

In 1935 Guttuso did his military service in Milan and two years later went to live in Rome where he set up his studio and had his first solo exhibition.  Guttuso kept producing outstanding works: nudes, landscapes, still lifes.  In 1941 he produced one of his most famous paintings entitled Crocifissione(Crucifixion), which is now looked upon as one of the most relevant masterpieces of the Twentieth Century.  He explained the meaning of the work:

: “… this is a time of war. I wish to paint the torment of Christ as a contemporary scene … as a symbol of all those who, because of their ideas, endure outrage, imprisonment and torment”.

This controversial painting for which he is probably best remembered, denounced the horrors of the war under a religious guise. His depiction of one of the most famous Christian events provoked widespread controversy.  The Vatican authorities even issued an edict forbidding the religious to look at the canvas.

In 1942 Gutusso turned his hand to stage design for musicals, creating both scenery and costumes for performances at the Teatro della Arte in Rome.  During the war Gutusso moved out of the capital city and joined the Resistance movement which was strongly opposed to fascism.  At the end of the war, he visited Picasso in Paris and this was to be the beginning of a lifelong friendship between the two painters.   He, along with some other like-minded artists, founded the “Fronte Nuovo delle Arti’ (New Arts Front), a group of politically aware artists who aimed at making up for those European artistic experiences whose circulation in Italy had been prevented by Fascism. Social themes and scenes of everyday life prevailed in his painting.   In 1950 Guttuso was awarded the World Council of Peace prize in Warsaw, and in the same year his first one-man exhibition was held in London.  Large-scale paintings of his were regularly shown at the Venice Biennale, always stimulating debates and controversies.  In 1972, Guttuso was awarded the Lenin Prize at the time of his exhibition at the Art Academy in Moscow. The following year Guttuso selected a relevant collection of works, both his own and by other artists, which would form the core of the future municipal art gallery of Bagheria.  In 1976 he was elected a Senator of the Republic for the Italian Communist Party, a political party he had been an active member since joining in 1937,

Guttuso died on 18 January 1987, leaving major works to the Galleria d’Arte Moderna, Rome. He had previously entrusted other works together with a rich collection of documents to the Museum in his native town of Bagheria which had been dedicated to him. This museum, Museo Guttuso, which is housed in the 18th century Villa Cattolica, owns the largest collection of his paintings, drawings and graphics.

And so to the painting I am featuring today, La Vucciria by Renato Guttuso which he completed in 1974 and can be found in Palermo’s Palazzo Steri.  It is a sort of folk art type of painting.  When I watched the TV programme and the part which looked at La Vucirria, nothing seems to have changed in almost forty years since the artist depicted it in his painting.  The naked electrical lights dangling over head still remained.   The Sicilian word vucciria means “confusion” and we can recognise the aptness of that name in the painting.   Look at the scene.  Can you imagine the noise and smells that emanate from this market as the vendors scream out descriptive delights of their precious products?  The many fish stalls have to be kept constantly wet to maintain freshness and the floor around these areas are never dry.  The closeness of the market to the port ensures the freshness of the fish and this is depicted by the artist as we see them curled, still in rigor mortis.    The painting is a rich and colourful, some would say gaudy, portrayal of life in the market.  The colours are so vibrant and pulsating.

There is verticality about the painting as the path between stalls moves almost in an upward direction through the centre of the painting to the top.  This is Sicily and, as we know, Sicily is synonymous with the Mafia and maybe there is a dark side to the painting.  Observe either side of the woman in white who has her back to us.  To her left there is the fish seller.  Note how he looks across at the cheese seller to the right of the woman.  Notice how they scowl at each other.  The fishmonger grasps the swordfish almost as if he is grabbing hold of a blade.  If one looks closely at the cheese seller there is evidence of a pentimento, which is where there is evidence in the form of traces of previous work that shows us that the artist has changed his mind as to the composition whilst he was in the process of painting. The word actually derives from theItalian word pentirsi, which means “to repent”.   It is thought that the partly hidden hand of the cheese seller once was painted with a knife in it.  Are we witnessing a brewing vendetta between the two men?  Does the woman in white have anything to do with the bad feeling?  Are the two vendors vying to be her lover?  The vertical line through the centre of the painting was looked upon as the vertical line of life and the horizontal line of sight between the warring cheese seller and the fishmonger was looked upon as the horizontal line of death and of course the intersection of the two lines form a cross.

Renato Getups was deeply anti-fascist and an ardent communist all his life.  He was also anti-Mafia and so it was ironic that in 2009 when a leading mafia financier, Beniamino Zappy, was arrested and had his art collection confiscated there were many paintings by Gattuso.  A spokesman for the anti-Mafia investigators said, with a touch of humour, of Zappy:

”…He is part of a criminal organization, the Mafia, but

Martha Rebuking Mary for her Vanity by Guido Cagnacci

Martha Rebuking Mary for her Vanity by Guido Cagnacci (c.1660)

Today I am returning to an artist I featured back in My Daily Art Display of April 24th 2011 when I looked at two paintings of his depicting the death of Cleopatra.  He is the Italian painter of the late-Baroque period, Guido Cagnacci.

Guido Cagnacci was an Italian painter belonging to the Bolognese School, which rivalled Florence and Rome as centres of painting.    He was born in 1601 in Santarcangelo di Romagna, a town in the province of Rimini where he spent the early part of his life.  Later, he moved to Rome where he met fellow artists Simon Vouet, and Giovanni Francesco Barbieri, often better known simply as Guernico.   Cagnacci had also been a pupil of Guido Reni and he tended to combine references to classical models and to Raphael’s work with his own lively interest in the type of daring perspectives and brilliant compositions that the Baroque style favoured.   It is also believed that during this time he may have studied under an ageing Ludovicio Carracci.  He moved back east to Venice in 1650 and started to paint very sensual scenes with seductive, half-naked girls as his subject, His later paintings often featured semi-naked women as Lucretia, Cleopatra and even Mary Magdalene, as we will see in today’s offering.  These erotic paintings were very popular and much sought after by collectors at the time and through them, his popularity spread.  In 1658 he journeyed to Vienna where he gained the patronage of Emperor Leopold I and that was his ticket to fame and riches.  It also gave him the opportunity to bring to the German-speaking lands the latest classical style.

It is his contentious painting of a semi-naked Mary Magdalene that I am featuring in My Daily Art Display today.  The painting, which Cagnacci completed around 1660, is entitled Martha Rebuking Mary for Her Vanity.  The title of the painting brings up the first question one needs to consider and that is who is Mary?    Many would say that the Mary in the title is Mary Magdalene but others would disagree.  Mary and Martha are the most familiar set of sisters in the Bible. In the books of Luke and John, the pair, who lived in Bethany were described as friends of Jesus and who had a brother called Lazarus.  Though some earlier interpreters blended the person of Mary of Bethany with Mary Magdalene, current theologians believe she was a different person.  In Latin tradition, Mary of Bethany is often identified as Mary Magdalene while in Eastern Orthodox and Protestant traditions they are considered separate persons. The Orthodox Church has its own traditions regarding Mary of Bethany’s life beyond the gospel accounts.  However I will go along with the idea that in this painting we are looking at Mary Magdalene and her sister Martha.

Cagnacci's Mary Magdalene

The painting is a vivid and somewhat melodramatic allegory of Virtue conquering Vice.  Cagnacci has managed to blend reality, idealism and fantasy in the way he has portrayed the occurrence.   Lying prostrate on the floor is the semi-clad Mary Magdalene being rebuked and lectured to by Martha who sits on the floor in front of her.  Martha leans forward and is fervently lecturing her sister about the sins of Vanity pointing to the allegorical scene we see in the background. She is passionately trying to get her sister to discard the life of pleasure she had been leading up until then and turn to the life of virtue as a true follower of Christ.  Mary would seem to have recognised the life of sin she had been leading and realised, in response to the admonitions of her sister Martha, the error of her ways.  As a dramatic act of changing course, she has discarded her lavish and extravagant outer garments, jewellery and her other worldly possessions which we see scattered on the floor around her.

To the right of the painting we see a couple of servants, one in tears, symbolising contrition whilst the other looks back in disbelief and annoyance at Mary’s act of repentance and she symbolises the unremorseful face of Vanity.   In the background, mirroring what is happening in the foreground, we see an angel, symbolising Virtue driving out the demon which represents Vanity.  Cagnacci has in some ways tailored the story of the discarding of the woman’s clothes so as to give us an unusually sensuous depiction of the semi-naked Mary Magdalene.  He was often criticised for this sort of eroticism in his paintings, with critics maintaining that some artists could make anything salacious and Cagnacci was one of these.  However one must remember that Cagnacci knew that this type of painting sold well, so he would not be put off by his detractors.

The scene, which Cagnacci has painted, does not come from any particular passage in the Bible and we must believe the artist has manipulated the biblical facts of the differing character of the two sisters to suit the story behind this work.  The story of the differing personalities of Mary and her sister Martha was painted many times before by many different artists and in my next blog I will feature one by Johannes Vermeer.

Cagnacci probably completed this work whilst working for Leopold I at the Austrian court in Vienna.   The painting later went to the Gonzaga court in Mantua, which had strong ties with the court at Vienna. The painting was acquired by the Norton Simon Art Foundation and is currently housed at the Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena, California.

Ruth Weisberg and her painting

When I was researching the painting I discovered that the Museum had held a special exhibition in November 2008 entitled Guido Cagnacci and the Resonant Image which featured the Los Angeles artist Ruth Weisberg’s series of works in dialogue with Cagnacci’s Baroque masterpiece Martha Rebuking Mary for her Vanity.  It was based on her intuitive artistic reaction to the work.  Ruth created over twenty paintings and drawings which were pictorial stories on the themes of repentance, anger and ultimately the triumph of virtue over vice. In one she even depicts herself and family members as characters from the Cagnacci work.

Venus and Mars by Sandro Botticelli

Venus and Mars by Botticelli by Sandro Botticelli (c.1485)

Many have written about today’s painting and the symbolism of what is depicted and the interpretations of the work abound.  In my blog today I have tried to steer a middle course between completely ignoring the interpretation of the work and delving too deeply into the scholarly minutiae of what we see before us.  Today I simply want to look at the characters behind the title of the painting and the actual people who we see before us.

The painting entitled Venus and Marswas completed by the Florentine artist, Sandro Botticelli around 1485 and the nineteenth-century title of the painting alludes to two mythological people who had an adulterous affair.  They are Venus, the Goddess of Love, who had an illicit liaison with Mars, the God of War, whilst she was still married to the lame blacksmith Vulcan, who forged Cupid’s arrows and the intricate armour of the Gods and heroes.   The tempera and oil on poplar work, which now hangs in the National Gallery in London, measures 69cms tall and 174cms in width.  Little is known as to who commissioned the painting or for where it was intended.

A cassone

However the dimensions of it would probably mean that it was made for either a cassone or a spalliera.   A cassone is the Italian word for chest or box. They were used for storage and often associated with the giving of a dowry.  A spalliera is the Italian word for the back of a bench or settle, or the headboard or footboard of a bed, or any similar vertical attachment of a piece of furniture.  They were commonly painted in Italy, especially in Tuscany.  Often these items of furniture were richly decorated with carving, gilding and painted panels illustrating acts of heroism or as is the case with this work, acts of love.  The fact that it is an act of love we are looking at probably means that this was meant for a bridal chamber and maybe it was to be incorporated into the headboard of a bed (spalliera di letto).  If we look at the painting we can see that the two figures almost rest on the base of the painting and so if it was meant to be part of the headboard of a bed, the lovers would almost be seen as lying on the bed itself.

Before I look at the two main characters in this painting by Botticelli, let us look at some of the other details we see before us.  The setting for the painting is contemporary.  It is a forest and yet strangely the artist has not incorporated any flowers into the scene which may be simply an indication of the time of the year. However the couple is framed by two evergreen plants, the laurel and the myrtle.  The former was associated with the family of Lorenzo de’ Medici and the myrtle was associated with Venus.   In the distance, on the other side of the fields we can just make out the city of Florence, behind which rise the mountains which lie to the north of the River Arno.

If you look closely at the top right corner of the painting, just above the head of Mars you will see a swarm of hovering wasps.  So why include them?  One thought is that as the Italian word for wasps is vespe and they form part of the Vespucci’s coat of arms.  We will see later that the model used for Venus was Simonetta Cattaneo, whose husband Marco was a member of the Vespucci family.  Others interpret the presence of wasps as being the symbolic of the painful stings of illicit love.

In the painting we also have four small satyrs.  Normally in paintings featuring Venus one would have expected to see erotes, which were the tiny group of gods and demi-gods associated with love and sex and part of Venus’ retinue.  The satyrs were more like little devils and maybe their inclusion once again to the fact that we are observing an act of forbidden love.  Two of the satyrs can be seen wielding a lance which no doubt has a phallic connotation.

The narcotic fruit ?

Another satyr can be seen blowing a conch shell in an attempt to wake the sleeping figure of Mars and one, with a lascivious expression on its face, lies beneath the arm of the exhausted Mars, clutching a green fruit.  This fruit has brought about much discussion as to what it is and why it is incorporated in the painting.   Some would have us believe it is the fruit of one of the highly narcotic datura genus of plants, datura stramonium and that Mars is in a drug-induced sleep.  Other art historians disagree with this assertion pointing out that the plant was not found in Italy at the time Botticelli painted his masterpiece.  Others have suggested the fruit depicted was ecballium elaterium which is also known as the ‘exploding cucumber’ or ‘squirting cucumber.’  This too is a poisonous plant.

Simonetta Vespucci née Simonetta Cattaneo de Candia

In today’s painting in My Daily Art Display the woman who was believed to have been used as a model for Venus was looked upon as the most beautiful woman of her time.  Botticelli had incorporated this woman in to two of his other masterpieces, namely, Primavera which he completed in 1482 and the Birth of Venus which he completed around 1485.  The interesting thing is that she had died some nine years before Botticelli painted the last of these works.   Some historians would have us believe that Botticelli had, like so many, fallen in love with her beauty.  How true that is we will probably never know but we do know that Botticelli asked to be buried at her feet in the Franciscan Church of Ognissanti, which was the parish church of the Vespucci family in Florence. His wish was in fact carried out when he died some 34 years later, in 1510 and a small round stone in a chapel of the right transept marks his resting-place.

The woman in question is Simonetta Cattaneo de Candia.  She was thought to have been born in either Genoa or Portovenere around 1453.  She was part of a very wealthy and influential family.  Her father, Gaspare Cattaneo della Volta, was a Genoese nobleman from the House of Volta and her mother, Cattocchia Spinola de Candia came from an equally wealthy background, the European dynastic House of Candia.  Simonetta was married at the age of sixteen to the son of a wealthy Florentine banker, Marco Vespucci, who was a distant cousin of the famous Italian explorer, Amerigo Vespucci.  Although this was not an arranged marriage, Simonetta’s parents were pleased with the arrangement as the groom’s family were well connected with the powerful Medici family.

Simonetta moved to Florence and after the marriage in 1469 she and her husband became regulars at the Medici court in Florence and she struck up a close friendship with the co-rulers of Florence, the two de’ Medici brothers Lorenzo and Giuliano.  It was whilst attending court functions that Simonetta first met a number of court painters including the young Florentine artist Sandro Botticelli.  Men were astounded by her natural beauty and she soon became a court favourite.  One of the most prominent men to fall under her spell was none other than Giuliano de’ Medici himself.  In 1475, Lorenzo de’ Medici, Giuliano’s elder brother, organised a jousting tournament to celebrate a treaty with Venice. It was reported that at this tournament Giuliano had entered it carrying a banner, which had been painted by Botticelli, and on which was a picture of Simonetta depicted as wearing the helmet of the Greek goddess of war,  Pallas Athene and beneath the portrait were the French words La Sans Pareille (The unparalleled one).  Giuliano won the tournament and at the same time, Simonetta was nominated the “The Queen of Beauty”.  It was following this that she was looked upon as the most beautiful woman of the Renaissance.

So what was Giuliano’s relationship with the married Simonetta?  Were they lovers or was it a platonic relationship?  The question has divided historians over the years and probably we will never know the truth.  Whatever the answer is the relationship was short lived as Simonetta died of tuberculosis on April 26th 1476, a year after the jousting tournament.  She was only twenty-two years of age.  On the day of her funeral, the city of Florence came to a stand-still as thousands of mourners attended the funeral.  Ironically, Giuliano de Medici was assassinated exactly two years to the day on 26 April 1478 in the Duomo of Florence, Santa Maria del Fiore, by Francesco de’ Pazzi and Bernardo Bandini. He was killed by a sword wound to the head and was stabbed 19 times.

The figure of Mars in the painting is depicted in a traditional classical God-like way, unlike the way in which Botticelli has portrayed Venus as a contemporary woman with a contemporary hair-style dressed in her contemporary clothes.  His body is one of a well-toned athlete and was similar to those classical paintings and sculptures of the young Gods.  The whiteness of his skin reminds us of the white marble sculptures of ancient times.  But who is this Mars?  If we believe that Venus is Simonetta Vespucci, then should we believe that this reclining man is her husband or should we believe that in fact it is her “close friend”,  possibly her lover, Giuliano de’ Medici?  The figure in the painting has a long nose and deep-set eyes and they resemble the ones in his portrait which Botticelli completed of Giuliano around 1477.  As we know from mythological tales Mars was the lover of the already married Venus so are we to deduce that Botticelli had wanted to similarly portray Giuliano de’ Medici and the already married Simonetta as a comparison?

Look at the way Botticelli has portrayed the two characters.  The man lies back exhausted but the woman sits upright and looks quite composed.  Who has initiated the bout of love-making?  Who is the giver and who is the receiver?  I believe in this painting, Botticelli has given the power to the female.  She looks at the man with little emotion.  Maybe she is reflecting on the power she has over him.  The woman seems totally in command of the situation whereas the man appears worn out after what could have been a bout of love-making.  Is this a scene of male-female role-reversal in which the female has seduced the male, drained him of his vitality and in some ways neutralised him and now studies her conquest?

I am a great fan of Botticelli especially in his portrayal of women.  They must be some of the most beautiful ever painted.

I started this blog saying I would keep it concise and not too technical but the more I investigated the painting and its symbolism the more I got carried away with the subject.  More has been written about the painting by more knowledgeable people than me and if this blog has stimulated your mind and your thirst for knowledge about this work I suggest you visit some of the websites which discuss the work of art.  They are:

http://omnparts.com/2010/07/29/david-bellingham-on-sandro-botticellis-venus-and-mars/

The autor of this site is by David Bellingham, of the Sotheby’s Institute of Art

and

http://www.3pipe.net/

The Three Pipe Problem, which is a truly amazing art blog and one i love to visit.  If you go to the “search facility” and insert “Venus and Mars” you will find some interesting articles about today’s painting.

The Risen Christ by Bramantino

The Risen Christ by Bramantino (c.1490)

Today I am returning to an Italian painting for My Daily Art Display and want to look at The Risen Christ by the fifteenth century Italian painter and architect, Bartolomeo Suardi.  He was better known simply as Bramantino, (little Bramante) as he was a devoted follower of his one-time tutor the great Italian architect, who designed St Peters, Donato Bramante.

Bramantino was born in Milan in 1456, the son of Alberto Suardi.  Initially trained as a goldsmith but later turned his attention to painting.  His initial artistic training was with Donato Bramante who profoundly shaped his artistic style.  His style as a painter is somewhat complex and diverse.  In his early career he was also influenced by the drawings of Piero della Francesca.  It was not until he was in his mid-thirties that he exhibited his first works.  It was at this time, around 1490, that he completed today’s featured painting, The Risen Christ as well as another of his great compositions, The Adoration of the Magi. 

Bramantino worked for Gian Giacomo Tivulzio for whom he designed a series of cartoons for a  tapestry cycle on the twelve months of the year which can now be found in the Castello Sfozesco.  Trivulzio, a nobleman and warlord, had over time, built up a great wealth, which he used in part as a patron of arts and in particular on works by Bramantino.   These commissions included the Trivulzio Chapel in the Basilica of San Nazaro in Brolo where he was eventually buried. In 1508 Bramantino was in Rome on a commission he had received from Pope Julius II to produce some frescos for one of the reception rooms in the Vatican.  The next year following his work for the pontiff he returned to Milan and was inundated with new artistic and architectural commissions.  In 1525 aged sixty-five he was appointed architect and painter to Maria Sforza, the Duke of Milan.  In the following years he produced many religious paintings for his patron including a Crucifixion which I saw when I visited the Pinacoteca Brera in Milan and a Virgin and Child with Saints, which is in the collection at Palazzo Pitti in Florence.

Bramantino died in Milan in 1530 aged 70.

My Daily Art Display featured painting is an oil on panel work entitled The Risen Christ which Bramantino completed around 1490 and is now hanging in the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza Gallery in Madrid.  It is a haunting portrayal of Christ.  I feel somewhat uneasy when I look at this work of art.   It is a very powerful portrayal but the power of it is not dependent on a depiction of violence or splashes of blood oozing from wounds.  In some ways, and in comparison to other paintings which depict the risen Christ, it is somewhat downbeat.  This is not a portrayal of a triumphant Christ having risen from the dead.

 Before us is a full frontal ,three-quarter length portrayal of Christ with the shroud of his burial wrapped around his shoulders.  This is a man who has passed through death and is now no longer part of this world.   Look at the luminosity Bramantino gave to Christ’s skin.  It is a combination of translucent white and grey.   The cloak, which Christ is wearing, has a metallic lustre and mirrors the paleness of his skin.  The shroud and the body of Christ seem to emit light.  His body, with its raised veins, shows the wound caused by the lance to his right side and the palms of his hands show the scars caused by the crucifixion nails.  In contrast to the colour of his body, his face is not so pale with Bramantino contrasting the ghostly pallor of the body with the reddish/brown of his face and his red hair which hangs down to the shoulders. The long hair and the and the hint of a beard which follows the jaw line helps to elongate the face.  Despite the colouring, his face is gaunt and haggard and bears testament to his mental and physical suffering he has had to endure.  There is a distinct look of sadness in his reddened eyes.  He looks directly at us but it is a penetrating and hauntingly pained look.  He almost appears to look through us with this riveting stare.  There is an air of detachment about Christ which serves to emphasise the fact that he is no longer part of our world. 

To the left, in the background we have a nocturnal landscape.  We can just make out a riverscape with a ship with its tall cross-shaped masts and two campaign tents topped by golden balls.  This part of the painting  is illuminated by moonlight and in some way manages to offset the emotional stress of the foreground.  Bramantino’s architectural interest can be seen coming out of the darkness on the right of the painting in the form of some classical architecture which could represent Christ’s burial tomb in the Garden of Gethsemane. To the left the buildings seemed to have fallen into a state of disrepair with vegetation growing wild from their tops.

What I like about this painting is that Bramantino has managed to stop us in our tracks when we first cast our eyes on the work.  He has managed that without the histrionics of bloody gore.  The pale figure has grabbed our attention and made us focus our mind on what has happened during the lead up to this situation.

Lot and his Daughters by Artemisia Gentileschi

 

Lot and His Daughters by Artemisia Gentileschi (C.1640)

The other day I was asked a question about a painting and the painting within that painting and it was whilst researching into the answer I came across My Daily Art Display’s featured painting of today.  My Daily Art Display painting today is entitled Lot and his Daughters by Artemisia Gentileschi.  I had previously featured a painting with the same title by Lucas Cranach the Elder back on August 20th and there are numerous similar works by other Renaissance artists who have depicted the biblical scene including Orazio Gentileschi, the father of today’s featured painter.

Artemisia Gentileschi was born in 1593 in her parents’ home on Via Ripetta, near S. Giacomo degli Incurabili, a church dedicated to St James the Great, in the Corso near Piazza del Popolo. She was the first born of five children of the Tuscan painter Orazio Gentileschi, then 30, and Prudentia Montone Gentileschi, who was then just 18 years old.   The Gentileschi family always lived in the artists’ quarter between Piazza del Popolo and Piazza di Spagna, in the Campo Marzio, Latin for the Field of Mars and the nearby church of Sta. Maria del Popolo, which was built in 1520 and contains works by Raphael, Bernini and Caravaggio.  Artemisia’s mother died in childbirth aged 30 when Artemisia was just twelve years of age and she was brought up by her father.  Artemisia studied painting in her father’s workshop and accounts of her early life tell of how she was a far better student than her brothers who were also being trained as artists by their father.  Her father introduced her to the Roman artists of the time including the great Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio.

Much of Orazio Gentileschi’s work was influenced by Caravaggio and in turn Artemisia’s style of painting in her early artistic days was also inspired by him.  The one main difference between the painting styles of father and daughter was that Orazio’s works were idealized, her paintings were more naturalistic in nature.  Artemisia was indebted to her father in the way he supported her artistic ambitions as at that time women were not considered to be intelligent enough to be an artist and her artistic talent, which was plain to see even in those early days, was heavily criticised by her male counterparts who were jealous of her artistic gift.  Artemisia was not to be put down and fought for her right to become an artist and her determined and unwavering attitude eventually gained her the respect she deserved and ultimately it gained her justifiable credit for her work.

She produced her first major work at the age of seventeen.  It was Susanna e i Vecchioni (Susan and the Elders) which she completed in 1610.  This biblical subject was another which had been, and was to be painted many times over.  However Artemisia’s painting shows how she incorporated the realism of Caravaggio into the work and is one of the few Susanna paintings showing the actual sexual assault of the two Elders as a traumatic event.

Two years later an incident occurred which was to change the course of Artemisia’s life.  Her father was working on a commission for Pope Paul V inside the Pallavicini Rospigliosi Palace along with fellow painters, one of whom was the Florentine artist,  Agostino Tassi.  Orazio got on well with his fellow worker and contracted him to tutor his daughter privately. It was during this tutelage that Tassi raped Artemisia. At the time she was nineteen years of age.  Instead of reporting the incident to her father she said nothing and continued to have sexual relations with her mentor, as Tassi had managed to placate her by promising her marriage.   Tassi however, had other ideas and broke off the liaison citing her unfaithfulness with another lover as the reason for the end of the relationship.   It was at this point that Artemisia’s father pressed rape charges and Tassi was arrested and put on trial for rape and for the theft of a painting from Orazio’s workshop.

The trial lasted several months and is well documented and the transcripts of the trial still exist.   The case followed a similar pattern that is familiar nowadays with the defendant maintaining that his victim had not been a virgin but was a willing lover and in fact had had many lovers and was an insatiable “whore”.  The assertion that Artemisia was not a virgin was the crucial issue and it has to be remembered that the fact that Artemisia had maintained that she had been a virgin prior to the rape was the only reason the courts would countenance a trial.  However she had to undergo the embarrassment of a number of  thorough gynaecological examinations by midwives to determine whether she had been “deflowered” recently or a long time ago and she even underwent intense questioning sometimes being tortured using a sibille, a type of thumbscrews, for the officials to come to a decision about the charges she had laid against Tassi.  Tassi denied ever having had sexual relations with the virginal Artemisia and brought many witnesses to testify that she was “an insatiable whore.”   During the court case, it came to light that Tassi had previously been imprisoned for having an affair with his sister-in-law and had planned to kill his wife.   Unfortunately for Tassi, a witness was produced who recounted how he had heard Tassi boasting about raping Artemisia.  Tassi was found guilty and sentenced to one year’s imprisonment.

A month after the trial ended, her father arranged for Artemisia to marry a Florentine artist, Pietro Antonio di Vicenzo Stiattesi and soon after the couple moved home to Florence.  Soon after the trial, Artemisia Gentileschi painted Judith Slaying Holofernes .  The painting is remarkable not only for its technical proficiency, but for the original way in which Gentileschi portrays Judith, who had long been a popular subject for art.  A year after moving to Florence, Artemisia gave birth to their daughter Prudentia.  In all they had four sons and the one daughter but it was only Prudentia who survived childhood.  She and her husband worked at the Academy of Design, and Artemisia became an official member there in 1616.  This was an extraordinary tribute to be paid to a woman of her day and this almost certainly came through the good auspices of her Florentine patron, the Grand Duke Cosimo II of the powerful Medici family.   It was during her time in Florence, that he commissioned a number of  paintings from her and soon betters her husband’s reputation.  Artemisia Gentileschi remained in Florence producing works for Cosimo II until his death in 1621 at which time she returned to Rome.

The following year her husband is charged with assaulting one of a group of Spaniards, who were outside their home serenading Artemisia. By 1623, her husband is no longer listed as being a household member and it appears that they have separated permanently. Artemisia continued to live in Rome until about 1627,when she moved to Venice.  A year later she was in Naples, living with her daughters and servants.  Always in search of new patrons she finally found one, King Charles I of England who was an art-collecting monarch and who surrounded himself with many continental artists including Artemisia’s father Orazio.  Her patronage ended suddenly with the outbreak of the English Civil War and the execution of her patron Charles.  Artemisia returned to Naples where she spent the rest of her life.  She died in there in 1654, aged 61.

Although the story about Lot’s wife being turned into a pillar of salt when she disobeyed God by looking back at the burning cities of Sodom and Gomorrah is very well known and told to children who receive bible studies or religious education, the follow-up biblical tale about Lot being plied with wine until he was drunk by his daughters, who then seduce him, and have a sexual relationship with him in order to have children is for obvious reasons often left off the religious curriculum in schools, or at least I can say, with hand on heart, it wasn’t mentioned during my religious lessons.

The Bible passage Genesis (19: 30-38) sets the scene:

30 Lot and his two daughters left Zoar and settled in the mountains, for he was afraid to stay in Zoar. He and his two daughters lived in a cave. 31 One day the older daughter said to the younger, “Our father is old, and there is no man around here to give us children—as is the custom all over the earth. 32 Let’s get our father to drink wine and then sleep with him and preserve our family line through our father.”

33 That night they got their father to drink wine, and the older daughter went in and slept with him. He was not aware of it when she lay down or when she got up.

34 The next day the older daughter said to the younger, “Last night I slept with my father. Let’s get him to drink wine again tonight, and you go in and sleep with him so we can preserve our family line through our father.” 35 So they got their father to drink wine that night also, and the younger daughter went in and slept with him. Again he was not aware of it when she lay down or when she got up.

36 So both of Lot’s daughters became pregnant by their father. 37 The older daughter had a son, and she named him Moab; he is the father of the Moabites of today. 38 The younger daughter also had a son, and she named him Ben-Ammi ; he is the father of the Ammonites of today.

Artemisia Gentileschi painted the subject in the 1640’s at the height of the Baroque era.  In the painting she elected to portray the scene of wining and dining prior to the first seduction.  Lot sits between his two daughters at the entrance to their cave.   In the left background, far behind them, the city burns, and in the middle distance Lot’s wife is frozen into a Baroque statue, her arms outstretched in terror. The three main figures are intricately interlocked by a system of rhyming arms and legs.   Three prominent arms take us across the painting from left to right in a slowly falling rhythm: the daughter’s arm on the wine jug rhymes strongly with Lot’s lower arm which in turn intersects with a third arm that curves gently down to the tabletop. This strong physical  linking, with its relationship to the wine jug, wine glass and bread, has set the scene and in some ways incriminates the father and daughters in the incest which follows.  In this portrayal of the scene unlike others the artist has not depicted Lot as somebody who is so drunk that he is incapable of knowing what is happening and thus unable to thwart the incest.  He is not shown as a passive victim of the affair.  Artemisia has portrayed all three members of the family as having an active role of what is about to happen.  The girls are virgins, a state which will soon change.

The daughter to the right of the painting is well highlighted and one must suppose that she is the elder daughter and the first to seduce her father.   Look at the colours of the girls’ clothing; blue, white and gold.  We have the rich blue which is the colour often used in the portrayal of the Virgin Mary.  We have the white which symbolises virginal innocence and we have gold which is symbolic of purity and preciousness.  The elder daughter twists round, almost contorted, to look at her father.  One end of the rich blue fabric snakes between her thighs whilst the other end lies close to the thighs of her father.  Is that just coincidental or are we to believe that maybe Artemisia has placed the sash between the daughter’s thighs as an indication that this is exactly where her father will position himself during their sexual act?  Again, are we reading too much into the painting if we compare the bread which is on the table as having had its outer skin violently broken and its fresh interior exposed to the light with the act of the virgin being deflowered?  Another strange departure from the biblical tale is the action of the father.  In the Bible we are told that the daughters plied their father with drink so he became drunk and did not know what was about to happen, but look closely at the picture.  The daughter with the wine is on the left and the father is passing his wine glass to the daughter on the right as if he is plying her with wine and not the other way around.  Look at his facial expression.  What do you read into it?  Is it a look of a man who is becoming befuddled and not in control of the situation or is this the look of a man who is beginning to enjoy himself and is encouraging his elder daughter to imbibe and  take pleasure in what is happening?  Is this another way in which Artemisia is implicating him in the sexual acts which were to follow?  Is Artemisia trying to tell us that the man is not without guilt?  So the question you must ask yourself as you look at this painting is whether the artist is portraying Lot as almost a lecherous old man or one that is being hoodwinked by the daughters?  If you believe the former, as a lot of feminists do, why did Artemisia portray him that way?  Had her being raped altered her view of men and thus she would not have us believe Lot was just an old man being hoodwinked by his daughters?  Remember also that her artistic career and her eventual fame did not come easily as she was thwarted throughout her life – by whom?  Men !!!!

Many questions and some controversial answers.   I will let you form your own conclusions.

Just a little addition to the original blog:

The sibille was a long cord which was wound round the base of each finger then the palms of two hands were tied together, palm to palm, at the wrists.   Then the cord was threaded around each pair of fingers.  A large wooden screw is then attached and turned so the cord tightens digging into the flesh, cutting it and eventually it would cut down to the bone.  The pain would have been excruciating.