dr richard stemp

154 – A Feast for the eyes

Donatello, The Feast of Herod, 1423-7. Baptismal Font, Battistero di San Giovanni Battista, Siena.

The Donatello exhibition in Florence is truly remarkable, an astonishing achievement, given that sculptures have been transported from churches and cathedrals across Italy, including several which have left their original settings for the first time since they were installed. Others have ‘simply’ been transported from the other side of the world – with institutions in the UK, Germany and the U.S. being particularly generous with their loans. The full range of the great master’s work in many different media is on show, and the curators succeed in their aim of showing that Donatello was undoubtedly one of the most important and influential artists of the Italian Renaissance. There is, of course, far too much to cover in one hour (I should have known this before) so the talk this Monday, 11 April – Donatello: The Renaissance – will be ‘Part One’. Part Two, focussing mainly on the section of the exhibition that is at the Bargello, will be on Monday 9 May, but more news about that next week (keep your eye on the diary page).

In case any of you have been worried about my WiFi, I do apologise for the interruptions and distortions during a couple of recent talks when I’ve been in London. By the time I do another one ‘down South’ (probably not until May) I will have installed a new system, which will guarantee a flawless service! In the meantime, I would like to look at one of the most important exhibits in Florence, which, having been gloriously restored, has left its usual home in Siena, and can currently be seen at eye-level. Usually you would have to genuflect to get close enough to see it.

This is the best image that I can find on the internet, just so we know what we’re thinking about. It is a pre-restoration photograph of Donatello’s Feast of Herod, cast in bronze, and gilded, in 1427. I’ve already written about a later Feast of Herod by Donatello, carved in marble and currently in the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Lille (where I will be taking a group for Art History Abroad in December) – it shows a similar – potentially even greater – complexity in its depiction of space (see Day 49 – Donatello in Lille). But before we look at the bronze, I want to bear in mind that one of the problems with looking at sculpture in reproduction comes from its very definition: it is three dimensional. This means that, unlike painting, it cannot be encompassed in one single photograph. Even if this is a relief sculpture (which means that you can’t go round the back), as a high relief (in the foreground at least) you can see it from a more-or-less 160˚ angle. That, plus its usual setting, means that I am going to give you a number of different pictures to get some sense of its context. Some of them were taken by other people in the original setting – the Baptistery in Siena – while the rest I took last week at the exhibition. This is a view of the baptismal font itself:

It sits in the centre of the Baptistery, which is underneath the choir of the Cathedral (it is ‘downhill’ from the Nave: they built the baptistery as the foundation for an extension to the Cathedral, building out over the hill, so that the font is effectively in the ‘basement’ of the chancel). The basin of the font is hexagonal, with a tabernacle of the same shape rising from it on a column. Another column stands on the tabernacle, with a sculpture of John the Baptist perched at the very top. At each corner of the tabernacle there is a small dancing putto – or spiritello, as the curators of the exhibition would have them called – three of which were made by Donatello. The hexagonal basin is decorated with an almost-square bronze relief on each side, each one depicting a different episode from the life of the Baptist. In 1417 two each were commissioned from Ghiberti, Jacopo della Quercia and Turino di Sano – the first famed for the bronze doors of Florentine Baptistery, the second a rather wonderful Sienese contemporary and the last – well, a solid Sienese craftsmen. In 1423 Jacopo della Quercia passed the commission for one of his reliefs to Donatello, and it is that which we are considering today. The relief you can see in the picture above – the one at the front – shows The Baptism of Christ (the most important episode in John’s life, so it is given the greatest prominence) and was one of the two made by Ghiberti. Going anti-clockwise (to the right here) is The Arrest of the Baptist, also by Ghiberti, and then The Feast of Herod. At each corner of the basin is a statuette of a Virtue – the one to the right of the Baptism is Donatello’s Faith (1427-9).

This is the basin as seen from the side – basically at knee-level. The Virtue on the left here is Donatello’s Hope (1427-9), which you can see twisting towards the front of the font on the far right in the previous image. Like the Feast of Herod this has also been restored, and can be seen in Florence, as can the Faith, which will be restored once the exhibition is over. This is an unprecedented opportunity to see these exquisite figures up close, and to examine them in the round: usually the font gets in the way. On the right of this photo is the Fortitude by Goro di Neroccio: you can just about tell her identity from the right shoulder, which has a hint of an epaulet from a suit of armour. And don’t worry if you’ve never heard of the sculptor – like Turino di Sano (one of whose reliefs was eventually completed by his son Giovanni) there are always more artists: it’s hard to keep up with them all!

So, finally, the relief itself, now that we know its context. Having said that, it is important to know that it is not an independent work of art in its own right, but part of one of the most remarkable collaborative projects of the Early Renaissance, and that it tells just one chapter of the story explaining the relevance of the object for which it was designed. It illustrates a the story of the Baptist’s death, as told in Mark 6:21-28. Prior to this he had been arrested and imprisoned as a result of his disapproval of Herod’s relationship with his own sister-in-law Herodias:

And when a convenient day was come, that Herod on his birthday made a supper to his lords, high captains, and chief estates of Galilee; And when the daughter of the said Herodias came in, and danced, and pleased Herod and them that sat with him, the king said unto the damsel, Ask of me whatsoever thou wilt, and I will give it thee. And he sware unto her, Whatsoever thou shalt ask of me, I will give it thee, unto the half of my kingdom. And she went forth, and said unto her mother, What shall I ask? And she said, The head of John the Baptist. And she came in straightway with haste unto the king, and asked, saying, I will that thou give me by and by in a charger the head of John the Baptist. And the king was exceeding sorry; yet for his oath’s sake, and for their sakes which sat with him, he would not reject her. And immediately the king sent an executioner, and commanded his head to be brought: and he went and beheaded him in the prison, And brought his head in a charger, and gave it to the damsel: and the damsel gave it to her mother.

Donatello creates a complex space to act as the stage on which this drama is enacted. In the foreground, on the right, we see Salome (who isn’t actually named in the text). She is still dancing, but already, on the left, the head is being presented on a charger by a kneeling soldier. We are looking at a typical example of ‘continuous narrative’, in which different elements of the same story occur in one static image. Herod, and the two boys next to him, both recoil from this horror – showing that Herod was, as the text says, ‘exceeding sorry‘. The figures in the foreground – the soldier and Salome – are in high relief, and are effectively statuettes attached to the background. A second plane of representation is formed by those behind the table, together with Herod, who are depicted in lower relief. The back of the room is constructed from a brick or stone wall topped by an arcade, with three full arches visible, and a partial arch leading off to the right. Behind are two more ‘planes’ which Donatello creates to people the narrative further. Through the central arch we can see a someone playing the viol for Salome’s soft shoe shuffle, and in the left arch two strong-looking men turn to look at the musician. Here is one of the pictures I took at the exhibition:

Behind the musician is another wall, with another arcade, and at the very back, is the fourth plane. In each of the successively distant levels the relief becomes shallower, a technique which Donatello invented to coincide with perspective. In paintings objects appear smaller, but also less distinct, as they get further away, corresponding to linear and atmospheric perspective respectively. In a relief like this, the shallowness of the most distant relief is an equivalent to atmospheric perspective. In the left-hand arch, we can see a soldier with the severed head of John the Baptist on the charger: he is coming from the prison where John has just been beheaded. Donatello is adept at using the perspective, and the architecture he invents to define it, to create appropriate spaces in which to stage different scenes from the drama. However, some of the spaces which he creates would seem to have no narrative function. For example, through the right-hand arch in this detail we can see an entablature, which appears to be a continuation of the further arcade. It is supported by a square column, one of two which frame a staircase going up to what must be – given the size of the figures in the very back space (an access corridor?) – a surprisingly low door. Is this actually the prison cell, perhaps? Or is it just Donatello showing off, because he can? He is certainly being very obsessive about the perspective – the two wooden beams projecting from the piers of the nearer arcade wouldn’t seem to have a function either, but they do serve to emphasize the depth of the imaginary space.

The same is true of the square tiles of the floor, divided into triangles. Some of these are stippled, while others go together to make plain diamonds. It is a bravura display of skill and technique, executed after the relief was cast, as part of the ‘cleaning up’ and finishing stage called ‘chasing’. It was presumably done to inspire wonder, to hold your attention, and to pull you into the depth of the relief, and so encourage you to engage with the story. The tiles lead your eye inexorably towards the vanishing point – as does the cloth falling over the edge of the table and the two knives to its right. We also see the feet of the people behind the table – one leaning in towards Herod, the other recoiling, hand across face in disgust. The detailing here, and the carefully layering, creating a convincing spatial arrangement, is another part of the design where I suspect that Donatello was deliberately showing off.

I hope this image is clear enough! I am always intrigued by the precise location of the vanishing point in any perspectival construction, and this is certainly no exception. The vanishing point is on the central axis of the image, but just a bit higher than the central point of the relief as a whole. Or rather, the vanishing point for the lower part of the image is there. The upper elements have a second vanishing point, slightly to the right of the lower one, and a bit higher – precisely at the top of the wall supporting the nearer arcade. What this means is that Donatello is not using single vanishing point perspective, as we usually assume, even though the technique was devised by his friend and colleague Filippo Brunelleschi. Maybe they were aware of its limitations already, or simply realised that you just wouldn’t see this discrepancy. Or maybe it just doesn’t matter precisely how you do it, as any perspectival projection is only an approximation to the way we see things. Nevertheless, I’m still fascinated by the position of the lower vanishing point. Bear in mind where it is – just above the elbow of the woman leaning in towards Herod – and have a look at the image as a whole again.

There is nothing there. There is nothing for us to focus on, even though the vanishing point is theoretically our point of view. We are looking at an empty space – a void. One person shies back from it, another leans away. Between Salome and the kneeling soldier there is an equivalent gap – an opening in the composition which allows us to see the detailed tiling and the feet under the table, and which gives us access to this space: it is our way in. It has been suggested that Donatello was effectively trying to show us the moral void which was the origin of this meaningless murder – and I am inclined to agree. Whatever Donatello’s precise motivation, this is an incredibly sophisticated use of a brand new technique, and underlines his importance for the development of the Renaissance.

Inevitably there is yet more to say about this image – notably about its influence – and so, like the talks, I will divide this entry into two posts! The second part will follow in a month or so, after we have considered Raphael. I do hope you can make it to Florence to see the exhibition. If you can’t, don’t be too upset, as versions will arrive in Berlin in September, and London, at the V&A, in 2023 – although I suspect those embodiments will not be nearly so inclusive. However, in the meantime, it would be lovely if you could join me for Part 1 of Donatello: The Renaissance on Monday.

153 – Fly on the Wall?

Carlo Crivelli, Madonna and Child, c. 1480. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

Buona Festa! The ‘Festa’ in question is the Feast of the Annunciation, or, to give it its English name, Lady Day. It’s the reason why we (in the UK) have Mother’s Day this weekend, rather than in May like everyone else. I suppose I should write about a painting of the Annunciation today (as I did two years ago), although I’d rather look at something else, as I will include The Annunciation with Saint Emidius – briefly, at least – when I talk about the exhibition Carlo Crivelli: Shadows on the Sky this Monday, 28 March at 6pm. Today I want to talk about a painting which is not in the exhibition to explain why I think Crivelli is such a remarkable painter, and, as it is Lady day, it is a painting of Our Lady.

The curators at the Ikon Gallery in Birmingham wanted to include it in their exhibition apparently, but as it is painted on a wooden panel it is too delicate to travel. Wood is especially sensitive to fluctuations in humidity, among other things, and so it has stayed at home in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. However, that does mean that we can get up close to the details without worrying that someone might think we’re going to touch the painting.

Mary stands behind a stone parapet with a cloth of honour hanging behind her. Not only does this frame our view of her, so that we see her more clearly, but it also speaks to her high status, being effectively a sign of royalty: it reminds us of her role as Queen of Heaven. Another cloth is hung over the ledge, and Jesus sits on a cushion placed on top of it. Behind the cloth of honour is a landscape: we are out in the countryside, with a track running from one side to the other. It is not entirely clear where Jesus and Mary are, when you stop to think about it: what is the function of this wall, other than as a support for the child? And if Mary is in the countryside, where are we, on this side of the wall? Crivelli is actually using the convention of Northern European portraiture, in which the sitter appears behind such a parapet, or balcony, which both distances them from us, but also, conversely, forms a bridge. linking us to them. It also explains why we can’t see their legs. In this case, it allows us to see a bust-length image of the Madonna, while also providing a convenient surface on which her son can rest. In other paintings such a structure takes on the appearance of an altar, or tomb, or even both, and although that doesn’t seem to be the case here, we shouldn’t discount the possibility that it provides at least a distant echo of Christ’s fate.

The cloth of honour is held up by broad red laces, bound at their ends with metal aglets. A garland of fruits and a vegetable hang from the same type of lace, in front of the cloth but behind the Virgin’s head. It is not clear what these are attached to – or even what they could be attached to – and originally they would just have appeared from behind the engaged frame. ‘Engaged’ in this context means that the frame was attached to the panel before painting commenced, and the paint surface would have been continuous from one to the other. You can tell it was engaged because there is a lip around the edge of the painted surface just next to the bare wood: it’s hard to know why anyone would ever have wanted to rip off the original frame, and is greatly to be regretted, although it did happen surprisingly often. The vegetable is a gourd, which, from its appearance in the Book of Jonah (who disappeared into the belly of a giant fish, only to be spat up on the third day) is often seen as a symbol of the Resurrection (given that Jesus disappeared into the belly of the Earth, only to return after the same time had elapsed). Whatever the fruits are – apples or peaches, I’m not entirely sure – they represent the forbidden fruit from the Book of Genesis (it never actually says ‘apple’). Either way, between gourd and fruit, we are looking at sin and redemption. The garland casts shadows on the cloth of honour – but not on the sky. It would be very unusual if it did, of course, but another garland, in one of the paintings I will discuss on Monday, does – hence the title of the exhibition, Shadows on the Sky. It is unique in the History of Art as far as I am aware, and worth thinking about in detail – but more about that on Monday. However, Mary’s halo also casts a shadow – which is very odd. A halo was originally a way of representing a glow of light expressing the figure’s sanctity – but how could light cast a shadow? What Crivelli has painted is definitely a gold disc, a solid object encrusted with jewels, capable of casting its own shadow. Mary’s headdress is elegant and delicate, with the concentric arrangement of the opaque and transparent layers over her forehead entirely typical of his work, in which shapes are often echoed as he thinks about the patterns formed on the surface of the painting as much as the imaginary depth he can create using perspective and tonal variation.

Jesus’s halo is a similar gold disc, although marked with a red cross (it is only Jesus, as ‘himself’, or as the Lamb of God, or the Holy Spirit – as a dove – who have cruciform halos like this). He holds a goldfinch in his hands, a symbol of his passion. The goldfinch was supposed to have eaten one of the thorns from the eponymous crown when a drop of Christ’s blood fell on its head – hence the red marking. As if to emphasize its own symbolism, the bird stretches its wings like a cross. Jesus is not sure whether to look, or to look away: his face is turned to our left, but his pupils are in the corner of his eyes, looking towards the bird. Mary has the long, slim, fingers typical of Crivelli’s etiolated forms – they are overlong even, adding an almost unnatural refinement to her delicate gestures, as if unsure of how to hold her own son. The open stretch between her right thumb and forefinger loops his waist in the same way – and with similar angular inflections – as the loop of fabric that rings his right arm, another one of those echoes of form.

It is at the very bottom of this small painting – measuring just 37.8 x 25.4 cm – that it gets conceptually complex. There is no problem with the cloth – a yellow water silk equivalent to the pink of the cloth of honour. Having been stored tightly folded, one of those folds is clearly visible as the central axis of the material. But it is also softly wrinkled, the subtle shading forming a counterpoint with the markings of the fabric. The child’s legs and the tasselled cushion cast shadows, those of the latter being remarkably crisp. They tell us that the light is coming from high up to the left, and from just in front of the painting. At one end the parapet is cracked, and at the other there appears to be the most enormous fly. Both are symbols of change and decay, but Jesus has come for our redemption – to free us from the sin, which, in some way, the fly represents, associated as it is with death and disease, in part because of the brevity of its own earthly existence. The cracks can be read like the ruins in the background of many paintings of the Nativity: Jesus has come to rebuild, rather than to destroy. But let’s look at the fly again – and compare it to Christ’s feet. They are of the same order of size. Can you imagine a fly the same size as a baby’s feet? Look again at the fly, and then at its shadow, and compare the shadow to that cast by the tassel. The light on the fly appears to be coming from the wrong direction… which suggests that it is not standing on the parapet at all. It appears to be standing on the surface of the painting, and casting a shadow onto the paint. If I were there in front of it, I’d be tempted to brush it away. It is a fly from our world – hence its disproportionate size – and Crivelli is playing with our perception. If he is good enough as an artist, he will trick us into thinking it is real – like the old story of the competition between Zeuxis and Parrhasius. Zeuxis painted grapes which were so real that birds flew down to eat them, but when he went to pull back the curtain in front of Parrhasius’ painting, he discovered that it was a painting of a curtain… so which was the better artist? Crivelli adds these details to keep us involved, to make us believe what we see (‘if it can crack, it must be real stone’), but also to remind us that this is a painting. Why do we want to know that it is a painting? Probably because that itself implies that the subject is worthy – that Jesus and Mary are worthy – to be represented, and so should be honoured accordingly. And also, of course, to show us how good he is. But how do we know who ‘he’ is? Well, because he tells us.

‘The work of Carlo Crivelli from Venice’, says the cartellino (a word which nowadays could now be translated as ‘tag’, but which means ‘a little cartello’ – itself a word which could be translated as ‘sign’, but means ‘little carta’ – or paper – so a cartellino is a little little paper…). The wording is Crivelli’s standard signature: he was keen to be known by his origins .Venice was, after all, one of the great centres of art, and its inclusion implies that he must have been good. However, nothing he painted there is known, and all that survives comes from the Marche, where he spent the last three decades of his life. He was not the only artist to depict a cartellino like this. There are so many, in fact, by so many different artists, that we can assume that they really did put their names onto pieces of paper and then physically attach them to the painting, rather than painting their names directly onto the finished work. Indeed, one suggestion why we don’t know the names of so many early Northern painters is that the original cartellini have simply fallen off. This might happen here: the cartellino is attached by blobs of red wax, although the blob at the bottom right has fallen off, leaving a red stain. But what is the paper supposed to be attached to? To the water silk? Or to the painted panel itself? I’ll leave you to have a look and decide for yourselves, but do bear in mind what would be more appropriate. Whichever it is, Crivelli had the most remarkable sense of the possibilities of painting, of illusion, and of crossing the boundaries between reality and imagination. This, together with his technical brilliance, is what has convinced me that he was such a great artist. We will talk about about these ideas, including trompe l’oeil and meta-trompe-l’oeil – ‘going beyond deception’ – on Monday when we look at the Shadows on the Sky. And if you still want an Annunciation for today’s Festa, you could always look back to Piero della Francesca, from two years ago (Day 7 – The Annunciation), or Veit Stoss (Day 70 – The Annunciation, again) or Giotto (Day 80 – Gabriel’s Mission)…

Day 1, Two Years On…

Another re-post – but why? Well, simply to celebrate the fact that this, my very first blog, was posted two years ago today. The day before I had been rescued from London, where my Borough alone had an unnerving 22 cases of Covid. We really had no idea what was coming. Three days later lockdown was announced. Up in Durham, knowing I had nothing to do, and that many others had nothing to do, I decided to go on ‘going on’ and write about a ‘Picture Of The Day’ every day for the next couple of weeks, by which time it would all be over… We really had no idea what was coming. It turned out to be 100 days, in the end. Initially I posted on Facebook, and then transferred the old posts – and then new ones – to this site. In an ever-evolving form we’re still here, with the now-irregular posts as much a newsletter as anything else. Zoom talks have been happening for just over a year, and finally I can even list live events. OK, so there’s just one ‘live’ talk so far – there will be more – but you can find details of that on the diary page, along with everything else that’s coming up. Thank you to all of you who have joined me on the way: I don’t know about you, but I’ve learnt a huge amount! Here’s to much more great art – and better health for all – in the years to come.

Day 1 – Titian, The Rape of Europa, 1562, Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston.

Originally posted on 19 March, 2020

In these extraordinary times, I’m going to attempt to write about a painting every day – but where to start? Having made a pilgrimage on foot to the National Gallery on Tuesday to catch the wonderful Titian exhibition just after it opened and immediately before it closed again, I am choosing the Rape of Europa from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston.

The painting is one of six Poesie which Titian made for the man who would become King Phillip II of Spain. They must rank among Titian’s greatest achievements. Not only do they show his phenomenal technique, his astonishing ability to manipulate paint and to form worlds out of colour, but they also demonstrate his brilliance as a storyteller. Drawing on classical mythology, and mainly the Metamorphoses of Ovid, he enters into a common Renaissance debate about the arts: which is better, poetry or painting? Although drawing much of his imagery from Ovid’s text, these are not illustrations. He adapts the stories, reworks them, finding the perfect way to spin his yarn on canvas. He retells the tales with brushstrokes rather than words.

Why this one, of the six? Well, although I have been to the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum at least three times, I can’t in all honesty say I stopped to look at this painting – there are so many other wonders there, and at the time I was either in my early stages of studying art history, and knew nothing, or was obsessed with the Ferrarese paintings in the collection. I’ve come to know it better through talking about the Poesie – particularly when the National Gallery acquired, with the National Galleries of Scotland, the two Diana paintings – and while teaching courses on the art of the 16^th Century. I also love the fact that Velazquez knew it in the Royal Collection in Spain, and quoted it in the background of one of his own works. However, before Tuesday, I couldn’t swear that I had seen the original before, so in that respect, it is new to me.

In this work we see how, in his endless and unquenchable lust, in order to get his hands on the beautiful nymph Europa, Jupiter has transformed himself into a bull. He persuaded Mercury to drive a herd of cows down to the beach, and frolicked among them, flirting with Europa, who happened to be there with her companions. She was gradually entranced by his winning ways, and, as she clambered upon his back, he sidled from shore to sea, going from the shallows through the waves, without her realising what deep water he was getting her into. Her companions – and the unwitting herd – can be seen in the distance, helpless on the shoreline.

It’s a problematic story – it is after all a story of rape. Is she entirely unwilling? In this instance it isn’t all that clear, although in other encounters Ovid is explicit about the dread and terror Jupiter’s victims experience. Like Jupiter, Titian seduces us. His means: rich colours and lushly applied brushstrokes, underplaying the horror with a touch of the absurd. I’d never noticed before how cupid rides his fish in much the same bizarre and awkward way that Europa rides the bull, one arm clinging on, waving (not drowning), a leg flying free.

The other fish was a revelation, a new favourite, and I’d like to nominate it as the Best Fish in Art, a category of which I was previously unaware (although I do have two suggestions for the Best Cabbage). Its scales are evoked with flicks of white and blue paint, making it glimmer at the bottom of the painting, as if is merging with the sea, appearing and disappearing, painted with similar brushstrokes and tones to the sea itself, part of the watery world over which Europa is now conveyed.

Eventually she will get her feet back on dry land – on the continent of Europe, which took her name. And eventually we will be able to see these paintings again, brought together for the first time, to be seen as Titian himself never did, all in one room. I am a least glad that these paintings, long separated, must be enjoying some quiet time together, but I am looking forward to seeing them all again when we have got to the other side.

Rethinking Artemisia Painting Painting

Artemisia Gentileschi, Self Portrait (?) as the Allegory of Painting (La Pittura), c. 1638-9, Royal Collection Trust, London.

This Monday 21 March at 6pm I will return to the exhibition Masterpieces from Buckingham Palace to have a look at some of the paintings which I couldn’t cover last time. When I did Part 1 – not that I knew then that it would be Part 1 – I posted about Rembrandt’s portrait of Nicolaes van Bambeeck, as Bambeeck’s wife, Agatha Bas, is the ‘poster girl’ of the exhibition. I didn’t get to talk about her in the end, but I will on Monday – so if you want to remind yourself about him, why not click on that blue link? I’d write about something new today, but as I am up against a deadline, and away for the weekend, I thought it would be as well to revisit one of the paintings which was not in the exhibition when it was first mounted: Artemisia Gentileschi’s Allegory of Painting. At that stage the painting had been promised to the Artemisia exhibition at the National Gallery, but after lockdown the Queen’s Gallery restaged the show, and was able to include it. However, by then, the Wallace Collection had mounted Frans Hals: The Male Portrait – which meant that the Royal Collection took their Hals out of the Treasures and lent it to the Wallace: it’s been an exhibition with flexible contents. I can’t be entirely sure what will be included when it opens on 25 March at the Queen’s Gallery in Edinburgh – so I will go by what I saw in London, and what is in the catalogue. In subsequent weeks I will talk about Three Renaissance Heroes – Crivelli, Donatello and Raphael – as exhibitions about all three are currently on, or about to open. Information about these talks (all of which are now on sale) can be found on the diary page – where you will also find information about an in-person talk at the National Gallery on 24 May, and a trip to Vienna from 21-24 April (there are now spaces again as a couple of people have dropped out).

Since I first wrote this post, I have changed my mind slightly about this painting – a result of seeing the Artemisia exhibition at the National Gallery. I am no longer entirely convinced that it is a self portrait – but I’ll tell you the reasons why on Monday.. In the meantime, this is what I said about the painting back in May 2020:

It’s a while since I last talked about Artemisia Gentileschi – way back in Picture Of The Day 17 – so I thought we should re-visit her to see how she’s getting on in lockdown. There is still no sign of the museums opening, though, and the exhibition at the National Gallery is still on hold – it is yet possible that it will open… You could, of course, order the catalogue directly from the National Gallery – it has great essays and superb illustrations.

This particular painting is always worth thinking about, as it shows just how brilliant Artemisia was – in many different ways. For one thing, it is a self portrait, so it gives us some idea of what she looked like. It’s perhaps not the best self portrait from this point of view, and that is because of the point of view: it is extremely unusual. She paints herself from high up, and from off to one side. It’s hard to know how she could have seen herself from this angle – it would take at least two mirrors set up in the right positions. It’s still not going to be easy though. Unlike some of the other self portraits we’ve seen of women painting – notably Judith Leyster and Elisabeth Vigée Le Brun (POTD 34 and 55 respectively) – she hasn’t bothered too much about her appearance. She may be wearing a rather wonderful green bodice, beautifully painted, but she has rolled up her sleeves and is wearing an apron. Who wouldn’t, while painting? Well, judging from most self portraits, most artists! And her hair is a bit of a mess! She has, however, put on some jewellery: a gold chain, with a pendant.

The pendant is the real clue to this painting’s meaning – it is a mask. It looks like a face, but is only the image of one, in the same way that this looks like Artemisia, but is only a portrait… This necklace is one of the ways of identifying this as an Allegory of Painting. Even in this detail we can see so much. Her left hand holds a few paintbrushes and a palette – one of the more ‘old fashioned’ rectangular ones, from our point of view. What is not so easy to identify is the object she is leaning on, the sort of stone slab used to mix her pigments – the coloured powders that give the painting its vitality – with the oil – the medium which binds the pigment; makes it liquid, so that you can actually paint; adheres the pigment to the support (usually, by this period, a canvas); and dries to protect it. Artemisia’s palette, brushes, and the stone slab form a stable foundation on which this portrait rests – they are the foundation of her art, after all – and it is here that she has chosen to sign the painting, using the initials A.G.F. – Artemisia Gentileschi Fecit – or ‘made this’, in Latin. Not only that, but she is showing us her technique. The left arm may now be a little worn with age, but it was always fairly thin – sketchy even – showing her skill at building up an image with an economy of means. Once the canvas was attached, taut, around the stretcher, she would have primed it, painting a dull brown ground layer of paint all across the surface: if you look at the areas of shadow between the green folds of the sleeve, that is the ground – particularly clear in the curving fold that comes up from the flash of white cuff, and curves down again just below the cord with which she has tied up her sleeve. This is something she could have learnt from her father, or directly from the work of Caravaggio, who often used this shorthand: not so much painting the shadow, as leaving it absent.

As for her hair, well, would you bother with that if you were hard at work? The fact is, this is another feature that helps to identify the subject of the painting. Artemisia is drawing on the Iconologia written by Cesare Ripa, an emblem book that describes the way in which personifications should be represented – a sort of ‘Handbook of Allegories’ . The first edition was published, without any pictures, in 1593, with a second illustrated edition following ten years later. ‘Painting’ is described thus:

A beautiful woman, with full black hair, dishevelled, and twisted in various ways, with arched eyebrows that show imaginative thought, the mouth covered with a cloth tied behind her ears, with a chain of gold at her throat from which hangs a mask, and has written in front ‘imitation’. She holds in her hand a brush, and in the other the palette, with clothes of evanescently coloured drapery.

Clearly, Artemisia has chosen some, if not all, of this description. Beautiful – well perhaps that was not for her to say – but with black hair, certainly. In other self portraits she has auburn hair with a wonderful sheen, beautifully dressed – whereas here it is ‘dishevelled, and twisted in various ways’, showing the distraction of the artistically inspired. The eyebrows are not arched – but this allows a wonderful passage of paint across the forehead: a thickly loaded brush was pulled across to pick out a highlight, emphasizing the light within, the power of her intellect. Or perhaps it was just showing us the form – like the little white fleck that shapes of the tip of her nose. Her mouth is not covered with a cloth, of course. Ripa wanted to show that painting is mute, it speaks through the eyes, and not through the ears, but that wouldn’t make for a good self portrait. It also wouldn’t have allowed us to see the wonderful, pensive, slight parting of the lips (I almost expect to see the tip of her tongue. like you do with children when they concentrate). However, she does have the ‘chain of gold at her throat from which hangs a mask’. We don’t need the word ‘imitation’ – Ripa was always guilty of over-egging the pudding – the mask is sufficient. It is a symbol of imitation, yes, but it was also a symbol of deceit (POTD 32), and what is painting, if not deceit, trying to show us something that is not real?

Scholars have argued about the background of this painting – even though there is almost nothing there to argue about. There is vertical line, which is not so much a line as a change of tone. This could be the corner of a room, with two walls meeting. Or the lighter area might be a blank canvas, about to be painted. If it is, then we have an even more sophisticated possibility. Artemisia holds the paintbrush between thumb and forefinger just below the top left corner of this blank canvas, with the tip of the brush just about to touch very close to its left-hand edge. And what do we see in the self portrait just below the top left corner, very close to its left-hand edge? Well, the tip of the paint brush. Artemisia is about to start painting by depicting the very paint brush that we can see her holding. Which just shows us how clever she was. And it has to be ‘she’. Ripa tells us that ‘Painting’ is a beautiful woman – and that’s because, in Italian, ‘Painting’ is La Pittura, a feminine noun. Artemisia’s male contemporaries simply couldn’t have painted this. Apart from anything else, it would never have occurred to them.

152 – One and a half princesses…

Thomas Gainsborough, The Three Eldest Princesses: Charlotte, Princess Royal, Augusta and Elizabeth, 1783-84. The Royal Collection.

This Monday, 14 March, I will be talking about Gainsborough’s ‘Blue Boy’ and the following week, I will be returning to the Masterpieces from Buckingham Palace which I didn’t get round to talking about the last time I tried… so what should I talk about today? Well, how about sticking with Gainsborough, and children (though maybe girls, to even out the gender balance), in a painting which is in the Royal Collection? It makes sense to me, at least. There are plenty to choose from, not least because poor Queen Charlotte had 15 children, and Gainsborough painted them all. Today I want to look at a portrait commissioned by the eldest of those children, George, Prince of Wales – the one who grew up to be King George IV.

This portrait was included in the truly splendid exhibition George IV: Art and Spectacle, and although that is long gone, the catalogue, which must be the definitive book on the patronage and collecting of the most acquisitive of monarchs, is still available – just click on the blue link above if you’re interested! Today’s painting does not usually hang in the Picture Gallery of Buckingham Palace (which is currently being refurbished), and so it is not part of the exhibition Masterpieces from Buckingham Palace which opens at the Queen’s Gallery at the Palace of Holyroodhouse in Edinburgh next week – so I’m very happy to look at it today.

The eldest Princess is Charlotte, Princess Royal – a title given to the eldest daughter of the monarch, which is currently held by Princess Anne. Charlotte was born in 1766, so she would have been at least 17 when this was painted, still a ‘child’ as she would not attain her majority until she was 21. Augusta (the middle of the three in age, but on the left in the painting) was probably 15 and Elizabeth (seated) 13. It’s hard to be precise, as it is hard to pin down when, exactly, Gainsborough painted it. We know that he received the commission in 1783, and that he planned to exhibit what was a high status work in the most significant venue – the Royal Academy annual exhibition – in 1784. But we’ll get to that story later.

The status of Charlotte, as the eldest, is communicated by her central position, and by her height. Whatever her actual height was, she is shown as the taller of the two who are standing. Her shoulders are parallel to the picture plane, which means that she occupies more space on the canvas than her younger sister Augusta, whose torso is turned towards the other two, foreshortening the view of her body, and thus taking up less of the width of the painting. It is subtleties like this which help to define the niceties of family relationships, niceties which were still apparent to Jane Austen writing at the beginning of the following century. This turn inwards also helps makes the trio more of an intimate group, and is echoed, in reverse, by Elisabeth, whose chair is turned to face outwards, thus angling her towards the other two. Although being seated in the presence of those standing is often a sign of power, they do not pay her any attention, and so it simply brings her lower down the picture plane, and decreases her status. Elizabeth may have been the youngest of these three, but there were three more: Mary born in 1776, Sophia, born the next year, and Aemilia, who arrived in 1783, by which time this portrait, too, had probably been conceived…

There is something about the gazes which also conveys status. Charlotte has her face turned directly towards us, and yet she looks off into the distance, focussing on serious issues rather than merely being seen and being pretty: with age comes responsibility. Augusta, on the other hand, free from the potential burden of getting married first, may have her face turned dutiful towards her older sister, but she looks out to us, almost slyly, almost flirtatiously. Both have powdered hair piled up on their heads, with one long lock falling over a shoulder, a fashion popular in the mid-1780s. Both also have strings of pearls wound through their hair, helping to give solidity and form to Gainsborough’s evanescent brushwork, which shows the fully developed freedom and apparent spontaneity which were hallmarks of his late style. On the left we see a lowering sky, on the right a curtain – and between a column. All three are typical of Van Dyck’s ‘Grand Manner’ portraits, signs of the wealth and status of his sitters. The column, in particular, suggests the strength of the British monarchy, while the swags of drapery imply both wealth and the opulent femininity of the monarchy’s women. Gainsborough was enormously influenced by the 17^th Century Flemish master – as we will see time and again on Monday – and so much of this portrait, from the compositional elements, to the freedom and transparency of much of the painting, is derived from an appreciation of his work.

The delicacy of the palette could hardly come from any other century. Pinks and blues are common to 18^th century paintings from across Europe. In France and Italy Boucher and Tiepolo used the same light and airy shades for skies and skin, sunsets and satins. The primrose yellow is another common feature, and can be seen, for example, in Picture Of The Day 43 – Psyche, the work of Fragonard. It is above all in the collars and cuffs, the jewels, the scarves and the shawls that Gainsborough’s delicacy is most brilliant and most evocative, although when you get closer to the paintings themselves the shimmering fabrics are all constructed with a similar build-up of flickering, almost-transparent brushstrokes. The echoing of the black belts with jewelled buckles of the outermost sisters helps to bring them closer together, while the interlinking of the arms and hands makes the trio seem like an enlightenment equivalent of the Three Graces. Having said that, it is hard to see where Elizabeth’s right hand is – or her arm, for that matter… Even her left hand is cut off oddly. Is this an awkward attempt to bring the sisters closer to us, by pushing them into our space?

No. Emphatically ‘No’. George commissioned this portrait from Thomas Gainsborough in 1783, and paid him a handsome 300 guineas for it. Gainsborough himself was happy with the result, and later claimed he had ‘painted the Princesses in so tender a light’ that it really shouldn’t been hung too high on a wall. This comment was made in response to the Royal Academy’s decision to hang the painting ‘above the line’. The ‘line’, as I have mentioned before recently, was an imaginary one, at approximately eye-level. ‘Below the line’ you could hang small cabinet paintings, which would allow them to be examined closely. ‘Above the line’ you might hang large, bold paintings that need some distance to be fully appreciated. Or you could hang paintings which you don’t think really deserve to be seen clearly up there. This may result in them being ‘skied’ – literally as close to the sky as possible, where you can’t see them very well. Obviously the best place to be was on the line, and that is presumably what Gainsborough wanted for his Princesses. The hanging committee wanted it skied, so Gainsborough withdrew it, and never exhibited at the Royal Academy again. Instead, he showed it in his studio in Schomberg House on the south side of Pall Mall before it went to its owner, and found its place in Carlton House, the home of the Prince of Wales (and later Regent), George, who hung it in the Saloon.

Regular visitors to Carlton House apparently said it was impossible to keep up with the interior décor – George kept redecorating and buying more things. By 1816, even though the painting was still at Carlton House, it was in store, catalogued as no. 244. Three years later, it was still in store, and no. 352: I suspect that reflects the rate of acquisitions. But worse was to happen. Here’s a copy of the painting by Gainsborough’s nephew and only student, Gainsborough Dupont – who was, possibly, the model for The Blue Boy. I’m also showing you a print of the original painting (although probably relying on some other source), dated to somewhere between 1860 and 1900.

Gainsboroguh Dupont, after Gainsborough, V&A

I know what you’re thinking. As a copy, it’s very free and inventive: they have legs. Well, skirts. Sadly not. At some point early in the reign of Queen Victoria (she succeeded to the throne in 1837, but this story was not recounted for another 30 years) the artist Edwin Landseer saw the ‘inspector of palaces’ – a man called Saunders – cutting down the canvas so that it could be used as an ‘overdoor’ (which is exactly what it says – a painting which is hung above a door). Comparison with what is left of the original shows that he removed the bottom third of the painting, and a considerable slice from the top. As it’s still there, it’s possible to say with precision that he also added an 11cm-wide strip on the left: the join can actually be seen quite clearly with the naked eye, even in reproduction.

The painting may have been cut down in its prime, but how did the Princesses fare? Well enough, I suppose, for women of their age. Charlotte became Queen of Württemberg, and lived to see her 62^nd birthday, while Augusta died at the age of 71 having never married. Well, not officially, anyway: she did have a lengthy ‘romance’ with Sir Brent Spencer, an Anglo-Irish officer in the British army. If they married ‘illicitly’ there is no record of it. Elizabeth, the toungest here, became Landgravine consort of Hesse-Homburg, and lived to be 69. Not bad innings, you could say, for the 19^th Century, and they all lasted a bit longer than the painting. What remains of it is charming, and delicate, even if the composition is now a bit unsatisfactory. The Blue Boy is different. We don’t know for certain who the model was, so we can’t be sure what happened to him. But the painting is doing remarkably well, and in wonderfully good condition for one that has travelled so far. I’m looking forward to talking about it and its family – all the paintings it looks back on and forward to – on Monday.

151 – Mommie dearest

James Abbott McNeill Whistler, Arrangement in Grey and Black No. 1, 1871. Musée d’Orsay, Paris.

This coming Monday’s talk, White: Whistler’s Woman… is an introduction to the Royal Academy’s exhibition entitled Whistler’s Woman in White. This does not refer to one specific painting, though, but to a person, as the subtitle of the exhibition makes clear: Joanna Hiffernan, one of Whistler’s regular models, and much more…. Curiously I’ve just noticed that the catalogue has a slightly different title – Whistler and the Woman in White, but I’ll try and explain why that might be so on Monday 7 March at 6pm. It is interesting, however, that none of the paintings for which Hiffernan modelled was ever called The Woman in White. The first, completed in 1863 (although it was reworked later) was called The White Girl, for example, although it is now known by the title that Whistler gave it some years later: Symphony in White No. 1. Today I’d like to think about a painting with a similar title, Arrangement in Grey and Black No. 1. This may not be ringing any bells, but if I were to call it Whistler’s Mother I’m sure the reaction would be different.

This is one of those paintings that seems to have entered the public imagination as ‘famous’ and therefore even ‘important’. It has even been given that most dubious of labels, ‘iconic’. I’ve spent quite a bit of time over the past few years trying to work out what, exactly, gives a painting this status. There are relatively few paintings which could be said to have some sort of ‘celebrity’ in the world of art. The Mona Lisa is the best example, I suppose, followed by Van Gogh’s Sunflowers. But there are others, like Klimt’s The Kiss, Munch’s The Scream or Grant Wood’s American Gothic which are so readily identifiable that they accrue their own type of fame, or infamy, or even notoriety, and which leads to them being quoted, re-purposed and even parodied. Whistler’s Mother is no exception. Among other appearances, it is a key element in that unmissable classic Bean – starring Rowan Atkinson as the eponymous ‘Mr’, who, in this case, works as a security guard at the National Gallery. OK, so the painting is in the Musée d’Orsay in Paris, but that’s a minor detail: we are talking about a work of fiction. And yes, I’m wrong, it is miss-able, but when I saw it with a group of National Gallery educators it was very funny. But putting that aside, why is this painting, or any painting, for that matter, iconic?

Simplicity is of the essence, I think. You need to be able to take it all in, so that, even at a second glance, you recognise it. Before you’ve finished looking at it the first time, it is already familiar. I suspect that a strong 2-dimensional design plays an important part – and Whistler’s painting has that in spades. I know that the Mona Lisa has a distant, atmospheric landscape, and The Scream has a bridge in exaggerated perspective, but what you notice first in each is the single figure facing resolutely towards you. In this case, Mother sits in profile, looking to our left, with her feet up on a low rest. This makes her lap almost horizontal, a feature which I think is also relevant: it ties her into the rectilinear composition of the painting as a whole. She is parallel to the picture plane, which is in itself slightly unnatural, as we rarely choose to arrange ourselves in line with the walls of a room. It implies stasis, and deliberate choice: she is somewhat abstracted from reality.

Two images hang on the cool grey wall. A monochrome picture – a print, perhaps, with a white mount and a black frame – hangs in a landscape format in the space between Mother’s head and the dark grey curtain on the far left. There is another, similar frame and mount at the top right corner, although there is barely anything of it, little more than a sliver, which gives it a compositional power far stronger than the small percentage of the picture space it occupies would suggest. There is no way of knowing whether this picture is in landscape or portrait format, but what we see implies the latter. As such, the two images echo the composition of the human figure, the picture on the right paralleling the stiff back, while that on the left is equivalent to the sitter’s lap. The strong, black horizontal of the wainscoting also emphasizes, and gives weight to, the horizontal placement of the thighs. These parallels are enhanced explicitly through the colouration – or rather, the lack thereof. The black of the frames and the white of the mounts are the same as those of Mother’s dress and of the headdress, collar, cuffs and handkerchief, the last of which she holds placidly on her lap. The silver grey of her hair is linked to the grey-scale of the engraving. The curtain also echoes this tonal range, although not going to the extremes of deep black or high white. It is Japanese, or in Japanese style: the influence of Asian visual arts on Western European painting was profound in the second half of the 19^th Century.

All of these details emphasize the two-dimensional nature of the painting, and of its design. Looking forward to the 20^th century, we might be reminded of Mondrian’s contemplative abstractions. But then, looking back, Vermeer inevitably springs to mind, with his careful placement of human actors against backgrounds defined by the rectilinear forms of paintings, picture frames, mirrors and other furniture. The only hint that we are seeing a three-dimensional space – apart from our inherent understanding of the structure of the human body – is the rug on which both chair and footstool are placed, with its woven border leading from the bottom left corner of the painting ever-so-slightly to the right, and some other, parallel lines in the rug which lead towards the footstall. But there is nothing that really grabs our eyes, and drags them into the distance – there is no real distance after all. There is nothing we could call a repoussoir, pushing our gaze back into the space. It is all statement, on the surface, and instantly recognisable. It is this, I think, which makes the painting ‘iconic’ – like an orthodox icon, flat, abstracted from reality, to make it more ‘ideal’. And yet, it is just a little bit approachable, as the skirt hangs down in front of the rug, just possibly reaching into our space – almost as if Mother’s self-contained composure is, in some way, accessible, if we could only just touch the hem of her skirt…

She seems to be intently focussed, with slightly pursed lips, her head slightly lowered, perhaps due to old age. Anna McNeill Whistler was 67 when this was painted. Not so terribly old, you might be thinking, but things were different then. She was enormously proud of her son’s success, although also despairing of his failings – including his dubious morals. At one point, after Whistler had received a legacy from an aunt, Anna wrote to Jemie, as she called him, suggesting that he use the £100 ‘to bestow on your model’. Why should he do that? The letter continued, ‘…you promised me to promote a return to virtue in her. I never forget to pray for her.’ The fact that Joanna Hiffernan was a model was not a problem, but, as models effectively sell their bodies, it was only a small step away from prostitution. And, to put it bluntly, Hiffernan was sleeping with the artist, whereas Mother clearly wanted him to settle down with a respectable woman. His response? He gave Hiffernan power of attorney over his affairs while he was away for seven months, and signed a will bequeathing his entire estate to her. Not exactly filial obedience.

It is not known for certain how the painting came about, although the most common version of the story is that Whistler’s model for the day couldn’t turn up, so he asked his mother to stand in for her. However, standing in – or at least, standing – turned out to be a problem. Anna was getting on a bit, and not able to stand for long periods – hence the fact that she is sitting. I can believe the first part of the story, but not the second. Or rather, if the first part is true, he would instantly have decided to turn the canvas on its side. Everything about this painted is geared towards a seated figure, after all. Alternatively, the fact that he used his mother as a model could be related to a sense of filial duty, or it could also reflect the fact that money was scarce at the time. Three years earlier Anna had complained to a correspondent, ‘he must pay models for them every day a shilling the hour & they must be well fed!’ Presumably mother did not need to be paid.

I’m intrigued how one should categorise this painting. Although it is commonly called Whistler’s Mother, is it really a portrait? I have the same qualms about some of the paintings in the Royal Academy exhibition, about which I hold strong views (with which I will undoubtedly regale you on Monday). After all, Whistler called it Arrangement in Grey and Black – it is the abstract values that concern him, and if it hadn’t been his mother, it could have been a different model, perhaps. However, the same is not true of Arrangement in Grey and Black No. 2, which is subtitled Portrait of Thomas Carlisle.

The title claims it is a portrait, and there is a greater sense, I think, that Carlisle’s appearance and character are important here. Having said that, when today’s painting was first exhibited at the Royal Academy Annual Exhibition it was given the subtitle Portrait of the Painter’s Mother – probably because, even in 1872, the Academy was not ready for the developments of the Aesthetic Movement, with which Jemie was becoming firmly aligned. ‘Art for Art’s Sake’ would be the best short explanation of this term, but again, more about that on Monday. Nevertheless, there are aspects of Arrangement in Grey and Black No. 1 which show that identity is important.

Take this detail for example – the top right hand corner of the curtain, and the framed engraving. The circle on the drape contains a highly stylised butterfly formed from the letters J and W – for James Whistler. This is his signature (a clearer version can be found in No. 2 above) and it is placed close to the print. The forms of this image are so specific that you would think it would be possible to identify the original – and indeed it is. It is a simplified version of his engraving Black Lion Wharf, dating from 1859. The example I am showing you here comes from the Freer Gallery of Art in Washington D.C.

Whistler is identified as the maker of today’s painting by his signature on the curtain, and by its proximity to the engraving of which he was also the author. So we see his signature and some of his art while we are looking at another example of his art – the painting itself – which includes his mother. This is almost as much a self portrait of as it is a portrait of his mother, as if he were saying, ‘This is where I came from, and this is where I am now.’ On her arrival in London Anna was, apparently, surprised by her son’s ‘flamboyant bohemian lifestyle’. If her own lifestyle expounded the same rigidity with which she appears, metaphorically, in this painting (which, as it happens, it did), then that is not surprising. The modern, interior décor was presumably not to her liking.

The painting has an interesting, if coincidental, link with The Red Boy, the subject of my last talk. Lawrence’s portrait (and it is definitely a portrait – it was commissioned as such) has the curious distinction of being the first painting to appear on a British postage stamp. That was in 1967. Anna McNeill Whistler pipped young Charles William Lambton to the post, though – quite literally, in this case – as she appeared on an American stamp 33 years earlier, in 1934, ‘In memory and in honor’, as the inscription on the stamp itself says, ‘of the mothers of America.’ Such a pity she didn’t get on better with Joanna Hiffernan – but we’ll talk about her, and look at the paintings for which she modelled, on Monday.

RE: Lent

It is the first day of Lent – again – and somehow this year I appear to be busier than last. We must have been in some kind of lockdown. What this means is that I don’t have time for Lenten Penance (I know, that’s hardly the point, but…) so if you would like to repeat last year’s, or if you weren’t following the blog then, here is the first chapter. Alternatively, this is a link to the original. I will post a link to the second at the end… but after that, it’s up to you. My suggestion would be to click on one of the links (either this one, or the one at the end), and bookmark the page. At the end of the post is a ‘next post’ button – tomorrow, you can click on that, and re-bookmark that page. I’m afraid I think that’s the easiest way through. Meanwhile, other posts will continue as… well, I was going to say ‘normal’, but that word is so open to interpretation. And, of course, links to book for the next two talks – White and Blue – are here and on the diary page. So – here’s to Lent…

This year I will be giving up abstinence. Well, I say, ‘this year’. To be honest, it’s a sacrifice I’ve been making for the past two decades at least, but there seems no reason to give up giving up now – so much has been given up already over the past couple of years. Instead, I will perform an act of penance, which will be to write one or two paragraphs (but I hope no more! [spoiler alert: I failed miserably]) about a single detail from a single painting every day of Lent. Inevitably this means that your penance will be to get an email from me every day. Feel free to delete or ignore at will! As with Advent, I won’t say what it is. The painting is not as familiar, but still one I have enjoyed talking about in the past. If – and when – you recognise it, please do let me know. But try not to name it! Knowing me, it will become all too clear all too soon.

This is a columbine, or aquilegia – Aquilegia vulgaris, to give it its Latin name. It is a perennial herb from the family Ranunculaceae (the ‘buttercup’ family) which is found in the Northern hemisphere growing in meadows and woodlands. As a relatively common plant, it is regularly depicted in art: the artists painted what they knew, after all. Not only that, but it was the most common of plants which became symbolic. It was widely believed that God had made the world specifically for humans, and had also made everything in it to remind us of the fact – so there should be something to learn from everything we see. It could therefore be relevant that the two common names of this plant are both related to birds. ‘Aquilegia’ comes from ‘aquila’, or eagle, because the petals of the flowers were said to look like talons. At the other end of the ‘hawk/dove’ spectrum, ‘columbine’ means ‘dove’ – because the flower as a whole was said to look like five doves flying in formation. It is this aspect of the flower which is important: it is a symbol of the Holy Spirit.

The naturalistic representation of flora and fauna in Western art became more common towards the end of the 14^th Century, and is especially favoured in the 15^th and early 16^th Centuries (and later, of course, in still life painting), which gives us a (very) rough time frame for our painting. However, the leaves are subtly shaded, the tonal values giving us a good idea of their three-dimensional form. This degree of naturalism is seen little before the 1420s, although it does exist, but nevertheless, we should definitely be thinking about the 15^th or 16^th Centuries. As a reference point, Jan van Eyck’s Ghent Altarpiece, completed in 1432, has a plethora of spectacularly naturalistic plants. Given that the flower is symbolic of the Holy Spirit, then this could well be a religious painting (it is Lent, after all), but despite this, it could be a naturalistic detail in a portrait, or mythological painting, I suppose. Let’s face it, Titian included one in the bottom right-hand corner of Bacchus and Ariadne (1520-23), next to some horsetail (Equisetum arvense) and an iris (Iris graminea) – see below. As for the other things we see in today’s detail (see above) – well, they don’t do well out of being removed from their context. We’ll come back to them some other time, I presume, and in future posts I’ll just ignore everything that doesn’t seem relevant!

For tomorrow’s post, maybe click on this link now, and bookmark the page – so you can find it easily tomorrow!

150 – Pinkie

Thomas Lawrence, Sarah Goodin Barrett Moulton: “Pinkie”, 1794. The Huntington Library, Art Gallery and Botanical Gardens, San Marino, California.

As my next two talks are entitled Red and White it seemed like a good idea to write about something related to both, and hence, the colour pink. Not only that, but today’s painting, by Thomas Lawrence (who also painted The Red Boy, about which I will speak on Monday 28 February), has for many years hung opposite The Blue Boy, which will form the focus of the third in the series Red, White and Blue. It’s all connected, you see. Details of all of these talks, are, of course, on the diary page… And, as if this isn’t enough to read, here is a link to my review of Tate Britain’s exhibition Hogarth and Europe which was published in the February Issue of The Burlington Magazine. Some of you may have come to my talk about the exhibition. However, with that ‘introduction’ I was trying hard to talk about the art, and probably didn’t really communicate what I actually thought about the exhibition. Well, the review is a polite version, draw your own conclusions. I didn’t have enough time to talk about Hogarth as a portraitist, which is a great pity: I prefer his portraits to those of either Reynolds or Gainsborough, which might come as a surprise to some. But then, compared to that illustrious couple, I also prefer the slightly later Thomas Lawrence, whose work I want to look at today, and then again during the talk on Monday.

I find this portrait somewhat disarming. A young woman – a girl, even – steps forward, her delicately shod right foot placed equally delicately on the central axis of the painting, her body, like a marble column rising above it, almost coincidentally in the middle of our field of view as she moves along a diagonal from the back left to go out of the painting beyond the front right. As she steps to the right her diaphanous muslin skirts are blown by a light breeze to the left, revealing the form of her leading leg. The untied ribbons of her hat, the same candyfloss pink as her high, empire-style waistband, also flutter to the left, making you wonder what it is, precisely, that is holding her hat in place. But she is not looking where she is going. The movement may be to the front right of the painting, but she has turned her face to look directly out, and so directly towards us, and her fixed gaze is commanding, compelling, and just a little bit unnerving.

She is walking on a hill top, far, it would seem, from ‘civilisation’. What exactly is she doing, you might ask, a girl of this tender age, walking so far from human habitation, and indeed, so far from any sign of human presence? Except, of course, she is not alone: we are there, to see her. Or rather, Thomas Lawrence was there, to paint her (not that she was actually outside when painted, of course…). At her feet the grass is short, and from it grow indistinct flowers, beautifully evoked with just a few dashes of paint, possibly a nod to her youth and future fertility. At some distance, over the brow of the hill on which she walks, we see the brow of the next, far lower hill, with a path curving across it, past sheep and towards a grove of trees. And beyond that – water – a river or lake – and more trees, and more hills. When the painting is seen from a distance this may look like the sea, but the blue is the result of atmospheric perspective, almost as if the blue of the sky and the mist in the air are getting in the way of everything we look at. To the left of her leading right foot we can just see her left, lifting off the ground to take the next step forward, under the complex billowing of her dress.

Her right arm is bent, with the hand perhaps resting on the back of the skirt, her left hand is raised, floating in front of her chest, and casting a shadow on her bodice. The lace trim suggests that the neckline is relatively low cut – for one so young – and it may be that the hand floats there as a sign of her insecurity given her immanent womanhood. Or maybe she is dancing – this is almost a sailor’s hornpipe. Whatever this gesture means, it adds to the slight mystery of the painting, and to its magic. If she is insecure, she does not show it on her face, which looks towards us, inquisitively perhaps, but with determination. It is framed by the rich lustrous curls which were a hallmark of Lawrence’s portraiture – if you wanted your hair to look good, you went to him – and the hair itself is framed by the pink halo of the hat.

Unlike The Red Boy – or, for that matter, The Blue Boy – the painting is not named for its colour. Instead, it is coloured for its name. The subject is Sarah Goodin Moulton, the 11-year-old daughter of Charles Moulton, a merchant from Madeira who settled in St James, Jamaica and married Elizabeth Barrett, whose family had settled there in 1655. Her name may be familiar: Elizabeth’s brother Edward was the father of the poet we now know as Elizabeth Barrett Browning, which is perhaps why the painting is now given both mother’s and father’s names: Sarah Goodin Barrett Moulton. The original Sarah Goodin had been the name of one the girl’s aunts who had died as an infant in 1791, two years before this Sarah was born. Within the family, though, the second Sarah was known as “Pinkie” – hence the name of the painting, and presumably, Lawrence’s choice for the colour which she wears. In Jamaica the family were wealthy landowners, and exporters of sugar cane and rum. And yes, there is no getting away from it, they owned slaves. Father seems to have been no good (and not just for this reason – after all, almost everyone was guilty either directly or indirectly). He left the family when Pinkie was only six, leaving Elizabeth to raise the girl, and her three younger brothers, on her own. In September 1792 the four children sailed to England to go to school, leaving Pinkie’s maternal grandmother, Judith Barrett, somewhat bereft. The following year Judith wrote to one of her nieces, who lived in Surrey, just outside London:

I became every day more desirous to see my dear little Pinkey. But as I cannot gratify myself with the Original, I must beg favour of You to have her picture drawn full Length by one of the best Masters in an easy Careless attitude. As your Taste and Judg’ment cannot be excell’d, I leave her Dress to You – You will therefore be so kind as to inform me by the first pacquet after you receive this, what the Amount will be, and I will get a Bill and send You as soon a possible – I shall expect it out as soon as the paint is well dried and Seasoned – Let the frame be handsome and neat.

The painting, with the requested ‘easy Careless attitude’ – perhaps inspired by the dance steps Pinkie would have learnt in her new school as part of her upbringing as a respectable and accomplished young lady – was completed in 1794, and exhibited at the Royal Academy annual exhibition the following year. The exhibition opened on 1 May. The day before – 30 April – Pinkie had been buried in St Alfege, Greenwich. The cause of death is not known. The painting was not sent to Jamaica, remaining with the family in England until 1910. Having passed through the dealers’ hands, in 1927 it was acquired by Henry E. Huntington, who just five years earlier had also bought The Blue Boy – and the two have been together ever since.

The portraits hang opposite each other in The Huntington Art Gallery, and are so connected in the public imagination that many imagine them to be brother and sister – even though one of them, although wearing 17^th Century costume, was painted around 1770, while the other was completed, in contemporary fashion, some quarter of a century later. Lawrence was not exactly old himself when he painted the later portrait: he was 25, and had just been made a full member of the Royal Academy, an honour Constable would not be granted until he was more than twice that age. Mind you, when he was Pinkie’s age – eleven – he was already a professional artist. His father had realised that young Thomas – a child prodigy – was well placed to earn enough money from his portraits to support the whole family. But that’s another story, and one which I will touch on on Monday, when we look at what is arguably his best portrait of a child, The Red Boy.

149 – Sunflowers

Vincent van Gogh, Sunflowers, 1888. National Gallery, London.

There can be few artists more famous or more popular these days than Vincent van Gogh, and I must confess that each time I hear about a new exhibition my heart sinks a little. But I’m glad to say, I am often wrong! The last one was Tate Britain’s Van Gogh and Britain which I thought would be completely pointless: he was hardly here, and wasn’t even an artist at the time. I was wrong about the former, and the latter didn’t matter – it was a brilliant exhibition, and I would still recommend the catalogue. As for the current one – well – that’s an exception. I knew it would be good. Apart from the fact that charting van Gogh’s career through his self portraits is such a good idea that I’m surprised it hasn’t been done before, exhibitions at The Courtauld are always small, and as a result focussed, and to the point. Van Gogh. Self Portraits is no exception – both magical and haunting – and I am delighted to be talking about it this Monday, 14 February at 6pm. I’m not saying it will be the perfect Valentine’s date, but it could give you something to talk about over dinner! The following Monday I’m having a day off before we commute to Webinars, which will launch on 28 February with a series of three talks entitled Red, White and Blue. There is more information about the series on the diary page, and, via the blue links there, on Tixoom, but the talks will be an opportunity to look at the works of Sir Thomas Lawrence, James Abbott McNeil Whistler, and Thomas Gainsborough, and will focus on two paintings acquired or borrowed by the National Gallery, and on an exhibition at the Royal Academy. But for today, let’s look one of Vincent’s most famous paintings: Sunflowers. Even if it’s not a self portrait, identity is an issue, as we shall see.

One of the problems we have to confront when we look at this painting is that, by now, the image is so familiar that we recognise it instantly, we know that we know it, and we simply don’t look. To be honest, knowing anything about a painting is one of the first boundaries we all have to cross if we want to learn something new. So let’s just look at it. I have done this with a number of different audiences at different times – mainly school groups, often members of the general public, and occasionally on private tours. I would love to ask you a series of questions, but this is a blog and you can’t answer, so I will just give you the answers I get 99% of the time. Here are the questions:

What is this a painting of?
Where are the Sunflowers?
Where is the vase?

The answer to no. 1, is obvious, really – Sunflowers, the clue is in the title – as is the next answer: in a vase. And the answer to question 3? On a table. It’s that simple. I get these answers every time. The only slight variation is in question three, and fair enough. A few people answer ‘on the floor’ – but very few people say that, simply because very few people have vases on the floor (as far as I’m aware). But, if I asked you to draw me a table, how would you do that? What does it need in order to be identified as a table? A table top, of course, but also legs. And van Gogh hasn’t given us any legs. So why do most people think this is a table? Well, because you tend to keep vases on tables or shelves, and this… well, it doesn’t look like a shelf to me. All this tells me two things. First, the human brain has a remarkable ability to fill in missing details. Second, van Gogh’s had a remarkable ability to abbreviate. How has he painted the table? With a change of colour and a blue line. There are relatively few artists who can convey so much with so little. Let’s face it – there is nothing about the painting of the table that suggests it is a horizontal surface. Imagine cutting out a section of the canvas, like this…

Please don’t actually try cutting out a section of the painting, it would be a rather expensive act of vandalism, and you would certainly get arrested. However, I have done it digitally, which is alright, and you can see that there is no shading, no perspective, nothing to say it is a horizontal, or even flat surface at all. In fact, there is nothing particularly remarkable about this bit of painting in any way, there is just the rough handling of the paint, with almost random brush strokes, used to fill up the space and little more. So we can move on to the next question: what shape is the vase? Or, to put it another way, if you were to take the flowers out and look at the top of the vase from above, what shape would you see?

The answer I always get is ‘a circle’. But how does Vincent tell us that? (I say ‘Vincent’ because that’s what it says on the painting.) There is barely any shading on the vase – OK, so the right side is lighter than the left, but it’s not exactly consistent, and it’s certainly not the subtle variation in tone to model the form in three dimensions that was perfected during the Renaissance. What really gives it the shape is a single line – the blue line curving down from one side of the vase and then up again on the other. This, and the slant of the word ‘Vincent’, together with the white blobs of paint. They are so obviously blobs of paint that quite a few people have asked me if the painting is damaged, or maybe unfinished. But no, blobs of white paint are exactly what Vincent wanted, and they represent a highlight reflecting off the vase, a highlight so bright that only white paint would do. It tells us (here’s the answer to the next question, which I shall therefore omit) that the vase is made of glazed ceramic. But wait a second. If there’s that much light reflecting off the front of the vase, what should we see, somehow, behind the vase? A shadow, surely? But no. No shadows. No shadows, no perspective… what else can he avoid using, I wonder? Well, we’ll have to go back to the painting as a whole in order to answer the next questions.

Pick a simple colour for every question. What colour is the wall? What colour are the flowers? What colour is the vase? What colour is the table? The answer to all of these questions should have been ‘yellow’. OK, so I know there are different shades of yellow, plus details in green and brown, and a couple of blue lines, but basically this is a painting of yellow flowers in a yellow vase on a yellow table against a yellow wall. It is almost – but not quite – monochrome, and the creation of a monochrome painting was really rather original in 1888. I know that Degas painted Combing the Hair using only red, but that was about 8 years later, and, while we’re at the National Gallery, Théo van Rysselberghe used only blue (more or less) for his Coastal Scene. But that was in 1892 – a little closer to Sunflowers in date, perhaps, but still four years later. And it still shows that van Gogh’s work was far more innovative that you might have thought. OK, in a letter to his sister Willemien (see below) he cited Monticelli as a precedent, but Monticelli’s paintings aren’t exactly yellow… And we are left with the problem that, if Vincent’s painting is yellow, then how does he make the vase visible?

It’s simple really, which is why it is so brilliant. The wall is lighter yellow than the table, and the top part of the vase is darker than the bottom. He places the dark of the vase against the light of the wall, and then, further down, the light against the dark. Economical, but telling.

And how does he depict the flowers themselves? At the bottom two droop down, balanced, but not exactly symmetrical. Each yellow petal, and each green section of the former bud, curves round in a single, curving brushstroke. One of the things that this painting makes clear is that van Gogh loved paint. He loved the feel of it, he loved the way it moved, and he loved applying it in different ways, with brushstrokes describing the qualities of his subject almost as much – if not more – than their colour and form do.

Just above the vase the composition is again balanced, but not symmetrical – with two thickly-painted seed heads in the centre, made up of thick blobs of glistening paint dabbed onto the canvas. To the left and right, and slightly higher up, are two more blooms with curling petals, tilted down, another tilted out. The petals here are fuller, and formed by a number of brushstrokes, each one with fairly thick paint in which we can see the lines formed by the separate hairs of the brush.

At the top we have a pyramid, with one, central, dominant flower. Admittedly it’s a very squat pyramid, but it focuses our attention on the centre of the image, leaving the top left and right as just ‘background’. Two flowers look out at us, one central, one on the far left, but both appear to be losing their petals, a little be worse for wear. The one on the left even looks a little tipsy – but I probably shouldn’t anthropomorphise. The texture of the paint is fantastic. The large central flowers are built up of the blobs of paint, dabbed and pressed onto the surface with the end of the brush, I presume, while the pale yellow background is applied in short horizontal and vertical strokes, almost as if it were woven.

The ‘story’ of the painting is well known, I think, but just as a reminder, it was painted when van Gogh was about to be visited in Arles by his hero of the moment, Paul Gauguin. They had met in Paris in 1887, but they weren’t exactly friends, and Gauguin only went down south because Vincent’s brother Theo – an art dealer – promised to pay him: Gauguin was desperate to raise cash to escape from France. Around 18 August 1888, shortly before Gauguin arrived, Vincent wrote to artist Emile Bernard saying,

I am thinking of decorating my studio with half a dozen pictures of “Sunflowers,” a decoration in which the raw or broken chrome yellows will blaze forth on various backgrounds – blue, from the palest malachite green to royal blue, framed in thin strips of wood painted with orange lead. Effects like those of stained-glass windows in a Gothic church.

And then, about three days later, he wrote to his brother Theo:

I am hard at it, painting with the enthusiasm of a Marseillais eating bouillabaisse, which won’t surprise you when you know that what I’m at is the painting of some big sunflowers.

I have three canvases going – 1st, three huge flowers in a green vase, with a light background, a size 15 canvas; 2nd, three flowers, one gone to seed, having lost its petals, and one a bud against a royal-blue background, size 25 canvas; 3rd, twelve flowers and buds in a yellow vase

Our painting is the fourth… he mentions it in a letter to Theo written around 27 August:

I am now on the fourth picture of sunflowers. This fourth one is a bunch of 14 flowers, against a yellow background.

And he mentions it again in a letter to his sister, Willemien:

So I myself too have already finished a picture all in yellow – of sunflowers (fourteen flowers in a yellow vase and against a yellow background …).

… which is pretty much the way I have described it for years, even though I only read this letter today! (You can find all the correspondence here – linking first to the letter to Bernard, in a better translation than I’ve quoted). In the end, rather than using this painting for the studio, it was hung in the room which Gauguin would use. The time the two artists spent together is the stuff of legend by now, but if you don’t know the story it will have to wait for another time, I’m afraid. Vincent presumably wanted Gauguin to feel at home, to enjoy himself, and to want to stay, so no wonder he wanted to decorate his room with a painting ‘all in yellow’ – the colour of light, the colour of life. But is it a happy painting? I’ll let you decide.

One last question: why does he sign himself ‘Vincent’. Well, I can assure you I’ve spent hours with every Dutch visitor I’ve ever shown this painting to – including entire school groups from The Netherlands – trying to get them to help me to pronounce ‘Van Gogh’ correctly. So far I have failed. Most English go for ‘van Goff’ (‘van’ to rhyme with ‘can’ – it should be more like ‘von’), the French for a soft ‘van Gog’, and the Americans for an insistent ‘van Go!’. It must have seemed far easier for him to stick to ‘Vincent’. Still, on Monday, when I get to talk about The Courtauld’s poignant Van Gogh. Self Portraits, I’ll give it another go.

148 – We’re all human

Francis Bacon, Head VI, 1949. Arts Council Collection, South Bank Centre, London.

There is nothing quite so exciting in 20^th Century painting as getting close to the surface of a work by Francis Bacon – there was no one who handled paint as well, with such power, and with such variety, who had worked so hard to achieve the right effects, knew precisely where the paint would go, how thick or thin it should be, how carefully or recklessly it should be applied to grab the viewer by the eyes and penetrate the sinews. So I was thrilled to see the Royal Academy’s new exhibition, Francis Bacon: Man and Beast on Tuesday, and then equally excited to be able to share my enthusiasm with a group of patrons of the RA two days later. And now I am looking forward to talking about him again on Monday 7 February, as the RA’s powerful exhibition is the subject of next week’s talk. It’s been a good week! On Thursday afternoon I also saw – on the opening day – the remarkable, focussed exhibition Van Gogh. Self Portraits at The Courtauld (the hiatus-inducing punctuation is theirs). Only 18 works, perhaps, but it says everything you need to know about Vincent himself – and I will talk about that on Monday 14 February. Today though, an old favourite, in which one of the best modern artists looks back to the one of the best of the Old Masters.

Throughout his career Francis Bacon painted around 50 screaming popes, but this painting, Head VI, is the first. Or at least, it is the first which survives. We don’t know that there were any others which preceded it, but it was painted in 1949, and already in 1946 he wrote to a couple of friends, including the artist Graham Sutherland, saying that he was working on three paintings inspired by the Portrait of Pope Innocent X by Diego Velázquez (c. 1650). However, Head VI would not have taken three years to paint. Either there were other discarded versions that preceded it, or the work progressed slowly, with much thought preceding the actual execution. Either is possible, both are likely, and the ‘three’ he mentioned are probably among those that surfaced later.

It would be easy to argue that Bacon’s work is not so terribly similar to the original. Quite apart from the way they are painted, there is just not so much of the Pope. I’m not talking about the absence of the top of the head in the modern version, but about the format – Bacon’s is only a bust length work. Indeed, some have suggested that he was actually inspired by the version which found its way into the collection of the Duke of Wellington, and can still be seen in Apsley House.

Velazquez, Diego; Pope Innocent X, 1650; English Heritage, The Wellington Collection, Apsley House.

But this just makes me think that ‘some’ should retire from the History of Art, and start looking at paintings instead. The Apsley House version does not have a visible throne, nor does the pope reveal his white sleeves. Both features were clearly visible to Francis Bacon, as both are included in Head VI – so we can forget Apsley House’s minor masterpiece and concern ourselves with the main event. But why was Bacon so obsessed with it? Well, because he knew how good Velázquez was. In an interview with the art critic David Sylvester in 1962 he said that the portrait ‘just haunts me, it opens up all sorts of feelings and areas of – I was going to say – imagination, even, in me.’ He was in awe of the way the Spaniard handled paint, and how he used it to go beyond the surface and reveal the character of his subject – whether the ‘subject’ was a portrait or a narrative. At one point he said that he wanted ‘to paint like Velázquez, but with the texture of a hippopotamus skin’. It had to be as good, of course, but rougher, and tougher, as he 20th Century demanded. The one thing that Bacon feared most was to be merely illustrative. In the 1962 interview the modern master said that what he admired in his Spanish predecessor was the latter’s ability ‘to keep it so near to what we call illustration and at the same time so deeply unlock the greatest and deepest things that man can feel’. It was the communication of the greatest and deepest things which most interested Bacon.

Much of the detailing we see here was the artist’s way of holding on to what interested him most, of pinning it down, and stopping it from escaping our attention – or, in his words, his need ‘to trap the fact’. The framing elements are his way of focussing our attention on the subject matter – something he believed that other artists did as well:

I think that the very great artists were not trying to express themselves. They were trying to trap the fact, because after all, artists are obsessed by life and by certain things that obsess them that they want to record. And they’ve tried to find systems and construct the cages in which these things can be caught.

In Head VI, the ‘fact’ is presumably – in some way – the inner life of Innocent X, and so it is on him that we must concentrate. His being is not, in this case, related to his mobility – so the legs are of no value – and everything we need to know is contained within the thinly sketched white cage, a feature, common in Bacon’s ouevre, which is often referred to as a ‘space frame’. Innocent is defined by his status – enthroned, as a monarch – and so the vaguely sketched gilded structure of the throne is also important, and also functions as another way to ‘trap the fact’. Notice how the painted image of the face does not go higher than the gilded chair, and the eyes – absent or veiled – are on a level with the back of the throne. Let’s have another look at the Velázquez.

The throne contains the Pope in much the same way that the space frame contains his 20^th Century descendant – the arms contain his arms, and the top of the chair – although above his eyes – helps frame him in much the same way that there is a gilt-wood frame around the painting. Both help to ‘trap the fact’. What is this? In part, I think, ‘the fact’ that Innocent’s attitude is not clear. Is he in control, or clasping the arms of the chair in fear? Comfortable with his power, or afraid of the fall?

In the lower half of the painting our interest is refocussed on the subject by the presence of so much raw canvas – this is the material of the work, but that is not what it is about. The diagonal closure of the space frame runs parallel to where the chair arm would be – although higher, as we cannot see the whole arm. But what we do see is an incredible painterly display, broad brushstrokes of ‘dry’ paint (i.e. a low amount of oil compared to the amount of pigment) dragged and smeared across the canvas, and across wet paint where it mixes, the strokes flowing or creeping down towards the join in the mozzetta, or papal cape. The colour, you might say, is not ‘right’. This is definitely purple. Velázquez painted a deep red, heightened to pink by the reflections. You could go on for a long time about the problems with colour reproduction, the transient nature of some paints, etc, etc, but you would be wrong. Velázquez painted red, Bacon painted purple it’s that simple. But why? Because that colour expressed Bacon’s feelings more profoundly? Probably not. The reason is probably one of the most surprising facts about his obsession with this painting: he never saw it. Even when he spent some months in Rome in 1954 – five years after this particular version – he didn’t go and see it. He didn’t paint from life, life was too distracting, it was bound up with time and place, with mood and with gut responses. He painted from photographs, as they got closer to ‘the fact’. Admittedly there is a suspicion that, when he was in Rome, he might not have wanted to see the real thing, just in case he realised he couldn’t live up to it. Or worse, that it would disappoint him after years of building it up. Nevertheless, in an interview with Sylvester just four years after the other, in 1966, he regretted that his versions of the masterpiece were ‘records of it, distorted records.’ But it wasn’t just this great work of art that he painted ‘second hand’. Even the portraits of his friends and lovers were painted from photographs, commissioned from another friend, John Deakin. He also hoarded a vast archive of source material, in books and magazines, or torn out from them: I’ll show you more of these on Monday. Here, though, is one of the images that influenced him most.

It is a film still – the nurse from the ‘Odessa Steps’ sequence of Eisenstein’s 1925 masterpiece Battleship Potemkin, a film that Bacon saw even before he started painting, and which influenced him greatly in a number of ways. In his 1962 interview he said, ‘I did hope one day to make the best painting of the human cry. I was not able to do it and it is much better in the Eisenstein and there it is.’

But why? Why the concern with suffering? There is, perhaps, a little hint of an answer in another odd detail here, a tassel which seems to dangle above the Pope’s nose. It occurs in other paintings, and is, in some ways, like the arrows which can be seen elsewhere in his work – it is another way of drawing your attention to what matters. It falls between the eyes, or where the eyes should be, or where the eyes were. It is almost as if they have been burnt away, or, like the nurse, as if the Pope’s glasses have been broken (not that Innocent X wears glasses). This blinding, the end of sight, is a sign of fragility, an intimation of mortality: one day, the lights will go out. This tassel could be a light pull. But actually it comes from another photographic source: a photograph of Hitler leaning out of a window. In that image, it appears to be part of a cord to pull down a blind, a way of shutting things out – the darkness, or the light – or, when lifted, of revealing, in that theatrical way which has cropped up more than once in my talks recently. That the tassel may have some relationship to Hitler hints at the levels of human suffering which are involved. Eisenstein’s nurse wasn’t Bacon’s only source material for the scream. He also had a collection of images of leading Nazis declaiming at rallies, their mouths wide open as they rabidly spewed out their venom.

Bacon lived through two world wars. Too young to serve in the first (he was only five when it started), he was too sick for the second. He was a lifelong sufferer from asthma, which was triggered particularly by dogs and horses – just one reason why his ex-military father, an unsuccessful race horse trainer, was disappointed in the second child of five. Father was also disappointed by his son’s effeminacy, and so horsewhipped him, as well as having him horsewhipped by the grooms. Bacon was all too aware of man’s inhumanity to man, and of the way in which we, with our supposed sophistication, can behave worse than animals. As the Second World War ended, the full extent of the Nazi horror became known. It did not help that the sense of triumph over evil was undermined by the means used to end another part of the conflict, in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. For many, God was dead. For Bacon, he had never existed. He described himself, though, as an optimist, because, if there is no God-given purpose to our existence, then life is what we make it, and Bacon was determined to make as much of it as possible. Nevertheless, that underlying fear of being left ‘on our own’ spawned Existentialism, with its fear of the Void, and even for those not philosophically inclined, there was the gnawing angst inspired by the possibility of nuclear Armageddon. Was this the source of ‘the human cry’? Was this the ‘fact’ that Bacon wanted to ‘trap’? He was, from his own experience, only too aware how thin the veil separating our sophistication from our animal instincts can be. We are all flesh and blood, we are all meat – and that applies to the Pope every bit as much as to – well – anyone else. It is, perhaps, also worth remembering that – with one medieval and one modern exception – there is only one way to stop being Pope. Basically, you’re there until God wants you back. Or, to put it another way, you’re trapped there till you die. I think I’d scream, under the circumstances.

Now, having said all of that, I really hope I haven’t put you off joining me on Monday! Francis Bacon is undoubtedly one of the greatest artists of the 20^th Century, dealing with issues that must concern us all: the nature of being alive, the full scope and depth – and depths – of humanity. For Bacon, being human during the 20^th Century – missing only some of the first and last decades living, as he did, from 1909-1992 – put him in the best position to see what was going on. And the exhibition Francis Bacon: Man and Beast lives up to that ambition.