Lent 17

In the words of comedian, actor and writer Arabella Weir, ‘Does my bum look big in this?’ Not only does this man bend over to give us a chance to contemplate an answer, but he also turns round to look us in the eye – indeed, he is, I suspect, one of the very few people in the painting who do look at us, aware of our presence, thus inviting our participation in the events depicted. His gaze connects us to the painting, while the plank, or beam, which he is holding with his left hand leads our eye in further, as we saw in Lent 9. We now know, of course, that this plank, or beam, is part of the cross. His right hand reaches down, arm fully stretched, to pick up his auger (not his pick), which he will use to make guide holes at the bottom and on both arms of the cross, so that later it will be easier to drive in nails. There are other paintings where you can see this in action. The boy with the improbable hat (Lent 7) is pointing to the auger, acknowledging its relevance, and also helping to structure the painting: his gesture parallels the length of the beam, and helps to keep our eye looking into the painting, and to the right, the direction that Jesus will soon travel on his way to Calvary.

There is something comical about bottoms, particularly when they are displayed so brazenly. They imply a sense of vulnerability, I think, especially when your hose is down. We could see, even in the small detail in Lent 9, that the left leg had collapsed. Someone suggested that the hose looks almost more like thigh-length boots – and it does. But this shouldn’t be a surprise: our mistake is to confuse ‘hose’ with ‘tights’ – thin, almost evanescent – but hose was intended to fully clad the legs – not only to cover them, but to keep them warm. Before lycra, and even before elastic, they could be tied up with garters, but were often attached to the bottom of the doublet with laces – rather like shoe laces, with pointed metal caps (‘aglets’) to stop them fraying. Perhaps for that reason they were called ‘points’. When Malvolio decides to dress precisely how he believes, in error, that Olivia wants him to, in Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, he says he will be ‘point-devise the very man’ – he means that he will be ideally dressed and perfectly presented. Not this man here: no points, so his hose has fallen down. It reminds me of the Whitehall farces – and no, I am not referring to contemporary politics, and no, I am not old enough to have seen any of them. But I know that, in these ‘classic’ comedies at the Whitehall theatre in the 50s and 60s, usually starring Brian Rix, there was usually a point where the hapless hero’s trousers would fall down, and it would always get a laugh. We are meant to laugh at this man – he is our comic chorus, like the Porter in the ‘Scottish Play’ or the Gravedigger in Hamlet. He is there to warm us up, to grab our attention, to get our emotions moving, to lower our guard – because later we should weep.

And it’s not just the bottom. He shares something in common with the right-hand sculpture adorning the palace which we saw in Lent 5, about which I said, ‘his buttocks are turned towards us… and… there is more than a hint of testicle’. Fine. Dress how you like. But don’t stand astride a plank. Or beam. If the man at the other end lifts it up much higher, there will be a nasty accident. This is part of the comedy, and it is also one of the ways in which the cruelty of these men is undermined – they are ugly, low and laughable. However, hardly anyone is paying attention to him – apart from us, perhaps. A child at the bottom of the Scala Santa looks up towards Jesus and waves. He really shouldn’t be here, as he has wandered out of another image, but seems to be morbidly interested in Christ’s suffering: as the Dutch used to say in the 17th Century (and maybe they still do), ‘Soo voer gesongen, soo na gepepen’ – ‘As the old sing, so the young pipe’. He’s been given a bad example.

Our artist is quoting from a print of The Flagellation by Dutch painter and printmaker Lucas van Leyden, probably as the design for a small stained glass panel, a vignette that would sit in the middle of a plain glass window. It was part of a series now known as The Circular Passion, and is dated 1509. This tells us something important: our painting must date from 1509 at the very earliest… but probably later.

Lucas van Leyden, The Flagellation from The Circular Passion, 1509. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

Lent 16

We’ve seen enough of the painting now to start meeting people again, and to put them into context – the woman weeping, and the improbable hat of the child next to her (Lent 7) can be seen in the bottom right – and now we know why she is weeping. Whoever she is – and there really is no way of knowing, I think, apart from being one of the many women who followed Jesus – it is now obvious that it is his arrest and torture which are upsetting her, not to mention his inevitable death: her head is right next to the cross, after all. The man we saw in the act of derision (Lent 8) was clearly deriding Jesus. Someone astutely commented that that detail reminded them of ‘an Ecce Homo scene’ (I’m sorry, I don’t have a name, only a group…), and they were more-or-less right. Ecce Homo means ‘behold the man’, words spoken by Pontius Pilate, as related in the Gospel of John, 19:5,

Then came Jesus forth, wearing the crown of thorns, and the purple robe. And Pilate saith unto them, Behold the man!

It is at this point, according to John, that the chief priests and officers call for Christ’s crucifixion, but Pilate claims to ‘find no fault in him’. Then the people also call for him to be crucified. Pilate tries every way possible to have him released – speaking again to Jesus, arguing with the priests, and confronting the public, but to no avail. Eventually he submits, and, in the words of John 19:16-17,

Then delivered he him therefore unto them to be crucified. And they took Jesus, and led him away. And he bearing his cross went forth…

And this is the precise moment we see – a stage further on from the Ecce Homo, but with the same rabble, who have been roused to the heights of passion, anger, derision: you may remember that yesterday I mentioned that ‘the chief priests moved the people’ (Mark 15:11) – i.e. they had turned them against Jesus. There are, at least, a few good people moved to tears amongst the crowd. We also read yesterday how Mark told us ‘they put his own clothes on him’ (Mark 15:20) before taking him away, which is why he no longer wears the ‘purple’ mentioned by John, above, and also by Mark. In today’s detail he is being led down some steps to pick up the cross.

These are not just any steps, as it happens, they have an important place in church history. It is widely believed that St Helena, the mother of Constantine the Great, went on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, and brought back many relics. One of the things she somehow acquired and had shipped back to Rome was an entire staircase, made up of steps which were supposed to lead to the Praetorium, the very steps up which Jesus walked to face Pilate, and the ones he is about to be led down now. The originals look rather different.

Still a vital pilgrimage destination, since the 18th Century the Scala Santa – or ‘Holy Staircase’ – has been clad in wood, and for much longer than that it has only been climbed on your knees. I’ve done it three or four times… I won’t go into its historical authenticity, but, as one website I’ve just seen suggests, ‘believers need no further proof and sceptics may never have enough proof’. I will go as far as to say I’m with the sceptics – and archaeologists. Nevertheless, this is what the steps in our painting represent. One of yesterday’s unexplained gestures now makes sense: the guard we saw on the left had unaccountably grabbed hold of Jesus’s robe. It turns out he was holding it up so that Jesus wouldn’t trip over while going down the steps. Whether this was an act of kindness, or simply a practical expedient, I shall leave you to decide.

Another detail I love here: the guards are clearly well rewarded. I’ve already commented on their elaborate clothing, but look at the purse of the man holding the rope. We see another pentimento, and in this case it tells us that the purse was originally smaller. It seems that, after taking on this job, he needed a bigger one, which was painted over the first.  The rope shows us, subtly, the direction of travel – down to the right – and then the cross takes over: in a couple of days we will head off from the top right of this detail – the cross points the way. The man holding it up has the typical grimace, and ugly distortions of form, seen throughout this rabble. It is not the ugliness of everyday life, as someone understandably asked me yesterday, but an expression of the inner character of these people. The idea – now rejected, thank goodness – was that the exterior appearance reflected the interior qualities. We see it again with the man at the very top right. He wears the finest clothes – the decorative chain mail around his collar appears like sewn pearls, and the silvery sleeve is tailored to an elegant fullness – and yet he has a ridiculous snub nose: the perceived ‘ugliness’ of his facial features would reflect the supposed ugliness of his mindset. He does, however, know which way we are going, and in a couple of days we shall follow his lead.

Lent 15

Jesus has been arrested, interrogated, tried and condemned. His hands are tied, and he is being led away. How do we know this? Well, he is wearing the crown of thorns. This follows on from the verse I quoted from the Gospel of Mark yesterday, in which he was taken to Pilate first thing on the morning of Good Friday. The interrogation revealed nothing, but, as it was the custom, Pilate decided to release one prisoner – and the one chosen, given that the ‘chief priests moved the people’ was Barabbas. When asked, ‘the people’ wanted Jesus crucified. After he had been scourged (this painting does not include The Flagellation), Jesus was handed over to be led to his execution. Matthew’s gospel includes the story of Pilate washing his hands, thus abdicating all responsibility for Christ’s coming death – another thing we don’t see.  According to Mark 15:16-18 & 20,

…the soldiers led him away into the hall, called Praetorium… And they clothed him with purple, and platted a crown of thorns, and put it about his head, And began to salute him, Hail, King of the Jews! … And when they had mocked him, they took off the purple from him, and put his own clothes on him, and led him out to crucify him.

So this is after the Mocking of Christ (also not depicted): he has the crown of thorns, but wears ‘his own clothes,’ the same dark grey robe we saw in the Garden of Gethsemane (Lent 10). I’m sure this was originally a different colour. It could have been blue – some blue pigments tend to darken – but I’m afraid I can’t confirm that, as I don’t have access to either the catalogue entry, or the technical report. Another day, perhaps, when libraries are open again.

Jesus is being hustled out, the guard to our left of him having grabbed hold of his robes with his right hand (although precisely why is not clear just now), and holds a rope with his left. The guard to our right snarls as he grabs Jesus’s sleeve and points the way. In another context I might admire his natty hot pants, but here they seem wholly inappropriate, looking for all the world as if he has simply forgotten to put on his trousers. We have seen this before. It is not becoming, and like the exaggerated features of the other guards, with their pronounced underbites, large noses and ears, his unsuitable apparel adds to the sense that these are not good people – however richly, and elaborately, some of them are dressed. Look at the two at the top right of the detail. They hold weapons we have seen before: the one on the left holds the bident that crept in yesterday (although I didn’t comment on it), and the one on the right has the halberd seen in Lent 6. They are guards, and yet they wear the most richly adorned clothes – it is all very incongruous.   

In the top left corner we can just see Pilate’s pink robe. Given that we now know what has happened, it does seem likely that the man we saw next to him yesterday – he had a red hat, and a yellow/gold collar, and nodded in a deferential way towards the prefect – was indeed one of the chief priests, checking to see the progress of their vendetta. Today we can just see his hands, resting complacently on the parapet.

Somehow, through all of this, Jesus remains calm, patient, meek even, his hands tied, his head bowed. The Crown of Thorns, evenly wound, sits tight upon his head, digging into his skin so that blood drips down his nose, over an eyebrow and across a temple – and down to his neck. His eyes are lowered, his lips parted as if he is sighing at the folly of mankind, but he does not struggle. And unlike the dramatic gestures, the exaggerated features, the almost animalistic expressions of the men who accompany him, his face remains still, and the features are regular – everything emanates his patience with, and love for mankind, which are the only things that will keep him going.

Lent 14

The lofty arches and deep, dark recesses of the arcade tell us that we have returned to the palace we have seen before – and indeed, the long, slim staff held by the man on the left of this detail creeps into the bottom of Lent 5. This is the very palace from which the black trumpeter heralds an important decree (Lent 6), and, as the staff must be a staff of office – in some way like a sceptre – this must be the ‘monarch’ for whom the musician was playing. His status is proclaimed by his dress – a broad, dark hat, wound around with a scarf, with a gold band and a plume like the tail of a comet. He wears a pink robe, and a gold-trimmed green collar, or cape, flecked with white. At this scale it is hard to tell what these details represent, but remember this outfit: we will see it again.

The ‘monarch’ is Pontius Pilate, not a ruler in his own right as it happens, but the Roman prefect – the governor of Judea at the time of Jesus’s death. His presence it attested in the historical record, but little is known about him (however, if you want to find out more, I came across a web page, which seems reliable, entitled Who was Pontius Pilate?) Given that he is standing more-or-less alone looking out from his palace, we could assume that Jesus has already been condemned, but it might be safer to withhold judgement until we see what happens next. However, the fact that we are with Pilate tells us that it is already Good Friday – the day on which Jesus was crucified.  After the arrest, which we haven’t witnessed, ‘they led Jesus away to the high priest: and with him were assembled all the chief priests and the elders and the scribes’ (Mark 14:53). This happened after the Last Supper, and after the Agony in the Garden (Lent 10) on the evening of Maundy Thursday – so it was already quite late. While he is with ‘the chief priests and the elders and the scribes‘, Jesus is accused of blasphemy, and Peter denies any knowledge of him. This has taken all night, and the cock has started to crow – indeed, by the time it crows the second time, Peter has denied Jesus thrice… This is what happens next, according to Mark 15:1 –

And straightway in the morning the chief priests held a consultation with the elders and scribes and the whole council, and bound Jesus, and carried him away, and delivered him to Pilate.

As yet, we do not know how far into the day we have come, so have no real way of knowing who the other people in today’s detail are – although the man in the red hat, and with a golden/yellow collar, could conceivably be one of the chief priests. Let us decide when we see what tomorrow has to offer.

Meanwhile, I would like to say ‘thank you’ to everyone who attended my series of talks, Going for Gold, which concluded last night – and to invite you all to the next series: Michelangelo Matters, which will take place on Mondays again – 22 & 29 March and 5 April. You can find the details, and relevant links, on the diary page. As a teaser, they will put the following three works in context.

Lent 13

Thirteen has always been considered an unlucky number – unless you’re a baker, of course, in which case a baker’s dozen is a good thing – and quite lucky: thirteen buns for the price of twelve. I’m certainly looking forward to my hot cross buns when this Lenten blog is all over, not that I’ll be eating thirteen of them. But that’s beside the point. Of course the reason why thirteen is seen as an unlucky number is that there were thirteen people sitting down to dinner at the Last Supper, and shortly after two of them died. Only one came back to life. I’ve had problems with groups in Italy: there are many restaurants that will not take a booking for a group of thirteen, so I got into the habit of booking for fourteen, and then apologising that someone had had to drop out by the time we got there. At the Last Supper, the thirteenth ‘unlucky’ person was, of course, Judas.

It’s just as well that we identified the figure waiting outside the Garden of Gethsemane and pointing to Jesus as Judas (Lent 11), given that he was wearing the red robe and blue cloak we would usually associate with Jesus. Here he is still wearing the red robe, which is open to reveal a white undershirt, which is open to reveal his stomach, which is open… It’s probably just as well that this isn’t the clearest part of the painting. That is probably because it appears to be an afterthought. Just as Judas himself repented, the artist has left us a pentimento… or so it appears. The hill is clearly visible through Judas’s skirts, and the sky through his torso – the brow of the hill cuts across at waist level. There are two things that give me pause. First, there are sketchy lines to the left, and under, his right foot, which could be underdrawing, which would imply that the figure was always meant to be there – although I suppose the ‘under’ drawing could have been painted ‘over’ the grass. Second, this is the perfect tree for despair: angular, pointed, thorn-like – the sort of tree you would expect Judas to seek out.

There is, of course, biblical precedent for what has happened. Having betrayed Jesus, Judas was seized with guilt, and tried to return the blood money (Matthew 27:3-5):

Then Judas which had betrayed him, when he saw that he was condemned, repented himself, and brought again the thirty pieces of silver to the chief priests and elders, Saying, I have sinned in that I have betrayed the innocent blood. And they said, What is that to us? see thou to that. And he cast down the pieces of silver in the temple, and departed, and went and hanged himself.

With the money they bought ‘the potter’s field’, which became known as ‘the field of blood’. It is mentioned again in the Acts of the Apostles, 1:18:

Now this man purchased a field with the reward of iniquity; and falling headlong, he burst asunder in the midst, and all his bowels gushed out.

This is problematic, as Matthew says that the priests bought the field. Although Acts isn’t explicit that ‘this man’ is Judas, he was the subject of the previous sentence, so who else could it be? It’s one of those biblical contradictions which, on the whole, gets ignored, but it does explain what has happened to him in this detail. Giotto shows Judas just like this, hanging among the damned in the Last Judgement in the Scrovegni Chapel, although I may have failed to mention that (despite the many blogs and many more words…). I would show you a detail, but you might be having your morning coffee. Seek it out in Day 38 – Enrico Scrovegni if you have the stomach for it. He’s the one hanging against the black background underneath the red rocks furthest to the left of hell, with ‘all his bowels gushed out’. Enough of this, though: tomorrow we must head back to the palace. But before then, I’m looking forward to talking about Crivelli’s fantastic Annunciation at 2pm and 6pm – maybe I’ll see some of you there!

Lent 12

So this is it, the ‘great multitude’ that Matthew describes, who came ‘from the chief priests and elders of the people,’ bearing ‘swords and staves.’ They look like an unlikely bunch of losers and reprobates to me.

It might be as well to see what the other gospels say about them. Mark says almost exactly the same as Matthew. They are two of the synoptic gospels, after all, meaning in this case that they tell more or less the same stories from more or less the same point of view, probably because they have a common source (it is usually believed that Matthew and Luke based their accounts on Mark). Here is Mark 14:43, with only one or two words different from Matthew:

And immediately, while he yet spake, cometh Judas, one of the twelve, and with him a great multitude with swords and staves, from the chief priests and the scribes and the elders.

We still have a great multitude… How about Luke 22:47?

And while he yet spake, behold a multitude, and he that was called Judas, one of the twelve, went before them, and drew near unto Jesus to kiss him.

Some extra information here – the mode of betrayal – but we still have a ‘multitude,’ even if it is not ‘great.’ So how about the remaining, non-synoptic, gospel? Here is John 18:3:

Judas then, having received a band of men and officers from the chief priests and Pharisees, cometh thither with lanterns and torches and weapons.

That’s what they are. They are a ‘band of men and officers’. Have a look and try and work out which is which.

Having said all that, it’s important to remember that all of the quotations I have given you are not the original version – they are from a translation, and a very specific one at that: the King James Version, published in 1611. It may not be the most accurate, and certainly not the most recent (!), but it is the one I prefer, and one of the foundation stones of the English language. Whatever the originals actually say, and however we would interpret that today, our artist has definitely painted ‘a band of men’ and not ‘a great multitude’. Although they don’t have ‘lanterns and torches’ in the plural, they do at least have one lantern, and they also have ‘weapons.’ Admittedly Matthew and Mark do both mention ‘swords and staves.’  I’m not sure I would care to distinguish between the ‘men’ and the ‘officers’ though, they all look equally disreputable. They remind me of one of the incompetent bands of local militia that Shakespeare writes into plays like Much Ado about Nothing, Measure for Measure and Love’s Labours Lost: even if they achieve results it is not through any ability or efficiency on their own part. However, there is a difference. For Shakespeare, these people are a comic sub-plot. Here, the mocking is to belittle the evil this rabble does. They can’t even dress themselves – two have no trousers (or 16th Century equivalent), which is a common way to undermine someone, ‘catching them with their trousers down,’ and at least one of them – probably more – has come out without any shoes. They seem hesitant, reluctant even. But ultimately, that won’t stop them from being violent. They all have weapons – swords, staves, spears and halberds – and several also have helmets. They could strike at a distance, and not run the risk of injury. And yet – there are only eight of them. Surely the apostles, if we got all twelve, or rather, the remaining eleven, would be able to take them on? But that’s not the point, really, is it? I mean, imagine if Jesus hadn’t been arrested. Suddenly everything would stop working. The story fails. There is no sacrifice, there is no salvation. Jesus had prayed, ‘O my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me: nevertheless not as I will, but as thou wilt,’ (Lent 10) and this is the result – so now he will go quietly.

Lent 11

So we come back a day later, and Peter, James and John are still asleep. We are now outside the Garden of Gethsemane, looking in through a gate. This gate – or equivalent – is a common feature of depictions of the Garden, as you will see if you have another look at the relief carving in Tilman Riemenschneider’s Holy Blood Altarpiece, which I linked to yesterday. It is depicted on the wing to the right of the Last Supper, and the gate can be seen – with people coming through it – in the top right. As it happens Jesus is kneeling at the foot of a very similar rock to the one we saw yesterday. Back in our painting, we can see that one of the horizontal bars of the gate casts a shadow on the grass on the other side. At least, I assume that’s what it is, although as the sky is so cloudy in this part of the painting a shadow would seem unlikely – so it could be a pentimento showing through.

A path winds through the garden, the regular footfalls having worn away the grass. The gate bars the entrance to the garden in a dip, or at the foot of a hill – the bush on the right means that we can’t quite see the lie of the land here. In front of it we see the shaft of the potentially-giant spear which we saw yesterday, but there is still not enough context to determine its true size.

Outside the gate someone stands and points towards Jesus, whose legs can just be seen at the top right of the detail, wearing the same grey/black robe we saw him in yesterday (of course it’s the same, this is the same bit of the painting). I’ll come back to that robe another day. The truly unnerving thing about this detail – for me at least – is that the person who is gesturing towards Jesus can only be Judas, and yet he is dressed in the blue robe and red cloak that we would associate with the man he is about to betray. If we didn’t know that Jesus is in the background, we would assume that this is him. I cannot explain why Judas is dressed like this, although I suspect it might be something to do with the structure of the workshop which produced the painting – more of that another day, too. That aside, I love the slight shock – the frisson, even – that seeing betrayer dressed as betrayed gives. It is almost sacrilegious.

Yesterday I ended with Jesus’s prediction, ‘behold, he is at hand that doth betray me‘. The verse which follows in Matthew’s Gospel (26:47) proves, of course, that he was right:

And while he yet spake, lo, Judas, one of the twelve, came, and with him a great multitude with swords and staves, from the chief priests and elders of the people.

Judas gestures towards Jesus with his right hand, but looks over his left shoulder. Maybe he is looking towards the ‘great multitude’. His left hand is not visible – it is cut off by the tree which frames the left-hand side of this detail. It’ll be interesting to see what this ‘great multitude’ looks like. If you don’t know where we are yet (and don’t worry, there really is no reason why you should) – and even if you do – it might be interesting to imagine how they will appear.

Lent 10

I said yesterday that today I would start to tell the story – so – are you sitting comfortably? Good. However, I have to come clean and say that this isn’t a Lent painting at all. By the time ‘the story’ starts Lent is over by several days, and we are well into Holy Week – it is an Easter story. We have witnessed the Entry into Jerusalem, the Expulsion of the Traders from the Temple, and even the Last Supper. Judas has departed, and Jesus has headed out into the Garden of Gethsemane, taking with him the ‘inner circle’ of apostles, Peter, James and John. He kneels, praying to his Father in Heaven.

Paintings of this episode (and for that matter, via the link above, sculptures) are called The Agony in the Garden, the word ‘agony’ coming from the Greek agōn, meaning ‘contest’ – originally it only referred to mental struggle, and only later came to mean physical suffering as well.  Such images occur frequently, partly because this part of the story it is mentioned in all four of the gospels, and partly because it shows Jesus at his most human and vulnerable. Here is the account from the Gospel of St Matthew (26:37-39):

And he took with him Peter and the two sons of Zebedee, and began to be sorrowful and very heavy. Then saith he unto them, My soul is exceeding sorrowful, even unto death: tarry ye here, and watch with me. And he went a little farther, and fell on his face, and prayed, saying, O my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me: nevertheless not as I will, but as thou wilt.

I’ve never seen a painting where Jesus is on his face – or, at least, if I have, I didn’t note the fact. The artists knew how people would pray in this sort of situation – when asking for a favour, or begging for mercy: on your knees. So that is what they painted. As for the ‘bitter cup’, as it is known, well, it is a metaphor, standing for the suffering that he knew he would have to undergo. Nevertheless, it is frequently visualised in art. You can see it standing, solitary, on top of the craggy rock under which Jesus is kneeling, just visible against the dark, lowering clouds. You might recognise these clouds from Lent 3 – and if you look back, the bitter cup is just visible in that detail at the bottom left. Maybe it was this very situation that made those clouds so ominous. This is how Matthew’s account continues (26:40-41):

And he cometh unto the disciples, and findeth them asleep, and saith unto Peter, What, could ye not watch with me one hour? Watch and pray, that ye enter not into temptation: the spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.

And indeed, all three are curled up asleep. If this were an Italian painting (which it isn’t – I should have said when we were looking at the exaggerated, expressive, almost caricatured expressions and physiognomies of the people we have seen so far – it’s typically ‘northern’) I would stand more of a chance of identifying which is which. Peter would be the oldest – short grey hair and beard, wearing yellow and blue (usually), and John the youngest, with no beard, leaving the third as James. However, it’s hard to tell here. I’ll go for Peter on the left, in blue, John at the bottom (his hair looks a bit lighter and shorter) and James on the right – slightly longer hair. But don’t quote me – James and John could easily be the other way round. Just to the right of them is the blade of a spear. There are two possibilities here: (1) it is a giant spear, the like of which you have never seen, held by a super-human soldier or (2) it is held by a normal-sized soldier in the foreground of the painting, and the detail of The Agony in the Garden is a long way into the background. I’ll leave you to make up your own minds, given what you know of (a) art and (b) the bible.

Jesus goes back to pray, using the same words, and when he returns to the disciples a second time they are asleep again. This is repeated a third time, at which point he thinks he will leave them be, before quickly changing his mind. After all, there is someone coming (Matthew 26:45-46):

Then cometh he to his disciples, and saith unto them, Sleep on now, and take your rest: behold, the hour is at hand, and the Son of man is betrayed into the hands of sinners.

Rise, let us be going: behold, he is at hand that doth betray me.

Lent 9

The National Gallery website says that the tool in this detail is ‘a pick’. It is not a pick. It is an auger, used by carpenters to make holes in wood, and as there is a plank of wood in the detail that would make perfect sense. The line at the bottom is the frame of the painting, so the plank, or beam, enters the painting at a diagonal. It is resting on the ground some way below the painting itself – and you can tell that because the shadow of the plank (or beam) enters the painting just to the right. The plank and shadow will meet where the plank is resting on the ground. So, for whatever reason, this plank is being lifted off the ground in between the legs of whoever is reaching for the tool. It doesn’t augur well. He might have a nasty accident.

The carpenter’s legs are clad in red – presumably fairly tight-fitting hose, which are not exactly the same as tights, although a bit more like stockings, as each leg is separate. They were worn by men, and thickened at the feet, often with an in-built leather sole. You can certainly see a seam passing across his achilles tendon and then under the ankle. But then it gets a bit confused – the foot is foreshortened, and reaches all the way to the toe, but overlaps with some green fabric. It is not clear now whether the toe was supposed to be under the green drapery, or treading on it, but, as far as I can see, the foot was painted after the fabric. This suggestion might be confirmed by the fact that pink is more likely to fade than green. What we are looking at is a form of pentimento – the word used when an artist changes his (or her) mind (as if they have ‘repented’ of what they did before) and the change becomes visible when the painting ages. You could argue that this might not be a pentimento, as it might not be a change of mind. It could easily be bad planning. Having designed the image, and then transferred the drawing to the painting surface, the artist then might have got carried away with the green fabric and it spread too far, so that there was nowhere for this man to plant his feet. We’d have to have a look at the underdrawing to get a better idea, but as that is under the painted surface we would need an infrared reflectogram… but let’s not get too technical about it.

The position and angle of the plank is clearly designed to lead our eye into the painting, and the shadow does the same. It also enhances the sense that we are part of the same reality as what is beyond the frame: the light appears to enter the painting from our space, and casts a shadow of the plank on the imaginary floor. I would suggest that, whatever this painting is, and wherever it was originally intended to go, there would have been a window behind us, above and to the left of our left shoulders. It is another thing about the painting (after Lent 4) which makes me think of the Ghent Altarpiece by Jan van Eyck: the fall of light, and the casting of shadows – from the frame itself, apparently – in the Annunciation on the outside of the wings. Here is a detail, simply because, as I’ve said before, I love the details from the Closer to Van Eyck website. Maybe I should do another Van Eyck lecture (I know, I’ve done a few…). This is the hem of Gabriel’s skirts, on the left panel of the four that make up the Annunciation, and the shadow of the frame is in the bottom right-hand corner. It is far more diffuse than the shadow of the plank, but then there are several windows in the chapel for which the Ghent Altarpiece was painted, so light is coming from several slightly different directions.

Another similarity with the van Eyck is the use of perspective, not systematic or rigidly geometrical, but a visual approximation, which nevertheless has the required effect. In both cases, like the plank it leads our eye into the painting, and gives us the sense of entering a real space. All of this helps us to believe that the story the artist is telling is real. So tomorrow, we shall start with the story. But I’ll leave you with a couple of bonus pictures: a pen and ink drawing of a man using an auger by Albrecht Dürer from the end of the 15th Century, and a detail of painting by Georges de la Tour of The Carpenter St Joseph, also using an auger, from 1642 (and yes, that is Jesus with the candle). Notice how the hands are placed to turn them. These are not picks.

  • Dürer, c. 1496. Musée Bonnat, Bayonne.
  • Georges de la Tour, 1642. Louvre, Paris.

Lent 8

As well as grief, whatever is going on in our painting can also inspire derision. This man – a soldier, judging by his helmet – sticks out his tongue and points, the finger almost serving as a continuation of his tongue. There is something almost obscene about it. It reminds me of the very opening of Romeo and Juliet, after the chorus, Act 1, Scene 1: ‘Do you bite your thumb at me, sir?’ – it was a sign of disrespect. No thumb-biting here, admittedly, but the proximity of mouth and digit is nevertheless not good. The focus of the disrespect is demonstrated by the pointing finger, and enhanced by the soldier’s gaze, by the angle of the sharp peak of his helmet, and by the diagonal made by the rope. The soldier’s unpleasant character is emphasized by the way in which he shows his teeth, although something strange is going on here: there appears to be something circular emphasizing how pointed his teeth are, which might be damage to the painting, a knot in the wood, or a nail. I would have to ask a conservator, though, to find out what it is.

This detail is a wonderful demonstration of the ways in which an artist can abbreviate to create the illusion of reality. The curves of the helmet, and the seams running around its brim and up past the ear, are implied by brilliant white highlights painted on a basic black, for example, whereas the rope is a brown line (or maybe two – one lighter, one darker) with diagonal dashes of beige to create the twist. The mail sleeve of the man holding the rope is a dark grey, with lighter grey dashes creating the ‘weave’ of the fabric, and white dots added to create the highlights at the top. It’s not standard chain mail, though, as these are not circular links, but I’m sure that’s what it’s meant to be. Our eyes see the signs, and our brains accept what is supposed to be there, even if that is not what it looks like on closer examination.

If you look carefully, you will see that the rope was actually painted before this bit of sleeve: the lighter grey dashes, and the cream ones on the ‘gold’ hem, go over the rope. There are various layers visible: it is quite common, as paintings get older, for the paints to go slightly transparent. All across this man’s face and arms there are scrawly lines: this is the underdrawing, resulting from the transfer of the basic design of the image from a preparatory drawing to the picture surface. You can see traces in the tendons of his wrist (in the top detail), and marking the position of his chin(s) and the shape – slightly shifted – of his pointing finger. It would have been ‘sketched’ out on the prepared panel as a guideline. Once the painting was complete, it would have been covered, only to be revealed, gradually, as the paint aged. There is a single line that crosses the bridge of the nose and cheek, crossing to the lower brim of his helmet. I suspect that this is the underdrawing which helped to plan the position of the rope. Yes, it has moved somewhat, but the general position and direction is more or less the same. Tomorrow we will see further evidence of the artist’s planning, and of the way he changed his mind.