dr richard stemp

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 16^th 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 15^th 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.

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.

Lent 7

Our painting is one that can inspire grief. The woman who is the focus of today’s detail is weeping, although I suspect she is trying to do so silently, and to herself. Her brow is furrowed, and tears fall from her eyes, which are sparkling with fresh tears, and a little red. Her mouth is only a slightly open – no loud wailing, no grand display of lamentation here. She lifts a hand to her face, maybe to wipe the tears away with her fingers, or with her scarf, or maybe to hide her eyes. Given the proximity of that rope, and the sheathed sword running alongside her head, she probably doesn’t want to step out of line. Next to her is a child – I think it’s a child – with the most extraordinary headgear.

Of course, it is a child, but one of the features of this artist’s style is that he (or maybe she?) couldn’t do children. Or rather, it might be more art historically accurate to say that the artist painted children like small, gnarled adults (exactly like some babies, if we’re honest). It’s not that they ‘couldn’t do children’, but that they chose ‘to do children’ like this: we’re not in a position to hypothesize why. And as for the headgear – well, fashion is clearly important today. I’m not an expert on historical clothing, but it’s a fair guess to say that no one has ever worn anything like that child has on its head. This is just a hint that, as far as the artist is concerned, we are ‘elsewhere’, even ‘far away’.

The woman’s outfit does not seem so unusual, being familiar from many costume dramas on stage and screen, not to mention the occasional painting, of course. She wears what is called a reticulated headdress – i.e. her hair is caught up in a net. Have said that, it is made to look as if her hair is caught up in a net – that’s not her hair though, the headdress it is padded to look as if it is. As you can see, her own hair is tied into plaits which emerge on either side – although the plaits could, of course, be extensions. Now yesterday we were talking about court musicians in the early 16^th Century, and the day before I said that I thought that parts of the palace dated to the same period. However, as far as I can tell, reticulated headdresses like this date to the end of the 14^th and beginning of the 15^th centuries. And that might not be a scarf, but an attachment to the hat – it does look to be more or less the same colour as the hat band. If it is, then it is a liripipe, an item of fashion that women adopted from the male chaperon at some time in the 1440s – still a long time before the 16th Century. The decorations – i.e. the tear-drop gold beads hanging from the gold band – are not a feature of European dress though. Basically, if this is an early 16^th Century painting, as other indications suggest, then with these two hats the artist is saying, ‘A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away…’ just like the opening of Star Wars. So maybe we should be looking for a young rebel from out in the sticks fighting against an evil empire…

Meanwhile, thank you to all those of you who came to Going for Gold 2 yesterday. Both talks were sold out (hoorah! thank you again!) and there are just a few tickets left for next Monday’s lectures. As well as those, I’ve just updated the diary page with other talks that are coming up over the next few weeks and months, in case you are interested.

Lent 6

Whatever is going on, it is clearly important – a trumpeter is heralding important news. Given the shadows on the slopes – and the blue remembered hills in the distance – he leans out from the very palace we saw yesterday. Stepping up onto a parapet with his left foot, he rests his left hand on his knee. His right arm stretches straight to support the long, single arc of his instrument, which, in a subtle, but charmingly artistic detail, echoes the curve of the track leading through the landscape beyond what must be the city wall. The musician looks over his right shoulder at something – or someone – just to our left, as his cheeks puff out to sound the trumpet. His dress is some way between exotic – with a striped scarf going round his left shoulder and tied under his right arm, and a bright yellow, full-sleeved tunic – and standard, however bright the broad-brimmed red hat.

Two weapons – a halberd and some form of spear – are held by people who must be in between us and the musician. Whatever the event, ceremonial or ‘actual’, it requires the presence of guards, but as the two weapons are different, and not held upright, I would think that this is not a formal occasion.

What most intrigues me about today’s detail is the fact that the artist has painted a black trumpeter. Given that there are so few people of colour represented in paintings in the National Gallery (so now you know where it is!) I am amazed that I only became aware of this man’s existence when I began looking at this work in preparation for this Lenten series. But then, that is the value of looking at anything without preconceptions. If you think you know what is there, as I thought I did, you only see what you expect. By taking the details out of context, as we are, you get more of a chance to see everything that is needed to make a painting work. As my PhD supervisor once advised me (it may have been the only advice I got), keep looking until you’ve seen everything, and can’t possibly see any more. And then look again.

As it happens, there were a number of black musicians in Western Europe in the 16^th Century, one of the most notable being John Blanke, a trumpeter in the courts of Henry VII and VIII. He is the only black Tudor for whom we have an identifiable image, and we know enough about him to know that he was well-paid, and well-respected. In 1512 he successfully petitioned Henry VIII for a promotion, and his wage was doubled. In the same year he got married, and the king gave him a wedding present: a new suit of clothes, including a hat and a violet velvet gown. There are two images of him that survive, dating from 1511, in the Westminster Tournament Roll, held by the College of Arms.

If you want to know more about him, you can find almost everything there is from the Historic Royal Palaces website, on a page entitled John Blanke: A black musician at the Tudor court. Or, for that matter, you could read the entry on the same website by independent art historian Michael Ohajuru, on The Black Presence at the Tudor court.

The English Court wasn’t the only one to have black musicians. I’ll leave you for today with a tapestry illustrating a wrestling match during the infamous Field of the Cloth of Gold, a meeting between Henry VIII and François I of France, which took place in 1520. I can’t for the life of me work out who owns this tapestry now – it was sold at Sotheby’s in 2014, and may have passed through Christie’s four years later. However, it is due to feature in an exhibition at Hampton Court between 1 April and 5 September this year to mark the 501^st anniversary of the event (yes, a year late because… well, you know). At the top left is another black trumpeter, with the fleur-de-lis on his banner, as if François I, watching the bout at the top right, was all-too conscious of the need to keep up with the Tudors. Maybe our musician is playing for yet another monarch…

Lent 5

It turns out we have a sizeable palace, built from stone, and decorated with architectural detailing and sculptures, all of which imply wealth and status. The arcade at the bottom right of the building is lofty and spacious, and the tall, thin windows at the top left suggest that there is a grand interior hall. Whoever this palace belongs to, they clearly want to impress.

The architecture itself is giving off different messages. The broadly-curving, round-topped arches look more Romanesque than Renaissance, and are reminiscent of the type of architecture that Northern European artists (by which I mean German, Flemish or Netherlandish generally) would use to imply ‘pre-Christian’. The sort of buildings, in fact, that we saw in Jan van Gossaert’s Adoration of the Magi (c. 1510-15), if you were around before Christmas, and following my Advent series. Above what appears to be the doorway, at the bottom left, the rounded arch is topped by an ogee arch – i.e. an arch made of two mirror-image ogees, s-shaped, curved sections of masonry, consisting of a concave and a convex element. In this case, each ogee is a cyma reversa, as the convex element (of stonework) is above the concave, relative to the inside of the arch. At the top of the arch is a capstone, which here is topped with a stylised lily. This, when combined with the undulating leaf forms which top the ogee, is common in Venetian architecture in the 15^th Century, but does occur elsewhere as well. Meanwhile, down the side of the building there is a more regular structure, with large, rectangular windows, including one in the pointed gable. These upper stories project slightly from the lower levels, and this section of the building, to my eye, at least, has a more 16^th Century feel.

The sculptures also give off different messages. The larger of the two presents a standing male figure in a long robe, wearing a cowl, and some form of hat – although not the sort that makes him appear monastic. Next to him is a figure in a rather undignified posture. Rather than the elegant, upright stance of his neighbour, he is all angles, the posture suggesting the character of the person represented. It doesn’t help, to be honest, that as he bends down his buttocks are turned towards us, and surprisingly (under any circumstance, but especially as the sculpture is at such a distance), there is more than a hint of testicle. The character depicted is clearly not one to be respected by right-minded people. With right arm bent and left fully extended, he could easily be an archer, although any bow, had it existed, is missing – but that would happen easily with any stone sculpture open to the elements. He would appear to be shooting directly at the other sculpture, though quite what he is aiming at I shall leave you to decide.

His bow and arrow may have gone, but he still has a sword and buckler – a circular shield, common in the medieval period. The sword does not appear to be European. It is curved in a broad arc, the end being cut across in a straight line leading to a sharp point: it is a scimitar. Originating in the 9^th century in central Europe, scimitars were perhaps best known as the swords faced by the crusaders, wielded by ‘the Turk’, or members of the Ottoman Empire. It is another suggestion that this building is not Christian, however familiar most of the individual features might be. But to find out who it belongs to, we may have to wait several days, or even weeks…

Lent 4

Well, it’s not all bad! After yesterday’s lowering clouds, the bright blue sky couldn’t be more welcome. The sun is shining, casting shadows on the pale green grass – although I’m not entirely convinced they are being cast in the right direction, given that, judging by the light on the different facets of the buildings, the light should be coming from the left. Having said that, on closer inspection, the lines of shadow are modelling the undulation of the hillside. The leaves of the tree are pale green – so it could be spring, or early summer. But beware, flowers can appear at any time in a painting, and so can leaves. As we are potentially dealing with the illustration of a text in which several people come back from the dead, new life would be valued in all its forms, and could be symbolic rather than naturalistic. And while we’re looking at it, you can see from the horizontal fluctuations in intensity running through the branches and leaves, that the tree was painted on top of the broader brushstrokes of the sky.

We’re not in the countryside, as the three previous details might have suggested. There are some elements, at least, of the built environment, solidly painted, and showing clear signs of perspective, although whether this is a rigidly determined single vanishing point perspective, or something approximated by eye, would probably be impossible to determine from the fragmentary evidence here. Nevertheless, this is some form of linear perspective, describing the way in which objects get smaller the further away they get, and parallel lines, leading away from the picture plane, converge. Even if the artist did use single vanishing point perspectives, a single system wouldn’t apply to the two buildings which are just visible, because they are not lined up. The front face of the one on the right doesn’t appear to be parallel to the picture plane, although the one on the left, from the sliver we can see, does. So the orthogonals of the two buildings – the lines leading into the distance, which, in a ‘classic’ perspectival scheme, would be at right-angles to the picture plane – would recede to different points.

In addition to linear perspective, the painter also knows about aerial, or atmospheric perspective: the effect that the air, or atmosphere, has on the way we see things in the distance. They look paler, and slightly less distinct, as if the air itself, or any dust or mist in the air, were getting in the way. As well as being paler, and less distinct, the distant hills also look blue, almost as if the very sky has got in the way. It helps that, for most people, the colour blue tends to recede visually, so blue can, in itself, look more distant. Atmospheric perspective was known to the Romans, but none of the relevant murals had been discovered in time for the artists of the Early Renaissance to learn from them: they saw it themselves, looking at the world around them. Its first use is usually credited to Masaccio, painting in the Brancacci Chapel in the 1420s. However, in his relief of St George and the Dragon, carved almost a decade earlier, Donatello clearly shows his understanding of the phenomenon in the wispy depiction of the trees that appear as if sketched onto the marble in the background. And then, of course, van Eyck would employ it to magnificent effect, and with far greater refinement than Masaccio, in The Adoration of the Sacred Lamb from The Ghent Altarpiece, completed in 1432. I’m going to include a detail of it from one of my favourite websites, Closer to Van Eyck, simply because I can. Our painting can only have been completed after this.