Day 91 – Another Flight

Workshop of Goossen van der Weyden, The Flight into Egypt, about 1516, National Gallery, London.

I am so sorry about yesterday. I was expecting it to happen at some point, but I didn’t know when. Basically other things just got in the way, and I was in no position to write – especially as I was doing the Cummings Commute, from work in London to lockdown in Durham. I’m sure this will happen again, but I’m going to carry on (as if yesterday didn’t happen), until I get to Picture Of The Day 100. After that, I will keep going as and when I can. I will probably write a few times a week, but we’ll see! Meanwhile, let’s get back to the art, and a third Flight into Egypt, following on from Picture Of The Day 85 and 87. During the former I said that the source for these images was biblical – Matthew 2:13-14 – but that there could also be additional outside sources. This painting from the National Gallery is a good example, as it includes two stories that were not in Juan de Pareja’s version – although there is no guardian angel, included by both Pareja and Giotto.

Workshop of Goossen van der Weyden, The Flight into Egypt, about 1516 Oil on oak, 80.2 × 69.7 cm https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/NG1084

The focus of the painting is the Virgin Mary, feeding the Christ Child and sitting on a gloriously hirsute donkey. They are passing in front of a dark wood, travelling along a path which leads along a shallow diagonal to the bottom left-hand corner of the painting. Mary’s dark blue clothes stand out clearly from the grey of the donkey, and, together with the dark green of the trees, the blue helps to focus our attention on her face, which is pale and flawless, and on her breast. Mary has already played her part in our salvation by bearing Jesus, but continues to do so by nourishing him. His tiny head – the same size as the breast – and the white cloth in which he is wrapped (perhaps a precursor of the shroud) makes his image shine out from the darkness.

The donkey is placid and dutiful, it needs no leading. Although Joseph is a few steps ahead, and holds a rope tied around the donkey’s head as a halter, there is no tension – he is guiding, but not compelling. He holds the rope in his left hand, which is held behind his back – this means that we can see his hand, and can tell that he is in control. The loop of the rope also echoes the folds of his red robe, and the shape of the gourd, which has been hollowed out as a water flask – one of his most common attributes, or symbols. Others include a flowering rod, or staff, a reference to the story of the betrothal of the Virgin, but that is not included here (for the story, see POTD 31). In this painting he is a walking stick, another of his attributes, as is the bag slung over it. They have come to a sharp bend in the path, and Joseph is already round the corner. In between his feet and the donkey’s is a small water trough, with water flowing out to form a stream crossing the path. This is undoubtedly a reference to Jesus as the water of life, and to the idea of Baptism – the washing away of sin. The turn in the path is a clever compositional device – not only does it make the painting more interesting to look at, it also enhances the sense of movement and directs our attention to the two scenes which play out in the background. 

Soldiers emerge from one of the gates of the city – Jerusalem – heading towards a small village – Bethlehem. One group is crossing the bridge which leads out of the city, while another has already made some headway. The latter group, closest to Joseph’s nose (on the picture surface, at least), has a leader on a white horse, others hold spears, and a few have flaming torches. At the point where the buildings emerge from behind the trees, flames are visible: they have set fire to the village.  On the green a woman stands with her arms in the air, a soldier attacks another woman to the left, while on the right a third woman runs away from another soldier. This is the massacre of the Innocents: Herod’s soldiers have come to find Jesus and to kill him, and so as not to be outwitted, they kill all the children under the age of 2 (Matthew 2:16). Pareja included this story in the background of his painting, although it was far too small to be seen with any clarity, whereas Giotto dedicated an entire painting to it. 

Closer to us is a ripe field of grain, unusual for January, you might think, particularly as we would appear to be in Northern Europe rather than the Holy Land. The crops are being harvested by a man with a scythe, who is addressed in a somewhat operatic fashion by a soldier, fully clad in 16th Century armour, who gestures towards the right of the picture. This story, which grew up during the middle ages, and is included in the background of more than one National Gallery painting, is written down in a text called La Vie de Nostre Benoit Sauveur Ihesuscrist – ‘The Life of Our Blessed Saviour Jesus Christ’ – which was written some time around 1400. One of the episodes it relates tells how, when the Holy Family were fleeing Bethlehem, they passed a man sowing his crops. Jesus (who was, remember, less than a month old) took a handful of the seeds and scattered them, whereupon they grew to head height. When one of Herod’s soldiers asked the farmer if he had seen a family passing by, he replied, ‘yes, when I was sowing seed’ – but as the crop was already fully grown, and ripe, the soldier calculated that it must have been some long time before, so it couldn’t have been the Holy Family. 

On the far right of the painting, in a dead tree, is a monkey (in the dark at he top right of this detail). There are several references here! One is the old idea that ‘art is the ape of nature’ – although in this context the monkey is unlikely to be a comment about the nature of picture making. It is more likely to represent man at his most animalistic, his most uncivilised: a monkey is like a man but without the manners, and so could be a symbol of the sinners that Jesus has come to save, washing them clean with the water of life. And the dead tree? Quite possibly a reference to Ezekiel 17:24: 

And all the trees of the field shall know that I the Lord… have made the dry tree to flourish…

This can be interpreted in more than one way – either as a symbol of Mary’s virginity (Mary is the ‘dry tree’ which ‘flourishes’ with Christ’s birth), or as a prophesy of the Crucifixion (the Cross is sometimes described as a tree, and Jesus as the fruit of the tree) – or, for that matter, both. Both is almost always possible when interpreting symbols! However, the main reason why I chose to talk about this painting this week, given that we have already seen two flights into Egypt, is the detail to the left of the dead tree.

A column rises from a hollow cubic base, and at the top stand two legs and a pair of buttocks. Tumbling down is a torso with an arm, and on the ground are a head, a hand, and a commander’s baton, a symbol of worldly authority. This illustrates another anecdote from La Vie de Nostre Benoit Sauveur Ihesuscrist, which tells us that, as Jesus entered into Egypt, the pagan idols all crumbled, and fell to the ground: the triumph of Christianity is acknowledged by the end of pagan statuary. At some point in history a statue was erected to someone who, given his staff of office, was some sort of figure of authority, but to God this was an idol, it represented someone unworthy of respect, and he has toppled it. Statues have always been toppled. It is part of the history of mankind.

Day 90 – Sofonisba, too

Sofonisba Anguissola, Self Portrait, 1556, Łańcut Castle, Poland.

I promised you more about Sofonisba Anguissola, and so today I bring you several of her paintings – I am only focussing on this particular self portrait because it makes the perfect companion to both the double portrait of Bernardino Campi painting her, which she painted (Picture Of The Day 77), and the self portrait by Caterina van Hemessen (POTD 28). The latter was the first self portrait that is known of an artist at their easel, and, as far as I know, this is the second.

I am fairly sure that Hemessen’s self portrait shows her painting her own self portrait, whereas Anguissola is painting a Madonna and Child. Apart from that difference, and the position of the palettes, the works are rather similar. We see the artist seated on the right side of the image, looking towards us, paintbrush in their right hand, and mahl stick in their left.  Sofonisba holds hers with a refined elegance, resting it on the unpainted edge of her canvas, and using it to support her right wrist, poised to continue painting the Christ child’s left arm – which, to my mind, looks finished anyway. We again have to ask, as we did with her before, who is she looking at and why? She can’t be looking at Mary and Jesus, for obvious reasons, and it is unlikely she would be looking at a model (this painting is more likely to have been based on drawings). It seems likely that she is just looking to us, so that we can acknowledge her skill. Her choice of a religious image is interesting, as all of her surviving works are portraits. But here she is showing us that she is available to fulfil religious commissions as well, painting in a subdued, mannerist style. The long right arm of Jesus, curving round his right flank, and the strong twist of his head is reminiscent of paintings by Bronzino, who was at the height of his powers when Sofonisba was painting this self portrait. Setting the holy characters in front of the base of a classical column also shows that she was au fait with the work of her contemporaries. 

Unlike the other female artists we have seen, Sofonisba was not the daughter of a painter. Her father, Amilcare, was a nobleman from Cremona, although not an especially wealthy one. He seems to have been strongly influenced by Baldassare Castiglione’s Book of the Courtier, which, as well as discussing the character of the ideal courtier (male), implies that women should also receive an all-round education. Amilcare made sure that this is precisely what his six daughters got. 

Sofonisba was the eldest of seven children, and in 1546, when she was 14, both she and Elena, the second daughter, were effectively apprenticed to Bernardino Campi (who we saw in the double portrait, POTD 77), living with him for three years, and only leaving because he moved to Milan. Elena gave up painting when she became a nun, but Sofonisba continued to study with Bernardino Gatti, a student of Correggio, and became sufficiently adept that she ended up teaching three more of her sisters – Lucia, Europa and Anna Maria. Lucia died around the age of 30, but some of her paintings survive, while the other two gave up on marrying.

In 1554 Sofonisba headed down to Rome, where the story goes that she was introduced to Michelangelo. She is supposed to have shown the elderly master a drawing of a girl laughing, which he admired, but then challenged her to draw someone crying, which is supposedly more difficult.

Sofonisba Anguissola, Asdrubale bitten by a Crayfish, c. 1554, Capodimonte, Naples.

The drawing shows her one brother, Asdrubale, being bitten by a crayfish. Michelangelo apparently recognised her talent, and offered her more advice, even informal tuition. However, I really need to look into this incident – Michelangelo was a notorious old grump, and the idea that he would be interested in the work of a young woman seems inherently unlikely. However, if it turns out to be true, then how much more remarkable a man he was! Whatever the origins of this fragile drawing, though, it is significant that it shows members of Sofonisba’s own family. Her most famous works show that however good her education, and whatever her talent, as a woman she was, as often as not, restricted to the domestic sphere. In her self portrait of 1556 she may have shown herself painting a Madonna and Child, and a rather fine painting it would be if she actually executed it, but most of her paintings are portraits, and a substantial number are of her own family, or herself.

Sofonisba Anguissola, The Game of Chess, 1555, National Museum, Poznan.

Here are three of her sisters, for example, in a charming group portrait which is signed and dated 1555 – an inscription runs around the edge of the chess board:

Sofonisba Anguissola virgin daughter of Amilcare painted these three sisters and a maid from life 

Clearly the education was paying off! I still can’t get my head around chess (but then, it might help if I actually wanted to…) From from left to right we see Lucia, Europa and Minerva, the 3rd, 5th and 4th daughters respectively. Minerva appears again, and very well dressed, in another family portrait, painted about 3 years later.

Sofonisba Anguissola, Portrait of the Artist’s Family, 1558-9, The Nivaagaard Collection, Copenhagen.

This is the only surviving portrait of Sofonisba’s father Amilcare. As befits the head of the family he is seated between his son and daughter. He looks out towards us, acknowledging Asdrubale with a protective gesture, his left hand on his back.  Asdrubale himself is standing by his father’s side and ready to take over the responsibilities of the family – however young he might be. He looks up to Dad (in more ways than one, I suspect) holding his father’s right hand, which rest on his lap, with his own, thus communicating the continuation of the dynasty. He is a little gentleman, and as such has the right to bear arms – the hilt of his sword projects from under his left wrist. 

Despite the family setting, Sofonisba’s reputation grew, and grew quite remarkably. In 1559 she was invited to Madrid by Philip II, to act as an attendant to the Infanta, and lady-in-waiting to Philip’s third wife, Elizabeth de Valois, whom she also taught to paint. She adapted her style to the more formal requirements of the Court, although tragically much of the work she carried out in Spain was destroyed by the devastating fire of 1734 which led to the complete rebuilding of the Alcázar – now the Palacio Real. In 1579 Sofonisba returned to Italy, and would have settled back in Cremona had she not met the captain of the ship – a Genoese nobleman – and married him (as it happens she was already widowed, Philip II having provided the dowry for her first marriage to a Sicilian nobleman). In 1624 she was visited by the young Anthony van Dyck, who found her mind to be very sharp – she was 92 at the time. He sketched her in his notebook, and wrote down her advice. He had arrived just in time, as she died the following year.

Sofonisba Anguissola, Self Portrait, 1610, Gottfried Keller-Stiftung, Winterthur, Switzerland.

Fourteen years before van Dyck’s visit, at the age of 78, she painted this remarkable self portrait. She was clearly one of those artists whose work just kept getting better. Vasari, whose second edition of ‘The Lives’ was published while she was in Spain, was clearly impressed:

Sofonisba worked with deeper study and greater grace than any woman of our times at problems of design, for not only has she learned to draw, paint, and copy from nature, and reproduce most skillfully works by other artists, but she has on her own painted some most rare and beautiful paintings.

Day 89 – The Baptism

Juan de Pareja, The Baptism of Christ, 1660s, The Prado, Madrid.

Yesterday we saw Velázquez’ beautiful portrait of Juan de Pareja, and last Thursday, Pareja’s own Flight into Egypt (Picture Of The Day 85 & 88). Today, I want to look at his Baptism of Christ. As only ten of Pareja’s works have so far been identified, talking about two of them might seem excessive, but, as I said, I want to look at it… I find him fascinating. I’m also beginning to think, with admittedly no time or resources for much research, that his three decades working as an assistant came to fruition in the last decade of his life, when he was finally free to paint for himself, and his style must have developed very quickly. The Flight into Egypt was lovely, I thought, entirely charming, but there was something awkward, maybe even a little staid about it. In the Baptism of Christ he really lets rip, and whereas the earlier work (it is dated 1658) is more like a Venetian painting from the first half of the 16th Century (apart from the Spanish fashion, that is), this is a truly Spanish 17th Century painting. 

We are fully into the baroque, with movement, drama, contrasts of light and shade, strong diagonals both across the picture surface and into depth, and just a few more details than you really need. It’s glorious! The main element of the narrative is treated as the Epiphany it really was, with a flash of light singing out from the darkness on either side. Back in the day the Feast of the Baptism of Christ was celebrated on the same day as the Feast of the Epiphany (6 January), until the church separated them to allow for more celebrations. In one, the Wise Men recognise the boy born to be King, and kneel down before him, and in the other we have the acknowledgement that Jesus is the Son of God. The Central axis, shifted onto a diagonal, shows all three members of the Holy Trinity, God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, in white. While the Father is in white from head to foot, with a long white beard, the Holy Spirit, as a dove, sports pure white feathers. Although Jesus only wears a white loin cloth, his skin is pale – reflecting his high status. He is certainly far paler than the very swarthy John the Baptist, who has, after all, spent some time in the wilderness by now. The areas of the painting on either side are far darker, but there is a transition into the shadows, with the angel in white on the left, and a lamb, whose head is white, with the body getting gradually darker, to the right.

The Baptism of Christ is described, with variations, in the three synoptic gospels, Matthew, Mark and Luke, but I’m just going to quote from Matthew to make things simpler. This is Matthew 3:1-4, in which John is seen as fulfilling the prophecy of Isaiah (the King James Version calles him Esaias), as the ‘voice crying in the wilderness’: 

In those days came John the Baptist, preaching in the wilderness of Judaea, And saying, Repent ye: for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. For this is he that was spoken of by the prophet Esaias, saying, The voice of one crying in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make his paths straight. And the same John had his raiment of camel’s hair, and a leathern girdle about his loins; and his meat was locusts and wild honey.

The scene of John ‘preaching in the wilderness of Judaea’ is depicted in the top left-hand corner of the painting, way into the background. Many people have gathered, and some have even climbed up into the trees to get a better view. John stands with his back to one of the trees, our attention drawn towards him by the light that shines on him from our left. He is near to the patch of blue sky, and one of the two men with bright white turbans points towards him. He is shown wearing the ‘raiment of camel’s hair’ which was his habitual garb. Many artists were not entirely sure what ‘camel’s hair’ would look like, but he is usually dressed roughly in some form of animal skin, with more of his arms and legs showing than would be appropriate for civilised society – and certainly for the churches in which the paintings were displayed. However, just in case ‘camel’s hair’ looked too low-status he is often given a royal-red cloak, as he is in the main image here. I have deliberately stretched this detail further out to the right than necessary, because I love the way that one of the angel’s wings runs parallel to one of the trees – the composition of the painting runs across both diagonals, as we shall see.

Matthew 3:5-6 continues the story:

Then went out to him Jerusalem, and all Judaea, and all the region round about Jordan, And were baptized of him in Jordan, confessing their sins.

Pareja includes this too, in the bottom right-hand corner. One person kneels as he is baptised, while others, scantly clad, await their turn sitting on the rock just below, or standing to the right. There are also some women, lining up with children, next to a waterfall coming down the adjacent hill. In this detail you can see the reed cross that the Baptist often carries – it is often made out of bamboo – and here there is a scroll wrapped round it saying ‘Ecce Agnus Dei’ – ‘Behold the Lamb of God’. This is actually a quotation from the Gospel of St John 1:29:

The next day John seeth Jesus coming unto him, and saith, Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world.

In the main image Pareja has combined this with the Baptism itself, just to drive the point home. Jesus is there, and there is a lamb off to the right, and there is the scroll saying ‘Behold the Lamb of God’ – we are not left in any doubt as to what is going on. Why a lamb? Well, I’m sure I mentioned this around Easter (POTD 21 & 22), but Easter falls at the same time as Passover, and it was the Passover meal – during which a sacrificial lamb is eaten – which was being celebrated at the Last Supper. From a Christian viewpoint, Jesus becomes the sacrificial Passover lamb.

All three of the synoptic gospels then have some version of the following – although I am going to quote from Matthew again, in this case 3:16-17:

And Jesus, when he was baptized, went up straightway out of the water: and, lo, the heavens were opened unto him, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove, and lighting upon him: And lo a voice from heaven, saying, This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.

There are many things about the Baptism of Christ that make it important. It is one of the sacraments in which Jesus himself participated, which is why it is one of the two sacraments followed by both Protestant and Roman Catholic churches alike (the Catholics have five more). But also, embodied within one or two verses is the doctrine of the Holy Trinity – the ‘Spirit of God’ is mentioned, as is a voice saying ‘This is my beloved Son’, which implies that the words are spoken by the Father. Not only that, but it says, quite specifically, ‘the Spirit… descending like a dove’, which explains why, in 99% of images of the Holy Spirit, it is shown as a dove. 

There is no mention of any accompanying angels in any of the biblical narratives of the Baptism, and yet they had become part of the iconography of its representation. This was how you showed it. Necessary to paintings of the Baptism were Jesus, John the Baptist and the River Jordan, although the Holy Spirit is almost always there, and God the Father is implied, even if he is not visible. But some members of the angelic host are usually present as well, and very often they assist by holding Jesus’s clothes, his red robe and his blue cloak, as they do here. Pareja has added a third angel, who has no specific wardrobe-related role, but he may be alluding to the Holy Trinity by deliberately including three angels. If he was really clever (or if his patron was), he could have been alluding to the three angels who visited Abraham back in the Old Testament. Early Christian theologians interpreted Abraham’s three guests as representing the Holy Trinity, and the Orthodox Church, which had an interdiction against representing God directly, chose to show the New Testament Holy Trinity by reference to this story (I must show you the most famous example of that some time). As it is, Pareja had dressed them with great refinement. On the right, the angel holding Christ’s blue cloak has a paler blue collar on his off-white/pale primrose robe. This delicately coloured garment is cut down the leg, with a gold-embroidered hem, and reveals a delicate coral pink lining, which echoes both Jesus’s pink cloak held by a second angel, and the fluttering red sash the latter wears as a belt. Like the Guardian Angel in Pareja’s Flight into Egypt (POTD 85), the second angel has pseudo-Roman peep-toe boots. The third angel is behind a tree, so we can’t see his clothes too well, but he does have rather fine sandals. 

The angels complete a diagonal of sanctity, which starts with God the Father, passes through the Holy Spirit and Jesus, and broadens out to the right-hand angel. Along the other diagonal we have John the Baptist – he is preaching in the top left, baptising Jesus in the centre, and dealing with the multitudes at the bottom right. It is a masterful construction, remarkable for its ability to include a wealth of both narrative detail and theological significance. It also seems a remarkable leap from the relatively straightforward depiction of the Flight into Egypt we saw last week. It’s not entirely clear when it was painted: you can see Pareja’s signature on the rock at the bottom left of the detail with the angels, and a date which could read 1667, and yet the Prado is unspecific, saying just ’17th Century’. I’ve also seen 1661 suggested, which could be another reading of this inscription. As Pareja died in 1670 it must certainly have been before then – which is why I have suggested ‘1660s’. He was certainly an artist who knew what he was doing – if only there were more paintings by him – or that he had had more time to practice his craft freely.

Day 88 – Juan de Pareja

Diego Velázquez, Juan de Pareja, 1650, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

I used this portrait as an illustration last week when I talked about Juan de Pareja’s own painting of The Flight into Egypt (Picture Of The Day 85), but I wanted to look at in its own right, because it is rather wonderful – and also because it gives a good opportunity to talk about both artist and sitter.

It was painted in 1650 in Rome, when Velázquez was visiting Italy for the second time. He was there at the behest of King Philip IV of Spain, and he had been sent to acquire paintings and sculptures for the Alcázar in Madrid. He was accompanied by Juan de Pareja, who had been in his service since the early 1630s. They sailed from Málaga to Genoa, and then travelled through Milan to Venice. There he bought paintings by Titian, Tintoretto and Veronese – all of which seem to have influenced Pareja’s own work, although they were, in any case, already in plentiful supply back in Spain. From there they headed to the Este Court in Modena, and thence to Rome. While there he was commissioned to paint Giovanni Battista Pamphili, better known as Pope Innocent X. ‘In order to get his hand in’ (as Jennifer Montagu phrased it in an article in the Burlington Magazine of November 1983) he practiced by painting ‘a head’ of his assistant. This was the term used by Antonio Palomino, who wrote one of the first biographies of Velázquez, published in 1724. From our point of view this masterful painting is far more than just a head – it is a fully finished portrait – but that was the term they used. Indeed, Palomino went on to say that it was included in an exhibition held in the portico of the Pantheon on 19 March 1650, and that, “it was generally applauded by all the painters from different countries, who said that the other pictures in the show were art but this one alone was ‘truth’.” 

The comment speaks for itself in many ways, although it does include much ‘art’. It is a herald of Velázquez’ late style, which contemporary Spaniards called the maniera abreviada , the ‘abbreviated style’. When you look closely, there is the most remarkable freedom in the handling of the paint, however detailed it may appear from a distance.

All of the details are there, we know how every item of clothing fits, where and how it is attached – and yet it is nothing but a mass of paint. Velázquez’ style had been developing a greater freedom ever since his earliest days of minutely detailed precision (POTD 20), but added to that we might be seeing a way of making a virtue out of necessity. You don’t always get long with a Pope, and Velázquez needed to be sure that he would be able to paint him quickly, and from life, rather than relying on a pre-existing model (a very common practice for ‘state’ portraits) – hence the need to practice on Pareja. However, the challenges were very different, but even here he might have been rehearsing. 

  • Diego Velázquez, Pope Innocent X, 1650, Galleria Doria Pamphili, Rome.
  • Diego Velázquez, Juan de Pareja, 1650, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

Apparently the Pope had quite a high, reddish, complexion – but was also to be shown wearing his scarlet biretta and mozzetta – the hat and cape – while seated on a red throne against a red curtain.  Although completely different in appearance, Pareja was also portrayed with a limited palette, but this time of mid- to dark-browns. It is a far subtler portrait, as a result, and I think a far more beautiful one, however brilliant Innocent X may appear – although of course I’m more than happy for you to disagree!

The gentle highlights on the forehead, nose and cheeks give us a real sense of form, while a softness around the mouth and eyes – and especially the double catch-lights that make the eyes seem so moist – create a sense of inner sadness, which may be projection on my part. Pareja may have been very happy at this point. 

He was born in Antequera, not so far from Málaga, in 1606, just three years before the Moors were expelled. His mother, Zulema, was mixed race, and in part of African descent, while his father (after whom Juan was named) was a white Spaniard. Pareja came to Madrid in the early 1630s, probably entering Velázquez’ service soon after the latter returned from his first visit to Italy in January 1631.

In Velázquez’ service he must have learnt how to paint, although Palomino says that the master wouldn’t allow him to do so because of his status, adding that in the Classical world only free men were allowed access to such sophisticated practices. However, he goes on to say that Pareja did paint in secret, and arranged for one of his own paintings to be in the master’s studio one day when King Philip IV visited. The King was so impressed that his insisted he should be freed, and allowed to practice in his own right. Sadly, this charming story is manifestly not true. A document in the archives in Rome, dated 23 November 1650 – published by Jennifer Montague in the article cited above – is a notarial act granting Pareja his freedom, ‘In view of the good and faithful service the slave has given him and considering that nothing could be more pleasing to the slave than the gift of liberty’ – provided that he stayed in Velázquez’ service for a further four years. This was quite a common clause, apparently, as was the ‘ownership’ of slaves by artists (and, I assume, other members of Spanish society).  Francesco Pacheco, Murillo and Alonso Cano all had enslaved assistants, for example.

Pareja’s earliest dated painting is The Rest on the Flight to Egypt which we saw on Thursday (POTD 85), and that was not painted until 1658 – four years after his ‘freedom’. It could be that other, earlier paintings have been lost – only ten survive, as far as we know – or it could be that he really didn’t start painting on his own until he was free. But however much he might have relished his liberty, he did not go far, as I said last week. He continued to work as Velázquez’ assistant until the master died in 1660. He then became the assistant to Juan Bautista del Mazo, Velázquez’ son-in-law, and remained part of that household until his own death in 1670, even though Mazo himself had died three years earlier. I hope to look at another of his paintings tomorrow.

Day 87 – The Childhood of Christ

Giotto, The Childhood of Christ, c. 1305, Scrovegni Chapel, Padua.

So, as we continue to explore the Scrovegni Chapel we hit the middle tier of frescoes on the side walls. With the Last Judgement at the West End (Picture Of The Day 38), and the Annunciation and Visitation at the East, spanning the chancel arch (POTD 80), we start near the altar on the South Wall with the Nativity – the birth of Christ. If each tier on each wall represents a chapter, then this is the third chapter, after the story of Joachim and Anna, and the Birth and Betrothal of the Virgin.

We start Jesus’s story as he is handed into the scene by a midwife. If we remember that the altar is to the left of this painting, and that during Mass the bread becomes the body of Christ, it is almost as if she could have taken the child, newly ‘born’, from the altar. With the help of a reclining Mary, the midwife places the child into the manger. The word comes from the French manger, ‘to eat’, which takes us back to the Mass – with Christ’s body on the altar, to be eaten by all the communicants. A ‘manger’ is a food bowl, after all, which could be why the ox and ass look a little perturbed. Joseph sleeps. Well, he had had a long walk to Bethlehem, leading the donkey, and anyway, for Giotto, he definitely was an old codger (POTD 31 & 85). Meanwhile the angels somersault over the roof of the stable, eventually telling the shepherds the glad tidings of great joy.

Notice how one, large rock forms the background for the stable, while another, cut off on the right, defines the space of the shepherds (one of whom has had the elbow of his tunic patched…). The gap in between, where we see the blue sky, helps to suggest that they are really some way off, and allows space for an angel to fly down to speak to them.

Mary is lying down. It wasn’t until the early 15th Century that we see Mary kneeling in adoration of her newly born son, an image derived from the visions of St Bridget of Sweden. Up until that point the Nativity was painted, almost with out fail, with Mary and Jesus lying alongside one another. I’m not surprised, as I have always imagined childbirth to be extremely exhausting. I also wanted to point out a technical detail: Mary’s blue cloak is in a bad way. Artists loved to use ultramarine, extracted from lapis lazuli, because of the intensity of its blue – and patrons loved them to use it too, as it was enormously expensive – more so than gold, even – and it showed their wealth. That was fine when painting in egg tempera (or, for that matter, oil), but for true fresco the pigments were mixed with limewater before being painted onto the wet plaster. However, ultramarine reacts with limewater, so you cannot paint it in true fresco. Consequently, ultramarine could not be used until the plaster was dry, and painting a secco like this meant that the paint did not bond with the wall, and was likely to flake off. Giotto painted Mary’s cloak red in true fresco first, because, with the blue painted on top, it would give it a slightly more royal purple tinge. However, as the blue has worn away, the red has been revealed. And before we move on, look at the way that the ox is looking up at Mary!

The angels above the stable are also a delight: they are torn between worshipping God in Heaven (1st, 2nd and 4th from the left), worshipping the Christ Child (3rd), and getting on with announcing to the shepherds (5th) – the effect, as I suggested before, is that they appear to be having the best time, looping the loop above the stable in celebration of the birth of our saviour. The upward swoop of the two on the left matches the hill behind them, and, as I pointed out earlier, the fifth angel fits nicely into the gap between the hills. The blue of the sky has suffered the same fate as Mary’s cloak, painted a secco with ultramarine, and much of it has now gone.

In the next image it is almost as if the camera has panned to the left as the Wise Men arrive – the stable is more or less at the same angle, although it is now at the right of the image, and the bed, stable, ox and ass have been removed, and replaced by a stepped throne on which Mary sits, Jesus, still swaddled, on her lap.

The Holy family are joined by two angels, one of whom bears the gift of gold.  The eldest Magus, who brought it, kisses Christ’s foot, having placed his crown at the foot of the throne, a sign of his humility. The three magi represent the three ages of man – old, middle aged and young, as shown by grey beard, brown beard and beardless – but not the three continents (I alluded to this briefly in POTD 70): they are all white. The black king does not appear until the early 15th Century – but more of that another day perhaps. The star is looking more than usually like a comet, as opposed to the camels, which look less than usually like camels… but then, I don’t suppose Giotto had ever seen one.

The third scene is the Presentation at the Temple, described in Luke 2: 21-38. Luke described many of the features that Giotto includes – the offering of two turtle doves, the High Priest Simeon, and the prophetess Anna. It had been predicted that Simeon would not die until he had seen the Messiah, and here he receives him, recognising him with the words, ‘Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, according to thy word: For mine eyes have seen thy salvation‘ (Luke 2:29-30) – the words of the Nunc Dimittis in the Anglican Evensong.

  • POTD 66
  • POTD 73
  • POTD 31

Notice also how Giotto uses the same ciborium in most of his representations of the temple – Joachim had been thrown out, Mary accepted in, and now we are back. The twisted, Solomonic columns (also known as barley-sugar columns) were associated with the temple of Jerusalem, and the Vatican is supposed to have some of the originals: Giotto would have been aware of this, having designed a mosaic for St Peter’s at the end of the 13th Century. This is a different part of the temple, I have assumed, from the inner altar where the bachelors waited to see who would be chosen to marry Mary, but the altar cloth is the same. When looking around the chapel, these echoes may not be immediately obvious, but inevitably they will add to the sense that the paintings are somehow familiar: memories of the images we have already seen must linger in the back of our mind somewhere.

There is no stopping the story – the Holy Family must leave, after Joseph’s dream warning him that Herod was coming for Jesus. Unlike Pareja’s version of The Flight into Egypt (POTD 85) Joseph leads the way on foot, although the Guardian Angel is here, flying above, watching over them and pointing the way. This time they are accompanied by two midwives (we only saw one briefly at the Nativity) and two servants (previously unseen).  

Mary sits side-saddle on the donkey, who is looking inordinately proud to be carrying her. I would even say it was smiling. The ultramarine blue of Mary’s cloak has almost completely worn off here. Rather than the red underpainting we saw in the Nativity, the colour left behind is a pale pink (the red is her robe, under the cloak). Originally, therefore, it would not have looked as rich as in the Nativity – a reminder that this is not as significant an event as the birth of the Son of God. See how – as so often – the landscape expresses the drama of the event, the rocks forming a background for Mary and Jesus, and enhancing the momentum towards the right of the painting. The Holy Family were fleeing, of course, to avoid Herod and his men, who, as we mentioned on Thursday, ‘slew all the children that were in Bethlehem, and in all the coasts thereof, from two years old and under’ (Matthew 2:16). 

The grief of the mothers is almost unbearable – all sense of decorum is lost as their hair becomes uncovered. They reach for their children, grabbed by the soldiers, killed, and piled in an undignified heap on the floor. One, in green at the top left, seems to imagine holding her baby once again with her now functionless hands. Tears streak their faces – Giotto used some unconventional technique here to make the flowing tears almost three dimensional, apparently – and their faces crumple in sorrow. On the right a soldier lifts his hand above his shoulder, but apart from some black marks it is hard to see why. Although the hilt of his sword looks gold, the blade would have been made of silver leaf, and sadly, as we shall see again, silver tarnishes. Not only has most of it come off, but what little remains is now completely black.

To end this chapter we must jump twelve years, to the point at which Joseph and Mary lose Jesus in Jerusalem, only to find him in debate with the Doctors in the the temple. Many weeks ago we saw how Pinturicchio set this discussion outside the building (POTD 40), but for Giotto they are securely seated inside, with Joseph and Mary arriving from the left. This is how the event is described in Luke 2:41-47: 

Now his parents went to Jerusalem every year at the feast of the passover. And when he was twelve years old, they went up to Jerusalem after the custom of the feast. And when they had fulfilled the days, as they returned, the child Jesus tarried behind in Jerusalem; and Joseph and his mother knew not of it. But they, supposing him to have been in the company, went a day’s journey; and they sought him among their kinsfolk and acquaintance. And when they found him not, they turned back again to Jerusalem, seeking him. And it came to pass, that after three days they found him in the temple, sitting in the midst of the doctors, both hearing them, and asking them questions. And all that heard him were astonished at his understanding and answers. And when they saw him, they were amazed: and his mother said unto him, Son, why hast thou thus dealt with us? behold, thy father and I have sought thee sorrowing. And he said unto them, How is it that ye sought me? wist ye not that I must be about my Father’s business?

What I find astonishing about Giotto’s depiction is that the building takes up almost the entire picture space – we see cut away walls and roof, leaving just a sliver of sky at the top, and the projecting walls of the side aisles on the outside – but basically the ‘fourth wall’ of the temple is as close as is possible to the frame of the picture itself. Jesus is ‘sitting in the midst of the doctors’ – right in the very centre – and his gesture implies that he is deeply involved in the discourse. 

In this chapter of the Scrovegni story, we started with the Baby Jesus being handed in to the scene of the Nativity – pictorially being ‘delivered’ – and we end with him finding his place in the centre of the image, firm and secure about his Father’s business. From here we will have to jump another 18 years or so, when he will begin his Mission in earnest. Directly opposite this painting, we will see Jesus in the centre of the image once more, but standing upright in the River Jordan at his Baptism. But that will be next week.

Day 86 – Ethiopia

Meta Vaux Warrick Fuller, Ethiopia, 1921, National Museum of African American History and Culture, Washington DC.

Today we make it into the 20th Century – so far I’ve deliberately avoided it, to be honest, for reasons of copyright, but that is the only reason… I’m assuming nothing will happen on this occasion, though. However, despite what I suggested a couple of days ago, I have decided not to confront the angst I thought I might try and deal with – the French press once labelled today’s artist ‘the delicate sculptor of horrors’ – because I wanted to end this mini-survey (to which I will return) with something more positive.

There are various versions of this piece, entitled either Ethiopia or Ethiopia Awakens – or other variations of these terms. You will also find it given a number of different dates, the result of an error in a book from 1940, which dated it to 1914, an error that has often been repeated. A publication from 1943 even said it was created in 1889, which is remarkably unlikely, as Meta Vaux Warrick would have been 12 years old! I am sticking to the date 1921: the work was commissioned for the America’s Making Exposition which took place that year in New York.

Meta Vaux Warrick was the daughter of prominent members of the African-American community in Philadelphia – they were friends with Henry Ossawa Tanner (Picture Of The Day 81), who was to be a great support when she got to Paris in 1899. Her father was a barber and caterer, her mother a wig-maker and beautician for wealthy white women. These included the woman after whom their daughter was named, Meta (pronounced the same as ‘metre’), the daughter of Senator Richard Vaux. By the time Warrick arrived in Paris she was a graduate of the Philadelphia Museum and School of Industrial Arts. Once in Europe, she continued her studies at the Académie Colarossi, well known as one of the first places to accept female students, and at the École des Beaux-Arts. She visited Rodin in his studio at Meudon, and he is supposed to have told her, ‘My child, you are a sculptor; you have the sense of form in your fingers’. To be honest, this is such a ‘typical’ thing for him to have said, I’m not entirely sure that it’s true, although he is known to have been very supportive. Some of her work at the time was very much in his style, as was the work of Camille Claudel, Rodin’s student – and lover: he had that sort of charisma that would knock people off their feet, it seems. Warrick was lucky enough to be exhibited by Siegfried Bing, whose gallery, the ‘House of New Art’, or Maison de L’Art Nouveau, which opened in 1895, gave the movement its name. This really put her name firmly on the Parisian map, and her work was also accepted for exhibition in the Salon of 1903, the year in which she returned to Philadelphia. Her last name – Fuller – comes from her marriage, in 1909, to one of the first black psychiatrists in the United States, Solomon Carter Fuller.

Things did not always go smoothly for her, though. Even on arrival in Paris she was denied access to the American Women’s Club, even though she had already booked a room, because she was black: it was Henry Ossawa Tanner who helped her find lodgings. Back in the States a fire in her studio in 1910 destroyed 16 years worth of work, a disaster which is just one of the reasons why her name is perhaps not as well known as it should be. As her work developed she introduced biblical themes. She was a regular church-goer, but stopped attending when she was faced with discrimination. Nevertheless – and despite its appearance – it was the bible that inspired today’s sculpture.

One of the first people she met in Paris, the author W.E.B. Du Bois, had always been one of her greatest advocates: it was he who came up with the idea for this particular work. The America’s Making Exposition was intended to celebrate the artistic and industrial creativity of the immigrant communities of the United States, and Du Bois was an executive committee member of the section entitled ‘Americans of Negro Lineage’ – Fuller’s sculpture was to feature prominently in the exhibition’s catalogue.

Although Du Bois had more or less described the sculpture he wanted, Fuller developed her own ideas, which are both subtly elegiac and profound. For both of them, however, it was the place that Ethiopia had in the African-American philosophy of the time, particularly in relationship to the church, which gave the sculpture its meaning. The inspiration came from the Book of Psalms, 68:31:

Princes shall come out of Egypt; Ethiopia shall soon stretch out her hands unto God.

This text was regularly cited within African-American churches as prophesying their eventual liberation. As Renée Ator explains in a superb article in American Art (Autumn 2003 – I was hoping to include a link, but sadly that’s not possible), ‘Ethiopia ultimately served two seemingly contradictory purposes. It filled a need for African Americans to formulate an authentic racial identity by looking to the grand achievements of Egyptian history while also supporting the romantic ideal of Christian Ethiopia as a symbol of black liberation’. Fuller herself explained in a letter to a friend,

Here was a group (Negro) who had once made history and now after a long sleep was awaking, gradually unwinding the bandage of its mummified past and looking out on life again, expectant but unafraid and with at least a graceful gesture. Why you may ask the Egyptian motif? The answer, the most brilliant period, perhaps of Egyptian history was the period of the Negro kings.

For African American theorists, the dominance of the Egyptian kingdoms was important, and served as a historical precedent for their own cultural aspirations. Supporters of slavery looked to Egypt as part of a continuum of culture that led through Greece and Rome to modern Europe and thence to the United States, and saw the Egyptian use of slaves as the inevitable domination of one race by another, and therefore, inevitably, a precursor to their own denial of the first sentence of the Declaration of Independence, ‘that all men are created equal’. For the African American community, if the Egyptians were seen as a noble race of Black Africans then the argument that had so incensed Edward Mitchell Bannister (POTD 84), that ‘the negro has an appreciation for art while being manifestly unable to produce it’, was manifestly untrue: like the Egyptians they had a culture of their own. We have already seen the importance of Egypt at the time in Edmonia Lewis’s The Death of Cleopatra (POTD 82), who, like Ethiopia, wears the nemes ­ – the headdress usually worn by Egyptian kings. 

The version of Ethiopia I have shown you so far is made of plaster, painted to look like bronze (Fuller often couldn’t afford to have her sculptures cast), but in a maquette preparatory for the finished work, she uses colour to pick out some of the details, which can make the piece easier to read.

Meta Vaux Warrick Fuller, Maquette for Ethiopia, Danforth Art Museum, Framlingham, MA.

I think it is far easier to see that the bands of the mummified form are starting to unravel, and that the figure holds one end of the bandage against her heart. The legs are still firmly bound, rigid, incapable of movement, but the torso has become more flexible. Both hands can move – the ‘graceful gesture’ of her left hand, and the act of self-liberation embodied by her right. The head also twists at the neck, no longer fixed, staring straightforward, but now able to look around and find a new place in the world. The sense of awakening was important. The Emancipation Proclamation ending slavery may have happened in 1863, but there was still not true freedom, and certainly no equality. Fuller had been a firm supporter of the Equal Suffrage Movement, hoping to get the vote for women, until she found out that black women were not included. However, culturally, things were changing, and, as Fuller hoped, a race which had lived out centuries in mummified subservience was taking hold of its own destiny. Ethiopia effectively serves as a fanfare announcing the birth of the Harlem Renaissance, an explosion of art, music and literature centred in the eponymous New York neighbourhood during the 1920s. Meta Vaux Warrick Fuller was one of the most significant women in this movement, and one of its most important sculptors – I should really talk about it another time. 

Day 85 – The Flight into Egypt

Juan de Pareja, The Flight into Egypt, 1658, The Ringling, Sarasota, FL.

Ah, look, you say – back in our comfort zone. A Spanish artist, a familiar subject. Yesterday I said Europe, I said 20thCentury, I said America – well, two out of three ain’t bad. It’s a European painting alright, in an American collection, but it was painted in the middle of the 17th Century. And just in case you thought I’d shifted away from what I said would be this week’s theme – think again! Juan de Pareja was born a slave, and was owned by Diego Velázquez.

The Flight into Egypt is a common subject in Western European painting, drawing its imagery both from the Bible and from popular retellings of the story. According to Matthew 2:13-14, after the Wise Men had departed, 

 ‘…behold, the angel of the Lord appeareth to Joseph in a dream, saying, Arise, and take the young child and his mother, and flee into Egypt, and be thou there until I bring thee word: for Herod will seek the young child to destroy him. When he arose, he took the young child and his mother by night, and departed into Egypt’

Joseph has several dreams in the gospels, which explains why he is regularly shown nodding off in medieval and renaissance paintings. It’s not just that he was considered to be old (Picture Of The Day 31), although I have already got to the age where I regularly nod off… And in this case, if you actually look at the painting, he isn’t old at all.

With reddish hair and beard, and an unlined face, I could easily imagine him to be in his 30s. This is a feature of Spanish 17th Century painting – and it is partly the result of the visions of St Theresa of Avila (POTD 63). According to Catholic belief, after their marriage Mary and Joseph continued to live a life of chastity – and therefore, both remained virgins. The medieval mindset couldn’t understand how Joseph could live with the most perfect woman ever, and not sleep with her (I’m not convinced that the outlook of some men has changed…). The only explanation they could come up with was that Joseph was, to put it bluntly, past it – and with the account in the Golden Legend that he too considered himself to be old, it’s hardly surprising that that is how he was depicted. In a number of medieval mystery plays he was even treated as a cuckold. Although he was married to a woman having someone else’s baby, that would, of course, have implied that Mary was having an affair with God – so it’s surprising that the church let the actors get away with it. St Bernardino of Siena, the 15th Century Franciscan preacher who first advocated the bonfires of the vanities, was appalled that Joseph should be considered a figure of fun – but it was really St Theresa who called a halt to it all… at least in Spain, where far from being an old codger, he starts to appear as a younger, and more virile man, a suitable step father, capable of working, and of caring for both Mother and Child. 

In between the calm and clearly delineated faces of Mary and Joseph is a distant crowd of soldiers: they have come to look for Jesus and kill him. In the end, as they could not be sure which of the children he was, the ‘slew all the children that were in Bethlehem, and in all the coasts thereof, from two years old and under’ (Matthew 2:16). Mary and Joseph have a curious glow over their heads, Pareja’s version of a halo, a holy emanation, whereas Jesus simply glows – it is not unlike the light you would find around the head of Tintoretto’s holy figures. Indeed, the Venetian influence in this painting is strong, probably the result of the number of Titians in the Spanish Royal Collection. 

Having said that, Joseph reminds of the Christ in Altobello Melone’s Road to Emmaus in the National Gallery – do look it up, but I suspect this is purely chance: both wear similar clothes. With his sturdy leggings, coat and hat, Joseph is dressed far more like a contemporary (17th C.) traveller than a 1st Century carpenter. Mary wears her timeless combination of red and blue, plus a rather jaunty 17th Century hat. And the angel – well, the angel is dressed how the Spanish liked to dress their angels, a pseudo-classical skirt and peep-toe boots, blue and red scarves, plenty of gold and a resplendent pair of wings. The angel is not part of the biblical narrative, but became a common presence in depictions of this story, derived from the messenger who appears to Joseph in his dream, promising to return. He becomes a guardian angel pointing the way, and leading them in safety to Egypt. Joseph effectively becomes the rear-guard – having led the donkey bearing Mary to Bethlehem, he is happy now to be the faithful follower. 

The classical temple on the hillside reminds us that these things came to pass during the reign of Caesar Augustus. And, like the Guardian Angel, the cherubs flying above the Holy Family watch over their progress. However, if I’m not mistaken (and sadly the reproductions I can find are very poor) two of them appear to be holding an apple. This is not something nutritious for the baby, but a reminder that Jesus has come to take original sin upon himself. The branches held by a couple of the cherubs could presage much the same: as palms of martyrdom they are, like the apple, a reminder that this tiny child has come to die. 

And yet, they do look like the amoretti Titian painted in the sky of The Rape of Europa – the subject of the very first POTD. But then again, as this was painted for Philip II, grandfather of the King alive in Pareja’s lifetime, that is not impossible. It is, however, surprising, that Pareja should be so strongly influenced by Venetian art given that he had been Velázquez’ assistant for nearly 30 years by the time he painted this. He became a free man in 1654, but even after this he continued to work for Velázquez until the master died – at which point he assisted Juan Bautista del Mazo, Velázquez’ son-in-law. I am entirely indebted to my sister, Jane Wickenden, for bringing him to my attention. I was aware of his name, and of the portrait that Velázquez painted of him, but not that he was, himself, an artist. I will tell you more about him another time, when I tell you about this truly glorious portrait.

Diego Velázquez, Juan de Pareja, 1650, The Met, New York.

I will look at more of his work in the future – although only ten of his paintings are known – and I will of course be talking about Diego Velázquez for Art History Abroad at 6pm (UK time) on Wednesday 24 June (yep, if you looked it up, I got the date wrong last time I mentioned it – sorry!).

Day 84 – Boston Street Scene

Edward Mitchell Bannister, Boston Street Scene (Boston Common), 1898-99, The Walters Art Museum, Baltimore, Maryland.

Another landscape today, very different in style to yesterday’s, but, in some very subtle way, connected by a common mindset. Edward Mitchell Bannister’s work contains even less reference to social status or racial issues than paintings by Robert S. Duncanson, but, like Duncanson, he creates a world in which liberty and calm seem to dominate, creating a sense of being at ease in a world where nature is essential benevolent.

Having said that, today’s Picture is not typical of his work, as it is a cityscape. Also, unlike most of his more ‘solidly’ painted works, inspired by stretches of barely populated countryside, it is in an avowedly Impressionist style. Like most national schools of Impressionism outside of France, the Americans were late to the party. Whereas the series of eight exhibitions held by the French stretched between 1874 and 1886, it wasn’t until then – 1886, and the end of ‘official’ Impressionism – that William Merritt Chase’s views of New York parks kick-started the American movement. Another of the great American Impressionists, Childe Hassam, had made his name in Boston between 1882-86 painting in a Realist style, before heading to France. It was there that he took on board the lessons of Impressionism, and took them home with him in 1889. By the time that Bannister was painting in 1899 American Impressionism was a fait accompli, but nevertheless, for him this was a new development in a long and successful career. He had been living in Providence, Rhode Island for nearly 30 years, and was visiting Boston when he painted this work. However, what might have been a new direction for his art stopped short: Bannister died two years later, and this was one of his last works.

As it happens, he was not American by birth. He was born in St Andrews, New Brunswick – in Canada – in 1828: he was just seven years younger than Robert Duncanson. His father was a native of Barbados, his mother’s heritage remains unknown. Orphaned at the age of 16, he was fostered by a white family, and destined for a life at sea, like most of the male population of St Andrews. However, he settled in Boston in 1848, and worked as a barber, supplementing his income by hand-colouring photographs – which was also Sorolla’s route into painting, as it happens. Although he had started painting and attending classes in the 1850s and 60s he became determined to become a successful artist through anger, having read an article in the New York Herald which stated, with the assurance typical of the ill-informed, that ‘the negro has an appreciation for art while being manifestly unable to produce it’. Less than ten years later he was awarded the bronze medal for painting (the first prize) at the Philadelphia Centennial – the very same exhibition at which Edmonia Lewis exhibited The Death of Cleopatra (POTD 82). I would show you the painting itself, but sadly Under the Oaks has not been seen since the beginning of the last century. Fantastic, you think, he won the bronze medal. But when the judges found out he was black they decided they had come to the wrong decision. Fortunately, Bannister’s white ‘competitors’ wouldn’t accept this, and the judges were forced to uphold their original choice. A substantial and successful career followed – in 1880 he was one of the seven founders of the Providence Art Club, which is still active today, for example. He was a prolific painter, and, despite his name being forgotten after his death, as those of so many artists of colour were, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, home to both The Death of Cleopatra (POTD 82) and Landscape with Rainbow (POTD 83) owns 122 of his works. 

Edward Mitchell Bannister, Driving Home the Cows, 1881, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington D.C.

The majority of Bannister’s output – including the 1881 painting Driving Home the Cows – is associated with Tonalism, a predominantly American movement inspired by one of the predecessors of Impressionism – the Barbizon School: think Corot, Millet and Daubigny. His direct source was probably one of the Boston-based Tonalists, William Morris Hunt, as, unlike other successful African-American artists in the 19th and early 20th Centuries, he never travelled to Europe.

I wanted to include this painting, though, because it is unlike anything else of his I have seen. The looser brushwork and lighter, pastel colours had gradually developed through the later 1880s and 1890s, but not quite to this extent. It is, as all good Impressionist paintings are (and there are one or two bad ones!), beautifully composed. The skill of such art is not just painting what you see when you see it, but choosing the right thing to look at in the first place, and the right way of looking at it. The authenticity of plein air painting in front of the motif (i.e. painting outside while looking at the subject – let’s cut to the chase!) has often been questioned. Were they really outside, for one thing? Many of the works were, of course, ‘improved’ back in the studio (but there’s nothing wrong with that). And were they really painting exactly what they saw? Well, no, of course not. They were artists! The main aim was to capture the ‘feel’ of being there. Well, one of the main aims, anyway. And in this case, the painting is dated ‘1898-99’, so even if he had been outside, he wouldn’t have been there all that time. Maybe he, just like Degas – and for that matter, Henry Ossawa Tanner – had recourse to photographs (The Banjo Lesson, POTD 81, was based on pictures that Tanner had taken). 

All that aside, we are probably heading along Tremont Street in Boston, with the Common to our right, and buildings – none of which survive, as far as I can tell – on our left. The street cuts in on a diagonal from the bottom left, with the line of the kerb starting in the corner, a favourite compositional device to lead the viewer’s eye into the painting. Here, it takes us to a stroller (yes, this is America) pushed by one of two ladies.

Bannister is using colour to unite the two, rather than painting what he saw, I suspect. The woman on the left, further back, has a brown top, the same colour as the skirt of the woman on the right. The latter’s top is pink – and uses the same colour as the dashes which describe the baby in the pushchair. There is a wonderful freedom in the handling of paint, wet-on-wet, almost scratchy in places, and a real ability to conjure up a sense of time and place. There is so little traffic – unlike late 19th Century Paris – with one horse and carriage coming towards us on the far left, and another heading away in the middle distance on the right – with a few more in the background.

The clear sky is built up from flecks of different blues, laid on top of brush strokes going in all directions. Surrounding the leaves, and what looks to me like blossom, it reminds me of some of van Gogh’s cherry trees. However, as the Dutch artist wasn’t exhibited in America until 1913, and, as I have said, Bannister did not travel to Europe, this is probably coincidental. There is such a delicate touch – the tall pink building is almost sketched in with the thinnest of horizontal and vertical lines building up its form – and across the painting, every window, windowsill and roof, however free, is still surprisingly secure. It is beautifully painted, I think, and I will certainly seek out more. Meanwhile, before tomorrow, we will have to leave the apparent calm of Boston at the end of the 19th Century, and head off to a more angst-laden 20th Century Europe. Although we may find that I’ve had to return immediately to America. 

Day 83 – Landscape with Rainbow

Robert S. Duncanson, Landscape with Rainbow, 1859, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C.

One of the problems with learning is that you keep finding out how much you don’t know. And this week I’m finding out the full extent of my ignorance. I should probably come clean: American art has never been one of my main areas of study, although I know enough about it to know that it didn’t start with the Abstract Expressionists in the 1940s. As the ‘Story of Modern Art’ used to be told, New York became the centre of the Art World after the Second World War – almost as if nothing had happened there before. I do understand the compulsion to pin down one ‘Story of Art’, but nothing is ever as simple as you think. Having said that, when, exactly, did ‘American Art’ get going? Benjamin West, the 2nd President of the Royal Academy, was born in Pennsylvania in 1738: was he an ‘American Artist’? Given that the War of Independence was fought between 1775-83 you could argue that he was not. But at what point did art from the North American continent stop being Colonial and become its own thing? I am, of course, talking about art evolving from the Western European tradition. I know there are whole areas of Native American Art that should be brought into discussion, but as, in this case, my ignorance is complete, I wouldn’t dare to discuss it. 

Some would argue that the first truly American artistic movement was the Hudson River School, a group of landscape artists influenced by Romanticism, and thoroughly in awe of the geography of the North American Continent – particularly, as the name suggests, the area surrounding the Hudson River in the State of New York. However, until the exhibition American Sublime at Tate Britain in 2002 I was completely unaware of it – and have subsequently seen very little: relatively few 19thCentury American paintings are held in British collections, and I don’t think I’ve been to the States since 2004…

One of the key paintings of the Hudson River School is Frederic Edwin Church’s Niagara – capturing the full scope and scale of the waterfall. It was enormously successful when first exhibited in 1857, and, at the time, it was suggested that no one would paint a landscape as grandiose again. However, that is precisely what Robert S. Duncanson attempted to do in his Landscape with Rainbow just two years later.

But who was Duncanson, and why have I never heard of him before? As my knowledge of Church’s work is limited, maybe I shouldn’t be surprised, but judging by the title of a Smithsonian Magazine article published in 2011, I am not alone: America’s Forgotten Landscape Painter. I will give you a link at the end of the blog. What becomes clear is that however successful Duncanson had been, his name disappeared from the singular ‘Story’ of art shortly after his death in 1872. In his day he had been big – very big. And not just in the States – in Canada he was seen as one of earliest ‘cultivators of the fine arts’, and on a visit to London he was declared a master of landscape painting. 

Robert S. Duncanson, Land of the Lotus Eaters, 1861, The Royal Collections, Stockholm.

On one occasion he even visited Alfred, Lord Tennyson at his home on the Isle of Wight, taking with him what is now seen as his masterwork, Land of the Lotus Eaters – inspired by the Poet Laureate’s similarly-titled poem. Given that it measures 225 x 134 cm – not quite as wide, but bigger overall than Church’s magisterial Niagara – that must have taken some doing. He was a determined man. The effort certainly paid off, as Tennyson reassured him that, “Your landscape is a land in which one loves to wander and linger.”

Art Historians argue about the extent that issues of race were important in the work of the man who is arguably the first successful African-American artist. In a letter to his son, Duncanson himself said,  “I have no color on the brain; all I have on the brain is paint.” However, in Land of the Lotus Eaters the ease and comfort enjoyed by the lucky few – inevitably white – is only possible because they have black servants. In other paintings there are similar references: painting the world around him, they would have been impossible to avoid. But Duncanson’s main concern was to be an artist, which, under the circumstances, was statement enough.

Race is not, it would seem, the ‘subject’ of Landscape with Rainbow: there are only two people, and both are white. Given their clothes – his trousers are rolled up, her skirt is lifted, revealing a petticoat, I would assume they are children, perhaps put in charge of the herd of cows which wander along the road. He carries a stick, and gestures towards the rainbow.

Duncanson leaves no doubt that this is the main focus of the landscape. It burns through the sky, almost more like a multi-coloured meteor. Each of the seven colours appear, even though they fade in and out as is so often the case when seen for real, with sporadic rain, and uncertain light. In addition to its brilliance, we are directed towards it by other elements of the composition. Not only does the boy point to it, but the track on which the children stand, along which the lowing herd winds slowly, is leading towards it. There are also flashes of sunlight, one illuminating the foreground directly under the children, another catching some rocks and plants below the right-hand trio of cows, which together form a virtual path of light towards the rainbow’s mythic golden end. 

Is it a coincidence, therefore, that more or less at the end of the rainbow there is a house? I really wouldn’t think so. An artist chooses what to paint and where to paint it – he must have had a reason to include the house. Sometimes choices are governed by style, or ethos, the decision to replicate what can actually be seen, and sometimes, by the will to summon up a world that is pure imagination. Unlike Church’s Niagara, inspiring awe by encompassing the grandeur and sheer scale of geological fact, Duncanson wanted to create a mood, by sharing an idea: there’s no place like home.

The fact is, if this is a real place, the both light and weather have gone awry. For one thing, you only get a rainbow when there is both sun and rain, and I can’t see that there is enough cloud. That could be something to do with the photographic reproduction, I suppose, but I doubt it. And where, precisely, is the sun? When talking about Constable’s Salisbury Cathedral (POTD 47) I explained precisely why you could never see a rainbow as Constable had depicted it. And I suspect the same is true here.  It’s such a masterful painting, that I can’t actually tell where the light is supposed to be coming from. The mood is crepuscular – the purple distant hills, the sense of plodding homeward, the gradual darkening of the sky, and above all, the brilliant yellow light on the distant horizon, suggesting it is sunset. But if the sun is in the distance, there is no way we could see a rainbow here, nor could there be a rainbow here. And we couldn’t we see a rainbow in the same place as the children do, they are too far away. But this is art, and the meteorological incongruities do not matter. This is a magical, enchanted place – every cloud is lit from a different direction, to make each look real, rather than actually being real. What Duncanson has painted is an ineffable sense of calm.  The cows head home, the children follow them, all will be well. And that is, of course, the standard symbolism for the rainbow – all will be well – as defined by God’s covenant with Noah (POTD 37).

Robert S. Duncanson, View of Cincinnati, Ohio from Covington, Kentucky, about 1851, Cincinnati Art Museum, Ohio.

Robert S. Duncanson was an African-American artist painting this landscape in 1859, two years before the outbreak of the Civil War. The Southern Confederate States, who continued to support Slavery, would fight the Northern Unionists. An earlier painting, dating from around 1851, is entitled View of Cincinnati, Ohio from Covington, Kentucky. Of all of Duncanson’s landscapes, this is – potentially – the most overtly political. The Ohio River, which separates Cincinnati and Covington, was one of the boundaries between North and South.  Duncanson – born free in 1821 in Fayette, New York – spent much of his life in Cincinnati, also in the ‘free’ North. It can be seen in the background of the painting, populous and thriving. In the foreground, in Covington, black slaves are labouring on the plantations under the watchful eye of the white owners. When Landscape with Rainbow was painted some eight years later, the war was still two years away, but tensions were rising. Nevertheless, the painting gives the sense that there might yet be the possibility of peace. It hints that there might just be somewhere idyllic, calm – Arcadian, even – where people could live in peace and harmony. Somewhere over the rainbow, perhaps?

If you would like to know more about this wonderful artist, I really recommend the article I mentioned above, America’s Forgotten Landscape Painter.

And on a completely different note, Art History Abroad has just announced my next online lecture, at 6pm on Wednesday 24 June: Reflecting on the Power of Art – Diego Velázquez.

Day 82 – The Death of Cleopatra

Edmonia Lewis, The Death of Cleopatra, 1876, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C.

Today I’m finding it hard to say who or what had the most unusual history – the artist or their art, the subject or the sculpture – and given the fame of Cleopatra, Queen of Egypt that’s really saying something.  But Edmonia Lewis was a remarkable woman, and, if anything, her history is further shrouded by the mists of time, and by whims of the imagination, than that of her famous subject. So let’s start with the sculpture. Cleopatra is seated on her throne, her left arm hanging down, her right hand resting on her thigh, her head tilted to one side, for all the world as if she has just nodded off. But as we know from the title, carved on the base of the sculpture, this is the sleep of death. Rarely has it been portrayed so calmly.

Intricately carved, you may yet be struggling to focus on some of the details: the sculpture is badly worn, the result of an unconventional history. Cleopatra wears an approximation to the headgear of Egyptian pharaohs, a combination of the nemes – the striped head cloth, with its two lappets hanging down behind the ears (familiar to us today from the mask of Tutankhamun) – with a form of pinnacle, perhaps derived from the hedjet – the white crown of Upper Egypt. The stylised leaf decoration on the back of the throne creates a foil to the crisply-carved folds of the dress, making the figure stand out from its background. The half-length sleeves are caught up twice into bunches, and the dress is gathered at a high waist, so that there is a counterpoint between the freely-hanging, more deeply carved drapery and broader areas where the cloth clings to the underlying anatomy. One breast is defined by fabric and folds, the other revealed. Her right hand, apparently relaxed, still holds the asp that killed her.

The queen wears two necklaces, both beaded, and the lower also has a pendant, possibly representing a bucranium– the skull of an ox – although, given the lack of detail, this is not certain. The full skirt flares out behind her hips, and hangs over the arm of the throne, which is carved along the sides with mock hieroglyphs.

The two heads on the arms of the throne, also wearing the nemes, represent the twin sons of Cleopatra and Mark Anthony. Whether the ring she wears on the fourth finger of her left hand represents her relationship with him, or is merely decorative, is not clear. She wears wonderfully inventive sandals, the large loops revealing her delicately carved toes, the smallest of which is slightly lifted. The skirt of the dress hangs down from her knees, wrapping round her left shin, with the hem to revealing her feet. From there, it trails down to the right, falling over the edge of the sculpture. A rose has dropped onto the foot of the throne, and lies there, resting on the dress, the fallen bloom symbolic of the subject’s death. 

On one side, as we have seen, the arm of the throne is covered by drapery. The other is decorated with a leaping griffin holding a leaf in its front paw, and surrounded by other, stylised leaves. From this angle, the tail of the asp can be seen lying across Cleopatra’s right leg.

The Death of Cleopatra was first exhibited at the Centennial Exhibition in Philadephia in 1876, but it had been shipped from Rome. Edmonia Lewis had settled there a decade before, having travelled from Boston via London and Paris. However, it is only the middle of her life that can be documented with any certainty. She was probably born in 1844 in the State of New York, to an Afro-Haitian father and a mother of mixed heritage, African American and Chippewa: as an adult Lewis would claim an affinity with Hiawatha. Both parents had died by the time she was nine, when she was brought up by her maternal aunts. As she said of her own childhood,

Until I was twelve years old I led this wandering life, fishing and swimming … and making moccasins. I was then sent to school for three years… but was declared to be wild – they could do nothing with me.

Apart from this it is hard to pin down her childhood. Like so many artists she became the master of her own history, and like Andy Warhol or Tracey Emin, was arguably her own greatest creation, drawing on different parts of her heritage according to the public she was addressing. She was good at marketing, it would seem, even if not financially secure. Her half-brother had made enough money in the Gold Rush, though, to send her to Oberlin College, which accepted both female and black students. Nevertheless, as part of a tiny minority she was subject to continual racism, and forced to leave after unfounded accusations that she had poisoned two fellow students and stolen from the College itself. She moved to Boston (again, supported financially by her brother), where the sculptor Edward Beckett acted as a mentor and helped her to set up her own studio. Her work was supported by a number of prominent abolitionists and advocates of Native American rights, of whom she modelled portrait medallions in clay and plaster, later carved in marble: one example is illustrated here. Her bust of Colonel Robert Shaw, a white officer who had led a company of African-American infantrymen during the Civil War, was enormously successful. She sold numerous copies, these sales paying for her trip to Europe.

Edmonia Lewis, Wendell Phillips, 1871, NPG, Washington D.C.

In Rome, she was befriended by American sculptor Harriet Hosman, who, like Lewis, was one of very few women to carve marble. On the whole, sculptors would pay stonemasons to carve their works, having first modelled them in clay or plaster. Figures as eminent as Canova would do this (Picture Of The Day 68) but Lewis could rarely afford to pay anyone, so did most of the carving herself. Nevertheless, the connection with Canova was real: when in Rome, she did as he did – and rented his former studio.

The Death of Cleopatra is said to have taken her four years, but by the time it was completed she couldn’t afford to ship it to the States. She travelled back alone, and sold smaller works to pay for it to be delivered. It was the hit sculpture of the Centennial Exhibition, although not universally popular. Traditionally Cleopatra had been seen as very much alive – decorous, alluring, and tantalising with that oh-so-dangerous asp. But definitely not dead. Curiously, there is a precedent – Artemisia Gentileschi painted Cleopatra post-bite, her lips already blue, but I doubt that Lewis would have known that. No slight on her – nobody really knew who Artemisia Gentileschi was in the 19th Century: they were only just rediscovering Caravaggio. 

In this sculpture there is an undoubted sense that Cleopatra, as a strong African woman, had a mastery over her own fate, and Edmonia Lewis, who is also known to have claimed her own biography, was in a position to show her doing so. The material was also ideal: it allowed Lewis to depict a strong African woman, while also giving her license to portray her white – not as white, but carved in white marble – which might have made the image more acceptable to some of the audience, as would the more-or-less fully clad figure. Most artists had portrayed the voluptuous Queen in a more advanced state of undress – including Artemisia, who showed her lying on her bed completely naked more than once, dead and alive. In this case, it really was the fact that she was already dead that some critics didn’t like. One, an artist himself, William J. Clark Jr., thought that “the effects of death are represented with such skill as to be absolutely repellent—and it is a question whether a statue of the ghastly characteristics of this one does not overstep the bounds of legitimate art.” Ironically, this was a form of praise: what Lewis was attempting to do, she had done too well.

Despite its popularity, the sculpture did not sell. Nor did it sell when subsequently exhibited at the Chicago Industrial Interstate Expo, but Lewis could not afford to ship it back to Rome. Somehow it ended up as a feature in a Chicago saloon, until it was bought from there by a shady character named ‘Blind John’ Condon, a racehorse owner and gambler, who used it as the gravestone for a favourite horse – also called Cleopatra – by side of a Chicago race track. The race track became a golf course, then a Navy munitions site, and finally a postal depot. The sculpture was covered with graffiti, until well-meaning boy scouts painted it white. Although rescued in the 1980s, it wasn’t until the 1990s that it ended up at the Smithsonian, where it was cleaned up as much as was possible. However, after decades in the open air, there is no hope of restoring its original finish.

Henry Rocher, Edmonia Lewis, c. 1870, NPG, Washington, D.C.

And Edmonia Lewis? She was successful, for a while, and could employ as many as six assistants. But then she disappeared from view for the last two decades of her life. It was only recently that it was discovered that she died in London in 1907 – she had been living in Hammersmith, and was buried in St Mary’s Catholic Cemetery, Kensal Green. She had disappeared from view, and sadly so had many of her sculptures – but there are just enough, in the Smithsonian, and the Met, to keep her name alive.