Day 81 – The Banjo Lesson

Henry Ossawa Tanner, The Banjo Lesson, 1893, Hampton University Museum, Hampton, VA.

I’m always glad to learn about new artists, and this week, for reasons which I hope are clear, I’ve decided to seek some out. Henry Ossawa Tanner promises to be the most exciting recent discovery. His style sits somewhere between Realism and Impressionism, the result of his training in the United States and his experiences in Paris, and it develops into something entirely original and personal.

Realism is nowhere near as famous as Impressionism, probably because the subject matter tends to be a little more intense and it never resorts to superficial effect. Although the term does have stylistic implications – it is undoubtedly naturalistic – ‘Realism’ refers more to the reality of the subject matter than to the appearance of the image. It was a term coined initially by Gustave Courbet in 1855 (as I mentioned in Picture Of The Day 10), and it relates to real-life events, and often subjects which are relevant to everyone, as opposed to the ‘History Paintings’ favoured by the Academies. These, are not necessarily ‘History’ but ‘Story’ paintings, narratives taken from the Bible or the lives of the saints, from classical history or myth. As it happens, Henry Ossawa Tanner was known for narrative paintings drawn from the bible – his father was a minister of the African Methodist Episcopal church – but also for his engagement with ‘Realism’, and especially in terms of the African American experience. It is true that, in previous centuries, art had dealt with what could be described as middle- or working-class subject matter in the genre of painting known, rather annoyingly, as Genre Painting. However, in focussing on normal people doing normal things for an inevitably elite audience, the artists often seemed to be looking down their noses and laughing.

Not so with Realism – the lives of normal everyday people were dignified and given value. It was one of Tanner’s great skills: to look where no one else had, and to find value. In today’s picture we see an old man teaching a boy to play the banjo. Given the age difference we assume that they are grandfather and grandson, although there is nothing specifically to confirm this, apart from the fact that both seem so much at ease that they could easily be at home – a very humble home at that. There are pots and pans on the bare floorboards, and a jug, a plate, and some bread on the table in the background. There is a coat hook, a shelf and two chairs – the old man sits on one, a coat is thrown across the other. The room is not without decoration, though: two pictures are hung on the walls, too indistinct to identify. 

There are two light sources, neither of which is visible. A fire on the right casts a warm glow on the floor, with some of the pots throwing the nearest floorboards into shadow. Foreground darkness is a traditional compositional tool, though: we tend to look from the dark towards the light, and so our eyes are led into the painting. The firelight also illuminated the back wall, with the table and jug casting shadows. This light is brighter than we might expect, but that is because illumination – or enlightenment – is one of Tanner’s themes. Light also comes from the left, as daylight enters a window or door, catching the faces of the two protagonists, giving them form, and character, and revealing their expressions.

This careful planning means that the couple are surrounded by light. It illuminates the floor around them and the wall behind, so they stand out, dark, but clear and distinct, even if the Realist attention to naturalistic detail is softened by an impressionistic blurring of form. The boy stands on the floor, legs close together and slightly bent, leaning against the old man’s leg, slightly unstable, slightly unsure. The grandfather is entirely stable, feet planted, secure. What we are witnessing is knowledge being passed from one generation to another. 

The degree of focus, of concentration, is captivating. The banjo is clearly too large for the child to encompass its entire length or to bear its full weight. The old man holds the end of the neck, and keeps it raised at the right angle – but this is the full extent of his intervention. His other hand sits foursquare on his thigh. Both look intently at the boy’s plucking fingers, their joint focus, and the echoing positions of their left hands, expressing their shared experience. The fingers of the boy’s hand stretch to form a chord, while his right wrist is bent, the fingers arched to pluck. The light catches the back of his right hand in the same way that it catches his grandfather’s resting fist. It also falls on his forehead, eyelids, nose and lips. We can see that he knows he is learning: he is illuminated, enlightened. The light glancing across his grandfather’s face suggests something else: the exhaustion of a difficult life, perhaps, but with the consolation that the boy is starting to learn.

Henry Ossawa Tanner was not the first artist to depict black men playing the banjo, but you could argue that he was the first to give them real dignity. Historically it was as musicians – entertainers – that people of colour had been permitted a role (to what extent that has changed is debatable) but often in paintings this was reduced to stereotypes of mock minstrelsy.  An exception might be the painting by Thomas Eakins, who was, tellingly, Tanner’s teacher. 

  • Thomas Eakins, Study for Negro Boy Dancing: The Banjo Player, NGA Washington.
  • Thomas Eakins, Henry Ossawa Tanner, The Hyde Collection, Glens Falls, N.Y.

Tanner was born in Pittsburgh in 1859 to Benjamin – the minister – and Susan, who had been born into slavery in Virginia, but escaped to the north, and became a school teacher. Henry’s second name – Ossawa – was invented by his father, and refers to the town of Osawatomie, Kansas, where, in 1856, there had been a violent clash between abolitionists and pro-slavery partisans. Henry drew and painted from a young age, his artistic activity re-doubling while he was recovering from illness resulting from a difficult apprenticeship. Although his father had initially opposed his wish to become an artist, in 1880 he enrolled as the only black student of the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. Thomas Eakins’ teaching was an inspiration, and Eakins reciprocated, appreciating Tanner’s talent – not only was he a favourite student, but one of very few honoured by the master with a portrait, painted some two decades later (above right).

In 1891 Tanner visited Paris – and ended up settling there for the rest of his life. There were a few return visits to the States, during one of which he painted The Banjo Lesson. Back in France, though, he regularly had works accepted at the annual Salon, and his success there was just one of the reasons he chose to remain. That he was able to be successful was another. As he put it himself, ‘In America, I’m Henry Tanner, Negro artist, but in France, I’m “Monsieur Tanner, l’artiste américaine”’.

There’s so much more to say about this painting – about its debt to the European tradition, and to contemporary French art – but to be honest it has already been said so well by others that I am simply going to refer you elsewhere – a clear, thorough and easy-going essay, beautifully illustrated by Farisa Khalid on the Khan Academy website, and an even more thorough and entirely academic article, exploring the full significance of Tanner’s achievement, by Judith Wilson, from Contributions in Black Studies. I shall return to Tanner’s work in the coming weeks, though.

Day 80 – Gabriel’s Mission

Giotto, Gabriel’s Mission, The Annunciation and The Visitation, c. 1305, Scrovegni Chapel, Padua.

Ah – Scrovegni Saturday! How many more will there be, I wonder? So far we’ve looked at the West Wall, with the Last Judgement (behind us, in the photo below), and the Virtues and Vices along the bottom of the South and North walls respectively, the Story of Joachim and Anna atop the South wall (on the right of the following view) and the Birth and Betrothal of the Virgin at the top of the North wall (on the left here).

So now – the chancel arch, at the East end. That is, ecclesiastical East, as the chapel is actually angled towards the North-East. But whatever the direction, we are looking at the triumphal arch which leads towards the altar. We will start at the very top, in the section that is mainly blue, like the sky.

And the reason why it looks like the sky is because that is where we are – beyond the sky, in fact – in Heaven. In the centre, God the Father sits enthroned, and yes, there are three steps Heaven, or at least, to the throne. Sadly much of the painted surface is damaged, but that doesn’t get away from the fact that God – and the throne – look substantially different. And that is because they are. Whereas everything we have looked at before and will look at after in this chapel is painted in fresco – i.e. onto wet plaster – the throne was painted with egg tempera on wood. This throne is actually a door. By 1278 it had become a tradition in this part of Padua to re-enact the Annunciation on the feast day itself, 25 March, even before the Scrovegni Chapel had been built. In all probability the drama was performed again when the chapel was consecrated, and dedicated to the Annunciation, on 25 March 1305. This door may well have been opened to allow a dove, representing the Holy Spirit, to fly out and settle on the Virgin Mary. However, as doves themselves are reasonably unpredictable, it would have been a model dove, on a piece of string, lowered down to the choirboy performing the role of the Virgin Mary. This is how the National Gallery of Art in Washington describes the performances of the ‘Golden Mass’ which took place in Bruges in the 15th Century, performances which seem to be echoed in Jan van Eyck’s painting of the Annunciation which we saw on Tuesday (POTD 76):

Two young choirboys—with “sweet high voices”—don costumes in the sacristy. Gabriel carries a sceptre. After the singing of matins, they take places near the main altar. Gabriel stands and Mary kneels as the deacon begins the Gospel reading from Luke:  “At this time, God sent the angel Gabriel to a city of Galilee called Nazareth, where a virgin dwelt, betrothed to a man of David’s lineage; his name was Joseph and the virgin’s name was Mary. Into her presence the angel came and said….”

At this point the choirboys pick up the narrative. Gabriel genuflects three times, then sings: ave gratia plena: dominus tecum: benedicta tu in mulieribus…. [Hail, full of Grace, most favoured among women, the Lord is with you….] He calms Mary’s initial bewilderment and explains that she will conceive and bear a son. Mary asks, “how is this possible as I have no knowledge of men?” As a dove is lowered from the choir, the angel explains: “the Holy Spirit will come upon thee, and the power of the Most High will overshadow thee. Thus this holy offspring of thine shall be known as the Son of God….”

Before giving her response, Mary stands. She turns to face the altar and raises her hands; her gesture during the reenactment, as in Van Eyck’s painting, parallels the expancis minibus made by the priest during the mass. She submits: Ecce ancilla domini, fiat mihi secundum verbum tuum [Behold the handmaiden of the Lord, let it be to me according to your word]. The actors remain in place as the mass continues, and the dove is raised again during the singing of the Agnus Dei.

A long quotation, I know, but I think it’s worth it. Let’s get back to the painted decoration – the black line going through the picture here is one of the braces, holding the walls together, just in case you were worried. God the Father sits enthroned surrounded by angels, who are gathered playing music and looking around at one another. Two angels flank the throne, one on either side – and the one on the left takes a step towards the deity: God gestures down to him. This is the Archangel Gabriel, being given a mission from God – to seek out Mary, the most perfect woman ever born – Immaculate, even (POTD 71 & 72) – and to tell her that she will be the Mother of Jesus. He flies down to the left, where we see him in a tabernacle which could so easily be part of a temporary stage for a religious drama, announcing the good news to Mary who is in an equivalent tabernacle on the other side of the chancel arch. 

To enhance the development of the narrative, Giotto paints these ‘tabernacles’ to match the house towards which Mary had processed after her betrothal to Joseph. When looking up to the top left of the left-hand image you can see that the end of the story of Mary is just above the announcing Angel on the adjacent wall – we have taken a step down, as we will again on the other side when Jesus is born – the story is spiralling down towards us as it becomes more significant.

For Giotto the Annunciation is a non-nonsense affair. Gabriel holds a scroll, intended to represent the angelic salutation, Ave gratia plena, but no staff or lily. Mary kneels, hands crossed in front of her chest, in practical acceptance. She has been at her desk, and holds a tiny volume of the scriptures. Beams of light seem to come down from God the Father, and, on the other side, they also emanate from Gabriel – there may well have been gold detailing, which has been lost, in both cases. In true theatrical fashion curtains have been drawn back to reveal the protagonists, and they are tied around porphyry columns to keep them out of the way. 

Churches often have the Annunciation depicted on either side of the Chancel Arch, but wherever the subject is represented it is always worthwhile thinking about the implications of the location. Gabriel says ‘Hail, full of Grace’ – and if you imagine the words being written out (as they are, by Jan van Eyck and others), then the space between Gabriel and the Virgin is itself ‘full of Grace’. In the Scrovegni Chapel the greeting acts to sanctify the chancel arch. Gabriel is announcing the birth of Christ across the archway which leads to the altar. This is where Mass is performed and bread is transformed into the body of Christ: Gabriel is announcing the birth of Christ exactly where he will indeed be ‘born’ through the miracle of transubstantiation. And, as I mentioned last Saturday (POTD 73), Mary was sometimes referred to as Porta Coeli – the Gate of Heaven – as she will give birth to the means of our salvation. In this setting the chancel arch represents that triumphal entry – Mary is both ‘the Gate’ and painted on ‘the Gate’.

It is immediately after the Annunciation that the Gospel of Luke tells us that Mary went to visit her cousin Elisabeth, who was with child. Giotto implies that Mary headed out straight away, wearing the same clothes – the differences in colour between the two images are probably the result of the photographs being taken at different times on different cameras under different lighting conditions and at different stages in the restoration history of the frescoes. This scene on the right is frequently represented as it is very important – The Visitation. At the beginning of her visit Mary greets her cousin, and the child moves within Elisabeth’s womb. This is how Luke reports it in 1:41-44:

And it came to pass, that, when Elisabeth heard the salutation of Mary, the babe leaped in her womb; and Elisabeth was filled with the Holy Ghost: And she spake out with a loud voice, and said, Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb. And whence is this to me, that the mother of my Lord should come to me? For, lo, as soon as the voice of thy salutation sounded in mine ears, the babe leaped in my womb for joy.

Even before he has been born, John the Baptist has recognised his cousin Jesus as the Messiah – and Mary acknowledges the fact with the words ‘My soul doth magnify the Lord’ – which become the words of the Magnificat, sung during Anglican Evensong.  But how does the painting fit onto the chapel walls?

It is directly below the image of the Annunciate Virgin – as if Mary has just gone downstairs. Notice how notice that Mary’s movement, like Gabriel’s in the Annunciation is, as ever, from left to right. And then, see how Giotto reverses the colours across the arch. Whereas Mary is on the left in red greeting Anna in yellow, on the other side of the arch a figure on the left is in yellow, with another on the right in red. This is the sort of symmetry that Giotto delights in across the chapel. As to what that scene represents – well, we’ll have to wait a couple of weeks to find out!

Before we go, let’s just stop to think about the flow of the narrative. Last week we traced the birth of Mary, her arrival at the temple and her betrothal at the top of the wall on the left here. We then take a step down to the Annunciation, where we are joined by Gabriel, who has been sent by God from the very top of the chancel arch. Mary then leaves the Annunciation, heading down – in the same clothes – to the Visitation below. And then the story continues at the same level on the right wall – the first image we will see next week is the one between the windows to the right of the Visitation. But before then, I will leave you with a detail that shows the love between two cousins, and Giotto’s skill at characterisation: the Immaculate Virgin, with her cousin Elizabeth, ‘well stricken in years’.

Day 79 – Pygmalion

François Boucher, Pygmalion and Galatea, 1767, The Hermitage, St Petersburg.

The day before yesterday I was talking about a self portrait by Sofonisba Anguissola seeming to come alive (Picture Of The Day 77), and referred to the myth of Pygmalion – so what better than to explore that idea a little further today. The origins of the story have been lost, and the nature of even Ovid’s version has been confused by George Bernard Shaw, whose eponymous play has almost nothing to do with the original – apart from being concerned with one man’s creation of his ideal, in which he falls in love. However, Shaw believed that the creation could not fall in love with its own creator, and in the play Pygmalion Henry Higgins does not get the girl. However, in My Fair Lady, musical theatre – and presumably the producer’s big bucks – persuaded him he was wrong. And indeed, for Ovid the tale of Pygmalion is an anomaly – it is one of the very few Metamorphoses which has a happy ending.

I’ve chosen this painting by François Boucher because, to be honest, there aren’t a great number to choose from, and some of the available examples have inappropriate implications. But also, it is undoubtedly the best example, and takes the idea of art coming to life just that one step further. It’s in The Hermitage in Moscow, but I’ve never seen it – there’s just too much to look at. And to think there would have been more! In the 1930s when the Soviet powers were more than usually strapped for cash, after the museum had closed its doors of an evening, the curators would sometimes be required to stay behind to rehang the paintings, in order to cover the gaps on the walls created by the sale of some of the best works, usually to the United States. For years no one in Russia found out the truth. Jan van Eyck’s Annunciation (POTD 76) was one of them. I’ve only just found that out from Irina Polevaya, a fantastic guide in St Petersburg: if you’re ever going, let me know and I’ll send you her details! 

One of the great joys of doing POTD, to be honest, is finding myself looking at paintings I’ve never seen and can’t find any information about – so we’re left with the looking, which is what this is all about. I know this was painted in 1767, so is a late work – Boucher was 64 and died three years later – but apart from that, I don’t know who it was painted for or where it was supposed to hang… which would be useful as it might explain some of the painting’s peculiarities. Is it a straightforward illustration of Ovid’s tale? Well, let’s have a look.

We see Pygmalion, the sculptor, in his studio, leaning on a table looking up at Galatea, his creation (Ovid doesn’t name her, by the way – the name came later). The scene is framed by sculptures at far left and right. Running along the bottom, in between us and Pygmalion, is a long work bench, with a portfolio, papers and a portrait bust at one end, and a mallet and material in the middle. There is also a monumental column running up the left hand side of the painting.  There are various cherubs and nymphs in attendance, and a chariot in the top left-hand corner, in front of which two doves are billing and cooing.

The story of Pygmalion is one of the tales sung by Orpheus after he has lost his beloved Eurydice – at which point he renounces the love of women, and sings of the loves of the gods for boys… Again, Pygmalion is unusual here, apart from the fact that he too has renounced the love of women. According to Ovid (or Orpheus, as he’s the one who is telling this story) Pygmalion came from Venus’s island of Cyprus, where the women, the Propoetides, had denied the goddess her status and became the first to prostitute themselves. Venus punished them by turning them into stone (I can see an ironic reversal on the horizon), and Pygmalion turned away from women because of their immorality, preferring to live as a bachelor, and carry on carving. Here’s an extract from a contemporary translation, which you can find on the Poetry in Translation website – you need to look for Book 10:

But, with wonderful skill, he carved a figure, brilliantly, out of snow-white ivory, no mortal woman, and fell in love with his own creation. The features are those of a real girl, who, you might think, lived, and wished to move, if modesty did not forbid it. 

Yes, he carved himself a sculpture, and fell in love with it. It is more beautifully told, if less accurately translated, in an 18th Century version, which, as the title page asserts, was ‘Translated by Sir Samuel Garth, John Dryden, et al’ – and you can find a transcript of that too, on the Internet Classics Archive – again, it’s Book 10, and this quotation overlaps with the last:

Pleas'd with his idol, he commends, admires, 
Adores; and last, the thing ador'd, desires. 
A very virgin in her face was seen, 
And had she mov'd, a living maid had been: 
One wou'd have thought she cou'd have stirr'd, but strove 
With modesty, and was asham'd to move. 
Art hid with art, so well perform'd the cheat, 
It caught the carver with his own deceit: 
He knows 'tis madness, yet he must adore, 
And still the more he knows it, loves the more: 
The flesh, or what so seems, he touches oft, 
Which feels so smooth, that he believes it soft. 

The phrase which really catches my eye here, which is not quite, I suspect, in the original, but captures so well what interests me about this story and its relevance to the power of art, is, ‘so well perform’d the cheat/It caught the carver with his own deceit’. Basically, he made such a perfect sculpture that he believed it was real – and he goes on to treat it as though it is, even though he knows it isn’t – like an audience member in the theatre, he has suspended his own belief. Soon after, at the Festival of Venus, he beseeches the goddess to give him – well, he would have asked to make the sculpture truly his, but asks instead for a woman who is just like the sculpture. When he gets back home, he goes to kiss his girl, his statue, as he often has before, imagining that he feels her soft and warm – and he feels her soft and warm. This time, she really is – and as she awakes, she sees him – and they live happily ever after! Venus even attends the wedding, and they have a son, named Paphos, after whom the city is named. 

It’s fascinating to see this transformation in Boucher’s painting. Pygmalion, leaning on his work bench, looks up at Galatea in awe, his hands stretched out as if he wants to touch, and yet he is not touching. This is the story re-imagined, not quite as Ovid tells it. To the left of his left hand we see a marble tree trunk, that very common accessory used to support the weight of marble sculptures, as marble legs can not bear a marble torso on their own. Carved from the same block is a marble cherub, who grasps Galatea’s drapery – but flying above him is a living double, painted in flesh tones with blonde hair, and another living cherub flies in behind. The feet, the shins and even the knees of Galatea look like stone – but how about the thighs, and stomach? Is that colour? Or is that imagination? The drapery on the left of the detail above is surely not stone… However, if we look at a different detail, we get a different idea of what is going on. 

The chariot in the top left belongs to Venus, and hers the doves that pull it (POTD 32). Clouds flow into the room to tell us this is a vision, covering some of the grandiose architecture, which, like the monumental column on the far left of the painting are part of the sculptor’s craft – although the work of stonemasons rather than artists, perhaps. Two cherubs ride the crest of the wave of cloud, one playing, one bearing a flaming torch aloft, next to another dove. Why the torch? Well, I’m sure I’ve said this before, but in the words of the poet, ‘Come on baby, light my fire’ – a song about many things, none of which is central heating. This torch will light the flames of passion – in Pygmalion already lit.  And of course, the ‘nymph’ attending to Galatea is none other than Venus herself, almost cradling the sculpture’s arm, and making it flesh, as if she is sculpting a real person out of marble. Galatea’s stretching left hand points, a cherub points back at the miracle of marble turned flesh, and a rococo reference to Michelangelo’s Creation of Adam is born: Adam was made out of clay, and Galatea from marble. She lives, she looks at Venus, she is surprised – and her clothing is definitely in colour. From this detail we have no doubt: this is a woman.

I am, however, intrigued by this workbench stretching the full width of the bottom of the painting. Pygmalion is the other side of it, almost as if he is trapped there, cut off from us. The paraphernalia of the sculptors studio is placed upon it – propped up props to remind us where we are – and yet it could almost be like the frame of a painting. It is as if, rather than the sculpture coming to life, the sculptor has become art – he has left our world and entered fully into the world of his own imagination. 

And if we step away again, there is an unnerving feeling that nothing he sees is real – the subtle variation in tone between Galatea as a sculpture and as a living woman is echoed in the feminine pallor of Venus, in the thinly painted, only-just-sketched cherubs and the pale pellucid sky. Is it really a sculpture being brought to life, or is it a painting of a sculpture being brought to life that he is looking at? He is real – undoubtedly solid, richly coloured, worldly, rugged, his weight leaning on that bench – but everything else is evanescent. Clearly we are looking at a painting, if only because it is a part of Boucher’s painting – and Boucher seems to say that, if we believe a sculpture could come to life, how much easier is it to believe a painting, how much more real is it?

Shakespeare used the story of Pygmalion, without ever saying what it was. In The Winter’s Tale the wronged Hermione is said to have died, but a sculpture of her is revered. It is a polychrome sculpture, painted by ‘…that rare Italian master, Julio Romano’ – the only artist Shakespeare ever mentions by name (POTD 44). Paulina takes Leontes to see the sculpture of his late wife, once he has truly repented of his wrongs, and he is overawed. She wants take him away, saying,

No longer shall you gaze on't, lest your fancy
May think anon it moves.

…and then, as if were not enough that the sculpture might move,

I'll draw the curtain:
My lord's almost so far transported that
He'll think anon it lives.

Eventually she confesses that, through dark arts, she can make it move, and when he says she should, Paulina’s request is simple

It is required
You do awake your faith. 

Shakespeare understood better than any other author, I think, the power of art – and The Winter’s Tale is the play in which he plays constantly with what is seen. Looking at paintings – and sculptures – is simple. Just trust your eyes. Believe what you see. It is required you do awake your faith.

Day 78 – St Petroc

C. E. Kempe & Co. Ltd., St Petroc, 1914, St Olaf’s Church, Poughill.

It’s all too easy to forget precisely how many Saints there are – probably because I doubt that anybody even knows how many saints there are. The Vatican must have an exhaustive list, but several have come and gone, some of them because even the church has deemed them to be entirely fictitious. Not so St Petroc, and as today is St Petroc’s day, I wanted to think about him. If you’ve never heard of St Petroc – shame on you! He is one of the Patron Saints of Cornwall.

I’ve also chosen today’s image because there is, of course, more than one type of picture. I’ve focussed on paintings, I know, but I have occasional shown you pictures of sculptures, or even, on rare occasions, buildings. But never stained glass. It is something that has flourished in various eras across most of Europe, but it has been especially important in Britain – even though, given the Reformation (or reformations, as they happened at different times in the different nations of the Kingdom) much of our heritage of stained glass has been lost.  I imagine that for iconoclasts, ‘idolatrous images’ in glass were quite fun to deal with. There was the most extraordinary revival in ecclesiastical decoration in the 19th Century, though, as a result of a revival in the church, and then a change in taste. The Anglo-Catholic Revival developed from the Oxford Movement, and as William Morris was an undergraduate in Oxford, it would inevitably influence the development of the Arts and Crafts movement, at the tail end of which today’s window was made. 

This is just one panel from a larger window which illustrates a number of Cornish Saints. The various legends about St Petroc are rather confused, and, given their age, it is hard to know how much of the myth is true – after all, he was supposed to have died in 564 AD.  Or 594, depending on which source you read. According to the earliest life written about him, he was the younger son of a Welsh Chieftain, and he studied in Ireland. Either before or after a pilgrimage to Rome he found his way to Kernow (Cornwall to you and me – unless you are from Kernow of course) and founded a monastery at the mouth of the River Camel on the North Cornish Coast, which came to be known as Petroc’s-Stowe – or, as we now know it, Padstow. He also founded an Abbey in Bodmin, and became its first prior – hence the crozier in his hand, a stylised shepherd’s crook, with which he would symbolically look after his flock, yanking them back in when they strayed from the straight and narrow.  After his death his remains were initially revered in Padstow, but they were ‘translated’ (i.e. moved) to Bodmin some time around the year 1000. However, in 1177 a disillusioned priest called Martin stole them, and took them to the Abbey of St Meen in Brittany (Petroc may well have preached all over Brittany: there are many churches named after ‘Saint Perreux’). Thanks to the intervention of King Henry II the precious relics were returned, and were kept in a rather fine Sicilian/Islamic ivory casket until the Reformation, at which point, with the dissolution of the monasteries, they were thrown out. Fortunately the casket survived, and can still be seen in St Petroc’s, Bodmin.

A second Life of St Petroc, written in the 12th Century, was re-discovered in Germany in a library in Gotha in 1937. It describes the saint as ‘handsome in appearance, courteous in speech, prudent, simpleminded, modest, humble, a cheerful giver, burning with ceaseless charity, always ready for all the works of religion because while still a youth he had attained by watchful care the wisdom of riper years’ – however, that can have had no influence on this window, which dates from 1914, some 33 years before the rediscovery of the Gotha Life.

Photo: Jules & Jenny on Flickr

At the top we see two angels holding scrolls, and then, in the upper tier, Sts Ia, Olaf and Keyna. St Petroc stands at the left on the bottom tier, alongside Sts Wyllow and Sampson – I’m sorry, but apart from our man, you’ll have to look them up for yourselves! The inscription underneath the last has a dedication to the memory of William and Margaret Field, and their son Francis Trevoes, and bears the date ‘mcmxiv’ – 1914. If you can pin it down, you will probably find the window attributed to Charles Eamer Kempe – but as he died in 1907 that’s not very likely, even though the designs for stained glass windows could be kept and reused.  As it happens the term ‘stained glass’ is a misnomer: the only colour you can stain glass is yellow – so only the yellow details in today’s picture are actually stained. The rest is coloured glass, made by the adding various mineral salts to the molten glass. The details – all the black lines and decorations – are painted on with a form of enamel, and fired to make them bond with the glass.

Kempe himself was from East Sussex (his father Nathaniel developed Kemptown in Brighton) and had a typical upper class education – Rugby, and Pembroke College, Oxford. It was as an undergraduate that he was inspired to become an architect, having seen the decorations of the Oxford Union carried out by, among others, William Morris and Edward Burne-Jones. He had wanted to go into the church, but had a rather bad stammer, and decided he could minister better by designing that by preaching. He studied with leading ecclesiastical architect George Frederick Bodley, himself a student of Giles Gilbert Scott, and became Bodley’s assistant during the building of All Saints, Cambridge. The East Window there was designed by Burne-Jones and executed by Morris & Co. Kempe himself designed three of the church’s windows. However, he wasn’t with Bodley for long, as he set up his own studio in London in 1866, which went on to be one of the leading ecclesiastical designers of its time. His windows were especially sought after, renowned for the peacock wings of his angels (this isn’t a great example), and the richly jewelled apparel of the royalty and priesthood – look at the pearls on the depictions of Sts Olaf and Sampson, for example. After his death the studio continued under the name of C.E. Kempe & Co. Ltd, and a distant cousin, Walter Earnest Tower, took over as chairman. Stained glass designers don’t often put their names on their work, but use symbols as a form of ‘maker’s mark’. Kempe’s was a sheaf of golden corn, called a ‘garb’, which came from his own coat of arms (I said he was upper class…). When Tower took over, a black tower was superimposed on the maker’s mark – and you can see it on the panel with St Petroc, in the decorative border to the left of St Ia’s feet – at the very top left-hand corner of the detail on the left.

There are not that many images of St Petroc, and, as a result, his iconography varies. The Kempe studio chose to show him holding a bowl, with a tame wolf by his side. These attributes are best explained by the various myths which survive about the saint. Here they are, retold by Anna Chorlton – you can find the full story on the website Mazed – Traditional Tales from East Cornwall:

It was always raining in North Cornwall near the monastery. One day Petroc predicted the rain would stop the next day, but the next day the rain still fell in rivers. Petroc was mortified, his power of prophecy had failed, maybe he wasn’t such a good holy man anymore. He decided to go on a pilgrimage to become more holy, so he travelled to the Holy Land and then on to India. One day he was standing by the sea, it was so hot and he was dreaming of Cornish rain, when he saw a silver bowl in the water. Petroc climbed into the bowl and floated to an island. There he lived for seven years, every day eating one silver fish he caught in a pond. The fish returned every day to be eaten again.

One day the shining silvery bowl floated up on the sea again, and Petroc climbed in and sailed back to shore.

A wolf was waiting for him. It had guarded Petroc’s staff and sheepskin for 7 years while the saint was on the island. The wolf stayed as Petroc’s loyal companion till the end of his days.

Day 77 – Sofonisba Anguissola

Sofonisba Anguissola, Bernardino Campi painting Sofonisba Anguissola, late 1550s, Pinacoteca Nazionale, Siena.

Who could not love this artist given her name? Quite apart from her talent, of course. I will come back to her very soon to explore her life and her work in more depth. But for now, I want to look at a painting which shows that, contrary to the assertions of many men over history (mainly artists who were protecting their pitch) women really did have the intellectual and conceptual ability to understand art and what art can do. 

It is a double portrait, as the ‘title’ suggests – but of course, this is only what some people choose to call it now. You can also find it listed as ‘Self Portrait with Bernardino Campi’ – but that really misses the point. What is remarkable is that, as far as I am aware, no one has ever thought this painting was by him – after all, he is the one painting. The self portrait by Judith Leyster (Picture Of The Day 34) was for years attributed to Frans Hals, because it is in a similar style to his, even though she herself is sitting there in front of an easel, holding a palette and around 18 paint brushes. Like the Leyster, we have a painting within a painting – in this case, a man painting a portrait of a woman – what could be unusual about that? It would make sense to assume that he was the artist. He looks towards his subject, painting the delicate details of her elegant dress. The padded end of his mahl stick (POTD 28) is propped on the very edge of the canvas so that he can rest his right wrist on it, thus keeping his hand steady to paint the details of the embroidery. His profile cuts across the left edge of his canvas and the easel can be seen projecting above it. The lower edge of his canvas can be seen, towards the bottom of the painting itself, and to the right we can also see the canvas stretched around the stretcher. As for the portrait he is painting, it is beautifully executed, and surely, almost complete. The subject wears a rich red, high-collared and sleeved bodice, embroidered with gold thread. Underneath this she has a white chemise, with its lace-trimmed collar standing up inside the collar of the bodice, delicately laced at the neckline. There is just a hint of a large drop-pearl earring, and her left hand droops at the wrist, holding a pair of deep red gloves, a sign of both class and sophistication. This is clearly a wealthy and successful woman. A beautiful executed portrait, in a perfectly standard painting, but it all seems perfectly normal. Until you remember that Sofonisba painted it.

Think about it this way: what are they looking at? He looks round towards us, but why? To catch our eye perhaps? To see if we approve of his efforts? Or is he looking at a mirror to catch his own reflection to paint his face? He would have had to do that to capture his own appearance, after all – but at the moment, he is painting Sofonisba’s dress – so he must be looking at her. And of course he’s looking at her, because it is she who is actually painting this, and, while his face was being painted, she must have been looking at him. And what about her? Who or what is she looking at? Well, if he’s painting the portrait, she must be looking at him, but, as she painted both subjects, she must be looking at herself, in a mirror: she had to, or she wouldn’t know what to paint.

If that hasn’t done you head in, here are a few more questions. Who is in charge here, and why? Whose face is clearer? Which character is more dominant? To my eyes – and it’s always worthwhile remembering that everyone sees things differently – Sofonisba stands out far more clearly than Bernardino. Her face is brighter, clearer, sharper. Her costume is richer – and brighter – whereas his black doublet fades into the background, and so does his hair and beard. He tones in. His face appears softer, the lights and shades more finely, and more subtly, blended. It is more painterly, I would suggest – and this makes her look more alert, more alive. He looks at us – and ultimately, whatever they were looking at during the course of the development of this work, the intention was to make it look as if they are looking at us, to make them seem more immediate and present – he looks at us with interest and understanding, but out of the shadows. By contrast, she is almost sphinx-like in her immoveable security. And she is higher up – which has always implied a higher status. When painting her face (if he were actually painting her), he would have to look up to her. And so he should – she is his creation. Not just in this imaginary portrait by him, which is actually by her, but in the person of Sofonisba herself. Because Bernardino Campi taught her to paint from the age of 14. She is everything he made her, and in this painting, probably painted when she was in her late 20s, she acknowledges that. But she also puts him in the shadow.  And if that’s not sophisticated enough, there is another suggestion: that she has painted each of the subjects in their respective styles. So she paints him how he would paint himself, whereas she paints herself, as she did quite often, using her own technique.

Conceptually I think this work is unparalleled before the 16th Century, and also, I suspect, for some time after. The self portrait by Catharina van Hemessen (POTD 28) is the first we have of an artist depicting themselves painting, and that was in 1548. I think it was Sofonisba who painted the second, in 1556. Today’s Picture would have followed a couple of years later. An artist painting someone else painting them. I might be missing the obvious, but I’m not sure I even know of any other examples – please tell me if you do! 

I would be more than happy to leave it here, but I should mention the painting’s curious history, partly because, if you were to look it up online or even – yes, it is possible – in a book, it might well look rather different. Look at the following three versions, and before you read any further, try and spot the differences.

I don’t know if you’ve ever visited the Pinacoteca Nazionale in Siena – it is the main art gallery, although people rarely go. There is so much else to see in the city, including genres of painting you can’t find anywhere else. There are frescoes extolling the virtues of Good Government, frescoes explaining the foundation of a hospital and all of its duties, and frescoes exploring the life of a fairly inconsequential Pope, and they are still on the walls for which they were painted, so why bother going to a museum? Siena is a city which really deserves more than the day trip it usually gets. But, until recently, the Pinacoteca has not been a great place to go – dingy, dirty even, with absolutely everything they could squeeze in hung on the walls in an endless sequence of shabby rooms. To be honest, I don’t know what it’s like now, because last March when I was there they were in the middle of refurbishing – probably the first time in seventy years or so it’s seen as much as a lick of paint. So by now it could be glorious. But I used to actively avoid taking my students there as it was one of those buildings that saps the spirit (I have a list). Had I spent more time there, I would have learnt how to cherry pick the best – but when I first went, this painting would never have made the cut. It was extremely dull. A black painting with two faces, two hands and a mahl stick. You could just about see the edge of the canvas and the easel, but it really was nothing remarkable. Until they cleaned and restored it in 1996, when they found out that Sofonisba was not originally wearing such a dark dress – but a wonderful red and gold one. But they also found out that she had two left hands. For five years, that is how they exhibited the painting – with one hand reaching up behind Bernardino’s, and the other lowered, holding her gloves. It was only six years after the first (recent) restoration that the conservators returned to the portrait and painted over the second hand – and so, since 2002, it has been exhibited as we have discussed it, the assumption being that Sofonisba must have intended it to be seen like that.

When you look at the details it only begs more questions. What would she have been doing? And why did she change her mind? And who changed her clothes? All of the answers to these questions must by hypothetical, but to me it looks as if she was reaching up to take the paintbrush. In Ovid’s Metamorphoses Pygmalion was a sculptor who fell in love with one of his own creations, and, having invoked Venus, goddess of love, the sculpture was brought to life – the power of art is that it can take on a life of its own. Here however, it is not love but talent that brings Sofonisba to life, taking over from her Master, like a relay runner taking the baton. A common topos – a regularly used phrase used almost conventionally – for a portrait was that ‘it only lacks a voice’. Well here, she may lack a voice, but she has come to life. Of course it’s possible that something else was going on, nothing to do with painting. Was she taking his hand? And if she was, would that have been appropriate? And what if she had meant to show herself taking his brush, but it looked as if she were going to take his hand? Maybe that’s why she changed it – or maybe she changed the position of the hand simply because it didn’t work, it looked too strange. Or maybe, she changed it because she looks more sophisticated holding the gloves. Whatever it was, it seems likely that she painted over the original hand, but over the years the change had become visible. Some paints fade, some change colour and some go transparent, revealing what are called pentimenti – changes of mind, as the artist ‘repents’ and repaints. So the second hand might have started to reappear. In the 19th century people didn’t like the ‘bright’ colours of earlier paintings, so to cover up the pentimento and make the whole thing look more balanced, more like an ‘old master’ painting, it could have been repainted, with a far darker dress for this respectable lady. Under most circumstances there would be no qualms about removing a 19th Century layer of paint from a 16th Century painting, but, having removed an earlier ‘overpaint’ which clearly wasn’t original, what are the ethics of covering up something that was? Was the first hand (or is that the second hand?) original though? Had it ever seen the light of day? Well, these are the choices that conservators and curators have to make. But rest assured, that hand hasn’t gone – it has just been disguised, covered up – and the conservators could get it back by taking off the new overpaint in a couple of days. Possibly quicker, but you never rush a painting, in case you damage it. I for one am happy to see it as it is now. And when I next have a chance to go to Siena, I will – and I hope to find it in a resplendent, newly decorated and refurbished art gallery!

Day 76 – Jan van Eyck

Jan van Eyck, The Annunciation, about 1434-6, National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.

It’s Picture Of The Day 76, and this is the first time I’ve talked about Jan van Eyck. I should be sacked! Well, that aside, my reason to include him today is that I’m talking about him online tomorrow, and the publicity material includes an image of this painting. It wasn’t going to be in the lecture, so I thought I’d talk about it here instead! It is a fantastic thing, and I was very glad to see it at the exhibition in Ghent this year. It is an Annunciation – we are starting to build up a library of these: there will be another one on Saturday. I think everything else this week will be pagan in some way to balance things out! 

The picture is very tall and thin – which isn’t ideal for the formatting of this blog, I know – but implies that it might have been part of a larger ensemble. However, van Eyck created a number of small, devotional panels that fitted the taste of the times, which, especially in Northern Europe, was for private devotion at home. We see the Annunciation taking place in a church, and van Eyck was the first panel painter to do this. It relates to the idea that, as Mother of Jesus, Mary was effectively ‘home’ to him for the first nine months of his earthly existence (POTD 71). As the Church is also the House of God, there is an equivalence between Mary and the Church – she becomes elided with Ecclesia, the personification of the Church. That is why, in several paintings, although not so obviously this one, she is clearly out of proportion with her surroundings. Even here, were she to stand up, she would be roughly as tall as the arcade behind the angel. She has, as so often, been contemplating the scriptures, and Gabriel appears bearing his staff of office (POTD 70). No need to bring a lily for the expectant mother, as there is a vase full of them just in front of her lectern.

Mary wears a simple blue dress, matching her humility, whereas Gabriel is dressed in the most remarkable finery – ecclesiastical robes, as if the choirs of angels were a branch of the priesthood higher than the Pope, with richly coloured fabrics encrusted with pearls and jewels. He greets Mary with the traditional words Ave Gratia Plena – ‘Hail, Full of Grace’ and she responds Ecce Ancilla Domini – ‘Behold the Handmaid of the Lord’ – her humble acceptance of God’s chosen role for her. But she is replying to God, so she replies backwards, and upside down, making it easier to read for anyone looking down from heaven. The Holy Spirit appears from above, swooping down with urgency on beams of golden light, as the Light of the World comes into the world. Mary’s face is framed by three windows, symbolic of the Holy Trinity. Jesus is the second person of the Trinity, and the Holy Spirit is the third. God the Father’s presence is implied by the light coming through the window at the top left of the painting. The windows behind Mary are also a miracle of painting. The are constructed out of  ‘bullseye glass’, which was made by putting a blob of molten glass on a rod, and rotating it to spin it out into a flat disc. These circular sections are the very centre of those discs, where the glass can still be relatively thick, so that they act as irregular lenses, refracting the light from outside to show the sky at the top and the plants and buildings indistinctly at the bottom, the latter gradually filtering out as you go up the windows, apart from the places where the most extremely curved glass acts to make the dark areas still visible. They look almost photographic.

When you get in closer, you can see precisely how he did it, with a darker base colour painted over by tiny blobs and arcs of lighter paint. Simple when you know how, until you look at the scale – which I have left in – and realise that each individual bullseye is less than 1cm in diameter. These details come from my new favourite toy – a truly wonderful website called Closer to van Eyck – click on the link for hours of fun zooming in to see the most breathtaking detail. The interstices between bullseyes are filled with red glass painted to have four petals – the stylised flower almost certainly intended to stand for the Virgin, whose response can be seen here, each letter carefully and delicately painted on a tiny scale. 

The significance of the three windows behind Mary becomes particularly evident when you look to the top of the church interior, where there is just one window. The stained glass has a single figure underneath two multi-winged angels which are standing on wheels. These are Thrones, from the third choir of angels after Seraphim and Cherubim. I really must go through the angelic choirs properly one day soon! The single figure could easily represent God the Father, although his presence is implied, as we’ve seen, by the light coming through the window at the top left. The stained glass image, though, is in some ways more representative of the Old Testament idea of God, Jehovah, in his singular presence. He holds the bible – although I can’t read which words are written there, and stands on a globe. On either side are murals. I find it truly astonishing that van Eyck was so aware of the Romanesque style of painting, with its simplified, linear forms, densely packed folds, and broad arcing outlines. To the left the murals illustrate the discovery of Moses, as he is handed to Pharaoh’s daughter (POTD 21), a precursor of the Annunciation, in which Jesus is effectively ‘given’ to Mary. On the right, Moses receives the Ten Commandments from God. This is also relevant to what is going on below, as the Law of Moses will be transcended by the Grace of Christ.

If you get in closer, you can even read the words ‘non’ in some of the commandments – ‘thou shalt not’! And the globe on which Jehovah is standing is divided by the equator, with the lower half clearly labelled ‘ASIA’. As we saw in POTD 70, a monarch’s orb is divided into the three continents that were known in medieval times. 

The relationship of the Old Testament to the New is also explored at the bottom of the painting. Van Eyck has painted the floor to look like it has been decorated with sgraffito. There are various different techniques which use this term, but they are all related to the idea of scratching. Here the lines of the imagery have been incised into the marble floor, and then filled with a dark pigment, to make them stand out. The rectangular tiles show scenes from the Jewish scriptures. The clearest image is at the bottom of the painting, to the left of the footstool with its wonderful brocade cushion. It shows soldiers standing in a tent on the left, with someone chopping off the head of a very large man on the floor at the right – this is the story of David and Goliath, and stands for the triumph of good over evil. In the tile above that we see Samson pulling down the pillars of the temple, killing himself and many of the Philistines in the process. To the left of that image, but mainly covered by the angel’s robes, Goliath is killing even more Philistines in battle. The implication is that God will triumph. In the roundels at the corners of the decorative borders are the signs of the zodiac. The Church has had an ambivalent attitude towards astrology over the course of its history, but, when accepted, it is as a sign that that God has dominion over the whole cosmos, which he had, after all, created. One quite credible reconstruction of the decoration of this floor suggests that Gabriel has positioned himself on top of Aries, the sign which includes 25 March, the Feast of the Annunciation, whereas Mary is on top of Virgo – the Virgin. Overall, the references to the Old Testament at both the top and bottom of the painting suggest that the Annunciation marks the beginning of the New Order – the Law of Moses will be superseded by the Grace of Christ, and Jehovah, although still relevant, would be better understood in terms of the Holy Trinity.  

Obviously very few people would ever have understood all of these references – but then, a painting of this size would always have had a small audience, and the person for whom it was painted would have got it all – indeed, the patron probably specified precisely what van Eyck should paint. It was the artist’s skill to bring it to life, to make it look real – so that we would believe it. However, his style is almost too real, too crystal clear, every single detail is so specific – it becomes almost hallucinatory, which is precisely the point. The truth which he was illustrating should be clearer, brighter, more intricate than our normal everyday world, which, compared to heaven, was, for the theologians, as much of an illusion as this painting: our world won’t last (there are angels ripping it up in POTD 38). But the painting functions as a door into eternity, and the permanent reality of heaven – and an incredibly beautiful ‘door’ at that.

There is still time to sign up for my lecture tomorrow night, Wednesday 3 June at 6pm British Summer Time. I will be looking at other paintings by Jan van Eyck to explore the ways in which he used illusion to convince us that what we are seeing is true. Just click on the words Art History Abroad for more information.  

Day 75 – Pentecost II

El Greco, Pentecost, 1596-1599, The Prado, Madrid.

To be honest, I couldn’t decide which picture to show you yesterday, either the painting by Plautilla Nelli (Picture Of The Day 75), or this one – so I decided I would talk about both. The theological content of the painting has been covered just as much as I wanted to then, though, so if you missed it, have a read of that first!

The basic ideas are of course similar to the two versions we saw yesterday. The Virgin Mary is central and surrounded by the apostles, who not only frame our view of the Virgin, but also allow our access to the group. Like Plautilla Nelli’s version, the tongues of flame rest above the heads of everyone present, although the mood is far more like the ecstatic transport of inspiration evoked by Botticelli, even if his broad, curving lines are replaced by El Greco’s flame-like, etiolated forms. I would like to say that the proportions of the figures are directly related to the subject matter, but by this stage in his career everyone El Greco painted was equally immaterial, expressing a religious fervour which is unparalleled in Western art.  His style does fit especially well here, though, and seems to predict the behavior of people in contemporary evangelical churches who are speaking in tongues – about which, of course, El Greco would have known nothing. As ever, I am intrigued by the number of people present: fifteen. The Virgin Mary, and the twelve Apostles, certainly – as in Botticelli – but also a couple of additions, although not as many as in Nelli’s painting. 

The peculiar appearance of this image relates to its structure. It is oil paint on canvas, and would originally have been framed with a semi-circular arch – so the brown sections top left and right would not have been visible. As it is, we can see how the artist used these spaces to wipe his brush clean from time to time. The dove of the Holy Spirit appears at the very apex, glowing in a yellow which was one of El Greco’s favourites – he often used it to structure the image, as we will see below. Rather than beams of light, it is the brushstrokes themselves which link the dove to the apostles, painted freely and thinly, with the rich, red-brown ground showing through, adding to the flickering of the tongues of flame. The gestures of the group add to this flickering, each hand appearing like another flame, blowing in the wind, as the apostles look around, at each other and upwards – with one exception: the face second from the right. This is always assumed to be a portrait, looking out at us. It is either El Greco himself (although it doesn’t look that much like the self portrait in his masterpiece, The Burial of the Count of Orgaz), or his friend, Antonio Covarrubias. It doesn’t look that much like him either, though. The other ‘excess’ person is Mary Magdalene, just to our right of the Virgin. To be honest, there is nothing to identify her – no jar of ointment, no flowing red hair – but there isn’t another single woman it could be. The apostle on the far left in blue lifts up his hand, connecting the main mass of the group to the sky, and so up to the Holy Spirit, and his gesture is echoed by the man in light blue on the far right, whose arm stretches downwards.

The arm reaching down connects the upper group with those lower in the composition. Given the tall, thin proportions of the painting, El Greco has to be extremely inventive in the way he fits everyone in. The hand that reaches into the lower group frames the face of the man in green looking up. He is the lynchpin, holding the top and bottom of the painting together, as El Greco keeps us looking up and down to draw the two halves of the painting into one whole. A man next to the apostle in green, wearing red and white, reaches his arm over his head, and looks into the painting, encouraging us to do the same – and at the bottom, two more people encourage us to look both in and up. On the left is a very young man in green and red (it’s a credit to El Greco’s art that he can make the back of someone’s head look so very young): this is St John the Evangelist. And on the right, leaning back, gesturing, in his traditional yellow and blue, is St Peter.

Notice how Peter’s yellow cloak reaches down to the very bottom of the painting. The yellow is picked up by the robes of the apostle just beside the Virgin, and then by the divine glow around the Holy Spirit: the yellow ties the whole painting together. Similarly John’s green ties him to the two apostles next to Mary, at both shoulder and knee height. The reds remain in the lower half of the painting. John and Peter seem transported, the one foot of each that we can see has just the toes touching lightly on the ground, and there is a progression of gestures upwards, from Peter’s left hand, through both of John’s, to the man in pale blue reaching down and the one in mid-blue reaching up.

This is an example of El Greco at his very best, I think. If you want to catch up on his personal history, I talked about him a bit in POTD 19, but, in brief, Domenikos Theotokopoulos was born on the island of Crete in 1541, grew up there and trained as an Orthodox icon painter. Crete was part of the Venetian Republic, and in 1567 he moved to La Serenissima, where they couldn’t pronounce his name (well, that’s the assumption), so everyone called him ‘The Greek’ (although he was Cretan, all members of the Orthodox Church were referred to as ‘Greek’). He was hugely influenced by contemporary Venetian art, notably the works of Titian, and especially by the free-flowing, highly spiritual forms of Tintoretto. He moved to Rome in 1570, and then to Spain in 1577, settling in Toledo, the headquarters of the church in Spain (even now it stands in relationship to Madrid in the same way that Canterbury does to London). Today’s picture comes from his most important commission in Madrid, though, the altarpiece for the chapel of the Colegio de la Encarnación de Madrid, which was also known as the Colegio de doña María de Aragón. As a result, the ensemble is referred to as the Doña María de Aragón Altarpiece – although this is academic, as the altarpiece was dismantled in 1810 as a result of the Napoleonic suppression of religious orders. Five of the paintings are still in Madrid, and a sixth (bottom left) has somehow ended up in Bucharest. There is no known record of the original appearance of the altarpiece, although it is known to have included seven paintings and five sculptures – the seventh painting and all of the sculptures are presumably lost, or have not yet been identified. However, it seems likely that the lost painting went under the Annunciation, in the centre at the bottom. The surviving images were probably arranged something like this.

At the top, we see the The Resurrection, The Crucifixion and Pentecost, and underneath The Adoration of the Shepherds, The Annunciation, and The Baptism of Christ. This is a very rapid summary of Jesus’s life, death, and afterlife.

The remarkable thing about El Greco’s unique style was that, however popular it was with a particular clientele during his lifetime, it had no particular impact on other contemporary artists. However, it would ring true for so many painters in the 20th Century. Picasso’s blue and rose periods would have been almost unthinkable without El Greco, for example. On the Prado’s website you can find a video relating to their exhibition ‘El Greco and Modern Painting’, which they mounted for the 4th Centenary of the master’s death in 2014. I’ll leave you with one of my own comparisons chosen at random, though: Picasso’s Acrobat on a Ball of 1905.

Day 74 – Pentecost

Suor Plautilla Nelli, Pentecost, 1554, San Domenico, Perugia.

Today is Pentecost, fifty days after the Resurrection, and ten days after the Ascension. According to the Acts of the Apostles, 2: 1-4:

And when the day of Pentecost was fully come, they were all with one accord in one place. And suddenly there came a sound from heaven as of a rushing mighty wind, and it filled all the house where they were sitting. And there appeared unto them cloven tongues like as of fire, and it sat upon each of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance.

Not only did the Spirit give them utterance, but people of all nations could understand them in their own languages – the Apostles had been given everything they needed to go out and preach the Word of God. Jesus had announced this occurrence just prior to his Ascension (Picture Of The Day 64), when he said ‘But ye shall receive power, after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you: and ye shall be witnesses unto me both in Jerusalem, and in all Judaea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth’ (Acts 1:8). We have seen a painting of Pentecost already – in the dome above the crossing in Ottobeuren Abbey (POTD 58) – but that was part of an entire decorative scheme. So today I want to focus on this remarkable altarpiece.

You may well be wondering, ‘what is so remarkable about that?’ and I wouldn’t blame you. It’s not the greatest painting I have ever shown you, and not only is it not terribly famous, it is almost completely unknown. As a result I don’t think it has been cleaned or restored for years, although the colours are both rich and intense. There are certainly no good photos of it to be found online – I suspect there aren’t any anywhere, for which I can only apologize. 

We see the apostles and Mary gathered in an upper room, seated in a horseshoe, leaving space for our approach. Their hands are held together, crossed in front of their chests, or held up, inflected at the wrists – all standard gestures of prayer at the time. Apparently in silence, they sit in their own private worlds, or look around at each other, or up towards the appearance of the Holy Spirit. The gestures are somewhat awkward – wooden even – which adds to the solemnity of the occasion, and to the sense that each individual is experiencing this event in their own way. We are pulled into the space by the strongly drawn perspective of the tiled floor, a combination of pale jade green and off-white squares, triangles, and rectangles. The architecture is High Renaissance in style, flanked by columns, and leading back between square piers supporting round arches to a distant doorway, which frames Mary’s head. Both this, and the perspective, make her the focus of our attention. There are seventeen people present, and, as with Perugino’s Ascension (POTD 64), I find the number surprising. Just before the descent of the Holy Spirit, in the last verse of Acts Chapter 1, Matthias was chosen to take the place of Judas – so there are now twelve apostles again, and, with the Virgin Mary, this makes thirteen. This is precisely the combination we see in a painting by Botticelli and his workshop from the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery.

Painted on a monumental scale – the figures are more or less life size – it is not in a terribly good condition, unfortunately, and has been cut down on all sides. We do not know its original location, although it would have been an altarpiece, and, judging by the size and scale of this remaining element, quite an impressive one. It was painted some time between 1495 and 1505, when Botticelli and his art had come under the influence of the visionary Dominican preacher Girolamo Savonarola, who preached the end of the world (due in the year 1500), and the Bonfire of the Vanities. He had it in for the Renaissance, and wanted to destroy all the portraits, the pagan texts and images, the excess jewellery, clothing, and hair extensions… among other things. His followers were known as the piagnoni – or ‘cry babies’. Botticelli’s brother was definitely one of them, and Botticelli was inclined to be – his paintings changed, losing their elegant refinement, and taking on an almost visionary feel – the proportions shift, the figures grow, and the characters become more emotive, charged with an inner energy. All twelve of the apostles – Matthias included – are seated on a circular bench around the Virgin Mary, raised up on her own circular dais. Again, a space has been left so that we have access, and can participate in the event. The room is square, with three panels on each visible wall, implying that there would be another three where the picture surface is – twelve panels in all, one for each apostle. It is a symbolic space. Golden beams come down from the Holy Spirit, who is sadly absent, just one result of the poor condition of the painting.

Botticelli’s golden beams represent the ‘cloven tongues like as of fire’, which ‘sat upon each of them’, an idea captured with both striking clarity and decorative elegance in today’s picture. The Holy Spirit appears in the form of a dove with a halo behind it and stylised flames licking out in every direction, although longer below. Scattered downwards are symmetrically arranged ‘cloven tongues’ which seem to sit on the surface of the painting – as if they had been applied in gold leaf. Behind them we see the carefully worked out perspective, but the ‘real world’ seems unconnected to the Spirit’s intervention. This is an other-worldly event we are witnessing, after all.

The tongues of fire really do sit upon each of the people present. And when we get this close, we can see who they are. On the left, hands raised, wearing yellow and blue with short grey hair and short grey beard, is St Peter. And on the right, with no beard, wearing pink and green, is St John the Evangelist, the youngest of the apostles. Indeed, he is the only man without a beard. In between Peter and John – and this is what is remarkable about the painting – there are five women. The Virgin Mary is in the centre, and to the left, with red hair, and wearing a scarlet cloak, is Mary Magdalene. She is carrying the jar of precious ointment with which she washed Christ’s feet in the house of Levi, and with which she was going to anoint his body in the tomb.

The Acts of the Apostles does not specify how many people were present at Pentecost, but earlier, after the Ascension, the eleven apostles had returned to Jerusalem and went to an ‘upper room’ – probably that represented in this picture. Acts 1:14 says, ‘These all continued with one accord in prayer and supplication, with the women, and Mary the mother of Jesus, and with his brethren’. Now, I’m not sure that we have the ‘brethren’ in this painting, unless they are counted among the apostles, but we do have ‘the women, and Mary the mother of Jesus’. It’s just that ‘the women’ are not usually represented. Who were they? Apart from the Virgin, and Mary Magdalene, the three others are potentially a third Mary, Joanna and Susanna. The first of these was with Mary Magdalene at the Resurrection (Matthew 28:1), while the other two are mentioned by Luke as people who supported Jesus (Luke 8:3).

Why do artists never include them? Well, my guess would be that none of the other artists were women. Suor Plautilla Nelli (1524-1588) is Florence’s first known woman artist. At the age of 14 she was put into a convent by her parents – hence the title ‘Suor’, meaning ‘Sister’ – standard practice at the time, as most families couldn’t afford dowries for more than one daughter. She entered the Convent of Santa Caterina on Piazza San Marco (it’s not there anymore), just over the square from San Marco itself, where Savonarola had made his mark as Prior. The nuns were overseen by the monks of San Marco, and although Savonarola was long dead (having organised the Bonfire of the Vanities, he was subjected to the same fate in 1498) his teaching lived on. He recommended that nuns should draw to stop them from becoming idle, and Nelli taught herself to paint: she never received any formal training, apparently. She is one of relatively few women mentioned by Vasari in The Lives of the Artists, and he thought that she, ‘would have done marvellous things if, like men, she had been able to study and to devote herself to drawing and copying living and natural things’. She seems to have become the chief artist for the Dominicans in Florence. If so, she was taking over this unofficial role from Fra Bartolomeo, whose work influenced her own in its broad, balanced, classicising forms – incredibly different from the ecstatic energy of late Botticelli, however much both were influenced by Savonarola.  She certainly inherited Fra Bartolomeo’s drawings, and possibly a lay figure – an articulated doll used as a model by artists – which was just as well, as, being a nun, she would never have had the opportunity to do life drawing from the nude. She even trained a number of her fellow nuns to work as her assistants, ending up with a sizeable workshop. By the end of the 16th Century, a third of the known women artists in Florence were Dominican nuns. Although she couldn’t sell her work, the convent could – and although she couldn’t leave the convent, her work travelled far afield: this Pentecost made it to Perugia, and is still to be found there, languishing in the Church of San Domenico. I shall finish with a rather sad photograph showing it falling out of what could be the original frame, with a couple of desultory plants sitting beside it. It looks even less remarkable here – until you stop and realise that, not only is the Virgin the focus of the painting (that was entirely traditional), but that there are four other women present, and they push the men to the edges. With five women taking centre stage and touched by the Holy Spirit, thus endowed with the ability to be heard and understood across the world, it is almost as if Suor Plautilla Nelli were advocating the ordination of women to the priesthood. 

Day 73 – Mary

Giotto, Stories from the Life of the Virgin, c. 1305, Scrovegni Chapel, Padua.

Welcome back to Scrovegni Saturday – we’re well into the story. Joachim has been rejected from the temple, and as William Caxton put it back in 1483, ‘And then Joachim, all confused for this thing, durst not go home for shame’ (POTD 66). Meanwhile, Anna is waiting at home, and an angel has announced the birth of a daughter. Joachim (not Zacharias – yes, I did stick in the wrong name last week…) gives a sacrifice to God, which is accepted, and an angel tells him to go and meet his wife at the Golden Gate. Will he go? Of course he will!

Joachim and Anna meet outside the Golden Gate to the City of Jerusalem and embrace. Giotto gives us no doubt of the fact that they are together, and united, as he doesn’t leave a single gap between the two forms. With the haloes on top of their heads, the self-contained arching form resembles nothing so much as the Golden Gate itself – which was probably Giotto’s intention. One of the epithets applied to Mary was Porta Coeli – the ‘Gate of Heaven’ – as the birth of Christ meant that we could be admitted into the presence of God. Joachim and Anna are part of that journey – the gate to the gate, if you like. 

Neither of them has come unaccompanied. One of the shepherds has made what I assume is a rare visit to the big city, probably just to make sure that Joachim actually gets there. I love the way he is slightly sheepish, just emerging into the scene from behind the picture frame: people think this type of ‘photographic’ cut-off originated with the Renaissance in the 15th Century, but as with so many other things, they learnt it from Giotto. Anna is chaperoned by her maid, who we last saw dutifully spinning on the porch. She is carrying an expensive fur-lined coat, presumably in case Joachim is chilly. As it is, he is dressed remarkably like Jesus, with a red cloak over a blue robe. There must be a reason for this – his role in our salvation is the most likely thing I can think of at the moment, but if I come up with a better idea, I’ll let you know!

And the kiss! Ah – the kiss! Always one of the true joys of this chapel, given the way he firmly clasps her shoulder, and she tenderly cradles his head between her hands, running her fingers through his beard. They go almost cross-eyed, looking at each other in such close proximity, and there is that sense of a nose-bump, narrowly avoided, as their lips touch. They just touch, with no sense of parting, and certainly no tongues – the ultimate chaste kiss. It was at this moment, some people believed, that the Virgin Mary was conceived. But very few people ever thought this – hers was not a virgin birth. However, it does represent the Immaculate Conception (POTD 71 &72), given the chastity of Anna and Joachim’s love. And let’s face it, you’re not going to show the conception in any other way, this is a chapel, for heaven’s sake, not the Palazzo Te (POTD 44 & 53). Look at the delicate transparency of Anna’s veil – and the careful attention paid to every single grey hair of Joachim’s head. It’s a miracle. It’s also the point in the story when things start to get interesting in terms of the arrangement of the paintings. 

First of all, we have a cast of characters – quite apart from Joachim and Anna, we have the shepherd, and the maid, who reappear from earlier paintings.

Also, we have a complete story – ‘Chapter 1’, if you like – starting with Joachim’s rejection from the temple, and ending here with his acceptance at the Golden Gate. Both buildings are angled inwards, each with its own entrance. Joachim’s role as protagonist is done now: he has come home, and his part of the story is over. At this point, we have to cross the chapel, and start at the top of the left-hand wall.

‘Chapter 2’ starts with the Birth of the Virgin. Mary has been born, and is washed and swaddled by two midwives, who are sitting on the ground: one of them is the trusty maid, showing her true value to the household, as she can perform more than one role. Anna sits up in bed, covered by a sheet and a rather grand bedspread. No, they didn’t have twins, this is a continuous narrative, with different stages of the story shown together. The maid was preparing a finer fabric to wrap around the swaddling clothes, and duly prettified and safely contained, Mary is presented to her mother. Friends have come round to visit the newborn miracle, and yet another turns up with a gift at the door. And if you think you recognise the setting, you would be right.

It is the same house that we saw on the opposite wall. I wouldn’t mind betting that it was the maid who took out the chest and bench to allow more guests to visit. Like all good theatre designers, Giotto has allowed the furniture to be flexible. It is the same: the same bedspread, the same curtain hanging from the same frame, but slightly shifted to enhance the narrative. The lighting is different, too: it’s the same building, but at a different time of day. In fact, it is night time: it looks dark through the window. I know the sky is still blue, but that is ‘heavenly background’ as much as anything else. It also needs to fit in with the other frescoes, and wouldn’t look that good if it were all black. Notice that, whereas Anna was kneeling in prayer, looking to the right (the direction of the narrative), it is now Mary who is handed over to the right. This is her story.

According the Golden Legend, when Mary was three, Anna and Joachim took her to the temple. This is from Caxton’s translation:

…they brought her to the temple with offerings. And there was about the temple, fifteen steps to ascend up to the temple, because the temple was high set. And no body might go to the altar of sacrifices that was without, but by the steps.  And then our Lady was set on the lowest step, and mounted up without any help as she had been of perfect age, and when they had performed their offering, they left their daughter in the temple with the other virgins, and they returned into their place. 

Two things are actually different here – one is that there are only 10 steps, rather than 15, and the other is that Mary has not set off on her own. Like any small child on their first day at school Anna has had to encourage her all the way to the top. Mind you, faced with that priest I don’t suppose most 3-year-olds would have been that keen. There’s no particular reason why Giotto should diverge from the text – but then, there was no particular reason why he should stick to every detail.

The Golden Legend doesn’t specify what the ‘offerings’ were, but they were clearly heavy. Joachim doesn’t carry them himself – they have a servant for that – and even though they only fill one basket, the servant is bent low by the weight. Giotto attempts a particularly daring foreshortening, quite hard to read from a distance, and one of the most unusual views of the human figure I know before the 16th Century.

It is the same temple as we saw in the very first painting – and yet we are on the other side. You see the same ciborium or ‘canopy’ over the altar, and the same raised pulpit, high enough over the screen for the entire congregation to see. These are features of medieval churches, of course, rather than having anything to do with Solomon’s temple, or, for that matter, a synagogue. One of my friends said it reminded him of a piece of theatrical scenery on wheels, and he’s absolutely right – Giotto has simply turned it round. I say ‘simply’ – this is a rather complicated thing to do, and, if we’re honest, it is another one of those theatrical tricks where it looks like the same building, but in reality it is slightly modified.

Mary lives with the other virgins (small ‘v’) in the temple until she is 14, when all of the others find suitable spouses. This is where I started back on the very first Scrovegni Saturday, POTD 31. If you re-read that, you will get the long story – but here it is, short. All the eligible bachelors were asked to come to the temple with rods, and place them on the altar. Nothing happened, so they put out a second call, and it turned out that an old guy called Joseph hadn’t come forward. When he did, his rod flowered, and a dove landed on it – so he got to marry Mary. The rest were furious. At this stage, they are only being betrothed – i.e. engaged – the wedding was to follow some time later. Now you might want to argue that this is not the same temple we saw before, but the reason for this comes from Caxton’s text. He talks of  ‘the altar of sacrifices that was without’ – which is the one under the ciborium, and the one which Joachim had attempted to go to before. For this part of the story we are clearly at an altar that is ‘within’.

After the betrothal, Mary was taken in procession to the house of her parents, followed by the other virgins, and led by a viol player, and a couple of elders. She is welcomed home by two ceremonial trumpeters. I’m afraid I don’t know why this particular part of the fresco is in such a bad condition – it is due to humidity, but I don’t know why that should have been so bad here. It might have something to do with the part of the Scrovegni Palace which was, until the 19th Century, behind this wall, or whatever happened to this bit of the wall when the Palace was destroyed. The two trumpets were clearly painted a secco – after the plaster had dried – meaning that the paint was not bound to the wall, and has completely gone. Alternately, they could have been gilded, although why the gold should go here, and not on the haloes, I don’t know. A bay window from the house makes it onto this wall: we’ll see more of that when we come back next week.

p.s. As suggested yesterday, I will be giving two online lectures this week:

• if you want to tune in to Artemisia on Monday morning at 11am, please email trish@summerleazegallery.co.uk

• if you would like to sign up for Seeing is Believing: van Eyck and the Art of Illusion at 6pm this Wednesday, 3 June, please go to the Art History Abroad website by clicking on the words Art History Abroad! Mix yourself a cocktail before you sign on – I will!

I’ll start updating the ‘diary’ on the website soon…

Day 72 – Immaculate Conception II

Diego Velázquez, The Immaculate Conception, 1618-19, National Gallery, London.

Don’t worry, this isn’t going to be a series! But it is a chance to talk about a very beautiful painting… and to bring us up to date with the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception. I explained yesterday (Picture Of The Day 71) that there were two main theories – one that Mary had been conceived with sin, and later ‘sanctified’, the second, that she was conceived free from original sin. The latter is the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, whereas the former is seen as the ‘Maculist’ doctrine. The adherence to these two doctrines was divided between the two leading Mendicant orders, with the Franciscans originating and then promoting the theory of the Immaculate Conception, while the Dominicans held firmly to the Maculist doctrine. The Spanish got increasingly worked up about this, and eventually King Phillip III (who is rarely mentioned in the annals of Art History) lobbied Pope Paul V (Uncle of Scipio Borghese, who owned many sculptures by Bernini, e.g. POTD 56, so is) to have the Doctrine of the Immaculate Conception declared dogma – i.e. an item of faith that is incontrovertibly true. Paul V didn’t go that far, but in 1617 he did issue a decree forbidding any public defence of the Maculist doctrine of sanctification. And the following year, Diego Velázquez painted this beautiful image.

You might think that it couldn’t look more different from the painting we saw yesterday, but, bearing in mind that Carlo Crivelli was working in the late 15th Century, and we are now in the early 17th, and given the vast stylistic difference, they are remarkably similar. Both feature the Virgin Mary, alone, standing, and praying. And in both, she has long blonde hair – this is certainly what counts as ‘blonde’ (‘rubia’, as it’s the Virgin) in Spain.  The fact that her hair is allowed to hang freely, undressed (even if it is partially covered in the Velázquez), implies that this woman is not of marriageable age – or, at least, not yet married – the implication being that she is a virgin.

Her hair seems to blow slightly in the breeze – and a sense of gentle movement flows throughout her entire body, with her young face, entirely unmarked by any blemish (the immaculate complexion?), turned slight to our left, with her hands inflected to our right. She looks down, with modesty and humility, her face illuminated from above and to the left – it’s so delicately painted that even her eyelashes cast a shadow. It is an entirely ‘sculptural’ depiction: young Diego may have started his training painting sculptures, which might have helped him to model form when painting on a flat surface. He was still young when he painted this – twenty, at most, when it was completed. Mary herself has a faint glow, with a gentle light radiating from her head, which is surrounded by a ring of twelve stars. And to her left and right there is a yellow glow on the inside of the clouds.

She stands on the moon, an inverted crescent, which becomes transparent, allowing a view of the distant mountains, and the landscape is populated with various symbols of her perfection – a fountain, a temple, trees and a ship. They are all there, although, if I’m honest, I can’t see them all on my rather shiny screen! Many of these derive from the Song of Solomon. For example, 4:15 mentions ‘A fountain of gardens, a well of living waters’. Yesterday I quoted the figure of ‘Wisdom’ from the book of Proverbs – she also speaks in Ecclesiasticus, and in 24:13 says, ‘I was exalted like a cedar in Libanus, and as a cypress tree upon the mountains of Hermon’ – hence the tall trees. I won’t go into everything, though. Overall, however, the imagery comes from the Book of Revelation, 12:1-3:

And there appeared a great wonder in heaven; a woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve stars: And she being with child cried, travailing in birth, and pained to be delivered. And there appeared another wonder in heaven; and behold a great red dragon, having seven heads and ten horns, and seven crowns upon his heads.

Not all of this will appear that relevant just yet… but the key part is the first verse ‘a woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve stars’. This vision of the Woman of the Apocalypse, who gave birth and defeated the ‘dragon’, was interpreted very early on as representing the Virgin Mary, and it was in this specific form that the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception would be represented in paintings. The National Gallery’s example is one of two related paintings, which Velázquez made as part of the same commission. Here is a detail of the second, John the Evangelist on the Island of Patmos.

It shows a surprisingly young, and Hispanic-looking, John the Evangelist, looking up to precisely the image evoked by the verses quoted above, even if the stars seem to have shifted towards the dragon.

When seen with the Immaculate Conception it becomes clear that they are a pair – John is having the very vision which will become the iconography of the other painting.  But this doesn’t explain the youth of John. Apart from historical reasons why the Book of Revelation couldn’t have been written by John the Evangelist, about which, if I’m honest, I know nothing, it was supposed to have happened late in his life, after a couple of attempts to martyr him. By the time he gets to Patmos he is usually shown as an old man with a long white beard. Here, he is still represented as if he were the youngest of the apostles. One theory to account for this is that the two models for John and Mary were the artist himself and his new, young wife: he married Juana Pacheco on 23 April 1618, five and a half weeks short of her sixteenth birthday. He was marrying his master’s daughter, in the same way that he would marry his elder daughter Francisca to one of his pupils, Juan Bautista del Mazo, when she was only 14… 

I mentioned Francisco Pacheco, Velázquez’ master, back in POTD 20, saying that, as well as painting, ‘His job was to make sure that the religious images were not heretical’ – and yes, he was involved with the Spanish Inquisition. I bet you weren’t expecting that, even though I have mentioned it before… Many of his thoughts and ideas were eventually published in ‘The Art of Painting’, which came out in 1649, five years after his death. Pacheco’s guidelines for the correct depiction of the Immaculate Conception are especially relevant:

Our Lady should be painted as a beautiful young girl, 12 or 13 years old, in the flower of her youth. She should be painted wearing a white tunic and a blue mantle. She is surrounded by the sun, an oval sun of white and ochre, which sweetly blends into the sky. Rays of light emanate from her head, around which is a ring of twelve stars. An imperial crown adorns her head, without, however, hiding the stars. Under her feet is the moon.

Velázquez follows most of these guidelines, if not all – there is no imperial crown, for example, although he does paint her tunic an imperial purple, rather than white. It’s worthwhile comparing Diego’s image with one painted by his master at about the same time.

Pacheco does include the imperial crown, but even he doesn’t paint a white tunic. There are some of the same symbolic elements at the bottom of the image as well, with a few extra for good measure, not to mention a portrait of the donor, Miguel Cid, a poet. This was painted in 1619, so potentially after the version by Velázquez, but there is little reason to doubt that the nature of the imagery – the iconography – was defined by the master. It’s just the style: what becomes immediately clear is that Velázquez was an infinitely better artist. All of the elements may be the same, or similar, but even in one of his earliest paintings Velázquez shows himself to be free of the last vestiges of Mannerism to which Pacheco is clinging. However artificial and symbolic the representation of the Immaculate Conception could appear, Velázquez manages to make it flow, and look entirely natural, and extremely beautiful.

The two images by Pacheco and Velázquez were undoubtedly painted in the rush of enthusiasm that flowed from Paul V’s decree of 1617 – and Pacheco painted several more. But this enthusiasm was not restricted to Spain, and spread across the whole Hispanic world.

Here, for example, is a detail from an announcement of the decree, dated 31 August 1617, which was published in Lima – it comes from the National Library of Peru. The coat of arms of Paul V Borghese, with its eagle and dragon (POTD 56) appears top left, and that of the Kingdom of Spain is top right. In the centre is an image of the ‘Immaculate’ not unlike these paintings. As it happens the name Immaculada is popular to this day, and Concepción is not unknown… But for Paul V the Immaculate Conception was still a doctrine, and not dogma. It was Pope Pius IX who finally declared it to be an essential belief for all Roman Catholics, and made the Feast of the Immaculate Conception (8 December) a holy day of obligation, on which all Catholics are supposed to attend mass. And that didn’t happen until 1854. By this stage the doctrine had been around for half a millennium… 

p.s. 1 If you had been expecting the Spanish Inquisition, you will have known that I was referring to Monty Python. I’ve always been a fan, but hadn’t seen any for years – decades even – and re-found them on NetFlix, where all four series and all of the films can be found. Their brand of surreal, irrational lunacy seems to fit the present time, even if issues of gender and race are problematic half a century on. I have always known that the foot that comes down at the end of the credits is taken from Bronzino’s Allegory with Venus and Cupid in the National Gallery, but I hadn’t realised what a regular visitor to the Gallery the animator Terry Gilliam must have been – there are figures taken from the collection peppered throughout the early series. I was especially delighted to see God the Father from Crivelli’s Immaculate Conception (yesterday’s POTD) appear at the end of the credits of series 1 to castigate a female nude. 

p.s. 2 I have finally been dragged kicking and screaming into the 21st Century, and have agreed to give a couple of zoom talks this week. The first, on Artemisia Gentileschi, is for the Summerleaze Gallery in Wiltshire. To be honest, I’m not quite sure how it’s going to work, but if any of you would like to join at 11.30 (UK time) on Monday morning, please email Patricia Scott Bolton on trish@summerleazegallery.co.uk and she will let you know! I’ll tell you about the second, currently scheduled for 6pm on Wednesday, if it happens, and if I’m allowed to!

p.s. 3 Inevitably the gradually easing of lockdown will mean that I’ll have to go and earn a living, which will mean less time, which will mean it might not be possible to sit and write about a Picture every Day… but I’m still thinking about that. Meanwhile, as I’ve said before (though not for a long time), if there’s anything you’d like me to talk about, please let me know!