Day 65 – Venice

Canaletto, Venice: The Basin of San Marco on Ascension Day, about 1740, National Gallery, London.

Yesterday was Ascension Day, and in Venice that always used to be one of the great days of the year. The celebration, known in the Venetian dialect as the Festa della Sensa, was associated with two historical events. On 9 May in the year 1000 the Venetians defeated the Slavic pirates who were threatening the Dalmatian coast, thus allowing the Venetians to begin their domination of the Adriatic Sea. The second took place in 1177, when the Doge welcomed both Pope and Holy Roman Emperor, who signed a treaty ending years of dispute between the two powers. In gratitude the Pope gave the Doge a ring he had blessed as a reward, a sign of Venice’s dominion over the sea. This was commemorated every year during the Festa della Sensa, which was also known as the Sposalizio del Mare – or ‘Marriage of the Sea’. The Doge was rowed out into the Venetian lagoon, where he threw a ring overboard, symbolically marrying the sea to La Serenissima – ‘The Most Serene Republic’, as Venice was known. The two were interdependent – Venice relied on the sea for its defence, for its trade, for its food, and the sea needed Venice… well… to defend it from everyone else, I suppose. I’m not sure that anyone had actually ever asked the sea if it wanted to marry Venice, but given that the relationship contained within it the age-old assumption that marriage is equivalent to domination, it seems unlikely.  All that aside, this is what the Festa looked like around the year 1740.

Canaletto, Venice: The Basin of San Marco on Ascension Day, about 1740 https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/NG4453

This is surely Venice as we see it now – or, at least, Canaletto’s great skill was always to capture Venice in a way that makes us think that this is how we see it now, although, in all probability, it never looked quite like this even when he painted it. But the wonderful thing is, most of these buildings are still there, and still look the same. Even the campanile, or bell tower, of San Marco looks the same, and that fell down at the beginning of the 20th Century. They rebuilt it, though, as a replica of the original. During the ceremony, the Doge would leave his palace on foot, and walk the relatively short distance to the Molo, or quay. He would progress to the State Barge, or Bucintoro, which is that great, gold galleon next to the quay in the middle of the painting. OK, I know it’s not a galleon, but I like alliteration (you might have noticed). When Enobarbus described Cleopatra’s vessel, he could have been describing the Bucintoro:

The barge she sat in, like a burnish'd throne, 
Burned on the water: the poop was beaten gold…

Nobody is entirely clear where the name bucintoro  (the ‘c’ is pronounced as in ‘butcher’) comes from, but a burcio was a traditional vessel used on the Venetian lagoon, and oro means gold. It could have been that. the English translation is ‘Bucentaur’, but I’ve never known it used in print. Canaletto paints the bucintoro with the dazzling shorthand of his mature style, using two tones of ochre, a darker one for the ground, and a lighter for the carved decoration – which is elaborate: there are figures all the way along. Towards the prow there are angels blowing trumpets, and, atop a vast shell, two figures carry a sword and a wreath, both in some way representing Venice: the figure with the sword is almost certainly Justice, one of the chief virtues Venice claimed. Remembering that Portia’s speech starting ‘the quality of Mercy is not strained’ occurs in a courtroom in Venice, I do wonder if Shakespeare ever got there… it has been suggested. To get to the bucintoro the Doge would have passed between the two columns which are visible behind the prow, the one on the right topped with the winged lion of St Mark, since 829 the main patron saint of Venice, and that on the left the earlier patron, that saint who killed a dragon, what was his name? Oh yes! Of course, St Theodore. And if you’ve never heard of St Theodore, you aren’t the only one. The theory is they sent people off to Alexandria to bring back the remains of St Mark, because a better-known saint would bring in more pilgrims. For which, read tourists. It seems to have worked. Behind the barge is the Biblioteca Marciana – the library of St Mark’s – and to the left of that, slightly set back, but also built out of stone, the Mint.

The Doge’s Palace is, of course, one of the most famous buildings in Venice. It started life as a defensive castle more or less at the mouth of the Grand Canal, its chapel dedicated to St Mark. The present façade dates to the 15thCentury. The arcade at the bottom is called the broglio, and you might hang around there to chat to your friends, or even to plot. If you did, in the broglio, that would be an imbroglio – one the many words we owe to Venice. The bridge on the right crosses the little canal, or rio, which goes under the Bridge of Sighs – people sighing because it leads to the prison, the plain, bulky, and impenetrable building on the far right of the painting. And to the left of the Palace, just next to the far end of the broglio, you can just see the temporary wooden structure erected for spectators eager to see the Doge leaving the Palace (the door is around the corner there, opposite the base of the campanile) and heading to the Bucintoro.

On the far right of this detail is the column topped by the statue of St Theodore. Just above him and to the left is a rather large chimney: that is the chimney of the Mint, where the furnace would melt the metal for the coin of the republic to be struck. The Italian word for Mint is ‘Zecca’, a word which comes from the Arabic ‘sicca’, meaning the die used to strike a coin, or even the coin itself. Being on the sea, the trade with ‘the East’ was always hugely important for Venice, and much of their dialect – and, for that matter, Italian as a whole – reflects this. They made some very small coins there, and, as you may know from tortellini, Italian diminutives use the ending ‘-ino’. So a very small coin, from the Zecca, was called a Zecchino – which is where we get the word ‘sequin’. Beyond the Mint is a red brick building which, however many times you have been to Venice, you will not remember. It is the grain store, and you won’t remember it because it spoilt Napoleon’s view from the apartments on St Mark’s Square across the lagoon – so he had it knocked down. There is now a fairly non-descript garden in its place. For now, let us leave it there, and imagine what it would be like to approach Venice from the sea. The first building you would pick out would inevitably be the Doge’s Palace, its grand, imposing bulk getting more solid the further up it goes, almost as if it was itself floating on the waves. It is the source of power. To the right is the prison – so if you, as a visitor, do wrong, that is where you would end up. Would that be true Justice – which was, as we’ve said, one of Venice’s favourite Virtues? Well, yes, because on the other side of the Palace is the Library – so the Justice of the ruling class is based on the knowledge held in the Library. Next to that, is the Mint – they are a wealthy state – and then the grain store – they are also a well-fed state. And not only that, they are watched over by St Mark, who rests just behind the Palace in the Basilica which developed from the small castle chapel. So as you approach you see a powerful, just, and knowledgeable state, wealthy, well-fed, and strong, ready to punish any threat to its stability. You’d be on your guard when you stepped off your boat.

Just to the left of the mouth of the Grand Canal we see the wonderful Church of Santa Maria della Salute – St Mary of Good Health – built at the request of a grateful public to thank the Virgin Mary for saving them from the plague of 1630-31. However it took 50 years to build, partly because in the 17th Century, Venice was not especially wealthy. Its heyday had long gone, starting with the Fall of Constantinople, over which it had had a tight hold, in 1453. By the 16th Century the Portuguese had the most important trade routes, only to be pipped at the post by the Spanish. By the 17th Century it was the Dutch, and the British in the 18th… By the time this view was painted Venice had no real trade, but, as it was a merchant city to its very core, it had to sell. 

Canaletto, Venice: The Basin of San Marco on Ascension Day, about 1740 https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/NG4453

So it sold itself. And the great ceremonies which had held society together for centuries became the great tourist attractions, and Canaletto painted them for the Grand Tourists to take back home with them. There are more views of Venice by Canaletto in one room of the National Gallery in London than you will find in all of the public collections in Venice put together. He even painted the tourists themselves – look at the boat in the bottom left: just under the yellow parasol a tour guide is pointing out the main features of the city to his attentive clients. That could have been me! And if you think tourism is bad now (well, not just now, of course) then look at this.

All across the pavements of the Molo, and in the arcade above the broglio – every dot a different face, every dash another hat. I love this detail: if you were to get in even closer, you would think it was the work of an abstract artist of the 1950s – it has both a wonderful sense of freedom, and an unnerving precision. And if you think tourists are bad now – well – back then they had no fear.

Day 64 – Ascension

Pietro Perugino, The Ascension of Christ, 1495-98, Musée des beaux-arts, Lyon.

Today is the Feast of the Ascension, forty days after Easter, when Jesus went up into Heaven – Jesus himself makes three references to it, before it has happened, in the Gospel of St John, and it is described in both the Gospel of St Luke and the Acts of the Apostles. This is what is says in Luke 24, verses 50-51:

And he led them out as far as to Bethany, and he lifted up his hands, and blessed them. And it came to pass, while he blessed them, he was parted from them, and carried up into heaven.

When Pietro Perugino came to paint this event for the Benedictine monks of San Pietro, just outside the walls of Perugia, he chose to show Jesus doing just as Luke says, still in the act of lifting up his hands and blessing them. But he also chose to paint fourteen people standing on the ground, which intrigues me. Luke does not say how many people were there, although the Ascension follows on, with a few intervening episodes, from the Supper at Emmaus (Picture Of The Day 30), after which the two pilgrims went and found ‘the eleven gathered together, and them that were with them’.  That was, theoretically, forty days before the Ascension, according to the Acts of the Apostles, which likewise does not specify who was there, but the ‘eleven’ mentioned by Luke were the remaining apostles, given that Judas had committed suicide. So how come there are fourteen here? Are the other three ‘them that were with them’?

The central figure is, of course, the Virgin Mary. There is nothing in the Bible to say that she was there – but then, there is no reason to suppose that she wouldn’t be, and it became a standard part of the iconography of the Ascension (i.e. the way that it is depicted) to include her. And, being Mary, she must be in the middle. She looks up towards her son, although she is awkwardly placed to do so, as her halo appears to be in front of the mandorla (the almond-shaped glory – see POTD 42) within which Christ stands. The Apostles have given her space, making her more prominent, and her head stands out clearly against the pale sky behind her. Perugino has painted a typical Umbrian bowl landscape (an idea he would pass on to Raphael – see POTD 23), with the horizon level to the right and left, and curving down in the centre, just like a bowl: it frames Mary’s head perfectly. The detail of this landscape is enchanting. Delicately picked out to the left of the Virgin’s right shoulder is a small town with turrets, towers and a domed church, and there is another chapel on a distant hill.  Standing next to Mary, to our left, we see a man in yellow and blue, with short grey hair and beard, holding a key – this is St Peter, in his typical colours, and he is holding the key to the kingdom of Heaven. To our right of Mary, with a long dark beard and receding hairline, wearing a red cloak and holding a sword, is St Paul. That is, figuratively, a two-edged sword – it represents both his persecution of the Christians as Saul, and also, his own martyrdom by beheading. The only problem with St Paul being there is that the Ascension happened in Acts chapter 1, whereas Saul was not converted until chapter 9 – so he shouldn’t be there yet. The painting is clearly a ‘statement’, rather than a narrative, and shows us the status he would later have as one of the two leaders of the Church after Christ.

The formal, symmetrical arrangement – with everyone facing front – is a clue to that. None of them are really in a good position to see Jesus, and only two have shifted to get a better view. On the left, an apostle in red and green has his back to us, and looks up at Jesus: he is a repoussoir, and is there to make us look into the picture, and up to Jesus. On our right, the man in yellow and blue closes off the composition, and redirects our attention back into the painting. In case we weren’t feeling entirely present, two of the apostles are looking out at us, just to make sure that we are paying attention (they are examples of Alberti’s ‘chorus’ figure – POTD 32). But even with the unwarranted – but symbolic – addition of Paul, and the understandable inclusion of Mary, there is still one person too many. The last must be St Matthias, appointed to replace Judas – but even that shouldn’t work, as he wasn’t chosen until the end of Chapter 1, and the Ascension is towards the beginning. This just goes to confirm the suggestion that this painting is not a simple ‘narrative’, but a theological statement about the implications of the Ascension, in which the presence of the apostles, with the addition of Mary and Paul, is vital. It basically represents Jesus saying  ‘now over to you’. The monastery for which this was painted was dedicated to St Peter, who has precedent among the other figures here, as he does in Giotto’s Last Judgement (POTD 38), given that he stands at the right hand of God – or, as Jesus has now ‘gone up’, at the right hand of the Mother of God. As all popes claim their authority from Jesus’ charge to Peter – ‘And I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven’ – the painting is an essential statement about the nature of the papacy and, if we include the apostles, the priesthood. Basically, this painting represents the beginning of ‘The Church’.

The upward gazes of the people on the ground are essential, as otherwise there is nothing to connect them with everything in the sky. Mary’s halo may overlap the mandorla, and her head might be in front of the sky – but the men have their feet firmly on the ground, and their heads are in front of the distant hills. Only Peter’s arm reaches up, otherwise Earth and Heaven are separate. Even the lowest angels have their feet poised delicately on tiny clouds some way above the horizon – they then lean precipitously far forward, looking down to the onlookers and pointing up. How do you communicate a sense of movement in something so balanced and orderly? You point. Their gestures tell us to look up to Jesus, and also that Jesus himself is heading upwards. If we didn’t get the hint, then we can read their scrolls, waving like ribbons, both of which carry inscriptions relating to the Ascension. Or we could, if we had the time…

Four angels at the top of the painting stand on slightly more substantial clouds, playing music to accompany Christ’s departure. He stands within the mandorla, his right foot planted firmly on a cloud, and his left resting delicately, if slightly comically, on the head of a cherub, his big toe curving comfortably round its scalp. He wears the most striking red robe – this is hardly the shroud-cum-toga we have seen before (e.g. POTD 24 & 25), although it does remind me of the surprising red loincloth in Raphael’s Mond Crucifixion (POTD 23). Maybe it was an Umbrian thing, but it certainly refers to the Byzantine use of the Imperial purple – Jesus is King, after all.

Perugino is never given enough credit. Look at the angel on our left, playing the harp. The foreshortening on that harp is breathtaking. And look at the shadow of his plucking hand on the wooden frame. He was very good. The mandorla, too, is beautifully constructed, and seems to be made of concentric rainbows. The colours are not in the right order, and green seems to predominate, but notice how the colours are reversed – this is exactly what happens with a double rainbow – I feel sure that Perugino must have seen one. But why a rainbow? I suspect it might be something to do with the account of the Ascension in the Acts of the Apostles. This is Acts 1:9-11:

…while they beheld, he was taken up; and a cloud received him out of their sight. And while they looked stedfastly toward heaven as he went up, behold, two men stood by them in white apparel; Which also said, Ye men of Galilee, why stand ye gazing up into heaven? this same Jesus, which is taken up from you into heaven, shall so come in like manner as ye have seen him go into heaven.

I love the idea that, after he’d had gone, they were still standing, staring into the sky in disbelief, and then two angels came along and told them off… They then also said that he would come back, ‘in like manner as you have seen him go’. There is, of course, a description of Jesus’ return in the Book of Revelation. In chapter 4 verse 3 it says, ‘and there was a rainbow round about the throne, in sight like unto an emerald’. So, if he is going to come as he went, he must have gone surrounded by a rainbow ‘like unto an emerald’ – which might just explain the predominance of green.

Luke says of Jesus, ‘he lifted up his hands, and blessed them’ – and that is precisely what he is doing. Both hands are raised – you can see the wounds from the nails in each – and while the right is blessing, the left points in the direction of travel. This could be an explanation to the onlookers or an instruction for the angels – but it also ensures that we know where to look next.  And that is at the painting which was – and fortunately still is – above this one.

Jesus is pointing up to his Father – who is looking down, also blessing, while peering through a dark blue ring. I suspect various untoward things have happened to this painting in the past. Indeed, I know they have. If I could get into a library and find the right book, I could look it up, but I suspect there was an additional framing element around God, and the dark blue represents its absence, with clouds added on, and the wings of cherubim extended to disguise the fact that something is missing. The Ascension was originally part of a polyptych with fifteen panels – this lunette was above the Ascension, there were two prophets in roundels, one on either side, and eleven predella panels running along the bottom. All but one of these survive, scattered between the Vatican and various French museums. It was broken up when the choir of San Pietro in Perugia was restructured in the 16th Century, although the paintings remained within the monastery, only to be ‘requisitioned’ by Napoleon’s troops many years later. However, in 1816, after Waterloo, they were due to go back to the Pope – but Pius VII decided he would give them to Lyon, in gratitude to the City for its kindnesses in years gone by.  

This is how the two panels in Lyon are exhibited today. The frame is relatively recent, as the lunette spent some time in Paris, and only returned to Lyon in 1952, but there is no doubt that the two panels should be seen in this configuration. The central axis, from Mary through Jesus and up to God, is of prime importance, as is the sense of ceremony evoked by the symmetry of the composition, and by its planar disposition. The arrangement of the angels in the sky in particular is like a filigree screen, although there are subtle, and telling, variations in depth. Mary stands in front of Peter and Paul, who are further forward than the other apostles – with the exception of the two framing figures, who funnel our attention inwards and up. Around Jesus, the two lower angels are in front of the mandorla, whereas the four musicians are further back, a subtlety of placement that contradicts our initial sense that everything is on one plane. It makes the whole thing shimmer, a magical vibration that disrupts the fabric of time. Here is some music to listen to while you look: Ascending into Heaven, by Judith Weir.

Day 63 – Ecstasy

Gian Lorenzo Bernini, The Ecstasy of St Theresa, 1647-52, Santa Maria della Vittoria, Rome.

I’ve said it before: the Baroque is theatrical. Well, the audience is gathering… 

Already the Cornaro family have bagged the best spots in the boxes on either side of the stage – those Venetians like a bit of theatre. They are the relatives of Cardinal Federico Cornaro, who was Patriarch of Venice from 1631 until 1644, which is when he resigned the post, and participated in the conclave which elected Pope Innocent X. Unlike Popes before and after, Innocent didn’t like Bernini, leaving the artist free to work for Cornaro, who commissioned his funerary chapel in 1647. It took five years to finish, which fortunately wasn’t too long: Cornaro died the year after completion. He’s second from the right on the right hand side. Bernini smartly gets him to chat to the person on his left – so he is looking out towards us, and we can see him better than any other figure.

The audience are seated, as I said, although others have taken to the air. Bernini was a master of Gesamtkunstwerk, a German word meaning ‘all the arts together’: sculpture, architecture and painting all contribute to this ensemble, and Bernini was a dab hand at each. Not that he had to do all three by this stage in his career, as he had a vast workshop with many assistants, and they’ve really raised the roof for this one. We can see the Holy Spirit descending in a glory of golden light, surrounded by the heavenly host, who are flying in or already in attendance, floating on the clouds which cover the vault and even obscure part of the window. The entrance arch to the chapel is also thronging with angels, modelled in stucco (a form of plaster).

There is even another audience member looking up from the pit: a skeleton raising its hands in prayer, reminding us that this is, after all, a funerary chapel. Its gesture – with hands together but elbows apart, was one which Bernini used to create interesting views when you were likely to get a number of different views of a sculpture – but it works equally well to create a sculptural effect here – particularly as the hands go to our left, while the skeleton looks up to our right, remarkably vivacious for one so dead. Maybe this is intended not only as a memento mori but also as a memento resurrectionis (or whatever that would be in Latin). The pietra dura, or ‘hard stone’, inlay of the pavement adds to all the other materials on view – from the stained glass, the frescoed ceiling, the stucco angels and the polychrome marble architecture, to the white Carrara marble sculptures. Don’t make the mistake of thinking of this as just a sculpture – it is far more than that: it is everything. But where do we fit in? With the boxes, the gods and the pit already taken, where do we find a space to watch the spectacle? Where else but the orchestra stalls.

So here we are, looking up to the drama itself. Bernini has already drawn back the curtain, and through the proscenium arch we see a woman reclining on a cloud, and a young man with wings holding a golden arrow. If we weren’t in a church you would swear he was Cupid. Some people still swear, to be honest. Bernini seems to have created a bubble in reality, the pairs of twinned columns supporting a triangular pediment which curves out towards us, while the back wall of this visionary space curves away. A supernatural light streams down from above along golden beams of light. If you are patient, you can even find a place in the front row.

This vision we are witnessing is part of a sculptural – or even architectural – altarpiece. Its function is made clear by the relief of the Last Supper on the front of the altar itself: this is where the Mass, as instituted at the Last Supper, is performed. And here, it would have been a funerary mass, performed for the soul of Federico Cornaro. The relief is cast in gilded bronze – two more materials that Bernini has brought into play. The members of the Cornaro family on either side are effectively donor portraits, familiar from many Renaissance paintings, but given new life, as they now have solid form. The angel is young, and smiles down at St Theresa, holding the arrow delicately in his right hand, while lifting her robe with his left. She seems unaware of his presence, eyes closed – or almost closed – lips parted, left hand and foot hanging down from the edge of the cloud on which she appears to be transported in ecstasy, her right foot poised on the cloud itself. As ever with Bernini the quality of the materials is so very specific. The angel’s dress is thin, and finely wrinkled, a light cotton presumably, like the surplices worn by choir boys, although curiously off the shoulder. Her habit is thicker, with fuller, more rounded folds, the textile equivalent of her heavy limbs – my guess would be wool. The cloud looks oddly rough – but how else would you get the nebulous, formless sense of an object without substance?

St Theresa of Ávila, a visionary Spanish nun of the 16th Century, had only recently been canonised – well, only 25 years before the commission, on 12 March 1622. At the same ceremony Pope Gregory XV also welcomed St Ignatius Loyola, founder of the Jesuit order, into the Canon of Saints. Both were important for the Counter Reformation because of both their faith and their deeds. However, Gregory is sure to have had an ulterior motive. Canonising two Spanish saints the year after the 12-year truce in the 80 years war between Spain and the Protestant Netherlands had ended was surely not coincidental: he was promoting two more top rank soldiers for the Church Militant in the fight against the Protestant threat. Theresa’s visions had a number of impacts on the History of Art – but no one could have foreseen this particular sculpture as one of them. On first sight, one is left asking how Bernini could dream up such a sensuous subject for the focus of our contemplation of the Divine – but fortunately, Theresa wrote an account of her life and experiences, so we can find out for ourselves. These extracts are from David Lewis’s 1904 translation, which you can find here – you need to go to Book XXIX.

Our Lord was pleased that I should have at times a vision of this kind: I saw an angel close by me, on my left side, in bodily form… He was not large, but small of stature, and most beautiful – his face burning, as if he were one of the highest angels, who seem to be all of fire: they must be those whom we call cherubim. Their names they never tell me; but I see very well that there is in heaven so great a difference between one angel and another, and between these and the others, that I cannot explain it.

So there we have it, ‘small of stature, and most beautiful’.  But then, even in heaven there is ‘so great a difference between one angel and another…’ – a statement which always reminds me of Goneril’s line in King Lear, spoken as her thrusting young lover Edmund departs, and just before the arrival of her rather ineffectual husband: 

Oh, the difference of man and man!
To thee a woman’s services are due.

But maybe that’s a distraction? There are, after all, nine choirs of angels – remind me to tell you about them another time. But why was this particular angel there? This is how the vision proceeds:

I saw in his hand a long spear of gold, and at the iron’s point there seemed to be a little fire. He appeared to me to be thrusting it at times into my heart, and to pierce my very entrails; when he drew it out, he seemed to draw them out also, and to leave me all on fire with a great love of God. The pain was so great, that it made me moan; and yet so surpassing was the sweetness of this excessive pain, that I could not wish to be rid of it. 

And this is the ecstasy in which we see her, the angel about to thrust, and she, moaning at the sweetness of the excessive pain. On seeing the sculpture in 1739 the French connoisseur Charles de Brosses cynically remarked, ‘If that is divine love, then I know it well’. I can see his point, and yet… the couple float so miraculously, they seem suspended in stasis outside of our world, protected by the architectural forms that wrap around them, holding them in an embrace, lit by the magical, manipulated light: they are divine. Yet we are allowed to see them, witnessed as they are by sculptural donors, carved and painted angels, and a pietra dura skeleton. We too have our place, transfixed along the altar rail. The last word goes to Theresa:

The soul is satisfied now with nothing less than God. The pain is not bodily, but spiritual; though the body has its share in it, even a large one. It is a caressing of love so sweet which now takes place between the soul and God, that I pray God of His goodness to make him experience it who may think that I am lying.

Day 62 – Portia

Elisabetta Sirani, Portia wounding her Thigh, 1664, Cassa di Risparmio, Bologna.

One of the questions I have been asked several times while teaching – although not often – is ‘How do you know that? Is it the artist’s idea, or is it your interpretation?’ and it can be a difficult question to answer, because, after a couple of decades of study and experience you sometimes realise you don’t actually know where the ideas originally came from. And that is a good thing, as it makes you go back to the original source. With this particular painting we are lucky that the artist, Elisabetta Sirani, was particularly thorough: she kept a record of everything she painted.

This is what she wrote about today’s picture:

A Portia in the act of wounding herself in the thigh, when she desired to know of the plot that worried her husband, an overdoor painting, and in the distance in the other room women, who are at work, for Simone Tassi.

This is particularly useful, as it tells us not only the subject of the painting – Portia – but also where the painting was going to go – over a door – and who had commissioned it. The patron, Simone Tassi, was a keen collector of her work: when he died, he owned 66 paintings of which at least five were by her, more than any other single artist in his collection. He had 16th and 17th century paintings (i.e. ‘modern’ art), the most famous of the ‘moderns’ being Guercino. Like so many of the successful women artists, Sirani was initially trained by her father, who was himself one of the leading students of Guido Reni. Neither Guercino nor Reni are especially famous today, but they were leading members of the School of Bologna. As home to Europe’s oldest University (and so, some would say, the World’s), Bologna had a well-informed and liberal outlook, and women were more likely to succeed there than anywhere else. By the time Elisabetta was 16, her father was no longer able to work – gout was to blame, apparently – and she took over the workshop. However, she died at the age of 27 – no one knows why – but in her frustratingly short career she produced around 200 paintings. Today’s is one of her last.

21st Century museum displays are generally clearer than those of centuries past, with paintings given plenty of space, and hung roughly at eye-level. The idea of sticking paintings above a door might seem unusual, but it was common practice, going back to the 15th Century at least. Given the high-ceilinged rooms that anyone commissioning paintings would have had, there would always have been a bit of dead space above the door. It might seem like a way of marginalising an image, but as people always have to use doors they would regularly look in that direction – even if only when leaving – so it could be quite a good place to have your paintings seen, as long as you knew how to make your work stand out. And of course, Sirani did. The format is right, for a start: ‘landscape’, probably the width of the door itself, and not too high, so that the top would not be in shadow. The principal figure is in the foreground, making her big and bold and easy to see – especially as she is dressed in a rich red. And there is also quite a lot of lighter flesh, grabbing our attention to the most significant parts of the painting – face, hands and leg. The heel of the foot is cut off too, as if the top of the door frame – or for that matter the frame of the picture itself – has got in the way, giving us the sense that we are looking up at this woman from below. The subject also works conceptually as an overdoor painting, given that it includes people in different rooms – the door itself could almost be part of the narrative. 

Portia was the wife of Brutus, the friend of Caesar who seemed least likely to plot against him. As Sirani says, she wanted to know more about the ‘plot that worried her husband’, and having become aware that something must be afoot, she wanted her husband to trust her – so she puts herself to the test. Her story is reported by Plutarch in his Parallel Lives dating from the beginning of the second century. This is from the Loeb edition of 1918:

Porcia [sic], being of an affectionate nature, fond of her husband, and full of sensible pride, did not try to question her husband about his secrets until she had put herself to the following test. She took a little knife, such as barbers use to cut the finger nails, and after banishing all her attendants from her chamber, made a deep gash in her thigh, so that there was a copious flow of blood, and after a little while violent pains and chills and fever followed from the wound. Seeing that Brutus was disturbed and greatly distressed, in the height of her anguish she spoke to him thus: “Brutus, I am Cato’s daughter, and I was brought into thy house, not, like a mere concubine, to share thy bed and board merely, but to be a partner in thy joys, and a partner in thy troubles. Thou, indeed, art faultless as a husband; but how can I show thee any grateful service if I am to share neither thy secret suffering nor the anxiety which craves a loyal confidant? I know that woman’s nature is thought too weak to endure a secret; but good rearing and excellent companionship go far towards strengthening the character, and it is my happy lot to be both the daughter of Cato and the wife of Brutus. Before this I put less confidence in these advantages, but now I know that I am superior even to pain.” Thus having spoken, she showed him her wound and explained her test; whereupon Brutus, amazed, and lifting his hands to heaven, prayed that he might succeed in his undertaking and thus show himself a worthy husband of Porcia.

Sirani clearly read this text attentively, even down to details like the ‘little knife’ used ‘to cut the finger nails’. That is not a large dagger she is holding in her right hand, but something smaller, taken from the case she holds in her left, which must be some form of 17th Century personal grooming kit (the story may be ancient, but the dress is modern). Placed at the bottom of the painting, this would have been clearly visible, even above the door, especially as it’s grey and silver geometric forms contrast with the richly coloured background of the red and gold brocade. The latter is lovingly depicted with short brushstrokes of creams and oranges, revealing the lustre of the gold threads and the undulations of the fabric. The brocade contrasts with the sleeve of the white blouse, which is applied freely with laden brushes, a bravura display of painterly skill. 

Petrarch tells us that Portia had taken care to banish all her attendants from her chamber – and we can see them in the background, through two doorways, a baroque sewing circle, with the oldest doing nothing but gesturing, a stereotypical gossip. Although we shouldn’t dismiss them – after all, Sirani talks of women ‘who are at work‘. Nevertheless, the artist has taken care to distance Portia from her companions not just physically, but also in terms of character: she is determined, she is active, and she is strong. The knife is firmly clasped, pointing downwards, although her thigh is already wounded and blood already flows. The threatened repeated stabbing is made more dynamic by painting the knife in front of a doorframe, the vertical lines of its architectural form catching the light like the knife, and connecting the weapon with the wound. In all of this, her face remains placid.

It is the red that dominates – her dress, the dress of the woman spinning in the background and the chair all circle round the wound, which seems to show three puncture marks, already, at least. The gold plays a complementary role, grabbing our attention at the bottom of the image, and echoing in the chain across her shoulder, at a diagonal which emphasizes the disarray of her dress, while also drawing our eye back down to the blood. And she signs the painting, subtly, with an equivalent yellow, along the bottom of the back of the chair, just above the tassels.

It would be great to know who chose the subject. Did Tassi commission a Portia from Sirani, or did he ask for any painting, and she wanted to do this? Either way, it makes its point. Men can get on and do things, whether they are good at it or not (I’m sure you can think of one or two examples just now), but women have to prove their worth. After Sirani’s father became incapacitated she was the family’s principal breadwinner, and also had to care for her younger siblings.  She even trained two of her younger sisters to paint, and earned money by teaching: she set up the first school for women artists. It’s hardly surprising she died young – stress-related illnesses are the most commonly cited hypotheses. But there are questions about her status as a proto-feminist: yes, a strong woman, trying to take her place in a man’s world, but also, a woman in her chamber, her skirts lifted and her shoulder revealed. It’s a heady mixture. But it does make the point that this woman is truly determined. And by this woman, I mean these: Portia – and Elisabetta.

Day 61 – …the Virgin and Child

Sir Peter Lely, …the Virgin and Child, 1664. National Portrait Gallery, London.

Last Monday we looked at Sir Anthony van Dyck’s Cupid and Psyche painted for Charles I (Picture Of The Day 54), which I suggested was quite possibly more than a little sacrilegious from a Catholic point of view. My precise words were ‘It’s entirely outrageous’. So this Monday, I wanted to balance that out with something altogether respectable from the Stuart Court, this painting of the Virgin and Child, glowing with health and happiness, by Sir Peter Lely. 

Like most great British artists of the time, Lely wasn’t British at all, having been born in the Netherlands in 1618. He trained in Haarlem, and was accepted as a Master of the Artists’ Guild there in 1637. It seems more than likely that he would have known Judith Leyster (POTD 34), who became a Master of the same guild four years earlier, when Lely would have been 15 and presumably already well into his apprenticeship. He arrived in London some time around 1643, and his talent meant that before long he was painting portraits for Charles I. Then, when Charles, for obvious historical reasons, had no head for portraits, he carried straight on painting Oliver Cromwell. With the Restoration in 1660 Charles II knew that, to be accepted as King, he had to look like a King, and people had to know what that looked like – so one of the first things he did on his return to England was to appoint two Royal Portraitists – Lely became Principal Painter in Ordinary in 1661.

Painting the Virgin and Child seems like a curious choice for Lely, a Dutch artist, who grew up and trained in Protestant Haarlem, and who was now working in a Protestant court – even if both old King and new had Catholic wives. It’s an especially lush image, though, the rich blue of Mary’s cloak glowing with the clarity and wholesomeness of a Madonna by Sassoferrato, the Italian Baroque artist whose work constituted a Raphaelesque revival. The parallels with Raphael can be seen here too: the Madonna and Child lean towards each other, creating the pyramidal composition typical of the High Renaissance. This is strengthened at the base by the blue horizontal of the cloak, reaching from Mary’s knees to the folds by her hips. Her posture – upright back and horizontal left leg – echoes the verticality of the fluted classical column and the horizontal cornice or capital on which Jesus rests his feet. All of these compositional devices serve to frame him better. He must be supported by his Mother’s left hand, as his feet barely touch the surface. They reach towards each other with touching affection, but look out to us, subtle smiles on their lips – and maybe a slightly sleepy look in Mary’s eyes. Well, I’m sure that even holy babies can keep you awake.

I first saw the Virgin and Child at the end of January in the British Baroque exhibition at Tate Britain, which sadly closed a month before it was due to, for obvious reasons.  A pity – it was a revelation. The Lely was hung next to the painting on the right here, and not so far away from the one on the left. The latter is the not-so-obviously Catholic (from this portrait, anyway) Catherine of Braganza. She arrived from Portugal in 1662 to take up her position as Queen, and she and Charles were married twice – a secret, Catholic ceremony followed by a public, Protestant one. This might make it look as if Charles had appointed two Court artists before one wife, but the contract had already been signed the year before – not that she was present at the time. But then, negotiations had begun during the reign of Charles I: by the time he was beheaded in 1649 she was still only 10. When finally married, at the advanced age of 23, her dowry included Tangiers and what was then called ‘The Seven Islands of Bombay’ – the British Empire started here, effectively. She was allowed to practice Catholicism, and even had her own Chapel. She also had her own artist, Jacob Huysmans, who painted both of these portraits. Again, as a great British artist, he was Flemish – and so Catholic – having been born in Antwerp in 1633.

Catharine’s portrait shows her in that guise favoured by more than one Queen, the Shepherdess. After all, she would be able to look after her flock: Charles’s subjects were now her own. It was painted early in her reign, and is packed full of symbols of her hoped-for fecundity – the ducks in the bottom left, the lambs, the flowers carried by the cherub, the cherubs themselves (there are more in the background), and especially the orange blossom in her hair. She calmly strokes the head of a particularly docile lamb, the implication being that she is equally meek and mild: this sweet girl provides no militant Catholic threat. OK, so it’s a very low-cut dress, but her first official portrait was so square-laced it looked as if she would never fit into Charles II’s court.

But what is its relationship to the other painting? It depicts John the Baptist as a rather gawky teenager, complete with long, lustrous and above all healthy Stuart hair. You wouldn’t get hair like that on a diet of honey and locusts. He has the softest of camel skins wrapped around his right arm, with an off-the-shoulder blouse of the subtlest royal purple, matched with a pale pink cloak. In the crook of his left arm is a bamboo cross wrapped round with a small scroll bearing the greeting ‘Ecce Agnus Dei’ – ‘Behold the Lamb of God’ – with which John greeted Jesus. Another docile lamb (clearly one of Huysman’s specialities) sits cross-legged beside him. His right hand points, as if illustrating the word ‘Behold’, but he doesn’t seem to have the energy to lift it up high enough to point at the lamb. Typical teenager. Despite this diffidence, I suspect that somewhere in the background Huysman’s inspiration was Caravaggio. And however you interpret whatever I’ve just said, I do think it’s a rather elegant painting, and really rather surprising when you read what has been painted in the top left hand corner: ‘Duke of Monmouth’. Who was he? You may well ask. He was James Scott, and in case that doesn’t help, he was the son of Lucy Walter. Still not helping? He was the eldest illegitimate son of Charles II, and this was painted at the earliest in 1663 just after Charles had ennobled his son, and even gone as far as bestowing him with the Order of the Garter. Evil to him who evil thinks! From this point onwards he was regularly seen in the company of the King and Queen – a thorn in her side, perhaps, but it’s a very clever portrait. According to the Bible, John the Baptist was asked if he was the Messiah, to which he replied that he was a voice crying in the wilderness ‘Prepare ye the way of the Lord’. The relevance to the contemporary situation would have been clear: the Duke of Monmouth was not the King’s legitimate heir – but one was on the way, thanks to Catherine. Having him painted by Huysmans – her artist – makes it look like she was totally happy about it. Tragically, despite several pregnancies, none of Catherine’s children lived. She must have led a very difficult life.

But why did the curators of the British Baroque exhibition hang the portrait of Monmouth, dressed up as John the Baptist, next to Lely’s Virgin and Child? Is it simply to fulfil the promise of the scroll, ‘Behold the Lamb of God’ by putting a painting of Jesus next to it? Come to think of it, it is a little unusual for Jesus and Mary to have such dark shiny hair – unless you’re in Spain – you could even argue a family resemblance with John the Baptist, I suppose. Well, maybe I should give you the full title of this painting. Naughty of me not to have done so before, really:

Barbara Palmer (née Villiers), Duchess of Cleveland with her son, probably Charles FitzRoy, as the Virgin and Child

So yes, that’s the reason – like James, Duke of Monmouth, as St John the Baptist it is another portrait of someone playing a role, someone in fancy dress, a genre which was rather popular in portraiture during the Stuart dynasty. But who was Barbara Villiers? The favourite mistress of Charles II in the 1660s. And Charles FitzRoy? Well, ‘Fitz’ comes from the French ‘Fils’ meaning ‘son’, and ‘Roy’ comes from ‘Roi’, meaning ‘King’ – Charles, son of the King. So this is the King’s favourite mistress, and one of his illegitimate sons (to be honest they don’t even know which one) dressed as the Virgin and Child. And if that’s not ‘entirely outrageous’ I don’t know what is. 

Day 60 – Psyche VI: ‘Resolution?’

Workshop of Raphael, The Story of Psyche, 1518-19, Villa Farnesina, Rome.

I had no idea this rom-com would involve so many episodes! But it is a great story, with some lovely paintings associated with it. And even if Apuleius didn’t tell it exactly as I am – well, my version seems to match the paintings… This week we move from Mantua to Rome – having stopped off in between somewhat out of the way in Stuart England. Cupid and Psyche are re-united, and both are awake, so now all they have to do is to get everyone else on their side. But before they do that, let’s put this cycle in context.

Raphael’s frescoes were designed for a garden loggia in what is now called the Villa Farnesina, built by the Sienese artist and architect Baldassare Peruzzi for banker Agostino Chigi, also from Siena, between 1506 and 1510. It is, like the Palazzo Te which houses Giulio Romano’s Psyche Cycle, a suburban villa, i.e. outside the city walls. It seems very close to the centre of Rome these days, but even now you pass through one of the gates in the city walls on your way there. It is in the Trastevere, the part of Rome which is, as its name suggests, ‘beyond the Tiber’. The easiest way to get there is over the charming pedestrian Ponte Sisto, built for Pope Sixtus IV (who, as well as the Sistine Bridge, was also responsible for the Sistine Chapel), to facilitate the movement of pilgrims through Rome during the Jubilee Year of 1475.  Sixtus’s nephew, Julius II, collaborated with Agostino Chigi to have two roads constructed, one from either end of the bridge, but both heading, more or less, towards the Vatican – thus enabling the pilgrims to get there even more quickly. It also freed up plots of land which people could build on. In other words, it was a property scam. One of the lots on the Trastevere side was taken by Chigi himself, out in the countryside, by the river, a perfect place to get away from the city and have fun – and he really did. The stories of excess consumption, and conspicuous display, are legion. But back to the art.

Nowadays you enter though the back door, in the middle of a rational, calm and orderly façade. No sense of the heavy stonework, or rustication, associated with the defensive palaces of the city. But you should have entered here, through the garden, and into the garden loggia – those big, reflective glass windows wouldn’t have been there in the five central arches. The River Tiber (‘Il Tevere’) is on our left, and at the back left corner of the Villa there was another loggia, but that was closed in during the 17th Century.  We are going to enter through the central door, head to the right-hand end of the loggia and look back.

This is the view you would have, with the frescoes designed by Raphael and executed by his workshop covering the ceiling. They should have carried on down the walls, but stopped at the bottom of the vaulting. Not even the lunettes are part of the original scheme. Work seems to have broken off when they had to move the scaffolding from the ceiling to the walls in 1519, probably because Raphael was busy – and then ill: he died the following year. It does, however, include the pendentives – the triangular elements hanging down as part of the vaulting. If you look at the end wall, the central pendentive shows Venus pointing out Cupid to Psyche, a painting which I included in ‘Psyche I’ (Picture Of The Day 43).

In context, you can see that Venus could so easily be pointing at any beautiful woman arriving in the loggia from the garden. There are two theories about the reason why this story was chosen to decorate the loggia… one is that it celebrates Chigi’s recent marriage, in which case, it would complement the beauty of his young wife, who must have been, like Psyche, more beautiful than Venus. The other theory is that, as a suburban villa, it was a place to get away – and entertain your mistress, which is precisely what Federico II was supposed to have done in Mantua. As it happens, Chigi’s marriage, which took place in 1519, was to his mistress, and the Pope legitimised their four children… so both versions are true, although the decoration was started before their marriage. As Giulio Romano was a member of Raphael’s workshop while it was being painted, I wonder if he suggested the subject to Federico II, Marquis of Mantua, for the Palazzo Te? It’s an intriguing thought… Another intriguing coincidence: Pope Julius II, who commissioned and prayed underneath Michelangelo’s Creation of Adam, would have dined under these frescoes.  Indeed, his friendship with Chigi was so great that the latter was granted the right to use the Pope’s family coat of arms, which is in the middle of the ceiling. In Mantua, when Holy Roman Emperor Charles V visited in 1530, he chose the Sala di Psiche as the room for a slap-up banquet. And promoted Federico from Marquis to Duke. What is it about this story that made it so attractive to the two most powerful men in Europe?

The conception of Raphael’s frescoes is delightful, even if the walls were never finished, meaning that we don’t see most of the story that we’ve heard so far. As a loggia, it would have been open to the garden – and Raphael continued this idea with the conceit that we are still in the open air, but covered by pergola hung with two tapestries. Their edges are scalloped from the tension of the ties with which they are attached, and in the gaps between the tapestries and the pergola we can see the sky. In the pendentives and the vaulting above the lunettes it is only sky, which is nevertheless inhabited by episodes from the story and by amoretti carrying symbols of the Olympian gods. The garlands themselves, wrapped around the frame of the pergola, were painted by Giovanni Martine da Udine and contain over 170 different species of fruits and flowers, beautifully observed, and occasionally obscene. The pendentive with Venus and Cupid is to the left of this photograph, and we saw the two at the top right last week (POTD 53) – they show Psyche returning with water from the Styx (top right) and Venus, surprised at receiving it (top, right of centre). I’m going to look at the four along the bottom first, and then the two at the top left. Notice how Cupid is pointing down in the bottom left pendentive: Psyche has entered the loggia, it seems, and he is pointing her out to three women. 

The three women are all naked (what was the Pope to think?) and although nudity is usually associated with Venus they can’t all be her. They are her companions, the Three Graces, and are seen alongside her in paintings such as Botticelli’s Primavera. Basically, Cupid is working on his mother by trying to get everyone else on his side. Earlier Psyche had unsuccessfully tried to get the help of Juno (there’s a Giulio Romano painting of that in the Palazzo Te, which I didn’t manage to include), and she had also sought the help of Ceres. It was Ceres who suggested that she should go and ask Venus about Cupid, as it happens – not without a little malice, I suspect. As Cupid is talking to the Graces, one of them looks earnestly down at Psyche, while the other two are enchanted by Cupid. However all three look as if he’s in for a rough ride – they know what mum’s like, after all. In the next pendentive we see Ceres, with cereal in her hair, and Juno, with a peacock at her feet (see POTD 32).  Venus is on the left – typically naked. Whatever they have said or done to Psyche in the past, they now plead on her behalf, but the Graces were right: Venus sneers and looks unconvinced. In all of the pendentives Raphael’s design is superb: he uses the triangular format to full advantage, with wings, drapery or legs extending to the extremities. It’s a real pity he didn’t get to do more of the painting. Scholars argue about which bits he did, or if he did any at all, with some grudgingly conceding his participation in a few bits of the Graces… although I’ve never been convinced. 

Finally, Venus gets a summons from the big boss, Jupiter, and flies on her chariot to see him. Each of the gods was supposed to have had ‘mythical’ creatures pulling their chariots: Juno had peacocks, and Venus had doves (or sometimes, swans), for example. I know that neither peacocks nor doves are mythical, but their use as beasts of burden is. I love the way that Raphael has given Venus a team of four in hand, each pair with their own yoke. Jupiter sits comfortably on his eagle – although the poor squashed bird doesn’t seem too happy about it – and holds his thunderbolt like a sceptre, filling the top right corner of the pendentive. He has the demeanour of the father of a spoilt girl – he knows she’s behaved terribly but he really can’t be cross with her – and she behaves accordingly. We’re two sentences before she gets to ‘it’s not fair!’ I think… But why is she there?

Well, because Juno and Ceres had a word with Jupiter, presumably. But also, definitely, because Cupid did. He has come hot-foot from finding Psyche in a sleep-like death on the road out of the Underworld. He has woken her, declared his love, and has now come to tell Jupiter all about it so he can get him on side. If Jupiter was behaving like an indulgent dad with Venus (and some genealogies suggest he was her father, although her foam-born origin says otherwise), he is doing the same – but more so – with Cupid. The Eagle has been banished to the top right of the fresco, and takes the thunderbolt in its beak, while Jupiter grabs Cupid’s face, and pulls it close to his, trying to look as angry as possible. He’s a very naughty boy. But maybe a little closer than a grandson should be. Which might be a sly nod to some of the rumours about Julius II. Whatever, Cupid got his way, and Jupiter sent Mercury, messenger of the gods, to fetch Psyche and bring her to Olympus. He leads the way, looking back at her superhuman beauty, while she crosses her arms with modesty and wide-eyed innocence. 

This fresco should precede the last one, really. It is at the far end of the loggia, opposite Venus and Cupid pointing to… whichever dinner guest was deemed the most beautiful. It represents Mercury swooping down among the gathered assembly to scoop up an unsuspecting maiden and take her up to meet the immortal gods. I love his total abandon, cloak flying out behind, with a look of direct engagement in his eyes: you – yes you! – are the most beautiful person here! His arms are thrown out in a gesture of triumph, almost, as if to say ‘ta-dah!!! I’m here!’ His right hand holds a trumpet to herald his arrival, and his left leads out attention to an oversized courgette in the garland above, a fig hung over one end, and another, split, fig in close relationship to it at the other. I’ll let you look up a detail yourselves, because I couldn’t possibly. What would the Pope say?

Day 59 – Virtues vs Vices

Giotto, The Cardinal Virtues, and opposing Vices, c. 1305, Scrovegni Chapel, Padua.

We have spent the last two Saturdays looking at the Theological Virtues, and their opposing Vices (Picture Of The Day 45 & 52)– and this week we will put together the remaining imagery along the lowest level of the Scrovegni Chapel.

All eight of the images we will look at today are contained within this one photograph, although it is hard to pick them out. The Last Judgement (POTD 38) is behind us, and we are looking towards the altar. At the very bottom left and right you can see the lowest level of the frescoes, trompe l’oeil paintings of marbled panels framed in green, passing two side altars which mark a transition from the main ‘body’ of the chapel, originally accessible to the public congregation, to an area associated with the patrons themselves, the Scrovegni. Just before the chancel arch there is a door on the left, which originally gave access to the Scrovegni Palace – nowadays this is where you enter. Destroyed in the 19th Century, the Palace used to run alongside the left side of the chapel, which is why there are no windows there. The light comes from the windows on the opposite side – the side of the Virtues, interestingly enough – and from behind us, where there is a window just above Jesus in the Last Judgement. Before you get to those side altars, though, and directly under the decorative strip which crosses the blue sky of the ceiling – which marks a point half-way along the chapel – there are two imaginary sculptures – Justice on our right, and Injustice on our left. Remember that Hell is behind our left hand looking in this direction, while the Blessed, going up to Heaven, are behind our right. The next Vice and Virtue are on the walls next to the side altars, with two more pairs beyond.

Justice – we’ll see her below – is in the middle of the seven Virtues painted on the right-hand wall and serves to balance them all. Reading from left to right, are Prudence, who is at the foot of the Chancel arch, Fortitude, Temperance and Justice. They are the Four Cardinal Virtues, sometimes seen as the ‘secular’ set. They were identified by Plato as the virtues exhibited by members of the ideal Republic, and they were brought into Christian theology by Sts Ambrose and Augustine, two of the Doctors of the Church we mentioned yesterday (POTD 58). 

Prudence makes sensible decisions based on knowledge and understanding – expressed here by her self-knowledge. She sits at a desk – so is undoubtedly learned – and in her left hand she holds a convex mirror, essential for reflecting on herself and learning from her past experience. You have to be careful with symbols though – if you spend too much time looking at a mirror, you would be considered vain. Indeed, the mirror is also a symbol of Vanity. Hers is a measured existence, and in her right hand she holds a pair of compasses, perfect to plot the right course, and to chart all possibilities. Plato associated Prudence with reason, and with the ruling classes. Both Prudence and Fortitude next to her look to the right. They are looking towards the Last Judgement, but also towards anyone entering the Chapel through the West door – presumably they want to catch the visitors’ eyes, and recommend their own personal qualities. I am intrigued to think what Prudence could see in her mirror – apart from her own face, that is. A glimpse of the altar, maybe? Or, if she tilted it up a little, the Virgin Mary, painted towards the top of the adjacent wall. I’m sure it is a deliberate choice to have her looking towards the Last Judgement while reflecting on the altar…

I wouldn’t want to pick a fight with Fortitude. Plato associated her with man’s spirited nature, and with the warrior class. Giotto makes her a doughty dowager, armed for war: I’d keep out of the way of that stick. She holds a full-height shield which has spear heads embedded in it, and you can also see the bolts of the handle she is holding on the other side. It is decorated with a lion, which, in other manifestations, would be one of her main symbols, and she puts the ‘her’ into Hercules: she is wearing the pelt of the Nemean Lion, slain by the ancient hero as one of his labours. Its muzzle is over her head, while the legs are tied around her neck and waist. I’d feel safer, though, with Temperance, Fortitude’s pacifist sister. Associated with moderation or self-restraint, she has sheathed her sword, and is altogether self-contained. In other images she waters down the wine – not a virtue I’ve ever been guilty of, I’m afraid. Plato thought that, in his ideal Republic, this quality should be possessed by the farmers and craftsmen – the producing classes – and I can’t help thinking that it smacks of an economy that the rulers need not have worried about…

Justice is unlike the other virtues – indeed, of the Cardinal Four, she is the chief, ruling the interaction of the classes, as far as Plato was concerned. She sits enthroned, and balances the entire wall, sitting as she does at the centre of the Chapel. The three trefoil sides of her gothic throne, and its sky blue background, make me think of Mary, Queen of Heaven – and Justice here is crowned. This was certainly an elision seen in Venice, which is not so far away. She holds the pans of her scales in either hand – but not the beam or connecting cords. And that’s because she, herself, is the balance. However, this concept was original enough, and unusual enough, for someone to find it uncomfortable, to the extent that they tried to sketch in the rest of the expected scales. In her right hand an angel leans forward to reward the good (sadly lost in a damage to the fresco), and in her left, a second prepares to strike a kneeling malefactor, distributive and retributive justice respectively. 

Opposing these four we see Injustice (he’s below), Anger, Inconstancy and Foolishness. Looking at this wall, the Last Judgement – and the entrance – are towards our left, and that is the direction that most characters look. From the right, this time, so moving away from the altar, Foolishness looks foolish, its that simple. Waving a stick, with a crown of feathers, and ragged clothes, this could be a medieval Fool, perhaps, but not a witty one, not with the insight we see in Shakespeare. Inconstancy – lacking the solidity, the firmness, the dependability of Fortitude, rides a wheel along a sloping marbled floor, out of control and, thus, completely unreliable. Anger – or Wrath – the only Vice who is also a Deadly Sin – rents her clothes, and lets her hair run free. They are a pretty unattractive bunch, which is probably just as well: we wouldn’t want to be like them. Let’s compare Injustice with his opposite.

She sits comfortable, serene and secure, in the decorative elegance of her ecclesiastically-flavoured throne: she embodies the scales of Justice. He looks away – towards the final Judgement, with a billhook and sword, but his domain is overgrown – no husbandry here. His throne is a fortified gateway to a walled city, but the walls are crumbling with Injustice’s neglect, and the floor is eroding away.  These two pivotal personifications each have a predella – an image often seen at the bottom of an altarpiece, illuminating the image above. In both cases they are painted to look like relief sculptures. 

Hers, above, shows a courtly couple out hunting with their dogs, safe in the ordered countryside; a group of ladies dancing; and well-provisioned travellers arriving from the right. His, below, shows a pair of soldiers opposite the courtly couple; the dancers face a rape; and a traveller has been murdered. If any of you know Ambrogio Lorenzetti’s Allegory of Good and Bad Judgement in Siena, these tiny paintings say what Lorenzetti says, some 33 years later, across one and a half walls. 

So now we know where we stand – and as we enter through the West Door (which, sadly, we no longer do) we have the same view as Jesus, although somewhat lower. We can bless the Virtues on our right hand, and condemn the Vices on our left – the former will lead us to Heaven, the latter to Hell, all laid out behind us. But to get to Heaven the Virtues will not suffice – we must be forgiven. And so we need Jesus… but if he is to be born, he must have a Mother, so she must be born. But first, she must be conceived… so that is where we shall start next week!  Don’t worry, it’s perfectly respectable. Immaculate, even.

Day 58 – Ottobeuren Abbey

Johann Michael Fischer, Ottobeuren Abbey, 1737-1766, Bavaria, Germany.

Frescoes: J.J. and F.A. Zeiller; Stucco: J.M. Feichtmayr.

Today’s picture is a building! Or rather, the decoration of a building. I’ve named Fischer as the architect, although, to be honest, so many people were involved that it is hard to know who did what – but Fischer is generally credited with the overall concept of the building as it now stands. I’ve been to the abbey three times, once on my own, and twice leading groups – and it is visually one of the most exciting places I have ever been. Each time I have gasped, and I think the groups did too, although maybe not so audibly. Today’s post is a response to yesterday’s (Picture Of The Day 57) – and refers back to POTD 51, in that it is the best illustration I know that, contrary to popular opinion, the Rococo is not, of necessity, frivolous.

The Abbey has a long and complex history, but all I am going to say is that is was founded by the Blessed Toto in 764. Little is known of him, but he was certainly not the patron Saint of Oz. Or Kansas, for that matter.  Long story short – it was secularised in 1802, and re-founded in 1834. The irony about the secularisation was that, after over 1000 years of history, it had only reached its present, glorious form some 46 years before. At first glance it is – incomprehensible. Every surface is decorated – I swear, every square centimetre – but everything has a purpose and a reason. In most books the style is described as ‘Bavarian Baroque’, but that can only be justified by the alliteration, or if you deny the existence of the Rococo – because it is definitely Rococo. The architectural forms are dissolved in the complexity of the decorative details, the walls dematerialise, and nothing is solid.  The predominant colour is white, and the windows – although not visible in this photo, which is part of the genius of the architecture – are large, allowing vast quantities of light to flood the building. It is, simply, heavenly. And that is its very purpose – the dematerialisation, the lack of solidity, the other-worldliness of it all, is the very opposite of the material world in which we live and work – this is a world of light, of spirit and of joy. If Heaven is like this I want to go!

There are quite a few side altars, all dedicated to local saints and Benedictine heroes (it is, and always has been, a Benedictine establishment), but I will just focus on the central themes. In the image above, you have to imagine that we have just entered through the West Door, through the narthex and under the organ loft. We are looking towards the high altar, seen impossibly far away in the distance.  There is one dome above the choir, and a second, closer to us, above the crossing – the large arches opening to the north and south transepts (left and right) are just visible – and that is where we shall start. Imagine walking along the nave until you reach the crossing, and then looking up. This is what you would see.

In the midst of the thin blue luminous sky, the zenith is even more brilliant. At its centre we see a dove – the Holy Spirit is descending, surrounded by a circle of angels. There are seven of them, so they must be all the archangels as mentioned by Raphael (POTD 4). Light flows down past the broken pediment of a monumental arch, which is flanked on either side by two obelisks – which, in their turn, return our gaze to the Holy Spirit. Framed by the arch – a succession of arches, even – is a woman standing in prayer, wearing a red robe and a blue cloak: the Virgin Mary. She is surrounded by a group of men, looking up to the sky, hands raised or clasped in prayer, each with a small flame above their head. We are witnessing Pentecost – the descent of the Holy Spirit, when, fifty days after the Resurrection of Christ, the Apostles were gathered in an upper room, and everyone outside could suddenly understand them as if they were speaking in their own native tongues. This was the point at which the Apostles were truly empowered to go and evangelise, to teach the Word of God. All around the base of the dome we see different trees, different animals – and, above all, different people. The whole world is represented here.

If we head back half way towards the West Door, turn around and look back up at the dome, Mary is just as clearly visible.  The dome is supported by four massive arches. The one on the far side leads to the choir, those on left and right to the North and South Transepts respectively, and the one closest to us, to the Nave, where we are standing. The base of the dome rests on the top of these arches, and in between four triangular forms hang down – we can only see two of them here. They are known as pendentives – because they hang down. Each has an elaborate stucco frame, almost like an inverted pear, containing a fresco. As there are four of them, you can often guess who would be painted there, and in this case you would probably be right – the Four Evangelists, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. In the pendentive on the left you may be able to see a seated man wearing red and green – the traditional colours of John the Evangelist – and on the right, there is an angel reaching down towards a man in blue. The angel is symbolic of St Matthew. The Holy Spirit has inspired the Apostles to evangelise in the dome, and their message is put into words by these four Evangelists.  The arches supporting the dome spring from an entablature, which is continuous around the whole building. At the crossing it is supported by faux-marble pilasters and columns. Underneath each of the pendentives, sitting on top of the entablature, there is a figure modelled out of white stucco. They are too small to identify here, but the one on the left wears a papal triple tiara, while the one on the right has a Bishop’s mitre. They are two of the four Doctors of the Church – Sts Gregory, Ambrose, Augustine and Jerome. The other two are on the side nearer to us, underneath Sts Mark and Luke, who are in the pendentives that we cannot see.  Their writings, an interpretation of the gospels, have a special authority within the church, and are fundamental to its teachings.

If we bring our eyes down from heaven, we will see the font on our left, and the pulpit on out right. I’ve always liked Baroque and Rococo pulpits, because I know that, should I ever be stuck there in the midst of an especially long and dreary sermon, there would be plenty to look at. Some of the best are in Belgium, as it happens – maybe the preachers there are more than usually dull. Nevertheless, this is where the Priest will interpret the Gospels, and the teachings of the Doctors, to the uneducated masses like myself (I couldn’t possibly speak for you).  He would inevitably be inspired by the Holy Spirit to do this, which is why the dove appears more often than not on the underside of the sounding board.  Both this and the font are remarkable structures, but I am especially fond of the font. In the photograph above, on the left, you can just see the lid of the font itself at the very bottom of the image. It is then topped by the most remarkable superstructure. Standing on what appears to be a platform you can see the Baptism of Christ, with John the Baptist standing on the left, pouring water over the kneeling figure of Jesus. Beams of golden light descend from the Holy Spirit, which is as far above Jesus as he is above the font, and just above him, God the Father peers down from a cloud. As it happens, that is not a platform on which the Baptism is taking place, but a sort of frame. And if you were a baby being baptised, held in the arms of a priest, and looked up, this is what you would see.

It is a remarkably good thing that babies are myopic, because I think this would be absolutely terrifying. The angel at the bottom right is gesturing towards a gilded serpent, with an apple in its mouth. There you are, a tiny baby, about to have water poured over your head, and already temptation is in view. And just over the brow of a marble frame, there is a gilded relief with a tree. You can’t see it from here, but that relief shows the Fall – Adam and Eve are in the process of accepting another version of that self-same apple. And then beyond… let’s get in a little closer…

Yes, the Baptism in full view, and above that, the Holy Spirit, and even higher, God the Father. The Holy Trinity, looking down over you, which, if only you could focus, might calm your nerves – although the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil is still the closest thing to you…

So – overall – we enter the church, and above the crossing we see the Dome in which the Holy Spirit inspires the Apostles with the gift of tongues so that they can go out and preach the word of God. Below them, the Four Evangelists write down the Good News of the Gospels, interpreted by the Four Doctors, who complete the teaching of the church. Once we have undergone the Sacrament of Baptism, we become full members of this church, and the Sermons we hear from the pulpit explain all of this – from the Holy Spirit, through the Apostles to the Doctors – so that we know what to believe, and understand our duties and our responsibilities, and we can head back out into the world to lead good lives. It covers just about everything, really. And ‘everything’ could hardly be called frivolous.

Day 57 – Tobias revisited

Gian Antonio Guardi, The Story of Tobias, c. 1750, Arcangelo Raffaele, Venice.

I’ve told you the story of Tobias and the Angel before (Picture Of The Day 4), so if you’d like to refresh your memory, do have a look there. At the time somebody mentioned the wonderful version of the story as told by a member of the Guardi family in Venice, and it’s taken me until now to get round to looking at it. Talking about Tiepolo last week (POTD 51), I said that he is ‘seen as being on the frivolous side of religious painting’, which reminded me about the Guardi. This is another example of Rococo religious painting which could be considered frivolous – but, as a friend pointed out, frivolity is a rather underrated value. However, the lightness of touch with which this sequence of images is painted does not make the story seem frivolous. If anything, it makes it more magical.

It was painted for the organ loft of the church of the Archangel Raphael. Make a beeline to see it the next time you are in Venice – not only are the paintings a delight, but also this part of Venice is rarely on the tourist trail. However, given that everyone I know seems to want to go to Venice as soon as the lockdown is over, because it has been so wonderfully quiet, I can’t imagine that the quiet will last. A pity, but I want to go – so why shouldn’t other people? The church is one of the oldest religious foundations in Venice – there is a record of it being destroyed by fire back in 889 AD. After all, Raphael is one of the Patron Saints of fishermen, and this is Venice, which is all sea. The current building is the eighth on the site: it was rebuilt for the last time in the 1740s, with work finishing in 1749. The organ was built in the same year by Gaetano Amigazzi. The case is highly elaborate, but a fairly restrained form of Rococo – it is entirely symmetrical, for one thing, and has a rather awkward, inorganic application of decorative details. The story is told on five canvases which have been stretched around the convex and concave bends of the organ loft. The sequence starts and finishes with the small panels to the left and right, which frame two wider canvasses, which themselves frame a bowed inner section. This creates a great rhythm for storytelling: an introduction and development leading up to the prolonged heart of the story, followed by a suitable conclusion, and a coda.  It could be the model for one of the pieces played on the organ itself. Or a five act ballet.

I said above that it was painted by a member of the Guardi family. To be honest, I was hedging my bets. The name you will most often see is Gian Antonio Guardi, the older brother of the better known Francesco. There was a third brother called Niccolò, also a painter, if rather a pedestrian one, and Francesco had a son, Giacomo, who also painted. Their sister married Tiepolo – artists in Venice were especially keen on keeping things in the family. Their father, Domenico, had also been an artist, although nothing is known about his work. He left the workshop to his eldest, Gianantonio, when he died in 1716, at which point Gianantonio was only 17. Very little is known about his work either – there is only one securely documented painting, The Death of Joseph, now in Berlin, which means that the attribution of the Tobias paintings is up for grabs. Even though most people think they are by Gian Antonio, there are still those who hold out for Francesco…

The narrative starts with the departure of Tobias – without bothering to explain any of the back story (I won’t bother to explain it either – head to POTD 4!). All you need to know is that Tobias’s father, Tobit, is blind, and Tobias is heading off in the company of the Archangel Raphael, supposedly disguised as a previously unknown member of the family called Azarias, to collect a debt from some distant relatives. At no point does Guardi try and disguise the fact that Azarias is indeed the Archangel Raphael. On the contrary, the wings are one of the wonders of this sequence, only out-feathered by the brushstrokes with which they are painted. Raphael leads the way, a staff, and Tobias’s left hand, in his right, his left hand held to his breast as a sign of his trustworthiness. Both travellers look back towards Tobit, while the dog, in the bottom right-hand corner, looks towards Raphael to see why they are hanging around. This is probably because Tobit himself is clinging onto Tobias’s right hand – a bit more paternal advice, presumably – while also pointing them the way. Anna, his wife, can’t bear to see her little boy go, and has turned back to the door so he doesn’t see her cry. He’s probably never been away before. Notice how the upward sweep of Raphael’s right wing – at right angles to the other – is matched by the diagonal of the clouds behind. And relish the feathery brushstrokes that we will see in every painting.  Detail gives way to an evanescent evocation of light and airy form.

After some time travelling they go down to a river to bathe – and are attacked by the most enormous fish. It doesn’t look like much of a threat here, but that’s because, following Azarias’s suggestion, Tobias has killed it. It also isn’t that big… it is, as so often, a symbolic fish that will fit better into the composition, and look more elegant as the boy lifts it out of the river with his scarf. The dog tries to get into the action, which is great, as it is only mentioned twice in the story: on departure and at their return. Azarias (Raphael) stands back, issuing instructions with a rather effete gesture – throughout, all characters in this story could be appearing in that five act ballet. Even the dog. I am showing you more than one version of this canvas, for more than one reason. This version gets in closer, so you can see the brushstrokes, and the canvas has been cleaned – so you can see the delicacy of the colours, which matches the light touch of the brushstrokes and the elegance of the gestures – there is nothing muscular about the Rococo. The tree in particular dissolves into an array of almost random dashes of light- and mid-greens: this is Impressionism avant le lettre. Indeed, Canaletto was the universally admired Venetian vedutista – or painter of views – up until the acceptance of Impressionism, at which point people started to re-evaluate the Guardi, and realised how brilliant they were.

In this version, before cleaning, we see more of the composition, and we realise that this is not so much a river, as the Venetian lagoon, complete with a ruined watchtower on a nearby island. And in the background on the right you can see ‘what happened next’ – they roasted the fish and ate it, saving some of its vital organs for later.

We arrive at the sweeping central section, bowing out towards us, with a gap in the centre allowing a view of the distant hills across the water. This gives the impression that the composition is a continuous narrative, showing two separate episodes on one canvas. On the left, we see the ‘distant cousins’ Tobias has come to find. They point towards the right of the image almost as if they are witnessing the arrival of their young cousin, the tall stranger (after all, they can’t see his wings) and the dog – although their gesture also serves to tie the two halves of the composition together, and to direct our attention to Tobias. As chance would have it, he had arrived at just the right time – they have a daughter of marriageable age, and, although Tobias is young, and may never have been away from home before, he is old enough… We see Azarias presiding over the wedding on the right.

The two servants carrying a hefty platter in the bottom left of this detail contradict the idea that this canvas is a continuous narrative, as I suspect they are bringing provisions for the wedding banquet. However, they are on the other side of a narrow stretch of water from the two richly dressed ‘cousins’, but are on the same ‘island’ as Tobias, so I wouldn’t rule it out altogether. If it is a continuous narrative, Guardi has feathered the two scenes together along a shallow diagonal – which seems like an entirely Rococo thing to do. Having said that, it does look as if they’ll have to clamber over a pile of detritus on their way. The outfits of these servants, coordinated in colour and loosely based on Venetian 18th century fashion, tell us that they work for a very wealthy household – but then, the two ‘cousins’, husband and wife, are finely dressed themselves – particularly the husband in his rich red and blue. His turban tell us that we are not in Venice any more – even if, to the right, we can see a gondolier… Just next to him, at the end of the parapet, is a jaunty vase, asymmetrical and quirky. To be honest, I think there is more life and vitality, more invention, in this one vase than in the whole of the organ casing we saw at the start. If only they’d asked the Guardi to design that too!

Azarias presides over the wedding, even though no one in the household knows he has such a very close relationship to God. He points upwards as Tobias kneels, head bowed in prayer, his wife-to-be kneeling devoutly and devotedly by his side. What the cousins didn’t initially mention was that she had been married six times before, and had murdered her husband on their wedding night every time. Azarias didn’t seem too worried about that, though, so they went ahead as planned. Just to the right of the bride you can see a censer burning – nicely framed by an archway, to give it an ecclesiastical feel. This is the heart of the fish which they had saved, sacrificed to bring good fortune at Azarias’s suggestion. And it worked – according to the book of Tobit, at this point the demon, which had been possessing the young woman, was driven out to Egypt, where it was bound in chains by the Angel. He must have been able to fly pretty quickly, as I don’t think they noticed he had gone. The mention of Egypt has led some people to suggest that, earlier in the story, they hadn’t been attacked by a fish at all, but by a crocodile – which would, let’s face it, have been far more threatening. Once married, according to the story, ‘… they went to sleep’. There is indeed a maid preparing a large, canopied bed on the far right. But I’m not sure it’s sleep that they had in mind. The dog, bottom right, continues to build up its part, and remains curious.

Again, two versions of this one – the first to show you what photographs of paintings often look like – flattened out, and made to look like a museum piece – and the second as it really appears on the organ loft, curving back from the central section. I’m not sure how they took the first photograph– maybe it was taken after cleaning: they would probably have removed the canvasses from their curved stretchers to do that. Anyway, Tobias decided to cut the wedding celebrations short, because he wanted to get back to Dad. And here he is, looking far too young to be married, clasping a box in his left hand, and touching his father’s face with his right. Azarias had suggested making a paste from the remaining organs of the fish (which they had probably kept in this very box), and applying it to Tobit’s blind eyes. On washing them, he could see again, he was cured – a miracle! The gathering of the figures in the centre of what is effectively a landscape is entirely charming, I think. Tobit is seated in the centre, with Anna bending down to care for him on the left, so that she and Tobias, reaching in from the other side, are on the same level. This is framed across the diagonal by the ever-curious dog and the angel, the former’s snout on the same line as the latter’s wing. Anna, Tobias and the dog look at Tobit, while Raphael looks over to Tobias – checking he’s doing it right, I suppose.

In the final scene, Azarias reveals himself as Raphael, before flying off back home to the Throne of God. He points up into the blue, as Tobit, Tobias, and the dog kneel in amazement, awe and adoration, their postures revealing their age – and their species. At the top right there is a green curtain, about to fall on this most delightful divertissement. La commedia è finita!

Day 56 – Apollo and Daphne

Gian Lorenzo Bernini, Apollo and Daphne, 1622-25, Museo Borghese, Rome.

This truly is one of the marvels of marble carving – nothing can rival the delicacy of the leaves rustling in the breeze, the firmness of the roots thrusting into the ground, or the varied textures of tree and tresses – nor is there anything to match the scent of fear, and of confused compulsion, which the sculpture exudes.

And to think that Bernini was only 23 when he conceived this masterpiece! Not only that, but it was the third sculpture he completed for the most important patron of his youth, Cardinal Scipio Borghese, nephew of Pope Paul IV. He probably started work on it after finishing the Pluto and Proserpina, but then broke off to execute his David before going back to this. Three larger-than-life-size masterpieces before he was 26, it’s quite remarkable. And this is the tour-de-force.

The story is well known, but just in case, here it is again. Daphne, daughter of the river god Peneus, had asked for something rather special: perpetual virginity. Her father thought this a strange request, suspecting she might grow out of her dislike of men, but she was adamant. After all, she said, ‘Diana’s got it – why can’t I have it’ – just like many teenagers nowadays (although, nowadays, they are more likely to want a new phone). So that’s what she got. Meanwhile, not so far away, Apollo came across Cupid playing with his bow and arrow, and laughed, and teased him: ‘You’re just a baby, playing with your toy bow and arrow set – wait until you’ve grown up, and get some real weapons – then you can have proper arrows like mine, which cause the plague’. Cupid wasn’t having this. He can be vicious when he wants, so watch out. He waited until the right moment and shot one of his best golden arrows at Apollo – so that Apollo would fall desperately in love with the first living thing that he saw. Cunningly, Cupid had waited until Daphne was nearby, and shot her with one of his worst leaden arrows. If you didn’t know he had leaden arrows as well – well, he does. This might explain any problems you’ve ever had chatting people up: a leaden arrow makes you hate the first thing you see. So of course Apollo sees Daphne, and goes up to her, she sees him coming and starts to walk away – already averse to the company of men, but now with a strange new compulsion. So he speeds up – and so does she. Before long, it is an all out race, with him charging full pelt towards her, and her fleeing as fast as her feet will allow. She called out desperately to her father, pleading with him to save her honour, to protect her chastity, to change that beauty that would be her downfall. So he turned her into a tree. How many fathers would do that for their daughters nowadays?

The story is told in Ovid’s Metamorphoses – the changes of form. We live in a fluid world, were things are always in flux, and this is what Ovid explores. It’s not just the physical form, but our shifting moods and emotions as well. His description of Daphne’s transformation is wonderfully specific, and shifts from sensuous to serious: ‘a heavy numbness seizes her limbs; her soft breasts are surrounded by a thin bark, her hair changes into foliage, her arms change into branches; her foot, just now swift, now clings to sluggish roots.” Bernini must have read this carefully, but inevitably he riffs on the idea, and we see leaves growing from her fingers as well – although as yet, there is no bark on her breasts.

A while back I mentioned that I think that Donatello’s Judith and Holofernes is the first sculpture of the Renaissance to be conceived fully in the round (Picture Of The Day 35). By the time Bernini was born, the idea was old hat – but that doesn’t stop him from excelling. It is not possible to see this sculpture from enough different angles… here are just some suggestions.

It rewards continued inspection, looking at it from every possible angle, including stooping down and looking up, if you can. And if I could take in a step ladder, I would. It is also worthwhile getting as close to it as you can (wisely, there is a chain at some distance, this is a remarkably fragile piece) – or for that matter as far away, to get the overall feel of the piece. I would advise a variety of viewing distances for any work of art, to be honest – the further back you get, the more likely you are to be able to take in the overall composition. As it happens, the room in which this sculpture is exhibited is not very big.

Bernini has chosen the moment at which Apollo finally catches up with Daphne – his right foot is firmly planted on the ground, his left is trailing behind, as is his right arm. The left hand rests on her waist, but – almost as if the transformation has responded to his touch – he doesn’t feel flesh. Oddly, and ironically, her feet are not firmly planted – it is almost as if she was trying to fly away. But you can see the roots shooting out of her toes, and bark has grown up between her legs, leaving a tantalising gap between its rough exterior and her soft, shadowed thigh. It grows over her groin, and round her left hip, and that is where his left hand rests, delicately, his thumb and forefinger a matter of millimetres away from her stomach. But he doesn’t quite touch her. As his face approaches her right shoulder, she twists it away, elongating the stretch between her right foot and hand, but she looks round, involuntarily perhaps, to see how close he might be. Her mouth is open with an almost audible cry.

His cloak is wrapped around his left arm, and falls over the protecting bark, his fingers and the folds of the cloak contrasting with the rough and smooth of tree and flesh. The cloak then goes round his shoulder and flies out in a loop behind him, before wrapping around his hips, leaving a inviting gap just like her bark. If you stand at the right angle you can see the light from the window glowing through this cloak – in places it is so thin it is translucent.

When we get closer in, we learn more about their feelings. Bernini has carved their irises and pupils – eyes are always hard to capture in sculpture. Daphne is looking right round, her pupils in corners of her eyes, whereas he looks quite vacant. His lips are slightly parted – but do not seem to express worry, or determination, or even love or longing. He may still be running towards her, reaching out to grab her, but he is not even looking at her – his gaze misses the mark. And I think that is the unrealised genius of Bernini’s sculpture. Neither of these people know what they are doing. They are both bewitched by Cupid, he to run towards her, she to flee. They are acting under compulsion and do not understand their own actions. Her hair flies out behind her, between them and then up towards her fingers, where both hair and hands become leaves. There is just one delicate, stray curl above her right eyebrow. Similarly his hair flies back in the wind, soft and supple – no one could texture marble like Bernini. It is a soft and flowing variant of Apollo’s classical top knot.

Indeed, if we look again, it is clear that the figure of Apollo as a whole is based on the Apollo Belvedere, one of the classical treasures of the Vatican Museums: it has stood in the Belvedere Courtyard since 1511, and is not so far away from the Belvedere Torso which we saw Angelica Kauffman drawing in POTD 48. Bernini was keen to make his mark, not just by his conceptual and technical skill, but also by acknowledging his awareness of the art of others. An early work (and you thought this was early!), which is also in the Museo Borghese, is his Aeneas, Anchises and Ascanius, completed before he reached the ripe old age of 21. Aeneas, carrying his aged father on his back, is modelled on Michelangelo’s Risen Christ. His Pluto and Proserpina includes the three-headed Cerberus, modelled on a classical sculpture of a dog, which, like the Apollo Belvedere, is in the Vatican Museums. By breaking off work on the Apollo and Daphne to carve a sculpture of David he could only have been pitching himself against Michelangelo himself. The face of his David is a self portrait. Bernini casts himself as the giant-slayer, and the giant at whom he was taking aim was undoubtedly Michelangelo. With Apollo and Daphne he pitches himself against the ancients. 

All of this was exactly what his patron wanted – the next bright young thing, who not only had the most fantastic technique, and the most imaginative ideas, but also the intellectual grasp of the subject to make it doubly rewarding. But surely, neither this sculpture, nor the Pluto and Proserpina, were ideal subjects for a Cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church? The former is another fantastic sculpture – a monstrous act, but a fantastic sculpture – and like this, it is another pagan story. But this one is maybe worse, seeing how it flirts and tantalises with its strip-tease like semi-concealment of the figures, and its tempting tactile values. It is just asking to be touched. To be caressed. To be enjoyed. So how could Borghese possibly justify it? Well, there’s an inscription on the base – two in fact, one on either side. On one side, there is a quotation from Ovid – more or less the section I quoted above – and on the other, a moral verse, written by Maffeo Barberini, who would become Pope Urban VIII, the next Pope but one after Scipio’s Uncle. They are held by the eagle and dragon of the Borghese coat of arms.  

On the left, the Ovid. On the right, in a rough translation, it says: ‘If you chase the joys of fleeting beauty, you’re grabbing at leaves and picking bitter berries’. So that’s alright then – this is a moral sculpture, it teaches us a lesson, it warns us of the dangers of physical pleasure. Which might convince me if the sculpture itself wasn’t quite so sensuous. But then, like many Cardinals, Borghese knew how to have his cake and eat it…

There are several theories about how it would originally have been displayed. Is there a predominant view, for example? I’m not sure that there is. Several of Borghese’s sculptures were placed against a wall – this is clear in the David, the back of which hasn’t even been carved. But I can’t see how that would make any sense with this one. Every viewpoint is interesting. However, given that there were so many different, and interesting ways of looking at it, which would be the best view to see first? After all, anyone entering the room where it is exhibited will have their viewpoint determined by the position of the sculpture in relationship to the position of the door. And I favour this final position. Not the most striking perhaps – and this is not quite the right view. Maybe the top left one in the mosaic up above… but, basically, there is a viewpoint whereby you can only see Apollo – and leaves. He appears to be running headlong into a tree. I think that would be a great ‘first view’ as you really wouldn’t know what was going on. Only as you walk into the room and around the sculpture would you discover the story – you see Apollo first, and then the chase, and then the transformation. That sense of the viewer’s participation in the drama is one of the things that can make the Baroque so profound, and so profoundly exciting.