Day 40 – The Baglione Chapel

Pinturicchio, The Baglione Chapel, 1501, Santa Maria Maggiore, Spello.

Another request today, and this time, for an entire chapel! It’s in the charming Umbrian hill town of Spello, and well worth the visit – something to look forward to when we can get out again, and travel. One of the things I love about Umbria is the fact that there isn’t a huge amount of art. This may sound counterintuitive, but this does mean that you can look at things properly, give them the right amount of attention, and still have plenty of time to wander through the picturesque streets and enjoy a relaxed and delicious lunch. By the time I’ve got into the Uffizi in Florence – and even before I’ve seen any of the paintings – I am already in need a holiday. It’s all a lot more relaxed if you go to some of these less visited towns.

We know very little about the artist, or about this particular commission, to be honest. We’re not even sure when he was born – although the traditional date, based on dodgy information, is 1454. Nor do we know with whom he trained. The only things we do know about his early life is that he was born in Perugia, the son of Betto di Biagio, and was christened Bernardino. His first important work was in Rome, and after painting the apartments of the notorious Borgia Pope Alexander VI, he was summoned to Spello in 1500.

The chapel he was commissioned to paint is an addition to the church of Santa Maria Maggiore. For years it served as the Sacrament Chapel: the consecrated host, which Roman Catholics believe is the actual body of Christ, was reserved in a tabernacle so that you could pray there in the physical presence of God. But the function of the chapel changed in 1874, as it did again 100 years later when a restoration removed any traces of Ecclesiastical furniture. Now it is hard to see how the chapel would have functioned. Of course, this does mean that you can see the frescoes better, as well as the delicate, 16th-Century ceramic pavement from Deruta.

The chapel is almost square, and entered from about two thirds of the way along the nave of the church, which is decorated in a rather overblown baroque style. Don’t get me wrong – I love the Baroque – but it’s not always good. Entering through a round-topped arch, you are confronted with three more almost identical arches opening up into three alternative universes – although it is worth remembering that the entrance arch is the only one that is solid. All of the ‘architecture’ that you can see in these photographs was painted by Pinturicchio and his studio. The ceiling is decorated with four Sibyls – the female equivalents of prophets – but as they are by a different artist, and in a rather poor condition – I shall let them go for the time being.

Directly in front of you is the Nativity. It is framed in the same way as the frescoes on the walls to left and right: two square pillars support an arch decorated with inlaid marbles, and a low wall prevents us from climbing in to the verdant landscape. But remember, there are no pillars, no arch and no wall – all of this is painting – fictive, or imaginary, architecture. Central, and just below our eye-level, the Christ Child lies on the ground – a true sign of his humility. His mother Mary kneels to our right, with Joseph standing still further off, the Ox and Ass looking on from behind. The stable has been scrappily thrown together from the ruins of a Roman building, including two square pillars not unlike the two framing the fresco. This is a common symbol that the rise of Christianity will coincide with the fall of Rome. A choir of angels stands secure on a cloud, slightly closer to us than the stable roof, and the shepherds approach from the left. Meanwhile the Magi wait their turn in the middle ground.

If we now turn our attention to the wall on the left as we enter, we see the Annunciation (compare it with Piero’s version, POTD 7). It is framed in the same way as the Nativity, but rather than a green meadow, we seem to have a stage that stretches away at the same level as the top of the low wall. The fictive entrance acts as the proscenium arch in a theatre, with entrances left and right.  The continuity of the space is evoked by the door on the back of the left wall, which is cut off by the pillar supporting the proscenium arch, and by the equivalent wall continuing off to the right. Mary would have been on stage as the curtains opened, standing at her lectern reading of the prophecies of the Messiah’s birth. The angel has entered Stage Right – the audience’s left – and… I think I’ve just had a revelation! Almost all Italian Annunciations have the Angel Gabriel on the left, and the Virgin Mary on the right. About 5% show them the other way round, and no one has ever been able to explain to me why that should be. The assumption has always been that, as we read from left to right, that is the way that the story should progress. However, in Northern European art, the image is more often the other way round. I can’t give you the figures, but maybe as many as 25%. So – why does Gabriel enter from the left? I’ve just realised that it must go back to the societal ‘leftism’ I mentioned on Saturday (POTD 38). Christ raises the blessed with his right hand, and condemns the damned with his left. As a result of this, in medieval mystery plays the angels would always appear Stage Right, and the devils, Stage Left – a tradition which continues with the goodies and baddies in a traditional pantomime. So of course it makes sense for Gabriel to enter from Stage Right, and therefore appear on our left. And I’ve been worrying about that for 30 years! Maybe the Germans didn’t have so much religious drama. Meanwhile, God the Father flies in from above, a true Deus ex Machina, and the Holy Spirit descends. He is currently just above the Virgin’s right arm, heading towards her ear. I’ll explain why another day. On the wall to our right a portrait is hanging. 

This is a self portrait. It shows a painting of the artist as part of the decoration of the Virgin’s house, his name written on the plaque underneath in Latin, ‘Bernardinus Pictoricius Perusinus’ – Bernardino Pinturicchio from Perugia. He came from Perugia, but couldn’t use ‘Perugino’ as his nickname, because that was already taken. Indeed, Perugino had already painted a self portrait like this, with a very similar inscription. It’s in Perugia, his hometown, in the frescoes he painted for the Money Changers Guild between 1497 & 1500. This was just before Pinturicchio did the same thing – the date of the completion of the Baglione Chapel is at the top of the pilaster on the left of this detail: MCCCCCI, or 1501. The name he signs himself with, Pictoricius – Pinturricchio – tells us something else about him. He was very short. It means ‘little painter’.

The perspective of the Annunciation suggests that we have not fully entered the chapel – we are not in the middle of the square – as the arches do not recede symmetrically. There also appear to be a slight shift in the perspective as you get beyond the marble floor, and into the enclosed garden – maybe this is all meant to be a painted backdrop? The situation is different on the opposite wall, which shows Christ Among the Doctors.

It is now twelve years since the Nativity (according to Luke 2:42), and Jesus is centre stage, standing on a marble pavement discussing theology with an array of adults. They have given him space, and many have discarded their books on the floor, because their knowledge and experience is no match for this boy. Worse than not being able to keep up with your child’s home schooling, Mary and Joseph had headed home after their yearly visit to Jerusalem, only to realise that they had left Jesus behind. I hope you have never lost your children but it must be terrifying.

Finally they have found him, and appear, with haloes, and gesturing towards him, at the front on the right. They are wearing their traditionally coloured clothes – yellow for Joseph and blue for Mary. He stands on the central axis of the painting, with the orthogonals – the parallel lines going away from you into the painting – converging on either side of him. However, he is not at the vanishing point. That is located in the dark entrance to the temple – the perspective is encouraging us to go to church. Pinturicchio has created the renaissance architect’s dream – a symmetrical, centrally planned church. Octagonal in ground plan, it has a porch on four sides (I’m taking the one at the back for granted). It is orderly and symmetrical, and therefore approaches perfection: symmetry is, simply, divine. The dome is also octagonal, and not entirely unlike the dome of Florence Cathedral – although, unlike most of his contemporaries, including those from Umbria, it seems likely that Pinturicchio never visited the Tuscan city. 

The temple sits in the middle of a field, not entirely unlike San Biagio, just outside the walls of Montepulciano – although the fresco can’t have been inspired by that example, as the church we see today, with its cruciform ground plan, would not be started until 1518. The idea actually comes from the Sistine Chapel, and Perugino’s fresco of Christ Giving the Keys to St Peter, in which the action of the painting takes place in the foreground, with a vast, perspectival pavement leading back to an octagonal temple with porticoes on four sides. One of Pinturicchio’s first jobs might well have been assisting Perugino in the creation of this fresco in 1481-82. Twenty years later, he still remembered the experience – and the composition – and adapted it for his own use.

A large number of the learned have gathered around Jesus, but more of them crowd in on the left of the painting. This leaves more space for us to see Joseph and Mary clearly on the right.

At the front on the far left – behind the two children who are clearly part of the Temple’s early learning programme – is a man entirely dressed in black. Compared to all the other faces here, his is far more specific: a long chin, sagging jowls, swept back, greying hair and a protruding nose above a pinched mouth. Compare it with the idealisation of the face on the right in this detail – the large, oval eyes, the simplified forms of the nose, mouth and chin. Clutching a book, on the right we have scholarship’s young dream. The man in black is the reality. He is the patron of the chapel, after whom it is named: Troilo Baglione. He was Prior of Santa Maria Maggiore from 1499-1501, after which he left Spello having been appointed Bishop of Perugia. He died five years later. Sadly we don’t know how he knew Pinturicchio, nor what he wanted from this decoration, but it is wonderfully coherent. Despite their poor condition, the Sibyls on the ceiling are there to prophesy the coming of the Messiah, whose immanence is then announced on the left-hand wall. But this is only an introduction – the perspective tells us that we have not yet fully entered the chapel, we are not yet at the centre of the story. Christ’s presence is made manifest as we move around in a clockwise direction. Starting with the left wall, we move to the one opposite the entrance, where Christ, as a baby, is lying on the ground, entirely central to the story and in the painting. Shifting once again to the wall on the right, he is still central, but now standing on his own two feet, already breaking free of parental constraints at an unnervingly young age. With the perspective centred, we too have arrived, fully, into the chapel, into an understanding of Christ, and we are witnesses to his understanding of the world. As the Sacrament Chapel, this would have made perfect sense – Christ is announced, is born, and is present in the Temple, both as a painted image and in the consecrated host. As a work of art it is a perfect three-act play – with prologue. And, if we have visited in the morning, it should set us up nicely for a wonderful Umbrian lunch.

Day 39 – La Tempesta

Giorgione, La Tempesta, c. 1504, Accademia, Venice.

I’ve been asked to talk about Giorgione’s evocative and mysterious painting La Tempesta, which I’m very happy to do, even if it is something I have often avoided, for reasons which should become obvious. The best translation of the title would be ‘The Storm’, but, if translated at all, it is usually called ‘The Tempest’, because that sounds more poetic – and it is a profoundly poetic painting. More poetic still, the title is more often left as La Tempesta, giving non-Italians a greater sense of the exotic and unreachable. We have no idea what Giorgione himself would have called it. As I have said before, like many titles, this is a nickname, but at least in this case it is one which makes sense, inspired as it by the lightening that is arguably the main focus of the painting. However, I sometimes wonder if it should be renamed ‘the swamp’, given that most scholars who talk about it end up stuck, waist deep in the shifting sands of interpretation. It would be easy to say that nobody really knows what is going on here, but the problem is worse than that: everyone thinks that they know what is going on, but has a different idea to everyone else. So, for now, let’s just look at it.

Accademia – La tempesta – Giorgione

It is relatively small (82 x 73 cm), painted with oil on canvas, and is predominantly a landscape – rich, deep green trees, bushes and shrubs and brighter grass surround a deep blue river, which reflects the colours of the lowering sky. A path emerges from the bottom right corner of the painting, curves around a small rocky outcrop, and turns back into the painting behind the outcrop at the bottom left corner, heading towards a small section of wall topped by two broken columns. It seems to lead to a light green pasture beside the river, which is crossed by very basic bridge. Posts support girders, which in their turn have planks lain across them. The bridge leads to one of the defensive gateways of a walled town, unidentified and unidentifiable, which has more defensive towers further away along the grassy bank of the river. There is a church with its campanile – or bell tower – in the distance. The setting is not Venice, but somewhere in the Veneto, the mainland domain of the maritime republic. The foreground seems unnaturally light given the colour of the sky, suggesting a sultry warmth. Maybe the clouds have cleared behind us, and a low sun is cast the golden light of dusk on the ground. We have reached that tense moment when the hairs on the back of your head start to bristle with the build-up of electricity just prior to the storm, and even after the first lightning has struck, but before it has begun to rain.

Accademia – La tempesta – Giorgione

Within this landscape there are also three people. A man stands on the left, his left hand behind his back, his right resting on a staff, which in turn rests on his shoulder. He looks towards the right of the painting, but probably not directly at the woman who is sitting, naked, on a white cloth on the grassy bank next to the path. She has another white cloth around her shoulders, and is breast-feeding a child who is sitting on the ground beside her. Who are they? Well, the earliest reference to this painting comes from 1530, when it was owned by the Vendramin family. At that point, twenty years after Giorgione had died, it was described as ‘el paesetto in tela cun la tempesta, cum la cingana et soldato … de man de Zorzi de Castefranco’. Admittedly my 16th Century Venetian dialect isn’t strong, but this translates as ‘the little landscape on canvas with the storm, with the gypsy and soldier… from the hand of George from Castelfranco’. Giorgione – meaning ‘Big George’ – probably because he was a great artist – was indeed from Castelfranco, a charming walled town in the Veneto not entirely unlike the one depicted here. It’s well worth a visit! But we don’t have to take rest of the description that seriously, as the man is definitely not dressed as a solider. His clothes could be described as the fashionable daywear of the moneyed class in Venice in the 16thCentury. And if we don’t have to take the identification of the man seriously, neither should we for the woman. As far as I am aware, none of the terms used in the phrase ‘breast-feeding naked in a storm’ has ever been used to describe a gypsy, however unconventional it may seem. But after that, we are lost – who are they and what are they doing there? You can at least see why the term ‘soldier’ might be appropriate, as he is standing with a staff that could be used as a weapon. He could be defending her, or on the lookout. But he might equally well be surprised to see her – the distance between them seems relevant. Another early account described him as a shepherd. This seems equally unlikely, in those clothes. And still there is nothing to explain why the woman is there. It is this that has intrigued everyone who has looked at the painting.

We are, undoubtedly, in the Veneto – but why would this couple – if they are a couple – be among ruins, with two broken column? As a symbol this would often refer to the classical past, but what do they signify here? Are they in some way related to the two characters, each in some way broken, or out of place?  Giorgione certainly brings them into visual relationship with the man and woman, by painting the columns in the same white as the fabrics. The man is pictorially echoed by the ruined structure as a whole. The brick-red colour of his hose and slashed britches echoes the bricks, while the marble sill which supports the two columns is equivalent to the white bar formed by the lower half of the man’s shirt, including the sleeve of his right arm. This horizontal white area is also topped by the white vertical which is left visible by the cloak thrown over his shoulders: both shirt and columns form an inverted ‘T’. The columns are also echoed by the guard towers in the background, especially by the more brightly lit walls on the left of each building. Giorgione uses this to structure the painting, the light areas forming a diagonal coming down from the lightening, through the towers and the columns to the shirt. The white of the woman’s drapery completes this pyramid of light on the right-hand side.

Accademia – La tempesta – Giorgione

I have said that we are in the Veneto, but where is the proof? The landscape is typical of the Venetian mainland – predominantly flat and marshy, with a river (it could be a canal…) and a bridge. The buildings look Venetian, too, with the big, conical chimneys of the houses which can be seen above the left end of the bridge. The relatively small dome on the church is also similar to many seen in Venice and the Veneto, as is the freestanding campanile.

Accademia – La tempesta – Giorgione

Even more specifically, some historians have identified the markings above the gateway at the end of the bridge as one of the emblems of Padua, whereas the Venetian Lion of St Mark can be seen on the edge of the tower at the left of the trees – visible at the bottom left of the detail above. With the lightening striking between these two symbols, some have suggested that the painting represents political discord between Padua and Venice at the beginning of the 16th Century – which is possible – although as Padua had been ruled by the Venetians since 1405, most towns in the area would have had St Mark’s lion prominent somewhere or other. It might also be worthwhile remembering that, unlike Venice, Padua had been a Roman town (the ruins of the Roman Amphitheatre, or Arena, can still be seen, and give an alternative name for the building commissioned by Enrico Scrovegni: the Arena Chapel). But this doesn’t help us in interpreting the painting. Nor does it tell us if there is any reason why a stork should be standing on the steep roof directly to the right of the lightening. Maybe it is just a naturalistic observation. Or maybe it is symbolic of the birth – even if this particular child was not born that recently.

So who are they? We may never know. One suggestion is that they are Adam and Eve, with Cain, their firstborn son, having been thrown out of Eden. But no other image of the biblical pair has shown them like this, and, if it is them, who built the town, and when? Another theory suggests that the painting shows the finding of Moses, but if you look at Poussin’s version (Picture Of The Day 21) you will realise that there should at least be a Princess present, if not several maids to accompany her. It doesn’t look at all like Egypt, either, but that is a minor concern. Yet more scholars have wondered if it is it even a narrative at all – it could be an allegory (e.g. of the discord between Venice and Padua). And at one point it was even interpreted as a self portrait of the artist with his own family, but if I were you I wouldn’t give that one a second thought. About a decade ago it was related to a poem written in 1482 in praise of the Vendramin family, which discusses their descent from the classical hero Aeneas (they weren’t the only family to flatter themselves with such exalted claims). More specifically, they claimed their origins with his second son, Silvius, who got his name from the Latin word ‘Silva’, meaning forest or wood, as that was where he was born. In this interpretation the woman would be Silvius’s mother, who has escaped the jealousy of her elder son, and the man would be Silvius himself, now grown up. It is not unusual to have the same person in a painting twice. This interpretation would certainly be worth looking into, as the painting was first known in the Vendramin Collection – and they might even have commissioned it.

Or maybe – for possibly the first time in art – it is just a picture drawn from the artist’s rich and inventive imagination. Going back to the Greeks, Simonides of Keos, who died in 468 BC, suggested that ‘Poetry is a speaking picture, painting a silent poetry’. The Roman Horace rephrased this a couple of centuries later in the phrase ‘Ut pictura poesis’ – ‘as is painting, so is poetry’. This idea is most fully stated in his Ars Poetica, where, to quote him at length, he suggests,

‘Poetry resembles painting. Some works will captivate you when you stand very close to them and others if you are at a greater distance. This one prefers a darker vantage point, that one wants to be seen in the light since it feels no terror before the penetrating judgment of the critic. This pleases only once, that will give pleasure even if we go back to it ten times over’.

So maybe – just maybe – this is what Giorgione was doing, painting a silent poem, evocative, enchanting but ultimately unknowable. Even if we go back to it ten times over.

Day 38 – Enrico Scrovegni

Giotto, The Last Judgement, c. 1305, Scrovegni Chapel, Padua

Welcome back to Scrovegni Saturday! I dipped into three scenes from the top last week, but today I want to look at an entire wall – the Ecclesiastical West End. I am not referring to those theatres in London where musicals like Jesus Christ Superstar, Godspell and Joseph etc are performed, but the end of the chapel opposite the altar. Traditionally, churches should be orientated, i.e. the altar should be at the East, with the rising sun behind them, a symbol of the resurrection of the Son. This is an aural pun which only works in English, but one which Shakespeare, whose works were meant to be heard (as in ‘audience’ – not ‘spectator’), knew well enough. More of that another day. Meanwhile, back in Padua, the Scrovegni Chapel was designed to be adjacent to the eponymous Palace, and so it had to have the same orientation as the palace. As a result the altar is not at the East, but it’s easier to use the traditional cardinal points to describe which wall you are talking about – the Ecclesiastical West End will always be the one opposite the High Altar, and in the Scrovegni Chapel it is completely taken up with an image of the Last Judgement.

I’m starting with a detail, as it helps to understand what is going on. We can see the patron, Enrico Scrovegni, giving the chapel to three angels, with the help of an obliging priest who has it comfortably balanced on his shoulder. The angels are, of course, accepting the gift on behalf of God, who is quite busy Judging elsewhere in the fresco. Why would any self-respecting person wanting to invest in such a magnificent gift? Well, because they wanted the Judgement to go in their favour, of course. Particularly when their father happened to be a notorious usurer. Enrico’s dad, Reginaldo degli Scrovegni, was so notorious that Dante (who might have been present at the consecration of the chapel in 1305) saw him in the seventh circle of hell. That is where the usurers sit, bags of money tied in purses around their necks, so that, however much and whichever way they look down, they can’t quite see their cash. On passing one of the damned Dante sees ‘an azure, pregnant sow inscribed as emblem on his white purse’: he is describing the Scrovegni coat of arms. Enrico paid for the Chapel, and its entire decoration by Giotto, to help get his father out of hell – and to keep himself out altogether. One of my favourite details in the entire chapel occurs just to the right of the depiction of the building, which still looks exactly like this today. You can see the foot of a cross which is held aloft by two angels. Quite apart from the wonderfully observed grain of the wood, a naturalism in detail that we would usually associate with later artists, I love the tiny soul clinging on behind. And why not? Just to the right, devils are hauling the damned to hell with no dignity whatsoever – one has his shirt pulled over his head revealing what may well have been the main cause of his sins. Just below a couple more trudge along the arch which forms the entrance to the chapel: they appear to be walking through our world. The priest’s robes also fall over the frame of the picture, Giotto already aware that his fiction will be all the more powerful if it breaks into our space. Compared with the whole these are tiny details, but the hidden soul clinging behind the cross could so easily express the fears of Enrico Scrovegni himself, clinging on, using everything at his disposal to stay out of the pit.

Christ sits in majesty in the centre of the painted image, directly under the window, so that most of the light in the chapel appears to come from the Redeemer himself – he is, quite literally, the Light of the World. The Heavenly Host are ranked in neat and orderly rows to the left and right of the window, with the twelve Apostles seated on either side of Jesus.

His arms are extended, with his right hand (on our left), palm upwards, raising the blessed to Heaven. On our right, his left hand is turned down, condemning the lost souls to Hell. From this, and a statistical constant (throughout history and pre-history roughly 10% of humans have been left-handed), stems society’s ‘leftism’. The Latin for ‘right’ is dexter  – from which we get the word ‘dextrous’, meaning that you are good with your hands. If you can use both hands equally well you are ‘ambidextrous’, meaning that you can use both of your hands as well as your right. If I were to try this I would be completely useless at almost everything, as I am left-handed. The Latin for ‘left’, on the other hand, is sinister – which nowadays, according to the Collins English Dictionary, means, ‘threatening or suggesting evil or harm’. If you ever see Jesus blessing with his left hand, get out of the way, it’s the Antichrist. And never trust a word I say. The Blessed are raised on Christ’s right, the damned on his left. But what about the Apostles, who are seated on either side? Well, clearly, if you are on a level with Jesus, it s all pretty good – but there is a hierarchy. The more important place is on Jesus’ right hand, and here, as so often, Peter, in his yellow and blue, with short grey hair and beard, is Jesus’ right hand man. His left hand man is St Paul – important, but not quite as important as Peter. It then alternates, going outwards, right, left, right left…

At the bottom of the image, on the left, we see the resurrection of the body, with tiny people climbing out of the ground, and above them the Blessed, being led to Heaven by Angels in two tiers. Lower down, and slightly smaller, are the everyday devout, perfectly well behaved and orderly in their neat rows. Above them, with haloes, slightly more space, and just a little bit larger are the Saints. Sadly the fresco is seriously damaged here. Meanwhile, on the right we see rivers of fire flowing down from the foot of the throne, and the disorderly damned subjected to a multitude of tortures, which vary according to the sins they had committed during their lifetime.

Inevitably, the Devil has the best tunes, and when visiting the chapel it is all too easy to get caught up enjoying Giotto’s inventiveness, as bodies are strung up by any extremity, sawn, spiked, or speared, swallowed by dragons, or stuck on the spines along their back, ingested by Beelzebub, only to reappear, undigested at the other end. You can see them trudging down across the entrance arch, some still pointlessly holding onto their worldly possessions or sartorial finery. Tellingly, given Dante’s account of Reginaldo’s fate, there are a number of money bags ostentatiously displayed down there, wielded by the damned in denial who still think that the money – or the status – that they had while alive still means something. But beware – because of the delicate condition of the frescoes you only get 15 minutes to see them all, having spent 15 minutes in a kind of limbo while you are atmospherically adjusted. Do book in advance, as often all the slots are filled, and, if you can, do what we do when I take groups and book two slots back to back. This will allow you to spend just a little bit more time, and will also give you the chance to gloat over those who are unceremoniously evicted, clinging to their tickets like the soul behind the cross we saw earlier. Inevitably though, and far too soon, it will be time to leave. By this stage my ticket is always dog-eared, and curling at the corners, so firmly have I been clasping it while trying to see everything as thoroughly as possible and as quickly as possible. There is still just time to stop and look at the very top of the fresco, and what really is my favourite detail. It is the end of the world, which, like my ticket, is dog-eared and curling up: the angels are rolling back the corners, preparing to scrunch it all up and throw it into the bin, only to reveal, behind it, the golden glory of the New Jerusalem, and the promise of a well-behaved eternity in paradise standing in orderly rows.

Day 37 – Noah

Paolo Uccello, Stories from the Life of Noah, c. 1447-8, Chiostro Verde, Santa Maria Novella, Florence.

I mentioned, a few days back (Picture Of The Day 32) – I think it was Sunday – that I would come back to the great polymath of the Renaissance, Leon Battista Alberti. And just a couple of days before that, last Friday, I was sitting down to write and Radio 3 launched into their sing-a-long, Somewhere over the Rainbow. It’s not what I tune into Radio 3 for, to be honest, but the great bonus is that you don’t hear the rest of the Nation (or at least, the Radio 3 contingent) singing.  Nevertheless, this painting naturally sprang to mind – as it had previously, passing the numerous rainbows displayed in windows, which I have seen throughout the town on my daily walk and weekly shop. It’s a symbol which is being used without most people realising why, I suspect. 

The rainbow is used as a symbol of hope, this meaning coming from the story of Noah, which you can find at the very beginning of the Bible, in Genesis Chapters 6-8. The rainbow is almost the end of the story – it has rained for 40 days and 40 nights, the floodwaters have lasted 150 days, but the land is now dry. Noah has grown food, and given a sacrifice to God in thanks for being saved from the flood. God has appeared in the sky to accept the sacrifice, and, as a sign of his covenant with Noah, he places a rainbow in the sky to reassure him that it will never happen again – whenever the rainbow appears, it is a sign of hope that things can only get better. He was not referring to New Labour. In typical fashion for Uccello, God’s appearance is quite alarming: he has flown in upside down. This is not the cardboard cut-out of God sitting upright on the clouds, familiar to fans of Monty Python, but Uccello’s attempt to create something new and real, using the innovative techniques of perspective. Even now it seems rather surprising, a little shocking, even. Noah stands directly beneath God, his hands raised. Haloes mark both of them out as holy. Noah is surrounded by his wife (who remains nameless, so is universally known as ‘Mrs Noah’), his three sons Japheth, Shem and Ham, and their wives (also unnamed). You can’t see them all in the detail here, nor are any of them very clear. Sadly this fresco is not in a terribly good condition. 

As you can see, a lot of the plaster has been lost. It was just one of a cycle of frescoes painted in the main cloister of Santa Maria Novella, the largest Dominican Friary in Florence – the Chapter House, discussed in POTD 24, leads off of it. The cloister is open to the elements, and although each of the four sides is covered, they are still subject to fluctuations of temperature and humidity throughout the year. Worse than this, and with a certain irony, the frescoes suffered from Florence’s own deluge, the catastrophic flood of 1966. Painted onto fresh plaster, the frescoes didn’t respond very well to the rising waters. As the walls were also waterlogged, the frescoes were removed (if you know what you’re doing it’s not too hard to detach fresco, apparently), only to be returned later. This one has recently been restored, and exhibited in the relatively new Santa Maria Novella Museum. Most of the images I am showing you are post-restoration: there is nothing that can been done about the centuries of damage which have resulted from exposure to the elements. It is one of two stories on the lower part of the wall. On the right of this detail you can see part of the Drunkenness of Noah. This is probably Ham telling his brothers – well, I’ll tell you that story another day. What you can see, though, is the vine which Noah has grown, which Uccello has painted in rather breath-taking perspective – he really had mastered the basic principles even if his application of them was sometimes a little… eccentric, I suppose. Vasari, writing in the mid-16th Century, certainly thought he was bonkers. I think that’s the correct translation from the original Italian. You can also see a hint of the wonderful woven wall of Noah’s garden shed.

But how, you might be asking, does Alberti come into this? He wrote his commentary on painting – rather conveniently called ‘On Painting’ – in 1435, in Latin. One of his intentions was to raise the status of his subject among his learned (or at least, rich) patrons, as they were far more likely to be able to read Latin than artists were. However, realising that, to have a direct influence on painting itself, it would be useful if the artists could read the book, he translated it into Italian the following year. It was the first text to describe how to ‘do’ perspective, the technique having been devised by Brunelleschi some 20 years before, and then put into practice by Masaccio and Donatello among others. Nevertheless, the perspective of the pergola is almost certainly indebted to Alberti. But the influence becomes more obvious if you look at the image at the top of the wall.

This is a photograph of the fresco in situ in the Chiostro Verde, or ‘Green Cloister’, which gets its name from a whole series of all-but monochrome frescoes painted in a pigment called terra verde or ‘green earth’. Uccello himself was only responsible for two bays of the decoration, this, and an earlier one (in terms of both the biblical narrative and his career) covering the Creation. The various gaps and joins you can see, and especially the metal clip on the left, tell you that this photograph was taken after the frescoes had been detached to prevent them from being damaged by the humidity of the wall – and to allow the wall itself to dry – but before the recent restoration.

The upper scene is the deluge itself, in two parts: the early days on the left, where people outside the Ark are struggling to avoid the rising waters, and after the waters have subsided on the right. The image is framed by two views of the Ark. On the left, Uccello creates a breath-taking sweep along the full length of the structure. God’s instructions to Noah were that, ‘The length of the ark shall be three hundred cubits, the breadth of it fifty cubits, and the height of it thirty cubits’ (Genesis 6:15). On the left we have the full three hundred-cubit length, while on the right is the shorter fifty-cubit end. Within this outer structure God had specified three stories, a window and a door.

You can see Noah leaning out of the window on the right, the dove returning with a sprig of olive just to the left of his extended hand. So where is the raven he sent out a week before? Well, it’s in the bottom right of the scene, at the foot of the Ark, pecking at the body of a dead child. I shan’t show you a detail of that. And who is the man standing proud and erect about two-thirds of the way from left to right? Well, nobody knows. Uccello didn’t let on. The best suggestion is that he is Alberti’s chorus figure, ‘who admonishes and points out to us what is happening there; or beckons with his hand to see; or menaces with an angry face and with flashing eyes, so that no one should come near’, who I mentioned in POTD 32 – although he is not looking at us. His hand – which could be read as a warning gesture – is pointed towards our right. This is the direction that anyone entering the cloister from outside the Friary would approach this fresco, so we could interpret him as warning anyone else who might be approaching, ‘so that no one should come near’. For us, in front of the scene, it is too late. However, this in itself would not necessarily be evidence that Uccello had read Alberti’s book. Let’s have a look at the upper scene in more detail, from a post-restoration image.

Here are a few quotations from On Painting. I am using the first ‘modern’ translation into English, by John R. Spencer, published by Yale, although I have substituted the word istoria (about which whole books could be written) with ‘image’:

‘That which first gives pleasure in the image come from copiousness and variety of things… I say that image is most copious in which in their places are mixed old, young, maidens, women, youths, young boys, fowls, small dogs, birds, horses, sheep, buildings, landscapes and all similar things’.

I would say that most of these are in here. And then again:

‘In every image variety is always pleasant. A painting in which there are bodies in many dissimilar poses is always especially pleasing. There some stand erect… some are seated, others on one knee, others lying. If it is allowed here, there ought to be some nude and others part nude and part clothed in the painting; but always make use of shame and modesty. The parts of the body ugly to see and in the same way others which give little pleasure should be covered with draperies, with a few fronds or the hand’.

Again, that is also the case. It’s also worthwhile looking back to Botticelli’s Birth of Venus (POTD 8), where she is covering herself (or pretending to) with her hands. And finally,

‘I am delighted to see some movement in hair, locks of hair, branches, fronds and robes’.

I would say that all of these things can be seen moving in this painting – some, rather alarmingly so. At this point, though, Alberti has a problem, and one that I have mentioned before – again, with the Birth of Venus:

‘However, where we should like to find movement in the draperies, cloth is by nature heavy and falls to the earth. For this reason it would be well to place in the picture the face of the wind Zephyrus or Austrus who blows from the clouds making the draperies move in the wind’.

Botticelli, as I said back in POTD 8, did do this – but then the narrative allowed him to, as Venus was said to have been wafted ashore by the winds. There is nothing in the biblical story of the Deluge which suggests that Uccello could fit similar personifications into his depiction. But look again at this detail.

Directly above Noah’s hand, just above and to the right of the dove, there is a small boy running through the sky, his left leg extended in front of him, the other bent right back, the foot almost touching the side of the Ark – and he is blowing. Not only that, but in the very corner, just tucked in where the edge of the image meets the side of the ark, there is a second face, cheeks puffed, a small jet of air coming out of the mouth. The details are really faint now, and seem to be fainter every time I look. If anything, they are slightly clearer in the pre-restoration photograph above.

I think this is conclusive proof that Uccello had read On Painting. Why else would you include these details? Unless you were slightly bonkers, of course. 

Day 36 – St George

Bernt Notke, St George and the Dragon, c. 1483-89, Storkyrkan, Stockholm

My text for today is taken from Henry V, Act iii, line 1125:  ‘Cry “God for Harry, England and St George!”’

Happy Birthday Shakespeare! Happy St George’s Day! Ramadan Mubarak!

And while we’re about it, we should also remember the deaths of Shakespeare and Cervantes, both of whom were once said to have died on this day, 23 April, in 1616. Even given the fact that Cervantes is now generally said to have died on the 22nd, even if they had both died on 23 April 1616 they wouldn’t have died on the same day. I’ve gone into this before (Picture Of The Day 23) – Spain had been on the Gregorian Calendar for about 3 decades, and England wasn’t to adopt it until 1752, so even if they both died on 23 April they would have died 11 days apart… More interesting this year is the coincidence of St George’s Day and the start of Ramadan, especially given that one of the main reasons to invoke St George throughout history was what in contemporary terms would be called islamophobia, which could make things tricky, but I won’t let it. 

Still, as we are celebrating St George’s day today, I wanted to do it with a remarkable sculpture in Sweden by a ‘German’ artist. I say ‘German’, because Germany at the time was not a single nation state and in any case the Notke family came from Talinn (Estonia). However, he did most of his work in Lübeck, which is now in Germany. Nationality is a tricky thing, and boundaries even worse. After all, there is nothing ‘English’ about St George, apart from the fact that, like many of the English his origins lie elsewhere. Some of my ancestors came over with William the Conqueror, apparently, and St George came from Cappadocia. He was effectively Turkish, and counts among England’s most successful immigrants, coming over here and taking the jobs of our perfectly good English patron Saints, Edward the Confessor and Edmund. This happened at some time in the 1340s, during the reign of Edward III, but no one is entirely sure when. You may think that someone who is most famous for having killed a dragon was entirely fictitious anyway, but as there were churches dedicated to St George as early as the 4th Century – i.e. as soon as Christianity was legalised within the Roman Empire – there must have been someone on whom the legend was based. As for the dragon – well, I shall let you make your own minds up about that.

I was looking forward to seeing this particular sculpture at least twice this year, as I was supposed to be taking a group to Stockholm in June. We’ll be going next year instead, but to make up for it this year I’m going to talk about it now. It is the most remarkable thing, larger than life-sized, and, with its base, about 6m tall. The main sculptural group measures about 3.75m on its own, allowing plenty of space for St George, on horseback, and the Princess, on her separate battlements, to be suitably socially distanced. They are separate elements of an ensemble, some of which has sadly been lost. We’re not entirely sure how it used to fit together, nor exactly where it stood. We do know, however, that it was consecrated in 1489, and was commissioned by Sten Sture, who acted as regent after the death of King Charles VII of Sweden in 1470. Charles had married his mistress on his deathbed, and despite the fact that their son was then legitimised, he was not accepted by the Swedish Government – hence Sture’s regency. It is generally assumed that the sculpture was commissioned to celebrate Sture’s victory at the Battle of Brunkeberg in 1471, at which he defeated a Danish force: like Germany, the Scandinavian countries hadn’t yet settled themselves into the form we know today, and Sweden was trying to break free of Danish domination. It is said that Sture had taken an oath of allegiance to St George before the battle, and that his troops went to war singing hymns to this most international of saints. In this theory, the meaning of the sculpture becomes clear – the Princess, as Stockholm, is saved from the dragon (Denmark) by St George (Sture). However, another theory says that the sculpture was planned as part of a fundraising effort to launch a crusade against ‘the Turk’. Ironic, given George’s origins. But this would be the more common interpretation of the story. The Princess, dressed in a wedding dress, represents the Church, the Bride of Christ, who is saved from the dragon of Islam by St George – Jesus himself. Whatever the interpretation, though, it is, in some way, the triumph of good over evil, however you choose to allocate those qualities.

According to the documents Bernt Notke, to whom the sculpture is attributed, was a remarkably important artist – although very little of his work survives today. This sculpture is generally seen as his masterpiece, but it has had a rather chequered history, partly as a result of the restructuring of the church for which it was made. The Storkyrkan, or ‘Great Church’, is medieval in origin, but the altar, choir and crossing were rebuilt for the first time in 1550, at which point the Saint George was moved. It seems likely that it would have been behind the high altar – the plinth on which the drama takes place would have allowed it to be seen above what was a rather low altarpiece. This might explain why St George is not focussed on his foe, but looks out with a sense of distant, almost visionary, abstraction – and effectively, in our direction.

From directly in front there is a wonderful combination of heads – the dragon, spiky, twisted to our left, the horse, heroic, turns to our right, while St George, rapt, and above it all in more ways than one, faces forwards. His complexion is smooth, clear and innocent, expressive of his virtue, as he triumphs over the complex forms of the suffering beast. It is pointedly tormented, this dragon, and its angular spiky form would be a remarkable feat were it carved solely out of wood. It is predominantly wood as it happens – oak – but look again at its horns, its wings and some of its spines. Notke has thrown everything he can at this sculpture, including one of the most remarkable materials I’ve seen in any work of art: elk antlers. But then, in other parts of the work he also uses iron, leather, rope and hair, coins and jewels, all of which are integrated into the complex forms and then beautifully painted and gilded.

The splendour of George’s elaborate golden armour is contrasted by the bilious colours and contorted forms of the dragon, not to mention the human remains of its unfinished meals which are scattered around, together with a brood of baby dragons squirming unpleasantly in the rocky crevices. George has broken his lance in the dragon’s chest. The tip remains embedded, while the hilt lies alongside. The dragon defends itself by grabbing the horse’s belly, piercing it so that it bleeds. It is this gesture that allows Notke a remarkable feat of engineering – the horse is rearing up on its hind legs. Most of the weight of horse and rider is actually borne by a metal armament embedded in the dragon’s leg.

The Princess kneels separately, and was presumably meant to be separate from the start. The idea is derived from painting by Jan van Eyck, which sadly has not come down to us. But it was so well known in the 15th and 16thCenturies that in the 1580s or 90s Giovanni Stradano imagined the Flemish master working on it in his studio. Even here you can see the horse rearing, its weight helping George to thrust the spear into the dragon’s mouth The Princess kneels in prayer, devout and demure, on her own in the middle ground. Further back you can see the city of Silene, which the dragon had been terrorising. The story is told, as so many are, in the Golden Legend (see POTD 31), which relocates it to Libya. I quite like the idea of St George being a Libyan immigrant, but that’s another story, which I will tell you in full another day. Wherever it took place, the Princess left the city to be sacrificed to the dragon, so it doesn’t really make sense in Notke’s sculpture that she is kneeling in a castle (the inconsistencies of scale are irrelevant). Her current location is probably part of a later restructuring of the original elements. It seems more likely that the King, her father, would have been poking his head up above the battlements.

It might even have been Notke’s posthumous portrait sculpture of Charles VII, currently in Gripsholm Castle, which served this function.  So there would have been at least three elements to this particular work. The first was, naturally, St George and the Dragon. The second, some way off, would have been the Princess, with a sacrificial lamb (its always good to have a side dish – the people of Silene only started sending the dragon people to eat when they were running out of sheep). This leaves the King in his castle, which would presumably have been a little further away. How these were disposed is not clear, but it challenges the assumption of the contemporary art world that it invented the concept of the ‘installation’. Art which takes some of its meaning from the movement of the viewer within the space that the work itself occupies has been with us for as long as art itself. Indeed, it is an essential function of devotional art, whether painting, sculpture or architecture. This work was also, effectively, a performance piece: the figure of St George used to be removed every year on 10 October, the anniversary of the Battle of Brunkeberg, and carried in procession to the site of the victory.

As a ‘work of art’, it also had a number of different functions. A sculpture of St George and the Dragon, undoubtedly, but also a celebration of victory at the Battle of Brunkeberg – or an encouragement to give money to fight the forces of Islam, depending on which interpretation you want to take. It was also a reliquary. You can’t see it in these photographs, but St George has a medallion around his neck which was opened in 1866 by none other than August Strindberg (yes! the playwright, that master of misery! He was working as a librarian at the Royal Library at the time). Inside were some bones and a piece of parchment explaining that these were relics of St George himself. This makes its location behind the High Altar all the more likely, as this was the standard place for a church to display its most important relics. Most medieval shrines, including those of St Thomas Becket in Canterbury and St Edward the Confessor in Westminster, were behind the high altar. St Edward’s is there to this day, the only shrine to a Catholic Saint to remain intact in an Anglican Church. As a devotional image, memorial and reliquary St George and the Dragon is already fulfilling more functions than most sculptures, but there was one more. After the death of Sten Sture in 1503 he was interred somewhere within the base of the monument, which can only have served to strengthen his identification with St George – although he was subsequently reinterred elsewhere – twice.

When the church was restructured, the sculpture was moved. The base of the sculpture was decorated with a series of reliefs of the various martyrdoms of St George (he was killed three times, and came back to life twice…), and these were removed and turned into an altarpiece. At some point, the King was removed, and the Princess’s dress was cut down so that she (and the sheep) would fit onto the castle. In 1866 the main figures were taken to the Historical Museum, at which point Strindberg discovered the relics. It was returned to the church, although not to its original location, in the early 20th Century, and at this point the ‘altarpiece’ with the reliefs of the life and deaths of St George was re-purposed, or rather, returned to its original purpose, as the decoration of the base, to become a focus of National pride and tourist interest. It is truly unique, the work of a ‘German’ artist of Estonian heritage working in Sweden, depicting a man who came from Turkey but is best known through a story set in Libya, the patron saint of England, Portugal, Catalonia, Ferrara, Genoa, Beirut, Malta, Ethiopia, Georgia, the Palestinian territories, Serbia and Lithuania. So, as I said at the start, Happy Birthday, Shakespeare, Happy St George’s Day, and Ramadan Mubarak! At the moment the threat does not come from other people, it comes from a virus. The world is a complicated place, and all we have to do for the time being is to stay at home, although now I’ve got to go out shopping. Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more!

Day 35 – Judith and Holofernes

Donatello, Judith and Holofernes, late 1450s, Palazzo Vecchio, Florence.

Talking about Judith Leyster yesterday I was reminded that I had said, when talking about Artemisia Gentileschi’s Judith Beheading Holofernes (Picture Of The Day 17), that I would talk about Donatello’s version of the same story – so here it is. And for those of you who have only joined recently, yes, today’s picture is a picture of a sculpture. Several pictures, in fact, although I’m astonished at the bad quality of many of the photographs online!

You can catch up on the story back in POTD 17, but, shortish story shorter, Judith was as Israelite in the city of Bethulia, which was besieged by an army headed by Holofernes. She crept out of the city, pretending to defect to the enemy camp, and having accepted his invitation to dinner, she dressed herself up, joined him, and, once he had drunk ‘far more wine than he had drunk on any other day in his life’ (that’s from the Book of Judith), she took down his sword and chopped off his head, taking it with her when she went back home. Hardly lady-like, you might think. His troops, on finding the headless body the next morning, fled – and thus, she saved her people.

Donatello’s version really doesn’t hold back. It is arguably the first and finest two-figure sculpture of the 15thCentury (hmmm…. I have another couple of suggestions for finest), and almost certainly the first sculpture that is truly ‘in the round’ – i.e. intended to be seen from all directions – since classical antiquity, that is. Cast out of bronze, Donatello has come up with a remarkably compact composition. This helps to save on the bronze, and also helps with the casting. The extremities of arm and sword are remarkable – it’s quite something to get the bronze that far out from the main ‘body’ of the sculpture. Having said that, this sculpture was cast in 11 parts, mainly to help with the gilding, only a little of which remains (notably on the sword). They are posed on a triangular base (see below), atop a cushion. His legs hang down, drunk, or lifeless, and she stands above him. She has grasped his hair in her left hand to yank him up, while her right hand is wielding the sword above her head, ready to swing it down and chop into his neck. 

A word of advice – whenever you are looking at a sculpture of a person, try and get into the character’s eye line. This photograph is taken from exactly the right angle – she is looking directly at us, and we can see the determination in her face. As it happens, this is a photograph of the replica which is currently displayed outside the Palazzo Vecchio – the original (seen here in the more obviously bronze-coloured photographs) is displayed inside, safe from the weather and pollution. I’m showing the replica because the strong sunlight and the verdigris – the green colour that forms as a result of the copper in the bronze – serve to make the forms clearer in any but the best photos.

While she is fully dressed, including elements that look almost like armour, which are decorated with putti (boys) and vases, he is down to his shorts – which allows Donatello to show his ability at depicting the male body. It looks as if Holofernes’ left shoulder has been dislocated – it hangs so unnaturally behind him.  Notice that Judith is standing on his right hand – a wise precaution, as, if he were to regain consciousness, he might reach for his weapon, or reach for her, to pull her down. But, if her left foot is on his right hand, where is her right foot? 

Next tip for looking at sculpture – keep moving. If it was intended to be freestanding, as this one was, look at it from all possible angles. This is why sculpture has never been as popular as painting – it takes just that little bit more effort. And it always loses out with photography, if there aren’t enough good photographs from enough different angles. If you do get round the other side – or have a good photograph – you will find that her right foot is firmly planted in his groin. She has clearly assessed the various threats he poses and has disarmed him both physically and sexually. Feet planted firmly, she has grabbed his hair, yanked him upright, and prepares to chop. This requires some concentration, and you can see she is biting her upper lip.

You can also see how Donatello did the drapery. Having made the figure of Judith, he then soaked a cloth in slip – a very liquid form of clay, mixed with a lot of water – and wrapped it around her head. A mould of this was then made, and used to produce a wax version of the sculpture. The wax is then encased in what becomes a second mould, melted, and replaced with bronze. This is known as the lost wax method. Quite early in the process – just before the first mould was made – the slip fell off the fabric covering her forehead, and the weave of the original cloth, underneath the patterned hem, was cast in bronze.

So far, so good. Or so bad, depending on how you look at it. She is poised to chop at his neck – what next? Look back at the black and white photographs – the angle of his neck is rather extreme. And that’s because – well, you might just be able to see in the left-hand image – she has already hacked at the neck. There is an enormous gash there. So she’s going in for the second chop. And she will keep going, swing after swing, until the head is finally severed. That takes some determination. 

Now look at the base they are on. It is triangular, thus encouraging us to keep looking around the sculpture, because there is no predominant side. It is decorated with scenes of bacchic revelry performed by winged cherubs. So much frivolous mayhem underneath such horror. The contrast between the revelry of the base and the violence of the sculpture only serves to heighten the drama. And this is where Donatello chooses to sign the sculpture – along the seam of the cushion. There are holes in the corners. It is meant to be a wine sack. The holes also imply that this sculpture was originally a fountain. I’d like to think of it in light of some of the stories about the Marcus Aurelius, an equestrian statue in Rome. Apparently, from time to time the horse was plumbed up for festivities so that water came from one nostril and wine from the other. I’d love to see red wine coming out of this fountain. Or maybe that’s going too far.

Who would want a thing like this? Well, the Medici, apparently. We don’t know it was definitely commissioned by them, but the first account of it places it in the garden of the Medici Palace. There was an inscription on it reading,

Kingdoms fall through luxury, 
Cities rise through virtues;  
Behold the neck of pride 
Severed by the hand of humility.

The sculpture was therefore seen as an allegory of pride and humility. The popularity of the subject in Florence is not unrelated to the popularity of the story of David and Goliath, which, ever since the Florentine defeat of the far larger Milanese army at the beginning of the 15th century, had been seen as a symbol of the triumph of virtue over strength. Judith and Holofernes represents the same idea. But how does this fit in with its Medici ownership? Another inscription stated,

‘Piero son of Cosimo de’ Medici has dedicated the statue of this woman to that liberty and fortitude bestowed on the republic by the invincible and constant spirit of the citizens’.

There is no little irony in this. Since 1434, when Cosimo il Vecchio had returned from exile, the Medici were the de facto rulers of Florence. Piero is nominally upholding the republican ideal, while actively working against it. And this was remembered when, in 1494, the Medici were expelled from Florence. Most of the their property was confiscated, including Donatello’s sculpture of Judith and Holofernes, which was then erected outside the Town Hall on a new base. This had – and has – it’s own inscription:

‘Placed here by the citizens as an example of public well-being’. 

In other words, ‘tyrants beware, we’ll chop your heads off’. In other words, ‘Medici beware’. When talking about art, we often ask ‘what does it mean?’ This exaple just goes to demonstrate that the meaning of art can change. And it continued to change – the Judith didn’t stay put. When Michelangelo completed his David, ten years after the Medici had been exiled, it was decided it shouldn’t go atop the cathedral as originally intended. A debate ensued.  Where should it go? Somewhere more visible than that, surely? In the end, it replaced the Judith, outside the Town Hall. The Judith was sidelined, only to return to a nearby position centuries later. One of the arguments for replacing it with the David went as follows:

‘The Judith is a deadly symbol, and unfitting for us whose emblems are the cross and the lily. Besides, it is not proper that a woman should kill a man, and, above all, it was erected under an inauspicious star, as ever since then things have gone from bad to worse’

Clearly it is not good that a woman should kill a man – although they don’t consider the morality if the situation were reversed. Having said that, and having seen the sculpture, you can see why the men of the committee were unnerved by the Judith. She is absolutely terrifying. This just goes to show how brilliant Donatello was.

Day 34 – Judith Leyster

Judith Leyster, Self Portrait, c. 1630, National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.

For JW≈ – and any Dutch mothers I know.

Yesterday we looked at Rembrandt trying to be someone else in 1640, but here, ten years earlier, with have an artist at the height of her powers and very happy to be herself: Judith Leyster. And so she should be – her talent was recognised when she was still a teenager, and continued until well after she stopped signing her paintings. Just look at this – she was brilliant. Whereas yesterday we were thinking about the way that the composition of a self portrait is partly governed by the way you paint it, especially when you are trying to pretend that you are not painting it, today Leyster is dealing with the problems of actually showing herself painting. Although for her, there don’t seem to be any problems: she makes it look easy!

There is, as I have said before (Picture Of The Day 28), a disproportionate number of self portraits of artists at their easels which are by women. The common assumption is that men didn’t have to prove that they could paint, whereas women did. It might be this that led to the suggestion that this work was painted to celebrate Leyster’s admission to the artists’ guild in Haarlem, in the Netherlands, in 1633. She was one of only two women painters ever to be admitted as Masters. Not only that, but she took on three pupils of her own. When one of them left her to enter the studio of Frans Hals – he wanted a Mister as a Master – Leyster took the boy’s mother to court seeking compensation for her loss of earnings – and won! However, the style of the painting and the style in which she is dressed both suggest it is a slightly earlier work, from around 1630, when she would have been 21 at most. She was born in Haarlem in 1609, where her father was a brewer, with an establishment called the ‘Ley-Ster’, or ‘Lode Star’ – i.e. the star that leads the way, or North Star. ‘It is the star to every wandering bark’ as Shakespeare put it – although, of course, he was talking about love. The family took its name from the brewery, and she often signed her works with a star: JL~*

She might have trained with an artist called Pieter De Grebber – she is certainly mentioned alongside him in 1628 when Samuel Ampzing wrote a paean ‘in praise of the City of Haarlem in Holland’, where she was said to have ‘good and keen insight’. At that stage, she was 19. Twenty years later, Theodore Schrevel wrote a similar panegyric, in which he stated, 

‘There also have been many experienced women in the field of painting who are still renowned in our time, and who could compete with men. Among them, one excels exceptionally, Judith Leyster, called “the true Leading star in art.”’ 

Leading star she might have been, but by this stage she had hardly signed any of her work for 12 years. That is, not since 1636 – the year in which she married. But that doesn’t mean she stopped painting. She married another artist, Jan Miense Molenaer, and seems to have worked as his assistant – it would have been easier to do business that way. Not only that, they had five children. Or rather, let’s put it this way, she had five children. That can stop you painting. After her death (1660) the inventory of her estate included paintings by ‘Mrs Molenaer’ – and almost immediately her own name was forgotten.

In this particular painting she goes all out to show us what she can do. She sits at her easel, paintbrush in her right hand and palette in her left. Now, given what I said yesterday, the fact that her right shoulder is foremost, and that she looks towards us, would suggest that she was right-handed. And indeed she is holding the brush in her right hand. However, given that she was looking at a mirror at the time, and not us, that would have been her left hand holding the brush. Having said that, we know full well that artists don’t always paint what they see – and they were fully capable, when they chose to do so, of altering what they saw in the mirror to make it look like it should in real life. So she has shown herself as right-handed, as I have no doubt she was. 

Indeed, her right hand is the closest thing to us, thus emphasising that this is where her skill lies. It’s not just her hand, but also her forearm that is in the foreground, parallel to the picture plane, extended towards the painting, beautifully and richly dressed. This is the hand that can paint that sleeve. Look at the intricate buttoning and the turned back, transparent cuff with its broad lace trim. This is an expensive item of clothing – which in itself speaks of her success – and a breath-taking passage of painting, nonchalantly thrown off as if it is incidental. Her hand sits in front of her broad, starched collar, with yet more expensive lace extended around it. It circles her neck, and makes her head stand clear, and although she would have been looking at her own reflection, she convinces us that we are the focus of her attention. That’s how relaxed she is, elbow poised on the back of the chair, glancing out while working, looking at us with her lips slightly parted, slightly smiling. Now try and think of all the paintings you know where someone is smiling or laughing. Very few, I imagine, because there are very few – it’s a very hard thing to get right. And she does it twice in one painting.  Who wouldn’t admire this young, happy, confident – and brilliantly talented – woman?

And yet – would she really have dressed like this while painting? Of course not! It’s about as impractical as you can get. But she does say – look at me, I’m painting; I know it’s a man’s job, but I can do it too while remaining perfectly lady-like. She also tells us she is a successful and respectable member of society, boosting her social status in the way that male artists always did, while also showing us, unlike them, that she was hard at work – or rather, showing us that, for her, this work was easy, her talent came naturally. Castiglione called this ability to carry off difficult tasks with apparent ease sprezzatura, but that can wait for another day.

How good is she? Well, very good. She has a firm grip on her palette, but has not bothered much with the smears of paint that sit there. However, she does manage to hold onto a cloth as well, not to mention a whole bunch of spare paintbrushes. I can’t see exactly how many there are, but I’ve seen it listed as ‘no fewer than 18’, and even as many as ‘22’. Why so many? Well, because she’s that good. That’s how subtly she can distinguish between tones and hues, with a separate brush for each, and between the finest brush, used for the delicate strokes of the lace, and the broadest, used for the slabs of paint on her skirt, as it blossoms out under her boned bodice. She is also no one-trick pony. Technical analysis has shown that the canvas she is working on originally showed an image of a woman’s face – possibly a portrait, and possibly this self portrait – but she changed her mind. By showing herself working on a painting of a musician she is demonstrating that she can work in two separate genres of painting – portraiture and genre (‘normal people doing normal things’). This is also a quotation from one of her earlier works, which we know was successful, as several copies survive: The Merry Company. It was sold by Christies in 2018, but I don’t know where it ended up.

There are other reasons for choosing this particular figure. Notice how her paintbrush is seen next to the bow of the violin. Not only is she saying that, like the musician who has practiced and mastered his art, she has practiced and mastered hers, but also she could be drawing a comparison between the arts. Both take us to other worlds, change our mood, and give us new insights. And like the effortless jollity of the fiddle player – in the context of The Merry Company he is probably a carnival performer – she has improvised this image for our delight. A common phrase used to describe a good portrait is ‘a speaking likeness’, and one topos – a Greek word commonly used to mean a rhetorical convention – which was often used for a portrait during the Renaissance and after was that ‘it only lacks a voice’, as if to say, it looks so lifelike it is almost real. As Leyster’s mouth is open, she could be speaking, and she is painting a man whose music we can imagine. The power of her image is that our sense of vision can evoke the sense of hearing – that’s how good she is.

So why was she forgotten? Well, she became Mrs Molenaer. The two did paint in a similar style, and, with her own name forgotten, many of her works were attributed to him. The rest were attributed to Frans Hals, who undoubtedly influenced her. He may have taken one of her students (he also had to pay a fine for taking a student from her, by the way, but then so did she, for not having declared her students to the Guild…), but they were friends. In 1631 she was a witness at the baptism of one of his children. It seems unlikely that she worked with or for him, but in the freedom of her brushwork, which at times borders on the reckless (as his certainly does), her work comes very close to that of Hals. This carried on until 1893. The Louvre had purchased a painting which was signed ‘Frans Hals’, but on closer inspection they realised that the signature was a forgery, covering up a strange doodle: JL~*. It was only then that her name was rediscovered. Despite this, it wasn’t until the late 20th Century that Leyster’s talent was fully appreciated, and even this painting was attributed to Frans Hals up until 1930. Yes, it depicts a woman painting, holding at least 18 paintbrushes, but, the Art Historians decreed, a man must have painted it. That’s how stupid some men are.

Day 33 – Rembrandt at 34

Rembrandt van Rijn, Self Portrait at the Age of 34, 1640, National Gallery, London.

A couple of days ago (Picture Of The Day 28) I posed a teaser: why would a right-handed artist tend to paint themselves so that their right shoulder appears to be closer to us? This self portrait by Rembrandt would seem to provide the ideal opportunity to explain. But first, I want to ask you another question. My impulse is to write ‘self portrait’ without a hyphen, and that is how the National Gallery writes it, but in most sources – including my annoying automatic spell-check (I know, I could switch it off, but…) suggests ‘self-portrait’, with a hyphen. I can’t for any reason imagine why it should have a hyphen. Can anyone enlighten me? The next question is: how do we know that Rembrandt was right-handed in the first place? Well, apart from the fact that most people are, and that, for centuries, left-handed people were forced to use their right hands (wait till Saturday for that), there is a way of telling. Look at this pen and ink drawing by Rembrandt.

It is a drawing of a painting he saw at an auction in Amsterdam in 1639, and a note to the top right of the sketch tells us it fetched 3,500 guilders – an enormous price at the time, apparently. It is a portrait of Baldassare Castiglione, author of The Book of the Courtier, and a good friend of Raphael, who painted it. Have a look at the tiny bit of shading on Castiglione’s forehead, and the shading on the far right of the image. Can you see that the diagonal lines go from top right to bottom left? These are the lines you automatically use for shading if you are right-handed. Southpaws like myself draw lines which go from top left to bottom right. Check out some drawings by Leonardo if you want to be sure! 

My choice of illustration is not coincidental, as Rembrandt was clearly influenced by Raphael’s portrait when he came to paint himself.

Rembrandt, 1606 – 1669 Self Portrait at the Age of 34 1640 Oil on canvas, 91 × 75 cm Bought, 1861 NG672 https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/NG672

This is Rembrandt at the age of 34, painting himself in 1640 at the height of his fame. What we probably wouldn’t notice, though, is that he is not wearing his own clothes – this is not the fashion of 1640, it is more like 1520. Even from the sketch of the Castiglione portrait you can see the influence – one shoulder turned towards us, the same arm framing the figure in the foreground, a dark hat framing the face, and a white shirt helping to give shape to the chin. The two figures are facing in opposite directions, it’s true, but that’s because Rembrandt has also been influenced by at least two other paintings, and also because he is painting himself.

When executing a self portrait, you have to be able to see your reflection in a mirror, and also have the canvas in front of you. If you pick up your paint brush (try this at home, though not necessarily with a loaded brush…) and hold it on the canvas, you do not want to look at the mirror over your painting arm, it is awkward, and your arm and shoulder might get in the way. So you look over your other shoulder towards the mirror. If you are right-handed, therefore, you would be looking over your left shoulder. But, of course, you are looking in a mirror, so the image you see is a mirror image, and that shoulder, in a painting, would look like your right shoulder. And that’s what we see in this painting. And if you think about it, the arm at the back of the painting looks like a left arm – which means it was Rembrandt’s right arm while he was painting. Notice how this hand is hidden away behind the parapet – as he was painting with it, he couldn’t see what it looked like, so it was just easier to hide it away. 

If any of the above wasn’t clear, I’m sorry, but without being physically present, with a mirror, I can’t explain any further! In most of Rembrandt’s many self portraits he does indeed appear to be looking over his right shoulder – although he did occasionally ring the changes, and look the other way. 

Dürer was also right-handed. He painted three self-portraits, and this is the second, at the age of 26. Painted in 1498, not that long after his first journey to Italy, he shows all the self-confidence of a young and successful man, incredibly wealthy and very fashionable. There is nothing about this portrait that would tell you that the subject is an artist, however ‘arty’ he might appear. It’s a wonderful ensemble in black and white, with a pleated blouse emerging at the elbows and revealed across his chest – although not much of the chest is covered. It’s a rather louche, low cut affair, the amount of flesh visible only emphasized by the twisted black and white cord which holds his cloak around his back. And he’s so enormously pleased with that hair! This is Dürer as a young aristocrat, giving himself the status he was aspiring to, rather than that of the class into which he was born. But the arm resting across the parapet, the gaze towards us, and the square-cut blouse are all repeated by Rembrandt. At least the latter has the decency to keep his shirt on, and the square-cut item is more like a low-cut jerkin – the same sort, more-or-less, as the one worn by Castiglione in the Raphael portrait.

Rembrandt’s palette is far more like that of the Raphael, too – but then, this was the palette he was using from the late 1630s onwards – rich, warm browns. The Raphael was not the only painting to come up in auction in Amsterdam that year that Rembrandt saw – a Titian, then thought to be a portrait of the poet Ludovico Ariosto, but now believed to be a member of the Venetian Barbarigo family, also fetched a pretty price. By one of those odd coincidences, it has ended up in the National Gallery, along with the Rembrandt. Like Dürer, the subject sits with his arm resting on a parapet – or that’s what I thought until recently. The elbow isn’t quite resting, I don’t think, as if he has lifted it up to show off that gorgeous blue quilted sleeve to its best advantage. Indeed, for years this painting was known as Portrait of a Man with a Blue Sleeve – the sleeve would almost seem to be the true subject of the painting. The parapet was an innovation of 15thCentury Flanders. It helps to explain why we can’t see the sitter’s legs, and makes the image look more real. It is as if we are looking through a window at the subject, and as well as keeping us away, the parapet also acts as a bridge to connect our world to that of the sitter. Yes, two completely contradictory impulses, but it worked so well that artists kept using it. It makes a convenient shelf on which to rest an arm (or not quite, in the Titian), thus using the arm to frame the image. Rembrandt has slightly adjusted Titian’s conception. Notice how it is Mr Barbarigo’s right eye which appears to be looking directly at us: it is on the central vertical axis of the painting. It is as if he has just noticed us, but is paying us little heed. Rembrandt, on the other hand, is. It is his left eye which is on the central axis. He has turned his head to give us his full attention. It makes him look more open, and more sympathetic.

Rembrandt seems to be have been inspired by all three of these images when he painted himself, but why? Why is he in fancy dress as someone from the 1520s? The fact is, this is not simply a self portrait It is related to a genre of painting common in the Netherlands in the 17th Century known as a tronij (pronounced trony, roughly speaking), which derives from an old Dutch term for ‘head’. They look like portraits, but are really character studies, or paintings of characters, fictional or otherwise. Musicians were particularly popular, but so were characters such as soldiers or scholars. Sometimes these were specific – like Alexander the Great, for example, or St Paul. So here we have Rembrandt as someone from the 16th Century. He is deliberately comparing himself to Dürer, and comparing his talent to that of Titian and Raphael – a remarkable thing to do, on the face of it. By buying this portrait you would be getting three for the price of one: a painting by Rembrandt, an image of Rembrandt, and a tronij. It’s a great piece of marketing – an image of the best, by the best, in a long tradition of greats. Sadly for Rembrandt, he wasn’t always riding this high – but everything he had learnt stood him in good stead when the going got tough. And his art just got better and better and better.

Day 32 – Juno discovering Jupiter with Io

Pieter Lastman, Juno discovering Jupiter with Io, 1618, National Gallery, London.

I started writing Picture Of The Day on 19 March – so I’m now beginning the second month! To celebrate I want to return to several of the themes of POTD 1: Jupiter, a great god, but a bad man; cows – Jupiter had disguised himself as a bull in order to carry off the fair nymph Europa; and the best! In that very first picture, I nominated one of Titian’s fish as the Best Fish in Art. Since then, we’ve had the Best Cabbage (POTD 3) and the Best Eggs (POTD 20). Today, I’m proposing a slightly different category, and I’m very grateful to Pamela for reminding me about the Prettiest Cow in the National Gallery.

You might not have heard of today’s artist, Pieter Lastman, but he was really good, just lacking that final touch of genius that would make him famous today.  What he is most known for now is teaching someone who had that genius – Rembrandt van Rijn (more of him tomorrow!) I confess, I don’t know Lastman’s work that well, but there are two superb examples in the National Gallery in London, and I have talked about this one quite often. You might think, at first glance, that it doesn’t look at all like Rembrandt’s work – but that’s because we are more familiar with the mature paintings than with his first endeavours, which look far more like his master’s oeuvre: bright, clear, colours; crisp outlines; and clarity. In fact, nothing that would suggest his late work would be so profoundly moving. The Late Rembrandt exhibition at the National Gallery remains one of my favourite ever. There was to have been an Early Rembrandt exhibition at the Ashmolean in Oxford – I was looking forward to it immensely – but I don’t know, at this stage, if it will ever see the bright, clear light of day.

Pieter Lastman, 1583 – 1633 Juno discovering Jupiter with Io 1618 Oil on wood, 54.3 x 77.8 cm Presented by Julius Weitzner, 1957 NG6272 https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/NG6272

In this particular painting Lastman shows himself to be a master storyteller – one of the things you will have realised I really appreciate in an artist. He gives us many clues as to what is going on. Now clearly, the focus of the painting is the cow – and I stand by the appellation, the Prettiest Cow in the National Gallery – or for that matter, in Art. Look at those deep dark eyes, eyes you could drown yourself in (a cliché, I know – and if anyone could tell me who said it first I’d be grateful) – but look at those delicate eyelashes too, fluttering at you. And yes, they are fluttering at you in particular. It’s almost as if Lastman has taken the words of renaissance theorist Leon Battista Alberti to heart: 

‘In a painting I like to see someone who admonishes and points out to us what is happening there; or beckons with his hand to see; or menaces with an angry face and with flashing eyes, so that no one should come near; or shows some danger or marvellous thing there; or invites us to weep or to laugh together with them. Thus whatever the painted persons do among themselves or with the beholder, all is pointed towards ornamenting or teaching the story’.

Notice how he says that the ‘painted persons’ interact with ‘the beholder’ – he knows that paintings can speak to us.  It just happens that, nearly two centuries after Alberti was writing, the ‘person’ interacting with us in this painting is a cow. Having someone in the painting looking at us strengthens our connection with it, and enhances our understanding of what is going on. More of Alberti’s ‘On Painting’ later in the week, I think. What exactly is the cow thinking though – well, that is a little more complex.

Just next to her is a boy with wings, a quiver tied round his back, and a bow discarded on the floor in front of him – this is Cupid, the little God of Love. So we already know that this is a painting about love.  He is holding one end of a pink cloth, the other end of which is held by a man with a rather curiously red face, wearing almost nothing but a fox fur which is almost wrapped round his waist.

On closer inspection you can see the redness of his face has a clear, sharp edge around the jawline, and around each eye, revealing flesh tones: he is wearing a mask. This tells us he is a personification of Deceit. Wearing a mask you are showing a second face – hence being two-faced. The wily fox was also seen as an emblem of Deceit. So we now know this painting is about love and deceit. And a cow. In the top left-hand corner is a woman sitting on a chariot pulled by two peacocks. This is Juno, Queen of the Gods and Goddesses, and wife of Jupiter (she was also his sister, but… well, let’s just try and conveniently forget that, as everyone else always has – Albert Square has got nothing on Olympus). Admittedly you would have to know your classical myths to know who this is, which might make it look like bad storytelling, but Lastman’s audience would have done, and would have instantly recognised her. With her left hand planted on the side of the chariot, and looking across the painting with some sense of – astonishment, I suppose, and slight confusion – she has an air of controlled indignation. She knew something was going on, but not exactly what. The other person in the painting, like Deceit, also has a red face. But this is the flush of embarrassment. Oddly Lastman shows us no visual clues as to this person’s identity (OK, so we’ve all read the title, but go with me…) but given the circumstances – an indignant Juno, Cupid, God of Love and Deceit, there is only one person it can be: Jupiter. And there he is, wearing absolutely nothing – OK, a blue cloth thrown over for the sake of decency – with his arm round a cow. She is exceptionally pretty.

But what is going on? The last time we saw him, Jupiter himself was the cow – or rather bull – disguised so he could creep up on the unsuspecting Europa. Well, things aren’t that different here. As I said, Jupiter was a great god, but a bad man. He would go after anything that moved, but the ‘anything’ usually knew to be wary as he was trouble, and if Juno found out she was worse. So Jupiter would disguise himself. He seems not to have used the same disguise twice – presumably people would catch on. And when he saw the beautiful nymph Io – actually she was a mere mortal – he came up with one of his most unexpected disguises – a cloud. There is a beautifully sensuous painting of this by Correggio in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna. And yet, I am more often reminded of E.H. Shepard’s illustration of Winnie the Pooh disguised as a rain cloud to get the honey from the bees…

Still, once Jupiter was safely disguised, Juno – one of whose responsibilities was the weather, it seems – noticed that it was cloudy and shouldn’t be, so realised her husband must be up to something. She jumped into her chariot, and got there as quick as she could. Having arrived, she has come to a sudden halt. One of the truly great things about this painting is the way in which the peacocks have slammed on the breaks – wings spread, legs thrust forward. How did Lastman know they would do that?! She looks over at her husband, understandable indignant, but he has already seen her coming and has transformed the poor girl into a cow. Cupid and Deceit try to cover her with the pink cloth. No wonder Juno is slightly confused. There is her husband, naked and blushing, with his arm around a farmyard animal. I really do think this is the origin of the phrase, ‘Who was that cow I saw you with last night?’

Now the more ornithologically minded among you might have noticed that the peacocks don’t quite look like the peacocks we would expect to see. This is Lastman being rather clever. Juno had had enough of her husband’s philandering, so she got the 100-eyed giant Argos to stand guard (having 100 eyes is very useful when you’re trying to find items in a catalogue shop warehouse, of course). Jupiter, understandably, didn’t want anyone keeping an eye on him – let alone 100 eyes – so he got Mercury, messenger of the Gods, to kill Argos. Juno wasn’t letting it go, though, so she took the eyes from the dead giant and put them on the tails of her peacocks. So that’s why the peacocks don’t have any eyes on their tails in this painting – that bit of the story hasn’t happened yet!

And Io? Well, the accounts vary, but eventually, most say, she was transformed back into a human being. However, her name is most often mentioned nowadays as one of the moons of the planet Jupiter. When astronomers first discovered there were moons orbiting the largest planet in our solar system, they wisely looked back to the classical myths and chose names from those unfortunates who had come within the God’s sphere of influence. Io and Europa are just two. Now, you might think that contemporary astronomers are an entirely serious bunch (if not entirely Sirius), but when they planned a mission to explore Jupiter and its moons, what better name could they choose?  Launched in 2011 the probe arrived in 2016, and is still in orbit – and will be until July next year. With at least 9 different types of sensors and cameras, Juno is still keeping more than one beady eye on Jupiter and his lovers.

Day 31 – The Suitors Praying

Giotto di Bondone, The Suitors Praying, 1305, Scrovegni Chapel, Padua.

I ended yesterday’s Picture Of The Day with a lacuna. Apologies if I confused you, but I had said what was going to happen in the second sentence of the second paragraph… Today, I want to continue with a lacuna. Or rather, I want to talk about the earliest painting I know in which nothing is happening. I don’t mean a painting in which nothing is supposed to happen – like a still life – but a narrative painting, where ‘nothing happening’ is part of the story. It’s a dramatic pause, I suppose, and a brilliant example of Giotto’s skill as a storyteller. I’ve also chosen this because I have been asked to talk about the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua, which I am only too happy to do, the problem being that it could take me another week to get through it – so I might just pop back from time to time and celebrate the brilliance of this one building. If I were ever asked which one room in the world I would want to save, it would be this one. Not the Brancacci Chapel. ‘Cradle of the Renaissance’ it may be, but it is not as consistent. Not the Sistine Chapel, however remarkable, because Giotto’s storytelling is better. No, it would be this – the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua. If you haven’t been, make sure it’s the first place you go as soon as we are allowed to go anywhere.

The building was constructed as the family chapel attached to the Scrovegni Palace, but, as the palace was later destroyed, it is now freestanding. It was built next to the ruins of the Roman amphitheatre, or arena, so it is sometimes also called the Arena Chapel. It was painted from floor to ceiling by Giotto and his workshop, with the exception of the chancel, around the altar, and it was consecrated on the Feast of the Annunciation (25 March – see POTD 7) 1305. It is the most coherent, most brilliant piece of story telling I know, rich in narrative detail and theological profundity. It can, and should, be read in narrative order, but Giotto has built in echoes vertically and diagonally across each wall, and from one side of the chapel to the other. There are three tiers of stories. The top tier, starting at the altar (on the right of this picture) and coming towards us, tells the story of Joachim and Anna, parents of the Virgin Mary, and then on the left wall, going away from us, we see Mary’s upbringing and betrothal. The Annunciation then happens across the chancel arch – you might just see it in the distance (or right at the bottom of the blog). The middle tier is concerned with the Nativity, childhood and mission of Christ, and at the bottom is the Passion and Resurrection. As the stories get more important, they get closer to us, so we can see them more clearly.

But I want to start at the top, about half way along. The first picture I am showing you is at the top left of the overall view, although this is the third scene in, after the Birth of the Virgin and The Presentation of the Virgin in the Temple. Although discussed in the Protoevangelium of St James, and the Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew, books probably written in the 2nd and 7th Centuries respectively and excluded from the Bible, the direct source for this story is probably the The Golden Legend. This is a series of stories of the lives of the saints compiled by a Franciscan called Jacobus da Voragine back in the 1260s, and it became one of the most important textbooks for artists commissioned to paint saints. In the chapter celebrating the Feast of the Birth of the Virgin (8 September), Jacopo tells us how Mary grew up in the temple alongside other virgins (small ‘v’). When they were of age (thirteen), a suitor was found for each one – with the exception of Mary, who declined, saying that her parents had destined her for the service of God. But a voice came from the temple decreeing that every eligible bachelor should bring a rod, and lay it on the altar – which is precisely what they are doing here. A sign would then appear to tell them which one was deemed suitable to marry the most perfect Virgin (big ‘V’).  And look at them all – they’ve turned up in droves. 

The temple looks like stage scenery, cut-away to give us a sense of the space. It is not unlike a church, with the altar in a semi-circular niche, or apse. Two side aisles are sketched out symmetrically. Remember what this looks like, we will see it again. The High Priest stands behind the altar, which is beautifully arrayed with the most fabulous altar cloth, intricately patterned in orange, red and blue. The semi-dome in the apse appears to have been coffered the same blue as the sky – although it’s not in a great condition. Certain sections of the fresco were painted a secco – on dry plaster – and when an artist does that, rather than painting in buon fresco – on good, fresh plaster – i.e. wet – it doesn’t bond with the drying surface and has a tendency to flake off (see POTD 7). The High Priest and his assistant appear to be rather sheepishly placing the rods on the altar, while looking suspiciously at this foremost suitor. Both are clearly extremely old, age being measured by the length and candor of their beards. You will notice that all the eligible bachelors are beardless – and therefore young – with one exception. But he’s clearly the odd one out, as he also has a halo. He is wearing a blue robe and a yellow cloak. He’s at the back, as he clearly doesn’t stand a chance.

Scene 2: we are in the same place – the same church-like temple with a semi-circular apse and a hint of two side aisles. The storytelling in the chapel always goes from left to right – starting at the altar and moving around the chapel in a clockwise direction. If there is any movement within the scene, that always takes place from left to right as well, to keep us moving in the same direction. But not here. Nothing is happening. They are waiting. Praying. I love how eager some of them are. The man in pinkish red – next to the old guy with the halo – appears to be leaning forward on his hands, while the man in white looks like he has clenched his fists in an attempt not to bite his nails, and in the hope that he will be chosen. And the man in red – who looks especially young to me – could be holding his thumbs, thrusting his head forward, his arms held down ready to spring up when he is chosen, a starter on the 100m block. The priest has removed his headdress, and is abasing himself in front of the altar. That could be another of the suitors on the far right. Both he and the priest act as repoussoirs, framing the altar, and making us look towards it just like they do. The gap between them allows us to see the richly patterned altar cloth topped by the suitors’ offerings, and together suitor and priest form a pyramid completed by the stack of rods. But nothing happens. It’s the first pause in art, centuries before Pinter.

And yet, very faintly – very – a hand appears above the altar. It was probably painted a secco. God is waiting to choose. According to the Golden Legend, Joseph was there with the others – that’s him with the halo, of course – and he did bring a rod. But as he was so old, and the Virgin so young, he didn’t think it was appropriate for him to marry her. So although everyone else put their rods on the altar, he hid his. Finally, after a long, expectant, wait, the Priest consulted God, who pointed out that obviously someone hadn’t put his rod on the altar. 

When the Priest conveyed this message to the suitors, Joseph was finally persuaded that he should give it a go. As he headed towards the altar, his rod flowered, and a dove flew down and landed on it. If that’s not a sign I don’t know what is. I really don’t know what Freud would make of it. So Joseph was betrothed to the Virgin – Scene 3 – taking place in exactly the same place. Some of the other suitors look furious, and one, in red – possibly the very young, very eager one – has taken back his rod and is breaking it over his knee. On the right there are three virgins (small ‘v’), who will accompany Mary back to her father’s house. This Wedding Procession is in the next picture, and concludes the story on this wall.  The next thing to happen is the Annunciation. This is very clever – Giotto has planned his storytelling so well that he has got to the Chancel arch just in time. If you remember that the Chapel was consecrated on the Feast of the Annunciation, you will realise why it takes such a prominent position in the chapel. But more about that another time… maybe I will institute ‘Scrovegni Saturday’.