Day 30 – The Supper at Emmaus

Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, The Supper at Emmaus, 1601, National Gallery, London. 

People often ask me what would be the best book to read as an introduction to renaissance art, and my answer is almost invariably ‘the Bible’. And its value is not restricted to the Renaissance. Most ‘Old Master’ painting was produced in a profoundly Christian world, and that outlook informs it all, in some way – although the relevance is hard to find in most paintings with classical subject matter. Nevertheless, it would be useful for this painting. Isn’t it odd how you don’t always know how things fit in? I’ve always known that ‘The Supper at Emmaus’ must happen after Easter – it has to happen after the Resurrection – but I hadn’t stopped to check exactly how long after the Resurrection it was. It turns out that it happened on Easter Sunday. According to Luke 24:13, ‘two of them went that same day to a village called Emmaus’. So I could have talked about this last Sunday – but I had another Resurrection in mind (Picture Of The Day 25).

Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, 1571 – 1610 The Supper at Emmaus 1601 Oil and tempera on canvas, 141 x 196.2 cm Presented by the Hon. George Vernon, 1839 NG172 https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/NG172

The two met Jesus on the road to Emmaus, but didn’t recognise him. On arrival they invited him to dine with them, and only when he broke bread did they click – at which point he disappeared. Their response is one of amazement. The man on the left – a repoussoir figure, pushing our eye into the depth of the painting (see POTD 27) – thrusts his head forward, and puts his hands on the arms of his chair to push himself up to get a better view. On the right the man throws out his arms in amazement – although this gesture has other implications. He could almost be saying ‘but I thought you’d been crucified’, demonstrating by acting out Christ’s position on the cross. The arms stretched wide also say ‘the room is this deep’. Caravaggio uses the foreshortened arms to give depth to the painting, and to lead our eyes from the foreground back to Jesus. In between the two astonished onlookers, it seems quite clear to me that the innkeeper, or waiter, standing at the back of the table having delivered the food, doesn’t have a clue what is going on, or why this man is waving his hands over the table.

So why didn’t they recognise him? I think a conversation I had with one of the school groups I took around the National Gallery is worth thinking about. If you want to get people of any age to look at paintings you should always start by asking them what they can see – then you can tell how much they already know, what their frames of reference are, and what interests them – and you can then develop those lines of thought, nudging them gradually in the right direction. It was a group of teenage boys. For anyone, the question ‘Who is the most important person in the painting?’ will always get you somewhere. In this case the answer that came back was, ‘The woman in the middle’. Always try to go with the flow. ‘And what’s going on?’ I asked. The reply: ‘They’re having an argument’. ‘Why?’ ‘She cooked a bad dinner’. I must confess, at this point I did have to disagree with them – the chicken in particular looks as if it has an especially crisp skin, and I can imagine it being tender underneath. Having got to this stage, I thought it would be worthwhile pointing out that the person in the middle of the painting was actually Jesus, at which point they all, spontaneously, adopted positions like the people in the painting. They were astonished, and acted accordingly, just like these men. Apart from one lad at the back who hadn’t been paying attention up until this point and had no idea what his mates were surprised about. He ended up looking like the innkeeper… 

So why didn’t they know it was Jesus? Apart from a cultural distancing from Christianity, that is. The disciples should have known, surely? Well, it doesn’t look like Jesus. Does he look like a woman? Not to me, but I can see what they mean. He doesn’t have a beard. Everyone knows Jesus had a beard. It’s in all the pictures. Well, not all of them. In the earliest images of Jesus as the Good Shepherd he is clean-shaven, but by the 10th Century he was almost always bearded. There is one notable exception, but more about that later on.

The other thing is, he’s not wearing his usual clothes. He usually wears a red robe with a blue cloak over the top – but here he’s wearing a white cloak. Why has he changed? Well, this is how he looks after the Resurrection. Here’s a detail from a painting by Jacopo di Cione in the National Gallery.

The shroud has been repurposed as a toga (see POTD 24), and that’s exactly why Caravaggio dresses him in white. This has the added advantage that the white of the shroud represents Christ’s purity. And the red? Well, his blood, his passion, his suffering… These are after all the colours of the flag he is carrying in this detail – the Cross of Christ Triumphant, the red of the passion on the white of his purity. It was adopted by the crusaders fighting in the holy land, who adopted St George, a soldier fighting for God as their patron. It is his flag too… and he became the Patron Saint of England some time in the 1340s. But more about him next week!

So, at some point in between the Crucifixion and his appearance on the Road to Emmaus Jesus has found time to shave and change his outfit. It’s hardly surprising they didn’t recognise him. But there are another couple of reasons, I suspect. Look at the way he is blessing the food. His right hand is raised, and the backs of the fingers and the thumb are just catching the glancing light, arriving as it so often does in Caravaggio from the top left of the painting. The left hand is cast in shadow. This brings me back to the other significant artist who painted Jesus without a beard. They both had the same name. No, not Caravaggio. Today’s artist was born in Milan, but brought up in Caravaggio, which is why he is ‘da Caravaggio’. On this basis I would be ‘Richard da Lewisham’ which somehow doesn’t quite have the same ring about it. His given name was actually Michelangelo, but we tend not to use that as it might get a bit confusing. However, the young Caravaggio (and dying at 39 he never got that old) must have grown up fully aware of the genius of his eponymous forebear, and probably wanted to emulate him if not surpass him. So look at this detail of Christ from the older master’s Last Judgement in the Sistine Chapel.

Yes, he is beardless. And look at the position of the hands. Usually in a Last Judgement Christ raises the souls on his right hand to Heaven, and damns those on his left hand. Michelangelo’s Christ seems merciless, and is only concerned with a forceful gesture of damnation for all, an unequivocal ‘Go to hell!’ The curmudgeonly master was known for his ‘terribilità’ – his ability to provoke awe or terror. The gesture is almost the same in Caravaggio’s painting, only relaxed. The right, blessing hand is now lower, at shoulder level, and catches the light. The left hand, used for damnation, is in shadow – no coincidence.

Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, 1571 – 1610 The Supper at Emmaus 1601 Oil and tempera on canvas, 141 x 196.2 cm Presented by the Hon. George Vernon, 1839 NG172 https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/NG172

Jesus also has a shadow behind his head. This could almost be another reason why he had not been recognised – there is no ethereal glow around this Saviour, it’s more like an anti-halo. I suspect that it might have something to do with the fact that he is just about to disappear. However, it is actually cast by the innkeeper’s head. Below and to the left you can see the shadow of his shoulder and arm – which then touches the arm itself at the elbow. This can only mean that the innkeeper’s elbow is resting on the wall. Look where arm and shadow meet: coming down in opposite diagonals, they touch and form a downward pointing arrow, pointing at Christ’s blessing hand – a very clever piece of direction from Caravaggio. Because the light is coming from the top left, the innkeeper’s face is in shadow – this could be symbolic of his confusion. To use the contemporary evangelical phrase, he hasn’t seen the light. Jesus seems to have leant forward to bless the bread, and before this, sitting upright, he would have been further back, in the innkeeper’s shadow. So what is happening here? He leans forward to bless the food, moves into the light, the two travellers see his face clearly for the first time – and they recognise him. And at this point, he

Day 29 – St Francis in the Desert

Giovanni Bellini, St Francis in the Desert, c. 1476-78, Frick Collection, New York.

The sun is still shining outside my window, as it is in this fabulous painting. It captures that wonderful sense of release you get when you’ve been cooped up inside all day, and finally step out into the fresh air, take a deep breath, and enjoy the world around you. This is how I feel each day as I head out for my daily walk, especially when the sky is blue, and particularly now that the traffic has dropped and the air is wonderfully clear.  St Francis has stepped barefoot into the light, holds his arms out as if to embrace it fully, and looks up to the sky.

He is not so very far away from civilisation: there is a walled town on the next hill, just on the other side of a river, but he is in a deserted place. On retreat from the world, he has constructed a study from the trunks of three types of tree – the colour of each is different – and a vine, which meanders upwards and forms a canopy of leaves over the top. A plank of wood projects from a low garden wall as a seat, and a lectern has been constructed with minimum care for joinery: a few 2x2s nailed together at right angles.  On the desk is a book, and a skull. Like any scholar of his day, St Francis meditates on death. But here, now, he is glorying in life.

There are signs of life throughout the painting. His raised garden bed grows medicinal plants. Behind the bench you can see iris leaves, and then the tall, pointed Great Mullein – or Aaron’s Rod (Verbascum thapsus – thanks, as ever, to the Ecologist) among others. There is also a fig tree starting to grow in the foreground, and plantains are taking root in the bare earth.

In the middle distance you can see a donkey, and a grey heron, ever vigilant. Just beyond them is a shepherd – the only other human in the painting – leading his flock just this side of the river. And most charming of all, underneath Francis’s right hand – a small rabbit, poking its head out of the burrow.

You can see the stigmata in Francis’s palms. It was said that, as a result of his special devotion to the Crucified Christ, one day he returned from his private devotions with an image of the cross – not painted on panel, or carved in wood, but in his own body. This is part of the account of the event given by St Bonaventure:

‘…as he was praying in a secret and solitary place on the mountain, Saint Francis beheld a seraph with six wings all afire, descending to him from the heights of heaven. As the seraph flew with great swiftness towards the man of God, there appeared amid the wings the form of one crucified, with his hands and feet stretched out and fixed to the cross. Two wings rose above the head, two were stretched forth in flight, and two veiled the whole body…

The vision, disappearing, left behind it a marvellous fire in the heart of Saint Francis, and no less wonderful token impressed on his flesh. For there began immediately to appear in his hands and in his feet something like nails as he had just seen them in the vision of the Crucified…. On the right side, as if it had been pierced by a lance, was the mark of a red wound, from which blood often flowed and stained his tunic.’

One interpretation of this painting is that it represents the Stigmatisation of St Francis – but as it is so completely different to every other depiction of the story, it can’t be that simple. In every other painted version St Francis is kneeling, one of his followers, Brother Leo, is present, and the seraph can be seen in the sky. Admittedly, this panel has been cut down, so there might once have been a seraph, which got lost in the process. However, to make the narrative clearer, beams of light usually stretch between the protagonists, and even if the seraph had gone, the beams would still be visible. Not only that, but there is no stigma on Francis’s one visible foot, and no wound in his chest.

St Francis founded the Order of Friars Minor, a group of mendicants who, it was intended, would live outside of towns and rely on the charity of others (I mentioned the other main mendicant order, the Dominicans, in #POTD 24). Following Christ’s exhortation to the Apostles not to worry about clothes or shoes, Francis wanted his followers to be similarly unconcerned about appearances, and to dress with utmost simplicity – effectively in sackcloth with a rope belt. The three knots you can see in the end of the rope stand for the three chief virtues of the order – chastity, poverty and obedience. And there are no shoes – although he does have some simple sandals which he has left under the desk.

He also has a piece of paper tucked into his belt. There is no way of knowing what this is, but it could easily be one of his own writings. One of the most famous texts is the Canticle of the Sun – also known as the Canticle of the Creatures. Here are two short excerpts:

Be praised, my Lord, through all your creatures, 
especially through my lord Brother Sun, 
who brings the day; and you give light through him. 
And he is beautiful and radiant in all his splendour! 
Of you, Most High, he bears the likeness.
Praised be You, my Lord, through Sister Mother Earth, 
who sustains us and governs us and who produces 
varied fruits with coloured flowers and herbs.

A second interpretation of the painting is that it is an illustration of this canticle – Francis has his mouth open, after all, and could easily be singing. He is also clearly enjoying the light of Brother Sun, while surrounded by ‘coloured flowers and herbs’. However, if Bellini had wanted the canticle to be the main subject of the painting, he would surely have included far more of the ‘creatures’ Francis wrote about: many are missing.

Yet another interpretation comes from the way that the Franciscans themselves saw their spiritual leader. As a result of his stigmatisation, and given that he had sought to follow Christ’s teaching, initially taking a group of 12 followers, he was given the title ‘Alter Christus’ – another Christ. But Jesus himself, as the leader of the disciples, was associated with Moses, the leader of the Jews. It followed on that Francis was also associated with Moses. And here we see him in the desert – just as Moses had taken the tribes of Israel through the desert – and, as God told Moses, he has constructed himself a tabernacle out of the branches and boughs of trees. Francis did live with the other members of the order, but would regularly go on private retreats. It was on one of these, on Mount La Verna in the Apennines, that he saw the Seraph, in much the same way that Moses saw God in a burning bush on Mount Horeb. Moses realised he was on holy ground, and took off his shoes – and Francis has done the same. But there is no Seraph here – is this interpretation really relevant to this painting? 

No Seraph, no – but there is tree in the top left-hand corner which almost seems to be bending towards Francis, its fresh, Spring leaves almost supernaturally illuminated. Could this be Francis’s version of the burning bush? He opens his body towards the tree – although his eye line is directly upwards, towards Heaven. 

The waterspout that you can see in the bottom left is another possible connection. At one point, in the wilderness, the tribes of Israel had no water. God told Moses to strike a rock with his staff, and when he did, water gushed forth. Directly below the spout there is a kingfisher, although you might be able to see it because it is so dark. And further down, to the right, you can see Bellini’s signature, painted on a trompe l’oeil strip of paper that looks as if it has been attached to the branches of a barren tree.

If Moses had a staff, so does St Francis, in the form of a walking stick, which he has left behind in the study. There are many stories told about this remarkable man. In one of them, his love for all God’s creatures led him to admire a tree – which bent over to greet him. That seems to be happening here. And in another, he struck his walking stick on the ground, and it took root and grew there. For many years, the resulting tree marked the spot. The stump of that tree still exists, apparently, although the Franciscans who will show it to you are fully aware that this is ‘just a legend’. They live on the Island of San Francesco del Deserto in the Venetian lagoon, where St Francis is supposed to have stopped off on his way back from visiting the Sultan of Egypt. The church on the island is, in all probability, the location for which this complex image was painted.

When interpreting art, we tend to ask the question, ‘what does it mean?’ and often there isn’t one, simple answer. Bellini would have taken advice from the patron, and from the Franciscans on the island – he might have had many ideas in mind. When the church was rebuilt in the second half of the 15th Century it was called ‘San Francesco delle Stimmate’ – so the stigmatisation must be part of the meaning. The saint’s joy in creation, as made clear in the Canticle of the Sun, is another. And so are the parallels between the saint and Moses in the wilderness. Bellini is clearly not representing the setting of the actual church: this is not an island in the Venetian lagoon. Having said that, the rocky outcrop on which Francis stands is like an island, surrounded by a sea of green grass. If anything, his retreat looks more like Mount La Verna, even if the walled town is the sort you’d seen in the Veneto – where Bellini was painting – rather than in Umbria, where St Francis settled. 

All of the possible interpretations of this painting are worth thinking about. Bellini may well have been hinting at them all, attempting a poetic evocation of the many rich threads that are woven through Francis’s life. I suspect there is yet one more way of thinking about it, though. This does overlap with the others. It comes from the name of the island: San Francesco del Deserto. Not ‘St Francis in the Desert’, like the name of the painting, but ‘St Francis of the Desert’. He is part of it, part of the desert, and is depicted in the middle of it. It is around him and in him. He is part of creation. And like St Francis back then, we are socially distanced now. We might even be self isolating. But we are not on our own, however lonely it might be at times: we are still part of a whole – part of the main, as John Donne said. No man is an island.

Day 28 – Catharina van Hemessen

Day 28 – Catharina van Hemessen, Self Portrait, 1548, Öffentliche Kunstsammlung, Basel.

I promised you something sunnier today, but it’s lovely and sunny outside anyway (well, it is up here), so I’ve put off that idea until tomorrow. And anyway, today is World Art Day! According to at least one website, ‘World Art Day is an international celebration of the fine arts, which was declared by the International Association of Art (IAA/AIAP), a partner of UNESCO, to promote awareness of creative activity worldwide. The first World Art Day was held on April 15th, 2012, a date chosen in honour of Leonardo da Vinci’s birthday’. So, Happy Birthday, Leonardo, but you get enough attention already. In honour of World Art Day, and to celebrate creative activity, particularly when you’re stuck at home, here is a self portrait: what else would artists do when self isolating?

It’s not just any self portrait, but the earliest known self portrait in which the artist shows themselves painting. That might not have been the first thing you noticed about it. I’m hoping you noticed the focussed attention of the artist looking towards us, right hand delicately holding the brush, while it is rested on a mahl stick to keep it steady. Later mahl sticks would have a padded end, so that they could be rested on the painting itself without scratching it. For the artist here, that isn’t a problem though, as the stick is rested on the frame. And yes, you might also have noticed that the painting is already framed, which was not unusual for panel paintings (this is oil on oak). Sometimes the panel and the frame were carved out of one plank, or in other cases, two opposite sides of the frame were part and parcel of the panel, with the other two were attached separately.  You might also have noticed that the painting has barely been started – so far only a face has been sketched in in the top left-hand corner – or that, back in the 16th Century, artists used rectangular palettes. However, I suspect that the first thing you noticed was that this is a woman painting.

It is no coincidence that the first self portrait to show an artist painting – at least, the first that we know of – was painted by a woman. Everyone knew men could paint. All the famous artists were men after all – or we used to think they were: see #POTD 14-17. Catharina van Hemessen was painting at a time before the first art schools – the academies – had been founded. In her day you became an artist by becoming an apprentice. Women couldn’t do this, because it meant going to live with a strange man when you were still, effectively, a child. Men, who were known to be artists, didn’t need to show that that is what they did. They had other concerns – being respectable, for example. So the vast majority of male self portraits show them dressed up, showing off their status and not their craft. Even Rembrandt, who painted more self portraits then anyone else before, and for several centuries after, only rarely showed himself holding a paint brush. X-ray analysis shows that, fairly often, he actually painted them out.

But women needed to let people know that they could do it – and what better way than by showing themselves in the act of painting. As a result there is a disproportionately large number of self portraits of artists painting which were executed by women. And Catharina was clearly proud of her work: a direct translation of the inscription on this example would be, ‘I Caterina de Hemessen painted me 1548’, and then, ‘Her age 20’. 

Catharina didn’t have to go and live with a strange man to become an artist, because she was already living with one. An artist, that is, not a strange man. Her father, Jan Sanders van Hemessen, had two daughters – but with no sons, who could he train to become his assistant, and take over the family business? Catharina was indeed trained by dad, and collaborated on a number of religious works. However, most of her own work seems to have been in the field of portraiture. Only 10 of her signed works survive, two of which are religious, and the rest, small-scale portraits. Other paintings have been attributed to her for stylistic reasons. There may well have been more religious works, but so much was destroyed in the waves of iconoclasm that passed through the Netherlands in the second half of the 16th century that it is hard to know. Her father’s work is full of bluster and posing, and is rather wonderful because of it. Hers is far more delicate, and really focuses on the details.

Look at the specificity with which she depicts the five paint brushes in her left hand, their shadows crossing her thumb, and on the way the paints have been worked across the palette, with the different shades of white and off -white she has blended to produce this painting. These tones can be seen in her headdress, the flesh tones and the white, chalk ground of the framed panel. She has also carefully observed the structure of the easel – the pegs which hold the shelf at the right level, and the unused holes beneath them, as well as the light and shade defining the form of the picture frame. And yet, she is only 20, she is still learning her craft.

The depiction of fashion would become one of her strong points. Above is a detail from her Portrait of a Woman in the National Gallery. The subtle patterning of the chemise is remarkable, as is the delicate lacing which ties it at the neck. The headdress, wired to hold it in place towards the back of the jaw, includes a semi-transparent veil, which reveals the slightly unruly wavy red hair. Painted just three years after the self portrait, the structure of this face is far more secure, the eyes deep within the sockets, shadowed bags beneath. Admittedly the unknown woman doesn’t look especially healthy – but you can’t fault the way she has been painted. A highlight along the ridge of the nose, and another at the rounded tip, define its form. The cheekbones, brow and slightly pouting mouth receive the same attention.

In  1554 Catharina married Christian de Morien, a musician – he was an organist in Antwerp Cathedral – and in 1556 the couple moved to Spain with her patron, Mary of Austria, a niece of Catherine of Aragon, and sister to Charles V. None of her paintings are dated later than 1554, though, so it is possible that she stopped painting when she got married – which is a tragedy, as she would only have got better.

I have always assumed that this self portrait shows her painting someone else – because her own face is in the top right, whereas the one she is working on is in the top left. But looking at it this morning I realised that this is exactly how she would have seen the self portrait when looking at it in a mirror. Rather than looking at us, she is, of course, intently looking at her own reflection. She has either adapted the composition to show herself painting with her right hand – or she could have been left-handed. For various technical reasons, most artists in self portraits appear to be looking over their right shoulders – but here she appears to be looking over her left. Which makes me think she was left handed. I tried explaining this once during a lecture, and failed to communicate why this should be so, until someone pointed out I could use the reflection in one of the windows in the lecture room to explain. I can’t do that here, so here’s a challenge: have a look in a mirror and work out why a right-handed artist would end up looking as if their right shoulder is closer to you. I will come back to this and explain what I mean at some point if it doesn’t make sense! 

If I’m right, and the painting in the painting is this painting, then not only was Catharina the first artist to paint herself painting, but she was also the first artist to paint herself painting herself. Happy World Art Day! 

Day 27 – Birds, Butterflies and a Frog among Plants and Fungi

Melchior d’Hondecoeter, 1636 – 1695 Birds, Butterflies and a Frog among Plants and Fungi 1668 Oil on canvas, 68.3 x 56.8 cm Presented by J. Whitworth Shaw, 1886 NG1222 https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/NG1222

Day 27 – Melchior d’Hondecoeter, ‘Birds, Butterflies and a Frog among Plants and Fungi’, 1668, National Gallery, London.

Well, here’s a curious thing! In terms of the standard classifications of art, it’s hard to know where to put it. Given its size (68 x 57 cm) and its subject matter, it should be a Still Life painting – but there’s nothing still about it, although everything is very much alive. That’s one of the curious things about the term – the objects in Still Life paintings are still, certainly, but usually dead. Or inanimate. The French and Italians call the genre ‘dead nature’, and while the ‘objects’ in this painting are definitely all natural, yet not dead. So it’s neither ‘still life’ nor ‘nature morte’. You could argue that this is a small landscape I suppose – even if it is in a portrait format. And once we’ve got to this point, you realise that these ‘standard’ categories aren’t always especially helpful. Which is perhaps not entirely surprising, because Hondecoeter was painting in the 17th Century, before a lot of the language or art – or science for that matter – had taken on its apparently timeless fixity.

I’ve chosen this painting for a very specific reason. I received a request, which was in effect a challenge, to talk about a painting with fungus in it. And oddly, I could only think of two. So, if you know any more, please let me know! And for that matter, if you have anything you’d like me to talk about, let me know that as well.

Melchior d’Hondecoeter was initially trained by his father Gysbrecht, and probably also studied with his uncle Jan Baptist Weenix, who is far better known. Weenix specialised in painting grandiloquent mountains of dead things – usually game – which are more sumptuous than you might expect. One of the best places to see them is at the Wallace Collection in London. Melchior, on the other hand, preferred his birds alive. He was born in Utrecht some time around 1636, but moved on to The Hague at the age of 23, and then four years later, to Amsterdam. He was 31 when he painted today’s picture, and it’s considered an early work: he died, still in Amsterdam, some 30 years later.

As you can see from this example, not only did prefer his birds alive, but he liked them to have character. Indeed, he has given us the material for a three-act play set somewhere in a shady grove. The colouration suggests this will be a tragedy, the darkness of the palette creating an air of foreboding, but it’s not without a comic sub-plot. The main drama involves a bird, presumably a brambling, presumably minding its own business, until a frog hauls itself out of the pond – this is clearly an affront to common decency, and the brambling is doing its best to give it a good telling off. In artistic terms, the frog is what we would call a ‘repoussoir’ – something in the foreground of the painting, which encourages us to look further in. And we do: we follow the frog’s gaze only to see the brambling trying to scare it off.  Meanwhile, up on a branch another bird – possibly another brambling, or maybe a chaffinch, it’s hard to tell from this angle and with that much flapping – is joining it at a safe distance, giving the frog a piece of its own mind. Next: we cut to the comic sub-plot. A more than usually cocky sparrow, which, judging by its swagger, really does think it is the cock of the walk, stumbles across the scene by chance, followed at a distance by a slightly duller bird. The first, foppish sparrow is brought up short, and looks over to see if the frog is really as much of a threat as the brambling thinks. The birds and the frog are at an impasse, and this pause in the proceedings allows a snail to get away. They could so easily have eaten it. Meanwhile, butterflies and moths flutter around, a chorus only confusing matters further.

There are emperor moths, and on the far left, a faded small tortoiseshell butterfly. At the top, there is also a painted lady. As with many Still Life paintings, these species don’t always appear at the same time in the same place. It is an artistic construct, rather than a documentary, after all, even if it might be pretending to be the latter. Look at the tortoiseshell and the emperor near it, for example. They look almost as if they are deliberately displaying their wings so that we can identify them – and it is highly likely that Hondecoeter was painting them from specimens. He may have had a collection himself, but if not, he would certainly have known people who did – they were the very people he was painting for. In the 17th Century, interest in the natural world was very much on the increase. Anyone who was anyone would have had their own ‘wunderkammer’, or ‘chamber of wonders’. These were like prototype museums with all the curiosities of the natural world included: shells, minerals and crystals, butterflies and even stuffed birds. In the midst of all this there could be paintings, bringing the dead objects to life, and showing you animal, vegetable and mineral together.

Unfortunately, this is another classification that falls apart fairly easily. At the time it seemed like a clear division. But what about the fungus? Is it a vegetable? That really depends whether you are ordering a meal, or studying natural history, to be honest. At this point it is worth remembering Hamlet (as it so often is), and in particular his statement, ‘There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy’. You only have to watch most David Attenborough documentaries to realise that (trust me – I live with an Ecologist, and I’ve seen most of them). For example, there is one thing that we know, that Hondecoeter probably didn’t: a fungus is not a plant. While most of us were growing up, ‘Fungi’ belonged to their own Kingdom – ‘Plants’ and ‘Animals’ being two of the others. After that it gets really confusing, because some countries, including the UK, assume there are five kingdoms, others, such as the US, say there are six. But by now, many scientists don’t believe in the concept of kingdoms at all, because not everything previously included in each kingdom is descended from a common ancestor – plants, animals and fungi are still separate branches on the evolutionary tree, but there are so many other branches. Slime molds, for example. And bacteria, which take up about a third of the evolutionary tree on their own. Don’t even start on viruses, they’re not even included. We might be obsessed with one right now, but they are not even classified as fully living things. They are somewhere in a grey area between being alive, and not being alive.

Anyway, back to the fungus. I don’t know what type Hondecoeter has depicted, I’m not a mycologist (someone who studies fungi), and neither is the Ecologist. But I do know that Fungi are everywhere, even though we don’t see them very often. Most plants co-exist with fungi, tiny ones, which attach themselves to the roots of the plants, and help them to feed. Most of the time fungi are out of view. Most of their substance is made up of a network of fine fibres almost invisible to the naked eye. But when they want to reproduce, the fruiting bodies appear out of the ground, or the tree trunk that the fibres have been living in. These fruiting bodies take on forms that vary from sombre to fantastical, and from delicious on toast to highly toxic, only to let off myriad spores and then disappear again. They live off dead material and are essential in breaking it down. Sometimes, of course, they live off living material too. I assume it is the former that led Hondecoeter to include them. Their role as autumnal harbingers of decomposition and decay adds to the sense of threat and foreboding in the painting. This isn’t a love story he’s telling us. Or, if it is, it must be a tragic one.

It’s also – like a more standard Still Life – about showing off. Hondecoeter is remarkably good at depicting the different textures, differentiating the patterns of the butterflies and the feathers of the birds, the glistening of the frog and of the snail. People often lament that nobody can paint like that nowadays. They can, to be perfectly honest, but it just doesn’t suit the way we live, it doesn’t say anything about life today. 

The fact that people don’t paint like this now was brought back to me by a sentence in a book I read recently, a novel, about a young scientist who had chosen his profession having been inspired by a documentary about a natural philosopher living in the 16th Century – only to find out that scientific life these days isn’t always so exciting:

‘To be a renaissance scientist, it was beginning to dawn on him, one first needed to live in the renaissance’.

The same is true of art. The quotation comes from a book called ‘Living with Annie’ by a friend of mine, Simon Christmas, and I really enjoyed it (yes, this is a plug). You can find my review here:

Annie, by the way, is a fungus. And it was Simon who challenged me. Tomorrow there will be more sunlight.

Day 26 – ‘La Tasse de Chocolat’

Nicolas Lancret, 1690 – 1743 A Lady in a Garden taking Coffee with some Children probably 1742 Oil on canvas, 88.9 x 97.8 cm Bequeathed by Sir John Heathcoat Amory, with life interest to Lady Amory by whom presented, 1973 NG6422 https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/NG6422

Day 26 – Nicolas Lancret, ‘La Tasse de Chocolat’, probably 1742, National Gallery, London.

It’s Easter Monday, which is not a religious festival (unless you’re Orthodox, in which case Easter isn’t until next Sunday anyway), but a chance for the banks to have a holiday because they wouldn’t have been open yesterday anyway, so couldn’t have a day off then. I think that’s the logic. What better time to sit back and enjoy the chocolate? That’s why I’ve chosen this painting – traditionally known as ‘La Tasse de Chocolat’ – the Cup of Chocolate. However, as I have mentioned before (#POTD 9) most titles we have for paintings before the 19thCentury are either simply descriptions of what is painted, or nicknames applied in the 19th or early 20th Centuries which have never gone away. In the case of some 18th Century French paintings the situation is different – I might get back to that another day! In this case someone at the National Gallery had the original idea of actually looking at the painting and then looking at the real world, and realised that the servant on the far left is not holding a chocolate pot, but a coffee pot. So, I’m afraid that I’m cheating today, as the official title of this painting is now ‘A Lady in a Garden having Coffee with Children’ – which, it turns out, is the title it had when it was first exhibited at the Paris Salon of 1742. Tant pis!

Lancret was one of the most important followers of Watteau, who is, sadly, slightly out of favour. His romanticising views of the life of leisure have come to seem a little pointless to some, but that is a great pity, as they are beautifully and delicately painted, with a wonderful sense of melancholy. Lancret appears to be quoting from him here, as two of the figures look remarkably similar to two in Watteau’s late, great masterpiece, ‘L’Enseigne de Gersaint’ – and yes, you’re right, it was a shop sign (though not for very long). Having said that, it is possible that Lancret has spent so much time looking at Watteau’s paintings that the older artist’s reflexes had become his own: the references might not be deliberate at all.

What is undoubtedly similar is the location. The official title says that they are in a garden – and a very fine one it is too. As a family unit, these people are undoubtedly entitled to gather together in a group larger than two, and I assume that, if the servant lives in, then there is no reason why he shouldn’t be there as well. And if this is their garden, they are truly blessed. There’s been too much ‘park shaming’ – as a friend called it – recently. It’s fine for those people with gardens to say ‘oh, they shouldn’t all be out in the parks’, but there are so many people living in cramped flats, often with too many other people: we must find a way to give them more space! With a garden like this one, there is no need – it looks more like a park anyway.

In Watteau, part of the magic is the ambiguity. You never know exactly where you are. The landscapes look like the countryside, but there are classical statues scattered around – it could be a park, or a run down estate, which has been left to go wild. Similarly, you can never be quite sure who the people he paints are. Are they off-duty actors? If so, why are they wearing their costumes out in the park? And why do they have costumes of different eras? The images are entirely poetic… and I will talk about one of them soon! Back to Lancret: he cuts down on the ambiguity, and keeps our feet just that little bit more on the ground. This could be a garden – an incredibly large one – or it could be a park, in good condition. The fountain flows into the circular pond, honeysuckle climbs up the wall, and flowers bloom in the vase. The Ecologist tells me they are all cultivars, by the way, double versions, more blousy than the natural forms. There is nothing unsophisticated about this garden.

The flowers appear to have been grown to accessorize with Madame’s outfit – that little ‘ping’ of deep salmon pink lifts our eyes to the top of the vase, and then back down to the mother’s dress. The yellow and white of the honeysuckle harmonize with the clothes of her younger daughter. Mum holds the coffee in her left hand (yes, I’d prefer it if it were chocolate, just for today, but it’s better that it’s coffee!), and delicately holds a spoonful towards the child, little finger suitably erect. The girl’s face is a joy – how exciting, to try coffee for the first time! But the parents aren’t taking any chances. The buttercup-yellow dress has been entirely swathed with an apron. If you think it’s hard to get coffee stains out now, just think how impossible it would have been in 1742.

It’s at this point that you might start to think, ‘But this is madness!’ Deliberately giving coffee to a young child? Surely you want to keep them calm and collected? Luckily, they have an enormous garden to run around in (and back then they didn’t need to socially isolate), but the last thing you would want if you were having a quiet breakfast in the garden is caffeine-pumped offspring. More important than this, though: how will the child turn out? Imagine the horror of appearing in public with children who were unsophisticated! And the sophisticated thing was to take coffee in the morning, and after lunch. This girl is learning what it means to grow up.

There’s a very good clue to this – the girl’s doll has been discarded, and lies, face down on the path. It is time to put away childish things. The doll’s dress has the same colours as the mother’s – deep salmon, jade green and ivory. But it’s in a different style: not just the stripes, but the cut, which is far more formal. And the dog? Well, it’s ignoring the proceedings entirely, grubbing away, ignoring the hollyhocks as well. But then, we know that dogs are not as sophisticated as humans.

It is a charming, delightful painting. It may appear inconsequential, but Lancret has clearly lavished attention on the composition. The trees in the top left lead our eyes down to the family group, the diagonal from the bottom right corner, through the dog, leads to the interaction between mother and child, and the sloping wall behind the mother’s shoulders follows her gaze towards the expectant girl.

The father – and the servant – are in an earthy brown which helps them to fade into the background. After all, what do men know about bringing up girls? The focus is definitely on the mother – and the colours across the painting remind us she is there. 

Enjoy your gardens, if you have them, and maybe give the people in the parks more space, as they might not. And enjoy your chocolate. Or coffee. Or, even better, both.

Day 25 – The Resurrection

Day 25 – Donatello, The Resurrection, c. 1460-65, San Lorenzo, Florence.

Happy Easter! And to celebrate: my favourite image of ‘The Resurrection’. Why this one, of all the possible examples? Quite simply, because it’s not easy: this is a hard won victory. And because it breaks all the rules.

Most versions of the Resurrection make it look effortless. Jesus springs forth without a care in the world, just like all good comic book escapes: ‘in one bound he was free’. Here again is Andrea Bonaiuti’s version, which I ended with yesterday (#POTD 24).

CF541C The Resurrection, by Andrea di Bonaiuto, 1365-1367, Spanish Chapel, Basilica of Santa Maria Novella, Florence Italy

Two angels sit serenely on either side of the empty tomb, the soldiers sleep just as serenely on the floor, while the lid of the tomb looks as if it has toppled off, and is now lying where it fell, just behind the sarcophagus. Jesus floats effortlessly in the sky, the Flag of Christ Triumphant over his shoulder: it’s a red cross on a white background. No, he wasn’t English – but I’ll tell you about that another day. In other examples, the Resurrection is more explosive, with fragments of tomb flying in all directions. In yet more, Jesus appears above the still-closed tomb, apparently without even lifting the lid or disturbing its structure. Donatello sees it differently. This is hard work. He drags himself out, one foot on the edge of the tomb, grasping the standard with both hands as if he is going to use it to push himself up in that one final effort to escape the horrors of hell. He is still almost entirely wrapped in his shroud. Look back again at the Bonaiuti: as so often the shroud has been nonchalantly thrown round his shoulders as an improvised toga. For Donatello it clings to his limbs, wraps tight around his face, and slips off the shoulder with no hint of sensuality and every sign of inconvenience. And his face – this is the face of exhaustion – the face of someone at the end of their abilities. The suffering he asked his Father to free him from in the Garden of Gethsemane less than three days before is not yet over. One last push. Meanwhile, the soldiers sprawl on the ground, uncomfortable and unaware.

Like the pictures I’ve shown you over the past couple of days, it is part of a larger whole. It is just one image on a pulpit which was erected for the first time in 1515, some fifty years after Donatello died. Even then it didn’t take the form in which we see it today. There are actually two pulpits in San Lorenzo, both of which were constructed out of incomplete elements left behind at Donatello’s death in 1466. They were finished by his assistant, Bertoldo di Giovanni. If we’re honest, we don’t know what these reliefs were intended for. They are probably connected to Donatello’s great patron, Cosimo de’ Medici – not the Grand Duke of Tuscany I mentioned yesterday, but the man who cemented the power of the dynasty in the 15th Century. He was awarded the title of  ‘Pater Patriae’ – Father of the Fatherland. This is the old Cosimo – Cosimo il Vecchio. He and Donatello grew old together, and, some say, they became friends. Cosimo is supposed to have commissioned work from Donatello to keep him busy in his old age, although he himself died two years before the sculptor. Cosimo was involved in a complete re-building of the local church, San Lorenzo, and was buried directly in front of the high altar. The theme of death and resurrection seen in the pulpits would be ideal for a tomb, and one suggestion is that these bronze reliefs were commissioned for Cosimo’s own funerary monument. Another suggestion is that there was a plan for the church which involved two pulpits from the outset. However, even though the pulpits have been given the same form, the shape and format of the imagery is different on each, and gaps have been made up with later work: they were not meant to be part of structures quite like this.

This scarcely matters for the consideration of this picture though. As you can see from the figure standing on the left, it is the continuation of a story – as it happens, the same story that we saw yesterday, ‘The Harrowing of Hell’ (#POTD 24). You might even recognise this figure, with his camel skin and his long, messy hair and beard: St John the Baptist.

He is reaching out to Jesus, who is struggling through the souls in hell. Working his way across the space, flag already over his shoulder, Jesus will get there. He grasps the hands of one of the souls, while others reach out to him. There is none of the orderly waiting we saw yesterday: it really is hell in here, with people reaching, grasping, striving, each with their own particular need. And Jesus keeps wading through the dead. John the Baptist reaches out to give him a helping hand, to pull him on, towards the gate on the far side of hell, opposite the one through which he entered. Donatello uses four buttresses to structure the narratives on this panel, which now makes up one side of the pulpit. There is one at either end, and two in the middle, dividing the surface into three: John the Baptist stands in front of the second from the left. These buttresses are shown in a rough perspective, as if our attention were focussed on the centre, on the Resurrection. 

Going from left to right the first three buttresses all have apertures in them, presumably doors. Jesus drags his way through hell, where he will step through the door behind John the Baptist. It is from this door that he hauls himself up, out of hell and onto the sarcophagus. Or rather, he will – he hasn’t done it yet. The perspective of the buttresses is centred, and implies that the focus of the relief is in the middle of the sarcophagus, where the two arches meet. This point is marked by a trophy, made up of a shield, two spears and two helmets, the sort of trophy used, typically, in monuments celebrating a victory. Jesus hasn’t got there yet. He won’t truly triumph over death until he makes it up onto the tomb, and stands, full height, in the centre of this relief. He’s nearly there.

That’s what I love about this version: it’s so original. So unexpected. Not only that: it goes against every single idea we have about this era. The Renaissance, or at least the Early Renaissance, developed a sense of order, clarity, and balance, making images that look more like the world we live in and experience, with accurate anatomy, naturalistic scale and a measured perspective. In relief carving – or modelling like this – this was achieved by giving the foreground figures higher relief than those further back, the relief gradually getting flatter as things get further away, with some details in the background being effectively drawn in. In all cases, the space depicted is imaginary, not real. But not here! We can see this clearly in the next story that Donatello has included: the Ascension. This bit of the narrative won’t happen for another 40 days – but nevertheless, here it is.

Jesus is in a tightly crowded space, surrounded by thirteen other people. The Virgin Mary, with her head covered, is just to the right of him, and to the left of her is probably John the Evangelist: young, and beardless, with flowing hair. And the other 11? Well, the remaining Apostles, although by this stage Judas was dead. The new 12th Apostle was St Matthias, and he must be here, even though, according to the Bible, he wasn’t appointed until just after the Ascension. The figures are corralled in by a fence, which stands free of the rest of the sculpture – you can see its shadow cast on the figures behind. This isn’t imaginary space Donatello has created, this is real space, and there are far too many people crowded into it: no order, no rationale, but, instead, expression. Indeed, you wouldn’t really get anything else quite as ‘expressionistic’ as Donatello’s late style until the early 20th Century. Not only are the figures crowded too closely together, but it is also hard to see their relationship to the floor of the room. Donatello is manipulating the space, and manipulating the movement of the people in it. As they gather around Jesus, they emphasize his upward movement, while also making way so that we can see more of him, from his knees to his halo. Tiny angels help him upwards – another unprecedented feature: in most versions he can do this on his own. As it happens, he cannot leave any other way: the buttress on the far right is the only one of the four with no way out. As we saw yesterday, the only way is up. 

He is so much larger than the other figures. So much for proportion and perspective! In this case, size doesn’t tell us where he is, but how important he is. Donatello has returned to a medieval hierarchy of scale, where size is equivalent to status. And not only that, on his way to Heaven, Jesus is physically leaving the picture space, head and shoulders above the frieze marking the top of the wall, his head and halo standing free from the background, solid and sculptural. Look back at the Resurrection, though: this escape from the bounds of the picture frame started there.

As Jesus progresses from left to right, from the ‘Harrowing of Hell’, through ‘The Resurrection’ to ‘The Ascension’, he gets bigger, and higher, and the relief gets increasingly deep. In ‘The Resurrection’ his head is already above the arches, with his halo in front of the circles of the frieze. And by the time he gets to the Ascension, both head and halo are clear of the frieze altogether. Jesus has left the building. Or he will do, in forty days.

In the meantime, Happy Easter! We are still in the middle of it all. Maybe we are not yet quite in the middle, we’re still waiting, but we’re getting there. It’s not easy, the last step – and who knows when the last step will be? But we will get there, and before too long we will also be able to go out. That might even be within the next forty days.

Day 24 – The Devils

Day 23 – Andrea Bonauiti, The Devils, from The Harrowing of Hell, 1365-68, The Spanish Chapel, Santa Maria Novella, Florence.

It’s Easter Saturday – a day, it might seem, like any other, trapped between two extraordinary days – Good Friday, and Easter Sunday – and we wait, expectant and patient, while nothing happens. Or so it seems. Behind the scenes, in terms of Christian theology, a lot is being prepared. There’s always a slight sense of worry, a sense of foreboding, what if it doesn’t work out? We are all there now, all of us across the world, of all faiths and none, with a sense of waiting to see what happens next. Will the threat of the Coronavirus exceed our society’s ability to overcome it? Or will it beat us in the end? We know it will be the former, we have that faith. But how do we deal with the constant tension? As so often, humour is one way through: by belittling the threat, maybe we can make it seem small. So today, I bring you – the Devils! This is just a detail from an image which is painted as one section of a single wall in a large chapel which is just part of one of the most important churches in Florence: Santa Maria Novella. It’s a tiny detail in a massive whole, and yet, it was a little hint of encouragement for the people who would have seen it when first painted, and I hope it can be for us too.

The Spanish Chapel got its name in the 16th Century. It became the main place of worship of the Spanish Community in Florence, who arrived in the train of Eleonora of Toledo when she married Cosimo I Grand Duke of Tuscany. But before that it was – and remained – the Chapter House of the Dominican friary. The friars would meet here every day, where they would be read a chapter from the Rule of St Dominic, and at these meetings the daily administration of the friary would also be discussed. It was in Santa Maria Novella that Boccaccio’s protagonists were supposed to have met in the Decameron. They then fled the city of Florence to avoid the plague – and not just any plague: the Black Death. Yes, they were Socially Distancing, but in an unfeasibly large group of ten. And how did they pass their time in medieval lockdown? Well, they told good stories. One story each, every day, for ten days. A hundred stories in all. Were the stories solemn, sober, and respectful of those suffering loss? Oh no! They are some of the filthiest things you will ever have read, and went on to be one Chaucer’s biggest inspirations for the Canterbury tales. You get through the daily bread of endurance with the leaven of comedy.

The Chapter House was decorated a couple of decades after the Black Death, but there is still a measure of defiance, a hint of hope. You start by making fun at the biggest threat, and, for the medieval mind, this was the Devil. Here are his minions. Terrifying. The threat is palpable. Or rather – they are completely laughable. To the modern mind minions are banana-coloured, weetabix-shaped creatures, who wish to serve the meanest mind on the planet. But this is how the medieval mind saw them. And yes, one of them is yellow – but scrawny, ill-fed, its rib-cage prominent, its biceps sagging, a comical look of distress on its face. Behind, two of its companions, in red and grey, clasp their hands and bite their nails, looking for all the world as if they are gossiping at a WI meeting with no jam and too much Jerusalem. Another devil, oblivious to the wispy hellfire, looks to see if what it feared is really true, and, because it is, scuttles rapidly back to the relative safety of the inner reaches of hell. What has disturbed them so much? Well, Jesus has just knocked on the door. This always reminds of the bumper sticker subverting any number of evangelical Christian badges: Jesus is Coming! Look Busy! 

According to the Apostles’ Creed, 

Jesus… was crucified, died and was buried;
He descended into hell;
on the third day He rose again from the dead.

Before we go any further, I want to clear up one point. I’ve often heard people say, ‘after three days he rose from the dead’, and less often, ‘but Easter Sunday isn’t three days after Good Friday’. Well that’s not what the creed says. It says, ‘On the third day…’ Let’s count: Friday – first day; Saturday – second day; Sunday – third day. It’s that simple. Meanwhile, what was Jesus up to? What was going on backstage in the drama of Easter? Well, he descended into hell, it says so in the creed. But what did he do when he got there? The belief was – and maybe still is – that because of Original Sin, mankind was destined to everlasting damnation. Christ’s sacrifice means that mankind is saved, but what about those truly good people who died before Jesus? What hope did they have? Well, in this scene, known as ‘The Harrowing of Hell’, Jesus has come to get them.

Jesus dies, descends into hell, and knocks on the door. The devils scarper: that’s them cowering on the far right of the image, hiding as far away from the Gates of Hell as they possibly can.

Eventually, one brave devil heads to the door… but by this time Jesus has lost patience, and tramples the door underfoot. The devil is crushed underneath it (and look! It even had a key to unlock the door – or maybe this was a vain attempt to lock it once and for all?) 

At this point you realise that hell has a curious ‘first in first out’ policy. The first to greet Jesus is Adam, now enormously old with the longest of white beards – and Eve is kneeling just below in pink. And you thought they would be given the largest share of the blame! Don’t worry: there is hope for all of us. Behind Adam is a young man with a lamb. It’s not the Lamb of God, though, as that is not John the Baptist. It’s not initially clear where John has got to, which is odd, as he didn’t die much before Jesus (three years at the most). So who could it be? Again, on the ‘first in first out’ basis, it must be Abel, the son of Adam and Eve: the son who sacrificed of his best – a nice fat lamb – only to be murdered by his brother Cain. To the right of him is an old man with a wooden box with a dark hole in it: Noah, with a working model of the ark, in between Mrs Noah and one of his sons. But where is John the Baptist?

Oddly he’s made his way back in the crowd, wearing his camel skin robe, with the usual long, messy hair and beard. He might look as if he’s trying to thumb a lift out of hell, but he’s carrying on where he left off, working the crowd as Jesus’s warm-up act, and now that Jesus has brought the doors down (if not yet the whole house), he is once again exhorting ‘Behold the Lamb of God!’ Just above him you can see Moses – with rays of light glowing out of either side of his head, and a stone tablet with illegible script: the ten commandments. Bonaiuti clearly had no Hebrew. To the right of Moses is a man with a crown, and a zither – King David, still harping on the Psalms, which he is supposed to have written. ‘Out of the depths have I cried unto thee oh Lord’ (see #POTD 5) – and now, He is here in person.

‘The Harrowing of Hell’ is just part of the larger picture. It occurs at the bottom right of the Altar wall in the Chapter House (or Spanish Chapel). At the top we see the Crucifixion, and at bottom left the ‘via Crucis’. Christ, stripped of his blue cloak, is in his red robe, carrying the cross out of the city gate and up the hill to Golgotha. Bonaiuti is using the surface to perfection. With Jerusalem bottom left, he heads up the hill to Golgotha to be Crucified at the very top of the image, and then descends to hell at the bottom right: the gate of Jerusalem and the gates of Hell are equivalent. Although, if we look forward to the New Jerusalem, you realise that the earthly city is shown under Jesus’ right hand, on the side of the Good Thief, whereas hell is on his left, under the Bad. No wonder the devils are scared of Jerusalem. With this wall, we get to the end of a chapter – or the end of an episode – and fortunately, we have the box set. What could possibly happen next? Well, spoiler alert! He rises from the dead! But where can Bonaiuti go from here? He’s filled up the entire wall! In the immortal words of that little-known 80s gospel singer, Yazz, ‘The Only Way is Up’. You’d have to look up at the ceiling.

The Resurrection, by Andrea di Bonaiuto, 1365-1367, Spanish Chapel, Basilica of Santa Maria Novella, Florence Italy

Bonaiuti has planned his storytelling across the wall and through space to the ceiling, which I find remarkable. And this is only one wall, and a bit of the ceiling. This is one of the most remarkable rooms anywhere in the world, and yet so few people know it. But then, the rest of Florence is also remarkable. As is the rest of Italy. And currently, no one can see it. Today’s Italians are being incredibly patient, waiting for the chance to get out. At least they are not as cramped as these souls waiting in hell. But that won’t make the apparently endless waiting any easier, or bring back those who are lost, I know. The threat is real, very real, but in this fresco it is cowering in the bottom right hand corner, risible devils, insignificant in the larger scale of things. This virus might seem to be a greater threat to us in the 21st century, but it dissolves in soap… so… keep washing your hands, and avoid huddling together while we wait for the threat to pass. And tell good stories. At least one a day.

Day 23 – The Crucifixion

Full title: The Mond Crucifixion Artist: Raphael Date made: about 1502-3 Source: http://www.nationalgalleryimages.co.uk/ Contact: picture.library@nationalgallery.co.uk Copyright © The National Gallery, London

Day 23 – Raphael Sanzio, The Crucified Christ with the Virgin Mary, Saints and Angels, about 1502-3, National Gallery, London.

It is Good Friday – which, of course, every year, prompts the question, ‘Why is it Good’? Well, according to the OED, the first use of ‘Guode Friday’ was in 1290, and the word is used in reference to ‘a day (or season) observed as holy by the Church’ – and we all like holy days – or rather, holidays. They are really good, even if this year the long Bank Holiday weekend will be spent at home. So now you know, don’t ask again next year.

It is of course the day on which Christians remember the Crucifixion of Jesus – making the choice of subject matter for today’s #pictureoftheday obvious. But why Raphael? Well, I missed it on Monday, but that day marked 537 years since he was born – or, more significantly, 500 years since he died. Like Shakespeare he had the good sense to die on his birthday, thus cutting down the number of dates we’d have to remember and making him look More Significant. ‘Why don’t you just say Anniversary?’ you ask. Well, it isn’t the same day. In the 16th Century, everyone in Europe was using the Julian Calendar. The Gregorian Calendar was instituted by Pope Gregory XIII in 1582, but Britain didn’t fall into line until 1752 (after all, it was clearly a Popish plot) when we ‘lost’ 11 days. By now the Julian Calendar is 13 days behind the Gregorian Calendar, apparently… so… oh it really doesn’t matter.

Back to the painting, which is a brilliant example of Raphael’s early style. As an artist he was a sponge – anything that he saw and liked he absorbed, assimilated and regurgitated, and here he is giving us his Perugino. Born in Urbino, the son of court artist Giovanni Santi, Raphael was initially trained by his father. He was then apprenticed to Pietro Perugino, and his early works are almost indistinguishable from that of his master – compare the second image. This is Perugino’s Archangel Raphael with Tobias painted around 3 or 4 years before Raphael’s Crucifixion – if you want to know the story, see #POTD 4. 

If you compare the paintings, the standing figures in both have one foot firmly planted on the ground, with the heel of the other slightly lifted, making the knee on that side bend – a position known as ‘contrapposto’. The head is tilted to one side. The articulation of the angel’s fingers, especially the delicate curve of the thumbs, and exaggerated separation of the little fingers, is very similar to those of St Jerome, the figure kneeling on the left of the Crucifixion. The overall effect is feminine – or effeminate – and slightly fay. The landscapes are – or were – also similar, but you can’t really see that as the Perugino has been cut down, also losing Tobias’ and Raphael’s elbows, and most of the dog. It’s what is called an Umbrian bowl landscape – seen in Umbrian paintings, rather than in Umbria itself. On the left and right the horizon is higher, and more or less horizontal, dipping down to a lower central section, thus looking like a bowl. The distance is blue, the middle ground green and the foreground brown – an early example of atmospheric perspective (the effect that the atmosphere has on the way we see things as they get further away). This colour scheme is formulaic: if you were standing on green grass it wouldn’t look brown. Notice, in the Crucifixion, that they are also standing on a hill. Yes, that does have a narrative function, ‘There is a green hill far away’, after all (even if it is brown here), but it is also a way of coping with the progression from foreground via middle ground to background. It cuts out the transition between the first two stages, and brings the characters further forward. Raphael isn’t the only artist to do this.

Full title: The Mond Crucifixion Artist: Raphael Date made: about 1502-3 Source: http://www.nationalgalleryimages.co.uk/ Contact: picture.library@nationalgallery.co.uk Copyright © The National Gallery, London

The more astute among you will have noticed that I said that the man kneeling on the left of the Crucifixion is St Jerome. And the most astute will also have realised that St Jerome was not present at the Crucifixion, living, as he did, from 347-420 AD.  The other three were, according to the bible. Standing on the left is the Virgin Mary, and on the right, John the Evangelist. We know that, because the gospels mention them standing at the foot of the cross: this is the point at which Jesus, from the cross, commended them to each other’s care. Also, they wear their traditional colours, Mary in a blue cloak over a red robe, and John in red and green (his colour scheme is not so fixed as it is for other saints). Kneeling on the right is Mary Magdalene, who is also mentioned as present in the Bible. I’m glad she’s there, as she is a useful antidote to those who would rather believe bad fiction than standard Christian theology and art history. Mary Magdalene was not present at the Last Supper, and has never been depicted as being there. Yes, John looks very girly – with long flowing hair, and a smooth, beardless face, but that’s how the young Raphael depicted young men – as, of course, did everyone else, including Leonardo. Any self-respecting woman would have her hair covered, or at least dressed, and the Magdalene does indeed have ribbons in her hair. I know, you could argue she was not a self-respecting woman, but by the time she was kneeling at the foot of the cross, she was, having repented of her sinful ways. This is why she is paired with St Jerome. They are the two leading saints associated with the act of penance. Mary is repenting her sinful ways as a prostitute (there is no biblical evidence for that, by the way, but that is another story), whereas St Jerome is lamenting the fact that he had read so much classical literature. Not an ideal saint for the Renaissance, you might think, but renaissance scholars were adept at sidestepping minor inconveniences like this. According to his story, he retired to the wilderness as an act of penance for the folly of his youth, beating his chest with a stone and contemplating Jesus’ sacrifice on the Cross.  This painting was commissioned for an altar dedicated to St Jerome – so he is there by necessity. As a result, you could argue that the Crucifixion is really there because of him, in this case, rather than the other way around.

What we are seeing is an elision of two separate things. The Maries and John are physically present at the Crucifixion, whereas St Jerome is contemplating a Crucifix. Another way of looking at it is that everything in the painting, with the exception of St Jerome himself, is one big thought bubble: the Crucifixion, the Virgin, St. John, and Mary Magdalene are all part of Jerome’s contemplation. This goes to show that however realistic a painting might look, the visual elements are predominantly symbolic. And indeed, the more you look at it, the more you realise that the art is in the artifice. The figures are perfectly balanced – if not exactly symmetrical – from one side to the other. With the inner figures kneeling, the four heads take on a similar profile to the horizon, with those of the Virgin and John standing clear against the sky, and those of the kneeling figures seen against the rolling hills lower down. The colours of their clothes tie them together as well, with the Virgin’s dress, Jerome’s belt, and John’s cloak being the same shade of red. Exactly the same shade of red is used for Jesus’ loincloth, which, if you haven’t noticed it already, is remarkable.

Full title: The Mond Crucifixion Artist: Raphael Date made: about 1502-3 Source: http://www.nationalgalleryimages.co.uk/ Contact: picture.library@nationalgallery.co.uk Copyright © The National Gallery, London

Have you ever seen Jesus in anything other than a white loincloth? It is one of the features of this painting that suggests it was commissioned to replace a far older image, as the only other examples I know were painted in the 13th Century. The third image is a Crucifix by Cimabue in Arezzo, and is dated to around 1270. The colour is associated with Royalty, and goes back to the Byzantine tradition, when the Emperors wore purple – which is often shown as red. It is also, of course, associated with the blood that you can see in the Cimabue flowing from the wounds in Christ’s hands and feet. In Raphael’s version the angels gather Christ’s blood in chalices. This is the Holy Blood, which was the subject of yesterday’s image (#POTD 22).

Notice how, in Raphael’s painting, the angels are flying in the same plane as Jesus. No, I know what you’re thinking: they are on the same spatial plane – the picture plane – and their ribbons fly out parallel to the picture surface as well, as does one end of Christ’s loincloth. Raphael is using them to pattern the surface of the painting – they do not move in depth at all – and, as ever, this placing of things parallel to the picture plane makes them look more iconic, taking them out of the reality of this world. In the real world, we move in and out of space. Likewise, and most otherworldly, we see the sun and the moon in the sky, on either side of the Cross, depicted with gold and silver leaf resepctively. This is another feature of archaic images of the Crucifixion, and can be interpreted in several ways – all of which are valid. It probably derives from the biblical passage which states that the sky darkened when Christ died – we have night during the day, and see both heavenly bodies at the same time. But it is also prodigious – the two shouldn’t be seen so close together – and so it forebodes ill. In some cases they mark God’s anger at the death of his son. They also came to symbolise the Old and New testaments – St Augustine, a contemporary of St Jerome, promoted that interpretation.

In between the Sun and Moon we see the titulus, or ‘title’, which Pontius Pilate attached to the cross, saying ‘Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews’ in Hebrew, Greek and Latin. Sometimes, but only rarely, artists include the full inscription in all three languages. More often, as here, they only include the abbreviation I.N.R.I., which comes from the Latin inscription: Iesus Nazarenus Rex Iudeorum.

Raphael has produced a static, almost timeless image. However relevant to today, this lasts for all time, night and day. The angels gather the precious blood, too precious, indeed, to allow it to fall to the ground. The Virgin and St John stand witness with long-suffering devotion while Jerome and Mary Magdalene look on in humble, penitent adoration. The symmetry of the composition, its order and balance, are given strength by a pyramidal composition. The figures of Christ, Jerome and the Magdalene define a triangle – and no normal triangle at that. This is the golden triangle – the ratio of the long side to the short is the golden section, and if you were to bisect one of the lower angles, one of the resulting triangles would also be golden. The base is the length of a pentagon which would have its apex at the top of this triangle. 

The golden section occurs often in nature – usually in terms of growth – and is so remarkable that it was the subject of a book written around 1498 that was first published in 1509. The author, a Franciscan Friar by the name of Luca Pacioli, called it ‘De Divina Proportione’ or ‘About Divine Proportion’. This shape is, in itself, holy, it seems, and so is the painting – the angels and the angles tell us so. It is Good.

Day 22 – The Last Supper

Day 22 – Tilman Riemenschneider, The Last Supper, 1499-1505, St. Jacobskirche, Rothenburg ob der Tauber.

It is the beginning of Week 4 of #pictureoftheday and I bring you a whole new innovation: I finally have my own website, and if you want to, you can head to the ‘home’ page and subscribe to my blog:

http://www.drrichardstemp.com

Alternatively, of course, you can just keep reading it here. But if you know anyone who might like it, who is not on social media, please do tell them!

On with today’s picture! We are continuing, really, from #POTD 18, where I talked about Christ’s Entry into Jerusalem, a relief carving on the left wing of Tilman Riemenschneider’s Holy Blood Altar. The Last Supper here is another detail from this remarkable structure, which is enormous, and quite hard to understand from a photograph. Nevertheless, you can see one view of the whole thing here: 

As with most carved altarpieces like this the most important part is the central section, with carved wooden sculptures encased in what is effectively a box.  This section is called the ‘corpus’, as it is the main ‘body’ of the altar. This can be shut away with the two wings, which are hinged like doors. The wings were never decorated as richly as the corpus – sometimes they were just painted, a far cheaper form of decoration than carving, whatever the relative values are now, and sometimes, as here, they were carved, but in low relief. The wings would be kept closed to protect the corpus from dust, and opened during the Mass, or on special feast days. In particular, they would usually be kept closed during lent, a period of calm, quiet contemplation, where any notion of celebration of excess is supposedly put away. However, as the corpus of the Holy Blood Altar shows the Last Supper, which takes place during Lent, it might not make sense to close it off. In addition to this, the physical structure of the piece – the carpentry as much as the sculpture – implies that this might not have been possible.

The corpus is raised above the altar by what is often called a ‘predella’. In a painted altarpiece this would be a strip of pictures on the box which supports the main panel, but in this case it is more of an open framework designed to house a small crucifix, and two adoring angels. It was at the Crucifixion that Christ’s blood was shed. This is, of course, of huge importance given the name of the altar. The church of St James boasted a relic of the Holy Blood, and the altar was designed as an enormous reliquary. Above the corpus, effectively standing on the roof of the Upper Room where the Last Supper is taking place, there are two kneeling angels holding another cross. There is no figure of Jesus here, but there doesn’t need to be, as it is this cross which contains the precious relic. On either side we see the Annunciation. The Angel Gabriel, standing on the right, announces to the Virgin Mary that she will be the mother of God. But he announces the coming of the Messiah across the relic of the Holy Blood – so with the news of Jesus’ birth comes the inevitability of his future death. At the very summit of the filigree work decorating the superstructure is one last sculpture – Jesus himself, as the Man of Sorrows. He is dressed in a loincloth and wears the Crown of Thorns. He points to the wound in his chest from which the blood flowed. As he is directly above the relic, it is as if the blood flows down into the reliquary cross – and on, downwards, into the chalice at the Last Supper. Or it would, if we could see a chalice.

That is the point of this sculpture: it was at the Last Supper that Christ instituted the Eucharist. According to Mathew (26:26-28):

‘And as they were eating, Jesus took bread, and blessed it, and brake it, and gave it to the disciples, and said, Take, eat; this is my body. And he took the cup, and gave thanks, and gave it to them, saying, Drink ye all of it; For this is my blood of the new testament, which is shed for many for the remission of sins’.

Before the 10th plague of Egypt (see #POTD 21, yesterday), the houses of the Israelites were marked with the blood of a spring lamb, which was sacrificed and then eaten. The blood on the door told the avenging angel not to kill the firstborn of that household – the Jews would be saved. Jesus takes this symbolism for himself, and becomes, as John the Baptist announced, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world. In the Eucharist, the bread and wine become his body and blood. In Christian belief, Jesus becomes the Passover lamb, and his blood means that Christians will be saved.

Nevertheless, we are witnessing a slightly different point in the drama, just before the institution of the Eucharist. Jesus has announced that one of the number would betray him – and some of them are still discussing which one it will be. The man on the far right appears to be accusing his neighbour, who points to himself as if to say, ‘No, not me guv’nor’. The three above them are looking confused – and maybe a little guilty. The implication is that, whenever anyone does anything wrong, they are effectively betraying Jesus. However, they seem to be unaware that we have already reached the denouement. Judas has stood up and is ready to leave, clutching a moneybag containing the thirty pieces of silver – the blood money – in his left hand. He gets a fantastically central position – but not, apparently, a chair. Maybe he has kicked it away, and it has fallen out of the frame. 

Actually, it’s better than that. The whole sculpture is carved out of several different blocks of wood, all fitted together – and Judas is carved out of a block on his own. Look at the structure of the woodwork making up the floor of the room: can you see that his feet rest on a separate plank? Well, the whole figure can be removed, and tonight, in St Jacobskirche, maybe it will be. Judas will leave the building. This would then allow a better view of the youngest of the Apostles, John the Evangelist, asleep on Jesus’s lap. And a clearer view of Christ’s right hand, withdrawn, almost limp, as even he appears to be wary of blessing Judas.

This really is the perfect piece of drama. Looking again at the overall structure of the altarpiece, we see the Entry into Jerusalem in the left wing (#POTD 18), and, as I suggested then, the fact that you can only see the shoe on the donkey’s foot from the left-hand side implies we should be with the Apostles, following Jesus, through the gate and into the city. This takes us into the Upper Room, depicted in the corpus, where we see Jesus and the Apostles at the Last Supper. From here, Judas heads off to the high priests – and to the arresting soldiers – while Jesus goes to the garden of Gethsemane, depicted in the right-hand wing of the altarpiece. The drama continues from left to right, taking us ever closer to the point where blood – the Holy Blood – is actually shed.

Even within the Last Supper, the drama is palpable throughout the day. On Sunday I showed a picture of the windows of the Upper Room seen from behind the altarpiece – they let light in from the windows of the church itself. The biblical characters are illuminated with the same light as we are, they are in the same world as us, and we become part of their narrative. I had wanted to see this, Riemenschneider’s masterpiece, for thirty years, and I finally saw it for the first time last December. I was lucky enough to spend the whole morning with it. It was a beautiful, crisp, winter’s day, with milky sunshine and a blue sky. Sitting in front of the altar, it was at first evenly lit by a diffuse light. As the Earth revolved the sunlight fell first onto Christ’s hand – the one that had shared food with Judas, the one that appears unable to bless the departing traitor – and then, it fell onto Judas himself. He appears almost blinded by the light… and makes to leave.

Day 21 – The Finding of Moses

Day 21 – Nicolas Poussin, The Finding of Moses, 1651, National Gallery, London.

Originally posted on 8 April 2020

Happy Passover! It isn’t every year that Passover coincides exactly with Easter, but of course it is no coincidence when it does. It was the Seder – the ceremonial Passover meal – which brought Jesus and the apostles together in what became known as the Last Supper: more of that tomorrow. Passover this year must be especially significant, as it marks the last of the ten plagues of Egypt, when the Lord smote all the firstborn of the land. As we know, it is unlikely that the firstborn will suffer this year, but my heart goes out to all those who can’t be with their families, or who have suffered loss.

According to the Book of Exodus, to protect the firstborn of Israel, a lamb was sacrificed. The doors of Jewish households were marked with its blood as a sign that no Egyptians lived there, so that the avenging angel would know to pass over – hence the name of the feast. The lamb itself was roasted and eaten, and is still often part of the Seder. But no lambs for me today (I don’t eat meat) – instead I’ve stepped back in the story of Exodus to the Discovery of Moses. After all, it was him who was trying to persuade Pharaoh to let his people go, and it was Pharaoh’s refusal that led to the 10 plagues. 

I’ve chosen a painting by Poussin that is sometimes in the National Gallery in London. It was bought jointly with the National Museum Wales, so it spends half of its time in Cardiff – like the Tribes of Israel it is continually on the move, but, unlike them, it will probably never find the Promised Land. I’ve chosen it because it holds a special place in my heart, as a result of the following. One December I was booked to take a group of Year 2 pupils (so, aged 6-7) round the National Gallery, and asked to show them ‘Stories, but not Christmas stories, they come from Hampstead’. I’m not sure (a) why they didn’t say ‘It’s a Jewish school’ or (b) how I intuited this. Anyway, the day came, and this painting was in the first room we got to. I sat them down in front of it, and after my usual introduction asked, as I always did, ‘What can you see here’. Around half of them piped up, without hesitation, ‘It’s baby Jesus!’ Given that they were 6 or 7, I didn’t go into the fact that medieval Christian theologians had identified Moses as a ‘type’ of Jesus, and mapped all of his life story onto the Life of Christ, and I’m not going to do that here either. Well, not today anyway. I can’t remember how I got round this corner, but I probably said something like, ‘Well, yes, it does look like the baby Jesus, doesn’t it, but it’s actually the baby Moses’. Next question: ‘And where is the baby Moses’? Several little hands went up, but the first answer was, ‘Well, it’s a bit like a crib, and it’s a bit like a nest’. And I melted slightly in the middle – such a perfect answer.

He is, of course, in a basket of bulrushes. Pharaoh had decreed that all Hebrew boys should be drowned at birth, but Moses’ mother hid him until he was three months old, then made a basket of bulrushes in which she floated him down the Nile. Her daughter Miriam watched to see what would happen next. The basket caught in the reeds, and was discovered by none other than Pharaoh’s daughter, who had come down to the river to bathe. She decided to adopt the baby – at which point Miriam came out of hiding to ask if a wet nurse would be required. The end result was that Moses and his mother were surreptitiously reunited. 

Poussin’s paintings are often solemn, and always measured. The Princess stands aloof in a yellow toga, which modestly covers her head. She is placed about a third of the way across the painting. Two thirds of the way across is the peak of a rocky outcrop, on which reclines a river god with one arm around a Sphinx and the other gesturing towards the water. This is a personification of the River Nile, which we can see flowing across the back of the painting and down towards the bottom right. As if the Sphinx weren’t enough, an Obelisk rises directly above the Princess’s head, and two pyramids can be seen in the distance in the gap in the trees above Moses, just in front of an even further blue mountain. We are obviously in Egypt.

The Princess didn’t go out alone, of course. As it says in Exodus 2:5:

‘And the daughter of Pharaoh came down to wash herself at the river; and her maidens walked along by the river’s side; and when she saw the ark among the flags, she sent her maid to fetch it.’

It doesn’t say how many maidens there were, but Poussin includes nine – although one of them could conceivably be Miriam. The general assumption is that she is the maiden in white holding the basket. The maid sent to fetch the child is still clambering out of the Nile, looking in our direction as if she wants us to share in her adventure. Her legs mark the diagonal leading from the bottom right, which then passes through the heads of the two women kneeling with the basket and that of the Princess, until it reaches the tree at the top left – just another example of Poussin’s measured composition. The maidens themselves wear brightly coloured clothes which echo each other across the painting and surround the baby with an almost rainbow-like aura. Moses alone is naked – although pointedly placed above royal blue fabric – and stands out because of the pallor of his skin.

He reclines in his nest-like crib, already the little leader, waving up toward the Princess. I’m sure there’s a reference here to Jesus’ precocious ability to bless with his right hand. He looks like a chubby baby version of Michelangelo’s Adam on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, and, if he is Adam, the Princess, who gestures towards him, stands in for God. In her own way she gives him life, as her choice to adopt him means he will not die. 

Our continued well-being rests with young and old alike, and our ability to look after each other in different ways however distant or isolated. Traditionally, during the Seder, hands are washed at least twice, sometimes three times.  Whatever our beliefs, we should all take part in this ritual every day.