241 – Vasari vs Veracity

Amanzio Cattaneo, Parmigianino surprised by landsknechts in his studio, 1854. Galleria Nazionale di Parma.

I am reaching the end of my series of talks examining all aspects of The National Gallery’s The Vision of Saint Jerome, and will conclude with a talk about The Sack of Rome this Monday, 3 February at 6pm. To tie in with this I want to look at a painting which has been used to illustrate the most dramatic moment in the painting’s history, when its completion was interrupted by German soldiers who broke into Parmigianino’s workshop in 1527. The talk will be subtitled Politics and Painting – and will cover both of those topics in precisely that order: what were the politics of the day which led to this devastating event, and how did it affect the history and art of Western Europe? As this concludes my Renaissance series – a re-birth for the new year – a new series will follow. I will take a step back to the middle ages, and revel in the unparalleled art of Siena in the fourteenth century, celebrating the National Gallery’s much-heralded exhibition: Siena: The Rise of Painting, which opens on 8 March. I will give individual talks dedicated to Duccio (10 February), Pietro Lorenzetti, Simone Martini, and Ambrogio Lorenzetti, and then bring these all together with an introduction to the exhibition as a whole, including the wonderful art and artefacts by other artists which will also be on show. I will post the dates as and when they are settled. Of course, you can always check on the diary…

Back to today – or rather, the middle of the 19th century, which is when Cattaneo painted his typically romanticizing view of Vasari’s account of the events of 1527. We can see the artist himself seated in front of his tall, narrow painting. Girolamo Francesco Maria Mazzola (1503-40) became known as Parmigianino because he was the little artist of the family, the grandson, son, and nephew of a family of artists from Parma. However, Vasari always refers to him as Francesco. In the left foreground a woman in a red skirt and white headscarf holds a baby, and to the right a group of soldiers has entered the room in haste. The leader of the group, in the centre of the painting, holds back the others as they take stock of what they see. Parmigianino, who sits calmly in his chair, looks over his shoulder towards them. On breaking in they seem to have knocked over a stool – a sign, perhaps, of their haste – which has toppled onto a portfolio from which project a few sheets of paper – preparatory drawings, presumably. A curtain divides the main body of the room from what could be an entrance hall or lobby. The curtain is held back by another soldier, and there is more activity in the shadows. How well does this coincide with Vasari’s account?

If you didn’t know, it is possible to find the whole text of Vasari’s Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Artists online. This link will take you to the translation by Gaston de Vere which was published by Macmillan between 1912 and 1914, and specifically to the Life of Francesco Mazzuoli [Parmigiano]  – the spelling of his various names has developed over time. Vasari starts this anecdote by telling us that Francesco (Parmigianino) had been commissioned to paint a panel for ‘Madonna Maria Bufalini of Città di Castello’,

But he was prevented from bringing this work to completion by the ruin and sack of Rome in 1527, which was the reason not only that the arts were banished for a time, but also that many craftsmen lost their lives. And Francesco, also, came within a hair’s breadth of losing his, seeing that at the beginning of the sack he was so intent on his work, that, when the soldiers were entering the houses, and some Germans were already in his, he did not move from his painting for all the uproar that they were making; but when they came upon him and saw him working, they were so struck with astonishment at the work, that, like the gentlemen that they must have been, they let him go on.

This is exactly what Cattaneo has painted: the artist has not moved from his painting even given ‘all the uproar that they were making’. Although it is shadowy, you can see that there are at least three soldiers in the lobby – one, fully armoured, is crouching down, while others move around, perhaps searching for what they can loot. One figure either wears, or carries, a flowing red fabric, which could be seen as evoking the flames which were engulfing buildings elsewhere in the Eternal City. But that is all just noise in the background. Closer to us, one soldier is pushing back the curtain to enter from the lobby, and five are already present. One, with a helmet, shoulder pauldrons, and a breast plate covered by a slashed red doublet, is being held back by the man on the left of the group. This less impulsive man wears the same armour, but with a yellow sash rather than a red doublet, which may indicate some kind of authority. He has red breeches, and mustard- or buff-coloured hose. His sword is held up in his right hand in front of his chest – an almost involuntary gesture of surprise – while his left hand is extended to hold back the energetic man in red. The colour is telling – not only is the doublet red, but so are the breeches and hose. This is the colour of danger, impetuous anger, and blood. He reaches to draw his sword with his right hand, while his left holds onto its scabbard. My feeling is that it is he who has knocked over the stool, which lies with its red top towards us: the two are linked together by colour. Two more men wear helmets. One, in full armour, stands at the far right, wielding his sword low in his right hand as if to swing it, while another peers through the gap between the leader and the man in red. The fifth member of this group is little more than a boy, with a full head of hair, no beard, and no armour – although he does hold a pike in his left hand. He reaches through the gap between the two foremost men as if to touch the painting – or, maybe, to take the leader’s sword. It looks as if Parmigianino has only just realised they are there, so intent was he on his painting. He turns round and rests his left arm on the back of his chair, holding his palette, brushes, and a mahlstick in his left hand. His sleeve is green – notably, the complementary contrast to the red worn by the soldiers, so potentially illustrating that they have opposing views. The artist seems barely perturbed that these soldiers are there. They are called ‘landsknechts’ in the title – so what was a ‘landsknecht’?

This is an etching by Daniel Hopfer from the Art Institute of Chicago. Made around 1530 – three years after the Sack of Rome – it shows a group of Landsknechte. If anything, their dress is more outlandish that that painted by Cattaneo, although the puffing and slashing of the sleeves and breeches, and the double tying of the same, clearly has the same origin. The meaning of the word is confused by the ways it changed over time: it originally meant ‘servants of the land’ – they ‘served’ the land by fighting for it. But as pikes were one of their main weapons, it was sometimes written as ‘Lanzknechte’ – as in ‘lance’. Whichever way you interpret their name, practically speaking they were well-trained, well-armed and experienced mercenary soldiers, and the main force behind the Holy Roman Empire. If you know the Loggia dei Lanzi in Florence – right next to the Palazzo Vecchio – it took its current name from them: in the middle of the 16th Century Cosimo I had his German mercenaries stationed there. Their outlandish clothing was a ploy – apparently it was meant to strike fear into the hearts of their opponents!

So far, so good – Amanzio Cattaneo seems to have painted a convincing illustration of Vasari’s anecdote – which he could have heard first hand. Both Vasari and Parmigianino ended up in Bologna in 1530 (we’ll see why on Monday), and it seems likely that this account came straight from the horse’s mouth – along with everything else that Vasari wrote about ‘Francesco’. I must confess, though, I don’t know what interested Cattaneo in the story. He was born near Milan in 1828, and studied at the Accademia di Brera under Francesco Hayez. One Italian website implies that his work was made up of ‘historical subjects of a romantic stamp,’ and this painting certainly fits that description. However, that’s about as far as it goes – apart from the fact that he died in Genzano, about 30km southeast of Rome, in 1897. There is nothing else about him or his paintings on the internet – but he seems to have had no direct connection to Parma, or to Parmigianino. What is entirely clear, though, is that he had not seen Parmigianino’s painting.

Comparing his depiction of the work in progress with the painting itself, we can see that he has put the Virgin and Child at the top, with Jesus standing at Mary’s feet, and that there is a golden glow around the Virgin. However, it is she who holds the book – on her left knee – rather than Jesus (who rests it on her right), and the boy does not kick out one of his feet. At the bottom the two Saints are the wrong way round, but it’s not as if he’s been looking at a print, which would reverse the imagery. Both heads are at the same level and, even if Jerome has nodded off, with his head falling forward, he is certainly not lying down. While John the Baptist looks towards us and points up with his right hand, this is not Parmigianino’s elaborate invention. It’s not even as if we can blame Vasari’s description of the painting. When writing about the panel for ‘Madonna Maria Bufalini’ he says:

Francesco painted in it a Madonna in the sky, who is reading and has the Child between her knees, and on the earth he made a figure of S. John, kneeling on one knee in an attitude of extraordinary beauty, turning his body, and pointing to the Infant Christ; and lying asleep on the ground, in foreshortening, is a S. Jerome in Penitence.

What Cattaneo has painted is fine, and arguably a good interpretation of Vasari’s description – until it gets to Saint Jerome. Even if he is sleeping, there is no way the saint could be described as ‘lying asleep on the ground, in foreshortening’ – but, if you think about it, Parmigianino’s conception of St Jerome such an extraordinary idea that you really would have to see it to know what it looked like. And it certainly isn’t a ‘S. Jerome in Penitence’ as Vasari suggests. Cattaneo probably wanted to make sure that we could see the figure, and even identify him, given the red fabric propped up somehow behind him. However, aspects of the painting are right, even if not mentioned by Vasari: the golden glow surrounding the Virgin, and the clouds with which she is surrounded, for example. It is almost as if Cattaneo has read another description in addition to Vasari’s.

He does seem to have made a very specific choice about how he should represent Parmigianino himself. Cattaneo’s depiction of the artist looks remarkably like Parmigianino’s ‘Portrait of a Young Man’, which was acquired by the Uffizi in 1682. At the time it was identified as a self portrait, with the same identification appearing in print until 1773 at least. However, this idea has never really gone from the popular imagination, and it seems fair to suggest that Cattaneo held on to the traditional interpretation – with a slight trim to the beard, and a larger white collar to make the face stand out. Elsewhere, however, his romanticizing view of an artist’s practice in the 16th century is a little anachronistic.

Cattaneo implies that Parmigianino has painted the Virgin and Child from life models dressed in appropriate costume. The woman on the left wears a white headdress and blouse and a red skirt. Behind her, on the box or stool she is sitting on, is a mass of blue fabric. These colours are precisely those of the Virgin Mary in the painting on which the fictional Parmigianino is working. The model leans protectively towards a small child – a toddler – looking over her shoulder to keep an eye on the intruders and thus keep the baby safe. This little being looks helplessly over its right shoulder – not unlike the child looking over his left in Raphael’s Madonna della Seggiola. However, even in the 1520s it seems to have been remarkably rare for there to be female models – even if fully dressed – and it was even less likely that they would have been dressed in costume and posed with props (e.g. children) in the way that Cattaneo has suggested. This is far more redolent of 19th century practice, which serves as an important reminder that each painting is the product of its time. While the 19th century loved to romanticize the past, Parmigianino’s Vision of Saint Jerome really was created in the fervid period leading up to the Sack of Rome. But precisely why that happened, what happened, and what its consequences were will have to wait until Monday…

240 – A mother’s grief

Raphael, The Deposition, 1507. Galleria Borghese, Rome.

I will be talking about Women as Patrons in the Renaissance this Monday, 27 January at 6pm, and so today I want to take a look at one of the most famous of the relatively few works of art which actually was commissioned by a woman. One of the things we will think about is why there were so few, the answer being, of course, ‘men’. It’s slightly more subtle than that, but not much. We will also consider how some women came to be in a position where they were able to act as patrons, and think about why they may have chosen to do so. The following week (3 February) I will talk about the origins and implications of The Sack of Rome in 1527, which had a lasting impact on the History of Art, not to mention Western European history. However, my diary still isn’t pinned down thereafter. What I want to do is to explore the remarkable artistic talent of 14th century Siena by dedicating individual talks to four of its greatest artists: Duccio, Pietro and Ambrogio Lorenzetti, and Simone Martini. This will lead up to an introduction to the National Gallery’s forthcoming exhibition Siena: The Rise of Painting which will open on 8 March. I may start this series on 10 February, but, if I’m honest, I’m so behind with everything at the moment I may leave it until later: keep an eye on the diary (or these posts).

The body of the dead Christ is carried by two men, its weight implied by the way they lean to left and right. Three other people look on behind, as if they want to help in this arduous task, but are unable to do so. To the right, three women look after a fourth, who has fainted. All this takes place against a delicate landscape, which includes a hill topped by three crosses to the right, a valley with a river and lakes in the middle, and a rocky outcrop at the left. The foreground is far more barren, when compared to the verdant pastures in the background. The complexity of the groupings, the subtle interactions of the figures, and variety of actions suggest that the traditional title of this painting – The Deposition – is not strong enough to bear the weight of everything that is going on.

The action is divided into two principal groupings. In the foreground, to the left of the painting, is the predominantly male group around the body. The corpse is, in itself, the single most important element of the painting. It is aligned along the foreground plane so that it is closest to us, and so that we can see its full length. Raphael has subtly contrived to have the two men bearing the weight standing behind it, with only their nearer arms crossing in front of it, and only a little, even then. The body is cradled on white fabric, which the backward lean of the bearers pulls taut, thus supporting the dead weight. The fabric continues over the left shoulder of the man in blue and billows out behind him, to our left. This extensive length of cloth will become the shroud in which Christ will be buried. On the far left is a dark cave in the rocky outcrop: this is the tomb which, according to the bible, belonged to Joseph of Arimathea. According to Mark 15:46, Joseph ‘bought fine linen, and took [Jesus] down, and wrapped him in the linen, and laid him in a sepulchre which was hewn out of a rock, and rolled a stone unto the door of the sepulchre.’ Steps lead up to the tomb, and the man in blue takes a tentative step back and up with his left foot, looking up as he does so, his face subtly showing the physical – and mental – strain of carrying the precious load. I have little doubt that Raphael had taken the idea of including steps from Michelangelo, who frequently used them to enhance the tension within the bodies he was depicting, creating more dynamic forms, and adding to the psychological complexity. There is also drama in the combination of the legs alone, enhanced by the rich and brilliant colours that surround them. From left to right we see red, blue, green and yellow. It is no coincidence that the right hand of Christ – with its dark red wound – hangs in front of a deep shadow where three of these colours coincide. A woman steps forward to get closer to the Saviour, her left hand supporting his left, and her right poised near his head. Her legs echo those of the weight-bearing figure on the right. He must be moving from right to left, towards the tomb, but has to lean back to support the weight – this contradictory movement helps to express the difficulty of the task. A man in green, with a yellow toga, steps up to the left, and at the top of the steps another stands, hands clasped, looking down at the body. We shall see who they are later.

On the right of the image, a little further away, is the group of women. One has fainted – she wears a purple dress and a blue cloak. It is, of course, the Virgin Mary, and while she is usually depicted in blue and red, Raphael often seems to have had his eye on some of the earliest images which survive. Mary was often depicted in purple – the colour of the emperors of Byzantium – up until the 13th century, and the use of purple here emphasizes her status. Later she was also depicted fainting, either on the Via Crucis – the road to the Crucifixion – or at the foot of the cross. This was known as Lo Spasimo, ‘the swooning’, and shows that she too, like Jesus, suffered for us, thus underlining her vital role in our salvation. Lo Spasimo is most beautifully and profoundly depicted by Rogier van der Weyden in his Descent from the Cross in the Prado. After the Counter Reformation the subject lost its currency, particularly given the statement in John 19:25, ‘Now there stood by the cross of Jesus his mother…’. She stood there, it says, she did not faint. The implication of Lo Spasimo was that Mary was neither mentally nor physically strong enough to bear the grief, and the Counter Reformation seems to have abhorred weakness: this episode is rarely depicted thereafter. Notice how one of the three women with the Virgin kneels on the ground, twisting at her waist to face the swooning Mary, thus adopting the spiralling form, or ‘figura serpentinata’ which became more common with the development of Mannerism. Again, only one artist could have inspired Raphael.

This is such a brilliant quotation it could easily be missed – if it weren’t so recognisable. In Michelangelo’s Doni Tondo the Virgin sits on the ground with her knees falling to her left, while she twists and reaches over her right shoulder to take the Christ Child from Joseph. Raphael’s figure is in a very similar position, although her arms are stretched out and up to take hold of the Virgin, and her hips are raised in accordance with this action. What I think is so brilliant about it is that Raphael has seen Michelangelo’s invention for the sculptural form that it is, and in his mind’s eye has taken a few steps around it and drawn it from a different angle. Michelangelo complained of Raphael that ‘everything he had in art he had from me’, but this shows that Raphael could use his own mind to complement, not just steal, Michelangelo’s vision. Intellectually this borrowing is also profound. In the Doni Tondo the Virgin reaches for the Redeemer, in the Deposition the woman reaches for the Co-Redemptrix (the feminine of co-redeemer). This was one of the many titles given to the Virgin, in this case stressing the vital role – already mentioned – which it is believed she had in our salvation. But who are the other women?

If we get closer we can see that all four have haloes – they are all holy – unlike the man who is carrying Christ, whose bright clothing and bold form grab our attention. We will come back to him, but for now it is worthwhile pointing out that his lean echoes Mary’s swoon, and that the green diagonal of his overshirt (which has an admittedly undefined relationship to the red robe) continues along the blue of Mary’s cloak, leading our eyes to her, and tying her into the composition. All four women are simply dressed, but dressed with great refinement – a sense of classic good taste. Well-cut clothes are complemented by minimal decoration in gold. The elaboration of the coiffures of the two on the right suggests that they have ample time on their hands, not to mention maids with nimble fingers. We are among the leading ladies of the society, and we’ll come back to that idea too. For now, it is worth quoting the whole of John 19:25 (I only included the first half of it above): ‘Now there stood by the cross of Jesus his mother, and his mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Cleophas, and Mary Magdalene.’ So, as well as the Virgin Mary, there was also her sister, Mary the wife of Cleophas. According to apocryphal sources, Mary Cleophas was actually the Virgin’s half-sister. Her mother Anne is supposed to have married three times, and to have had a daughter with each husband: the Virgin Mary, and two more daughters often known as Mary Cleophas and Mary Salome. But other Maries are also mentioned. Matthew 27:56 says that ‘Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James and Joses, and the mother of Zebedees children’ visited Jesus’ tomb after his death. It would make sense that we are looking at these three women, given that the two mothers mentioned here are often identified as Mary Cleophas and Mary Salome. However, there is a slight problem…

The woman next to Christ with long, red hair flowing over her shoulder is undoubtedly Mary Magdalene (she too has a halo) – which makes the identity of one of the three women on the right uncertain. However, Luke 24:10 helps to resolve the problem. He explains that, ‘It was Mary Magdalene and Joanna, and Mary the mother of James, and other women that were with them, which told these things unto the apostles.’ So, it could be Joanna. Or one of the other women – Luke doesn’t specify how many there were: clearly quite a few. But what ‘things’ did they tell the apostles? Primarily, that Jesus had risen. I think this suggests that women were essential in conveying the message of Christianity… so why should there be any problem now with women priests? But let’s not get into that! At the ‘top’ of the grouping on the left is a young man with a halo, long hair and no beard – John the Evangelist, the youngest of the apostles, who had also been present at the foot of the cross according to the scriptures. Next to him in light green with a yellow toga is another saint (again, he has a halo). He is usually identified as Nicodemus, the man who brought precious spices to anoint Jesus’ body. However, it could equally well be Joseph of Arimathea, and some scholars suggest that it is. Nicodemus could be the man with the turban, although as he doesn’t have a halo, this seems unlikely… As so often, I need to do further research – but I suspect that it is not entirely clear anyway.

Jesus also has a halo – one that contains the shape of the cross, implied by the two curving forms at the crown of his head and by his right ear. A remarkable detail I had not noticed before is the pink colour of his loin cloth (but then, I don’t think I’ve seen the painting since it was conserved in 2019-20, and the colours of this photograph initially surprised me by their freshness). It reminds me of the Mond Crucifixion in the National Gallery, in which Jesus wears a red loin cloth – and again, Raphael was looking back to paintings from the late 13th Century, and making an allusion to the royalty of Christ as King of Heaven. The body shows the pallor of death, with the right hand hanging down – much as it does in Michelangelo’s Pietà. The left hand is supported by the Magdalene, and although the knees are bent, the feet do not hang lower – a sign of rigor mortis, perhaps? However, despite the pallor, I can’t help thinking that he looks asleep rather than dead. Of course, he will ‘awaken’. Images of the sleeping Christ Child remind us that he will wake up soon, and are symbolic of the later death and resurrection of the adult Christ. This is also hinted at in Michelangelo’s Pietà, which also has the head lolling back, the left shoulder tilted towards us and the left foot higher – thus making more of the body visible – so I can’t help but see Buonarroti as Raphael’s inspiration once more.

But who is the un-haloed bearer of Christ on the right? And what significance does the landscape have, if any? Well, ‘there is a green hill far away’ (to quote the hymn): Golgotha, on which stand three crosses. A ladder still leans against the one in the middle, and two centurions, one with a spear, stand there in contemplation and awe. But this painting is not a Deposition – the body must have been taken down some time ago. The crowds have dispersed and the body has been carried some considerable distance. It is also not quite an Entombment, as the group is not quite at the tomb. All present are lamenting, but it is not exactly a Lamentation either, in which the focus is on the dead body and the lamenting figures. It is, effectively, a combination of all three iconographies. The Galleria Borghese’s website even gives it an alternative title: ‘Deposition (The Carrying of the Dead Christ to the Sepulchre)’ a subject which is almost unprecedented. However, this is, more or less, the title of one of the National Gallery’s paintings by (surprise, surprise) Michelangelo: ‘The Entombment (or Christ being carried to his Tomb)’.

Whatever else it includes, today’s image is a painting of a dead man, and of a mother’s grief. That has led some people to identify the handsome youth bearing the body of Jesus as a portrait of Grifonetto Baglione, son of the patroness, Atalante. They were members of the family who ruled over Perugia, a city which tumbles across several hills high above the River Tiber, some way before it reaches Rome. And although the town perched on the hillside to the left of the young man’s head does not resemble any particular view of Perugia, it may well be intended to represent the city in some way. A track appears to lead from the brow of the young man, in between two ranks of trees, curving up the hill to the left, with a single traveller approaching the town below a prominent palace.

The story of the Baglione family is a complex one. Powerful and wealthy, it was not at peace within itself – and there were frequent struggles for dominance between two separate branches of the family. As well as being a member of the Baglione family by birth, Atalante was also the daughter of a countess, a remarkably high-ranking member of society – which may well have a bearing on the appearance of the Three Maries who accompany the Virgin. She married another member of the family, Grifone Baglione, who was killed in exile in 1477. Her son Federico, born shortly after his father’s death, took his nickname ‘Grifonetto’ from his father – ‘the little Grifone’ – and it is worthwhile bearing in mind that the griffin is one of the symbols of Perugia. As a young adult he was determined to take control from the more powerful branch of the family. According to the family chronicle, on 3 July 1500, together with other family members, he broke into one of the Baglione palaces to kill his cousin Giampaolo where he was sleeping. However, Giampaolo escaped, climbing out of the window and over the roof… On returning home Grifonetto’s mother Atalante refused him admission to the house, presumably angry and frustrated by the continuation of the feud. So he headed back into town – only to be killed by Giampaolo, or, others say, another cousin, Carlo. Grifonetto’s dead body was stripped naked and left on the street in full view of the people of Perugia, a sign of his ultimate humiliation. It was left to his mother, Atalante, and wife, Zenobia, to have him buried. He was only 23, but prior to his death he had gained burial rights in a chapel dedicated to St Matthew in the Perugian church of San Francesco al Prato. However, when Atalante came to commission an altarpiece for the chapel from Raphael some years later, she did not choose a subject relevant to St Matthew, but one telling the story of a mother accompanying the naked body of her dead son on the way to his burial – the relevance is only too clear. Originally there were also three predella panels showing the theological virtues, Faith, Hope and Charity, which are now in the Vatican Museum, and a painting above the main panel with God the Father blessing, which is still in Perugia, in the Galleria Nazionale dell’Umbria. All in all, the horrendous story is rendered acceptable to God, and the mother’s unimaginable grief – and guilt, having turned her son away from home – resulted in great beauty. But the criminal origins of the painting were followed – coincidentally, surely – in a criminal ‘coda’. Contrasting the way this is explained by the Galleria Borghese and Wikipedia is intriguing, I think. According to the museum, “The work remained in the Umbrian city for a hundred years, until one night, with the complicity of the friars, it was secretly smuggled out and sent to Rome to Pope Paul V, who gifted it to his nephew Scipione Borghese (1608).” However, Wikipedia suggests that, “The painting remained in its location until, in 1608, it was forcibly removed by a gang working for Cardinal Scipione Borghese, nephew of Pope Paul V.” Either way, I think it’s fair to say it was stolen to order…

At the bottom left of the painting we can see Raphael’s signature, ‘RAPHAEL · URBINAS · MCVII’ – ‘Raphael from Urbino, 1507’. This is inscribed next to the seed head of a dandelion. While the juice of the plant itself was used for its healing properties – a ‘salve’ that became symbolic of ‘salvation’ – all seeds resemble dead things. When planted, though, they give rise to new life. The seeds contain the promise of the resurrection of the body, not just for Jesus, but also, ultimately, Grifonetto – which, for his grieving mother, Atalante, must itself have been some kind of ‘salve’. I have said nothing as yet about how Atalante came to be a patroness, but I’m afraid I’ll have to leave that until the talk on Monday.

Bringing ‘The Resurrection’ back to life

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

On Monday 20 January at 6pm I am going to try and answer the question What is Mannerism?. I hope this will put Parmigianino’s masterpiece, which I discussed earlier in the week, into a broader artistic context. However, it’s been one of those weeks, and as there hasn’t been enough time to write something new, so I’m bringing back a post from Easter 2020 when we were three weeks into lockdown. I’ll leave it exactly as it was (unless there are any typos), but will explain why I am re-posting this in particular at the end. The following week, as I continue to explore the world of Parmigianino’s The Vision of Saint Jerome, I will talk about Women as Patrons in the Renaissance, starting with the patron of The Vision, Maria Bufalini. We will consider what stopped women from commissioning more works of art and architecture, find out the situations in which they could, and try and work out if female patronage resulted in any specific qualities… The following week, 3 February, I am planning to talk about The Sack of Rome – but I’m going to wait until I know I am definitely free on that day until I put that on sale. As ever, keep your eye on the diary for that – and also for information about a second trip to see the Fra Angelico exhibition in Florence for anyone who found out that the first one is full.

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 [see also Easter! as I focussed on this painting the following year]).

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 [back in 2020…], 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 the figure on the right, 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.

[Reading this again, it is clear that we really were still in the early days of Covid. This was Picture of the Day 25, the end of the third week of lockdown. By the time I got to POTD 100 museums were starting to open up – but they hadn’t in time for the Feast of the Ascension that year.

But why repost this now? Well, as I said, the bronze reliefs, whatever they were for, were finally erected as pulpits in 1515. No one had ever seen the like before – and they seem to have had a profound effect on the artists of the time. It has been suggested they are one of the sources of the overpopulation of imagery which is one of the key features of Mannerist art – but we’ll think about that more thoroughly on Monday.]

239 – Saint Christina of Bolsena!

Luca Signorelli, Virgin and Child with Saints, 1515. The National Gallery, London.

This Monday, 13 January I will be talking about the National Gallery’s superb, small-scale exhibition Parmigianino: The Vision of Saint Jerome, expanding on what is on display with reference to the superb and thoroughly researched catalogue. Earlier this week, while talking about the history of images of The Virgin and Child, I briefly mentioned how the format of a painting has an effect on its composition. While I was trying hard not to discuss every illustration in detail (and apologies to those of you whose questions I did not have time to answer) I made the mistake of trying to identify all the saints in an altarpiece in the National Gallery which I don’t know very well – and failed. Thank you to all those of you who ventured valid suggestions, but it turns out to have been a saint I don’t remember having heard of before: Christina of Bolsena. This has prompted me to get to know the painting better today – giving a few hints as to its relevance for the Parmigianino on Monday. The following week (20 January) I will pick up on the style of The Vision of Saint Jerome by asking the question What is Mannerism? and on 27 January I will pick up on its patronage by taking a closer look at Women as Patrons in the Renaissance. I’m fairly sure that the week after I will talk about the origins and implications of the Sack of Rome – which is directly relevant to Parmigianino and his masterpiece – but I might change my mind: keep an eye on the diary!

Today’s altarpiece was painted by Luca Signorelli, and is of a format which became popular in the second half of the 15th century – the pala, which is a single, large painting on a unified field, and therefore different from a polyptych, an altarpiece made up of many different panels, each surrounded by a framing element. The name is derived from the Latin word for ‘cloak’, pallium, and is related to the various fabric drapes with which altars were adorned at different points in the church’s history. The simplest description of the subject matter of Signorelli’s painting would be ‘The Virgin and Child with Saints’ – like so many others – but the 16th century became increasingly inventive with the distribution of the figures across the pictorial field. One of the reasons behind this can be explained by comparing Signorelli’s pala with one of my all-time favourites, Bellini’s San Zaccaria Altarpiece, which is still in the eponymous church for which is was painted.

Both show the Virgin and Child with four saints, and both are examples of renaissance naturalism. While Signorelli locates his figures in the countryside, Bellini’s stand in a form of projecting loggia, roofed, but open to the air on either side. Our eye-level, as defined by the horizon, is about one third of the way up the painting in each, and both altarpieces have saints at far left and right standing on the ground. Indeed, all of Bellini’s saints are at the bottom of the painting, with the Madonna and Child enthroned in the middle, the throne raised on several steps, with the horizon (our eye level) coinciding with the position of Mary’s feet: we look up to her. Nevertheless, the top half of the painting is occupied by architecture, with little or no narrative or religious content. This is nevertheless an important aspect of the painting. Seen in situ, the frame of the altarpiece has the same architecture as that depicted in the painting: the arches you can see receding to the back wall theoretically spring from the entablature which also supports the arch of the frame. It makes it look as if the sacra conversazione (‘holy conversation’) is taking place in a chapel built out from the church, implying that we are in an adjoining space. It helps to make the characters look more real and immediate, thus making it more easy for us to believe in them. However, arranging them like this does limit the scale of the figures: Bellini has to fit five human figures across the width of the painting with the result that they take up about two fifths of its height (40%).

Signorelli, on the other hand, does not have all of his figures standing on the ground. Two do, and another two are poised on clouds, framing the Madonna, who is also seen in the sky. As a result, the figures can be broader, and, keeping them in proportion, also taller: they occupy about half the height of the painting (50%). Signorelli was not the only artist to do this. One result of the use of perspective – whether it is the linear, single vanishing point version employed by Bellini, or the atmospheric version out in the countryside of Signorelli – is that people, restricted to the ground, will leave the top of a portrait-format painting empty. By accepting that holy figures are not necessarily earthbound, artists could either make the saints bigger or include more of them. Parmigianino was given a more extreme challenge when commissioned to paint an altarpiece which was not only tall (nearly 3.5 m), but also relatively narrow (1.5m) – and we’ll see how he dealt with that on Monday. But how does Signorelli resolve the challenges of his commission?

Two of the saints stand on the ground, as we have said. On the left is St Jerome – there is no lion, I know, but he is dressed (anachronistically, as it happens) as a cardinal, with a long, red, hooded robe and a book resting open on his right hand. There is also a piece of paper in his left. He was known as a scholar, the translator of the bible from its various languages into what became known as the Vulgate, and the author of many essays as well as a regular correspondent – as a cardinal with a book and (probably) a letter, we don’t need to doubt that this is him. On the other side is a bishop. He is wearing a mitre (a hat with two points, effectively) and a cope (a large cloak) which is clasped below the neck with a morse. He carries a crozier, derived from a shepherd’s crook, which symbolises his care for his flock. He also carries a book, presumably also the bible, which does not necessarily help us to identify which bishop saint this is.

However, at his feet are three gold balls, representing the gold which St Nicholas of Bari threw through the window of an impoverished nobleman’s house as each of his three daughters reached marriageable age. This provided them with dowry, allowing them a respectable marriage, and meant that they would not have to resort to prostitution. St Nicholas, of course, eventually became Santa Claus, who is also associated with gift giving… To the left of this detail we see St Jerome’s broad-brimmed red cardinal’s hat, complete with its long tassels. Seen in this detail, it is more obvious that Signorelli has made the hem of his red cloak, falling across the ground, echo the disc-like form of the hat. In between these two attributes is a lengthy inscription, telling us, roughly speaking, that,

The outstanding work that you see was commissioned by the master doctor Aloysius from France and his wife Tomasina, as a result of their devotion, and at their own expense, from Luca Signorelli of Cortona, a famous painter, who brought forth these forms in the year 1515

The patron ‘Aloysius’ was indeed a French doctor, Louis de Rodez, and one of the terms of the contract was that Signorelli and his family would receive free medical services whenever – and wherever – necessary. Apart from this, the artist was not paid. The altarpiece was painted for a chapel dedicated to St Christina of Bolsena in the church of St Francis in the Umbrian town of Montone.  This explains why one of the saints depicted is the relatively obscure (as far as I am concerned) Christina… but we’ll come back to her. Let’s keep our feet on the ground for the time being.

With two saints on the ground, standing to the left and right, it leaves Signorelli space for a fantastic landscape in the middle – and the details are truly delightful. To the right we see the edge of St Nicholas’s robes, and in particular one end of his embroidered stole. It is patterned with a series of niches occupied by standing saints. In the one we see here the knife in the man’s hand tells us that this is St Bartholomew. I’m guessing that all the others are apostles too, as St Peter, holding the keys of heaven, is at Nicholas’s left shoulder, partially hidden by the crozier. In the landscape we can see a broad meadow leading down to a lake. There is one walled town to the right, next to the lake, and two more on the left, each one smaller and fainter according to their distance. At the bottom of this detail are two Franciscans in their typical brown habits who appear to have taken a stroll, to appreciate the wonder of God’s creation, and to contemplate in relative solitude. Either that, or they are travelling from one preaching opportunity to another. They have both hitched up their skirts (Signorelli painted the altarpiece over two summer months – it would have been hot) and one has sat down. Both have large red books – the bible, or a prayer book, presumably. Their inclusion is undoubtedly related to the dedication of the church in which the altarpiece was located: St Francis. Maybe they are on their way to Montone. That is not the town represented, which is on a hilltop, but the lake might invoke Lake Trasimeno, which is not so far away. Well, it’s in the same part of the world (Umbria) but it is 33km away from Montone, over the hills….  It’s far more likely to be the Lago di Bolsena – Lake Bolsena – with the town on the waterfront representing Bolsena itself. This would partly explain why Signorelli has included this landscape. However, this naturalistic feature might also reflect Signorelli’s renewed interest in the paintings of Perugino and Pinturicchio which he would have seen in this area, and is also a result the renaissance interest in the world we live in and see all around us. It constitutes one of the ways of keeping us involved with the painting. If viewers can see and recognise the different elements of the landscape, it will draw them in, and help them to believe that the saints, too, are equally real. Above the head of the standing Franciscan are two women fighting, with a man who seems to be disclaiming any responsibility for their behaviour, and on the other side of the trees two groups make their way across the meadow on horseback. There is really no ‘significance’ to any of these details: they are entirely whimsical, but do keep us looking. The lake, however, is significant, and not only because Bolsena was the location of Christina’s major shrine.

The saint herself is one of the two standing on clouds on either side of the Virgin – who herself is standing on the heads of cherubim and seraphim peering down from similar clouds. Christina has long, blond hair falling down the back of her neck, but no headdress, which tells us she must be a virgin, and relatively young. She wears a green dress and a red cloak – which might be what originally confused me: she could have been a young, beardless St John the Evangelist, who often wears these colours, and can be shown with similar hair (and no headdress). However, she is holding an arrow in her right hand, and a millstone is tied around her neck, almost as if it is slung over her left shoulder like a broad-brimmed hat. The historical record of Christina’s life is remarkably blank, but devotion to her is rooted in the early church. Legend suggests she was born in the 3rd century in Tyre in modern-day Lebanon, although others suggest she was a native of Bolsena, where she is supposed to have died. Nearby, early Christian remains include the tomb of a woman with a name like Christina, and an associated shrine. She was clearly revered by the 6th century, when she is included in the procession of virgin saints in the mosaics at Sant’Apollinare Nuovo in Ravenna. The legends that grew up around her suggest that, born into a pagan community, she was told about Christianity by an angel. To cut a long story short, this led to numerous tortures, until, according to the 2004 Catholic Martyrology, she was ‘thrown into the lake with a great weight of stone, but was saved by an angel’ – and this is the relevance of the lake. After enduring yet more tortures, ‘she completed the course of her martyrdom … being pierced with arrows’ – both the single arrow and the millstone are explained. If you are aware of The Mass at Bolsena – as depicted by Raphael – that too has a tangential connection, given that the miraculous event took place in the Basilica of Santa Christina in Bolsena, the location of her shrine.

The arrow which she holds, and the fact that she survived several attempts to kill her, makes her the perfect partner for St Sebastian. Although pierced with many arrows he was not killed at this attempt, but later succumbed to death by stoning. The light, falling from the left, glances across his torso, mapping the musculature of his svelte form. He stands with his legs straight and feet apart, not unlike Donatello’s St George (which Signorelli had probably seen when in Florence), or more relevantly, just like several of the figures in the artist’s fresco of The Resurrection of the Flesh in Orvieto Cathedral. It is not necessarily a coincidence that this building also contains the relic of the Miracle of Bolsena, as it could have informed Signorelli’s understanding of Christina’s story. The various stages of her martyrdom are, of course, recounted in The Golden Legend, and some were included in the predella of today’s altarpiece, which survives in the Louvre.

As so often, Mary is shown as personifying a number of distinct aspects of her character. The two angels each have one hand on a crown, which they hold above her head as the sign that she is Queen of Heaven. Each also holds a white lily in their other hand, reminding us of her purity and virginity. Meanwhile, as Theotokos – Mother of God – she holds the Christ Child effortlessly and, were we dealing with mere mortals, impossibly poised on her left hand.

Two last details: the child holds a sphere, patterned with blue and green forms. In the words of the spiritual, ‘He’s got the whole world in his hands’, even if we don’t recognise the individual land masses depicted. Christ is not just King of Heaven, but also Pantokrator – ‘Almighty’ or ‘ruler of all’. Mary, on the other hand, has what might appear to be a form of saddlebag. Two straps curl around her fingers, with a rectangular panel of brown fabric attached to each. This is a scapular, worn by specific groups of the devout as a sign of that very devotion. It’s not entirely unlike a tabard, with the two straps going over the shoulders, and the rectangles hanging over the back and chest. This is a brown scapular, which was particularly associated with the Carmelite Order, which does not seem to relate to the painting’s origins in a church dedicated to St Francis. It is not mentioned in the contract for the payment, nor in subsequent records which survive in the archives. But then – and I managed to get into the National Gallery’s library yesterday – it looks like it was added some time after the painting’s completion. When seen close to, the area around the scapular looks worn, as if it had been prepared for this additional detail to be painted on top of the original work. It has been done expertly: the way in which it loops around Mary’s hand looks entirely natural. However, without it we could see far more clearly how Mary’s left forefinger touches her son’s extended right foot with an extreme delicacy, which again gives a sense of his supernatural weightlessness. Although not original, it does remind us of the many roles played by the Virgin Mary. Of course, we’ll see more of these in Parmigianino’s Vision of Saint Jerome on Monday.

238 – Following the Magi

Masaccio, The Adoration of the Magi, 1426. Gemäldegalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin.

Happy New Year! And as Monday will be the Feast of the Epiphany, I thought that it would be a good idea to talk about a painting of The Adoration of the Magi today. I have chosen Masaccio’s version rather than any of the many other alternatives because it originally sat underneath the National Gallery’s Pisa Madonna, which will play an important role in the talk on Monday, 6 January at 6pm (which is Epiphany) The Virgin and Child (a brief history). Starting from the earliest examples, I will go as far as Parmigianino: The Vision of Saint Jerome, which will be the subject of my talk on the following week, Monday 13 January. As Parmigianino was one of the leading Mannerist painters, I will attempt to answer the question What is Mannerism? a week later (20 January), and, given that The Vision of Saint Jerome was commissioned by Maria Buffalini, on 27 January I will discuss Women as Patrons in the Renaissance. I have yet to decide what will happen in February, but in March I will be off on The Piero della Francesca Trail with Artemisia – there are details of that and other trips I will make this year towards the bottom of the diary page on my website.

Even without knowing the dimensions of this painting (21 x 61cm, just so you know), its slim proportions might suggest to you that it once formed part of a predella panel (the row of paintings which decorated the box supporting the main panel of an Italian altarpiece), and you would be right. This is the central section from the predella of the polyptych which Masaccio painted in 1426 for Santa Maria del Carmine in Pisa – better known today as ‘The Pisa Altarpiece’. It shows The Adoration of the Magi, the episode in the Christmas story when the three wise men, having followed a star from the East, pay homage to the boy born to be king, and present him with their gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh. The stable is at the left, home to the ox and the ass, and at the right are the horses belonging to the Magi and their entourage. The human drama is therefore framed by animals. Those on the left can be given a sacred interpretation, while those on the right are profane. The Magi are central and are accompanied by their servants, as well as two men in black whose sober dress makes them stand out from the other characters. This all takes place in a stark landscape, with the broad, rounded forms of the Tuscan hills in the background: as so often, the location in which the work was painted is shown to be a place worthy of God’s presence. The light comes from the left, and casts long shadows across the ground – as if the sun has just risen on a new era for humanity.

The light does not come specifically from Jesus, though – he and Mary appear to be shaded by the stable. Nevertheless, Masaccio uses artistic licence to allow him to paint the light falling across the ox’s back, delineating its spinal column and defining the ribs on its right flank – he was the very first to paint a single, coherent light source, even if he does bend the rules from time to time. Outside the stable two forms of seat are contrasted: the saddle of the donkey, and the gold faldstool. As well as reminding us of the journey from Nazareth to Bethlehem, the former also symbolises Christ’s humble birth, while the latter – as the type of throne used by medieval kings in their peripatetic courts – takes us back to the kings’ epiphany, the revelation that this is the boy born to be king. The gold leaf links the faldstool to the haloes of the Holy Family, and to the eldest Magus’s crown, taken off and placed on the ground – as if under Mary’s foot – as a sign of his humility in the presence of God and King (and Queen) of Heaven. It also echoes the gift of gold – usually interpreted as a symbol of Christ’s royalty – which has been given to Jesus by the Magus and is now held by Joseph. There is also a gold star on Mary’s shoulder. This evokes the medieval canticle Ave Maris Stella  – ‘Hail, Star of the sea’ – which compares Mary to the North star, our guiding light. The word maris, which means ‘of the sea’, is also a play on the Virgin’s name, Maria.

With the eldest Magus kneeling at Christ’s feet, the next two follow, approaching from the right – all three hold their hands as if in prayer. As the second is further back in the space, he catches the morning light fully as it falls behind the stable. His crown has been removed, and is held by the servant behind him, who is wearing a scarlet jerkin. The third and youngest magus is still standing, although his crown is being removed by a servant in black in preparation for his obeisance. Further back another servant, in scarlet like the middle king’s page, holds a second gift. The third is not visible. There are also the two men dressed very soberly in black cloaks and black hats. The older, on our left, wears black hose, the younger wears scarlet – the same as the youngest magus. Already, by the 1420s it seems, red tights were the must-have fashion item for the well-to-do man. The contemporary appearance of these two – contemporary to the 1420s, that is – suggests that they are the patrons of the altarpiece. The older man is Giuliano di Colino degli Scarsi da San Giusto, a wealthy notary from Pisa, and the younger is Marco, his nephew (well, first cousin once removed), who was also a notary. By placing themselves here, they not only suggest that their devotion is such that they too would have travelled far to see the infant Christ, but they also make their presence felt as patrons of the altarpiece: they are both wealthy and devout. However, given that they are in the predella, rather than the main panel of the altarpiece, their choice also suggests a certain degree of humility, as does their position on a level with the servants, rather than next to the Magi themselves.

Having said that, it is possible that they too, like the Magi, have arrived on horseback. There are a least five horses visible: three white, one brown and one black, and they are tended to by three, or possibly four grooms – as far as we can see here. The implication is that the servants would have been walking – but this was standard practice. In Benozzo Gozzoli’s Procession of the Magi in the chapel of the Medici Palace in Florence, the three Magi ride on horseback, as do the ‘important’ members of the entourage (including the Medici themselves), while servants, courtiers and younger members of the ruling family are on foot. It would appear, therefore, that the two donors have travelled with the Magi, and, like them, have dismounted to pay homage to the Baby Jesus. Not so humble after all, even if they are holding back. But it is just the Christ Child they are here to revere? A comparison of this panel with the image which would originally have been directly above it is informative.

Notice the position of the Virgin and Child in the two images. In both, Mary is enthroned – on the left, on a gold faldstool, on the right on a stone throne. Her back is bent as she curves forward over her child, who sits on her lap with his right foot lowered and the left higher up, as his left knee is more bent. This allows the eldest Magus to kiss his right foot. There is no Magus in the image on the right. However, it just happens to be the first surviving panel painting to use a coherent single vanishing point perspective. The vanishing point is theoretically our eye-level – our most logical focus of interest – and in this painting it is located in exactly the same position as Christ’s right foot. Our eyes are therefore imagined as being on a level with the child’s foot – just like the Magus. The predella panel tells us how to behave: remove your headgear, kneel down and kiss this foot. You are in the presence of God made Man – and, by arranging the perspective this way, Masaccio makes sure that we are suitably humble in our approach.

If we look back to see all three Magi together, it becomes clear that the instructions on how to behave are complete – we just have to follow them. The youngest Magus approaches with dignity, but in all humility, hands joined in prayer, while his crown is removed. The middle-aged Magus is kneeling, bareheaded, and is still praying. The eldest, also kneeling, also praying, has bent lower to kiss the Christ Child’s foot. Curiously, nature does the same. Above the head of the third Magus a light, distant mountain almost reaches the top of the painting. To our left of that, there is a lower, darker hill, whose fissures echo the sleeves of the second king – hill and Magus kneel together. And above the eldest is a space, a gap, which emphasizes the distance between the worldly supplicants and the Holy Family. The view the eldest Magus has of mother and child is directly equivalent to the way in which we see these two in the main panel of the altarpiece. The behaviour of the Magi models ours, effectively an animation of what we should do in front of an image of the Virgin and Child. Having realised this, it is always worthwhile asking yourself, when looking at any depiction of The Adoration of the Magi, whether they are approaching the Madonna and Child themselves, or are they praying in front of an image? Let’s see how many similar examples we can find on Monday!

237 – Monet, looking at London

Claude Monet, The Thames below Westminster, about 1871. The National Gallery, London.

Keep looking – that’s the most important thing. If you keep looking you keep learning. I certainly do: it’s one of the things I most enjoy about writing this blog. But then, check that what you’ve learnt from what you see is correct – if you can. Maybe this all comes from my background as a scientist: make an observation, draw an inference, test the hypothesis. I’ve just done that with today’s painting and… I’ve thrown out a long-held (and oft-suggested) idea. We’ll get to that. Monet looked. He looked and looked again, and painted each different idea as he saw it – and then painted again later, as he remembered what he’d seen. It is this practice which is the foundation of The Courtauld’s sold-out exhibition, Monet and London: Views of the Thames which I will talk about this Monday, 23 December at 6pm. I thought a splash of colour in mid-winter would get us through the cold and the dark – although it is still oddly mild in the UK, and apparently will remain so until Christmas. At least Monet made the best of it, and enjoyed the bad weather. For that matter, he also enjoyed the pollution: every cloud has a silver lining, I suppose. In some cases, for Monet, that lining was rarely silver, though. Sometimes it was golden, purple, green or (in one instance) even yellow and pink… but more of that on Monday.

There will then be a break for the Twelve Days of Christmas. I’ll be back on the Feast of the Epiphany (6 January) for The Virgin and Child (a brief history). As a short introduction I will start with early Christian examples and some paintings from Byzantium and the Orthodox Church, before exploring the development of the idea in the Western European tradition, using examples from the National Gallery’s collection as a starting point. I will go as far as the High Renaissance, culminating with a painting by Parmigianino. This, in its turn, will be the subject of the following week’s talk. Parmigianino: The Vision of Saint Jerome (13 January) will introduce and expand on the National Gallery’s small exhibition about this recently restored treasure, one of the highlights of Mannerism. In case it’s not clear what this term means, the following week (20 January) I want to ask the question ‘What is Mannerism?’, and, as Parmigianino’s painting was commissioned by a woman, we will then think about Women as Patrons in the Renaissance on 27 January. I’ll put the last two onto the diary as soon as I can. Meanwhile, there’s a lovely, select exhibition of terracotta sculptures dating across three millennia at Colnaghi until mid-January, and I’d love to talk about it. I might just sneak in an extra mid-week talk at some point, and I’ll let you know if I can find a time – but don’t miss it if you have a spare hour in London: they are very close to the Royal Academy.

This view is, for most of us I suspect, quite familiar. Even if we are not inhabitants of, or frequent visitors to London, the Houses of Parliament – seen on the right of the image – are so regularly featured in films, documentaries and the news that we recognise them instantly. Their fairy-tale appearance, speaking of an age-old presence, evokes a nostalgic view of times gone by, a mood that is enhanced by Monet’s choice of palette, which has the almost-monochrome appearance of a black and white photograph. The steamboats chugging along the Thames and the manual labourers on the Embankment, which is itself free from today’s heavy traffic, add to this sense that the painting belongs to ‘the good old days’. But this interpretation of the painting shows how flawed our contemporary vision can be if we don’t look from a historical perspective. Not only is it flawed, but it couldn’t be further from Monet’s intentions. For him, this was a painting of modernity.

The artist came to London in late 1870, although it is not clear exactly when he arrived. Most commentators would suggest September, but he might not have got here until November. The Franco-Prussian war had broken out on 15 July (Monet was on his honeymoon in Trouville at the time), and it looks like he fled France, with Madame Monet, to avoid the draft. Since my school days the dates ‘1870-71’ have been fixed in my mind: the Franco-Prussian war, one of the things that led up to the First World War. Since my early days as an art historian I’ve known that Monet was in London during those precise years. As a result, I’ve always assumed that he was in London for nearly two years. However, one of the things I’ve learnt writing this post is that by 2 June 1871 he was in Holland, so at the very most he was only in London for nine months, although there is every possibility that it was little more than six. In that time he painted (among other things) five views of the city – two of the Pool of London, two of parks, and this. He also met his colleague Daubigny. They are supposed to have bumped into each other when both were out painting on the banks of the Thames. Daubigny then introduced Monet to the dealer Paul Durand-Ruel, who exhibited Monet’s work in the short-lived London gallery, before purchasing many of his paintings back in Paris in the early days of Impressionism. Even before the name had been adopted for this disparate group of avant-garde artists, one of their main aims was to paint modern life. Three years before the ‘first Impressionist exhibition’ of 1874 (150 years ago…) that was precisely what Monet was doing in London.

The tree at the far right of this detail marks the edge of the painting. The structures in the distance behind it belong to Westminster Abbey, adjacent to the Houses of Parliament – just over the road, in fact. From this point of view the front right corner of the Palace of Westminster (as it is also known) is marked by what is probably also its the most famous element. Known almost universally as Big Ben, after the main bell which tolls the hours, this was originally called St Stephen’s Tower, but was officially renamed Elizabeth Tower in 2012 to mark the late queen’s Diamond Jubilee. To the left of that, at a ‘medium’ height in the painting, is the Victoria Tower, which is actually the tallest part of the palace. It is at the far end of the building from the Elizabeth Tower and includes The Sovereign’s Entrance at its base. To the left again is an octagonal tower with a spire which rises above the Central Lobby at the centre of the building. Unimaginatively, it is named the Central Tower. The mass of buildings to the left are the House of Commons and the House of Lords – closer to us, and further away respectively.

These buildings have stood for our entire lifetimes, and also those of our grandparents. They are all we have ever known, but they are not really that old. There was a disastrous fire on 16 September 1834 which all but destroyed the muddle of medieval buildings which had originally been the royal court, before they evolved into the seat of Parliament. When it came to rebuilding, there was a debate as to whether the new palace should be neo-classical – looking back to England’s Roman past – or the relatively new neo-gothic style. The latter was chosen as representing England’s medieval history – the point at which it became itself. I say England, knowing full well that the United Kingdom contains other nations – but like so many decisions of national importance this was considered purely in terms of the South East. The first stone was laid in 1840, and the Victoria Tower was completed twenty years later. However, construction did not finally end for another ten years – meaning that the building was only completed in 1870, the year that Monet arrived in London. He was painting a brand new building.

He was certainly painting what he saw, but he was also painting what he wanted to see – making the towers, spires and pinnacles taller and thinner than they are in real life. The effect is to make it look even more like a fairy-tale gothic castle – not unlike the Disney Castle, which was first sketched in 1953, based on the castle included in Cinderella (1950). That was based on Neuschwanstein, built for the Bavarian king Ludwig II, with the foundation stone laid on 5 September 1869 – far too late for Monet to have known anything about it. Admittedly there is also an influence from the third Hohenzollern Castle (1846-67) – but I still think that’s too late, or too distant… I’ve always thought that Monet was inspired as much as anything by something like the town hall at Calais. This idea was based on what must have been a brief, but strong impression I had when passing through the town after disembarking from the cross-channel ferry some years before the opening of the tunnel (1994). However, I looked it up this morning and found out that the current town hall was built between 1912 and 1925… so that’s that theory out of the window. However, it is safe to say that Monet was looking at the Houses of Parliament – and using artistic licence.

On the grey water of the River Thames a number of steamboats go about their business, their dark colours subdued in the distance by the intervening mists. Of the two closer to us, the one on the right has red paint at the water line – a nod back to Constable’s practice of adding flashes of red to make his landscapes look greener, even if there is no green here. Behind them, Westminster Bridge spans the Thames between Parliament and the low, broad mass of St Thomas’s Hospital, visible behind the bridge at the left edge of the painting. Again, all of these would appear to be features of London whose origins are lost in the mists of time – but that is only because they are gradually being lost in the mist. As well as the palace, the fire of 1834 also seriously damaged Westminster Bridge, which consequently also had to be rebuilt. The current bridge, the one seen in the painting, was designed by Thomas Page, and opened on 24 May 1862. That was only 8 years before Monet painted it – still relatively recent. St Thomas’s Hospital did not open until 21 June 1871, by which time Monet had been in Holland for about three weeks. Surely the steamboats were old? As far as we are concerned today, they are, of their very essence, ‘old fashioned’. Well, yes, the idea was older: the first steam-powered ship was launched in 1783, so they had been around for nearly 90 years. But they still hadn’t completely taken over. There are no sail boats visible in this painting, even though there would have been some on the Thames at the time: have a look at Monet’s contemporary Boats in the Pool of London (1871), from Amgueddfa Cymru – Museum Wales, if you want to be sure. His choice not to include any in The Thames below Westminster suggests that he was focussing on what’s new – although admittedly there might not have been any sailing vessels on this stretch of the river at the time he was painting.

Monet’s viewpoint for The Thames is above the level of the river, and some way in from the river bank – so we must assume that, while painting, he was standing on a jetty not unlike the one depicted in the foreground. There are men working on this jetty, and below them a number of planks, or logs, are floating on the surface of the water, each grey-brown ripple of which is marked out with a separate brushstroke. Under the trees at the far right another plank slopes down from the jetty to the embankment, looking as if it would get in the way of the pedestrians who are walking towards, or away from, Parliament. The embankment is a vital part of the composition. The wall meets the water snugly in the bottom right corner of the painting, and together with the horizontal elements making up the architectonic structure of the embankment wall, the line where it meets the water leads our eyes along a diagonal into the painting, pulling our attention towards the Palace of Westminster. It takes us past the dark skeleton of the jetty – which gets in the way, but which, in the process of doing so, helps to measure the depth of the painting. Of course, this is not any old embankment. It is The Embankment, designed by Joseph Bazalgette to contain London’s much-needed sewers, with architectural elements designed by Charles Henry Driver. Construction started in 1862, and it was officially opened by the Prince of Wales (later King Edward VII) and one of his younger sisters, Princess Louise, on 13 July 1870. Like the Palace of Westminster, Monet is painting a very recent feature of the London landscape. Indeed, it is often said that the workmen on the jetty are removing some of the scaffolding after the Embankment’s completion… although it would have been left in place for six months or more after the opening if that is true.

One of the problems, though, is that we don’t know exactly when this was painted. Yes, you can see the signature in the bottom right corner of the painting, and it definitely says ‘Claude Monet 71’. And so we could assume it was painted some time between January and May, given that it would have taken him a couple of days to get to Holland for 2 June. However, it’s never that simple. The National Gallery currently dates the painting ‘about 1871’. Monet had an annoying habit – for the literally-minded like me, at least – of adding dates later. He might have started it in 1871, but he could have got to work immediately after his arrival in 1870. However, he might have taken it with him to Holland and finished it later, although it was certainly finished by, or during, 1872, when he sold it to Durand-Ruel. Indeed, most of the paintings we will see on Monday are dated two, three or even four years after Monet visited London to paint them. But as far as this painting is concerned that is really unimportant, compared to the fact that the Palace of Westminster and the Embankment were both completed in the year that Monet arrived in London, and St Thomas’s Hospital did not open until after he had left: this is a modern painting for modern times. The freedom of handling of the water in this detail, with its dabs and dashes of paint, and the surprising variety and richness of the colours – including some unexpected splashes of royal blue – tell us as much. And remember, this was three years before the ‘first Impressionist exhibition’.

As a whole, The Thames below Westminster is far more rigorously constructed than the apparent spontaneity we tend to attribute to Impressionism might suggest. Built up from a combination of horizontals and verticals, the only diagonal is the line of the Embankment, which thrusts into the painting and leads us to the point where the base of Big Ben meets the extrapolation of Westminster Bridge. Bristling along with the tower are the spires and the pinnacles of the palace, the funnels of the boats and the verticals of the jetty. The combination of these last posts with the jetty’s horizontals – the platform the workers are standing on and the binding elements below – makes this structure resemble nothing so much as the skeletons of Mondrian’s abstract compositions from the 1920s and 30s, while the long, low stretch of the bridge seems to keep the painting calm and grounded. The cool, almost featureless grey of the sky suggests to many that Monet had managed to see the earliest Nocturnes by Whistler – although there is no concrete evidence that they met either in Paris or in London before they became good friends in the 1880s. The subtle pink glow around the Palace of Westminster – which is far easier to see in the original – speaks of the presence of the sun behind the mist, fog and clouds. We are looking more or less due South, as it happens, which would suggest that this is more or less midday, and with the sun low in the sky it must have been early in the year. But, as with Monet’s painting, we can’t be too precise. That would take the edge off things. Nevertheless people do try to be too precise – I’ll give you an example on Monday. Some of the paintings have even been given a precise date and time according to where the sun is in the sky (if the sun can be seen)… which fails to take into account that these paintings are not documentary evidence, they are works of art. Maybe Monet put the sun where it looked best. In this painting there is no sun – but there are those tall, aspiring towers, and a warm glow surrounding the Palace of Westminster that suggests this really is a powerhouse… The painting is entirely real, and true, and historically accurate. But it is also a wonderful example of the power of the imagination.

236 – Rubens, before Constable

Peter Paul Rubens, A View of Het Steen in the Early Morning, probably 1636. The National Gallery, London.

After five weeks talking about the Italian Renaissance I’m going to take a break and head forward to the 19th Century. There is a direct line to be drawn, I think, from Constable, via Monet, to Van Gogh – and as all three have exhibitions in London at the moment, it makes sense to draw the line somewhere… I started with Van Gogh, soon after that exhibition opened, back in October, and this Monday 16 December I will go back (in art historical time) to Discover Constable & The Hay Wain – an exhibition which sets out to clarify how radical the oh-so-familiar nostalgia-infused painting actually was. I’m not entirely convinced that the curators succeed in this aim, but that doesn’t stop it being a great painting, or a good exhibition. Like others in the relatively recent Discover series, it focusses on the titular painting, enlarging our knowledge and understanding of the work, and giving us a better sense of its relevance for the world in which it was created. The following week, 23 December, I will creep into the 20th Century, which is when the particular views The Courtauld are celebrating were painted. If you haven’t seen or booked for Monet and London: Views of the Thames, it is a jewel of an exhibition, but I’m afraid the whole run is now sold out – so maybe the talk would be your best chance to see something of it. I will return to the Renaissance with renewed energy in the New Year, looking first at The Virgin and Child (a brief history) on 6 January. Next is another small exhibition at back the National Gallery, Parmigianino: The Vision of Saint Jerome on 13 January. I’m planning to follow that by exploring Women Patrons in the Renaissance before asking What is Mannerism? All of this will gradually make its way on to the diary, of course. Meanwhile, to get us from the Renaissance to Romanticism I want to stop off in the 17th Century. Whether this is Baroque or not I will let you decide for yourselves.

We are looking at a landscape. A cart, enhanced with posts and slats so that it can carry more, splashes through shallow water as it is pulled by horses on a diagonal to our left. In addition to the horses there are two people. At the far left there is a house among the trees, with smoke coming from one of the chimneys. The trees fill a lot of the top left corner of the painting, although there is a clouded sky visible above them. The top right corner is given over to an expanse of open sky, with clouds lit by the sun. A man in the undergrowth is out looking for something to eat – if he can lay his hands on it – and beyond the fields stretch out into the distance.

I say, ‘we are looking at a landscape’ – but not the same one. I was actually looking at Constable’s The Hay Wain – but I’m assuming that you will have followed my description while looking at the picture I’ve posted of Rubens’ Het Steen. I’ll come back to this connection later – but first we should get to know the Rubens better (and of course I will spend more time with the Constable on Monday).

Het Steen can be translated, literally, as ‘the stone’, although it effectively means ‘the fortress’. It is the title of the large manor house at the top left of the painting. Rubens purchased it in 1635, thanks to his enormous wealth – the result of his successful career – and to the status which came from being knighted by both Philip IV of Spain and Charles I of England and Scotland. A person of lower rank would not have been allowed to buy such a grand building, and anyone with less money would not have been able to afford it. At the age of 58 Rubens was effectively retiring to the countryside, leaving behind a life of diplomacy and large scale public commissions in order to paint a few portraits and more landscapes – many of which, like this one, were done for his own pleasure. His grand new home bristles with battlements and is complete with a moat. Access to the front door is across a small bridge, from which a man can be seen fishing. Sunlight flashes off the windows, and a group of the nobility (among whom Rubens could count himself) are gathered outside. My guess is that they have been up all night. At the bottom of this detail a woman in a straw hat and red jacket can be seen.

She is the only person riding on the cart. As well as the red jacket she wears a blue skirt, and looped around her left elbow is a cord tied around a large copper jug – which I suspect contains milk. This rests on a barrel, in which there may be more milk (was milk ever kept in barrels?) – although it might contain beer. There is also a calf with bound legs lying on some straw, suggesting that this couple is heading of to sell the rich produce of Flanders at the nearest market. The cart is pulled by two yoked horses, which are steered and driven forward by a man riding the nearer of the two. He holds the reins with both hands, and also clasps a whip in his right. The white splashes of paint which streak back from the horses’ feet and from the wheels of the cart tell us that they are making their way through shallow water – a ford, or, more likely, a sizeable puddle in the dirt track leading away from the manor house.

Further to the right a man is hunting for his dinner… or something to sell. He crouches down, gun in hand, accompanied by a dog. He is hiding from some ducks in the adjacent field, clearly hoping to pot one or two of them, providing that they don’t all fly away at the first shot. He hides behind the hollow trunk of a blasted tree whose lower branches have survived and spread both left and right. This is just the first element in some form of hedge, which develops into a line of trees that stretches along a diagonal to the top right corner of this detail. The huntsman’s right leg, stretched out behind him, forms the beginning of this diagonal which is continued by his back. His gaze also leads our eyes into the distance. He could almost be the definition of the word repoussoir, pushing our eyes back into the depth of the painting. A brook cuts between the trees just beyond the ducks, but there is a precarious plank bridge crossing it. As with so many landscapes, we are invited to travel through this space in our imaginations, and both the obstructions to our journey, and the way to overcome them, are shown. If the trees – and the poacher’s gaze – lead our eye to the top right, the brook could distract us to look towards the top left. The curving, flooded track along which the cart is trundling follows parallel to the poacher’s back, then later curves round to the left, where it echoes the line of the brook before disappearing out of sight. We can still see where it is, though, as its route is measured out by the bases of the trees growing on the adjacent bank.

The line of trees – the continuation of the diagonal which starts at the huntsman’s right foot – gradually diminishes until it is terminated by another row parallel to the horizon – although that doesn’t stop our eye from following the now virtual line to the sun, glowing above the horizon. The painting of the sky is one of the true glories of this landscape, with areas of clear blue interspersed with the puffs and swirls and eddies of white clouds coloured yellow by the sun, with even, I want to believe, a slight blush of pink – although that might just be my imagination. The distant horizon is blue, as if the sky has got in its way. Rubens’ control of atmospheric perspective – the effect that the atmosphere has on the way we see objects at a distance – is nowhere more subtle.

A small city can be seen on the horizon, a church tower standing tall: the distance implies that this would be a mighty structure if seen up close. There is also a small town closer to us, and a little to the right, whose buildings also look blue to the eye. I’ve never been clear if these are real places. Het Steen is 16km north-east of Brussels, and 9km due south of Mechelen. Apparently you can see the horizon 9km away if you are at a height of 6 metres above ground – and so maybe this is, indeed, Mechelen: that is certainly what I have always assumed. Rubens could have been at this height looking out of one of the top windows of the mansion, or if he had climbed the tower which is visible just behind the right end of the house. This serves to point out a basic fact about the landscape: it has a very high, and presumably imaginary, viewpoint – there were no other large structures near by. It is a format sometimes known as a ‘world landscape’, from the German ‘weltlandschaft’ – because it allows you to see so much of the world. For Rubens, it served to show how far away from the common throng he now was – and how much land he had acquired. He also painted the view looking in the opposite direction in the Rainbow Landscape, which belongs to the Wallace Collection. I’ve always wondered which market the couple on the cart are going to. My instinct is that they are heading in the direction of Brussels – but that’s a long way to go in a cart.

We could tell that the sun is close to the horizon, even if it weren’t in the painting. The trees cast long shadows across the ground, telling us that the sun must be low, and they are lit from the side with a yellowish light. If there sun were higher they would just look green. But how can we tell that it is morning rather than evening? Sunrise rather than sunset? Yes, of course I trust the National Gallery and its titles implicitly (that’s not actually true, I’m afraid… too many titles are ‘traditional’ and unrelated to the artist’s intentions), but if that is Mechelen, then we are looking towards the north and the sun must therefore be rising, as it is in the east. Not only that, but markets took place from the early morning and were usually wrapped up by lunch time. As I said earlier, I suspect that the nobility by the mansion have been up all night, whereas the poacher has tried to get up before anyone else so as not to be seen. Not that I know anything about poaching. There is also the activity of the workers in the fields to bear in mind.

Towards the right edge of the painting, we can see birds gathering on the scrubby bushes in the foreground. One goldfinch flies in with wings spread, while another stands on a branch next to what looks a bit like a blackcap. There I also something coloured, but not shaped, like a kingfisher – so I’m not sure what that is. However, above them (in pictorial terms – actually some distance away in the adjacent field) there are some cows. There are also two humans. One is walking from right to left towards the herd, while another is seated beside one of the cows: she is milking. I once asked a group of school children what time of day you milked cows, and they looked at me baffled. I thought to myself, ‘Ah, they might not even be aware of the origin of milk, as it so obviously comes from plastic bottles in the supermarket’. So I carried on, as was my habit with this painting, ‘Well, it’s something that farmer’s always do first thing in the morning’. At which point they looked even more baffled, and even alarmed. Then several of them blurted out ‘but you’ve got to do it in the afternoon as well’ – at which point I remembered that they had come from a village school, and many of them must have grown up on a farm… They were initially baffled because surely everyone knew when you were supposed to milk cows. Of course, I knew it was something that was done in the early morning because I used to listen to The Archers. All this aside, I’m sure Rubens was using it as a typical, early morning activity.

The colour in the painting is quite remarkable, and serves so many different functions. Primarily it is descriptive, of course. Grass is green, the sky is blue, and jackets can be red, for example. But it also gives us a sense of the time of year: the leaves are both green and brown, so it is presumably late summer/early autumn, before all the leaves have changed or fallen. As well as the time of the year, there is also the time of day. Even without the sun the clouds and the sides of the trees are lit yellow… And then, it gives us a sense of distance – using the standard formula developed as early as the late 15th century that the foreground should be brown, the middle-ground green, and the distance blue, thus conforming to the conventions for depicting atmospheric perspective, which are employed in this painting, as I have said, at their most subtle and organic. This was one of the formulae of art that Constable rebelled against.

But what of the relationship between Het Steen and The Hay Wain? Is it coincidence that, apart from anything else, the woman on the cart in Het Steen wears red, the same colour as the saddles of the horses pulling The Hay Wain? This is yet another function of colour: the touches of red make the green of the landscape look more green – a trick which Constable learnt from Rubens as much as from anyone else. It just helps to make the landscape look fresher. But then, Constable admired 17th century landscapes generally – both Dutch and Flemish. This wasn’t the only connection, though. Het Steen entered the National Gallery as part of the Sir George Beaumont Gift, officially dated to 1823/8. Beaumont’s promise to leave his collection to the Nation in 1823 precipitated the foundation of The National Gallery 200 years ago. He died four years later, in 1827, which is why the gift didn’t materialise until 1828. As well as being a collector and amateur artist, Beaumont was also a great patron, and even mentor, of John Constable. As a result, the artist had frequent access to his collection, and would have known Het Steen well. His painting The Cornfield (which is also in the Discover exhibition which I will discuss on Monday) is based on another of Beaumont’s paintings, Claude’s Landscape with Hagar and the Angel. Constable even carried out ‘restoration’ work for Beaumont – and it has even been suggested that some of the clouds in Canaletto’s Stonemason’s Yard were actually painting by the British artist… but that’s another story. Whether Constable was consciously basing the composition and activities of The Hay Wain on Het Steen, or if it was the subconscious result of his through knowledge of the Flemish painting and his understanding of its composition, we will probably never know. But it is almost pure luck that they have ended up in the same collection, allowing us to see the relationship at first hand.

235 – Raphael, after himself

After four weeks talking about the Royal Academy’s superb exhibition celebrating the ‘chance’ encounters of Michelangelo, Leonardo and Raphael in Florence, it will be a pleasure to keep the momentum going this Monday, 9 December by including just a few of their works in my introduction the King’s Gallery exhibition Drawing the Italian Renaissance. There are so many glorious images to choose from that I’m now going through the difficult process of cutting my presentation down to a manageable size… and you probably know what that means. I will come back to the Renaissance in January, delving into A brief history of The Madonna and Child on 6 January (as it’s Epiphany I’m bound to include the odd Magus…), and then I will discuss the National Gallery’s exhibition dedicated to Parmigianino’s The Vision of St Jerome which opens today, and has already received brilliant reviews. However, before then, I will be thinking about colour, and landscape, and Romanticism, with the exhibitions dedicated to Constable (16 December) and Monet (23 December). All of this is in the diary, together with details of the trips I will be taking for Artemisia next year, along The Piero Trail, and to Hamburg, Liverpool, and Florence (…and if you’d like to come, please mention my name when booking, thank you).

One of the things I appreciate more and more is precisely how good Raphael’s drawings are, and how important they were to his process of creating art and disseminating ideas, which is why, even after posting about him for the past two weeks, I want to do so again today. This also happens to be a particularly rare type of drawing – although the reason why is not immediately apparent. We see a man on the far right pointing upwards, with a group of nine others approaching him in different attitudes, some gesturing, one starting to bow, hands in prayer, and one on his knees. We are left in no doubt as to his importance, even though there is nothing notable about his appearance – apart from the fact that he is not wearing any trousers, I suppose. This is clearly a preparatory drawing for a religious scene, but then we knew that from the title: Christ’s Charge to St Peter – but how did the people who gave the drawing that title know what was going on? After all, Jesus did not dress like this, nor was he associated with a group of nine men… However, people only kneel before people they respect or fear (or both), and there is no sense of any threat, even if one or two faces show a touch of concern. On the whole the image radiates calm, and compassion, and even communicates a sense of sanctity – but maybe that is the result of having read the title.

The protagonist wears a baggy shirt, with the sleeve of the right arm rolled to the elbow. The shirt is gathered at the waist with a belt, and its tails might be tied between his legs, or the man is wearing a pair of baggy underpants which are cut very high at the sides. Raphael seems to be particularly interested in the articulation of the model’s left hip, and the structure of the leg below it. Attention is also paid to the face, looking downwards with a sense of humility, although other details are only hinted at – the short, thinning hair, for example, and the right hand, which is apparently pointing. The left sleeve may not be rolled up – but we can’t be sure as most of the forearm and hand are not seen. This is either because the drawing has been damaged, and/or cut down, or because the paper Raphael was using was not large enough for the whole composition. Just looking at a photograph it is hard to tell, although the edges are very crisp for an old piece of paper, which suggests that it might have been trimmed. The four men visible on our left of the detail above are positioned in a falling diagonal. The man closest to the protagonist is kneeling, and the one behind him is bending over. His shadowed hands, raised in prayer, fall half-way between the two heads. The two men next to him have their heads tilted in different directions, towards us and away, and this is enough to start the curving diagonal which creates a clear space between the group and the protagonist. But then there is another negative space between the praying man and the man kneeling – the latter is singled out from the group: presumably he is the secondary subject of the narrative, St Peter.

I find the delicacy with which each individual face is drawn, and the subtlety of the emotions depicted, truly beautiful. And trust me, it is even more remarkable – and subtle – if you see the drawing in the flesh: there is a softness to the lines which is really very evocative. Notice how the light comes from the left, so that Jesus’s face (or at least, the face of the model who is in the position of Jesus) is the only one that is fully lit. Even there, the side of the cheek and neck are softly shadowed. The praying man’s hands are quite dark, apart from a couple of fingers which catch the light coming over his shoulder. The side of his face is also lit, as is the side of his neck and his back, and this brightness pushes him towards us, as does the light on his large, puffed, 16th century sleeve. He looks younger, and more innocent than the others here: maybe this is St John, the youngest of the apostles.

The kneeling man’s face is more deeply shadowed by close, insistent, parallel strokes which darken around his neck. His hands, clasped to his chest, are also in deep shadow. The light shines on the crown of his head, with short strokes of the chalk defining curling tufts of hair. He looks up with awe – and maybe even some slight concern.

Behind him, the three men we have discussed are divided from the remaining five, a connection between the two groups being made by the right arm of the man to the left of the gap, which crosses in front of the shoulder of the man who whose head is tilted slightly towards us. The man reaching forward looks back over his right shoulder, and this helps to unite the group of five with the rest of the composition. It is as if he is checking to see how they are reacting to the interaction between the protagonist and the kneeling man. The next person – the one closest to us, perhaps – clasps his hands to his chest, a sign of awe, or of devotion, while the character behind him leans forward, also placing his left hand, more crudely drawn that the others, on his chest. We only see the faces of the remaining two, but again each is individually characterised, with one turning in towards us, and the other in strict profile.

It is clear from the three figures on the right, if not the others in the group, that Raphael was using models. They could easily have been studio assistants. These three, who were wearing contemporary, 16th century clothing, have removed their breeches and hose so that Raphael could get understand the structure and articulation of the legs. He carefully demarcates the light and shade defining the forms of the muscles, bones and tendons. If the legs, whether standing or kneeling, are correctly positioned, then the rest of the body presumably follows suit. And if you know where the legs are, and so how the figure is positioned, it is easier to dress the figures, and to understand how and where the drapery will fall. The legs of the younger, praying man (on the left of the detail above) are more freely sketched in, but nevertheless we can see precisely how they work – and Raphael still pays considerable attention to this man’s right ankle, in the bottom left corner of the detail. Like the protagonist (the model standing in for Jesus), the kneeling figure wears a baggy shirt gathered at the waist, and some form of underclothing. Again Raphael looks at the structure of the hip joint, and also the curve of the buttock and thigh. He pays far less attention to what this man is clasping to his chest, but the forms projecting above his hands and hanging beneath his elbow can easily be read as a pair of keys – the keys that loose and bind. This is, of course, St Peter, and the reference is to St Matthew’s Gospel, Chapter 16, verse 9. These are Christ’s words to St Peter:

And I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.

The legs of most of the remaining figures can be seen in the bottom left corner of the drawing – and here they appear to be clothed – although the forms of the legs can be seen through the fabric. Raphael fixed the position of the legs, and then drew drapery on top of them – precisely the method I suggested above. It would be very difficult to identify the form and style of this clothing, though, given the sketchy nature of its depiction. It is also difficult to know how many of these figures are based on models, or how many come from the artist’s imagination – his memory and experience. Would he really have grouped ten people together in the studio to draw them? Or did he build up the composition by posing one or two models in several different poses? There are a number of similar facial types and hairstyles, but these are things he could easily adjust. Having said that, Raphael is said to have had one of the largest workshops of his day, and it was reported he used to walk around Rome with a considerable group of his assistants and apprentices – so maybe it would have been possible to get a group of this size together. What I find most striking in this particular detail, though, is the insistent shading – shading which runs on diagonals at various angles from top left to bottom right, which, as I was saying only recently, is the sign of a left-handed artist – like Leonardo da Vinci. But Raphael was right-handed. It might be possible to work out what is going on if we think about what it is that we are actually looking at.

The drawing was made in preparation for one of the tapestries that Raphael had been commissioned to design for the Sistine Chapel: Christ’s Charge to St Peter. The keys that Peter holds refer to Matthew 16:19, but they are just there to identify the Saint. The incident depicted in the tapestry occurred later, after the resurrection, as you might be able to tell from the fact that Jesus is dressed in white, with ‘supernatural’ gold decorations. Rather than point up, as in the drawing, in the tapestry he points down to Peter with his right hand, and with his left he indicates a small flock of sheep. This is an illustration of John 21:15:

Jesus saith to Simon Peter, Simon, son of Jonas, lovest thou me more than these? He saith unto him, Yea, Lord; thou knowest that I love thee. He saith unto him, Feed my lambs.

This instruction is repeated again in each of the following two verses, and refers, of course, to Peter watching over his fellow Christians: to this day a priest’s congregation is referred to as his flock.

By comparing the drawing with the completed tapestry we can see a number of things. First, the nine men in the drawing are just missing two of the apostles. There were only 11 at the time, as this was after Judas’s suicide, and before St Mathias had been appointed. One was inserted behind and to our right of the young praying figure (who is, indeed, St John the Evangelist). This is presumably St Peter’s brother, St Andrew, usually depicted with a long white beard, who John’s gospel says was the first apostle to be called. The 11th was added at the far back of the group, to our left of the figure in profile. The other thing which you may not have noticed is that the compositions are fundamentally the same. However, they shouldn’t be: they should be the mirror image of each other. A tapestry is designed in much the same way as a painting, with preliminary drawings leading up to a full-scale cartoon. After this the process differs. The would be sent off to the tapestry weavers, who would cut it into sections, and work on the tapestry from behind. In the process, the orientation of the design is reversed. We can check this by comparing the drawing with the relevant cartoon – and that is possible, of course, because some of them have survived. They belong, like today’s drawing, to the Royal Collection, but are on long-term loan to the Victoria and Albert Museum.

And look – the drawing is the reverse of the cartoon. That’s because this is not actually a drawing: it is an offset. Having made a delicate red chalk drawing, a dampened piece of paper would have been placed over it and the two pieces of paper pressed together and rubbed. An offset is effectively a print of a drawing, and like other printing techniques results in the design being reversed. Three fragments of the original survive: there are two below, now joined together, which are in the National Gallery of Art in Washington. The third is the figure of ‘Christ’, which is in the Louvre. The second image below is a detail of the Royal Collection’s offset version, so you can see that they are, effectively, identical.

Why would Raphael have done this? Well, he was an incredibly accomplished and thorough artist. He wanted to know – before he went too far – that the composition he was designing would look alright once it was reversed in the tapestry – so he made the offset just to be sure. The reversal of the image explains why the right-handed Raphael was apparently drawing as if he were left-handed… it’s a result of the process. And maybe, as an offset, that is also why the ‘drawing’ has a softer appearance than many of the other marvellous examples in the King’s Gallery exhibition… if indeed it has. Why not join me on Monday to find out?

234 – Raphael, after Leonardo, and after Michelangelo

Raphael, St Catherine of Alexandria, about 1507. The National Gallery, London.

After discussing Michelangelo and Leonardo, I looked at Raphael on Monday, and so we are all set up for the last of my four talks relating to the Royal Academy’s ‘perfect’ exhibition, Michelangelo, Leonardo, Raphael: Florence c. 1504, this Monday 2 December. It will effectively be a virtual guided tour of the exhibition itself, looking at the connections between the three ‘titans of the Renaissance’, and the ways in which their work relates not only to that of the others, but also to the social, political and artistic life of Florence at the time. You could argue that the first three talks were artificial constructs, looking at individual artists with little or no reference to whatever else was going on around them – and, truth be told, most exhibitions are constructs of this type. This became all too clear on Monday while I was trying hard to talk about Raphael without mentioning the other artists who were in Florence at the same time. By the way, if you missed the Raphael talk, I will be repeating it, with some variation, for ARTscapades this Tuesday 3 December. The week after (9 December) I will introduce the other superb Renaissance exhibition with which London is currently graced, Drawing the Italian Renaissance at the King’s Gallery. The talk will, of necessity, be selective, as there is such a wealth of remarkable material – but I will choose the best, the most interesting, and, quite frankly, my favourites from among the treasure trove on display. I recommend going, getting your ticket stamped as a pass for the year, and then going back often! In the weeks after this I will return to the ‘colourful’ side of my Mono/Chrome series, by looking back from Vincent van Gogh (about whom I talked in October), to reconsider what I consider to be the later development of ‘romanticism’ in art, introducing first The National Gallery’s exhibition Discover Constable & The Hay Wain (16 December) and then Monet and London (23 December) at The Courtauld. Details are now online and on sale via those links, and can also be found on the diary.

Today, though, I want to think about a painting which is not in the Royal Academy’s exhibition, but which does date from Raphael’s time in Florence, and shows so much of what he learnt from the great masters who were also present in the Tuscan capital. It is not known for whom it was painted, but given the small to medium-sized format (it measures 72.2 x 55.7 cm) it was presumably made for private devotion – or even, just conceivably, as a work of art, something that was beautiful in and of itself. This was still a relatively new concept in 1507.

After her conversion to Christianity, the Emperor Maxentius tried to dissuade Catherine from her monotheistic ways, first by imprisoning her. In her captivity she was visited by the Emperor’s wife, whom she converted to Christianity, leading to the Empress’s immediate execution. Catherine had not been killed straight away, presumably because she was a virgin: the death of an ‘innocent’ was always frowned upon. The Emperor then sent 50 of his leading philosophers to persuade Catherine that she was wrong – but they failed. They were converted too, and likewise executed. She was then tortured with four spiked wheels, but God intervened and destroyed the wheels, so eventually the Emperor resorted to decapitation. Among other things Catherine is now the patron saint of philosophers (thankfully, as she could prove even them to be wrong), and her feast day is celebrated by various denominations of Christianity on either 24 or 25 November – so I’m a bit late for the festivities, but not by too much. Raphael gives us no sign of her imprisonment or suffering, although she does lean on a wheel, the instrument of her torture. She stands in a calm and peaceful landscape, with white, fluffy clouds floating in an otherwise clear blue sky, and she looks up over her right shoulder towards the sun shining at the top of the painting.

It was probably obvious earlier, but seen closer we can tell that this is not the sun, but the light of God shining down from above. Catherine’s sanctity is confirmed by the thin, gold ring of her halo which encircles her head. Similarly thins beam of light emanate from the golden glow in the top left corner – the love of God rewarding her devotion. The whites of her eyes show us that she is looking up and to our left, and we can see the underside of her chin, a result of the twist and tilt of her head as she looks towards the source of her inspiration. Her lips are slightly parted, as if she herself is inspiring, or ready to speak and witness to her faith. A small plait curves around a spiralling bunch of hair which is tied by a red ribbon as it curves around the back of her neck. At exactly the point where the lower edge reaches the flesh, a transparent veil emerges, its brightly lit hem curving over her shoulder and echoing the gleam of the foreshortened halo. The hem is also echoed by the concentric curve of the underlying bodice, and the golden yellow lining of her cloak which falls over her left shoulder. The top of her bodice appears to have a black trim – but chemical analysis shows this contains red and blue pigments, and was presumably intended to represent a purple velvet.

The buttercup yellow of the lining curves down and behind her waist at the level of a dark green belt, and then emerges under her right elbow, where it is illuminated by the light of God to appear a far paler yellow. The clouds, and the blue of the sky are reflected in the lake behind her, as are the freely painted trees and bushes. Buildings stand on either side, in front of distant, blue hills, and palings can be seen embedded in the lake, showing us, like the buildings, that this is a cultivated landscape. The cloak is a rich red, while her dress is lavender. Her right hand is held to her chest as a sign of her heartfelt devotion, and the fingers rest on the veil which crosses diagonally from her left shoulder down to the belt above her right hip.

The folds in the yellow lining of the cloak spiral around, looping down and across her right thigh and then up again to be held under her left hand. Her left elbow rests on the wheel, which appears to have been disarmed: rather than the sharp spikes, it has rounded bosses – a sign, perhaps, that her faith has rendered it harmless. Or maybe, Raphael wanted a far calmer image than the violence of sharp spikes would have suggested. However, maybe that violence is indicated by the colour of her cloak, the deep red flowing from beneath the golden lining at the level of her shoulders – not so far from her neck, which would be severed from her head. The red then pourss along her left arm, with folds of drapery lapping over the wheel at front and back, before continuing down her left thigh to her right. The deep blood-red is also visible in the shadows between the spokes of the wheel.

Naturalistic plants appear at the bottom of the image – most notably a dandelion seed head in the left corner. The dandelion is interpreted as a bitter herb which is often associated with the death for Christ. Its presence here reminds us of Catherine’s suffering, and of her faith. It is strangely truncated though, emerging from nowhere, and the figure too seems to terminate abruptly. As it happens the painting has been cut down on all four sides – but not by much. The top, left and right of the image have a ‘barbe’, a sort of lip, or ridge of paint, implying that it was painted with an engaged frame. However, as the barbe is still there, we know that none of the image has been removed on these sides: all that has gone is the frame itself and the unpainted wood under the frame. However, there is no barbe at the bottom, so some of the painted surface must also have been removed – but there is no way of knowing how much. There is a cartoon for this painting in the Louvre, but it doesn’t extend to the bottom of the image. It stops just below the fingers of Catherine’s left hand, and it’s not clear where the design of the legs comes from. Raphael might have improvised them on the panel itself, based on his earlier preparatory drawings. If you want more information about this you can find the whole, detailed catalogue entry on the National Gallery’s website.

The position St Catherine adopts – her hips twisted to our left, her shoulders to our right, and the head back to our left, with the added flow of the drapery wrapping around her form – is a superb example of a composition which was common in the 16th century. Known as a figura serpentinata  – a ‘serpentine figure’, it gives life and movement to the image, and, in a religious context such as this, can refer to the soul spiralling upwards towards God, almost like a flame. But where did Raphael get the ideas for this painting from? A couple of weeks ago I wrote about Leonardo’s drawings of Leda, at least one of which resulted in a painting, sadly now lost (see 233 – Leonardo, hatching ideas). I showed you a version of the one that he doesn’t seem to have painted. Today, as promised, I can show you the drawing Raphael made of the one that he did. Part of the Royal Collection, it is currently on view at the Royal Academy – this is just a detail.

The stance of the figures is remarkably similar, with the left shoulder of both figures angled away from us, and the right shoulder closer, and lower down. Each has a right hip which curves outwards, enveloped by another form – the gold lining for the Saint, and the wing for Leda. They both have a similar tilt of the neck to our left, but whereas St Catherine looks up, Leda looks out towards us.

Leonardo’s painting was last mentioned in 1625, when it was in the Château de Fontainebleau, not so very far from Paris. No one knows what happened to it, but it may well have been destroyed by someone who disapproved of the imagery and its implications. Nevertheless, it was popular in its day, and there are many copies of it – six or seven, at least, just counting the ones which survive. This version, from the Galleria Borghese in Rome, was painted by the Sienese artist Giovanni Antonio Bazzi, known as ‘Il Sodoma’. Raphael’s swan is, admittedly, more like a goose, and his Leda acknowledges us rather than looking bashfully to her progeny, but otherwise the relationship is clear. And it is not just the composition which his St Catherine owes to Leonardo, but the way in which so many details spiral – the plait, the hair around which the plait is wound, the curve of that hair around the neck, the folds of the golden lining of the cloak, not to mentioning the looping and flowing of the lining itself, and of the transparent veil. These are all things which obsessed Leonardo, and which he drew often. But Raphael’s observation of Leonardo’s work doesn’t explain everything – this is not just ‘Raphael, after Leonardo’. For the strong turn of St Catherine’s neck, for example, or the head foreshortened from below, we must look to Michelangelo. This is Raphael, after Leonardo, and after Michelangelo.

As the sculptor’s work on the David drew to a close, he was commissioned to carve a series of the Twelve Apostles for the cathedral of Florence. He was supposed to carve one a year, and he did at least get started on the St Matthew, but went no further – the unfinished sculpture is now in the Accademia in Florence, part of the avenue of unfinished works leading to the David. Eventually he managed to extricate himself from this commitment. Apart from anything else, Pope Julius II wanted a tomb – and then a ceiling – and then later Popes wanted other things: a façade, a funerary chapel, a library, a palace, a wall… Michelangelo always found it hard to argue with a Pope. We know that Raphael saw the unfinished St Matthew, because he drew it – and the drawing (above right) is now in the British Museum (but not in the RA exhibition). Raphael used this drawing for one of the figures in his Baglione Entombment, which was originally in Perugia, but stolen to order for Scipio Borghese, and so now in the Galleria Borghese, not far from the Leda above. But he also used the drawing for St Catherine.

Having clarified the anatomy and clothing of the St Matthew in his drawing, Raphael’s debt to the sculpture in the St Catherine is easier to see. The position of Catherine’s legs, with their exaggerated contrapposto, and the angle of her head, are clearly drawn from Michelangelo. Notice also how the strap across Matthew’s chest meets with one end of his belt, as Catherine’s veil does with hers. There is even a hint of Catherine’s belly button: St Matthew’s is seen clearly in the drawing. Raphael had come to Florence to learn, according to a much-disputed letter, and here we can seen him doing just that. This is really what the Royal Academy’s exhibition is about: precisely what drawing was ‘for’, whether it was used as a tool for learning, observing, or preparing, or as an art form in its own right. Raphael continued to learn when he got to Rome, to the extent that eventually Michelangelo complained in a letter that, “ciò che aveva dell’ arte, l’aveva da me” – ‘that which he had of art, he had from me’, to translate literally. This is clearly an exaggeration. Look at how much Raphael learnt from Leonardo, for example. Or from Perugino, before that. But then Raphael was a sponge: he saw, he absorbed, he learnt, and then he squeezed himself dry to produce something that was truly his own – always the sign of a great artist. And he gave to others in his turn. But he did learn a lot from Michelangelo. I even wonder if the left hand of St Catherine is actually derived from the Virgin’s hand in the Taddei Tondo – he certainly quoted that hand in another painting which I will show you on Monday. Maybe this is just a hand, though: I’ll let you compare and contrast, and decide for yourselves. As for the other lessons he learnt – and what Michelangelo and Leonardo shared with each other – well, that is what Monday‘s talk will be about.

And as we’ve been talking about Leda… I really would encourage you to go and see the Barbara Walker exhibition in Manchester! This is her large-scale drawing, The End of the Affair (2023). There’s nothing ‘bashful’ here – quite the opposite – but there is a soaking red…

Re-Announced

Raphael, The Annunciation, c. 1506-7. Nationalmuseum, Stockholm.

This week I had planned to write about a drawing by Raphael after a painting by Leonardo – but as predicted, I’ve run out of time. So instead, I will re-post an entry about a drawing by Raphael which may have been made for a painting by someone else… it’s not entirely clear. It comes from the period when the young artist was in Florence (c. 1504), and so is a perfect introduction to my talk this Monday 25 November at 6pm, covering the works by Raphael in the Royal Academy’s perfectly focussed exhibition, discussing them in the context of his early career. Next week I hope I will get to write about a painting he developed from the drawing I had wanted to talk about this week. As well as being inspired by Leonardo, the painting also took ideas from Michelangelo – thus making it the perfect introduction to the last talk in my series of four, Florence c. 1504, in which I will draw all of the ideas together and see how the works of all three artists relate to each other – and to the other paintings, books and ideas which are also exhibited at the RA. If you missed the first two talks (Michelangelo and Leonardo), I will be repeating them, in a slightly edited form, as a study evening for ARTscapades, on Tuesday 26 November, 5.00pm – 7.30pm. On 9 December I will introduce the other remarkable renaissance exhibition currently enriching the London scene – Drawing the Italian Renaissance at the King’s Gallery – details, as ever, are in the diary. If, rather than reading something old (today’s post was originally published in April 2022 as ‘Pre-Announced’), you would rather read something new, an entry I wrote for The Visual Commentary on Scripture is this week’s ‘Exhibition of the Week’. If you don’t know VCS, click on the link anyway: it’s a superb initiative, aiming to illustrate every section of the bible with a virtual, online exhibition.

The subject matter of today’s drawing is unsurprising, perhaps – The Annunciation – but what is remarkable is the quality of the drawing and the degree of finish. This is not a ‘sketch’, nor is it a working-through of ideas. It is a fully-fledged composition with almost every detail thoroughly considered and all the concomitant problems effectively resolved. What is surprising about that? Well, what is it a drawing for? Raphael made other drawings like this for altarpieces – but no such painting exists. In the catalogue of Raphael drawings, written by Paul Joannides (my PhD supervisor, as it happens), it is categorised as a ‘presentation drawing’, which can have two meanings, I suppose. Either it was made as a proposal for a project, and presented to a potential patron – effectively a way of saying ‘this is the work I could make for you’ – or as a drawing in its own right, to be given (i.e. presented, hence ‘presentation’) as an independent work of art. It was only during the Renaissance – at some point in the late 15th century – that drawing acquired this status. On the whole though, drawing was still used to make observations, to think through ideas, to develop forms, to plan compositions, and to transfer the ideas to the finished work.

There are other oddities. Usually the Annunciation takes place in a domestic setting – Mary’s room, usually her bedroom, or some private space where she has been contemplating the scriptures.  However, in this instance the characters appear to be in a large building, presumably a church – although as the events depicted took place nine months B.C., and churches wouldn’t be legal for another 313 years, that would be entirely anachronistic. So it could be a synagogue or temple, I suppose. The angel Gabriel kneels in humble reverence of God’s chosen vessel, holding the by-then (then being Raphael’s time) traditional lily, symbol of Mary’s purity, in his right hand. His left hand rests on his chest as a sign of his heartfelt awe in the face of such beauty and perfection. Mary turns to greet him, standing in a classical contrapposto with the weight on her left leg and the right leg bent, the drapery pulling tighter around her right knee, her thigh illuminated by the bright light shining down from above.

In between them we can see a large, semi-circular apse, the architectonic structure that makes this look like a church, which is exactly the place where we would expect to see an altar. However, there is none there. Nevertheless, directly behind Mary, and off-centre, there is a large flat block of stone (presumably) on slightly broader base. It is too tall to be an altar, and its function is not clear. This should make us realise that the drawing is not, perhaps, as fully resolved as we first thought. It could be the base of a large column, although there is no column there – which could be a metaphor for the promised arrival of the Messiah, a tower of strength, if not, exactly, a column. To the right of Mary you may just be able to make out the rising diagonal of a reading desk – the drapery falling from her left arm falls from it (and while we are there, notice how her left hand is on her breast, just like Gabriel’s). She has been kneeling there, reading, and presumably praying. When the angel appeared she stood and turned round to greet him – her body turning 90 degrees, with the head completing the full 180.

The shadowy depth of the apse is conveyed in two ways. To the left, above the angel’s head, there are vertical lines, and then, overlapping these, are slightly curving diagonal strokes which appear to link the two figures, almost as if this is the energy binding them together. The slight curve shows us the way they were drawn, with Raphael holding the quill (this is a pen and ink drawing) and making long strokes like a compass, with his elbow at the centre of a circle and his hand tracing arcs around it at the full length of his forearm. Try this yourself, and if you are right handed – like Raphael – you will make this sort of curve, with the lines going from top right to bottom left (for the left-handed Leonardo, the diagonals go the other way). The angel’s wings are just sketched in, the right one fully visible, with the other crossing behind his head, so that the foremost curving outline (do wings have ‘elbows’?) projects to the right of his nose. Notice how, despite the subtlety of the shading, none of the three hands in the detail above (or, for that matter, Gabriel’s right hand in the previous detail) is shaded. They are defined by outline alone, forming bright highlights, this clarity serving to make them more expressive.

The arched top of the drawing is very subtly sketched in, and perfectly frames God the Father, who looks down at the action below while surrounded by clouds and a small delegation of the heavenly host. Equally spaced are five tiny heads of cherubim and seraphim, creatures so holy they do not need a body but appear just as heads with wings. They are disposed symmetrically, with one each at top left and top right, two more towards the bottom left and right, and a fifth, bottom centre of this detail – although, if you wanted to read the loops of cloud as further cherubim, I wouldn’t disagree. Then there are four winged youths, evenly spaced in a rectangular formation, hands held in prayer or resting on chest or cloud, with the Father central. He looks down to Mary, his right hand raised in blessing, the fore- and middle fingers separated, and thumb held apart – so delicately defined, for such a tiny detail. The left hand seems to hover, as if to calm – to calm the angel, perhaps? It’s as if he was worried about getting the words wrong, but I suspect he is following the divine instructions well, and is being reassured from above. Or maybe, to calm Mary – who, nevertheless, does not appear to be especially troubled at the angel’s saying.

The Father hovers above the apse. It is almost as if the roof of the church – or temple – has dissolved as he manifests his presence. Yet more cherubim and seraphim solidify from the clouds below the previous group, and below them all, at the centre of the semi-dome of the apse (but some way in front of it) is the Holy Spirit, a tiny dove with a tinier dove-sized halo, appearing against another, larger halo, the same size as the Father’s, but flat against the surface of the drawing rather than angled in space. Of course, it is not there at all. There is a circle drawn by the pen – quite firmly, as the light catches indentations made on the paper – but the halo itself is not there. That is just blank paper. It is possible that details like this halo – the glow around the Holy Spirit – were drawn first with a ‘blind stylus’ – i.e. a pointed object without any ink. The outlines were indented in the paper in a way that is almost invisible – and then traced over with pen and ink if they are deemed to be in the right place.

Overall, the position of God the Father directly over the circle enclosing the Holy Spirit looks like a practice run for the Disputa, one of the frescoes Raphael would later paint in the Vatican Palace (if you don’t remember it, there is a detail below, and I will show a full image on Monday). The position of the dove is slightly unusual, to my mind. If proceeding from the Father, I would expect to see it in between the Father’s head and Mary’s. However, I suspect its position speaks of an absence – or rather, of a future presence. The apse should contain an altar, and on the altar, during the Mass, at the Elevation of the Host, the bread becomes (in Roman Catholic belief) the actual body of Christ. And so Christ would eventually be physically present directly underneath the dove, forming a vertical axis of Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Again, this is equivalent to the monstrance containing the consecrated Host in the Disputa. I hope these two details appear side by side for you:

The space between Gabriel and Mary is, after all, full of grace. These are the words Gabriel is speaking in Luke 1:28. In the Vulgate, the Latin is ‘ave gratia plena Dominus tecum’. The King James version gives us ‘Hail, though that art highly favoured, the Lord is with thee,’ or, in the Douay-Rheims 1899 American Edition, about which I know little but seems a more accurate, and poetic, translation than some, ‘Hail, full of grace, the Lord is with thee’. Imagine these words written on the curving lines between Gabriel and Mary, and you will realise that the space between them is sanctified – it is, in itself, ‘full of grace’. This is the place where the Mass will one day be celebrated, and so where the body of the announced Messiah will be shared. Raphael is imagining Jesus between Gabriel and Mary, I think.

As for the function of the drawing – well, however highly finished it is, I don’t think it’s quite finished enough to be a drawing in and of itself, a work of art in its own right. There are still ideas which aren’t clear enough. I’m fairly sure that it is the design for an altarpiece, in which anything that is not yet specific would be resolved by colour. So much survives by Raphael: he was remarkably productive given that he only lived 37 years. In part, that was because of his skills as a draughtsman, and because he was an incredibly generous man. For example, as a teenager he designed the frescoes which Pinturicchio painted in the Piccolomini Library in Siena Cathedral, and later he also drew The Holy Family with a Pomegranate, which was then painted by Domenico Alfani. We shouldn’t be surprised if other things haven’t survived. Nevertheless, it seems likely that Raphael’s renown would mean that we would know about any altarpieces he painted himself, even if, by now, some no longer exist. But if this drawing were used by another artist the painting would not have had the same reputation, and neither its existence, nor its loss, would have been recorded in the same way. On the other hand, it could simply be that it was a project for an altarpiece that, for one reason or another (for example, the unexpected death of the patron) was never executed.

I don’t know the answer to this problem – but I don’t really mind. It’s such a beautiful drawing that I’m not too worried about what it was ‘for’. And trust me, it is far more impressive than the photos I have shown you would suggest. When I first wrote about it, in April 2022, it was in the Raphael exhibition at the National Gallery – and by now it will have returned to its home in Sweden. Nevertheless, there are more delights currently on view at the Royal Academy, which I will talk about on Monday, and even more at the King’s Gallery… but we’ll leave those for another week!