214 – Rembrandt and the State of the Art

Rembrandt van Rijn, Christ Presented to the People (‘Ecce Homo’), state V, 1655. National Galleries of Scotland.

Happy New Year! And greetings from Liverpool – I’ve started the process of moving here, which may take a while to complete… In the meantime, the world of ‘online’ remains, and I will start afresh this Monday, 8 January at 6pm with Part 1 of my introduction to the exhibition The Printmaker’s Art: Rembrandt to Rego. That link will take you to a reduced-price ticket for both talks, but if you are only interested in one, these two links, 1. From Rembrandt… (8 January) and 2. …to Rego (15 January) will let you to book for each talk individually. The exhibition is drawn from the collections the National Galleries of Scotland, and is housed in the Royal Scottish Academy Building in Edinburgh. Although it is organised thematically, according to the different techniques of printmaking, I am currently enjoying the process of deconstructing it, and rearranging the exhibits in chronological order to see if we learn anything in the process – a sort of ‘History of Printmaking’, if you like. After these two talks I will take a week out (to see ‘Rothko’ in Paris), but will return to consider two rather lovely exhibitions currently at the National Gallery – those dedicated to Pesellino (29 January) and Liotard (5 February). I am also planning some more in-person tours for the end of January, and will give you more information soon: keep your eyes peeled on the diary for that, and for links to book the Artemisia trips to Ravenna and Delft which I will be leading in April and May respectively.

Included in Monday’s talk will be an explanation of each different printing technique, and of the specific language used by print afficionados. For today, though, I just want to think about one of each: this is a drypoint, and we are looking at the fifth state of the print – out of a total of eight. I’ll explain both of these terms once we’ve had a chance to think about the image itself. Rembrandt is illustrating a very specific text from the bible – the Gospel according to St John, chapter 19, verse 5 (or John 19:5, to use the usual abbreviation). As usual, I am going to give you the verse – and those preceding it – so we can see precisely what it is that Rembrandt is interested in. It is Holy Week, Jesus has been arrested, and brought before Pontius Pilate.

19 Then Pilate therefore took Jesus, and scourged him.
2 And the soldiers platted a crown of thorns, and put it on his head, and they put on him a purple robe,
3 And said, Hail, King of the Jews! and they smote him with their hands.
4 Pilate therefore went forth again, and saith unto them, Behold, I bring him forth to you, that ye may know that I find no fault in him.
5 Then came Jesus forth, wearing the crown of thorns, and the purple robe. And Pilate saith unto them, Behold the man!

In the Vulgate – St Jerome’s Latin version of the bible – the words ‘Behold the man’ are given as ‘Ecce Homo’ – which gives this particular image its name.

Rembrandt imagines a platform in front of a large, civic building with wings projecting to the left and right, or maybe inside an open courtyard. People have gathered in front of the platform as witnesses to the event, entering from a colonnade to the left, or coming down a staircase on the right. Others watch from windows in the façade, and a few more stand on a balcony to our right. Christ and Pilate stand near the front of the platform, framed by the dark shadows of an arch through which they have presumably entered. They are surrounded by a number of soldiers and officials.

Pilate wears a large turban – an exoticizing touch, used as a sign that we are not in Europe. Pilate was, after all, the Roman Prefect in Judea, although having said that, his first name, ‘Pontius’, could imply that he came from southern Italy. However, that is by no means certain: Roman citizens could come from anywhere within the Empire.  He holds – as he often does in northern European images – an incredibly long and thin staff of office. Despite the non-European headgear, his cloak is lined with ermine, a European symbol of royalty, used here to remind us of his high status. We can see the lining thanks to the gesture of his left hand, which is held out towards Jesus, as if to say, ‘Behold the man!’ – ‘Ecce Homo’. The weapons and costumes of the group surrounding the protagonists fall somewhere between non-specific ‘biblical’ imaginings and the observed reality of the renaissance and baroque. Rembrandt is giving a sense of the near past, something the original viewers of the print might have been aware of, even familiar with, but nevertheless leaving a sense of difference: this is not exactly here and now, but something the viewer could understand. Jesus’s costume is indistinct, but he certainly does not have the crown of thorns, as John’s gospel suggests that he should, and if he is wearing a purple robe it is unusually short: his knees and calves are clearly defined. From this detail alone I would suggest that Rembrandt is more interested in the mood of the event than a precise illustration of the text, and in particular, he is interested in Jesus’s vulnerability.

Above the archway is a blank area of wall framed by two pilasters, each of which serves as the backdrop to a sculpture. On our left a blindfolded figure holds a pair of scales, while on the right a second holds a club and wears a lion skin. These are personifications of Justice and Fortitude. Justice, considered to be unprejudiced, is therefore shown as blind, and holds scales to weigh up – albeit symbolically – the degrees of good and bad. Fortitude is represented by the classical hero Hercules, who slayed the apparently invincible Nemean lion, and thereafter wore its skin for his own personal protection. These are precisely the sorts of virtues you would find on the façade of a Dutch town hall. In Amsterdam, what is now the Royal Palace was originally designed by Jacob van Campen as the town hall. Construction took place between 1648 and 1665, although it was sufficiently far advanced to be officially ‘opened’ in 1655. On the façade facing Dam Square, a figure of Justice stands to the right of the pediment, with Prudence (rather than Fortitude) standing to the left. Given that Rembrandt was working on this print in the year that the Palace was opened, it may well be relevant. This is just one of the ways in which Rembrandt tells his story: by finding contemporary equivalents for far-off, biblical events, thus making the narrative more comprehensible for his contemporaries.

The window to the left of the façade is another example: it is designed with contemporary, classical-style architecture, including framing pilasters, the one on the left including a relief carving of a lily. Looking out of the window is a woman in contemporary (i.e. 17th Century) dress. To the right of her is a reminder that this is an ‘official’ building: there are soldiers lurking in the shadows.

And now for those technical terms. This is a drypoint. You can see that from the blur around most of the lines in this detail, most notably across Jesus’s chest. Elsewhere the blur creates a sense of extra shadow. This blurring is a feature of drypoint. Unlike engraving, in which a sharp, V-shaped tool called a burin is used to cut out distinct slivers from a copper plate, thus creating a groove with clear-cut edges, in drypoint a sharp, hard, pointed metal tool – a needle or stylus – is used to gouge out a groove. The material from the groove is pushed to one side, a bit like soil when ploughing, and remains on the plate as a bur. This bur – effectively a ridge of gnarled-up copper – gathers ink in the pits of its rough surface alongside the ink which gathers in the groove which has created it. When the image is printed this results in a blurred line. With engraving, because the burin makes a far more clear-cut groove, the lines are sharper, more clearly defined. However, with each successive print that is taken from the plate of a drypoint, the bur is gradually worn down – so later prints from an edition (I’ll get to that term on Monday – or in week 2…) are less blurry than the earlier prints.

Having dealt with one of today’s terms – drypoint – let’s move on to the second: what is a state? Compare and contrast the following two images:

It is relatively rare that a work of art is completed in one session. Admittedly some artists – notably modernists and beyond – make such ‘spontaneity’ a feature of their work. But on the whole, art is a process of trial and error, of gradual development. This is certainly the case with printmaking. It’s worthwhile remembering that, with a print, the artist is almost always working back-to-front: the process of printing results in a reversal of the imagery. Having worked on the plate the artist might want to get some idea of how the finished design will turn out – so they ink the plate and pull (i.e. make) a print. The resulting image may not be entirely satisfactory, in which case the plate could be reworked, and a second print could then be pulled. The first print would be state I, and the second, state II. For the Ecce Homo Rembrandt apparently went through a series of eight states, with the above two being states V and VIII. What is interesting about this is that we might have assumed that states I – VII were not satisfactory, which is what led to them being reworked. So why do examples still survive? Why were they not discarded? Well, drawings and sketches are of interest because they show the artist’s mind and hand at work, and the same is true of the different states of a print: the developmental process is of interest in itself. In addition to this, different collectors have different tastes, and each might prefer a different state – so keeping examples of all the states can maximise the artist’s potential sales. The numbering of the states post-dates the event: it could be that there were originally 10 different states of this image, but so far art historians have only identified 8, based on what is known now from surviving collections.

The Dutch Republic of the 17th Century was important for many reasons. Having broken away from Spanish Rule, it became officially and predominantly Protestant, as opposed to having Catholicism imposed by the Spanish. It was ruled by a rising merchant class who wanted to show off their wealth. They had the world’s first, modern stock market (and the first stock market crash), and they also had what was effectively the world’s first art market, not to mention the first dedicated ‘collectors’ – and collectors can be particularly obsessive. Not only might they want an example of the work of each of the most important artists, but they might also want examples of each of those masters’ prints, and even, an example of every state of each of those masters’ prints. By pulling multiple prints of each state, an artist was more likely to make more money from them – providing they had the right client base, of course.

But what are the differences between these two states? I’m going to leave you to consider this at your leisure, while pointing out the most obvious, and most remarkable, which can be seen at the bottom of the image. Again, compare and contrast.

The difference is striking and clear. In the fifth state there is a crowd of onlookers of all ages in front of the platform. They are mainly men, with a few women, who are looking after babes-in-arms and toddlers. A single man steps in from the right, his shadow falling onto the platform, and another figure – possibly also male – leans round at the far left. In the eighth state it is only these last two which survive. The others have been burnished out (the process of polishing the plate smooth again), and replaced with shadowy texture, and two deep, dark and ominous arches. A ghostly figure remains, central, and looking out at us – but Rembrandt seems to have lost interest in either defining this figure more fully, or removing it entirely. The effect of the change is to increase the focus on Jesus, and to make the image as a whole darker, starker, and more intense. There is now no one between us and the protagonists – which puts us in the position of the crowd: we are now the onlookers. In all four gospels a Passover ritual is related: the people present were allowed to choose a prisoner to be freed – Jesus, or the notorious prisoner, bandit, or even murderer Barabbas. They choose the latter. By removing the crowd, Rembrandt puts us in the position of those who choose. He assigns the blame to us. It’s a chilling idea.

Elsewhere he gouges again and again into the copper plate, adding more details, and deepening the shadows. One effect is to make Christ appear more haggard, more fragile, and more of a victim. It is darker, and more emotive. And yet the choice of Barabbas will always be the same.

213 – With Berthe in the Bois de Boulogne

Berthe Morisot, A Horse and Carriage in the Bois de Boulogne, after 1883. The Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford.

If you want an exhibition to help you cope with the stress of Christmas, or to get you going – gently – in the New Year, you could do worse than heading to Impressionists on Paper at the Royal Academy – the show I will be introducing this Monday, 18 December at 6pm. Each painting or drawing is a delight to the eye, and includes the most famous, such as Monet and Van Gogh (admittedly not an Impressionist…), as well as some who are less familiar: I’ve been particularly struck by the works of Zandomeneghi. There will then be a break for Christmas, and I will return in the New Year determined to increase our knowledge of the different techniques used to make prints – thanks to the National Galleries of Scotland and their exhibition The Printmaker’s Art: Rembrandt to Rego. On that link you can book both talks at a slight discount, or you can book the free-standing talks individually. On Monday, 8 January I will talk about the earlier artists (1: From Rembrandt…), and then the following week, 15 January, we will get up to the modern day (2: …to Rego). I am also offering some more in-person tours of the National Gallery in London. The morning tour of The Early Italians filled up very quickly, so I will do another at 2.30pm on Wednesday, 17 January. For those who have done this tour I am also doing ‘National Gallery 2’ – i.e. The Early Renaissance (in Florence), but you don’t have to have been on the first to do the second, and there are still just a few tickets left on Tuesday, 16 January in the morning (11.00am) and afternoon (2.30pm). All this information is also in the diary.

I’ve written about Berthe Morisot a couple of times before this year, in March, when the Dulwich Picture Gallery staged their exhibition of her work (see 192 – Role Reversal), and before that, in February, when I was delivering a series of talks on women artists (186 – Morisot and Motherhood). But I wanted to look at her again today because, in many ways, she was the archetypal Impressionist, and because her works on paper best express that idea. Indeed, as Ann Dumas says in the catalogue of the RA’s exhibition, ‘Watercolour was ideally suited to Berthe Morisot’s fluent, luminous technique as her evocation of a summer’s day in the Bois de Boulogne reveals’. Similarly, Christopher Lloyd tells us that her watercolours ‘were constantly praised at the Impressionist exhibitions for the variety in their execution and wide-ranging subject matter’. As it happens, the fluent, flickering brushstrokes were commented on by contemporary critics, some of whom noted their ‘feminine’ nature. They too pointed out the fact that this made Morisot one of the best exponents of the style – but this was not necessarily a compliment. It fed into the idea that the artists were imprecise, and created works of art which were not ‘finished’. The ‘femininity’ was, if anything, a criticism, the sign of a lack of focus. If I’m honest, I’m not convinced that we have entirely escaped this condescension, as the context of the quotation from Christopher Lloyd’s essay reveals. While talking of Édouard Manet, he says,

‘Watercolours by his sister-in-law, Berthe Morisot, were constantly praised at the Impressionist exhibitions for the variety in their execution and wide-ranging subject matter. Indeed, the brushwork of Morisot’s stronger watercolours is comparable with Manet’s in its energy and confidence.’

First, I would suggest that defining Morisot primarily as Manet’s sister-in-law, rather than putting that fact into a bracket or subordinate clause, could be seen as belittling her status as an artist in her own right. Second, we could also argue about the use of the terms ‘energy’ and ‘confidence’, which, like the comparative ‘stronger’, could be seen as masculine qualities, particularly when compared to Manet. This might imply that the more ‘male’ Morisot’s work was, the better… You might disagree with me, and fair enough if you do, I’m probably being over-picky, but the fact remains that Morisot exhibited in seven of the eight Impressionist exhibitions – three more than either Monet or Renoir – and was a prime mover in the organization of the group. In the exhibitions she was given a status equivalent to that of her male contemporaries, as the following extract from the catalogue of the ‘first’ exhibition shows.

At the time the group called themselves ‘The Anonymous Society of Artists, Painters, Sculptors, Engravers, etc.’ (…it was never going to catch on!), and they were listed alphabetically in the catalogue. As a result, ‘Mlle MORISOT (Berthe)’ comes after ‘MONET (Claude)’. Both exhibited nine works, and each included four oils, and five works on paper.  This in itself is part of the rationale of the Royal Academy’s exhibition: works on paper were exhibited alongside oil paintings, and given an equal status, arguably the first time that this had happened. Enough talking, let’s look.

The first thing to notice is that trees are not necessarily green. Sometimes they are blue – but they are only blue when they are in the shade. Following the general theory that shadow is the absence of light, together with the idea that sunlight is predominantly yellow or orange (depending upon the time of day – and, of course, artistically rather than scientifically speaking), then the absence of that light would be represented by its opposite. If you set out a simplified colour wheel, then yellow is opposite purple, and orange, blue. Hence the deep blue (or maybe indigo?) shadows that we can see here. We are in the Bois de Boulogne, the much-frequented pleasure park on the edge of 19th Century Paris, which by now is well within the suburbs. The horse and carriage can be seen on the left of the painting, standing out as a result of the brown and ochre hues with which they are painted, different from the otherwise pervasive blues and greens.

However sunny the bright green and greeny-yellow leaves of the tree on the right might appear, the sky is not blue. Morisot leaves the paper blank, a use of the non finito – to use an Italian term for ‘unfinished’ – for which the Impressionists became famed. You don’t have to say everything, after all, as long as you say enough, and the presence of this ‘space’ at the top of the painting is enough for us to know that we are looking at the sky. Actually, there is a very pale wash which takes up some of this space, but elsewhere the white of the paper constitutes one of the luminous, unifying features of the work. The regular, short, dabbed brushstrokes are another. From this detail alone we can’t see the trunks of all of the trees, nor can we see where the trees are growing. Nevertheless, the blue of the leaves on the left and the light greens on the right help to bring the latter forward, and make the former recede. If we check with the full image (above and below), this is confirmed: the ‘blue’ trees are beyond the track along which the horse and carriage are driving, while the ‘green’ tree is on our side.

The white of the sky is reflected in the pond at the bottom right of the painting, with the blues here being the reflections of the shadows in the trees, together with the shadows of the reeds growing in the water. Notice how deftly Morisot paints each individual leaf, a flick of the paintbrush which I imagine as going upwards, lifting the brush off so that the tops of the strokes are pointed like the leaves themselves. There is also a curved, zig-zag stroke of blue running through the water, an indicative feature of Morisot’s style, her ‘handwriting’ if you like, which she used when painting in oils as well as in watercolour – a daring gesture which speaks to her talent. You can also find it in the National Gallery’s Summer’s Day.

Two people sit at the back of the open carriage, painted in the same brown as the horse, which nevertheless seems lighter as it is not framed by the same strokes of a deep indigo. The driver is barely sketched in, and far paler. The blue of the shaded trees, and the blue shadows cast on the grass by the trees, frames the browns of the horse and carriage, thus making them stand out clearly, as well as embedding them firmly ‘in the Bois de Boulogne’, as the title of the painting suggests. Travelling from left to right, and slightly into the depth of the painting, the carriage will soon pass behind the brown vertical of the trunk of the brightly-lit tree. The horizontal axis of the vehicle and its movement, and the vertical axis of the trunk, help to stabilise the image. Before long the riders will pass a woman who is walking away from us, wearing a brown shawl and carrying a red-brown umbrella, or parasol – I don’t know for sure that’s what it is, but I can’t imagine what else it would be. There is something of the same red-brown hue in the tree above. I have no idea what that is, but its presence helps us to pick out the parasol, and reminds us that everything belongs here.

The blues and whites of the pond, and the greens of the grass and reeds, tie the bottom of the painting to the top, thus unifying the image as a whole. The brushstrokes themselves are very different, though. At the bottom the grass is a wash of colour, and there are also long, flowing lines. At the top, as a complete contrast, there are short, broken, scattered dashes, giving the sensation, perhaps, of the leaves blowing in the wind. As well as unifying the image from top to bottom, and making sense of the painting as a two-dimensional image, the colours also help to hold it together in depth. The greens of the brightly lit tree are roughly at the same depth as those of the grass, but these are framed – in front and behind – by the shadows in the pond and the shaded, further trees. Uniting the foreground and background in this way is a technique often associated with Cezanne, and I wonder to what extent these two artists were looking at each other’s work.

At first glance this may appear to be a simple, inconsequential sketch, but I think this apparent ‘simplicity’ reveals Morisot’s innate talent. I’m not sure that everything I have mentioned was a deliberate choice, but I am sure that it came to her naturally. You’ll have to go to the exhibition to see if the same spontaneous brilliance was shared by the other artists who are included – although I suppose you could also join me online on Monday.

212 – A yellow book

Ramon Casas I Carbó, Jove decadent. Després del ball, 1899. Museu de Montserrat, Spain.

Don’t be fooled by fame and celebrity – there are some wonderful works of art by artists who only make it to the footnotes of art history, of whom you may never have heard. The ‘poster girl’ for the Ashmolean Museum’s spectacular Colour Revolution (about which I will be speaking this Monday, 11 December at 6pm) is a painting by one such artist, perhaps: Ramon Casas, one of whose works could be found in a corner of the National Gallery’s sprawling After Impressionism exhibition, whose name I had only previously known as an associate of the young Picasso in Barcelona. I’m afraid I object to what they’ve done to the painting online, and on the cover of the catalogue, but you’ll have to join me on Monday (or check the Ashmolean’s website) to find out why! The following week (18 December) I will talk about the Royal Academy’s popular Impressionists on Paper – which ties in with some of the developments covered by Colour Revolution in a rather satisfactory way. It also has some fantastic work by some lesser-known artists, as well as a couple of unexpected works by the most famous. In the New Year – well, that’s in the future – but I hope I will have decided what I’m doing by next week! However, I do know that I will be arranging more in-person tours of the National Gallery: for those of you who couldn’t join me for The Early Italians I will repeat that visit on Wednesday, 17 January, 11:00-12:30. Meanwhile, as ever, keep your eyes on the diary.

Casas was a leading artist in the Modernisme movement, the Catalan version of Art Nouveau, whose most famous exponent was the architect Antoni Gaudí. He was one of the founders of Els Quatre Gats – ‘The Four Cats’ – a bar and club which also exhibited art, inspired by an equivalent club, Le Chat Noir in Paris. It was based at the Casa Martí, designed by one of Gaudí’s most brilliant contemporaries, Josep Puig i Cadafalch. Do seek out his buildings if you go to Barcelona: they are wonderfully elaborate, and far easier to take on board than Gaudí’s other-worldly elaborations – I’m hard pressed to say which of the architects I prefer! Els Quatre Gats is a Catalan expression meaning ‘just a few people’, with the implication that they are also a bit strange. ‘The usual suspects’ might be a better translation… It opened in 1897 but closed, due to financial difficulties, just six years later – although it was ‘revived’ in the 1970s, and is now a rather good restaurant. In its short, original life it became the meeting place of the avant garde, with what is probably Casas’ most famous painting being exhibited there almost as a shop sign.

Ramon Casas and Pere Caseu on a Tandem is a double portrait of the artist and the proprietor of the establishment, effectively two of ‘els quatre gats‘. The tandem illustrates the idea that they were going to break with tradition, as expressed metaphorically by the inscription at the top right: ‘To ride a bike, you can’t keep your back straight’. It was at Els Quatre Gats, in 1899, that the young Pablo Ruiz had his first solo exhibition… or, to give his matronymic, as well as the patronymic, Pablo Ruiz y Picasso. He was seventeen. In the same year Ramon Casas also had his first one-man show – even though by this stage he was an ‘old man’ at 33. Despite having largely funded Els Quatre Gats his exhibition was held at the Sala Parés, the oldest gallery in Barcelona, and it was on this occasion that today’s painting was first exhibited.

I love the extravagance – the richness of colour, and the complete collapse of the subject, the ‘young decadent’ of the title. This is usually translated as ‘a decadent young woman’, but there is no indication of gender in the Catalan, even if it is obvious when we look at the painting. Is this complete collapse the result of exhaustion? The full title suggests that it might be – ‘Young Decadent. After the Dance’. However, it could equally well be ennui – maybe the dance was just too, too boring. The young lady has returned home, taken a book to read, and collapsed on the sofa. She can’t even be bothered to read the book. The diagonal of her body is not the strong, muscular diagonal of baroque art – which would be closer to 45˚ to the horizontal – but more shallow, and broken by the fall of the legs. It’s this shallowness which communicates a sense of lassitude, I think, of ‘not being bothered’ about anything. The fall of the arm, and the long black length of fabric between the arm and the skirt increase the sense of sprawling. The right arm is apparently lodged behind the cushion, and the hand, resting on top of the cushion, is holding a yellow book. She really couldn’t spread out much further, she couldn’t take up any more space.

To the right of the painting the shallow diagonal of the body is matched by the cushions, which form an equivalent diagonal continuing all the way to the left of the painting. Where the legs collapse over the front of the sofa, and the parallel of body and cushions is broken, the flat green surface of the seat emphasizes the ‘absence’ of the skirts, and helps to increase the sense of collapse. The wall appears to be decorated in a similar green colour to the sofa, although it is in shadow, which helps to push the sofa, and so the subject, towards us. On the central vertical axis of the painting the yellow book rings out bright and clear, but the woman’s chin, almost embedded in her chest, confirms the suspicion that she is unlikely to read any more any time soon.

There is something almost spider-like about the figure, with the black skirt, the scarf-like fabric, and the sleeve all radiating from the woman’s torso. I know, there aren’t eight such ‘projections’, but even so… Clearly the green of the sofa and of the wall are the most dominant elements, but a suggestion that the room might contain even more, equally brilliant colours is given by the rich red, yellow and green of the rug which appears at the very bottom of the painting just underneath the one visible foot. There are also some green objects, and maybe one yellow, leaning against something – probably the wall, but apparently the picture frame – in the bottom right-hand corner. They could be more books, or possibly journals. The painting was first exhibited by one of Barcelona’s art journals, Pèl e Ploma, ‘Hair and Feather’. The title would seem to have nothing to do with art, but the implication is ‘brush and pen’, or, in other words, paintings and drawings. The publication was financed – as Els Quatre Gats had been – by Ramon Casas himself, and he designed many of its covers, adapting Jove Decadent for one of them. Maybe he is implying that the future issues of the journal, which maybe we are seeing lined up in the bottom right-hand corner, would be entirely suitable both for the young and the decadent…

Given that the model’s outfit is entirely black, it is hard to make out what the material which falls almost equidistant between her arm and her legs is, but in the print version of this image it is clear that this is indeed one end of a form of scarf, which is tied in an enormous bow under her chin. In the painting you might just be able to make out the two loops of fabric falling below her cheek and towards the pillow on the right, and to the left of the bright flash of red formed by her mouth. The other end falls along her drooping left arm. Her right arm disappears into the cleft between two of the cushions. Casas seems to be enjoying following the different lines of fabric, and exploring the spaces between the cushions and the way in which her head is subsiding into one of the gaps. Almost matching her lips, her hair is a flaming red, piled up on top of her head, falling over her brow, and flicking out above her nose and under her left ear.

Although exhibited in Barcelona, the canvas was painted in France. The model was Madeleine Boisguillaume, the daughter of a fabric merchant who, after her father’s early death, supplemented her earnings as a seamstress by modelling. She posed first, apparently, for Henri de Toulouse Lautrec, and then Casas and his colleague (and associate in the publication of Pèl e Ploma) Miquel Utrillo, who was an art critic and father (probably) of the better known Maurice. Like Casas, he was one of Els Quatre Gats – the four men who founded the eponymous club – as was Santiago Rusiñol, who also employed Madeleine. While in Paris they would all hang out at Le Chat Noir, not to mention the more famous Moulin de la Galette. Photographs suggest that Boisguillaume really did dress like this.

The key to the painting, though, is the book that Madeleine is holding. It may look like a small and insignificant tome – even if the cover is a brilliant yellow – but look how similar it is to a book currently on display in the exhibition at the Ashmolean museum.

I’m not talking about those on the left and right, but the small one at the bottom centre of the photograph. Those to left and right are relevant, though. They are copies of The Yellow Book, an equivalent in some ways to Pèl e Ploma, although with a greater interest in literature. Published in London between 1894 and 1897, it was illustrated by Aubrey Beardsley, and associated with notions of aestheticism and decadence. When Oscar Wilde was arrested in 1895, he was carrying a yellow book – but not The Yellow Book – one of the others. However, it is believed that Beardsley suggested this particular yellow colour because of the French equivalents – a multitude of books which were like the closed volume, bottom centre, as well as the open one at the top, which is also yellow, even if you can’t see its cover. They are both the type of book that your maiden aunt would be mightily displeased to see you reading: the yellow cover was enough to tell you that its contents would be thoroughly disreputable. One of these two has a title which is sufficiently unpleasant for me not to want to tell you, but the other is almost delectable in its prolixity: The Secret Loves of an Imperial Countess, in her own words, Followed by the Saucy, Curious and Amusing Pleasures and Adventures of Several good-time girls of Paris. It was written by P. Cuisin and published in Paris in 1850. The fact that Madeleine Boisguillaume has such a yellow book in hand is enough to confirm the title of the painting: she really is a young decadent. Precisely which scurrilous novella she has been reading we will never know, but the genre, together with The Yellow Book in England, help to explain why the decade became known as The Yellow Nineties – where ‘yellow’ can be read as equivalent to ‘naughty’. There were other, more wholesome reasons, though, which I will of course mention on Monday. As for the greens – well, they could be altogether more toxic…

211 – Hans Holbein: the other side of the mural?

Hans Holbein the Younger, Jane Seymour, c. 1536-7. Royal Collection Trust and Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna.

On Monday I talked about Hans Holbein the Younger’s origins in Augsburg, and his career in Basel, and next week I’m looking forward to talking about his time in England with Holbein II: Realism and Royalty (Monday 27 November at 6pm). It will be an introduction to the Queen’s Gallery exhibition Holbein at the Tudor Court, focusing on the master himself, as there is much else on show besides: the exhibition does more than it says on the packet. If you missed the first talk, and can’t make the second, I’ll be delivering an edited version of both as a study evening for ARTscapades on Thursday, 30 November – they record their talks, so you can always catch up later. I’ll be away the following week (in Hamburg with Artemisia), and so there will only be two talks in December, bringing some much-needed colour with the Ashmolean’s spectacular Colour Revolution (11 December), and then the Royal Academy’s promising Impressionists on Paper (18 December). I’m still planning the New Year – so do keep your eye on the diary. And of course, if you have any ideas, including anything you would like me to talk about, do let me know via the contact page.

I’ve recently written about the Whitehall Mural (see 207 – Making a monarch, a mural, and more) and Holbein’s portrait of one of Henry’s potential wives, Christina of Denmark (199 – The One that Got Away), but today I would like to go back to the Mural, and look at the woman who was on the other side from Henry VIII, his third wife, Jane Seymour. This drawing of her is typical of Holbein’s beautifully delicate use of coloured chalk. Many drawings like this survive, and, as we shall see on Monday, they document Holbein’s circle of patronage and the increasing success and status he enjoyed as a portrait painter. However, although they are part of the process of developing a finished portrait, they are not sufficient: they have a great deal of detail in the face, but other elements have only been sketched in. It seems highly likely that there were other drawings – for the hands, and details of the costume, for example, which this image, along with the others, does not provide. This particular drawing seems to have been used more than once: it was lengthened by the addition of an extra strip of paper along the bottom, and lines have been drawn below the join, and just below the neckline of the bodice, implying that there might have been versions of the portrait in different formats.

Holbein knew how to work efficiently. The drawings are all on paper which was prepared with a pink wash before he even started. This meant that he didn’t have to worry about the flesh tones. He would sketch faint outlines in black chalk, and gradually refine and strengthen them. Different elements were shaded in coloured chalks – black, yellow and brown for the headdress and red for the lips in this example. The eyes are picked out with green watercolour. The outlines, once secure, were heightened with pen and ink, which is particularly clear along the outline of the face on our left, and around the tip of the nose, the top of the nostril, and between the lips. He also uses it to define the eyelashes, the space between them and the whites of the eyes telling us the thickness of the eyelids. There are delicate suggestions for the patterning of the headdress, but, as I said above, this is not enough to explain his understanding of the costume in the finished painting.

Not all of the painted versions after Holbein’s drawings which survive are by the master himself, but this one, in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, is. It is really worthwhile looking at in detail… so we shall.

Jane Seymour wears a typical Tudor headdress known as a gable hood – so called, because its structure is reminiscent of the gables at either end of a pitched roof. The white band which frames the face is decorated with a motif repeated in Seymour’s jewellery. Flowers with four gold petals surrounding a dark gemstone alternate with squares of four equally sized pearls. A striped, golden fabric folds over her high forehead, and a patterned red and gold cloth wraps around the ‘gable’, with a black hood stretching behind and folded over the head.

The alternating flowers and pearls frame the neckline, hemming the bodice and sleeves, and also make up the necklaces. From one of these, effectively a choker, hangs a pendant. A second necklace hangs lower, and is tucked into the bodice. This strikes me as an odd thing to do, as it could be scratchy, but it was common practice: women in several other portraits wear necklaces in the same way. It looks as if the brooch, which is pinned to the front of the bodice, is hanging as a pendant from the longer necklace – even if the red velvet of the bodice is in between them. A pattern of triangles – or diagonal and horizontal lines – is embroidered in gold thread around the hems of the velvet (‘inside’ the flower-and-pearl bands), and in the lining of the oversleeves, which are folded up so that we can see them (they are more visible in one of the details below). Small, individual stitches – again in gold thread – can be seen along the seam to our right of the bodice. The brooch itself is both intricate and delicate. It shows Jane Seymour to be an observant Christian, as it is made up of the first three letters of Jesus’s name in Greek – ‘ihs’ – with the horizontal line which tells us that this is an abbreviation being used to turn the ‘h’ into a cross. This was a formulation devised by St Bernardino of Siena in the 15th Century. It was used by him as the ‘Name of Jesus’, at which, according to the bible (Philippians 2:10), and the well-known hymn, every knee shall bow. With no little irony, given what had just happened to the church in England, and the way in which the break from Rome would develop, this symbol – the Name of Jesus – would soon be adopted by the Society of Jesus (the Jesuits), which was founded just three or four years after the portrait of Jane Seymour was painted. As a jewel, though, this brooch could easily have been designed by Hans Holbein himself.

The British Museum has many of Holbein’s designs, including nine for brooches. The one on the right was almost certainly designed for Jane Seymour: it combines the ‘H’ of Henry VIII with the ‘I’ equivalent to the ‘J’ of Jane – as seen in the Whitehall Mural. The letters in the brooch Seymour is wearing are defined by cut stones, whereas those in the drawing are probably meant to be worked in gold, but apart from that, the combination of letters hung with three pearls is remarkably similar.

Seymour also wears rings: there are three on her left hand, one of which looks remarkably like a simple wedding band. She has a belt made of the flower-and-pearl pattern, from which hang chains which vary this motif with the addition of tiny paired chalices decorated with spiralling gold patterning and gold handles. The undersleeves appear to be a richly patterned grey (or silver?) brocade, buttoned to allow the chemise to puff out. The latter has delicate black embroidery on the cuffs. The panel of the underskirt is made from the same grey/silver brocade as the sleeves.

The costume Queen Jane wears in the Whitehall Mural is remarkably similar. The painting was destroyed in the Whitehall Palace fire of 1698, but this reduced-size copy by Remigius van Leemput, still in the Royal Collection and included in the current exhibition, was painted in 1667, so we know (roughly) what the original looked like. The cut of the clothes is not identical – the neckline is notably different, for example. Apart from that, the posture is the same, and the structure of the clothes very similar. The fabrics are different, though: the oversleeves are lined in ermine – emphasizing Seymour’s royalty in this dynastic portrait – and the undersleeves and skirt are red velvet. Other details are identical: the three white ‘puffs’ of chemise visible below the sleeve on our right, for example. It seems highly likely that the original drawing, at the top of the post, was used to develop a cartoon for the mural much like that for Henry VIII which survives in the National Portrait Gallery. Here is an edited version to suggest how they might have worked together.

We don’t know why the cartoon for Henry (and his father, Henry VII) survives, but that for the other side of the mural doesn’t. There were many copies of Henry’s portrait, which might explain the cartoon’s survival. However, as mother of the heir to the throne, Jane Seymour was also important, which would explain the different versions of the portrait which were made. Nevertheless, she wasn’t queen for long. The couple married in private on 30 May 1536, and their son, the future Edward VI, was born on 12 October 1537, just over sixteen months later. But within two weeks Jane had died, from complications arising from the birth. Heartbroken, Henry VIII was nevertheless on the hunt for a new wife the following year: the portraits of Christina of Denmark and Anne of Cleves are the result.

Jane Seymour was Queen for little more than 16 months, but it coincided with Holbein’s presence at the Tudor Court, and for that we must be thankful. At least we have a beautiful, delicate drawing and a stunning, intricately executed painting to remember her by.

210 – Hans Holbein, already in the picture

Hans Holbein the Elder, The Basilica of St Paul, 1504. Staatsgalerie Altdeutsche Meister, Augsburg.

I am looking forward to the exhibition Holbein at the Tudor Court at the Queen’s Gallery, and so wanted to write about Holbein today. This is by Hans Holbein, although probably not the Hans Holbein you are thinking of. Today’s painting is by Hans Holbein the Elder, father to the better known artist, and I’ve chosen this painting as it will be the first image in the first of my two talks about his son, Holbein I: Religion and Reform on Monday, 20 November at 6pm. I want to look at it today because there won’t be nearly enough time to talk about it in detail on Monday. The following week I will talk about the Queen’s Gallery exhibition in Holbein II: Realism and Royalty. While the first talk will introduce Holbein himself, his background (including his training in his father’s studio) and the early part of his career, the second talk will be a thorough investigation of his work in England at the court of Henry VIII. After a week off, during which I will visit Hamburg with Artemisia, I’ll try and bring some colour to the winter months, in the hope that they won’t be as dour as the autumn has been. I’ll look at the spectacular Colour Revolution at the Ashmolean in Oxford, and then Impressionists on Paper at the Royal Academy. It’s all in the diary, of course. Before you read any further, I should warn you that I’ve written a ridiculously long post – possibly the longest ever – but I make no apology for that, it’s a remarkably intricate painting. If you just want to know the precise reason why I chose it, you might want to jump straight to the final paragraph!

This complex work could be described as a triptych, painted as it is on three separate panels which are then elaborated by arched framing elements painted in gold, typical of German architecture and design in the late 15th and early 16th centuries. It was one of a series of paintings representing different Roman basilicas which decorated the Dominican convent of St Catherine. The building of the former convent now houses the the Staatsgalerie Aldeutsche Meister in Augsburg, which owns the paintings. As well as this one, the Staatsgalerie has a painting dedicated to Santa Maria Maggiore, also by Hans Holbein the Elder, and a San Giovanni in Laterano by Hans Burgkmair the Elder. All are of a similar format, and contain an image representing the church in question, together with scenes from the life of the dedicatory saint. Each also has a scene from the life of Jesus, top centre: we can see that here, and will come back to it below. On a small scale like this it is not that easy to read, but Holbein the Elder makes it perfectly clear where St Paul is by giving him an unusually coloured cloak – effectively a light sky blue, which rings out across the surface in ten different locations. The saint actually features more often than that, though – you could argue that he appears in the painting as many as fourteen times. It’ll be easier to look at each section individually, though.

Although the disposition of stories isn’t strictly left to right, that is roughly how they are arranged. The first, and one of the most important parts of the story, is to be found at the top of the left panel, with St Paul, in his sky-blue cloak and deep turquoise robe, reaching up from a white horse which has collapsed underneath him. He stretches up to the sky, looking towards the beams of light which shine down from heaven, the latter effectively represented by the area above the curved, painted framing element which acts here as the vault of heaven. This is the conversion of Saul (later Paul) as described in the Acts of the Apostles, Chapter 9, verses 3 & 4:

3And as he journeyed, he came near Damascus: and suddenly there shined round about him a light from heaven:
4 And he fell to the earth, and heard a voice saying unto him, Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me?

Saul had been on his way to Damascus to punish the Christians on behalf of the Roman Empire, and he was blinded by this brilliant light. The Lord then appeared to a man called Ananias, and sent him to seek out Saul of Tarsus.

17 And Ananias went his way, and entered into the house; and putting his hands on him said, Brother Saul, the Lord, even Jesus, that appeared unto thee in the way as thou camest, hath sent me, that thou mightest receive thy sight, and be filled with the Holy Ghost.
18 And immediately there fell from his eyes as it had been scales: and he received sight forthwith, and arose, and was baptized.

We see the baptism at the bottom left – this is the point that ‘Saul’ takes his Christian name ‘Paul’. Ananias is clearly identified: his name is embroidered multiple times around the hem of his black cape. However, we have to assume that the man being baptised is Saul from the context and from his facial appearance – light brown hair and a medium-to-long beard – as the sky-blue cloak is nowhere to be seen. Holbein the Elder shows himself to be a skilled painter of the male nude, not to mention being aware that baptism in the early Church (and up until the 11th and even 12th centuries) was a matter of full immersion, rather than sprinkling.

Paul appears twice more in this section, though. Behind the font, to the left, is a circular tower, in which Paul is imprisoned – we can see him, his beard and halo, but most clearly, the cloak, through the diagonal bars that prevent his escape. He hands a letter through the bars to a man dressed in early 16th Century clothing. Although Paul was arrested at least 5 times, according to the Acts of the Apostles, this is presumably a reference to the last, in Acts 28:16:

16 And when we came to Rome, the centurion delivered the prisoners to the captain of the guard: but Paul was suffered to dwell by himself with a soldier that kept him.

It is assumed that he wrote many of his epistles – to the Ephesians, Philippians, and Colossians, for example – whilst imprisoned at this time. As a result they are sometimes referred to as the “prison” epistles. The ‘soldier that kept him’ may be the one represented at the top right of the detail above, leading Paul over a bridge to the right of the depiction of Saul on the road to Damascus – the cloak and halo are the most visible parts of this tiny representation.

Paul appears at least six times in the central panel. The Basilica of San Paolo fuori le Mura (St Paul without the Walls) is represented as a stylised cut-away, in a form unlike any it ever took. At the top centre of this detail we can see the chancel arch, with three steps leading up to the chancel itself. Paul is preaching to the gathered assembly – three men and a woman – in front of the high altar. The altarpiece is represented by two Romanesque arches, not unlike the tablets of the law. As with the baptismal font, Holbein the Elder appears to be aware that, early on, the church used the rounded arches of the Romans before it adopted what were, in the north of Europe, still considered to be the ‘modern’ gothic forms (although, as the tracery shows, he was already moving on towards the Renaissance). The name of the Basilica is written above the altar, and the flame of a lantern reminds us that a service is in progress. A second woman sits on a chair outside the chancel, her back to us, but looking in towards the preaching Saint. The piers which flank the chancel arch are enriched with sculptures, three on each side. Those on the far left and right are in profile, and in shadow, so that I, for one, can’t identify them (at a guess, they are Aaron and Moses). However, the four in the light are clearer. From left to right they are St John the Evangelist, carrying a chalice from which a serpent emerges; St Paul himself, anachronistically carrying the sword with which he would later be executed (see below, both in picture and text!); St Peter, with the keys to the Kingdom of Heaven; and St James the Great, dressed as a pilgrim and carrying the cockle shell awarded to pilgrims reaching his shrine in Santiago di Compostela.

The beheading is shown in the foreground. Paul arrives from the right, an iron collar around his neck attached to a chain. He appears to console St Peter, dressed in a red cloak (German artists did not use the colours for saints with which many of us are familiar from Italian art). On the left the executioner sheaths his sword, while the corpse lies below, blood gushing from its neck. The serene looking head sits in the centre of the floor. Two other images of Paul appear at the back left and right: they are also related to the beheading. None of this is in the bible by the way – Paul was very much alive at the end of the Acts of the Apostles. It is all reported in apocryphal sources though. These details are derived from the Golden Legend (to which I have often referred), a collection of stories, some of which were already nearly a millennium old when they were gathered together by Jacopo da Voragine towards the end of the 13th century. As he was being led to his execution, we are told, Paul met a noble woman, a Christian, named Plautilla, and said to her,

Farewell, Plautilla, daughter of everlasting health, lend to me thy veil or kerchief with which thou coverest thy head, that I may bind mine eyes therewith, and afterwards I shall restore it to thee again.

We do not see the kerchief in the beheading itself – the head is left uncovered so that we can see it clearly for our own devotions. But he must have had it. After his execution – and yes, he had been beheaded – this is what he did:

The blessed martyr Paul took the kerchief, and unbound his eyes, and gathered up his own blood, and put it therein and delivered it to the woman.

Hard as this is to believe, it might be easier to understand if we could actually see it. But only some of the elaborate account is illustrated. After the execution, Plautilla confronted the butcher, the man responsible for beheading Paul:

Then the butcher returned, and Plautilla met him and demanded him, saying: Where hast thou left my master? The knight answered: He lieth without the town with one of his fellows, and his visage is covered with thy kerchief, and she answered and said: I have now seen Peter and Paul enter into the city clad with right noble vestments, and also they had right fair crowns upon their heads, more clear and more shining than the sun, and hath brought again my kerchief all bloody which he hath delivered me. 

And, if you don’t believe that, on the left (below) you can see Peter and Paul entering the city ‘clad with right noble vestments’ with ‘right fair crowns upon their heads’, and on the right Paul is delivering the kerchief, in which he has ‘gathered up his own blood‘, to Plautilla.

Paul’s head appears twice in the detail above, which is taken from the top of the right-hand panel. At the top left it can be seen on a pole which is held by a man surrounded by sheep, whereas in the centre of the detail it is the Pope himself who carries it with reverence in a white cloth, much as a priest might hold a monstrance containing the consecrated host: it is clearly considered to be a holy relic. Again, we are with the Golden Legend. It seems that, according to the stories, the heads of people who were executed were all thrown into the same valley. At a certain point it was decided that the valley should be cleaned:

… and the head of S. Paul was cast out with the other heads. And a shepherd that kept sheep took it with his staff, and set it up by the place where his sheep grazed; he saw by three nights continually, and his lord also, a right great light shine upon the said head.

The shepherd is the man in red, on the right, whereas the ‘lord’ is to the left of the head, in grey, and wearing a fashionable grey hat – a chaperon. The story continues:

Then they went and told it to the bishop and to other good christian men, which anon said: Truly that is the head of S. Paul. And then the bishop with a great multitude of christian men took that head with great reverence …

The body of the Saint appears centrally in the right-hand panel on its funeral bier, the scantly clad torso echoing the scene of baptism on the left. Having been promised a new life through baptism, Paul now has gained that new life – in heaven – through death: the pairing is deliberate. However, his head has been placed, somewhat unexpectedly, at the corpse’s feet. Yet again, this is a direct reference to a story in the Golden Legend – indeed, it is the continuation of the same sentence:

And then the bishop with a great multitude of christian men took that head with great reverence, and set it in a tablet of gold, and put it to the body for to join it thereto. Then the patriarch [presumably the man shown as Pope] answered: We know well that many holy men be slain and their heads be disperpled in that place, yet I doubt whether this be the head of Paul or no, but let us set this head at the feet of the body, and pray we unto Almighty God that if it be his head that the body may turn and join it to the head, which pleased well to them all, and they set the head at the feet of the body of Paul, and then all they prayed, and the body turned him, and in his place joined him to the head, and then all they blessed God, and thus knew verily that that was the head of S. Paul.

Yes, this is an old translation, and I love it – it is the version by William Caxton, no less, and was published in 1483. ‘Disperpled’ is an obsolete word for ‘scattered’. I’m going to start using it more.

Holbein the Elder does not attempt to show the body turning to join the head… but that is hardly needed. To right we can see Paul’s final appearance on the altarpiece, being lowered from a window in a basket, and we are back with biblical authority: Acts 9:23-25. Paul – still known here by the name he grew up with, Saul – has been very successful and the local Jews are not happy that so many people have been converted:

23 And after that many days were fulfilled, the Jews took counsel to kill him:
24 But their laying await was known of Saul. And they watched the gates day and night to kill him.
25 Then the disciples took him by night, and let him down by the wall in a basket.

We see the act of escape on the far right of the painting, opposite the image his imprisonment on the left of the left panel. This symmetry is a metaphor, surely, of the soul being freed from its earthly prison, the body, as a result of death. There is one final section of the painting to look at.

At the top, almost as if mounted on the vault of San Paolo fuori le Mura, we see the mocking of Christ, and the crowning with thorns. This is taken from Matthew 27:28-29. There is a very similar account in Mark, although Holbein the Elder has definitely drawn on Matthew, as Mark says that the robe was purple, whereas Holbein the Elder has clearly chosen scarlet:

28 And they stripped him, and put on him a scarlet robe.
29 And when they had platted a crown of thorns, they put it upon his head, and a reed in his right hand: and they bowed the knee before him, and mocked him, saying, Hail, King of the Jews!

The man kneeling beside Jesus and handing him the reed is particularly elaborately dressed, with enormous, richly embroidered sleeves and intricately patterned hose – as if Holbein the Elder is making fun of contemporary excesses in fashion. But then the soldier at the back right – one of two men ramming down the crown of thorns with a long stick, because it is too thorny, too dangerous, to hold – is hardly less ornately dressed, with a regularly studded jerkin attached at the front by a number of red leather and gold buckles. Jesus, meanwhile, maintains a serene, transcendent expression. On either side grotesque figures gesticulate – scribes and pharisees, presumably, although the man with the peaked and domed hat is presumably Pontius Pilate, given that he holds a commander’s baton (although he could be Herod, as King). The hat itself is based on one worn by the Byzantine Emperor John VIII Palaeologus to the Council of Florence in 1438, which Holbein the Elder could have known about from a medal by Pisanello.

However, whatever is in the painting, and however much I have said (without even starting on the style of the depiction, the artist’s superb control of composition, use of colour, or ability to direct our eyes around the painting), it does nothing to explain why I wanted to look at this particular work by Hans Holbein the Elder, rather than any other, in order to introduce his son. Let’s look again at a detail of the baptism of St Paul in the left-hand panel.

Paul stands demurely in the baptismal font, his hands lowered to preserve his modesty as he looks down at Ananias conducting the service. To the right there is a man looking out towards us dressed in early 16th Century clothes – a dark grey coat over a black jacket. In front of him stand two boys, identically dressed in light grey-green coats, with various objects attached to their belts. The one on the right is taller, and has longer hair, and seems to be looking after his younger brother: he rests his left hand on his younger brother’s left, and puts his right hand on the boy’s back. The younger boy rests his right hand on his own shoulder – and possibly on his father’s right hand, which we can’t actually see. ‘Dad’ seems to indicate the younger boy by pointing with his left forefinger. Dad is none other than Hans Holbein the Elder, and on the right is his first son, Ambrosius, who was born around 1494, and whom Hans taught to paint. But then, he taught his second son to paint as well. Born around 1497 he must have been six or seven when the Basilica of St Paul was painted in 1504. This is Hans Holbein the Younger, and for a long time this was thought to be his first appearance in the History of Art. Both dad and brother seem to focus on him. Was there any way of knowing that he would grow up to be more famous than the both of them? Could he already have been showing extraordinary talent at the age of seven? It seems hard to believe it, and yet… who knows? Why else is dad pointing at him specifically? Franny Moyle, author of the recent biography of Holbein, believes that he was considered a child prodigy, and may even have been educated by the nuns of St Catherine’s (whose building now houses this painting). She has even identified an earlier portrait of the boy in the same museum, with the five-year-old Hans holding a fish next to Jesus in the Feeding of the Five Thousand – he clearly was a golden boy. But we will look at that painting, and what our seven-year-old did next, on Monday.

Doggedly re-posting

William Hogarth, The Painter and his Pug, 1745. Tate Britain, London.

I’m not much of a dog person, but I have developed a fondness for William Hogarth’s pet pug, not least because it rejoiced in the name of Trump (no relation). This portrait – if that’s what it is – belongs to Tate, rather than the National Portrait Gallery, but as I have been using a different Hogarth Self Portrait, which is from NPG, to advertise my third ‘re-visit’ – looking at some of The Georgians, this Monday, 13 November at 6pm – it seems like a good time to re-visit this particular painting as well. I will then continue this autumn’s theme of portraiture with two talks about Holbein, the first introducing his background and early work (Holbein I: Religion and Reform on 20 November) and the second introducing the Queen’s Gallery exhibition Holbein at the Tudor Court (Holbein II: Realism and Royalty on 27 November). If you click on this link you can by a ticket for both talks at a reduced rate… I will then move on to brighten up the winter with some colour (it’ll be in the diary soon), but that won’t be for a while, so let’s get back to Trump.

The Painter and his Pug 1745 William Hogarth 1697-1764 Purchased 1824 http://www.tate.org.uk/art/work/N00112

I questioned, above, whether this really is a portrait. It would seem so obvious that it is a self portrait that we don’t stop and question what genre of painting it actually is. After all, Hogarth is not presenting us with a direct image of himself, but shows us a painting within a painting. The image of Hogarth is, in itself, an object which he has depicted. The likeness of the artist is painted on an oval canvas, and rests, unframed, on a pile of three books. If you get in close, you can see light reflecting from the tacks which pin the canvas to the oval stretcher. Next to the painting lies a palette resting on some fabric, and a curtain hangs down from the top right corner, falling behind the dog. This is a collection of objects – canvas, books, palette, cloth: surely it is really a Still Life? The dog features in the same way that birds, insects, or even occasional frogs do in earlier Still Life paintings (see, for example, Picture of the Day 27). Alternatively, you could suggest that this is a portrait, pure and simple, of Trump, the proud and upright pug seen to the right. He is more real than the image of Hogarth, who, in this case, would have been included as one of the ‘attributes’ of the subject, Trump, telling us more about him: not just what our hairy hero looked like, but more about his background. For a dog, that would include the appearance of the owner, an aspect of the canine character that is usually omitted from the genre of pet portraiture. If this is indeed a portrait of a fully rounded hound, then we would expect the other objects to include further references to his occupations – nowadays, I suppose, that would include balls, mangled toys, and possibly even a dog chew or two. But no such luck – there is no other hint of animal husbandry. There are, however, books.

It seems highly unlikely, judging by what little I know about dogs, that Trump could read. Even if he could, it would surely only be the cleverest canine that would enjoy Shakespeare, Swift and Milton (specifically Paradise Lost), the very words written in gold lettering on the spines of the books. These clearly relate more to the owner than the owned, and appear to be the influences or inspirations that Hogarth is claiming for himself. Indeed, as the painting rests upon the books it would seem to suggest that they are the very foundations of his art.

Another way of looking at it is that his painting, sitting on top of Milton, Swift and Shakespeare as it does, represents the very apogee of artistic achievement. But why does he limit his own appearance to a painting, while showing us the ‘real’ Trump? Maybe he wants to say that he is his art – this is not just what he looks like, but his very essence, as if to say, ‘we are what we do’. The palette says the same, in a subtler and more sophisticated way. This is not, it would seem, the palette of a working artist – there is no paint on it (even though he included grey-scale daubs in an engraved version), nor are there any brushes (although technical analysis shows that at one point there were, stuck through the thumb hole of the palette). Instead there is an inscription: ‘The LINE of BEAUTY’, after which comes, in fainter script, ‘And GRACE’. Further to the right is his signature – or at least his initials – and the date, ‘W.H. 1745’.

This is as much the painting of a theoretician as of a practical painter. In 1753, eight years after the completion of this work, he would publish The Analysis of Beauty, a summation of his thoughts on art, expressed in essence by the Line of Beauty – the S-shaped curve we see on the palette. It implies not only a sense of flow in any depicted form, which he says is more interesting and varied than rigid, straight lines would be, but also gives a sense of liveliness and movement to a painting. It also, he believed, echoes the way in which our eyes look around an image.

As ever, things are never that simple. He was still formulating his ideas when this self portrait was completed in 1745, and painted out the words ‘And GRACE’ – only for them to be revealed again as the overpainting gradually became transparent. Even the line itself is not as simple as it may appear. An S-shape, yes, but one that casts a shadow on the palette. It is, in the world of the painting, a three-dimensional object, like a gold wire floating impossibly above the flat surface, resting with the lightest touch at either end. It is, in a way, a statement of the power of art to create things we do not know, or which can not exist within our physical world. In his book he would describe the line of beauty as being two dimensional, whereas the line of grace was three-dimensional – suggesting that this is the latter. However, it seems that he hadn’t settled on this distinction by the time the painting was completed, and so tried to cover ‘And GRACE’. This still leaves us with Trump. Why is he here? And why is he ‘more real’ than Hogarth himself, given that the artist is ‘relegated’ to a painted image?

X-ray analysis tells us that Hogarth had initially planned a more formal portrait to feature in this ‘Still Life’. In all probability it was more like the miniature by André Rouquet illustrated on the right. However, that formality – fully bewigged and dressed with cravat, waistcoat and jacket – was relaxed to show the artist in his cap and house coat, the way you would meet him ‘at home’, rather than dressed to the nines in performative fashion when out in Society. This is the man himself. And he was, of course, a man who loved dogs. He had a succession of pugs – Pugg, Trump and Crab are known by name, but Trump was the favourite, and gained the most renown. Apparently Hogarth often remarked how similar they were, and in this painting the proud pooch becomes an emblem of Hogarth’s pugnacious nature. The scar on the artist’s forehead, of which he was rather proud, might even imply that he (like Trump?) was a bit of a bruiser, although as it happens it was the result of an accident in his youth, rather than the trophy of a fight.

Trump himself became a well-known character. He probably appears in four other paintings, and nowadays he even has his own Wikipedia page, which will tell you what the paintings are. Not only that, but he was modelled in terracotta by the great French sculptor, and friend of Hogarth, Louis François Roubiliac – whose terracotta bust of the artist (which, like the miniature above, belongs to the National Portrait Gallery) I will talk about on Monday. Sadly the original Trump has been lost. Wedgwood made a version in black basalt ware based on a cast he got from a plaster shop owned by a man called Richard Parker. Neither the Wedgwood nor the plaster cast seem to have survived either: I certainly can’t track down any photographs. However, the Chelsea Porcelain Factory also released a white version, probably based on a similar, commercially available, plaster cast.  So here is Roubiliac’s Trump in a version by the Chelsea Porcelain Factory, now in the V&A. That’s what I call celebrity.

When I first posted this, the painting was included in the Tate Britain exhibition Hogarth and Europe, which led me to question how our painting related to the rest of the continent. Presenting the artist as a typical British Bulldog (or rather, Pug), and resting on three of the great British authors, there wouldn’t seem to be anything ‘European’ about it, until you realise that The Line of Beauty – that sinuous S-shaped curve – is, in itself, one of the founding compositional principals of Rococo art and design. As so often, Hogarth may have expressed disdain for everything ‘overseas’, but he was a great lover of its art. But was that even what Tate Britain’s exhibition was about? You’d have to look up my review in the Burlington Magazine to find out (and sorry, you’d have to pay for it on that link, but you could look it up in a library).

It’s possible that Trump – or more likely, Crab – originally made an appearance in the NPG self portrait. However, the featured dog was painted out, probably because he had adopted a rather disrespectful stance, as dogs regularly do. I’ll see if I can find an X-ray to show you where he was – and what he was doing – in time for the talk on Monday.

Reverting to Type

Elisabetta Sirani, The Penitent Magdalene, 1663. Musée des Beaux-Arts et d’Archéologie, Besançon.

I first got to know today’s painting when I wrote about it back in November 2020, but only saw it for the first time in the flesh (flesh being the operative word) the week before last, when I was in Hamburg. It features in the exhibition Ingenious Women, which is the subject of my talk this Monday, 6 November at 6pm. The painting is every bit as brilliant as the not-so-terribly-good reproductions had led me to believe, and confirmed the sense I had that Elisabetta Sirani really was a great artist. The exhibition as a whole is superb, and a great contribution to the field. It looks at the work of about 30 different women, some of whom are more famous than others (Sofonisba Anguissola, Rachel Ruysch and Angelica Kauffman are among the better known, Michaelina Wautier and Catharina Treu perhaps less familiar). It is hung thematically, exploring background, training, and opportunity, examining the different strategies the artists employed – consciously or otherwise – to develop their careers, and how they were enabled to a greater or lesser degree by the men in their lives who were also artists. This approach is not without its criticisms – but I’ll explain what I mean by that on Monday. The following week I’ll be back at the National Portrait Gallery, looking at The Georgians, and then will dedicated two talks to Hans Holbein. You can either book both together, at a discount, or each one individually. Part 1, Religion & Reform, will be on Monday 20 November, while Part 2, Realism & Royalty – an introduction to the Queen’s Gallery exhibition which opens soon – will follow on Monday 27. It’s all in the diary, of course. But back to the re-post of a blog which is now nearly 3 years old. I was starting from an assumption that all artists were men. Bear with me. I also hadn’t put the name of the artist at the top of the post…

Typical! You take a subject as sensitive and emotive as the penitence of Mary Magdalene, a woman struck with remorse at her sinful past, an existence spent earning money from the debauchery of the flesh, and you turn it into an excuse for men to stare at a display of the very flesh that has caused her downfall, a voluptuous, sensuous image that contradicts the very nature of the profound changes in this woman’s life, and that goes as far as to question the title of the painting itself. In short you objectify her. Typical indeed, and only to be expected from a paternalistic society in which men paint for men, for their own private pleasure. But before you get too outraged, there is just one small problem with this attitude…

The problem is, that it was painted by a woman – Elisabetta Sirani. It questions the notion that art might be gendered – or, to put it another way, that women might paint women in a different way than men would. I’m not saying that painting isn’t gendered, by the way, but… well, it’s complicated.

Sirani was a very successful artist. I have talked about her before, back in May, with Picture Of The Day 62 – Portia, but, in case you don’t have time to read up about her there, here’s a brief reminder. She was born in 1638 in Bologna – and that was where she seems to have spent her entire life. It’s quite possible she never left the city. I say entire life, but she died, tragically young and under unexplained circumstances, at the age of 27, leaving behind over 200 paintings. Like her older contemporary, Artemisia Gentileschi, she was trained by her father, who was an artist, and like Artemisia her earliest surviving work was painted when she was 17. By 20 Elisabetta was already enormously successful, and soon after she founded an academy for women artists [n.b. in the last three years – since I first wrote this – this assumption has been questioned]. Her early death was mourned by artists and intelligentsia alike, and she was buried in great pomp in San Domenico, one of Bologna’s most important churches, alongside the city’s most famous artistic son, Guido Reni, who had trained her father.

If we can believe what we see in this painting, having repented and mended her ways, Mary Magdalene has retreated to a cave to read the bible and contemplate Christ’s sacrifice on the cross, while meditating on death, and mortifying the flesh. This should not be in doubt. The bible stands open at the left of the painting on a ledge which also supports a candle stick. We can just see the base of the candle, though not the flame itself, which illuminates the scene with a supernatural brilliance.

The precise fall of this light is beautifully traced across the painting, while a second light source, the moon, silvers the edges of the cave, and can just be glimpsed in the sky outside. Within, the candle illuminates the underside of the right arm of the delicately carved and coloured crucifix, against the base of which the bible is leaning. The wound in Christ’s chest is lit, revealing a dash of red blood, as are the side of his face around the eye socket, and his halo. The light even flicks across the edges of the titulus attached to the top of the cross, on which the letters I.N.R.I. (Iesus Nazarenus Rex Iudeorum – Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews) are summarily sketched. It also casts a shadow from the surprisingly low-slung loincloth, and defines the firm thigh muscles of the saviour’s tautly bent right leg. It’s not just the Magdalene who is sensuously depicted. The candle illuminates Mary’s chest and neck, models the contours of her face with delicate sensitivity, and casts a shadow onto the wall of the cave behind her. Her golden hair glows around her face, falling copiously over both shoulders.

A strand of hair crosses her chest, and lies between her breasts, while another wraps around her left arm, and under the knotted cat o’ nine tails. She holds the whip in her right hand, the end of its handle resting provocatively close to her left nipple (the other nipple is caressed by a shadow from her pink robe, which frames, but doesn’t clothe, her torso). Her left hand is poised on top of a skull, the symbol of her meditations upon death and of the transience of flesh, which sits almost too comfortably in her lap.

To understand the extreme sensuality of this painting, surely it would be useful to know more about the life of Mary Magdalene? The problem is that none of it is in the bible. What we are looking at is a fiction, but one that was believed for well over a millennium. If we do go as far as to read the bible, we will find the first mention of the Magdalene in Luke’s Gospel, at the beginning of Chapter 8. Here are the first two verses:

And it came to pass afterward, that he went throughout every city and village, preaching and shewing the glad tidings of the kingdom of God: and the twelve were with him, And certain women, which had been healed of evil spirits and infirmities, [including] Mary called Magdalene, out of whom went seven devils…

Immediately before this, in chapter 7, Jesus was at dinner with the Pharisee Simon, when the following episode occurred – I’ll give you verses 37 and 38, and the very last verse of the chapter, verse 50:

And, behold, a woman in the city, which was a sinner, when she knew that Jesus sat at meat in the Pharisee’s house, brought an alabaster box of ointment, And stood at his feet behind him weeping, and began to wash his feet with tears, and did wipe them with the hairs of her head, and kissed his feet, and anointed them with the ointment…. And he said to the woman, Thy faith hath saved thee; go in peace.

Of course, there is no connection between this episode, and the fact that, immediately afterwards, in the next chapter, Mary Magdalene is mentioned for the first time. Or is there? Well, if you keep reading, and presuming you’ve already read Matthew and Mark, after Luke you would get to the Gospel According to St John. And this is what you would read in Chapter 11, verses 1 & 2:

Now a certain man was sick, named Lazarus, of Bethany, the town of Mary and her sister Martha. (It was that Mary which anointed the Lord with ointment, and wiped his feet with her hair, whose brother Lazarus was sick.)

Now, Luke doesn’t say that his ‘woman… which was a sinner’ was called Mary, but in John 11 she has done exactly the same thing – so maybe she was called Mary, and maybe indeed she was the sister of Lazarus and Martha. However, in the next chapter (12), in the first three verses, John tells us:

Then Jesus six days before the passover came to Bethany, where Lazarus was, which had been dead, whom he raised from the dead. There they made him a supper; and Martha served: but Lazarus was one of them that sat at the table with him. Then took Mary a pound of ointment of spikenard, very costly, and anointed the feet of Jesus, and wiped his feet with her hair: and the house was filled with the odour of the ointment.

So, is John’s mention of the event in Chapter 11 referring to what would happen later in Chapter 12, or what we might already have read in Luke 7? Mary would certainly become associated with precious ointment. Mark’s Gospel, chapter 16, verse 1, tells us that after the Crucifixion,

And when the sabbath was past, Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James, and Salome, had bought sweet spices, that they might come and anoint him.

And this is why Mary always has a jar with her after she has visited Jesus’s tomb in paintings of the Noli me tangere, which is recounted in John 20 – have a look back to the version by another of Italy’s great 17th Century women, Fede Galizia: 104 – Don’t touch!

Basically, we are discussing the identities of three people: (1) Luke’s ‘woman… which was a sinner’ from Chapter 7; (2) ‘Mary, called Magdalene’ from Luke, Chapter 8, and (3) Mary, sister of Martha and Lazarus, from John, Chapters 11 & 12. However, way back in 591, the year after he became Pope, Gregory the Great delivered a homily for Easter in which he conflated these three women, and Mary Magdalene was identified as the sister of Martha, a former sinner who had repented, only to became one of Christ’s most ardent followers. It wasn’t until 1969, under Pope Paul VI, that the Roman Catholic Church finally recognised them as three separate people. But for the History of Art that is almost irrelevant: from 591 – 1969, as far as the Roman Catholic Church was concerned, Mary Magdalene was a repentant sinner. And for most people, that meant a repentant prostitute. That effectively includes the whole of European art since the fall of the Western Roman Empire (less a century or so), which includes everything in the National Gallery in London, for example. For that matter, it also includes today’s painting from the Musée des Beaux-Arts et d’Archéologie, Besançon. But why would a woman like Elisabetta Sirani, who knew all too well the problems that women faced, choose to paint the Magdalene like this?  Well, I’m afraid I’ll have to leave you to think about that. People are more complex than we might expect [but maybe it’s one of the things I will think about on Monday].

209 – Rubens: a nude, with nuance?

Peter Paul Rubens, Samson and Delilah, about 1609-10. The National Gallery, London.

Relatively few people get their own adjective, but as far as Rubens is concerned, that could be a good thing. ‘Rubenesque’ can be positive or negative, or an all-too-obvious attempt to be polite, I suppose, it depends on your attitude. A basic definition would probably be ‘curvaceous, womanly, voluptuous’, while it also implies the sexualisation of the fuller female figure. The curators of Rubens & Women at the Dulwich Picture Gallery – about which I will be talking this Monday, 23 October at 6pm – are aiming to find more nuance in the great Flemish master’s appreciation of the female form. Indeed, they successfully show that he did paint all aspects of womanhood (as I hope to explain) even if (as I shall also discuss) they have stretched their optimism a little far at times. I am currently in Hamburg, though, and have just seen Ingenious Women at the Bucerius Kunst Forum – it’s a superb exhibition, and, I think, a valuable contribution to the study of women as artists. It will be the subject of my talk on 6 November. The week after that I will head back to the National Portrait Gallery for part I of The Georgians. The autumn’s theme of portraiture will then continue with two talks dedicated to the Queen’s Gallery exhibition Holbein at the Tudor Court on Monday 20 and 27 November – they will go on sale soon (keep checking the diary). Both of my November in-person tours are full, I’m afraid (or rather, I’m glad to say…), but I’ll see how those go, plan accordingly, and let you know about future developments.

It’s such a pity that this painting is not in the exhibition in Dulwich – it may not have occurred to the curators, or they may not have been able to borrow it, or there may not have been space. But I really think it does have ‘nuance’ (even if I confess to being wary of the over-use of this increasingly nuance-free term). The story of Samson and Delilah is a complex one, but one of the things I have always admired about this painting – and about Rubens generally – is the brilliance and clarity of the story telling. Even if you don’t know it (and I’m going to pretend that we don’t), you can get a pretty good idea of what is happening just by looking. Before you read any further, have another look and ask yourself what is the first thing that you notice? What is the brightest part of the painting, for one thing?

Four people are gathered in a room, with soldiers just outside the door. It is night time – the sky is black, and there are numerous light sources, from the brazier on the far left to the torches held by the soldiers. A strong man, all but naked, is slumped over the lap of a young, blonde, fair-skinned woman, while an older woman leans over this couple and a second man attends to the hair of the first.

What is the brightest part of the painting? To my eye, it is the young woman’s flesh: her shoulder, neck, and the lower part of her face. And her breasts, of course, which are, for some reason, uncovered. She is reclining on a chaise longue in a flowing, rich red dress, with a similar golden-orange fabric hanging beneath. Above, a deep purple drape enhances the sense that this is a day bed – even at night. It is the brazier on the far left which illuminates the young woman’s flesh, and there is a warm, orange glow at the bottom of the painting, giving a warmth to the legs of the chaise longue, and to the man’s back where it would otherwise be in shadow.

Earlier I said that the soldiers were holding torches – plural. One is immediately apparent, held centrally in the doorway and reflecting off the armour and face of the man holding it. But over his shoulder is a younger man, with no beard, whose neck is illuminated – he must be holding another torch, hidden behind the first soldier. They are pushing their way into the room, the tentative gaze of the man on the left, who has his arm on the door, and the commanding stare of the man on the right – as if he is worried that the other is making too much noise – suggest that this is a form of ambush. To the left of the door a flagon casts a shadow onto a column which supports two glass vessels – decanters – which both reflect and refract the light. It shines on the surface of the glass and illuminates a patch of the wall at the back.

The details at the top of the painting tell us what the story is about. There is second brazier which illuminates the statue above it of an all-but naked woman holding the hands of a boy with wings – Venus and Cupid, the Roman gods of love. This tells us that we are in a pagan environment, and, although Rubens is giving us the wrong religion, we know that this is neither a Christian nor a Jewish household. The purple curtain hangs down, looking almost like over-ripe fruit, next to the glinting decanters, and to the right of them the soldiers appear at the door. This is a story about love (or is that lust?), about drink, and about the army. Meanwhile, the old woman shades her eyes from the glare of the candle so that she can see what is going on.

The light in this painting is playing so many roles. It highlights the details which Rubens has included in the background to tell us what the story is about, and it gives us a sense of character as well. It is the brazier on the far left which illuminates the young woman so brightly, after all. It also enhances her appearance: she is blonde and pale skinned, features which were celebrated as signs of beauty and of refinement throughout western European history. The man is darker skinned, and muscular: it is the fall of the light and the resulting shadows which tell us precisely how muscular he is. He appears to be fast asleep. The head resting on his right hand suggests as much, even if the hanging left arm might imply death (but if Rubens had wanted to show him dead, he would probably have painted him paler). And then there is the fact that his hair is being cut so cautiously: if you don’t want him to wake, you would need to be careful. Why worry how you do it if the man is dead? And while we’re at it, why is she topless? Why is he nearly naked? I’m sure you don’t need to ask: something has been going on… Or has it?

For those of you who don’t know the story, the account I am going to give you is not exactly what it says in the bible (the Book of Judges, Chapter 16) – but it is a version of the story which Rubens’s painting would allow, even if I am taking some licence. Samson was an Israelite hero, enemy of the Philistines (not Christian, not Jewish, but not Roman either, despite Venus and Cupid, but we’ll have to let that pass: the sculpture functions as a non-biblical ‘idol’ suggesting ‘love’ and a religion outside ‘the book’). The Philistines could not defeat Samson, and wanted to know his secret. He clearly liked the Philistine beauty Delilah, so they got her to find out. She invited him round, flirted with him, offered him drink, and implied she might offer him more. He seemed interested, so she offered him more drink, and asked him the secret of his strength. After more flirting, and quite a few more drinks, and, I suspect, a certain amount of pouting on both sides, Samson eventually confided that he had never had his hair cut, and that was where his strength lay. At that point he collapsed unconscious on her lap, she called in the barber – and her maid, it seems – and then summoned the soldiers. End of story – almost… You’ll have to look up what happened next.

The barber does seem to be going about his job in an oddly complex, even awkward, way. OK, so this is a very strong man who doesn’t want a haircut, so you’d have to be careful, but crossing the hands over like this doesn’t seem to be entirely necessary. I can’t help thinking that Rubens was showing off how well he could paint hands: not everyone could. Not only that, but the fall of light is extraordinary. It’s not just the brilliant illumination of the back of the left hand which is holding the lock of hair, or the light glinting across the top of the left forearm, but especially – and remarkably – the shadows that the scissors cast on the forefinger of the right hand which is holding them.

But why is the maid there? She’s not mentioned in the bible. Admittedly, anyone as wealthy and refined as Delilah would be expected to have a maid. However, given the way that Delilah is dressed, and that she has a sculpture of Venus and Cupid in her room, together with the ‘over-ripe’ appearance of the purple curtain, maybe she isn’t really that refined after all. There are quite a few northern European paintings with an old woman watching over a young woman in a low-cut dress (admittedly lower than low-cut in this case), with a young, handsome man (who has been drinking) in attendance. The implication is that the younger woman is a prostitute, the older a procuress, and the man a client. Samson is visiting a prostitute. That’s hardly heroic, you might think, hardly biblical, but think again. Judges 16:1 says ‘Then went Samson to Gaza, and saw there an harlot, and went in unto her.’ However, that’s not Delilah. Verse 4 says, ‘And it came to pass afterward, that he loved a woman in the valley of Sorek, whose name was Delilah.’ Rubens is combining the two verses, and is doing it deliberately. What is the moral of the story, after all? It’s quite simply, ‘Don’t Trust Women’. They may be beautiful, but they will betray you, and hold a power over you which will unman you. It was a commonly told tale. In German this ‘trope’ is known as Weibermacht – the Power of Women. The story of Samson and Delilah is just one of the oft-cited examples. Others include Aristotle and Phyllis, and Hercules and Omphale, you’ll have to look them up. After all, it was the 17th Century, hardly an enlightened era, and this was painted by a man, for a man – Nikolaas Rockox, art collector, patron, and friend of Rubens who served as the Mayor of Antwerp on more than one occasion. He hung it over his fireplace, which explains the warm glow at the bottom of the painting and across Samson’s shadowed back (Rubens, being a brilliant artist, includes real light from outside the painting as part of the narrative, thus making his image look more ‘real’). Here’s a painting from the Alte Pinakothek in Munich by Frans Francken the Younger, painted around 1630-35. It’s called Supper at the House of Burgomaster Rockox, and it shows the painting in its original location.

So that sums it up. Painted by a man, for a man, and it’s the 17th Century, so what do you expect? It’s misogynistic, and Rubens ratchets up the misogyny by suggesting that Delilah was a prostitute – which is not what the bible says. Not much nuance there, really. And not only that.

Have another look at the old woman, and at Delilah. Look at their heads, and the angle of their heads to their shoulders, and the curve of their shoulders. Look at their profiles. This could be the same woman. Delilah may be beautiful now, but the older woman – that’s what you’d end up married to. Don’t trust physical beauty, it won’t last – you should rely on ‘inner beauty’, which she clearly doesn’t have, because she’s so deceitful.

However, let’s think again. Look at the expression on Delilah’s face – she’s not the evil, triumphant villainess, is she? And look at her left hand. Yes, it’s ‘too big’, but no! Rubens did not ‘get that wrong’ – I’ve ranted about his before. I get so annoyed when people get caught up in petty naturalism. This is art, it’s artifice, it’s not meant to be real, it’s meant to show us something beyond what looks ‘right’. And that over-sized hand tells us that she has power, yes, but she also has a care for him: that hand is not oppressing him, or containing him. It is a consoling hand, even if he cannot sense that, given that he’s asleep.

Any great work of art allows of more than one interpretation – just look at all the different interpretations of Shakespeare you’ve seen (well, I hope you’ve seen) – and I think the same is true of this painting. I’ve given you the standard interpretation, let’s call that the ‘Male Chauvinist’ interpretation. I’m using broad brushstrokes here (though sadly not with as much skill as Hals). And surely this interpretation is supported by the bible. Why is Delilah doing this, anyway? It say in Judges 16:5, ‘The rulers of the Philistines went to her and said, “See if you can lure him into showing you the secret of his great strength and how we can overpower him so we may tie him up and subdue him. Each one of us will give you eleven hundred shekels of silver.’ So she was doing it for the money. She was little better than a prostitute.

But did she have a choice? Let’s face it, the whole of the Philistine army is waiting outside the door – she had to do it. Interpretation 2: This is a woman being used as part of the men’s power struggle, a cog in the male machine, a victim of men’s needs. What choice does she have? I’m going to call this the ‘Old School Feminist Interpretation’. As I say, broad brushstrokes. Very broad.

But wait yet again – eleven hundred shekels of silver? Each? That’s a lot of money. And she has the means to get it. Try looking at it this way (interpretation 3): this is a woman using what she’s got to get what she can. She is entirely empowered. This would be the ‘Post Feminist’ interpretation. I used to call it the Spice Girls interpretation (‘I’ll tell you what I want’), but that only tells you how long I’ve been talking about it. I think the painting allows all three interpretations – but not just the first. Look at that hand, how softly it lies on his back, large as it is, and potentially damaging, and look at her face, the regret in her eyes, after she has betrayed him. That’s nuance.

208 – Some are born great

Frans Hals, Portrait of Catharina Hooft with her Nurse, 1619-20. Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Gemäldegalerie.

I have rarely been so excited at an exhibition as I was when visiting Frans Hals at the National Gallery. I was excited to go, yes, but on seeing the first paintings, the thrill increased. I’ve seen quite a few of them before, and yet they seemed more brilliant than ever. His handling of paint is second to none – unprecedented in its freedom and apparent spontaneity – and his ability to capture both the appearance and character of his subjects is also unparalleled. I have no doubt that he was a better painter than Johannes Vermeer, but was he a better artist? Well, that depends on how you define artistry, and it also relies on personal taste. I certainly think people should be queuing round the block to see this exhibition, but perhaps the fact that Hals was far more productive than Vermeer means that it does not seem so ‘special’. Or maybe it’s because there are no novels or films inspired by his work… But you must go – you’re in for a treat! Either that, or sign up for my talk this Monday, 16 October at 6pm. The following week I will look at another of the 17th Century’s most dazzling artists, Peter Paul Rubens, whose output was even greater than that of Hals, but don’t let that blind you to his virtuosity and subtlety. In subsequent weeks I will introduce an intriguing exhibition currently in Hamburg, Ingenious Women, and return to the National Portrait Gallery for a third visit – looking at (some of) The Georgians. Before then, though, a new project: in-person tours. This is a trial, looking at the early Italian paintings in the National Gallery, which have been beautifully rehung and superbly lit in the lower galleries. I will give the same 90-minute tour twice, at 11:00am and 2:30pm on Thursday 9 November, and am limiting the numbers for a better experience. These links will take you to Eventbrite, which is better for in-person events than Tixoom, I believe.

This is a relatively early painting by Frans Hals, although he seems to have been a slow starter: he would have been about 37 or 8 when it was painted. Having said that, he was still working at the age of 80, so there was more than enough time for him to catch up. As an ‘early work’, though, there is absolutely no sense that he was still learning – it is a painting of the most profound brilliance, both in terms of its technique and its originality. The basic idea may seem quite simple, and yet it is entirely innovative. The rising merchant class of what would be recognised, about three decades after this was painted, as the Dutch Republic wanted you to know who they were, and so portraiture reached new heights. It was not only the pater familias who should be represented – and so commemorated for future generations – but also the lady of the house. She usually retained her own family’s name as a sign that she was from a background of equal status to that of her husband. And then there was the hope for the next generation, and the continuation of the greatness which husband and wife brought with them. Young Catharina Hooft is presented to us as the queen of the household, ruling over her domain, supported by her most loyal courtier, her nurse. And that is what is truly astonishing about this painting. In the tradition of family portraiture, which was still developing, boys were watched over by their fathers (to the right – our left – of the family), and were frequently shown learning what it was to be a man. On the left (our right), the girls are with their mothers, preparing to be good wives – and so, good mothers – with flowers (beauty), fruit (fertility) or dolls (maternity)… In this case, though, we have a servant, who receives almost as much attention as the young mistress. Portraits were usually of the great and the good, and servants, if included (and I can think of a couple of examples), tended to be in the background, or off to one side. Placing the nurse at the centre of attention is entirely unorthodox, but a stroke of genius.

Not much to see in this detail, you might think, and yet – Catharina’s dress takes up about one third of the surface of the portrait. Not a huge amount of fabric, admittedly, given the size of the subject, and yet, relative to the size of the subject no expense has been spared. Catharina Hooft was born on 28 December 1618, and would have been less than two – possibly less than one – when this was painted. To say that her skirts would reach to the floor implies that she was able to stand. They certainly allow for movement, as the dress is incredibly broad for her tiny frame. This wealth of material is overlaid by what appears to be a second, shorter overskirt attached to her bodice or jacket. Every square centimetre is richly embroidered – in gold – with stylised foliage and fruits, which not only emphasizes the enormous wealth of the family to which she belongs, but also the fact that the same wealth is reliant on her future fecundity for it to remain within the family down through the generations – not something that would have occurred to her just yet, I would imagine. She would marry at the age of 16, though.

As well as the overskirt, there are full-length embroidered sleeves and an embroidered cape attached across her shoulders, not to mention the most delicate starched lace cuffs and collar. She has multiple gold chains around her neck from which hangs a polished red jewel, as well as an equivalent gold bracelet and a gold belt (the last of these more subtle). The necklace frames a beautiful section in the lace panel which runs the length of her bodice, one of three octagonal details, the other two of which are disguised by the jewel and belt. In her left hand she is holding a rattle, with a teether that appears to be silver, set in a gold mount. However, it is more likely to be ivory (coral was another common material used for teething). There are also gold bells, which, as well as amusing the child, were also supposed to ward of evil spirits, as was coral, if used. The nurse is holding an apple, proffering it to her ward, and I can’t help seeing the apple and rattle as standing in for an orb and sceptre. In 1631 Velázquez would use this metaphor in a portrait of the young Balthasar Carlos, heir to the throne of Spain. The objects in question are held by one of the court dwarves, who stands in front of the Prince acting as a mock monarch. Hals, despite living in a republic which was in the process of freeing itself from Spanish rule, seems to have got there a decade earlier, and so Catharina appears as a proper little princess, heiress to the family fortunes.

Of course, the full force of the painting comes from the faces. Catharina is surprisingly self-possessed for one so young – but then, that was Hals’s great talent: the communication of character. She looks us straight in the eye, a pleasant smile on her face, her plump, pink cheeks glowing from her otherwise pale (and therefore, given the time, genteel) complexion. Her entirely delightful appearance is framed by a diadem-like lace fringe on her headdress, and the starched, lace-trimmed collar which we noted before. Light reflects from the collar onto the side of her cheek, helping to define the curve of her jaw. The nurse’s expression is more equivocal – a smile, yes, but one that speaks of duty and service. Her complexion is slightly swarthier – she is of humble origins, after all – and she does not look us fully in the eye: she has something on her mind, undoubtedly. Her headdress is not without ornament – thin bands of lace – and her simple ruff is fastened with a red ribbon, a hint of which can be seen where the collar parts at the front. And at this juncture is the most wonderful gesture, the action of a child who is not fully in command of their limbs, as Catherina reaches out to her nurse to touch, or hold, or show affection, or maybe distance – as if she were saying ‘don’t get too close – this is about me’. There are many elements which differentiate the status of the two subjects of this portrait, Catharina’s gesture being just one. The complexions, and the complexity of dress are two more, and there is also an interesting difference in the way the mouths are painted.

In both, the lips are divided by a simple painted line. For the nurse this is a particularly bold brushstroke, rough and ready like the woman herself. For Catharina it is far finer, and more delicate. But then, she is only one, or two at the most… It’s not a technique I noticed Hals using in the other portraits, but maybe I didn’t look closely enough, so I’m heading back in there now to check – I’ll let you know what I find on Monday. I’d love to tell you more about Catharina’s future – but I’ve said enough already. She does have a Wikipedia page of her own, though, so you can check there to see what happened next, and how she looked as a ‘grown up’. Well, at eighteen – but she’d been married for two years already by then, so…

Revisiting, too…

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

I will be Revisiting the NPG for a second time this Monday, 9 October at 6:00pm, and in this instalment of the survey I will reach The Stuarts. To introduce that, I am also revisiting an old post: it was originally ‘Picture of the Day 61 – …the Virgin and Child‘, back in May 2020. I was delighted, if initially surprised, to see the painting take its place in the newly refurbished National Portrait Gallery next to a very imposing portrait of King Charles II. What is a religious work doing there? Isn’t this a ‘portrayal’ rather than a ‘portrait’? Well, read on…! (I get very exercised about the improper use of the word ‘portrait’, but more about that another day). I shall then break away from the NPG (returning in November with The Georgians), but continue with 17th Century portraiture: Frans Hals will be on 16 October. I saw the exhibition yesterday, and frankly it is the BEST exhibition this year. I enjoyed it more than Vermeer. Go and see it. On 23 October I will talk about Dulwich Picture Gallery’s Rubens & Women – which is also good, and includes some of the most impressive displays of artistry… but I’d advise you to take some of the texts with a pinch of salt (to find out why, sign up for the talk!). At the end of the month I’ll have a week off, coming back in November with some women (and their men), some Georgians, and two talks about Holbein – but keep your eyes on the diary for all that. Meanwhile, let’s see what I had to say about Sir Peter Lely’s act of devotion two months into lockdown:

“Last Monday we looked at Sir Anthony van Dyck’s Cupid and Psyche painted for Charles I [the one I accidentally erased, but then re-posted – see Day 54 – Psyche V], which I suggested was quite possibly more than a little sacrilegious from a Catholic point of view. My precise words were ‘It’s entirely outrageous’. So this Monday, I wanted to balance that outrage with something altogether more respectable from the Stuart Court, this painting of the Virgin and Child, glowing with health and happiness, by Sir Peter Lely. 

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

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

I first saw the Virgin and Child at the end of January [2020] in the British Baroque exhibition at Tate Britain, which sadly closed a month before it was due to, for obvious reasons.  A pity – it was a revelation. The Lely was hung next to the painting on the right here, and not so far away from the one on the left. The latter is the not-so-obviously Catholic (from this portrait, anyway) Catherine of Braganza. She arrived from Portugal in 1662 to take up her position as Queen, and she and Charles were married twice – a secret, Catholic ceremony followed by a public, Protestant one. This might make it look as if Charles had appointed two Court artists before one wife, but the contract had already been signed the year before – not that she was present at the time. But then, negotiations had begun during the reign of Charles I: by the time he was beheaded in 1649 she was still only 10. When finally married, at the advanced age of 23, her dowry included Tangiers and what was then called ‘The Seven Islands of Bombay’ – the British Empire started here, effectively. She was allowed to practice Catholicism, and even had her own Chapel. She also had her own artist, Jacob Huysmans, who painted both of these portraits. Again, as a great British artist, he was Flemish – and so Catholic – having been born in Antwerp in 1633.

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

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

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

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

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

Revisiting this post has reaffirmed my conviction that the rehang of the NPG is a huge success. Even the one wall on which today’s painting can be seen says so much about the reign of King Charles II, but I will try and explain exactly what I mean by that on Monday. I’m not going to discuss the contemporary relevance of this painting under King Charles III though. You can do that for yourselves.