Shanah Tovah, everyone! I hope that this year, we will not continue the stupid mistakes of last year, and that the unfortunate events of last year will not repeat themselves.
Speaking of repetition, I spent (another) day at the Louvre this weekend. This weekend was the Day of Italian Paintings: that's virtually all I saw, but my itinerary took me from the medieval painters of the Sienese school to the canvases of the age of Louis XIV.
The curators of the Louvre have worked hard to present their Italian paintings in a historically coherent fashion, that nonetheless is free from strict chronology. They have converted a colossal second-floor hallway in the Denon wing, perhaps the longest continuous wing in the entire palace, into a gallery to display their great Italian treasures. I would guess that at least 20% of the paintings depicted the Madonna and child, even though by the middle of the seventeenth century, this motif is no longer in vogue. The earliest Italian paintings, those dating from the late 13th century, were in a side room, as was the Mona Lisa, but for the most part, the chronological trajectory was straight. Oh, and I also passed two famous Greek statues, dating from antiquity, on the way, "The Gladiator" (who actually isn't a gladiator), and the "Victory of Samothrace."
The first room contained some well-known names to those of you familiar with art history, or just with Dante's Divine Comedy. Cimabue and Giotto, two great painters of the 14th century, who, like all their contemporaries, painted only religious scenes. Whereas Cimabue's style places him squarely in the medieval school, on account of his highly impersonal representations of saints and angels outside of time and space, however well he executed them, Giotto began to innovate, and began to situate his paintings in time, at precise moments in history. Today, it seems obvious that a painting, even a still-life or a portrait, is in some sense a snapshot of a particular object at a particular time, but in the middle ages, Mary and Jesus, surrounded by angels, stare out at the spectator in a kind of calm eternity. They are objects of veneration. However, Giotto welcomes his viewers to imagine a specific moment in time. His paintings changed not only the history of art, but also the history of religion; according to Van Loon's Arts, Giotto's wonderful paintings of the life of Saint Francis of Assisi are what brought about such enormous popularity to this sect (indeed, the Franciscans are still around today, and I have a friend who is considering joining them, although he seems to be leaning closer to the Dominicans). I saw one of these paintings, and it was quite fantastic, capturing the moment in which Saint Francis received the stigmata (I also saw a very obvious imitation of it by a painter of the Sienese school, who lacked the creativity to compose his own tableau). In the same room, of a slightly later period, were two 15th-century monk-painters, Fra Angelico and Fra Filippo Lippi, who were lucky enough to be painting after Brunelleschi invented linear perspective, and also lucky enough to be patronized by the Medici. While Fra Angelico had an enormous love of bright color, Lippi played with light and shadow, and made great strides (to my eyes) in increasing the level of realism in painting, even going so far as to situate a self-portrait rather prominently in one painting. For those of you who don't know, Lippi was a great womanizer, and Cosimo de Medici often had to be patient with the monks debaucheries.
Yes, and so the Renaissance was beginning. The Louvre has several paintings by such illustrious artists as Titian, Raphael, and Leonardo da Vinci. Yes, I saw the Mona Lisa, although I wasn't paying as strict attention to it as the mob of tourists waiting in line to come within several meters of the painting. It turns out that the woman in the painting is actually a historical figure, and that the French title of the painting, "La Joconde," is actually a pun on her surname; the painting might have been intended as a wedding present, even though Francois I brought it home in his luggage after his wars in Italy. Facing the Mona Lisa is Veronese's huge, huge painting, "The Wedding of Cana," the largest painting in the Louvre; I have absolutely no idea how they even managed to transport it to its current location: they must have unrolled it, and constructed the frame inside of the gallery, and then hung the painting on a nail the size of a parking meter. The massive painting was commissioned by a Dominican monastery, who hung it in their dining hall. However, the Dominican order forbids speaking during mealtimes, so the lively painting, full of action and music (the musicians may have been modeled after musicians whom Veronese knew personally) ended up accompanying many a dour, silent meal. In the same gallery is hidden a fairly good painting entitled "Concert champetre," or "meadow concert;" the painting depicts a singer and a lute-player just about to begin playing, accompanied by two nudes. The composition is actually a clever allegory of poetry, and the inner and the meanings hidden between the lines, as represented by the two naked women. Not far from these is a colorful painting of Paradise that once hung over the throne of the doge, in Venice. The last painter not to miss in this room is a less-known Bassan, who decided to include depictions of daily life in his work, which was at the time an unusual choice. In a painting of what is ostensibly Hephaestus's forge, the artist visited a local smithy, and has meticulously portrayed the artisans at work; in another painting, Bassan took the same approach towards viticulture and wine-production.
There are a number of other interesting 16th-century paintings in the gallery. There is a series of four portraits, called the Four Seasons, by Arcimboldo, and presented to Maximilien II of the Holy Roman Empire in 1573. The painting, four portraits cleverly composed of various vegetable and floral arrangements, are actually symbolic palimpsests, simultaneously presenting the four seasons, the four humors, and the unity of an Empire that was a variegated hodgepodge of various nationalities, language-groups, and religions. There are some excellent religious paintings dating from the early Counter-Reformation, and particularly good are those painted by a fellow named Carrache, who also took the trouble to paint countryside scenes of fishing and hunting, towards the late 16th and early 17th centuries. One of the most unusual paintings of this section, however, is a large painting situated in the middle of the corridor, depicting the same scene from two different angles, one on one canvas, and another on a canvas on the opposite side. The scene is that of David about to decapitate Goliath with the latter's sword; from one side, one sees the faces of the two, and from the other, the backs; the painter's name is Danielle de Volterra.
In the Louvre's exhibit on Italian painting, between the 16th and the 17th centuries are two markers. The first is a large white urn, placed in the center in the hallway; the second is the series of works by Caravaggio (such as this one), who recreated painting. Developing (though not inventing) the method of clair-obscur, this painter completely changed the way painters depicted light, just as da Vinci had a century or so earlier. If you love the light of Vermeer, and the darkness of Rembrandt (as I do), you will know what I mean. Although I still prefer the work of the two Dutchmen to that of the Italian, it is only because the former have a special place in my heart. However, Caravaggio did more than transform style, he also made a drastic change in subject; although "humanist" is an overused and imprecise term, I believe that it characterizes his general elision of angels from his paintings. There are certainly exceptions to this (such as the painting of the Akedah), but when angels appear, they seem human, obeying the same laws of light and shadow as human subjects; likewise, even when halos appear, they are faint circles.
After Caravaggio, there are few remarkable paintings. Painters who I had not heard of, whom I will probably forget, such as Le Guerchin, Revi, Le Dominiquin, and Salvatore Rosa, dominated. This last painter has an interesting story, however. When he was young, he spent time with a group of bandits, and many of his paintings include violent themes. His most famous, "Bataille heroique," painted 1652, is intriguing, because it is anything but heroic; it is violence, pure and simple. The painting followed a series of extremely violent civil wars in France (which I have been reading about), and this painter decided to paint a battle without heroes, fought in a smoking, deserted landscape. Needless to say, Louis XIV wasn't too excited about it, and nobody paid much attention to it for a few centuries. Now, according to the Louvre curators, it is without a doubt his most famous painting.
That night, I went out with some Cornellians, and didn't get back until 4 am. It was a long day!
~JD
"Aucun d'eux ne pensait qu'un roi eleve dans l'eloignement des affaires osat prendre sur lui le fardeau de gouvernement. Mazarin avait prolonge l'enfance de ce monarque autant qu'il l'avait pu" [Not one of them thought that a king raised at a distance from the affairs of state would dare to take upon himself the burden of governing; Mazarin had prolonged the childhood of this monarch as much as he could] (Voltaire, Le Siecle de Louis XIV, p. 229).
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