What Great Paintings Say

Volume 1
What Great Paintings Say
Volume 1
What Great Paintings Say
Volume 1

Rose-Marie and Rainer Hagen

TASCHEN
K5L.N LONDON LOS ANGELES MADRID PARIS TOKYO
Cover:
Diego Velazquez
Venus at her Mirror, c. 1646
Oil on canvas, 123 x 177 cm
London, National Gallery
Photo: AKG Berlin

Backcover:
Georges de La Tour
The Fortune Teller, after 1630
Oil on canvas, 102 x 123 cm
New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Photo: AKG Berlin / Erich Lessing

Illustration Page 2:
Peter Paul Rubens
The Love Garden (detail), c. 1632-1634
Oil on canvas, 198 x 283 cm
Derechos reservados © Museo del Prado, Madrid

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Original edition © 2000 Benedikt Taschen Verlag GmbH

© 2002 for the illustrations of Marc Chagall, James Ensor and Otto Dix:
VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn
Editing and layout: Simone Philippi, Susanne Uppenbrock, Cologne
English Translation: Iain Galbraith, Wiesbaden; Karen Williams, Whitley Chapel
Cover design: Claudia Frey, Angelika Taschen, Cologne

Printed in Slovenia
ISBN 3-8228-2100-4
 Contents

8 Propaganda on cloth 98 The merchants of Venice

Artist unknown: The Bayeux Tapestry, after 1066 Vittore Carpaccio: Miracle of the Relic of the Cross,

1494/95
14 "A garden inclosed is my spouse"
Upper Rhenish Master: The Little Garden of Paradise, 104 A message from the world of alchemy
c. 1410 Piero di Cosimo: The Death of Procris, c. 1500

20 A deceptive idyll 110 Strange quartet

The Limburg Brothers: February miniature from the Hans Baldung Grien: The Three Stages of Life, with Death,
“Tres Riches Heures du Due de Berry”, c. 1416 c. 1510

26 A saint with a practical turn of mind 116 Composure in the face of misfortune
Fra Angelico: St Nicholas of Bari, 1437 Raphael: The Fire in the Borgo, 1514-1517

32 May God help the Chancellor 122 The femme fatale charms the devout viewer
Jan Eyck: The Virgin of Chancellor Nicolas Rolin, c. 1437 Niklaus Manuel: The Execution of John the Baptist, c. 1517

38 What is Christ doing beside Lake Geneva? 128 The battle to end all battles
Konrad Witz: The Miraculous Draught of Fishes, 1444 Albrecht Altdorfer: The Battle of Issues, 1529

44 A Christian artisan advertises his craft 134 Careers in the king's service
Petrus Christus: St. Eligius, 1449 Hans Holbein the Younger: The Ambassadors, 1533

50 A family sings its own praises 140 From the canopy of Heaven to a
Benozzo Gozzoli: Procession of the Magi, 1459 four-poster bed
Titian: Venus of Urbino, c. 1538
56 The splendours of a small dynasty
Andrea Mantegna: Ludovico Gonzaga and His Family, 146 The utopia of common huntsmanship
c. 1470 Lucas Cranach the Younger: The Stag Hunt, 1544

62 An empire collapses; the painter retreats 152 The Lord sits at the table of lords
Hugo van der Goes: The Portinari Altar, c. 1475 Paolo Caliari (Veronese): The Marriage at Cana, 1562/63

68 Hocus-pocus, Inquisition and demons 158 The Antwerp building boom

Hieronymus Bosch: The Conjuror, after 1475 Pieter Bruegel the Elder: The Tower of Babel, 1563

74 The patrons watch over the city 164 Apostle wanted

Master of the Transfiguration of the Virgin: The Virgin and Tintoretto: The Abduction of the Body of St Mark,

Child with St. Anne, c. 1480 1562-1566

80 Shock treatment for the intractable 170 For Tiber, read Seine
Sandro Botticelli: The Story of Nastagio degli Onesti, Antoine Caron: The Massacre by the Triumvirate, 1566

1482/83
176 The barn is full - time for a wedding!
86 A cart trundles towards damnation Pieter Bruegel the Elder: Peasant Wedding Feast, c. 1567

Hieronymus Bosch: The Haywain, between 1485 and 1490

182 Faith in the magic festivals
92 Fairest daughter of heaven and waves Antoine Caron: Caesar Augustus and the Tiburtine Sybil,

Sandro Botticelli: The Birth of Venus, c. i486 c. 1580

188 Aspirations to immortality 284 Cultivated leisure, music and champagne
Jacopo Tintoretto: The Origin of the Milky Way, c. 1580 Antoine Watteau: The Music-Party, c. 1718

194 Two saints bury the munificent donor 290 The fine art of extravagance
El Greco: The Burial of Count Orgaz, 1586 Giambattista Tiepolo: The Banquet of Cleopatra,

1746-1750
200 A woman thwarts Spain's pride
George Gower: Armada Portrait of Elizabeth I, c. 1590 296 The proper combination of activity and leisure
Thomas Gainsborough: Mr and Mrs Andrews, 1749
206 The princess in the hospital
Adam Elsheimer: St Elizabeth Tending the Sick, c. 1597 302 Every convent had its salon
Francesco Guardi: The Parlour of San Zaccaria, 1750
212 Tyrannicide by tender hand
Caravaggio: Judith and Holofernes, c. 1599 308 Tennis with Apollo
Giambattista Tiepolo: The Death of Hyacinthus, 1752/53
218 The theatre of cruelty
Caravaggio: Martyrdom of St Matthew, 1599/1600 314 Politics as a dirty business
William Hogarth: An Election Entertainment, 1754/55
224 Double-dealing hands and eyes
Georges de La Tour: The Fortune Teller, after 1630 320 What's in a square
Bernardo Bellotto: The Freyung, Vienna, from the
230 Grateful for the gift of sensuous pleasure Southeast, 1759/60
Peter Paul Rubens: The Love Garden, c. 1632-1634

326 A star-machine explains the universe

236 The victor honours a defeated enemy Joseph Wright of Derby: A Philosopher giving a Lecture
Diego Velazquez: The Surrender of Breda, 1635 on the Orrery, 1764-1766

242 The writing on the wall 332 The marriage of Venice with the sea
Rembrandt: Belshazzar’s Feast, c. 1635
Francesco Guardi: The Departure of the Doge on
Ascension Day, c. 1770
248 Tho' our wealthy days be done, here's to a
life of luxury 338 A German icon
Jacob Jordaens: The King Drinks, 1640-1645
Johann Heinrich Wilhelm Tischbein: Goethe in the Roman
Campagna, 1786/87
254 A nude for the king
Diego Velazquez: Venus at her Mirror, c. 1646 344 The holy revolutionary
Jacques-Louis David: The Death of Marat, 1793
260 The Governor's catalogue
David Teniers the Younger: Archduke Leopold Wilhelm’s 350 The black widow, beautiful and deadly
Galleries at Brussels, c. 1650
Francisco de Goya: The Duchess of Alba, 1797

266 An Old Testament family portrait 356 Grand entrance in the cathedral
Rembrandt: Jacob Blessing the Sons of Joseph, 165 6
Jacques-Louis David: The Coronation of Napoleon,
1807
272 A Careerist bathes in the Sun King's radiance
Charles Le Brun: The Chancellor Seguier, after 1660
362 A martyr's death at dawn
Francisco de Goya: The Third of May 1808, in Madrid,
278 Life: a drawing-room comedy
the Execution on Principe Pio Hill, 1814
Antoine Watteau: Love at the French Theatre, 1716-1721
368 A view to infinity 458 An inflammatory protest against dictatorship
Caspar David Friedrich: Chalk Cliffs on Riigen, c. 1818 Vassily Surikov: The Boyarina Morozova, 1887

374 Dramatic struggle for survival 464 Jesus Christ, the lonely contemporary
Theodore Gericault: The Raft of the Medusa, 1819 James Ensor: Christ’s Entry into Brussels, 1888

380 A Romantic's Asiatic tour de force 470 Not long until it bursts apart
Eugene Delacroix: The Death of Sardanapalus, c. 1827 Otto Dix: Metropolis (Triptych), 1928

386 Across the river and into the past 476 The Vitebsk Man of Sorrows
Ludwig Richter: The Schreckenstein Crossing, 1837 Marc Chagall: White Crucifixion, 1938

392 The German painting best-loved by Germans 482 400 years at a glance
Carl Spitzweg: The Poor Poet, 1839 Diego Rivera: Dream of a Sunday Afternoon in Alamedea

Park, 1948
398 The greatest amateur musician of the nation
Adolph Menzel: The Flute Concert of Frederick the Great 488 Appendix
at Sanssouci, 1850-1852

404 A studio opens its doors to the world

Gustave Courbet: The Studio, 1855

410 A fragrance of women and the Orient

Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres: The Turkish Bath, 1863

416 The wrong uniform exposes the true culprit

Edouard Manet: The Execution of Maximilian, 1868

422 A look behind the scenes

Edgar Degas: The Rehearsal on the Stage, 1873

428 Keeping in the time with machines

Adolph Menzel: Steel Mill, 1875
S

434 Laughing struggle for freedom

Ilya Repin: Zaporogian Cossacks Composing a Letter to

theTurkish Sutan, 1880-1891

440 Venue for gentry, bourgeoisie and boheme

Pierre Auguste Renoir: The Luncheon of the Boating Party,

1881

446 Declaration of love for the capital of the world

Edouard Manet: A Bar at the Folies Bergere, 1881

452 In the paradise of the petite bourgeoisie, all

are strangers
Georges Seurat: Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La

Grande Jatte, 1884-1886

 Artist unknown: The Bayeux Tapestry, after 1066 and a large edifice, probably a church or
castle. To preclude misinterpretation, occa¬

Propaganda on cloth sional Latin inscriptions were added to

identify scenes. To the left of the town on
the hill we read: “Here William arrives at
Bayeux.”
First exhibited at Bayeux Cathedral in 1077, the tapestry
The narrative is framed above and below
(0.5 x 70.34 m) marks a turning-point in European history: it tells
by a decorative border. Extending the en¬
the story of William the Conqueror’s victory over the English army tire length of the linen, these are filled with
at Hastings in 1066. The work now hangs in the Centre symbolic animals whose relation to the
Guillaume Le Conquerant, Bayeux. main action remains obscure. This is not
always the case, however: the border under
the battle scenes contains naked, mutilated
corpses.
Notwithstanding its reductive symbol¬
ism, the hanging contains a wealth of do¬
cumentary detail: the shape of the shields,
In 1025, at the Council of Arras in north¬ several metres longer. The linen ground is the spores worn by cavalry, raised and re¬
ern France, the clergy decided to embellish embroidered in eight different colours of inforced bow-props at the front and rear of
their churches with decorations of a new wool. It is not known who designed the saddles. The props provided support dur¬
type. Historical events and figures were to cartoons or embroidered the cloth. The lat¬ ing battle, but they could also jeopardize
be portrayed on cloth hangings to help ter was probably the work of nuns. All that the rider. William was fatally injured when
educate the many illiterate members of the is known for sure is when and where the the pommel of his saddle ruptured his ab¬
congregation. The Bayeux Tapestry, the hanging was first exhibited: 14 July 1077, domen during a fall - but that was not until
most famous example of this form of me¬ in the newly-built cathedral at Bayeux, a 1087.
dieval instruction, is - as a historical docu¬ small town in Normandy. William is one of two main protagonists
ment and work of art - sans pared. The town is depicted in the detail above. of the narrative. The story is'told from his
Consisting of several joined lengths of In fact, it is less “depicted” than reduced, in point of view: crossing the Channel as the
linen, the hanging is 50 cm wide and 70.4 m symbolic form, to two essential features: a Duke of Normandy in 1066, he routed his
long. The final section of the work is miss¬ hill - most towns in those days were built English opponents at the Battle of Hast¬
ing, suggesting the original may have been on high ground to facilitate their defense - ings, was crowned King of England and
D; SRCRmemMiFECTT:-
'/VI [LSI, MO JDVCJ >■ ,

entered history as William the Conqueror.

The sole topic of the hanging is the re¬
presentation and vindication of the victory
won over England. Hung at Bayeux Ca¬
thedral, it served as an official declaration,
as well as a means of religious and moral
indoctrination.

An oath,
extracted
and broken

W illiam, the Norman duke, sits to

the right of the hill of Bayeux,
his power symbolized by the
sword resting on his shoulder. The second
protagonist, the figure standing between
two shrines, is the English King Harold. In
1063 Harold was cast ashore on the coast
of France and held captive there. After ran¬
soming him, William promised Flarold his
daughter in marriage. Here he is shown
swearing allegiance to his new liege-lord.
The shrines on which his hands are laid
contain relics.
The significance of the oath, a ritual
whose function was pivotal to contempor¬
ary society, was far from confined to the

9

context of the Bayeux narrative. An indi¬
vidual was not the citizen of a state, but the
vassal of a lord. Expressed in simple terms,
feudal society was constructed along the
lines of a pyramid: the peasants took their
tenures from knights or barons; the baron
was invested with estate by a count; the
count received his county as a fief from the
duke, while the duke himself was given
land by the king. To defend the country
against aggressors the monarch needed the
military and financial assistance of his
nobles, who, in turn, required the service
of their vassals. With few exceptions, feu¬
dal obligation was established not by writ¬
ten contract, signed and sealed, but sworn
in the form of an oath.
Oaths were sworn at a ceremony, with
the procedure fairly strictly defined.
Kneeling, the vassal recited a set formula
by which he acknowledged homage to his
superior. He would then stand and swear
fealty to his new lord on the Holy Bible
or on the authority of a relic. Following
this, the lord granted his vassal a fief in the
symbolic form of a branch, a staff or a
ring.
The Bayeux Tapestry shows only the
most important part of the ceremony: the
oath sworn on the relics. This act had the
force of conferring upon the church the of¬
10
fice of official custodian. When Harold of Normandy after my death. Were it to
broke his oath, mounting the English pass to Harold, I do not think he would
throne in 1066, William sought the juris¬ keep the peace.” Harold: “Give it to me
diction of the pope. Excommunicating the and I will look after it!” King: “Then you
perjurious Harold, the pope placed a papal shall have my kingdom, but if I know Wil¬
standard at William’s disposal to accom¬ liam and his Normans, it will be the death
pany his Norman troops. William’s cam¬ of you.”
paign thus practically gained the status of a
Holy War.
Things looked rather different from
Harold’s point of view. In swearing allegi¬
ance to William, he had not been a free
man. By paying Harold’s ransom, the
Norman duke had become his superior.
Harold’s oath had acknowledged fealty to
William, but without it, he presumably
could never have left Normandy and re¬
turned to England. Furthermore, an Eng¬
lish account of the event contests that Ha¬
rold’s oath was sworn on a table under
which relics were concealed - with Harold
quite ignorant of the trap William had set
for him.
The previous king had promised the
English throne to his cousin William. Ha¬
rold knew this. He may have used his
powerful allies to put pressure on the
dying monarch. A contemporary chron¬
icler cites the following dialogue: King: “It
is known to you that I have taken steps to
ensure my kingdom shall pass to William
To England
with weapons
and wine
W
illiam built a fleet and prepared
it to carry his soldiers across
the Channel to England. The
hanging shows swords and a battle-axe
being carried to the ships, a cart loaded
with a row of twenty spears, helmets
ranged on posts along the side of the
wagon, following which three men carry
suits of chain mail, the typical armour of
the day. The latter consisted of connected
links of thin iron covering the trunk and
stretching to the elbows and knees, with
slits at the front and back ensuring freedom
of movement on horseback. In the cen¬
turies that followed, chain mail was re¬
placed by solid coats of armour, the spears
by heavy lances. In the eleventh century,
however, soldiers were relatively lightly
armed and still quite mobile.
The prominence given to wine indicates
its relative importance as a provision: the
embroidery shows a larger and smaller
barrel, as well as a leather bottle slung over
one bearer’s shoulder. In peacetime, whne
was imported to England by merchants; it
was also grown in England as far north as
the Scottish borders. The most important
beverage of the age, wine was cherished
less as a luxury than for its nutritional
value. With no effective means of storage,
however, it was generally drunk when
little older than a year. Beer was more per¬
ishable still, and, what was more, im¬
possible to transport. It could therefore be
drunk solely in regions where it was pro¬
duced.
Raising an army to conquer England
proved something of a problem. Like all
vassals, those bound to a duke were ob¬
liged to perform only certain clearly
defined duties. William could set them
smaller tasks - punitive expeditions against
unruly neighbours, for example - as often
as he wished, provided he did not require
their services for longer than a week at a
time. Only once a year at the most could he
call upon his vassals to undertake a longer
military campaign covering larger dis¬
tances, though even the duration of these
expeditions was limited to 40 days. All fur¬
ther services were seen as voluntary, re¬
quiring additional remuneration by the
duke. Fighting which took them across the
Channel was considered entirely beyond
the call of duty.
William therefore had to use all his
powers of persuasion, an undertaking
whose success was undoubtedly facilitated
by the pope’s blessing. However, the main
form of enticement at his disposal was the
promise of enfeoffment: one of his fol¬
lowers was offered an English monastery,
another a town, a third might be lured with
a whole county. William had to make
promises on a grand scale, for the risks to
which his vassals were putting their lives
and livelihood were equally great. There
was no way of predicting the outcome of
the fighting.
Relatives were the most generous allies
of all. At the time, power usually rested in
the hands of an individual ruler, whose en¬
tire family profited as a result. In turn, it
was in the family’s best interest to support
the ruler. William’s brother, Bishop Odo of
Bayeux, who took part in the campaign
himself, provided financial backing for a
hundred ships. Forbidden as a member of
the clergy to wield a sword, he held a cud¬
gel instead. William’s other brother, Ro¬
bert de Mortain, paid for a further 70
boats.
The ships were over 20 metres long and
up to five metres wide. They had no deck,
but planking drawn to a curve at prow and
stern; amidships was a square sail, and a
tiller was attached aft on the starboard
side. This was the type of boat sailed by
11

the Vikings, a reminder that the Normans
themselves were originally Northmen.
During the ninth and tenth centuries the
Vikings had used such craft to occupy the
coastal regions of Europe, founding new
states of their own in England, Southern
Italy and Normandy. To help him take
England, William, himself a descendent of
the Vikings, exploited the expansionist de¬
signs of the ruling Norwegian king, Ha-
rald Hardrada. He persuaded him to in¬
vade Northumberland, the most northerly
county of today’s England. The Nor¬
wegians landed and forced Harald to
march north to meet them. The invading
army was routed and the Norwegian king
killed in the struggle.
King
Harold falls
in battle
S
carcely had Harold warded off the
Norwegian attack when William
landed south of Dover. Harold rode
swiftly south, arriving with an army worn
out after a hard-won battle and two forced
marches. Taking up position on a ridge, he
12
had ditches dug to thwart the Norman cav¬
alry and waited for the onslaught. The
Normans stormed the English position
again and again, but could make no head¬
way against the English shield-wall. Their
principal obstacle was the English axemen,
who cut down even their horses. One
chronicle reports that “three horses were
killed under William, one with a blow so
great that the English axe, after severing his
horse’s head, cut deeply into the earth.”
Realizing the ineffectiveness of frontal
attack, William used cunning instead: mak¬
ing a pretence of retreat, he lured the Eng¬
lish from their position. With their power¬
ful formation broken, the English were no
match for the Normans. Two brothers of
Harold, both generals in his army, were
killed. One of them had pleaded in vain
with Harold to leave the fighting to them;
for Harold, whether under coercion or
not, had sworn allegiance to William, an
oath that could not be broken lightly. Ha¬
rold, too, fell in battle. The inscription in
the detail reproduced above left reads:
“King Harold is killed.” The English king
is shown with an arrow piercing one eye.
The hanging shows the maimed king
struck down by a Norman cavalryman
while attempting to extract the arrow. The
cavalryman was later banished by William,
ter
according to one chronicle, for to kill a
defenceless opponent constituted a breach
of chivalrous conduct.
In fact, such battles involved relatively
little slaughter. The corpses heaped in the
lower border are an exaggeration. Vassals,
fighting to advance the - more or less - pri¬
vate interests of their feudal lords, were in¬
clined to see their own interests best served
by maintaining a certain reticence in battle.
In any case, it was less worth their while to
kill an enemy than take him prisoner.
Prisoners could be exchanged for a ran¬
som: the more powerful the captive, the
greater the sum that could be demanded
for his release. The mutual obligations
agreed by vassals and their lords usually
foresaw the provision of ransom, should
either party fall into enemy hands.
Fighting took place only at certain
times. In winter, at night and in wet
weather, swords remained in their sheaths.
Furthermore, William’s war was hardly a
protracted affair: the Battle of Hastings,
important as it was, was over in a day. By
the evening of 14 October 1066 the last
obstacle had been removed between Wil¬
liam and London, where he was crowned
on 25 December. Thus England and France
began a period of common history that was
to last 400 years.
 And since history is always the history
of the victor, the Normans provided a tes¬
timony to their conquest of England in
the form of the Bayeux Tapestry. Hung in
the church of a bishop who rose to power
in the land of the vanquished, the em¬
broidery served both to vindicate and to
advertise. No less astonishing than the
quality and scope of the work is the fact
that it has survived for 900 years - despite
i'j * I, the Hundred Years’ War between England
and France, the repeated destruction of
the cathedral, the struggles between Cal¬
vinists and Catholics and the Revolution
of 1789.
The hanging was to serve propaganda
purposes on two further occasions. Con¬
templating an invasion of England at the
beginning of the 19th century, Napoleon
had the historic tapestry brought to Paris
for six months in 1803 in order to rouse
“the passions and general enthusiasm of
the people”. While Adolf Hitler was con¬
cocting plans for an invasion, a book on the
tapestry appeared under the title: “A
sword thrust against England.” But the
Norman Duke William has remained the
sole conqueror of the island kingdom.

13
 Upper Rhenish Master: The Little Garden of Paradise, c. 1410
"A garden inclosed
is my spouse"
The painting, measuring 26.3 x 33.4 cm, is
approximately the size of our reproduc¬
tion. The work dates from c. 1410, and is
now in the Stadel, Frankfurt. It shows a
detail of a past world: the sequestered cor¬
ner of a garden within a castle walls.
The sole function of castles at that time
was to provide protection. Conflicts be¬
tween nobles were far less likely to be re¬
solved by the emperor or his courts than
by attack and defence. Fighting was a part
of life at every level of society. The wall in
the picture shields the peaceful garden
scene from a violent world.
The scene is also secluded from the con¬
fusion and discomforts of everyday life: ex¬
crement on the roads, stray dogs and pigs
everywhere, the stench, cramped gloom and
cold of the dwellings, the constant presence
of sickness and poverty. The garden idyll
shows a pictorial antidote to the hardships
endured by the people of the time.
Gardens designed for pleasure were less
common in 1410 than today. The first gar¬
dens in northern climes dated from the
Roman occupation, but these disappeared
with the collapse of the Roman Empire and
the subsequent chaos of mass migration.
With the spread of monastic life the idea of
14
the garden again crossed the Alps, though
the new horticulture was generally motiv¬
ated by pragmatic rather than aesthetic
considerations. Spices and medicinal herbs
were grown in the cloister quadrangle, at
whose centre stood a well. Part of the
quadrangle was often set aside as a burial
Mfc V ,r-'L H
kr i Wm I
if T :
ground for the monks. m-:. ( & • if • yT vISrL
Monastic herb gardens soon expanded to
include vegetables and fruit. The monas¬
teries spread northward, bringing new agri¬
cultural techniques to the rural population
and awakening their sympathy for Nature.
There is a famous story about Abbot Wa-
lahfried, who, from 838, was head of Rei-
chenau Abbey on Lake Constance: “When
the seeds sprout tender shoots, Walahfried
fetches fresh water in a large vessel and care¬
fully waters the tiny shoots from the
cupped palm of his hand so that the seeds
are not hurt by a sudden gush of water...”
Abbot Walahfried was mainly concerned
with questions of labour and harvesting. It
was not until 1200 that the garden was rein¬
vented as a place of relaxation and enjoy¬
ment. Beauty emerged as a central criterion:
the visitor was to spend his time in a plea¬
surable manner. Albertus Magnus (c. 1200-
1280) of Cologne, a wise and learned father
of the church, was a passionate advocate of
gardens, and much of his advice relating to
their design is found on the present panel.
Entitled The Little Garden of Paradise, it
was executed some two hundred years later
by an unknown Upper Rhenish master. Ac¬
cording to the 13th-century sage, a garden
should have “a raised sward, decked with
pleasant flowers ... suitable for sitting ...
and delightful repose”. The trees were to
stand well apart “for they may otherwise
keep out the fresh breeze and thus impair
our well-being”. A “pleasure garden”
should contain “a spring set in stone,... for
its purity will be a source of much delecta¬
tion”.
Mr 4 v
r • p*t '■■ V < CY amrU»
■ 1
Xm( A ^L. **
-i
pillI \is 1^ vilniwiUy
f iMRS; v!hm ||yy

15
T he artist has filled the castle garden
with holy personages. The largest
figure is Mary, wearing her heavenly
crown and looking down at a book. She
has no throne, but sits on a cushion in front
of, and therefore below, the terraced part of
the lawn. Contemporary spectators at¬
tributed significance to the relative height
at which a figure sat. Though Mary was the
Queen of Heaven, she was also humble and
modest: “Behold the handmaid of the
Lord.”
Contemporaries of the Upper Rhenish
master would have had little trouble nam¬
ing the other women. They would not have
identified them by their faces, however, to
each of which the artist has lent the same
gentle charm: small, very dark eyes, a small
mouth with a spot of shadow under the
lower lip.
Saints and other holy persons could be
identified by the objects or activities
A legend
for every
saint
16
attributed to them. St. Dorothy,
example, is shown with a basket. Accord¬
for
ing to legend, she was asked on her way to
a martyr’s death to send flowers and fruits
from heaven; she prayed before her execu¬
tion, and immediately a boy appeared
with the divine gift - in a basket. Here,
beyond the grave, she picks her cherries
herself.
A legend was attributed to every saint,
so a painting of this kind would have been
full of stories to a contemporary spectator.
However, some figures may have been
more difficult to identify than St. Dorothy.
St. Barbara, seen here drawing water from
a spring, is shown without her usual at¬
tributes: a tower and chalice. Apparently,
the artist could not find a place for them in
his garden scene. Those who were ac¬
quainted with her legend, however, knew
that her bones could work miracles, bring¬
ing water to dried up rivers and ending
droughts. In contrast to the verdant
growth of the surrounding garden, the area
around the well is dry and stony. A realist
might infer that the grass around the well
had been trodden down by the many
people who came to draw water. However,
a pious spectator would recognize the dry
ground referred to in the legend, which the
saint waters with a chained spoon to make
it fertile.
The woman holding the medieval
string intrument, a psaltery, for the child
Jesus is probably St. Catherine of Alexan¬
dria. It was said that Mary and Jesus ap¬
peared to her in a dream. Touching her
finger, Jesus had told her he was wedded
to her through faith. On waking, she
found a ring on her finger. According to
medieval belief St. Catherine was closer to
Jesus than any woman but Mary, which
explains the position given to her by the
artist.
Although the gospels make no reference
to Jesus making music, medieval art often
portrayed him as a musician. An illumina¬
tion of c. 1300 shows him playing a violin,
while an inscription reads: “Manifold joys
Lord Jesus brings, to souls he is the sound
of strings.” Music was a sign of spiritual, or
heavenly joy. The artist, unable to depict
bliss by facial expression, chose a string in¬
strument as a vehicle instead, a gesture
understood by the contemporary spec¬
tator.

L ike the string instrument, many de¬
tails of the Little Garden of Paradise
stand for something other than them¬
selves. They are the signs and symbols of a
pictorial language with which the majority
of people in the Middle Ages were ac¬
quainted. Very few people could read at the
time; in order to spread the faith, the
church therefore needed a language of pic¬
tures, or, as we might call it today, a form
of non-verbal communication.
Even the garden itself was a symbol, not
merely the appropriate scene for a congre¬
gation of holy persons. Gardens were syn¬
onymous with paradise, presumably be¬
cause of the Old Testament Garden of
Eden. The unknown artist emphasizes the
paradisial character of the garden by show¬
ing flowers in blossom which usually
bloom in different seasons. He also avoids
any sign of toil, to which Adam and Eve
were condemned on their expulsion from
the Garden of Eden.
A paradisial scene with a wall would be
interpreted as a hortus conclusus, an en¬
closed garden. Walls do not usually have a
place in paradise, but this one symbolizes
Mary’s virginity, underlining the special
status of “Our Blessed Lady”; for accord¬
ing to Christian belief Mary conceived
without penetration. This pictorial sym¬
bol, too, derives from the Old Testament,
from an image in the Song of Solomon-. “A
garden inclosed is my sister, my
spouse ...”
Various superimposed layers of im¬
agery interlace and merge in this painting;
their independence is not painstakingly
defined in the way we might wish it today.
Thus paradise is represented not only by
the garden but. also by Mary herself: like
paradise, where sexuality does not exist,
Mary’s immaculate conception places her
in a permanently paradisial state. In a
paean composed by the poet Conrad of
Wurzburg, who died in 1287, Mary is “a
living paradise filled with many noble
flowers”.
The table situated in Mary’s immediate
proximity emphasizes, like the height at
which she sits, the Queen of Heaven’s
modesty, her status as the “handmaid” of
God’s divine purpose. In practice, the
stone-carved hexagonal tables found in
many paintings of the time were used for
picnics and board-games.
Various flowers also characterise the
Holy Virgin. In several parts of Germany
Red rose and
white lily - flowers
in praise of Mary
the primrose - seen at the right edge of the
painting - is still known as the Himmels-
schliissel, or “key to heaven”; for it was
Mary who opened Man’s door to heaven.
The violets are another symbol of modesty,
while the white lilies represent the Virgin’s
purity. The rose was a medieval symbol of
the Holy Virgin and, indeed, of virginity in
general; the branches with roses have no
thorns.
The flowers in this garden would make
up a veritable bouquet of virtues - gath¬
ered, of course, with the female spectators
of the painting in mind.
These signs, allusions and symbols stand
for something which eludes direct re¬
presentation. Modern man has learned to
distinguish clearly and coolly between the
thing and the symbol. People 500 years ago
saw one within the other: Mary was
painted as a humble woman, an enclosed
garden and a rose, her purity revered in the
whiteness of the lily; thus God’s history of
salvation revealed itself through Nature.
A painting of this kind was more than a
theological treatise.
17

A tree stump
stands for
sinful humanity
H
ow a sinless Madonna could poss¬
ibly spring from a humanity burd¬
ened by original sin and expelled
from paradise was a subject which gave rise
to much racking of brains. The artist of the
Little Garden of Paradise makes a con¬
18
tribution to the debate in the form of a tree
stump from which grow two new shoots:
which is as much as to say that even an old
tree can bring forth new life.
To ensure spectators knew the tree
stump stood for sinful humanity, the
Upper Rhenish master painted a small
devil next to it. To contend that devils, dead
dragons or pollarded trees do not really be¬
long in paradise would be to grant inap¬
propriate weight to logic.
The fact that the three figures near the
devil and dragon are male can be ascer¬
tained from the colour of their faces, which
are darker in hue than those of the women.
Apart from colour, however, their faces
follow the same pattern as those of the
women: men and women have the same
eyes, the same mouths, and even the same
tapering fingers.
Two of the three male figures are easily
identified. The one wearing greaves and
chain mail is Sir George who liberated a
virginal princess from the power of a dra¬
gon. Paintings that show George doing
battle with the dragon generally make the
mythical beast enormous and threatening;
here it is shrunk to little more than a
trademark. The angel with the headdress
and the beautiful wings is Michael. He it
was who hurled devils into the abyss, one
of whom sits, well-behaved, at his feet:
dragons and devils are powerless in para¬
dise.
The identity of the standing male figure
remains obscure, with no hint of the artist’s
intention. If we look hard enough, how¬
ever, we find a black bird just behind his
knees. Black is the colour of death. Perhaps
the panel was painted in memory of a
young man who died. Its small format sug¬
gests it was intended for a private dwelling
rather than a church. The tree around
which the young man’s arms are clasped
appears to grow from his heart - an ancient
symbol of eternal life.
On the other hand, it is possible that the
young man was St. Oswald. In Oswald’s
legend a raven acts as a divine messenger,
carrying away the pious man’s right arm
when he falls in battle against the heathens.
Yet another story! The spectator of 1410
would have found the picture full of stories
combining religious teaching and enter¬
tainment. As an act of veneration dedicated
to the Virgin Mary, the painting itself be¬
came an object of reverence, bringing sol¬
ace to the faithful. It showed a better world
in store for those who left this vale of tears.
The artistic quality of the painting, so fas¬
cinating to today’s museum visitor, was un¬
doubtedly admired at the time. In terms of
the panel’s significance as a religious work,
however, it meant relatively little.
Woodpecker,
goldfinch and
waxwing
B
liss in the life hereafter was not the
only subject of paintings like this.
Besides the garden of paradise there
were also Gardens of Love, celebrations of
worldly happiness. These did not depict
sensuality in a crude manner, but harked
back to the Arcadia of heathen antiquity,
itself closely related to the idea of paradise.
The effect was to show heaven on earth, so
to speak.
As the subject of religious art, the gar¬
den of paradise did not last more than a few
decades. By the second half of the 15th cen¬
tury it had practically disappeared: a late
blossom, embedded in a medieval language
of symbols. The worldly Garden of Love,
however, a more readily comprehensible
topic, appeared again and again in a variety
of different forms. Manet’s Dejeuner sur
I’herbe is a more recent example.
The Garden of Love was a literary topos
before it found its way into painting. The
most well-known example today is Boc¬
caccio’s Decameron, written in Florence
some 60 years before the Little Garden of
Paradise was painted in the region of the
Upper Rhine. The setting of these works is
remarkably similar: the young Florentines
tell each other stories in a garden “sur¬
rounded by walls”, in the middle of which
is a “lawn of fine grass adorned with a
thousand brightly coloured flowers”,
where water gushes from a little fountain,
“gently splashing ... into a wonderfully
clear well”. Here men and women did not
sit apart on their best behaviour, for all
who were present “strolled together, weav¬
ing the loveliest wreathes of manifold
sprigs” and telling each other erotic tales.
The French Romance of the Rose pre¬
dates the Italian Decameron by over a cen¬
tury. It also sings love’s joys and com¬
plaints, is set in a garden and, like Boccac¬
cio’s Decameron, was read widely in Eu¬
rope by the educated elite of the day. In
both books, feelings of happiness are ac¬
companied by birdsong. In the Romance of
the Rose we read: “Their song was com¬
parable to that of the angels in heaven.”
And only three sentences later: “One was
inclined to believe it was not birdsong at all
but the voices of sea-sirens.” Whether
angels or sirens, divine messengers, or se-
ductresses who were half beast, half
human, whether Christian figures or those
of antiquity, the example shows the essen¬
tial ambiguity of all pictorial symbols at
the time. Even spectators of a Christian
garden of paradise would know that
painted birds were there not only to sing
God’s praises.
The birds in the Little Garden of Para¬
dise are rendered accurately. Zoologists
have distinguished at least ten different
species: great tit, oriole, bullfinch, chaf¬
finch, robin, woodpecker, goldfinch, wax¬
wing, hoopoe and blue tit. Had he been
concerned solely with angelic music,
the artist might have painted the birds as
schematically as the faces of his saints.
But he evidently wished to emphasize
their variety, just as he did with the
plants. He wanted to show what he saw;
he wanted to be exact. The plants testify
to this, with some 20 identifiable species.
Exact zoological observation betrays an
interest in natural science. This was new in
a painting of c. 1410. While it is true that
birds and flowers were frequently painted
with some degree of accuracy, they had
rarely been rendered with such a powerful
inclination to catalogue empirical data.
Medieval painting was usually dominated
by religion. While this painting might ap¬
pear to confirm the rule, it also illustrates a
growing awareness of Nature; no longer
mere adornment, the distinctive presence
of a natural world is felt as strongly here as
that of the holy figures. However, it was
not until the next century that the first bo¬
tanic gardens were created in Germany: at
Leipzig in 1580, and at Heidelberg in 1597.
The discovery and scientific exploration
of Nature were first steps on the long road
to modernity. The Little Garden of Para¬
dise lends visibility to that phase of intel¬
lectual history. However, the beauty of the
painting also resides in the harmony, evi¬
dently still attainable, between religious
and realistic views of the world: two types
of experience which did not appear to pres¬
ent the dichotomy felt by Christians in the
Western world today.
19
 The Limburg Brothers: February miniature from the
"Tres Riches Heures du Due de Berry", c. 1416
A deceptive idyll
The reality was often harsher than
the peaceful scene in the picture
(15.4 x 13.6cm): marauding sol¬
diers, fear of wolves in extreme
winters, bad harvests, famine and
plague were all common features
of French peasant life. The mini¬
atures painted by the three Lim¬
burg brothers are nonetheless
among our most important pictor¬
ial records of life in the Middle
Ages. The Tres Riches Heures
is kept in a safe at the Musee
Conde, Chantilly, near Paris.
20
A rolling snowscape beneath a low, over¬
cast sky. In the background a village with a
church spire, in the foreground a farm. A
man drives a loaded donkey toward the vil¬
lage, another fells a tree. The house in the
foreground is open to reveal three figures
seated at a hearth. They have lifted their
dresses to warm themselves at the fire. The
portrayal of French peasant life in the Feb¬
ruary miniature of the Tres Riches Heures
du Due de Berry shows a world of peace
and harmony. All is well, it seems.
But the real world of the fifteenth cen¬
tury looked very different from ours, and
contemporary spectators probably would
not have found the illustration quite as
idyllic as we might think it today. Snow, ice
and cold were a threat to survival. During
a hard winter wolves came out of the forest
and attacked the cattle; firewood would be
scarce. If a late frost nipped the seed in
spring, and the harvest was meagre, famine
left people more vulnerable to epidemics.
Several hard winters in succession could
decimate the population.
Most of the pages in the Tres Riches
Heures were painted between 1408 and
1416, and at least two winters during this
period were extreme. Contemporary
chroniclers also mention repeated floods
and droughts, as well as hordes of soldiers,
skirmishing and full-scale battles. Since
1337 France had been at war with England,
whose kings laid claim to the French
throne.
War with an external enemy was com¬
pounded by internal squabbles. The
French king, Charles VI, had become in¬
sane in 1392, leaving the mighty of the land
to fight among themselves and, often
enough, call on the English to help them
defeat their rivals.
France was thus in the grip of chaos, its
inhabitants exposed to constant threats.
Some protection could be found within
castles or town walls, but those who dwelt
on the land were left to the mercy of ma¬
rauding soldiers. If they could, the popula¬
tion fled to the forests. To warn them of
approaching danger they relied on look¬
outs posted on church towers who sig¬
nalled the advance of enemy troops by
sounding the bells or blowing horns.
Church towers in those days were not only
associated with prayer.
The chronicles of the time were com¬
missioned by powerful lords. They there¬
fore contain little or nothing about the life
of the peasants; if they appeared at all, they
were relegated to decorations in the mar¬
gins, or to elaborately illuminated initials.
Calendar miniatures were also painted for
the rich and mighty. It was the peasants’
way of life, however, which best helped il¬
lustrate the passing seasons. Thus the most
lowly class found its way into European
painting. In time, certain motifs became
traditionally associated with each month.
Some were taken from the courtly world of
nobles, but most showed rustic scenes: in
February they warm themselves at the
hearth; in March they till the soil; in June
they harvest the hay.
It has never been satisfactorily explained
why the Book of Flours, which was in¬
tended for private devotion, should con¬
tain twelve calendar pages preceding the
religious texts. Was it a reminder of the
transience of all earthly things? Was its
purpose to illustrate the will of God, mani¬
fest in the changing seasons ? Perhaps it was
merely that the rulers of the land wanted to
see pictures of their own contemporaries,
their own environment, as well as the more
conventional biblical figures. Love of allu¬
sions to mythology and astrology may also
have played a role. The only thing of which
we can be certain is that calendar illustra¬
tions are among our most important his¬
torical records of the peasants’ way of life
21
 in the Middle Ages, especially those by the
Limburg Brothers, Herman, Jean and Paul.
Born in Nijmegen, they worked for the
Due deBerry from about 1405. By 1416, all
three were dead, presumably the victims of
an epidemic.
A hard life 1 t is difficult to make out the donkey’s
on the land Iload’ but 11 is Probably wood- °nlE
I branches and brushwood were burned
by the villagers for cooking and heating.
Tree-trunks were reserved for the duke’s
own hearth, or were used to build houses.
The man driving the donkey is wearing
a coarse smock, the usual attire of peasants
and labourers at the time. He has probably
pulled a sack over his head to protect him¬
self from the cold. Unlike the burghers and
nobles, he would not be allowed to wear
fur; for even if he could afford it, he would
be acting in contravention of the sump¬
tuary laws which regulated dress. “The
peasant works hard to provide purple for
the king,” a contemporary verse epic re¬
lated, “but his own body is scratched by a
hemp smock.”1
Feudal society during the Middle Ages
was divided into three orders - nobility,
clergy and peasantry: those who fought
and received land in reward for their ser¬
vices, those who prayed and preached, and
those who produced food for everyone.
22
About 90 percent of the population were
peasants and agricultural labourers, the
lowest class, who served - much as the
donkey served the peasant - as beasts of
toil for the ruling classes. “Jacques Bon-
homme” was the condescending term for a
peasant - something like Honest John,
where “honest” means both good-natured
and simple-minded. But “Jacques” was not
always good-natured. The first peasants’
revolt took place in 1358, and was brutally
suppressed.
The rebellion was not directed against
the feudal order itself, since this was con¬
sidered divine right: “The countryman is
born to the sieve and the milking pail,” as
the verse epic cited above puts it, “while
the king receives choice dishes and pepper,
meats and wine.” The reason for the rebel¬
lion was the heavy tax imposed by a war¬
worn aristocracy. Serfdom no longer
existed in most regions of France. The
peasants were allowed to own the land
they worked, but were nonetheless obliged
to pay taxes to their various masters: to
landowning nobles, to the clergy, and also
to the king.
In times of war, when their expenditure
increased, the nobles and king not only
squeezed more money out of the peasants,
but also took corn, meat and fowls. “When
the poor man has paid his taxes,” the tax
collectors return “to take his pots and his
straw. The poor man will soon have not a
crust left to eat.”2
At the same time, the villagers were not
all equally poor. Research on a village in
Picardy shows that two out of ten land¬
owning peasants had a relatively good
standard of living, while four others had
enough to eat. The remaining four eked out
a meagre existence and, like unpropertied
(and usually therefore unmarried) la¬
bourers, were constantly threatened by
hunger.
The confusion of the Hundred Years’
War added to their misery. The French
Herald at Arms, in dispute with his Eng¬
lish counterpart, might proudly proclaim:
“We have many things which you do not
have... Before all else, we have wine... so
much, that our countrymen do not drink
beer, they drink wine!”3
At the same time, however, an English
general, plundering the French country¬
side with his army, wrote: “The peasants
drink only water.”3
A dovecot:
the landowners'
privilege

A nother traditional February motif,

besides peasants warming them¬
selves by the fire, was the man cut¬
ting wood. However, the round, grey
building on the right of the painting, a
dovecot, was more unusual.
Doves were not there to be eaten, at least
not primarily so. Nor were they particu¬
larly significant as messengers. Their most
important function at the time was to pro¬
duce manure. Pigeon dung, used to fertilise
herb gardens, had a higher value than
manure produced by sheep, pigs or cattle.
It was also essential for sowing hemp. Pi¬
geon manure did not really lose its signific¬
ance in Europe until the appearance of ar¬
tificial fertiliser.4
Dovecots were therefore fertiliser fac¬
tories, built according to economic prin¬
ciples. The inner walls provided niches for
the nests. The niches started at a certain
height above ground level, where the drop¬
pings collected, and ended a certain dis¬
tance from the flight-holes, since doves
will not sit near heavily frequented exit-
holes. Doves like quiet places which are
not too windy; dovecots were therefore
built away from the centre of the farmyard,
in the lee of a forest if possible - like the
one in the painting.
The artists have even included the typi¬
cal, cornice-like rings around the walls.
These were not decorative, but served to
protect the doves by hindering entry to the
dovecot by rats, weasels or martens.
Although important producers of
manure, doves were greatly feared as grain-
feeders. Huge flocks of them would de¬
scend upon the freshly sown fields and de¬
vour the seed. Their numbers were there¬
fore strictly controlled. The simple peasant
was allowed to keep only a few pairs nest¬ Berry’s time, the dovecot had become a The law governing the right to dovecot
ing under his roof. A separate building for status symbol: the size of a dovecot indi¬ ownership remained in force until the
doves was the exclusive prerogative of the cated the size of its owner’s property. French Revolution. It was finally repealed,
land-owner. However, he too was required The dovecot’s size would have allowed together with a number of other feudal pri¬
to limit his doves to a number related to the contemporary spectators of the Tres Riches vileges (of more far-reaching conse¬
extent of his lands. The rule was one nest Heures to deduce that its painters had not quence), on 4 August 1789. Jacques Bon-
per arpent: about one and a quarter acres. chosen a poor peasant’s smallholding as homme had asserted his rights.
These regulations had emerged gradually their subject: the buildings shown here
during the Middle Ages and, by the Due de must have belonged to a noble landowner.

23
T he beehives ranged on the wooden
surface in front of the wicker fence
were empty. Every autumn they
were held over a smoking fire. The bees
suffocated and the honey flowed out, fol¬
lowed by the wax.
At the time, honey was practically the
only available sweetener, for only the very
rich could afford imported sugar-cane.
Wax was used to fashion candles, then con¬
sidered the finest of all forms of lighting. In
spring, the peasants would go into the
forest to attract new swarms of bees.
The only herd animals to be seen in the
painting are sheep. They were the most
commonly kept domestic animals on farms
in the Middle Ages, for they provided
meat, milk and wool and, unlike cows,
were able to graze poor ground.
Bees and sheep
24
One of the few authentic contemporary
accounts by a member of the peasant class4
states that while hundreds of sheep were
raised in a certain village, there were only
a dozen milking cows. This ratio was
probably fairly typical, and is mentioned
by the narrator, Jean de Brie, in connection
with an account of his own vocational
training, which began when he was seven
years old.
For it was then that his childhood came
to an end and Jean was expected to look
after the village geese. At the age of eight he
was entrusted with the pigs: “raw beasts of
low discipline”. The memories he retained
of these animals were anything but fond;
he found life with them “unbearable”.
At the age of nine he helped the plough¬
man with his oxen. Later, he looked after
the village’s twelve milking cows. Finally,
at the age of eleven, he was given “80 good-
natured, innocent lambs who neither jos¬
tled nor hurt” him. He saw himself as their
“tutor and guardian”, and soon a large herd
of 200 ewes and 120 lambs was given into
his keeping: Jean’s task was to make sure
they had food, to shear them, and to pro¬
tect them from wolves. By the age of four¬
teen, when few of today’s youngsters
would even have begun their vocational
training, Jean had completed his appren¬
ticeship. Girls, too, were obliged to look
after the animals. Joan of Arc was the cen¬
tury’s most famous shepherdess.
Of course, the artist may have had quite
a different reason - besides their greater
numbers - for painting sheep rather than
other herd animals. Sheep were loved, not
only by shepherd-boys, or for their wide
range of practical uses by the peasantry in
general, but also by noble ladies.
This was the era of the first pastoral
plays, a tradition which became very
fashionable during the later Rococo: noble
ladies had little, prettily-decorated sheep-
stalls built, kept favourite animals, bound
ribbons around the necks of their lambs.
They played at being shepherdesses, sang
songs and received their suitors in the
meadows. The housekeeping books of the
French court give an exact account of the
sum spent in 1398 by Queen Isabelle of Ba¬
varia on her sheep at Saint Ouen: 4000
golden thalers.
The factor's house

A lthough the miniature depicts the

property of a noble landowner, we
see neither manor house nor
castle. Nor does the painting show us
many of the other buildings typically
found on such an estate. According to an
account written in 1377, a manor would in¬
clude, as well as stalls and barns, a separate
kitchen outhouse with servants’ and farm-
labourers’ quarters, a chapel, and a farm¬
house with two rooms for the the factor, or
bailiff.
It is the factor’s house we see here. Its
inhabitants were evidently not poor. La¬
bourers’ huts had a fire in the middle of a
single room, the smoke rising directly to
the roof without passing through a chim¬
ney, whereas here a walled fire-place is
visible on the left of the interior. Poor
people slept on straw sacks, but here a bed
is seen in the background. While the poor
possessed only one set of clothes, here sev¬
eral pieces of spare clothing are shown
hanging on bars along the walls. It is true
that the interior contains very little in the
way of furniture, but that was the case even
in the houses of the very rich.
The three figures sitting in front of the
fire have raised their dresses to warm
themselves, the two furthest lifting them so
high that their genitals are exposed. The
Limburg Brothers were showing nothing
out of the ordinary: “Folk in many com¬
munities go about almost naked in sum¬
mer,” a contemporary priest complained.
S
“Though they have no hose, they do not
readers that there were better places to uri¬ The Limburgs knew nothing of sublimi¬
fear the gaze of passers-by.”5
nate than at a window, or on the stairs. nal processes at work in society. What
Our own view of the Middle Ages is
The threshold of shame is not innate, struck them was the enormous difference
largely conditioned by pictures commis¬
but determined anew in every era, usually between the nobility and the peasantry.
sioned for churches by the clergy. Genita¬
by the members of the ruling strata, whose Dangers to life and limb also remain
lia, of course, were concealed in these pic¬
manners and behavioural norms the lower largely outside the scope of their painting.
tures. But Christian doctrines directed
strata adopt. Undoubtedly, this also ap¬ Here they show the snow and the cold, but
against the body and its pleasures were
plied to the degree of nakedness con¬ epidemics, armies and civil wars do not
hardly concordant with the behavioural
sidered appropriate for the lower ab¬ feature in their work. They spent much of
norms of the people themselves. Cramped
domen. The figures in the background re¬ their time in their chambers at the duke’s
living space made intimacy unthinkable;
veal their genitals without the least sign of castle, painting “idyllic” miniatures with
whole families sleeping in one bed left little
embarrassment. The lady in the fore¬ the aid of a magnifying glass. Meanwhile,
opportunity for privacy. Nor did people
ground, however, whose finer clothes and all around them raged a chaos to which
show particular concern for the “gaze of
bearing suggest a higher class, has raised they may eventually have fallen victim
passers-by” when relieving themselves.
her dress only slightly. In time, the other themselves.
For centuries to come, codes of courtly
manners would find it necessary to remind two will follow her example.

25
26
Fra Angelico: St Nicholas of Bari, 1437

A saint with a
practical turn of mind

Two miracles associated with St Nicholas The life of St Nicholas, the pop¬
are depicted in this panel. The saint ac¬ ular patron saint of merchants
cordingly appears twice: in the heavens,
and sailors, is surrounded by a
top right, he is helping shipwrecked mar¬
iners in distress, while bottom left he is wealth of legends. In Early
thanking a captain who has given him part Renaissance Florence, a monk
of his consignment of grain. According to by the name of Fra Angelico -
legend, St Nicholas miraculously caused
Brother Angelic - portrayed a
the grain to multiply and thereby saved
the inhabitants of the city of Myra from number of his miracles in paint¬
starvation. ings which “seem to have been
The panel was originally flanked by two made in heaven rather than in
works identical to it in size and also de¬
this world”.
picting scenes from the life of St Nicholas.
They each measured 34 x 60 cm and to¬
gether made up the front of a predella, a consecrated; with its mighty cupola, it
long, narrow plinth beneath an altarpiece. stood as the soaring symbol of a new
The three main panels above were each movement - the Renaissance.
over 1 metre tall and showed the Madonna
and Child with four saints in traditional,
statuesque poses against a gold back¬
ground. While these large paintings pro¬
vided the centrepiece for worship, the St
Nicholas scenes served as edifying enter¬
tainment in story form. In the 19th cen¬
tury the altar was broken up; two panels,
including the one shown here, are today
housed in the Vatican Museum in Rome,
while the remaining parts are located in
j* 4
Perugia.
The altar was commissioned in 1437 for
the Dominican Chapel of St Nicholas in
Perugia. It was executed in Fiesole, a town
just outside Florence, by a painter-monk.
Guido di Pietro, who was born around
1400 and died in 1455. He initially took
the name Fra Giovanni upon entering the
Dominican order, but later became known
as Fra Angelico - “Brother Angelic”. He
painted the altar at a time of political as
well as artistic upheaval: the mercantile
magnate Cosimo de’ Medici, already the
dominant economic force in Florence, had
just secured himself political power in the
city republic. And just a year earlier, in
1436, the city’s new cathedral had been
27

Successor
to the
ancient gods
A
t the time when Fra Angelico
painted his altar, St Nicholas rank¬
ed amongst the most popular of
the non-biblical saints. More than a dozen
pious and miraculous acts were ascribed to
him in the Golden Legend, the famous
collection of readings on the saints com¬
piled in the 13th century by Jacobus de
Voragine. Over 2000 monuments to his
memory, dating from the years before 1500,
28
have been recorded in Germany, the
Netherlands and France alone.
Yet despite this, Nicholas was never of¬
ficially beatified, and he probably never
even existed. It is more likely that a num¬
ber of different miracles were attributed
to one name, which subsequently came
to be associated with the real-life figure
of Bishop Nicholas of Myra. The Golden
Legend records that the bishop is sup¬
posed to have died in AD 343, on 6 De¬
cember - St Nicholas’ day.
6 December was an important date even
before the spread of Christianity. It is
around this time that winter storms start to
hit the Mediterranean, making seafaring
more dangerous and the help of supernat¬
ural or submarine powers all the more im¬
portant. The role formerly played by Po¬
seidon and Neptune, the gods to whom the
peoples of antiquity had addressed their
prayers, was now assumed by St Nicholas,
who become the patron saint of mariners.
There was a significance, too, in the fact
that Nicholas came from Myra, located on
the mountainous shores of the southern
coast of modern-day Turkey. From Myra,
ships sailed for Alexandria. Instead of tak¬
ing a coastal route, as was usual in those
days, they steered directly south, with no
landmarks from which to take their bear¬
ings. It seems understandable that sailors
and captains setting off on such a perilous
journey - a “voyage into the abyss”, as it
was called - should imagine their port of
departure as the home of their patron saint.
The story of St Nicholas saving the sea¬
men is one of the oldest of all the acts asso¬
ciated with his name, although in the
Golden Legend, at least, we are given little
information about the circumstances. The
narrator is concerned only with telling us
that the sailors prayed to St Nicholas, that
he appeared, and assisted them “with the
sails and ropes and other rigging of the
ship, and the storm died down immediate¬
ly.” Fra Angelico sets a more specific
scene: here, the ship has been driven
against a rocky coastline in high seas and a
sea-monster has reared its head out of the
water. The miracle which St Nicholas is
performing is to make the wind blow off
the shore and cause the sails to billow’ to¬
wards the stern. In practical terms, this lat¬
ter is impossible, since the yard, from
which the sail is suspended, is attached to
the front of the mast and cannot twist
round to face the back. But the saint
touches the yard with his bishop’s staff,
and the impossible happens.
Nicholas was initially popular in the
Byzantine Empire. With the arrival of Is¬
lam, Italian ships abducted the saint’s re¬
mains from Myra and took them to the
port of Bari, where they remained until
1087. From there his fame was spread by
mariners as far as northern Europe; he be¬
came the patron saint of the Hanseatic
League and of what would later become
New York. He is the only saint to have sur¬
vived the Reformation in Protestant areas.
Only the Catholics have difficulties
with him today, since he was never offi¬
cially beatified. His halo is not legitimate.
A ccording to the legend of St Nich¬
olas and the famine, there were
ships laden with wheat lying at
harbour in Myra, preparing for their win¬
ter voyage. Nicholas “begged the ship’s
people to come to the aid of those who
were starving, if only by allowing them a
hundred measures of wheat from each
ship.” The sailors replied: “Father, we dare
not, because our cargo was measured at
Alexandria and we must deliver it whole
and entire to the emperor’s granaries.”
Then Nicholas said: “Do what I tell you,
and I promise you in God’s power that the
imperial customsmen will not find your
cargo short.” And so it was. Nicholas also
multiplied the wheat thus donated to
Myra, so that “not only did it suffice to
feed the whole region for two whole years,
but supplied enough for the sowing.”
It is a historical fact that grain consign¬
ments passed through Myra on their way
from Alexandria to Constantinople. For
many years grain served as a form of tax
and as an important food staple for the im¬
perial capital. Fra Angelico was not think¬
ing of Constantinople, however, but of the
capital of the Western Empire and his own
Church. Thus one of the ship’s pennants
bears the letters “SPQR”, the abbreviation
for Senatus Populusque Romanus - The
Senate and the People of Rome.
The object being used to pour the grain
into the sacks is a measuring scoop, one of
the most important pieces of equipment in
the corn trade. Nicholas asks for one hun¬
dred measures per ship, and the narrator
emphasizes that the wheat has been meas¬
ured out in Alexandria and will be meas¬
ured again upon its arrival in Constanti¬
nople. A great deal of attention was paid
to measuring, because different regions
used different dry measures - something
often exploited to make a profit.
The situation which prompted Nicholas’
miracle was characteristic of the period
from which it dates, and one which explains
its enduring popularity - famine. Everyone
was familiar with it, and most people suf¬
fered it. Wheat was the most important
foodsource, and although the towns and
cities practised stockpiling, two poor har¬
vests in succession were sufficient to empty
the granaries. There were few ways of im¬
porting food quickly, but those who suc¬
ceeded could make up to 400% profit.
Both bread and grain play a role in the
legend of St Nicholas, and it is likely that
early on the saint was assigned some of the
functions of the pagan fertility gods. One
of his attributes were three bread loaves,
which were thrown overboard when a
storm was brewing in the hope that they
would appease the ocean.
In the days when famine was a constant
threat, wheat became a symbol of prosper¬
ity and Nicholas a prosperity-bringing
saint. He was not only the patron saint of
sailors, but also of merchants, especial¬
ly corn merchants, shippers, weighers,
millers, bakers and brewers. He offered
protection against theft and loss of prop¬
erty, and he gave poor girls gold so that
they could get married. The medieval
Church, with its emphasis upon asceticism
and the hereafter, no doubt needed a saint
who didn’t entirely disapprove of material
happiness in order to enhance its popular
appeal.
Nicholas asked each ship
for one hundred measures
of grain
29
 T he present panel pays homage, not
just to a popular saint, but also to
seafaring and trade. Ships and goods
occupy a large part of the picture. Mariners
and merchants are depicted sailing across
the seas in a threatening storm, while the
captain facing the bishop is as large as the
saint himself. Nicholas is thereby por¬
trayed as a celestial fellow merchant.
This homage to trade, and in particular
to international trade, reflects its crucial
importance. It had undergone continuous
expansion over the preceding century - in
the shape of the Hanseatic League, for ex¬
ample - and had altered the balance of
power within society. Cities of growing
commercial and financial strength now
rose up alongside the feudal lords of old,
and within city republics such as Florence
it was the bankers and merchants who
held the reins of power. It was thanks to
A cheque account
for God
30
his banks and businesses that Cosimo de’
Medici became political ruler of Florence,
even if he never flouted his power in pub¬
lic. Like all Florentine merchants, he
dressed in a plain red cloak and a simple
black cap, like the man kneeling on the
right in the group of supplicants.
Christian merchants had a problem, all
the same: for a long time, their Church
condemned all money-trading as usury, as
the deadly sin of avarice. This was punish¬
able by excommunication and, after death,
the most excruciating torments of Hell.
Even in the 12th century, the Canon Law
of Gratian stated that: “The merchant can¬
not please God, or only with difficulty.”
In the 13th century Thomas Aquinas at¬
tempted to bring the Church’s position up
to date: “If we consider commerce from
the point of view of the common weal, and
if we wish to prevent a shortage of vital
commodities, then profit, rather than be¬
ing viewed as the goal, may be considered
a due reward for effort.”
Aquinas’ dispensation was granted only
to those goods essential to everyday living,
and was thus strictly limited in its scope.
Profit-oriented merchants continued to
fall under suspicion of avarice. In order to
avoid the torments of Hell (and often act¬
ing, too, out of a sense of social obliga¬
tion), they became benefactors. Upon
their foundation, Italian trading compan¬
ies — metaphorically speaking — opened a
cheque account especially to fund charit¬
able works, and were not always paying
mere lip sendee when they began their
books and contracts with the words: “In
the name of Our Lord Jesus Christ and the
Blessed Virgin Mary ...”
Most of their donations went to the
Church or, via religious aid organisations,
to the needy. Cosimo de’ Medici endowed
churches, chapels and monasteries, and for
many years gave a home to Pope Eugene IV,
who had enemies in Rome. In 1436 the
Pope granted him permission to renovate
a run-down building in Florence and to
donate it to the Dominican monks in Fie-
sole as a monastery. Those monks includ¬
ed Fra Angelico, who was commissioned
to decorate the new monastery. His frescos
in San Marco are still one of the city’s most
important sights today.
A mountainous ridge separates the
locations of the two miracles, but
ated from the front left. In yet another
contradiction, the figures are observed in
From the point
of view
they are reunited by sea and sky, great detail, while the mountains and
and appear to the viewer to be taking place houses are portrayed in a strikingly sim¬
of eternity
at the same time. It was common practice plified form.
in the Middle Ages to portray several What is so astonishing, not to say mira¬
events unfolding within one and the same culous, about this panel is the fact that these
painting. The Church sought to impart a contradictions cause absolutely no upset. It
sense of eternity, and sub specie aeternitatis is as if we are looking at a scene from a
- from the point of view of eternity - dif¬ dream, the portrayal of something super¬
ferences in time and place were unimport¬ natural taking place on our earth. Writing
ant. of Fra Angelico in the 16th century, the
In the 15th century, however, real-life artist biographer Vasari observed that the
settings and real-life chronology began to monks’ figures “are so exquisite that they
command greater attention, also in art. really seem to be in Paradise”.
For commissions were no longer awarded
solely by the churches, but - with ever in¬
creasing frequency - by bankers and mer¬
chants. Their professions required them to
think in terms of quarter days and trade
routes; geography and elapsing time
formed the bases upon which they made
their calculations. Their sense of the reali¬
ty of this life was strengthened by the re¬
discovery of the authors of antiquity.
What we call the Renaissance was born.
An artist like Fra Angelico may have
worked for the Church and his order, but
his painting was financed over many years
by Cosimo de’ Medici, the most powerful
merchant in Florence. Fra Angelico also
painted the frescos in the cells in San Mar¬
co to which Cosimo withdrew to medit¬
ate, in order - or so his enemies said — to
do penance for his greed.
The age in which the artist lived also in¬
fluenced his art. Set against their gold
backgrounds, the saints in Fra Angelico’s
main altarpiece are still entirely indebted
to medieval tradition. In his predella panels,
by contrast, the pious message is accom¬
panied by a new attempt to invoke earthly
reality in the picture and to lend depth to
the whole through the use of perspective.
In the chain of mountains rising up in the
background, Fra Angelico was perhaps
aiming to create an impression of three-di¬
mensional space. He applied the laws of
perspective only intermittently, however,
as can be seen in the bowsprit of the middle
ship, which seems to point vertically up¬
wards rather than diagonally forwards,
and in the ship on the left, whose front
deck is portrayed from a different angle
than its stern. And whereas the light - so
important in the creation of spatial depth -
strikes the mountains from the rear left,
the figures in the foreground are illumin¬

31
 Jan van Eyck: The Virgin of Chancellor Nicolas Rolin, c. 1437
May God help the Chancellor
Although of low birth, Nicolas
Rolin’s cunning and lack of
scruple helped him become chan¬
cellor of a realm. Under his strict
rule, Burgundy became a major
European power. Rolin sought to
save his soul through acts of
charity and ostentatious venera¬
tion of the Virgin Mary. In so
doing, he struck an equal balance
between humility and pride - as
the portrait shows. The painting
(66 x 62 cm) is now in the Louvre,
Paris.
32
His hands folded in prayer, an ageing man
kneels at a prie-dieu before the Virgin
Mary. An angel bearing a golden crown
floats above the head of the Queen of
Heaven, upon whose lap the infant Jesus is
enthroned. To document His majesty, the
Holy Child holds an imperial orb of crys¬
tal in one hand, while blessing the kneeling
man with his other. The pious scene, in¬
tended to remind the spectator of the here¬
after, is lit by the setting sun. The painting
is an example of the medieval donor por¬
trait.
However, the picture is hardly devoid of
earthly lustre. The man’s mink-trimmed
brocade coat shimmers more opulently
than the Virgin’s red robe. The setting is a
magnificent palace, high up in the hills. The
view through the arched loggia takes in
distant mountains, a riverscape, the build¬
ings of a town - the wealth of this world.
Dating from around 1437, Jan van
Eyck’s painting, now in the Louvre, de¬
parts from the medieval devotional tradi¬
tion in a number of important points.
While these herald the dawn of a new era,
they also tell us something about the per¬
son who commissioned the work. The
donor at prayer is not, as was usually the
case, flanked by an intercessory patron
saint. Instead he kneels alone, on a level
with - and the same size as - the Virgin
Mary herself. Rather than cowering in self-
effacing deference at the lower edge of the
painting, his figure occupies the entire left
half of the composition.
In the life of the man shown kneeling,
worldly values had always played a more
important part than religion. He had every
reason to be proud: according to the con¬
temporary chronicler Georges Chastel-
lain, Nicolas Rolin (1376-1462), Chan¬
cellor of Burgundy, had made his lord,
Duke Philip the Good, the most glorious
ruler on earth.
During his 40-year period of office,
Rolin expanded the boundaries of Bur¬
gundy to include an area six times as large
as the original province of that name, thus
creating a powerful state that was feared
throughout Europe. Its foundation stone
was a royal wedding in 1369: the bride’s
dowry was Flanders, while the bride¬
groom’s portion was the Duchy and
County of Burgundy, as well as his con¬
siderable political skills. He and his two
successors profited from the ruin of
France, which had been occupied and
ravaged by the English during the Hun¬
dred Years’ War. They created a kingdom
which extended from the Swiss border to
the North Sea, from Dijon to Bruges. The
union of a French ruling dynasty with the
spirit of the industrious Flemish and
Netherlandish townsfolk prepared the
ground for a highly sophisticated blend of
courtly tradition and bourgeois culture.
Rolin, a Burgundian by birth, and the
Netherlandish Jan van Eyck (c. 1370-
1441), a highly respected court painter,
were contemporaries at the court of the
third duke, Philip the Good (1419-1467).
Both were of non-aristocratic origin. Van
Eyck had been appointed to his post for
life, his main task being to “execute paint¬
ings at the behest and according to the will
of the duke”. Unfortunately, not one of his
court paintings survive. What we do have,
besides several altarpieces, are a number of
portraits of his contemporaries: a gold¬
smith, an Italian banker called Arnolfini,
and Nicolas Rolin. The artist enjoyed a
privileged position at court and was occa¬
sionally entrusted with political or diplo¬
matic missions of a confidential nature.
These brought him into contact with the
chancellor, who, according to Chastellain,
“was the supervisor of all things.”1
33
The sly fox knew
no kindness
A
few years after van Eyck, another
Netherlandish artist painted Ni¬
colas Rolin. Rogier van der
Weyden (c. 1400-1464) portrayed him in
an altarpiece as the founder and donor of
the hospital for the sick and needy at
Beaune, in Burgundy. Even today, the hos¬
pice receives its income from the vineyards
which Rolin donated. It is hardly surpris¬
ing, therefore, that van Eyck painted stone
vines carved on the loggia arches; or green
vineyards in the landscape beyond the
chancellor.
The gaze of the man, about sixty at the
time, is solemn and withdrawn. “There
was not one great prince,” wrote one of his
contemporaries, “who did not fear him”.2
This is perhaps surprising, since Rolin,
born at Autun in 1376, was a parvenu of
“humble origin”.2 The fact that his career
should have been so successful at a court
34
known for its obsession with chivalry and
etiquette is due largely to qualities prover¬
bial among the Burgundian peasantry:
toughness, cunning and, above all, realism.
“He was very wise... in the ways of the
world,” wrote the chronicler. "His harvest
was always of this world.”2
In 1419 Rolin s talents drew the atten¬
tions of the young Duke Philip of Bur¬
gundy, who had come suddenly to power
following the murder of his father. Three
years later Rolin was appointed chancellor.
“It was his wont to govern alone,” wrote
Chastellain, “and everything, whether
matters of war, peace or finance, passed
through his hands.” The chancellor used
his great authority to increase the wealth of
Burgundy through inheritance, marriage
and purchase of land. He was thus respon¬
sible for the annexation of Namur in 1421,
Hainaut, Friesland and Zealand in 1426,
and the Duchies of Luxemburg and
Guelders in 1443.
However, the different parts of the king¬
dom of Greater Burgundy were politically
disparate and geographically separate.
They were held together only by the duke
himself, and by the cleverness of his chan¬
cellor, who had made the centralisation and
consolidation of state power his leading
concern. Rolin standardised administrative
and judicial practice while curtailing the
privileges of both the nobility and the bur¬
ghers, particularly in monetary matters. In
order to finance Duke Philip’s displays of
pomp, the chancellor procured vast quan¬
tities of money through a never-ending
series of taxes. The rebellions of Nether¬
landish municipalities against this enor¬
mous fiscal burden were put down merci¬
lessly.
If Rolin was the most important man in
the kingdom, he was also the most hated,
mainly because of his greed. He was given
to pocketing a share of the royal income,
and had no qualms about accepting bribes.
X-ray photographs show van Eyck orig¬
inally portrayed him holding an enormous
purse. We can only speculate as to what
may have moved the artist to paint it over.
Hands for praying, hands VII, and used his army to drive the English
out of the land.
for grabbing
To avoid finding itself suddenly on the
losing side, it was necessary for Burgundy
to reverse its alliances without losing face.
border towns to Philip the Good, offered a
solemn apology for the murder of his
father and promised several sensational
acts of atonement.
There was no further mention of the girl

A
Rolin’s achievement was to give to this who had prepared the ground for the
complete about-turn the appearance of a treaty, however, not even by the king who
Book of Hours lies open on the Burgundian triumph. He convened a owed his crown to her. She had been
hassock - van Eyck apparently general peace conference at Arras and, to burned at the stake by the English. The
also painted miniatures for manu¬ the considerable applause of those present, Burgundian army, capturing Joan, had sold
scripts of this kind, already much sought disassociated himself from the English, her to the English for a horrendous sum of
after by collectors. The Book of Hours who had decided to stay away from the money. It is not unlikely that part of this
contained prayers appropriate to certain conference. At the same time, the French sum found its way into the chancellor’s
hours of the day. It is impossible to de¬ king ceded several strategically important purse.
cipher the text of the open pages, with the
exception of the initial D.
The chancellor’s white and well-mani¬
cured hands are folded in prayer directly
above the open pages. Just how fiercly
these hands could strike out when it came
to punishing defaulters or rebellious mu¬
nicipalities is documented by the French
King Louis XI’s remark on Rolin’s charit¬
able donation at Beaune: “It is only appro¬
priate that one who has turned so many
people into paupers while still alive should
provide shelter for them after his death.”3
In a business transaction of not entirely
unusual character for the times, Rolin at¬
tempted to buy his salvation through a
spectacular act of charity. A description of
the deal was recorded in the hospice’s
founding deed of 1443.
It is possible that van Eyck’s painting is
intended to commemorate a specific event
in Rolin’s life. Its execution coincides al¬
most exactly with a climax in Rolin’s
career, the signing of the Treaty of Arras in
1435. This was a political masterpiece, re¬
versing an entire system of alliances, end¬
ing a bloody civil war between France and
Greater Burgundy, and further, exacting
atonement from the French king for a mur¬
der which, though unforgotten, already lay
many years in the past.
Under circumstances which have never
been fully explained, John the Fearless,
Duke of Burgundy, had been murdered on
a bridge in 1419 by the heir to the French
throne, or by the latter’s friends and sup¬
porters. This had provoked Burgundy to
seek an alliance with the English invaders
during the Hundred Years’ War, helping
them to occupy France. However, follow¬
ing years of humiliation for the defeated
French, national resistance flared up again
under the leadership of Joan of Arc. She
had the French successor crowned Charles
35
A kingdom
at a glance
O
ne of the acts of atonement ex¬
tracted from the French by Rolin
was the erection of a cross at the
scene of the murder, the bridge at Mon-
tereau. A similar cross is shown on the
bridge in the landscape background of van
Eyck’s painting. This suggests that the pic¬
ture was indeed intended to celebrate the
Treaty of Arras.
Many unsatisfactory attempts have been
made to localise the landscape with its in¬
tricate detail and population of some 2000
figures. The town on either side of the
broad river has been variously identified as
Ghent, Bruges, Geneva, Lyons, Autun,
Prague, Liege, Maastricht and Utrecht. In
fact, it is probably not meant to represent
an authentic scene at all, but to gather
together various impressions gained dur¬
36
ing van Eycks travels. Effectively, the view
thus stretches all the way from the plains of
the Low Countries to the snow-covered
Alps.
Only a few details can be identified: the
tower of the cathedral at Utrecht, for
example, or St. Lambert’s Cathedral at
Liege. At the same time, there would have
been many more wooden buildings and
straw roofs at Liege than are shown in van
Eyck’s splendid townscape with its large
stone buildings and countless spires. The
latter, set in a perfectly balanced landscape,
provide the appropriate background for a
devotional painting, as well as for the rep¬
resentative portrait of a chancellor.
Perhaps the landscape is intended to
show an improved version of the wealthy
Burgundian towns supervised by Rolin.
Or perhaps it is a higher, spiritual place: “a
celestial Jerusalem”, the “Civitas Dei”, the
Kingdom of God, the realm of the Queen
of Heaven.
The little garden beyond the portico,
with its roses, lilies and magnificent pea¬
cocks, is equally ambiguous: it can be in¬
terpreted as an allusion to Rolin’s lux¬
urious possessions, or as the “hortus con-
clusus”, or “garden inclosed”, a commonly
employed symbol for the Holy Virgin dur¬
ing the Middle Ages. The biblical scenes
carved in relief on the capitals of the stone
pillars also permit a number of different in¬
terpretations.
The ambiguity of the artist’s “veiled
symbolism” is intentional. Van Eyck was
not only respected by the duke “for the ex¬
cellent execution of his craft”;4 he was also
considered a highly educated man, with
some understanding of the obscurer as¬
pects of humanistic, learning. He wrote
cryptographic Latin or Greek inscriptions
on the frames of some of his pictures,
painting hidden self-portraits as a kind of
signature on others. It is therefore not en¬
tirely improbable that he painted himself
and his brother Hubert as two figures lean¬
ing over the parapet at the bottom of the
garden.
 Shortcut to Our Lady

H is honoured guest, the Holy Virgin,

has settled on a modest cushion in
the chancellor’s portico. Her body
serves as a throne for the infant Jesus, lend¬
ing a gentleness to the scene, despite her
crown and royal purple. Perhaps her ap¬
pearance offers the sinner at prayer hope of
understanding and forgiveness.
The Virgin is portrayed as a graceful
young woman in eight of van Eyck’s extant
works: “She is more beautiful than the
sun,” he wrote on the the frame of one of
these paintings, “and excels every constel¬
lation of the stars.”5
This quotation from the aprocryphal
Wisdom of Solomon is included in the Of¬
fice of the Virgin, a collection of prayers to
the Holy Virgin which lies open in front of
Rolin. In the 15th century many people
said these prayers daily. Indeed, many of
them, including contemporary spectators
of this painting, would undoubtedly have
been so well-versed in the biblical similes
and flowery metaphors frequently em¬
ployed to extol the Virgin that they would
have had little trouble piecing together the
textual fragments which may be deci¬
phered in gold lettering on the hem of the
Rolin-Virgin’s robe: texts dedicated to the
Virgin, “exalted, as are the cedars of Leba¬
non”,6 and to the glory of God’s creation.
All his life, Chancellor Rolin devoted
himself to obtaining the Virgin’s forgive¬
ness. In 1461 he bequeathed a silver statue
of the Virgin, weighing more than fourteen
pounds, and a “gold crown made at La-
Motte-Les-Arras” to the Church of Our
Lady at Autun. Perhaps the finely the church in which he had been chris¬ Rolin’s political life-work, the state of
wrought, bejewelled diadem presented by tened, and it was here that he wished to be Greater Burgundy, broke apart shortly
the angel in van Eyck’s picture is an allu¬ buried. after his death, ruined by the arrogance of
sion to Rolin’s intended donation, or per¬ Van Eyck’s painting was not originally its last duke, Charles the Bold. History is
haps Rolin’s gift was copied from the pain¬ intended as an altarpiece, but was hung always the history of the conquerors:
ter’s design, who, as court artist, would be commemoratively in the chapel where, as today, despite his position as one of the
required to have knowledge of the relevant stipulated by Rolin’s deed of foundation, a 15th century’s greatest statesmen, and al¬
craftsmanship. mass was to be held for his salvation every though, as the founder of an empire and
Many documents testify to the chancel¬ day until the end of time. This may, of loyal servant of its ruler, his stature can be
lor’s role as benefactor towards Our Lady course, be a sign of his great piety; it may, compared with that of Bismarck, Rolin is
at Autun. He had the church renovated and however, merely signify the shrewd pre¬ practically forgotten.
decorated and made a number of large cha¬ cautions taken by a man of whom one of His memory survives only in the work of
ritable donations. Through a private pas¬ his contemporaries wrote: “As far as the his charitable trust, the hospice at Beaune,
sage, crossing a narrow street, Rolin was temporal is concerned, he was reputed to as well as in two works of art which, with
able to take a shortcut between his own be one of the wisest men of the kingdom; unerring taste, he commissioned from the
house and prayers at Our Lady’s. This was as for the spiritual, I shall remain silent.”7 best two painters of the day.

37
38
Konrad Witz: The Miraculous Draught of Fishes, 1444

What is Christ doing

beside Lake Geneva?

The story of the miraculous draught of

fishes is told by John the Evangelist. Peter
and some of the other disciples had spent
the whole night casting their nets, but had
caught nothing. Next morning, a stranger
standing on the shore called out to them:
“Throw out your net on the right-hand
side of the boat, and you’ll catch plenty of
fish!” They did as he instructed, and imme¬
diately their net was filled with fish. One
of the disciples recognized the stranger as
Jesus. “When Simon Peter heard that it was
the Lord, he put on his tunic ... jumped
into the water, and swam ashore. The others
stayed with the boat...”
What is important here is not the draught
of fishes, but rather that this was one of
the moments when Jesus, who had died on
the cross, revealed to his disciples that he
had risen from the dead. The site of this
revelation was the sea of Galilee. Konrad
Witz, however - or his patron - pictured
the scene taking place on Lake Geneva.
The point at which the artist was stand¬
ing can be specified fairly precisely. It was
more or less where the Quai Montblanc
now runs along the side of the lake, near
the centre of Geneva. On the right of the
picture, the river Rhone can be seen flow¬
ing out of the fake, on either side of a nar¬
row island with a tower on it. Visible
above the tip of the boat is the rock beside
which there is now a large fountain. The
far shore has long since been built up, of
course, but the panorama of hills and
mountains can still be clearly identified:
on the right the Petit Saleve, in the middle
the Mole Pointu, on the left the tops of the
Voirons, and in the background a snow-
clad mountain range with the summit of
Montblanc.
The 132 x 154 cm panel, which today
hangs in the Musee d’Art et d’Histoire in
Geneva, was originally part of an altar. In
addition to the Latin signature of the
painter, Conradus Sapientus, its frame
bears the date 1444. To paint such a large
panorama in such topographical detail
was by no means common at that time.
Spatial depth and landscape had only just
been discovered. The brothers Hubert and
Jan van Eyck had depicted elysian fields
in their Ghent Altar of 1432, but these
were imaginary landscapes. Paolo Uccello
would do something similar in Llorence:
in his Battle of San Romano panels, ex¬
ecuted around 1456, he attempted to posi¬
tion horses, lances and fields so that they
corresponded with the laws of perspective,
creating a sense of depth by following
mathematical rules. The fact that he was
thereby portraying an outdoor landscape
was not important to him, however.
Konrad Witz, on the other hand, paint¬
ed - probably for the first time in the his¬
tory of European art - a realistic land¬
scape. This innovative, avantgarde work
arose not in Italy or the Netherlands, not
in Ghent or Llorence, the major art centres
of the day, but in Geneva - in the heart of
the provinces, so to speak. That, too,
might be described as a miracle. In this
case, however, one that can be explained.

39
A thorn
in Geneva's
flesh

K onrad Witz was born in Rottweil on

the river Neckar between 1400 and
1410. He is first mentioned in rec¬
ords in Basle, where he became a citizen in
1435. Shortly after completing the altar
with the Miraculous Draught of Fishes for
St Peter’s cathedral in Geneva, he died. His
wife is described as a widow in 1446. Only
20 of his works have survived, most of
them in Basle, and a number of well-re¬
garded art historians have described Witz
as a Swiss artist. That is incorrect, of
course - not just because he came from the
Neckar region of Germany, but because
there was no Switzerland in those days,
just a small Swiss Confederation to which
neither Basle nor Geneva belonged.
The southern shore of Lake Geneva
depicted by Witz was part of the Savoy,
a duchy whose extent and power it is as
difficult for us to visualize today as Bur¬
gundy in its former magnitude. These are
vanished realms. In the 15th century Bur¬
gundy stretched from the North Sea coast
of the Netherlands to the Jura mountains,
and Savoy from the Jura to the Mediter¬
ranean. Through marriage to the Milanese
Visconti dynasty, the dukes of Savoy be¬
came kings of Sardinia-Piedmont and, in
the 19th century, kings of unified Italy.
As regards the situation in 1444, how¬
ever, Geneva was enclosed by Savoy and
more or less subordinate to the duchy. Al¬
though its bishop had a certain number of
rights and its citizens many freedoms, the
real power in the city was held by the
Duke’s appointed governor. He sat in a
fortress on the narrow island, which starts
with the tower on the far right of the pic¬
ture. The island was considered “the thorn
in Geneva’s flesh” by its citizens.
The crumbling walls in front of the
tower point to fortifications that have
fallen into decay. Documents show that in
1444 great efforts were made to bring the
city’s walls and ditches back into good as the Pre l’Eveque (Bishop’s Meadow), painted in praise of its sovereign of many
order. Behind the tower lies a marshy area members of an officially registered confra¬ years - a sovereign who in 1444, however,
in which the houses are built on stilts. The ternity are practising their archery. was no longer in power: Amadeus VIII,
fields and hedges on the far shore give A seemingly paradisaical landscape. Duke of Savoy.
a peaceful and well-ordered impression. Surely a region could only flourish as well
Washerwomen are bleaching their sheets as this under a wise regent? There is good
on the shore, shepherds are grazing their reason to suspect that this landscape, ren¬
flocks, and on a terrace known then as now dered with such fidelity to nature, was

40
In 1434 “Master Konrad of Rotwil”
bought his way into the guild of
its own traditions he would be better
known today than he actually is. Born in
French side of Lake Geneva between
Evian and Thonon.
painters, stonemasons and goldsmiths 1383, he consolidated his lands through This duke, hermit and wise lover of the
not in the city of Geneva, but in Basle, strategic treaties, protected himself against good life was thus elected in Basle to be
having previously married - as was the the aggressive Burgundians to the north the successor to St Peter. Decisive factors
convention - the daughter of a painter and by marrying the daughter of a Burgundy in his election were his reputation as a ju¬
guild member. He had settled in Basle a few duke, and extended his influence south of dicious ruler and pious son of the Church,
years earlier, probably drawn to the city the Alps by marrying his own daughter to and the role of his duchy as geographical
not least by the presence of the Council of a Visconti. Amadeus ran what was, by intermediary between France and Italy.
Basle. It was a well-known fact that such contemporary standards, a model system No doubt the large number of Savoy clergy
theological councils brought foreigners of government, and - at the age of fifty attending the Council also played a part.
into the city and boosted the volume of and height of his power - handed over the Since the Pope in Rome refused to be sup¬
money in circulation. Accommodation running of the affairs of state to his two planted by the one in Basle, there were
had to be built and festivities staged, and sons. That was in 1434. once again two popes. The Church was
this meant work - and pay - for painters. Flis wife already having died, he left his split a second time.
Councils also offered artists the chance to lively and luxurious court in his capital of It was conventional for Peter to be
make themselves known to potential Chambery and withdrew to a sort of mon¬ portrayed with a beard, and the hermit
clients from outside the city. astery, built on his own instructions, on Amadeus also boasted a famous beard,
The Council of Basle began in the Lake Geneva. With the prior’s permission, which is mentioned in several texts. In
spring of 1431, and was dominated by the he dressed as a “hermit”, and with a small contrast to pictorial tradition, however,
dispute over who was the supreme church number of companions lived a pious, Peter’s successor to the papal throne had
authority: the Pope or the Council? The modest, albeit not entirely ascetic life. Nor to be clean-shaven, and so Amadeus had
Pope saw himself as the direct successor to did he quite relinquish all his authority; his beard shaven off. His beard undoubted¬
St Peter, and his supporters based their his sons still had to consult him on all the ly lent him “a sort of dignity”, wrote a
defence upon the words spoken by Christ most important appointments and treaties. critical observer, and without it his “slant¬
according to St Matthew: “You are Peter, The Duke simply kept out of the tiresome ing eyes ... and flabby cheeks” made him
and upon this rock (petra) I will build my day-to-day business of government. look “like a very ugly monkey”.
church.” His opponents argued that no¬ His secular monastery was called Ri-
where was it written that Peter had more paille; faire ripaille in those days meant,
A Savoy
authority than the other apostles, and that unkindly, to “feast”, “carouse” or “revel”,
the “rock” was not Peter, but Christ him¬ as it still does in French today. The build¬ duke
self. ing is still standing; it can be found on the becomes Pope
It was not a question of authority, how¬
ever, but of power. For centuries the papal
throne had been a thoroughly secular in¬
stitution surrounded by controversy. The
popes had been forced to seek refuge in
Avignon from 1309 to 1371, and from
1378 two popes reigned concurrently for
39 years, one in Rome and the other in
Avignon. Amidst these battles between
families and nations, the true, spiritual du¬
ties of the Church were increasingly neg¬
lected.
The idea of replacing the authority of
the Pope with a Council was by no means
new. Naturally, the Pope in Rome rejected
the calls of the church leaders gathered in
Basle. In 1437 he shifted the Council to
Ferrara, and later to Florence. Only a few
of those taking part obeyed. The others re¬
mained in Basle, and in 1439 declared the
Roman Pope deposed and elected a new
one: the ruler of Geneva and its surround¬
ings, Amadeus VIII.
Amadeus is one of the more interesting
figures in European history, and had
Savoy remained an independent state with

41
If we look more closely, it is clear that
Christ is standing not on the shore but
on the water. According to St Matthew,
the disciples were out in their boat one
stormy night when they saw Jesus walking
towards them across the water. Peter
wanted to go out to him, but lost his nerve
on the water and started to sink. Christ
reached out his hand to him and asked:
“Why did you doubt me?”
Why the painter - or his patron -
should incorporate a reference to this sec¬
ond biblical scene into the composition is
unclear, but perhaps he was recalling the
hesitation and doubt shown by Duke
Amadeus. It was usual for the person
elected Pope to decide within 24 hours
whether or not to accept the elevated of¬
fice. Amadeus, however, kept the delega¬
tion which had brought the offer from
Basle waiting, as he stalled for time. He
A white cross
with
broad arms
42
had to consider the good of the Church
and that of his duchy, and in particular
work out the financial implications of be¬
coming Pope. The outcome was that he
abdicated as duke and regent once and for
all, accepted his election and took the
name Felix V.
In 1440 he made his ceremonial entry
into Basle and had himself crowned Pope.
As his papal coat of arms he chose those of
Savoy, a white cross with short, broad
arms, as later adopted by the Swiss Con¬
federation. A flag bearing this cross was
carried in front of his missions. As the
years passed, however, more and more
countries declared their allegiance to
Rome, and in 1449 Felix V stepped down.
Two years later he died. Witz’ altarpiece
was thus painted during his term of office.
It was probably destined for St Peter’s
cathedral in Geneva. But who commis¬
sioned it?
The content of a painting - its so-called
programme — was decided not by the art¬
ist, but by the person commissioning it,
and since there are no other landscape por¬
traits in Witz’ oeuvre, the idea of locating
this biblical scene in Savoy must have
come from the patron or his advisers. The
fact that a pope was reigning not in Rome
or Avignon, but on Take Geneva, must
thereby have been very important to them.
It may be that the panel was paid for by
Felix V himself. Researchers have come up
with two other possible patrons, however.
One is Francois of Metz, Bishop of
Geneva with his see in St Peter’s cathedral,
whom Felix elevated to cardinal immedi¬
ately after being crowned Pope in 1440. A
portrait of the cardinal is probably to be
found on one of the other altar panels.
A second possibility is an Italian called
Bartolomeo Vitelleschi. He was amongst
those who had profited from the schism in
the Church. His uncle, an Italian cardinal,
had been suspected of treason by the Ro¬
man Pope and murdered in 1440; as one of
his relatives, Bartolomeo was also pursued
and fled with his uncle’s savings to the
newly-appointed Antipope, who first
made him assistant bishop to Francois of
Metz and later also a cardinal. The fact
that Savoy, the land which had given him
refuge, should appear on the altarpiece
rather than some imaginary landscape,
would have been particularly important to
him. And like Francois of Metz, he owed
the Savoy Pope a large debt of thanks.
Under the
seal of
the fishermen

K onrad Witz’ Miraculous Draught of

Fishes came at the end of the Middle
Ages and the beginning of the Re¬
naissance, and as such documents a period
of transition. The painters of this era were
fascinated by humankind, by the richness
of nature, by the representation of space in
perspective. Their interest was directed to¬
wards their visible surroundings. For the
artists of the Middle Ages, on the other
hand, their physical environment and this
earthly realm were relatively unimportant.
It was their task to bring to life the events
narrated in the Bible, to guide the viewer
from the visible to the invisible, to what ex¬
ists outside of time, to the hereafter, to God.
Witz, too, makes it impossible for the
viewer to overlook the actual focus of his
altarpiece: he shows Christ as much bigger
than the disciples (even allowing for per¬
spective, to emphasize his symbolic signi¬
ficance) and swathes him in a voluminous
robe whose red mass ensures that he
stands out clearly within the composition.
Directly above Christ’s head rises the
Mole Pointu, with its summit encircled by
a cloud - like the clouds which, in me¬
dieval painting, traditionally bore the risen
Christ up to Heaven.
In order to lend the invisible more tan¬
gible expression for the viewer, the artists Andrew while they were fishing, and he reflections in the water. We are given the
of the Middle Ages, including Witz, fre¬ “called out to them, ‘Come, be my dis¬ distinct impression that the painter is con¬
quently employed symbols. At the front ciples, and I will show you how to fish for cerned less with the metaphorical meaning
edge of the picture and beneath the two people!”’ The fish became the secret sym¬ of the fish than with recording what he has
figures of Peter, a large stone rises out of bol of early Christian communities; bap¬ observed with his own eyes.
the water: it represents either Peter the tism was celebrated as a draught of fishes, In contrast to The Miraculous Draught
rock, or the rock on which the Church is and the Savoy Pope Felix V signed one of of Fishes, two of the other surviving
founded. One of the symbols for the his missives “Datum Lausannae sub annu- panels from Witz’ Geneva Altar have gold
Church was a ship. In a communique, the lo Piscatorum” (Given to Lausanne under grounds. Thus, fully in line with medieval
Council of Basle insisted that it wanted to the seal of the fishermen). tradition, he affirms belief in the hereafter,
avoid a fatal division in the Church and According to St John, there were 153 the temporary nature of this earthly life,
reach port safely in “Petri navi”, Peter’s fish in the disciples’ nets, surely not a and the existence of God. More interesting
boat. The fact that Witz placed his fishing number he selected at random. Its symbol¬ to the modern viewer, is the way Witz’
boat directly beneath the hilly landscape ism was later unravelled by St Augustine. painting reveals a new awareness of the
of the Voirons, whose silhouette looks like In Witz’ panel there are only 16 or 17; was real world - something we consider a step
the same boat turned upside down, is un¬ this significant, or was Witz simply trying forward. Seen through the eyes of the
doubtedly no less of a coincidence than his to be more realistic with his smaller catch? people of the Middle Ages, however, it sig¬
positioning of Christ beneath the cloud- His treatment of the individual fish can nalled a downward slide: the hereafter was
capped mountain. hardly be dismissed as stylized; rather, he displaced by a panorama, the noble task of
Fish, too, came into the category of portrays them from various sides and in painting subverted by the reproduction of
symbols. Christ met Peter and his brother various positions, not even forgetting their something already visible for all to see.

43

A Christian
artisan advertises
his craft
Three figures in a narrow interior. The
convex mirror shows two men standing on
the street outside. Like the spectator, they
are gazing into the picture space: a gold¬
smith’s workshop. Guild regulations de¬
manded a shop be open to the street so that
customers could assure themselves that a
smith was not guilty of doctoring his
precious metals.
The goldsmith is painted in the act of
weighing a ring; a young, richly dressed
couple looks on attentively. However, the
eyes of the goldsmith are not focused on
the scales in his hand but raised in an up¬
ward gaze. He is more than an ordinary
artisan: he is the patron saint of goldsmiths,
St. Eligius.
The artist has added a Latin inscription
to the bottom edge of the 98 x 85 cm panel.
Translated, it reads: “Petrus Christus made
me in the year 1449.” This was unusual in
the 15th century; artists tended to remain
anonymous and rarely dated their paint¬
ings. Little is known of the artist’s life: he
44
Petrus Christus: St. Eligius, 1449
acquired the citizenship of Bruges on 6th
July 1444; in 1462 he joined a brother¬
hood; he is mentioned seven years later as
a distinguished member of the artists’
guild, which also registered his death in
1473.
Petrus Christus was born at Baerle,
probably in 1415. It is thought he may have
been the pupil of Jan van Eyck (c. 1370-
1441), and that he completed works left
unfinished by the master at his death be¬
fore founding his own workshop, for
which he was obliged to acquire citizen¬
ship. 1449, the year in which he painted St.
Eligius, also saw the dedication in Bruges
of the Chapel of Smiths, the guild to which
goldsmiths belonged. Perhaps this event
occasioned Petrus Christus’s painting of
St. Eligius in his workshop.
In the 19th century the painting entered
the collection of a German who claimed to
have bought it from a Dutchman. The
Dutchman had apparently claimed to be
the sole surviving member of the Antwerp
Goldsmiths’ Guild. Antwerp had over¬
taken Bruges as a centre of trade and com¬
merce in the late 15th century. Perhaps the
painting followed the flow of money.
Today it is in the Metropolitan Museum,
New York.
The painting is a devotional work, but
it also served as a kind of advertisement
for the goldsmiths’ craft and guild. Be¬
hind the pious man, Petrus Christus has
arrayed a selection of rings, silver
pitchers, a chain, brooches and pearls -
luxury goods for which, in the year 1449,
there was considerable demand in the
wealthy town of Bruges. At that time the
town belonged to the Duchy of Burgun¬
dy, a kingdom amassed in three gener¬
ations by the French dukes of Valois,
extending from the French province of
Burgundy, which bordered with Switzer¬
land, to the North Sea. Its commercial
capital, and indeed that of the whole of
northern Europe, was Bruges. Ships sailed
here from the Mediterranean, England
and the Hanseatic ports. Bruges was a
busy overseas trading centre for timber,
cereals, furs and dried cod from the north,
and for wine, carpets, silks and spices
from the south. In one day in 1457,
Bruges’s harbour on the Zwijn at Sluis
contained two Spanish and 42 British
caravels, three Venetian galleys, a Por¬
tuguese hulk and twelve sailing ships
from Hamburg. These were good times -
not least for producers of luxury goods.
The merchants of the day devoted spe¬
cial attention to weighing goods, for differ¬
ent countries used different units of
measurement and fear of fraud was wide¬
spread. In 1282, the merchants of the
Hanse had managed to have one of their
own weighing scales, constructed in Lti-
beck, set up in Bruges. That a saint should
be painted in the act of weighing, in which
trust played such an essential part, rather
than executing some other form of work, is
probably no coincidence.
Trade attracted finance, and Italian
banks chose Bruges as a base for their
northern branches. The gold coins of many
nations circulated in the town. On the
saint’s counter can be seen gulden from
Mainz, English angels and, of course, the
heavy “riders” of Duke Philip the Good of
Burgundy (1396-1467), regent during Pet¬
rus Christus’s lifetime.
- '

45
 feast day on 1st December to provide
large quantities of wine for the black¬
smiths and everybody who worked in the
stables.
Rather than displaying him in episcopal
robes, Petrus Christus paints the saint in
the clothes worn by the citizens who were
his customers. Eligius became the patron
saint of blacksmiths, goldsmiths and
money changers. These shared a common
chapel and .marched together at pro¬
cessions under the banner of the black¬
smiths, whose gudd, though possibly not
the most elegant, was certainly the most
powerful.
The guilds emerged in the Netherland¬
ish townships of the 14th century. Their
purpose was to prevent ruinous competi¬
tion, to guarantee high standards of work¬
manship and represent the interests of
craftsmen. Thus goldsmiths were required
to work at an open window but forbidden
- according to a 14th-century Netherland¬
ish document - to draw attention to them¬
selves or canvass custom by “sneezing or
sniffling”. They were also bound to con¬
fine their business practice to one place.
Each guild had its own religious super¬
structure with a patron saint and, if
wealthy enough, an altar or chapel of its
own.
The medieval guilds of Bruges, like
those of other towns, made a decisive con¬
tribution to the city’s rise and fall. Origin¬
ally progressive associations became clubs
for the defence of privilege. Closing their
ranks to new members and new methods
gius, using the precious materials, gold and of production, they constantly quarrelled
From with other guilds and thus were respons¬
jewels provided, managed to produce two,
blacksmith whereupon the king appointed him minis¬ ible for sapping the strength of the citizens’
to minister ter and master of the mint. A coin, the “sou council, which, in turn, made it easier for

E ven today Saint Eligius is well-

known to French-speaking children
as “grand Saint Eloi” who, in a popu¬
lar ditty, informs absent-minded king Da-
gobert that he has his trousers on back-to-
front, to which the king replies that he will
just have to turn them back round again
then. In one sense at least the song is based
on historical fact: Eligius really did act as
personal adviser to the Merovingian King
Dagobert.
Eloi, or Eligius, was born at Limoges in
c. 588, completed an apprenticeship as a
goldsmith and soon gained a reputation as
a thrifty and skilful craftsman. Commis¬
sioned by the court to make a throne, Eli¬
de Paris”, bore his signature. Because Eli¬
gius was very pious, Dagobert also ap¬
pointed him Bishop of the Diocese of
the Dukes of Burgundy to bind the towns¬
folk to their will. When a revolt against the
Noyon, which included Bruges. As a
bishop he is said to have led a lapsed popu¬
lation back to the Church. He founded
several monasteries and chapels, and three
churches in Bruges alone.
A number of miracles were ascribed to
him, greatly strengthening his hand as a
missionary. He is said to have started out
as a blacksmith. When brought a particu¬
larly wild horse to shoe one day, so legend
has it, he severed the horse’s foot, fitted it
with a new shoe, and put it back on again,
whereupon the horse cantered friskily
away. It became a custom on the saint’s
Duke’s policies failed in 1436/37, the
citizens were forced to beg on their knees
for forgiveness.
By 1494, half a century after Petrus
Christus painted his portrait of St. Eli¬
gius, “trade in Bruges had come to a
standstill”. Some 4000 to 5000 houses
were left behind - “empty, locked up or
ruined”. The merchants and bankers
moved to the more flexible town of Ant¬
werp, where medieval guild regulations
were no longer applied in quite such a
narrow-minded manner.

46
Rich young woman to be a bride of Christ. Re¬ depiction of a particular couple. Both per¬
ligious critics have inferred that the paint¬ sons wear sumptuous, fashionable clothes
and famous
ing alludes to the legend. But rather than only members of the Burgundian duke’s
customers

A
ring, reputedly made by Eligius
for St. Godeberta, was once kept at
the Noyon Cathedral treasury
(Eligius’ see).
Wealthy suitors are said to have com¬
peted for Godeberta’s hand, but her par¬
ents could not decide without the consent
of the king, who may well have been inter¬
ested in the girl himself. The matter was in
council before the king when Eligius inter¬
vened with his golden ring, declaring the
painting the saint as an opponent of
worldly marriage, it is more likely, and
probably far more in keeping with the pa¬
tron’s interests, that the artist wished to
show him as a supporter and guardian of
marriage. After all, the manufacture of
wedding rings was a lucrative department
of the goldsmith’s trade. Eligius is seen
weighing a ring in the painting. A tradi¬
tional wedding girdle lies on the counter in
front of the couple.
It is unknown whether the work - like
Jan van Eyck’s “Arnolfini” portrait - is the
court could afford, or the few wealthy
burghers who mixed with the aristocracy.
The lady’s gold brocade with its exotic
pomegranate pattern probably came from
Italy; her golden bonnet is embroidered
with pearls. Following a trend set by the
duke, courtiers were richly adorned with
jewellery. The lady’s fiance wears not only
a heavy gold chain but a brooch pinned to
his elegantly bound headgear. He may well
have been one of the goldsmith’s better
customers.
However, the Bruges jewellers’ best
customer was the Duke himself. In 1456
French visitors reported never having
“seen the like of such wealth or such bril¬
liance” as witnessed at the Burgundian
court, and one chronicler described Philip
the Good as “the richest prince of his
day”. Every object he used, from his cup
to his toothpick, was made of solid gold,
and he possessed a large collection of
precious stones, brooches, rings and
clasps.
Not only was his festive table opulently
laid for banquets, but tables along the
walls, piled with plates and dishes and
guarded by members of the goldsmith’s
guild, made a deliberate display of costly
tableware owned by the Duke. A salt-cel¬
lar decorated with sirens was considered an
especially valuable piece. It was valued at
about 900 ducats, the equivalent of ap¬
proximately 200 times the yearly wage of a
craftsman.
There was a degree of pragmatism in this
ostentation. Gold and silver demonstrated
wealth, and wealth was an important pillar
of power. Moreover, symbols of power had
to be readily transportable, for like all great
potentates, the Burgundian dukes were
highly mobile, travelling constantly from
one residence to the next. The treasure was
carried from place to place, and it was quite
common for services to be rewarded not
with money, but with golden dishes, jewel-
encrusted boxes or solid gold chains. In a
manner of speaking, a goldsmith produced
disposable assets.

47
P robably the most valuable of the arte¬
facts ranged on the workshop s
propriately showy setting. The preference
for drinking from coconut-shell goblets
was based on a belief that the exotic fruit
shelves were the tiny, dark, trowel¬
had the property of a counter-poison. A
like objects pinned to the wall on thin gold
vessel of this kind can be seen on one of the
chains. They were called “adder’s tongues”
shelves, half concealed by a curtain. The
or “glossopetrae”; in fact they were fos¬
demand for “touchstones” was great, for
silized sharks’ teeth. They were supposed
princes led dangerous lives. Both Philip’s
to detect poison by changing colour on
father and his uncle were assassinated. Ru¬
contact. In view of their importance
mours of attempts to poison various other
“touchstones” like this were given an ap-
members of his family abounded, and there
was evidence of an attempt to poison Phil¬
Gems as a ip’s heir, Charles the Bold, in 1461. Rulers
protection had servants whose job was to taste the
food before they ate it, thus protecting
against poison
48
them against poisoning. The vessels from
which their food was served were covered
by special lids to prevent anything being
added en route between kitchen and table.
The “privilege of lids” was a form of pro¬
tection enjoyed solely by the ruling princes
of the day.
Most of the objects on the goldsmith’s
shelves served a dual purpose: they were
not only jewels, but a means of warding
off evil. Magical qualities were ascribed to
branching coral; it was supposed to stop
haemorrhages. Rubies were said to help
against putrefaction and sapphires to heal
ulcers; the two oblong articles leaning
against the wall were probably touch¬
stones. Above them are brooches, a ros¬
ary of coral and amber and a golden
buckle that would fit the wedding girdle.
The vessel of gold and glass next to the
branching coral was probably used to
keep relics or consecrated communion
wafers.
Religion, magic and symbolism have
lent a particular aura to the art of the gold¬
smith. Besides their value and magical
powers, precious stones were also seen as
symbols of continuity and longevity. Gold
was considered the quintessence of
worldly riches, as well as a symbol of
power. Whoever held power over the Ger¬
manic tribes gained possession of their
golden treasure, as we know from the myth
of the Nibelungs.
Tradition granted goldsmiths a special
status as craftsmen. During the early
Middle Ages they worked only for the
church and for rulers, who were thought
to rule by the authority of God. The most
famous 13th-century goldsmith was a
monk. In some Catholic regions the pres¬
tige enjoyed by goldsmiths may have sur¬
vived to this day. A play published in
1960, for example, contains the figure of a
goldsmith with highly unusual abilities
and a particularly piercing gaze, a “mar¬
vellous” maker of wedding rings. “My
gold balance”, he explains, “does not
weigh metal but the life and lot of human
beings ...” The play, entitled “The Gold¬
smith’s Shop”, was even turned into a film.
Its author, Karol Wojtyla, became Pope
John Paul II.
Self-portrait
in a mirror
T he weights for the hand-scales were
evidently stacked inside one another
and stored in the round receptacle
with the open lid lying on the counter. The
gold coins next to them may allude to the
office held by Eligius: Master of the Royal
Mint. In the 15th century Eligius was also
the patron saint of moneychangers, an im¬
portant profession in the banking town of
Bruges; they also formed a sub-section of
the goldsmiths’ guild.
The convex mirror to the right of the
coins reflects several of Bruges’s character¬
istic red-brick houses. The two men out¬
side the open shop-front are painted ap¬
proximately where we might expect a
spectator of the painting to stand. The
trick with the mirror allows the artist to
present a view taken simultaneously from
within and without, enabling him to show
what lies in front of and behind the im¬
aginary spectator. The problem of spatial
organization seems to have fascinated him.
However, to judge by the angles of the
shelves, the Bruges master was not ac¬
quainted with the mathematical laws of
perspective recently discovered in Flor¬
ence. Petrus Christus was still experiment¬
ing.
Convex mirrors, sometimes called “wit¬
ches” for their “magical” powers, were
frequently found in Netherlandish house¬
holds; hung opposite a window, they
could make a room brighter. Jan van Eyck
paints a mirror of this kind in his “Arnol-
fini” portrait. Since it is probable that Pet¬
rus Christus was apprenticed to the older
master, the mirror in the present painting
may be a “quotation”. As Van Eyck’s mir¬
ror is presumed to show his own reflec¬
tion, the present painting may equally
contain a likeness of Petrus Christus in the
figure of the man with the falcon, whose
head is tilted in an attitude frequently
found in self-portraits. Falconry was a fa¬
vourite pastime at the Burgundian court,
and falcons were imported from far and
wide. For an artist like Petrus Christus,
however, the sport would have been much
too costly; he probably held a menial po¬
sition at court.
Although the artist signed and dated
this painting, his biography has remained
something of an enigma to historians. The
heart-shaped sign next to his signature
may be a “master’s trademark” such as was
used in Bruges not by painters but by
miniaturists and goldsmiths. Perhaps the
artist was trained in one of these crafts.
The biographies of several Renaissance
painters, most notably Botticelli, refer to
their apprenticeship to goldsmiths. If this
were also true of Petrus Christus, it would
explain his relationship to St. Eligius and
the artefacts, painted so accurately, in his
shop.
Many of these objects had a short life.
They were used by powerful people as a
form of cash payment. Depending on the
needs of their new owners, they might
then be taken apart or recast - much to the
joy of the goldsmith, to whom it meant
more work, and much to his sorrow at see¬
ing his work done in vain. It is known that
at least one goldsmith despaired to such an
extent at the destruction of his artefacts
that he threw in his trade and entered a
monastery.
Little, too, has survived of the treasures
once owned by the dukes of Burgundy.
The last of the dukes, Charles the Bold,
was defeated in Switzerland in 1476. The
treasure he had with him at the time fell
into the hands of Swiss goatherds who had
no use for it. They sold the “Burgundian
booty” below value, breaking the pearls
and diamonds out of their settings and
melting down the gold to make them easier
to sell.
49
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50
Benozzo Gozzoli: Procession of the Magi, 1459

A family sings its own

praises

Festive processions were extremely pop¬

ular in Renaissance Italy. Combining lav¬
ish display, fancy dress and self-publicity,
they offered a welcome distraction from
everyday life. The Florentines, in particu¬
lar, adored such spectacles, and the proces¬
sions through their city are supposed to
have been the most dazzling of all.
They were organized by guilds and so¬
cieties such as the charitable Compagnia
de’ Magi (Company of the Magi). Every 6
January, the feast of Epiphany, members
dressed up as the three wise men from the
East and their companions and processed
through the streets of Florence. Benozzo
Gozzoli took such processions as his in¬
spiration in his decorative scheme for the When the art-loving Medici
Medici’s private chapel. He painted three
family commissioned Benozzo
sides of the chapel with frescos filling the
entire wall, each depicting one of the three
Gozzoli (1420-1497) to dec¬
kings with his train. Only one of the fres¬ orate the chapel of the present-
cos is still in its original state, the other day Palazzo Medici Riccardi
two having been affected by subsequent
with a series of frescos, it had
building work. It is the fresco depicting
almost reached the summit of
the Medici family itself.
The Medici were members of the Com¬ power in the medieval city re¬
pagnia de’ Magi. They had another, more public of Florence. The artist,
personal reason for supporting its lav¬ who started work on the frescos
ish processions, however: such spectacles
in 1459, used the Christian le¬
kept the people happy, captivated their
attention and thereby distracted them gend of the Procession of the
from the political problems of the day. Magi to create a magnificent
Political philosopher Niccolo Machiavelli monument to the proud and
(1469-1527) observed that “giving the
ambitious dynasty of bankers.
people something to take their minds off
the State” was a deliberate Medici tactic.
That something was festivals and proces¬
sions. magnificent, that its planning and execu¬
By 1465 - six years after Gozzoli had tion preoccupied the whole city for several
painted his frescos - the feeling of dissatis¬ months”, as Machiavelli noted. During
faction amongst the citizens of Florence this time, the Medici were able to imple¬
had grown particularly pronounced. At ment their political plans and rule Flor¬
the instigation of the Medici, the Compag¬ ence without disturbance.
nia de’ Magi therefore decided to stage a
Three Kings procession “so splendid and

51

Money and modesty
as stepping-stones
to power
T he elderly man on the left was the
unofficial ruler of Florence: Cosimo
de’ Medici (1389-1464), to some
people a despot obsessed with power, to
others a “father of the Patria” worthy of
the title. Riding alongside him are his two
sons, both of them already mature in
years: with the white band tied around his
head, the gentle, food-loving Giovanni
(1421-1463), who was destined to take
over the running of the family bank;
with the simple red hat, the elder Piero
(1416-1469), who would inherit his father’s
political leadership.
All three were ill men, often laid out
simultaneously by severe attacks of gout.
While Gozzoli was working on his fres¬
cos, Cosimo was so stiff that in 1459 he
was unable to kneel before Pope Pius II,
who was visiting Florence at the time and
was profoundly impressed by the 70-year-
old. “It is he”, wrote Pius, “who decides
52
between war and peace and supervises law
and order ... The political problems are
solved in his house. Official positions are
given to those whom he choses. Title and
ceremony are all that he lacks to be king.”
And further on: “He is very modest; only
one servant accompanies him when he
goes out.”
A proud reserve characterized Cosimo
throughout his life. Even in this fresco, his
simple black garb stands in contrast to the
gold embroideries worn by his sons. Yet
he had transformed the banking house
founded by his father in 1397 into the
biggest of its day, with branches across
Europe. It was managed from the control
centre in Florence, the Medici city palace,
where the chapel containing Gozzoli’s
frescos is also found.
Cosimo used the profits from his bank¬
ing operations to secure his position of
power in Florence; he bought the alle¬
giance of friends and clients with gifts and
secured the favour of the masses with ex¬
pensive festivals. Money was also at the
heart of his foreign policy. He won the
support of the Duke of Milan and the
King of France in the north and created a
balance of power vis-a-vis Venice and
Naples which would ensure Florence’s
peace and prosperity. By 1459 Cosimo’s
ambitions were fulfilled, and it was now
simply a question of handing over the
reins of power to his sons.
When implementing his plans, Cosimo
was careful to avoid offending those of his
fellow citizens who still clung to the fic¬
tion that Florence was a republic. His
motto, accordingly, was “Wisdom, mod¬
eration and courage”, symbolized in his
coat of arms by three ostrich plumes. Al¬
though these plumes, and the balls which
also form part of the Medici coat of arms,
are not found on the bridle of Cosimo’s
mule, they can be seen on that of Piero’s
grey, and indicate to the identity of the
rider. While there are no contemporary
texts confirming that Gozzoli included
portraits of his patrons in his frescos, it
would have been conventional practice for
him to do so. Donors of altarpieces, for
example, frequently appeared in the paint¬
ings they had commissioned, naturally in a
reverent pose and at a fitting distance from
the saints - but not so far removed that
they could not be seen.
 The Orient
comes
to Italy

B earded types in exotic costumes and

strange headdresses mingle in Goz-
zoli’s fresco with smooth-shaven
Florentine merchants. In the context of a
Procession of the Magi, the presence of
these Oriental figures is not implausible;
but on the walls of the Medici chapel they
also fulfil another, more specific function.
They recall Cosimo’s first international
“coup”: in 1439 he managed to entice a
major ecumenical council to Florence.
Gozzoli probably watched the council
fathers make their spectacular entry into
Florence in person, as a 19-year-old youth.
At the head of the procession rode the By¬
zantine Emperor John VIII Palaeologos,
accompanied by Joseph, patriarch of the
Orthodox Church. The painter probably
gave their trains to the two Magi depicted
on the two other walls of the chapel. They
were followed by 22 bishops and numerous
other dignitaries, together with a whole
crowd of servants, pedlars and prostitutes.
The Council was intended to end the
tensions between the Catholic and the Or¬
thodox churches and to unite Christians
against the Turks. It was preceded by pro¬
tracted negotiations; even the question of
where to hold the Council was beset with
problems. It had to be somewhere accept¬
able not just to the Pope and the Eastern
Emperor, but also to the various Italian
states. After much deliberation, Ferrara
was eventually selected.
With a great deal of diplomatic skill, They filled their coffers with the money of humanism and experienced the Renais¬
however, Cosimo succeeded in transfer¬ flowing freely from the hands of the coun¬ sance of Greek culture within its own
ring the Council to Florence. The official cil fathers, trade blossomed, and profits far walls. When Turkish forces overran Con¬
excuse for relocating the event w^as an out¬ exceeded Cosimo’s investment. The ven¬ stantinople in 1453, many fleeing scholars
break of the plague near Ferrara. Ulti¬ ture had not only paid off in material from the Bosporus sought refuge in the
mately, however, the decision was probab¬ terms, but profited the city in a less tan¬ former council city wdth which they were
ly precipitated by the fact that Cosimo, gible way. The council members arriving already familiar. In Florence they were not
the wealthy financier, offered to assume from the East had packed a new culture in only able to make a good living as teachers,
part of the Council’s costs. their baggage, so to speak, and brought it but were treated “like princes”. Cosimo
The meeting in Florence was ill-starred. with them to the Arno -namely the lan¬ de’ Medici thereby set the example.
The agreement, reached after months of guage, literature and philosophy of the The success of his “Council operation”
negotiations, whereby the Byzantine Em¬ Greeks. For centuries, the Byzantine Em¬ increased Cosimo’s prestige and cemented
peror would submit to the authority of the pire had been alone in preserving Greek his dominant position within the city.
Pope, was rejected in fury by the clergy culture, but the visitors from the East now Venice, another major pow'er in Italy, not¬
and people of the Flastern Roman Empire. drew the attention of their Florentine hosts ed with irritation that “this money-shov¬
Emperor John died in 1448, shortly before to this almost forgotten cultural sphere. eller” had the Pope and his Council in his
his empire was conquered by the Turks. Italian merchants soon started collecting pocket. And there was a danger, according
Far more positive were the consequences antique manuscripts while their children to the Venetians, that half of Italy would
of the Council for the citizens of Florence. learned Greek. Florence became the centre soon disappear in there alongside them.

53
T here were over 800 villas in the im¬
mediate vicinity of Florence of the
sort portrayed by Gozzoli in the
background of his fresco. They lay not in
an inhospitable rocky landscape, however,
but nestled amongst the gently undulating
hills which surrounded the city. There, ac-
cording to a.n enthusiastic contemporary,
“there is little mist, no pernicious wind and
everything is good, including the pure,
clean water; and of the countless build¬
ings, some are like princes’ palaces, some
like beautiful castles.”
These villas were often converted from
castles formerly owned by the aristocracy,
who had long since fallen from power.
They boasted fortified towers and crenel¬
lated battlements. In Gozzoli’s fresco, the
keep has wide, elegantly curving arched
windows which are unlikely to date from
the Middle Ages. They correspond to a
new demand for light and air, for a view
Splendid palaces
for the
self-sufficient rich
54
of nature. All the villas had shady gardens
and were surrounded by agricultural out¬
buildings.
In their love of the rural life, the practical
Florentines invariably remained profit-
riented; even the richest of them retired to
their villas not just to escape from their
business affairs and to find diversion in the
beauty of nature, but to enjoy eggs freshly
laid by their own hens and wine from the
vineyards behind their houses. The pros¬
perity enjoyed by the city dwellers there¬
by spilled over onto the peasants in the
region, who made a good living as tenant
farmers or labourers on townspeople’s
estates.
The Medici naturally owned several
country estates. One such was the villa
near Careggi, purchased by the family in
1417 and later extended and modernized
by their favourite architect, Michelozzo
(1396-1472), who also built their city
palace. Perhaps it was this villa, or the so-
called “Medici fortress” near Cafaggioli,
constructed in 1451 also by Michelozzo,
that Gozzoli had in mind when painting
his fresco.
11 jji
The members of the Medici family seem
to have moved continuously from one villa
to the next, depending on the season, the
weather and their state of health. The gout-
afflicted kinsmen were permanently flee¬
ing from “pernicious winds” and searching
for good air and “pure, healthy water .
Their city palace, moreover, had been a
building site for years, and no doubt Flor¬
ence’s rulers also liked to keep a certain
geographical distance between themselves
and their recalcitrant fellow citizens.
Cosimo, the head of the family, was par¬
ticularly fond of living in the country and
used his time in his villas to demonstrate
to the rest of the world the simplicity of
his republican lifestyle. Clad in the simple
garb of a country dweller, he loved to cul¬
tivate his own garden. He would prune the
vines while his in-house scholar, Marsilio
Ficino, read aloud to him from the works
of the Greek philosopher Plato. Cosimo
usually received the members of the Pla¬
tonic Academy, which he founded in 1459,
in the country, too, beside a babbling
stream which flowed through the shady
villa gardens.
mPS
1. Ti m * * js ft id
 The clan
becomes
a dynasty

In the face of the youngest of the Magi -

so tradition has it - Benezzo Gozzoli
painted a portrait of Lorenzo de’ Medici
(1449-1492), who represented the third
generation of Medici rulers. With him, the
dynasty almost became a monarchy, and
on the walls of this private chapel the
banker’s son wears a crown. Escorted by six
armed young men, Lorenzo rides a horse
whose bridle bears the family devices of
golden balls and ostrich plumes. Lorenzo
himself appears against a laurel bush - a
play upon the Latin word laurus, from
which his name was derived.
The harmonious features of the young
king bear no obvious resemblance to
known portraits of Lorenzo. When the
frescos were painted, Lorenzo was still a
child with immature features, but he is
nevertheless unlikely to have been as
handsome as this. He was unabashedly
ugly, with bulging eyes and a flattened
nose. But he more than made up for his
looks with his kindness, charm, intelli¬
gence and artistic talents - as an organizer
of lavish festivals, too, he was allegedly un¬
surpassed. He came to power at the age of
21, and he entered the history books as
Lorenzo the Magnificent.
The young Medici heir is already decked
out in magnificent style in Gozzoli’s
fresco. The paradoxical requirements of
Florentine politics demanded that the
city’s leaders should display both a modest
reserve and an appropriate degree of pomp he could negotiate a better price for the undoubtedly important. Gozzoli never¬
when representing the city on official large quantities of gold and ultramarine theless seems to have possessed a healthy
occasions. During the state visit of Pius II, that he needed to buy. “I would have come self-confidence, for he made sure that - in
the 10-year-old Lorenzo rode on a white to speak to you in person, but I started a work where so much is left to conjecture
horse in the ceremonial procession. His applying the blue early this morning, the - one person at least can be identified in all
robes of velvet and brocade, interwoven heat is great and the size is quickly certainty: the painter himself. Gozzoli in¬
with gold thread, were a showcase for the spoiled.” Gozzoli addressed his patron as cluded his own portrait amongst the mem¬
most beautiful products of the Floren¬ “My distinguished friend” and did not bers of the royal train and wrote, in gold
tine textile industry, which was now ex¬ hesitate to ask the Medici directly for as¬ letters on his cap, the words “Opus
porting ever more exquisite, luxury fabrics sistance on another occasion, too, when he Benotii” - “The work of Benozzo”.
in place of the simple wools of the past. got into trouble because his apprentice had
In art, too, modern tastes demanded stolen two bed sheets from a monastery.
gold ornament. It was something to which Although Gozzoli did not rank amongst
Piero de’ Medici attached particular im¬ the top-flight painters of his day - he had
portance. From his villa near Careggi, he a few problems with perspective, as is
personally oversaw Gozzoli’s work on the evident in the hunting scene - he was one
frescos. In the summer of 1459 the painter of those artists who followed their client’s
wrote to him asking for an advance, so that wishes to the letter. To the Medici, that was

55
 Their country was “marshy and unhealthy .
They suffered from gout, malaria, rickets and a
chronic shortage of cash. But the proud
Gonzaga commissioned their family portrait
from the “most modern” artist of their time. The
fresco can still be admired in the reception room
of the Ducal Palace at Mantua.

mmimnfflTP 'itixdiu

; ^1

yv d\. :p:. Klpv^Sj. ;

Andrea Mantegna: Ludovico Gonzaga and His Family, c. 1470

The splendours of a small

dynasty

Gold-embossed leather curtains are drawn

back to reveal a terrace. Here, a distin¬
guished company is gathered before a
marble screen among the lemon trees: the
family and court of Marquis Ludovico
Gonzaga of Mantua, in northern Italy.
Only the reigning couple can be identi¬
fied beyond doubt. Ludovico is shown
with a letter in his hand, conferring with a
secretary. Marchioness Barbara of Bran¬
denburg has a little daughter at her knee;
behind her may be one or two of her ten
children. The sombre officials in their dark
clothes contrast starkly with the arrogant-
looking courtiers, possibly Gonzaga bas¬ tered over, but did everything he could to
tards, or masters of ceremonies. They wear attract the best architects and artists to his
stockings in the red-and-white of the court.
reigning house. Rubino, the marquis’s dog, The architect and early Renaissance the¬
and a dwarf complete the family portrait. orist Leon Battista Alberti (1404-1472)
The Gonzaga, dressed in luxurious, designed churches for the marquis in the
gold-spun cloth and blessed with many very latest style - after the model of an¬
children, present the image of a confident, tique temples.
successful clan. In the middle of the fif¬ In the Ducal Palace Mantegna’s frescos
teenth century, the family had experienced transformed a relatively small reception
a sharp upturn in fortune. In 1328, one of room, later called - for reasons unknown -
their predecessors, a simple but none¬ the Camera degli Sposi or Bridal Chamber;
theless wealthy landowner, had risen to his illusionistic painting appears to extend
the position of “Capitano” of the city of the real space of the room via the ceiling
Mantua. The family had succeeded in re¬ into the sky, and through the walls on
taining its foothold, amassing pow'er and either side into a terrace and landscape.
finally adding legitimacy to its position
through the purchase of a ducal title from
the emperor.
By the standards of the wealthy Floren¬
tine Medici, the income of the Gonzaga
was limited. Their small territory on the
Lombard plains was modest by compari¬
son with the powerful states of Venice or
Milan. Pope Pius II gave a bleak descrip¬
tion of Mantua in 1460: “Marshy and un¬
healthy ... all you could hear were the
frogs.”1 Ludovico Gonzaga decided to find
a remedy for this: he not only had the mar¬
shes drained and the town squares plas¬

57
T he writing on the sheet of paper held
in Marquis Ludovico’s hand could
tell us something about the occasion
for the group portrait, which was probably
commissioned to commemorate a particu¬
larly significant event. Since it is impossible
to decipher the letter, we can only specu¬
late. What is certain, however, is that the
Three years to engage
a painter
58
letter bears testimony to a favourite pas¬
time at the court of Mantua: the writing,
reading and preservation of manuscripts.
Owing to the work of countless clerks and
secretaries, a huge archive and precise rec¬
ord of the most important events at Man¬
tua has been passed on to posterity. The life
of the painter Mantegna, who spent 46
years there, is thus more thoroughly do¬
cumented than the life of any other artist of
his time.
The documents begin in 1457 with the
voluminous correspondence undertaken to
attract the 26 year-old painter to Mantua.
Marquis Ludovico spent three years at¬
tempting to engage him. Andrea Mantegna
(1431-1506) had made a name for himself
with frescos in Padua. Their bold use of
perspective and confident return to re¬
cently discovered antique models
tonished his contemporaries. It was said
as¬
that his portraits showed the sharply
defined contours of Roman coins. Ludo¬
vico was determined to draw this exciting,
modern man to Mantua, which lacked its
own artistic tradition at the time. At least he
could boast the presence of one other inno¬
vator: the Florentine architect Leon Bat¬
tista Alberti had recently been entrusted
with the building of churches and palaces.
Mantegna was hesitant to assume the
obligations that accompanied the position
of court painter. These included a vast
amount of time-consuming, routine work:
the decoration of country houses, the plan¬
ning and staging of court festivities. More¬
over, if the testimony of the Pope could be
believed, Mantua was hardly an attractive
proposition. What could be used to attract
Mantegna? For one thing, the sum, agreed
by letter, of. “180 ducats per year, a house
to live in, enough wheat for six persons and
firewood”.2 Owing to their chronic lack of
money, the Gonzaga payments were often
overdue (because of this, Mantegna later
was forced to write countless reminders
and requests for payment). The Lords of
Mantua found it much easier to reward
their ambitious painter with status sym¬
bols. In the course of the years, they con¬
ferred upon him the fine-sounding titles of
Count Palatine and Knight of the Army of
Gold.
The real reason for Mantegna’s decision
to go to Mantua in 1460 was probably the
marquis’s cultivated understanding of art,
his ability to appreciate the innovations of
the Renaissance and, not least, the solici¬
tous attitude exhibited by this busy ruler
towards the artists in his service, a quality
also documented in the correspondence.
In 1465, for example, the marquis per¬
sonally ordered “two cartloads of lime
with which to paint our room in the
castle”:3 frescos were painted on a ground
of fresh lime. In 1474 he sent for gold-leaf
and lapis lazuli, paints so precious that they
were usually added only as a final touch.
These letters were separated by nine years,
during which time Mantegna was evi¬
dently decorating the Camera Picta, or
Painted Room, for the renovated palace.
For in 1470 Ludovico complained about
the slowness of the artist, “who started to
paint the room so many years ago, and still
has not completed half of it.”4
A cunning man
of peace
M
arquis Ludovico’s stockingless
foot wears a slipper, and his
simple housecoat contrasts with
the ostentatious gold thread of his family’s
dress. When Mantegna finally completed
his frescos in 1474, the potentate was 62
years old, worn out by thirty years of gov¬
ernment, and in ill health.
Ludovico had held highest military of¬
fice. Initially serving the Venetians, he had
eventually become general commander for
the Dukes of Milan, a position he main¬
tained for 28 years. His reliability and loy¬
alty towards those he served contrasted
favourably with the vast majority of con-
dottieri, the mercenary generals paid by
Italian princes to fight their wars. Unlike
his peers, he was not interested in booty,
nor in war as an art. Ludovico was a man
of peace. He did not owe high military
rank to martial prowess, but to the geo¬
graphic and strategic position of his small
state.
The river Po, used for transporting
goods, flowed directly through the land of
the Gonzaga. Mantua also controlled the
approach to the Brenner Pass. Connecting
Italy with the north, this was one of Eur¬
ope’s most important trading routes. Man¬
tua, protected on all sides by water, was
considered impregnable. The rival neigh¬
bouring powers of Venice and Milan there¬
fore attempted to secure an alliance with
the marquis, or at least his neutrality, and
he was clever enough to play the two off
against each other.
In order to achieve a certain degree of
independence from both powers, the Gon¬
zaga sought foreign support by marrying
beyond the Alps. Ludovico was married to
Barbara of Brandenburg, a relation of the
emperor. For his heir, he himself chose a
bride from the House of Wittelsbach. He
maintained good neighbourly relations
with Venice and Milan, and always com¬
manded the army of whichever was pre¬
pared to pay him most. His wage as a con-
dottiere, in reality a disguised reward for
his alliance, was considerable, indeed it
would occasionally exceed the income
generated by his entire kingdom.
Without a separate, external income he
could never have afforded such a lavish
life-style at home. His princely suite would
sometimes comprise more than 800 per¬
sons. He also had an expensive hobby:
horse breeding. Of course, his Milanese
ducats also permitted Ludovico to pa¬
tronise the arts, to commission buildings
and paintings. His investment proved
worthwhile. Shortly after Ludovico’s
death, a man who was probably the great¬
est art expert among the Renaissance
princes, Lorenzo de’ Medici, also known
as the Magnificent, travelled specially to
Mantua to admire its paintings and collec¬
tion of antiques. Out of a swamp where
“all you could hear were the frogs” had
arisen a town whose fame, within a mere
twenty years, had spread far and wide.
59
T he white-haired man standing be¬
tween two of Marquis Gonzaga s
sons had been dead for some time
when Mantegna came to paint his frescos.
Vittorino da Feltre owed his place in this
fresco to the gratitude of his former pupil.
Without him, Ludovico Gonzaga would
probably never have become quite such a
remarkable ruler.
Vittorino da Feltre (1378-1446) came to
Mantua as a teacher and court librarian.
His pupils included not only Ludovico and
his siblings, but also Ludovico’s future
wife, the German Barbara of Brandenburg,
who had come to the Gonzaga court at the
age of ten. With Vittorino’s help this unat¬
tractive, but by all accounts clever girl be¬
came a ruling lady, fully capable of govern¬
ing the state when her husband was away
commanding foreign armies.
The reputation of Vittorino’s “School
for Princes” attracted pupils to Mantua
from all over Italy, and many important
figures of the Renaissance were educated
A teacher who formed
Renaissance Man
60
there, among them Duke Federico of Ur-
bino. All lived together, with 60 poor, but
gifted pupils who received a scholarship
from the Gonzaga, in Vittorino’s Ca zoi-
osa”, or “house of joy”. The contrast be¬
tween this more modern institution and the
grim monastic schools of the Middle Ages,
where pupils had lived under the rule of
rote-learning and the cane, was not solely
atmospheric. Vittorino s educational ideas,
derived from Classical models, were revol¬
utionary for their time. He paid great atten¬
tion to physical education, for example,
and attempted to awaken in his pupils both
a Christian sense of duty and a healthy re¬
spect for Classical virtues. His ideal was
the “uomo universale”, combining vigour
and spirit to form a harmonious whole.
Ludovico Gonzaga came very close to
Vittorino’s educational ideal. He was an in¬
tellectual of high artistic sensibility, and a
man of action who was single-minded in
improving the fortunes of his family and
town.
The marquis owed his political success
to an inspired move: in 1459, following ex¬
tensive preparations, he convened a con¬
ference of sovereign princes at Mantua, at¬
tended by the pope and by dignitaries from
both sides of the Alps. Although this
plunged Ludovico into debt for many
mm 11p|l| i"ijjJgg
years, it also gave him an opportunity to
spin the threads of a cardinal’s robe for his
second son Francesco (1444-1483). Fol¬
lowing Francesco’s elevation to the rank of
cardinal in 1462, Ludovico greeted his son,
according to one of his contemporaries,
“with tears of joy”;5 it is possible that this
was the triumphant occasion Mantegna’s
painting was intended to record. The paper
in Ludovico’s hand may be a letter of ap¬
pointment bearing the papal seal.
Ludovico’s two eldest sons, standing to
the left and right of Vittorino da Feltre,
although not educated by the great teacher
himself, were brought up in his spirit.
Cardinal Francesco, on the left, laid the
foundations for a famous collection of
Classical antiques. His older brother Fe¬
derico, Ludovico’s heir, despite spending
the greater part of his few reigning years
(1478-1484) on battlefields, was also a pa¬
tron of the arts. Mantegna even worked
under a third generation of Gonzaga. Lu¬
dovico’s grandson, Francesco (1466-
1519), had great respect for him: “an
extraordinary painter, unequalled in our
time.”6 He, too, had learned that “a ruler
becomes immortal by knowing how to
honour great men.”7 It was a lesson Vit¬
torino da Feltre had taught Francesco’s
grandfather.
Gout, malaria, rickets:
complaints of the Gonzaga

D warfs and other human freaks were

much sought after as court fools; at
some Renaissance courts they were
systematically “bred”, a practice otherwise
restricted to dogs and horses. Marchioness
Barbara, too, is said to have kept a Bea-
tricina and midget Maddalena to amuse
her. However, more malicious tongues
have it that the dwarf in Mantegna’s fresco
was a daughter of the reigning couple. The
proud ruling family of Mantua - according
to retrospective medical diagnosis - not
only suffered from gout and malaria, but
also from arthritis and rickets, which often
led to curvature of the spine.
The boy and girl at the marchioness’s
knee look pale and thin; only two of ten
children enjoyed perfect health. Two, in¬
cluding Cardinal Francesco, suffered from
obesity; one had rickets, and four, among
them Ludovico’s heir Federico, had an un¬
mistakably hunched back, although the
fresco hides this. Since little is known of
the remaining Gonzaga children, it cannot
be excluded that they were dwarfs.
The defect probably entered the family
through Ludovico’s mother Paola Ma-
latesta, who had come to Mantua from the
renowned ruling house of Rimini. Two of
her children were deformed, and even her
eldest son Ludovico hardly demonstrated
Vittorino da Feltre s ideal of a healthy mind
had been broken off at the first sign of de¬ of Sforza lay in Ludovico’s hands, the loyal
in a healthy body. He suffered from
veloping curvature of the spine. Susanna general commander hurried to their im¬
obesity, and was often ill. It was possibly
had thereupon entered a convent, leaving mediate aid.
only the strict diet and regular exercise
Dorotea to take her place as the Sforza Perhaps Ludovico Gonzaga took secret
imposed on him by his teacher that
heir’s bride. But as soon as the opportunity revenge on the Sforza family by com¬
prevented him from developing curvature
of a more advantageous match arose - with missioning Andrea Mantegna to paint a
of the spine as well. His heir Federico was
an heiress from the house of Savoy - Sforza fresco showing the moment of triumph
not so lucky: he was described by one of
made public knowledge of his feelings of when a missive containing a cry for help
his contemporaries as an “amiable, engag¬
disgust for the Gonzaga. had reached him from the impertinent Mi¬
ing man with a hump”.8
The insult threatened to cause a reversal lanese. Of course, he would not grant the
The Gonzaga bore their ailments with
of existing alliances, almost driving Ludo¬ Sforza name itself a place in the picture.
composure, accepting humiliation when
vico into the service of Venice. In the end, For they were to have no part in the im¬
necessary. In 1464 the Milanese heir, Ga-
however, the link with Milan proved mortality which the lords of Mantua
leazzo Maria Sforza, refused to marry Lu¬
stronger; over the years the marquis had hoped to secure for themselves through
dovico’s daughter Dorotea with the words:
become “like a son, ... like a brother” to Mantegna’s art.
“these women, born of the blood of
hunchbacks, only give birth to new hunch¬ successive dukes: a true “guardian of the

backs and other lepers”.9 His first engage¬ state of Milan”.10 On three separate occa¬

ment, to Dorotea’s elder sister Susanna, sions, when the fate of the troubled house

61
 This altar, today part of the collection of
Hugo van der Goes: The Portinari Altar, c. 1475
the Uffizi in Florence, measures six metres

An empire collapses; wide and two and a half metres high. It

was painted in Ghent, taken to Pisa via
Sicily on a merchant ship, from there

the painter retreats transported by barge up the Arno to the

gates of Florence, and then carried to the
church of San Egidio by 16 men. It
reached its destination on 28 May 1483.
Its safe arrival was by no means a fore¬
gone conclusion. Ten years earlier, a Flor-

62
entine banker had attempted to send a Last
Judgement by the artist Hans Memling
back to his native city from Flanders. But
the ship was seized by a Hanseatic free¬
booter and Memling’s painting landed in
Danzig, where it still remains today.
The church of San Egidio belonged to
the Santa Maria Nuova hospital, which
was founded in 1288 by the merchant Fol-
co Portinari. The altar by the Flemish
artist Hugo van der Goes was donated
63
by one of Folco’s descendants, Tommaso
Portinari. Tommaso was manager of the
H ugo van der Goes shows an inhos¬
pitable, northern December land¬
One explanation for the gloomy atmo¬
sphere hanging over this holy Nativity
may lie in 15th-century events: at the time
scape, in which the trees spread
Bruges branch of the Medici bank, and the altar was painted, the powerful Bur¬
their bare boughs against a grey sky. A
was also a councillor at the court of gundian empire, of which the Netherlands
rocky outcrop towers threateningly over
Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy. was a part, was starting to disintegrate.
the mountainous path which the pregnant
Van der Goes portrays Tommaso Porti¬ There may have been more personal fac¬
Mary, supported by Joseph, must tread, as
nari on the left wing of the altar, and his tors in play, too: the painter suffered from
they make their way to Bethlehem for the
wife Maria on the right. Their three chil¬ depression, at least in his latter years. This
census. The stony path points to the suf
dren - Margherita, Antonio and Pigello - we know from the detailed records kept
fering which lies ahead for the Virgin and
are kneeling behind them. The family are by Brother Gaspar Ofhuys, master of the
which she already knows she will have to
protected by their name saints, who tower sick in the monastery to which the painter
over them: St Margaret has her foot on the bear.
In the central panel of the altar, an aus¬ withdrew in 1478.
dragon which, according to legend, once
Van der Goes was born around 1440 in
tere Madonna gazes down at the Christ
swallowed her; Mary Magdalene bears the
Child with an expression which is almost Ghent. Little is known about the early
jar containing the ointment with which
years of his life. In 1467 he was accepted as
that of a Pieta. The baby is lying not swad¬
she annointed Christ s feet; St Thomas has
dled in a manger full of hay, but naked on a master into the painters’ guild of Ghent.
beside him, as his attribute, the lance with
the ground, unprotected in a stable open to In 1468 he worked in Bruges - probably
which he was killed; and St Antony Ab¬
all four winds. Nor are the angels singing alongside Hans Memling and Petrus
bot, the father of the monastic order, is
“Exultate Jubilate”; rather, they are look¬ Christus - on the decorations for the mar¬
identified by his bell and rosary. The
ing with stern and serious faces at a sinful riage of Duke Charles the Bold. The great
youngest son has no patron saint of his
world. There is little in this altarpiece to masters of Flemish painting, the van Eyck
own; he was probably born after the con¬
indicate that, with the birth of the Saviour, brothers and Rogier van der Weyden, were
tents and layout of the altar had already
they have a joyful message to proclaim. by now already dead.
been decided.
In portraying the patron saints on a
much larger scale than the donor family,
van der Goes was following a well-docu¬
mented medieval tradition, whereby size
served as a symbolic indication of impor¬
tance. He also obeyed medieval conven¬
tion in another way, namely by ignoring
time and space and bringing together, within
one painting, episodes which occurred at
different times and in different places.
Thus we see not only the actual Nativity,
but Mary and Joseph on their way to
Bethlehem prior to Christ’s birth. On the
other hand, van der Goes executed many
of the details with an extraordinary degree
of realism and drew upon his knowledge
of centralized perspective, as evidenced by
the buildings in the background.
The Portinari Altar is a work full of
contradictions and tensions. In Florence,
where medieval tradition had long been
overridden by the Renaissance and where
saints and gods had been brought back
down to a human scale, it must have at¬
tracted great attention. It came from an¬
other world.

An
endangered
genius
64
 When, in 1480, a charter described van
der Goes as “the most outstanding living
Flemish master”, the Portinari Altar was
already finished. It must have been shortly
after completing this work that he entered
the so-called Red Monastery near Brussels
as a frater conversus, a rank between canon
and lay brother. He embraced poverty,
chastity and obedience and continued to
paint. His known oeuvre comprises some
40 works.
According to Gaspar Ofhuys, “one night,
Brother Hugo was seized by a strange sick¬
ness of the imagination. He began to wail
incessantly that he was damned and con¬
demned to eternal damnation. He would
even have inflicted a hurt upon himself,
had not those around him forcibly pre¬
vented him from doing so.” The painter’s
attacks expressed themselves in religious
delusions in line with the beliefs of his day
and his environment.
In retrospect, Hugo van der Goes ap¬
pears as one of the first of a new breed of
artist. In the Middle Ages, a painter was
simply viewed as a craftsman who carried
out the wishes of his clients, be they from
the sacred or the secular sphere. He thus
worked within clear and narrow bounds.
In 1482, by contrast, the Florentine author
Marsilio Ficino described the artist for the
first time as an endangered melancholic
genius, in turn inspired or cast down by
Saturn. Creative zeal was followed by
crippling despair. 1482 was the year in
which van der Goes died.

tained seven subsidiary offices (in Venice,

The donor was
Milan, Rome, Bruges, Avignon, Lyons and
an ambitious London). Bruges was important because it
but luckless banker was here that trade was conducted with
the Hanseatic cities of northern Europe.

T he date of the altar can be deduced

with some certainty from the ages of
the Portinari children: the three por¬
trayed by the artist were born between
1471 and 1474, and a fourth was born in
1476. The work was thus probably painted
around 1475/76. The donor at that time
stood at the pinnacle of his career - and
shortly before its sudden end.
Tommaso Portinari was the representat¬
ive in Bruges of what was then the biggest
banking and trading house in Europe.
Around 1470, in addition to their head¬
quarters in Florence, the Medici main¬
Born in 1428, Tommaso Portinari had
entered the service of the Medici at the age
of 17. He rose through the ranks and in
1462 became head of the Bruges branch
and simultaneously a partner in the Medici
empire: he put up two-fifteenths of the
business capital and received a quarter of
the profits. Each time his contract was re¬
newed, this extremely shrewd business¬
man negotiated more favourable terms for
himself.
His independence grew following the
death of Piero de’ Medici, the experienced
head of the family concern who had pro¬
found distrust of Portinari. The running of

65

the bank passed to Lorenzo de’ Medici (later
called Lorenzo the Magnificent), who was
just 21 years old, and who was more inter¬
ested in large-scale politics than in business.
Tommaso Portinari was granted an in¬
creasingly free hand. Although, in 1471,
a fixed limit was still imposed on the
amounts he could lend to the Duke of Bur¬
gundy, two years later this was dropped.
Everything was left to his own judgement.
A dangerous development, for the banker
loved risky speculation: around 1475 he
invested large sums in a voyage of discov¬
ery mounted by the Portuguese, which set
sail for the African coast and which ended
up making an overall loss. Only two dec¬
ades later, a similar expedition led to the
discovery of America. Tommaso, mean¬
while, continued to back the wrong horses:
he miscalculated with some long-term
wool contracts, and was lured again and
again into granting massive loans to the
Duke of Burgundy.
Bruges at that time belonged to Bur¬
gundy, a loose-knit empire which extended
from the Swiss border to the shores of the
66
North Sea. Duke Charles the Bold, its
ruler since 1467, needed money to fund his
magnificent court and countless wars.
Tommaso provided it, “in order” - as
Lorenzo de’ Medici subsequently accused
him - “to court the Duke’s favour and
make himself important”, whereby he “did
not care whether it was at our expense.”
Like many others, the Florentine Porti¬
nari was bewitched by the charismatic
Duke and dazzled by the aristocratic
glamour of his court. He enjoyed cultivat¬
ing an appropriately ostentatious image
and persuaded the Medici to buy one of
the most splendid houses in Bruges as the
bank’s offices.
In the altarpiece, Tommaso’s wife Maria
is wearing the austere costume of the Bur¬
gundian court, with a gold-embroidered
pointed hat. The daughter of a good Flor¬
entine family, in 1470 - aged just 15 - she
was sent to Bruges to marry Tommaso, 42
years her elder. Just a few years later she
appears in this painting looking somewhat
careworn, exhausted by childbearing and a
strenuous life alongside her agile husband.
The shepherds,
realistically portrayed,
represent the people
T he code of conduct at the Burgun¬
dian court forbad uncontrolled ges¬
tures and the expression of personal
feelings. The figures in this altar are por¬
trayed accordingly. With one exception:
the shepherds, who represent the “dis¬
courteous” people outside the court. In
the background, one raises his clenched
fist with a shout, while in the foreground,
another throws open his arms. They make
no attempt to conceal their curiosity.
Large in size and realistically portrayed,
they are an unruly bunch thrusting their
way into the stable.
Never before had the shepherds been
granted such a dominating role in a Nativ¬
ity scene. Whether coincidentally or not,
they call to mind the historical role as¬
sumed around this time by the shepherds
and peasants of other lands.
Only shortly after this altarpiece was
executed, the Swiss Confederation con¬
quered the army of Charles the Bold and
thereby destroyed the powerful duchy of
Burgundy. The confrontation was sparked
by the Duke’s attempts to annex the re¬
gion, which lay in between the individual
parts of his empire. As a result, the neigh¬
bouring states were effectively forced to
unite against him. France gave the orders,
while the Confederates (in return for a
great deal of money) did the dirty work.
In true medieval fashion, Charles fought
with heavily armoured knights; the Swiss
shepherds and peasants came on foot. They
were thus more mobile than their oppon¬
ents, and they knew the terrain. In 1476
they launched a surprise attack on Charles
near Grandson, and plundered his train
and treasures near Murten. On 5 January
1477 Charles fell at Nancy.
After his death, France reclaimed parts
of Burgundy for itself. Elsewhere in the
empire, unrest broke out. Charles’ daugh¬
ter Maria and her husband Archduke
Maximilian of Austria inherited a tattered
Burgundy saddled with debt. It had lasted
just a hundred years, but had seen a late
flowering of medieval courtly culture.
The financial losses incurred by the Me¬
dici were enormous, and the consequences
for Portinari catastrophic. Italian banks
had already been ruined by loans to rulers
in the past; the Peruzzi and the Bardi
banking houses, for example, had lent
“sums worth a kingdom” to Edward III
(1312-1377). Lorenzo de’ Medici disasso¬
ciated himself from Portinari and forced
him to continue the running of the Bruges
branch, with its low profits and huge
debts, alone. Tommaso spent the rest of his
life recovering loans and avoiding his cred¬
itors. He lived partly in Bruges, partly in
Florence - always half on the run. In 1501
he died in the hospital to which, years earl¬
ier, he had donated the altar. His son re¬
nounced his inheritance, afraid that his
father’s debts would outweigh his assets.
S tanding in the centre foreground, as if
placed in front of a built altar, are two
vases of flowers - carnations, aquile-
gia, lilies and violets. Normally they
would never bloom in December; these
bunches of flowers on the day of Christ’s
birth are a miracle.
The hidden
meanings are
the sweetest
The altar is full of symbolic and biblical
references. The harp above the door of the
palace in the background signals that this
is the home of the line of David, to which
Joseph belongs: King David once played
the harp to King Saul, who was tormented
by an evil spirit, and calmed him. The
sheaf of wheat is a reference to Bethlehem,
whose name means “house of bread”, and
also to the body of Christ, the “bread of
life”. The parallels between the body of the
child lying on the ground and that of the
wheatsheaf correspond to the belief that
the one will transform itself into the other.
The painter has thus already incorporated
in his Nativity references to the death of
Christ, and to Mass and Communion.
According to St Augustine, “the hidden
meanings are the sweetest”, and in the
15th century the masters of Netherlandish
painting took his words to heart, filling
their paintings with religious allusions and
symbols. After van der Goes, however,
these became rare. The need for a Chris¬
tian superstructure in art was displaced by
a Renaissance interest in reality.
In granting the two vases of flowers
their central position in the foreground,
the painter also accorded them a central
significance. In the 15th-century language
of symbols, violets stood for humility,
modesty, and submission to God’s will.
Carnations were known in Flanders as
nagelbloem - “nail flowers”; thus the {hree
carnations recall the nails with which
Christ was hammered to the cross. The or¬
ange lilies represent the blood of Christ,
and the white and blue irises the suffering
and purity of the Virgin Mary. St Bridget
of Sweden (born 1303) wrote of the Vir¬
gin: “For she felt the sharp edge of this
sword in her heart just as often as she fore¬
saw the wounds and sufferings of her son
in her mind ...”
The aquilegia also point to the suffering
ahead; they were associated with melan¬
choly and their dark blue was the colour of
mourning. Mary is also dressed in a dark
blue robe, a further indication that this al¬
tar is announcing not the glad tidings of
Christ’s birth, but his future Passion.
It was painted as Charles the Bold was
heading for ruin, as his duchy was collaps¬
ing. Perhaps something of the contem¬
porary atmosphere of doom and gloom
made its way into the altarpiece. Van der
Goes was a subject of the Duke and his ca¬
reer was closely bound up with the House
of Burgundy. He had documented its mar¬
riages, funerals and festive processions,
and Charles’s death, the collapse of his
empire and the uprisings which broke out
in Ghent must have affected him. These
events may also have been the reason why
the shipment of the altarpiece to Florence
was delayed - and why the painter with¬
drew to the seclusion of a monastery.
The depressive van der Goes was prob¬
ably also affected by the intellectual con¬
tradictions of his day, and in particular by
the conflict between medieval restraint and
the more liberal ideas of the Renaissance.
Although he never visited Italy, he must
have seen works by Renaissance masters
in the houses of Florentine merchants in
Bruges. Tension is certainly evident in his
Portinari Altar. While its subject and sym¬
bolism still adhere fully to medieval Chris¬
tian tradition, its use of perspective and
the realism of its shepherds point to the
Renaissance. The way in which van der
Goes portrayed the shepherds exerted its
own influence in Italy, as can be seen in
works from 1485 by the Florentine master
Ghirlandaio - evidence of a reciprocal
artistic exchange between Flanders and
Florence.
67
68
 Hieronymous Bosch: The Conjurer, after 1475

Hocus-pocus,
Inquisition and
demons

The name Hieronymous Bosch suggests

images of pot-bellied demons and flying
fish, spiderlike gremlins and gruesome
half-animal, half-human beasties. In con¬
trast to such nightmarish apparitions, the
figures in this painting seem positively
civilized.
The Conjurer belongs to a group of
early works which Bosch probably painted
c. 1475. The artist was born c. 1450, and
was therefore about 25 when he painted
these works. Demons may put in an ap¬
pearance in some of them, but they have
not yet gained the upper hand. The prevail¬
ing world-view is scathingly critical. In the
Ship of Fools, for example, the artist paints
a monk and nun indulging in gluttony and
childish or erotic games instead of prepar¬
ing for life in Heaven. The Conjurer, too,
was probably an invective against the cre¬
dulity of his contemporaries.
The arrangement is simple and easily Other versions of the Conjurer continue
surveyed. In the middle, a table with cups, the story of the theft. In these the scene is
balls and magic wand; also a frog, which not enclosed by a wall, but opens to houses
appears to have sprung from the mouth of in the background on the right. In one the
the large figure bent over the table’s sur¬ monk is imprisoned, while the more dis¬
face. A second frog appears poised be¬ tant background contains a gallows where
tween the person’s lips, though this could the monk (whether genuine or an impos¬
equally be saliva. At the edge of the group ter) will soon hang. Thus justice is re¬
of spectatdrs a man in a monk’s habit stored.
severs the purse strings of the person bent The engraving is inscribed with rhymed
over the table. It is impossible to judge admonitions to the general public. The
whether cutpurse and conjurer are in ca¬ world, we are told, is full of deceivers who
hoots. succeed with all kinds of tricks in making
There are five versions of the painting, as us spit wonders onto table tops; trust them
well as an engraving. Scholars are unable to not, it says, for “when you lose your purse,
agree on the original, or on which comes you’ll regret it”.
closest to an original possibly lost; how¬ The present painting does without
ever, the majority have settled far the pres¬ written injunctions, nor are we told the
ent version. The property of the municipal rest of the story. The high wall permits the
musuem of Saint-Germain-en-Laye, near artist to isolate the scene from its everyday
Paris, the painting measures 53 x 65 cm, is environment, thereby giving it exemplary
unsigned and rarely exhibited. The cau¬ force. The question is whether delusion
tious city fathers usually keep their hal¬ and theft really were all he wished to
lowed treasure in a safe. show.

69
B osch was born c. 1450 at ’s-Her-
togenbosch, where he spent most of
his working life. It is also likely that
he derived his pseudonym from the name
of his native town. To be named after one’s
place of origin was by no means uncom¬
mon. His real family name was van Aken,
for his family hailed from Aachen.
’s-Hertogenbosch, today a peaceful
country town, was at that time one of the
most important market towns of the Low
Countries. The town had 2930 households
in 1472; by 1496 there were 3456. This was
equivalent to a population of approxi¬
mately 25,000.
If statistics available for other towns can
be believed, population growth went hand
in hand with an increased rate of theft. The
best form of protection against theft in
stable communities was mutual supervi¬
sion. People lived in close proximity; they
knew their neighbours well. An influx of
strangers made supervision more difficult.
The thief
and the
Inquisition
70
Even greater fear and suspicion were ar¬
oused by travellers. The term used for such
people in French courts was “demeurant
partout” - at home everywhere, in other
words nowhere. A person of no fixed
abode had bleak prospects in a court of law.
Among these travellers were storytel¬
lers, musicians, conjurers, clowns, sur¬
geons and hawkers of medicines and
remedies, who trailed from fair to fair in
search of clientele. A rising town where
money flowed across the counters in large
quantities was particularly attractive.
The thief in the painting wears a robe
that strongly resembles the habit of a lay
brother of the Dominican Order. His belt
and the top section of his garment, includ¬
ing the cowl, are missing, but his pale dress
and black scapulary make his status clear
enough. His head tire alone is typical of a
burgher.
The Dominicans were powerful in
Bosch’s day; but their power was also the
object of considerable controversy. It is
therefore no accident that the artist alludes
to them through the figure of a thief in a
friar’s habit. They were powerful because
they controlled the Inquisition. In 1484,
Innocence VIII had proclaimed in a papal
bull that “very many persons of both sexes,
lapsed from the Catholic faith, [have] en¬
tered unions of the flesh with devils, and,
by means of magic spells, curses and other
unworthy charms, [have] caused great dis¬
tress to Man and beast”. Belief in witches
grew to an obsessive pitch, and the Do¬
minican Order was the Pope’s special anti¬
witch force. _
They were powerful, but not all-power¬
ful, and, in the Low Countries especially,
the hysterical manner with which they per¬
secuted their victims met with considerable
resistance. When a Dominican priest de¬
clared a number of respected citizens of the
city of Ghent to be heretics in 1481, he was
promptly placed under arrest by the City
Council. The Council also made it an of¬
fence to give alms to Dominicans or to visit
their church services.
Fear of witches and the Inquistion alike
were castigated especially by the human¬
ists, whose spokesman, Erasmus of Rotter¬
dam (1469-1536), courageously declared
the “pact with the devil” to be “an inven¬
tion of the Inquisition”. Hieronymous
Bosch possibly wanted to express some¬
thing similar: the conjurer and the sup¬
posedly pious friar working hand in hand,
the Inquisition feeding on the very heresies
it was supposed to suppress.
The conjurer's
tall hat

T he figure who appears to have spat

out a frog is usually seen as a man,
though the profile could equally be¬
long to an elderly woman. The key hanging
at the figure’s side, the attribute of the
housewife, would seem to confirm the lat¬
ter view. The two Dominican authors of
the so-called Hammer of the Witches, an
infamous handbook for Inquisitors, would
also have argued that the figure belonged
to the female sex. In their opinion women
were highly frivolous creatures, making it
easier for the devil to draw them into
witchcraft than men.
The conjurer influences the woman
without touching her or, since his mouth
is closed, speaking to her. He need only
look into her eyes: that evil could be per¬
formed through eye contact was estab¬
lished within the first pages of the Ham¬
mer of the Witches. The authors of the
book were apparently authorities on tech¬
nique, too: an evil eye, they wrote, “in¬
fects the air”; and the infected air, upon
reaching the sorcerer’s victim, causes “a
change for the worse in the body of the
affected person”.
The tall, black hat worn by the conjurer
bears no resemblance to the headgear of
the other men present. This type of hat was
traditionally worn at the Burgundian court
in the early years of the 15th century, later
- as Jan van Eyck’s Arnolfini Wedding, ex¬
ecuted in 1438, attests - becoming fashion¬
able among the wealthy urban middle
played on the worldy rulers of the age - the most dedicated supporters in the struggle
class.
By Bosch’s day, however, this erstwhile Habsburgs’'and Burgundians. to suppress heresy were the Dominicans. It
symbol of courtly life and the wealthy The town of ’s-Hertogenbosch be¬ was thus only logical that Archduke Maxi¬
bourgeois class was probably worn by va¬ longed to the kingdom of Burgundy, which milian, the first Habsburg monarch to rule
gabonds hoping to lend some semblance of fell to the Habsburg empire in 1477, just as Burgundy, should co-operate with the Do¬
dignity to their appearance. The conjurer Bosch was setting out to establish himself minicans as closely as possible. On visiting
in the painting - who evidently has hyp¬ as an artist. Many Netherlanders had s’-Hertogenbosch, he would stay in the
notic powers, and performs conjuring acts fought against the Bugundian dukes, ob¬ Dominican monastery, demonstrating to
with cups and balls, as well as making his jecting to their unscrupulous exploitation the inhabitants of the town where his true
little dog leap through a hoop - is no ex¬ of their country’s wealth. But the Habs- allegiance lay.
burgs, too, were seen as tyrants and ex¬ It is therefore quite conceivable that
ception.
But perhaps Hieronymous Bosch in¬ ploiters. Bosch’s main intention in this painting
tended the hat to signify more than a me¬ The Habsburgs prosecuted the pope’s was not to criticize the Dominican Order
tier. Like the garment worn by the thief, it worldly and spiritual interests. In return but to expose the profitable alliance be¬
may be an allusion: if the thief’s habit in¬ for this service, they collected a tenth of all tween spiritual and worldly rulers, who
sinuated the presence of Dominicans and church benefices in their sphere of in¬ oppressed the people and stole their
the Inquistion, the hat may well have fluence. In the Low Countries, the pope’s money.

71

Monkey or owl -
fun and symbol
T
he animal in the conjurer’s basket
cannot ultimately be identified: it is
either a guenon, a species of long¬
tailed monkey, or an owl. Monkeys often
provided an interlude in the repertoire of
fair-ground artistes. The owl, one of the
artist’s favourite birds, puts in an appear¬
ance in several of his paintings.
72
In the symbolic language of the period
the monkey signified cunning, envy and
lust. The owl was ambiguous: on the one
hand it symbolized wisdom, on the other
it was the bird of darkness, the companion
of witches during their nightly flights.
Whether monkey or owl, the animal must
be seen as a reflection on the character of
the man from whose belt it hangs.
Frogs and toads, too, frequently painted
by Bosch, signified equally positive and
negative qualities. A figure with a frog’s
head was revered in ancient Egypt as a god¬
dess of resurgent life. The early Egyptian
Christians adopted the figure, adorning it
with a cross and making it the symbol of
their belief in the resurrection of the dead
on the Day of Judgement.
To some European church fathers, how¬
ever, the frog and the toad were revolting
creatures. They associated the animals’
croaking call and habitat of mud and ponds
only with devils and heretics. The frog is
also a reference to the science of alchemy.
The books of alchemists were full of pic¬
tures, for they used drawings and crypto¬
grams to illustrate their methods and aims.
Frogs and toads were part of the base,
earthbound element which was separated
by distillation from its ethereal counter¬
part.
The aim of alchemy was the transmuta¬
tion of human and material substance by
the union of opposites. Bosch makes ref¬
erence to this in his later works, showing
couples copulating in alchemical retorts.
The desired union was also represented
through the conjugation of sun and moon:
the sun as a circle, the moon as a sickle.
This alchemical sign is hinted at in the top
left of The Conjurer in the form of a round
window which - strictly speaking - really
ought not to be there.
A characteristic quality of the symbols
used in alchemy (and indeed of medieval
sign language in general) is their compli¬
cated multiple ambiguity. By contrast, our
thinking today has adapted to the scien¬
tific demand for unequivocal precision.
But even a shape combining sickle and orb
did not always symbolize the unity of op¬
posites; sometimes it was simply the
moon.
The moon has an important role in a re¬
lated discipline: astrology. Drawings of the
“children of the planets”, a precursor of the
horoscopes printed today in various news¬
papers, were sold at fairs and local markets.
At that time the moon was considered a
planet. Among the moon’s “children” were
actors, singers, pedlars and conjurers. Sur¬
prisingly, at least one of the prints of the
“planets’ children” shows almost an exact
replica of the motif used by Bosch: a travel¬
ling conjurer with a table and thimble-rig
trick.
 <?
s '
if
The secret
of the tarot
cards
B osch was acquainted with, and used
in his painting, not only the sign lan¬
guages of alchemists and astrolog-
ists, but also the symbolism of the tarot
pack, cards used in games and fortune-tell¬
ing. It has been suggested that gypsies
brought tarot cards to Europe from Egypt
or India in the 14th century. Other sources
claim that the Waldenses - a southern
French sect whose persecution by the Do¬
minicans was especially bloody - used the
cards as early as the 12th century. While the
design of the cards has varied from cen¬
tury to century, the basic motifs - sup¬
posedly revealing, or rather concealing, the
knowledge of the ancients - have remained
unaltered. With the advent of science and
technology, these mystical figures were
condemned to oblivion, though they have
recently been rediscovered by the fol¬
lowers of “New Age” esotericism.
Comparison reveals that the couple in
Bosch’s painting, one of whom has placed
his hand on the breast of the other, can also
be found on early tarot cards. The scep¬
tical, sombre-looking man with black hair
and a dark robe in the midst of the group
of onlookers is also prefigured in the cards.
One card shows a revolving wheel; above
it an animal, possibly a dog, dressed in a
costume. In Bosch’s painting, the little dog
does not sit above a wheel, but next to a
hoop.
However, it is the conjurer with his table
who bears the closest resemblance to simi¬
lar figures on tarot cards and other con¬
temporary pictures. Dressed in red, he is
equipped with a magic wand and thimble¬
rig cups and balls. The trick of manoever-
ing balls or small stones between cups or
thimbles by sleight-of-hand had been per¬
formed since antiquity.
Cognoscenti would have recognized in
the figure df the conjurer the Greek god
Hermes, who, as a messenger between this
world and the beyond, sometimes be¬
stowed divine knowledge on human
beings. Guides to the interpretation of
tarot cards link this card with creativity,
imagination and intelligence, as well as
with delusion and disguise. It is called
“The Magus” or “Conjurer” (French: “Le
Bateleur”), resurfacing in later card games
as the “Joker”. power. Though the demons that hold sway
References to tarot - or alchemy and as¬ in so many of Bosch’s later paintings may
trology - indicate that the painting’s almost be biding their time, restrained, as yet,
naive, anecdotal charm conceals more than from peering around corners, their other¬
a warning against tricksters, or against the worldly presence is nonetheless already
combined forces of clerical and secular palpable.
73
 Master of the Transfiguration of the Virgin:
The Virgin and Child with St Anne, c. 1480
The patrons watch
over the city
Even though its massive cathed¬
ral still lacked its soaring spires,
Cologne was the largest and
most important city in Germany
when, around 1480, its skyline
provided an anonymous artist
with the background for his
painting of the Virgin and Child
with St Anne, together with
St Peter, St Gereon and
St Christopher. This was the
first time that a painting had
presented a more or less accur¬
ate picture of 15th-century
Cologne. The large altarpiece,
which measures 131 x 146 cm,
today hangs in the city’s Wall-
raf-Richartz Museum.
This painting dates from the great age in
Cologne’s history. No other European
centre at the end of the 15th century sur¬
74
passed the city in terms of size, and none
other boasted such a splendid and extens¬
ive city wall - 8 kilometres in length. The
former Roman colony was rich in churches
and art, and with its some 40,000 citizens it
was also the most heavily populated city in
Germany.
The assembly of saints with Cologne in
the background was painted around 1480,
at a time when Albrecht Diirer was just a
boy and Martin Luther had not yet been
born, when there was still no Renaissance
north of the Alps and when the unity of
the Church still seemed free from threat.
The artist portrays the city - from the
Bayenturm tower overlooking the Rhine
on the left to St Cunibert’s church on the
right - with a quite extraordinary degree
of realism for his day. He has only made
one correction: whereas the Rhine actually
makes a gentle bend as it flows through
Cologne, the painter here shows it run¬
ning parallel to the wall-hanging against
which the saints are standing.
St Christopher, seen on the far left with
the Christ child on his shoulders, was par¬
ticularly venerated by sailors and fisher¬
men. Next to him stands St Gereon, mar¬
tyr and patron saint of Cologne. St Peter,
dressed in the robes of the Pope and
adorned with gold and precious stones,
symbolizes the power and the wealth of
the Church. Amongst its most valuable
relics, Cologne still possesses even today a
section of the chains with which Peter was
bound, and fragments of his bishop’s staff.
In their contrast to the apostle, the three
figures of St Anne, her daughter Mary and
the infant Christ (who thus features twice
within the one painting) appear almost
unassuming.
The saints stand protectively in front of
the city. In later centuries, however, they
would also do its citizens harm - by ob¬
structing their view of the changing world
around them.
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75

i on was apparently supposed to kill the se¬
A soldier with the golden cross on his breastplate,
becomes remained rather more of a local saint. His
legend is closely bound up with the his¬
a martyr
tory of Cologne, and with its first period of
growth under the Romans. This began in
given her birthplace its charter. It was
probably less of a gift, however, than a stra¬
tegic move: the empress thereby demon¬
strated her ability to get her own way (she
would later have her husband poisoned).
As the capital of the newly-created prov¬
ince of Lower Germania, Cologne now
assumed more importance. Its Roman title
of “Colonia” evolved into the German
“Koln” (Cologne).
Many gods were worshipped in the Ro¬
man Empire - Jupiter, Juno, Minerva and
Isis (who originated from the Orient) as
well as local deities; one often merged into
another. For many years, however, this re¬
ligious tolerance did not extend to the god
of Christianity. Christians were considered
enemies of the State and blamed for un¬
rest, including the uprisings in Gaul at the
end of the third century. The units sent to
quell these revolts, however, themselves
included secret worshippers of the Chris¬
tian god. Such soldiers were considered a
military risk. In order to root them out,
pagan sacrifices were commanded. Those
who would not take part gave themselves
away. Every tenth man was executed as a
form of general deterrent.
This measure, ordered by the com¬
mander-in-chief, was also in force amongst
the legions stationed along the Rhine on
Gaul’s eastern border. At least 50 Roman
soldiers are supposed to have been ex¬
ecuted for their Christian beliefs before
the gates of Cologne. According to legend,
one of them was the cohort leader Gereon.
The standard in his hand shows that he
was more than just a simple soldier. Gere-
lected Christians, but refused and himself
then suffered a martyr’s death
In 1847 the remains were discovered in
Cologne of 67 people who had died a viol¬
ent death, and who became linked with
Gereon’s - still much disputed - execu¬
tion. Beyond dispute, however, is the fact
that the church dedicated to St Gereon is
the only one in modern-day Cologne
which was founded in Roman times. It
dates back to the 4th century, when Em¬
peror Constantine proclaimed Christian¬
ity the state religion. In the Middle Ages it

T
he Virgin and St Anne, St Peter and
St Christopher continue to be ven¬
erated by Catholics of all nations.
Gereon, on the other hand, the knight
AD 50, when the settlement was granted
the status of a town and made a colony
(“Colonia”) of the Roman Empire. Agrip¬
pina the Younger, wife of Emperor Clau¬
dius and born in Cologne as the daughter
of a Roman general, is supposed to have
was the highest-ranking church in the city
after the cathedral. According to an old
manuscript: “And because the magnificent
building with its mosaic decorations gleams
like gold, the people of Cologne have taken
to calling it ‘The Golden Saints’.”

76
T he city panorama is dominated by
churches - something which was
very much the case, but which is
given particular emphasis here by the
artist. The donors of this altar wing were
clearly proud of what the city’s inhabitants
liked to call their “hilligen Coellen” - their
holy Cologne.
The new cathedral was intended to be
the biggest and most beautiful of all
Cologne’s churches. Work had started on
the building a good 200 years before this
picture was painted, but around 1480 had
all but lost its momentum. The choir is
finished, and partitioned off by a provi¬
sional wall so that it can be used for ser¬
vices. The north tower is missing, and only
half of the south tower has been built. The
wall linking the south tower and the choir
was taken no higher than the 14 metres it
has reached here. We know from other
pictures that a massive crane was mounted
on the platform of the south tower. Our
painter has left it out, however - it prob-
The Rome
of the north
ably didn’t fit with his vision of the “holy
city”. The cathedral was only completed
in 1880: not out of a sense of religious
commitment, but out of a new feeling of
national pride - Cologne cathedral as a
monument to historical German architec¬
ture.
Yet when construction began to stag¬
nate, Cologne was not just the largest of
the German cities, but also a Catholic city
of particularly high standing, as evidenced
by the prize relics in its possession: since
1164 Cologne had been home to the bones
of the Three Kings. The ideal of a Christian
kingdom was closely associated with these
wise men from the East, and since it was
the archbishop of Cologne who crowned
Germany’s newly-elected kings in Aachen,
the devout image of the Magi transferred
itself through him to the new regents.
Even more greatly revered than the
relics of the Three Kings, however, were
the rusty links of St Peter’s chains and his
famous bishop’s staff, which (as we now
know) in fact dates from the 4th century.
Through these relics, the citizens
Cologne believed themselves directly con¬
nected with the apostle. Like the Roman
Christians, they considered their cathedral
to have been founded by Peter and per¬
ceived Cologne as the northern counter¬
part to Rome.
These perhaps not altogether convincing
claims were underpinned with legends.
Peter himself, for example, was supposed
to have sent three men to the Rhine in or¬
der to spread the Word. One of them was
said to have been called Maternus and to
have been the young man whom Jesus
raised from the dead in Nain. When this
same Maternus died in Alsace, his com¬
panions hurried back to Peter and be-
seeched him to restore Maternus to life.
Peter gave them his bishop’s staff, and
when they touched the dead man with it,
he was brought back to life a second time.
Maternus continued to make his way up
the Rhine, founding various communities
as he went, including that of Cologne.
Naturally, the construction of the ca¬
thedral itself was also accompanied by mi¬
raculous tales. One such story concerned a
man who, wishing to do penance, worked
on the cathedral as a simple labourer. He
was so industrious that his colleagues soon
of came to hate him. They killed him and
threw his body into the Rhine - but the fish
brought it back to the surface. Through
this miracle, the wicked deed was exposed
and the murderers forced to confess.
77
C ologne cathedral is dedicated not
just to St Peter, but also to the Vir¬
gin Mary. The painter shows the
Madonna with her infant son and her
mother, St Anne. This three-generation
group was a very popular motif at the end
of the 15th century, and one frequently
treated in art.
The Crusaders brought the cult of St
Anne to western Europe from Jerusalem
and Constantinople. In 1481, i. e. at around
the time this picture was painted, Pope
St Anne
helps
the disciple
78
Sixtus IV introduced St Anne’s day into
the Roman calendar, and 100 years later
she was given her own feast. For all their
veneration of her memory, the question of
whether St Anne conceived her daughter
without the assistance of her husband re¬
mained the subject of dispute amongst
theologians.
The issue was probably of less interest
to the layfolk. They invoked St Anne’s aid
and intercession in a wide range of situ¬
ations, many of them related to family
matters: pregnancy, birth, marriage and
widowhood, for example. Women wanting
but apparently unable to have children, in
particular, addressed their prayers to her,
for according to her legend Anne herself
remained childless for many years. Her
husband Joachim, a shepherd, was taunted
about this in the temple. Upon returning,
troubled, to his flocks, he had a vision, at
exactly the same time as Anne at home: an
angel told him that he would have a child
before whom the whole world would
kneel in reverence. That child was Mary.
St Anne has religious significance solely
as the grandmother of Jesus. This family
connection made her worthy of venera¬
tion and was probably the reason why she
was so popular amongst the middle classes.
Certainly, the cult of St Anne grew with
the rise of the bourgeoisie.
This aspiring class was only able to as¬
sert its identity in cities. In the case of
Cologne, this took place in several, clear¬
ly identifiable stages. Since 953 the arch¬
bishops had also been the secular rulers of
Cologne. It was against them that the civil
movement towards emancipation was first
directed. In 1074 the merchants rebelled;
in 1106 the people of Cologne were grant¬
ed military sovereignty; in 1288 they took
up arms against their archbishop and de¬
feated his army. From now on, the citizens
of Cologne were allowed to rule them¬
selves; their city became, albeit unofficial¬
ly, a free imperial city and was subject only
to the emperor.
A small group of wealthy families took
over the running of affairs. Over the fol¬
lowing decades, however, the merchants,
craftsmen and less well-to-do citizens re¬
belled against this patrician rule. They or¬
ganized themselves into Gaffeln, political
associations, most of them dominated by
individual guilds, and in 1396 overthrew
the patricians. A new constitution was
drawn up, which stated that in future the
city council could only be elected by
members of the Gaffeln, and not by mem¬
bers of the wealthy upper classes.
The middle classes - but not the masses
of domestic servants, clerks and day
labourers - had successfully asserted
themselves. They owed their victory to a
flourishing economy. Their rise was ac¬
companied by an strengthening sense of
family: only with a house, money and a
certain degree of independence could they
start to build up a family tradition, some¬
thing previously only possible for the aris¬
tocracy. Now ordinary citizens started to
get even - with St Anne’s help. Weavers
and bakers and coopers might not be able
to win glory on the battlefield, but they
could gain a place on the council or be
elected to an important post, perhaps even
that of mayor.
A monument
to civic pride

A few years after their victory, the

citizens of Cologne built them¬
selves an architectural monument:
the town hall tower. On a square ground-
plan with sides a good 13 metres in length,
they erected a massive building 61 metres
in height with thick, fortified walla, and
a portal similar to that of a church. The
tower was not merely a grandiose symbol
of civic success, however, but also served a
practical purpose as well.
The patricians had usually dealt with the
affairs of government in their own, large
houses, where they also kept the treasury,
the official wine cellar and the archives.
The new rulers did not own such houses;
furthermore, they wanted to make a clear
distinction between private and public af¬
fairs. So they built the tower with a wine
cellar, conference chambers, and rooms in
which to house the archives, the treasury
and arms. Stationed at the very top were
the tower trumpeters and fire wardens.
The new town hall tower, its stone still
pale in colour, can be seen on the left of the
picture beside the venerable church of
Great St Martin. Were it shown in the cor¬
rect perspective, the tower would actually
appear very much smaller, as it lies further
from the Rhine than the church. But per¬
spective was clearly something in which the
artist had little interest. He only hints at
spatial depth. The city appears to run like a
narrow strip along the river, whereas in
truth it took the shape of a crescent, curving
away from the Rhine into the background.
The topography of Cologne neverthe¬ example, from which Cologne’s economy Cologne and only returned to the city in
had long benefited, and the opening up of 1821. Of even greater consequence than its
less only occupies a fraction of the paint¬
new trade routes: once mariners had found ambivalent relationship with its prelates,
ing. As a whole, the work remains firmly
the passage around Cape Horn, goods however, was Cologne’s rejection of Prot¬
rooted in the traditions of medieval sacred
from the East no longer reached northern estantism. Almost all the cities undergoing
art. Peace and prosperity are guaranteed
Europe via the Mediterranean and the economic expansion were Protestant, or
not by the long city wall, the industrious
Rhine, but were shipped along the coast. tolerated Protestant churches. Not so
citizens on the riverbank or the new town
Cities such as Antwerp and Amsterdam Cologne: even as late as 1787, it was still
hall, but by the saints who dominate three-
blossomed and usurped the place of the banning the construction of Protestant
quarters of the picture. Consequently, the
former centres of trade, quickly overtaking houses of God. If the Romans and, later,
narrow slice of real world leads not into
them in terms of size, too: right up to the the Holy Roman Emperors had once fos¬
blue sky and white clouds, but into the
19th century, the population of Cologne tered the standing of the fortified city in
traditional gold ground, a symbol of the
numbered little more than 40,000. the north of their empires, after Luther
omnipresence of the Divine.
Most of the internal reasons for Co¬ Cologne remained merely a bulwark of
In the centuries that followed the com¬
logne’s decline can be traced, directly or the Counter-Reformation. Just as the city
pletion of this altarpiece, Cologne suffered
indirectly, to the Church. The ousted arch¬ failed to embrace a new political vision, so
a period of decline. Many of the reasons
bishops had set up residence in Bonn and the saints are looking away, preventing the
for this were beyond the city’s control -
Briihl; they took little further interest in intrusion of new, forward-looking ideas.
the collapse of the Hanseatic League, for
79
80
Sandro Botticelli: The Story of Nastagio degli Onesti, 1482/83
Shock treatment for the intractable
The Florentine painter Sandro Botticelli
was made famous by his Venus, wafting
gracefully across the sea on a scallop, and
his sweetly-smiling Madonnas - images of
seraphic peace and harmony. One panel
which came out of his workshop around
1482 was quite different, however: it shows,
in the most exquisite colours, an unexpect¬
edly dramatic and horrifying scene.
In the middle of a rural banquet beneath
pine trees, a “naked woman, young and
very beautiful” comes rushing onto the
scene, “sobbing and screaming for mercy.
Nor was this all, for a pair of big, fierce
mastiffs were running at the girl’s heels,
one on either side, and every so often they
caught up with her and savaged her.”
Bringing up the rear was “a swarthy-look-
ing knight, his face contorted with anger
... and brandishing a rapier, and who, in
terms no less abusive than terrifying, was
threatening to kill her.”
Thus Giovanni Boccaccio describes the
scene which - over 100 years later - Botti¬
celli would recreate in this panel. The tale
from which it is taken is found in his
Decameron of 1350, a collection of short
stories which became tremendously pop¬
ular, and which were well-known to the
large majority of Botticelli’s contempor¬
aries. The artist thereby sticks to Boccac¬
cio’s tale right down to the details.
When the “agonized yells of the fugitive
girl” make themselves heard, the well-
dressed company, gathered in an enclosed
spot beside the sea, are - in the painting as
in the story - already on their last course.
The three musicians who have played dur¬
ing the meal are now silent: the lute .and
recorder are lying on the table, and the
drummer is taking off his instruments.
The ladies leap to their feet in horror, a
table tips over, and the harmony of this
rural feast is destroyed.
Only one person seems to be master of
the situation. A young man dressed in a
grey jacket, red hose and yellow boots is
standing in the midst of the uproar with
arms raised, as if directing the action. He is
the hero of Boccaccio’s story, a wealthy
heir from Ravenna called Nastagio degli
Onesti, who has deliberately stage-man¬
aged this confrontation between his gen¬
teel guests and the ferocious pursuit. He is
using this hellish spectacle - and it is truly
nothing less - for his own ends.
Both, the hunter and the hunted, have
long been dead and are condemned to this
endless chase. “Every time I catch up with
her”, explains the cruel rider, “I kill her
with this ... rapier; then I slit her back
open, and ... I tear from her body that ...
heart... and ... cast it to these dogs to feed
upon. Within a short space of time, as or¬
dained by the power and justice of God,
she springs to her feet again as though she
had not been dead at all, and her agonizing
flight begins all over again, with the dogs
and myself in pursuit.”
The knight was given his terrible pun¬
ishment because he had committed suicide
out of unrequited love. The woman whom
he loved so much, meanwhile, had earned
her own hideous fate not - like so many of
the damned whom Dante, the devout
poet, encountered in Hell - because of any
sinful conduct. No, the less devout Boc¬
caccio had her punished for her “hard,
cold heart to which neither love nor pity
could ever gain access”, and because, “cruel,
harsh and unfriendly”, she would not
accept her suitor.
81

A blood-curdling
spectacle after
the picnic
In The Decameron, the tale of Nastagio
degli Onesti forms the Eighth Story of
the Fifth Day, which is devoted to “the
adventures of lovers who survived calam¬
ities or misfortunes and attained a state of
happiness”.
The calamity which Nastagio had to
survive was the rejection of his suit by a
young woman, introduced as the daugh¬
ter of Messer Paolo Traversaro”. “On ac¬
count possibly of her singular beauty, or
perhaps because of her exalted rank”, she
turned down his offer of marriage. The
spoiled youth fell into despair, toyed with
the idea of suicide, but in the end took the
advice of his friends and repaired to the
solitude of the pinewoods by the sea. Hav¬
ing sent for tents and pavilions, he dis¬
patched his companions back to the city,
from time to time inviting various friends
■to dine or breakfast with him.
One day, while wandering in the
pinewoods lost in thought, Nastagio came
face to face with the hellish chase. Seized
82
The last course had just been served
when the girl, knight and dogs rushed
onto the scene. The knight repeated his
story, “pounced ... upon the girl, who was
kneeling before him, held by the two mas¬
tiffs and screaming for mercy at the top of
her voice ... and plunged his rapier into
the middle of her breast ... extracted her
heart and everything else around it, and
hurled it to the two mastiffs, who de¬
voured it greedily upon the instant.
“All the ladies present ... wept as plaint¬
ively as though what they had witnessed
had been done to themselves ... But none
was stricken with so much terror as the
cruel maiden loved by Nastagio, for she ...
realized that these matters had more to do
with herself than with any of the other
guests ... consequently, she already had
the sensation of fleeing before her enraged
suitor, with the mastiffs tearing away at
her haunches. So great was the fear engen¬
dered within her ... that in order to avoid a
similar fate she converted her emnity into
love”. Nastagio’s plan had worked: the
resistance put up by the woman he adored
had collapsed. They were married the fol¬
lowing Sunday, “and after celebrating
their nuptials they settled down to a long
with compassion for the beautiful victim, and happy life together.”
“Their marriage”, so Boccaccio con¬
he attempted to defend her against the cruel
knight, who only warned him thus: “Leave cludes his story, “was by no means the
me ... to give this wicked sinner her only good effect to be produced by this
deserts!” The knight introduced himself as
Guido degli Anastagi and explained that, in
life, he had been deeply in love with the
young woman. When she spurned him,
horrible apparition, for from that day
forth the ladies of Ravenna in general were
so frightened by it that they became much
more tractable to men’s pleasures than
however, he had killed himself in despair they had ever been in the past.”
and been damned. When the woman herself
subsequently died, “we were both given a
special punishment, which consisted in her
case of fleeing before me, and in my own of
pursuing her ... Every Friday at this hour I
overtake her in this part of the woods”.
The hunt then departed, leaving Nasta¬
gio “rooted to the spot out of fear and
compassion”. He was a practical young
man, however, and it occurred to him that
the encounter could prove very useful.
The next Friday he invited Paolo Traver¬
saro and his family to a “magnificent ban¬
quet” in the open air.
He “had the tables placed beneath the
pine-trees in such a way as to surround the
place where he had witnessed the massacre
of the cruel lady”, and seated his hard¬
hearted beloved “directly facing the spot
where the scene would be enacted”.
 T he moral of Boccaccio’s tale
Ladies, comply with men’s wishes! -
- their empire was built upon the lower
classes of society and they did not want to
No lesser personage than Piero’s own
son and successor, the “magnificent”
was clearly considered an appropri¬ arouse envy. Lorenzo de’ Medici, assumed the ceremo¬
ate exhortation to a bride. For everything The members of the Medici banking dyn¬ nial role of “marriage broker” at the wed¬
points to the conclusion that Botticelli’s asty had ruled the “republic” of Florence ding of Giannozzo Pucci. The bridegroom
Story of Nastagio was commissioned for a as “simple citizens” since 1434, with the remained true to family tradition: in 1497
wedding. Resplendent above the heads of help of loyal supporters such as the Puccis. he was part of a plot to return the now ex¬
the ladies on the left is the coat of arms of Such families had seen their fortunes rise iled Medici to power. As a consequence of
the Pucci family, bearing the head of a with the Medici, has amassed wealth and his involvement, he was executed by the
Moor; the shield appears again on a tree on had been rewarded with political offices. Republicans. There was thus a very good
the right, this time combined with the em¬ Antonio Pucci had made himself useful to reason for the Medici coat of arms to hang
blem of the Bini family, signifying an al¬ Piero de’ Medici (1416-1469), known as in the centre of Botticelli’s painting.
liance between the two houses, in other Piero the Palsied. After the quashing of a
words the marriage of a Pucci to a Bini. conspiracy against the Medici, he succeed¬
Documents show that one Giannozzo ed in 1466 in pacifying the opposition by
Pucci married Lucrezia, daughter of Piero arranging marriages between the estranged A lesson
Bini, in Florence in 1483. Both families be¬ parties. for a bride
longed to the wealthy merchant class; An¬
tonio, the father of the bridegroom, had
already purchased an Adoration of the
Magi from Botticelli in 1470.
It was traditional, before weddings, to
commission paintings containing a tribute
or an exhortation to the bride. For the
Pucci marriage, Botticelli portrayed the
most important scenes from Boccaccio’s
story of Nastagio degli Onesti on four
wood panels in tempera. The first two
show the young man encountering the hu¬
man hunt in the pinewoods and seeing the
young woman meet her horrible death.
The third panel, measuring 84 x 142 cm, is
the one illustrated here, and shows the
banquet under the pine trees and - in the
right-hand background in front of a tent -
Nastagio’s marriage to his now compliant
beloved, who lays her hand trustingly on
her husband’s arm. Finally, the fourth
panel depicts the wedding feast within an
imposing Renaissance architecture.
The cycle was probably destined for
the apartment occupied by the newly¬
weds in the Pucci family palace. Grown¬
up sons continued to live in their father’s
house; when they got married, their rooms
were redecorated. This included the inser¬
tion into the wall panelling of painted
wooden panels - the sole luxury in rooms
which for the most part were simply fur¬
nished.
The thrifty merchants only spent money
when prestige demanded it, namely in the
case of feasts and marriages. For the rest of
the time, they cultivated a life of patri¬
archal simplicity, for political reasons and
following the example set by the Medici:
these “uncrowned kings” of Florence de¬
liberately avoided ostentation, because

83
A ntonio Pucci, who arranged mar¬
riages as a means of reconciling
political parties, probably sought a
similarly politically and financially advant¬
ageous alliance for his own son. Giannoz-
zo’s first wife, Smeralda, died in August
1482, and negotiations for the Bini mar¬
riage were clearly begun almost straight¬
away.
Marriages in these circles rarely had
anything to do with love. What was at
issue was the alliance of two houses, two
fortunes and two political spheres of influ¬
ence. Heads of families and lawyers hag¬
gled over marriage contracts for months.
The Florentine historian C. Cambi, writ¬
ing at the end of the 15th century, accused
his fellow citizens of thereby treating
women as if they were rolls of cloth.
The “commodities” themselves were sel¬
dom asked for their opinion. Young women
like the two heroines in Boccaccio’s story,
who were able to reject a serious suitor
simply because they didn’t like him, must
have been extremely rare. It is significant
that, unlike the male heroes in Boccaccio s
tale, they remain anonymous, or are simply
referred to as “a daughter of Messer Paolo
Traversaro”.
84
Woman existed neither in political, nor
economic, nor legal terms - it was not
even possible for them to take legal action
paid little regard to the wishes of Alberti
or their menfolk. In the 15th century,
however, the legendary, highly-educated
Renaissance woman equal in rank to men
against someone; a male relative had to do
must have been the exception. The woman
it for them. Girls from the upper classes
celebrated by poets and artists in their
were 17 at the oldest when they passed out
sonnets and paintings was an idealized fig¬
of their father’s possession into that of a
ure; in reality, she was treated by a patri¬
husband. If he died, a son or a brother of
archal society as an ignorant, sinful crea¬
the widow assumed power of disposal
ture driven by instinct, one who had led
over her and her estate.
the biblical Adam into temptation: a wild
In his treatise On the Family, written
animal to be hunted and tamed. This dual¬
after 1430, Leon Battista Alberti recom¬
ity is encapsulated in the conch shells
mended future bridegrooms to cast an eye
placed on the truncated trees in the fore¬
over their brides “like good heads of fam¬
ground of the present panel. They carry a
ilies, who look several times at the mei-
double meaning as symbols both of female
chandise they are buying before conclud¬
sexuality and of virginity. Botticelli uses
ing the deal”. Factors which Alberti there¬
them in his pictures as attributes of the pa¬
by considered important were, alongside
gan Venus and, equally, the Virgin Mary.
the standing of the family, the influence
wielded by the father, the size of the
dowry, a physical build which promised
fertility, the ability to run a large house¬
hold, and the virtues of faithfulness, de¬
corum, and discretion. A wife should al¬
ways have her eyes cast down, according
to Alberti, should never ask her master Young women
what he did when he went out, and never
as
take a look at his accounts.
It may well be that the ladies of Florence commodities
O nly one early anecdote about Bot¬
ticelli’s relationship with the op¬
master’s instructions and in his style - dec¬
orative elements such as clothing, land¬
Three of them today hang in the Prado
Museum in Madrid. The fourth, in which
posite sex has survived. When a scape and gold paint. Botticelli is supposed Nastagio’s wedding is celebrated with
friend tried to persuade him to get mar¬ to have had little interest in landscape great pomp, was purchased from a British
ried, the painter replied: “Let me tell you painting. private collection by an American who
something that happened one night not so In the case of wall panels, he generally wishes to remain anonymous. Until 1868,
long ago. I dreamt I had taken a wife, and only drew the designs, although in the the complete cycle hung in the Pucci fam¬
it troubled me so much that I woke up. So view of the art historian Ronald Light- ily palazzo in Florence. Living there today
that I wouldn’t fall back to sleep and have bown, there were a small number of work¬ is Emilio Pucci, the grand old man of Ital¬
the same dream, I got up and spent the shop pictures whose important parts Bot¬ ian fashion. His daughter Laudomia -
whole night wandering the streets of Flor¬ ticelli executed himself, or which he went quite unlike her forebear Lucrezia - is
ence like a madman.” Botticelli’s words over at the end. In Lightbown’s opinion, quite welcome to take a look at the ac¬
led his friend to conclude that “the ground the finest and most interesting examples of counts: as vice-president, she manages her
wasn’t yet fertile for the seed”. The painter this were the Nastagio panels. father’s business.
remained a bachelor and lived all his life in
his brother Mariano’s house.
In 1470, Botticelli opened his own
workshop, in which he employed appren¬
tices and journeymen. By around 1480, his
paintings were already highly prized
amongst the art-loving members of Medici
society. His two masterpieces, the Prima-
vera and the Birth of Venus, were painted
just a few years later. He was famed not
simply as an “outstanding artist” but as a
“skilful and willing adherent to the in¬
structions of his patrons”. Antonio Pucci
would certainly have given him precise in¬
structions regarding the coats of arms and
portraits of friends and relatives which
were to be included in the Nastagio panels.
Although the individual characters can no
longer be identified, the older man in the
red hat may be Antonio Pucci himself, or
his protector Piero de’ Medici. He is seat¬
ed directly beneath the Medici coat of
arms with its six red balls on a gold
ground. To these were added, in 1465, a
blue ball with three golden fleur-de-lys, as
a heraldic thank-you from the king of
France to his Italian banker.
Naturally, details such as this coat of
arms would not have been painted by Bot¬
ticelli himself. They fell to his assistants, of
whom only Filippino Lippi made a name
for himself as an artist in his own right. It
was they who added - following their

Painter
and
patron
85
 Hieronymus Bosch: The Haywain, between 1485 and 1490

A cart trundles towards damnation

made more profit than traditional masters

clearly as if to make up for the chaos in
of a craft, and they amassed large fortunes
front.
The panel, which measures 135 x 100 at the expense of real workers.
The acquisition of wealth was a topical
cm, forms the centre of a triptych. The left
subject in Bosch’s day. The ruler of the
wing portrays Paradise, and the right wing
Netherlandish provinces - the Hapsburg
a sort of Hell. The haywain and its crowd
Archduke and later Emperor Maximilian -
of followers are thus moving away from
supported the new production methods,
the meadows of innocence and towards
since he profited from the greater volume
the place of punishment for all sin. Never
of taxes they yielded. His banner, with the
before, as far as is known, had a haywain
double-headed eagle, can be seen behind
formed the central focus of a painting. To¬
gether with its wings, the work resembles the group of rulers on the left-hand edge

an altar. But at the point where Christ of the picture.

Another highly topical subject was the
would normally be seen on the Cross,
Bosch paints his farm cart, disproportion¬ decaying state of the Catholic Church.

ately large in relation to the surface area of Bosch painted this picture of everyone
trying to grab a handful of hay 30 years,
the panel.
The work is undated, but leading Bosch before Luther nailed his Protestant theses

experts place it between 1485 and 1490. In to the church door at Wittenberg. One of

all probability, it was painted in s’Her- the chief reasons for Luther’s anger at the
togenbosch, the artist’s birthplace, from Church was its secularization. The Pope
At first sight an alienating picture - over¬
which he derived his name. Born around behaved no differently to the princes. Ma¬
crowded with objects and figures, bearing
1450 into a family called van Aken, he died terial gain came before spiritual leadership.
little relation to one another. In the middle
there in 1516. It was from his that he de¬ The situation was similar in the churches
is a cart laden with hay, with a bush some¬
rived his name. S’Hertogenbosch was at and monasteries, which ranked amongst the
how growing on top. In front of the bush,
that time a prosperous town of some biggest landowners. Many of the clergy
three people are making music; standing
25,000 inhabitants, albeit without its own and those living in monasteries considered
beside them - and painted with equal real¬
university or bishop’s palace. Its citizens their own well-being more important than
ism - are an angel and a devil. Riding be¬
wove linen, forged weapons, and traded, the leading of a pious life. The annals of
hind the wagon are an emperor, a king and
chiefly in agricultural products. Both then the day are full of scandals; the faithful felt
a pope - as if high-ranking rulers had ever
and over the following centuries, some themselves abandoned, and by the end of
provided a ceremonial escort for dried
90% of the population worked on estates the Middle Ages there was a widespread
grass! The haywain is accompanied by
and in the fields. Bosch’s painting thus sense of scepticism and pessimism. Symp¬
men and women who, rather than trying
stemmed from a time when a laden hay¬ tomatic of this mood is Bosch’s figure of
to prop up the heavy load, are in fact try¬
wain would have been a familiar sight to Christ, pushed away to the upper edge of
ing to pull hay off it. They fight, and some
the viewer, who would also have appreci¬ the picture and displaying his stigmata in a
of them fall under the wheels.
ated the value of hay as winter fodder. seemingly helpless fashion.
The wagon is being pulled by strange
The rise in s’Hertogenbosch’s fortunes The decline of the Church, therefore,
creatures - demons from the underworld.
was accompanied, as in other Dutch towns, and the abolition of the guild system, to¬
One of them is not quite a fish and not
by social strife. Since the height of the gether with religious and social uncertainty
quite a man, but has something of both.
Middle Ages, all skilled trade activities had and a new wealth, characterized the society
Behind them, people are streaming out of
been regulated by guilds. Now, however, in which Bosch painted his Haywain.
a mound of earth with a wooden door.
There is another contradiction, too, be¬ employers introduced new production

tween the wasteland in the foreground and processes and based their operations on

the rich landscape in the upper half of what would later be termed early capital¬
the picture, presented so beautifully and ist methods. Those who were successful

86
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87

The world
is a
haystack
C arts on which something was sym¬
bolically represented would have
been familiar to the 15th-century
viewer from festival processions, such as
those staged during the annual Shrovetide
carnival or to honour a ruler. It is not
merely the load carried by the haywain
which is important here, however, but also
the fact that it is moving forward. The
people of the Middle Ages thought and
felt in eschatological terms: according to
Christian teaching, humankind was head¬
ing for an ultimate destination - the resur¬
rection of the dead, the Last Judgement,
and eternal life for the blessed. On the
Day of Judgement, each person would
have to answer for his actions before the
throne of God. Each person was heading
inexorably, along with everyone else, to¬
wards that day of divine reckoning - in¬
cluding those who had lost sight of that
fact in the hustle and bustle of earthly ex¬
istence. The haywain is rolling along. This
motif of forward movement is also behind
Bosch’s Ship of Fools, in which religious
and secular representatives of society are
88
shown passing the time on board in frivol¬
ous pursuits. They pay no attention to the
course they are sailing, and instead of
landing in the harbour of salvation, they
are shipwrecked off the coast of Fool’s
Land and are unable to stand before God
at the Last Judgement.
The cart is laden with hay to a height
which - from a realistic point of view - is
impracticable. According to a Netherland¬
ish proverb: “The world is a haystack, and
everyone takes from it as much as they can
grab.” Although the proverb is only first
recorded in the 19th century, it may be
older. This is supported by the text of a
Netherlandish song chronicled around
1470: God has piled up all good things like
a haystack for the benefit of humankind; a
fool is one who wants to have the whole
haystack entirely for himself. Many of the
figures in Bosch’s painting are caught up in
frenzied activity, trying to grab at the hay;
only the rulers, accompanying the hay as if
it were their rightful property, are calm.
The symbolic meaning of hay would
have been familiar to Bosch’s contempor¬
aries who, from the Bible, would recog¬
nise this reference to the ephemeral nature
of all things. Psalm 37: “Don’t worry
about the wicked ... For like grass, they
soon fade away.” Psalm 90: “For you, a
thousand years are as yesterday! ... You
sweep people away ... like grass that
springs up in the morning. In the morning
it blooms and flourishes, but by evening it
is dry and withered.” Isaiah 40: “... people
are like the grass that dies away ... The
grass withers ... but the word of our God
stands forever.” And in his first letter to
the Corinthians, Paul writes of the value
of worldly possessions: “... gold, silver,
jewels, wood, hay, or straw ... Everyone’s
work will be put through the fire to see
whether or not it keeps its value.”
With the hay on his cart, Bosch makes
reference to ephemerality and greed. The
thought or the sense of the transience of all
things, of the unworthiness of humankind
and of the approaching apocalypse was
particularly widespread within the re¬
signed atmosphere of the late Middle
Ages. On the other hand, the introduction
of early capitalist forms of industry made
it possible for individuals to amass wealth
on a scale unimaginable in the days of the
old guild system. Bankers such as the Fug-
gers could decide the outcome of wars
with their purses.
When the protector of this early capital¬
ist economic order, Archduke Maximilian,
visited s’FIertogenbosch in 1481, the plat¬
form erected for him collapsed. This, it
was said, was the revenge wreaked by
craftsmen who supported the old guild
system. In Bruges in 1488 Maximilian was
even held hostage by guild leaders. At
times, the conflict between those who sup¬
ported his rule, and with it the new order
and the chance to get rich, and those who
did not, came close to civil war.
Opposed
to God's
order

In the left-hand wing of the triptych,

Bosch portrays not just Paradise, but
also the fall of the angels, as described in
Revelations: “Satan ... was thrown down
to the earth with all his angels”. Bosch
shows the rebel angels as small, insect-like
creatures, often with a tail, tumbling out of
the clouds and disappearing into the earth.
They reappear in the central panel as the
demons pulling the haywain.
Revelations describes Satan as “the one
deceiving the whole world”. With the help
of the hay, Satan’s helpers are enticing
the vain, greedy, warring inhabitants of
Bosch’s painting towards Hell. As always
in his pictures, these demons are a mixture
of human, animal and plant. One is a
hooded man with branches growing out of
his back; another is a fish with human legs,
human arms and the face of a mouse.
It may well be that Bosch was here
indulging his own distinctive, fantastical
imagination. But there may equally well be
a theoretical explanation for such figures:
whereas God had separated the genera, the
bodies of Bosch’s crossbreeds are clearly
opposed to God’s order.
For the majority of people in the Middle
Ages, the devil and his helpers were real
beings, as clearly emerges from the guide¬
lines issued to help worshippers examine
their conscience prior to confession, and
from people’s life stories and tales of mys¬
tical experiences. In the 13th century, for
example, the abbot of Schontal monastery
reported that the world was full of evil There are many records in which it is ite sex, although of course they also came
spirits, who surged around every person claimed that people felt themselves pushed as deformed creatures with heads as large
like water around a drowning man. The or punched by ghosts, without them actu¬ as cauldrons, crowned with horns. Hybrid
abbot blamed these invisible beings for ally seeing anything. As to the abbot in the figures were nevertheless the exception;
every indisposition, be it toothache, loss 13th century, such spirits were real, but in¬ they are sooner found as roof decorations
of appetite or a hangover after drinking. It visible. If they showed themselves, it was or gargoyles on Gothic cathedrals than in
was even they who caused every sort of in¬ usually as animals. To one Eustochia written records. It seems they were never
voluntary noise, whether laughing, sneez¬ Calafato, who died in 1485, they appeared experienced at first hand in the shapes
ing or sighing, for that was how they com¬ “now in the shape of dogs, now in that of which Bosch created so skilfully and with
municated amongst themselves. In 1487, bears, now in that of pigs”. In particular, such variety. His fantasies in paint were
around the time that this painting was ex¬ they often came as unpleasant types of richer than those visited in person by ap¬
ecuted, a Carthusian monk wrote that he small animals and insects. Goethe adopted paritions from Hell.
had stumbled in his cell one night, and a this idea into his Faust, in which Mephis-
ghost had caused him to fall. Was it the topheles is the “lord of the rats and mice,
devil, he asked, or was it some poor soul the flies, frogs, bugs, lice ...”
from purgatory who wanted to make his To nuns, monks and priests sworn to
presence known? chastity they often appeared as the oppos¬

89
B osch’s painting speaks, as we have
said, of ephemerality and greed.
Along the lower edge of the picture,
he arranges people who clearly illustrate
deception and theft, inspired by greed.
The man standing on the left wears a tall
black hat, identifying him as a travelling
magician. He has a child in his cape, per¬
haps stolen. Next to him, a gypsy is read¬
ing another woman’s palm, while her child
tampers with the woman’s dress. Further
right, a quack doctor is tormenting a fe¬
male patient. A nun is making up to a devil
playing the bagpipes (a symbol of the male
sex organ), while other nuns are stuffing
hay into a sack at the table of a fat monk
with a glass in his hand; they are swindling
their church and breaking their vows. Be¬
side the haywain above them, meanwhile,
there is murder and death. Only on top of
the haywain does Bosch seem to have in¬
cluded something of an idyll, in the group
of three figures peacefully making music
together: a richly-dressed lutenist, a young
woman and a young man.
Jarring notes
in a
musical idyll
Half concealed in the bush, however, is a
couple kissing, watched by an observer
behind the bush. Is there a symbolism in
this arrangement - in front those commun¬
icating chastely through music, behind
those whose methods are more physical,
and at the back the spy, the voyeur? For all
the speculation, the scene remains an en¬
igma. Only the significance of the peri¬
pheral figures is clear: the blue demon in¬
terrupts the love songs with the blast of his
trumpet nose, while the angel looks be¬
seechingly up to Christ. The angel is the
only figure in this painting who is aware of
the existence of Christ.
Man, caught between angel and devil -
he must make up his mind. According to
the teachings of the Church, humankind
was by no means helpless against the devil,
but Satan’s power was great and there
were many who made pacts with him. In
Goethe, such pacts were written in blood
on paper or vellum. In the Middle Ages,,
they were sealed with the sexual act. “Not
without great sorrow”, declared Innocent
VIII in a papal bull of 1484, had he learned
that “in some parts of Upper Germany ...
very many people of both sexes, deserting
the Catholic faith, [had] entered into car¬
nal union with the devil”.
Those who joined themselves with the
devil were witches and sorcerers, and in
the same bull the Pope ordered that they
be hunted out and destroyed. This became
the particular task of the Dominicans,
whereby two members of the order, Hein¬
rich Institoris and Jakob Sprenger, were
especially industrious. It was they who
wrote the Malleus maleficarum (Witches’
Hammer), an instruction manual on in¬
quisitions and sermons. The three-vol¬
ume work was first published in 1487
and quickly went into further editions.
Sprenger was a prior in Cologne, the cap¬
ital of the Dominican province to which
s’Hertogenbosch also belonged. When
Maximilian visited s’Hertogenbosch, he
stayed with the Dominicans; sacred and
secular power were thus closely linked -
just as, in Bosch’s painting, the pope, em¬
peror and king follow close together be¬
hind the haywain.
The belief in witches, devils and demons,
clearly already widespread, was furthered
still by the Church. The latter was weak;
many of the faithful were turning to sects
or anti-Rome movements. By way of warn¬
ing and as a means of countering deser¬
tion, such people were accused of being
possessed by demons or in league with the
devil.
Erasmus of Rotterdam, the great hu¬
manist, condemned the fear of witches in¬
cited by the Church. “The pact with the
devil”, he declared, was itself an “inven¬
tion of the masters of the inquisition”.

90
A topical
message
for today

T here are two versions of The Hay-

wain. One hangs in the Escorial, the
other - reproduced here - in the
Prado. Whether both are by Bosch, or just
one, or whether both are perhaps copies of
a lost original, and whether the artist him¬
self put his signature on the panel or some¬
one else - the fact that these questions re¬
main unanswered does not detract from
the quality of the painting. One of the two
panels, like other paintings by Bosch, was
purchased just 100 years after its comple¬
tion by Philip II, the Spanish Habsburg
king, and taken to El Escorial, his monas-
terial seat of government.
The years that gave rise to the Haywain
also saw the completion in Florence of a
painting of a very different nature, Botti¬
celli’s Birth of Venus. Botticelli celebrated
- for the first time since classical antiquity
- the beauty of the female body, and with
it prized the dignity and strength of hu¬
mankind per se. He stylized the figure of
Venus as a masterpiece of Creation. It is an
optimistic work, an early testament to a
new epoch, the Renaissance. Botticelli’s
Venus makes it clear that Bosch, his north¬
ern contemporary, was very much a
painter of the resigned, pessimistic closing
years of the Middle Ages.
There are no written documents, how¬
ever, indicating to what extent Bosch him¬
self shared the general mood, or whether
he actually believed in demons himself.
Did he feel hunted, threatened? Was paint¬ tych, gluttony also features. It is demon¬ For social and economic reasons, this

ing his means of exorcising himself of strated by the stout monk with a glass in devout warning was particularly apt in

nightmarish visions? Or of distancing him¬ one hand and his rosary in the other. The Bosch’s day. In a strange way, it remains

self from the Church through derisive ca¬ arguments against over-eating today are equally appropriate today - not with re¬

ricatures? Both opinions can be found in based on considerations of health, not gard to personal possessions, but to our

the relevant literature. Bosch’s work is morality, and we perceive the battle for treatment of nature.

open to interpretation. We do not know wealth, too, as a legitimate one. We have Not unlike the figures in this painting
internalized liberal and capitalist ideas to grabbing the hay, people today are trying -
whether his relationship with the Catholic
such an extent that we are barely able to both in cooperation and in rivalry - to
Church was close or distant. According to
recognize the pious message contained in seize and exploit the riches of nature for
records, he was a member of the well-re¬
this picture: a warning against worldly themselves. And like the haywain, one
garded confraternity of Our Blessed Lady,
possessions. It is a warning which runs might say, they are thereby heading blind¬
but that alone does not say a great deal. He
through the history of Christianity right ly towards the abyss, the destruction of
received one commission from Philip the
from the beginning. The fat-belly in the their world. The crowded foreground in
Fair, son of Maximilian, but little is known
monk’s habit demonstrates the reason Bosch’s painting is already desolate and
about his other patrons. What is certain is
why: someone who drinks wine and has empty, without water or vegetation. The
that he didn’t have to live from his paint¬
hay gathered for him does not pray; his beautiful background bears witness to
ing; he had married into a wealthy family.
love of worldly goods reduces his love of what is being lost.
While greed is given pride of place
amongst the sins portrayed in this trip¬ God.

91
Venus, a life-sized human figure, steps ashore from
her shell; the female nude, banned for 1000 years,
has returned to take its rightful place in art. Like
Venus herself, the nude had been seen as the incar¬
nation of sinful lust. The Renaissance rediscovered
the beauty of the human body. The painting is one
of the greatest treasures of the Uffizi, Florence.
Sandro Botticelli: The Birth of Venus, c. 1486
Fairest daughter of heaven
and waves
It had been a thousand years since anyone
in Europe had seen the like of it: an almost
life-sized nude, the representation of a
naked woman, a picture of perfect cor¬
poreal grace - Aphrodite, the Greek god¬
dess of beauty and love, whom the Romans
called Venus, reborn in Renaissance
Florence. Arisen from the waves, borne on
a breath of wind, she approaches the shore
on a shell.
This pagan scene was painted around
1486 by the Florentine Sandro Botticelli, a
devout Christian, whose studio concen¬
trated largely on satisfying the enormous
demands of the public for devotional pic¬
tures: saints, gentle-faced Virgins and the
Holy Child. Practically all art had a reli¬
gious content at the time. It has been calcu¬
lated that only 13 percent of art works had
secular themes, the majority of them por¬
traits.
At the peak of his career, Botticelli, the
renowned painter of Virgins, decided to
turn his hand to something new: four
large-scale “mythologies” based on the
pagan tradition of Classical myths and le¬
gends. One of them was the Birth of Venus.
The first male nude of the Renaissance,
a young bronze David, had been modelled
from life in 1430 by the Florentine sculptor
Donatello. The fact that the Birth of Venus
did not appear until over fifty years later is
a testimony to the lasting effect of the
Christian taboo against the portrayal of the
naked female body. Previously, the only fe¬
male nudes to dare appear in works of art
had been Eves with snakes and apples;
punished for their sins, they had quickly
been expelled from paradise, stooping
under the burden of their shame.
Unlike these heavily stylised, Gothic
figures of Eve, Botticelli’s Venus is patently
the product of anatomical studies, as well
as the artist’s adherence to Classical
models. The influence of Greek Classical
sculpture is visible in the way the weight of
the goddess rests on one leg, in the attrac¬
tive curve of her hip, in her chaste gesture.
The Renaissance artist has drawn her pro¬
portions in accordance with a canon of
harmony and ideal beauty developed by
artists such as Polyclitus and Praxiteles.
This included the measurement of an equal
distance between the breasts, between the
navel and breasts, and between navel and
crotch. The canon helped form countless
nudes, from Classical Greek statues to
figures on late Roman tombs. However, it
later fell into disrepute and, eventually, ob¬
livion, where it remained until its redis¬
covery by the Renaissance. It has in¬
fluenced our taste ever since.
Botticelli’s goddess of beauty is one of
the great stars of the Uffizi, Florence. Only
with difficulty can she be protected against
the storm of her admirers. The situation
has become worse since restoration of the
work was concluded in the spring of 1987.
A layer of varnish, added some time after
the work was completed and darkened to a
yellowish-brown patina with age, was
removed from the 184 x 285.5cm canvas.
The heavens, waves and deities now shine
out boldly and brightly in their original
tempera.
93
W here the goddess of
lingers, roses fall from the sky.
In the place where her foot first
alighted on land - according to the Greek
poet Anacreon (who lived from 580 until
after 495 B.C.) - sprang the very first rose¬
bush. There are pale red roses, too, wound
around the waist of the girl waiting to re¬
ceive Venus on the shore. Perhaps she is
one of the three Graces, thought in Classi¬
cal antiquity to belong to the entourage of
the goddess, or one of the three Horae, the
seasons. The anemones at her feet and her
cornflower-bespangled dress suggest she is
the Hora of spring - the time of the year
when Venus restored love and beauty to
the earth after a hard winter.
The Birth of Venus could almost be
called Primavera, or Spring, the title of
Botticelli’s other great “mythology” in the
Uffizi. Here, too, a (clothed) Venus holds
court in a garden, surrounded by gods of
the wind, flower-girls and semi-nude
Graces.
Decorative blossom
for a cool villa
94
love
The painter and art biographer Giorgio
Vasari mentions the paintings for the first
time in 1550, when they hung together at
Castello, a country villa near Florence be¬
longing to Cosimo I de’ Medici. Vasari,
who was Duke Cosimo’s architect, de¬
scribes one as “The birth of Venus, and the
skies and winds who lead her to the Earth,
escorted by the gods of love; the other,
Venus crowned by the Graces with flowers,
announces the advent of Spring.”1
Art historians have generally assumed
that Botticelli painted the works for the
owner of this villa. In 1486 the owner was
Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco de’ Medici, also
known as “Lorenzo the Younger” to dis¬
tinguish him from his cousin Lorenzo the
Magnificent, the uncrowned king of the
Republic of Florence. However, while a re¬
cently discovered inventory has verified
the younger Lorenzo’s ownership of Pri-
mavera, there is no trace in the inventory
of the Birth of Venus. It is therefore not
known who commissioned it.
A link has naturally been sought be¬
tween the painting and the two most fa¬
mous Medici of all, Lorenzo the Magnifi¬
cent and his brother Giuliano. The splen¬
dour, extolled by the poets, of their pa¬
geants and banquets has never ceased to
fire the popular imagination. The Birth
thus came to be seen as an act of homage to
lgpan|■guy * 4 0 fi]
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Simonetta Vespucci, the wife of a Floren¬
tine merchant. She had been the “Queen of
Beauty” at a tournament organised by
Giuliano in 1475, a fact which led various
commentators to conclude that the nature
of their relationship had been romantic;
and since Simonetta was born at Porto
Venere (Port Venus) on the Ligurian coast,
Botticelli’s goddess was said to bear her
features. Both died shortly after the pa¬
geant: Giuliano stabbed by his political
enemies, and Simonetta of consumption,
adding a tragic note to the popular appeal
of this account of events. Unfortunately,
however, there is no real evidence to sup¬
port the story.
Nor has it ever been explained how the
painting later entered the possession of the
Medici family. It is quite probable that it
was intended for a country house outside
Florence. The owners of these cool villas,
bankers recuperating from business, noise
and epidemics, preferred frescos and can¬
vases with light-hearted themes to reli¬
gious panel paintings. Botticelli probably
painted the goddess for one of his Floren¬
tine contemporaries, many of whom were
capable of combining an understanding of
money and politics with a refined sensi¬
bility for the arts. His patron may even
have been able to appreciate Anacreon in
the Greek original.
,.Wu{ il
Sr- - - _■ Vj Ju
Relatives:
Venus and Mary
A phrodite, or Venus, was held in
high regard by the Greeks and Ro¬
mans. With the triumph of Chris¬
tianity she fell into disgrace. During the
Middle Ages she was seen as the incarna¬
tion of sinful lust and depravity.
The distrust in which she was held until
well into the 14th century is documented
by the Florentine sculptor Lorenzo
Ghiberti (1378-1455). He wrote of an an¬
tique statue of Venus, a work “of great per¬
fection”, found in the neighbouring town
of Siena. The citizens showed great rev¬
erence for the statue, placing it on the town
well. But when the town was afflicted by¬
war, the mood changed dramatically.
“Since idolatry is forbidden by our faith,”
warned one public speaker, “there can
surely be no doubt who has caused our
misfortunes.”2 On 7 November 1357 the
councillors decided to “smash” the statue
of Venus “to pieces” and to “bury its frag¬
ments within the precincts of Florence” in
the hope that they would bring similar
misfortune upon the heads of their
enemies. The same Ghiberti was lucky
enough to witness the rediscovery of a sec¬
ond Venus, which came to light in Florence
“while they were digging under the Bru¬
nelleschi Villa”. However, this statue did
not suffer the fate of its Sienese cousin, for
the religious climate in Florence had now
changed. Tired of the conventions propag¬
ated during the Middle Ages, the Floren¬
tines sought new models. They found them
in Classical antiquity: the movement
which came to be known as the Renais¬
sance had begun.
It is not known what inspired Botticelli,
one of the second generation of Renais¬
sance artists, to paint the Birth of Verms.
He was undoubtedly acquainted with the
Medici family’s collection of antique gems
with their Roman depictions of nereids
and sea-goddesses. It was also at this time
that translations by Florentine humanists
first appeared in printed editions in Botti¬
celli’s native town. The Homeric Hymns,
for example, were published in 1488:
“Aphrodite, beautiful, chaste, of her shall I
sing... who holds sway over the sea-
washed embattlements of Cyprus, where celli’s St. Barnabas altarpiece, it can only
the moist breath of Zephyrus gently bore symbolise virginity: it was thought that
her... to be greeted by the Horae with various kinds of mollusc were fertilised by
golden diadem and joy...”3 the dew. The ambivalence of the symbols
In his Theogeny, written in the eighth suggests that the dominant mythical female
century before Christ, Hesiod tells of figures of Classical antiquity and the
Aphrodite Anadyomene - i.e. “rising out Middle Ages overlap. In any case, Botti¬
of the waters”: During the battle of the celli evidently had no compunction about
gods, Cronos defeats and castrates his using the same model for both.
father Uranus, the heaven; his seed flows
into the sea, the union of water and heaven
producing the goddess of love. The secret
of her birth was considered a sacred mys¬
tery and was linked to a cult, whose sym¬
bols appear in Botticelli’s painting. Thus
the purple gown, held ready for the god¬
dess on the shore, has not only an aesthetic,
but also a ritual function. Its first appear¬
ance was on early Grecian urns, where it
symbolised the border between two re¬
gions: both newly born babies and the dead
were wrapped in cloth.
During the Middle Ages, the traditional
attributes of Venus, her roses for example,
were passed on to another dominant
figure, whose role was utterly opposed: the
Christian Virgin Mary. This is also true of
her shell. In connection with the pagan
goddess, the sea-shell, like water, re¬
presented fertility. Its resemblance to the
female genital organs made it also a symbol
of sensuous pleasure and sexuality. But as
the dome above the Virgin’s head in Botti¬
95

Zephyrus makes
their robes flutter
H omer’s story of Venus refers to the
chubby-cheeked god of the wind.
His name was Zephyrus, the Wind
of the West, on whose breath spring came
to the land. The Roman poet Ovid tells of
his companion Chloris, whose w'hite legs
and arms are clasped around Zephyrus’
brown body: after he had raped her, the
West Wind made her his wife, turning her
into Flora, the goddess of flowers.
Where did the Florentine craftsman and
tanner’s son Botticelli receive his education
in mythology? He was described in child¬
hood as a sickly boy who spent much of his
time reading.4 But could an apprenticeship
to a goldsmith, and later to a painter, really
leave him as well-versed in Ovid and
Homer as some of Florence’s richer mer¬
chants? It seems unlikely, given the size of
the library which belonged to the Maiano
96
brothers. These artists came from the same
town, the same generation and the same
class background as Botticelli. According
to an inventory compiled in 1498 they pos¬
sessed a mere 29 books, half of them relig¬
ious. The only Classical texts were a bio¬
graphy of Alexander and an edition of
Livy’s works. The scope of Botticelli’s li¬
brary was probably comparable.
“Required to execute a history paint¬
ing,” the Renaissance architect and art his¬
torian Leon Battista Alberti (1404-1472)5
recommended “... asking friends for ad¬
vice.” Through his neighbour, Giorgio
Antonio Vespucci, Botticelli was well con¬
nected with the intellectual elite of
Florence: scholars who, under the aegis of
the ruling Medici, had set about redis¬
covering Classical antiquity.
Botticelli occasionally collaborated with
the humanist and poet Angelo Poliziano
(1454-1494). For example, he decorated a
jousting banner for Giuliano de’ Medici
with allegorical motifs devised by the
scholar. In a poem written in honour of the
same tournament, Poliziano describes a
Birth of Venus not unlike that by Botticelli.
Possibly, the painter’s “mythologies”
benefitted from Poliziano’s expert advice.
However, Botticelli’s adviser could just
as easily have been the philosopher Marsi-
lio Ficino (1433-1499). Ficino’s life-work
was an attempt to reconcile Classical phil-
osphy with Christianity (even humanists
attended daily mass!): a new doctrine
sprung from the union of pagan ideas with
medieval theology. “Celestial Venus”, as
opposed to the pagan earthbound goddess,
was given a highly positive role in Ficino’s
system: she stood for humanity, charity
and love, and her beauty led mortals to
heaven.
Even if Poliziano or Ficino did not ad¬
vise the artist directly, their society must
have made the ancient divinities acceptable
in his eyes, ensuring that a devout Floren¬
tine painter in 1486 could portray a naked
Venus in good conscience, without having
to fear that his work would be “smashed to
pieces and buried”.
 white. It was this, together with the “lean”
Cornflowers of lapis
tempera, which made the painting re¬
lazuli blue
semble a fresco, making it suitable for a
country residence. Indeed, the fact that she
carnival, Shrove Tuesday 1497, he ordered
make-up, jewellery and false hairpieces of
all kinds, as well as “lascivious paintings”,
to be burned on a “bonfire of vanities.
Botticelli is said to have become a follower

B
was hung in a villa outside Florence may
have saved this Venus from oblivion, for it of this fanatic monk. True or not, he cer¬
ecause we take pleasure “at the sight soon seemed as though all the efforts of hu¬ tainly stopped painting pagan mythologies
of flowing garments,” the theorist manists to rehabilitate the goddess had and naked women.
Alberti advised painters to show the been overtaken by history. The defeat of
face of Zephyrus blowing down through the Medici led to the monk Savonarola’s
the clouds and “robes fluttering gracefully strictly enforced Florentine theocracy
in the breeze”.6 Botticelli followed his ad¬ from 1494 and 1498. On the night before
vice. In his Birth of Venus everything is in
motion: the waves, the branches of orange
trees in the backgound, the roses floating
to earth, the robes of the different figures.
It was also true of the figures’ hair: Alberti
had demanded that hair be shown “in
flowing curls which appear to form rings,
or to surge like flames into the sky, or to be
intertwined like snakes.”6
The representation of movement as an
expression of life and natural energy in re¬
discovered Roman statues and reliefs
greatly impressed the artists of the Re¬
naissance. They considered it important to
take up the idea in their own work. In 1434,
Alberti wrote a “modern” aesthetics based
on Classical principles, entitled On Paint¬
ing. Although unpublished until the fol¬
lowing century, it was already known in
Florence much earlier, probably becoming
Botticelli’s theoretical bible. Cennino Cen-
nini’s The Craftsman’s Handbook had ap¬
peared in 1400 and would certainly have-
been used in Botticelli’s studio. It ex¬
plained how to crush lapis lazuli to extract
blue colouring for the cornflowers on the
Flora’s robe, for example, or how to apply
extremely thin gold-leaf to Venus’ purple
gown. However, Botticelli was an innova¬
tive craftsman in his own right. His Birth
is not painted conventionally on poplar.
Unlike the Primavera it is not a panel
painting at all, but the first large-scale Tus¬
can work to be painted on canvas.
Although Botticelli still painted with
tempera (Cennini advised using eggs from
town hens, since country eggs made the
colours too bright), he added extremely
little fat to the pigment, achieving excep¬
tional results. His canvas has remained
firm and elastic ever since, the paint itself
showing very few cracks. Removing a layer
of oily varnish that had been added to the
painting after its completion, restorers dis¬
covered that Botticelli had applied his own,
very unusual protective layer of pure egg-

97
 Vittore Carpaccio: Miracle of the Relic of the Cross, 1494/95
The merchants of Venice
Carpaccio marginalises the heal¬
ing of the possessed. The object of
his religious adoration is not a
miraculous relic, but his own city:
Venice. He shows the Rialto, the
city’s business centre, where the
great trading nations owned
houses and wealthy burghers par¬
aded in their finest clothes. The
painting (365 x 389cm) is in the
Galleria dell’ Accademia, Venice.
98
A procession in Venice: filing across the
bridge, it disappears between the houses,
then reappears from the left. The brethren
at the head of the procession ascend the
steps to a loggia, where they are met by the
patriarch, the spiritual leader of the city-
state. The brothers have brought him a re¬
liquary containing a splinter of the holy
cross. The patriarch holds it before a man
who is possessed by a spirit - the man is
immediately healed. Or so the story goes.
The relic, which belongs to the Brother¬
hood of San Giovanni Evangelista, was also
responsible for a number of other miracles.
In one case the splinter was supposed to ac¬
company the funeral procession of a brother
who had refused to recognise the sacred na¬
ture of the relic, whereupon the splinter, in
turn, refused to enter the church where the
dead man lay. The scene was painted by Gio¬
vanni Mansueti (c. 1485 -1527). On another
occasion, during a procession, the relic fell
into a canal. Several brothers jumped in after
it, but the splinter permitted only the leader
of the brotherhood to remove it from the
water. This incident is recorded in a painting
by Gentile Bellini (c. 1429-1507). The work
hangs beside Carpaccio’s painting in the Ac¬
cademia, Venice.
The patron of the works by Carpaccio,
Bellini and Mansueti was the owner of the
relic: the Scuola Grande di San Giovanni
Evangelista. There were several such
“schools” in Venice, societies devoted to
charity, and named after churches, or pat¬
ron saints. The Scuola di San Giorgio degli
Schiavoni, for example, another of Carpac¬
cio’s patrons, represented the interests of a
group of foreigners: Dalmatians who
worked in Venice. The great Society of
John the Evangelist (Giovanni Evangelista)
looked after the old and sick, for whom
they built a hospice. In 1369, they received
a present from the High Chancellor of the
King of Cyprus: a splinter of the Holy
Cross. The gift was kept in a reliquary of
quartz and silver. However, relics were not
only significant in religious terms. The
more valuable the relic, the greater the re¬
spect shown to the society or town that
owned it. Conversely, the more powerful a
society or municipality had become, the
less it could afford to be content with a sec¬
ond-rate relic. Venice herself is a good
example: in her early days she had managed
to get by with a patron saint of local origin;
as a powerful city state, however, Venice
decided to make St. Mark the Evangelist
her patron saint. St. Mark’s bones were
stolen from Alexandria and, according to
tradition, smuggled out of the Muslim
country wrapped in pork. Thus the Vene¬
tians came into possession of one of the
most highly-prized relics in Christendom.
By 1500, the cult surrounding relics was
less widespread than during the Middle
Ages, at least among the upper classes, or
among those who had enjoyed the benefits
of a humanist education. To the latter, the
original manuscript of a Classical text
would have been just as meaningful as the
most important Christian relic.
Carpaccio executed his painting in 1494
or 1495. In 1544, probably to accommo¬
date new doors, several paintings, includ¬
ing Carpaccio’s, were shortened by remov¬
ing a section from the bottom. Before this
was done, however, the Giovanni Brother¬
hood consulted an expert for advice. A
document now in the Venetian State
Archive records the following: “The very
wise Master Titian, the painter, a man
whose great experience is known to all, was
taken to the place. He recommended cut¬
ting some off the bottom of the said can¬
vases ... saying the cut would not damage
the said canvases in any way.”1
A century later, the painting was length¬
ened again by 27 centimetres, an addition it
is impossible to overlook.
g i j ______ ■p [\Jjjjf
Mil

99
The rooftops of Venice D omestic life in Venice partly took
place on roof terraces high above the
town. More simple terraces were of
wood; others had brick walls. Some were
even embellished with marble cladding.
It was here that the Venetians would
beat carpets, or that women and young
girls would bleach their hair; here, too,
families would sit out on summer evenings
and enjoy the cool air. Roof terraces pro¬
vided an alternative to gardens, for space
was severely restricted at ground level in
the town centre.
Only on the nearby islands did people
have small gardens. The wealthier Vene¬
tians made up for land shortage in town by
buying a villa or palazzo on the mainland.
At certain times of year they would move
to the country, where normal life would
continue in different surroundings.
100
In the 15th century, washing and clothes
were not hung out to dry or to air on wash¬
ing-lines, but on poles. In Carpaccio’s
painting these are shown protruding from
the houses. However, the poles usually ran
through rings which were fixed along the
walls beneath the windows. The rings, too,
are shown in Carpaccio’s painting.
The funnel shaped chimney was a typi¬
cal feature of the Venetian skyline. There is
no practical reason for its unusual shape.
Chimneys were probably given broad tops
for aesthetic reasons, since this allowed
their owners to embellish them. Chimneys
were considered decorative objects. It is
said that the poorer Venetians, like the rich,
went to great trouble to paint their chim¬
ney-funnels, hoping, even if only in this
detail, to compete with their wealthier fel¬
low-citizens.
Two Turks and a Knight of
A
St. John
man in a black coat with a white
cross leans back casually in his
gondola: a Knight of St. John. Like
two other orders, the Knights Templar and
the Teutonic Knights, the Knights of St.
John had come into their own during the
crusades, a mass movement from which
Venice, with its large fleet of transport
ships, had greatly profited.
The Knights of St. John were the oldest
of the three orders. Founded in 1070, two
decades before the first crusade to the
Holy Land took place, its purpose was not
to fight, but to help. A small number of
men had come together to found a hospital
for pilgrims. They took monastic vows and
called themselves the Brotherhood of the
Hospital of St. John at Jerusalem. Forced
to defend their property against the “infi¬
dels”, they took up arms and became
knights. They were sent presents and do¬
nations from all over Europe, becoming a
large organisation who supported pilgrims
not only upon their arrival in the Holy
Land, but also during their pilgrimage.
Like other orders, they owned houses in
most of the large ports - Venice included.
The hospice of the Knights of St. John was
near the Church of San Giovanni dei Friul.
The Teutonic Knights kept their hospice
near the Church of the Santissima Trinita,
while that of the Knights Templar was near
the Church of the Ascensione.
But all that had been many years before
Carpaccio’s time. In the meantime, the
Christians had been driven out of the Holy
Land, the Templars dissolved by the
French king, while the Teutonic. Knights
had become totally insignificant. Only the
Knights of St. John had managed to retain
their organisational structure and power.
They were based on the island of Rhodes,
where they continued to foster their ideal,
begun in the Middle Ages, of a life combin¬
ing knighthood and monastic vows. It was
not until 1523 that the island fell to the
Turks, 30 years after Carpaccio had painted
a Knight of St. John sitting casually in the
middle of Venice. The main enemies of the
order, and of Venice itself, were the Turks,
two of whom, standing at the foot of the
bridge in white turbans, are shown in the
painting. Perhaps they were merchants, or
diplomats. The Turks had conquered
Greece and Albania, thereby occupying
bases on the Adriatic, a region of primary
strategic importance to the Venetians.
Competition sometimes led to hostilities
between the two powers, sometimes to
treaties; but trade between the two
flourished whenever the opportunity
arose. The governments of other states
often found this difficult to understand.
The State Chronicles refer to an incident
in 1496, when a horse, presented by a Turk¬
ish pasha, was led into the reception hall of
the doge’s palace. In 1500 there is a ref¬
erence to Turkish ambassadors in Venice.
However, in the same year the Venetians
were defeated by the Turks in two sea-
battles. A peace treaty was (provisionally)
concluded in 1503, and by 1509 the Vene¬
tians were pleading with the Turks to help
them fight their European enemies...
“The Venetians are more like Turks than
Christians: shopkeepers with no religion!”
said their European opponents. However,
the Venetians had their own motives for en¬
tering the fray: “In fear of God, in the best
interests of Christendom, for the honour of
the Republic, for the benefit of the mer-
chanthood!”2 Although the “merchant-
hood” is mentioned last, its interests un¬
doubtedly came first. The merchants were
the Venetian aristocracy. Their success
benefitted not only the ruling class, how¬
ever, but the entire Venetian population.
101
V
Rialto
enice was governed from the dis¬
trict of San Marco, with the doge’s
palace and procurators’ offices on
St. Mark’s Square. The business world met
in Rialto, the district painted by Carpaccio.
Rialto was the site of the great Venetian
markets; it was here that sailing ships un¬
loaded their cargoes and that great trading
nations kept their warehouses. Rialto was
also the site of the only bridge across the
Canale Grande. Behind the Rialto bridge,
on the right, is the Persian warehouse. The
German warehouse (Fondaco dei Tede-
schi) was not built until 1505, ten years
after the painting was executed. It still
stands in the immediate proximity of the
bridge, where today it houses a post-office.
The houses kept by various nations
served foreign merchants as both ware¬
houses and hostels. The Venetians treated
foreigners with suspicion, while capitalis¬
ing on their own misgivings: foreign
traders were forced to contract weighmas-
ters, balers and real estate brokers from the
government in San Marco. The position of
broker, especially, brought a large quantity
of money for very little work; it was there¬
fore a sinecure for deserving Venetians.
The broker at the Fondaco dei Tedeschi in
1516, for example, was the painter Titian
(who allowed Carpaccio’s painting to be
shortened).
The middle section of the Rialto bridge
could be raised, allowing larger ships to na¬
vigate the Grand Canal; the ropes attached
to the drawbridge can be easily identified with suspicion in Venice; a watchful eye ten years before the picture was painted. Its
in Carpaccio’s painting. On the wooden was also kept on the practices of local busi¬ main task was to fight the plague, which
bridge were tiny stalls with counters on the nessmen. Meat, fish, cereals and oil were broke out about every eight years. The auth¬
inside and small windows looking over the sold at fixed prices. Only fishermen over 50 ority attempted to prevent its spread by iso¬
canal. In 1502, the bridge almost collapsed were allowed to sell fish, an early form of lating its victims in state-run hospitals
because of the number of pedestrians. In insurance for old people. Any person sell¬ where the sick were kept in quarantine.
1591, almost a century after Carpaccio ing bad fish was whipped the length of the The cause of the epidemic was unknown,
painted the scene, a new, stone bridge was Merceria, a street stretching from the but was thought to lie in refuse and filth.
built; it stands there to this day. Sculptors Rialto bridge to St. Mark’s Square. The cul¬ For this reason shopkeepers were pro¬
and architects like Michelangelo, Palladio, prit was forced to pay a fine, imprisoned for hibited from throwing their rubbish out on
Vignola, Sansovino and Scamozzi all drew a month and forbidden to carry out his pro¬ the street. From 1502, it was forbidden to
up designs for the project; in the end, the fession for four years. Dishonest inn¬ let pigs on the streets of Venice; this con¬
work was commissioned from a lesser- keepers could expect similar treatment. trasts with Berlin, where pigs were still per¬
known architect by the name of Antonio The round sign of an inn can be seen hang¬ mitted on the streets under the Great Elec¬
da Ponte. ing from one of the houses on the left. The tor (1620-1688). Scavenging was practised
Why the job was finally given to him, inn is called “The Sturgeon”; an inn of that in Venice at the time of the painting, and the
nobody knows. Perhaps it was because his name is known to have stood here. tidal canals provided a natural means of
plan suggested preserving the little shops Hygiene was taken particularly seriously waste-disposal. But that did not always
and stalls on the bridge, whereas Palladio in Venice, the first town in Europe with a work. In the summer of 1494, for example,
wished them removed. public health authority: the Magistrate della temperatures were so high and the tides so
Not only foreign trade was regarded Sanita. The office opened in 1486, exactly weak that the fishes died in the canals.

102
O
The Moor
fficially, trading slaves was forbid¬
den in Venice at this time; in prac¬
tice, however, it continued until
the end of the 16th century. At the end of
the 15th century, a healthy boy between
the ages of twelve and sixteen, or an un¬
touched, healthy woman, would cost
about 50 ducats. Men usually cost more.
The slaves were generally North African
or Levantine prisoners. Moors were con¬
sidered highly fashionable.
Judging by contracts, slaves, like pieces
of furniture or plots of land, entered the
estate of their owners unconditionally
upon purchase. They were christened and
given a new name. Despite their lack of
freedom, they were sometimes better off
than hired servants, since the master was
obliged to provide for them even after his
death. A final will might read as follows:
“The slave shall remain in my widow’s ser¬
vice for six years, whereupon she shall re¬
lease him with a legacy.”
Whether slave or servant, the dress of the
gondolieri in the painting is magnificent,
indeed often more so than that of their mas¬
ters. Servants were frequently used as a
badge of family wealth. Exhibitions of
wealth and ease were a popular pastime
among the Venetian upper classes in 1500.
Once, they had devoted their energies to
consolidating the power of the Republic
and increasing the profits of the merchants,
but those days were over. Venice was now
on the defensive. The Ottoman Empire had
and balances. In Florence, Genoa, Milan
grown powerful in the east, and Venice The Republic
could not hope to compete with Spain and and Rome, individuals frequently suc¬
France in the west. The discovery of a sea ceeded in usurping total power. This was
passage around the Cape of Good Hope not the case in Venice. Public office was
made the subject of regular elections. Only

was also a factor in Venice’s demise, for it
meant that new trade routes could be op¬
ened between Europe and Asia. Spices, car¬
pets and precious woods no longer had to
be transported on camels to the Mediter¬
ranean coast before they could be loaded on
ships; merchandise was shipped to the west
directly, its destination no longer Venice,
A
the doge had life tenure, and he was usually
stonishingly, Venice continued to an old man by the time he entered office.
exist as a Republic for another 300 The third reason for the stability of the
years. It was neither conquered Republic was a feeling, an attitude: rev¬
from without, nor overthrown from erence. The Venetians revered their town,
within. This made it unique in Italy. There their state. When they prayed to St. Mark,
were three main reasons for its exceptional their patron saint, they were praying,

but Lisbon. It was from Lisbon and Seville stability. The first was geographical. Its in¬ through him, to a communal body which

that expeditions put out to sea for South sular position made it difficult to attack. It they inhabited.
America, too. Trading routes had changed; was not until it had finally become too We sense this reverence in Carpaccio’s
merchantmen no longer put in to Venice as poor to employ a proper army that Na¬ painting. He was commissioned to paint a

a matter of course. The town had lost its poleon’s troops entered Venice without re¬ miracle. But Carpaccio marginalises the
leading position, and its merchants had sistance. That was in 1797. The Republic legend, qsing it as an excuse to paint a

nothing to do. They preferred being rowed had survived more than 1000 years. panorama of the Rialto. The pious brother¬

about Venice in gondolas than sailing on The second reason for the long life of the hood, also citizens of Venice, did not ob¬
Republic was its clever system of checks ject.
the high seas.

103
In a marshy meadow, a semi-naked young
woman with bleeding wounds is lying
amongst the flowers. A faun bends over
her, and a large hunting dog sits at her feet.
Dogs and birds are seen on the shore of an
expanse of calm water behind. Morning is
breaking.
104
The “hazy atmosphere of a waking
dream”, the “poetic dreaminess” which in¬
fuse the scene have struck all who have
studied this painting. Speaking of Piero di
Cosimo, to whom this unsigned and un¬
dated picture is attributed, the art histori¬
an Erwin Panofsky describes the “strange
lure emanating from his pictures ... their
content as unusual as their style ... not a
‘great master’ but a most charming and in¬
teresting one.”
Piero di Cosimo (1462-1521) lived in
Florence all his life.JHe saw the High Re¬
naissance and the city’s flowering under its
Piero di Cosimo: The Death of Procris, c. 1500

A message from the

world of alchemy

mm

Medici ruler Lorenzo the Magnificent, and Sculptors and Architects, published in 1550, other painters”, and one “wildly inventive
he saw its decline: the expulsion of the the architect and court painter Giorgio and fanciful”.
Medici in 1494, the reign of the monk Vasari also included a biography of Piero At what date Piero painted this panel of

Savonarola, occupation by the French, war di Cosimo. On the basis of reports by the young woman, faun and dog is un¬

and civil war, and finally, in 1512, the return contemporaries who had known him per¬ known. Some consider it an early work,

of the Medici in the tow of the Spaniards. sonally, Vasari described the artist as “a others a late one. Its content is similarly a

In his Lives of the Most Eminent Painters, spirit set apart and very different from matter of dispute. It hangs in the National

105
Gallery in London, where it bears the gen¬
eralized title of A Mythological Subject.
The custodians of the museum doubt that
it shows - as most art historians believe -
The Death of Procris, the final scene in an
ancient legend told by the Roman poet
Ovid in his Metamorphoses.
It is the sad story of how mistrust and
jealousy destroyed the happiness of the
newly-wedded Cephalus and Procris. It all
started when Cephalus allowed himself to
be persuaded to put his wife’s faithful¬
ness to the test, by courting her while dis¬
guised as another man. She “wavered”.
When Cephalus then revealed his true
identity, Procris fled, ashamed and en¬
raged, to the goddess Diana in the forest.
Cephalus eventually succeeded in winning
his wife’s forgiveness, but now it was she
who mistrusted her husband. Jealously,
she followed him out hunting one morn¬
ing and secretly spied on him from behind
a bush - and was fatally wounded by the
spear thrown by Cephalus at what he
thought was an animal.
Strangely, Piero di Cosimo has por¬
trayed in this panel not Cephalus, but a
dog, Laelaps, who only plays a secondary
role in the legend. He was given to Procris
by the goddess Diana. He now sits at his
mistress’ feet, the embodiment of faithful¬
ness, a virtue so important to the two main
characters in the story and yet one in
which they had so little trust.
106
L et this be a lesson to women: where
there is jealousy, there is no more
peace!”. The moral of Procris’ story is
drawn not by Ovid, but by a “nymph in
the fourth act of Cefalo, a drama by Nic-
colo da Correggio. The play was per¬
formed at the Ferrara court on 21 January
1487. Correggio thereby made theatre his¬
tory, since it was only the second play
about a classical subject to have been
seen in Renaissance Italy after Angelo
Poliziano’s Orfeo. It appeared in print in
Venice around 1507, and Piero di Cosimo
was probably familiar with it.
In those days, dramas based on jealousy
with a more or less tragic outcome were
not confined to the stage. Thus the author
Matteo Bandello (c. 1485-1562) lamented:
“If only we didn’t have to hear daily stor¬
ies about someone murdering his wife for
suspected infidelity ...” If women “do
something that displeases us, we imme¬
diately reach for the rope, dagger and
poison.” But the self-confident women of
the Renaissance were no more ready than
Procris to accept their husbands’ extra¬
marital escapades. In 1488, for example,
the lord of Faenza, Galeotto Manfredi,
was “hacked to pieces” on his wife’s or¬
ders “because he was unfaithful to her”.
The Procris legend was evidently con¬
sidered appropriate as a way of warning a
bride and bridegroom against mutual mis¬
trust within their marriage. A performance
of Correggio’s play was given at a wedding
held at the Este court. In this instance,
however, the author deviated from Ovid
and gave the story a happy ending as ap¬
propriate to the occasion: in the fifth act, a
sympathetic goddess brings Procris back
to life and gives her back to Cephalus.
Death is followed by resurrection.
Piero di Cosimo’s panel may also have
been intended for a wedding. The work is
executed in tempera and oil on wood, and
measures 65 x 183 cm — an unusual format
for a painting, but one that would fit the
front of a cassone, or bridal chest. In Flor¬
ence between 1350 and 1530, almost every
bride took one of these long, lockable
wooden trunks with her into her new
home. They housed her trousseau - laun¬
dry, clothes and jewellery - and were
placed at the foot of the matrimonial bed.
Those who could afford it had their cas¬
sone decorated by an artist.
Like his famous colleague Sandro Botti¬
celli, Piero di Cosimo is supposed to have
decorated several wedding chests, for ex¬
ample with the Departure of the Argo¬
nauts to capture the Golden Fleece. In
these chests, artists could allow their ima¬
ginations a freer rein than in altarpieces
and large panel paintings. Favourite scenes
were thereby those from myth and ancient
legend, and thus it was that cassom provid¬
ed the first forum for classical subjects in
the art of the Early Renaissance - many
are decorated with scenes from Ovid.
In view of its very long and narrow for¬
mat, the Death of Procris might also have
formed part of a series of wall panels, such
as Piero - according to Vasari - executed
for the apartment of a wealthy citizen.
Based on a philosophical programme, the
panels portrayed the development of hu¬
mankind through the theme of the History
of Fire. Perhaps Procris also belongs to this
thought-provoking ensemble, and con¬
tains a message other than simply a trivial
warning against jealousy.
A victim
of
jealousy
A landscape
from
the underworld

In his biography of Piero di Cosimo,

Vasari repeatedly emphasizes the
painter’s “odd and original invention”.
For this reason he was much in demand
during his youth for carnival masquerades.
Under Lorenzo de’ Medici (1449-1492) -
who earned the name of “Lorenzo the
Magnificent” not least for the glittering
festivals which he staged - carnival proces¬
sions assumed the scale of grandiose
mythological and allegorical spectacles.
Their ingenious invention and surprise ef¬
fects are supposed to have stemmed from
Piero.
Years later, at the carnival of 1511, the
painter “filled the whole city both with
terror and with wonder” with the spec¬
tacle of an enormous chariot: “over the
chariot was a huge figure of Death, scythe
in hand, and all around the chariot were a
large number of covered tombs”. When
the procession stopped, the tombs opened,
skeletons leapt out and all “sang to music
full of melancholy the song ... Grief, woe
and penitence.” Piero had a penchant for
the macabre, morbid and odd; this is evid¬
enced, too, in his drawings and paintings,
which are peopled with creatures of fan¬
tasy, dragons and sea-monsters “more
bizarre” and “more fantastic”, according
to Vasari, than one could ever hope to find
elsewhere.
The creations of this Mannerist were
often, again according to Vasari, “not ...
pleasing ... but ... strange, horrible and rather than Piero di Lorenzo after his own Jan van Eyck and Hugo van der Goes,
unexpected”. Piero di Cosimo thereby fell father. whose Portinari Altar was installed in Flor¬
outside the conventional bounds of the When Rosselli was summoned to Rome ence in 1483.
Florentine High Renaissance. For the by Pope Sixtus in 1482 to help decorate The Death of Procris is characterized by
works of his celebrated contemporaries, the Sistine Chapel, he allowed Piero to ex¬ an elegiac watery landscape beneath an in¬
such as Botticelli, Ghirlandaio, Perugino ecute the landscape in his fresco of The determinate sky - a space without bound¬
and Sansovino, were characterized not by Sermon on the Mount. It is the younger aries, devoid of the logical vanishing point
bizarreness, but by the beauty of their fig¬ artist’s first known work. Piero di Cosi- offered by centralized perspective. Great
ures, their measured proportions and their mo’s landscapes lend his portraits and white herons - birds which Pliny the El¬

harmony.
Piero was apprenticed as a young man
to a second-rate artist called Cosimo
Rosselli. Although his painting soon sur¬
passed that of his master, he remained with
Rosselli for over 25 years, until the latter’s
death in 1507. Out of affection for his
teacher, he called himself Piero di Cosimo,
more conventional paintings of saints their
special charm, their atmosphere. That
landscape did not have to serve merely as a
backdrop, but that it could play a decisive
role in determining the character of a
painting, was a lesson which Italian artists
at the end of the 15th century were learn¬
ing from Netherlandish masters such as
der, the Roman natural historian, said shed
tears in sorrow like people - stand on the
shore of a grey river. Rivers such as this
flowed through the ancient underworld to
which Procris descended: Acheron, the
river of woe, Cocytus, the river of lam¬
entation, and Lethe, the river of forgetful¬
ness.

107
B ent over the prostrate body of Pro-
cris is a creature with a turned-up
nose and long pointed ears and
horns - a goat-legged faun or satyr. In an¬
tique mythology, these instinctual natural
spirits frightened herds of cattle or pursued
nymphs with their unbridled sexuality.
There is no mention of a faun in Ovid’s
tale of Procris. In Correggio’s marriage
play, on the other hand, one plays a mali¬
cious role: because he covets Procris him¬
self, he tells her that her husband is deceiv¬
ing her, and thereby brings about her un¬
doing. Now he sees what he has done and
bends over her dead body with an expres¬
sion of tender concern.
108
Piero portrays this wild creature with an
extraordinary degree of sensitivity. He
thereby reveals how close he was to the
natural, untamed world. His fellow Flor¬
entines had a considerably more distant
relationship with nature; they saw the hills
around their city simply as a pleasant set¬
ting in which to spend their free time, and
the fields of farmland as no more than ve¬
getable plots. Piero, on the other hand,
“was content to see everything run wild,
like his own nature”, as Vasari relates with
some disapproval. "He would never let his
garden be dug or the fruit trees pruned”,
and “followed a way of life more like that
of a brute beast than a human being.”
Piero di Cosimo, living in sophisticated
urban Renaissance society, was fascinated
by an animal level of existence. He painted
more animals than most of his colleagues
and populated his paintings with primitive
creatures such as fauns, satyrs, field gods
and bacchantes - most notably in his Vul¬
can cycle, in which he celebrated the power
of fire.
Fire as a force of nature is also at the
heart of a Prometheus cycle attributed to
Piero. Erwin Panofsky diagnoses Piero as
having a “fire complex” - but the artist’s
obsession with flames can also be inter¬
preted in another way.
In Renaissance Italy there existed a
small number of men who, like Vulcan and
Prometheus, were proud of being the mas¬
ters of fire. Their most important tool, it
served them in their secret pursuit: it was
kept burning beneath their ovens round
the clock for over 40 days, as they at¬
tempted to make the magical elixir with
which to turn base metals into gold. These
were the alchemists, still searching - as in
the Middle Ages - for the philosopher’s
stone. One of them was Piero di Cosimo’s
teacher, Cosimo Rosselli. "This artist took
great pleasure in alchemy”, reported
Vasari, and "vainly spent what he pos¬
sessed to this end ... and thereby became
very poor in his old age”.
Those who dedicated themselves to
alchemy had to be “taciturn and discreet”
and “live far from other people”. This dic¬
tate from an old treatise on alchemy might
go a long way towards explaining the
“bestial” existence of a man who “stayed
all the time shut up indoors and never let
himself be seen at work” and who “would
not even allow his rooms to be swept”. It
is probable that Piero di Cosimo dabbled
in alchemy, at least as assistant to his mas¬
ter. What is certain is that it influenced his
artistic oeuvre: not just his Death of Pro¬
cris, but indeed the majority of his motifs
can be explained in terms of the pictorial
language of alchemy.
The artist
lived
like an animal
The patron
of alchemists
M ost peculiar, for example, are the
three dogs in the background.
The black dog and the white dog
were familiar to alchemists as the “bitch of
Coracesium” and the “Armenian hound”
respectively. They symbolized two con¬
tradictory chemical states, the solid and
the volatile, which are permanently in op¬
position. The attempt to fuse them by
means of fire represented an important
step along the path towards creating the
philosopher’s stone. In another experi¬
ment, it was sought to sublimate dead,
“decomposed” matter in a phial into a
“White Swan”, also visible in the back¬
ground of this panel.
The hunting dog appears twice in the
picture. He is both supervising the battle
between the opposites on the riverbank,
and mourning at the feet of the dead hero¬
ine in the foreground. This is not simply
the dog Laelaps from Ovid’s fable, how¬
ever, or the traditional animal symbol for
faithfulness. It is also Hermes Trismegis-
tos, the “three times great” inventor and
patron of the art of alchemy, who is por¬
trayed in alchemical texts in the shape of a
dog, or least as a dog’s head. He is the fu¬
sion of a legendary magician with the
Greek god Hermes, messenger of the gods
and intermediary between this world and
the next. He is a guide to the realm of the
dead and a teacher of the “hermetic” secret
sciences. Alchemical doctrine thus ex¬
plains why he is granted, in his symbolic
shape, such a large and dominant position
in this panel.
The prostrate Procris ~is wrapped in a
red and gold veil, both symbolic colours
of the “red-hot” philosopher’s stone
which transforms everything into gold.
Her position and the structure of the pic¬
ture bear similarities with illustrations
commonly found in the 15th century on
the last page of alchemical treatises. In
these, the corpse of a man or woman,
Adam or Eve, pierced as prima materia by
Hermes’ spear, lies stretched out horizont¬
ally. Growing out of it is a small tree, the
arbor philosophica. The death of matter is
followed by resurrection, liberation of the
spirit, spiritual transformation. Making
gold was only the lowest stage of the re¬
finement of the body; the true goals of the
alchemist went much further. Alchemy
was also the science of immortality. Al¬
though the small tree in Piero’s painting
doesn’t grow directly out of Procris’
corpse, it sprouts up just behind her, above
her shoulder and heart. Seen through the
eyes of an alchemist, this painting signifies
victory over death - under the watchful
eyes of Hermes Trismegistos and with the
aid of the forces of nature, embodied by
the “wild man”. Perhaps it hung in an al¬
chemist’s study.
In order to communicate their secret
knowledge, initiates used symbolic images
which they borrowed from established
tradition or classical mythology. Carl Gu¬
stav Jung sought to establish that these
have their roots in the depths of the col¬
lective unconscious and are hence familiar
even to modern man from his dreams.
This may explain the sense of “dreami¬
ness”, the “strange attraction” which issues
from Piero di Cosimo’s works. He was
master - and this, too, is a definition of
alchemy - of the “science of pictures”.
109
 Hans Baldung Grien: The Three Stages of Life, with Death, c. 1510
Strange quartet
In 1510 the artist Hans Baldung,
alias Grien, completed a painting
enigmatic enough to ensure that
its theme has remained the object
of speculation ever since. Who is
the young woman, so engrossed
in her own reflection: a goddess,
the allegory of Vanity, a whore?
The other figures are equally ob¬
scure. All that can be said for sure
of this Renaissance work is that it
retains no trace of that Christian
notion of salvation which so
dominated the art of the Middle
Ages. The painting (48 x 33 cm) is
in the Kunsthistorisches Museum,
Vienna.
110
Of the four naked figures in the gloomy
landscape, it is the young woman who
draws our attention. A pale, attractive
figure, she stands out starkly against the
browns and darker hues of the other
figures. To her right, a torn creature holds
an hourglass over the young woman’s
head; a hag enters from the left, a child
kneels at the comely blonde’s feet.
The work belongs to the Kunsthistori¬
sches Museum, Vienna, in whose catalogue
of 1896 the old woman is described as Vice,
the young woman as Vanity and the chdd as
Amor. In the catalogue of 1938 the painting
is entitled Allegory of Transience, and 20
years later: Death and The Three Ages of
Woman. Allegory of the Vanity of all
Worldly Things. The laconic title in a cata¬
logue of works exhibited at the Baldung ex¬
hibition of 1959 reads: Beauty and Death.
Dispute has not been confined to the
subject of the painting; the authorship, too,
remained obscure for many years. Initially
ascribed to Lucas Cranach and Albrecht
Altdorfer, the painting was eventually at¬
tributed to the hand of Hans Baldung
Grien. Little is known of the artist’s life: he
was born c. 1485, probably in Schwabisch
Gmtind. From 1503 to 1507 he was ap¬
prenticed to Albrecht Dtirer’s Nuremberg
workshop. He painted the high altar at
Freiburg Cathedral, but lived mainly in
Strasbourg, where he died in 1545.
Despite the puzzle presented by the
theme, it is nonetheless possible to recon¬
struct contemporary ideas associated with
the four figures, while throwing light on
the historical background of the ideas
themselves. Numbers, for example, held a
peculiar significance at the time. They not
only served the practical purpose of order¬
ing diverse phenomena, but were con¬
sidered things in themselves, pillars of the
world order. Numbers possessed a myth¬
ical aura that can be retraced to antiquity
and, in particular, to the work of Pytha¬
goras. Though number symbolism had
never quite sunk into oblivion during the
Middle Ages, it nonetheless experienced a
revival with the rediscovery of antiquity.
Three and four are the numbers most
strongly felt in Baldung’s picture: the three
stages of life, and, as a fourth stage, Death.
Both numbers were highly significant.
Four were the points of the compass, four
the elements and the humours; there were
four periods of the day and four seasons.
The times of day and seasons, too, were
frequently associated with periods in life:
spring and morning were childhood, night
and winter the final years of a person’s life,
or death.
As a universal number, three was even
more significant than four. The Holy
Trinity, after all, was at the heart of Chris¬
tian theology. In antiquity, the number
three - the beginning, middle and end -
stood for the totality. Aristotle had used the
number three in his ethics: a bad action
derives from an “excess” or a “deficiency”,
whereas the “just action” lies in the
“mean”. The Greek philosopher also ap¬
plied the number three to the stages of a
person’s life: youth had too much strength,
courage, anger and desire; old age had too
little of these. Only persons in their prime
possessed these qualities in due proportion.
Much thought during Classical anti¬
quity was devoted to the division of life
into three, or four (or even seven, or ten),
stages, but these ideas did not find their
way into the visual arts. The portrayal of
the different stages of a human life in me¬
dieval art, in paintings commissioned by
the church, is exceptional, for such distinc¬
tions were considered irrelevant in the face
of that still greater division between life be¬
fore and life after death. It was not until
approximately 1500, when worldly pa¬
trons began to influence artistic themes,
 At the same time, less interest was
shown in children altogether than is the
case in today’s nuclear family: bonding be¬
tween parents and children did not occur
with quite the same intensity. Too many
children were born, and too many died.
Only a fraction of those born actually sur¬
vived; it was better, therefore, safer, not to
get too close. Perhaps such emotional
reserve partly also explains why artists
paid relatively little attention to children.
They perceived the adult body more accur¬
ately than that of a child. This is certainly
true of Hans Baldung Grien. Children
who are not old enough to find their bal¬
ance do not kneel with one leg stretched
out in the manner shown in the painting.
At least, the position would be extremely
unusual.
The image of the child was determined
not only by feelings and social relations,
but by a whole superstructure of theo¬
logical theory. This included the tenet,
prevelant since antiquity, that children
were intrinsically innocent. However,
everyday relations with children made
very little of the belief in a child’s in¬
nocence. Children were treated as imper¬
fect adults. Their special status existed
only in theory, characteristically illus¬
trated by a motif in the Bible story of the
Garden of Eden: the bite taken from the
forbidden apple, and Man’s consequent
loss of innocence. Baldung cites the theme
in the shape of the round object on the
ground: this could simply be a child’s ball,
but it could equally be an apple lying
within the child’s reach. The child is likely
to pick it up before long.
To an educated spectator, the hobby¬
horse, too, was more than a toy that hap¬
pened - by accident, as it were - to be lying
on the ground. Cognoscenti would have
linked it, through one of Aesop’s fables, to
suggest a boy. The hobby-horse, probably the theme of the different stages of life. For
that the ages of Man were more frequently
considered a boy’s toy at the time, tends to the Greek writer attributes an animal to
painted. Hans Baldung made them the
confirm the suspicion. Conversely, how¬ each of the three stages: the dog, the ox and
theme of his own work on several occa¬
ever, if the painting is intended to portray the horse. The dog, a morose creature,
sions.
“the three stages”, why give childhood a friendly only to those who look after it,
different sex from that of maturity and old stands for old age; the ox, a reliable worker,
age? who provides nourishment for old and
Perhaps the gender of a child was of little young alike, represents life’s prime; the
First steps horse personifies childhood, since, in this
importance to contemporary spectators.
The difference was, in any case, rarely em¬ fable at least, horses are unruly creatures,

It is difficult to judge whether the child at

the young woman’s feet is a boy or a girl;
phasized. During the first years of their
lives boys and girls wore the same clothes:
long frocks or smocks, and snug caps in
lacking in self-discipline.

contours barely visible behind the veil winter.

112
Beauty
keeps her
secret
T he star of the painting is the damsel.
The other figures seem present
solely to make her stand out more
starkly. Baldung achieves this effect by ar¬
rangement and colour: the young woman
is furthest to the fore, the only figure
whose body is not, at least partially, ob¬
scured by one of the others. At the same
time, her skin is significantly brighter, in¬
deed nearly white.
In his use of colour, Baldung follows a
convention here. His teacher Albrecht
Dtirer, as well as his contemporaries Al¬
brecht Altdorfer and Lucas Cranach,
usually painted the bodies of women
somewhat paler than those of men, and
young bodies lighter than older ones. But
in so doing, they showed moderation, were
less given to extremes. Since, even in those
days, male skin was probably no darker
than that of women, and young skin no
paler than old, artists must have been in¬
fluenced by something other than Nature.
Perhaps pallor was intended to indicate a
certain delicacy. It is more likely, however,
that they were painting an ideal aspired to
by women themselves. Pale skin was the
fashion, at least in circles that could afford
it: at court, or among the wealthy urban
middle class.
The special status granted to the young
woman may mean that she is intended to
represent a special person: the goddess
Venus, for example. The child, in that case,
would be Amor. However, contemporary
spectators of the painting, exposed to pic¬
tures of Venus and Amor more often than
we, would have noticed immediately that
something was wrong. Amor, for one
thing, has no bow and arrow, his tradi¬
tional attributes; secondly, since Venus is
immortal, the hourglass held over her head
is entirely superfluous.
If not a goddess, perhaps the young
woman was intended as the allegory of
Vanity. There is much in the painting to
suggest this. The young woman, appar¬
ently absorbed in her own reflection,
brushes back her lovely, long hair with her
left hand, while, in her right, she holds a
mirror, the symbol of Vanity. The mirror
is convex; flat mirrors were difficult to
fabricate, and therefore inordinately ex¬
pensive. If the young woman is Vanity,
then the older woman is a procuress: sup¬
porting the mirror with one hand, she
probably beckoned with the other, making
sure the young woman did not lack ad¬
mirers for very long. Death, too, has its
place in this picture: anyone setting out to
paint the vanity of beauty would probably
also have its ephemerality in mind. This
was doctrinaire Christian morality, for
which the flesh, an obstacle to the spirit’s
journey to God, was evil. Outside the
church, too, people were constantly forced
to confront death and the ephemerality of
life. The average life expectancy was thirty,
almost half our own. Many died in their
prime, especially women in childbirth.
Hans Baldung Grien painted at least three
women who had come under the shadow
of Death.
In contrast to the three paintings men¬
tioned, however, Death in the present pic¬
ture seems merely to be imparting a polite
reminder to the young lady that life event¬
ually comes to a close. The hourglass has
not yet run out: Beauty has time enough to
regard herself in a mirror. But is she really
the allegory of Vanity? The child would
certainly be out of place in such an allegory.
Baldung’s. composition does not comply
with any of the many iconographical pat¬
terns of his time. Something is always left
unexplained.
113
The body
becomes
a burden

G reek and Roman authors, writing

of the different periods of life and
death, had men in mind. They
talked of young men and old, not of girls
and old women. Men, during antiquity,
were considered the true representatives of
mankind, a notion which has survived the
centuries and, even today, continues to find
its way into people’s minds.
Painting has often differed in this re¬
spect, not least that of Baldung himself.
Three of his paintings show Death and a
maiden. A panel in Leipzig shows the
Seven Stages of Life, another, in the French
town of Rennes, the Three Stages of Death:
in both Baldung paints nude women. Only
once does Baldung show Death and a man:
the man is fully clothed, his dress that of a
mercenary. Baldung’s preference for
women may derive from a more general
preference for painting the female nude.
But there may also be reasons less per¬
sonal: women’s bodies alter more visibly
than men’s, making it easier for the artist to
illustrate the different stages of her life.
Furthermore, beauty is considered more
significant in woman than in man - more
attention is therefore accorded to the pas¬
sing of her charms.
Baldung’s work belongs to a period in
the history of art called the Renaissance, an
era in which the human body is said to have
been discovered anew. But that is only half
the story. The body that was discovered,
celebrated and painted over and over again
was restricted to a single stage of human
development: young adulthood, which,
like the pale-skinned woman in the paint¬ mous illustration of parsimony, showing a charcoal drawing of his mother, together
ing, was full of youthful energy. The other bare-breasted old hag with narrow eyes in with a pronounced tendency to portray the
periods, age and childhood, were ne¬ her wrinkled face, with more gaps between older female nude as ugly, probably derive
glected. There are very few individual her teeth than teeth in her mouth, and a from a peculiarly male perspective. The
portraits of children, or paintings of nudes sack of gold in her lap. young woman, the object of male desire,
who are visibly past their prime. The old woman in Baldung’s painting was given a certain appeal; sexual inclina¬
If painted at all, then it was not for their may be intended as a bawd. In contrast to tion determined aesthetics. Conversely, an
intrinsic qualities, but for purposes of vi¬ the younger woman, she is portrayed to older woman’s body was seen as worn out,
carious illustration. Children, for example, her disadvantage, for her bodily propor¬ its erotic properties dissolved. The male re¬
were a part of the traditonal inventory of tions are incorrect. The arm with which she action to this was one of disillusionment,
allegories: as putti, angels or Amor. The wards off Death is too long. Baldung fre¬ perhaps even disappointment. This de¬
bodies of old women, on the other hand, quently distorted proportions in this way. cided how he painted.
were generally linked to something revolt¬ The lack of respect and devotion granted
ing or contemptible: witches, for example, older women at the time, with the excep¬
or the Fates. One such work is Diirer’s fa¬ tion, perhaps, of portraits like Diirer’s

114
Dancing
to death
T he artist has crowded three figures
into the left of the painting, leaving
the right to Death. The proportional
harmony and figural balance sought by
Dtirer is lacking here. Instead, the chief ef¬
fect is one of movement: created, for
example, by the old woman striding force¬
fully towards Death, or by the veil. The lat¬
ter begins with the child, flows over the
young woman’s upper arm, is picked up by
Death, finally drifting out of the painting
on the right.
It has been suggested that the pale nude’s
veil is the badge of a whore, for in cities like
Strasbourg at that time, prostitutes were
obliged to wear veils. But then the Virgin
was also frequently painted wearing a veil,
as were Eve and Venus. It is therefore un¬
likely that Baldung’s contemporaries
would have linked the delicate fabric of the
veil with the idea of fornication.
The veil is nonetheless an important fea¬
ture. Firstly, it fulfils a practical and tradi¬
tional function in covering the pubic re¬
gion; secondly, it creates a link between the
child, the young woman and Death. The
older woman, warding off Death with one
hand and supporting the mirror with her
other, completes the group.
All four are inter-connected. The cycle
of figures thus suggests the motion of a
dance: a roundel. Dancers often joined by
holding a piece of cloth rather than each
others’ hands.
Bearing this in mind, it is possible that
the contemporary spectator of this paint¬
ing would not have thought only of Venus
and Amor, Vanity and the bawd, the ages
of Woman, beauty and ephemerality, but
also of the widespread image of the danse
macabre, the dance of death. It was an
image often seen carved on the walls of
graveyards and churches: a skeleton,
usually playing an instrument, leads rep¬
resentatives of each of the social strata,
from the peasant to the emperor to the
pope, into the Hereafter. The message
these pictures conveyed was that Death
cancelled worldly distinctions; only God’s
judgement counted.
This religious and moral exhortation
was evidently compounded by the widely
held belief in ghosts. Death was not the
only figure to haunt the living; there were
also the “undead”. People in those days
spoke of revived corpses, dead persons
taken before their time, the victims of
murder, suicide, accident or war, who, de¬
prived of last rites, roved the surface of the
earth like a “tormented army”.
One of Baldung’s contemporaries, the
doctor and philosopher Paracelsus, re¬
ferred to these revived corpses as “mum¬
mies”. The term aptly describes Hans Bal-
dung Grien’s figure of Death: no naked
skeleton, but a dried-out corpse, whose
finger and toe-nails continue to grow,
whose parched skin hangs down in tatters
like the dry bark of the nearby tree. But
even a superstitious belief in zombies can¬
not fully account for the four figures in the
painting. There is, at any rate, one thing
that all these explanations have in com¬
mon: the painting contains no reference to
the Christian notion of salvation, not a
trace of that doctrine of Divine Supremacy
that was acknowledged and celebrated so
frequently in medieval painting.
115
A papal miracle - painted to reinforce papal authority.
The latter, undermined by a deep crisis in the Church,
needed propaganda to support it. In the year Raphael
completed his fresco, the Reformation began in
Germany with Luther’s 95 theses pinned to the door
of the palace church at Wittenberg. The base of the
fresco, in the former Vatican dining room,
measures 6.97 metres.
Raphael: The Fire in the Borgo, 1514-17

Composure in the face of

misfortune

Pope Leo X was much given to sensuous

pleasure. During long banquets, he would
close his eyes and hum along to the music.
When he opened them, and his gaze rested
on the walls of his dining chamber, he
could enjoy frescos by Raffaello Sanzio of
Urbino, the most popular and well-paid
painter in Rome.
Raphael’s frescos show scenes from the
lives of previous popes called Leo. A fire
was said to have broken out near St. Peter’s,
in the Borgo San Pietro, during the time of
Pope Leo IV (847-855). The fire raged
until the local population sought the pope’s
help. The Holy Father made the sign of the
cross, whereupon the fire immediately papal feats. The dining chamber was the
went out: a papal miracle. first room painted by Raphael for Leo X.
Little is seen of the dangerous fire in Ra¬ Raphael had also enjoyed the great respect
phael’s monumental fresco (base: 6.97 of Leo’s predecessor, Julius II, pope from
metres; top arched by domed ceiling). One 1503 to 1513.
or two figures are shown fighting it with The artist was born in Urbino in 1483.
vessels of water; others, barely dressed, try In 1508 he began work for Julius in Rome.
to escape. The arms and faces of the figures His cartoons for frescos in three new Vati¬
in the backgound are raised in supplication can appartments, known as “stanze”, had
to the pope. He alone can save them from pleased Julius so much that he ordered all
catastrophe. He alone can command the work by other artists to be removed from
hostile elements. these rooms. Only Raphael was to paint
The image was undoubtedly appreciated them.
by the patron of the fresco. Weakened by When Julius died, only two of the rooms
internal disruption, Italy was in desperate were finished. The new Pope Leo X gave
need of a pope who could perform miracles Raphael so much work that the young ar¬
and protect it against the French, Spanish tist was increasingly forced to rely on as¬
and Imperial armies struggling for Euro¬ sistants for completion of the Vatican
pean hegemony. frescos. The Fire in the Borgo was the last
Leo X wished to be remembered as a fresco to be executed by his own hand. The
pope of peace. The motif of a legend from dining chamber was completed in 1517.
the life of a previous Leo served his cause The appartments “owed their distinctive
very well. He showed great interest in the beauty to unique works of art,” wrote
progress of the fresco. “The pope sum¬ Leo’s secretary, and to the fact that they
mons us every day,” reported Raphael, were “almost always full of cardinals”.2
who started work on the papal dining
chamber in 1514, “and discusses the work
with us a little.”1
The three other walls also show topical

117

An Epicurean
on St. Peter's
P ope Leo IV appears at the window of a
loggia, surrounded by attendants. His
features are those of Raphael’s patron,
throne Leo X. At his first Easter procession, Leo is
said to have almost collapsed under the
weight of his golden ceremonial gowns and
tiara. A weakly man, he was no longer in the
best of health at the age of 37, when the
painting was executed. His health had in¬
fluenced his election. Many cardinals had
hopes of succeeding him; none of them had
wished a “strong pope”.
Leo’s predecessor on St. Peter’s throne,
Julius II, had been known as “il papa ter-
ribile”: “the terrible pope”. His portrait,
too, can be found in Raphael’s Vatican
frescos.
During his ten years of office, Julius had
been at war almost continually. He had
taken the field himself, swearing like a
trooper, commanding battles, besieging
towns. He saw himself not only as the head
118
of the Christian Church, but as a worldly
ruler.
With his battle-cry “Fuori i barbari”
(“Out with the barbarians”), Julius had at¬
tempted to drive the great foreign powers
from Italian soil, constantly forging new
alliances in the process. Italy was divided,
its towns and princedoms at war with each
other. Julius wanted to unite them under
papal leadership - a dream, shared by many
patriots, which he took with him to the
grave. His successor had other interests,
and the system of electing popes made it
difficult to realise long-term political goals.
Leo X was more interested in family
politics than war or empire-building. He
had been born in 1475 as Giovanni de’
Medici, the second son of Lorenzo the
Magnificent, the uncrowned ruler of
Florence. It was decided when Giovanni
was very young that he should crown the
family fortunes with papal dignity. Given a
tonsure at the age of 7, he received a cardi¬
nal’s hat at 14. “God has conferred the pon¬
tificate upon us,” Leo is known to have
said after his election, “we therefore intend
to enjoy it!”3
The glory of the Holy See under the
highly educated humanist and Epicurean
Leo X knew few limits. Furthermore, the
enthusiastic patronage of the arts begun by
Julius continued under Leo. However,
since he had practically no background in
financial management, he exhausted - ac¬
cording to the French historian Paul Lari-
vaille - the “treasuries of three popes” dur¬
ing his own period of office: the wealth ac¬
cumulated by Julius, his own income, and
that of his successor.
Despite his desire to be a man of peace,
he could not avoid involvement in the
struggle between the leading European
powers. With his diplomatic intrigues and
timid tactical opportunism, he could do
little to match leaders like Francis I of
France, or Charles V, Spanish and Holy
Roman Emperor.
Like other popes, Leo X was unre¬
strained in his nepotism, surrounding him¬
self with relatives and close friends from
Florence. This was essential for his own
protection. Rome was a dangerous place,
especially after the death of a pope. While
the cardinals met in conclave, there were
regular riots in the city. The people mar¬
ched through the streets, plundered the pa¬
laces of the dead pope and cardinals, and
set them on fire.
R aphael’s fresco shows a part of the
old city of Rome that was de¬
molished during the 16th century:
the original facade of St. Peter’s with its
Romanesque window arches and mosaics
on a golden ground. The basilica had been
subject to building work for some time.
The church, begun by Emperor Constan¬
tine in A.D. 324 over the grave of the
apostle Peter, was no longer safe, and its
simplicity no longer appealed to High Re¬
naissance taste.
Renovations began under Julius, the
“terrible pope”. In fact, Julius merely
The master builders
of Rome
wished to build a grand monument to him¬
self in St. Peter’s. But when Michelangelo’s
monument proved too large, Julius decided
to extend the church to accommodate it.
While plans were being drawn up, however,
Julius concluded that only the total recon¬
struction of Christendom’s most important
church constituted an adequate monument
to his period of office. It was to be a building
which could compete in size and magni¬
ficence with the “Holy Wisdom” (Hagia
Sophia) in Constantinople.
Julius entrusted the architect Bramante
with the plans and, on 18 April 1506, cere¬
moniously laid the foundation stone under
St. Veronica’s choir-pillar, behind the old
facade. The facade itself was left standing,
while parts of the basilica were pulled
down and renewed.
It was in this half-demolished church in
1513 that Pope Leo X was forced to cel¬
ebrate his first Easter. He had Bramante
continue the building works, appointing
Raphael Master Builder of St. Peter’s in
1514 after Bramante’s death, because, as he
said: “We have no greater wish than that
this temple be completed in the most
splendid manner, and as quickly as
possible.”4 The new St. Peter’s cathedral
was completed in 1626 - 19 popes later.
It was not unusual for painters to engage
in architectural work. To meet the Renais¬
sance ideal of “universal man”, the artist
had to be an “all-rounder”. He only had to
deliver the plans, after all; the rest was
taken care of by experts with the necessary
practical experience. “What place... in the
world could be more dignified than Rome,
and what work confer more dignity than
St. Peter’s,”5 wrote Raphael to his uncle.
His interest in architecture is reflected in
The Fire in the Borgo. Architectonic fea¬
tures are not merely intended to be de¬
corative. Here, space is used to great effect,
and with evident understanding of per¬
spective. The building, with its mighty
square stones and loggia on the church fa¬
cade, probably reflects plans that Raphael
had already drawn up for a Borgo Palace.
The “universal” artist Raphael also de¬
signed villas for bankers and palaces for
cardinals; he participated in the architectu¬
ral reconstruction of Rome as a leading
city, then fully underway. It was during
Raphael’s lifetime that the Holy City over¬
took Florence as a centre of art.
The immense sums of money needed for
these works were procured by means of
“spiritual” transactions by the popes
themselves, not least by Julius and Leo.
They sold ecclesiastical offices to the high¬
est bidders, and papal indulgences for
every sin in the book. “Thus the material
construction of St. Peter’s was responsible,
to a large extent, for its spiritual decon¬
struction,” as one Catholic historian at the
Council of Trent (1545-1563) put it, “for
in order to collect the millions swallowed
by that colossal work, Julius II’s successor
was forced to engage in practices which
provoked Luther’s heresy, which, in turn,
has made the Church poorer by an even
larger number of millions of souls.”3 In
1517, the year the papal master builder Ra¬
phael completed his fresco, Luther had
pinned his 95 theses to a church door in
distant Wittenberg.
119

The Classical
heritage
S t. Peter’s, the Vatican and other pal¬
aces were built largely from the ruins
of antiquity. This had been a well-
tried method ever since the feudal lords
Orsini and Colonna had used the remains
of the Colosseum to build fortified towers
for themselves and their families. The
popes of the Middle Ages had held heathen
monuments in disdain. Their humanist
successors in the late 15th century, on the
other hand, liked to think of themselves as
Caesar’s heirs, collecting antique medals
and sculptures (Julius II, for example, is
known to have paid huge sums for the
statue of Laocoon, found in the vineyards
in 1506). But even these popes exploited
ancient remains when it suited them.
120
forum and Constantines basilica... Fie
found it “...extraordinarily painful to
have to behold the cadaver, as it were, of
such a venerable and noble town J
But Raphael not only tried to preserve
ancient Rome; he attempted to reconstruct
a picture of it from texts and excavations.
In the year Raphael complained so bitterly
to the pope, highest honours were con¬
ferred upon him for his contributions to
acrchaeology. According to an epigram
dating from 1519, he had “sought and
found Rome in Rome”. “Great is the man
who seeks, but he who finds is a god!”8
While excavating the Latium marshes, Ra¬
phael fell ill with swamp fever. He died in
1520.
The painter and architect was greatly
celebrated in his own lifetime. Raphael’s
personality came as close to the ideals of
his time as his art. He was modest, well-
mannered, widely read and exceptionally
charming. His extraordinary career was
aided by the fact that the two other major
artists of his time did not compete with
him: after finishing the ceiling of the Sistine
Chapel in 1512, Michelangelo returned to
his work as a sculptor; Leonardo da Vinci
left for France in 1516.
Success brought him riches. From 1513,
Raphael lived in a palace of his own in the
Borgo, with a large studio on the ground
floor where his assistants did much of the
work. Raphael knew how to delegate and
organise. He was also an excellent busi¬
nessman: “... our lord, His Holiness, gives
During Raphael’s lifetime, it gradually me 300 golden ducats for the building
work at St. Peter’s which I am to receive as
dawned on the Romans that something
had been lost, irrecoverably, with these long as I live... Moreover, I am paid for my
buildings. On 27 August 1515, Leo X made work as I see fit...”6
the master builder of St. Peter’s “praefect
over all marble and masonry unearthed
from this day forth in Rome and within a
He received many different honours, al¬
most, indeed, becoming a cardinal. In this,
low birth and lack of religious qualification
would have proved no hindrance. In 1517,
compass of ten miles.”6 Anyone finding
“marble or other stones” was now obliged Leo appointed 31 cardinals at a time, invit¬
to inform Raphael immediately. No “in¬ ing all of them afterwards to celebrate the
scribed stones” were to be cut or broken event with him at a huge banquet in the
without his permission. Vatican, under Raphael’s frescos.
Following their registration, the ma¬ Raphael’s Fire in the Borgo is not only a
jority of these “inscribed stones” probably monument to the basilica, it also depicts
became part of the stonework of St. Peter’s. ancient columns of dark, Africano marble
There was little the artist could do to alter with Ionic capitals, and white columns
this practice, despite regrets to the con¬ with Corinthian capitals. There had been
trary, expressed in a letter to the pope in columns like these in the basilica at Con¬
1518. In the previous twelve years, he stantinople. Raphael planned to use them
wrote, he had “witnessed the destruction again in the new church. He painted them
of the triumphal arch of the Diocletian with cracks and fractures: like the remains
thermal springs, the temple of Ceres in the of a bygone age.
G aping in amazement, a beautiful
woman, bearing water to extin¬
guish the fire, pauses in mid-stride
to marvel at the pope’s miracle. Her whole
bearing expresses nobility, a posture frozen
in wonder. The wind plays with her time¬
less, antique robe to reveal a strong, fully-
ln the Grand Manner
formed figure. Raphael painted her “with
voluptuous brush”,9 according to one of
his contemporaries. In a letter to Count
Castiglione of Urbino, the artist himself
regretted that there were “so few beautiful
women available” in Rome as models.10
“We lack nothing but women at court,”3
complained Cardinal Bibbiena. Women in
paintings undoubtedly had a special signi¬
ficance at the Vatican. Women were no
longer admitted to papal banquets as they
had been under one of Julius II’s predeces¬
sors, the Borgia pope Alexander VI. It
would have been thought unseemly for the
concubines of the prelates to enter the Vati¬
can.
Raphael, too, is reputed to have kept a
mysterious mistress at his palace; he en¬
sured a financially secure future for her
through a passage contained in his will.
Besides graceful, “sweet” Madonnas, he
also painted - like Michelangelo - strong
heroines who were capable of maintaining
a thoroughly dignified air - and an elabor¬
ate coiffure! - while fighting a fire. These
women were fully consistent with contem¬
porary taste for what came to be known as
the “maniera grande”.
The “Grand Manner” was thought by
leading humanists at the Holy See to be an
appropriate form of homage to the Classi¬
cal ideals of proportion and harmony. Self¬
composure was of paramount importance,
even during a disaster. It was not only the
water-bearer’s physical beauty that at¬
tracted the admiration of the painting’s
spectators, but her equanimity, her poise.
An open mouth was permissable; distorted
facial features were not. Nothing was to be
allowed to disturb the spectator’s aesthetic
pleasure.
The most eloquent contemporary ex¬
pression of the rules of refined behaviour
was Count Castiglione’s book The Court¬
ier. As its title suggests, the manners it
codified applied only to behaviour at
court, among the nobility, who were thus
able to distinguish themselves clearly from
the lower classes. To an aristocratic sensi¬
bility, refined manners were a form of real,
visible beauty.
These ideals were propagated at a time
when Italy, and Rome especially, was
threatened by one catastrophe after an¬
other: whole streets would be engulfed by
flames during fighting between the rival
Colonna and Orsini families; the Tiber-
burst its banks and flooded the lower-lying
areas of the city; earthquakes shook the
buildings, and after the death of a pope, the
mob ruled. While the people prayed fer¬
vently to the golden Archangel Michael
high up on the Castel Sant’Angelo, the rul¬
ing class would strive to maintain its sense
of equanimity - not always successfully,
however: on the night before Raphael died
on 6 April 1520, an earthquake is said to
have made Pope Leo flee in panic from the
very Vatican appartments where Raphael’s
frescos pay such impressive homage to the
ideal of composure.
121
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122
 Niklaus Manuel: The Execution of John the Baptist, c. 1517
The femme fatale
charms the devout viewer
John the Baptist was put in prison for be¬
ing too popular. He proclaimed the com¬
ing of the Messiah, called for repentance
and baptized the faithful in the river Jor¬
dan. So many people flocked to hear the
famous preacher in Galilee that the Ro¬
man authorities began to fear he would in¬
cite a riot (and exhort the people to stop
paying their taxes). Thus reported the
Jewish historian Flavius Josephus in the
1st century AD. The Roman governor,
King Herod Antipas, had John “clapped
in chains, taken to the fortress of Machae-
rus ... and executed.”
In Niklaus Manuel’s painting, the sword
with which John has just been beheaded is
lying in a pool of blood on the ground.
The body of the ascetic is being quickly
whisked away on a bier. The person carry¬
ing the front of the stretcher has already
disappeared through the arch; only his
boot is still visible. The executioner holds
out the bloody head of John the Baptist by
the beard, about to sweep it onto a silver
tray. Ready to receive this gruesome offer¬
ing, three women are staring fixedly at the
empty platter. The two younger women
are called Herodias and Salome, and it is
they - so the Bible has it - who have John
the Baptist on their conscience.
For if there were political motives
for John the Baptist’s death, there were
also more personal ones. As Mark and
Matthew both relate in their gospels, the
preacher against vice and moral corrup¬
tion had been bold enough to openly ac¬
cuse Herod and his wife of adultery.
Herodias had originally been married to
Herod’s brother Philip, before deserting
him for Herod. Insulted and enraged,
Herodias “wanted John killed in revenge,
but without Herod’s approval she was
powerless.” (Mark 6:19) For Herod knew
that John “was a good and holy man”, and
rather than considering having him ex¬
ecuted, “kept him under his protection”
and “liked to listen to him”.
His vengeful wife therefore instructed
her daughter Salome, Herod’s step-daugh¬
ter, to ask - at a moment when Herod
could not refuse her anything - for the
head of the Baptist. “I want the head of
John the Baptist, right now, on a tray!”,
demanded the obedient Salome. Herod
“was very sorry”, but because he had
sworn to give the girl anything she asked
for, “he sent an executioner to the prison
to cut off John’s head and bring it to him.
The soldier beheaded John in the prison,
brought his head on a tray, and gave it to
the girl, who took it to her mother.” (Mark
6:27-28)
The Evangelists do not say exactly
where this transfer took place. The painter
sets the scene on an open-air terrace look¬
ing out onto a dramatic landscape with a
castle, rugged cliffs and windswept fir
trees. Dark clouds are banked up in the
nocturnal skies overhead, and - an apoca¬ - and a great deal of money. French gold
lyptic phenomenon - a rainbow and a star crowns and Italian ducats flowed for en¬
are visible at the same time. tertainments, luxuries and the arts.
The work is first mentioned in an in¬ Niklaus Manuel also made a good liv¬
ventory of paintings in 1586, where it is ing. In 1517 he received 400 pounds for a
referred to as “The Execution of John with large commission: the decoration of the
Lightning and Thunder”. In 1662 it was choir of Berne cathedral. The present,
purchased by Basle, where it hangs in the “small Execution” probably dates from
Kunstmuseum today. Painted in varnished around this time. An earlier version of the
tempera on spruce, it measures just 34 x 26 same subject, the “large Execution”, still
cm. In the inventory it was described as hangs in Berne today. John the Baptist
“the work of Manuel Tiitsch of Berne”. was extremely popular - as evidenced not
This Niklaus Manuel, sometimes known simply by the numerous altars dedicated
as Niklaus Deutsch, was born in Berne in to him, but also by the so-called “John
1484, and lived an unusual life as a painter, trays” displayed in many chapels, on which
mercenary and statesman - at a time of un¬ lay naturalistic models of the head of the
usual upheaval for his country. Baptist, still dripping with “blood”.
Bernese mercenaries, like mercenaries Many Swiss made the pilgrimage to
from other parts of the Swiss Confedera¬ Amiens cathedral in France, which boast¬
tion, headed south in the service of the ed amongst its relics the “genuine” head of
king, pope or emperor employing them, the saint (as, incidentally, did Paris, Venice
and from 1494 onwards fought for over 30 and several other cities). Pilgrims prayed
years in the Italian campaigns. Returning to John the Baptist for a cure for every
to their provincial, medieval home town, possible ill, and in particular - and appro¬
which lay off the major trade routes, they priately - for headaches and an addiction
brought with them foreign ideas, customs to dancing.
123
N iklaus Manuel’s Salome does not
seem very distressed by the execu¬
tion. Her appearance as she looks
at her tray is rather that of an upright, du¬
tiful daughter of a Bernese dignitary out
shopping in the market. Only the infam¬
ous slit in her tucked dress, revealing a
small area of white flesh beneath a see-
through petticoat, hints at the charms of
the biblical Lolita who seduced her step¬
father. While the king was dining with his
guests, so Mark relates in his Gospel, “the
daughter of Herodias herself came in and
performed a dance that greatly pleased
124
them all.” The king then promised Salome,
“I will give you whatever you ask, up to
half of my kingdom!”
More the Evangelists do not say; they
do not even call the “girl” by her name. As
“the daughter of Herodias”, she remains
an anonymous instrument in the hands
of her mother. The historians, too, know
little more than that she married a King
Aristobul, was depicted on a gold coin and
was called Salome. Yet this secondary
player in the martyrdom of St John is
omitted from none of the altars dedicated
to him, and for almost 2000 years has
ranked amongst the favourite subjects of
painters, writers and composers.
It is Salome’s dance which, for artists,
holds the greatest appeal of all. It adorns
the 11th-century Bernward column in
Hildesheim and the bronze doors of the
church of San Zeno in Verona (around
1100), whereby Salome’s art (she is danc¬
ing on her hands!) strikes us as more acro¬
batic than alluring. People in the past must
have thought otherwise: in as early as the
5th century, the church fathers con¬
demned Salome’s depravity and de¬
nounced dancing in general as the ultimate
in wantonness and vice.
It was with similar words that the
preachers of Niklaus Manuel’s day thun¬
dered their warnings against the evils of
dancing from the pulpit of Berne cathed¬
ral. If we are to believe the many prohibi¬
tion orders from this period, the pleasure-
addicted citizens of Berne danced day and
night in their homes, in the streets, in the
town hall, and especially under the arches
of the Franciscan monastery. The preachers
blamed the decline in Berne’s once so strict
morals on the mercenaries, for “war and
money are a school for every vice”.
This was the reason for the strict dress
code in force in Berne up to the end of the
15th century, which decreed how each
class had to clothe itself. After the lucrat¬
ive Italian campaign of 1516, however, the
wearing of “gold, velvet and silk” became
widespread “to a degree never before seen”,
complained the Bernese historian Ans-
helm. Niklaus Manuel’s Salome is wearing
“Italian” sandals, puffed sleeves and a
laced dress in the very latest fashion. Her
costume is thereby almost identical to
that of a prostitute whom Niklaus Manuel
portrayed around this same period. The
prostitute is dancing towards her death
in the arms of a skeleton. Salome, too, did
not escape death: she was dancing on the
ice one day, so legend has it, when it
cracked “as soon as she put her accursed
feet” on it. She sank beneath the surface
and the ice closed around her, leaving only
her head sticking out - as if decapitated.
Salome wears
the clothes
of a prostitute
A Confederate soldier
wielded
the sword
T he executioner offers another ex¬
ample of extravagant Confederate
fashion: over a finely-pleated snow-
white shirt, he wears an asymmetrically-
cut short velvet jacket and particularly
elaborate multicoloured hose - one leg
lavishly decorated with a notched trim, the
other patterned with a vertical stripe and
featuring a gaping hole which reveals the
silk lining beneath. This type of “holiness”
guaranteed not only freedom of move¬
ment, but also signalled - then as now (as
in the case of jeans) - non-conformism and
provocation.
Provocative, too, is the elegant, dancing
pose in which the executioner is captured,
like a lunging fencer. Agility, combined
with a powerful, accurate strike, were the
trademarks of Confederate mercenaries,
“invincible giants” who did not wear ar¬
mour. The artistic prototype created by
Niklaus Manuel continues to adorn the
stained-glass windows of Swiss, churches:
with legs astride and a flag in his strong
fist, he recalls past military might.
These soldiers, who emigrated briefly
from their homeland to seek their fortune
in the service of foreign masters, liked to
pride themselves on their chivalrous vir¬
tues. They sought single combat and
despised cannon as “dishonourable”. To
the German humanist Jakob Wimpheling,
however, they remained “obstreperous,
sullen and arrogant wild men”, taught
from their youth onwards only to reach
for their weapons. They sold themselves to
those offering the best pay and observed
no discipline. These “honest Confederate
soldiers” plunged into the fray or left the
battlefield depending on their mood.
When they failed to get paid after the cap¬
ture of Novara in 1522, they took out their
anger on the town, plundering, burning,
raping and murdering with the utmost
brutality.
The king *of France, the Pope and the
German emperor all vied for their services,
each bribing them away from the others.
The Confederates’ central geographical
position meant that a contingent of 30,000
soldiers could be deployed in Italy, France
or Germany within two weeks. With suc¬
cess: in 1512/13 the Swiss drove the French
out of Upper Italy, installed Sforza as the
Duke of Milan and conquered Domodos-
sola, Locarno, Lugano and the Valtellina.
They were at the height of their power. In
1516 they switched allegiance and sub¬
sequently fought on the side of the French.
The Bernese troops who marched to
Italy between February and May 1516 also
included the 32-year-old Niklaus Manuel,
serving as “army secretary” to Albrecht
von Stein, commander of the Bernese
force. Like so many of his contemporaries,
he left his wife, child and job - an altar-
piece for the town of Grandson - in the
hope of easily-earned money, adventure
and foreign climes. He is supposed to have
returned home with a rich booty.
Because they had gone to war without
the official permission of the Bernese au¬
thorities, however, the painter and his col¬
leagues first had to hide out in the Francis¬
can monastery for a few days. In anticipa¬
tion of a mild sentence, they spent their
time there eating and drinking merrily.
In 1522 Niklaus Manuel contracted
himself out anew. The historian Anshelm
reports that the painter injured his hand
during the plunder of Novara. He was also
on the field when the Confederates suf¬
fered a devastating defeat in the battle of
Bicocca. Over 4000 Swiss soldiers lost
their lives, including Albrecht von Stein.
Niklaus remembered them in his Song of
Bicocca, his first work of poetry known to
us, in which he insults the victorious en¬
emy in the coarsest terms. In his Berne
Dance of Death, he portrays himself, the
painter at work, as the last figure in the
roundelay. Spruced up in exactly the same
elaborate costume as John the Baptist’s
executioner, he is quite the proud Confed¬
erate soldier.
125
S alome was not the only one to meet
an unfortunate end. According to
some people, so the Golden Legend
relates, when Herodias “had the head [of
John the Baptist] in her hands and taunted
it gleefully, by God’s will the
breathed in her face and she expired.”
Other legends have her as a witch, swoop¬
ing through the skies at full moon on Mid¬
summer Eve and pitilessly chasing the
head of the Baptist like a ball. The Roman¬
tic poet Heinrich Heine met her - and fell
under her spell, like many artists before
126
and since. “Why did you look at me so
tenderly, Herodias?” For Herod’s beauti¬
ful wife is a biblical example of a femme
fatale, a woman who brings about a man’s
undoing. Perhaps Niklaus Manuel’s Hero¬
dias possesses magical powers; her exquis¬
head
ite headdress suggestively includes the
wings of an owl, the messenger of death.
Above all, she is strong-willed: with her
slender index finger, Herodias instructs
the executioner precisely where he is to
put the severed head - possibly in mock¬
ing imitation of the gesture with which
John the Baptist, in many paintings, points
to Christ, whose coming he has been
preaching.
It is not surprising that some artists
should have confused Salome and Hero¬
dias, since both embody the allegedly dan¬
gerous aspects of the female sex. Thus
John is the victim both of the hatred, thirst
for vengeance and unscrupulousness of
the adultress Herodias, and equally, of
the erotic arts of seduction practised by
the wanton dancer Salome. In Niklaus
Manuel’s painting, the two are joined by
an ugly old woman, completing the pop¬
ular group of the “three ages of man”. She
might be the old nurse who helped con¬
coct the murderous intrigue, or even Satan
in person. In some of the popular St John
plays” performed in the 15th and 16th
centuries, the devil visits Herodias in the
shape of an old woman, in order to goad
her on against the Baptist.
This threatening trio embodies the
power of women. Even Niklaus Manuel
must have been scared stiff of them. In his
sketchbooks, attractive female figures are
almost always armed - with a “lasso”, or a
sword or dagger. He associated women,
beauty and eroticism with blood and
death and thereby shared the gruesome
leanings of his day. From the 13th century
onwards, John’s execution was clearly the
most popular episode in the Baptist’s life
as far as artists were concerned. The num¬
ber of portrayals of such execution scenes
doubled every hundred years or so, reach¬
ing its high point in the 16th century. At
the same time, the number of protagonists
was reduced, and the format of the paint¬
ing shrank accordingly. Niklaus Manuel’s
almost miniature-like work can hardly
have been painted for a church; the Bible
served merely as the pretext for a private
devotional image whose purpose was sim¬
ultaneously to satisfy the piousness, sadism
and lust of an - unknown - Bernese art
lover.
The fearsome
power
of women
B ehind the clouds filling the sky of
this “Execution with Lightning and
Thunder”, a star is shining. The
Golden Legend relates that “a star ... came
to rest over the spot where John the Bapt¬
ist’s head was buried.” Mysterious natural
phenomena such as comets and eclipses
were believed to accompany significant
events and were viewed as portents of dis¬
aster. In times of uncertainty and fear, they
were seen with particular frequency. When
the Swiss suffered a serious defeat at
Marignano in 1515, two blood-red stripes
- reported the historian Anshelm - could
be seen running all the way to Berne in the
skies over the Confederation. They were
signs of further calamity.
Bicocca was followed in 1525 by the
equally catastrophic battle of Pavia, where
the fleet-footed Swiss soldiers fell beneath
the fire of the cannons they so despised.
With increasing frequency, too, Swiss sol¬
diers found themselves facing each other
on opposite sides of the battlefield. Civil
war threatened. The mercenary profession
had plunged the country into serious po¬
litical and social crisis.
In his poem The Dream of 1522, Nik-
laus Manuel describes how, during sleep¬
less nights, he worries about his homeland
and yearns for peace and a new order.
Another important celestial sign was the
rainbow. Ever since it appeared to Noah,
announcing the end of the Flood, it had
been seen as a symbol of peace and salva¬
tion. It signalled hope for a fairer world
and was clearly connected with John the
Baptist, who foretold the salvation of
the world through Christ. It was from a
pulpit decked with a rainbow banner that
the preacher and revolutionary Thomas
Miintzer (c. 1490-1525) called for a radical
shake-up of existing conditions. And it
was beneath rainbow pennants that the re¬
bellious peasants marched into the battle
of Frankenhausen.
Meanwhile, in Berne cathedral, Bercht-
hold Haller had started preaching in a
slightly more moderate vein, in an attempt
to “tame the wild bears with the teachings
of Christ”. He looked for salvation from
the political confusion in passages from
the Bible, and in a reformation of the
Church and morals, for “the mercenary
soldier is an inhuman ... sinful thing”. The
small, influential groups who supported
him soon took on Niklaus Manuel, as an
agitator and propagandist of the Reforma-
Signed
with
a dagger
1* * r / / If 1
U\V Jyf
fnl I
Jl Ik
tion. The painter wrote polemical pamph¬
lets, denounced the corruption of the
clergy - which he had experienced at first
hand in Italy - and fought, this time with
his pen, for a new order. The former sol¬
dier became a politician, and from 1523 to
1528 was bailiff of Erlach, not far from
Berne. He had little time left over for
painting.
It is possible that the “small Execution”
was painted at the start of Niklaus Ma¬
nuel’s period in Erlach. However, it is usu¬
ally dated to 1517, however, on the basis of
the Swiss dagger - halfway between a dag¬
ger and a sword - which appears in the
centre of the painting under the artist’s
gold monogram. Over the course of the
years, its blade grew broader and shorter
and was decorated with a ribbon. Manuel
used this weapon, typical of Confederate
mercenaries, to sign both his paintings and
his pamphlets. The fact that his signature
occupies such a prominent position in the
upper half of the picture suggests more
than just a healthy self-confidence. Per¬
haps the artist painted the panel for his
own use. Perhaps it hung in the chambers
of Niklaus Manuel the statesman, who in
1529, as a member of the privy council -
the executive in post-Reformation Berne -
passed strict laws a'gainst service in foreign
armies, the carrying of weapons, eye¬
catching dress, vice, adultery and dancing.
'
in.1-
127
 Albrecht Altdorfer: The Battle of Issus, 1529
The battle to end all battles
The Wittelsbach Duke Wilhelm IV was
hardly one of the more important rulers of
his day. He governed Bavaria from 1508 to
1550, during the Reformation, but his
strategy of shifting alliances with the
powerful Habsburgs, French king and
Protestant rulers brought him little ad¬
vantage; he even made a vain attempt to
become German king. On the other hand,
he did achieve two things with lasting ef¬
fect: Wilhelm ensured that Bavaria re¬
mained a Catholic land, and he commis¬
sioned one of the most important German
paintings, Albrecht Altdorfer’s The Battle
of Issus.
The painter and architect Altdorfer lived
in Regensburg, approximately sixty miles
north of the ducal residence in Munich.
Though situated in the middle of Bavaria,
Regensburg was a Free Imperial Town,
128
whose allegiances alternated between the
Emperor in Vienna and the Wittelsbach
dukes. The same might be said for the
Regensburg citizen Altdorfer. Altdorfer
executed some 200 works for Emperor
Maximilian, most of them miniatures and
woodcuts, but he created his masterpiece
for Duke Wilhelm in Munich.
Altdorfer must have been almost 50
when he received the commission to paint
The Battle of Issus. His exact age cannot be
established, since his date of birth is un¬
known. It is thought to have been c. 1480.
However, documentary evidence does re¬
veal that Altdorfer quickly rose to wealth
and prestige. In 1513 he bought a house
“with a tower and farmstead”. In 1517 he
became a member of the Outer Town
Council, in 1526 a member of the Inner
Council, and on 18th September 1528 he
was elected Mayor. However, Altdorfer
declined this high office. His reason for
doing so is mentioned in the annals of the
Regensburg Council: “He much desires to
execute a special work in Bavaria for my
Serene Highness and gracious Lord, Duke
Wilhelm.” This “work” was The Battle of
Issus.
As an artist and member of the town
council, Altdorfer became involved in the
conflicts of his age. He announced the
town’s expulsion of its Jewish inhabitants,
making a quick sketch of the synagogue
before it was destroyed. His connections
to the imperial court were such that, when
Regensburg fell into disgrace with the
Emperor, Altdorfer was entrusted with
the mission of apologizing. When the
Turkish army threatened Vienna, he was
given the task of fortifying the Regens¬
burg defences.
As a member of the town council, Alt¬
dorfer had to interrogate Anabaptists and
sit in a committee to appoint a Protestant
minister. In his will, he declared that he had
no desire for “spiritual accessories”, which
probably meant that he rejected the admin¬
istration of last rites, or the holding of a
mass. By the time of his death in 1538, he
was probably no longer a practising Cath¬
olic.
The schism within the church and the
military threat that sprang from the non-
Christian Orient were the two main fac¬
tors determining life at the time. Inse¬
curity and fear were widespread. It is
against this background, too, that we
must consider the genesis of the present
painting.
The artist shows an event from the dis¬
tant past, a battle fought near Issus in 333
B.C. This he sets against a panorama of
sky and landscape; the battle in Asia Minor
thus assumes the aura of a natural disaster,
or a scene from some cosmic Armaged¬
don. In fact, the battle was seen at the time
as a turning point in world history: the
Greek Occident had defeated the Persian
Orient.
The contemporary signifcance of the
subject was obvious, and the tablet pro¬
claiming victory at the top of the painting
assumed a special significance in the face of
the Turkish threat. The tablet appears to
descend from the vault of the heavens, and
bears a message in Latin: “The defeat of
Darius by Alexander the Great, following
the deaths of 100,000 Persian foot-soldiers
and more than 10,000 Persian horsemen.
King Darius’ mother, wife and children
were taken prisoner, together with about
1,000 fleeing horse-soldiers.”
 'iL . -V

; 0.V\
A ltdorfer provides details of military
strengths and losses not only on
which derived from the Macedonian’s de¬
feat of an army many times larger than his
details he cited. There is nothing in the
painting to sugggest the numerical superi¬
ority of Darius’ army; nor has the artist
the large tablet, but on banners and own. According to figures cited in the
painting itself, Darius commanded 300,000 followed historical accounts of strategic
flags. The painting was probably intended
foot-soldiers, while Alexander led only deployment. On top of this, he has
to serve several purposes, one being to
32,000; the Persian king had a cavalry of clothed the figures in the dress of his own
keep alive Alexander’s strategic fame,
100,000, his opponent a mere 4,000. One of time. The cavalry wear heavy armour;
the great general’s admirers was Napoleon, some of Persians are shown in turbans of
who, in 1800, had Altdorfer’s painting the kind Turks were seen' to wear. The
brought to Paris and hung in his bathroom. women in feathered toques look like Ger¬
Women on As an artist, however, Altdorfer evi¬ man courtly ladies, dressed for a hunting

the battlefield dently felt little obligation to illustrate the party.

That Altdorfer painted women at all on
a battlefield must probably be attributed to
his passion for invention. The 16th century
became increasingly preoccupied with
western civilisation, but this was not
necessarily accompanied by an interest in
historic truth. Investigative research into
the past had not yet begun; archaeology
was a subject of the future.
One of Altdorfer’s sources was prob¬
ably Hartmann Schedel’s “World
Chronicle”. Most of the artist’s statistics
are identical to those given by Schedel. The
book had appeared in Nuremberg in 1493,
35 years before Altdorfer commenced
work on The Battle of Issus. Another
source may have been an account written
by Q. Curtius Rufus, a document prob¬
ably dating from the first century. How¬
ever, neither work makes mention of
women entering the fray - one of Altdor¬
fer’s inventions.
A highly dramatic scene involving
women is indeed related in Curtius’s ac¬
count, only this takes place in a camp. Ac¬
cording to Curtius, Darius’ mother and
wife, taken prisoner in their tents, sud¬
denly began to wail: “The reason for this
shocking scene was that Darius’ mother
and wife had broken into loud and woeful
lamentations for the king, whom they
thought killed. For a captive eunuch ...
recognizing Darius’ tunic, ... which he
had cast off for fear that his clothing
would betray him, in the hands of the sol¬
dier who had found it, and imagining the
garment to be taken from the king’s dead
body, had brought false news of his
death.”

130
Heroes
replace
saints
D arius escaped with his life at the
battle of Issus. He was certainly
not pursued by Alexander to
within a length of the latter’s lance, as Alt¬
dorfer’s painting suggests. At least, there is
no mention of this in either historical ac¬
count. The artist was faithful to historical
truth only when it suited him, when his¬
torical facts were compatible with the de¬
mands of his composition.
It is not known what Altorfer’s patron
wished the painting to show: admiration
for Alexander’s strategic prowess, the par¬
allel with the Turkish threat, or - since he
was himself such an enthusiastic partici¬
pant in tournaments — a celebration of
chivalry? All that can be said for sure is that
Altdorfer’s painting reflected one of the
chief preoccuptions of his age: the reap¬
praisal of Classical antiquity was a charac¬
teristic feature of the Renaisssance. During
the Middle Ages, saints had grown in sig¬
nificance over the legendary figures of
ancient Greece and Rome, and more value
was attached to relics of Christian martyrs
than to antique manuscripts. However, a
change in attitude soon began to make it¬
self felt in quattrocento Italy, spreading
north across the Alps during the century
that followed. The saints began to lose
their exemplary status. Of course, this pro¬
cess was linked to the decadence of the
Roman Catholic Church. Reappraisal of
antiquity and the decline of the Church
went hand in hand.
Wilhelm IV commissioned not only The
Battle of Issus, but a whole series of heroic
scenes: Hannibal defeating the Romans at
Cannae, Caesar besieging Alesia, the cap¬
tive Mucius Scaevola burning his hand to
demonstrate to his adversaries the bravery
of the young men of Rome; eight paintings
(of which Altendorfer painted only one) in
an identical, upright format. There is also a
second series in horizontal format - poss¬
ibly commissioned for the Duchess -
showing seven famous women, many of
them Old Testament figures: Susanna
bathing, before defending herself against
the advances of two elders who slander her
and condemn her to death; Judith cutting
off the head of Holofernes, the enemy of
her people; and Helen, Troy’s ruin.
All of these men and women had distin¬
guished themselves in some way or other.
The interest they aroused during the 16th
century was not only a sign of the period’s
rediscovery of antiquity, it was the mark of
a new sense of self. During the Renaissance
people no longer saw themselves solely as
members of a social group, as the citizens
of a town, or as sinners before God in
whose eyes all were equal. They had
become aware of the unique qualities that
distinguished one person from another.
Unlike the Middle Ages, the Renaissance
celebrated the individual. Altdorfer may
have painted row after row of apparently
identical warriors, but the spectators
themselves would identify with Alexander
and Darius, figures who had names, whose
significance was indicated by the cord
which hung down from the tablet above
them.
131
S chedel’s World Chronicle was a semi¬
nal work, treasured not only for its
comprehensive survey of the histori¬
cal knowledge of the age, but for its de¬
tailed approach to geography. The book
contained illustrations of the more import¬
ant figures of the Bible and Classical anti¬
quity (naturally wearing 16th-century
dress); it also showed the famous woodcut
vedutas of towns executed in Nuremberg
after the sketches of travellers.
The World Chronicle thus not only re¬
flected contemporary interest in the his¬
tory of civilisation “from the beginning of
the world unto our own time”, but also a
widespread curiosity about geography. In
this sense, it is a typical product of the age
of discovery, an epoch marked by Col¬
umbus reaching America, Magellan sailing
Painting in
the age
of discovery
132
around the world, and attempts by carto¬
graphers to find the appropriate visual
form in which to present distant parts of
the world. Altdorfer attempted something
similar. His Battle of Issus is set against the
imposing panorama of the Eastern Me¬
diterranean.
The inspiration for this was probably
provided by a map in Schedel’s chronicle.
In the detail below, Cyprus is shown as a
disproportionately large island, with the
Red Sea above it to the left. Above right is
the Nile delta, identified by its eight arms
and by the lakes thought to be its source.
The mountain range beside the Nile has no
equivalent in reality, but is featured in
Schedel’s map.
The town situated on the near Mediter¬
ranean shore is probably not intended to
be Issus. Issus was an unimportant town
in Altdorfer’s day, and is not mentioned
in Schedel’s book. According to the
Chronicle, the battle took place in 333
B.C. near the town of Tarsus. This, by
contrast, was a name to conjure with, as¬
sociated in many readers’ minds with a
school of philosophy which, in Roman
times, had been as famous as the schools
of Athens and Alexandria. First and fore¬
most, however, Tarsus was known as the
birthplace of the Apostle Paul, a place of
significance in church history. Perhaps
this explains why Altdorfer - anachronis-
tically - embellished the townscape with
church towers.
For in spite of the Renaissance, the pre¬
valent geographical and historical pictures
of the world c. 1500 were still dominated
by church doctrine. This, too, is reflected
in Schedel’s book. The acts of God in cre¬
ating the world are there presented as no
less factual than the number of soldiers
who took part in the Battle of Issus. Be¬
cause God created the world in six days
and rested on the seventh, Schedel divided
the entire history of mankind into seven
“ages”: “Now, seven is a perfect number,
seven days there are to a week, seven stars
that never sink ...” According to Schedels
calculations, the human race c. 1500 had
reached the seventh, and final, “age”. The
end of the world was nigh.
The end
of the world
is nigh

M any of Schedel’s and Altdorfer’s

contemporaries were tormented
by the fear that the world was
coming to an end. Even Luther believed it.
One of Luther’s commensals reported:
“the following day he again spoke much of
the Day of Judgement and of the end of the
world, for he has been troubled by many
terrible dreams of the Last Judgement this
half year past ...” On another occasion
Luther complained: “Dear Lord, how this
world is reduced ... It is drawing to a
close.” Or: “When I slept this afternoon I
dreamt the Day of Judgement came on the
day of Paul’s conversion.”
Dreams, premonitions and prophecies of
the end of the world were fed not only by
calculations based on the “seven days”
premise, as in Schedel’s work. Calculations
of an entirely different order, those of the
prophet Daniel, seemed to point in the same
direction. He had predicted that four king¬
doms would come and go, before the com¬
ing of the kingdom of the Lord. The four
kingdoms were thought to be Babylon,
Persia, Greece and Rome. This was proble¬
matic, however, for the Roman Empire had
long since passed away. A route out of the
quandary was found by propounding that
Rome still existed - in the form of the pa¬
pacy. By Luther’s time, however, the papacy
was so much gone to seed that it really did
seem on its last,legs. Luther: “Daniel saw
the world as a series of kingdoms, those of
the Babylonians, Persians, Greeks and Ro¬ sensed what it was to live at the end of doms anticipated by God and prophesied
mans. These have passed away. The papacy Time, then the sky over the Battle of Issus by Daniel cedes, near Issus, to the third, as
may have preserved the Roman Empire, but assumes a new meaning. In the original the Greeks defeat the Persians. However,
that was its parting cup; now that, too, is work, the sky was bigger; the painting was the change of power is, at the same time, a
gone into decline.” reduced in size at a later date when strips stage further on the world clock, a step
This comment, along with other were cut from all four sides, with the lar¬ closer to the impending end of the world.
examples of Luther’s “table-talk”, was re¬ gest section removed from the top. The Viewed in this way, The Battle of Issus had
corded in 1532, four years after Altdorfer moon, too, originally stood further from a direct bearing upon the present.
began work on his painting. Altdorfer was the corner of the painting. Even in its pres¬ It is thought that Wilhelm IV wanted the
undoubtedly aware of the eschatalogical ent size, however, the sky covers more than painting to celebrate the grandeur of the
preoccupations of his contemporaries. As a third of the painting’s surface. With its individual. He wanted a Renaissance paint¬
a member of the leading body of the town sharply contrasting lights and darks, dy¬ ing. What he got was a work whose view of
in which he lived, he was forced constantly namic congregation of clouds and sun re¬ the world was dominated in equal parts by
to deal with questions relating to the flected in the sea, it suggests the occurence new ideas and medieval tradition: even the
church. of an extraordinary event. cleverest and boldest of individuals cannot
If we take for granted that Altdorfer The exact nature of this event was ex¬ decide the course of world history - that is
knew of these things, and that he, too, pounded by Daniel: the second of the king¬ the province of God alone.

133
 Hans Holbein the Younger: The Ambassadors, 1533
Careers in the king's service
A young French bishop visits a
young French diplomat in Eng¬
land. They were friends, and the
artist shows us some of the inter¬
ests they shared: music, mathe¬
matics, astronomy. Death, too, is
concealed in the painting. The
double portrait (207 x 209 cm) is
in the National Gallery, London.
134
An official portrait: two men whose bear¬
ing, respectability and earnest mien make
them look about 40 years old. But they
were both much younger; the man on the
left was 29, the man on the right 25. Life
expectancy in the 16th century was shorter
than today; people tended to enter import¬
ant posts at an earlier age. One of the men
is already a bishop, the other is French am¬
bassador to the English court.
The churchman, himself occasionally
entrusted with ambassadorial duties by the
French king, is visiting his friend, the
diplomat. The two represent different sec¬
tors within the diplomatic corps, named
after their styles of dress: “1’homme de
robe courte” and “l’homme de robe
longue”. Men of the short robe were
worldly ambassadors; those with long
robes were clergymen.
To be sent on a diplomatic mission by
the king was an honour, but seldom a plea¬
sure in the 16th century. Above all, it was
expensive. The king granted fiefs, benefices
and allowances to both clergy and nobility.
In return, these were obliged to perform
services, a duty extending to the disposal of
their incomes. They were thus expected to
pay for their stay in foreign lands out of
their own pocket. Once there, they were
generally treated with due politeness, but
also with suspicion. Diplomats were
thought to combine their official duties
with spying. In 1482, for example, it was
strictly forbidden for Venetians to talk of
public affairs to foreign diplomats; and one
Swiss ambassador reported from London
in 1653 that a member of parliament who
spoke to a foreign ambassador risked los¬
ing his seat. Certainly, it was one of the am¬
bassador’s main tasks to collect as much
exact information as possible about the
country he was visiting. Newspapers did
not exist at the time.
Contemporary manuals and memoirs
give us some idea of the abilities expected
of a diplomat: First of all, he should cut an
appropriately representative figure, wear¬
ing clothes that were fine enough, and ex¬
pensive enough, to be worthy of his master.
He should be eloquent, have an excellent
knowledge of Latin (the lingua franca of
the day), and be educated to converse with
scientists and artists. His manner should be
urbane, charming, never too curious; he
must be able to retain full composure while
listening to the worst of news, and be
skilled in slowing down or speeding up
negotiations whenever necessary. His pri¬
vate life should be impeccable, precluding
even the slightest hint of a scandal. His wife
must stay at home, of course; after all, she
might gossip. It was considered of the ut¬
most importance to retain an able cook;
good food is often a ticket to the best infor¬
mation.
The 16th century was the cradle of mod¬
ern diplomacy. Previously, the affairs of
European states in the Holy Roman Em¬
pire had been regulated centrally by the
Emperor. This system had lost much of its
authority. Instead, bilateral agreements had
grown in significance, and with them the
art of diplomacy. However, permanent em¬
bassies remained an exception; diplomatic
missions lasted only a few weeks or
months. It was not yet essential, as it later
became, for foreign policy to direct its en¬
ergy toward establishing relationships of
mutual trust over long periods. Short-term
success was more important. If a contract
no longer served a country’s interests, it
was simply broken. These were times of
great insecurity. The balance of power
changed from month to month. There was
one means alone of securing an alliance of
real duration - marriage.
The changing structure of alliances in
the 16th century is reflected in its record of
engagements and their dissolution, its his-
135
 capital of Troyes, an office held by his golden chain around his neck. This was the
tory of marriages and their annulment. As
father before him. Jean de Dinteville did French equivalent to the Spanish Order of
a young man, the English king Henry VIII
not belong to one of the great noble the Golden Fleece or the English Order of
had married Catherine of Aragon. She was
families of the land, nor was he one of the the Garter. The 16th-century royal orders
an aunt of the powerful Spanish king,
great historical figures of his time. He was, had nothing to do with the orders of the
Charles V. Henry and Catherine had a
however, an archetypal Renaissance noble¬ late Middle Ages, brotherhoods dedicated
daughter, Mary, who herself became en¬
man: a humanist with an interest in music, to a way of life combining monastic and
gaged to Charles V of Spain. However,
painting and the sciences. He was active in chivalric ideals. Instead, they were a means
while Mary was still a child, Charles V dis¬
the king’s service, and dependent on the of endorsing the allegiance of a loyal sub¬
solved his engagement to her, for he wished
king’s goodwill. His greatest gift to pos¬ ject, awarded to capable men in the hope of
to marry Isabella, the Infanta of Portugal,
terity was his decision to have himself ensuring their devoted service to the
a match which would directly increase his
portrayed with his friend by Hans Hol¬ throne. Their prestige derived partly from
wealth and sphere of influence. Henry,
their limited membership. There were only
meanwhile, in whose opinion Charles V bein.
The artist portrays the nobleman with 100 holders of the Order of St. Michael at
was becoming altogether too powerful,
the Order of St. Michael hung on a long any one time.
sought to ally himself by marriage with
France. Before remarrying he needed the
pope to declare his marriage to Catherine
null and void. But the pope had been dom¬
inated by Charles V since 1527. He was
therefore unabale to annul Henry’s mar¬
riage. The matter was made even more
complicated by the Privy Council, who
wished to see the English noblewoman
Anne Boleyn, rather than a French prin¬
cess, on the throne of England.
It was against this background, in the
spring of 1533, that a French ambassador
was sent to London. While there, the
diplomat had his portrait painted in the
company of his friend. Hans Holbein
documents execution of the painting on
English soil by means of the mosaic on
which his subjects are standing; the design
is that of the mosaic laid by Italian craft¬
smen in the sanctuary floor at Westminster
Abbey. Today, the floor is heavily worn
and covered by a large carpet. Only at the
carpet’s edge is it possible to see the orig¬
inal ornamental work.

Nobleman
on a delicate
mission

T he French ambassador is Jean de

Dinteville. Born in 1504, he resided
at Polisy in Champagne. As a man¬
orial lord, he had the right of jurisdiction;
he was also King’s Proxy at the provincial

136
 Francis I, the French king, had sent Jean
de Dinteville to London for the first time
in 1531. In the spring of 1533, he was sent
to London again, for in the meantime, the
alliance between the two countries had
become even more confused. Henry VIII
had secretly married the pregnant Anne
Boleyn in January, though the pope had
not yet annulled his previous marriage.
Francis I offered to use his influence in
the Catholic Church on Henry’s behalf. A
meeting was arranged between Clement
VII and Francis I; but Henry procrastin¬
ated. He had the Archbishop of Canter¬
bury declare his old marriage null and void,
thereby encroaching upon papal rights. He
obstructed negotiations between the
French king and the pope.
On 23 May 1533, Dinteville informed
his master by letter that he had asked
Flenry VIII “if it should please him to
make a secret” of the archbishop’s decision,
“so that our Holy Father is not informed
of this matter before Your Majesty speaks
to him of it. He replied that it was im¬
possible to make a secret of this, and that it
must be made public even before the coro¬
nation.”1
Anne Boleyn was crowned at Westmin¬
ster Abbey on 21 June. High honours were
conferred upon the French ambassador A pious man his immediate surroundings as the
during the festivities that followed. In the worldly ambassador. A similar distinction
fears for
meantime, however, the subject of negotia¬ may be made in respect of their dress and
tions between Dinteville’s sovereign,
the Church bearing. Dinteville’s puffed up fur makes
his shoulders twice as wide as those of his

Francis I, and the pope had changed: the
French king now sought to marry his son
to the pope’s niece. His aim was to win
over Milan. Henry’s interests were forgot¬
ten. There was therefore little left for Din¬
teville to do in London. He left on 18 No¬
vember 1533.
Dinteville was present in London not
only for Anne Boleyn’s coronation, but
also for her execution. He was entrusted
with three further diplomatic missions to
England, before his family fell into dis¬
grace. Apparently, his three brothers had
plotted against Francis I. Jean de Dinteville
died, aged 51, at Polisy. Before his death, he
conducted renovations at his castle, em¬
ploying - like the English kings and
Francis I - Italian craftsmen to execute the
work. A tiled floor in the Italian style exists
at Polisy to this day. Holbein’s painting
hung at the castle for many years. Today it
is in London’s National Gallery.
U
nlike his worldly friend, the bishop
does not hold an ornamental dagger
in his right hand, but a pair of
gloves. His arm rests on a book, on whose
fore-edge part of a sentence may be deci¬
phered: “aetatis suae 25”. If we add the
word “anno”, the sentence, rendered into
English, reads: “in the 25th year of his life”.
Dinteville’s age, incidently, is written on
his dagger. Facts like this helped identify
the figures. The bishop was Georges de
Selve.
As can be expected from a representa¬
tive portrait of this kind, the subjects’
faces are almost expressionless. Without
their different styles of beards, the two
friends might even look quite similar.
Their eyes, on the other hand, are distinc¬
tive. Those of the bishop are smaller, with
their pupils more heavily shadowed by
the lids. Accordingly, the bishop does not
appear to concentrate quite so intently on
friend. The diplomat wears his fur coat
wide open; the clergyman is holding his
coat so that it completely covers his body.
The life of one is more outward-going,
the other’s more introspective. Their dif¬
ferent personalities allow Holbein to
characterise two castes: robe longue, robe
courte.
Georges de Selve’s father, president of
the Parlement de Paris, had been rewarded
for his many services to the crown by the
bestowal of a bishop’s fief upon his son.
Georges, then aged 20, was made Bishop of
Lavaur in the southwest of France. Al¬
though the minimum age for this office
was 25, a dispensation from the pope ren¬
dered exceptions possible. These were fre¬
quent enough. Bishops who were too
young for office received an income and
title, whil^ their clerical duties were per¬
formed by priests.
Even after Georges de Selve was per¬
mitted to take up ecclesiastical office, he

137

spent most of his time outside his diocese.
In the autumn of 1533, following a private
visit to London, the French king sent him
as an ambassador to Venice; later, he was
entrusted with a mission to the pope in
Rome, and then to Charles V in Madrid. In
1540 de Selve requested to be relieved of
his offices for reasons of health. In April of
the following year he died, aged 33.
Georges de Selve’s writings bear testi¬
mony to his piousness. He saw the solu¬
tion to the problems of his time, including
those of a worldly nature, in a total re¬
generation of religious life. He criticised
not only the condition of the Church, but
also the selfish machinations of kings and
princes. De Selve evidently had some sym¬
pathy for Luther’s endeavours as a refor¬
mer; he nevertheless opposed the division
Central role
of mathematics
T he figures portrayed in 16th-century
double portraits are usually shown
close together. Not so Dinteville and
De Selve. Holbein sets them as far apart as
possible, placing them right at the edges of
the painting. Between them, a plain, two-
138
of the Church. In all probability, De Selve
was France’s delegate at the Diet of Speyer
in 1529, holding a great speech there in fa¬
vour of confessional re-unification.
Holbein refers to the notion of re-unifi-
cation by means of a hymnal lying open on
the lower shelf. The book is neither French
nor English, but the German Johann Wal-
ther’s Book of Hymns, printed at Witten¬
berg in 1524. The book lies open at two of
Luther’s hymns: “Kom Heiliger Geyst
Herregott” and “Mensch wiltu leben selig-
lich”. The first is a German translation of
‘Weni Creator Spiritus”, the second points
to the importance of the Ten Command¬
ments. In content and tradition both are
good “catholic” texts, emphasising the
common ground between the new Lutheran
and old Roman Catholic standpoints.
storeyed cupboard displays a large number
of books and instruments. It is almost as if
Holbein wished to indicate that the bach¬
elors’ friendship was based on a common
interest in natural science.
All of the instruments are linked in some
way or another to applied mathematics.
On the left there is a celestial globe; next to
it, a cylindrical sundial, or shepherd’s time¬
keeper. There are several sundials on the
faces of the polyhedron; these were used
for travel. Then there are two different
types of quadrant, and on the lower shelf a
small, portable globe, a level, and a com¬
pass lying under the neck of a lute. Music,
too, was considered a mathematical art at
the time. The tubes probably contained
maps.
It might seem strange to us today that a
display of instruments of measurement
should be considered fitting attributes for a
diplomat and a churchman, but it would not
have seemed so at the time. Both men had
been to university, where mathematics had
become one of the most important aca¬
demic disciplines of the Renaissance. This
contrasted with the Middle Ages, when a
religious explanation of the world had
been considered more appropriate than the
study of natural sciences, and mathematics
had consequently fallen into neglect. How¬
ever, as times changed, scientists began
to search once again for laws of mathe¬
matics and physics which would make it
possible to explain how the world func¬
tioned. Even painters occupied themselves
with the study of mathematics. In his In¬
structions for Measurements taken with the
Level and Compass, Holbein’s compatriot
Albrecht Diirer had celebrated geometry as
the true foundation of all painting. Perhaps
the inclusion of these two instruments in
Holbein’s painting was a reference to the
older artist’s work.
The level is inserted between the leaves
of a book, which, like the Hymnal, has
been identified: A sound instruction in all
calculation for merchants, in three vol¬
umes, including useful rules and questions.
This was a textbook on the principles of
calculation in business, written by Peter
Apian, a university teacher at Ingolstadt,
and printed in 1527. Apian begins with the
fundamental operations of arithmetic and
guides his reader via a series of steps to the
extraction of square roots. With the aid of
practical examples, he shows how silver
value equivalents can be converted into
gold value, or how to convert currencies.
Then come the “useful questions”, which
are not much different from those used in
schools to this day: “A messenger leaves
Leipzig and takes 18 days to reach Venice;
another messenger leaves Venice at exactly
the same hour and takes 24 days to reach
Leipzig. The question is: how many days
pass before they meet?”2
The globe behind Apian’s book has been
attributed to Johann Schoner of Nurem¬
berg. Holbein himself came from Augs¬
burg, and it may be supposed that the ob-
jects from southern Germany which are
exhibited in the painting were introduced
by the artist rather than the patron. How¬
ever, Holbein has altered Schoner’s globe
to suit Dinteville’s wishes. This is evident
from a comparison of the names on the
painted version with those on the original.
They both have about 100 names in com¬
mon, but there are also 20 names which ap¬
pear on Holbein’s copy only. These names
all have some bearing on the lives of Din-
teville and the members of his family: Bur¬
gundy, Avern, or Polisy, for example.
Death
concealed
in a puzzle
E
verything in Holbein’s painting,
whether persons or things, is rep¬
resented more or less realistically,
with one exception: the skull suspended
above the floor. At first glance it is hardly
identifiable. It is only recognisable as a
skull when seen from the right or left edge
of the painting, and only when it is viewed
through a lens which alters its proportions
altogether does the image become quite
distinct.
Anamorphoses, or distorted images of
this kind, were a well-known trick at the
time. They were usually applied to portrait
drawings, and were achieved by means of a
ruler and length gauge, that is by the use of
mathematical instruments. First, the artist
would draw the contours of a normal port¬
rait, over which he would then draw a grid
of lines. On a second sheet of paper he
would distort the grid, squashing it flat in
one direction, and exending it in the other.
He then transferred the portrait to the
dimensions of the corresponding grid-
squares. A mathematical picture puzzle.
There is yet another skull in the paint¬
ing: a very small one set in the brooch on
Dinteville’s beret. The double appearance
of the skull cannot be put down to chance;
Flolbein’s painting is too well thought out,
its effect too precisely calculated. Their
meaning may become clearer if we consult
two paintings by Fra Vincenzo dalle Vac-
che, painted around 1520 for a church in
Padua. The paintings do not contain ana¬
morphoses, nor do they even contain
figures; however, like Holbein’s painting
they show a number of different objects on
shelves. One of the paintings, entitled The this regime of calculated rectangularity,
Vanity of the Worldly Power of the Church giving the work an aura of contemplation
and suggesting the presence of some hidden
and Laity, shows a bishop’s staff, a crown,
commentary on human affairs. After com¬
an hour-glass and a skull. The objects
shown in the other painting, entitled The paring the painting with Agrippa’s text, or
Vanity of Science, are a celestial globe, a with paintings like those by Vincenzo dalle
sextant, a mathematical textbook, a sheet of Vacche, one might conclude that its mess¬
music and a viola with a broken string. age was the vanity of art, science and high
Holbein’s lute also has a broken string. His rank. In order to make such a statement,
own arrangement of instruments seems de¬ however, Holbein need not have disguised
liberately to combine the effect of the two the skull. He therefore seems to be saying:
Italian paintings. The common theme is Study of the arts and sciences need not be
vanity, or vanitas. vain at all. On the contrary, it may lead us
The notion of vanitas had wider conno¬ to a deeper, more comprehensive appreci¬
tations at the time than it does today. It ation of the world. Indeed, it is sometimes
meant blindness towards the most import¬ only by scientific means that we can make
ant things in life; also, the futility of human visible the presence of death behind phe¬
endeavour. A vain person forgets all too nomena, behind the pleasing appearance of
easily that he must die. A vain person be¬ things. That, after all, is what the painting
lieves that science can give him knowledge achieves.
of the world. In a pamphlet in Latin in
1529, shortly before Hans Holbein ex¬
ecuted his painting, the German writer
Cornelius Agrippa complained of the “un¬
certainty and vanity of all art and science”.
Art and science, he continued, “are nothing
but the laws and imaginings of human
beings”; the truth, on the other hand, is “so
great and free that it cannot be grasped by
the musings of science, but by faith
alone...”3
We must conclude that Holbein’s paint¬
ing is not merely a double portrait. At first
glance, its subject seems entirely worldly,
entirely temporal: the official portrait of
two young men surrounded by instru¬
ments of scientific and mathematical re¬
search. Even the composition of the paint¬
ing, with its emphasis on powerful hori¬
zontals and verticals, seems arranged ac¬
cording to mathematical principles. Only
the anamorphosis, apparently floating di¬
agonally through the picture, contradicts
139
140
 Titian: Venus of Urbino, c. 1538
From the canopy of Heaven
to a four-poster bed
On 9th March 1538 Guidobaldo della
Rovere, son of the Duke of Urbino, wrote
a letter to his father’s ambassador in Venice.
He was sending a courier, he wrote, or
rather dictated, to “bring me two paintings
currently in the hands of Titian”. The
courier was, under no circumstances, to re¬
turn without the paintings, even if it meant
waiting for two months.
The situation was complicated, for Gui¬
dobaldo did not have enough money to
pay for the works. The ambassador, so he
requested, was to use his good offices to
elicit an advance, or a guarantee for the
required sum, from his mother, the
Duchess. In a later letter Guidobaldo
wrote that “if the worst comes to the
worst” he should have to “pledge that
which is mine”. He was determined to
have the two Titians. One was his own
portrait, the other was “la donna nuda”,
the “naked woman”. Known today as the
Venus of Urbino, this 119 x 165 cm Re¬
naissance painting can now be seen in the
Uffizi, Florence.
In the spring of 1538 Guidobaldo
reached the age of 25 years. Titian (prob¬
ably born between 1488 and 1490) was
twice Guidobaldo’s age. By that time he
was, in all likelihood, the most highly-re¬
garded artist in southern Europe. He had
worked for churches and monasteries, for
rich merchants and the Republic of Venice,
for Italian princes and the Emperor,
Charles V. Titian enjoyed the highest social
and artistic esteem. Charles V had elev¬
ated him to the rank of Count Palatine and
Knight of the Golden Spur - an extra¬
ordinary honour for a painter.
Guidobaldo may have become ac¬
quainted with Titian through his father,
Francesco Maria della Rovere, Duke of
Urbino since 1508. Francesco was known
for his violent temper and prowess as a
military strategist. He had killed a cardinal
with his bare hands, fought for the papacy
and led a Venetian army into battle: in
short, he was a typical condottiere. He
owned a palace in Venice and died in Oc¬
tober 1538, presumably poisoned by his ri¬
vals.
This condottiere loved paintings and
sophisticated company. He was married to
the much-admired Eleonora Gonzaga: “If
ever knowledge, grace, beauty, intellect,
wit, humanity and every other virtue were
joined in one body, then in this”, enthused
the writer Baldassare Castiglione. Frances¬
co had commissioned paintings by Titian
since 1532: a Nativity, a Hannibal, and a
Christ for the Duchess. Later he commis¬
sioned a Resurrection and purchased a
Woman in a Blue Dress. Portraits of the
Duke and Duchess followed.
Guidobaldo continued the family tradi¬
tion, commissioning new paintings more
or less regularly until his death in 1574.
Like his father, he served as a general in the
Venetian army, frequently staying at
Venice. His financial problems of spring
1538 were solved by the death of his father
in the autumn of that year. He was now
Duke of Urbino. And his mother had paid
for her son’s portrait, though not for the
“naked woman”.
141

Who was the
"donna nuda"?
It was later claimed that the future Duke
of Urbino wished to possess the painting
because it portrayed his mistress. Alter¬
natively, it has been suggested that Titian
painted his own mistress, for the woman
appears in his paintings no fewer than three
times. A rumour during the nineteenth
century maintained that the painting
showed Guidobaldo’s mother, Eleonora
Gonzaga, for it was difficult to ignore a
certain resemblance between her portrait
from Titian’s hand and the “naked
woman”. Moreover, both paintings con¬
tained the same curled-up lapdog.
There is no evidence to support any of
these theories. An Italian “lady of quality”
was unlikely to have herself portrayed in
the nude, for this would have been irrecon¬
cilable with her role in society: she was ex¬
142
pected to bear children, hold house, put
her husband’s honour above all else and
stand by his side on public occasions.
Though the human body was increasingly
exalted during the Renaissance, the exhibi¬
tion of a woman’s body unclothed to eyes
other than those of her husband would
have provoked ugly scenes indeed, had the
terrible facts been revealed in public by a
painting.
The ideal of uxorial respectability did
not include the expression of sexual and
sensual pleasure, so evident in the present
painting. The church, with its repudiation
of the body and disdain for women, did
whatever it could to ensure that the re¬
spectable ideal became respectable prac¬
tice. Men were permitted to indulge their
sexuality, women were not. It is probable
that the opportunities for such gratifica¬
tion within marriage were limited, for mar¬
riage - both to the aristocracy and to the
bourgeoisie - had less to do with personal
inclination than with politics, or finance.
Families were expected to afford their
members protection; safety was more
highly valued than love.
The constraints imposed by men on
their wives and daughters drove the former
to seek their consolation in mistresses and
prostitutes. According to the diary entry of
a man called Priuli, there were some 11,000
prostitutes in Venice c. 1500, and, accord¬
ing to another source, there were 6800 in
Rome c. 1490. If one relates these figures to
the total population of the towns at the
time - Rome had 40,000 inhabitants,
Venice 120,000 - one arrives at the figure of
almost 20 percent of the female population
in one case, and over 30 percent in the
other. Even if these figures seem too high
to sustain credibility, they nonethless sug¬
gest that prostitution was anything but a
marginal social phenomenon. Countless
anecdotes confirm this. Payment for sexual
favours was socially acceptable. Priests
damned it, of course, but Cardinal de’
Medici, during his stay in Venice in 1532,
made no secret of living with a girl called
Zeffetta.
Alfonso d’Este, who married Guidobal¬
do’s sister Julia, was even praised for it on
one occasion: instead of simply seducing
young girls, he at least asked their parents’
permission before taking the girls to live
with him. Later, he married them off with
an excellent dowry. For the poorer strata of
the population, giving away one’s daughter
as the mistress of a wealthy man was prac¬
tically considered a normal means of secur¬
ing her existence.
The prerequisite was, of course, that the
girl was as appealing as Titian’s model. Ti¬
tian himself lived for many years with a
barber’s daughter, who bore him two
children. Titian then did something quite
unusual: he married her.
T
itian painted a bouquet of roses in
the reclining nude’s hand. Roses
were an attribute of Venus. Whether
mythical figure or “donna nuda”, her body
reflects the ideals of beauty and erotic
predilections of the High Renaissance.
Her high forehead, however, was un¬
typical of the period. Throughout the
Middle Ages, women whose circumstances
had granted them leisure to indulge in
fashion had plucked their hair above the
forehead in order to lengthen their faces.
 slender and elongate, an effect emphasized
by their trains, tapering bonnets and slop¬
ing shoulders. The ideal female figure of
the Renaissance was more solidly built.
Broad shoulders, enlarged and embellished
by the ploys of dressmakers, were an im¬
portant characteristic of this type. Titian
gives special emphasis to the reclining
nude’s right shoulder, while a servant in the
background wears fashionably puffed
sleeves. Breasts were considered beautiful
only if small, round and firm, lacking the
fullness of maturity. This was the view ex¬
pressed in an Italian text of 1554, a view
evidently shared by Titian. A narrow
waist, the distinguishing feature of 19th-
century fashion, was considered undesir¬
able. The latest Spanish fashion was a high
corset that flattened the breasts, denied the
waist and enclosed the trunk of the body
like a tube. However, this puritanical gar¬
ment, turning the female body into a kind
of geometrical figure, gained little accept¬
ance in Italy.
Titian painted his nude with a gently
rounded belly. In Gothic art, the stomach
tended to protrude further than the
breasts. Renaissance painters, on the other
hand, hoping to capture a more natural at¬
titude, did away with exaggerated curves.
Nonetheless, the belly, the symbol of fer¬
tility and procreation, remained the focal
point of the female body.

Bodies change
with fashions

The curve of the head between forehead

and cranium was considered attractive, and
was emphasized for that reason. High fore¬
heads, however, were now a thing of the
past. Even married women no longer con¬
cealed their hair under bonnets, and the
locks of unmarried women fell loose about
their faces, softening their features.
Although the hair of most Italian
women was black by nature, the most
fashionable colour at the time was blonde.
Almost all mythical figures painted during
the Renaissance have fair hair. It was said
of the women of Venice in 1581 that they
used “spirits and other remedies to turn
their hair, not only golden, but snow-
white”.
In Gothic art, women generally appear

143
 The bed was probably a four-poster,
supporting a canopy and with crossboards
for hanging curtains; neither posts nor
crossboards are visible in the present paint¬
ing, however. With its curtains drawn, a
bed was transformed to a room within a
room, a realm of privacy. Maids and ser¬
vants often slept in the master bedroom, or
in front of the door, since the majority
of houses did not have servants’ quarters.
Titian painted his beauty half-sitting;
the pose reflects contemporary sleeping
habits.
Titian’s interior contains little but a bed
and chests; in fact, these were the most im¬
portant, and sometimes the only pieces of
furniture to be found in a house. There
were few proper tables; meals were gener¬
ally eaten at boards which were laid across
trestles and later stowed away. It is difficult
to see whether the hangings in the back¬
ground are tapestry or leather.
Venice, with lively trading relations to
the Near East, was one of the main trans¬
shipping ports for oriental carpets, and the
best, or most famous, gold-printed leather
was imported from the Spanish town of
Cordoba. Marble floors were found in all
the wealthier homes. Artists treasured
their regular square patterns, which pro¬
vided a means of lending mathematical
precision to perspective; this had been an
important feature in painting since the de¬
velopment, in Florence a century earlier, of
artificial perspective.
The windows of domestic interiors were
relatively small, and were closed with
wooden shutters. The open space shown in
Titian’s painting may be part of a room
used only in summer, perhaps at a country
villa. A view of pleasant, surrounding
countryside was an essential feature in
behind, an unusual posture. Indeed, Titian every Renaissance villa.
A chest While Titian’s work contains many de¬
may be the only artist of his day to have
was part of painted a woman in this attitude. tails epitomizing life at the time, it was not
every dowry The interior and furnishings are typical his intention to paint a realistic picture.
of the period. The kneeling woman is rum¬ This is made abundantly clear by the dark
maging in a clothes-chest, referred to in plane dividing the painting into two halves,

T itian’s “donna nuda” reflected the

Renaissance ideal in a number of de¬
tails, and it was perhaps for this rea¬
son - as much as for its quality as a work
of art - that Guidobaldo was so desperate
to possess it. The artist emphasizes the
nudity of the reclining woman by showing
two fully-clothed servants in the back¬
ground. The kneeling woman is seen from
Italian as a cassone. Clothes-hangers and
wardrobes had not yet come into use, and
clothes were kept in chests. They formed an
integral part of every dowry and, depend¬
ing on whether their owners were wealthy
enough, would often be inlaid with mar¬
quetry, or painted. Titian, too, had painted
cassoni in his youth. They tended to be low,
since they doubled as seats. Some were even
fitted with backrests.
whose right edge ends just above the re¬
clining nude’s hand. Though evidently in¬
tended to suggest the curtain of the bed, it
is entirely lacking in definition. The plane
helps balance the two halves of the picture,
as well as providing a background against
which the upper half of her body stands
out more clearly. The vertical border also
emphasizes her mons veneris, which the
nude coyly conceals.

144
The goddess
becomes a
woman
I
n c. 1485, Sandro Botticelli painted his
Birth of Venus, one of the loveliest Venus
nudes to emerge from the Florentine Re¬
naissance. She is shown standing upright,
almost floating. It was the Venetian Gior¬
gione who devised the first reclining
Venus. Against a natural setting, we see her
asleep with her head resting on one arm.
Giorgione died in 1510, before he could
finish the work. Titian, his collaborator,
completed it. He returned to the theme
more than a quarter of a century later, this
time replacing the outdoor setting with a
domestic interior.
The three paintings show a pro¬
gression. Botticelli’s Venus is a supernatu¬
ral apparition in human form, untouch¬
able, not of this world. Giorgione’s Venus
has a realer presence. She is shown reclin¬
ing in an attitude of abandon - to sleep,
rather than a man’s gaze. She, too, retains
something of the aura of a Nature god¬
dess. Titian has removed her from natural
surroundings, placing her in a man-made
setting instead: a four-poster bed. The
goddess is transformed: a young woman
meets the spectator’s gaze, conscious of
her appeal, revealing her body and expect¬
ing, if not caresses, then admiration. It
was Titian who liberated the nude from
the constraints of the mythical stereotype,
seeing a real woman in the female figure.
To his contemporaries, this must have
been an exciting development. It can
hardly be put down to accident that Gui-
dobaldo, who wanted the painting so
badly, spoke only of the “donna nuda”,
the naked woman.
It was not until later, through the inter¬
vention in 1567 of the art historian Vasari,
that the nude became known as Venus. Her
identity was confirmed in a later inventary.
Though the chief attribute of antique
Venus, her son Cupid with his bow and ar¬
rows, seems to have deserted her in the
present picture, Titian nonetheless paints
her with her characteristic flowers: he
shows her holding roses, the symbol of
pleasure and fidelity in love, and places a
pot of myrtle on the window ledge to
indicate constancy in marriage. The lapdog
is an unusual figure here. It symbolized
carnal desire, but also devotion; on the
gravestones of many married couples a dog
was shown lying at the woman’s feet. Per¬
haps it found its way into the painting
quite by accident. Perhaps it belonged to
the artist’s workshop, and Titian simply
enjoyed painting it.
Some scholars have suggested that Gui-
dobaldo commissioned the work to mark
the occasion of his wedding in 1534, which
would explain his eagerness to possess the
work. There is no evidence for this. At the
same time, however, it is impossible to
overlook the symbolic reference through
roses and myrtle to conjugal fidelity. Titian
may have wished to show more than Ve¬
nus’ conventional attributes. Perhaps he
wanted to show an alternative to the wide¬
spread division of the female population
into repectable housewives and paid para¬
mours, demonstrating that sensual plea¬
sure could be found in marriage too. Gui-
dobaldo, as his letters testify, was very
happily married.
145
 Lucas Cranach the Younger: The Stag Hunt, 1544

The utopia of common

huntsmanship

A hunting scene in Saxony in 1544. In the

background the river Elbe with Torgau on
its banks. In the foreground two of the
leading figures of their day: at the left edge
of the painting, between two men with
white beards, Emperor Charles V; further
to the right, wearing a green coat, John
Frederick the Magnanimous. As Elector of
Saxony, John Frederick was the Emperor’s
subject; as a Protestant prince, he was the
Catholic monarch’s enemy.
Big hunting parties were at that time
part of the traditional supporting pro¬
gramme at political meetings; while the de¬
puties at Imperial Diets argued over form¬
Painted in 1544 by Lucas Cranach alities, their lords went out hunting in the
the Younger, Elector John Frede¬ forests. Hunts were organized for enter¬
tainment and representative purposes; the
rick of Saxony and the German
names of participants and numbers of head
Emperor Charles V appear the of game were recorded in letters, in written
best of hunting companions. But accounts of the chase, and occasionally in
appearances are deceptive: the paintings.
Protestant prince and Catholic Lucas Cranach the Elder once received
the following advice: “When princes bid
monarch were rivals, soon to
you accompany them on the hunt, you
wage war. Their hunting expedi¬ take your panel and, with the hunt all
tion never took place. Cranach’s around you, show Frederick tracking a
painting (117 x 177 cm) is in the stag, or John pursuing a wild boar.” For
Kunsthistorisches Museum, “it is well known”, the writer explained,
that the finished painting “affords the
Vienna. princes as much pleasure as the hunt it¬
self”.
The stag hunt of 1544 was probably not
painted by the elder Cranach, but by his
son, Lucas the Younger. The latter began
work in his father’s studio, which he later
took over. Neither Cranach signed paint¬
ings with his name, preferring to use the
trademark of the workshop, a winged ser¬
pent. This is painted on the prow of the
boat, beneath the year 1544.
Only in tournaments and the hunt did
princes and nobles find opportunity to
train for the toils of war. However, the key
figures in Cranach’s painting would hardly
be overstrained by the hunt depicted: they
are shooting at driven game.

146
147

A retinue of
genteel ladies
T he lady furthest to the fore is John
Frederick’s wife, Electress Sybille.
Little of the picture space is reserved
for her or her retinue; when dogs and stags
were present, thus the artist implies,
women took a back seat.
The Electress is probably holding a
loaded “German spring-bolt”, a relatively
light crossbow. She would not draw the
bow herself, of course; an attendant would
hand her the fully-loaded weapon when she
was ready. The heavy crossbows or arba¬
lests of the key huntsmen in the foreground
could only be drawn with the help of a
special jacking mechanism; the artist has
rendered all these instruments - in the
hunters’ hands or lying at their servants’
feet - with great precision. Firearms were
still considered “unchivalrous” in the
16th century, at least for the hunt; they were
too loud and not especially accurate, and
the powder invariably refused to ignite in
damp weather.
The variety of game species had shrunk
148
since the Middle Ages. Bison and wild ox
were now found only in Eastern Prussia,
while bears had withdrawn to the Alps, the
Bohemian Forest and further east. What
remained - apart from birds - were roe and
red deer, wild pigs, hares, foxes and lynx, as
well as that most feared of all huntable pre¬
dators, the wolf.
On the other hand, the populations of
these species had increased since 1500,
when hunting became the privilege of the
ruling class. At the beginning of the cen¬
tury, game laws still allowed peasants to
hunt at least small game or huntable preda¬
tors; later, even this right was removed. Ef¬
fective protection of crops was thus ren¬
dered impossible. The height of fences was
strictly limited, while the use of pointed
fence-posts was prohibited to prevent in¬
jury to crossing deer. Peasants were forced
to collar their dogs with wooden bars or
clubs to stop them hunting, and they were
forbidden to put their pigs to feed in the
forests, in case they frightened the game.
At the same time, the villagers were ob¬
liged by feudal law to provide labour for
the hunt: they set up tents and built fences,
drove the animals towards the archers,
acted as bearers for killed game. The meat
itself rarely came their way. Game was con¬
sidered the fare of a privileged class. One
critically-minded contemporary remarked
of the nobility that they “turn up their
noses at the sight of a common man or
peasant with just a little of it to eat”, con¬
sidering themselves "the victims of grave
injustice” unless they were “served game at
every mealtime”.
The hundreds of peasants who drove the
stags for the princes are not shown in Cra¬
nach’s painting; they remain behind the
scenes, as it were, somewhere in the forest.
The extent of the burden on peasants’ lives
caused by the courtly distraction of hunt¬
ing is recorded in documents dating from
the Peasants’ War, fought almost twenty
years before the painting was executed. At
the time, peasants from the Black Forest
region protested at having to “hang bars
from their dogs’ collars”, while peasants
from Sttihlingen demanded the right, ac¬
cording to “the divine law of God”, to
“hunt and shoot” all kinds of game “and to
satisfy our hunger”. The game laws im¬
posed by the rulers of the land, as well as
their rejection of the peasants’ demands,
were among the factors which provoked
the peasants’ uprising.
A castle rebuilt
as a palace
C
ranach probably painted the hunt¬
ing scene for the building in the
background: Castle Hartenfels at
Torgau, usually referred to simply as
Castle Torgau. It is situated on the river
Elbe some 25 miles upstream of Witten¬
berg: within an easy day’s journey. Witten¬
berg was Elector John Frederick’s “capi¬
tal”, Torgau his favourite residence.
Under John Frederick’s aegis, the build¬
ing, already some 500 years old, was rede¬
signed for representational purposes. This
was a consequence of the canon; rendered
defenseless by the canon ball, castles had
resigned their protective function, a devel¬
opment which led, throughout Europe, to
their alteration and conversion. Powerful
figures now began to use their residences as
a means of demonstrating wealth and good
taste: castles were turned into palaces.
Castle Torgau was rebuilt with oriels,
bartizans, cornices, countless windows
and, outstandingly, a grand spiral staircase.
These winding stone steps are, to this day,
considered one of the most remarkable
examples of German early Renaissance
architecture. The outer wall of the staircase
resembles the tower on the right in the
present work, though in reality it is not
situated on the bank of the Elbe. The artist
has altered the setting in order to include a
famous architectural feature in his painting.
The Elector had employed an architect
from Coburg, Cunz Krebs. His interior
designer hailed from Wittenberg: Lucas
Cranach the Elder. Wherever the latter
worked during these years, Lucas the
Younger was'sure to be found. Their work¬
shop, with countless apprentices, took care
of all the necessary painting: they embel¬
lished shields, lances and horse-cloths;
decorated wardrobes, beds and walls; they
painted portraits and altarpieces, as well as
antique themes with female nudes, copied
and varied ten or twentyfold, according to
demand. The Cranachs, like most contem¬
porary artists, thought of themselves first
and foremost as craftsmen; they simply
met a demand. The Stag Hunt, too, was
commissioned, executed during the final
phase of the renovations conducted at Tor¬
gau, where the painting presumably also
hung. The extent of the work carried out at
Castle Hartenfels by the Cranachs can,
today, be ascertained only with the help of
the prince’s account books. The transport¬
able works have been removed; the murals,
with the exception of residual islands of the
original work, have peeled away or been
painted over. Various documents relate
that the hares, pheasants, peacocks and
partridges these contained were so true to
life that visitors would even attempt to
remove them from the walls.
During the Reformation, Torgau was a
place of some renown, though oversha¬
dowed by Wittenberg, the home of Martin
Luther and site of a university founded in
1502 by Frederick the Wise. Torgau’s his¬
toric importance is still felt in the form of
two significant concepts: the “Torgau
League”, an alliance, formed in 1526, be¬
tween Protestant lands who had sworn to
support one another if attacked for their
beliefs, and the “Torgau Articles”, rules
governing the life of the Reformed
Church, established in 1530 under the di¬
rection of Luther and Philip Melanchthon.
Incidentally, the chapel at Castle Torgau
was the first interior to be specifically de¬
signed for Protestant services. It was con¬
secrated in 1544 by Martin Luther.
149
 loyalty were writ larger in his character than
enthusiasm for humanist learning or politi¬
cal strategy. Early in life he became a zealous
supporter of the Reformer, and devotion to
his doctrine determined his politics and per¬
sonal fate. Widely renowned for his physical
prowess, he was an excellent horseman and
a skilled and powerful combatant at tourna¬
ments. He was also a passionate, and fre¬
quent, huntsman - indeed he seemed posi¬
tively possessed by the “fiend of the chase.
An “unholy” devotion to hunting was com¬
mon enough among the nobility of the day;
John Frederick’s cousin Maurice, the Duke
of the other part of Saxony (a Duchy that
included Leipzig and Dresden), confessed
on his death bed to deep regrets over his
passion for hunting.
With the exception of the common
pleasure they took in the chase, John Frede ¬
rick and his cousin differed in many ways.
Though both were Protestant, Maurice had
always sought to influence the affairs of
state to his own advantage. His loyalties
shifted between the Catholic Emperor and
the Protestant cause, as suited his interests.
John Frederick would not have been ca¬
pable of this. He was one of the founding
members of the Schmalkaldic League, an
association, formed in 1531 on the basis of
the Torgau Pact, which united the majority
of Protestant cities and lands and, for a
short while, facilitated the peaceful spread
of the Reformation in Germany.
The Electorate of Saxony, with John
Frederick at its head, was the strongest force
in the Schmalkaldic League, and - owing to
Luther and Wittenberg - also its spiritual
and intellectual centre. It therefore grew to
become the Catholic Emperor’s main Ger¬
man rival. The Emperor’s energies, how¬
ever, were already directed towards dealing
with the Turks, the Pope and France. In
life, but based on already existing like¬ 1544, the year in which the present painting
A prince was executed, Charles appealed to the
nesses. This was common practice. Charles
who stood V did not sit for Cranach, either. It was Schmalkaldic forces at the Diet of Speyer,
by his faith enough to suggest a few of the person’s fea¬ asking them to support him against his
tures; realism was not essential. enemies. Help was forthcoming when the

E lector John Frederick was born in

Torgau in 1503. His mother died in
childbirth, and pigmentation in the
form of a cross on the baby boy’s skin was
immediately interpreteted as a sign of bad
luck. In the panorama of the hunt, he is 41
years old, though he appears no older than
on earlier paintings. This is hardly surpris¬
ing, since the portrait was not done from
This applies to stance, too, for it might
have been possible to show one of the two
main protagonists in the act of shooting.
Yet they appear to have been painted as if
with the help of a single stencil. For Cra¬
nach the Younger, this evidently con¬
stituted the appropriate hunting pose for a
sovereign who was not on horseback.
John Frederick grew up under Luther’s
influence in Weimar and Torgau. Piety and
Emperor gave the Protestants his word that
he would do nothing to thwart them.
Charles V and John Frederick may have
hunted together during the Diet of Speyer,
but they never took part in a hunt at Tor¬
gau. Cranach’s panorama illustrates the
Elector’s wishful thinking, his hope that
the quarrel between the Catholic Emperor
and the Protestants had been settled. The
painting is the document of an illusion.

150
The Emperor won
in the end

J ust as Elector John Frederick was a

vehement defender of the Lutheran
doctrine, Emperor Charles V was a
champion of the one and only redeeming
Catholic Church. And he was merely bid¬
ing his time. In 1547, three years after the
Diet of Speyer, his opportunity came: the
Turkish threat had receded, peace had been
made with the Pope, and his French rival,
Francis I, had died. What was more, he had
succeeded in forming an alliance with
Maurice of Saxony.
By the time the Emperor took to the
field, the Schmalkaldic forces had quar¬
relled and their army split up. John Frede¬
rick was stationed with only 6000 men on
the bank of the Elbe 20 miles upstream of
Torgau, unaware that the imperial army
on the opposite bank was four times as
large. The Elector had the bridge at
Meissen burned, but Maurice, leading
Charles’ army with the Spanish general
Alba, had discovered a ford. The armies
engaged in comabat at the Battle of
Miihlberg. While the imperial troops ral¬
lied to “St. George, Burgundy and
Spain!”, the Protestants’ battle-cry was
“God’s Word is Eternal!”
The Elector’s troops were routed on a
patch of moorland closely resembling the
hunting ground in Cranach’s painting; his
face bleeding, John Frederick was taken
prisoner. According to one member of the
imperial army: “Had all done battle as the
Elector himself, he would scarcely have
been beaten or taken prisoner.”
Torgau was forced to surrender, but
Wittenberg, with a garrison of 3000 troops
under Electress Sybille, held out bravely. life of his lord and master, whereupon the his studio at Wittenberg, under the direc¬
Instead of storming the town with great Emperor assured him that John Frederick tion of his son.
loss to life and limb, Charles called a mili¬ would come to no harm. Several days after the Battle of
tary court, which, under Alba’s presidency, However, the title of Elector and much Miihlberg, a certain Sastrov von Mohnike
condemned John Frederick to death. This of his land fell to his cousin Maurice. Fol¬ rode over the battlefield and recorded what
had the desired effect: Wittenberg, the lowing long, drawn out negotiations John he saw. He wrote of the wounded and half-
spiritual capital of the Reformation, sur¬ Frederick was conceded the right to refer starving he found lying there. But he also
rendered to the Emperor. to himself as “Elector by birth”. He was remarked that the Elector had lost the
On arrival at the imperial camp, Sybille imprisoned for five years and, though battle on land where he had so often
kneeled before the Emperor and pleaded granted several opportunities to escape, hunted, once a source of great enjoyment
for her husband’s life. She was permitted to stayed his sentence. For three of these to him, and of chagrin to the local popula¬
visit him. While inspecting Wittenberg, years, Cranach the Elder joined his lord- tion who, “for the sake of the great pleas¬
Charles had Cranach the Elder, who had ship in prison; John Frederick had called, ure he took in the chase, suffered great dis¬
painted his portrait as a boy, admitted to and the painter had come: he, too, a loyal pleasure, discomfort and damage to limb
his presence. Cranach, too, pleaded for the man. In the meantime, work continued at and livelihood”.

151

Despite rules forbidding them to
raise their eyes from the plate
while eating, the Benedictine
monks at the monastery of S.
Giorgio Maggiore decorated their
refectory walls with the painting
of a sumptuous feast. Their excuse
was that the work illustrated a
miracle: Christ’s turning of water
into wine at the marriage in Cana
of Galilee. Napoleon had the
painting (6.69 x 9.90 m) removed
to Paris, where it now hangs in
the Louvre.
With its 6.69 x 9.90 metres, this is one of the
largest works ever to be painted on canvas.
The contract concluded between the
monks of the Venetian monastery of San
Giorgio Maggiore and the painter Ve¬
ronese (1528-1588) on 6 June 1562 speci¬
fied “a painting as wide and as high as the
152
wall”1 for the end wall of their new refec¬
tory.
During the 16th century, while the rich
Venetians built one splendid Renaissance
palace after another, the Benedictine
monks of Venice added a new dining-hall
(refectorium), cloister, library and church,
thereby greatly embellishing their island
opposite St. Mark’s. Since many were the
younger sons of the lagoon-Republic’s rul¬
ing families, they had access to wealth and
could therefore afford building works on
this scale.
The refectory of the Benedictine monas¬
tery made its architect Andrea Palladio
(1508-1580) famous. Palladio took his in¬
spiration from antique temples, and his
cleverly calculated proportions imparted a
rare sense of harmony to the large, simply
decorated hall. The background of The
Marriage at Cana is strongly reminiscent
of Palladio’s architectural style. Veronese
draws the spectator’s eye through to pal¬
aces, a campanile and balconies - in other
words into an ideal Renaissance town-
scape, set against a bright and cloudy sky.
The open square with the marriage feast
in progress is framed on either side by col¬
umns in antique style. Servants scurry back
and forth on a gallery, while the guests sit
around the banquet table in the fore¬
ground.
Christ presides at the centre of the paint¬
ing, surrounded by his mother and dis¬
ciples, while some of Veronese’s patrons,
the Bendictines of San Giorgio, sit at the
right. These elderly gentlemen with their
rich robes and well-fed faces do not seem
at all disinclined to partake in the feast of
life. Nor does it seem beyond the bounds
of credibility that they took great pleasure
in Veronese’s portrayal of the feast during
their own mealtimes - despite a strict rule
which forbade Benedictine monks to raise
their eyes from the plate while eating.
 Paolo Caliarl (Veronese): The Marriage at Cana, 1562/63

The Lord sits at the table of lords

\v
 L arge-scale canvases like 7 he Marriage
at Cana were only possible as the col¬
lective work of a studio. According to
Veronese’s sketches, his brother Benedetto
Caliari, a nephew, and a host of nameless
assistants and apprentices all worked in his
bottega at the time.
Benedetto was responsible for the ex¬
ecution of architectonic aspects of the
painting, and occasionally sat as model.
His striking face with its characteristic
Roman nose appears in many of Veronese’s
paintings. Here, Benedetto is portrayed as
a Master of Ceremonies, raising a glass of
wine to his expert eye.
Enough wine, This glass is the site of a biblical miracle-
but hardly the changing of water into wine (St. John
any water 2,1): “This beginning of miracles did
154
Jesus... and manifested forth his glory” at
“a marriage in Cana of Galilee”. 1 here was
no wine left, and “Jesus saith unto them, Fill
the waterpots with water... Draw out now,
and bear unto the governor of the feast...
When the ruler of the feast had tasted the
water that was made wine,” he was as¬
tonished, asking the bridegroom why he
had “kept the good wine until now”.
Veronese’s richly-clothed majordomo
does not seem to be asking any questions,
however, but to be examining the colour
and taste of a wine, an everyday event for a
Venetian connoisseur. Consumption of
wine in the city in the lagoon was consider¬
able, partly because of the shortage of
drinking-water. The Venetian historian
Marino Sanudo, writing in 1533, mentions
this paradox: “Venice in the water has no
water.”2 Although the senate occasionally
looked at plans to bring water to Venice by
aqueduct, the inhabitants had to make do
with rain-water. Collected in a large num¬
ber of marble cisterns distributed around
the town, the water is reputed to have left
an unpleasantly muddy, or sandy, after¬
taste, so that the Venetians tended to prefer
wine.
The biblical miracle of the changing of
water into wine does not appear to have
found many admirers among the guests of
Veronese’s Marriage. Instead, they seem
fully preoccupied with food, music and
each other. Certainly, Christ’s figure is the
focal point of both the banquet and the
painting. The cruciate halo shines around
his head, while the activity on the gallery
immediately above his head is presumably
intended to be ambivalent: servants are
butchering meat, though they might
equally be slaughtering a sacrificial lamb.
Nonetheless, the significance of the mir¬
acle goes unrecognised in the hubbub of the
feast, and Jesus is only one of well over 100
figures. Worldly things seem to have dis¬
placed the spiritual dimension; the guests
are more interested in present enjoyment
than in the afterlife. This was hardly an un¬
usual state of affairs in Venice at the time,
and one that was frequently described. The
Venetians were trying to “turn the world
into a pleasure garden,” wrote the German
pilgrim Felix Faber after visiting Venice in
1480: “The Turks and other infidels who
see these gleaming palaces say the Chris¬
tians who built them cannot esteem the
afterlife, nor can they expect to gain very
much from it.”3

Exotic splendour of the
banquet
G oblets and bowls of finest glass,
gold and silver sparkle on the da¬
mask table-cloth. The ambassador
of the Republic of St. Mark to the Imperial
City of Augsburg in 1510 expressed his as¬
tonishment that even the rulers of the Em¬
pire ate from earthenware dishes, whereas
gold and silver dishes had been in wide¬
spread use in his own home town for some
time. Even the toothpicks - a lady in the
painting is shown raising one to her mouth
- are said to have been made of gold. The
guests at one noteworthy banquet, held in
1574 in honour of Henry III, were amazed
and delighted when their Venetian hosts
presented them with some highly inven¬
tive, and very costly decor: cutlery, croc¬
kery and table-cloths of pure spun sugar.
The government of the city, whose
preferred tone was generally inclined to
discretion and understatement, used state
functions and feasts as a means of demon¬
strating that Venice was still the richest and
most luxurious city on earth. The more du¬
bious Venice’s role as a great power, the
greater the need for such demonstrations
became.
The patricians gathered around the fes¬
tive table in the painting evidently still con¬
ceived of themselves as rulers of the waves.
Almost all of them wear robes of rich and
exotic materials. Their services to the Re¬
public will-have taken most of them to
posts in the Levant as diplomats or colonial
administrators. The Venetian Empire itself
had included Istria and Dalmatia, and had
extended to Constantinople. At its zenith
in the beginning of the 15th century, it had
held sway over the Adriatic and Aegean,
over Crete and Cyprus. Eventually, how¬
ever, it began to disintegrate. Bit by bit was
lost to the Turks. At the same time, the dis¬
covery of a sea-route to India in about 1500
broke the Venetian trade monopoly on
pepper and spices. By then, the Venetians
were no longer in a position to redress such
political and economic setbacks. Instead of
pumping more and more money into ad¬
venturous trading expeditions, as they had
done in the past, they preferred the se¬
curity of investment in property on the Ita¬
lian mainland, leaving trade on the high
seas to up-and-coming cities like Antwerp
and Amsterdam. A Venetian visitor, Tom-
maso Contarini, saw “neither luxury nor
pomp” in these cities, neither silver nor silk
robes, noting that “these were unknown in
our own town at the time of our fore¬
bears.”4
Shortly before Veronese painted his
Marriage at Cana, an especially sump¬
tuous feast had been held to celebrate the
coronation of the Venetian dogaressa Zilia
Priuli on 19 September 1557. Following
nine heads of state who were all bachelors,
Doge Lorenzo Priuli had at last set a
woman beside him on the throne.' His
reputation for meanness had made him
particularly concerned on this occasion to
display his magnificence. Perhaps the
memory of the feast is reflected in Verone¬
se’s painting. According to one contem¬
porary chronicler, nothing like it had been
seen for over a hundred years.
155
 bearded man is holding out between the
columns. Those not carrying food or pas¬
sing it on seem equally busy making sure
that everything happens according to plan.
The Venetians ate an astonishing
amount at their feasts. No fewer than 90
different foods would be served to 100
guests at a banquet lasting about four
hours. The artist’s unconventional look at
the trivial world of servants was not to
everyone’s taste, however. Some years later
in 1573, when Veronese had again painted
a large-scale picture for the refectory wall
of a Venetian monastery, he was sum¬
moned before the Inquisition. He was ac¬
cused of having crowded a biblical scene,
The Last Supper, with vulgar and irreverent
figures such as servants, common merce¬
naries and even dogs. “If there is room in a
painting, I decorate it as I see fit,” Veronese
answered. “I painted a cook, thinking to
myself that he would probably have come
out to have some fun and see what was
going on.”5 Veronese was aquitted, but in¬
structed to change the title of the painting.
The Inquisition demanded it be altered to
A Feast in the House of Levi.
In The Marriage at Cana, too, the ser¬
vants have come out “to have some fun”
and are seen taking part in the general hub¬
bub on the servant’s gallery, taking time off
to watch the festive goings-on over the ba¬
lustrade. Their exotic dress and dark faces
under turbans and feather-caps identify
them as the natives of Venice’s traditional
trading partners. Saracen, Tartar and Cir¬
cassian slaves served in almost every
household in Venice. In Veronese’s day,

T
slaves were readily available at the public
auctions held in the Rialto market.

Veronese brings on he kitchens and other rooms where Attempts by Holy Roman emperors,
food was prepared were generally popes, patriarchs and doges to forbid the
the servants slave trade in Venice had always ended in
situated in a separate building or cel¬
lars, far from the banqueting-hall, or at failure. It was simply too lucrative. Count¬
least out of sight of guests and spectators. less female slaves worked in Venice as wet-
Kitchens and those who worked in them nurses and maids. Without their labour,
therefore rarely appeared in paintings. and without the enormous sums of money
Veronese broke with this convention. gained by trafficking slaves, the Venetians’
He painted a third level between the guests very pleasant, very lavish life-style would
seated around the table in the foreground not have been possible.
and the spectators looking down at the
feast from their balconies in the back¬
ground: a gallery, joined to the dining area
by two staircases at either end, stretches
across the entire painting. This is the site of
bustling activity: several porters are
carrying a roasted ox. A black boy waits on
the left with a tray for the roast which a

156
It is said that Veronese portrayed many of
the famous figures of his time, including
Francis I of France (died 1547), among
the roughly 150 guests depicted in the
Marriage at Cana. However, we do not
owe this notion to the testimony of his
contemporaries, but to art historians of the
16th and 17th centuries. Equally un¬
proven, though more enticing, is the art
theorist A.H. Zanetti’s contention in 1771
that the little orchestra in the middle of the
painting was composed of the most well-
known painters in Venice. “Titian is play¬
ing the double-bass,” he wrote, describ¬
ing the man on the right dressed in red.
“Paolo portrayed himself as the figure in
the white robe with the cello,” he went on,
and, of the musician sitting next to him: “It
is correct to suppose that this is Jacopo
Tintoretto.”6
If this is true - and comparisons with
other portraits appear to corroborate the
claim - then the unchallenged masters of
16th-century Venetian painting, the three
great colourists, were gathered here to
Painters play
for the guests
make music. All three received major state
commissions and worked hard to decorate
Venice’s churches and government build¬
ings with their paintings. Paolo Caliari was
the youngest of the three, born in 1528 at
Verona, the reason for his nickname Ve¬
ronese. His first success at the city on the
lagoon had come when he was commis¬
sioned to decorate St. Mark’s library. Al¬
ready an old man in 1557, Titian is said to
have rewarded the artist by hanging a gold
chain around his neck.
Tintoretto (1518-1594) was an eccentric
who, during his lifetime, did not achieve
such great public recognition as Titian (c.
1477-1576), who was knighted and cel¬
ebrated as a “divino”, one of the divine.
Perhaps the painters met at Titian’s
house. He possessed an organ, bartered
from an organ-builder in return for the lat¬
ter’s portrait. Music was played there just
as it was everywhere in Venice in the 16th
century. Even in 1506, Durer had written
of the city-state that he had heard people
playing violins so sweetly there that the
players themselves had been moved to
tears.
It is quite possible that the music played
at Veronese’s feast would have been by An¬
drea Gabrieli, the organist at St. Mark’s and
leading composer of his time. His melodies
were heard at the time in the salons,
theatres and on public squares. Gabrieli’s
studies in the field of harmony must have
fascinated painters and sculptors, too:
“Just as vocal proportions are harmonious
to the ear,” explained the learned monk
Francesco Giorgi in 1525, “so physical
proportions are harmonious to the eye.
Such harmonies provide the greatest of
pleasure without anyone knowing why,
except for One who understands the causal
connections between all things.”7
The search for these “causal connec¬
tions”, and for perfect harmonies of tone,
proportion and colour, was taken up by
composers, architects and painters alike.
As a result, 16th-century Venice entered a
period of unparalled flowering of music
and the arts, at a time when the city was
long past its political and economic hey¬
day. This was made possible by the conti¬
nued wealth of the city, together with the
artistic sensibility of its ruling class. Un¬
willing to risk adventurous journeys on the
high seas or to engage in pioneering trading
expeditions as they once had, the patricians
of the Republic of St. Mark had become a
class of highly educated, hedonistic hu¬
manists who were fond of spending large
sums of money on the arts. The Benedic¬
tine monks of San Giorgio, who had their
refectory built by Palladio and painted by
Paolo Veronese, and who wished to eat to
the accompaniment at least of painted
music, are themselves an excellent example.
157

The unfinished tower warns
against arrogance before God.
Bruegel set the biblical scene
against a contemporary back¬
ground. For many years, the artist
had lived in Antwerp, the new fin¬
ancial capital of Europe. The city
was experiencing a building
boom. The painting (114 x 155cm),
a testimony to the fears that
accompany modernisation, is in
the Kunsthistorisches Museum,
Vienna.
158
The Old Testament Book of Genesis de¬
scribes how God created the earth, the ani¬
mals, the plants and eventually also man. It
is a story of disobedience and punishment,
revolt and suppression. God punishes man
three times. The first punishment is the ex¬
pulsion from Paradise of Adam and Eve
after they have eaten from the tree of
knowledge of good and evil. They lose
eternal life in a world without work or
need.
But God is also unhappy with the beha¬
viour of their children and children’s
children: “God saw that the wickedness of
man was great in the earth... And the Lord
said, I will destroy man whom I have cre¬
ated from the face of the earth”, and not
only man, but the beasts, too. Only Noah
finds grace in the eyes of the Lord. God
commands him to build an ark in which to
rescue himself, his wife, and two of-every
sort of living thing. God then destroys all
other living substance by means of a great
flood. When the flood abates, Noah pre¬
pares a burnt offering. God smells “a sweet
savour” and decides not to destroy man
again: “Neither will I again smite any more
every thing living, as I have done.”
But he certainly made life difficult when
he thought man deserved another punish¬
ment. Lor in the meantime, Noah’s de¬
scendants had decided as follows: “Let us
build us a city and a tower, whose top may
reach unto heaven; and let us make us a
name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the
face of the whole earth.”1
Now, building a tower as a means of
self-orientation and as a symbol of com¬
munity was one thing; building one that
reached into heaven was quite another. It
was not the sort of challenge God could
easily put up with!
Instead of killing them, he took from
them their common language. They could
no longer understand one another’s speech
and were scattered over all the earth. Their
city and tower remained unfinished. The
name of the city was Babel, like the Hebrew
verb “balal”, meaning “to confound”.
Pieter Bruegel the Elder: The Tower of Babel, 1563

The Antwerp building boom

T wo paintings of the Tower of Babel
by Pieter Bruegel the Elder have sur¬
vived, while a third, a small one on
ivory, is lost. The theme must have inter¬
ested him greatly. There are no records to
tell us what led the painter to this subject,
but life in the town where he worked for at
least a decade must have constantly re¬
minded him of Babel.
The town was Antwerp: few other cities
were forced to accommodate such an in¬
flow of people and so gigantic a building
boom in such a short period of time. There
were only two or three cities with over
100,000 inhabitants in 16th-century Eu¬
rope; Antwerp became one of them. The
Italian Ludovico Guicciardini’s descrip¬
tion of Antwerp in 1566 contains the fol¬
lowing comment: “Today there are already
about thirteen thousand, five hundred
houses in Antwerp.” If building work con¬
tinued unabated, Antwerp would soon be
considered “one of the most crowded
towns in Europe”.2
The most crowded town
in Europe
160
The main reason for the boom which
changed a small port into the “most
crowded town in Europe” was the re¬
orientation of world trade following the
discovery of sea-routes around the Cape
to Asia and across the Atlantic
America. As a result, Venice and Genoa
lost their leading positions, while ports on
the west coast of Europe gained in signi¬
ficance. The Netherlands were favourably
placed not only for transatlantic trade, but
for traffic between the north and south,
for imports of spices from the Orient, and
for reloading wood and cereals from the
Baltic. In the course of the 16th century
Antwerp advanced to become the centre
of Western European trade.
Foreign trade naturally brought a great
babel of languages to Antwerp - and not
merely to the immediate vicinity of its har¬
bour, or to the public houses frequented by
sailors. Foreign trading companies sent
representatives to establish branch offices
in the city. There were Italians, French and
English merchants, traders from the Hansa
towns and, most numerous of all, the Por¬
tuguese. In 1570, the Portuguese com¬
munity included 102 households.
Foreigners were enticed to Antwerp
with various privdeges, but they were also
treated with suspicion by the town’s in¬
habitants. Though hardly very many in
percentage terms, they were conspicuous:
they spoke different languages, wore dif¬
ferent clothes, had different customs. The
majority of people at the time lived in small
to towns with stable populations, in which
everybody knew everybody else. A town
growing as fast as Antwerp, with new faces
coming in all the time, was unusual
enough, and an influx of people who also
spoke different languages must have added
to the confusion. The population of Ant¬
werp probably experienced something
similar to the inhabitants of Babel: a grow¬
ing, tightly-knit family of man disintegrat¬
ing into separate groups.
There was a similar development in Ant¬
werp - and not only there - in the field of
religion. For centuries, the Roman Cath¬
olic Church had succeeded in preventing
attempts at secession and eliminating sects.
Its unity was not destroyed until the Re¬
formation, when not only Luther, Calvin
and Zwingli, but also the Anabaptists and
a host of other, since long-forgotten sects,
established reformed Christian Churches.
In 1563, the year in which he painted his
Tower of Babel, Bruegel left Antwerp for
Brussels. It has been suggested that one of
his reasons for doing so was to escape the
grips of a sect called the Schola Caritatis.

Experience
instead of
textbooks
B ruegel has painted an enormous
crane on one of the ledges of the
tower. There are three men in the
tread-wheel attached to the near side of the
crane, and presumably three others in the
drum at the far side. This enabled the
builders to lift weights many times heavier
than themselves. In this case, they are lift¬
ing a stone that has already been cut to
shape. A man on a balcony is trying with a
rope to prevent the stone from banging
against a buttress.
A crane of this type is said to have stood
in the market-place at Antwerp to help
with the handling of goods. On the ledge
below it, Bruegel shows a different, smaller
kind of treadwheel crane; he also paints
several winches. His technical drawing was
very precise; perhaps this explains why he
was commissioned to depict the building
of the Antwerp-Brussels canal. His death
in 1569 prevented him from executing this
work.
Transport of materials on the building
site was done by low-paid labourers. The
stonemasons came at the top of the hierar¬
chy of building workers; Bruegel paints
them at work in the foreground, cutting
stones to size. Usually, this was not done
on the site itself, but at the quarry. Long¬
distance transport was expensive; super¬
fluous stone meant higher freight costs. At
the same time, it was cheaper to carry ma¬
terials by boat than to have them trans¬
ported overland on an ox-drawn cart.
Bruegel’s decision to show building work
in progress by the sea is not, therefore,
merely reminiscent of the position of Ant¬
werp as a coastal town, it is also a correct
observation of economic reality.
Scaffolding on high buildings presented
a particular problem. Only wood could be
used. The wooden bars and planks were
bound together, but they could not be
made as high as the wall of a cathedral. The
masons therefore had to attach the scaf¬
folding to the wall as they built it. Bruegel
has avoided this problem by painting his
imaginary tower with ledges which served
as ground-level supports for work on su¬
perior levels. His arrangement of the inner
passageways, arches and steps is vaguely
reminiscent of the Colosseum and Castel
Sant’Angelo at Rome, sites which Bruegel
had actually visited.
On the ledges spiralling to the top of the
building are a number of huts. This is also
concordant with contemporary building
practice: each guild had its own hut, or
lodge, built as close as possible to the
building site. Here the builders took meals
and kept their tools. The lodge was also the
masons’ winter workshop.
These huts were often surrounded with
a great aura of mystery, an aura later trans¬
ferred to the lodges of the freemasons. In
fact, there was nothing more mysterious
about them than the specialised knowledge
of the master builders who convened there.
There were no textbooks in those days, no
written instructions; building knowledge
was imparted orally from one generation
to the next.
As far as we know, the mathematics of
statics was still in its infancy. The enor¬
mous cathedrals of the day were built not
on the basis of cleverly worked out calcu¬
lations, but on tradition and experience.
More than one of God’s houses collapsed,
like the cathedral at Beauvais; or remained
unfinished, like Siena. Architecture had
not yet become a fully-fledged profession.
Usually, it was the master mason who di¬
rected the work on site.
161
It is said that the order to build the Tower
of Babel was given by King Nimrod, a
grandson of Noah and the first mighty
ruler in the post-diluvian history of man¬
kind. Bruegel depicts him here with sceptre
and crown, and the masons before him on
bended knee.
At least one of the masons has gone
down on both knees, an unusual form of
reverence in 16th-century Europe, at least
outside the Church. Of course, anyone
who wished to present something to
The gods descend from
heaven
162
Charles V or Philip II, the Spanish Em¬
perors, was required to kneel, but only on
one knee. Here, Bruegel demonstrates an
Oriental custom.
Archaeologists have proved that the
story of Nimrod’s tower is based on a real
precedent in ancient Sumerian culture,
whose civilisation reached its zenith in the
4th and 3rd centuries B.C. It is thought
that the Sumerians migrated from the
mountians to the Mesopotamian plains
and wished to take their gods with them.
So that the gods would be more inclined to
descend from the heavens to the plains, the
Sumerians built mountain-like temples for
them. The tower was essentially a later de¬
velopment of the high temple.
Alternatively, it has been suggested that
the Sumerians thought the home of the
gods was a mountain between heaven and
earth; their tall temples were therefore imi¬
tations of the heavenly mountain, and were
built in praise of the gods.
The ancient Akkadians and Assyrians
inherited the celestial mountains from the
Sumerians. Every town is thought to have
had its own. Babylon - or Babel, as it was
called in Hebrew - presumably had the
greatest of all. Archaeologists discovered
its foundations at the beginning of the
twentieth century. It was square, and had
sides that were 91 metres long. According
to ancient scrolls, it had seven floors, each
smaller than the one below it, and was
about 90 metres high. The Greek writer
Herodotus saw the tower (or rather, a later
version of it) in 458 B.C. However, it was
already a ruin during Alexander the Great’s
visit to Babylon some 130 years later.
The building also found its way into the
Christian tradition. The oldest surviving
illustrations of the Tower of Babel empha¬
sise that the wrath of God was directed
against the hubris of those who dared think
in such dimensions. God is shown destroy¬
ing the tower - an event that is not de¬
scribed in the Bible - or scattering its
builders over the face of the earth. A mo¬
saic, dating from about 1220, in St. Mark’s
cathedral in Venice shows two towers.
While work is shown still in progress on
one of them, the other is already deserted;
angels in the sky around it are shown scat¬
tering people in every direction.
Whether in mosaics, Bible-illustrations
or the illustrated Books of Hours of the
14th and 15th century, the tower is never
particularly huge by comparison with the
people around it: it is rarely more than
three times the size of the builders. The
reasons for this are less ideological than
practical. If the artists had attempted to
make the building appear gigantic by let¬
ting it fill the entire space of the work, they
would have had to make the human figures
tiny by comparison. In practice, however,
the figures would then have been too small
to depict with mosaic stones, or in mini¬
atures. The situation changed with the ad¬
vent of panel-painting and, more espe¬
cially, with the flourishing of 16th-century
Netherlandish painting: during Bruegel’s
lifetime, and in the decades immediately
after his death, the theme found its most
widespread treatment.
A warning
to the
mighty
P ainting the Tower of Babel became
little short of a fashion in the 16th and
17th centuries. This was not merely
due to the obvious parallel of Antwerp’s
rise to international fame, or to the spec¬
tacle of Christendom divided by the Re¬
formation; it was also the attraction of
painting imaginary architecture in realistic
detail, depicting famous biblical edifices as
if they were really situated in western Eu¬
rope: in a Netherlandish port, for example.
Realism of this kind was a comparatively
new phenomenon and contrasted sharply
with the previously dominant Christian
world-view.
The work of a German Jesuit, Athana¬
sius Kircher, who attempted to draw up
exact calculations for a tower as high as the
moon, serves as an illustration of the ex¬
tremes to which realism could be taken
some 100 years after Bruegel’s death. Kir¬
cher worked out that the building of such
a tower would require so much material
that the Earth itself would be thrown off
balance and dragged from its position at
the centre of the cosmos.
Despite its “secularisation”, the theme
retained its moral force. The less familiar
motifs in Bruegel’s painting emphasise its
message. The artist’s contemporaries
would have recognised everything they
saw in it from their own environment, with
two exceptions: the tower piercing the
clouds and the mason’s Oriental gesture of
homage to the king. By contrast with other
motifs in the painting - landscape, coast,
ships, town, builders, construction tech¬
nique - these point directly to hubris, vain¬
glory and megalomania.
Bruegel also painted other warnings
against hubris: fallen angels, the fall of
Icarus, the death of King Saul. Few of these
themes appear in his graphic work, how¬
ever. His drawings were moderately
priced, his paintings expensive - his warn¬
ings must therefore have been directed pri¬
marily at the ruling class. Among the rep¬
resentatives of this class were rich mer¬
chants such as Nicolaes Jonghelinck, who
is known to have offered his collection of
paintings, including many Bruegels, as se¬
curity against a loan of 16,000 guilders; or
representatives of the Spanish government,
such as the powerful Cardinal Granvella,
who also owned a number of Bruegels.
Apparently, the painter considered those
with money and power especially vulner¬
able to hubris.
There may have been a further, quite
specific reason for Bruegel to have painted
the Tower of Babel in 1563. He had per¬
haps heard of yet another massive building
project, begun in Spain the very year in
which his painting was executed: the Es-
corial, an‘enormous, palatial monastery
near Madrid. Philip IPs motives for build¬
ing it may have been extremely pious, but
his Escorial was also a demonstration of
power. Even if Philip could not be accused
of throwing down the gauntlet to God, as
Nimrod had done, his ideas were a chal¬
lenge to humanity, and to the Netherlan¬
der in particular, many of whom did not
wish to be Catholics. Even if the Escorial
itself has survived the passage of centuries,
it was under Philip that the power of Im¬
perial Spain began to crumble.
163
 Tintoretto: The Abduction of the Body of St Mark, 1562/66
Apostle wanted
Venice in the Early Middle
Ages was a powerful city, but it
lacked a suitably important
patron saint. And so it simply
had one stolen: in 827 the body
of St Mark was abducted from
Alexandria. The Venetian artist
Tintoretto portrayed this auda¬
cious act in a painting in which
historical events are infused
with a dream-like quality. The
large canvas, which measures
398 x 315 cm and was executed
between 1562 and 1566, today
hangs in the Gallerie dell’Acca-
demia in Venice.
Dramatic events are taking place in Tin¬
toretto’s painting: three Venetians are car¬
rying a corpse, the body of St Mark. A
man on the ground is trying to restrain the
large camel which is to transport the body.
People are fleeing into the arcades, seeking
164
shelter from lightning and a storm. Scene
of the action: the port of Alexandria. The
year: anno Domini 827.
The artist, so it seems, has painted a vert-
specific historical event, namely the re¬
moval of the body of St Mark from Egypt
to Venice. According to one doge’s official
report, this translatio was deemed neces¬
sary because it could no longer be guaran¬
teed that the Evangelist would be allowed
to rest in peace in Egypt. “The caliph of
the Saracens had ordered the construction
of a magnificent palace in Alexandria, and
since the necessary materials were lacking,
the command was issued to remove the
marble columns from Egypt’s Christian
churches.” The church housing the body
of St Mark was thereby also under threat.
Venetian merchants approached the priests
with an offer of help: “The precious treas¬
ure which you keep in your church is in
great danger ... Give it to us.”
The abduction had to be carried out in
ereat secrecv. In order to hoodwink the
o
Christians in the city, the Venetians re¬
placed the bodv of the saint with that of
someone else. Thev then pulled the wool
over the customs officials’ eyes by filling
“the upper part of the chest in which they
had placed the relic with ham and pork,
items well known to be repugnant to Sara¬
cens, as to Jew-s. When the chest was
opened at the customs outpost, the offi¬
cials cried out ‘Kanzir, Kanzir?’, which is
apparently an expression of disgust, and
let the shipment go through without fur¬
ther ado.”
Thus the doge’s report, albeit written 500
years after the event. It w'as not the only
version of the story, however. According to
another, the merchants purchased the relic
from the monks w'atching over it for 50 se¬
quins. Its secret abduction wras assisted by
the heavens: thunder, lightning and a storm
drove the citizens of Alexandria off the
streets, enabling the body to be earned to
the ship unseen. It is this second version —
more dramatic than the first and so obvi¬
ously given the divine seal of approval -
that Tintoretto chose to paint.
It is doubtful that the Venetian mer¬
chants who negotiated the abduction had
docked in Alexandria entirely by chance.
Thev were most probably there on busi¬
ness. In the Middle Ages, a cits- with im¬
portant relics within its walls enjoyed an
elevated status. Hence the remains of
saints were not simply bought and sold,
but also stolen or forged. Lp until AD
827, the onlv relics which \ enice pos¬
sessed were those of its patron saint
Theodore, a figure of minor importance.
The upwardly mobile city w as therefore
on the lookout for a prize relic, and prob¬
able organized a sort of “commando unit’
especially for the purpose.
Relics were normally transferred to
churches - not so in Venice, where the mer¬
chants took the bones of St Mark to the
reigning Doge. Perhaps because their or¬
ders had come from him. and perhaps be¬
cause there was no safer place for such a
treasure than the Doge s palace. V hatever
the reason, in retrospect this deviation from
the medieval norm takes on a symptomatic
significance. For the veneration of St Mark
vers- quicklv lost its association with the
person of the martyr and Evangelist, and
became svnonvmous with the veneration
of the city itself. San Marco was Venice, and
the winged lion who was the saint’s at¬
tribute became the symbol of the Republic.
Even after the Republic had been dis¬
solved under Napoleon, St Mark retained
his influence. In 184S - over 1000 years
since the abduction - a Venetian tried to
incite his fellow citizens to revolt against
Austrian foreign rule. He had no success
with the slogan “ Viva la liberta”, nor even
with “Viva l’ltalia”. Only the battle cry
“Viva San Marco”, it is said, rallied his
countrymen to his side.
165

A corpse
shrouded
in mystery
T intoretto painted the three men and
the dead body in a similar fashion to
a Deposition or Entombment of
Christ. Perhaps he thereby wanted to un¬
derline the elevated status of the saint. He
gives him a strong, handsome body which
bears no indication of the fact that the
saint was dragged to his death through the
streets of Alexandria. It has evidently sur¬
vived the centuries in the tomb equally un¬
changed.
Little is known of the man himself. It is
generally agreed that Mark came from
Jerusalem, accompanied Paul to Rome,
where the two men visited Peter, and
wrote the first surviving Gospel. An early
bishop recorded that Mark founded the
Christian Church in Alexandria and was
martyred there on his second visit. It is
uncertain whether this is true. There may
166
have been another Mark teaching there.
Nor was the apostle ever in Venice. The
assumption that he went there from Rome
is based on a fabricated legend for which
there is no supporting evidence.
Precisely whose remains the Venetians
brought home is thus somewhat unsure.
One report of the abduction is clearly in¬
tended to quash any doubt: “When they
set sail, however, and told those on the
other ships that they were carrying the
dead body of St Mark, one of them said:
‘No doubt someone has given you the
corpse of an Eyptian, and you think
you’ve got St Mark!’ But see, the ship car¬
rying the holy corpse immediately
turned” and repeatedly rammed the other
ship “until all aboard cried out: ‘We be¬
lieve it is the true body of St Mark’.” This
legend, too, is a “legend of convenience”,
fabricated and circulated to spread the
fame of the relic.
Once in Venice, the relics were con¬
cealed in a secret spot in the Doge’s private
chapel. The first St Mark’s church was
then built, the saint transferred to it and
again entombed in a highly secret spot. In
976, however, there was an uprising; the
Doge was stabbed and the church burnt to
the ground. No one knew precisely where
to find the bones of St Mark amidst the
ruins. They seemed lost.
That could not be allowed, however.
The Venetians could never admit that their
patron saint had gone astray during an in¬
ternal dispute, of all things. And so, at the
very point in time when a new St Mark’s
church had been completed and the loss of
the relics was being mourned with prayers
and penitential exercises, he was rediscov¬
ered. According to official church records,
the church suddenly quaked, the fabric of
the building started to crumble, and the
long-sought coffin appeared in the ma¬
sonry of a column. According to another
version, St Mark himself stuck his arm out
of pillar to show where he was.
It was the Venetians’ faith in the relics -
and not the relics’ genuineness - which
made them so important for so long. In
the 16th century this faith began to wane.
The cult of relics began to decline across
Italy. The new humanists had other, secu¬
lar priorities. Tintoretto was the last of the
great Venetian painters to commemorate
St Mark in several pictures.
A lthough the body of St Mark was
abducted from Alexandria, the
square portrayed by Tintoretto is
Venetian. It bears a striking resemblance to
the Piazza San Marco, the spacious square
which provided the magnificent, ostenta¬
tious backdrop to the Republic. With no
regard for history or geography, Tintoret¬
to includes in his painting the elements
that were important for his city state.
St Mark’s square is still bordered on one
of its narrower sides by the church of San
Marco; in Tintoretto’s day, the church of
San Geminiano stood opposite. In 1807 it
was pulled down by Napoleon and re¬
placed with the buildings visible today.
The painter has not rendered the facade of
the former church exactly as it was, al¬
though some of the details are accurate. In¬
stead, he has borrowed certain elements
from the buildings of the Scuola Grande di
San Marco — for whom the painting was ex¬
ecuted. In the case of San Geminiano, too,
Tintoretto has thus thought nothing of
bringing together elements which were sig¬
nificant either for him or his client.
The facade of the Scuola Grande can
still be seen on the Campo Santi Giovanni
e Paolo; the building behind it houses one
of the city hospitals. Right from the start,
the official role of the Scuole was to per¬
form charitable deeds. These lay confra¬
ternities, associations of Venetian citizens,
addressed themselves to caring for the sick
and burying the poor, and arranged mutual
aid in emergencies. This was all done in
the name of a saint; Christian ceremonies
were part of the programme.
At least as important as these religiously
motivated acts of charity was the political
influence which such Scuole wielded.
Venice was ruled by a patrician class. Only
men from families whose names were re¬
gistered in the city’s Golden Book had the
right to sit on the Great Council, from were benevolently left in peace. After all, Kind deeds
which all the offices of government were they were useful on two counts: they pro¬
and
filled. The popolani, the simple citizens, vided important charitable services, and at
the same time absorbed socio-political
proud display
had no means of participating in govern¬
ment. The Scuole offered a substitute. Al¬ ambitions. From the socio-psychological
though their members had no political point of view, too, they contributed to the for a number of years, he hoped to be ad¬
power, they enjoyed considerable social stability of Venetian society over several mitted to the confraternity. From a certain
esteem. They were allowed to play a role centuries. More important for us today is point onwards, certainly, Tintoretto only
in public festivals and processions, and the fact that the Scuole also financed a sig¬ worked for one of its rivals, the Scuola di
thus raise their profile. To rise to the posi¬ nificant proportion of Venetian art. San Rocco, whose meeting rooms are al¬
tion of Guardian Grande, the head of a Tintoretto is an outstanding case in most entirely decorated with his works.
Scuola, was a highly desirable goal. point. He executed four scenes from the Here he eventually became a member. The
Although these confraternities were legend of St Mark for the Scuola Grande di Scuola di San Rocco still ranks amongst
monitored by the ruling authorities, they San Marco, and it is not impossible that, the great sights of Venice.

167
T intoretto’s paintings of St Mark were
commissioned not by the Scuola
his patronage of the arts. Every project he
funded thereby served to enhance his own
tradition. It was the prerogative only of
senior officials to have themselves por¬
trayed with a saint, and when they did so,
Grande di San Marco itself, but by reputation. When he paid for the restora¬
tion of the church of San Guiliano, for ex¬ it was always at a respectful distance from
one of its members: the doctor Tommaso
ample, he had a bronze statue of himself the saint whom they were venerating.
Gianotti from Ravenna, who had adopted
erected above the entrance, with an in¬ Rangone wanted special treatment. He
the aristocratic name of Rangone. He had
scription in Latin on the left and in Heb¬ had himself portrayed as a merchant, clad
his portrait included in each one, and al¬
rew on the right, both full of praise for in expensive robes and holding the body
ways in a prominent position. In the Ab¬
the donor. He also financed the restora¬ of St Mark, thereby breaking several of the
duction his head appears just above that of
tion of the fa$ade of San Geminiano on St unwritten rules of 16th-century Venetian
the saint and itself exudes a sense of bib¬
Mark’s square, and again had a bronze painting. As a consequence, on 10 August
lical dignity.
bust of himself erected in return. When he 1573 the pictures were sent back to him.
Yet this Gianotti-Rangone was first and
expressed his wish to adorn the facade of The donor was instructed to have his head
foremost an eloquent, highly persuasive
the Scuola Grande with a similar bust, painted out. Rangone passed on the works
quack. In addition to medicine, he had
however, the proposal wasYejected. to the artist, who left them unchanged. At
studied physics, astronomy, mathematics
He also ran into trouble with his St some point - probably once Rangone was
and literature; in his books he offered du¬
Mark paintings. Not just because of his dead and no longer a nuisance - they
bious advice on how to live to 120, and at
vanity, but because he had broken with found their way back to the Scuola.
the same time sensible warnings on the
disadvantages of too much eating, too
much sitting and excessive indulgence in
the pleasures of the senses. Particularly
dangerous, in his opinion, were the differ¬
ences in temperature to which the patri¬
cians exposed themselves when they is¬
sued forth from their hot assembly cham¬
bers in the Doge’s palace into a wintery
Venice, “into icy drafts, into the gusts of
wind from the tower on St Mark’s square”,
or when they climbed into their gondolas
and “went off to disport themselves”.
Doctors were well paid in Venice. Many
came from far away in order to practise
here. Around 1560, their normal fee for a
visit was one ducat; if they were famous
and in demand like Gianotti-Rangone,
they could charge a good deal more. The
paintings in the St Mark cycle apparently
cost 80 ducats each, and were thus relative¬
ly affordable for a busy doctor. By way of
comparison, Tintoretto paid an annual
rent of 48 ducats for his house.
Rangone’s professional success was sur¬
passed only by his extraordinary conceit
and relentless egotism. Since he couldn’t
buy his way into Venice’s patrician class
(that was something which only a few
very wealthy businessmen managed to do
at times when the state finances were in ex¬
treme crisis), he satisfied his vanity through

A quack
driven
by ambition
168
The funeral pyre
didn't fit
the picture
W hen changes were eventually
made, they were all the more
drastic. After the disbanding of
the Scuola in 1807, The Abduction was
moved to the Marciana, the Venetian state
library. Because it was too big for its in¬
tended site, the left-hand edge was severe¬
ly trimmed. The sense of the unassailable¬
ness of a work of art had yet to be de¬
veloped.
An engraving of the original work re¬
veals what is now missing: the saint’s soul,
surrounded by the heads of angels, float¬
ing and transparent, portrayed in white
against the walls on the left. Traces can still
be seen against the columns.
The funeral pyre in front of the church
was for a long time hidden by overpaint¬
ing; it was only revealed in 1949. In the
context of the abduction of the corpse, this
pyre makes little sense. According to le¬
gend, however, the heathens had originally
wanted to burn the body of the saint
whom they had dragged to death, but the
Christians managed to bury it in one of
their churches.
In his Abduction, it is likely that Tin¬
toretto has jumbled up not just places, but
also events which took place at very differ¬
ent times. Just as he sees Venice in Alexan¬
dria, so he may be combining the burial of
St Mark’s body with its abduction.
This condensation and combination
of separate themes is characteristic of a
dream, and indeed, Tintoretto has here
painted a dream-like picture. This impres¬
sion is reinforced by the thunder and
lightning, which bathe the scene in an un¬
real light. The saint is brightly lit, while
the majority of the other figures remain in
shadow. In contrast to the Christians, who
appear as real beings, the heathens flee like
pale phantoms into the arcades on the left.
Christians and heathens are separated
by the band of pale slabs running from the
front edge of the picture to the church at
the back, and which the painter uses to
demonstrate spatial depth. This emphasis
on perspective recalls the painting of the
Renaissance, an epoch which turned its at¬
tention back to the world around it, and
which sought to communicate not just a
Christian message, but the image of a real
world full of real people.
In Tintoretto’s case, however, the Re¬
naissance belief in this present life seems to
be faltering. The masses of his architecture
are no longer harmoniously balanced, and
they have something of the appearance of
a stage set which might blow away in the
wind at any moment. The people do not
stand firmly rooted in beauty; instead, the
heathens are fleeing to the left, and the
Christians are hastening forwards out of
the picture. Everything is in motion.
Only the saint embodies calm. It was
he whom the Venetians trusted through¬
out all the political and religious up¬
heavals of the 16th century, throughout
the Reformation and Counter-Reforma¬
tion, the ravages of war and Italy’s eco¬
nomic decline. It was him they trusted -
even if th? occasional Venetian harboured
doubts about the genuineness of his relics.
Here, faith was far more important than
reality.
169
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f s; ill' i nil P®B|RpF^p3f.
&*niSSa.
• ? SJBS : OpggPlil ^.v /?r
r? ^

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ifilKaffilSS
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170
Antoine Caron: The Massacre by the Triumvirate, 1566

For Tiber, read Seine

One day in 1913, in search of protection It was in far-off ancient Rome

from the English drafts, the French Mar¬
that the court painter to the
quis de Jaucourt was rummaging through
the London antique shops for a folding French queen chose to set the
screen. He spotted a stand that “was exact¬ murderous events taking place
ly the right height”. Only when he got in a Paris torn by religious con¬
home, did he realize that it was an oil
flict. Caron’s elegant portrayals
painting, a canvas measuring 116 x 195 cm
cut into three pieces. of gruesome atrocities were
Cleaning the work brought its bright popular at court and amongst
palette and its content back to light: sol¬ supporters of both camps in the
diers in antique military costume are pur¬
French Wars of Religion, the
suing people across a spacious open
square, massacring them and then setting Hugenots and the Catholics.
out their heads in a row. The victims at¬
tempting to flee up flights of steps and
across roofs have no chance of escape.
They suffer the most excruciating agonies
before finally being left lifeless on the
ground by their tormenters. The scene
takes place within an imposing decor, be¬
tween triumphal arches, the Capitol hill,
the Colosseum and the Castel Sant’Angelo
- the buildings of ancient Rome.
The painting portrays an episode from
the history of Rome. In 43 BC, following
Caesar’s murder, Antony, Octavius and
Lepidus formed a triumvirate and resolved
to dispose of their numerous political op¬
ponents in one fell swoop. They put a price
upon their heads and had them massacred.
In 1939 Jaucourt donated the painting,
still in its three sections, to the Louvre in
Paris. Restorers have succeeded in uncov¬
ering an inscription on the wall of the
steps on the left-hand edge of the compo¬
sition, behind the stone ball on the fore¬
ground parapet. It reads: “Ant ... Caron
Piet”, and - beneath an illegible line - the
year 1566.
Antoine Caron lived from 1521 to 1599
and served Catherine de’ Medici as court
painter and decorator of lavish feasts. The
widow of Henry II reigned for almost 30
years over a France torn by religious wars.
Violence, atrocities and murder were the
order of the day - just as in ancient Rome.

171
Reality
behind a
classical faqade
A ll one could hear from every side
was screaming, sobbing and wail¬
ing ... one saw illustrious men
fleeing miserably ... hiding themselves in
wells, cellars and underground places”.
Thus the Greek historian Appian, writing
in the 2nd century AD, described the mas¬
sacre instituted by the three triumvirs.
Caron follows his description right down
to letter. For example, he shows a soldier
bearing Cicero’s head on the tip of his
sword to Antony, Cicero’s bitter enemy,
who “was seated on his tribunal” and
who “greatly rejoiced” at the sight. Caron
shows the triumvirs sitting beneath a can¬
opy and passing their judgements.
The French translation of Appian’s His¬
tory of Rome was published in several edi¬
tions between 1544 and 1560. Public inter¬
est in classical subjects was widespread,
but the Roman despots held a particular
relevance amongst Caron’s contempor¬
aries. On 7 April 1561, three aristocrats
founded a French “triumvirate” in Paris to
defend the Catholic faith.
The three men who hoped, through the
association with ancient Rome, to reflect
glory and legality onto their own pact were
Anne de Montmorency, France’s most se¬
nior military commander, Duke Francois
172
de Guise, the ambitious head of a Lothar-
ingian dynasty, and Marshal Jacques d’Al-
the power-hungry feudal lords, the many
soldiers returning from the Italian cam¬
paigns to unemployment and the religious
bon de Saint-Andre, a friend of Henry II.
The king’s premature death in 1559 had fanaticism in both camps (each backed by
left a power vacuum, since his sons were support from abroad), conspired to ensure
still too young to succeed to the throne. that the latent conflict eventually erupted
From 1560 Queen Catherine ruled on be¬ into the open.
half of the 10-year-old Charles IX - a wel¬ One year after the formation of the tri¬
come opportunity for the feudal lords, umvirate, France saw its first War of Reli¬
who had lost their influence under Henry gion. It was followed by another seven,
and his predecessors, to redress the bal¬ separated only by brief ceasefires, and last¬
ance. They did not hesitate to exploit the ing till the end of the century.
religious conflict to these ends.
France was at that time split into two
camps: since the publishing of John Cal¬
vin’s Institutio Cbristianae Religionis in
1536, many French had professed their
faith in the Protestant Church. Although
these Huguenots were persecuted by the
Catholic majority, around 1559 they num¬
bered about one third of the population.
The other two thirds were Catholic.
For Catherine, the banker’s daughter
from Florence who had come to the
French throne through her marriage to
Henry II, the welfare of France came sec¬
ond only to that of her children. She
preached tolerance and sought comprom¬
ises. She would have been happy to allow
everyone to worship as they wished. But
A few days after the proclamation of
the French triumvirate, students
from the Paris university gathered
to track down Huguenots who dared to
sing their psalms in public - something
they were only allowed to do outside the
city. Persecution of the religious minority
started to increase across the whole coun¬
try.
On 1 March 1562, a Sunday, one of the
three Catholic leaders, the Duke de Guise,
stopped in the small town of Vassy, where
the Protestant community had assembled
for a service in a barn next to the church.
That was a violation of the rules of
religious worship. The Duke’s troops
stormed the building, killed 74 people and
injured another 104. The Duke took the
Atrocities
in
art and life
survivors to Paris to have them punished
as insurgents. He was greeted as a hero
and the massacre celebrated as a great ex¬
ploit. Shortly afterwards, the First War of
Religion broke out.
French reality was thus not far removed
from the scene that Caron portrays in his
Massacre. A painting of this type is sup¬
posed to have hung in the study of the
Protestant leader, the Prince of Conde, a
permanent reminder to his followers of
the persecution they had suffered.
We know from an inventory that the
Catholic General Montmorency also
owned a Massacre picture. That was noth¬
ing unusual. According to a contemporary
report, in 1561 “three large pictures, excel¬
lently painted”, portraying the triumvir¬
ate, “were brought to the Court ... dearly
purchased by the great rulers”.
Representations of such blood-thirsty
subjects were evidently in demand -
amongst supporters of both parties. Over
twenty, mostly anonymous versions of the
Massacre by the Triumvirate survive from
this epoch, and the records speak of an¬
other two dozen more. A second, un¬
signed painting of the same subject has
been attributed to Caron himself; it hangs
in the museum in his native town of Beau¬
vais.
Such pictures were probably also pop¬
ular for their detailed rendition of atro¬
cities - a source of sadistic pleasure to cer¬
tain viewers. Thirty years of war with Italy
had brutalized people’s sensitivities, and
acts of cruelty were perpetrated by both
sides. Thus one Huguenot leader sported a
necklace made out of the ears of Catholic
priests.
The artist here anticipates events that
would take place in real life just a few years
later, at the Massacre of St Bartholomew
in 1572. Tired of tolerance, Catherine at¬
tempted to wipe out the Protestant leaders
in one go. The result was a massacre. The
Protestant Admiral Coligny was thrown
out of a window, trampled to death by his
enemies, his head cut off and his body
dragged through the streets. The bodies of
around 4000 killed or drowned were swept
down the river Seine.
173

The artist
had never
seen Rome
T he victims of Caron’s Massacre are
adrift not in the waters of the Seine
in Paris, but in the Tiber, floating
past one of Rome’s most distinctive land¬
marks, the mausoleum of Emperor Hadri¬
an, renamed the Castel Sant’Angelo by the
popes. Caron distributes an entire collec¬
tion of well-known Roman monuments
across his picture - something which dis¬
tinguishes it from other Massacre pictures,
all of which take place against an ill-
defined antique backdrop. Caron shows
the Colosseum with the Pantheon rising
above it, the triumphal arch of Septimus
Severus standing to the left of Trajan’s
Column and the Arch of Constantine to
the right, and in the background the Arch
of Titus, surrounded by imaginary ruins.
He thereby portrays these monuments not
as Antony, Octavius and Lepidus would
have seen them, but as they appeared to
174
his own contemporaries, such as the
French diplomat and poet Joachim du Bel-
lay, who described Rome’s “walls, arches,
baths and temples” in the collection of
sonnets which he published in 1558 under
the title Les Antiquites de Rome.
Francois I (1494-1547) had encounted
Roman architecture and the Renaissance
buildings modelled on the classical style
during his military conquests in Italy.
When he crossed back over the Alps, he
brought a team of architects, painters and
craftsmen in his train. They were to build
him a “New Rome” in the shape of Fon¬
tainebleau, the magnificent palace which
was to serve as a shining example to the rest
of France. On the king’s instructions, the
painter Francesco Primaticcio (1505-1570)
arranged for 130 crates full of plaster casts
of the most famous antique statues to be
shipped to France. Casts were taken from
them in the Fontainebleau workshops in
1545 and erected in the palace grounds. It
was there that Caron was able to study
replicas of the Belvedere Apollo and Her¬
cules with the child on his arm.
He probably never went to Rome itself,
however. Although the buildings he por¬
trays are accurate in their architectural de¬
tails, they are topographically incorrect -
Caron has positioned them at random. It
is unlikely, too, that he would have made
certain errors of scale (the columns of
the Temple of Castor and Pollux above
the Forum are too tall; the people in the
Colosseum far too large in relation to the
building) had he seen it all with his own
eyes.
He seems to have based his composition
on the engravings of Roman monuments
which the French artist Antoine Fafrery
executed in Rome and subsequently dis¬
tributed in Paris in 1562.
With this erudite anthology of classical
buildings, the court painter Caron pays
tribute to the general passion for architec¬
ture shared by the queen herself. Catherine
was almost as fanatical about building as
her father-in-law Franqois I; in 1566 she
erected, in the Italian style, the “new
Fouvre” where Caron’s painting is housed
today.
C aron learned his trade under the Ital¬
ian masters at Fontainebleau, the
burnt and plundered the spiritual capital.
A new aesthetic was rising to the fore -
decor composed of strictly symmetrical
terraces and staircases. The Apollo on the
construction site of the “New one art historians call Mannerism. left counterbalances the Hercules on the
Rome”. His name appears between 1540 There is a wide gulf between the form right, just as the Arch of Septimus Severus
and 1550 on the palace list of salaried staff: and content of Caron’s painting. He paints finds its counterpart in the Arch of Con¬
he earned the modest sum of 14 pounds a slewn heads and murdered bodies in cheer¬ stantine. Order and confusion permeate
month. A decade later, in 1559, his salary ful, bright colours, while his butchers are each other. An obelisk marks the centre of
rose to 50 pounds: under the supervision grouped in elegant poses under fluttering the canvas, which is divided vertically by
of Primaticcio, Caron was entrusted with banners, as if dancing in a courtly ballet. two columns into three equal areas -
the renovation of the royal apartments. The heads of the actors are small, their something which probably contributed to
Up until then the French art scene had gestures exaggerated and mannered. Other its misappropriation as a folding screen.
been dominated by the Italians, but by the than in the details of the architecture, there For almost 300 years Caron’s style was
start of the 1560s most of these guest is no room for realism in Caron’s artificial dismissed and his works unrecognized or
artists were dead or had returned to their world. The composition is based upon lost. Today, however, his paintings exert a
native land. A new emphasis was put upon contrasts: the spacious square, teeming renewed fascination on those visitors who,
French qualities: although French poets with soldiers and their victims, neverthe¬ venturing away from the hordes of Mona
continued to compose their odes along less gives the impression of being empty. Lisa tourists, find their way up to the
classical lines, they now wrote in their Those fleeing and their pursuers race fran¬ peaceful second floor of the Louvre.
mother tongue, rather than in Latin or tically through a tranquil and timeless
Italian. It was an opportune moment for a
French artist, and so Caron entered the
service of the king’s widow, Catherine.
It is not known for whom he painted
the Massacre by the Triumvirate. The
identity and confession of his client might
shed light on the artist’s intentions: is he
pillorying the outrages committed by the
Catholics or by the Protestants, for ex¬
ample, or is he issuing a general warning
against the dangers posed to the populace
by any dictatorship - something which
would have been fully in line with Cather¬
ine’s thinking? The moral or allegorical
meaning of this painting remains locked
and barred to us.
In this, his first large-format work, the
newly-appointed court painter was prob¬
ably trying to impress. Hence he chose a
broadly popular Roman subject with a
modern relevance, and portrayed it in an
exciting, new style, concentrating upon
surprises and contrasts. For a century, art
had aspired to ideal beauty and harmony,
but Caron’s contemporaries had wearied
of these Renaissance values. There was
nothing harmonious about the world in
which they lived: civil war was raging in
France, the Reformation had placed a
question mark over all that was held most
sacred, and Charles V’s mercenaries had

A wide gulf
between
form and content
175
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176
Pieter Bruegel the Elder: Peasant Wedding Feast, c. 1567

The barn is full -

time for a wedding!

The painting, now measuring 114 x 163 cm,

is in the Kunsthistorisches Museum,
Vienna. It is neither signed nor dated. The
signature and date were probably on the
bottom section of the original oak panel,
which was sawn off and replaced at a later
date. The craftsmanship of the more recent
section is noticeably poorer.
Experts think Bruegel painted the work
c. 1567. He married in 1563 and died in
1569, aged about 40. The Peasant Wed¬
ding Feast was therefore executed during
his short marriage, shortly before his
death.
The celebration takes place on the
threshing floor of a farm. Long tables - not
even the rich had proper tables in the 16th ably indicated membership of a group.
century - were put together using wooden Young men at the time lived very much in
planks and trestles. The man in black on cliques, a source of fun as well as an op¬
the far right is seated on an upturned tub, portunity to celebrate with people of their
while most of the other guests sit on own age.
roughly hewn benches. The only chair Scholars often attribute religious or alle¬
with a backrest has been reserved for an old gorical significance to the work. Some see
man: possibly the notary who drew up the it as the marriage at Cana where Christ
contract of marriage. The prints pinned to turned water into wine and vessels were
the backrest of the long bench resemble filled over and over again. Others suggest
those sold during religious festivals or pil¬ this was Bruegel’s version of the Last Sup¬
grimages. per. Yet another view has it that he was
In the foreground two men serve bowls warning his contemporaries against
of meal, using an unhinged door as a tray. “gula”, the deadly sin of gluttony.
Though merely servants at the feast, the None of these hypotheses is especially
left of the two, the largest figure in the convincing. However, The Peasant Wed¬
whole painting, is the focal point. The ding Feast is full of realistic detail, provid¬
colours, too, make him stand out. Presum¬ ing a window on 16th-century social re¬
ably, the artist used the figure to stabilize a ality. In his biographical Book of Painters,
complicated composition. The half-diago¬ published in 1604, Carel van Mander de¬
nals formed by the two rows of eaters in scribes how Bruegel often went “to visit
the foreground intersect in the waiter; the the peasants, whenever there was a wed¬
edges of the back of his apron mark the ding or kermis”.
central axis.
A bunch of ribbons, similar to those
tied to the instruments of the two bagpipe
players, or peeping out from some men’s
shirts, hangs from his cap. Usually, these
were used to lace up trousers. Worn on
the hat, or tied to instruments, they prob¬

177
The barn
is full

T wo sheaves of corn, held together by

a rake, whose pole handle is buried
in stacked cereal: at first glance the
background of straw or unthreshed wheat,
almost identical in hue to the trodden clay
of the floor, looks like a normal wall. How¬
ever, the projecting rake and, above the
bride’s head, the prongs of a fork used to
hold up a decorative cloth, together with
the blades of corn sticking out on top of
the heap, make it clear what Bruegel in¬
tended to depict.
The image of a full barn evoked a dif¬
ferent response four hundred years ago
than in our own age of agricultural sur¬
pluses. Cereal was the staple diet; as bread
or meal it formed the bulk of every meal¬
time. To Bruegel’s contemporaries, the
sight of a full barn meant the threat of
starvation was staved off for the following
twelve months.
It was a threat which, as in many
developing countries today, recurred an¬
nually in Europe. The size of harvests var¬
ied enormously, and in the Netherlands,
according to historians, losses of as much
as 80% had been recorded from one year
to the next. Prices were consequently un¬
stable: a yearly increase of 500 percent for
a standard measure of oats or wheat was
not unknown. A craftsman’s apprentice,
for example, spent 70% of his income on
food, which was mainly cereal. High prices turn, led to reduced bodily resistance, ill¬ took place as soon as the harvest was
meant insufficient nourishment, which, in ness and early death. Epidemics usually gathered, the cereal here was probably
followed in the wake of famine. unthreshed.
Town authorities attempted to compen¬ The Netherlandish peasants were better
sate by stockpiling and imports. At that off in the 16th century than many of their
time, the Baltic was the breadbasket of Eu¬ class in other European countries. They
rope, with the Hanse in control of ship¬ had their freedom: serfdom had been
ment. A sea-journey round the coast of abolished, and forced labour for the feudal
Denmark could take two months. With lords was prohibited by law. In the
two months for the order to reach the sup¬ Netherlands, the peasants’ situation made
plier, and allowance made for winter stop¬ it unnecessary to have a war of the type
pages, it is obvious that imports could not that raged in Germany. Initially, the
compensate for bad harvests. What Netherlanders found it possible to adapt to
counted was how full your barn was. the colonial hegemony of the Spanish
There were seasonal fluctuations in Habsburgs. In 1567, however, Philip II
price, too. Cereal was cheapest in autumn, sent the Duke of Alba from Madrid to raise
directly after the harvest. Most of the taxes and wipe out Protestant “heresy”.
threshing was done between September The last years of Bruegel’s life marked the
and January - on the threshing floor, which end of an era of prosperity. The long
provides the setting for Bruegel’s Peasant struggle for the liberation of the Nether¬
Wedding Feast. Since weddings usually lands had begun.

178
A spoon impossible to say whether he was a bowl of meal. This explains the spoon at¬
wealthy burgher or a noble, for to wear a tached to the man’s hat, and his bag, of
in your hat
sword was no longer deemed an aristo¬ which - in the present work - only the
meant poverty cratic privilege. shoulder-strap is visible.
The aristocracy and clergy each made up The wooden spoon is round. Oval

T
approximately one percent of the popula¬ spoons came later, when - following the
tion. Relations between them were gener¬ example of the courts - it was thought bad
here was no more densely populated ally excellent. In order to preserve manners to open one’s mouth too wide
region north of the Alps than the property and power, many sons and while eating. To put something into one’s
Netherlands. This was largely due to daughters of the nobility did not marry, mouth with a fork was practically un¬
higher wages. The textiles industry entering various Church institutions in¬ known in the 16th century. The alterna¬
flourished; the Netherlandish ports at¬ stead. In this sense, the Church provided a tives to the spoon were fingers or a knife.
tracted coastal trade from the Baltic in the form of social relief, and, in return, was Everyone carried their own knife; even the
north to Lisbon in the south; for several made the benefactor of countless dona¬ child in the foreground has one dangling
decades Antwerp, the site of the first stock- tions and legacies. For Bruegel’s contem¬ from his belt. No instrument features more
exchange, was the economic hub of Eu¬ poraries it would have been immediately often in Bruegel’s paintings - the knife was
rope. obvious why the monk in the painting con¬ the 16th-century all-purpose tool.
The agricultural economy of the verses with the only wedding guest who
densely-populated Netherlands was might be construed as an aristocrat.
thought especially progressive and pro¬ The spoon attached to a waiter’s hat was
ductive. The fact that peasants, as free¬ a sign of poverty. Since the abolition of
holders, worked for their own livelihood, serfdom and, its corollary, the obligation of
acted as a stimulant - even if the feudal feudal lords to maintain their serfs’ wel¬
lords owned their houses and land. As fare, the rural proletariat had greatly in¬
money circulation grew and capitalist creased in number. Peasants with no
forms of wage-labour developed, the property or means took whatever work
wealthy bourgeoisie, who had begun to re¬ they could find, harvesting, threshing, even
place the nobles, invested in agriculture as assisting on festive occasions. Most lived in
a means of supporting their families in huts and were unmarried; wages were not
times of crisis. enough to feed a family. Few had a fixed
The man in the dark suit with broad abode, for they spent too long on the road
sleeves may have been the landlord. It is in search of work, a crust of bread or a

179

Melancholia,
a thirsty
business
T he jug being filled in the foreground
is a man’s drinking vessel. Women
drank from smaller jugs. Whether
they are serving wine or beer is impossible
to say. Wine had been a popular drink in
the Netherlands for several centuries and,
at that time, was grown much further north
than was later the case. By the 16th century,
however, wine-growing was on the de¬
180
cline. The perimeter of the wine-growing
regions retreated south, settling more or
less where we find it today. Ludovico
Guicciardini, reporting on Netherlandish
wine in 1563, noted that the “little there
was of it generally tasted sour”.
Wine was replaced by beer. This was
originally imported from Germany, from
Hamburg or Bremen. Not until Bruegel’s
lifetime was beer brewed in large quantities
in the Netherlands, where it was not only
produced in breweries. The peasants cel¬
ebrating in this scene may have brewed
their own beer. Home-brewing was wide¬
spread, and considered a woman’s work.
Calculations suggest an average daily con¬
sumption of one litre per person. Accord¬
ing to Guicciardini: “For those used to it,
the common beverage of beer, brewed with
water, spelt, barley and some wheat, and
boiled with hops, is a pleasurable and
healthy drink.”
Beer was an important part of the 16th-
century diet. It even caused rebellions - for
example when the Antwerp city council
prohibited the brewing of beer in the Old
Town, or its transportation from the sur¬
rounding regions. The council “were quick
to repeal the beer-law that had so dis¬
pleased the common people”, wrote Guic¬
ciardini.
It is to this Italian that we owe the most
interesting account of the Netherlands in
the 16th century. In his own country, as in
Spain, drunkenness was considered dis¬
graceful, and Guicciardini conseqeuently
castigates the “vice and abuse of drunken¬
ness”. According to his observations, the
Netherlanders drank “night and day, and
so much that, besides creating disorder and
mischief, it does them great harm in more
ways than one”. As a southerner, unused to
the north, he found an excuse for their be¬
haviour: the climate. The air was “damp
and melancholy”, and “they had found no
better means” of driving away their
weather-induced melancholia.
There is no sign of drunkenness in this
painting, however. Indeed, the mood seems
comparatively sober; an Italian may even
have found it melancholy. Nonetheless, the
mood would no doubt change as the meal
progressed, or during the celebrations,
which could last anything up to several
days. Bruegel’s Peasant Wedding Dance
(Institute of Arts, Detroit), 1566, a painting
of almost identical format, shows the
guests in a frenzy of drunken revelry. The
two paintings could almost be a pair.
In contrast to the ease with which the
bride may be identified, it is difficult to de¬
cide which of the celebrants is the bride¬
groom; he may be the man filling the jugs,
whose place, apparently unoccupied, may
be at the top of the table on the right - ob¬
scured by one of the waiters. He would
thus be sitting between two men, just as his
bride is seated between two women. Wed¬
ding feasts are known to have taken place
without the bridegroom being invited, for
a wedding day was primarily the day of the
bride.
The bride
does not lift
a finger

T he bride, backed by green fabric, a

bridal crown hovering above her
head, is easily distinguished. She
presents a strange sight: her eyes semi-
closed, hands quite still, she is completely
motionless. Brides were expected to do
nothing on their wedding days; forbidden
to lift a finger, she was thus guaranteed at
least one holiday in a lifetime of hard la¬
bour. A person who avoided work was
sometimes referred to as having “arrived
with the bride”. The nobleman, or wealthy
burgher, at the right of the painting is the
only other guest with his hands folded. He,
too, was a stranger to physical labour, it
seems.
The bride is also the only guest not to
cover her hair. She is displaying her long
hair in public for the last time. Henceforth,
like her married cousins at table, she will
wear her hair under a bonnet. Here, she
wears a circlet, a “bride’s coronet”. In
many parts of the country at the time, this
would have a prescribed value. In the same
way, the number of guests, the number of
courses served at the feast and the value of
the wedding presents were all determined
in advance according to specific criteria.
The authorities justified this measure by
claiming that it was necessary to protect
families against excessive expenditure, but
the more likely explanation is that it pro¬
vided a means of making social status
visible. A feast of this kind would have
given Bruegel’s contemporaries a fairly
exact picture of the financial standing of
the newly-weds, or their parents. trance of the church rather than in front of ghers or nobles, many finding their way
The meal was preceded by a wedding an altar. into collections owned by the Austrian
ceremony. As far as Luther was concerned Statistics for the period reveal that Habsburgs. In 1594 the Peasant Wedding
this was a purely secular affair, and a women raised an average of 2.5 children. Feast was purchased in Brussels by Arch¬
priest’s presence optional rather than com¬ There had been a child more in the pre¬ duke Ernst. It later turned up in Emperor
pulsory. This had also been the case among vious half of the 16th century, but the peas¬ Rudolf II’s famous collection at Prague.
Catholics. In 1563, however, a few years ant population was decimated by the wars There was practically no chance of peas¬
before the painting was executed, the of liberation which broke out in the wake ants themselves seeing a painting like this.
cardinals at the Council of Trent decided of Alba’s rule of terror, the wholesale pil¬ The only works of art they saw were in
that only priests should join couples in lage, perpetrated especially in unprotected churches. If they owned decorative pic¬
wedlock. It is possible that the Franciscan rural areas, by marauding armies, and by tures at all,.they were most likely to be re¬
monk at the table was invited precisely for ensuing famine and plague. ligious prints of the type pinned to the
this purpose. At the time, however, cere¬ Bruegel did not live to witness this. His backrest of the bench in Bruegel’s Wedding
monies were frequently held at the en¬ paintings were bought by wealthy bur¬ Feast.

181
 Antoine Caron: Caesar Augustus and the Tiburtine Sybil,
Faith in the magic
of festivals
A bizarre architectural landscape
on the banks of the Seine provides
the setting for an opulent festival
hosted by Henry III of France.
Antoine Caron (1521-1599) ren¬
ders the event, centred around the
staging of a mystery play, in a
manner which is both artificial
and assiduously attentive to detail.
The painting (125 x 170 cm) is in
the Louvre, Paris.
182
c. 1580
Amidst the storm of civil war, and not¬
withstanding its chronic shortage of funds,
the French court stages a festival. Several
events are shown simultaneously in pro¬
gress in the extensive grounds of the
Tuileries by the Seine, a setting alienated
here by antique columns and circular
temples. In the background on the left two
knights in full armour joust in a tiltyard,
while a barge, carrying a large number of
musicians and singers, draws near to the
riverbank.
However, the majority of figures in the
painting are shown watching a play per¬
formed on an estrade, acted by persons in
Roman costume. It is probably the “Mys¬
tery of the Incarnation and Birth of Our
Saviour and Redeemer Jesus Christ”. In a
key scene of the play the Roman Emperor
Augustus - here seen kneeling in a purple
gown and laurel wreath, while three of his
soldiers look on - meets the wise Sybil of
Tibur. He asks her to predict the fate of the
Empire, whereupon she points at the sky,
where the Virgin Mary and Infant appear
in a nimbus. Christ is thus presented to the
pagans as successor to the Roman emperor
and Lord of the Universe.
The mystery play, first performed in
Rouen in 1474, was revived in Paris in
1580, for its mixture of antiquity and
Christian piety was much in keeping with
contemporary taste. Anything Roman or
Greek was likely to appeal during the late
Renaissance, and the work’s religious slant
undoubtedly satisfied the Catholic party
dominating court and capital.
But the real star of a court festival was
always the sovereign himself, whose inten¬
tion was to demonstrate his own power
and the glory of his house. It was this,
more than anything else, that Antoine
Caron had been commissioned to paint,
by order of the Queen Mother, Catherine
de’ Medici.
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183
T hough the sovereign was the centre
of attraction at a courtly festival, the
larger-than-life figure at the centre
of Caron’s painting is a woman, the
Florentine Catherine de’ Medici. Though
by 1580 she had lost the regency, she
was still one of the dominant person¬
alities at the French court. Her position as
queen and mother had helped her deter¬
mine the course of French politics for two
decades.
According to her own testimony,- her
sole motive in wresting power in 1559, fol¬
lowing the death of her husband at a tour¬
nament, was to defend her children’s in¬
heritance. Her seven children were “the
most important thing in the world”; with
her love of family she was, in effect, a real
“Italian mamma”. Officially, her sons
Francis II (1559-1560) and Charles IX
(1560-1574) wore the crown, but both
were tubercular and neurotic, one dying at
A powerful
Florentine, larger
than life
184
16, the other at 24. Catherine attended to
their affairs of state, and was rarely
squeamish in the methods which she em¬
ployed. She had few qualms about murde¬
ring her opponents when interests of state
or the progress of the Valois dynasty de¬
manded it, and she shared much of the re¬
sponsibility for the deaths of thousands of
Huguenots killed at the St. Bartholomew
Massacre of 1572. But it was also thanks to
her that there was a French state left to
speak of when her third son, Henry III,
ascended the throne in 1574.
France had been torn asunder by the
Reformation: while the Huguenots fought
for religious freedom, another militant fac¬
tion attempted to wipe out heresy in the
name of the Catholic majority. Catherine
herself was inclined to be tolerant, and she
was tireless in her efforts to arbitrate be-
teen the two parties. She extracted count¬
less compromises, made them sign peace
treaties, but civil war usually broke out be¬
fore their signatures had dried on the
paper. Thus France sank into anarchy and
poverty.
If a pamphlet written in 1573 is to be
believed, it was Catherine herself who was
responsible for all this misery: after all, dis¬
aster was all that could be expected from
the government of a woman, nay, a
foreigner, the “daughter of an Italian
grocer”.
By 1580 Catherine had lost her political
power, for her third son, Henry III, was
less inclined to heed her advice than that
of his proteges. Though firm in other
matters, Catherine had nonetheless con¬
doned his behaviour, for she idolized this
son more than any other, and was prone
to illusions about his abilites. However,
once forced into negotiations with the
warring factions, even he made use of
Catherine’s diplomatic skills. She had
learned how to lead, how to use the
passions and interests of others to her
own benefit. In so doing, she enlisted the
persuasive powers of some 300 alluring
maids of honour. Known as the Queen
Mother’s “flying squad”, they succeeded
more than once in taming rebel leaders
who were susceptible to feminine charms.
In Caron’s painting, however, the three
ladies sitting at the feet of Catherine, who
is not shown in mourning for once, are
merely caressing their lapdogs.
The king's
favourites
compete

T o further her political aims Ca¬

therine de’ Medici not only enlisted
the charms of her ladies-in-waiting,
but was equally skilful in her use of fest¬
ivals. The purpose of these, however, was
not only to display the pomp and power of
the ruling house. From her father-in-law,
Francis I, she had learned that “two things
are necessary in order to live in peace with
the French ... One must keep them happy,
and set them some sort of exercise to keep
them occupied ...” The latter, as Catherine
went on to tell her son, “prevents them
from engaging in more dangerous activ-
• • »
lties .
In order to prevent quarrelsome secta¬
rian leaders from inciting their followers to
further bloodshed, the Queen Mother kept
them as busy as possible with feasts, court
balls and masquerades; she even organized
snowball-fights between Catholic and
Protestant nobles.
Tournaments were often the climax of
such festivals, the risk and danger of mar¬
tial displays providing their combatants
with ample opportunity to work off sur¬
plus energy and aggression. Henry Ill’s
favourites, sporting young men dispara¬
gingly referred to as mignons (catamites),
were particularly avid participants. It is in
their company that Henry III, the last of
the Valois dynasty, is seen following the
joust from an elegant stand. In 1580
Henry was only 28 years of age, the vic¬
tim, like his brothers, of tuberculosis.
Like them, too, he failed to provide his
country with an heir. Pendulating be¬
tween scenes of wild debauchery and the
pious observance of his spiritual exercises, between the king and antique greats such cluded the spectacle, Jupiter, the father of
he felt most at home in women’s clothes as Caesar Augustus, or even gods. the gods, and Minerva, the goddess of wis¬
in the company of his foppish entourage. Theologians, philosophers and human¬ dom, descended to earth and, kneeling be¬
A detail from the world of fashion, the ists concocted the ideological flavour of the fore Henry III, paid homage to “the au¬
black beret with the white feather, con¬ festival programme, selecting suitable im¬ thority, wisdom and eloquence of the great
firms that Caron’s painting dates from c. ages and deciding even minor details, so king”. According to the report of one con¬
1580. that even the confectionery served as a des¬ temporary, the gods then went on to pro¬
In the hope of lending prestige to an sert was designed in such a way as to illus¬ claim that the King owed these virtues to
otherwise unpopular monarch who com¬ trate a mythological theme. In 1581, they “the wise advice of the Queen, his
manded little public respect, the festival had the sorceress Circe, together with a re¬ mother”. The event is supposed to have
had recourse to all kinds of symbols and tinue of monsters and sea-deities, dancing swallowed up 400,000 thalers and been
allegorical motifs. Comparisons as flatter¬ on her enchanted island to the music of ten seen by some 10,000 spectators at a single
ing as they were undeserved were drawn orchestras. During the fireworks that con¬ showing.

185

A genuine
palace in an
artificial setting
T ranslation of the festival theme into
practice occupied whole teams of
artists for months at a time, and
these were always the best available. On
15th September 1573, for example, when
the future king Henry III celebrated his
“joyous and triumphal entry” to the city of
Paris, the decoration of the capital and di¬
rection of festivities were entrusted to the
poet Jean Dorat, the sculptor Germain
Pilon and the painter Antoine Caron.
The festival team would usually include
an architect; indeed he usually led it. Ever
since the Italians had rediscovered Classical
antiquity and embellished their towns with
Renaissance palaces, building had ranked
as “the queen of the arts”. Building fever
broke out in France, too, with the palaces at
Fontainebleau and on the Foire emulating
Italian design. It went without saying that a
court festival required a Roman setting,
even if the latter was constructed of wood,
plaster and painted canvas.
186
Architecture also dominates Caron’s
painting; the natural world is practically
absent. Whether erected to grace a particu¬
lar festival or merely the artist’s invention,
his Classical edifices are laden with sym¬
bolic significance and flattering allusions to
the monarch. The circular temple, designed
after the Roman “tempietto” of the Re¬
naissance architect Bramante, proclaims
the king’s fame. The obelisk next to it was
a monument to his everlasting glory. The
shield between two overladen, spiral col¬
umns on the pedestal in the foreground
praises the “Pietas Augusti”, the piety of
the Emperor. To Caron’s contemporaries,
columns were symbols of power and gran¬
deur.
Several triumphal arches have been
adapted to provide elegant stands for spec¬
tators. Two of the arches are decorated
with horses; the festival grounds were situ¬
ated near the royal stables.
At the centre of the pseudo-antique
townscape stands the real, newly-built
town palace of the Queen Mother, who
was obsessed with building. She had offi¬
cially inaugurated it - with a festival of
course - in 1573. It was built on the site of
a former tilery (“Tuilerie”) outside the old
town walls, by which it was joined to an¬
other new royal residence, the Fouvre. On
the right is the Seine and Paris itself.
The Tuileries building with its twin
gables appears in so many of Antoine Ca¬
ron’s paintings that it could almost be de¬
scribed as his trademark. Caron learned his
craft at Fontainebleau, the primary centre
of Renaissance art in France, and, follow¬
ing the death of his Italian master, climbed
to the position of “valet and painter to the
Queen Mother”. Forgotten for two hun¬
dred years, Caron has regained his renown
as one of the leading artists of the School of
Fontainebleau.
With their strange blend of the real and
ideal, their utterly disproportionate, elong¬
ated figures set against the starkly contrast¬
ing accuracy of Caron’s architectonic per¬
spectives, the ten paintings ascribed to the
artist today are at once captivating and dis¬
concerting; they epitomize the bizarre,
dreamlike artificiality of School of Fon¬
tainebleau mannerism.
Breasts that
spout pure oil

In the “Mystery of the Incarnation and

Birth of Our Saviour and Redeemer
Jesus Christ” mention is made of a
well. The Sybil has hardly had time to
show the Emperor the future ruler of the
world in the heavens, when her black ser¬
vant Sadeth, shown sitting at her feet, re¬
ports that another of her prophecies has
come true. As she predicted, a Roman well
had begun to provide pure oil instead of
water - “like a beam of golden sunlight”.
Caron - a breast fetishist like most painters
associated with the School of Fontaine¬
bleau - shows oil spouting from the breasts
of a figure standing on the well, who,
naked, with a shining mirror balanced on
her head, may symbolize (prophetic)
Truth.
Various other statues can be seen in Ca¬
ron’s painting, several of which - particu¬
larly those that fit the category of the “ideal
mother” or “wise woman”, images with
which she liked to be identified - probably
resemble Catherine de’ Medici. Among the
latter were the Sybils, the ten legendary
prophetesses of the ancient world. Their
name means “god’s decree”, and their ar¬
cane books were consulted by the Roman
senate at times of crisis. Next to her bed,
the Queen Mother kept the medieval imi¬
tation of a book of this kind, a collection of
obscure proverbs, together with a calendar
and several engravings with architectural
motifs. People all over Europe from Paris
to Prague were reading the “Sybilhne
Books”, as well as works by Nostradamus
and Regiomontanus, hoping for know¬
ledge of the future, or advice on how to get Astrologers,-magicians and necromancers Thus the Queen Mother and many of
on in the present. were naturally consulted when the plans her contemporaries were convinced that a
There seems to have been a powerful were laid for a festival. People sought re¬ link existed between the performance of
need for this at the time, a sense of uncanny course to the supernatural not merely as a the tragedy Sophonisbe at court in 1556
powers at work, invisible forces conspiring means of fathoming the occult forces that and the death of Henry II and outbreak of
to trap unwitting, helpless victims. To dis¬ determined reality; they also hoped to har¬ sectarian troubles soon afterwards.
cover their fate, people consulted not only ness such forces to their own ends, to in¬ Thenceforth, Catherine prohibited the

ancient books, but the stars. fluence events and effect political change. staging of dramatical works with unhappy
One of Antoine Caron’s paintings At its most destructive, this might involve endings, instead putting her trust - more or
shows Astronomers Studying an Eclipse. casting spells on their enemies; in more less in vain - in the benificent magic of har¬
However, the observatory which Cath¬ positive terms, it meant organizing a monious festivals. Perhaps there was more
erine de’ Medici had built next to her town triumphant festival. Choosing the right to Caron’s picture than a record of the
palace is more likely to have been fre¬ day of the year, or selecting suitable art¬ event for posterity; it is possible that the

quented by astrologers than astronomers. work, whether from the realms of music, picture itself was intended as a magical
It was not without reason that the edifice painting or architecture, were tasks whose charm.
was referred to as a “horoscopic column”. magical dimension was self-evident.

187
188
 Jacopo Tintoretto: The Origin of the Milky Way, c. 1580

Aspirations to
immortality

Jupiter, father of the gods, is known to have

loved a number of mortal women. One of
these was Alcmene, with whom he begot
Hercules. Taking advantage of his wife Ju¬
no’s slumber, he held the baby boy to her
breast, thus letting him drink the milk of
immortality. The goddess started up in sur¬
prise, sprinkling milk into the firmament.
The drops of milk immediately turned into
stars. This explanation for the origin of the
the Milky Way was given in the first cen¬
tury B.C. by Gaius Julius Hygienus, libra¬
rian to Caesar Augustus. Here, the Vene¬
tian Jacopo Robusti, known as Tintoretto,
an artist of highly refined dramatic sensi-
bilty, has painted the climax of the story,
the moment of surprise. Lying on her
heavenly bed of clouds, nude Juno starts
up from sleep. A skilfully foreshortened
Jupiter sweeps down towards her, baby on
his arm. Putti and birds surround the two
main figures.
Tintoretto’s work normally shows angels
or saints, hie earned his reputation in Venice
as a specialist in Christian miracles, render¬
ing spectacular episodes from the Bible in
large format. Erotic scenes from pagan
mythology rarely feature in his paintings.
Tintoretto was swamped with official com¬
missions when - between 1578 and 15 80 - he
painted the (undated) Milky "Way. Although
he could not have met the great public de¬
mand for his work without the help of his
busy studio, it has been established, not only
that the Milky Way is from Tintoretto’s
hand, but that he actually painted it twice.
When the London National Gallery re¬
stored the 148 by 165 cm oil-painting in
1972, X-rays revealed that a first version of
the work had been carefully painted over.
The original version was a treatment of the
same subject. However, it was executed in
a much less sophisticated manner, in the
“rapid and resolute”1 style so characteristic
of Tintoretto’s work. Art historians have
suggested that the potential owner of the
Milky Way changed before work on the
painting reached completion. The new
owner was not just anybody, but a person¬
age entitled to demand the highest stan¬
dards: Emperor Rudolf II, who had de¬
cided to go about establishing a new collec¬
tion of art.
The painting is not mentioned in an (un¬
reliable) inventory of the collection, com¬
piled during the emperor’s lifetime. How¬
ever, an Italian pamphlet, dated 1648, men¬
tions that Tintoretto executed “four paint¬
ings of fables” for the emperor, among
them “Jupiter holding a little Bacchus to
Juno’s breast”.2
If we assume that the writer has mis¬
taken Hercules for Bacchus, then the
Milky Way probably hung in the Imperial
Palace at Prague - although not for .very
long. For in 1648, shortly before the end of
the Thirty Years’ War, Prague was taken by
the Swedes, whose soldiers looted Rudolf’s
collection of paintings, taking many away
with them when they left Bohemia. In the
confusion, about a third of the Milky Way
canvas was lost.

189

An ambitious
doctor
T he original appearance of Tintoret¬
to’s painting can be ascertained from
a sketch, now kept in the Kupfer-
stichkabinett at Berlin, executed in Prague
by the imperial court painter Jakob Hoef-
nagel. In the sketch, there is a second fe¬
male nude below the Olympian scene:
probably Jupiter’s mistress Alcmene, she is
lying among long-stalked lilies, which, ac¬
cording to a later version of the legend, are
190
supposed to have sprung from drops of Ju¬
no’s milk which fell to Earth.
This version of the Mdky Way legend
was published in Venice in a Byzantine
tract on botany in 1538, several decades be¬
fore Tintoretto started work. It was per¬
haps here that he found the extravagant,
and extremely rare iconography of his
painting. In any case, there was one person
known to the painter who was certainly ac¬
quainted with the theme: a medal struck in
1562 in honour of Doctor Tomaso Ran-
gone showed Hercules at Juno’s breast, as
well as stars and lilies. As documented in a
series of receipts, this Venetian doctor com¬
missioned, and paid for, a series of paintings
from Tintoretto in honour of St. Mark.
Born at Ravenna as Tomaso Gianotti, he
had managed to rise from a poor back¬
ground, take a doctor’s degree and, prob¬
ably through adoption, acquire the re¬
spected Venetian family name Rangone.
Perhaps it was due to the reputation of the
Milky Way legend as mythology’s first
example of an adoption, albeit an involun¬
tary one, that Rangone chose it as a motif
for his medal and coat-of-arms.
Juno sent two snakes to kill her
“adopted” infant, but Hercules, by then al¬
ready immortal, strangled them. Doctor
Rangone also offered his patients a first
step to immortality, selling them expensive
“magic potions” which, so he promised,
would help them live to at least 120 years
old. He became immensely rich in the pro¬
cess. Besides medicine, he had studied
physics and astronomy, and, clever charla¬
tan that he was, operated a successful busi¬
ness, exploiting the widespread inability of
his customers to distinguish between
science and magic.
In order to ensure his own survival,
however, Rangone put his trust in art. A
spirited patron of the arts, he succeeded in
having his bust mounted between a celes¬
tial sphere and a globe on a Venetian
church facade for which he had donated
the money, despite the fact that this form of
immortality was officially reserved for
nobles and persons born in Venice. Ran¬
gone also appears several times in Tintoret¬
to’s sequence of paintings on the life of St.
Mark. Here, he is shown as a life-sized
figure with a central role in the depicted
events - much to the displeasure of the
public, who demanded that Tintoretto
remove the Rangone portraits. However,
his striking head has remained a character¬
istic feature of the paintings to this day. The
doctor, vain as he may have been, has
achieved his aim!
It was for Rangone that Tintoretto
probably painted the first, “rapid” version
of the Milky Way. When the doctor died in
1577, the artist found a new buyer: Em¬
peror Rudolf II, who had been crowned in
1576. However different the Venetian char¬
latan and the Habsburg emperor may
have been in background and social stand¬
ing, they did have one thing in common:
both of them used alchemy, astrology and
art in their attempts to fulfil their aspira¬
tions to immortality.

Art for the
sovereign
T he Hercules legend was exactly
suited to Emperor Rudolf’s taste, for
the ancient hero was already part of
the Habsburg family tradition. At the be¬
ginning of the 16th century, Rudolfs
predecessor Maximilian I had had himself
celebrated as “Hercules Germanicus”. A
demigod who had strangled the Nemean
lion, exterminated the many-headed hydra
and cleaned out the stables of Augeas pro¬
vided the ideal model for any temporal
ruler. Rudolf, too, liked to have himself
portrayed wearing a lion’s skin
carrying a club, both attributes of Her¬
cules. This was an indication of the em¬
peror’s political aims, showing him com¬
mitted to following the example of his
ancient model by protecting his subjects
and securing peace and order in the Em¬
pire.
However, Rudolf II found it exceed¬
ingly hard to keep his promise. Born in
1552 as the son of Maximilian II, crowned
Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire at the
age of 24, he inherited an empire that was
deeply divided, and threatened by the
Turks from without. Ruling was made dif¬
ficult for him by religious conflicts, re¬
gional disputes and Habsburg family
feuds. During his lifetime, however, he
managed to maintain an unstable balance
of power. It was not until after his death
that the Thirty Years’ War broke out.
The vigorous man of action chosen by
the ruler to symbolise his power was not in
the least like Rudolf as a person. In 1583,
he gave up Vienna and retreated to Prague.
As a depressive “eccentric in the imperial
palace”, he did his best to ward off the de¬
mands made on him by a chaotic environ¬
and ment. He relaxed from the unpleasant
business of ruling by collecting precious
objects and works of art. “Whoever wishes
to see something new,” wrote Karel van
Mander, a contemporary biograher of ar¬
tists, “must seek an opportunity to visit
Prague and the greatest living admirer of
the art of painting, the Holy Roman Em¬
peror Rudolf II, in his imperial residence.”3
Tintoretto’s completion of the Milky
Way and Rangone’s death in the 1670s were
concurrent with Rudolf’s decision to col¬
lect paintings in earnest. He was especially
interested in works by Diirer. Following a
extensive correspondence with the town
coucil of Nuremberg, he was able to pur¬
chase Diirer’s All Saints’ Altarpiece in 1585.
Rudolf also had a penchant for the Vene¬
tian colourists and, over a number of years,
bought many works by Titian and Tinto¬
retto. Several works were officially
presented to the emperor as gifts by the
Venetian Republic; others he bought
through his ambassador, or under the guid¬
ance of official advisers such as the Man¬
tuan Ottavio Strada, official “antiquary” to
the imperial collection.
Ottavio Strada himself sat for Tintoretto
in Venice in 1569. It is quite possible that
he bought the Milky Way for his master ten
years later, together with three other works
showing the amorous adventures of Her¬
cules. After all, it was not only the subject
of these paintings that was suited to Ru¬
dolf’s taste, but also their erotic qualities;
although he steadfastly refused to marry
and provide an heir for his throne, Rudolf
was much given to “visual enjoyment”.
191
Fascination of
the enigma
A work of an was not only there to
provide sensuous or aesthetic
pleasure, however. To please the
emperor it needed an aura of mystery, a
hidden meaning which only the initiate
could decipher. An elitist predilection for
coded messages and arcane reference in art
and literature was not unusual at the time.
But it was cultivated particularly intens¬
ively by the imperial court at Prague,
where the emperor, according to one of his
contemporaries, “despised common life
and loved only what was extraordinary
and marvellous”.4
In the course of his duties, the “anti¬
quary” Ottavio Strada evidently advised the
artists in some detail concerning their choice
of subject and development of various artis¬
tic projects for the emperor. The imperial
preference was for “mythologies” which,
like the Milky Way, intimated to the specta¬
tor that the cosmos and human psyche were
interrelated at some deep and hidden level.
192
At first glance, Tintoretto’s painting
seems easy enough to read; its different ele¬
ments are derived from a relatively well-
known repertoire. Two of the putti play¬
fully circling around the Olympian figures
carry erotic symbols: Cupid’s bow and
arrow and the flaming torch of passion (of
Jupiter for Alcmene). The other two bear
the chains of marriage (between Jupiter
and Juno) and the net of illusion (whose
powers so often came to Jupiter’s aid). Ju¬
no’s traditional pair of peacocks are seen at
her feet.
Jupiter’s eagle accompanies the king of
the gods, a figure with whom the Habs-
burgs were no less inclined to identify than
with Hercules, and whose bird they had
long included in their coat-of-arms.
The creature held in the talons of Ju¬
piter’s eagle provides some grounds for
speculation, however. Are its arrow-
shaped extremities intended to suggest an
embodiment of lightening, Jupiter’s tradi-
tional weapon? Or does it represent a crab ?
Cancer was the sign of the zodiac under
which Emperor Rudolf had been born on
18 July 1552. The arrangement of figures
would seem to confirm this thesis: Cancer
comes between Aquarius, represented in
the painting by the putto with the net, and
Sagittarius, whose incarnation here is the
putto with the bow.
It is possible that Tintoretto has inte¬
grated into the painting’s iconography de¬
tails of a horoscope cast for Rudolf II by the
famous French astrologer Nostradamus. It
is said to have been none too favourable - a
veritable disaster for a sovereign whose be¬
lief in the influence of the stars on human
fate was no less powerful than that of his
subjects. He was, for example, quite unable
to make a decision without consulting his
astrologers, and persons seeking his audi¬
ence had first to be vetted by having their
horoscope cast. In the hope of escaping his
ruinous destiny and influencing by magic a
reality he could not change, the emperor
later decided to move his date of birth so
that it fell under the more favourable in¬
fluence of Taurus, a sign under which the
Roman Caesar Augustus was thought to
have been born. However, the ruse does not
seem to have helped Rudolf much. Lonely,
stripped of his power, he died in 1612 in his
castle at Prague.
guage of the “cognoscenti”: thtprima ma¬
teria which they attempted, in long and dif¬
ficult operations, to transmute, had first to
be bathed in a mysterious substance called
“Virgin’s milk”, also known as succus luna-
riae or “moon-juice”. In the course of this
process, the more earthy part of the prime
material, the “toad”, was united with the
ethereal element, the “eagle”. The arrows
held by the putti were symbols of the al¬
chemist’s knowledge; they frequently dec¬
orate Rudolf’s portraits and emblems. The
Milky Way is so full of references to al¬
chemy that one is inclined to suspect that
those in Venice who referred to Tintoretto,
the painter of so many devotional works, as
a “necromancer”, or sorcerer, did so with
some justification.
The original patron of the work, Doc¬
tor Rangone, would naturally be ac¬
quainted with alchemy, too, as would
most of the imperial physicians. Scientists
and charlatans of different kinds made
their way to Prague in large numbers at
that time. Once there, they were safe from
persecution by a Church that was deter¬
mined to prevent the questioning of re¬
ceived dogma. The emperor’s protection
allowed them to explore nature and inves¬
tigate its causal sequences. Most of them
were searching for the harmoma mundi,
the correspondence between the human
microcosm and divine macrocosm, or
universe with its stars and planets. They
did so partly by occult means - and pre¬
pared the way for modern science.
Two mathematicians, both court astron¬
omers to Rudolf, were largely responsible
for the “disenchantment of the universe”.
The first, the Dane Tycho Brahe, had magic
potions sold under his name, but he also set
up an observatory near Prague and deter¬
mined the position of 777 stars. His succes¬
sor, the German Johannes Kepler, who cast
horoscopes and wrote a “Warning to the
opponents of astrology”, made an import¬
ant discovery in 1605: “The heavenly ma¬
chine is more like a clock than a divine
being.”6 This turned the traditional view of
the universe on its head. It was in Prague,
too, that Kepler evolved a theory of the
astronomical telescope, an instrument
which would, at last, enable scientists to
explore the distant Milky Way. Hitherto,
all explanation of this heavenly body had
been limited to the type of conjecture made
by the ancient Greeks, or it had taken the
form of a mythological account of its
origins.
Rudolf II’s patronage of the sciences and
arts won him everlasting fame. “The im¬
perial star shines” was a hopeful motto
thought up for him by Ottavio Strada:
“Astrum fulget Caesareum”.

Reaching out
to the universe

B ut Rudolf was also a devotee of yet

another occult science: alchemy. He
would spend nights on end in his
laboratory, bent over a glass flask in
which mysterious substances bubbled
over a fire. This met with disapproval in a
report sent to Florence by the Tuscan am¬
bassador: the emperor, he wrote, “neglects
his duties of state in order to spend time
in the laboratories of alchemists and the
studios of artists.”5 The ruler, like so
many of his contemporaries, was search¬
ing for the “philosopher’s stone”, which
not only was a means of transforming
base metal into gold, but could make its
owner immortal.
Tintoretto’s painting, in which every¬
thing circles around the subject of immor¬
tality, can be interpreted as a study in al¬
chemy. It contains, for example, a number
of symbols reminiscent of the vivid lan¬
193
 El Greco: The Burial of Count Orgaz, 1586
Two saints bury the
munificent donor
The canvas, 4.8 metres high and 3.6 metres
wide, covers the entire wall of a chapel,
reaching from the arch of the ceiling almost
to the ground. The figures are life-sized,
painted in 1586 for the Santo Tome church
in Toledo by the Cretan artist Domenikos
Theotokopulos, known in Spain as El
Greco, the Greek.
El Greco’s painting shows a miracle, said
to have occurred in the Santo Tome church
at the burial of Don Gonzalo Ruiz in 1312.
According to legend, St. Stephan and St.
Augustine appeared and laid the mortal re¬
mains of Gonzalo Ruiz in the grave.
Ruiz, erstwhile Chancellor of Castile
and governor of Orgaz, was a man of
great wealth and influence, whose beni-
ficence had been especially apparent to¬
wards institutions of the church. Through
his good offices, the Augustinian Order
acquired a developable site within the
Toledo town walls. He gave financial sup¬
port to the construction of a monastery,
too, and to the building of the church of
194
Santo Tome. He even made provision that
the town of Orgaz should, after his death,
make an annual donation to both church
and monastery of two lambs, sixteen
chickens, two skins of wine, two loads of
firewoood and 800 coins. According to
the testimony of the saints who attended
his funeral, their presence there conferred
high distinction upon one who had
“served his God and saints”. On vanish¬
ing, they are said to have left a divine fra¬
grance on the air.
El Greco made no attempt to clothe his
figures in medieval dress. Social or political
change was little understood at the time,
and attention to detail of this kind would,
in any case, have conflicted with his pa¬
tron’s wishes: the painting was not in¬
tended to recall an historical event, but to
encourage contemporary spectators to fol¬
low the worthy example it honoured.
Emphasis on the contemporary relev¬
ance of the subject probably contributed to
the artist’s realistic rendering of many de¬
tails in the lower, more worldly half of the
painting: ruffs, lace cuffs, the transparent
supplice. Furthermore, the Toledans
would have recognized, among the
gentlemen in black, several of their most
well-known citizens.
El Greco gives to the two returned
saints the appearance of ordinary persons
(showing them without the nimbus which
typically invested such figures). He por¬
trays Augustine, the great church father, as
a venerable greybeard in a bishop’s mitre,
while Stephan, reputed to be the first
Christian martyr, appears as a young man.
A further painting is inset in his mantle: the
lapidation of St. Stephan. Stephan was the
patron saint of the monastery to which
Gonzalo Ruiz had given his support. The
Jobe of the priest standing at the right edge
>f the painting carries a series of emblems
eferring to St. Thomas, patron saint of the
church and also of architects, whose attrib¬
ute was usually a builder’s square.
It seems the artist chose the theme of the
miracle in order to deliver a lesson in ha-
giology. This may explain why, confronted
with such an extraordinary event, the
figures maintain their composure: not one
is shown throwing up his hands in fright,
or sinking in a state of shock to his knees.
On the contrary, the monks on the left are
engaged in discussion, while others calmly
point to the event, as if illustrating a tenet
of doctrine.
Indeed, to 16th-century Toledans that
was exactly what the painting meant. The
legend was part of general religious know¬
ledge, related and reinterpreted each year
in a service held on St. Stephan’s day at the
church of Santo Tome. The artist’s vision
conflated past and present, simultaneously
showing the miracle and its incorporation
into ecclesiastical doctrine.
El Greco’s Heaven comes in muted
tones; only the Virgin Mary is somewhat
brighter in colour. The figure behind her is
Peter with his keys; further down are the
Old Testament “saints”: King David with
his harp, Moses and the stone tablets of the
decalogue, Noah and his ark. John the Bap¬
tist kneels opposite Mary, while Jesus
Christ is enthroned on high. El Greco de¬
picts the soul of the dead Gonzalo Ruiz as
the transparent figure of a child borne up
in the arms of an angel. The soul’s progress
appears obstructed, however, or restricted
to a narrow strait between two converging
clouds.
This might seem surprising, given the
high distinction conferred upon the pious
man at the burial of his mortal remains.
An inconsistency perhaps? In fact, the art¬
ist had good reason not to take for granted
the soul’s unimpeded progress to heaven.
The reason lay in the political predicament
of the church at the close of 16th century.
195
 fact that large tracts of Spain, including
Toledo itself, had been under Moorish rule
for many centuries. The Moors thought of
women as base creatures who, easily
tempted, required constant surveillance.
Although there were famous nuns in Spain,
the mistress of a king, by contrast with her
French peer, had no influence whatsoever.
Women had no place in the public sphere,
as El Greco’s painting so ably demon¬
strates: Mary is the only large-scale female
figure among countless men in Heaven and
on earth.
In the 16th and 17th centuries the Virgin
Mary was the most significant religious
and cultural figure in Spanish life: many
works by Lope de Vega and Calderon are
dedicated to her.
The militant adoration of the Virgin cli¬
maxed in the dispute surrounding her Im¬
maculate Conception. This did not, as
might be imagined, refer to the begetting of
Jesus Christ, but to Mary’s own procre¬
ation. Her mother was said to have con¬
ceived her either without male contribu¬
tion, or, if a man’s presence at the event
were conceded, without original sin, for
the man was merely God’s instrument. Al¬
though the pope did not raise the Immacu¬
late Conception to a dogma until the 19th
century, it had been tantamount to a dogma
in Spain long before. In 1618 the Spanish
universities were put under obligation to
teach and actively defend the Immaculate
Conception.
From a Spanish point of view, however,
the Protestants had not only debased the
work of the Devil was confirmed by re¬ Holy Virgin, they had also got rid of the
Fighting for
ports of iconoclasts tearing the saints to saints, who were tremendously important
the Holy Virgin shreds and leaving the demons at their feet to the Catholic faith. To say that El Greco
intact. underlines the integral function of the

E l Greco painted in the century of the

Reformation. Protestant thought had
found few followers on- the Iberian
peninsula, but the Netherlands, where it
had spread very quickly, and where Span¬
iards and Netherlandish mercenaries
fought each other over towns, ports and
the true faith, was part of the Spanish em¬
pire.
News from their northern province
filled pious Spanish souls with terror:
church statues of saints had been cast down
from their pedestals, paintings of the Vir¬
gin pierced by lances - satanic forces were
at work. That the events had less to do with
the revival of the church than with the
It was the demotion of their most highly
venerated Virgin Mary that disturbed the
Spaniards most. Luther, so it was reported,
saints in this painting would be an under¬
had said Mary was no holier than any other
Christian believer, while yet another Re¬
former had said that if Mary had been a
purse full of gold before Christ’s birth, she
was an empty purse afterwards, and that
anybody who prayed to the Virgin was
committing blasphemy by exalting a
woman to the rank of a god.
The great respect commanded by the
Holy Virgin south of the Pyrenees stood in
peculiar contrast to the disregard shown to
women in Spanish society. Their status was
far below that of women in Italy, Germany
or France. One explanation may lie in the
statement. Together with the Virgin, it is
they who intercede with the distant, en¬
throned figure of Christ on behalf of the
souls of the dead; only through their sup¬
plication can the barrier of clouds dissolve
and the soul find its way to paradise unhin¬
dered. The painting’s theological interven¬
tion demonstrates the rupture of the vital
dynamic suggested in the brightly lit
undersides of the clouds: the upward surge
through the vortex of light to Jesus Christ
is obstructed. Since the Reformation had
degraded the Virgin and the saints, it was
now the task of the Counter-Reformation
to effectively demonstrate their signific¬
ance.

196
T he painting also contains a portrait
of Philip II of Spain, who, in 1586,
was still on the throne. He is shown
sitting among the saints who, gathered be¬
hind John, are interceding for the soul of
Ruiz. Philip’s empire was the largest of all
European states. It not only included the
Netherlands and Naples with southern
Italy, but colonies in Central and South
America, some of which were literally bor¬
derless. This was the empire on which - in
the words of the well-known dictum - the
sun never set.
Of course, his life was as remote from his
many subjects as any god. Furthermore, the
court etiquette he had inherited from his
father ensured that court and government
officials kept their distance. Only a small
elite was ever admitted to his presence, and
anybody who handed something to him in
person was obliged to do so on his knees.
However, there was one important element
of his father’s etiquette which, character¬
istically, Philip altered: priests were no
longer obliged to genuflect before him. He
gave to the ambassadors of the kingdom of
God, though appointed by himself, a status
A king
among saints
far greater than that accorded to the rep¬
resentatives of worldly affairs.
This was altogether typical of Philip’s
rule. He set greater store by defending his
faith than his empire. No personal loss
could hurt him more deeply, he wrote
upon receiving news of the Netherlandish
iconoclasts, than the slightest insult or dis¬
respect to the Lord and his effigies. Even
“the ruin” of all his lands could not hinder
him from “doing what a Christian and
God-fearing sovereign must do in the ser¬
vice of God and in testimony to his Cath¬
olic faith and the power and honour of the
Apostolic See.”
Philip II had a powerful instrument at
his disposal: the Inquisition. In other
countries the authorities who condemned
apostates, unbelievers and witches were
purely clerical; afterwards, offenders were
handed over to the state authorities, who
would then enforce the penalty. In Spain
even the trial was subordinate to the
throne. The king appointed the Grand In¬
quisitor, and the persecution of non-Cath-
olics served interests of state. For over 700
years the Moors, finally defeated in 1492,
had ruled over almost the whole Iberian
peninsula. Only families who converted
from Islam to Christinity were permitted
to remain in Spain. The same applied to
Jews. They, too, suffered enforced bapt¬
ism.
Though hundreds of thousands of Jews
and Muslims had left the country, or were
in the process of doing so, Philip still saw
Catholic Spain threatened by unbelievers
who merely paid lip-service to Christ, or
by heretics secretly plotting insurrection.
The Inquisition acted as a secret police
force, defending the status quo and trans¬
ferring to the state the wealth and property
of those it condemned.
Combined religious and racial persecu¬
tion was one of the chief factors leading to
the decline of the Spanish empire. The
Jews had been specialists in foreign trade
and finance; the country’s best physicians
were Jews, and they constituted the cream
of its university teachers. It was thanks to
Jewish scholars and translators that for¬
gotten manuscripts by antique philo¬
sophers were translated from Arabic into
Latin, thus becoming available to Chris¬
tian theologians.
For their part, the Muslims had farmed
vast areas of the country, and the success
of agriculture depended on Moorish irrig¬
ation systems. Now that they were gone,
the fields were bare, the villages depopu¬
lated, and the businesses of the merchants
collapsed. For Philip, however, as for the
clergy, the Spanish grandees and a large
section of the Spanish population, this
was less important than defending the
faith.
197

Yet Philip’s unrealistic religious zeal was
not the only factor that earned him a place
among the saints in Heaven in El Greco’s
painting. Other artists, too, for example
Diirer in his All Saints’ Altarpiece of 1511,
gave a place in Heaven to their most
prominent contemporaries. In so doing,
they enjoyed the support of St. Augustine’s
“City of God”, in which the domains of
Heaven and earth were interwoven, pro-
Monument
to a priest
viding theological justification for the de¬
piction of mortals as the inhabitants of
T
Heaven.
he priest portrayed reading is An¬
dres Nunez, who, at the time in
question, was responsible for the
parish of Santo Tome. It is to him that we
owe the existence of this painting. Com¬
198
missioning El Greco to execute the work
was the final act in a campaign Nunez had
conducted for decades in an attempt to
bring just renown to Gonzalo Ruiz and -
lest it be forgot - himself.
His first undertaking of this kind had
been the attempt to move Gonzalo’s grave.
The pious Castilian chancellor had chosen
an inconspicuous corner of the church of
Santo Tome as the resting place of his
earthly remains - apparently a sign of his
modesty. Nunez wanted his bones moved
to a more auspicious place, but his su¬
periors rejected the request, for “the hands
of sinners” should not touch the body of
one who had been “touched by the hands
of saints”.
Consequently, Nunez decided to build
a chapel with a high dome over the im¬
mured coffin. Soon after this demonstra¬
tive deed in memory of the lord of Orgaz
(it was his descendents who received the
title of count), the citizens of Orgaz de¬
cided to annul the 250-year-old legacy of
two lambs, 16 chickens, two skins of wine,
two loads of firewood and 800 coins.
Nunez instituted legal proceedings, win¬
ning the case in 1569. In order to record
his triumph he had a Latin text mounted
above the grave, recounting the legend and
referring to the rebuttal of the town of
Orgaz through “the vigorous efforts of
Andres Nunez”.
The smart priest thus created a monu¬
ment to himself. After applying to the
archbishopric in 1584, he was granted per¬
mission to commission a painting of the
miracle of the interment. El Greco was
commissioned in 1586 and delivered the
painting in the same year. Whatever the
work may owe to the personal ambition of
a priest, it has to be said that propagation
of the miracle of the burial was also fully
in keeping with Counter-Reformation
church policy. It was seen as important not
only to exalt the Virgin and saints, but to
defend the need for charitable donations
and the worship of relics. According to
Catholic belief, the route to Heaven was
paved with “good deeds”, a view rejected
by Reformers, for whom faith and divine
mercy were all that counted. The Refor¬
mers also vehemently opposed the venera¬
tion of relics, a cult of considerable signi¬
ficance in Catholic countries. It was at this
time, too, that Gaspar de Quiroga, ap¬
pointed archbishop in 1577, brought the
bones of St. Leocadia and St. Ildefonso to
Toledo, thereby greatly adding to the
status of its cathedral. Santo Tome’s paint¬
ing of the burial extolled the piety of char¬
itable donations, at the same time defend¬
ing the worship of relics. For had not two
saints touched, and thereby honoured, the
mortal frame? Was it not therefore correct
to infer that all Christians should honour
the mortal remains of the pious, the saints
and the martyrs?
The painting’s gigantic format complied
with Counter-Reformation propaganda in
yet another sense: its stunning visual im¬
pact. The Protestants, by contrast, wished
to see their churches purified of all or¬
namentation. Places of worship were to be
free of graven images, or at least not
crowded with visual distractions from
God’s word. But the Catholics thought
otherwise: since the church was God’s
house, why not use every means possible
to decorate it in His honour? The exube¬
rant splendour of Baroque churches was,
not least, a reaction against the plain chur¬
ches of the Reformation.

Reality as
a stage set
T he boy pointing so meaningfully at
the saint was El Greco’s son; his year
of birth, 1578, can be deciphered on
his handkerchief. When his father painted
the miracle, he was eight years old. The
contract was concluded on 18th March. El
Greco finished the work, whose value was
estimated by two experts at 1200 ducats, by
Christmas. Since the price was too steep
for the parish council of Santo Tome, it ap¬
pointed two experts of its own, only to
find that they arrived at a value of 1600 du¬
cats. It was not until July 1588 that the par¬
ties agreed - on the lower sum.
El Greco was dogged by financial prob¬
lems almost all his life. He was not a
prince among painters, like Titian, in
whose Venice studio he had trained. “The
Greek” was born in 1541 on Crete, which,
at that time, was under Venetian rule. He
learned icon painting, left for Venice
where he became a master of spatial re¬
presentation and architectonic perspec¬
tive, then moved to Rome. When Pius V,
disturbed by the nudity of some of the
figures in Michelangelo’s Last Judgement,
wanted some of the frescos in the Sistine
Chapel painted over, El Greco is reputed
to have offered to paint an equally good,
but more decent, work if the original were
destroyed.
It is not known when, or why, El Greco
settled in Spain. It is possible he felt ill at
ease with the Italian artists’ exaltation of
corporeal and architectural beauty; per¬
haps he hoped his celebrations of the after¬
life would find greater recognition in
Spain. Spanish cardinals, resident in Rome,
are likely to have spoken of the Escorial,
Philip II’s palatial monastery, and El Greco
may have hoped to find work there. In¬
stead he settled in the old religious capital
of Toledo, the seat of the archbishop. In
1579 the king commissioned a painting
from him - the only order he received from
that source. Philip apparently disliked the
Greek’s paintings.
Spiritually they had much in common.
For both, the afterlife was more important
than this life. Philip longed to rule from
the Escorial in the company of monks,
and to be able to see an altar even from his
bed. This view meant more to him than
his empire: his Armada was defeated in
1588; in 1598, the year of his death, finan¬
cial pressures forced him to give up his
war against France, and the northern
provinces of the Netherlands were already
as good as lost.
El Greco’s whole life’s work, and this
painting in particular, bears witness to his
belief that the kingdom of heaven was
more important and more real than the
world in which we live. Though he is
painstakingly exact in his detailed render¬
ing of the lower, worldly half of the paint¬
ing, the realistic heads and dress have the
effect of drawing the burial scene into the
foreground, while the isocephalic arrange¬
ment of onlookers’ heads gives the appear¬
ance of the top of a stage set. It is only
here, behind this dividing line, that the
true life begins. Only the upper half is dy¬
namic, vital through and through, an effect
achieved with the help of lighting and a use
of depth and line that draws the eye up¬
ward.
It remains to be said that not all Span¬
iards ceded to the uncritical renunciation
of reality. The writer Miguel de Cervantes,
for example, a contemporary of El Greco
and Philip II, took a different point of view.
Though he did not attack the religious zeal
of his compatriots, his character Don
Quixote, a chivalrous and deluded idealist,
illustrates the dangers that may befall a
person who inhabits a world of fantasy
rather than facts, someone who, in pursuit
of ideals, loses sight of the ground beneath
his feet.
199
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200
George Gower: Armada Portrait of Elizabeth I, c. 1590

A woman thwarts
Spain's pride

She was painted many times and had many

of her portraits subsequently destroyed; it
seems she felt the pictures did not show her
to enough advantage. Her red hair needed
to shine, proper justice had to be done to her
famous pale complexion, and no shadow
was to be allowed to darken her face.
When Elizabeth I sat for the present
portrait, with its two background views of
the sea and ships, she was about 56 years
old. Her hair was false and her face plas¬
tered with a thick layer of white makeup.
But the fiction of youth and beauty had to
be maintained, in art as at court. The age¬
ing queen kept young suitors and had
been negotiating marriage with a French
prince for decades. She enjoyed having
many admirers, but had absolutely no in¬ In his portrait of Elizabeth I,
tention of wedding any of them. At the executed around 1590, the Eng¬
mere age of eight she is supposed to have
lish artist George Gower pre¬
announced: “I will never get married!” She
had good reason to make up her mind so
sents his queen as a self-confid¬
early: that same year her step-mother was ent sovereign. He also pays
beheaded, while her own mother, Anne tribute to her greatest triumph:
Boleyn, had already been executed. The
the decisive defeat which Her
cruelty displayed by her father, Henry
VIII, towards his wives may thus have
Majesty’s navy had inflicted
shaped her attitude towards marriage; it is upon the vast Spanish fleet in
more probable, however, that her own the English Channel just a few
thirst for power left no room for a hus¬
years earlier, in 1588. The sink¬
band to reign at her side.
Portraits of this extraordinary woman
ing of the Armada marked the
were fashioned not simply to flatter her beginning of England’s rise to
vanity, however, but also for reasons of major international power.
state. Like her carefully stage-managed
Gower’s portrait, which meas¬
public appearances, these pictures were
also part of a propaganda programme
ures 105 x 133 cm, today be¬
which had no call for realism. Thus the longs to Woburn Abbey in
two scenes visible through the windows at Bedfordshire, England.
the back took place neither at the same
time nor in the same place: weeks lay be¬
tween the first appearance of the Spanish the reign of Elizabeth I that lasted over 40
Armada and its eventual defeat off the years. It was painted by George Gower
coast of England. The painting neverthe¬ (1540-1596), Serjeant Painter and one of
less makes sense as a glittering tribute to its the artists who for many years had the
sitter - it shows the most glorious event in privilege of painting the queen.

201
T he traditional insignia of power -
orb and sceptre - are missing from
this picture. Instead of a sceptre, the
queen holds an ornate fan of ostrich
plumes in her left hand, while her right
hand rests on a globe. Just as the tradi¬
tional Roman orb represented the whole
world, so the globe offered a modern 16th-
century version of the old symbol.
In those days, globes existed only in
small numbers. The first had been con¬
structed in Nuremberg barely 100 years
earlier. George Gower has not taken pains
to reproduce one of the English models
exactly; he was evidently more interested
in the queen’s hand lying on the globe,
which demonstrates in impressive fashion
Elizabeth’s hegemony beyond the bounds
of her small island kingdom.
It was no coincidence that Gower’s
202
painted globe should also show ships, for
in those days world domination meant
sovereignty of the seas. When Elizabeth
came to the throne in 1558, the major po¬
litical and naval powers were still Spain
and Portugal, both nations of explorers. In
1580 Philip II of Spain annexed neigh¬
bouring Portugal, and from then onwards,
declared, “all the Americas, known and
unknown” belonged to him.
Elizabeth vied with him on this score.
Her subject, Francis Drake, became one
the first people to sail round the world and
thereby proved that the Spaniards were
not the only ones capable of such a pion¬
eering feat. Drake and other English free¬
booters captured Spanish galleons and di¬
minished the profits which Philip hoped
to reap from his American colonies. A
small-scale war ensued. Although Eliza¬
beth had not yet officially taken up arms
against the number one world power, she
permitted her subjects to lay Spanish gold
and silver at her feet.
She needed the money, because when
she took up office she had inherited a
mountain of debts. According to a report
by the Venetian ambassador, when Eliza¬
beth paid back the last of the money ow¬
ing, she was “hailed by the people as if she
were a second Messiah”. But the English
buccaneers embarked on their perilous
voyages not just in search of booty. Philip
had a monopoly on trade outside Europe,
something which Elizabeth was not pre¬
pared to accept. In this she had the back¬
ing of the English merchants. The new
merchant classes wanted their own slice of
the international market, and Elizabeth
rightly hoped that they would bring pros¬
perity to her impoverished country.
There was yet another factor, too, in the
increasingly bitter conflict with Spain.
Philip II was an ardent, fanatical Catholic;
Elizabeth, on the other hand, like the ma¬
jority of her subjects, was a Protestant.
Philip appointed himself the battlefield
champion of his Church - Elizabeth had
no other choice but to fight for her own.
It was a fight she did not want. As far as
she was concerned, it was pointless to shed
blood for one or the other variation of
the faith. Her father, Henry VIII, had re¬
nounced Catholicism because he wanted
to divorce the first of his many wives and
pocket the possessions of the Church. His
daughter, “Bloody Mary”, had attempted
to turn back the tide of the Reformation
by torturing people and burning them at
the stake. She was followed onto the
throne by Elizabeth, who had thus experi¬
enced her father’s abuse of religion and her
sister’s religious fanaticism, and who rep¬
resented instead - even if she couldn’t al¬
ways act upon it - the law of tolerance:
“There is only one Christ Jesus and one
faith; the rest is a dispute about trifles.”
A battle
over
trade and trifles

The trick
with
the fireships
T he view through the left-hand win¬
dow shows the Spanish Armada in
the background, as tight-knit as a
floating fortress. They possessed more
majesty than the English fleet, according
to a contemporary report, but advanced
only slowly even in full sail, because their
hefty superstructures made the ships heavy.
They approached in a crescent formation,
the two cusps of the crescent at least seven
miles apart.
The Armada comprised exactly 130
ships with 30,656 men on board, including
over 100 priests and monks. The voyage to
England had the character of a Crusade; it
was mounted against heretics. The Arma¬
da was planned as a transport fleet which
would sail to Calais, pick up another
40,000 soldiers from the Spanish Nether¬
lands, and then cross the Channel. Once
on land, matters would be settled by force.
Despite adopting a new tactic, the Eng¬
lish did not succeed in stopping the float¬
ing army on its way to Calais. The English
ships were lower and faster than the Span¬
ish “sea elephants”, and although their
cannons did not fire the heavy shot of
their opponents, their range was longer.
They therefore attempted to manoeuvre
themselves close to the Spanish one be¬
hind another in a line, so that they could
let off their broadsides while themselves
remaining out of firing range.
To appreciate just how new this English
style of warfare was, it is necessary to go
back 17 years to the last great naval battle,
which took place off Lepanto in the Me¬
diterranean in 1571 and which was fought
against the Turks by the Venetians and
Spanish. In this confrontation, both sides
used rowing galleys to board the enemies’
ships and overpower their crews. Rowing
galleys were not suitable for the rough seas
of the Atlantic, however, and the Span¬
iards had to leave them behind. Boarding
nevertheless remained their chief strategy,
and they despised the English for not
wanting to approach.
In the same view through the window, a
number of the English ships are visible in
the foreground, recognizable by their tra¬
ditional St George’s flag with its red cross
on a white ground. The English fleet was
headed by Lord Howard of Effingham,
who was intelligent enough to call upon
the nautical experience of the former buc¬
caneer Drake. As Sir Francis, ennobled by
the queen, he held the position of vice-ad¬
miral.
Gower shows the famous encounter off
Calais. The English had so far failed to halt
the Spaniards, and Elizabeth did not pos¬
sess a standing army; the troops she had
hastily rallied together were not nearly so
well trained as those of Philip. The danger
of England becoming a Catholic province
of Spain was great. On 29 July 1588 the
English set fire to several of their own
ships and let them drift across to the Span¬
ish Armada. The ships burnt out without
causing any damage - but their psycholo¬
gical effect was enormous. The Spaniards,
sailing so close together, feared nothing
more than fire, and they also suspected
that the English ships were concealing ex¬
plosive powder kegs. Panic swept through
the fleet, arid the ships wildy broke forma¬
tion and fled individually. A trick had
blown the floating fortress apart.
203
T he ships seen here foundering in the
waves bear the Spanish national en¬
sign, the diagonal cross of St An¬
drew. Following the initial dispersal of
the Armada on 29 July, the decisive naval
battle took place off Gravelines. For the
first time, the Spaniards emerged as clearly
inferior: they lost eleven ships and count¬
ed 600 dead and 800 wounded. According
to contemporary reports, when one holed
Spanish ship capsized, streams of blood
could be seen flowing into the sea.
The English only suffered 60 fatalities.
They owed their light losses not just to
their speedy ships and long-range artillery,
but also to the miserable Spanish com¬
mand. As in most countries in those days,
Spain's Armada
sinks amidst
the waves
204
it was the tradition in both England and
Spain to appoint a high-ranking noble to
the position of supreme command. But
Philip II had thereby chosen a grandee
who was prone to sea-sickness and who
had previously only fought on land. Nor
did he have a Francis Drake as his vice-ad¬
miral. The second-in-command in the
Spanish fleet had no reputation and no au¬
thority.
The battle off Gravelines left the Span¬
ish demoralized. They had considered the
Armada invincible and were not prepared
for defeat. To avoid being shot apart by
the English any further, they had to es¬
cape, and took advantage of a strong
breeze which carried them north.
The Armada could no longer fulfil its
instructions to transport an invasion force
to England. Spanish pride, however, and a
fear of Philip, meant it could not admit to
failure. While the ships held their course
northwards, the fleet’s commanders decid¬
ed to return to the English Channel “as
soon as conditions permit”. They all knew
that would not be straightaway. Silently,
the captains prepared themselves for the
long and perilous voyage home, one which
would take them over 1500 miles around
England, Scotland and Ireland.
The captains were instructed to sail far
from the coast. But when their water and
food supplies ran out, they had to seek the
land, and many thereby ran aground on
rocks and sandbanks. Many ships were al¬
ready damaged even before they started
the journey north. These problems were
compounded, too, by navigational errors
made by sailors who were unfamiliar with
the North Sea and the North Atlantic. Al¬
together, the Armada lost another 59 ships
on its voyage home. Only some 10,000 of
over 30,000 soldiers and sailors eventually
made it back to Spain.
The Armada was ultimately defeated
not by the English, but by the forces of
nature. The English expressed it different¬
ly. They may not have wished to claim vic¬
tory for themselves, but they did not want
to attribute it to Nature either; they an¬
nounced instead that “this time Christ
showed himself to be a Protestant.”
A virgin
as queen
of the seas

T he English could have won the day

outright had their queen not been so
thrifty. Her fleet only had water and
provisions for two days, and the gunpow¬
der ran out early. Under these conditions,
it would have been impossible to pursue
the fleeing Spaniards. In vain, Elizabeth’s
advisers tried to persuade her that war
could only be waged successfully if suffi¬
cient means were made available, and in
particular if the ships had adequate provi¬
sions.
Barely had the immediate danger of an
invasion passed than the queen ordered
the English fleet to disband. Unlike Philip,
Elizabeth possessed almost no ships of her
own; those leased from merchants and
buccaneers were given back, and the sol¬
diers and sailors dismissed. There was no
money with which to pay them off.
More men died of poverty, hunger and
typhoid after the war, it is said, than fell in
the battle against the Spaniards. No won¬
der many of the English considered their
queen not just thrifty, but mean.
Faced with the magnificent outfits in
which she had herself painted, and which
she also donned for her public appear¬
ances, the tight rein which Elizabeth exer¬
cised over her spending seems something
of a contradiction. But the lavish dresses
and expensive jewellery cost her little: she
had them given to her. On 1 January every
year she graciously accepted clothes and
jewels from her admirers and courtiers.
After his circumnavigation of the globe,
Francis Drake presented her with a crown
of gold and precious stones which he had
plundered from the Spanish. Elizabeth ac¬
quired the six strings of pearls which she is of the Spaniards, Elizabeth has become the head. What was at stake was not money or
wearing in this picture from her sister ‘‘queen of the seas”. Pearls were also ships, but religion. Philip had the entire
Mary Stuart, at a price well below their viewed as symbols of virginity. Like the ideological power apparatus of Rome be¬
true value. diamonds and topaz on her dress, they are hind him. Elizabeth possessed nothing
The many bows, lace trimmings, pearls a declaration of purity. What the real state comparable. She had to appear both as Eng¬
and diamonds adorning Elizabeth’s dress of affairs was, and how far Elizabeth actu¬ land’s regent and the head of its Church. If
were not merely the attributes of a vain ally went with her lovers, is another ques¬ the others were fighting for the Virgin
queen, however. They also helped to lend tion, one often asked at her court and Mary, the English could at least fight for
Elizabeth the individual a symbolic stat¬ much loved by her biographers. But as the their Virgin Queen.
ure. The various precious stones carried representative of her island, as a symbolic
their own meaning. Pearls, for example - figure, she was emphatically a virgin.
especially predominant in the present Ar¬ For in order to assert themselves against
mada portrait - come from the sea: they Spain, the English urgently required a
testify to the fact that, following the defeat highly stylized, almost mystical figure¬

205
 Adam Elsheimer: St Elizabeth Tending the Sick, c. 1597
The princess in the hospital
Princess visits patient - we see the same
thing from time to time in our own media,
and in the 19th century it was a much¬
loved motif of Salon painting, whereby the
high-ranking visitor was always clearly
emphasized. Not so in Adam Elsheimer’s
picture. Elizabeth, princess and saint, is
distinguished from the other figures in the
scene neither by her dress nor her pose,
but only by the slender halo barely notice¬
able above her head.
Elsheimer painted Elizabeth as she saw
herself, namely in service to those suffer¬
ing. Born in 1207 as the daughter of the
Hungarian king Andreas II, she was mar¬
ried at 14 to the later landgrave Ludwig IV
of Thuringia and widowed at 20 with three
children. Her husband died while he was
in Italy, preparing to go off on a crusade.
To be a widow at 20 was no unusual fate
in the Middle Ages. What was unusual,
however, not to say shocking, was that
Elizabeth refused to remarry and re¬
nounced all her privileges as a princess and
landgrave’s widow. She thereby also disas¬
sociated herself from her children, left her
husband’s ancestral seat, the Wartburg,
and went to Marburg, where she founded
a small hospital. Elsheimer portrays the
saint in her hospital - as, 400 years later, he
imagined it to look. He painted his picture
around 1597/98.
The beds in the foreground are occu¬
pied by men, those in the background, as
far as can be made out, by women. The
leaded glazed windows can be opened.
This was common in the 16th century, but
not in the 13th: in those days, air was let in
through small unglazed windows with
wooden shutters.
Above the window, the artist has mount¬
ed Elizabeth’s Hungarian coat of arms.
Had Elsheimer been painting in the saint’s
own day, he would have portrayed Eliza¬
beth - in line with her elevated status - as
larger than the other figures, and the room
simply as a shallow backdrop. Nor would
he have included the many realistic details
such as the slippers and chamber pot un¬
der the bed, the rod used to carry the pot
of soup and, in the background, the rope
which lowered the chandelier whenever
the candles needed replacing or lighting.
The case for a person’s canonization had
to be argued with evidence from contem¬
porary witnesses. Hence we know quite a
lot about Elizabeth’s life, even if much of
the information only serves to stylize her
as a saint. “When she was barely five years
old”, we are told, “she persisted in her
prayers in the church for so long that her
companions and maids could hardly per¬
suade her to leave.” Should she win a chil¬
dren’s game, she would break it off saying:
“I don’t want to carry on playing, but
wish to stop for God’s sake.”
She developed a radicalism which went
far beyond what we perceive as normal - dead man. And lo, the dead man came
when she renounced her children along back to life, so that they were all frighten¬
with her privileges, for example, and when ed and astonished.”
she laid lepers in her own bed, or kissed Her own corpse, too, was the subject of
their feet. Reading the relevant passages in a miracle - if we are to believe the reports.
the documentary accounts of her life, one Instead of the smell of decomposition, it
can’t help suspecting that she was engaged gave out a sweet perfume, for “because her
on a path not simply of succouring to the body had been chaste and pure during her
sick and infirm, but of conscious self-sac¬ lifetime, it issued a sweet perfume after her
rifice. She died on 17 November 1231 at death.” Her corpse also excreted an unctu¬
the age of 24. ous fluid, “because in her life she over¬
A saint is also required to work mir¬ flowed with acts of mercy”.
acles, and Elizabeth’s biographers seem to
have felt it important to stress that these
were not restricted to Marburg alone.
Thus she appeared in a dream to a monk
“in the bishopric of Hildesheim” and re¬
lieved him of his pain. When her assistance
was invoked “in the bishopric of Mainz”,
she brought a drowned man back to life,
and “in the bishopric of Cologne” she
helped a hanged man: “And when the
grave had been prepared, and he had been
taken down, his father and his uncle ap¬
pealed to Saint Elizabeth to protect the
207
T he staring eyes, protruding tongue
and straining muscles of the man
something to drink, offering shelter to
strangers, clothing the naked and visiting
Elizabeth’s lifetime, municipal communit¬
ies occasionally appointed their own doc¬
tor, whose duties included visiting hos¬
sitting up in bed suggest a nervous those in prison.
With the exception of visiting prisoners, pitals. Perhaps the artist intended the man
disorder. It takes great effort for him to
all these charitable services were offered with the red hat to represent a trained doc¬
control his limbs and organs. His hands
by hospitals. These were not hospitals in tor. But even doctors with a university edu¬
are still folded: before he reaches out for
the modern sense, but rather institutions cation were of little help. Most held firm
the spoon, he wants or has to pray.
which cared for needy people of all kinds. to the ancient theory of the four humours,
The head of the man in the second bed
Thus pilgrims might seek lodging there, as which in the healthy body were harmo¬
bears a certain resemblance to traditional
well as the elderly and homeless. Numbers niously balanced. If someone became ill, it
portrayals of Christ. A picture of the Cru¬
were nevertheless limited; pilgrims aside, meant their humours were upset. In order
cifixion hangs on the wall beside him.
hospitals only considered themselves re¬ to establish the extent of this disturbance,
Elsheimer may be making reference here
sponsible for those living in the immediate doctors observed the urine, and the urine
to one of the best-known legends of St
vicinity. Otherwise overcrowding would bottle was thus one of their most import¬
Elizabeth. One day while her husband was
have soon forced them to close. ant pieces of equipment. Elsheimer shows
still alive, so the story goes, Elizabeth
Such hospitals were normally funded three such bottles, one in the left-hand
tended a leper in her own bed. Her mother-
by churches and monasteries. These in foreground and two more beneath the
in-law saw this and informed her son. He
turn lived from alms, donations, legacies, Madonna in the niche.
stormed furiously into Elizabeth’s bed¬
rents and sales of wine. In Elizabeth’s day, The limited possibilities offered by
room, but the figure he saw in her bed was
they ranked amongst the wealthiest land- earthly cures and treatments increased the
Christ nailed to the cross.
owners. A relatively new source of finance value of faith. If hospital patients could
It is clear from this legend that tend¬
were the orders of knights, most of them not hope for a present life that was easier
ing for the sick was equated with loving
founded in Jerusalem, which spread across to bear, they could still hope for a better
service to Jesus Christ. “I assure you, when
Europe with the returning Crusaders. hereafter. It was for this reason, too - and
you did it for one of the least of these my
They included the Knights Templar and not just because they were funded by reli¬
brothers and sisters, you were doing it for
the Knights of St John. After her death, gious institutions - that religion played
me”. Thus Matthew 25:40. In the same
chapter, St Matthew lists the other acts of the running of Elizabeth’s hospital was such a prominent role in hospitals. Els¬

mercy which a Christian should practise: handed over to the Teutonic Order. heimer makes its presence clear in the pic¬

feeding the hungry, giving the thirsty In these hospitals, treatment primarily
took the form of herbal remedies, as pre¬
scribed by folk medicine. Conventional
medicine, as we understand it, played only
A woman of rank a secondary role. The new professional
serves class of academically trained doctors was
still too small and its fees too high. During
the suffering
tures above the beds and the statue of the
Virgin high up on the wall. Three of his
figures have their hands folded in prayer.
Chapel and altar, on the other hand, are
not visible, although it was usual for hos¬
pital inmates to be able to see an altar from
their beds and to take part in services.

208
Leprosy,
the deadly
disease

T hose admitted to a hospital got some¬

thing to eat. In an epoch when failed
harvests and famine were regular
occurrences, that alone meant a great deal.
It was no coincidence that Elizabeth
founded her first hospital beneath the
Wartburg during a widespread famine in
1226, when her husband was still alive; and
it is no coincidence that most St Elizabeth
paintings show her feeding the hungry and
giving the thirsty something to drink. Ac¬
cording to legend, the apron from which
she distributed bread kept miraculously
refilling itself, and her jug never emptied.
In one story, a sick man asked for fish:
when Elizabeth rinsed out a pot at the
fountain, it filled with little fish.
A second large category of St Elizabeth
paintings shows her tending the sick, and
in particular lepers. Because of the conta¬
gious nature of their disease, lepers were
banned from towns and cities. Leprosy is
known to have existed in Europe since the
7th century, although it only reached epi¬
demic proportions later, claiming several
million victims in the 12th, 13th and 14th
centuries. An altar from the workshop of
Michael Wolgemut (Albrecht Diirer’s
teacher) shows Elizabeth washing a leper
and cutting another’s hair. In an altarpiece
by Bernt Notke she is washing the feet of a
Christ whose skin exhibits the blemishes
typical of leprosy. The first altarpiece was
painted around 1480, the second around
1483. Both show men with bandaged adopted from other paintings of St Eliza¬ cities were more than happy to take over

calves. Leg ulcers were another feature of beth. these former monasteries, together with
Amongst the most important historical their valuable property holdings, but in
the clinical picture of leprosy.
Elsheimer, too, shows a bandaged calf. events of those 400 years between Eliza¬ doing so also inherited the charitable ser¬

It belongs to the bearded man in the right- beth and Elsheimer was the Reformation, vices they provided for the old and sick. In
which had a profound impact upon hos¬ Hesse, for example, four large monasteries
hand foreground, who thrusts his left leg
pitals in Germany. In the Middle Ages, were converted into “regional hospitals”.
demonstratively forward. But if we ignore
people’s willingness to help the poor and Landgrave Philip I of Hesse, responsible
the man’s balding head - which could
needy was fuelled by the notion of “good for the founding of these new regional hos¬
have a variety of causes - he bears no other
works”: those who do good in this world pitals, also took up Luther’s fight against
obvious signs of leprosy. Elsheimer has
can expect to be treated with mercy in the the Catholic cult of saints. In 1539 he had
not portrayed the disease in clearly identi¬
hereafter. Luther vehemently rejected this the bones of St Elizabeth forcibly, re¬
fiable way. Perhaps he had never actually
idea; it was impossible, he argued, for hu¬ moved from her church and thereby
seen a leper. Almost 400 years separated
mankind to earn a right to God’s mercy. robbed the city of Marburg of its most
his life from that of the saint, and the two
altarpieces were executed a good 100 years He thereby removed one of the attractions precious relics.

before his own painting. The epidemic had of giving money to good causes. Further¬
died out and no longer posed a threat. All more, in the wake of the Reformation
that remained was the motif of the band¬ monasteries were dissolved, robbing hos¬
aged leg, which Elsheimer may have pitals of their sponsors. Sovereigns and

209
E lsheimer was 28 when he painted this
serious, shadowy self-portrait. Four
years later he died. Little is known
about his life: born in 1578 in Frankfurt as
the son of a tailor, he was probably ap¬
prenticed to the painter Philipp Uffen-
bach. In 1598 he travelled to Venice, and
from 1600 he lived in Rome. Here he got
married, converted to Catholicism, was
considered lazy, and found a patron, who
nevertheless had him thrown into a the bandaged calf is clearly reminiscent of
debtors’ prison before eventually effecting
a reconciliation. Elsheimer died in 1610.
His best-known work is the altarpiece The
Discovery and Celebration of the True
Cross (c. 1603/04), today housed in the
Stadel Institute in Frankfurt.
He was born into a lean period in Ger¬
210
man art. The generation which followed
on from Albrecht Altdorfer, Lucas Cra¬
nach and Albrecht Dtirer - the artists who
had carried German painting to such great
heights in the first half of the 16th century
- had produced no painters of similar
rank. Elsheimer oriented himself in his
youth to these Old Masters; he looked
back to the past, studying Diirer’s Heller
Altar. His portrayal of the sick man with
saints as painted earlier by Albrecht Diirer.
In contrast to his venerable predeces¬
sors, however, he restricted himself to
small formats and a very specific carrier.
His painting of St Elizabeth measures just
28 x 20 cm (approximately the same size as
our reproduction) and is executed on cop¬
per. Elsheimer was not the only artist of
his day to paint on copper, but most of the
others were engravers who were using up
old plates. Why Elsheimer limited himself
to small formats on copper is unknown. It
had certain disadvantages, since it meant
he missed out on commissions for large-
format works, and only large-scale paint¬
ings in churches and palaces brought wide
public recognition.
Adam Elsheimer painted little, and he
painted small. Perhaps it was this that
prompted the accusation that he was lazy.
The smooth surface of the copper allowed
him to include miniature-like details which
would have been almost impossible on
panel or canvas.
Elsheimer’s self-portrait is his only
(known) painting on canvas and, unusual¬
ly for him, measures a good 63 x 48 cm. It
was probably executed for the San Luca
painters’ academy in Rome, whose mem¬
bers were all required to supply a self-por¬
trait in a prespecified format.
With his move to Rome, Elsheimer ex¬
changed a city of 18,000 inhabitants for a
metropolis of an estimated 100,000. Frank¬
furt enjoyed a certain degree of fame as
a centre of commerce, serving as a point of
transshipment for goods travelling the
trade route between north and south.
Rome around 1600, on the other hand,
was considered the centre of the world.
The Pope and his Church had recovered
from the shock of the Reformation and
were spearheading the Counter-Reforma¬
tion. As part of their battle campaign, they
made strategic use of architecture and
painting as a means of demonstrating their
might and propagating the Catholic faith.
Architects and artists flocked to the holy
city from all over Europe. Alongside St
Peter’s cathedral, there arose a host of
churches and palaces, giving Rome the
face that it has preserved right up to the
present day.
Embracing
the Baroque
in Rome

Not in
Frankfurt, but
in London
In Rome, Elsheimer’s style changed.
Static compositions such as his St Eliza¬
beth now gave way to scenes of much
greater animation. Effects of lighting in
the manner of Caravaggio (1571-1610),
seven years his senior, added a dramatic
dimension. The painter who had formerly
looked back to his German past now
emerged as a Baroque artist eager to ex¬
plore the latest trends.
His painting Contentment, executed
around 1607, and thus about a decade after
St Elizabeth Tending the Sick, makes this
transformation clear. Elsheimer takes a
motif from earlier Italian literature. Mer¬
cury is abducting the female figure of
Contentment from the midst of an excited
crowd. He is acting upon the instructions
of Jupiter, who has been angered by the
complacency of the people and their lack
of interest in the gods. Jupiter can be seen
hovering in front of his temple top left,
while in the background people are in¬
dulging in various sporting entertain¬
ments. Elsheimer’s figures are caught up in
a line of movement which starts in the
front right-hand corner, switches direction
by Mercury apd Jupiter and bears off into
the top right-hand corner. Looking at the
illustration reproduced here, one might
expect the original to be several metres
square; in fact, it measures just 30 x 42 cm
- a miniature in comparison to the large
formats of Elsheimer’s contemporaries
Caravaggio and Rubens.
Rubens, one year older than Elsheimer,
admired his German colleague, and even
copied one section of Contentment. Upon
hearing of Elsheimer’s early death, he
wrote: “After such a loss, our entire pro¬
fession should clad itself in deep mourn¬
ing. It will not be easy to replace him, and
in my opinion there was none to equal him
in the field of smaller figures, landscapes
and so many other subjects. He died at the
height of his artistic powers.” Elsheimer
was similarly praised by Joachim von San-
drart, in his Teutsche Academie (German
Academy) of 1675. Sandrart describes Els¬
heimer’s inventiveness, his ability to paint
landscapes and night scenes, and con¬
cludes by reproaching Elsheimer’s native
city of Frankfurt for possessing not a single
one of his works: “in Frankfurt Town Hall
there is not a single thing by him to be seen
nor any mention of his name”.
In 1927 and 1928 Frankfurt had the op¬
portunity to purchase St Elizabeth Tend¬
ing the Sick when it came up twice for auc¬
tion. At that time, however, Elsheimer had
still to be more widely rediscovered; if his
works were in demand at all, it was those
from his Roman years. The copper plate
found its way not into a museum, but into
a London collection where it can still be
admired today - the Wellcome Institute
for the History of Medicine at 183 Euston
Road.
211

The lovely Jewish widow Judith,
who beheaded an Assyrian leader
because he had threatened the
lives of her people, was held up as
a shining example by religious fa¬
natics. Caravaggio’s subject was
highly topical at the time of the
Counter-Reformation. Today, the
painting (145 x 195 cm) is in the
Roman Galleria Nazionale d’Arte
Antica.
“Now when Holofernes was stretched out
on his bed, and was drunk and asleep... Ju¬
dith stood weeping at his bedside and said
in her heart, O Lord, God of Israel, give me
strength and look in this hour upon the
work of my hands... She... took his
sword... and held him fast by the hair of
his head and prayed again... Then she
struck his neck twice with all her might and
212
smote off his head... Soon afterward she
went out and gave Holofernes’ head to her
maid, who placed it in her food bag.”1
This account is taken from the Book of
Judith. It recounts an incident in the his¬
tory of the Jews, but since the original
manuscript is lost and the text itself is dif¬
ficult to date, the Book of Judith is con¬
sidered apocryphal (not accepted as ca¬
nonical) by Jews and Protestants. It was,
however, included in St. Jerome’s Latin
translation of the Scriptures, the Vulgate.
Caravaggio’s painting of the scene, ex¬
ecuted in 1599, follows the biblical version,
except that the maid does not wait outside
but is painted alongside her mistress - her
wrinkled skin offering the artist a welcome
contrast to the peachy skin of his heroine.
The “very comely” and rich widow Ju¬
dith, “of whom nobody could say ill”, had
put off her mourning clothes, dressed her¬
self in her finest garments and entered the
enemy camp in order to rescue her people.
The Assyrian army, led by Holofernes,
stood in arms before the city of Bethulia.
The Jews had lost heart, were on the point
of giving up, and yet this woman set out on
her own to seduce the enemy. After her
bloody deed, the enemy soldiers fled in
panic; Israel was saved and Judith returned
“unsullied by sin” from the libertine’s tent.
“Thou art the glory of Jerusalem, thou
art the great boast of Israel, thou art the
great pride of our nation.” Such were the
high priest’s words of praise for the her¬
oine. “Exalted thou art in the eyes of the
Lord for ever and ever! And all the people
said Amen.”
This episode has featured in the work of
many artists throughout the centuries,
many of whom may have been less at¬
tracted by the political and religious impli¬
cations of the tyrannicide than by the viol¬
ent eroticism which lends the biblical mur¬
der story its great narrative tension.
Caravaggio: Judith and Holofernes, c. 1599

Tyrannicide by tender hand

213
H olofernes had to die because he had
attempted to force the Jews to wor¬
It had taken some time before the Cath¬
olic Church and loyalist states (Spain, Italy,
Poland and the heartlands of the Habsburg
denounced Elizabeth I of England as
cause of so much damage to the Catholic
the

faith and of the loss of millions of souls”;

ship the Assyrian king Nebuchad¬
Empire) were capable of taking up the he could see °no doubt, but that he who
nezzar instead of Jehova. He was a gentile,
counter-offensive. The Council of Trent dispatches her from this world with the
and Judith’s fatal blow was dealt for the
had met repeatedly between 1545 and 1563 holy intention of serving God commits no
greater glory of her - only true - God. This
before finally reaching a consensus on re¬ sin, but is deserving of reward”.2
made her deed highly topical when Ca¬
forms: the removal of the worst forms of At the dawning of the age of absolutism
ravaggio painted the picture in Rome at the
abuse leading to the schism, and the estab¬ and the divine right of kings, the authority
end of the 16th century.
lishment of strict rules of faith. The as¬ of the royal sovereign was officially un¬
The struggle to repress heresy by what¬
sembled representatives of the Church questionable; if a monarch left the one true
ever means possible, including fire and the
thus succeeded in laying down the founda¬ faith, however, he was declared a usurper
sword, was the central preoccupation in
tions of spiritual renewal, while turning the and an outlaw. This was Catholic doctrine
the capital of the Papal States. It was the
Church itself into a force to be reckoned in 160C; proclaimed from the pulpit and
time of the Counter-Reformation. The
with. The hierarchy was tightened up, the broadcast by countless pamphlets, it en¬
Catholic Church was attempting to re¬
Pope’s authority strengthened and the or¬ couraged all kinds of fanatics and madmen
cover those dominions that it had lost dur¬
ganisation of the Church in Rome was cen¬ who heard voices and thought they were
ing the first half of the 16th century. Eng¬
tralised. Several religious orders grew in heeding the call of God to take up daggers
land and Sweden, and parts of the Nether¬
power and influence, particularly the and firearms.
lands, France and Germany, had followed
Jesuits, who, as defenders of the faith, were While Elizabeth I managed to escape
Luther, Calvin or Zwingli. They no longer
organised along military lines and set to countless assassination attempts, finally
accepted the authority of the Pope and re¬
work to convert the heretics - or extermi¬ dying in her bed in 1603, William I of
fused to pay taxes to Rome.
Orange, Stadtholder of Holland, Zealand
nate them.
The most spectacular example of the and Utrecht, was shot in 1584, and Henry
persecution of heretics was the St. Bartho¬ IV of France, who had survived a dozen
lomew Massacre of thousands of Hugue¬ attempts on his life and had even returned
nots on 23/24 August 1572. But at a time to the bosom of the Church in 1593, was
when the faith of monarchs automatically stabbed to death by a religious fanatic. Ju¬
determined that of their subjects, it seemed dith was held up as a shining example by
A blow a far more practical business to strike a many fanatics: in contemporary pamphlets
against the blow against the Protestant rulers them¬ calling for the murder of heretics, Judith
was celebrated as a paragon of virtue.
Protestants selves. Thus Pope Gregory XIII publically

214
A chaste
heroine

J udith’s features betray neither

triumph nor passion, but determina¬
tion and disgust. She slays the defence¬
less man without using force, keeping as
great a distance as possible between her
victim and herself. Nor does this demure
heroine appear in a magnificent Baroque
gown, like the Judith painted by Christo-
fano Allori just a few years later, but in the
best clothes of a woman of the people. Per¬
haps Caravaggio’s model was a woman
called Lena who is thought to have been his
mistress and, according to a police report
of 1605, was usually found “loitering at the
Piazza Navona”, which was tantamount to
saying that she worked as a prostitute.
Travellers to Rome around 1600 gener¬
ally found the large number of prostitutes
worthy of comment: there were many un¬
married men among the masses of pilgrims
and Church servants who came to the
Catholic capital. There were more than a
million visitors to the Eternal City during
the Holy Year of 1600. The innkeepers and
tailors also did a good trade, the latter pro¬
viding sumptuous robes for ecclesiastical
dignitaries. Otherwise, there was neither
trade nor industry in Rome; the majority
of the city’s inhabitants lived in poverty
and were dependent on the charity of the
Church.
It was at this time, too, that Rome, fol¬
lowing its destruction by mercenaries in
1527, was being rebuilt - despite the
greatly reduced income of the See - to the
magnificent city we know today. The One of these was Michelangelo Merisi, It was not long before Caravaggio’s
building boom was a product of the born in 1571 in the Lombardic village of fame spread abroad. On receiving his first
Counter-Reformation: it was intended that Caravaggio, near Bergamo, a village whose noteworthy commission in 1598/99, the
the capital city of the the Catholic faith name he later; adopted as his own. Arriving decoration of a chapel, Caravaggio left the
should shine out for all to see and that its in the papal city at the beginning of the homosexual milieu of the cardinal’s palace,
spiritual hegemony in the world be re¬ nineties, his life had initially been all but where he is thought to have lived with an¬
flected in its material glory. It was hoped easy. A Sicilian art dealer had employed other painter.
that the magnificence of the Roman archi¬ him to produce “three heads every day”, It was at this time that he painted Judith,
tecture would impress the uneducated and given him only salad at mealtimes. But his first erotically attractive female figure,
masses and reinforce their piety. his talent was discovered in 1596 by Cardi¬ although in fact she is modestly dressed -
Pope Sixtus V (1521-1590) commis¬ nal Francesco Maria del Monte (1549- Caravaggio never painted a female nude.
sioned the construction of magnificent 1626), who offered the painter food, wine, Perhaps it was the image of Judith as both a

avenues, had viaducts built and had the pocket-money and lodgings at his palace. devout heroine and, at the same time, a cor¬

huge dome of St. Peter’s finally completed. Caravaggio painted for him in return: rupter of men which so appealed to the ar¬
Clement VIII (1536-1605) and his cardi¬ semi-nude boys making music, Bacchus tist. Like Delilah, who took Samson’s male

nals commissioned as many palaces, chur¬ with a sensuous mouth, adorned with potency when she shaved off his locks, Ju¬

ches and chapels as they could, attracting flowers, gentle angelic figures. Such works dith appears, in the struggle between the

architects, masons, sculptors and fresco- appealed to the cardinal, who loved the sexes, as the incarnation of the male fear of

painters to Rome from all over Italy. company of young men. ultimate vulnerability to a woman.

215

Fascinated by
decapitation
M ost artists painting this theme
have shown Judith after the deed,
holding up the head of the dead
Holofernes in her hand. By contrast, Ca¬
ravaggio has painted the precise moment in
which he is beheaded: the victim is still
alive, his head only half-severed from his
body. His eyes have not yet grown dim in
death, but are staring out of his head, full
of mortal fear, and his mouth is wrenched
open in a scream. Caravaggio sought to
capture the moment of shock and horror,
an effect also loved by his English contem¬
porary William Shakespeare. The latter’s
plays Macbeth and King Lear with their
216
bloody murders and scenes of torture were
performed for the first time in 1606.
It was not only on canvas or on the stage
that such brutal scenes took place, how¬
ever; artists were confronted with violence
of this kind every day, whether in Elizabe¬
than England or in Rome during the
Counter-Reformation. There were said to
be more severed heads nailed to the Ponte
S. Angelo over the Tiber than melons on
the stalls of Roman markets. The “Awisi”,
a kind of handwritten newspaper, reported
in 1583: “The Papal States are in chaos...
The countryside is in the hands of ban¬
dits ... who murder... rob the couriers, lay
waste to towns and houses.”3 These ban¬
dits were political outcasts from every¬
where in Italy, peasants ruined by papal
taxes and bad harvests, monks fled from
their monasteries and other social misfits.
It was reported that the Papal States were
imperilled from time to time by as many as
27,000 brigands. In Rome they performed
the function of armed bodyguards; known
as bravi, the “daring”, they accompanied
any citizen or visitor who could afford
their services, always ready to defeat their
employer’s enemies, or to engage in a street
battle with the papal police, the sbirri.
“Practically no day passes,” the Vene¬
tian ambassador to Rome reported in 1595,
“without our seeing the heads (of dead
bandits) they have brought into the city,
or of the men they behead at the Castel
Sant’Angelo in groups of 4, 6, 10, 20 and
sometimes even 30 at a time. It has been
calculated that over 5000 persons have died
a violent death in the Papal State since the
death of Sixtus V (1590), whether con¬
demned to death, or murdered by ban¬
dits.”4
Decapitation - a form of execution
reserved for criminal members of the aris¬
tocracy - was generally linked to a number
of macabre rituals. The severed heads were
publically exhibited at the Castel Sant’An¬
gelo, displayed on a black cloth between
two burning torches. When the twenty-
two year-old Beatrice Cenci was found
guilty of patricide and beheaded in 1599,
Caravaggio may have attended the execu¬
tion. A contemporary textbook on art ad¬
vised painters to accompany the con¬
demned to the scaffold in order to observe
their twitching eyelids and rolling eyes. It
was at this time that Caravaggio was work¬
ing on Judith.
Decapitation must have fascinated the
artist. In 1603 he painted the Sacrifice of
Isaac by Abraham; his Beheading of St.
John the Baptist, painted in 1608 and now
in Valetta Cathedral, Malta, bears Caravag¬
gio’s sole extant signature. The words “F
Michel A” can still be read on the badly
damaged painting; they are written in the
paint he had used for the blood dripping to
the ground from the martyr’s neck. The
head of the Baptist in Salome’s hands reap¬
pears in a work executed in 1610, while an¬
other, later painting shows a young David
holding up Goliath’s head. Contemporary
spectators noticed the similarity in looks
between Goliath and Caravaggio himself,
who was said to be “dark-skinned, with
grave eyes and thick black eyebrows and
hair”.5
Holofernes’ screaming, suffering face
may also have been a self-portrait, letting
Caravaggio act out a masochistic fantasy of
himself as the victim of brutal violence.
C aravaggio, whose fame had grown
so quickly, was patronised by Mon¬
signori and cardinals. He found it
difficult to adapt his work to their taste,
however. In decorating churches he fre¬
quently departed from the conventions
laid down by the Council of Trent, which
had stipulated that while paintings of the
Scriptures were to be used to educate the
ignorant masses, the artwork itself must
remain dignified and aloof. Caravaggio’s
work offended against this “decorum” by
showing saints with dirty feet and a
drowned Virgin Mary whose corpse had
swollen in the water.
At the same time, his style broke with
the Renaissance ideal of beauty. His vision
and aesthetic were novel and realistic, and
his works, treasured by a small circle of
supporters who paid high prices for them,
shocked many of his contemporaries. In¬
stead of copying conventional models, Ca¬
ravaggio painted directly from life. In so
doing, he suppressed neither the furrows
and lines on a face nor the wrinkles pro-
Undaunted
by reality
duced by a life of toil on the hands of an old
woman. “Too natural”, was all the artist
Annibale Carracci could say about his con¬
temporary’s painting of Judith.
It was here that Caravaggio first used a
device that was to become characteristic of
his work: figures, accentuated by artificial,
almost subterranean lighting effects, stand¬
ing out against a dark, nocturnal back¬
ground.
The fact that darkness and violence were
themes to which the artist continually re¬
turned may possibly derive from his char¬
acter. Various incidents show Caravaggio
to have been a rowdy and a thug. On 28
May 1606, he mortally wounded a certain
Ranuccio Tomassoni in a brawl over a
wager on a tennis match. This was by no
means his first brush with the law, how¬
ever, as the numerous demands for sen¬
tences recorded in the Roman archives
show. On one occasion, the painter threw
a plate of artichokes at an impolite waiter
at the Osteria del Moro; on another, he in¬
sulted a policeman who had asked to see
his licence to carry a weapon.
Caravaggio led the adventurous life of a
Roman bravo. Although he delivered his
paintings on time, his biographers say that
he rarely stuck it out at work for very long
before setting out with his gang of toughs,
attending one tennis match after the other,
“always ready to fight a duel or engage in a
brawl”.6 The sword he carried at his side on
these occasions is said to have been con¬
spicuous for its size.
Swords, daggers and knives may be seen
in almost all Caravaggio’s paintings. Like
blood and decapitation, they constitute a
kind of sadistic leitmotiv in his work. In
the artist’s everyday life, they were not
only the means of self-assertion, but status
symbols. The offence taken by Caravaggio
at the policeman’s demand to see his licence
to carry such a weapon is explicable: wear¬
ing a sword was considered a nobleman’s
privilege, and, despite the torn and dirty
clothes he usually wore, it was as a noble¬
man that Caravaggio wished to be seen. He
was a social climber, and his aggression was
most likely a means of compensating for a
social inferiority complex.
Parallel to the refusal of several of his
best works on grounds of theological in¬
correctness and the consequent reduction
in the number of his official commissions,
Caravaggio’s aggressive behaviour in¬
creased, climaxing in the murder of 1606,
which forced him to flee Rome. He spent
the rest of his life tormented by a persecu¬
tion complex, driven from one place to an¬
other, leaving behind him a trail of master¬
pieces that were to have a lasting influence
on 17th century European art. He died, a
lonely man, in exile in 1610 - “as miserably
as he lived”, as one contemporary noted.7
217
Michelangelo da Caravaggio:
Martyrdom of St. Matthew, 1599-1600

The theatre of cruelty

It was Michelangelo Merisi’s first large

commission, given to the young artist
solely because a finished work was needed
as quickly as possible: the Holy Year of
1600 was nigh and half a million pilgrims
from throughout Europe were expected in
Rome. It was essential that the world
centre of Christianity make a great im¬
pression on the visitors, thus spreading
abroad the glory of God, as well as that of
Pope Clement VIII and his triumphant
Counter-Reformation.
Sacked in 1527 by Charles V’s merce¬
naries, Rome had been rebuilt more beau¬
tifully and on an even grander scale than
before. The cathedral of St. Peter’s was al¬
ready finished; wide streets, splendid pal¬
aces and countless new churches added to
the town’s attractions. Interrupted only
by political instability or financial diffi¬ young artist was to deliver two oil paint¬
culty, building had continued for the bet¬ ings, each measuring 323 by 343 cen¬
ter part of a century. The foundation stone timetres: the Calling of the tax-collector
for San Luigi dei Francesi, for example, Matthew by Christ, and his Martyrdom.
the French Church, had been laid in 1518; The instructions he received, essentially
the church was finally consecrated in those conceived for Cesari, demanded an
1589. On the very threshold of the year of act of homage to the donor’s patron saint.
celebrations, however, and much to the The contract for the Martydom stipulated
annoyance of the French priests, work on a “spatious interior of some depth, like a
the fifth and last chapel on the left - the temple, with an altar at the head ... Here
Contarelli chapel, named after its found¬ St. Matthew is murdered by soldiers while
ing donor Cardinal Matteu Cointrel - was celebrating mass ... and falls, dying but
not finished. not yet dead; while in the temple a large
The renowned artist Guiseppe Cesari number of men and women ... most of
d’Arpino, who, during the nineties, had them horrified by the dreadful deed ...
decorated its ceiling with frescos, had run show terror or sympathy.”
out of time before painting the walls. Like The paintings were officially unveiled in
the majority of famous artists during the July 1600, six months overdue. The man¬
Roman building boom, Cesari’s time was ner in which Caravaggio had interpreted
taken up painting more prestigious work. his “instructions” caused a “considerable
On 23rd July 1599, the works committee stir” far beyond the walls of the Holy City.
decided to offer the commission to the 27- Four years later, news had spread to the
year-old, almost unknown painter Michel¬ distant Netherlands, where Carel van
angelo Merisi, self-styled “da Caravaggio” Mander reported that a certain Agnolo van
after his native town. By the end of the Caravaggio was “doing extraordinary
year, and at a total cost of 400 scudi, the things in Rome”.

219
Gentle angels
for a cardinal

A palm branch, the symbol of divine

gratitude, is proffered to the dying
martyr by a young boy. The ges¬
ture, far from triumphant, betrays a certain
degree of caution: leaning from a cloud, he
supports himself with one hand, perhaps
unsure his wings will carry him. The angel,
with flaxen locks and pearly skin, is one of
those gentle creatures so characteristic of
Caravaggio’s early work: dreamy strum-
mers of lutes, scantily dressed and crowned
with vine-wreaths, raising chalices of wine
or holding ecstatic saints in their arms.
Whether antique Bacchus or Christian
angel, these figures reflected the taste and
preferred company of Caravaggio’s patron,
Cardinal Francesco Maria del Monte
(1549-1626), who, according to a contem¬
porary biographer, “was enamoured of the
company of young men”.
For several years the church leader of¬
fered his protection to the young artist,
providing lodgings, bread and wine in his
Roman palace, situated diagonally oppo¬
site the church of San Luigi dei Francesi.
The Cardinal gave him regular pocket
money, too, and helped him out of the dif¬
ficulties into which the artist’s aggressive
behaviour repeatedly plunged him. Born
in 1571 near Bergamo, Caravaggio is re¬
puted to have fled from Milan to Rome in
1592 to escape the consequences of a
bloody quarrel. Once in Rome, he was
forced to sell his paintings on the street,
between “marrows, nougat, cleaning uten¬
sils, drums, water and heads of veal”. But
soon enough, according to van Mander, he
had "climbed from poverty through hard
work” - assisted, of course, by the protec¬
tion of his patron, for whom, from c. 1594,
he painted a series of beautiful boys, many
of which betrayed Caravaggio’s own fea¬ The six-month delay with which Ca¬ covered several earlier versions of the
tures. ravaggio delivered the works can be put Martyrdom, in which the artist ex¬
The influential cardinal also helped his down to his unfamiliarity with certain perimented with smaller protagonists in
protege acquire his first big commission. technical problems posed by the task. He various different arrangements. Appar¬
Initially, Caravaggio had painted' relat¬ was not only required to adapt his skills to ently, the Apostle was first shown stand¬
ively small works with few figures for del a large-scale format, but had also gathered ing, then kneeling, while at his side a fierce
Monte’s private rooms. The two paintings little previous experience of integrating angel, armed with book and sword, was
of St. Matthew, on the other hand, would such a large number of figures: seven in ready to confront the murderer. Later, and
be seen by a large number of spectators: the Calling, and 13 in the Martyrdom. possibly in the interests of decency, the
some 300,000 French pilgrims visited Furthermore, Caravaggio had difficulty naked heavenly messenger was banned to
their church in Rome during the Holy calculating the perspective for the “spa¬ his cloud, where he duly abstained from
Year, many of them staying at the hospice cious interior of some depth”, ^ith the further intervention, leaving the martyr to
there. help of X-rays, art historians have dis¬ his fate, and executioner.

220
D efenceless, the old man lies on the
ground, waiting for the mortal
blow. He is wounded, his robe
stained with blood. While all around him
flee in panic, the Apostle meets death
“freely”, in the name of his faith, as befitted
a martyr. A “witness” to the truth of
Christ’s divine revelation, he looks his
murderer straight in the eyes.
In order to heighten the dramatic
quality of the scene, Caravaggio departs
from tradition. According to the Golden
Legend of the saint’s life, his executioner
stabbed him “from behind with his sword
while St. Matthew stood before the altar,
his arms outstretched in prayer”. The
Apostle, preaching “in the land of the
Moors”, had dared deny the heathen King
Hirtacus access to “a virgin devoted to the
Lord”, thus incurring the King’s wrath.
“While mass was held, the King sent his
henchman ... thus the martyrdom was ful¬
filled.”
Caravaggio’s contemporaries were ex¬
posed to dramatic accounts of martyrdom
not only in the legends of saints. In the age
of religious struggle in Europe, both Pro¬
testants and Catholics suffered and died
every day on behalf of their confessions. In
England under Elizabeth I, the death pen¬
alty awaited anyone discovered holding
mass. As a result some 40 priests were tor¬
tured and executed. By the beginning of
To bear witness
and die
for one's beliefs
the 17th century their portraits were ex¬
hibited at the “English College” in Rome,
while the “German College”, too, had five
martyrs to its name.
These institutions had been set up by the
pope to provide special training for young
priests sent on dangerous missions to Pro¬
testant countries. The destiny of the pupils
was a source of envy: “Could I but die the
death of these just men!”, enthused the
church historian Baronius. They were sol¬
emnly addressed as the “Flores Marty-
rum” - the “flower of martyrs”.
At that time, the Catholic church was
attempting to regain those countries it had
lost to Protestantism during the first half of
the 16th century. Counter-Reformation
strategy involved the mobilization of
“Christian soldiers”, who were ready to
fight and, if necessary, die for their faith.
The early Christian martyrs were held up
as shining examples, especially after 1578,
when a landslide revealed part of the for¬
gotten Roman catacombs, rekindling
popular interest in the heroic, founding
years of the Church. Excavations began,
and the.catacombs were made the object of
extensive research. During the celebrations
of 1600, a host of pilgrims, in awe-struck
reverence, followed in the underground
tracks of the early Christians.
Resurgent interest in the martyrs,
together with their suitability for propa¬
ganda purposes, prompted the pope to
order a new edition of the martyrological
catalogue, a work in progress since the 5th
century. In 1584, Baronius’ “Roman Mar-
tyrology” appeared in several volumes, a
standard work of monumental stature,
lending to the old legends the veneer of his¬
torical truth. Countless new editions of the
work have since been published, most re¬
cently in 1956.
However, the Protestant side also had its
martyrs, in whose honour, as early as 1563,
John Foxe published his Book of Martyrs.
On St. Bartholomew’s Eve of the year after
Caravaggio’s birth, thousands of Hugue¬
nots were massacred in Paris for their be¬
liefs. In 1600, when the painting of St. Mat¬
thew was unveiled, a man who regarded
himself as a martyr was burnt to death at
the stake: Giordano Bruno, referred to as a
“magician” and “unrepentant, stubborn
heretic”, died neither for the Catholic nor
Protestant faith, but for freedom of
thought and science.
T he English College frescos have long
since vanished, but in 1582 they
showed the history of England re¬
duced to a series of ghastly scenes of tor¬
ture and execution. It was at this time, too,
that the Jesuits ordered the decoration of
San Stefano Rotondo, a church belonging
to the German College, with 30 gory
scenes illustrating the persecution
Christians. Their motivation for doing so
was largely educational: investing in the
persuasive power of the senses and imagin-
Bloodthirsty
murder, fear
and horror
222
ation, the Jesuits used art in their educa¬
tional establishments to encourage the mi¬
litancy of their pupils, at the same time ac¬
quainting them with their probable fate.
Confronted daily, whether in the library,
refectory or chapel, with sights of terror
and suffering, the future martyrs were ac¬
customed to the notion of martyrdom at an
of early age.
“One should not be afraid”, wrote
Cardinal Paleotti in his “De Imaginibus
Sacris” (Of Sacred Images) in 1594, “to
paint the torments of the Christians in all
their horror: with wheels, grates, racks and
crosses. The Church wishes, in this man¬
ner, to glorify the courage of its martyrs.
But it wishes also to fire the souls of its
sons.” This was in accordance with the
aims of the Counter-Reformation: at its
final session in 1563, the Council of Trent
had decided to use art to spread the Cath¬
olic faith among the uneducated masses.
The clergy were required (as in the case of
the Contarelli chapel) to draw up detailed
proposals for paintings, and to ensure not
only their precise execution in the chur¬
ches, but also their theological correctness,
intelligibility and decorum. Paintings
which indulged in the horrific minutiae of
torture and suffering did not offend against
these regulations, but responded rather to
widespread predilection.
Renaissance artists had celebrated
beauty and harmony, giving little space to
human suffering or death in their work.
Yet it was precisely these phenomena
which appear to have fascinated both art¬
ists and the public towards the end of the
16th century — possibly due to Spanish in¬
fluence, for Spain ruled most of Italy at the
time. Pain, torment, death, cruelty and vio¬
lence not only had a considerable impact
on art, but were part and parcel of every¬
day life. Public executions were turned
into pompous displays. The most exciting
of these is said to have taken place on 11
September 1599, when members of the
Cenci family were executed for patricide
and the murder of a husband: a bloodthir¬
sty, highly ritualized piece of theatre, in
which both executioner and victim per¬
formed with great aplomb.
In dear contrast to the peaceful scene de¬
picted in his Calling, Caravaggio’s Martyr¬
dom, too, celebrates violence. At the centre
of the scene, with his long sharp weapon,
stands the athletic, half-naked figure of the
king’s henchman. With a fearful scream
from his gaping mouth he storms into the
church. Throwing the martyr to the
ground, he steps across his body to deliver
the deadly blow. In the commotion, by¬
standers flee in panic. A frightened boy
screams. The full light falls on the terrible
beauty of the executioner’s body. While the
others, including his victim, merely react
to the assault, the assailant remains unchal¬
lenged: he is the sole source of energy, the
seductive, irresistible force of aggression
incarnate.
A "wild"
and violent
painter
S creams of terror assume a prominent
place in a number of Caravaggio’s
other works, painted in the same
period as the Martyrdom: the gaping
mouth of the Medusa’s severed head, for
example, or Holofernes’ screaming mouth
as Judith cuts off his head. By the turn of
the century, images of horror had begun to
replace the gentle youths of his earlier
work. According to Caravaggio’s Ameri¬
can biographer Howard Hibbard, images
of decapitation and torture now began to
dominate his work to an alarming extent.
The wildness of his personality had ex¬
ploded into his art.
Police archives in Rome confirm the
“wild” and violent nature of the man. His
name turns up on record for the first time
shortly after he delivered the Contarelli
painting: on 19 November 1600 the artist
“assaulted” a certain Girolamo Stampa,
whom he “beat several times with a stick”.
According to one contemporary source,
after spending several hours of each day in
his studio, Caravaggio “would appear in
various quarters of the city, his sword at his
side as though he were a professional
swordsman”. Caravaggio went for his dag¬
ger at the slightest provocation. He spent a
considerable amount of his time in front of
the magistrate, and his patrons found it in¬
creasingly difficult to protect him from the
consequences of his violent temper. They
were finally forced to give up when he
killed a man, on 28 May 1606, in a quarrel
over a wager. Caravaggio was forced to flee
the Papal State, spending the rest of his life
on the run, a tragic figure. He died in 1610,
a mere decade after the two paintings of St.
Matthew had brought his artistic career to
fruition.
In his Martydom, the painter has lent his
own features to the legendary King Hir-
tacus. According to a contemporary, Ca¬
ravaggio was “ugly ... pale of visage, with
abundant hair and sparkling eyes set deep
in his face”. The heathen potentate is
shown in the background of the painting,
observing the murder of the Apostle by his
henchman. According to the “Golden Leg¬
end”, his punishment was fitting: “the vic¬
tim of horrible leprosy, and unwilling to let
himself be healed, he fell on his own
sword.”
Yet it was with this rather dismal figure
that the 28-year-old Caravaggio, whose
paintings of St. Matthew caused “a con¬
siderable stir”, identified. New com¬
missions for work confirmed his success.
As early as 1600, he was asked to paint
works for another chapel.
Caravaggio’s work nonetheless re¬
mained controversial. Though the theme
and violence of the Martydom were in
keeping with contemporary trends, their
execution proved a shock to the Roman
art world: this was a radical departure
from the prevailing tone in fresco paint¬
ing, whose scope was restricted to the
bland repetition of patterns, attitudes and
gestures in place since the early Renais¬
sance. It undoubtedly needed an artist as
idiosyncratic as Caravaggio to break the
conventional mould: somebody, for
example, who painted living models - a
revolutionary innovation in 1600; or
someone who put light and shadow to
such novel use.
It is quite possible that Caravaggio’s rea¬
sons for plunging entire areas of his canvas
into inky blackness were entirely practical:
on the one hand, cover of darkness enabled
him to cast a veil over the technical difficul¬
ties he encountered with perspective; on
the other, starkly accentuated areas of
bright light were effective in attracting
spectators to an otherwise inconspicuous
chapel. The scenes depicted in his paintings
in the chapel of San Luigi dei Francesi
made an impression not only on the pil¬
grims of the Holy Year of 1600; their real¬
ism, high dramatic tension and masterful
handling of light and shadow gave a
powerful impetus to painting throughout
Europe.
223
 Georges de La Tour: The Fortune Teller, after 1630
Double-dealing hands
and eyes
A French masterpiece was once secretly
smuggled out of France. In 1960 the New
York Metropolitan Museum bought The
Fortune Teller, a work attributed to
Georges de La Tour (1593-1652), for an
unknown but “very high sum of money”.
When the affair became publicly known,
critics raised their voices in the French
press against this sordid victory of the dol¬
lar, complaining of irretrievable loss to the
“national heritage”. The Minister of Cul¬
ture, Andre Malraux, attempted to explain
to parliament how the Louvre had let the
opportunity to acquire such a treasure slip
by unnoticed. It was never fully explained
how a licence to export the painting had
been acquired in the first place; the head of
the Louvre Old Masters department at the
time remained silent.
Hardly anyone had seen the painting be¬
fore 1960, and the story of its discovery is
mysterious. In 1942, so the story goes, a
monograph on the works of La Tour en¬
tered the hands of a French prisoner-of-
war. The reproductions in the book re¬
minded him of an old painting which hung
at his uncle’s castle. When the war was
over, he had the painting examined by a
priest who had an expert understanding of
art. The latter, concluding that the painting
was a genuine La Tour, informed the
Louvre. Secret negotiations were then con¬
224
ducted to arrange for the purchase of the
work. However, the art dealer Georges
Wildenstein outbid the Louvre, finally
buying the Fortune Teller in 1949 for 7.5
million francs. The painting then remained
in his possession for the next ten years, ac¬
cessible only to a small number of experts.
In 1960, the Metropolitan Museum
presented its sensational acquisition to the
public for the first time.
It portrays a 17th-century picaresque
scene: four sly thieves in the act of robbing
a young man. The latter’s attention is fully
occupied by an old woman who is about to
tell his fortune by reading his palm. He is
thus unaware that he is the victim of a plot:
while one girl is removing his purse from
his pocket, her accomplice’s hand is already
held out to spirit it away; at the same time,
a pale-skinned beauty is cutting a gold
medal from the chain around his neck. The
protagonists are turned to face the specta¬
tor like actors on a stage; indeed, it is quite
possible that the artist borrowed the scene
from a play.
According to experts at the Metropoli¬
tan Museum, the oil painting is in “excel¬
lent condition”.1 The sweeping calligraphy
of the signature “G. de La Tour Fecit Lu-
neuilla Lothar” in the top right of the
painting proves it to be the original work
of the artist, who spent most of his life in
the small Lotharingian town of Luneville.
The details of his life are obscure. At the
beginning of the twentieth century only
his name and two paintings were known.
In the meantime, however, several dates
and various other facts have been found in
archives, and in 1972, at the first major La
Tour exhibition at Paris, 30 paintings were
attributed to his hand. The Fortune Teller
is one of the few spectacular “daylit paint¬
ings” of an artist whose reputation, until
the thirties, rested entirely on his execution
of candle-lit “nocturnal scenes”.
225

In spite of his military-style doublet, the
richly-dressed young man has rather a
baby face. He is probably still a student
at one of the colleges visited by wealthy,
upper-class boys until - at the age of fifteen
- they were introduced to the world of
adults.
Contact with the adult world must have
started for many of them at an early age,
however, for “before they even reach Aris¬
totle’s lessons on restraint,” according to
the essayist Michel de Montaigne, “a hun¬
dred school-boys already have syphilis.”2
There would certainly be no shortage of
226
places to contract such diseases - inns, hos-
telries and brothels - within even a short
distance of the college gates. La Tour has
not defined where the scene in his painting
is taking place; perhaps the old woman will
not be content with her fortune-telling, but
will attempt to prostitute one of her young
accomplices to the young man. Their dark
skin, black hair and richly coloured Orien¬
tal dress show the old woman and two girls
on the left to be gypsies.
La Tour’s contemporary, the Lotharing-
ian artist Jacques Callot, made similar
portrayals in his Gypsy etchings of 1621.
Callot is reported to have accompanied a
band of gypsies as far as Rome after run¬
ning away from home at the age of twelve.
He was discovered there by merchants
from Nancy and sent home to his parents.
The other two great “daylit” paintings
attributed to La Tour show similar scenes.
In the paintings Card-sharper with the Ace
of Clubs, and Card-sharper with the Ace of
Diamonds a young victim is about to lose
the pieces of gold piled up before him to a
cunning card-sharper and his lovely accom¬
plice. Perhaps all three pictures illustrate
episodes from the biblical parable of the
prodigal son who “took his journey into a
far country and there wasted his substance
with riotous living”.3
This story from the Gospel of St. Luke
was a favourite among the painters of the
16th and 17th centuries, since it allowed
them to portray popular, low-mannered
scenes with drinkers and brothels. Such
subjects were only tolerated by the Church
in conjunction with warnings against
“vice”.
La Tour’s message appears to have been
more serious than that of many of his con¬
temporaries; he refrained from painting
gay scenes of “dissolute” life. The faces of
victim and thieves are less cheerful than
concentrated. Fortune-telling and robbery
were dangerous businesses. If caught, the
youth could theoretically expect to be ex¬
communicated - although he would be
more likely in reality to be given a good
hiding by one of his teachers. Watch-
thieves usually had both ears cut off in the
17th century; they were tortured with red-
hot pincers and branded, or even hung,
drawn and quartered. For the slightest of¬
fence gypsies were publically whipped and
banished without trial.
In this painting, whose protagonists
form a close group and yet are nonetheless
isolated from one another, the Lotharing-
ian artist, like his contemporary, the scien¬
tist and philosopher Blaise Pascal, appears
to be warning the specatator against the
dangers of an evil world: a world full of
greed, selfishness and traps.
 A gold coin twinkles in the old wo¬
man’s deeply lined hand. It is both
the reward for her work and an es¬
sential part of the ritual of fortune-telling.
Before looking into the future, she must
A palm cross the soft, white hand that the youth so
crossed trustingly holds out to her with the gold
with gold coin.
The custom is described by Preciosa, the
“little gypsy girl” in the “Exemplary
Story” of the same title by Cervantes, pub¬
lished in 1613. “All crosses are good,” she
explains, “...but silver or gold crosses are
the best, and crossing the palm of the hand
with a copper coin, you must know, re¬
duces good fortune, at least, the good for¬
tune I foretell.”*
It was usual for a fortune teller to retain
the coin used for this ritual, and to keep it
for herself; unlike everything else that she
earned, begged or stole, which the unwrit¬
ten laws of her people - according to popu¬
lar lore on gypsies - required her to share
with the other members of her clan. This
would apply to the youth’s purse, for
example, or to the medal cut from its chain
by the deft fingers of the pale young
woman. In performing the latter, the pale
beauty observes her victim from the cor¬
ners of her eyes. Movement in the painting
is restricted to fingers, or to eyes, whose
lines of vision cross, or appear to avoid
meeting.
Tension in the painting derives from its
inherent contrasts: pretended calm and
concealed activity; innocence and cunning;
the girls’ youthful vigour and the wea¬
thered features of the old woman. It is this
tension - including its erotic aspect - which
appears to have interested the artist most;
neither the rich materials, the elaborate
clothing nor the gleam of gold in the diffuse
light can distract from it. In his later “noc¬
turnal” works, La Tour dispensed with
such decorative trimmings and reduced his
saints almost to their abstract corporeal
mass, lit by the glow of a single candle.
Recent expert opinion has placed the
origin of the undated Fortune Teller, as well
as that of the two Card-sharpers, between
1630 and 1639 - a time when the Thirty
Years’ War had broken over the border
country of Lorraine, bringing with it pes¬
tilence and famine. Luneville, the small
town where La Tour spent most of his life,
was besieged, plundered and pillaged on
several occasions. The painter himself is
said to have profited from these times,
making a fortune in grain speculation and
rising to the station of a land-owning
squire. Thus gold coins played as import¬
ant a role in his real life as they did in his
paintings.
227

An
ostracised
people
U nder one of his etchings illustrating
the life of the gypsies, Jacques Cal-
lot wrote a warning: “If they, with
their words, you spellbound hold,/ Keep
an eye on your silver, your guineas and
gold!”5 Gypsies are rarely mentioned in
old documents without some accompa¬
nying allegation of their lack of respect for
other people’s property. Because they did
not accept Christianity, a sedentary way of
life or property, the basic values of Western
societies, but insisted instead on retaining
their own laws, gypsies were discriminated
against and ostracised as “vagabonds and
crooks” wherever they went in Europe,
228
where they had first made their appearance
in the 15th century.
Cervantes, otherwise well-disposed to
the gitanos in his Little Gypsy Girl, writes:
“Gypsies seem to have been born into the
world for the sole purpose of being thieves:
they are born of thieving parents, they are
brought up with thieves, they study in
order to be thieves, and they end up as past
masters in the art of thieving.”6
Court records refer to the existence of
“Egyptians and Saracens” in the Duchy of
Lorraine. They contain reports of torture,
banishment and execution as punishments
for robbery, blasphemy and witchcraft.
The sight of “travelling houses” passing
through Lorraine would have been com¬
mon enough during the Thirty Years’ War;
some would have belonged to the armies,
others to gypsies. Callot’s etchings record
both their hardships and the more roman¬
tic, colourful aspect of their lives. La Tour,
who had become a rich landowner, would
probably have viewed them with distrust;
the court records at Luneville also betray
that he would flog anyone with his own
hands who trespassed on his property.
In younger years, the artist may have ac¬
companied travelling people some of the
way to Italy, where he possibly underwent
part of his training. At least one detail in
the painting bears testimony to his know¬
ledge of their customs: the hair of unmar¬
ried women and girls was worn loose,
while that of married women was tucked
under a bonnet, or into a scarf knotted at
the nape; a scarf knotted under the chin,
however, like the one worn by the beauty
at the centre of the painting, was a sign that
a woman was neither a virgin nor married.
Perhaps she worked for the bawd on the
right.
Pale-skinned gypsies were considered
particularly attractive, since they were
closer to contemporary ideals of beauty
than their dark-skinned, black-haired
sisters. Like Cervantes’ Preciosa, they
usually turned out - at least they did in
comedies and novels - to be Christian girls
who had been abducted as children by
travelling people. It is possible that La
Tour’s figures are acting out a plot of simi¬
lar content on the stage, which would also
explain their unusual richness of clothing
for travelling people.
The costumes they are wearing are pro¬
ducts of the imagination, entirely incon¬
sistent with expert opinion on 17th-cen¬
tury Lotharingian fashion. Leather
doublets of the type worn by the youth in
the painting, for example, were always tied
at the front. In rendering the old woman’s
shawl with its Oriental design, the painter,
usually at pains to reproduce textiles in
meticulous detail, has been astonishingly
lax: the weft of the folded-back inside of
the fabric runs in a different direction from
that of the outside. The shawl itself is con¬
spicuously similar to a carpet lying at the
Virgin’s feet in the Netherlandish Joos van
Cleve’s 16th-century work Virgin and
Child, even down to distortions of per¬
spective. It was these discoveries at the end
of the sixties that began to puzzle the Eng¬
lish art historian Christopher Wright. His
suspicions increased when he found the
French swear-word MERDE (shit) woven
into the scarf worn by the second girl from
the left.
 Teller replaced an older painting with a
An
similar theme which had hung in the castle
ingenious and could be traced back as far as 1879. The
forgery? painting was of inferior quality, so that the
Louvre had not bid especially aggressively
for it at its auction. It had therefore been
swear-word “merde”. Could it have been a
forger’s joke? In 1982 the Metropolitan
Museum made it known that this “later ad¬
dition” - in whose existence nobody but
Wright had previously shown any interest
at all - had been removed during the clean¬

In the La Tour monography published by

Benedict Nicolson and Christopher
easy enough to obtain a licence to export
such a work.
It is entirely understandable, according
ing of the canvas.
The museum still stands by its version of
the work’s authenticity. However, there is
a certain piquancy in the proximity of
Wright in 1974, the Fortune Teller was to Wright, that experts and museum direc¬
listed among works known to be from the tors should not be swayed in their opinion Wright’s hypothesis of the painting as a

painter’s hand. Ten years later - Nicolson of the authenticity of a painting they have forgery to the shady double-dealing

had died in the meantime - Wright revised helped “discover” themselves, or whose shown in the Fortune Teller itself: we evi¬

his opinion that the work had been painted purchase they have advised, or for which dently live in a world of lies and deception

in the 17th century and claimed that the they have had to pay millions. Not one of in which not only immature youths, but

painting exhibited in the Metropolitan them acknowledged the bizarre detail also museum directors can be fleeced by

Museum was the work of a twentieth-cen¬ brought to light by Wright: the French cunning rascals.
tury forger who had been intelligent
enough to use an old canvas and mix his
paints with the help of old recipes.
Why this change of mind? In a book en¬
titled The Art of the Forger, published in
1984, Wright described how pressure was
brought to bear on him as a young aca¬
demic to suppress his doubts as to the
authenticity of the painting. Finally, he had
submitted to the reputation of interna¬
tional experts and to pressure from the
powerful authority in matters of art of Sir
Anthony Blunt; Blunt, frequently con¬
sulted by the art dealer Wildenstein, was
later exposed as a Soviet spy.
The authenticity of the Fortune Teller
had originally been proved in 1972 at the
Paris La Tour exhibition by comparing it
with the other two “daylit” paintings, the
two versions of the Card-sharper. These
two paintings had been discovered in the
20s; having remained since then in private
collections, they could now be examined
for the first time. One of them had just
been purchased by the Louvre. According
to Wright’s later opinion, this had been a
case of several forgeries confirming each
others’ authenticity. He nevertheless kept
silent. In his book in 1984 Wright at¬
tributes several of the other “daylit” paint¬
ings to an unknown master, while calling
the authenticity of the two Card-Sharpers
and the Fortune Teller into question.
Wright’s hypothesis was that all three
may have been the work of a French re¬
storer called Delobre who had worked for
Wildenstein in the USA; according to
Wright, the first two were probably
painted at the beginning of the century, the
third during the 40s. Delobre died in 1954.
In Wright’s opinion, the forged Fortune
229
Peter Paul Rubens: The Love Garden, c. 1632/34
Grateful for the gift of
sensuous pleasure
Peter Paul Rubens married his second wife
in 1630. He was a 53-year-old widower, his
wife a mere sixteen-year-old. Although the
age difference would have been considered
more than unusual even in those days, it
was hardly a matter to worry Rubens: he
was a man in his prime, a respected,
wealthy gentleman, a painter at the height
of his fame and fortune.
The painting, now in the Prado at Ma¬
drid and known as The Love Garden, was
executed shortly after the wedding. Ex¬
perts have dated it to between 1632 and
1634. Unlike most of his work, it was not
done for a wealthy patron, but for himself.
Nor was his own intervention restricted to
the initial sketch and finishing touches, as
was the case with so many of the paintings
that left his busy studio, including those
executed during the same period for the
Banqueting House in London.
In spite of its great size - 198 by 283 cen¬
timetres - it is an unusually private paint¬
ing. It expresses the feelings of a man who
is already advanced in years and has re¬
gained a happiness thought for ever lost. “I
have regained a life of contemplative tran¬
230
quility,” he wrote to a friend, adding:
“How gladly we accept this gift of sen¬
suous pleasure! And how gratefully!”1
The painting tells of the pleasures of
wealth and good company, of sensuous joy
and love of life. The gentleman on the left,
his arm placed tenderly around his blonde
companion, is trying to persuade her to lay
aside her reserves; a magnificently dressed
couple descends from the staircase on the
right, while the ladies in the centre of the
painting listen to a lute player.
The swords are a sign that the
gentlemen belong to the nobility or at
least to the upper bourgeoisie, while the
ladies in their finery reveal as much
shoulder and bosom as permitted, or
rather demanded, by the latest French
fashions. The only nude figures in the
painting are its many cherubs: winged,
mythological creatures. Here they are
shown strewing flowers, caressing the
splendily dressed, politely chatting figures
or giving them an encouraging little shove
- to help them, in various ways, to enjoy
“this gift of sensuous pleasure”, which is,
after all, what they are there for.
Comparison of the female heads reveals
that all of them have the same straight
noses, very round and slightly protruding
eyes and fair hair. They all resemble the ar¬
tist’s new wife, so that several art historians
think that Rubens may have painted her in
the company of her sisters. However, the
men, all of whom wear moustaches and
beards, are also similar in looks. They re¬
semble the artist himself. In painting the
picture he probably was thinking of his
wife and himself. On the other hand, a self-
portrait painted not long afterwards shows
that Rubens already looked much older at
the time. He has rejuvenated for the Love
Garden, adapting his age to that of his
young wife, or showing himself as his new
marriage made him feel.
A painting that overflows with the joys of love:
the widowed artist had married a sixteen-year-
old. Rejuvenated, he filled an entire canvas with
images of himself and his wife. Cherubs and
Classical architecture make their happiness time¬
less. The intimate work (198 x 283 cm) is in the
Prado, Madrid.

m
yijpl
The artist
as a
nobleman
S hortly before his wedding, Rubens
had been knighted by Charles I. The
English king had given as a present to
Rubens the sword, set with diamonds,
which he had used for the ceremony.
Rubens was now permitted to call himself
Sir Peter.
He was probably knighted less for his
artistic than for his diplomatic services. But
it was his art which had provided him with
a significant diplomatic advantage: unre¬
strained access to European royalty. While
other emissaries had to haunt the ante¬
chambers and seek a path between hostile
intrigues, Rubens gained admittance with¬
out effort. Easy access would have brought
him relatively little advantage, however,
232
were he not also a man of discretion, charm
and considerable persuasive powers. The
German painter and art historian Joachim
Sandrart had this to say of him: “He... was
polite and extremely friendly to everyone,
a welcome and much loved guest wherever
he went.”2
Rubens undertook most of his secret
diplomatic missions in the service of the
Spanish vicereine of the southern Nether¬
lands. It was here, too, in the seaport of
Antwerp, that Rubens lived. The vicereine
also recommended him to the Spanish king
in Madrid, who sent him to London in
1629 to find out whether the old hostilities
between Spain and England could be laid
aside.
A peace treaty was concluded, and
Rubens wrote: “I can honestly declare that
my travels in Spain and England have been
crowned with the greatest possible for¬
tune. Matters of great import have been
settled to the full satisfaction of my lord,
indeed to the satisfaction even of the op¬
posing party.”3
Rubens was sent by the Spanish vice¬
reine on several occasions to carry out
secret missions in the northern Nether¬
lands, the so-called States General. These
provinces had gained independence from
Spain in 1579, since when there had been
war between the two parts of the Nether¬
lands, interrupted only by highly unstable
periods of truce. The Netherlands formed
a subsidiary theatre of the larger European
conflict: the Catholic Habsburgs in Vienna
and Madrid versus the Protestant states
and France.
Rubens succeeded in enlisting England
for the Catholic cause, but he was unable
to do anything to promote lasting peace or
the reunification of the Netherlands. It was
the fact that he felt unable to achieve any¬
thing for his own country that finally
prompted Rubens to give up diplomacy
following his triumphant mission to Lon¬
don. After the death in 1633 of the vice¬
reine, whom he had greatly admired, he de¬
clined further missions abroad. He wanted
to paint.
H e had begun to find courtly life
quite “repulsive”: “In that laby¬
rinth, beleaguered day and night by
bothersome crowds of people... under ob¬
ligation to attend... without cease.”3 His
Spanish contemporary, the painter Diego
Majestic
proportions
Velazquez, decided otherwise, accepting
offices at the Spanish court, shutting him¬
self away in the corridors of the royal ad¬
ministration, rarely, in later years, returing
to his work at the easel.
It was not easy for Rubens to leave. He
had to force himself to “sever the golden
knot of ambition,”3 as he wrote. The
freshly knighted widower rejected advice
to marry into a noble family: “I feared that
notorious quality of the aristocracy, their
self-conceit, especially so in someone of the
opposite sex, and thus I am more attracted
to a woman who does not blush when she
sees me lift the tool of my trade.”3
He did not reveal in this letter to a friend
that his young wife Helene Fourment was
considered a beauty, indeed as “one of the
most beautiful women here”, according to
the newly appointed Spanish viceroy.4
Unlike today, the ideal female body in
Rubens’s day had an ample layer of fat be¬
neath the skin. Visible or indeed palpable
bones were considered inappropriate; opu¬
lent curves were much in demand, as was a
plump neck and a large bosom. Further¬
more, a beautiful woman was required to
have “a majestic deportment, fine propor¬
tions, a luscious head of thick ash-blonde
curls... and sweet white hands”.5 Thus the
description in a book printed in 1655 and
entitled Le Merite des Dames.
Rubens had been painting this type for
decades. Even the facial features in this
painting are found in his previous work:
perhaps one of Helene’s elder sisters had sat
for him, or perhaps the artist simply found
this the most comely of female forms. Some
art historians have maintained that in paint¬
ing the Love Garden, Rubens illustrated a
process: Helene’s progress from a young
girl and bride to a wife and mother.
According to this hypothesis, the hesi¬
tant girl on the left is invited by a careful
lover and cherub’s encouraging push to lay
aside all reservation and sit down on the
grass. The next scene shows her doing
exactly that, with her hand on her lover’s
knee and her dreamy gaze staring out of
the picture, as if looking into the painter’s
eyes. Finally, the scene on the far right
shows her as the confident wife, stepping
majestically down from a staircase on the
arm of her husband.
The three women seated at the centre of
the painting would then represent different
kinds of love: ecstatic love, companion¬
ship, motherly love. The figure of maternal
love with the cherub on her lap is drawing
the young woman down to her.
This interpretation of the painting is
supported by the suggestive objects
brought by the little Cupids. Accompanied
by turtledoves, the symbol of conjugal
love, they hold up the torch of Hymen, the
god of marriage, strew bridal bouquets and
bear the yoke of matrimony. The peacock
at the far right of the canvas is an attribute
of Juno, the patroness of marriage.
The artist’s second marriage was as
happy as his first. “In your arms, dam'sel,
he shall grow young again,” it said in a
poem for his wedding, for she would not
let him him suffer “the perilous burdens of
ageing”.6 He was to father five children in
the ten years left to him, the last born after
his death. Helene became a rich widow; she
married again, too.
233

Venus
rules the
garden
H aving “severed the golden knot of
ambition,” Rubens retired from
the public stage. The theme of the
painting suggests he had followed the ad¬
vice of his mentor Justus Lipsius, Profes¬
sor of Philosophy at the University of
Leuven. Lipsius extolled life on the land
and the cultivation of gardens. Only far
from the golden fetters of court life was it
possible to live happily and do as one
wished.
Rubens, of course, had a garden of his
own; in 1635 he even bought an estate with
a small castle. His garden was' in the
grounds of his house at Antwerp, an im¬
posing building to which he added an ex¬
tension, built in the style of the late Re¬
naissance and containing his studio.
In order to connect his studio with the
main house, Rubens also built a portico; it
had three passageways and was supported
by massive columns, similar to those in the
234
painting. A balustrade decorated with
stone balls, like the one just visible on the
left, divided the domestic area from the
garden.
Gardens were important in the 17th cen¬
tury, partly because they were considered
status symbols. Gardens were divided into
four categories.
The common people, if they had one at
all, had a vegetable garden in which they
might also cultivate medicinal herbs.
Besides containing a vegetable patch, the
garden of a somewhat more prosperous
family would be designed with little paths
for walking and contemplation.
A nobleman, or a wealthy burgher like
Rubens, would have a landscaped garden
with grottos, arbours and summerhouses;
the parklands of princes and kings would
further contain artificial lakes and smaller
castles. The most luxurious example of the
latter was to be the later palace at Versailles.
The fact that the artist has restricted
meadows and trees to a relatively small sec¬
tion of the canvas is entirely in keeping
with contemporary views of Nature. There
was little demand for wildness at the time.
Hedges and flowerbeds were designed to
accord with a perfectly calculated, geome¬
trical scheme.
Only domesticated Nature was con¬
sidered beautiful or inviting, and gardens
therefore contained as many wells, balus¬
trades, statues and artificial grottos as
possible. A garden was seen as a kind of
open-air salon.
According to Justus Lipsius, this pro¬
vided the ideal background against which a
sophisticated gentleman might stroll and,
whether alone or in conversation with a
friend, draw lofty distinctions between the
important and less important things in life.
In upper-class society it was fairly com¬
mon for ladies and gentlemen to conduct
their rendezvous in the “park”, where they
could promenade, picnic, listen to seren¬
ades or participate in pastoral plays.
Gardens and love went hand in hand in
the 17th century. There were practical rea¬
sons for this. Palaces and large houses of¬
fered little opportunity for intimacy; too
many people lived in them; there was a
constant toing and froing of servants, and
most of the rooms served as passages to ad¬
joining rooms. It was far easier for lovers
to share their intimacies in little groves, be¬
hind hedges, or in the seclusion of a grotto.
Besides such practical considerations,
the idea of the Garden of Love, or pleas-
ance, has a place in cultural tradition and
can be traced back to notions of paradise
where human beings could live together in
happiness, surrounded by a permanently
clement, natural world. Each era had its
own version of the paradisial Garden of
Love: in the 16th century it became the evil
garden of lust, whereas in Rubens’s circle,
the Garden of Love probably symbolised
the harmony of physical and spiritual love.
The artist has included the figure of
Venus on a well in the top right corner of
painting. Water is sprinkling from the
breasts of the goddess, a sign of fertility.
She is riding a dolphin, the incarnation of
playful and tireless pleasure in love. The
shell on the portico is an attribute of Venus,
and the many cherubs, brothers of Cupid,
could be her sons: indeed, “Venus’ court of
pleasure” was another title given to the
painting.
T he painting’s title, The Love Garden,
probably dates from the eighteenth
century. During the artist’s lifetime,
works of this kind were usually referred to
in a mixture of Flemish and French as
“conversatie a la mode”.
Women
take
command
Conversatie was conversational dis¬
course, and it was a la mode since discourse
of this kind between men and women, the
easy interchange of thoughts and opinions
accompanied by flights of flirtatious wit,
was considered a particularly worthwhile
pursuit.
The new fashion of conversation had
originated in Paris as a reaction against the
rude, military tone that had dominated the
court of Flenry IV. Thus it was women
who decided the new rules and determined
what was to be considered appropriate be¬
haviour in society.
The importance attached to elegant,
witty conversation can be deduced from
the countless references to individual man¬
ners found in contemporary letters and
memoirs. Rubens was frequently praised
for the “infinite sweetness of his conversa¬
tion”.
But the new vogue of conversation was
not the only fashion to change. For almost
a hundred years the ceremonial black of
Spanish conventional decorum had domi¬
nated women’s clothes fashions at the ma¬
jority of European courts. Women were
forced to wear stiff, uncomfortable dresses
which veiled from sight all but the hands
and face and hid away their necks behind a
broad, stiff ruff. Over twenty years had
passed since Rubens had painted his first
wife, dressed in the Spanish manner, “in a
bower of honeysuckle”. In The Love Gar¬
den he presents his second wife, Helene, in
soft, flowing robes which reveal her neck,
nape and busom, and evidently please her
husband.
Like the new style of conversation, the
latest clothes fashions also came from
Paris, both attesting to a view of female
roles that departed radically from the be¬
haviour traditionally expected of women
in Spain. Spanish women were locked up at
home, their reading restricted to religious
literature. They remained uneducated and
were closely protected. French women, by
contrast, had a certain freedom of move¬
ment, and were using it to gain a dominant
position in society. One of the women in
the painting by Rubens has the air of con¬
ducting social affairs with her peacock
feather.
The liberated, confident behaviour of
women at Brussels and Antwerp must have
greatly irritated the Spanish in the Nether¬
lands, as well as leading to occasional mis¬
understandings, as may be illustrated by a
letter written to Madrid by the new Span¬
ish viceroy: “They are so free and easy, and
this allows us much opportunity. But their
careless manner of intercourse is reserved
solely for society; at home they are diffi¬
cult, and nothing can be got out of them.”7
The influence of French fashion was a re¬
flection of the growing political power of
France. Spain was still a world power, but a
weak and disorganised one. France would
determine the styles and politics of the fu¬
ture. Thus even a very private painting be¬
trays something of the changing balance of
political power in the era of its origin.
235
 Diego Velazquez: The Surrender of Breda, 1635
The victor honours a defeated enemy
The Catholic Spaniards had be¬
sieged Protestant Breda for 12
months before hunger forced the
commander of the fortress to sub¬
mit. The artist, commissioned to
celebrate Spanish victory, was
faced with a problem: few Spanish
soldiers had been present at Breda
and nothing particularly heroic
had taken place. Velazquez chose
a different subject: the noble atti¬
tude exhibited by general and
commander. The painting (3.07 x
3.70 m) is in the Prado, Madrid.
The date: 5 June 1625. The time: ten
o’clock in the morning. The commander of
the Dutch fortress of Breda hands over the
key of the town to his victorious Spanish
counterpart.
236
Spain, at the time, was the “land on which
the sun never set”, with dominions in
America, Italy and Burgundy; it comprised
the whole Iberian peninsula, including Por¬
tugal. The Netherlands, too, were a part of
the Spanish Empire; but only the Catholic
south remained loyal to the king in Madrid,
while the Protestant northern provinces re¬
belled. Breda lay on the border between the
north and the south. For the Spanish, it was
the “stronghold of Flanders” and a “sanc¬
tuary for traitors”.
The war in the Netherlands had begun
sixty years earlier; at the time, Philip II had
sent the Duke of Alba to secure Spanish
rule. Philip III then agreed to a truce. Six-
teen-year-old Philip IV, mounting the
throne in 1621, sought a decisive blow in
the north. His commander in chief in the
Netherlands, Ambrogio Spinola, had taken
Jiilich. But the king wanted Breda, too. His
council of war advised against the move: a
siege would be costly and bring little mili¬
tary advantage. But the ruler, now nineteen
years of age, sent Spinola a note with the
words: “Take Breda!” Signed: “I, the
King.”1
Spinola besieged the fortress town for
twelve months. He repulsed two relief of¬
fensives mounted by the Netherlandish
side. His own army meanwhile was decim¬
ated by epidemics. Then he received intel¬
ligence from a number of intercepted let¬
ters that the besieged were suffering from
starvation; they were on the point of sur¬
render. The capitulation was formally
signed on 2 June. The garrison withdrew
on 5 June. News of the surrender took ten
days to reach Madrid; Te Deums were sung
in every church.
Spinola offered the Dutch extraordinar¬
ily honourable terms of surrender: the
commander and all officers and soldiers
“shall, as befits brave men of war, with¬
draw fully armed in an orderly fashion; the
infantry shall leave with flags flying to the
beat of drums, their muskets charged and
slow match lit (that is, ready to do battle);
the cavalry, with cornets flying, shall leave
to the sound of trumpets, armed and
mounted as if to start a campaign”. The
conditions also permitted the commander
of the garrison to take his furniture, and
granted an amnesty to the inhabitants of
the town. On 5 June Spinola met his adver¬
sary before the town walls. He “greeted
and embraced the commandant of Nassau
warmly and, with words more amicable
still, praised the bravery and steadfastness
of the defence”. Thus the description of the
event in a report published in Antwerp in
1629.
It was the form of the surrender which
evoked the enthusiasm of the Spanish re¬
sponse. This is illustrated both in a play
written by Calderon and in the painting by
Velazquez. Calderon de la Barca was 25
years old at the time. His play, entitled The
Siege of Breda was first performed in 1625,
the year of the surrender. The poet cel¬
ebrates the meeting of the two comman¬
ders in long, elegant dialogues: “The brav¬
ery of the vanquished honours the victor,”
says Spinola’s stage persona. As for Velaz¬
quez, his chosen subject is not the depic¬
tion of Spanish troops as they repell an
enemy relief force or enter the besieged
town; nor does he paint Spinola’s horse
shot from under him; in fact, he does not
include the fortress of Breda in his compo¬
sition at all (it lies to the left of the depicted
scene).
Instead, Velazquez shows an encounter
between two human beings: one on bended
knee, the other, in a consolatory gesture,
resting his hand on the shoulder of the
first. An utterly unwarlike scene amidst the
weaponry and dogs of war.
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237
 B reda was not taken by bravery, but
by stealth and stamina. The days of
the Gueux, when the Dutch had ter¬
rorised the Spanish army with cunning
guerilla-style tactics, were over. Now was
the hour of the war of position, in which
the fighting was more like a game of chess:
units of troops shunted back and forth,
each party attemping to force his opponent
into checkmate.
The Dutch master of scientific warfare
was Maurice of Orange. Knowing how ex¬
posed to attack Breda was, he had had the
War: town turned into a model fortress. The
a chessboard commander of the fortress was the sixty-
with soldiers six-year-old Justin of Nassau; his oppo¬
238
nent was not a Spaniard, but a Genoese:
Ambrogio Spinola. Spinola was an ascetic:
cool-headed, self-denying, always ready
for action. Khevenhiiller, the Austrian am¬
bassador to Madrid, wrote: “He (Spinola)
frequently went into seclusion with the en¬
gineer Giovanni de’ Medici for many
hours to work out what the siege would
cost, how long it would last, what they
would need to sustain the alertness of the
army, and to prepare for every event¬
uality...”
Spinola was forced to wage war on two
fronts: one against the army stationed in
the garrison of Breda, the other against re¬
lief forces from without. For protection, he
built two ramparts, or defensive ijnounds,
almost entirely surrounding the town. Ve¬
lazquez has painted them in the back¬
ground. It took five hours to walk this
double ring of fortifications. The Spanish
army was encamped between the two
walls. Spinola had some of the meadows
flooded in order to provide further protec¬
tion for his army. This is suggested in the
painting, too. The boys beside the horse
are probably cadets, in training at the mili¬
tary academy in Breda. It is said that young
Protestants from all over Europe were sent
there.
As predicted by the council of war, the
Spanish investment of enormous sums of
money and gold in the campaign, as well as
the commitment of their army to the siege,
did not ultimately decide the war in their
favour.
However, military and financial ques¬
tions were by no means the sole criteria in
the eyes of 16th and 17th-century Spanish
monarchs; for they saw themselves primar¬
ily as warriors of the Church. The prov¬
inces of the Iberian peninsula had been
united by the crusade to expel the forces
of Islam. This had a lasting effect: rather
than expelling infidels, the new crusade
was directed against the Protestants. What
was worse, the Protestants had managed to
gain a foothold on Spanish soil, for the
Dutch provinces had fallen to Spain by in¬
heritance. No king worth his salt could tol¬
erate them. Freedom of religion? Quite un¬
thinkable! Any monarch in Madrid who
remained loyal to his heritage was impelled
by his religion and Spanish tradition to
take up the sword against those who had
apostatised from the Catholic faith.
Whether or not the struggle was ultimately
successful was of secondary importance.
Sosiego:
a quality befitting
S pinola had been born into a Genoese
family of merchants and raised to the
rank of Marques de los Balbases by
the victor the Spanish king. This was a great honour,
probably conferred upon him in gratitude
for military services, and possibly also be¬
cause Spinola himself embodied a virtue of
which the Spaqjsh thought most highly: so¬
siego.
One way of translating sosiego
“equanimity”. It is no accident,
example, that Spinola was reported to have
borne the trials of the siege with “serene
equanimity”. The quality of sosiego is
therefore reminiscent of the philosophy of
the ancient Stoics, according to which the
world was imbued with an elemental, di¬
vine force. Everything that happened in the
world was pre-ordained and therefore
right. A human being was to bear his des¬
tiny without protest: to accept it with
equanimity, in other words.
Calderon makes use of this idea in his
Breda drama. He makes Justin of Nassau
speak at the surrender about the pain of the
moment, but also of defeat as the will of
Destiny: a force which can crush even the
proudest state into the dust.
The Spanish word sosiego, however, does
not only mean equanimity; it also suggests
a sense of superiority. The Spanish con¬
sidered themselves the most powerful na¬
is tion in Europe: they had driven the Moors
for from the Spanish peninsula, thereby expell¬
ing Islam from Europe; they had “chris¬
tianised” America; they were the rulers of a
large part of the European continent.
Their glorious history and (supposedly)
vast power thus made it relatively easy for
them - and their generals - to display mag¬
nanimity towards an adversary. After all,
the latter could not ultimately damage
Spain, which was great, and was fighting
for the one true, Christian religion. The
state was thus acting in full accordance
with “divine force”.
239

The Spanish
no longer
wanted to fight
In Spain, the painting was often referred
to quite simply as Las Lanzas - almost a
quarter of the canvas is dominated by
lances, or pikes, which, for many centuries,
had been the symbols of military strength.
By the time of the siege of Breda, firearms
had not yet come into their own. The
Dutch used short spears. The Spanish in¬
fantry approached their enemy in tight,
oblong formations of several hundred
240
pikemen. While Calderon compared the
pike-formations with fields of corn, one
French writer described them as moving
towers, capable of immediately closing up
holes in their own brickwork. The mere
sight of such formations must have been
enough to fill the enemies’ hearts with
dread.
Under Philip II, the grandfather of the
king on the throne in 1625, Spanish sol¬
diers had been famous for their discipline.
Their perfectly vertical pikes held up in
parallel had come to symbolise military
order. Velazquez did not wish to paint a
display of military prowess, however. Not
all of the pikes are held up vertically. The
heyday of Spanish discipline was over. By
the time Velazquez came to paint this pic¬
ture, the only Spanish volunteers were ad¬
venturers and criminals on the run. The
Spanish ranks were largely composed of
foreign mercenaries who changed sides
regularly, were paid little, and placed all
hope in booty. When a military campaign
came to an end, they were dismissed, for¬
ming bands of marauders who were the
scourge of the rural population. During the
Thirty Years’ War (1618-1648), central
Europe was full of unemployed merce¬
naries looking for someone to lead them.
Those in service were frequently worse off
still. In 1629, four years after the trium¬
phant victory at Breda, a letter from Flan¬
ders arrived at the Spanish court: “The sol¬
diers are starving to death,” it reads, "and
go half-naked from door to door begging
for alms. We have reached the end of our
tether.”2
Velazquez’ pikemen are almost faceless.
Unlike the officers observing the cere¬
mony, they have kept on their hats. Per¬
haps they are watching the withdrawal of
the Dutch garrison in the background.
They would probably feel some bitterness
at the fact that their hopes of plunder had
been foiled by a gesture of sosiego for
which they would not feel the slightest
sympathy. Sosiego had nothing to do with
the reality of their lives or needs.
Spinola’s officers were Italians, Ger¬
mans and perhaps even Flemings, but there
was hardly a Spaniard among them. The
Spanish noblemen no longer wanted to
fight. They rejoiced at their monarch’s
military success, organised sumptous
feasts for his and their own pleasure, but
they no longer went to war themselves.
That was a thing of the past. Special taxes
imposed by the king on those who refused
to take the field had no effect; the nobles
preferred to pay up and stay at home,
where at least they could enjoy life. In their
minds Spain was still the greatest and most
powerful empire on earth; merely to be a
subject of the empire was enough to relieve
them of all further responsibility. If they
accepted a post at all, it was as governor of
a South American colony, for those who
returned from such posts were rich. In Eu¬
rope itself, there was little gain to be made.
With the king’s commission to paint the
siege nine or ten years after the victory at
Breda, Velazquez was instantly plunged
into a quandary. There had not been a spec-
tacular battle worth commemorating; nor
had the Spanish regiments excelled. The
soldiers’ main battles had been fought
against hunger, cold and illness. Not even
the commander had been born in Spain, let
alone most of his generals, and Spinola had
evolved his strategy with the aid of Italian
experts. What was left? There was sosiego -
a form of composure so highly thought of
in Spain that it was assumed to be arche-
typically Spanish. In fact, it had very little
to do with the reality of the siege campaign.
Portrait of a self-
confident artist
T he soldier furthest right in the paint¬
ing resembles the artist himself;
many art historians take this figure
to be a self-portrait. Velazquez was not
present at the surrender of Breda. The pan¬
oramic military landscape was probably
executed after an engraving by Jacques
Callot. He had got to know Spinola during
travels to Italy, but was unacquainted with
Justin of Nassau. The Dutch commander
probably looked older at 66 than he does in
the painting.
Velazquez painted the “surrender” for
the king’s new residence in 1634 or 1635,
nine or ten years after the historical event
itself took place. One of the main rooms of
the new palace was the Salon de Reinos, the
Salon of Kingdoms. This contained a series
of twelve large paintings celebrating the
military triumphs of Spain in the reign of
Philip IV. Spain’s greatest artists competed,
and the triumphal series attained mythical
heights in a depiction of the famous twelve
tasks of Hercules, the muscle-bound son of
Zeus, by Francisco de Zurbaran (1598—
1644).
What a contrast! A king who is unable
to pay his soldiers - lack of money had
meanwhile led to military disaster and
death for Spinola in Italy, too - builds a
residential palace with a hall devoted to his
own fame, while his realm, incapable of de¬
fending itself, falls into economic wrack
and ruin. The contrast was quite typical for
Spain at the time: economic and political
decline on the one hand, flowering of the
arts on the other, with Madrid itself the
cultural centre of Europe. Velazquez, Mu¬
rillo and Zurbaran were all painting here
during this period, as was an important
representative of the previous generation:
El Greco. Literature and the theatre were
dominated by equally important figures
such as Lope de Vega, Calderon de la
Barca, Tirso de Molina and Miguel de Cer¬
vantes.
The power of a literary text is sometimes
illustrated by the way fictional characters
leave the written page and, like Don Juan
or Don Quixote, take on a popular life of
their own. Both figures originate from this
period; Cervantes’s Don Quixote was pub¬
lished between 1605 and 1615, while Tirso
de Molina’s Don Juan was first performed
in about 1624. Furthermore, both figures
are very much the products of this period
in Spanish history. Don Juan is a noble who
rejects all social convention and duty, de¬
voting his life to pleasure and the seduction
of beautiful women: a figure who would
never have taken to the field in defence of
Catholic Spain. Don Quixote is a dreamer
whose head is full of old-fashioned Spanish
chivalry; blind to realities, he takes up the
fight against windmills.
Finally, both figures share an important
quality with General Spinola, as painted by
Velazquez; each, in his own way, demon¬
strates sosiego; each reveals that contempt
for the real world which forms an essential
component of sosiego. Don Quixote’s
failures to defend the old, chivalric values
are borne with equanimity. Don Juan
generously invites the stony-faced har¬
binger of his own death to eat at his table;
he descends to hell without remorse. Spi¬
nola, meanwhile, comforts his adversary as
if he were a friend, allowing his enemies to
hold on to weapons which they will con¬
tinue to use against Spain.
241
 ***eam£!

242
Rembrandt: Belshazzar's Feast, c. 1635

The writing on the wall

Babylon, 6th century BC: King Belshaz¬

zar gave a feast for his nobles, invited his
wives and concubines and - according to
the Old Testament - “drank wine with
them”. Defiant in his drunkenness, he
called for the sacred cups plundered from
the Temple in Jerusalem to be placed on
the table. The company drank out of them
- and thereby blasphemed the God of Is¬
rael. A hand suddenly appeared and wrote
a series of indecipherable characters on the
wall of the royal banqueting hall. The king
“turned pale with fear. Such terror gripped A fright during dinner: an un¬
him that his knees knocked together and known hand scrawls an illegible
his legs gave way beneath him”.
message on the palace wall.
This is the moment captured by Rem¬
brandt. His contemporaries would have Rembrandt was not yet 30 when
been familiar with the rest of the story. he executed this large-format
The king called for all his wise men and canvas, measuring 167 x 209 cm.
asked them to tell him what the writing
It reflects the influence of the
meant. When none of them could interpret
it, he summoned Daniel, a captive brought Caravaggisti, testifies to his
out of Judaea. Daniel was able to read the artistic ambitions, and also re¬
message “Mene mene tekel u-parsin”, veals something of the political
which he interpreted thus: “Mene means
and religious situation within
‘numbered’ - God has numbered the days
of your reign and has brought it to an end. which he had to prove himself.
Tekel means ‘weighed’- you have been The work today hangs in the
weighed on the balances and have failed in National Gallery, London.
the test. Parsin means ‘divided’ - your
kingdom has been divided and given to the
Medes and Persians.” That same night, ary relevance when Rembrandt painted his
Belshazzar was murdered. picture in Amsterdam in around 1635: the
The story of Belshazzar’s Feast is told in Netherlandish provinces were at that time
the Book of Daniel, which was composed also suffering under foreign rule, and were
by a number of authors writing at differ¬ battling for independence from their Span¬
ent times, estimated to be between 300 and ish overlords.
150 BC. Daniel himself is probably not a
historical figure, but rather a compilation
of several fragments. Christians view him
as a prophet who foretold the coming of
Christ. To the Jews, he was a wise man
who, through his unshakeable faith and
the grace of God, helped his people to sur¬
vive captivity in Babylonia. In this sense
Daniel and Belshazzar had a contempor-

243

A preference
for the
Old Testament
T he stolen gold and silver cups on
Belshazzar’s table would have re¬
minded Netherlandish viewers of
the heavy taxes and duties which they had
to pay the Spaniards. It was normal for
such parallels to be drawn, since everyone
was familiar with the stories of the Old
Testament. As pictures, they were often
hung in public buildings, particularly if
they contained an appropriate moralizing
message.
In a painting in the Haarlem leper’s hos¬
pital, for example, the prophet Elisha is
seen rejecting the gifts offered to him by
the commander Naaman, whom he had
cured of leprosy - a warning to the hos¬
pital’s attendants not to accept bribes. In a
painting which hung in the revenue office
of the Zuiderkerk church in Amsterdam,
Joseph is selling the corn that he has set
aside in years of good harvest to the starv¬
ing Egyptians - an example of good hus¬
bandry. And displayed in the courtroom
in Leiden was a painting of Susanna,
whose innocence Daniel helped to estab¬
lish in a hearing after she was harrassed
and falsely accused by two elders - a
warning to judges and lay assessors.
244
Rembrandt executed at least 32 paint¬
ings of Old Testament subjects, and there¬
by followed the contemporary trend.
There was a whole host of reasons why
biblical Jewish figures should be so pop¬
ular in art. Firstly, there were many Jews
living in the Netherlands, refugees from
Spain and Portugal. They had been par¬
ticularly welcomed in Amsterdam, since
the merchants amongst them had brought
with them capital and trade links with
overseas. They were part of the landscape;
they had their own courts, and were pro¬
tected by the city fathers - amongst other
things, from the Calvinists, who were con¬
stantly trying to prohibit the Jews from
practising their religion.
Nevertheless, around 1650 only about
five percent of Amsterdam’s 150,000 in¬
habitants were Jews, and they played no
notable role as patrons of the arts. Amster¬
dam’s citizens were taught their Old Testa¬
ment less by their Jewish fellows than by
the proximity of the Calvinist to the Jew¬
ish understanding of God.
Both Jews and Calvinists preached and
worshipped a harsh God, a strict Lord
who demanded unquestioning obedience
and a political system in line with His
laws. Unlike the God of the Catholics and
Lutherans, He was rarely willing to show
forgiveness. The Netherlands had em¬
braced the Reformation teachings not of
Martin Luther, but of the unbending John
Calvin.
It is unlikely, even so, that the Old Tes¬
tament would have found its way into
painting as often as it did, had Calvinism
not placed severe restrictions upon an
artist’s choice of subject. Calvin did not
want paintings to be worshipped; his
teachings thus forbad works of art depict¬
ing God, Jesus, Mary or the martyrs of the
Catholic Church. And because the Calvin¬
ists were the dominant influence across the
whole country, the demand for New Tes¬
tament subjects was small.
The problem of subject-matter was
compounded by the country’s lack of his¬
tory. This is made clear by a comparison
with Venice, where the walls of the Doge’s
palace were covered with the portraits of
famous past doges, with paintings of heroic
battles and a glorious past. This was not
something Amsterdam could boast. Its
wealth was only newly acquired, and prior
to the declaration of war against Spain, the
city had always been under foreign rule. It
was only through fortunate circumstance
that the small port had evolved, over the
course of the previous 100 years, into Eur¬
ope’s leading centre of trade. Amsterdam
nevertheless remained a city without a
paintable history. It certainly had no her¬
oes who could hope to compare with the
famous figures of the Old Testament.
Influences
from Italy

T he Dutch described themselves as

“new Hebrews” and called their
country a “Netherlandish Israel”,
and they drew the models both for their
heroes and their enemies from the Old
Testament. A caricature of 1645 shows a
tottering Castilian tower and, in the sky
beside it, the foreboding “Mene mene
tekel u-parsin”. In leaflets and sermons,
the Spanish king was derided sometimes as
Belshazzar, sometimes as the wicked
Pharaoh. When the Spanish laid seige to
the town of Leiden in 1574, the Dutch de¬
stroyed the dykes; a historian described
the citizens of Leiden as “the Israelites
crossing the Red Sea. The water protected
them and drowned their enemies.”
Rembrandt was born in Leiden in 1606.
The war had all but ceased; mercenaries
continued to fight in the border regions,
but with little enthusiasm. Rembrandt
trained in Leiden and Amsterdam. Al¬
though he himself did not make the trip to
Italy which had become the convention
for artists at that time, he studied under
painters who had - and through their work
he encountered the influence of Cara¬
vaggio and his circle. These Caravaggisti
were no longer interested in the classical
beauty and ideal proportions sought by movement to indicate shock. She shrinks a crown, and thus lends the man from the
the painters of the Renaissance, but instead away from the sinister writing and thereby East a royal symbol from the West.
painted from real-life models and loved spills the contents of her goblet - and The brilliant white light shines against a
powerful movement and dramatic lighting. whereas all the other figures are shown dark background - powerful effects of
Belshazzar’s Feast shows Rembrandt, from the side, she is seen from above. We chiaroscuro became one of the hallmarks
now around 30 years old, processing the look down on her neck and see the swell of of Rembrandt’s art. During the period in
influences of the Italians. The most import¬ her bosom below her throat. Rembrandt which he executed Belshazzar’s Feast, the
ant source of light is the writing, which creates a dramatically foreshortened view painter was combining contrasts of light
masks a second light source beyond the of her body sitnply through the interplay and dark with animated movements and
left-hand edge of the painting. It is so daz¬ of light and shade. unusual perspectives - as in the case of the
zling that the viewer is unable to make out From what we can see of her dress, it king’s companion with the beautiful neck.
either the wall or the room. The scene is seems to correspond to the style of cloth¬ Some critics are gently disparaging
thus robbed of its stabilizing framework. ing worn in Amsterdam in Rembrandt’s about Rembrandt’s early, large-format
It is entirely dominated by the figure of day. Historical figures in contemporary works - Belshazzar’s Feast measures 167 x
Belshazzar, leaping to his feet and raising dress were quite acceptable. Knowledge ol 207 cm. For them, Rembrandt only came
his left arm in a defensive gesture. In past fashions was very limited, and both into his own when he took the animation
putting out his right hand to support him¬ painters and viewers contented themselves out of his pictures and portrayed the light
self, he has missed the table top and caught in biblical scenes with exotic details, added as issuing less from outside than from the
the lid of a large dish. In addition to these according to taste. Men in turbans, for faces themselves. But to skip over these
hasty movements, he is also turning his example, had already featured in Rem¬ large works is to do an injustice to Rem¬
head, looking away from his guests and brandt’s paintings on many earlier occa¬ brandt’s oeuvre. His flamboyant, “Ba¬
over his shoulder to the rear. sions, but none had a headdress as magni¬ roque” works have a quality of their own
In the woman on the right of the pic¬ ficent as the turban worn by Belshazzar. and fully deserve their place alongside his
ture, too, Rembrandt has used violent Rembrandt also gives the King of Babylon “still” paintings.

245
Rembrandt's
staring eyes
A s part of the Rembrandt Research
Project, over the past few years
academics have made a close study
of almost all the paintings attributed to the
artist, with the aim of establishing which
ones truly stem from his own hand. Des¬
pite some doubts, Belshazzar’s Feast has
been pronounced a genuine Rembrandt.
The doubts concern the left-hand third
of the painting, whose composition is less
satisfactory than the rest of the canvas,
suggesting that it may have been executed
by Rembrandt’s workshop. X-rays have
also revealed that several figures in the
semi-darkness have been overpainted,
with only the girl playing the recorder still
visible. The remaining characters in the
left half of the picture seem unhappily
crowded; while this may be justified as a
reaction to the king’s spontaneous move¬
ment, it spoils the composition.
The faces in this painting are character¬
ized by their staring eyes, portrayed with
detailed precision in case of the bearded
man and the woman with the string of
pearls in her hair, but also evident in the
girl playing the recorder behind them and
in King Belshazzar himself: his exposed
iris and raised eyebrows lend his profile an
expression of horror.
The young Rembrandt made a study of
himself wearing this expression in the mir¬
ror, and devoted particular attention to the
246
portrayal of eyes throughout his life. Sight
is a recurrent theme within his oeuvre, as
for example in The Blinding of Samson
and a painting of Tobias healing his blind
father. Perhaps Rembrandt’s father was
himself blind, or perhaps the artist feared
for his own eyesight - whatever, the sub¬
ject was clearly one which preoccupied
him.
The two guests on Belshazzar’s right are
characterized not just by wide-staring
eyes, but also by slightly open mouths.
The king, on the other hand, presses his
lips together. In making this distinction,
Rembrandt was following - probably un-
conciously - a visual tradition dating back
hundreds of years, whereby rulers and her¬
oes were not painted with their mouths
open. Instead, they displayed composure
and did not let their feelings show. Only
children and persons of low rank, such as
the stooped old man and the woman be¬
side him, opened their mouths in astonish¬
ment or fear. Rulers, according to pictorial
etiquette, were also masters of themselves.
Like almost all the female figures in
Rembrandt’s paintings from this period,
the woman with the string of pearls across
her brow looks like his wife Saskia, whom
he married in 1634. Rembrandt was the
son of a miller, Saskia the daughter of a
well-to-do mayor from Friesland. For
Rembrandt, the marriage spelled social ad¬
vancement, leading in 1639 to his buying a
house in fashionable Breestraat in Amster¬
dam.
Later admirers of his art have liked to
stylize him as an outsider who despised so¬
ciety. But in this phase of his life, at least,
that was not at all the case: he wanted suc¬
cess, and he got it. Rather than painting
landscapes and genre scenes like most of
his colleagues, he concentrated - alongside
portraits - upon large-format history
paintings, at that time considered the high¬
est form of art. Belshazzar’s Feast falls into
this category. The artist employed appren¬
tices and journeymen even as a young man,
having them paint in his style and signing
their works. It may be that Rembrandt is
expressing something of his own attitude
to life in the figure of the King - not in his
expression of fear, but in his ruler-like ges¬
ture of all-powerful authority.
The secret
of the writing

In most paintings of Belshazzar’s Feast,

the ominous writing on the wall is actu¬
ally omitted. It was visible, the artists of
these works might have argued, only to
Belshazzar and Daniel, who would inter¬
pret its meaning in accordance with God’s
wishes - but not to the general public.
This was why the wise men of Babylon
were unable to read it or say what it
meant: they simply couldn’t see it.
Those artists who did include the “mene
mene tekel u-parsin” in their paintings
transcribed it into Latin, to make it easier
for the humanistically-educated viewer to
understand. Rembrandt may well be the
only painter to give the inscription in Heb¬
rew. He probably drew upon the assist¬
ance of the rabbi Menasseh ben Israel, of
whom he had already made an etching and
for whom he executed a number of book
dlustrations. The inscription is also given
in one of Menasseh ben Israel’s essays in
exactly the same order of characters as in
Rembrandt’s painting.
But even for those familiar with the Heb¬
raic script, the writing cannot be easily
deciphered. Hebrew is normally read ho¬
rizontally from right to left. Menasseh ben
Israel and Rembrandt, however, arrange that his painting may have been destined continue to command great admiration
the letters vertically from top to bottom, for a Jewish customer. Their identity, and a good price: in cities such as Frank¬
and only then from right to left. The hand however, is unknown. furt and Hamburg, characterized by their
writing them on the wall is thus located Barely 100 years later, the painting sur¬ confidently prosperous middle classes, in a
bottom left not on artistic grounds, but for faced in England. It was acquired by the number of Protestant German courts -
the logical reason that it has reached the Earl of Derby and remained in the posses¬ and in England.
final character. Even those who could see sion of his family until being purchased by Rembrandt died in 1669; even in the
the writing, therefore, were not able to the National Gallery in London in 1964, Netherlands, interest in his work had de¬
make immediate sense of it-since as Jewish since when it has been accessible to the clined. The upper classes were now orient¬
experts surmise, the text consisted of terms general public. ing themselves towards their powerful
for money and weights which only made The fact th^t the painting ended up in neighbour, France. There had been a gen¬
sense in the light of Daniel’s interpretation: England is a reflection of the radical polit¬ eral decline, too, in interest in the charac¬
“numbered, weighed, divided”. ical and cultural changes taking place in ters of the Old Testament. Their services -
Encoded messages of this kind were one Europe at that time. In 1648 the Peace of as figures with whom one could identifiy -
of the practices of the cabbala, the secret Westphalia guaranteed the independence were no longer required: the Dutch were
Jewish lore, and the question why one of the Netherlands. Spanish hegemony no longer “new Hebrews”. Since 1648
person could read the text while others was on the wane. The France of Louis they had had their own sovereign state
couldn’t was one which preoccupied many XIV became the leading power in Europe whose independence was acknowledged
a 17th-century mind. Calvin brushed aside - and Versailles the arbiter of artistic taste. by all.
all the theories and declared that God had From now on, paintings were governed by
only made the writing visible to Belshaz¬ classical harmony and restraint; moments
zar and David. This was probably the gen¬ of shock and fear, blinding lights, women
eral opinion amongst Christians in Ams¬ falling off their chairs, open mouths and
terdam in Rembrandt’s day. The fact that the furrowed faces of Rembrandt’s late
Rembrandt nevertheless shows the writ¬ period were no longer the order of the day.
ing, albeit in a cryptic fashion, suggests Only in centres far from Paris did they

247
 Jacob Jordaens: The King Drinks, 1640/45
Tho' our wealthy days be
done,
here's to a life of luxury
“The King drinks!” was a toast pro¬
nounced by the assembled company when
an old man wearing a crown raised his cup
to his lips - whereupon everyone drained
their glasses. Such was the custom at the
Twelfth Night feast in many Catholic
countries of Europe. The 6th of January is
still widely celebrated today, if not with the
roistering gusto exhibited by the revellers
in the painting. Some are shown yelling at
the tops of their voices, others gesticulate
wildly; one is depicted in the act of vomit¬
ing. It seems that none of the company
takes umbrage at a proverb fixed to the
wall at the back: “Nil similius insano quam
ebrius”, or “Nothing resembles the mad¬
man more than a drunkard.”
Light at the window suggests a daytime
scene. Feasts of this kind would last from
noon until midnight, the revellers keeping
themselves amused between courses with
songs and games. The Twelfth Night Feast,
also called the “Feast of the Bean-King”,
was an occasion to which relatives, special
friends and servants were invited. Children
would also partake and, like the blonde girl
in the foreground, were sometimes
allowed a sip from the wine-glass. Cats and
dogs completed the scene.
248
Jacob Jordaens (1593-1678) probably
used his family and servants as models for
this scene, setting it in his own house in
Hoogstraat, Antwerp. The picture was ex¬
ecuted between 1640 and 1645. Business
was good; the artist was highly successful,
and paintings of this kind sold particularly
well. Twelfth Night festivities had provided
the subject for six of his paintings. He
devoted a similar number of canvases to
yet another company at table. These were
entitled: “As the old cock crows, the young
cock learns”. Both sets of paintings cel¬
ebrated values that were greatly cherished
by his clientele: the family, prosperity, plea¬
sure. Coarse detail, such as the drinker
vomiting, was not considered inappropri¬
ate here. Other works depict children wait¬
ing for adults to clean their bottoms.
An imposing format was important to
buyers; this work, now at the Kunsthistori-
sches Museum in Vienna, measures 242 by
300 cm. A large number of figures was also
important. Most of Jordaens’ commissions
came from the wealthy bourgeoisie of the
southern Netherlands, a region roughly
equivalent to today’s Belgium. At that time,
it was part of the Spanish Empire.
Both the southern and northern prov¬
inces had attempted to gain independence
from Spanish rule; following a protracted
struggle, the north alone had been success¬
ful. As a result, the northern provinces
flourished, while trade in the south stag¬
nated. Jordaens’ patrons had lost much of
their business and were forced to draw on
the amassed wealth of fatter years. This
may explain their predilection for the ar¬
tist’s portrayal of them as folk whose zest
for life appeared quite unbroken.
Ownership of this painting eluded
them, however. Instead, it was acquired by
a Habsburg: Leopold Wilhelm, the Spanish
viceroy at Brussels. In 1656, he left for
Vienna, taking the painting with him.
249

A mediocre painter -
but a great boozer
T he popular figure of the old man
wearing a golden, pasteboard crown
is no stranger to Jordaens’ work. He
is Jordaens’ father-in-law, Adam van
Noort, a member of Jordaens’ household
until his death at the age of eighty. Al¬
though a mediocre painter, Van Noort be¬
came one of Antwerp’s more wealthy
citizens. His status in the history of art,
however, is based solely on the reputation
of his two famous pupils: Peter Paul
Rubens and Jacob Jordaens.
The old man’s crown distinguishes him
as the King of the Feast. It was customary
in Antwerp to determine the king and
queen of the feast and members of their
court by drawing lots. Lots, called “billets
de roi”, were hawked on the streets on the
days before the 6th January. Two such
250
tickets, inscribed “Sanger” (minstrel) and
“Hofmester” (Controller of the Royal
Household), are seen on the floor between
the dog and the cat, while others are worn
by the guests: the man with the fish is the
Carver; the “billet” pinned to the hat of the
vomiting drinker identifies him as
“medezijner” (doctor of medicine). The
drawing of lots does not appear to have de¬
cided the "cast” of Jordaens’ paintings,
however; the oldest man is always the king,
and the most beautiful woman is always
queen.
In some parts, a bean or coin was hidden
in a cake; whoever found it was king, and
would choose his own entourage. The
painting, like so many other depictions of
the same theme - by Jan Steen for example
- is also known as “The Feast of the Bean-
King”. Pieces of Twelfth Cake were cut not
only for the guests, as the 16th-century
German preacher and chronicler Sebastian
Franck observed: “To honour God”, he
wrote, pieces were kept for Jesus, the Vir¬
gin Mary and the Magi. As soon as lots had
been drawn, the new king was lifted into
the air three times, to the applause of the
assembled company. According to Franck,
the king then went solemnly about the
house chalking crosses on floorboards and
beams to ward off evil spirits and ill luck.
Ritual ceremonies of this kind were held
throughout the Catholic countries of Eu¬
rope; in some places, the tradition remains
unbroken to this day.
The 6th of January had always been a
significant date in the Christian calendar.
The birth of Christ had originally been cel¬
ebrated on this day. After a long dispute
between various communities in the
Christian world, the date had been brought
forward to the 25th of December. The new
Christmas was evidently intended to dis¬
place popular pagan festivals which had
taken place on that day: the rites of the
Egyptian goddess Isis, for example, or the
Nativity of the “Sol Invictus”, the Uncon¬
quered Sun, celebrated throughout the
Roman Empire.
From now on, Christian believers no
longer celebrated the corporeal Nativity of
Christ on 6th January, but a spiritual birth.
The day was now reserved for the festival
of the Epiphany, the day of baptism and
manifestation of Christ’s glory. Christ had
manifested himself to the Gentiles in the
person of the wise men of the East. Popular
belief saw the Magi not only as expert as¬
trologers who had followed a star to Beth¬
lehem, but also as scientists and magicians.
They thus had practically become auxiliary
saints with the power to ward off evil,
a
guard against fire, sickness and
weather, or, since they had come so far
themselves, give protection to travellers.
bad
Their names, Caspar, Melchior and Baltha¬
sar, were sometimes invoked in blessings.
In the 9th century, the three wise men,
now promoted to the status of kings, were
adopted by the Christian liturgy. From the
11th century onwards, their day was
marked by carol-singing and entertain¬
ments. The tradition of sumptuous feasting
can be traced back as far as the 14th cen¬
tury: it was customary, following the ser¬
vice at Epiphany, for the deans of churches
in the north of France to invite their chap¬
ter to a banquet at which they would
preside as King of the Feast. Groaning
tables were greeted as a presage of good
fortune in the new year; left-over food met
with disapproval.
S umptuous banquets lasting several
days at a time were also held on other
occasions. These were expensive for
the host and, since they frequently ended
in excessive drinking and brawling, a thorn
in the side of the authorities. The govern¬
ment did what they could to contain such
dissipation, but even the “Decree against
Occasions
for revelry
excessive behaviour at weddings and ex¬
cursions for the purpose of banqueting”
from 1613 was no more effective than pre¬
vious decrees.
The Guild of St. Luke at Antwerp, a
professional association of painters, had
been founded to provide mutual assistance
in time of sickness and distress. During the
17th century, however, the Guild was
much given to the organisation of festi¬
vities. Practically its entire income was
spent on an annual banquet held on St.
Luke’s Day. It is therefore hardly surpris¬
ing that Jordaens attempted - in vain - to
decline his election to the post of Dean of
the Guild in 1621. He presumably felt that
he would be unable to foot the enormous
bill for expenses which he knew his new
office would bring. Even death provided
opportunities for revelry. No fewer than
four funeral feasts were held at Antwerp to
mark the occasion of Rubens’s death in
1640: one by his friends and next of kin at
the house of the deceased; another, at the
Town Hall, by the members of the Town
Council; a third, for the Romanist
Brotherhood, took place at an inn called
“The Marigold”; while the fourth, a feast
organised by the Guild of St. Luke, was
held at an inn called “The Hart”.
Feasting was widespread even in monas¬
teries and convents. On the occasion of one
young lady taking the veil at the Falcon
Convent at Antwerp on 10 February
1664, the convent archives report a celeb¬
ratory feast attended by 19 guests who,
between them, ate “20 half-stivers-worth
of white bread, a boiled leg of mutton, two
hams, two pieces of salted meat, three
bowls of rice, three bowls of mutton stew
with vegetables, sausages and dumplings,
and three bowls of plum puree. That was
the first course.”1 This was followed by
two equally abundant courses, the whole
feast being repeated on the following day.
Even when festivals like the Twelfth Night
were celebrated within the family, at least a
dozen substantial dishes would usually be
served. The guests in the painting have al¬
ready eaten their fill, leaving the table al¬
most empty, although one of the ladies is
still shown picking at her food with a fork.
The only other visible food consists of a
half-eaten pie, a few pieces of orange and,
at the other end of the table, a few prawns
to go with the alcohol, or perhaps to en¬
courage thirst, like the salted herring one
guest is depicted as dangling above his
open mouth.
A custom linked with the Twelfth Night
feast was the practice of looking up at the
stars through the chimney. The number of
stars counted by the viewer determined the
number of glasses of wine he was then per¬
mitted to drink. The rummers of the cel¬
ebrants were probably filled with Rhine
wine and Moselle. “Taking away a Flem¬
ing’s glass,” wrote one French traveller in
the 18th century, “would be like cutting off
the roots by which a tree draws up its
sap.”2 Almost two thirds of Dutch genre
paintings depict drinking scenes in the
home or the tavern. Even ceremonial
group portraits capture highly respectable
town councillors in the act of raising their
glasses.
251
C ardinal Infante Ferdinand, a prede¬
cessor of Leopold Wilhelm as Vice¬
roy of the Spanish Netherlands,
once visited Antwerp’s great fair. Filled
with disgust, he reported what he had seen
to his brother, King Philip IV. After the
procession, he wrote, “the people sat down
to eat and drink until eventually they were
all drunk. It is apparently impossible to
celebrate any other way here. They live like
veritable animals.”3
For the Spanish, concerned above all
They live like
veritable animals
252
things with posture and bearing, a drunk
was someone utterly lacking in human dig¬
nity. “Drunkard” was considered so viol¬
ent a term of abuse that its use could pro¬
voke a duel. The example quoted above re¬
veals how distant were relations between
the Spanish and the Dutch, who had been
brought together by a royal marriage and
inheritance. In the 16th century, the Span¬
ish Habsburgs had inherited the 17 rich
Netherlandish provinces (today’s Belgium,
Holland and Luxemburg) as part of Bur¬
gundy. King Philip II’s policy of centralis¬
ing power and his intolerance drove the
freedom-loving, partly Protestant Dutch
to rebel against their Spanish, Catholic
overlords. After eighty years, the struggle
was concluded by the terms of the Treaty
of Westphalia in 1648: the northern prov¬
inces would receive their independence as
a Calvinist “Republic of the United Prov¬
inces of the Netherlands”; the southern
provinces, meanwhile, remained under
Spanish rule - politically disabled, strictly
Catholic and economically feeble.
Jordaens painted his Twelfth Night feast
during the final phase of the struggle, be¬
tween 1640 and 1645. The fighting had all
but ceased, especially as far as the southern
provinces were concerned. Spain, with its
incompetent burocracy, chronic lack of
money and demoralised army, had relin¬
quished its former military power.
Even if it had managed to hold on to the
southern provinces, Spain proved inca¬
pable of defending the strategically im¬
portant Scheldt estuary. A blockade im¬
posed by the northern provinces cut Ant¬
werp off from the North Sea trade routes
to which it owed its affluence.
An Englishman travelling in the south¬
ern provinces described the “devastated
countryside, demoralised inhabitants... an
impoverished nobility and degenerate
merchant class... towns destroyed...
general poverty”.4 This had been written
some time before Jordaens painted his pic¬
ture. In the meantime, however, Antwerp
had largely been rebuilt and the causes of
the acuter misery eliminated. A century
earlier, the town had been one of the richest
trading centres of the world; now it had
lost half its inhabitants. The English and
Italian banks had fled. In 1648, the Munici¬
pal Library moved into the empty Stock
Exchange.
The cultivation of entrepreneurial skills
was practically taboo in a country where
aristocratic pedigree and land ownership
were all that counted. The sons of once
prosperous merchants now gave up their
fathers’ business and set about purchasing
titles and estates.
Strict censorship by the Catholic
Church inhibited art and cultural develop¬
ment; French became the dominant lan¬
guage, replacing the indigenous Flemish
tongue, which was now thought fit only
for “the tavern and the kitchen”. At the
same time, this had the effect of robbing
the people of pride in their national inde¬
pendence and past achievements. All that
was left now was retreat into the privacy of
their own homes, where they could hold
feasts, and talk, sing, yell and swear in
Flemish as much as they liked.
Bourgeois domestic
scenes

T he chubby-faced blonde drinking

from a wine-giass with such aban¬
don turns up repeatedly in the ar¬
tist’s work. She was probably one of his
daughters. Jordaens would often use the
same motif over and over again. He did this
more often than other artists, finding it
hard to paint from the imagination. More¬
over, the constant stream of commissions
he received during the second half of his
life left him little time to invent new scenes.
The demand for his services ran to altar-
pieces, pagan mythology and bourgeois
domestic scenes.
Rubens, sixteen years Jordaens’ senior,
had spent decades of his life supplying
wealthy patrons throughout Europe with
the Christian genre pieces and mythologi¬
cal themes favoured during the age of abso¬
lutism and the Counter-Reformation. Like
Jordaens, Rubens lived in Antwerp, and
both artists had shared the same master.
Jordaens occasionally assisted at Rubens’
studio, for even a tireless genius like
Rubens was only capable of meeting the
great demand for his work with the aid of a
workshop run almost along factory lines. an ordinary citizen. His best customers his northern contemporaries. Instead, he
In 1637/38, Rubens was commissioned were affluent townsfolk. Finally, unlike favoured the lavish Baroque style so ably
to paint a series of 56 allegorical paintings Rubens, he did not receive commissions and peerlessly promoted by Rubens.
for the King of Spain over a period of 15 from the most important churches in the However, Rubens had never intended his
months. To meet this demand, a team of land. The powerful, aristocratically- style to be applied to crude, everyday re¬
otherwise independent artists had to work minded Jesuits, for example, had never ality. On the contrary, he had chosen to
under Rubens’ direction. One member of sought his services. paint fantasy worlds in which the fortunes
this team was Jacob Jordaens, who was At about this time, a new and highly idio¬ of rulers were directed by the gods. His
considered a competent, minor painter. syncratic bourgeois art was emerging in the drunkards appeared in the guise of Sileni,
One year later, in 1639, the English court northern provinces, which had emanci¬ frolicking in the company of Bacchantes.
considered giving a particularly large com¬ pated themselves from their Spanish, aristo¬ The Baroque pathos of the style con¬
mission to Jordaens instead of Rubens. cratic overlords. Instead of the usual port¬ trasts with the painting’s somewhat banal
Jordaens, after all, did not charge as much. raits of rulers,^artists there were painting subject. Jacob Jordaens has painted a small
Rubens died in 1640, one year before the groups; and instead of mythological scenes, world in a grand manner. The sweeping
other great Flemish painter of the period, quotidian scenes from the limited world of gestures seem too large for the narrow in¬
Anthony van Dyck. Their deaths made the tranquil bourgeois interior were now terior, and the expression of mirth on some
Jordaens the pre-eminent artist of the considered worthy of art. Artists such as of the faces has a static, almost masklike
southern Netherlands. As a result, he was Gerard Terborch and Pieter de Hooch, and quality. This contradiction reflects some¬
able to take on more pupils. His wealth and later also Jan Vermeer, painted small, un¬ thing of a dilemma in the southern prov¬
reputation quickly grew, although his fame pretentious scenes from everyday life with inces, whose citizens would have liked
would never match up to that of Rubens. very few figures. These artists formed the nothing better than to live in the grand
Jordaens lacked Rubens’ international avant-garde in a Europe otherwise domi¬ style they had enjoyed in the old days.
clientele, and his work was less sought after nated by grandiose Baroque display. Only those days were over.
in aristocratic circles. Unlike Rubens, he Although executed under Spanish rule, The economic centres now lay to the
had never left Flanders; nor did he share Jordaens’s images of boozing and gluttony north. The citizens of the south had grown
Rubens’ experience of diplomacy or life at also depict everyday scenes in bourgeois poorer. Their feelings of impotence and
court. Whereas Rubens had risen to the interiors. But Jordaens’ works have noth¬ fear are hidden behind an emphatic display
ranks of the aristocracy, Jordaens remained ing of the plain candour demonstrated by of vitality and joie de vivre.

253
254
Diego Velazquez:
Venus at her Mirror (The Rokeby Venus), c. 1646

A nude for the pious king

In 1914 this painting was attacked with a Velazquez’ Venus ranks

knife in the National Gallery in London.
amongst the most famous
The offence was committed by a woman:
she slashed the hips and back of the reclin¬
nudes in the history of Euro¬
ing Venus, in what she intended as a con¬ pean art. She was painted in a
tribution to the battle for the equality of country in which the portrayal
the sexes. of a naked woman was socially
It seems understandable that she should
choose this picture in particular. Few other
taboo and officially forbidden.
paintings celebrate, so aesthetically and Unless the work was commis¬
alluringly, the reduction of Woman to a sioned by the king himself.
physical body, to the object of male desire.
But even he was only granted -
Venus’ face, which might reveal something
of her individuality and mind, is blurred in
or only requested - a modest
the mirror, while her curving pelvis is rear view.
placed in the centre of the composition.
The dark sheet sets off Venus’ pale skin to
particular advantage and is almost like a nude by a Spanish artist until Goya’s
dish on which the beautiful goddess is pre¬ Naked Maja of around 1800. It was still
sented. risky to paint a nude woman even in
In contrast to contemporary Italian and Goya’s day.
Netherlandish portrayals of nudes, Diego
Velazquez includes neither landscape, nor
room, nor maid - nothing which might
distract the attention. The only other fig¬
ure present is Cupid. The winged boy was
someone the painter could not omit, for
Cupid shows that Velazquez is painting a
mythological figure, Venus, and not a real
woman.
But in 17th-century Spain, even that
was dangerous. The Inquisition had eyes
everywhere, and anyone painting “lascivi¬
ous” pictures, as they were called, faced a
fine of 500 ducats, excommunication and a
year in exile. Perhaps Velazquez portrayed
his Venus from the rear for safety’s sake,
and not just to tease the imagination. Per¬
haps he was playing it safe, too, with the
reflection in the mirror: according to the
laws of optics, it should in fact reveal the
young woman’s abdomen and bosom.
Four Venus paintings are believed to
have issued from Velazquez’ workshop,
but only this one, measuring 123 x 177 cm,
has survived. Indeed, it is the only known

255

Melancholy,
weak-willed,
licentious
A s court painter, Diego Velazquez’
main task was to paint the royal
family. He executed some dozen
portraits of Philip IV, always wearing the
same serious, melancholy expression. Such
official portraits were mostly exchanged
between courts. Velazquez worked inside
the Alcazar, the royal palace in Madrid.
The king often visited him in his studio:
“Sometimes Philip came every day, often
accompanied by the queen”. There thus
arose a certain degree of familiarity be¬
tween the king and his painter, as far as the
differences in their rank permitted.
Velazquez was born in Seville in 1599;
256
connections gained him entry to the royal
court in Madrid, and in 1623 his remark¬
able talents earned him the privilege of be¬
ing the sole artist allowed to paint the
king. He retained this prerogative right up
to his death in 1660. In 1643 Velazquez
was made a court chamberlain and ap¬
pointed head of the royal collections and
buildings. These official posts brought
him income and social standing, but cur¬
tailed the amount of time he had available
for painting. It seems probable that he
only produced eleven pictures in the
1640s, amongst them the so-called Fraga
portrait of the king, and between 1644 and
1648 the Venus at her Mirror.
His low output during this period was
also linked to the gloomy situation at
court: Queen Isabella died in 1644, fol¬
lowed two years later by Baltasar Carlos,
the young heir to the throne. The political
situation was similarly bleak. In 1640 Por¬
tugal and Catalonia rebelled, in 1642 and
1643 the Spanish army was twice heavily
defeated by the French, and in the Peace
of Westphalia of 1648, Philip was obliged
to accept that the Protestant Netherlands
no longer belonged to Spain. The idea of
a Catholic Europe under Spanish rule,
conceived by Philip’s great-grandfather
Charles V, was finally destroyed.
These catastrophic developments caused
the king much anguish, but he exerted no
controlling influence upon them. He left
all decision-making to his favourite, the
power-hungry Duke Olivares. Philip was
exceptionally weak-willed, a product of
Habsburg in-breeding whose public life
was regulated entirely by court etiquette.
This laid down exactly what he had to do,
and even how he should walk: “... all his
actions and occupations are always the
same and unfold at exactly the same pace
day after day, so that he knows what he
will be doing all his life”, noted a contem¬
porary. ... he walks with the air of a living
statue".
This apparent statue was deeply reli¬
gious, was pained by his own inabilities,
compensated for his political passivity
with furious hunting and a licentious sex¬
ual life, and then suffered the decline of his
empire as a personal punishment from
God for his sins. After the deaths of his
wife and son, bouts of depression and de¬
bauchery became frequent occurrences. It
was during these years, or so it would
seem likely, that Velazquez painted him
the Venus at her Mirror.
The work is undated, but probably
arose before Velazquez’ trip to Italy in
1648 and after the death of the queen in
1644, since the latter was forbidden by
court etiquette to set eyes on naked flesh.
Any offending pictures inside the palace
were draped before the queen walked past
them.
Venus at her Mirror is first mentioned in
an inventory by Gaspar de Haro, the son
of a new favourite. The inventory was
compiled on 1 June 1651, when Velazquez
was still in Italy. It is most unlikely that
Velazquez had executed the work prior to
his departure for the young Gaspar de
Haro, who at that time was only 22. For
Caspar’s father, perhaps? Whatever the
case, the painting was completed in the
palace, under the eye of the king and in all
probability for the monarch himself - as a
source of solace and distraction.
A n actress caused a
Madrid when it became known
scandal
that she liked to drape her bed in
sheets of black taffeta. Velazquez employs
the disreputable fabric for probably the
same reason as the actress - to set off the
colour of Venus’ skin and the contours of
her body to particular advantage.
The model for Venus was probably one
of the king’s mistresses, who were fre¬
quently drawn from the world of theatre.
It was his ambition to be known as the
best hunter and most successful lover in
the kingdom. The cult of the lover and
ladies’ man was widespread in the Spain of
his day. Every man who could afford it
kept a mistress. There were 30,000 prosti¬
tutes - according to a French visitor - in
Madrid alone, representing ten percent of
the population. Alongside a mistress from
the demimonde and a wife to look after
the house and children, a man from the
upper classes also addressed his suit to a
woman “of station”, to whom he made
gifts, for whom he fought duels, whom he
publicly adored and occasionally,
doubt, seduced. It was no coincidence
in that, during this same period, the story of
Don Juan should make its way onto the
stage and become so popular.
The author of the play, the monk Tirso
de Molina, was interested not in the adven¬
tures of the daredevil seducer alone, but
rather in his consequent damnation. Sin is
followed by divine punishment. This was
what the king also believed. The fact that
his mistresses, once he had finished with
them, had to go into a nunnery had less to
do with religion than hierarchy: a woman
who had been enjoyed by the king was not
allowed to be touched by any other man.
Just as a horse that he had ridden was not
allowed to be mounted by anyone else.
The suggestion that the painter took a
specific woman as the model for his Venus
is reinforced by the colour of her hair. Had
he been portraying an idealized Venus, he
would have made her blonde, at that time
the most popular colour. Blonde like the
Habsburg princesses from Vienna. Fully
in line with the Spanish notion of beauty,
too, is Venus’ slender figure, particularly
no striking in comparison to the contempor¬
ary Venuses of Rubens and Titian. “To my
taste, all they lack is embonpoint”, ob¬
served Madame d’Aulnoy, a French aristo¬
crat, of Spanish women. “That is no flaw
in this country, where they like one to be
thin and to be no more than skin and
bones.”
The dresses worn at the Spanish court
revealed almost nothing of the body,
which remained hidden beneath geometric
forms: a stiff, triangular bodice and a
broad, cylindrical skirt, which disguised
even the fact that a woman was pregnant.
Only the face and hands could be exposed
to a foreign gaze. These are precisely what
Velazquez keeps hidden or unclear - a
goddess as the counterpart to court con¬
vention, a body for Don Juanesque fant¬
asies.
Perhaps one
of the
king's mistresses
257
A round 1640 Velazquez painted a
large Coronation of the Virgin
with cloud-bearing putti, Christ
and God the Father holding an exquisite
coronet above the Virgin’s head. Fler face
resembles that of Venus. The same model?
The same girl as the goddess of lust and
the Virgin Mary, one painted for the pri¬
vate chapel of the queen, the other for the
private quarters of the king?
Since “respectable” women were not al-
Venus and the
Virgin Mary -
the same model
258
lowed to sit for artists, it is plausible that
Velazquez may have used the same model
twice. Nor, most likely, would anyone
have found this shocking. For the idea that
Virgin and Venus were two aspects of
Woman, that whore and saint did not lie so
very far apart, as moral theologians be¬
lieved, was a widespread topic of debate in
Europe, and probably also in Spain, where
the faithful worshipped the Virgin Mary
with especial fervour. The dogma of the
Immaculate Conception, only proclaimed
by Rome at the end of the 19th century,
was already being preached in Spain in the
17th century. The entire population com¬
mitted itself to fighting for this doctrine,
from the Cortes, Spain’s supreme parlia¬
mentary assembly, right down — so it is re¬
ported - to the criminals in the prisons of
Seville. One of the symbols for the virgin
birth was the mirror, since a mirror ab¬
sorbs and reflects the sinful world without
losing its own purity. Mary and Venus
have this symbol in common. In the case of
the goddess of love, the mirror refers to
vanity; although it is absent from Velaz¬
quez’ Coronation of the Virgin, it is pres¬
ent in a Madonna by Murillo (1618-1682).
The contrast between the cult of the
Virgin and that of Venus, between ecstatic
devoutness and the example set by Don
Juan, was something which constantly
astounded foreigners in Spain. What they
found particularly astonishing was the ex¬
tent to which women’s expectations were
shaped by their Don Juan image of men.
Madame d’Aulnoy quotes “one of the
grandest and most virtuous ladies of the
court” thus: “I swear, if a cavalier has had a
tete-a-tete with me for half an hour with¬
out asking of me everything one can ask, I
would be so insulted that I would stab him
if I could.” And when asked whether she
would indeed grant him all the favours he
requested, she replied: “Not necessarily; I
even have reason to suppose I would grant
him nothing; but at least I would have
nothing to reproach him with, whereas, if
he left me entirely in peace, I would take it
as proof of his disdain.” “There are none
who do not share these same sentiments”,
concludes Madame d’Aulnoy.
Society in 17th-century Spain was hall¬
marked by an extreme machismo - and
not just in the higher echelons. Every hus¬
band who could afford it kept his wife and
daughters more or less prisoners. Young
women’s virginity and wives’ virtue had to
be preserved - not just for their own sakes,
but because their loss would have dis¬
honoured their fathers and brothers.
.Women could only venture out into the
street if accompanied, and at public en¬
gagements men and women sat separately.
Here, the Christian Church’s contempt
for women met the harem tradition of the
Moors, who had ruled large parts of Spain
for several centuries. Woman was inferior,
voiceless, was considered easy prey and
had to be protected from the country’s
Don Juans. As Madame d’Aulnoy per¬
ceptively noted, the very fact that girls and
women were locked up made them all the
more receptive to the advances of strange
men.
A love by Rubens, designs for tapestries. In addi¬ palace, he attempted to blow up the palace
tion, he inherited several works by and the royal couple inside it. He was ar¬
of Venus
Velazquez from the estate of his uncle and rested and convicted. His failed murder
and art predecessor as royal favourite, Duke Oli¬ plot was only punished with exile, and
vares. His son Gaspar owned ten paintings when he died in Naples in 1687, it was still

Q
by Velazquez, although these are thought as the Spanish viceroy.
to have included a number of workshop As was the case with Philip, for whom
ueen Isabella, for whose private copies, one of them the so-called Fraga the Venus was painted, Gaspar de Haro
chapel Velazquez painted the Cor¬ portrait of King Philip. also combined a tendency towards an ex¬
onation of the Virgin, had an even Gaspar da Haro was the typical product tremely profligate lifestyle with a love of
harder time of it than other Spanish of a corrupt, decaying society; a man who art. The same was true of a third promin¬
women. She came from the French court, unscrupulously used his high birth and ent owner of the work, Manuel Godoy.
was accustomed to being treated with immense wealth to win himself yet more Between 1792 and 1806 Godoy was the
greater respect, was permanently pregnant favours. In 1657 he hosted a banquet for lover, favourite, generalissimo and First
and forced into an etiquette which forbad Philip and Marianne with a thousand Secretary of State of the Spanish queen
her either to laugh or to be touched by any guests, and shortly afterwards was made a Maria Luisa. His collection included not
man other than the king. When two cava¬ grandee. When, however, following the simply Velazquez’ Venus at her Mirror,
liers freed her foot from her stirrup after death of his father, the position of royal but also Goya’s Naked Maja, the second
she had fallen off her horse one day, they favourite did not pass to him, nor the luc¬ important nude in the history of Spanish
subsequently fled, because by touching rative job of looking after Buon Retiro art.
her they had committed a sacrilege. Only
after Isabella had interceded imploringly
on their behalf were they allowed to return
to Madrid.
Following the death of Queen Isabella
and then that of Prince Baltasar Carlos,
Philip had to marry again: the country
needed an heir to the throne. The choice
fell upon the Habsburg princess Marianne
of Vienna, one of Philip’s nieces, who had
previously been engaged to Baltasar Car¬
los. In 1648 a delegation of dignitaries left
Madrid to fetch the bride from Vienna.
Velazquez went with it, albeit only as far
as Italy. There he was to buy works of art,
in his capacity as head of the royal collec¬
tions. He was probably not unhappy to
leave the mournful Spanish court; he only
returned in 1651, after the king had several
times expressly requested him to do so.
When Marianne married Philip in 1649,
she was a rosy-cheeked 14-year-old who
liked to laugh. Her arrival brought about a
change - temporarily, at least - in the situ¬
ation at court. The king’s spirits lifted and
he tried to control his appetites and be¬
come a good husband. There was no
longer room, amongst these new resolu¬
tions, for the reclining Venus, the grand
seductress and goddess of unbridled sen¬
sual delights.
He gave the picture, it is to be assumed,
either to his new favourite Luis de Haro or
his son Gaspar, who listed the picture in
his inventory of 1651. Giving paintings to
loyal subjects was common practice. Thus
Don Luis, for example, was also presented
by Philip with six monumental cartoons

259
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feiffre. _*%J

260
 David Teniers the Younger: Archduke Leopold Wilhelm's
Galleries at Brussels, c. 1650

The Governor's catalogue

Exactly 50 works are shown in this paint¬

ing. Today, most of them can be seen in
the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna,
but in 1650, when the painting was ex¬
ecuted, they hung in the Brussels palace of
Archduke Leopold Wilhelm, an Austrian
Habsburg.
Teniers’ work is an example of the so-
11 7 called “gallery-painting”, a genre first seen
' ■
in the Netherlands c. 1600, and disappear¬
ing again approximately a century later. At
that time the Netherlands were a great
centre of arts and sciences. According to
il one admiring French traveller, the streets
«9KHf 0 in the towns were wide and the gates of the
iI wealthy burghers’ houses decorated with

;
i
f oM
irF"\~v ..'KTTT - ~
beautiful sculptures, while the houses
themselves were always home to “a large
number of paintings”.
Since paintings meant so much to the
Where today’s wealthy collector
might ask an art historian to com¬
pile a lavish catalogue of his treas¬
ures, his 17th-century predecessor
Netherlanders, they liked to have them¬
selves portrayed with their personal collec¬ commissioned an artist to create a
tions. There was no more elegant manner visual record of the paintings in
of demonstrating wealth and taste, or
his possession. The famous Flem¬
showing friends in faraway places what
they liked or had in their possession. The ish genre artist David Teniers the
gallery-painting served as a “painted cata¬ Younger, a skilful copyist, painted
logue” of the owner’s collection, as well as the galleries of the Habsburg Leo¬
demonstrating his taste.
pold Wilhelm, containing work
Archduke-Teopold Wilhelm was not a
by Italian masters such as Ve¬
Netherlandish burgher, however. As
Governor of the Southern Provinces from ronese, Giorgione and Titian.
1647 to 1656 he lived at the palace of Teniers’ painting, measuring
Coudenberg, near Brussels. His paintings 127 x 163 cm, is in the Kunst¬
filled three corridors of over twenty
historisches Museum, Vienna.
metres in length, as well as three rooms of
the same length, each ten metres wide, one
of which is shown here. In accordance
with contemporary taste, the paintings are
crowded together frame to frame, floor to
ceiling.
Notions we might consider important
today, such as allowing the individual rency then. Instead, it was the impression
painting a certain amount of space, or en¬ of abundance that counted. Paintings had
suring it has enough light, had no cur- to cover the entire wall, like wallpaper.

261
T he Duke stands out as the only man
wearing a hat. This was in keeping
with Spanish etiquette. The South¬
ern Provinces of the Netherlands belonged
to the Spanish crown, and the Habsburg
Leopold Wilhlm served as viceroy for the
court at Madrid.
Leopold Wilhelm was born in 1614, the
son of Emperor Ferdinand II. His exalted
birth meant power and wealth, but not
freedom. Just as a monk subordinated his
actions and way of life to the greater glory
of God, a Habsburg too was obliged to
devote his life to serving the House of
Habsburg. His father had determined that
Leopold Wilhelm, his second in line,
should take holy orders. Traditionally, the
Habsburgs were great champions of the
Catholic church, it was therefore only
natural that a member of the family should
enter its clergy. At the same time, a large
part of the land and property of the “Holy
Roman Empire” belonged to the church,
and the incomes of the monasteries, con-
A bishop at the age of 11,
a general at 25
262
vents, bishoprics and other institutions
could be more easily made to serve family
interests if one of its members sat at their
head.
Thus Leopold Wilhelm was given the
bishoprics of Passau and Strasbourg at the
age of eleven, and was made Bishop of Hal-
berstadt at the age of 14. When he was 25,
however, his brother - Emperor Ferdinand
III - appointed him Supreme Commander
of the Habsburg army, sending him to par¬
ticipate in a struggle which history later
referred to as the “Thirty Years War”. With
an experienced officer called Piccolomim
at his side, his military career began with a
number of successes in Bohemia, but he
was soon defeated and removed from of¬
fice. He retired to his bishopric in Passau,
but was reinstated as Supreme Comman¬
der two years later, only to be replaced
once again after another year. In 1647, Leo¬
pold Wilhelm left for the Netherlands,
where he was to serve the interests of Ma¬
drid.
A year after his arrival in Brussels, the
Peace of Westphalia, signed at Munster and
Osnabriick, sanctioned the partition of the
Netherlands. The new Governor was
therefore no longer obliged to fight the Re¬
publicans and Protestants of the North.
However, it was his duty to ensure that the
Southern Provinces at least remained
Catholic, and loyal to the Spanish-Habs-
burg crown.
During the years he spent at Brussels,
Leopold Wilhelm amassed one of the lar¬
gest art collections in Europe. Buying and
commissioning of works of art was a
Habsburg tradition, Charles V and Philip
II having employed the best artists of their
day, the works of whom may still be
viewed at the Prado. As for the Austrian
Habsburgs, Rudolf II’s mania for collect¬
ing was justly famous.
The personalities of sovereigns such as
Charles, Philip and Rudolf have in com¬
mon a feature apparently relating to their
passionate interest in art: all three were re¬
clusive, withdrawing whenever possible
from the public stage. Charles V abdicated
and entered the seclusion of a monastery;
Philip sought the palatial solitude of his
Escorial; Rudolf hid himself away in his
castle at Prague, neglecting his official
duties so badly that his brothers eventually
had to depose him. Perhaps Leopold Wil¬
helm also withdrew to the relative privacy
of his galleries, where his collection may
have provided some refuge from the de¬
mands of war and politics.
The "antiquarius":
painted by Titian,
copied by Teniers

T he collections of emperors, kings

and dukes grew with the help of ex¬
perts and go-betweens. One is por¬
trayed in a painting in the painting: Jacopo
de Strada of Mantua. The word “antiqua¬
rius”, meaning an expert on Greekland
Roman antiquity, is decipherable in a car¬
touche at the top right of the painting.
Strada is portrayed exhibiting an antique
statue of Venus, with a male torso on the
table before him. Titian’s original, also in
the Kunsthistorisches Museum, is almost a
metre in height, whereas Teniers’ copy
measures only 20 centimetres.
Titian’s portrait dates from almost a cen¬
tury before Teniers’ gallery-painting, a
period in which collections tended to look
somewhat different from that of Leopold
Wilhelm. The maxims of the Renaissance
were still largely in place; intense interest in
the origins of European civilization and
culture had led to a frenzied search for the
remains of antiquity. Ancient manuscripts
and statues fetched the highest prices. To
purchase a Greek manuscript was con¬
sidered as glorious a deed as successfully
besieging a town, and was probably no less
expensive.
Besides various testimonies to antiquity,
objects bearing witness to superstition, as
well as products of the new natural sciences
attracted collectors. Thus the alleged jaw¬ session. Besides the sculptures, there were Catholic faith. The Netherlandish icono¬
bone of a sea-nymph would be found next 888 German and Netherlandish, and 517 clasts of the north had rebelled against the
to a tablet bearing a Greek inscription, or a Italian works. However, Teniers’ painting opulent decoration of churches, and paint¬
deformed foetus, somehow preserved in a includes only works by Italian masters, ing, since the Reformation, had anyway
jar, consorted with a rung of the very ladder with one exception: a landscape, at floor played a subordinate role in churches. For
upon which Jacob was supposed to have level, by the Flemish aritst Paul Bril. Te¬ the Catholics, however, little had changed:
seen angels ascending and descending. Be¬ niers made at least eight paintings of sec¬ a work of art was still considered an effect¬
tween these: paintings by Raphael or Dtirer. tions of the Archduke’s galleries, each ive instrument of religious propaganda.
Leopold Wilhelm’s uncle, Rudolf II, had, in almost exclusively recording works by Simple, but impressive works promulgated
Prague, possessed the most famous cabinet Italians: Titian, Giorgione, Veronese, the Counter-Reformation and a glance at
combining curiosities of the kind men¬ Tintoretto and Raphael. Perhaps they the wall of paintings in the present work
tioned with works of art. were the owner’s favourites; or perhaps confirms the Archduke’s projection of
The Archduke was one of the first to it was in their illustrious company that himself as a champion of that movement:
oust such oddities from his art collection. he especially wanted to be seen. there is hardly a female nude to be seen,
He owned 542 sculptures alone, many an¬ His preference for the Italians might be and, apart from the portraits, almost ex¬
tique or reproductions of antique works. put down to taste, possibly acquired in clusively Biblical scenes are included,
Several are seen above the Strada portrait Madrid’s remarkable galleries during his for example The Lamentation of Christ,
on a projecting structure resembling a cup¬ youth. Even if this were true, another rea¬ The Betrothal of St. Catherine and
board in fact a small wooden vestibule. son is worth mentioning. The Archduke, Christ among the Scribes.
Leopold Wilhelm’s inventaries present a as a member of the clergy and of the Habs-
reliable picture of the works in his pos¬ burg family, was obliged to defend the

263

The king of England
had no money
T he two paintings shown at the top
left were ascribed to Veronese and
Giorgione, the three under them to
Palma Giovane, Veronese and Pordenone,
all of whom lived a century before Leopold
Wilhelm. The route taken by these works
before entering the archducal collection re¬
flects something of the course of European
history.
These works of art were from Venice. In
the period when the paintings were ex¬
ecuted, the Republic on the lagoon was still
a powerful city, comparable, thanks to the
accumulated wealth of the past, to a treas¬
ure Frove. Not only the churches, but also
private houses were replete with valuable
paintings.
Following the discovery of America and
the sea-route round the Cape of Good
Hope to India, Venice had lost its leading
position as the nodal point of all trade-
routes, and the income of the Venetian
merchants had sunk drastically as a result.
The rich citizens were now living on their
capital, and had begun to sell their
property. The art collection of the deceased
patrician Bartolomeo della Nave had been
on the market since 1634.
Charles I, King of England, which by
264
that time was an up-and-coming naval and
colonial power, contracted to buy the entire
collection. However, when the paintings fi¬
nally arrived in crates at London in 1639,
the monarch was unable to pay. Most of his
money had flowed into curbing rebellions
in Scotland and Ireland, and the Civil War
against Cromwell had taken the rest.
The crates were delivered to the Mar¬
quess of Hamilton, who, sharing the fate of
his friend Charles, was beheaded after the
Civil War. Parliament confiscated the
paintings. Eventually they were shipped to
the Netherlands, besides all else the centre
of the European art trade.
It is unlikely that paintings were pro¬
duced in such numbers elsewhere and no¬
where else did so many paintings change
hands. Money was there in abundance, for
towns like Antwerp and Amsterdam had
now taken over the role once played by
Venice on the Adriatic Sea, a harbour
where all trade-routes had met.
The majority of paintings recorded here
by Teniers were originally from the Barto¬
lomeo della Nave collection, and the fact
that they had found their way to Brussels
by 1650 confirms a well-known rule of
thumb: paintings follow money and
power. This is also true of the later history
of the archducal collection, for in 1656,
Leopold Wilhelm returned to Vienna.
He took his paintings with him, event¬
ually bequeathing them to the Emperor.
They were to form the basis of the imperial
collection which now may be seen at the
Kunsthistorisches Museum.
Not all of the paintings remained in
Vienna, however. Works of art were often
given away as presents to retiring ministers
of state, to viceroys, or family members.
The Empress Maria Theresia was espe¬
cially generous with art treasures which
had accumulated in Vienna, and the present
whereabouts of many of the works pre¬
viously in the archducal collection recalls
the erstwhile spread of the Austro-Hunga¬
rian Empire. For example, the Raising of
Lazarus (at the bottom right of the detail
above), by the Venetian Renaissance mas¬
ter Pordenone, is now at Prague, where the
present gallery-painting also hung for
many years. Several of the paintings
brought to Brussels from Venice were later
given by Maria Theresia to her governor in
Transylvania, where they may be seen to
this day in the Museum Brukenthal, Her-
mannstadt (Sibiu). An especially large
group of paintings from the archducal col¬
lection found their way to the residential
palace at Buda: 34 of them are now kept at
the Museum of Fine Art, Budapest. The
portrait of a young man by Giorgione,
shown partly obscured in Teniers’ painting
(the fourth from the right in the row of
portraits), can also be seen there.
Small copies
of large
pictures

B eside Leopold Wilhelm stands David

Teniers the Younger (1614-1690),
custodian of the Archduke’s gal¬
leries. Teniers executed at least eight paint¬
ings of sections of the Archduke’s collec¬
tion. He also published a volume contain¬
ing 244 copper engravings of the Italian
paintings, entitled Theatrum Pictorium.
The court painter and custodian of the
archducal galleries copied the 244 paintings
himself, at the same time reducing their
format to that of the engravings. The en¬
gravers were therefore spared the task of
working from the original paintings. Sev¬
eral of these small copies are exhibited at
Vienna in the same room as the gallery-
painting.
Examples of Teniers’ genre painting,
upon which his popularity during his
own lifetime was founded, can be seen at
the same museum. He is said to have
painted some 100 alehouse scenes, as well
as scenes of kitchens and stables, peasants
in a barber’s shop, soldiers in the guard-
room. Realistic, everyday scenes of this
kind contrasted sharply with the idealized
works containing Biblical, antique or aris-
tocractic motifs that were so greatly ad¬
mired in the south of Europe. Louis XIV,
on seeing a painting by Teniers, is said to
have expressed his disgust with the words:
“Otez-moi ces magots!” (Get rid of these
eyesores!) ian religious works of his patron. He does suggests an uneven triangle, distracting
Leopold Wilhelm’s opinion of Teniers not forget to include the Archduke’s dogs, from the oppressive symetry of the wall of
and his northerly contemporaries differed and adds several figures, among whom pictures.
from that of Louis, however; his collection only the dwarfish figure of Canon Jo¬ Critical opinion today does not rank Te¬
contained over 800 paintings by German hannes Antonius van der Baren can be niers among the most original Netherland¬
and Netherlandish artists, many of whose identified. Hjs name later became import¬ ish artists of his century, artists like Rubens
works, like those of Teniers, were genre ant to historians of art, not for the flower or Rembrandt. He was outstanding only in

paintings. The interest in everyday life as a pieces he painted himelf, but because he the skill with which he made copies, and in

subject of art, a reality undisguised by the compiled a list of paintings in the pos¬ the speed at which he worked. His many

veil of beauty, had grown in the Nether¬ session of the Archduke. genre paintings, too, follow well-trodden

lands during the struggle against Spain. Re¬ As in all his gallery-paintings, Teniers paths.
ligious subjects were the pendant to Span¬ ventures more than the simple reproduc¬ However, his ability to copy paintings at

ish-Catholic rule, but genre painting was tion of a wall of paintings. As far as his in¬ such speed put him in a position to benefit

closer to a republican Protestant outlook. structions allow, he injects a certain dy¬ from a a genre that became highly popular

Leopold Wilhelm acquired both, but sat namic into the composition, partly with in the Netherlands during his lifetime: the
the help of the figures, partly by including gallery-painting. His vistas of the arch¬
for the custodian of his gallery in the com¬
pany of Italian paintings, for these alone the paintings at floor level. The latter form ducal collection made him famous, and

corresponded to the spirit of his ecclesias¬ a tangential line to the picture plane, rising his work is shown today in several large
diagonally to meet, in the far corner of the museums, including Brussels, Munich and
tical and political mission.
Thus Teniers, with his Netherlandish room, the confluent lines drawn by floor Madrid, as well as Vienna.

devotion to realism in art, painted the Ital¬ and external wall. The composition thus

265
 Rembrandt: Jacob Blessing the Sons of Joseph, 1656
An Old Testament family
portrait
Jacob was a Jewish patriarch. According to
tradition, he was 147 years old when he
died. On his deathbed he blessed his sons
and asked for his grandsons, Manasseh and
Ephraim, to be brought to him so that he
could also bless them. Their father, Joseph,
is seen here helping the old man to sit up,
while their mother, Asnath, watches.
The event takes place in Egypt, though
it is unclear whether the scene shows the
interior of a tent or a building. Rembrandt
Harmenszoon van Rijn (1606-1669) has
painted Jacob in a cap commonly worn in
the 17th century. He has given the boys’
father a Turkish-style turban, while their
mother is shown in a Burgundian bonnet,
once fashionable in the Netherlands. The
turban and bonnet are intended to suggest
an ancient, Oriental scene.
It was largely unknown at the time what
the Old Testament peoples wore. Know¬
ledge of the Old Testament itself, on the
other hand, was widespread. Its various
stories and figures were common know¬
ledge at every level in society. Rembrandt
could take it for granted that his contem¬
poraries would know all about Jacob’s
blessing.
People today have become estranged
266
from the practice of blessing; if it is
thought of at all, then as something per¬
formed by priests and ministers of the
Church: an entreaty to God for provident
care. In Old Testament times, however, a
blessing meant more than that. A progen¬
itor’s blessing conferred upon its recipient
a special status in the family. This, in turn,
attributed to him a role within the history
of his people, thereby also linking him with
the history of his people’s salvation. The
people in the Bible saw life on earth as un¬
folding according to God’s plan. God in¬
tervened directly in human affairs: by help¬
ing the faithful and punishing the faithless.
The custom was for the father or pa¬
triarch to lay his right hand on the head of
the firstborn, thus appointing him head of
the family. In blessing his grandsons, how¬
ever, Jacob broke with tradition. He laid
his right hand on the head of the younger
boy, Ephraim. The boy’s father, Joseph, at¬
tempted to redirect Jacob’s hand. He
thought his father had made a mistake, for
the old man’s eyes “were dim for age”. But
Jacob said: “I know it, my son, I know it”,
explaining that Manasseh would also
“become a people”, but that “his younger
brother shall be greater than he, and his
seed shall become a multitude of nations”
(Genesis, 48).
Jacob Blessing the Sons of Joseph
measures 173 by 209 centimetres, with a
signature in the bottom left, below which
the painting is dated 1656. It belongs to the
Staatliche Kunstsammlungen at Kassel and
hangs in the Old Masters gallery at Schloss
Wilhelmshohe. Rembrandt-experts are
currently investigating the authenticity
of all works attributed to Rembrandt, but
results have not yet been published with
respect to Jacob Blessing the Sons ofJoseph.
There can be little doubt of the painting’s
authenticity, however, despite manipula¬
tion of the signature.
267
Ephraim resembles Christ
eventeenth century spectators well
versed in the Bible would have been
acquainted with the story of how this
venerable old man had once deceived his
own father, Isaac, into blessing him. Jacob
had already tricked his brother Esau out of
his birthright for a “pottage of lentiles”.
When it was time for Isaac, who was also
blind, to bless Esau, his firstborn, Jacob
crept into his fathers tent disguised as his
brother. His father blessed him with the
words: “Let people serve thee, and nations
bow down to thee.”1 Although Jacob’s de¬
ceit was discovered, it was impossible to
reverse the effect of the blesssing. Bless¬
ings, when spoken by the right person, laid
down the law.
Jacob could therefore hardly be de¬
scribed as a paragon of virtue, but what
counted for the authors of the Book of Gen¬
esis was that he had been chosen by God,
and that he remained faithful to the Al¬
mighty. He wrestled with the angel until he,
too, gave Jacob his blessing. He dreamed of
a ladder to heaven with the Lord God above
telling him that his seed would be spread to
268
all the points of the compass, but that God
would eventually lead “the families of the
earth” back to Israel.
Motifs from the life of Jacob had often
provided a theme for medieval and Baroque
painting, and Jacob blessing his grandchild¬
ren was one of the most popular subjects. It
was important to both artists and patrons
that Jacob should be depicted with crossed
arms. This was seen as an allusion to the
Cross at Golgotha. According to Christian
doctrine, Jacob’s choice of the younger
grandson anticipated the new faith:
Ephraim stood for Christianity, whereas
Manasseh represented the older Judaism.
In 1620, a few decades before Rembrandt
executed this work, an Italian artist of the
Bolognese school, II Guercino (1591-
1666), had shownjacob in the act of blessing
with his hands very obviously crossed in the
middle of the painting. Rembrandt, how¬
ever, attaches practically no significance to
the motif of crossed arms or hands. It is sug¬
gested that Jacob’s left fingers touch Manas-
seh’s dark hair, but it is unclear whether
Manasseh is crouched further to the fore
than his brother, as would be necessary if
Jacob’s arms were to be seen as crossed.
Rembrandt uses other means to
emphasise Ephraim’s special role: he
paints the boy as a young Christ, sugges¬
ting a halo around his head and portraying
him with his arms folded across his breast.
His omission of the traditional motif of
Jacob’s crossed arms may be due to his
knowledge of a new translation of the
Bible. The word “crossed” in the ancient
Latin Bible used by the Catholic Church
had been changed to “wittingly” in the
new Calvinist and Lutheran translations.
The meaning of the corresponding He¬
brew word had been the subject of some
controversy. Interestingly, the latest, re¬
vised versions have reverted to the words
"crossing his hands”.
Rembrandt lived in Amsterdam, which,
like all the northern Dutch provinces, had
embraced the Reformation and struggled
free of Spanish-Catholic domination. II
Guercino, on the other hand, was painting
in Catholic Italy within a tradition un¬
broken since the Middle Ages and wholly
consistent with the aims of the Counter-
Reformation. The rendering of Jacob’s
arms thus indicates the geographical and
religious standpoint of each of the artists.
 been assured by God that the Jews would body shall communicate with him orally or
Return to the land
return to the Promised Land; Jacob was in writing nor show him any favour... ”2
of the fathers A curse is the opposite of a blessing, and the
therefore one of the most important
words chosen to drive Spinoza from Am¬

R
figures of Jewish history, whose promise
Manasseh ben Israel was struggling to ful¬ sterdam show how great, during Rem¬
embrandt kept his distance from the fil. Even if the painter did not share Jewish brandt’s lifetime, was the belief in the ex¬
Calvinist Church. It is unlikely that belief in the prophecies of the Old Testa¬ pression of divine power through the
he belonged to any of the Churches ment, they had been explained to him by human word. Rembrandt’s contemporaries
or sects that were active in Amsterdam at people he knew and trusted. will undoubtedly have seen the event de¬
the time. The municipal authorities main¬ An event which took place during the picted in his painting of Jacob as a true rep¬
tained an astonishingly liberal attitude to same year provides us with a further insight resentation of reality.
the many religious groupings of the day, into the Jewish community at Amsterdam: The Calvinism predominant in Amster¬
making life hard only for their old rivals, the curse called on the philosopher Spinoza dam at the time was similar to Jewish belief
the Catholics. (1632-1677). Spinoza was a Jew who de¬ in a number of important ways: both con¬
Synagogues, too, were tolerated. There nied that the Jews were God’s chosen ceived of God as vengeful rather than for¬
was a large Jewish community at Amster¬ people, an attitude for which he was ex¬ giving; a deterministic outlook was com¬
dam, the majority of whose members had pelled from the Jewish community: mon to both; in both, material wealth
fled the Inquisition in Spain and Portugal. “Cursed be he by day and cursed be he by could be interpreted as a sign of divine ben¬
With them they had brought valuable com¬ night; cursed be he when he lies down and evolence; Calvinistic and Jewish leaders
mercial skills and trading contacts, thus cursed be he when he rises up... The Lord were required to base their politics on re¬
aiding Amsterdam’s rise to the foremost will destroy his name... We ordain that no¬ ligious doctrine.
trading centre of 17th-century Europe. It
may also have been Jewish influence that
led contemporary artists, Rembrandt
among them, to return again and again in
their work to the great figures of the Old
Testament.
It is known that Rembrandt had Jewish
acquaintances. The street where he lived
was also home to a large number of Jewish
families, and the artist made friends with a
rabbi who was named after one of Jacob’s
grandchildren: it was probably Manasseh
ben Israel who introduced Rembrandt to
the idea that the Jews were God’s chosen
people, and that a Messiah would one day
lead them to the Promised Land.
The sense of Messianic promise had re¬
cently become especially intense for this
rabbi in Amsterdam, for a traveller return¬
ing from South America had observed
tribes of people there who lived like Jews.
Now the scattering of the Jews to every
corner of the earth was regarded as a pre¬
condition for their ultimate salvation. With
the discovery of Jews in America, there
was only one country missing: England. So
Manasseh ben Israel submitted a petition
to the English dictator, Cromwell, travell¬
ing to London to obtain permission for
Jews to settle again in England. He died on
the way back to Amsterdam in 1657.
Rembrandt had painted Jacob Blessing
the Sons of Joseph in 1656 while the rabbi
was in London. There is a connection be¬
tween the theme of the painting and the
rabbi’s mission to England. During his
dream of the ladder to heaven, Jacob had

269
A new ideology
of the family

It is not known whether Rembrandt re¬

ceived a commission to paint Jacob’s
blessing. It is quite likely, however, that
the artist chose the subject himself, and at
his own risk. Rembrandt was one of a
growing number of artists who were at¬
tempting to emancipate themselves from
the traditional system of patronage. These
artists wanted to develop their work inde¬
pendently of their patrons’ inhibiting re¬
quirements, although many of them - in¬
cluding Rembrandt - fell into debt as a
consequence. They probably hoped that
their creditors would be forced to buy the
paintings which thus accumulated in their
studios.
Rembrandt’s interest in the motif of
Jacob’s blessing can be traced not only to
his acquaintance with the topical issue of
God’s Old Testament promise to the Jews,
but also to his special preoccupation with
the subject of blindness. An earlier work,
showing the blinding of Samson, had been
executed with gruesome realism. Blind
beggars frequently appear in his drawings
and sketches. He painted Jesus healing the
blind, and several scenes illustrating the
story of blind Tobias whose eyesight was
returned to him by his son. Rembrandt In order to show difference in age, Rem¬ project which benefitted from the ideo¬
probably witnessed his own father’s loss of brandt alters his brushwork. The smooth¬ logical support given to the family by the
sight and was plagued by a lifelong fear ness of Joseph’s younger face is reflected in Reformation. Medieval monastic asceti¬
that the same thing might happen to him¬ a smoothly finished canvas, whereas the cism, the inward life spent in prayer far
self. wrinkled brow of the old man is achieved from the hue and cry, had reflected the
Age was a related theme; Rembrandt, with rough furrows of paint. highest ideals of the Catholic Church.
after all, was 50 when he painted Jacob At the time, family portraits were some¬ Luther, by contrast, attached a far greater
Blessing the Sons of Joseph. The painting times commissioned in the form of Old importance to the laity. The lay-world of
shows three generations: youth, parents Testament scenes, but there is no evidence the family, the patriarchal role of the father,
and the aged. Pictures comparing the dif¬ to suggest that Jacob Blessing the Sons of the responsibility of motherhood, thus
ferent “ages of man” had been common Joseph was painted to order. came to be seen in a new light. “It is true,
enough in Classical antiquity. The medium Family portraits became increasingly the state of wedlock is humble,” wrote Lu¬
for the portrayal of human ageing had been popular from the mid-16th century on¬ ther’s supporter Melanchthon, “but it is
the male body, since men were thought to wards. This was an indirect consequence of also holy, and it is more pleasing to God
represent mankind. Classical themes en¬ the growth of towns, and of the Reforma¬ than celibacy.”3
joyed renewed popularity during the Re¬ tion. Unlike the majority of peasants, bur¬ The raised status of matrimony encour¬
naissance, and the process of ageing was ghers were not enthralled to feudal lords; aged the cultivation of corresponding sen¬
now demonstrated in portraits of female as they did not have to ask permission to timents. This is illustrated by the text of a
well as male bodies. In the 17th century the marry or move from one place to another. contemporary sermon: “It is impossible
subject of human age was linked to the de¬ Their lives were also more secure, for they for a good Christian marriage to be lived
piction of family scenes, and the attempt to were not exposed to bands of marauding without love,” wrote a Rostock minister in
categorise different stages of the ageing soldiers. 1668, for “all life without love is a form of
process was relinquished in favour of their This enabled the more affluent among hell,” This was a new tone, by no means
realistic integration into “lived” situations. them to develop a more private lifestyle, a usual even in the late 17th century.

270
R embrandt’s painting contains some¬
thing of the new familial sentiment.
It was evidently unimportant to Rem¬
brandt whether the bedposts squared with
It has an intimate quality. The the perspective of the bed itself. Blankets
method Rembrandt employs to this effect and curtains function here as a kind of pro¬
- drawing the viewer’s attention away from tective screen within which the figures are
the indistinct setting at the margin of the isolated from the outside world. The
painting - is nothing unusual in his work, method heightens our impression that the
only here he puts the method to new use. figures in the painting are entirely ab¬
sorbed by their own, personal affairs. Fur¬
thermore, he paints Ephraim and Man-
Transience and asseh as children; according to the Bible,
continuity however, they must have been at least 17
years old. He also has the children’s
mother watching on, although she is not
mentioned at all in the Biblical scene.
Other artists had altered the scene in a
similar way, but none had so clearly in¬
tended to show the family as a self-en¬
closed unit. Theological considerations
had dictated the inclusion of the children’s
mother in previous works. Since she was
an Egyptian, it was important to legitimise
her place within the Jewish line of suc¬
cession.
The artist’s intention to paint a family
scene is nowhere more clearly expressed
than in his portrait of Joseph. Joseph, after
all, was the most important man in Egypt
after Pharaoh. Joseph had had his father and
brothers brought to him in Egypt to rescue
them from famine. His brothers had wanted
to kill him when he was a boy because he had
dreamed that he would one day reign over
them. But instead of killing him, they sold
him to a caravan bound for Egypt, and it was
there that Joseph’s famous career began. Yet
Rembrandt reveals nothing of Joseph’s
great power as a lord and governor.
In a painting executed twenty years ear¬
lier by Rembrandt, Joseph is shown as a
powerful figure, vehemently protesting at
Jacob’s reversal of the conventional mode
of blessing. In this picture, however, he is
portrayed as a loyal son supporting his old
father, looking gently on his children and
willingly accepting his own role in the fam-
iiy-
This was not Rembrandt’s original inten¬
tion. X-ray photographs have shown that
Joseph stood or sat further away from his
father in the initial version of the painting,
and that the children’s mother was not in¬
cluded at all. It is not known why Rem¬
brandt decided to alter his original concep¬
tion of the painting and complete the family
in this way. Perhaps there were personal
reasons. In 1656, the year in which he
painted this work, Rembrandt was declared
insolvent. He was forced to sell his valuable
collections and to move to poorer lodgings
while his house was put up for compulsory
auction. His wife Saskia had died fourteen
years earlier, and he now lived out of Wed¬
lock with Hendricke Stoffels and his young
son Titus. It is quite possible that in this
period of existential crisis, the family paint¬
ing was a comfort to him: a picture of se¬
curity, but also a picture of transience and of
continuity. One person parts, another ar¬
rives; an old man, dying, touches a child.
271
 Charles Le Brum The Chancellor Seguier, after 1660
A careerist bathes in the
Sun King's radiance
The aged Chancellor, shown on horseback
with an entourage of young, fleet-footed
pages, cuts a dignified figure. In stiff robes of
gold brocade, Pierre Seguier, Duke of Ville-
mor, has all the makings of an idol or a
Chinese mandarin. In fact, his swagger was
the official pose of the Lord Chief Justice of
France and head of that country’s civil ser¬
vice in the mid-17th century; above all else,
the grandeur of the portrait by Charles Le
Brun (1619-1690) shows how Seguier
wished the world to see him. The painting,
measuring 2.95 by 3.57 metres, hangs in the
Louvre, Paris.
Two violet silk parasols sway above Se-
guier’s head. Conspicuous insignia of his
rank, these also provided welcome protec¬
tion against the scorching sun under whose
burning heat Paris sweltered on that 26th
August 1660. Indeed, so great was the heat,
according to one contemporary chronicler,
that the Chancellor, contrary to official
protocol, was obliged to allow his entour¬
age to don their hats now and then. The
representatives of the state chancellory
were participating in a procession that
moved gradually through a Paris decorated
with triumphal arches and obelisks, while
at His Majesty Louis XIV’s side, his
newly-wed wife Maria Theresia celebrated
her entry to the capital.
272
The 21 -year-old French monarch and the
daughter of Philip IV, King of Spain, had
been married shortly before in a town at the
border. The purpose of the match was to seal
thepeace between the two states. France had
emerged victorious from the struggle for
European hegemony which had marred re¬
lations between the two countries for al¬
most 30 years, but it had emerged almost as
exhausted as the vanquished Spain.
Before Louis XIV came of age, the no¬
bility and parliament had endeavoured to
augment their respective power at the cost
of the monarchy, plunging the country into
civil war in the process. France was bank¬
rupt; there was a depression; the popula¬
tion had been decimated by invading ar¬
mies, famine and epidemics were rampant.
It was time for a change.
The orderly procession was intended as a
sign to the cheering Parisians that a new
epoch of peace and glory had dawned. It
was led by the retinue of His Eminence, the
all-powerful minister, Cardinal Mazarin,
who had arranged the peace treaty and wed¬
ding. Next came the royal household and
then the royal stables. Following them, in
fourth place, came the representatives of the
chancellory. Besides Seguier himself, coun¬
sellors, treasurers and secretaries, as well as
those at the bottom of the hierarchy, the
beadles and court ushers, all took part in the
procession. Their appearance is captured in
an ironic description of the event by Jean de
la Fontaine, written in rhyming verse:
“The sires of Council a splendid sight, in
their midst was the Chancellor, a pillar of
might, dressed from his head to his toe in
brocade, while his retinue made the splen¬
did parade ...”
The parade was an impressive testimony
to the power of a healthy monarchy. It was
one of the first great manifestations of this
kind to take place under the auspices of the
young king. Louis XIV soon proved a mas¬
ter of the art of using pomp and circum¬
stance for propagandistic purposes, in the
service of absolutism as well as his own fame.
273

From burgher
to duke
T he Chancellor takes obvious pleas¬
ure in his appearance on this occa¬
sion. According to the anecdotal
“Histories” of the writer and worst gossip
of the 17th century Tallemant des Reaux,
he was “greedy for glory”, avaricious, and
“driven by such extraordinary vanity that
he was incapable of raising his hat to an¬
other person.” Nobody attached quite so
much importance as he did to “external ap¬
pearances ..., and he could hardly walk
two feet without calling for his lackeys and
an armed guard.” Like most of his contem¬
poraries, Tallemant was not particulary
fond of the Chancellor.
Seguier, who held his exalted office for
37 years and exercised power ruthlessly,
was one of the most hated men in France.
In 1648, while civil war raged in Paris, he
274
was obliged to hide from the people, who
“wanted to tear him to pieces”, in the lava¬
tory of a private house until troops came to
his rescue. The Marquise de Sevigne, famed
for her correspondence, likened the Chan¬
cellor to the spiteful figure of Tartuffe, the
hero of a comedy by Moliere, first per¬
formed in 1664. It was not until 1672 when
Seguier, with due composure, died the edi¬
fying death of “a great man” that the lady
felt bound to remember his more positive
qualities: piety, wit, a talent for oratory,
and a remarkably good memory.
Seguier was undoubtedly an unusually
gifted lawyer and administrator, abilities
which rendered his services indispensible to
two prime ministers in succession. As their
“most loyal lackey”, as Tallemant con¬
temptuously put it, “a man who could
swallow anything”, he served Cardinals
Richelieu and Mazarin, who ruled France
under Louis XIII and during Louis XIV’s
youth.
Like many 17th-century politicians, the
Chancellor was from a bourgeois back¬
ground. His family came from Parisian
merchant stock and had slowly climbed
their way up the administrative ladder by
marrying into the right circles and using
their money to buy profitable public posi¬
tions. It was quite normal at the time for
public offices to be bought and sold; such
posts were seen as a form of capital invest¬
ment, offering their owners both income
and independence: civil servants could be
neither transferred nor dismissed.
The Seguiers supported each other
wherever they could. In 1612 one of his re¬
lations lent Pierre, born in 1388 and made
an orphan early in life, 56,000 livres for the
purchase of his first public office. He be¬
came Counsellor of Justice to the Parisian
parliament. Then, using the dowry of his
wife, the daughter of a wealthy army treas¬
urer, who brought 80,000 livres into their
marriage, he purchased the office of Presi¬
dent of the Parliament for the bargain sum
of 120,000 livres. This allowed the career-
minded public servant to recommend him¬
self to Cardinal Richelieu by steering
various political trials in an opportune di¬
rection. Having caught the minister’s at¬
tention, Seguier rose rapidly in rank and
position from then on.
In 1634 Seguier’s daughter was married to
Richelieu’s nephew. To be connected with
the house of such a powerful man brought
advantage and honour, but it also meant the
ambitious burgher was obliged to provide a
dowry of 500,000 livres, an enormous sum
of money. In the following year he was made
Chancellor - a non-purchasable office - and
remained so until his death. He survived,
practically without damage to position or
person, both the transition into Mazarin’s
service following Richelieu’s death in 1642,
and the confusion of the civil wars. In 1650
he was made Duke of Villemor. By his death
in 1672 Pierre Seguier had amassed a fortune
of over four million livres.
But the apotheosis of Seguier’s career
had come in 1639/40 when Richelieu, in¬
vesting him with the power of a viceroy,
sent him to Normandy at the head of a
punitive force whose task was to subdue
the revolt of the so-called “nu-pieds” -
poverty-stricken rebels who went barefoot
- against the war-tax. Suppressing the up¬
rising with unprecedented ruthlessness,
the Chancellor entered the conquered
town of Rouen in triumph, sourrounded
by his generals and saluted by cannon. This
time he was not part of another’s entour¬
age, but the most celebrated figure present.
E
ntering Paris with the royal couple,
Chancellor Seguier was preceeded by
a magnificent steed sporting a feather
head-dress and decked with a lilac silk sha-
braque embroidered with lilies. The horse
was unmounted and carried on its back a
gold-plated casket containing the French
seal of state, the instrument of Seguier’s
power. Four “chauffe-cires” (wax-
warmers) held silk cords to steady the cas¬
ket. Their work, heating the wax and ap¬
plying the seal, could apparently be done
only by illiterate nobles. This was thought
to prevent abuse of their office.
Drawn in ink and red chalk, the scene is
one of 14 drawings in Stockholm which,
laid out in series, show the entire chancel¬
lor^ department of the procession. They
include a portrayal of Seguier’s immediate
group that is identical to the group in Le
Brun’s painting. The drawing mentions by
name several of the counsellors and secre¬
taries in the Chancellors company. The
same names are recorded in lists, dating
from the period, of chancellory em¬
ployees.
The seal of state
on a magnificent steed
The drawings probably formed part of a
project commissioned by the Chancellor
and carried out by one of Le Brun’s colla¬
borators. A display of chancellory person¬
nel with its dignitaries dressed in the pomp
of office must have been a welcome pros¬
pect to the vain Seguier, with all his con¬
cern for external appearances. Whether the
sketches were intended as preliminary
studies for a series of prints or oil paintings
is unknown. Only the Seguier group found
its way onto canvas.
It was the Chancellor’s solemn duty
twice a week to preside over the applica¬
tion of the seal - given such lavish pride of
place in the drawing - to royal correspond¬
ence, decrees and documents. Without the
seal, sentences, pardons and elevations to
noble rank remained null and void.
If necessary, the Chancellor could refuse
to apply the seal, for he was answerable
only to the king, who, in person, had ap¬
pointed him for life. He combined the
functions of a viceroy and Chief Justice,
and as head of the civil service he also had
various executive powers. However, his
main function was as the king’s official
spokesman.
“I have come to bestow my good will
upon the parliament. The Chancellor will
tell you everything else.” Thus Louis
XIV’s dignified utterance on the occasion
of his first political appearance in 1643, fol¬
lowing the death of his father. He was four
years old.
Seguier, together with the queen-mother
and Mazarin, held a seat in the regency
council. He occasionally took a personal
interest in the infant king’s upbringing.
“My Lord the Chancellor was here”,
writes one courtier in his memoirs of 1651,
“to see the king at his studies. He was
highly satisfied and exhorted the king to
continue.” Ten years later, Seguier’s con¬
descension towards the king would have
been considered quite inappropriate. The
day after Mazarin’s death, the king, though
previously so submissive, threw off the
shackles of patronage. On 10th March
1661 at seven o’clock in the morning, ac¬
cording to one report, he called for his
ministers and addressed the Chancellor in
a tone worthy of a man who was “Lord
over himself and all the universe”: “My
Lords, I have asked you to assemble here
to let you know that... the time has now
come for me to govern my own affairs.
You shall come to my aid with your
council should I require it... I demand of
you, indeed I order you, Lord Chancellor,
to put my seal on nothing, and to do
nothing in my name, until we have
spoken of the same, but to act solely at
my command.”
The old Chancellor continued to serve
the young king for several years before his
death. On his deathbed, he asked his con¬
fessor to convey his undiminished loyalty
to Louis XIV and had his seal returned to
the king: it was Seguier’s last official act.
275
T he elegantly poised figure in shining
white linen holding the parasol is
said to be Le Bran’s self-portrait.
Showing himself in the Chancellor’s com¬
pany was realistic enough; the son of a
Parisian sculptor, he had enjoyed Seguier’s
patronage since his chddhood. The arts and
sciences not only fell under Seguier’s offi¬
cial brief, he was also a patron of the arts in
his own right - hoping, no doubt, to “have
his praises sung”, griped Tallemant.
The Chancellor had become acquainted
with the talented young lad in 1631 or
1634, at an early stage in the latter’s career.
He provided lodgings for him at his town
palace, where he had also set aside a num-
Artist with
a parasol
276
her of stipends for writers. He sent Le
Bran to study under well-known masters
and was soon able to show his work at
court: a drawing, executed in 1638, celebra¬
ting Louis XIV’s birth, and an allegory
dedicated to Cardinal Richelieu. For his
patron, the young artist painted mostly
altarpieces and portraits. In 1642 Seguier
sent him to Rome, equipped with letters of
recommendation, expenses and a com¬
mission to make copies of Raphael s
works.
Three years later, defying the orders of
his patron, Le Bran returned to France.
He had shown signs of insubordination
before, during the years of his apprentice¬
ship in Paris. However, once back in Paris
he remained obedient, gradually adapting
his personality to the dictates of an era in
love with order, in which artists were re¬
quired to show discipline and good man¬
ners.
Le Bran led an exemplary life. He was
pious and diligent, showing little sign of
passion, and none of vice. Women (other
than his wife) had no place in his life or
work, to which he dedicated himself as¬
siduously. His career was favoured by the
timely death of two important painters
and rivals: Simon Vouet (1590-1649) and
Eustache Le Sueur (1617-1655). As soon
as the Sun King climbed the throne, they
left the stage to Le Bran without a
struggle.
Le Bran had caught the monarch’s at¬
tention through his work on the palace of
the Minister of Finance, Fouquet, at Vaux.
The artist was responsible for the entire
decorations there, from frescos to foun¬
tains in the park and displays of fireworks
on festive occasions. Louis ordered the art¬
ist to paint a scene for him from the life of
Alexander the Great. Le Bran executed the
large heroic work to the full satisfaction of
the monarch, painting it in front of his very
eyes. From that time ownwards he enjoyed
the king’s favour and worked to spread his
sovereign’s fame.
However, Le Bran did not forget Se¬
guier, his first patron. Though the exact
date of his portrait of Seguier entering
Paris is unknown, Le Bran designed, fol¬
lowing the Chancellor’s death in 1672, the
decorations for a church in which Parisian
artists held a memorial mass in the Chan¬
cellor’s honour. Madame de Sevigne was
present, and reported as follows: “The
mausoleum was as high as the dome itself,
decorated with a thousand candles and sev¬
eral statues made up to honour the man ...
with the insignia of his high rank ... the
judge’s cap, ducal coronet and order ...
They really were the most beautiful dec¬
orations imaginable.”
If Pierre Seguier really did attach so
much importance to having “his praises
sung”, then he could not have done better
than invest in Charles Le Bran.
Fashion as
royal propaganda
T o “lend distinction to the highest
ranking courtiers”, according to the
philospher Voltaire (1694-1778),
Louis XIV personally designed “a blue
doublet, embroidered with gold and silver.
To be invited to wear this piece of clothing
was considered a great honour, an occasion
for pride, and it was as highly coveted as an
order on a chain.”
Elements of fashion such as patterns and
colours, especially gold, assumed a special
value under the influence of the young
monarch. To help establish his absolute
authority as the Sun King, he subordinated
all style, form and design, as well as politics
and etiquette, to the interests of his per¬
sonal propaganda.
Le Brun soon emerged as the dominant
figure among the group of artists employed
by the king. He brought discipline to the art
world, turning the Academy of Fine Art,
previously little more than a loose associ¬
ation of artists, into a tightly-knit state or¬
ganization. The Academy assumed a mon¬
opoly over the teaching of art; it awarded
stipends, prizes and state commissions, im¬
posing strict stylistic orthodoxy. Art,
shown to be reducible to a universally ap¬
plicable set of precepts, was required to
subject itself to a doctrine of clarity and ra¬
tionality explicit in the rules of French
Classicism. For twenty years, Fe Brun, the
chancellor of the Academy, kept a dictator¬
ial eye over the strict observance of these
rules.
Fe Brun was also responsible for estab¬
lishing norms for the mass-production of
artworks and artefacts. Under his direction,
50 painters and 700 craftsmen worked at the
Royal Gobelin Factory, which opened in
1663. Here, not only tapestries, but frescos,
wood panelling, furniture, vases, locks and
coaches were made to Fe Brun’s design. Pro¬
duced to the highest standards and showing
excellent taste, these artefacts were intended
for Versailles and for export. Fe Brun was
the arbiter of taste in all matters of art, design
and cultural management; he created Fouis
XIV’s official court style, which, like the
French language and French fashions,
quickly spread to the rest of Europe.
All this left Fe Brun with little time for
his own painting. His great masterpiece,
the decoration of Versailles - he also in¬
fluenced the architecture of the palace and
gardens - proved ephemeral. He was
forced to stand by and watch as furniture
and vases of silver and gold which he had
designed were melted down to provide
funds for Fouis’ wars. The unique syn¬
thesis of art and design that was Versailles
may have existed to perfection only at such
moments when, paying homage to the
“Roi Soleil”, courtiers perambulated in the
galleries to the music of Jean-Baptiste
Fully. Fe Brun, who had devoted his life to
his sovereign’s fame, was permitted, upon
his elevation to the nobility, to include
Fouis XIV’s personal emblem in his coat-
of-arms: a resplendent, golden sun.
277
 Antoine Watteau: Love at the French Theatre, 1716-1721
Life: a drawing-room
comedy
In Voltaire’s opinion, the brief
Regence had “turned everything
to frivolity and jest”. How right
he was! Between 1715 and 1723,
during Philip of Orleans’s short
period of regency government,
the French enjoyed life to the full
Watteau’s painting (37 x 48 cm),
now in the Gemaldegalerie, Ber¬
lin, has captured the spirit of the
times.
The Parisian theatres had never been so
full. The enchanting fantasy world of the
stage allowed an audience to escape the
bleakness of reality for an hour or two.
France was often a cheerless place at the
outset of the 18th century. The country
was exhausted after the costly war it had
fought against most of Europe for almost
278
I ;
25 years. Louis XIV, the old Sun King, who
was responsible for the disaster, had
become strict and pious in the face of im¬
pending ruin. He had forgotten how he
once danced at the centre of splendid bal¬
lets, or patronised dramatists like Moliere.
He no longer appeared at court entertain¬
ments, preferring instead to have the Ita¬
lian Commedia dell’arte banned from Paris
in 1697: they had dared allude in the title of
a play to the prudishness of Madame de
Maintenon, his companion in old age.
When Louis XIV finally died in 1715,
the French breathed a sigh of relief and
devoted themselves with renewed vigour
to the pursuit of enjoyment - not merely in
the interests of oblivion, but because they
felt driven to make up for the misery of the
past years. This was especially true of
Philip of Orleans, the Regent, who gov¬
erned France vicariously on behalf of the
five-year-old great-grandson of the Sun
King. It was the Duke of Orleans’s official
title, too, that gave the period its name: La
Regence. The Regent’s first priorities had
been peace and economic recovery. He had
also moved the court to Paris, exchanging
the aloof formality of Versailles for the joie
de vivre of the capital.
One of the first steps taken by the Re¬
gent had been to call the banned Comme¬
dia dell’arte back to Paris. They returned
in 1716, immediately resuming their old
rivalry with the official French stage: the
Comedie Franchise. Antoine Watteau,
born in 1684 as the son of a craftsman,
painted both threatrical companies. Ac¬
tors, minstrels and dancers were among
his favourite subjects. These figures ap¬
pear in many of his pictures, an often mel¬
ancholy reminder of how short the
regency era actually was (1715-1723),
when, according to the philosopher Vol¬
taire, “everything turned to frivolity and
jest”.1
279

The role that
brought fame
and fortune
O nly one of the actors is looking
straight at the audience. He is
dressed completely in black, one
hand resting on his sword, the other hold¬
ing his hat. Very soon he will step out to the
front of the stage and address his “most
highly esteemed audience”.
Every evening when the show was over,
it was his job as “orateur”, or spokesman
of the troupe, to amuse the audience with a
few well-chosen words and encourage
them to come back again for more. Usu¬
280
ally, he would speak off the cuff, and his
“short, well-turned complimentary ad¬
dress,” according to one contemporary ob¬
server, was sometimes “listened to with as
much pleasure as the comedy before it”.2
Moliere (1622-1673) had doubled as di¬
rector and spokesman of his troupe for
many years. In 1716, the “orateur” at the
Comedie Fran$aise was called Paul Pois¬
son, and it is he whom Watteau has port¬
rayed here. Poisson was a member of the
“royal troupe”, a company which was
formed at the instigation of the court in
1680, several years after Moliere’s death,
and which combined the talents of the
three rival French stages in Paris. In fact,
Poisson was better known alias Crispin II,
a crafty servant, a role he played in count¬
less comedies throughout his life.
In Watteau’s painting he is shown wear¬
ing the traditional Crispin costume: a
sword, a broad leather belt with a brass
buckle, long, yellow gauntlet gloves and a
starched-white rounded collar. His hat -
worn over a small cap - doublet, hose and
high, turndown boots are all in fashionable
Spanish black, a reminder, perhaps, of his
origin. This “comic” had made his first ap¬
pearance on a French stage in the mid-17th
century as Crispinillo in Paul Scarron’s
burlesque Pupils of Salamanca. He was so
popular with the Parisian theatre-going
public that various authors wrote a series
of different parts for him: “Crispin, the
doctor”, “Crispin the censor”, “Crispin
the chaperone”, and even “Crispin the
Egyptian mummy”. Crispin was cunning.
He was forever running after the pretty
maid Lisette, while at the same time assist¬
ing his master in the success of his own
love-affairs. It was Crispin, too, who later
inspired Pierre Augustin Caron de Beau¬
marchais’s famous figure of Figaro.
Paul’s father Raymond first played Cris¬
pin in 1654, after which the role remained
in the family for five generations. The Pois¬
sons were not only endowed with a certain
loudmouthed swagger that went with the
part, but were also highly skilled in the fig¬
ure’s muddled stammering. In the course
of time, the Poissons became a kind of
theatrical dynasty and, not unlike mon-
archs, were given distinguishing numbers.
Crispin I’s comic accomplishment is
underlined by Moliere’s testimony that he
“would gladly have given everything he
had to be blessed with the natural ability of
this great actor”.
When Raymond Poisson retired from
the stage, Paul immediately gave up his
highly respected position at court to suc¬
ceed him as Crispin II. Paul’s acting won
him great esteem and wealth. In real life his
unscrupulous behaviour is said to have
matched that of the figure he played so well
on the stage, and he became involved in du¬
bious financial affairs in order to pay for
his expensive lifestyle.
At times it was impossible for one actor
alone to meet the great public demand for
the Crispin-figure. From 1700, Paul’s son
Philippe therefore joined his father on the
stage as Crispin III. Paul Poisson retired to
the country in 1724, but was required to
return to the stage once more at the age of
70: the young King Louis XV had de¬
manded to see the legendary Crispin II.
T he elegant gentlemen clinking
glasses in the middle of the painting
might easily pass as the guardian
spirits of the age of regency revelry. Tradi¬
tional attributes worn with their contem¬
porary dress show them to be mythologi¬
cal figures. The actor on the left is wearing
a crown of grapevines, with a leopard-skin
slung over his shoulder. This was enough
to distinguish him as Bacchus, the god of
wine. Standing opposite him is a man with
a golden quiver full of arrows: no com¬
monplace hunter, this, but Amor himself,
the god of love.
The presence of these two deities on the
stage of the Comedie Fran^aise may help
The age of
Bacchus and
Amor
identify the play itself: it is probably The
Feast of Bacchus and Amor, a pastoral by
the composer Jean-Baptiste Lully, with
content largely based on one of Moliere’s
comedies. The play was performed twice
during Watteau’s lifetime, and there are
records of “grapevines and a canopy of
leaves” included among the accessories, as
well as “musicking shepherds”. One of the
dance intermezzi was called “Le Profes-
seur de la Folie” (The Teacher of Folly).
Perhaps the pretty blonde with fool’s bells
sewn to her sleeve is imparting some kind
of instruction in the fine art of tomfoolery
to the two Olympians - a fool’s sceptre can
certainly be seen on the ground at the front
of the stage.
A typical feature of this kind of stage
production was the mixing of different
genres: the two gods and the dancers are of
operatic provenance; Crispin is a theatrical
figure; the white-faced Pierrot really be¬
longs in a fairground show. This blurring
of distinctions was consistent with regency
taste. La Regence, itself a period of tran¬
sition, sought pleasure in the combination
of normally separate forms of entertain¬
ment. Hybrids developed: the “comedie-
ballet”, for example, or the
comique” (an opera with spoken dia¬
“opera-
logues). Light comedy was especially
popular. There was a return to the earlier
stage tradition of providing a three-act
comedy as light relief directly after a five-
act tragedy. The length of the acts was
determined by the life of the candles in the
candelabra above the apron-stage. During
intervals between acts the candelabra were
lowered and the candles replaced.
Neither the candelabra nor the new
stage lights, added in 1670, seem to interest
Watteau; nor does he paint the genteel
members of the audience who took seats
on the stage to be close to the actors and
show off their fine clothes, a luxury for
which they paid more than five livres dur¬
ing the 1720/1721 season. The boxes were
not quite so dear; standing room in the
stalls, to which ladies were not admitted,
cost only one livre. The performance at the
Comedie Fran§aise began every evening at
a quarter past five. Every evening, too, the
actors went along to collect their share of
the takings - once cleaning costs, the price
of candles and a small levy “for the poor”
had been subtracted.
281
T he identity of the pretty dancer with
the frilly white collar proposes no
less of a riddle to the spectator than
the stone head in a fool’s cap grinning
down on the scene like a sphinx. It is
possible that Charlotte Desmares, whose
passion - she was a collector - brought her
into contact with many painters, sat for
Watteau. In fact, she had won fame as a
tragic actress, but she was not averse to
The Regent's
beautiful mistress
282
taking an occasional part as soubrette in a
comedy. Like the Poissons, and indeed like
most of her other contemporaries on the
stage, she had been born into a family of
actors and actresses, whose talent and tech¬
nical skills were passed on from one gener¬
ation to the next.
Charlotte Desmares was born in
Copenhagen in 1682 - her parents were
members of a travelling theatre group at
the time - and first took the stage at the age
of eight. Unlike many actors of her par¬
ents’ generation, she decided not to hide
her identity behind a stage name. The
growing enthusiasm for theatre during the
18th century gave actors and actresses
greater self-confidence. It turned many of
them into stars who won the admiration of
ladies of society and launched the latest
fashions, the hooped skirt for example, on
the stage.
It had become important for the actors
to impress the audience with the richness
of their costumes. If the supernumeraries
were peasants who wore sdk gowns and
carried silver shepherd’s crooks, then the
main parts obviously had to be dressed
even more lavishly: in satin, velvet and taf¬
feta, with expensive ostrich feathers in
their hats, and sporting gold and silver em¬
broidery.
The two dozen or more members of the
Comedie Fran$aise company had relatively
high incomes (up to 39 times the wage of a
labourer), a pension scheme, and enjoyed
additional security through a royal pension
which was paid in regular instalments to
the company. The majority of actors and
actresses nevertheless lived above their
means. For this reason, Madame Desmares,
like so many contemporary actresses,
sought a generous “guardian”. His name
was Philip of Orleans, the later Regent.
He loved actresses “as long as they are
good-humoured and shameless and drink
and eat a lot”,3 noted his mother, Liselotte
von der Pfalz. “The Desmares woman has
given my son a little girl,” she went on,
“and she’d have liked to have saddled him
with a second child, too, but he said: No,
it’s much too much of a harlequin... It’s
made up of too many different pieces. I
don’t know whether she’s managed to foist
it off on the Elector of Bavaria, who cer¬
tainly had his share in its making, a privil¬
ege which cost him the prettiest, most ex¬
pensive snuff-box you have ever seen...”.3
Liselotte von der Pfalz was not particu¬
larly fond of actresses, a sentiment she
shared with the Church: “Unhappy be
those among you who laugh,” the eloquent
Bishop Bossuet thundered down from the
pulpit, “for tomorrow you shall weep!”4
Actors were given a Christian burial solely
on condition that they renounced the stage
in writing before they died. The king him¬
self was forced to intervene before Moliere
could be buried in consecrated soil. Even in
1730, with the popularity of the French
theatre at its climax, the police still had to
bury the famous tragic actress Adrienne
Lecouvreur under cover of darkness at the
edge of the Seine.

Musicians
help create
an illusion
M usicking shepherds” are said to
have accompanied The Feast of
Bacchus and Amor. On Watteau’s
stage they wear pink ribbons tied to their
hats and shoes and play fiddles and wind
instruments. The instruments are typical
for a pastoral play. Before 1715, the violin
was mainly used as an accompaniment to
folk dancing; it was only later that its range
extended to include virtuoso perfomances
and chamber music. The musette, a type of
bagpipes, had the advantage of being easy
to use; moreover, its players did not have to
blow into it and were therefore spared the
necessity of pulling ugly faces.
Together with the oboe in the back¬
ground, the lute leaning against the stone
bench and the tambourine at the front of
the stage, the little orchestra thus consisted
of five instruments altogether. It was offi¬
cially forbidden for more than six instru¬
ments and two singers (here probably
Amor and Bacchus) to appear on the stage
at the Comedie Fran^aise at any one time
during the 18th century. Although licensed
to stage their popular plays with music and
dance, they were required to limit the
number of the cast, a regulation over which
the royal opera kept a watchful eye. The
composer Lully had - despite protest by
Moliere - been granted a royal monopoly
for his sumptuous “musical theatre”, with
its large orchestara and chorus. From now
on, the ordinary theatre was forced to limit
its scope.
Music-making was hardly restricted to
the theatre, however. Almost any gentle¬
man or aristocrat worth his salt could play
at least one musical instrument, the guitar
being especially popular at the time. Musi¬
cians, besides actors and dancers, fre¬
quently appear in Watteau’s paintings.
With their costumes and masks, they popu¬
late his rural festivities and lonely parks,
lending them an aura of harmony and, at
the same time, a hint of protean magic.
The young Antoine Watteau is said to
have followed a painter of stage scenery
from Valenciennes to Paris in 1702. He
later worked for Gillot, a well-known il¬
lustrator of theatrical scenes and costumes.
Thus Watteau’s work constantly took him
to the theatre. Strangely enough, little is
known of the relationships, even closer
ones, he presumably had with actors. Paul
Poisson is the only one it has been possible
to identify.
It also remains unclear when Watteau
painted the French actors, or for whom.
The painting was probably executed after
1716 with the help of sketches made some
time earlier. The title of the painting,
L’Amour au Theatre Frangais (Love at the
French Theatre) was not found on an en¬
graving until after the artist’s death in 1721.
In 1769, the work - together with Love
at the Italian Theatre - turned up at Berlin
in the collection of one of Watteau’s ad¬
mirer’s: Frederick the Great.
283
 h»hhm

284
Antoine Watteau: The Music-Party, c. 1718
Cultivated leisure, music
and champagne
A small company of friends gathers to
make music on a parkland terrace. Between
dogs and children at play a pleasant con¬
versation unfolds while instruments are
tuned. The park in the background is an
invitation to stroll. The scene, painted c.
1718, shows Antoine Watteau’s rendering
of one of the more popular “innocent plea¬
sures” of the age. Among such pleasures, a
contemporary listed the "joys of dining,
music and the gaming-table, conversation,
reading and walking”.
To enhance the “joys of dining”, a
“Moorish boy” cools champagne, which,
patronized by the highest in the land, had
lately become a highly fashionable drink.
Duke Philip of Orleans was known to
drink this sparkling wine in large quan¬
tities at his “petits soupers”. Philip was
Regent, governing France between 1715
and 1723 during the minority of his
grand-nephew, the future King Louis XV.
During this short era, which coincided
with Watteau’s most productive period,
the Duke brought change not only to the
worlds of fashion and taste, but to politics
as well.
In the twenty years prior to his death,
Louis XIV, known as the Sun King, had
kept France almost constantly at war. The
Regent, by contrast, signed peace treaties,
paid off crushing state debts and encour¬
aged industry and commerce. While 20
million French breathed a sigh of relief, no
longer victim to the worst deprivation —
1709 had been a year of starvation in Paris
- a small, privileged minority scented the
chance to live life to the full. And they
grasped it with both hands.
Under Louis XIV, political expediency
and religious orthodoxy had been felt as
crushing burdens, stifling all individuality.
The ideals of a French “classical epoch”,
promulgated in church by Bishop Bossuet
and on stage by the poets Racine and Cor¬
neille, were discipline and self-denial, the
sacrifice of self-fulfilment to the higher
principle of public order and well-being.
The affected piety of an ageing king had
made matters worse. All in all, it was
hardly surprising that France slaked its
thirst for pleasure and luxury the moment
the king died.
Christianity and stoicism were set aside
for more worldy philosphies. In the tradi¬
tion of the Epicureans, the “Regence”
devoted itself to the ideal of sensual de¬
light: “the art of sensual refinement,
heightened by feelings of virtue”, accord¬
ing to Remond de St. Mard’s definition in
the Parisian magazine Mercure in 1719.
The son of a wealthy financier, Remond
de St. Mard was one of the few privileged
enough to devote themselves to the pur¬
suit of this art. The “hedonists” went fur¬
ther, demanding a right to individual hap¬
piness, which the Encyclopaedists of the
second half of the 18th century described
as “a contemplative state, bejewelled here
and there with the brighter tones of pleas¬
ure”. Happiness and sensual pleasure are
also the subject of Watteau’s painting,
which, measuring 69 x 93 cm, is now in the
possession of the Wallace Collection,
London.
285
T he small chateau on whose terrace
the musicians have gathered be¬
longed to a wealthy banker. It was
called Montmorency and had a vestibule,
or roofed, columned forecourt, with a pan¬
oramic prospect of the surrounding park
and countryside. Its owner, Pierre Crozat
(1665-1740), nicknamed ironically “the
pauper”, was one of the richest men in
France. He used his wealth to collect Old
Masters and support young artists. In 1718
Watteau lived at Crozat’s palatial home in
Paris. He undoubtedly made frequent
visits to Montmorency and was able to ob¬
serve and paint the life of the townsfolk at
their country retreat.
Though for many centuries a privilege
of the aristocracy, ownership of large areas
of land now began to appeal to members of
the ascendant bourgeoisie. The privileges
of the latter did not accrue to them by
birth, but were won through business
acumen and the pursuit of profit. Develop¬
ments, set in motion under the Sun King,
had accelerated during the regency. Para¬
doxically, country life had became fashion¬
able just as Paris started to enjoy a boom.
In 1715, accompanied by the nobility and
Townsfolk in the country
286
royal household, the Regent, who hated
Versailles, had returned to Paris. “All the
French love Paris more than anything”,
noted his mother, the German Elizabeth
Charlotte of the Palatinate, although it
was, in her opinion, “a dreadful place. It
stinks ... People just piss on the street; it’s
intolerable.” Whoever could afford it
therefore had good reason to flee to the
country - although few strayed far, for it
was important to remain within easy reach
of the centre. Montmorency was situated
some 15 miles from Paris, and Crozat’s
coaches took only two hours to transport
the banker and his guests to its theatres and
salons.
Though the townsfolk were un¬
doubtedly drawn to the clean air and the
pleasant countryside, they also sought the
ease and unbuttoned informality of a new
philosophy of life. Far from codes of beha¬
viour which constrained life in every class of
society, far from the strictures of etiquette
and obsession with external appearances
which dominated their own class, they were
able to converse with their friends from
morning until night, reclining on the mead
with them if they so wished, or strolling in
the park. Walking no longer meant the stiff¬
ness of a promenade “a la Roi Soleil” in the
garden at Versailles, between geometrically
arranged flower-beds and closely-cropped
box-hedges. Nature was gradually un¬
shackled. In Watteau’s day and age, the Jar-
din du Luxembourg, the most popular Paris
park, was said to be “crude and unkempt”,
with the trees’ skyward growth and uncut
hedges’ spread unhindered.
The demand that a “garden should owe
more to Nature than to art” was entirely
new (“The Theory and Practice of Gar¬
dening”, Paris, 1707). This was the era of
the English landscape garden, with its
lawns, copses and hillocks, a style possibly
seen by Watteau at one of the properties
owned by his rich, anglophile patron. For
it was in this type of landscape - natural
scenery, undoubtedly “unkempt” by con¬
temporary standards, but nevertheless
pleasant, and constructed solely for human
enjoyment - that he chose to situate his
amorous couples and musicking friends.
It was Watteau’s landscape painting,
more than anything else, which found the
admiration of his contemporaries. These
paintings captured all that was modern
about the era in which he lived: its new re¬
lationship to Nature, the new ideal in land¬
scape. An anonymous portrait of the artist
as a young man contains an admiring text
declaring that Watteau was always si nou¬
veau: so new.
A difficult
instrument
to play

In his Life of Antoine Watteau, Painter of

Figures and Landscapes, published in
1748, Count du Caylus, describing his
deceased friend, writes: “He may have re¬
ceived little or no education, but he had a
finely attuned ear and a highly discriminat¬
ing taste in music.” Watteau painted his
musical instruments with such precision
that experts can even identify their manu¬
facturers.
At the centre of his Music-Party Wat¬
teau painted a theorbo. This lute was so
difficult to tune and play that it was ne¬
glected almost to the point of extinction
even in Watteau’s day. Amateur players
could hope to learn little more than the eas¬
iest of accompaniments and simplest of
tunes. In professional music it had long
been used to supply the basso continuo, or
thorough-bass. However, the last compo¬
sition for the theorbo was published in
Paris in 1716, and by 1732, “no more than
three or four venerable old gentlemen”
could play the instrument. New instru¬
ments, such as the violoncello and harpsi¬
chord, were imported from Italy. The thor¬
ough-bass passed to the cello, and to the
harpsichord. Though Watteau is said to
have decorated the latter instrument, it did
not appear in any of his paintings; it would would be added - suggests that the musi¬ a favourite pastime for those who chose to
not have been played at one of his outdoor cians gathered on the terrace were prepar¬ sojourn in the country, for country life “is
concerts anyway. ing a cantata. made for love”, while “music” itself, so it
Many of his works show musicians, Once a month, a mixed society would was said, was “the agent of love”. Music
thus reflecting one of the favourite pas¬ meet to listen to chamber music at the served as a pretext for advances, and music
times of the era: “They are all learning to salon of the wealthy bourgeois Crozat. gave expression to- things one had not yet
play music”, wrote Elizabeth Charlotte of The Venetian painter, Rosalba Camera, vi¬ found the opportunity, or courage, to ex¬
the Palatinate, “it’s the latest rage, followed siting Paris at, the time, gave an account of press.
by all young people of quality, whether one such concert. The Regent appeared in The group appears to be waiting for the

male or female.”
What did they play? Music by the Italian
composers Albinoni, Stradella and Scar¬
latti - works demanding smaller, more in¬
timate ensembles - predominated in the
person - for not only were the Crozat
brothers’ services useful to him for various
credit transactions, but, like his hosts, he
loved Italian music, and indeed is said to
have composed an opera himself. The
theorbist to tune his instrument - a long
and complicated business. It is possible
that the artist intended an erotic in¬
nuendo: to Watteau’s contemporaries,
versed in the erotic symbolism of their

music library of Watteau’s patron, Pierre painter Watteau was also present, back time, the instrument would have sug¬

Crozat. Together with church music and from several months in England. Famous gested an allusion to the female body,
opera, chamber music, a new form, en¬ soloists, like the Italian castrato Antonio played by her lover’s hands. A chateau in

joyed increasing popularity among pro- Paccini, performed alongside amateurs - the country provided its guests not only

gessive, or “modern”, circles in Paris. “So¬ the niece of the painter La Fosse taking a with terraces, salons and dining-rooms,

natas and cantatas”, wrote the Mercure in voice part, the papal internuncio plucking but discreet alcoves.

1713, “are spreading like mushrooms”. the theorbo.

Watteau’s choice of instruments - theorbo, Watteau’s painting probably shows a
guitar and violoncello, to which a voice group of amateurs. Making music was also

287
T o have a “Moorish” boy, dressed all
in silks and velvets, was one of the
more luxurious fashions of the 18th
century. He might be seen holding the train
of a duchess, or cooling a banker’s bottles,
and always, he invited onlookers to ponder
on the great wide world, and on the riches
of the French colonies. Among these were
Guadaloupe and Martinique in the Ant¬
illes, whose rising importance in economic
terms brought fat profits to merchants and
shipowners like the Crozats. They bought
black slaves in Africa and exchanged them
for exotic goods in the Antilles, where the
slaves were exploited in the sugar planta¬
tions. A royal edict of 1716 accorded to “all
merchants of the realm” the right “to trade
freely with negroes”. An attractive “Moor¬
ish boy” was a “colonial luxury” as covet¬
ed as the chocolate which he served his
mistress at bedtime. Because - so the ru¬
mour went - the Marquise de Coetlogon
Luxury goods
from the colonies
288
had drunk too much of this dangerous new
beverage during pregnancy, she gave birth
to a son “as black as the devil”.
Trade with new luxury goods such as
sugar, coffee, tabacco, tea and chocolate was
encouraged by the highest authority in the
land, partly for economic reasons, partly
also because the Regent had developed a
taste for luxury goods himself, a taste that
extended to the sparkling wine which vint¬
ners in Champagne had recently begun to
produce by secondary fermentation. “The
wine from Rheims is at its best drunk
chilled with ice”, according to one contem¬
porary source. “That prickling sensation
which tickles the nose and can raise the dead
to life” helped the Regent back on his feet
for an evening’s entertainment after work¬
ing a twelve-hour day. He liked even to add
champagne to the sauces he prepared for his
friends. He wanted his dishes to taste simple
and yet highly refined. It was an era that
witnessed the birth of what is generally
referred to as “French cuisine”. Whoever
could afford to do so ate - judged by today’s
standards - enormous quantities, whether
of the traditional fare or the latest culinary
inventions. The richest gorged themselves
regularly at the most astounding orgies of
drunkenness and gluttony. The Regent
himself would drink six or seven bottles of
champagne every evening. His mother,
Elizabeth Charlotte of the Palatinate, writ¬
ing in 1719, commented: “The great fashion
in Paris is presently for ladies and men in
equal part to drink overmuch and engage in
all sorts of ignoble and disorderly acti¬
vities.”
There is no mention here of those “in¬
nocent pleasures” whose enjoyment with
“refinement” and “feelings of virtue” the
Mercure of that year had encouraged.
Elizabeth Charlotte compares Paris to
Sodom and Gomorrah, and indeed, the ex¬
cesses of the French upper classes were to
have dire consequences during the Revol¬
ution of 1789, when the people gave short
shrift to the privileged strata. “Luxury and
over-refinement in a state”, warned the
17th century Due de La Rochefoucauld,
“are a sure sign of its decadence, for indi¬
viduals can only serve themselves to such
an extreme by neglecting the common
weal.”
A painter of
the avant-garde

W atteau’s figures are never seen

eating; his paintings rarely
show filled champagne glasses
or bottles. He portrayed reality only to the
extent that it corresponded to the ideals of
his age. He painted cultivated ladies and
gentlemen who were beyond the slightest
suspicion of excess participating in so-
called fetes galantes, a thematic innovation
which, in 1717, having rapidly gained rec¬
ognition as a new genre, won him a place in
the Academy. Watteau, finally successful
after the hard years of his early career, now
lived in a world of luxury, far from that of
his upbringing. He had been born in 1684
at Valenciennes, the son of a master tiler.
In late 1717, Watteau stayed at the Paris¬
ian palace of the banker Crozat; a year later
he was sharing living quarters with the
painter Nicolas Vleughels, who, like Wat¬
teau, hailed from the north of France. Un¬
like Watteau, however, Vleughels had al¬
ready travelled to Italy; he was later ap¬
pointed Director of the French Academy
at Rome. Watteau shows him biding his
time, leaning against a column in his red
coat and beret, a costume his spectators
would have thought old-fahioned even in
those days. Watteau is said to have owned
a collection of theatrical costumes in which
he dressed his models. The silk suit and
white ruff were articles in regular use at the
Italian theatre - but it is hard to imagine the
papal internuncio who played the theorbo
at Crozat’s house-concerts allowing him¬ teau capable of creating something that him”, too restless to stay anywhere for
self to be seen in such a “get-up”. you would value.” Crozat gave the painter very long, whether with Crozat or
Besides other artists, Watteau’s ac¬ the freedom of his house, offering him Vleughels.
quaintances included the journalist Anto¬ every opportunity to study his art collec¬ Luxury seems to have meant little to
ine de La Roque, who took over editorship tion and become acquainted with the revels Antoine Watteau: to those who exhorted
of Mercure in 1724, Count du Caylus, who of the upper class - those “joys of dining, him to count his earnings and get on with
painted nudes with him and later wrote his music and the gaming-table, conversation, his career, he replied that he could live in
obituary, as well as art dealers and the reading and walking”. the poorhouse if the worst came to the
wealthy collectors of the bourgeoisie. To what extent did Watteau himself par¬ worst. In 1717/19, when Watteau was
Among the latter was the glass dealer Si- take in such revelling? Was he capable of painting his deliciously sensuous Music-
rois, the first to buy a painting by Watteau, excess? He is said to have worked con¬ Party,, he was already a sick man. He had
and the paint manufacturer Glucq, who is stantly, his sketch-book always to hand, tuberculosis, or possibly paint-poisoning.
known to have owned The Music-Party in and while certainly knowledgeable in mat¬ In 1721, at the age of 36, he died. The image
ters musical and an avid reader, it is diffi¬ we have of the 18th century is largely
1720.
Crozat himself does not seem to have cult to imagine him engaged in flirtatious determined by paintings Watteau executed

owned paintings by Watteau, although he conversation. According to his bio¬ in its first two decades. He was “so new”

had his dining room decorated by the art¬ graphers, he was “timid” and “melan¬ that he anticipated much of what came

ist. “Of all our artists”, he wrote to Rosalba cholic” by nature, always “dissatisfied later. Today he would undoubtedly be

Carriera in 1716, “I consider solely M. Va- with himself, and with everyone around referred to as a painter of the avant-garde.

289
 Giambattista Tiepolo: The Banquet of Cleopatra, 1746/50
The fine art of extravagance
West meets East: the Roman
general Antony dines with the
Egyptian queen Cleopatra who,
for dessert, eats a pearl. Tiepolo
mounted the encounter, as if stag¬
ing a scene from grand opera, on
the wall of the banqueting-hall at
the Venetian Palazzo Labia, where
it can be seen to this day. Tearing
down walls, his sophisticated opti¬
cal illusion draws the spectator’s
eye into a world of luxury and
fantasy.
Spellbound, the assembled guests gaze at a
woman about to redeem a wager. Cleopa¬
tra VII, Queen of Egypt, had boasted to
the Roman general, Antony, that she could
290
devour a hundred times one hundred thou¬
sand sesterces at one meal. Now was her
chance to prove it.
Judging the wager is the Roman consul
Lucius Munatius Plancus. He sits at the
table, clothed in Oriental robes, with his
back to the spectator. Opposite him, clad in
shining helmet and armour, is Antony,
Caesar’s heir and one of the most powerful
men in the world. The Roman author Pliny
the Elder, writing during the first century
after Christ, had described the scene in his
Natural History. Cleopatra, according to
Pliny, had served up a banquet which,
though sumptuous, amounted to little
more than one of their everyday meals.
Seeing this, Antony had merely laughed
and asked to see the bill. Cleopatra had
then assured Antony that he had seen no
more than the trimmings, whereas the feast
to come would certainly cost the agreed
amount. She had then ordered dessert.
However, the servants had placed before
her only a single dish, filled with vinegar,
whereupon the queen had removed one of
her earings, dipped it into the vinegar, let it
dissolve, and swallowed it.1
With her cunningly staged gesture of ex¬
travagance, the exotic queen had won a
stunning victory over the astonished Ro¬
mans. Her feast became world famous,
providing the ideal subject for the ban¬
queting-hall of an 18th century Venetian
palazzo.
The banqueting-hall in question was
new at the time. The noble Labia family
had just had its century-old palace entirely
renovated; for it had no longer correspon¬
ded to contemporary notions of comfort
and representation. The result evidently
more than repaid the cost. Even the high
standards of the French traveller Charles
de Brosses were satisfied. He praised the
building in 1739 as “one of the most beau¬
tiful on the Grand Canal”; built “a la mod-
erne”, it was “the only one whose interior
seemed to me to be well-designed”.2 It
should be added that de Brosses had seen it
even before the interior was painted.
It was only fitting that the painting
should be executed by the most famous
artist of his day: Giambattista Tiepolo.
Born in 1696, Tiepolo had reached the peak
of his artistic career by the middle of the
eighteenth century. He had painted frescos
in palaces and churches throughout the
north of Italy, committing entire hosts of
Christian saints and complete pagan myth¬
ologies to walls and ceilings. Between 1746
and 1750 (there is no documentary proof
of this), Tiepolo and his assistants dec¬
orated the entire banqueting-hall, includ¬
ing the ceiling. The work thus covered
some 500 square metres. Tiepolo turned
the Labia banqueting-hall into a kind of
theatre, on whose walls, as if acted out on
a series of different stages, he produced his
version of the Cleopatra story. The plot
was well-known: a historic meeting be¬
tween East and West, embodied in the per¬
sons of the Egyptian queen and the Roman
triumvir Antony. The latter had come to
plunder the satellite state of Egypt, but in¬
stead Cleopatra had seduced him and
scored an important victory.
The accessories were borrowed from the
opera: Moors, a turban or two and an obel¬
isk in the background were sufficient to
recreate a conventional, exotic stage set¬
ting. Armour, helmets and weapons sug¬
gested Roman antiquity; a Classical col¬
umned hall, open to the sea at the back,
provided the perfect architectural stage de¬
sign. Tiepolo has even included an orches¬
tra playing for the guests from an airy bal¬
cony. To the Venetians, dining under the
frescos by candlelight to the sound of real
music, it must have seemed as if the Egyp¬
tian queen and the Roman general were
there in person.
 >■ " -
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A pearl as
dessert
A n extraordinarily large
shaped pearl shimmers between
drop¬
Cleopatra’s fingers. The naturalist
Pliny gives pearls the highest place among
all things of value, but he also accuses the
“family of shells” of thereby encouraging
indulgence and moral degeneracy. He evi¬
dently disapproves of proud Cleopatra’s
wager, as both an outstanding example of
luxuriance and the deliberate destruction
of an unusually rare, Natural treasure by “a
royal whore”.3
Such are the thoughts of a strict moralist
who cherished plainness and severity, the
virtues of a male-dominated, highly mili¬
tarised society. The Roman castigated lux¬
ury, self-indulgence and extravagance,
characteristics typical of the rich and deca¬
dent Egypt of Cleopatra’s times. Envy may
have been an important factor too: the
main reason for Caesar’s and Antony’s
292
Egyptian expedition had been to find
money for Rome’s costly military cam¬
paigns. Thanks to their powerful fleet, the
Ptolemies had amassed great riches. Queen
Cleopatra liked to be referred to as the
“Queen of Plenty”, and on coins she is
portrayed with pearls in her hair and on
her robes.
Tiepolo’s contemporaries were prob¬
ably in a better position than Pliny to ap¬
preciate Cleopatra’s lifestyle. The Venetian
Republic had lost most of its political and
military power by the 18th century. At the
same time, its citizens attempted to make
up for their sense of loss by squandering
the vast wealth they had accumulated dur¬
ing their glorious past. With a passion that
took them far beyond their means, the
Venetians cultivated extravagance as a par¬
ticularly fine art.
The Labia family had excelled neither on
the battlefield nor in the Venetian senate.
Nor had they been members of the aristo¬
cracy for very long. During the 17th cen¬
tury, when the maritime republic had been
desperate for money to fight the Turks, the
Labia had used the opportunity to buy
their way into Venice’s exclusive patrician
circles. A legendary act of extravagance
won them a mention in the annals of the
town: at the climax of a banquet for 40 per¬
sons, a Labia, expressing violent contempt
for all material possession, had com¬
manded the golden plates from which the
guests had just finished eating to be thrown
out of the window into the canal. In choos¬
ing the extravagant Egyptian queen as the
subject of their banquet hall frescos, the
Labia were attempting to establish their
own, admittedly rather tongue-in-cheek
relation to tradition.
But all that glisters is not gold, and even
the most fantastically frivolous and de¬
bauched gestures are often nothing but a
fake. Thus it is said that the Labia re¬
covered their costly plates by means of
underwater nets stretched out in front of
the palazzo. As for Cleopatra, chemistry
has proved that pearls do not dissolve in
vinegar! Are we to conclude that the
“Queen of Plenty” did not swallow her
precious jewel at all, but made it vanish by
some sleight of hand? Is it really possible
that a clever conjuring trick helped her to
win a wager, keep her pearl, confound the
Romans and deceive posterity?
Portrait of
an attractive
widow

In Tiepolo’s day, a Labia widow and her

two sons lived in the palace. De Brosses
describes her as woman who, though no
longer young, “was once very beautiful,
and had many love affairs”.4 Like the
Egyptian queen, she had a famous collec¬
tion of jewels which she was proud to
show to visitors. Tiepolo would often
make flattering allusions to his patrons in
his paintings. His majestic portrait of
Cleopatra may therefore bear some resem¬
blance to the lady of the house. On the
other hand, her ample charms were also
consistent with the fashionable female
figure of the day, and probably with the
artist’s own taste. The real women in
Tiepolo’s life and the female figures in his
paintings all looked alike.
Cleopatra VII of the Ptolemaic dynasty
was born in 69 B.C. She reigned between
51 and 30 B.C. “Her beawtie,” according
to the Greek writer Plutarch, “was not so
passing, as unmatchable of other women,
nor yet suche, as upon present viewe did
enamor men with her: but so sweete was
her companie and conversacion, that a man
could not possiblie but be taken. And
besides her beawtie, the good grace she had
to talke... her curteous nature that tem¬
pered her words and dedes, was a spurre
that pricked to the quick.”5 The queen used
her words and deeds without scruple when
it came to furthering her political aims:
maintaining- her power and Egypt’s
(relative) autonomy. At the age of 22 she
had enchanted great Caesar; only seven
years later she had Antony eating out of
her hand. The Romans never forgave her. so damnable to the “virtuous” Romans and Besides extravagance, pleasure and lux¬
Only the cool-minded Octavius Au¬ to the Christians of the Middle Ages made ury were the key words of the period. A
gustus resisted Cleopatra’s charms (by the Egyptian queen attractive in the eyes of ruler, an exotic one at that, who entered a
which time she was nine years older), driv¬ modern writers: between 1540 and 1905 struggle for power armed only with a wo¬

ing her to suicide. Since history tends to be she was the central figure of no fewer than man’s wiles, was bound to become a her¬
written by the conquerors, Roman writers 77 plays (the most famous of which was oine on the stage and on canvas.
presented her as an “enemy of the state”, a Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra), 45 In 1762, only a few years after Tiepolo

cunning seducer, a lascivious and degener¬ operas and five ballets. had painted his sensuous queen, Catherine

ate “royal whore”. Cleopatra remained a The hedonistic eighteenth century was the Great of Russia seized power on a very

victim of Roman propaganda throughout particularly given to celebrating the fame real political stage. Catherine was an un¬

the Middle Ages. The Florentine poet of this great seductress. Aristocratic so¬ scrupulous ruler who employed female

Dante banned her to the second circle of ciety considered the victory of woman wiles in order to attain her ends. She would

his Inferno, along with Dido, Semiramis over man, who was glad to be distracted certainly have felt flattered by comparison

and Helen of Troy: all of them “lascivious from the call of business and duty, to be with Cleopatra.

women”. But the qualities that had seemed exemplary (at least in theory).

293

The team pays
homage to
the master
T he master and his assistants appear in
the background as discreet observers
of the banquet they have painted.
Besides Tiepolo - whose sharp features are
recognisable from his many other frescos -
there is a black servant called Alim, who was
probably an assistant. The man with the
294
roundish face is said to be Girolamo Men-
gozzi Colonna (c. 1688 -1766), an expert in
painting architecture.
By the time Tiepolo came to decorate
the Palazzo Labia, he was not only one of
the most famous painters in Europe, he
was also the most expensive. The King of
Sweden was forced to abandon a com¬
mission intended for Tiepolo because, un¬
like the Labia, he was unable to afford the
artist’s fee. The Swedish Count Tessin had
excited his king’s interest in the project by
praising the artist’s “glowing colour”, the
“bravura of his brushwork” and his “fire”.6
“Fire”, in the language of the day, meant
wealth of the imagination, spontaneity, vir¬
tuosity - qualities particularly useful to
Tiepolo as a fresco painter when improvis¬
ing on the wet, freshly laid plaster.
Before the master started on the figures,
the setting was prepared by his expert of
many years’ standing, Mengozzi Colonna,
who helped Tiepolo with the majority of
his great frescos. The work of each was so
perfectly attuned to that of the other that
one enthusiastic contemporary compared
their collaboration to “the harmony of
bass and soprano”.7 Mengozzi built the
stage on which Tiepola produced the ban¬
quet. As a specialist in matters of perspec¬
tive, Mengozzi used similar techniques to
those used in theatrical set design. By
means of illusionistic architectural ele¬
ments painted on the walls and ceiling, he
transformed a real room - the Labia ban-
queting-hall was a straightforward cube -
into an apparition of splendour, extrava¬
gance and endless space.
However, Mengozzi’s contribution to
the Cleopatra frescos was not confined to
the backgound, or to the musicians’ bal¬
cony supported by pillars; he was also re¬
sponsible for various parts of the fore¬
ground, perceived by the spectator as
“real”, tangible objects in space: the stone
steps up to the table, for instance; or the
huge, fluted, pink marble pillars; or the
black-and-white marble columns beside
the doors. The imposing round arch which
spans the scene is also fictive: the real ceil¬
ing is flat. The only real things in the room
are the floor, the windows and the doors.
The entire, sumptous majesty of the stately
room is a masterpiece of trompe-l’ceil, or
optical illusion.
Trompe-l’oeil technique was nothing
new. It was based on the calculated use of
perspective, on naturalistic precision in re¬
cording detail: in imitating marble, for
example, or in observing the correct rela¬
tion between shadowing and the incidence
of light. According to Pliny, such trompe-
l’ceil effects were much loved in the Classi¬
cal age. The Italian Renaissance, in ap¬
plying modern science to the problems of
perspective, gave the device a new lease of
life. Paolo Veronese perfected its use in his
16th-century frescos in Venice. The small
dog on the steps leading up to the banquet
possibly represents an act of homage to
this artist, whose works were full of hunt¬
ing dogs and lapdogs. These were as much
a part of trompe-l’ceil tradition as the pain¬
ter’s habit of including his own self-port¬
rait. If the effect of the illusion was not to
be destroyed, the artist could hardly add
his signature to a fresco.
T he Labia would have been rich
enough to panel their banqueting-
hall with real marble if they had
wished, or to decorate it with solid marble
columns. It is possible, in any case, that this
Architectural illusions
baffle the eye
would have proved cheaper. But they were
probably more fond of illusion than reality.
After all, there were marble columns
everywhere in Italy, whereas Tiepolo’s
architectural illusions were something
quite exclusive: a highly skilled and baff¬
ling artifice which amused visiting specta¬
tors. The latter had to be willing to play
along, of course, for the trompe-l’ceil takes
place only in the eye of the beholder. Con¬
tradictory messages passing between the
eye and the brain induce a perverse, yet
thoroughly pleasurable state of perplexity
for anyone prepared to entertain the sensa¬
tion. Optical illusions were a sort of game,
indulged in by the Labia for their own en¬
joyment, and to the amusement of their
friends.
Walls panelled with real marble might
have demonstrated wealth, but they could
never have achieved what Tiepolo and
Mengozzi enacted with such apparent ease:
the extension of space into an imaginative
seascape under a vast evening sky. Their il-
lusionistic frescos tore down walls, draw¬
ing the spectators eye into a marvellous
fantasy world where seductive heroines
could squander gigantic pearls with im¬
punity.
Tiepolo’s contemporaries, it seems, were
only too happy to retire from the grey de¬
mands of reality. Angelo-Maria Labia, for
example, the widow’s eldest son, became
an abbe - a very worldly ecclesiastic - in
order to escape the troublesome duties of a
Venetian noble. As an abbe, he was not re¬
quired to take office, but could devote his
time to renovating palaces, collecting
paintings and commissioning frescos. His
contemporaries spent their time at the
theatres, opera houses or the carnival, and
aristocratic tourists from all over Europe
came to Venice to partake in what was es¬
sentially a non-stop orgy of escapism. But
the turning-point was nigh. In 1750, when
Tiepolo had ended his work and left Venice
for Wurzburg, Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s
essay Discours sur les sciences et les arts was
published in Paris. In it, the author rails,
not unlike Pliny once had done, against
“moral corruption and luxury”. The mor¬
alist made out culture and art as the main
culprits for the seduction and perversion of
mankind, counterposing the innocent vir¬
tues of artlessness and natural simplicity.
Soon, the return to Classical values was in
full swing, and concepts of virtue - in the
period leading up to the Revolution -
began to be synonymous with the “vir¬
tues” of the Roman Republic. Once again,
a military-style, male-dominated society
gained the upper hand. There was a de¬
mand for men of earnest, and, once again,
Cleopatra fell into disgrace.
Why should Tiepolo fare better? The
Rationalists accused him of painting that
was lacking in simplicity, seriousness or
truth. His ludic, extravagant art was dis¬
credited along with the aristocratic society
to whose members it had once given such
pleasure. His masterpiece, the banqueting-
hall at the Palazzo Labia, was practically
forgotten. One 19th-century traveller to
Venice described it as “wretched and
deserted”. Although, in the meantime, the
work has been restored several times, and
though 'its once “glowing colour” has
grown paler, Tiepolo’s optical illusion is
still as amazing as ever.
295
 A young couple, their cool gaze fixed on the spectator,
poses before a broad country prospect. They are
newly married. The woods, meadows and fields
belong to their estate. Various details of the painting
characterise their marriage, or comment on the state of
contemporary agriculture. The work (70 x 119cm) is
in the National Gallery, London.

296
Thomas Gainsborough: Mr and Mrs Andrews, 1749

The proper combination of

activity and leisure

A young couple, Mr and Mrs Robert An¬

drews, pose before the trunk of a mighty
oak. The depiction of Auberies, their es¬
tate, with its fields, meadows and trees,
takes up more space than the double por¬
trait itself. No English painter before
Thomas Gainsborough had chosen to allo¬
cate space in this way; nor did Gainsbo¬
rough himself ever return to this pattern. Is
it the experiment of a young artist? Or did
the division of space correspond to his pa¬
tron’s wishes?
The identity of the couple has been wife’s lap may also be seen as discreet erotic
passed down by the Andrews family, in allusions. The bird, no more than a barely
whose estate the work remained for over suggested outline against a lighter patch of
200 years. The 70 by 119cm picture is now colour, is possibly the victim of a certain
in the National Gallery. An entry in the nonchalance - towards finishing paintings
parish register of the small Suffolk town of that bored him, for instance - to which the
Sudbury records that Robert Andrews artist was occasionally prone. “Painting
married Frances Mary Carter there on 10 and punctuality”, he wrote to one patron,
November 1748. He was 22 years of age, “mix like oil and vinegar”, and “genius and
his bride 16. Also newly wedded, albeit regularity are utter enemies”.1
one year younger than the bridegroom he
was to paint, was Thomas Gainsborough
himself. In a London chapel notorious for
its secret weddings, he had taken the preg¬
nant Margaret Burr to be his lawful
wedded wife.
After a number of years spent in appren¬
ticeship in London, he then retuned to his
native town of Sudbury. He probably
painted the portrait only a few months
after his patrons’ marriage, in the late sum¬
mer of 1749. The corn is cut, and the
sheaves stand ready bound in the field.
Ripe ears of corn are a fitting fertility
symbol for a wedding portrait. Gainsbo¬
rough’s realistic landscape also holds a
number of other symbolic references to the
couple’s consummate marriage and hope of
issue: a little tree grows between two larger
ones on the right; the man’s casually low¬
ered shotgun and the bird lying in his

297
T he church spire of St. Peter’s, Sud¬
bury, a market town about two miles
The poor, according to Defoe, were on the
point of devouring the rich - at least in
genre himself. However, landscapes were
not in demand at the time. They were ex¬
tremely badly paid and considered little
from Auberies, can be seen peeping number.2
The modest clothier’s business run at more than decorative space-fillers, to be
out from behind the trees in the back¬
Sudbury by Thomas Gainsborough’s hung over doors or above fireplaces.
ground. The Andrews had been married in
father was declared bankrupt in 1733. He Gainsborough was therefore forced to
the somewhat finer All Saints’ Church.
was evidently not quite as astute in such earn his living with portraits - “face paint¬
Sudbury had three churches, a reminder of
matters as the Carters. The painter, born in ing” as he called it - which he enjoyed far
more affluent times in which there was a
1727, and one of eight children, may well less than landscapes. In 18th century Eng¬
flourishing textile industry. The bride’s
have inherited his father’s lackadaisical at¬ land, representative likenesses were the
grandfather had made his fortune in the
titude to property. More than earning order of the day. Returning to his native
drapery business. He had invested his
money, he preferred to pick up his viola da Sudbury with his young wife in 1748,
money in real estate, eventually becoming
gamba and walk out to a pretty village Gainsborough could probably reckon
one of the region’s largest landowners. His
where he could paint landscapes. with a number of sitters among the
family were thus spared the consequences
By the age of 13, Gainsborough was al¬ wealthy squires of the region. Perhaps the
of the decline of the textiles industry. Its
ready so skilled at drawing from the life Andrews-portrait, with its unusually
ruin was brought about by political instab¬
that his family sent him, possibly with the generous accommodation of the surround¬
ility towards the end of the seventeenth
support of a patron, to study in London. ing countryside, was intended to give
century, and wars at the beginning of the
Under the designer and decorative artist potential patrons a demonstration of his
eighteenth. The latter had led to an in¬
creased tax-burden, the destruction of the Hubert-Fran?ois Gravelot he learned the skills in realisitic landscape painting. To

home market and a sharp fall in all foreign fashionable French Rococo style, which, in judge from the portraits he executed in the

trade. The writer Daniel Defoe, who England too, had replaced the pompous so¬ years that followed - in which his sitters

passed through Sudbury in 1724, described lidity of the Baroque. Its influence can be were shown against a neutral background,

the town as poor and highly populated. seen in the elegant curves of Mrs Andrews’s or in conventional Rococo garden settings
garden bench. It was in London, too, that - his innovative proposal was taken up
Gainsborough became acquainted with the neither by the Suffolk gentry, nor by the
Garden bench with realism of Dutch landscape painting. members of society whose celebrated port¬
a Rococo flourish Gainsborough made several essays in this raitist he later became.

298
Upwardly
mobile

T here is not such a set of Enemies to a

real artist” as the “damn Gentle¬
men”, stated Gainsborough, railing
against a class he was forced to portray all
his life. “They have but one part worth
looking at,” he went on, “and that is their
purse.”3 It is as a member of this species
that Mr Robert Andrews, leaning casually
on the garden bench with his legs crossed
and his blase expression, presents himself
here. His ease of attitude, pale coat and
pure white, fahionably bound neckerchief
suggest, together with his shooting gear, a
gentleman’s proper combination of activ¬
ity and leisure. His feet rest on the roots of
an oak, a tree which traditionally sym¬
bolised stability and continuity, and some¬
times even eternity.
Andrews poses as a member of the
landed gentry, the freeholding class of
squires and recent peerage, who not only
owned most of the country, but had parlia¬
ment in their hands, too. Without their
consent, George II could neither impose
taxes nor raise an army. “In my eye,” as one
contemporary statesman apostrophised
this class, “you are the great oaks that
shade a country, and perpetuate your
benefits from generation to generation.”4
The landed gentry is thought to have
numbered some 8000 to 20,000 families
(estimates vary considerably). The ma¬ stay in London, was put up by a silver¬ In 1749, however, such days were still
jority of these families owned estates large smith. Perhaps Mr Andrews senior was his far off. Mr Andrews gave his son Robert,
enough to bring them an annual income of unsuspecting patron. who was born in 1726, a gentleman’s edu¬
some 1000 to 3000 pounds, allowing them Old bankbooks reveal Robert An¬ cation at Oxford and, with the profits of
to lead a life of leisure or enter politics. Of drews’s father to have lent money at very usurious business deals, bought him an es¬
course, even larger estates were owned by high interest-rates. There were many large tate and a squires’ daughter as a bride,
the small elite of peers and lords of ancient landowners among his debtors. In 1743 he thereby ensuring his son’s entry to the
aristocratic lineage. lent the substantial sum of 30,000 pounds upper classes. Robert, by all accounts, be¬
The franchise was based entirely on to Lrederick, Prince of Wales, and was later came a worthy member of his new class.
land-ownership at the time. The great mass appointed “remembrancer” (debt collec¬ Although he did not enter politics, and
of the population, who owned no land at tor) to his household. He ran a successful despite a long life (he died at the age of 79),
all, nevertheless enjoyed equality before business from his house in Grosvenor his occupations are unlikely to have left
the law, by contrast with their cousins on Square, buying ships and trading with the him much time for rural recreation'. With
the continent. The shrewdest businessmen colonies. He was one of a new generation the death of his father in 1763, he took over
among them were also able to purchase of merchants and factory founders who the family financial empire. He did every¬
land. It is probable that the Andrews fam¬ paved the way for the Industrial Revol¬ thing within his power to increase the fam¬
ily came to wealth and rank in this way. ution. They had made England the world’s ily fortune and, if eight offspring are any¬
Robert is not as blue-blooded as he might leading trading nation and would soon thing to jydge by, to strengthen the family
appear. His father was apparently an arti¬ hold the political reins in their hands: capi¬ tree: a field of endeavour so suggestively
san, a silversmith, in London. It is known tal and factories had become more import¬ symbolised by Gainsborough’s ancient
that the young Gainsborough, during his ant than land. oak.

299

on undiminished for the benefit of gener¬
A good match
ations to come.
As a final ditch against incompetent or
F eelings had little sway in the matter of
marriage between two wealthy
reckless heirs, family trusts were set up
which left successive heads of the family no
more than usufructuary rights on the
families. The bride was often property they inherited. Moreover, the
promised at a very tender age and, like precaution was frequently taken of deter¬
Frances Mary Carter, married off at the age mining the younger sons’ inheritance and
of 15 or 16. She was little more than a pawn daughters’ dowries in advance, indeed be¬
in a business deal, in which each party was fore they were born, lest these prove an
concerned to increase its wealth, property undue strain on family resources. The sum
or influence by means of the most advant¬ designated for the lady of the manor’s pri¬
ageous match. Family lawyers would vate expenses, as well as her widow’s
haggle for weeks over marriage contracts, allowance, were also the object of negotia¬
thinking up endlessly sophisticated clauses tion. For “the only hope that keeps up a
to insure family fortunes against every wife’s spirits”, according to the cynical Mr
conceivable danger. It was imperative that Peachum, a character in John Gay’s popu¬
the wealth whose accumulation had de¬ lar Beggar’s Opera, is “the comfortable es¬
manded such great care should be passed tate of widowhood”, while losing her hus¬
300
band “is the whole Scheme and Intention
of all Marriage Articles”.5
Frances Carter was undoubtedly an ex¬
cellent match. The estate of Auberies, upon
which Gainsborough has painted the
couple, was probably part of her dowry.
Auberies bordered on Ballingdon, her fa¬
ther’s estate. According to a description of
1769, Auberies consisted of “a modern
regular and uniform building of bricks...
situated upon an eminence.commanding
a most delightful prospect... with gardens
... and several ponds”.6 Gainsborough’s
painting includes none of these features.
The Andrews may have had their mansion
built later, of course, possibly even on the
spot where their garden bench stood.
It may be assumed that the bridegroom
will have gone to some expense in furnish¬
ing both his country seat and town house
on Grosvenor Square. Unlike the estab¬
lished landed aristocracy, merchants and
gentry attached great value to comfort and
spared no extravagance in acquiring it. The
material for Frances Carter’s fashionable
dress is much more likely to have come
from London or Paris than from her fam¬
ily’s local cloth mill. Its full blue silk over
hooped, pale-yellow petticoats hardly has
room on the Rococo bench. Unlike most of
his contemporaries, Gainsborough did not
employ a drapery painter. He devoted no
less attention to the iridescence of shot silk
than to the play of colours in a cloudy sky.
If we are prepared to accept the views of
an artist who strove to go beyond mere
likeness in revealing his sitter’s character,
then Frances Carter must have made a fit¬
ting companion for her businesslike hus¬
band. She died in 1780, 26 years before
him. The cool gaze and tight lips of this
young woman suggest that the accumula¬
tion and retention of property may have
come quite naturally to her. In this, at least,
the couple will have been compatible - un¬
like Gainsborough and his wife.
As an illegitimate, unowned child of the
Duke of Beaufort, Margaret brought a life¬
long annuity of 200 pounds to her marriage.
This provided the couple with a modest
security. But Margaret’s pettiness and greed
were a cramp on Gainsborough’s Bohemian
lifestyle. She kept a tight control over his in¬
come, too, making sure he painted portraits
and driving away his merrier and more dis¬
tracting friends. The painter seems to have
submitted calmly: “She was never much
formed to humor my happiness.”7
T he view from the garden bench gives
the appearance of a boundless idyll -
not unlike the ideal parkland pro¬
posed by the most famous, 18th century
landscape gardeners. It even includes an
occasional cluster of trees: aesthetically in-
dispensible for the interruption of vistas
that would otherwise seem too wide, or
too symmetrical. However, functionality
in all its forms was considered inappropri¬
ate in one of the new English parks. Corn
fields and herds of sheep, not to mention
the byre just visible in the background on
the left, would be quite out of place. Gains¬
borough, it must be concluded, has not
painted Mr and Mrs Andrews in a park,
but on a farm.
The inconspicuous wooden pen enclos¬
ing grazing land for sheep would have been
equally unlikely to feature in a parkland
Illusion
of a
pastoral idyll
scene. It is rather a testimony to the Ag¬
rarian Revolution, which changed England
some 50 years before the Industrial Revol¬
ution by doubling agricultural produce.
Enclosure, the fencing in of previously
open land, had been a precondition of more
intensive cultivation. For centuries, the old
patriarchal feudal system had guaranteed
access to the open fields. This meant that
large areas of common land had provided a
more or less subsistence holding. Any vil¬
lager had the right to put his cow or geese to
pasture on common land after the harvest.
The right proved a fetter on the rationalisa¬
tion and intensification of farm cultivation,
and therefore had to be reversed. A new
type of highly effective farming began in the
middle of the 18th century when the more
progressive landowners began to combine
strips of land to create larger fields (in Not¬
tinghamshire, for example, where 322 nar¬
row strips were joined to form 23 pastures).
They ploughed up land that had previously
been infertile or forest, and they had the
fields fenced in, thus preventing the vil¬
lagers putting their own cattle to graze -
much to the disadvantage of the rural poor,
who were ruined by the loss of their rights.
As far as the landowners were con¬
cerned, however, the “enclosures” proved
one of the most profitable investments of
the 18th century. Among the agricultural
pioneers of the time were men like Mr An¬
drews, merchants who had recently
bought themselves into land. Used to in¬
vesting capital for profit, they were also
more open to innovation than were the
longer established, landed gentry.
It is therefore not beyond the bounds of
possibilty that the young London financier,
proud of his “model farm”, asked for a
generous depiction of it in his wedding-
portrait, or at least reacted warmly to the
artist’s suggestion of the idea. Even in com¬
missioning the portrait from Gainsbo¬
rough, a mere beginner after all, Andrews
proved his acumen for highly profitable in¬
vestment in “future markets”. For the
gentleman at the foot of the durable oak un¬
doubtedly contributed to the welfare of his
descendents who sold the painting for
130.000 pounds at Sotheby’s in 1960.
301
302
 Francesco Guardi: The Parlour of San Zaccaria, 1750
Every convent had its salon
The parlours of Venetian nun¬
neries were one of society’s
meeting-places. Here the nuns
received friends and relatives,
here business deals were struck
and here, occasionally, balls
were staged. They were typical
institutions of their day.
The convent of San Zaccaria and the city
of Venice were built at more or less the
same time - in the 5th century. Fleeing be¬
fore the Huns, Ostragoths and Lombards,
the people of the Upper Italian Adriatic
coast settled on the islands in the lagoon.
Here, so the story goes, a bishop by the
name of Oderzo San Magno founded six
churches and a nunnery.
At the end of the 7th century, the inhab¬
itants of the lagoon sought greater inde¬
pendence from their ruler, the Byzantine
Emperor. Despite the presence of an im¬
perial adminstrator, they elected a leader
for themselves, the first Doge. In the 8th
century, Emperor Leo Isamico sent the
nunnery the bones of St Zachariah and en¬
dowed it with land. Whether this was an
attempt to deter the city’s inhabitants from
breaking away from his rule is a question
that must remain unanswered.
The nuns made a deal with the Doge
anyway. In 811 they sold him a vegetable
plot which was big enough to hold both
the Doge’s palace and St Mark’s church.
San Zaccaria maintained relations not just
with the head of state, however; it also
served the patricians - which was virtually
the same thing. The patricians were the
families who in 1297 made up the Great
Council, and who had declared themselves
and their descendants the Venetian aristo¬
cracy. So as to safeguard the new class
against parvenus, the privilege of aristo¬
cracy was inherited only by those children
whose parents were both patricians. If a
patrician married outside his class, his
children lost their privilege and could play
no role in government. Since most of the
patricians in public office were not paid,
however, they had to be independently
wealthy. In order to keep the family for¬
tune intact, it was usually bequeathed
solely to the eldest son. For unmarried pa¬
trician daughters, this meant they had to
go into a nunnery.
Nuns from patrician families were nat¬
urally allowed to keep their rank. They had
maids. Their entry into the nunnery was
celebrated with a banquet. They were given
a trousseau, as if getting married. For
many, however, this confinement behind
bars and within walls was both against
their wishes and “against nature”. The
consequences were demonstrated by a law,
passed by the Great Council in 1349,
“against those who commit fornication in
nunneries”. At the same time, it was de¬
creed that nuns’ chaplains should be at
least 50 years old, and their confessors at
least 60. When an earthquake struck
Venice in 1510, the patriach blamed the
disaster upon the “shameless whores who
turn their nunneries into brothels”.
The parlour - a room where nuns could
converse with visitors from the outside
world - in the convent of San Zaccaria,
painted by Francesco Guardi around 1750,
was supposed to have been closed down in
July 1514. But the nuns mounted a spirited
defence against the officials, “and threw
stones at one of them”. The parlour stayed
open - and continued to cause scandal.
According to a report dated 12 April 1681:
“On Sunday there were indulgences in San
Zaccaria. Seeking something quite other
than indulgences, however, were two gen¬
tlemen who, out of jealousy and rivalry,
stabbed each other with knives in this sac¬
red parlour.”
303
Intrinsic to the concept of convent life is
the renunciation of the world. Intrinsic
to the needs of the nuns of San Zaccaria
and similar convents, however, was as
much contact with the outside as possible.
The architectural solution to this conflict
between “convent concept” and “nun
needs” was the parlatono, or parlour, in
which grilles separated the nuns from their
visitors, while still allowing them to talk
and touch.
The size of the parlour in San Zaccaria
can only be estimated from Guardi’s paint¬
ing, but they were normally large enough
to hold balls. The nuns still remained be¬
hind the grilles, but sometimes joined in
the festivities. Thus one French visitor re¬
ported seeing nuns in parlours dressed “in
men’s clothing and with a large feather in
their hat, bowing with much grace ...” Gi¬
acomo Casanova learned from a nun that
four squares of the grille could be opened
like a window: “Any man of my size could
have got through”.
Special occasions aside, parlours were
generally accepted as daily meeting-places.
A woman who had originally gone to talk
to one of the inhabitants might also ren¬
dezvous there with a gentleman without
embarrassment. In Guardi’s picture, one
of the nuns is passing a letter to the lady in
white - the parlour as communications ex-
The nuns
and
their visitors
304
change. Positions, privileges and money
were also topics of conversation. The con¬
vent was rich, and many patricians came to
discreetly request a loan.
The businessmen were greeted from be¬
hind the grilles by handsomely dressed
women. “More gallant than modest” was
how Baron von Pollnitz described the
nuns’ habit in the middle of the 18th cen¬
tury. “Their skirts are so short that one can
see their ankles ... they usually leave their
bosom exposed, and only cover it when
they go to chapel, with a cloak of the finest
white wool which hangs right down to the
ground”. The Venetian patrician nuns also
did not have to cut off their hair, but only
had to hide it. In San Zaccaria it disap¬
peared beneath a tight-fitting cap, held in
place by a veil shot with gold which was
draped around the chin and neck. The
number of folds in the veil varied in line
with the latest Paris fashion.
Two women without caps, one sitting
and the other standing, can be seen behind
the grille in the middle window. The fact
that they are openly displaying their hair
indicates that they are not nuns. They may
be novices, or women only residing in the
convent temporarily, be it because they are
awaiting their divorce, have been sent here
for their education, or for their protection.
Casanova tells of a 15-year-old girl from
the middle classes whom he was after, and
who was quickly bundled off to a convent
by her father, where she had to stay until
an acceptable husband could be found for
her. When none turned up, she was occa¬
sionally comforted by a “benefactor”. The
President de Brosses, a French traveller,
reported that in 1739 three Venetian con¬
vents had simultaneously competed for
the honour of being allowed to supply the
new papal nuncio with a mistress.
By the mid-18th century, things were no
longer going as well for the patricians as
Guardi’s picture would seem to suggest.
Their forefathers had lived from interna¬
tional commerce, profiting from Venice’s
strategic position along the trade route be¬
tween Europe and the Orient. This
changed, however, with the discovery of
the sea routes around Africa and to Amer¬
ica. Venice subsequently lost its commer¬
cial power and the ruling class its income.
For it was part of the code of honour that
a patrician, if indeed he pursued any busi¬
ness at all, could only engage in interna¬
tional trade.
Since only rich families could marry off
several children, the worsening financial
situation was reflected in the declining
number of weddings and progeny. In the
16th century, when Venice was at the
height of its glory, there were over 2000
patrician men. By the middle of the 18th
century, this number had fallen to below
1000. Most of these were in debt to
monasteries and convents, the only issuers
of loans in Venice who were still solvent.
In 1797, when Napoleon’s troops occu¬
pied the city, its convents and monasteries
were secularized. First they had to call in
their loans. This spelled the final ruin of
many patrician families. San Zaccaria was
used as a barracks. During subsequent
conversion work, the parlour vanished.
Today the former convent is home to the
carabinieri.
Servants
of the State

T he two men in front of the left-hand

window are wearing the black toga
which for centuries had formed the
official dress of patricians. It resembles the
modern-day gown of a lawyer, and was in¬
troduced to counter the increasing osten¬
tation of the costumes being worn in the
Great Council, and to indicate that every¬
one had equal rights and duties. Wigs, on
the other hand, had been worn in Venice
for only a few decades when Guardi paint¬
ed his picture. They were only introduced
after lengthy debate, in the course of
which the patrician Antonio Correr had
even founded an Anti-Wig Association. In
vain. Twice a week the headdress had to be
spruced up; the danger of lice increased,
and faces became smooth-shaven - beards
didn’t go with powdered white wigs. The
number of barbers and wig-makers rock¬
eted. By the end of the Republic, there
were almost as many wig-makers living in
Venice as there were patricians. Following
A beggar is standing at the left-hand
edge of the picture. There were
must have been hard to pass them by with¬
out being accosted. In 1760 a census
the city’s invasion by the Napoleonic beggars standing and squatting all counted almost 18,000 of them - in a city
army, both professions lost their jobs. over Venice, in front of churches, outside of 140,000. Approximately one in every
From now on, wigs were considered a convent doors, on bridges - stinking and eight Venetians thus lived from the charity
symbol of the old order. clamouring for alms, so we are told. It of others.
That had not always been the case.
There were not even 500 beggars to be
counted in 1586. The increase in their
numbers reflected the city’s economic
downturn. Yet despite the decline in inter¬
national trade, for the patricians - and
hence for the government - there could be
no question of creating a new economy
based on industry, on internal trade with
Europe, or on the agricultural exploitation
of Venice’s extensive holdings on the main¬
land. Their almost religious veneration of
the way of life that had made them great
now made them blind to the new reality.
Apart from the city’s 18,000 beggars,
Venice was also home to some 6000 nuns,
monks and priests - themselves making no
contribution to the economy.

Beggars were
all part
of the scene
305

The lady
In white
G overnment edicts prescribed black
dress for patrician women - some¬
thing that was frequently ignored.
With this in mind, the woman in white
posing near the centre of the composition
might be a defiant patrician lady. She
might also, however, be a bride. It was the
custom for brides to pay a visit to all the
more important convents; they were also
allowed to don colourful, sumptuous cos¬
tumes and even wear jewellery in public.
All this until one year after their wedding
- a date which usually coincided with their
first confinement. Only for this limited
period, this short span of time between
leaving the convent and giving birth, were
the official rules on dress suspended.
All the women on this side of the par¬
lour grilles would also have been in a con¬
vent, normally from their 7th to their 17th
306
year. During that time, they learned little -
dancing, music, posture and needlework
perhaps, but almost nothing in the way of
arithmatic or writing. “You educate girls”,
wrote one nun, “as if they were without
intellect and feelings”.
Their whole lives long, these women
were more or less the property of a man.
First their fathers, who had to protect
their virginity and hence placed them in a
convent. Then their husbands, whose chil¬
dren they were required to bear and whose
image they were expected to enhance.
They were forbidden any kind of inde¬
pendent activity, and had no say in any po¬
litical decisions. Nevertheless, in compar¬
ison to their convent education, marriage
meant a certain degree of freedom.
A day in the life of a patrician lady
looked something like this: in the morn¬
ings, sleep late, then a cup of chocolate in
bed. The children are brought in and kiss
their mother’s hand. A light lunch, fol¬
lowed by two hours getting dressed with
hairdresser, visitors, gossip and chat. Trip
out in the gondola, visit friends or par¬
lours, stroll through St Mark’s square,
theatre, dinner, gambling in the Ridotto or
privately with friends, return home in the
early hours of the morning.
In the long term, a rather boring exist¬
ence. The household was run by the major-
domo, the children grew up in the care of
nurses, private tutors and convents. In such
a situation, it was almost inevitable that
clothes, fashion and looks should become
matters of prime importance. Paris set the
trend. Once a year, at the feast of Ascen¬
sion, a Parisian dummy - the piavola de
Franza - was placed on display in a shop on
the main street. It was not just the fashions
which came from Paris, however, but also
the fabrics. 300 years earlier it had been the
Venetians who exported the most beautiful
cloths in Europe. Now the government
was simply trying to slow down the import
of foreign luxury articles. Artificial bosoms
from France were publicly burned in the
courtyard of the Doge’s palace.
FIoop skirts allowed women to carry
around with them more items than per¬
mitted by almost any other fashion before
or since. One Venetian lady gave Casano¬
va a guided tour of the contents of her
skirt pockets: a gold snuffbox, a pearl-en¬
crusted bonbonniere, a gold cigarette case,
a lorgnonne, scented handkerchiefs, two
watches with chains and pendants. When
Guardi painted The Parlour of San Zac-
caria, the Venetian hoop skirt had reached
its greatest dimensions. The comic dram¬
atist Goldoni noted that each dress re¬
quired 14.5 metres of cloth: “For the price
of one dress, you could feed a family for a
whole year.”
The portrait of the patrician lady would
be incomplete without a mention of her ci-
cisbeo, her permanent companion. Cicis-
bei visited their ladies during their morn¬
ing toilette, took them to the theatre, to
play cards, to the parlour and home again
at night. Since marriage was seen as a pure¬
ly social institution, as an alliance of two
fortunes and free from emotional attach¬
ments, husbands were entitled to a mis¬
tress, and wives to a cicisbeo. Their role
was mostly assumed by a patrician whose
fortunes were on the wane, a childhood
friend or a cousin. Goldoni called them
“martyrs of gallantry and slaves to the
whims of the fair sex”. The President de
Brosses believed that only about 50 ladies
of Venice “sleep with their cicisbeo, the
rest are held back by piety”. If the woman
in white is not a bride, but already mar¬
ried, the man in the scarlet cape might be
her cicisbeo.
Children,
calisoni
and puppets
T he nuns made the visitors to their
parlour feel as welcome as poss¬
ible. They entertained the children,
served iced drinks, coffee, the especially
popular chocolate, and calisoni - ring-
shaped biscuits such as the one the lady in
white is holding out to her little dog. Cal¬
isoni were a long-standing speciality of the
two patrician nunneries of San Zaccaria
and San Lorenzo. Both were required “to
send the doge 17 x 1020 calisoni a year” -
an obligation dating back to the days when
taxes were paid in kind.
Dogs, and in particular lap dogs, had al¬
ways been much loved in Venice, as docu¬
mented in paintings down the centuries. In
the 18th century, it seems, they were even
more popular than ever. It was during this
period, certainly, that they became the
subject of much satirical verse. In 1768 the
government also addressed its attention to
dogs: they now had to wear collars for
identification purposes. Bowls of water
were to be put out for them in every cafe
and shop. The provision of water basins
for dogs next to public fountains had al¬
ready been the subject of an earlier decree.
The patrician sons, splendidly dressed
like miniature adults, are looking up at the
castello dei burattim, the “puppet castle”.
The main characters were the two jesters
Pulcinella and Arlecchino, then the
“wicked Turk” and a soldier. Naturally,
the puppet Turk was forever getting wal¬
loped. The real Turks, on the other hand,
had beaten the Venetians and around this
period seized virtually all their holdings
outside Italy. Of soldiers there were only a
few. There was no money and no spirit of
resistance. Napoleon’s troops encountered
no defence when they arrived to occupy
the city.
307
 Giambattista Tiepolo: The Death of Hyacinthus, 1752-1753
Tennis with Apollo
According to tradition, the Greek
god Apollo, in a sporting competi¬
tion with his lover, injured him
fatally with a discus. A German
ruler and connoisseur of fine art,
Count Wilhelm zu Schaumburg-
Lippe (1724-1777), commissioned
an unusual rendering of the story
from the Venetian artist Tiepolo.
The painting suggests that Apol¬
lo’s friend fell victim, not to a
discus, but to a tennis ball that
was travelling too fast. The
canvas, measuring 287 x 235 cm, is
in the possession of the Museo
Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid.
308
A youthful body with pale gleaming skin
lies draped in decorative abandon on shim¬
mering silk. For all its tender-seeming
femininity, the body, painted by Giambat¬
tista Tiepolo, belongs to a man - the dying
lover of the god Apollo.
Most art historians assume the artist ar¬
ranged the scene - showing the fatally
wounded Hyacinthus, Apollo’s favourite -
at some time in 1752 or 1753; the painting
itself is undated. By the mid-18th century,
the Venetian was one of the most famous
artists in Europe: his use of light, his radiant
colours and evident pleasure in idealized
figural beauty were exactly what contem¬
porary art lovers and buyers cherished.
Tiepolo did not paint the sensuously re¬
clining youth in Venice - nor, indeed, under
southern skies. Prince-Bishop Carl Philipp
von Greiffenclau had enticed the artist to
Wurzburg with an enormous fee, com¬
missioning him to decorate with frescos the
residential palace built by Balthasar Neu¬
mann. “A1 fresco” paints were applied to a
ground of fresh plaster, a process which, at
that time, could only be carried out in the
warmer summer months. During the
winter months of his three-year stay at
Wurzburg, Tiepolo therefore designed the
cartoons for his murals, as well as executing
various works at his easel: alterpieces, love
scenes based on literary texts, mythologies.
The Death of Hyacinthus was not
painted for the Catholic Prince-Bishop,
however, but for a Protestant count who
lived even further north, Wilhelm zu
Schaumburg-Lippe. In a catalogue of the
Count’s paintings the work is listed as hav¬
ing been bought directly from the artist for
200 Venetian “zecchini” in gold.
Neither the Prince-Bishop of Wurzburg
nor the Count zu Schaumburg-Lippe were
among the more influential German rulers;
they could not compete with the rulers of
Prussia, Saxony, Austria or Bavaria. Nor
were they financially powerful. This can be
illustrated in demographic terms: a large
town might contain some 100,000 resi¬
dents, whereas Wurzburg had 14,000 and
Biickeburg a mere 1600 inhabitants. The
destination of Tiepolo’s Hyacinthus con¬
sisted mainly of its castle and those .em¬
ployed there, including the workmen and
tradesmen who provided services for the
Count and his entourage.
Compared to Biickeburg, Wurzburg
was a thriving metropolis with a magnifi¬
cently wealthy prince as sovereign. The re¬
spective fees paid to Tiepolo illustrate the
difference: 200 zecchini against 30,000
Rhenish gulden. For this handsome sum
Tiepolo decorated Wiirzburg’s Kaisersaal,
painting a dramatic history of the town’s
Catholic princedom, while the ceiling
above the grand staircase shows a
monumental cosmology comprising the
four continents. The figures of Apollo,
Mars and Venus appear against a cloud
background, while the hub of the universe
is a resplendent portrait of Herr von Greif¬
fenclau himself.
Several motifs used at Wurzburg recur in
the painting that went to Biickeburg. The
pediment broken by a ball on a plinth is
found in the background of “Europe” at
Wurzburg; the parrot features in
“America”, while the long robe with
double stripes worn by the elderly man is
found in “Africa” and “Asia”. In the
Kaisersaal at Wurzburg Hyacinthus’ head,
seen from an identical angle, belongs to a
trumpeter, albeit one whose eyes are open.
The recurrent use of identical motifs was
not seen as self-plagiarism, but was con¬
sidered normal practice at the time. Artists
constantly rearranged their stock of set-
pieces, according to context or contract. In
Wurzburg the artist’s task was to present
the historic town and its present ruler
to their best advantage. In the case of the
Biickeburg painting, however, now in
the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, the rela¬
tionship of picture to patron was of an en¬
tirely different order.

A god plagued
by dreadful guilt
W ilhelm Graf zu Schauburg-
Lippe was c. 28 years old when
the painting was executed. He
was born in 1724 in London, where his
father held high office at the court of the
Hanoverian kings George I and George II.
He grew up at Biickeburg, however, where
he was educated, as was customary for
someone in his position, by a private tutor,
a church minister. He studied at Geneva
and Leyden, spoke French elegantly and
German tolerably, and was a lover of
music. He later employed Johann Chris¬
toph Friedrich Bach at Biickeburg. A lover
310
of fine art from an early age, he had col¬
lected engravings by the French artist Jac¬
ques Callot while still a boy; fully grown,
he sat for Joshua Reynolds, who portrayed
him as a general.
The artistically-minded count, un¬
doubtedly the recipient of an education in
the classics, would naturally have known
the Roman poet Ovid’s Metamorphoses,
whose 1 Oth Book tells the story of Hyacin-
thus, the favourite of Apollo. The story
finds them engaged in sport: “the god and
the boy removed their garments, rubbed
their bodies, till they gleamed, with rich
olive oil, and began to compete with one
another in throwing the discus.” When
Apollo hurled the discus to the clouds;
Hyacinthus "ran forward without stop¬
ping to think, in a hurry to pick up the
discus, but it bounced back off the hard
ground, and rose into the air, striking him
full in the face. The god grew as pale as the
boy himself: he caught up Hyacinthus’
limp frame ... - the wound was beyond any
»
cure.
According to Ovid, the god, plagued by
dreadful feelings of guilt, could not under¬
stand what he had done to deserve such
loss. “Yet how was I at fault, unless taking
part in a game can be called a fault, unless I
can be blamed for loving you?” From the
blood that gushed from the wound, Apollo
caused a flower to spring, bearing the
youth’s name. “Still in what fashion you
may you are immortal: as often as spring
drives winter out... so often do you come
up and blossom on the green turf.”
Far from the whim of an artist, the sub¬
ject of a painting was generally chosen by
its patron. The young Count Wilhelm
probably commissioned this one himself.
But why? He may simply have been an
admirer of Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Goethe
wrote that “nothing can be more stimulat¬
ing to a young person’s imagination than to
linger in that fabulous, serene region where
gods and goddesses share with us their
deeds and passions ...”
However, it is equally possible that
something more specific than the Pantheon
had stimulated Wilhelm’s imagination. To
judge from his correspondence, Wilhelm
had felt attracted to young men from an
early age. At the age of twenty-two he de¬
scribed a young Hungarian as “his beloved
Festetics” and “my other half”. When Fes-
tetics was about to marry, Wilhelm advised
him rather to die than wed a woman
against his will. At approximately the same
time, one of his father’s friends, a woman,
asked whether Wilhelm had maintained
“sa froideur pour les femmes”, his coldness
towards women.
Not long after this he eloped with a
Viennese theatre belle, taking her with him
to Venice. Once there, however, he lived
not only with her, but with a Spanish mas¬
ter of music, entering a menage a trois
which later shifted its focus to London. In
a letter to his son, Wilhelm’s father men¬
tioned the Spaniard as “your friend
Apollo”. As ruling Count, Wilhelm tried
to bring his Apollo to Biickeburg. The lat¬
ter even agreed to come, but died in 1751,
just before the present painting was ex¬
ecuted.
R ather than competing at discus,
Hyacinthus and Apollo in Tiepolo’s
painting have evidently been playing
tennis, or - as it was often referred to at the
time - jeu de paume. The artist, at least,
suggests as much by showing a racket, balls
and a net, instead of a discus, and placing
the racket next to the flower growing out
of Hyacinthus’ blood.
Tennis balls were not soft and elastic -
air-filled rubber balls were not developed
until the 19th century - but made of leather
and filled with wool, hair, or even sand.
They were hard and rather dangerous, and
indeed frequently the cause of injury or
even, on occasion, death. In 1751, Frede¬
rick Prince of Wales was hit so badly in the
stomach by a tennis ball that he died of in¬
ternal bleeding. Count Wilhelm, who
maintained close relations with the English
royal family, would naturally have heard
the news.
Tennis was not played on a lawn, but in¬
doors in a court. Nor were such courts de-
A sport
with deadly balls
signed to standard measurements. Those at
the Louvre in Paris were 36 by 12 metres;
other courts were half that size. The net
was hung at breast-height, and the parti¬
cipants, like those in today’s game of
squash, played off the walls. Each court
had an enclosed spectators’ gallery, one of
which is suggested at the top left of Tiepo¬
lo’s painting.
Jeu de paume, or real tennis, was not,
unlike riding, hunting or dancing, an ac¬
complishment required of the young aris¬
tocrat, but it was nonethless “rightly in¬
cluded among those exercises designed to
divert the mind and maintain good health”,
as a manual of 1742 advised.
In a different tract of the same period,
we read: “The tennis court is a form of
exercise for the nobility rather than the or¬
dinary citizen, for it requires much
money.” It was therefore hardly a sign of
disrespect if the artist portrayed the god
Apollo engaging in a modern, aristocratic
- rather than antique - sport.
However, the racket and ball bear a
more direct relation to the patron, for one
of Germany’s 60 tennis courts was actu¬
ally situated at the small castle of Biicke-
burg, and Wilhelm himself was an extraor¬
dinarily good player. At the age of
twenty-two he reported from Dresden
that the male members of the royal family,
except for the king, who had been away
from home at the time, had all watched
him playing tennis, and that he had been
urgently requested to stay until such time
as the king, who would certainly want to
play with him, had returned to Dresden:
“I am told he is an excellent player, but I
am sure you will understand that Festetics
comes before all the kings in the world.”
Festetics was his Hungarian friend, to
whom he wished to return as quickly as
possible.
In Vienna, according to Wilhelm, the
Emperor himself had watched him play,
shouting: “Bravo, Comte de la Lippe!” A
close friend confirmed to his father the
young man’s success: “His unusual
strength and adroit mastery of the game of
tennis have ... contributed much to the as¬
tonishment, approval and renown which
he is accorded everywhere, and, indeed,
have induced both the imperial majesties to
watch and applaud his game ...”
311
O ver their light clothing, 18th-cen¬
tury real tennis players wore “a
broad belt of cloth fastened
around the hips with two knots ... and no
player goes without such a girdle, for its
firm binding protects the body, especially
the intestines and liver, against sudden
movements and blows.” This, at least, was
the opinion expressed in a doctoral thesis
submitted to the Medical Faculty of the
University of Paris in 1745.
Long robes, of the type sported by
Apollo, were commonly worn by antique
or mythical figures in Tiepolo’s paintings.
Count Wilhelm
ruins his
reputation
312
Hyacinthus’ short, and rather tight, kilt,
however, fastened about the ribs, is quite
unique in this form. The artist has prob¬
ably turned a contemporary tennis cos¬
tume into a quasi-antique garment.
Hyacinthus’ kilt is held by a broad belt
whose ring is attached to the golden head
of a satyr. A second satyr, in the form of a
statue in the top right of the painting, grins
down at Apollo and Hyacinthus. An ident¬
ical statue appears in a further painting ex¬
ecuted at Wurzburg, entitled Rinaldo
under Armida’s Spell, which also contains
a parrot and broken pediment. However,
the twofold appearance of a satyr in the
present work can probably be no more at¬
tributed to accident than can the allusion to
jeu de paume. The explanation may lie in
Wilhelm’s way of life. Satyrs, usually pic¬
tured with goats’ horns, tails and hooves,
were thought of as particularly wild types.
Incapable of leading a civilized existence,
they perpetually indulged in priapic excess,
constantly insulting and shocking people.
This echoed Wilhelm’s own behaviour.
He was indeed the wildest of types, uncon¬
ventional to the core.
He was locked up in England at the age
of 18 for disobeying military regulations:
for a wager, so it was said, he had ridden a
horse from London to Edinburgh, sitting
back to front in the saddle. Once, for fun,
he had travelled the country dressed as a
beggar. Several years later, in Vienna, he ap¬
plied for a commission as colonel, and was
refused by Empress Maria Theresia. Wil¬
helm thought it was because he was not a
Catholic, but his ill repute was the more
likely reason.
The genuine admiration he inspired as a
tennis player did not help him much, and
though he showed real bravery on one oc¬
casion by defending a friend against four
attackers, the affair only made matters
worse, for the friend was a rather unscru¬
pulous character himself, with an equally
bad reputation. When, finally, he eloped
with a theatre belle, the mistress of a re¬
spected nobleman, Wilhelm was forced to
flee Vienna.
Living with an actress and a Spanish
conductor in Venice was hardly designed
to improve his reputation. Furthermore, it
was considered somewhat eccentric to
employ a so-called marqueur as a personal
cook. A marqueur was basically a kind of
all-round tennis slave: a coach who
doubled as ball-boy, opponent, umpire
and court caretaker. Marqueurs were often
also responsible for collecting the money
from wagers taken before a tennis match.
The Count is known to have played in
Venice in c. 1747. Unrestrained, as yet, by
the burdens of office, the 23-year-old Wil¬
helm enjoyed the free and easy life of a
gentleman of quality. He evidently gained
a number of friends among the Venetian
patricians, the influential family Grimani
even dedicating a Carnival opera to him. It
was in Venice, too, that he probably be¬
came acquainted with Tiepolo, possibly
even discussing plans for the painting
which Tiepolo later executed in Germany.

An enlightened despot
A pollo, one of Tiepolo’s favourite
deities, also appears in the palace at
Wiirzburg, where the artist has in¬
cluded him in two separate scenes. Apollo
was god of light, and since light, brilliance
and clarity maintain a powerful presence
throughout Tiepolo’s work, it is easy to see
why he felt drawn to the deity. However,
Apollo also personified the mood of 18th-
century philosophy in the era of Enlighten¬
ment. In French, which at that time was the
language of the educated, the link with
Apollo is made clearer still: the Enlighten¬
ment was the “siecle des lumieres”, the age
of leading lights and of the enlightened.
However, Apollo was also seen as god of the
Muses, and Tiepolo’s painting shows not
only the victory of reason, the light of
understanding, but also the triumph of the
arts, of culture itself. To Wilhelm, both the
Enlightenment and the arts were of equal
importance: he employed one of Bach’s
sons as his court musician, bought paint¬
ings, did everything he could to keep Jo¬
hann Gottfried Herder, the philosopher of
history who prepared the ground for Ger¬
man Classicism, at Biickeburg, and was a
keen follower of developments in philo¬
sophy and natural science. He also allowed
the principles of the Enlightenment to
guide him in governing his own, small land.
Had he ruled over more than 15000 sub¬
jects, he undoubtedly would have been one
of the outstanding German potentates of
his time. As it was, Wilhelm went on to have
an influential career as an artillery expert,
became Commander-General of the Artil¬
lery of the Electorate of Hannover during
the Seven Years’ War (1756-1763) and then
Commander-in-Chief of the Anglo-Por-
tuguese army in the war against Spain.
His fame now depends largely on mili¬
tary scientific writings which he did not
publish during his lifetime for fear of ri¬
dicule; the sovereigns of petty-princedoms
were discouraged from thinking aloud be¬
yond their station. Besides, his opinions
would have been quite unacceptable to the
military establishment of his day. Wilhelm
declared the prevention of war to be the sole
aim of all military strategy. A way of achiev¬
ing this, according to the author, was to
make one’s defences strong enough to deter
potential aggressors from risking an attack.
Apollo, crowned with a laurel wreath,
was not only god of light and the arts, but
also of beauty and youth. Since so many
mortals - not only Hyacinthus - had met
their end through him, his name was linked
with death, too. Like the majority of edu¬
cated people of his day, Wilhelm would
have been well aware of the multi-faceted
nature of this deity.
Wilhelm was a young man when he or¬
dered the work from Tiepolo. It is there¬
fore not difficult to imagine the feelings
and memories that must have haunted him
when, grown so much older, he contem¬
plated the painting at Biickeburg in later
years. Wilhelm died in 1777 at the age of 53.
He was succeeded by his nephew. Whether
coincidence or not, the man entrusted with
administering Wilhelm’s estate after his
death bore the forename Hyazinthus.
313
William Hogarth: An Election Entertainment, 1754/55
Politics as a dirty business
. : . '
■Pdliis»
..
■*, ** Wmm
'M
Democracy was still in its in¬
fancy when Hogarth executed
his painting, measuring 102 x
127 cm. After the English parlia¬
ment had succeeded in restrict¬
ing the rights of the monarch,
elections to the House of Com¬
mons became increasingly im¬
portant. The candidates fought
with every means at their dis¬
posal - including bribery, intim¬
idation and fraud. Hogarth’s
biting satire on these chaotic
conditions today hangs in Sir
John Soane’s Museum in Lon¬
don.
314
When William Hogarth painted his Elec¬
,
tion Entertainment in 1754/55, the English
throne was occupied by a German mon¬
arch. King George II did not like his king¬
dom; in his view, “there wasn’t an English
baker who could make sweetmeats, an
. '
English musician who could play, [or]
English coachman who could drive ...
English entertainments were worthless,
whereas in Hanover all these things were
performed with the greatest accomplish¬
ment”.
George’s low regard for English enter¬
tainments was not simply a reflection of
his poor knowledge of the language. Like
*
his father George I, with whom the House
of Hanover came to the island’s throne in
1714, George never felt at home in Eng¬
land. His “foreign rule” helped accelerate
a process with consequences that are
still with us today: the restriction of the
monarch’s rights by parliament and thus
the development of modern democracy.
Hogarth painted his picture, therefore,
when our present form of government was
still in its infancy. It is not a very flattering
image. The first of a series of four paint¬
ings about a parliamentary election, it
shows a dinner in a tavern. The represent¬
atives of the host party are sitting on the
left. Opposite them at the other end of the
table, a local dignitary is slumped in his
chair: he had eaten too much and is being
bled. Demonstrators are throwing stones
through the window, and in the front left-
hand corner, election gifts are being laid
out.
The other three pictures in the cycle also
portray chaotic proceedings in a down-at-
heel society. The fact that something new
was nevertheless taking place seems to es¬
cape Hogarth’s eyes. Or at least, he does
not show it.
 '■:mT
gi
/"If

315
 The scuffle
for power

E ven in those days, music was all part

ill™

of electioneering. The man playing

xMrafft -»c'r* ’

the bagpipes is scratching his neck,

for of course he is a Scot, and according to
English prejudice all Scots had the itch.
The violin is being played by Fiddling
Nan, a popular figure in Oxfordshire. It
was the 1754 Oxfordshire parliamentary
elections which provided Hogarth, a Lon¬
doner, with the starting-point for his po¬
litical satire.
Above the small orchestra hangs a badly
damaged portrait of William III. Like the
Hanoverians, he too had been fetched in
from abroad. He was offered the crown
after the English had driven out his prede¬
cessor, James II. A member of the House
of Orange, William was also the governor
of the Netherlands and the son-in-law of
the deposed king. He came to the throne
in 1689, 65 years before the election paint¬
ed by Hogarth.
With William’s appointment, however,
the British made it clear to their foreign
monarch that from now on the king was
there for the people, and not the other way
around. William had to approve the fam¬
ous Bill of Rights. This guaranteed elect¬
oral freedom and freedom of speech in
parliament. It was no longer forbidden to
criticize the Crown, and members of par¬
liament were no longer chosen by the
monarch, but elected by the voters. With¬
out the approval of parliament, moreover,
the king was no longer allowed to main¬
tain an army in peacetime, and thus lost
his instrument of power.
William and his successors regularly
tried to get round the Bill of Rights; one
such attempt had probably infuriated the
visitors to the tavern so much that they
slashed the King’s portrait.
In those days, only a small proportion of
the population in England were actually al¬
lowed to vote. In 1754 it was less than
16,000 people - naturally all of them men.
As a rule, to be eligible as a voter, it was ne¬
cessary to own land. Even a modest farmer
could vote if he lived on his own land,
whereas a tenant farmer could not. Mer¬
chants and manufacturers similarly were
denied suffrage. Parliament was dominat¬
ed by the landed gentry.

316
T he two smartly dressed gentlemen
seen here on the right and in the
middle are the hosts and the victims
of the dinner. The one seated further back
is being pestered by a pushy man and his
smoking pipe, while the younger man in
front endures the unpleasant embrace of a
fat old woman. Someone is deliberately
trying to singe his wig - a common prank
in those days. Perhaps the young girl on
the left is even slipping the ring off his fin¬
ger. From beneath raised eyebrows, he
looks out at the viewer with an ironic,
long-suffering expression: if you want to
be elected, you have to suffer, you have to
smile even at malicious tricks.
Whether the two men are actually can¬
didates themselves, or are simply canvass¬
ing for votes, is unclear: well-paid agents
often had to do all the real work in elec¬
tion campaigns. From their yellow rib¬
bons (and the flag behind them), however,
we know that their money and their feel¬
ings are being sacrificed on behalf of the
To get into the
House of Commons,
you had to suffer
Whigs, whose party motto was “Liberty
and Loyalty”.
Elections to the House of Commons in
London were held every seven years - or
at least they were supposed to be. In Ox¬
fordshire, however, it was over 40 years
since the last ballot. In another district,
there were only three elections in the
whole of the 18th century. Instead, the
landed gentry frequently decided amongst
themselves who should represent their re¬
gion. The rules of democracy may have
been written down, but they were not yet
being exercised.
In London, seats in parliament were oc¬
casionally offered openly for sale. Their
buyers were mostly unemployed younger
sons of large aristocratic families. In a let¬
ter of 1767, Lord Chesterfield described
how he approached a dealer and offered
him £2,500 for a “safe seat”. The dealer
merely laughed in his face and told him
that you couldn’t buy a borough for that
price any more. Over the course of the
century, prices for a seat in the House of
Commons rose to £5,000.
Elections were expensive at the best of
times. In 1754 a candidate in Eastbury
spent £3,400 on canvassing, but probably
didn’t pay the electoral deputy enough:
the latter declared 15 votes cast in his
favour invalid and pronounced the rival
candidate the winner. The sorts of things a
candidate had to pay for were listed in a
satirical article: ribbons for suits and hats,
cudgels and bottles of brandy, coach rides,
perjurers, coffee-house gossips, demoli¬
tion of houses, incitement of unrest, legal
costs.
Just as the candidates bought their voters,
once inside the House of Commons they
could count on having their own vote
bought. They were not paid a regular
salary. But as Robert Walpole, for many
years the British prime minister, once said:
“Every man in the House of Commons
has his price”. Members of parliament
whom he invited to dinner would some¬
times find, tucked under their serviette, re¬
mittances of £500. Walpole was particular¬
ly delighted with one of his ballot victories
because it had only cost him £900. Bribes
were a generally accepted political tool. In
the words of one member of parliament:
“I have heard many speeches in the House
of Commons which have changed my
views, but none that have influenced my
vote.”
317

Every coal man
a politician
T he man sitting on the floor with the
cudgel in his hand, and the one rins¬
ing out the wound on his head with
gin, the alcohol of the poor, had no vote:
they belonged to the proletariat. Their
services were nevertheless required in the
election campaign. Even in Oxfordshire in
1754, votes were not only secured with
money, but also with intimidation and
force. And for that, a strong pair of arms
was always useful. On this occasion the
Tories won, but the Whigs contested the
result on the grounds that it was obtained
318
with threats and bribery. And since the
Whigs held the majority in the House of
Commons, they won their appeal in Ox¬
fordshire too.
The proletariat grew steadily over the
18th century - thanks to improvements in
sanitation and increasing agricultural out¬
put, and as a consequence of burgeoning
industrialization. More and more people
left the countryside for the city, swelling
the numbers of those looking for work
and thereby suppressing wages. A 14 to
16-hour working day, 6 days a week, be¬
came the norm. Both the exploited and
the unemployed vented their dissatisfac¬
tion in large-scale fights - especially at
election time. In 1790 the opposing parties
in Leicester thought they had found an
ideal solution: they would bypass all the
militant electioneering and simply share
out the seats amicably amongst them¬
selves. Upon learning of this decision, the
disappointed mob stormed the town hall
and stock exchange and plundered the
homes of the wealthy.
The mobilization of the unemployed or
underpaid population in the election cam¬
paign had its positive sides, too, however.
Many of them took a real interest in the is¬
sues, discussed parliamentary decisions
and took sides. According to a letter writ¬
ten in London: “Here every coal man is a
politician and airs his views in public with
the importance of a man who knows he is
serving the common weal.” Public pres¬
sure on parliament was so strong that it
became impossible for House of Com¬
mons debates to remain confidential. As
from 1771, the newspapers were allowed
to carry reports on Commons business,
thereby enabling the activities of parlia¬
ment to be generally monitored.
Quite clearly, interest in politics in 18th-
century England was much more wide¬
spread than in the countries on the Euro¬
pean continent. This is apparent in art as
well. Witness Hogarth, who is regarded as
the founder of a distinctive English school
of painting - and whose first works in that
school were satirical portrayals of English
society. Witness too, for example, a man
such as the librettist John Gay, who wrote
The Beggar’s Opera in 1728. Bert Brecht
made it famous in our own century as The
Threepenny Opera. But while it was noth¬
ing unusual to put beggars on the stage in
Brecht’s day, 200 years ago it was entirely
unprecedented and ran counter to every
convention. And Gay not only made raga¬
muffins into heroes, but showed their lives
to be no more immoral lives than those
of their masters: corruption was rampant
throughout all the classes.
Literary and art historians are fond
of insisting that the works of Gay and
Hogarth arose as a reaction to Italian art,
as a deliberately coarse reply to glorifying
opera and flawless painting. That would
be only half the truth, however. Gay’s
opera and Hogarth’s pictures reflect more
than just the artistic situation of their day;
they also mirror their social surroundings.
It is hard to imagine their arising in any
other country than chaotic, early demo¬
cratic England.
O utside the tavern window, the
Tory supporters are mounting a
demonstration. They are throw¬
ing stones into the room and in return are
being showered with water, or perhaps
even urine. The election campaign in Ox¬
fordshire in 1754 was a fierce one - and
left dead and many wounded in its wake.
While Hogarth hasn’t actually painted
bubbles coming out of people’s mouths,
he has nevertheless incorporated a consid¬
erable amount of text, which he uses to
pinpoint the hottest issues of the day. The
Tories, for example, are protesting against
a bill which will allow Jews to be natural¬
ized. “No Jews” are the words written on
the chest of an effigy being carried past the
window.
The dispute
surrounding the
new marriage laws
Even more topical is the Tory text being
waved on a banner: “Marry and multiply
in spite of the devil” - “and in spite of
Lord Hardwicke’s law”, as contempor¬
aries added. This new law stated that in
future, marriages would only be valid if
they were concluded with the publication
of the banns, a licence, parental permission
if necessary and an official ceremony con¬
ducted by a lawful member of the clergy.
Before that, it had been much simpler.
It sufficed for a man and a woman to de¬
clare in front of witnesses that they wished
to be married, to exchange rings and to
consummate their marriage. From a legal
point of view, that was all that was re¬
quired. The Church attempted to step
in by forbidding marriages of this kind,
but with no success. It even forbad its
priests to bless couples who wished to
get married, but again to no avail. There
were plenty of clergymen without a per¬
manent appointment, and the cheapest of
all were the ones in the debtors’ prison.
They would marry you for just a few
shillings.
The result was a profusion of secret
marriages, concluded against the wishes of
parents or in violation of promises of mar¬
riage already given. Hogarth, too, had
eloped with his future wife and married
her in secret. There were often no written
records of such ceremonies, which meant
that any later claims to an inheritance
could not be settled. Bigamy was hard to
prove. The English novels of Hogarth’s
day were full of elopements, adultery, and
illegitimate children fighting for their
rights. They reflected the realities of life
within the aristocracy as within every other
class of society. The majority of the op¬
ponents to the new law were conservative
Tories. They argued that it represented an
inadmissible incursion into the personal
freedom of the individual.
Both marriage practices and political
practices testified to the chaotic situation
reigning in the English society of the 18th
century. It was a time of upheaval, of labori¬
ous reorientation. Upon one point, how¬
ever, the majority were essentially agreed:
it no longer wanted the dictatorial order
represented by Frederick II in Prussia, for
example, or Maria Theresia in Austria.
319
320
Bernardo Bellotto:
The Freyung, Vienna, from the Southeast, 1759/60

What's in a square

Bellotto, the Venetian, had left Dresden. A

note attached to his travel documents, is¬
sued on 5 December 1758, reads: “The
painter Bernardo Bellotto detto Canaletto
is travelling from here to Bayreuth”. He
had worked in Dresden as court painter
for over ten years, but Saxony was now at
war with Prussia. There was no money for
art; the armies of Frederick the Great were
marching through the land.
Bellotto travelled via Bayreuth to Vi¬
enna. Whether he had been invited there
by Empress Maria Theresia, or whether he
was looking for new patrons on his own
initiative, is unclear. In Vienna, he execut-,
ed 13 paintings for the empress, and three
for other clients. In January 1761 he left
the city. In a letter of recommendation of 4 Bellotto used a camera obscura
January, Maria Theresia praised his work to “photograph” Freyung
in her own inimitable French: “il s’est
square, whose perspectives and
conduit ici tres bien et nous at fournit
plusieurs pieces de ces ouvrages tres belle.” proportions he has reproduced
He had behaved himself very well, in with mathematical precision.
other words, and had supplied several very Such realistic views had become
beautiful examples of his art.
the fashion amongst tourists.
That is all we know about Bellotto’s
time in Vienna. Nothing about how he They also reflected - in the cen¬
lived, nothing about what he earned, noth¬ tury of the Enlightenment - a
ing about the extent to which his choice of growing interest in things built
motifs and their treatment was determined
by human hands, in things
by his patrons.
The fact cannot be overlooked, how¬ which testified to the dominance
ever, that many of the buildings and pan¬ of reason over nature.
oramas which he painted in Vienna lay par¬ Cityscapes were viewed as na¬
ticularly close to the empress’ heart: the
ture subdued.
Belvedere, only acquired a few years earl¬
ier; the panoramic view of the city which
the Belvedere afforded; the newly-renov¬ from which several streets led off. Far
ated imperial Schonbrunn palace; the aud¬ from being an architectural jewel, it lacked
itorium with which Maria Theresia had homogeneity, having evolved haphazardly
endowed the university. But a square like over the course of the centuries. Nor could
the Freyung? It was neither harmoniously it boast much in the way of glamour, with
proportioned, as for example was St its market women, servant girls out shop¬
Mark’s Square in Bellotto’s native Venice, ping, and middle-class gentlewomen -
nor an enclosed ensemble: the Freyung nothing, certainly, that could rival the glit¬
was a marketplace and a thoroughfare ter of the imperial court.

321

The monastery as an
economic power and
centre for the arts
P erhaps the picture was commissioned
by the church which dominates the
background. Bellotto painted an¬
other view of the same church, seen from
the opposite direction, in a second canvas:
it shows the main entrance of the church
and the Freyung opening out in the right-
hand background. Whether he painted the
church for the empress is a question that
must remain unanswered - whatever the
case, the building represents one of Vi¬
enna’s important historical monuments.
The church is called Our Lady of the
Scots, and forms part of Vienna’s oldest
monastery. It was founded around 1155
by monks whom Heinrich Jasomirgott,
the first Duke of Austria, had invited to
Vienna from Regensburg. They were Irish
Benedictines, and since Ireland was at that
time called “Scotia major” - Great Scot¬
land - the brothers were called Scots. Vi¬
enna lay on the eastern border of Chris¬
tianized Europe; the Benedictines were to
serve as examples of the Christian life,
were to perform missionary work, pro¬
322
mote agriculture and provide accommoda¬
tion for pilgrims on their way to Jerusa¬
lem.
Duke Jasomir was thereby extremely
generous towards his monks. He gave
them a plot of land in front of the city
walls on which to build their church and
monastery, as well as other holdings and at
least eight churches and chapels with their
incomes. He also agreed that only “Sco-
tos” should be accepted as monks; the
Irish insisted upon successors from their
native country. All went well for two and a
half centuries, but then “they began to re¬
nounce spiritual and monastic discipline
and honesty and held dances and public
entertainments” - for which they were to
be disciplined by German Benedictines.
The Irish, full of the joys of living, had dif¬
ferent ideas: “Either we would kill them or
they us”, they declared, and left Vienna.
That was in 1418.
Endowments, donations and legacies
made the monastery one of the major eco¬
nomic forces in the city and also one of the
important religious centres of the arts. The
city boundary was redrawn to include the
monastery, and the walls pushed forward
(to present-day Ringstrasse). The mon¬
astery now lay near the city’s West gate,
the “Scottish gate”. Like most churches
and monasteries, it enjoyed sanctuary sta¬
tus: once within its consecrated grounds,
victims of persecution could not be pro¬
secuted - they were free. It is probably
from this that the name “Freyung” is de¬
rived. When Bellotto painted his picture,
the monastery was still offering asylum to
law-breakers, much against the wishes of
the police. A few years later, in 1775, this
right was revoked by Maria Theresia.
Only fragments of the walls of the ori¬
ginal Romanesque basilica still survive.
After an earthquake and a fire, the church
was rebuilt in the Gothic style. Having
subsequently fallen into disrepair, between
1638 and 1648 it was restored by two Ital¬
ians, and given the Baroque exterior which
can be seen in this painting and which it
has retained almost unchanged to this day.
Bellotto shows the lateral facade of the
church featuring the side entrance and, on
the left-hand side, one of the two squat
towers of the front facade, with their pyr¬
amidal roofs. Only the cross on top of the
second tower is visible. Before Bellotto’s
day, both towers were probably crowned
with Baroque onion domes, like the one
on the clocktower to the right. Behind the
church and the clocktower extended the
monastery complex. On the far side of the
low wall lay the cemetery. In front of it,
Bellotto shows women from the sur¬
rounding countryside hawking their dried
herbs.
The square which, in Bellotto’s painting,
bustles with market activity and carriages,
is today smartly cobbled, restricted to
traffic, and empty. Beneath it lies an un¬
derground car park, its entrance near the
church.
Beside the
half-timbered
house, the palace

P erhaps Bellotto chose this view not

for the church alone, but because it
allowed him to show a large open
space. Most of the streets in Vienna were
barely wide enough to allow a single
horse-drawn carriage to pass. The German
Romantics would later glorify the narrow¬
ness of medieval towns; Vienna’s rulers,
however, deplored it. In their eyes, spa¬
ciousness and magnificence were the
proper qualities of a city which formed the
residence of the imperial royal family.
Outmoded, too, were the medieval half-
timbered houses lining the streets, occa¬
sionally with a winch in the skylight to
hoist goods up to the attic. “Bedbug
coops” was how one imperial quartermas¬
ter dismissed the medieval buildings, most
of which were even narrower-chested than
the one shown by Bellotto. In order to
render such house facades in accurate per¬
spective on his canvas, Bellotto used a
camera obscura. With the help of an an¬
gled mirror, this box-like apparatus pro¬
jects the real image in front of it onto a
glass plate. The artist places a sheet of
transparent paper onto the plate and traces
the main outlines of the image, thereby en¬
suring that perspective and proportions
are correct. The customers who bought
Bellotto’s views, or vedute, demanded the enna’s occupation by the Turks, and was rent. Aristocrats were thereby excused,
highest possible degree of accuracy. They subsequently rebudt around 1700. The but it is nevertheless possible that the Har¬
wanted a factual and objective view of front of the palace was thereby extended rachs also placed part of their palace at the
reality - even if this meant foreshortening to the edge of the Freyung, making room court’s disposal.
the facades until they were almost beyond for reception rooms in the modern style. Lady Mary Montague, the wife of an
recognition. These rooms today house part of the col¬ English diplomat, visited Vienna in 1717
His realism made Bellotto famous - lection of the Vienna Kunsthistorisches and wrote that there was not a house with¬
whereas the lack of it in the vedute of his Museum, including Bellotto’s Freyung. out five or six families living in it. No
contemporary Francesco Guardi, today so Around 1700, indeed, Vienna as a whole more than a partition wall divided off the
highly prized, sent their value down. experienced a veritable budding boom. It rooms of the most distinguished lady, even
Buildings seem to dissolve under Guardi’s followed the expulsion of the Turks from those of a minister of state, from those of a
brush; they give the impression of being Hungary, and was a reflection both of tailor or cobbler.
products of shimmering light rather than lower defence levies and of a reinforced Despite the accommodation shortage,
robust architecture. absolutism: Maria Theresia centralized her Lady Montague nevertheless reported that
Beside the half-timbered house stands administration and brought the members there was nothing of more breath-taking
the palace of Duke Harrach, its wide fa¬ of the aristocracy from their country es¬ magnificence than the grand apartments,
cade corresponding to the grandiose lean¬ tates to the imperial court. These nobles, which commonly took the form of a suite
ings of contemporary court taste. The like the middle-class officials, had to be of eight or ten large rooms, all decorated
Harrachs were diplomats, governors and housed. The court resorted to compulsory with inlay and featuring elaborately
members of the Council of State. Their billeting: every citizen had to make part of carved and gilded doors and windows, and
palace burned down in 1683 during Vi¬ his house available, in return for a small furnished in a princely fashion.

323
M aria Theresia was the sovereign
in Austria. She ruled for 40
years, from 1740 to 1780, and
treated her multi-national state as she did
her many children: firmly but kindly, as
far as the national interest allowed.
Something not in the national interest
was personal freedom. Like Frederick the
Great, her hated colleague, but also like
the Jesuits, who in those days dominated
education, the empress demanded that her
subjects should be under constant surveil¬
lance and usefully employed at all times.
In the training academy which she found¬
ed for officers and officials from the nobil¬
ity, the students rose at 5 o’clock in the
morning and went to bed at 9 o’clock at
night. They had two breaks of one hour
each during the day, and even those were
supervised.
Every tavern
was
suspect
324
The aristocrats at court and the empress’
own sons had it no easier. Maria Theresia
would ideally have organized every adult’s
day right down to the last minute, just as
she did her own. The clock - visible in a
prominent position in Bellotto s painting,
too - was a central theme of 18th-century
society. “In order to keep a clock accurate
and in working order, it is necessary to
clean and correctly maintain not just the
large cogs, but also the small ones”, wrote
one Freyherr von Schrodern in a set of ser¬
vants’ instructions of 1744, “seeing that
the one is moved by the other.”
Journeymen were officially told not “to
absent themselves from work without per¬
mission” on Mondays; pilgrimages and
processions were restricted, since “they
waste time which they [the faithful] owe to
their homes and their fatherland”. Even the
churches were supervised, since illicit rela¬
tionships might be struck up during ser¬
vices. The 12 o’clock Mass in St Stephen’s
cathedral was condemned as a “whore’s
Mass”.
Austria was a state under surveillance.
Particularly suspect as hotbeds of criticism
were its taverns, meeting places for lackeys,
errand boys, journeymen, servants, coach-
drivers and soldiers. There were rarely
women present, other than serving girls;
they were not allowed to be served alco¬
hol.
There were police informers on every
corner. The State saw to it that fixed prices
and closing times were observed, that
there was no prostitution, and that there
was no threat to the political order. The
inn on Freyung square is called “Zu den
drei haken” (“The Three Hooks ). This is
probably a reference to the bells hanging
at the entrance, and which may have been
rung to signal closing-time. Vienna’s cof¬
fee-houses, later to become so famous,
were allowed to stay open until 11 p.m.,
one hour longer than taverns. They were
middle-class institutions, and as such were
perceived by the reigning authorities as
posing less of a danger to public order.
Foreigners, too, were monitored, as Gi¬
acomo Casanova experienced at first hand.
He came to Vienna twice, in 1753 and
in the winter of 1766/67, and encounted
“villainous spies, who are called chastity
superintendants”. The devout empress
hated sin, “and desiring to earn herself
merit in the eyes of God ... she rightly be¬
lieved that it was necessary to persecute it
in detail”. When a young woman entered a
house, the spy following her waited down¬
stairs at the front door until she came out
again, and then interrogated her. A young
woman could only walk through the
streets unhindered, noted Casanova, if she
was holding a crucifix in her hand and be¬
haved as if she was going to Mass.
He himself was caught relieving himself
in the corner of the street and was admon¬
ished. He was also surprised in the room
of a travelling acquaintance in a guest¬
house at 8 o’clock one morning: “What are
you doing in Vienna?”, he was asked. “I’m
drinking cafe au lait, as you can see”, he
replied. The bed in his own room next
door was undisturbed, as the superintend-
ant established; the lady was therefore in¬
structed to leave Vienna within 24 hours.
Thanks to friends in high places, Casanova
was able to prevent her departure - and
“despite the infamous police, I still man¬
aged to eat and sleep with her all four
nights that she was in Vienna.” Shortly af¬
terwards, he was hunted out of town him¬
self, as the innocent victim - so he insisted
- of an intrigue.
A realist
plays
with reality
L arge-format cityscapes were
known in Vienna before Bellotto.
un¬
There were drawings and engravings
of individual buildings, fountains and
squares, and topographical views of the
city from above, resembling a town plan.
But for houses or a city to be dignified by
means of art and on the scale of paintings -
that was something new.
In Rome and Venice, cityscapes started
life as souvenirs. A growing number of
tourists wanted to take home more than
just their own sketches and diary entries.
The English, in particular, sought works
which would keep their impressions of
Italy fresh in their minds, and at the same
time embellish the interiors of their homes.
In the 18th century, this souvenir art took
on a new role: more and more aristocrats
wanted grand portraits not just of for¬
eign settings, but also of their own cities
and palaces. For those in positions of
power, moreover, such pictures occasion¬
ally served not just to delight the eye, but
also as political propaganda.
This was particularly evident in War¬
saw. When Bellotto left Vienna in 1761, he
travelled via Munich back to Dresden.
Since commissions in Dresden were still in
short supply, a few years later he continu¬
ed further north, and worked - up till his
death in 1780 - as court painter to the Pol¬
ish king Stanislaw II Poniatowski. The
waiting room next to the royal audience
chamber was soon full of Bellotto paint¬
ings. They portrayed Warsaw, the castle as
a symbol of royal might, and the palaces of
the royal family and its supporters. With
the help of these pictures, it was suggested
to visitors that the position of the elected
king was firm and secure, something which
in reality it was not.
Whether souvenir, glittering portrait or
propaganda - there may be yet another
reason for the 18th-century interest in
cityscapes. They represented an apprecia¬
tion of things built by human hands.
Things which showed that humankind
was master over nature and her laws. In
this sense, a city represented nature sub¬
dued. It was the materialization of that
which was demanded of its inhabitants:
that they should suppress “the most nat¬
ural of all instincts” and work obediently
for State and family.
Even the veduta painter had to discip¬
line himself not to allow his imagination
free rein, but to stick faithfully to what he
saw before him. Or at least to pretend to:
Bellotto did not simply copy what the
camera obscura showed him, in fact, but -
as revealed by his Vienna panorama, for
example - moved buildings and altered
their size to make a picture out of what he
was seeing.
In the case of the Freyung, too, he has
imposed a discreet order upon the chaotic
square. The two main base lines of the
houses on the left and - slightly curved -
the building on the right meet at the cor¬
ner tower of the church. Bellotto thereby
creates a leftward movement which draws
the viewer’s eye to the tower. Fie counters
this with the clocktower soaring above the
church to the right of centre, emphasized
both by its height and its strong contrast
of light and shade. This movement into the
left-hand background and the dominant
tower on the right serve to infuse the
painting simultaneously with tension and
harmony.
Bellotto places an accent in the centre of
the composition, too, in the figure of the
servant girl in her blue skirt, red bodice,
white shirt and bonnet. People and light
were the materials which the veduta
painter could use at his own discretion,
and which best allowed him to animate his
scene. Thus he surrounds the girl with
shadow, but places her in full sunlight. The
colours of her clothes are more luminous
than those of the woman to the right, busy
with her basket. The woman on the right
is in motion, the one on the left still. Bel¬
lotto presents her as a bright, calm centre -
an example of how the painter famed for
his realism played with reality, when he
wanted to turn it into a picture.
325
326
Joseph Wright of Derby: A Philosopher giving a Lecture on
the Orrery, c. 1764-1766

A star-machine explains the

universe

The painting takes science and the dissemi¬

nation of scientific knowledge as its theme,
a rare subject in art, with Rembrandt’s
Anatomy Lesson of Dr Nicolaes Tulp per¬
haps one of its few, well-known examples.
While Rembrandt’s painting focuses on
a corpse, the centre of attention in Wright’s
work is a machine, referred to as an
“orrery”, after an Earl of Orrery who fin¬
anced its construction in the early 18th
century. The apparatus demonstrates the
path of the planets around the sun. The
Earth and Moon can be made out, as well
as Saturn with its rings; the Sun is hidden,
as are the operating crank and a compli¬
cated lever system with whose aid the
To make the teaching of science
planets were set in motion.
The philosopher in his broad, red the subject of a large painting was
jacket-coat stands head and shoulders most unusual. Most large-scale
above the figures listening to his lecture on works showed scenes of historical
the orbits of the planets. The presence of a
or mythological signifcance. In
woman on the left, and of children, indi¬
cates that we are not witness to a university
Wright’s painting, teacher and stu¬
seminar, but a private lecture. Books are dent remain anonymous, the set¬
shown in the background on the right. The ting is practically unrecognizable
eight figures are gathered in a darkened li¬ and the time is simply the present.
brary.
The subject of the painting is
In Rembrandt’s Anatomy Class, ex¬
ecuted in 1632, the sight of a corpse, the nonetheless significant: the search
image of ajiuman being, inspires thoughts for knowledge in the Age of the
of death and the fleeting nature of existence. Enlightenment.
Wright, 130 years later, places a machine at
the centre of his painting, an automaton that
cannot render visible, but simulates the
paths of celestial bodies. Spectators were
enthralled by the curved bands of metal.
Today, their fascination is practically im¬
possible to understand.
The work, measuring 147.3 x 203.2 cm,
was first exhibited at London in 1766.
Today it is in the Art Gallery at Derby,
where Joseph Wright (1734-1797) painted
it, and where he spent most of his life.
 the dawn of the Industrial Revolution.
Scientific discoveries had begun to roll
back the dark blanket of religious
prejudice.
Inventions and discoveries were often
exploitable for industrial purposes. One of
the members of the Lunar Society was
James Watt, who built the first steam en¬
gine in 1765. The power of electricity had
not yet been harnessed; apart from horse
and human power, the only other form of
drive was provided by water. Watt s inven¬
tion thus became a machine of paramount
importance for the industrialization of Eu¬
rope.
Another member of the Lunar Society,
and one whose name is still known today,
was Josiah Wedgewood, whose ceramics
factory at Derby had, thanks to the latest
technology, developed the capacity to turn
out mass products of high quality. The
prototype of the Lunar Society member
was a man like John Whitehurst, another of
Wright’s music-making friends. He was a
watchmaker, a maker of barometres and
scientific instruments and the author of a
scientific work on the origin of the Earth -
exemplary, in other words, in his capacity
to combine the practical skills of a preci¬
sion mechanic or engineer with the theore¬
tical bent of a scientific thinker. It was men
like Whitehurst, Wegewood or James Watt
who translated scientific discovery into
useful machines. The capacity to combine
practical and theoretical skills was also a
called because its members met once a prerequisite for the construction of an
Science orrery, a clockwork model of the solar sys¬
month on the Monday closest to full
produces moon. They may have chosen the ap¬ tem. The reputation, or even renown, of
machines pointed day because - in the days before this mechanical representation of the dy¬
street-lighting - it facilitated their nightly namics of celestial bodies was founded not

T he name of the man taking notes is

known only because he sat for one
of Wright’s portraits: Peter Perez
Burdett. He was a surveyor and carto¬
grapher; the painting suggests he was also
interested in the calculation of celestial or¬
bits. Burdett and Wright were close
friends, sometimes playing music together.
The artist portrays him here as an elegant
figure in a pale, striped jacket, with his
three-cornered hat tucked under his arm,
clutching a fashionable-looking walking
stick in the hand that holds the paper on
journey home, or perhaps the reason was
quite simply that they wished to document
the importance of celestial bodies at their
meetings.
The Lunar Society was given personal
and financial support by men who were in¬
terested in the sciences, either because they
earned their living as inventors or scientists
themselves, or because they wished to dis¬
cuss the latest scientific discoveries with
men who were specialists in the field. The
difference between a specialist and a lay¬
man was still undefined, for the field of
knowledge was by no means as extensive
only on its simulative capacity, but also on
the apparatus itself as the product of the
latest developments in technology.
As a testimony to the high value at¬
tached to machines of all types at this time,
the “Encyclopedic”, a work, published in
France since 1751, whose aim was to col¬
late the entire knowlege of the age, con¬
tained countless illustrations of machines
and apparatuses. In the course of the 18th
century, natural science and technology
were accorded a status equal to that of reli¬
gion, philosophy and art.

which he is writing. or well-charted as it is today. But the de¬

Demonstrations and lectures of this mand for education, especially in the natu¬
kind were organized in Derby and other ral sciences, was great. The 18th century
English towns by the Lunar Society, so- was the Age of Enlightenment, as well as

328
 know why, since the apple falls to the earth,
the Moon does not, or why planets should
follow set paths in space.
Today, Newton’s laws of gravitation be¬
long to the basic principles of natural
science. They have been verified beyond
doubt. At the time in question, however,
they created a sensation, provoking reac¬
tions throughout Europe, even from
people with no knowledge of mathematics
or physics.
In fact, the excitement was caused less
by Newton’s mathematical formulae than
by his claim that the paths of planets were
subject to calculation - his contention, in
other words, that the acceleration of a fall¬
ing apple, or the dynamics of celestial
bodies, could be described with the help of
mathematical concepts, and that the laws
deduced from his calculations were univer¬
sal. If all this were true - thus the argument
of his enraged detractors - the universe was
tantamount to a machine. Where, then, was
God’s place in it?
The mathematics of an apple falling to
the ground, on its own, would have been
unlikely to raise a scandal. The movement
of the stars, however, had always provided
an illustration of God’s guiding hand, a be¬
lief which Newton’s discoveries refuted.
Whoever accepted the latter might con¬
tinue to see God as the Creator of all
things, as theprimum mobile, but he would
be forced to deny the notion of a God who
intervened, or revealed His presence in
over the movements of the planets and physical phenomena.
Mathematics
comets. Newton himself did not arrive at this
replaces One of Ferguson’s planetary demon¬ conclusion. He was a pious man, and did
God strations may have inspired Wright’s not wish to question the omnipresence of
painting. The philosopher resembles sev¬ God. Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, the

W hitehurst, watchmaker, ama¬

teur geologist and neighbour of
the painter Wright, was a friend
of the astronomer James Ferguson, who
constructed orreries in his London work¬
shop. Ferguson is known to have held
a lecture at Derby in 1762, or possibly
a series of lectures. He earned his living
partly as a travelling scientist, moving
- presumably with crates of instruments
- from town to town. It was through men
like Ferguson, as well as institutions
like the Lunar Society, that scientific
knowledge spread. According to Fergu¬
son, the aim of one series of lectures was to
explain, with the help of mechanics, those
laws by which God regulates and rules
eral figures whom Wright portrayed indi¬
vidually, but most of all he recalls the fea¬
tures of a person Wright never saw in real
life: Isaac Newton (1643-1727). Like the
philosopher in the painting, whom Wright
shows head and shoulders above the other
figures, the English philosopher, mathe¬
matician and physician towered like a
great mountain over 18th-century
thought.
At least one anecdote from the life of the
famous scientist is probably still told to
every schoolchild: sitting on the grass,
Newton observed an apple falling to the
earth from a branch. This everyday occur¬
rence is said to have inspired his research
on gravity in general, and the earth’s grav¬
itational pull in particular: he wanted to
great German scholar and sometime ad¬
versary of Newton, referred to this con¬
tradiction in his work. Poking fun at him
in a letter, he suggested that although
Newton’s God had created the world
clock, He was forced, in order not to ap¬
pear superfluous, to constantly rewind
and repair it.
The world as a clock, the cosmos as a
machine or automaton - such notions ex¬
cited Wright’s contemporaries, preyed on
their minds, left them unsettled. An orrery
not only fascinated them as an example of
technical progress, it also lent a more vivid
dimension to theological debate.

329

Universal science
for women
T he brightest faces in the painting be¬
long to the two children. They do
not look bored, as the majority of
and children children may do in maths lessons today,
but dreamily content, as if watching some¬
thing especially beautiful. They remind us
of angels’ faces in Nativity scenes.
It is not known whether the artist in¬
tended to forge a link with the tradition in
religious painting. It is possible, however,
that Wright’s painterly emphasis of young
faces reflects a growing awareness of the
unique status of children. The literature of
the period confirms this impression: the
philosopher John Locke (1632-1704) had
demanded that teachers pay special atten¬
tion to the peculiar interests of children in¬
stead of making them learn by heart. His
Thoughts Concerning Education enjoyed
considerable currency during the 18th
century.
Wright paints a picture of the ideal edu¬
cation: the children in his painting are not
forced to learn by rote, but acquire sci¬
entific knowledge through their natural
inclination to play. In painting, too, there
was a growing interest in children. There
had always been portraits of princes and
princesses, but this was a privilege middle-
class children now began to share, some
family portraits no longer marginalizing
children, but giving them pride of place.
330
There is a very beautiful portrait of a
mother and daughter by Joseph Wright,
who also painted two brothers hugging a
pet dog. Neither subject would have been
considered usual in England at the time.
To the left of the orrery Wright places a
young woman, demonstrating that women
too participated in intellectual life. Even
more so than in England, this was the case
in France, especially in aristocratic circles.
Voltaire’s friend, the Marquise du Chatelet,
for example, translated Newton’s works
into French, and a portrait of 1753 shows a
Parisian lady with a lectern, the word
“Newton” decipherable on the page of an
open book.
Special introductions to the sciences
were addressed to a female readership:
John Harris’s Astromomical Conversations
between a Gentleman and a Lady, pub¬
lished in 1719, for example, or Newtonian
Science for the Lady by Francesco Alga-
rotti, in 1737 (first English translation in
1742). However, knowledge did not al¬
ways make a woman popular, as an acerbic
comment made by Samuel Johnson in
1763 and reported by his friend James
Boswell, clearly shows: “Mr Johnson said
today that a woman’s preaching was like a
dog’s walking on his hinder legs. It was not
done well, but you were surprised to find
it done at all.”
Wright’s painting derives its striking ef¬
fect from lighting that appears to draw
faces and objects from the surrounding
darkness. But light not only acts as a for¬
mal device in this painting, it is also sym¬
bolic, representing the light of reason and
knowledge. The terms used to describe the
epoch itself reflect this concern: the Ger¬
mans speak of the Aufkldrung, the English
word is “Enlightenment” and the French
refer to the si'ecle des lumieres; in each case,
the image is one of increasing light and
clarity. Newton, too, was celebrated as a
leading light: “Nature and Nature’s Laws
lay hid in night”, wrote the English poet
Alexander Pope (1688-1744), “God said,
Let Newton be, and all was Light.”
T he lighting effect used in the painting
was not Wright’s invention; Ca¬
ravaggio, Georges de la Tour, Rem¬
brandt and Gerard van Honthorst had de¬
veloped tenebrist effects before him.
Wright uses them again and again in his
work. In his accounts he describes his
paintings as “candle light pictures”, al¬
though their light was by no means always
provided by candles.
He was especially interested in power¬
ful contrasts of this type, painting a fire¬
works’ display in Rome and, during his
stay in Naples, the eruption of Vesuvius by
night. He also did several paintings of
The art
of lighting
a lecture
blacksmith’s shops by night, with huge,
water-driven hammers beating down on
white-hot iron. It was a topical motif. He
also painted the moonlit factory of Joseph
Arkwright, a well-known English indus¬
trialist, whose cotton mill was kept run¬
ning twenty-four hours a day, in two
twelve-hour shifts; Wright painted the fac¬
tory with its windows gleaming in the
dark.
Wright’s lasting fame was founded on
two renderings of scientific demonstra¬
tions: the Lecture on the Orrery and An
Experiment on a Bird in the Airpump
(1768). The Airpump centres around a glass
container from which the air has been
removed; in it is a bird, sunk to the bottom
in the vacuum. Once again, the dramatic
quality of the work derives from its single
source of light, leaving faces and instru¬
ments in partial darkness.
The format - over two metres wide - of
the two paintings was generally reserved
for history paintings, highly popular at the
time. Thus Wright’s lecture scenes com¬
peted courageously with large-scale battles
and mythologies. Lectures and scientific
demonstrations were not considered
worthy of art, but Wright succeeded, with
his “candlelights”, in finding an appropri¬
ate form for his subject.
Wright earned his living, not with paint¬
ings of this kind, but by portraiture. In this
sense, he was no worse off than his famous
contemporaries, Sir Joshua Reynolds and
Thomas Gainsborough. The role of 18th-
century art was primarily determined by
the demand for portraits of aristocrats and
wealthy burghers. It was important to be
able to lend one’s subject a certain charm or
nobility: Reynolds, for instance, invested
his clients with classical dignity by dress¬
ing them in quasi-antique robes. Wright
did not go quite so far, though he did tend
to smooth out the wrinkles, as it were: his
orrery painting can be seen as a group
portrait of several unusually handsome
figures.
Wrights clients, with the exception of a
few Midland’s gentry, came from his own
class: his father was a Derby lawyer; one of
his brothers also became a lawyer, the
other a doctor. They were members of a
middleclass that was intent on progress
and industrialization, and whose efforts
brought it economic and political power.
Wright went on the usual “grand tour”
to Italy, but spent most of the rest of his life
in Derby. An attempt to establish himself
as a portraitist in fashionable Bath, a spa
considered particulary chic by the aristo¬
cracy, was doomed to failure. The painter
evidently had difficulty adapting to his
clientele: “The great people are so fantast¬
ical and whimmy”, he wrote, “they create
a world of trouble.” The suffix “of Derby”
was not given to him as a title, but as a
means of distinguishing him from other
painters called Wright.
The Orrery was bought by a certain
Lord Ferrers, a member of the Royal So¬
ciety who had published astronomical ob¬
servations and constructed an orrery him¬
self.
331
332
Francesco Guardi: The Departure of the Doge
on Ascension Day, c. 1770

The marriage
of Venice with the sea
A few light clouds adorn a blue sky over
Venice. The doge’s palace and the Cam¬
panile can be seen on the right, the chur¬
ches of Santa Maria della Salute and San
Giorgio Maggiore in the centre and on the
left. The artist evidently set up his easel at
a point now occupied by the public gar¬
dens, the setting of today’s Venice Art
Biennale. Francesco Guardi has com¬
pressed the panorama a little in order to
show as many famous buildings as
possible.
The large ship floating in the harbour is
the bucintoro, the Venetian Republic’s ship
of state. The name originally meant “ship Every year on Ascension Day, in
of gold”. The doge with his dignitaries and
a symbolic act of union with the
senators are on board to enact the symbolic
marriage of the head of state with the Adri¬
sea, the Doge of Venice boarded
atic, a ceremony celebrated each year on the ship of state, a ceremonial
Ascension Day. barge that was so heavily burd¬
This was the most important festival of ened with ornament, it was practi¬
the year, spread out over two weeks to
cally unseaworthy. The weaker
allow the Venetians to celebrate as befitted
the occasion. With masques permitted and the Republic became, the more
theatres and the casino open, tourists pompous the ceremony, captured
flocked to the city. A trades fair, offering here by Francesco Guardi in 1770,
Venetian luxury goods, was mounted sim¬
only decades before Venice finally
ultaneously. Ascension thus cleverly com¬
bined business interest with a pleasurable
lost its independent sovereignty.
springtime extension of Carnival, officially The painting, measuring
opened with a popular, semi-religious 67 x 101 cm, is now in the
ceremony of state. Louvre, Paris.
The work belongs to a series of twelve
depictions of Venetian festivals which
Guardi probably painted for Doge Alvise
Mocenigo IV, the third last of the doges be¬
fore the annals of the Republic closed. Mo¬
cenigo celebrated his first marriage with
the sea in 1763. As usual, the Venetians
were entitled to inspect the bucintoro the
day before. Those who possessed boats
joined a flotilla which, in a manner resem¬
bling a wedding procession, accompanied
the dream-ship along its route. According
to Goethe, the ship showed both “what the
Venetians were, and what they imagined
themselves to be”.

333

A golden
parasol recalls
Byzantium
M any ships were richly decorated
in those days, but none weighed
quite as heavily at the bows as
the bucintoro. The lengthy, projecting
wooden beak, usually attached to galleys
for the purpose of ramming enemy ships,
was here purely decorative; moreover, it
was even complemented by a second such
extension. The upper beak, ornamented
with waves, seaweed and children, sym¬
bolized the sea, while the lower one, with
bushes and stones, and with Zephyr puff¬
ing his cheeks, was the Earth. They joined
in a gigantic bank of shells upon which Jus-
titia was enthroned.
Behind the latter, the doge himself
would be practically invisible were it not
for his golden parasol. Whenever he left
his palace on official business, this ancient,
oriental symbol of power was carried
along beside him, a reminder of the town’s
earliest days when it was part of the By¬
334
zantine Empire. The marriage to the sea
itself harked back to the first centuries of
the maritime Republic. Originally the
water was merely blessed by those on
board, a ceremony resembling that in
which the coastal dwellers of antiquity had
asked for Nepune’s clemency. Later, the
Christians had adapted the heathen cus¬
tom to their own ends. The ceremony was
followed by a simple repast of chestnuts
and red wine.
This altered again with Venice’s rise to
power. The ritual now began to incorpor¬
ate reminders of Venice’s former triumphs.
On Ascension Day in 997 or 1000 (the
exact date was a matter of dispute between
town chroniclers), the Doge Pietro Orse-
olo II put out to sea to liberate the towns
of the Dalmatian coast from pirates. The
operation was successful and marked the
beginning of Venetian hegemony over the
Dalmatian coast. In 1177 Venice succeeded
in arbitrating between Emperor Friedrich
Barbarossa and Pope Alexander III. Ac¬
cording to legend, the two greatest poten¬
tates of the age held their conciliatory
meeting in St. Mark’s, thereby involuntar¬
ily recognizing Venice’s claim to dominion
over the Adriatic. As a token of his grati¬
tude, the Pope is said to have presented the
doge with a consecrated ring, expressing
the wish that he “marry the sea, just as a
man marries a woman to become her
lord”.
Venice in its infancy had begged for the
sea’s clemency; now it presumed to declare
itself the ruler of the waves. The religious
ceremony was transformed to an act of
state in which the town celebrated itself
and its claims to power. Each year the doge
had a ring made that was identical to that
given to him after his election as an official
symbol of his unity with the Republic, and
each year he would throw the ring to the
waves, uttering the declaration: “We wed
ourselves to thee, O Sea, as a sign of our
true and lasting dominion.”
This avowal of lasting marital supre¬
macy was the object of much ridicule.
When the Turks became powerful during
the 16th century, it was said that while
Venice might be the sea’s husband, Turkey
was her lover. The 18th-century Venetian
writer Giacomo Casanova commented
that if the unseaworthy vessel were to sink
“all Europe would laugh at the tragic acci¬
dent, saying the doge had finally decided to
consumate his marriage.”
"The ship
is a veritable
monstrance"

F or the lords and dignitaries of Venice

to sail beyond the Lido in the burin-
toro would have been rash; the Lido
itself was navigable only on a comfortable
breeze. According to Casanova, whether
or not the burintoro left its dock at all
depended “on the courage of the Admiral
of the Arsenal, who vouched for good
weather with his head”.
Thus laden with responsiblity, the offi¬
cial in question is seen in the present pic¬
ture standing on the roof of the ship, set¬
ting the course with his commander’s
baton and leaning with his other hand
against the mast which, instead of a sail,
carries a flag with the emblem of the Vene¬
tian lion. The roof was hardly the best of
places whence to maintain control or give
orders, but there was none better to be had.
The commander is flanked by two other
admirals, identifiable by their red coats. In
wartime, admirals were not permitted to
command the Venetian fleet, since this was
the prerogative of patricians. High-rank¬
ing officers, on the other hand, were ordi¬
nary burghers who had won their colours
at sea and were made responsible for the
various districts of the harbour, including
the shipyards, or Arsenal. Their most im¬
portant public role came at Ascencion, or
La Sensa, as the Venetians called it, or
whenever the burintoro was used to trans¬
port state visitors.
The Admiral of the Arsenal was a higher
rank than other admirals, for it was in his state, which, relying heavily on their ser¬ lordly heads of its rulers”, wrote Goethe,
area of control that ships were built and vices, treated them accordingly. If it is true and went on: “For it is well known that
housed; the Arsenal was the shipping that they were not paid as highly as people like their overlords adorned as
centre of Venice. The burintoro, too, had workers at some private shipyards, they sprucely as their hats.”
its own, stylish boathouse there, designed could not be dismissed either. They were The Venetians built a new burintoro ap¬
in 1547 by the architect Michele Sanmi- responsible for supplying a fire-fighting proximately once a century. The ship
cheli. Venice, in its heyday as a great, sea¬ service and guarding the three most im¬ painted by Guardi was launched in 1729,
going power, had been home port to over portant sites of the Republic: the doge’s Pa¬ and cost 70,000 ducats. It was 35 metres
3000 seaworthy vessels, almost all built in lace, the Mint and, of course, the Arsenal long and 7.5 metres wide, with four men at
Venice herself. By the mid-18th century, itself. Only they were permitted to row the each oar. The enclosed upper deck was
there were only 60 or 70, all of which were burintoro, during which task they sang ela¬ reserved for the senators.
built at foreign shipyards. The Dutch and borate madrigals. The vessel’s last voyage came in 1796,
English had developed better ships, forcing The ship of state was a galley, a type of shortly before Napoleon’s troops occupied
the Venetians to buy from them if they vessel that was known for its seaworthi¬ the town and brought the history of the
wished to hold their own as merchants. ness. Unlike the bucintorol “The ship is all maritime Republic to an end. The Vene¬
The Arsenal was once the most import¬ decoration,... all gilded carvings, a verit¬ tians were forced to stand by and watch
ant industrial quarter in Venice. The arsen- able monstrance, devoid of all purpose while the French put their “gilded” “dec¬
alotti, or dockers, were employed by the beyond exhibition to the people of the oration” to the torch.

335
In Venice’s heyday the bucintoro would
be accompanied by some 4000 to 5000
fun, playing games, enjoying
doing whatever one wishes, and nothing
oneself, away from home, or where letters and
presents were taken. Carlo Goldoni, a
Venetian writer of comedies, described
vessels: fishing boats, gondolas and one will ever regret.” This paean was writ¬
ten in the 16th century; even then, the gon¬ them as “blithe, contended, honest men of
peote. The latter were gilded gondolas of
dola, decked out with cushions, was seen as honour, famed for courage and courtesy,
state with ornately carved cabins. The doge
a “soft shell of love” — a love nest. It is no always ready to share a joke, even with
owned three, using them on official occa¬
accident that the verb “gondolar”, to their Excellencies”. One French traveller
sions, or to meet royal visitors to Venice
“travel in a gondola”, also means to amuse had quite a different, and rather more criti¬
who preferred to travel incognito. For of¬
oneself” in Venetian dialect. cal opinion, finding them “roguish, de¬
ficial state visits the bucintoro was towed
Goethe, visiting Venice in 1786, also bauched and hypocritical”. But the
from its dock at the Arsenal. Foreign
enjoyed the pleasures of travelling by Frenchman had probably hired a public
diplomats owned peote, too, attempting to
gondola, fiaving come all the way from gondola, and cheating foreigners was prac¬
outdo one another with the splendour and
Weimar, however, where he had left Frau tically a point of honour among hired gon¬
number of the vessels in their possession.
von Stein, he did not experience the vessel doliers.
The type of vessel known as the gondola
as a love nest, but as a kind of mini-bucin¬ The gondoliers in the foreground wear¬
gradually developed during the 16th cen¬
toro: “Grown weary, I took a seat in a ing blue coats and hats with dangling gold
tury. By the 18th century, their appearance
gondola ... and, transported, suddenly coins were probably arsenalotti. They
was much as it is today, with the exception
was a ruler of the Adriatic: a feeling every alone were permitted to row the bucintoro,
that a larger number had roofs or cabins;
Venetian knows who lies back in his gon¬ or to steer the doge’s peote.
the need for protection was evidently felt
dola.” The arsenalotti had a special role at all
more keenly than the desire to see or be
Gondoliers wore a special costume, state ceremonies: it was they who carried
seen. Gondolas were used in much the
usually consisting of knee breeches, white the newly elected doge on their shoulders
same way as coaches in other towns, for
stockings and a red beret. When Venice around St. Mark’s Square; and it was they,
trysts and everyday transport.
was a leading sea-going power, some 3000 too, who held the torches at his funeral, or
“The gondola is a peaceful way to travel,
gondoliers were employed by the patri¬ who stood guard between the death of one
allowing one to lie back safely, whether
cians; by Guardi’s day there were only c. doge and election of the next, a time when
alone or with company, laughing, having
300 left, sadly depleted, like the number the doge’s palace was especially vulnerable
and wealth of the patricians themselves. to thieves. On the eve of Ascension Day,
Gondoliers in private employ were ex¬ the masters and foremen of the arsenalotti
Pleasure pected to be especially discreet, since they, were invited, together with the members of
under the roof more than anyone, knew where the indi¬ the government, to take part in a festive re¬

of a gondola vidual members of a family spent their time past at the doge’s palace.

336
From harsh
reality to the
illusion of beauty

T hose who did not accompany the

bucintoro by boat stood at the edge
and watched. Many of the spectators
wore traditional white masks which
covered only the upper part of the face,
preserving anonymity while allowing the
wearer to speak freely. One function of the
masks, aided by capacious coats, scarves
drawn over the head and three-cornered
hats, was to obliterate gender and class dif¬
ference. Social barriers seemed to vanish;
tourists, too, looked much the same as
Venetians.
But it was not the unusually prolonged
Carnival alone that made Venice such a
“must” on the “grand tour” itinerary of ar¬
istocrats and art-obsessed, middle-class
travellers. Goethe, for one, was lavish with
praise: “Everything around me is imbued
with dignity, a great work of collective
human power, worthy of the respect due to
a splendid monument, not to a ruler, but to
a people”, he wrote, continuing, “even if its
lagoons gradually silt up and its foul
swamps exhale the ague, even with its mer¬
chant trade grown weak and former power
sapped, the visitor will find the physical
and spiritual consitution of the Republic
none the less venerable. For, like all tem¬
porary phenomena, Venice too is subject to
the passage of time.”
Understandably, Venice was a place that
inspired the traveller to take home some
souvenir of his visit. It was this need, too, relatively late in life, for the veduta. was everyday Venetian life, whereas Gozzi fa¬
that provided the impulse for the painting not as highly regarded as the more tradi¬ voured fables and fairy-tales, luring his
of vedute, realistic “views” of landscapes tional, figural genres such as mythologies, public into a world of phantasmagoric
and cities. Vedute were cherished for their histories and Biblical subjects. Guardi sold grotesqueries.
accuracy, as well as for their small format. his work at his workshop or in the market¬ Evidently, neither tourists nor the
The latter quality meant they could be eas¬ place, unless, of course, they had been Venetians themselves wished to be ac¬
ily stowed in a traveller’s luggage, which in commissioned, such as his series of twelve costed with images of real life, whether in
turn encouraged sales. The veduta had its canvases showing the festivals of the paintings or on the stage. Instead, they
origins in 17th-century Rome and spread doges. took refuge in fantasy, preferring not to
to Venice in the 18th century. The first Guardi’s vedute differ from those of Ca¬ look behind the outward semblance of
Venetian vedutisti were Antonio Cana¬ naletto in placing less emphasis on line. beauty. Art, like the Carnival, was there to
letto, followed by Guardi, probably one of Line in Guardi dissolves, while atmo¬ help them forget the harsh realities of
his pupils. sphere replaces the sobriety of Canaletto’s everyday life. The grand ceremony of
Francesco Guardi (1712-1793) worked realism, the latter’s attention to detail Venice’s marriage with the sea, too, was
for many years in a workshop he shared yielding to Guardi’s fields of colour. The nothing more than an extravagant ex¬
with his brother Antonio (1698-1760), dramatists of the day were turning away pression of wishful thinking. In the last
and historians of art often have difficulty from reality, too, with Goldoni gradually decades of the Republic it was painted
in telling their work apart. Francesco was eclipsed by Carlo Gozzi: Goldoni was a more than ever before.
not elected to the Venetian Academy until realist whose work contained scenes from

337
338
 Johann Heinrich Wilhelm Tischbein: Goethe in the Roman
Campagna, 1786/87

A German icon

Towards the end of October 1786, soon

after Johann Wolfgang Goethe’s arrival in
Rome, Johann Heinrich Wilhelm Tisch¬
bein began his portrait of the poet. The
painting is one of the most popular in Ger¬
many. Hardly a school-child escapes seeing
it, a fact which makes it particularly well¬
loved by advertisers. Goethe in the Roman
Campagna is as familiar as a trademark, as
sacred as an icon. The work has come to
symbolise Germany’s Classical humanist
ideal: German geist.
The painter admired Goethe - and it
shows. He gives the poet a broad-rimmed
hat, which has something of the appear¬
ance of a dark halo, enlarging the poet’s
head and showing his profile to advantage.
The poet’s facial features are idealised; his
mantle is a timeless gown; his eyes are fo¬
cused on infinity. This is no normal man
with both feet planted firmly on the
ground. Only one foot touches the earth,
and his supine position makes him appear
to float. He is evidently not of this world.
The painting was sold by a private col¬
lector to the Stadelsches Kunstinstitut,
Frankfurt, in 1887, when the Goethe cult
was at its height. The citizens of a newly
formed German Empire sought shining
paragons among the generations of past
Germans. Goethe and Schiller thus at¬
tained a national status far beyond their
significance as writers. A distinction was
drawn between the drab, low level of
politics and economics and the higher life
of the mind, of art, of culture. A vaguely
floating Goethe, whose walking tour
through Italy has not soiled his shoes,
fitted into the picture perfectly.
Were it not for this painting, the artist’s
name would be known only to a handful of
art historians. During the 18th century,
however, the Tischbeins were a widely-
known family of painters, working in
Hamburg, Liibeck, Haina, Hanau and
Kassel. Various uncles and cousins worked
as portraitists, directors of art galleries and
court painters. Johann Heinrich Wilhelm,
born in 1751, received a stipend from the
academy of art at Kassel to enable him to
travel to Rome, where he wanted to study
the Old Masters. When his funds were ex¬
hausted, he travelled to Zurich, where
friends provided contact to Goethe. Tisch¬
bein then sent letters and sketches to Wei¬
mar, and Goethe used his good offices with
Duke Ernst of Gotha to procure a second
Rome-stipend for Tischbein.
Thus contact between the two was estab¬
lished. Then Goethe, poet and supporter of
artists in distress, himself came to Rome:
“... I’m here, and have sent for Tischbein,”
he wrote in his journal. Some time later, in a
letter back to Weimar, he wrote: “We are so
well-suited that it is as if we have always
lived together.It was during this period of
close friendship that the portrait was ex¬
ecuted, although Goethe never saw it com¬
pleted. Divergent interests drew the two
men apart, and Tischbein makes no men¬
tion of the work in his memoirs. The mem¬
ory of the work must have harboured un¬
pleasant associations for the artist.

339

My eyes are receiving
the most unbelievable
education
G oethe had left for Italy in secret. He
had not asked the Duke of Weimar,
whom he served as a minister, for a
vacation, nor had he taken leave of his
friend, Charlotte von Stein. Goethe, at the
age of thirty-seven, had simply packed his
bags and fled.
There are a number of explanations for
this total breach of decorum and injury to
his oath of allegiance. Firstly, Goethe was
making no progress in his career as a writer.
Early success with Werther and Gotz von
Berlichingen had made him the Germans’
favourite author, at least among the
younger generation. But since coming to
live and work at Weimar, he had had no
comparable success. Torquato Tasso, Faust
and Egmont were either unfinished, or had
not progressed beyond the planning stage.
Neither Werther’s sensitivity, nor Gotz’s
lack of it, were particularly interesting to
him any more. He was stuck.
340
Then there were his problems with Frau
von Stein. She had taught him how to be¬
have properly when he had first arrived at
the court of Weimar; she had shown him
that there were orders of precedence and
all kinds of unwritten rules - at court and
in love. They met daily, and Goethe sent a
- sometimes passionate - note to her al¬
most every day. But his physical desire for
her remained unrequited, or at least unful¬
filled. After ten years, flight was the only
means Goethe could find of putting an end
to his quandary.
The portrait betrays none of Goethe’s
restlessness or sense of crisis. Goethe ap¬
pears in full command of his faculties, a
prince of poets. What Tischbein actually
knew of Goethe’s state of mind at the time
is not known. Like the other German
painters living in Rome, however, he will
have known that Goethe, the famous poet
and Weimar minister, wished to remain in¬
cognito. He took refuge in Tischbein’s
rooms under the name of Filippo Miller,
pittore. His first letters to Weimar carried
no sender’s address. When eventually it be¬
came impossible for him to maintain the
credibility of his pseudonym, he none¬
theless declined invitations to aristocratic
society.
Goethe also makes little reference to his
private problems in his book of memoirs,
Italian Journey, which was compiled al¬
most thirty years later from his letters and
notes of the period. He describes the 20
months he spent in Italy as an educational
journey. Education, in the Goethean sense,
does not mean adding to one’s knowledge,
but adding to one’s abilities; it is a form of
work on one’s own person, the transfor¬
mation of the self.
The faculty which interested Goethe
most was that of seeing: “I have again seen
outstanding works of art here, and have felt
my mind clear and move in new direc¬
tions,” he wrote. “My eyes are receiving
the most unbelievable education, and I
shall work, lest my hand lag behind them.”
He spent much time drawing, asking
Tischbein and other painters to correct his
work. He probably hoped his talent would
grow beyond that of a mere dilettante.
Tischbein has painted him as a man of vi¬
sion, a man captured in the act of looking.
His large hat was fashionable at the time
among the German artists in Rome.
Iphigenia
recognises
Orestes

A nybody who is acquainted with

today’s Rome will find it hard to
imagine that Goethe should have
travelled there, of all places, to find himself.
If his wish was to escape the crippling nar¬
rowness of the Weimar court, he could eas¬
ily have travelled to Paris, Vienna or Lon¬
don, or, indeed, have hidden himself away
on some country estate. But he wanted
Rome. Venice had managed to hold his at¬
tention for all of two weeks, Florence for
only three hours: “The desire to get on to
Rome was so great, and continued to grow
so quickly, that I simply could not stay any
longer...” Fie called this desire to reach
Rome “a kind of illness”. The only remedy
was “the sight and presence of the place”.
And then: “I am here at last, and quiet, and
it seems I shall have peace for the rest of my
life.”
Not only Goethe sought a cure at Rome.
Tischbein, too, during his first journey to
Rome in 1779, had expressed himself simi¬ partly a reaction to the more recent styles in work out aloud and was moved by Tisch-
larly: “The further we travelled,” he wrote art: the ecstatic exuberance of the Baroque, bein’s reactions: “His strange, original
in his memoirs, “the more I returned to my and a Rococo tendency to belittle things by views on the piece and manner of explain¬
self and the greater was the thought that I turning them into a harmless source of ing to me the state of mind in which I wrote
was to see the beautiful land of Italy, where frivolity. Although there were wonderful it have shocked me... There are no words
vitality and the highest spiritual values examples of work from both periods at for the depth of human feelings he has
dwelled among the people, and more than Venice, Goethe took no notice of them. He sensed behind the hero’s mask.” Goethe
anything, it was the thought of beautiful was searching for “noble simplicity and was worried. Had Tischbein discovered
Rome itself, the greatest city in the serene grandeur” - words the archaeologist the extent to which Goethe’s own feelings
world!”2 Johann Joachim Winckelmann (1717— were expressed in the play. Tischbein: “In
Rome distinguished itself from Venice 1768) had chosen to characterise the essen¬ the evenings you read us your Ephigini. It
or Florence by its Classical monuments. tial quality of Classical Greek art. is the only time a reading has entered me so
Travellers went there in search of an Goethe’s Iphigenia bears testimony to deeply, and I ofttimes hear it still in my
ancient Roman and Greek sense of hu¬ this search. Begun in Weimar, set to verse mind and thoughts surge that I should like
manity; with its help, they hoped to re¬ in Italy and finished at Rome, it is a play to describe.”3
cover their own strength and form their about a priestess who releases her brother Tischbein has left a monument to this
minds. Tischbein, already an expert on from the curse of matricide and pursual by reading in his portrait of Goethe: Iphigenia
Rome, took the new arrival to see all the the Furies. On 6 January 1787 Goethe recognising her brother Orestes. At the
wells, portals and columns. He knew wrote: “Yesterday, I found it very uplifting same time, the relief is intended to sym¬
which collections held the most beautiful to place the cast of a colossal head of Juno bolise Greek art, just as Roman art is Sym¬
statues. Goethe purchased plaster casts of in my room. The original is at the Villa Lu- bolised by the ruined capital beside it.
the heads of the gods and goddesses and dovisi. She was my first love in Rome, and Egyptian culture was originally suggested
took them back with him when he re¬ now I possess her... But I feel I have by hieroglyphs on the block of stone to the
turned to the north. He also travelled to earned the company of such noble society left, but Tischbein removed these from the
Sicily, but did not visit Greece, which was in future, too, for I am able to report that final version. Perhaps he found the effect, a
under Turkish occupation. my Iphigenia is finished at last...” kind of visual catalogue of ancient cultures,
Enthusiasm for Classical antiquity was In the evening, Goethe read the new too academic.

341
Life-sized

T ischbein, too, had turned away from

Rococo style and the demands made
of artists by the courts. “Portraits of
powdered hair and rouged cheeks which
cannot be painted from life because the sit¬
ters are too artificial...”4 had become ana¬
thema to him.
He found inspiration not only in ancient
Rome, but also at Zurich. It was there, in
the literary circle around the famous his¬
tory professor Johann Jakob Bodmer
(1698-1783), that first attempts to formu¬
late a national consciousness were made.
miration for these ruins, but is focused be¬ little time thinking about the ephemeral
Bodmer demanded that the “deeds of
yond them in “profound thought on the nature of things. He was much too inter¬
noble and great German men be presented
ephemerality of all things”, as one traveller ested in other things, much too involved in
to the nation as sacred in the works of
wrote in the Teutscher Merkur in 1788, ad¬ thoughts about his own development and
poets and painters; for this will form the
ding that “the terrible thought of tran¬ ability to see things, about his changing
character of the people, awakening and
sience” seems “to float in his very face”. personality and the regeneration of his cre¬
nourishing in them a love of the father-
Comparing these words of veneration ative powers. On returning home, his wish
land...”5
with Goethe’s own diaries of the period, or was to “let my friends find something in
“These were the paintings I felt I wanted
with his Italian Journey, it is evident that me to please them”. He was taking himself
to paint,” recalled Tischbein, “paintings
the fugitive poet in fact spent relatively back to Weimar as a present, or work of art.
which had a strong effect on the minds of
Germans, patriotic themes” or “persons...
worthy of being held up as an example in a
painting...”6
Goethe, though hardly a German pa¬
triotic theme, was “sacred” to Tischbein.
He painted him life-sized; the portrait is
206 cm wide and 164 cm high. “A fine
picture,” Goethe noted down- on 29 De¬
cember 1786, “only it is much too large
for our northern dwellings.” The poet
never saw the finished work, but wrote of
a bust, taken by the sculptor Alexander
Trippel, that it had been “executed in a
pleasing and noble style, and I have noth¬
ing against perpetuating the idea that I
should once have looked like this . He
would probably have thought in much
the same way about Tischbein’s ennobling
portrait.
Tischbein not only paints him in large
format, he also portrays him large in rela¬
tion to his surroundings of ruins in a
Roman landscape. The very objects of
Goethe’s journey to Italy are here reduced
to the status of appurtenances, mere dec¬
orations. Goethe’s gaze is not one of ad¬

342
Repressed,
forgotten

W hen Goethe arrived in Rome,

he and Tischbein immediately
became the best of friends. To
Goethe, it felt as if he had always lived with
his new companion. They lived in adjoin¬
ing rooms, often eating together. Tisch-
bein’s drawing of his friend leaning out of
a window bears testimony to their rela¬
tionship.
But harmony between them did not last.
After three months in Rome, they travelled
to Naples, where their ways parted.
Goethe wanted to go on to Sicily, while
Tischbein, financially less secure than the
minister from Weimar, remained in Naples
in the hope of a position as director of the
academy of art. That, at least, was the out¬
ward reason for their separation. The in¬
ward reason, however, was that they could
not stand each other’s company for any
length of time. Critically, Goethe noted
that Tischbein’s mind was “jostled by a
thousand different thoughts, and occupied
by about a hundred persons”, adding: “He
is unable to share in another person’s life
because he feels so restricted in his own en¬
deavours.”
These comments reveal something
about the writer, too. Goethe did not like
the painter to spend so much time with
other people; he wanted Tischbein’s full at¬
tention. At the same time, he gives a fitting
description of Tischbein’s weakness of
character. He was too indecisive, and not
radical enough in pursuing his talents.
His talents lay in exact observation, and
in his rapid grasp of a subject. A casual
Goethe leaning out of the window, seen
from behind - Tischbein’s masterdrawing
immediately puts us in the picture. In his
paintings, however, Tischbein did not at¬
tempt to capture momentary, or natural at¬ Unlike Goethe, Tischbein does not and abilities to their utmost. This had al¬
titudes; what he wanted on canvas - and criticise his companion in his memoirs. He ways eluded Tischbein. Instead he re¬
what the times demanded - were grand, writes only of their trip to Naples, not of mained subaltern to the dictates of fashion,
and highly significant poses. These con¬ their meeting in Rome. The painting is not a product of his time.
stantly eluded him, however. His historical mentioned at all. The only explanation for While living with Goethe, Tischbein
and mythological themes seem crude and this is that Tischbein himself wished to for¬ must have found this difference between
dull. Their beautifully drawn lines and get it. Goethe - whether on canvas or in them depressing. He would presumably
meaningful gestures are empty. Only his real life - was probably too large a figure have felt hurt, too, had he known that it
Goethe-portrait has retained its appeal; for him. Goethe took himself seriously; his was for his portrait of Goethe, more than
whether due to its quality as a painting, or great gift lay in giving full rein to his for any other work, that the Germans
simply to familiarity, is hard to say. genius, in pursuing his personal interests would remember him.7

343
 Jacques-Louis David: The Death of Marat, 1793
The holy revolutionary
In 1793, a young aristocratic
woman stabbed the Parisian jour¬
nalist Jean-Paul Marat in his bath:
the French Revolution had its
martyr. The painter Jacques-Louis
David was officially commis¬
sioned to turn the murder into
propaganda. His canvas (165 x
128 cm), painted in a suitably
“grand” manner, was completed
in the same year, and can be seen
today in the Musees Royaux des
Beaux-Arts, Brussels.
344
The writer Nicolas Restif de la Bretonne
was strolling through the streets of Paris
when he heard a shopkeeper talking to his
neighbour: “She was about to flee. She was
stopped at the door. He’s dead.” Soon, the
whole town was buzzing with the news,
and wherever he went, whether on the
street or in cafes, the novelist heard “a hun¬
dred mouths talking of the terrible misfor¬
tune” that had befallen revolutionary
Paris.1
A girl from the provinces, Charlotte
Corday, had murdered the Deputy Marat
in his bath, where he had retired to relieve
his skin trouble and to correct the galley
proofs of his newspaper. It was the evening
of 13 July 1793.
Jean-Paul Marat was one of the most
popular revolutionaries. The poor, whose
rights he defended in his newspaper L’Ami
du Peuple (The Friend of the People), wor¬
shipped him. The royalists hated him, but
in this they were not alone. The moderate
supporters of the Revolution opposed him
for his leading part in the “September mas¬
sacre” of captured opponents of the Revol¬
ution. Naturally, he had also voted for the
king’s execution in January 1793. Jacques-
Louis David had done no less.
David was not only a painter; he was the
director of the Fete de la Revolution. The
festival was a massive spectacle, conducted
in the interests of political propaganda. Its
organisers based their plans on the example
of Roman Catholic ceremonies, providing
magnificent displays, like those which had
been put on to honour Renaissance
princes.
Now that the princes had been deposed
and beheaded, the churches closed and the
priests driven away, the valuable experi¬
ence they had accumulated in the field of
propaganda and indoctrination was put to
new use. David turned Marat’s funeral into
a particularly ostentatious campaign.
Naked from the waist up, his body was
laid out in state in a former church so that
anybody who wished could see the fatal
wound. In front of the pedestal was placed
his bath, the wooden crate that had served
him as a table, and, on it, his inkpot and
quill. The objects were displayed like holy
relics. During the funeral procession,
which ended at the Pantheon, a cannon re¬
sounded at five-minute intervals. The stag¬
ing of the funeral turned Charlotte Cor-
day’s victim into a martyr: a saint of the
revolution.
David’s festival displays are history, but
many of his paintings have stood the test of
time. His style was influenced not only by
the Renaissance, but also by Classical anti¬
quity. He had come to love Classical
themes long before the Revolution. In 1784
he had painted The Oath of the Horatii,
followed in 1789 by Brutus and his Dead
Sons. Both works tell of the triumph of pa¬
triotism over individual happiness and
family love.
Classical antiquity was a la mode, even
in clothes fashions, but David’s approach
was more unremitting and he used Classi¬
cal themes more convincingly than his
contemporaries. He was a master of the
“grand gout”, as the “grand manner” of the
day was called. He preferred large formats
and grand gestures, leaving everything
superfluous aside. Simple lines dominate;
the structure is monumental. His works
may be viewed from a distance, a quality
also necessary for the success of a public
spectacle.
Having tested his style on Classical
themes, David turned his hand in 1793 to
the depiction of a topical event: the death
of Marat. He succeeded in turning a mur¬
der whose manner was far from “grand” -
having taken place in a bathtub - into a
painting of extraordinary political effect
and artistic merit.

The sublime
features
of heroism
T he French revolutionary Jean-Paul
Marat was born in 1743 in the do¬
main of Neuchatel, which, at the
time, was a Prussian enclave in Switzer¬
land. His mother was Swiss; his father, a
former monk, hailed from Sardinia. His
son must have inherited his father’s desire
to preach, to instruct, to direct.
346
period, his ideas had been firmly estab¬
lished from the outset. It was against the
background of these ideas that he judged
all future events. As the self-appointed
censor of political affairs, his intention
was to use L’Ami du Peuple to “keep the
National Assembly under surveillance, to
disclose its errors, to guide it unceasingly
back to the correct principles, to establish
and defend the rights of citizens and to
supervise the decisions of the auth¬
orities”.2
Initially, the Revolution was a bourgeois
affair, a revolt against the king’s financial
sovereignty. The people stormed the Bas¬
tille, which brought them little benefit.
“What use is it to us,” wrote Marat, “that
we have broken the aristocracy of the
nobles, if that is replaced by the aristocracy
of the rich?”2
He fought not only against the royalists,
but also against bourgeois revolutionaries
and profiteers, making enemies on all sides.
As a result, his paper was repeatedly
banned and Marat hounded by the au¬
thorities. He fled, returned, hid in cellars.
In 1791, the King himself was forced to
flee; the supporters of a constitutional
monarchy were done for. Marat became a
Deputy at the National Convention. He
saw terror as a legitimate revolutionary
weapon: society must “be purged of its
corrupt limbs! ” he wrote. “Five or six hun¬
dred cut-off heads would have guaran¬
teed... freedom and happiness... A false
humanity... will cost the lives of thou¬
sands”.2 Marat warned that bourgeois
forces would triumph, and he was proved
Young Marat studied medicine and right. He wrote that only a dictatorship
could help to overcome the crisis of the
physics, writing a treatise on the spectral
colours. Goethe later attested to his “in¬ Revolution, and Napoleon’s rule con¬
sight and accuracy”. However, his scien¬ firmed his prediction.
tific work did not bring him the recogni¬ It was his violent death which turned
tion which - in his opinion - he deserved. this controversial revolutionary into a na¬
He remained poor. Feeling underrated, he tional hero. David painted him with a
saw himself as the object of unfair dis¬ gentle face; nothing in his features betrays
crimination by envious colleagues. He also the zealous demagogue. The painter
ruined his health by overworking. wanted to portray the “sublime features of
The loner’s radical ideas were un¬ heroism and virtue”, as he put it in con¬
doubtedly a constant barrier to recogni¬
tion. In 1774, 15 years before the Revol¬
ution, he published, in -England, a tract
junction with another painting, an artistic
apotheosis of the first martyr of the Revol¬
ution, Lepelletier: “I shall have fulfilled my
task if one day my work moves a... father
entitled The Chains of Slavery, purpor¬
ting to disclose “royalty’s most unscrupu¬ to say: Look, my children, this was the first
lous attacks on the people”. In 1789, dur¬ of your representatives to die for your
ing the first year of the Revolution, he freedom; see his features, how serene they
founded the paper L’Ami du Peuple in are! That is because a person who dies for
Paris. Unlike most revolutionaries of the his fatherland is beyond all reproach.”3
A speaker at the National Conven¬
tion calls upon David to paint Mar-'
at’s portrait: “David, where are you
now? Have you not passed down to pos¬
terity the image of Lepelletier dying for the
fatherland? Now you have another paint¬
ing to do!” Whereupon David answers:
“Aussi le ferai-je!” The French words
somehow contain more pathos than their
English equivalent: “I’ll do that too!”4
David had visited Marat on the eve of his
murder. He describes the wooden crate
beside his bath. On it, he says, were ink and
paper, “and his hand, stretching out from
the bath, was writing his last thoughts for
the welfare of the people... I thought it
might be interesting to show him in the po¬
sition in which I saw him last.”4
Marat was a sick man when he was mur¬
dered; he may even have been mortally ill.
He had been unable to go to the Conven¬
tion for weeks and had written very little
for the newspaper. He had a constant fever
Accessories as
holy relics
and was tortured by a fearful rash. He
sought to relieve his itching skin in water.
He went back and forth between his bath¬
tub and his bed, wound cloths soaked in
vinegar around his head, took only fluid
nourishment and drank inordinate
amounts of black coffee.
It was David’s task to portray this
human wreck in a manner that aroused ad¬
miration. He removed all sign of skin dis¬
ease and placed Marat’s body in an imagin¬
ary space. In real life, the bathtub had
stood before a papered wall with painted
columns. Not so in David’s painting. His
largely dark background - taking up al¬
most half the canvas - not only points to
the frugality of Marat’s ascetic way of life,
but suggests that the space in which his
figure is placed may be eternity itself. Its
effect is reminiscent of the gold ground of
medieval paintings.
The letter and banknote in front of the
inkpot were probably the artist’s inven¬
tion. The letter reads: “Give this banknote
to the mother of five whose husband died
defending the fatherland.”5 At the trial
which followed the murder an exact inven¬
tory of the objects found in the bathroom
was read out; but the letter and banknote
were not among them. David used them to
portray Marat as a friend of the people.
Marat’s newspaper wrote that he had spent
much of his time “hearing the complaints
of numerous misfortunates and giving
weight to their demands by petitioning on
their behalf”. The benefactor’s own pov¬
erty - a wooden crate instead of a table, or
the mended patch of cloth at the bottom
left of the picture - emphasised his mag-
naminity.
David has painted Marat’s body in a pose
whose effect is particularly resonant: his
limp arm hanging down, head lolling to one
side and body half-leaning to face the spec¬
tator, supported under one shoulder, the
white cloths - this pose had been used for
centuries to portray Christ’s Descent from
the Cross. Here, David was exploiting im¬
ages that were stored in the public memory.
He may also have responded to a wide¬
spread need for objects of religious venera¬
tion. His Man of Sorrows was Marat.
347

She bought
the knife that
morning
A s one might expect, some contem¬
porary pictures include the figure
of the murderess. David’s subject
was not the drama of the murder, however;
it was the awed hush that followed it. He
painted an icon, in which feud, disorder
and passion had no place.
The only signs of the murderess in the
painting are the knife on the floor and the
letter in Marat’s hand. It reads: “13 July
1793. Marie Anne Charlotte Corday to the
citizen Marat. It is enough that I feel un¬
happy for me to have a right to your good¬
ness.”5 Marat never received the letter, but
Charlotte Corday had a similar note in her
possession when she was arrested. The real
letter did not include the word “good¬
ness”, however. Again, David has added it
to underline Marat’s philanthropism.
The murderess was 24 years of age at the
time, and no less eccentric than Marat. Her
full name was Marie-Anne Charlotte de
348
Corday D’Armont. Her family were of
impoverished aristocratic stock, but she
had been brought up in a wealthy convent.
She had become engaged to a man of noble,
and equally impoverished, background.
While he had joined the royalist cause, she
supported the bourgeois revolutionaries.
Her fiance wanted to marry and emigrate;
Charlotte refused. Patriotism may not
have been her only motive, but it was cer¬
tainly one of them. Following the Roman
example, she declared the fatherland more
important than personal happiness.
She might have found like-minded re¬
volutionaries among the Parisian aristo¬
cracy, but in her native town of Caen there
was nobody. She was ostracised and soon
became estranged from her family. It was
only when her father and an uncle who was
a priest were forced to go into hiding, and
when her fiance and his brother were ex¬
ecuted, that she turned against the increas¬
ingly bloody upheavals, deriding the “false
demagogues... who drape themselves in
the togas of people’s advocates” to “estab¬
lish tyranny and usurp the Republic”.6
She meant men like Marat who held the
majority in the Convention and persecuted
the moderates. Several moderate Deputies
had fled to Caen, where they organised an
uprising. However, when they called for
volunteers to fight against the Convention,
only seven men turned up. Charlotte
Corday had made up her mind: “Surely we
have not survived these four years of afflic¬
tion only to allow a man like Marat to rule
over France!” she exclaimed. “Too long
have agitators and scoundrels been per¬
mitted to confuse personal ambition with
the welfare of the people!”6
She kept her decision secret. Buying
herself a pair of good shoes, she took the
mail coach to Paris on 9 July 1793, where
she stayed the night at the Hotel de la
Providence. Her plan was to stab Marat to
death at the Convention - hoping she
would then be killed immediately by his
supporters, thus maintaining her an¬
onymity and avoiding any trouble for her
family. She was disappointed to hear that
Marat’s illness had prevented him from ap¬
pearing at the Convention for some time.
On the morning of Saturday, 13 July, she
bought a knife; but she was turned away at
Marat’s door. She tried again that evening.
Marat heard her voice and demanded that
the unknown supplicant be admitted. She
told him she had come from Caen. Marat
then asked her about the Deputies who had
fled there. Charlotte: “What do you intend
to do with them?” Marat: “I shall have
them all guillotined in Paris.” According to
Charlotte’s later testimony, these words
had sealed his fate.
Full of grand
gestures,
but no guts

C harlotte Corday was arrested im¬

mediately. Four days later, during the
morning session, she was brought
before a judge. That same evening she
mounted the scaffold.
She had been “a Republican long before
the Revolution,” she explained to the
tribunal, adding that she had killed Marat
“because he embodies the crimes that are
devastating the country”. As for herself,
she had “never lacked energy”. “What do
you mean by energy?” the presiding judge
had asked. Energy, she answered, was a
quality demonstrated by persons who
were “capable of setting aside their per¬
sonal happiness and laying down their lives
for their country”.6
Thus she went to her death, as “sub¬
lime” a heroine as any admired in ancient
Rome. Insisting on a right to curiosity,
she pushed away the executioner who
wished to spare her the sight of the guil¬
lotine. She laid her head under the blade
herself. It was not long before she, too,
was hailed as a martyr - by moderates
who abhorred the Terror and defended
the citizen’s right to property. The stration of their blind faith in the future - ing over the real historical figures and re¬
royalists also championed her, generously passed a decree which prohibited future placing them with new ones “who have
overlooking the fact that she had been a legislative bodies from removing the paint¬ come to the fore in the meantime and will
convinced Republican. ings. therefore be of far greater interest to future
David had acquired Marat’s death mask By June the following year the moder¬ generations”.7 No sign here of those cel¬
for the portrait, and had Marat’s bath, ink¬ ates had taken power, sending Robespierre ebrated Roman virtues! David had become
pot and the knife brought to his studio. and about 100 of his supporters to the scaf¬ a master in the art of adapting to new cir¬
He wrote a modest-sounding dedication fold. Sensing an imminent reverse in his cumstances; it was not long before he was
on the wooden crate in Roman style: “For fortunes, Robespierre had cried out in the celebrating the new dictator, Emperor Na¬
Marat, David”. At the same time, he Convention: “It remains for me to take poleon. With the fall of Napoleon in 1814,
painted his own name in letters that were hemlock!”, an allusion to the death of So¬ however, David decided to go into exile.
not much smaller than the name of the crates. David, in a gesture as grand and He took the Marat painting - removed
dead hero. He dated the painting “Year noble as any ever seen in Rome, answered: from the Convention in 1795 - with him to
Two”, after the new revolutionary calen¬ “If you drink hemlock, then I shall drink Brussels. The portrait of Lepelletier en¬
der. with you!”7 When Robespierre was tered the estate of his daughter, who, hav¬
In October 1793, the painting was ex¬ removed from power in a tumultuous ing meanwhile become a fanatical royalist,
hibited at his studio and in the courtyard of session the following day, however, David did away with it. It has not been seen since.
the Louvre. In November, he handed it stayed at home. He did not reappear until
over to the National Convention along well after the radical revolutionaries had
with its pendant, the portrait of Lepelletier. been executed and the authorities had
“My colleagues, I offer you the homage of grown weary of the guillotine.
my paint brushes!”7 Five years later, in 1799, the artist de¬
The Convention had both works hung clared himself willing to complete an ear¬
in the assembly chamber and - a demon¬ lier, unfinished revolutionary work, paint¬

349
 Francisco de Goya: The Duchess of Alba, 1797

The black widow, beautiful and deadly

She is like a theatre star whose presence
fills the whole stage. She needs no acces¬
sories, no props, no column to lean against,
no tree to lend its shade. She stands alone
before an almost monochromatic Andalu¬
sian riverscape. The solitude and confident
pose are fully consistent with her character
and social standing. Her name is Maria del
Pilar Teresa Cayetana de Silva Alvarez de
Toledo, 13th Duchess of Alba. After the
Spanish queen, she is the first lady of the
realm.
“Beauty, popularity, grace, riches and
nobility”,1 the Duchess of Alba had them
all, as Lady Holland reported from her
travels in Spain at the end of the 18th cen¬
tury. Other women envied her; the people
worshipped her. The blind street singers,
competing with the gazettes in Madrid,
had almost daily news of the duchess’ la¬
test extravagances. They bantered about
her rivalry with Queen Maria-Luisa, en¬
larging on the details of permanent
Later, he would draw her as a squabbles about fashion and lovers, bull¬
witch. Here, he has written his fighters and popularity.
Today, the Duchess of Alba and her
name in the sand at her feet.
scandals would be known only to a hand¬
“Goya” also appears on one of
ful of historians, had she not met the artist
her rings. Did the deaf painter Francisco de Goya. His relationship with
have an affair with the assertive the beautiful aristocrat gave rise to count¬
finished. A rumour circulating at the time
suggested that she had been poisoned in
the course of a quarrel with the queen. In a
country that was traditionally dominated
by men, both women were vastly superior
to their husbands in vitality and strength of
will. The Duke of Alba was as weak in
character as he was in constitution. Maria-
Luisa was so much more powerful than her
phlegmatic husband, King Charles IV, that
she had little trouble in transferring state
power to her lover, Manuel Godoy, in
1792. However, the muscular thighs of the
25 year-old officer were generally thought
to carry greater conviction than his powers
of statesmanship. He was hardly the right
man to guide Spain through the troubled
waters of European politics.
A minority of Spanish intellectuals had
immediately saluted the French Revolu¬
tion in the hope that it would bring reform
to a country that was badly exploited by its
aristocracy and Church and was too back¬
ward to help itself. The execution of the
French monarch, Louis XVI, had led to a
half-hearted and unsuccessful Spanish ex¬
pedition to avenge the affront. Soon, how¬
ever, Godoy had not only concluded peace
with revolutionary France, but had allied
Spain with France against England. As a

aristocrat? The portrait (210 x
149 cm) belongs to the Hispanic
Society, New York.
less legends. During the nineteenth cen¬
tury, romantic novelists turned it into a
passionate, and tragic, love story. In 1951,
Lion Feuchtwanger made it the subject of
a thrilling novel. But even he was forced to
invent most of the plot, for very little evid¬
ence was left by either of them, or by any¬
one who knew them. Besides a small num¬
ber of drawings and prints, the most im¬
portant piece of evidence is a large (210 x
149 cm) portrait of the duchess, painted by
Goya in 1797. It now belongs to the His¬
panic Society in New York.
Even today, there is much that remains
in the dark - the duchess’s death, for
example, five years after the painting was
result, Spain was embroiled in war, includ¬
ing a civil war, for the next 20 years.
Initially, the Spanish grouping in favour
of France and the Enlightenment had
quickly grown in popularity. Its luminaries
had met at the Salon of yet another formi¬
dable lady, Countess Benavente, where
they had forged plans for a modern state
modelled on the French example.
The majority of the population re¬
mained hostile to foreign ideas and cus¬
toms, and a counter-movement soon
formed in the Spanish capital to defend
Old Spain. These conservative patriots
made a great show of imitating the majos
and majas, the simple townsfolk of Ma-

350

drid, and of going to bullfights instead of
visiting the Salons.
The highly aristocratic Duchess of Alba
placed herself at the head of this plebeian
movement. She put aside her French ward¬
robe and posed in a black skirt and lace
mantilla, her hand resting provocatively on
her hip. For a maja had to be salada
As crazy
as ever
E very hair on the Duchess of Alba’s
head arouses our desire,”2 wrote one
enraptured French traveller to Spain
in the year 1796. In Goya’s painting she ap¬
pears petite and well-proportioned, with
352
(“salty”): ready to answer a risque compli¬
ment with a snappy, equally brazen come¬
back. Fler face should give nothing away,
her bearing should be proud, with her head
held high. This was the correct Spanish
pose - whether for a backstreet maja or for
a noble duchess.
huge eyes under thick eyebrows and lush
dark hair.
To those who knew how to read it, the
large black beauty spot beside her right eye
symbolised “passion”. Fler dress, too, is
predominantly black. This was appropri¬
ate both for a widow - the duke had died
in 1796 - and for a maja. The effect is
brightened only by her gold-lace sleeves, a
short jacket, a white and yellow ribbon and
a red sash.
Goya’s painting does not capture the
duchess’s spontaneity. What a lively,
quick, gay person she was!” one elderly
lady recalled. Visiting the duchess when
they were both young, she had found her
completely naked: “If it disturbs you to see
me naked,” the frolicsome duchess had ex¬
claimed, “I shall veil myself with my hair.”3
The Duchess of Alba was 35 when she
sat for the painting. She was therefore con¬
siderably younger and more beautiful than
her two rivals, Countess Benavente and the
queen. According to Marla-Luisa in a letter
to Godoy, however, she was “still just as
crazy as she was when she was a young
thing”.4 Her biographers see these
“quirks” as deriving from her childhood
and sterility.
Born in 1762 as an only child, she grew
up in the various Alba palaces surrounded
by nurses, governesses, footmen and court
fools. Her grandfather, the Duke of Alba,
was renowned for his arrogance. As his
granddaughter was his only descendant,
his desperation to secure the continuity of
the famdy line drove him to find a husband
for the girl while she was still very young.
At the age of 13, she was married to the 19
year-old Duke of Villafranca. The bride¬
groom was bound by oath to take the name
of Alba.
The young duchess proved unable to
fulfil her most important dynastic task: to
provide an heir for the house of Alba.
Bored and frustrated, she plunged into a
hectic life of engagements and amusement.
Twentieth-century psychologists have di¬
agnosed her as infantile, frigid, labile and
narcissistic.
The duchess remained a spoilt child all
her life, expecting her every whim to be
gratified whatever the consequences for
other people. She was as haughty as her
forebears, but did not allow class prejudice
to spoil her fun: she loved to ruin a man, or
at least make a fool of him.
One of her jokes, for example, involved
flirting with a seminarist on a street in Ma¬
drid: enticing him into a cake shop, she de¬
liberately ordered so many of the most ex¬
pensive delicacies that the poor young man
was unable to foot the bill and, to the
amusement of the (incognito) duchess,
ended up pawning his trousers.
A top hat on a
peasant's skull

F rancisco de Goya did not need to

dress up as a majo - he was one, born
and bred, even if the frontispiece of his
Caprichos shows him wearing a top hat on
his peasant’s skull. He was a majo whose
genius, diligence and single-mindedness
took him to the top of his profession.
Born in Saragossa in 1746, Goya was
brought up in modest circumstances. After
a knife-fight, the young painter is said to
have led a life of adventure, roving from
town to town. He may even have per¬
formed as a torero in the bullfighting
arenas. Goya held a lifelong reputation as
an expert on bullfights, returning to them
again and again as the subject of his work.
Even after moving to the capital in 1774,
where he received commissions from the
Church, aristocracy and royal family, the
artist remained true to his inquisitive mind
and natural joie de vivre. He felt most at
home drinking with the majos in the back-
street inns of Madrid. Like them, he loved
flash clothes, music and dancing. A sturdy,
carefree hedonist, Goya enjoyed drinking
hot chocolate, partridge hunting and beau¬
tiful women.
Goya viewed painting above all as a craft
which would bring him money and re¬
nown if he worked hard at it and knew all
the right people. He had married into a re¬ In the 80s, success came thick and fast. far”.5 But beyond such remarks, very little
spected family of painters and began work Goya became a royal painter in 1786, and is actually known.
painting pictures for churches and provid¬ three years later was nominated a court By the end of 1793, Goya was back in
ing large-scale cartoons for the royal ta¬ painter. He was celebrated effusively as the Madrid. But he had gone stone deaf; not
pestry factory. These mostly showed greatest of all Spanish painters. To crown even the greatest noise could reach him.
folksy scenes from the fashionable world his steep rise to fame and fortune he was to His illness, as well as the isolation deriving
of the Madrid majos. be elected to the coveted directorship of from his deafness, had turned the ex¬
Wealthy burghers and aristocats soon the famous Royal Academy at Madrid; troverted hedonist into a brooding sceptic
began to commission portraits from Goya. suddenly, however, his solid and appar¬ who was tortured by bad dreams, evil de¬
Although his realism pulled very few pun¬ ently secure existence collapsed. mons and monsters.
ches, he was nevertheless concerned to In the years 1792 and 1793, the painter It was apparently at this juncture in his
produce representative works, rendering entered a period of crisis which took the life that the painter, now grown totally
his sitter’s dress and attitude in a manner outward form of a dangerous illness. deaf, sickly and miserable, began his much-

befitting his patron’s position in society. Travelling in the south, he arrived at Cadiz discussed “affair” with the Duchess- of

The work brought him into everyday con¬
tact with people who were well-educated
and acquainted with world affairs, several
of whom became his friends. It also opened
new perspectives, encouraging the painter
to think more critically about the world
and his place in it..
“in very bad shape” and was laid low in Alba.
March 1793 at the house of his friend Se¬
bastian Martinez. Symptoms mentioned in
his friends’ letters were “roaring in the
ears”, loss of balance, deafness. One of
them wrote that it had been “Goya’s im¬
prudence which has brought him thus

353

Evidence of a
romance?
A s far as we know, Goya painted the
Duchess of Alba for the first time
in 1795. Besides his portrait of the
duchess in a white dress, he had also
painted her husband. In fact, the artist had
belonged at the time to a circle around the
artistically-minded countess of Benavente,
one of his earliest patrons. The idea of
drawing the artist away from the countess
must have appealed to the duchess, whose
proteges were usually actors and bull¬
fighters. The manner in which she achieved
this is recorded in a letter in which Goya
tells a friend that the duchess came to him
and asked him to make her face up, which
“of course I enjoyed more than painting on
a canvas”.6 The context of the letter helps
date it to 1795; oddly, however, it is ac¬
tually dated 1800, with a sender’s address
in London, although Goya had never been
there. But this is by no means the only in¬
consistency in the affair.
It seems quite certain that the duchess
and the painter spent several months in
354
Andalusia in 1796/97. At the time, Goya
had undertaken a second journey to the
South, while the duchess, following the
death of her husband in June 1796, had re¬
tired to her estates for the statutory period
of mourning.
The fact that they met there is evidenced
by the portrait itself, with its date 1797
written in the sand. The background shows
the flat riverscape around Sanlucar. There,
the family of the duchess owned a large es¬
tate with comfortable hunting lodges and
country houses, an appropriately solitary
retreat for a widow in mourning.
However, the ring held out on the du¬
chess’s finger is not a memento of her dead
husband. Beside the jewel carved with the
word “Alba” is a gold band with a clearly
inscribed “Goya”. Furthermore, her index
finger imperiously draws the spectator s
attention down to the ground, where the
words “Solo Goya” — “only Goya — are
written in the sand.
The word “Solo” was not rediscovered
until the painting was restored several
years ago. At some time or other, someone
had gone to the trouble of painting it over,
probably because the claim expressed in it
by the artist seemed inappropriate, or com¬
promised the sitter. In the foreword of a
biography written in 1949, a later Duke of
Alba expressed his opinion that an “ill-
tempered, violent man” like Goya, whose
“outward appearance was anything but
refined, and whose language was extremely
vulgar”, could not possibly have become
the lover of the sensitive duchess.7
It is possible that Goya added the writ¬
ing without the duchess knowing; if so, his
painting may be a wish-fulfilment fantasy.
On the other hand, it is worth consulting a
book of sketches, made during Goya’s stay
at Sanlucar. One of these, showing the
duchess during a siesta, suggests a highly
confidential relationship between them.
The deaf, ugly genius Goya may well have
been attractive to a woman of extreme in¬
clinations who had a penchant for men of
the lower classes.
"Flown"

G oya did not paint the duchess after

1797. Unlike her portrait in white,
which is still in the Alba Palace at
Madrid, the portrait of her in black did not
enter her possession. Acccording to an in¬
ventory made in 1812, the portrait was still
in the artist’s studio at the time.
With the division of the artist’s estate
following his wife’s death, Goya’s son in¬
herited the painting. The artist must there¬
fore have let it go, perhaps because it ar¬
oused such bitter memories.
The artist’s disappointment is also sug¬
gested by the negative context of the du¬
chess’s two later appearances in Goya’s
work, in the Caprichos (Caprices), pub¬
lished in 1799 and executed over a period
of three years. A new, sceptical Goya ex¬
presses himself here in a series of about 80
satirical prints.
In one of the etchings, “Number 61 ”, an
unmistakable Duchess of Alba with out¬
spread black mantilla flies across the sky
like a witch on her way to the witches’ sab¬
bath where Goya assembled the demons
and evil spirits who tortured him. Her white
doll’s face has an expression of haughty con¬
tempt; butterfly wings - symbols of fickle¬
ness - adorn her hair; three ugly figures, the
bullfighters Costillares, Jose Romero and
Pepe-Hillo, cower at her feet.
Goya wrote the caption “Volaverunt” -
“They have flown” - under this etching. A
savage form of leave-taking, perhaps?
The duchess died in 1802, at the age of
40. Immediately, some flimsy pretext was
invented to justify impounding her estate. The person he entrusted with this ex¬ in the embalmed corpse; instead they

This gave the queen ample opportunity to tremely delicate task, in a letter dated 30 found that somebody had hacked off the
purchase her dead enemy’s jewels at their July 1802, was - of all people - the art-lover dead duchess’s feet.8 Oriental superstition

“estimated” value; Godoy, too, “bought” and prime minister Godoy. As is to be ex¬ attributed to this form of mutilation the

several of her paintings. Whatever re¬ pected under these circumstances, the re¬ power to prevent the return of the dead.

mained after the estate was restored was
shared out among the servants. A nine-
year-old distant relative inherited the fam¬
ily name.
A rumour spread in Madrid that the
duchess had been poisoned by her ser¬
vants, or by “high-ranking persons”. The
king was unable to avoid ordering an en¬
quiry to ascertain whether or not she had
died of “natural causes”.
port he compiled has disppeared. There is
an inexplicable gap in the royal archives, as
there is in the Alba family archives, starting
just after 30 July 1802.
With speculation remaining rife well
into the twentieth century, the Duke of
Alba in 1945 was moved to throw light, by
means of an autopsy, upon the mysterious
circumstances of his ancestor’s death. The
pathologists discovered no sign of poison

355
Grand entrance in the cathedral
When First Consul Bonaparte
crowned himself Emperor of
France in Notre-Dame cathed¬
ral in 1804, his court painter
David was amongst the invited
guests. Three years later the
famous Neo-classicist delivered
the painting in which, as com¬
missioned, he recorded the the¬
atrical occasion for posterity.
The enormous canvas, measur¬
ing 6.1 x 9.3 metres, today hangs
in the Louvre.
356
For the coronation ceremony held on 2
December 1804, the cathedral of Notre-
Dame had to be renovated - it had grown
rather shabby during the godless years
which followed the French Revolution of
1789. Two architects entirely redesigned
the interior, concealing its columns behind
drapes and triumphal arches. Resplendent
everywhere was the letter “N”, surround¬
ed by gold laurel wreaths. “God wouldn’t
have recognized himself”, remarked one
observer sarcastically. Fully in line with
the taste of the times, the Gothic church
had been transformed into a Greco-Ro¬
man temple.
In his painting, completed in 1807, the
artist has included a portrait of himself
sketching; he can be seen standing, higher
up beneath the central arch, second from
the left in the second row. Together with
his family and friends, he had indeed been
present at Napoleon’s coronation in 1804,
well equipped with a picnic hamper and a
little stove to warm his feet. The guests
had to last out in the cathedral for ten
hours - in the bitter cold.
Like most of the participants at this
monarchic celebration, David had a re¬
volutionary past. As a member of the Na¬
tional Convention, in 1793 he had voted in
favour of King Louis XVI’s execution, and
had later designed atheistic feasts in hon¬
our of the Goddess of Reason. When the
revolutionary reign of terror came to an
end, the already prominent painter is
supposed to have invited none less than
Robespierre to drain the cup of poison
with him. Robespierre was beheaded,
David lived. “We were not virtuous
enough to be Republicans”, he said, and
carried on painting. A portrait of the am¬
bitious young General Bonaparte, for ex¬
ample. In 1804 he was appointed court
painter to Napoleon and was commis¬
sioned to record his coronation for poster¬
ity.
 rr-< ...v Hj
1 - " JVQSfl
;(?.f,i Mit^Kak .'!*■ vRail

357
T he main character stands majestic¬
ally in the centre of the painting: Em¬
David has captured here: Napoleon him¬
self places the crown on the head of his
to himself and his sword, which hangs at
his side in a swathe of white silk.
Napoleon was 35 years old when he be¬
peror Napoleon I. The fact that “his wife Josephine, having already crowned
himself with a gold laurel wreath just a few came emperor, and was starting to put on
small figure was lost under his vast ermine
moments before. The Pope, who had jour¬ weight. The lean, hungry, dashing face that
cloak” was a disadvantage he effortlessly
neyed from Rome especially for the occa¬ David had sketched a few years earlier had
overcame. He impressed his audience
sion, was thereby reduced to a supernu¬ matured into the majestic head of a Cae¬
most of all with the “unexpected” - but nat¬
merary; his part in the proceedings was re¬ sar: the emperor was at the height of a glit¬
urally precisely rehearsed - action which
stricted to anointing the couple. The Em¬ tering career. He owed his success to his
peror evidently intended to demonstrate talent for winning battles and - something
An emperor that his authority was granted to him not, perhaps even more important - for mak¬
by his as in the case of his predecessors, by “the ing quick political decisions. In a France

own grace grace of God”, but that he owed it solely exhausted by years of atrocities commit¬
ted in the name of the Revolution, and fac¬
ing threats from outside, General Bona¬
parte proved himself to be the man of the
hour, rapidly succeeding in “curbing re¬
volutionary passions within a strong and
powerful government” (as Joseph Fouche,
the French Minister of Police, put it). In
1799 he overthrew the government and
made himself First Consul, established in¬
ternal peace and sent the foreign armies
packing. In 1801 he forced Austria, and in
1802 England, to sign peace treaties with
France.
Bonaparte’s military successes, his gloire,
enabled both Republicans and returning
Royalists to rally behind him. The bour¬
geois were appreciative of the fact that he
had re-established law and order, and that
exchange prices were rising. In 1802 First
Consul Bonaparte became “First Consul
for life”, and just two years later the Sen¬
ate resolved to entrust the running of the
First Republic to an emperor. The French
people confirmed Napoleon I in heredit¬
ary imperial office in a plebiscite which at¬
tracted 3,572,329 “yes” votes to less than
3,000 “no” votes.
But only the official sanction of the
Church could lend the newly-created im¬
perial throne the legitimacy it required. “I
don’t know if he believes in God”, said his
wife Josephine of Napoleon, “but he
knows how to use Him”. The emperor ne¬
gotiated a concordat with Rome and or¬
dered the churches which had been closed
in France since the Revolution to be re¬
opened. At the coronation of 1804, the
Pope was required to give the young ruler
his blessing, as can be seen in David’s
painting. The artist originally portrayed
the Pope not with his hands raised, but
with them resting on his knees. But the
emperor insisted this should be changed:
“I didn’t make him come so far just to do
nothing”.

358

The ambitious
Corsican clan
A contemporary viewer remarked
that, in David’s painting of the
coronation, “the women are por¬
trayed as in Mahomet’s paradise, all young
and beautiful”. In this the painter was only
being true to reality: seldom was a royal
household as youthful as that of Napo¬
leon. The monarch had not had to inherit
dignitaries from a predecessor, but was
free to appoint his own from amongst his
comrades-in-arms, brothers and sisters.
The majority were under 30.
The attractive ladies seen above are
(from left to right) Caroline, Pauline and
Elisa - Napoleon’s three sisters. Next is
Hortense de Beauharnais, his step-daugh¬
ter, whom he married to his brother Louis,
and on the far right Julie Clary, the wife of
his brother Joseph. All five were members
of the Corsican Bonaparte clan, whose
head, Madame Letizia, David places in the
seat of honour in the middle box. In real¬
ity, however, Napoleon’s mother was in
Rome at the time, having deliberately
stayed away from the coronation celebra¬
tions. In a quarrel between the emperor
and his brother Lucien (similarly absent),
she had taken the latter’s side. Poor and
widowed early, it had been a struggle for
Madame Bonaparte to raise her eight chil¬
dren. Her chief concern now was to put
money aside for the future, since she re¬
mained sceptical of Napoleon’s success. “I
only hope it lasts!”, as she was fond of
saying.
Napoleon showered his brothers and
sisters with money, honours and titles:
Caroline, married to Marshal Murat and
the mistress of Marshal Junot (who is
standing on the right-hand edge of the de¬
tailed view above) would soon become
queen of Naples. Pauline and Elisa had
already been made princesses. Hortense,
later queen of Holland, is holding the hand
of the young Charles Napoleon, whose
real father - it was maliciously rumoured -
was Napoleon himself. Julie Clary would
become queen of Spain.
The emperor installed his relatives on
countless thrones across Europe not be¬
cause he thought highly of them, but be¬
cause he hoped for their loyalty, which
was understandably in the interests of
the family. But Napoleon’s relations dis¬
played what chief of police Fouche called
“a shocking incapacity”, as well as being
greedy, selfish, dishonourable and quarrel¬
some. The emperor’s sisters protested hys¬
terically at having to carry Josephine’s
train at the coronation. In vain - but at
least David spares them this ignominy in
his painting. In a departure from the truth,
he shows the train being carried by two
ladies-in-waiting.
359

T he empress was almost caused to fall
in the middle of the ceremony, when
her vexed sisters-in-law suddenly
dropped her heavy ermine train, 23 metres
in length. But Josephine survived the incid¬
ent with her usual grace. “Without being
exactly pretty, her entire person possessed
a peculiar charm”, which few could resist.
Makeup was nevertheless required to dis¬
guise the fact that she was already 41, six
years older than Napoleon. Her power
over him was waning, and right up to the
last minute it remained uncertain whether
she would be crowned at all.
When artillery general Bonaparte mar¬
ried her, Josephine was already a woman
with a turbulent past. Born Marie Josephe
Tascher de la Pagerie in 1763 on the
Caribbean island of Martinique, she was
360
married at the age of 16 to a Vicomte de
Beauharnais, who later met his end under
the guillotine. Josephine was left with two
children, and was soon running a popular
salon in Paris, where people were once
again starting to enjoy themselves follow¬
ing the end of the Terror. Josephine’s salon
was frequented by leading figures in the
new government, the Directory. One of
her protectors was Barras, a corrupt and
influential banker. Barras had no objec¬
tions to assisting a young officer whom
the beautiful Josephine had recommended
to him: Bonaparte was new in Paris, and
was called “the ugly general” by the ladies
owing to his “long face” and his “sad ex¬
pression”. Through Barras, Josephine pro¬
cured him the command of the French
army in Italy, and thus the chance to prove
A lady
with a
turbulent past
his abilities. Before he departed for the
field, they married.
“I really loved her”, the emperor wrote
later in his final years on St Helena. “I
didn’t esteem her. She was too much of a
liar. But she had a certain je ne sais quoi
which pleased me. She was a real woman;
she had the prettiest little behind pos¬
sible ...” Throughout her life, however, the
lovely Josephine could resist no tempta¬
tion and only a few men. While Bonaparte
was covering himself in military glory in
Italy and Egypt, Josephine was making a
fool of him in Paris with her affairs.
With time, her disillusioned husband
began to distance himself from her - not
least since her inability to bear him a child
presented ever more of an obstacle to the
ambitions of the career-minded parvenu.
Napoleon wanted to found a dynasty, and
the Corsican clan pressurized him to di¬
vorce his wife. Josephine’s only hope was
that Napoleon might adopt the young
Charles Napoleon, Hortense’s son, and
make him his heir. When the emperor
went ahead and crowned her, she believed
her position was secure. In fact, Napoleon
had probably already decided upon di¬
vorce. In his eyes, his coronation of
Josephine was simply an act of gratitude
towards a woman to whom he owed a
great deal.
Josephine’s fate was sealed in 1807,
when the death of the young Charles
Napoleon ruined their plans for adoption
- it seems there was no other nephew suit¬
able. Her marriage to Napoleon was de¬
clared null and void, and the monarch
proceeded to wed the daughter of the Aus¬
trian emperor, Marie Louise, who bore
him his long-awaited son. Josephine fled
weeping with a handsome young lover
to a chateau in the country. Here, after
Napoleon’s fall, she received his con¬
querors, the Tsar and the King of Prussia,
still as lovely and faithless as ever.
T he imperial orb which Marshal
Alexandre Berthier is here carrying
on a velvet cusion did not belong to
the traditional insignia of the French mon-
archs. In 1804, however, it was intended as
a reference to the Holy Roman Empire
and to Charlemagne, who seemed to the
new ruler a more appropriate predecessor
than the Bourbons deposed and beheaded
just a few years earlier. Napoleon’s com-
rades-in-arms nevertheless had some diffi¬
culty getting used to the new rank of their
general, and to the whole elaborate busi¬
ness of the coronation - in the past, after
all, they had been more used to going into
churches to steal paintings than to attend
mass. But the emperor relied particularly
Reliable
supporters
of the throne
heavily upon his brothers-in-arms: they
were the new aristocrats and supporters of
his throne. He furnished them with gifts
of money and the glittering medals of the
Legion of Honour, founded by himself.
To coincide with his coronation, he an¬
nounced the appointment of 18 new field-
marshals. The majority had once worn
Republican hats, but they now willingly
donned the magnificent costumes designed
by the painter David and played their part
in the imperial ceremonial.
Marshal Berthier, here acting as Grand
Huntsman, made himself useful to Napo¬
leon as a talented organizer: “There was
not a better chief of staff in the world”. He
was as devoted to his emperor as other¬
wise only the ordinary soldiers were. In
Bamberg in 1815, shortly before his ruler’s
defeat, Berthier threw himself out of a win¬
dow to his death.
The man in the red cape behind the mar¬
shal, on the other hand, was adept at mak¬
ing himself indispensable to every regime,
be it the Revolution, Napoleon, or later
the returning Bourbons. He is Charles
Maurice de Talleyrand, and is seen here in
his capacity as imperial Grand Cham¬
berlain. He was Napoleon’s Minister of
Foreign Affairs. He practised politics as
the “art of the possible”, to the benefit of
France and to his own advantage. A few
years after Napoleon’s coronation, he sold
important information to his enemies
Austria and Russia for a great deal of
money. Napoleon scornfully described
him as “a heap of shit in silk stockings”.
With his powdered wig, and as always
impeccably dressed beneath his plumed
hat, Talleyrand - a former bishop - seems
to cast a sceptical eye over the Christian
ceremonial around him. Years earlier he
had attended the coronation of Louis XVI,
and knew from experience how shaky
seats of power could be. It was something
of which Napoleon was equally well
aware: “A throne”, he said, “is only a
plank trimmed with velvet”.
361
362
Francisco de Goya: The Third of May 1808, in Madrid,
the Executions on Principe Pio Hill, 1814

A martyr's death at dawn

“The population of Madrid, led astray, has

given itself to revolt and murder.” Thus
ran the daily bulletin of 2 May 1808 issued
by Marshal Joachim Murat, senior com¬
mander of the Napoleonic troops, who
had been in Spain since the previous year.
“French blood has flowed. It demands
vengeance!” A court-martial was immedi¬
ately convened, and every Spaniard found
with a weapon in his hand was shot. Some
400 died. In Goya’s painting, some of the
rebels are already lying in a pool of blood
on the ground, while others face the firing
squad and others again wait in a long line
to meet their death. These executions took
place in several locations simultaneously
on the night of the Second to the Third of From 1808 to 1814 Spain was
May, most of them at dawn. In Goya’s pic¬ ravaged by a bitter war between
ture, too, there is already a faint glimmer
the Spanish people, attempting
of light in the sky.
Juan Antonio Martinez, beggar, Julian to drive out the occupying
Tejedor de la Torre, silversmith, Manuel Napoleonic forces, and the
Antoh'n, royal gardener - these are just French emperor, seeking to
some of the names on the list of the 45
bring the proud country under
Spaniards who were liquidated on top of
Principio Pio hill, not far from the French his rule once and for all. Goya
headquarters. The desolate hill lay be¬ captured the horrors of the con¬
tween the Manzanares river and the city flict in many works, none more
limits of Madrid. The cluster of buildings
forceful than this picture of an
visible in the background have since disap¬
peared. The site of the execution is today a
execution, which he completed
public park. in 1814.
The 62-year-old artist, so some would
have it, watched the execution of the 45
through a spyglass from the window of his
home. Later he is supposed to have taken a
lantern up to the hill and recorded the
sombre scene in his sketchbook. But Goya
at that time lived nowhere near the site of
the executions, and his painting was only
executed six years later: not as a spontan¬
eous reaction to the atrocity, but as an offi¬
cial commission from the Spanish govern¬
ment.

363
Uprising against
Napoleon

T he Second of May 1808 has become

a symbol of the heroism of a Spanish
people thirsting for freedom. For
the men looking squarely into the eyes of
the firing squad or burying their faces in
their hands in despair had dared to stand
up against a power that had already con¬
quered half of Europe: Napoleonic France.
Because they now saw their own royal
family in danger, the citizens of Madrid
had reached for their weapons.
The uprising had started in the morning
with a seemingly trivial incident in the
square in front of the palace. A sister and
brother of King Ferdinand VII were get¬
ting into their coach to leave Madrid. All
the other members of the ruling family, in¬
cluding the monarch himself, had already
been obliged to depart for France, where
their orders were issued by Emperor
Napoleon. The royalist inhabitants of
Madrid wanted to prevent the departure
of these last two Bourbons - if necessary,
by force. the 19th century, the bulk of the Spanish
Bystanders and passers-by gathered people held fast to their king. Brought up
round the coach, and a French soldier was amidst the strict principles of religion and
pulled off his horse and almost lynched. the monarchy, they were not susceptible
Marshal Murat ordered grenadiers and to ideas such as those propounded by the
chasseurs onto the scene, with instructions French Revolution of 1789: the abstract
to clear all the entrances to the palace us¬ concepts of freedom, equality and broth¬
ing armed force. He was thereby follow¬ erhood had no chance alongside the im¬
ing an earlier directive from the emperor: pressive figure of a real king.
“If the canaille stirs, let it be shot down!” The devotion of the people failed even
A crowd of protesters presently gath¬ to be shaken by a monarch such as Charles
ered in the Puerta del Sol, the main square IV, under whose 20-year reign Spain
in Madrid. A Mameluke squadron came reached a political and moral low point.
racing in and a short, unequal fight ensued. The Bourbon sat back and did nothing as
Those Spaniards who escaped the blood¬ his power-hungry wife insinuated into his
bath were pursued, mown down or cap¬ place a favourite as pretty as he was in¬
tured before they had a chance to throw capable. The favourite steered the country
away their knives and daggers. Some of into financial ruin and allied it for better or
them were farmers who had come to the for worse to Napoleonic France.
capital to sell their wares at market; many When the French emperor, unsure of his
were labourers who were building a ally, commanded his army to march into
church near the royal palace, while others Spain in 1807, the Spanish people only ac¬
again were ordinary people such as the cepted the abdication of Charles IV be¬
beggar, the silversmith and the gardener. It cause they could still pin their hopes on
is possible that their loyalist fervour was his 23-year-old son: under Ferdinand VII
further fuelled by the money and alcohol everything would be different, and better.
generously distributed amongst the crowd When the Spanish realized that Napoleon
by supporters of the monarchy. But such wanted to rob them of their new idol, too,
ploys were hardly necessary: at the start of they struck out in anger.

364
T he eight soldiers in the French firing
squad are aiming at their victims at
extremely close range. In order to
polish off the wounded, they have at¬
tached bayonets to their rifles. The uni¬
formed men stand with their feet planted
squarely on the ground in the prescribed
position, braced to absorb the kick of their
guns. They form an orderly, disciplined
line, in striking contrast to the chaos
amongst the Spanish. Standing diagonally
opposite their targets, the riflemen show
neither their eyes nor their faces. They
stand there like a machine. Their uniforms
identify them as representatives of an au¬
thoritarian system: grey wool winter
coats, long trousers, and on their heads the
cylindrical felt shako with its waterproof
leather covering.
These heavy shakos were originally one
of the characteristics of mounted troops,
but as from around 1805 were also worn
by the infantry, to whom the soldiers in
Goya’s picture most likely belong. The
men are probably not French, but Italians,
Poles, Swiss or Germans - members of the
auxiliary forces which had to be mustered
for Napoleon’s Grande Armee by defeated
or allied countries. (For its part, the regu¬
lar Spanish army was in 1808 engaged in
Flanders.)
The troops which Napoleon dispatched,
at the end of 1807, to occupy “allied”
Spain on their way to Portugal, were - al¬
most without exception - second-rate. It
such was their “noble and generous char¬
acter”, according to one of Napoleon’s
would be an easy job, the emperor chamberlains, that “they could not endure
thought. He shared the contempt of most being treated like a conquered nation”.
Europeans for their southern neighbours, Shortly after the Madrid executions, un¬
who were considered backward and lazy, rest broke out across the country, growing
ignorant and superstitious. Economically, into a general uprising and a war against
the country was bankrupt; it was governed the occupying power. For almost six years
by an incapable monarchy and a bigotted it was conducted on both sides with un¬
clergy. Spain thereby stood for everything paralleled brutality: pillage, rape, torture
against which France’s philosophers had and murder were the order of the day. Dis¬
campaigned in their books, and against turbed, but at the same time fascinated by
which her revolutionaries had taken up the outbreak of violence, Goya captured
arms. The emperor’s soldiers, too, per¬ many of these scenes in his works. In 1810
ceived themselves as missionaries: they he commenced a series of etchings entitled
were proud to spread the ideas of the En¬ The Disasters of War.
lightenment and to liberate the peoples of
Europe from the “chains of tyranny”.
But the French ideals were greeted with
sympathy by only a very small minority in
Spain, namely by a few members of the
nobility and the upper middle classes, and
by a small number of intellectuals (includ¬
ing many friends of the painter Goya).
The majority were uninterested in an im¬
ported freedom; they were happy to hold
onto their long-standing “tyrants” and
loved their “chains”. French and Spanish
lived in different worlds, and there was
nothing but misunderstanding between
The "ally"
them. Marshal Murat, for example, thought
that he could subdue the Spanish once and becomes
for all with his tough stance in May. But the enemy
365
K neeling in the front row of the vic¬
tims is a monk with tonsure and
white-belted habit - a Capuchin or
Franciscan. Perhaps he is the Franciscan
Gallego Davila, chaplain of the Madrid
Monastery of the Incarnation, whose
name also stands on the list of those ex¬
ecuted on Principe Pio hill. He clasps his
hands in prayer for himself and his fellows
- for in the eyes of the Spanish faithful, the
Catholic Church had the power “to lend
wings to the souls of those who wear
chains on their feet”.
For most men of God in Goya’s day,
however, prayer was not enough. Many of
them were amongst the first to call for res¬
istance against the occupying army. They
took up arms themselves, positioned them-
The Church
fights on the
front line
366
selves at the head of the rebel forces and ap¬
pealed for a new crusade. In true Spanish
tradition, for it had been the struggle
against the Moors in the 15th century
which had first united the country. Now the
French were the unbelievers and heretics,
and Napoleon the Antichrist incarnate.
The Spanish clergy had good reason to
make the emperor out as a devil: he had
ordered the immediate dissolution of two
thirds of the country’s monasteries and
nunneries, as well as the abolition of the
Inquisition which in Spain monitored “the
purity of morality and thinking”. For cen¬
turies the Inquisition had represented the
unlimited spiritual power of the Church,
which wielded extensive secular and polit¬
ical influence to boot. It owned a quarter
of all arable land and its annual income
was vast. The Church felt closely tied to
the monarchy: together they were in a po¬
sition to unite the different interests of the
Spanish regions and to nurture patriotism.
Hence the call to arms against the French
ran: “For God, Country and King”.
In the fight against the foreign occupy¬
ing forces, the Church provided a power¬
ful battalion. In a country of ten million
inhabitants, it numbered almost 140,000
priests, monks and nuns. Members of the
mendicant orders, in particular, distin¬
guished themselves in the struggle. They
shared the prejudices and passions of the
common folk. For this very reason, how¬
ever, they were condemned as particularly
behind the times by those Spaniards who -
like Goya’s friends - were trying to reform
their country. The painter himself attacked
men of the cloth in his etchings, portray¬
ing them as gluttons and drinkers, indol¬
ent and sex-mad, invariably in the service
of oppression, superstition and darkness.
Not without some justification.
In Andalusia, one Franciscan boasted
that he had “slaughtered 600 French with
[his] own hand”. Near Murcia, a priest
burned down entire villages if they refused
to join him on his “holy war”. “Say what
you will”, observed the French Marshal
Langres, “they are fellows who put up a
good fight!”
Under such leaders, the Spanish soon
evolved a new style of tactics - guerilla
warfare. It suited their individualism:
small groups appeared out of nowhere, des¬
cended upon French support troops, sen¬
tries, stragglers and sick, and then van¬
ished without trace, assisted by the pop¬
ulace. Napoleon rapidly found himself
compelled to send over 200,000 of his best
soldiers to Spain, where over the following
years they were worn down and demoral¬
ized by this guerilla fighting.
As Napoleon’s star finally began to
wane in Russia, his brother Joseph was
obliged to flee Madrid, where the emperor
had placed him on the Spanish throne.
Over 50,000 Spaniards went voluntarily
with him into French exile: they knew
what would await them as collaborators
upon Ferdinand’s return. Persecution, im¬
prisonment and death also threatened
those who, even though they had fought
for Spain, had spoken out in favour of a
more liberal constitution. The “longed-
for” King Ferdinand VII immediately and
harshly reintroduced the old system: an
absolute monarchy and an omnipotent
Church. The Inquisition was reconvened
and, under its holy supervision, a sweep¬
ing purge begun.
 of ingratiation, an attempt by the artist to
A picture
save his own skin. Hence much in the
full of
painting remains ambiguous: the French
ambiguity soldiers embody not just violence, but also
the powers of reason and order, while the
high. His pose recalls the crucified Christ,
and one of the stigmata bleeds on his right
hand: a martyr amidst his dead and des¬
pairing comrades. Similar scenes are also
found in Goya’s Disasters of War etchings,

D uring the purge which accompan¬

ied the return of Ferdinand VII in
condemned are chaotic, not heroic, in
their plight. Such details reflect the split in
Goya’s own thinking: through his long¬
which bear comments by the artist ex¬
pressing protest and powerlessness. “Bar¬
barians”, he calls one, “Why?” and “I saw
1814, Goya too had reason to be standing contact with liberal intellectuals, it” two others. Beneath the drawing of a
worried. He had never concealed his sym¬ he had learned that reform was vital for his mass grave, Goya writes: “For this you
pathies for the pro-French reformers. country, and that it could only be achieved were born”, and under an execution scene
True, the painter had lived a quiet life in with outside aid, namely with the assist¬ reminiscent of The Third of May, “One
Madrid during the years of French rule, ance of France. At the same time, however, cannot bear to watch ...”
isolated by his deafness and preoccupied he remained closely allied with the Span¬ Thanks to his talents as an artist, Goya
with his work. But in 1808 he had sworn ish working classes; himself the son of a survived the purge of 1814 intact, and was
“love and fidelity” to King Joseph, accept¬ craftsman, he understood the unquestion¬ even given his lucrative old job of court
ed a medal from him and painted portraits ing loyalty of the simple Spanish folk to¬ painter back. Nevertheless, in 1824 he fol¬
of members of the occupying forces. wards the monarchy and the Church. lowed his friends into French exile: driven
Goya now set about gathering witnesses Goya was the first painter to make the out of his country by the reactionary
who would testify that he had “emphatic¬ anonymous folk the true heroes of a paint¬ regime of the very King Ferdinand VII for
ally refused all contact with members of ing. In the centre of the painting stands a whom the insurgents of 3 May 1808 went
the usurper government”. This was not man in a white shirt with his arms raised to their deaths.
enough: Goya wrote to the new rulers to
express his “ardent wish to immortalize
with the brush the most memorable ...
scenes from our glorious uprising against
the tyrants of Europe”. The authorities
chose to be merciful: not only did they as¬
sume the costs of his canvases, stretchers
and paints, but paid him an allowance for
the duration of the project.
Goya executed two paintings: The Sec¬
ond of May in the Puerta del Sol and The
Third of May 1808, in Madrid, the Execu¬
tions on Principe Pio Hill. Thus this sec¬
ond painting, which we instantly read to¬
day as a protest against oppression, as a
monument to freedom, was itself a work

367
 Caspar David Friedrich: Chalk Cliffs on Riigen, c. 1818

A view to infinity

Caspar David Friedrich was born in 1774
at Greifswald on the Baltic coast. Across
the bay lay the island of Rtigen, where
Friedrich liked to go walking. When he
married in 1818 - by then he lived in Dres¬
den - he showed his wife not only his na¬
tive town, but also the island. His painting,
set in the chalk cliffs there, was probably
executed shortly after his honeymoon. It is
Carus walks to Cape Arkona, “the most
northerly point on German soil”. He visits
a place “where peculiar, old rune-stones
enclose an ancient burial mound, or some
kind of sacred hill”. The withered oak tree,
Cape Arkona, megalithic barrows - these
were legacies of the past, symbols of a na¬
tional history, and Friedrich returned to
them again and again in his drawings and

not dated. paintings.

The boundless ocean, figures at
the edge of a precipice, old-fash¬
ioned clothing, huge chalk cliffs as
witnesses of the distant past - the
painting (90 x 70 cm) by the Ro¬
mantic C.D. Friedrich is evidently
more than a view of a North Ger¬
man landscape. It belongs to the
Stiftung Oskar Reinhart, Winter¬
thur (Switzerland).
Friedrich frequently made drawings on However, by far the most moving spec¬
Riigen, basing several of his later paintings tacle for Carus was the view from the top
on the sketches. His written references to of the cliffs that made Friedrich famous
the island (which was not yet linked to the and turned tourism on the island into a
mainland) are few and far between. How¬ mass industry: “Towards evening we took
ever, an account of a walking tour on the the forest path, listening to the distant roar
island was made by Friedrich’s friend, the of the waves mingling with the rustle of the
doctor and art critic Carl Gustav Carus. wind in the leaves around us. All of a sud¬
The two men had become acquainted in den, the forest ended and we were standing
Dresden, and it was presumably Fried¬ at the top of the sheer chalk cliffs at King’s
rich’s enthusiasm for Rtigen that inspired Seat, where the long, drooping branches of
Carus’s trip to the Baltic coast. His visit fell young red beeches swayed over the foam¬
in 1818, when Friedrich married and may ing surf far below, and the blue-grey mir¬
also have painted his Chalk Cliffs. ror of the Baltic streched out in a broad
“To put over to Riigen across the broad sweep to the barely perceptible line of the
Greifswalder Bodden, we hired a little horizon...
yacht,” recalled Carus, “and I first set sail
under a fine morning sky on 14th August.”
The island was entirely unprepared for
tourism: “Instead of a well-appointed
hotel to welcome the island’s guests, there
was nothing among the scattered blocks of
granite but a fisherman’s smoky cabin,
where new arrivals could satisfy their most
urgent needs.”
The reader will learn little from Carus
about the people who lived on Riigen,
about their work or way of life. The fea¬
tures he describes are those which also in¬
terested Friedrich: “I came across an
ancient oak right in the middle of the is¬
land. It was almost completely withered;
its monstrous, grey branches stretched up
worn and shining into the blue sky...”

368
 Baden-Baden, the new seaside health re¬
sorts wished to offer their guests an attrac¬
tive social life.
While Friedrich was painting his sea¬
scape, upper class families were discover¬
ing the pleasures of the seaside. In the in¬
terests of modesty, the English had in¬
vented the bathing-machine: “The bather
mounts a two-wheeled vehicle, a carriage,
upon which is a small wooden hut... At¬
tached to the back is a kind of tent.” The
description is from an essay, entitled “Why
does Germany have no large, public, sea¬
side resort?” written by the Gottingen
philosopher Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
in 1793. To enable ladies to bathe in such
tents, English seaside resorts offered spe¬
cial “loosely-fitting suits”, which, “al¬
though they float on the surface, allow
their wearers the security of feeling fully
dressed”. Ironically, Lichtenberg adds that
this “security” will “be ever sacred to the
innocent, whether on the ocean or sub¬
merged in total darkness”.2
Traditionally, Christian doctrine decried
the body as the adversary of the spirit; the
female body, especially, was thought to be
the devil’s instrument of temptation. Hos¬
tility towards the body was particulary
pronounced in 18th and 19th-century
bourgeois culture. Washing the body was
avoided; in pietistical circles, it was con¬
sidered immoral for women to see even
their own bodies naked. Friedrich was
prudish, too, at least in his pictures. He was
interested in Nature, not in the naturalness
of the body. Like the woman in the paint¬
ing, almost all his figures are fully dressed.
Only their necks, heads and hands are
visible.
The woman’s long, loose dress, with its
high waist girded just below the breast,

At the seaside
in a high-necked
A t the time, swimming and sailing
were not yet thought of as holiday
pursuits. Visitors were drawn to
dress the watering-places which had begun to
spring up along the German coast, just as
they were to the spas of the interior, solely
on account of the healing powers at¬
tributed to water. Indeed, once there, they
were more likely to bathe in a tub than in
the sea.
The Mecklenburg court had made a start
on the Baltic coast in 1793, near Doberan,
the later Heiligendamm. Travemiinde fol¬
lowed six years later, with a casino added in
1822. Like the famous spas at Karlsbad and
was a development of the Empire gown.
This had become fashionable in France at
the time of the Revolution, at least in the
upper classes. It was worn sleeveless, had a
low neckline, and was generally made of
transparent materials.
In adapting the dress for the German
bourgoisie, however, everything free or
transparent was removed. The style has
more in common with Gothic than Empire
style. This may be the reason why Frie¬
drich painted this type of dress so fre¬
quently; the Gothic, after all, was supposed
to be a German style. The pseudo-Gothic
dress thus serves as a reminder of German
history.

370
Fashion as a
pledge of loyalty

T he man wearing a beret and leaning

against a tree is also dressed in “old
German” style. The so-called “na¬
tional costume” was, in itself, a pledge of
loyalty. Its origin lay in the wars of libera¬
tion against Napoleon. It was a pledge
against foreign dictatorship, against the
despotism of German princes, for a unified
Germany and for human rights.
It had been middle-class burghers, not
the princes, who had mobilised an army
against the French occupation. The self-
confidence this had generated now sought
official recognition. Once the French had
been expelled, however, the German
princes attempted to re-establish absolutist
structures of power. In 1819, their minis¬
ters passed a series of repressive laws: cen¬
sorship of the press, prosecution of all
“demagogues”, banning of radical stu¬
dents’ associations, prohibition of the “old
German” costume.
The costume had been propagated by
another of Riigen’s native sons, Ernst Mo¬
ritz Arndt, born on the island in 1769. In
1814, one year after the war of liberation
ended, he wrote an essay entitled “Of Man¬
ners, Fashions and Costumes”. Although
he had few suggestions to make on the sub¬
ject of womens clothing, Arndt insisted
that a man’s proper dress was a frock-coat
buttoned to the neck and a wide shirt collar.
Hair could be worn long and was to be
covered with a velvet beret. From about
1815 onwards, the majority of men in
Friedrich’s paintings appear in this, or simi¬
lar, dress.
In memoirs recalling his youth, Arndt
also described what he wanted to abolish: Germany’s river, not Germany’s border,” David Friedrich: one of many statements
“All that rigmarole with periwigs, that he wrote in defiance of Napoleon. Under of the painter’s political sympathies.
whole foppish way of dandified dressing the latter’s occupation he was forced to flee Friedrich wrote that he would like to
with its jesuitical, arabesqued, Frenchi¬ to Russia. Following Napoleon’s defeat, he paint a memorial to Scharnhorst, the Prus¬
fied squiggles and twirls - a style which was made professor of history at Bonn sian military reformer: “I am not a bit sur¬
survived from Louis XIV to the French university, but was dismissed as a “dem¬ prised that no memorial has been erected,
Revolution.” Arndt had suffered under agogue” two years later: “because I had whether to honour the people and their
this style of dress: “It often took the best acted in the spirit and best interests of what cause, or to remind us of the noble-minded
part of an hour until your queues were I understood to be - and, as it happened, deeds of individual Germans. As long as
starched up and your toupet and curls were actually were - the spirit and best interests we remain the minions of despots and
waxed down and you were properly of Prussia.” princes, nothing great of that kind will ever
smoothed over with pomade and piled He was prohibited from returning to his happen. Whenever people are denied a
with hairpins and powder.”3 profession for twenty years. The file com¬ voice, they are also prevented from feeling
Arndt’s fate was fairly typical for a man piled at the time of his removal from office who they are, or from taking pride in their
of his political persuasion. “The Rhine is contained a letter, dated 1814, from Caspar own achievements.”4

371
 actually existing landscape. When Goethe
asked him to sketch cloud formations for
his scientific studies, Friedrich refused. He
did not portray nature au vif as it were; he
rearranged it. He introduced distance
where there was none. He moved the ruins
of Eldena monastery from its original set¬
ting near Greifswald to the Giant Moun¬
tains. He also changed the chalk cliffs until
they fitted his idea of them.
Friedrich was not the only painter of his
time to use landscapes to express ideas .
In Rome, his German contemporary, Jo¬
seph Anton Koch, was painting combina¬
tions of very different landscapes, attempt¬
ing to illustrate different moods and states
of mind.
This kind of thing did not interest Fried¬
rich. It is not only his emphasis of things
German that springs to mind when one
looks for “ideas” in his work; tranquility
and distance are equally important. He
avoided stirring movement; wind, storms
or battle scenes are not found in his work.
The movements of the figures on the chalk
cliffs serve to underline the general sense of
peace and tranquility. Gonversely, his ver¬
sion of Nature lacks the sequestered, leafy
intimacy which Ludwig Richter so often
extolled in his landscape idylls. The three
ramblers on the chalk cliffs are quite
clearly standing on the edge of a dangerous
precipice.
Rather than intimacy, it is a sense of
great distance which the picture evokes.
With its dark foreground, bright middle

Beyond
landscape
A view from chalk cliffs belonged to
the category of “landscape paint¬
ings”, a genre not thought particu¬
larly worthy of respect. The importance of
a painting was decided less by its quality,
than by its subject.
In 1802/03, the philosopher Friedrich
Wilhelm Schelling reflected on the relative
importance of subjects. At the top of his
hierarchy was the history painting; at the
bottom, the still life. Landscapes came
somewhere in between. Acording to
Schelling, landscapes lacked objective
meaning: “Only the outer mantle is ac¬
tually shown; the thing itself, the idea, is
without form; it is therefore left up to the
spectator what he makes of this flimsy,
formless state of being.”5
Friedrich would never have agreed with
Schelling’s point of view. His aim was not
to show the “mantle”, or to reproduce an
ground and high horizon, fully framed by
the trees and rocks, it is like a window with
a view to infinity.
Besides tranquility and the infinite,
there is a third idea which recurs in Fried¬
rich’s work: the past. He painted burial
mounds, Gothic churches, ruins and
churchyards. The chalk cliffs, too, are the
legacy of geological events which took
place millions of years ago. Men like Fried¬
rich and Arndt found strength in the past;
they looked to history for models of a bet¬
ter Germany. At the same time, Friedrich’s
motives for turning to the past were by no
means solely political. He was a religious
man. His writings show his belief that God
revealed Himself through Nature. He at¬
tempted to convey this feeling of divine
revelation in his landscapes, returning
again and again to notions of tranquility,
eternity and infinity.

372
 T he identity of the three persons on
the cliff edge has given rise to much
speculation. The woman may be Ca¬
roline Friedrich, with whom the artist
visited Rtigen in 1818. One of the men
might then be Friedrich himself, the other
possibly his brother, Christian, who, with
his own wife, accompanied the newly¬
weds on their tour.
Or was the artist thinking here of his
friend Cams? Why is one of the men look¬
ing down, while the woman appears to be
pointing at something, or waving, as if
warning of some danger? Perhaps she has
lost her hat: like the men, she would cer¬
tainly have worn one. Is their gaze into the
depths symbolic?
Friedrich himself offered no explana¬
The art of tion. What we do know is that the figures
contemplation are painted more or less from behind, and
that this is consistent with the figures in
almost all of his paintings. Since indi¬
viduals are generally recognised by their
faces, it is logical to assume that Friedrich’s
rear views do not portray individuals, in¬
deed that he was not interested in portra¬
ying individuals in his landscapes at all.
Rather, he was interested in them as ve¬
hicles: they are shown in the act of gazing,
thus inviting the spectator to do the same.
It is not the figures themselves who are sig¬
nificant, but the object of their gaze.
Whether gazing at the moon, a moun¬
tain top or the sea’s horizon, Friedrich’s
figures, like the man on the right, are
usually shown looking into the distance.
Their pose, in so doing, is almost always
an expression of inner peace. They are
meditative figures, seemingly lost in
thought. According to Carl Gustav Cams,
it was preferable to visit the island “alone”,
“entrusting oneself” to Nature. Once
“alone”, one’s “gaze from the mighty chalk
cliffs” could “accompany distant sailing
ships across the iridescent ocean waves...”
The poet Novalis described the roman¬
tic notion of “entrusting oneself” to Na¬
ture as a difficult art: “The art of contem¬
plation is hard. Gazing creatively at the
world demands austerity, the ability to en¬
gage in uninterrupted, serious reflection;
the reward will be... only the pleasure of
knowledge and growth, of touching the
universe at a deeper level.”6 Novalis died in
1801. Friedrich painted his self-portrait in
1810.
Friedrich’s crayon drawing does not
show the artist in contemporary dress, but
in a cowl resembling, more than anything
else, a monk’s habit. The garment thus
gives its wearer the exalted aura of some¬
one who is used to “contemplation”. A
person who spends his time “touching the
universe”, or communicating with the In¬
finite, is no longer in touch with reality -
with the social world of normal human
beings. Social reality, for someone of Fried¬
rich’s political sympathies, was as op¬
pressive in 1810 as it was later, in 1818. For
if, in 1810, Germany was occupied by Na¬
poleon’s army, by 1818 the German no¬
bility was firmly back in place. Friedrich
did not flee to Russia; nor was he removed
from office, like his fellow-Pomeranian
Ernst Moritz Arndt. Friedrich fled to the
Infinite. The narrowness of the political
scene intensified his longing to “touch the
universe”.
373
374
Theodore Gericault: The Raft of the Medusa, 1819

Dramatic struggle
for survival

The press leapt on the story like a hungry

animal. The first report of the wreck of the
frigate “Medusa” was published in Sep¬
tember 1816 by the Parisian Journal des
Debats. Inquiry into the cause and exact
circumstances of the disaster occupied the
French newspapers for months to come. A
tale of human misfortune - only ten of the
147 castaways on the raft had survived -
snowballed into a political scandal. Gov¬
ernment attempts to cover up the full ex¬
tent of the catastrophe were exposed in the
press by the opposition; public outrage led
to the dismissal of the minister responsible,
together with 200 naval officers.
The disaster and ensuing furore were
Originally, twenty-seven-year-old
not forgotten by the time Gericault came Theodore Gericault had hoped his
to exhibit his painting three years later. The “Scene of a Shipwreck”, sub¬
title he had chosen for the work sounded mitted to the Paris Salon of 1819,
anodyne enough: Scene of a Shipwreck.
would merely bring him fame.
Without it, the painting might never have
gained entry to the highly official Salon of But it was not long before the
1819, an exhibition whose function was no monumental canvas, now in the
less political than artistic. For the Bour¬ Louvre, immediately recognized
bons, returned to the throne of France in
as a powerful testimony to the
1814, needed a glamorous art show to
demonstrate the nation’s stability and
pathos of suffering humanity.
prosperity under its legitimate ruler.
Inevitably, the artists whose sub¬
missions were selected for the exhibition
were practically unanimous in the respect
they brought to the regime and its closest
ally, the Church. Two thirds of the large-
scale history paintings - the centre of at¬
tention at every Salon - showed scenes
from the lives of the saints; the rest paid
tribute to previous French monarchs. (In¬
terestingly enough, the majority of these
works were by artists who had celebrated
Napoleon’s victories). By contrast, Geri-
cault’s painting flattered neither crown nor
cloth; nor did it have much to contribute to
“the nation’s honour”. On the contrary, it
served as a reminder of a scandal which the
new regime would rather have forgotten.
The picture was a provocation.

375
T he first report of the wreck of the
"Medusa” was published by Henri
Savigny, one of the ten survivors,
who had served on the frigate as the ship’s
surgeon. Gericault portrays him standing
to the right of the mast, together with an¬
other survivor, the cartographer Alexandre
Correard.
Gericault was personally acquainted
with both men and had read the book in
which they recounted their experiences of
the ordeal. The book was intended as a
means of soliciting damages for the vic¬
tims. Not only had all previous appeals
been rejected, but their troublesome peti¬
tioning of the authorities had cost them
their jobs in the civil service, as well as fines
and even a brief spell in prison.
For all its subjectivity, there is no more
revealing an account of the events that oc¬
curred on the raft: The royal frigate “Me¬
dusa” had left its French port on 17th July
1816, bound for Saint-Louis in Senegal.
Described as the “swiftest and most mod-
Abandoned
to the mercy
of the Atlantic
376
ern vessel of her day”, her mission was to
take possession of the West African colony
of Senegal, which England had recently
handed back to France. On board was the
newly appointed Governor of Senegal,
together with his family, civil servants and
a marine battalion equipped “for the pro¬
tection of overseas territories”. Correard
was one of 60 scientists whose task was to
explore and map the colony. All in all, there
were some 400 people on board the frigate
- more than usual, and certainly more than
the life boats could hold.
Instead of obeying orders to sail in con¬
voy with three other ships, the swift “Me¬
dusa” hurried on ahead, facing the long
journey alone. The ship was under the
command of Hugues Du Roy de Chauma-
reys, who, having fled from Napoleon, had
spent the next twenty-five years of his
career, not on the high seas, but visiting
emigre salons in Coblenz and London.
When the Bourbons took over from Na¬
poleon, they rewarded their loyal subject
by making him the captain of a ship:
royalist sentiment was evidently more im¬
portant than nautical prowess or sea-going
experience.
En route to Senegal, aristocratic arrog¬
ance appears to have prevented the captain
of the “Medusa” from heeding his officers’
advice. Quarrels arose, and catastrophe fi¬
nally struck: on 2nd July, calm seas and
good visibility notwithstanding, naviga¬
tional error and incompetence left the fri¬
gate stranded on the shoals of Arguin off
the African coast between the Canaries and
Cap Verde - a peril marked on every nau¬
tical map.
After several half-hearted attempts to
refloat the vessel, the captain and leading
officers lost their nerve and ordered the
evacuation of the ship. The undue haste
with which they did so led to panic, sel¬
fishness and brutality. The Governor, cap¬
tain and officers crowded into six life¬
boats, while 147 people, finding no room
in the boats, were forced to clamber on
board a makeshift raft, constructed out of
planks, parts of the mast and rigging. A
solemn promise was given that the boats
would tow the raft to the nearest land.
Two hours later, however, and under cir¬
cumstances which have never been fully
explained, the ropes linking boats and raft
were severed. “We could not believe that
we were entirely abandoned until the
boats were almost out of sight,” recalled
Savigny, “but our consternation was then
extreme.”
The survival
of the
fittest

T he struggle for survival on board the

raft now began in earnest. 147 cast¬
aways had only one case of ship’s
biscuit between them, and that was con¬
sumed on the first day. The water supplies
went overboard during the first night; a
few barrels of wine were all that was left to
drink.
When fighting eventually broke out, it
was not over biscuit and wine, but over the
safest positions on the raft. A surface area
of eight by fifteen metres ought to have left
space enough for all, but the edge of the raft
was frequently submerged under heavy
seas, forcing the men to seek refuge nearer
the centre. It was here that the few officers
and civil servants who had not found a
place in the lifeboats had taken up position,
Correard and Savigny among them. They
had weapons, too, whereas the ordinary
sailors and soldiers had been disarmed be¬
fore coming on board. Twenty of these,
who attempted to hold out at the edge of
the raft, vanished overnight.
On the second night, fighting broke out
as the men struggled for survival: “they all
crowded towards the centre.” The survi¬
vors of the ordeal, officers all but one, said
there had been a mutiny: men who were
drunk or mad with fear had tried to de¬
stroy the raft, attacking the officers who the fourth day onwards, and that cases of sign of cannibalism in the painting. Only
intervened. In legitimate self-defence, the cannibalism had already begun to occur by in one of his many preliminary studies for
latter had killed 65 men. the third day. the work did Gericault include two naked
It is now generally thought that the of¬ “Those whom death had spared”, Sa¬ men eating a dead body. Cannibalism was
ficers exploited a welcome opportunity to vigny recalled, “threw themselves raven¬ taboo, and examples of its treatment in
rid themselves of as many rivals for wine ously on the dead bodies with which the western art are few and far between.
and space as possible. After the first week raft was covered, cut them up in slices, However, Gericault does include a cryptic
only 28 survivors remained. However, which some even that instant devoured. A reference to it in the form of the classically
even that was too many: “Out of this num¬ great number of us at first refused to touch paternal gesture of a figure supporting the
ber fifteen alone appeared able to exist for the horrible food; but at last, yielding to a dead body of a youth. The figure was
some days longer; all the others, covered want still more pressing than that of hu¬ reminiscent of Count Ugolino, the subject
with large wounds, had wholly lost their manity, we saw in this frightful repast the of several well-known contemporary
reason”, Savigny later wrote. “After a long only deplorable means of prolonging exist¬ paintings. The legendary Ugolino, accom¬
deliberation, we resolved to throw them ence.” panied by his sons and grandsons, was im¬

into the sea.” It was Savigny himself who suggested prisoned by his enemies in a tower with¬
Savigny, a doctor of medicine, selected cutting the flesh of the dead into strips in out food. When the children died, the
the victims himself. Later, he prepared a order to let it dry in the sun. The sailors Count tried to keep himself alive by eating

doctoral thesis on “The Effect of Hunger who later rescued the survivors found their flesh, as his account in Canto
and Thirst on the Survivors of Ship¬ these shreds of flesh particularly repug¬ XXXIII of Dante’s Inferno suggests: “and
wrecks”, reporting that the survivors of nant, at first taking them for drying for two dayS I called them, after they were
the “Medusa” had supplemented their clothes, or sails. Gericault does not in¬ dead, then fasting had more power than
wine rations with sea water or urine from clude this detail in his work; there is no grief.”

377
 vigny's selection. Like four other survi
vors, he later died on board the “Argus”
after eating too much too hastily.
In order to paint the work Gericault
went to considerable lengths to research
his material thoroughly. He conducted in¬
terviews with Correard and Savigny, and
even had a small model built of the raft.
The painting was so large (491 x 716 cm)
that he was forced to hire a more spacious
studio. He found one near a hospital
where he was permitted to make sketches
of the sick and dying, even taking home
dead limbs in order to observe their dis¬
colouration in the early stages of putrefac¬
tion. He collected all the information he
could find for a realistic picture, which he
did not paint.
For example, he gives Jean-Charles the
back of a muscular, well-fed young man;
after 13 days without food, however, the
muscles are reduced and bones show
through the skin. In Correard and Savig¬
ny’s report, the mens’ skin was burned
red by the sun, their bodies covered with
weals and fissures. There is no sign of this
in Gericault’s painting. Rather than the
reddish blue of real corpses, his dead have
a certain idealized hvidity. Whether dead
or alive, the men are all clean-shaven and
relatively well-kempt, whereas reports of
the incident speak of long and tousled
hair.
Nor do the weather conditions depicted
in Gericault’s work reflect those actually
recorded on 17th July 1816. The sky was
clear and the sea calm, but Gericault shows
gathering clouds and towering waves. The
effect - a perilous sense of foreboding -
would have been difficult to achieve
against the background of a calm sea.
Despite the powerful presence exercised
elevation above the water, it was im¬ by the ocean here, it in fact occupies only a
Hope
possible to distinguish it at such a distance. small area of the picture space. Tradition¬
on a distant We did all we could to make ourselves ob¬ ally, maritime scenes devoted large areas of
horizon served; we piled up our casks, at the top of the canvas to the water itself, with persons
which we fixed handkerchiefs of different and ships kept relatively small. Earlier ver¬
colours ...” sions of Gericault’s painting show similar

A fter 13 days on board the raft, the

remaining survivors of the “Me¬
dusa” saw a ship: it was a brig
called the “Argus”, which had been sent to
search for them. It "was at a very great dis¬
tance; we could only distinguish the tops of
its masts”, wrote Savigny. “Fears, however,
soon mixed with our hopes; we began to
perceive that our raft, having very little
Gericault shows the tiny ship on'the dis¬
tant horizon; he paints the barrels and cases
on which those waving supported them¬
selves, with a black man at the highest
point. The name of the latter was Jean-
Charles, probably the only “common
man” among the fifteen survivors, the rest
being officers, scientists and clerks. Jean-
Charles had to obey orders; it had been his
job to throw overboard the victims of Sa¬
proportions. As work progressed, how¬
ever, increasing prominence was given to
the raft, so that the spectator of the final
version feels practically able to step on
board. As the figures grew larger, the water
was marginalized and emphasis was given
to the pyramidal structure of the composi¬
tion. It was not realism Gericault sought,
but sophisticated grandeur on a monu¬
mental scale.

378
 Contrary to Gericault’s hopes, the in determining his choice of subject. He
Flight began to paint the raft after a love affair
painting was not purchased by the Bour¬
from bon king, and the criteria by which the with the young wife of one of his uncles.
responsibility critics judged it were not so much artistic His mistress was banished to the country,
as political. Echoes of its political reson¬ the child she bore him taken from her and

O n delivering the finished painting

and seeing it for the first time out¬
ance can be felt even in our own time: 1968
saw the premiere in Hamburg of an orato¬
rio composed by Hans Werner Henze en¬
given away for adoption, a course of events
which the artist did nothing to prevent. So
meticulous was his family in hiding the
threat to its reputation that the affair only
side his studio, Gericault dis¬ titled “The Raft of the Medusa”, which the
composer deliberately turned into a dem¬ came to light recently, a hundred and fifty
covered formal weaknesses. He is reported
onstration with red flags and the appropri¬ years after the event.
to have added, working at phenomenal
ate slogans. The police intervened and the From what is known of this period in
speed, a corpse to the bottom left and bot¬
affair ended up in court. Gericault’s life it seems he spent much of it
tom right of the canvas, broadening the
It has never been satisfactorily ascer¬ in the big studio he had hired, tortured by
base of the pyramid of bodies, stabilizing
tained whether Gericault actually intended the thought of his cowardice and guilt. For
the composition and strengthening the
his painting to have a political effect by de¬ like the captain of the “Medusa” he had
monumental effect of the painting.
nouncing the corruption of the regime. deserted his dependents in their hour of
Monumentality, both in format and ex¬
There is much to suggest that this was not need. He cut himself off from his friends and
ecution, was a stylistic feature of the history
the case. For one thing, the artist seems to had his head shaved to prevent himself going
painting, a highly esteemed genre at the
have been genuinely surprised that the gov¬ out, sentencing himself, as it were, to 18
time. The history painting, so it was said,
ernment did not buy his work. There is also months’ hard labour. Evidently, however,
showed whether an artist was truly talented.
his choice of potential subj ects for the paint¬ the long hours he put into the Shipwreck
Its prerequisites were stylistic fluency and
ing: Barbary horses being driven through were not enough to expiate his sense of guilt
thematic concentration on famous or dra¬
the streets of Rome during Carnival, or a and personal failure, for as soon as his mas¬
matic incidents drawn from national, Chris¬
murder scene in provincial France. His real terpiece was finished, he redoubled his ef¬
tian or antique history. Gericault’s work did
aim was to paint a work on such a grand scale forts to punish and, indeed, destroy himself:
not fulfil these requirements: the “Medusa”
and to such tremendous effect that he would he undertook several suicide attempts, and
scandal was too contemporary. One of the
finally - at the age of twenty-seven - achieve rode everywhere he went at breakneck
spectators immediately accused the artist of
the recognition he felt he deserved. speed, causing a series of accidents. Event¬
“slandering the entire Ministry of the Navy
Personal considerations may have been ually, he was badly injured falling from a
with the facial expression of one of the men
more important than political convictions horse, and died in 1824, at the age of only 32.
in the painting. ”
379
 Eugene Delacroix: The Death of Sardanapalus, c. 1827
A Romantic's Asiatic tour
de force
A monumental bed forms the diagonal axis
of the painting. Relaxing on it is a man. Ap¬
parently unconcerned, he watches the tur¬
bulent scene unfolding before his eyes:
women’s bodies in contortions of ecstasy,
wild-eyed Orientals, a marvellously be¬
jewelled horse surrounded by golden
treasures.
The scene is an orgy of death. The dark-
skinned Nubian has plunged his sword al¬
most to the hilt in the horse’s body; the
naked women are either dead or being
stabbed to death; to the right and left of the
red-spread bed lie wooden beams, soon to
be set on fire. The scene takes place on a
funeral pyre.
The Assyrian king, Sardanapalus,
defended his capital city for three years
against a powerful enemy (according to the
Greek author Diodorus, writing in the first
century A.D.). But when the river Eu¬
phrates, in fulfilment of a prophecy,
flooded its banks and tore down the wall of
the city, he gave up and admitted defeat.
“He had a gigantic funeral pyre erected in
his palace, heaping upon it all his gold and
silver and every garment in the royal ward¬
380
robe. He then locked his concubines, his
eunuchs and himself in a room that had
been cleared in the middle of the pyre and
committed everything, including himself
and his palace, to the flames.”1 Nothing
that had ever served his pleasure was to be
spared.
The story has little in common with the
life of the true historical figure. Sardanapa¬
lus’ reputation was legendary: he was the
incarnation of irresponsible hedonism. His
epitaph is said to have read: “I have eaten,
drunk and amused myself; nothing meant
more to me than a straw.”2
According to Diodorus, it was only Sar¬
danapalus’ bravery on the field of battle
that proved he was a real man. Otherwise,
“he surpassed all his predecessors in sloth
and luxury... living like a woman and
spending his days with concubines... He
wore women’s clothes, covering his face
and whole body with cosmetics that made
his skin white... so that he became more
delicate than the most luxurious of
women.”1
It was precisely those qualities that
would have been considered unattractive
by bourgeois standards which predestined
Sardanapalus as a hero of the English and
French Romantics. Lord Byron devoted a
tragedy to him, and Eugene Delacroix, al¬
most 30 years old at the time, painted his
395 by 495 cm painting.
The painting exemplifies the most im¬
portant features of French Romanticism:
the unrestrained superman as hero; the
combination of death and eroticism;
Oriental decor; swirling movement rather
than the repose and balance of an orderly
construction; the predominance of colour
over line.
The work was painted for the Paris
Salon of 1827/28. It was intended to be
provocative - and achieved its aim. Dela¬
croix called it an “Asiatic tour de force”.3
381

Heinous
heroes
G eorge Gordon Noel Lord Byron
(1788-1824), who rediscovered in
Sardanapalus a figure for his own
time, was one of the leading lights of the
Romantic movement. His influence was
felt throughout Europe and was not con¬
fined to literary circles, for it was not only
Byron’s works, but his personality that
made him famous. The English aristocrat
acted in constant defiance of social and
ethical norms. He indulged in extravagant
debauches, vaunted his incestuous and ho¬
382
mosexual relationships and died, in 1824,
for the liberation of Greece - of malaria
rather than wounds.
In his play Sardanapalus, published in
1821 and dedicated to the “illustrious
Goethe”, Byron did little to disguise his
self-portrait. The hero of the story is a split
personality: on the one hand “the despo¬
tism of vice, the weakness and wickedness
of luxury, the negligence, the apathy, the
evils of sensual sloth...”;4 on the other,
heroism. Byron had similar views of him¬
self: “I am such a strange melange of good
and bad”,4 he wrote. In this sense, he was
both a Don Juan (the title of one of his
most well-known works), hurrying from
one love-affair to the next, and a freedom-
fighter, chartering a brig and fighting the
Turks in Greece.
Delacroix was a great admirer of Byron,
and several of his paintings were inspired
by the English poet. Delacroix, too, gave
Sardanapalus features of his own: “his pale
complexion, his full black hair... eyes, like
those of a wildcat, thick eyebrows vaguely
raised,” wrote the French poet, Theophile
Gautier, describing the artist. Gautier con¬
tinues: “His face had such a strangely
exotic, such a wild, almost worrying
beauty, one might have taken him for an
Indian maharaja, brought up the perfect
gentleman in Calcutta.”5 To this picture of
himself, the artist has added only the beard,
and a distinctly muscular arm; he was, in
reality, of rather puny build.
Eugene Delacroix (1798-1863), who
was ten years younger than Byron, was the
archetypal representative of the French
Romantic generation. Born during the
years of Napoleon’s conquest of Europe,
brought up to the sound of beating drums
and tales of glory, his was a generation who
had come of age in a society where “great”
events no longer happened. “The world
had been shaken to the core, and suddenly
all was still,” wrote the Romantic poet Al¬
fred de Musset. “From then on it was as if
there were two camps: here, expansive,
soulful spirits whose hearts and minds
overflowed; there, sober, down-to-earth
types, inflexible, happy enough to be alive,
content to count their money.”6
In a society devoted to narrow-minded
materialism, “expansive, soulful spirits”
were easily driven to melancholy: “the
sickness of the century”. They became
world-wearied, pessimistic through and
through. Delacroix, too, complained in his
journals of “boredom and melancholy”;
everybody, he wrote, “goes about in a
leaden cloak”.7
Disappointment and ennui were the
crucible in which the Romantic hero was
fired: the prototypical rebel who, on behalf
of author and reader, pitted himself against
social norms and died a hero’s death; the
loner who challenged the gods, a Titan, a
fallen angel. One such figure is Victor Hu¬
go’s Hernani, a robber who fights the em¬
peror, and over whose life hangs a dreadful
curse. Another, equally contradictory
figure is Antony, the protagonist of a play
by Alexandre Dumas, who is forced to
murder his loved one. It is sullen-faced
figures like these who populate the books
and plays of the period: they were “beauti¬
ful as Satan, cold as snakes, haughty, bold”.
Lord Byron, the “Bonaparte of poetry”,
came close to this ideal. The youth of
France admired him as the century’s sec¬
ond-greatest hero. The literary embodi¬
ment of the ideal was Sardanapalus (in By¬
ron’s version), who, in celebration of his
own demise, draws the most pretentious
comparisons: “In this blazing palace,... we
leave a nobler monument than Egypt hath
piled in her brick mountains o’er dead
kings.”4

Exotic
accessories
B eside Sardanapalus’ bed is his young
cupbearer, who, according to the
catalogue of the Paris Salon of
1827/28, “will set light to the pyre and
throw himself on the flames”. Here, he is
seen presenting the king with a cup of poi¬
son.
The carafe stands on a table that is dec¬
orated with an Egyptian winged sun. Dela¬
croix gives the cupbearer an Indian or
Turkish turban, while the Moor at the
other side of the bed wears an Egyptian-
style hood. The mighty elephants at the
foot of the bed are of Indian provenance.
Delacroix thus assembles geographi¬
cally disparate accessories and costumes
whose sole common denominator is their
non-European origin. They evoke a vague
sense of “the Orient”, a non-European
realm of fables and dreams. Here, as well as
in the distant Middle Ages, Delacroix and
his friends took refuge from the oppressive
restraints of contemporary reality.
Two men were responsible for the grow¬
ing interest in the Orient at the beginning
of the 19th century: Napoleon and Lord
Byron. In 1798, Napoleon had led a spec¬
tacular expeditionary force to Egypt and
won a victory near the pyramids over the
Mamelukes. Although the expedition ulti¬
mately failed its purpose, it unleashed an
intense, lasting interest in what, at that
time, was a relatively unknown part of the
globe.
In 1809, Lord Byron set off on his
"grand tour”, traditionally a part of every
young noble’s education. However, he
could not visit France or Italy, because
England was at war with Napoleon. In¬
stead, he travelled to Greece and Turkey,
composing a poetic travelogue entitled
Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage which soon
became a sensational success. His motive
for the pilgimage was this: “With pleasure
drugged, he almost longed for woe,/and
e’en for change of scene would seek the
shades below.”4
Nobody had ever written as colourfully
of dervishes, pashas and mosques. Behind
the colour, however, was a need to escape
the narrowness of Europe, a desire for
change at any price - including death.
Byron actually did risk his life. He re¬
ported on the liberation struggle of the
Greeks against the Turks, commending the
impressive heroism of the former and at¬
tacking the atrocities of the latter. The
struggle attracted considerable sympathy
in a Europe whose memory of the Re¬
volution and Napoleonic Wars was still
fresh. A philhellenist movement emerged
which, in 1827, forced the European gov¬
ernments to send an international fleet in
support of the Greeks.
Even as a schoolboy, Delacroix had
drawn pictures of Turks and harems. In the
Salon of 1824, he offended the establish¬
ment with his topical Massacre at Chios. It
was not until several years after he had
completed The Death of Sardanapalus .that
he travelled to the Orient himself. In 1832,
he accompanied a French diplomat to Ma-
rocco and Algeria: “I feel completely over¬
come ... moments of fascination, and of the
strangest bliss!”8
383
S ardanapalus goes to the grave accom¬
panied by his Arab horse. It has been
dragged to his bed, bejewelled like a
woman, with its braided mane and golden
reins. Delacroix, too, loved horses. He had
sketched them ever since his youth, and
later on, they became a recurrent motiv in
his work. Like other Romantics, he saw in
the horse an embodiment of his longings.
The Classical ideal was self-control; the
scale of human measurement was man. The
horse of the Romantics, on the other hand,
was unbridled impetuosity, a rearing beast,
all movement, the incarnation of power
and passion. Again and again, Delacroix
painted horseback duels, lions and tigers
falling on horses. He wanted “impetuos-
Unbridled
passion
384
ity” and “fluency”; wanted a “coat shim¬
mering with the play of muscular reflexes”
and, more than anything else, he wanted
“the soul, the horse’s eye”.9
Gericault and Delacroix painted illus¬
trations for Mazeppa, an epic poem by
Byron. In the poem, the hero is driven into
the wilderness, bound to the back of a
horse. Here, man is not in control of his
passions, but is carried along by them - an
archetypal Romantic subject.
Delacroix’s friends saw the emotional
content of his work as deriving from his
character. His upbringing and the demands
of society had taught him to observe the
rules of politeness, wrote one contempor¬
ary, but behind this facade he was only just
able to conceal the violence of his mood:
“a wild passion, whose fire shone in his
eyes”. The alternation of his mood be¬
tween intense exhileration and severe de¬
pression was largely due to an organic
complaint which eventually killed him: the
painter was suffering from tuberculosis.
Delacroix: “Always this light fever ...”
The poet Charles Baudelaire wrote: “One
might be tempted to speak of a crater,
elaborately concealed by flowers.”9
He not only had the character of a Ro¬
mantic hero; his background, too, was
shrouded in mystery. Talleyrand, the great
French politician, who had succeeded in
first serving Napoleon and then the Bour¬
bon monarchy, is said to have been Dela¬
croix’s father. Delacroix’s family were civil
servants, with close links to the Empire.
The family became impoverished during
the Restoration and the artist was forced to
turn his painting, initially a hobby, into a
means of earning a living. Spectacular suc¬
cess came relatively quickly; by the time he
was twenty-four, one of his paintings had
been exhibited at the official Paris Salon.
The painting was bought by the State, and
the artist was celebrated as a “genius” by
the critics.
During the following years, two of his
paintings, both of them passionate inter¬
ventions on behalf of Greek liberation,
caused a sensation: The Massacre at Chios
(1824), and Greece Expiring on the Ruins
of Missolonghi (1827).
These paintings made Delacroix the
leader of the Romantic movement in paint¬
ing. As such, he took over from his older
friend Theodore Gericault, who died in
1824 as a result of a riding accident.
The spokesman of literary Romanticism
in France was Victor Hugo. While Dela¬
croix presented Sardanapalus at the Salon,
Hugo was demanding total freedom for art
in the Preface to his play Cromwell. Ac¬
cording to Hugo, traditional rules (such as
the unities of place, time and action) should
be abolished.
Delacroix did not compose a written
manifesto, but Sardanapalus fully ex¬
pressed the artist’s opposition to the domi¬
nant Classical rules and precepts. The most
important exponent of the style at the Salon
of 1827/28 was Jean-Auguste-Dominique
Ingres, with his Apotheosis of Homer.
Harmony and line are the dominant fea¬
tures of Ingres’s aesthetic, while Sardana¬
palus is all colour and movement. Dela¬
croix demonstrates his “rejection of aca¬
demic principles” and demands “free ex¬
pression of my own feelings”. He sees his
Sardanapalus as an “Asiatic tour de force,
directed against all these Spartan imitations
of David”. Ingres, on the other hand, saw
Delacroix as an “apostle of the ugly... re¬
plete with dangerous doctrines and incli¬
nations”. When Delacroix left the room,
Ingres had all the windows opened to let
cut the “stink of sulphur”.

Scandal
at the Salon
F aced with Sardanapalus, even Dela¬
croix’s erstwhile supporters balked.
“This time Delacroix has gone too
far,” one of them wrote. Aesthetically, his
contemporaries were outraged; his combi¬
nation of eroticism and death was con¬
sidered utterly beyond the pale. In fact,
this “black Romanticism”, as it later be¬
came known, was typical of the wide¬
spread Romantic attempt to provoke a
powerful emotional response with the aid
of morbid or macabre subjects. In England
there had been a wave of stories about
vampires, and Frankenstein’s monster.
In France, the portrayal of decomposing
bodies on Gericault’s Raft of the Medusa
created a furore. Delacroix liked to paint
victims of violence too - preferably female
ones. Both his Massacre at Chios and The
Knights of the Cross Taking Constantinople
are full of suffering, tormented, dying
women. It is only women who are shown
dying at Sardanapalus’s bedside. Their
eyes, which, according to the Romantics,
were the mirror of the soul, remain hidden.
They are naked, all body, while the Assyr¬
ian king lies fully clothed on his bed. He
commands; his will is done; he is the sub¬
ject. The others, the women very visibly so,
are degraded to mere objects. In one of his
novels, the Marquis de Sade writes: “Oh,
what pleasure could even be compared
with that of annihilation: I know of no
more delicious thrill!”10
It is not unlikely that Delacroix’s paint¬
ing, too, is an expression of his lifelong
problems with women. He needed
women, and feared them. He was unable to
commit himself to a steady relationship.
Delacroix frequently expressed himself in
comments like: “Such a pretty passion;
she’d be the ruin of any man.” Or: “When
I go to work, it’s like another man hurrying
to his mistress...”11
The Death of Sardanapalus caused such
a scandal that Delacroix was unable to sell
anything, according to his own testimony,
for five years. The Salon, whose role was
essentially to judge what was good art and
what was bad, was dominated by the
Classical works of Ingres and his pupils, or
by the more moderate Romantics.
Success eventually returned to Dela¬
croix with the response to a painting
which, like many of his earlier ones, was
inspired by political events - this time by
the 1830 July Revolution. This work also
shows corpses: not in a bedroom, however,
but on, or in front of, the barricades. This
time, the painting is not dominated by a
man, but by Liberty: a woman, shown
leading the people against the ruling class.
The painting was bought by the State, but
disppeared into cold storage only a year
later. Delacroix was unable to sell The
Death of Sardanapalus until 1846, when it
was bought by an Englishman. Passing
from one private collection to another, it
remained invisible to the public until 1921,
when it w^is bought by the Louvre. It can
be seen there, in close proximity to his pro¬
grammatic picture Liberty Leading the
People, to this day.
385
 Ludwig Richter: The Schreckenstein Crossing, 1837
Across the river and into
the past
The ferry boat, with its passengers
old and young, lends an air of
tranquil contemplation to the
scene. Yet Germany was already
well on its way to becoming an in¬
dustrial state: trains and steam¬
ships were the new forms of trans¬
port, and factories replaced the
old artisans’ workshops. Richter’s
flight from contemporary reality
has ensured the popularity of his
work to this day. The painting,
measuring 116 x 156 cm, is in the
possession of the Staatliche Kunst-
sammlungen, Dresden.
There is a condescending tendency among
art historians to treat Ludwig Richter
(1803-1884) as a minor craftsman rather
than a real artist. Judging by his popularity,
however, he must inevitably be seen as one
of the great German painters of the 19th
century. The subjects he chose - Romantic
landscapes and sentimental idylls - were
386
not alone in determining the popularity of
his work; it was the printing press that es¬
tablished his mass appeal. His main cus¬
tomers were publishers and bookshops
who commissioned him to produce illus¬
trations for calendars, fairy-tales and song-
books. Ordinary folk could thus afford to
buy Richter’s pictures.
Richter’s father, too, had worked as an
illustrator. Ludwig was born at Dresden in
1803, leaving school at the age of twelve.
He was expected to learn copper engraving
to help his father, but his real wish was for
freedom to paint his own work. He was
twenty years old when one of his father’s
customers financed a much longed-for
journey to Italy, and Richter travelled to
Rome to paint “historic” landscapes.
Ini 826 he returned to Saxony, becoming
a teacher of drawing at the school of porce¬
lain painting at Meifien. Lonely at first,
oppressed by the narrowness of his envi¬
ronment, he longed to return to Italy. A
turning-point finally came in the thirties,
and the painting of the boat shows the di¬
rection his work now took. In his Memoirs
of a German Painter he noted that, after an
excursion near the town of Aussig in north¬
ern Bohemia, he had asked himself: “Why
go looking for something in distant climes
when you can find it so close to home?”
Richter continued: “Returning to Aussig, I
made several sketches of Schreckenstein
and its surroundings. I was standing on the
bank of the Elbe just after sunset... when
my attention was drawn to an old man
ferrying people across. His boat, loaded
with people and animals, pushed silently
across the river, in which glowed the reflec¬
tion of a golden evening sky ...”

Gentle music
of a
bygone age
R
ichter’s Memoirs contain the follow¬
ing observation: "Amongst other
things I noticed a boat crossing with
a motley crowd of passengers, one of
whom was a old harper who paid his fare
by playing to the assembled company.”
In our own time the harp is rarely heard
outside the concert hall, but in those days,
a smaller version of the harp was one of
several instruments frequently played by
itinerant musicians on the streets of towns,
388
or at inns. As a boy Richter was evidently
fascinated by these figures. In his memoirs
he recalls visiting a coffee-house with his
father: “But what interested me most was
the blind harper sitting under a linden out¬
side, playing ballads and singing some very
funny folk-songs ... Whenever he sang, I
went up and stood so close it must have
appeared that I was counting the very
words that came out of his mouth.”
In fact, the group of figures in Richter’s
boat owes very little to chance; far from a
“motley crowd of passengers”, each figure
has its own special significance - like the
“bark” itself. A full boat crossing a river
symbolized the journey of life: one was
never sure whether it would arrive safely
on the other side. At a more or less sub¬
liminal level this ancient motif formed part
of every contemporary spectator’s re¬
sponse, though it might be as unobtrusive
as it was in the present landscape.
The figure of the harper Was equally sig¬
nificant. His instrument - like the guitar -
generally served as a form of accompani¬
ment. Poets of antiquity had been harpists,
like Ossian, the 3rd-century Celtic bard.
The Ossian cult, widespread in the second
half of the 18th century, had led to one of
the greatest scandals of literary history. A
Scottish teacher by the name of James Mac-
pherson had composed “translations” of
Ossian which, especially in Germany, won
him considerable acclaim.
The exposure of the forgery did nothing
to diminish contemporary enthusiasm for
bards. In the popular imagination these
were semi-mythical figures, associated
with notions such as the “mists of time”,
the “wisdom of the ancients” and the
“mystery of Fate”. Johann Wolfgang von
Goethe established a literary monument to
a bardic figure in his novel Wilhelm Mei-
ster’s Apprenticeship.
But anyone who had Goethe’s harper in
mind necessarily also thought of Mignon,
a character in the same novel, and it cannot
be attributed to accident that Richter
places a child next to the harper in the boat.
Goethe’s Mignon is the spirit of ideal child¬
hood incarnate: she composes poetry, sings
and - dressed as an angel - leaves a deep
impression wherever she goes. Apparently
neither male nor female, she seems rather
to incorporate a higher synthesis of both,
dying before she is forced to leave that state
of innocence and purity. The writer thus
spares her the trials and tribulations of
puberty.
The apotheosis of childhood as the high¬
est stage of life, from which human beings
are forced to descend in order to become
adults, is found in the works of almost all
German Classical and Romantic writers: in
Goethe, Schiller, Holderlin, Tieck, Novalis
and Wackenroder. “Wherever you find
children, you will find a Golden Age!” en¬
thused Novalis. And according to Wilhelm
Heinrich Wackenroder: "That aetherial
gleam, the token of a world once peopled
by angels, lives on, stirring afresh in the
vital spirit of each new-born child.” Or
Holderlin: “Yes, the child is a divine being,
so long as it remains untouched by the
colours of chameleon humanity!”

Flight from a
loathsome world
R ichter’s journey on foot across the
Alps to Italy had taken him in
search, not only of the South, but of
the past. Italy was a land of ancient cul¬
tures, whose masters were required study.
Here, the world of the past lived on in the
present: “The entire region I had walked
through along that coast was like some
ancient, yellowed sheet of parchment from
the book of history!” His aim was to paint
“historic” landscapes. The world of the
present evidently offered few attractions.
Richter’s view of the Elbe, too, lends
prominence to the past. His composition
deliberately exaggerates the height of the
rock on which Castle Schreckenstein
stands, thereby heightening, too, the Ro¬
mantic significance of the old building. The
figure of the wanderer on board the boat,
- overcome by longing or lost in thought,
gazes up at the ruin.
He may have been musing over the fate
of German patriotism. Following Napole¬
on’s humiliaton of Germany, the Wars of
Liberation were fought in the hope of uni¬
ting the German states and establishing
democratic rights to limit the power of the
feudal princes. The kings and princes, pol¬
itically divided amongst themselves as ever,
were nonetheless united in their struggle to
suppress the “democratic itch”. Intellec¬
tual activity of all kinds was stifled by cen¬
sorship and the exclusion of “radicals”
from public service.
Only a small section of the patriotic
movement resisted, attempting to establish
the conditions for greater political partici¬
pation. Most of these were doomed to
failure: Joseph Gorres, editor of the
Rbeinische Merkur, fled to Strasbourg in
1819; Heinrich Heine emigrated to Paris in
1831, and in 1849, Richard Wagner fought
in vain on the side of the revolutionaries at
Dresden.
Ludwig Richter belonged to the silent
majority whose resistance was passive,
who fled to the past: a world of castles in
which Germany was strong and beautiful
and Germans of all social strata lived
together in peace and harmony. Or such
was the illusion they cherished.
As a young man Richter had been
treated with terrible injustice by a noble.
He had been employed, at the age of seven¬
teen, to make sketches for a travelling Rus¬
sian prince, accompanying his entourage to
France. For a young man of lower middle-
class background, this was a unique oppor¬
tunity to see a bit of Europe. However, the
It
S
91
journey turned out to be a dreadful experi¬
ence of dependency and cruelty at the
hands of a moody despot. “I had fallen into
total disgrace ... The thing that hurt me
most was the way the other gentlemen
spurned me whenever the Prince was pres¬
ent... I sometimes felt like a ghost among
the living, with no way of reaching their
ears ... a dreadful predicament, with no
hope of escape ...”
Even the seventy-year-old, composing
his memoirs, cannot deny the depth of the
wound; yet he puts it down to personal
fate, or sees it as a trial sent by God. It
evidently did not occur to Richter,
whether at that time or any other, to make
some contribution of his own towards
changing the political or social conditions
of the age. Apart from the war scenes of
1813, politics are not mentioned in his
Memoirs. In the words of Richter’s son:
“He had no time for day-to-day political
debate, for chewing the political cud, as it
were; he felt it was all quite beyond him; it
was like being asked to judge a painting
someone was holding in front of your
nose. In order to make a reasonable assess¬
ment, you had to look at a thing from the
proper distance, or allow a certain amount
of time to pass.”
389
R ichter was an unpolitical patriot; he
loved his native German soil more
than the power of a state: “How my
heart leapt as we beheld once again a land
whose people and customs were so ob¬
viously German!”
On returning from Italy, Richter had
originally intended to publish a series of
etchings, entitled Three German Rivers,
with scenes of the Rhine, Danube and
Elbe: “In fact, the entire artistic idea was
born of patriotic sentiment.”
The work on German rivers never hap¬
pened, but the “artistic idea” stayed, in¬
forming everything he undertook from
then on. Like the Schreckenstein Crossing,
his work became a celebration of his native
land - or what he wished that land to be.
His paintings had little in common with
contemporary reality.
The real world of “German rivers” saw
an increasing number of steamships re-
Native soil
transfigured
390
placing both sailing boats and the horses
that had once pulled barges from tow-
paths along the riverbanks. Rivers were
made progressively navigable, and canals
built in great number. In 1800 there had
been 725 miles of navigable inland water¬
ways in Germany; by 1850 the distance, at
2200 miles, had more than tripled. There
would certainly have been ferrymen in
Richter’s day, and they were probably
even known to ferry the odd harper across
a river, but both figures stood, not for
what was new or typical of the modern
era, but for timeless continuity with the
past. Richter preferred to paint “historic”
landscapes.
The real world also meant improved
roads and new railways. But these are
rarely found in the artist’s work, appear¬
ing only in his memoirs, where he de¬
scribes streets in towns as “racecourses for
people and vehicles”. He also recalls a
suburb of Dresden where he lived for
many years, where “steam locomotives
pierce the air with their shrill whistles, and
wagons clatter along railway tracks and
through streets that have replaced once
peaceful cornfields with a world gone
steam-mad.” In 1837, the very year Rich¬
ter painted his Schreckenstein, building
work began on the railway from Dresden
to Leipzig.
The real world meant factories, too,
which Richter did not paint. When he
paints people at work, they are invariably
shown going happily about their business
in a field or artisan’s workshop. He
wanted to show the “life and joys of the
people” rather than their sorrows and
woes. Had Richter wished to assemble in
one boat figures who epitomized his
period, its passengers would certainly
have included a businessman and a factory
worker.
Finally, there is no sign in Richter’s pic¬
tures of the rocketing population growth,
though the population of Germany practi¬
cally doubled in Richter’s lifetime, and in¬
deed, that of Dresden tripled, growing
from 60,000 to 180,000. Change on such a
drastic scale may well have felt threatening
to a timid man. Richter fought back with
his paintings. In that sense, they are anti¬
pictures: unhoused in the present, the artist
celebrated the ancient homeland of his
fathers.
"A state of bliss
that made
us silent"

In the expanding 19th-century cities, the

neighbourly spirit which continued to
be found in villages and small towns,
where everybody knew everybody else,
had more or less dissolved: there were too
many people one knew nothing about, and
their number increased daily. The weaken¬
ing bond of neighbourly relations, once the
basis for help and safety through mutual
observation, was now replaced by some¬
thing new: the privacy of the family.
The change may be illustrated with ref¬
erence to festive occasions of various kinds.
In the 18th century Christmas was primar¬
ily a religious festival, celebrated in the com¬
munity. It was not until the beginning of the
19th century that it became a family occa¬
sion. From now on, celebrants rejoiced not
only in the birth of Christ, but in the com¬
munity of parents and children. A similar
change can be observed with regard to wed¬
dings. In smaller communities the entire
neighbourhood was invited to take part in a
celebration that generally lasted several
days. A wedding was very much a public
event. Ludwig Richter’s wedding, on the
other hand, in the growing city of Dresden
in 1827, was an intimate affair with very few
guests. Nor did he recall the official, demon¬
strative aspect of the wedding as its most
noteworthy feature: “Our wedding day
passed very simply, in an atmosphere of
beauty and good cheer. As for us, we had
entered a state of bliss that made us silent, for
which there are no words, and which ex¬
pressed itself in looks, tone of voice, and the
warmth with which we took each other’s
tokens of trust and affection, began to re¬ Their transfiguration of family life is one
hands.” The young couple in Richter’s boat
place traditional forms; fathers, too, spent of the main factors contributing to the
has something of that blissful intimacy.
more time with their children. popularity of Richter’s paintings in Ger¬
Feelings began to have a stronger say in
Richter recalls “with pleasure the long many. Equally important in this respect is
more than choice of spouse. In previous
evenings we spent sitting around the stove their rejection of responsibility in the public
centuries, families had resembled teams
with the children, listening to the same sphere, their flight to the cosy refuge of
whose raison d’etre lay in mastering the
story for the tenth time, or making up new hearth and home. Even the ferrryman and
everyday tasks of survival. Relations be¬
ones.” A visitor to the Richter family his passengers have a certain homey famil¬
tween individual members of the family
speaks of the “poetry of a German house¬ iarity. In moony silence, they listen to the
tended to be reserved, governed by practi¬
hold”. The kind of “German household” harper, united by the “atmosphere” of the
calities. In Germany, children addressed
he meant was inward-looking, closed to scene, and it would require few alterations
their parents with the polite “Sie”, and hus¬
the outside world. Its warmth and homely to pose or dress to transpose them from their
bands and wives often used each other’s
security alleviated the burden of noisy ma¬ mighty river to a scene in a bourgeois sitting
surnames. Now, however, more intimate
chines and political oppression. room.
forms of address, the “Du” and first names,
391
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392
Carl Spitzweg: The Poor Poet, 1839

The German painting

best-loved by Germans

A young man pushes a companion in a

wheelchair into Charlottenburg palace in
Berlin - in the room housing the pictures by
Carl Spitzweg, the pair snip the retaining
wires of two paintings with a tool they have
kept concealed. The alarm goes off, guards
block the path of the intruders, but the
thieves escape into the crowd. With them
go Spitzweg’s The Love Letter and The
Poor Poet. That was on 3 September 1989.
The paintings have not been seen since.
The Poor Poet had already been abduct¬
ed once earlier, in 1976, but on that occa¬
sion it was returned after only a few hours.
Spitzweg’s works are frequently stolen. In
autumn 1992, 36 of his pictures appeared
in the German Federal Crime Depart¬
ment’s list of missing works. Their handy
format - The Poor Poet measures just 36 x
45 cm - makes them relatively easy to steal.
But the main motive for their theft is, of
course, the painter’s extraordinary popu¬
larity in Germany, where a survey of
people’s favourite paintings revealed The
Poor Poet in second place, behind Leonar¬
do da Vinci’s Mona. Lisa and in front of
Albrecht Diirer’s Hare.
It was painted by a beginner. Spitzweg
was born in Munich in 1808, and at his
father’s wish he became a pharmacist. In
1833, a few years after his father’s death,
he gave up his profession with a sigh of re¬
lief and devoted himself entirely to paint¬
ing. This was made possible by an inherit¬
ance. In 1837 he sold his first two pictures;
in 1839 he painted two (almost identical)
versions of The Poor Poet at the same
time. One was sold to a private client, and
the other exhibited first in the Munich
Kunstverein, then in Hanover and then
Regensburg.
One curiosity that has survived is a
sheet of tracing paper which the artist
evidently used to copy his own work; the
outlines are marked with pinpricks. One
version hung until 1989 in Berlin, the
other hangs in the Neue Pinakothek in
Munich. There is also a third version in a
private collection.
No one at the time predicted the paint¬
ing’s future popularity. It was first men¬
tioned in the press in 1840, in a review
of the Hanover exhibition carried by the
Morgenblatt fur gebildete Leser (Morning
News for Educated Readers): “Of the
genre paintings ... Dielmann’s, ‘Children
Playing in front of a Saint’s Shrine’, S.G.
Meyer’s, Grandmother with her Grand¬
children etc., then, Fliiggen’s Interrupted
Marriage Contract, Spitzweg’s Poet, Kal-
tenmoser’s Hat-plaiter...” Six more works
are named, before the lengthy sentence
eventually concludes with “... deserve
honourable mention.”
While none of the other works listed by
the reviewer have enjoyed lasting fame,
their subjects indicate the context in which
The Poor Poet was viewed in its day. These
were sentimental scenes of artisans, chil¬
dren and family upsets. The reviewer:
“There is<a lavish predominance of genre
paintings, and within these domestic
scenes ...” The Poor Poet as a “domestic
scene”?

393
S pitzweg remained a bachelor. He
liked travelling and knew life in a
garret from first-hand experience: he
would dent his skull, he wrote from
cramped quarters in Franconia, if he
should awaken suddenly in the night and
sit up - “for which reason I always ask for
sweet dreams before I go to sleep ...”
He liked living up high. In 1833 he
moved into an apartment on the top storey
of a house in Munich’s Old Town: “The
view is magnificent ... all around a vast
mountain chain of roofs, studded with
chimneys and attic windows like castles
and ruins ... and the sky so close - it is un¬
rivalled.” The young artist’s happiness as
he looked out over the roofscape is cap¬
tured here in this painting.
In front of and below Spitzweg’s win¬
dow lay the city of Munich, with its king,
court and almost 100,000 inhabitants. It
was a Munich in the throes of change:
since coming to power in 1825, King Lud¬
394
wig I had enlarged the narrow medieval
city through the addition of magnificent
avenues such as the eponymous Lud-
wigstrasse, with its Generals’ Hall and
Victory Arch. He built the Glyptothek
sculpture gallery and the Pinakothek art
gallery, the court and national theatre, all
inspired by the architecture of the Italian
Renaissance. Munich was to become a
“German Rome”, or the “Athens of Ger¬
many”.
King Ludwig built without asking his
citizens. Like the other princes in the Ger¬
man Federation, after the July Revolution
of 1830 he actively suppressed all demo¬
cratic tendencies. In 1836 he decreed that
his officials should use the old term “sub¬
jects” instead of “citizens”, because “cit¬
izens ... leads to arrogance”. The king de¬
termined what was said and written, and
also what kind of art could be taught at his
Academy. He had been profoundly im¬
pressed by Italian culture ever since his
trip to Rome, and appointed Peter Cor¬
nelius (1783-1867), a German “Italian”, as
head of his Munich Academy. Cornelius
painted frescos and enormous tableaux de¬
picting mythological and historical scenes.
His figures are beautified, polished, pow¬
erful, and far removed from the harsher
side of everyday life. He had no time for
painters who preferred small formats and
modest, unheroic subjects. Spitzweg did
not even attempt to get into the Academy
of Arts. He taught himself within a circle
of artist friends.
It is evident from The Poor Poet that he
started with a great deal of drawing.
Everything has a clear outline, and gives
the impression of having been coloured in
almost as an afterthought. There is as yet
no trace of the vibrant palette of his later
works. The subject - a poet in poor digs -
was not entirely new: the English artist
William Hogarth had treated it in 1736,
and his compatriot William Turner in
1809. The Italian Tommaso Minardi used
the theme a few years later for a self-por¬
trait. A poet’s garret was drawn by a Mun¬
ich artist called Kaspar Braun in 1832, fol¬
lowed in 1842 by the French artist Honore
Daumier, and no doubt by many more
since.
The image of the poet living in poverty
was evidently widespread - not just in pic¬
tures, but also in books and on the stage.
In 1812 August von Kotzebue wrote a
play entitled Der arme Poet (The Poor
Poet); perhaps Spitzweg’s title was bor¬
rowed from him. In 1851 Henri Murger’s
novel La Boh'eme was published in Paris,
and subsequently provided Giacomo Puc¬
cini with the story for his opera of the
same name. The author opens with a de¬
scription of an artist’s cold room. Table,
chair and bed have already found their
way onto the fire, and hanging on the wall
is a notice to quit issued by the bailiff.
Above
the rooftops
of Munich
An unprofitable
occupation
T he view out of the window forms
the brightest part of the picture, and
the tiled oven beneath it the darkest.
While the view of snow-covered rooftops
brought the artist pleasure, he uses the
tiled stove show what a sorry state of af¬
fairs his figure, the poet, finds himself in.
The stove is namely cold - otherwise the
top hat would not be hanging on the flue,
the sheaf of papers would not be lying in
the oven door, and the poet would prob¬
ably not be huddled under the bedcovers
in his dressing-gown or dress coat.
Cold rooms were something with which
everyone was familiar. Ovens and fire¬
places only ever kept parts of houses and
apartments warm. Every morning the fires
had to be lit afresh - if there was any fuel
available. Top of the list of offences against
property was not theft of food, but theft
of firewood. According to Prussian statist¬
ics, four fifths of all thefts concerned fuel.
Spitzweg even has his poet burn his own
writings to keep warm. Lying in a bundle
in front of the soot-blackened oven door
are his “Operum meor. fasc. Ill” and “IV”;
parts I and II of his works have probably
already gone up in smoke.
If we take a closer look at the situation
of Munich writers in the 1830s, it emerges
that the poet’s wretched situation is not
necessarily a reflection of any lack of tal¬
ent. You could earn a living in Munich as a
painter, but not as a poet. “There are only
very few here who live exclusively from
their literary earnings”, according to a
book on Munich life published in 1840
by one Herr Daxenberger. “Journalism is
restricted to just a few local papers and
these pay almost nothing. Encouragement
is lacking. Munich has no literary market
like Leipzig or Stuttgart, no literary public
like Vienna.” Although there were literary
circles, Herr Daxenberger continues, the
sorts of people whose works they pre¬
sented, were headmasters, members of the
royal household and university professors.
They were thus almost all employed as
civil servants, and indulged in writing
merely as a hobby. Just like their king,
who dictated the standards in so many
areas and who described his own position
in verse thus: “Happy! he appointed to a
throne; / Steps to ascend he has none, /
No one on earth stands above him!”
To earn one’s living with poems, stories,
novels or travelogues was difficult not just
in Munich. Heinrich Heine, who had
moved to Paris to escape censorship and
repression, lived more from inheritances
than from his (many) royalties. Eduard
Morike kept body and soul together for
many years as a country parson, and the
aristocratic Joseph von Eichendorff - like
many of his contemporaries - considered
it “ridiculous” to make a “profession” out
of “writing poetry”.
Spitzweg’s poet is thus out of touch
with reality because he has taken up poetry
instead of securing himself an income as an
official - and also because he is composing
in such an old-fashioned manner. Heavy
literary tomes, such as those on the floor
in front of the mattress, were looked down
on by the Romantics of his day. Words
were to flow freely from one’s own experi¬
ence, from one’s own fount of language,
and not within the prespecified feet of a
hexameter, whose rhythms the poet has
noted in marks on the wall. He seems to
be counting the syllables with his fingers,
to make sure they fit the classical metre.
Heine makes a similar jibe in Ata Troll
(1847), where he writes of a young bear
who “... scratches himself on the head/
like a poet seeking the rhyme / he too
scans with his paws.”
395
T o protect himself from the cold, the
poet is lying in bed dressed in a tat¬
tered coat and wearing, like many of
his contemporaries, a nightcap. He has
tied a cravat around his neck, as if ready to
go out. Cravats were one of the most im¬
portant accessories in a man’s wardrobe.
They could be tied in an almost inconceiv¬
able multitude of ways. The French novel¬
ist Honore de Balzac (1799-1850) even
claimed that “La cravatte, c’est l’homme”
(The cravat is the man).
The cravat
makes
the man
396
He might have said the same thing
about walking sticks. These were swung in
the left hand, in other words on the side
on which a man of class would, prior to
the French Revolution, have worn his
sword. One manufacturer offered 500 dif¬
ferent models. The walking stick, like the
cravat, was one of the means by which a
man could distinguish himself from others
and lend himself a touch of individuality.
The poor poet’s stick is leaning against the
wall on the left. It is one of the econom¬
ical, sturdy types, and has a T-shaped
head, making it a “Fritz crook”, so-called
after the Prussian king Frederick II.
The open umbrella over the bed is prob¬
ably one of Spitzweg’s own pictorial in¬
ventions; no one, as far as is known, had
painted the motif before. The umbrella it¬
self had nevertheless been around for a
while. It had come into fashion in the 18th
century. However, it sheltered only those
few young gentlemen, who could not af¬
ford their own carriages. That changed af¬
ter the Paris revolution of 1830: Louis
Philippe of the House of Bourbon, France’s
citizen king, used an umbrella as a means
of demonstrating his proximity to the
people. The pedestrian’s practical access¬
ory thus became a symbol of populist po¬
litical leanings.
The same was true of the top hat. It ac¬
quired its cylindrical shape during the
French Revolution, when it came to re¬
place the tricorne and the wig. In the 19th
century it lost its originally subversive sig¬
nificance and became the standard dress
for ordinary, law-abiding, royalist men.
Top hat, umbrella, cane, cravat - these all
held an immediate significance for contem¬
porary viewers of Spitzweg’s picture. Both
in reality and in art, they characterized the
individual in terms of class and personality.
They rendered differences visible.
Today we view the reclining poet and
the characteristic items of his wardrobe
from a different, almost opposite angle.
For us, he is not the individual who distin¬
guishes himself from others, but the sym¬
bolic figure of an entire epoch - the Bie-
dermeier era.
The Biedermeier period, which lasted
from 1815 to 1848, was dominated by the
restoration of a feudalistic style of govern¬
ment. Constitutionally-minded “citizens”
were once again to become “subjects”.
Most citizens reacted to this pressure from
above by withdrawing into the private
sphere. The term “Biedermeier” today
evokes images of large, happy families,
pastoral scenes and a sentimental life far
removed from all political activity. But just
as the epoch only acquired its name after it
had ended, so rimmed glasses, top hats,
umbrellas and walking sticks only became
the symbolic attributes of a private
lifestyle over the course of the years.
Spitzweg, who painted right up to his
death in 1885, played an influential role in
transforming the objects of daily life into
symbols of the spirit of the age. But that
was in the years after The Poor Poet. In
this painting, only the stocking cap has an
added significance. It was namely as an
item of clothing worn by “German
Michael”, a figure who originated in the
16th century and who represented a cari¬
cature of the German nation or of the typ¬
ical German.

A different
sort of
"typical German"?
S pitzweg’s painting is still the subject
of minor academic controversy, poss¬
ibly instigated by the artist himself.
At issue is a preparatory drawing on which
four words have been hastily scrawled.
The last two words can be deciphered as
“weg floh” (away flea). This suggests that
the man in the bed is not scanning syl¬
lables, but squashing a flea between his
thumb and forefinger.
But has the inscription been correctly
deciphered? And even if it has, argues the
opposition, perhaps it was not the poet
who wanted to be rid of the flea, but the
artist who wished to shake off the suspi¬
cion of having fleas?
Whatever the case: the contrast between
the poet’s flights of fancy - the words ad
parnassum are printed on one of the tomes
— and the poverty of his room is already
striking enough. The point about the flea
would be a nice touch, but not an indis¬
pensable one.
The question remains as to why Spitz¬
weg’s painting is so popular, and why it
seems to be the German painting best¬
loved by Germans? Surely not simply be¬
cause it is used to illustrate the Biedermeier
era in every school history book? Such
books contain other utterly unmemorable
pictures.
Perhaps the work is so popular because
it comes close to one of our own occa¬
sional dreams - of retreating to within our
own four walls, of devoting ourselves to
books rather than to reality, of escaping
from the ugly world outside into a safe, in¬
ner world of beauty, cushioned by soft pil¬
lows, beneath a sheltering umbrella.
The escapist appeal of The Poor Poet is
not the only possible explanation for its
popularity; a second factor - more na¬
tional in character - must also be taken
into consideration. Since the beginning of
the 19th century, at least, the caricature of
“German Michael” was also generally por¬
trayed in a pointed nightcap. Was the poor
poet perceived as a modern-day brother to
this “typical German”? Have the Germans
taken Spitzweg’s poet so much to their
hearts because he illustrates the positive
side of their formerly negative image - as a
man who, in the face of all adversity,
“strives ever onwards”?
During these years of repression and
revolution, there arose in France, too, a
painting in which the French were able to
recognize their national characteristics:
Liberty Leading the People, executed in
1830 by Eugene Delacroix. It is impossible
to imagine a more striking contrast to
Spitzweg’s poetry-composing Michael - a
female figure storming over the barricades,
an idealized Liberty holding the tricolour
in her raised hand and followed by armed
citizens, workers and children.
In the sphere of art, one prerequisite of
great popularity is often a certain simpli¬
city. Like the Mona Lisa and Dtirer’s Hare,
Spitzweg’s garret can be assimilated at a
glance. There is no complicated perspect¬
ive: room, window, stove and mattress are
presented parallel to the pictorial plane.
Everything is clearly delineated, and even
if the viewer doesn’t quite know what the
object hanging on the wall on the right is
supposed to be, it doesn’t disturb the
overall effect.
Another condition of popularity: pic¬
tures must speak to our feelings. The
Mona Lisa’s smile exudes a mysterious
charm, and we would like to stroke Dur-
er’s hare. In the case of Spitzweg, however,
the viewer’s feelings are mixed: we are not
entirely sure if we are looking at an idyll or
a satire. Spitzweg probably had both in
mind, and therein lies the true appeal of
this painting. As in many of his other pic¬
tures, Spitzweg is here caricaturing human
weaknesses, but in an affectionate manner.
He portrays his heroes in all their eccent¬
ricity, but without derision. He accepts
and loves people as imperfect as they are.
A wise philosophy, albeit entirely unsuit¬
able for revolutions.
397

Intending his picture to be as real¬
istic as possible, Menzel painted
one of the evening recitals given
by Frederick II a hundred years
earlier. At the same time, his ren¬
dering was entirely consistent
with the expectations of his Prus¬
sian contemporaries. The latter
lived in hope of a powerful mon¬
arch who would make use of their
dormant “sense of nationhood”.
The painting (142 x 205 cm) is one
of the most well-known works in
the Nationalgalerie, Berlin.
398
The young King Frederick II, travelling to
Holland, wished to remain incognito; but
for two companions, he left his retinue be¬
hind and pretented to be a touring flautist.
He ordered vol-au-vents at an inn in Am¬
sterdam, but the landlady thought he
looked too poor to pay the bill. His com¬
panions assured her that their friend, a vir¬
tuoso musician, could earn more money in
an hour than ten vol-au-vents could poss¬
ibly cost. The landlady then asked him to
play for her, which he did. “So carried
away was she by the beauty of his recital”1
that she promised to bake the vol-au-vents
without further ado.
There are many popular anecdotes
about Frederick II as a flautist, and since
anecdotes generally reveal a powerful sym¬
pathy on the part of those who tell them, it
may be deduced that the Prussian king’s
music-making made him highly popular
with his subjects. The flute-playing Frede¬
rick II even provided the subject of an
opera. Entitled An Army Camp in Silesia,
it was first performed in 1844 to mark the
opening of the new Berlin Royal Opera
House. The music was composed by Gia¬
como Meyerbeer, and the libretto is based
on an incident in which Frederick nar¬
rowly escapes being taken prisoner by pre¬
tending to be a musician.
Menzel painted his Flute Concert be¬
tween 1850 and 1852, shortly after the pre¬
miere of Meyerbeer’s opera. The painting
(142 by 205 cm) is one of the most popular
in the Nationalgalerie at Berlin. This cannot
be explained by its superior quality; there
are other paintings, equally good. Its appeal
is probably closely linked to the theme: the
great king playing to friends and family. The
setting is the music room of the palace of
Sanssouci at Potsdam. The room is one of
the finest examples of German Rococo.
Beautifully restored, the room today looks
much as it did when Menzel was alive.
Adolph Menzel: The Flute Concert of Frederick the Great
at Sanssouci, 1850/1852

The greatest amateur

musician of the nation
Rapture and
boredom
T
hree men stand and listen; as long as
the king stands, no other male guest
may sit. The concert in Menzel’s
painting is supposed to have taken place in
1750, a century before he started work on
the picture. The artist also left a sketch
identifying the figures. On the far left, an
enraptured smile on his face, stands the
spirited writer and courtier Baron Jacob
Friedrich von Bielfeld. He had been a guest
at Rheinsberg, too, Frederick’s palace
when he was crown prince. “Evenings are
devoted to music,” von Bielfeld noted.
“The Prince gives regular recitals at his
Salon - invitation only, of course, and
those who receive an invitation may con¬
sider themselves highly favoured. The
Prince usually plays the flute. He has per¬
fect command of his instrument: his em¬
bouchure, dexterity, fluency and presenta¬
tion are unique. He has even scored several
400
sonatas himself. I have frequently had the
honour of standing behind him when he
was blowing the flute and was exceedingly
taken with his adagio. But then Frederick
is accomplished in all things...”2
It was an honour, too, to be invited to an
evening recital at Sanssouci. Even those
who were bored by the music felt obliged
to attend. This, at least, would appear to be
so in the case of the mathematician and
geographer, Pierre Louis Moreau de
Maupertuis. One of several French intel¬
lectuals whom Frederick had invited to
Berlin, Maupertuis was the first scientist to
show that the Earth’s sphere flattened out
at the poles. The king appointed him Pres¬
ident of the Academy of Sciences. He had
the reputation of a brilliant raconteur and
entertainer, a master of the art of conversa¬
tion, in which, it is said, he occasionally ex¬
celled Voltaire. Voltaire and Maupertuis,
each convinced of his own superiority, and
both in the small township of Potsdam-
Berlin: it was obviously a recipe for disas¬
ter. They fought each other with articles,
schemed against each other in the most
underhand fashion and made each other
the laughing-stock of the court. When Vol¬
taire insulted the king, however, he had to
go. Maupertuis stayed: the victor. In the
painting he looks boredly up at the ceiling.
He would never have dared had the king
been looking. Menzel’s arrangement of the
figures is revealing!
The portly gentleman with the old-fash¬
ioned periwig in the foreground is Count
Gustav Adolf von Gotter, a hedonist and
man of the world. He always had an eye to
the main chance and was highly skilled in
recommending his own services. After sev¬
eral years as Prussian ambassador to
Vienna, he became Lord Marshall at
Frederick’s court and was often entrusted
with missions abroad.
He was a courtier and diplomat, but
could boast little in the way of personal
achievement. Count Heinrich von Lehn-
dorff, the queen’s lord-in-waiting, recalled
a coach-journey in his company: “Gotter,
with whom I travel, thought himself about
to die. He had such terrible hiccups that I,
too, thought he might give up the ghost. A
moment later, he was singing and blabbing
about young girls. It has always been a
riddle to me how this man could have ac¬
quired such wealth, rising from the middle
class to polite Vienna society, where his
only interest is to indulge himself. But
what amazes me most is that the same man
enjoys the King’s favour.”3
 this position, Frederick had both provided
His sister occupies
her with a benefice and removed her from
the place court. In his chronicle of events in 1756,
of honour Count Lehndorff writes that the Abbess is
fond of a certain page “whom she has im¬
mediately made a gentleman, and, what is
them well out of his way and, unlike other
rulers of his day, had no mistress. He liked
to be surrounded by men, preferably sol¬
diers and intellectuals.
Two ladies listening to the concert are
maids of honour; life at court was probably

Important ministers and officers were less

likely to be invited to Frederick’s even¬
worse, she has made him head of the
chancery at Quedlinburg. He’ll make a
splendid chancellor, I’m sure!”8
hard for them. In his diary,
Lehndorff recalls: “The King gave a dinner
which ended in disaster. Fraulein von
Brand, sitting down at high table, enraged
Count

ing recital than men whose company he Menzel has included four women in the
found pleasing, those whom he had known painting, placing them, with their colourful the King so much that he almost sent her

since his days as crown prince, or who ex¬ dresses, in the best light. They thus provide away. Then he began to talk in the most
celled in conversation. In the painting, not a marked contrast to the gentlemen, who, unbelievably impolite manner of the poor

one of his brothers is present. There were almost all turned out in black, stand in the ladies, saying the dragons stayed on at

six in all, of whom three were still alive. But shadows. The presence of women creates a court while the pretty ones married and
Frederick’s relationship to them was false impression, however: there were few left, and that you could smell the vile hags
strained. He described them in his Political women at Frederick’s court. The king kept within a ten miles radius.”9
Testament as hybrids “who are neither
rulers nor private gentlemen and who are
sometimes most difficult to govern.”4
Frederick’s wife, too, is absent. Indeed,
she never set foot at Sanssouci, Frederick’s
favourite residence. Frederick’s father, the
“Soldier King” Frederick William I, had
forced the crown prince to marry. At the
time, the bridegroom had predicted that
the Princess would be “dismissed as soon
as I am master”.5 He held his word. The
provision of an heir to the throne was of no
concern, since he considered himself impo¬
tent anyway; his doctor described his con¬
dition as “imaginary eunuchism”.6 The
king was usually resident at Potsdam, the
queen at Berlin. She took “afternoon
strolls in the zoological gardens. The
queen, who has so little pleasure in life,
finds extraordinary enjoyment in things
that leave us quite indifferent.”7 Thus her
lord-in-waiting, Lehndorff.
The woman sitting directly beneath the
chandelier is Frederick’s sister, Wilhelmina,
who was married to the Margrave of
Bayreuth. Three years older than her
brother, she had helped him survive his fa¬
ther’s barbaric discipline, the unbearably
repressive atmosphere at court, and the
strictness of his military training. Their re¬
lationship remained close even when they
were older, and it may be true to say that
she was the only woman for whom he felt
a deep and lasting affection. Menzel is quite
right to give her the place that would nor¬
mally be granted to the queen.
On the sofa to the left of Wilhelmina sits
her sister, Amelia. She ran up debts, had an
“affair”, never married and, in 1755, be¬
came Abbess of the Protestant Ladies’
Foundation at Quedlinburg. In giving her
401
Bach's
dispassionate
gaze
N
ot only women had a hard time at
court. Frederick was a misanthrop¬
ist. There were few people whom
he actually liked. One was his flute teacher,
Johann Joachim Quantz, seen standing at
the right in the painting. J.S. Bach’s son,
Carl Philipp Emanuel, here shown accom¬
panying Frederick on the harpsichord,
stood considerably lower in the king’s es¬
teem. Perhaps this was Bach’s own doing;
he was hardly suited to the role of a musical
vassal and may well have showed it. Men-
zel has given masterly expression to Bach’s
predicament. At first glance, he appears to
be giving the royal soloist his undivided at¬
tention; only at second glance does it
become apparent how dismissive, indeed,
how downright condescending his gaze ac¬
tually is.
Bach accompanied his king for 28 years.
402
However, he was poorly rewarded for his
troubles. Although Bach was one of Ger¬
many’s most well-known musicians,
Friedrich paid him far less than Quantz, or
even one of his Italian singers. At the same
time, he did not allow him to go elsewhere.
Although Carl Philipp Emanuel, a Saxon
by birth, was not bound by Frederick’s
consent, his wife and child were Prussian
subjects, and the king could easily prevent
them leaving the country. Bach’s chance to
take his leave finally came in 1767, when he
was granted permission to take over from
Georg Philipp Telemann as musical direc¬
tor of Hamburg’s five principal churches.
A few years after Bach’s departure from
Berlin, the English music critic Charles
Burney was granted the favour of an in¬
vitation to a royal recital. In his The Pres¬
ent State of Music in Germany, the Nether¬
lands and the United Provinces (1773),
published in German in 1772/73, Burney
wrote: “Apart from beating time with a
tiny motion of his hand at the beginning of
each movement, Herr Quantz had nothing
to do at this evening’s recital but occasion¬
ally call out ‘Bravo!’ at the end of solo parts
and cadenzas. This seems to be a privilege
which the other virtuosi in the orchestra do
not enjoy.”10 According to Burney, Quantz
had written some 300 pieces for his gifted
pupil. The Englishman found “various
passages in Herr Quantz’s concertos are al¬
ready old and quite ordinary... some were
composed forty years ago.”11
Frederick’s musical inclinations did not
develop beyond the taste he had acquired
during his years as crown prince. He loved
the nimble elegance of pre-Classical
melodies. He admired Johann Sebastian
Bach’s technical skill, but was unmoved by
his music. Although Frederick had a splen¬
did Opera House built in Berlin, he
allowed only older works to be performed
there, long after the public had become
desperate to hear something new. He is
generally reckoned to have been an “en¬
lightened” monarch; as far as religion was
concerned, he thought each person should
live “acording to his own fashion”. But
when it came to music, there was only one
taste that counted: his own.
German monarch,
German music

M enzel’s painting shows a scene

from the past. There was nothing
unusual in this at the time, for the
Romantics had discovered history. Most
artists painted imaginary scenes from the
Middle Ages, but the realist Menzel chose
a period which he could research and ren¬
der true in detail.
There were topical reasons for Menzel’s
interest in German history. The political
situation in Germany was depressing. Na¬
poleon had humiliated the Germans at the
beginning of the century. The demands of
the liberationists of 1813 for a unified,
liberal Germany had remained unfulfilled.
In 1850, when Menzel began to paint his
Flute Concert, the sense of defeat many felt
with regard to the failure of the revolution
of 1848 was still painfully acute. Menzel
had begun a revolutionary canvas in 1848,
entitled The Fallen March Revolutionaries
Lying in State, but had laid it aside. This
was symptomatic. Progress had come to a
standstill (unless one counted the explosive
developent of industry). A powerful long¬
ing grew up for a vigorous leader to take
Germany’s fate in his hands. Frederick was
seen as the model for this figure, although,
historically speaking, he was entirely un¬
suited for the part.
The King of Prussia, who had only ever
shown an interest in Prussian expansion,
now came to be seen as a pioneer of Ger¬
man national unity. “He did honour to the
German name,” wrote Franz Kugler in his
biography of Frederick, which appeared,
with illustrations by Menzel, from 1839 to
1842. “He awakened his people to a sense
of nationhood that had slumbered within
them for over a century, so that once again, Sanssouci was German; and since, in the ing energies that were denied political ex¬
as of old, German deeds and German 19th century, orchestral and chamber pression.
words might be known beyond our bor¬ music were considered especially German, In portraying the king as a musician,

ders...”12
Beyond his own borders, however,
Frederick was considered a belligerent ag¬
gressor during his own lifetime. Further¬
more, “German words” could hardly be
described as Frederick’s strong point; he
spoke and wrote French, showing nothing
but contempt for the German language and
its literature. But the music he cultivated at
a king with a flute was the image most
likely to link nationalist sentiments and
hopes with his person.
These hopes were undoubtedly intensi¬
fied by the fact that violins, flutes and pi¬
anos were played in so many German
middle-class families. Song recitals were
equally common. Music was part of family
life. Music provided a means of sublimat¬
Menzel had therefore made him an ac¬
cessible figure; by adding women to the
audience, he had painted a scene with
which his public would already be familiar.
He showed them a king who was one of
them: a bourgeois monarch (which he cer¬
tainly was not!). Thus the painting tells us
as much about Menzel’s own time as it does
about the era of the king he admired.

403
404
Gustave Courbet: The Studio, 1855

A studio opens its

doors to the world

The brightly-lit female nude standing be¬ When Courbet started painting
hind the painter is the first of the 30 life-
in 1840, France was still domin¬
sized figures in Gustave Courbet’s The Stu¬
ated by Neo-classicism. Right
dio to strike the eye. The model draws our
attention - quite unlike the second nude, a from the start, however, he
male figure, who is draped around a stand championed a new, realistic way
in the semi-darkness like a martyred saint.
of seeing. His Studio of 1855 is
For Courbet’s contemporaries - or at
not simply an attack on ossified
least those of them familiar with the artist’s
thinking - these two nudes were pointers academicism, however, but also
to an underlying programme. The figure in a statement of the artist’s polit¬
the semi-darkness is a jointed mannequin
ical standpoint.
of the type used by artists to study poses
and proportions, and which for Courbet
symbolized Academy tradition and its re¬
moteness from reality. He himself adhered
less to tradition than to real life, embodied
in the most literal sense in this painting in
the figure of the naked woman.
Courbet considered the world around
him more important than the world of art.
In his view, an Academy training only ser¬
ved to spoil an artist’s eye. What Courbet
thought was the right way to go about art
is demonstrated by the boy kneeling on
the floor to the right of the model and
sketching away like mad. It is no coinci¬
dence that he has excluded the jointed
mannequin from his field of vision.
For Courbet, the world around him also
included the'people who, at that time,
were not considered worthy of artistic tre¬
atment: labourers, begging veterans, the
far from Madonna-like woman nursing
her child. These are some of the characters
whom Courbet assembles on the left-hand
side of his huge canvas, measuring 359 x
598 cm, which today hangs in the Musee
d’Orsay in Paris. On the right he portrays
friends and companions - people directly
involved in his work. The atelier itself is
only suggested - Courbet has painted less
a real room than an imaginary one. It em¬
braces, as the artist noted, “seven years of
my artistic life”.

405
History in a gallery
of Courbet's
contemporaries
T
he picture was painted in 1855. Seven
years earlier, France had been pro¬
foundly shaken by revolution: in
1848 the Parisians stormed the Palais
Royal, forced King Louis Philippe to abdic¬
ate and proclaimed the Second Republic.
Street battles ensued, leaving 10,000 dead.
Courbet did not take up arms, but stood
firmly on the side of the revolutionaries
and designed a signet for one of their shor-
lived newspapers.
He had already been influenced as a
youth by the anti-monarchist and anti-cler¬
ical ideas of his grandfather. Courbet por¬
trays him in this painting in the top hat and
black coat of a gravedigger, and thereby re¬
calls his earlier painting of 1849/50, Burial
at Ornans. “In 1848, he was 83”, the artist
later wrote. "... one day, while dining, I
said to him: ‘Grandfather, we are living in a
republic [again]!’ ‘A republic!’, he replied.
406
‘I warn you, you won’t keep it going for
long, and besides, you’ll never achieve as
much as we did!”’ Courbet commented:
“For me, these words were hurtful; for
what is the point of life if children don’t
achieve more than their fathers?”
The elderly man on the left, with the
pale coat, wide-brimmed hat and bag
slung across his chest, is a veteran of the
French Revolution of 1789. Courbet, who
was born in 1819, would have seen such
old revolutionaries in his youth, and the
fact that he includes him in his personal
history gallery bears witness to the im¬
portance he attached to the revolutionary
tradition of his country.
The seated man with the dogs is a hunter.
(A new hypothesis has recently been put
forward in which it is suggested that this
hunter represents Emperor Napoleon III;
the present authors remained unconvinced,
however.) Courbet hunted a great deal
himself and later painted a whole series of
hunting scenes. Between his grandfather
and the hunter sits a draper, peddling his
wares. To hawk gold fabrics to people with
little money - Courbet must have viewed
such merchants as tempters and exploiters
of the poor. A similar character appears in
Gustave Flaubert’s novel Madame Bovary:
here, he lures the luxury-loving heroine
into debt and thereby contributes to her
downfall. The novel was published in
1857, two years after Courbet executed his
painting.
While a fairground juggler dressed in a
colourful costume examines the proffered
cloth with interest, the labourer with his
arms folded across his chest remains utter¬
ly unmoved. He wears a peaked cap, the
counterpart to the top hat worn by the
bourgeoisie, and represents the new class
of the proletariat. Its members were still
defenceless, working up to 14 hours a day
and only earning a pittance. Nor were they
permitted to take industrial action: local
strikes were quickly crushed.
A number of intellectuals recognized
the wretched condition of the working
classes, publicized it and called for redress.
One such was the writer Pierre Joseph
Proudhon (1809-1865). He can be seen
standing on the right-hand side of the pic¬
ture, amongst the group of men in the
background, recognizable by his bald
forehead and rimmed glasses. It was he
who formulated the militantly provocative
phrase: “Property is theft”.
An assault
on
good taste

P roudhon rejected The Studio because

it wasn’t political enough for him. It
was rejected, too, by middle-class
critics, because it didn’t correspond to
current notions of art. Pictures, it was at
that time believed, should create ideals and
transfigure the world; they should exalt
the sublime - princes and intellectual
princes - and pass over the ordinary; they
should contribute to the moral improve¬
ment of humankind through their por¬
trayal of religious subj ects and heroic deeds.
They might inspire the imagination with
exotic scenes and symbolic landscapes, but
only within politically safe bounds.
Courbet, the son of a wealthy land-
owner from the former duchy of Bur¬
gundy, brushed all these rules aside. In his
Burial at Ornans, completed in 1850, for
example, we are shown nothing of the
pathos of grief or of a metaphysical dimen¬
sion to death - there are only simple vil¬
lagers, a dog, bored acolytes and a sullen
priest.
This “realistic” painting caused just as
much of a scandal as The Stone Breakers
executed the year before: here, Courbet
shows two road labourers in dirty, tattered
clothing, examples of an oppressed ex¬
istence. The two stone breakers were imit¬
ated and satirized in the press of the day,
whereby in all these caricatures the size of
tence, in those days signalled a shocking words of the same critic, the “coarse, fat,
the wooden clogs worn by one of the two
contravention of the rules. Firstly, it was greasy beggar-woman” with the infant at
men was grossly exaggerated. The small
unacceptable that a lady (such as the one her breast - these were people one didn’t
boy in front of the easel is also wearing
on the right-hand side of the picture) or a want to see, either in real life or on the
clogs, and is not dressed in the bourgeois
manner either. Through him Courbet child should be exposed to the sight of a canvas.
naked person in public. And for a lady to The artist painted The Studio for the
makes reference to The Stone Breakers,
see children looking at a naked person was Paris World Exposition of 1855. London
just as he recalls the Burial at Ornans in
quite unforgivable — in the prudish society had set the trend with its Great Exhibition
the figure of the gravedigger.
of the Second Empire, such a thing was of 1851, and now the French capital was
His contemporaries, however, were
perceived as a provocation. Secondly, in determined to go one better. Each world
struck less by such references than by the
the growing towns and cities of the 19th exhibition strove to outdo the last. In con¬
situation in the studio itself. Their reac¬
century, the rich were strictly divided trast to London, the Paris exhibition in¬
tions to the painting were triggered not
from the poor. The nobility were dis¬ cluded domestic items for working-class
only artistic criteria, but also by their
tanced by their elevated birth, while the households, designed “to improve the
bourgeois sense of decorum. One critic
bourgeoisie, grown wealthy through trade situation of the less well-off”, as well as
was horrified to see: “A beggar-child in
and industry, demonstrated their separate¬ works of art. Courbet submitted 14 paint¬
front of the easel, about eight years old ...
ness by creating their own suburbs. Fig¬ ings; eleven were accepted. Amongst those
looking at the naked bather before describ¬
ures such as the “beggar-child” or, in the refused: The Studio.
ed”. What today appears a harmless sen¬
407

A salute
to the
poet of evil
O
ne of the people in Courbet’s
circle of friends between 1848
and 1855 was Charles Baudelaire
(1821-1867). The painter had known the
poet since the July Revolution; Baudelaire
had been one of the founders of Le Saint
Public, the radical newspaper for which
Courbet designed a logo. At the end of the
1840s, Courbet painted Baudelaire sitting
at a table, reading. He copied this portrait
for his Studio, this time seating Baudelaire
408
on top of the table - probably for no other
reason than lack of space.
The writer is lost in his book, paying not
the slightest attention to any of the other
visitors. Nor is he aware of the painter:
gone are the days when they fought side
by side for a better future. Baudelaire had
lost all faith in progress. He scoffed at
those “good French people” who thought
that “progress., was the power of steam,
electricity and gas lighting, miracles un¬
known to the Romans”, and who believed
that “these discoveries amply testified to
our superiority over the ancients”. He also
warned against the hope of progress in the
arts or social behaviour. Even if a look
back over the past seemed to suggest that
such progress had indeed been made,
"where, I ask you, is the guarantee of pro¬
gress for tomorrow?” Courbet’s question,
by contrast, had been: “What is the point
of life if children don’t achieve more than
their fathers?” The two no longer had very
much to say to each other.
Baudelaire’s words are cited from an
article which he wrote on the World Ex¬
position of 1855. The optimism about the
future which radiated from such an ex¬
hibition was odious to him. He preferred
to celebrate the forces of destruction and
self-destruction, and was fascinated by the
beauty of evil and nothingness. “Under a
pale light, life runs, dances and winds
without reason”, he wrote in his collection
of poems Les Fleurs du Mai (The Flowers
of Evil). A first selection of these poems
appeared in the same year as the World
Exposition, 1855.
Amongst the women with whom Bau¬
delaire fell suicidally in love was the ne-
gress Jeanne Duval: “Sorceress with the
ebony flank, child of black midnights,
more exquisite than opium ...” Courbet
included her in The Studio, looking at her¬
self in the mirror. By the time of the exhibi¬
tion, however, Baudelaire was in love with
another; Courbet was obliged to paint over
Duval, whose figure nevertheless still lin¬
gers like a grafitti drawing on the wall.
Women, as far as we know, played no
dominant role in Courbet’s own life. Nor
does he seem to have experienced Baude¬
laire’s periods of self-destructiveness. He
was nevertheless tormented by a desire for
recognition which, for all the accolades he
received, was never satisfied. Or so at least
it would seem, judging by his craving for
celebrity, which was probably very hard to
put up with. In The Studio, too, he places
himself centre stage, surrounds himself
with an audience designed to reflect his
glory, and wields the brush with an almost
imperious gesture. He even manages to
show himself in profile, an angle of which
he was particularly proud, even though -
considering the distance at which he is
seated from the easel - he should strictly
speaking only be visible from the rear.
The fact that he was not to be allowed to
show off this of all his paintings to the
world’s public was a disappointment he
could not endure. He applied for permission
to mount his own show, for which he erected
a small wooden pavilion directly beside the
entrance to the main exhibition. The sign on
the pavilion read: “Realism. G. Courbet”.

The painter
goes
into politics
A comparable act of independence
had never been seen in France”, the
painter wrote proudly of his one-
man show. To a certain extent, Courbet was
right: no individual artist in Paris had ever
before taken the liberty of showing in pub¬
lic works rejected by the official jury. But
the counter-exhibition met with little suc¬
cess. Most of the reviews were negative, and
few members of the public came to view
it. Why should they, indeed? - next door
they could see works from several Euro¬
pean countries, including a number of pic¬
tures by Courbet. Furthermore, he was
charging admission. That was not the com¬
mon practice.
After the exhibition, the enormous can¬
vas was rolled up and returned to Cour¬
bet’s Paris atelier, the room it depicted. It
was only sold after the artist’s death, and
it was not until 1920 that a small number
of art lovers realized that it in fact repre¬
sented one of the masterpieces of the
19th century. With the aid of a public
collection, the picture was acquired for the
Louvre.
After The Studio, Courbet refrained
from painting the types of people whose
poverty might offend the sensibilities of
the bourgeoisie. But he remained true to
his socialist and republican views. This
was demonstrated in the calamitous year
of 1871, following France’s defeat in the
Franco-Prussian War. In March the govern¬
ment fled Paris for Versailles. The people
rebelled and founded a socialist municipal
council, the Commune. Courbet offered
his services and was appointed deputy for
the fine arts, in which capacity he organ¬
ized the protection of the museums from
the street mobs. He wanted to re-dedicate
the column on Place Vendome, a symbol
of imperial rule, “to the dead rubbish of
history”, and re-erect it in front of Les In-
valides. Instead, it was destroyed.
After government troops had gunned
down the Commune and in the process
killed 25,000 people in a single week, Cour¬
bet was thrown into gaol. He was held re¬
sponsible for the destruction of the column
and was to be made to pay. Government
agents forced their way into both his stu¬
dios and requisitioned furniture and pic¬
tures. Courbet fled to Switzerland, where
he died in 1877, bitter and destitute.
The artist was not the only person ap¬
pearing in The Studio to suffer persecution.
Baudelaire had to appear in court to defend
his Fleurs du Mai against charges of ob¬
scenity. Proudhon was sentenced to im¬
prisonment for his socialist writings. Max
Buchon, a childhood friend of Courbet,
who is standing to the right of Proudhon,
was forced to emigrate after the 1848 re¬
volution.
The Studio is thus not simply one of the
most important works of art of the 19th
century, but also a political document:
both the nature of its composition and the
biographies of some of the individuals it
portrays testify to the battle which Cour¬
bet and numerous of his contemporaries
waged against the prevailing opinions and
ruling forces of their day.
409
 Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres: The Turkish Bath, 1863
A fragrance of women and
the Orient
This gathering of nude young women was
painted by an old man. AETATIS
LXXXII:"at the age of 82”, Jean-Auguste-
Dominique Ingres wrote on the painting.
And not without pride: for in the last years
of his life - he died in 1867 - Ingres re¬
ported that he still felt “the burning
passions of a thirty-year-old man”.1 He
spent six hours at his easel every day and
his work was received with success by fel¬
low artists and the emperor alike. In 1862,
410
250 French artists had a medal designed in
his honour, while Napoleon III appointed
him “Representative of the Arts” to the
Senate.
Ingres signed The Turkish Bath in 1862,
but continued to work on it for at least an¬
other year. The painting, 108 centimetres in
diametre and containing 20 figures, was the
sum of his life’s work. He did not need to
call a single sitter to his studio, for he was
able to fall back on the large collection of
sketches and pictures he had made over the
years. Thus the painting is a gathering of
old friends: “women bathing”, “women
sitting”, “odalisques lying” (white slave
women in a harem), and exotic sultanas.
He had returned to these figures again and
again, with his pen, with his brush -
usually as single figures lying on a couch,
or painted from behind at the edge of a
pool. They were a testimony to the pain¬
ter’s lifelong, sensuous response to the fe¬
male nude.
It is not known exactly when Ingres
started work on The Turkish Bath, but its
figures, decor and atmosphere had cer¬
tainly interested him half a century before
he actually executed the work.
In a notebook that accompanied him to
Italy for 18 years in 1806, there is a passage
in his handwriting which includes the fol¬
lowing description: “We came to a room
full of sofas... Steam entered through
pipes, bringing with it a pleasurable
warmth and most agreeable fragrance...
Here, a group of women were waiting for
the sultana to finish her bath, so that they
could dry her beautiful body with towels
and massage her with precious oils... Here,
the sultana could enjoy the most volup¬
tuous relaxation.”2 The text, whose source
has remained a mystery to this day, carries
the title: “The Baths at Mohammed’s Sera¬
glio”.
Male
fantasies
I
think there were two hundred women in
all,” it says in a “Description of the
Women’s Baths at Adrianople” from
which Ingres made notes some time after
1825. Perhaps he had already started work
on The Turkish Bath. He found the text in
Lady Mary Montagu’s Turkish Letters. She
had accompanied her husband, a diplomat,
to Turkey. At the baths, “a women’s coffee¬
house, where the town’s latest gossip is ex¬
changed and scandals are invented”, she
modestly refused to undress. It was only
with some trouble that she could be incited
even to loosen her corset. Yet the atmos¬
phere of the place was quite free: “Beauti¬
ful naked women in all positions... some
talking, some at work, others taking coffee
412
or sherbet, many casually reclined, while
their slaves (generally attractive girls of 17
or 18) braided their mistresses’ hair in the
most playful manner.”3
Lady Montagu’s letters were reprinted
eight times in France between 1763 and
1857. There was great curiosity about dis¬
tant lands, with Rococo-style chinoiserie
and turquerie already popular in 18th-cen¬
tury art. A military expedition in 1798 in¬
tensified public interest: Napoleon’s inva¬
sion of Egypt. Although it ended in a fi¬
asco, the adventure was fantasy-material
for generations of restless adolescents,
who* after Napoleon’s abdication in 1814,
took refuge from the dreary, everyday re¬
ality of France in dreams of a beautiful
Orient.
The “Egyptian fever” received new sus¬
tenance from the Greek uprising against
the Ottoman Empire in 1822. The Greek
insurgents met with considerable sym¬
pathy in Europe. Poets and artists became
involved in the struggle: Victor Hugo
wrote his Orientales; Lord Byron hurried
to Greece; and Eugene Delacroix, in 1824,
caused a furore with his painting on the
oriental war, The Massacre at Chios.
Ingres, with his paintings of odalisques
- white, female, harem slaves - was thus
fully in tune with the times. But while De¬
lacroix at least travelled to Islamic North
Africa for his “Oriental” studies, Ingres
never got further than Italy. Nor did he
support the Greeek liberation struggle di¬
rectly. In fact, his notebooks, in which he
describes various painting projects, show
that he rarely took inspiration from
politics at all, but rather from books. He
used exotic elements sparingly in his work:
at the most, his odalisques wear head¬
dresses or scarves with oriental designs.
Heavy gold jewellery, carpets or musical
instruments merely suggest a setting.
For Ingres, it was only the reclining fe¬
male body that was important. In the fe¬
male nude, Ingres sought a degree of sen¬
suousness that he and his contemporaries
thought exinct outside the world of the
musulmanes. Delacroix’s visit to an Alge¬
rian harem had sent him into raptures:
“Moments of fascination, and the strangest
bliss... They were my idea of what a
woman should be: not flung outward into
life, but withdrawn to its very heart, to a
place where life could not be more secret,
more sensuous, more movingly consum¬
mate.”4
 Greeks and Romans were highly fashion¬
A celebration
able during the French Revolution. Their
of Classical champion was the painter Jacques-Louis
beauty David (1748-1825). The young Ingres had
been a pupil in David’s studio before
spending 18 years in Italy, where he stu¬
and the same Classical purity of line in the
contour of her shoulder. Here she holds a
costly vessel containing incense or per¬
fume: an example of the close correlation
between the world of Homer and 19th-
century Turkey.

It was customary neither in Lady Mon¬

tagu’s nor Ingres’ time to indulge in the
died the art of Classical antiquity and the
works of Renaissance painters. The latter,
in the 15th century, had rediscovered the
As far as Ingres was concerned, line
was the “queen”, colour her servant.
Clarity of form and visual harmony were
pleasures of communal bathing. Pari¬ ancient canon of ideal beauty: “Art should his precepts. If The Turkish Bath, in spite
sians usually bathed once a year in the pri¬ be nothing if not beautiful, nor should its of its many figures, succeeds in avoiding
vacy of their own bedrooms, possibly in doctrine be anything but beauty,”5 ex¬ irregularity and unrest, it is because the
one of the 1059 bathtubs which 78 differ¬ claimed the Frenchman, declaring the Ita¬ artist has employed the traditional
ent firms delivered, along with hot water, lian artist Raphael to be his “God”. “golden section”, a formula known since
to private homes. Some visited the Chinese An 1827 study for Ingres’s work The antiquity. The painting is geometrically
or Turkish baths. These were to be found Apotheosis of Homer shows the goddess constructed and was originally square.
in the Rue du Temple. There was a magni¬ Victory crowning the Greek poet with a Shortly before its completion, in 1863,
ficent half-moon over the entrance and the laurel wreath. In The Turkish Bath, painted Ingres gave it its round form, turning it
decor and equipment were “after the Asi¬ in old age, we recognise the same profile into a “tondo”.
atic form and fashion”. For 30 sous, cus¬
tomers could have a bath “a la Mahomet”
in water freshened with “perfumes of
Araby”, and with music in the back¬
ground.
However, while Lady Montagu noted
that it was forbidden on pain of death for a
man to appear in the women’s baths at
Adrianople, the Parisian institution seems
to have been a regular trysting-place for
clandestine lovers: men would dress in
women’s clothes and creep into the little
cubicles where their sweethearts were tak¬
ing a bath. Even here, bathing was a private
affair.
It was only through their knowledge of
Classical antiquity that Ingres and his con¬
temporaries were familiar with the notion
of the communal bath at all. There had
been thermal baths - with steam baths,
sweat-rooms, cold-water basins and rooms
for resting - everywhere ancient Greek and
Roman culture had spread. All that re¬
mained of these baths in Europe were the
ruins. In Islamic countries, the baths had
been preserved; they were now redis¬
covered by educated Europeans as a sign
that the Classical spirit had survived. In¬
deed, it was altogether fashionable at the
time to draw comparisons between Classi¬
cal antiquity and the Orient: a new transla¬
tion of the Iliad accompanied Lady Mon¬
tagu on her travels through the Ottoman
Empire, and Delacroix found Algeria as
beautiful as in Homer’s time”.
Archaeological finds at Pompeii and
Herculaneum during the 18th century had
brought a new urgency to the study of
Classical antiquity, and the “republican”
413
 Ingres respected not only the great artists
of the past; his own art was sacred, too.
On discovering what he thought to be
an excessive desire for dancing in the
woman whom he had intended to become
his second wife, he did not hestitate to dis¬
solve the engagement. He had foreseen a
His motifs
were often
copied
414
threat to his art, which he placed above all
else, including his private life. In order not
to make the same mistake again, Ingres
thereafter left the choice of his future wife
in the hands of good friends, who sent a
young relative, Madeleine, to Italy. The en¬
suing marriage lasted 36 years; his bio¬
graphers have failed to attribute a single
extramarital escapade to the artist. Made¬
leine was handsome, faithful, an excellent
housekeeper and, above all, made sure he
had peace to work. When they went walk¬
ing together in Rome, Madeleine would
protect her husband’s eyes from the repul¬
sive sight of a begger by covering them
with a corner of her shawl.
Ingres left Italy in 1824 and returned to
Paris, where his work immediately re¬
ceived great critical acclaim. The timeless,
Classical beauty of his paintings was con¬
sidered a welcome contrast to. the work
which certain other, younger artists had
dared exhibit. In 1819 Theodore Gericault
had created a furore with his Raft of the
Medusa, a passionate indictment of an in¬
competent government whose negligence
was responsible for a shipwreck. Five years
later, Delacroix’s painting The Massacre at
Chios showed Turkish atrocities during the
struggle for Greek independence, exposing
the indifference of the European powers.
These were disturbing pictures by angry,
politically engaged artists who were not
afraid to show disorder, suffering and ugli¬
ness in their work.
None of these “Romantic” innovations
were found in Ingres’s work, however.
Beside Delacroix’s Massacre in the Salon of
1824 hung Ingres’s Vow of Louis XIII, cel¬
ebrating religion and the legitimacy of the
monarchy. The painting was perfectly
suited to the political landscape of the Res¬
toration after Napoleon’s downfall. The
Parisian establishment welcomed Ingres
with open arms, granting him official com¬
missions and electing him to the “Aca¬
demic des Beaux-Arts”, which not only
brought him honour, but asssured him a
substantial pension until the end of his
days. Ingres, who had painted a portrait of
Napoleon before leaving for Rome, had no
trouble adapting to the Bourbons, nor,
later, to the Orleanists or Napoleon III. He
had no interest in politics.
His commitment to art and painting, on
the other hand, was intense. Many pupils
described him as a strict teacher. He sub¬
jected them to a disciplined regime of
copying old masters, for “art, if it will sur¬
vive, must turn to the past”.5 He used ma¬
terial by other artists in his own work, stu¬
dying pictorial documents in libraries and
tracing them to make copies.
The Romantic artist Narcisse Diaz de la
Pena accused Ingres of a lack of imagin¬
ation: “Lock him up in a tower where he
has no recourse to engravings and the man
will end up at the end of the day with a
white canvas. He is incapable of producing
anything from his own head.” But adopt¬
ing motifs from other artists did nothing to
diminish Ingres’s sense of ownership: “My
painting belongs to me; it’s got my signa¬
ture scrawled on it.”5

The painter
who loved
women
Ingres was held in particularly high es¬
teem as a portraitist by the rich and
mighty of the Restoration and Second
Empire. No other artist attained quite such
a precise, empathic sense of the dignity of
these imposing figures on canvas. The
critic Elie Faure once made the derisive re¬
mark that Ingres had mastered the art of
“weighing the bellies of the bourgeois
gentlemen and the bosoms of their wives”.5
Yet Ingres wished to devote himself
only to “great and noble art”, considering
portraiture an unworthy genre for a man of
his talents. It may well have been his predi¬
lection for the company of beautiful so¬
ciety ladies which finally swayed him to
condescend. “One of the things that distin¬
guish Monsieur Ingres,” wrote the poet
and art critic Charles Baudelaire, “is his
love of women”; or: “Beautiful women of
generous build, fully reposed and bursting
with health are... his joy.”6
However, the French doctor Laignel-
Lavastine cast doubt on the health of Ing¬
res’ favourite models. On the contrary, he
diagnosed insuficient function of the thy¬
roid gland. The symptoms: “Thick necks,
thyroid with two enlarged, protuberant
lobes, the passive gentleness... of a face
with full cheeks and thick lips... large, soft,
melting eyes that have lost their sparkle...
very round, fat arms, shoulders sunk into
folds of flesh.”7
In The Turkish Bath, the figure who best
fits this description is the odalisque with
raised arms, stretched out in the fore¬
ground of the painting. Ingres painted her
after a sketch he had made of his wife,
Madeleine, many years earlier, in 1818.
Perhaps she, too, was one of those “sub¬
missive creatures” who, according to the
doctor, “avoid thinking as much
possible and prefer lying about on sofas”.7
Since most of the other women in the
baths appear to confirm the doctor’s im¬
pression, one detractor referred to the
painting as a “heap of brainless cattle”; an¬
other compared it with a “bed of cultivated
mushrooms”; while Paul Claudel
scribed it as a “can of maggots”. The artist’s
admirers, meanwhile, probably for the
same reasons, described it as the “Ninth
symphony of the Eternal Feminine”.8
Above all, however, the Turkish Bath,
with its risque accumulation of nude
bodies, was a shock - at least at the time. Its
first purchaser, a relation of Napoleon III,
was forced to return the work several days
later, since his wife had found the painting
too “unseemly” to hang in her salon. In
1865, the painting found a second owner;
appropriately enough, he was a former
Turkish ambassador, Khalil Bey. It then
disappeared into the latter’s private collec¬
tion in Paris, and was seen in the ensuing
years only by a small circle of friends. Per¬
haps it was for this reason that the painting
did not cause a scandal like Edouard
Manet’s Dejeuner sur Therbe, which was
rejected by the committee of the official
as Salon of 1863 and publically exhibited at
the Salon des Refuses instead. In any case,
the Oriental scene continued to meet with
disapproval. When art patrons in the early
years of the 20th century bequeathed The
Turkish Bath to the Louvre, the museum
rejected the offer twice. It was only when
de¬ the Staatsgemaldesammlungen at Munich
took an interest in it that the Louvre finally,
in 1911, decided to accept the unpopular
work.
415
416
Edouard Manet: The Execution of Maximilian, 1868
The wrong uniform
exposes the true culprit
Edouard Manet intended this painting to
denounce a political crime and stir up
French public opinion. The imperial cen¬
sor intervened, however, hindering his de¬
sign. The authorities discreetly informed
him that it would not be worth his while to
submit his “otherwise excellent” painting
to the official Parisian art exhibition, the
Salon of 1869.
Manet’s work showed the climax of a
drama which had occupied the European
press for years. Any regular newspaper
reader would immediately have recog¬
nized the scene: during the early morning
of 19th June 1867, near the Mexican town
of Queretaro, a Republican firing squad
had executed the Austrian Archduke
Maximilian and two of his generals. For
three years Maximilian had ruled as Em¬
peror of Mexico. Officially invited to the
land by a conservative minority, he had
been persuaded to participate in the ill-
fated adventure by the French Emperor
Napoleon III, who had also supplied an
army. When Napoleon withdrew his
troops from Mexico, Maximilian was
taken prisoner by his enemies. Forced to
abdicate, he was sentenced to death and
executed.
“You can understand the horror and the
anger of the censors”, wrote Manet’s
friend, the writer Emile Zola, in 1869. “An
artist has dared put before their eyes so
cruel an irony: France shoots Maximilian!”
Manet had delivered a topical painting on a
political scandal - as effective a medium at
that time as the photos in some of today’s
news magazines. France had a tradition in
such paintings: Theodore Gericault, in
1819, had attacked the criminal incom¬
petence of the naval authorities in his Raft
of the Medusa (ill. p.144/145), and in his
Massacre at Chios (1824), Eugene Dela¬
croix had pilloried Europe’s indifference to
the Greek liberation struggle. Both works
were exhibited, caused a sensation, and
achieved a political effect.
Manet must have hoped his Execution
would be similarly received, and began
work shortly after first reports of the ex¬
ecution reached Paris in early July of
1867. One and a half years later he had
produced a small study in oils, a litho¬
graph (prints of which the censor forbade
him to sell), and three large-scale paint¬
ings. None of these works was exhibited
in France during the artist’s lifetime. The
Second Empire’s demise in 1870 brought
no improvement, for few people in Re¬
publican France desired to see paintings
that reminded them of the humiliating
Mexican episode.
The canvases were consequently kept
rolled up in a dark corner of Manet’s stu¬
dio; the largest, after the artist’s death in
1883, was cut into several pieces, fragments
later finding their way to London; the oil
sketch, meanwhile, went to Copenhagen,
and the first version of the large-scale work
to Boston. The final version, completed in
late 1868, and measuring 252 x 305 cm,
carries the date of the execution. It was
bought by citizens of the German town of
Mannheim in 1909, who donated it to the
Kunsthalle. The political atmosphere in
the German* Reich at the time was such
that any reference to the fickleness and
perfidity of France could be sure of a warm
welcome.
417
 W hile the squad fires upon its vic¬
tims, a sergeant wearing a red
hat, who, at first glance, seems
peculiarly uninvolved, cocks his rifle. The
inglorious task awaiting him is to deliver
the coup de grace to Emperor Maximilian.
The sergeant, with his beard and sharply
defined nose, bears a striking resemblance
to Napoleon III. The similarity was in¬
tended. Manet, of upper middle-class back¬
ground, was no friend of the Second Em¬
pire. By the time he came to paint the final
version of the Execution, he had realized,
like the majority of his contemporaries, that
"Napoleon
le Petit"
418
it was Napoleon who was responsible for
Maximilian’s ignominious demise.
Louis Napoleon Bonaparte (1808-1873)
was contemptuously referred to by his
enemies as “Napoleon le Petit”. He spent
most of his life trying to emulate his fa¬
mous uncle, Napoleon I. In 1848 he was
successfully elected President of the Re¬
public; three years later he became em¬
peror by virtue of a coup d’etat. His next
plan was to establish French hegemony in
Europe. However, he was less fortunate in
foreign affairs than in establishing his posi¬
tion at home. In the early 1860s, he endeav¬
oured in vain to influence Italy. Searching
for a new outlet for his intervention
politics, he concluded, somewhat astound-
ingly, that the distant land of Mexico of¬
fered the key to establishing France as a
great power.
It was a power vacuum which enticed
Napoleon to Mexico, a country rich in
mineral resources, but badly run down and
heavily in debt. Since gaining its independ¬
ence, it had been torn by chaos and an¬
archy, with a civil war raging between the
conservatives - the aristocracy, big land-
owners and church - and the liberal, Re¬
publican forces.
When the reformer Benito Juarez was
elected President in 1861, his opponent
and the loser of the election, General Mi¬
guel Miramon, emigrated to France where
he was succesful in enlisting the support
of influential French financiers and of the
court itself. Napoleon conceived of a plan
to win Mexico while its powerful neigh¬
bour, America, was involved in the Civil
War. Napoleon wanted to establish a
“bulwark” on the American continent
against Anglo-Amercian expansion - a
Catholic, “Latin-American” empire,
which would enjoy French protection,
and from which France would profit
economically.
From 1861 onwards, and under various
pretexts, France sent 40,000 troops across
the Atlantic. They were followed three
years later, once the country had been tem¬
porarily “pacified”, by the Austrian Arch¬
duke Maximilian, whose fate, as Emperor
of Mexico, was utterly dependent on Na¬
poleon. When he arrived, the land was still
largely under the control of Republican
forces. His sole support as a ruler, besides
French bayonets, was Napoleon’s solemn
vow, laid down in writing, that France
would never deny its support to the new
empire “whatsoever the state of affairs in
Europe”.
However, the American Unionists,
emerging victorious from the Civil War in
1865, recognized Juarez as the legitimate
Mexican president, sending arms and re¬
fusing to tolerate a French presence on the
North American continent. Napoleon fi¬
nally acquiesced to U.S. diplomatic pres¬
sure, for his position in Europe was under
serious threat. He needed every man he
could muster to defend the Rhine against a
superior Prussian army. The last French
soldier left Mexico in early 1867. Napoleon
III, in tears, had broken his word. This cost
him whatever popular credit he had once
enjoyed and contributed to the rapid de¬
cline of the Second Empire. Mexico proved
both the Moscow and the Waterloo of
“Napoleon le Petit”.
N ot unlike spectators at a bullfight, a
crowd of Mexicans has gathered in
the background to watch the ex¬
ecution of the Emperor. They were prob¬
ably part of the great mass of mestizos,
mulattos, Indians and blacks who lived
without rights or property. Benito Juarez,
The role
of the
Mexicans
a full-blooded Indian and former President
of the High Court, had guaranteed them
civic rights for the first time in his Con¬
stitution of 1857, expropriating the
Church to provide the people with land.
Juarez was their man, and they gave him
their support in the guerilla war against the
French.
Mexican national pride was, from the
outset, unlikely to grant much of a wel¬
come to a foreign monarch arriving from a
distant continent. When Maximilian and
his wife landed at Veracruz on 28th May
1864, a deathly hush fell on the harbour;
the inhabitants had all stayed at home.
With the withdrawal of the French troops,
Maximilian’s fate was sealed. Abandoned
by his Mexican officers, he was taken
prisoner by the Republicans and placed be¬
fore a military tribunal. Sentenced to death,
he was refused a pardon by Juarez, a step
which led to an international outcry. The
President was accused of flagrantly viola¬
ting international law.
When news of the execution arrived in
Paris, the ensuing protest was therefore in¬
itially directed against the Mexicans. Com¬
mencing the painting in 1867, Manet may
originally have wished to denounce the
Mexicans: the first version of the Execu¬
tion, now at Boston, shows the squad and
sergeant in Mexican uniforms and som¬
breros.
In the course of July, however, it grad¬
ually dawned on the Parisian public that
the true culprit was not Juarez at all, but
Napoleon. Manet painted over details of
the exotic costumes, refining the wide
breeches and sombreros to suggest French
uniforms. This gave the first version a pe¬
culiarly unfinished, ambiguous character,
making it unsuitable for presentation.
Manet went to work again, giving the ser¬
geant, in each of the later versions, the fea¬
tures of Napoleon. From now on there
could be no doubt of the artist’s intention;
the artist was criticizing his own govern¬
ment: Maximilian shot by Frenchmen,
with the Mexican people as mere specta¬
tors.
419
 T he Emperor is shown at the place of
execution, standing between two
loyal generals: dark-skinned Gen¬
eral Tomas Mejia, and the former president
and infantry commander Miguel Mira-
mon. Manet apparently took the Em¬
perors pale face and blurred features from
a contemporary photograph. The French
press had reported that Maximilian, on his
last journey, had worn a dark suit, as well
as the broad-brimmed sombrero of his
adopted country. A handsome, erect figure
with a thick blond beard, Maximilian had
presented himself until the end - according
to a conservative Parisian newspaper -
with the dignity befitting a true Habsburg.
To Napoleon, Maximilian must have
seemed the perfect candidate for such an
unpromising campaign in distant Mexico.
The prospect of “wresting a continent from
the grip of anarchy and poverty” was not
without appeal to the thirty-year-old Arch¬
duke Ferdinand Maximilian of Austria, un¬
happy as he was in his role as younger
brother of Emperor Franz Joseph. Con-
Dignity
befitting
a Habsburg
420
demned to political inactivity in Europe,
forced to occupy himself building palaces
and collecting butterflies, he leapt at Na¬
poleon’s offer of the Mexican throne as if
responding to the call of divine Providence.
Beguiled by Romantic dreams, Maxi¬
milian ignored all well-meaning warnings.
Putting his trust in Napoleon’s promises,
he embarked on the Mexican adventure -
though militarily and financially, the con¬
ditions for such an enterprise were as dire
as they could be.
The Mexican state was heavily in debt;
maintenance costs for the French taskforce
alone swallowed up more than its entire an¬
nual income. Funds were too low to pay for
the upkeep of an indigenous army; the few
Mexican soldiers under French command,
realizing they were unlikely to be paid for
their services, deserted to the Republicans.
With his own zeal fully absorbed by the
task of bringing “guidance and refinement
to the people”, Maximilian left everyday
political business to his French advisers,
who, deliberately withholding intelligence
of the deteriorating military situation, per¬
suaded him to lend his signature to un¬
popular measures, such as a summary
death penalty for the slightest resistance to
the imperial government.
When Napoleon withdrew his troops in
1867, Maximilian, with his handful of Aus¬
trian and Mexican loyalists, found himself
facing an army of 60,000 Republicans who
had most of the country under their con¬
trol. A sense of honour prevented the Em¬
peror from leaving Mexico with the French
troops. A Flabsburg, he was reported to
have said, “did not flee”; nor would he “de¬
sert the post which Providence had con¬
ferred upon him; no danger, no sacrifice
could force him to recoil until such time as
his task was fulfilled or destiny was
stronger than he.”
The Emperor, lured into a strategic cul-
de-sac at the town of Queretaro, betrayed
by a Mexican officer, gave up after 72 days
of siege. He could have escaped even then,
for the Republicans saw no advantage in
turning him into a martyr. But Maximilian
refused to budge, finally leaving his oppo¬
nents with little choice about what to do.
When his adjutant found a crown of
thorns on a broken statue of Christ in the
monastery courtyard where the Republi¬
cans were holding him prisoner, Maximi¬
lian said: “Give it to me; it will suit me well. ”
Like Christ, he felt himself “betrayed,
deceived and robbed ... and finally sold for
eleven reales ...” In Edouard Manet’s
rendering of the execution, the bright,
broad rim of the sombrero surrounding
the doomed victim’s face has the appear¬
ance of a halo.
Goya
provided
the prototype
T here is one thing I have always
wanted to do”, Manet once confided
to a friend, “I should like to paint
Christ on the cross ... What a symbol! ...
The archetypal image of suffering.” In the
Execution scene Manet comes close to
achieving this ambition. Emperor Maxi¬
milian may not be wearing a crown of
thorns, but his left hand, and the hand
holding it belonging to Miramon, already
show signs of bleeding, though the squad
is painted in the very act of firing. The de¬
tail is contrived, an allusion to the nail and
lance wounds of Christ, the stigmata
shown in traditional Crucifixions.
Manet had seen stigmata on the hands
of an innocent victim during a journey to
Spain: in a secular, and apparently realistic
painting. The work was Goya’s early
19th-century execution scene, his famous
Third of May, 1808, in which invading
French troops under Napoleon I murder
Spanish patriots. As well as the symbolic
wounds, Manet adopted the structural ar¬
rangement of Goya’s composition, in¬
cluding the position of the firing squad,
which, seen from behind, gives the im¬
pression of a faceless, anonymous death-
machine. The contextual links between
the two paintings are not without irony:
revolutionary patriots, the victims in
Goya’s painting, are the perpetrators of a
crime in Manet’s work; both works show
French invading armies at work, and, in
each case, a different Napoleon is respon¬
sible.
However, the French painting retains
none of Goya’s theatrical emotionalism.
Manet transposes the scene from flicker¬
ing lamplight to the cold grey of dawn,
avoiding grandiose gesture, brushing aside
the moving circumstantial detail that had
been reported in the press: the waiting
coffins, the priests, the tears of loyalists
who had accompanied the Emperor on his
last journey, the blindfolded generals. As a
result, he was accused of witholding sym¬
pathy; in fact, however, there were artistic
reasons for his abstinence. His frieze-like
arrangement of figures — the victims and
firing squad are unrealistically close
together - against the neutral grey of the
wall, together with his muted use of
colour, acknowledge his debt to the
painter Jacques-Louis David (1748-1825)
and the tradition of the French history
painting.
Academic convention demanded the
subject of a history painting be drawn
from the Bible, antique mythology or an
actual historical event; it had also to be
morally or politically edifying and contain
a universally significant moral lesson. In
Manet’s day, this “high” branch of art still
commanded the greatest respect, cel¬
ebrated as it was at the official Salon year
after year.
All his life, Manet had craved recogni-
ton, preferably in the shape of an official
prize, at the Salon: in vain. With The Ex¬
ecution of Maximilian the renewed pros¬
pect of success appears to have inspired
him with hope yet again. However, by the
time he came to paint over the Mexican
uniforms, replacing them with French,
Manet must have realized that the work
could only meet with the opprobrium of
the political and artistic establishment. He
continued work nonetheless, driven by an
ambition even greater than his desire for
recognition: the Execution was to be his
Crucifixion, and the great, modern history
painting of his age. The “moral lesson” was
equally important: to denounce treachery
and breach of promise, and lodge an indict¬
ment: “France shoots Maximilian!”
421
422
Edgar Degas: The Rehearsal on the Stage, 1873

A look behind the scenes

At his death in 1917, the eighty-three-year-

old Edgar Degas left behind some 1200
paintings and sculptures, more than 300 of
them depicting ballerinas: at the bar, at
their toilet, resting, or rehearsing - witness
the present work - on a half-lit stage. It was
through Degas that ballet attained its re¬
nown as a subject of painting, though by
Degas’ time, the stage art itself was in dire
need of innovation.
The history of ballet had begun some
300 years earlier in the form of a ceremon¬
ial courtly dance whose function was to
demonstrate the glory of the sovereign. In 1873, when Edgar Degas
Only when ballet became professional
painted this picture, “tout Paris”
were the dancers joined by women. During
revelled in the romance of the bal¬
the Romantic era, the female dancers be¬
came the centre of attraction, appearing to let. But the elegance and grace of
float across the stage, scorning gravity. The the ballerinas, who appeared to
new technique of the toe dance made bal¬ float across the stage, was not its
lerinas more suited to typical Romantic
only source of appeal. It was the
parts, such as elves, spirits or fairies. Their
male partners receded into the back¬
done thing for a Parisian gentle¬
ground, their main task from now on to man of leisure to maintain a “lia-
support or lift the ballerinas, emphasizing son” at the theatre, while dancing
the latters’ lightness and grace. offered many girls their only op¬
The Romantic ballet was born in the 30s
portunity to escape from poverty.
and 40s of the 19th century and, in Paris,
was the dominant style even when Degas The painting The Rehearsal on the
came to paint the present picture in 1873. Stage, measuring 65 x 81 cm, is
In literature and theatre, Romanticism had now in the Musee d’Orsay, Paris.
been largely-repudiated by more realistic
modes, while in Italy, a choreographer had
attempted to convert current events, like
the construction of a tunnel through the
Alps, into dance. No such development
took place in Paris, however, where the
theatre-going public stuck largely to what
it knew.
Degas’s exclusive preference for female
dancers, too, conformed to contemporary
taste. Eventually, helped by Tchaikovsky’s
music, ballet was given a new lease of life
at St. Petersburg; but it was not until the
20th century that male dancers regained
some of the recognition they had once en¬
joyed.

423
 "Long,
lascivious
legs"

T he lightness of the Romantic tech¬

nique allowed the ballerinas to lay
aside all heavy clothing and shoes.
Elves floated better without such un¬
necessary ballast: ballet shoes were now
made without their formerly wide soles
and heels, and the ballet costume itself was
reduced to a sleeveless bodice and flared
skirt of white muslin. The skirt billowed
when the ballerina alighted, prolonging the
illusion of her floating gently to earth.
Originally calf-length, the skirt had short¬
ened to the knee by Degas’s day.
Ballerinas had now begun to reveal
more of their bodies, especially their legs,
covered only by thin tights. Though this
favoured artistic expression, it was also
seen as an affront to conventional mor¬
ality; for it was considered indecent in the
nineteenth century for ladies to show their
legs. Heinrich Heine cites two English
ladies who “were barely able to express
their disgust at what met their eyes when
the curtain rose and those wonderful,
short-skirted ballerinas began a graceful,
elaborate movement, stepping out with
long, lovely, lascivious legs and, with a
sudden bacchanalian leap, falling into the
arms of the male dancers who came
springing towards them ... Their busoms
grew pink with indignation. ‘Shocking!
For shame, for shame!’, they constantly
groaned.”
Understandably, few male spectators
showed signs of outrage. Unlike women
and girls, men were given more or less free
rein to seek gratification for their erotic
urges. For them, ballet took on a new
meaning, and the pronounced tendency
among 19th-century choreographers to
bring ballerinas up to the footlights more
frequently than their male colleagues
surely cannot be ascribed solely to the art¬
istic gain derived from the introduction of
the toe dance.
The ladies in the boxes may occasionally
have been consoled by the knowledge that
their stage rivals were deemed unmarriage-
able. From low-class backgrounds, with
perhaps a laundress or seamstress as a
mother, they were as likely as not to have
grown up in a one-room flat at the back of
424
some dingy close. The theatre offered one
of the few opportunities to escape a life of
poverty and misery. With luck, they would
be accepted, at the age of eight or nine, into
the Opera dance school, the Academie
Royale. They made their first stage appear¬
ance at the age of 14 or 15, and retired 20
years later. Though a girl of mediocre tal¬
ent might never be more than an ordinary
dancer in the corps de ballet, earning no
more on stage than she would as a seam¬
stress, she nonetheless had a better chance
as a ballerina of attracting the attentions of
a wealthy gentleman. She was in dire need
of his self-centred favours if she were to
escape from hunger and her dingy close.
Apart from anything else, male patronage
could be advantageous in determining the
outcome of professional rivalry between
dancers.
Rear view
of a
career
T
he biography of almost every 19th-
century Parisian ballerina contains
the name of a rich, and more or less
powerful, patron. One example serves to
illustrate many: that of Emma Livry and
her mother. Emma’s mother, an unsuccess¬
ful ballerina at the Paris Opera, had
become the mistress of a baron; Emma was
their child. The baron eventually left Em¬
ma’s mother to marry a princess, and was
replaced by a viscount. The viscount was
said to have had a whole string of relation¬
ships with ballerinas. He “knew all the
scandals and intrigues, was informed of all
the storms in teacups that constantly
shook this small, inward-looking world.
He liked to intervene, too, taking sides,
hoping to influence matters to further his
own interests and, more importantly, those
of his mistress.”
He also exerted his influence to help
Emma, the daughter of his mistress. He en¬
sured that her debut in the corps de ballet
did not go unnoticed, put in a good word
for her with the director of the Opera, used
his good offices in the imperial household,
negotiated her contract himself, and even
protected her against a series of intrigues
designed to delay the premiere. In the end
Emma Livry’s performance in “La Syl-
phide” in 1-858 was a sensational success;
she was 16 years old at the time. She died at
the age of 21, her short skirt set alight by a
gaslamp behind the scenes.
425
 Patronage of ballerinas was a pleasure-
able diversion for gentlemen of leisure
from traditionally affluent backgrounds.
Since the latter were disinclined to be
punctual, the ballet were not introduced
before the second act. The Paris premiere
of Richard Wagner’s “Tannhauser”, with
ballet included in the first act, was booed
out in 1861. Though not the only reason
for the flop, premature entry of the dancers
was certainly a major contributive factor.

The power
of subscribers

T he ballerinas in Degas’s painting are

nameless, like the gentleman sitting
on the chair. He may be the director
or choreographer, or perhaps the especially
privileged friend of one of the girls. The
theatre itself is easily identified: the Grand
Opera in the Rue Le Peletier. It was here
that Emma Livry’s star rose so briefly, and
here, too, that Richard Wagner’s Tarin-
hauser flopped.
The theatre in the Rue Le Peletier had
1095 seats; it became the Grand Opera as a
result of an assassination in 1821. The son of
the French heir to the throne was attacked
near the building in the Rue de Richelieu
which had housed the opera hitherto. The
injured man was carried into the theatre.
Meanwhile, his friends sent for the Arch¬
bishop of Paris to administer the last sacra¬
ment to the dying man. However, the bishop
agreed to enter the building only on condi¬
tion that it was torn down afterwards. This
was done - an impressive demonstration of
the Church’s power in its struggle against
the theatre as an immoral institution.
The narrow boxes vaguely indicated be¬
hind the sitting gentleman were a charac¬
teristic feature of the new Grand Opera in
the Rue Le Peletier. These boxes, built
above rather than in front of the stage, were
referred to as baignoires or boites tiroirs, in
other words as “baths” or “drawers”. They
were reserved for the director, or for in¬
fluential subscribers who were more inter¬
ested in physical proximity than the aes¬
thetic experience.
The power of subscribers had contin¬
ually grown in the 19th century. The future
of a theatre now depended less on the good
will of a local ruler than on its ability to sell

426
seats. Subscribers could rent a box, or a seat
in the stalls (for men only), which, during
the season, they occupied at least once a
week. Their interest was in constant need of
renewed stimulus, and in their attempt to
provide it, theatres would occasionally seek
recourse to methods that were less than art¬
istic: in 1831 the Director of the Grand
Opera allowed access to the Foyer de la
Danse, the dancers’ rehearsal room, to some
of his more refined clientele. Degas would
often sit there himself, sketching the scene.
It was a large room with a golden frieze
below the ceiling and imitation marble col¬
umns along the wall, a high mirror and the
usual training bars, hardly comparable with
those neon-lit, highly functional rooms
with mirrors covering all four walls in
which today’s dancers practise their steps.
The Foyer de la Danse was open, during
intervals and after the performance, only to
the girls’ mothers and certain male sub¬
scribers. The purpose of this was obvious.
The modern equivalent might be the wel¬
come-lounge of a massage parlour.
In October 1873 the theatre in the Rue
Le Peletier was destroyed by fire. A new,
magnificent building, the Palais Gamier, Like looking gestures. Their faces are usually pale,
where ballets are still performed today, was anonymous. With regard to their gestures,
through a
opened in January 1875. A competition for what interested him most was what they
keyhole

the design of the new opera house was held
in 1860. Both the text of the announcement
and, ultimately, the building itself betrayed
the social function of opera at the time: art¬
istic performance seen as the appropriate
ambience for the cultivation of social status
and gratification of the male libido. Boxes,
according to design recommendations,
were to have an adjoining salon whither
parties who wished to converse might
withdraw. The plans were to include
“drawers”, too, which remained in use
until 1917. The building was to have three
separate entrances: one for the Emperor,
who no longer existed after 1870, one for
the subscribers and a third for the public.
The broad staircase to the first floor, imi¬
tating the stairway at the Rue Le Peletier,
had 63 steps. The much cosseted sub¬
scribers were not expected to alter their
habits. They were provided with a special
lounge for intervals, and the Foyer de la
Danse was transformed into a palatial hall
with chandeliers, stucco and the portraits
of famous ballerinas. At the same time,
however, the director raised the entry fee;
only gentlemen who subscribed three
evenings a week were allowed access.
D
egas made the preliminary sketches
for his painting in one of the front
boxes, executing the painting some
time later in his studio. By the time he
painted The Rehearsal on the Stage, the
theatre in the Rue Le Peletier had probably
burned down. Like all contemporary
stages, it was lit by dangerous, open gas
flames. The lights were generally situated
at the edge of the apron. Degas marks the
footlights with a series of bright brush¬
strokes.
He was almost 40 at the time, but was
not one of the ballerinas’ lovers. On the
contrary, he lived the life of a reclusive as¬
cetic, rarely leaving his studio. He needed
to be alone, remaining a bachelor, declar¬
ing, on one occasion: “A painter has no pri¬
vate life!”
Besides ballerinas, there were two other
subjects he favoured: women at their bath
and jockeys at the races. All three have one
thing in common: movement. The details
printed here make it clear that Degas was
less interested in the ballerinas as individ¬
ual characters than in their movement and
did more or less subconsciously when they
were not playing to the public. Degas
paintings are full of women combing,
washing and dressing themselves - auto¬
matically, as it were. “Up until now, the
portrayal of nudidity has always presup¬
posed exposure to the public eye”, he
wrote, “but the women in my paintings are
simple, good people, thinking of nothing
and preoccupied with nothing but their
own bodies”; it was “like looking through
a keyhole.” On another occasion he
referred to them as “animals in the act of
washing themselves”.
In the The Rehearsal on the Stage, too,
the girls stand or sit about quite unselfcon¬
sciously: yawning, scratching, stretching,
utterly self-absorbed and attending to their
own needs. There was a grace here which
fascinated Degas. It was a quality he found
in dancers who were resting between
scenes, but also - on few and fortunate oc¬
casions, and with a different level of intens¬
ity - in those who were actually dancing: it
was not the natural grace of a woman which
interested him then, but a grace she had ac¬
quired by dint of artistry, the grace of a bal¬
lerina who is entirely engrossed in her art.

427
 Adolph Menzel: The Steel Mill, 1875
Keeping in time with machines
After extensive research at the Sile¬
sian industrial centre of Konigs-
hiitte, then the site of one of the
world’s most modern steel mills,
Adolph Menzel (1815-1905)
painted this renowned view of
everyday work in the industrial
age. The large-scale painting
(158 x 254 cm) can be seen at the
Nationalgalerie, Berlin.
428
This painting was completed in 1875. It
was purchased in the autumn of the same
year by the Nationalgalerie, Berlin. At that
time, museums were full of scenes of hero¬
ism, thrilling histories, romantic depic¬
tions of Nature, fauns, water-nymphs and
flattering portraits. A painting that showed
factory workers was most unconventional.
The director of the gallery must have been
a brave man.
Persuading the appropriate minister to
lend his approval to the purchase may have
been facilitated by the artist’s excellent
reputation at court: Adolph Menzel had
delivered the official painting of Wilhelm
I’s coronation ten years earlier. However,
the director was also under pressure to per¬
suade the public of the work’s merit. He
thus called it Modern Cyclopes, equating
workers and machines with a race of giants
in Greek mythology who forged bolts of
lightning for Zeus. The people who visited
his musuem would have felt more at home
with figures drawn from Greek mythology
than with factory workers.
Driven by curiosity, and by a compul¬
sion to capture the world in his paintings
and drawings, Adolph Menzel travelled for
this work from Berlin to Konigshtitte in
Silesia, the site of one of the world’s most
modern steel mills. Of the figures and ma¬
chines which appear in the present paint¬
ing, all are contained in the preliminary
sketches made at Konigshtitte or another
steel mill in Berlin.
The factory is shown in the process of
producing rails. Two workers have already
wheeled a glowing piece of steel to the
nearest roll, while three others, equipped
with large tongs, feed it into the roll. With
the help of suspended poles, the men on the
other side of the machine will then push
the piece of metal back under the roll for
further pressing.
429
Consequences
of the
steam-engine
P
ower was transferred from the fly¬
wheel to the three rolls by dint of
crankshafts, cogwheels and metal
rods. The wheel’s enormous size and
weight ensured that the axles turned
evenly. Menzel’s emphasis of the wheel in
the background underlines its integral im¬
portance to the entire scene.
The wheel is part of a steam-engine - the
invention which had made industrializa¬
tion in Europe possible in the first place.
Previous machines had been driven by
people or animals, by wind-power or
water. Though the discovery of the new
form of propulsion is generally attributed
to James Watt, it would be wrong to as¬
cribe its emergence to him alone. Its devel¬
opment had encompassed everything from
research into air pressure to the construc¬
tion of the steam-turbine. Progress had in¬
cluded a vast number of adjustments and
improvements. Smaller and more mobile
engines were constructed, making them
suitable for use on ships and rails. They
grew more powerful, too, increasing their
drive during the 19th century from 20 to
20,000 horsepower.
The steam-engine changed the land¬
scapes, demography and national econ¬
omies of Europe. The varying response
provoked by the invention may be demon¬
strated with the help of two poems.
Though neither can claim to be important
works of literature, they nonetheless illus¬
trate opposing points of view. The first, by
one J. A. Stumpff, published in 1831, cele¬
brates the latest technology:
Fierce flames the boiler fire,
the surging waters seethe with ire,
yearn to vent avenging force,
oppressive prison walls to hurst.
The second, written in 1840, bemoans the
consequences of the railway:
Existing relations evaporate all.
And mortals now are driven by steam:
Universal equality's breathless harbinger.
The first poem was composed by a bour¬
geois writer whose class stood to gain from
industrialization; the second was written
by Ludwig I, King of Bavaria, who had
every reason to fear imminent social
change.
Steam engines were originally
veloped in Britain. One of the
models to be transported to the Conti¬
nent was brought to Silesia in 1788. Its
fiery furnace drove a pump at a colliery
and was so famous in its day that even
Goethe travelled to see it with his patron
and boon companion, Duke Karl August
of Weimar.
Industrialization of Silesia had initially
been the policy of Frederick the Great. It
was during his reign, too, that hard-coal
extraction began. The new fuel produced
more energy than wood. Frederick
founded state-controlled coal and ore
mines; blast furnaces followed. Konigshiit-
te, or the “King’s Works”, the scene of
Menzel’s painting, was founded by the
Prussian state to accelerate industrializa¬
tion and experiment with model factories.
By the end of the 18th century, when the
“King’s Works” were built, Silesia con¬
tained the only fully integrated industrial
region on the European continent; it was
not until the middle of the 19th century
that the Ruhr began to catch up.
However, by the time Menzel came to
visit, the state had sold the works at Ko-
nigshiitte for one million thalers to a big
Silesian land owner, Count Carl Hugo
Henckel von Donnersmark, who, riding
the investment boom unleashed by Ger¬
de¬ man Unification in 1871, had turned the
first works into a shareholding company. Only
a year later he was able to sell Kbnigshutte,
together with a second factory, for 6 mil¬
lion thalers.
A hurried
bite and a swig
from the bottle

T he workers ate surrounded by the

noise, dirt and heat of the machines;
a makeshift shield of sheet metal was
their sole protection against the sparks that
sprayed from the roll. There was neither
canteen nor washroom at Konigshiitte;
Menzel shows workers washing at the left
of the painting. It was uncommon for fac¬
tory owners to show any concession to the
needs of their employees.
Eating habits were changed by indus¬
trialization. In a craftsman s workshop, or
in the country, large families would eat
with their maids, apprentices and farm¬
hands. Grace was said, and seating arrange¬
ments and food rationing reflected do¬
mestic hierarchy. A meal therefore meant
more than nourishment. It might involve a
break of up to two hours, allowing its par¬
ticipants a midday rest during their long
working day. An interruption of this kind
was unimaginable in a factory, where the
tune was called by machines and foremen.
Menzel also paints a man with a bottle
raised to his lips. Alcoholism was rife
among industrial workers. The writer Mo¬
ritz Bromme frequently returns to this
problem in his autobiographical “Life of a
Modern Factory Worker”, published in
1905: “Here in Ronneburg drinking
schnapps was even more widespread than
it had been in Schmolln”, he wrote. “Being
the youngest I naturally had to fetch the
schnapps, even filling up soda bottles for
some of them.” The working day was
twelve hours long or more, the work itself Germany moved from the country to the surely grow up without acquiring the vir¬
monotonous and physically arduous, en¬ towns and from east to west, most of them tues of thrift, domesticity or family life,
durable for many workers only with the to the Ruhr. Families and neighbourhoods and without respect for propriety or
help of stimulants. Unable to bear the were torn asunder. The older folk stayed property, manners or morals.”
pressure of work, they took to drink, on while younger people left in search of The proletarian writer Moritz Bromme,
“seeking the illusion of freedom in work. They found the simplest of accom¬ too, grew up in “hovels” of the kind men¬
schnapps, the scourge of modern civiliza¬ modation as so-called “night lodgers” in tioned above: “As I had been obliged to
tion ...” They would then often find them¬ other workers’ homes, living in miserable take two or three of our beds ... to the
selves sacked for drunkenness, turned out conditions without social support of any pawnshop, my little seven-year-old sister
to enjoy the “freedom” of unemployment, kind. Elsa had to sleep with her mother, who had
which they found equally impossible to One critically-minded contemporary galloping consumption. I also slept in the
bear without alcohol. observed: “It is only because many of these same room as my parents ...”
Besides pressure of work, the destruc¬ poor souls have brought to these hovels a
tion of social ties also made factory vast wealth of moral standards, Christian
workers susceptible to the dangers of alco¬ values and general decency from the places
hol. Factories were rarely built where they have left that the worst has not yet
workers already lived. During the 19th happened. As for the children and young
century a constant stream of people in people who live in these holes, they must

431
 P eople took jobs in factories because
they could no longer find work on
the land; or because they wanted to
escape the power of landowners who were
able to do with “their people” practically
whatever they wanted. Work in factories
was at least subject to a number of regula¬
tions drawn up by the government, and it
was the job of factory inspectors to make
sure these regulations were put into prac¬
tice. Bromme describes the situation as fol¬
lows: “One day the cry went up that the
factory inspector was on his rounds. Now,
I had no idea at all what this official’s job
was. So they said to me: ‘If he asks how
long you work, tell him 10 hours; youths
are not allowed to work more than that.’
Meanwhile, the cleaning boys, usually be¬
tween 9 and 11 years old, were told to leave
the shopfloor post-haste, returning home
via the back garden .”
In contrast to agricultural labourers,
craftsmen and factory workers had the
Workers
discover
solidarity
432
right to form associations. Steel
workers could join the “General German
mill
Metalworkers”, officially described as an
“Unemployment Insurance Association”.
Self-help was the principal motive for the
formation of such associations; solidarity
and the defence of workers’ interests
against the employer followed. The
power of these forerunners of the trade
unions naturally grew with that of the
workers’ political organizations. In 1875,
the year in which Menzel completed his
Steel Mill, the two hitherto competing
parties united to form the “Socialist Wor¬
kers’ Party of Germany”, later known as
the Social Democratic Party of Germany
(SPD).
It is possible that the workers depicted
by Menzel at Konigshiitte refused to join
the “German Metalworkers”, objecting to
the word “German”. Contrary to their
foremen and managers who spoke German
and were from German cities elsewhere,
they spoke Polish and thought of them¬
selves as Poles. In 1868 the villages and
housing schemes surrounding the works
merged to form one town whose purpose
- significantly enough - was “to provide a
place of refuge in which German life, Ger¬
man customs and German strengths may
be nurtured and flourish within an order
established by Germans.” The “order es¬
tablished by Germans” proved problem¬
atical. Starting in 1871 a number of dis¬
turbances took place at Konigshiitte which
only the combined forces of police and
army were able to suppress; a special unit
was stationed there until 1881. Konigshiit-
te fell to Poland in 1921, returned
“home to the Reich” in 1939, finally
reverting to Poland in 1945. Today it is
called Chorzov.
The majority of contemporary specta¬
tors probably knew of the Silesian prob¬
lems of the 1870s and of the measures
taken by Prussia to suppress the drive for
Polish home rule. Menzel, a Silesian him¬
self, was well acquainted with the situ¬
ation. It is possible, too, that visitors to
the Nationalgalerie did not therefore
think merely of mythical Cyclopes or in¬
dustrial progress when they saw this
painting, but of German superiority:
“German strengths” flourishing “in an
order established by Germans” - and
feeding off the strengths of others. During
the First World War the painting was di¬
rectly exploited for nationalistic purposes:
subscribers to war loans were presented
with a print of the work.
The hat
as a sign
of authority

In a short statement on his painting Men-

zel wrote: “The director can be seen in
the background, behind several people
operating a puddling furnace.” It was in the
flames of the puddling furnace that iron
was turned into steel.
The most obvious difference between
the director and his employees was the for¬
mer’s hat. Workers wore headgear, too:
caps, generally of softer materials such as
felt or cloth, whose purpose was to protect
them from cold, dirt and flying sparks.
Headgear had greater significance al¬
together in those days, and workers would
often keep on their caps at home or in ale¬
houses. In a street scene, headgear served
to identify social rank, and the matter of
who should take off his hat to whom, doff
his cap or touch a forelock, was a vexed
issue. Bromme wrote of one new worker:
“Whenever he asked the master-turner
something to do with work, he removed
his cap, a gesture which the former
answered with a condescending smile.
‘That’s what I call a real worker, standing
there dressed in his humility’, was the sar¬
castic remark then heard passing between
bystanders.”
The director is wearing a bowler. This
was more expensive and less practical than
workers’ headgear, but less extravagant
than the top hat which had been con¬ fold. The new middle class, too, had workers’ parties united and - coinciden¬
sidered respectable headgear among the backed the Wars of Liberation against Na¬ tally or not - Menzel completed work on
bourgeoisie until the middle of the 19th poleon’s armies, and had been the driving his Steel Mill.
century. Dress at this time became plainer force behind the Revolution of 1848. There has been some debate over whether
and more comfortable, at least everyday Capital, extracted from trade and industry, Menzel’s painting contains a deliberate pol¬
wear. Silk knee-length stockings and knee accumulated in bourgeois hands on an un¬ itical bias. Could it not be construed as sym¬
breeches, tails and narrow-waisted morn¬ precedented scale, while economic power bolic that the artist had banished the bour¬
ing coats either disappeared altogether or frequently facilitated bourgeois influence geois capitalist to the background of the
were promoted to the status of festive in areas where that class had no direct painting, while allowing workers to domi¬
clothing. The new everyday wear consisted political control. nate the foreground? Unfortunately, there
of drainpipe trousers and long, straight The bourgeoisie, and the middle class of is no evidence to support the hypothesis that
jackets like the one worn by the director in citizens in general, had once thought Menzel was politically motivated. It has
the painting. Bowlers replaced tricorns and themselves the “progressive class”, a claim been mooted, too, that Menzel wished to
tall top-hats. Bourgeois rather than courtly which now passed to the working class, demonstrate the workers’ confidence, their
fashions now determined the character of the industrial proletariat. Just as the liberal belief in progress during the early years of a
everyday clothes. citizenry had once fought against the class new, united Germany - or, conversely, that
Increasing bourgeois influence in the hegemony of the feudal aristocracy, indus¬ he intended to show the exploitation and
world of fashion reflected the growing trial workers now struggled against bour¬ alienation of the workforce. Such conten¬
power of the class in society as a whole. It geois employers to obtain human rights tions amourft to little more than specula¬
had been the bourgeoisie, after all, who and change society for the better. The date tion. All that can be said for sure is that he
had proclaimed the French Revolution which best marks this historical sea- wanted to show what he had seen: workers
and led their king and queen to the scaf¬ change is 1875, the year in which the two in a steel mill.

433
 Ilya Repin: Zaporogian Cossacks Composing a Letter to the Turkish Sultan, 1880-1891
Laughing struggle for
freedom
A sombre sky, uproarious
laughter, Cossacks in their camp -
a scene in 1676, painted some 200
years later by Ilya Repin, the Rus¬
sian realist. Cossacks, in Repin’s
time, were considered “the sym¬
bol of Russian nature”; the great
writer Nikolai Gogol, too, sang
their praises, calling them a people
“whose souls were like wide-open
skies, yearning for never-ending
feasts and festivals.” But all that
belonged to the glorious past,
evoked as an antidote to the
Tsarist dictatorship. Repin’s paint¬
ing was a patriotic commentary
on the contemporary scene.
434
Cossacks have a symbolic function in Rus¬
sia similar to that held by trappers, cow¬
boys and pioneers in North America: they
epitomize a heroic notion of freedom, their
deeds and legends providing the stuff of
which national identities are forged.
The Cossacks are not a nation, but the
descendents of refugees who collected on
Russia’s southern borders from the 14th
century onwards. To their east lay the Tar¬
tars, to their south the Ottoman Empire;
Poland, Lithuania and the Russian state
with Moscow at its centre lay to the north
and west. They were thus surrounded. In¬
itially, they included a large number of Tar¬
tars from whom they assumed certain
characteristic features, such as their tufts of
hair and bald heads.
However, it was first and foremost their
form of government which distinguished
the Cossacks from their neighbours. They
were not ruled by princes, kings or sultans,
potentates who endeavoured to bequeath
their power to their heirs. Cossack leaders
were elected for a limited term, and im¬
portant issues were decided by a system of
votes. The Cossacks had no wish to be
anybody’s vassals.
At first, the majority of these people
lived along the banks of the Don and the
Dnieper. Those who settled along the
lower Dnieper were called Zaporogian
Cossacks, after the Russian words “za po-
rogi”: “beyond the rapids”. In 1676 they
defeated the army of the Turkish Sultan,
who nonetheless demanded they submit to
his conditions. In reply the Zaporogian
Cossacks wrote a letter to the Sultan that
was thick with insult: “For all we care, you
and your hordes can eat the Devil’s shit,
but you’ll never gain an ounce of power
over good Christians ... you ... pig¬
snouted mare’s arse, you butcher’s cur ...”
Stalin is said to have loved telling this story.
 lu *

St I?*:.. '.W
m
jbJPBV &tfEii.tsu

435
Not given
to writing
I
lya Repin worked on his Cossack pic¬
ture from 1880 to 1891, a fact noted at
the bottom centre of his 203 x 358 cm
painting. He thus showed an event which
had taken place 200 years previously. The
Cossacks had long since become subjects
of the Tsar, their collective self-government
stifled or replaced by imperial bureau¬
cracy. They nevertheless retained a special
status: treated as a caste of warriors, the
state provided them with land and
exempted them from taxes; in return, the
men were expected to serve in the Russian
army for twenty years, providing their
own horses and equipment. In the 1880s
they made up roughly a half of the Russian
cavalry.
However, the enthusiasm for the Cos¬
sacks which abounded in Repin’s time was
not directed towards the contemporary
warrior caste, but towards their ancestors.
436
In Nikolai Gogol’s story Taras Bulba,
these early Cossacks are characterised by
their love of freedom, fighting and festiv¬
ities: “Their constant drinking, the way
they threw care to the four winds, had
something quite infatuating. This was no
band of boozers drowning their sorrows,
whining in their cups; this was untainted,
untrammelled zest for life. Anyone who
drew near felt its pull, left whatever he was
doing and joined them; the past no longer
counted; sending care to the dogs he aban¬
doned himself to the freedom and fellow¬
ship of spirits who thirsted for adventure
like himself... whose souls were like wide-
open skies, yearning for never-ending
feasts and festivals. Here was the source of
that unbridled joy ...”
Nostalgic glorification of the ancient
Cossack community was facilitated by the
lack of contemporary documents. The
Cossacks had compiled very few records
before the 18th century. They were not
given to writing. It was true that each het¬
man, as the Cossack captains were called,
had a secretary at his side, but the latter’s
abilities were employed almost exclusively
for external correspondence. There were
no registers of birth, marriage or deaths, no
written laws, no lists defining privilege.
This was not due to inability, but convic¬
tion: the Cossacks thought of written doc¬
uments as dangerous instruments of op¬
pression; they had probably learned as
much at the hands of both the Turks and
the Russians.
A contemporary of Repin, the Russian
anarchist Michail Bakunin (1814-1876),
was of a similar mind. According to Ba¬
kunin, the first aim of an insurrection
should be to set fire to the town halls, for it
was here that the “paper empire” stored its
documents, which must be annihilated if a
fresh start were to be made. Criticism of the
unwieldiness and corruption of Russian
bureaucracy came not only from reformers
and revolutionaries. On the contrary, it was
so widespread that the notion of a society in
which men took matters into their own
hands and then “abandoned” themselves to
“freedom and fellowship” found admirers
even at the Tsar’s court in St. Petersburg.
S ome of Repin’s contemporaries
wrongly imagined that the artist was
sketch Cossacks for his paintings, the more
frequently he met with rejection from a
interest in things ancient. Among the no¬
bility and the thin band of the middle classes
of Cossack descent. Flattered, he re¬ people who feared forfeiting their soul to was a movement whose aim was to promul¬
jected the proposal, referring to it in the the devil by allowing themselves to be gate whatever was truly Russian or Slavic
first sentence of his memoirs as “a great painted. against the strong influence of Western
honour indeed”. The full extent of his ad¬ Repin also had difficulty finding authen¬ Europe, and which sought to establish, by
miration for these people was made evi¬ tic clothes, weapons and other objects. As a prosecuting indigenous tradition, a new
dent in 1881 by his four-year-old son, realist, he was unwilling to improvise, and sense of pride in all things Russian. For
whose head, in accordance with contem¬ yet a cultural anthropology worth the Repin, too, there was more at stake than
porary custom, Repin had shaved, while name, whose collection and study of uten¬ realism or historical accuracy: “What I feel
insisting at the same time that a single tuft sils might have facilitated his project, was in each tiny surviving detail of that era is an
of hair be left in place - a tradition that had still in its infancy. He was forced to give up, unusual form of spirituality, a kind of en¬
practically died out even among Cossacks. and it was not until 1887 when he found a ergy; it all seems so rich in talent, so vig¬
Ilya Repin was from the Ukraine, one of scientist who owned a collection of Cos¬ orous, so replete with liberal social signific¬
the original Cossack homelands. He was sack artefacts that he decided to resume ance ... The freedom of our Cossacks, their
born in 1844 in a military settlement: an painting. He was by no means alone in his chivalry, I find quite delightful.”
arrangement whereby peasants were given
land by the state in return for providing
billeted soldiers with food and lodging.
The situation was not unlike that found in
Cossack villages. Repin’s father had been
an ordinary soldier.
Owing to his extraordinary talent,
Repin was accepted into the Imperial
Academy of Arts at St. Petersburg, which
also paid for him to travel abroad in 1872,
visiting Paris in 1873. On his return to
Russia he lived in St. Petersburg and Mos¬
cow, though he travelled constantly
throughout the land, always on the look¬
out for interesting people and subjects, or
searching for signs of the supposedly
glorious Cossack era of yore.
By contrast, Cossack life in contempor¬
ary Russia was hardly uplifting. Their for¬
mer martial spirit was sapped by loss of in¬
dependence as a warrior people. Moreover,
they had become intellectually and econ¬
omically backward. When the railway
reached the Don, for example, the Cos¬
sacks demanded it bypass their town for
fear the tracks might hinder their access to
grazing land. The horses and the animals
they kept for meat were more important to
them than industrial progress.
If the Cossacks held by their traditonal
way of life, they also made much of ancient
superstition, a phenomenon Repin experi¬
enced on several occasions. The further he
penetrated into the Russian interior to

Every
detail
counted

Hilarity
on canvas
T
he oppression of women was part of
Cossack freedom. Not a single
woman appears in Repin’s picture, a
detail that may simply reflect the reality of
a military encampment, but which is also in
keeping with a widespread opinion which
held that women, to a Cossack, were there
for work, lust and beating. This, at least,
was the view presented by writers like
Gogol, or in Sholokhov’s novel: And Quiet
Flows the Don. “Don’t listen to her blether,
my boy, she’s a woman and doesn’t know
what she’s talking about...”, says Gogol’s
Taras Bulba. Or: ... stop your whining,
woman! A Cossack shouldn’t need to
worry himself with females!”
438
The weapons, fur hats and coats in the
picture also evoke a life of freedom under
“wide-open skies”. During the 16th cen¬
tury Siberia was penetrated by Cossacks
who kept Moscow supplied with valuable
animal skins and furs. In the 19th century
it was Cossacks again who defended Rus¬
sia’s Asian borders. They settled in places
as far apart as the Dnieper and the Pacific
coastline, 5000 miles to the east, where, far
from Moscow and St. Petersburg, they re¬
tained some of their original autonomy.
Russia’s old rivals to the south were still
strong, and the Russians needed to secure
access to the Black Sea and weaken Turkish
influence in the Balkans. However, the
Crimean War (1853-1856) ended in Rus¬
sian defeat - an outcome which admittedly
owed more to the action of the British and
French than that of the Turks - and not¬
withstanding their victory in the Russo-
Turkish War of 1877/8, the Russians did
not achieve their aims. Repin painted his
Cossacks at a time when the Russians con¬
sidered the Turks their sworn enemy. For
many years, Russian soldiers had gone into
battle not only for their own country, but
to defend Christendom against the en¬
croachment of Islam.
Repin saw the 17th-century Cossacks in
a similar light: “It was here that certain in¬
trepid elements within the Russian people
spurned a life in comfort to found a com¬
munity of equals whose purpose was the
defence of those principles most dear to
them - Orthodox worship and personal
freedom. This may seem old-fashioned by
today’s standards, but at that time, when
thousands of Slavs were made slaves by the
Muslims, it was an exhilirating prospect.”
According to Repin, the Cossacks
“defended the whole of Europe” and
“laughed heartily at the arrogance of the
East.”
Repin’s history painting contains a
wealth of reference to his own time. Con¬
temporary relevance was, by definition,
part of the genre. The history painting pro¬
vided a vehicle by which the past could
speak to the present in a manner edifying
to moral and national sentiment. It was
considered the highest branch of art
throughout Europe, and its themes were
nobility and heroic grandeur.
There is no indication that Repin or his
contemporaries noticed that the letter¬
writing scene contained something quite
unusual in art: laughing men. One may
search far and wide in museums of Euro¬
pean art before finding a scene with figures
who are not simply smiling or grinning,
but laughing aloud; and one is even more
unlikely to find such a scene in a history
painting. Hilarious laughter may be in
keeping with an occasion where men in¬
vent a series of increasingly rude insults; it
does not consort well with the dictates of a
genre expected to awaken feelings of a
more solemn nature.
This, at least, may initially seem to be the
case. To the contemporary spectator, how¬
ever, the story taken up by Repin’s painting
was part of traditional lore; they knew the
artist did not merely wish to portray
superficial amusement. Repin was con¬
cerned to show the latent vigour of the
Russian people, a force which, put to
proper use, could defeat both external ag¬
gressors and the bureaucracy.

In search
of Russia
W
hen Repin became acquainted
with the letter of the Zapo-
rogian Cossacks in 1878, the
final year of the Russo-Turkish war, he im¬
mediately began a sketch. Two years later
he travelled to the Ukraine to collect fur¬
ther material, starting work on the painting
itself in October 1880: “It all happened by
accident - I was unrolling a canvas and
then suddenly I just couldn’t stop myself
picking up a palette and starting work ...
Everything Gogol wrote about them is
true. A hell of a people! No one in the
world has drunk so deeply of liberty,
equality and fraternity!”
In 1881 Tsar Alexander II was assasi-
nated by revolutionaries. Repin attended
their execution and witnessed the reprisals
meted out by Alexander III: “What dread¬
ful times were those ... We lived in con¬
stant fear ...” He set aside his half-painted
canvas with its scene of hilarity and did not
return to it until 1889, after a further re¬
search trip. He had considerable trouble
completing the work: “Working on the
harmonic proportions of the painting ... I
have been forced to leave out some things
and alter others - both colours and
figures.”
The colours in the final version of the
painting are restrained, contrasting soberly
with the sheer vitality of the figures and
stark crudity of the letter. Moreover, Repin
paints a cloudy, grey, sunless sky. Most of
his paintings are sombre in this way. “The
Russian national scene is grey, even when
the weather is fine. Let it be grey then, not
pink or sunny or joyous blue!” Thus the
demand of a Russian art critic in 1892, one
of Repin’s friends. His article castigates the
imitation by Russian artists of Western
styles and colours and draws a comparison
with Russian literature: “Pushkin, Turge¬
nev and Tolstoy’s literary colour was
powerfully grey, powerfully Russian.
Only if Russain art takes a leaf out of their
book will it attain the high distinction of
Russian literature.”
It had been clear to Repin ever since his
first period abroad, after completing his
studies at the Academy, what he wanted
from art: to paint Russia. He had found
little to interest him in the Paris of the Im¬
pressionists, nor did he share the French
artists’ enthusiasm for light and atmo¬
sphere; it was not a new technique he was
searching for, but his own subject. His
great wish was “to study what is truly
ours”, he wrote; for the “study of the idio¬
syncrasies” of the Russian people “had
barely begun”.
It was a planned retrospective of his
work at St. Petersburg in 1891 that finally
made Repin complete the work. “All those
legends, stories, memories, even Taras
Bulba himself - it all came back ...”, en¬
thused one of Repin’s artist friends. It is un¬
likely that a man like Alexander III, whose
fear of revolutionaries turned Russia into a
police state, really understood the paint¬
ing’s apotheosis of the Cossack sense of
freedom. He may have felt drawn to pugna¬
cious and powerfully-built men who were
able to hold their liquor simply because that
was the kind of man he was himself. What¬
ever the reason, he purchased the painting -
now in the State Russian Museum, St. Pe¬
tersburg - there and then, paying the hand¬
some sum of 35,000 rubles: apparently, the
highest sum hitherto paid to a Russian artist
for a single work.
439

The Luncheon of the Boating Party, 1881
Venue for gentry,
bourgeoisie and boheme
It took Pierre-August Renoir, from his stu¬
dio in the centre of Paris, a mere 20 minutes
by train to reach the open countryside.
Every half hour, a train left on the new line
to St. Germain - apopular technical achieve¬
ment in an era which could boast of so little
in the way of public transport. As a conse¬
quence, rural Chatou on Sundays was
packed with Parisians who, like the artists,
longed for fresh air and light. They prome¬
naded along the banks of the Seine, “roamed
aimlessly under high poplars”, went boat¬
ing or swam in the Seine, unperturbed by the
many floating carcasses of dead animals.
Thus the account that Renoir gave retro¬
spectively to his son, the film director Jean
Renoir, and to the art dealer Ambroise Vol-
lard, both of whom recorded the artist’s
memoirs in writing. The circumstances
under which Renoir painted The
Luncheon of the Boating Party are there¬
fore extraordinarily well documented.
According to Renoir, two establish¬
ments were especially popular among Sun¬
day trippers. One, situated on an island on
the Seine, was called the “Grenouillere”,
literally the “frog pond”. The name was a
pun, referring less to croaking amphibians
than to the Parisian girls who went there in
search of a lover.
440
Pierre-Auguste Renoir:
The clientele at the “Restaurant Four-
naise”, on the other hand, consisted largely
of “young sporting types in striped sing¬
lets”, Renoir recalled. “It was a sort of
water sports club”, a hotel proprietor hav¬
ing “hit on the idea of doing up a wooden
shack he owned on the island and serving
lemonade there to Sunday-trippers ... He
was a rowing enthusiast himself and knew
all about hiring boats out to Parisians.”
Monsieur Fournaise appears in the picture
in the appropriate outfit, a -white cotton
singlet stretched over his bulging chest; he
is apparently observing the activities of his
guests.
Renoir had frequented this establish¬
ment since the 1860s, forming an acquaint¬
ance with the proprietors and introducing
several of his artist friends. He loved to pa¬
tronise this “amusing restaurant” where
“you could always find a volunteer to play
the piano of an evening” - whereupon the
tables would be cleared aside on the terrace
outside to make room for dancing.
Here, over the years, Renoir painted a
large number of landscapes, as well as por¬
traits of the landlord and his family. In
1880 he decided to embark on a large-scale
work, “a picture of boaters, which I’ve
been itching to do for a long time ... One
must from time to time try things beyond
one’s strength.” The painting measures
129.5 x 172.7cm and is therefore equal in
size to another ambitious work begun five
years earlier: Le Moulin de la Galette. Be¬
fore completing it at his Paris studio, Re¬
noir had worked on the painting from
April to September 1880 on the terrace of
the riverside restaurant. It would appear
that he enjoyed himself: “The weather is
good and I have models”, he wrote in a let¬
ter. He later looked back on the experience
with nostalgia: “We still had life ahead of
us; we denied ourselves nothing ... Life
was a never-ending celebration!”
441

Paintings
to pay
the bill
T
he boaters and their lady-friends,
having finished eating, sit back
among the “debris” of the meal, re¬
laxed and sated. In a novel written in 1868,
the brothers Edmond and Jules de Gon-
court, contemporaries of Renoir, described
the mood after a full meal in the country:
“The day was there solely to be enjoyed:
the fatigue ... the fresh, invigorating air,
quivering reflections on the surface of the
water, piercing sunlight... that almost ani¬
mal intoxication with pleasure.”
On the white tablecloth, besides crum¬
pled linen napkins, we see a bowl of fruit,
a small barrel of brandy, half-full bottles
442
of wine and various glasses: round ones
for red wine, tall ones for coffee, smaller
ones for “chasers”, cognac or liqueurs. In
his A Day in the Country, published in
1881, Guy de Maupassant includes the
menu of a simple riverside restaurant:
baked fish, rabbit stew, salad and a sweet.
The characters also order a local wine and
a bottle of Bordeaux to go with their meal.
This was a fairly large repast, costing
about one and a half francs per person, a
luxury Renoir and his artist friends were
unable to afford for many years.
“I don’t always have enough to eat”, he
told the artist Frederic Bazille in 1869. “I’ll
write you more some other time, because
I’m hungry and I have a plate of turbot
with white sauce in front of me. I’m not
putting a stamp on this letter. I have only
12 sous in my pocket, and that’s for going
to Paris, when I need it.” In the 1860s and
1870s the works of avant-garde painters
who were ridiculed as mere “impressio¬
nists” were worth practically nothing. Art¬
ists who, unlike Edouard Manet or Paul
Cezanne, did not come from wealthy
families, had a particularly hard life.
Claude Monet had the hardest time of all;
with a wife and child to support, he very
often had little more than the bread Renoir
sometimes brought him after visiting his
parents.
The latter, artisans who had retired to
the country, may not have been rich, but
at least they had bread on their plates and
a coop full of rabbits. Renoir, too, would
probably have been better off had he stuck
to the trade he had originally learned:
porcelain painting, a skill which had en¬
abled him to earn a living at the age of
fifteen. But at 21 the artist, born in 1841,
turned his hand to painting in earnest. He
learned “anatomy, perspective, drawing
and portraiture” at the studio of a well-
known teacher, where he also met other
young painters.
These artists would meet at a Parisian
cafe to talk about new forms of perception
and revolutionary painting techniques.
Meeting at a cafe was necessary because
most of them stayed in such miserable
lodgings. (It is thanks to deplorable hous¬
ing conditions that cafes, restaurants and
bars have come to play such a vibrant role
in French culture.) For many years Re¬
noir’s furniture consisted of no more than
“a mattress lying on the floor, a table, chair
and chest of drawers ... and a stove for the
model”.
The artist used the stove to make his
daily bowl of bean or lentil soup. Accord¬
ing to his son, Renoir enjoyed “fresh basic
foods”, detesting margarine or sauces
made with flour. However, he was able to
indulge his innate epicurean leanings only
by accepting the occasional invitation of
some rich patron, or by dining at the
“Restauarant Fournaise”. Here he was sel¬
dom presented with a bill at the end of the
meal: “You gave us that landscape”, the
proprietor would say. “My father insisted
his painting was without value: ‘I’m warn¬
ing you, nobody will want it.’ ‘What does
that matter to me if it’s beautiful. Anyway,
one must hang something on the wall to
hide those patches of damp.’”
F or much of his career Renoir could
not afford to pay the fees of profes¬
sional models, a single sitting costing
as much as ten francs - the price of several
meals. However, even when he was much
better off, he preferred to paint his family
and friends. He was interested in people
and their relationships. He was a social
being: “I need to feel a bustle going on
around me.”
According to Renoir, all the social
classes met under Fournaise’s striped awn¬
ing. They had two things in common:
friendship to the artist and an interest in art
or sport. The man in the shiny black top
hat, for example, was an art collector called
Charles Ephrussi, a banker and owner of
the art magazine Gazette des Beaux-Arts,
Sporting
and other
friends
in which, in 1880, he devoted a study to the
Impressionists.
By contrast, the bowler-hatted man at
the centre of the painting was Interested
only in “horses, women and boats”. The
former officer and diplomat, Baron Bar-
bier, is reported to have told Renoir: “I
don’t know anything about art, and even
less about your art, but I like helping
M
you.
When he heard of the artist’s plans for a
boating picture, he offered to take over the
organization and provide boats. Aristo¬
crats like himself kept fit by riding, boxing
and tennis, whereas ordinary people made
do with walking, or riding the newly-in-
vented bicycle. (It was in falling from a bi¬
cycle that Renoir broke his arm in 1880).
But the gentry, bourgoisie and boheme
would generally meet in order to indulge
their passion for rowing. Fournaise “knew
all about hiring boats out to Parisians,
entrusting them only to trained enthusi¬
asts ... Everyone pulled on their oars as
hard as they could, trying to break records
and become expert rowers.”
One such expert was Gustave Caille-
botte, a wealthy bachelor, here shown sit¬
ting astride a chair next to the actress Ellen
Andree. A trained engineer, he built racing
boats, using them to participate in compe¬
titions. At the same time, he was an en¬
thusiastic painter, though aware of the
limitations of his talent. He was a generous
man, paying a good price for his friends’
works.
Wearing the appropriately named cano-
tiers - “boaters” - on their heads, and with
necks and muscular arms bared, Fournaise
and Caillebotte stand out among the other
guests in their correct city clothes. In an
era which devoted so much attention to
the “decency” of clothing, a girl might
easily feel embarrassed by a sportsman’s
bare arms, as Maupassant recounts in his
Day in the Country. “She pretended not
to notice them”, whereas her mother,
“bolder, and drawn by a feminine curios¬
ity which may even have been desire,
could not remove her eyes ...”
443
T he guests gathered on the terrace had
yet another thing in common: their
youth. Even the solemn-looking
banker Ephrussi was only 31. Caillebotte
was 32, while the girls in their fashionable
hats, whose healthful, rosy bloom Renoir
so loved to paint, were little more than
twenty years old. “Come tomorrow with a
pretty summer hat”, the artist wrote to one
of them on 17th September 1880, “in a light
dress. Wear something underneath, it’s
starting to get cold ...”
None of the sportsmen’s lady-friends
would have been seen dead without a hat.
The hat was an indispensable sign of re-
Ideal woman
in a hat
444
spectability and social status. The actresses
Ellen Andree and Jeanne Samary, the latter
of whom is shown holding her hands over
her ears in the background, refusing to
listen to the compliments of two admirers,
wear highly fashionable headgear acquired
from a milliner’s. The landlord’s daughter
Alphonsine, leaning on the railing at the
edge of the terrace, like the seamstress
Aline Charigot and the flower-girl Angele,
have trimmed their simple straw hats with
flowers or ribbons.
Angele, seen in Renoir’s painting with a
wine glass raised to her lips, was one of the
many prostitutes who roamed Montmar¬
tre. This, at least, was the account Renoir
gave his son. While he was working on the
boating picture at Fournaise’s, Angele had
managed to “pick up” a young man from a
well-to-do family who married her and
took her to live in the country, where he
turned her into a lady with affected man¬
ners. Aline Charigot, here seen entirely en¬
grossed in her little dog, had recently
moved to Paris from her Rome in Bur¬
gundy. She, too, had found a serious ad¬
mirer: Auguste Renoir. Since his decision
to devote his life to painting, Renoir had
subordinated everything to this aim, even
suffering hunger or cold if need be. Ac¬
cording to his son, he went “through life
with the delicious feeling of possessing
nothing” but “the hands in his pockets”,
avoiding serious relationships of any kind.
For “I have known painters”, Renoir re¬
called, “who produced nothing of value
because they spent their time seducing
women instead of painting them.” The ac¬
tress Jeanne Samary, who wanted to marry
him, was eventually forced to resign: “He
was not made for marriage; with his brush
he weds every woman he paints.” How¬
ever, what had been so easily acceptable to
a young bohemian proved increasingly
onerous to the forty-year-old artist:
“When you are alone, the evenings are
deadly dull.” In 1879 he met Aline.
The young seamstress was mad about
water and “adored rowing”. Renoir took
her with him to Chatou. During the even¬
ings, Baron Barbier waltzed her round the
terrace, while Caillebotte looked after her
“ as he might have done a younger sister ” and
Ellen Andree was determined to “give this
delightful peasant girl a bit of polish”. But
Aline refused to give up her Burgundian ac¬
cent and “become an artificial Parisian”.
She sat for Renoir, and he taught her to
swim. At that time, according to Maupas¬
sant, only women who were sufficiently
well-rounded dared bathe in the river.
“The others, padded out with cotton¬
wool, shored up with stays, propped up a
little here, touched up a little there, looked
on in blank disdain while their sisters
splashed about in the water.”
Aline could show herself without fear.
The 21-year-old Burgundian was “slim
and yet everything in her was rounded”;
she was one of those “privileged beings
whom the gods have spared the horrors of
acute angles.” But she not only incorpor¬
ated Renoir’s ideal of feminine beauty, the
artist felt that, with her, he was altogether
in the best of hands. Aline appeared to him
to be “extraordinarily gifted to succeed in
an area of which men scarcely dare dream:
making life bearable”.

Air,
light and
water
Ironically, while he was painting the ap¬
parently so light-hearted and harmon¬
ious Luncheon of the Boating Party, Re¬
noir’s life had entered a crisis. No longer as
young as he had been, the artist suffered
from lack of recognition, honour and
money. He had also come to a crossroads
in his art: “I no longer knew what I was
about.”
For many years Renoir had belonged to
the group of artists known as “Impressio¬
nists”. Together with Frederic Bazille, Ca¬
mille Pissaro, Alfred Sisley and Claude
Monet, he had left his studio in the 1860s
to paint out of doors, sailing down the
Seine painting and drawing with Sisley in
1865, or competing to produce the best
work with Claude Monet at the "Gre-
nouillere”, near Chatou, four years later.
The young artists tried “to capture the
light and project it directly onto the
canvas”, as Monet put it. They developed
new methods of reproducing the effect of
light in the trees and its reflection on the
surface of the water. They dissolved solid
forms and revolutionized painting. At the
same time, however, they met with the
stern disapproval of the critics and the
public, and their exhibitions of 1874 and
1876 ended in failure, leaving them lucky if
they managed to sell a painting for 50
francs. By 1878, Renoir had had enough
and began to do traditional portraits of rich
Paris society ladies. “I think he’s sunk”,
wrote Pissaro in 1879. “Poverty is so hard
to bear”, he added sympathetically. “The
problem isn’t art, but a hungry stomach ...
and an empty purse.”
However, Pissaro was doing his friend
an injustice. Renoir’s break with Impress¬
ionism - the group was in the process of
dissolving anyway - had artistic reasons: “ I
had travelled as far as Impressionism could
take me”, he later recalled, “arriving at a
point where I could no longer paint or
draw ... I began to notice that the paintings
that came out were too complicated and
that one was constantly forced to cheat.”
In the Luncheon of the Boating Party
Renoir “cheats” in virtuoso fashion once
again. His reflections of light and reverbe¬
rating shadows, the atmosphere of a hot
summer’s day spent on a riverside terrace,
remain a masterpiece of Impressionist
“plein-air”. The Seine landscape in the
background is composed of air, light and
water. The figures, however, acquire a new
sense of solidity. Rigorously composed,
and far from dissolving into their hazy sur¬
roundings, they attain an almost
monumental stature at the centre of the
canvas. They are harbingers of the new
“rigorous style” that Renoir was soon to
evolve under the influence of the Old Mas¬
ters.
After completing the Boating Party, the
artist - with the money from his portraits -
allowed himself a trip to the South. The
break had a considerable effect on his life
and art. On returning to Paris in the autumn
of 1881, his decision was made: he set up
house with' Aline, who made his “life bear¬
able”, and returned to work with renewed
confidence.
445

•'.'V- :
For his last great work, the artist,
already seriously ill, chose a
theme that was “poetical and mar¬
vellous”: the mirrored bar in Eu¬
rope’s most famous amusement
palace. The latter, with its bright
lights and beautiful women, was
the temple of Parisian joie de
vivre and a favourite haunt of the
dandy Manet. He completed the
painting (96 x 130 cm), now in the
Courtauld Institute, London, two
years before he died.
446
The young woman with the blond fringe,
her arms propped on the marble counter,
wears a calm, somewhat detached look.
On the surface in front of her are bottles of
champagne, English pale ale and pepper¬
mint liqueur. Between the bottles are shin¬
ing mandarin oranges and pale roses in a
vase. She has put a posy in the neck-line of
her low-cut dress, next to the white skin.
Only the large mirror behind the
woman tells us where we are. It reflects a
man in a top-hat looking intensely into the
young woman’s eyes, also a room full of
people, lights, movement, lustre.
The young woman and her bar are in the
famous Parisian cabaret Folies Bergere. No
other theatre, according to an enthusiastic
Charlie Chaplin recalling the place in 1964,
“ever exuded such glamour, with its gilt
and plush, its mirrors and large chande¬
liers”.' Chaplin performed there at the be¬
ginning of the century in the “variety” pro¬
gramme of light music, ballet, mime and
acrobatics. Indeed, the green shoes and legs
of a trapeze artiste are just visible in the top
left corner of the painting.
The entertainment palace was near the
Boulevard Montmartre at the heart of
Paris, which, not only by its inhabitants,
was considered the capital city of the
world. By the middle of the 19th century,
the French capital - whose population
quadrupled between 1800 and 1900 - had
become a symbol of progress in science,
the arts, industry and good living. “Unlike
other cities, Paris is no longer just a gather¬
ing of stones and people,” declared one,
rather proud contemporary, “it is the me¬
tropolis of moderri civilisation.”2
Edouard Manet: A Bar at the Folies Bergere, 1881

Declaration of love for the

capital of the world

r§
Jj’* -:i

1
|
if ^ ^
Society
glitz
D
uring the exuberant seventies and
eighties, the Folies Bergere was
considered the most modern, most
exciting place in the whole of Paris. The
latest technological advance to be exhibited
at the “Electricity Fair” in 1881 had al¬
ready been installed at the Folies Bergere:
bright, electrically lit spheres shone out
beside familiar gaslit chandeliers. In keep¬
ing with the fashionable Anglomania of the
times, the establishment had been mod¬
elled on Londons Alhambra Theatre and,
on opening in 1869, was dubbed Paris’s
first music-hall - distinguishing it from the
more traditional cafe-chantant.
448
The company’s name did not derive, as
is sometimes thought, from the French
word for folly or madness (folie), but from
a term in use during the 18th century to
denote a country house hidden by leaves
(in Latin, folia) where it was possible freely
to indulge in various enjoyable pursuits. In
the interests of local colour, the pleasant-
sounding name of a nearby street, the Rue
Bergere, was added.
The balcony of the auditorium, where
the smarter members of the audience
reserved loge seats, can be seen in the mir¬
ror behind the bar. The darkly dressed
gentlemen and the ladies in their long
gloves and broad-brimmed hats seem more
interested in each other, or in the audience
in the stalls, than in the trapeze number.
The green bootees may belong to the
American artiste Katarina Johns, who per¬
formed at the Folies Bergere in 1881. Her
show, a typical melange of daring feats,
erotic suggestion and sexual innuendo, at¬
tracted swarms of locals and tourists.
The establishment’s greatest attraction,
however, was its clientele: a nervy gather¬
ing of middle-class burghers, dandies and
gaudily dressed cocottes. Manet has placed
two such ladies, his friends, in loge seats:
the lovely demi-mondaine Mery Laurent
in a white dress and, behind her in beige,
the actress Jeanne de Marsy.
It was de rigeur at the time for guests to
take a stroll around the premises. They
would start in the palm garden on the
ground floor, then saunter slowly up the
broad, sweeping staircase to do a round or
two of the circular promenade. Artists
would make their sketches here, and
writers like Maupassant and Huysmans
described the unique atmosphere of the
place. Like Manet, they made the theatre
famous, although, according to one de¬
lighted contemporary, it was “not a theatre
at all - with some two thousand men
drinking, smoking and having fun, and
some seven or eight hundred women, all
dolled up and having a whale of a time”.3
Suzon needs a coach-ride from the young Charlie
Chaplin in the early years of the century.
no make-up
Mery presented herself in the loge; the “co-
cottes” sailed around the promenade.
The latter were a thrilling sight with
tively of the make-up of hired affections”.5
In his memoirs, Charlie Chaplin nostal¬
gically recalls the ladies who worked there:
“In those days they were beautiful and
courtly.”1 Women unaccompanied by men

T
their bright colours and generously dis¬ were only permitted in possession of a spe¬
played charms. Tourists, returning home, cial card issued every two weeks to the
he young woman’s name was Suzon. sung their praises all over Europe: those prettiest, most elegant and most discreet
In fact, she really was working as a typical Parisian girls, all sophisticated and prostitutes by the managing director him¬
barmaid at the Folies Bergere when pretty. The Folies Bergere and the “co- self.
Manet asked her to sit at his studio. That is cottes” who frequented it had no small part
all that is known about her. She wears a in contributing to the city’s legendary
long, black, velvet bodice over a grey skirt: reputation as the “world capital”.
the uniform dress of the female personnel. The French novelist Huysmans en¬
In his novel Bel ami, which appeared in thused over the Folies Bergere as the only
1885, the Naturalist writer Guy de Mau¬ place in Paris “that stinks quite as seduc¬
passant described “three bar counters...,
enthroned behind which were three wilt¬
ing barmaids; made up to the eyeballs, they
were selling drinks and love”.4
Manet’s Suzon is different: her gaze is
cautious, her complexion, still young and
rosy, needs no make-up. She was probably
a girl from one of Paris’s rural suburbs, and
perhaps it was her youth and freshness that
got her the job at the Folies Bergere.
Girls like Suzon served in most of the
capital’s cafes and restaurants, or sold lux¬
ury goods behind the counter of the big
Parisian department stores, whose era, at
the time, had only just begun. According
to the philosopher and historian Hip-
polyte Taine, serving behind the counter
was every true Parisienne’s dream: for it
was the perfect opportunity to use her tal¬
ent for twisting men round her little finger.
There were thousands of these girls work¬
ing in Paris, and their modest elegance,
their flirtatiousness and snappy repartee
contributed enormously to the attractive¬
ness of the metropolis. Cashiers, barmaids
and sales-girls were paid miserable wages,
however, and many were tempted to em¬
ploy their “talents” more profitably. They
would then join some 30,000 prostitutes in
Paris who, preferring to stay clear of the
brothels, solicited “on the sly”, giving their
“one night stands” the illusion of an excit¬
ingly unique adventure.
The Folies Bergere was one of the main
centres of prostitution, especially of the
more luxurious sort. The choice ranged
from the classy demi-mondaine Mery
Laurent, Manet’s girlfriend, who enjoyed
the “support” of an American dentist to
the tune of 15,000 francs a month, down to
the common tart who, for a “petit mo¬
ment”, demanded 20 francs and the price of

449
 T he favourite drink of those who
visited the Folies Bergere was, of
course, champagne. Several bottles,
with their characteristic gold paper scarves,
are ranged on the counter. The chance dis¬
covery of an 1878 winelist showed that
there were no fewer than ten different sorts
of champagne on offer (from 12 to 15
francs a bottle). Mumm, Heidsieck and
Pommery extra-dry were offered as
“Grands Vins” at 18 francs, while a stan¬
dard price covered “Glaces, sorbets et
boissons americaines”. The peppermint
liqueur and (English) pale ale were prob¬
ably included among the “American
drinks”. Manet shows the bottles, includ¬
ing an unidentifiable red drink, displayed
on the marble counter. It was probably
their bright colours that appealed to him.
Warm champagne
for a painting
450
The painter was less interested in giving
an exact rendering of the bar counter -
otherwise he should have put the cham¬
pagne on ice - than in achieving certain
painterly effects. This also explains his
method of combining Folies Bergere-
motifs which, in reality, were situated in
totally different parts of the building. The
three bars, for example, were in the artifi¬
cial garden at ground level; it was appar¬
ently impossible to see the audience or bal¬
cony from there, whether directly or re¬
flected in a mirror.
What is more, Manet has immersed the
scene in a wan daylight which cannot have
come from the sparkling chandeliers or
bright electric lights. It is the light of
Manets studio, where he executed the
painting. There, the artist reconstructed
the scene from a small number of sketches
actually made on the premises.
Manet’s sympathies lay with the realists.
Like the writers Emile Zola and Guy de
Maupassant, he wanted to show what he
actually saw, to give an objective picture of
the reality of his own times. His paintings
of scenes from the cafes and streets of Paris
caused a series of scandals. Meanwhile, the
critics and public celebrated academic
painters who presented “sublime” works
with themes based on Classical antiquity.
The works to receive the greatest acclaim
while Manet was working on his Bar at the
Folies Bergere had titles such as The Recog¬
nition of Odysseus and Telemachus (1880),
or The Anger of Achilles (1881). Manet was
denied success; his work was upbraided as
trivial and ugly, in other words: realistic.
And yet, according to Manet’s friend Jac-
ques-Emile Blanche, “Manet is not a rea¬
list, but a Classicist; as soon as he has a spot
of paint on his canvas he starts thinking
more about paintings than nature”.6 Simi¬
larly, a younger painter, able to watch
Manet at work on the Bar in 1882, said:
“Although he had models to sit for him,
Manet did not copy nature; I noted his
masterly art of simplification... Every¬
thing was abridged”.6
By this time, Manet was already a very
sick man. While working, he “tired easily
and had to lie down on a low sofa,” the
same eyewitness reported. During his final
years, Manet therefore did smaller formats
in pastels, which were less physically de¬
manding: portraits of pretty Parisian girls
(he did a profile of Suzon, too), fruit and,
above all, small flower arrangements - like
the bunches brought to him daily by his
friend Mery Laurent, or the posy worn in
a Folies Bergere barmaid’s bosom. Manet
confessed to his art-dealer Vollard that he
would have liked to have been "the St.
Francis of still-life”.7
Practically
everything
is an illusion

T he mirror brings to light what other¬

wise would remain unseen: the bar¬
maid, although apparently alone, is
in fact the object of a gentleman’s lustful
advances. The man with the top-hat is one
of countless dandies, boulevardiers and
playboys: like the seductive Parisiennes,
stereotypical denizens of Parisian night
life.
The painting gives the spectator the
strange feeling of being part of the scene: as
if the spectator, in the image of the dandy
reflected in the mirror at Folies Bergere,
were looking at himself. It is an optical il¬
lusion and a stroke of genius: Manet pur¬
posefully neglects the rules of ^perspective
and optics, painting the'reflection as if the
mirror at the back of the bar were hanging
at an oblique angle to the picture-plane.
However, this impression is simulta¬
neously repudiated by the fact that the
mirror frame runs parallel to the marble
counter.
Suzon’s frontal view would normally
exclude any reflection of her back, and the
customer would only be visible if standing
between the bar and the spectator.
Over half of the canvas is taken up by
the background mirror; apart from the liv¬
ing, real figure of Suzon, practically every¬ separates the German writer from the true painter we have all been waiting for,
thing is unreal, reflection, an illusion - an French painter, but both were equally infa¬ will be one who grasps the epic quality of
appropriate symbol for the night life and tuated with Paris. life today, who manages, by colour and
its manifold wiles. Manet was unwilling to leave his native drawing, to make us see and understand
“Paris is the city of mirrors,” wrote the town for any length of time. When his how grand and poetic we are with our cra¬
German Walter Benjamin in 1929, “... thus painting friends went to study plein-air vats and patent leather shoes.”9 This, pre¬
arises the specific beauty of Parisian painting in the country during the second cisely, was Manet’s achievement in his last
women. Before a man looks at them, they half of the sixties, Manet stayed in the capi¬ great work, in which he took leave of the
have already seen themselves reflected ten tal, taking afternoon strolls along the specifically Parisian pleasures that had
times. But the man, too, sees himself re¬ boulevards, frequenting the more fashion¬ meant so much to him. He painted a bar¬
flected in mirrors all the time; in cafes, for able cafes and - an elegant figure with his maid in her everyday uniform and sur¬
instance... mirrors are the city’s spiritual dandy’s cane and black silk top-hat - drop¬ roundings, but did so in such a way that
element, its coat-of-arms.”8 ping in at the Folies Bergere in the evening. critics have seen in her a “mythical figure,
The quotation is from Benjamin’s essay: “Parisian life,” wrote Manet’s friend, the an intensely French high priestess”, a sym¬
“A declaration of love by poets and artists poet Charles Baudelaire, “is rich in themes bol of the isolated individual, or the im¬
for the capital of the world”. Half a century poetical and marvellous. The painter, the mortal sister of the ancient goddesses.

451
 Georges Seurat: Sunday Afternoon on the Island
of La Grande Jatte, 1884/86
In the paradise of
the petite bourgeoisie,
all are strangers
This work documents the in¬
vention of a new technique:
pointillism. Instead of mixing
pigments on his palette like his
predecessors, Seurat applies
them to his canvas as dots of
primary colour. Only when
they are processed on the
viewer’s retina do they com¬
bine into the desired hue. The
composition itself only comes
into focus when viewed from
several feet away.
452
The philosopher Ernst Bloch described
the picture as a “mosaic of boredom”. To
the Marxist, who died in 1977, La Grande
Jatte by Georges Seurat (1859-1891) was
an image of “Sunday misery”, a “land¬
scape of painted suicide”.
To the art critic Felix Feneon, on the
other hand, it was a cheerful work: “Be¬
neath a dog-day sky, at four o’clock, the is¬
land, flanked by passing boats, alive with a
fortuitously-met Sunday population happy
to be out in the fresh air, amongst the trees”.
Feneon was full of admiration for La
Grande Jatte, executed between 1884 and
1886. In his articles, he sang the praises of
Seurat and his “new way of ciphering real¬
ity” - namely in a dense scatter of innumer¬
able tiny points of light. The painting there¬
by documents the invention of pointillism.
The public did not share the critic’s en¬
thusiasm, however, and the picture re¬
mained in the artist’s possession until his
early death in 1891. “Seurat’s mother is
most anxious about what will happen to
his big canvases after his death”, noted the
painter Paul Signac in his diary. “She
would like to bequeath them to a museum
... but what museum would currently
agree to take them?”
Nine years after Seurat’s death, at his
family’s request, Signac and his friends held
a show of Seurat’s works. His drawings
were priced at 10 francs unframed, or 100
francs framed. La Grande Jatte went for
800 francs to a member of the Paris upper
middle classes. In 1911 the board of the
Metropolitan Museum in New York voted
against purchasing the canvas. The wealthy
Frederic Clay Bartlett displayed greater
courage and better artistic judgement when
he acquired the painting in Paris for 20,000
dollars. Shortly afterwards he donated it to
the Art Institute of Chicago, where it is
housed as a key work of European Mod¬
ernism. In 1931 a French consortium tried
to buy it back for 400,000 dollars. In vain.
453

T
he canvas, which measures 207 x 308
cm, only just fit into the studio of
the 25-year-old artist. A colleague
described him as “infinitely persistent”,
with “an energy no less extreme than his
shyness”. Seurat, born in 1859, could af¬
ford to indulge in artistic experimentation:
he was financially supported by his father,
a lawcourt official who had made a fortune
in property speculation.
Seurat had left the ficole des Beaux-Arts
when he was just 21. He wasn’t interested
in history painting, nor in mermaids and
nymphs - and thus rejected the career path
454
followed by conventional artists. After the
“unexpected and profound shock” which
he experienced upon attending the fourth
Impressionist exhibition in 1879, the artist
worked alone, drawing portraits and fig¬
ures of ordinary people in thick black con-
te-crayon and painting small-format land¬
scapes. Like the Impressionists, he thereby
liked to work en plein air, out of doors,
and in particular beside the water.
It was particularly important to Seurat
to capture the light, and nowhere did he
find light more captivating than beside the
Seine in Asnieres, a suburb to the north-
Modelled
on a
temple frieze
west of Paris. His first large-scale canvas
was entitled Bathers at Asnieres; rejected
by the official Salon in 1884, it drew atten¬
tion at the Salon des Independants. It
shows bathing men and boys on the banks
of the Seine. They are looking across to an
island in the river - La Grande Jatte, the
setting for Seurat’s next work.
The Impressionists, striving to capture
the fleeting moment, mostly painted spon¬
taneously out of doors. Seurat’s canvas, on
the other hand, was preceded by painstak¬
ing preparation. He made numerous stud¬
ies on panel, executed on site, of the river-
bank, grass and trees, in part devoid of
people.
These he drew in different positions in
black and white sketches. He then com¬
bined his two sets of studies. Feneon de¬
scribes the some 40 figures in La Grande
Jatte as “portrayed strictly from behind, in
front or the side, sitting stiffly, lying flat,
or bolt upright”. Contemporaries even
spoke of a “Pharaonic procession”, and
Seurat himself named the temple frieze by
the Greek sculptor Phidias as a source of
inspiration: “Phidias’ Panathenaea were in
procession. As in those friezes, I want to
portray modern people in their essence.”
A classless
Sunday outing

S eurat portrays the island in the sub¬

urbs as a modern Arcadia. There are
neither bottles nor picnic hampers to
be seen on the well-tended grass. Invisible,
too, are the restaurants, cafes, boatyards
and private residences which in the 1880s
already occupied two thirds of the island.
The visitors, Seurat’s “modern people”,
are taking a genteel stroll or relaxing in the
shade. No one is bathing, no one has re¬
moved their clothing.
Feneon described them as a “fortuitous¬
ly-met ... population”, and in truth, the
people who came together on the small
strip of land in the Seine were drawn from
various classes of society. For the modern-
day viewer, however, it is hard to tell
whether the reclining man with the cap
and the pipe is a worker from the nearby
industrial suburb of Clichy, or a Parisian
watersports enthusiast dressed for the part.
For the citizens of Paris, Asnieres - from
where a ferry made the crossing to La
Grand Jatte - was quick and easy to reach
thanks to the new railway line. But tech¬
nology and progress were changing the
capital’s suburban idylls and covering
them with factories and cheap housing for
the workforce. They now became El Dora¬
dos for speculators such as Seurat’s father.
Thus rural Asnieres had also doubled its
population in the past few years and
evolved into a dormitory town for the pe¬
tite bourgeoisie - that upwardly-mobile
class cultivated by the government of the
Third Republic for its contribution to social
stability. La Grande Jatte was now visited
on a Sunday chiefly by small businessmen,
shop assistants, white-collar workers and
civil servants, together with their families.
Visible in the background of the paint¬
ing are two soldiers and - identifiable by
her white cape and her bonnet with the
long ties - a nurse seen from behind, seat¬
ed beside an elderly woman beneath a
parasol. Everyone else has exchanged their
working clothes for their Sunday best. The
women in the picture are laced into tight
corsets; most are wearing the fashionable
cul de Paris beneath their full skirt, em¬
phasizing the curves of their figure. Their
outfit is completed by a hat, without which
- and without a male escort - no honest
woman would be seen in public.
The painting poses many questions: are
the two girls at the feet of the trumpeter
supposed to be easy prey for the ap¬
proaching soldiers? Is the woman angler
fishing for a man? The French for “to fish”
(pecher) and “to sin” (pecher) sound al¬
most the same. And do the dog and mon¬
key being held on a lead by the lady in the
foreground signal simply fashionable ex¬
travagance, or (as traditional symbolism
would have it) lewd desires?
The man accompanying this lady is
wearing a top hat and monacle and carries
a walking stick, all typical attributes of the
upper middle classes, who usually prom¬
enaded in the Bois de Boulogne. Unlike
the mixture of society found on La Grande
Jatte, the Bois de Boulogne was decidedly
exclusive. It would normally have been the
domain of the “well-known Parisian gen¬
tleman from the best circles”, whose wife
- reported the journal Autour de Paris in
1887 - kicked up a terrible row when she
found out that he had spent the Sunday on
La Grande Jatte with her chambermaid.
But Seurat tells no anecdotes. His pro¬
tagonists have neither a face nor body lan¬
guage, neither a history nor individuality.
The “modern people” whom he wanted to
“portray ... in their essence” are reduced
to the formal attributes of top hat, cane and
corset - they are characters in his frieze.

455
T he secret of working class morality
lies in a Sunday day of rest”. Thus
ran the conclusion of an essay of
1874 which was awarded a prize by the
Academie des Sciences Morales et Poli-
tiques. Instead of socializing amongst
themselves, like the men in Seurat’s
Bathers at Asnieres, workers were sup¬
posed to spend Sunday with their families.
The government of the Third Republic
similarly recommended that proletarians
should avoid pubs and protest rallies and
ensure order and stability through their
upright behaviour. While it was usual to
have one day a week free, it was not guar¬
anteed by law until 1902 for women and
children, and 1906 for men. Particularly in
the 1880s, the issue was the centre of pas¬
sionate debate: Seurat’s subject was thus
highly topical.
It is questionable whether either the
workers or the petite bourgeoisie knew
what to do with their prescribed “family
Sunday”; there are few men on Seurat’s La
Grande Jatte. “Nothing but miserable in¬
activity” is what Ernst Bloch saw in the
picture, by “puppets concentrating in¬
tensely on taking a rigid stroll”. In the
456
eyes of the Marxist, Seurat’s picture spoke
above all of the malaise of the workers and
petite bourgeoisie, of alienation in an in¬
dustrial society.
How different the mood in the Lunch¬
eon of the Boating Party, which Auguste
Renoir painted in 1882 in another Parisian
suburb along the Seine. Here, the artist’s
friends are seated around the remains of
lunch at a restaurant table, talking, flirting
and laughing - a picture of relaxed con¬
viviality. In Seurat’s La Grande Jatte, there
is virtually no eye or body contact be¬
tween the protagonists; even the large
couple in the foreground are strolling side
by side without touching.
Marxists can draw support for their
views from one of Seurat’s contempo¬
raries. In 1891, following the death of his
colleague, Paul Signac wrote in the anar¬
chist journal La Revolte that Seurat had a
“vivid image of our transitional era”, and
that the work of his friend “testified to the
great social conflicts between workers and
capital”.
The avant-garde artists in whose cir¬
cles Seurat moved were fully aware of
the darker side of the belle epoque: mo¬
ney ruled without morality, and strikes
by the exploited workforce were brutally
crushed. Not a few intellectuals doubted
the possibility of reform and believed that
the ruling social system would have to be
overthrown by force, if necessary, in order
to attain a “natural harmony” between
people.
Felix Feneon for one, Seurat’s friend
and eminence grise of literary and artistic
life in Paris. During the day he worked as
a respectable civil servant in the War Of¬
fice, while at night he wrote his articles
and threw bombs into an exclusive Paris
restaurant. In 1894 he was only acquitted
of the charge of belonging to an interna¬
tional conspiracy for lack of evidence.
Seurat himself left behind no tangible
pointers to any political commitment. The
sense of isolation and the lack of contact in
La Grande Jatte probably reflect (amongst
other things) the artist’s personal problems.
Paul Signac described him as a “hypo¬
critical and jealous personality”, perman¬
ently afraid that someone would contest
his right to his artistic inventions.
As the youngest child, he was fussed
over by his mother and aunt and taken for
walks in the park. As in La Grande Jatte,
the female element was dominant in his
life. He had barely known an intact family;
in 1849 his father had withdrawn into a
suburban villa like a sort of religious
recluse. He visited his family for dinner
just once a week, on a Tuesday. The artist
never dared miss this ritual; right up to his
death, he slept under his mother’s roof and
kept secret from his family and friends the
fact that he lived in his studio with a
young working-class girl, with whom he
had a child. Seurat lived a double life and
observed the bourgeois conventions. He
was only unconventional in his art.
A picture
of alienation?

L a Grande Jatte was finished in the
spring of 1885. Due to arguments be¬
tween the organizers, however, that
year’s Salon des Independants did not take
place. The painting stayed in Seurat’s stu¬
dio, and the artist went to the coast.
When he returned to Paris in the au¬
tumn, he turned his attention again to the
picture and, over the course of the win¬
ter months, completely reworked it. He
covered the entire surface with swarms of
tiny dots of paint - only someone standing
several feet away from the canvas could
make out what it actually portrayed.
The painter thereby discovered the “op¬
tical formula” for which he had been
searching, as he himself said, for as long as
he had held a “brush in his hand”. He had
spent the summer by the Atlantic im¬
mersed in books, including On the Law of
the Simultaneous Contrasts of Colours
(1839) by the chemist Eugene Chevreul,
and the Scientific Theory of Colours by
the New York physicist Ogden Nicholas
Rood, published in France in 1881. From
his reading he had learned that colours
reach the eye in the form of light of vary¬
ing wavelengths, and are only mixed once
they get there. This in turn prompted him
to rethink his own art.
Instead of mixing pigments on the
palette, he applied them to the canvas as
dots of primary colour. Only when these
are processed on the viewer’s retina do
they combine to form the desired hue.
Artists already knew that colours are par¬
ticularly intense in their effect when per¬
ceived within a different-coloured setting;
Seurat systematized the use of comple¬
mentary colours and translated scientific
knowledge into painstaking artistic detail.
Seurat called his new technique “divi-
sionism”; it later became known as
“pointillism”. In 1886, at the eighth and
last Impressionist exhibition, he presented
it in the shape of La Grande Jatte and
shocked the public. Young painters, how¬
ever, such as Signac and Fucien Pissarro,
followed his lead. Feneon named the new
group the Neo-Impressionists. He there¬
by distinguished them from the “romantic
Impressionists” who had sought to cap¬
ture fleeting effects of light in a more intu¬
itive fashion. Seurat had replaced their
more “arbitrary” approach with a scientif¬
ic system.
The painter was addicted to order and
harmony - and thereby bore an affinity
with the intellectual anarchists of his day.
Seurat destroyed the reigning visual con¬
ventions; he exploded the structure of
colour in order to build it back up again,
dot by dot.
He even incorporated the frame into his
striving for harmony: not wanting La
Grande Jatte to end abruptly at a gold
The invention
of pointillism
frame or wall, a few years later he gave it a
painted frame. This narrow border brings
the picture’s waves of colour to a gentle
conclusion.
The tranquility and fascination exuded
by the painting can be traced not simply to
its colours, but also to its austere linear
structure: the verticals of the trees and the
strolling figures correspond to the hori¬
zontals of the shadows and the people
seated and reclining.
Here too, Seurat was searching for a sys¬
tem and experimenting with the latest the¬
ories. The academic Charles Henry, in his
Introduction to a Scientific Aesthetic pub¬
lished in 1885, had investigated the emo¬
tional expressiveness of colour and line,
and had thereby distinguished between
falling, constricting lines which made the
viewer feel ill at ease, and rising lines which
- like those of the sailing boat in the back¬
ground - produced a feeling of elation and
joy in the viewer. Sails such as this, with
their “positive”, gentle curves, are also
found in a number of the later works
which Seurat executed in the few years re¬
maining to him - the signature, so to speak,
of the harmony-loving art revolutionary.
457
Vassily Surikov: The Boyarina Morozova, 1887

An inflammatory protest
against dictatorship

When, in 1887, the Russian

painter Vassily Surikov chose
as his subject a boyarina who
had died for her faith a good
200 years earlier, he was tacitly
condemning the Tsar’s oppress¬
ive, anti-reformist regime.
The painting, measuring 304 x
587 cm, today hangs in the
Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow.

458
459

I
t is November 1672. The boyarina Feo-
dossiya Morozova is being dragged
through the streets of Moscow on a
primitive farm sledge. She is being borne
past the churches and palaces of the Rus¬
sian capital, through the gaping crowd, to
prison. The wealthy noblewoman is lying
on straw, and there are manacles around
her wrists, but she demonstratively raises
her right arm and makes the sign of the
Cross with two fingers - and thereby is¬
sues a challenge to the sacred and secular
authorities. For the gesture is the symbol
of the “old faith” which has been banned
for several years, and for which Morozova
now faces torture, banishment and ulti¬
mately death from starvation.
Until only recently, the pampered noble¬
woman had been driven through Moscow
in her own silver and gold carriage, drawn
460
by twelve Persian horses and surrounded
by servants. As a boyarina, Feodossiya
Morozova was a member of the aristocratic
class which boasted power and wealth in
17th-century Russia and which tradition¬
ally played a role in government. One
boyar, Boris Morozov, ran the affairs of
state during the first three years of the reign
of Tsar Alexis Mikhailovich, who ruled
from 1645 to 1676. Feodossiya was married
to his brother. Around 1660, after just a
few years of marriage, she was widowed
and inherited a vast fortune.
The young widow showed little interest
in earthly comforts, however. Although
she dutifully brought up her only son and
fulfilled her duties as a lady-in-waiting to
the tsarina, she spent many hours every
day in a hospital for incurables, where -
anonymously - she tended the poor and
An aristocrat
in conflict
with the authorities
sick. Beneath her mourning, the noble¬
woman always wore a hair shirt to mortify
the sinful flesh.
Her ascetic piety was given a new focus
following her introduction to the pontiff
Avvakum, a prominent spiritual leader and
a passionate fighter by nature. With this
fiery priest, Feodossiya Morozova defend¬
ed the true “old faith” against the in¬
novations which were at that time causing a
schism - the raskol - in the Russian church.
Around 1651, Patriarch Nikon had
modified a number of Russian Orthodox
rites, bringing them into line with the
practice of the Greek Orthodox mother
Church. The number of genuflections in
front of icons was changed, for example, as
was the order of the plainsong. The sign of
the Cross, too, was now to be made with
three fingers in the Greek manner, and
not with two as before. The Patriarch’s
changes provoked unrest; under the lead¬
ership of Avvakum, a resistance movement
of “Old Believers” was formed. “An¬
tichrist” Nikon eventually excommunicat¬
ed his opponents and, with the Tsar’s sup¬
port, had them persecuted. Thousands of
Old Believers who held firm to their con¬
victions met their end in Siberia or at the
stake.
Avvakum spent a large part of his life in
exile, but maintained contact with his
Moscow congregation, which gathered
under the protection of the boyarina. In
1672, however, even Morozova’s elevated
social status could help her no longer: she
was arrested along with her entire house¬
hold. According to a biography of the
boyarina- probably written by her brother
- while she was being dragged off to
prison in disgrace, she rattled her chains
loudly, and as she passed the Kremlin, she
raised two fingers, in the hope that the
Tsar would see. “You are Russia’s sun”,
Avvakum had written to her from prison;
“Your eyes are like lightning”.
The self-imposed
suffering of
"God's fool"
T he ragged beggar on the side of the
street also makes the sign of the
Cross with just two fingers, in a
parting greeting to the boyarina. The ges¬
ture was used as a sign of recognition by
all those opposed to the reforms being im¬
plemented in the Church. “How do you
make the sign of the Cross?” was always
the first question put to suspected heretics
at their trial. Since every Russian made the
sign of the Cross many times a day - to
lend emphasis to their words, to ward off
evil or, as here, in greeting and blessing -
the attempt to alter the traditional form
was bound to meet with opposition.
The beggar also wears a crucifix around
his neck. It is made of a metal so heavy
that the chain has cut into his flesh. The
man is wearing only a tattered shirt and
sits barefoot in the snow, whereas even the
beggarwoman next to him wears a patch-
work fur coat as protection against the bit¬
ter cold. Someone who castigates himself
to such a degree is no ordinary beggar, but
one known as “God’s fool” - in Russian, a
yurodivy. Ever since the 14th century,
Russia had seen such devout individuals
give up a more or less secure existence and
spend their lives wandering through the
country praying, preaching and admon¬
ishing their fellows. They treated not just
their bodies and their senses with con¬
tempt, but also their minds. Through their
crazy behaviour, they sought to create in
themselves the emptiness which opens the
mind to God: “If you think you are wise
by this world’s standards, you will have to
become a fool so you can become wise by
God’s standards”, Paul wrote to the
Corinthians; and “Our dedication to
Christ makes us look like fools”.
It was not easy to distinguish between
the holy men and the common madmen
and charlatans, but yurodivii nevertheless
commanded the greatest respect. Even the
tsars did not dare to rebuff them when
they raised their warning voices in the
name of the people.
In the unsettled 17th century, full of war,
anarchy and uprisings, these devout fools
appeared in particularly large numbers.
Many of them associated themselves with
the Old Believers. One, by the name of
Feodorii, followed Avvakum all the way to
Siberia and, since he was granted unhinder¬
ed access wherever he went, was able to
carry messages from the priest to the out¬
side world. He found shelter in Morozo¬
va’s house, and he even managed to deliver
a petition from Avvakum to Tsar Alexis in
person. In vain, however - the ruler had
come down on the side of reform, and per¬
secution of the opposition did not stop
even at God’s fools: Feodorii was executed.
In 1675 Feodossiya Morozova and her
sister died in misery in a convent dungeon.
In 1682 Avvakum was burnt at the stake.
They became martyrs of the movement.
Despite all their persecution, communities
of Old Believers survived in Russia into
the 20th century. The ban against them
was only officially lifted in 1971.
461
H is portrayal of this sneering priest,
laughing with his fat crony at the
boyarina’s disgrace, made Vassily
Surikov many enemies. Even in the Rus¬
sia of 1887, it was still risky to paint a der¬
ogatory picture of a member of the Or¬
thodox hierarchy. After a brief phase of
liberalism, Church and sovereign had re¬
turned to their authoritarian stance. There
was no freedom of religion; censorship
was in force, and the division in the
Church of 200 years earlier was a taboo
subject.
The 17th-century supporters of the Old
Believers were recruited from the layfolk.
Only a few priests followed the path of
resistance adopted by the courageous Av-
vakum; most made the sign of the Cross
462
with three fingers, as ordered by the au¬
thorities.
In the first half of the 17th century, after
years of war, anarchy and crisis, the Rus¬
sian Orthodox Church had become par¬
ticularly strong. New churches sprang up
all over the country. A number of Moscow’s
many chapels, churches and cathedrals,
with their onion domes of gleaming gold,
can be seen in Surikov’s painting. Tsar and
peasant alike were urged to spend hours
every day in church, and to perform over
100 genuflections in front of their icons in
their rooms at night.
In the second half of the 17th century,
however, this piety began to wane; the
Church was weakened by the schism, and
Tsar Alexis used the religious dispute to
bring the Orthodox hierarchy largely un¬
der the control of the State. Although he
supported Nikon’s reforms, he soon re¬
placed the ambitious patriarch with a
compliant prelate. Ceremonial proces¬
sions to the various shrines, previously the
Tsar’s favourite pastime, were gradually
replaced by more worldy entertainments:
such as German players performing com¬
edies in the Kremlin. Alexis became the
first to deliberately open up his country to
the West.
Soldiers, doctors and engineers from
western Europe were invited into the pre¬
viously isolated empire. Although their
skills were invaluable, many people dis¬
trusted them: they were perceived as a
threat to the purity of Russian morals and
the Orthodox faith. Hence the Church
tried to segregate these foreigners as much
as possible. For a while they were obliged
to live outside Moscow; no believer was
allowed to work for them as a servant, and
no Russian tutor was permitted to teach
their children. But the visitors had awaken¬
ed new demands for western conveni¬
ences, and many Russians were seduced by
their comfortable lifestyle, in particular
the upper classes.
In 1675 Tsar Alexis allowed himself to
be persuaded by the patriarchs one last
time to place a ban on “German clothing”,
the outward sign of western customs. In
Surikov’s picture, both the onlookers from
the ordinary people and the boyarina are
still wearing traditional full-length “Tartar
dress”. In the courts of the aristocracy,
however, the short western fashions had
already been adopted. Some young men
even made so bold as to shave - a scan¬
dalous development in a country where
beards were seen as a symbol of manhood,
without which a man could not gain ad¬
mission to Paradise after his death. Just a
few years later Peter the Great, born in
1672, would ban Tartar dress. He made the
wearing of western dress obligatory and
took pleasure in personally cutting off the
beards of the boyars.
Religious
opposition to
western dress

T he serious-faced man beneath the
icon is holding a pilgrim’s staff. Pil¬
grims who travelled across the
country carried the news of the boyarina
Morozova’s fate to the furthermost cor¬
ners of the empire. In 17th-century Rus¬
sia, where any news relating to domestic
or international affairs was treated as clas¬
sified and for the Tsar’s ears only, these pi¬
ous wanderers were the only source of in¬
formation for the common folk. The pil¬
grim in the painting has taken off his hat
before the martyr. His gesture and expres¬
sion reflect the feelings of the painter,
whose features he bears.
Vassily Ivanovich Surikov (1848-1916)
had heard the story of the boyarina Moro¬
zova from the mouth of an elderly relative,
while he was still a boy in a Cossack vil¬
lage in Siberia. He grew up amongst
women who still wore the traditional
Russian dress and hand-embroidered
headscarves seen in this picture. Surikov
studied painting at the St Petersburg
Academy of Art and in 1870, together
with a group of fellow artists, founded an
association dedicated to the organization
of touring exhibitions. They called them¬
selves the Peredvizhniki - the Wanderers -
and showed their works not just in Rus¬
sia’s two major cities, but also in the depths
of the provinces. Instead of confining their
art to a small circle of aristocratic connois¬
seurs, they wanted to take it to a broad
public. In 1886 over 50,000 people saw
their pictures.
The two revolutionary innovations
thereby embraced by Surikov and his
friends were realism and nationalist themes.
They turned their backs on the Salon art of
fashionable court circles and sought to
portray an unembellished reality. “I can¬
not recall ever having seen a more ugly
picture”, wrote one St Petersburg art critic
of the Boyarina in 1887. And according to
the reviewer in the Moscow German
Newspaper, Surikov was either unable or
unwilling “to portray [Morozova], in con-
An artist discovers his theme:
the people versus the
powers-that-be
trast to the uncivilized masses, as a martyr
in the cause of an idea, whereby she would
have elevated such a picture above the
level of vulgar reality”.
But it was just this sort of idealization
that Surikov rejected. The Russian people,
who the critic dismissed as the “uncivil¬
ized masses”, played a leading role in
his works. True to the programme of the
Wanderers, his large history paintings
were devoted to scenes from Russia’s past.
He painted the soldiers who had fought
against Napoleon’s invading armies, and
the rebellious Cossacks, who under Stenka
Rasin in the 17th century had plundered
the countryside until they were merciless¬
ly wiped out. His best-known picture
shows the Streltzi, the elite muskateers
who had dared to rebel against Peter the
Great and who were subsequently execut¬
ed. As in the case of Morozova, the Old
Believer who protested against religious
dictatorship, Surikov’s works focus on
failed attempts to oppose the State. “The
people versus the powers-that-be” was the
artist’s recurrent theme.
It was not by chance that he thereby
translated into the less offensive past the
burning issues, preoccupying him and his
contemporaries, which would eventually
culminate in the revolutions of 1905 and
1917. Surikov lived in a police state, where
the censors suppressed all public criticism
of the regime, every thought of freedom.
Only in the spheres of art and literature
was there a certain degree of liberality. In
their novels and paintings, writers and
artists had a chance to protest against the
general oppression, though naturally only
through allusion or by citing historical
events. But their message reached its audi¬
ence all the same: when a revolutionary
who had spent over 20 years in prison in a
fortress saw an engraving of The Boyarina
Morozova, she was reminded of the execu¬
tion of her" friends. “The painting”, she
wrote, “speaks of the fight for one’s con¬
victions, of the fate of those who staunch¬
ly remained true to themselves.”
463
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464
James Ensor: Christ's Entry into Brussels, 1888

Jesus Christ, the lonely contemporary

When Christ made his entry into Jerusa¬ Masks and crowds are constant¬
lem on the back of a donkey, his sup¬
ly recurring motifs in the work
porters laid clothing and palm branches in
his path, so that he would ride over them.
of the Belgian artist James En¬
“Bless the one who comes in the name of sor, one of the major forerun¬
the Lord!”, they shouted. And to those ners of the Expressionists and
who asked who this man was, they
Surrealists. In 1888 he complet¬
replied: “It’s Jesus, the prophet from
Nazareth in Galilee.”
ed the largest picture he ever
The Belgian James Ensor shows Jesus painted. The canvas - today in
making his entry not into Jerusalem, but the collection of the Getty Mu¬
into the capital of his own country. There
seum in Malibu, California -
are no palm branches and no clothes on
the cobbles. Nor is there anything to be
shows Christ caught up in a
seen of the characteristic architecture of procession, half carnival parade,
Brussels. And alongside the political slo¬ half political demonstration.
gans, Ensor records just one Christian’s
shout, on the right-hand edge of the pic¬
ture: “Long live Christ, King of Brussels”.
Writers of the 19th century had already
sited Jesus in other places and other times.
Honore de Balzac, for example, describes
in his Jesus Christ in Flanders how, at some
point in the Middle Ages, the Saviour
appeared on a ship off Ostend during a
storm; he proceeded to save the poor and
the faithful, but let the others drown. Fyo¬
dor Dostoyevsky envisaged Jesus in
Seville at the time of the Inquisition -
Jesus was burned because his reappearance
upset the order of the Church. Dostoyev¬
sky’s novel The Brothers Karamazov,
which contains the story of the Grand In¬
quisitor, appeared in French in 1888 - the
same year in which Ensor painted Christ’s
Entry into Brussels.
Ensor made Jesus a contemporary. The
citizens of Brussels carry the flags and
banners commonly seen in Ensor’s day,
and are led by a military band. A repres¬
entative of the authorities wearing a white
sash stands on a green podium. It remains
unclear, however, whether the crowd are
really accompanying Jesus into the city, or
whether Jesus hasn’t accidentally got
caught up in a carnival parade.

465

What is it you want? % # ive la Sociale” are the words writ-
Aren't you content? \g ten ab°ve the heads of the crowd:
w the banner reads almost like a cap¬
tion and effectively means “Long live the
social revolution”. Social legislation was in
its infancy in Belgium. In 1886, two years
before Ensor completed his huge painting,
King Leopold II had declared that the lot
of the working classes was “highly deserv¬
ing of attention” and that the lawmakers
should endeavour “to improve it with the
greatest solicitude”.
466
This royal proclamation had been pre¬
ceded by months of strikes and uprisings.
The unrest had started in the mines. The
miners had marched from pit to pit, from
factory to factory, and had sparked a mass
movement such as Belgium had never ex¬
perienced before. The army was called in
to quash it. People were killed, also in En-
sor’s native town of Ostend.
A similar chain of events was unfolding
in most other European cities: an indus¬
trial boom at the expense of the workers,
followed by protests against the inhuman
living conditions endured by the working
classes. Resistance first had to be organ¬
ized. In Brussels in 1885, 59 workers’ as¬
sociations merged to form the Belgian
Workers’ Party. The new party had no one
to vote for it, however, since suffrage was
linked to property and a high income.
Ensor never meddled in politics; that
would have presupposed a sense of social
commitment, which he did not possess. In
the same year as Christ’s Entry into Brus¬
sels, he painted The Strike, in which he
portrays soldiers fighting against unarmed
workers. Standing in one corner of the
picture, with their bayonets fixed, are the
same uniformed figures in shakos who are
playing the music in Christ’s Entry. A
drawing entitled Belgium in the 19th Cen¬
tury must also date from around this time.
It shows the king peering in puzzlement
through his lorgnon at the fighting be¬
tween the workers and the military and
asking: “What is it you want? Aren’t you
content?” The answer is written on one of
the worker’s flags: “General elections”.
More numerous and more significant
than such topical commentaries are the
many pictures in Ensor’s oeuvre portray¬
ing crowds of people. Christ’s Entry into
Brussels is far and away the largest of them,
and is also the biggest painting he ever did.
Its unusual dimensions of 260 x 431 cm
heighten the overwhelming impact of the
crowd advancing towards the viewer.
Almost none of Ensor’s artist colleagues
painted crowds so often and with such
intensity. Ensor thereby pinpointed one of
the major social developments of his day:
the transition from rule by the few to rule
by the many, and the recognition by the
old elite that the working classes were "de¬
serving of attention”. Belgium at that time
had the greatest population density of any
country in Europe and was its second
most important industrial power.
E nsor never left Belgium for any
length of time and - apart from his
years at the Academy in Brussels -
lived in Ostend all his life. He was born
there in 1860 and died there in 1949. As a
youth, he experienced the transformation
of the small fishing village into a cos¬
mopolitan seaside resort. The flourishing
economy made the middle classes rich;
they sought rest and relaxation outside the
rapidly-growing cities. Holidays by the
sea became fashionable. The small town of
Ostend built itself a wide promenade and a
flashy spa and casino. The trains which
stopped at its station included the Orient
Express on its way to Vienna and Con¬
stantinople, the Northern Express en
The people
of Ostend
detested art
route to Berlin and St Petersburg, and ex¬
press trains to Italy. Its port offered fast
connections to England.
Ostend was thus a leading seaside resort
and a major international railway junction.
The locals, however, possessed nothing of
the cosmopolitan outlook of the visitors;
they were not in the least bit ready for
modern art. As Ensor wrote in a letter of
1895: “The Ostenders, a public of oysters,
don’t stir themselves; they don’t want to
see the pictures. Hostile public, crawling
along the beach. The Ostender detests art.
Sticky excrement winding itself into an
oyster, eater of disgusting things, formless,
mumbling sea creatures. Last year thirty
Ostenders visited the exhibition, this year
we will reach the figure of thirty-one.”
Ensor’s mother owned a souvenir shop
in Ostend, from which the family lived.
The woman with the white bonnet, white
bow and black dress bears some of her fea¬
tures. The face to the left of her strongly
resembles a portrait which Ensor made of
his sister. The masked figure with the
pointed white cap also appears in an earlier
picture of a domestic scene: a man with a
long false nose is seated at a table with a
bottle; in front of him stands a woman
with black eyes, a threatening expression
and a stick in her hand. Ensor had often
experienced confrontations of this kind,
albeit unmasked. His father drank.
Ensor loved this father, an Englishman
who had got stuck in Ostend, very much.
He was well-read, multi-talented, and in¬
terested in the arts, but unable to turn his
talents to professional use. He is absent
from the crowd in Christ’s Entry. He had
died the year before; passers-by had found
him dead in the gutter.
Son James was the second man whom
his mother had had to support. She had
sent him off to the Academy in Brussels in
the hope that he would paint souvenir pic¬
tures which she could sell in her shop. He
never did. He could hardly sell anything.
When he painted Christ’s Entry, he had no
studio, but worked in the attic of his par¬
ents’ house. The ceiling was not high
enough to take the whole canvas, and he
had to roll some of it up. Thus he could
only ever see parts of the composition at a
time.
467
No friends,
no women
H
anging and lying in his mother’s
souvenir shop were shells, dried
fish and masks. These were the ob¬
jects amongst which Ensor grew up. The
Ostenders wore fancy dress primarily at
carnival-time, which was celebrated in Os-
tend, it was said, on a particularly grand
scale. Ensor, too, donned a disguise and
took part. “Oh, the animal masks of the
Ostend carnival: enormous lama heads,
badly painted birds with paradise tails,
cranes with blue beaks screeching stupid
lies, tedious know-alls with mouldy
skulls, strange insects, hard eggshells with
soft animals inside!”
No other artist of his day gave such a
central role to masks, whereby it is not al¬
ways clear whether Ensor is portraying an
actual mask itself, or whether he has coar¬
468
sened and distorted real faces until they
look like masks. For him, there was prob¬
ably no real difference: the way he saw
people, it was if they were masked, as if you
couldn’t get close to them, as if they were
so terrifying that you had to run away from
them. He wrote: “I have cheerfully ban¬
ished myself into a seclusion in which the
mask - all power, light and splendour - is
king.” Masks as metaphors for loneliness.
The information we have about his life
confirms that he was mostly very lonely,
and that he lacked understanding compan¬
ions. Within his family, only his father
might be counted as sympathetic, and he
died early. He had few friends, and he
scared off his colleagues with his immod¬
erate egocentricity. He had difficulties,
too, with women. He once noted that he
had been “enslaved for a moment by the
lust of the flesh”. He protected himself
from the evidently unsatisfactory experi¬
ence by putting up a mask: “Ah, woman
and her mask of flesh, living flesh, which
has rightly become a cardboard mask ...”
There is also an element of revenge
about Ensor’s masks. If people didn’t like
him, he would show them just as they
were: ugly. Many of the faces in Christ’s
Entry seem to be painted with particular
brutality - no nuances, no shading, noth¬
ing of the sensitive portraiture of which
he was also a master. He slams one colour
hard down beside the next. One year
later: “I also liked masks because they
injure the public which received me so
badly.”
Bearing in mind Ensor’s difficult rela¬
tionships with other people, the many
crowd scenes in his oeuvre take on a
new significance. Crowds arouse fear. You
can’t talk to masks. Even the city official
on the tribune stands helplessly by. In¬
dividual identity is lost in a crowd, just
as behind a mask. Crowds and masks
point to Ensor’s social problems. It is true
that, in his many crowd pictures, the artist
recorded an important public phenom¬
enon of his day; but the impulse to do so
came from his very private inner world.
A longside masks and crowds, an¬
other typical motif in Ensor’s
oeuvre is the figure of Christ. The
faces of his Christs all resemble that of the
artist: Ensor too had long hair and a short
goatee beard. And on one of his Crucifix¬
ions, in place of INRI he has clearly writ¬
ten his own name. He identified himself
with Christ: Ensor, who is bringing a new
message to Belgium, is not recognized by
the masses.
In Christ’s Entry into Brussels, the viewer
has to look hard to find the Christ. He is
The future
belongs to
the lonely
neither in the centre of the composition
nor particularly emphasized through col¬
our, and his enormous halo might be part
of a carnival costume.
Equating himself with Christ might
seem arrogant, but for Ensor it was no blas¬
phemy. He was probably influenced by
authors such as Ernest Renan (1823-1892),
a French theologian extremely popular in
Ensor’s day. Renan interpreted the life of
Jesus from a positivist angle, discounting
all the miracles and rejecting the dogma
that Jesus was the Son of God. For Renan,
Christ was simply an exemplary character
with an unusual destiny. In his words: “Let
us therefore place the person of Jesus at the
pinnacle of human greatness.” Ensor felt
there were close parallels between his life
and that of Christ: he saw himself as some¬
one who sacrificed himself to art and was
crucified by his critics.
In the 1880s, meanwhile, Christ was
also the subject of argument at a quite dif¬
ferent level. In 1879 a liberal government
had passed a law which decreed that every
local authority had to run a “neutral and
laical” school. Religious education was
banned from the curriculum and teacher
training was placed under the supervision
of the State.
This attack on Belgium’s traditionally
Catholic education system was intended
to weaken the power of the Church. Even
diplomatic relations with the Vatican were
broken off. The controversy around edu¬
cation escalated into a war of religion.
Soldiers drove teachers and pupils out
of Catholic schools; people were killed.
When the pro-Catholic parties regained
the majority in 1884, they in turn booted
out the newly-appointed teachers.
Ensor’s Christ pictures inevitably fell
between the battle lines drawn up by the
two sides in this dispute. Nor were they
helped by the fact that the Catholic
Church ultimately won the day.
Much more clearly visible than the fig¬
ure of Christ are the soldiers who are
marching in front of him like a black wall.
It says on their standard that they are
“doctrinaire” and “toujours reussi” - al¬
ways successful. The members of the mil¬
itary band are in fact Christ’s opponents,
those who defend the existing system and
fight against anything new. For Ensor,
they were the art critics who, because they
continued to base their judgements on old
criteria, failed to recognize his achieve¬
ments and thereby barred him from the
major exhibitions. Meanwhile, the fact
that the drum major marching at the front
edge of the painting is a bishop indicates
that Ensor also connected the soldiers
with the influence of the Church.
If we look more closely, we can see
that the space around Christ is devoid of
people. As in the masks and the crowd,
Ensor again reveals something of his own
affliction: loneliness. To be able to bear his
isolation more easily, he sublimates it and
thereby thinks of Christ’s abandonment.
He also declared it a necessary precondi¬
tion of all art, prophesying: “Only isolat¬
ed, lonely and great, composed, measured
and patient sufferers - will be great in art.
The future belongs to the lonely!”
469
 Otto Dix: Metropolis (Triptych), 1928

Not long until it

bursts apart

470
Otto Dix (1891-1969) completed his Metropolis triptych (181 x 403 cm) with the
“roaring twenties” in full fling. Berliners danced the shimmy, the Charleston and the
one-step; jazz was played even at the opera. Yet the consequences of defeat in the
Great War were conspicuous even ten years after Armistice Day: begging war
veterans, cripples and the victims of inflation were in sharp contrast to the hectic pace
and fun-loving frenzy of the big city. Dix captures the contradictory scenes in this se¬
cular altarpiece. He, too, found it difficult to put his wartime experiences behind him.

471
 The painter of the Metropolis triptych
hailed from Untermhaus, a small town
near Gera in Thuringia. Gera belonged to
one of the smallest German states, the
princedom of the Junior Branch of Reufi.
Otto Dix was born there on “2nd Decem¬
ber 1891 at 1.30 in the morning in the
house next to the old Gothic church”. Un¬
termhaus was a small town in a small state,
with a rigidly structured society in which
everybody knew everything about every¬
body else and in which the upper class,
even according to the proclamations of the
church, was God-given. Keeping order
was seen as every citizen’s duty, and private
charities provided even the under-priv¬
ileged with a minimum of social security.
Dix’s father worked as a moulder in a
foundry; he was thus near the bottom of
the social ladder. At the top, in distant Ber¬
lin, was the Emperor himself. The local
ruler was Prince Henry XIV of Reufi. Dix’s
father was unable to pay for his son’s edu¬
cation as a painter; the Prince stepped in to
help, but only on condition that the boy
learned a decent trade first. Dix left school
at the age of 13, apprenticing himself for
four years to a decorative artist.
Finally putting the small-town atmo¬
sphere behind him, he left for Dresden, the
Saxon capital and a centre of art. Here he
entered the School of Arts and Crafts. In
1915 he went to war and was deeply af¬
fected by the collapse of every kind of
order, by the misery he saw at the front, by
fear, mutilation and death. Never again
would he be able to paint pictures that con¬
formed to the rules of conventional aes¬
thetics. The role of art was not to make life
pleasant. Dix’s paintings disillusioned their
specatators; many found his manner re¬
volting. He was twice charged with paint¬
ing obscene portraits of whores and
brothel scenes, and twice acquitted. In
1923, the director of an art museum bought
one of Dix’s war pictures, entitled Trench¬
es, but was forced to remove it by the mu¬
seum’s governing board. One sensitive
critic wrote: “Rembrandt’s second ana¬
tomy lesson is charming. The Dix - excuse
my language - made me want to throw
up.”
Dix painted numerous self-portraits.
With his thrusting chin and provocative,
even aggressive expression, he resembled
the war cripple in the left panel of the trip¬
tych. Perhaps - though the artist never said
so himself - his overpowering desire to dis¬
472
illusion his spectators was fed by his prole¬
tarian background. He may have wanted to
get his own back on the bourgoisie, with
their cosy notions of beauty, security and
order.
After the war, Dix lived at Dresden and
Dtisseldorf, then moved to Berlin, a me¬
tropolis of four million inhabitants, and
became “famous”. The greater part of his
work now consisted of coldly realistic,
large-scale portraits of doctors amd art¬
ists, as well as bohemian types who fre¬
quented the “Romanische Cafe”. In 1927
he was offered a professorship at the
Dresden Academy, where he had grad¬
uated only five years earlier. Notwith¬
standing his success in Berlin, he returned
to the town he knew and liked. With him,
he took the preliminary studies for the
Metropolis triptych, finally executing the
painting in his quiet Academy studio on
the Bruhlsche Terrasse, with its broad
vista over the Elbe. Full of personal ex¬
perience, the work also typified the mood
of the twenties.
Cripples
T hough the Metropolis triptych was
painted ten years after the armistice,
the war is still very much in evid¬
ence: in the right panel is a man without
legs, the remains of whose face suggest the
effects of makeshift surgery; in the left
panel a man in a field-grey uniform lies on
the ground behind a war-cripple with arti¬
ficial limbs and crutches.
The lost war still felt uncannily close,
not only in Dix’s paintings, but also in
contemporary books, diaries and maga¬
zines. Ludwig Renn’s novel “War” ap¬
peared in 1928; Erich Maria Remarque’s
All Quiet on the Western Front in 1929;
and in August 1927, Harry Graf Kessler,
diplomat and man of letters, noted in his
diary: “Went to an American war film this
evening: ’’What Price Glory?" - best I’ve
seen to date ...”
In August 1928 Kessler crossed the
battlefields of Verdun to Rheims, where he
saw “the hurt, dreadfully abused cathe¬
dral, exhausted by fire”. He expressed the
wish that the whole region be made sa¬
crosanct, a mecca to pilgrims who con¬
demned war. The entry also contains an
apergu reminiscent of the kind of contra¬
dictory scene Dix captured in the panels of
his triptych, where destruction and amuse¬
ment exist side by side: “The only pilgrims
there now are crowds of tourists, desecrat¬
ing the landscape like a revolting swarm of
flies.”
“War”, “soldiers” and “the military”
were key words in the parliamentary de¬
bates of the Weimar Republic, too. The
Left had made Prussian militarism respon¬
sible for the disaster, while the Right
blamed the ignominy of defeat on mutiny
in the ranks. The Left saw the threat of a
new war in the nationalist and racial
politics of various right-wing groupings,
while the Right saw the socialist parties
plunging the country into anarchy - and
so it went on. The election of Field Mar¬
shal Hindenburg, himself a symbol of the
Prussian militarist tradition, as President
of the Reich was a victory for the Right.
That was in 1925, three years before Dix
painted maimed soldiers in his Metropolis
altarpiece.
It is unlikely that Dix wanted the motif
to be understood as party political propa¬
ganda. At least this was not his primary in¬
tention. Dix was haunted by memories of
horror, destruction and wartime suffering.
The figure of the cripple is synonymous
with these memories. This was true not
only for Dix. No period in German art has
produced so many paintings of cripples as
the Weimar Republic. They made frequent
appearances in the literature of the period,
too. Erich Kastner’s urban novel Fabian
(1931) contains passages that could almost
be read as a commentary on Dix’s portrayal
of the cripple with the botched-up face
whose hand is raised to his temple to salute
women bent on ignoring him.
 Fabian, the hero of the novel, hears that
“soldiers were still lying maimed in lonely
hovels throughout the land: men without
limbs, men with horrifically distorted
faces, men without noses or mouths. And
nurses who stopped at nothing would pour
food through thin glass tubes, poking them
through scarred, excrescent tissue into
holes where these deformed creatures once
had mouths - mouths capable of laughing,
speaking, screaming.”
The Negro
“ ... in a bastardized, nigger-ridden world,
all that we think of as human beauty and
nobility ... would be lost forever.” A “nig¬
ger-ridden world” was the nightmare-vi¬
sion invoked in 1927 by a politician: Adolf
Hitler, in Mein Kampf. Many Germans
thought and felt in that way. “Negroes”
and Jews threatened the Germanic race
and, more especially, its culture. They were
enemies.
The French army of occupation in the
Rhineland was also considered an enemy,
partly composed as it was of black soldiers
from the French colonies. For blacks to
have power over Germans on German soil
was deeply humiliating to many German
patriots.
But public attitudes towards blacks dur¬
ing the Weimar Republic were determined
not only by racist propaganda and the
presence of black soldiers in the occupying
army. Blacks, identified with America,
were harbingers of a New World. Before
the Great War, Europeans had viewed the
United States as a kind of colony. They had
looked down on the Americans as the va¬
liant, but primitive colonists of a vast wil¬
derness - especially with regard to cultural
matters. For where was their music, their
painting, their literature?
By the end of the First World War
America had unexpectedly shot to the po¬
sition of number one world power. Its in¬
dustry had reached a higher stage of devel¬
opment than those of Europe. Taylorism,
the principle whereby manufacturing was
broken down into a series of easily
defined and easily executed steps (at the
conveyor belt), had become the model to
which European industrialists aspired.
The general standard of living, industrial
relations and the practical effects
’ ? Ni
I against a music without rhythm. Reflec¬
2 custodians of all that is precious ...”
democracy all seemed equally admirable,
or in any case better than their equivalents
in Germany. However, the most import¬
ant thing to come out of America, espe¬
cially as far as the cities were concerned,
was its new lifestyle. “Ah, but it seems the
days of old Paris are numbered: it’s be¬
coming Americanized. And it’s Berlin,
they say, who calls the American tune on
the Continent.”
This view of the contemporary scene
was the subject of an article, appropriately
entitled “The Americanization of Eur¬
ope?”, by the Swiss essayist Max Rychner.
Published in the Neue Rundschau in 1928,
the year in which Dix completed his
Metropolis, the article lists several fea¬
tures Rychner considered typical of the
new lifestyle: aggressive optimism, un¬
assuming self-confidence, an unbroken
faith in the goodness of the world, youth,
vitality. He sees the musical expression of
this temper in the music of the blacks: jazz.
of
J
Jazz
azz took off in Germany in the mid¬
twenties. Sam Wooding and Duke El¬
lington toured with their bands in
1925, and a journal called Musikbldtter des
Anbruchs, in the same year, devoted an en¬
tire issue to the latest music. This contained
a description of another aspect of jazz:
“Revolt of the darker national instincts
tion of the times: chaos, machines, noise,
extensity to the limit. The victory of irony,
the defeat of ceremony, the wrath of the
The custodians of all that was precious
were those who prosecuted a strict division
between music as entertainment and music
as art. Jazz satisfied the demands of both
categories: it was as popular as the com¬
mercially produced hits of the era, yet it
lacked the latter’s sickly-sweet superfi¬
ciality. Jazz consorted badly with the as¬
sumed hierarchy of German cultural
values. It was “high” culture that came
from “below”. Many music critics, if they
took note of this kind of music at all, were
left confused, their “wrath” aroused.
However, they could hardly avoid tak¬
ing note when jazz musicians took to the
opera stage in Ernst Krenek’s “Johnny
Strikes up the Band!” in 1927, with perfor¬
mances at 50 German theatres. Chaos, ma¬
chines and noise were certainly part of the
experience: telephones rang, sirens
howled, machines pounded. The hero of
the piece was a black jazz violinist. For the
finale, the choir came in with: “A new
world crosses the ocean and takes Old Eu¬
rope by dance.”
473
Charleston
nees together, feet apart - the couple
in the painting can only be dancing
the shimmy or the Charleston. Both
dances were new at the time, imports from
the USA. Charleston was made popular in
Europe by an American chorus girl called
Josephine Baker. With'her brown, supple
body, her grand gestures and hair slicked
down with pomade, she established a trend
followed by many of the women and girls
who frequented bars and nightclubs.
The twenties, especially in the big cities,
were “a wild ball, sweeping along even the
tired and weary”, according to Walther
Kiaulehn, the Berlin feature writer. Dan¬
cing took place not only at bars and clubs;
people danced at home, too, thanks to the
phonograph, and gramophone records,
which entered mass production in 1925. In
1927 a poem published in the magazine
Weltbiihne began:
Discs in a pale lilac glow,
Violin's syrupy squeak,
Smart set's flitting shadow,
Filtered negro musique ...
and ended:
For all their life's evanescent,
They live as if in a trance,
Since Heine's day incessant -
On a volcano's edge they dance.
There is much in the writing of the period
to suggest a link between the dancing
mania of the twenties and the anxiety of a
society teetering on the edge of a volcano,
an anxiety also found in contemporary
painting. In the work of artists who were
interested in the portrayal of society - Max
Beckmann, George Grosz, Otto Dix or
474
Karl Hofer - bars, nightclubs and carnival-
esque festivities were, like the crippled, a
recurrent theme, only here the dancers
seem bored rather than amused, and dis¬
turbed rather than exuberant: not one per¬
son is smiling in Dix’s bar.
Flappers
uch had changed since the war,
including women’s fashions and
hairstyles. Before and during the
war women had worn ankle-length dresses
with long sleeves and laced-up waists, em¬
phasizing their hips and bosom, as well as
full coiffures. In the 1920s skirts rode up
above the knee; European women had
never been permitted to show so much leg.
Dresses were straight, while breasts, waist
and hips were concealed, indeed denied. It
was now deemed permissible, too, to re¬
veal one’s arms, including the shoulders,
and women began to shave their armpits.
Hair, which once, like the bosom and hips,
had been a signal zone of female eroticism,
was cut short, like a man’s.
This departure from traditional female
dress had its own reasons. Pre-war society
had been strongly male-oriented, with the
officer providing the dominant role model.
While the brisk military type had deter¬
mined men’s notions of manliness, women
had been expected to exude femininity. In
1918, however, their menfolk came back
from the front. Far from basking in glory,
the latter had been forced to look on as their
supreme commander, the Emperor, that
paragon of manly virtues, had fled the
country. Meanwhile, during the war,
women had learned to fend for themselves
and their families without the support of a
husband. Gaining self-confidence, they had
grown estranged from their traditional role
as “little women”. Many were war-widows,
and had to go to work. Women poured into
the factories, staffed offices, convinced pro¬
fessors they could study as well as any man.
In the new Republic, as opposed to the old
Empire, they had also won the right to vote.
Besides their debt to military defeat,
changing gender roles also drew their im¬
petus from a long, if initially weak, struggle
for women’s emancipation. American in¬
fluence also played a part, brought home to
European audiences by American-style
chorus girls. Unlike French cancan dancers,
these girls did not try to whip up their audi¬
ences into an emotional frenzy. On the con¬
trary, precisely choreographed, in long
lines, they looked more like the interlocking
parts of a machine. The sociologist and film
critic Siegfried Kracauer had this to say:
“Their lines snaking up and down the
stage were an ecstatic advertisement for the
merits of the conveyor belt; their quick¬
step sounded like: business, business; their
legs, simultaneously thrown in the air, glee¬
fully approved progress by rationalization;
and their constant repetition of certain set
pieces without ever breaking ranks pro¬
jected upon one’s mind’s eye the image of a
never-ending line of automobiles leaving
the factory for the great wide world ...”
The word “girl” became synonymous
with a certain female type, the “flapper”:
down-to-earth, neat, sporting, confident.
A typical flapper was unromantic, scorn¬
ing jealousy and laughing chivalry in the
face. The latter was now considered part of
the dead stock of the Empire, with no place
in the modern world. The flapper had her
counterpart, however, in the man-eating
“vamp”, later personified by Marlene Die¬
trich. Essentially a later version of the
femme fatale, there was nothing especially
new about the vamp; she may not have epi¬
tomized the period to quite the same extent
as the flapper, but she resembled the latter
in that she, too, refused to subordinate her¬
self to men. The large standing female
figure in Dix’s painting illustrates aspects
of both: the ostrich plumes and eye make¬
up of the vamp, combined with the flap¬
per’s male hair-do, loose hanging dress and
sporting legs.
Waiting room
T he 1920s in Germany are referred to
as the “Weimar period”, after the
Weimar Republic, but the period
should really be known after Berlin, since
it was here, in the city of four million, that
the typical features of the period made
themselves felt: constant political struggle,
the American influence, the theatre boom,
press diversity, intermingling of politics
and art, the mania for entertainment. To
many contemporaries, especially intellec¬
tuals and artists, the constant tension of liv¬
ing in Berlin was unbearable. Siegfied
Kracauer: “In the streets of Berlin it can
suddenly strike you that it is unlikely to be
very long until the whole lot bursts apart.”
The feeling was widespread in the Wei¬
mar Republic that things were not “quite
right”. People did not feel at home in the
world; something had to “happen”. Rather
than developing naturally and gradually, the
new state had taken the place of the old far
too abruptly when the Emperor abdicated.
With the Emperor gone, the political and so¬
cial head and cornerstone was missing. De¬
prived of their guiding star, the people had
lost their bearings. There was no basic pol¬
itical consensus. Parliament, where more
than 20 different political parties sat, proved
an inadequate tool of government. The
general mood was one of anticipation:
something had to change. The protagonist
of Erich Kastner’s Fabian describes the
mood as one imbued with the sense of the
“provisional”. People led a temporary exist¬
ence, as if in a gigantic “waiting room”.
The spaces depicted in Dix’s triptych,
too, with their uninviting atmosphere, are
reminiscent of waiting rooms: on the right,
lavishly lit, fake architecture of the grot¬
esque sort found in movie palaces at the
time; in the middle, a dance bar whose
lighting alone would put most people off
dancing; on the left, a gloomy bridge, with
lemonade-coloured light spilling onto the
cobbles from the brothels. Dix’s metro¬
polis is anything but hospitable.
Kracauer’s presentiment that everything
was about to burst asunder has found its
way into the paintings of the triptych. Pic¬
ture space appears to have come apart at the
seams. On the right, pieces of architecture
are meaninglessly piled on top of one an¬
other; the parquet floor in the middle slopes
down to the picture-plane, and the cobbles
on the left are much too large in relation to
the bricks of the bridge pillar. There is also
something inveterately “wrong” with the
painting’s use of depth: the dancing couple
is shown further away from the large stand¬
ing figure than the lines on the parquet floor
allow; the brightly-dressed whore stroking
the horse’s head with her pointed fingers is
standing next to the head of the lying man at
the front of the passage, but the horse is
standing at the back. The feeling is that
something has gone terribly “wrong”. The
horse, too, with its sack of oats, looks oddly
out of place.
“What was the point of his staying in this
town, in this box of building-bricks gone
mad?” Erich Kastener asks on behalf of Fa¬
bian, the hero of his novel. “After all, he
could watch Europe’s decline and fall just as
easily from the town where he was born.”
Kastner has Fabian return to his place of
origin: Dresden. By coincidence, Otto Dix
too returned to Dresden in 1927, when he
was offered a professorship there, carrying
in his portfolio the preliminary sketches for
the triptych. He was travelling to a town he
knew well, a place where he felt at home; he
may even have felt safe there.
Degenerate
O nce in Dresden, Dix increasingly
turned his hand to family por¬
traits: his wife, his children, him¬
self as a father. More than ever before, he
seems to have lived in harmony with the
world around him. He began to paint Bib¬
lical motifs. It was hardly coincidence that
led him to tell people he had been born
“next to the old Gothic church”.
The Metropolis triptych also invites cer¬
tain religious associations, though not only
because of the Dix’s chosen form: the
winged altarpiece. The vertical row of
women set out of perspective in the right
panel recalls the angelic hosts of medieval
art. The position of the ostrich-plume fan
is reminiscent of a halo. The lengths of ma¬
terial draped over knee-length dresses re¬
mind us of the trains of show stars, or of
fallen angels’ wings. The cripple on the left
may not be nailed to a cross, but he is cer¬
tainly hanging on wood. Dix might have
entitled the triptych “Harlot Babylon”.
Dix was one of the first to lose his posi¬
tion when the Nazis came to power in
1933. The Nazis demanded that art use its
power to make life beautiful again and, in
particular, to glorify German history and
the Aryan race. The paintings that had
made Dix famous did not fulfil these re¬
quirements. Instead, they were accused of
“deeply offending the moral sensibility of
the German people ... and of undermin¬
ing ... the will of the German people to de¬
fend their country.”
Exhibitions held in the spirit of propa¬
ganda used Dix’s paintings as a method of
intimidation. The exhibitions had titles like
“Art as Demoralization”, or “Mirrors of
Corruption”, or quite simply “Degenerate
Art”. The Nazis placed such “demorali¬
zing” pictures in a political context, inter¬
preting them as “mirror images” of the
Weimar period.
In 1934 Dix was banned from exhibiting
his work, and 260 of his paintings were con¬
fiscated in the course of that year. He retired
to the country, living in Hemmenhofen on
Lake Constance from 1936 until his death.
Metropolis triptych, which remained in his
estate until 1965, entered the possession of
the Stadische Galerie Stuttgart in 1972,
where it is now exhibited, together with the
large-scale preliminary studies, to the
painting’s best possible advantage.
475
476
 Marc Chagall: White Crucifixion, 1938
The Vitebsk Man of Sorrows
In his novel The Brothers Karamazov,
Dostoyevsky tells of a Jew who crucifies a
child. The Jew, according to the story, cuts
off all the four-year-old boy’s fingers be¬
fore nailing him to a wall and standing back
to enjoy the sight.
This horrific tale epitomizes the image
of Jews presented in all of Dostoyevsky’s
books: Jews are dishonest and malicious,
exploiters, conniving hoarders of gold and
silver, and perhaps - one is never quite sure
- they slaughter little children at Easter.
Dostoyevsky’s allegations and insinua¬
tions were a reflection of the anti-Semitic
attitudes of many of his countrymen. The
Tsars, in tandem with the Orthodox
Church, had long deprived Jews of the
right even to dwell on “holy Russian” soil.
This situation did not change until the 18th
century when the partition of Poland
paved the way for Tsarist Russia to expand
west. Among the country’s newly acquired
subjects were a million Jews - at that time
practically half the world Jewish popula¬
tion.
From then on their predicament, not
unlike that of Jews in many other Euro¬
pean states, varied between periods of
toleration and persecution, without their
ever being fully accepted. The Tsars
repeatedly outlawed Jewish books and
schools, attempting to coerce the “unbe¬
lievers” into accepting the Christian faith;
there were pogroms, synagogues and
shops were plundered, people killed.
Writers like Dostoyevsky provided moral
justification.
The Brothers Karamazov appeared in
1879 and 1880; not long afterwards, in
1887, Chagall was born at Vitebsk, a small
town where Jews enjoyed relative freedom
of movement. To visit St. Petersburg,
however, the capital of Tsarist Russia, spe¬
cial permission was required. Permits,
highly coveted, were granted only to those
with proof of employment: as a servant or
a sign-painter, or a student at one of the
art academies. Chagall, each of these in
succession, frequently found himself shar¬
ing cramped sleeping quarters with many
of his fellow men: “I began to understand
that we Jews were not the only ones to be
forbidden the right to live in Russia, for
there were many Russians too, all crawl¬
ing over each other like lice on a head of
hair.”
Professional status allowed a small num¬
ber of privileged Jews, most of them doc¬
tors, lawyers or bankers, to live in St. Pe¬
tersburg. They would often support young
artists, and one paid for Chagall to visit
Paris in 1910. It was a long journey - not
only in kilometres. Chagall had come far:
from an isolated township in provincial
White Russia, via St. Petersburg, to the cul¬
tural centre of Western Europe.
Marc Chagall died in 1985 at the
However, in this respect Chagall was
not unique. Many artists, members of the age of 97. Many of his paintings
oppressed Jewish minority, left Russia for plead for love and understanding
the West in the period before the First between the peoples of the world,
World War, and again after the Russian
or warn of terror and violence.
Revolution. Their contribution to western
When the National Socialists in¬
culture was both enriching and influential.
They included writers like Ilya Ehren- tensified their campaign to exter¬
burg, the set designer Leon Bakst, the minate the Jews, unleashing the
sculptors Jacques Lipchitz and Ossip Zad¬ “Kristallnacht” pogrom in 1938,
kine, as well as Chaim Soutine and Issai
Marc Chagall, a Jew, painted the
Kulviansky, two of the many painters of
whom Marc Chagall was only the most fa¬
Christian Redeemer surrounded
mous. by scenes and symbols taken from
Among the artists, only Chagall re¬ the life and beliefs of the artist’s
mained faithful to his Russian-Jewish
own Russian-Jewish homeland.
background. His paintings return again
The painting was not a work of
and again to, the same motifs: the small huts
of Vitebsk, devout Jews with the Torah protest. As an allegory of human
scroll, rabbis and synagogues. “I have con¬ suffering, it pointed to a divine
tinued the work passed on to me by my order behind the misery and afflic¬
parents and by their parents in turn for
tions of this world. The painting,
thousands of years”, he said. “I shall never
forget the land of my birth.” Thanks to
measuring 155 x 139.5 cm, is now
Chagall’s paintings, many people - even in the Art Institute of Chicago.
those to whom the world of the Jews
otherwise means very little - have become
acquainted with Jewish motifs.
477
T he houses in Chagall’s painting are
depicted lying on their sides; one is
on its roof, another is up in flames.
The laws of statics and gravity seem no
longer to apply in the world of the paint¬
ing; the buildings appear to be made of
folded paper, or part of a dream. In any
case, they look very different from those
we are used to seeing. Chagall does not at¬
tempt to copy the recognizable world, but
creates a world of his own, selecting and
juxtaposing otherwise disparate fragments
of reality. Among these are simple houses
of the kind in which he was born at Vi¬
tebsk. At the time of Chagall’s birth in
1887, Vitebsk, situated on the river Drina
near the former Lithuanian border, had
some 60,000 inhabitants, over half of them
Jews. Some were tradesmen and craftsmen,
or founded factories, but the majority,
like the Chagalls, were poor. Chagall’s
father earned his living in a fishmonger’s
shop “hoisting heavy barrels, and I felt my
heart twist like a Turkish pretsel when I
saw him lift such heavy weights or go rum-
Pictures
of a world
without pictures
478
maging in barrels of herring with his
frozen hands.”
Though in material terms, standards
were extremely modest, Jewish tradition
and religious devotion made life culturally
rich. The Sabbath and the different relig¬
ious festivals determined the course of the
year. “On Fridays, when we’d eaten the
Sabbath evening meal, our father would al¬
ways fall asleep at the same place in the
prayer”, so that Chagall’s mother, he re¬
called, would say to her eight children:
“Come on! Lets sing that song about the
rabbi!” Thus Chagall’s account in his
memoirs. “My mother was the eldest
daughter of a grandfather who spent half
his life by the stove, a quarter in the syna¬
gogue, and the rest at the butcher’s shop.”
“Thou shalt not make unto thee any
graven image, or any likeness of any thing
that is in heaven above, or that is in the
earth beneath, or that is in the water under
the earth.” The Old Testament command¬
ment forbidding idolatry was interpreted
by Jews as a prohibition against the paint¬
ing of pictures. “No picture hung on our
walls, not even a print... Until 1906, in all
the years I spent at Vitebsk, I had never
seen a single picture.” In 1906 Chagall, 19
years old at the time, was permitted to re¬
ceive lessons from a portraitist in his home
town. However, his father refused to place
the money for tuition in his hand, throw¬
ing it on the ground in the yard instead. As
a dfevout Jew he did not wish to encourage
painting; but neither did he wish to prevent
his eldest son from doing so. Chagall later
recalled: “My uncle is too frightened to
give me his hand. He has heard that I am a
painter. What if I wanted to paint him?
God forbids such things. Sin.”
Not only the houses, but the scene with
the prostrate woman and child, too, derive
from the artist’s memories of his childhood
and youth. Though he had not seen these
figures himself, he had been told about
them, and was evidently deeply impressed.
He recalled: “I no longer remember -
could it have been my mother who told
me? Apparently, at the very moment of my
birth a great fire broke out in a little house
near Vitebsk, on the road behind the
prison. The town was in flames - the poor
Jewish quarter burning. They took the bed
and mattress, with the mother and the baby
at her feet, to a safe place on the other side
of town.” The artist has thus included him¬
self in the form of an anecdote relating to
the day of his birth in a great painting of
fire, persecution and floating figures.
The inscription
"I am a Jew"
deleted
W hen Chagall painted these child¬
hood memories he was over 50
years old. He had incorporated
them in a picture whose subject was in¬
spired by a misfortune of quite different
proportions to that of a local fire: the perse¬
cution of the Jews by the Nazis. Chagall
painted the White Crucifixion in 1938, the
year of the “Kristallnacht” pogrom in Ger¬
many, when Hitler’s Brownshirts set fire to
the synagogues, plundered Jewish shops
and physically abused Jewish citizens. The
mass extermination of Jews in concentra¬
tion camps had not yet begun, but the
“Kristallnacht” and banning of Jews from
German public life were stages on the way.
Only a tiny detail betrays the occasion
that gave rise to Chagall’s painting: in front
of the burning synagogue is a figure appar¬
ently clad in the uniform of the Brown-
shirts. However, as if shrinking from so
unequivocal a statement, the artist has
avoided painting the Nazi emblem on the
flags. He also later deleted an unambiguous
clue from the white piece of cloth covering
the chest of the man in the blue smock. It
originally carried the German inscription:
“Ich bin Jude” (I am a Jew), as an extant
preliminary sketch for the painting reveals.
But Chagall was not a political realist,
nor was he interested in current affairs, or
he would not have painted refugees in 1938
who, with their long beards and Russian
smocks, resembled the Jews of his old
home town. Moreover, the painting not
only avoids precise indications of time or
place, but does without aids like perspec¬
tive or a recognizable horizon, both of
which usually facilitate orientation. This
contributes to the altogether dreamlike
tenor of the work.
Torah scrolls are twice depicted in the
painting: one is burning on the ground in
the bottom right; the other is in the res¬
cuing arms of a man on the left. The Torah
is essentially the Jewish Bible, comprising
the first five books of the Mosaic law, the
Pentateuch; it is kept in the synagogue, and
an exerpt is read on the Sabbath. When a
boy is accepted into the community, he
reads the weekly portion in Hebrew, and
when a Jew dies, the Torah is brought from
the synagogue to his home. The Torah
forms the basis of Jewish religious practice,
as well as of social cohesion in the Jewish
community. Adherence to the letter of He¬
brew texts in the Torah helped Jews survive
through periods of persecution and exile.
It is rather more difficult to establish the
exact significance of the red flags shown
entering at the top left of the picture. Do
the armed men belong to the oppressors,
or are they liberators? Are the flags red be¬
cause Chagall felt the painting needed the
colour, or did he intend us to think of
Communists? In fact, Chagall was a Bol¬
shevik Commissar for Fine Art, with the
task of founding an art academy at Vitebsk.
He was forced to yield the post two years
later, however, not because of political dif¬
ficulties, but because of quarrels about art
with two of the teachers he had appointed
at his institute: El Lissitzky and Kasimir
Malevich.
Prior to returning to the West, travelling
first to Berlin and then on to Paris, Chagall
worked as a stage designer in Moscow,
largely for the State Jewish Theatre, and
taught at an orphanage. There is practically
no evidence to suggest he studied Marxism
or Lenin’s politics. Chagall saw the Revol¬
ution as a means of releasing creative
potential, a project to which he willingly
lent his support. He had no time for politi¬
cal structures or ideological battles.
479
T he floating, birdlike figures shown
wailing and gesticulating above the
Cross are evidently Jews rather than
Christian saints. Two are wearing a “tal-
lith”, or prayer shawl, over their heads, and
one has a small leather box at his forehead
containing parchments inscribed with pas¬
sages from the Old Testament. These are
the “tefillin”, or phylacteries, worn by de¬
vout Jews at prayer.
Chagall, more than any other 20th-cen¬
tury painter, is the artist of floating figures,
figures who appear to recline on air. Some
of the figures are dreaming; many are
lovers; yet others are musicians. These
figures have in common their “height¬
ened” state; their bodies appear to respond
to intense emotion. The present scene
possibly depicts the exaltation of the de¬
vout. The motif is reminiscent of a Jewish
anecdote: “Sometimes, when Rabbi Elime-
lech spoke the Shema on the Sabbath, he
Joyful are those
who perceive
the divine purpose
480
would take out his pocket watch. This
being the hour when he felt his soul most
likely to melt in sheer bliss, he looked at
his watch to keep himself locked in the
present, and thereby attached to the
world.”
But perhaps the artist intended to sug¬
gest not a state of emotional intensity, but
the presence of Jewish teachers and
prophets; or possibly he had reason to
mean both. In his memoirs Chagall recalls
the very real presence of the prophets in his
parents’ house: “Ordering me to open the
door, my father raised his glass. Were we
opening our door, the outside door, at such
a late hour to let in the prophet Elijah? A
silvery sheaf of white starlight darted into
my eyes out of the blue velvet sky - and
straight into my heart. But where was Eli¬
jah and his fiery white chariot? Perhaps he
was still out there in the yard, about to
enter the house as a frail old man, or a
stooping beggar with a sack hung over his
back and a stick in his hand? ‘Here I am.
And where, I pray you, is my glass of
wine?’”
The story of the rabbi keeping himself in
the present by looking at his pocket watch
is part of the Chassidic tradition in which
Chagall grew up. The Chassidim, or
“pious ones”, aspire to the perfection of a
divine purpose in reality, no matter how
imperfect, miserable or painful reality itself
might be. One who succeeds in this en¬
deavour, even briefly during prayer, is
filled at once with joy, ecstasy, enthusiasm.
It is no coincidence that the Chassidim are
great singers and dancers.
Chassidism was originally a response to
the more intellectual discipline of Talmud¬
ism; the “pious” held intuition and the
emotions in higher esteem than logic.
Chassidism has no firm doctrine, but is
rich in tales and legends. Many concern the
right way - the pious way - to look at
things. One tells of how Rabbi Lob visited
an elder, “not to hear his teachings, but
merely to see how he tied and untied his
felt shoes”. Rabbi Menachem Mendel,
from Vitebsk like Chagall, is reported as
saying: “When I see a bundle of straw lying
lengthways rather than sideways on the
ground, it is to me a sign of divine
presence.”
Chagall had
little time for
political protest

S tories like these were part of Chagall’s

childhood, and it was perfectly in
keeping with their undogmatic spirit
for the artist to paint Christ with a halo.
For in orthodox Judaism, Christ is not seen
as a Messiah sent to redeem the world and
propagate the Kingdom of Heaven; a halo
would normally therefore be considered
inappropriate. Nor is Christ, according to
Jewish belief, what the Roman Pontius Pi¬
late ironically dubbed him: “The King of
the Jews”. Yet Chagall not only uses the
Roman abbreviation for Pilate’s epithet,
I.N.R.I., but writes it in Jewish lettering, as
if it expressed the Jewish view. To ortho¬
dox opinion the descending beam of light
would also be unacceptable. For the Jews,
Christ was a normal being; he may have led
an exemplary life, and perhaps he was even
a prophet, but that was all.
Such matters were of little interest to
Chagall, who felt indifferent to the opi¬
nions of the rabbis. In leaving his home
town, he had also left behind him the Jew¬
ish religion; he no longer went to synagoge
or celebrated Jewish festivals. Nor, for that
matter, did he bother with the New Testa¬
ment, not even - according to his daughter
Ida - when designing the cathedral win¬
dows at Rheims and Metz.
“I am not a Jewish artist”, he once said.
“To me the Bible means only one thing. It
is the most important source of material
for poetry.” Chagall inhabited a world of
his own, a world of ideas and images,
among which were not only praying pressed minority who were unable to de¬ tion at the bombing of the Spanish town by
figures, the Torah scroll or wooden huts at fend themselves, and whose watchful at¬ planes of the “Condor Legion” in 1937.
Vitebsk, but also the Crucifixion. Al¬ tempts to see a divine purpose in the reality Thus both artists adopted an attitute to¬
together he painted oyer twenty Crucifix¬ of their wretched condition was virtually a wards atrocities committed by the German
ions, the first, in 1912, showing Christ with means of survival. In his autobiography Facists. Picasso’s work is an appeal for re¬
the body of a child. Later, he appears to Chagall wrote of the indiscriminate, sistance, calling for immediate protest; the
have identified as an artist with the figure “sheep-like” love he felt for his fellow artist wants to change the world. By con¬
of Christ. By 1940 he was painting Eastern beings, but there is no indication that he trast, Chagall’s masterpiece points to a dif¬
European Jews nailed or bound to the defended himself against discrimination. ferent world altogether, a world beyond
Cross in the village streets of his youth. All Nowhere does he mention the Socialist or death, the central column of white light
his depictions of Christ and the Crucifix¬ Zionist movements that inspired many pushing the more colourful scenes away
ion have one thing in common: they are Russian Jews. They could not reach Marc from the centre towards the edges of the
symbols of suffering. Chagall; they bore no relation to his world. canvas. Flight, fire and pillage pale into in¬
To suffer the world and accept, with all There is a famous counterpart to Cha¬ significance for those to whom the divine
that means in terms of social relations, is a gall’s painting of the Crucifixion: Guer¬ purpose is revealed.
characteristic feature of Chassidism. Its nica. Executed a year earlier than Chagall’s
origins lie in the predicament of an op¬ picture, Picasso’s work expressed indigna¬

481
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Diego Rivera: Dream of a collage just as might be experienced in a

dream.
Sunday Afternoon in Alameda Park, 1948
The chronology of the mural neverthe¬

400 years at a glance
If you want to take a proper look at the
whole of Diego Rivera’s 4.8-metre-high
mural, you’ll need to take a walk - along all
15 metres of its length, and past almost 150
different characters. By European stand¬
ards, the format is enormous - as enorm¬
ous, indeed, as the task which the artist set
himself: to bring together figures from the
past 400 years into a panorama of the his¬
tory of his country, set in Alameda Park.
The park lies in Mexico City, and on
Sunday afternoons the capital’s inhabit¬
ants still gather here to sit, stroll, chat and
picnic. The grown-ups buy balloons and
windmills for their children, and the ado¬
lescents wade in the fountain which Rivera
has portrayed in the centre of his composi¬
tion. He has placed well-known figures
from Mexican history alongside many
more who are unknown, and has also in¬
corporated mythical figures such as angels
and Death, as well as members of his own
family. This is no official historical record,
in other words, no Social Realism, but a
less unfolds more or less logically from left
to right. At the apex of three small pyr¬
amids of figures distributed across the co¬
position, Rivera portrays three Mexican
presidents: on the left, Benito Juarez, head
of state from 1858 to 1872, is holding the
written constitution in his hands. Just to
the right of centre is the uniformed, sleep¬
ing figure of Porfirio Diaz, who held of¬
fice for over 30 years before being ousted
by Francisco Madero. The latter can be
seen, raising his hat in greeting, near the
right-hand edge of the mural; in 1913 he
was assassinated.
Beneath them, along the lower edge of
the mural, are those who have no hand in
politics, but who suffer its effects: ordin¬
ary citizens, Indians, agricultural workers,
and the poor. The conflict between these
people and those in power was one which
Rivera painted many times. On the left, a
thin youth is picking the pocket of a well-
dressed gentleman; in the middle, an In¬
dian woman in a yellow dress strikes an

482
 . . .

aggressively provocative pose, while fur¬
ther to the right a policeman is expelling a
family of Indians from the park. One of
the men he is threatening has already
reached his hand round to the back of his
belt, where he keeps his knife.
Floating above all their heads is a hot-air
balloon - a reference to the flight made by
the aeronaut Cantolla, and at the same
time a symbol of hope for “RM”, the
Republica Mexicana.
Spaniard’s hands. By the standards of his
day, however, Cortes was an outstanding
man: daring and adept at manoeuvering
his small Spanish force amidst an Indian
population of infinitely superior numbers.
One of his soldiers, Bernal Diaz del
Castillo, described the experience in great
detail and recorded how, wherever he
could, Cortes destroyed the Aztec temples
and erected crosses in their place. He con¬
quered this foreign land for his God and
his King - not for himself.
ruled by a viceroy. Rivera has painted the
eighth, with glasses and ruff. The man who
created the Alameda - not for the general
public, but for the Spanish ruling classes.
That was in 1592. The execution site used
by the Inquisition was later added to its
grounds. Rivera shows the condemned,
wearing the tall pointed hats of sinners, in
front of the flames in which they will burn
to death.

T he man with the bloody hands,

Hernan Cortes, is the most con¬
tentious figure in Mexican history:
he conquered the country for the Spanish
crown, and in so doing slaughtered count¬
less Indians and destroyed important testa¬
ments to their highly advanced culture.
The history of modern Mexico thus be¬
gan with death and destruction. The native
population remains an underprivileged
class, and the figure of the conqueror is
caught up and spurned in their struggle
for social justice to this day. On whose
side Rivera stood can be seen from the
In 1519 he set off from Cuba; in 1521 he
subdued the Aztec capital once and for all.
It lay on the site where Mexico City today
Slaughter in
the name of God
sprawls, a city of nine million people.
Cortes became the first governor of “New
Spain”, and Fray Juan de Zumarraga its
first bishop: Rivera portrays him beside
Cortes. With iron determination, seen in
his own age as motivated by charity but
seeming so cruel to us today, he set about
converting the Indians to Christianity. He
burned their writings - an incalculable loss
as far as our understanding of ancient
American culture is concerned.
From 1535, the Spanish colony was

483
R ivera painted his dream of Mexican
history for the dining room of the El
Prado hotel, beside Alameda Park.
The mural was completed in 1948, but it
caused an uproar and was damaged by a
protester. It was subsequently concealed
behind a rapidly-erected wall, where it re¬
mained hidden for seven years. Only after
Rivera had changed one small inscription
did the hotel management put the mural
back on display; later, in order to satisfy
the public interest, the painting was even
transported - wall and all - into the recep¬
tion hall. The offending words were writ¬
ten on the piece of paper held up by Igna-
The undoing
of an
idealist
cn fa
484
cio Ramirez, the dark-skinned man with
the white hair. They originally read: “God
does not exist”.
The words visible on the sheet of paper
today are: “Conference in the Academy of
Letran, 1836” - a cryptic reference to an
occasion when Ramirez had stated his
atheistic views. Not especially significant
in itself, it was important only as an allu¬
sion to trends hostile to the Church and re¬
ligion. The power of the Catholic Church
was the subject of controversy. In the 19th
century, the desire to safeguard its influ¬
ence and possessions brought it to side
with the Conservatives. Anyone with a lib¬
eral turn of mind was automatically its en¬
emy. Even the unfortunate Emperor Maxi¬
milian would suffer the consequences.
Mexico’s Conservatives invited the
Austrian Archduke to their country al¬
most 140 years ago. Rivera portrays him
with his famous pale blue eyes and flour¬
’
jSlfl ? \
y . 1
ishing ginger beard, standing below and to
the right of Ramirez. Maximilian, it was
hoped, would re-establish order in a Mexi¬
co which had declared itself independent
of Spain and the monarchic system of gov¬
ernment, and which had since been rav¬
aged by decades of civil war. In May 1864
he arrived on Mexican soil with his wife
Charlotte, who was now known as Car-
lota. But since he neither abolished the
new freedom of worship, nor returned to
the Church its nationalized property, he
made enemies of the very Catholic forces
which had appointed him Emperor.
Maximilian, the liberal idealist and inex¬
perienced politician, had failed. Three
years after his landing, he was deposed and
shot; the guns in Rivera’s mural recall his
execution. A few weeks before his death,
his wife Carlota, portrayed next to her
husband, went mad. She lived for another
60 years, dying in 1927.
\\
1ggC^a.
Viva Zapata!
Land and
Freedom!
V irtually every country has an idol, a
figure typifying the national char¬
acteristics of which it is most
proud. In Prussia, it was the civil servant
or officer - someone who placed service to
the State above personal happiness. In
the United States, it was and still is the
cowboy: someone who prizes adventure
and freedom more highly than urban
civilization. In Mexico, America’s south¬
ern neighbour, it is still the revolutionary:
someone who fights against the exploita¬
tion of the poor and tries, by force of arms,
to lessen the inequality in society. In his
mural, Rivera gives particular visual em¬
phasis to the revolutionary, placing him -
like the three presidents Juarez, Diaz and
Madero - at the apex of a fourth pyramid
of people. In the Mexican dream and in the
Mexican self-image, the revolutionary is
an omnipresent point of reference, whose
praises are sung in countless ballads and
whose portrait - as a reprint of old pho¬
tographs enlarged to poster size - hangs
on many walls.
In Rivera’s human panorama, the re¬
volutionary is accompanied by an armed
woman; women played an important role
in the struggles of the artist’s day. At the
revolutionary’s feet, men with guns are
surging forward; one is holding a hand
grenade with its fuse already lit. Their
banners read “Tierra y Libertad” (“Land
and Freedom”) and “Viva Zapata”.
Emiliano Zapata was one of the most
famous of Mexico’s revolutionaries. “Hear,
Senores, hear the terrible tale of how Zap¬
ata, the great rebel, was treacherously
murdered in Chinameca”, one folksong
begins; it ends: “Restless stream, what is
that carnation whispering to you? It is
whispering that Zapata is not dead, he will
come again!” Zapata’s story is typical of
that of many revolutionaries. He was born
in 1877 in the small Mexican village of
Anenecuilco. His father was a small-scale
farmer. The region, like rural Mexico as a
whole, was at that time ruled by the ha-
cendados, the large landowners. The ha¬
ciendas in Anenecuilco dated right back to
the 16th century, when they had been
founded with the consent of the Spanish
king. Around 1900, those Indian villages
which had managed to survive began to be
squeezed out by the landowners. The rail¬
ways had opened up access to the interna¬
tional markets, but the bacendados could
only increase their profits by enlarging
their estates. With the assistance of small
private armies and a partisan judicial sys¬
tem, they proceeded to take away from the
Mexican peasants their communal land
and thus their own property. The Indian
farmers became vassal agricultural labour¬
ers, and lost their land and their freedom -
their “Tierra y Liberdad”.
Emilio Zapata organized armed resist¬
ance and joined forces with rebels from
other villages. Together they formed a
peasants’ army, were victorious on some
occasions, defeated on others, and in the
meantime argued amongst themselves. Za¬
pata ultimately met the same fate as most
other peasant leaders: he was betrayed and
murdered. He had begun his resistance in
1909; in 1919 he met his end. For a long
time, it was rumoured amongst his sup¬
porters that he had only gone under¬
ground and would return, and that the
body put on display at the time was not
that of Emilio Zapata at all!
485
A repeated willing to realize his third declared aim,
namely to give the Indian farmers their
cycle of murder
land back. Perhaps he had embraced this
and violence goal during the struggles more for tactical
reasons than out of conviction. Had he
Through his works, Rivera wanted to
contribute towards the reconciliation of
Mexico’s two cultures, the establishment
of unity and the creation of a Mexican
identity. Hence his many history cycles,

F rancisco Madero, the man raising his

hat in greeting, was a revolutionary
like Zapata, but from a very different
background. His family came from the
ranks of the country’s wealthy and owned
haciendas, banks and industrial concerns.
The two men were nevertheless united by
their struggle against the ageing president
Porfirio Diaz, whom Rivera portrays doz¬
ing in the middle section of his mural.
Diaz held power for over 30 years. With
the help of the army and the large land-
owners, he brought a certain stability to
the country, but at the expense of the poor,
the Indians - and the democratic constitu¬
tion. Diaz was a dictator; he suspended the
article which forbad the re-election of
a president after a single term in office.
Madero, a liberal-minded capitalist, ob¬
jected. He published a pamphlet against
this violation of the law and called for uni¬
versal suffrage extending to the Indians.
Diaz had him imprisoned. Upon his re¬
lease, Madero became head of the revolu¬
tionaries. In 1911 Diaz fled the country.
Madera entered Mexico City and was
himself appointed president.
His political goals are written on the
banner behind him: “Universal suffrage -
no re-election!” He proved unable or un¬
implemented it, he would have harmed the
very class from which he came. Generals
of the Revolution such as Zapata, the
his championing of the oppressed Indians,
the Mexican proletariat, and his criticism
of the ruling minorities.
farmer’s son, immediately disassociated
themselves from him and resumed fight¬
ing. Madero lost control over the country.
Officers of his government placed him un¬
Painting on
der arrest. On his way to prison, he was walls for
shot by his escort. the Revolution
Madero was not the only president to
meet an unnatural end. Murder and viol¬
ence are threads running all the way
through the history of Mexico, from its
conquest right up to the 20th century. In
Rivera’s mural they are symbolized in the
flames of the Inquisition’s stake, as in the
fires of the Revolution. There are many
reasons for this bloodthirsty tradition;
most can be traced back to the country’s
conquest by the Spaniards and to the in¬
equality of its two cultures. Mexico’s In¬
dians were unfamiliar with the European
concept of individuality. Community was
and still is more important than personal
success. Competition played no great role.
They thereby lacked the drive to learn how
to survive, something which made them
defenceless in the face of European aggres¬
sion. Only when their misery became in¬
sufferable did they start to fight back, did
they rally to the side of men like Zapata.

486
T he artist who thus placed his talents
so emphatically in the service of his
people, was born in 1886. In the
central section of his Dream, he portrays
himself as he must have looked at the start
of the century: in shorts and a straw
boater, with a frog and a snake - living
toys - in his pockets. He kept his plump
figure and slightly bulging eyes all his life.
Behind him stands his wife, the artist Frida
Kahlo, who lays her hand protectively on
the boy’s shoulder.
From 1908 to 1921 Rivera lived almost
permanently in Europe, mostly in Paris, in
those days the metropolis of the fine arts.
He painted in the style first of the Impres¬
sionists, then of the Cubists. Later, he stat¬
ed: “From 1911 onwards, my work was
entirely oriented towards one day painting
large-scale murals.” In 1921 he realized
that he wanted to fulfil this aim in Mexico;
he returned home, where he proceeded to
harness his artistic talents to his social
commitment.
Since Rivera and other likeminded
artists wanted to work not for museums
and palaces, but for the broad masses of
the Mexican people, uneducated in liter¬
ature and art, they sought out the walls of
public buildings. They thus became known
as the muralists - the “w^all-painters”. They
wanted to make their message visible to all
who passed by. In the Middle Ages, the
walls of churches were used to teach and
edify the populace. The mostly anti-cler¬
ical Mexican muralists of the 20th century
chose schools, assembly chambers and of¬
fice buildings.
They thereby fused the Indians’ tra¬
ditional sense of the collective with new
ideas from Communist Russia. Commun¬
ity was important both as a statement and
as a form of work. The muralists founded
a syndicate in which artists and craftsmen
earned the same amount.
In addition to Diego Rivera, the group
included the painters Jose Clemente
Orozco and David Alfaro Siquieros. To¬
gether these artists represent the three
most important Mexican muralists. Rivera:
“Fresco painting, the collective art par ex¬
cellence, which belongs to all and is access¬
ible to all ... regained its contemporary
relevance.”
The artists succeeded in winning over a
minister to their views, and in 1923 Rivera
was commissioned to decorate the former
monastic cloisters in the Ministry of Edu¬
cation. In 1929 he embarked upon a his¬
tory of Mexico in the National Palace.
Compared with the rationalistic pathos
of Rivera’s cycles from the 1920s and
1930s, his Dream of a Sunday Afternoon
in Alameda Park seems more a sceptically
conciliatory work of old age. Rivera was
already over 60 when he painted it. He
now took the liberty of mixing members
of his family with those from history; his
hopes for a happier future were no longer
projected onto the Indian working class,
but onto a garlanded pink hot-air balloon.
Death wears
a feather boa
N ear the hot-air balloon, the symbol
of a rosier future, stands the figure
of Death, dressed up as a woman
with a plumed hat and a feather boa. She is
holding the hand of the young Rivera on
one side, and that of Jose Guadalupe Posa¬
da (1852-1913) on the other. Posada was
the first Mexican artist to free himself
from a dependency upon European art. He
executed graphic works in a folk style, il¬
lustrated songsheets and achieved special
popularity with his endlessly inventive
skeletons.
Rivera has incorporated one of these into
his mural. The quotation is undoubted¬
ly more than simply a gesture of respect
for his predecessor and source of inspira¬
tion; it is probably more, too, than simply
a reference to the death and violence
which had left their bloody mark on Mex¬
ico’s past. The costumed skeleton symbol¬
izes something else again: standing hand in
hand between the other figures, it is a nat¬
ural part of any stroll in a park on a Sun¬
day afternoon. Those familiar with Mex¬
ico will know that this is the case not
simply in Rivera’s Dream.
Death is not excluded in Mexico in the
way it is in the cultures of Western Europe
and North America. It remains om¬
nipresent, not merely as a threat or an ene¬
my, but also as a friend and neighbour.
A visible demonstration of this can be
found on All Souls’ Day in every Mexican
shop and apartment: they are hung full of
skeletons made of card and skilfully fold¬
ed paper. Coffins are brought out in doll’s
houses, confectioner’s shops sell marzipan
coffins and sugar skulls, bakers bake
loaves in the shape of bones, and the Mex¬
icans take a trip to the cemeteries to eat
and drink merrily with their dead.
The dead are thus remembered not in
sorrow, but in joy. This attitude to death
has its roots in Indian tradition. For Mex¬
ico’s native inhabitants, death was not
the absolute end: it was simply another
form of existence. Death was followed by
rebirth, in a process watched over by a
god, venerated in the shape of a feathered
snake.
Death and future, skeleton and balloon
thus all belong together. Through rebirth,
past and present are also one. Rivera ren¬
ders this unity visible in his Alameda
Dream — a dream which contains more
than simply an itemized history of his
country.
487
Appendix
Anonymous
The Bayeux Tapestry, after 1066
50 cm x 70.34 m
Bayeux, Centre Guillaume Le Conquerant
Lit.: Bertrand, Simone: La tapisserie de Bayeux et la maniere
de vivre au onzieme siecle, np 1966. - Grape, Wolfgang: Der
Teppich von Bayeux, Triumphdenkmal der Normannen,
Munich 1995. - Parisse, Michel: La tapisserie de Bayeux, Un
documentaire de Xle siecle, np 1983.
Upper Rhenish Master
The Little Garden of Paradise, c. 1410
26.3 x 33.4 cm
Frankfurt, Stadelsches Kunstinstitut
Lit.: Hennebo, Dieter and Hofmann, Alfred: Geschichte
der deutschen Gartenkunst, Garten des Mittelalters, Vol. 1,
Hamburg 1962. - Vetter, Ewald M.: Das Frankfurter
Paradiesgartlein, in: Heidelberger Jahrbiicher, 9, np 1965. -
Wolfhardt, Elisabeth: Beitrage zur Pflanzensymbolik, Uber
die Pflanzen des Frankfurter “Paradiesgartlein”, in: Zeit-
schrift fur Kunstwissenschaft, Vol. VIII, Berlin 1954.
Limburg Brothers (1385/90-1416)
Paul, Jean, Herman Limburg
February miniature from the “Tres Riches
Heures du Due de Berry”, c. 1416
15.4 x 13.6 cm
Chantilly, Musee Conde
Lit.: Les Tres Riches Heures du Due de Berry, Introduction
et Legendes de Jean Lognon et Raymond Cazelles. Chan¬
tilly/Paris 1969. - Les Tres ... Facsimile Edition, Luzern
1984. Commentary: ed. Raymond Cazelles and Johannes
Rathofer. - Contamine, Philippe: La vie quotidienne pendant
la guerre de cent ans. Paris 1967. - Defournraux, Marcelin:
La vie quotidienne au temps de Jeanne d’Arc. Paris 1957. -
Epperlein, Siegfried: Der Bauer im Bilde des Mittelalters.
Leipzig 1975.
Notes:
1 from the epic poem “Ysengrimus, the sly fox”, c. 1150;
cited by Epperlein, p. 61
2 Defourneaux, p. 29
3 Defourneaux, pp. 22, 29
4 Contamine, p. 167/168
5 Epperlein, p. 89
Fra Angelico (c. 1400-1455)
(Guido di Pietro)
St Nicholas of Bari, 1437
34 x 60 cm
Rome, Pinacoteca Vaticana
Lit.: Groot, Adrian de: Saint Nicholas, a psychoanalytic
study of his history and myth, The Hague/Paris 1965. -
Jones, Charles W.: St Nicholas of Myra, Bari and Manhattan.
Biography of a legend, Chicago 1978. - Le Goff, Jacques:
Marchands et Banquiers du Moyen Age, Paris 1972. - Pope-
Henessy, John: Angelico, London 1952.
Jan van Eyck (c. 1390-1441)
The Virgin of Chancellor Nicholas Rolin,
c. 1437
66 x 62 cm
Paris, Musee du Louvre
488
Lit.: Adhemar, Helene: Sur la vierge du chancelier Rolin, in:
Bulletin Institut Royal du Patrimoine Artistique, XV, 1972,
Bruxelles. - Boehm, Laetitia: Geschichte Burgunds. Stutt¬
gart, 1972. - Calmette, Joseph: Les Grands Dues de Bour¬
gogne. Paris 1949/79. - Dhanens, Elisabeth: Hubert und Jan
van Eyck. Konigstein 1980. - Perier, Arsene: Un chancelier
au Xve s., Nicolas Rolin. Paris 1904. - Roosen-Runge, Heinz:
Die Rolin-Madonna des Jan van Eyck. Wiesbaden 1972.
Notes:
1 Roosen-Runge, p. 17
2 Roosen-Runge, pp. 17, 18
3 Hirschfeld, Peter: Miizene. Munich 1968, pp. 103-108
4 Dhanens, p. 218
5 Dhanens, p. 39
6 Roosen-Runge, p. 29
7 Roosen-Runge, p. 18
Konrad Witz (1400/1410-1444/1446)
The Miraculous Draught of Fishes, 1444
132 x 154 cm
Geneva, Musee d’art et d’histoire
Lit.: Deuchler, Florens: Konrad Witz, la Savoie et Pltalie; Nou-
velles hypotheses a propos du retable de Geneve, in: Revue de
TArt, no. 76, Paris 1986. - Feldges-Henning, Uta: Landschaft
als topographisches Portrat, Berne 1980. - Schmidt, Georg:
Konrad Witz, Konigstein 1962. - Teasdale Smith, Molly:
Conrad Witz’s Miraculous Draught of Fishes and the Coun¬
cil of Basle, in: The Art Bulletin, New York 1970.
Petrus Christus (c. 1415-1473)
St. Elegius, 1449
98 x 85 cm
New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art,
Rober Lehmann Collection, 1975
Lit.: Comeaux, Charles: La vie quotidienne en Bourgogne au
temps des dues Valois, Paris 1979. - Metropolitan Museum
of Art: Petrus Christus, Renaissance Master of Bruges, New
York, 1994. - Pirenne, Henri: Geschichte Belgiens, 2 vols.
Gotha 1902. - Prevenier, Walter and Blockmanns, Wim: Die
burgundischen Niederlande, Antwerp 1986. - Schabacker,
Peter: Petrus Christus, Utrecht 1974.
Benozzo Gozzoli (1420-1497)
Procession of the Magi, 1459
wall width c. 750 cm
Florence, fresco in the chapel of the Palazzo
Medici-Riccardi
Lit.: Cleugh, James: The Medici, a tale of fifteen generations,
New York, 1975. - Gombrich, Ernst: The early Medici as
patrons of art, in: Norm and Form, London 1966. - Lucas-
Dubreton, Jean: La vie quotidienne a Florence au temps des
Medicis, Paris 1958. - Roover, Raymond de: The rise and
decline of the Medici bank, Cambridge, Mass. 1963.
Andrea Mantegna (1431-1506)
Ludovico Gonzaga and His Family, c. 1470
600 x 807 cm
Mantua, Palazzo Ducale
Lit.: Atti del Convegno: “Mantova e i Gonzaga nella civilita
del Rinascimento”. Mantua 1974. - Camesasca, Ettore: Man¬
tegna. Florence 1981. - Coletti, Luigi: La camera degli sposi
del Mantegna a Mantova. Milano 1969. - Catalogue: “Splen¬
dors of the Gonzaga”, Victoria & Albert Museum. London
1981. - Mazzoldi, Leonardo: Mantova, La Storia. Vol II,
Mantua 1961.
Notes:
1 Catalogue, pp. 27/28
2 Catalogue, pp. 15/16
3 Camesasca, p. 36/37
4 Camesasca, p. 37
5 Mazzoldi, p. 20
6 Catalogue, pp. 21/22
7 Catalogue, p. 15
8 Schivenoglia, in Atti, p. 311
9 Atti, p. 321
10 Equicola, in Coletti, p. 43
Hugo van der Goes (c. 1440-1482)
The Portinari Altar, c. 1475
600 x 250 cm
Florence, Galleria degli Uffizi
Lit.: Hatfield Strens, Bianca: L’airivo del Trittico Portinari a
Firenze, in: Commentary Rivista di Storia e di Critica d'Arte,
Rome 1968 IV. - Koch, Robert: Flower symbolism in the
Portinari Altar, in: The Art Bulletin, New York 1964. -
Roover, Raymond de: The rise and decline of the Medici
bank, Cambridge, Mass. 1963. - Panofsky, Erwin: Early
Netherlandish painting, Cambridge, Mass. 1953. - Swaan,
Wim: Kunst und Kultur der Spatgotik, Freiburg 1978.
Hieronymous Bosch (c. 1450-1516)
(Hieronymous van Aken)
The Conjurer, after 1475
53 x 65 cm
Saint-Germain-en-Laye, Musee Municipal
Tarot card: The Conjurer
Private Collection
Lit.: Fraenger, Wilhelm: Hieronymous Bosch, Dresden 1974.
- Geremek, Bronislav: Truands et Miserables dans l’Europe
moderne (1350-1600), Paris 1980. - Brand, Philip L.: The
Peddlar by Hieronymous Bosch, a study in detection, in:
Niederlands Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek, Bussum 1958. -
Schuder, Rosemarie: Hieronymous Bosch, Wiesbaden nd (c.
1975). - Tolnay, Charles: Hieronymous Bosch, Baden-Baden
1973.
Master of the Transfiguration of the Virgin
The Virgin and Child with St Anne, c. 1480
131 x 146 cm
Cologne, Wallraf-Richartz Museum
Lit.: Borger, Hugo; Zehnder, Frank Gunter: Koln, Die Stadt
als Kunstwerk, Stadtansichten vom 15. bis 20. Jahrhundert,
Cologne 1982. - Dehio, Georg: Handbuch der deutschen
Kunstdenkmaler, Rheinland, without place of publication
1967. - Ennen, Leonhard: Geschichte der Stadt Koln, sources
mostly from the city archives of Cologne, Cologne and
Neuss 1863.
Sandro Botticelli (1445-1510)
(Allessandro die Mariano Filipepi)
The Story of Nastagio degli Onesti, 1482/83
84 x 142 cm
Madrid, Museo del Prado
Lit.: Boccaccio, Giovanni: The Decameron. Translated with
an introduction and notes by G.H. Me William, London
1995. - Brucker, Gene: Giovanni e Lusanna: Amour et
mariage a Florence pendant la Renaissance, Aix-en-Provence
1991. - Larivaille, Paul: La vie quotidienne a Florence et a
Rome au temps de Machiavel, Paris 1979. - Lightbown,
Ronald: Botticelli, London 1978.
Hieronymus Bosch (c. 1450-1516)
(Hieronymous van Aken)
The Haywain, 1485/1490
135 x 100 cm
Madrid, Museo del Prado
Lit.: Dinzelbacher, Peter: Die Realitat des Teufels im Mittel-
alter, in: Peter Segl, (ed.): Der Hexenhammer, Entstehung
und Umfeld des Malleus maleficarum von 1487, Cologne/
Vienna 1988. - Gibson, Walter S.: Hieronymus Bosch,
Frankfurt/Berlin/Vienna 1974. - Hammer-Tugendhat, Da-
niela: Hieronymus Bosch, eine historische Interpretation
seiner Gestaltungsprinzipien, Munich 1981. - Schuder, Rose¬
marie: Hieronymus Bosch, Wiesbaden undated. - Tolnay,
Charles de: Hieronymus Bosch, Baden-Baden 1973.
Sandro Botticelli (1444-1510)
(Alessandro di Mariano Filipepi)
The Birth of Venus, c. 1486
184 x 285.5 cm
Florence, Galleria degli Uffizi
Virgin with Child, Four Angels and Six Saints
(Detail), c. 1487
Florence, Galleria degli Uffizi
Lit.: Burke, Peter: Culture and society in Renaissance Italy.
London 1974. - Clark, Kenneth: The Nude, a study in ideal
form. A.W. Mellon Lectures, np 1953. - Levi d’Ancona,
Mirella: Botticelli’s Primavera. A botanical interpretation
including Astrology, Alchemy and the Medici. Florence
1983. - Lightbrown., Ronald: Sandro Botticelli, 2 vols. Lon¬
don 1978. - Uffizi, Studi e Ricerche 4: La Nascita di Venere e
l’Annunziazione del Botticelli ristaurate. Florence 1987. -
Warburg, Aby: Sandro Botticellis “Geburt der Venus” und
“Friihling”. Eine Untersuchung liber die Vorstellung von der
Antike in der Friihrenaissance. Leipzig 1893.
Notes:
1 Vasari, Giorgio, cited in German in Warburg, p. 1
2 Ghiberti, Lorenzo: Denkwiirdigkeiten. trans. J.
Schlosser, Berlin 1927, Commentarii III, pp. 86, 89, 138,
139
3 Homeric Hymnes, cited in German by Warburg, p. 3
4 Lightbow, p. 58
5 Leon Battista Alberti: Treatise on painting, cited in
Uffizi, p. 28
6 Warburg, pp. 1, 5, 6
Vittore Carpaccio (c. 1460-1525/26)
Miracle of the Relic of the Cross, 1494/95
365 x 389 cm
Venice, Galleria dell’Accademia
Lit.: Cancogni, Manlio/Perocco, Guido: L’opera completa
del Carpaccio. Milan 1967. - Kretschmayr, Heinrich:
Geschichte von Venedig. 3 Vols., Darmstadt 1964 - Lauts,
Jan: Carpaccio, Gemalde und Zeichnungen, Complete cata¬
logue. Cologne 1962. - Ludwig, Gustav/Molmenti, Pompeo:
Vittore Carpaccio, La vie et l’ceuvre du peintre. Paris 1910.
Notes:
1 Ludwig/Molmenti, p. 257
2 both cited by Kretschmayr, pp. 362, 360
Piero di Cosimo (1462-1521)
The Death of Procris, c. 1500
65 x 183 cm
London, National Gallery
Lit.: Hartlaub, G.F.: Der Stein der Weisen, Munich 1959. -
Hutin, Serge: La vie quotidienne des Alchimistes au Moyen-
Age, Paris 1977. - Lavin, Irving: Cephalus and Procris in:
Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institute, no. 17, Lon¬
don 1954. - Panofsky, Erwin: Studies in Iconology, New
York 1939/62. - Vasari, Giorgio: Lives of the artists, trans¬
lated by George Bull, London 1965.
Hans Baldung (c. 1485-1545)
(alias Grien)
The Three Stages of Life, with Death, c. 1510
48 x 33 cm
Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum
Lit.: Boll, Franz: Die Lebensalter, Ein Beitrag zur antiken
Ethologie und zur Geschichte der Zahlen, Leipzig, Berlin
1913. - Herter, Hans: Das unschuldige Kind, in: Jahrbuch fur
Antike und Christentum, Jahrgang 4, Munster 1961. - Von
der Osten, Gert: Hans Baldung Grien, Gemalde und Doku-
mente, Berlin 1983. - Wirth, Jean: La jeune fille et la mort,
Geneva 1979.
Raphael (1483-1520) Titian (1488/1490-1576)
(Raffaelo Sanzio) (Tiziano Vecellio)
The Fire in the Borgo, 1514-1517 Venus of Urbino, c. 1538
Fresco base 6.97 m 119 x 165 cm
Vatican, Stanze di Raffaello Florence, Uffizi
Lit.: Gregorovius, Ferdinand: Geschichte der Stadt Rom im
Giorgione
Mittelalter. Dresden 1930. - Fleers, Jacques: La vie quotidi¬
(Giorgio da Castelfranco)
enne a la cour pontificale au temps des Borgia et des Medicis.
Paris 1986. - Jones, Roger & Penny, Nicholas: Raffael. New Sleeping Venus, 1510
Haven/Munich 1983. - Larivaille, Paul: La vie quotidienne
Dresden, Staatliche Kunstsammlung
en Italie au temps de Machiavel. Paris 1978. - Ullmann,
Ernst: Raffael. Leipzig/Giitersloh 1983. Lit.: Gronau, Georg: Die Kunstbestrebungen der Herzoge
von Urbino, in: Jahrbuch der Koniglich-Preuftischen Kunst-
Notes:
sammlungen, Berlin 1904. - Hollander, Anne: Seeing
1 Letters by Raphael, cited by Warnke, Martin: Hofkunst-
through clothes, New York 1975. - Hope, Charles: Titian,
ler, zur Vorgeschichte des modernen Kiinstlers. Cologne
London 1980. - Rostand, David: Titian, New York 1978. -
1985, p. 295
Valcanover, Francesco: Das Gesamtwerk von Tizian, Ger¬
2 Letter by Bembo to Bibbiena, July 1517, cited by Jones,
man edition: Lucerne nd; Italian edition 1969.
p. 147
3 Gregorovius. pp. 1179, 1091, 1185
4 Memo by Leo, 1514, in Ullmann, p. 253
Lucas Cranach the Younger (1515-1586)
5 Letter by Raphael to his uncle Simone Ciarla, in Ull¬
The Stag Hunt, 1544
mann, p. 171
6 Ullmann, pp. 259; Jones, p. 199 117x 177 cm
7 Heers, p. 225; Jones, p. 199
Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum
8 Epigram by Calcagnini, 1519, in: Jones, p. 199
9 Paolo Giovio, in: Jones, p. 151 Lit.: Friedlander, Max J. and Rosenberg, Jakob: Die Gemalde
10 Letter by Raphael to Castiglione, in: Jones, p. 96 von Lucas Cranach, Basle, Boston, Stuttgart 1979. - Grimm,
Claus, Brockhoff, Evamaria and Erichsen, Johannes, (eds.):
Lucas Cranach, Ein Maler-Unternehmer aus Franken, Augs¬
Niklaus Manuel (c. 1484-1530) burg 1994. - Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna: Lucas
Cranach der Altere und seine Werkstatt, Katalog zur Ju-
The Execution of John the Baptist, c. 1517
bilaumsausstellung museumseigener Werke, Vienna 1972.
34 x 26 cm -Schade, Werner: Die Malerfamilie Cranach, Vienna and
Basle, Kunstmuseum Munich 1977.
Lit.: Beerli, Conrad Andre: Le peintre poete Niklaus Manuel
Deutsch et Involution sociale des son temps, Geneva 1953. -
Paolo Veronese (1528-1588)
Daffner, Hugo: Salome in Kunst und Musik, Munich 1912. —
Catalogue of the Berne Kunstmuseum: Niklaus Manuel
(Paolo Caliari)
Deutsch, Maler, Dichter, Staatsmann, Berne 1979. - Merkel, The Marriage at Cana, 1562/63
Kerstin: Salome, Ikonographie im Wandel, dissertation,
6.69 x 9.90 m
Frankfurt 1990. - Metzsch, Friedrich-August von: Johannes
der Taufer, Seine Geschichte und Darstellung in der Kunst,
Paris, Musee du Louvre
Munich 1989.
Lit.: Lebe, Reinnard: Als Markus nach Venedig kam. Frank¬
furt 1980. - Lenz, Christian: Veroneses Bildarchitektur. The¬
sis, University of Munich 1969. - Molmenti, Pompeo: La
Albrecht Altdorfer (c. 1480-1538) Storia di Venezia nella Vita Privata. Bergamo 1905-1908,
The Battle of Issus, 1529 Reprint Triest 1973, vol. 2. - Pignati, Terisio: Veronese, cata¬
logue raisonne. Venezia 1976. - Piovene, Guido: L’Opera
158.4 x 120.3 cm
completa di Veronese. Milan 1968.
Munich, Alte Pinakothek
Notes:
Lit.: Buchner, Ernst: Die Alexanderschlacht, Stuttgart 1956.
1 Lenz, p. 94
- Krichbaum, Jorg: Albrecht Altdorfer, Meister der Alexan¬
2 Molmenti II, p. 44
derschlacht, Cologne 1978. - Winzinger, Franz: Albrecht
3 Lebe, p. 206
Altdorfer, die Gemalde. Munich, Zurich 1975.
4 Contarini, cited in: Civilta veneziana del Rinascimento -
atti del congresso, Venice 1958, p. 99
5 Piovene, p. 84
Hans Holbein the Younger (1497/98-1543) 6 Zanetti, cited by Pignatti, p. 74
The Ambassadors, 1533 7 Honour, Hugh: Venedig. Munich 1966, p. 73
207x209 cm
London, The National Gallery, reproduced by Pieter Bruegel the Elder (c. 1525/30-1569)
courtesy of the Trustees The Tower of Babel, 1563
Lit.: Hervey, Mary S.: Holbein’s Ambassadors. The picture
114 x 155 cm
and the men. A historical study. London 1900. - Jacobs, Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum
Eberhard/de Vitray; Eva: Heinrich VIII. von England in
Lit.: Claessens, Bob/Rousseau, Jeanne: Unser Bruegel.
Augenzeugenberichten. Dusseldorf 1969. - Pinder, Wilhelm:
Antwerp 1969. - Eisele, Petra: Babylon. Berne/Munich 1980.
Holbein der Jiingere und das Ende der altdeutschen Kunst.
- Guicciardin, Ludwig (Luigi Guicciardin): Beschreibung
Cologne 1951. - Salvini, Robert/Grohn, Hans Werner: Das
gemalte Gesamtwerk von Hans Holbein d.J. Milan, Lucerne
dess Niderlands ursprung, auffnemen und herkommens.
Frankfurt 1582. - Grossmann, Fritz: Bruegel, Die Gemalde,
1971. - Samuel, Edgar R.: “Death in the glass - A new view
Complete catalogue. Cologne 1566. - Klamt, Johann-Christ-
of Holbein’s Ambassadors”. In: The Burlington Magazine,
ian: Anmerkungen zu Pieter Bruegels Babel-Darstellungen,
vol. CV, pp. 718-729, London 1963.
in: Pieter Bruegel und seine Welt. Eds. Otto von Simson/
Matthias Winner, Berlin 1979. - Seidel, M./Marijnissen,
Notes:
1 Dinteville’s letter to Francois I, 23 May 1533, in: Jacobs/ R. H.: Bruegel, Stuttgart 1979.
de Vitray, p. 137
Notes:
2 Petrus Apianus: “Eyn Newe unnd wolgegriindte under-
1 Genesis, Chaps. 6, 8 and 11
weysung ...”, Ingolstadt 1527. The copy provided by the
2 Guicciardin, p. 64
British Museum has no page numbers.
3 Henrici Cornellii Agrippae: Ungewissheit und Eitelkeit
aller Kiinste und Wissenschaften, in: Bibliothek der
Philosophen, Volume 5, Munich 1913, pp. 19, 22
489
Tintoretto (1518-1594) Notes: pp. 16 ff. In: The Holy Bible, New Revised Standard
1 Gould, p. 212 Version with Apocrypha. New York/ Oxford 1989.
(Jacopo Robusti)
2 Ridolfi, cited by Garas, pp. 31, 32, 38 2 Lavater Sloman, Mary: Elisabeth I. Zurich 1957, p. 359/
The Abduction of the Body of St Mark, 3 Catalogue I, p. 39 360
1562/66 4 Melchior Goldast, cited in: Erlanger, Philippe: L’Em¬ 3 Delumeau, p. 561
pereur insolite, Rodolphe II de Habsbourg. Paris 1980, 4 Paolo Paruta, 1595, in: Delumeau, p. 563
398 x315 cm
p. 354 5 Bellori, cited by Rottgen, p. 153
Venice, Galleria dell’Accademia 5 Catalogue, p. 39 6 Floris van Dyck, in: Rottgen, p. 152
6 Erlanger, p. 222 7 Giovanni Baglione, cited by Hibbard, p. 356
Lit.: Lebe, Reinhard: Als Markus each Venedig kam. Die
Erfolgsgeschichte der Republik von San Marco, Frankfurt
1980. - Molmenti, Pompeo: La storia di Venezia nella vita
El Greco (1541-1614) Caravaggio (1571-1610)
privata. Dalle origini alia caduta della Repubblica. 3 vols.,
Bergamo 1929/Triest 1973. - Palluccini, Rodolfo: Tintoretto, (Domenikos Theotokopulos) (Michelangelo Merisi)
le opere sacre e profane, Florence 1982. Swoboda, Karl M.: Martyrdom of St. Matthew, 1599-1600
The Burial of Count Orgaz, 1586
Tintoretto. Ikonographische und stilistische Untersuchun-
480 x 360 cm 323x343 cm
gen, Vienna 1982. - Voragine, Jacobus de: The Golden Leg¬
end. Readings on the Saints. Translated by William Granger Toledo, Santo Tome Rome, S. Luigi dei Francesi
Ryan, Princeton 1995.
Lit.: Gudiol Jose: El Greco, Geneva 1973. - Male, £mile: Lit.: Delumeau, Jean: Vie economique et sociale de Rome
L’art religieux de la fin du XVIe siecle, du XVIIe siecle et du dans la seconde moitie du XVIe siecle, Paris 1957-1959. -
XVIIIe siecle, etude sur l’iconographie apres le Concile de Friedlander, Walter: Caravaggio Studies, Princeton
Antoine Caron (1521-1599)
Trente (Italie, France, Espagne, Flandres), Paris 1951. - 1955-1974. - Hibbard, Howard: Caravaggio, London 1983.
The Massacre by the Triumvirate, 1566 Schroth, Sarah: Burial of the Count of Orgaz, in: Studies in - Male, Emile: L’art religieux de la fin du 16e et 17e s., etude
116 x 195 cm the History of Art, Vol. II, National Gallery of Art, Wash¬ sur l’iconographie du Concile de Trente, Paris 1932.
ington, D.C. 1982.
Paris, Musee du Louvre
Lit.: Beguin, Sylvie: L’Ecole de Fontainebleau, le manierisme Georges de La Tour (1593-1652)
a la cour de France, Paris 1960. - Cloulas, Ivan: Catherine de George Gower (1540-1596) The Fortune Teller, after 1630
Medicis, Paris 1978. - Ehrmann, Jean: A. Caron, peitre des Armada Portrait of Elizabeth I, c. 1590
fetes et des massacres, Paris 1986. - Erlanger, Philippe: Le
102 x 123 cm
Massacre de la Saint-Barthelemy, Paris 1965.
105 x 133 cm New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art,
Woburn Abbey Rogers Fund, 1960
Pieter Bruegel the Elder (c. 1525/30-1569) Lit.: Jenkins, Elisabeth: Gloriana, Queen of England, Lon¬ Lit.: Clebert, Jean-Paul: Das Volk der Zigeuner: Vienna 1964.
don 1959. - Levey, Michael: Painting at court, London 1971.
Peasant Wedding Feast, c. 1567 -Erlanger, Pierre: La vie quotidienne au siecle d’Henri IV.
- Lewis, Michael: The Spanish Armada, London 1960. - Paris 1972. - Catalogue of the La Tour Exhibition. Oran-
114 xl63 cm Strong, Roy: The cult of Elizabeth, London 1977. - Yates, gerie, Paris 1972. - Nicolson, Benedict and Wright, Christo¬
Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum Frances A.: Astraea, The imperial theme in the 16th century,
pher: Georges de La Tour. London 1974. - Rosenberg, Pierre
London 1975.
et Mace de Lepinay, Francis: G.d. L.T, vie et oeuvre. Fri¬
Lit.: Alpers, Svetlana: Bruegel’s festive peasants, in: Simiolis,
bourg 1973. - Wright, Christopher: The art of the forger,
1972/3. - Claessens, Bob and Rousseau, Jeanne: Unser
London 1984.
Bruegel, Antwerp 1969. - Hagen, Rose-Marie and Hagen,
Adam Elsheimer (1578-1610)
Rainer: Pieter Bruegel der Altere, Cologne 1994. - Simson,
Notes:
Otto von and Winner, Matthias, (eds.): Pieter Bruegel und
St Elizabeth Tending the Sick, c. 1597
1 Brealey, John and Myers, Peter: The Fortune Teller, in:
seine Welt, Berlin 1979. - Stechow, Wolfgang: Bruegel the 28x20 cm Burlington Magazine 1981
Elder, New York 1980. - Stridbeck, Carl Gustav: Bruegelstu-
London, Wellcome Institute for the History of 2 Montaigne, Michel de: (Euvres completes (Pleiade).
dien, Stockholm 1956. -Wied, Alexander: Bruegel, Milan
Paris 1962, Essais I., chap. 26, p. 161.
1979.
Medicine
3 St. Luke 15,11-23
4 Cervantes, Miguel de: La Gitanilla, in: Novelas Ejem-
Related works:
plares, 1613. English: The Little Gipsy Girl, in: Exem¬
Antoine Caron (1521-1599) Adam Elsheimer plary Stories (trans. C. A. Jones). London 1972, p. 32
Caesar Augustus and the Tiburtine Sybil, Self-portrait, c. 1606 5 Catalogue, Orangerie, p. 150
c. 1580 Florence, Galleria degli Uffizi 6 Cervantes, op. cit, p. 19

125 x 170 cm
Paris, Musee du Louvre Adam Elsheimer
Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640)
Contentment, c. 1607
Lit.: Cloulas, Yvan: Catherine de Medicis, Paris 1978. - The Love Garden, c. 1632-1634
Ehrmann, Jean: Antoine Caron, Peintre a la Cour des Valois,
Edinburgh, National Gallery of Scotland
198 x 283 cm
Geneva 1955. - “L’ecole de Fontainebleau”, Exhibition Cata¬
Lit.: Andrews, Keith: Adam Elsheimer, Werkverzeichnis der
logue, Grand Palais, Paris 1972. - Jacquot, (ed.): Les fetes de Derechos reservados © Museo del Prado,
Gemalde, Zeichnungen und Radierungen, Munich 1985. -
la Renaissance, Paris 1956.
Kramer, Gode: Ein wiedergefundenes Bild aus der Friihzeit
Madrid
Elsheimers, in: Pantheon, Internationale Zeitschrift fur
Lit.: Glang-Suberkriib, Annegret: Peter Paul Rubens, der
Kunst, vol. XXXVI, no. IV, Munich 1978. - Murken,
Tintoretto (1518-1594) Liebesgarten. Thesis, Kiel 1975. - Goodman, E.L.: Rubens
A.H./Hofmann, B.: Die heilige Elisabeth als Kranken-
(Jacopo Robusti) “Conversatie a la mode” and the tradition of the “Love Gar¬
pflegerin, in: Historia Hospitalium, no. 13, without place of
den”. Thesis, Ohio 1978. - Lessing, Erich & Schiitz, Karl:
The Origin of the Milky Way, c. 1580 publication 1979/80. - Rechberg, Brigitte: Die heilige Elisa¬
Die Niederlande. Die Geschichte in den Bildern ihrer Maler
beth in der Kunst - Abbild, Vorbild, W'unschbild, Marburg
148 x 165 cm erzahlt. Munich 1985. - Warnke, Martin: Peter Paul Rubens,
1983.
London, National Gallery, reproduced by Leben und Werk. Cologne 1977. - Wedgewood, C.V.:
Rubens und seine Zeit. Amsterdam 1973.
courtesy of the Trustees
Caravaggio (1571-1610) Notes:
Jakob Hoefnagel (Michelangelo Merisi) 1 Letter by Rubens to a friend, 1634, in: Evers, H. G.:

Origin of the Milky Way, sketch after Rubens, Munich 1942, p. 337/338
Judith and Holofernes, c. 1599
2 Sandrart, cited by Wedgewood, p. 122
Tintoretto, c. 1620 145 x 195 cm 3 Letter by Rubens, 1630, in: Evers, p. 338
Berlin, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin - Preu- Rome, Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Antica 4 Wedgewood, p. 143

ftischer Kulturbesitz, Kupferstichkabinett 5 Goodman, p. 109

Lit.: Evans, Robert John Weston: Rudolf II and his World. A
Study in intellectual history. Oxford 1973/84. - Garas. Clara:
Le tableau du Tintoret du Musee de Budapest et le cycle
peint pour l’Empereur Rodolphe II, in: Bulletin du Musee
hongrois des Beaux-Arts no 30, 1967. Gould, Cecil: An X-
ray of Tintoretto’s Milky Way, in: Arte Veneta XXXII 1975.
- Exhibition Catalogue: Prag um 1600, Kunst und Kultur am
Hofe Rudolfs II., 2 vols., Essen/Vienna 1988.
Lit.: Delumeau, Jean: Vie economique et sociale de Rome 6 Evers, p. 326
dans la seconde moitie du XVI s. Paris 1957. - Hibbard, 7 Cardinal Infante Ferdinand to the King of Spain Philip
Howard: Caravaggio. New York 1983. - Hinks, Roger: IV, cited in: Gluck, Gustav: Rubens’ Liebesgarten, in:
Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, his life, his legends, his Jahrbuch der kunsthistorischen Sammlung in Wien, vol.
works. London 1953. - Rottgen, Herwarth: 11 Caravaggio, 35,1920, p. 64
ricerche e interpretazioni, Rome 1974.
Notes:
1 Book of Judith, from the Apocrypha of the Lutheran
Bible. Ed. Stuttgart 1971, vol. 5, pp. 1178/9; Judith,

490
Diego de Silva y Velazquez (1599-1660)
The Surrender of Breda, 1635
307 x 370 cm
Derechos reservados © Museo del Prado,
Madrid
Lit.: Defourneaux, Marcelin: La vie quotidienne en Espagne
au siecle d’or. Paris 1960. - Hager, Werner: Die Ubergabe
von Breda, von Diego Velazquez. Stuttgart 1956. - Justi,
David Teniers the Younger (1610-1690)
Archduke Leopold Wilhelm’s Galleries at
Brussels, c. 1650
127 x 163 cm
Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum
Lit.: Brieger, Lothar: Die groBen Kunstsammler, Berlin 1931.
- Garas, Klara: Die Entstehung der Galerie des Erzherzogs
Leopold Wilhelm, in: Jahrbuch der kunsthistorischen Samm-
Antoine Watteau (1684-1721)
The Music-Party, c. 1718
69 x 93 cm
London, The Wallace Collection
Lit.: Le Nabour, Eric: Le Regent, Paris 1984. - Moureau,
Francois and Morgan Grasselli, Margaret: Watteau, le pein¬
tre, son temps, sa legende, (Actes du colloque Watteau 1984),
Paris, Geneva 1987. - Posner, Donald: Antoine Watteau,

Carl: Velazquez und sein Jahrhundert. Stuttgart nd, reprint London 1984. - Rosenberg, Pierre and Morgan Grasselli,
lungen in Wien, 63 (New Series 28), Vienna 1967. - Das
of 2nd ed. of 1903. First ed. 1888. - Lopez-Rey, Jose: Schicksal der Sammlung des Erzherzogs Leopold Wilhelm, Margaret: Catalogue: Watteau Exhibition, Paris, Washing¬

Velazquez, artiste et createur, avec un catalogue raisonne de in: Jahrbuch der kunsthistorischen Sammlungen in Wien, 64 ton, Berlin 1984-1985. - Rosenberg, Pierre: Vies anciennes

son ceuvre integral. Lausanne/Paris 1981. - Ortega y Gasset, de Watteau, Paris 1985.
(New Series 26), Vienna 1968. - Rosenberg, Alfred: Teniers
Jose: Velazquez und Goya, Beitrage zur spanischen Kul- der Jungere, Bielefeld, Leipzig 1901. - Speth-Holtershof, S.:
turgeschichte. Stuttgart 1955. La celebre Galerie de Tableaux de L’Archiduc Leopold-Guil-
laume, in: Reflets du Monde, Brussels 1952. Giambattista Tiepolo (1696-1770)
Notes:
The Banquet of Cleopatra, 1746-1750
1 Unless otherwise stated, references to Breda in: Justi,
pp.351-358 Rembrandt (1606-1669) Venice, fresco at Palazzo Labia
2 Defourneaux, p. 238; for lances cf. Justi, p. 361/362
(Rembrandt Harmensz van Rijn) Lit.: Battersby, Martin, Trompe l’oeil. The Eye deceived.
London 1974. - Grant, Michael: Kleopatra - eine Biographie.
Der Segen Jakobs, 1656
Engl. Ed. 1972. Bergisch Gladbach 1977. - Levey, Michael:
Rembrandt (1606-1669) 173 x 209 cm Giambattista Tiepolo. His life and art. New Haven/London.
(Rembrandt Hermensz. van Rijn) Kassel, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Kassel, - Levey, Michael: Banquet of Cleopatra. Newcastle 1965. -

Belshazzar’s Feast, c. 1635 Molmenti, Pompeo: Tiepolo, la vie et Pceuvre du peintre.

167x209 cm
London, National Gallery
Related work:
Rembrandt
Self-portrait (etching), 1630
Hamburg, Hamburger Kunsthalle
Lit.: Alpers, Svetlana: Rembrandt’s enterprise, Chicago 1988.
- Carstensen, Thomas: Empirie als Bildsprache. Uberlegun-
gen zum jiidischen Einflufi auf Rembrands Kunst, Hamburg
1993. - Tiimpel, Christian: Rembrand in Selbstzeugnissen
und Bilddokumenten, Reinbek 1977. - Tiimpel, Christian
(ed.): Im Lichte Rembrandts. Das Alte Testament im Golde-
nen Zeitalter der niederlandischen Kunst, Munich 1994.
Gemaldegalerie Alte Meister
Paris 1911.
Lit.: Bar-Efrat, Shimon: Some remarks on Rembrandts
Notes:
“Jacob blessing Ephraim and Manasseh” in: Burlington
1 Cajus Plinius Secundus (23-79 A.D.): Naturgeschichte.
Magazine, Septemer 1987. - Beuys, Barbara: Familienleben
Stuttgart 1843, p. 1093. Cf. also Pliny the Elder: Natural
in Deutschland, Reinbek 1980. - Einem, Herbert von: Rem¬
History: A Selection from Philemon Holland’s Transla¬
brandt van Rijn, Der Segen Jakobs, Stuttgart 1965. - Gerson,
tion. Ed. J. Newsome, 1964.
Horst: Rembrandt, Gemalde, Gesamtwerk, Wiesbaden o.J.
2 President Charles de Brosses (1709-1777); Lettres famil-
Copyright 1968, Amsterdam. - Hausherr, Reiner: Rem¬
ieres d’ltalie, cited in: Levey, Banquet, p. 7
brandts Jakobssegen, Opladen 1976. - Tiimpel, Christian:
3 Plinius, pp. 1086/1093
Rembrandt, Mythos und Methoden, Konigstein 1986. -
4 de Brosses, in Levey: Tiepolo, p. 148
Valentiner, W.R.: Rembrandt and Spinoza, London 1962.
5 Plutarch, cited by Grant, p. 96 (Engl. Translation by Sir
Anmerkungen: Thomas North: Plutarch: Lives. 1579, cited in: The
1 Erstes Buch Moses 27/29 Arden Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra. Ed. M. R.
2 Valentiner S. 26 Ridley, London 1965, p. 247)
3 Beuys S. 220, das folgende Pastoren-Zitat Beuys S. 254 6 cited in Levey: Tiepolo, pp. 6, 72
7 Graf Algarotti, cited by Molmenti, p. 195

Jacob Jordaens (1593-1678) Charles Le Brun (1619-1689)

The King Drinks, 1640-1645 The Chancellor Seguier, after 1660 Thomas Gainsborough (1727-1788)
242 x 300 cm 295 x357 cm Mr and Mrs Andrews, 1749
Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum Paris, Musee du Louvre 70 x 119 cm
Lit.: d’Hulst, Roger Adolf: Jacob Jordaens. Stuttgart 1982. - London, The National Gallery, reproduced by
Meisen, Karl: Die Heiligen 3 Konige und ihr Festtag im Frangois Chaveau or Charles Le Brun courtesy of the Trustees
volkstiimlichen Glauben und Brauch. Cologne 1949. - From the cycle: The Chancellor Seguier,
Lit.: Hayes, John: The landscape paintings of Thomas Gains¬
Pirenne, Henri: Geschichte Belgiens, vol. 4. Gotha 1913. -
after 1660 borough: Critical text and catalogue, London 1981. - Corri,
Van Puyvelde, Leo: Jordaens. Paris/Brussels 1953. - Rooses,
Max: Jordaens, Leben und Werk. Leipzig 1898.
Stockholm, Statens Konstmuseer Adrienne: The search for Thomas Gainsborough. London
1984. - Catalogue: Thomas Gainsborough. Tate Gallery,
Lit.: Exhibition Catalogue: Charles Le Brun, Versailles 1963.
Notes: London 1980. Mingay, G.E. English landed society in the
- Erlanger, Philippe: Louis XIV, Paris 1965. - Gaxotte,
1 Rooses, p. 65 18th c. London 1963. - Makowski, Henri and Buderath,
Pierre: Louis XIV, Paris 1974. - Mauricheau-Beaupre, M.: Le
2 cited in: Bazin, Germain: “In vino veritas”. Jardin des Bernhard: Die Natur dem Menschen untertan. Okologie im
Portrait du Chancelier Seguier, in: Bulletin de la Societe de
Arts, Paris, Nov. 1968 Spiegel der Landschaftsmalerei. Munich 1983 and 1986.
l’histoire de Part Fran^ais 1941-1944, Paris 1947.
3 Rooses, p. 67
Notes:
4 Pirenne, vol. 4, p. 560
1 Catalogue, p. 13
Antoine Watteau (1684-1721) 2 Defoe, Daniel: Tour through the Eastern Counties. 1724.
3 Catalogue, p. 16
Diego de Silva y Velazquez (1599-1660) Love at the French Theatre, 1716-1721
4 Mingay, p. 263
Venus at her Mirror, c. 1646 37x48 cm 5 Mingay, p. 30
123 x 177 cm, London, National Gallery Berlin, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin - Preu- 6 Anon.: A New and complete History of Essex by a
Gentleman. Chelmsford 1769, vol. II, p. 139
fiischer Kulturbesitz, Gemaldegalerie
Related works: 7 Catalogue, p. 30
Lit.: Boerlin-Brodbeck, Yvonne: Antoine Watteau und das
Diego Velazquez
Theater. Thesis, University of Basle, 1973. - Catalogue of
so-called “Fraga” portrait of King Philip IV Watteau exhibitions. Washington 1984. - Meyer, Jean: La vie Francesco Guardi (1712-1793)
(detail), 1644 quotidienne en France sous Regence. Paris 1979 - Mongre-
The Parlour of San Zaccaria, 1750
dien, Georges: La vie quotidienne des comediens au temps de
New York, Frick Collection 108 x 208 cm
Moliere. Paris 1966. - Textes du Colloque international,
Paris 1984: Antoine Watteau, le peintre, son temps et sa Venice, Ca’ Rezzonico
Diego Velazquez
legende. Paris 1987.
Coronation of the Virgin Mary (detail), c. 1644 Lit.: Jonard, Norbert: La vita a Venezia nel secolo XVIII,
Notes: Milan, undated. - Molmenti, Pompeo: La Storia di Venezia
Madrid, Museo del Prado
1 Meyer, p. 18 nella vita privata. Dalle origini alia caduta della Repubblica. 3
Lit.: Defourneaux, Marcelin; La vie qoutidienne en Espagne 2 Dramatic poet Chappuzeau, cited by Mongredien, p. 180 vols., Bergamo 1929/Triest 1972. - Morassi, A.: Guardi, I
au siecle d’or, Paris 1966. - Deleito y Pinuela, Jose: La mujer, 3 Meyer, pp. 131,136 Dipinti, Venice 1973. - Morazzoni, G.: La moda a Venezia
la casa y la moda, Madrid 1946. - Harris, Enriqueta: Velaz¬ 4 Mongredien, p. 21 nel secolo XVIII, Milan 1931.
quez, Oxford 1982. - Hume, Martin: The court of Philip IV.,
London 1907. - Justi, Carl: Velazquez und sein Jahrhundert,
Zurich 1933. - Lopez-Rey, Jose: Velazquez, Catalogue
Raisonne I. Cologne 1996.

491
Giambattista Tiepolo (1696-1770)
The Death of Hyacinth, 1752/53
287 x 235 cm
Madrid, Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza
Lit.: Levey, Michael: Giambattista Tiepolo, His life and art.
New Haven, London 1986. - Luze, Albert de: La magnifique
histoire du jeu de Paume, Paris, Bordeaux 1933. - Sack, E.:
Giambattista und Domenico Tiepolo, Hamburg 1910. -
Schaumburg-Lippe, Wilhelm Graf zu: Philosophische und
politische Schriften, ed. Curd Ochwadt. 3 vols. Frankfurt am
Main 1977-1983.
William Hogarth (1697-1764)
An Election Entertainment, 1754/55
102 x 127 cm
London, Sir John Soane’s Museum
Lit.: Boehn, Max von: England im Achtzehnten Jahrhundert.
Berlin 1920. - Fetscher, Iring: Grofibritannien - Gesellschaft,
Staat, Ideologic, Frankfurt 1968. - Gowing, Lawrence: Hog¬
arth, Tate Gallery exhibition catalogue, London 1971. -
Lindsay, Jack: Hogarth, his art and his world. London 1977.
- Paulson, Ronald: The art of Hogarth. London 1975. -
Rave, Paul Ortwin: William Hogarth, Die Parlaments-
wahlen, Berlin 1947.
Bernardo Bellotto, also known as
Canaletto (1721-1780)
The Freyung, Vienna, from the Southeast,
1759/60
116 x 152 cm
Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum, on display
in the Palais Harrach
Lit.: Casanova de Seingalt, Jacques: Venitien: Histoire de
ma vie, edition integrale en 6 vol. Wiesbaden/Paris 1960. -
Kozakiewicz, Stefan: Bernardo Bellotto genannt Canaletto,
Recklinghausen 1972. - Tanzer, Gerhard: Spetacle miissen
seyn, Die Freizeit der Wiener im 18. Jahrhundert, Vienna/
Cologne/Weimar 1992. - Wohlrab, Hertha: Die Freyung,
Vienna/Hamburg 1971.
Joseph Wright of Derby (1734-1797)
A Philosopher giving a Lecture on the Orrery,
c. 1764-1766
147.3 x203.2 cm
Derby, Derby Museum and Art Gallery
Lit.: Boime, Albert: Art in an Age of Revolution, 1750-1800,
Chicago, London 1987. - Egerton, Judy: Wright of Derby,
London 1990. - Paulson, Ronald: Emblem and Expression,
Meaning in English Art of the Eighteenth Century, London
1975.
Francesco Guardi (1712-1793)
The Departure of the Doge on Ascension Day,
c. 1770
67 x 101 cm
Paris, Musee du Louvre
Lit.: Jonard, Norbert: La vita a Venezia nel 18 secolo, Milan
1967. - Lane, Frederic: Venice, a maritime Republic, Balti¬
more 1973. - Mazarotto, Bianca Tamasso: Le Feste venezia-
ne, Florence 1961. - Molmenti, Pompeo: La Storia di Venezia
nella vita privata, Bergamo 1905-1908, Reprint, Triest 1973. -
Morassi, Antonio: Guardi, l’Opera completa di Antonio e
Francesco Guardi, Venice 1973.
Johann Heinrich Wilhelm Tischbein
(1751-1829)
Goethe in the Roman Campagna, 1786/87
164 x 206 cm
Frankfurt a.M., Stadelsches Kunstinstitut
492
Goethe at the Window Jacques-Louis David (1748-1825)
Frankfurt a.M., Freies Deutsches Hochstift, The Coronation of Napoleon, 1807
Frankfurter Goethe-Museum 610 x930 cm
Lit.: Beutler, Christian: J.H.W Tischbein - Goethe i.d.C
Paris, Musee du Louvre
Stuttgart 1962. - Goethe: Briefe. Ed. Philipp Stein, vol. 3, Lit.: Cabanis, Jose: Le Sacre de Napoleon - 2 decembre 1804
Berlin 1902. - Goethe: Italienische Reise. Vol. 25/6, Munich (Trente journees qui ont fait la France), Paris 1970. - Schnap¬
1962. Goethe: Tagebiicher 1775-1809. Vol. 43, Munich 1963. - per, Antoine: David, temoin de son temps, Fribourg 1980.
Lenz, Christian,: J.H.W Tischbein - Goethe i.d.C Series:
Kleine Werkmonographie des Stadelschen Kunstinstitutes,
No. 6, Frankfurt nd. - Stadelsches Kunstinstiut und Stadtische Francisco de Goya (1746-1828)
Galerie Frankfurt: Goethe gemalt von Tischbein - ein Portrat
Der 3. Mai 1808 in Madrid: die Erschieftung
und seine Geschichte. Frankfurt 1974. - Tischbein, Wilhelm:
Aus meinem Leben. Ed. Lothar Brieger, Berlin 1922. auf dem Hiigel des Principe Pio, 1814
266 x 345 cm
Notes:
1 The majority of quotations are from Goethe’s Italian Madrid, Museo del Prado
Journey, Part III; cf. also letters and diaries, commencing
Lit.: Chastenet, Jacques: La vie quotidienne au temps de
October 1786
2 Tischbein, p. 110
Goya, Paris 1966. - Gassier, Pierre; Wilson, Juliet: Francisco
Goya, Leben und Werk, Fribourg/Frankfurt a M. 1971. -
3 cited by Beutler, p. 8
Thomas, Hugh: The Third of May 1808, London 1972.
4 cited in: Goethe gemalt von Tischbein - ein Portrat und
seine Geschichte, p. 9/10
5 Tischbein, p. 156
Caspar David Friedrich (1774-1840)
6 Tischbein, p. 197
7 For Tischbein’s silence regarding his portrait of Goethe, Chalk Cliffs on Rugen, c. 1818
we are indebted here to the explanation given in 90 x 70 cm
Brieger’s introduction to Tischbein’s memoires
Winterthur, Museum Stiftung Oskar Reinhart
Jacques Louis David (1748-1825) Self-portrait
The Death of Marat, 1793 Berlin, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin -
165 x 128 cm PreuEischer Kulturbesitz, Kupferstichkabinett
Brussels, Musees royaux des Beaux Arts de Lit.: Arndt, Ernst Moritz: Ein deutsches Schicksal. Aus
seinen biographischen Schriften. Berlin 1924. - Carus, Carl
Belgique
Gustav: Lebenserinnerungen und Denkwurdigkeiten, 4
Lit.: Cabanes, Dr.: Marat inconnu, l’homme prive, le Theile. Leipzig 1856/66. - Borsch-Suspan, Helmut/Jahnig,
medecin, le savant. Paris 1928.- Cordier, Stephane: Jean-Paul Karl Wilhelm: C. D. F Miinchen 1973. - Hinz, Sigrid: C. D. F
Marat. Paris 1967. - Decours, Catherine: Charlotte Corday. in Brief en und Bekenntnissen. Miinchen 1974. - Hofmann,
Paris 1985. - Catalogue of the exhibition: Goya, das Zeitalter Werner, Ed.: C.D.F. und die Nachwelt. Frankfurt 1974. -
der Revolutionen. Kunsthalle Hamburg 1980. - Schnapper, Jensen, Jens Christian. C.D.F.: Leben und Werk, Cologne
Antoine: David und seine Zeit. Wurzburg 1981. 1974.
Notes: Notes:
1 Restif de la Bretonne, cited by Cordier, p. 85 1 description of a trip to Rugen, in: Carus, 1. Theil,
2 Cordier, pp. 31, 44, 45, 52, 56 pp.259-276
3 Schnapper, p. 152 2 Lichtenberg: Schriften und Briefe. Ed. Wolfgang
4 Schnapper, p. 158 Promies, vol. 3, Munich 1972, p. 97/98
5 Schnapper, p. 162 3 Arndt, p. 48. For “old German” costume, cf, also Jensen,
6 Decours, pp. 285-288 p. 48/49
7 Schnapper, pp. 160, 169, 120 4 Hinz, p. 24
5 Schellings Werke. Ed. Manfred Schroter, Suppl. Vol. Ill,
Munich 1959, p. 195
Francisco de Goya (1746-1828) 6 from “Die Lehrlinge zu Sais”, in: Werke und Briefe. Ed.
A. Kelletat, Munich 1953, p. 113
The Duchess of Alba, 1797
210 x 149 cm
New York, Courtesy of the Hispanic Society Theodore Gericault (1791-1824)
of America The Raft of the Medusa, 1819
491 x 716 cm
“Caprichos” (Caprices), Plate No. 61
Paris, Musee du Louvre
Hamburg, Hamburger Kunsthalle
Lit.: Anthonioz, Pierre: La veritable histoire du radeau de la
Frontispiece to “Caprichos” Meduse, in: “L’Histoire”, No. 36, July/August 1981. - Bel-
Hamburg, Hamburger Kunsthalle lec, Francois: L’affaire da la Meduse, Documentation du
Musee de la Marine, 1981. - Catalogue de l’exposition du
Lit.: Chastenet, Jacques: La vie quotidienne en Espagne au Musee de la Marine, 1981. - Catalogue de l’exposition Geri¬
temps de Goya. Paris, 1966. - Ezquerra del Bayo, Joaquin: cault, Paris 1991-1992. - Eitner, Lorenz: Gericault’s Raft de
La Duquesa de Alba y Goya. Madrid, 1928. - Gassier, Pierre la Medusa, London 1922. - Nicolson, Benedict: The “raft”
& Wilson, Juliet & Lachenal, Francois: Francisco de Goya, from the point of view of subject matter, in: Burlington
sein Leben und Werk. Frankfurt 1971. - Gudiol, Jose: Goya. Magazine, 1954.
New York 1970. - Sanchez-Canton, F.J.: Vida y Obras de
Goya. Madrid 1951.
Eugene Delacroix (1798-1863)
Notes:
1 Lady Holland, cited by Sanchez-Canton, p. 55 The Death of Sardanapalus, 1827
2 Marquis de Langle, 1784, cited by Sanchez-Canton, 395 x 495 cm
p. 55
Paris, Musee du Louvre
3 Ezquerra, p. 61
4 Soler, Dottor Blanco: La Duquesa de Alba y su Tiempo. Lit.: Huyghe, Rene: Delacroix, Munich 1967. - Johnson,
Madrid 1966, p. 76 Lee: The paintings of Eugene Delacroix. Oxford 1981. -
5 Gassier, p. 105 Prideaux, Tom: Delacroix und seine Zeit. Amsterdam 1966.-
6 Sanchez-Canton, p. 55 Praz, Mario: Liebe, Tod und Teufel. Die schwarze Romantik.
7 Soler, p. XI Munich 1963. - Spector, Jack J.: The Death of Sardanapalus.
8 for the autopsy, cf. Soler, pp. 104, 129,132, 154 London 1974.
Notes: 10 cf. Rummenholler, Peter: Die musikalischeVorklassik. Adolph Menzel (1815-1905)
1 Diodorus Siculus (c. 90-c. 20 B. C.), Bibliothecae Histor- Munich 1983, p. 52 ff.
icae, Book II, 22-25
Das Eisenwalzwerk, 1875
11 Rummenholler, p. 53
2 cited by Spector, pp. 47, 50 12 Kugler/Menzel, Introduction, p. 7 158 x 254 cm
3 Huyghe, p. 173 Berlin, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin -
4 Byrons poetische Werke in 8 Banden, Stuttgart, nd, vol¬
ume 5/6 pp. 243, 363
Preufiischer Kulturbesitz, Nationalgalerie
Gustave Courbet (1819-1877)
The Complete Poetical Works of Lord Byron. Ed. E. H. Lit.: Bromme, Moritz Th.W.: Lebensgeschichte eines mo-
The Studio, 1855
Coleridge and R.E. Prothero, 13 vols. London dernen Fabrikarbeiters, Nachdruck der Ausgabe von 1905,
1898-1904 359 x 598 cm
Frankfurt/Main 1971. - Hofmann, Werner (Hrsg.): Menzel,
5 Gautier, cited by Huyghe, p. 10 Paris, Musee d’Orsay der Beobachter, Katalog, Miinchen 1982. - Jensen, Jens
6 Alfred de Musset: La Confession d’un Enfant du Siecle. Christian: Adolph Menzel, Koln 1982. - Kaiser, Konrad:
1836, cited by Huyghe, pp. 74, 75 Lit.: Courthion, Pierre (ed.): Courbet, Gustave: Raconte par
Adolph Menzels Eisenwalzwerk, Berlin 1953. - Riemann-
7 Huyghe, pp. 162, 168 lui-meme et par ses amis, Geneva 1948/50. - Fernier, Robert:
Reyher, Ursula: Moderne Cyclopen, 100 Jahre “Eisen¬
8 Prideaux, p. 104 La vie et l’oeuvre de Gustave Courbet, catalogue raisonne,
walzwerk” von Adolph Menzel, Berlin 1976.
9 Huyghe, pp. 161, 12 Lausanne/Paris 1977. - Herding, Klaus, (ed.): Realismus als

10 Sade: Juliette, cited by Praz, p. 84 Widerspruch, die Wirklichkeit in Courbets Malerei, Frank¬

11 Huyghe, pp. 16, 28 furt 1978. - Huyghe, Rene; Bazin, Germain; Adhemar,
Ilya Repin (1884-1930)
Helene Jean: Courbet, L’Atelier, in the series “Monographies
des Peintures du Musee du Louvre”, Paris undated. - Nicol- Zaporogian Cossacks Composing a Letter to
Ludwig Richter (1803-1884) son, Benedict: Courbet, The Studio of the Painter, in the the Turkish Sultan, 1880-1891
series “Art in Context”, London 1973.
The Schreckenstein Crossing, 1837 203 x 358 cm
116 x 156 cm St. Petersburg, Russian Museum
Dresden, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres Lit.: Karpenko, Maria et al.: Ilya Repin, Malerei, Graphik,
(1780-1867) Leningrad, Diisseldorf 1985. - Parker, Fan and Parker,
Lit.: Neidhart, Hans Joachim: Ludwig Richter, Leipzig 1969.
The Turkish Bath, 1863 Stephen Jan: Russia on Canvas, Ilya Repin, London 1980. -
- Richter, Ludwig: Lebenserinnerungen eines deutschen
Hilton, Alison Leslie: The Art of Ilya Repin. Tradition and
Malers, Selbstbiographie nebst Tagebuchniederschriften und 108 cm diametre Innovation in Russian Realism, Ann Arbor 1979. - Repin,
Briefen, Leipzig nd. - Ludwig Richter: Zeichnungen, Druck-
Paris, Musee du Louvre Ilya: Femes und Nahes, Erinnerungen, Berlin 1970.
grafik und Gemalde, autobiographische Texte, ed. Johannes
Beer, Konigstein 1984. - Ludwig Richter und sein Kreis, Lit.: Alazard, Jean: Ingres et l’lngrisme. Paris 1950. - Ebert,
Ausstellungsbuch und Katalog der Ausstellung zum 100. Hans: Ingres. Berlin 1982. - Catalogue of the exhibition at
Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841-1919)
Todestag im Albertinum zu Dresden 1984, Konigstein 1984. the Louvre: Le bain turc d’lngres. Paris 1971. - Pach, Walter:
Ingres. New York 1973. The Luncheon of the Boating Party, 1881
129.5x 172.7 cm
Carl Spitzweg (1808-1885) Notes:
1 Pach, p. 158 Washington, D.C., The National Gallery,
The Poor Poet, 1839 2 Catalogue, pp. 4, 5 The Phillips Collection
36 x 45 cm, formerly Berlin, 3 Montagu, Lady Mary: Briefe aus dem Orient, Stuttgart
1962, p. 98/99; Letters and Works. Ed. Lord Wharn- Lit.: Crespelle, Jean-Paul: La vie quotidienne des Impres-
Schlofi Charlottenburg
cliffe, London 1837 sionistes, Paris 1981. - Daulte, Fran§ois: Auguste Renoir,

Related work: 4 Delacroix, cited in: Le Bris, Michel: Die Romantik in Catalogue Raisonne de l’oeuvre peint, Lausanne 1971. - De

Carl Spitzweg Wort und Schrift. Geneva/Stuttgart 1981, p. 164 Goncourt, Edmond et Jules: Menette Salomon, Paris 1868. -

Drawing (pencil on reddish paper) 5 Pach, pp. 278, 59, 46, 73 Ehrlich White, Barbara; Renoir, his life, art and letters,

pre-1839 6 Alazard, pp. 117, 30 New York 1984. - De Maupassant, Guy: Une Partie de Cam-

Munich, Staatliche Graphische Sammlung 7 Dr. Laignel-Lavastine: La glande thyroi'de dans l’ceuvre pagne, Paris 1881. - Renoir, Jean: Renoir, mon pere, Paris

de M. Ingres, in: Aesculape, Paris 1929 1962. - Vollard, Ambroise: Auguste Renoir, Berlin nd.
Lit.: Daxenberger, Sebastian, known as Carl Fernau: Miinch-
8 Catalogue, p. 20/21
ener Hundert und Eins. No. I, Munich 1840. - Haus der
Kunst Munich: Catalogue of the Spitzweg exhibition, Edouard Manet (1832-1883)
Munich 1985. - Jensen, Jens Christian: Carl Spitzweg,
Edouard Manet (1832-1883) A Bar at the Folies Bergere, 1881
Cologne 1980. Raupp, Hans-Joachim: Carl Spitzweg - Der
arme Poet, in: Wallraf-Ricbartzjahrbuch, Cologne 1985/6. - The Execution of Maximilian, 1868 96 x 130 cm
Wichmann, Siegfried: Carl Spitzweg, Munich 1990. 252 x 305 cm London, Courtauld Institute Galleries, The
Mannheim, Stadtische Kunsthalle Samuel Courtauld Trust
Adolph Menzel (1815-1905) Edouard Manet Lit.: Benjamin, Walter: Gesammelte Schriften. Vol. IV, 1:
“Paris, die Stadt im Spiegel - Liebeserklarung der Dichter
The Flute Concert of Frederick the Great The Execution of Maximilian, 1867 und Kiinstler an die Hauptstadt der Welt”, Berlin 1928. -
at Sanssouci, 1850-1852 Boston, Museum of Fine Arts Corbin, Alain: Les filles de Noce, misere sexuelle et prosti¬
142 x 205 cm tution au 19e s. Paris 1978. - Castle, Charles: The Folies

Berlin, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin -
Preufiischer Kulturbesitz, Nationalgalerie
Lit.: Hofmann, Werner, Ed.: Menzel der Beobachter. Exhibi¬
tion catalogue, Hamburg/Munich 1982. - Jensen, Jens Chris¬
tian: Adolph Menzel. Cologne 1982. - Kuehnheim, Haug
von, Ed.: Aus den Tagebiichern des Grafen Lehndorff. Berlin
1982. - Kugler, Franz, and Menzel, Adolph: Geschichte
Friedrichs des Groften. Leipzig 1936 (Edition to commemo¬
rate the 150th anniversary of Frederick the Great’s death). -
Rave, Paul Ortwin: Adolph Menzel: Das Flotenkonzert
Friedrichs des Grofien. Stuttgart 1956. - Schieder, Theodor:
Friedrich der Grofie, Ein Konigtum der Widerspruche.
Frankfurt, Vienna, Berlin 1983.
Notes:
1 Kugler/Menzel, p. 244
2 Kugler/Menzel, p. 107 ff.
3 Lehndorff, p. 38
4 Schieder, p. 54
5 Schieder, p. 44
6 Schieder, p. 56
7 Lehndorff, p. 76
8 Lehndorff, p. 60
9 Lehndorff, p. 52 ff.
Francisco de Goya
3rd May 1808, 1814
Madrid, Museo del Prado
Lit.: Catalogue: Edouard Manet and the Execution, List Art
Centre, Brown University, Providence 1981. - Hamann,
Brigitte: Mit Kaiser Max in Mexiko, Aus dem Tagebuch des
Fiirsten Karl Khevenhiiller, Vienna, Munich 1983. - Hanson,
Ann Coffin: Manet and the Modern Tradition, New Haven
1977. - Rouart, Denis and Wildenstein, Daniel: Edouard
Manet, Catalogue Raisonne, Vol I, Lausanne 1975. - Wilson,
Michael: Manet at Work, National Gallery, London 1983.
Edgar Degas (1834-1917)
The Rehearsal on the Stage, 1873
65 x 81 cm
Paris, Musee d’Orsay
Lit.: Browse, Lillian: Degas’ Dancers, London 1949. -
Cabanne, Pierre: Degas, Munich nd (1964). - Guiral, Pierre:
La vie en France a Page d’or du capitalisme 1852-1879, Paris
1976. - Merlin, Olivier: L’Opera de Paris, Fribourg 1975.
Bergere. London 1982. - Catalogue of the Manet exhibition.
Paris 1983. - Ross, Novelene: Manet’s Bar at the Folies
Bergere and the myth of popular illustration. Thesis, Ann
Arbor, Michigan 1982.
Notes:
1 Castle, p. 38
2 Lavallee c. 1845, cited by Ross, p. 37
3 Camille Debours 1889, cited by Castle, p. 28
4 Maupassant Guy de: Bel-Ami, cited in: Catalogue, 478
5 Huysmans, Joris-Carl: Croquis Parisiens, 1880, cited in:
Catalogue, p. 482
6 Jacques-Emile Blanche and Georges Jeanniot, cited in:
Catalogue, p. 482
7 Catalogue, pp. 498, 500
8 Benjamin, op. cit. pp. 356-359
9 Charles Baudelaire: Le salon de 1845, Le salon de
1846, in: (Euvres completes (Pleiade), Paris 1976,
pp. 407, 496
Georges Seurat (1859-1891)
Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande
Jatte, 1884/86
207 x 308 cm

493
Chicago, The Art Institute of Chicago,
Helen Bartlett Memorial Collection
Related work:
Georges Seurat
Woman Fishing (pencil on Ingres paper),
1884/85
New York, The Metropolitan Museum,
Purchased by Joseph Pulitzer Bequest 1955
Lit.: Art Institute of Chicago: Museum studies, Chicago, vol.
14, no. 2, 1988/98. - Bloch, Ernst: Das Prinzip Hoffnung,
Frankfurt 1959. - Cachin, Fran9oise; Herbert, Robert L.
(eds.): Catalogue of the Seurat exhibition, Paris/New York
1991. - Halperin, Joan Ungersma: Felix Feneon, aesthete and
anarchist in fin de siecle Paris, New Haven/London 1988. -
Russell, John: Georges Seurat, London 1965.
Vassily Surikov (1848-1916)
The Boyarina Morozova, 1887
304 x 587 cm, Moskow, Tretyakov Gallery
Lit.: Kemenov, V.: Vasily Surikov, Leningrad 1979. - Pascal,
Pierre: Awakum ou les debuts du Raskol, Paris 1938/62. -
Pleyer, Viktoria: Das russische Altglaubigentum, Munich
1961. - Schakovskoy, Zinaida: La vie quotidienne a Moscou
au 17e siecle, Paris 1962.
James Ensor (1860-1949)
Christ’s Entry into Brussels, 1888
260 x 431 cm, Malibu, California, The J. Paul
Getty Museum
Lit.: Delevoy, Robert L.: Ensor. Antwerp 1981. - Haesert,
Paul: James Ensor, Stuttgart 1957. - Kiefer, Theodor: J.
Ensor. Recklinghausen 1976. - Kunsthaus Zurich
Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten Antwerpen: Cat¬
alogue to the exhibition of Ensor 1983.
Otto Dix (1891-1969)
Metropolis (Triptych), 1928
Centrepiece: 181 x 201 cm; outer panels: 181 x
101 cm
Galerie der Stadt Stuttgart
494
Lit.: Conzelmann, Otto: Otto Dix, Hannover 1959. - Giese,
Fritz: Girl-Kultur, Munich 1925. - Hermand, Jost and
Trommler, Frank: Die Kultur der Weimarer Republik,
Munich 1978. - Kessler, Harry Graf: Tagebucher 1918-1937,
Frankfurt am Main 1961. - Kracauer, Siegfried: Das Orna¬
ment der Masse, Frankfurt am Main 1963. - Loffler, Fritz:
Otto Dix, Leben und Werk, Dresden 1977.
Marc Chagall (1887-1985)
White Crucifixion, 1938
155 x 139.5 cm
Chicago, The Art Institute of Chicago, Gift of
Alfred S. Alschuler
Lit.: Alexander, Sidney: Marc Chagall, Eine Biographie,
Munich 1984. - Chagall, Bella: Erste Begegnung, Brennende
Lichter, Hamburg 1980. - Chagall, Marc: Ma Vie, Paris 1931.
- Chagall, Marc: Retrospective de Poeuvre peint, Katalog der
Fondation Maeght, Saint Paul 1984.
Diego Rivera (1886-1957)
Dream of a Sunday Afternoon in Alameda
Park, 1948
4. 80 x 15 m
Mexico City, Pabellon Diego Rivera
Lit.: Bahlsen, Gerhard: Mexiko, Aufruhr und Beharrung.
Stuttgart 1961. - Carillo, Rafael A.: Mural Painting of Mex¬
ico, Mexico City 1981. - Gonzales, Stella M.; Blazquez, Car¬
men G.: Die Geschichte Mexikos von der vorspanischen Zeit
bis zum heutigen Tag, Mexiko City 1980. - Paz, Octavio: The
labyrinth of solitude, life and thought in Mexico, New York
1961. - Rivera, Diego: Wort und Bekenntnis, Zurich 1965.
and
Acknowledgements
The publisher would like to thank the muse¬
ums, archives and photographers for their
kind co-operation and permission to reproduce
photographic material. Besides the collections
and institutions acknowledged in the appendix,
we are grateful to:
Archiv fiir Kunst und Geschichte, Berlin: 13,20-25,
140-144,146-151 (Erich Lessing), 158-163 (Erich Lessing),
164-169,194-199 (Joseph Martin), 302-307, 368-373
Jorg P. Anders: 190, 278-283, 373, 398-403
The Art Institute of Chicago, photograph © 1994 All rights
reserved: 476-481
Artothek, Peissenberg: 14-19, 68-73 (Willi), 80-85,128-133,
194-199, 338-342 (Blauel/Gnamm), 428-433, 452^157,
458-463
© Bildarchiv Preuflischer Kulturbesitz, Berlin: 8-13,
392-396,
Raffaello Bencini: 95
Deutsche Fotothek/Sachsische Landesbibliothek, Dresden:
386-391
Rafael Doniz, Mexico City: 482-487
Ursula Edelmann: 343
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Malibu, California: 464^169
Hamburger Kunsthalle, Elke Walford (Photo): 246
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna: 110-115, 146-151,
260-265 320-325
Jochen Littkemann, Berlin: 488-493
The Metropolian Museum of Art, New York, All rights
reserved: 44^19 (Copyright © 1975), 454
Musee d’art et d’histoire, City of Geneva, Bettina Jacots-
Descombes (Photo): 38-43
Museo del Prado, Madrid: 86-91, 254-259, 362-367
Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid: 308-313
National Gallery, London: 104-109, 242-247
National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh: 211
Offentliche Kunstsammlung Basle, Kunstmuseum, Martin
Biihler (Photo): 122-127
Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C.: 440-445
© Reunion des Musees Nationaux, Paris: 32-37, 66-71 (G.
Blot/J. Schormans), 182-187, 272-277, 332-337, 356-361,
374-379, 380-385, 404-409, 422^127
Scala, Florence: 26-31, 50-55, 56-61, 62-67, 116-121,
152-157,164-169, 210, 212-217, 218-223, 290-295,
302-307,410-415
Statens Konstmuseer, Stockholm: 275
Staatliche Graphische Sammlung, Munich: 397
Sir John Soanes Museum, London, By courtesy of the
Trustees: 314-319
Elke Walford: 353, 355
Wallace Collection, London: 284-289
Wallraf-Richartz-Museum, Rheinisches Bildarchiv,
Cologne: 74-79
The Wellcome Centre of Medical Science, Wellcome Insti¬
tute Library, London: 206-209
Woburn Abbey, Bedfordshire, By kind permission of Mar¬
quess of Tavistock and Trustees of Bedford Estate: 200-205
Masterpieces
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What is that callow youth
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