Lecture 5: Classic Baroque: Painting Myths and the Myth of Painting

Key Ideas (2)

1. The Baroque period is usually assumed to be after/opposed to the Renaissance & its peak of interest in antiquity

2. BUT Baroque artists continued to absorb & reinterpret the classical tradition

Peter Paul Rubens

Background

• From Antwerp (present-day Belgium) (1577)

• Took on the trappings of a gentleman; patrons were the courtly, primarily catholic elite; was knighted in England & Spain

• Was highly receptive to antiquity

  • Received a classical education in Antwerp; was admired for his knowledge of antiquity

  • Later in life, had an impressive collection of antiquities, ancient texts & modern commentaries (text-based classical tradition)

  • ‘In order to attain the highest perfection in painting, it is necessary to understand the antique, nay, to be so thoroughly possessed of this knowledge that it may diffuse itself everywhere.’

• Travelled to Italy in 1600 (later than many of his compatriots)

  • Stayed for 8 years

  • Spent much time at the North Italian court of the Gonzaga family in Mantua

Impact of the classical on his works

After his return from Italy:

1. Sought to bring a little bit of Italy back home w/ him to Antwerp

   • E.g. his Antwerp mansion: added Italianate structures to his new home

     • Classicising arch leading into the garden, façade decorated w/ classicizing reliefs & art based on well-known classical reliefs Rubens had copied in Italy

     • Housed his classical collections of art & literature

2. Continued to refer to his drawings for inspiration

   • BUT NOT just blindly imitative; still contains his unmistakable hand

   • Was criticized by some competitors for borrowing whole figures from the Italians

     • Rubens: his competitors were free to do so likewise, if they found that they could benefit from it

       = suggested that there was more to his borrowings than merely making whole copies; rethinking classical models required special skill

3. Continued to refer to ancient texts for inspiration

   • Made paintings depicting narratives from ancient texts

     • E.g. The Apotheosis of Germanicus (Gemma Tiberiana) (1626), Peter Paul Rubens)

   • Svetlana Alpers: this interest in using art to illustrate texts was a key feature of the Renaissance = Rubens was, despite being from the North, an Italianate artist ⭐

Jan Vermeer

Background

• Was born & spent much of his working life in Delft (a city in the Netherlands) (1632)

• Patrons were wealthy, mostly Protestant citizens of his hometown

(Non) impact of the classical on his works

• Early works: explicitly Christian & classical narratives

• Majority of works: interior scenes

  • E.g. The Art of Painting (ca. 1666–1668), Johannes Vermeer

  • Women (& occasionally men) absorbed by the minutiae of everyday life

  • Surrounded by objects & spaces that are intimately observed

  • Possibly used a camera obscura to make them: a highly effective means of tracing, painting, & mapping the world in 2 dimensions

  • Svetlana Alpers: Vermeer stands IN OPPOSITION TO the text-based classical tradition associated w/ Rubens

    • ‘Anti-narrative’ & ‘anti-classical’ ⭐

    • Many scholars have tried to find specific texts to explain supposedly hidden allegorical/narrative meanings of Vermeer’s scenes

    • BUT Alpers argues we must try to see these images w/o any Italianate preconceptions (concerned w/ illustrating a classical text/narrative; action & visual narration)

    • Instead, Vermeer has a profoundly Northern interest in ‘describing the world’ (mapping impulse & describing the present day w/ a highly attentive eye)

Diego Velázquez

Background

• Born in Spain (1599)

• In his 20s: moved to the Spanish & Catholic court of Philip IV in Madrid

• Gained access to the King’s art collection (incl. numerous paintings by Titian)

  • Met Rubens when the latter spent a year at the Spanish court in the late 1620s

• Later, made 2 trips to Italy to:

  (1) Buy more paintings for the royal collection

  (2) To study Italian masters & ancient artefacts in person

Impact of the classical on his works:

(a) A small no. of religious paintings

• Most w/ a Counter-Reformation, Catholic agenda

(b) A small no. of genre paintings

• Domestic subjects

• Pays descriptive attention to surface textures & individual objects; similar to Vermeer

(c) A small no. of narrative/text-based paintings

• E.g. Apollo in the Forge of Vulcan (1630), Diego Velázquez

• E.g. The Myth of Arachne/The Spinners (ca. 1657), Diego Velázquez

• BUT unlike Rubens & Vermeer, his works lie between the narrative & descriptive modes

(d) Most commonly, painted portraits of the royal family, courtiers, etc.

• E.g. Las Meninas/The Family of Philip IV (ca. 1656), Diego Velázquez

Diego Velázquez vs. Peter Paul Rubens vs. Jan Vermeer

The Triumph of the Catholic Church (ca. 1625), Peter Paul Rubens

Historical context

• Preparatory oil sketches for a tapestry series

• Commissioned for a Franciscan convent in Madrid by Isabella Clara Eugenia

  • One of Rubens’s most important patrons

  • A Spanish Habsburg (devout Catholic ruler of the Spanish Netherlands)

  • Herself was a lay member of the convent

Analysis

• Mantegna’s classicising composition, The Triumphs of Caesar (at Hampton Court Palace, London)

  • Classical imagery

    • E.g. classicised, twisted columns

    • E.g. the triumphant Church is depicted as an allegorical female figure, reminiscent of classical personifications of victory

    • E.g. mythological figure, idealized & classicized bodies, nudity

Interpretation

• Classicising imagery to serve a non-classical theme: the allegorical triumph of the Catholic church

  • To serve his patron’s devotional & political interests

  • Support for the Counter-Reformation (the Catholic church’s attempts to counter the criticism of it by Protestant reformers)

    • Through carefully-controlled but often highly-emotional forms of visual imagery

The Apotheosis of Germanicus (Gemma Tiberiana) (1626), Peter Paul Rubens

Historical context

• Exemplifies Rubens’s interest in collecting classical coins (esp. cameos & gems)

• Rubens’s correspondence w/ his friend Nicolas-Claude Fabri de Peirsec

  • Peirsec had established that a famous ancient cameo was actually a depiction of the apotheosis of the Germanicus

  • Thought in medieval times to be an illustration of the Old Testament tale of Joseph @ the court of the Egyptian Pharaoh

    • Peirsec reunited a classical image w/ its correct classical iconography (matching image → text)

    • Seen as a key characteristic of the Renaissance revival of the classical tradition

• Excited by such discoveries, Peirsec & Rubens planned an illustrated volume showing all the most beautiful ancient cameos & gems known at the time

  • Project was never completed

  • BUT Rubens painted an enlarged copy of the cameo as a gift for Peirsec

Description

• Depicts Germanicus taking leave of his parents, the Emperor Tiberius and his mother Livia

• With other members of the Julio-Claudian family, past and present.

Analysis

• Exaggerated classicising aspects of the original cameo

  • E.g. classicized bodies: modelled figures to emphasise musculature, volume & contours; idealized

  • E.g. heightened shadows, even behind the figures = more animated, lifelike

  • E.g. intensified expressions of the figures

    • Endowed w/ a graceful naturalism

  • E.g. added a life-like warmth to the white, cold stone

    • Did not replicate the layers of brown in the sardonyx

    • Instead, subtler and more blended brown

  • E.g. tidied up the cameo’s irregular shape & restored 2 heads in the bottom left & right, which were missing in the original

    = an attempt to perfect it

Interpretation

• His copy was NOT a documentary record, but a sympathetic interpretation ⭐of the stately classical beauty of the gem.

The Art of Painting (ca. 1666–1668), Johannes Vermeer

Description

• The artist himself is sat painting

  • Dressed in what would have seemed at the time a rather old-fashioned outfit in the Burgundian style

  • Has begun to paint the woman standing before him on his canvas

• The woman represents a figure of Clio

  • The ancient muse of History

  • Holds a book, a trumpet, & wears a crown of laurels

  • BUT clearly is not supposed to be Clio herself, but one of Vermeer’s models dressed up & posing as Clio

• A map of Holland hanging on the wall

  • Upper right edge of the map: the word ‘descriptio’ (= description)

  • As if to confirm the essentially descriptive nature of Vermeer’s project ⭐

Interpretation

• Rather than depicting the actual classical figure of Clio, Vermeer shows a 17th-century woman pretending to be a classical muse

  • REFUSES to merge text & image into a seamless & convincing unity (vs. Rubens)

    • Shows us how artificial it can be to do so

  • Lays bare before our eyes the mechanics of pictorial representation

    • The process by which a model is transformed → myth

    • Art can only describe what the artist actually sees before his eyes ⭐

• Highlights tensions between:

  • Description vs. narration

  • Mapping the world vs. illustrating a text

Apollo in the Forge of Vulcan (1630), Diego Velázquez

Description

• Shows the moment when the god Apollo (far left) announces to Vulcan (in the centre) that his wife Venus is having an affair w/ the god Mars

Interpretation

• At 1st glance, seems to be a typically Italianate illustration of a classical text (Ovid’s Metamorphoses - Roman mythology)

• BUT:

  • Attention to detail; meticulous depiction of objects (e.g. Vulcan’s tools & the red-hot piece of armour he’s about to hammer)

  • Using real, manual labourers for his figures RATHER THAN idealised male bodies based on ancient sculptural prototypes

    = makes this work lie BETWEEN the narrative & descriptive modes identified by Alpers

Las Meninas/The Family of Philip IV (ca. 1656), Diego Velázquez

‘Las Meninas’ = the maidservants

Description

• A room in the Spanish royal palace

• Velázquez himself stands on the left

  • In front of an enormous canvas, which we cannot see

• 1 of the royal princesses posing beside him

  • Attended by 2 maidservants, a dog, and 2 court dwarfs

• Behind, other courtiers come & go

• Background: dark, shadowy paintings hanging on the rear wall

  • All copies of works by Rubens depicting mythological tales from Ovid

  • In the style of Titian

    = alludes to his fellow classicising & text-oriented artists

• The King & Queen are included indirectly in the shiny, light-filled frame in the back

  • Depicts a mirror rather than another painting

  • The mirror as a long-standing symbol of mimesis

    = everyone in the painting looks out attentively towards the viewer because the people standing in this position are the King & Queen of Spain

    OR the mirror reflects the painted portraits of the royal couple painted on the unseen canvas

Interpretation

• Italianate vision of the intellectual & social ambitions of artists & art itself ⭐

  • Makes grandiose claims about his own status as an artist

    • E.g. portrays himself as a well-dressed gentleman

    • E.g. includes the red cross of the Knights of Santiago on his suit

      • An aristocratic order that he would eventually join

    • E.g. clearly at ease w/ the servants, courtiers, and the royal princess herself

      = visual confirmation of his social graces & status at court

• Wilful visual ambiguity about royal couple in the mirror

  • Highlights the artist’s intelligence & skill

    = supports his claims about the status of artists & the art of painting itself

• Vs. Rubens & Titian had both been knighted

  • Velázquez was only just putting together a petition to ask for a knighthood of his own

    • BUT does this through a visual description of the here & now

    • DESPITE alluding to his classicising & text-oriented fellow artists

    • Velázquez’s own painting seems much more descriptive > narrative

      • A snapshot of a fleeting moment in the everyday domestic life of the royal family

      • Rather than an idealised & imagined reconstruction of a distant & ancient past

        = Velázquez stands WITHIN & OUTSIDE the classical Italianate tradition ⭐

The Myth of Arachne/The Spinners (ca. 1657), Diego Velázquez

Historical context

• Textual source for the scene in the background: Ovid’s Tale of Arachne

  • Ancient Roman poetry

• A highly-gifted weaver who foolishly challenges the goddess Minerva to a contest to see who could produce the best tapestry

  • Arachne’s hubris leads to her downfall

  • The goddess turns her into a spider

    • The moment depicted is just before her downfall

Description

• Foreground: people spinning threads used to make tapestries

• Background: Arachne showing off her handiwork to Minerva

  • Minerva w/ her armour & helmet

  • Arachne’s tapestry evokes Titian’s famous painting of yet another classical story: the Abduction of Europa

    • Also written by Ovid

    • This painting was owned at the time by Philip IV

      = provided Velázquez w/ a painterly model @ 1st hand

Interpretation

• Velázquez’s homage to classical literature & the classicising art of Titian ALSO includes some very Northern features

  • E.g. mythological tales (main narrative action) confined to the background, while foreground depicts a more typically-Northern genre scene of everyday life ⭐

    • This composition comes from Northern sources