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 ⭐

Artistic philosophy

• Art should imaginatively evoke what is in our minds & in the books we have read

  • Seeks to merge text & image into a seamless & convincing unity

• His unquestioning iconographic & formal hierarchies prioritise the classical tradition above all else

Jan Vermeer

Background

(Non) impact of the classical on his works

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)

Artistic philosophy

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

  • Refuses to merge text & image into a seamless & convincing unity

Diego Velázquez

Background

Engagements w/ the classical/Renaissance (2)

Oeuvre (4)

Artistic Philosophy

Background

• Born in Spain (1599)

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

Engagements w/ the classical/Renaissance:

• 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

Oeuvre:

(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

Artistic philosophy

Intentionally ambiguous response to his classical & classicising predecessors

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