and malnourished, but not entirely lifeless. This extraordinary view of Death in motion raises philosophical questions about our ability to comprehend death’s dynamism and unpredictability.
It is important to note that The Triumph of Death was created, in part, as a response to an invitation Brown received in 2018 to exhibit a new body of work at Blenheim Palace, in Oxfordshire [fig.2]. This UNESCO World Heritage Site was a gift from Queen Anne to John Churchill, 1st Duke of Marlborough, following his victory at the Battle of Blenheim in 1704 . A masterpiece of Baroque architecture, the palace houses several significant paintings, including Henri Fantin-Latour’s A Nymph Attended by Two Putti (mid-19th century), Ambrose McEvoy’s Consuelo, Duchess of Marlborough (1916) and George Stubbs’s Portrait of a Royal Tiger (c.1770), in addition to a famous series of tapestries collectively known as The Victories of the Duke of Marlborough (1707–17). In the years running up to the exhibition, Brown looked to the palace’s holdings for inspiration. She became excited about ‘the idea of painting with an audience in mind, making specific work that would resonate with a specific place’.1
Several of the resultant site-specific interventions are worth highlighting. There’ll always be an England (2019) was discreetly installed above a doorway; Rot and Wormwood (2019) rested on a marble-topped side table; and Dog is Life (2019) was hung above a fireplace, all of them in the same room as the infamous Battle of Blenheim tapestry. There’ll always be an England – a nod to singer Vera Lynn’s patriotic song – was set in contrast with words such as ‘rot’, the moderately poisonous herb ‘wormwood’ and the bestial ‘dog’. This juxtaposition read as a warning against historical or glorified ideas of imperial rule, transforming the paintings into ironic accompaniments to the tapestry’s spectacular display of eighteenth-century British power. Hunt with Nature Morte and Blenheim Spaniel (2019) was placed between a painting of the Duke of Marlborough at the Battle of Ramillies and a bronze statue of the duke, physically interrupting these heroic portraits, with nature morte translating as ‘still life’ or, literally, ‘dead nature’. These morbid references seem to signal the end of the eighteenth-century model of Great Britain as the world’s dominant colonial power. Perhaps the most explicit in this respect was The Children of the Fourth Duke (2019), which was situated directly in front of Sir Joshua Reynolds’s The 4th Duke of Marlborough and his Family (1777–78) [fig.3 ]. Reynolds’s painting – the sketch for which is housed in the Tate collection – is considered a masterwork by the foremost portraitist of his day. Brown’s canvas, which is roughly 25 per cent smaller than the original, continues her critique of eighteenth-century aristocratic lifestyles. With great formal skill and dexterity, she erases the 4th Duke and Duchess in an oleaginous field of abstract marks. Brown also removes the two male heirs featured in the earlier portrait. With these individuals dispatched, Brown’s painting preserves and highlights the couple’s four daughters – countering the limited freedoms these women would have experienced in the moment they were portrayed.2
Dynamic Death
Unlike the above-mentioned works, with their unique connections to Blenheim Palace’s collection, The Triumph of Death was something of an outlier in terms of its subject matter. It is based on a 1446 Italian fresco, also called The Triumph of Death, it has been speculated by Guillaume Spicre, housed in the Palazzo Abatellis in Palermo, now home to the Galleria Regionale della Sicilia [fig.1].3 The technique of fresco painting involved working in water-based pigments on a wall covered in freshly applied plaster, so that as the plaster dried the painting became an integral part of it. Several Italian frescoes incorporate Death as a wild rider, including the Triumph of Death by the Master of the Dominicans in St. John’s Chapel, Bolzano (1330–35 ); Buonamico Buffalmacco’s fresco at the Campo Santo in Pisa (1336–41); the Sienese School painting in the Monastery of St. Benedict, Subiaco (1363–66); Bartolo di Fredi’s fresco in the Church of San Francesco, Lucignano (c.1380) ; and the Tyrolian School Triumph of Death at the Chapel of St. Kathrein at Karneid Castle, South Tyrol (c 1380). Compositionally speaking, the Subiaco and Lucignano frescoes are the closest to the Palermo painting in that they both show Death wielding a bow and arrow, with another weapon tucked into his belt [fig.4]. Death rides over a group of bodies while taking aim at a couple of young nobles. Behind him are several other figures begging for release from their suffering. Following the Black Death of 1346–53 – the most fatal pandemic in human history – the Triumph of Death became a popular artistic theme across Europe.
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Cecily Brown
The Triumph of Death
Published in 2022 by Ridinghouse and Thomas Dane Gallery
Published on the occasion of the exhibition Cecily Brown: The Triumph of Death Museo e Real Bosco di Capodimonte, Naples 10 February–30 September 2022
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