Early Modern Moving Images Journal

Early Modern Moving Images

Undergraduate Academic Journal 2015 Supervised by Dr. Angela Vanhaelen

McGill University Dept. of Art History Supervised by Dr. Angela Vanhaelen 2014-2015 © ARTH 435, Early Modern Moving Images Editor in Chief ~ Jemma Elliott-Israelson Graphic Design ~ Meghan Myers-Colet Publishing Liaison & Communications ~ Marlene Misiuk

Editorial Board: Kimberly Carrière Patrick Deslauriers Hayley Eaves Sebastian Grant Klea Hawkins Emma Le Pouesard Xiyuan Li Marlene Misiuk Erica Morassutti Ranier Schraepen Emily Sheiner Chloé Vadot Dorothy Yang

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Table of Contents The Moving Image • 4 Dr. Vanhaelen Exploring the Dionysian World of Caravaggio • 5 Sebastian Grant Château de Vaux-le-Vicomte Motion and Emotion in a Seventeenth-Century French Garden • 11 Rainier Schraepen The Mobile Face • 18 Patrick Deslauriers Samuel van Hoogstraten: A Peepshow with Views of a Dutch Interior • 23 Kimberly Carrière Long Live the Queen: The Funeral Effigy of Elizabeth I • 29 Erica Morassutti The Puppet Resistance: Theatrical Art and Entertainment in Commonwealth London (1649-1660) • 40 Hayley M.L. Eaves The Artist as Poet: Agnolo Bronzino, “Imbued with the Spirit of Petrarch” • 49 Jemma Elliott-Israelson From Exotic to Domestic: The Development of Porcelain in the Seventeenth-Century Dutch Republic • 55 Xiyuan Li “Please Do Not Touch” Illusions of Medium in Bernini’s Moving Bodies • 62 Chloé Vadot Calculated Experience The psychology of perspective and the Jesuit Mission in Andrea Pozzo’s illusionistic ceiling • 69 Dorothy Yang Pathos and Pestilence: the Tension of Painting and Wax in Gaetano Zumbo’s La Pestilenza • 78 Emma Le Pouésard Tra il Devoto et il Profano: Caravaggio, Bernini, Ecstasy, and the Baroque Style • 85 Marlene Misiuk Motherhood, Morality and Mammary An Exploration of the Dichotomous Breast in Seventeenth-Century Dutch Visual Culture • 106 Emily Sheiner The Grotta Grande: The Dissolution of Boundaries between Art and Nature • 112 Klea Hawkins

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The Moving Image Dr. Vanhaelen

Early modern art criticism conveys a fascination with the moving image—an artwork so strikingly lifelike that it appears to come alive. The force of the moving image is physical, immediate, and emotive. Such works consume their beholders, deploying stunning visual effects that move and even change their human interlocutors. In the words of one commentator, the viewer thus confronted by the incarnate artwork “becomes another person.” This type of response to images has been largely repressed from art historical discourses that focus on the distanced intellectual interpretation and contemplation of the work of art as a closed field of knowledge. Frequently dismissed as a form of ‘primitivism’, the living image is most often encountered in popular culture studies or anthropologies of the image. As we reconsidered the moving image in this seminar, we explored its potential to put art history in motion, animating and dynamically opening it to new objects, questions, and methods of analysis. We found that engagement with the affective impact of images can unsettle art historical categories of understanding, pressing us to reassess key terms of analysis like representation, mimesis, making, spectatorship, meaning, and interpretation as mobile and transformative processes. The moving image especially stirs and manipulates emotions. Indeed, the force of the artwork can be deployed almost as a weapon, mobilized to inspire or control political, religious, colonial, and social actions. With this in mind, we considered the powerful and passionate responses that images can elicit, ranging from tenderness to terror, rage to devotion, arousal to revulsion. This prompted discussion of a key question—one that is rarely asked—why do we care so much about art?

Each week, we explored the multifaceted potentialities of a broad range of moving images—both in the classroom and at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts. We asked why the Mona Lisa was perceived to have a beating pulse and deliberated the Pygmalion potential of this and other lively works. We explored how the horror of the Laocoön reverberated through the art world after it’s unearthing in 1506, and we looked at many terrifying images of disembodied heads, continuously coming back to the Medusa’s power to petrify and thus transform viewers into statues. We studied early modern maps, street posters, and garden designs in relation to the physical movements of people and things. We thought about smoke, clouds, vapours, and relationship of the moving image to spirits, demons, and witches. In the works of artists like Caravaggio and Bernini, we were confronted with the intense sensuality of early modern spirituality. We also engaged with objects that often fall outside of the purview of art history, like automata, moving mechanical figures, and waxwork portraits (from Julius Caesar to Justin Bieber). We especially came back to the motility of various media—metal, stone, paint, ink, glass, wax—and to the issue of how the artist’s manipulation of the medium could move and alter the beholder. Freed from reading for the prescribed meanings of iconography or ideology, we practiced close looking, responding to images on their own terms, and considering how the lively image impacts viewers, moving them physically and psychologically. This was a creative class. Sometimes we drew pictures in order to better grasp what was at stake in our discussions. At the MMFA, we were chastised (more than once!) for being too animated in our engagement with the paintings. All of the student research presentations and papers were exciting, interesting, thoughtful, and innovative. Because the students worked so well together as a group, the final papers also cohere as a group, and it’s a pleasure to see them all published together in this special issue.

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Exploring the Dionysian World of Caravaggio Sebastian Grant The work of Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio can be easily recognized by the style and the themes that he used throughout his career. From the development of his chiaroscuro effect to his highly dramatic use of the style that later became known as Baroque, Caravaggio includes elements in his work that make his pieces discernible when viewed by a passing onlooker. One of the most recurring images that appears in his repertoire is the image of the beautiful male youth that Caravaggio portrays in idealistic finery. Of his many depictions of these youthful boys, his Bacchus (plate 1) can be seen as one of his most interesting paintings because of its reinterpretation of the Ancient Greco-Roman god in Early Modern Italy. The Bacchus was painted in 1596 in a commission for one his most famous patrons, Cardinal Francesco Maria del Monte, after Caravaggio became a part of his household1.

As he lived with his patron in Rome, he was commissioned for various works as del Monte promoted his fame throughout the city. With his various themes, from religious work to still lives, it Plate 1. Caravaggio, Bacchus, c. 1595, Oil on is curious as to the reason why Caravaggio had such an interest in Canvas, Florence: Uffizi Gallery depicting Bacchus in youthful finery.

In the piece, the Bacchus looks at the viewer, confronting him with a commanding gaze, and asking the viewer to join in the feast surrounding him. He lounges on the couch with his dark black curls crowned in grapes and vines. Dressed in a Classical style, one of his shoulders is exposed, drawing the eye to the enticing musculature of his body, but the viewer only gets a glimpse of his body before it is covered by the thin loose white fabric that he wears. As he looks upon the viewer, he asks him to give into his desire, to abandon all sense of propriety, and to join the feast that is set before them. He coerces the viewer to take from the fruit basket in the foreground, suggestively placed in front of the Bacchus’s groin. He completes the solicitation with the gesture of his wine glass, offering it outwards for the viewer to take. The viewer at this point is left to ask through Bacchus’s insistence: Should I join in this revelry? Or should I stay in the orderly confines of the institution?

This conflict between our own order and our own desire serves as the primary topic in Frederich Nietzsche’s text The Birth of Tragedy, which identifies this distinction in the development of Ancient Greek Tragedy through the gaze of the Apollonian and the Dionysian. Like the viewer who looks upon the Bacchus, the Apollonian tries to build a “restraining boundary”2 in order to establish a “freedom from [his] wilder impulses” by trying to create a sense of order in the illusion that confronts him. Yet our own desire rises out of our “innermost core”3 as we fall to the temptation of the dark and alluring part of us that is deep within. By looking at the Bacchus, Caravaggio himself creates his own temptation of the viewer by exploring his own interpretation of the Dionysian in the images of Bacchus, and by displaying them in their seductive beauty on the canvas. As he displays these wild desires in his paintings, we are faced with specific questions that come into our minds when comparing Caravaggio’s use of the Bacchus to Nietzsche’s concept of the Dionysian. Why does Caravaggio use Bacchus as a theme for his seductive males, and how do Nietzsche’s concepts of the Apollonian and the Dionysian make the Bacchus tempt the viewer with its innermost desire? In addition to this question, how is Caravaggio’s major patron, Cardinal del Monte, 1 2 3

Uffizi Gallery, “Bacchus by Caravaggio,” 2014, Web. Friedrich Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy, edited by Michael Tanner, translated by Shaun Whiteside. (London: Penguin Group, 1993), 16.

Ibid., 17

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influential to the creation of Caravaggio’s desirable paintings, and how does his private life become a part of the Dionysian soul of these paintings?

In order to answer both questions, this essay will explore two other paintings in addition to the Bacchus: The Musicians (plate 2) and Sick Bacchus (plate 3). These two other pieces will be used to explore how Nietzsche’s concept, the Dionysian, can be discussed within the context of the seductive quality of Caravaggio’s work. The Musicians uses the Dionysian aspects of music to encourage the primal instincts of the viewers to give themselves over to the acts of dance and revelry, and to depict Cardinal del Monte’s adoration of music. The Sick Bacchus brings out the Dionysian in its full power as it transforms the youth into the manifestation of Bacchus itself. The Dionysian is no longer protected behind its mask of order and rationality, and it makes itself known through the model, which in this case is Caravaggio himself. By looking at these three pieces, we can see how the Dionysian captures the viewers, the patrons, and Caravaggio himself in its seductive power.

In order to identify the concealed Dionysian in Caravaggio’s works, it is important to discuss the context in which his works were made by discussing his major patron, Cardinal del Monte. Del Monte lived just after the Counter-Reformation, a period when the Catholic Church tried to reestablish its authority that had diminished after the recent Protestant Reformation4. From the visionary extravagance of Baroque art to the rise in power of the Jesuits, the Church created new ways of bringing believers back to its faith after the major schism. One of the ways the Church attempted to reestablish its dominance was through the strict reforms that were implemented in order to prevent its followers from being led astray from Christian law. During the Council of Trent from 1545 to 1563, the Church implemented many strict reforms including the Inquisition and the Index Librorum Prohibitorum, a list of books that were banned because of their sinful nature. Along with these reforms, the Council also condemned art that contained nudity, eroticism, and pagan themes5. As an important leader of the Church that had recently implemented such severe laws, it was important that Cardinal del Monte portrayed himself as pious and loyal to these reforms.

It was crucial to his participation in the Church that he created an Apollonian image in order to show himself as an orderly follower of the Vatican law.

Yet the cardinal also had a private life that contradicted the pious life that he was meant to portray in the public life of the Church. In the privacy of his own home, Cardinal del Monte was able to bring out his Dionysian desires in many forms, from his interests in the banned works of the Church to his own sexual desire. Beyond his role as a cardinal, del Monte had an appreciation for the arts and sciences about topics that were banned from the Vatican. In his service to the Church, he held the office of Cardinal Protector of the Accademia di San Luca, which was the painter’s organization in Rome6. Yet by looking at the types of works he commissioned from artists such as Caravaggio, his patronage encouraged the type of art that was recently banned by the Church in the Council of Trent. By commissioning a piece like the Bacchus that was discussed previously, he continued to promote a culture of painting not only pagan images, but also painting desirable and seductive images. By commissioning these pieces, most likely for his own private use, he shows his intrigue in the creation of artwork that was banned by the Church.

His plans to promote this banned art extended beyond his private home, as he also influenced the dissemination of artworks that were explicitly rejected by the Church. This can be specifically related to Caravaggio’s works, which were sometimes considered too “provocative”7 to be accepted by the pope. Yet, in a private market developed from del Monte’s close circle, these rejected art pieces such as Caravaggio’s Inspiration of Saint Matthew were sold to specific buyers 8. As Caravaggio’s chief patron, del Monte influenced the sales of these rejected paintings.

He was also interested in the natural sciences, which had been well known to be in a contentious debate with the teachings of the Church. Not only was his brother Guidubaldo a mathematician and a physicist, but Cardinal del Monte was also a supporter and a close friend of Galileo Galilei9. It has been noted that Galileo visited del Monte’s residence, the Palazzo Madama, quite a few times and he must have frequently presented his ideas to the cardinal10.

4 Brittany A Stella, The Papabile and the Pauper: The Influence of Cardinal del Monte’s Patronage for Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio (Gainesville: University of Florida, 2011), 14-16.

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5 6 7 8 9 10

A. Stella, 17. glbtq Inc, “Patronage I: The Western World from Ancient Greece until 1900,” 2005, 5.

A. Stella, 88.

Ibid.

Sybille Ebert-Schifferer, Caravaggio: The Artist and His Work (Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 2012), 91.

A. Stella, 73.

Galileo was well known to have had a controversial history with the Church, which eventually arrested him, and forced him to recant all of his theories made about the physical world. For Cardinal del Monte to be a close friend of Galileo, one can see that he is more than the pious servant of the Church, and he lets his personal interests explore topics censored by the Vatican.

It is also interesting that Cardinal del Monte was willing to take someone like Caravaggio into his home, as the latter was a man who had a questionable reputation. He was known to have a lifestyle that went against the strict reforms of the Council of Trent, including “carousing with prostitutes, gamblers, drinkers, Romani”11 and other groups that were marginalized by the church. He frequently used prostitutes as models for many of his paintings, including his religious ones, and he had a very violent nature, as he was known to have killed people over the smallest issues. It is then quite interesting to see Cardinal del Monte become the patron to a man who can be seen as an enemy to the strict laws that revitalized the Catholic Church, and it creates questions as to the reasons why del Monte took Caravaggio into his home.

Another part of del Monte’s private life that has been frequently debated is his sexuality. During his service to the Church, sodomy was an illegal act punishable by death12, and as a cardinal, del Monte was expected as a pious individual to remain celibate. Although his sexuality is not clearly known, the homoerotic themes of the works by Caravaggio that he commissioned suggest that he may have had homosexual desires. Pieces such as Bacchus and The Musicians featuring youthful, androgynous boys uncover del Monte’s identity and his sexuality. His sexual tastes further come into question in a statement made by art historian Francis Haskell, who said that Cardinal del Monte would hold lavish banquets where “‘the dancing was done by boys dressed up as girls’”13. It is unclear where these boys came from, or how they personally knew del Monte, but this statement suggests that del Monte’s private life differed from his public life as a cardinal.

This distinction between the public and private life of Cardinal del Monte shows the conflict between the Apollonian and the Dionysian that influences him. He is expected by society to project an image of piety and obedience to the Church, yet in many instances, his private life shows that he was not obedient to the strict reform laws of the Council of Trent. As the conflict between Nietzsche’s Apollonian and Dionysian is explored through Caravaggio’s seductive paintings, the conflict becomes just as important in the patron who commissioned his pieces.

The Musicians was commissioned by Cardinal del Monte in 1595 in order to show his appreciation and adoration for music. The piece also seems to have been commissioned in order to display his vast music collection that was important to him and was necessary to show off Plate 2. Caravaggio, The Musicians, c. 1595, Oil on his status in society. Del Monte himself practiced music Canvas, New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art frequently through vocal work and Spanish guitar14, yet he had a passion that extended beyond his practice and appreciation of musical pieces themselves. In 1594, he was appointed as the head of the Congregation for the Reform of Church Music15. He was also known to have had his own private musical performances, where musicians and composers would come to the Palazzo Madama and show their talents to the cardinal, as described by the composer and close friend of del Monte, Emilio de Cavalieri16. His presence was well known in the community, as composers would also dedicate their music to him.

Del Monte also possessed a vast musical instrument collection, which became a symbol of his wealth and status in society. Musical instruments were very expensive to buy, and by having such a large collection, del Monte 11 12 13 14 15 16

Ibid., 19.

Byrne Fone, Homophobia: A History (London: Picador, 2001), 189.

Gilbert Creighton, Caravaggio and his Two Cardinals, (University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1995), 202.

Franca Camiz, “Music and Painting in Cardinal del Monte’s Household,” Metropolitan Museum Journal 26 (1991), 218.

S. Ebert-Schifferer, 91.

F. Camiz, 213.

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showed himself as a wealthy and educated patron of the arts17. It was recorded that he had thirty-seven instruments, which ranged from flutes to madrigals, lutes, guitars, violins, and organs18. Del Monte allowed Caravaggio to use his instruments in his paintings as a way for the cardinal to display his collections, and many of these instruments were featured in Caravaggio’s pieces such as The Musicians. Yet with this depiction of del Monte’s collection, Caravaggio also combines the desirable qualities of music with his attractive youths to create a piece that brings out the inner Dionysian soul out of the viewer.

The piece enters into the scene of a concert with four boys preparing to play their instruments. Some scholars say that the two boys in the center are modeled on Caravaggio himself and his friend Mario Minniti19. They are youthful and portray an ideal beauty, and some welcome the viewer to their concert by staring outwards towards the audience, while others turn away. One boy has his back fully turned away from the viewer, as if he takes the position of the viewer himself, and this positioning opens the viewer to enter the piece and join the concert. He is further welcomed by the violin in the foreground, which he is encouraged to pick up so that the viewer becomes an active participant of the piece. The piece then tries to seduce the viewer with the tantalizing aspects of the beautiful youths and the scenery around them. The skin of their shoulders is exposed, similar to the Bacchus, and their rosy lips are slightly parted as if they are about to sing. They are surrounded in sumptuous finery, from the red velvet shawl around the centre figure to the bunch of green grapes that appear out of the shadows in the bottom left corner of the piece.

The painting continues to symbolize aspects of desire through the figure in the back, who is dressed as Cupid with wings and a quiver full of arrows. He is placed in the background as if to entice the viewer to enter the piece in order to catch him.

While these pictorial images are meant to lure desire from the viewer, the subject of music also becomes a tool of seduction that is meant to uncover the inner Dionysian spirit of the viewer. Nietzsche discusses the power of music in The Birth of Tragedy, and he examines how music reaches the primal soul of any participant, revealing the wild spirit that is usually hidden in the illusion of the Apollonian mind. He describes melody as “primary and universal”20, and states that when it is played in its most basic form, it inspires a “drunken enthusiasm”21 from its listener. In this passage, he depicts music as a primal form that has always existed before the formation of society, and before it became categorized into the Apollonian image. According to this description, music exposes itself as a part of the desire, the madness, and the passion of the Dionysian spirit. Music was an important part of the Dionysian ritual since antiquity, where the festival of the Dionysia would be filled with “‘Drunkeness, and the boisterous music of flutes, cymbals, and drums’”22. By discussing music in relation to drunkenness, music is filled with the “Dionysiac currents”23 that bring the listener into the wild and passionate revelry that is hidden deep inside each soul.

Nietzsche describes how this passion also becomes part of the poet, who uses the music to its full potential, giving him a “stirring of passion […] to the roar of madness”24. Through music, the poet becomes the image of “unappeased emotion: his own desire, his yearning, his moans, and his jubilation become a symbol with which he interprets the music himself”25. In this moment, music has fully fused with the inner soul of both poet and listener, and it has brought out their full passion and emotion beyond the controlled image of the Apollonian.

By using the subject of music in The Musicians, Caravaggio incorporates this unbridled and stirred emotion into his painting, becoming the poet for the listener who looks at his piece and captures the seductive quality of the music played by the beautiful youths. With the violin placed in the foreground, he invites the viewer to join in the drunkenness and revelry of music, and he entices the viewer to reach his primordial form through the power of music.

In the depiction of Cardinal del Monte’s instruments, Caravaggio also refers back to his patron, as the viewer can see how the piece may inspire the desire of the passionate musician. He imagines the private musical performances that del Monte held in his Palazzo Madama, and he imagines how the unbridled passion of music controlled these private sessions, as del Monte explored his own Dionysian spirit through music.

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17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25

Ibid., 216.

A. Stella, 63-64.

John Gash, Caravaggio, (London: Chaucer Press, 2003), 42.

F. Nietzsche, 33.

Ibid., 34.

Leonhard Schmitz, “Dionysia,” in A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquites, William Smith, ed., (London: John Murray, 1875), 411.

F. Nietzsche, 33.

Ibid., 34.

Ibid., 35.

Yet even in the wild abandon of music, The Musicians still has aspects of the Apollonian illusion that keep the piece controlled and rational. The beauty of the boys is idealized, and their naturalism makes them seem more human than the Dionysian god. Caravaggio depicts the boys as “live models”26 and his passion is kept under some control through the idealism of their beauty. This idealism is finally abandoned in his Sick Bacchus, where the Dionysian spirit becomes fully realized in the piece, and it becomes exposed to the viewer.

Sick Bacchus was an early piece done by Caravaggio in 1594, and it is assumed to be a self-portrait of the artist when he was in the hospital27. It has been proposed that he was sick with malaria at the time, which could be the reason for his jaundiced skin in the portrait. Yet his skin can symbolize more than just sickness, but also the transformation of his body. By taking the image of Bacchus upon himself, he embodies the role of Nietzsche’s Dionysian in the form of the tragic hero. In The Birth of Tragedy, Nietzsche discusses how the celebrated characters of the Ancient Greek stage, the tragic heroes, are “merely masks of that original hero, Dionysus”28, and they are only created to be the “ideality”29 of the Apollonian society. In the illusory state of the Apollonian, Dionysus and Plate 3. Caravaggio, Sick Bacchus, c. his wild passions are kept hidden behind the mask of order and rationality.

1593, Oil on Canvas, Rome: Galleria The masking of Dionysus was a common theme in Ancient Greek tragedy, Borghese and it was used in works such as Euripides’s Bacchae. In the Bacchae, Dionysus “change[s] [his] form to a mortal one” and he “alter[s] [his] shape into the nature of a man”30 in order to infiltrate the rational city led by Pentheus, and let his Dionysian spirit flow through the city to bring it to a frenzy.

Nietzsche discusses this same masked Dionysus, who is kept in hiding under the cover of rationality, waiting to expose his passionate spirit in the Apollonian world.

By adorning the disguise of Bacchus upon himself, Caravaggio makes that exposure, and he takes off the illusory mask of the Apollonian hero to reveal the wild and seductive nature of Dionysus himself. Once again, the subject stares out towards the viewer, like in Bacchus and The Musicians, and he entices the viewer into the passionate world of desire. The falling drapery of his tunic exposes his skin, yet he tantalizes the viewer by crouching as if to cover his exposure unsuccessfully. The fruits offer a symbolic gesture of enticing the viewer as the grapes and peaches bunched together create a phallic image, and they are left in the foreground at the edge of the table, as if they ask the viewer to grab them31. The boy has his own bunch of grapes, which he holds lightly in his fingers, and he is captured in the moment of bringing the bunch towards his open mouth.

While the viewer is enticed by the youthful beauty of the Bacchus, he also realizes that the figure in the image has transformed into something other than the ideal boy of Caravaggio’s other paintings. The yellowed skin of his sickness creates discomfort in the viewer, as the figure becomes a creature of nature, and his skin imitates the color of the grapes that he is holding. His sickness also plays an important part in the transformation of the artist, as the fevers and cold sweats of malaria create the idea that he has been put into a state of delirium that is then imprinted onto his painting. As the painting gains a hallucinogenic quality, the figure becomes something other than the illusory, and he uncovers his mask to expose the wild, beastly, and delirious being that embodies the true spirit of the Dionysian.

The figure becomes Nietzsche’s satyr of The Birth of Tragedy, a being that captures the qualities of the “sublime and divine”32 nature in its transformation. The satyr is not fully human, yet it is also not fully a creature of nature, but it is the product of both. The figure adopts the image of the satyr, and he becomes a creature separated from a 26 27 28 29 30 31

A. Stella, 88.

32

F. Nietzsche, 40.

J. Gash, 39.

F. Nietzsche, 51.

Ibid.

Euripides, Bacchae, translated by T.A. Buckley, (London: Henry G. Bohn, 1850), Line 53-54.

Leo Bersani and Ulysse Dutoit, Caravaggio’s Secrets, (Boston: Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1998), 5.

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human being in its transformed skin that still retains a human shape. The viewer himself becomes horrified by his own desire and how he encourages the transformation by viewing the piece. The viewer is then reminded that this creature Caravaggio painted to be both desirable and horrifying is actually the artist himself in his self-portrait. It becomes apparent that in this piece Caravaggio uncovers his inner primal being that is the Dionysian, and he exposes it to his audience, not behind the mask of the idealistic youth of his other paintings, but in the form of the transformed Dionysus itself. He has freed his Dionysus that was trapped under the illusion of the Apollonian, and through this piece, he has made the Dionysian become reality.

By looking at the works of Caravaggio through the perspective of Nietzsche’s The Birth of Tragedy, one can see how the concept of the Dionysian spirit becomes a part of Caravaggio’s painting by enticing the viewer to the passions and desires of Dionysus. Whether he depicts the model in the form of Bacchus itself, or he explores the Dionysian aspects of music, Caravaggio’s pieces are meant to inspire the viewer to enter the portrait and lose him or herself to the enchantment of the Dionysian spirit. Cardinal del Monte is also important to the piece through the influence of his own Dionysian spirit that is hidden in his private life, but is exposed in Caravaggio’s paintings.

Through the painting of the Bacchus, both artist and patron can remove the mask of Apollonian illusion, and explore the inner passions of the Dionysian soul. Department of Art History, McGill University Bibliography Aldrich, Robert, and Garry Wotherspoon, eds. Who’s Who in Gay & Lesbian History: From Antiquity to World War II. New York: Routledge, 2001.

Bersani, Leo, and Ulysse Dutoit. Caravaggio’s Secrets. Boston: Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1998.

Camiz, Franca. “Music and Painting in Cardinal del Monte’s Household.” Metropolitan Museum Journal 26 (1991): 213-226.

Christiansen, Keith. “The Musicians: Object Information.” The Metropolitan Museum of Art. 2014.

Creighton, Gilbert. Caravaggio and his Two Cardinals. University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1995.

Ebert-Schifferer, Sybille. Caravaggio: The Artist and His Work. Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 2012.

Euripides. Bacchae. Translated by T.A. Buckley. London: Henry G. Bohn, 1850.

Fone, Byrne. Homophobia: A History. London: Picador, 2001.

Gash, John. Caravaggio. London: Chaucer Press, 2003. glbtq Inc. “Patronage I: The Western World from Ancient Greece until 1900.” 2005.

Horton, Scott. “Nietzsche- The Dionysian Impulse.” Harper’s Magazine. 1993.

Moffitt, John. Caravaggio in Context. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company Inc., 2004.

Nietzsche, Friedrich. The Birth of Tragedy. Edited by Michael Tanner. Translated by Shaun Whiteside. London: Penguin Group, 1993.

Posner, Donald. “Caravaggio’s Homo-Erotic Early Works.” In Homosexuality and Homosexuals in the Arts, edited by Dynes, Wayne, and Stephen Donaldson, . New York: Garland Publishing Inc., 1992.

Schmitz, Leonhard. “Dionysia.” In A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquites, edited

by William Smith. London: John Murray, 1875.

Stella, Brittany A. The Papabile and the Pauper: The Influence of Cardinal del Monte’s Patronage for Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio. Gainesville, FL: University of Florida, 2011.

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Uffizi Gallery. “Bacchus by Caravaggio.” 2014.

Château de Vaux-le-Vicomte: Motion and Emotion in a Seventeenth-Century French Garden Rainier Schraepen “Every artwork implies a metaphysics,”1 Allen Weiss suggested in the introduction of his 1995 book Mirrors of Infinity. Indeed, when considering the history of landscape architecture, a close relationship between gardens and philosophy can be retraced. But was else is implied, to use Weiss’ term, in every artwork? I will argue that the formal garden at the Château de Vaux-le-Vicomte, constructed between 1656-1661, is the dynamic culmination of seventeenth-century French aristocratic culture, the refinement of a domestic garden theory, and the metaphysics proposed by René Descartes. Particular attention will be paid to the skewed perspective of the garden with specific reference to Cartesian ontology. I hereby intend to not only reveal the paramount influence which contemporary philosophy had on the garden, but also to consider how sociopolitical circumstances coupled with an emerging discourse around garden theory contributed to the final design of Vaux-le-Vicomte.

If one is to weave together the social, theoretical, and philosophical strands that form this horticultural tapestry, a preliminary familiarity with the artwork on purely formal grounds is necessary. The overview will then be complimented by a more detailed analysis, which shall serve to illustrate and elucidate the various arguments presented below. Of course, in viewing this piece, one must realize that the materials used, by their very nature, are among the most fleeting and ephemeral. It is said that in the great French gardens, nothing was ever completely static.2 Both present-day photographs of the garden as well as seventeenth-century images will be used, particularly the engravings by Israel Silvestre (completed some time before 1660), which have been deemed accurate.3 In fact, the current state of the garden is said to be the result of extensive renovation faithful to the initial design, rather than a reconstruction. The photographs suggest a better feel for the garden envisioned by André Le Nôtre, the landscape architect, as the trees have now fully matured.

The first glance of the garden is gained as one exits the Grand Salon of the château and steps onto the rear terrace (plate 1).

There, from the ideal viewing point, the gardens are spread before one’s eyes: flowers, lawns, parterres de broderie, marbles and fountains, all perceived at once as if seen through a perfectly framed Plate 1. André le Nôtre, view from the back terrace of the Château de Vaux-lewindow. A gravel path, in which are set two Vicomte, Google Street View – Jan 2014. Retrieved on December 8, 2014. great fountains (one circular, one square), divides the composition in two symmetrical halves. The entire composition gently and unnoticeably slopes downwards, only to rise dramatically beyond the great transversal canal, leading the eye towards a monumental seven-arched grotto flanking a grassy upward slope. Facing the grotto, and hidden from view when standing on the terrace, is the garden’s great cascade (plate 2), the most elaborate of all the fountains at Vaux.4

The garden, its design and execution, may be said to be a product of its time. More concretely, the patron of the estate and its gardens, as well as the social climate within which he lived, are of relevance. Nicolas Fouquet, the 1

Allen S. Weiss, Mirrors of Infinity: The French Formal Garden and 17th-Century Metaphysics (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1995),

2

Chantal Marie Cormier, Seventeenth-Century Garden Theory in France: Its Culmination at Vaux-Le-Vicomte (Montreal: McGill University, 1992),

3 4

Jean-Marie Pérouse de Montclos and Georges Fessy, Vaux Le Vicomte (London: Éditions Scala, 1997), 102-03.

10.

2.

Beatrix Jones, “Le Nôtre and His Gardens,” Scribner’s Magaine 37, no. July-December (1905): 46.

11

patron of Vaux-le-Vicomte, was born in 1615, descendant of rich parliamentarians belonging to the enterprising bourgeoisie of seventeenth-century France.5 At age 38, in 1653, Louis XIV awarded him the post of Superintendent of Finances. His new position led him to amass unthinkable wealth, and towards the end of his career, Fouquet was more financially powerful than the monarch himself.6 At Vaux, the Superintendent wanted to surround himself with beauty and pleasure in every form.7 It was the greatest art centre of the period.

In fact, it is the very same circle of artists Plate 2. Adam Perelle after drawing by Israël Silvestre, Veue en perspective des cascades de Vaux, before 1660. Etching. Retrieved from Getty Search Gateway brought together at Fouquet’s estate who later constituted the nucleus of Versailles culture after the surintendent’s demise.

Art, and not nature, was supreme in these gardens.8

The court culture present at Vaux-le-Vicomte was the direct predecessor of that at Versailles.9 Emerging from the ideas proposed by René Descartes in his Passions of the Soul (1649), intense studies were conducted by the likes of Charles Le Brun in exposing how the face is animated directly by the passions.10 This is particularly evident in Le Brun’s Conférences sur l’expression des passions of 1668, presented at the Académie. The social etiquette at court required one to be the ideal man, that is, Descartes’ concept of “man the machine” who is in complete control of his passions by the force of his intellect.11 The perpetually observed members of the court constantly had to control their own expressions, the ultimate manifestation of which was Louis XIV’s own public “court mask”, being always fixed, rigid, and indifferent. As such, a politics of the gaze existed within this micropolitical climate.12 If one’s expressions happened to oppose the king’s desires or expectations, it could prove disastrous.

And disastrous it was indeed in the case of Nicolas Fouquet. On August 17, 1661, Fouquet, having nearly completed his château and grounds, hosted a superbly lavish and Plate 3. Israël Silvestre, plan of Vaux-le13 Vicomte, before 1660. Etching. Retrieved from luxurious fête in honour of Louis XIV, who was in attendance. In fact, 5 6 7 8 9 10 11

Cormier, Seventeenth-Century Garden Theory in France, 4.

Google Cultural Institute – Vaux le Vicomte, Un chef d’œvre pas à pas.

Ibid., 5.

Ibid., 6; Chandra Mukerji, Territorial Ambitions and the Gardens of Versailles (Cambridge ; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 655.

Cormier, Seventeenth-Century Garden Theory in France, 7.

Montclos and Fessy, Vaux Le Vicomte, 128; Jones, “Le Nôtre and His Gardens,” 44.

Weiss, Mirrors of Infinity, 23-24.

Lyle Massey, Picturing Space, Displacing Bodies: Anamorphosis in Ealry Modern Theories of Perspective (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2007), 41.

12

12 13

Weiss, Mirrors of Infinity, 25.

Cormier, Seventeenth-Century Garden Theory in France, 8.

Plate 4. Aerial View of Vaux-le-Vicomte. the fête was excessively extravagant. It angered the king that a minister of his was able to provide something the monarch himself couldn’t. Merely three weeks after the feast, which had included a fireworks display, a premier performance of a new Molière play (who was living at Vaux) complete with stage sets painted by Charles Le Brun, Fouquet was arrested on the king’s orders for embezzlement of funds. Fouquet was sentenced to life in prison.

Chandra Mukerji has argued that Fouquet was simply too successful in his cultural innovation and thereby made too grand a claim for his social standing. As a result, he lost his office, his property, and his role in the development of culture in France.14 After Fouquet’s demise, Louis XIV hired the same team that had designed Vaux-le-Vicomte to design Versailles.15 He also seized and sent much of the artworks to Versailles, and provided a new space for 14 Mukerji, Territorial Ambitions, 658.

15 Ibid.; Weiss, Mirrors of Infinity, 47.

13

Fouquet’s artistic circle to continue. The display of wealth and intellect present and enacted within Fouquet’s gardens proved too great in the context of the courtly culture of the period.

The garden itself (plates 3 and 4), designed by André Le Nôtre, an emerging landscape architect at the time who would become the most famous architect of French Grand Siècle gardens, is the apex of a gradual refinement of a domestic garden theory. Jean-Marie Pérouse de Montclos and Georges Ferry, among other scholars, have characterized this refinement as a move away from the enclosed medieval garden to one gushing outwards from the middle of the house, projected towards infinity.16 Baridon argues that the modernity of Vaux-le-Vicomte lies in a marriage of the infinite with perspective that dominated contemporary scientific minds.17 At Vaux this development was completed.18 This new type of French garden, altering medieval models through Italian inspiration19, was to be a mirror of nature. However, these gardens hardly resembled the look of natural landscapes. Instead, the French garden was the realization of the ideas of nature current in the period.20 The changes occurring placed a new importance on balance, symmetry, and mathematics. Active interest concerning the effects of perspective in garden design can be noted as early as 1600, when Olivier De Serres recommended adjusting layout proportions as a way to offset the negative effects of perspective.21 An organic whole made up of unifying parts such as symmetrical parterres de broderie, a French invention, was theorized. New training was thus required of gardeners, which went beyond practical horticulture.22 Thus the status of gardener was elevated to that of landscape architect. In fact, Le Nôtre was the perfect pupil in this sense, studying gardening at the Tuileries under his father, painting at the Louvre alongside Charles Le Brun, and architecture under François Mansart.23 The new type of baroque garden conceived by the French called for the spectator to participate actively. One was meant to experience through motion, exploring gardens of substantial grandeur yet created on the scale of man. Motion, after all, has been argued to sum up all of baroque style and sensibility in a single word.24

Perhaps most notably, the garden of Vaux-le-Vicomte embodies the metaphysics of Descartes. This is important, for Descartes’ ontology has often misleadingly been equated with linear perspective as seen from a single viewpoint. This garden elucidates the problems that are encountered in linking perspective with Cartesian rationalism.

As Lyle Massey has suggested, the “assumed link between Cartesianism and perspective remains confusing and ambiguous, especially when one takes into consideration the actual techniques, practices, and historical theories of perspective.”25 A Cartesian concept of perspective has become popular since many deem the relation between Descartes’ res cogitans and res extensa as parallel to the relation of all-seeing subject and quantifiable matter on which perspectival theory rests.26 The res cogitans of Descartes, however, deals with the mind’s apprehension of reality and extension by way of having an infinite possibility of viewpoints (the mind’s eye). It is thus impossible to equate his notion with the perspectival conception of the subject as fixed viewing point (the body’s eye, the Albertian window). Perspective, Descartes would say, always necessarily misrepresents reality for it is “incapable of presenting to the mind through visual sensation an adequate account of either thought or extension.”27 Based on the same mathematical principles as perspectival representation, yet manipulating them, anamorphosis produces an image that 16 Montclos and Fessy, Vaux Le Vicomte, 119.

17 Michel Baridon, “La relation du jardin au château et ses métamorphoses (1500-1800),” Dalhousie French Studies 29, no. Jardins et châteaux (1994): 16; Stuart Clark, Vanities of the Eye (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007); Massey, Picturing Space, Displacing Bodies.

18 19 20 21 22 23 24

Montclos and Fessy, Vaux Le Vicomte, 119.

25 26 27

Massey, Picturing Space, Displacing Bodies, 24.

Cormier, Seventeenth-Century Garden Theory in France, 16; Mukerji, Territorial Ambitions, 653 & 56.

Territorial Ambitions, 663-64.

Cormier, Seventeenth-Century Garden Theory in France, 19-20.

Ibid., 22-23; Mukerji, Territorial Ambitions, 665.

Cormier, Seventeenth-Century Garden Theory in France, 30.

Weiss, Mirrors of Infinity, 21; Refer to José Antonio Maravall, Culture of the Baroque, trans. Terry Cochran (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1986), 173-204.

14

Ibid., 28.

“Anamorphosis through Descartes or Perpective Gone Awry,” Renaissance Quarterly 50, no. 4 (1997): 1158.

appears distorted, yet has the ability to resolve itself if viewed from the right position. Anamorphosis, and other visual tricks ubiquitous in the garden of Vauxle-Vicomte, corresponds far better with Cartesian metaphysics than fixed-viewpoint linear perspective does.28 Anamorphosis, that is, distorted oblique perspective, recalls and adheres to Cartesian ontology on multiple accounts. Descartes’ famous cogito ergo sum argument, “I think, therefore I am”, places supreme importance on the act of doubting.

In practicing radical doubt concerning the existence of anything and everything, one’s mind cannot Plate 5. Israel Silvestre, view of he grottos, before 1660. Etch- doubt that it is doubting. Doubt, as Massey argues, “becomes the testing ground of self-certainty for ing. Reproduced from Allen Weiss “Mirrors of Infinity.”

Descartes.”29 It is intrinsically tied to possibility, and especially the possibility that sight can, and does, deceive. Anamorphosis instantiates Descartes’ perceptual doubt and undermines the idea that perspective allows a rational representation of things. Rather, it highlights that perspective requires no correspondence with the things it represents.30

This idea of exercising radical doubt, and asserting new truths working outwards from Descartes’ cogito, has interesting implications for the design of this garden. An anamorphic image requires the most active kind of viewer participation. Domestic garden theory of the time, with its newfound baroque sensibility, similarly sought such a form of viewership.31 From the phenomenological standpoint of Maurice MerleauPonty and Emmanuel Maignan, a seventeenth century theorist of anamorphosis, a view emerges that “this world is one in which vision is imagined as not an extension of the Cartesian mind, but of the body.”32 Physical space and motion thus take an important role. While twodimensional manifestations of anamorphosis demand an active Plate 6. André le Nôtre, view facing the rear of the chateau, Google Street View – kind of spectator participation, 2014. Retrieved on December 8, 2014. the garden of Vaux-le-Vicomte requires the most demanding movement in physical space of any anamorphic projection.33 Indeed, the spectator must physically enter the space in order to experience the artwork, rather than merely move around it. Although 28 29 30 31 32 33

Clark, Vanities of the Eye, 335.

Massey, “Anamorphosis through Descartes,” 1159.

Clark, Vanities of the Eye, 335; Massey, Picturing Space, Displacing Bodies, 39.

Cormier, Seventeenth-Century Garden Theory in France, 16.

Massey, Picturing Space, Displacing Bodies, 109.

Weiss, Mirrors of Infinity, 39.

15

Massey does not address the use of anamorphosis in seventeenth-century garden architecture, she eloquently states what the anamorphic tricks in the gardens of Vaux-le-Vicomte achieve. That is, the garden forces “the viewer to see perspective space as a fiction of geometry and to see the pictorial surface [the scene taken in from the viewpoint] as an object that stares back.”34 The artwork challenges the viewer, and demands a new form of spectatorship altogether.

The manipulation of perspective forces the viewer to realize the effects of mobility in relation to the static artwork. Anamorphic projection requires us to deny the usual conventions of looking from one single viewpoint.

Daniel L. Collins’ concept of the eccentric observer, one who has willingly sacrificed centric vantage, is useful in exploring the garden.35 As one leaves the terrace and vignette described earlier, physically entering the perspectival projection with one’s body, a whole new understanding of the artwork is gained. It is the doubt of the senses that challenges the viewer, tempting one on metaphysical grounds to assess the illusion of depth itself.

Strolling down the central pathway, it becomes evident the garden is much larger than it first appeared.

Firstly, the spectator is forced to walk around a circular pool, which had appeared oval due to foreshortening.

Shortly thereafter, one discovers a transversal canal, which had been hidden from the chateau’s point of view. One then proceeds to continue along the central pathway, after descending numerous steps. The mirrored slender basins off the side of the gravel path now reveal their true elongated nature, although they had appeared as perfect square quatrefoils from the ideal viewpoint earlier on. It is at this point that the spectator perceives the grotto and the statues within their niches. Moving closer, and noting the loud noise of crashing water, one realizes the grotto is in fact on a far lower level than the one on which one currently stands. In fact, one is separated from the grotto by the great transversal canal, nearly a kilometer long, which had been completely hidden. As the spectator boards a pleasure boat (in Fouquet’s time), he or she glances behind themselves towards the source of the noise: the grand cascade (plate 2).

Crossing the canal, and approaching the grotto and its niches, what had appeared as marble sculptures turns out to be abstract rocaille formations from which water is flowing (plate 5). The laws of linear perspective, and the deviation from the central axis, created all the first illusions. The illusion of the grotto sculptures is due to atmospheric perspective, that is, the loss of visual detail at a distance. Walking up the sloping lawn beyond the grotto, one finally reaches the original vanishing point of the perspectival projection. The spectator is now 800 meters away from the Grand Salon, and perceives the Chateau as a new vanishing point, albeit with a lower horizon line (plate 6). While the chateau allowed for a perfect frontal perspective of the scene, the top of the sloping lawn now shows an oblique perspective seen from above. An interchangeability of viewpoint and vanishing point is experienced, and one comes to realize the illegitimate truth that one-point linear perspective traditionally presents.36 One is forced to arrive at the conclusions made by Descartes in his writings based solely on the personal bodily experience of the artwork. In fact, vision can only be fulfilled by motion, for only then can one attain an infinite number of viewpoints akin to the Cartesian mind’s eye. The extreme surprise and pleasure of these discoveries made by every participant in the artwork is the thrill of a veritable physical entry into a mathematical doctrine.

Engaging with Allen Weiss’ argument that every artwork implies a philosophy, the garden of Vaux-le-Vicomte has been shown to depend upon Descartes’ ontology, particularly evident by André Le Nôtre’s use of anamorphic perspective in the garden design. In explaining the design in its totality, however, theoretical and social influences were argued to act alongside the philosophical framework. Chandra Mukerji subscribes to the same conditions herein analysed, suggesting “[t]he use of perspective and foreshortening [a type of anamorphosis] in these plans was not of practical use for viewing the garden, but rather displayed the designer’s knowledge of perspective and foreshortening, adding to the literacy of the design and bestowing great honor on its owner.”37 A scenario thus emerges that presents a symbiotic relationship between Cartesian metaphysics, French garden theory, and seventeenth-century aristocratic culture. The site where all of these were enacted was Vaux-le-Vicomte, and the synthesis of them can be observed in

16

34 35 36 37

Massey, Picturing Space, Displacing Bodies, 68.

Daniel L. Collins, “Anamorphosis and the Eccentric Observer: Inverted Perspective and Construction of the Gaze,” Leonardo 25, no. 1 (1992): 73.

Massey, Picturing Space, Displacing Bodies, 41-42.

Mukerji, Territorial Ambitions, 663.

the architectural artwork of the garden itself. Department of Art History, McGill University Bibliography Baridon, Michel. “La relation du jardin au château et ses métamorphoses (1500-1800).” [In French]. Dalhousie French Studies 29, no.

Jardins et châteaux (1994): 5-24.

Clark, Stuart. Vanities of the Eye. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007.

Collins, Daniel L. “Anamorphosis and the Eccentric Observer: Inverted Perspective and Construction of the Gaze.” Leonardo 25, no. 1 (1992): 73-82.

Cormier, Chantal Marie. Seventeenth-Century Garden Theory in France: Its Culmination at Vaux-Le-Vicomte. Montreal: McGill University, 1992.

Jones, Beatrix. “Le Nôtre and His Gardens.” Scribner’s Magaine 37, no. July-December (1905): 43-55.

Maravall, José Antonio. Culture of the Baroque. Translated by Terry Cochran. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1986.

Massey, Lyle. “Anamorphosis through Descartes or Perpective Gone Awry.” Renaissance Quarterly 50, no. 4 (1997): 1148-89.

Picturing Space, Displacing Bodies: Anamorphosis in Ealry Modern Theories of Perspective. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2007.

Montclos, Jean-Marie Pérouse de, and Georges Fessy. Vaux Le Vicomte. London: Éditions Scala, 1997.

Mukerji, Chandra. Territorial Ambitions and the Gardens of Versailles. Cambridge ; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997.

Weiss, Allen S. Mirrors of Infinity: The French Formal Garden and 17th-Century Metaphysics. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1995.

17

The Mobile Face: Recontextualising the Mona Lisa and Leonardo’s Notions of the Spirit Patrick Deslauriers

Plate 1. Leonardo da Vinci, Mona Lisa, c. 1503-1506, oil on wood, Musée du Louvre, Paris.

The Mona Lisa (fig. 1) has become arguably the most famous painting in the history of European art. Amidst the acclaimed popularity of the work, however, which has resulted in the fabrication of endless reproductions, the Mona Lisa has been largely decontextualized and dissociated from its original context. This paper will aim to correct such disconnections, tracing the origins of the work from the early sixteenth century. This will be achieved through the examination of numerous interests at play in the work, which stem from the artistic traditions of the period and from Leonardo himself. This paper will posit that the Mona Lisa, while widely read as an ambiguous or mysterious image by art historians and untrained viewers alike—and rightly so, as will be discussed later—was in fact a product of its own time and the interests which were at stake therein, and was especially influenced by Leonardo’s unique ideas about animation, the body, and the soul. Let us begin with one of the most well-read Renaissance sources on Leonardo: Giorgio Vasari.

Much of the “original” knowledge we have of Leonardo and the Mona Lisa today comes down to us from 18

Vasari’s Lives of the Artists, a text which was intended as a compendium of biographical accounts of famous artists from around Vasari’s time, including Giotto, Michelangelo, Leonardo, and a good many others. First published in Florence in 1550, the Lives has been posited as “the first monumental history of art” despite the fact that, as Paul Barolsky has argued, a good deal of Vasari’s writing is fictional, rooted in his imagination, and thus his accounts must be taken with a grain of salt.1 Nevertheless, many scholars of the artists discussed in Vasari’s work still use the Lives as a starting point for their own research, for the simple reason that it contains an abundance of useful and accurate information beneath the extra coating of literary embellishment. On the subject of the creation of the Mona Lisa specifically, Frank Zöllner has stated that, setting aside details which were likely inserted to add flavour to the text— such as Leonardo hiring musicians and clowns to entertain the sitter while he painted her likeness—Vasari gets most of the historical details right.2

Although more specific details concerning the production of the Mona Lisa are vague or unknown, other basic information does come down to us from Vasari and the efforts of subsequent scholars, who have in turn verified Vasari’s assertions. For one, we know that the sitter portrayed in the painting is Lisa Gherardini. Hailing from an established noble family in Tuscany, Lisa married Francesco del Giocondo, a wealthy Florentine silk merchant, around 1495. Though dates for the production of the work remain difficult to pin down, it may have been commissioned by Francesco because of the family moving house in April of 1503, and would thus have been intended as a piece of interior décor for the new family home.3 Because the work was intended as a minor, private portrait, no documentation of payments or contracts between Leonardo and Francesco exist, and indeed the work was, for some unknown reason, never delivered to the Giocondo family.4 Already, this lack of documentation raises questions that foster the notion of the painting as ambiguous and shrouded in mystery. However, it did of course arise as a product of various influences which moved the artist to create it.

As a work produced by a learned Renaissance artist, the Mona Lisa would have almost certainly been influenced by the artistic traditions and ideas of its time. One key notion that would have impacted the work is mimesis, though the Renaissance definition of the term did not place emphasis on what Maria Loh has called “individual exactitude.”5 Rather, in the context of Renaissance portraiture, mimesis was concerned with the animation of subjects, and it is for this reason that the best Renaissance works, according to Renaissance people, tended to be described as living or speaking portraits.6 Indeed, Vasari himself described the Mona Lisa as having a beating pulse which is evident simply by looking at Lisa’s neck.7 Leonardo’s work is and was considered a mimetic success, then, not because it replicates the sitter and the scene with perfect precision and technique, but because it brings the sitter to life. However, this is not necessarily done in a way that captures the subject in a truthful manner. As Loh has argued, Renaissance portraits were intended to convey information that prompted viewers to read the sitters in certain ways, regardless of whether or not these views of the sitter were in fact accurate.8 Harry Berger has called such portraits visualisations of “ego ideals”, works which demonstrate the ways people wanted to be seen.9 These portraits, then, walk a fine line between mimetic lifelikeness, individuation, and idealisation of the same sitter, a process that Berger dubbed “mimetic idealism.”10 In other words, Renaissance portraits present “truths” about their sitters in such 1 2

Paul Barolsky, Why Mona Lisa Smiles and Other Tales by Vasari (Pennsylvania State University Press, 1991), pp. 3-4.

3 4 5 6 7

Zöllner, “Leonardo’s Portrait”, p. 9.

8 9 10

Loh, p. 349.

Frank Zöllner, “Leonardo’s Portrait of Mona Lisa del Giocondo”, in Leonardo da Vinci: Selected Scholarsip, ed. Claire J. Farago (New York: Garland Publishing, 1999), p. 4.

Ibid, pp. 6-7.

Maria H. Loh, “Renaissance Faciality”, Oxford Art Journal, vol. 32, no. 3, 2009, p. 346.

Loh, “Renaissance Faciality”, p. 346.

Giorgio Vasari, “The Life of Leonardo da Vinci, Florentine Painter and Sculptor”, in The Lives of the Artists, ed. Julia Conaway Bondanella and Peter E. Bondanella (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), p. 294.

Harry Berger, “Fictions of the Pose: Facing the Gaze of Early Modern Portraiture”, Representations, no. 46, spring 1994, p. 94.

Berger, “Fictions of the Pose”, p. 96.

19

strikingly lifelike ways that we, as viewers, are compelled to accept them unquestioningly, to read them as they are meant to be read. There is little doubt that the Mona Lisa was considered a mimetic success in its time; Vasari posits Lisa as so lifelike that he is able to see the moisture glistening in her eyes and the variations in the pores of her skin.11 What is questionable about the work is the information that we are meant to garner from it about the sitter. Her pose arguably projects dignity and confidence, but beyond this we have little to go on. As Zöllner has noted, the work is typical of female Renaissance portraits, but not inherently remarkable.12 Lisa’s beauty is likely intended to suggest her virtuous nature. Her dark clothing, which was in accordance with the fashions of the time, gives her an air of splendor and dignity.13 Her veil may be a symbol of marriage and the virtues attached to it, such as chastity and obedience, but we cannot be certain if it was intended to be seen as such. On the one hand, then, the Mona Lisa is a typical female Renaissance portrait, but on the other, it does not present us with any information that helps us read Lisa herself in any specific way. The portrait has a distinct lack of markers that could aid us in understanding her as an individual, a quality that was certainly uncommon for portraits of this period and that lends itself well to the ambiguity attached to this particular image.

I would argue that the ambiguities associated with the Mona Lisa may be alleviated through a reading of the painting in light of Leonardo’s distinct views of the human body. Having studied numerous texts about science and natural philosophy, Leonardo came to see the body as a microcosmic version of the macrocosmic model of nature and the universe.14 He saw evident similarities between the movement of fluids through and on the earth and the body’s own circulatory system and flow of bodily substances.15 Leonardo came to think of the human soul as an elemental force, something with fundamental ties to nature.16 It is perhaps for this reason that the Mona Lisa uses colours and forms which seemingly fuse Lisa herself to the surrounding, hazy landscape in the background; the amorphous forms of the land echo the flowing fabrics in which she is dressed, and the colours of her skin and clothing are almost identical to those used to depict the landscape. For Leonardo, then, art was not the only thing that sought to imitate nature; the human body did as well.

This fundamental connectedness between humans and nature is taken a step further in Leonardo’s views of the spirit which, as Anne Pasek has noted, are directly related to automata.17 Leonardo allegedly made several of these, or at least started to, including a mechanical lion and a robotic knight.18 Predating Descartes, Leonardo recognised the problematic of differentiating automata from real entities, but he did not share in Descartes’ view of a distinct separation between mind and body. Rather, Leonardo posited what Pasek has called “enlivened materiality”, the notion that bodies and souls are in fact entirely conjoined in sensation and movement.19 For Leonardo, the spirit inhabits the body, is fused to it, flows through and animates it.20 The movements of the body, therefore, are also movements of the spirit, and hint at the intentions of the mind which the spirit empowers.21 For Leonardo, this notion of enlivened materiality applies to all forms of life which exist in nature, meaning that humans are fundamentally connected to other forms of life.22 Further, there is no divide between nature and the mechanical 11 12 13 14

Vasari, “The Life of Leonardo”, p. 294.

15 16 17

Kemp, “Science and the Poetic Impulse”, p. 209.

18 19 20 21 22

Pasek, “Renaissance Robotics”, pp. 4-5. The lion is also documented by Vasari (see p. 293).

Zöllner, p. 16.

Zöllner, p. 13.

Martin Kemp, “From ‘Mimesis’ to ‘Fantasia’: The Quattrocento Vocabulary of Creation, Inspiration and Genius in the Visual Arts”, Viator, vol. 8, no. 1, 1977, p. 382; Martin Kemp, “Leonardo da Vinci: Science and the Poetic Impulse”, Journal of the Royal Society of Arts, vol. 133, no. 5343, February 1985, p. 209.

Ibid, p. 210.

Anne Pasek, “Renaissance Robotics: Leonardo da Vinci’s Lost Knight and Enlivened Materiality”, Shift Graduate Journal of Visual and Material Culture, issue 7, 2014, p. 7.

20

Pasek, “Renaissance Robotics”, p. 2.

Ibid, p. 7.

Ibid, p. 7.

Ibid, pp. 10-11.

according to Leonardo, since all beings make use of the mechanical principles of their bodies in order to move.23 Humans, for example, are able to walk by bending their knees, swinging their legs, and lifting their feet, motions which could be easily translated into automated processes. In light of this commonality of mechanical principles, then, Leonardo saw automata and other machines as products of nature, not just man-made artifice. This view is directly related to the Renaissance conception of invention, or ingenium, which emphasises the adaptation of things which already exist in the world in new and interesting ways.24 In this particular understanding of invention, nature is adapted, not dominated.25 In the case of automata, then, natural mechanical processes are explored and replicated in creative and artistic ways to produce new, pleasurable moving objects. With respect to the art of painting, Leonardo attributes mimetic liveliness to the capturing of the subject’s spirit in a medium where the body itself cannot actually move. These movements of spirit are transmitted to the viewer through the image and, though their association with the intentions of the mind, allow the viewer to get a sense of what the subject is thinking.26 The Mona Lisa, however, does not appear to fit within Leonardo’s theories about the body, soul, and animation insofar as it does not clearly project its subject’s intentions. Lisa herself, though arguably lifelike, is static, and in the absence of bodily movements and indicators we find ourselves unable to grasp the movements of her spirit and, in turn, the intentions of her mind.

Why, then, did Leonardo seemingly produce a work which does not comply with his own ideas? The answer comes in the form of what I refer to here as “Leonardo’s challenge”, which is in fact the main motivation behind the work. The essence of Leonardo’s challenge is captured effectively by Martin Kemp: “The real originality of the Mona Lisa is ... to create in painting the equivalent of a mobile face, in which the physiognomic signs do not constitute a single, fixed, definitive image. It is this lack of immutably fixed signs which accounts for the diversely subjective reactions to the portrait on the part of different spectators, and even the same spectator at different moments” (emphasis my own).27

Leonardo’s deliberate construction of the Mona Lisa with a “mobile face” means that the image itself, and thus the viewer’s ideas about the subject, simply cannot be concretised. In other words, Leonardo intended the work to be ambiguous, and it is for this reason that it is. He is literally challenging us to read Lisa’s face in order to discern her character, and yet we are unable to do so. This is because her bodily features and markings, which Leonardo would have seen as “animated material traces of the movements of spirit through the body”,28 are deliberately hidden.

Leonardo has halted our attempts to read Lisa through the hazy surfaces, textures, and colours used in the work, and she is further obscured by layers of glazes which are applied more heavily around her eyes and mouth, the areas which would usually contain the most physical traces of the spirit and thus would serve as our main access points to her soul and thus to her intentions.29 The Mona Lisa, then, may be posited as an artistic exercise wherein Leonardo deliberately and mischievously denied viewers all possible windows of legibility with respect to the subject, and then challenged viewers to read that subject anyway. The result, of course, is a challenge with no right answer, and it is almost certainly for this reason that viewers have, over the course of the painting’s five hundred-year life, been repeatedly excited and confounded by their attempts to decipher the woman behind the image. The Mona Lisa can, I argue, only be fully grasped through the lens of Leonardo’s unique ideas concerning the body and spirit, and yet the physical traces of these same ideas have been deliberately erased from the image. It is for this reason that I have attempted to recontextualise the image herein.

23 24 25 26 27 28 29

Ibid, p. 11.

Ibid, p. 12.

Ibid, p. 13.

Pasek, pp. 7-8.

Martin Kemp, Leonardo da Vinci: The Marvellous Works of Nature and Man (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), p. 259.

Pasek, p. 9.

Kemp, Nature and Man, p. 260.

21

Though traditionally seen as an ambiguous image, this paper has demonstrated that the Mona Lisa was significantly influenced by the artistic traditions of the Renaissance, complete with notions of mimesis and conventions of portraiture. However, the painting does not fully lend itself to these traditions, and as such has been subsequently discussed with respect to Leonardo’s exceptionally relevant ideas about the body, the soul, and animation. These ideas, at first glance, also do not seem to fit perfectly with Leonardo’s famous work, and yet this is only the case because he deliberately hid their manifestations in the work from view in order to confuse viewers with an impossible challenge. The Mona Lisa, therefore, is not mysterious. Rather, it is only ambiguous because it was intended as such, and thus functions as a prime example of the importance of recontextualising works of art.

Department of Art History, McGill University Bibliography Barolsky, Paul. Why Mona Lisa Smiles and Other Tales by Vasari. Pennsylvania State University Press, 1991.

Berger, Harry. “Fictions of the Pose: Facing the Gaze of Early Modern Portraiture.” Representations, no. 46, spring 1994, pp. 87-120.

Kemp, Martin. “From ‘Mimesis’ to ‘Fantasia’: The Quattrocento Vocabulary of Creation, Inspiration and Genius in the Visual Arts.” Viator, vol. 8, no. 1, 1977, pp. 347-398.

Kemp, Martin. Leonardo da Vinci: The Marvellous Works of Nature and Man. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006.

Kemp, Martin. “Leonardo da Vinci: Science and the Poetic Impulse.” Journal of the Royal Society of Arts, vol. 133, no. 5343, February 1985, pp. 196-214.

Loh, Maria H. “Renaissance Faciality.” Oxford Art Journal, vol. 32, no. 3, 2009, pp. 341-363.

Pasek, Anne. “Renaissance Robotics: Leonardo da Vinci’s Lost Knight and Enlivened Materiality.” Shift Graduate Journal of Visual and Material Culture, issue 7, 2014, pp. 1-25.

Vasari, Giorgio. “The Life of Leonardo da Vinci, Florentine Painter and Sculptor.” In The Lives of the Artists, ed. Julia Conaway Bondanella and Peter E. Bondanella. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998, pp. 284-298.

Zöllner, Frank. “Leonardo’s Portrait of Mona Lisa del Giocondo.” In Leonardo da Vinci: Selected Scholarsip, ed. Claire J Farago. New York: Garland Publishing, 1999, pp. 243-266.

22

Samuel van Hoogstraten: A Peepshow with Views of a Dutch Interior Kimberly Carrière

Samuel van Hoogstraten’s A Peepshow with Views of a Dutch Interior is an object that categorizes the act of seeing into a series of unfolding events that is founded on a process of visual scrutiny. Not only is van Hoogstraten’s box a prime example of his perspective skills, but it is also a form of early moving image. The transformative nature of his piece is a bi-product of the reciprocal relationship between viewer and box where its exchange with the beholder is a necessary condition for the success of its artifice. It is this reciprocity that forms the foundation of van Hoogstraten’s peepshow and characterizes it as a process of unfolding. Without the viewer, the transformative nature of the peepshow would cease to exist.

The peepshow, or perspective box, was a short lived phenomenon emanating from seventeenth century Holland.1 Alluding to the Dutch fascination with perspective and optical devices, these peepshows were used by artists to create trompe l’oeil images that produced illusions of three-dimensional space. The Netherlandish enthrallment with perspective boxes can be judged by John Evelyn’s account of a peepshow he saw in 1656: “[They] showed me a pretty perspective and well represented Plate 1 Samuel Van Hoogstraten, Perspective Box in a triangular box, the great Church of Harlem in Holland, with Views of a Dutch Interior. 1655-1660. Oil on to be seen through a small hole at one of the corners, and Panel. The National Gallery, London. contrived into a handsome Cabinet. It was so rarely done, that all artists and painters in town, came flocking to see and admire it.”2 Evelyn’s remark reveals that these perspective boxes sparked immense curiosity in seventeenth-century viewers and became a remarkable form of illusionism. The most notable example of Dutch peepshows is a box created by van Hoogstraten between the years 1655-1660 (plates 1-2). This device, called a Peepshow with Views of a Dutch Interior, is only one of six peepshows that today still survive.

Rectangular in form, van Hoogstraten’s box measures approximately two feet high by three feet wide. Sitting on a wooden pedestal, the exterior of the Plate 2 Samuel Van Hoogstraten, Perspective Box with Views five-sided peepshow is painted with various allegorical of a Dutch Interior. 1655-1660. Oil on Panel. The National scenes. The sixth-side, now left open to expose the Gallery, London. (left end view) inner workings of the piece, would have originally 1 John Mills, Christopher Brown, David Banford, and Joyce Plesters, “Samuel van Hoogstraten and Painting,” National Gallery Publications 11 (1987): 63.

2 Susan Koslow, “De Wonderljke Perspectyfkas: An Aspect of Seventeenth Century Dutch Painting,” in Oud Holland 82 (1967): 36

23

been fitted with a filter paper.3 This semitransparent film would have allowed light to enter the peepshow while also preventing its deceptive qualities from being exposed. Located on either end of the cabinet are two small apertures that grant access to the inner workings of the box. When looking through either of the two peepholes, one is confronted with an illusionistic rendering of a domestic space. This particular interior contains a total of nine rooms that open in succession from the central hall (the voorhuis).

From this main hall, viewers are coerced along a variety of painted thresholds and windows that lead to further views into the domestic space as well as to views outside of it. 4

The inquisitive gaze of spectators into the work creates a form of reciprocity between the art object and viewer. This reciprocity initiates a transformation of van Hoogstraten’s interior from a jumble of compound images, to an accurate rendering of a three-dimensional reality. This metamorphosis of the art object Plate. 3 Samuel Van Hoogstraten, Perspective Box is intrinsically tied to its interaction with viewers such that the exchange between spectator and object is a necessary condition for with Views of a Dutch Interior. 1655-1660. Oil on Panel. The National Gallery, London. (detailthe success of the box’s artifice. It is this reciprocity that forms the view through right peephole) foundation of van Hoogstraten’s peepshow and characterises it as a process of unfolding. Without the viewer, the transformative nature of the peepshow would cease to exist.

Before discussing van Hoogstraten’s peepshow as a form of moving image, it is important to discuss the box’s self-referential features as a cue that points to the artistic skills of its maker.5 At the apex of his career, van Hoogstraten was working in a Netherlandish tradition of detailed realism that praised an artist’s ability to deceive the eye. Being an avid social climber, van Hoogstraten exploited the Dutch reverence for realism as a means to further his career.6 In this sense, his professional and social identity was coupled with his ability to fool the eye. The use of van Hoogstraten’s artistic skills as a tool to gain social favour is best exemplified by his successful reception at the court of Ferdinand III in the early 1650s. After being deceived by one of the artist’s trompe l’oeil pieces, the king presented van Hoogstraten with a royal medallion that the artist, from that point forward, incorporated into numerous genre paintings Plate. 4 Samuel Van Hoogstraten, Perspective Box with Views of a Dutch Interior. 1655-1660. as a way for viewers to acknowledge his artistic capabilities.7

The self-referential cues, so prominent in his genre paintings, Oil on Panel. The National Gallery, London. (deare also seen in his Peepshow with Views of a Dutch Interior. There tail- view through left peephole, woman reading and Peeping Tom watching her)

24

3 Mills, Brown, Banford and Plesters, “Samuel van Hoogstraten and Painting,”65.

4 Celeste Brusati, Artifice and Illusion: The Art and Writing of Samuel van Hoogstraten, (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1995), 215.

5 Justina Spencer, “Baroque Perspectives: Looking into Samuel van Hoogstraten’s Perspective Box” (MA thesis, McGill University, 2008), 81.

6 Brusati, Artifice and Illusion, 52- 53.

7 Ibid.

are a variety of visual motifs throughout van Hoogstraten’s work that refer to the identity of its maker. The most explicit of these self-referential cues are not however inside the box, but are rather found enveloping its exterior panels. Covering three out of the four exterior panels, are painted putti that are identified as Amoris Causa, Lucri Causa and Gloriae Causa. Standing amid allegorical scenes, these putti foreshadow the last three chapters of van Hoogstraten’s influential treatise on painting (Inleyding tot de Hooge Schoole der Scholderknost), written only several years after the completion of his peepshow.8 Embodying the major incentives of the artist, these putti represent the artist’s desire for wealth and fame as a motivation for artistic practice. Similar to the trompe l’oeil that fooled King Ferdinand III, these putti allude to the deceptive qualities of his peepshow as a form of complex illusionism that can only be mastered by the most skilled of painters.9 By positioning these putti on the exterior of his work, van Hoogstraten is ultimately referencing his artistic ability to fool the eye; a quality that was so significant in the forging of his social and professional identity.

The Peepshow as a process of unfolding

Unlike a painting, van Hoogstraten’s perspective box places certain constraints on the viewer which are essential for the success of his illusion. Much of van Hoogstraten’s peepshow consists of complex mathematical illusions, particularly anamorphic perspective, whose deceptive properties rely heavily on a spectator’s viewing position.10 The visual features in van Hoogstraten’s perspective box are therefore entirely dependent on the precise vantage point produced by the work’s peepholes. Without these two apertures, much of van Hoogstraten’s peepshow would remain misshapen, like the faithful terrier that sits at the threshold of the main room (plate 2).

Created through anamorphic projection, van Hoogstraten’s dog looks incredibly distorted when viewed from the box’s open side. This distortion, however, is eliminated upon the viewers fixed position in front of the left peephole (plate 3). Van Hoogstraten’s artifice is therefore intrinsically tied to an organized process of scrutiny.

Unable to explore the space with both eyes, van Hoogstraten purposely limits the ocular access of his viewers. By imposing monocular vision, van Hoogstraten denies viewers any sense of scale or depth within his Plate. 5 Samuel Van Hoogstraten, Perspective Box with Views of a Dutch piece.11 This denial of depth cues, along with Interior. 1655-1660. Oil on Panel. The National Gallery, London. (detailthe exclusion of the life-sized world outside view through left peephole, woman sleeping in the bedroom) of the peepshow, creates an illusion that they are looking into a full-sized rendering of a domestic interior.12 This form of artifice is discussed by van Hoogstraten in his treatise on painting where the artist writes: “…through the knowledge of this science one can also make the… miraculous perspective box which if painted right…shows a finger-long figure as though life-size.”13 By manipulating the limitations of monocular vision, van Hoogstraten was not only able to successfully create a form of three8 Ibid., 213.

9 Spencer, “Baroque Perspectives: Looking into Samuel van Hoogstraten’s Perspective Box,” 69.

10 Thijs Weststeijn, “The Visible World: Samuel van Hoogstraten’s Art Theory and the Legitimation of Painting in the Dutch Golden Age (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2008), 304.

11 12 13

Susan Koslow, “De Wonderlijke Perspectyfkas: An Aspect of Seventeenth Century Dutch Painting,”Oud Holland 82 (1967), 36 Mills, Brown, Banford, and Pelsters, “Samuel van Hoogstraten and Painting,”62.

Ibid., 68.

25

dimensional reality, but was equally able to produce a space that could be entered into by the outside world.

By forcing viewers to examine his domestic interior through a peephole, van Hoogstraten disembodies viewers by isolating their eyes. This segregation of the eye from the body permits van Hoogstraten the ability to provide viewers with privileged ocular access to a normally private world.14 By positioning viewers in a very specific location, van Hoogstraten emphasizes their voyeuristic activities.15 While his apertures prevent viewers from physically entering the space, their eyes are nonetheless invited to explore it indefinitely. By using various visual cues, van Hoogstraten transports viewers into his domestic interior, while making them wholly aware of their embodied presence within the work.16 This self-referential quality of his peepshow is created using several clever features, most notably his dog that stands at the threshold of the illusionary space. By making direct eye contact with viewers, van Hoogstraten’s dog calls attention to their physical body as well as their detected presence within the confines of the house.17

By providing audiences with a privileged view of this private space, van Hoogstraten is able to transform viewers from passive onlookers to active voyeurs of an intimate Dutch interior. These voyeuristic activities are made even more salient by the shadow of a Peeping Tom in the interior’s back room.18 Looking from the left peephole, viewers are provided visual access to a woman seated near a window reading a book. Barely visible, on the other side of the window pane, is a man who watches her from the street (plate 4). This Peeping Tom is a self-referential cue that calls attention to viewers’ dubious activities as voyeurs and intruders of a private interior. Unlike the Peeping Tom, who stands on the outskirts of this intimate space, viewers are granted visual access to the entire house through their embodied presence within the work. It is through this embodied presence that viewers are able to see another Plate. 6 Hans Holbein, The Ambassadors. 1533. Oil on woman asleep in the adjacent bedroom ( plate 5).19 By canvas. National Gallery. London. producing a domestic space that must be looked into and explored, van Hoogstraten’s peepshow ultimately becomes a form of erotic looking. Through the intricate placement of doorsiens, or views into distant spaces, van Hoogstraten invites viewers to penetrate the domestic space and enjoy the most private of views.20 This is especially apparent in the viewers’ unobstructed view of the young, unsuspecting woman lounging in bed. By rendering these female figures open to voyeuristic activities, van Hoogstraten is ultimately remarking on the erotic nature of artistic engagement.21 Van Hoogstraten’s box was most probably created for an elite art patron who was well-versed in the artistic discourses of the time. Peering into the box, this knowledgeable viewer would have certainly understood his or her voyeuristic involvement amid the sexual dynamics 14 Brusati, Artifice and Illusion, 181.

15 Ibid.

16 Ibid., 184.

17

The same self-referential cue can be seen in Van Hoogstraten’s Perspective with a Young Man Reading a Book. When looking into the space the viewer is interrogated by a dog that rests on the floor. Although not erect, the dog still acknowledges one’s presence by lifting his head.

26

18 Spencer, “Baroque Perspectives: Looking into Samuel van Hoogstraten’s Perspective Box,” 81.

19 Brusati, “title?” 174.

20 Martha Hollander, An Entrance for the Eyes: Space and Meaning in Seventeenth-Century Dutch Art (Berkeley, California: University of California Press, 2002), 8.

21 Ibid., 10.

of this particular visual field.22 This familiarity with the artistic commentaries of the time would have undoubtedly intensified the peepshow’s visual eroticism.

By providing viewers nine rooms to search with their lustful eyes, van Hoogstraten ultimately creates a form of unveiling that contributes to the transformative nature of his piece. The categorization of his domestic space as a series of unfolding events forces viewers to penetrate each space with an active gaze.23 By immobilizing the beholder’s eye at the peephole, van Hoogstraten generates a restless form of looking. In this sense, the act of seeing becomes dramatized as an ongoing temporal and pictorial process of framing and reframing the space.24 When looking into either of his two apertures, viewers are confronted with a variety of thresholds that are impossible to explore in one glance. By embedding multiple doors, windows and pictures into his work, van Hoogstraten’s peepshow creates a form of irresistible curiosity that ultimately results in viewers’ peering and probing this space with their prying eyes. This erratic form of looking creates a process of unfolding, whereby the more one looks, the more one sees. It is through this active eye that viewers experience a work that is in a constant state of flux; one that is constantly transforming. By including multiple paintings in his interior, van Hoogstraten emphasizes the implied power of the artist as creator.25 He is thus flaunting the importance of his own practice by alluding to the infinite reach of the painter’s art as a craft that can make anything imaginable come to life.26

Although viewers are physically prevented from entering into the domestic interior, their corporal participation is still mandatory as a contributing factor to the peepshow’s transformative nature. Out of the six perspective boxes that still survive, van Hoogstraten’s Peepshow with Views of a Dutch Interior is the only box that has two peepholes.

The second aperture in van Hoogstraten’s work is significant when considering the box’s reciprocal relationship with viewers as a process of unfolding. By positioning the two peepholes on opposite sides of the box, van Hoogstraten forces viewers to physically walk around the piece in order to look through the other side.

The physical movement of viewers around the box is very similar to anamorphic imagery and its viewership. Anamorphic images are a type of illusion that uses an extreme form of perspective that is rendered Plate. 7 Hans Holbein, The Ambassadors. thorough a distortion of geometric principals. To remove the distortion 1533. Oil on canvas. National Gallery, and bring the image back to the way one would generally except to see it, London. (detail- the transformation of the viewers must interact with the image in a very particular fashion.27 This anamorphic projection into a human skull). particular interaction usually requires viewers to view the image from a position that is extremely unconventional.28 A perfect example of distorted projection can be seen in Hans Holbein’s Ambassadors produced in 1553 (plate 6). A double portrait, Hans Holbein’s painting depicts Jean de Dinteville and his friend, Georges de Selve, who stand amongst numerous books and instruments. When directly confronting the work, the momento mori that floats in the painting’s foreground resembles a grey oculus. It is only when viewers walk to the extreme right of the painting that the distortion is corrected and an accurate rendering of a human skull 22 23 24

Spencer, “Baroque Perspectives: Looking into Samuel van Hoogstraten’s Perspective Box,” 81.

Spencer, “Baroque Perspectives: Looking into Samuel van Hoogstraten’s Perspective Box,” 64

26 27 28

Mills, Brown, Banford, and Pelsters, “Samuel van Hoogstraten and Painting,”62 Ibid., 67 Mills, Brown, Banford, and Pelsters, “Samuel van Hoogstraten and Painting,”67 .

Georgina Cole, “Wavering Between Two Worlds: The Doorway in the Seventeenth Century Dutch Genre Painting,” Philament: Online Journal of the Arts and Culture 9. http://www.arts.usyd.edu.au/publications/philament/issue9_ pdfs/COLE_Doorways, pdf (March, 2007): 24.

25 Brusati, Artifice and Illusion, 178.

27

emerges (plate 7).29 This process of unfolding, which is guided by the physical movement of the viewer, is very similar to van Hoogstraten’s work. By providing viewers with two unique perspectives of a Dutch interior, van Hoogstraten requires viewers to move positions in order to amass all necessary information.30 If one were to look through only one of the two apertures, half of van Hoogstraten’s work would remain concealed from view, preserved in an immovable state.

Through a close analysis of van Hoogstraten’s Peepshow with views of a Dutch Interior it becomes clear that his box was founded on a process of visual scrutiny. Urging viewers to look through its aperture, the optical device confines the eye in such a way as to generate an accurate rendering of three-dimensional reality. This metamorphosis is intrinsically tied to the object’s interaction with viewers such that its exchange with the beholder is a necessary condition for the success of its artifice. It is through this reciprocity that van Hoogstraten’s peepshow transforms into a moving object, one that is constantly shifting through a process of unfolding. Department of Art History, McGill University

Bibliography Baltrusaitis, Jurgis, and W. J. Strachan. Anamorphic Art. Cambridge: Chadwyck-Healey Ltd., 1976.

Brusati, Celeste. “Perspectives in Flux: Viewing Dutch Pictures in Real Time.” Art History 35 (2012): 908-933.

Brusati, Celeste. Artifice and Illusion: The Art and Writing of Samuel van Hoogstraten. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1995.

Cole, Georgina. “Wavering Between Two Worlds: The Doorway in the Seventeenth CenturyDutch Genre Painting.” Philament: Online Journal of the Arts and Culture 9.http://www.arts.usyd.edu.au/publications/philament/issue9_pdfs/COLE_Doorways.pdf (March, 2007): 19-37.

Ebert-Schifferer, Sybille, Wheelock, Arthur and Veca, Alberto. Deceptions and Illusions: Five Centuries of Trompe l’Oeil Painting. Lund Humphries Publisher: United Kingdom, 2003.

Hollander, Martha. An Entrance for the eyes: Spacing and Meaning in Seventeenth-century Dutch art. University of California Press: Oakland, 2002.

Koslow, Susan. “De Wonderlijke Perspectyfkas: An Aspect of Seventeenth Century Dutch Painting.” Oud Holland 82, 2 (1967): 35-56.

Mills, John, Brown, Christopher, Banford, David and Plesters, Joyce. “Samuel van Hoogstraten and Painting.” National Gallery Publications 11 (1987): 60-85.

Spencer, Justina. “Baroque Perspectives: Looking into Samuel van Hoogstraten’s Perspective Box.” M.A thesis. McGill University, 2008.

Verweij, Agnes. “Perspective in a Box.” Architecture, Mathematics, and Perspective Nexus Network Journal 6 (2010): 47-62.

Weststeijn, Thijs. The Visible World: Samuel van Hoogstraten’s Art Theory and the Legitimation of Painting in the Dutch Golden Age. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2008.

29

Jurgis Baltrusaitis, and W. J. Strachan, Anamorphic Art (Cambridge: Chadwyck-Healey Ltd., 1976), 91.

30 Ibid., 90.

28

Long Live the Queen: The Funeral Effigy of Elizabeth I Erica Morassutti

After forty-five years of reign, Queen Elizabeth I of England succumbed to a severe respiratory illness in her palace at Richmond on the twenty-fourth of March, 1603. Prior to her passing, rumours of the ailing queen had spread among the public despite attempts by Council to conceal her illness. In the words of Father William Weston, a Catholic priest imprisoned in the Tower of London at the time, “a strange silence descended on the whole city […] not a bell rang out, not a bugle sounded.”1 His description of the public unease regarding the imminent loss of the ruling monarch recognized royal death as a grave interruption in the order of the kingdom.2

The need to quell national uncertainty at such a time was reflected in the ritual of featuring an effigy of the royal body – a lifelike alternative to the natural corpse – in the customary processions of early modern funerals3 Displayed in an elaborate procession, the effigy of Elizabeth I was used to create the impression of social cohesion

during a precarious period of transition in leadership. Designed to evoke Plate 1. Reconstruction of the original 1603 funeral effigy of Elizabeth I, 1760. the lively presence of the monarch, the procession of the effigy through Undercroft Museum in Westminster the streets of London demonstrated its affective power over subjects, Abbey, London whose reactions implied support for the monarchy and affirmed the future stability of the state. Subsequent exhibition of the effigy in Westminster Abbey served to smooth the transfer of power from Elizabeth to her living successor, James I. The effigy ultimately played a critical role in imparting a message of national stability to the public despite the death of the head of state, and persisted in spite of the iconoclastic fervour of post-Reformation England.

The ritual display of the royal body in English funerals dates back to the eleventh century. The corpse was initially mounted upon a funeral bier and carried to the grave, which gave way to a procession of the corpse in an open coffin with his or her face uncovered.4 In both cases, the natural body of the monarch was shown to his or her subjects. The first use of an effigy in place of the corpse occurred in 1327 for the funeral of Edward II.5 Contemporary embalming practices were not sufficiently advanced to ensure the preservation of Edward’s body during the three months that elapsed between his death and funeral ceremony.6 While this fact suggests that the function of the effigy was first and foremost one of practicality, it also underlines the cultural importance placed upon the public display of the royal body. Indeed, the physical body of the monarch had an important political function. The theory of the “king’s two bodies,” used by Ernst Kantorowicz to examine the symbolism of royal effigy rituals in France, distinguishes between the ‘body natural’ – the physical mortal body of an individual ruler, which was vulnerable and ultimately subject to death, and the ‘body politic’ – the transcendent authority of kingship transferred upon the death 1 2

Olivia Bland, The Royal Way of Death (London: Constable and Company Ltd., 1986), 24.

Jennifer Woodward, The Theatre of Death: The Ritual Management of Royal Funerals in Renaissance England, 1570-1625 (Suffolk, UK: Boydell Press, 1997), 2.

3 Unfortunately, the original effigy does not survive. The effigy pictured above is a 1760 reconstruction of the 1603 original. It currently exists in the Undercroft Museum in Westminster Abbey, London.

4 5

Woodward, The Theatre of Death, 65.

6

Ralph E. Giesey, The Royal Funeral Ceremony in Renaissance France (Genève: E. Droz, 1960), 83, 85.

Julian Litten, “The Funeral Effigy: Its Function and Purpose,” in The Royal Effigies of Westminster Abbey, eds. Anthony Harvey and Richard Mortimer (Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 1994), 4. For a brief account of effigy use between Edward II and Elizabeth I, please see Additional Notes.

29

Plate 2. Detail of head in profile showing the collar, crown and jewelry reconstruction of the original 1603 funeral effigy of Elizabeth I, 1760.

Undercroft Museum in Westminster Abbey, London

Plate 3. Alternate view: Reconstruction of the original 1603 funeral effigy of Elizabeth I, 1760.

Undercroft Museum in Westminster Abbey, London

of a monarch to his or her successor.7 In this sense, the physical

body of the ruler was an “earthly manifestation of the body politic, invested with authority to govern [the] nation.”8

This embodiment of royal authority provided incentive to control the public image of the monarch, both in physical appearance and artistic rendition, to communicate specific ideas about his or her rule and the stability of his or her state.

Notoriously strict with her public image, Elizabeth I wielded this practice to her advantage. In 1596, she ordered the destruction of any “unseemly” portraits revealing her advancing age.9 Being a monarch who was both female and unmarried, it was in her interest to ensure her depiction as a capable leader. She controlled her depiction as a magnificent, powerful ruler in the prime of her life, Plate 4. Artist unknown (formerly attributed to a Virgin Queen who had willingly “relinquished her femininity George Gower), Elizabeth I of England (The Arand wed herself to the state.”10 Such manipulation of her image mada Portrait), 1588, Oil on oak panel, Woburn was extended to her physical appearance in public. As she was Abbey, Woburn, Bedfordshire. frequently seen while traveling in and out of London or greeting her subjects on formal occasions, Elizabeth went to great lengths to conceal any perceptible weakness of her physical body – cosmetics to obscure an aging complexion, a luxurious auburn wig to hide her thinning hair, and elaborate outfits and jewelry to distract the eye (Plate 4 and 5).11

Given that royal death in general constituted a rupture in the order and stability of the kingdom, the death of Elizabeth would have been a particularly severe shock to her subjects. Considering the length of her reign, many of them would never have known any other ruler.12 While succession was legally effective from the moment of the death of the previous monarch, royal funerals were typically staged prior to the coronation and official entry of the

7

Woodward, The Theatre of Death, 93; Nicole Marafioti, The King’s Body: Burial and Succession in Late Anglo-Saxon England (Toronto: The University of Toronto Press, 2014), 12; Michael Evans, The Death of Kings: Royal Deaths in Medieval England (London: Hambledon and London, 2003), 80.

8 9 10 11

211.

30

12

Marafioti, The King’s Body, 14.

Woodward, The Theatre of Death, 89-90.

Ibid., 93.

Neville Williams, “The Tudors,” in The Lives of the Kings & Queens of England, ed. Antonia Fraser (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1975), Bland, The Royal Way of Death, 26.

successor.13 During the interim between her death and the public display of her successor, James I, the effigy of Elizabeth served as a symbolic statement of royal authority and demonstrated the perpetuity of kingship until the arrival of the new King.14 It bridged the gap between the death of one monarch and the coronation of the next.

The effigy was a theatrical alternative to the Queen’s body, designed to evoke the lively presence of the monarch and, by extension, the invincibility of the monarchy. The use of an effigy avoided the display of the natural corpse to the public, sparing subjects from the sight of the monarch in a “vulnerable, mortal” state.15 Steps were taken to ensure that the ‘body natural’ of Elizabeth I was completely hidden from view. Her corpse was first wrapped in a linen sheet, tied securely at the head and feet (“like a cracker,” as Olivia Bland puts it), and encased in a lead shell, which was then placed in a wooden coffin three centimetres thick.16 As the natural body of Elizabeth was shrouded and sealed away in the coffin, attention was instead directed to the effigy lying recumbent on top of the coffin. The Plate 5. Marcus Gheeraerts effigy was designed to resemble a version of Elizabeth that was alive. Modeled in wax the Younger, Queen Elizabeth with the use of Elizabeth’s death mask, the mimetic I (‘The Ditchley portrait’), c. quality of the effigy would have contributed to a 1592 17 Oil on canvas, 95x60 in, Na- life-like appearance. Eyewitness accounts support tional Portrait Gallery, Lon- the theory that the designers intended a realistic don. depiction of the Queen: “…a little wrinkly […] though the truest countenance of her face.”18 The desire to evoke an animated presence of the monarch is further evident in the way the effigy was painted. Illustrated accounts of the procession depict the effigy with flaming red hair, flushed cheeks, and bright blue eyes. Lacking the pallor and closed eyes of death’s sleep, the effigy incited another viewer to remark that it was “coloured so faithfully that she seems alive.”19 The regal costume of the effigy served to further enhance its lively and commanding presence. Fitted with joints at the elbows to facilitate dressing, the effigy was clad in the crimson Parliamentary robes and ermine-trimmed mantle previously worn by the funeral effigies of Henry V, VII, and VIII respectively.20 The imperial crown was placed Plate 6. Unknown artist, A sketch

on the tresses of her scarlet wig, the orb and sceptre in her hands – symbols of of Elizabeth in the elaborate cossovereignty that completed the image of the lively and imposing ruler (Plate 1). tume and jewels she wore while

By virtue of its lively resemblance to the Queen herself, the effigy attending the Thanksgiving celeeffectively elicited a response of grief. One contemporary account describes bration after the Armada victory, c.

1588,The Royal Library at Windsor the feelings of sorrow upon seeing the likeness of the Queen: “There was Castle, Berkshire. such a general sighing and groaning and weeping as the like hath not been 13

Woodward, The Theatre of Death, 63. Such was the case for the funeral of Elizabeth I. James I was in Edinburgh at the time of his proclamation as King. He did not arrive in London for his coronation until after the Queen was buried.

14 15 16

Woodward, The Theatre of Death, 92-94, 98.

17 18 19 20

Woodward, The Theatre of Death, 87-88.

Marafioti, The King’s Body, 14.

Bland, The Royal Way of Death, 27; Aidan Dodson, The Royal Tombs of Great Britain (London: Gerald Duckworth & Co. Ltd., 2004), 10, 97. For a discussion of early modern embalming practices and the posthumous treatment of Elizabeth’s body, please see Additional Notes.

Ibid, 109.

Ibid.

Ibid., 93.

31

seen or known in the memory of man.”21 Whether this emotional display was honest or contrived, the performance of collective national grief for Elizabeth over the course of the procession created the impression of unity and consensus.22 The procession of the effigy in the streets therefore enabled the demonstration of power over subjects whose reactions implied support for the monarchy and future stability for England despite the demise of its ruler.23

In addition to the effigy itself, the elaborate visual spectacle of the procession was also orchestrated to overwhelm the audience with the impression of the unity and order of English society notwithstanding the demise of its reigning member (Plate 8).24 In order to communicate this impression, the public aspect of the procession ritual was essential.25 John Stow, a scholar who attended the event, observed that the city was “surcharged with multitudes of all sorts of people, in the streets, houses, windows, leads and gutters, that came to see the obsequy.”26 Sixteen hundred participants marched and rode in the procession, a number that allowed ample opportunity for funerary spectacle (Plate 7-10).27 The long and steady stream of subjects pouring from Whitehall Palace to Westminster Abbey would have been awesome to behold. Considering the number of people involved, the front of the procession likely would have reached the Abbey before the end of the line had left the palace.28 The magnificent costume of the procession would also have been visually arresting. The College of Arms enforced sumptuary laws that regulated the design of mourning garments for royal funeral ceremonies.29 For the funeral of Elizabeth, eighteen thousand yards of black fabric were issued to the members due to appear in the procession.30 The uniformity of black mourning dress lent group coherence to the procession and ensured spectators would be impressed by the grand display in honour of the ruling dynasty.31

The procession featured individuals from a variety of social groups, from sergeants and stewards to squires and scullery maids (Plate 7-10). As representatives of each rank of society were included, spectators bore witness to a marching microcosm of Elizabeth’s kingdom.32 The hierarchy of English society was organized with the monarch at the apex from which social authority flowed to subordinate positions.33 The funeral procession reproduced this structure, hierarchically organized around the royal effigy just as society was centred on the monarch.34 One’s position in the procession was therefore deliberately determined in order to advertise his or her rank. For example, proximity to the effigy of Elizabeth was determined by social status, and thus served as one way in which the rank of each participant was made recognizable.

The order of the procession offered a visual gradation of rank. It began with the lower classes and servants of royal and noble households, progressed to a “climax of dignity” – an entourage of nobles who occupied privileged positions surrounding the cortege bearing the coffin and effigy – and concluded with a parade of officials of lesser rank.35 Led by a half-dozen Knight Marshals with golden staves, the first participants to appear were two hundred 21 22 23 24 25 26 27

Bland, The Royal Way of Death, 32.

Woodward, The Theatre of Death, 91.

Ibid., 65.

Ibid., 28. .Ibid., 32.

Bland, The Royal Way of Death, 30.

Marafioti, The King’s Body, 15. The social status of the deceased determined the number of participants in the procession. As Elizabeth I represented the apex of social order, her procession merited a great many participants.

28 29 30 31 32 33

Bland, The Royal Way of Death, 32.

Ibid., 16, 18.

Ibid., 29.

Woodward, The Theatre of Death, 19, 66.

Ibid,, 17.

Stephen Collins, “‘A Kind of Lawful Adultery’: English Attitudes to the Remarriage of Widows, 1550-1800.” In The Changing Face of Death: Historical Accounts of Death and Disposal, eds. Peter C. Jupp and Glennys Howarth. (London: Macmillan Press Ltd., 1997), 40-41.

32

34 35

Woodward, The Theatre of Death, 92.

Ibid., 17.

members of the poor, followed by a series of esquires, knights, porters, trumpeters, and sergeants-at-arms.36 All members of Elizabeth’s royal household were included, also organized by rank with the lowest appearing first: those who worked in the wood yard, scullery, pastry, larder, buttery, kitchen, and stables.37 Government officials and dignitaries of the church followed: the Lord Chief Justice of England, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, the Principal Secretary, and a slew of bishops, viscounts, and earls, the appearance of whom served to anticipate the funeral chariot. Drawn by four white horses caparisoned in black velvet to the hocks, the chariot carried the coffin, draped in purple velvet with the sumptuously attired effigy lying supine upon its lid. The chariot was followed immediately by the Chief Mourner, the Lord Treasurer and Lord Admiral, and the ladies of the aristocracy – marquesses, baronesses, countesses, viscountesses, maids-of-honour – with the full ranks of the Royal Guard, marching five by five, bringing

Plate 7. Artist unknown, Two Queries leading a horse trapped in velvet, the Sergeant of the Vestrie, Children and Gentlemen of the Chapel Royal, Funeral Procession of Queen Elizabeth, c. 1603 ink drawing, The British Library, London.

Plate 8. Artist unknown, The focal point of the procession: the funeral chariot, coffin, and effigy of Elizabeth I. Funeral Procession of Queen Elizabeth, c. 1603, Ink drawing, The British Library, London.

36

Bland, The Royal Way of Death, 29-32. An appendix of the participants in the procession also appears in Woodward, The Theatre of Death, 210-

37

Woodward, The Theatre of Death, 92.

214.

33

Plate 9. Artist Unknown, Gentlewomen, noblewomen and Chiefs of the Vestrie, Funeral Procession of Queen Elizabeth, c. 1603, Ink drawing, The British Library, London

Plate 10. Artist Unknown, Sir Walter Raleigh (Captain of the Guard) and the Royal Guard, Artist unknown, Funeral Procession of Queen Elizabeth, c. 1603, Ink drawing, The British Library, London.

up the rear.

In addition to physical proximity to the effigy, rank was also made recognizable by the attire of the participants (Plates 7-10). The amount and quality of material issued by the College of Arms to each individual in the procession and instructions regarding their design and appearance were recorded in seventeenth-century accounts of the Royal Wardrobe.38, 39 Members of the aristocracy were provided with black silk for the fashioning of cloaks and gowns.40 Noblewomen had their gowns made in the height of contemporary style and wore them with farthingales, large white bibs, and white veils or wimples (Plate 9). Men of noble status wore their cloaks over black trunkhose suits, and distinguished themselves from men of lower classes with elaborate hoods (Plate 9). Meanwhile, the lower orders of servants were each allotted four yards of black cloth to be made into jerkins, hose, and modest head 38 39

Bland, The Royal Way of Death, 29.

40

Bland, The Royal Way of Death, 29-30.

poor.)

34

Woodward, The Theatre of Death, 19. The accounts refer to each participant in the procession by individual name (except for members of the

coverings (Plate 10).41

Moreover, the use of costumes could be strategically employed to ensure each rank received adequate representation.

If the number of mourners available to represent a certain rank was insufficient, subjects were simply dressed according to the conventions of the group lacking sufficient representation.42 The individual identity of a given participant was therefore subordinate to the symbolic function of the costume.43 In furtherance of this effect, the head coverings that served to demarcate rank also obscured the face of the mourner. The regulation of costumes within the procession suppressed individual expressions of identity or emotion and functioned primarily to reduce one to his or her social rank.44

In addition, the appearance of subjects in the funeral procession implied support for the existing social order at a moment of national rupture. For some individuals, participation was furnished with social incentive. For members of the lower classes, taking part in the obsequies of a monarch would confer importance on their part, and the cloth issued for the making of mourning garments had material value.45 Those who occupied a higher rank in society were given an excellent opportunity to show off their status, and in doing so, confirm their support for the hierarchical system that upheld their claim to status.

Plate 11. Tomb of Elizabeth I. c. 1606.

Regardless of Henry VII Chapel, Westminster Abbey, London the true nature of their compliance, the appearance of all within the procession would appear consensual to spectators, and therefore function as a public display of their loyalty to the Queen and the enduring power of the state over which she had presided.46 Ultimately, the choreography of the procession was designed to link individuals to their established places within the order of English society and unite them in mourning – a visual affirmation of the position of the monarch at the apex of the social order and the undiminished strength of the nation in spite of her death.47

The propagandistic function of Elizabeth’s effigy persisted after its initial exhibition in the funeral procession, as it was used to smooth the transfer of power from the defunct monarch to her living successor, James I. The political transition from Elizabeth I to James I was particularly fraught, as Elizabeth died unmarried and childless, 41 42 43 44 45 46 47

Ibid., 30.

Woodward, The Theatre of Death, 18, 21.

Plate 12. Tomb of Elizabeth I. c. 1606.

Henry VII Chapel, Westminster Abbey, London

Ibid., 21.

Bland, The Royal Way of Death, 30.

Woodward, The Theatre of Death, 12-13, 24.

Ibid., 24. Bland, The Royal Way of Death, 14.

Clare Gittings, “Expressions of Loss in Early Seventeenth-Century England,” in The Changing Face of Death: Historical Accounts of Death and Disposal, eds. Peter C. Jupp and Glennys Howarth (London: Macmillan Press Ltd., 1997), 22.

35

Plate 13, Tomb effigy of Elizabeth I. c. 1606.

Henry VII Chapel, Westminster Abbey, London.

the last of the Tudor line, and the question of her succession had never been formally settled.48 Thus, it was especially urgent for James to develop his image as a legitimate heir of Elizabeth’s royal legacy. He did this by forging a symbolic relationship with Elizabeth, using her effigy to do so. Within the first two years of his reign, James had the funeral effigy specially refurbished for display during the state visit of King Christian IV of Denmark.49 In addition, he commissioned the construction of an extravagant canopied tomb featuring ten pillars of coloured marble for Elizabeth in Westminster Abbey, which was furnished with a full-length marble effigy of the Queen (Plate 11, 12 and 13).50 Finally, James enlisted a ‘tomb keeper’ who charged people a penny to see the tombs, effectively recruiting both the funeral effigy and tomb effigy as tourist attractions. Under the guise of creating a material locus for public loyalty to Elizabeth I, James associated himself with the queen, appropriating the loyalty to her memory to secure his reign.51 His patronage of the costly effigy tomb project and the refurbishment of funeral effigy were merely performances of familial duty to his predecessor that underscored the legitimacy of his lineal descent and buttressed his claim to the throne.52

The custom of featuring life-like effigies of the monarch both within the funeral procession and upon her tomb may seem surprising. At first glance, cultural fascination with the display of the royal body is hardly consistent with the iconophobia of post-Reformation England (Plate 14). Indeed, the iconoclastic fervour of the Reformation involved a particular intolerance for the sculpted image as an object of worship or conduit for intercessory prayer.

The funeral effigy – a life-size, life-like portrait of the deceased – would seem to be a potential target for the charge of idolatry.53 However, its existence was justified on the basis of its impermanence and its civic importance. The ephemerality of the effigy’s movement in the funeral procession did not pose the same threat as did permanent 48 49

Williams, “The Tudors,” 211.

50 51 52 53

Dodson, The Royal Tombs of Great Britain, 12, 97. The tomb cost 965 pounds, “besides stonework.”

Woodward, The Theatre of Death, 131, 205. According to the 1606 Treasurer’s Accounts, a substantial sum was reserved for the “dressing [of] the effigies,” including the effigy of Elizabeth I. Contemporary accounts confirm that the effigy of Elizabeth was “newly beautified, amended and adorned with royal vestures” for the occasion.

36

Woodward, The Theatre of Death, 133.

Marafioti, The King’s Body, 5.

Woodward, The Theatre of Death, 103.

installations of ritual objects, which were considered to be more egregious violations of iconoclastic policy.54 The existence of the tomb effigy, which could not claim ritual ephemerality, was legitimized by the fact that it commemorated a member of the dead as an object of civic rather than religious veneration.55 The recognition of the secular importance of the effigy ritual enabled its practice despite post-Reformation attitudes that otherwise would have outlawed its existence.

Contrary to what one might assume, the Reformation’s restrictive policies had consequences for royal funeral rituals that helped rather than hindered their propagandistic ends. These ideas did not merely tolerate laudation of the deceased; they actively endorsed it. For instance, all religious processions except funeral processions were abolished in the 1547 Injunctions.56 The fact that the funeral procession alone was allowed to remain acknowledges its social and civic value in terms of maintaining impressions of national order and stability. Further, the processional banners bearing images of saints that customarily surrounded the coffin of the deceased were burned by reformist zealots and never replaced.

Accordingly, the funeral convoy was not overshadowed by saintly insignia.57 Flags bearing the heraldic and royal arms were the only images permitted, allowing for a singular emphasis on the abiding power of the body politic that would outlive Elizabeth despite her mortal demise.

The Reformation’s attitudes toward death also had a Plate 14. Detail: tomb effigy of Elizabeth I. c. 1606. positive impact on the purposes of the royal funeral procession.Henry VII Chapel, Westminster Abbey, London.

The abolition of the doctrine of Purgatory meant that the posthumous welfare of the soul could not be improved through the prayers of the living.58 Prior to the Reformation, members of the poor were included in the procession as an act of charity on behalf of the soul of the deceased.

The abolition of the doctrine of Purgatory made this practice unnecessary, but the poor remained a feature of royal funeral processions. The secular nature of their participation served the purely propagandistic aim of enhancing the appearance of social cohesion and stability under English rule.59

In conclusion, the effigy ritual of Elizabeth I was a powerful political object at a moment of national crisis.

Swaying spectators with a lively appearance of the Queen in the grand visual spectacle of her funeral procession, the effigy fixed a final image of Elizabeth’s reign in public memory and reinforced the dignity, prestige, and continuity of the monarchy following her death. The persistence of its exhibition in a post-Reformation funerary context underscores its significance to the preservation of social order. Borne above its mortal counterpart, the effigy assured the public of the endurance of state power as Elizabeth was carried to her final place of rest. It marked the end of one reign and ushered in the beginning of the next. Department of Art History, McGill University

54 55

Ibid., 204.

56 57 58 59

Woodward, The Theatre of Death, 54.

Ibid., 104-106, 204. Several royal tombs and effigies were vandalized during the height of the Reformation; however, the fact that they continued to be constructed suggests that the secular justification for their existence ultimately prevailed.

Ibid., 40.

Gittings, “Expressions of Loss in Early Seventeenth-Century England,” 21.

Woodward, The Theatre of Death, 44.

37

Additional Notes

Descriptions of effigies appear in the records of the College of Arms (the body responsible for the organization of royal obsequies) and contemporary witness accounts. Between Edward II’s funeral in 1327 and the first Tudor funeral in 1502, the use of effigies in royal funeral processions were sporadic for reasons that are not always clear.

Julian Litten states that Richard II (d. 1400), Edward V (d. 1483) and Richard III (d. 1485) lacked effigies due to their respective political failures, which suggests the inclusion of an effigy as a privilege bestowed on monarchs deserving of public honour. There is no record of an effigy in the funeral procession of Henry IV (d. 1413), which does not rule out its existence. The obsequies of Henry V (d. 1422), Katherine de Valois (d. 1437), Henry VI (d. 1471) and Edward IV (d. 1483) all featured effigies. For reasons that remain (to my knowledge) unknown, the effigy of Edward IV did not appear in his funeral procession, but was instead only revealed once the procession was inside Westminster Abbey.

Consistency in effigy use appears with the House of Tudor. The first Tudor funeral (for Elizabeth of York, d.

1502) was an occasion to show off Tudor prestige and featured a particularly elaborate effigy, as did the funeral of her husband, Henry VII (d. 1509). Instructions exist for the design of an effigy for Catherine of Aragon (d. 1536), but the effigy itself has been lost, as has the effigy for Jane Seymour (d. 1537.) Henry VIII and Edward VI were both represented by effigies in their respective funeral processions (the former being sumptuously dressed with jeweled rings and gold bracelets, the latter more conservative in comparison). Mary, Queen of Scots (d. 1558) was dignified with a wooden effigy that could be arranged in different positions by virtue of its moveable joints. Such is a brief history of effigy use in English royal funerals leading up to that of Elizabeth I. 5

The use of chemical injections to stave off the process of bodily decay was not incorporated into English mortuary practices until the eighteenth century. During the medieval and early modern period, it was customary to remove the organs from the body and bury them a separate urn. However, the details of the posthumous treatment of Elizabeth’s body remain unknown. The Queen apparently had a strong aversion to the idea of evisceration. Having no desire for her body to be eviscerated nor embalmed following her death, she left specific instructions for the court morticians to that effect. However, conflicting accounts exist as to whether or not her wishes were respected. Some sources note that “vapours” released by the uninhibited decay of the body (suggesting that she had not, in fact, been embalmed) caused her coffin to explode, while several others dismiss the event as a rumour. Aidan Dodson suggests the coffin-explosion story may have been a rumour spread by Catholics to imply the death of the Protestant queen had been “surrounded by ill-omen.” (Dodson, Royal Tombs of Great Britain, 96-7.) In any case, this tale serves as an interesting example of how the physical body of the monarch was invested with meaning, even after death.

Department of Art History, McGill University 16

Bibliography Bland, Olivia. The Royal Way of Death. London: Constable and Company Ltd., 1986.

Collins, Stephen. “‘A Kind of Lawful Adultery’: English Attitudes to the Remarriage of Widows, 1550-1800.” In The Changing Face of Death: Historical Accounts of Death and Disposal, edited by Peter C. Jupp and Glennys Howarth. London: Macmillan Press Ltd., 1997.

Dodson, Aidan. The Royal Tombs of Great Britain: An Illustrated History. London: Gerald Duckworth & Co. Ltd., 2004.

Evans, Michael. The Death of Kings: Royal Deaths in Medieval England. London: Hambledon and London, 2003.

Giesey, Ralph E. The Royal Funeral Ceremony in Renaissance France. Genève: E. Droz, 1960.

38

Gittings, Clare. “Expressions of Loss in Early Seventeenth-Century England.” In The Changing Face of Death: Historical Accounts of Death and Disposal, edited by Peter C. Jupp and Glennys Howarth. London: Macmillan Press Ltd., 1997.

Litten, Julian. “The Funeral Effigy: Its Function and Purpose.” In The Royal Effigies of Westminster Abbey, edited by Anthony Harvey and Richard Mortimer. Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 1994.

Marafioti, Nicole. The King’s Body: Burial and Succession in Late Anglo-Saxon England. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2014.

Marin, Louis. On Representation. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 2001.

Williams, Neville. “The Tudors.” In The Lives of the Kings & Queens of England, edited by Antonia Fraser. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1975.

Woodward, Jennifer. The Theatre of Death: The Ritual Management of Royal Funerals in Renaissance England, 1570-1625. Suffolk, UK: Boydell Press, 1997.

39

The Puppet Resistance: Theatrical Art and Entertainment in Commonwealth London (1649-1660) Hayley M.L. Eaves

Plate 1. Entertainments on Offer at Bartholomew Fair, 1721, engraving, Wellcome Collection, London

The Portable puppet theatre in Commonwealth London provided a popular source of entertainment during an otherwise more insipid time in English history, when all theatrical entertainments and performances had been banned according to the legislation of Puritan merchant Oliver Cromwell (Lord Protector of the English Commonwealth from 1653 to 1658). As soon as the war was over, Cromwell passed a number of laws to ensure that the theatres would stay closed, making theatre performances, the opera, and puppet shows illegal. Those who disobeyed the laws of the Protectorate would be subject to physical torture and pernicious fines. In spite of the new laws however, the puppet theatres continued unhindered.1 Puppeteers carried their booths from city centers (Covent Garden Piazza in the center of London, for example) to busy commercial emporiums where they would be well camouflaged amidst the colors, sounds, and sights of the surrounding environment. At Bartholomew Fair, one of London’s most pre-eminent fairgrounds, there were acrobats, wild beasts (a camel had arrived at Bartholomew fair from Egypt after the death of Charles I, in 1649), rope-dancers, alehouses, and rare pieces of art.2 In addition to the safeguard of the fairground setting, there were a number of added reasons why the puppet shows survived Cromwell’s legislative bans. Firstly, puppeteers could perform their shows in the homes of wealthy nobles- the roughly hewn puppets, and the subject matter of the plays (satirical and religious) would have been refreshing to an urban population craving the odd thrill or excitement. Secondly, the puppet plays were an inexpensive way to entertain the entire family, and finally, the shows were considered a lowly form of entertainment, and therefore not a cause for much concern from local authorities. As the only theatrical entertainment now available, the puppet shows proved vital for the preservation of England’s convivial entertainment culture.

Setting:

The camouflage provided by Bartholomew Fair was an essential element to the preservation of the puppet theatre. In his Memoirs from Bartholomew Fair (1892), English literature professor Henry Morley (1822-1894) argues that “Bartholomew Fair held its own while the play houses were silenced.”3 Londoners would have been exposed to a vast and ripe array of seasonal and imported delights at the fair, which is perhaps a reason why it

40

1 2 3

George Speaight, The History of the English Puppet Theatre (Southern Illinois: Southern Illinois University Press, 1990), 70.

Henry Morley, Memoires of Bartholomew Fair (London, New York: G. Routledge, 1892), 231.

Ibid., 230.

Plate 2. William Hogarth. Humours of the Fair, 1733, engraving, Cincinnati Art Museum, Ohio

maintained great popularity despite competition from newly established urban markets during the seventeenth century. In addition to local fish, fruit, bread, cheese, alcohol, and tobacco, consumers could buy live cattle, cloth, leather goods, and fine silverware (fig 1).4 Other popular fairs in London (Southwark and Mayfair) were frequented more than a dozen times by the royal family between 1719 and 1740.5 A print by William Hogarth (1733) well depicts the busy ambiance of the Southwark fair, featuring a peep-box, a rope dancer, musicians, a police-officer on horseback, a puppet performance (in the top right hand corner of the picture plane), and a finely clad female character in the foreground beating a sizeable drum (fig 2); at Bartholomew Fair puppet shows were announced by playbills, banners, and by loud banging on drums. As the early eighteenth century engraving suggests however, puppet shows were not exposed out in the open. Instead, puppet masters concealed their booths in enclosed or semi-concealed areas so as to both escape the eyes of patrolling policemen and to make sure that all spectators had paid the modest fee of one penny before viewing.6

The eradication of the theatre forced more critical spectators to watch the lowly puppet shows in popular London fairs. These new spectators did not always appreciate the plays and as a result the glove puppets developed an increasingly negative reputation towards the end of the seventeenth century. By the time that The Merry Monarch (Charles II, King of England from 1660 to 1685) had assumed the throne, restoring England to its royal roots, the glove puppets had started to go out of fashion amongst more elite groups, only to be replaced by marionettes. The marionette was a highly naturalistic string puppet with moving hands, rolling eyes and invisible mechanics, features that allowed for an entirely more deceptive performance (fig 3).7 Not surprisingly, however, the glove puppets made a come-back thanks to a later adaptation of Italy’s famous Punchinello (Mr. Punch) from the Commedia dell’arte during the Victorian Era (fig 4).

Holland House:

In addition to the public puppet shows were private domestic shows. Wealthy elites would pay to have puppet masters entertain guests in their grandiose estates (similar to the court performances that were made popular under Elizabeth I).8 The private shows at Holland House (Kensington, London) are perhaps the best documented despite 4 5 6 7 8

Ibid., 381.

Speaight, The History, 70.

Henryk Jurkowski and Francis Penny, A history of European puppetry (Lewiston: Edwin Mellen Press, 1996), 110.

Ibid., 44.

Ibid., 70.

41

the house being previously owned by a Puritan (fig. 5). Following the execution of property owner Henry Rich, 1st Earl of Holland in 1649 (a Royalist during the Civil War), Holland House (located approximately four miles from the center of London) was inhabited

by Cromwell’s Commander-in-Chief, General Fairfax (Black Tom), and in July of that same year, Parliamentary General John Lambert had fixed his headquarters there. Furthermore, Cromwell himself paid regular visits to Holland House. On one particular occasion, he held a private meeting in the estates gardens with his son-in-law, Henry Ireton, during which they discussed “the important events which had contributed to agitate England.”9

While there is no documentation of the puppet booths entering Holland House during its ownership by General Fairfax, there is evidence to prove that the house was a safe environment for actors during its later inhabitance by Lady Holland (still during the Commonwealth). From her work on Holland House (published in 1874), Marie Norberte writes that Lady Holland “encouraged acting in Holland House when theatres were shut by the puritans.”10 In addition, Henry Morley, in his Memoires of Bartholomew Fair, writes that “the Plate 3. Rosalynde Osborne Stearne with sevsuppressed players had, under the Commonwealth, a special gathering eral of her strong puppets from “The Clouds”, photograph, McGill Rare Books and Special place for secret performances in Holland House;” presumably, the Collection Library, Montréal. “players” could have been a reference to the puppet masters. 11 Morley refers to these players at Holland House as “Lady Holland’s Mob.”12 In addition, the fine of 5 shillings (around five British pounds, or ten Canadian dollars today), which was the cost of watching an illegal puppet show, would have been less crippling to the nobility than it would have been to the “simple folk.”13 To compare, a nobleman’s annual salary in Ireland during the 1640’s would have been between two to three thousand pound sterling’s (presumably higher in London), whereas a man from the working class would have earned about five shillings per week- the sum of watching one illegal puppet show.14 To put things into better perspective, five shillings would have been equal one quarter of a British pound, topping the working class salary at around one pound sterling per month (and this would have been a fairly generous salary). Furthermore, since the nobility (who were more typically associated with the monarchy) were less threatened by Cromwell’s laws and were eager to maintain their own social reputations through the display of entertainments in the home, the puppeteers were not out of business. Finally, since the fair was a seasonal event, these private at-home performances would have enabled the puppet shows to run all year-long.

Portable Theatre:

The fact that the puppet booths (and the puppets, which could number up to a dozen) could be moved from place to place was perhaps the most important secret behind their prolonged success (fig 6). The puppet masters could quickly move the booths away from the eyes and ears of the law. Despite the freedom they had to shift about the city however, a fee was incurred per square foot of space that a puppeteer and his booth were estimated to occupy. A Bartholomew Fair Account Book in the Corporation of London Records Office reveals that puppet showman Robert 9 Marie H.N. Liechtenstein, Holland House (London: Macmillan and Co, 1874), 16.

10 Ibid., 17.

11 Morley, Memoires, 234.

12 Ibid., 234.

13 Speaight, 72.

14 Steven King and Alannah Tomkins, The Poor in England 1700-1850: An Economy of Makeshifts (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 42

2003), 87.

Plate 4. Punch and Judy, c. 1850, McGill Rare Books and Special Collections Library, Montréal

Parker rented twenty five feet of land at the fairground in 1672 for £2.10s (or 50 shillings). In 1675 he rented thirty feet of land for £3.00, and paid £6.00 for the same amount of land in 1677.15 Considering that each member of the audience would have paid only one penny (sometimes two) to watch the performances, it would have taken a good while for the puppeteer to save up the £2.00+ necessary to perform his puppet show; there were 240 pennies to one pound at the time, and Parker would have needed to receive payment from over five hundred audience members in order to afford one season of showings at the fair. The shows themselves lasted for thirty minutes, and could be presented up to eight times in one afternoon. That the puppeteers paid such fees proves both that the shows were highly popular, and also that the puppet masters most likely had higher incomes than members of the working class.

Finally, if the puppeteers could not afford to perform in the fairgrounds they could bribe the authorities into turning a blind eye towards their showings in the urban piazzas.16 The Plays:

When German writer Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832) was four years old his grandmother bought him a puppet theatre. Soon after, Goethe started writing plays to bring his puppets to life on his little wooden stage.

His famous masterpiece Faust (1770s), about a man who sells his soul to the devil in exchange for all the knowledge in the world, was a drama initially composed for his childhood theatre, and was later transformed into one of the most acclaimed narratives on the larger stage.17 The devil character had been derived from the Elizabethan stage (human actors), and was made into a puppet so as to satirize the Puritans’ perception of the theatre as an abomination to the Lord. Many of the plays during the Commonwealth were based on religion; biblical narratives such as Babylon and Nineveh (a tale of two cities), Bel and the Dragon (a beauty and a beast), Jonah and the Whale, The Creation of the World, and The Destruction of Jerusalem, for example, were all made into puppet plays. In addition to these were a number of plays based on contemporary events like The Gunpowder Plot (at the House of Parliament in 1605), and The Massacre in Paris (St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre in 1572). A textual sample, written by naval administrator Samuel Pepys (1633-1703) on December 4th, 1991, reads the following: “to the fair to see the play ‘Bartholomewfair’ with puppets. And it is an excellent play: the more I see it the more I love the wit of it: only the business of 15 16 17

Sybil M. Rosenfield, The Theatre of the London Fairs in the 18th Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1960), 6.

Speaight, 70.

Alice K. Early, English Dolls, Effigies, and Puppets (London: Batsford, 1955), 196.

43

abusing the Puritans begins to grow stale and of no use, they being the people that at last will be found the wisest.”18 Here, Pepys reveals that the puppeteers mocked the Puritans in their plays, and admits that although initially amusing, the topic eventually grew tiresome. In addition, the fact that Pepys saw the plays in December (the seasonal fair started in August and typically ended in the same month) proves that the fair, and by extension the puppet shows, remained popular during the winter. There was a downside to this “prolonged fair” however, since it could turn into a “mere carnival” of disorder and debauchery, characterized by drinking, stage-plays, drolls, raffling, gaming and lotteries.19

In his Cutter for Coleman Street (1641), playwright Abraham Cowley (1618-1667) reveals that Puritans did not object to visual re-enactments of biblical narratives on the puppet stage; these “holy performances” therefore, would have perhaps been allowed to continue despite other types of performances being banned.20 This type of favoritism caused actors from the Theatre Royal (on Drury Lane in Covent Garden) to align in protest on the streets of London in 1642. The protests were altogether unsuccessful, however, and by the early eighteenth century a scaleddown version of Solomon’s Temple had been designed for the puppet theatre, attracting the attention of a large and international crowd (fig 7).21 Finally, since the puppets were so popular, they were a formidable menace to real-life actors- even more so when the puppets took on performances from the human stage.

Many felt it was unjust for the puppet shows to continue during a time when other theatrical entertainments

Plate 5. Joseph Nash. In the Garden at Holland House Kensington, with Couples and Children, 19th C, engraving.

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18 19 20 21

Samuel Pepys and James G. Wilson, Mr. Secretary Pepys: With Extracts from his Diary (New York: Wynkoop & Sherwood, 1867), 211.

Morley, 381.

Early, English Dolls, 193.

Ibid., 193.

were banned. In an entry from The Actor’s Remonstrance or Complaint for the Silencing of their Profession (1643), an actor writes the following; “Puppet plays, which are not so valuable as the very music between each act at ours, are still kept up with uncontrolled allowance.”22 While frustrated actors urged the authorities to ban the puppet shows, no real efforts were made to do so. In 1647, the Lord Mayor of London, John Warner, tried to regulate show times after receiving complaints about puppeteers performing up to an hour before the fairs were officially open.23 Despite his every intention of regulating the shows however, Warner passed away just months after receiving the complaints. Almost immediately after his death, glove puppets were crafted that resembled Mayor Warner and were included in the shows at Bartholomew Fair. While his coming back to life as a puppet made a mockery of his esteemed reputation, it nevertheless caused for great entertainment. A broadsheet elegy from November 1648 reads the following; “Here lies my lord Mayor, under this stone that last Bartholomew Fair no Puppets Plate 6. An Italian Puppeteer Carrying his Theater. would own. But next Bartholomew Fair, who liveth to see, Shall view my Lord Mayor a puppet 24 to be.” The puppeteers addressed real-life issues and popular discontents in their performances, but despite “the show’s use of parody, there is no attempt at realistic imitation.”25 The puppets looked like grotesque dolls, and were not meant to be interpreted as deliberate imitations of real-life human beings. By contrast, marionette puppets, made popular during the Restoration, would have been praised for their mimetic life-likeness. Finally, despite the crude application of real-life people and events, resembling modern-day gossip channels on the T.V, the controversy was intended to be jovial and broadly sarcastic.

Coming to Life:

An account from English playwright Ben Johnson (1572-1637) reveals that the puppets, or “motions”, at the Bartholomew Fair were either brought to life with strings (as in the case of marionettes) or were animated by an unseen operator from below (as in the case of glove puppets). He writes, “They act in dumb show, and the showman describes and explains what is happening in a running commentary, as he stands beside the stage.”26 Here, Jonson describes the puppet show as an entertainment carried out by two performers. In addition to the puppet master, there would have been an another character present, independent of the puppet booth itself who would have played music, spoken to the audience, and provided a narrative to accompany the visual amusement; A visible accomplice could also keep an eye out for incoming patrolmen. Johnson himself wrote a number of puppet plays, including The Ancient Modern History of Hero and Leander (an Ancient Greek love epic), and another about Damon and Pythias (a story about true friendship) which “together with their setting in contemporary London, also the treatment as a mildly obscene joke, were the essence of this little burlesque comedy.”27 Jonson transformed the well-known stories (which were familiar from the actors’ theatre) into parodies acted out by puppets. In addition, a description of the 22 “The Actors remonstrance or complaint for the silencing of their profession and banishment from their several play houses,” Early English Books Online, 1643

23 Speaight, 71.

24 Ibid., 71.

25 Steve Tillis, Toward an Aesthetic of the Puppet: Puppetry as a Theatrical Art 26 Jurkowski and Penny, European Puppetry, 111.

27 Ibid.,111.

(New York: Greenwood Press, 1992), 42.

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performances reveals that the shows would have been announced by a separate character called “Leatherhead.”28 In another example, a puppet master may have hired real-life dancers to warm-up the crowd before starting his performance. These dances/dancers were often taken from foreign traditions- Dutch dancers in costume, Indians with castanets, Irishmen, and Italian posture dances, for example.29

More traditionally, the puppet master would have provided the voices for his own puppets using a swazzle; if they did not have access to a swazzle however, and they had a hand free to do so, they would simply pinch their noses.30 The swazzle was a noise instrument made from two strips of metal, wrapped around a cotton tape reed. The sound made by the swazzle can be compared to the voice of Elmo (the red muppet from Sesame Street); it produces a quick, high pitched sound that is almost unintelligible. This multi-channeled communicative device was used in the plays at Bartholomew Fair to compete with other surrounding noises and to draw in the attention of curiohunters (or intrigued passers-by). Furthermore, the puppeteers used non-instrumental distortions such as accents, falsetto, growling or nasal speech.31 Percy Press, Jr. argues that giving the puppets a voice took the violence out of their behavior. The glove puppets in particular could move at fast speeds and were easy to maneuver. For this reason, they were used for “burlesque or bastinado style” shows, which involved a lot of hitting, fighting, and clubbing; the puppets would also fight with Leatherhead.32 During the Commonwealth, a Puritan puppet was introduced to stop the violence between other puppets. He kept busy by “spying on the jollities of Bartholomew Fair” and trying to convince the human-crowd that “all theatre is immoral and a product of the devil.”33 Finally, Jonson made a great contribution to the theatrical art of glove puppetry due to his understanding of the puppet as an intermediary between fantasy and reality, which encouraged the interpretation of the puppet as an “artificial actor.”34

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Engagement:

Steve Tillis in his Towards an Aesthetic of the Puppet (1992) argues that “the puppets lack of consciousness as a perceived object is thus an invitation for the audience to participate in the creation of “life” similar to their own.”35 In this case, the beholder gives agency to the puppet in order for it to come alive. Tillis goes on to argue that “the only consciousness the puppet can have is that consciousness invested in it by an anonymous and potentially infinite audience, it may be imagined to bear the consciousness of an anonymous and infinite world.” 36 Here, Tillis argues that the beholder projects their knowledge of the sensory environment onto Plate 7. Jacob Judah Leon, Temple of Solomon, 1665, engraving. the objects they see, which when seeing in the company of others, results in a single object 28 Ibid., 111.

29 Rosenfield, London Fairs, 8.

30 Jurkowski and Penny, 110.

31 Frank Proschan, “Puppet Voices and Interlocutors: Language in Folk Puppetry,” The Journal of American Folklore, v. 94, (1981), 540.

32 Jurkowski and Penny, 111.

33 Ibid., 111.

34 Ibid.,112.

35 Tillis, Aesthetic of the Puppet, 83.

36 Ibid., 83.

acquiring agency or “consciousness” from variable perspectives. The puppet has no consciousness when unengaged, and yet an infinite number of psyches when engaged by a diverse culture of spectators. By contrast, in China “the puppets were the first actors, and when men took to the profession they were instructed to move as the puppets did, and their acting was stylized in imitation of the puppet play.”37 In this case, the actors received agency from the puppet. They were inspired by the character and spirit of the puppet itself.

According to Tillis, the audience perceives the puppet in one of two ways, first as a living being (life), and second, as an inanimate doll (object).38 Plato’s metaphor, “man is a puppet of the gods”, is a common trope found in the theatrum mundi (world-theatre) beginning in the Elizabethan era, as well as in the works of Shakespeare who compared human actors to puppets controlled by master showmen.39 Puppets were employed in dramas that were originally written for actors because “the puppet had a broader psychological impact upon every type of audience, sophisticated or not”.40 If the audience perceives the puppet as a doll, despite not having played with dolls since childhood, then their emotional reactions may be the result of their reminiscing on a more innocent time in their lives (perhaps a better time). Conversely, if the audience understands the puppet to represent reality, then “it may have something of religious awe if they be the progeny of divine images.”41 Whether intentional or not, this “doublevision” was a constant in all puppet performances, and provides the basis for a synchronic explanation of the puppet’s popular and lasting appeal. The puppet creates in everybody the pleasure of a profound and illuminating paradox provoked by an “object” with “life.”42

In conclusion, the glove puppet theatre was unique in the fact that it stood alone as the only form of theatrical entertainment in one of the world’s most affluent and populous cities for over two decades. The fantastical and realistic role played by the puppets encouraged both the early dramatic works of acclaimed writers such as Goethe and provided stability during a time when society was pinned against a new wave of Puritanism in both public and private spheres. Constant demand for the puppet shows required that the tiny theatres find new microcosms of operation and in doing so preserved theatrical traditions from the human stage that otherwise may have been forgotten. By 1660 the popularity of the glove puppet shows had begun to fizzle out, making way for new forms of entertainment such as the Marionette Theatre and Restoration dramas. Department of Art History, McGill University, 2015 Bibliography Barasch, Frances K. “Shakespeare and the Puppet Sphere”. English Literary Renaissance, vol. 34, no. 2, 2004.

Early, Alice K. English Dolls, Effigies, and Puppets. London: Batsford, 1955.

Jurkowski, Henryk and Penny Francis. A History of European Puppetry. Lewiston: Edwin Mellen Press, 1996.

King, Steven and Alannah Tomkins. The Poor in England, 1700-1850 an Economy of Makeshifts. Manchester, U.K.: Manchester University Press, 2003.

Liechtenstein, Marie Henriette Norberte. Holland House. London: Macmillan and Co, 1874.

Morley, Henry. Memoirs of Bartholomew Fair. London: G. Routledge, 1892.

Pepys, Samuel and James Grant Wilson. Mr. Secretary Pepys with Extracts from his Diary. New York: Wynkoop & Sherwood, 1867.

Rosenfeld, Sybil Marion. The Theatre of the London Fairs in the 18th Century. Cambridge [England]: Cambridge University Press, 1960.

37 38 39 40 41 42

Early, 197.

Ibid., 59.

Frances K. Barasch, “Shakespeare and the Puppet Sphere,” English Literary Renaissance Inc (2004): 157.

Tillis, 47.

Ibid., 47.

Ibid., 65.

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Speaight, George. The History of the English Puppet Theatre. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1990.

The Actors remonstrance or complaint for the silencing of their profession and banishment from their severall play-houses in which is fully set downe their grievances for their restraint ... as it was presented in the names and behalfes of all our London comedians ... and published by their command in print by the Typograph Royall of the Castalian Province, 1643. London: Printed for Edw. Nickson, 1643. Retrieved from http://gateway.proquest.com/openurl?ctx_ver=Z39.88 Tillis, Steve. Toward an Aesthetic of the Puppet: Puppetry as a Theatrical Art. New York: Greenwood Press, 1992.

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The Artist as Poet: Agnolo Bronzino, “Imbued with the Spirit of Petrarch” Jemma Elliott-Israelson

The Italian painter Agnolo Bronzino (1503-1572) was not only a renowned painter in the Medici court, but also a celebrated poet in his own right. This paper will center on Bronzino, ideals of Petrarchan Beauty, Bronzinos’ portraits as living images and finally an analysis of his own painting and poetry. Ultimately, it will argue that working within two vocations helped to develop Bronzino’s realistic and subtle style of portraiture. Bronzino drew on Petrarchan ideals of feminine beauty in his portraits. His images are hauntingly expressive and aesthetically pleasing, yet also master an air of “lifelikeness” as he portrays each of his subjects with individualized characteristics and expressions. They seem to be vox sola deest (only lacking voice). 1 This essay will aim to examine how the renaissance painter as a poet was able to render his subjects in a more realistic fashion, and will discuss the connection between text and art in the early modern era. It will argue that the artist as poet merges two genres of art in a multi faceted fashion, and thus can portray his subject matter in a highly individualized and sometimes uncanny fashion.

The emergence of the “artist as Poet” is seen in the early Renaissance period, and encapsulates the idea of the artist as mediator for the creation of moving images. The combination of the word and image work in tandem to animate a work of art. This is accomplished through technical artistic employment and the via speech of the depicted figures through text. Bronzino’s lifelike portraits were based off of Petrarchan ideals of feminine beauty. This paper will be examining how Bronzino’s portraits of women were moving images, in both their visual representation and in their connection to his poetry. Subsequently, the correlation between text and image will be examined in its ability to create a more “living” or “moving” image.

Bronzinos portraits as living images “What is a story that is not read, whose pages remain closed within the covers of a book? What is a Picture that is not looked at, that, so to speak, has its face turned to the wall?” 2 According to J. Hillis Miller, pictures seek to be viewed, just as stories seek to be read.3 . Agnolo Bronzino was a Florentine painter and poet working from the 1530s to the 1560s. He served in the court for Cosimo I de’ Medici and created numerous portraits of noblemen and women as well as a plethora of religious works. Vasari considered him “the most important and oldest” 4 of living artists at the time. Bronzino was not only praised for his artistic endeavors, but also for his production of poetry. Bronzino achieved an uncanny sense of reality in his portraiture, as seen in his Portrait of Lucrezia Panciatichi (see appendix 1). These images seem to be living, breathing, and sometimes mocking the viewer. He trained under the mannerist painter Jacopo da Pontormo 5. Vasari states that Bronzino “painted many portraits of various persons, and other pictures, which gave him a great name. 6 Bronzino painted portraits of Cosimo I de Medici’s family, as well as “the Lady Donna Maria, a very tall and truly beautiful girl”7 We will see Bronzino’s panache for painting female court portraits in the manner of “Petrarchan” beauties.

Agnolo Bronzino’s Portrait of Lucrezia Panciatichi (Plate. 1) is a marvelous work that depicts the feminine virtues of chastity in a hyper realized fashion. Hiller points out that while these virtues are made clear, and however aesthetically pleasing the work is, we rely on text to animate it and tell us the identity of the figure. . 8 “Nothing in the painting itself verifies that identification. We are dependent on external performative testimony.”9 This portrait 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

Fredrika Jacobs, “Introduction: The Topos of Lifelikeness,” in The Living Image in Renaissance Art, II. 1.J. Hillis Miller,. “What Do Stories about Pictures Want?” , 59.

Ibid.

Janet Cox-Rearick, “Bronzino, Agnolo.” Grove Art Online. Oxford Art Online.

Vasari, Giorgio, and A. B. Hinds, The lives of the painters, sculptors, and architects, 868.

Ibid, 869.

Ibid, 672.

Ibid, 67.

Ibid.

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is brought to life by the written inscription on her necklace “Sans fin amour dure” which signals the lady’s enduring and steadfast love and faithfulness to her husband. Fredrika Jacobs discusses how the vocabulary for describing works of art as “living” was greatly expanded in sixteenth century Italy when Bronzino was producing his works. Terms such as vivio (alive) and una cosa viva (a living thing) became widely used to describe works of art in the period as animated or living things.10 Jacobs also asserts that the interaction of “vivid words and lifelike images” relates in context to “a neo-Aristotelian understanding of the expressive aims of imitation as it relates to the poetics of Petrarchan love and longing.” 11 This theory ties in well when examining the Portrait of Lucrezia Panciatichi.

Charles McCorquodale notes that Bronzino used “the arm to close the sitter off from the viewer and to prelude any intrusion on our part into this world.”12 This suggests that Bronzino was attempting to convey “expressive aims of animation.”13 In doing so, he incorporated the Petrarchan lofty ideals of beauty, not readily relatable to the common viewer, which could serve to provoke the beholder’s thought, curiosity and awe. What makes Lucrezia come into a “physiological and physiological condition Plate 1. Agnolo Bronzino, of being”14 is the combination of these attempts at ennoblement, Portrait of Lucrezia Panciatichi, 1540, Oil on panel, with a viewer-sitter connection through her intense yet soft 101 x 82.8 cm,Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence gaze. The way she seems to be leaning forward, poised to get up, lends to the portrait’s moving quality. Maria Loh suggests that we are bound to the convention of throwing character onto Renaissance sitters stating “Conventional approaches to Renaissance portraiture are bound by a misunderstanding of mimesis and by a psychobiographical tendency to impute character to these ‘realistic’ faces – what Harry Berger Jr. identified as the fallacies of ‘mimetic idealism’ and ‘physiognomic interpretation.’ 15 In Bronzino’s case, his images are imbued with a sense of character that seems innate. This character is brought forth by his literary enhancements. Besides visual cues pointing towards an elevated sense of spiritual morality and restraint (her severe hair and austere expression) the aid of the inscription lets the viewer know in concrete terms what kind of a woman Lucrezia Panciatichi is in respect to class and virtue.

Enhancing this point is her outright lack of identity sans text. Her physical representation can however be connected to text, specifically those of Petrarch.

What is Petrarchan Beauty?

Francesco Petrarca (1304-1374) was an Italian poet and one of the first humanist scholars of the Renaissance.

Many of his sonnets contain Laura, his love as the female subject of admiration. Stephen Campbell mentions, “Bronzino, a poet himself was adept in the imitation of Petrarch, who had long been the single most authoritative

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10 11 12 13 14 15

Fredrika Jacobs, II. Ibid, III. Charles McCorquodale, and Agnolo Bronzino, Bronzino, 26.

Fredrika Jacobs, III. Ibid, II. M. H, Loh, “Renaissance Facility.”, 346.

model for Italian poetry, even more than the great Dante.”16 Furthermore Campbell states “Imitators of Petrarch sought purity of form and a delicacy of language… “Petrarchists” tended to curtail anything that smacked of harshness in the words of violent passion in the sentiment.”17 Laura’s beauty, and that of other females in his work is always equated with a pure, angelic nature. An excerpt from one of his sonnets describes the woman as Chiara, soave, angelica, divina;18 (Clear-voiced and pure, angelic and divine,). 19

His intense love is expressed as a production of the woman’s beauty. He says: Tu stai negli occhi ond’ amorose vespe Mi pungon si, che ‘nfin qua il sento e ploro20 (Thou lingerest on those eyes, whose beauty presses Stings in my heart that all its like is exhaust21)

Petrarch often equated Laura with links to divine beauty: Thy Beauteous images haunts this futile abode, And sighs for Laura mix with prayers to God ….From Memory’s tablet raze the form divine.22

Michael Delahoyde states that Petrarch often “praises his mistress’s

superlative qualities using descriptions of beauty.” 23 These physical attributes include golden hair, ivory breasts, and ruby lips. She is love both personified and objectified.24Bronzino mastered the Petrarchan style of poetry both in form and genre, and consequently imbued his portraiture with its sentiment and spirit. After this brief description of Petrarchan beauty, we can now use Agnolo Bronzino’s portraits as pictorial representations of this lofty beauty, angelic or divine perfection, and passionate love.

All these attributes are evident in many of Bronzinos female Portraits. The lofty beauty or altera bellazza are particularly highlighted in his 1540 portrait A Young Woman and Her Little Boy (Plate 2)25

We can assume she is a noble woman due to her attire, but no information about her actual identity is extant. Despite her lack of identity, Bronzino manages to convey a message of rigid aristocratic behavior and decorum expected of a Renaissance woman through her opulent dress, static pose and somber expression. Her lofty beauty or “altera bellazza” 26 Plate 2. Agnolo Bronzino, is evident to the viewer, as she possesses small and perfectly proportioned features, elegant dress and refined but opulent jewelry. Her distance separates A Young Woman and her Little Boy, the onlooker from her courtly realm and places her on a pedestal of sorts. Her c. 1540, oil on panel, 9.5x 76 cm, assertive gaze makes the viewer feel as if they are themselves being appraised.

National Gallery of Art, Washington.

The woman seems to posses a type of agency, highlighting the notion from 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26

Stephen J Campbell, Michael Wayne Cole, Italian Renaissance Art, 470.

Ibid.

Ibid, 4 Petrarca, Francesco, Fifteen sonnets of Petrarch, 5.

Ibid, 6 Ibid, 7.

Francseco Petrarch, A poetical epistle from Petrarch to Laura, 6.

Michael Delahoyde, Petrarch (1304-1374).

Ibid.

Overview The Collection :: A Young Woman and Her Little Boy.” National Gallery of Art, Washington.

Andrea Emiliani, Il Bronzino. Busto Arsizio: Bramante, 58.

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The Greek Anthology that “either Nature is lifeless or Art is

alive.” 27 This exchange of judgment contributes to the reciprocal animation created by and in Bronzino’s portraits. Consequently, his Portrait of a lady with a Lapdog (Plate 3) immediately draws the viewer in through her gaze. Character and narrative details denoting her class are given through her costume. She wears a dress with a “high waisted bodice, billowing upper over sleeves and exaggerated halo-like coiffure” 28. Her education and piety are noted in the form of the books, rosary and lapdog. 29. Despite her ennobled posture, there are elements of playfulness to this work, the interrogative tilt of the puppy’s head and its akimbo hairs, the woman’s half smile, and the repetition of the gold and black lattice in her hair and lap. The puppy can be seen as an “extension of the sitter herself” 30 who invites the viewer into the scene with a similar gaze as the woman. The sitter in this work has been identified by Robert Simon as Maria Salviati, daughter of Lucrezia di Lorenzo de’ Medici and Jacopo Salviati.31 . It uses “strong and audacious” use of color 32, “incisive contour” with the sitter’s face emanating a “sparkling quality”.33. “The winsome but not oversentimental charm of the little lapdog all convey a youthful verve in execution coupled with and elegance of finish”. Plate 3. Agnolo Bronzino, Portrait of a Lady with a Lapdog, ca. 1537-40, 34 . This panache for creating dazzling clothing and jewelry 80.9x70.5 cm, through bold colour would become synonymous with Bronzino’s Stadel Museum, Frankfurt. later court style for the Medici family. Through his dramatic use of colour the sitter becomes animated, and the view is drawn into her parlor, into her word through her and her puppy’s “sparkling” gaze.

Bronzinos’ work in the Medici court had close links with his own poetry, which was inspired by Petrarchan sonnets. His Portrait of Eleonora di Toeldo (Plate. 4), wife of Cosimo I de Medici exemplifies all the ideals of a Renaissance woman both physically and in the expression of her virtues. Particular attention paid to the lack of colour in her complexion, which “betokens rank, good health, and disputation all contributing to her beauty.” 35 Bronzino’s images were seen to be “imbued with the spirit of Petrarch and its entrenched codas of interactive response….[to] provide Cosimo with a Medicean “Laura”.36 The portrait of Eleonora highlights the ideals of Petrarchan love and those same sentiments expressed in his own poetry. His poem Cortese Donna outlines the “court lady” as being “A vivid, splendid example of sublime heart” (D’alto core, e bellezza esempio vivo).

Cortese Donna, in vera alta onestade D’amore accesa, alteramente schivo D’alto core, e bellezza esempio vivo

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27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36

Fredrika Jacobs, VII. Gabrielle Langdon, Medici women: portraits of power, love and betrayal from the court of Duke Cosimo I, 26.

“Collection Highlights Agnolo Bronzino Portrait of a Lady with a Lapdog, Ca. 1537–40.” Städe Museum Gabrielle Langdon, 27.

Ibid, 25.

Ibid Ibid, 27.

Ibid Ibid, 91.

Ibid

Saggia, e perffetta om fresca acerba etade37 Lines 1-4

The vivid aspect of her “loftily elusive” nature is indicative of the painter’s ability to imbue his works with this veracity or living quality, while at the same time placing his aristocratic subject on a higher plain of beauty and existence. 38 She features pale skin, a high and slightly receding hairline, small delicate hands, with her proper right hand delicately clutching her son, pert pink lips and wears an elegantly embellished dress. All these physical attributes serve to mark her identity as an ideal aristocratic woman. Her youthful appearance paired with the presence of her son, makes her the ideal combination of young fertile ragazza and mother. Bronzino shows us these unattainable or “lofty” ideals in this work, and commits them to pen in his sonnet.

Elonora di Todelo also asserts authority, maturity and capability through her gaze. These attributes are duly included, as she served as the Regent in Florence when her husband Cosimo I de Medici was not present.

The use of the term esempio vivo (vivid) in Bronzino’s Cortese Donna Plate 4. Agnolo Bronzino, Portrait of Eleperfectly describes the quality imparted by the portrait of Eleonora. onor di Toledo, c. 1545, Oil on panel, 115x96 cm, Uffizi Gallery, Florence.

She is regal, assertive, and intimidating through her posture, gaze and comportment. Through examining the aforementioned sonnet and the portrait, it is clear how Bronzino’s two artistic practices were informed and enhanced by each other. This image seems to be “non dipinta ma viva (not painted but alive), containing a “battere I polsi (beating pulse).”39 Furthermore, the combination of being affluent in rhetoric, poetry and painting was integral in order to legitimize Bronzino’s place as a liberal artist and humanist in the Renaissance court of the Medici. This is perhaps why he was highly favored as court Portraitist for the Medici family, and why his works continue to fascinate and strike awe onto viewers today.

Through the examination of Bronzinos’ writings and court portraiture of we can see how the ability to work in two vocations created fuller, more animate images. Consequently this relationship highlights how the image and text together can inform the viewer in terms of identification, class position and character of the sitter. Bronzino was able to imbue his portraiture with a sense of animation, and rebuke the sentiment that portraiture is lifeless and dull.

The ideals of Petrarchan Beauty, Bronzinos’ portraits as living images and his own painting and poetry all contributed to making his images become animated. In these cases, the sitters seem to be aware of their power on the viewer, and the viewer is captivated, moved and sometimes struck into awe by their intense and often uncanny gazes. The power of female beauty is highlighted in Petrarch’s works as well as Bronzino’s own writings. Having textual cues then informs the viewer on how to approach the portraits, but more importantly these cues give the sitter a voice and identity. Consequently, the image is moved by the text, and the text is moved by the image, just as the viewer moves the image, and the image moves the viewer. Department of Art History, McGill University Bibliography Bronzino Agnolo, Emiliani Andrea, Cerboni Baiardi Giorgio. 1960. Il Bronzino. Busto Arsizio: Bramante.

Campbell, Stephen J, Wayne Cole Michael. 2012. Italian Renaissance Art. New York, New York: Thames & Hudson Inc. Chapman, Hugo. “Bronzino, Agnolo Tori di Cosimo di Mariano.” The Oxford Companion to Western Art. Oxford Art Online. Oxford University Press, accessed September 11, 2014, http://www.oxfordartonline.com/subscriber/article/ 37 Ibid, 203, 204 lines 1-4.

38 Ibid, 92 39 Fredrika Jacobs, VIII.

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opr/t118/e385.

Christiansen Keith, Lee Rubin Patricia,Weppelmann Stefan,. 2011. The Renaissance portrait: from Donatello to Bellini. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art. “Collection Highlights Agnolo Bronzino Portrait of a Lady with a Lapdog, Ca. 1537–40.” Städel Museum. Accessed October 15, 2014. http://www.staedelmuseum.de/en/collection-highlights.

Cox-Rearick, Janet, “Bronzino, Agnolo.” Grove Art Online. Oxford Art Online. Oxford University Press, accessed September 11, 2014, http://www.oxfordartonline.com/subscriber/article/grove/art/T011518.

Delahoyde, Michael. “Petrarch (1304-1374).” Petrarch, Washington State University. Accessed November 16, 2014. http://public.wsu.edu/~delahoyd/renaissance/petrarch.html.

Jacobs Fredrika, 2005, “Introduction: The Topos of Lifelikeness,” in The Living Image in Renaissance Art (Cambridge University Press: Cambridge) Jeffries John, Wilson Martin Bronwen, 2007. The Renaissance World. New York: Routledge.

Langdon, Gabrielle. 2006. Medici women: portraits of power, love and betrayal from the court of Duke Cosimo I. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

Loh, M. H. «Renaissance Facility.» Oxford Art Journal 32, no. 3 (2010): 341-63. doi:10.1093/oxartj/kcp032.

McCorquodale Charles, Bronzino Agnolo. 2005. Bronzino. London: Chaucer Press. Accessed Sept 11. 2014 Miller J. Hillis. “What Do Stories about Pictures Want?” Critical Inquiry 34, no. S2 (2008): S59-97. doi:10.1086/529090.

Overview The Collection :: “A Young Woman and Her Little Boy.” National Gallery of Art, Washington.

Petrarch, Francesco, A poetical epistle from Petrarch to Laura. 1780. London: Printed for J. Walter, at Homer’s Head, Charing-Cross.

Petrarch Francesco, Wentworth Higginson Thomas, Rogers Bruce 1903. Fifteen sonnets of Petrarch. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.

Parker, Deborah. 2000. Bronzino: renaissance painter as poet. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Rogers, Mary. 2000. Fashioning identities in Renaissance art. Association of Art Historians (Great Britain), Aldershot, England, Ashgate.

Strehlke Brandon Carl, Cropper Elizabeth. 2004. Pontormo, Bronzino, and the Medici: the transformation of the Renaissance portrait in Florence. Philadelphia, PA: Philadelphia Museum of Art. Vasari Giorgio, Hinds A. B, 1927. The lives of the painters, sculptors, and architects. London: J.M. Dent & Sons.

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From Exotic to Domestic: The Development of Porcelain in the Seventeenth-Century Dutch Republic Xiyuan Li

Plate 1. Willem Kalf, Still-life with Silver Ewer, 1655-1660

For the newly formed Dutch Republic in the seventeenth century, global trade domination quickly served the nation to raise its prominence on the world stage.Among the many foreign commodities acquired by the Dutch East India Company (Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie, or VOC) was fine blue and white porcelain from the East.

Ships of the VOC began bringing porcelain objects back to the Netherlands, where they were bought by members of both the European nobility and the Dutch middle class. Prior to their introduction en masse to the European market, these fine wares were rarities collected by royals. For the Dutch, the initial allure of porcelain lay in the lack of an equivalent type of ceramic in Europe at the time. Typical European wares were were heavier and less vibrantly decorated earthenware or stoneware, such as majolica from Spain. As such, the blue and white porcelain was unique, and its ‘exotic’ character made it a highly sought-after object given the Dutch curiosity-collecting fever at the time.

However, these wares did not remain just foreign trinkets. Seeking domination of the globe through trade pursuits, the Dutch decontextualized the wares into a more European object until they became a symbol of their own nation. Through an exploration of various seventeenth-century porcelain objects, this paper aims to present the process of Dutch assimilation of the foreign into the domestic as a means to exercise power over trade competitors.

This process of domestication begins by first supplying the Dutch national demand for the exotic, then situating the wares together with other displaced foreign luxury goods. Finally, the Asian porcelain was made to tailor to European lifestyles and desires, eventually culminating in the formation of Delftware , the creation of which ultimately decreased the value of foreign porcelain wares. After examining the technical transition of porcelain through this period as well as the history of porcelain as a good on the market, the appropriation of Ming ware into Delftware can be further explored through the discourses of Peter Mason and Benjamin Schmidt on exoticism as well as the influence of Dutch trade on art as described by Roland Barthes and Julie Hoochstrasser.

Much has been written by porcelain experts on how to distinguish the various types of porcelain that appeared on the European market over the course of the seventeenth century. Ming ware (Chinese in origin, done in the original Ming styles and gradually incorporating some European stylistic influences) appeared first, followed

by Transitional and Japanese porcelain (either Chinese or Japanese in origin, featuring porcelain repurposed to fit

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contemporary European tastes and functions). The last to emerge was Delftware, the homemade European counterpart to Ming ware, which featured a [dramatically] reduced emphasis on Eastern visual repertoire in comparison to its predecessors.1 This change in type and location is generally attributed to the mid-century civil unrest in China after the fall of the Ming dynasty under which the first wares were categorized – an event that forced European traders to seek an alternative and more stable source of porcelain to meet the demand at home.2 The Dutch used their connection to Japan to acquire and order porcelain wares from their kilns, which led to the production of wares that were initially were of lower quality than the Ming wares.3 Thus leading into the period of Japanese porcelain as well as the introduction of more European styles into porcelain forms and decoration.4 While the Dutch maintained contact with the Chinese porcelain kilns, the 16755 destruction of Jingdezhen, the Chinese centre of porcelain and ceramic production, caused what wares that could be bought to be only intermittently available.

Eventually, the Dutch were able to form their own process of achieving an aesthetically similar product in their own workshops, with the appearance of Delftware in the 1660s.6 There are some fundamental physical differences between Delftware and the Asian wares - such as the differences in clay types, which affected the whiteness that could be achieved with firing, as well as the use of a tin-based glaze rather than the cobalt-based glaze typically used in Chinese and Japanese wares.7 The factories in Jingdezhen were able to obtain the specific blue and white underglaze porcelain by their firing technique at very high temperatures and the mix of clay they used to achieve maximum whiteness in the finished product.8 Due to sagging during the firing process, Japanese kilns used saggars to hold the base of the wares in place, leaving little marks which do not commonly appear in Chinese works.9 It has been noted that earlier works more typically aligned with the Chinese tradition were dishes and plates, whereas the introduction of more closed forms such as vases and bowls were often done in the Transitional style.10

Looking closely at the decorative motifs and forms of the wares also helps to identify their place in the development of porcelain through the stylistic traditions and trends that eventually percolated through to Delftware from the original Ming wares.

It becomes clear that although those motifs were rooted in Chinese symbology, they become distilled from their original setting. Traditionally, the Chinese wares had a very orderly, compartmentalized decorative scheme with specific patterns and colouring styles that denoted their origin.11 Motifs such as the taotie or the eyed-beast symbol arise from early Chinese art and can be seen  throughout the decoration of various Chinese artworks.12 Compared Plate 2. Unknown, Kraak porcelain ware from to the later Japanese porcelain, the Chinese porcelain bore more solid China with taotie motif,1605-1650, coloured decorations, whereas the Japanese developed a gradient

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1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12

Christiaan J.A. Jorg, Fine and Curious: Japanese Export Porcelain in Dutch Collections. (Amsterdam: Hotei, 2003) 9 Christiaan J.A. Jorg, Fine and Curious, 11, 12 Christiaan J.A. Jorg, Fine and Curious, 12 Christiaan J.A. Jorg, Fine and Curious, 155 Christiaan J.A. Jorg, Fine and Curious, 10 Christiaan J.A. Jorg, Fine and Curious, 37 Christiaan J.A. Jorg, Fine and Curious. 14 Christiaan J.A. Jorg, Fine and Curious. 14 Christiaan J.A. Jorg, Fine and Curious. 14 Christiaan J.A. Jorg, Fine and Curious. 14 Christiaan J.A. Jorg, Fine and Curious. 24 Christiaan J.A. Jorg, Fine and Curious. 24

colour scheme for their wares with bolder brushwork.13 It is the amalgamation of these various visual cues alongside motifs such as the tulip pattern and heraldry that lend a distinctly European slant to the visual qualities of later wares of the Transitional work. The Dutch were also able to have china made to their specific orders and demands, as evidenced by the appearance of specifically European ceramic forms such as butter tureens or figures decorated in the style of blue-white porcelain.14 The Dutch ordered wares that also slightly adjusted the traditional Chinese forms to accommodate Western needs, such as steeper-walled cups and deeper plates once the European demand continued.15 Another signifier of later ceramics were depictions of scenes that encompassed the entire inner surface of plates, a decorative scheme that strayed from the traditional Chinese aesthetic.16 This scheme is prominent in Delftware pieces and commissioned Japanese wares as well. However, throughout this progress, the Dutch maintained an insistence that the decorations had an identifiable ‘Chinese’ scheme, with ‘Chinese figures, and Chinese styles.’ Although the Dutch would eventually depict more Western scenes, they still retained some aesthetic components reminiscent of an Easternly origin, such as straight, tiled roof buildings.17 After the re-establishment of the Jingdezhen workshops, the Dutch were able to commission specific forms and shapes on a larger scale than before, bringing home familiar European shapes with the iconic blue-white underglaze decoration in larger quantities.18

The Dutch initially brought porcelain onto the open market after capturing two Portuguese vessels in 1602 and 1604.19 The ships’ cargoes of porcelain wares were brought to the Netherlands and auctioned off. Departing from previous tradition in which porcelain went straight to the collections of royalty and nobility, auction introduced porcelain to a wider market.20 In the auction of cargo from the Santa Catarina in 1604, King Henry IV of France and King James I of England purchased wares from the confiscated cargo of the ship.21 Arguably, the arrival of these spoils arose from pressure by King Philip II [of x country] to block Dutch access to Portuguese ports in a growing battle for global trade supremacy in 1595.22 The Dutch would eventually come to dominate trade through their business acumen and shipbuilding traditions. A specific order came from the chairman of the VOC for porcelain in

1657.23 t Although there are some records of porcelain imports Plate 3.Unknown, Japanese Arita Blue and White left behind by ship cargo manifests, a great deal of porcelain Porcelain with VOC logo, c. 17th century does not appear in VOC documentation and can only be recuperated through letters and porcelain collections.24 One 13 14

Christiaan J.A. Jorg, Fine and Curious. 24

15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24

Jennifer Chen, Porcelain Stories, 252

Jennifer Chen, Mimi Gardner Gates and Julie Emerson, Porcelain Stories: from China to Europe. (Seattle: Seattle Art Museum and University of Washington Press, 2000). 252 Christiaan J.A. Jorg, Fine and Curious,.210 Julie Hoochstrasser, Still life and Trade in the Dutch Golden Age. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007) 140 Christiaan J.A. Jorg, Fine and Curious, 155 Jennifer Chen, Porcelain Stories, 101 Julie Hoochstrasser, Still life and Trade in the Dutch Golden Age, 122 Jennifer Chen, Porcelain Stories, 101 Jennifer Chen, Porcelain Stories, 101 Christiaan J.A. Jorg, Fine and Curious, 155 Jennifer Chen, Porcelain Stories, 102

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such example was the Witte Leeuw, a Dutch boat/ship that sank after a battle with the Portuguese off the southwestern coast of Africa.25 When the Witte Leeuw wreck was salvaged in 1976, divers discovered hundreds of fine porcelain objects/vessels that had been dislodged from the holdings of the ship and scattered around the bottom of the sea.

Work has been done by experts to identify similar wares in contemporary paintings.26 After the fall of the Ming dynasty and the destruction of Jingdezhen, the Dutch turned to Japan as an alternative source of porcelain. After asking the Japanese kilns to develop porcelain of a similar quality but with Chinese motifs, the Dutch received their first order of wares, consisting of 145 dishes, in 1650.27 Following an official order from the Amsterdam Director of the VOC in 1657, the Dutch brought wooden models of European forms for the Asian kilns to replicate – an act that brought Transitional wares to the market.28 As the Qing dynasty rose to power and Jingdezhen was rebuilt, Chinese porcelain reappeared on the open market in the East. It was of good quality, less expensive, and was more efficiently made than the Japanese wares, which could no longer compete – the last order for porcelain from Japan was recorded in 1683.29 By this time, Japan had already imposed a strict policy against European trade that prohibited all ships except for those of the Dutch from coming in to harbour.30 Although this created a unique monopoly for the Dutch in terms of trade relations with the Japanese, the Japanese government was also extremely restrictive towards Dutch trade. For instance, Dutch sailors and merchants had to live on an island off the coast of Osaka and send annual gifts to the court of the Emperor, and neither ships nor cargo were allowed to leave without permission from the Japanese government.31 These limitations left the Dutch with less power than was perhaps preferable. The Japanese wares themselves differed from those of the Chinese in certain respects, and were also more

expensive to obtain. The introduction of tin-based glazing in Europe had Plate 4. Unknown, Delftware faience from enabled earthenware to be decorated in a similar manner to porcelain, Delft, 1670-1700 a technique in which many workshops in Delft began to specialize.32 Ultimately, in the early 1700’s, the market value of porcelain began to fall, risking the loss of its reputation as a luxury good upon which the VOC could depend as a source of revenue.33 However, the introduction of tea, coffee and chocolate in Europe helped maintain a market for wares that could be used to serve these luxury delights. By 1700, tea-drinking had become a social pastime. Its requirement of proper tea sets and wares was easily fulfilled by porcelain and Delftware.34

Nonetheless, a great deal of the porcelain brought back in the late 1600’s remained unsold at auction in Amsterdam.35 At this time, porcelain began to be used as ballast for ships carrying precious tea back to the Dutch Republic.36 At this time, tea was in such demand that the directors of the VOC asked that “as tea begins to come into

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25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36

Jennifer Chen, Porcelain Stories, 102 Julie Hoochstrasser, Still life and Trade in the Dutch Golden Age 128 Christiaan J.A. Jorg, Fine and Curious, 11 Christiaan J.A. Jorg, Fine and Curious, 155 Christiaan J.A. Jorg, Fine and Curious, 12 Christiaan J.A. Jorg Porcelain and the Dutch China trade. (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1982) 91 Julie Hoochstrasser, Still life and Trade in the Dutch Golden Age 139 Jennifer Chen, Porcelain Stories, 107 Christiaan J.A. Jorg, Fine and Curious, 129 Jennifer Chen, Porcelain Stories, 108 Christiaan J.A. Jorg, Fine and Curious, 129 Julie Hoochstrasser, Still life and Trade in the Dutch Golden Age 149

use by some of the people, we expect some jars of Chinese as well as Japanese tea with every ship.”37 Once the end of the century rolled around, porcelain was no longer prized as a good that required effort to obtain, as a similar ceramic ware could be easily bought from their own kilns.

The process by which porcelain rose and fell as a desired object of trade from the Dutch can be considered in terms of the Dutch commodification of the exotic.In his analysis of the Dutch relationship to exoticism, [scholar/ historian/whatever he is] Benjamin Schmidt outlines how the Dutch, with their command of global geography and trade, were able to sell a de-contextualized and sanitized categorical view of the foreign to Europeans through the dissemination of goods brought back from abroad, as well as through their meticulous detailing of certain aspects of “exotic” cultures through atlases, charts and written accounts.38 This presentation of the exotic allowed the Dutch to control how a foreign culture was depicted or analyzed in Europe, whether in its own form or in illustrative form.39 The Dutch were not looking to present a true-to-life view of these faraway peoples, but rather presented them in a way that simply listed their cultural aspects in a detached manner - for example, the types of hats one could see in Asia. 40 Such lists treated foreign objects in a way that denied them significance beyond their mere existence as ‘things’ that Europeans could enjoy. Due

Plate 5. Willem Kalf, Still-life with a Late Ming Ginger Jar, to Dutch command over global trade, it set the precedent 1669` for European considerations of the ‘exotic’.41 This is mirrored in the way the Dutch approached the decoration of the porcelain wares, with the demand for ‘Chinese figures’ - the figures could be painted on by Chinese, Japanese or Dutch workers irregardless.42 What mattered was that the image presented on [the?] market as porcelain remained exotic but manageable for the Dutch. In taming the Other of the East in such a manner, the Dutch could conquer what they physically could not conquer in Asia due to the established empires of China and Japan. As argued by the scholar Roland Barthes, these objects were represented as not only the trappings of trade but the particular spoils of the Dutch.43 Such representation enabled the Dutch to articulate their national capability for global trade domination through still life depictions of objects that could be bought, traded and sold as goods, whether porcelain wares or human slaves.44 Once these items could be seen as mere objects to the Dutch, their original significance could be stripped and repurposed for the Dutch mentality. Peter Mason, in his work, has postulated that upon the act of discovery, a process of decontextualization occurs, displacing the ‘exotic’ object in question to a non-native setting where it is then recontextualized and given different meanings 37 38

Julie Hoochstrasser, Still life and Trade in the Dutch Golden Age 151

39 40 41

Benjamin Schmidt, “Inventing Exoticism”, 353

42 43 44

Julie Hoochstrasser, Still life and Trade in the Dutch Golden Age, 137

Benjamin Schmidt, “Inventing Exoticism: The Project of Dutch Geography and the Marketing of the World, circa 1700” in Merchants & Marvels : Commerce, Science and Art in Early Modern Europe eds. Pamela H. Smith and Paula Finden. (New York: Routledge, 2002) 348 Benjamin Schmidt, “Inventing Exoticism”, 362

Benjamin Schmidt, “Accumulating the World: Collecting and Commodifying ‘Globalism’ in Early Modern Europe” in Centres and Cycles of Accumulation in and Around the Netherlands during the Early Modern Period ed. Lissa Roberts. (Zurich: Lit, 2011) 130 Roland Barthes, “World as Object,” Critical Essays. (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1972) 5 Roland Barthes, “World as Object” 6

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and values than it originally possessed. 45 What matters is not the original meaning but the object’s capacity to lend itself to other meanings once it has been moved. Porcelain, as such, is an item that could be easily exoticized - it could be shipped halfway across the globe without much difficulty, and could be used in ways that would not been considered in its original context. Furthermore, its aesthetic form could be applied to forms previously unknown to its original source, in the ways of Transitional wares. The very labelling of these wares as kraak wares, possibly after the carrack ships of the Portuguese,46 displaces and recontextualizes the porcelain in terms of Dutch ability to overtake the Portuguese as a global merchant

In terms of porcelain as a symbol of luxury, Julie Hoochstrasser has analyzed its representation in still life painting, where it works in tandem with other symbols of luxury. With other equally exotic trade commodities such as the lemon, the tulip or the orange (sinaasappel - ‘China apple’), porcelain represented/signified the Dutch ability to access these goods through their successful trade enterprises -although European development of Delftware led to the eventual waning of porcelain as a valued good.47 Although these goods were originally symbols of the faraway, some of these objects would become more closely associated with Dutch national identity – such/as was the case for the tulip. These still-lifes also brought attention to the Dutch wrangling with their proximity to luxury: on one hand, it was believed that the ability to amass capital in the material world was meant as a sign of salvation after life, but one also had to place the spiritual over the material and remain austere and humble.48 The connection that porcelain had with other foodstuffs in terms of function as well as the development of collecting fever of the Dutch entrenched it into the web of commerce. By moving porcelain across the seas from Eastern Asia to Europe, the Dutch could transform porcelain into a foreign luxury good that could be incorporated into the growing Dutch identity. The recontextualization of the exotic porcelain into a recognizable Dutch product by the end of the seventeenth century with the introduction of Delftware allowed for a figurative way to conquer what was different and new to the Dutch.

By analyzing the visual and commercial changes in/of porcelain trade in the seventeenth-century Dutch Republic, one can see the incorporation of previously foreign Ming ware into domesticated, homegrown Delftware and, consequently/by extension, Dutch identity. As they had done with [the objects of? facets of?] many other cultures, the Dutch tamed the exotic into a manageable item from which they could derive commercial benefit. What lies the introduction of porcelain to the Dutch Republic during this time is the process of conceptualizing the identity of a newly formed nation hoping to gain a foothold on the international stage. Although the physical transformation of porcelain has been documented in detail, its influence on European ceramics suggests a significance beyond that of a pretty trinket brought back from the East. Its presence in the still-life paintings so commonly associated with Dutch life during this period can be further examined along with other souvenirs of the Dutch trade in foreign goods.

Although porcelain fell out of popular favour in the 1700s, it never fully disappeared from the Dutch market and mind. Existing today in the form of Delftware, porcelain is commonly purchased by tourists and considered to be symbolic of the country. Porcelain has now been rendered innocuous and superficial to the world by the Dutch, but persists/continues to exist as a strong symbol of Dutch national pride. Department of Art History, McGill University Bibliography Barthes, Roland, “The World as Object,” Critical Essays. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1972.

Chen, Jennifer, Mimi Gardner Gates and Julie Emerson. Porcelain Stories: from China to Europe. Seattle: Seattle Art Museum and

University of Washington Press, 2000.

Jorg, Christiaan J.A.. Fine and Curious: Japanese Export Porcelain in Dutch Collections. Amsterdam: Hotei, 2003.

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45 46 47 48

Peter Mason, Infelicities: representations of the exotic. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998) 6 Julie Hoochstrasser, Still life and Trade in the Dutch Golden Age, 124 Julie Hoochstrasser, Still life and Trade in the Dutch Golden Age, 148 Simon Schama, The Embarrassment of Riches: an interpretation of Dutch culture in the Golden Age. (New York: Kopf, 1987) 295

Jorg, Christiaan J.A.. Porcelain and the Dutch China trade. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1982.

Hoochstrasser, Julie. Still life and Trade in the Dutch Golden Age. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007.

Mason, Peter. Infelicities: representations of the exotic. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998.

Schama, Simon. The Embarrassment of Riches: an interpretation of Dutch culture in the Golden Age. New York: Kopf, 1987 Scheurleer, D. F. Lunsingh. Chinese Export Porcelain: Chine de Commande. New York: Pitman Publishing Corporation,, 1974.

Schmidt, Benjamin, “Inventing Exoticism: The Project of Dutch Geography and the Marketing of the World, circa 1700” in Merchants &

Marvels : Commerce, Science and Art in Early Modern Europe eds. Pamela H. Smith and Paula Finden. New York: Routledge, 2002.

Schmidt, Benjamin, “Accumulating the World: Collecting and Commodifying ‘Globalism’ in Early Modern Europe” in Centres and Cycles

of Accumulation in and Around the Netherlands during the Early Modern Period ed. Lissa Roberts. Zurich: Lit, 2011.

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“Please Do Not Touch” Illusions of Medium in Bernini’s Moving Bodies Chloé Vadot

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Walk into any museum and small signs around the room advise visitors to keep their hands to themselves, and off the art. The urge to touch artwork does not simply arise out of the desire to connect with history through what da Vinci, Michelangelo, or Bernini once worked on, but rather it is a compulsion of curiosity, which serves to affirm the true nature of the material, restructuring the boundaries of visual illusion and optical effects. Early modern debates on the accomplishments of visual mimesis recognized the aesthetic qualities of optical effects caused by contrasts of highlight and shadow, rendering the haptic characteristics of living subjects.1 While painters had the advantage of color and alchemy to recreate the tonal gradations of light on a scene, sculptors simply had the monochrome surface of solid stone to render subjects as they appeared to the eye in reality. Challenging the hierarchies of artistic creation, Gian Lorenzo Bernini’s sculptural techniques sought to enliven his subjects through the appropriate effects of highlight and shadow in his work, particularly in renderings of the human body. Bernini was specifically recognized for his ability to defy the boundaries of the medium and recreate the effects of chiaroscuro in his sculptural works, bringing out the qualities of the male and female bodies in motion and emotion. These illusions appeared to metamorphose the nature of the statue’s material, inviting viewers to wonder about the tangible qualities of the medium. Bernini is often compared to Ovid’s Pygmalion, a sculptor who, in a state of self-imposed celibacy, had created the sculpture of a woman so beautiful and lifelike that he had fallen in love with it, and wished for it to come alive, a wish that the goddess Venus subsequently granted.2 In the tale of Pygmalion, Ovid describes the cold ivory of the statue transforming into soft flesh under the loving hands of the enamored sculptor, similar to wax heated to the point of simple malleability.3 This paper considers the extent to which the metamorphosis in Bernini’s sculpture provides evidence of the artist’s skilled hand in transforming the qualities of the medium into living material, captivating the viewer’s attention and compelling the sense of touch towards the sensuality of his statues’ moving bodies.

During the Renaissance, in parallel with the revival of mythological accounts unearthed in excavations of early Greek and Roman civilizations, Ovid’s tales pervaded the art scene, in both the subjects artists chose to represent, and in the visual theories used to interpret them.4 Specifically, the tale of Pygmalion popularized the concept of imitation within a fictitious narrative, alluding to the artists’ skills in rendering idealized lifelike subjects alive. This is demonstrated in many of Vasari’s accounts, which show how deeply embedded the myth can be in the descriptions of artworks.5 This research paper begins with the tale of Pygmalion in order to set the framework for discussing Bernini’s sculpture, which brings its subjects to life with intricate detailing for the pleasures and desires of the viewing audience. Bernini’s agile handling of medium allows the metamorphosis of the material into various represented elements, recalling the perfect statue sculpted by Pygmalion and enlivened through the passion of the beholder.

Born in 1598 of a Florentine sculptor, Gian Lorenzo Bernini began his artistic practices in his youth and quickly gained recognition for his diligent works, which exposed his incredible talent for imitating reality; rendering the exact textures and compositions of the human body. In 1605, Bernini moved to Rome, where members of the reigning papal family discovered his works, and for whom he later created many art pieces over the course of his career. Meticulous and attentive in his work, Bernini was able to achieve impressive illusions in sculpture, rendering the moving figures of the Renaissance seemingly alive, from religious narratives like the ecstasy of Santa Teresa or the martyrdom of St. Lawrence, to the mythological tales of Apollo and Daphne, or Pluto and Proserpina. The court 1 Genevieve Warwick. Bernini: Art as Theatre (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2012), 105.

2 Warwick, Bernini: Art as Theatre, 10.

3 Ovid. Metamorphoses. Trans. Stanley Lombardo. (Indianapolis: Hackett, 2010) 4 Paul Barolsky. “As in Ovid, So in Renaissance Art.” Renaissance Quarterly 51 (Summer 1998), 451.

5 Barolsky. “As in Ovid, So in Renaissance Art,” 453.

poet Lelio Guidiccioni reports in a letter recounting the experience of witnessing Bernini at work, “bending over, stretching up, modeling with his fingers…marking the marble with charcoal in a hundred places while looking in another…”6 Recalling Michelangelo’s definition of the sculptor’s task, Bernini worked to release his figures from the block of marble he worked on. For Michelangelo, sculpture stands as an art to render internal essence, and the act of sculpting involves the discovery of a form already present within the marble.7 Feeling the figures form under his hands, the senses of the artist are as much heightened in his creation process, as he wishes them to be for the future beholders of his work, captivated by the molded forms of the marble, seemingly hiding within the block until the artist exposes them. In the tale of Pygmalion, the artist sculpts a statue so beautiful and lifelike that he becomes enamored with it, fantasizing about the reality of his creation. John Elsner insists that Ovid’s Pygmalion falls in love not with an artwork, but with “his own creation, his own fantasy.”8 Actively sensorial, Pygmalion’s relationship with his statue is triggered by his touching of the statue’s cold ivory, imagining it warm and sensible like the flesh of a real female body. Kenneth Gross

writes: “[Ovid’s narrative] suggests how much the divagations Plate 1. Gian Lorenzo Bernini. Ecstasy of Santa Teresa, 1647-52. Marble, 350 cm. Cornaro Chapel, of erotic fantasy haunt their more refined, aesthetic Santa Maria della Vittoria, Rome. sublimation, but perhaps also how much anything we want to call sexuality or eros is bound to the domain of fantasy itself, to its literalizations and ambivalences, and how much the meaning even of intimate physical contact is conditioned by a fantasy of the body.”9 Recalling Bernini’s representations of human figures, the appearance of extreme physical condition imbues the statues with the emotional fantasies of the characters they represent.

Techniques for representing human features allow for flexibility of the artist’s ability to create a simulacrum, – a representation of life itself – and give life to the statue in unique and unexpected ways. Baldinucci, whose biography of Bernini was published in 1682, wrote of the sculptor’s work: “We imagine that the marble speaks.”10 In a lecture he gives on representing vivacita – lifelikeness, liveliness –Baldinucci explains that artists worked the material means of illusion to imbue their figures with life. 11 The successes of these renditions in Bernini’s sculpture echo in accounts of viewers like Lelio Guidoccioni, who writes in a letter to the artist: “Bernini your work miracles, you make marble speak.”12 Attentive detailing in the facial features of his characters achieved illusions of liveliness, suggesting a covered anima behind the statues’ frozen expression, eyes open and fixed into the distance, and mouth ajar as if to suggest the coming of a sound, of a voice.13 6

Letter to Bernini from Lelio Guidiccioni, 4 June 1633, Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Cod. Barb. Lat. 2958, fols 202-207v, partially published in D’Onofrio, 1967, 380-8

7 8

Leonard Barkan. “‘Living Sculptures’: Ovid, Michelangelo, and the Winter’s Tale.” ELH 48 (Winter 1981), 651.

9 10 11 12 13

Kenneth Gross. The Dream of the Moving Statue. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1992, 79.

John Elsner. “Visual Mimesis and the Myth of the Real: Ovid’s Pygmalion as viewer” in Re-Viewing Pygmalion, eds. John Elsner and Alison Sharrock (Ramus 20, 1991), 160.

Filippo Baldinucci, Notizie dei professori del disegno da Cimabue in qua, ed. F. Ranalli, vol. 5, (1681-1728), 621.

Filippo Baldinucci. “Vocabolario toscano dell’ arte del disegno.” Societa Tipografica de CLassici Italiani, Milano (1809) Lelio Guidiccioni in D’Onofrio, 380-8.

Warwick, Bernini: Art as Theatre, 12.

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In Bernini’s Ecstasy of Santa Teresa (1652), the female figure is fully covered in an agitated cloth, concealing, but still suggesting, the sensations of the woman’s body. ( Plate 1) Simon Sharma, in his Power of Art series, dedicates an episode to talk about Bernini’s illusionary sculptures. Schama points out Bernini’s statue of Santa Teresa, where the chaotic folds of her habit seem to represent the agitated entrails of the saint as she experiences the power of God inside her, turned inside out for the viewer’s eye.14 Yet it is through the intensity of Santa Teresa’s facial expression that the viewer is able to perceive her emotional state. As she dies for God’s passion, Bernini’s sculpture immortalizes Santa Teresa’s surrender, yet his technique animates the stone, infusing life into the lifeless limbs already full of God.15 Approaching another representation of a religious narrative, Bernini’s Martyrdom of Saint Lawrence evokes similarly raw emotions through the intricate representation of the saint’s facial expression and twisting body as the first flames of the fire start to burn his limbs. (Plate 2)16 His expression reflects the physical turmoil that takes over Saint Lawrence’s body, as the burning heat painfully comes into contact with the skin, turning into a sensation of liberating pleasure.17 The twisting bodies, the speaking facial traits, and the overall mastering of the material, shape the characters of Bernini’s representations, recounting the stories of the characters he extracts from stone.

Plate 2. Gian Lorenzo Bernini. Martyrdom of Saint Lawrence, 1617. Marble, 66 cm x 108 cm.

Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence. Contini Bonacossi Collection.

To discuss Bernini’s sculpture in terms of representational mimesis, the pieces commissioned for the Cardinal Scipione Borghese immediately stand out. Both representative of mythological subjects, his Apollo and Daphne (1622) and Rape of Proserpina (1625) prove the artist’s ability to create simulacra as his works convincingly represent the textures of the female nudes fighting against their abductors. Warwick states that Bernini had always been noted to defy the stony hardness of his medium evidenced by the bodies of Proserpina and Daphne, achieving an illusion of fleshy softness in the female nude.18 In the Rape of Proserpina, the hands of Pluto dig into the flesh of his “still-struggling abducted bride,” bringing her down to his hellish kingdom.19 The contact of the two bodies defined, so realistic in its nature that the marble seems to lose its qualities as a hard material, and metamorphoses into the actual flesh of Proserpina. (Plate 3) The pulsing veins of Pluto’s hands and arms, as well as his bulging 14 15 16

Schama, Simon. Power of Art: Bernini. Film. London: BBC, 2006. 44”10.

17 18

Schama. Power of Art: Bernini. 8”20.

19

Robert Wallace. The World of Bernini (1598-1680) (New York: Time-Life Books, 1970), 24.

Warwick, Bernini: Art as Theatre, 75.

Gian Lorenzo Bernini, Martyrdom of Saint Lawrence, 1617. Marble, 66 cm x 108 cm. Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence. Contini Bonacossi Collection.

365.

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Genevieve Warwick. “Speaking Statues: Bernini’s Apollo and Daphne at the Villa Borghese,” Art History, Volume 27, Number 3 (June 2004),

muscles evoke the throbbing power of the God as he pulls Proserpina down to the underworld, while also depicting the passion flowing through his body.

The twisting bodies recall the form of the serpentinata, sensualizing the scenes of violence and alluding to the malleability of the material rendered by the sculptor’s dexterous hand. Similar to the sculpted mattress Bernini had configured for the Hermaphrodite, a Hellenistic sculpture unearthed in 1608 and acquired by Scipione for his villa, these illusionary effects of the softness of marble act to solicit the viewer’s tactile reflexes.20 As remarked by Charles de Brosses when he saw the works, Bernini’s sculpture compels one “to pass one’s hand over [what] is no longer marble.”21 In the same vein, Francois Raguenet, another visitor to the Villa, writes about the elicited participation of the audience, curious of the contact with the hard marble, “resisting where it would have been natural to believe that one’s finger would sink in.”22

Looking now at Bernini’s Apollo and Daphne, Apollo’s hand on the metamorphosing nymph recalls the sense of touch, ever present in the sensual chase of the mythological subjects. (Plate 4) There is a second dimension to the power of metamorphosis in this work, as Bernini masters the material he works with so as to create what Warwick qualifies as a “visual double entendre,” a transformation of both marble into flesh and flesh into bark.23

Here, Bernini presents the Plate 3. Bernini, Gian Lorenzo. The Rape of Proserpina, 1621-22. Marble, scene in the moment that the metamorphosis is taking place, as 225 cm, Galleria Borghese, Rome Daphne’s extremities are slowly morphing into the natural elements of the tree, the roots, the trunk, the branches and the leaves. The representation of a specific moment, imbued with metamorphosing subjects, enhances the mythology of a narrative, creating a seemingly magical atmosphere around the characters. The metamorphosis bears this fantastic trait due to the sensuality it suggests, through the transformation of one material into another. It is this transformation of material that separates the viewer from his desires, revealing the moment of realization wherein the nude is deemed unattainable to her pursuer.

The sensuality of Bernini’s sculpture communicated the idea that perfected simulacra can initiate an exchange of emotion between the artwork and the beholder. Hersey, in a book titled Falling in Love with Statues, dedicates a chapter to discuss the kinetic urges of encountering such a work of art as that of Pygmalion or Bernini: “when someone looks at a work of figure art, at a true masterpiece, it is not simply Plate 4. Bernini, Gian Lorenzo. Apollo and Daphne, present visually but awakens keen physiological sensations in the 1622-25. Marble, 243 cm, Galleria Borghese, Rome. viewer’s body.”24 These physical reactions compel the viewers to 20 21 22

Warwick, Bernini: Art as Theatre, 104.

23 24

Warwick, Bernini: Art as Theatre, 103.

Charles De Brosses. “Letter XXXIX,” vol.2, 44. (1938)

Francois Raguenet, Les Monuments de Rome, ou Descriptions des plus beaux ouvrages de peinture, de sculpture, et d’architecture, qui se voyent à Rome & aux environs. (Paris: 1700), 37-9.

George L. Hersey. “Ovid and Tactility” in Falling in love with statues: artificial humans from Pygmalion to the present (Chicago; London: University of Chicago Press, 2009) 90.

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experience for themselves the reality of the vision, aroused by the sight of such realistically carved figures. Equally fascinating are the more indefinable fantasies of touch that can be triggered by sculpture, understanding how the way we touch a statue might differ from the way we touch another regular object, and how touch registers or subdues its qualities and use.25 According to Gross, touching a statue is suggestive of bringing the fantasies of the viewer alive. In a time when the representation of mythological subjects provided a visual vehicle for the artist’s erotic desires, as well as for the visual pleasure of viewers, these tactile fantasies evoke the beholder’s curiosity and attraction.26 Accounts of visitors seeing Bernini’s works echo Hersey’s observation. Paul Fréart de Chantelou was Bernini’s chaperone when he visited Paris in 1665. During his travels, Bernini tells him the origin story for the inscription that appears on the plinth of his Apollo and Daphne.27 He explains that when he was working on the statue, Pope Urban VIII (then Cardinal Maffeo Barberini) came to see it with Cardinal de Sourdis and Cardinal Borghese, for whom the commission was made. Cardinal de Sourdis observed that he would not want to have the statue in his home, reckoning that such a precise rendition of a female nude may arouse, or disturb those who saw it. However, the Cardinal’s censure of Daphne can be understood as a testament of admiration to the sculptor’s disarming skill.28 The epigram, composed by Barberini, serves as a sort of warning of the power of the statue, recalling the bitterness of Daphne’s laurel leaves as Apollo kissed them in his chase: “The lover who would fleeting beauty clasp Finds bitter fruit, dry leaves are all he’ll grasp”29 Unlike Pygmalion’s tale, Barberini’s epitaph stands as a sort of warning for deception, a mise en garde of the artist’s prowess in creating so well the illusion of flesh, hair, and tree to provoke physical reaction from the beholder. John Elsner reifies this argument, when he writes that “realism in art necessarily evokes a myth of reality,” wherein perfectly sculpted flesh evokes real flesh and a perfectly sculpted body evokes a real body; therefore, the ‘real’ object, in Pygmalion’s case, a woman, is the artist’s goal, and yet it is the limit which they can never attain.30

Bernini’s figures all evoke a form of evasion, from the female nudes fleeing their abductors, to the saints’ emotional devotion crippling them in so much pain that they take pleasure in the experience. This discourse of escape is translated in sculpture in the way that Bernini represents a departure from the stone plinth, floating up to airy substance: “while statues are supposed to evoke gravity, Bernini’s defy it, floating away from their plinths,” says Simon Schama.31 Returning one last time to Pygmalion’s tale, it is in the moment that Galatea steps off the plinth that she becomes a real woman, moved by her lover’s passionate touch. “The plinth is to the statue what the frame is to the painting,” explains Victor Stoichita in a book on the Pygmalion Effect. “To “go beyond” the plinth is tantamount to removing the imagination from its framework, or a form from its limits.”32 Such is the illusion of Bernini’s saints, their souls rising out of their bodies towards the heavens, while his mythological characters fight against the forces that hold them back. The illusion of transcendence is thus achieved, forming a pathway for the beholder’s emotions to come alive and enter in dialogue with the human statue, tempted towards physical contact.

The art of Bernini is recognized for the qualities the sculptor is able to invoke out of marble, making it “flutter 25 26

Gross. The Dream of the Moving Statue, 71.

Liana Cheney. “Disguised Eroticism and Sexual Fantasy in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century Art,” in Eros in the mind’s eye: sexuality and the fantastic in art and film, ed. Donald Palumbo (New York: Greenwod Press, 1986) 23.

27

Paul Fréart de Chantelou, “Excerpts from the Diary of Cavalier Bernini’s Visit to France 1665” Art Humanities Primary Source Reading 26.

Translated from Journal du voyage du Cavalier Bernin en France, Paris, 1930. The text was first published by L. Lalanne, “Journal du voyage du Cavalier Bernin en France,” Gazette des beaux-arts, xv-xxxi, 1877-1885.

28 29 30 31 32

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Warwick, Bernini: Art as Theatre, 83.

Gian Lorenzo Bernini, Apollo and Daphne, 1622-25. Marble, 243 cm, Galleria Borghese, Rome.

Elsner. “Visual Mimesis and the Myth of the Real: Ovid’s Pygmalion as viewer,” 156.

Schama. Power of Art: Bernini. 4”37.

Stoichita, Victor Ieronim. The Pygmalion Effet: from Ovid to Hitchcock (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008), 114.

and stream, quiver and sweat.”33 Following the argument of Juhani Pallasmaa in his book The Eyes of the Skin, these visual illusions enrobe the attention of the beholder, prompting his sense of touch to imagine the sensation of the medium, transformed by the sculptor’s skill.34 As in the tale of Pygmalion, it is the dream of tactile contact between viewer and artwork that prompts the work to come alive. Similar to Galatea’s simulacrum, Bernini is able to bring alive the narratives of mythological subjects and religious icons. By defying the boundaries of a solid medium like marble, Bernini alludes to the possibility of the statue to leave the plinth of sculpture and become part of reality, seducing the audiences with the effects of light and shadow on the surface of the stone. McGill University Bibliography Filippo Baldinucci, Notizie dei professori del disegno da Cimabue in qua, ed. F. Ranalli, vol. 5, (1681-1728), 621.

Baldinucci, Filippo. Vocabolario toscano dell’ arte del disegno. (Milano: Societa Tipografica de CLassici Italiani, 1809) Barkan, Leonard. “‘Living Sculptures’: Ovid, Michelangelo, and the Winter’s Tale.” ELH 48 (Winter 1981), 651.

Barolsky, Paul. “As in Ovid, So in Renaissance Art.” Renaissance Quarterly Volume 51 , Number 2 (Summer 1998), pp. 451-474.

Bernini, Gian Lorenzo. Apollo and Daphne, 1622-25. Marble, 243 cm, Galleria Borghese, Rome.

Bernini, Gian Lorenzo. Ecstasy of Santa Teresa, 1647-52. Marble, 350 cm. Cornaro Chapel, Santa Maria della Vittoria, Rome.

Bernini, Gian Lorenzo. Martyrdom of Saint Lawrence, 1617. Marble, 66 cm x 108 cm. Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence. Contini Bonacossi Collection.

Bernini, Gian Lorenzo. The Rape of Proserpina, 1621-22. Marble, 225 cm, Galleria Borghese, Rome.

Cheney, Liana. “Disguised Eroticism and Sexual Fantasy in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century Art,” in Eros in the mind’s eye: sexuality and the fantastic in art and film, ed. Donald Palumbo (New York: Greenwod Press, 1986) 23-38.

D’Onofrio, Cesare, ed., 1967. Roma vista da Roma (Rome) De Brosses, Charles. “Letter XXXIX,” vol.2, 44. (1938) Elsner, John. “Visual Mimesis and the Myth of the Real: Ovid’s Pygmalion as viewer” in Re-Viewing Pygmalion, eds. John Elsner and Alison Sharrock (Ramus 20, 1991), pp. 154 -169 Fréart de Chantelou, Paul. “Excerpts from the Diary of Cavalier Bernini’s Visit to France 1665” Art Humanities Primary Source Reading 26.

Translated from Journal du voyage du Cavalier Bernin en France, Paris, 1930.

Gombrich, E.H. “Pygmalion’s Power” in Art and Illusion: A study in the psychology of pictorial representation (London: Phaidon Press, 1959), pp. 80-98 Gross, Kenneth. The Dream of the Moving Statue. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1992.

Hersey, George L “Ovid and Tactility” in Falling in love with statues: artificial humans from Pygmalion to the present (Chicago; London: University of Chicago Press, 2009) pp. 90-110.

Miller, J. Hillis. “Pygmalion’s Prosopopoeia” in Versions of Pygmalion (Cambridge; London: Harvard University Press, 1990) pp. 1-12.

Nead, Lynda. The Female Nude: Art, Obscenity and Sexuality (London: Routledge, 2002) Ovid. Metamorphoses. Trans. Stanley Lombardo. (Indianapolis: Hackett, 2010) Pallasmaa, Juhani. The Eyes of the Skin. (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, 2005) Raguenet, François. Les Monuments de Rome, ou Descriptions des plus beaux ouvrages de peinture, de sculpture, et d’architecture, qui se

33 34

Schama. Power of Art: Bernini. 2”58.

Juhani Pallasmaa. The Eyes of the Skin. (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, 2005)

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voyent à Rome & aux environs. (Paris: 1700), 37-9.

Schama, Simon. Power of Art: Bernini. Film, 54”09. London: BBC, 2006. Uploaded on YouTube on January 25, 2012. Web. https://www. youtube.com/watch?v=95_7l87prmI. 7 December 2014.

Segal, Charles. “Ovid’s Metamorphic Bodies: Art, Gender, and Violence in the ‘Metamorphoses,’” in Arion: A Journal of Humanities and the Classics, Volume 5, Number 3 (Winter 1998), pp. 9-41 Stoichita, Victor Ieronim. The Pygmalion Effet: from Ovid to Hitchcock (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008) Wallace, Robert. The World of Bernini (1598-1680) (New York: Time-Life Books, 1970) Warwick, Genevieve. “Speaking Statues: Bernini’s Apollo and Daphne at the Villa Borghese,” Art History, Volume 27, Number 3 (June 2004), pp. 353-381.

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Calculated Experience: The psychology of perspective and the Jesuit Mission in Andrea Pozzo’s illusionistic ceiling Dorothy Yang Introduction

The illusionistic Baroque ceilings of the seventeenth century are a testament to the progress of artistic techniques and perspectival theory. They are also, however, inextricable from the political and religious events that to a large extent were the reason for their creation. One such work, Andrea Pozzo’s Glory of St. Ignatius and the Missionary Work of the Jesuit Order (1691-94) (plate 1), painted on the vaulted ceiling of the Church of St. Ignatius in Rome, exemplifies the connection between art and function that was the hallmark of the Jesuit Baroque style.

Employing the most advanced artistic techniques of the time and a rigidly defined iconography, Pozzo created an illusionistic ceiling that is emblematic of the way art was tied to message, illustrated how Jesuit art manipulated or engineered an extremely particular viewer experience, and exemplified the use of imagery as propaganda.

Painted over the course of three years, Pozzo’s ceiling depicts a monumental view of Heaven di sotto in su, or “seen from below,” which is also known as horizontal perspective.1 The classicizing architecture features pillars and arches rendered in steep foreshortening that appear to rise up much higher than does the physical ceiling, opening onto an illuminated sky. This setting is crowded with a dizzying array of figures, most of them swirling around the central figures of Jesus and Saint Ignatius of Loyola (plate 2). The Jesuit saint is here seen being received into Heaven

by Jesus, rising toward him on a cloud borne by angels. At the four corners of the fictive architecture Pozzo depicts the four continents of the world as they were known at the time: Asia (plate 3), Africa (plate 4), America (plate 5), and Europe (plate 6). Each one is represented with a female personification and various accompanying figures.

Plate 1. Andrea Pozzo, The Glory of Saint Ignatius and the Missionary Work of the Jesuit Order.

1691-94. Fresco.

Church of St. Ignatius, Rome

Plate 2: Pozzo, Glory of St. Ignatius (detail: Christ and St. Ignatius)

1 Andrea Pozzo, Rules and examples of perspective proper for painters and architects, etc. In English and Latin: containing a most easie and expeditious method to delineate in perspective all designs relating to architecture, After a New Manner, Wholly free from the Confusion of Occult Lines: by that Great Master Thereof, Andrea Pozzo, Socjes. Engraven in 105 ample folio plates, and adorn’d with 200 initial letters to the Explanatory Discourses: Printed from Copper-Plates on Ye best Paper by John Sturt. Done into English from the original printed at Rome 1693 in Lat. and Ital. By Mr. John James of Greenwich (London: Printed by Benj. Motte, MDCCVII. Sold by John Sturt in Golden-Lion-Court in Aldersgate-Street, 1707), fig. 78

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The level of skill required to execute a work of this scale is difficult to imagine. The artist would have needed an incredible amount of precision and a thorough understanding of geometric perspective in order to perform such a tast. Because the vaulted ceiling of the Church of St. Ignazio was a slightly curved surface, the rules of perspective could not be simply applied as they would be on a flat canvas or wall. The ceiling painting becomes essentially an anamorphic image; much like Hans Holbein’s famous skull in The Ambassadors (plate 7), the picture looks stretched or distorted until the viewer is standing at a precise angle, at which point the image appears to have a three-dimensional effect. Anamorphic images are made by first sketching a plan of the image on a flat surface, laying a grid of lattice-work over it, then distorting that grid very precisely to fit the intended surface; this is the method that Pozzo used to transfer the desired image onto the church’s ceiling.2 In fact, Pozzo wrote a detailed treatise on perspective in which he explained his process for the St. Ignatius ceiling. The sheer popularity of his treatise, which was immediately translated into all the dominant European Plate 3: Pozzo, Glory of St. Ignatius (detail: Asia) languages, and even into Chinese,3 was a clear sign that Pozzo and other Baroque artists had perfected such techniques to a science.

The thoroughness and precision with which perspectival techniques and Jesuit iconography were developed, all prominently evident in Pozzo’s ceiling, are indicative of Jesuit art’s calculated nature.

Plate 4. Pozzo, Glory of St. Ignatius (detail: Africa) 2 3 70

Plate 5. Pozzo, Glory of St. Ignatius (detail: America)

Pozzo, Rules and examples of perspective proper for painters and architects, fig. 100.

Richard Bosel, “Pozzo, Andrea,” Grove art Online, Oxford Art Online (Oxfrod University Press, accessed 15 November, 2014), http://www. oxfordartonline.com/subscriber/article/grove/art/T069154.

Plate 6. Pozzo, Glory of St. Ignatius (detail: Europe)

Plate 7. Hans Holbein the Younger, the Ambassadors. 1533. Oil on oak, 207 cm × 209.5 cm. National Gallery, London Manipulating Experience

As the seat of the Catholic Church, seventeenth century Rome was the centre of the Catholic CounterReformation, a response to the Protestant Movement of the previous century. The Catholic Church pushed to reinstate religious fervour and the connection between the visceral and the spiritual in religious practices. The Jesuit Order was a secular clergy founded by St. Ignatius of Loyola, the aforementioned central figure in Pozzo’s ceiling. The Order became the most powerful force in the Roman Catholic revival, extending their influence to many parts of the world.

Andrea Pozzo himself was a Jesuit lay brother who was deeply invested in the Jesuit mission.4 At this time techniques of geometric perspective reached their peak. Quadratura in the Baroque style was essentially about manipulating the viewer’s experience. The term quadratura was coined in the seventeenth century to refer to the technique of painting a fictive architecture that seems to continue the existing architecture. Although used almost exclusively to refer to illusionistic ceilings, quadratura also applied to illusionistic wall paintings. The technique was designed to “open up” the architecture and create illusions of limitless space.5 The astounding effects achieved by Pozzo and his 4 5

Bosel, “Pozzo, Andrea.”

Rudolph Wittkower, Joseph Connors and Jennifer Montagu, Art and Architecture in Italy, 1600-1750 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999).

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contemporaries were utilized by the Jesuits to create works meant to overwhelm and inspire awe.

In order to advance Catholic ideals, the Jesuits likely intended for visitors to their churches to experience the sort of overwhelming, transcendent feeling that a work like Pozzo’s ceiling would induce. However, in considering how the early modern viewer might have experienced the work, we come across several complexities. Alberta Battisti wrote that the trompe l’oeil effect of the ceiling is so powerful that the observer feels a sense of lightness, as though literally seized by the picture.6 Oliver Grau believes this description is “rather overstated” and not within the interests of the Jesuit agenda.7 In reality, since it is an anamorphic image, Pozzo’s ceiling only appears to have a trompe l’oeil effect from a single viewpoint, which is helpfully indicated by a marble circle embedded into the floor of the nave.8 From any viewpoint other than the one indicated, the images appear to be distorted.

In his book The Psychology of Perspective and Renaissance Art Michael Kubovy distinguishes the difference between the effects of trompe l’oeil and illusionism. Kubovy categorizes trompe l’oeil as images that instantaneously fool the viewer. For example, Samuel van Hoogstraten’s letter rack paintings were said to be so realistic that viewers often found themselves reaching out to touch the image before realizing that the items were actually painted. In contrast, Kubovy defined illusionistic images such as anamorphic pictures as those that first appear, and require the viewer’s action in order to achieve their intended effect. To understand why Kubovy makes this distinction, one must understand the psychological theories of stereoscopic vision and robustness of perspective. Stereoscopic vision “gives us the ability to accurately gauge and compare distances in our immediate environment.”9 Usually stereoscopic vision prevents us from being fooled by pictures because despite the three-dimensional scene pictures might represent, we recognize them as a two-dimensional objects. When the picture frame is evident, as in van Hoogstraten’s paintings, the perspective is known to be “robust”; that is, the three-dimensional appearance created by geometric perspective remains undistorted no matter what the angle at which the viewer is standing. However, the robustness of perspective fails when the viewer is unable to see the painted surface or the picture frame.10 In order to properly see an illusionistic image, Kubovy argues that the viewer must be in collusion with the artist. Because it is an anamorphic image, Pozzo’s ceiling would be categorized as illusionistic rather than trompe l’oeil. Upon entering the church’s nave, the viewer can immediately see the ceiling, but only as a distorted image. The picture remains distorted until the viewer moves to stand in the marked ideal viewpoint; only then can they fully experience the illusionistic effect.

The Jesuits’ goal in creating works meant to astonish and amaze was to induce a transcendental spiritual experience in the viewer, but in the case of Pozzo’s quadratura the viewer was made actively complicit in bringing about that experience. Despite Grau’s misgivings, it seems entirely possible to have an intense affective experience of the work even if it does not strike immediately. Kubovy claims that although we approach an illusionistic image with some level of expectation, this pretext does not take away from the pleasure of experiencing the illusion.11 If we adhere to Kubovy’s distinctions, the illusionism of the ceiling necessitates a level of collusion with the artist on the part of the viewer. In the same sense, visitors to the Church of St. Ignatius were in collusion with the Jesuits; the viewer must move themselves in order for the image to move the viewer.

Another method of manipulation can be seen in the optical devices of Pozzo’s ceiling. Mirrors and light appear frequently in both literal and figurative forms, and serve a vital role throughout the image. Evonne Anita Levy argues that light and fire are conflated with spirit and message within the painting. The passing of spiritus is indicated through rays of light in an interpellative structure. Christ’s illuminated body indicates the origin of his spirit, which he passes directly to St. Ignatius; the rays of light then transmit from his body to the four corners of the world, an illustration of the Jesuit founder’s central role as mediator of Christ’s spirit. St. Ignatius’s pose and outstretched hand

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6 7 8 9 10 11

Oliver Grau, “Historic Spaces of Illusion,” in Virtual Art: from Illusion to Immersion (Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 2003), 48.

Grau, “Historic Spaces of Illusion,” 49.

Ellis Kirkham Waterhouse, Baroque Painting in Rome: The Seventeenth Century (London: McMillan & Co., 1937), 38.

Michael Kubovy, The Psychology of Perspective and Renaissance Art (Cambridge [Cambridgeshire]: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 40.

Kubovy, The Psychology of Perspective and Renaissance Art, 56.

Kubovy, The Psychology of Perspective and Renaissance Art, 80.

Plate 8. Pozzo, Glory of St. Ignatius (detail: in-

scription and angel with mirror)

Plate 9. Pozzo, Glory of St. Ignatius (detail: inscription, fire, and avenging angels)

mirrors Christ’s; likewise, his body acts as a mirror that directs Christ’s light.12 Below St. Ignatius, a literal mirror is borne by an angel. It is inscribed with the name of Jesus, conflating light or spirit with Christ’s name.13 It can be argued that these purposeful rays of light were meant not only to illustrate a certain message within the image, but to draw the viewer into that message as well. The angel bearing the mirror looks down and makes eye contact with the spectator, directing the light from the image down to the eye of the beholder. There are two painted plaques held aloft by angels at either ends of the image which further illustrate the role of light in manipulating the viewer. The plaque just below the angel bearing the mirror is inscribed with Christ’s words from Luke 12:49: Ignem veni mittere in terram (“I have come to cast fire on the earth”) (plate 8). The other half of the passage is inscribed in the same way on the other side of the image: et quid volo, nisi ut accendatur (“Would that it were already kindled”) (plate 9).14 Pozzo’s conflation of light with fire can be seen in the way that the rays emanating from St. Igatius ignite and transform into flames upon reaching the cornice above one of the inscribed plaques (plate 8).15 The inscribed passages which allude to light and fire, and which are clearly meant for the viewer, serve to draw in the viewer and implicate them in the events depicted above.

Art as Propaganda

Considering Pozzo’s work as a product of Jesuit propaganda seems at first counter-intuitive. The highly decorative nature of Baroque art seems to invite a purely formal engagement with it. However, during the seventeenth century art served no less a purpose than it did during the Renaissance, but in a vastly different context. “Scenes of biblical, saintly or political history [were] no longer treated in a generalised and descriptive manner, but [were] given an authoritative and dogmatic import.”16 Levy argues that Jesuit architecture had the power to affect its viewers; she characterizes a specific “Jesuit style” which is based on the idea that the Jesuits were central to the development of Baroque style architecture.17 In light of these arguments, it can be said that the early modern viewer was meant 12 13 14 15 16 17

Evonne Anita Levy, Propaganda and the Jesuit Baroque (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004), 154.

Levy, Propaganda and the Jesuit Baroque, 155.

Levy, Propaganda and the Jesuit Baroque, 151.

Levy, Propaganda and the Jesuit Baroque, 155.

Waterhouse, Baroque Painting in Rome, 2.

Evonne Anita Levy, Propaganda and the Jesuit Baroque (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004), 15-16.

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to engage with Baroque art not only on an affective or phenomenological level, but also on an intellectual level.

Starting in the later sixteenth century, decoration in Catholic Churches began to spread to every available surface of the architecture, and there was a conscious change in the way religious imagery was being presented. Where in the Renaissance the primary function of religious imagery was to be a Bible for the illiterate, seventeenth century art tended to appeal to the educated and the intellectual, those who were most influential in the battle between Protestantism and Catholicism.18

Examination of the iconography in Pozzo’s ceiling reveals clear evidence of its role as a disseminator of the Jesuit message. The image is essentially a depiction of the Catholic Church triumphant. St. Ignatius is glorified as the central victorious figure. Placed just off center, he is second only to Christ, who occupies the focal point at the center of the image. This incredibly privileged position entrenches the Jesuits’ venerated founder as closest to God and Heaven. This effect is further amplified by the presence of the four continents, which position St. Ignatius as an internationally important figure. The four continents also showcase the global influence of the Catholic Church. The Jesuit Order, which consisted of highly educated members who collectively studied numerous different languages, prided themselves on their international influence.19 Pozzo’s ceiling shows the Jesuits victorious in this influence, having spread Catholicism to every corner of the world, and brought enlightenment to the so-called “pagans” and “savages” depicted in the three non-European continents. In fact, Pozzo himself explained the iconography of the painting as a representation of the worldwide work of St. Ignatius and the Jesuits: “My idea in the painting was to represent the works of St. Ignatius and of the Company of Jesus in spreading the Christian faith worldwide…those torches that you see in the two extremities of the vault represent that zeal of St. Ignatius, who in sending his companions to preach the Gospel said to them: Ite, Incendite, Inglammate Omnia, verifying in him Christ’s words.”20

The message is made all the more clear in the aforementioned inscriptions on the margins of the image, in which Christ declares his intention to “cast fire on the earth.” Adjacent to these plaques, avenging angels armed with spears act almost as a warning; they suggest that not only will Catholicism spread throughout the world, but any who dissent will be punished by God and Heaven.21 Additionally, it is a play on or invocation of the Saint’s name, as Ignatius means ‘to ignite.’

The image of Jesuits and Catholicism triumphant in Pozzo’s ceiling is not exceptional. In fact, most of the ceilings in Baroque Catholic churches invoke images of Catholicism’s triumph and glory. Pietro da Cortona’s Allegory of Divine Providence (1632-9) (plate 10) in the Palazzo Barberini in Rome depicts the figure of Divine Providence with the crown of immortality celebrating the activities of Pope Urban VII,22 while Baciccio’s Triumph in the Name of Jesus (1679) (plate 11) in the Jesuits’ mother church, Il Gesu, juxtaposes an allegory of the Jesuit mission with images of heretics being smitten during the Last Judgement. The

Plate 10. Pietro da Cortona, AlJesuits had developed a specific iconography that manifested in the quadratura legory of Divine Providence. ca. as allegories and triumph imagery meant to glorify their founding saints and the 1633-39. Fresco. Palazzo Barberini, Papacy.23 Therefore Pozzo’s ceiling is strongly emblematic of the way imagery Rome.

18 Waterhouse, Baroque Painting in Rome, 1.

19 Bosel, “Pozzo, Andrea.”

20 Levy, Propaganda and the Jesuit Baroque, 151. The quote is from later printings of Pozzo’s treatise.

21 Al Roker, Empire of the Eye: The Magic of Illusion: Sant’Ignazio’s Ceiling, Part 4 (video, on Artbabble), http://www.artbabble.org/video/ngadc/ empire-eye-magic-illusion-santignazios-ceiling-part-4

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22 23

Wittkower, Connors and Montagu, Art and Architecture in Italy 1600-1750, 166.

Waterhouse, Baroque Painting in Rome, 2.

Plate 11. Giovanni Battista Gaulli, Triumph in the name of Jesus. 1679. Fresco.

Chiesa del Gesu, Rome was used by the Jesuits to convey their specific message and advance the Counter-Reformist agenda.

The propagandist aim of Pozzo’s ceiling is also implicated in the precise nature of its execution, especially in the artist’s masterful use of geometric perspective. At the time, the St. Ignatius ceiling was considered the pinnacle of the development of perspective; it was seen as a perfect culmination of the technique that created a perfect illusion.24 However, considering again that this illusion can only be properly perceived from a single standpoint, the role of the complicit viewer once again emerges. Ellis Kirkham Waterhouse argues that “the perfect illusion can only be perfect 24

Bosel, “Pozzo, Andrea.”

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from one standpoint: but what is important is the perfection of the illusion, so the spectator must conform himself to that standpoint. One could not find a more pregnant illustration of the influence of dogma upon decoration.”25 In response to Battisti’s earlier lavish and “overstated” description of the ceiling’s affective power, Grau argues that the ceiling can be interpreted as a “calculated attempt to captivate the observer’s perception and rational consciousness.

It is a mise-en-scène of intangible heavenly promise, put on for the visitor standing on the church floor, and of an authority of religious control.”26 Invocation of authority and permeation of dogma into aspects aesthetic decoration are hallmarks of propaganda, and these characteristics can all be seen in Pozzo’s ceiling when examined in context of its historical and political origins Conclusion

The early modern viewer of Pozzo’s ceiling may well have been sensorily overwhelmed and emotionally moved by the work, but they would also have been aware of its significance within the Counter-Reformative context.

In a sense, this illusionistic ceiling that appears to open onto endless sky acts more as an oppressive reminder of the Papacy’s power than a truly open space. At the same time, for those in accordance with the Jesuit agenda such as men with vested papal authority and Jesuit lay brothers like Pozzo himself, the ceiling might have evoked a sense of self-importance. It would have been a grandiose display of power that gave a select audience a sense of pride in the splendour and magnificence of their faith.27 In any case, the fact that the experience of Pozzo’s ceiling was likely consciously manipulated does not exonerate the possibility of a truly affective and moving experience. After all, for the Catholics imagery was meant to facilitate ecstatic religious fervour, and the visceral experience was inexorably tied to the intellectual. Through masterful use of light, colour, and geometric perspective, quadratura painters such as Andrea Pozzo were able to combine architecture, sculpture and painting to impress the viewer. Their presence in the Jesuit churches were part of art’s function as engineers of a specific visual and intellectual experience, which served to advance the mission and goals of the Catholic Church. Department of Art History, McGill University Bibliography Bosel, Richard. “Pozzo, Andrea.” Grove Art Online. Oxford Art Online. Oxford University Press, accessed 20 November, 2014, http://www. oxfordartonline.com/subscriber/article/grove/art/T069154.

Carl, Klaus H., and Victoria Charles. “Baroque in Italy,” in Baroque Art. New York: Parkstone International, 2012. 19-50.

Grau, Oliver. “Historic Spaces of Illusion,” in Virtual Art: from Illusion to Immersion. Trans. Gloria Custance. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press,

2003. 24-65.

Kemp, Michael. The Science of Art: Optical Themes in Western Art from Brunelleschi to Seurat. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990.

Kubovy, Michael. The Psychology of Perspective and Renaissance Art. Cambridge [Cambridgeshire]: Cambridge University Press, 1986.

Levy, Evonne Anita. Propaganda and the Jesuit Baroque. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004.

Massey, Lyle. Picturing Space, Displacing Bodies: Anamorphosis in Early Modern Theories of Perspective. University Park, Pa.:

Pennsylvania State University Press, 2007.

O’Toole, Jodi L. Andrea Pozzo: the Joining of Truth and Illusion. M. Arch. thesis, McGill University, 1999.

Pirenne, M.H. Optics, Painting & Photography. London: Cambridge University Press, 1970 Pozzo, Andrea. Rules and examples of perspective proper for painters and architects, etc. In English and Latin: containing a most easie and expeditious method to delineate in perspective all designs relating to architecture, After a New Manner, Wholly free from the Confusion of Occult Lines: by that Great Master Thereof, Andrea Pozzo, Socjes. Engraven in 105 ample folio plates, and adorn’d with 200 initial letters

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25 26 27

Waterhouse, Baroque Painting in Rome, 38.

Grau, “Historic Spaces of Illusion,” 49.

Waterhouse, Baroque Painting in Rome, 17

to the Explanatory Discourses: Printed from Copper-Plates on Ye best Paper by John Sturt. Done into English from the original printed at Rome 1693 in Lat. and Ital. By Mr. John James of Greenwich. London: Printed by Benj. Motte, MDCCVII. Sold by John Sturt in GoldenLion-Court in Aldersgate-Street, 1707.

Roker, Al. Empire of the Eye: The Magic of Illusion: Sant’Ignazio’s Ceiling, Part 4. Video, on Artbabble). http://www.artbabble.org/video/ ngadc/empire-eye-magic-illusion-santignazios-ceiling-part-4 Waterhouse, Ellis Kirkham. Baroque Painting in Rome: The Seventeenth Century. London: McMillan & Co., 1937.

Wittkower, Rudolph, Joseph Connors, and Jennifer Montagu. Art and Architecture in Italy, 1600-1750. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999.

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Pathos and Pestilence: the Tension of Painting and Wax in Gaetano Zumbo’s La Pestilenza Emma Le Pouésard

Plate 1. Gaetano Giulio Zumbo, La Pestilenza. Circa 1690, Wax. La Specola Museum of Natural History, Florence.

The wax tableaux of Sicilian artist Gaetano Giulio Zumbo have been a source of perpetual puzzlement to their viewers. Their slippery medium – both materially and philosophically speaking – is the source of much of this puzzlement, to which their subjects add a sense of solemnity and gravity. The four teatrini of death are entitled The Triumph of Time, The Vanity of Human Glory, The French Plague, and La Pestilenza (plate 1). It is this latter wax tableau that will be the focus of this paper. Depictions of the plague in the medium of painting are plentiful, one of the best-known examples being Nicolas Poussin’s Plague at Ashdod (plate 2). Zumbo’s depiction of this theme in wax, however, is one of a kind. The preferred medium to represent the plague had always been painting, leading to this theme developing a precise vocabulary in oil painting. Wax, on the other hand, has been a doubly malleable medium: in its texture, and in its uses. Most importantly, wax has never been accepted into the canon of fine art, being continuously marginalized as the product of a craft, and as popular material culture. Indeed, David Freedberg argues that wax “use falls into six main contexts, namely: in funeral ceremonies, as ancestor portraits, in votive and judicial contexts, in witchcraft, and as aids to anatomical study,”1 none of which are categorized as high art forms. The unlikely blend of the “plague picture”2 tradition with the medium of wax is what La Pestilenza represents, providing its viewers with multiple entry points to think about this intriguing work. In this paper, it will be argued that La Pestilenza is the product of a careful selection with regards to symbols and style, borrowing from, at times ignoring, and at times copying the medium of painting in its rendition of the plague as an artistic subject.

La Pestilenza was created in 1690 by Gaetano Giulio Zumbo, a Sicilian wax-maker born in 1656 in Syracuse.3 Relatively little is known of this enigmatic man, despite the fact that he is widely recognized as the inventor of the anatomical wax model, which was a result of his short-lived association with the French surgeon Guillaume Desnoues in Genoa towards the second half of the 1690s.4 Among Zumbo’s illustrious patrons are the Grand Duke of Tuscany,

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1 2 3 4

David Freedberg, The Power of Images: Studies in the History and Theory of Response (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989), 213.

W. Bonser, “Medical Folklore of Venice and Rome,” Folklore 67, no. 1 (1956): 2.

R Ballestriero, “Anatomical Models and Wax Venuses: Art Masterpieces or Scientific Craft Works?” Journal of Anatomy 216, no. 2 (2010): 224.

Ibid.

Cosimo III de’ Medici, and Louis XIV, in whose court Zumbo died in 1701.5 Scholars have speculated that Zumbo’s taste for the macabre stemmed from the fact that he was an abbot, and as such harbored a religious interest in the theme of death. However, nothing more is known regarding this incongruous fact.6 Indeed, all four teatrini represent the throes of death in minute, excruciating detail, which, for their small scale, testifies to Zumbo’s patience in making his artistic vision a reality.

La Pestilenza (plate 1) is perhaps the most gruesome of the four wax theatres.

Commissioned by Cosimo III de’ Medici, possibly for his son the Gran Principe Plate 2. Nicolas Poussin, Plague at Ashdod. 1630, Oil on canvas.

Ferdinando,7 it is believed to be a representation Musée du Louvre, Paris. of the Naples Plague of 1656,8 which coincided with the birth of Zumbo, and as such cannot be a representation of events he witnessed. The scene is set in a grotto, where in the foreground lay heaped bodies of victims of varying degrees of liveliness. Their more or less darkened skin tone indicates the level of putrefaction of each corpse, with the longest dead being black, the less decayed being a dark green, the still less rotting being a pale green, and the freshly dead being yellow. The victims unfortunate enough to still be alive are a fleshier taint of yellow. The background, painted by Zumbo, features a contemporary city on a hill. As the eye descends the hill, it encounters a man burning bodies heaped on a cart (plate 3), a practice only carried out when the cemeteries were full.9 Dilapidated classical architecture frames the teatrino.

The plague was a much-feared affliction of medieval and early modern times, a fear which we will see vividly depicted in La Pestilenza. A variety of causes were attributed to this particularly lethal

epidemic, ranging from pestilence being a divine punishment for moral Plate 3. Gaetano Giulio Zumbo, La Pesmisdemeanour to it resulting from the influence of Saturn or Jupiter, tilenza. Circa 1690, Wax. La Specola Museum an Aristotelian prophecy.10 It was most widely believed to be spread of Natural History, Florence. through polluted air, with the miasma theory associating it with the contaminated air that arose from decaying animals.11 Because the dissemination of the disease was so tightly linked with air, fresh air was the first recommendation made by doctors.12 Additionally, protective wear with masks featuring a beak that could be stuffed with a variety of herbs was the dress-code for medical practitioners attempting to cure plague victims, as it was believed that the herbs would cleanse the air inhaled by the wearer of the mask.13 Other preventive measures included using sulphur, heat, sunlight, and vinegar to clean the belongings of people who had 5 Ibid., 227.

6 Ibid., 224.

7 R. W. Lightbown, “Gaetano Giulio Zumbo – I: The Florentine Period,” The Burlington Magazine 106, no. 740 (1964): 490.

8 Ibid., 493.

9 Ibid.

10 Christine M. Boeckl, Images of Plague and Pestilence: Iconography and Iconology (Kirksville, MO: Truman State University Press, 2000), 14.

11 Ibid.

12 Ibid., 15.

13 Ibid., 15.

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lost their battle to the plague.14 Families and friends of these people were asked to wear yellow or white scarfs so that others could avoid them,15 indicating that contamination was also believed to occur through personal interactions, and not solely though breathing infested air. Finally, because the medical doctrine of the time still relied on the balance of humors, the principal way of treating patients was to drain their carbuncles of bad blood, a painful and largely unsuccessful method.16

Representations of the plague in painting tend to be quite codified, with a variety of symbols being commonly associated to the plague. La Pestilenza interestingly differs greatly from these paintings, especially in its omission of these symbols, which include arrows, believed to be shot by Apollo and Diana as divine punishment; the arma Christi; signa magna such as eclipses and earthquakes; vanitas symbols such as skulls, skeletons, and scythes; fig leaves, which were used as a treatment and carried chiliastic associations; and dark clouds symbolizing pestilential air.17 None of these is seen here, except the fig leaf, which can be observed growing on the Classical column to the right. Classical architecture is, incidentally, also a recurring motif of representations of the pestilence.18 Gestures commonly depicted in plague images were pinching the nose, a variation of which can be seen in La Pestilenza with the plague attendant and his cloth-covered nose, and pointing out the buboes, not depicted by Zumbo. Although his inclusion of common plague symbols and motifs are few, their appearance in La Pestilenza demonstrate the artist’s familiarity with the plague picture genre, and with painting more generally. In fact, Zumbo collected old master drawings.19 It is also noteworthy that, aside from the title and perhaps the burning of the corpses barely discernible in

Plate 4. Gaetano Giulio Zumbo, La Pestilenza. Circa 1690, Wax. La Specola Museum of Natural History, Florence.

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Plate 5. Nicolas Poussin, Plague at Ashdod. 1630, Oil on canvas. Musée du Louvre, Paris.

the painted background, no direct visual references to the plague are made. The bodies do not feature skin lesions, nor buboes.

Poussin’s renowned Plague at Ashdod likewise does not feature overt afflictions of the plague, but the similarity between this painting and La Pestilenza goes beyond negative evidence. Zumbo is known to have been influenced by painters such as Antonio da Correggio, Gian Lorenzo Bernini and Nicolas Poussin,20 and it is this latter painter especially whose influence is most palpable in Zumbo’s teatrino. To be sure, Zumbo’s references to Poussin have a place in the wax-maker’s attempt to elevate his work from craft to art. In many ways, Plague at Ashdod served as a model for Zumbo in his crafting of a wax image of pestilence. The lack of depictions of the plague in wax required the artist to seek models elsewhere, and Poussin’s painting from 1630 proved to be the perfect source of inspiration for the skilled Zumbo, whose artistic aspirations had long stifled his religious ones. In Zumbo’s image are found Poussin’s architectural elements to convey a “sense of dramatic grandeur,”21 and, more importantly, a near-copy 14 Ibid., 16.

15 Ibid., 16.

16 Ibid., 16.

17 Ibid., 47.

18 Ibid., 48.

19 R. W. Lightbown, “Gaetano Giulio Zumbo – II: Genoa and France,” The Burlington Magazine 106, no. 741 (1964): 565.

20 Ibid.

21 Elizabeth Cropper and Charles Dempsey, Nicolas Poussin: Friendship and the Love of Painting (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996),

of the mother and child group (plates 4 and 5). The chief difference between Zumbo’s and Poussin’s mother is that the former reverses the image such that the dead woman’s left arm, and not her right one, is thrown back above her head. Additionally, Zumbo omits the second child pictured near the mother in Plague at Ashdod, focusing the drama by contracting the space of the two figures and placing them on a slope slanting towards the viewer, as opposed to on flat ground as in Poussin’s depiction. This more dramatic angle provides a plunging view of the dead woman’s body.

The mother and child group was developed between 1512 and 1514 by Raphael for his Plague of Phrygia.22 It soon came to play a more metaphorical role in depictions of the plague, until its inclusion in any painting was enough to designate it as a representation of pestilence.23

While the living dominate the dead in Poussin’s image, Zumbo opts for a majority of corpses, with only three living beings depicted in the tableau: the plague attendant, the suckling child, and the old woman. Of these, both the child and the old woman are on the verge of death, such that its aura permeates all parts of the image.

Paradoxically, Plague at Ashdod appears much more static when contrasted with La Pestilenza, whose corpses are entangled in vivid and dramatic ways.

In this respect, it can be argued that La Pestilenza stylistically resembles The Massacre of the Innocents (plate 6), although it draws more on Plague at Ashdod thematically and with regards to content. Zumbo’s tortuous bodies writhe in an agony comparable to the one seen in The Massacre of the Innocents. Although the victims of the plague are already dead, they retain in their posture the marks of a struggle to escape, which

renders them more akin to the women and babies in The Plate 6. Nicolas Poussin, Massacre of the Innocents. Circa Massacre of the Innocents than to the victims in Plague 1626-1627, Oil on canvas. Petit Palais, Paris. at Ashdod. The strongest point of semblance between Zumbo’s plague and Poussin’s massacre is the pathos both these representations evoke in the viewer. Whereas Plague at Ashdod’s characters are mostly upright or, if lying down, appear almost to be lounging such as the man in the far left bottom corner, in La Pestilenza the victims are far from passive. Even in death, their muscles seem tense, as if battling against an oppressor. The will to live of an old woman near her last breath is so powerful that she goes so far as to attempt using a dead baby to free herself from the weight of a corpse crushing her. In Plague at Ashdod, the pathos is concentrated in the mother and child group, serving as an “exemplum doloris.”24 By contrast, every figure in The Massacre of the Innocents imbues its beholder with pathos. The attempt to move the viewer operates both at the level of the anguish of the women and babies and at that of the violence of the act perpetrated against them. In La Pestilenza, this is taken a step further as pathos results entirely from the pain visible in the bodies of the victims.

By omitting to personify the plague, or to more directly reference its presence through its effects on the bodies of its victims, Zumbo creates a deeply moving image of unexplained and unnecessary torment and suffering. There is no figure to blame, no personification to whom the viewer can attribute the carnage. The aftermath of a violent act is depicted, its culprit invisible.

A final, more general way in which La Pestilenza approximates painting stylistically is through its use of chiaroscuro. The blue dress of the dead mother completes the trajectory of the eye, which forms a narrow arc starting immediately to the left of the plague attendant with the darkest corpse, continuing towards the left along 270.

22 23 24

Christine M. Boeckl, Images of Plague and Pestilence (Kirksville, MO: Truman State University Press, 2000), 50.

Ibid., 12.

Elizabeth Cropper and Charles Dempsey, Nicolas Poussin (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996), 85.

81

the lightening corpses, then sharply turning to face the right once it reaches the edge of the waxwork to travel back to the plague attendant, along a row of progressively lighter corpses. Chiaroscuro was a style widely used in Baroque painting for its dramatic appeal. It gave paintings eloquence and drew in the viewer.25 Several scholars have noted Zumbo’s use of “exaggerated baroque aesthetics.”26 In La Pestilenza, the use of this painterly tactic similarly emphasizes the dramatic quality of the scene, while additionally creating a path for the eye to follow amidst the chaos of the intermingled corpses.

Yet, for all the ways La Pestilenza strives to emulate painting, there are countless others in which it departs dramatically from the medium. While perspective played an important role in Early Modern painting, this concern is noticeably absent from Zumbo’s waxes. In Plague at Ashdod, corpses and figures recede from the forefront into a piazza facing a monument, but the eye continues to retreat further into the image, following a narrowing street to its very end, where a blurry column stands commandingly. The perspectival tricks of recession employed by Poussin allude to the scale of the city by centering our vision at a distant vanishing point that still appears imposing despite its distance from the forefront. By comparison, Zumbo’s painted background seems strikingly two-dimensional. A further point of dissent is the manner in which Zumbo tints his wax to denote varying degrees of death. In Plague at Ashdod, all victims are painted in ashen tones. The extreme pathos explored above is a third point of difference.

Finally, the overwhelming presence of death in Zumbo’s work differs indubitably from Poussin’s Plague at Ashdod and The Massacre of the Innocents, in which the majority of the figures are alive, even if they are shortly to be killed.

Attempting to explain these differences entails going into further detail about the medium of wax, as each of these departures from painting can be ascribed as resulting from the materiality of, associations to, and ideology around wax.

Wax as a medium is one that has been described by scholars as a series of contradictions. It is “warm and cold, supple and solid, ephemeral and permanent, amorphous and polymorphous.”27 Its ability to mimic flesh lends the medium its lifelikeness, but its stillness taints the picture with a gloomy sense of death, leading it to become a mere representation of “arrested life.”28 Wax, like human flesh, has a tendency to decay, further complicating the tension between life and death inherent in the medium. This ability of wax to deteriorate and die imbues the medium with the implications of a memento mori.29 Wax paradoxically comes to act as a reminder of transience through its attempts to freeze time and the living. Whether used in funerary processions to represent the deceased, or to cast molds of corpses for scientific advancement, wax has throughout its history been used in rituals and occupations that carry death and disease at their center.

With this morbid baggage in tow, wax as an artistic medium experienced a mixed and passionate reception.

Celebrated for its verisimilitude, cautioned against as producing disgust, wax was always deemed too problematic and shock-inducing to be recognized as high art. It was seen as “emotionally […] overpowering.”30 Some of the problems associated with the medium were its “degradation” and “excess,” which produced unease and revulsion in its viewers.31 Furthermore, the medium was prone to tricking its viewers’ intellect through the “waxwork moment” required to ensure that the figure observed is made of wax and not living flesh.32 The medium’s resemblance to flesh 25

Thijs Weststeijn, “‘Painting’s Enchanting Poison:’ Artistic Efficacy and the Transfer of Spirits,” in Spirits Unseen: The Representation of Subtle Bodies in Early Modern European Culture, ed. Christine Gottler (Leiden: Brill, 2007), 153.

26

Roberta Panzanelli “Introduction: The Body in Wax, the Body of Wax,” in Ephemeral Bodies: Wax Sculpture and the Human Figure, ed. Roberta Panzanelli (Los Angeles, CA: Getty Research Institute, 2008), 5.

27 28 29 30 31

Ibid., 1.

Ibid., 2.

Ibid., 3.

J. P., “Wax Miniatures,” The Philadelphia Museum Bulletin 42, no. 213 (1947): 51.

Georges Didi-Hubermann, “Viscosities and Survival: Art History Put to the Test by the Material,” in Ephemeral Bodies: Wax Sculpture and the Human Figure, ed. Roberta Panzanelli (Los Angeles, CA: Getty Research Institute, 2008), 155.

32 82

Uta Kornmeier, “Almost Alive: the Spectacle of Verisimilitude in Madame Tussaud’s Waxworks,” in Ephemeral Bodies: Wax Sculpture and the Human Figure, ed. Roberta Panzanelli (Los Angeles, CA: Getty Research Institute, 2008), 67.

sparked discomfort in viewers by “[creating] the illusion of a shared space and physical reality.”33 This immediacy of wax was another feature of the medium that unsettled its viewers as it bridged the gap between spectator and object, shattering the “perceptual distance” between the two entities in a way that made apparent the uncanny nature of wax.34

With this in mind, we can begin to understand the stylistic departures of La Pestilenza from painting.

Elizabeth Cropper and Charles Dempsey highlight the all-important place of sight in painting, stating that “appeals to taste and to smell had no place in painting for the very reason that their extremes were closer to disgust […] than they were to a true, purgative, and ennobling terror.”35 By contrast, Zumbo alludes powerfully to senses other than sight, notably that of smell with the plague attendant, whose entire body appears revolted by the stench of the decaying corpses. This appeal to the viewers’ senses through the unpleasant sights and smells evoked intensifies the drama of the work. The uncanniness of wax is exploited by Zumbo to deepen the pathos experienced by the viewers.

The artist’s choice to tint his wax in varying shades to denote levels of death is an interesting one that clearly attempts to push the medium to new frontiers, especially in its capacity to incite disgust and revulsion in its viewers. While disgust is to be moderated and curtailed in painting to create the less easily assimilated, but more aesthetically acceptable feeling of horror in viewers,36 it is inseparable to the medium of wax. Zumbo pushes this disgust to physically move the viewer at a visceral level.37 This visceral reaction to the waxwork creates an intensified emotion, further emphasizing the pathos of the piece and the shock value of wax as an artistic medium.

The omnipresence of death in La Pestilenza is another salient difference between paintings of the plague and Zumbo’s wax rendition of pestilence. The verisimilitude of wax and its stillness are two attributes of the medium that make it especially apt to represent death and the dead body, and that explain Zumbo’s apparent resistance to depicting live bodies. Although wax has no equal in its ability to mimic flesh, its immobility bars the medium from reaching “aliveness.”38 The convincing way in which Zumbo represents flesh does lend the work a certain lifelikeness, which perhaps ought to be called ‘deathlikeness’ as the flesh it so skillfully represents is no longer alive. Aliveness and lifelikeness differ in that the former is the “presence of life in inanimate objects,” whereas the latter is a “depiction true to life.”39 Aliveness is thus missing from this image in its overt emphasis on the dead body.

In order to explain Zumbo’s selection from the styles of painting and wax-making in the formation of a unique amalgamation of elements in La Pestilenza, what these choices achieve must be considered. The work’s chiaroscuro, its energetic depiction of pain inscribed in the body, and the prominence of corpses it features all result in the overwhelming presence of pathos permeating throughout the waxwork. Indeed, it appears that every stylistic decision made by Zumbo is aimed at intensifying the viewers’ emotions. The medium of wax, due to its attributes, takes common painterly tropes such as the mother and child group to new emotive heights, incorporating elements carefully avoided in painting, such as the sense of smell, to accentuate disgust rather than attempt to curtail it.

Ultimately, La Pestilenza is about far more than appropriating a popular subject for painting to the medium of wax.

The work is carefully built on both media’s traditions to create an image that is as stirring as wax permits, and as artistic as painting can allow. Department of Art History, McGill University Bibliography Ballestriero, R. “Anatomical Models and Wax Venuses: Art Masterpieces or Scientific Craft Works?” Journal of Anatomy 216, no. 2 (2010): 223-234.

33 34 35 36 37 38

Ibid., 73.

39

Ibid., 9.

2005), 6.

Ibid.

Elizabeth Cropper and Charles Dempsey, Nicolas Poussin (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996), 269.

R. San Juan, “The Horror of Touch: Anna Morandi’s Wax Models of Hands,” Oxford Art Journal 34, no. 3 (2011): 440.

Ibid.

Fredrika Jacobs, “Introduction: The Topos of Lifelikeness,” in The Living Image in Renaissance Art (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,

83

Boeckl, Christine M. Images of Plague and Pestilence: Iconography and Iconology. Kirksville, MO: Truman State University Press, 2000.

Bonser, W. “Medical Folklore of Venice and Rome.” Folklore 67, no. 1 (1956): 1-15.

Cropper, Elizabeth, and Charles Dempsey. Poussin: Friendship and the Love of Painting. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996.

Didi-Hubermann, Georges. “Viscosities and Survival: Art History Put to the Test by the Material.” In Ephemeral Bodies: Wax Sculpture and the Human Figure, edited by Roberta Panzanelli. Los Angeles, CA: Getty Research Institute, 2008.

Düring, Monika von, and Marta Poggesi. Encyclopaedia Anatomica: A Selection of Anatomical Wax Models. Köln: Taschen, 2001.

Ebenstein, Joanna. “Ode to an Anatomical Venus.” WSQ: Women’s Studies Quarterly 40. no. 3-4 (2013): 346 – 352.

Freedberg, David. The Power of Images: Studies in the History and Theory of Response. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989.

Goodwin, Sarah McKim Webster, and Elisabeth Bronfen. Death and Representation. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993.

Grootenboer, Hanneke. “Introduction: On the Substance of Wax.” Oxford Art Journal 36, no. 1 (2013): 1 – 12.

Hartley, J. S. “How to Model in Clay and Wax.” The Art Amateur 12, no. 3 (1885): 65 – 66.

J. P. “Wax Miniatures.” The Philadelphia Museum Bulletin 42, no. 213 (1947): 50 – 63.

Jacobs, Fredrika. The Living Image in Renaissance Art. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005.

Kornmeier, Uta. “Almost Alive: The Spectacle of Verisimilitude in Madame Tussaud’s Waxworks.” In Ephemeral Bodies: Wax Sculpture and the Human Figure, edited by Roberta Panzanelli. Los Angeles, CA: Getty Research Institute, 2008.

Lightbown, R. W. “Gaetano Giulio Zumbo – I: The Florentine Period.” The Burlington Magazine 106, no. 740 (1964): 486, 488 – 496.

Lightbown, R. W. “Gaetano Giulio Zumbo – II: Genoa and France.” The Burlington Magazine 106, no. 741 (1964): 563 – 567, 569.

Luisa, Maria, and Azzaroli Puccetti. “La Spècola, the Zoological Museum of the University of Florence.” Curator: The Museum Journal 15, no. 2 (1972): 93 – 112.

Marker, Anna. “The Anatomical Models of La Specola: Production, Uses, and Reception.” Nuncius 21, no. 2 (2006): 295 – 321.

Murrell, Vernon T. “Some Aspects of the Conservation of Wax Models.” Studies in Conservation 16, no. 3 (1971): 95 – 109.

Panzanelli, Roberta. “Introduction: the Body in Wax, the Body of Wax.” In Ephemeral Bodies: Wax Sculpture and the Human Figure, edited

by Roberta Panzanelli. Los Angeles, CA: Getty Research Institute, 2008.

Riva, Alessandro, Gabriele Conti, Paola Solinas, and Francesco Loy. “The Evolution of Anatomical Illustration and Wax Modelling in Italy from the 16th to Early 19th Centuries.” Journal of Anatomy 216, no. 2 (2010): 209 – 222.

San Juan, R. M. “The Horror of Touch: Anna Morandi’s Wax Models of Hands.” Oxford Art Journal 34, no. 3 (2011): 433 – 447.

Schnalke, Thomas. Diseases in Wax: The History of the Medical Moulage. Chicago: Quintessence Pub. Co, 1995.

Weststeijn, Thijs. “‘Painting’s Enchanting Poison: Artistic Efficacy and the Transfer of Spirits.” In Spirits Unseen, edited by Christine Gottler. Leiden: Brill, 2007.

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Tra il Devoto et il Profano: Caravaggio, Bernini, Ecstasy, and the Baroque Style Marlene Misiuk

Caravaggio and Bernini demonstrated the capacity of the Baroque style to dissolve traditional distinctions between the sacred and profane in religious imagery. Through innovative Baroque techniques of color, composition, and light, a dualistic approach to representing sacred and mystical subjects emerged in the Counter Reformation.

The role of Christian art was not simply just to inform, or delight a viewer but also to move them emotionally and physically to ensure their allegiance to the catholic faith. Mysticism, that is, the union between God and his followers through Christ, had an important theological role in expressing the spirituality of the Counter Reformation.1 The Catholic Church used the lives of the saints and mystics as models for devotional practices of laymen and women.

The strongest union with god was the experience of ecstasy, which takes over the mind, body and soul. Artists of the reformation took up religious subjects in ecstasy, but appropriated them in new ways to attend to the needs of the church. As Jessica Bell notes, depicting the ephemeral, transcendent state of ecstasy in art led to the appropriation of erotic vocabulary and physical metaphors, much like the mystical texts they were based on.2 This lead scholars like Tom Hayes to assert that: “the more artfully one tries to represent the sacred, the more profane the result.” 3

In my essay, I aim to draw similarities between images of religious ecstasy in Early Baroque painting to those of the Bel Composto (or multimedia) High Baroque chapel. To do so, I will address Caravaggio’s painting of Saint Francis in Ecstasy (1595) and Bernini’s program of The Ecstasy of Saint Teresa (1647-52) in the Cornaro Chapel at the church of Santa Maria Della Vittoria in Rome (Plates 1 and 2). I will then explore two technical innovations that provide a dualistic purpose or meaning in the ecstatic visions of Saint Francis and Saint Teresa. The first is the use of light and flames used to convey mystical love. The second involves the bodies and poses of the figures, which are both eroticized while conveying martyrdom. In addition, I will then address Bernini’s hybrid form and content in the wider thematic scope of the Cornaro Chapel. In this section, Bernini’s design unites Teresa’s mystical marriage or union with Christ to the more traditional liturgical practice of the Eucharist.

In Caravaggio’s painting of St Francis in Ecstasy of 1595, the saint and angel are illuminated by an unknown source of light on the left (Plate 1). Francis, almost unconscious, is represented with one teary eye opened as he lies down in the grass. He rests with his left hand open and his right hand pointing the wound on his chest as he awaits the stigmata. Brittany Stella notes in her master’s thesis on the “Influence of Cardinal Del Monte’s Patronage for Caravaggio”, that an innovative quality of the painting lies in the stigmata “that is represented as a form of light as opposed to bodily wounds.”4 The only wound visible to the viewer is on the left side of his chest (Plate 3). This wound represents the stabbing of Christ by Longinus with a spear, as he hung on the cross. According to William Wallace, the wound on the chest conveys a secondary form of “imitatio Christi”, as it also mirrors Christ revealing his wound to Thomas upon resurrection. 5 The lack of clear stigmatization wounds internalizes the feelings of the saint in the moment of ecstasy. Maffeo Barberini, later Pope Urban VIII, once spoke about the stigmata more generally, claiming that: “although the stigmata may seem like wounds, they are not, but openings whence the heart breaths out its flames.” 6 While they may be understood as painful wounds, for Barberini, the stigmata is born out of the love of god, only to surface from the heart. While omitting some wounds may be seen as distancing the viewer to the work, Wallace concludes that the viewer is able to grow a stronger relationship to the saint as it enables Francis to imitate 1

Jessica Peyton Bell,, “Brides of Christ Vision, Ecstasy, and Death in the Holy Women of Gianlorenzo Bernini.” (Florida: University of Florida,

2 3

Ibid., 8.

2008), 7.

Tom Hayes,, “A Jouissance Beyond the Phallus: Juno, Saint Teresa, Bernini, Lacan.” American Imago 56, no. 4 (1999), 340.

4

Brittany Ashlyn Stella, “The Papabile and the Pauper: The Influence of Cardinal Del Monte’s Patronage for Michelangelo Merisi Da Caravaggio.”

(Florida: University of Florida, 2011), 48.

5 6

William E. Wallace, “Caravaggio’s “Saint Francis,” Source: Notes in the History of Art 22, no. 3 (2003), 12.

Helen Langdon,. Caravaggio: A Life. (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1998), 127.

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Christ, and the viewer to imitate doubting Thomas by examining Francis’ wound.7

Outside of the stigmata as being represented through light, the small reference to natural light in the painting also has symbolic function. The horizontal golden gradient rays of light in the distant sky signal the advent of dawn (Plate 1 and 4). 8 These lines are crucial as they confirm that the light that illuminates the saint is not solely from natural rays of the sun, but that divinity comes to life within it. As light takes on symbolic meaning in the image of Saint Francis, flame is also a vital natural element in the painting. The picture plane is divided diagonally, which emphasizes the natural landscape as a mirror to the intimate mystical moment occurring on the other side (Plate 1).

The small natural flame we see in the distance brightly stands out, and is aligned with the love of god that St. Francis has internalized in the moment of ecstasy (Plate 4). The small flame calls attention to the passion of saint Francis when Saint Bonaventure notes that: “[…] this vision had thus been presented unto his gaze by the divine providence […] he was to be wholly transformed into the likeness of Christ crucified, not by the martyrdom of the body, but by enkindling of the heart”9. The natural flame is set against religious love, and its miniscule size proves that it is no match against the love of God Francis is experiencing. While there is no proof of Caravaggio having read Saint Bonaventura’s writings, Caravaggio was often instructed by cardinals (such as Cardinal Mattei) that informed his religious images.10

Whereas light could have drawn in the viewer as a doubting Thomas in Caravaggio’s painting of Saint Francis, the lighting in the central portion of the chapel dedicated to the Ecstasy of Saint Teresa would have been essential to the early modern viewer and artist (Bernini) (Plate 2). As Robert Petersson notes in his book The Art of Ecstasy: “light is crucial to the sculptors practice and is used for more than just the necessity of vision”. 11 The light would accentuate different areas of the sculpted surface depending on the depth in which it was modeled. Petersson emphasizes that: “the light emerging from the window above the figures and through gilt bronze rays provide drama, a feeling of unreality or heightened reality while preserving realism.” 12The use of natural light that would beam onto the religious scene would have strongly demonstrated the fact that the divine could be seen as emerging from the natural world. For Westeijn, “the work of art is also thought to “beam out” powerful spirits into the spectators eyes.

The assumption that beholders are thus affectively ‘moved’ to take over the qualities of the objects they look at.”13 Light upon the sculpted figures in a darkened setting therefore could function as a means of achieving a spiritual aura.

As a result, the power to affect the early modern viewer would have been greater. Charles Avery (as cited by Tom Hayes) does point out that this technical achievement is no longer available to the contemporary viewer due to the “unforgiving electric light in the chapel which over-illuminates its every part.”14 On the other hand, for early modern viewer, the nuances and varying degrees of light through out the day would have incited a variety of responses and symbolic readings of the Ecstasy of Saint Teresa (Plate 5). Light, which illuminated the figures, would also heat them and this heat recalls the flames or passion of Teresian ecstasy.

Fire and flames associated with religious passion is present in imagery used by Bernini in his rendering of Saint Teresa, as much as in her mystical writing. According to Teresa’s writing on her experience of ecstasy, she stated that the angel was: “not tall but short, and very beautiful, his face so aflame that he appeared to be one of the highest types of angel who seem to be all afire”15. Teresa then notes that the tip of the spear held by the angel seemed to also convey a “point of fire”. At the end of her account, Teresa reiterates that: “he left me completely afire with 7 8 9 10 11 12 13

Wallace, “Caravaggio’s “Saint Francis” , 12.

14 15

Hayes, 352.

Ibid.

Saint Bonaventura. The Life of Saint Francis. (London: J.M Dent, 1904), 139.

Stella, “The Papabile and the Pauper: The Influence of Cardinal Del Monte’s Patronage for Michelangelo Merisi Da Caravaggio.”, 48.

Petersson, Robert T, The Art of Ecstasy; Teresa, Bernini, and Crashaw. (New York: Atheneum, 1970), 69.

Ibid.

Weststeijn, Thijs, “’Painting’s Enchanted Poison’: Artistic efficacy and the Transfer of the Spirits.” Spirits Unseen: The Representation of Subtle Bodies in Early Modern European Culture, (Leiden: Brill, 2008), 147.

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Petersson, The Art of Ecstasy; Teresa, Bernini, and Crashaw, 40.

a great love of god.”16 In her later writing, entitled The Way of Perfection, Saint Teresa states that: “Fire and water obeyed Saint Martin; even birds and fishes were obedient to Saint Francis… It was clear that they were masters over everything in the world [..] So, as I say, the water, which springs from the earth, has no power over this fire.”17 While there is no visible “fire” represented in the workings of the chapel, the presence of flame is taken up in hybrid form.

Robert Petersson claims that “symbols of fire, attributions and suggestions of fire flicker in the space and rise with the spiritual surge of the chapel.”18 The twists of the mantle worn by the angelic figure, the curls of its hair and the flowing lines of his wings all invoke flames (Plate 6 and 7)19. The angelic figures body also takes on a serpentine form recalling the curvature of flames. Moreover, Petersson even goes as far to note that the acanthus leaves on the column capitals convey flame-like shapes (Plate 8).20 The natural elements take on a hybrid form within the figures themselves, and create a physical counterpart to Teresa’s mystical love.

The second innovative way that Caravaggio and Bernini visualized religious ecstasy is through the hybrid bodies and poses of the angels and saints. These bodies and their heightened sensuality dualistically function as a means of foreshadowing martyrdom and death.

In the writings of Saint Bonaventura on the “Life of Saint Francis”, it is mentioned that the ecstasy was a seraphic vision: “ On a certain morning about the Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross, while he was praying on the side of a mountain, he beheld a seraph, having six wings, flaming and resplendent, coming down from the heights of heaven.”21 Renaissance artists like Giotto and even Giovanni Bellini had taken up literal translations of this vision that were significantly different (Plate 9 and 10). Walter Friedlaender notes that the apparition is missing, and instead there is a “shimmer of golden light on the horizon” that confirms Caravaggio’s conception of divine presence as a form of magic light.22 In addition, Caravaggio changed several visual aspects by the night setting as well as through the bodies of the saint as neither standing nor kneeling but lying down. The seraph, like the figure of Francis, is also transformed into a hybrid angelic figure.

The angel in Caravaggio’s vision does not correspond to the seraph Saint Francis imagined while in ecstasy.

The angel seen in this image is neither a flaming seraph, nor a fully idealistic rendering of angel. Steven Ostrow in his essay “Caravaggio’s Angels” points out that Caravaggio used live models (“dal naturale”), white sheets as togas, studio prop wings, and other objects to build on his angelic images.23 These props wings and sheets were re-used on many occasions, and are most clearly visible in a later cupid such as the Amor Vinicit Omnia painting produced a few years later in 1601-1602 (Plate 11).

The painting of Saint Francis was the first religious work by Caravaggio commissioned by Cardinal Del Monte in Rome, one of his most important patrons. Caravaggio lived in one of his palaces known as the Palazzo Madama along with the artist and model used for the angel, Mario Minitti. 24 Mario Minitti also had modeled for many of Caravaggio’s earlier works like the Boy with a Basket of Fruit (Plate 12). 25 What is essential of Caravaggio’s angel is that it represents a boyish form with weight and muscle, yet it still conveys a sense of idealism when compared to the Boy with a Basket of Fruit. Regardless of the ambiguity of the figure, scholars such as Howard Hibbard have reduced Caravaggio’s angels to their sensual and slightly homoerotic qualities claiming them as: “a survival from the world of Del Monte’s pretty boys.”26 Furthermore, scholars such as John Spike noted that the figure 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26

Ibid.

P. Silverio, De-Santa Teresa. The Complete Works of Saint Teresa of Jesus. Ed. Allison E. Peers (London: Sheed & Ward, 1946), 79.

Petersson, The Art of Ecstasy; Teresa, Bernini, and Crashaw, 79.

Ibid.

Ibid.

Bonaventura, The Life of Saint Francis, 139.

Friedlaender, Walter. Caravaggio Studies. (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Pr., 1955), 149.

Ostrow, Steven F. “Caravaggio’s Angels.” In Caravaggio: Reflections and Refractions, (Surrey: Ashgate Publishing Limited, 2014), 135-139.

Stella, The Papabile and the Pauper: The Influence of Cardinal Del Monte’s Patronage for Michelangelo Merisi Da Caravaggio.”, 47-48.

Ibid.

Ostrow, “Caravaggio’s Angels.”, 137.

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resembled “a boyish angel who could easily represent Cupid if the context were different”, while Robb described the figure as a “mop haired angel” with a pair of stage propped wings.”27 Unlike most scholars, Ostrow deems that material human likeness is a leading force that highlights the spirituality of Caravaggio’s angels.28 The fact that they are so corporeal and physical purposefully aims to convince the viewer upon the “truth”, the tangible “existence of God’s emissaries”. 29 Caravaggio’s angel as both “human” and “divine” could appear more familiar, and as a result it could enhance a viewer’s religious connection to the work. The porcelain complexion and pink cheeks that illuminate the face of the boy/angel are idealistically rendered. However, beneath the translucent sheet that covers the angelic body is the shape and form of Minetti’s human musculature.

Bernini’s angel or seraph takes on a similar dualistic quality as he embodies human form, but not necessarily a male figure like Caravaggio’s piece (Plate 6). Saint Teresa, as noted earlier, described the angel as: “short and very beautiful”30. As well, when approaching Bernini’s angel, we must first consider that like Saint Francis, Teresa also envisions a seraph. These fiery creatures were most often represented as red figures like in Giotto’s painting of Saint Francis, or figures that more broadly convey a sense of heat like the angels subtle red cheeks in Caravaggio’s painting (Plate 9). Tom Hayes has referred to Bernini’s angel or seraph as a “symbol of unbounded homoerotic bliss burrowed from Caravaggio.”31 Instead, Petersson interpreted the creature as being a “Corregiesque angel” that is an “idealized picture of celestial gentleness.” (Plate 13)32 Both statements are in fact true of the angelic figure in many respects.

Although, the pose of the “angel” and facial expression is indebted in many ways to the cupid in Caravaggio’s Amore Vinicit Omnia (Love Conquers All) painting, unaddressed by Hayes (Plate 12). Meanwhile, Petersson’s choice to unite Bernini’s “angel” to the work of the 16th century Renaissance artist, Antonio da Correggio, could be expanded on. Looking to the angel in Correggio’s Danaë painting of 1531, similarities are present visually by the hair, smoothness of the angels’ body, as well as its idealized facial features. However, Bernini’s angel is endowed with a mischievous smile that eliminates the docile naivety or “celestial gentleness” (as Petersson would call it) of Correggio’s angel (Plate 7). Bernini’s angelic figure has a deviant smile that is far from innocent and in line with Caravaggiesque facial expression. Like Caravaggio’s angel in the painting of Saint Francis (Plate 1), Bernini’s angelic figure does not represent a seraph or angel, neither is it a full spiritual “ideal” or a human boy. One contrasting element that does emerge as a product of the medium, pointed out by Petersson, is that while the angels face is “sweet and luminous”, its marble qualities leaves it glowing with a “cool, white ardour”33.

Caravaggio and Bernini provided hybrid form to the figures of the angels, which is also present in the bodies and poses of the saints. Saint Francis is far from the austere, slightly bald and beardless figure that Giotto and Bellini depicted. Christoph Frommel argued that the figure resembles its patron. 34 However, the only surviving portrait of Del Monte post-dates the painting, and in turn complicates Frommels’ interpretation.35 Like the angelic figures, a viewer is confronted with a multi faceted figure, one that resides in a liminal space between the physical and the divine. Bernini’s Teresa, as Margaretta Salinger notes, was represented as a “frail and delicately youthful figure, quite different from the sturdy, capable woman described by her biographers.”36 As well, Salinger notes that more realistic depictions of the saint would have been depicted by Rubens who displayed a “stocky, rather plan middle-aged 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34

Ibid., 136.

35 36

Ibid.

Ibid., 143.

Ibid.

P. Silverio, De-Santa Teresa, The Complete Works of Saint Teresa of Jesus, 79.

Hayes, “A Jouissance Beyond the Phallus: Juno, Saint Teresa, Bernini, Lacan.”, 339.

Petersson, The Art of Ecstasy; Teresa, Bernini, and Crashaw, 71.

Ibid.

Frommel, cited in Stella, “The Papabile and the Pauper: The Influence of Cardinal Del Monte’s Patronage for Michelangelo Merisi Da Caravaggio.”, 48-49.

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Salinger, Margaretta. “Representations of Saint Teresa.” The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin 8, no. 3 (1949), 108.

woman.” (Plate 14) 37 Consequently, it is clear that both saints are represented much younger and idealized by the artists in their experience of ecstasy.

Unlike earlier representations of the saints, the recumbent poses implemented by the artists can be seen as a form of sexual sublimation by the saints, but more importantly, it foreshadows martyrdom. Where the grip on the belt of St. Francis may be homo-eroticized, Wallace addresses the fact that the physical embrace of the angel in Caravaggio’s painting may have referenced a biblical passage from the book of Luke (22:43) (Plate 1). This passage describes an angel who supports the swooning Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane.38 This forms a “conflation or dualistic rendering of two well-known subjects”, which suggests “Francis’s own identification with Christ”. 39While the embrace between the angel and Francis is sensual, it is out of a greater “love of god” that an extremely physical moment of Christ’s life is relived. In turn, the complexity of religious passions strengthens Tom Hayes’ assertion that “the sacred is unrepresentable” and “we can only allude to it by means of the profane.”40

The angelic figure that pulls up Teresa’s mantle by the same token cannot simply be understood as a driving force of a “phallus”, especially as it is in no way represented as a strictly male gendered figure. As expressed earlier, the angel conveys fire, which is the love of god that consumes Teresa to the point of Ecstasy. Teresa being “consumed” by a thick mantle up to her neck also does weaken interpretations of the saint as embodying features of an “eroticized reclining nude”. 41

The pleasures and sensuality of the ecstatic visions simultaneously display a sense of pain and they foreshadow martyrdom. After the religious ecstasy and stigmatization, Francis inevitably dies as Christ did. Bell notes that unlike Francis, “Teresa is a mystical martyr, having died of her faith, rather than for her faith.”42 This distinction is made because Teresa died during and not after an ecstatic vision. Pleasure and pain in mystical texts are often terms used interchangeably. When combining pleasure and pain to an extreme degree, one is said to achieve bliss. Hamill also notes that the sexual ambiguity in Caravaggio’s work (like Bernini’s) provides a jouissance that shatters “ego identity”, such as gender.43 An example of this type of jouissance is religious ecstasy. The expressive open mouths of Teresa and Francis (despite gender difference) lie in this liminal space between pain and pleasure, the corporeal remains inextricably spiritual. The same combination of pleasure and pain is experienced before the arrow strikes Teresa and before the stigmatization reaches Francis, due to the fact that their experience resides outside of earthly conceptions of narrative, time and space.

The complexity of ecstatic visions is an element Bernini could attend to in his Bel Composto Cornaro Chapel as a whole. While Caravaggio early on in his career had attributed symbolic or hybrid narrative elements to his painting, the Cornaro Chapel, according to Anthony Blunt was: “conceived as a single unit which includes four different levels of reality.” (Plate 18) 44 Blunt emphasizes the four levels as being composed of: the holy trinity and heaven as seen in the vault (Plate 19), the miraculous vision of Teresa below, the Cornaro family in the loges (left and right), as well as the skeletons on the ground that represent the “souls in purgatory” (Plate 20). 45 The incorporation of several layers of reality emphasizes that Bernini aimed to link different elements of Christian devotion to the scene of ecstasy. As Bell argues, Teresa’s ecstasy is associated with her mystical marriage to Christ, and in turn, this union points out the Eucharistic rite of the beholder46. The vault designed by Bernini and executed by Guidobaldo Abbatini depicts frescoed and sculpted angels/putti that emerge from clouds to celebrate in the realm of heaven (Plate 20). The 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46

Ibid., 98.

Wallace, “Caravaggio’s “Saint Francis,”, 12.

Ibid.

Hayes, “A Jouissance Beyond the Phallus: Juno, Saint Teresa, Bernini, Lacan.”, 338.

Ibid.

Bell, 69.

Hammill, Graham L. Sexuality and Form: Caravaggio, Marlowe, and Bacon (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), 60.

Blunt, Anthony, “Gianlorenzo Bernini: Illusionism and Mysticism.” Art History 1, no. 1 (1978), 74.

Ibid.

Bell, “Brides of Christ Vision, Ecstasy, and Death in the Holy Women of Gianlorenzo Bernini.”, 75.

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heavenly creatures also are endowed with flowers and musical instruments. As Bell notes, the painted clouds expand and “spill over the chapel architecture” onto the gold painted stucco reliefs below that illustrate moments of Teresa’s life47. The spiritual takes on the physical world and can no longer be contained in the singular space of the vault. A hybrid combination of media reinforces the earthly and spiritual connection.

The celebrating figures in heaven take on a dual purpose as Bell argues that when Bernini takes a flower crown and “places it between the hands of two angels at the center” of the arch vault (Plate 20), a viewer can then associate martyrdom to nuptial imagery.48 In her thesis, Bell also points to one detailed scene in the barrel vault that illustrates a separate vision of Saint Teresa. In this vision, Christ takes her as a spouse and gives her a nail of the crucifixion as a symbol of their union (Plate 21).49 In addition, the vault in the frieze that surrounds the chapel also depicts putti figures with flower garlands that symbolize nuptial imagery. Furthermore, it is crucial to note that right above the scene of the ecstasy, we see little putti figures that emerge from cloud. These liminal creatures are caught in metamorphoses or transformation like Teresa in the scene below (Plate 8). Ostrow, in discussing angels more generally, cites Saint Thomas of Aquinas, who described angels as “ethereal vaporous creatures who, when they appear on earth assume bodily form.”50 This validates both Caravaggio’s and Bernini’s understanding of cupid or angelic forms as being capable of possessing human (earthly) and spiritual qualities (Plate 22). As a result, the profoundly physical (and sensual) moment Teresa lives in the center of the chapel cannot be separated from the greater “spiritual marriage” that is conveyed through the other elements in the chapel.

The lower section of the Chapel, as Bell proposes, can be seen as a counterpart to the marriage, both highly physical and spiritual of St Teresa51. Below Teresa, we see an altar of gilt bronze relief that depicts the Last Supper (Plate 23 and 24). As Bell argues, the Last Supper is the “liturgical equivalent to Teresa’s more intense and exceptional communion with God”, and viewers would be encouraged to strive to follow a more accessible route to the mystical union with god through the Eucharist52. The chapel attends to mystical and liturgical routes to Christian enlightenment. Cardinal Federigo Cornaro (Plate 25) is the only figure among the Cornaro family in the loges whose gaze is directed to the viewer if standing in the optimal viewing position. Hayes points out that out of all figures in the loges, his eyes are the only ones that have “incised pupils and irises”, making him more alive and present.53 Federigo engages with the viewer, and calls the viewer through his gaze, to explore the complexity of his burial chapel. It is through vision and by active participation that a viewer can contemplate different ways to unite with god. The visual emphasis on Federigo on the right side endorses Bells’ interpretation of the figures in the loges.

To Bell, the Cornaro family embodies two routes to salvation: on the left, “the internal path of logic, prayer and contemplation” (Plate 26), and to the right, “the external path of revelation, communication and action.” (Plate 27) 54 Bernini expands on the technical hybrid visual language proposed by Caravaggio in the Early Baroque, into what Bell calls a “multivalent narrative”. 55Through his multi media chapel the sacred (spiritual) and profane (physical) are united. By the same token, the Eucharistic practice is united with Teresa’s mystical union with Christ.

The technical innovations introduced by Caravaggio and Bernini in the Baroque period conflated the sacred and profane elements of religious devotion. Light was capable of standing in for divine presence, and flame took on the role of enriching the viewers understanding of mystical love and the passions. The bodies of the saints and angels took on new forms and poses, intermingling sacred idealization and human likeness. Whereas the poses and expressions of the figures were capable of invoking both sensuality and pain, to remind the viewer that such a strong 47 Ibid., 63.

48 Ibid., 73.

49 Ibid.

50 Ostrow “Caravaggio’s Angels.”, 140.

51 Bell, “Brides of Christ Vision, Ecstasy, and Death in the Holy Women of Gianlorenzo Bernini.”, 72.

52 Ibid.

53 Hayes, “A Jouissance Beyond the Phallus: Juno, Saint Teresa, Bernini, Lacan.”, 351.

54 Bell, “Brides of Christ Vision, Ecstasy, and Death in the Holy Women of Gianlorenzo Bernini.” , 67.

55 Ibid. 84.

love of god would come at the cost of martyrdom. In Bernini, this lead to extending the visual hybridity into the larger scope of the Cornaro Chapel, producing what Bell noted as a “multivalent narrative”, oscillating between Teresian mystical marriage and the invocation of the Eucharistic rite56.

To conclude, the duality of early and high Baroque artwork invites what Weststeijn notes as a “two way transfer of the spirits.”57 On the one hand, an artwork can “affectively change its spectators”, while on the other hand, the ultimate transformation resides in “the additional act of the beholders imagination.”58 In sum, a viewer ultimately must engage with the works and endow the work with meaning. Not all early modern viewers would have liked to do so; instead they could be instructed in different ways on the routes to salvation. In a letter written on August 2nd 1603, Cardinal Ottavio Paravicino wrote of Caravaggio’s work, that he had painted “some paintings which were in that middle between piety and profanity, such that I would not have wish to see them from afar” (“qualche quadro, che fusse in quell mezzo tra il devoto et il profano, che non l’haveria voluto vedere da lontano”)59. Thus leading Glenn Most to argue that when the cardinal stated that he wished to not see the paintings “from afar”, this implied that he would have wished to not see the paintings at all60. In diminishing the barriers between sacred and profane, the powerful baroque style could therefore only produce the strongest meaning in an early modern (or contemporary) viewer opened to the challenge. Department of Art History, McGill University • Bibliography Bell, Jessica Peyton. “Brides of Christ Vision, Ecstasy, and Death in the Holy Women of Gianlorenzo Bernini.” Thesis. University of Florida, 2008. University of Florida. Web. <http://etd.fcla.edu/UF/UFE0022161/bell_j.pdf>.

Blunt, Anthony. “Gianlorenzo Bernini: Illusionism and Mysticism.” Art History 1.1 (1978): 67-89. Print.

Bonaventura, Saint. The Life of Saint Francis. N.p.: J.M Dent, 1904. The Internet Archive. Google. Web. <https://archive.org/details/ lifesaintfranci02bonagoog>.

De Santa Teresa, P. Silverio. The Complete Works of Saint Teresa of Jesus. Ed. Allison E. Peers. London: Sheed & Ward, 1946. Archive. Web. <https://archive.org/details/completeworksofs009705mbp>.

Friedlaender, Walter. Caravaggio Studies. Princeton, NJ: Princeton U Pr., 1955. Print.

Hammill, Graham L. “History and the Flesh: Caravaggio’s Queer Aesthetic.” Sexuality and Form: Caravaggio, Marlowe, and Bacon.

Chicago: U of Chicago, 2000. 63-90. Print.

Hayes, Tom. “A Jouissance Beyond the Phallus: Juno, Saint Teresa, Bernini, Lacan.” American Imago 56.4 (1999): 331-55. Proquest. Web. Langdon, Helen. Caravaggio: A Life. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1998. N. pag. Print.

Most, Glenn W. Doubting Thomas. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 2005. N. pag. Print.

Ostrow, Steven F. “Caravaggio’s Angels.” Caravaggio: Reflections and Refractions. By Lorenzo Pericolo and David M. Stone. Surrey: Ashgate Limited, 2014. 123-48. Print.

Petersson, Robert T. The Art of Ecstasy; Teresa, Bernini, and Crashaw. New York: Atheneum, 1970. Print.

Salinger, Margaretta. “Representations of Saint Teresa.” The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin 8.3 (1949): 97-108. JSTOR. Web. <http:// www.jstor.org/stable/3258079>.

“Santa Maria Della Vittoria.” Panoramic Earth. N.p., n.d. Web. 28 Nov. 2014. <http://www.panoramicearth.com/502/Rome/Santa_Maria_ della_Vittoria>.

56 57 58 59 60

Bell, “Brides of Christ Vision, Ecstasy, and Death in the Holy Women of Gianlorenzo Bernini.”, 84.

Weststeijn, “’Painting’s Enchanted Poison’: Artistic efficacy and the Transfer of the Spirits.”, 143.

Ibid., 166.

Most, Doubting Thomas , 204.

Ibid.

91

Stella, Brittany Ashlyn. “The Papabile and the Pauper: The Influence of Cardinal Del Monte’s Patronage for Michelangelo Merisi Da Caravaggio.” Thesis. University of Florida, 2011. Web. <http://ufdcimages.uflib.ufl.edu/UF/E0/04/31/67/00001/stella_b.pdf>.

Wallace, William E. “Caravaggio’s “Saint Francis”” Source: Notes in the History of Art 22.3 (2003): 12-13. JSTOR. Web. 25 Nov. 2014. <http://www.jstor.org/stable/3258079>.

Weststeijn, Thijs. “’Painting’s Enchanting Poison’: Artistic Efficacy and the Transfer of the Spirits.” Ed. Christine Göttler and Wolfgang Neuber. Spirits Unseen : The Representation of Subtle Bodies in Early Modern European Culture. Leiden: Brill, 2008. 169-205.

Print.

92

Appendix Appendix Plate 1 Plate 1

Caravaggio, Saint Francis of Assisi in Ecstasy, Oil on Canvas, 1595.

Caravaggio, Saint Francis of Assisi in Ecstasy, Oil on Canvas, 1595.

Plate 2 Plate 2

Gianlorenzo Gianlorenzo St. Teresa, St. Teresa,

Cornaro Chapel, Santa Maria Della Vittoria, Rome.

Cornaro Chapel, Santa Maria Della Vittoria, Rome.

Bernini, Ecstasy of Bernini,1647-1652, Ecstasy of marble, marble, 1647-1652,

93

Plate 3

Plate 3: Caravaggio, Saint Francis of Assisi in Ecstasy (Detail:Wound of Francis), Oil on Canvas, 1595.

Plate 4

Caravaggio, Saint Francis of Assisi in Ecstasy (Detail: Upper Left Side), Oil on Canvas, 1595.

94

Plate 5

Bernini, Ecstasy of St. Teresa, marble, 1647-1652, Cornaro Chapel, Santa Maria Della Vittoria, Rome.

Plate 6

Bernini, Ecstasy of St. Teresa (Detail of Angelic Figure), marble, 1647-1652, Cornaro Chapel, Santa Maria della Vittoria, Rome

95

Plate 7

Bernini, Ecstasy of St. Teresa (Detail of Angelic Figure), marble, 1647-1652, Cornaro Chapel, Santa Maria Della Vittoria, Rome.

Plate 8

Gianlorenzo Bernini, Cornaro Chapel (Detail of Frieze and Acanthus Column Capitals), 1642-1652, Santa Maria Della Vittoria, Rome.

96

Plate 9

Giotto di Bondone, Stigmata of Saint Francis, Tempera on Panel, 1295-1300.

Plate 10

Â

Giovanni Bellini, Saint Francis in Ecstasy, Oil on Panel, 1475-80.

97

Plate 11

Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, Amor Vinicit Omnia (Love Conquers All), Oil on Canvas, 1601-02.

Plate 12

Caravaggio, Boy With a Basket of Fruit, Oil on canvas, c.1593

98

Plate 13

Antonio da Coreggio, Danaë, Oil on Canvas, 1531.

Plate 14

Peter Paul Rubens, Saint Teresa of Àvila, Oil on Panel, circa 1615.

99

Plate 15

Bernini, Ecstasy of St. Teresa (Detail of Saint Teresa), marble, 1647-1652, Cornaro Chapel, Santa Maria Della Vittoria, Rome.

Plate 16

Bernini, Ecstasy of St. Teresa (Detail of Saint Teresa), marble, 1647-1652, Cornaro Chapel, Santa Maria Della Vittoria, Rome.

100

Plate 17

Caravaggio, Saint Francis of Assisi in Ecstasy (Close-up of Francis), Oil on Canvas, 1595.

Plate 18

Gianlorenzo Bernini, Cornaro Chapel (Extended View), 1642-1652, Santa Maria Della Vittoria, Rome.

101

Plate 19

Gianlorenzo Bernini, Cornaro Chapel (Marble Floor Skeleton), 1642-1652, Santa Maria Della Vittoria, Rome.

Plate 20

Gianlorenzo Bernini, Cornaro Chapel (Vault Detail), 1642-1652, Santa Maria Della Vittoria, Rome.

102

Plate 21

Gianlorenzo Bernini, Christ Taking Teresa as a Spouse, Cornaro Chapel (Right Side of Vault), 1642-1652, Santa Maria Della Vittoria, Rome.

Plate 22

Â

Gianlorenzo Bernini, Cornaro Chapel (Extended View 2), 1642-1652, Santa Maria Della Vittoria, Rome.

103

Plate 23

Gianlorenzo Bernini, Cornaro Chapel (Altar Relief), 1642-1652, Santa Maria Della Vittoria, Rome.

Plate 24

Plate 24: Gianlorenzo Bernini, Cornaro Chapel (Altar), 1642-1652, Santa Maria Della Vittoria, Rome. Â

Plate 25

Â

104

Gianlorenzo Bernini, Cornaro Chapel (Close-up of Federigo Cornaro), 1642-1652, Santa Maria Della Vittoria, Rome.

Plate 26

Gianlorenzo Bernini, Cornaro Chapel (Left Loge Detail), 1642-1652, Santa Maria Della Vittoria, Rome.

Plate 27

Gianlorenzo Bernini, Cornaro Chapel (Right Loge Detail), 1642-1652, Santa Maria Della Vittoria, Rome.

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Motherhood, Morality and Mammary: An Exploration of the Dichotomous Breast in Seventeenth-Century Dutch Visual Culture Emily Sheiner

The breast can be regarded as a pivotal symbol of progression in the visual culture of the Dutch Republic’s Golden Age, communicating a woman’s vital and changing roles in society. Its’ image proliferated in contemporary genre scenes, which grew in popularity during the Post-Reformation era. Within secular art, the breast was considered an emblem of purity and charity, a vehicle for the nourishing and protection of the Republic’s future.

However, the breast held a dichotomous relationship with its Dutch audience, both reminding them to relish motherhood and live in an unadulterated fashion, while equally warning onlookers of the strict behavioral regulations stipulated by society. The seventeenth-century Dutch Republic was notoriously chronicled as sanitary and upright with the family unit functioning as its central artery. It was the staple of their civilization; uncompromised by adultery, licentiousness or deviousness.

Visual culture served as an outlet for impure urges, depicting cathartic exchanges with harlots and procuresses that onlookers could revere for their immoral, yet sexually satiating subject matter. In this regard, the centrality of the breast in Dutch visual culture served a dual purpose; it inferred the familial foundation of society and gave voice to silenced lasciviousness. The dualistic relationship of the good breast and the bad breast informed the significance of the other and was conveyed upon the vessel of the Dutch woman in contemporary genre scenes.

The seventeenth-century was a pivotal era for the strengthening of the Dutch economy and establishing the Republic as an international powerhouse of trade.1 While the ability to capitalize on the Republic’s trade opportunities and appropriate wealth was a right reserved for men, women too reaped both physical and personal benefits from trade; acquiring both the luxuries of affluence and autonomy in the absence of their merchant husbands’. The nation’s economic stability and growth of the merchant class gave rise to increasing rights for women such as control over certain aspects of their spouses’ business, the ability to enter into contracts, and control their own dowries.2

Furthermore, women were the custodians of their notoriously immaculate seventeenth-century Dutch households, the concept of which grew to be a symbol of the Republic’s modest culture and “proof of [its inherent] patriotism, a metaphor for keeping the country undefiled by enemy invaders.”3 Women “took great pride in furnishing their residences and would bequeath to later ages the notion of home as an intimate private place,” a place where the woman was the dominant figurehead, independently raising her children and grooming the domestic space.4 The combination of complete domestic rights within the private sphere and partial rights in the public sphere granted affluent Dutch women more freedoms than women in any other European country thus giving rise to a unripe, contemporary feminism. 5

The breast is inarguably a symbol of ‘womanhood’, one that was employed throughout Dutch visual culture to signify a variety of effects; from maternal affection to carnal desire.6 Although the gland often connotes sexuality 1 2 3 4 5

Simon Schama, The Embarrassment of Riches: An Interpretation of Dutch Culture in the Golden Age “New York: Knopf : 1987), 255-256.

State, Paul F. A Brief History of the Netherlands (New York: Facts On File, 2008), 68-72.

B. V. Bavel, and O. Gelderblom, “The Economic Origins of Cleanliness in the Dutch Golden Age,” Past & Present, (2009) 45.

Note 2 supra at 83.

Klaske Muizelaar, and Derek L. Phillips, Picturing Men and Women in the Dutch Golden Age: Paintings and People in Historical Perspective (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003), 42-44.

6 106

Merril D. Smith, Cultural Encyclopedia of the Breast (Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield, 2014), 265.

and possession, it can equally be argued that the breast symbolizes developing female liberation and the concept of necessary motherhood. Paulus Moreelse depicts Sophie Hedwig, countess of Nassau-Dietz and BrunswickWolfenbüttel as Caritas (charity) (fig. 1) of woman’s domestic rule. She sits in the center surrounded by her three sons, one of whom she embraces with her right arm. Her head is the highest of all four subjects, symbolizing her aggregate authority and responsibility over her children. She presses two fingers around the nipple of her bare breast as if signaling the source of her power and altruism, “the very sustenance of her body.”7 luscious plate of fruit directly below his mother’s breast, perhaps indicating the fruitfulness of her charity by nourishing strong, healthy Dutch citizens.

Through the act of suckling, a mother was fulfilling her social duties both to her family and to the future of the Republic. During the Dutch Golden Age, suckling one’s own child was synonymous with love, and conversely sending one’s child to a wet nurse, a custom popular in England, France and Spain, was considered not only neglectful but evil. The flagrant distaste for wet-nursing amongst the Republic’s elite was justified by contemporary religious and scientific thought.8 Protestant teachings imply that “a nursing mother was pleasing to God and that a woman who refused to nurse was an abomination in the eyes of the Lord.”9 Medical treatises confirmed this superstition stating that breast milk was derived from the blood of the mother and that there are major risks associated with feeding one’s child the blood of a stranger.10 Contemporary physician Blankaart in 1684 confirmed this superstition by publishing a statement in his Verhandelinge van der opvoedige en ziektes der kinderen reading it was a mother’s sole duty to provide milk and affection to her offspring otherwise “why would God have given women breasts?”11 He preached that anything besides the natural mother’s milk would cause sicknesses when the child was older and a wet-nurse or any substitution would damage the child’s common sense and reasoning. He speculated that foreign milk was perhaps too heavy or difficult for the child to digest.12

In this regard, the obsession with maternal suckling is symptomatic of the Dutch preoccupation with cleanliness and purity within the family unit.13 Through this portrait, Moreelse not only conveys the product of this mother’s charity unto her children but captures her feminism and patriotism by celebrating her domestic authority and duty to her homeland through the extensive nurturing of future Dutch citizens.

Just as Sophie is portrayed as the ideal Dutch mother, it is impossible to ignore the striking similarity between Sophie’s pose and the iconic pose of Maria Lactans (Mary as the Nursing Mother) (Plate. 2). This Maria Lactans made by an anonymous sixteenth-century Flemish painter is a depiction of the maternal Maria, in awe of her suckling kin, evidenced by the trajectory of her soft gaze towards her infant son. The Christ figure here is suggestive of a generic, even greedy newborn child rather than a primarily divine figure.14

Maria is stimulating her round breast with two fingers, directing the source of her nourishment towards the mouth of her son. While the golden background and circular panel are Catholic in nature due to their ostentation 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14

2014, 4-6.

Marilyn Yalom, A History of the Breast (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1997), 95.

Note 1 supra at 538.

Note 7 supra at 93.

Note 1 supra at 539.

Ibid.

Note 1 supra at 539-540.

Note 3 supra at 41.

Golda Balass, “The Female Breast as a Source of Charity: Artistic Depictions of Caritas Romana.” Academia.edu. 2010. Accessed November 24,

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and iconography, the humanistic depiction of Maria is aspirational; she is representative of the every-mother.15 Understandably, the physical image of Maria Lactans is considered the ultimate icon of charity and motherhood, inspiring natural suckling and selfless caregiving prior to the Reformation.16 Simon Schama suggests that in the postReformation, predominantly Calvinist Netherlands, many of the images of the Virgin breastfeeding were removed from churches.17 Genre scenes of a mother tenderly breastfeeding her child rose to replace the icon and inspire mothers to care for their young as Mary did unto Jesus. Many such genre scenes were actually hung in churches while less modest versions of the progressive icon were commissioned for the homes of the elite like Moreelse’s Sophie. The civilian breast replaced the need for the image of Mary’s breast acting as both a religious and patriotic symbol of the Dutch Republic, designating the mother and her nourishment as the creator and protector of the Netherlandish people.18

While the image of a mother suckling her infant denoted secular family love, if positioned in a church interior, the image could discernibly be received as possessing theological significance. Gerard Houchgeest was one of many artists to employ this theme in his work. In his Church Interior with a Nursing Mother (fig. 3), a woman sits at the base of a towering column, her body dwarfed by the grandiose architecture of the church. In this classic post-Reformation whitewashed church, there are few decorations upon the walls, simply the altar and benches punctuate the ivory space. Although some may have difficulty identifying the act of breastfeeding without consulting the piece’s title, suckling in a church had deep representational significance during the Golden Age. Images like this one underscored a general collapse of “Mariolatry [in favour of] mother-love.”19 Mimicking the actions of Mary replaced revering icons of such as nursing grew to be enforced as well as consecrated.20

The breast in this vein is a representational symbol of woman’s unique and vital role in the sustenance of the young Republic. In such progressive times, women were aggregately entrusted with domestic duties. In this post-iconoclastic period, the Dutch nursing mother was likened to Mother Mary, underscoring her maternal duties while simultaneously honoring them. While in this regard the breast is ultimately good, pure and virtuous, it can be argued that in the visual culture of the Dutch Republic, the breast too symbolized the sexual deviance that stained the spotlessness of the era.21

The partially revealed breast has forever been considered a symbol of femininity, intimacy and lust.22 In Dutch visual culture, the breast specifically symbolized the adultery that propagated within brothels, the contemporary milieu for sexual digression outside of the marital unit. Within the confines of such strict social and 15 Victor Lasareff, “Studies in the Iconography of the Virgin.” The Art Bulletin 20, no.1 (1938): 32.

16 Ibid.

17 Note 1 supra at 540-542.

18 Note 7 supra at 96-97.

19 Note 1 supra at 540.

20 Note 1 supra at 540.

21 Note 3 supra at 43.

22 Note 6 supra at 111.

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religious regulations that permeated throughout the Dutch Golden Age, brothels acted as the bucket that caught the drips of sexual and behavioral spillover.23 Brothels represented a complex contradiction for the Dutch people, acting as both a source of anxiety and obsession - representing a flaw in and escape from their pure and orderly social structure. The brothel was “quite plainly the anti-home […] and the procuresses were the anti-mothers.”24

Gerrit van Honthorst depicted a brothel scene entitled The Procuress (plate.4) in 1625 highlighting the breast as the centerpiece of the work. Like Moreelse, he used techniques borrowed from Caravaggio-like the chiaroscuro effect. At the beginning of the seventeenth-century, during trips to Italy, several young Utrecht artists learned to paint in the new, innovative style of Caravaggio. One of the most successful of these “Utrecht Caravaggisti” was van Honthorst who introduced into this Italianate style a “typically Northern theme of adulterated love.”25 In the center of this piece, the glow of a single flame reflects off a male customer who reaches his right hand out towards the harlot facing him. In his left hand he clutches a coinpurse, gesturing his intention to pay. To the gentleman’s right one can make out the silhouette of an old woman, her hair pulled back by a scarf drawing attention to her protruding, mischievous eyes. She points in the direction of the man as if signaling to young woman her next customer. The procuresses’ subtle instruction identifies this house as a “school of vice” whereas the home “was the great school of virtue.” The premises covered in “dirt, theft, squalor, deceit, Plate 4. Gerrit van Honthorst. The Procuress.1625. Oil drunkenness [and] immoderation” acting as the antithesis of on panel. Centraal Museum, Utrecht. society’s domestic norms.26

While the chiaroscuro effect bathes both the customer and procuress in shadows, the face and breasts of the harlot are illuminated, highlighting her smile, rosy cheeks and full bosom. The warm lighting makes the breast seem safe and welcoming, it is difficult to attribute crime and contamination to an aspect of the work that Honthorst depicts so delicately. Therefore, if the shadows are representative of the dishonest nature of brothel life, it can be argued that the illumination of her bosom and sunny disposition act as a commentary that justifies her presence and occupation.

Bernard de Mandeville, a seventeenth, eighteenth-century Anglo-Dutch philosopher published A Modest Defense of Public Stews in which he argued for the unofficial toleration of brothels. He hypothesized that demarcating zones of impurity would protect innocent housewives from molestation in the public sphere. Without an outlet for licentiousness, uncontrollable sexual thirst could be rendered into a common crime. In the vein of Thomas Aquinas who stated that it is “sensible to tolerate a lesser evil if a greater evil could be avoided,” Mandeville argued that this sort of “constructive civic hypocrisy” was necessary to achieve a social utopia.27

Although a contemporary taboo, prostitution was an integral component of metropolitan Dutch society.28 Due to its illegality there is little documentation that records the number of actual prostitutes in Dutch cities, however court records prove that between 1650 and 1750, “5,784 people involved in prostitution appeared in court in 8,099 separate trials: 4,633 as prostitutes and 898 as bawds”. Most women were between 18 and 25 years old with the average age being 23. The prostitutes were mostly lower class and from the marginal groups of port cities.

Evidently, policing the realm of prostitution was a reality during the Golden Age yet the proliferation of the harlot 23 Note 5 supra at 133.

24 Note 1 supra at 467.

25 Lotte Van De Pol, “The Whore, The Bawd, And The Artist: The Reality And Imagery Of Seventeenth-Century Dutch Prostitution.” Journal Of Historians Of Netherlandish Art 2, no. 1-2 (2010): n.p.

26 27 28

Ibid.

Note 20 supra.

Note 1 supra at 467.

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theme in visual culture, court records and travel logs prove that Dutch officials could not diffuse its popularity.29 The propagation of the big-breasted prostitute theme in visual culture can be defended in one of two ways. Firstly, perhaps the popularity of said theme was an attempt to justify and defend the presence of prostitution in Dutch society, not only to curb the sexual thirst of lonely civilians but also offer an outlet to satiate the carnal desires of travelling merchants and soldiers upon returning from sea.30 In this regard, Honthorst’s application of chiaroscuro that draws our eye towards the wholesome breast forces us to accept, and even revere the work of the prostitute.

It was a trope in visual culture to depict the prostitute as friendly and homey, perhaps to inform the public that prostitution was not detrimental to the Republic, but in the vein of Mandeville, necessary for its subsistence.31 Secondly however, it is necessary to consider the possible moralizing intention of the work. Just as Moreelse’s Sophie acts as a moralizing message for mothers to naturally suckle their children, perhaps Honthorst’s brothel scene can be construed as a warning of the corruption associated with engaging in prostitution. In this regard the breast is employed in the same manner as a fly to a flame, it seems alluring and sincere however once one gets too close, and indulges in the warmth, danger ensues.

Not only was prostitution detrimental to the austerity and purity of Dutch society in the seventeenth-century, the act of engaging in adulterous lovemaking was riddled with uncertainties. Firstly, there were various venereal diseases associated with prostitution, giving rise to much civic anxiety. In the sixteenth-century, a fierce syphilis epidemic swept through Northern Europe “bringing with it a new fear of sex and generating a hatred of prostitutes and avoidance of brothels.” Brothels were furthermore associated with seduction, drunkenness, robbery and deception.32

Jan Steen, the father of humorous yet moralizing imagery in the Dutch Golden Age depicts a contemporary brothel scene in his Robbery in a Brothel (fig. 5) that is occupied by unsavory effects clearly representing the antihome and all its vices.33

In the foreground a young man perches forwards, his head resting on the satin-covered lap of a harlot with whom we as viewers lock eyes. She holds a flute of spirits as if celebrating a victory over this formerly respectable gentleman. On the man’s left, another woman can be seen blatantly robbing him, handing his pocket watch off to the procuress of the house.

The Madame is clearly dressed in the habit of a nun, perhaps signifying the corruption of the church as she clutches her stolen loot: a silver sword and a velvet robe. In the background, another customer is being serenaded by a violinist, an event similar to the musical seduction unfolding in Honthorst’s The Procuress.34 Seduction was clearly a prolific theme in popular brothel scenes, its consequences rendering male customers vulnerable to robbery, exploitation and deceit. Oyster shells and cards litter the floor underscoring wastefulness and gambling.35 In this brothel scene, the women are antagonized; lewd, ruthless and dishonest. Perhaps Honthort’s The Plate 5. Jan Steen. Robbery in a Brothel (Bad Procuress clarifies the atmosphere of Steen’s brothel scene that is Company), 1665. Oil on Panel. Musée du Louvre, Paris.

29 Note 20 supra.

30 Note 1 supra at 319.

31 Note 20 supra.

32 Ibid.

33 Note 1 supra at 391-392.

34 Note 20 supra.

35 Note 5 supra 133-135.

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shadowed from the audience’s view with the breast employed as a tool of seduction representative of the female capacity to victimize unsuspecting men and deter citizens from engaging in such sinful activities depicted in Steen’s work. While jocular and potentially exaggerated, Steen’s brothel scene acts as a stern warning to onlookers to avoid such lascivious milieus in which one is vulnerable to experiencing the decay of purity in Dutch society.

The revealed breast, an image that subverts modest sartorial trends of the Dutch Golden Age is teeming with underlying didactic and moralizing substance. The breast depicted in visual culture speaks to the maternal and domestic norms of the era, instructing mothers to enact charity unto their kin analogous to representations of Mary nourishing and caring for Jesus. The Dutch mother transformed from an ideal to an icon in this post-Reformation era, revered for her selflessness towards her children and ultimately the Republic – bearing absolute responsibility over her young. The home was the golden thread weaved through the fabric of the Dutch Republic; ornamenting it with purity and virtue while keeping its austere structure and integrity. The domestic breast was subject to inherent feminist rights and responsibilities due to her role as both wife and mother. However, the fruits of said unripe feminism were solely dispensable to upper-class homemakers while harlots and procuresses bore the breast of deception and licentiousness. While it is arguable that the delicate depiction and warm allure of prostitutes in Dutch visual culture communicated a utilitarian view of whoredom, it equally conveyed a sterner, moralizing truth.

Satirical brothel scenes satiated to some extent the era’s curiosity with these outlawed milieus of adulterated love and contamination. While playful during the act of reception, brothel scenes employed the breast as a didactic symbol of caution – underscoring the sin and dangers of intercourse outside of marriage. The breast in Dutch visual culture held a complicated and dichotomous relationship with its contemporary viewers. Its presence informed audiences of its nationalistic consequences. While the breast was a symbol of civic pride and necessary motherhood, the breast was too an emblem of lasciviousness and corruption, ultimately communicating conceptions of the home and the antihome; the opposing cornerstones of the Dutch Golden Age. Department of Art History, McGill University Bibliography Balass, Golda. “The Female Breast as a Source of Charity: Artistic Depictions of Caritas Romana.” Academia.edu.

January 1, 2010. Accessed November 24, 2014.

Bavel, B. V., and O. Gelderblom. “The Economic Origins of Cleanliness in the Dutch Golden Age.” Past & Present, 2009, 41-69.

Lasareff, Victor. “Studies in the Iconography of the Virgin.” The Art Bulletin 20, no. 1 (1938): 26-55.

Muizelaar, Klaske, and Derek L. Phillips. Picturing Men and Women in the Dutch Golden Age: Paintings and People in Historical Perspective. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003.

Schama, Simon. The Embarrassment of Riches: An Interpretation of Dutch Culture in the Golden Age. New York: Knopf :, 1987.

Smith, Merril D.. Cultural Encyclopedia of the Breast. Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield, 2014.

State, Paul F. A Brief History of the Netherlands. New York: 2008.

Yalom, Marilyn. A History of the Breast. New York: Alfred A. Knopf:, 1997.

Van De Pol, Lotte. “The Whore, The Bawd, And The Artist: The Reality And Imagery Of Seventeenth-Century Dutch Prostitution.” Journal Of Historians Of Netherlandish Art 2, no. 1-2 (2010): N/a. Accessed December 1, 2014.

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The Grotta Grande: The Dissolution of Boundaries between Art and Nature Klea Hawkins With the Renaissance revival and celebration of classical antiquity, gardens in sixteenth- century Italy became a prominent feature of the villas, palaces and estates of the upper classes and nobility. While inspiration for the Renaissance garden largely came from classical sources such as Pliny the Elder’s Natural History and Ovid’s Metamorphosis, the scale and magnificence of the sixteen-century Italian garden was unprecedented. Although the sixteenth-century Italian garden sought to revive the glory and culture of classical antiquity, it simultaneously sought to claim superiority over it.1 This notion becomes evident in the seventeenth-century cliché which referred to Italy

Plate 1. Bernardo Buontalenti, and Giorgio Vasari, Exterior view of the façade Grotta Grande, Boboli Garden, Florence, 1556 – 60 and 1583 – 89.

Plate 2 Bernardo Buontalenti, Interior of the Grotta Grande, with frescoes by Bernardino Poccetti, figures by Piero Mati, and plaster cast copies of Michelangelo’s Prisoners, Boboli Garden, Florence, 1583-1585.

as “the garden of the world.” 2 The Renaissance garden was a place where the reborn classical and the modern came into being. The common topos of art and nature which played itself out in classical antiquity became paramount in the sixteenth-century Italian garden. In the garden not only did art and nature collide, but art had the ability to disguise itself as nature, and nature as art. This confusion between art and nature particularly dominates the garden grotto. Whereas the Renaissance Italian garden traditionally exuded order, rationality and restraint in organization and layout, the grotto was a zone of chaos and irrationality.3

The Grotta Grande (plates 1 & 2), situated in the north-east corner of the Boboli Gardens, is a prime example of this chaotic irrationality. Art and nature become indistinguishable from one another within the Grotta Grande – it is a place of mystery and confusion. I wish to argue that, in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth- century “when consciousness was less rigidified,”4 the Grotta Grande had the ability to transform the mind of the visitor by immersing them into an alternate or other-worldly reality – an illusionistic world where art and reality collided. Thus, through an analysis of the sensory elements at play within the first chamber of the three-chambered Grotta Grande, we will see how the affective power of the grotto had the ability to perceptually deceive its early modern visitor, 1 Claudia Lazzaro, “Introduction,” in The Italian Renaissance Garden: From the Conventions of Planting, Design, and Ornament to the Grand Gardens of Sixteenth-Century Central Italy, (New Haven & London: Yale University Press, 1990), 5.

2 John Dixion Hunt, “The Garden on the Grand Tour,” in Garden and Grove: The Italian Renaissance Garden in the English Imagination: 1600-1750, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986), 9.

3 Naomi Miller, “Humanist Conceits: Renaissance Gardens,” in Heavenly Caves: Reflections on the Garden Grotto, (New York: George Braziller, 1982), 53.

4 Joscelyn Godwin, “Garden Magic,” in The Pagan Dream of the Renaissance, (London: Thames & Hudson Ltd, 2002), 153.

112

particularly through the interpenetration of art and nature.

Between 1556 and 1560 Vasari unknowingly began the first stage of what would become the Grotta Grande when he erected a classical portico in front of a small fishpond in the Boboli garden. It was only with the death of Cosimo de’ Medici in 1574 and the ascension of grand- duke Francesco de’ Medici that Vasari’s portico saw further development. In 1583 architect- engineer Bernardo Buontalenti added an additional level to the classical portico in order to accommodate the proposed construction of the three cave-like chambers of the Grotta Grande. The realization of the grotto in 1593 with its rustic architecture which concealed art from nature and nature from art was the epitome of the illusionism and irrationality characteristic of Mannerist art. 5

The ambiguity and confusion of art and nature which the Grotta Grande addresses was not only a concern raised by modern Renaissance man but one which also had preoccupied the ancients. Ovid in his Metamorphoses describes the grotto of Diana as one “[...] wrought by no artist’s hand. But Nature by her own cunning had imitated art; for she had shaped a native arch of the living rock and soft tufta.”6 While the arch of Diana’s grotto is shaped by nature in imitation of art, the arch of the façade of Buontalenti’s Grotta Grande is shaped by art in imitation of nature. The chalky limestone spunga which drips over the edge of both the arch and roofline of the grotto’s exterior both recalls and evokes the natural stalactites found in caves. The dripping stalactite-like forms of the upper level of the grotto stand in stark contrast to Vasari’s classically inspired façade of Tuscan columns and statuary below.

The architectural forms of the upper level of the façade transform, however, intersecting and merging Plate 3. Bernardo Buontalenti, Interior of the Grotta Grande, View of the oculus with the artful artifice of what appear to be the natural with frescoes by Bernardino Pocetti, 1583-1585. forms of the stalactites. The ambiguity generated between architectural and natural forms – this aforementioned illusionistic play between art and nature – announces the program of the entire grotto and anticipates what awaits the visitor in its interior.

Traversing the Grotta Grande’s threshold, moving from the exterior into its interior, the visitor would move from what would have perhaps been a hot and bright Florentine day into the dark, cool and damp world of the grotto. The participatory dimension of the visitor moving through space is a necessary element when attempting to understand the fully immersive, bodily and sensory experience the visitor would undergo upon entering this other worldly environment. The rustic architecture and dripping stalactites first encountered on the exterior of the grotto here dominate and overwhelm the space. The man-made stalactite-like forms which combine a variety of artificial and natural materials – stucco, terracotta, spunga, rocaille, etc. – merge, creating a multimedia-like environment where art and nature become indiscernible from one another. “Inspired by nature, [the Grotta Grande] also imitate[s] the vestiges of ancient rustic grottoes that still survived,” states Lazzaro.7 Alberti’s familiarity with the ancient practices of decorating and designing grottoes is revealed in a passage in his Ten Books on Architecture: “the ancients used to dress the Walls of their Grottoes and Caverns with all Manner of rough Work, with little Chips of Pumice.”8 This play 5 Pamela Coombes, “The Medici Gardens of Boboli and Luxemburg: Thoughts on their Relationship and Development, (master’s thesis, McGill University, 1992), 36-37.

6 Claudia Lazzaro, “Ornaments of Nature,” in The Italian Renaissance Garden: From the Conventions of Plating, Design, and Ornament to the Grand Gardens of Sixteenth-Century Central Italy, (New Haven & London: Yale University Press, 1990), 61.

7 Lazzaro, “Ornaments of Nature,” 58.

8 Miller, “Humanist Conceits ...,” 35.

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between natural and artificial is also employed by Bunotalenti in the Grotta Grande in order to recall and create the effect of an ancient ruin rediscovered and resurrected. “It is the idea of antiquity incarnate,” argues Naomi Miller.9 Thus, upon entering the first chamber of the Grotta Grande, the visitor is immediately thrust into a world dominated by “theatrical illusion.”10 The seemingly rational and orderly space of the garden gives way to the irrationality characterized by the grotto’s interior. Art’s mimicry of the natural is here paramount.

However, before the visitor could visually comprehend or attempt to make sense of the natural and artificial elements at play within the Grotta Grande’s interior, his/her senses would have been overwhelmed. Carefully hidden in the walls were thin tubes dripping water over the stucco stalactites. The floor, punctuated with hidden water jets, would soak the unsuspecting visitor. Although it only remained in place for a short time, Buontalenti’s design included a large crystal bowl filled with water and stocked with fish suspended from the grotto’s oculus (plate 3).11 This novel experiment would have filtered the exterior daylight through the crystal fish bowl and onto the grotto’s walls. The reflections and shadows caused by the movement of the fish in the crystal bowl would have further heightened the magical play of light and shadow across and throughout the grotto’s interior. With the added movement of the visitor through the space of the grotto the entire room would seem to be in motion. This constant play of shimmering light, reflections of shadows and water across the grotto’s surfaces, as well as the visitor’s own movement through the space, not only animated the entire room, but made it come alive. Added to this was the sound of water, constant, intense, and echoing, dripping down and off the stalactite-like forms. This would have added an auditory dimension to a total immersive bodily and illusionary experience. The manmade and the natural elements in the Grotta Grande would have thus elicited multi-sensual responses from visitors. And, if Mannerism in the arts was, as Jocelyn Godwin suggests, “[...] partly a search for new challenges, one of which was the imitation of living and moving nature,”12 the Grotta Grande realized this goal.

This otherworldly, bodily or transcendental experience elicited by the Grotta Grande whose meaning was “[...] never spelled out by its creators,”13 can perhaps be best attributed to the fact that art and nature were in a constant state of flux and transformation. The indistinguishable play between art and nature would not only have confused and deceived visitors in their traditional understandings of the two, but would have also triggered unexpected wonder and delight. Like the early modern Wunderkammer, the Grotta Grande would become ever more intriguing when Plate 4. Michelangelo, Prisoners, marble, Accademia, Florence, 1520- 1534 (installed the “[...] wonders of art and the wonders of nature”14 in the Grotta Grande in 1585 and removed to the Accademia in 1908 – plaster casts currently replace them) were fused together and their boundaries obscured.

The dissolution of boundaries between art and nature is evidenced in Francesco Bocchi’s description of the Grotta Grande in his guidebook to Florence from 1591. Recognizing “[...] that the vault was in ruins,” Bocchi commented upon the “animals and serpents emerging from the fissures and breaks in the structure.”15 He saw Michelangelo’s 9 Ibid, 37.

10 Coombes, “The Medici Gardens of Boboli and Luxembourg ...,” 37.

11 Claudia Lazzaro, “The Source for Florence’s Water in the Boboli Garden,” in The Italian Renaissance Garden: From the Conventions of Plating, Design, and Ornament to the Grand Gardens of Sixteenth-Century Central Italy, (New Haven & London: Yale University Press, 1990), 201.

12 Godwin, “Garden Magic,” 174.

13

Joscelyn Godwin, “Grotesqueries,” in The Pagan Dream of the Renaissance, (London: Thames & Hudson Ltd, 2002),

14 Lorraine Daston and Katherine Park, “Wonders of Art, Wonders of Nature,” in Wonders and the Order of Nature: Zone Books, 1998), 260.

15 Lazzaro, “The Source for Florence’s Water ...,” 206.

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146.

1150-1750, (New York:

unfinished marble Prisoners (plate 4), installed in the four corners of the grotto’s first chamber in 1585, as attempting, with all their might, to break free of the stone which possessed them in hopes of evading the structure’s imminent ruin. While art’s mimicry of the natural inspired delight, it too was capable of eliciting terror. A similar passage is found by Fynes Moryson who upon visiting another of Buontalenti’s grottoes at Pratolino, describes it as a“cave strongly built, yet by art so made, as you feare to enter it, lest great stones should fall upon your head” 16 Buontalenti’s ability to create the idea of illusionary ruin can best be understood as a form of “clever deceit.”17 John Dixon Hunt notes that “it is art’s infinite capacity to outdo natural things, while still being seen to imitate them that is striking.”18

Confusion between the natural and the artificial is further evident in an analysis of the Grotta Grande’s first chamber. Here the boundaries between art and nature become ever more obscured. Bernardino Poccetti’s frescoes which cover the walls of the upper level and vault of this chamber provide a naturalistic landscape setting for Piero di Tomasso Mati’s stucco and stalactite mythological and pastoral scenes (plate 5).19 While the men, women, animals, trees and waterfalls depicted in Pocetti’s naturalistic landscape slowly grow into the porous stalactite- like rocks, they simultaneously emerge from them.

This constant transformation or metamorphosis of art into stone and stone into art has provoked scholars such as Hunt to suggest an Ovidian interpretation of the Grotta Grande’s visual and sculptural program. This interpretation becomes particularly appealing when applied to Michelangelo’s unfinished marble Prisoners.

While Bocchi understood Michelangelo’s nonfinito sculptures as attempting to evade disaster, the early modern visitor would have also most certainly associated Michelangelo’s Prisoners with the Plate 5. Piero di Tomasso Mati, Pastoral Scene, North Wall, Grotta Grande, Boboli mythological tale of Deucalion. According to Garden, Florence, 1583Ovid in his Metamorphoses, the gods angered by the impiety of human kind destroy the world through the unleashing of a flood. The only two survivors, Deucalion and his wife Pyrrha, are then responsible for its regeneration. Out of the stones Deucalion and Pyrrha throw behind their backs slowly emerge the world’s new civilization. Michelangelo’s unfinished Prisioners, in an attempt to break free from the stone which constricts them, may thus be interpreted as representing this new civilization.20 The aforementioned crystal fish bowl suspended beneath the vault’s oculus, may then be interpreted as symbolizing the “‘waters above the heavens’ which poured down in the Deluge.”21

While Michelangelo’s Prisoners may indeed be attempting to emerge from the stone, like Tomasso Mati’s stucco and stalactite figures, they also draw attention to their production. They “exemplify the process of creating art out of nature.”22 Art is not only an extension of, but rather inherent in nature. In this view Michelangelo’s nonfinito sculptures can be seen as imprisoned within the stone, a notion suggested by Michelangelo himself when he writes, 16 John Dixon Hunt, “Art and Nature,” in Garden and Grove: The Italian Renaissance Garden in the English Imagination: 1600- 1750, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986), 92.

17 Lazzaro, “The Source for Florence’s Water ...,” 206.

18 Hunt, “Art and Nature,” 93.

19 Lazzaro, “The Source for Florence’s Water...,” 202.

20 John Dixon Hunt, “Ovid in the Garden,” Architectural Association Files, no. 3 (January 1983): 3-4.

21 Godwin, “Grotesqueries,” 146.

22 Lazzaro, “The Source for Florence’s Water ...,” 206.

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“The best of artists hath no thought to show Which the rough stone in its superfluous shell Doth not include. To break the marble spell Is all the hand that serves the brain can do.”23

The oppositional categories of art and nature developed in Aristotelian thought, and still held by most early modern Europeans, are in the Grotta Grande shattered, for the “realms of art and nature [are] intertwined into single objects.24 The collaborative or fluid relationship between art and nature was first elaborated on by Jacopo Bonfadio who, in 1541, described the Renaissance garden as a “third nature.” This notion was later developed in 1559 by Bartolomeo Taegio in his treatise La Villa when he wrote, “nature incorporated with art is made the creator and connatural of art and from both is made a third nature, which I would not know how to name.”25 The indescribable character of the Renaissance garden as well as the inability to fix or locate art and nature within a binary system of opposites suggests that the Renaissance garden did not cohere with the “prevailing epistemological and discursive structures” of the period.26 While art and nature had traditionally been seen as separate, in the Renaissance garden this categorization of opposites could no longer be applied. Rather, art and nature “together [...] produce something that is neither one nor the other, and is created equally by each.”27Art and nature are united into an indiscernible whole.

The notion of a third nature particularly pertains to the Grotta Grande for it is best understood as a hybrid entity. Within the grotto, art and nature contain one another so perfectly, that they are not only indistinguishable from one another, but, more, they are capable of deceiving the visitor about their origins. The “raison d’être” of the grotto’s “hybrid objects undermined the nature-art opposition.”28 That which was thought to be understood and known was subverted in the Grotta Grande. The constant oscillation or transformation of art into nature and nature into art was something Bartolomeo Taegio and others did “[...] not know how to name,” and thus for a lack of a more adequate vocabulary was described as a “third nature.” Language was incapable of describing that which the passions felt and the “rational” mind understood. “Words could and did trespass against the boundary between art and nature, but seldom with the impact of things seen with one’s own eyes,” assert Lorraine Daston and Katherine Park.29 The sixteenth-century French potter and garden designer, Bernard Palissy imagined his wholly manmade artificial grotto to be “so close to nature, that it would be impossible to describe [...] holding no appearance neither of form of art, nor of sculpture, nor the labor of the hand of man.”30 This also seems to be Buontalenti’s intent in his Grotta Grande.

According to Joscelyn Godwin, the first chamber of the Grotta Grande would have urged the more “philosophical pilgrim” (philosophical viewer) to contemplate “[...] the origin of life on earth, of humanity, and of the rebirth of the true man that is the esoteric goal [...].” 31 Thus, immersed within the illusionary world of the Grotta Grande, early modern visitors would have been prompted to question their own ontological understanding of what art and nature were, and whether they themselves, like the men and women who emerge out of the pebbles thrown behind the backs of Deucalion and Phyrra, were in fact born of nature.

These questions raised and provoked by the play and confusion between art and nature in the Grotta Grande are those which, in the seventeenth-century, would lead to the beginnings of the birth of the Age of Reason. Both Francis Bacon and Rene Descartes, by “[...] appealing to the stock objects of the Wunderkammern and grottoes 23 Baldwin Brown, “Notes on ‘Introduction’ to Sculpture,” in Vasari on Technique by Giorgio Vasari, (New York: Dover Publications, Inc.), 180.

24 Daston and Park, “Wonders of Art, Wonders of Nature,” 255.

25 Luke Morgan, “The Monster in the Garden: The Grotesque, the Gigantic, and the monstrous in Renaissance Landscape Design,” Studies in the History of Gardens and Designed Landscapes: An International Quarterly 31, no. 3 (2011): 173.

26 Ibid, 177.

27 Claudia Lazzaro, “Nature and Culture in the Garden,” in The Italian Renaissance Garden: From the Conventions of Plating, Design, and Ornament to the Grand Gardens of Sixteenth-Century Central Italy, (New Haven & London: Yale University Press, 1990), 9.

28 Daston and Park, “Wonders of Art, Wonders of Nature,” 280.

29 Ibid, 277.

30 Daston and Park, “Wonders of Art,” 286.

31 Godwin, “Grotesqueries,” 148.

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[...],”32 would attempt to dissolve the oppositional categories of art and nature first proposed by Aristotle. This confusion between art and nature, however, would continue to inform philosophical debates well up into the eighteenth- century and beyond. Department of Art History, McGill University

Bibliography Brown, Baldwin. “Notes on ‘Introduction’ to Sculpture.” In Vasari on Technique by Giorgio Vasari, 179-199.Trans. Louisa S. Maclehose. New York: Dover Publications, Inc. 1960.

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Master’s thesis, McGill University, 1992.

Daston, Lorraine and Katherine Park. “Wonders of Art, Wonders of Nature.” In Wonders and the Order of Nature: 11501750, 255-302. New York: Zone Books, 1998.

Godwin, Joscelyn. “Garden Magic.” In The Pagan Dream of the Renaissance, 153-180. London: Thames & Hudson Ltd, 2002.

Godwin, Joscelyn. “Grotesqueries.” In The Pagan Dream of the Renaissnace, 127-152. London: Thames & Hudson Ltd, 2002.

Hunt, John Dixon. “Art and Nature.” In Garden and Grove: The Italian Renaissance Garden in the English Imagination: 1600-1750, 90-100. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986.

Hunt, John Dixon. “Ovid in the Garden.” Architectural Association Files, no. 3 (January 1983): 3-11.

Hunt, John Dixon. “The Garden on the Grand Tour.” In Garden and Grove: The Italian Renaissance Garden in the English Imagination: 1600-1750, 3-10. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986.

Lazzaro, Claudia. “Introduction.” In The Italian Renaissance Garden: From the Conventions of Plating, Design, and Ornament to the Grand Gardens of Sixteenth-Century Central Italy, 1-7. New Haven & London: Yale University Press, 1990.

Lazzaro, Claudia. “Ornaments of Nature.” In The Italian Renaissance Garden: From the Conventions of Plating, Design, and Ornament to the Grand Gardens of Sixteenth-Century Central Italy, 47-68. New Haven & London: Yale University Press, 1990 Lazzaro, Claudia. “The Source for Florence’s Water in the Boboli Garden. In The Italian Renaissance Garden: From the Conventions of Plating, Design, and Ornament to the Grand Gardens of Sixteenth-Century Central Italy, 191-214. New Haven & London: Yale University Press, 1990.

Miller, Naomi. “Humanist Conceits: Renaissance Gardens.” In Heavenly Caves: Reflections on the Garden Grotto, 35-58.

New York: George Braziller, 1982.

Morgan, Luke. “The Monster in the Garden: The Grotesque, the Gigantic, and the monstrous in Renaissance Landscape Design.” In Studies in the History of Gardens and Designed Landscapes: An International Quarterly 31, no. 3 (2011): 167180.

32

Daston and Park, “Wonders of Art,” 292.

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