The Hidden Life of Art

THE

HIDDEN OF ART E F LI bols Secrets and Syrm ieces p e t s a M t a e r G in N CLARE GIBSO

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Allegorical Figures & Symbols

The Merchant Georg Gisze

Hans Holbein the Younger

1532, oil on oak, SMPK, Gemäldegalerie, Berlin, Germany lthough it was painted in London, England, neither the sitter nor the artist were English, and, indeed, they probably conversed in Middle Low German while The Merchant Georg Gisze was taking shape. It was important to both men that it had the “wow factor,” Gisze wanting to impress his fiancée back home, as well as his business associates, with a portrait in which he appeared both authoritative and prosperous, and the German-born Holbein, who had recently arrived in England from Basle, in Switzerland, in search of work, hoping that it would trigger a flood of lucrative commissions.The portrait must have fulfilled all expectations, for it is recorded that Gisze was married three years later in his Baltic hometown, and that Holbein was employed by King Henry VIII of England in 1536. The Merchant Georg Gisze is a rewarding picture for the twenty-first-century viewer to study, too, partly because its photographic quality is as impressive today as it was in 1532, partly because the everyday objects that surround him make the long-dead Gisze (1497–1562) seem more of a real person, and partly because it gives us an extraordinary insight into how offices looked nearly six hundred years ago.

As a merchant from Danzig—today known as Gdansk—a town that belonged to the Hanseatic League (a powerful, northern European trade confederation), Gisze’s business was international, and by 1532, it had taken him to London, where he lived and worked tax-free with other German merchants in the Thames-side Steelyard complex. Being based in London for a few years must have been good for trade, but can’t have been a particularly comfortable existence, not least because only bachelors were permitted to reside at the Steelyard.This explains the presence of the Venetian-glass vase filled with flowers—an otherwise rather incongruous touch in a trader’s office—for according to the conventions of the time, carnations denoted engagement, leading one to surmise that Gisze had his likeness painted as a gift for his bride-to-be, and that Holbein included the flowers as a tribute to her.

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See also Flowers (pages 129–30).

An intricately decorated string dispenser hangs alongside a pair of signet rings and a set of keys that probably provide access to the goods in Gisze’s stockroom.

A pair of scales and a signet, or seal, counterbalanced by a ball of amber (for which the Baltic region is renowned) hang from a shelf. Holbein has included Gisze’s personal motto to the left: Nulla sine merore voluptas, or “No joy without sadness” when translated from the Latin, which may refer to his separation from his fiancée.

A number of red seals have been tucked behind a batten, alongside the letters whose contents they once kept private. Some of the writing is legible, such as In Jurge zu Basel 1531, or “From George in Basle 1531” (could this have been a letter recommending Holbein to Gisze?)

Pinned to the wall, as though it were an office memo, is an important statement written in Latin (then the international language of both business and posterity) and a little Greek.

Distichon I Imagine Georgii Gysenii Ista, refert vultus, qua cernis, Imago Georgi Sic oculos viuos, sic habet ille genas Anno aetatis suae xxxiiij Anno dom 1532, it says, which means: “Look at the portrait of George Gisze.What you see here shows his features and figure; his eyes and cheeks look exactly as they do in life. In his thirty-fourth year, in the year of our Lord 1532.”

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Allegorical Figures & Symbols

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Allegorical Figures & Symbols

The document that Gisze is holding is a letter addressed to Dem Erszamen Jorgen gisze to lunden in engelant mynem broder to handen (the Middle Low German for, “To the honorable George Gisze in London, England.To be given into his hands.”)

During this period, carnations in a vase represented engagement (the underlying symbolism was probably to do with future children, for a water-filled vase can signify the fertile womb, and pink flowers, the babies that it sustains). Rosemary, a few sprigs of which can be discerned here, symbolizes remembrance––an appropriate floral message to send to Danzig.

Arrayed on the expensive Oriental carpet that serves as a tablecloth are a brass timepiece, which suggests both that time passes quickly and that its owner, like it, is well-regulated, or disciplined; a signet; writing implements, sticks of sealing wax,

a sand-shaker with which to dry wet ink and a pile of loose change (or wax disks) in a pewter stand; and a pair of scissors.

One of Gisze’s numerous signet rings also lies on the table: used to imprint a symbol of personal or corporate identity on molten

sealing wax, it may be that Gisze handed them to his representatives to use, or that he himself acted as the agent for many different concerns, whose seals he was therefore entrusted with as a sign that authority had been delegated to him.

Allegorical Figures & Symbols

Giovanni Arnolfini and his Wife (“The Arnolfini Portrait”)

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Jan van Eyck

1434, oil on wood, National Gallery, London, England he question mark that casts doubt upon the identity of the man portrayed in the painting perhaps provisionally entitled Portrait of Giovanni Arnolfini and his Wife (“The Arnolfini Portrait”) is by no means the only query that art historians have raised in relation to this image. Indeed, the more one delves into the theories that it has generated, the more of an enigma it becomes, so that in the end, the only certainty is that this Early Netherlandish masterpiece was painted by Jan van Eyck, who positioned his brush above the round mirror and signed his work with a flourish. Or did he? For rather than following artistic convention and using the conventional Latin wording Johannes de Eyck fecit, or “Jan van Eyck made this,” the artist instead wrote Johannes de Eyck fuit hic, 1434, or “Jan van Eyck was here, 1434,” which does not necessarily mean the same thing.

Although it was thought to depict a married or betrothed couple, little was known about this painting until a sixteenth-century inventory, written in French, was discovered that appeared to refer to it as “A big panel painting, Hernoult le Fin with his wife in a room.” Van Eyck was working in Bruges, one of the most important ports in the duchy of Burgundy (and, indeed, the world), in 1434. Searches of the city archives revealed two potential candidates for the fur-draped man: the brothers Arnolfini (the Italian equivalent of the French “Hernoult le Fin”), namely Giovanni di Arrigo, or di Nicolao, and Michele, scions of a wealthy merchant and banking family from Lucca, Italy, who had taken up residence in Bruges to conduct business with Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy (who was also van Eyck’s patron). The records reveal that Giovanni married Giovanna Cenami, the daughter of another Italian financier, and the wealth inherent in such a union, along with the evident prosperity of the bedchamber depicted in such intricate detail by van Eyck, has led scholars to claim that the painting commemorates their wedding.

Others, however, insist that it is simply a double portrait of a well-to-do husband and wife.The debate will no doubt continue, but for the moment it seems safe to say that the symbolic messages contained in this image allude to the ideal Christian marriage.

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See also The Virgin Mary (page 76), Margaret of Antioch (page 80), Crucifixion of Christ (pages 114–15), Dog (page 136).

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Allegorical Figures & Symbols Oranges imported from the Iberian Peninsula would have been expensive luxuries in fifteenth-century Bruges, so their inclusion in the painting emphasizes the household’s wealth. In symbolic terms, oranges can denote fertility, while orange blossom represents virginity and blushing brides.

That only one candle is burning in such a handsome chandelier, and in such a well-ordered household is a mystery. Art historians’ best guess is that the single flame conforms to Christian convention in symbolizing Christ’s divine illumination, or all-seeing eye, or else may signify faith, one of the three theological virtues.

The lady may appear pregnant, but a comparison with other northern European paintings of this period reveals that even saintly virgins were portrayed with protruding abdomens, indicating that this body shape was then considered the ideal for young women, as were voluminous gowns fashioned from heavy fabrics.

The brush hanging by the bed would have been used for dusting, and thus signifies a disciplined housekeeper and a clean, wellrun household.

A rosary (or two) hangs on the wall. Rosaries aid the memory when at prayer, and consequently denote piety. And because rosaries can represent the Virgin Mary, the “rose” of heaven, they may also refer to Christianity’s ideal feminine, a role model to which fifteenth-century women were encouraged to aspire.

Ten medallions, each portraying a scene from Christ’s Passion, with the Crucifixion at the top, surround a convex mirror, again suggesting piety, as well as feminine purity, for the Virgin Mary was often likened to a “spotless mirror.” Zoom in on the mirror, and we can see the reflections of two additional people (witnesses to a wedding, maybe?), a male figure in red and a turbaned man in blue, who may be van Eyck himself.

The wooden finial on the bedhead has been carved into a representation of St. Margaret of Antioch and the dragon.The saint’s escape from the dragon’s stomach caused her to be invoked by women in childbirth, who prayed for an easy labor at a time when children were almost invariably born in the marital bed.

Like all canines, the little dog symbolizes faithfulness, and because, being a lapdog, it belongs to the lady of the house, wifely fidelity in particular.

It appears that the man has kicked off his pattens (the wooden clogs that protect his stockings while out and about in the filthy streets on business), while the lady’s red slippers can be seen lying higgledy-piggledy in the background. Because they strike such untidy notes in an otherwise formal composition, supporters of the wedding theory have speculated that they refer to God’s Old Testament injunction to “put off thy shoes from off thy feet, for the place whereon thou standest is holy ground” (Exodus 3:5), their argument being that because marriage is one of the sacraments of the Church, it takes place on sacred ground.

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Allegorical Figures & Symbols

La Pia dei Tolomei

Dante Gabriel Rossetti

1880, oil on canvas, Spencer Museum of Art, Lawrence, Kansas, USA he English artist Dante Gabriel Rossetti paid homage to two of his great loves in his painting La Pia: the work of the poet Dante Alighieri (1265–1321), from whom he derived his first name and whose Italian heritage he shared; and Janey Morris (née Burden), the wife of his Pre-Raphaelite “brother,”William Morris.

Dante Alighieri immortalized the character of La Pia (Italian for “the pious woman”) in Part II, Purgatorio (“Purgatory”), of his epic poem Divina Commedia (“Divine Comedy”), of 1321. In the fifth canto (lines 130–6), Dante relates that when he encountered the soul of La Pia in purgatory (for she had died without absolution), she implored him to “Remember me who am La Pia, me from Siena sprung and by Maremma dead. This in his innermost heart well knoweth he, with whose fair jewel I was ringed and wed.” Dante’s Italian contemporaries would have been familiar with the true story of La Pia, of the family of Tolomei, a noblewoman from Siena whose husband, Nello della Pietra dei Pannocchieschi, was responsible for her death in 1295, some say due to his jealousy on account of her adultery, and others, so that he would be free to marry the Countess Margherita degli Aldobrandeschi. Although there is also some disagreement as to the exact manner of La Pia’s death––one version of the tragic tale telling us that illness killed her, another asserting that she was thrown from a window to her death––it is agreed that she met her untimely end in the unhealthy, marshy region of the Sienese Maremma, in Tuscany, and specifically at the Castello della Pietra, or Pietra Castle, where her husband had imprisoned her. In portraying the unhappy, rejected La Pia with the features of Janey Morris, Rossetti may have been hinting that he was longing to act as Janey’s knight in shining armor in liberating her from a marriage that, he felt, had become her prison, and from a husband who had become her jailor.

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See also Plants (pages 130–31), Birds (pages 138–40).

The bundle of weapons over which her husband’s standard is draped represents the violence that could be used against La Pia should she try to escape.They could furthermore be interpreted as phallic symbols on account of their elongated forms, or, because they are tridents, as the pitchforks wielded by Satan’s demons in hell.

A clamor of rooks (birds of the crow family) flies through leaden skies past the brooding La Pia. Like all noisy, black, carrioneating birds, rooks are said to portend death. Scholars believe that by depicting these birds, Rossetti was also referring to the section in his poem Sunset Wings (1871) that starts, “And now the mustering rooks innumerable / Together sail and soar, / While for the day’s death, like a tolling knell, / Unto the heart they seem to cry, Farewell, / No more, farewell, no more!”

Like all instruments that measure the passage of time, the sundial alludes to the passing of human life, which moves closer to death with every hour that passes.The gnomon is decorated with a wheel of fortune, a symbol of the fickleness of fate that can reverse the fortunes of anyone and everyone in a matter of seconds.

Love letters lie beneath an open prayer book.The letters denote “old news,” while the prayer book and rosary that acts as a bookmark suggest that the contrast between the memories that the letters have evoked and her current circumstances have driven the pious lady to seek solace and strength in her faith.

Lost in thought, La Pia toys with her wedding ring, the “fair jewel” with which her husband “ringed” her, or claimed ownership of her, on the occasion of their marriage.

The fig leaves to the lonely lady’s left represent potential fruitfulness, which is doomed to remain unfulfilled, while the evergreen ivy on her right may symbolize the memories to which La Pia clings, or else her undying fidelity (because it attaches itself to solid structures, ivy was once regarded as a symbol of married women who depended on their husbands for support).

The bell in the castle’s belfry adds to the ominous atmosphere, suggesting that it won’t be long before it tolls a funeral knell for La Pia.The fortress of which it is a part is a place and symbol of imprisonment, but in other contexts, castles can denote defensiveness, security and protection from hostile aggressors.

In psychology, a princess languishing within a castle can represent both long-sought-after

enlightenment and an object of sexual desire. In addition, a black castle in which a solitary occupant is incarcerated may represent hopelessness, failure and hell.Towers, too, have symbolic significance: as watch-towers, they denote vigilance, and, as soaring structures, spiritual or intellectual elevation; their shape can also cause them to be phallic symbols, while in Christian iconography, they may signify chastity.