Jorie Graham wrote an unforgettable poem about the madonna as well, called "San Sepolchro."
The poet “places” the Madonna in San Sepolchro; despite the fact that it is really located down the road in Monterchi (not far from the painter's birth city of San Sepolchro, but Monterchi was the town where his mother was born).
Graham must have been unable to resist the image of San Sepolchro–being named after the Holy Sepulcher….the ending of the story.
And so the poet beckons you in…..
“Come in, I will take you to see God being born…”
Here is the poem:
In this blue light I can take you there, snow having made me a world of bone seen through to. This is my house,
my section of Etruscan wall, my neighbor’s lemontrees, and, just below the lower church, the airplane factory. A rooster
crows all day from mist outside the walls. There’s milk on the air, ice on the oily lemonskins. How clean the mind is,
holy grave. It is this girl by Piero della Francesca, unbuttoning her blue dress, her mantle of weather, to go into
labor. Come, we can go in. It is before the birth of god. No one has risen yet to the museums, to the assembly line—bodies
and wings—to the open air market. This is what the living do: go in. It’s a long way. And the dress keeps opening from eternity
to privacy, quickening. Inside, at the heart, is tragedy, the present moment forever stillborn, but going in, each breath is a button
coming undone, something terribly nimble-fingered finding all of the stops.
It was the great Soviet film maker Andrei Tarkovsky who perhaps made her most famous of all. Having traveled hundreds of miles across Italy to see this particular work of art, the Madonna del Parto appears prominently in his masterpiece, Nostalghia.
In this fascinating article about Tarkovsky's use of the Madonna in his film, the author James Macgillivray, begins by describing the history of the fresco– from its removal from the 13th century Romanesque church, where it was originally installed around 1460, to being left as part of the remaining chapel when the majority of the nave was destroyed to create a cemetery in the late 18th century.Macgillivray is painstaking in explaining the way the painting was utterly removed from its context as part of a church, with much of the original architectural frame being lost along the way. It's quite an interesting story –albeit one that has occurred over and over. Apparently, when Tarkovsky first saw the Madonna in 1979, the picture was being prepared for its eventual removal to a museum–to be cut off forever from its religious and ritualistic context. The Madonna had a long history of veneration by women in the village who were trying to conceive babies. Maybe, suggests Macgillivray, this is why the filmmaker decided to use a very different location some 80 miles away for his 1982 film. It was a better site to replicate the original setting for the Madonna, says Macgillevray. That is, Tarkovsky wanted to put the picture back in what he imagined was its original context.
When I told our tour guide on our first day in Venice that I had come to see Titian's masterpiece, her face fell.
Oh, I am sorry to be the one to tell you this, but the picture is being restored.
When she saw the look on my face, she quickly added, They have a wonderful reproduction in its place though.
Well, they did have a wonderful reproduction. In the two-dimensional digital photograph, at right, you probably can't tell that it is a reproduction. If she hadn't told us, I might not have noticed!
Still, I was bitterly disappointed.
Rightly considered the great masterpiece of his early period, the Assumption of the Virgin ordinarily hangs in the place for which it was created; in the high altar of the Basilica di Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari. Known affectionately in Venice as "the Frari," the basilica was consecrated the same year that Columbus arrived in the Americas. A great barn of a church, it looms almost too large for the small parcel of land to which it has been given. A wealthy and vital monastic center at the heart of Venice, it is perhaps most famous for the works of art it displays in its cavernous interior.
Early in his career, Titian was commissioned to create a painting of the Virgin for the high altar.
Saint Mary in Glory.
It was for this that the church was named: this moment when Mary was "assumed" up to heaven. That Mary was born Immaculate was a belief of the Franciscans. Although bitterly contested by the Dominicans for centuries, it had been sanctified as doctrine by the Franciscan Pope Sextus IV in 1477. In the painting, we see the moment when Mary--depicted as a young women-- is assumed to heaven, where she is crowned Queen.
Created on twenty-one cedar panels joined together by sixty walnut pegs, the seven foot tall painting is installed over the altar in the frame for which it was created. The Frari is unique in having one of Italy's only surviving intact choir screens, and the arch of the screen serves to wonderfully frame the work again. So, when seen from the far end of the nave, the picture appears strikingly to be double framed.
I was intent to see this work, considered by the sculptor Canova as, "the greatest painting in the world;" and by Ruskin --cryptically --as being one of the few pictures which are truly religious.
In the swirl of the miracle--a spiraling swoosh by which Mary is raised up to heaven to the amazement of the apostles standing below, people have imagined they could hear music. British poet Arthur Symons described the work as being a "symphony of color... a symphony of movement.. a symphony of light without a cloud--a symphony of joy in which the heavens and earth sing Hallelujah."
And the legendary art historian Bernard Berenson declared the angels to be "Embodied joys, acting on our nerves like the rapturous outburst of the orchestra at the end of "Parsifal."
So, I had traveled to Venice not just see the picture --but to hear it, as well.
We had chosen to stay in the Cannaregio district, not five minutes from Titian's house.
Born in the mountains to the north of Venice, Titian spent most of his life in Venice, just a stone's throw from the Fondamenta Nuove, where today's Venetians catch the vaporetti --water buses--going to the outlying islands. Nowadays, the house where Titian lived is humble, behind walls. The original property has been divided up countless times, leaving no real remains from the 16th century. But there is a plaque.
And the square near the house is also named after the artist.
These days, Cannaregio is described as a more working-class neighborhood.
And what is left of the property does not give any impression of what was in Titian's day a gigantic property, with gardens and a house so large it was at the time known as the casa grande. As Mark Hudson says in his fantastic book, Titian: The Last Days, by the standards of the time, Titian was a multimillionaire.
Despite the fact that he lived and worked his entire life in Venice, most of his greatest works are to be found elsewhere--especially in Madrid and London.
Indeed, in today's Venice, there are only a handful of great Titian masterpieces to be seen.
Of these masterpieces, one is supremely moving.
It might not have made my list of "must sees" if the Assumption had been on display in the Frari. But, thanks to Mark Hudson's book, I knew there was one other great masterpiece to be seen in Venice.
It was Titian's last painting, the Pietà.
The artist had always intended to be buried in his hometown in the mountains, and he painted the picture for his tomb. However, before he died, he had several altercations with people back home. This led him to change his mind and go forward with a burial in the Frari-- the place not just of his famed Assumption but of another of his great masterpieces, the Pesaro Altarpiece. He wanted to be buried near the Pieta, so he gave it as well to the Frari.
But Titian being Titian, he became unhappy with the place where they decided to hang the painting, so demanded it back! The argument with the friars of the Frari went all the way to the Papal Nuncio in Venice. Eventually, the friars reluctantly returned the painting to Titian. Scholars believe that he probably intended to go back to his first plan and be buried in his hometown, but before things could be worked out, he died during the plague of 1576. He was then buried in the Frari in Venice, where he remains today.
Nowadays, the picture is kept in Venice's Gallerie dell'Accademia. It hangs in a very long, narrow hallway, where it is difficult to see properly. Not only is it hard to gain the distance necessary to view the picture in its entirety, but worse, there is a terrible glare from poor lightening.
But what a painting it is!
In the darkened place outside the tomb, Mary is cradling the lifeless body of her Son, the Christ; with Mary Magdalene in disturbed motion to the left, hands raised in dread.
Tragically, at the bottom right, under the architectural element shaped like a lion is a votive picture of Titian and his son on their knees praying to a picture of the Pietà --in all probability praying to be spared of the plague that eventually killed them both.
Despite the terrible glare of the lights and despite the painting's challenging location, I was utterly floored. For in the gloomy darkness of death, there we find the great Titian, clothed in red like Saint Jerome; who--in the words of Mark Hudson-- is humbled; fallen to his knees, he is crawling toward God. Reaching out to touch Jesus' limp hand, you can almost taste the horror of what has happened, as the greatest artist in the world --this man who had everything-- takes the hand of his Lord (pale against his own living flesh)--to beg for salvation.
Brooks Riley has written a stunning essay on Anselm Kiefer called Fire in the Attic at 3 Quarks Daily. Of the many things this unique thinker has brought into my world, Anselm Kiefer is one of the jewels. Chris asked, "How could we not have heard of Kiefer before this?" It's a good question since Kiefer is one of the greatest living artists active today--so yeah, how did we miss him till now? Thank you Brooks!
The Broad Museum has several important Anselm Kiefer pieces. Last week, we went down and faced the long lines to see the three currently on display.
Deutschlands Geisteshelden [Germany's Spiritual Heroes] (1973): Born at the close of World War II, Anselm Kiefer reflects upon and critiques the myths and chauvinism that propelled the German Third Reich to power. With immense scale and ambition, his paintings depict his generation’s ambivalence toward the grandiose impulse of German nationalism and its impact on history. Painted in extreme perspective, Deutschlands Geisteshelden positions the viewer at the mouth of a great hall, an amalgam of Kiefer’s former studio and Carinhall, a German hunting lodge used to store looted art during the Nazi era. Burning torches line the walls of the space, which is empty except for the names of inspirational artists and writers scrawled above the receding floor: Joseph Beuys, Arnold Böcklin, Adalbert Stifter, Caspar David Friedrich, Theodor Storm, and many others. This is hardly a triumphal place; the lodge keeps vigil, housing names that have become embroiled in a painful history.
This is the attic of Kiefer's first studio, located above the home where he and his new wife lived in a village not far from the Palatinate Forest (?) Kiefer's early work is characterized by forest scenes and attics. In Brooks' essay, she discusses the painter's use of the attic in his 1971 painting called Quanternity--"depicting three small fires burning on the floor of a wooden attic and a snake writhing toward them, vestiges of the artist’s Catholic upbringing in the form of the Father, the Son, the Holy Ghost and the Devil. Metaphor meets reality in the sacred attics of stored mythologies." She writes about a different Kiefer attick (this one from a house he lived in during his art student days):
Quaternity is one of the few paintings that addresses a lapsed religion now stored away in Kiefer’s mind, his attic—an attic he once lived in as a student, and one he has revived in other paintings. It is only one of his many recurring motifs that serve as conduits for his multiple concerns and thought processes. Myths of all kinds are stored in that iconic space, along with the first- and second-hand memories of history, philosophy, poetry, metaphysics, astrophysics, mysticism and alchemy.
We stood in front of Deutschlands Geisteshelden for a very long time. Tourists would wander into the alcove where his work was quietly hanging on three walls, and stand to take a selfie. I watched as they would struggle to position themselves in a place that would make them active participants in the painting. With its extreme perspective, the viewer stands in ambiguity and must choose to enter the vortex, standing as participant in a position within the perspective enabling the art work to "work" or to stand outside it and be an observer-but not able to have the three dimensionality wash over them.
Brooks says:
It’s difficult to stand in front of a Kiefer painting without hyperventilating. The bombardment of myth, thought, history, philosophy, mysticism, metaphor, poetry and omen, together with the tactile spirit of materials like lead, straw, dust, sand, ash, in multiple layers, coaxed by his alchemical processes of scorching, electrolyzing, melting, soldering, endow his works with an impact and energy completely at odds with the pleasant, colorful, often figurative works that dominate the canon of modern art—the Rauschenbergs, the Warhols, the Basquiats, the Hockneys, the Rothkos.
She talks about the maelstrom quality of his work.
That is how I felt in front of this painting. I could not help but think of Heidegger. Heidegger‘s book on art had a huge impact on me when I was young and I tend to look at art through the lens of Heidegger --but I also am extremely interested in materials and what you wrote about the alchemy of materials. So much could be said about Heidegger‘s philosophy, German nationalism, exploration of mythology and the psyche and how a “work of art works.” Standing there, you are in a state of ambiguity and of existential choosing. Person-making involves an embeddedness with the communal history and culture, and with being as a work in progress. To stand within the historical mindset, within nature--the forest-- the religion, the myths and to choose. Which cultural icons are to have their names written in that "Hall." You see absent is Heidegger and Nietzsche. But there is Wagner and Caspar David Friedrich.
And then there was the use of varied materials and high craftsmanship. You can’t even grasp how something like this was created --as it looked more like an artifact that fell down from space than something that man. Or in this case, the wood seems organic. Alive.
Kiefer sifts and evaluates different culturally transmitted possibilities for being... [his] self-defining aesthetic investigations suggest that human existence is a constant process of interpretation and that it is possible to take both authentic and inauthentic readings of our world and our possibilities for self transcendence. Like Heidegger, Kiefer's works suggest that the individual subject exists within a shared social and historical horizon that it inherits from its past and that it projects towards future.
Biro is very interesting when he compares Deutschlands Geisteshelden to Leonardo's Last Supper (which Chris noticed right away, I think. Or maybe it was me?) In 2016, over at 3 Quarks, I wrote a post called Eyes Swimming with Tears-- about the surprising effect that Leonardo's work had on me. And that, in part, could explain the emotional power the early Kiefer work exerted. Here is Biro:
Like Leonardo da Vinci‘s Last Supper in the church of Santa Maria del Grazia in Milan, for example, Germany Spiritual Heroes opens up the wall upon which it hangs in thereby sucks the viewer into an enveloping fictive space of representational and symbolic elements. However, whereas the perspectival space of Leonardo‘s fresco both idealizes and harmonizers its religious subject matter (through the placement of Christ's head at the center of the image, the balancing of the figure groups, and the harmonious poses), the perspectival space of Germany’s Spiritual Heroes, which is skewed slightly toward the left, suggests a rationality and an order of gone wild. Upon inspection, Kiefer's one-point perspective appears more pronounced than Leonardo's. And because nothing substantial occupies the space between the spectator and the far wall, our eyes move back-and-forth between depth and flatness more rapidly in Kiefer's painting than in the more filled interior of the renaissance work. As a result, the spectator feels more controlled. Thus, because Kiefer's perspective is “forced" and his room empty of human inhabitants, his perspective scheme also seems more violent and domineering. In addition, the conflict between the geometrical linear and organic linear elements of Kiefer's surface creates a destabilizing optical rotation, which evokes rhythmic and monotonous motions of machine production. As Kiefer's wooden interior implies, it is at times reasonable to have heroes -- role models with stories and relics can represent possibilities for action in our own lives -- and at other times completely insane, as demonstrated again and again by social and political movements that based themselves On the cult of a. supreme leader . This perspectival expansion of the wooden room suggests the scientific – rational power of the heroes followers: the subjects who have supposedly constructed the wooden hall and whose social identity appears to be at least partially informed through their acts of collective historical commemoration. In addition, because of the multiple signs of danger, Kiefer's work suggests that the "followers" have contributed their considerable strength and knowledge to serve some higher cause without a visible sign to confirm the moral correctness of their allegiance to this particular group of Germany’s spiritual heroes. Finally, the pronounced natural grain of the wood clashes with the geometric structure that confines it and to which it must conform. Nature, which in the Renaissance was understood to harmonize and find completion in human reason, here seems at odds with-- perhaps even endangered by --humankind's rational abilities.
I said I found myself spellbound by the picture. That does not mean I necessarily like the picture. What it means is that Leonardo's Salvator Mundi came to haunt my thoughts. As if the picture had been burned into my retinas. Again and again, I found it floating in front of my eyes before I fell asleep at night: extraordinarily beautiful, Christ stood facing fully front as if in a Byzantine icon against a dark background. With his hands bestowing a blessing (fingers lit up in light) the luminescence of the chest and forehead dazzles.
It is extraordinary really.
When I first saw it, not long after the disaster in Fukushima, I was somehow reminded of the solemnity of the Kudara Kannon Statue (百済観音) at Horyuji. Carved (probably by Korean artists) out of a piece of camphor wood, it is gilded in bronze. Like Leonardo's Christ, Kannon holds one hand in blessing, and in the other holds a vessel containing the "nectar" of compassion. Also like the Leonardo, the Kannon looks straight at you--and yet looks beyond you. The Salvator Mundi--like Kannon-- blesses human kind as he makes his promise to save us.
Statuesque, solemn, like a Byzantine icon...
Incidentally, in 2011 I wrote a post on my old blog, Tang Dynasty Times, about the newly discovered Leonardo, as well as a celebrated court case about another Leonardo called, Leonardo in the Gilded Age. This post won 3QD's Strange Quark Prize (judged by Gish Jen) and thereby kicked off my very happy relationship with 3 Quarks Daily!
Over the years, following the news about the picture and seeing more and more images online, I felt that the picture felt so familiar--as if I had seen it before. The face is reminiscent of the Mona Lisa. But it is also reminiscent of Saint John the Baptist (especially the curls).
I was also immediately reminded of the 1500 Self-Portrait by Dürer (see just above). Who but Durer would paint himself as Christ Triumphant? (I strongly recommend Joseph Leo Koerner's book below on Self-Portraiture in German Renaissance Art if you are interested in the Northern tradition of painting Salvator Mundi pictures and the Durer Self-Portrait in particular).
You can see the Durer painting at the same time you see you can see the other early Leonardo painting, Madonna of the Carnation at the Alte Pinakothek in Munich. Visiting Munich is a top priority for me. Madonna of the Carnation is --along with the Benois Madonna in the Hermitage Museum-- considered to be the two early paintings that Leonardo referred to in his notebooks that he was working on in 1478. This was about the time that Leonardo was transitioning from being a pupil of Verrochio in Florence to make his own way as an independent artist, soon thereafter moving to Milan.
Both the Durer Self-Portrait and the Leonardo are dated 1500. Durer dated the picture himself (the 1500 date for the Leonardo is just an educated guess).
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But there was something else that I couldn't place my finger on.
Finally, breaking down, I bought a used copy of the Christie's catalog on ebay for $90. I thought it was steep, but in the end, my curiosity got the better of me and I was delighted to open it up and immediately see both the Durer and Bosch's orb shown side by side with the Salvator Mundi.
There was also a discussion of expert MET curator Luke Syson's proposal that Leonardo was consciously trying to emulate the face of Christ as seen in famous examples of acheiropoetos, like the Shroud of Turin and the Veil of Veronica. Of course, that is why I felt so emotional about the picture! Why it looked so familiar! How could I have forgotten that my friend Brooks Riley had suggested as much last year in her post at 3QD on Leonardo, Resisting Leonardo?
Syson particularly focused on the Mandylion of Edessa (not the Shroud). There are three images that are said to be the authentic image of Edessa. One has long been held by the French crown and was kept in Saint Chapelle (along with the Crown of Thorns, for which the chapel was built) until the French Revolution. The other was kept (and still remains) in a church outside of Genoa, under Sforza control until 1499 when the French claimed it. Syson suggests that if Leonardo was painting the picture for the French crown (for Anne of Brittany and then later removed from France a hundred years later when the French princess Henrietta Maria married Charles I in 1625) then it is possible that he was commissioned to create the face in the likeness of the second Mandylion.
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Note Two (And what about that rock crystal orb?)
Some suggested that no one but Leonardo had the skill to paint that orb at that time. The restorer, Dianne Dwyer Modestin, has remarked about the extraordinary detail of the orb under microscope. Leonardo expert Martin Kemp also has written movingly about the orb in his memoir, Living with Leonardo (I cannot recommend this book enough! I could not put it down). Trained in science, Kemp was quick to note that this orb was unique in Renaissance painting, being a perfect rock crystal sphere with inclusions. Rock crystal was used during the Renaissance for reliquaries and was highly valued. Leonardo Patron Isabella d'Este had asked Leonardo to give his opinion on vases made in materials such as agate, jasper and amethyst and made note that Leonardo particularly liked crystal because of its clarity. Kemp did a study of Salvator paintings with orbs and found that while brass and glass orbs were quite common, none could be found made of rock crystal.
The orb as a crystalline sphere immediately calls to mind the exterior shutters of Bosch's Garden of Earthly Delight.
This is impossible to see at the Prado because the triptych is permanently displayed open.
Bosch depicts the third day of creation. According to the Book of Genesis, God said, "Let the waters under heaven be gathered together and the dry land emerge."
The choice of non-colors (grisaille) on the outer shutters of the triptych is very conventional--but instead of the usual depiction of donors or saints, Bosch gives us the earth as it was before the ruin at the hands of mankind. This is not the moment of creation but rather is a picture of a glass globe of the kind that emperors hold in their hands to express their dominion over the world.
In the top corner is God. And this inscription:
"For he spake, and it was done; he commanded and it stood fast." (Psalms 33:9)
I've always love to imagine the enormous delight that guests of the Duke of Nassau (original patron of the triptych?) when the gray world of the outer triptych opened to display the shock of all those colors (colors of the new world?) depicted on the inside of the triptych.
"The process of production is more in keeping with the commissioning of a superbly made chair from a major craftsman, "Kemp wrote...."We do not ask if a certain glued joint in the chair was made by the head of his assistants--providing the joint holds and looks good."
In the case of the Madonna of the Yarnwinder, as it was with the two versions of the Virgin of the Rocks, "we should modify the traditional questions asked by art historians: Which version is the "authentic" or "autograph" or "original" one? Which are mere "copies"? Instead, the proper and more interesting questions to ask are How did the collaboration occur? What was the nature of the team and the teamwork?
Interestingly, contemporary artists such as Jeff Koons and Takashi Murakami (Dustin Yellin is an interesting case) work using a production team.
Note Four (Restoration)
Etienne Gilson writes that the "restoration of paintings is one of the surest methods scientifically to substitute new paintings for the old ones."
And: Cecilia Giménez was scorned after her amateur efforts to repair a faded painting of Christ – but in the years since, the disaster has been transformed into a windfall as her story is being turned into a comic opera, called (you guessed it: behold the Man!) ! You can't make this stuff up!
Note Five (Aquamarine):
The use of aquamarine in the picture is noteworthy for two reasons. First it is unusual to see that much blue used to depict Christ (it is traditionally associated with Mary). And, because of its extraordinary expense, experts are quite sure Salvator Mundi was no ordinary copy! But incidentally, the copy of the Mona Lisa in the Prado, is a copy but also uses very expensive pigments, including aquamarine and vermilion (not very much though) so we know that that studio copy had a patron of some wealth.
One Day many years ago somebody told me that all the true ultramarine paint in the world came from one mine in the heart of Asia.
It's true, it seems that all the ultramarine paint in the world was painstakingly derived from the lapis luzuli rocks mined from one place in northeast Afghanistan. Located not far from Bamiyan; from the Sar-e-sang mine in Afghanistan, donkeys transported the expensive pigment in rough sacks over an ocean of mountain ranges-- East to Central Asia and beyond, and West to Venice and beyond.
In Europe, the precious pigment was so expensive that it was worth more than gold, and the legendary painters of the Renaissance were forced to wait till their patrons provided them the pigment before they could apply the heavenly blue to Mary's robes (for by this time the color was symbolic of Mary).
Finlay says in today's money, a pound would cost about $3000.
The color is truly heavenly-- just look at the Wilton Diptych-- shown here. That is all lapis lazuli from Afghanistan. It is the same color blue that was used at Kizil in what is now Western China and the same color blue that was used in painting the great Buddhist statues that stood over the Bamiyan valley for 1400 years.
In Medieval Byzantium dark blue was the color reserved for an empress. It was also--along with gold--the costliest material of all and so was used in paintings of the Virgin Mary as an expression of devotion.The color became, therefore, a symbol of Mary, and this is where the term, la sacre bleu comes from too...
Cennino Cennini, in Il Libro dell'Arte, wrote that "Ultramarine blue is a color illustrious, beautiful and most perfect, beyond all other colors; one could not say anything about it, or do anything with it, that its quality would still not surpass."
Even the great Michaelangelo was famously unable to finish his painting The Entombment because his promised shipment of ultramarine fell through.
Note Six (Pentimenti)
One of the most important clues that x rays tell us is what is happening beneath the surface of the painting. In this case, what was shown were countless changes of heart made by the painter as he created this work. The Italian word pentimenti means "regrets" and these refer to the changes made during the act of creation. Not surprising, Leonardo is known for his creative work that exhibits many revisions and improvisations during the act of painting. Compared to the final version, he had painted the thumb in a straighter position. He later painted over this to create the curved position of the right thumb we have today. As I mentioned, this kind of re-working during the painting process is typical of Leonardo, but it also suggests (not conclusively) that this is the original work since the other copies have the more bent thumb--as in the final version.
Pigments and binders are also analyzed to try and find signature Leonardo techniques. For example, Martin Kemp describes his usual method of painting over his first underdrawing with a light wash of lead (this was not widely shared with other painters) and his laying of a white lead priming directly onto some of his panels without an intervening layer of gesso. His technique of using his hand to model the flesh tones (something seen in the Salvator Mundi) is also idiosyncratic to Leonardo.
Note Seven (Good Old-Fashion Connoisseurship)
If you are interested in this subject, I really recommend reading, The Eye, by Philippe Costamagna. A specialist in 16th century Italian painting and a museum director in Corsica, Costamagna is a proud proponent of good old-fashioned connoisseurship. This is almost a dirty word in today’s American art world, which has removed art history from being considered a humanities subject and is turning it into a social science with a strong distrust of aesthetic intuitions and body know-how. Of course, the idea of a specialist gaining expertise by basically looking at every picture he or she can manage to see in her area of specialization and creating a memory palace in the mind—which can function as a catalog of all that he or she has seen, so as to be able to just “know” if something is authentic or not-- seems less scientific than the technical, analytical and textual training that is received today. And yet, this is a kind of “know-how” that has always been a part of the art world.
In Costamagma's words: “We stand in front of a work. Boom, we suddenly, instinctively know the artist who painted it”
Having a good eye is what they call it. And, this detached, de-contextualized objective seeing is straight out of Kant. To really see means to really look. And connoisseurs are people who have trained their eyes for decades, focusing on one particular period they would see every example of the artist or genre as possible in order that their eyes would form an expertise allowing them to recognize the hand, style palette of any given artist. To be trained as an “eye” was one of the hallmarks of an advanced degree in art history in days past.
I recommend reading this with The American Leonardo, by John Brewer, about a disputed Leonardo painting which led to a protracted court battle during America's gilded age. This occurred when identification and authentication depended on experts who could just know if a work was genuine or not and they did this by immersing themselves in the artists’ lives and seeing and really looking at everything they could. Costamagna compares the eye to “a nose: in the perfume world. There are musical people who can “know” they are listening to Mozart in just the first note or can hum the entire ring cycle because the music is so deeply inscribed in their minds (my friend can do this).
Peter Greenaway in his documentary Rembrandt's J'Accuse (2008) thinks it is a terrible shame the way we have all become visually illiterate. And perhaps musically, as well?
I agree it is very sad the way we have turned away from memorizing poetry and that art and music has been cut in elementary schools. Children are being forced into so much text-based hoop jumping but we really are losing our cultural sensitivity. We are losing our body know-how.
Note Eight (Consensus)
As in standard models on hard science, attribution is based on consensus among experts. For me, the most noteworthy aspect of this Leonardo discovery is the level of consensus. Of the scholars called upon to examine the picture out of its frame and alongside other early work by Leonardo, only one had qualifications. This was Carmen Bambach, who was inclined to see Boltraffio as playing a major role. The most persuasive dissenting opinion that I read was written by German art historian Frank Zollner in his newly updated Taschen publication.
He seemed inclined to favor another Salvator Mundi picture which was discussed as being the prototype original Leonardo in 1978. This picture, called the de Ganay Salvator Mundi, has a much more impressive French Provenance and also for a time carried a Leonardo attribution (and this picture is maybe a better match for the preparatory drawings in the Royal Trust Collection).
Its provenance originally places the de Ganay in the collection of Anne of Brittany, the wife of the King of France, Louis XII, who was Leonardo's last patron. The de Ganay sold at auction to a private collector for $332,000 in 1992. I would say they got a bargain.
Isn't it gorgeous?
Also a note about the restorer. Dianne Dwyer Modestini was married to one of the world's greatest connoisseurs and restorers of Renaissance painting, Mario Modestini, and is an internationally recognized art restorer and academic in her own right. I found this video in which she discusses the loss of her husband and the Salvator Mundi to be very moving.
“All of the most relevant people believe it’s by Leonardo, so the rather extensive criticism that goes ‘I don’t know anything about old masters, but I don’t think it’s by Leonardo’ shouldn’t ever have gone to print,” says British old masters dealer Charles Beddington. “Yes, it’s a picture that needed to be extensively restored. But the fact that it’s unanimously accepted as a Leonardo shows it’s in good enough condition that there weren’t questions of authenticity.”
I highly recommend reading this above short article from Bloomberg for an understanding of what is so annoying about the peanut gallery. Many years ago the Atlantic had a very thought-provoking article about what the Internet is doing to our brains. It was called Is Google Making us Stupid? And it posits way that online reading is turning us into pancake people. That is to suggest that not only are we reading FAR FEWER books but our understanding of basic concepts from science to art and music is becoming more and more superficial. This is to suggest that we no longer know what we don't know. My own opinion is that since I have not seen the picture in person yet, I cannot make any kind of judgement (since my judgements would only be based on aesthetic calls and emotional reactions anyway). However, I also tried to learn everything I could to write intelligently about this issue. Books recommended on Leonardo are as follows (And if you have any favorites, I am all ears!) I have grown concerned in my own life about the noise of my online life. Social media especially for me has become a time black hole and one day recently I woke up feeling very manipulated. Before the Internet I probably actively read and could talk about 4-6 books a month.
Note Ten: (Since the beginning of time, the super wealthy have over-paid for art)
It speaks volumes that Salvator Mundi was sold in Christie's Post-War and Contemporary Art Evening Sale. Why? Because that is where people spend the big bucks. So, if you are concerned about someone being ripped off, that is where I would look. Have you seen The Price of Everything? The HBO documentary about the contemporary art market does not intentionally mean to be cynical or vilify--but nevertheless the result is intensely obnoxious (I warn you: it might make you throw up in your mouth).
“If every library is in some sense a reflection of its readers, it is also an image of that which we are not, and cannot be.” ― Alberto Manguel, The Library at Night
Brooks Riley wrote so beautifully again over at 3 Quarks about her favorite obsession (except, maybe, for Wagner?): Albrecht Dürer. Like all lovers, Brooks seeks to know him. She says:
Personality is like ether, it hovers in the atmosphere long after death. Decades, even centuries later, long after the end of memories, traces of it move through the air like a fleet aroma caught at just the right odd moment. Where did that come from? It is elusive, and cannot be captured or bottled or even explained. Such is the personality of Dürer. It rises like a mist from a certain landscape seen from the train. It lurks in the amusing portraits of friends like Stefan Paumgartner as St. George, or Willibald Pirckheimer imbibing at the baths, or the selfie pointing to the pain in his spleen. It rages in two haunting, nude sketches of himself. Or radiates in that iconic self-portrait from 1500, which hung in his atelier, never for sale but as constant reminder of the perfection he would strive for with his self-proclaimed ‘diligence', that most German of virtues—a quasi-blasphemous Christ-like pose that sanctified his art through his person. Thomas Hoving once called it ‘the single most arrogant, annoying and gorgeous portrait ever created,' missing the point—or perhaps not. It was so life-like, Dürer's dog ran over to it and started licking it before the paint was quite dry. Of the plethora of explanations for this work, I like to think he painted it in case the Apocalypse predicted for 1500 really happened. I will survive, it says. And he did.
I told her about how,
I had just finished The Vanishing Velázquez: A 19th Century Bookseller’s Obsession with a Lost Masterpiece. There was so much about this book that I loved but one aspect was echoed in your wonderful post--how personality is like ether and it can outlast a human life. Much less was known about Velázquez than about Durer and the author in a very interesting manner (filtered through her own mourning over the death of her beloved father) tries to reconstruct who the Spanish painter was....there is so little to go on. She makes the point though, that in the end, we have all the evidence we need in the pictures themselves. With that in mind, looking at Durer's unbelievable self-portrait I now think the portrait of Durer in the Relic Master was too sweet. But I suppose, like you said, he didn't have a dark side and was known as an overall nice family man? And yet the self portrait!
.... And yet, how to explain Durer's extraordinary self-portrait? Salvator Mundi!
**
I wanted to ask Brooks about Durer's library. I came across a wonderful essay by Suzanne Stratton-Pruitt in a book of essays about Las Meninas. As Laura Cumming described so painfully in her book Vanishing Velazquez, there is very little information to go on about Velazquez's personality (or his inner life). One crucial piece of evidence came to light in 1925 when scholars were able to make an inventory of his library. This was a turning point in Velazquez studies. And in knowing what books he owned, we can surmise that the painter was no intellectual slouch. For informing Las Meninas are sophisticated books on mathematics, architecture and geometry. He also had two editions of Pliny. Velazquez owned 154 volumes--which was substantial for a painter at that time.
In Alberto Manguel's The Library at Night (a book that has become my Bible), the author describes a visit to the fateful home that Cervantes lived in in Valladolid from 1602-1605. Fateful because it was where he wrote his last work, Exemplary Novels (our hotel in Valladolid is named after one of the novellas in this work)-and where Cervantes got caught up in a murder investigation and was --yet again-- hauled off to jail. The house is a museum now and as Manguel wanders amongst what is left of Cervantes belongs, he thinks about the famous Inquiry of the Library chapter in part one of el Quixote. Deciding to try and help the mad Quixote, the barber and the priest decide to purge Don Quixote's library of any items which could have contributed to his madness. Manguel takes note of the housekeeper who insists the room itself must be purified, "for there might be here one of those many wizards who inhabit these books, and he might cast a spell on us, to punish us for wanting to expel them from the world."
Maguel notes that like many people who do not read (He doesn't say who cannot read but who do not read), the housekeeper fears the power of the books that she refuses to open.He goes on to suggest that the same superstition holds true for most readers as well; for the books we keep closest to hand are possessed by magic.
I just re-read this for the third time. It is an absolutely spellbinding story of a man without means who dares to buy a Velazquez at a time when collecting masters was an activity of aristocrats. This man becomes obsessed with his picture. And over time he finds his life falling apart. His wife leaves him and he has to go abroad with his picture where he probably died of poverty (all his money used to fight off lawsuits and advertise his most prized possession in exhibitions he put on in the UK and in New York.
This is a detective story. Two stories, in fact. The story of the bookseller and his picture--but also the story of the mysterious Spanish painter==of which not a lot is known about his personality. As I read this book I wondered if it could have been published in the United States. Not because it is an esoteric story but because the clues are so few and despite enormous research by the author--nothing is uncovered. The clues lead nowhere. Nothing new is learned about Velazquez but worse, the man without means (named Snare) and his painting are never tracked down. He and his picture disappear into the mists of time... so in effect, Cumming is describing a painting that she has not seen nor can she even uncover what became of it. No one is even sure if it is a Velazquez or not.
For me, herein was the great beauty of this book (and I am not alone since this was a great best seller and much discussed book!!). The fewer concrete clues she uncovered the more the author relied on her own intuitions about the artist. It is the most moving art book I have ever read. Art can save a person. Cumming was in mourning for her father and the way Las Meninas spoke to her during her period of sadness is unforgettable. In several places in the book, I got tears in my eyes I was so moved by her words and way of describing how art made her feel. I came to treasure this book and have re-read already three times!
Today in class, one of the students (they are all very bright!) mentioned reading Michel Foucault's essay on Don Quixote, originally from his work, The Order of Things.
I felt very annoyed by the essay, said the student.
What kind of author uses the word "transcendence" three times in one paragraph!!
The class laughed --and our dear professor said --also laughing--
I knew that essay would annoy you guys, as scientists!
He reminded us that the Continental essay tradition does not follow the Anglo-American style of beginning with the main points before proceeding to lay out the argument. The French essai never begins with the conclusion, but rather meanders, aiming to illuminate a topic from various angles. Think of Montaigne. Think of Badiou. Like the French tradition, the traditional Japanese essay form is also known to meander. In fact, the word zuihistu 随筆 means "following the brush." And like the French essai, zuihitsu often feel like personal musings -- but at the same time, tees less rigid forms of writing can be extremely enlightening and thought-provoking.
That said, I am also not a fan of the writing of Michel Foucault. Is anyone a fan of his writing style?
In my last year at Berkeley, my beloved guru, Hubert Dreyfus taught a class with Paul Rabinow on their book about Foucault, called Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics. I loathed the book but was taking any class taught by Dreyfus. Basically, I lived, breathed and dreamt Heidegger those last years and probably would never have ended up in Japan for two decades had it not been for Hubert Dreyfus.
And, like all his classes, Dreyfus began this class on Foucault discussing Heidegger's concept of the clearing (lichtung).
If humans have no essential nature as the Existentialists tell us (ie, "existence precedes essence"), then it is humans themselves who assign meaning to being. That is to say, that humans assign meaning and interpret not only the world around them, but their understanding of being itself, so that being is in fact intrinsically embedded within all the shared social and cultural practices by which we have been socialized and through which we understand the world around us. It is this understanding of being that Heidegger refers to as "the clearing" (lichtung). So fundamental, it is often unconscious to us as well-- like the air we breath. We simply don't notice how these shared practices inform how we understand things, that anything outside the paradigm will show up as incomprehensible (just like trying to get a flat-worlder to think about the earth being round-- it just "doesn't compute").
Foucault used Heidegger's concept of the clearing to explore what he called the episteme. This was always Foucault's primary interest: to try and grasp the a priori network or grid of meaning that we map onto the world.
Professor Wey-Gómez called this the "rules of the world."
I love that expression and had never heard it before.
Cervantes gives us a fiction. But he also always gives us the rules, says the professor.
And, it is in the recognition that reality is a cultural construct and that all narratives have rules by which we can--in this recognition-- that we are able of taking a stand. [the existential stand].
++
Note: Foucault thought that there were two works of art that heralded the modern world: Diego Velázquez and Miguel de Cervantes. Specifically it was Velázquez’s famous painting of Philip IV’s daughter the Infanta Margarita and her entourage, Las Meninas--and Cervantes' Don Quixote.
About Las Meninas, he writes
We are looking at a picture in which the painter is in turn looking out at us. A mere confrontation, eyes catching one another’s glance, direct looks superimposing themselves upon one another as they cross. And yet this slender line of reciprocal visibility embraces a whole complex network of uncertainties, exchanges, and feints. The painter is turning his eyes towards us only in so far as we happen to occupy the same position as his subject.
Someone should write a beautifully written book in a meandering and personal style about these two works of art since they are somehow linked.
There is a wonderful letter, in James Elkins' Pictures and Tears, about museum goers looking at a landscape painting in Japan. The lady who wrote the letter to Elkins was in Tokyo as part of an Andy Warhol exhibition. Unable to speak the language and perhaps not all that knowledgeable about the culture, it had to be based on some kind of misunderstanding that she came to believe that the painting of a waterfall on rare display at the Nezu Museum, called Nachi Waterfall, was "a picture of God."
This painting is a National Treasure of Japan and is not displayed so often (I never managed to see it in 22 years there). So, not surprisingly, the exhibition was jam-packed full of people there to see it.
In the letter, she described how beautifully dressed the people were, many in formal kimono and some looked to be college professors. She said it was like going to the Met, except that when she finally got near the picture, she found the people around her to all be silently standing there crying.
It is an extraordinary story in an extraordinary book.
Has that ever happened to you? Have you ever been overcome to tears by a painting? (It has to be a painting and it has to be tears).
James Elkin (my new favorite writer) is obsessed by Stendhal Syndrome--and since I am obsessed by Jerusalem Syndrome, I couldn't help but find myself increasingly intrigued. I never knew that-- unlike Mark Twain (who has a malaise named after himself too)-- that Stendhal, like so many others at that time period, had become so utterly enraptured by the art he saw in Florence that he became dizzy and had heart palpitations. In fact, apparently, he had to seek medical help. Elkins says that in the old days, it was much more common to be moved to tears by art.
In fact, as far as emotional response to paintings, we are living in a bit of a dry age, he insists.
There is a wonderful letter, in James Elkins' Pictures and Tears, about museum goers looking at a landscape painting in Japan. The lady who wrote the letter to Elkins was in Tokyo as part of an Andy Warhol exhibition. Unable to speak the language and perhaps not all that knowledgeable about the culture, it had to be based on some kind of misunderstanding that she came to believe that the painting of a waterfall on rare display at the Nezu Museum, called Nachi Waterfall, was "a picture of God."
This painting is a National Treasure of Japan and is not displayed so often (I never managed to see it in 22 years there). So, not surprisingly, the exhibition was jam-packed full of people there to see it.
In the letter, she described how beautifully dressed the people were, many in formal kimono and some looked to be college professors. She said it was like going to the Met, except that when she finally got near the picture, she found the people around her to all be silently standing there crying.
It is an extraordinary story in an extraordinary book.
Has that ever happened to you? Have you ever been overcome to tears by a painting? (It has to be a painting and it has to be tears).
James Elkin (my new favorite writer) is obsessed by Stendhal Syndrome--and since I am obsessed by Jerusalem Syndrome, I couldn't help but find myself increasingly intrigued. I never knew that-- unlike Mark Twain (who has a malaise named after himself too)-- that Stendhal, like so many others at that time period, had become so utterly enraptured by the art he saw in Florence that he became dizzy and had heart palpitations. In fact, apparently, he had to seek medical help. Elkins says that in the old days, it was much more common to be moved to tears by art.
In fact, as far as emotional response to paintings, we are living in a bit of a dry age, he insists.
I doubt this will surprise many people, but Elkin says that Rothko is the modern painter most famous for causing viewers to cry. Exploring Art's connection to time and to God, Elkins goes through quite a lot of effort to try and figure out why exactly Rothko makes people cry (even reading over all the entries in the guestbook at the Houston Chapel), but in the end, he doesn't ever nail the reason.
The artist himself explained it simply thus:
I'm interested only in expressing basic human emotions. And the fact that a lot of people break down and cry when confronted with my pictures shows that I can communicate these basic human emotions. (Mark Rothko)
Interestingly, Elkin himself has never broken down in front of a painting--nor has the great Gombrich.
I think he is right, that crying in front of pictures is simply a rarity in today's world of disenchantment and the commodification of all our experiences. Speaking for myself, I have been deeply touched and experienced a tremendous emotional response from the art I saw as part of my Piero Pilgrimage, as well as when I finally made it to Belgium to see van Eyck's Mystic Lamb in Ghent. Piero's frescoes in Arezzo in particular were reminiscent of emotional reactions I have had to Buddhist statues (butsuzo) in Japan--which is that of feeling drawn in and immediately calmed.
In 2007 (or 2008?), NHK Broadcasting in Japan aired an amazing documentary on their Highvision channel, called the "Best Loved Buddhist Sculpture in Japan"（book version: にっぽん 心の仏像100選). To prepare for the show viewers were invited to write the station to tell stories of their most beloved Buddhist statue. NHK received 1400 letters and from those letters, they compiled a top 100 list. In a country full of tremendous sculpture, I wasn't surprised how moving the letters were. But, as they went through the list , working their way up to the #1 most popular, I was struck by the way these statues were embedded into the lives of the people who loved them. Especially elderly people interviewed, said something along these lines:
"The statue has just always been there. When I was a girl, I would come and help polish the temple floors or come here with my mom and aunties to pray. Of course my beloved mother and my beloved aunties are now long gone, but the statue remains, and nowadays when I come here, it's like I am back here again with my loved ones."
Something real-- something eternal, the butsuzo for the people interviewed seemed to be an interwoven part of their lives. Rather than works of art or treasures of the nation, the statues were viewed as being members of the community. The program showed one butsuzo that needed repair and filmed as one of the village men wrapped it up in a huge long piece of cloth and strapping it on his back carried it down the mountain like he was hauling a bale of hay (or in Asia, the way women carry babies and small children). The scholars and guests were stunned. One sputtered, "Why, I have never seen anything like that."
In another scene, a group of parishioners gathered around their village butsuzo and took a group picture. The Butsuzo was in the middle, like one of the gang.
In yet another scene, a very elderly woman had gone to Osaka to live with her son's family. She had wanted desperately to come and visit the Butsuzo of the village; for it was always there in her heart. Finally, her son agreed to make the long trip back to the village and drove her up the mountain and helped her into the temple, where she sat on the tatami matted floor in front of the statue of Kannon-sama. Putting her hands together in prayer, she smiled as if she was in the company of a long-lost friend.
Toward the end of the program a scholar in religious studies, came on and commented how in the same way that infants respond seamlessly to the expression on their mother's faces, so too are we effected by what we see. He said, psychology and science can prove that looking at something that calms us is by definition good for us. It's true on two accounts, I think. One, that these butsuzo have a tremendous power to calm us or effect certain positive emotions. Even on the TV screen, to be honest I found myself feeling increasingly calm-- and yes, happy.
That one of the ladies, with crippling arthritis, chose to gather flowers from her garden and hike up a mountain road to the top where the temple was located at first seemed overkill. But, actually, I imagine her slow methodical pace up the hill got her blood really moving, and then at the top-- the reward. Sitting on the sweet-smelling tatami mats, she put her hands to pray and a look of great peace swept over her face. I imagine, if she is like me, that moment of calm-- spreading out from her belly up toward her face, pupils dilating, she gently closes her eyes and lets a feeling close to bliss-- but quieter-- sweep over her.
Still, that feeling of being utterly drawn in and held in awe is quite different from being floored, or as Elkins calls, it punched in the stomach.
This is something that has only happened to me once and it was so totally unexpected that I simply feel embarrassed by it. First of all, it happened in front of a picture that is so over-reproduced that it is a wonder that anyone can feel anything about it. Like the Mona Lisa, Leonardo's Last Supper is perhaps one of the most over-copied works of art in the world. Umberto Eco, for example, found something like seven wax copies just on a trip from LA to San Francisco. I had absolutely no expectation of feeling anything. In fact, were it not for my astronomer and his devotion to Leonardo, I would have just as soon skipped it. I also am not a fan of Last Supper iconography--and of the three possible Last Supper subjects, my least favorite is the one Leonardo chose: that of the betrayal.
So, I just could not believe it when I cried!
Elkin captured what happened to me as I stood there in that room looking at the Last Supper as my eyes were swimming with very hot tears:
"Pow! They are responses to the painting's sheer unexpected overwhelming presence. In each case the painting is suddenly there, exerting a real force on the viewer, knocking the wind out of him or shoving him down."
That was indeed, exactly how it felt, as a very very sudden and unexpected density and presence. And I was almost overcome by love. Elkin likens this to a religious experience ("Crying at God") and says,
If you love a painting, and are overwhelmed by it--perhaps even to tears-- then you may be aware of a certain presence, an immediacy or even a nameless pushing. Those words, like the word "God," some from a place that cannot be reached by language. Most of the time they can be called by any number of names, but there are also occasions when they need to be named directly.
The painting of the waterfall I mentioned at the top, by the way, perhaps moved the people at the exhibition in the same way. This same work also greatly intrigued Andre Malroux. Actually to say "intrigued" is to put it mildly; for it was standing in front of the painting that Malroux experienced a spiritual epiphany-- what he called the "transmission of the sacred." Malroux considered all works of art to be "signs" that illuminate the questions of our inner reality--not the answers, but the questions. And it was standing in front of this picture in which he discovered what he called "primordial forms." Whoever painted the picture would have liked that interpretation since the painting has not traditionally been considered to be a mere landscape. It is rather viewed as an example of religious art, or suijaku-ga (paintings based on Shinto-Buddhist unity). Suijaku are "traces" of Buddhist nature as pictured in the guise of a Shinto deity (ie, in the case, the waterfall). So, in a sense, the picture is of "God;" though maybe better is to say it serves to capture our attention as a mandala does, embodying Buddhist cosmology or truth.
I've written here about the plague of our disposable society (also definitely see Jalees Rehman's piece here), and wondered if then, there is really no escape from "man the eternal consumer?" Not only are the neo-liberal practices of production and consumption ruining the planet, but they are ruining our lives. I really believe that. As I wrote last June, my astronomer is more optimistic. He thinks that erotic love is the last frontier by which a person can access the numinous. Beyond pure efficient instrumentalism, love is--as Badiou and Zizek write--all about madness and yes even violence. My beloved believes that purely practical people can still fall madly in love and that this experience is something --in today's world more than ever-- that is deeply hungered after. As always, I guess I am more pessimistic and agree with Zizek that it is gradually disappearing as well (as Badiou says, "Love is not a contract between two narcissists"). For in a truly disposable culture what things or experiences will have the power to move us beyond what Carl Sagan called the prison of the self? It's no surprise, I guess, that this dead-end in the search for meaning is where all roads end in ruins in Continental philosophy today....
