Art History Today

Painters, Thieves and Plagues.

According to Van Dyck's Italian sketchbook, in Palermo he encountered one Don Fabrizio Valguarnera, a nobleman with a Catalan pedigree dating back to the 14^th century. Though he had been born into a noble family and raised as a gentleman, Don Fabrizio did not have enough money to keep himself in the style he wanted. He tried to solve his relative poverty by attempting to obtain a position as a physician at the Spanish court, but was unsuccessful. He had great success, however, operating as an art dealer, orchestrating dodgy deals with paintings, and especially jewels. These were eventually to lead to his downfall because he engaged a thief in Madrid to steal a shipment of diamonds from traders in that city. His friend fled to France, but the impassive Don Fabrizio thought himself above suspicion, that is until the merchants he had stolen from tried several attempts on his life. Don Fabrizio took the hint and made his way via France to Rome where he sought out the studios of famous painters, his aim being to use the proceeds of the robbery to buy paintings from celebrated artists like Poussin, Pietro da Cortona and Lanfranco. A strange aspect of this journey was Valguarnera's decision to murder his accomplice and take the diamonds, but he was swayed from this drastic cause by the appearance of the image of the Virgin Mary in a dream forbidding him to commit murder. What a typical baroque blend of religiosity, violence and art crime. In Rome Valguarnera's past caught up with him. Three merchants from Spain came to Rome and exposed his nefarious activities to the authorities; this resulted in his arrest and a celebrated trial featuring, of all people Poussin, whose Plague of Ashdod, had been sold to the aristocrat for 110 scudi. As Poussin told the court he would not accept diamonds as payment, but waited for real currency. Wise man!

The exact nature of Valguarnera's activities in Palermo are not known, but he seems to have asked Italian and Flemish painters there to make copies of Old Testament stories, presumably for illegal reasons. He may have commissioned copies from Van Dyck although the young artist would have been preoccupied with his greatest painting in Italy: another plague painting showing St Rosalia whose remains were discovered on Monte Pellegrino during Van Dyck's visit to Palermo in 1624. This altarpiece- not widely known outside specialist circles- was based on Rubens's altarpieces from his Italian period. In May of that year the plague broke out which eventually was to kill Van Dyck's benefactor, Emmanuel Filiberto, Viceroy of Savoy, whose magnificent portrait the artist painted a few months before the patron died. Fearing for his own life, Van Dyck lost no time in escaping the plague by returning to Genoa until news of his sister's death brought him back to Antwerp in 1627.

As for Valguarnera, again he thought his aristocratic bearing coupled with hard lies would get him acquitted. Not so: the evidence mounted against him and he died in a Roman prison in 1631 with "no marks on his body." Despite Valguarnera's immorality, Poussin scholars will always be grateful to him because the proceedings of his trial reveal important information about art in Rome. Now if only Valguarnera could have given us a description of Poussin's workshop, which he must have visited during 1630-1.  

 

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Van Dyck and Rubens

The current debate about the two, almost identical, works by Anthony van Dyck is fortuitous; it comes exactly at the time when I'm teaching classes on the Northern baroque, specifically in 17th century Antwerp. So, I'm able to combine work with a blog post, and it's high time I did another post.

The Rotterdam panel was once owned by Rubens, which implies that Van Dyck modified Ruben's design to fit his own ideas. Questions of connoisseurship and attribution aside, the panels invite speculation on the relationship between two of the greatest artists that the 17th century produced.

Anthony van Dyck probably first met Rubens in 1615, the year that Rubens supposedly painted a portrait of the younger artist. If it is by Rubens, the portrait seems an attempt to check the stylistic exuberance demonstrated in Van Dyck's memorable Self-Portrait of 1613-14. In that striking image, Van Dyck looks back over his shoulder at the spectator; the effect is ambivalent, half innocence and half calculation, the latter borne out by his stare which is unflinching for such an apprentice. For apprenticed he was- not to Rubens, but to the mediocre Hendrik van Balen- a situation to be improved when Van Dyck officially became a pupil of Rubens in 1617. Rubens himself never took on young pupils preferring elder, accomplished artists, his reason being that younger painters should train with another master before entering his workshop. Perhaps this controlling tendency lies behind his portrait of Van Dyck, which whilist retaining something of the "romanticism" of Van Dyck's own, re-models his image. Gone are the tendrils of hair falling down over the younger artist's forehead; instead they are eclipsed by the shadow above the eyes.

Although Van Dyck seems to have joined Rubens's workshop around 1616-17, the employment situation was far from simple. The younger artist may have kept his own workshop, whilist also working in Rubens's, an odd, and illegal state of affairs since Van Dyck was going against the rules of the Antwerp Guild. Rubens seems to have turned a blind eye to this, not out of affection for his problematic pupil, but because Van Dyck was the greatest painter, after the master, in the entire workshop. Yet the two semi-identical panels suggest a dynamic between the two studios. The Stockholm panel is thought to be a copy, possibly based on the Rotterdam version which may have been used as a model. But did the Rotterdam version- owned by Rubens- come from his studio initially, or were the two panels conceived by Van Dyck in his own studio?  

That- and other connoisseurship issues- may be resolved by the large Van Dyck exhibition being planned for the Prado in 2012, but the relationship between Rubens and Van Dyck still fascinates with its narrative of intergenerational tensions, multiple studio operations and competitive rivalry. Consulting a catalogue of the Van Dyke exhibition of 1999, I find mention of even possible envy on Rubens's part towards a genius 22 years his junior, rapidly catching up with the elder artist, even surpassing him in one genre- portraiture. According to this source, it was the 17th century critic and biographer Bellori, who said that Rubens would only cede to Van Dyck in the field of portraiture, and no other. This may be why portraiture is emphasized in the allegorical headpiece to Bellori's Life of Anthony van Dyck. This figure- a woman holding up a mirror whilst trampling the ape of nature- representing "Judicious Imitation" explains why – as Claire Pace and Janice Bell explain in a wonderful essay on Bellori's allegories- Van Dyck whilist tied to his model as a portraitist, nevertheless was selective and judicious enough to supplant its limitations and put portraits on a level almost with history painting.

So much for Van Dyck in the abstract, but his early life in Antwerp was firmly down to earth with family squabbles, bankruptcy and acrimonious law suits. Van Dyck's genius was born of painful necessity, which takes the shine off the myth of the aristocratic artist fashioning courtly pictures for jaded and decadent elites. Van Dyck's financial embarrassment and its consequences may well have instilled in him that competitive and determined nature that gave him the confidence to go up against one of the greatest of baroque masters.  

Left-hand Theory

Reading Lisa Jardine's meditation on left-handedness in a BBC article put me in mind of an old rock song from the 1970s. An odd recollection? No, because the song was called "Left Hand Theory" hence the post title. PFM's "Left Hand Theory" is a potted history of left-handed achievements in culture. Mentioned are southpaw baseball players, witches, associated with the sinister- sinistral = left-, guitarists like Jimi Hendrix, and for the artists, Leonardo da Vinci, who was ambidextrous.

Left-handed people are comparatively rare in the adult population- 7-10%. You're in good artistic company if you're a left-handed person with a creative inclination. Looking at a list on a site called Famous lefthanders, I see Leonardo and Michelangelo amongst the artists, but I didn't know Rubens was part of this talented company. Knowing that, I'm even more impressed at the fluency with which his brush, pen and chalk traveled the artistic surface. Durer's on the list- but that seems wrong. As Jardine rightly points out, the self-portrait drawing of Durer does not show left-handedness; he's using a mirror so the image is naturally reversed.  

Here's the lyric to "Left-hand Theory", a beautifully concise presentation of the creative left-hand.  

 

Left-hand Theory- PFM

 

You left-handed people

You have your own special flair

Fast left-handed players

Slow men had better beware

Tough baseball southpaw

Left tennis smash

 

Left-handed person

Once was a sign of a witch

Now the world needs them

To teach us a different stitch

What do they mirror?

A contrast in view

 

Think of da Vinci  

His ambidextrous arts

Hendrix's guitar sang

Sweet feedback lightnin' from mars

And in reflection

We see the stars

New Leonardo for 2010?

2010 has begun with rumours of a newly discovered Leonardo da Vinci painting. Thanks to my friend in Los Angeles, Ben Sweeney, for sending me this article. According to this article, an anonymous source told the Washington Post that the Boston MFA has a Leonardo in its holdings.

As I told Ben, it seems like American art historians on the east coast are in love with the mystery surrounding Da Vinci rather than the actual work. They all sound conspiratorial; they're certainly tight-lipped about this mysterious newly discovered painting. What also contributes to the aura of mystery are the references to the Da Vinci code by Alexander Nagel who seems to know something we don't. Can any Da Vinci matter be entirely free of this absurd sensationalism?

I visited Boston MFA in 2006. It has a decent selection of renaissance paintings including works by Rosso and Rogier van der Weyden, but an authenticated Leonardo would raise Boston's stock considerably. Art historians say they have no photo, Ben thinks it might be the Lansdowne Madonna- images, courtesy of him. Ben hopes that the art historians used his discovery that shows that the infrared of the Christ child's left hand is actually a Poly-syndactyly hand. More on that here.

Near the end of the last decade, we heard about a new Leonardo drawing; are we going to start this decade with another discovery? 2010 will reveal all.

Happy New Year!