Art History Today

Sotheby’s Summer Study in London Michelangelo to Matisse: European Art, 1500-1900.

Sotheby's have asked me to publicise a course they’re teaching this summer. An overview and contact details can be found here. Here’s a short description of the course.

In this intensive course students explore four extraordinary centuries in the history of European art, from the High Renaissance of the early sixteenth century to the Avant-Garde movements of the early twentieth. The course has a broadly chronological structure, within which key themes and issues will be explored under the guidance of a succession of expert tutors. There will be a focus on paintings and sculpture, and on the works of masters such as Michelangelo, Titian, Holbein, Caravaggio, Bernini, Rubens, Claude, Poussin, Watteau, Hogarth, Tiepolo, Delacroix , Turner, Manet, Monet, Whistler and Matisse. Along the journey students will explore the impact of the classical past; the interrelationship between stylistic developments, materials and technique; questions of production, consumption and the market; and the broader cultural, intellectual and historical context in which certain kinds of art emerged. Continuities in the Western art tradition are explored alongside challenges, change and renewal.

A schedule of visits to galleries and museums in London, as well as a day trip to Cambridge, form an integral part of the experience. This is because the teaching approach at Sotheby’s Institute of Art emphasizes object-based learning, enabling students to gain confidence in identifying and evaluating a wide range of different works of art: we believe that firsthand experience of those works of art is irreplaceable, and London contains exceptional venues for that experience.
The ultimate aim is to provide students with an understanding of a rich, exciting and crucial phase in the development of European art, while also developing their critical and visual capacities. The course attempts to foster skills appropriate to careers in the art world.

 

The Malmesbury Judgement of Paris: the Full Picture: Updated Research Report 4.

This is the final post in the series of research reports on the enigmatic and controversial Judgment of Paris- apologies for the delay. The technical research is organized under various headings, some with sub-divisions.

Judgment of Paris, att to Raphael, 1512, Private Collection, U.K.

1.  General introduction to technology used in scientific examination of Judgment of Paris

As this is a scientific report, and in order to establish the credentials of the author of the report, I think it’s only fair to introduce the post with a statement about Graeme Cameron’s professional background, and his expertise in the technical examination of paintings, which seems to have been questioned in some quarters. What follows is guided heavily by Graeme's scientific expertise, and is virtually verbatim. I don’t have anything like Graeme's technical expertise, just quietly added my voice at times, when I thought it appropriate.

Graeme Cameron’s Technical & Scientific Research Background

The scientific and technical investigative analysis of Old Master paintings in research projects, was an important specialty of the author’s multi-disciplinary background, complimenting his documentary and connoisseurship approach to the restitution of lost art works. This commenced in the United Kingdom in the late 1970’s, where he was much assisted in this area by the facilities of the University of London’s, noted Courtauld Institute, through the auspices of the leading British scholar, Mr. Christopher Wright FRS and by Sir Robert Bruce Gardner, the head of the institute’s Conservation Department.

Graeme Cameron also conducted additional independent scientific investigations using X-Radiography, infra-red, microscopy, macro photography and paint chip section analysis, etc. whilst in the United Kingdom over four years, which continues today.

As a consequence in the mid 1990’s, he was invited by Professor John Miller of the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology University’s Department of Physics, to perform a senior guest lecturing role in this specialist area of the sciences, conducting tutorials and subject exams in the methods and developing role of scientific techniques employed in today’s art research and attribution investigations.

He was earlier Conference Guest Speaker on this topic of “The Use of Scientific Techniques in Art Research”, at the International Conference of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgeons in Sydney, Australia in the late 1990’s, by invitation of its Professor President.

 Surface probing systems

Two scientific technologies were employed to analyse the painting’s sub surface, which revealed extensive compositional alterations, as noted in the volume, The Secrets of Leonardo da Vinci, Vol. 1.

These revealed not only the usual few “pentimenti”, but many major changes of Raphael’s created whilst refining his original concept of the legend. These findings eclipsed any that Cameron had witnessed over the past four decades conducting such investigative research. Such significant compositional changes confirmed the artist had used the sub surface of his composition as he would a sketching board. Only through technology can we now view his unique, multi- staged original creative development of this pivotal composition.

This extensive development of the composition from its initial concept, comes direct from the great artist’s mind, and is a rare event to witness in the field of Renaissance paintings research.

Infra-red Reflectography Scanning

In 2002, twelve detailed scans were undertaken at The University of Melbourne’s, technical analysis facility for art works, providing some remarkable findings of the painting’s sub surface, which first revealed this unique staged genesis of the composition.

Both Infra-red and Vega Scans of sections, whole image showing the many significant head, garment and hand compositional changes.	Both infra-red and Vega Scans of Goddesses body sections.

Two infra-red sections of Goddess Body Sections.

The most significant of these were the four major changes of both the position, dress and of the physiognomy of the face, of the seated figure of “Paris”. Likewise those of three significant changes to the dog’s position and other primary alterations were observed, including those to both of “Paris’s hands. See detailed discussion and other images of scans below.

VegaScan Deeper Sub surface Scanning

VegaScan of pentimenti of 4 body position, dress and face changes to Raphael figure.

A decade following the Infra-red reflectology scans, an advanced new scanning method developed by Cameron, the VegaScan system, was used to further reveal these known sub surface features, and search for further alterations.

Whilst the technology is still subject to proprietary restrictions, this adaptive scanning process, achieves the spectral sublimation of a primary image’s layers, by sequentially dissolving from the surface image, through its various constituent layers, to reveal its original deep sub surface base components. In simple terms, it is a technical way of peeling off the various upper layers of the paintng, (like an onion), to reveal the compostion’s deeper sub surface features.

These clearer scans further assisted the viewing and interpretation of the known major creative changes and importantly revealed that “Mercury”, in the top right corner, was originally lower and only one third of the size, than seen today on the finished surface.

location of inverted modello.

Further, a fascinating small fully completed “Modello”, also in oils, of a “Study for a Madonna & Child”, was also discovered, in a reverse mode in the upper right section of the work, an earlier trial study “pentimento. Further research indicates this to be slightly different to any extant version, of these subjects, but certainly has Raphael’s imprimatur, and is thus a previously unknown study for a future uncompleted work. For further observations on this hidden “modello”, see below.

2. Condition of Painting.

Examination of craquelure reveals

detail showing craquelure

There is volume loss present, consistent with 16thC Renaissance works; there is also shrinkage, very fine rectangular 16thC cracquelure, again consistent with works from this period.Initial Glazing layers are the original layers.

In 1980, ultra violet testing in London likewise confirmed there has been no alterations or intrusions or retouching performed and that the time yellowed balsamic glazes exhibited the usual indications of the deep opaque green of original varnish.

It should also be noted that for approximately two centuries or possibly more, this painting remained fully protected behind a framed glass surround, quite rare method usually reserved for watercolours rather than protecting oil paintings. Thus the vanish darkening effects, especially of 19thC Victorian coal fuelled fires has been averted.

Ultraviolet test reveals

Additional to remarks on varnish. This examination confirmed a dense cloudy green layer of extremely aged varnish over the entire surface of the painting with just a few tiny incidental losses having earlier been inpainted. This affirmed the physical observation that the work’s final surface glazing(s) had experienced minimal past cleaning or other interference, and are remarkably close to their original status.

Giorgione/Titian, Concert Champetre, Louvre, 1508-9.

The aged varnish imparts a patinated hue to the painting’s s surface and is particularly evident in the golden glow of the nude goddesses' bodies. In 1854 Gustave Waagen referred to this as,“the warmest golden tones”. Through this craquelure however other fresher colours and more natural pink flesh tones are readily discernible. In his Titian to1518, pp 99, Joannides had observed a very similar phenomenon in respect to the broadly contemporary Giorgione/Titian “Pastoral Concert” painting, where he refers  to, “layers of dirty and coloured varnish give it crespuscular warmth and subdued harmomy”.. “and its colour relations were once sharper brighter and more emphatic..” Over the considerable period since such finish(es) were finally applied, they had developed the expected fine, regular pattern of craquelure, resultant from their gradual hardening and consequent shrinkage from volume loss, of their naturally derived volatile balsamic constituents. Beneath these, can be evidenced the deeper, wider craquelure and fissuring of the original painted surface, caused likewise by this ageing process. Thus it still remains as Waagen had earlier noted in 1854, “in excellent preservation”, much due to its long unbroken provenance from 1770 – 1952 with successive Earls of Malmesbury whilst also having been protected behind glass, from 18^th -19thC coal laden city atmospheres, in provincial Malmesbury.

3. Pigment Analysis.

Microscopy

It is intended for gas chromatographic pigment analysis to be performed, as with the Holbein, however earlier attempts to have this arranged were unable to proceed due to prior commitments of the laboratory contacted. Initial microscopic visual analysis at 250x revealed crystalline structures of the pigments, consistent with those of other early 16thC works.

Lapis – not yet determined but is either this or Azurite.

Azurite – not yet determined but is either this or Lapis

Perhaps glass powder – It should be stated that glass powder appears restricted to Raphael’s earlier Florentine works, and it is recalled that Jill Dunkerton (of the scientific dept. at the NG)  actually admitted it was not definitive, as both this pigment and Raphael’s base grounds were both widely variable.

Ridolofi’s remarks.

Ridolfi, Title-page Le maraviglie dell’ Arte ovvero, Le vite degli Illustri Pittori Veneti and dello Stato, 1648.

Ridolofi’s citing is critically important as few paintings carry Ridolfi’s rare imprimatur and connoisseurship expertise. There is the other conjoint fact well worth citing that just as today in 2012 we can quite easily determine an 1850’s Victorian painting by its cracquelure and aged appearance, so in 1648 it would have been just as easy for Ridolfi to discern the painting had all the same age characteristics of a circa 1510 example.

Secondly, any advanced pigment testing would still only age the painting to around Ridolfi’s 1648 period and backwards, as the same pigments were used over that same 150 year period, and no test can yet differentiate within that one and a half century timeline. Therefore his unique visual 1648 on site evaluation is a more valid confirmation of this painting early 16thC dating, with the additional imprimatur of his acknowledged connoisseurship credentials of knowing many significant master’s paintings, and attesting to their primacy, even if he understandably gave this in Venice to Giorgione and not Raphael, for the earlier mentioned valid reasons.

4. Alterations and substitutions

Underdrawing

Vega Scans revealing a “modello” of a Madonna. below, magnification of vega scans revealing different layers.

 

A fascinating additional subsurface feature of significance was also revealed during these investigations, which would further support Raphael’s authorship of the painting. This is a finely detailed Study, Modello colorito, albeit just 12cm sq. approx, in an inverted position at the end of the right goddesses robe, for a exquisite Madonna and Child composition. The Madonna has her hair half covered by a light headdress, with a trailing piece to the rear, and is garbed in a white blouse with ballooning shoulders, contrasted with darker armbands over the upper arms, (which from the density scale of its Infra-red colour values are most probably in red). Over this white blouse is a darker “V” necked tunic, (which due to its much darker colour value is probably in the blue range), with white ballooning sleeves at the Virgin’s wrists.

magnification of Vegascan showing buried modello.

She cradles the figure of the infant Christ against her right breast, but significantly, it can also be discerned that she is holding a small darker rectangular (Bible) book in her right hand, which she is reading from, perhaps whilst suckling the infant Christ. The composition has a distant city background with walled buildings, one larger one with a dome and tower with a spire, and also a broad sky. Her exposed left arm comes up under the infant’s right arm, whilst her Right hand is just visible above his left shoulder, holding the book. It appears this fully painted study was for an unrealised Madonna and Child project as it differs from any of Raphael’s known executed Madonnas.

Alba Madonna, National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1509-10.	Colonna Madonna, Gemäldegalerie, Berlin, c. 1507.

The various deep subsurface “invisible” images captured range between just 2 and 12 kb in size and are in a very deep nanometer 25,000+ range, being reproduced through combined Infra-red with advanced surface scanning technology, and the resultant composition is only just discernible through, the final scans offering the best image resolution. Its detailing and qualities appear quite consistent with Raphael’s other productions from this period. The composition shares similarities with the contemporary, Alba Madonna, and since she is holding the small Bible, also has links with his earlier 1507 Colonna Madonna, now in Berlin. However in this rendition the Madonna is portrayed in a different posture to either of these, which suggest it represents a unique new creation from Raphael’s early Roman period. There is a separate seated Infant study to the Left of this, looking away from this composition, and various other minor pentimenti and alteration

Its existence on this work’s sub surface indicate it to be an original draft composition for a Madonna & Child subject from the period. Interestingly, under infra-red the inverted foreground robe reveals an underlying boat, scoop or cradle shape.

The under drawing is substantial and quite unprecedented in his oeuvre. This painting represents Raphael’s most innovative example in a ‘private work’ of the “Venetian oil on canvas alteration technique”, as demonstrated in Giorgione’s ‘The Tempest’, eg. where the focal nude figure was substantially shifted. In the Judgment of Paris composition, Raphael uses the original sub surface for both major compositional changes and minor figural improvements, as the concept is developed to its final surface appearance. He would have learned of these techniques from Marcantonio, who had worked with both Giorgione and Titian in Venice, and also from observing Piombo whilst working with him in the Farnesina Gallery.

Major Changes and their Implications.

There are three major alterations and substitutions that Raphael has made to the original conception that were initially revealed by Infra-red spectography carried out at the University of Melbourne’s, Ian Potter Centre for Art Research, by Mr. Sean Loughrey MA and later at the authors advanced scanning facility.

These alterations included:

Vega scans. Section A shows four different face and position changes, as they advance from the tree. Section B shows the two upper and lower hand positions, and a forefinger extension.

Shallower vega scan revealing final changes to the composition, which occur as “pentimenti” nearer the surface than the other three Vega Scans. In section A, the hand has 2 position changes and is downturned with a golden apple partly visible. The four faces changes are also evident. In section B the dog has had 3 very significant changes of its position, moving down with Paris away from the centre, being originally seated right next to “Fornarina.”

1. Changes to the ‘moment of Judgement’ of The Judgement of Paris episode, and consequential changes to the hands, both in their gesture and function, with substitutions of the Golden Apple award. The hand in the original hooded figure- see below for remarks on dress- was originally upturned and offering the Golden Apple seen within it, not pointing as in the last two versions. This means that in the so-called original “Shepherd” images, no “Apple” was in his lower clenched hand.

Detail showing later Mercury departing after Paris’s decision.

This reading is also supported by changes noted to the figure of Mercury who was originally conceived as a small, foreshortened figure in the sky, floating above the “Judgement” scene at right angles to the picture plane. Raphael subsequently deleted this figure, by the addition of a cloud, and substituted it with a far more significant and detailed Mercury figure, in a twisting pose, diagonal to the picture plane, departing the scene below. He looks back across his shoulder to the unfolding drama taking place below. Mercury’s role and depiction has therefore changed from one of observer of the contest, to that of bearer of the news of Paris’s final Judgement decision to Mount Olympus. This substitution also functions as a clever perspective device to accentuate the strong triangulation of the composition, to the sky, while assisting the painting’s three dimensionality and its depth, relative to the planar focal figures.

2. The most important change is one which completely revises the narrative from the classical interpretation of the legend, as in the later collaborative engraving by Marcantonio, (after the antique sculptural friezes), into an early 16thc Arcadian nude posie painting of love, in the contemporary Venetian manner. See post 3 of this series for a detailed discussion of this. This change transforms the painting’s concept from its traditional rendition, into the artist’s personal painting of love, and only known visual declaration of their joint devotion.

5. Dating

Sub-surface-see the above remarks on Ridolfi.

Age and date concordances scientifically confirmed dress by dendrochronology.

Raphael’s portrait. Physiognomic Age specific images. Raphael's countenance, which as proven by its subsurface pentimenti, was added into the composition to join that of Fornarina, and is also a unique portrayal, in that it is not a copy of any previously known image of him, either in its dress or "type", It too is an "Age and Date specific "original" portrait like Fornarina's of 1512. His physiognomy is consistent with that of "Stanza" version, with the garb datable to this period, however he is clearly younger and in better health than seen in the 1519 joint portrait. None of these could be claimed as "chance" likenesses but were purpose created portraits for this painting.

Faces of Raphael. Stanza self-portrait (1509-10); Judgment self-portrait (1512); self-portrait with a Friend, (1518)

Fornarina’s portrait. The Fornarina is clearly a more naive and youthful portrayal than any previously known image of her and is therefore neither a copy nor any "chance resemblance", but a unique visage of her in 1512. It is self evidently an "Age and Date” specific portrait, which most accurately records her actual physiognomy at that time, which may well include her naked countenance, from this original sitting.Accurate portraits are difficult enough to create, yet both these are finely wrought, true to life renditions and dateable to Rome in 1512.It is his first portrayal of the young Fornarina’s portrait image in Rome, completed in the year 1512, but probably commenced in 1511.

Faces of Fornarina. Judgment (1512); Sistine Madonna (1513);  “La Donna Velata” (1516).

6. Forensic

Anatomical

Raphael’s body type; concordant facial Comparisons.

Physiognomic

Ears and feet; physiological concordances.

Craniological

Similarities with Raphael’s exhumed skull and consequently proposed facial features; the ear of Venus is comparable with Raphaels other contemporary portrayal of ears The very distinctive “Raphaelesque Feet’ are quite comparable with his other portrayals and show a remarkable concordance.

Crainiometric comparison and forensic analysis is hoped to be undertaken at a future time to compare the now established visual concordances.  Readers might like to know that interest in Raphael’s skull dates back to the early modern period. What was thought to be Raphael’s skull was adorned with laurels by the Accademia di San Luca, but subsequent investigations revealed it to be that of a sixteenth-century canon at the Pantheon. The search for Raphael’s bones reflected a period interested in the science of craniology and craniometry, a story that David Allan Brown and Jane van Nimmen tell in their book on The Bindo Altoviti portrait, once thought to be a self-portrait, but now known to be a portrait of the renaissance banker.

Costume/dress

Detail of Judgment and Portrait of Agnolo Doni, 1506, Galleria Palatina (Palazzo Pitti), Florence.

In addition to linking to the age data, this aspect of the investigation crosses both science and style areas. The scientific examination determined that the “Paris” figure had undergone four changes: an initial garbed figure in a “monk” like black hood, seated next to the tree; then a shepherd figure seated further out; then Raphael introduced his own visage, as “Paris”, as self-portrait, with a comprehensive dress change; a final change where “Paris” is moved further out from the tree, whilist rotating his head towards the viewer. As observed in another post, there are similarities between the dress, “the parti-coloured tights and plumes and slashes of the sixteenth century”, in the Judgment and Venetian paintings like the Rural Concert by Titian and Giorgione. It should also be noted that the sleeve style and pigment directly match that seen in Agnolo Doni’s Portrait, painted by Raphael during his Florentine period.

7. Monogrammatic

It would appear that through his contact with Leonardo during his formative years, Raphael became familiar with Da Vinci’s monogramme signing traits. Some of these are present in the Malmesbury Judgment of Paris. They are manifested as signature devices, being multiple monogrammes and dates for the year 1512. A 1512 date is inscribed within the fabric headband of the central goddess, a method that Raphael is known to have used in another work.

As per GC’s book.

A further group of both 1512 date and monogramme is set within the Golden Apple. Two other “Rv” monogrammes are on the upper chest and within the crotch area of both goddesses, a cogent example of Raphael’s known approach, to his personal relationships as the “lothario” lover.

As per GC’s book.

There appears a just decipherable “R” monogramme or character on the collar of the dog at Paris’s side, along with other “meaningless” decorative inscriptions, (Gould), or perhaps (Cufic) writing as discussed in Rona Goffen’s 2003, “Designer Labels article. It is noted that Raphael’s earlier St George panel (1505), has an inscription on the horse’s bridle.

8. Future technical analysis

It is intended that further X-Radiographic, Spectrographic Pigment Sampling, Macro Surface Studies, and other relevant examinations be undertaken in the near future, to provide additional scientific corroboration to the definitive findings already established from the above examinations.

Canvas support analysis – Future testing handy – but likewise not really definitive. Also needs 1510 comparisons and other museum results support, which is never forthcoming and usually denied.

9. Finishing Up 

Just as a painting is never really finished- you can always come back to it and re-touch it, or re-view it in the light of something new, so this debate is likely to go on. Though this series is officially finished, there will be a unstructured catch-all summary post in which issues raised can be re-visited and  elaborated upon. I know that Graeme Cameron wants to amplify certain points. Likewise, readers of this blog are invited to supply material for this round-up post; if you want to raise anything, offer an insight, a criticism, or anything that occurs to you after reading this or all the posts in this series, then contact AHT via e.mail or leave a comment here and I’ll integrate it into the post.

 

David Brown & Jane Van Nimmen, Raphael & the Beautiful Banker : the story of the Bindo Altoviti portrait, New Heaven [Conn.] ; London : Yale University Press, c2005.

Graeme Cameron, The Secrets of Leonardo da Vinci, Vol. 1, VegaScan, 2011.

Rona Goffen, Raphael’s Designer Labels : From the Virgin Mary to La Fornarina, Artibus et Historiae, Vol. 24, No. 48. (2003), pp. 123-142.

Cecil Gould, Raphael versus Giulio Romano : The Swing Back, The Burlington Magazine , Vol. 124, No. 953. (Aug., 1982), pp. 479-485+487.

Paul Joannides, Titian to 1518: The Assumption of Genius, Yale University Press, 2002.

Carlo Ridolfi, Le maraviglie dell’ Arte ovvero, Le vite degli Illustri Pittori Veneti and dello Stato, 1648.

Patricia Rubin, Signposts of Invention : Artists’ Signatures in Italian Renaissance Art, Art History 29 (4), 563-599.

Dr G Wagen,Treasures of Art in Great Britain, John Murray London (1854) pp. 416.

37 Masters?

Following up on the report of the Rome heist recovery, here’s a article from that fount of art history knowledge- the Telegraph.

The paintings include Portrait of a Knight by Van Dyck, Christ on the Cross by Rubens and The Baptism of Christ by Nicolas Poussin, a 17th century French artist who spent most of his working life in Rome.

Lesser known works include an exquisite painting of the Madonna and Child by the 13th century artist Berlinghiero Berlinghieri, who came from Lucca in Tuscany, and a work by a student of Caravaggio.

Two of the masterpieces may have been painted by Rubens and El Greco, although the attributions are yet to be confirmed.

"Rarely does one recover such a large quantity of works of such artistic importance," said Rossella Vodret, an expert from the ministry of culture.

Five other art works, which were stolen at the same time, are still unaccounted “

In what universe were such badly executed and conceived canvases painted by Rubens and his student Van Dyck?  I’m starting to wonder if the press have mis-represented or mis-quoted Vodret- time will tell..

If anybody has come across a list of the 37 works, then I’d be interested to see it. Most of all I’d love to see a copy of the auction catalogue in which these paintings appeared as Poussin et al.

 

Poussin recovered, but is it a Poussin?

Att. to Poussin, here rejected, perhaps unknown 17th century Italianate artist, Baptism of Christ, detail, Italian police hand-out!

I’m hearing of the rescue of many stolen old masters by the Italian police, the famous carabinieri military police. See the Guardian article here. It records the finding of 37 works of art taken in an art theft in Rome in 1971. Artists mentioned are Van Dyck (Portrait of a Cavalier), Guido Reni and Poussin (Baptism of Christ). I can’t comment on van Dyck and Reni, but I know that this isn’t by the French master. The Guardian reports:

“It was one of the most audacious art thefts seen in Rome: one night in 1971 a gang of thieves slipped into the plush residence of a construction magnate in the upmarket Parioli neighbourhood and walked out with 42 rare paintings, including works by Van Dyck and Poussin.

Detectives soon concluded that the culprits were not members of the mafia, but beyond that, there were few concrete clues, and within days the trail had gone cold.

Now, four decades on, Italian police have recovered some of the stolen paintings from a house in the same district of the country's capital, where they were hanging proudly on the walls. As well as a Van Dyck portrait of a cavalier and a Poussin depiction of the baptism of Christ, the haul contains a Christ on the cross attributed to Rubens, now being verified by experts.

Italian painters Berlinghieri and Guido Reni are also included in the collection, which was described as an exceptional find by Rossella Vodret, an expert from the Italian culture ministry.”

Well, Rossella Vodret may an expert in the Italian culture ministry, but I’m a Poussin scholar and I don’t think I’m looking at one of his works. A clumsy composition- and those cherubs!As I spent a lot of time in my doctorate days looking at religious paintings by NP, I think I’m qualified to pronounce on this. So the owners bought a picture they thought was by Poussin, and the thieves stole it thinking the same? My guess is an Italianate painter trying to emulate Poussin, not very successfully. Or it could be a collaboration between Gaspar Poussin- Poussin’s brother-in-law-and an Italian artist?  But the figures are too monumental for Gaspard, yet parts of the landscape recall NP.

Still, I’m intrigued as to who the painter might be. I wish I had something better than a reproduction on a hand-out from the Italian police to go on!

Modes of Viewing in Moroni’s Portraits.

G.B. Moroni, Titian’s “Schoolmaster”, late 1560s, National Gallery of Art, Washington, oil on canvas, 97 x 47 cm.

Bernard Berenson is well-known for hatchet jobs on painters, but he really excelled himself with his dismissal of the Brescian portrait painter, Giovanni Battista Moroni. The “only mere portrait painter that Italy had ever produced,” Berenson thundered before going on to condemn Moroni for not being able to paint without the model in front of him. For Berenson, Moroni’s Brescian characters were too realistic, too “uninterestingly themselves.” However, the sage of I Tatti grudgingly conceded that Moroni’s painting “Titian’s Schoolmaster”- so called because Titian is said to have studied it- was worthy of Velasquez, though not Titian himself. Given the excellence of Moroni’s portraits, including this one which was actually mistaken for a Titian by Van Dyck, Berenson’s negative judgment is completely unforgivable. That’s absolutely the case, but I don’t want to ponder Berenson’s prejudices in this post; instead, I want to dwell on realism in Moroni and float some ideas that have been generated in my teaching of the North Italian painters course. This can be seen as the third section of my “triptych” of lesser known northern Italian painters, the other “panels” being Tura and Il Pordonone.

G.B. Moroni, Abbess Lucrezia Agliardi Vertova, c. 1556, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Oil on canvas, 91 x 69 cm.

Anybody coming to Moroni must be struck by his enhanced realism. It’s partly achieved by strict graphic delineation; the outline is fairly sharp, drawing the eye to lines and contours. The demeanour of the sitters is calm, the expressions grave, indications of self-absorption and the contemplation of an inner world. Moroni’s portraits owe much to his mentor Moretto di Brescia, who combined northern portraitists like Titian and Lotto with the aloofness of Florentines like Bronzino.

Agnolo Bronzino, Portrait of a Young Man, c. 1540, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, oil on wood, oil on wood, 96 x 75 cm.	G. B. Moroni, Portrait of Antonio Navagero, 1565, Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan, oil on canvas, 115 x 90 cm.

Bronzino also comes to mind when studying the portraits of Moroni himself, although there are differences between the Brescian and Florentine masters. Moroni’s portraits lack the forbidding, cold arrogant stare of Bronzino’s subjects; they are reserved, but not unapproachable. Moreover Bronzino’s subjects seem intact and immune from the ravages of time. Contemplating Moroni’s portraits, I sense decline, and in some of them Moroni actually places his subjects next to ruined buildings. This seems to me a collective portrait of a tarnished aristocratic class; one individual, though attired in splendid garb has his foot in a brace; another sumptuously dressed in furs occupies a space with dilapidated walls.

G. B. Moroni, Portrait of a Gentleman, (Conte Faustino Avogadro(?), c. 1560, National Gallery, London, oil on canvas, 202 x 106 cm.

It’s almost as if the idea of ruin permeates the whole portrait; the portrait becomes a ruin in the sense that it undermines the illusion of prosperity and wellbeing that these pictures are supposed to completely convey. And this is Moroni’s preference- such ruins are never seen in Moretto’s portraits where this decaying grandeur is absent. This is something unheard of in Bronzino’s portraits where not a wall is defaced, not a surface is besmirched with the signs of age- many of Moroni’s ruins have wild plants growing on them, and his walls are usually stained with brown paint.

G.B. Moroni, A Gentleman in Adoration before the Madonna, 1560, National Gallery of Art, Washington, Oil on canvas, 60 x 65 cm.

According to Sydney Freedberg, Moroni’s “verism”, that is his truth or extreme naturalism, might be linked with the problem of religious art, particularly the creation of an art that conformed to the Counter-Reformation in its combination of  “verism” and an old-fashioned style, the latter easily absorbed  by the viewer. This stark pairing occurs in a number of canvases that Moroni produced for unidentified patrons in Brescia. Take an example in Washington, this painting juxtaposes a sombrely clad donor, realistically portrayed, next to an apparition of the Virgin and Child. The Madonna is executed in a retardataire style, she looks back to the quattrocento. She also looks back towards Moretto’s own anachronistic use of quattrocento modes which his pupil adopted in tandem with his realistic proclivities, which if Freedberg is right, are keyed towards both a local religious sensibility as well as a more orthodox one in line with mainstream religion.

G. B. Moroni, The Baptism of Christ with a Donor, 1550s, Private collection, Oil on canvas, 104 x 113 cm.

A similar donor picture that juxtaposes verism with deliberate anachronism, in a private collection in Milan, provides an even more striking example of how Moroni’s aesthetic works. Here, he places a similar donor with praying hands before a scene of John baptizing Christ in the wilderness. Although Freedberg has placed these paintings in the context of aesthetics and religion, to me they have great potential in thinking about the role of the spectator in Moroni’s portraits. Where is this donor supposed to be? Is he indoors, or is he outdoors? Is he part of the scene and therefore within the landscape where Christ is baptized? The adjacent ruins are rendered in the same veristic way as the figure; they seem to be part of his physical world, yet they are still part of the landscape.  Moroni has painted the picture in such a way that this could be viewed as a baptism contemplated by a donor in the same scene, or a painting of the baptism of Christ witnessed by donor outside the picture. But there’s no clear-cut opposition between inside/outside to conform either of these viewing positions; pictorial space in relation to viewing space is problematized. The donor, presumably the commissioner, could actually be looking at a picture he has bought, since a framed picture is implied by the vertical wall running up from the praying hands, though admittedly it doesn’t run to the top- Moroni leaving room for ambiguity? This man could be contemplating not only the baptism of Christ, but the painting- the Baptism of Christ on a wall in his home. A colleague of mine, Maaike Dirkx, pointed out to me that if it is a painting on the donor’s wall, he has so identified with the scene that he’s “in” it. This seems to make good sense to me. In the Washington picture, the donor has so reached a pyscho-religious condition that he “sees” the Virgin, possibly in his mind- the austere cell could suggest a mental state.

Lorenzo Lotto, Assumption of the Virgin, 1506, Duomo, Asolo (Treviso), oil on wood, 175 x 162 cm.

However, what jars with me is the realist mode in all these donor portraits, the verism which undermines the idea of enthrallment in the presence of the divine. I can see it in artists like Lotto who infused their saints with the look of devotion, like St Basil in Lotto’s Assumption- but that look seems to be absent in Moroni.

Adding another layer of complexity brings us back to Moroni’s relationship with Moretto. In a discussion of the latter’s John baptizing Christ (National Gallery, London, c. 1520), Nicholas Penny says that another scholar, Cecil Gould, argued that this landscape “may originally have featured a half-length or bust-length portrait of a figure on the right, hands joined in prayer and viewing the episode within the landscape.” Penny agrees with Gould’s proposition, though he points out these unusual donor portraits, meant to be viewed in a context of private devotion, do not appear before Moroni. It seems that Moroni ingeniously transposed his master’s religious compositions whilst pioneering a completely unique type of donor portrait that united modes of realism geared towards a sophisticated viewing subject. As an amusing coda, Penny states, presumably with his tongue in cheek, that the donor within Moroni’s Portrait of a Man Contemplating the Baptism of Christ, may have had the name Giovanni Battista. These of course are Moroni’s Christian names, and it would be typical of this playfully inventive artist to introduce yet another level of interpretation into his imaginative pictures.

The Sage of  I Tatti, 1903.

Berenson should really have persevered with Moroni, especially as the connoisseur was fascinated by the idea of becoming one with the work of art through contemplation. What better example could there be than Moroni’s Portrait of a Man Contemplating the Baptism of Christ? As Berenson wrote in 1948, subsequently published in Aesthetics and History in 1950:

“In visual art the aesthetic moment is that flitting instant, so brief to be almost timeless when the spectator is at one with the work of art he is looking at, or with actuality of any kind that the spectator himself sees in terms of art, as form and colour. He ceases to be his ordinary self, and the picture or building, statue landscape, or aesthetic actuality is no longer outside himself. The two become one entity; time and space are abolished and the spectator is possessed by one awareness. When he recovers workaday consciousness, it is as if he has been initiated into illuminating, exalting, formative mysteries. In short, the aesthetic movement is a moment of mystic vision.”

Perhaps Moroni’s verism worked to prevent that “aesthetic moment” and “mystic vision” in Berenson’s eyes.

Sources

Bernard Berenson, Italian Painters of the Renaissance: Venetian and North Italian Schools. Phaidon, 1968, first pub. 1952

Bernard Berenson, Aesthetics and History, (Constable, 1950).

S.J. Freedberg, Painting in Italy 1500-1600, (New Haven and London, Yale University Press), 1993.

Nicholas Penny, the Sixteenth-Century Italian Paintings, Vol 1: Paintings from Bergamo, Brescia and Cremona, (National Gallery, 2004).