CONVERGENT MUSICAL EVOLUTION 

How do composers conjure and craft their music? Whence come their melodic and motivic ideas? Are they always de novo? Are they borrowed? Or are there certain motifs that are universal ?

Ludwig van Beethoven began writing his ninth symphony in 1817. 

The Ode to Joy theme in the final movement of Beethoven’s ninth symphony stemmed from a melodic idea which he had originally hatched back in 1790, when he set to music a 1785 poem and drinking song by Friedrich Schiller, an die Freude (To Joy). 

Beethoven’s 1795 Lied (German art song), Gegenliebe (Returned Love), contained the motif that he would later employ as the “Ode to Joy.”

Ah, but Wolfgang Mozart had already penned that melodic motif twenty years years earlier, in 1775, in a sacred work, the Misericordias Domini, KV 222.

In Mozart's Misericordias Domini, at the 1:05 mark, you can hear the Ode to Joy melody, i.e., Beethoven's Ode to Joy. 

The motif repeats several times in Mozart's composition.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lEBYufTXJQk

How can this be? 

Did Beethoven copy Mozart?

It is highly unlikely. There is no evidence that Beethoven ever heard the Misericordias Domini, nor did he ever see the autograph.

A similar example is heard with Beethoven's 1805 Eroica symphony theme. 

Mozart had penned a similar motif  thirty-seven years early in the overture to his 1768 opera, Bastien und Bastienne, KV 50. 

Bastien und Bastienne was performed only once in Mozart's lifetime, a private performance at the home of the physician Dr Hans Mesmer. 

The opera was not published until the 1880s and received its first known public performance in 1890. 

It is highly unlikely for Beethoven to have seen the manuscript and he never heard the opera.

Here is a snippet of the overture to Bastien und Bastienne. Do you hear a bit of the first theme of Beethoven's Eroica symphony within it?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ad7WlYjxS3Y

These serendipitous motivic events are examples of what I call Convergent Musical Evolution. These motifs are simple, diatonic, with no chromatics, and with small intervals between the notes. 

Convergent Musical Evolution is a form of Convergent Evolution - an analogy would be butterflies and birds independently evolving to develop wings.

What we have here with these lovely Mozartian and Beethovenian motifs is straightforward: it is not one genius borrowing from another. Rather, it is two geniuses, independently conjuring and crafting eternal and universal melodies.

Portraits: 

Left: The posthumous portrait of Wolfgang Amade’ Mozart Barbara Kraft 1819   Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde Vienna

Right: The Portrait from Life of Ludwig van Beethoven with the Missa Solemnis. Karl Joseph Stieler  1820 Beethovenhaus Bonn

GIUSEPPE ARCIMBOLDO:

MAESTRO OF NATURE AND FANTASY

                         Summer (detail of vegetables) 

                          Giuseppe Arcimboldo    1563

Nicknamed “il Meraviglioso” (“the Marvelous”), the  famed Italian mannerist artist Giuseppe Arcimboldo (1526-1597), was the darling of the courts of three Holy Roman Emperors. He produced dozens of magnificent and elegant portraits of the nobles and their retinue, as well as a series of remarkably illusionistic portraits of profile heads incorporating flora and fauna.

The series of Four Seasons that the brilliant Arcimboldo crafted for the Habsburg aristocrat and Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian II are only extant in the paintings of Summer and Winter, that today hang at the wondrous Kunsthistorisches in Vienna, and that of Spring, which is in Madrid at the beautiful Museo de la Real Academia de Bellas Artes. 

Maximilian asked Arcimboldo to make copies of these, to give to his Royal relatives and friends. A complete set of all four of Arcimboldo’s copies of the Seasons are at the Louvre. 

A wonderful monograph on Arcimboldo and his time was produced by the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC in 2010, as part of their blockbuster show: “Arcimboldo: Nature and Fantasy.”The PDF link for this monograph is below. 

Here is part of the introduction: 

“Soon forgotten after his death, Arcimboldo was rediscovered in the 1930s when the director of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, Alfred H. Barr, included the artist’s paintings in the exhibition Fantastic Art, Dada, Surrealism. 

“Ever since, Arcimboldo has been considered a source of inspiration for the surrealists and their successors. 

“Art historians have also seen him as a typical representative of mannerism, a term used to describe an artistic style fashionable at European courts in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Mannerist painters rejected the rational, harmonious approach of much Renaissance art in favor of ambiguity, virtuosity, and elegance. Along with their patrons, they prized artifice, cleverness, obscure symbolism, and intellec- tual puzzles — all qualities found in Arcimboldo’s paintings. Arcimboldo’s composite heads were already celebrated as “scherzi” (jokes) by his contemporaries, but they also reflect the serious scientific study of nature that was characteristic of the sixteenth century.”

NGA DC monograph PDF https://www.nga.gov/content/dam/ngaweb/exhibitions/pdfs/arcimboldo_brochure.pdf

A splendid example of the meticulous and realistic rendering of plants is this detail from the portrait of Summer by Arcimboldo which is held by the Kunsthistorisches. 

High-resolution, zoomable link from the Kunst: 

https://www.khm.at/en/objectdb/detail/71/?offset=3&lv=list

Summer 

Giuseppe Arcimboldo 

1563 (oil on panel)

67 cm × 50.8 cm 

Kunsthistorisches Museum

ANOTHER DE’ MEDICI, THIS ONE A POPE

           ANOTHER DE’ MEDICI, THIS ONE A POPE

Of the careers and positions held by members of the great de’ Medici family of Firenze, besides those in banking and commerce, was the papacy.

The Medicis produced four popes: Leo X, Clement VII, Pius IV and Leo XI. 

It is said that their genes have been mixed into many of Europe's royal families. (Please comment on this statement). 

(BTW, it is stated that the last Medici ruler died without a male heir in 1737, ending the family dynasty after almost three centuries). 

Here are the dates of the Medici popes: 

Pope Leo X (December 11, 1475 – December 1, 1521), born Giovanni de' Medici, was pope from 1513 to his death.

Pope Clement VII (May 26, 1478 – September 25, 1534), born Giulio di Giuliano de' Medici, Giuliano di Piero de’ Medici’s illegitimate son by his mistress Fioretta Gorini. He was a cardinal from 1513 to 1523 and was pope from 1523 to 1534. He was a first cousin of Leo X.

Pope Pius IV (31 March 1499 – December 9, 1565), born Giovanni Angelo Medici, was pope from 1559 to 1565. However, he was only distantly related to the other Medici Popes.

Pope Leo XI (June 2, 1535 – April 27, 1605), born Alessandro Ottaviano de' Medici, was pope from April 1, 1605 to April 27 1605. 

I present for your admiration, study and discussion the great c. 1518 Raffaello (Raphael) portrait of Pope Leo X (Leone dieci, Giovanni di Lorenzo de’ Medici), one of the masterpieces in the Uffizi.

This is one of Raffaello’s last works and one which is possibly one of the only ones he designed and painted by himself in his last years

The figure of Pope Leo X here is monumental. In fact, the realism we see in this painting is one of Raffaelo’s greatest achievements, imho. I place it with Raffaello’s great portrait of Baldassare Castiglione (Louvre) as among the greatest portraits of that time. 

The black background allows Pope Leo and his cardinals to be spotlighted, a proto-tenebroso technique. This creates a dramatic aspect to this masterpieces. 

An illuminated prayer book lies open on the table in front of Pope Leo. On the same table rests a finely carved bell. Both objects reveal the exquisite tastes of the Pope who was an active patron of the arts, and somewhat of a bon vivant 

Ref: wga.hu and Catholic encyclopedia entry on Pope Leo X(see in references, and also see comments for excerpts and reference) 

The pommel on top of the Pope's chair evokes the symbolic abacus balls of the Medici family, while the illuminated Bible open on the table has been identified as the Hamilton Bible. Ref: Bernice F. Davidson, Raphael's Bible (1985), p. 12.

As an ophthalmologist, I am always fascinated by the ocular issues of the de’ Medici and the signs we see here. 

We know that the de’ Medici were a learned, bookish and myopic family. It is written that Pope Leo “read letters always close to his nose.”

But we can go further than inferences. How?

The Pope’s myopia can proven here by the lens that he is holding in his Left hand. 

You might quite logically think that what the Pope is holding is a magnifying lens. 

But it is not a magnifier. Look carefully at it and you will not see any enlargement of Leo’s thumb beneath it, which a magnifier would do.  In fact, the tip of the thumb is slightly smaller than it should be. 

Thus the lens cannot be a magnifying lens. 

So what is it? 

In fact, this handheld lens still exists. 

You can see it in the Museo di Galileo (formerly Museo Storia della Scienza di Firenze). It has been measured at - 12 diopters (minus signs before diopter numbers mean myopia, plus signs mean hyperopia or presbyopia). 

So, this Pope was myopic, indeed highly myopic. 

The cardinal to the left of the painting is identified as Giulio di Giuliano de' Medici. He would become the  future Pope Clement VII. 

The other cardinal is usually identified as Luigi de' Rossi, who was a maternal cousin to both Pope Leo X and Cardinal Giulio di Giuliano.

This great painting doesn’t travel, per an expert committee of art conservators, because it is too fragile. 

Yet, the painting did travel.

Notwithstanding the committee’s opinion, it traveled to the blockbuster Raffaello show at the Scuderie del Quirinale in Rome, last year, after which all the conservators resigned. 

“On February 24, the scientific committee at the Uffizi gallery in Firenze, a group of experts tasked with evaluating which artworks are fit for loan, quit en masse in protest over the decision to loan this famed Raphael painting for the blockbuster retrospective of the artist in Rome.

“According to a letter sent to its administering body, which includes the education ministry and Firenze’s  city council, the panel said it had deemed the 1518 portrait of Pope Leo X unfit for travel from the Uffizi. 

“The work was recently restored, and the letter’s authors stated they had received confirmation from Uffizi director Eike Schmidt in December that their ban on the loan would be honored. Only later, they said, did they discover via local media reports that the painting would, in fact, be making an appearance in Rome for a show at the Scuderie del Quirinale.”

Go figure. 

Zoomable image link  here: 

https://artsandculture.google.com/asset/portrait-of-pope-leo-x-withcardinals-giulio-de-medici-andluigi-de-rossi-raffaello-sanzio/qwFo4XF73Dmd1Q?hl=en

References:

1) Sir Patrick Trevor-Roper, The World Through Blunted Sight, Penguin Press. 1988. pp. 28-30. 

2) wga.hu 

3) Bernice F. Davidson, Raphael's Bible (1985), p. 12.

4) Louis Alaerts. La myopie héréditaire des Médicis. Brussels. Laboratories Cusi. 1958. 

5) Catholic Encyclopedia entry on Leo X:

https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/09162a.htm

Portrait of Pope Leo X (Giovanni di Lorenzo de’ Medici) and his cousins, the cardinals Giulio de' Medici and Luigi de' Rossi

Raffaello Sanzio (Raphael)

Oil on panel

154 cm x 119 cm (5 feet x 4 feet)

1518-1519

Uffizi

DOGE-ING THE QUESTION

Portrait of the Doge Leonardo Loredan

Giovanni Bellini

1501

National Gallery, London

DOGE-ING THE QUESTION: 

Giovanni Bellini’s Revelatory Portrait of the Doge Leonardo Loredan

La Serenissima (Venezia), that universally beloved city, is drowning. I have visited five times in my life and hope to go back many more times. Please complete the barriers surrounding the Lido !

This post is to honor Venezia and its Doges. 

What is a Doge, you ask? The Doge was the chief magistrate and leader of the Republic of Venice between 726 and 1797. 

The Doge of Venice (Venetian: Doxe de Venexia Italian: Doge di Venezia [ˈdɔːdʒe di veˈnɛttsja]; derive from the Latin term, dūx, "military leader"), translated as Duke (compare the Italian Duca). 

Giovanni Bellini’s iconic depiction of one of Venezia’s most powerful Doges, Leonardo Loredan, captures the power and control of these Venetian rulers, as well as the awesome responsibility they bore for their empire and citizens. 

Giovanni Bellini is justifiably admired for his exquisite Madonnas. He was also one of the great official portraitists of his time.. 

The esteemed art historian John Pope-Hennessy described Giovanni Bellini as "the  greatest fifteenth-century official portraitist", adding that "the tendency towards ideality that impaired Bellini’s private portraits here stood him in good stead, and enabled him to codify, with unwavering conviction, the official personality.”

I have been discussing side bias in portraiture of late, and again here, the artist has chosen to depict the left face of the subject. 

However, in this extraordinary portrait, the light is coming from the Subject’s Right side (the Left side of the painting), so that even though the Left  side of the Doge’s face is featured, it is relative shadow.

Why would that be? What hidden metaphors are we missing? Bellini was a master of light and color. Nothing here is random.

Thoughts? 

Portrait of the Doge Leonardo Loredan

Giovanni Bellini

1501

NG, London

THE CHANTILLY CODEX

ARS SUBTILIOR !
The Chantilly Codex

Submitted for your delectation and edification is the Baude Cordier Heart of Music of c. 1405 that is part of the  famed Chantilly Codex of c. 1390, This fascinating Musical Heart was added by the composer Baude Cordier a few years after the Codex was printed.

Note the musical score and rhythmic markings within the heart.
The Chantilly manuscript, Musée Condé no. 564, both celebrated and notorious for the extremely complicated notation of the ars subtilior, but also admired for the decorative aspect of some of its pages, comprises, in the five fascicles of its original corpus, seventy ballades,seventeen rondeaux, twelve virelays and thirteen isorhythmic motets, all of them compositions of the second half of the fourteenth century.

The piece "Belle, Bonne, Sage, Plaisant" was written by Cordier to a special lady for the New Year, and reflects the shape of the notation with the text (“Lovely, good, wise, and pleasant”)

The graphic layout of the notation is a play on words on the "Cor" ("heart") in "Cordier".

Composers in the Codex includeJohannes Symonis, Jehan Suzay, P. des Molins, Goscalch, Solage, Baude Cordier, Grimace, Guillaume de Machaut, Jehan Vaillant, Franciscus Andrieu, Johannes Cuvelier, Rodericus, Trebor, and Jacob Senleches.

AGNOLO’S FROZEN BEAUTIES: Bronzino’s Madonnas and the concept of Paragone

The marmoreal and sculptural beauty of Agnolo di Cosimo’s  (il Bronzino) depictions of the Madonna never fail to astonish me. He creates a sort of paragone confrontation sui generis, which is to say, that within his own paintings he confronts the debate between painting and sculpture (vide infra).

Herewith for your admiration is the sublimely beautiful face of the Virgin Mary in the Louvre version of Bronzino’s Holy Family with St. Anne  and the infant St John.
Take a look here as well at the Kunsthistorisches version.

Astonishing beauty.
I would love to know who was Agnolo’s model for these portrayals of Mary, or did he craft these exquisite visages purely from his own conception of perfect beauty?

“In an art-historical context, the Italian word paragone (“comparison”, pl. paragoni) refers to a number of theoretical discussions that informed the development of artistic theory in 16th-century Italy.
“These include the comparison between differing aesthetic qualities of central Italian and Venetian schools of painting (the so-called disegno/colore paragone) and whether painting or literature was the more convincing and descriptive medium.
“But the term paragone most often refers to the debate about the relative merits of painting and sculpture during the Renaissance period. This debate unfolded primarily in Italy but also in the Low Countries (Flanders and the Netherlands) in writings about art and artworks themselves, and informs our understanding of some of the most significant art and artists of the Renaissance.”
Ref: Oxford Art Online

The Holy Family with St Anne and the infant St John
Agnolo di Cosimo di Mariano, detto il Bronzino
1550
Louvre

MOZART AND SALIERI: TRUTHS AND MYTHS

Mozart and Salieri. Whole books, Broadway and West End plays, and an Oscar-winning movie have been conjured of the purported rivalry and animosity between Antonio Salieri and Wolfgang Amade’ Mozart.

Was there a rivalry? Yes. 
Did Salieri poison Mozart or contribute to his early death?  No. That is a fable.
Yet one more Mozart myth.

What was the real relationship between the composers?

It was cordial, competitive and collegial.

By the time Wolfgang Mozart arrived in Vienna in summer 1781, Antonio Salieri was already ensconced as Court Composer and Kapellmeister. Salieri’s operas were being produced, were popular, many enjoying numerous performances. Salieri had virtually nothing to fear from Mozart.
In fact, it was actually Mozart who was jealous of Salieri, not the other way around.
Mozart is documented in a letter to have written about the “Italians” and their “cabals” to keep some of Mozart’s operas off the stage. Mozart mentioned Salieri by name and discussed Salieri’s “plots” in a 1789 letter to Michael Puchberg.

In reality, however, Mozart and Salieri were mostly cordial to each other, as but two of several fine composers in the competitive world of operatic music in Vienna in the 1780s and early 1790s. There were also other superb composers actively working in Vienna at that time, such as Martin y Soler. 
Mozart’s operas were not the ones that were most often presented in Vienna during his lifetime. Apart from Die Zauberflote, the three famous Mozart operatic collaborations with Lorenzo Da Ponte - Le Nozze di Figaro, Don Giovanni and Cosi' fan Tutte, each only had a dozen or so performances during Mozart's lifetime. It was only after Mozart's passing that his musical genius became widely recognized and admired.

So what are the Facts about Mozart and Salieri. Here are four:

1) Mozart and Salieri were both invited by Count Orsini Rosenberg (director of spectacles for the Habsburg Court) to craft a short opera by for the pleasure of Emperor Joseph II and his sister Maria Christina Duchess of Teschen, for a February 7th 1786 performance at Schonbrunn Palace. Mozart wrote the opera, “Der Schauspieldirektor” (The Impresario KV 486) which is still occasionally performed (it was a highlight of Mozartwoche this past January in Salzburg), whereas Salieri’s operatic offering “Prima la Musica e Poi Le Parole” (“First the Music and then the Words”) has languished for two centuries with only three performances documented.

2) Mozart and Salieri collaborated together as colleagues on the Cantata “Per la Ricuperata Salute di Ofelia (For the recovered health of Ophelia, KV 477a) for the soprano Anna Selina (Nancy) Storace. 

3) Mozart invited Salieri and Salieri’s protege and mistress Caterina Cavalieri to a performance of Die Zauberflote in October 1791, where Salieri was effusive in his praise of the Singspiel. After the performance, Salieri effused that, “... it was an operone (a grand opera) worthy of the highest praise.”

4) Salieri was one of the piano teachers of Mozart’s second son, Franz Xaver Mozart.

There are no signs from any of the above facts that there was any animosity.

Musicologist and critic Harold Schonberg wrote this in a May 1974 article in The NY Times:

“The fact is that there is simply not shred of evidence linking Salieri to Mozart's death.
In addition, as many have pointed out, would Mozart's widow have picked Salieri as a composition teacher for Wolfgang Jr. had she entertained any idea that he was her husband's murderer?
“It has also been pointed out that while Mozart had good cause to envy Salieri, the Italian had relatively little to be worried about Mozart. It was Salieri, not Mozart, who was the more successful composer. It was Salieri, not Mozart, who had the entrée to the court, There is even some evidence that Salieri looked upon Mozart with certain amount of fondness."

Oh, you heard or read something about Salieri poisoning Mozart? No proof. Another Mozart myth.

Oh, you read that Salieri, insane at the end of his life and in an asylum, said that he poisoned Mozart? I hope you read that he told Ignaz Moscheles that he had nothing to do with Mozart’s illness or death.

Read on dear reader, this summary from Harold Schonberg:

“One of the saddest bits of musical biography in existence was written by the great pianist and composer, Ignaz Moscheles, who visited Salieri in 1823, presumably after Salieri's suicide attempt. Salieri thought that he was dying.
Moscheles had studied with the Italian and was very fond of him. “Our meeting,” wrote Moscheles, “was a sorrowful one; for already Salierk’s appearance shocked me, and he spoke to me in broken sentences of his nearly impending death.
At last he said: ‘I can assure you as a man of honor that there is no truth in the absurd report; of course you know—Mozart —I am said to have poisoned him; but no —malice; sheer malice; tell the world, dear Moscheles, old Salieri, who is on his deathbed has told this to you.”

Mozart and Salieri- composers and musicians in Vienna in the late 18th century
Cordial colleagues

https://youtu.be/K7MhqYZ5YmY

Images:
Wolfgang Mozart- the 1819 posthumous oil of Mozart by Barbara Kraft
Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde Vienna

Antonio Salieri- the Joseph Willibrod Mahler portrait of Salieri of 1825
Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde Vienna

STRANGE BEAUTIES: The Refined Sensuality and Off-Beat Genius of Parmigianino

Anthea
Il Parmigianino
c.1534
Museo Nazionale de Capodimonte, Napoli

STRANGE BEAUTIES:
The Refined Sensuality and Off-Beat Genius of Parmigianino

When you took your Italian Renaissance course, if you took it, at some point you landed squarely on a painting commonly referred to as the “Madonna with the Long Neck,” the archetypal painting in the Mannerist style.

It was created by the preternaturally gifted artist Girolamo Francesco Maria Mazzola, whose nickname was Parmigianino (so many Italian artists har nicknames - “cosiddetti”- such as Sassetta, Bronzino, Pontormo, Veronese, Guercino, Parmigianino, and Tintoretto).

Parmigianino was one of the supreme masters of the late Rinascimento, who died, like Masaccio and Raffaello, terribly young even for the times, at age 37. His works are tipified by the elongations and exaggerations that are emblematic of Mannerism.

One of Parmigianino’s many grand creations, a work that is imbued with the refined sensuality for which he is justifiably famous, is the portrait you see in this post, known as Anthea (Antea), a magisterial and mysterious painting (that was on loan from the Museo di Capodimonte in Napoli in a solo exhibition at the Frick a decade ago).

Anthea is depicted with a marten fur stole draped over her highly exaggerated right shoulder, with an arm so far from her body it is as if there were another arm in there somewhere (well, that’s Mannerism for you 🙂 ).
Who was Antea? The name was not given to the painting by Parmigianino, but rather, was associated with it in the latter part of the 1500s. Was she a 16th century courtesan lover of Parmigianino ? A metaphor for Aphrodite? No one seems to know for sure.

The wiki entry for the painting tells us that “in the description of the Farnese Ducal Gallery (1725) it is listed as “Portrait of Antea” or “The Beloved of Parmigianino,” referring to some famous courtesan of Rome and mentioned by both Benvenuto Cellini and Pietro Aretino.”

This attribution has been later contested, as well as the traditional dating of the work to the period in which Parmigianino was in Rome (1524–1527). Studies of the woman's garments, a mix of luxury and popular elements, led to the hypothesis that she could be either a daughter, a lover or a servant of Parmigianino, if not Pellegrina Rossi di San Secondo or another noblewoman of Parma.”
Parmigianino repurposed the face of Antea in the famous Madonna of the Long Neck”(see image in comment) and it bears a striking resemblance to Parmigianino himself !).
What was that comment and website by Simon Abraham that “every artist paints himself”?
There may be a kernel of truth to it.

Anthea (Antea)
Il Parmigianino (Girolamo Francesco Maria Mazzola)
c. 1534 Museo Nazionale di Capodimonte, Napoli

BLUE OF DREAMS: THE ULTRAMARINE OF ANTONELLO’A VERGINE ANNUNCIATE

THE BLUE OF DREAMS

Antonello da Messina and Ultramarine

“A noble color, beautiful, the most perfect of all colors”

Cennino Cennini, Il Libro dell’Arte, c.1400

La Vergine Annunciata
Antonella da Messina
c. 1476
Palazzo Abatellis
Palermo, Sicilia

There is Blue - with such evocative adjectival subspecies as navy, cerulean, baby, or powder. Then there is an unclassifiable Blue, a Blue that defies categorization  and yet is decidedly Blue.

It is the breathtaking, ineffable Blue of the Palermo Madonna of Antonello da Messina. 

The Blue of Antonello was Ultramarine, the exquisite and rare Blue of ground Lapis Lazuli. Until the 1700s, the only source of Lapis was the remote Sar-e-Sang valley in the Badakhshan mountains in northeast Afghanistan, where it has been mined for six thousand years. 

Cennino Cennini, the author of the early 15th century text, Il Libro dell’Arte_ ( _The Book of Art_),  describes the magic involved in taking Lapis Lazuli. grinding it down to a fine powder, and with some alchemical legerdemain, transmuting it into ultramarine. 

Ultramarine (lit. “beyond the sea” which perfectly describes the stone’s origin from Afghanistan through Persia and then across the Mediterranean into the Adriatic to Venezia),  is a zeolite pigment, chemically more stable than other blue pigments, most of which are azurite derivatives which oxidize quickly to greenish-black.

Antonello da Messina (c.1430 -1479) was one of those little known transformative geniuses. The legendary art historian John Pope-Hennessy described Antonello as "the first Italian painter for whom the individual portrait was an art form in its own right.” 

Antonello was born in Messina, the eastern tip of Sicilia, trained in Napoli, visited and worked a while in Venezia, but spent most of his time on that beautiful  island at the toe of Italia. He was one of the few southern Italian painters who influenced the style of northern italian artists. 

Antonello’s portraits are striking: full frontal views of the subject, with dramatically dark backgrounds ( a chiaroscuro technique a century and a half before Caravaggio) and identifying markings such as books or tabletops. Antonello’s portraits channel the early Nederlandisch masterpieces of Memling and van Eyck but there is no evidence that he ever left Italy. 

This captivating image of the Virgin Mary - her youth, her eyes, the remarkable foreshortening (lo scorcio) of her raised right hand, as she is interrupted in her reading by the Angel of the Annunciation, never fails to astonish the viewer. 

Why Blue for the Virgin Mary? In Roman times, the color Blue was associated with “Barbari” (“those with beards” “- a proxy for “barbarians”) and so they didn’t use it (even though the ancient Egyptians loved the stuff).  Renaissance painters chose blue for Mary’s robes because it was a color not previously associated with anything else (red for passion, e.g.) and represented humility.

La Vergine Annunciata

Antonella da Messina

c. 1476

Palazzo Abatellis

Palermo, Sicilia

RAINBOWS OF COLORS: DAZZLED BY LUDWIG SEITZ'S VATICAN ANGEL

Angel and Farmer (Detail)
Ludwig (Ludovico) Seitz
1899
Galleria dei Candelabri
Musei Vaticani
Rome

      “GRATIA DEI ET CONTENTIONE VOLUNTATIS      

          EXCELLENTIAM VIRTUTIS ADIPISCIMUR” 

Ludwig (Ludovico) Seitz’s wondrous Vatican Angel is not a product of the Renaissance, yet it channels so much of the Renaissance as well as being surrounded by it in the Galleria Dei Candelabri in the Vatican.

Some paintings are so iconic that they remain emblazoned in our minds, reappearing often as lovely dreams. The wondrous painting of the Angel and Farmer by Ludovico Seitz (Ludwig Seitz, 1844 - 1908) in the Vatican's Galleria dei Candelabri (Gallery of the Candelabras), is one of these.

It depicts, in blazing, living color, the metaphor of Divine Grace on Human Works, as exemplified by the Angel showing the Sun to an old man toiling away at his labors. 

The Angel’s accoutrements (laurel wreath, staff, flowing robe) and her immediate surround (the verdant garden) are depicted in dazzling colors, indeed all the colors of the visible spectrum (ROYGBIV), whereas the laborer and the rest of the painting are muted in sepia or a drab gray. 

The Angel is pointing out that without sunlight, the laborer`s works are in vain. Just as sunlight brings about the material works of man, Grace allows the works of the spirit to shine. 

Seitz’s genius Iies not only in painting those dazzling colors, but also for the “incredible lightness of being”’he invests in the Angel, floating, buoyant, androgynous, ethereal and yet tangible, just magnificent.

Behind the Angel is the Latin motto:

“GRATIA DEI ET CONTENTIONE VOLUNTATIS EXCELLENTIAM VIRTUTIS ADIPISCIMUR” 

“With the grace of God and the effort of Will we obtain the excellence of Virtue”

The Farmer and The Angel (Detail)

Tempera on panel 

Ludwig (Ludovico) Seitz 

c. 1899

Galleria Dei Candelabri

Vatican Museums

Roma

NATURALISM AND HUMANISM: GHIRLANDAIO’S OLD MAN AND CHILD

Domenico Ghirlandaio 

Elderly Man and Child

Ritratto di un vecchio e un bambino

1490 Louvre

“.... there is no more human picture in the entire range of Quattrocento painting, whether in or out of Italy...”                     Bernard Berenson

                                                 

Among the defining characteristics of the Renaissance were naturalism and humanism, and one of the characteristics of humanism was an authentic realism- with no accreted layers of theology, religion, mythology or metaphors.

To be sure, many Rinascimento paintings and sculptures were depictions on religious or mythologies themes, but the spirit of the Renaissance hewed toward inquiry and realism even in these works.

In Domenico Ghirlandaio’s iconic and enduring  portrait of the Elderly Man and Child, we see an artist who has transcended painting metaphors and inferences, symbols and tangents, to an artist who paints reality; reality admixed with a courageous intimacy.

Ghirlandaio depicts the  face of the Elderly man with all its faults- “warts and all.” 

This realism is such that I employ this painting to teach the residents about oculocutaneous rosacea of the eyelids and cheeks, and the nasal carbuncular changes (called rhinophyma), conditions which are depicted here with an anatomicopathological accuracy that is almost photographic in detail.

Nothing is sugarcoated.

Detail and truth. 

Ghirlandaio presents the portrait in a naturalistic and sympathetic fashion, at variance with the physiognomic theory of the era, which maintained a connection between external appearances and internal truths.

Whereas the pre-Renaissance view of the old man might have been to disparage his “old age-ness”, Ghirlandaio elevates the rendering of his wizened face and deformed nose to a tender moment where the old man and the child share a common bond - perhaps this is a grandfather and his grandson. 

Given the affection the two have for one another, we can assume that they are related, and likely at the level of a grandfather and grandchild.

“Rather than implying a defect of character, An Old Man and his Grandson” invites appreciation of the man's virtuousness.

“The painting depicts a moment of intimacy between the elderly man and the child, underscored by the placement of the child's hand on the old man's chest, and the old man's gentle expression. This show of affection endows the picture with emotional qualities beyond those expected from a traditional dynastic portrait.”

In fact the Italian name for this painting is very specific: “Ritratto di un vecchio e nipote”

“A painting of an old man and grandson (or nephew)” (The term “nipote” can refer to either a grandchild or a nephew). 

Of this great humanistic masterpiece, the great Harvard art historian Bernard Berenson stated that “there  is no more human picture in the entire range of Quattrocento painting, whether in or out of Italy."

Domenico Ghirlandaio 

Elderly Man and Child

Ritratto di un vecchio e nipote 

1490

Louvre

CANGIANTE: THAT REMARKABLE RENAISSANCE PAINTING TECHNIQUE

Delphica, the Oracle of Delphi
Michelangelo Buonarotti
c.1512
Capella Sistina, Vatican

Cangiante is one of the four canonical Renaissance painting techniques, the others being Unione, Sfumato and Chiaroscuro.

In the Cangiante technique, one color abruptly replaces another color, to create shadow or to highlight an area that would be dulled more if the color would simply be mixed with brown or black.

Notice the abrupt transition from green to yellow in Michelangelo’s famous Delphic Oracle in the Capella Sistina Her blouse displays Cangiante  technique, to create texture and shadow. There is also Cangiante seen in the orange to yellow transition in her outer robe. 

Much bolder than Unione and Sfumato, Cangiante accentuates changes in color as opposed to toning them down. You’ll notice greens as ”yellow” shadows and yellows as “orange” shadows in this type of painting style.

Another example of Cangiante is seen in the robe of Michelangelo’s Daniel, also in the Capella Sistina. 

The term Cangiante derives from “cangiare,” a Renaissance Italian verb for “cambiare,” “to change, to transform” Ultimately from “changier” French first half of the 14th century. Late Latin “cambiare,”  from Latin “cambire,”  “to trade or barter.” P-I-E root “kemb” “to bend”

Detail of Delphica, the Delphic Oracle

Michelangelo Buonarotti 

c.1512

Capella Sistina, Vatican