THE EXQUISITE CLARITY OF PINTURRICHIO

La Madonna della Pace (detail) 

The Perugia School of Painters - those remarkable Umbrian artistic geniuses: Raphael (Raffaello), the eponymously nicknamed Perugino, and Pinturicchio- have left as their legacy among the most exquisite visages of the Madonna, the baby Jesus and saints. 

Here we see a closeup of a sublime portrait of the Virgin by Pinturicchio. Born Bernardo di Betto in Perugia in 1454, his nickname “il Pinturicchio” means “the little painter,” an attribute of his short stature. 

Vasari, in his Lives of the Artists, tells us that Pinturicchio trained as a paid assistant under Perugino, thus the eerie similarity between Pinturicchio’s Madonnas and those of the Master himself.

The Madonna here is indeed exquisitely rendered: the sensitive depiciton of her face, its ovoid shape channeling the oval of an egg, the seed that became her Son. The modeling is subtle and soft, her cheeks almost seem to have rouge on them, creating a vitality, a vividness, her half-lidded eyes portraying both a sensuality and a sadness, a presaging of knowledge of His future Passion and Crucifixion. The veil, in ultramarine, that alchemically transformed lapis lazuli, has a translucency even as it is as a deep blue. Pinturicchio captures the Virgin as if she were sitting directly in front of his easel. 

La Madonna della Pace 

The Madonna of the Peace 

Il PInturrichio (Bernardino de Betto)

c. 1490

Pinacoteca civica Tacchi-Venturi

Duomo di San Severino 

San Severino nelle Marche

Does an Apple a Day keep the Doctor away?

An article I wrote on apples in art, philology, history, science and nutrition. 

https://hekint.org/2018/10/10/does-an-apple-a-day-keep-the-doctor-away/

Adam and Eve
Lucas Cranach the Elder
1526
Courtauld Institute
London 

LUX ET VERITAS: Jan van Eyck’s Eye

The Marriage of the Arnolfini
Jan van Eyck
1434
National Gallery of Art, London 

Jan van Eyck’s Arnolfini Marriage is one of the great secular masterpieces of early Nederlandisch painting and the northern Renaissance. That it is a secular painting, and not religious, is also what makes it so iconic and important. 

In the back of the painting, on the far wall, at the vanishing point, is a wondrous mirror, above which are these words in Latin: “Johannes de Eyck fuit hic” - “Jan van Eyck was here.” 

Jan van Eyck bore witness to the marriage of the Arnolfini with his presence, and he bore witness to his presence in the mirror. 

Here is a fine article about Jan van Eyck, his masterpiece the Arnolfini Portrait, Nikolaus Cusanus, and that wondrous and all-revealing mirror:

https://harpers.org/blog/2009/01/cusanus-and-van-eyck-the-eye-behind-the-mirror/

Beryllus lapis est lucidus, albus et transparens. Cui datur forma concava pariter et convexa, et per ipsum, videns attingit prius invisible. Intellectualibus oculis si intellectualis beryllus, qui formam habeat maximam pariter et minimam, adaptur, per eius medium attingitus indivisibile omnium principum.

The beryl is a brilliant, white and transparent stone. It is possessed simultaneously of a concave and a convex form, and whoever attempts to peer through it comes across things hitherto invisible. If we measure a beryl to reason and fix the gaze of eyes of reason upon it, we perceive the greatest and the smallest forms at once and are thus affected by the recognition of the inseparable origins of the all.

–Niclas Krebs, later Cardinal Nicholas of Kues (Nikolaus Cusanus), De beryllo, cap. ii (1458) in Nikolaus von Kues’ philosophisch-theologische Werke in deutscher und lateinischer Sprache, vol. 3, p. 4 (S.H. transl

The Marriage of the Arnolfini

Jan Van Eyck

1434

NGA, London

PARALLEL UNIVERSES: CARLO CRIVELLI’S ANNUNCIATION

LIBERTAS ECCLESIASTICA:

THE PARALLEL UNIVERSES OF CARLO CRIVELLI

Carlo Crivelli (1430 - 1495) was an iconoclastic genius who, though he lived and worked in Venezia and Le Marche near Ancona at a time when the naturalistic trends of Firenze held sway, continued to work in the conservative International Gothic Style of Northern Europe. 

His settings, as we see here in the finely detailed Annunciation with Santo Emidio, are jewel-like and full of elaborate allegorical detail. 

Here there are two narratives taking place simultaneously in which allusions abound.

To me, the extraordinary, powerful, almost vertiginous linear perspective goes beyond being a mere line of sight to the vanishing point in the center of the painting. 

Crivelli favored verdant backgrounds, his works enriched by a characteristic use of fruits (do you see the cucumber? 🙂 ), and flowers as decorative motifs, often depicted in pendant festoons, which channel the Paduan studio of Francesco Squarcione, where he studied and worked.

The painting pays homage to the town of Ascoli, to which, in 1482, Pope Sixtus IV granted a degree of self-government. It is part of an altarpiece for the church of Santa Annunziata in Ascoli to celebrate the event. The coats of arms are those of the Pope (left) and the local bishop, Prospero Caffarelli (right). News of Ascoli's new status reached the town on the feast of the Annunciation, 25 March, which then became a feast day when the town celebrated its liberty.

L’Annunciazione con San Emidio

The Annunciation with Saint Emidius

Carlo Crivelli

1486

NGA London

BEETHOVEN’S FINEST OPERATIC MOMENT: The Fidelio Act One Quartet

Fidelio - Act One Quartet 

Mir ist so wunderbar (I feel wonderful)

Four people - same situation - Four different realities.

Extraordinary, and all from such a simple tune.

Then again, isn’t one aspect of genius its elegant simplicity combined with awesome power? 

Take the four and a half minutes to listen to the Act I Quartet from Fidelio, and let this sublime music and its meaning wash over you.

Yes, it is about the power of love. 

https://youtu.be/Qop7e81OazA

Gundula Janowitz, William Wilderman, Stella Richmond, Misha Raitzin, 

IPO, Zubin Mehta conductor

NEVER FINISHED, YET PERFECT: Leonardo’s Saint Jerome in the Desert

Saint Jerome in the Desert

  Leonardo Da Vinci (c. 1480)

Tempera and Oil on Walnut Panel 

Musei Vaticani 

Submitted for your wonder and fascination is Leonardo’s never finished, iconic and brilliantly conceived painting of St Jerome in the Desert.

So many of Leonardo’s ideas - in engineering, science, medicine and art- never were completed. He could never say “done,” even for La Gioconda (Mona Lisa), and yet there is always a perfection of form and power of meaning even in his drafts and uncompleted works. 

St Jerome in the Desert, one of only seven Leonardo’s 20 or so extant works that are indisputably only in His hand, will be coming to the Met from the Vatican later this year, as a one-painting show to honor the 500th anniversary of the death of the Master.

The painting shows St. Jerome at prayer at the end of his life, a hermit in the wilderness, alone save for his lion companion—a common Renaissance subject. And yet it stands alone in its deeply moving, intimate depiction of the penitent saint in a moment of private reverie. As Jerome stares up at his crucifix, his spiritual struggle is plain to see, even though many passages of work show little more than the ground preparation on the wood panel, with hastily sketched outlines.

And we literally have Leonardo’s hand in this masterpiece- his fingerprints can be found in the upper left of the painting it as he rubbed and smoothed his oils and tempera on the walnut. 

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/11/arts/design/davinci-saint-jerome-metropolitan-museum.html

CORRECTING A MOZART MYTH: The Truths about the Mozart Allegri Miserere Story

The “Bologna Mozart” portrait
The 1777 copy of the lost 1770 portrait of Mozart
wearing the medal of the Order of the Golden Spur
Accademia di Musica di Bologna 

For as long as I remember as a Mozartian, which goes back to my teenage years, I have heard the story of the ”secret” Gregorio Allegri Miserere and Mozart’s “miraculous” feat of
copying it out “perfectly” upon “one” listening.
It sounded like a Mozart myth.
So I decided to do my own research to find out the truth.
There is indeed a kernel of truth in this well-worn story. The story of Mozart’s two April 1770 visits to the Vatican during Holy Week and the Allegri Miserere “caper,” have gone through many permutations, most of them distorted and hyperbolic.
Below is my research that removes the encrusted accretions of two centuries of  hyperbole, gets the facts straight, and shows you exactly how a young genius could have done it.

During the first (1770) of their three Italian journeys,the trips that were formative in Wolfgang's compositional embryogenesis, Wolfgang and Leopold found themselves in Roma during Holy Week.
Wolfgang and Leopold arrived in Roma from Firenze on Wednesday , 11 April 1770, a rainy afternoon in the Eternal City.
During the Tenebrae Service at the Vatican on Thursday April 12th (Holy Thursday in Christian tradition), the Mozarts heard Gregorio Allegri's sublime nine-part, two-choir. polyphonic 1635 masterpiece, Miserere (Miserere mei, Deus).

One of many Mozart myths is that the Miserere manuscript was “heavily guarded” at the Vatican and that there were “no other copies.”

Untrue.

By 1770, one hundred thirty-five years after the Miserere was composed, there were a number of copies around Europe, several specifically in London, where the Mozart family sojourned for several months in 1764. The Allegri Miserere was performed a number of time times in London in the 1760s.
Could Wolfgang have heard it as an eight year-old when he was in London?

Where were the other copies?
The Vatican, of course, had a copy (likley the original autograph manuscript ) of the Miserere. Another copy was in Bologna in the possession of Mozart’s friend and early musical mentor, Padre Giovanni Battista Martini.  The King of Portugal also had a copy.

After hearing the Miserere on Holy Thursday, April 12th, Wolfgang went back to his apartment and, with his eidetic memory and absolute pitch, wrote out on several sheets of composition paper what he remembered of the work.
Wolfgang and his father went back to hear the Miserere performed again on Saturday, April 14th (Holy Saturday in Christian tradition), the day before Easter Sunday.
Finding some mistakes in the copy he had made, Wolfgang made corrections.
The Mozarts went on to Napoli to attend an opera at San Carlo (which Mozart didn’t care for) and then on to see Pompeii.
Somehow and at some point, Wolfgang's fair copy got into the hands of Pope Clement XIV.
The Pope, instead of excommunicating Wolfgang, decided to award Wolfgang the honor of Chevalier of the Order of the Golden Spur (Caveliere dello Sperone D'Or), First Degree.
Recieving the Order of the Golden Spur was an extraordinary honor for anyone, especially a teenager. The Pope went one step further in giving Wofgang First Degree honors, a higher rank than that conferred on most other recipients, including Christoph Willibald von Gluck.
On July 5th 1770, Cardinal Lazzaro Pallavicini, the papal secretary to Pope Clement XIV, conferred LonSperone D'Oro di prima classe (The Order of the Golden Spur in the First Degree) on Wolfgango Amedeo Mozart, a rank equal to the Order of the Golden Spur the Papacy had previously conferred only on Orlando di Lasso, some two hundred years earlier.

How did Wolfgang do it?
He did it as follows:
1) he used his eidetic memory;
2) he used his absolute pitch:
3) perhaps he had seen a manuscript in London in 1764  (there were a number of copies there);
and most importantly,
4) the work is short and VERY repetitive - in fact it repeats six times.

It was quite doable for Wolfgang to copy out what he had heard.
The Miserere is about twelve minutes. But, it is actually a two-minute compsition repeated six times. A genius such as Wolfgang would have had very little trouble remembering the melody. The polyphony would have been the issue.
What is truly astonishing, therefore, and in my view, was Wolfgang's remarkable ability to parse out the nine-part polyphony that comprises the heart of the Miserere, not putting a repeat sign at the end of a two-minute composition.
THAT is the stuff of genius......

Listen to the haunting, mystical Gregorio Allegri Miserere, in the iconic, benchmark 1980 performance by the Tallis Scholars.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nKj1iK2WKS8

Vincent DeLuise

Image: The so-called Bologna portrait of 1777. This is the 1777 copy by an unknown artist of the lost 1770 oil painted of Mozart for Padre Martini’s Gallery of Composers for the Accademia di Musica di Bologna e Verona. Note that Mozart is wearing the Order of the Golden Spur in this portrait. Leopold said that Wolfgang was “sick” when he sat for the portrait but that the portrait resembled Wolfgang almost exactly.

A MUSEUM OF VISION: CELEBRATING THE HUMAN EYE

A NEW MUSEUM OF VISION:

A CELEBRATION OF THE HUMAN EYE

Kudos to the American Academy of Ophthalmology (AAO) and museum chairs Drs Marmor, Truhlsen and Medow, for launching an extraordinary new Museum of Vision, to be unveiled at the AAO headquarters in San Francisco next year. 

This public museum of over 38,000 objects will be a fascinating and edifying resource for young and old to learn about our most prized possession, our sight, and all that Ophthalmologists are doing world-wide to protect our vision throughout our lives.
Here is the link to a short video which details the Academy’s wonderful new initiative.

https://lnkd.in/d4jYBzg

THE PALE BLUE DOT

THE PALE BLUE DOT

“Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. 

“On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there-on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

“The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot.

“Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.

“The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.

“It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.”

(Excerpted from Carl Sagan, _Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space_)

The Earth, from the Moon 

NASA photo Apollo 11

BALDASSARE CASTIGLIONE AND LA SPREZZATURA

Baldassarre Castiglione 

Raffaello Sanzio (Raphael)

c.1515

Louvre

THE GREAT COURTIER

(Il GRANDE CORTIGIANO)

Each time I have been to the Louvre, while everyone else is jostling for a quick look at La Gioconda (aka la Mona Lisa, that painting behind velvet rope and bullet proof glass ), I go to the room perpendicular to that room, and the next room, and say hello to the FOUR other Leonardos in the Museum, and to this sublime and elegant Raffaello portrait of the Courtier Baldassarre Castiglione, and usually, there is no one around me, because they are all angling for that long view of Lisa Gherardini. 

Go figure.

It was Baldassarre Castiglione who “walked the walk” as well as “talked the talk” of the Renaissance humanist: a courtly gentleman, polyglot and polymathic, suave and urbane, author and poet.  It was Castiglione  in his famous 1528 book, Il Cortigiano (The Courtier), who first defined that virtually untranslatable Italian word for elegant and effortless nonchalant coolness, Sprezzatura.

The guy was supersmart and supercool. 

Ars longa!

LEONARDO DA VINCI, THE UNIVERSAL HUMANIST

LEONARDO, THE UNIVERSAL HUMANIST

On the eve of the five hundredth anniversary of the death of Leonardo Da Vinci (2 May 2019), the superb medical journal, The Lancet, is paying homage this month to this greatest of geniuses and humanists.

Take a moment to observe and really see this wondrous red chalk portrait and read this elegiac tribute paragraph from the editors of The Lancet

“Leonardo's approach to life was built upon a vision of unity. The singular lens he used contrasts with modern dichotomous ways of seeing and thinking that separate the arts and sciences, and underlies Leonardo's diverse body of work spanning anatomy, neurology, optics, embryology, cardiology, medical education, architecture, engineering, and, of course, fine art. He perceived art and science as complementary dimensions of human experience, also believing that people and animals were inextricably entwined and interdependent on each other for survival. This was manifested in his (then radical) transition to a vegetarian diet, and through his appreciation of nature—in biodiversity and geology, and particularly through his use of the analogy of the microcosm of the human body reflecting the macrocosm of the Earth.”

The Lancet April 6,2019

Portrait of a man (possibly a self-portrait of Leonardo Da Vinci)

Biblioteca Reale, Torino

c. 1512

WHO WAS THE MASTER OF THE FEMALE HALF-LENGTHS?

There is so much we still dont know about Art and Connoisseurship.
Paintings are attributed incorrectly all the time; we say this is a Leonardo and that is a Modigliani or a Corot, and often, we dont know.
If not often, then more than rarely.
There is actually a boat load of debate about a LOT of what you thought you had learned or knew.
It has become almost a parlor game to re-attribute works of Art, even "famous" ones (perhaps they are famous because of the mis-attribution instead of their inherent exqusiteness? Hmmmm.)
One exquisite example is the exquisite Art of the exquisite anonymous painter (or painters) of the Female half-lengths.
The Master of the Female Half-Lengths.
Who was she? or he? Or they?
I have been enamored of these paintings for years.
Whoever - she/he/they - was/were, they were Northern European artists who worked during the cinquencento - smack dab in the Renaissance.
Many names have been profferred, mostly in re either Jan or Hans Vereycke.
Many towns have been suggested as to where they/he/she worked, like Antwerp or Bruges, Ghent or Mechelen (the usual suspects).
Dates ranging from 1520 to 1590 have been proposed.
See how much (er, little) we know !
Calling the author "The Master of the Female Half-Lengths" is like calling a Bronzino a painting by the Master of Mannerist Firenze, if we didnt know it was by Agnolo di Cosimo.
I suppose that is better than saying "anonymous."
It is what is known in art historical parlance as a Notname.
Yes, a Notname
A Notname is not a not name, It is a word that stems from the Deutsch: Notname (German: Notname (German: [ˈnoːtˌnaːmə]
A Notname is a "necessity-name" (a  "contingency-name), in art historical terms, an invented name given to an artist whose identity has been lost.
We may Not know the Name of this Master of the Female Half-Lengths.
But she or he or they sure was/were amazing.

Three Musicians
Master of the Female Half-Lengths
c. 1530
Los Angeles County Museum of Art