Old Kingdom, end of Dynasty VIReliefs from the Tomb of Khnumti in Saqqarah,
about 2181 B.C.Limestone23 7/8x19 5/8 in.
(60.5x50.0 cm) and
21 ½ x 18 15/16 in.
(54.4 x 48.0 cm)
Gift of the James G. Hanes Memorial Fund, 1972 (72.2.1/2)
These reliefs from a tomb chapel symbolically provide for the needs of the deceased through all eternity. In one scene (top), Khnumti, identified by an inscription as a lector priest (one who reads sacred texts for religious observances), is seated before a table on which stand twelve loaves of bread. Beneath it sit a variety of vessels and a bundle of leeks. Khnumti wears a kilt and a broad collar on which floral details would have been painted. In conformity with Egyptian sculptural practice, Khnumti's head, arms, and legs are seen in profile, while his eye, shoulder, and torso are shown frontally.
The hieroglyphic text above Khnumti's head promises him bread, beer, cattle, fowl, alabaster, and linen, and the line of repeated plant symbols below indicates thousands of these provisions. Columns of text in sunken relief below the broken top edge extend a menu of offerings. This list is invoked by the five officials visible at the upper left, three of whom wear sashes identifying them as lector priests like Khnumti. The first figure kneels before a low offering table; the last walks away from the scene, dragging a herbal broom to clean and perfume the chamber in final preparation of the tomb for Khnumti's afterlife.
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The second relief (bottom) from the same tomb was originally part of a panel on the opposite wall. Almost a mirror image of the other relief, its differences provide information on the technique of the ancient sculptor. The figure of Khnumti is seated in a similar pose, but in order to portray both the right arm reaching toward the table and the whole left arm with its hand holding a folded cloth, the left arm is bent awkwardly back across the chest. The area beside the table features a wealth of offerings, including fruits and vegetables, vessels, and a trussed duck. Most of these offerings are only outlined with incision, a preliminary step to removing the stone from the background to create the low raised relief seen in the more finished section of the panel. The inscription above the figural scene is striking in its unfinished state, with the marks of the chisel still visible in the background. It is tempting to suppose that the hasty execution of this panel was due to the unexpected need to prepare quickly for Khnumti's burial.
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ANCIENT EGYPTIAN ART
>Old Kingdom,
Dynasty V, about
2494-2345 B.C.
Figure of a Man
Wood with traces of gesso and paint h. 52 1/4 in.
(132.7 cm)
Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Gordon Hanes, 1979 (79.6.3)
Like the vast majority of Egyptian artworks, this wooden statue of a nude male survives because it was sealed in a tomb for thousands of years. It was probably originally in the serdab chamber of a tomb, where funerary statues of the deceased were placed to watch over offering ceremonies through eternity; the tomb, known as a mastaba, was probably located at Saqqarah, the great aristocratic cemetery area of ancient Memphis (near modern Cairo).
Poised in the conventional Egyptian stance of left leg forward but weight evenly distributed on both feet, this wooden statue of a nude male was covered with a layer of gesso (plaster) that was painted red. His ruddy complexion underscores his participation in the outdoor activities reserved for men. Representations of nudes are rare in ancient Egypt, so the statue may have worn a linen kilt that has not survived. The separately attached arms, now missing, may have held insignia identifying his rank or position.
Without these emblems or the head, or exact knowledge of the place of discovery, the identity of the statue remains anonymous, but some information can be deduced. The expense of large pieces of wood suitable for such finely modeled sculpture suggests that the deceased was a wealthy official.
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Egyptians believed that the dead had to cross a stretch of water before they could achieve resurrection in the afterlife. In the Middle Kingdom, tombs were provided with models of boats to ensure that the deceased had transportation for the journey. This round-bottomed boat with prow and stern in the shape of stylized papyrus echoes the form of actual papyriform boats used on the Nile. It is steered by the helmsman with two steering-oars suspended at the stern. The craft was propelled by a broad sail (now missing) held by rigging, some of which survives intact, and attended by two sailors and four rowers. A pilot at the prow surveys the river ahead. The deceased, dressed in a close-fitting white garment, sits under a canopy with a curved roof as he impassively watches his progress toward the afterlife.
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Middle Kingdom,
Dynasties XII-XIII, about 1991 -1633 B.C.Model of a Boat
Wood, gesso, paint, twineh. 3O 1/2 x W. 20 ½ x 1.41 in.
(77.5 x 52.0 x 104.0 cm)
Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Gordon Hanes, 1982 (82.12)
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ANCIENT EGYPTIAN ART
New Kingdom, Reign of Amenhotep III, about 1417-1379 B.C.Goddess Sekhmet
Graniteh. 23 in. (58.5 cm)
Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Gordon Hanes, 1982 (82.11)
Sekhmet, whose name means "the mighty one," was a goddess of war, always allied with the king during battle. Her name may derive from the story of her terrible fury when her father, the sun god Re, sent her to earth to destroy humankind for plotting against him. After a great massacre, Re relented but was unable to restrain his daughter's bloodlust. He finally stopped the killing by flooding a field with beer, dyed red so that Sekhmet mistook it for blood and drank until pacified. Although Sekhmet brought death and disease, the Egyptians also credited her with the ability to cure illnesses, and she became the patron goddess of doctors. Her priests were the earliest known veterinarians.
This is one of the more than 600 granite statues of the lion-headed female goddess erected by King Amenhotep III in his mortuary temple and at the Temple of Mut at Karnak, where many remain in situ. Presented in standing and seated form, both types wore on top of the head a moon disc, now missing from this statue, and both originally stood more than two meters in height. The flower of the papyrus scepter visible beneath her breasts indicates that this statue stood erect, holding the scepter with her left hand. Her right would have held an ankh sign, the symbol of life, along the side of her body. The variegated color of the granite emphasizes the subtle carving of the lion's muzzle and the mane framing the face.
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To ensure the pharaoh's freedom from menial labor in the afterlife, at least two hundred shawabti figures were prepared for the tomb of Akhenaten at his capital Tell el Amarna, but none survived antiquity intact. These figures, whose name means "answerers," were intended to substitute for the king in labors he might be called upon to perform in the next world. As is characteristic for shawabti figures, they were mummiform in shape.
The bearded Akhenaten wears the pharaoh's striped headdress; the remains of the royal Uraeus, a serpent symbolic of the pharaoh's power, can be seen above his forehead. He also carried royal insignia, the scepter in the form of a crook and a flail of kingship, as witnessed by the tip of the crook on his right shoulder.
Akhenaten imposed sweeping religious reforms and instituted unprecedented changes in the style of Egyptian art. Here, the eyes slant slightly toward the nose and the lips are full and fleshy, subtle reminders of the curvilinear, naturalistic style of the art produced during Akhen-aten's reign. His monotheistic worship of a sun god, Aten, and the use of exaggerated curves in the depiction of the human figure did not, however, survive his reign.
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New Kingdom,
Dynasty XVIII, Amarna Period, about 1379-1362 B.C.Head from a Shawabti of Akhenaten
Quartzite
h. 2 3/4 in.
(7.0 cm)
Gift of the James G. Hanes Memorial Fund, 1974 (74.2.8)
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ANCIENT EGYPTIAN ART
Late Period, Dynasty XXII -XXXIII, about 945-715 B.C.
Coffin of Djed Mont
Wood, gesso, polychrome
h.71 in.
(180.3 cm)
Gift of the James G. Hanes Memorial Fund, 1973 (73.84)
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This wooden anthropoid coffin was the final resting place of the deceased, identified by hieroglyphic text on the back as Djed Mout, the daughter of Narht-Hor-erou; both father and daughter are otherwise unknown. The cover is in the form of a stylized woman representing the deceased; she wears a wig, and her face is framed by vulture's wings. The wings represent the protection of the goddess Isis, to whom the vulture is sacred. Below the broad and colorful pectoral collar that ends in falcon heads on the shoulders is the goddess Nut. Flanked by two rams, her wings outspread, Nut kneels atop a small shrine. Djed Mout is led by the ibis-headed god Thoth toward the mummiform god Osiris, who is accompanied by other protective deities in a frieze running across the front.
At the top of the central column, Djed Mout appears again on a bier. Over her flies the ba, the deceased's spirit that preserves her identity for eternity. Beneath the bier are four Canopic jars with heads of the four sons of Horus, who protect her liver, lungs, stomach, and intestines inside the jars. Over the lower section of the coffin, vertical lines of text from the Book of the Dead are interspersed with genies. This ritual text provided the deceased with spells and magic to safeguard her journey.
Djed Mout appears once more in the area of the feet, where she is shown between the gods Horus and Anubis. A protective snake lies along the whole length of the cover on both sides. The theme of protection carries over to the interior of the coffin, where Nut is depicted on both the lid and bottom, literally enveloping the mummy.
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ANCIENT EGYPTIAN ART
Ptolemaic Period
Mummy Covering,
about 300 B.C.
Linen with gesso, paint, and gilding h. approx. 60 in.
(152.4 cm)
Purchased with funds from the State of North Carolina, 1975 (75.1.1)
This cartonnage—linen stiffened with glue and covered with a thin coat of gilding— formed the top layer of the linen-wrapped mummy of the deceased. The lowest register of the funerary mask depicts the ceremony of the adoration of the heart, the organ regarded by the Egyptians as the seat of human emotions and intellect. Embossed and incised figures and scenes, designed to ensure a happy afterlife for the deceased, adorn the breastplate and the pieces covering the legs.
Two depictions of the falcon god Horus with a sun disc on his head protect the deceased. A winged scarab, the symbol of the perpetual daily rebirth of the sun, surmounts a depiction of a temple where Osiris, the god who oversaw the afterlife and resurrection, is worshipped by his wife Isis and her sister Nepthys. The goddess Nut, spreading her wings across the mummy's legs, protects the deceased, whose funeral boat and burial can be seen above her. Isis and Nepthys are also arrayed to the sides of the legs, as are the four sons of Horus. The golden soles placed beneath the mummy's feet prevented impure contact with the ground from defiling the dwelling of Osiris. The wrapped and covered mummy would have been placed inside a mummiform coffin.
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Classical Art
FROM ITS BEGINNINGS AROUND 900 B.C., Greek art underwent continuous and relatively rapid formal and stylistic changes. During the Archaic period (about 650-480 B.C.) artists moved toward a greater naturalism in representations of the human body, but retained from the earlier Geometric period (about 900-600 B.C.) a tendency to simplify anatomy and to emphasize repeating patterns in the rendering of hair and other details. The NCMA's Cypriot Head represents this Archaic phase of Greek art.
By the Classical period of the mid-fifth century B.C., sculptors and painters had thoroughly mastered the study of anatomy and of the body in motion and had achieved a completely natural portrayal of human figures. Greek art is also characterized, however, by a tendency to idealize the subject—whether god, hero, or mortal—as young, healthy, and beautiful. Such perfect figures embody the Greek concept of a healthy mind in a healthy body and the philosophy that "man is the measure of all things."
Whereas Greek buildings—temples, theaters, and other public structures— and marble sculptures survive in significant numbers, other aspects of Greek art can be studied only indirectly. The beautiful wall paintings described by ancient writers have not survived, but vase paintings may indicate the subjects and forms of those lost masterpieces. Few monumental bronze sculptures survive, but many Greek originals, in both marble and bronze, were copied during the Roman period.
Throughout the history of Rome, from the Republican period beginning around 500 B.C. through the Imperial period (27 B.C.-A.D. 395), the Romans admired and imitated the Greeks in many areas of life and art. During this time, however, they also made original contributions in art and architecture, as they did in other fields of endeavor, including law and governmental administration. With a practical turn of mind, the Romans excelled in architectural engineering, introducing; the use of arches, vaults, domes, and concrete in the construction of immense public buildings as well as in structures such as bridges and aqueducts. In sculpture they emphasized unflinching realism and produced some of the most striking portraits of any period in the history of art.
Unlike the Greeks, who made portraits only of the great and famous, Roman artists portrayed people from all walks of life, from rulers to freed slaves. Well represented in the NCMA's collection are imperial portraits, with marble sculptures of Marcus Aurelius and Caracalla, and a bronze head that may be a likeness of Livia, wife of Augustus Caesar. Also included in these pages are the Museum's portraits of individuals from other social strata—a priest and his wife, and an intimate group portrait of a family of former slaves.
Neck Amphora (detail)
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CLASSICAL ART
Steiner Master Cycladic, Syros GroupFemale Figurine,
about 2800-2400 B.C.
Marble
19 7/8 X 5 1/2 in.
(50.6 x 14.0 cm)
Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Gordon Hanes, 1986 (86.5)
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The Cyclades, small islands in the Aegean Sea between Greece and Turkey, had a flourishing Early Bronze Age culture, dating from about 3200 to 2000 B.C. Among the most memorable artifacts of that culture are the marble figurines that were placed in many graves. Most are female, like this one, holding her arms folded beneath the breasts, and reclining rather than standing, indicated by the extended position of the feet. The addition of painted details, such as the eyes, is attested in the ghost of an outline visible in certain light.
The simple geometry of the forms struck a responsive chord in modern artists and accounts for the great appeal of the figurines in the twentieth century. Unfortunately, this popularity led to the plundering of many Cycladic cemeteries in search of the figurines. With the resulting destruction of information on their contexts and the lack of any written documentation from this prehistoric period, interpretation of the meaning and function of the figurines is uncertain.
Scholars now group figurines according to elements of their style. Thus, the broad U-shaped head with its small, high-placed nose, and the distinctive profile with a thick torso and slender legs link our figure to an artist known as the Steiner Master, after the owners of the first figurine to be identified with this style.
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The figural scenes on this vase come from a rich mythological context. On one side, the hero Herakles is shown standing in a chariot, its four horses steadied by a groom. He wears an elaborate cloak and a lion skin draped protectively around his head. The skin is a trophy from the first of Herakles' twelve labors, the killing of the Nemean lion. His weapon in this exploit was the club, here carried on his shoulder. The goddess Athena gestures toward Herakles as she turns toward Hermes, the divine messenger and guide, who will lead the chariot to Olympus. There Herakles will claim immortality as the prize for the successful completion of his twelve labors.
On the other side, two men turn to one of the two horsemen flanking them. The central warrior armed with helmet, white shield, greaves, and long spear is the king of Ethiopia, Memnon, who went to the aid of his uncle Priam of Troy in his war with the Greeks. He is accompanied by a squire.
The name of the painter of this vase is unknown. The three lines that separate the bands of decoration under the figural scenes are characteristic of the otherwise anonymous painters of the Three Line Group, to whom this vase is attributed. These bands, the palmette and lotus chain on the neck, and the floral motifs by the handles form a rich decorative scheme that articulates the elements of the vase while focusing the viewer's eye on the drama of the figures.
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Greek, Attic, attributed to the Three Line Group
Neck Amphora,
about 530-520 B.C.
Black-figure ceramic with added red and white paint
h. 16 5/8 in.
(42.2 cm)
Purchased with funds from the North Carolina Art Society (Robert F. Phifer Bequest), 1990(90.2)
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CLASSICAL ART
>Greek, Attic, attributed to the Painter of the Brussels Oinochoai
Oinochoe, about 470 - 460 B.C.Red-figure ceramic
h. 9 5/8 in.
(24.5 cm)
Purchased with funds from the North Carolina Museum of Art Foundation (Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Gordon Hanes), 1979 (79.11.5)
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An oinochoe is a pitcher used for pouring wine. Highlighted against the surface background of black glaze, two warriors face each other. On one side, an older bearded warrior is armed for battle. He wears a short tunic known as a chiton, a cuirass (armor covering his breast and back), and a Corinthian helmet, and carries a spear and a shield on which is depicted a black snake. Standing frontally, he looks toward the youth on the other side. The young warrior is nude except for a long cloak or chalmys. His long ringlets are bound by a cloth headband. He carries a spear and plain black shield, and holds a Corinthian helmet in his outstretched right hand. The connection between the two figures established by the expressions and the gesture suggests that the younger warrior is receiving his arms in preparation for military service. Such arming scenes are common in Greek vase painting.
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Originally part of a life-sized statue, the head is crowned by a wreath of large bay leaves resting above berries and ivy, but is still without a specific identity. As one of the numerous offerings set up in a sanctuary in the eastern part of the island of Cyprus, the work may represent a god, a priest of the sanctuary, or even the donor of the statue. Large numbers of such statues were dedicated to deities, so many that it occasionally became necessary to bury old statues to make room for new. During the difficult moving process for the ceremonial burials, heads like this one must often have become detached from their bodies. Greek influence is evident in the form, transitional between the Archaic style (a stylized treatment as seen in the tightly curled locks of hair and beard, as well as the faint smile) and the Classical trend toward naturalism, also seen in the expression. Traces of red paint on the eyes, eyebrows, and hair remind us of the Greek practice of painting architecture and sculpture.
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CypriotHead of a God or Priest, about 450-425 B.C.Limestone
h.15 in.
(38.1 cm)
Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Gordon Hanes, 1979 (79.6.12)
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CLASSICAL ART
GreekLekythos,
4th century B.C.
Marble
h.18in.
(45.7 cm)
Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Gordon Hanes, 1991 (91.5)
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Originally this solid marble vase probably stood nearly 33 inches tall with a long slender neck and attached handle. Its shape is known as a lekythos by comparison with small ceramic vases of similar form used to hold precious oils and unguents. This vase, however, was set up on the terrace surrounding a family's burial plot. The seated bearded man and the woman standing before him are identified by the Greek inscription carved in a line above their heads as Polyarchos and Polyxena. Polyarchos is taking his last farewell from Polyxena, probably his wife or daughter. In the context of this scene, their handshake represents a link not to be severed by death.
Ultraviolet light under laboratory conditions reveals the original painted decoration of the surface. A trace of one floral form remains on the shoulder of the vase. On its body, the painted designs add an architectural element to the scene: a Greek key or maeander pattern in a line below the figures and an egg-and-dart pattern at the very top. These are painted versions of the kinds of moldings employed in ancient architecture. A reconstruction of the appearance of this lekythos helps us to imagine how the brightly painted structures of antiquity must have appeared (left).
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The hydria, a type of vessel generally used for collecting and pouring water, has here been adapted as a monumental grave marker. Mourners could pour liquid offerings such as wine directly into the soil through the vase and a hole at its base. The decoration follows the funerary theme. The central figures stand in an elaborately adorned Ionic naiskos, a tombstone in the shape of an entrance to a shrine. Two women, possibly a mother and daughter, are attended by a servant holding a fan. Objects of everyday life complete the scene: a stool, a basket of yarn on a casket, and personal accessories, including a jewel box, ribbons, festoons, a necklace, and a stringed musical instrument. The white used to portray the figures and objects within the naiskos may have been the painter's way of indicating that these are relief sculptures decorating the shrine. It is also possible that white was used to emphasize these important figures and provide a decorative contrast to the red used for the four mourners — three women and a man—outside the naiskos. They carry offerings: a covered dish, a flat offering dish, a jewelry box, and a brazier.
Work attributed to the Patera Painter, named for his frequent use of pateras (braziers), is characterized by broad, relaxed figures, delineated by fine, fluid strokes.
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Apulian, attributed to the workshop of the Patera Painter
Hydria, about 340-320 B.C.Red-figure ceramic with added red and white paint
h. 31 in.
(78.7 cm)
Purchased with funds from the State of North Carolina, 1974 (74.1.2)
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CLASSICAL ART
Greek, from Centuripe, SicilyFunerary Vase (Lebes Camikos),
about 225-200 B.C.
Terracotta, paint
h. 35 1/2 in.
(90.2 cm)
Purchased with funds from the State of North Carolina, 1975 (75.1.9)
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Composed of several separate pieces, this vase is in the traditional form of a vessel presented as an offering to a bride on her wedding day. However, its unstable construction and fragile decoration, as well as the documented findspots of Centuripan vases in cemeteries, indicate its use as a funerary offering. The wealth of decorative detail blurs distinctions between the iconography of marriage and that of death. Applied three-dimensional decoration painted in bright colors and gold draws on the vocabulary of Classical architecture: moldings, leaves, flowers, a Doric frieze of triglyphs and metopes, offering vessels in the shape of bulls' heads, and human figures used as supports.
A separate miniature vase in the shape of a funerary vase (lebes gamikos} tops the larger vase and depicts the head of a winged female, perhaps Nike, goddess of Victory. The main panel, painted against a vivid pink background, centers on a bride flanked by attendants.
To the left a flying Eros profers a garland and a small naked child holds her arms up to the bride's attendants. On the far left, a woman surveys the scene, while on the right, a woman holding a tambourine seems to lead the procession toward a door, a symbol of the house of her groom or of Hades, god of the underworld. The appearance of protective friends, Erotes (cupids), and a Nike is appropriate for both of the major transitions of woman's life, marriage and death.
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This marble relief was carved to fit into the facade of a stone tomb that probably stood along a major road outside Rome. Information about the three people derives both from the Latin inscription at the bottom of the relief and the images themselves. The inscription names the three figures as Sextus Maelius Stabilio, Vesinia lucunda, and Sextus Maelius Faustus, and indicates that the men were freed slaves of Sextus Maelius and that the woman was freed by a Roman matron named Vesinia. The letter "L" in the inscription is an abbreviation for libertus, meaning "freedman," or liberta, for "freedwoman." Such reliefs were often commissioned by recently enfranchised slaves and their families as a way of establishing the social and familial identity and relationships that had been legally denied to them.
The handshake shared by the older man and the woman identifies them as husband and wife. lucunda also wears a bride's veil and her betrothal ring, and she holds her left hand to her face in a wife's traditional gesture of modesty. The younger man is probably the couple's son, born to them while they were still slaves. He may have been responsible for commissioning this monument. The emphasis on the symbols of marriage evident in this relief reflects the importance attached to the family during the reign of Augustus (27 B.C.-A.D. 14)
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Roman
Funerary Monument for Sextus Maelius Stabilio, Vesinia lucunda, and Sextus Maelius Faustus, early 1st centuryMarble
h. 31 1/2 x w. 59 x d. 8 13/16 in.
(80 x 49.9 x 22.4 cm)
Purchased with funds from the State of North Carolina, 1979 (79.1.2)
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CLASSICAL ART
RomanHead of a Woman in the Guise of a Goddess,
1st century
Copper alloy and silver
h. 11 5/8 in.
(29.5 cm)
Purchased with funds from the North Carolina Art Society (Robert F. Phifer Bequest), the State of North Carolina, and various donors, by exchange, 1995 (95.6)
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The striking appearance of this portrait is enhanced by the technique of the eyes. The pupils were inlaid with crystalline stone and the whites overlaid with sheet silver. The young woman wears her hair parted in the middle and knotted at the nape of the neck, with large, soft waves framing her face and tendrils escaping onto her shoulders. The lush hairdo suggests a visual link with the goddess Venus, who is characteristically portrayed with a similar coiffure. The diadem, usually worn by gods or deified rulers, also suggests the woman's distinction. Her idealized beauty still reveals individualized features: full, fleshy cheeks, a strong nose, and thin lips. The empress Livia (58 B.C.-A.D. 29 ), wife of Augustus (ruled 31 B.C.-A.D. 14 ), may well be represented. The imperial family's association with Venus as its patron deity, Livia's own divine status granted some twelve years after her death by the Emperor Claudius (ruled A.D. 41—54), and the similarity to some of her later portraits support this identification.
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The Greek goddess of love and beauty, Aphrodite, known to the Romans as Venus, was born from the sea, a fact alluded to by the support in the form of a dolphin beside her leg. Her connection with Gyrene, a city in North Africa, is a statue of similar type found there in 1913 and now on display in the Museo Nazionale delle Terme in Rome. That statue was the first of this type discovered and thus has given its name to similar statues discovered later.
The gesture of Aphrodite's now-missing arms has been surmised (right). Her right arm was bent at the elbow with the right hand held up to a strand of hair falling to her breast; a trace of hair may still be seen. Her left arm was also probably bent at the elbow to hold a lock that fell from just behind the left ear. Fixing her hair is an appropriate gesture for the goddess as she rises from the sea. Many examples of this type of Aphrodite, known by the Greek term Anadyomene, are still extant, attesting to the popularity of the goddess throughout Classical antiquity.
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Roman, after a Hellenistic original
Aphrodite of Cyrene,
1st century
Marble
h. 67 1/2
(171.5 cm)
Purchased with funds from the State of North Carolina and the North Carolina Art Society (Robert F. Phifer Bequest), 1980 (80.9.1)
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CLASSICAL ART
RomanTorso of an Emperor in the Guise of Jupiter,
1st century
Marbleh. 55 1/4 in.
(140.3 cm)
Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Gordon Hanes.1986 (86.4)
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In its complete state, this statue stood almost eight feet tall. It depicts a Roman emperor (probably one of the Julio-Claudian dynasty descended from Augustus) in a pose characteristic of the god Jupiter. This type of pose—semi-nude with a mantle draped around the lower body—became popular for the portrayal of the father of the gods in the fifth century B.C. in Greece. During the early Roman Empire, the emperors adopted the pose for their official portraits to infuse their political role with divine associations. Such statues usually stood in public areas, such as the forum of a city or town, to visually affirm the emperor's connection to every Roman citizen.
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Roman, from Phrygia in Asia MinorFunerary Stele of the Priest Dionysios and His Wife, Tertia,
about 240-260
Marble
h.60 ½ x
w. 23 7/8 x d. 8 in.
(153.5 x 69.5 x 20.3 cm)
Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Gordon Hanes 1979 (79.6.3)
The Greek inscription reads: "This stele is dedicated to the priest Dionysios and his wife Tertia, by herself in her own lifetime, and also by her living children Gaios Mnesos, Appes and Ammias, who are yet unmarried."
This tombstone comes from the upper Tembris Valley in Phrygia, a fertile region of central Turkey, part of the eastern Roman Empire in antiquity. It stood over the grave site of the deceased Dionysios and his family, who are named in the inscription. Busts of the father and mother appear at the top. In the fashion of the day, Tertia wears a veil and her hair is held by a jeweled band.
The symbols surrounding the couple refer to their agricultural and domestic concerns. The now-headless eagle at the top represents Zeus as a fertility god. The pruning knife and vines refer to the production of wine on the family's estate. The triple goddess Hecate is associated with agricultural fertility. The scroll beneath her identifies Dionysios as a priest, a position of authority and high social standing. Beside Tertia are her symbols as the household's matriarch: the mirror, spindle, and distaff. The door frame continues the agricultural theme with plant motifs in three borders. Beneath the door is the worn outline of a plow.
On the door panels are depicted an altar with a lamp burning on it, a reference to Diony-sios's role as a priest, as well as a bushel basket of wool with a bird sitting atop it and a carding comb above, reminders of Tertia's domestic activities. The door itself recalls earlier Phrygian grave monuments of the sixth and fifth centuries B.C. The stele thus blends Roman symbols of authority with native forms to ensure proper respect for the dead.
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35
CLASSICAL ART
Roman, after a Hellenistic originalHerakles,
2nd century
Marble h.65 in. (165.1 cm)
Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Jack Linsky, 1955 (55.11.2)
36
Excavated in the Roman Forum in 1771, this statue of the Greek hero Herakles depicts him in one of his less glorious moments. The son of the god Zeus and the mortal Alcmena, he was famed for his twelve superhuman labors. They are alluded to here by the club and the lion skin on the tree trunk, mementos of his first task, the killing of the monstrous lion of Nemea. Herakles, however, was also noted for his prodigious drinking. The lowered head and advanced right leg suggest that Herakles is feeling his way gingerly, an interpretation enhanced by the balancing positions of the restored arms. His parted lips and aged face depict a hero somewhat worse for wear. There are no clues to the specific adventure from which he is recovering, and his career offers numerous possibilities.
The stories connected with Herakles offered Hellenistic sculptors a wealth of opportunities to experiment with the depiction of the effects of exertion, fatigue, and wine. The hero was popular in Roman times as Hercules, and Roman patrons commissioned numerous copies of the Hellenistic works to decorate their homes, as well as gymnasia and other public places.
MES
This Osteotheke (literally "place for bones" in Greek) was the final resting place for the ashes and bones of the cremated body, or bodies, of the deceased. Cremation was the preferred burial custom among all social classes in Rome until the mid-second century, and was gradually superseded by the practice of inhumation in the following decades. The deceased may be represented by one member of the couple standing on one long side of the Osteotheke; alternatively, the remains of both husband and wife may have been placed within.
Flanking the couple are seated figures. Their quiet, idealized poses recall Greek and Roman sculptural representations of philosophers and Muses, learned allusions that indicate the educated status of the deceased. A procession of playful Erotes (cupids) linked by a garland begins on one short end and continues on one of the long panels of the box. A robust infant dressed as the hero Hercules on the other small panel is identified by the club and lion skin, reminders of one of his twelve labors, and attributes by which Hercules is identified in other works in the Museum's collection (pages 25, 36).
MES
RomanOsteotheke,
second half of the 2nd centuryMarble
h. 20 7/8 x w. 37 3/8
x d. 201/4 in.
(52.9 x 94.8 x 51.5 cm)
Gift of Anne and Carl Carlson in memory of Lynn and Karl Prickett,
1988 (88.2)
37
CLASSICAL ART
RomanPortrait of the Emperor Marcus Aurelius, late 2nd centuryMarble
h. 26 5/16 in.
(69.4 cm)
Purchased with funds from gifts by Mr. and Mrs. Gordon Hanes, Mrs. Chauncey McCormick, and various donors, by exchange, 1992 (92.1)
Marcus Aurelius, the last of the "good emperors" of the second century, ruled the Roman Empire from 161 to 180. His successful career as a soldier and an emperor is attested in historical accounts. His adherence to the principles of Greek Stoic philosophy is recorded in his private devotional diary that has survived in a collection of twelve books, given the modern name Meditations. Written in Greek rather than Latin, they reveal an intense scrutiny of the burden of power while pursuing an active life in harmony with nature.
In this mature portrait, Marcus Aurelius is wearing a beard, as did his adopted grandfather the Emperor Hadrian, in an acknowledgment of the tradition of the bearded Greek philosopher. The richly carved surface of the hair and beard contrasts with the smooth, imposing planes of the face. The eyes are lightly incised, creating a forceful expression enhanced by the luminous quality of the stone. The image is that of a vigorous yet thoughtful emperor, the personification of Plato's philosopher king.
MES
In Greek mythology, the god Helios was responsible for drawing the sun daily across the heavens in his horse-drawn chariot. In the fourth century B.C., Alexander the Great, king of Macedon, adopted the god as his personal favorite, no doubt because Alexander had conquered the "lands of the rising sun"—Mesopotamia, Parthia, Bactria, and northwest India. During the later second century A.D., Roman emperors of the Severan dynasty, to which Caracalla belonged, were involved in military campaigns in lands once occupied by Alexander and sought to emulate his glory and conquests.
In this statue, Helios is given the face of a youthful Caracalla, which may portray the emperor prior to his reign of 211-217. There is also a deliberate attempt to associate Caracalla with Alexander. He is portrayed with Alexander's distinctive hairstyle and also with the attributes of Helios: the crown that originally had twelve bronze rays framing his face, the torch he carried in his left hand (traces of the flame are visible on the upper left arm), and the horse's head that indicates his chariot. His right arm would have pointed to the route across the sky. As in the Torso of an Emperor in the Guise of Jupiter (page 34), religious symbols are here artfully employed for the purposes of political propaganda.
MES
RomanEmperor Caracalla in the Guise of Helios, early 3rd centuryMarbleh. 77 1/4 in. (196.2 cm)
Purchased with funds from the North Carolina Art Society (Robert F. Phifer Bequest), 1984 (84.1)
39
New World Art
MOST WORKS OF ART THAT HAVE SURVIVED from the ancient cultures of Mexico and Central and South America were preserved in tombs. These civilizations viewed death as a journey from one realm of existence to another. Burial rites and grave offerings were intended to prepare and equip the soul for this transition. Many objects placed in graves had been used previously and thus reflect aspects of daily life as well as mortuary customs. Maya cylindrical vessels, such as the one described in the following pages, were used by members of the ruling elite for drinking a favorite chocolate beverage and later were buried with their owners.
Ceramic sculptures ranging in scale from small figurines to life-size images were placed in tombs. Some represent priests and deities, some show people from various walks of life, and others portray animals, including the creatures that inhabit the rain and cloud forests of Costa Rica. In their multiplicity of form and subject, these figures reflect a view of the world as multilayered, every part controlled by deities whose personalities and activities symbolized the forces of the universe.
Some of the native peoples of the Americas, such as the Maya and the Teotihuacans, were highly accomplished builders, constructing immense pyramidal tombs and temples and other monumental stone buildings, which they adorned with sculpture and frescoes. By contrast, the people of ancient Costa Rica were not great builders in stone, but excelled in the production of small objects of the types represented in the NCMA's collection: ceramic sculptures of humans and animals, and objects fashioned of jade or gold.
Shared by many cultural groups in ancient Mesoamerica (parts of the modern nations of Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, and Belize), urban and rural alike, was a game played with a rubber ball. At some sites the stone ball courts survive. The Museum's Ball Court Marker, carved with the image of a ballplayer in his game costume, came from such a place. Europeans who witnessed the game took rubber balls home as novelties, thus introducing ball games to Europe.
In their desire to control both new territories and the minds of local inhabitants, Europeans intentionally destroyed the indigenous cultures they encountered in the New World, beginning in the sixteenth century. Entire libraries of Maya books were burned, so scholars today must reconstruct Maya history, religious beliefs, mathematics, astronomy, and other achievements from inscriptions on stone monuments and elite painted pottery. The meaning and significance of objects from other ancient American civilizations for which no written records survive can never be fully recovered.
Cylinder Vase (detail)
41
NEW WORLD ART
Mexico, Vera Cruz, El Zapotal Style
Standing Female Deity or Deity Impersonator,
about 600-900
Terracotta and paint
57 1/4x 22 3/8 in.
(145.4 x 56.8 cm)
Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Gordon Hanes, 1986 (86.8)
42
The Vera Cruz culture is named for the modern Gulf Coast region of Mexico, where remains of this ancient civilization have been excavated. Monumental sculptures by Vera Cruz artists of the Classic period (about 600 B.C.-A.D. 900) are the largest ceramic figures known from pre-Columbian America. They are hollow and were designed with various openings to allow heated air to escape so that they would not explode as they were fired. It was also necessary to reinforce the sculptures structurally so that they would not collapse before the clay had hardened. Because no ancient Vera Cruz kilns have been found, it is thought that such sculptures were fired in open pits.
The Vera Cruz culture apparently had no written language, and little is known about the mythology of its Classic period. Although the identity of this figure is uncertain, it may have been part of an elaborate burial offering of sculptures of deities, deity impersonators, and human attendants depicting religious rituals. The figure wears a half-face mask over her mouth and a heavy necklace of shells or large seeds. Her impressive circular earflares indicate her elite status. She holds a curved sacrificial knife in her upraised right hand, and an incense bag in the shape of a skull hangs from her left hand. The serpents that appear on her belt and headdress may associate the figure with the cult of a particular goddess.
MES
A game played with a large rubber ball and resembling soccer was common to most of the cultural groups of ancient Mesoamerica. This sculpture may have been placed in the playing alley of a ball court, possibly functioning as some kind of marker important to the rules of the game. Many ball court markers are sculpted with imagery identifying the court as a symbolic opening into the underworld. This example is unique because the mouth-like opening framing a male figure is marked with symbols that refer to other kinds of supernatural places. The outermost circle is embellished with parallel lines symbolizing shiny materials (jade, the sun, the surface of a mirror). The inner circle is a sign referring to the moon. At the corners are symbols for supernatural beings.
A Maya ballplayer squats in the center of these cosmic symbols. He wears a wide, belt-like yoke and holds what appears to be the ball close to his body. Although no ball has survived from Maya culture, this depiction suggests that the ball was composed of tightly wrapped strings of natural rubber. The ballplayer wears a headdress that refers to one of the Hero Twins from the Maya epic the Popol Vuh. (The Popol Vuh is a tale about vanquishing death, represented by the Lords of the Underworld, and how to achieve everlasting life.) The Hero Twin is rendered in his aspect as the sun god; his solar headdress reaffirms that this marker represents a cosmological opening into a supernatural realm.
MES
Mexico, Chiapas, MayaBall Court Marker,
about 550-850
Limestone23 1/8 x 24 in.
(58.8 x 61.0 cm)
Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Gordon Hanes, 1982 (82.14)
43
NEW WORLD ART
Guatemala, MayaCylinder Vase,
8th century
Terracotta with paint and slip
h. 7 x d. 4 5/8 in.
(17.8 x 11.8 cm)
Gift of Mr. John B. Fulling, 1976 (76.2.1)
44
Beautifully painted cylinder vases were used by the Maya ruling elite for drinking chocolate beverages. This vase is painted with an elaborately rendered hieroglyphic date in the Maya calendar, which is equivalent to December 5, 711. Part of the date glyph is represented by the profile head of the Young Corn God inside a daysign cartouche. The cartouche is flanked by two square signs that refer to the partition between natural and supernatural realms. Atop the glyph is the hunal, the headdress of kingship, with its white cloth tie-ends draped on either side of the cartouche. These are apt symbols for a chocolate beverage drinking vessel used during important sociopolitical meetings among the Maya ruling elite.
Although painting was one of the principal forms of artistic expression among the Maya, few of their frescoes and almost none of their illustrated books survive. Thus, vase painting is the best source of information about this virtually lost art. The best painted ceramics were prestige items used by the wealthy classes; they survive because they have been preserved in tombs. Made by the coil method (the Maya did not use the wheel), some of the finest pots include inscriptions suggesting that the painters who made them were members of the royal family, possibly sons who were not in the line of succession to the throne. As individuals schooled in hieroglyphic writing, all master pottery painters belonged to the elite class of Maya society.
MES
Pre-Columbian artists of Costa Rica created fine scuptures in jade, gold, stone, and clay. Their most imaginative representations of human and animal subjects were modeled as ceramic jars, incense burners, and effigy figures. During the period from 500 to 1000, the Guanacaste-Nicoya region (the Pacific coast area extending into Nicaragua) produced its best and largest ceramic figures, which were popular enough to be imported into other regions of Costa Rica.
The role of women as child-bearers and child-raisers is a common theme in the pre-Columbian art of Costa Rica, as these roles were critical to the social health and continuity of the culture. Here a woman supports an infant who crawls up her back. The figure is decorated with body painting (or tattooing) executed in black and red paint on the cream slip covering the figure. Archaeologists have found numerous ceramic stamps that were used to paint such patterns onto the skins of living individuals. The specific meanings of the various motifs would have been clear to those for whom the figure was made, but these meanings have been lost. The use of conspicuous patterns on the breasts of many Costa Rican female figures, however, relates to the idea of nurturing children.
MES
Costa Rica,
Guanacaste-Nicoya
region
Standing Female Figure with Infant,
about 500-1000
Terracotta with paint and slip
h. 12 15/16 in.
(32.9 cm)
Gift of Dr. Clifton F. Mountain and Mrs. Marilyn T. Mountain, 1996(96.4.43)
45
Oceanic Art
OCEANIA REFERS TO THREE GROUPS OF ISLANDS in the Pacific Ocean: Melanesia, Polynesia, and Micronesia. Altogether, the area encompasses thousands of islands inhabited by many different cultural groups speaking more than a thousand languages. Most works in the NCMA's collection of Oceanic art come from Melanesia, which includes New Guinea, New Ireland, and Vanuatu.
Although each of the many cultures of Melanesia has its own language, customs, belief systems, and distinctive art tradition, certain shared concepts are recognized. Sculpture made of a wide variety of natural materials—wood, stone, bone, feathers, textiles, fibers, seeds, shells—most often portrays human figures and animals, sometimes together. Animals are important in creation myths and clan histories and are thought to be vitally linked with humankind. In addition to animal spirits, works of art honor and placate other nature spirits believed to be powerful and influential.
The veneration of ancestors is important throughout Melanesia. Deceased family members are thought to influence the daily affairs of their living relatives. The departed are honored to ensure their benevolence and aid in maintaining a positive balance between human and spiritual realms. The Ancestor Figure from the Sepik River region of New Guinea included in this book illustrates this important principle.
In New Ireland, ceremonies to commemorate deceased members of a clan also provide opportunities to reinforce family bonds and enhance the prestige of the group through bountiful feasts, elaborate dance performances, and extravagant displays of art, such as the malanggan carving in the Museum's collection. Competition for prestige is an important impetus for art among many groups in Melanesia.
Helmet Mask (Tatanua) (detail)
47
OCEANIC ART
New Ireland
Memorial Carving (Malanggan), early
20th century
Wood, raffia, sea shells, and paint
h.92 ½ x dia.10 1/4in.
(235.0 x 26.0 cm)
Purchased with funds from the State of North Carolina, 1978 (78.1.2)
48
The word "malanggan" refers to a series of memorial rites honoring the dead, and also to the commemorative carvings used during these observances. A malanggan ceremony was a lavish feast that went on for days, accompanied by music, dancing, and elaborate displays of artwork. Given by a chieftain and members of his clan, the ceremony honored members of the family who had died since the last malanggan held by the group. (Because of the tremendous expense and the extensive months-long preparations necessary for a malanggan, five or ten years might pass between ceremonies.) The deceased were honored by the display of elaborate openwork memorial carvings, such as this, erected under an arbor. Designs were specific to families and included animals with particular meaning to the group. Here, a boar's head tops the carving. Below are two upright ancestor figures, an owl with a snake in his beak placed horizontally, and a third ancestor standing on his head at the base. Each of the ancestors holds a flying fish in front of him.
Intricately carved from a single piece of wood, painted in black, red, and white with detailed patterns, and enhanced with raffia (for hair) and parts of seashells (for eyes), this Memorial Carving (Malanggan) reflected in its quality a family's prestige. Made of perishable materials, each malanggan carving was designed for a single use, after which it was supposed to be discarded; only a few that were retrieved by outsiders have survived.
MES
49
OCEANIC ART
New IrelandHelmet Mask (Tatanua), prior to 1900Wood, paint, fiber, and other natural materials.
h. 17 x w. 8 1/8 in.
(43.2 x 20.6 cm)
Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Gordon Hanes, 1986 (86.9)
50
Melanesia, a group of Pacific islands to the north and east of Australia, produced many objects associated with memorial rites to honor ancestors and help ensure their continued propitious intervention in the lives of members of the community. At these ceremonies, helmet masks (tatanua) such as this were worn by dancers, who performed to the accompaniment of a chorus and the beat of bamboo slit gongs.
Tatanua masks portray the souls of the dead, who were thought to inhabit the masks and fill them with power during the ritual dance. The design of each mask was specific to an individual in the details of shape, the patterns painted in white, red, blue, and black, and the configuration of the large fiber crest. The elaborate curves and linear designs are divided bilaterally along the crest and feature distinctly different motifs on either side. This aspect of the design was highlighted in the mortuary festival, during which the dancers performed in a line, turning suddenly and in unison from one side to the other. Unlike malanggan carvings (page 48), helmet masks were not destroyed after the performance, but were stored for future use.
MES
This squat, somber figure with his hands placed on his hips is typical of the art found in the basin of New Guinea's Sepik River, which flows from the center to the central east coast of the island. The region, occupied by approximately thirty-five distinct cultural groups, each speaking a different language, is one of the richest art-producing areas of New Guinea.
The figure represents an important and powerful ancestor of a clan. He wears a tapa (bark) loincloth and plaited rattan armbands. The elongated conical cap originally supported a wig. Incised designs on the figure represent the body scarification of its owner. Traces of paint indicate that it was further adorned with patterns in black, white, yellow, and red. The image was used to provide a temporary abode for the spirit of the ancestor, so that he would use his power to ensure his descendants' prosperity and success in hunting, fishing, and agriculture. Such figures also were used during the initiation ceremonies of the sons and brothers of the ancestors.
MES
Sepik River area of Papua, New GuineaAncestor Figure (Kandimbing),
20th century
Wood, rattan, tapa, paint
h. 33 3/8 in.
(84.8 cm)
Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Gordon Hanes, 1986 (86.12)
51
African Art
AFRICA IS A VAST CONTINENT, more than three times the size of the United States. The many peoples of west and central Africa have produced some of the continent's most varied and sophisticated cultural traditions, rich in sculpture, textiles, and other visual arts, in poetry, and in performance arts such as dance and masquerade. Most of the NCMA's African art originates from these prolific art-producing regions. Yoruba art is particularly well represented in the collection, as reflected in the selection of objects for this publication. Although the objects in the Museum's collection date to the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, some of them are based on traditions that go back hundreds of years. Others demonstrate more recent innovations resulting from cross-cultural contacts and the experiences of the modern era.
Each cultural and ethnic group has distinctive beliefs and customs and its own systems of aesthetics and symbolism within which artists are trained. Thus, works of art from numerous cultures reflect a wide range of symbolism, styles, materials, techniques, and functions. Styles vary, for example, from naturalism in the portrayal of humans and animals to extreme forms of geometric abstraction. Among some groups, artists exaggerate certain features, such as the head or stomach, which are assigned symbolic significance.
Whereas the majority of objects in the collection are sculptures carved of wood, a readily available material in most of west and central Africa, a variety of other materials is also in evidence, including terracotta, beads, cast metal, textiles, and ivory. Within the established traditions of their peoples, many artists developed individual styles that won wide recognition in their communities—and sometimes far beyond. Although the names of most of these artists are lost today, some are known, and the works of others can be identified by their distinctive styles.
It has often been observed that traditional African art is essentially functional rather than "art for art's sake." If so, function must be broadly defined. Works of art may be used to enhance worship, to reinforce status, to symbolize royal power and prestige, in civil and religious ceremonies and festivals, in the administration of justice, and to add beauty and meaning to daily life.
Egungun Costume (detail)
53
AFRICAN ART
Nigeria, Egbado region, YorubaLid of a Ceremonial Vessel, late 19th or early 20th centuryTerracotta with indigo pigment
h. 14 x d. 12 1/4 in.
(35.6 x 31.1 cm)
Gift of Lee and Dona Brunson, 1977(77.74)
54
This vessel lid of baked clay, colored dark blue with indigo pigment, can be attributed to a Yoruba artist of the Egbado region of Nigeria. Although the artist has not been identified by name, her work is somewhat related in style to that of Abatan of Oke Odan, probably the most renowned traditional Yoruba potter of the twentieth century. (While Yoruba wood carving, beadwork, and weaving are the domains of male artists, pottery is made by women.)
Although its companion bowl-shaped container is lost, the vessel lid is well preserved. It is in the form of a mother with twin infants, one of whom she nurses; the other child she carries on her back. The woman is a devotee of the river god Eyinle, to whom river stones, sand, and water are sacred. The vessel, a container for such substances, would originally have stood on a domestic altar to Eyinle. Together with its contents, the vessel symbolized abundance, longevity, and the promise of an afterlife, endless like the waters in which Eyinle dwells.
The lid rises into a four-sided, open-work summit, which seems to form the torso and arms of the female figure. It is decorated with bosses, small projections that refer to the river stones within. The cheeks of the mother figure bear lineage marks (facial scarification) that probably correspond to those of the patron of the vessel.
RMN
The Yoruba people have one of the highest rates of twin births in the world, but because of low birth weight, infant mortality is also high. Twins are considered to be a great blessing and to have special powers. Traditionally, when a twin died the family sought guidance from a divination priest, who often directed the parents to commission a commemorative carving of the deceased child. Through the figure, the parents could honor and placate the dead twin, whose spirit might otherwise call away the spirit of the one yet living. For the Yoruba, who say that "children are the wealth of life," losing both twins is an unspeakable tragedy.
The Museum's figures, similar in style and in patterns of wear, undoubtedly were carved when a pair of male twins died. Whatever the age of the twin at death, the sculptor always portrayed him or her in youthful maturity, emphasizing the male or female characteristics. Twin figures are not portraits, although the parents may specify that family lineage markings (facial scarification) be carved on the figures. Otherwise, the figures embody the Yoruba ideal, which defines beautiful art as that which captures the essential nature of a person or thing, balancing realism and abstraction. Large heads are further emphasized by elongated hairstyles, in keeping with the Yoruba belief that a person's character and spirituality are centered in the head.
This pair has been adorned with beads and rubbed with red camwood powder, a valuable cosmetic. Frequent caressing of the figures produced the lustrous patina characteristic of ere ibeji that have been lovingly tended.
RMN
Nigeria, Yoruba, Igbomina SubgroupTwin Figures (Ere Ibeji),late
19th or early 2Oth century
Wood with beads and camwood powder
h. 10 1/4 in.
(26.1 cm),
each figure
Purchased with funds from various donors, by exchange, 1985 (85.2/1-2)
55
AFRICAN ART
Ogbomoso, Nigeria, YorubaEgungun Costume,
2Oth century
Cloth, wood, and burtons
h. approx. 60 in.
(152.4 cm)
Purchased with funds provided through a bequest from Lucile E. Moorman, 1997 (97.5.3)
56
The Yoruba people believe that deceased individuals can intervene for good or ill in the lives of their living family members. It is essential, therefore, to honor ancestors, known as am orun ("dwellers in heaven"), with elaborate rituals performed over a period of several weeks during the egungun ("powers concealed") ceremony held every one or two years in traditional Yoruba communities. Among the many types of costumes and masks worn during the festival, one of the most popular is a masquerade made up of multiple layers of cloth in many vibrant colors, textures, and patterns. The number of layers often reflects the age of a costume; each year, the family members who own it may add new layers of valuable cloth to honor their ancestor. The earliest fabrics in this costume are French cotton voiles from the 1930s, while the outer layers consist of fabrics produced in the 1950s.
The wearer of the masquerade would balance the wood panel (from which the many panels of cloth hang) on top of his head and peer out through the hand-knotted net face panel. His acrobatic dance included rapid spinning, which caused the panels of the costume to fly out in a spectacular display of color and pattern. Clothed in a body stocking, the dancer remained concealed, while the presence and power of the ancestor were revealed through the drama of the masquerade.
RMN
Among the Yoruba, each oba (ruler) has authority over a city-state, a city or town and its surrounding territories. For ceremonial occasions, the oba wears a conical beaded crown within which are sealed powerful herbal medicines. The tiny glass beads used here are typical for crowns made in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, when Yoruba beadworkers (who were always male) replaced the traditional red beads of coral or carnelian with multicolored glass "seed beads" obtained through trade with Europeans.
Faces on either side of the crown may refer to Olokun, god of the sea and "owner of the beads"; to ancestors of the oba; or to the "inner [spiritual] face" of the oba himself. They also serve as a reminder that the oba sees and hears all, even that which takes place behind his back. Other designs include an interlace pattern symbolic of the ruler's power, and zigzag motifs representing energy and/or the lightning bolts of the god Shango. The elongated shape of the crown emphasizes the importance of the head, which the Yoruba believe to be the center of an individual's character, destiny, and spirituality.
Although generally well preserved, the crown may have suffered some losses. Often a veil of beads hangs over the alias face, separating him from earthly concerns and uniting him with the spiritual realm. In addition, a three-dimensional beaded bird may surmount such a crown as a symbol of the spiritual power of older women, called "our mothers," whose support and cooperation is essential to the oba's successful rule. It is also possible that the crown never had these features, for rulers wore simpler or more elaborate conical crowns, depending on the occasion.
RMN
Nigeria, YorubaBeaded Crown,
20th century
Glass beads and grass cloth
h. 20 3/8 in.
(51.7 cm)
Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Gordon Hanes, 1977 (77.2.10)
57
AFRICAN ART
Nigeria, Niger River Delta
Sawfish Headdress,
20th century
Wood, mirrors, and paint
h. 27 1/4 x w. 19 7/8 x l. 89 3/8 in.
(69.3 x 50.6 x 227 cm)
Purchased with funds from various donors, by exchange, 1985 (85.1)
58
Horizontal water spirit headdresses in the forms of sawfish, sharks, crocodiles, and other predatory aquatic animals probably originated among the I jo, coastal fishermen in the delta region of the Niger River. The use of these colorful masquerades then spread to neighboring groups, including the Abua, Ekpeya, and Igbo. Among these riverine peoples, annual festivals honoring water spirits were held to ensure their benevolent influence on fish and crop harvests in the coming year. According to an eyewitness account, in one Ijo community a sawfish headdress, worn by an athletic young male, was brought to the village downriver in a canoe. Having disembarked, the sawfish danced on land, where he was "hunted" by masqueraders representing fishermen.
"Whereas many African carvers take great pride in carving an elaborate sculpture from a single piece of wood, the makers of water-spirit masks such as this Sawfish Headdress took advantage of carpentry techniques, whereby fins, teeth, and other components of the whole were carved from separate pieces of wood and attached. Mirrors obtained by trade with outsiders were used for the eyes and to adorn the tail of the sawfish.
RMN
The Bamana people honor Tji Wara as the spirit who taught their ancestors how to till the earth and grow crops. At traditional planting and harvest festivals, champion farmers are chosen to dance in honor of Tji Wara. The headdresses represent male and female antelopes to symbolize the procreative forces of nature and the marital cooperation necessary for successful farming. They are attached to woven caps by which they can be secured to the heads of the dancers, whose bodies are covered with long, thick raffia costumes that signify rain. While the costumed men leap in imitation of an antelope, women dance alongside them, singing praises to the ideal farmer, who exhibits the grace, strength, and endurance of an antelope. Two long sticks held by each dancer represent the rays of the sun.
The abstraction and decorative patterning of the sculptures emphasize the antelope's essential qualities: a narrow head, gracefully arching neck, and long horns. The zigzag design of the male's neck and mane represents the path of a running antelope; the tall horns suggest waving stalks of grain. Combined with the features of an antelope on each headdress are the squat lower body and legs of the aardvark, a type of anteater that burrows in the soil as farmers do when they cultivate the earth. In addition, human characteristics are incorporated into the portrayal of the female antelope, who wears earrings and a nose-ring and imitates human mothers in the way she carries her baby on her back.
RMN
Mali, BamanaAntelope Headdresses (Tji Wara),
20th century
Wood, twine, and metal female figure,
h. 26 7/8 in.
(68.3 cm);
male figure,
h. 33 1/4 in.
(84.5 cm)
Purchased with funds from the North Carolina Art Society (Robert F. Phifer Bequest), 1986 (86.1/1-2)
59
AFRICAN ART
Democratic Republic of the Congo, Kongo, Yombe Subgroup
Oath-Taking and Healing Image (Nkisi N'kondi),
20th century
Wood, metal, and quills
h. 14 3/4 in. (37.5 cm)
Gift of Mr, and Mrs. Gordon Hanes, 1991 (91.7)
60
This Oath- Taking and Healing Image was carved by a sculptor and completed by a ritual practitioner, who added powerful ingredients (such as medicinal herbs, blood, or soil from a sacred place) to the receptacle on the figure's stomach. This cylindrical container is sealed with a mirror, which recalls the reflective surface of a river in which spirits dwell, and so refers to spiritual powers within the figure. Other potent objects and materials were attached to the limbs and torso of the figure to enhance its efficacy. The ritual practitioner would have used the figure when clients sought advice on personal matters such as illness or familial conflicts, or judgments on legal matters such as real estate transactions or peace treaties between warring villages. The nails and spikes driven into the image on these occasions activated its power and also solemnized oaths that were sworn before it by the practitioner's clients.
The Kongo people call such objects nkisi n'kondi (plural minkisi minkondi). The word nkisi refers to the container for medicines, while n'kondi means "hunter." The hunter, revered for his strength, courage, and skill, was seen as an implacable individual who sought out wrongdoing and exacted retribution. As is characteristic for minkisi minkondi., the face of this figure is strikingly naturalistic, with mirrored eyes and an open mouth, as if he would speak.
RMN
Democratic Republic of the Congo, LubaBowl Bearer,
20th century
Woodh. 17 7/8 in. (45.5 cm)Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Gordon Hanes, 1972 (72.19.38)
Luba vessels and stools adorned with female figures, which served as symbols of royal authority and status, reflect the central role of women in Luba court life. Royal women served as emissaries, ambassadors, and tribute collectors in dealings with neighboring states, and their marriages to rulers of other groups helped expand the Luba domains. Artistic traditions established during the glory days of the Luba empire, from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries, have survived into the twentieth century in traditional Luba communities.
This caryatid figure is characteristic of Luba court art in her erect, dignified posture, which is emphasized by the straight, elongated arms. The legs, by contrast, are fluid and hug the ground, so that the genital area is close to the earth, the source of all life. The elaborate cross-shaped coiffure (on the back of the head), coffee-bean shaped eyes, and scarification patterns are typical of Luba court sculpture.
Sculptures of bowl bearers were used in royal investiture ceremonies and were important emblems of Luba kings. They also served as containers for a white clay used by divination priests. In traditional Luba court art, bowl-bearing figures usually hold their bowls in front of them, whereas caryatid figures such as this one typically support stools above their heads, not bowls. Several theories can be suggested for the deviation from standard Luba court iconography in this carving. The artist may have been influenced by the art of a neighboring culture. The sculpture may postdate classic Luba art, and may have been made with the international art market in mind. Whatever the reason, the maker of this object employed an innovative combination of traditional Luba motifs in the use of a caryatid figure as a bowl bearer.
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61
Jewish Ceremonial Art
THROUGHOUT THE MILLENNIA, beautifully crafted and adorned ceremonial objects have enhanced the experience of worship and the sacred quality of important events in Jewish life. Although the second commandment (Exodus 20:4—5) prohibits art for fear of idolatry, there has always been a place for decorative and symbolic ceremonial art.
Few examples of Jewish ceremonial art (Judaica) survive from a period earlier than three or four centuries ago. Throughout history, Jews have often been forced to flee from persecution, taking with them only their most essential belongings. Although bulky ceremonial objects were often left behind, manuscripts and books were saved; some describe the works of art that perished.
In the Museum's Judaic art collection, many of the objects are made of precious materials such as silver, gold, and ivory and are decorated in the heavily adorned Baroque style that originated in the seventeenth century. Some pieces, such as the Pair of Sabbath Candlesticks described in this section, are in the more delicately ornate style of the eighteenth-century Rococo period. During the Baroque and Rococo periods, many Jews in France and Germany grew prosperous enough to commission expensive ceremonial objects in the prevailing styles. The richly decorative approach of this period has remained popular ever since. Some objects in the collection, such as the Torah Case (Tik) from North Africa, belong to the Sephardic tradition (that of Jews in North Africa and the Near East) and reflect the influence of the art of the dominant Islamic culture of that region.
In many parts of Europe, Jewish artists were not permitted to join artists' guilds, and therefore were restricted from practicing certain kinds of metalwork. Thus Jewish patrons of necessity commissioned objects for religious use from non-Jewish artisans. Although they worked in the styles and techniques with which they were familiar, these craftsmen decorated objects for their Jewish clients with appropriate Jewish symbols and biblical subjects.
With the artistic freedom afforded them in the twentieth century, many Jewish artists have turned with enthusiasm and tremendous creativity to the design of ceremonial objects that combine traditional functions and symbolism with modern form. The Passover seder set described in the following pages embodies this modern aesthetic in the service of traditional ceremonial observance.
Torah Case (Tik) (detail)
JEWISH CEREMONIAL ART
North AfricanTorah Case (Tik), 1908
Silver: die-stamped, repoussé, cast, applique, chased, engraved, partially gilt; wood; textile
h. 36 7/8 in. x diam.10 1/2 in.
(93.7 x 26.7 cm)
Judaic Art Fund and Museum Purchase Fund, 1980 (80.3.5)
The Torah, consisting of the first five books of the Hebrew Bibles, is the cetral text in Judaism. Inscribed by hand in Hebrew on a leather scroll, it is the most revered object in the synagogue, enshrined in a special ark-a cabinet or niche-on the wall facing Jerusalem. During the regular religious services, successive portions of the text are read to the congregation so that the entire Torah is recited of the course of the year or, in some congregations, three years.
Among the Sephardim (Jewish communities of North Africa and the Near East), the Torah scroll is traditionally kept in a hinged wooden case called a tik. The scroll is wound on two rollers ad remains within the case at all times. During readings, the open case stands upright on a table. Tiks are often ornately embellished. This particular example is sheathed in silver, its surface heavily worked with a trellis and flower pattern, perhaps derived from textile designs. The case is crowned with a dome from which dangles pendants. They recall the bells, which, alternating with pomegranates, adorned the robes of the high priests of the ancient Jewish Temple (Exodus 28:33-35). Attached to the dome are two brass finials, called in Hebrew rimmonim, literally "pomegranates," because of their bulbous shape.
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Hebrew inscriptions adorn the case both inside and out. Some of the inscriptions quote appropriate lines from the Bible: "This is the Teaching that Moses set before the Israelites" (Deuteronomy 4:44). Another records that the case and its scroll were "dedicated to the soul of the righteous woman (may glory rest upon her) Dina, the daughter of Hannah, may she be remembered always ..."
AK
Middle Eastern, possibly YemenPair of Torah Finials (Rimmonim),
18th-19th century
Brass: hollow-formed,
chased
each: h. 10 1/8 in.
(25-7 cm)
Judaic Art Fund and Museum Purchase Fund, 1980 (80.3.6a-b)
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JEWISH CEREMONIAL ART
German
Pair of Sabbath Candlesticks,
mid-19th centurySilver: cast, die-stamped, chased, engraved each:
h. 8 x diam. of base 3 3/4 in.
(20.3 x 9.5 cm)
Purchased with funds given by family and friends in memory of Dr. Frances Pascher Kanof, 1989 (89.1/1-2)
The most sacred of Jewish holy days is the Sabbath, a day of rest in obedience to the biblical commandment: "Six days shall you work, but on the seventh day you shall cease from labor" (Exodus 34:21). The Sabbath begins on Friday evening before sundown, when the Jewish woman lights candles and then covers her eyes while reciting the blessing. When she opens her eyes, it is to the lights of a new and holy day. The lighting of candles also marks the onset of all other Jewish religious holy days, including Passover, Shavuot, Sukkot, and Rosh Hashanah.
This ornate pair of silver Sabbath candlesticks is of German workmanship. Though they date from the mid-1800s, their fanciful decorative style echoes Rococo designs of the previous century. On each, a rampant lion upholds a flowering branch topped by a candle holder in the form of a large blossom. Heraldic pairs of fierce animals as guardians of sacred objects have their origin in the art of the ancient Near East. Lions in particular have a long symbolic association with the Jewish people: in the Hebrew Bible, the tribes of Israel are lauded as "a people that rises like a lion, leaps up like the king of beasts" (Numbers 23:24). Around the base of each candlestick are three scenes, framed in elaborate cartouches. Five of the six scenes are biblical: Jacob's dream, Moses as a shepherd, Samson and the lion, the sacrifice of Isaac, and the judgment of Solomon. Appropriately, the sixth scene depicts a woman blessing the Sabbath lights.
AK
The most colorful and family-centered of the Jewish festivals is Passover, which commemorates the liberation of the Israelites from bondage in Egypt as recorded in the Book of Exodus. The principal celebration is a ritualized family meal known as a seder. Traditionally, the seder begins with prescribed prayers, followed by the retelling of the story of the Exodus, and the blessing of wine and bread. The bread (matzah) is unleavened to recall the haste of the Israelites' departure from Egypt. Other symbolic foods are served, among them horseradish in remembrance of the bitterness of slavery; a mixture of fruit and nuts moistened with wine (haroset) to recall the sweetness of life; and lamb shank to commemorate the sacrifice of the paschal lamb, whose protective blood was sprinkled on the door posts of the Israelites before the Exodus.
This coolly elegant seder set is a masterwork of Ludwig Wolpert, a German-trained silversmith renowned for introducing modernist design to the creation of Jewish ceremonial objects. Wolpert was strongly influenced by the industrial design aesthetic of the Bauhaus, an internationally important German design school which advocated the clear, unadorned exposition of an object's function. Wolpert's set is superbly crafted of silver, glass, and ebony, its various elements and functions organized architecturally. The matzah is stored in glass shelves, one for each of the three ancient divisions of the Jewish people: Kohen, Levite, and Israelite. The six glass dishes are for the symbolic foods. The Hebrew inscription on the wine cup quotes an appropriate verse from Psalm 116: "I raise the cup of deliverance and invoke the name of the Lord."
Ludwig Yehuda Wolpert American, born Germany, 1900-1981
Passover Seder Plates with Dishes and Wine Cup,
designed 1920s, fabricated 1975
Silver: hollow-formed, pierced; glass; ebonyh. overall, with cup: 9 3/4 in. (24.8 cm); plate assembly:
h.4in. x diam. 13 3/4in.
(10.2 x 34.9 cm); cup: h.6 x
diam.2 3/4in. (15.2 x 7.0
cm); dishes: h. 7/8 x diam.
2 7/8 in. (2.2 x 7.3 cm)
Judaic Art Fund, 1976
(76.4.6/3 -j)
AK
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Northern European Medieval and Renaissance Art
THE ROMANESQUE PERIOD (approximately tenth through twelfth centuries) of the Middle Ages was an era of significant church construction, a time when builders drew inspiration from Roman architecture in erecting massive stone walls, round arches, and barrel vaults. The Romanesque period also saw a revival of large-scale sculpture, which had been out of favor—in part because of its association with idolatry—since the fall of the western Roman Empire in the fifth century. Especially important was the stone relief sculpture that embellished the facades and interiors of churches, but artists also crafted freestanding wood sculptures, such as the NCMA's Madonna and Child in Majesty.
During the Gothic period (approximately mid-twelfth through fifteenth centuries), a new style of architecture originated in France and spread through much of Europe. With pointed arches, high vaults, flying buttresses, and thin walls pierced by stained glass windows, Gothic churches seemed to soar heavenward. Figures represented in architectural and free-standing sculpture were also attenuated, graceful, and elegant, qualities embodied in the Museum's ivory Madonna and Child.
In the later part of the fifteenth century northern Europe witnessed a new humanistic interest in the individual, reflected in realistic portraiture, and a fascination with the natural world, apparent in accurate portrayals of domestic interiors and carefully observed landscapes as settings for figures. Some artists, such as the anonymous painter of the Latour d'Auvergne Triptych, combined these elements with Italian Renaissance-style architecture and the use of linear perspective to create the illusion of three-dimensional space. In sculpture, the new enthusiasm for the observation of nature was apparent in certain realistic details of human figures, such as the double chin and heavy-lidded eyes of Peter Koellin's Madonna, or the bony, veined right hand of Tilmann Riemenschneider's Female Saint.
While Church patronage remained important during the late Middle Ages, the early Renaissance period also saw the rise of a self-made merchant class, whose members became important art patrons, acquiring primarily portraits and religious pictures. Some of the most active centers of painting and patronage were in the Netherlands, an area corresponding to present-day Holland, Belgium, Luxembourg, and parts of France. Evident in the work of several Netherlandish painters in the Museum's collection are three major developments in Northern Renaissance art: realistic portraiture (Antonis Mor), the emerging importance of landscape as a worthy subject in and of itself (the Master of the Female Half-Lengths and Jan Brueghel the Elder), and early experimentation with still-life subjects (Pieter Aertsen). In Aertsen's A Meat Stall with the Holy Family Giving Alms, the old order of things is inverted so that the religious scene is relegated to the background and the lavishly rendered still life looms large in the foreground. Aertsen's work already foreshadowed the market scenes and still-life subjects that would emerge as favorite themes of Dutch and Flemish artists of the seventeenth century.
Harbor Scene with St. Paul's Departure from Caesarea (detail)
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NORTHERN EUROPEAN MEDIEVAL AND RENAISSANCE ART
French, Auvergne regionMadonna and Child in Majesty, about 1150-1200Wood and traces of paint h.29 1/2 in.
(74.9 cm)
Purchased with funds from the State of North Carolina, 1962 (62.1.7)
Rigid, strictly frontal, and solemn in expression, the enthroned Mary and Christ Child embody maiestas ("majesty"), the term used by twelfth-century writers to describe this type of sculpture. Seated on a throne with round, Romanesque arches, the Madonna serves in turn as a throne for the child; she is the "Throne of Wisdom," according to the Latin liturgy. The mature appearance of the Christ Child suggests his divine, all-knowing nature, and he holds a Bible to show that he is the fulfillment of the Old Testament prophesies. (The heads of both figures appear to be later replacements carved in the characteristic style of twelfth-century "Majesties" from the Auvergne region.)
Traces of blue and red pigment reveal that the sculpture originally was painted, as wooden sculptures almost always were in the Middle Ages. The heads and hands are disproportionately large, while the rigid bodies are concealed beneath draperies defined by incised lines in symmetrical patterns. This rendering of the human form contributes to the apparent otherworldliness of the figures, which were intended to inspire reverence and religious devotion.
Small in scale and relatively lightweight, the sculpture might have been carried in processions during religious festivals. At other times, it probably stood on an altar or pedestal in a church as an inspiration to worshippers. Sculptures of this type also may have been used to represent Mary and Jesus in liturgical dramas enacting the story of the three wise men, while other roles were played by the clergy.
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70
The slender, elongated figures of the Madonna and Child echo the shape of the elephant tusk from which they were carved. They also embody the "courtly" style of Gothic sculpture developed in Paris in the mid-thirteenth century under the patronage of King Louis IX. In keeping with this refined style, Mary is elegantly attired and crowned like a queen, her delicate features enlivened by a sweet smile.
Mary's crown also identifies her as the Queen of Heaven, while the rose she holds symbolizes her purity as a "rose without thorns," a metaphor often used by medieval religious poets. The Christ Child turns in his mother's arms, suggesting an intimacy between the two figures. In his left hand, he holds an apple to signify that he is the "New Adam" who will redeem mankind from the sin introduced into the world by Adam and Eve when they ate the forbidden fruit in the Garden of Eden.
This small sculpture probably was kept by its owner in a private chapel or bedchamber. The warmth and tenderness it conveys reflect the important role Mary played in the devotions of the thirteenth century, when she was seen as a merciful and forgiving intercessor with Christ on behalf of mankind.
RMN
French, ParisMadonna and Child, about 1250-70
Ivory and metal h. 11 3/4 in.
(29.9 cm)
Gift of Mrs. Edsel B. Ford in memory of W. R. Valentiner, 1959 (59.6.1)
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NORTHERN EUROPEAN MEDIEVAL AND RENAISSANCE ART
Master of the Latour d'Auvergne Triptych French, active about 1490-1500
The Annunciation with Saints and Donors, called The Latour d'Auvergne Triptych, about 1497
Tempera and oil on panel center: 26 11/16 x 19 3/8 in. (67.8x49.3 cm);
wings (each): 26 5/8 x 9 1/2 in.
(67.7 x 24,2 cm)
Gift of the Samuel H, Kress Foundation, 1960 (60.17.61)
The subject of this three-panel painting, or triptych, is the angel Gabriel's Annunciation to the Virgin Mary that she is to be the mother of Christ. His words to her, taken from Luke's gospel (chapter 1:28), are inscribed in abbreviated Latin on the scroll between them, "Ave gra[tia] plena dominus tecum" ("Hail [Mary], full of grace, the Lord is with you").
The wings of the triptych, which close like shutters, have preserved the painting in excellent condition. They bear the likenesses of the donors of the work, the count and countess of Latour d'Auvergne. Their names, Jean and Jeanne, are the French masculine and feminine equivalents of the name John and therefore link the subjects with their patron saints. On the left wing, John the Baptist wears a hair shirt, a reminder of his sojourn in the wilderness, and holds a lamb that refers to his pronouncement, "Behold the Lamb of God." On the right wing, John the Evangelist is identified by his chalice filled with poison (indicated by the dragon), which he was forced to drink, according to legend.
French verses on the banners above the donors offer prayers to the Virgin on their behalf. The verses on the left scroll refer to Gabriel's annunciation and pray for the salvation of the count. The verses on the right request that the countess be blessed with children. Since the count and countess married in 1495 and are believed to have had their first child in 1498, the inscription dates the painting to about 1497.
The painting is from the beginning of the Renaissance in France. The treatment of the landscape background extending across all three panels reveals the Renaissance interest in portraying biblical events in a natural setting. The hills and vegetation accurately depict both the
72
locality of Auvergne, the province of the count and countess, and the traditional date of the Annunciation, March 25. Other hallmarks of the Renaissance style are the landscape and architecture 's recession into space and the shadows cast by the dove and the angel's scroll. Some of the architectural details of the columns and capitals show that the artist had some familiarity with Italian Renaissance architecture, perhaps through engravings. Medieval symbols that survived into this period include the Holy Spirit entering the room in the form of a dove, the gilded rays of light emanating from the tiny figure of God in the window, and the white lilies, symbolizing the Virgin's purity.
There is a remarkable attempt at realism in the figures as well as in the landscape. The faces of the count and countess appear to be true portrait likenesses, and those of the Virgin and the angel seem closer to observed models than to idealized conceptions. While the anatomy of the figures is not completely successful, the extensive detail of the Virgin's hands reveals the painter's efforts to reproduce them accurately. A mallard duck was the model for the markings on the angel's wings.
The desire for a child expressed on the scroll was fulfilled. The couple's daughter married a member of the illustrious Medici family of Florence and had a daughter, who returned to France as the wife of the future king Henri II. Known as Queen Catherine de Medici, she played a dominant role in French politics and culture.
The style of the painting indicates that it is a rare example of a local work by a provincial artist aware of contemporary trends in Italian and Flemish painting. An eighteenth-century
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inscription painted in gold on the backs of the shutters and a paper attached to the back of the central panel provide an unusually complete history of its ownership. After the count's death, the countess kept the painting in her castle in Vic-le-Comte. She later bequeathed it to the Franciscan monastery of that town, which retained possession of it until 1703, when it was returned to the Latour d'Auvergne family. Art historians lost track of the triptych for many years, until Samuel H. Kress purchased it on the art market in 1957. The Kress Foundation subsequently donated it to the Museum.
JPC
74
In his role as "Savior of the World" (Salvator Mundi), Christ gives the sign of benediction and holds a jeweled crystal orb, a symbol of the world created and ruled by God. This painting has been attributed to the Antwerp painter Quentin Massys based on a comparison of details with motifs in other works known to be by the master. These details include an openwork cross set with jewels, a morse (brooch) portraying Moses holding the tablets of the law, and the brilliantly painted reflections of the cityscape and the hand of Christ on the orb. However, the dark circular halo around Christ's head and the red dots across the gold background are not typical of Massys's work, although such details are found in works by at least one of his contemporaries.
Such severe, frontal representations of Christ were especially popular in Northern Renaissance art and were often paired with the praying Madonna. In existing examples of this type by Massys and his circle, the panels are usually rounded at the top. Although this may have been the original shape of the Salvator Mundi, at some point in its history the image apparently was expanded into a rectangular format. Clouds now cover the additions in the upper right and left corners. Use of a procedure known as dendrochronology has revealed that the oak tree from which the panel was cut grew in the Baltic/Polish region of eastern Europe and was felled between 1497 and 1503.
DW
Attributed to Quentin Massys Netherlandish, 1465-1530Salvator Mundi,
about 1500-1510
Oil on panel
21 x 141/2 in.
(53.3x36.8 cm)
Gift of the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, 1960 (60.17.62)
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NORTHERN EUROPEAN MEDIEVAL AND RENAISSANCE ART
Pieter Aertsen
Netherlandish,
1507/8-1575
A Meat Stall with the Holy Family Giving Alms, 1551Oil on oak panel
45 1/2 x 66 1/2 in.
(115.5 x 169.0 cm)
Purchased with funds from Wendell and Linda Murphy and various donors, by exchange, 1993 (93.2)
Aertsen's Meat Stall is considered to be the earliest still-life painting of foodstuffs, and the precursor of a type of painting known as a market-piece, a work that combines still-life and genre elements, such as Frans Snyders's Market Scene on a Quay (page 93). Aertsen's painting was clearly a famous work in its own day, as at least five versions are known; preparatory underdrawing in this work may indicate its status as the "prime" version.
The Meat Stall features a superabundant display of meats and other foods, painted with astonishing fidelity. Aertsen presents the viewer with a feast for the eyes, a smorgasbord of forms, colors, and textures depicted with virtuosic skill: the flayed skin and bristly muzzle of the ox head, the shiny surfaces of the metal plates and kettles, the downy feathers of the chickens, the cracked surface of the cheese, and the swelled skins of the sausages.
The painting is more than merely a display of the artist's virtuosity, however. The background contains two small narrative scenes, which initially appear rather awkwardly inserted in the context of the gargantuan display in the foreground. On the right, a young man draws water from a well in a courtyard before an inn where two couples amuse themselves. The women's decolletage and the shells strewn in the courtyard invest the scene with erotic overtones (mussels and oysters were considered aphrodisiacs). In the left background, a procession of worshippers advances toward a church in the distance. In their midst is Joseph accompanying Mary and the infant Jesus astride a donkey, a motif traditionally associated with the Holy Family's flight into Egypt. Mary offers some bread to a boy and his father, a vignette only rarely depicted in art.
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The combination of these narrative scenes with the still-life array in the foreground and the vast discrepancy in scale between them are extraordinary, even unprecedented. In assigning a prominent place for a typically insignificant or "low" art form (the still life) while according a less prominent role for a traditionally "high" art form (a religious subject), Aertsen has reversed the traditional hierarchy of composition, creating a whole new type of painting— the "inverted" still life.
As might be expected with such an innovative work of art, the Meat Stall has been variously interpreted. Some scholars have argued that the painting represents the conflict between Carnival (Mardi Gras), a time of feasting, and Lent, the forty-day period between Carnival and Easter. During Lent, pious Catholics gave up many foods, including all red meats, poultry, and fats—all of which appear in the foreground of Aertsen's painting—in favor of fish, pretzels, and greens, foods that also form part of the display, albeit in decidedly less abundance. Others have suggested that Aertsen's inversion of traditional compositional principles was either satirical or rhetorical. One writer has hypothesized that the Meat Stall was painted for the butcher's guild at Antwerp. Aertsen lived in the Ossenmarkt (ox market) section of Antwerp, near where cattle were brought into the city for butchering, and where presumably a great many butchers lived and worked.
While any of these interpretations may be correct, the key to understanding the more profound meaning of the painting lies in its contrasts. Temporal food for the body, symbolized by the lavish array in the foreground, is contrasted with eternal food for the soul in the form of the bread offered by Mary in the background scene. Bread coming from the Holy Family carried clear associations with the Eucharistic bread, symbolic of the sacrifice of Christ, who described himself as the "bread of life." Underscoring this Eucharistic message are the crossed fish (a traditional symbol of Christ) directly below the Holy Family, and the trees above the figures, which form a cross. Closely related to this comparison between earthly food and spiritual food is the contrast between Mary's act of charity and the churchgoers' piety in the scene on the left, and the sensual indulgence of the figures in the tavern scene on the right. Aertsen's scene encourages the viewer to examine his or her spiritual condition, to consider the consequences of pursuing earthly pleasures at the expense of eternal spiritual rewards to come.
DS
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NORTHERN EUROPEAN MEDIEVAL AND RENAISSANCE ART
Master of the Female Half-Lengths Netherlandish, active about 1525-50The Flight into
Egypt, about 1530-35Oil on panel
25 ¾ x 24 7/8 in.
(65.4 x 63.2 cm)
Purchased with funds from the North Carolina Art Society (Robert F. Phifer Bequest 1952(52.9.105)
The identity of the artist who painted this panel is not known, so art historians have named him after a group of his paintings—images of female saints portrayed from the waist up. The master's portrayals of figures and landscapes distinguish his unsigned paintings.
This northern European landscape provides the setting for a story related in the Gospel of Matthew (2:13 — 18). In the foreground, Joseph, Mary, and Jesus flee to Egypt to escape the wrath of King Herod. Having heard from wise men of the birth of a Jewish king and fearful that the child would become a threat to his own rule, Herod ordered the deaths of all children two years old or younger in Bethlehem and its environs.
In the middle distance are several small scenes, including one of a village where soldiers carry out Herod's terrible command. The artist also depicted two events which were not mentioned in Matthew's account but were popular episodes drawn from apocryphal gospels during the Middle Ages. One scene shows the Holy Family resting beneath a date palm, which bends its branches for Joseph to reach its fruit. In the background, soldiers on horseback converse with a man in a field of wheat, which miraculously grew up overnight. When asked by the soldiers if a family had recently journeyed past, the farmer truthfully answered they had come by when his wheat field was freshly planted. Thus the soldiers were discouraged from pursuit and the family was saved.
RMN
78 Although this man's identity is unknown, his alert, intelligent expression and intensely focused gaze convey a vivid sense of his personality. The visual interest of his face is heightened by the contrast between the sharp, well-defined features and the soft textures of the beard and hair. Seated in a chair Mor used for several other portraits, the man is fashionably dressed in a black silk costume of Spanish style. While the somber colors and plain background result in an austere portrait, the sitter's high social status is conveyed by his dignified pose and the realistic and detailed rendering of his elegant, dark clothing. He holds a pair of fine leather gloves, an indication of wealth and breeding in sixteenth-century portraits.
A native of Holland, Mor traveled widely and spent much of his career in Spanish-ruled Flanders, where he served as court painter to the Spanish governors in Brussels and was a member of the Antwerp painters' guild. The Spanish version of his name is Antonio Moro.
RMN
Antonis Mor, called Antonio Moro Netherlandish, about 1516/20-about 1575/77
Portrait of a Gentleman,
about 1570
Oil on panel
48 x 35 1/4 in.
(122.0 x 89.5 cm)
Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Ralph C. Price, 1955 (55.4.1)
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NORTHERN EUROPEAN MEDIEVAL AND RENAISSANCE ART
Jan Brueghel the Elder
Netherlandish,
1568-1625
Harbor Scene with St. Paul's Departure from Caesarea, 1596Oil on copper
14 1/4 x 21 1/2 in.
(36.2 x 54.6 cm)
Purchased with funds from the State of North Carolina, 1952 (52.9.92)
Caesarea, a monumental harbor city founded by Herod the Great late in the first century B.C., is the setting for a teeming crowd of sailors, fishermen, and onlookers, some in turbans and flowing Middle Eastern robes, others in sixteenth-century European garb. The festive air and bustling crowd are true to the account of the Jewish historian Josephus (about 37-95), who described not only the towers of the harbor, but also the numerous people promenading along the seawall. Nearly lost in this mass of humanity is St. Paul. Identified by his halo, he is surrounded by soldiers near the lower right corner. The religious subject seems to be primarily a pretext for painting a marvelous landscape, an initial step toward the development of landscape as an independent subject in the following century.
Executed in oil on copper, this small painting exhibits the jewel-like tones and remarkable attention to minute detail for which Jan Brueghel was famous. His nickname, "Velvet Brueghel," attests to the nature of his delicate and subtly detailed surfaces. Unlike his older brother Pieter, who concentrated on the rustic imagery introduced into painting by their well-known father Pieter Brueg(h)el the Elder, Jan chose a wide and varied range of subject matter for his pictures, including flower still lifes, landscapes, allegorical and mythological subjects, and religious scenes. After the death of his father when he was only a year old, little is known about Jan, including his training, until he undertook a six-year stay in Italy. He returned to Antwerp in 1596, becoming a prominent member of the painters' guild and a close friend and collaborator with Peter Paul Rubens.
DW
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St. Jerome (about 332-420) is known for his translation of the Bible from Hebrew and Greek into Latin, called the Vulgate. Because he once served as secretary to the pope in Rome, Jerome traditionally is depicted in the red hat and robes of a cardinal, even though that church office did not exist during his lifetime. Here, St. Jerome is portrayed as a scholar in a wood-paneled study with a tile floor, rendered in linear perspective to create the illusion of spatial depth. The portrait is framed by a stone archway and pillars carved with figures of saints under Gothic canopies. Within, Jerome turns from his books toward a small lion. According to legend, during a sojourn in the wilderness near Bethlehem, St. Jerome encountered a lion suffering from a thorn in its paw. Taking pity on the beast, the saint removed the thorn, thereby winning the devotion of the lion, which became his constant companion. The artist probably had never seen a lion and modeled his depiction on other artists' renderings.
The artist's attention to domestic details—such as the books and writing implements on the lectern and the pewter tankards on the shelves—characterizes many northern European paintings of this period, as does the abundance of angular drapery folds gracefully arrayed around the feet of St. Jerome. The painter's interest in the natural world is reflected in the luminous landscape glimpsed through an open door.
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German, School of CologneSt. Jerome in His Study, 2nd
quarter of the 15th century
Oil on panel
15 ½ x 12 in.
(39.4 x 30.5 cm)
Purchased with funds from the North Carolina Art Society (Robert F. Phifer Bequest), 1952 (52.9.139)
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NORTHERN EUROPEAN MEDIEVAL AND RENAISSANCE ART
Attributed to Peter Koellin German, active about 1450-75Madonna and Child Sheltering Supplicants under Her Cloak,
about 1470
Lindenwood, paint, and gold and silver leaf
h.57 in.
(144.8 cm)
Gift of R.J. Reynolds Industries, Inc., 1961 (61.13.1)
The image of the Madonna enfolding the faithful under her protective cloak is known as the "Madonna of Mercy." The term refers to the Virgin Mary's role in Catholic theology as an intercessor, always ready to plead to Christ for mercy on behalf of those in physical or spiritual distress. In the Middle Ages, the subject was especially popular among members of monastic orders and charitable lay fraternities. In this sculpture, the Madonna shelters members of the spiritual estate: a pope, a cardinal, and a bishop can be identified by their distinctive hats. On the other side are representatives of the secular estate, including an emperor and knights. Held high in Mary's arms, the Christ Child makes a gesture of blessing and holds an apple, symbolizing his role as the "New Adam" who redeems humankind from the consequences of sin.
Mary's white gown is lined with blue and adorned with gold fleurs-de-lis ("lily flowers"), symbols of purity. She stands on a crescent moon from which a layer of silver leaf has all but worn away, revealing the red preparatory layer beneath the metal; what remains of the silver has darkened. The moon refers to Mary's role as Queen of Heaven and also reflects the vision of the "Apocalyptic Woman" described in the Revelation of St. John: "A great portent appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars" (Revelation 12:1).
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Tilmann Riemenschneider was one of the leading German sculptors of the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, a period of transition between Late Gothic and Renaissance styles in northern European art. His portrayal of a female saint continues Gothic traditions in its treatment of pose and drapery. The figure forms an S-curve, sometimes referred to as the hip-shot pose because of the pronounced swing of the hips. Large, angular folds of drapery conceal the body underneath. The new Renaissance emphasis on the close observation of nature is apparent in the naturalism of the face and right hand, with the bone structure, veins, and fingernails meticulously rendered (the left hand is a modern replacement). The somber expression of the long, slender face is characteristic of Riemenschneider's female saints, as is the coiffure of heavy, coiled braids.
The saint's crown indicates that she was of royal blood, while her book suggests a woman of learning. The sword, a symbol of martyrdom, is not original to the statue, so the identity of the saint cannot be ascertained, although she is probably either St. Catherine or St. Barbara. Both were princesses known for their learning who were martyred for their Christian beliefs. Hollowed out in the back to allow for even drying of the wood, the statue likely was once part of a larger ensemble in a church.
RMN
Tilmann
Riemenschneider German, about 1460-1531Female Saint,
about 1505
Lindenwood and traces of paint
h. 38 in.
(96.5 crn)
Purchased with funds from the North Carolina Art Society (Robert F. Phifer Bequest) and the State of North Carolina, 1968 (68.33.1)
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NORTHERN EUROPEAN MEDIEVAL AND RENAISSANCE ART
Lucas Cranach the Elder German, 1472-1553Madonna and Child in a Landscape,
about 1518
Oil on panel
16 ½ x 10 1/4 in.
(41.9 x 26.0 cm)
Gift of Mrs. George Khuner, 1964 (64.35.1)
Lucas Cranach was one of the major artists of the German Renaissance. As court painter to the prince-electors of Saxony in Wittenberg, Cranach relied on a large group of apprentices and assistants to meet his patrons' demands for portraits, mythological subjects, interior decorations, court costumes, and armorial devices. Around 1518, Cranach painted the series of small devotional images of the Madonna and Child to which this panel belongs.
The smooth, enamel-like application of deeply saturated colors characterizes Cranach's paintings of this period. From his earlier association with the painters of the Danube School, he retained an interest in the German landscape, dark and fecund. Brilliant highlights sparkle on the foliage and branches of the lush evergreen forest. The Madonna is seated directly on the forest floor, which emphasizes her humility, while the chubby Christ Child sits upon a tasseled, velvet pillow. The grapes offered by his mother symbolize the wine of the Eucharist, which in turn represents the shed blood of Christ. Renaissance artists often included in their images of the Madonna and Child some symbolic reference to the Crucifixion as a reminder of Christ's ultimate sacrifice.
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84
The dry flesh of Hans Geyer, age 54, is pulled tightly over prominent bones. He stares blankly ahead from pale blue eyes and holds a rosary in his tightly clasped hands. Dangling from the prayer beads is a tiny skull, a reminder to Geyer of his own mortality, and to others of theirs. Characteristic of German portrait painting of this period are the precise rendering of the details of the figure and his clothing and jewelry, and the linear definition of forms. The wide-brimmed hat, fur-trimmed coat, and signet rings reveal that the sitter was a prosperous man. His name and year of birth originally were inscribed on the back of the panel. The inscription has been lost, but was recorded in the inventory of a previous owner of the painting.
The artist dated the panel February 8, 1524, and signed it with his monogram, which combines his initials with a garden spade emblematic of his name (Gartner means "gardener" in German). The portrait is one of the earliest documented works by the artist, who later, in the 1530s, worked as a portrait painter at various German courts.
RMN
Peter Gartner German, active about 1523-39Hans Geyer, 1524
Oil on panel
19 x 13 in.
(48.3 x 33.0 cm)
Purchased with funds from the State of North Carolina, 1952 (52.9.138)
85
Flemish Baroque Art
IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY THE NETHERLANDS came under the control of Philip II, the Hapsburg ruler of Spain. Because Philip was so repressive toward Protestants, the northern provinces, including Holland, broke away and eventually gained their independence. The southern province of Flanders (present-day Belgium) remained under Spanish control. Thus seventeenth-century Flanders, administered by royal governors, was monarchical, aristocratic, and staunchly Catholic.
During the first half of the century, Flemish art was dominated by one larger-than-life figure, Peter Paul Rubens. Master of a large workshop with many assistants and apprentices, Rubens received commissions from the royalty, nobility, and religious orders of Europe. In addition, he was a savvy collector of art and antiquities, a skilled linguist, an accomplished diplomat, and an astute businessman. Only after his death in 1640 did other Flemish painters rise to prominence, most notably Anthony van Dyck (who by then was active in England), Jacob Jordaens, and Frans Snyders. Earlier, all of these artists had collaborated with and/or worked under Rubens in his Antwerp atelier.
As a young artist, Rubens spent eight years in Italy (1600-1608), where he studied the arts of Classical antiquity, the Italian Renaissance, and the early Italian Baroque. When he returned to Flanders, Rubens brought with him the new Baroque idiom that would soon become popular throughout most of Europe. In The Holy Family with St. Anne, various elements of Rubens's dramatic style are evident— monumental and abundant figures, rich and varied colors, fluid brushwork, bold lighting, and the tender emotions of the Christ Child's parents and grandmother (the Virgin Mary's mother, St. Anne).
Although the economy of Flanders stagnated in the seventeenth century, particularly after 1621 (when a twelve-year truce in the war with the Dutch ended), the arts and learning flourished as the Catholic Church and wealthy individuals provided steady patronage. The Baroque style found vivid expression in both religious and secular paintings. Large, strikingly naturalistic figures fill the canvases of Jacob Jordaens, Theodoor Rombouts, and Gerard Seghers. Theatrical lighting was most dramatically expressed in night scenes, such as Seghers's Denial of St. Peter. Secular paintings encompassed many subjects, such as Rombouts's gaming scene in The Backgammon Players, David Teniers's bustling forge in The Armorer's Shop, and Frans Snyders's array of foodstuffs in Market Scene on a Quay. In the Baroque period, still life came into its own as a favorite type of painting, and in his Market Scene, Snyders exploits to the fullest the genre's potential for rich, saturated colors, varied textures, and multitudinous forms.
The Holy Family with St. John and His Parents (detail)
87
FLEMISH BAROQUE ART
Gerard Seghers Flemish,1591-1651The Denial of St. Peter, about 1620-25Oil on canvas 62 x 89 5/8 in.
(157.5 x 227.7 cm)
Purchased with funds from the State of North Carolina, 1952 (52.9.112)
The serving maid of the high priest Caiaphas, recognizing Peter, said to him, '"You also were with Jesus, the man from Nazareth.' But he denied it, saying, 'I do not know or understand what you are talking about'" (Mark 14:66-68). After three such denials, Peter realized he had fulfilled Christ's prophecy that he would disown him three times before a cock crowed twice (Mark 14:30).
Peter's encounter with the serving maid and a soldier at the far left is the most dramatic detail of the composition. Although the candle's flame is hidden by the woman's arm, it strongly illuminates Peter's face just as he utters one of his denials. The subject is well-suited to the theatrical approach popular with Seghers and other northern painters who had been to Rome and adopted the naturalistic manner of Caravaggio and his Italian followers.
Many copies of The Denial of St. Peter are known to exist, but this picture appears to be the prime version. The details which have bled through the paint layers provide evidence for this conclusion. Motifs that the artist originally included in the work, but later painted over, have gradually reemerged. The most prominent of these — readily visible when standing before the actual painting—is a hand holding a staff, which appears as a ghostly image to the right of St. Peter's hand. Seghers ultimately decided to move this motif further to the right of his composition. Because there would be no need for such changes, called pentimenti, to appear in a copy, their presence here strongly supports the conclusion that this is the original version.
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89
FLEMISH BAROQUE ART
Theodoor Rombouts Flemish, 1597 -1637The Backgammon Players, 1634Oil on canvas
63 1/4 x 92 7/16 in.
(160.7 x 234.8 cm)
Gift of E. Graham Flanagan, Charles R. Flanagan, and Mrs. Rosamond Flanagan Wagner in memory of their father E. G. Flanagan, 1957 (57.2.1)
During the seventeenth century, the popular game of backgammon, or trictrac, was often associated with idleness or was used to symbolize life as a game of chance ruled by fate. The elaborate costumes and graceful demeanor of most of the well-dressed adults and children depicted here, however, imply that this is probably not the case in this work. Still, there is a suggestion of the violence then linked with backgammon in the inclusion of a soldier and a man with a sword.
Regardless of the elusive interpretation of the subject matter, The Backgammon Players is a remarkable example of Rombouts's art. Its large scale and skillful execution is characteristic of many of his best works. Born and trained in Antwerp, the painter was active in Rome between at least 1620 and 1625. In Italy, Rombouts, like so many of his northern European colleagues who traveled south, was influenced by the dramatic naturalism found in paintings by Caravaggio and his followers. After his return to Antwerp in 1625, the Caravaggesque element in Rombouts's paintings was soon tempered by the art of his Flemish contemporaries Peter Paul Rubens and Anthony van Dyck. Their artistic influence is evident in the shimmering fabrics of the players' costumes.
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Unlike his famous contemporary Peter Paul Rubens, Jacob Jordaens never traveled to Italy to study the arts of antiquity and the Renaissance. Instead he spent his life in his native Antwerp, where he often painted peasants and other simple folk. In this painting, Jordaens portrays the Holy Family as robust, modestly dressed individuals in a humble setting; however, he uses various motifs to impart a deeper meaning to the scene. Although Mary has no halo, her coiled braid suggests one, and her high-backed wicker chair resembles a throne. The infant Jesus, wrapped in swaddling clothes, wears a garland of flowers in lieu of a halo.
Greeting the mother and child are their kinspeople, the young John the Baptist and his parents, Elizabeth and Zacharias. The story of their visit to Mary and Jesus is found in the Proto-Evangelium (Proto-Gospel) of James, an early Christian text dealing largely with the life of Mary. The young John the Baptist has the attributes associated with his adult ministry as a wilderness preacher and prophet. He wears a camel-skin garment and is accompanied by a lamb, in reference to his identification of Jesus as the "lamb of God." The goldfinch flying from its wicker cage may symbolize the human soul set free by God. Because it feeds on seeds from thorny thistles, the goldfinch also was associated with the legendary bird which tried to pull thorns from Jesus' crown of thorns and was smeared with blood, accounting for the red patches on either side of its head.
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Jacob Jordaens Flemish, 1593-1678The Holy Family with St. John and His Parents,
about 1615-17
Oil on canvas46 x 56 7/8 in.
(116.8 x 144.5 cm)Purchased with funds from the State of North Carolina, and gift of the North Carolina Art Society (Robert F. Phifer Funds) and David M. Koetser, 1952 (52.9.101)
91
FLEMISH BAROQUE ART
Peter Paul Rubens Flemish, 1577-1640The Holy Family with St. Anne,
about 1635
Oil on canvas
68 3/4 x 56 in.
(174.6 x 142.2 cm)
Purchased with funds from the State of North Carolina, 1952 (52.9.107)
The most renowned Flemish painter of his lifetime, Peter Paul Rubens was in great demand to produce commissions for royal and aristocratic patrons throughout Europe. As a native of Catholic Flanders, a Spanish province in the seventeenth century, Rubens also painted many monumental religious paintings for churches, including numerous Holy Families. Here, three generations are portrayed. St. Anne tenderly embraces her daughter Mary and gazes fondly at her sleeping grandson, the Christ Child, while Joseph looks on from the far side of a low wall. In keeping with Christian theology and artistic tradition, Joseph is separated somewhat from the central group, reflecting his role as the earthly father of the miraculously conceived child.
Characteristic of Rubens's style are the robust and monumental figures, the varied textures and free brushwork, and the rich colors, especially the reds and blues of Mary's clothing and the opalescent hues of the women's skirts. The classicizing architecture ornamented with horizontal bands, also found in other paintings by the master, effectively frames and accentuates the individual figures. St. Anne sits in a slightly shadowed recessed niche, while Joseph looks in through a window-like opening. An attached column defines the vertical axis of the composition and reinforces the centrality of Mary and the Christ Child. The light that illuminates their pale skin and glistens on the child's golden curls further focuses the viewer's attention on the mother and child.
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92
More than eleven feet in width, Snyders's still life must have greatly impressed his contemporaries when he became the first to paint market scenes on such a monumental scale. During the previous half-century, Pieter Aertsen had established this subject in Antwerp—on a more modest scale—with such paintings as the Museum's A Meat Stall with the. Holy Family Giving Alms (page 76).
As the foremost Flemish still-life artist of his time, Snyders specialized in market scenes and compositions that included game animals. In fact, he often collaborated with Peter Paul Rubens and other artists, executing still-life elements for some of their commissions. The demand for Snyders's work was so great that he employed assistants to paint portions of his compositions. The quality of the fur and feathers in this painting indicates that the master himself painted the deer, cat, swan, partridges, and curlew. Snyders observed his game birds with such remarkable specificity that each species can be identified.
Snyders's native Antwerp was the leading commercial and artistic center of Flanders during his lifetime. Such produce as the artichokes and melon were not native to Flanders and demonstrated the international mercantile connections that brought prosperity to the city. The display of the luxurious abundance of Antwerp's commercial port may indicate propagandist overtones related to the Spanish administration of Flanders as it continued its war with the Dutch Republic.
JPC
Frans Snyders Flemish, 1579-1657Market Scene on a Quay, about 1635
Oil on canvas 79 5/16 x 135 in.
(201.5 x 345.5 cm)
Purchased with funds from the State of North Carolina, 1952 (52.9.113)
93
FLEMISH BAROQUE ART
David Teniers II (the Younger) Flemish, 1610-1690
The Armorer's Shop,
about 1640-45
Oil on panel
22 1/2 X 31 3/4 in, (57.1 x 80.9 cm)
Purchased with funds from the State of North Carolina, 1952 (52.9.116)
In The Armorer's Shop, Teniers offers a glimpse into the workings of a royal armory. Several pieces of the parade armor can be identified with extant examples in imperial Hapsburg collections in Brussels and Vienna. Only in 1651 did the artist become a court painter to Archduke Leopold Wilhelm, the governor of the Spanish Netherlands. Teniers must have been granted access to the armory prior to this date, however, since this painting is a fine example of Teniers's work from the first half of the 1640s. The artist combined sketchy brushstrokes in the background areas with a finer, more detailed technique for the mound of armor and the individual in the foreground. It has been suggested that the seated figure, who cleans the wheel lock of a carbine, is a self-portrait.
Of the three paintings by this prolific artist in the Museum's collection, The Armorer's Shop is most characteristic of Teniers's work. The painting includes references to the association of metallurgy and arms-making with alchemy, a favorite subject of Teniers. The figures in the background busy themselves with the production of armor. This activity, transforming molten metal into valuable objects, was sometimes associated with alchemy. Alchemists sought processes for transforming base matter into pure gold as a concrete expression of their spiritual goal, which was to transcend the material world and achieve spiritual purification and enlightenment.
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The Adoration of the Shepherds is the largest and most ambitious of Jordaens's paintings now in the Museum's collection. With the death of Peter Paul Rubens nearly twenty years earlier, a number of Antwerp's most important altarpiece commissions fell to this native son. It is tempting, therefore, to conclude that The Adoration of the Shepherds was painted for one of the city's many churches. Unfortunately, the circumstances surrounding the commission have not surfaced.
Lacking the stimulus of Rubens's example, Jordaens's creative powers declined during the 1640s and 1650s. The Adoration of the Shepherds reflects this trend, as is evident in the manner in which he recycled various gestures and facial types from other pictures. Even with this loss of innovation, however, many passages, particularly the goat in the foreground, are brilliantly painted. The subject gave Jordaens an opportunity to incorporate many of his favorite rustic elements into the composition. These elements work well with Jordaens's style from the 1650s, characterized by a deeper palette, strong highlights, and a loose and free handling of the paint.
DW
Jacob Jordaens Flemish, 1593-1678The Adoration of the Shepherds, 1657Oil on canvas
106 1/4 x 81 in. (270.0 x 205.7 cm)
Gift of John Motley Morehead, 1955 (55.7.1)
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The Dutch Golden Age
ALTHOUGH THEY EFFECTIVELY FREED THEMSELVES from Spanish control in 1609, the seven provinces of the northern Netherlands, frequently called Holland after the name of the largest province, were not recognized by treaty as the Dutch Republic until 1648. With its newfound political, economic, and religious freedom, the Dutch Republic achieved unparalleled commercial prosperity and intellectual and artistic sophistication. Commerce, banking, and shipping led to the rise of an affluent middle class for whom collecting art soon became a passion. This patronage led to a thriving market for popular types of paintings: portraits, biblical and historical scenes, landscapes, still lifes, and scenes of everyday life (genre paintings).
While the art of Spanish-controlled Flanders to the south was profoundly influenced by one man, Peter Paul Rubens, the burgeoning Dutch market created an environment in which many artists achieved wide renown and financial success. Although Rembrandt van Rijn is the most famous Dutch Baroque artist today, he was but one among many highly regarded painters in his own time. Like Rubens in Antwerp, Rembrandt had numerous pupils and assistants in his Amsterdam studio. Some of them, such as Covert Flinck, whose Return of the Prodigal Son is in the Museum's collection, had very successful independent careers.
With the notable exception of the sizable Catholic population of Utrecht, most citizens of the Dutch Republic were Calvinist. This Protestant faith forbade religious art in its churches, thus eliminating church patronage. Individuals sometimes commissioned paintings of biblical subjects for their homes, however, and even still-life and landscape paintings often contained moral messages with religious implications. Jan Jansz. den Uyl's Banquet Piece, for instance, with its gold-covered beaker, pewter pitcher, fine glasswares, and other luxury items, can be seen as a celebration of Dutch affluence and taste. On the other hand, details such as the half-empty glass, the snuffed-out candle and wick trimmer, the silent lute, and the general disarray of the feast are symbols of the transience of earthly life and its pleasures, and thus a reminder to pay heed to the health of one's immortal soul.
Although Dutch Baroque art is not as grandiose in scale or theme as its Flemish counterpart, both styles share certain artistic elements—dramatic contrasts of light and dark, striking naturalism in the portrayal of humans and animals, and the expression of deeply felt emotions.
The Worship of the Golden Calf (detail)
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THE DUTCH GOLDEN AGE
Esaias van de Velde Dutch, 1587-1630Winter Scene, 1614Oil on panel
10 1/4 x 12 5/8 in.
(26 x 31.9 cm);
original size: 5 x 12 5/8 in.
(12.7 x 31.9 cm)
Purchased with funds from the State of North Carolina, 1952 (52.9.61)
This intriguing winter scene represents one of the earliest dated paintings by Esaias van de Velde, an artist who played a major role in the development of the realistic landscape in seventeenth-century Holland. Characteristic of the new subject matter and naturalistic style that came to dominate Dutch painting during its "Golden Age," this work was painted in the innovative art center of Haarlem during a twelve-year truce (1609—1621) between the Dutch Republic and the Spanish-controlled southern Netherlands.
The format of the painting has been greatly altered since its completion in 1614, as nearly all the sky is painted on a wooden panel subsequently added across the top. Furthermore, another smaller strip extends across the bottom of the painting. These additions, possibly dating as early as the seventeenth century, raise a number of questions about the work. Since more extensive areas of sky were increasingly preferred by collectors as the century progressed, it is possible that the addition may have been an effort to make the picture appear more "modern." Another explanation may concern the possible original function of Winter Scene. Its 1614 format is similar to dimensions found in landscape paintings that were inserted into furniture, especially cabinets. It is plausible that Van de Velde's painting was removed from a cabinet and later expanded to make it more salable as a wall painting.
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Exotic seashells, carefully observed insects and fruits, and rare hybrids of flowers were elements of the seventeenth-century Dutch fascination with the natural world. An extreme manifestation of this curiosity was "tulipomania," the folly of collectors spending huge sums to acquire individual tulip bulbs such as the one that produced the striped variety in this still life. The shells are depicted with such exactitude that they can be identified as species from seas off the coasts of the East and West Indies and Africa. These and the Chinese porcelain are evidence of the extensive trading sphere of Dutch merchants.
Van der Ast specialized in paintings of such objects, admired for their verisimilitude to nature as well as for the moral associations attached to individual motifs. For example, the painter frequently followed the convention of scattering tiny creatures and spoiling fruit in pictures as reminders of the transitory nature of life. The butterfly, grasshopper, and fruit exist for only a brief span. The fading beauty of the cut flowers reinforces this idea, but like the shells, they may have offered criticism on the practice of squandering money on objects of curiosity. Interestingly, the fruits and flowers appear together although they come from different growing seasons. Like many of his contemporaries, Van der Ast would have utilized studies that he later combined in his compositions.
JPC
Balthasarvan der Ast Dutch,1593/94-1657Still Life with a Basket of Fruit, 1622Oil on panel
19 ½ x 32 in. (49.5 x 81.3 cm)
Purchased with funds from the State of North Carolina, 1952 (52.9.197)
99
THE DUTCH GOLDEN AGE
Jan Jansz. den Uyl Dutch, 1595/96-1640Banquet Piece,
about 1635
Oil on panel
31 3/8 x 37 in.
(79.7 x 94.0 cm)
Purchased with funds from the State of North Carolina, 1952 (52.9.43)
This remarkable Dutch still-life painting, somber yet sumptuous, represents a seventeenth-century type known as a "banquet piece." The various surfaces and textures of luxury tablewares made of pewter, gold, silver, and glass, as well as the foodstuffs and white linen tablecloth, are meticulously rendered. At the same time, symbolically charged elements such as the empty glass, burned-down candle, and lute at the far left hint at deeper meanings. The painting has been interpreted both as a vanitas image, that is, one that refers to the rapid passage of life and the emptiness of worldly possessions and pleasures, and as a representation of the five senses. However, it is equally likely that Dutch concerns about overindulgence and ostentatious display also are addressed in the painting.
Jan Jansz. den Uyl was well known and successful during his lifetime — the Flemish master Peter Paul Rubens owned three of his pictures—but was largely forgotten after his death until the middle of this century. In most of his known works, Den Uyl made a visual pun on his name: an owl (in Dutch uyl) is perched upon the gold container in the center of the composition.
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Holding the severed head of Goliath and accompanied by the armies of King Saul under his command, David made his way back to Jerusalem. As he did, "the women came out of all the towns of Israel, singing and dancing, to meet King Saul, with tambourines, with songs of joy, and with musical instruments. And the women sang to one another as they made merry, 'Saul has killed his thousands, / and David his ten thousands'" (I Samuel 18:6—7). The lively demeanor of the Israelite women in Ter Brugghen's depiction of this episode contrasts strongly with the uneasy expression on David's face and with the greenish hue of the flesh of Goliath's head. In this masterpiece of his oeuvre, Ter Brugghen employed the distinctive facial types, palette, and thin paint application that characterize his style. However, the realistic modeling with light and shadow and the placement of the half-length figures near the picture plane show Ter Brugghen's debt to the Italian Baroque painter Caravaggio.
Ter Brugghen painted this work in Utrecht nearly a decade after his return from a long stay in Italy, between about 1604 and 1614. Utrecht, a Dutch city with a large Catholic population, offered artists ample opportunities to paint religious scenes. Ter Brugghen was himself a member of a prosperous, long-established Catholic family. An important member of a group of Utrecht artists who appropriated ideas from Caravaggio, he also painted genre scenes, including A Boy with a Wineglass (1623), also in the Museum's collection.
DW
Hendrick Ter Brugghen Dutch, 1588-1629David Praised by the Israelite Women, 1623Oil on canvas
32 3/16 x 41 1/2 in.
(81.8 x 105.4 cm)
Gift of the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, 1960 (60.17.66)
101
THE DUTCH GOLDEN AGE
Jan Lievens Dutch, 1607-1674The Feast of Esther,
about 1625
Oil on canvas
53 x 65 in.
(134.6 x 165.1 cm)
Purchased with funds from the State of North Carolina, 1952 (52.9.55)
One of the most dramatic moments from the Book of Esther comes when the queen accuses the king's advisor Haman of treachery against her people (Esther 7:1—7). Through her efforts, Hainan's plot for the slaughter of all the Jews in Persia was unmasked before King Ahasuems (Xerxes). Seated before his chamberlain, Harbonah, the king reacts in anger with arms outstretched and hands clenched. Across from him sits the isolated, shadowy figure of Haman, who cowers at the king's wrath. Shortly thereafter, Haman's life would end on the gallows.
The broad, painterly style, bold colors, and dramatic energy of The Feast of Esther has much in common with works produced by the young Rembrandt in his native city of Leiden. In fact, the picture was formerly attributed to Rembrandt. Nevertheless, the artist of this provocative work is now identified as Jan Lievens, Rembrandt's slightly younger and more precocious Leiden colleague. The picture shares many similarities with other examples from Lievens's oeuvre. In its scale, clarity of spatial organization, bold palette, and description of materials, the painting is the masterpiece of the artist's youth.
Painted during a period when Lievens and Rembrandt may have shared a studio, the painting calls attention to the differences between their works. The scholar and art lover Constantijn Huygens, the first to discuss both artists, wrote in the early 1630s that Lievens's paintings from the 1620s had a grandeur of invention and boldness that Rembrandt did not achieve. The Feast of Esther confirms his insightful opinion.
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Thomas de Keyser was the preeminent portrait painter in Amsterdam prior to the arrival in 1632 of the young Rembrandt, whose early development as a portraitist de Keyser influenced. Portraits were in tremendous demand in seventeenth-century Holland, where members of the newly prosperous middle class had an insatiable desire for likenesses of themselves. These solid, practical Calvinist burghers preferred realistic portraits with careful attention to detail and accurate rendering of their elegant but somber clothing and accessories.
De Keyser's portrait of an unidentified man is characteristic of conventional Dutch portraiture in its straightforward portrayal of the sitter, restrained brushwork, and subdued color scheme. The artist employs the familiar half-length portrait formula, with the figure looking directly at the viewer and positioned at a slight angle against a neutral background. Wearing an elegant silk velvet costume with starched linen ruff and cuffs, the gentleman holds a pair of fine leather gloves, an indication of his social status and wealth. De Keyser's confident handling of the paint to indicate the textures of flesh and hair and to suggest the underlying bone structure is evident in the beautifully modeled head and the sensitively rendered hands of the sitter.
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Thomas de Keyser Dutch, 1596/97 -1667Portrait of a Gentleman,
about 1626
Oil on panel
28 ¼ x 21 7/8 in.
(71.8 x 55.6 cm)
Anonymous gift, 1963 (63.18.1)
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THE DUTCH GOLDEN AGE
Jan Miense Molenaer Dutch, about 1610-1668The Dentist, 1629Oil on panel
23 1/8 x 31 9/16 in.
(58.8 x 80.2 cm)
Purchased with funds from the State of North Carolina, 1952 (52.9.50)
The elevation of scenes of daily life as subjects worthy of artistic interest is primarily a phenomenon of the early seventeenth century. It was in Haarlem, Molenaer's hometown, that many innovations in subject matter first took hold in seventeenth-century Dutch art. Interestingly, these changes occurred at the same moment when the young Dutch Republic began to assert its importance on the world stage through commerce.
One of the earliest dated pictures by Molenaer, The Dentist points to his probable training in the workshops of both Frans and Dirck Hals. In comparable works by Frans Hals, the figures' animated actions and lively expressions both engage and amuse the viewer. Molenaer's grimacing young patient makes a similar impression, enhanced, at least in the eyes of the Protestant Dutch, by his misplaced trust in the rosary he clutches. His prayers seem to have little effect on the pain he suffers at the hand of the fancifully dressed dentist. Dentists, who were routinely portrayed as quacks during the period, had a reputation for extracting money as well as teeth from unsuspecting patients.
Molenaer was a prolific and imaginative artist whose works vary greatly in quality and style. Among the diverse subjects he painted are peasant scenes, proverbs and allegories, portraits, religious narratives, and elegant merry companies. In many respects, he was the true predecessor of Jan Steen (see page 110). By 1636, the year he married the painter Judith Leyster and moved to Amsterdam, he had become a mature and respected master, living up to the promise evident in The Dentist.
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Although Young Man with a Sword is signed "Rembrandt" and dated 1633, the painting is not by Rembrandt himself. In seventeenth-century studios, works by the master's pupils often were signed and sold as products of the master's own hand. The imagery and many of the stylistic elements of Young Man with a Sword identify the picture as a product of the Rembrandt circle. Its recent attribution history reflects unresolved issues within the scholarship devoted to Rembrandt and the extensive Rembrandt school. Connoisseurs working earlier in this century, for example, saw the painting as an outstanding work by Rembrandt. More recently, a number of scholars have attempted to connect it to some of his best pupils, including Ferdinand Bol, and especially Covert Flinck. Comparisons between Young Man with a Sword and known works by these painters are, however, not convincing.
Regardless of weaknesses in the structure of the shoulders and face, Young Man with a Sword suggests a competent painter who was well-versed in Rembrandt's artistic interests during the 1630s and early 1640s. The dramatic chiaroscuro and romantic costume are typical of works by Rembrandt and members of his circle. The refined color combinations in the brownish coat with its glowing golden border, the gold chain against the gray and blue vest, and the dark blue cap with the elegant feather are also reminiscent of the master.
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Circle of Rembrandt Dutch, 1606-1669Young Man with a Sword, about 1640-45Oil on canvas
46 9/16 x 381/16 in.
(118.4x96.7 cm)
Gift of the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, 1960 (60.17.68)
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THE DUTCH GOLDEN AGE
Govert Flinck Dutch,1615-1660The Return of the Prodigal Son,
about 1640
Oil on canvas
52 1/2 x 67 in.
(133.4 x 170.2 cm)
Purchased with funds from the State of North Carolina, 1952 (52.9.41)
In this composition inspired by a Rembrandt etching of 1636, Govert Flinck adopted the style and palette of his former master. The earthy colors and broadly applied brushstrokes are qualities associated with Rembrandt, as is the strong interaction between the protagonists. However, Flinck seldom achieved the emotional intensity of his master. Shortly after completing The Return of the Prodigal Son, Flinck abandoned this Rembrandtesque manner, adopting instead the more elegant and colorful style found in portraits by Anthony van Dyck and his Dutch followers. Thereafter, Flinck became one of the leading painters in Amsterdam. When commissions for the city's new town hall were awarded in the 1650s, it was Flinck, not Rembrandt, who received the lion's share of the work. Unfortunately, Flinck died in 1660 before most of these commissions could be completed.
The story of the prodigal son, based on a parable of Jesus recorded in the Gospel of Luke (15:11-32), had been a popular subject for sixteenth-century Northern artists. They almost invariably chose to represent the colorful and erotic episode of the prodigal son wasting his inheritance in the company of harlots. Flinck, like Rembrandt before him, instead chose to depict the moment of reconciliation and forgiveness between the father and his repentant son who had "squandered his property in dissolute living" (Luke 15:13). Symbolizing the reconciliation between a merciful God and a repentant sinner, this moment captures the spiritual message of the biblical parable.
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Jacob van Ruisdael is the best known and most important seventeenth-century Dutch landscape painter. His reputation is based on the enormous diversity found within his landscapes and the high quality of their execution. Born in Haarlem and the nephew of the successful landscape painter Salomon van Ruysdael, Ruisdael began to paint in the mid-1640s. A decade later, he settled in Amsterdam, remaining there for the rest of his career.
Wooded Landscape with Waterfall falls into the largest category of Ruisdael's work. Although he probably based his painting in part on the Scandinavian landscapes of one of his contemporaries, he may also have conceived this and similar scenes through his travels to the mountainous Dutch/German border region. The composition, however, does not record a specific site. The rugged landscape, tall fir trees, and remnants of a wooden shed serve as a backdrop for the rushing waters that cascade over the large foreground boulders, roaring their power to the figures in the distance.
Ruisdael probably intended for his dramatic landscape to embody a symbolic meaning. Water rushing pell-mell over a waterfall, clouds billowing across an ever-changing sky, ancient dying trees, and ruined buildings were all familiar seventeenth-century symbols of the transience of human life.
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Jacob van Ruisdael Dutch, 1628/29-1682
Wooded Landscape with Waterfall,
about 1665 -70
Oil on canvas
41 x 56 1/2 in.
(104.1 x 143.5 cm)
Purchased with funds from the State of North Carolina, 1952 (52.9.56)
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THE DUTCH GOLDEN AGE
Pieter de Hooch Dutch, 1629 -1684
The Fireside,
about 1670-75
Oil on canvas
25 ½ x 30 1/4 in.
(64.8 x 77.0 cm)
Purchased with funds from the State of North Carolina, 1952 (52.9.45)
Along with the Delft master Johannes Vermeer, Pieter de Hooch was among the first of the Dutch painters to explore the subtle effects of light in domestic interiors. A native of Rotterdam, De Hooch probably trained in Haarlem. By August of 1652, he is recorded as a resident of Delft, where he spent the better part of a decade. Responding to innovations found in Delft architectural paintings, De Hooch, like Vermeer, developed a sophisticated treatment of domestic spaces. Looking for a better market for his work, De Hooch moved around 1660 to Amsterdam, where he spent his remaining years.
The Fireside is one of the better examples of De Hooch's late work and still reflects the influence of the Delft tradition. Views into well-lit rooms, such as the one beyond the hallway at the left, are often featured in Delft paintings. The commonplace actions of everyday life are also an element of De Hooch's Delft experience. As two women prepare for the day's main meal, a young child plays with a cat. Blocks of peat burn in the fireplace, and surrounding the figures are the trappings of a simple seventeenth-century home. Of particular interest are the two paintings within the work: a picture in a black frame over the mantel and a portrait to its left. Their inclusion reflects the widespread interest in art collecting among the seventeenth-century Dutch.
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Beginning around 1660, civic self-awareness and an awakening national pride contributed to a growing interest in paintings of topographical views of Dutch cities. One of the innovators in this genre was Gerrit Berckheyde. His straightforward depictions of Amsterdam, The Hague, and his native Haarlem provide visual documentation of these cities. Berckheyde achieved harmony in his scenes through subtle rendering of light and shadow, balance between the open space and solid buildings, and refined and precise application of paint.
The site shown in The Fish Market and the Grote Kerk at Haarlem appears much the same today as it did in the seventeenth century. Although the market no longer exists, modern-day visitors can still see the towering transept of the Late Gothic Grote Kerk (Saint Bavo's Church) to the left, the many step-gabled houses, and the distinctive town hall on the other side of the market square. A range of everyday events unfolds, presenting a lively picture of daily life: a woman pumps water from a well, shoppers make their selections from the catch-of-the-day, and well-dressed burghers converse among themselves. Thus, within a single image, Berckheyde skillfully integrated religious, civic, and economic elements of everyday life in this important Dutch city.
Cerrit Adriaensz. Berckheyde Dutch, 1638-1698The Fish Market and the Grote Kerk at Haarlem,
about 1675-80
Oil on panel
17 ¾ x 16 3/4 in. (45.1 x 42.6 cm)
Gift of the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, 1960 (60.17.69)
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THE DUTCH GOLDEN AGE
Jan Steen
Dutch, 1626-1679The Worship of the Golden Calf,
about 1671 -72
Oil on canvas
70 ¼ x 61 1/4 in.
(178.4x155.6 cm)
Purchased with funds from the State of North Carolina, 1952(52.9.58)
"While Jan Steen is best known for his pictures of unruly merrymakers in humorous situations, he was, above all else, a storyteller. Whether he was painting proverbs, scenes from the theater, the battle between the sexes, or religious narratives, his talent to describe and animate a scene was unmatched among his contemporaries. As one of his largest and most ambitious works, The Worship of the Golden Calf clearly attests to this Dutch painter's extraordinary ability to tell a story. Exodus 32:1—6 describes the Israelites' loss of faith while they were waiting for Moses to return from Mount Sinai. By asking his brother Aaron to make idols for them to worship, they broke their covenant with God, which ultimately brought down God's wrath in the form of a plague.
Here, the consequence of their request still lies in the future, for after seeing the golden calf, the Israelites exclaimed:
'These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt/' When Aaron saw this, he built an altar before it; and Aaron made proclamation and said., 'Tomorrow shall be a festival to the Lord.' They rose up early the next day, and offered burnt offerings and brought sacrifices of well-being; and the people sat down to eat and drink, and rose up to revel (Exodus 32:4—6).
Although Steen included Aaron, the golden calf, and many of the merrymakers in the distance, he concentrated his efforts on the riotous behavior of the figures in the foreground. Particularly noteworthy is the fancifully dressed young couple gazing lasciviously at each
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other at the center. It is not surprising that the man holding the triangle bears a striking likeness to the painter, for Steen often portrayed himself in compromising situations of this type. The viewer is accosted by abundance and excess from all directions; adding to the decadence are ripened fruit, cut flowers, elaborately woven carpet, and most notably, musical instruments. The tambourine, flute, drum, triangle, and barking dog to the right only augment the revelry.
In light of this excess, how did Steen provide the viewer with a warning against the dangers of sensual pleasure and moral decay? Nearly lost in the crowd is the young boy at the left holding a parrot. Emblematic literature from the period suggests that parrots offered warnings against allowing sensual appetites to dictate actions. Just as this bird instinctively mimics human voices, people are easily led to imitate destructive behaviors. Alternatively, the parrot might be seen as the quiet voice of conscience, thereby alluding to the judgment to follow.
Steen, a native of the Dutch university town of Leiden, found inspiration for his painting in the central panel of an altarpiece depicting the same subject by Lucas van Leyden, the city's most famous painter of the previous century. In both examples, the dancers remain in the background, while the debauched merrymakers fill the foreground. Steen even went so far as to appropriate some of Lucas van Leyden's sixteenth-century costume elements. Steen's picture must date to the early 1670s, for it reflects the new elegance then entering into his paintings. The sparkling clarity, decorative and brilliant color, and delicate textures of the canvas would have appealed to an aristocratic class at ease with luxury.
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111
THE DUTCH GOLDEN AGE
Attributed to Michiel van Musscher Dutch, 1645-1705Allegorical Portrait of an Artist, about 1680-85Oil on canvas
44 15/16 x 35 7/8 in.
(114.2x91.0 cm)
Gift of Armand and Victor Hammer, 1957 (57.10.1)
Gesturing with a paintbrush towards her creation, an artist sits in her lavish studio awaiting the praise of viewers. Her skill in transforming nature into art, confirmed by the floral still life sitting on the easel, is already celebrated. Fame trumpets her presence and a putto places a laurel wreath on her head. The statue of Minerva, the mythological patroness of the arts, and attributes of the liberal arts such as the palette and brushes, sculptural casts, and open music book on the table call attention to the painter's elevated status.
While the costume and hairstyle of the sitter suggest a date of about 1680—1685, her identity and that of the artist responsible for the picture are open to debate. Once thought to represent the Dutch still-life painter Rachael Ruysch (1664—1750), the woman pictured here does not correspond to known likenesses of Ruysch. A somewhat more plausible identification is that of Maria van Oosterwijck (1630-1693), at the time the most highly regarded female still-life painter in Holland. Considering the relatively young age of the woman, however, this suggestion also seems unlikely. Stylistically, the painting bears many likenesses to works by Michiel van Musscher, an artist who painted similar allegorical subjects during his career.
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Late Medieval and Renaissance Art in Italy
THE ITALIAN RENAISSANCE, which flowered in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, originated in the early fourteenth century with the humanistic poetry of Petrarch and the profoundly original paintings of Giotto. In the art of Giotto and his contemporaries, Medieval and proto-Renaissance elements often existed side by side. In Giotto's Peruni Altarpiece, for example, pointed Gothic-shaped panels, a gold background, and the larger scale of the Christ figure are Medieval, whereas the well-rounded figures draped in subtly modeled robes point the way toward the early Renaissance, with its emphasis on natural-looking figures. For his new approach to portraying figures, Giotto drew inspiration from Classical art, just as Petrarch drew themes from ancient history and mythology. Thus they were both in the vanguard of the rebirth ("renaissance") of Classical antiquity.
During the Medieval and Renaissance periods, the Italian peninsula was not unified, but instead was divided into individual city-states. The diverse artistic styles that developed in cities such as Lucca, Florence, Siena, Bologna, and Milan are well represented in the NCMA's collection. As is true for late Medieval and Renaissance art in general, Christian themes predominate in the Museum's collection, although artists and patrons were increasingly interested in other subjects as well, including portraits and secular themes drawn from Classical history and mythology. Many of the religious paintings originally belonged to large altarpieces that have been dismantled and their individual parts dispersed. Raphael's St. Jerome Punishing the Heretic Sabinian, for instance, is a predella panel from the base of an altarpiece.
By the emergence of the High Renaissance in the first decades of the sixteenth century, artists had fully mastered the skills that would enable them to portray completely natural-looking figures, interiors, and landscapes: anatomy for realistically proportioned and posed figures, modeling with light and shade for naturally rounded forms, linear and atmospheric perspective to create the illusion of depth on a two-dimensional surface. These techniques were employed to capture a natural but idealized beauty and a sense of controlled movement and graceful repose within a balanced, harmonious environment. Bernardo Lanino's symmetrically balanced Madonna and Child Enthroned with Saints and Donors demonstrates this combination of realism (the donors and saints) and idealized beauty (the Madonna) in a composition based on mathematically exact linear perspective.
In Venice, artists successfully exploited the potential of the new oil medium, which gradually replaced water-based tempera paint during the Renaissance period. Oil paint can be applied in many thin, translucent layers to achieve a depth and luminosity of color that is not possible with tempera. In his Madonna and Child in a Landscape,, Venetian painter Cima da Conegliano used oils to achieve remarkable effects of color, light, atmosphere, and texture, and in so doing created a Renaissance paean to human, divine, and natural beauty.
StJerome Punishing the Heretic Sabinian (detail)
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LATE MEDIEVAL AND RENAISSANCE ART IN ITALY
Circle of the Berlinghieri Family Italian, active about 1200-1274Madonna and Child, about 1230-40Tempera and gold leaf on panel
28 ¾ x 19 1/4 in.
(71.8 x4 8.9 cm)
Gift of Wachovia Bank and Trust Company, 1957 (57.16.1)
Several members of the Berlinghieri family were active in the Tuscan city of Lucca in the thirteenth century. Their Italo-Byzantine style of painting was inspired by the religious icons of the Eastern Christian (Byzantine) tradition. In this style, elongated figures with solemn expressions are silhouetted against a gold background. Long, continuous lines define facial features such as the brows and nose, and dark triangles represent shadows under the eyes. A web of lines articulates drapery folds and highlights. The Madonna and Child appear to be incorporeal, two-dimensional images rather than flesh and blood human presences.
The Virgin Mary's fringed veil is adorned with stars to show that she is the "Star of the Sea," the meaning of the Jewish form of her name, Miriam, and a reminder that she is as constant as the North Star by which mariners navigate. She holds the Christ Child high as he extends his right hand in a gesture of blessing. Mature in his wisdom, he holds a scroll of Old Testament scriptures, which is also a reminder that he is the Messiah foretold by the Jewish prophets.
The Madonna and Child was probably the central panel of a triptych. The flanking wings, which may have depicted saints and/or scenes from the life of Christ, are lost. The wings would have closed underneath the spandrels in the upper corners of the panel. An angel is still visible in the right spandrel, while its mate on the left has been damaged beyond recognition.
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Painting in fourteenth-century Siena developed along different lines than in Florence, where the influence of Giotto's revolutionary style dominated. Rather than emphasizing the natural volumes of the human body, as did Giotto and his followers, Sienese artists such as Duccio and his follower Segna di Bonaventura incorporated a more elegant approach to painting. Their works are distinguished by graceful curvilinear rhythms and delicate blends of colors, elements they brought to an unprecedented level of refinement.
Segna's Madonna and Child would have originally formed the central panel of an altar-piece composed of three or five main panels. The style and technique are quintessentially Sienese. Rendered in delicate, parallel brushstrokes, the features of the Madonna—her long, oval head, almond-shaped eyes, long, straight nose, and pursed lips—reveal the strong influence of Duccio, as does the lyrical flow of the draperies. Photographs made of the painting in the early 1900s show the Madonna with a carved and gilded wooden star on her shoulder, indicating that the present star is of modern origin. It and the star on her headdress refer to her Hebrew name, Miriam, which means "Star of the Sea."
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Segna di Bonaventura Italian, active by 1298-died before 1331Madonna and Child, about 1320-30Tempera and gold leaf on panel
35 3/8 x 22 1/4 in.
(89.9 x 56.5 cm)
Gift of the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, 1960 (60.17.1)
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LATE MEDIEVAL AND RENAISSANCE ART IN ITALY
Puccio Capanna Italian, active about 1325-50
Crucifixion,
about 1330
Tempera and gold leaf on panel
7 x 5 1/2 in.
(17.8 x 14.0 cm)
Gift of the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, 1960 (60.17.8)
A native of Assisi, Puccio painted several frescoes in that city's basilica of San Francesco during the 1340s. These frescoes continued the ambitious decorative program of the basilica, where, in the first decade of the century, Giotto's pupils—and possibly the master himself— painted two extensive fresco cycles. They were among the most forward-looking and influential works of the period.
Giotto's influence is clearly evident in this Crucifixion. Like Giotto, Capanna focuses on the human aspects of the subject, making the Crucifixion a personal event. Profound and varied emotions are conveyed through the natural expressions and poses of the figures, and are intensified by the shallow, crowded pictorial space. These qualities, and Capanna's masterful use of color, reveal him to be one of Giotto's most sensitive and gifted followers.
The Crucifixion was the central compartment of one panel of a diptych. The other half of the diptych, which has survived intact and hangs in the Vatican Picture Gallery, features an enthroned Madonna and Child with attending angels in the central compartment, surrounded by eight smaller compartments depicting female saints and the Annunciation to Mary.
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Tino was one of the most important and influential sculptors of his day. His particular specialty was creating elaborate sepulchral monuments, often composed of several individual sculptures and carved reliefs that comprised the building blocks for extensive architectural constructions. This Madonna and Child probably formed part of the decoration of one such monumental tomb, the shrine of St. Octavian, which once stood in the cathedral of Volterra.
Tino enjoyed an itinerant career, with extended sojourns in four of the most important art centers on the Italian peninsula: Siena, Pisa, Florence, and Naples, where he moved in the same circles as the writers Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio. Tino maintained close relationships with influential artists, including Giotto.
Works like this Madonna and Child demonstrate the significant "cross-pollination" that occurred between sculptors and painters during this period. The substantial, block-like massiveness and geometric structure of Tino's figures influenced painters throughout Tuscany, and they reflect concerns that are also addressed in Giotto's works. The graceful and rhythmic fluency of line that distinguishes Tino's draperies finds close parallels in the paintings of contemporary Sienese artists.
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Tinodi Camaino Italian, about 1280-1337Madonna and Child, about 1317-20
Marble
18 x 19 1/2 in.
(45.7 x 49.5 cm)Gift of the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, 1960 (60.17.4)
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LATE MEDIEVAL AND RENAISSANCE ART IN ITALY
Giotto di Bondone and assistants Italian, about 1266/76-1337The "Peruzzi Altarpiece,"
about 1310-15
Tempera and gold leaf on panel
41 5/8 x 98 1/2 in.
(105.7 x 250.2 cm), framed
Gift of the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, 1960(60.17.7)
The Florentine painter Giotto is unquestionably one of the most influential artists who ever lived. In his day, he was credited with changing the course of painting from the artificial and flat style seen in the Berlinghieri family Madonna and Child (page 116) to a style based more on the study of nature. Giotto was the first painter to infuse his art with humanity, to individualize his figures, endowing them with a believable bulk and weight and expressive gestures and features. His unprecedented approach laid the foundation for Italian Renaissance art.
The inclusion of St. John the Evangelist, St. John the Baptist, and St. Francis of Assisi (the female figure is the Virgin Mary) has led to the hypothesis that the altarpiece may have been painted for the Peruzzi family chapel, which was dedicated to St. John the Baptist and St. John the Evangelist in the Franciscan church of Santa Croce in Florence. Sometime around 1310-15, Giotto and his pupils painted two series of frescoes in the Peruzzi chapel, depicting scenes from the lives of the two St. Johns. In the middle of the fifteenth century, the sculptor Lorenzo Ghiberti recorded four paintings and four chapels Giotto painted in Santa Croce, but it cannot be determined whether the Museum's altarpiece was one of these.
The panels comprise one of the few complete altarpieces by Giotto and his workshop that have survived. During the nineteenth or early twentieth century, the central panel was separated from the other four; the altarpiece was reunited in 1947, when all five panels were purchased by Samuel H. Kress.
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LATE MEDIEVAL AND RENAISSANCE ART IN ITALY
Pseudo-Jacopino di Francesco Italian, active about 1320-50The Nativity and Adoration of the Magi, about
1325-50
Tempera and gold leaf on panel
20 3/4 x 31 5/8 in.
(52.7 x 80.3 cm)
Gift of the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, 1960 (60.17.11)
The lively expressions and gestures of Pseudo-Jacopino's figures and the elaborate, stylized patterns and color combinations found in his compositions reflect the influence of contemporary Bolognese manuscript illumination and Riminese painting. In many of the artist's works, highly refined elements appear side by side with rather awkward, retardataire passages. In this painting, the lively demeanor of the figures and the dignified mien of the elegantly attired kings on the right clearly reveal the artist's abilities. His use of simultaneous narrative, the combination of two distinct episodes in the same work, was a compositional device often employed by Medieval artists. To the left, Mary, Joseph, angels, and the ox and ass reverently worship the newborn Christ Child, who lies in a manger under an open shed while, seated before the same structure, Mary and the infant Jesus receive the gifts of the three kings from the East.
This is one of five paintings in the Museum's collection by Pseudo-Jacopino, whose works are rarely found outside Italy. The Museum's panels, which appear to come from two separate altarpieces, were once part of the collection of the Gozzadini, one of the distinguished patrician families of Bologna. The name of this anonymous artist (or perhaps group of artists) is derived from the painter Jacopino di Francesco Bavosi, who was active about 1360-83. While the two artists' works are superficially similar, the group of paintings now attributed to Pseudo-Jacopino are thought to date from about 1320 to 1350, too early for them to have been painted by Bavosi.
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The delicate Madonna and Child, elongated saints, and tiny angels with spiraling draperies exemplify the International Style of the early fifteenth century. This late development in Gothic painting is also characterized by pleasingly orchestrated color harmonies and rich ornamentation, seen here in the decorative tooling of the gold background and the carpet of flowering grasses.
The Virgin Mary is portrayed as the Queen of Heaven. Enthroned on a dais and surrounded by incised rays of light, she is crowned by a pair of angels, while two others herald her on trumpets. St. John the Evangelist and St. Anthony Abbot, identified by inscriptions above their heads, present a supplicant to the Madonna and Child. He kneels before them and folds his hands in a gesture of homage. This figure, representing the patron of the painting, was reworked, probably around 1452. At that time, a new inscription on a strip of printed paper was added across the bottom of the panel, identifying the patron as the Count of Sant' Angelo. The blue coat of arms with gold lion rampant, also repainted, is that of the Sforza family. The count was an adopted member of this family, who ruled Milan and the surrounding region. The identification of the original patron and coat of arms is not known.
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Italian, School of PaviaMadonna and Child with St John the Evangelist, a Donor, and St. Anthony Abbot, about 1400-1420Oil, tempera, and gold leaf on panel
13 3/8 x 9 1/2 in.
(33.9 x 24.1 cm)
Gift of the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, 1960 (60.17.21)
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LATE MEDIEVAL AND RENAISSANCE ART IN ITALY
Apollonio di Giovanni Italian, 1415/17-1465The Triumph of Chastity, about 1450- 60Tempera and gold leaf on panel
23 x 23 1/4 in.
(58.4 x 59.1 cm)
Gift of the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, 1960 (60.17.23)
Many Renaissance masters and their workshops produced painted trays or salvers (deschi), customarily presented on the occasion of the birth of a child or possibly, as might be the case here, as a wedding present. The therne of Chastity's triumph celebrates the virtue of the bride. On the back of the tray, two boys are shown urinating on poppy pods, probably an allegory of fertility expressing the hope that the marriage would be blessed with many offspring.
The theme of Chastity's triumph is taken from the writings of the Renaissance humanist Petrarch, who described a series of six successive allegorical triumphs in which each succeeding figure triumphs over the preceding one. Love is the first victor, only to be vanquished by Chastity, who is in turn succeeded by Death, Fame, Time, and Eternity. Here, like a victorious general entering Rome, Chastity regally stands atop her unicorn-drawn chariot—it was thought that these beasts could be tamed only by a virgin—while a bound Cupid, symbolizing love (or lust) subdued, kneels at her feet. The chariot is surrounded by maidens, one of whom carries a banner bearing the image of an ermine, an emblem of purity, while others hold yokes, signifying matrimony or obedience. The dog in the foreground is a symbol of marital fidelity.
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Cima was born in Conegliano, a prosperous market town north of Venice in the foothills of the Italian Alps. The picturesque landscape of this region frequently appears in the backgrounds of his paintings; the hill town in the background of this work is probably Conegliano. Cima's family name derives from the profession of his father and grandfather, who were cima tori dipanni, craftsmen employed in the trimming and finishing of woolen cloth.
Cima was among the generation of artists who ushered in the "Golden Age" of Venetian painting, which was distinguished by three closely linked qualities: the exploration and refinement of the oil medium, a remarkable sensitivity for rendering light, and a particular affinity for landscape painting. All three qualities are evident in Cima's work. His mastery of the oil medium is apparent in passages such as the luminous landscape, which conveys the ethereal quality of the light that suffuses the Venetian countryside, and in the heads of the Madonna and Child, beautifully modeled through subtle gradations of light. The refinement of Cima's technique is also revealed in his careful rendering of the Madonna's headdress, where the transparency of the cloth, the detailed embroidery, and the delicate fringe along the border are depicted with a sophistication and acuity that reflect a professional familiarity with cloth.
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Giovanni Battista Cima
da Conegliano
Italian, 1459/60 -1517/18Madonna and Child In a Landscape,
about 1496-99
Oil on panel, transferred to canvas
28 x 24 3/4 in.
(71.1 x 62.9 cm)
Purchased with funds from the State of North Carolina, 1952 (52.9.152)
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LATE MEDIEVAL AND RENAISSANCE ART IN ITALY
Alessandro di Mariano Filipepi, called Sandro Botticelli, and assistants Italian, 1444/45-1510The Adoration of the Child,
about 1500
Tempera on panel
d. 49 1/2 in.
(125.7 cm)
Gift of the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, 1960 (60.17.26)
Botticelli enjoyed the patronage of leading Florentine families including the Medici, for whom he created his most famous masterpieces, The Birth of Venus and La Primavera (both in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence), Profoundly influenced by the sermons of the fiery Dominican preacher Savonarola, after 1500 Botticelli gradually moved away from the secular and mythological themes of his earlier paintings and turned almost exclusively to religious subjects. His later paintings, many of them executed with the assistance of pupils, are distinguished by strong, contrasting colors and crisply contoured forms.
The painting depicts the adoration of the Christ Child by his mother. In the middleground, Botticelli includes the approach of the three magi and their retinues, who have come to pay homage to the newborn king of the Jews. As is frequently the case with Renaissance paintings, this work contains many Christian symbols. The wheat stalks emerging from the thatched roof and beneath Christ's pillow refer to Bethlehem (literally "house of bread" in Hebrew) and to the bread of the Eucharist. The circular shape of this panel, called a tondo from the Italian word for "round," also has religious significance: during the Renaissance, the circle was considered the most perfect geometric form, just as Christ personified perfection. Although the circular format presented significant compositional challenges to Renaissance painters and sculptors, it was particularly well suited to Botticelli's affinity for line and rhythmical movement.
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This painting was one of three panels, now dispersed, that were originally framed below a large panel depicting the Crucifixion with the Virgin and Saints Jerome, Mary Magdalene and John the Evangelist, which is now in the National Gallery, London. The altarpiece was commissioned by Domenico Tommaso de' Gavari for his family chapel in the church of San Domenico in the central Italian town of Citta di Castello. Although the painting is one of Raphael's earliest independent commissions, it already reveals the delicate grace that distinguishes his mature style.
The subject of this panel is extremely rare in Renaissance art. Shortly after the death of St. Jerome, a dispute arose between the heretic Sabinian and bishop Sylvan of Nazareth. Sabinian declared that Jerome had written a book supporting his view, a book that Sabinian had actually faked. Since the debate could not be resolved, a pact was made that if by the next morning a miracle of St. Jerome proved the book a forgery, Sabinian would be beheaded; if not, Sylvan would be. A night of prayer had no apparent result, and the next morning, Sylvan knelt before the executioner. At that very moment, St. Jerome appeared in the sky, arrested the descent of the executioner's sword, and denounced Sabinian, whose head then fell from his body as if it had been severed by the sword.
DS
Raffaello Sanzio, called Raphael Italian, 1483-1520St. Jerome Punishing the Heretic Sabinian,
1503
Oil on panel
10 1/8 x 16 1/2 in.
(25.7 x 41.9 cm)
Purchased with funds from Mrs. Nancy Susan Reynolds, the Sarah Graham Kenan Foundation, Julius H. Weitzner, and the State of North Carolina, 1965 (65.21.1)
127
LATE MEDIEVAL AND RENAISSANCE ART IN ITALY
Bernardino Lanino Italian, about 1512-1583Madonna and Child Enthroned with Saints and Donors, 1552Oil on panel
92 3/8 x 60 1/2 in.
(234.7 X 153.7 cm)
Gift of the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, 1960 (60.17.45)
The rosaries held by the female donors, the scattered roses (symbols of the rosary), and the presence of numerous Dominican saints indicate that the altarpiece must have been painted for a church, monastery, or lay organization (confraternity) of the Dominican Order. Roman Catholics use rosaries to recite meditational prayers on events from the life of the Virgin. Dominicans attributed the invention of the rosary to St. Dominic (1170-1221), founder of their order. The Virgin was said to have appeared to him in a vision and presented him with a string of beads, each bead symbolizing a sorrow and joy of her life, which Dominic called "Our Lady's crown of roses."
A composition depicting the Madonna and Child with saints, in which the sacred figures are united by some common action, is known as a sacra conversazione (holy conversation). The six Dominican saints standing behind the kneeling donors can be identified as Dominic, holding lilies, symbols of chastity, and a model of a church; Antonio Pierozzi of Florence, emptying a money bag, symbolic of his charity; Thomas Aquinas, wearing a star on his breast and holding a lily and a book; Vincent Ferrer, holding a flaming heart, representing his religious zeal and fiery preaching; Peter Martyr, his head cleft with a blade, holding a martyr's palm; and Catherine of Siena, holding a crucifix and lilies and wearing the crown of thorns Christ gave her in a vision.
DS
128
Statues of Neptune, god of the sea, were a favorite crowning motif on the multi-tiered fountains adorning the piazzas of numerous Italian cities in the sixteenth century. Neptune is shown nude, with windblown hair and long flowing beard, holding a three-pronged spear or trident (now missing here) and accompanied by the hippocamps (sea horse monsters) that pulled his chariot through the sea.
This statue has been tentatively proposed as Cellini's entry in the competition to design a fountain for the main square of Florence, the Piazza della Signoria. Rendered in a rather rough, sketchy manner, the sculpture was probably cast from a rapidly executed wax model. Neptune's pose, with one arm held close to his body and the other raised, may represent Cellini's solution to the shape of the designated block of marble, which had been damaged at the quarry in Carara and was too narrow at the top for both arms to be raised or extended. The slender, elongated figure of Neptune, with a head that seems small in proportion to the body, is characteristic of the Mannerist style of the second half of the sixteenth century.
Cellini recounts the story of the competition, which he did not win, in his colorful and self-aggrandizing Autobiography. Cellini is remembered today for this lively account of his life more than for his work as a goldsmith and sculptor.
RMN
Attributed to Benvenuto Cellini Italian, 1500-1571Neptune,
about 1560
Bronze
h. 9 1/2 in.
(24.1 cm)
Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Arthur W. Levy, Jr., 1957 (57.11.2)
129
Italian Baroque Art
ONE OF THE SIGNIFICANT INFLUENCES ON BAROQUE ART in Italy was the patronage of the Roman Catholic Church during the Counter-Reformation period. Having seen the Church's influence severely shaken and weakened by the rise and growth of Protestantism, Catholic clergy employed every means at hand to reassert its power and authority and to attract worshippers to their ancient faith. Because the Church found Baroque art an effective means for spreading its ideological message, architects, sculptors, and painters were valuable allies in this tremendous effort. Religious art was viewed as "the Bible of the illiterate" and particular emphasis was placed on themes that reinforced the primacy of the Catholic Church and its teachings, such as martyrdom, the role of saints as intercessors with Christ on behalf of the faithful, and the unique sanctity of the Virgin Mary. The Museum's paintings depicting the Assumption of the Virgin by Lodovico Carracci and Massimo Stanzione, for example, celebrate the Catholic doctrine that Mary's body was assumed into heaven on the third day after her death so that it was not subject to the corruption of the flesh.
Another wide-reaching influence on Baroque art in Italy was an art academy founded in Bologna by Lodovico Carracci and his cousins Annibale and Agostino. The Carracci rejected the prevailing Mannerist idiom of the mid- to late sixteenth century, a highly sophisticated style characterized by fantastic inventiveness and, as often as not, by the intentional distortion and exaggeration of form and the use of dissonant colors. The Carracci advocated instead a return to naturally proportioned figures in logically constructed spaces, to harmonious colors and compelling, heartfelt emotions. These ideals were passed on to students at their academy, such as Domenichino and Guido Reni, who were taught to study nature and the art of Classical antiquity and the High Renaissance.
The painter Caravaggio, active in Rome and Naples, exploited the dramatic potential of using extreme contrasts of light and dark (chiaroscuro), and employed humble, rugged, working-class people as models for biblical figures and saints. Although Caravaggio did not establish an academy or a formal workshop, his earthy naturalism and striking light effects influenced many fellow Italians, including Bernardo Strozzi, and artists from other countries, such as the Spaniard Jusepe de Ribera and the Dutchman Matthias Stom. This international influence was not unique to Caravaggio. During the Baroque period, artists from many parts of Europe were drawn to Italy, where they could study Roman antiquities, masterpieces of the High Renaissance, and the achievements of their contemporaries. Some, such as French painter Claude Lorrain, were attracted by the light-filled Italian landscape, which featured natural beauty alongside spectacular ruins of Classical civilizations.
Massimo Stanzione, The Assumption of the Virgin (detail)
131
ITALIAN BAROQUE ART
Lodovico Carracci Italian, 1555-1619The Assumption of the Virgin,
about 1586-87
Oil on canvas
96 1/2 x 53 in.
(245.0 x 134.6 cm)
Gift of Mrs. J. L. Dorminy in memory of her husband, 1957 (57.21.1)
132
Carracci was one of the leading Italian painters of the Counter-Reformation period, when the Catholic Church sought to differentiate itself from the newly established Protestant denominations and to reassert its power and authority. As such, he often painted subjects with particular relevance to the Catholic tradition, including those that celebrated the special place of the Virgin Mary in the teachings of the church.
The story of the Virgin Mary's Assumption, when her body was taken up into heaven by angels, is not described in the Bible. It was a popular subject, however, for Counter-Reformation artists, who knew the story from literary texts. Here Carracci combines the Virgin's Assumption with the discovery of her empty tomb by the apostles, much as the Neapolitan painter Massimo Stanzione does in his portrayal of the same subject (page 136). The apostle John, whose outward gaze draws the viewer into the painting, holds a palm branch, symbolic of victory over death. St. Thomas, kneeling at the left, looks up and touches the girdle (sash), which the Virgin tossed down to prove to him the reality of her miraculous Assumption. Behind Thomas stands St. Peter, holding the book from which he conducted her funerary rites.
By showing the Virgin Mary triumphantly borne above funerary monuments of the Romans (on the far left), Egyptians (the obelisk inscribed with hieroglyphs in the center background), and Jews (the sarcophagus on the right that bears a relief of the stone tablets of Moses), the artist glorifies her and asserts the superiority of the Christian (in this case Catholic) faith.
RMN
Like Guido Reni (page 138), Domenichino studied under Lodovico Carracci in the Car-racci Academy in Bologna. After spending several years in Rome, Domenichino journeyed to the town of Fano, on the eastern coast of Italy, in order to execute a lucrative set of commissions for an aristocratic family. It was during this period that the goldsmith Antonio Salvatore commissioned from the artist this altarpiece for his family chapel in the church of San Francesco at Fano. The chapel was dedicated to St. Eligius, patron saint of goldsmiths, and St. John the Baptist, both of whom are depicted in the painting. The inclusion of St. Anthony Abbot is due to his role as Antonio Salvatore's patron saint. The altarpiece remained in the church until 1805, when it was sold by the monks of San Francesco to pay for a new roof.
Images of the Madonna of Loreto, depicting Mary and Jesus seated on the roof of a house borne aloft by angels, were especially popular in the region around Fano. According to legend, when the Saracens were driving the Crusaders out of the Holy Land in 1291, thereby threatening the safety of Christian shrines, angels were said to have carried the house of Mary and Joseph from Nazareth to Loreto, a town located some 40 miles down the Adriatic coast from Fano.
DS
Domenico Zampieri, called Domenichino <note type=“culture”>Italian</note>, <date>1581 -1641</date>
The Madonna of Loreto Appearing to St. John the Baptist, St. Eligius, and St. Anthony Abbot, about 1618-20Oil on canvas
94 7/8 x 67 1/8 in.
(241.0 x 170.5 cm)
Gift of the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, 1960 (60.17.51)
133
ITALIAN BAROQUE ART
Bernardo Strozzi Italian, 1581 -1644St. Lawrence Distributing the Treasures of the Church,
about 1625
Oil on canvas
46 1/2 x 62 in.
(118.1 x 157.2 cm)
Purchased with funds from the State of North Carolina, 1952 (52.9.168)
134
The story of the last days of St. Lawrence was recorded by several early Christian writers soon after his martyrdom in Rome in 258 during the persecutions of Emperor Valerian. As the archdeacon of the Roman church under Pope Sixtus II, St. Lawrence was horrified when the pope was imprisoned and condemned to die for his faith. He eagerly carried out the pope's final instructions that the treasures of the church be distributed to the poor of Rome. When the Roman authorities commanded St. Lawrence to turn over the treasures to the emperor, he presented an assembly of the poor, the disabled, and the orphaned to the authorities, explaining that these were the true treasures of the church. For this affront to the emperor's authority, St. Lawrence was condemned to die by being chained to a gridiron and roasted alive.
In his interpretation of the St. Lawrence story, Strozzi portrays a dark, shadowy atmosphere from which boldly modeled half-length figures emerge into the light. Gathered around St. Lawrence are rustic individuals rendered with naturalism and attention to detail. The saint himself is a more aristocratic-looking figure, delicately attenuated and dressed in heavily ornamented clerical robes of crimson and gold. The ice-blue garment of the young woman and the bright red mantle of the elderly man beside her, together with the metallic sheen of gold and silver objects, enrich the otherwise dark color scheme of the painting. A slightly discomfiting detail is the figure at far left, who gazes out of the painting to catch the eye of the beholder.
RMN
The unflinching realism of this portrait is characteristic of the Baroque naturalism of some seventeenth-century painters, particularly Caravaggio and his followers. As a resident of Genoa in his formative years, Strozzi was well situated to absorb the influence of some of the leading artists of his day, including northern and Italian followers of Caravaggio, and the Flemish painter Anthony van Dyck, all of whom spent time in the city in the 1620s. From the portraits of Van Dyck, Strozzi adopted the angled pose and the effect of spotlighting the figure against a dark background. The varied textures, depth of color, and broad, fluid brushwork are characteristic of Strozzi's Genoese canvases.
Although the identity of the sitter is not known, Strozzi has included attributes that offer some indication of the man's station in life. The understated elegance of his somber costume is apparent in the rich fabric, fur trim, and fine white collar and cuffs. His lace-trimmed handkerchief is another indication of wealth and high social position. On the table beside the man's chair are a book and a pen and inkwell, suggesting that he is a learned man. His disheveled hair and bloodshot eyes do not diminish the sharpness and intelligence of his gaze.
RMN
Bernardo Strozzi Italian, 1581-1644Portrait of a Gentleman,
about 1629
Oil on canvas
46 1/2 x 35 1/2 in.
(118.1 x 90.1 cm)
Gift of R.J. and G.C. Maxwell in honor of their sister Rachel Maxwell Moore, 1959(59.36.1)
135
ITALIAN BAROQUE ART
Massimo Stanzione Italian, 1585-1656
The Assumption of the Virgin,
about 1630-35
Oil on canvas
108 1/2 x 74 5/8 in.
(275.6 x 189.6 cm)
Gift of the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, 1960 (60.17.52)
136
This Assumption is Stanzione’s earliest large-scale masterpiece. It is the type of altarpiece that transformed painting in Naples during the 1630s, and secured the artist's position as one of the foremost painters in what was then the second-largest city in Europe. The work epitomizes the religious painting being created in the wake of the Counter-Reformation, art that was intended to spiritually rouse the worshipper, ultimately inspiring greater devotion.
The Assumption of the Virgin Mary into heaven is not recorded in any of the canonical gospels, but it was included in the thirteenth-century Golden Legend, a frequently used source for artists. On the third day after Mary's death, the apostles were gathered around her tomb when "she came forth glorious from the tomb and was assumed into the heavenly bride chamber, a multitude of angels mounting withal."
Stanzione combines the episode of the Virgin's body being miraculously borne (assumed) into heaven by angels with that of the discovery of her flower-filled tomb by the astonished apostles below. He underscores the reality of the scene by endowing the apostles with individualized features and expressions. Simultaneously, he celebrates the miraculous and joyful arrival of the Virgin into heaven through her intense, yearning expression and the frolicking cherubs surrounding her, all enveloped by a golden light.
DS
Although Jusepe Ribera remained in Italy after going there as a youth in 1607, he was known by his contemporaries as "Lo Spagnoletto," the Spaniard. His signature on this painting, barely discernible on the rock beneath St. John's right foot, is written in Latin and can be translated, "Jusepe Ribera, Spaniard of Valencia, native of the town Jativa." Ribera was influenced by the Italian painter Caravaggio, the great master of tenebrism, or the "dark manner" in which naturalistic figures emerge from a shadowy, atmospheric background into dramatically focused light. In Ribera's painting, the red cloak of the saint, the lamb, a little stream, and a triangle of blue sky are areas of light within a brooding, rocky landscape.
St. John the Baptist spent his adult life as a hermit and preacher in the Judean wilderness, where he baptized his followers and foretold the coming of the long-awaited Jewish Messiah. Ribera shows the saint as a handsome youth already embracing a rugged wilderness existence; he is draped in the camel skin described in the biblical account of his life. The reed cross and the lamb are symbols of his role as the prophet who identified Jesus as the Messiah. His recognition of Jesus as the "lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world" (John 1:29) foretold the Crucifixion, since the lamb was a traditional sacrificial animal in Jewish observance. The stream of running water reminds the viewer that the saint established baptism by water as a ritual central to the Christian faith.
RMN
Jusepe de Ribera Spanish, 1591-1652St John the Baptist, about
1624-28
Oil on canvas
70 3/4 x 50 7/8 in.
(179.7 x 129.2 cm)
Purchased with funds from the State of North Carolina, 1952 (52.9.183)
137
ITALIAN BAROQUE ART
Guido Reni Italian, 1575-1642Madonna and Child,
about 1628-30
Oil on canvas
45 x 36 in.
(114.3 x 91.4 cm)
Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Robert Lee Number in memory of their daughter, Eileen Genevieve, 1955 (55.12.1)
138
A contemporary of Guido Reni observed that, while other artists painted like mere mortals, Reni painted like an angel. Reni's seventeenth-century biographer explained the artist's ability to capture the grace of the Virgin Mary in this way: "Many believed ... that because of his great devotion, the Virgin deigned to appear before him, he being no less of a virgin. No painter of any century ever knew how to represent her so utterly beautiful and modest, and it is inconceivable that anyone ever will again." By the time of his death, Reni's name was almost invariably preceded by the adjective "divine," a celestial title previously reserved for only Raphael and Michelangelo.
Reni's Madonna and Child epitomizes what was appreciated by seventeenth- and eighteenth-century connoisseurs and collectors as the highest achievement of artistic perfection. The painting achieves its "divine" elegance and grace through the artist's virtuoso technique. The rich, dark background dramatically sets off the alabaster flesh of the Madonna and Child, crisply defining the figures and giving them an almost sculptural quality and weight. Reni's command over light, color, contour, and expression imbues the painting with refined, intimate elegance appropriate to its subject and its function as a work intended for private devotion.
DS
All light in this scene emanates from the Christ Child. The light is most brilliant near the source, illuminating the hands and faces of the Virgin Mary and her mother, Saint Anne, and shedding a softer glow on Joseph and the shepherds. This effect illustrates John the Evangelist's description of Christ as "the true Light, that gives light to every man" (John 1:9). In addition to unifying the composition, the light and the background shadows surround the scene of adoration with an element of spiritual mystery.
Matthias Stom was one of a group of prominent Dutch painters who traveled to Italy and came under the influence of the Italian Baroque master Caravaggio. Whether they returned to the Netherlands or remained in Italy, as did Stom, the Dutch Caravaggisti frequently depicted night scenes and other subjects that feature dramatic light and shadow. Stom depicted the subject of the adoration of the shepherds at least ten times. Here the drama is increased by the wide-eyed appearance of the boy, who has just removed his cap. Stem's portrayal of the shepherds may be compared with Hendrick Ter Brugghen's rendering of David Praised by the Israelite Women (page 101), in which light from an unseen source highlights hands and faces.
JPC
Matthias Stom Dutch, about 1600-about 1650Adoration of the Shepherds,
about 1635-40
Oil on canvas
44 5/8 x 65 3/8 in.
(113.5 x 161.5 cm)
Purchased with funds from the State of North Carolina, 1952 (52.9.59)
139
ITALIAN BAROQUE ART
Claude Gellee, called Claude Lorrain French, 1600-1682Landscape with Peasants Returning with Their Herds,
about 1637
Oil on canvas
29 1/4 x 39 in.
(74.3 x 99.1 cm)
Purchased with funds from the State of North Carolina, 1952 (52.9.125)
140
While the artistic milieu of Italy held strong attractions for French artists of the seventeenth century, Claude went there to cook pastry. He remained in Rome for most of his long life not as a chef, however, but as one of Europe's most successful painters. The name Claude Lorrain is a combination of the artist's real name, Claude Gellee, and the nickname given him in his time, "Le Lorrain," meaning "the man from the French province of Lorraine." Most of Claude's poetic views were inspired by the beauty of the countryside around Rome, frequently embellished with rustic or antique elements such as the mill with a water wheel in this painting. The ruined circular temple on a hill resembles the one Claude observed at Tivoli, the site of the second-century emperor Hadrian's grandiose villa and gardens, located about twenty miles east of Rome. Claude's paintings are best known for the warm light suffused into the landscapes, often with a pink or golden sunset hue.
Collected by such patrons as Philip IV of Spain and Pope Urban VIII, Claude's paintings enhanced the esteem of landscape as an artistic genre. He kept a record of the majority of his paintings in the form of a book of drawings known as the Liber Feritatis,, the "Book of Truth," perhaps to help distinguish his works from those of imitators. The drawing corresponding to the Museum's painting is the twentieth entry in the Liber Veritatis^ indicating an approximate date of 1637.
JPC
After drinking water given to him from a well by a woman of Samaria, Christ used the water as a metaphor for his gift of salvation and the promise of eternal life, saying, "... those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty." (John 4:14)
Like Claude Lorrain (page 140), Pierre Mignard studied and practiced his art in Rome. During his twenty years there, he developed a style based on the colors and clarity characteristic of Bolognese artists, including Domenichino (page 133). This painting dates from Mignard's return to France, where the work was admired by the nation's supreme arbiter of taste, King Louis XIV. An observer writing a letter from Versailles records Louis's reaction to seeing the new picture in the collection of a prominent family: "The king found [the Woman of Samaria] so beautiful that he could not help showing that he would very much have liked to own it." Louis, however, had to be content with a much smaller replica he commissioned from Mignard in 1690, the year he elevated the artist to the positions of First Painter to the King and Director of the French Academy. Louis's picture is today in the Louvre, but many of Mignard's more important commissions for the decoration of rooms at Versailles and elsewhere have been destroyed. This is his most important work in an American collection.
JPC
Pierre Mignard French, 1612-1695Christ and the Woman of Samaria, 1681Oil on canvas 48 x 63 in. (121,9 x 16.0 cm)Purchased with funds from the State of North Carolina, 1952 (52.9.127)
141
Eighteenth-Century Italian Art
IN EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY ITALY, the primary artistic patronage shifted from the Catholic Church, which had played a dominant role in defining the art of the preceding century, to the aristocracy. For the adornment of their houses these new patrons preferred paintings with secular themes, light and elegant forms, luminous colors, and an overall decorative emphasis. Venetian artists produced masterful paintings in this airy new style that employed pastel colors, even lighting, and illu-sionistic architectural perspective inspired by stage scenery. Although Venice was in the last stages of its decline as a commercial and political power, the city's nobility and wealthy bourgeoisie continued to furnish their palaces and villas lavishly. The glories of the Venetian Republic are celebrated as though yet untarnished in Pompeo Batoni's artistic tour-de-force, The Triumph of Venice, one of the masterpieces of eighteenth-century art in the NCMA's collection.
Eighteenth-century travelers from northern Europe, especially Great Britain, journeyed to Italy in record numbers on the Grand Tour, a journey through the cultural capitals of Europe that was considered an essential part of every gentleman's education. Because affluent travelers liked to take home works of art as souvenirs, many artists specialized in paintings of famous and picturesque sites. Canaletto's Capriccio: The Rialto Bridge and S. Gogio Maggiore is such a veduta, or "view," of Venetian monuments. His nephew Bernardo Bellotto carried on the family tradition in marvelous cityscapes, as seen in his two views of Dresden.
Local patrons delighted in playful and fanciful subjects, such as Magnasco's scenes from the comic theater, the Commedia dell'arte., and Ubaldo Gandolfi's mischievous interpretation of the myth of Mercury and Argus.
The Triumph of Venice (detail)
143
EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY ITALIAN ART
Pompeo
Girolamo Batoni Italian, 1708-1787The Triumph of Venice, 1737Oil on canvas
68 5/8 x 112 5/8 in.
(174.3 x 286.1 cm)
Gift of the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, 1960 (60.17.60)
The Triumph of Venice reveals a great deal about eighteenth-century history painting and the complex, ambitious aims and expectations of both artists and patrons of the period; Batoni's first important secular work, it was painted for Marco Foscarini, the newly appointed Venetian ambassador to the papal court, a highly cultured bibliophile and historian. According to Fos-carini's secretary, the painting illustrates "the flourishing state of the Venetian Republic when after the wars incited by the famous League of Cambrai, peace returned and the fine arts began to flourish again, summoned back and nurtured by Doge Lionardo Loredan [governor of Venice from 1501 to 1521]."
A female personification of Venice is enthroned upon a triumphal car drawn by two winged lions, the attributes of St. Mark, Venice's patron saint. To her left, Doge Loredan gestures toward harvest offerings, symbolizing the Venetian region's agricultural bounty from the goddess Ceres, who reclines in the lower right corner. To Venice's right, the goddess Minerva, patroness of the fine arts, presents putti bearing attributes of architecture, music and drama, painting, sculpture, and poetry. Neptune, the mythological patron of the Venetian Republic, points out the city to Mars, the patron of Rome. Above Venice are the figures of Fame, with trumpet and laurel branch, and double-faced History, her older face looking back to Venice's glorious past while her younger aspect contemplates her record of the city's equally glorious present. To the right of Fame, Mercury presents a history of the Republic's achievements to a group of ancient sages and historians, among them the blind Homer, who emerges from the entrance to Hades, as indicated by the presence of Cerberus, the three-headed canine guardian of the underworld. In the background is a view of Venice's Molo, the waterfront area at the entrance to the Grand Canal near St. Mark's Square and the Ducal Palace.
144
Commemorating events that occurred during the first quarter of the sixteenth century, the subject seems at first glance to be a rather peculiar choice for a commission some two hundred years later. Clear parallels existed, however, between Venice's earlier political situation during Loredan's rule and the circumstances in which the Republic found itself at the time of Fos-carini's ambassadorship. These parallels would have been apparent to Foscarini, the official historiographer of the Republic, and to eighteenth-century visitors to the Palazzo Venezia in Rome, where the painting was to hang.
During Loredan's rule, Venice's existence had been threatened by the League of Cam-brai, an alliance among France, Spain, the Holy Roman Empire, and the Papal States, whose sole intent was the destruction of the Republic. According to historical accounts, it was only due to Loredan's political astuteness that the League's designs were thwarted, and Venice's imminent defeat was ultimately transformed into triumph. The Republic retained its independence, entered an era of lasting peace, and enjoyed great prosperity at a time when the Italian peninsula was plagued by continual warfare and foreign domination. The price for achieving this peace and prosperity was that Venice had to abandon its policy of territorial expansion and surrender a substantial portion of its foreign empire, which included parts of northern Italy, much of the Dalmatian coast, Crete, Cyprus, and portions of Greece.
In the early eighteenth century, Venice's political situation was remarkably similar to that which it had faced under Loredan's dogeship two hundred years earlier. Under the terms of a 1718 treaty dictated by England and the Netherlands, Venice ceded her territorial possessions in the Near East to Austria. The foreign empire of the once-mighty Republic was reduced to only the city of Venice and the surrounding territory of the Veneto. As in the early sixteenth century, Venice once more found itself at a political crossroads, its political empire reduced by more powerful rivals. Batoni's painting reflected a political course for contemporary Venice similar to the one chosen two hundred years earlier. In 1737, no longer able to maintain its far-flung foreign possessions, Venice could again opt for the blessings of peace and prosperity that might foster a renaissance of the arts such as the one that occurred following the peace treaty concluded by Doge Loredan.
DS
145
EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY ITALIAN ART
Alessandro Magnasco Italian, 1667-1749The Supper of Pulcinella and Colombina,
about 1725-30
Oil on canvas 30 ¾ x 41 3/8 in. (78.1 x 105.1 cm)
Gift of the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, 1960 (60.17.56)
This work depicts figures from the Commedia deH'arte^ a popular theatrical genre originating in sixteenth-century Italy that had its roots in ancient Roman comedies. During the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries, Commedia troupes delighted audiences across Europe, presenting improvisational performances intended to illustrate the entire range of human weaknesses. These performances featured stock characters, including the vulgar, hooknosed glutton Pulcinella and the naive servant girl Colombina, depicted here relaxing at home with their children (pulcinellini) and friends. A pendant painting in the Museum of Art in Columbia, South Carolina, depicts Pulcinella singing to several pulcinellini. Although Mag-nasco has broken with artistic tradition by showing these characters off-stage rather than in performance, his presentation nevertheless is quite theatrical.
In spite of the "lowbrow" nature of its subject, the painting demonstrates Magnasco's considerable artistic sophistication, and it is this contrast between subject and style that was appreciated by the artist's aristocratic clientele. Magnasco achieves a subtle chromatic harmony within a limited palette of browns, creams, and grays, enlivened by his vigorous brushwork and the thick smears of paint (impasto) that he uses to indicate foodstuffs, the ruffs of collars, and highlights on various surfaces. The restricted range of colors also underscores the impoverished circumstances of the characters, as does the ramshackle condition of their surroundings.
DS
146
Trained by his father, a painter of theatrical scenery, Canaletto specialized in views of his native Venice. By the 1730s, he was one of the most successful artists in Europe, his most avid patrons being the English aristocrats who came to Venice on their "Grand Tours" of Europe and commissioned painted views of the city as souvenirs of their visits. Canaletto's precise technique helped to invest these views with the illusion of topographical accuracy. A contemporary wrote: "He paints with such accuracy and cunning that the eye is deceived and truly believes that it is reality it sees, not a painting." However, the artist often subtly adjusted architectural details, viewpoints, and topography to create a more picturesque and harmonious work of art; on occasion, he took even greater artistic license. This painting combines in a single setting three famous landmarks from different areas of Venice: the church of San Giorgio Mag-giore, designed by the famous architect Palladio and located on an island at the entrance to the Grand Canal; the Rialto Bridge; and at left, the Palace of the Ten Wise Men. The Italian word capriccio, meaning whim or fancy, is used to describe these fanciful compositions.
DS
Giovanni Antonio Canal, called Canaletto Italian,1697-1768Capricdo: The Rialto Bridge and the Church of San Giorgio Magglore,
about 1750
Oil on canvas
66 X 45 in.
(167.6 x 114.3 cm)
Purchased with funds from the State of North Carolina, 1952 (52.9.149)
147
EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY ITALIAN ART
Bernardo Bellotto Italian, 1720 -1780
View of Dresden with the Frauenkirche
At Left, 1747 [left]Oil on canvas 51 1/2 x 91 1/2 in, (131.ox 232.4 cm)View of Dresden with the Hofkirche at Right, 1748 [right]Oil on canvas
53 1/2 x 92 in.
(135.9 x 233.7 cm)
Purchased with funds from the State of North Carolina, 1952 (52.9.145,146)
148
In 1747, Bernardo Bellotto was invited to the Dresden court of Augustus III, prince-elector of Saxony and king of Poland. At twenty-seven, Bellotto was a prodigious talent and a rising star in the field of painted city views. He was, however, still somewhat in the shadow of his mother's brother, Canaletto, and at the time still signed his canvases with both his given name and surname as well as the nickname "Canaleto," to highlight his relationship with his famous uncle.
During his reign (1694-1733), Augustus's father, Augustus II "the Strong," had transformed Dresden into one of the most culturally and intellectually sophisticated capitals in Europe. One of the most enlightened artistic patrons of his day, he established the porcelain factory at Meissen, created an important print collection, and opened the Royal Painting Gallery and the "Green Vault," the first treasure museum open to the public. His ambitious building program produced some elegant examples of Rococo architecture, including the Frauenkirche (Church of Our Lady) and the Zwinger palace and pavilion. Augustus III and his powerful prime minister, Count Bruhl, continued this building program with such architectural masterpieces as the Hofkirche (Court Church) and Bruhl's own palace on the Elbe.
Soon after his arrival in Dresden, Augustus commissioned Bellotto to produce, in the form of twenty-five views of Dresden and eleven of the surrounding Saxon countryside, a painted record of architectural accomplishments of the king and his father. To secure his position with Count Bruhl, who also served as director of the royal art collections, Bellotto painted a series of twenty-one views for the prime minister, including the Museum's two paintings. They originally hung in Bruhl's own art gallery, the long white building with nineteen windows on the left side of the view with the Frauenkirche.
The two complementary views were taken from opposite sides of the Elbe at either end of the city to emphasize Dresden's superb site and highlight its elegant architecture. Behind
Bruhl's art gallery looms the dome of Georg Bahr's Protestant Frauenkirche (1726 — 43); beyond the gallery is Bruhl's palace, the twelfth-century Augustus Bridge (renovated under Augustus II), some of the Zwinger pavilions, and the Hofkirche, which is also the prominent structure at the right side of the other painting.
Bellotto's views are accurate in their architecture and topography, and reportedly have been used in the restoration and reconstruction of buildings (such as the Frauenkirche) damaged or destroyed in World War II. The only artistic license he seems to have taken here is with the belltower of the Hofkirche. In the 1747 view, it has not yet been constructed. In the other painting, the finished belltower can be seen through the scaffolding, despite the fact that it was not completed until 1755, seven years after Bellotto's picture was painted. Bellotto, who was friends with the Hofkirche's architect, Chiaveri, must have based his belltower on the architect's original drawings, and was thus giving Bruhl and Augustus a preview of how Dresden's newest architectural jewel would dominate this particular view of the city.
Augustus was clearly delighted with Bellotto's efforts, for in 1748, he appointed the artist Court Painter at a very generous salary. Presumably Bruhl was also pleased with his set of paintings, although these works brought the artist considerably less financial reward. Bellotto never received payment from Bruhl for the paintings, and his suit against the minister's heirs was never allowed to go to court. Fifteen of the paintings from the Bruhl series were sold to Catherine the Great in 1768, and are still in the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg. Five others were purchased by English collectors in the nineteenth century. Among these were the NCMA's two views, which were among the most important works purchased with funds from the original appropriation from the state legislature.
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149
EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY ITALIAN ART
Ubaldo Gandolfi Italian, School of Bologna, 1728-1781Mercury Lulling Argus to Sleep,
about 1770-75 [left]
Oil on canvas 86 x 53 5/8 in. (218.4x136.7 cm) Mercury about to Behead Argus,
about 1770-75 [right]
Oil on canvas 86 1/8 x 53 7/8 in.
(218.7 x 136.9 cm)
Purchased with funds from the North Carolina Art Society (Robert F. Phifer Bequest), in memory of Robert Lee Number, 1983(83.1, 83.2)
The Gandolfi family—Ubaldo, his brother Gaetano, and his nephew Mauro—were the last great painters of the Bolognese school, which rose to international prominence at the end of the sixteenth century through the works of the Carracci and their followers Guido Reni (page 138) and Domenichino (page 133). The confident understanding of human anatomy evidenced in these paintings reveals Ubaldo's debt to the Bolognese tradition, which was firmly based on drawing from live models.
Commissioned to adorn the walls of the palace of the Marescalchi family in Bologna, the two scenes originally formed part of a series of six works illustrating Classical myths. Io was a beautiful princess who was seduced by Jupiter, king of the gods. To conceal his infidelity from his wife, Juno, Jupiter changed Io into a white heifer. Suspicious, Juno cunningly asked for the heifer as a gift, a request that Jupiter could not very well refuse, and she placed the heifer under the guard of the hundred-eyed giant Argus (Gandolfi wisely decided to depict him with only two eyes). Sent by Jupiter to recover Io, Mercury lulled Argus to sleep with music and then cut off the giant's head.
The two paintings illustrate consecutive moments in the story. In the work on the left, Mercury—wearing a winged cap and winged ankle bracelets—lulls Argus to sleep by playing his flute. In the companion painting, Gandolfi represents the imminent dispatch of Argus with a touch of humor, as Mercury gestures for the viewer to be quiet so as not to wake the sleeping giant.
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The Spanish Golden Age
AT THE BEGINNING OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY Spain was the wealthiest and most powerful country in Europe, ruler of a far-flung colonial empire that included territories in the Low Countries, the Italian peninsula, and the Americas. Conservative and austere, Spain was geographically isolated from the rest of Europe, despite its vast territorial possessions and its role as a militant defender of the Catholic faith. During the seventeenth century Spain's political and economic power declined, but art and literature flourished. Roman Catholic monasteries and churches provided many commissions for artists, including Bartolome Esteban Murillo and Esteban Marquez de Velasco.
In Spain, as in Flanders and Italy, art served Roman Catholicism during the Counter-Reformation period, when the Church sought to restore the authority and influence that had been weakened by the rise of Protestantism. Religious subjects dominated painting in seventeenth-century Spain, although portraiture, genre (scenes of everyday life), landscape, mythology, still life, and other secular subjects began to appear in painting, popularized by the work of Diego Velazquez and Francisco de Zurbaran.
By the eighteenth century, Spain's Golden Age had come to an end. The ensuing period saw increasing secularism in art, with a greater number of painters turning to genre and still-life subjects. Luis Egidio Melendez, recognized today as the leading master of eighteenth-century Spanish still-life painting, emphasized the simple beauty of humble kitchen implements and victuals. In works such as Still Life with Grapes and Figs and Still Life with Pigeons, a variety of shapes, colors, and textures is revealed through the subtle play of light over forms arrayed on a shelf or dangling from hooks on rough walls.
Still Life with Crapes and Figs (detail)
153
THE SPANISH GOLDEN AGE
Esteban Marquez de Velasco Spanish, died 1696
The Marriage of the Virgin,
about 1693
Oil on canvas
96 x60 in.
(243.8 x 152.4 cm)
Purchased with funds from the State of North Carolina, 1952 (52.9.180)
Surrounded by turbaned men and wide-eyed children, the Virgin Mary and Joseph prepare to join hands in an age-old ceremonial gesture of marriage. The only mention in the Bible of the marriage of the Virgin Mary concerns her betrothal to Joseph (Luke 1:27). The story is told in considerable detail, however, in the thirteenth-century Golden Legend by Jacobus da Voragine, a compilation of stories of saints that was an important sourcebook for artists. According to these accounts, Mary was raised as a Temple maiden in Jerusalem. When she reached marriageable age, the high priest of the Temple was aided by a miraculous sign in selecting Joseph from among her many suitors. Each of them was instructed to bring the high priest a rod. While those of the other suitors remained bare, Joseph's rod burst into bloom, and a dove miraculously appeared from heaven, as shown in this work by Marquez de Velasco. Demonstrating God's blessing upon these events, the heavens open to reveal a choir of putti playing instruments and scattering pink roses upon the couple below. The rose is a traditional symbol of Mary as a pure, flawless virgin, or a "rose without thorns." Indeed, a saintly radiance surrounds her head and her youthful, innocent face is without blemish.
The Marriage of the Virgin is probably one in a series of eight paintings showing scenes from the life of the Virgin Mary that Marquez de Velasco painted for the monastery of the Unshod Trinitarians in Seville. The paintings were removed from Spain during the Napoleonic Wars, and were sold and dispersed at auction in London in 1810.
RMN
154
155
THE SPANISH GOLDEN AGE
Bartolome Esteban Murillo Spanish, 1617-1682The Blessed dies before Pope Gregory IX,
1645 - 46
Oil on canvas
65-1/2 x 731/4 in.
(166.3 x 186.0 cm)
Purchased with funds from the State of North Carolina, 1952 (52.9.178)
Murillo, the last great figure of the Golden Age of Spanish painting, spent most of his career in Seville. This painting was part of a series of eleven canvases for the Sevillian monastery of San Francisco (St. Francis of Assisi) that constituted his first large commission. All the paintings in the series illustrate miraculous events in the lives of members of the Franciscan order, including Giles, a thirteenth-century follower of St. Francis. His religious fervor was so intense that he reportedly experienced states of ecstasy during which he levitated. Hearing of this miracle, Pope Gregory IX called Giles to him so that he could witness it for himself. The inscription in rhymed couplets at the bottom of the painting translates: "Giles flourished in sanctity, and Gregory the Ninth went to Perugia to speak with him. Brother Giles visited him, his breast filled with fervor and loving obedience. He was afraid to come in, but finally entered the cloister itself. His faith and his love were so miraculous that, standing before the Pope in wonder, he was carried away in a divine ecstasy."
Light from an unseen source illuminates the monk's head against the dark background. Such dramatic effects of light and shadow were practiced by Murillo's Sevillian predecessor Diego Velazquez and demonstrate an interest in the styles of Italian artists shared by these two artists with other Spanish painters of the seventeenth century.
JPC
156
Spanish conquistadors brought chocolate from the New World to Europe in the early sixteenth century. Chocolate was first enjoyed in Europe as a drink, made by grating chocolate paste into wine or water sweetened with sugar and flavored with vanilla and various spices. During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, hot chocolate was a favorite drink of people of all social classes in Spain.
This engaging image shows a young man kneeling as he scrapes a large slab of chocolate. The scraping is done on a metate, a type of grinding stone widely used by natives of Mexico and Guatemala for grinding corn and probably, like chocolate, introduced into Spain from, the New World. Below the stone, a small container holds a fire producing heat to soften the hard chocolate so that it can be ground more easily. The large bowl in the foreground contains some of the ground material, and before it, patties of chocolate rest in a wooden container and on a letter or document. The writing is largely indecipherable, although there are fragments of Spanish words, such as casa (house) at the lower left.
DW
SpanishA Man Scraping Chocolate, about 1750-1800
Oil on canvas
41 x 28 in.
(104.1 x 71.1 cm)
Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Benjamin Cone, 1969 (69.20.1)
157
THE SPANISH GOLDEN AGE
Luis Egidio Melendez Spanish, 1716 -1780Still Life with Crapes and Figs,
about 1765-75
Oil on canvas
14 9/16 x 19 3/8 in.
(37.0 x 49.2 cm)
Still Life with Pigeons,
about 1765-75
Oil on canvas
14 9/16 x 19 3/8 in. (37.0 x 49.2 cm)
Purchased with funds from the North Carolina Art Society (Robert F. Phifer Bequest), 1952 (52.9.176, 52.9.177)
Although he received little acclaim during his lifetime and died in poverty, Melendez is recognized today as the greatest Spanish still-life painter of the eighteenth century. What would have been a promising career as a history painter was abruptly cut short when he was expelled from the Spanish fine arts academy as a result of delivering a diatribe written by his father against the directors of the academy. Lacking the official status of an academician, and thus denied access to royal and aristocratic patronage, Melendez was forced to turn to the less prestigious— and far less lucrative—field of still-life painting.
Melendez's genius as a composer and his consummate technical skill at rendering the volumes and textures of objects enabled him to transform the most mundane kitchen fare into powerful artistic statements. Underpinning all of his compositions is a dynamic interplay among the objects and the voids. A low and close-up point of view imbues his humble objects with a monumentality that can barely be contained within the composition, Melendez's use of a strong, almost raking light brings out every textual nuance of his forms, whether it is the translucent sheen on the skin of a grape, the pronounced facets of a hammered copper kettle, or the rough surface of a wooden table, chipped and worn from years of use. Only his French contemporary Chardin (page 171) rivals Melendez in terms of the originality, power, and consistent quality of his still lifes.
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159
British Portraiture
THE "GRAND MANNER" OF PORTRAIT PAINTING was introduced into Great Britain in the seventeenth century by Flemish Baroque master Anthony van Dyck. In his many portraits for the court and aristocracy, Van Dyck was able to capture each sitter's likeness, while making every person, however unattractive in reality, appear graceful, elegant, and beautiful or handsome. His large, full-length portraits, such as the Museum's Lady Mary Villiers, often incorporated Classical architectural elements, such as fluted columns, and allegorical references to Classical mythology to suggest that the sitter was wealthy and cultivated.
In the eighteenth century, British painters emulated the grand portrait style of Van Dyck. They were flooded with commissions from wealthy patrons wishing to add their likenesses to the family portrait galleries in their great houses. Not every painter was pleased by the popular demand for portrait likenesses. Joshua Reynolds, founding president of the Royal Academy of Arts, stressed the traditional preeminence of history painting, although he seldom had the opportunity to paint this type of work since his clients clamored for portraits. Although his career necessitated a studio in London, where he painted mostly portraits, Thomas Gainsborough was most enthusiastic about landscape painting and preferred the life of a country gentleman in the resort town of Bath. Landscape settings are prominent in his work, as can be seen in his portrait of Ralph Bell in the NCMA's collection.
Some British artists found a market for history and genre subjects, among them Scottish painter David Wilkie. His painting Christopher Columbus in the Convent of La Rdbida Explaining His Intended Voyage portrays historical figures whose actual appearance was not known to the artist. By convincingly capturing the likenesses of the men and boy who modeled for these figures, however, he gave his canvas the look of a group portrait. Thus he used the illusion of portraiture to impart a compelling sense of reality and immediacy to this quiet moment in the lives of Columbus, his son Diego, and their companions.
The Oddie Children (detail)
161
BRITISH PORTRAITURE
Anthony van Dyck Flemish, 1599-1641, active in England 1632-1641Lady Mary Villiers, later Duchess of Richmond and Lennox, with Charles Hamilton, Lord Arran, about 1636Oil on canvas
83 3/8 x 52 9/16 in.
(211.8 x 133.5 cm)
Gift of Mrs. Theodore Webb, 1952 (52.17.1)
162
The most gifted and influential European portraitist of his age, Anthony van Dyck received major commissions while still in his teens. Before his twentieth birthday, he had become the chief assistant in Peter Paul Rubens's Antwerp studio. Eager to move beyond the shadow of Rubens, the young Van Dyck, after a brief stay in London in 1620, spent most of the following decade in Italy refining his elegant portrait style. He returned to Antwerp in 1628 and remained there for four years before being lured back to England to become a court painter to Charles I. Except for brief visits to the continent, Van Dyck was active in England until his untimely death. His legacy was a profound and lasting influence on English portraiture.
In England, Van Dyck expanded the definition of portraiture in a number of allegorical portraits; the likeness of Mary Villiers (1622—1685) is one of the few surviving examples. Describing this work in 1672, the noted Italian biographer Giovanni Bellori wrote, "This portrait because of its unique beauty put in doubt as to whether credit should be accorded to art or to nature. He portrayed her in the manner of Venus." Charles Hamilton (Lord Arran), accompanying his cousin in the role of Venus's winged son, Cupid, holds up one of the arrows with which the young god of love pierces unsuspecting hearts.
The only daughter of the duke of Buckingham, Lady Mary had been raised at the English court after the assassination of her father. The painting may have been commissioned to celebrate her marriage in 1635 at age thirteen to Charles Herbert.
DW
Before the eighteenth century, British artists often portrayed children in family portraits as if they were small adults. The subject of children at play reflects a new attitude of tolerance for childhood games in the second half of the century, although an opposing puritanical philosophy still viewed play as sinful. This charming picture of Sarah, Henry, Catherine, and Jane Oddie, the daughters and son of a London lawyer, must have achieved some popularity, since it was reproduced as an engraving. Young Catherine, careless of spoiling her white muslin dress, rests on all fours, gazing out as if to invite the viewer to join the children's activities. The artist simulates the textures of fabrics brilliantly, contrasting the simple white dresses of the girls with their colorful satin sashes and matching leather slippers. He also manipulates light and dark areas to great effect, silhouetting Jane's brunette hair against the sky and the heads of her fair-haired siblings against the dark foliage.
The Oddie Children was exhibited with six other Beechey portraits in the Royal Academy exhibition of 1791. Appointed portraitist to Queen Charlotte in 1793, Beechey also painted her husband, King George III, and the couple’s sons, and gave painting lessons to their daughters. These services to the royal family earned a knighthood for the artist.
JPC
Sir William Beechey British, 1753-1839The Oddie Children, 1789Oil on canvas
72 x 71 7/8 in.
(183.0 x 182.6 cm)
Purchased with funds from the State of North Carolina, 1952 (52.9.65)
163
BRITISH PORTRAITURE
Thomas Gainsborough British, 1727-1788Ralph Bell,
1772-74
Oil on canvas
92 1/4 x 61 1/8 in.
(234.3 x 155.3 cm)
Purchased with funds from the North Carolina Art Society (Robert F. Phifer Bequest) and the State of North Carolina, 1952 (52.9.70)
164
In 1772 Thomas Gainsborough began work on this masterful portrait of the fifty-two-year-old Ralph Bell (1720-1801). The sitter had journeyed from his estate in Thirsk, North Yorkshire, to Bath, where Gainsborough had a studio. Bell probably took possession of the picture, its background still unfinished, shortly before Gainsborough's departure for London in 1774. A few years later, the artist painted a matching full-length portrait of Bell's wife, Ann Conyers. Both works hung until 1897 in the "Great Dining Room" of Thirsk Hall.
The Bell portrait reveals some of Gainsborough's artistic interests during his fourteen years of activity in Bath. In addition to the light, rapid brushstrokes and a palette of delicate colors, the painting demonstrates the strong influence of the seventeenth-century Flemish painter Anthony van Dyck, whose portraits Gainsborough could observe in Bath. Among these was Van Dyck's striking Portrait of Sir John Suckling, now in the Frick Collection in New York. Like the Flemish master, Gainsborough imparted an easy naturalness to his subjects. Ralph Bell pauses for a dip of snuff, his attention momentarily drawn by something to his right. The accurate observation of Bell stands in contrast to the unfinished nature of the flowing landscape to which he is skillfully linked.
DW
The imposing Thomas Robert Hay (1785-1866), eleventh earl of Kinnoull, stands proudly in the uniform of a colonel in the Royal Perthshire Militia. He had assumed his rank in 1809, retaining it until 1855. In this masterpiece of British military portraiture, the artist created a dashing and virile likeness of a man confident of his abilities.
The energetic and supple brushwork found in this portrait characterizes the work of Henry Raeburn at the height of his powers. The preeminent portrait painter to the Scottish aristocracy, Raeburn began his career as a miniaturist and was largely self-taught as an oil painter. Following a trip to Italy, he set up a studio in Edinburgh in 1787 and remained there for the rest of his career. As the Hay portrait demonstrates, Raeburn achieved brilliant results by painting directly onto the canvas with bold contrasts and strong shadows. Typically, he appears not to have employed drawings or preliminary sketches.
DW
Sir Henry Raeburn Scottish, 1756-1823Thomas Robert Hay, Eleventh Earl of Kinnoull, 1815Oil on canvas
93 1/2 x 59 in.
(237.5 x 149.9 cm)
Purchased with funds from the State of North Carolina, 1964 (64.19.1)
165
BRITISH PORTRAITURE
Sir David Wilkie Scottish, 1785-1841Christopher Columbus in the Convent of La Rabida Explaining His Intended Voyage, 1834Oil on canvas
58 1/2 x 74 1/4 in.
(148.6 x 188.6 cm)
Gift of Hirschl & Adler Galleries, 1957 (57.17.1)
166
Wilkie’s portrayal of the Italian explorer Columbus at the Convent of La Rabida in Spain was based on the Life of Columbus by the American writer Washington Irving, with whom Wilkie had become acquainted in Spain during the 1820s. When the painting was exhibited at the Royal Academy in London, Wilkie provided an identification for the figures and their activities, acknowledging Irving's text as his source.
Columbus is seated at the right, accompanied by his son Diego and their Italian greyhound. To the left of Columbus is the guardian of the Franciscan monastery of La Rabida, Friar Juan Perez de Marchena, who gazes at the chart with which Columbus explains his intended voyage. The friar assisted the explorer and was instrumental in gaining the support of the Spanish monarchs for Columbus's voyage. He took the young Diego into his monastery to be educated. Leaning across the table is the physician of Palos, Garcia Fernandez, who also became a supporter of Columbus's plan. The figure standing in the background holding a telescope is the sea captain Martin Alonzo Pinzon, who later helped Columbus outfit his expedition and sailed with him.
In the 1820s, Wilkie had traveled for three years on the continent, where he studied the paintings of the European Baroque masters and learned to emulate their lively compositions with dramatic lighting and bold, fluid brushwork. For his painting of Columbus, however, Wilkie chose a quiet moment, in which the emotions and excitement of the characters are internal and are only hinted at by their gestures and expressions.
RMN
167
French Rococo Art
BETWEEN THE ACCESSION OF LOUIS XV TO THE THRONE in 1715 and the execution of his son and successor Louis XVI in 1793 at the height of the Reign of Terror in Paris, French manners and tastes were dominated by the royal court. Many foreign artists also adopted the Rococo style, characterized by playful sensuality, lightness of mood, delicate ornamentation, pastel colors, and gold and silver flourishes.
The term "Rococo" comes from the French words rocaille (rock) and coquille (shell) and refers to decorative motifs fashionable in eighteenth-century architecture, interior design, and gardens. Graceful S-curves and arabesques, often embellished with shells and other natural forms, abounded on various surfaces, from the ceilings and walls of fanciful garden grottos to the chandeliers whose lights sparkled from gilded ornaments and mirrored walls.
With the death in 1715 of the Baroque era's "Sun King," Louis XIV, the focus of court life shifted from the palace at Versailles back to Paris. In the city, the aristocracy resided in elegant but relatively small townhouses, where the heavy ornamentation of the preceding Baroque period was unsuitable. In art and interior design, as in social life, patrons appreciated cleverness and a sophisticated sense of humor, as evidenced by paintings such as Jean-Marc Nattier's Portrait of a Lady as a Vestal Virgin. Salons were furnished to be conducive to gallantry and witty conversation. Paintings were but components of a total interior decoration that included frames, lighting, furniture, carpets, tapestries, and porcelains. Small, collectible works of art, such as Joseph-Charles Marin's Bacchante Carrying a Child on Her Shoulders, fit well into such environments. Subjects from Classical mythology and history remained popular, with a preference shown for playful and romantic themes, as in Francois Boucher's painting of Venus Rising from the Waves.
Eighteenth-century French portraits were intimate and casual, with an air of fashionable nonchalance or, in the idiom of the day, "negligence" an apparent lack of concern for external appearances. Like Count Shuvalov in the portrait by Elisabeth Vigee Le Brun, the sitters were elegant but casual, as if relaxing among friends.
The Eruption of Mount Vesuvius (detail)
169
FRENCH ROCOCO ART
Studio of Hyacinthe Rigaud French, 1659-1743Louis XV, after 1715
Oil on canvas 70 1/2 x 53 1/2 in.
(179.1 x 135.9 cm)
Purchased with funds from the North Carolina Art Society (Robert F. Phifer Bequest), 1952 (52.9.132)
170
When his great-grandfather died in 1715, Louis XV became king of France at the age of five. Louis XIV, the "Sun King," had been the most powerful monarch of Europe during much of his long reign. He crafted for himself a persona of majesty and glory embodying the French nation and culture, an image reflected in the art of his court. For the sake of stability after his succession, the child-king is linked with the authority of his ancestors in this studio replica of his coronation portrait (the original is in the palace at Versailles) by his predecessor's official portraitist. Rigaud makes him seem more mature than his age would suggest. The young monarch is endowed with majesty by his gesture, the sumptuous fabrics, and the regalia of his illustrious forebears. He holds the scepter of rule in his right hand and wears the insignia of the Order of the Holy Spirit on his chest. At his side are the French royal crown, the "Hand of Justice" that had belonged to Charles V, and the sword of Charlemagne, which can be seen today in the Louvre. The pose is also intended to evoke the grandeur of Louis XIV; the exposure of one stockinged leg, gracefully turned, was invented for the deceased king, who prided himself on his participation in the court ballets of Versailles.
JPC
Eighteenth-century Parisian collectors of still-life paintings were unaccustomed to the ordinariness of the objects in Chardin's kitchen scenes. Other artists of the day, such as Jean-Baptiste Oudry (page 172), preferred more luxurious still lifes of game animals. There were, however, precedents for Chardin's modest subjects in Flemish and Dutch pictures, and there were enough French collectors who admired Chardin's skill to sustain his career.
Intimate groupings of kitchen utensils and victuals were a new subject for Chardin around 1730. Two years earlier he had been received as a member of the prestigious Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture on the acceptance of a much larger presentation piece, now in the Louvre, which also features a ray fish. While the ceramic jug, copper pot, and mortar and pestle were common objects in middle-class eighteenth-century households, Chardin did not include them haphazardly. He selected objects that appealed to his sense of material surfaces and his fondness for curved shapes, and he worked out his compositions with corresponding deliberation and care. Several of Chardin's small pictures were repeated almost exactly; this painting is the earliest of about a half-dozen known versions. Such pictures, and later scenes of daily life in which he continued to include precisely positioned household objects as compositional elements, made Chardin the finest painter of still lifes in France.
JPC
Jean Simeon Chardin French, 1699-1779Still Life with Ray Fish, Copper Kettle, and Onions, 1731Oil on canvas
16 x 12 5/8 in.
(40.6 x 32.0 cm)
Purchased with funds from the State of North Carolina, 1963 (63.29.1)
171
FRENCH ROCOCO ART
Jean-Baptiste Oudry French, 1686-1755Swan Attacked by a Dog, 1745Oil on canvas
70 x 82 in.
(177.8 x 208.3 cm)
Purchased with funds from the North Carolina Art Society (Robert F. Phifer Bequest), 1952 (52.9.131)
172
Oudry made an excellent living filling commissions for noble patrons, especially King Louis XV, whose favor he won by creating hunting scenes with realistic drama. Louis also appreciated Oudry's "portraits" of his favorite hunting dogs, whose names were sometimes prominently inscribed in the paintings. Eighteenth-century critics interpreted Oudry's animal paintings as if they were history subjects and judged them as they would scenes of human conflict and emotion. The artist was also much admired in his own day for his virtuosic handling of white-on-white areas, such as the feathers of the swan, which include a marvelous range of shades and tones.
This painting has been substantially altered from its original format. The animals fill the foreground so fully that the picture's edges appear truncated. A drawing of the composition by Oudry reveals that the painting was cut down from a vertical format almost twice as high as the present canvas, probably to conform to the dimensions of a room. The original composition included a dead boar hung from a tree. On close examination of the painting, the outline of the boar's head and leg can be detected, painted over, against the stone wall.
JPC
Denis Diderot wrote of this painting in his Salon of 1759:
Here is a Vestal of Nattier, and you are going to imagine youth, innocence, candor, just a bit of hair, drapery over the head hiding part of the face, a bit of pallor, because pallor suits piety as well as tenderness. Nothing of it; in its place an elegant coiffure, a studied pose, all the affectation of a woman of the world at her dressing table, and eyes full of voluptuousness . . .
Thus the famous philosopher-critic dismissed Nattier's elegant portrait of a woman dressed as a vestal virgin of ancient Rome. Diderot saw the portrait at the exhibition of the most important works of the 1759 season in the annual Salon of the Louvre. Though a perceptive critic, Diderot displays a rather prudish morality in reaction against the libertine excesses of the period of Louis XV.
Nattier was a favorite portraitist of royalty and nobility, known for his flattering portrayals of eighteenth-century women as Classical goddesses. In 1748, he exhibited portraits of both the queen and, at the suggestion of the king, the royal mistress Madame de Pompadour as the virgin goddess Diana. Another artist even portrayed Madame de Pompadour as a vestal virgin, surely with a hint of irony, for these priestesses of the temple of Vesta, goddess of the hearth, were sworn to absolute chastity. Breaking the vow was punishable by being buried alive. Vestal virgins were charged with keeping the altar fire in Vesta's temple burning perpetually, as suggested here by the scene in the background, where two women tend the sacred flame.
JPC
Jean-Marc Nattier French, 1685-1766Portrait of a Lady as a Vestal Virgin, 1759Oil on canvas
45 ½ x 53 1/2 in. (115.6 x 135.9 cm)
Purchased with funds from the State of North Carolina, 1952 (52.9.130)
173
FRENCH ROCOCO ART
Francois Boucher and Studio French, 1703-1770Venus Rising from the Waves,
about 1766
Oil on canvas
56 x 45 in.
(142.2 x 114.3 cm)
Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Sosthenes Behn.1955 (55.8.2)
At Versailles, King Louis XIV created a grand palace and expansive formal gardens as a magnificent setting for the royal court. To stimulate commerce and provide furnishings for his residences, Louis established factories such as the Gobelins, which became celebrated for its magnificent tapestries. In the following century, Louis's great-grandson, Louis XV (page 170) appointed Frangois Boucher director of the Gobelins and later First Painter to the King. The artist was much in favor for the decoration of rooms for the king and queen in the royal palaces at Versailles and Fontainebleau. Another influential patron of the artist was Madame de Pompadour, official mistress of Louis XV, who exerted a significant influence on French culture in the eighteenth century.
Venus Rising from the Waves is a late work designed as a model for a Gobelins tapestry. It was removed from Gobelins in 1870 along with the painting Jupiter and Callisto., also in the collection of the Museum, with which it formed a pair.
Venus's association with the sea refers to the Greek myth of her birth from sea foam. The dolphin and white doves are symbols of the goddess of love, as are the three Cupids and the objects they hold—pink roses, arrows for piercing hearts, and a torch for inflaming passions. Both Classical mythology and themes of love were particularly popular among aristocratic French patrons of Boucher's time.
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Madame Vigee Le Brim enjoyed one of the most extraordinary lives of any artist of the eighteenth century. As a portraitist for Queen Marie-Antoinette, she enjoyed the favor of the royal family and the aristocracy, which came to a terrifying end in 1789 with the onset of the French Revolution. Vigee Le Brun's aristocratic associations were despised by the revolutionaries, so she fled France for twelve years to resume painting crowned heads and other noble clients from London to St. Petersburg. Her winning personality found favor with those who posed for her, as did her flattering portrait style. The artist's vigorous brushwork made all of her sitters appear to have soft hair and creamy skin set off by red cheeks and lips and the rich materials of their clothing.
The artist's sojourn in Russia was particularly successful. In her memoirs she compared life at Catherine the Great's court favorably to Paris in its former glory. In addition to Russian princesses and visiting monarchs, her sitters included Count Shuvalov, a man of charm and intellect. A half-century before this portrait he had been the lover of Empress Elisabeth I, carrying the title "Gentleman of the Imperial Bedchamber." Shuvalov helped to found the University of Moscow and the Academy of Fine Arts in that city. In 1782 Catherine the Great awarded the count membership in the Orders of St. Vladimir and St. Andrew, the insignia of which he wears in this portrait.
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Elisabeth Louise Vigee Le Brun French, 1755 -1842Count Ivan Ivanovitch Shuvalov
about 1795-97
Oil on canvas
33 x 24 in.
(83.8 x 61.0 cm)
Purchased with funds from the State of North Carolina, 1952 (52.9.224)
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FRENCH ROCOCO ART
Pierre-Jacques Volaire (the Chevalier Volaire) French, 1729-before 1802The Eruption of Mt. Vesuvius, 1777Oil on canvas
53 1/8 x 89 in.
(135.0 x 226.0 cm)
Purchased with funds from the Alcy C. Kendrick Bequest and from the State of North Carolina, by exchange, 1982 (82.1)
. . . This amazing mountain continues to exhibit such various scenes of sublimity and beauty at exactly the distance one would choose to observe it from—a distance which almost admits examination and certainly excludes immediate fear. When in the silent night., however, one listens to its groaning, while hollow sighs, as of gigantic sorrow, are often heard distinctly in my apartment, nothing can surpass one's sensation of amazement. . .
This description of Mt. Vesuvius was written in 1786 by Hester Thrale, one of many travelers who made Naples a destination on their Grand Tour of Europe. The Grand Tour, popular among wealthy Englishmen during the eighteenth century, was an extended sojourn through Europe to admire Classical ruins, picturesque landscapes, and artistic masterpieces, in order to complete a gentleman's education. Pompeo Batoni (page 144), Canaletto (page 147), and the French Chevalier Volaire made careers in Italy executing souvenir pictures for English travelers. Volaire painted more than thirty scenes of Mt. Vesuvius, among the principal natural attractions of the continent because it erupted periodically throughout the century.
Volaire contrasts the moods of nature; the cool, calm water reflecting moonlight and fire is juxtaposed to the violent explosion and fiery terror. Along the bridge he includes references to St. Januarius, protector of Naples from volcanic destruction: from left to right are a statue of the saint, a fleeing townsman holding an image of the saint toward the mountain, and people praying before a drawing of the holy figure posted to a stone pier.
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The bacchante, a female follower of the Roman god Bacchus (known to the Greeks as Dionysius), carries an infant, who may represent the god himself. Bacchus, a fertility god, was associated particularly with the making and consumption of wine. His mythological followers and human devotees were known for their frenzied rituals celebrating the mysteries of his cult. The frolicsome appearance of the female figure and the playful reach of the child for the grapes suggest, however, a lighthearted mood rather than drunken abandon. Patrons of French Rococo art enjoyed mythological themes, particularly the romantic and playfully erotic exploits of Classical gods and heroes.
Lying beside the bacchante is an urn spilling water, artistic shorthand for a river, perhaps included here to suggest a woodland setting. The thrysus, or wand, which leans against the urn is an attribute of Bacchus. It is entwined with ivy and topped by a pinecone, an ancient fertility symbol.
This type of small terracotta sculpture, a specialty of Marin, became popular with French collectors in the eighteenth century. These small-scale objets d'art with their fine detailing and varied surface textures were well suited to the refined decor and relatively intimate scale of the hotels (townhouses) favored by wealthy Parisians at this time. Even the pale pink earthtones of the terracotta sculptures complemented the pastel hues of Rococo interiors.
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Joseph-Charles Marin French, 1759-1834Bacchante Carrying a Child on Her Shoulders,
about 1790-95
Terracotta
h. 27 5/8 in.
(70.0 cm)
Purchased with funds from various donors by exchange, 1985 (85.3)
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Neoclassical and French Nineteenth-Century Art
AT THE END OF THE EIGHTEENTH AND THE BEGINNING OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY, the lighthearted, sensual Rococo style was replaced by the more austere Neoclassicism, whose proponents disdained the frivolity of Rococo art. They instead promoted noble and edifying subjects drawn from current events, and Classical mythology and history. Through painting and sculpture, French Neoclassicists, led by painter Jacques Louis David, endeavored to raise morals and inspire patriotism and self-sacrifice. In The Death of Alcestis by David's contemporary Pierre Peyron, the story, taken from a Classical Greek drama, celebrates marital devotion. The painting's style incorporates elements borrowed from Greek and Roman art.
For the Romantics of the early and mid-nineteenth century, Neoclassicism was too cerebral—devoid of imagination, emotional intensity, color, and movement. Romantic painters such as Eugene Delacroix explored themes from literature, history, and current events, with an emphasis on mankind's often violent relationship with nature. Meanwhile, other painters preferred a more down-to-earth approach to subjects based on their own experiences and those of ordinary working people, whose political rights they championed. The Realists portrayed the French landscape in its simple beauty, its rural inhabitants with dignity. Members of the Barbi-zon School of landscape painters, named for a town on the edge of the Forest of Fontainebleau, moved their easels outdoors and began to sketch and paint directly from nature.
This practice of painting out of doors was continued by the Impressionists, beginning in the 1860s. Like the Realists, the Impressionists found their subject matter in contemporary life. Urban dwellers at leisure in the city or on excursions to the countryside were viewed and painted with a cool detachment devoid of the Romantics' intense emotionalism and the Realists' social commentary. Interiors and landscapes were studied at various times of day and in many conditions of light and atmosphere. New chemical pigments provided a wide range of colors, often bright and intense. Black was virtually eliminated from the palette, and short, broken strokes of color were placed side by side to be "mixed" by the eye and mind of the viewer. Through these and other means, the Impressionists sought to capture their impressions of transient reality, of color in its infinite variations, of light and its transforming effects on color and form.
The Cliff, Etretat, Sunset (detail)
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NEOCLASSICAL AND FRENCH NINETEENTH-CENTURY ART
Pierre Peyron French, 1744-1814The Death of Akestis, 1794Oil on canvas38 x 38 1/4 in,
(96.5 x 97.0 cm)
Purchased with funds from gifts by Mr, and Mrs. Jack L Linsky, Mrs. George Khuner, Cornelius Vanderbilt Whitney, an anonymous donor, Lady Marcia Cunliffe-Owen, William Walker Hines, and Mrs. Alfred Elliot Dietrich, by exchange, 1991 (91.1)
Ambitious young artists in eighteenth-century France aspired to the prestigious Grand Prix award, which enabled them to live and study in Rome as French painters had since the time of Claude Lorrain (page 140). Pierre Peyron won the Grand Prix in 1773, and his seven years in Rome absorbing the lessons of Italian and ancient examples were particularly useful in his development of the Neoclassical style, made famous by Jacques Louis David. Upon his return to Paris, Peyron enjoyed patronage that included a commission from King Louis XVI for a painting of the death of Alcestis. The original version was exhibited in 1785 and is now in the Louvre. Dated 1794, the Museum's smaller version reveals some compositional changes. The servant in the center has been repositioned and redrawn to present a profile suggested by antique sculpture. Details of ancient furniture are simplified, and more emphasis is placed on the classically inspired drapery folds.
The subject is the conjugal virtue of the heroine of the tragic drama Alcestis by the fifth-century B.C. Greek poet Euripides. When her husband angered the gods, Alcestis volunteered to give her life so that his might be spared. The grieving husband and especially the child heighten the sadness of the death scene. The earnestness of Peyron's subject, popularized in France a few years earlier by German composer Christoph Willibald Gluck's opera Alceste, reflects the official rejection of the frivolous Rococo period and its obsession with games of love. The attitude toward ancient models for feminine virtue makes an interesting contrast with the coquettish vestal virgin of Nattier (page 173).
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Canova carved the original Venus Italica to replace the ancient Roman Medici Venus, seized by Napoleon in 1802 from the Uffizi Gallery in Florence and taken to France. In the true Neoclassical spirit, Canova decided to reinterpret the ancient work rather than carve an exact replica. Drawing inspiration from other Classical statues of the goddess, he made several significant changes in the figure; as a result, his Venus appears more natural and her movement more gentle than the Medici Venus. The Venus Italica was immediately hailed as Canova's masterpiece and a worthy successor to the ancient Venus. "When I saw this divine work of Canova," wrote the poet Ugo Foscolo in 1811, "I sighed with a thousand desires, for really, if the Medici Venus is a most beautiful goddess, this is a most beautiful woman."
The beauty and fame of the first Venus Italica created a market for replicas, and at least four versions were executed in Canova's studio before his death. The finesse of the carving and the careful finish of the Museum's version indicate that it was probably carved by one of the master's more talented pupils under his supervision. In its conception and execution, the Venus Italica is a quintessentially Neoclassical work, combining the Classical ideals and the virtuosic technique that distinguished Canova as the greatest and most influential European sculptor of his day.
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Studio of Antonio Canova Italian, 1757-1822Venus Italica,
about 1815-22
Marble
h. 67 3/4 in.
(172.1 cm)Purchased with funds from the North Carolina Art Society (Robert F. Phifer Bequest), 1992(92.2)
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NEOCLASSICAL AND FRENCH NINETEENTH-CENTURY ART
Jean-Francois Millet French, 1814-1875Peasant Spreading Manure, 1854-55Oil on canvas
32 x 44 in.
(81.3 x 111.8 cm)
Purchased with funds from the North Carolina Art Society (Robert F. Phifer Bequest), 1952 (52.9.128)
The son of farmers, Jean-Francois Millet was devoted to cataloguing aspects of peasant life and preferred the village existence near the Forest of Fontainebleau to the art establishment of Paris. Unlike the Impressionists, who began to paint about a decade after this work, Millet made several preparatory drawings for figures such as the farmer in his wooden shoes. Though he represented his subjects with dignity, his views present a life of struggle and toil. "It is never the cheerful side of things that appears to me," he wrote of his work. By the late 1870s, Millet and the like-minded painters known as the Barbizon group were gaining acceptance in exhibitions, with collectors, and in the eyes of the young Impressionists, who admired the naturalness of their landscapes.
Millet wanted to finish this canvas for the Paris World's Fair of 1855, but his projects for that year proved to be too ambitious. Millet's peasant subjects and his realistic style were ahead of popular taste and would have seemed out of step with the urban novelties of the fair. His friend and fellow painter Theodore Rousseau bought Peasant Spreading Manure even without its finishing details. The open landscape, new to Millet's paintings, no doubt appealed to the other artist, but Rousseau probably purchased it primarily to assist Millet with his debts.
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Belgian Alfred Stevens was attracted to the art world of Paris and became one of its most successful painters, held in high regard by the important French and American artists of his day. Stevens was notable for his modernism. Like his friends the Impressionist painters Edgar Degas and Edouard Manet, he turned away from mythological and historical subjects. He preferred painting people of his own time, especially Parisian ladies wearing the latest fashions, some of which the artist borrowed from the daughter of Emperor Napoleon III. While Stevens's painting style appears less daring to modern viewers than that of the Impressionists, there are elements such as subtle color harmonies in his work that appealed to other artists, including the Americans James A. M. Whistler and William Meritt Chase, who collected several of Stevens's pictures. Also then in vogue among Parisian painters and collectors were Oriental art objects such as the Japanese screen and fan and the porcelain being studied by the woman in this painting. Stevens's greatest triumph came at the 1867 Paris World Fair, where he exhibited eighteen works and was rewarded with a first-class medal and promotion to Officer in the Legion of Honor.
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Alfred Stevens Belgian, 1823-1906The Porcelain Collector, 1868Oil on canvas
26 7/8 x 18 in. (68.3 x 45.7 cm)
Gift of Dr. and Mrs. Henry C. Landon III, 1981 (81.11.1)
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NEOCLASSICAL AND FRENCH NINETEENTH-CENTURY ART
Eugene Boudin French, 1824-1898Trouville, The Jetties, High Tide, 1876Oil on canvas
12 ¼ x 17 3/4 in.
(31.1 x 45.1 cm)
Gift of North Carolina National Bank, 1967(67.12.1)
Boudin was born in Normandy on the north coast of France, where he developed a love for marine subjects. For a time he operated a frame shop in Le Havre, and after leaving it, he continued to display his paintings there. In 1858 he encountered a young caricaturist showing bis drawings at the same location. The artist was eighteen-year-old Claude Monet, who initially disliked Boudin's fresh style of brushwork. Later, however, Monet credited the older painter with encouraging him to buy his first box of paints and to paint outdoors on the beaches: "So one day I joined Boudin in painting outdoors. I began to daub my canvas. Then I watched him paint. And suddenly, I was overcome by a deep emotion... more, I was enlightened." By 1876 Monet's style was far beyond the proto-Impressionism of Boudin's earlier painting. This example of Boudin's later work shows the influence of the younger Impressionist in the freedom from detail, the interest in light, and the unifying effects of bravura brushwork.
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The monumentality of the famous cliffs at the resort of Etretat in Monet's native Normandy distinguishes them from most of his other subjects. The rock formations are known as the Elephant and the Needle because of their shapes. More commonly, Monet selected an unobtrusive corner of a meadow or stretch of river for his landscapes. The Etretat painting does, however, serve as a typical example of the Impressionist style, demonstrating an interest in atmospheric conditions and the effects of light as the day progresses. Colors are vibrant and applied to the canvas in separated brushstrokes that create the illusion of motion on the water's surface. Close examination of the setting sun reveals Monet's technique of applying one color of paint over another that is still wet. He thus achieved a partial mixture, not a thorough blending of the colors as traditional painters had done on their palettes.
Monet's almost daily letters to his future wife Alice during his painting campaign at Etretat record his awe of the cliffs and his "seduction" by them. His desire to do justice to the subject intensified his obsession with achieving ambitious goals. His letters describe his struggles with the February weather, the changing tides, and the difficult terrain. When, in true Impressionist manner, he set up his easel on the shore to observe the subject, he was making studies that he intended to take back to his studio for producing finished paintings. His hope of having a few finished canvases at the conclusion of his three-week sojourn was not realized, but he did paint at least eighteen views of Etretat dated 1883.
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Claude Monet French, 1840-1926The Cliff, Etretat, Sunset, 1883Oil on canvas
21 3/4 x 31 3/4 in.
(55.3 x 80.7 cm)Purchased with funds from the State of North Carolina, 1967 (67.24.1)
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NEOCLASSICAL AND FRENCH NINETEENTH-CENTURY ART
Camille Pissarro French, 1830-1903The Saint-Sever Bridge from Rouen, Fog, 1896Oil on canvas
23 3/4 x 34 1/4 in.
(60.0 x 87.0 cm)
Gift of Wachovia Bank and Trust Company, 1967 (67.26.1)
Few subjects recall the Impressionists' fascination with changing effects of atmosphere and water as much as Pissarro's view of Rouen. Among the members of this group, Pissarro was the most receptive to experimentation with new ideas and approaches. When he saw Monet's pictures of Rouen Cathedral, created as a series, Pissarro found in them "the superb unity which I have been seeking for a long time." Having painted in Rouen earlier, Pissarro was drawn back to the city in 1896 by Monet's success. He selected a less monumental subject than Monet's cathedral, preferring the distant views of the Seine bridges visible from his hotel window. Pissarro completed sixteen canvases of the bridges that year, delighted by the combination of natural mist and the smoke from boats and factories. Like Monet's cathedrals, Pissarro's Rouen bridge paintings vary greatly in color and quality of light, depending on time of day and weather conditions. He wrote to his son Lucien of his work, saying, "what interests me especially is a motif of the iron bridge in the wet, with much traffic, carriages, pedestrians, workers on the quays, boats, smoke, mist in the distance, the whole scene fraught with animation and life." Such urban scenes are more frequent in Pissarro's oeuvre than in that of any other major Impressionist,
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In 1896 and 1897, Monet rose at 3:30 in the morning in his village of Giverny to work on a project of capturing early morning light as it appeared through the fog. By dawn, he was in the small boat he kept on a branch of the Seine for use as a floating studio. An observer recorded that the painter worked simultaneously on fourteen canvases, all depicting this exact spot, shifting from one to another as the strengthening sun burned through the mist. Monet spent the decade of the 1890s pursuing his innovative concept of series paintings, showing the same motif in varying conditions of light, time, and atmosphere. Of the twenty known versions of this subject, this one is among the most delicate, the features of the distant landscape obscured by the diffused light through the mist.
The Mornings on the Seine series is different from the exuberant Impressionism of Monet's earlier sunset from Etretat (page 185). Both are scenes of his home province of Normandy, but the color range in the later paintings is more limited, and the brushwork is thinner and softer, creating a more subtle texture. The format of the river views is almost square, giving them an abstract quality. It was at about the same time that Monet began to create the famous paintings of the Japanese bridge over his water-lily pond, which share the format and mood of the Mornings on the Seine. While some of the artist's later works are increasingly bold, this painting exemplifies Monet at his most poetic and introspective.
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Claude Monet French, 1840 -1926The Seine at Giverny, Morning Mists, 1897Oil on canvas
35 x 36 in.
(89.0 x 91.4 cm)
Purchased with funds from the Sarah Graham Kenan Foundation and the North Carolina Art Society (Robert F. Phifer Bequest), 1975 (75.24-1)
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American Art
DURING THE COLONIAL AND EARLY FEDERAL PERIODS most Americans concentrated their attention on practical concerns of surviving in a challenging new environment. They had few resources and limited leisure for the pursuit of art and other perceived luxuries. Puritan and other Protestant congregations provided no church commissions for artists, and there were few large public buildings that required decoration. A political philosophy that stressed the rights and potential of the individual did, however, prove sympathetic to portraiture. With no art academies and no established masters under whom they could study, early American portrait painters were largely self-taught. A fortunate few, including John Singleton Copley, whose work can be found in the following pages, were able to study—in some cases pursue careers— in Europe.
After the War of 1812 the new nation achieved greater self-confidence and a sense of pride in its vast territories and tremendous natural resources. By the early decades of the nineteenth century, Americans began to feel that they had succeeded in taming the wilderness and imposing civilization on their "New Eden." This sense of conquest over Nature brought with it not only the desire to celebrate the continent's bounty, but also a sense of nostalgia that its pristine beauty and abundance were already compromised. This was the great age of landscape painting in the United States, led by the artists of the Hudson River School, including Thomas Cole, a founder of the movement, and second-generation Hudson River School painters such as Jasper Cropsey, Albert Bierstadt, and Louis Remy Mignot.
In the middle of the nineteenth century, scenes of everyday life (genre paintings) also became quite popular. Although they painted ordinary people going about their daily activities, genre painters tended to romanticize their subjects, celebrating the American dream of democracy and egalitarianism. The Civil War brought disillusionment and a more truthful portrayal of American life in the work of Realist painters such as Winslow Homer and Thomas Eakins, both of whom are included in the NCMA's collection and in these pages. Although known for their distinctively American vision, Homer and Eakins, like so many other American artists, traveled in Europe and studied the artistic traditions of that continent. The influence of Europe on American culture continued to the end of the nineteenth and into the twentieth century, as evidenced by Frederick Frieseke's very French Garden Parasol.
Romantic Landscape (detail)
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AMERICAN ART
John Singleton Copley American, 1738-1815, active in Great Britain from 1774Mrs. James Russell (Katherine Craves), about 1770Oil on canvas
50 ¼ x 40 in.
(127.5 x 101.7 cm)
Purchased with funds from the North Carolina Art Society (Robert F. Phifer Bequest) and the State of North Carolina, by exchange, 1992 (92.9)
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Although largely self-taught and without benefit of European study, John Singleton Copley invented a powerfully convincing style of portraiture that summarized the expansive ambitions and self-confidence of colonial American society on the brink of independence. His mature style is marked by a somber richness of color, dramatic lighting, exacting observation, and a virtuoso ability to realize in paint both the physical and psychological being of the sitter.
Katherine Graves Russell (1717-1778) of Charlestown, Massachusetts, was the daughter and wife of magistrates and the mother of eleven children. Judging from her portrait, she was a formidable personality in her own right. Elegantly if soberly dressed — as befits a Puritan woman of means — and seated in an amply upholstered Chippendale armchair, she eyes us with calm assurance and perhaps a touch of hauteur. The artist encourages a ready rapport with her by the studied informality of the pose: apparently we have interrupted her reading. While Copley leaves no doubt that Mrs. Russell is a woman of rank and importance, his portrait of her is neither sentimental nor dishonest. He respects the testimony of his eyes, depicting the woman forthrightly as the aging matron that she was. Similar attention is given to the precise rendering of fabrics and other materials. The painter delights in the luxuriant sheen of satin and the crisp white of the apron and lace-trimmed kerchief. Against a dark background, Copley casts an opulent light, imparting a vivid, almost sculptural presence to the ensemble.
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John Singleton Copley was never content with being the preeminent portrait painter in a provincial outpost of the British Empire. While building his career and fortune in Boston, he dreamed of making the voyage to Europe to study the works of the old masters and prove himself against the best of London's painters. Finally, in 1774, after years of vacillation, Copley left for Europe. His exit was surely hastened by the increasing political turmoil in the colonies. Though he assiduously avoided politics and courted the patronage of both high Tories and such rebels as Samuel Adams and John Hancock, revolutionary Boston was no place for a society painter. Leaving America, never to return, Copley looked forward to a more hopeful future abroad.
After a study tour of Italy, Copley and his family settled in London, where he set about the daunting task of establishing himself as a painter of the front rank. As might be expected, a number of his earliest patrons were fellow Americans, including Sir William Pepperrell (1746-1816), who had arrived in London a year after Copley. Sir William was the grandson and heir of William Pepperrell (1696-1759), a prosperous merchant, politician, and soldier— and the first native-born American to be awarded the title of baronet. The younger Pepperrell further enhanced the family's stature by marrying the daughter of Isaac Royall, one of the wealthiest men in British America. However, during the turbulent years leading up to the American Revolution, Pepperrell remained steadfastly loyal to the British Crown. Fearing mob violence and the wholesale confiscation of his property, he sailed from Boston with his family toward an uncertain exile. Soon after arriving in 1775, Pepperrell commissioned Copley to paint a family portrait. When finished, the painting was more than the standard, flattering
John Singleton Copley American, 1738-1815, active in Great Britain from 1774Sir William Pepperrell and His Family, 1778Oil on canvas
90 x 108 in.
(228.6 x 274.3 cm)
Purchased with funds from the State of North Carolina, 1952 (52.9.8)
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celebration of a proud, illustrious family. It also symbolized with poignant irony the tragedy of the Pepperrells.
No doubt in accord with the wishes of his client, Copley staged an extravagant, yet intimate portrayal of Sir William, his wife, Elizabeth, and their three daughters and newborn son. He invented a setting that is neither a proper interior nor a landscape, but a studio fantasy. The ;olossal fluted column, Baroque drapery, plush "Turkey" carpet, and the inviting glimpse of a twilight park were stock devices in royal and aristocratic portraiture, signifying wealth, gentility, and dominion. Within this setting the Pepperrells are presented in a moment of studied informality. Striking a pose of courtly nonchalance, Sir William presides over the happy domestic scene. His solemn and beautiful wife holds up to him their gleeful son. The oldest daughter embraces her brother while turning a coquettish eye to the viewer. At right, the two younger Pepperrell daughters play at skittles. The boy, heir to his father's title and fortune, is the center of the painting and of his parents' hopes.
Unfortunately, the portrait is an elaborate fiction, perpetrated by client and artist to mask an unacceptable reality. The Pepperrells were not English gentry, but exiles, bereft of country and much of their fortune. Moreover, Elizabeth Royall Pepperrell had died in Boston two years before the portrait was painted. (For her likeness, Copley probably relied upon a portrait miniature.) For the widower and his children, Copley offered a comforting vision of what might have been, had not war and death come knocking.
The painting was equally important for Copley in promoting his nascent career in England. Exhibited in the annual exhibition of the Royal Academy in 1778, it served to advertise the artist's abilities. He demonstrated his mastery at organizing a complex arrangement of figures, fitting the family within a strict pyramidal composition and linking each figure with graceful and telling gestures. The American flaunted his virtuosic skills at rendering the sheen and textures of costly fabrics. He also theatrically orchestrated the colors and the play of light and shadow, spotlighting the family against a background of deep, luxuriant greens. The painting is a sumptuous tapestry, every part enlivened: the spaniels are treated with nearly as much attention as their masters. Shortly after arriving in London Copley had written that "you must be conspecuous in the Croud if you would be happy and great." With the exhibition of Sir William Pepperrell and His Family, Copley signaled to the British public that he had arrived.
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Thomas Cole American, born Great Britain, 1801-1848Romantic Landscape,
about 1826
Oil on panel
16 1/16 x 21 15/16 in.
(40.7 x 55.8 cm)
Purchased with funds from the State of North Carolina, 1952 (52.9.7)
More than any other artist, Thomas Cole created the myth of the wilderness in which divinity and America's destiny dwelled. For him and other Romantic painters, landscape was not just scenery, but the play itself, an eloquent means of addressing profound questions of human and divine purpose. The founder and presiding presence of the Hudson River School of landscape painters, Cole celebrated the vast, unconquered wilderness as a metaphor for the American republic. Through his pictures of "uncivilized" nature, the viewer was led to contemplate the purity and promise of the "New World."
This small painting dates from the early years of Cole's career when the young and largely self-taught painter was first exploring the dramatic possibilities of landscape art. The composition is based on studies made in the Catskill Mountains in upstate New York. It presents a vision of primeval nature: gnarled trees, crags, mountain peaks mirrored in a silent lake, and a turbulent sky suffused with sunlight. The wildness—and Americanness—of the scene is further heightened by the presence of Native Americans in the middle distance. (Here it is worth noting that this picture was painted in the same year as the publication of James Fenimore Cooper's Last of the Mohicans). That Cole intended such paintings as visible sermons is amply born out in his poem "Lines from Lake George," in which he implored:
0 may the voice of music that so chime With the wild mountain breeze and rippling lake Ne'er wake the soul but to a keener sense Of nature's beauties . . .
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AMERICAN ART
John James Audubon American, born Santo Domingo (now Haiti) , 1785-1851The Birds of America,
1827-38
Hand-colored aquatint/engravings on Whatman paper, bound in 4 volumes Sheet:
38 ¼ x 25 1/4 in.
(97.2 x 64.2 cm)
Transfer from the North Carolina State Library, 1974 (74-27>4)
Trumpeter Swan
Havell CCCCVI
Image: 24 ¾ x 38 in.
(62.9 x 96.5 cm)
Vigor's Warbler
Havell XXX
Image: 19 3/8 x 12 1/4 in.
(49.2 x 31.1 cm)
Carolina Parrot
Havell XXVI
Image: 33 x 23 1/2 in. (83.9 x 59.7 cm)
Only a larger-than-life figure like John James Audubon could have been equal to such a Herculean labor—the realization of this oversized, multivolume masterpiece, The Birds of America. The complex project—to document all the birds of this country — consumed nearly twenty years, requiring field work to record the species and entrepreneurial skills to publish the resulting four-volume survey.
The largely self-taught artist-naturalist's intent was clearly scientific, but his passionate involvement lifted his visual interpretation beyond mere literal transcription. Sharing the reverence for nature of his contemporaries, the Hudson River School painters, Audubon broke away from the tradition of isolating birds in stiff profile. In his stunning watercolor studies, he concerned himself with the distinguishing characteristics of shape, plumage, and habit.
Printing The Birds of America was itself a daunting undertaking. Guided explicitly by the watercolors, the London printer Robert Havell combined etching, aquatint, and engraving with hand coloring to meet Audubon's exacting standards. Over a twelve-year period, Havell produced 435 plates (generally bound into four volumes) with more than a thousand life-sized bird portraits of 490 species.
The state of North Carolina has owned one of the estimated 200 bound sets since 1846 (housed initially in the State Library and subsequently transferred to the Museum). The Birds has always found an audience responsive to Audubon's majestic contribution to art, science, and conservation.
194
AMERICAN ART
Christian Mayr American, born Germanyabout 1805-1851Kitchen Ball at White Sulphur Springs, Virginia,
1838
Oil on canvas
24 x 29 1/2 in.
(61.0 x 75.0 cm)
Purchased with funds from the State of North Carolina, 1952 (52.9.23)
196
The portrayal of African Americans by white artists before the Civil War almost invariably reflected the harsh prejudices of society. American painters generally accepted the crude racial stereotypes, casting black people in marginal and often comic roles that emphasized their political and social inferiority. Kitchen Ball at White Sulphur Springs, Virginia is a rare exception, all the more remarkable for its vivid depiction of the private lives of blacks in the antebellum South. It is probable that the artist, as a recent immigrant from Germany, felt less constricted by American racial attitudes, and thus freer to see and paint African Americans as people, not chattel.
White Sulphur Springs, Virginia (now West Virginia), was a favorite summer resort among Southern plantation families. Though Mayr arrived at the spa in search of portrait commissions, he seems to have lost interest in the high society of the planters, preferring instead the "low" if equally polite society of their servants. In this painting, Mayr recreates a joyful gathering among the household slaves, whose dress and manner mirror those of their masters. Almost certainly, they are celebrating the wedding of the white-clad couple at center. Far from being caricatures, the men and women are convincing individuals. According to Frederick Marryat, an English guest at the resort, Mayr "introduced [in the picture] all the well-known coloured people in the place." However, he deliberately omitted one musician, joking that the poor man's inability to play in tune "would spoil the harmony of my whole picture!"
JWC
William Tylee Ranney American, 1813-1857First News of the Battle of Lexington, 1847Oil on canvas
44 1/16 x 63 5/16 in.
(111.9 x 160.8 cm)
Purchased with funds from the State of North Carolina, 1952 (52.9.25)
As the defining moment in the history of the United States, the American Revolution quickly acquired the grandeur and aura of a sacred myth, a myth constantly retold and reimagined by artists of the young republic. Most, following the European tradition, depicted the violent birth of the nation as grand opera, its heroes larger than life, their struggles titanic, and their virtues triumphant. (Emmanuel Leutze's Washington Crossing the Delaware, now in New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art, is only the most celebrated example.) In marked contrast, William Ranney conceived the Revolution on a less elevated, though no less moral, plain.
First News of the Battle of Lexington is one of a series of paintings depicting scenes of ordinary people responding to extraordinary events. The skirmish between redcoats and minute-men at Lexington on April 19, 1775, signaled the beginning of the War of Independence. However, rather than represent the actual encounter, Ranney turns our attention to the aftermath. An unnamed commentator, possibly the artist himself, describes how "the tidings spread—men galloped from town to town beating the drum and calling to arms. The people snatched their rifles and fowling pieces, and hurried towards Boston. The voice of war rang through the land, and preparations were every where commenced for united action."
Ranney's anonymous farmers and tradesmen, rallying to the call of their country, exemplified the collective heroism of Americans. It was no coincidence that the artist's evocation of selfless courage and patriotism appeared just as the United States was preparing for war against Mexico. In First News of the Battle of Lexington, Ranney created an image of a valiant past to stir a new generation of Americans to glory.
JWC
197
AMERICAN ART
Severin Roesen American, born Germany, 1814/15 -1872Still Life with Fruit,
about 1855-60
Oil on canvas
30 ¼ x 25 in.
(76.8 x 63.5 cm)
Gift of the North Carolina Art Society (Robert F. Phifer Bequest) in honor of Mr. and Mrs. Charles Lee Smith, Jr., 1977 (77.8.1)
198
Little is known about the painter Severin Roesen. He was born in Germany, possibly in Cologne, and emigrated to this country in 1848, living first in New York and later in Williams-burg, Pennsylvania. His career was confined to the painting of fruit and floral still lifes. Although Roesen achieved only modest success in his lifetime, his work has come to represent Victorian American painting at its most exuberant.
In both subject and style, Roesen's paintings descend from the great still-life tradition of seventeenth-century Holland. In Still Life with. Fruit, he serves up a luxuriance of ripe, succulent delights—grapes, cherries, blackberries, strawberries, plums, peaches, pears, a sectioned lemon—heaped high, overwhelming the reed basket and cascading off the marble ledge. Of course, the picture is completely contrived. The composition follows Roesen's tried-and-true formula: there exist many related versions, both vertical and horizontal. It is unlikely that the artist painted the picture from life. He probably relied on memory, selecting and combining elements into a dynamic and intricately staged ensemble. Even so, the artist attends scrupulously to the facts, bestowing upon each grape and berry a vivid particularity.
Such princely bounty was rarely seen in America, even in the most affluent households. Though all of the pictured fruits might be had for a price, their perfection and sheer abundance are uncanny, as though they had been plucked from some earthly paradise. Roesen's still lifes may have struck a nationalist chord with his patrons, affirming the special generosity of Nature — and Nature's god—toward the American people.
JWC
The pioneer family blazing a new life in the wilderness is one of the great identifying themes of the American experience. In the mid-nineteenth century, no one better exemplified the spirit of the young republic than the self-reliant, hard-working homesteader. Jasper Cropsey's depiction of backwoods America celebrates the romantic myth of frontier life with little regard to the often harsh reality. Though derived from sketches made in the White Mountains of northern New Hampshire, the picture was painted while Cropsey was living in London.
It is morning in early autumn. The chill sun brightens a clearing in the remote valley where a charming, if ramshackle, log cabin sits. It is evidently a new settlement: the land is still coarse and scraggly. In the cabin doorway, a woman watches her young daughter play with chicks while another daughter totes water from the nearby river. Hand in hand, two small children walk toward their father, who talks casually with an Indian. The precariousness of the family's existence is implied by the dark, encircling forest and by the gaunt pair of dead trees, whose shadows fall across the cabin. Yet, the scene does not beg our pity, but only our admiration for the courage and resourcefulness of these pioneers. By their industry, the forest will surrender to fields and pasture: livestock graze, grain awaits cutting and stacking, while cabbage, corn, and pumpkins ripen in the garden. In the foreground, a newly laid "corduroy" (or log) road promises an end to the valley's isolation.
JWC
Jasper Cropsey American, 1823-1900
Eagle Cliff, Franconia Notch, New Hampshire,
1858
Oil on canvas
23 15/16 x 39 in.
(60.8 x 99.0 cm)
Purchased with funds from the State of North Carolina, 1952 (52.9.9)
199
AMERICAN ART
Louis Remy Mignot American, 1831-1870Landscape in Ecuador, 1859Oil on canvas
24 x 39 1/2 in.
(61.0 x 100.3 cm)
Purchased with funds from gifts by the American Credit Corporation, in memory of Guy T. Carswell; and various donors, by exchange, 1991 (91.2)
200
A native of Charleston, South Carolina, Louis Mignot enjoyed a brief but highly successful career as the only Southerner among the landscape painters of the Hudson River School. The turning point in his career came in the summer of 1857 when he accompanied the painter Frederic Church on a four-month expedition to Ecuador. The two friends trekked from the coastal rainforests through the Andean highlands, dominated by a stupendous range of snowcapped volcanoes. Mignot was profoundly challenged both by the extravagance of the scenery and by Church, whose grandly operatic interpretation of nature informs Mignot's panoramic Landscape in Ecuador.
Like most of Mignot's pictures, this painting is not a literal transcription of a specific scene, but an imaginative composite of various views and motifs, derived from his travel sketches. The artist invites the viewer on a journey both adventurous and spiritual: the eye roves through dense and humid jungle across viaduct and rolling grasslands towards a distant town, and upward over ascending ridges to the summit of El Altar. Presiding over all is the newly risen sun, an emblem of transcendent divinity.
The picture must have seemed the very image of a tropical paradise to an untraveled American in 1859. In fact, many of the artist's contemporaries imagined America, both South and North, as a second Eden, manifestly destined by God. Landscape in Ecuador celebrates the concord of human and divine aspirations, soon to be shattered by the outbreak of civil war.
JWC
Trained in Paris, Thomas Hicks enjoyed a successful career as a fashionable portrait painter in New York City. Chief among his sitters were Longfellow and Lincoln. Hicks also painted landscapes, still lifes, and scenes of everyday life (or genre). Of his genre pictures, the most engaging is The Musicale, Barber Shop, Trenton Falls, New York.
Hicks was a summer neighbor of the Trenton Falls Hotel, a famed resort in upstate New York. The hotel was popular with affluent urban families who escaped the heat of the city for a comfortable "wilderness" experience. Here the artist depicts one of the genteel pleasures offered to guests: a casual concert in the hotel's barbershop. Occupying a separate building on the hotel grounds, the shop was a male preserve, women by custom or rule keeping a respectful distance. The dignified man frozen in mid-song is William Brister, the hotel's barber. Among the accompanying musicians is a black fiddler who, like Brister, is rendered with none of the customary racial stereotyping. The easy association of the races implied in this painting is unusual for the period immediately following the end of the Civil War.
In the left corner, Hicks portrayed himself sketching the scene while the hotel's owner looks over his shoulder. In the foreground, a young man, Charles Tefft, sits listening to the music. Apparently, he has been hunting—note the rifle and hound. Could it have been Tefft who initiated the concert? After all, it was he who commissioned this warm-hearted souvenir of a summer afternoon.
JWC
Thomas Hicks American, 1823-1890The Musicale, Barber Shop, Trenton Falls, New York, 1866Oil on canvas
25 x 30 1/8 in.
(63.5 x 76.3 cm)
Purchased with funds from the State of North Carolina, 1952 (52.9.15)
201
AMERICAN ART
Albert Bierstadt American, born Germany, 1830-1902Bridal Veil Falls, Yosemite,
about 1871-73
Oil on canvas
36 1/8 x 26 3/8 in.
(91.7 x 67.0 cm)
Purchased with funds from the North Carolina Art Society (Robert F. Phifer Bequest) and various donors, by exchange, 1987(87.9)
202
German-born Albert Bierstadt gave definitive expression to America's westward expansionism in the 1860s and 1870s. His vast panoramas of the Rockies and Sierra Nevadas, their skies often turbulent and shot through with sunlight, introduced Americans to a majestic wilderness, awesome but unthreatening, and well worth possessing. In a sense, the artist staked claim to the land by painting it, then passed ownership on to the viewer.
Bierstadt found his greatest subject in California's Yosemite Valley, which he first visited in the summer of 1863. So spectacular was the remote and secluded valley that early visitors readily imagined it the Promised Land. Bierstadt's many paintings of Yosemite are indeed biblical in their grandeur, imbued with the sense that divinity dwelled within the wilderness. This painting, probably dating from the artist's return to the valley in 1872, depicts the aptly named Bridal Veil Falls, one of Yosemite's celebrated natural wonders. A companion of Bierstadt wrote that the falls "might well seem the veil worn by the earth at her granite wedding." The torrent, swollen by the spring thaw, leaps over the precipice and crashes onto the rocks below in a rising cloud of mist. The air shimmers in sunlight. Deer peaceably graze in this vision of earthly paradise. Ironically, the popularity of Bierstadt's paintings attracted droves of tourists to Yosemite, compelling the artist to look elsewhere for untrammeled scenery.
JWC
The Song of Hiawatha, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's epic poem, published in 1855, tells the story of an Ojibwa chief, his valiant struggle against evil, and his quest for peace. The poem inspired many artists, most notably Thomas Moran. In 1860 Moran made the trek to the southern shore of Lake Superior—Hiawatha's "shining Big-Sea-Water"—where he sketched the gnarled and towering rock formations. Partly from these sketches, he derived his spectacular landscapes that visualize the mythic world of Longfellow's hero.
Moran titled this painting with an evocative quotation from Canto IX: "Hiawatha and the Pearl-Feather." This portion of the poem recounts Hiawatha's battle against Megissogwon, the murderer of his ancestor. The hero's grandmother Nokomis points across the water to the West, where "fiercely the red sun descending/Burned his way along the heavens," and identifies it as the abode of Megissogwon. Moran imagines this realm as a primordial world lit by the sulfurous flare of a sunset that seems to ignite the clouds. Threatening crags and peaks rise up out of the "black pitch-water." The maw of a cavern offers no haven.
The wild sublimity and chromatic extravagance of this landscape owe much to the great British painter J. M. W. Turner. (Indeed, critics once dubbed Moran the "American Turner.") His study of Turner freed Moran to conceive of landscape as high, heroic poetry. For this painting, he amplified his sketches and memories of the Great Lakes region, employing pyrotechnic color and bravura technique to conjure the awesome power of creation.
JWC
Thomas Moran American, born Great Britain, 1837-1926"Fiercely the red sun descending/Burned his way along the heavens”about 1875Oil on canvas
33 3/8 x 50 1/16 in.
(84.8 x 127.1 cm)
Purchased with funds from the North Carolina Art Society (Robert F. Phifer Bequest), 1952 (52.9.34)
203
AMERICAN ART
Winslow Homer American, 1836 -1910Weaning the Calf, 1875Oil on canvas
24 x 38 in.
(61.0 x 96. 5 cm)
Purchased with funds from the State of North Carolina, 1952 (52.9.16)
204
At first glance, Homer's Weaning the Calf seems simple enough: a reminiscence of an idyllic summer down on the farm. Though the artist frequently addresses themes of childhood in his art, his pictures generally avoid the cloying sentimentality common to other Victorian painters. In this painting, he pays close attention to the play of sunlight and shadow, endowing the scene with the heightened realism of a fond and vivid memory. An expert storyteller, Homer is rarely straightforward. He resists full explanations, the better to guile the viewer's imagination. In Weaning the Calf, the relationship between the struggling boy and the two onlookers is left unresolved.
Such nostalgic visions were obviously escapist: they comforted Americans eager to forget four years of civil war as well as the disruptions of rapid industrialization. However, some scholars have suggested that Homer may have intended other, more complex meanings. Weaning the Calf is among a remarkable group of pictures from the 1870s depicting African Americans with an understanding and sympathy rare for the time. These paintings recently have been interpreted as a sustained meditation on the unsettled position of black people in postwar American society. In this picture, the central image of a black boy in tattered clothes straining to separate a stubborn calf from its mother has been read as a visual metaphor for the painful "weaning" of African Americans from slavery. Though intriguing, there is little evidence that Homer himself intended such a reading. If one is to believe a New York critic of 1876, Homer's contemporaries preferred to enjoy the picture simply as "a farmyard scene of a very spirited character."
JWC
George Inness American, 1825-1894
Under the Green wood, 1881
Oil on canvas
36 1/8 x 29 1/8 in. (91.7 x 74.0 cm)
Purchased with funds from the State of North Carolina, 1952 (52.9.17)
George Inness never fit in among the fraternity of landscape painters—including Jasper Cropsey, Albert Bierstadt, and Thomas Moran—who reveled in the grandeur and spectacle of the American wilderness. Volcanic sunsets or the majesty of the Yosemite Valley held little meaning for him. Instead, Inness was drawn to what he termed the "civilized landscape": an inhabited nature, tamed to human wishes. His pictures are less descriptive than evocative, the forms blurred, the colors muted, their temperament quiet and introspective. Through them, Inness sought a profound emotional correspondence between himself (or the viewer) and the natural world.
Under the Greenwood imagines a summer idyll. Near the forest edge, the shepherd boy has found a shady spot to whittle a stick. But for his clothes, he could be a Greek lad tending his flock in some dreamy Arcadia. Here nature is neither awesome nor savage. It possesses all the gentleness and radiance of a childhood memory. The boy's reverie is our own. By invoking so strongly the myth of a pastoral life — peaceful and harmonious — the picture acquires both timelessness and a timely point: it offered a poetic alternative to the starker realities of modern life.
Inness found the title to this painting in Shakespeare's famous song to the bucolic life from As You Like It (Act II, Sc. 5):
Under the greenwood tree
Who loves to lie with me,
And turn his merry note
Unto the sweet bird's throat,
Come hither, come hither, come hither . . .
JWC
205
AMERICAN ART
Augustus Saint-Gaudens American, born Ireland, 1848-1907The Puritan,
modeled 1886, reworked, reduced, and cast after 1899
Bronze
h. 31 in.
(78.7 cm)
Gift of Mr, and Mrs. Fabius B. Pendleton, 1971 (71.40.9)
206
The most talented and accomplished American sculptor of the nineteenth century, Augustus Saint-Gaudens received his art education in Paris and Rome. Primarily a portraitist, he created over the course of his career a pantheon of public statuary commemorating presidents (Lincoln, Garfield) and military heroes (Sherman, Farragut) as well as preachers, tycoons, and social lions. Masterful with large civic commissions, he was equally adept at the more intimate genre of relief portraiture. He designed and modeled his sculptures with unexcelled vigor and elegance, always with an intuitive appreciation for the humanity of his subjects. More than the work of any of his contemporaries, the sculpture of Saint-Gaudens expresses the ideals and optimism of America's Gilded Age.
Among the artist's most famous works is the stern, striding figure of Deacon Samuel Chapin (1595-1675). Standing more than eight feet tall, the statue was commissioned for a monument honoring one of the founders of Springfield, Massachusetts. However, with no surviving likeness of Chapin to guide him, Saint-Gaudens opted for what he called "an embodiment ... of the 'Puritan.'" Accordingly, he conceived the statue in general terms, emphasizing the heroic, almost mythic character of the early settlers in New England. Draped in a great billowing cloak, the figure projects an austere and commanding presence. He advances toward the viewer, cradling a weighty Bible in his arm, his downturned eyes shadowed by the wide-brimmed hat—the very incarnation of righteousness and unshakable purpose. Deacon Chapin proved so popular that Saint-Gaudens later modeled a reduced replica, retitled The Puritan, which was cast in a large edition.
JWC
At the height of his career, in the 1880s and 1890s, the British-born J. G. Brown was probably the most popular and successful artist in America. He was especially praised for his depiction of working-class children. Street urchins were his specialty. In the 1880s, New York swarmed with the children of the desperate poor. They were children robbed of their childhood, the sons and daughters of immigrants, many homeless and adrift in the teeming streets and alleys of lower Manhattan. However, in Brown's pictures, the squalor and viciousness of urban poverty is nowhere to be seen. Instead, the artist invented a sentimental fiction in which poor but honest and industrious youngsters elicit not our concern for their plight, but our admiration for their pluck.
This "rich man's fantasy" underlies A Tough Story, one of Brown's most engaging compositions. Posing the boys in his studio, the artist created a crisp, compelling narrative: three young bootblacks pause briefly in their work to listen intently to their barefoot friend's tale. Brown's straightforward, craftsman-like realism enhances the credibility of the scene—note the carefully observed details of the brushes and half-opened tin of polish. The name "Pat," carved into one boy's bootblack box, identifies the lad as Irish. Though dressed in rags, the boys are well scrubbed and well fed, appearing none the worse for the hard life they lead. As such, they were acceptable decoration for the parlors or picture galleries of polite New Yorkers who were doubtless reassured by this sentimental glimpse of the far-less fortunate.
JWC
John George Brown American, born Great Britain, 1831-1913A Tough Story,
1886
Oil on canvas
25 x 30 1/8 in.
(63.5x76.3 cm)
Purchased with funds from the State of North Carolina, 1952 (52.9.5)
207
AMERICAN ART
Thomas Eakins American, 1844-1916Portrait of Dr. Albert C Getchell,
1907
Oil on canvas
24 x 20 1/16 in.
(61.0 x 51.0 cm)
Purchased with funds from the State of North Carolina, 1967 (67.6.1)
Although he studied in Paris, Thomas Eakins was influenced more by the somber color, precise observation, and unsentimental humanism of seventeenth-century Dutch and Spanish painting. No other American portrait painter has equaled his ability to reveal the essential, unvarnished character of his subject. The poet Walt Whitman considered his friend Eakins the only artist "who could resist the temptation to see what [he] think[s] ought to be rather than what is."
Eakins's commitment to honesty earned him a reputation for harsh realism that sorely cost him friends and commissions. As a result, many of his later portraits were initiated by the artist, who doggedly sought to document in paint the range of humanity within his acquaintance. An example is this portrait of Albert C. Getchell (1857-1950), a prominent Worcester, Massachusetts, physician who reportedly met Eakins at a medical conference. Rather than flatter his subject as was customary, Eakins executes a frank, unpretentious likeness expressive of the doctor's quiet strength, but also of his fatigue and isolation. Strong light and shadow sculpt the face. Superficial details of clothing or setting are only cursorily noted. What concerns the artist is the physical structure of the head, how skin stretches and sags over muscle and bone, and how it all comes together to signify a man.
JWC/VB
208
The lure of France and of French Impressionism proved irresistible to a generation of American painters. Frederick Frieseke arrived in Paris as a student in 1898 and, save for occasional visits home, remained an expatriate. He once insisted that in France "I am more free and there are not the Puritanical restrictions which prevail in America." Unrestricted, Frieseke devoted himself almost exclusively to the painting of women: dressed or nude, lounging in the boudoir or taking tea in the garden. His is a gentleman's fantasy, his women inhabiting a charmed world — sheltered, sensual, and eternally sunlit. To render that world, the artist embraced a highly decorative Impressionist style, remarkable for its intense, rapturous color and vivacity of brushwork.
Large and dazzling, The Garden Parasol grandly evokes the serene pleasure of a summer idyll. It ranks among Frieseke's finest achievements: a sumptuous confection of light and color. The setting is the garden of the artist's house at Giverny, where Frieseke spent many summers as the next-door neighbor to Claude Monet. The seated woman is Sarah Frieseke, who frequently modeled for her husband. She is depicted as a cultivated woman of leisure whose reading is interrupted by the arrival of a visitor—or visitors, for it is our approach that distracts Mrs. Frieseke from her book and prompts her to fix us with a questioning stare. However, any drama that would arise from so genteel an encounter is fully upstaged by the garden setting, and especially by the Japanese parasol. It spices the scene with the fiery, swirling colors of the Orient.
JWC
Frederick Carl Frieseke American, 1874 -1939, active in France from 1898The Garden Parasol, 1910Oil on canvas
57 1/8 x 77 in.
(145.1 x 195.5 cm)
Purchased with funds from the State of North Carolina, 1973 (73.14)
209
Art of the Twentieth Century
AT THE BEGINNING OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY European artists conducted daring experiments that set the stage for the avant-garde movements of subsequent decades. A young Spanish artist, Pablo Picasso, working with French painter Georges Braque, invented Cubism with its fracturing of forms and space into angular shapes. French artists led by Henri Matisse employed brilliant, saturated colors and bold brushwork that delighted—and provoked. In the Netherlands, Piet Mondrian introduced a geometric abstraction of straight horizontal and vertical lines, rectangles, and primary colors, while Russian painter Vasily Kandinsky created the first abstract paintings based on forms in nature. The German Expressionists employed brilliant color with a vigorous, even raw, style that often used distortion and exaggeration of forms to express intense feelings and emotions.
In the years between world wars, Europe continued to be the center of advanced art. The Bauhaus, an innovative school of art, architecture, and design in Germany, established many of the principles and standards that guide architects and designers to this day. Young iconoclasts founded the Dada movement, the influence of which still echoes among artists who incorporate found objects into their work, use texts as images, and emphasize concept over finished product. Artists drawn to fantasy, dreams, and the unconscious formed the Surrealist movement, which resonated with artists in the United States and Mexico.
Not until the years after World War II did the United States become the acknowledged center of avant-garde art. Drawing on Surrealism's experiments with the unconscious mind, the Abstract Expressionists in New York and California became the new leaders of the art world in this country and Europe. However, not all artists shared their enthusiasm for abstraction and flamboyant self-expression. Some painters, including Thomas Hart Benton and Andrew Wyeth, employed a representational style to capture aspects of life in America. Others, such as Georgia O'Keeffe and Alex Katz, adhered to recognizable imagery, but simplification and flattening of forms gave their work a decidedly modern feel.
The 1960s and 1970s saw new energy and creativity surging in many directions, from Pop Art, with its celebration of popular culture and consumer society (exemplified in the works of Andy Warhol and Ed Ruscha), to Minimalism, which reduced painting and sculpture to the most essential geometric forms, supposedly devoid of emotion and self-expression, as in Ronald Bladen's Three Elements in the NCMA's collection.
In the 1980s European artists again became the international art world superstars. Some of the leading figures in this European renaissance—Gerhard Richter, Georg Baselitz, and Anselm Kiefer, all Germans — are represented in the Museum's collection. Other internationally renowned painters in the collection include Guillermo Kuitca of Argentina and Moshe Kupferman of Israel.
The Calligrapher Replies I (detail)
211
ART OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY
Ernst Ludwig Kirchner German,1880-1938, active in Switzerland after 1917Panama Girls,
1910-11
Oil on canvas
19 7/8 x 19 7/8 in.
(50.5 x 50.5 cm)
Bequest of W. R. Valentiner, 1965 (65.10.30)
In 1905 Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Erich Heckel, and Karl Schmidt-Rottluff issued a manifesto. The young German artists called for "a bridge" to move art from stale academic conventions to a visceral expressionism. Their loose alliance, Die Brucke (The Bridge), shared convictions with other groups (like the Fauves and the Cubists) who sought a radical departure from the picture that reproduced or copied nature. The Brucke artists, led by Kirchner, developed a terse vocabulary of agitated line and discordant color to convey their subjective response to the startling, exotic, modern urban spectacle.
Panama Girls, one of several dance-hall paintings by Kirchner, is typical of Brucke subject matter and characteristic of its expressive style. Kirchner's rejection of naturalism was encouraged by his exposure to Henri Matisse and ethnographic sculpture. After seeing work by Matisse in Berlin in 1909, he adapted the Fauve palette, using broad patches of vibrant colors for Panama Girls. South Pacific carvings Kirchner found in a Dresden museum influenced the composition. The Panama girls, boldly articulated and lined up in a shallow space, suggest a condensed frieze, a compositional device based on decorated house beams from the Palau Islands. Kirchner uses the left-right, left-right rhythm of the turned faces to add the sensation of movement, with the dancers' long, thin legs punctuating the beat. In escaping imitation, Kirchner helped revolutionize modern art.
HP
212
Often stereotyped as tortured souls who transferred their angst directly to canvas, the German Expressionists treated various subjects in various moods. They realistically appraised themes of city life, and as Ernst Ludwig Kirchner's Two Nude Figures in a Landscape demonstrates, they celebrated nature in pastorals idealizing the primitive.
Two Nude Figures was likely done at Fehmarn, the picturesque Baltic Sea island where several Brucke members spent time painting. Using the same palette applied in the same feathery brushstroke for the figures and their surroundings, Kirchner has integrated the two nudes into the landscape rather than making them the dominant element of the composition. He aimed to express a perfect union between man and nature but not necessarily in a naturalistic vocabulary. The figures have elongated proportions, and the simplified palette relies on salmons, red-browns, blues, and greens. The pebbly texture of the ground breaks up the liquid tones, giving the colors an airy freshness that suits the seashore setting.
The painting, done about the time the short-lived Brucke disbanded, was until recently assigned to another group member, Otto Mueller—an indication of the ongoing reciprocal influence among the German Expressionists. Sharing outlook and interests, all these artists saw nature as a panacea. The painted arcadia of Two Nude Figures, flooded with sun-soaked color, offers refuge from a society in upheaval.
HP
Ernst Ludwig Kirchner German, 1880-1938, active in Switzerland after 1917Two Nude Figures in a Landscape, 1913Oil with small additions of wax on canvas
47 ½ x 35 1/2 in.
(120.6 x 90.2 cm)
Bequest of W. R. Valentiner, 1965 (65.10.48)
213
ART OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY
Maurice Sterne American, born Latvia, 1878-1957Dance of the Elements, Bali, 1913Oil on canvas
56 3/4 x 65 1/2 in.
(144.1 x 166.4 cm)
Purchased with funds from the State of North Carolina, 1952 (52.9.28)
What Tahiti was for the French artist Paul Gauguin, the Indonesian island of Bali was for Maurice Sterne: a tropical Eden, undefiled by Western civilization, where people lived in accord with nature and the rhythms of an ancient culture. A self-described nomad, Sterne arrived on the remote island in 1912 and remained nearly two years. For the artist, life on the island was a rapturous dream, "an undulating spectrum of colors . . . which moved to the constant, exotic pulsing of the Balinese music."
Dance of the Elements is one of Sterne's largest paintings from his stay on Bali. It is certainly his most ambitious. Painted in the colors of night, it depicts a ritual ceremony within a crowded temple court. In the center sit an elderly priestess and her attendants, circled by dancers bearing bowls, fans, and braziers of smoking incense. (A keen observer but with little understanding of the Hindu rites, Sterne erroneously interpreted these offerings as symbolic of the elements: water, air, and fire.) Some of the dancers appear lost in an ecstatic trance common to Balinese religious rites. The composition—a pyramidal architecture of twisting, contorted figures compressed within a shallow space—was inspired by French modernism, specifically Paul Cezanne's Great Bathers (in the Philadelphia Museum of Art). When Sterne's Balinese paintings were first exhibited in New York in 1915, their exotic subject matter and avant-garde treatment provoked a genuine sensation and inspired the American fantasy of "Bali Hai."
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Living as an expatriate in Berlin prompted Marsden Hartley to reflect upon his native country and his own identity as an American. In the summer of 1914 he began a series of paintings exploring what he later called "the idea of America." The series—abandoned after only four pictures-—was no jingoist anthem, no pictorial "America the Beautiful." The artist had long been troubled by what he judged as the soulless greed and violence of modern industrial society. (To Gertrude Stein, he damned New York City as an "inferno .. . run to the machinery of business"). For Hartley, the cure for civilization was to be found in the rapturous embrace of the "primitive." Like many artists and writers before and after him, he idealized pre-Columbian America, which he imagined as a promised land, inhabited by a virtuous, pacific, and deeply spiritual race. To a friend he confessed that "I find myself wanting to be an Indian—to paint my face with the symbols of that race I adore[,] go to the West and face the sun forever—that would seem the true expression of human dignity."
Indian Fantasy is just that, a romantic fantasy upon a Native American theme. In style and execution the painting owes much to the European avant-garde, which also celebrated the "primitive" arts of Africa, Oceania, and the ancient Americas. However, the subject—an ascending arrangement of Pueblo and Plains Indian motifs and symbols, presided over by a totemic eagle with wings outstretched against a rising (or setting) sun—is purely, uniquely American. The insistent symmetry and the bold patterning only heighten the mystical character of the image. Here, Hartley conjures a redemptive vision of earthly and spiritual harmony, all the more poignant for being painted just before the outbreak of World War I.
JWC
Marsden Hartley American, 1877-1943Indian Fantasy, 1914Oil on canvas
46 11/16 x 39 5/16 in,
(118.6 x 99.7 cm)Purchased with funds from the State of North Carolina, 1975(75.1.4)
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ART OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY
Lyonel Feininger American, 1871-1956, active in Germany 1887-1937The Green Bridge II,
1916
Oil on canvas
49 3/8 x 39 1/2 in.
(125.4 x 100.3 cm)
Gift of Mrs. Ferdinand Moller, 1957 (57.38.1)
An American resident in Germany since 1887, Lyonel Feininger met Karl Schmidt-Rottluff and fellow Brucke founder Erich Heckel just after this radical group had relocated to Berlin in 1912. More important to Feininger's development as a painter was his discovery of Cubism at about this same time. In 1907, he had abruptly left a successful career as an internationally known political cartoonist and comic-strip artist to devote himself to painting, dividing his time for the next several years between Paris and Berlin. It was not, however, until he absorbed the lessons of Cubism, which he saw in a Paris exhibition in 1911, that he found himself as an artist. In the five years between seeing the Cubism exhibition and painting The Green Bridge II, Feininger experimented. The work falls into two distinct groups, one in which he employs the sinuous, energetic line of his cartooning style and a second in which he begins shaping the austere vocabulary of crystalline, light-soaked abstraction on which his renown rests. The Green Bridge II reveals the artist confidently merging the strengths of these approaches.
Feininger painted the first Green Bridge in 1909 and repeated the composition in a 1910 etching before painting the 1916 version. In this slight variation of the original, the bridge, an incongruous and coolly alluring mint green, functions as a somewhat askew proscenium arch. It encloses a "stage set" of mildly caricatured figures, some in work clothes and others dressed for an evening out, who fill a small-town street. The woman snugged into the lower right corner serves as a mediator between viewers and the townspeople. This unassuming painting, with its dancing marionette-like figures and enticing atmosphere, modestly celebrates modest
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pleasures—an end-of-the-day moment of relaxation and recreation. Set against the war-torn days of 1916, the scene takes on added poignancy.
If the painting represents a wish to salvage life's simple satisfactions, it also blends in nostalgic memories of the artist's years in France in the preceding decade, a time which nurtured Feininger's lifelong affection for that country. Exploring Paris and its environs, Feininger saw bridges and viaducts passing over urban streets, like the Meudon and Arceuil aqueducts that he often sketched—and much like the setting with its unidentified bridge in the Museum's painting. Bridges intrigued Feininger; their engineering appealed to him—and inspired him.
In the Museum's painting, Feininger uses the imposing green curve to tie the composition together. The people, as well as the buildings and street, are created of rounded facets of transparent colors, echoes of the overarching viaduct. This fragmentation, in sometimes unlikely colors, and the repeated curve, which pinwheels throughout the composition, set the painting in motion. In the next decade Feininger's paring-down process would replace people, movement, and semicircles with a vast, otherworldly realm of calm stability, mostly horizontals and verticals in harmonious equilibrium. Anticipated here are the deep space that would always be important to Feininger and the glowing luminosity of his future palette.
Feininger defies categorization. He thought of himself as an American, yet he is closely identified with early twentieth-century German painting. Indeed, he lived in Germany for fifty years, taught at the Bauhaus, and exhibited with various avant-garde German groups. (Feininger was also included in the Nazis' Entartete Kunst exhibition, the demagogic 1937 show exposing "degenerate art"—a development which precipitated his return to the United States.) But his subject matter, handling of color and structure, and refinement of feeling set him apart. In contrast to the German Expressionists, Feininger maintains a mild temperature in his open-ended, atmospheric universe, so lyrically lit that it seems to hold magical healing powers.
Feininger individualized everything he learned. As can be seen in The Green Bridge //, he shared Italian Futurism's fascination with machines and motion and French Orphism's ambition to resurface Analytic Cubism with color. Ultimately, however, he found both movements disappointingly flat in feeling. Beguiled by the way Cubism fractured the subject into its parts, Feininger was equally curious about how things are put together. Witness his tinkering with toys and scale models and his passion for music. Moved by the clarity he found in the strict architectural patterns of music, especially Bach, he sought its visual equivalent. There is indeed a correspondence between the translucent, overlapping, repeated geometric forms in his paintings and the contrapuntal character of fugues, which Feininger himself composed. An innate romantic, Feininger invented an uplifting, mysteriously delightful artistic language.
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ART OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY
Karl Schmidt-Rottluff German, 1884-1976Portrait of Emy,
1919
Oil on canvas
28 5/16 x 25 3/4 in.
(73.5 x 65.5 cm)
Bequest of W. R. Valentiner, 1965 (65.10.58)
The member who thought up Die Brucke's name, Karl Schmidt-Rottluff exercised a raw talent that made his style the most vigorous of the group. Exploiting an innate understanding of composition, he carved out a crudely monumental style characterized by drastically reduced forms rendered in hotly contrasting colors. His formal vocabulary reflects the impact of French Cubism, which had been exhibited in Germany since 1912; Schmidt-Rottluff was the Briicke artist most affected by the Parisian school.
If Cubism played its part in Schmidt-Rottluff's development, so did his interest in African art and his experiments with woodcut. These influences are interwoven in his Portrait of Emy, with its face like a mask sculpted from a block of wood. Schmidt-Rottluff contorts physical facts to emphasize emotion. Painted the year after he married Emy Frisch, the portrait of his bride manifests the aggressively anti-naturalist colors, the emphatic outlines, and the heightened distortion of appearance that typify German Expressionism. The artist allows the rough texture of the canvas to show through, further denying the illusion of reality. In succeeding decades, though he gradually softened this harsh, almost barbaric simplification of form, Schmidt-Rottluff continued extracting from his subjects a potent expressivity.
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Emil Nolde was a relatively little-known Impressionist when Karl Schmidt-Rottluff invited him to join the artists' alliance known as Die Brucke in 1906. Though he, like the younger Brucke artists, believed in nature's spirituality and color's expressive power, the independent Nolde soon left the group. A thrilling colorist in various media, he depicted Bible stories and primordial legends, as well as landscapes, seascapes, and flowers throughout a long career.
Nolde's watercolors best reveal his extraordinary gifts as a colorist. Watercolors, and works on paper in general, provided a crucial testing ground for many German artists of the early twentieth century. Few, however, approached watercolor with the daring intuitive panache of Nolde. An improviser, he applied the watercolor to moistened Japan paper and in effect dyed the paper with the pigment, imbuing the saturated colors with a luminous depth. Nolde also knew how to coax eloquence from paper left blank.
Still Life, Tulips has the feel of a spontaneous, exultant response to nature's glory, found in the rare and the ubiquitous. Flamboyant amaryllis oversee tulips bunched along the lower border—vermilions and scarlets radiating around one golden orb of a tulip blossom and set against the modulated tones of a dusky purple sky. The cropped composition fills the sheet, suggesting that it extends beyond its edges. This reverent, romantic watercolor sings praise to nature's awe-inspiring dynamism.
HP
Emil Nolde German, 1867-1956Still Life, Tulips,
about 1930
Watercolor on paper
18 ¾ x 13 7/8 in.
(47.6 x 35.2 cm)
Bequest of W. R. Valentiner, 1965 (65.10.51)
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ART OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY
Max Beckmann German, 1884-1950, active in United States from 1947Self-Portrait, 1932Watercolor and charcoal on paper
24 ¾ x 18 7/8 in.
(62.8 x 48 cm)
Bequest of W. R. Valentiner, 1965(65.10.4)
Although Max Beckmann belonged to the German Expressionists' generation, as a young painter in the second and third decades of the twentieth century he stood resolutely apart from them. In his view, their inclination toward abstraction threatened to reduce painting to mere decoration. World War I only confirmed Beckmann's determination to use art to address man's tragic fight against evil. In Beckmann's paintings, this epic struggle takes place in a stage-set world, crowded with haunting presences and relying on the symbolism of cabaret and carnival. For Beckmann, role-playing represented a survival strategy, an outlook that also found expression in a career-long series of more than eighty self-portraits in which the painter often cast himself in such guises as a circus performer or mythological hero.
In the Museum's self-portrait, however, he presents himself straightforwardly as Beckmann the artist. Without mask or costume, Beckmann retains only his ever-present cigarette and a stretched canvas on an easel, his lone weapon against the irremedial asperities of an inhuman world. The tense linearity of the watercolor's pictorial architecture squeezes the subject into a claustrophobic space typical of Beckmann—and transforms the portrait into a metaphor for the imprisonment of a soul. In the dual role of vulnerable man and intransigent artist—on the eve of the Nazi takeover when art was threatened and life itself was uncertain — he personifies the suppressed tensions of an entire age.
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Though World War I forced Vasily Kandinsky home to Russia, he spent many years before and after the war in Germany, actively involved in the artistic ferment. His influential book, On the Spiritual in Art, first appeared there in 1912. Acquainted with the avant-garde Brucke artists, he formed associations with more like-minded innovators such as Franz Marc and Lyonel Feininger. After the war, Kandinsky joined Feininger on the faculty of the Bauhaus, where he taught until this revolutionary school of art and design was closed by the Nazis in 1933.
Zunehmen, done that same year only shortly before Kandinsky sought refuge in France, is a testament to the artist's conviction that nonrepresentational art could be pictorial rather than decorative. The title helps reveal Kandinsky's intent. "Zunehmen" and the French name he inscribed on the painting's reverse, "croissance," both connote growth or improvement. Both words are idiomatic for the waxing crescent moon, a recurring shape in the painting.
Zunehmen has a meditative, almost cosmic quality, as though one is looking at the clustered constellations of a distant galaxy. The work's calming restraint, its lofty message pose a soft-spoken rebuke to the conditions in Germany in the early 1930s. Kandinsky, never abandoning hope for an end to, in his words, "the nightmare of materialism," envisioned an art for a new spiritual epoch.
HP
Vasily Kandinsky Russian, 1866-1944, active in Germany and FranceZunehmen
(also known as Croissance), 1933Oil, egg tempera, and ink on paper
20 1/16 x 12 3/8 in.
(51 x 31.4 cm)
Bequest of W. R. Valentiner, 1965 (65.10.29)
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ART OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY
Georgia O'Keeffe American, 1887-1986Cebolla Church,
1945
Oil on canvas
20 1/16 x 36 1/4 in.
(51.1 x 92.0 cm)
Purchased with funds from the North Carolina Art Society (Robert F. Phifer Bequest), in honor of Dr. Joseph C. Sloane, 1972 (72.18.1)
Georgia O'Keeffe was in the vanguard of artists who in the first decades of the twentieth century synthesized an energetic, self-consciously American response to European modernism. She outlived all of her contemporaries, becoming in later years a hallowed and almost mythic figure. Her best-known work was inspired by the light and rugged landscape of northern New Mexico. Beginning in 1929, she spent many summers there and eventually took up year-round residence. Never comfortable with the loud and crowded life of New York City, O'Keeffe found sanctuary among the remote highlands and valleys. Her paintings are spiritual distillations of places and things. Whether it was the wild, sensuous topography of the desert, the antlered skull of a deer, or the austere facade of a mission church, O'Keeffe invested her subjects with a mystical aura that transcended the mundane reality of desert, bone, or church.
Often on her drives through the New Mexican highlands near her home, O'Keeffe would pass through the village of Cebolla with its rude adobe Church of Santo Nino. The artist was moved by the poignancy of the little building: its sagging, sun-bleached walls and rusted tin roof seemed "so typical of the difficult life of the people." When she came to paint the church she addressed it forthrightly, emphasizing its isolation and stark simplicity. Literally formed out of the earth, the building affirms the permanence and the hard, defiant patience of the people of Cebolla. For O'Keeffe, the church symbolized human endurance and aspiration. Writing about the painting in 1973, the artist volunteered that "I have always thought it one of my very good pictures, though its message is not as pleasant as many others."
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In February 1937, Thomas Hart Benton was sent by the Kansas City Star to sketch the flood-devastated areas of southeastern Missouri. The artist reported that "the roads of the flood country were full of movers .... Every once in a while seepage from under the levee would force evacuation of a house and you would see a great struggle to get animals and goods out of the rising water." Benton's quick, vivid sketches later became the inspiration for Spring on the Missouri. However, in translating the cursory drawings into a painting, the artist reimagined the scene as epic theater, symbolic of the common man's valiant, if ultimately tragic, struggle with the forces of nature. Against a backdrop of threatening storm, two sharecroppers scramble to rescue their few possessions from the advancing river. The wagons and mules create a strong upward diagonal, evenly dividing the picture into light and dark. Within this dynamic composition, the forms are agitated and willfully distorted. Further heightening the melodrama, a low, eerie sunlight plays across the scene.
Benton not only celebrated the courage and stoic endurance of rural America; he also defied the rising tide of abstract art which he dismissed as a pretentious European import. In such pictures as Spring on the Missouri, he preached a nativist art, rooted in the experience of the American heartland, and as plain and eloquent as an Ozark ballad.
JWC
Thomas Hart Benton American, 1889-1975Spring on the Missouri, 1945Oil on masonite
30 ¼ x 40 1/4 in.
(76.7 x 102.2 cm)
Purchased with funds from the State of North Carolina, 1977 (77.1.3)
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ART OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY
Eugene Berman American, born Russia, 1899-1972Sunset (Medusa),
1945
Oil on canvas
57 5/8 x 45 in.
(146.3 x 114.3 cm)
Purchased with funds from the North Carolina Art Society (Robert F. Phifer Bequest), in honor of Beth Cummings Paschal, 1974 (74.8.2)
Eugene Berman rejected modernism's faith in progress and the future. Instead, he drew inspiration from Classical antiquity, painting strange and melancholy reveries on time and the transience of life. Beginning in the 1940s, he painted a series of enigmatic women, each solitary against a backdrop of decay. Often the figures stand or sit with their backs to the viewer, or crouch with their faces hidden, as in Sunset (Medusa). In each painting, the woman is visually and emotionally remote. Berman's sense of drama derived from his work as a celebrated theatrical designer.
In Sunset (Medusa) the female figure, clothed in velvet and lace, kneels grandly on a shallow stage before a ruined wall—an ominous setting for this eerie and uncertain drama. The heightened clarity of the image as much as the trompe I'oeil monogram at the bottom edge suggest Northern Renaissance art, specifically that of the German master Albrecht Durer. According to Emily Genauer, writing in Art Digest in 1949, Berman explained that the "curious, spattered, almost mouldy surface" of his paintings symbolized "all the bullet-holes with which the world's walls have been peppered during [World War II], as well as our whole moral and spiritual degeneration." The beauty of the writhing locks of Berman's Medusa, modeled by the film actress Ona Munson (later Berman's wife), suggests a comic, Freudian interpretation of the snake-haired Gorgon of Greek mythology, whose horrific features turned men to stone.
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Andrew Wyeth's meticulously imagined art conveys a tragic vision. Considered together, his paintings comprise a lifelong meditation upon the frailty of life and the imminence of death. The artist celebrates the bleak landscape of late autumn and winter, the weathered barns and farmhouses of Maine and Pennsylvania, and the people who endure a hardscrabble existence on the margins of society.
Winter 1946 is one of the artist's most autobiographical works, painted immediately after the death of his father, the celebrated illustrator N. C. Wyeth. According to the artist, the hill became a symbolic portrait of his father, and the figure of the boy running aimlessly, Allan Lynch, "was me, at a loss — that hand drifting in the air was my free soul, groping." Even without this story, the image is troubling: a dark, jagged form set awkwardly against an oceanic swell of brown. A skilled dramatist, Wyeth eliminates all distracting elements from the scene. The boy and his thoughts are visually isolated, his eyes averted. Further deepening the physical and emotional alienation of the boy, the artist has us look down upon the scene from an improbable height. The heightened clarity of the picture results from Wyeth's use of the egg tempera medium: ground earth and mineral colors mixed with yolk and thinned with water. Wyeth liked tempera for its "feeling of dry lostness."
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Andrew Newell Wyeth American, born 1917Winter 1946, 1946Tempera on composition board
31 3/8 x 48 in.
(79.7 x 121.9 cm)
Purchased with funds from the State of North Carolina, 1972 (72.1.1)
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ART OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY
Richard Diebenkorn American, 1922-1993Berkeley No. 8, 1954Oil on canvas
69 1/8 x 59 1/8 in.
(176 x 150 cm)Gift of W.R. Valentiner, 1957 (57.34.3)
Richard Diebenkorn crafted a distinctive West Coast response to abstract art. His paintings are intuitively structured and highly subjective, yet remain rooted in the visual experience of the world. They have been rightly described as "abstract landscapes." The connection between picture and place is further suggested by the artist's habit of titling his paintings after the towns where he lived. Berkeley No. 8 is one of the most lyrical works in a series executed while Diebenkorn was living in California, across the bay from San Francisco. As with all of the artist's best work, it is a summary of his quickened perceptions of color and space. Rather than plan, Diebenkorn improvises the picture, discovering its image through trial and error. Line matters as much as color: free, calligraphic drawing both over-and underlies the layered passages of paint. The composition itself is built of blocks of color, reportedly inspired by aerial views of the American Southwest, the terrain cut by roads into a patchwork of desert and adobe hues. Diagonals cleave and fracture the horizontal elements of the design. Balance and motion coexist precariously. There is no one focus to the picture; each form and gesture carries the same weight. Most remarkable is the quality of light, a synthesis of the parched colors of New Mexico with the soft, marine radiance of the Bay Area. For Diebenkorn, light is everything. The artist once confessed, "I discover the light of a place gradually, and only through painting it."
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Franz Kline American, 1910-1962Orange Outline,
1955
Oil on paperboard, mounted on canvas
38 x 40 in.
(96.5 x 101.6 cm)
Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Samuel J. Levin, 1958 (58.8.8)
The story goes that Franz Kline first awakened to the expressive potential of abstract art when he projected several small ink drawings upon the wall. Greatly enlarged, the images acquired grandeur and aggressive authority while still retaining the spontaneity and verve of the sketches. For the artist, they pointed the way to making big, ambitious paintings that capitalized on his strength as a draftsman. He rapidly developed a muscular, almost swaggering style of painting that has become one of the great achievements of Abstract Expressionism. Though known primarily for starkly black-and-white paintings, Kline never shied from color. Orange Outline began with color: warm earth tones, which the artist then overlaid with white and black.
Kline sought to fix in paint a moment's living and breathing. He insisted that his most successful paintings were visual translations of a specific emotional state. Describing his images as "painting experiences," he explained that "I don't decide in advance that I'm going to paint a definite experience, but in the act of painting, it becomes a genuine experience for me."
Kline's brash and exuberant art wells from a distinctively urban, specifically New York sensibility. (He once professed a preference for the roar of city traffic to the peace and quiet of Thoreau's Walden Pond.) Each of his works is a clamorous construction site, built stroke by stroke, revised and reworked. In Orange Outline., the seemingly haphazard swaths of tar-black paint suggest a truss spanning and shoring the composition. The painting contains but barely the energies of its making. Orange Outline also gains a gritty honesty by the deliberate, blatant roughness of its execution and the poverty of materials: cheap, commercial house paint slathered on a flimsy sheet of paperboard.
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ART OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY
Joseph Cornell American, 1903-1972Suzy's Sun
(for Judy Tyler), 1957Wooden box construction, with objects, paper collage, and tempera
10 3/4 x 15 x 4 in.
(27.3 x 38.1 x 10.2 cm)
Purchased with funds from the State of North Carolina, 1978 (78.1.1)
Joseph Cornell, an autodidact with an associative mind, is identified with the enthralling shadow boxes he fabricated and filled with disparate objects — collected both by chance and by choice. Time and memory, themes central to Cornell, are pointedly addressed in Susy's Sun (for Judy Tyler). The sun (a cutout from an antipasto tin) and the sea (an implied presence) speak with eloquent authority of life cycles and passing time. Equally potent symbols, driftwood and the infinitely spiraling seashell readily bring to mind the tides on which they ride, summoning a universal metaphor for the ebb and flow of life itself.
The assembled elements oddly—and poetically—lead to a sense of irrevocable loss; Cornell equates the human condition with a state of permanent longing. Perhaps that outlook explains his attraction to the theater, a world where dreams become real, if only temporarily. Cornell dedicated this box to an actress, one of the many starlets who fascinated him. Judy Tyler had just achieved a certain celebrity when she was killed in an automobile accident. Suzy probably refers to the artist's assistant Suzanne Miller. The sun, designated as Suzy's, presides over the box as a life-sustaining force counteracting the finality of death. Cornell is paying homage to the magical powers of transformation possessed by both the sun and art. The elegy culminates in an ode to fantasy and creativity.
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Paul Delvaux was nearly forty when he discovered the Italian Surrealist Giorgio de Chirico, whose work was to have decisive impact on his style. Though Delvaux never officially joined their ranks, both he and the Surrealists relied on the unconscious as a source of revelation. As a result his paintings, like theirs, are haunted by enigmas. Delvaux's statuesque females — unfazed by their public nudity and largely indifferent to one another — occupy phantasmal settings. The artist's themes, shaped by incongruity and contradiction, often relate to the impenetrable isolation in which each individual dwells.
Delvaux acknowledges Marguerite Yourcenar's 1954 novel, Memoires d'Hadrien, as the inspiration for his painting. In this vivid reconstruction of the Roman emperor's life, Yourcenar has Hadrian musing on the nebulous borders between real-life experiences and dreams and on the inability of reason to explain matters of the heart—ideas with ready appeal for Delvaux. The artist then ignores the details of the ruler's infatuation with the exotic, ill-fated Antinotis, who drowned in the Nile. Instead he confronts viewers with a sad and strange deathbed ritual. Only three figures pay Antinoiis any heed. The rest of the solemn celebrants—all women, many in extravagant hats, some scantily clad — Delvaux arranges frieze-like in the background and middle ground. The entire cult has been transported beyond the rational to a dream world of inexplicable mysteries.
HP
Paul Delvaux Belgian, 1897-1994Antinous, 1958Oil on plywood
49 1/8 x 75 1/8 in. (124.8 x 190.8 cm)
Gift of John L. Loeb, 1962 (62.22.3)
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ART OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY
Morris Louis American, 1912-1962Pi, 1960Acrylic on canvas
103 x 175 in.
(261.6 x 444.5 cm)
Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Gordon Hanes, 1982 (82.15)
Morris Louis's paintings appear serene, almost ethereal, belying the technical difficulties involved in their making. Working within a cramped studio, the artist pleated and tacked large spans of cotton canvas to a wooden stretcher, then poured dilute paint down the pleats, tilting the stretcher to further guide the course of the liquid. Paint soaked the fabric, like watercolor into paper. Critics at the time praised the flat, uninflected character of surfaces. Writing in 1960, the critic Clement Greenberg insisted that Louis's "suppression of the difference between painted and unpainted surfaces causes pictorial space to leak through—or rather, to seem about to leak through—the framing edges of the picture into the space beyond them."
Pi is one of the earliest of the Unfurleds, a series of 150 monumental paintings each characterized by symmetrical banks of streaming color separated by an empty expanse of white. Despite the simplicity and flatness of the design, the bleached white of the canvas and the rivulets of color interact to create the illusion of vibrant space. In Pi the progression of color, warm to cool, furthers the sense of recession, as through a valley, towards a luminous void. Occupying two-thirds of the canvas, that void becomes the dominant element, uniting as well as dividing the sides. In such paintings, Louis aspired to a sublime purity of expression, cleared of the rhetorical and nonessential — a singularly visual experience.
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All her life Minnie Evans was pestered by admonitory dreams—and uplifted by visions of hope and happiness. Inspired by these communications she felt were from God, the self-taught artist employed a psychedelic palette to spread the good news of salvation. A long life spent entirely in southeastern North Carolina included twenty-six years as a gatekeeper at Airlie Gardens near Wilmington. Influenced by this Edenic environment, Evans realized her visions in bursting compositions matching the natural exuberance around her. Nature is one source for her abstract motifs of flowers, petals, and leaves; the Bible, another. Some drawings exude the lyricism of the Psalms; others virtually illustrate the supernatural phenomena recounted in the Revelation to John.
Nearly fifty years old before she started drawing in earnest, this African-American artist slowly evolved the emblematic presentation for which she is best known—an iconic head set in a vivid floral mandala, a format more closely resembling Near Eastern art than Western prototypes. As exemplified by the 1962 King (one of seven drawings by Evans in the Museum's collection), symmetry controls the lush foliage, imposing a balance that underscores the artist's view of God's proportioned design. Evans's colored-pencil representations of paradise make a joyful noise, testifying to her faith in a world harmony. This rhapsodic visionary dwells on earthly abundance rather than hardship, heavenly reward rather than retribution.
HP
Minnie Evans American, 1892-1987
King, 1962Colored pencil on paper
11 7/8 x 8 3/4 in.
(30.2 x 22.2 cm)
Gift of Mr. and Mrs. D.H. McCollough and the North Carolina Art Society (Robert F. Phifer Bequest), 1987 (87.7)
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ART OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY
Henry Spencer Moore British, 1898-1986Large Standing Figure: Knife Edge,
1961, cast 1976
Bronze
h. (including base)
137 1/2 in.
(349.3 cm)Bequest of Gordon Hanes. 1997 (97.1)
A pioneering genius, this long-lived, prolific sculptor made work in wood, stone, and bronze that can be found all over the world. As a young student in London, Henry Moore absorbed the influences around him, both the work of his contemporaries (notably the Surrealists, Picasso, and the Romanian sculptor Constantin Brancusi) and in particular the pre-Columbian and ancient art in the British Museum. It is easy to see a connection between Large Standing Figure and ancient art. Interestingly, Moore first called an earlier version of this work Winged Victory, acknowledging a debt to an earlier "Winged Victory," the Louvre's Hellenistic Nike of Samothrace.
The three variants of this sculpture have a second source; they are based upon a bone. Moore liked the shape of bones. He studied and drew them in museums, in the landscape, or in his kitchen. This practice reached a climax in the early 1960s, at about the time Moore had the idea to model a work on the knife-edge thinness of a bird's breast bone. Moore worked up the maquette extensively in clay, adding vestigial head and arms and elaborating the torso with drapery—and thus drawing out an affinity with Greek sculpture. The relationship to a bird, however, is not lost. The sculpture retains a suggestion of a wingspread and, with the wings' diagonal orientation, a sensation of rising skyward.
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Henry Spencer Moore British, 1898-1986Large Spindle Piece,
1968-69, cast 1974
Bronze
h. 128 x w. 127 x
diam. 77 1/4in.
(325.1 x 322.6 x 196.2 cm)
Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Gordon Hanes, 1980 (80.6.3)
Henry Moore especially admired Constantin Brancusi for returning sculpture to uncomplicated, basic shapes, a lesson he took to heart. A striking formal simplification is a hallmark of Moore's oeuvre.
The soft curves and bulges of Large Spindle Piece reflect the artist's abiding interest in organic form, yet its pointed projections—echoing machine parts—demonstrate that he was not unaffected by modern technology. For Moore's concern was not just with nature and the human figure, but with their relationship to the man-made environment. The colossal Spindle represents a variation on the "points" theme which Moore first used in the 1930s. For Moore, the points activate form. He further enlivens the mass by introducing a void into the solid, manipulating empty space as deftly as he does metal. Not an inert shape, the sculpture weighs in as an elemental force. Sited to honor Moore's intention that the work be viewed from different angles, Large Spindle Piece is perhaps best seen—its robust upward spiral explicit— against the backdrop the artist preferred above all others, the sky.
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ART OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY
Ronald Bladen American, born Canada, 1918-1988Three Elements,
1965, fabricated 1966-67
Painted and burnished aluminum in three identical parts
Each: h. 120 3/8 x w. 48 3/8 x d. 211/2 in.
(305.7 x 122.9 x 54.6 cm)
Overall: h. 120 3/8 x w. 48 3/8 x d. 448 1/2 in.
(305.7 x 122.9 x 1139.2 cm)
Purchased with funds from the North Carolina Art Society (Robert F. Phifer Bequest) in honor of Mr. and Mrs. Gordon Hanes, 1988 (88.6.1-3)
In 1963, Ronald Bladen turned aside from painting and began producing freestanding constructions. Formally austere and intentionally impersonal in finish, the series helped shape an emerging movement—Minimalism—which critics interpreted as a cerebral corrective to the operatic excesses of Abstract Expressionism. The passionate gesture had given way to a strictly hands-off mentality. The movement inspired the 1966 exhibition Primary Structures: Younger American and British Sculptors., held at the Jewish Museum in New York City. This show in turn prompted Three Elements. Bladen's relentless simplification articulated the new dogma: geometric structure as image, monumental scale as content. The artist's first important statement came to exemplify the Minimalist aesthetic, which a quarter of a century later remains influential.
However, Bladen's work, as it converses with the Museum building, the landscape, and the nearby Henry Moore sculptures, may not be as drained of meaning as Minimalism's purists require. Instead of fending off associations, the pitched-forward threesome suggests—to some observers at least—walking or leaning figures. The falling-forward has been suspended at the last moment before collapse. Thus this icon of Minimalism, its emotion reined in, subtly alludes to man's struggle for a precarious equilibrium. Its radical reduction only increases the drama, leaving viewers in the commanding presence of a grave, elementary force.
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Forward dramatizes an incident in the life of the abolitionist heroine Harriet Tubman (about 1820-1913). While describing her story as "one of the great American sagas," Lawrence also observes that "the black woman has never been included in American history." Born into slavery, Tubman escaped, then repeatedly returned to the South to rescue other slaves, guiding them north along the secretive network known as the Underground Railroad. In this painting, she leads a small group of fugitives. The artist relates the story with masterful economy, eliminating all but the essentials. By the dark of a new moon six barefoot figures steal warily across a bare landscape. Tubman commands center stage, clutching a revolver, her indomitable spirit expressed in the forward momentum of her body and the muscular thrust of her arm that impels her reluctant comrade onward. Others follow, their faces and gestures expressing both fear and resolution.
Born in New York's Harlem and a child of the Great Depression, Jacob Lawrence combines a gift for story and a strong social conscience with a bold, incisive painting style. His paintings, often worked out in series, frequently concern the struggle of human existence, and in particular the valiant journey of African Americans towards freedom and equality.
Lawrence addressed the story of Tubman more than once, most notably in a well-known narrative series of thirty-one pictures (1939-40). Many years later, when he painted Forward, he condensed her life into one singular, emblematic act of heroism. In the context of the ongoing Civil Rights struggle, Lawrence reimagined the historical Harriet Tubman as a timeless exemplar of moral courage.
JWC
Jacob Lawrence American, born 1917Forward, 1967Tempera on panel
23 7/8 x 35 15/16 in.
(60.5 x 91.2 cm)
Purchased with funds from the State of North Carolina, 1970 (70.8.1)
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ART OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY
Frank Stella American, born 1936Raqqa II, 1970Synthetic polymer and graphite on canvas
120 x 300 in.
(304.8 x 762.0 cm)
Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Gordon Hanes, 1982 (82.16)
To many artists of Frank Stella's generation, the highly subjective paintings of the Abstract Expressionists seemed mannered and self-indulgent. Stella's response was to systematize the abstract picture using geometry and a strict but arbitrary set of procedures. Explaining that his art "is based on the fact that only what can be seen there is there," he sought to distill the image :o paint and canvas alone. He stripped his paintings of story or statement—even a brushstroke conveyed too much personality. Stella methodically developed images in series, first mapping the designs on paper before transferring them to canvas. Little was left to chance.
Raqqa II belongs to Stella's aptly titled Protractor Series, begun in 1967. Though never completed, the series was to include thirty-one compositions, each to be carried out in three different formats: interlaces, rainbows, and fans. He titled the paintings after ancient, circular-planned cities. Raqqa II does not lie quietly on the wall. It dominates its surroundings. What at first glance appears a child-like pattern is actually a highly complex exercise in perception. Bright bands of flat color arc and overlap, promising an illusion of receding space. However, their containment within a strict system of seven shaped and framed units confounds that illusion. The monumental scale and aggressive confidence of Raqqa II typify American art during the 1960s.
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Moshe Kupferman's vigorous and enigmatic abstractions well up from vivid life experiences: note, for example, the prevalence of architectural or structural idioms in his compositions—resonant of his earlier work as a construction laborer. Kupferman gropes for each new painting. He first severely restricts his available colors to heighten the abstract nature of his imagery. His paintings evolve internally through a repetitive, dialectical process, begun without plan or premeditation. An initial gesture or action creates a situation that then invites a clarifying reaction and a new situation. Or, put another way, a question is posed, considered, and then answered with another question. As often as not, the answer is to scrape away or paint over. The whole paradoxical cycle of creation and destruction repeats until the painting achieves final "saturation." In this way, the artist embeds the accumulated multiplicity of sensations and perceptions, both conscious and unconscious, that occur during the act of painting.
In this intricately plotted image, the primary motif is a freely drawn rectangular grille defining the foreground plane. Through this, the eye roves into a pale, luminous space. The space is not vacant but kinetic, animated with overlying systems of lines that have been brushed and incised in the paint surface. Beneath these lines appear traces of other forms and linear structures. By mentally peeling away the layers, the viewer moves towards the origin of the painting. Then, reversing, the viewer travels outward through partial questions and provisional answers towards a final, summary resolution.
JWC
Moshe Kupferman Israeli, born Poland 1926Untitled, 1974Oil on canvas
51 3/8 x 64 in.
(130.5 x 162.6 cm)
Purchased with funds from the North Carolina Art Society (Robert F. Phifer Bequest), 1990 (90.4)
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ART OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY
Romare Bearden American, 1912-1988New Orleans: Ragging Home, 1974Collage of plain, painted, and printed papers, with acrylic, lacquer, graphite, and marker, mounted on masonite
36 1/8 x 48 in.
(91.7 x 122 cm)
Purchased with funds from the State of North Carolina and various donors, by exchange, 1995 (95.3)
Using a basically Cubist composition and adopting techniques from Abstract Expressionism, Romare Bearden lays lush veils of pigments over cutouts of printed and painted papers, infusing his collages with remarkable emotional power. The artist exploits technique to reinforce theme—the black matriarch, his North Carolina heritage, the Civil Rights movement, and music. Collage, pieced and patched, serves as a metaphor for the struggle of African Americans in this society to establish identity. In Bearden's hands, collage also reminds the viewer that humankind, for all its fragmented diversity, enjoys common bonds.
New Orleans: Ragging Home is from Of the Blues., a series in which Bearden commemorates the blues of his native South and the jazz he heard in Harlem from his boyhood on. The collages tell the story of the music, while at the same time Bearden builds with color and repeating shapes an approximation of the jazz sound. In New Orleans: Ragging Home., Bearden uses modulated tones as an equivalent of the slurred or bent quality of blue notes to convey a transcendent message. A brass and drum band, ragtiming its way home from a funeral through a mercurial blue twilight, pulls off that miraculous transformation: consoled by song, the mourners become celebrants of art and life.
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ART OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY
Alex Katz American, born 1927Six Women, 1975Oil on canvas
114 x 282 in.
(289.6 x 716.3 cm)
Purchased with funds from various donors, by exchange, 1991 (91.15)
Alex Katz has developed a remarkable hybrid art that combines the aggressive scale and grandeur of modern abstract painting with a chic, impersonal realism. During the 1950s and 1960s—decades dominated by various modes of abstraction — Katz stubbornly upheld the validity of figurative painting. In major, mature works such as Six Women, the artist distances himself from his subject. Space is flattened, as are the personalities of the women, their features simplified and idealized: Katz's models are as fetching and vacuous as cover girls. The artist paints them with the authority and license of a master craftsman, but his brush conveys little emotion or personality. In contrast to the turbulent paint effects favored by the Abstract Expressionist artists, Katz pacifies the surface of his picture. Through the virtuosic technique of painting wet-on-wet, he achieves a level and unifying smoothness. He further "cools" the image by adopting the casually cropped composition and overpowering size and indifference of a highway billboard or big-screen movie.
In Six Women, Katz portrays a gathering of young friends at his Soho loft. The apparent informality of the scene is deceptive. It is, in fact, carefully staged. Note the three pairs of figures: the foreground couple face each other, the middle ground pair alternately look out and into the picture, while the pair in the background stand at matching oblique angles. The artist also arranges the women into two conversational triangles. Katz studied each model separately, then artfully fit the models into the picture. The image suggests an actual event, but the only true event is the play of light. From the open windows, a cordial afternoon sunlight saturates the space, accenting the features of each woman.
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Georg Baselitz's paintings—large, ambitious, and emotionally turbulent—explore the territory between abstraction and representation. Uncomfortable with pure abstraction, Baselitz pledged qualified allegiance to traditional art themes — landscape and especially the human figure—but interpreted them through a willful and highly volatile subjectivity. His earliest mature paintings featured misshapen and "fractured" figures, whose lack of proportion and physical integrity argued against their heroic scale. These violent manipulations were carried to a logical extreme when he inverted the figure, thereby decisively shifting attention to the abstract potential of the composition. As the artist explained: "An object painted upside down is suitable for painting because it is unsuitable as an object."
Male Nude is an arresting image and simple enough in plan: a nude man slouching uneasily in a chair. The painting is a self-portrait, one of a justly famous group of large, upside-down figural compositions—mostly portraits of the artist and his wife, singly or together—that Baselitz executed in the early and mid-1970s. The artist takes what is essentially a traditional studio nude and electrifies it with a vibrant and unsettling ardor. The image is hacked into being: paint is brushed, scratched and scraped, and smeared with the fingers — each action at once brutal and rapturous. This is the work of a supremely confident painter, passionate, intuitive, and wildly inventive. What results is a haunting, even poignant image of a human being alone and naked in the late twentieth century.
JWC
Georg Baselitz German, born 1938Male Nude, 1975Oil and charcoal on canvas 78 3/4x63 3/4 in. (200x161.9 cm)Purchased with funds from the North Carolina Art Society (Robert F. Phifer Bequest), 1997 (97.4)
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ART OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY
Robert Rauschenberg American, born 1925Credit Blossom (Spread), 1978Solvent transfer, quilt, and other fabrics on paperboard applied to gessoed wood panel
84 1/8 x 108 1/4 in.
(213.7 x 275 cm)
Purchased with funds from the National Endowment for the Arts, the North Carolina Art Society (Robert F. Phifer Bequest), and the State of North Carolina, 1979 (79-2-6)
Robert Rauschenberg is a synthesizing innovator. As a student at Black Mountain College in western North Carolina, he shared ideas with the iconoclastic composer John Cage and learned from the austere abstract painter and former Bauhaus teacher Josef Albers. While with Cage he could detect the aesthetic in the banal, he also was receptive to the disciplined training that Albers insisted upon. A formidably gifted renegade, Rauschenberg bridged the divide between Abstract Expressionism and Pop Art, helping keep the representational tradition viable. His use of materials, however, is imaginatively nontraditional. In 1955, he made a painting out of his own bed (Bed is in the Museum of Modern Art in New York). Nearly twenty-five years later, in perhaps a mischievous nod to that well-known "combine" (a hybrid of painting, collage, and sculpture), he constructed—rather than painted—Credit Blossom (Spread). Made of a worn quilt and fabrics, the work is printed with images appropriated from the media.
The primary colors and the patterned surface give Credit Blossom a gaily decorative lift that at first camouflages the work's structure and message. The multiple clockfaces (which the repeating patterns in the quilt somewhat resemble) testify that time rules in these assembled pictures of rest and activity. The artist also pairs other contrasts: the natural and the technological, the homespun and the factory-made, the supposedly simpler past and the undeniably complicated present. The images around all four edges of the quilt are like quilters at a quilting bee, drawn up to their work-in-progress. Repose is at Credit Blossoms, heart, the necessary center, the eternally elusive goal.
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A German born in the last months of World War II, Anselm Kiefer grew up in the ashes of the Third Reich. Among his earliest memories were bombed-out cities and scorched fields, indelible images that the artist would later recycle in his work. Though Kiefer in his art frequently addresses historical themes, including the Nazi era, he neither commemorates nor illustrates. Rather, he employs history and mythology (another form of memory) together with science, literature, and philosophy in a sustained meditation upon time, existence, and the tragic course of human events.
The Museum's painting summarizes many of Kiefer's central concerns. The viewer is first confronted with a grandeur of scale, a density of material, and a complexity and opacity of meaning that demands complete attention. The painting presents a vast, cosmic vision, the interpretation of which is left deliberately and maddeningly ambiguous. The three-part format, suggestive of an altarpiece, identifies the painting as a symbolic representation of a spiritual mystery. The drama is played out against a scarred landscape that can be readily imagined as the dark and rain-sodden aftermath of battle. The central image is of a great serpent coiled at the foot of a ladder. The ladder, forged of lead, might refer to the dream of the patriarch Jacob, who saw angels descending and ascending a ladder from heaven (Genesis 28:12). Kiefer's ladder seems to offer a similar conduit between the material and the spiritual worlds. The identity of the serpent is more puzzling. Is it the snake who brought evil into the Garden, or is it one of the angelic host come to earth? (Kiefer has used serpents in other paintings to represent seraphim and cherubim, the angels closest to God.) Likely, the artist accepts the serpent as indivisibly good and evil, its duality a metaphor for the confusion of earthly and spiritual desires.
>Anselm Kiefer German, born 1945Untitled, 1980- 86Oil, acrylic, emulsion, shellac, lead, charcoal, and straw on photographic print, mounted on canvas; with stones, lead, and steel cable
Three parts, left panel:
130 1/4 x 73 in,
(330.7 x 185.4 cm);
center panel:
130 5/8 x 72 5/8 in.
(331.7 x 184.9 cm);
right panel:
130 ¼ x 727/8 in.
(330.7 x 185.0 cm)
Purchased with funds from the State of North Carolina, W. R. Valentiner, and various donors, by exchange, 1994(94.3/a-c)
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ART OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY
Around the snake and ladder swirls a vortex of charred paint and splattered lead. The two flanking panels of the triptych also feature puzzling objects: six lead-dipped stones suspended by cable and a strange, funnel-shaped vessel. A mysterious process seems to be in motion, the lead raining down on the right side, then "funneled" and rematerializing into the stones on the left.
By way of explanation, Kiefer makes reference to alchemy, a quasi-scientific philosophy practiced in pre-modern Europe. Alchemists sought to discover the relationship of human to divine nature. Through occult chemical experiments they hoped to transform base matter such as lead into gold or other precious substances. Such actions can be interpreted metaphorically as expressing the universal desire for transcendence from the physical to the spiritual world. Kiefer employs this metaphor but adds to it the notion of existence as an eternally repeating cycle of creation and destruction. Order will inevitably emerge out of chaos, but will just as certainly disintegrate.
Such doomsday interpretations are amplified by Kiefer's brutal and highly unorthodox use of materials. Paint is fiercely brushed across the surface. Straw, embedded in the wet paint and ignited, registers only as blackened residue. Molten lead is spilt here and there. The surface of the painting undergoes extraordinary torment, as if creation were only possible through repeated destruction.
Kiefer, more persuasively than any contemporary artist, has envisioned the Apocalypse. He finds no consolation in the sound and fury: "If one detaches oneself from the premise that the human being is the center of the world, of the cosmos, then meaninglessness ensues . . . Yet by countering that meaninglessness with something, by placing something alongside it, I naturally create meaning. But it is a meaningless meaning, an illusory meaning." In such statements and throughout his art, Kiefer echoes the magnificent pessimism of Shakespeare.
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ART OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY
Gilbert and George British, born Italy 1943 British, born 1942Cabbage Worship,
1982
30 hand-colored gelatin silver prints
Each 23 ½ x 19 1/4 in.
(59.7 x 48.9 cm)
Overall 118 ¾ x 120 in.
(302 x 305 cm)
Purchased with funds from the Madeleine Johnson Heidrick Bequest, 1984 (84.5)
Though two human beings (albeit surnameless), Gilbert and George are in fact a single artistic entity. Collaborators since they met in 1967 at St. Martin's School of Art in London, they have made a name for themselves with wacky, stilted work existing in a netherworld somewhere between conservative and liberal attitudes, titillation and seriousness.
By 1977, Gilbert and George had settled on a format—exemplified by Cabbage Worship—for their billboard-size "photo-pieces": rectangular photographs abutted to form a grid and creating one overall image. Contradiction and contrivance energize this blaring visual language, whose strict order contains highly expressionistic content. Cabbage Worship, with its heavy black outlines and intense colors suggesting a stained-glass window, is from a series about current spiritual crises entitled Modern Faith; this photo-piece spotlights the growth industry of cultism. The object of devotion is not the Godhead but a head of cabbage, lampooning how human beings place their faith in dubious causes—which they promote with fanatical extremism as denoted by the clenched-fist salutes. The artists are present (Gilbert at the top, George at the bottom), while in the foreground an ambiguous youth mouths the credo but turns away from the Cabbagehead. Is he a malleable mind ripe for brainwashing or society's hope for freedom from manipulation and zealotry?
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Convinced that much of modern art is irrelevant to real life, Alabama native Roger Brown addresses varied subjects of current interest in an emblematic visual language devised for accessibility. Nonetheless, complexity resides in these snappy images with their quick impact. Relying on symmetrical compositions, the Chicago Imagist painter also balances clarity and paradox, the jokey and the serious, and lessons learned from the museum and the streets.
American Landscape with Revolutionary Heroes salutes the founding fathers of the United States: (from left to right) Alexander Hamilton, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, James Madison, and John Marshall. Cloaked in shadow and solemnly posed in a cramped stage-like space, the life-size figures form a frieze before a countryside quintessentially American in its vastness. But the background is more like a backdrop. And characteristically, Brown has secreted a puzzle of meaning in the patterned landscape. The pinwheel arrangements of the sumac plants and the horizontal bands of fields read as stars and stripes, as if these eighteenth-century heroes backed up to a scrim painted with a Pop version of the American flag.
Silhouetting these men in a setting of eerie, turquoise luminosity suggests that the ideals which the founding fathers represent risk abasement. This brooding history painting, in which past and present meet across a great divide, is commentary turned cautionary.
HP
Roger Brown American, born 1941American landscape with Revolutionary Heroes, 1983Oil on canvas
84 x 144 in.
(213.4 x 365.8 cm)
Purchased with funds from the Madeleine Johnson Heidrick Bequest, 1984 (84.2)
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ART OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY
William T. Williams American, born 1942Double Dare, 1984Acrylic on canvas
84 x 541 1/2. in.
(213.3 x 138.4 cm)
Purchased with funds from the North Carolina Art Society (Robert F. Phifer Bequest), 1991 (91.9)
Following early experiments with geometric abstraction, William T. Williams rejected "those kind of refined, seemingly effortless surfaces," which give "no indication of hand, no effort, no toil on the surface." He was led to develop an approach to painting that was less calculated, more personal and open to sensation. From his travels through West Africa and study of its textile and painting traditions, he acquired a new vocabulary of pattern and form. At the same time, an awakening affinity with the Expressionist legacy of modern art altered his attitude toward his materials. Paint—not merely color, but the dense mercurial substance of paint—becomes a principal vehicle of communication.
One of Williams's most assertive paintings, Double Dare is passionately wrought, built up of layers of paint poured onto the canvas and dripped down its length. Though Williams accepts chance and accident, there is nothing casual or spontaneous about his direction. Double Dare is one of a series of paintings, each building on the experience of the preceding images. In this series, Williams fosters sensual interactions between himself and the material, and between the material and the viewer. Asked to explain the title, the artist cryptically replies, "Double Dare refers to the distance I have traveled as an adult. The souvenirs of endless summers, childhood pranks dared and general mischief." There is a playfulness in the syncopated slaps of the hand— Williams's personal imprints that simultaneously hover above and sink into the encrusted surface. Literally and metaphorically, the artist endows his painting with a human touch.
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Defying convention, Gerhard Richter refuses to conform to one particular style of painting. Insisting that all styles are equally valid—and invalid—Richter moves freely between abstract and representational modes. However, his open-ended series of abstractions, marked by visceral, seductive color and a decisive, almost reckless technique, constitutes his major achievement. These images are deliberately divorced from our experience of the world, and instead present an alternative reality of color and spatial relationships sensible only within the confines of the picture.
The artist's painting process is studiously unrehearsed. It depends upon a continuous, unpredictable, and changing dialogue with the image: "I always begin with the intention of obtaining a closed picture, with a properly composed motif," Richter observes. "Then,... I proceed to destroy this intention piece by piece, against my own will almost, until the picture is finished—that is until it has nothing left besides openness."
Station is a masterpiece of controlled frenzy. The pictorial space, graded light to verdant shadow, is nebulous and unstable, cleaved violently by a magenta wedge. Within the space, diverse and seemingly incompatible objects behave lawlessly. Paint in broad, thick swaths and long, dragging trails swirls and knits around a tubular armature. The welter of gestures never coalesces in any form or object. Instead, it seems the visual traces of impulsive, even ecstatic motion. The whole lively history of abstract art is at play here. Richter's forceful, almost swaggering confidence, so evident in this painting, testifies to the continued vitality of abstraction.
JWC
Gerhard Richter German, born 1932Station (577-2), 1985Oil on canvas
98 7/8 x 98 7/8 in.
(251.2 x 251.2 cm)
Purchased with funds from the North Carolina Art Society (Robert F. Phifer Bequest), the North Carolina Museum of Art Guild, and various donors, by exchange, 1996(96.2)
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ART OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY
Tom Phillips British, born 1937The Calligrapher Replies 1, 1987Oil on canvas
38 ¾ x 61 1/4 in.
(98.4 x 155.5 cm)
Purchased with funds from various donors, by exchange, 1991 (91.19)
Perhaps best known in this country for A Humument, the Victorian novel whose pages he illuminated, Tom Phillips has created an oeuvre of oceanic diversity. His resume includes paintings, prints, sculpture, books (among which is his illustrated translation of Dante's Inferno), and multimedia projects (including his video version of the Inferno and his opera). An overriding interest in letter forms and language permeates this entire output.
Some of this London artist's earliest works prove that words can be pictures. Beginning in the 1960s, Phillips used packers' stencils to freight his canvases with a lettered—and multivalent—cargo. Years later, inspired by a trip to Japan, he switched to calligraphy. A rejoinder to the stenciled series, The Calligrapher Replies I is painted out in longhand arabesques as elegantly entangled as the voices in Renaissance polyphony.
This work's complicated harmony and puzzling intricacy tender countless paths of line and color for the eye to explore. The painting is a tease. It invites and resists interpretation. Viewers can pick out a word here, a phrase there, but the artist has intentionally entrapped the content within the written maze. If the images are words, the theme is communication. Phillips's discerning wit exposes the way the modern babble obscures sense and significance. His work reasserts the power of the word—and the power of art—to deepen understanding.
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Joel Shapiro's spare, geometric vocabulary derives from 1960s Minimalism. Yet to Minimalism's hard edges, seamless surfaces, and primary forms, Shapiro reintroduces personal associations and psychological depth. For Shapiro, a work of art succeeds to the extent that it functions as metaphor.
Even without a suggestive title to persuade the eye, this sculpture makes unmistakable reference to the human body. Shapiro refers to the work as one of his "double torso" pieces, but its appealing ambiguity allows the viewer to perceive the second torso as a raised arm. The tipsy figure, suggesting energetic movement in space, inspires diverse interpretations — reveler, acrobat, or loose-limbed dancer (Twyla Tharp? Or is it Groucho Marx?). The blocky anthropomorph's disturbed balance—its pronounced lean induces the sensation of falling— is key to Shapiro's work, as is the mixture of whimsy and unease.
The larger-than-life scale—perhaps ironically heroic—recalls earlier figurative sculpture. The use of bronze, expertly cast and finely chased and patinated in time-honored ways, reasserts traditional craftsmanship and further enriches the art-historical allusions latent in this piece. Shapiro's fine, brusque sense of form — speaking simultaneously of alienation and exultation—permits no pat reaction.
HP
Joel Shapiro American, born 1941Cast bronze
h.101 ½ x w. 42 x d. 78 in.
(257.8 x 106.7 x 198.1 cm)Purchased with funds from various donors, by exchange, 1990(90.3)
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ART OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY
Donald Sultan American, born 1951Venice without Water, June 12, 1990, 1990Butyl rubber, acrylic paint, and plaster on vinyl composite tiles, mounted on four masonite panels
96 x 96 in.
(243.8 x 243.8 cm)
Purchased with funds from the North Carolina Museum of Art Foundation, Art Trust Fund, 1997 (97.3)
One of the world's most recognizable sights, the Rialto bridge spanning the Grand Canal in Venice, appears here in a decidedly unfamiliar way. Out of the encroaching twilight, the city known as the Serenissima emerges as a disquieting, depopulated apparition—worlds apart from the traditional notion of this busy, glittering fantasy-place. Though Donald Sultan kept in mind the work of artists—like Canaletto and Francesco Guardi—who helped create that tradition, his interpretation seems more closely related to James A. M. Whistler's dusky tonalities.
Sultan based his painting on a 1990 newspaper photograph showing a waterless canal under the city's best-known bridge. The image summed up the artist's dismay over the deteriorating environment, a concern he hauntingly conveys in this disjunctive scene. The only suggestion of water can be found in the wavelike dribbles of aqua acrylic. The unused mooring posts, retreating in a V, are mired in mudlike tar. The Minimalist geometric system (the painting is done on rows of tiles which function as a grid) combines uneasily with the melancholic mood. Sultan makes viewers feel that the atmosphere is irreversibly clotted.
Sultan, a North Carolina native, first attracted national attention with uncomplicated yet startling paintings of lemons done in atypical materials. More recently his subjects have included a group of industrial plants to which Venice without Water is related. Whether story-free still life or nightmarish urbanscape, the authority of the image commands attention.
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Elizabeth Murray's paintings are groping, clumsy, inevitably messy journeys of self-revelation. Her paintings are sustained improvisations, developed through the process of making rather than from any preconceived design. Increasingly, her works have pushed into three dimensions, her shaped canvases acquiring the mass and insistence of sculpture.
Murray notes that "starting to make a painting is like starting to tell a story." With Pigeon, the story began with freely drawn meditations upon a basic shape fancifully inspired by the famous limp clocks of the Surrealist painter Salvador Dali. The shape was next modeled in clay, then constructed out of laminated wood. Canvas was glued to the surfaces. Typically, the artist waits until the shape is built before considering how to fill it. In Pigeon, the floppy "clock" also reminded Murray of a woman, the upturned flap stamped with her giant footprints. As the painting progressed, the lady vanished, leaving only her blue, long-sleeved dress as surrogate. Abruptly, the painter rends the dress at the waist, an unexplained act of violence. Clock hands — Dali's persistent memory—snake over the surface of the painting. Though Murray had specific images in mind when she painted Pigeon, she consciously left them ambiguous in the belief that ambiguity beguiles the imagination. The painting's title simply honors the birds who share Murray's barn/studio.
JWC
Elizabeth Murray American, born 1940Pigeon, 1991Oil on canvas on laminated wood,
h. 95 3/4 x w. 62 5/8 x d. 13 5/16 in.
(243.0 x 159.0 x 33.8 cm}
Purchased with gifts by Mr. and Mrs. Samuel J. Levin and William R. Valentiner, by exchange, 1992 (92.3)
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ART OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY
Guillermo Kuitca Argentine, born 1961People on Fire, 1993Mixed media on canvas
76 ¼ x 109 7/8 in.
(193.7 x 279.1 cm)
Purchased with funds from various donors, by exchange, 1993 (93.3)
Argentine artist Guillermo Kuitca is fascinated by maps, houseplans, and genealogical charts as metaphors for locating the self. His paintings, highly analytical and devoid of the human figure, awaken a disquieting sense of alienation and psychological vacancy. In People on Fire, Kuitca charts a bleak human terrain. Instead of towns, the lines connect people, stitching a taut fabric of names, faceless others of our species. We read them as we might read stones in a cemetery, presuming significance in the rhythms and coincidences: Laura Orellana, Ramon Rivas, Gabriela Rivas, Juan Pablo Villa, Helena Rivas, Joaquin Burgos, Monica Pratti, Norberto Podesta, Selva Orfila, Alfredo Rivas, Ariel Rivas—ourselves by any other name.
With the routine fervor of a clerk, the artist diagrams this community, ordering and systematizing, even color-coding each name by gender: males are orange, females pink. Oddly, he leaves several sites blank, explaining them as symbolic of the people unknown, yet connected to the whole. But to anyone aware of modern Argentine history, the blanks would as readily call to mind the Desparecidos, the thousands of the artist's countrymen who "disappeared" in the military terror of the late 1970s. Still, there is more than random fear and menace. There is something grandly apocalyptic in this image of the human tribe encircled by roiling washes of carmine and ash. Against the chaos, the intricate architecture of kinship and relations seems little more than a jerry-built folly. Here, in time for the millennium, is a prophetic vision of the burnt and the burning.
JWC
254
The terra "Pop art" may first bring to mind Andy Warhol and the New York scene, but among the key works of the Pop movement are wry, painted images of words by Los Angeles artist Edward Ruscha. Throughout a long career (which anticipated the language-oriented art prevalent in the 1980s), Ruscha has captured the poetic intensity of simple words and phrases culled from the American vernacular. Ruscha manifests, as Peter Plagens wrote in Sunshine Muse: Contemporary Art on the West Coast, an "easygoing, nonmilitant Pop, as at home in Southern California as was Impressionism on the banks of the Seine."
In Scratches on the Film, Ruscha exploits the canvas nap to convincingly create the surface texture of an old piece of film, scratched and faded to a sepia color. Floating on the simulated celluloid are the final words of a vintage movie, "The End," spelled out in Gothic lettering. The oversized, old-fashioned typeface immerses viewers in the nostalgic romanticism of old movies, a mood done in by the apocalyptic implications of the inscribed message and the creeping realization that the artist's tone might well be mock-serious. By giving everyday phrases glorified treatment, Ruscha encourages a reconsideration of the complex relation between word and image, as well as between word and speaker.
HP
Edward Ruscha American, born 1937
Scratches on the Film, 1993Acrylic on canvas
36 1/16 x 72 in.
(91.6 x 182.9 cm)
Purchased with funds from the North Carolina Museum of Art Foundation, Art Trust Fund, 1997 (97.2)
255
ART OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY
Barbara Kruger, American, born 1945
Henry Smith-Miller, American, born 1942
Laurie Hawkinson, American, born 1953
Nicholas Ouinnell, British, born 1935PICTURE THIS/Museum Park Theater,
designed
1992-94,
constructed
1994-97
The Museum's new outdoor stage and cinema is the result of a unique collaboration by an artist, architects, and a landscape architect. An amalgam of art and architecture, this work's dominant feature is the phrase PICTURE THIS. The giant letters are sculpted into the landscape and sprawl over two-and-one-half acres, while the stage, seating, and enormous film screen are woven into the fabric of the text.
The "P" is cut into a slope, its massive retaining wall cast with Barbara Kruger's provocative phrases. The two concrete "I"s consider North Carolina's history and geography, one with roadside historic markers tethered to a giant map of the state, the other filled by the state's motto, "TO BE RATHER THAN TO SEEM." The paved "T" reminds us of North Carolina as "the good roads state" while the "U" and "R" are planted. The "S" is formed by playfully piled boulders, and the "C" is an enormous sandbox for games and movie watching. Scattered within the walled "E" are stainless-steel plaques inscribed with quotations selected by Kruger. The stage canopy with its "walking strut" system articulates an off-balance movement over the shifting planes that form the letter "H" and the stage. Together, these elements create a collection of sculptural events in the landscape that expand the vocabulary of contemporary environmental art being produced internationally.
PICTURE THIS seems an open-ended cajole, an obvious response to gallery pictures. The design conceptually represents a turning inside-out of traditional notions of a museum. It offers a complement to and creates a dialogue with the great treasures held within the Museum walls.
DPG
256
Opposite: Aerial view of Park Theater and Museum building
This page, top to bottom:
Barbara Kruger's text, cast into the "P" wall
View across stage and seating to Museum facade
View from waiting area across "PICTURE"
257
Glossary of Selected Terms References for Quotations
Index
View of the NCMA from the Museum Park Theater
259
GLOSSARY OF SELECTED TERMS
abstraction
A work of art without a recognizable subject, or a work in which certain aspects of the
subject are emphasized, simplified, or otherwise altered from natural appearance.
altarpiece
A painted or carved work of art situated behind and above the altar in a Christian church.
Analytical Cubism
The earliest phase of Cubism, in which portrait or still-life subjects can be recognized, but the figure or object is broken into many geometric shapes, portrayed from several different angles simultaneously, and represented in a narrow range of muted colors such as browns, grays, and greens.
aquatint
A printmaking process in which a copper plate is partly or completely covered with a solution of asphalt, resin, or salts, producing a granular surface. The plate is then immersed in acid, which etches the exposed areas. After the surface of the plate has been cleaned, ink is pressed into the acid-etched surface. When the ink is transferred to paper, the resulting print has rich tonal areas.
ba
In Egyptian art and thought, a manifestation of the soul of the deceased in the form of a bird with a human head.
Bauhaus
An innovative German school of architecture, art, craft, and design founded in 1919 by the architect Walter Gropius in Weimar. The school moved to Dessau and finally to Berlin before being closed by the Nazis in 1933.
black-figure vase painting
A technique of Greek vase painting in which figures and designs are defined in black pigment against the reddish-colored clay of the vessel. Internal details are scratched in with a needle, or painted in contrasting white or purple pigment.
Byzantine
Having to do with the history, culture, or art of the medieval Eastern Christian empire whose capital was Constantinople (called Byzantium by the ancient Greeks, and known as Istanbul today).
Canopic jars
Four containers used to contain the internal organs (intestines, liver, lung, stomach) removed during the mummification process in ancient Egypt, often with lids representing the heads of the four sons of the sky/sun god Horus.
260
Caravaggisti
Followers of the Italian Baroque painter Caravaggio (1571 — 1610).
caryatid
A sculpted female figure that serves as a supporting column.
chiaroscuro
In painting and drawing, a method of using gradations of light and shade (Italian chiaro,
light + oscuro, dark) to model forms so that they appear three-dimensional.
collage
From the French coller (to paste): a composition made by gluing onto a flat surface scraps of cut or torn material, such as various types of paper or cloth, to which drawn or painted elements may be added.
Corinthian
a) One of the Classical orders of architecture, consisting of a system of carefully proportioned structural elements and designated ornament, including acanthus leaf decoration on the column capitals; b) Of or relating to the ancient Greek city of Corinth.
Counter-Reformation
The efforts of the Roman Catholic Church in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries to combat the influence of the Protestant Reformation, and the resulting renewal and reform in the Catholic Church.
Cubism
A non-realistic style of art pioneered in Paris in the early twentieth century, which fractures forms and space into angular, geometric shapes.
Cupid
The Latin name for the young god of love, called Eros by the Greeks, who is often shown
as a boy with wings, carrying a bow and arrows, with which he pierces hearts with passion.
Die Brucke
The name of an association of avant-garde German artists, founded in Dresden in 1905. The name, which means "The Bridge," expressed their desire to form a bridge toward the art of the future.
Danube School
A loosely associated group of artists active in the German-speaking territories flanking the Danube River during the first half of the sixteenth century. Alpine landscape backgrounds feature prominently in paintings and prints produced by these artists.
261
GLOSSARY OF SELECTED TERMS
diptych
A work of art consisting of two painted and/or carved panels, called wings, hinged together.
Doric
One of the Classical orders of architecture, consisting of a carefully proportioned system of structural elements and specified ornament, such as a horizontal band or frieze of triglyphs and metopes.
emblematic literature
A type of literature especially popular in the Netherlands in the seventeenth century, but which apparently originated earlier in Italy. Its most common form was that of the emblem book, in which images (emblems) were briefly described through a motto, then more fully analyzed in a longer text.
engraving
A printmaking process in which lines are incised into a copper plate using a sharp metal tool. Ink is pressed into the incised lines, the surface of the plate is wiped clean, and the ink is transferred onto paper, producing a reverse of the design on the plate.
etching
A printmaking process in which a copper plate is coated with an acid-resistant resin and a drawing is made on this surface with a sharp metal tool, exposing the metal. The plate is immersed in acid, which eats into the metal where it has been exposed. When the resin coating has been removed, ink is pressed into the etched areas, then transferred to paper to produce a reverse image of the design on the plate.
Eros
The Greek name for the young God of Love, called Cupid by the Romans, who is often
shown as a boy with wings, carrying a bow and arrows, with which he pierces hearts with
passion.
fresco
True fresco (Italian fresco=fresh) is the technique of painting on moist plaster with ground pigments suspended in water so that the paint is absorbed into the plaster and becomes part of the wall as it dries. Dry fresco is the technique of painting with water-based pigment on dry plaster.
Futurism
An early twentieth-century Italian art movement which combined Cubism's fracturing of
forms with an emphasis on rapid movement inspired by the modern machine age.
genre
a) A style or category of art; b) A work of art that portrays scenes from everyday life.
262
Hellenistic
Of or relating to Greek history and culture from the death of Alexander the Great in 323
B.C. to the accession of Augustus as the first Roman emperor in 27 B.C.
hieroglyphic
A form of writing in which a picture of a figure, animal, or object stands for a word, syllable, or sound.
icon
A sacred image of one or more divine or holy personages, such as Christ, the Virgin Mary,
or saints, usually painted on a wooden panel and venerated by Eastern Christians.
iconography
The study of the symbolic meanings of objects, persons, and events portrayed in works
of art.
in situ
A Latin term meaning "in position" or "in location," which describes an object or work of
art which is in the location for which it was originally intended.
International Style
The International Style of Gothic art originated in France and northern Italy in the mid-fourteenth century and spread to other parts of Europe and was characterized by a combination of naturalism with lavish use of rich ornament.
Ionic
One of the Classical orders of architecture, consisting of a system of carefully proportioned structural elements and designated ornament, including a double volute (a spiral, scroll-shaped form) on the column capitals.
mandala
A geometric symbol for the cosmos in Buddhist and Hindu art and thought.
maquette
A small preliminary model for a three-dimensional work of art.
mastaba
An ancient Egyptian tomb of rectangular form with sloping sides and a flat roof that covered a funerary chapel for offerings to the deceased and a shaft to the burial chamber.
metope
One of the square areas alternating with the triglyphs on a Doric frieze.
263
GLOSSARY OF SELECTED TERMS
oeuvre
A French word meaning "work," used to describe the whole of an artist's output.
Orphism
An early twentieth-century style of painting that originated in Paris and which combined the geometric forms of Analytical Cubism with vivid colors.
painterly
A style characterized by an emphasis on the use of color and values of light and shade as opposed to the use of outline or contour to define forms. Richly textured brushstrokes, readily apparent to the viewer, follow and define the shapes of objects.
pendant
A companion piece.
perspective
A technique for representing spatial relationships and three-dimensional objects on a flat surface in order to create the illusion of three-dimensional space. In linear perspective a mathematical system of diagonal lines is employed to suggest spatial depth.
picture plane
The surface on which a picture is painted and the foreground space parallel to this surface,
the existence of which is implied to the viewer.
polychrome
Having many or various colors (Greek poly chromos=many colored).
predella
The base of an altarpiece, often incorporating small panels decorated with scenes related
in subject to the main panel or panels.
264
putto (pi. putti)
A nude, male child, often winged, frequently portrayed in the art of the Classical,
Renaissance, Baroque, and Rococo periods.
red-figure vase painting
A technique of Greek vase painting in which figures and designs are defined by the reddish clay of the vessel whereas the background is painted black. Internal details such as facial features, hair, and clothing are painted in black lines.
relief
Sculpture which is not freestanding, but is carved or cast so that it projects from the background of which it is part. The sculpture may be described as "low relief" or "high relief," depending on the height of the projection.
retardataire
In art, a style that is old-fashioned and backward looking.
spandrel
The area enclosed by the outside curve of an arch and an adjoining right angle, or the
roughly triangular area between the exterior curves of two adjoining arches.
tempera
Paint made by mixing (tempering) ground pigments with any of a variety of mediums, most often egg yolk and water.
terracotta
Hard-baked clay (Italian terra cotta=baked earth) usually reddish-brown but often glazed
in various colors, used for pottery and sculpture and as a building material.
triglyph
A decorative element that alternates with metopes on a Doric frieze, and which is divided
by vertical grooves into three sections.
triptych
A carved or painted image made up of a central panel and a pair of hinged side panels known as wings.
vanitas
A subject in painting, particularly in still lifes, which employs symbols such as candles, timepieces, flowers, and human skulls, to cause the viewer to reflect upon the brevity and emptiness (Latin vanitas=emptiness, absence of purpose) of life and earthly pleasures.
265
REFERENCES FOR QUOTATIONS
Biblical quotations come from The New Revised Standard Version, 1989, except for those in the section "Jewish Ceremonial Art," which follow the translation authorized by the Jewish Publication Society, 1985.
[Stanzione] p. 136
Jacobus de Voragine. The Golden Legend of Jacobus de Voragine. Trans. Granger Ryan and Helmut Ripperger. Salem, New Hampshire, 1969, p. 454.
[Reni] p. 138
Carlo Cesare Malvasia. Felsina Pittrice. Vol. 2.
1678. Ed. cited: Bologna, 1841, p. 53.
[Batoni] p. 144
Francesco Benaglio. "'Abbozzo' della vita di Pompeo Battoni pittore luchese . . ." In Vita e prose scelte di Francesco Benaglio. Ed. Angelo Marchesan. 1747-57. Ed. cited: Treviso, 1894, pp. 62-63.
[Ccmaletto] p. 147
P. A. Orlandi. Abecedario Pittorico, corretto e
accresciuto da P. Guarienti. Venice,
1753.
[Van Dyck] p. 162
Giovanni Pietro Bellori. Le vite depittori, scultori
et architetti moderni, Ed. E. Borea. Turin, 1976, p.
262.
[Nattier] p. 173
Pierre de Nolhac. Nattier: Peintre de la cour de Louis XV. Paris, 1910, pp. 206-07.
[Volaire] p. 176
Roger Hudson, ed. The Grand Tour. London,
1993, p. 199.
[Canova] p. 181
Ugo Foscolo. Epistolario 17-IV. 1954, p. 177.
[Millet] p. 182
Eric Zafran. French Salon Paintings from Southern Collections. Atlanta, 1982, p. 148.
[Boudin] p. 184
Charles F. Stuckey, ed. Monet: A Retrospective. New York, 1985, p. 271.
[Pissarro] p. 186
John Rewald, ed. Camille Pissarro: Letters to his
Son Lucien. New York, 1943, p. 270.
ibid., pp. 282-83.
[Copley] p. 191
Jules David Prown. John Singleton Copley. Vol. 2. Cambridge, Mass., 1966, p. 246.
[Cole] p. 193
Marschall B. Tymn, ed. Thomas Cole's Poetry.
York, Penn., 1972, p. 47.
[Mayr] p. 196
Frederick Marryat. Diary in America. Ed. Jules Zanger. Bloomington, 1962, p. 273.
[Ranney] p. 197
Francis S. Grubar. William Ranney: Painter of the Early West (exh. cat.). Washington: National Gallery of Art, 1962, p. 29.
[Bierstadt] p. 202
Fitz Hugh Ludlow. The Heart of the Continent: A Record of Travel Across the Plains and in Oregon, with an Examination of the Mormon Principle. New York, 1870, p. 440.
[Homer] p. 204
Nicolai Cikovsky, Jr. and Franklin Kelly. Winslow Homer. Washington, 1995, p. 117.
[Saint Gaudens] p. 206 Homer Saint-Gaudens, ed. The Reminiscences of Augustus Saint-Gaudens. Vol. 1. New York, 1913, p. 354.
[Eakins] p. 208
Horace Traubel. With Walt Whitman in Camden.
Vol. 1. Boston, 1906.
[Frieseke] p. 209
Clara T. MacChesney. "Frieseke Tells Some of the Secrets of His Art." New York Times, 1 June 1914, sec. 6, p. 7.
266
[Sterne] p. 214
Charlotte Leon Mayerson, ed. Shadow and Light: The Life, Friends and Opinions of Maurice Sterne. New York, 1965, pp. 105-06.
[Hartley] p. 215
Hartley to Alfred Stieglitz, 3 November 1914. Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University.
Hartley to Stieglitz, Dec. 1913. Yale. Hartley to Stieglitz, 12 Nov. 1914. Yale.
[Kandinsky] p. 221
Vasily Kandinsky. Concerning the Spiritual in Art and Painting in Particular. 1912. Reprint: The documents of modern art series. Robert Motherwell, dir. New York, 1947, p. 24.
[O'Keeffe] p. 222
Georgia O'Keeffe to Dorothy B. Rennie, October
1973. NCMA curatorial files.
[Benton] p. 223
Thomas Hart Benton. An Artist in America. New
York, 1937, p. 147.
[Berman] p. 224
Emily Genauer, "Less Theater, More Drama for Berman." Art Digestif (1 Nov. 1949), p. 9.
[Wyeth] p. 225
Richard Meryman. Andrew Wyeth: A Secret Life.
New York, 1996, p. 227.
[Diebenkorn] p. 226
Dan Hofstadter. "Almost Free of the Mirror"
New Yorker, 1 Sept. 1987, p. 59.
[Kline] p. 227
Katharine Kuh. The Artist's Voice: Talks with Seventeen Artists. New York, 1962, p. 144.
[Louis] p. 230
Clement Greenberg. "Louis and Noland." In The Collected Essays and Criticism. Vol. 4. Ed. John O'Brian, 1993, p. 97.
[Lawrence] p. 235
Ellen Harkins Wheat. Jacob Lawrence: The Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman Series of 1938-40. Hampton, Va., 1991, p. 30.
[Stella] p. 236
Bruce Glaser. "Questions to Stella and Judd" Art
News, Sept. 1966, p. 5.
[Baselitz] p. 241
"The Upside-Down Object," in Diane Waldman, Georg Baselitz (exh. cat.). New York: Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, 1995, p. 214.
[Kiefer] p. 243
Charles W. Haxthausen. "The world, the book, and Anselm Kiefer," Burligton Magazine 133 (December 1991), p. 850.
[Williams] p. 248
Williams quoted in Valerie J. Mercer, William T. Williams: Fourteen Paintings (exh. cat.). The Montclair Art Museum, 1991, n.p.
Henry J. Drewal and David C. Driskell. Introspectives: Contemporary Art by Americans and Brazilians of African Descent (exh. cat). Los Angeles: The California Afro-American Museum, n.p.
[Richter] p. 249
Roald Nasgaard. Gerhard Richter: Paintings.
London, 1988, p. 27.
[Murray] p. 253
Sue Graze and Kathy Halbreich. Elizabeth Murray: Paintings and Drawings. New York, 1987. p. 130.
[Ruscha] p. 255
Peter Plagens. Sunshine Muse: Contemporary An
on the West Coast. New York, 1974, p. 142.
267
INDEX
Adoration of the Child, The (Botticelli), 126
Adoration of the Shepherds, The (Jordaens), 95
Adoration of the Shepherds, The (Stom), 139
Aertsen, Pieter, 76
Allegorical Portrait of an Artist (Musscher), 112
American Landscape with Revolutionary Heroes (Brown), 247
Ancestor Figure (Kandimbing) (Papua New Guinea), 51
Annunciation with Saints and Donors, The (Master of the Latour d'Auvergne Triptych), 72
Antelope Headdresses (Tji Wara) (Bamana), 59
Antinous (Delvaux), 229
Aphrodite of Cyrene (Roman), 33 Armorer's Shop, The (Teniers II), 94
Assumption of the Virgin, The (Carracci), 132
Assumption of the Virgin, The (Stanzione), 136
Ast, Balthasar van der, 99
Audubon, John James, 194
Bacchante Carrying a Child on Her Shoulders (Marin), 177
Backgammon Players, The (Rombouts), 90
Ball Court Marker (Maya), 43
Banquet Piece (Uyl), 100
Baselitz, Georg, 241
Batoni, Pompeo Girolamo, 144
Beaded Crown (Yoruba), 57
Bearden, Romare, 238
Beckmann, Max, 220
Beechey, William, 163
Bellotto, Bernardo, 148
Benton, Thomas Hart, 223
Berckheyde, Gerrit Adriaensz., 109
Berkeley No. 8 (Diebenkorn), 226
Berlinghieri Family, circle of, 116
Berman, Eugene, 224
Bierstadt, Albert, 202
Birds of America, The (Audubon), 194
268
Bladen, Ronald, 234
Blessed Giles before Pope Gregory IX, The (Murillo), 156
Botticelli, Sandro, 126 Boucher, Francois, 174 Boudin, Eugene, 184 Bowl Bearer (Luba), 61
Bridal Veil Falls, Yosemite (Bierstadt), 202
Brown, John George, 207
Brown, Roger, 247
Brueghel the Elder, Jan, 80
Brugghen, Hendrick Ter, 101
The Calligrapher Replies I(Phillips), 250
Cabbage Worship (Gilbert and George), 246
Canaletto (Giovanni Antonio Canal),
147
Canova, Antonio, studio of, 181
Capriccio: The Rialto Bridge and the Church of San Giorgio Maggiore (Canaletto), 147
Carolina Parrot (Audubon), 194
Carracci, Lodovico, 132
Cebolla Church (O'Keeffe), 222
Cellini, Benvenuto, attributed to, 129 Chardin, Jean Simeon, 171
Christopher Columbus in the Convent of La Rabida Explaining His Intended Voyage (Wilkie), 166
Christ and the Woman of Samaria (Mignard), 141
Cima da Conegliano, Giovanni Battista, 125
Claude Lorrain (Claude Gellee), 140
Cliff, Etretat, Sunset, The (Monet), 185 Coffin of Djed Mout (Egyptian), 18
Cole, Thomas, 193
Copley, John Singleton, 190, 191
Cornell, Joseph, 228
Count Ivan Ivanovitch Shuvalov (Vigee Le Brun), 175
Cranach the Elder, Lucas, 84
Credit Blossom (Spread) (Rauschenberg), 242
Croissance (Kandinsky) see Zunehmen
269
INDEX
Cropsey, Jasper, 199
Evans, Minnie, 231
Crucifixion (Puccio), 118
Feast of Esther, The (Lievens), 102
Cylinder Vase (Maya), 44
Feininger, Lyonel, 216
Dance of the Elements, Bali (Sterne), 214 Female Figurine (Cycladic), 24
David Praised by the Israelite Women (Brugghen), 101
Death of Alcestis, The (Peyron), 180 Delvaux, Paul, 229 Denial of St. Peter, The (Seghers), 88 Dentist, The (Molenaer), 104 Diebenkorn, Richard, 226 Domenichino (Domenico Zampieri), 133 Double Dare (Williams), 248 Dyck, Anthony van, 162
Eagle Cliff, Franconia Notch, New Hampshire (Cropsey), 199
Eakins, Thomas, 208 Egungun Costume (Yoruba), 56
Emperor Caracalla in the Guise of Helios (Roman), 39
Eruption of Mt. Vesuvius, The (Volaire), 176
Female Saint (Riemenschneider), 83
"Fiercely the red sun descending/Burned his way along the heavens" (Moran), 203
Figure of a Man (Egyptian), 14
Filipepi, Alessandro di Mariano, see Botticelli
Fireside, The (Hooch), 108
First News of the Battle of Lexington (Ranney), 197
Fish Market and the Grote Kerk at Haarlem, The (Berckheyde), 109
Flight into Egypt, The (Master of the Female Half-Lengths), 78
Flinck, Covert, 106 Forward (Lawrence), 235 Frieseke, Frederick Carl, 209
Funerary Monument for Sextus Maelius Stabilio, Vesinia lucunda, and Sextus Maelius (Roman), 31
270
Funerary Stele of the Priest Dionysios and His Wife, Tertia (Roman), 35
Funerary Vase (Lebes Gamikos) (Greek), 30
Garden Parasol, The (Frieseke), 209 Gartner, Peter, 85
Gainsborough, Thomas, 164
Gandolfi, Ubaldo, 150
Gilbert and George, 246
Giotto di Bondone, 120
Giovanni, Apollonio di, 124
Goddess Sekhmet (Egyptian), 16
Green Bridge II, The (Feininger), 216 Hans Geyer (Gartner), 85
Harbor Scene with St. Paul's Departure from Caesarea (Brueghel), 80
Hartley, Marsden, 215
Hawkinson, Laurie, 256
Head of a God or Priest (Cypriot), 27
Head from a Shawabti of Akhenaten (Egyptian), 17
Head of a Woman in the Guise of a Goddess (Roman), 32
Helmet Mask (Tatanua) (New Ireland), 50 Herakles (Roman), 36
Hicks, Thomas, 201
Holy Family with St. John and His Parents, The (Jordaens), 91
Holy Family with St. Anne (Rubens), 92
Homer, Winslow, 204
Hooch, Pieter de, 108
Hydria (Apulian), 29
Indian Fantasy (Hartley), 215
Inness, George, 205
Jordaens, Jacob, 91, 95
Kandinsky, Vasily, 221
Katz, Alex, 240
Keyser, Thomas de, 103
Kiefer, Anselm, 243
King (Evans), 231
Kirchner, Ernst Ludwig, 212, 213
Kitchen Ball at White Sulphur Springs, Virginia (Mayr), 196
Kline, Franz, 227
271
INDEX
Koellin, Peter, attributed to, 82 Kruger, Barbara, 256 Kuitca, Guillermo, 254 Kupferman, Moshe, 237
Lady Mary Villiers, later Duchess of Richmond and Lennox, with Charles Hamilton, Lord Arran (Van Dyck), 162
Landscape in Ecuador (Mignot), 200
Landscape with Peasants Returning with Their Herds (Claude), 140
Lanino, Bernardino, 128
Large Spindle Piece (Moore), 233
Large Standing Figure: Knife Edge (Moore), 232
Latour d'Auvergne Triptych, The, 72
Lawrence, Jacob, 235
Lekythos (Greek), 28
Lid of a Ceremonial Vessel (Yoruba), 54
Lievens, Jan, 102
Louis, Morris, 230
Louis XV (Rigaud), 170
Madonna and Child (Circle of the Berlinghieri Family), 116
Madonna and Child (French), 71 Madonna and Child (Reni), 138 Madonna and Child (Segna), 117 Madonna and Child (Tino), 119
Madonna and Child Enthroned with Saints and Donors (Lanino), 128
Madonna and Child in a Landscape (Cranach), 84
Madonna and Child in a Landscape (Cima), 125
Madonna and Child in Majesty (French), 70
Madonna and Child Sheltering Supplicants under Her Cloak (attributed to Koellin), 82
Madonna and Child with St. John the Evangelist, a Donor, and St. Anthony Abbot (School of Pavia), 123
Madonna of Loreto Appearing to St. John the Baptist, St. Eligius, and St. Anthony Abbot (Domenichino), 133
Magnasco, Alessandro, 146 Male Nude (Baselitz), 241
Man Scraping Chocolate, A (Spanish),
157
Marin, Joseph-Charles, 177
272
Market Scene on a Quay (Snyders), 93
Monet, Claude, 185, 187
Marquez de Velasco, Esteban, 154
Marriage of the Virgin, The (Marquez de Velasco), 154
Massys, Quentin, attributed to, 75
Master of the Latour d' Auvergne Triptych, 72
Master of the Female Half-Lengths, 78 Mayr, Christian, 196
Meat Stall with the Holy Family Giving Alms, A (Aertsen), 76
Melendez, Luis Egidio, 158
Memorial Carving (Malanggan) (New Ireland), 49
Mercury about to Behead Argus (Gandolfi), 150
Mercury Lulling Argus to Sleep (Gandolfi), 150
Mignard, Pierre, 141 Mignot, Louis Remy, 200 Millet, Jean-Francois, 182 Model of a Boat (Egyptian), 15 Molenaer, Jan Miense, 104
Moore, Henry Spencer, 232, 233 Moran, Thomas, 203 Mor, Antonis, 79
Mrs. James Russell (Katherine Graves) (Copley), 190
Mummy Covering (Egyptian), 20 Murray, Elizabeth, 253
Musicale, Barber Shop, Trenton Falls, New York, The (Hicks), 201
Murillo, Bartolome Esteban, 156 Musscher, Michiel van, 112
Nativity and Adoration of the Magi (Pseudo-Jacopino di Francesco), 122
Nattier, Jean-Marc, 173 Neck Amphora (Greek), 25 Neptune (attributed to Cellini), 129
New Orleans: Ragging Home (Bearden), 238
Nolde, Emil, 219
Oath- Taking and Healing Image (Nkisi N'kondi) (Kongo), 60
Oddie Children, The (Beechey), 163
273
INDEX
Oinochoe (Greek), 26\
O'Keeffe, Georgia, 222
Orange Outline (Kline), 227 Osteotheke (Roman), 37 Oudry, Jean-Baptiste, 172
Pair of Sabbath Candlesticks (German), 66
Pair of Torah Finials (Rimmonim) (Middle Eastern), 65
Panama Girls (Kirchner), 212
Passover Seder Plates with Dishes and Wine Cup (Wolpert), 67
Patera Painter, workshop of, attributed to, 29
Pavia, School of, 123
Peasant Spreading Manure (Millet), 182
People on Fire (Kuitca), 254
"Peruzzi Altarpiece, " The (Giotto), 120
Peyron, Pierre, 180
Phillips, Tom, 250
Pi (Louis), 230
PICTURE THIS/Museum Park Theater (Kruger, et al), 256
Pigeon (Murray), 253
Pissarro, Camille, 186
Porcelain Collector, The (Stevens), 183
Portrait of Dr. Albert C. Getchell (Eakins), 208
Portrait of Emy (Schmidt-Rottluff), 218 Portrait of a Gentleman (Keyser), 103 Portrait of a Gentleman (Mor), 79 Portrait of a Gentleman (Strozzi), 135
Portrait of a Lady as a Vestal Virgin (Nattier), 173
Portrait of the Emperor Marcus Aurelius (Roman), 38
Pseudo-Jacopino di Francesco, 122
Puccio Capanna, 118
Puritan, The (Saint-Gaudens), 206
Quinnell, Nicholas, 256
Raeburn, Henry, 165
Ralph Bell (Gainsborough), 164
Ranney, William Tylee, 197
Raphael (Raffaello Sanzio), 127
Raqqa II (Stella), 236
274
Rauschenberg, Robert, 242
Reliefs from the Tomb of Khnumti in Saqqarah (Egyptian), 12
Rembrandt, circle of, 105 Reni, Guido, 138
Return of the Prodigal Son., The (Flinck), 106
Ribera, Jusepe de, 137
Richter, Gerhard, 249 Riemenschneider, Tilmann, 83 Rigaud, Hyacinthe, studio of, 170 Roesen, Severin, 198
Romantic Landscape (Cole), 193 Rombouts, Theodor, 90
Rubens, Peter Paul, 92
Ruisdael, Jacob van, 107
Ruscha, Edward, 255
Saint-Gaudens, Augustus, 206
Saint-Sever Bridge from Rouen, Fog, The (Pissarro), 186
Salvator Mundi (attributed to Massys),
75
Sawfish Headdress (Niger River Delta), 58
Schmidt-Rottluff, Karl, 218 Scratches on the Film (Ruscha), 255 Seghers, Gerard, 88 Segna di Bonaventura, 117
Seine at Giverny, Morning Mists, The (Monet), 187
Self-Portrait (Beckmann), 220 Shapiro, Joel, 251
Sir William Pepperrell and His Family (Copley), 191
Six Women (Katz), 240
Smith-Miller, Henry, 256
Snyders, Frans, 93
Spring on the Missouri (Benton), 223 Station (577-2) (Richter), 249
Standing Female Deity or Deity Impersonator (Vera Cruz), 42
Standing Female Figure with Infant (Costa Rican), 45
Stanzione, Massimo, 136 Steen, Jan, 110
275
Stella, Frank, 236
Sterne, Maurice, 214
Stevens, Alfred, 183
Still Life, Tulips (Nolde),219
Still Life with a Basket of Fruit (Ast), 99
Still Life with Fruit (Roesen), 198
Still Life with Grapes and Figs (Melendez), 158
Still Life with Pigeons (Melendez), 158
Still Life with Ray Fish, Copper Kettle, and Onions (Chardin), 171
St. Jerome in His Study (German), 81
St. Jerome Punishing the Heretic Sabinian (Raphael), 127
St. John the Baptist (Ribera), 137
St. Lawrence Distributing the Treasures of the Church (Strozzi), 134
Stom, Matthias, 139
Strozzi, Bernardo, 134, 135
Sultan, Donald, 252
Sunset (Medusa) (Berman), 224
Supper of Pulcinella and Colombina, The (Magnasco), 146
Susy's Sun (for Judy Tyler) (Cornell), 228
Swan Attacked by a Dog (Oudry), 172 Teniers II, David, 94
Thomas Robert Hay, Eleventh Earl of Kinnoull (Raeburn), 165
Three Elements (Bladen), 234
Tino da Camaino, 119
Torah Case (Tik) (North African), 64
Torso of an Emperor in the Guise of Jupiter (Roman), 34
Tough Story, A (Brown), 207
Triumph of Chastity, The (Giovanni),
124
Triumph of Venice, The (Batoni), 144
Trouville, The Jetties, High Tide (Boudin), 184
Trumpeter Swan (Audubon), 194
Twin Figures (Ere Ibeji) (Yoruba), 55
Two Nude Figures in a Landscape (Kirchner), 213
Under the Greenwood (Inness), 205 Untitled (Kiefer), 243
276
Untitled (Kupferman), 237
Wolpert, Ludwig Yehuda, 67
Untitled (Shapiro), 251
Uyl, Jan Jansz. den, 100 Velde, Esaias van de, 98
Venice without Water, June 12, 1990 (Sultan), 252
Venus Italica (Canova), 181
Venus Rising from the Waves (Boucher), 174
View of Dresden with the Frauenkirche at Left (Bellotto), 148
View of Dresden with the Hofkirche at Right (Bellotto), 149
Vigee Le Brun, Elisabeth Louise, 175 Vigor's Warbler (Audubon), 194
Volaire, Pierre-Jacques, 176
Weaning the Calf (Homer), 204
Wilkie, David, 166
Williams, William T., 248
Winter Scene(Wyeth), 225
Winter Scene (Velde), 98
Wooded Landscape with Waterfall (Ruisdael), 107
Worship of the Golden Calf (Steen), 110
Wyeth, Andrew Newell, 225
Young Man with a Sword (Circle of Rembrandt), 105
Zunehmen (also known as Croissance) (Kandinsky), 221
277