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A Basic History of Art 4e - Janson
A Basic History of Art 4e - Janson
A BASIC
HISTORY
ilKlif
H. W. Janson
and Anthony F Janson
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A BASIC
HISTORY
OF ART
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Fourth Edition
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Fourth Edition 1992
Library of Congress
Cataloging-in-Publication Data
II. Title.
Copyrigl l-
l Harry N. Abrams. B.Y..
The Neth<
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CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION 9
Art and the Artist 9 Looking at Art 15
PART ONE
THE ANCIENT WORLD 28
Map 30
AEGEAN ART 62
Cycladic Art 62 Minoan Art 63 Mycenaean Art 65
GREEK ART 67
Painting 68 Temples 72 Sculpture 78
ETRUSCAN ART 90
ROMAN ART 94
Architecture 94 Sculpture 98 Painting 104
PART THREE
THE RENAISSANCE, MANNERISM,
AND THE BAROQUE 196
Map 198
ROCOCO 325
Painting 325 Architecture 332
PART FOUR
THE MODERN WORLD 340
Map 342
NEOCLASSICISM 344
Painting 344 Sculpture 350 Architecture 350
POST-IMPRESSIONISM 395
Painting 395 Sculpture 407 Architecture 408
Realist Photography 410
Glossary 504
Books for Further Reading 508
Index 514
List of Credits 528
V
PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
TO THE FOURTH EDITION
The fourth edition of H. W. Janson's A Basic works of art themselves remain the primary
History of Art has more changes and additions document. Most people who read this book
than any previous one. The book is now do so to enhance their enjoyment of art, but
much more consistent in character with H. W. often feel uneasy in looking at individual
Janson's History of Art, from which it descends, works of art. The new material addresses that
yet preserves its own identity, appropriate to obstacle by providing some general observa-
its different audience. Thus, the chapters on tions on viewing art, without resorting to for-
artbetween 1520 and 1750 differ appreciably mulaic guidelines that too often get in the
from that volume. way. In making these revisions, my primary
Part Four, devoted to the modern world, has aim has been to preserve the humanism that
been completely reorganized. The distinction provided the foundation of this book, and to
between Neoclassicism and Romanticism is integrate my own views and writing style as
now drawn more clearly. Twentieth-century seamlessly as possible into A Basic History of
painting now has a more straightforward Art as it has evolved over more than twenty
chronological organization. A separate chap- years.
ter devoted to sculpture since 1900, which
is This edition is dedicated to Diane Chal-
has followed a rather different path from mers Johnson, who encouraged me to think
painting. Modern architecture begins with more deeply about the process of looking at
Frank Lloyd Wright, while its antecedents, in- art. I am also indebted to two former cura-
cluding the Chicago school and Art Nouveau, torial colleagues: Michael McDonough for his
have been placed in earlier chapters where helpful suggestions on modern architecture
they properly belong. have also taken the
I and Joseph Jacobs for his stimulating ideas
opportunity to bring the record of art history about contemporary art. Diana Murphy has
up-to-date and to add a number of artists. taken a fresh look at the entire text in the
There are many more illustrations in color, course of editing the book. Sheila Franklin
as well as several new illustrations showing Lieber, Project Manager at Harry N. Abrams,
works in situ. In addition, there are architec- Inc., provided strong support and made con-
tural drawings that have never appeared in sistently helpful suggestions throughout the
the book, including improved diagrams and revision process. Ellen Nygaard Ford re-
plans. The expanded Introduction now in- designed the entire book with sensitivity and
cludes a brief discussion of line, color, light, skill. Bob McKee also offered his experience
composition, form, and space. This section is in the design process. Jennifer Bright and
intended to help the beginner become more Colin Scott provided their usual resourceful-
sensitive to visual components of art. The de- ness in securing new photographs and repro-
cision to incorporate basic elements of art duction rights for the book. Shun Yamamoto
appreciation— a subject that lies outside the brought bear on
his considerable expertise to
traditional scope of art history— is based on the book ensure that the high production
to
the conviction that one must first learn how to standards for which it is known would charac-
look at art in order to understand it, since the terize the fourth edition as well.
A. F.j.
1991
INTRODUCTION
ART AND THE ARTIST the conscious and the subconscious, where
most of our brain activity takes place. It is the
"What is Few questions provoke such
art?" very glue that holds our personality, intellect,
heated debate and provide so few satisfactory and spirituality together. Because the imag-
answers. If we cannot come to any definitive ination responds to all three, it acts in lawful,
conclusions, there is still a good deal we can if unpredictable, ways that are determined by
say. Art is first of all a word, one that acknowl- the psyche and the mind.
edges both the idea and the fact of art. With- The imagination is important, as it allows
out it, we might well ask whether art exists in us to conceive of all kinds of possibilities in
the first place. The term, after all, is not the future and to understand the past in a
found in every society. Yet art is made every- way that has real survival value. It is a funda-
where. Art, therefore, an object, but
is also mental part of our makeup, though we share
not just any kind of object. Art is an aesthet ic it with other creatures. By contrast, the urge
object. It is meant to be looked at and appreci- to make art is unique to us. It separates us
ated for its intrinsic value. Its special qualities from all other creatures across an evolution-
set art apart, so that it is often placed away ary gap that is unbridgeable. The ability to
from everyday life, in museums, churches, or make art must have been acquired relatively
caves. What do we mean by aesthetic? By defi- recently in the course of evolution. Human
nition, aesthetic is "that which concerns the beings have been walking the earth for some
beautiful." Of course, not all art is beautiful
to our eyes, but it is art nonetheless.
People the world over make much the same
fundamental judgments, since our brains and
nervous systems are the same. Taste, how-
ever, is conditioned solely by culture, which is
so varied that it is impossible to reduce art to
any one set of precepts. It would seem, there-
fore, that absolute qualities in art must elude
us, that we cannot escape viewing works of art
in the context of time and circumstance,
whether past or present.
Imagination
lost to us.
Who were the first artists? In all likelihood,
they were shamans. Like the legendary Or-
pheus, they were believed to have divine
powers of inspiration and to be able to enter
the underworld of the subconscious in a
deathlike trance, but, unlike ordinary mor-
tals,they were then able to return to the
realm of the living. Just such a figure seems to
be represented by our Harpist (fig. 1) from
nearly five thousand years ago. A work of
unprecedented complexity for its time, it
was carved by a remarkably gifted artist
who makes us feel the visionary rapture of
a bard as he sings his legend. With this artist- 2. Pablo Picasso. Bull's Head. 1943.
Bronze cast bicycle parts, height 6 '/«" (41 cm).
shaman's unique ability to penetrate the un- 1
attention. Art has the power to penetrate to be absurd to insist that he must share the
the core of our being, which recognizes itself credit with the manufacturer, since the seat
in the creative act. For that reason, art repre- and handlebars in themselves are not works
sents its creators' deepest understanding and of art.
highest aspirations. At the same time, artists While we feel a certain jolt when we first
often act as the articulators of our shared be- recognize the ingredients of this visual pun,
and values, which they express through
liefs we also sense that it was a stroke of genius to
an ongoing tradition to us, their audience. put them together in this unique way, and we
cannot very well deny that it is a work of art.
Nevertheless, the actual handiwork of mount-
Creativity
ing the seat on the handlebars is ridiculously
What do we mean by making? If, in order to simple. What from simple is the leap of
is far
simplify our problem, we concentrate on the the imagination by which Picasso recognized
visual arts, we might say that a work of art a bull's head in these unlikely objects. The
must be a tangible thing shaped by human leap of the imagination is sometimes ex-
hands. This definition at least eliminates the perienced as a flash of inspiration, but only
ISTRODUCTION • 11
rarely does a new idea emerge full-blown like statue by trying to visualize a figure in the
Athena from the head of Zeus. Instead, it is rough, rectilinear block as it came to him
usually preceded by a long gestation period from the quarry. seems fair to assume that
It
in which all the hard work is done without at first Michelangelo did not see the figure
finding the kev to the solution to the problem. any more clearly than one can see an unborn
At the critical point, the imagination makes child inside the womb, but we may believe
connections between seemingly unrelated thathe could see isolated "signs of life" within
parts and recombines them. the marble. Once he started carving, everv
Our Bulls Head is, of course, an ideally sim- stroke of the chisel would commit him more
ple case, involving only one leap of the imag- and more to a specific conception of the fig-
ination and a manual act in response to it. ure hidden in the block, and the marble
Once the seat had been properly placed on would permit him to free the figure whole
the handlebars and then cast in bronze, the only if his guess as to its shape was correct.
job was done. Ordinarily, artists do not work Sometimes he did not guess well enough, and
with ready-made parts but with materials that the stone refused to give up some essential
have litde or no shape of their own. The cre- part of its prisoner. Michelangelo, defeated,
ative process consists of a long series of leaps left the work unfinished, as he did with the
of the imagination and the artist's attempts to Captive (fig. 3), whose very gesture seems to
give them form by shaping the material ac- record the vain struggle for liberation. Look-
cordingly. In this way, by a constant flow of ing at the block, we may get some inkling of
impulses back and forth between the artist's Michelangelo's difficulties here. But could he
mind and the partly shaped material, he or not have finished the statue in some fashion?
she gradually defines more and more of the Surely there is enough material left for that.
image, until at last all of it has been given He probably could have, but perhaps not in
visible form. Needless to say, artisticcreadon the way he wanted. In that case the defeat
is too subde and intimate an experience would have been even more stinging.
to permit an exact step-by-step description. Clearly, then, the making of a work of art
Onlv artists can observe it fully, but thev are has litde in common with what we ordinarily
so absorbed by it that thev have great diffi- mean by making. It is a strange and risky-
culty explaining it to us. business in which the maker never quite
The been likened to
creative process has knows what he or she is making until it has
birth, a metaphor that comes closer to the actually been made; or, to put it another way,
truth than would a description cast in terms it is a game of find-and-seek in which the
of a transfer or projection of the image from seeker is not sure what he or she is looking for
the artist's mind. The making of a work of art until it has been found. In the case of the
is both joyous and painful, full of surprises, Bull's Head it is the bold "finding" that im-
and in no sense mechanical. We have, more- presses us most; in the Captive, the stren-
over, ample testimony that artists themselves uous "seeking." To the non-artist, it seems
tend to look upon their creations as living hard to believe that this uncertainty, this need
things. Perhaps that is why creativity was once to take a chance, should be the essence of the
God, as only He could
a concept reserved for artist's work. We all tend to think of "making"
give material form to an idea. Indeed, the in terms of the craftsperson or manufacturer
artist's labors are much like the Creation told who knows exacdy what he or she wants to
in the Bible. produce from the very outset. There is thus
This divine ability was not realized until comparatively litde risk, but also litde adven-
Michelangelo, who described the anguish and ture, in such handiwork, which as a conse-
glory of the creative experience when he quence tends to become routine. Whereas the
spoke of "liberating the figure from the mar- artisan attempts onlv what is known to be pos-
ble that imprisons it." We may translate this to sible, the artist is always driven to attempt the
mean that he started the process of carving a impossible, or at least the improbable or un-
",
12 • 1STRODCCTION
imaginable. No wonder the artist's way of instead of merely making something. Clearly,
working is so resistant to any set rules, while then,we must be careful not to confuse the
the craftsperson's encourages standardization making of a work of art with manual skill or
and regularity. We acknowledge this differ- craftsmanship. Some works of art may de-
ence when we speak of the artist as creating mand a great deal of technical discipline;
I\TR0DUCT10N • 13
others do not. Even the most painstaking works of art and assess their degree of
piece of craft does not deserve to be called a originality.
work of art unless it involves a leap of the
imagination.
Meaning and Style
Needless to say, there have always been
many more craftspeople than artists among Why do we create art? Surely one reason is an
us, since our need for the familiar and ex- urge to adorn ourselves and deco-
irresistible
pected far exceeds our capacity to absorb the rate the world around us. Both are part of a
original but often deeply unsettling experi- larger desire, not to remake the world in our
ences we get from works of art. The urge to image but to recast ourselves and our envi-
penetrate unknown realms, to achieve some- ronment in ideal form. Art is, however, much
thing original, may be felt by every one of us more than decoration, for it is laden with
now and then. What sets the real artist apart meaning, even if that content is sometimes
is not so much the desire to seek, but that mys- slender or obscure. Art enables us to commu-
terious ability to find, which we call talent. We nicateour understanding in ways that cannot
also speak of it as a "gift," implying that it is a be expressed otherwise. Truly a painting (or
sort of present from some higher power; or any work of art) is worth a thousand words,
as "genius," a term that originally meant a not only in its descriptive value but also in its
higher power (a kind of "good demon") that symbolic significance. In art, as in language,
inhabits and acts through the artist. we are above all inventors of symbols that
convey complex thoughts in new ways. How-
ever,we must think of art in terms not of
Originality and Tradition
everyday prose but of poetry, which is free to
Originality, then, ultimately distinguishes art rearrange conventional vocabulary and syn-
from craft. We may say, therefore, that it is the tax in order to convey new, often multiple,
yardstick of artistic greatness or importance. meanings and moods. A work of art likewise
Unfortunately, it is also very hard to define. suggests much more than it states. It commu-
The usual synonyms — uniqueness, novelty, nicates partly by implying meanings through
freshness— do not help us very much, and the pose, facial expression, allegory, and the like.
dictionariestell us only that an original work As in poetry, the value of art lies equally in
must not be a copy. No work of art can be what it says and how it savs it.
entirely original. Each one is linked in a chain But what is the meaning of art — its iconog-
of relationships that arises somewhere out of raphy? What is it trying to say? Artists often
the distant past and continues into the future. provide no clear explanation, since the work
If it is true that "no man is an island," the is the statement itself. Nonetheless, even the
same can be works of art. The sum
said of all most private artistic statements can be under-
total of these chains makes a web in which stood on some level, even if only an intuitive
every work of art occupies its own specific one. The meaning, or content, of art is insep-
place; we call Without tradi-
this tradition. arable from its formal qualities, its style. The
tion (the word means "that which has been word style is derived from stilus, the writing
handed down to us"), no originality would be instrument of the ancient Romans. Origi-
possible. It provides, as it were, the firm plat- nally, it referred to distinctive ways of writ-
form from which the makes a leap ofartist ing: the shape of the letters as well as the
the imagination. The place where he or she choice of words. In the visual arts, style
lands will then become part of the web and means the particular way in which the forms
serve as a point of departure for further that make up any given work of art are
leaps. And for us, too, the web of tradition is chosen and fitted together. To art historians
equally essential. Whether we are aware of it the study of styles is of central importance. It
or not, traditionis the framework within not only enables them to find out, by means
which we inevitably form our opinions of of careful analysis and comparison, when,
ION
measure quality. People tend to compound come so much a part of our daily lives that we
the two problems into one. Quite often when take it for granted. In the process, we have
they ask, "Why is that art?" they mean, "Why become desensitized to art as well. Anyone
is that good art?" Since the experts do not post can buy cheap paintings and reproductions to
exact rules, people are apt to fall back on the decorate a room, where they often hang vir-
defense: "Well, I don't know anything about tually unnoticed, perhaps deservedly so. It is
art, but I know what I like." It is a formidable smallwonder that we look at the art in mu-
roadblock, this stock phrase, in the path of seums with equal casualness. We pass rapidly
understanding. Let us examine the roadblock from one object to another, sampling them
and the various unspoken assumptions that like dishes in a smorgasbord. We may pause
buttress it. briefly before a famous masterpiece that we
Are there really people who know nothing have been told we are supposed to admire,
about art? No, for art is so much a part of the then ignore the gallery full of equally beauti-
fabric of our daily life that we encounter it all ful and important works around it. We will
the time, even if our contacts with it are lim- have seen the art but not really looked at it.
ited to magazine covers, advertising posters, Looking at great art is not such an easy task,
war memorials, television, and the buildings for art rarely reveals its secrets readily. While
where we live, work, and worship. When we the experience of a work can be immediately
say, "I know what I like," we really mean, "I electrifying, we sometimes do not realize its
like what I know (and I reject whatever fails impact until time has let it filter through the
to match the things I am familiar with)." Such recesses of our imaginations. It even happens
not in truth ours at all, for they have
likes are that something that at first repelled or con-
been imposed by habit and culture without founded us emerges only many years later as
any personal choice. one of the most important artistic events of
Why should so many of us cherish the illu- our lives.
sion of having made a personal choice in art Understanding a work of art begins with a
when in fact we have not? There is another sensitive appreciation of its appearance. Art
unspoken assumption at work here: some- may be approached and appreciated for its
thing must be wrong with a work of art if it purely visual elements: line, color, light, com-
takes an expert to appreciate it. But if experts position, form, and space. These may be
appreciate art more than the uninformed, shared by any work of art. Their effects, how-
why should we not emulate them? The road ever, vary widely according to medium (the
to expertness and wide, and it invites
is clear physical materials of which the artwork is
anyone with an open mind and a capacity to made) and technique, which together help
absorb new experiences. As our understand- determine the possibilities and limitations of
ing grows, we find ourselves liking a great what the artist can achieve. For that reason,
many more things than we had thought possi- our discussion is merged with an introduction
ble at the start. We gradually acquire the to four major arts: graphic arts, painting,
courage of our own convictions, until we are sculpture, and architecture. (The technical
able to say, with some justice, that we know aspects of the major mediums are treated in
what we like. separate sections within the main body of the
text and in the glossary at the back of the
book.) Just because line is discussed with
LOOKING AT ART drawing, however, does not mean that it is not
equally important in painting and sculpture.
The Visual Elements
And while form is introduced with sculpture,
We live in a sea of images conveying the cul- it is just as essential to painting, drawing, and
ture and learning of modern civilization. architecture.
Fostered by an unprecedented media explo- Visual analysis can help us appreciate the
sion, this "visual background noise" has be- beauty of a masterpiece, but we must be care-
//O.N
IXTRODUCTION • 17
male ngures on male nudes drawn from life. considerable distance below? Evidently Mi-
im, only the heroic male nude possessed chelangelo believed that only by describing
_ physical monumentally necessary to ex- the anatomy completely could he be certain
press the awesome power of figures, such as that the figure would be convincing. In the
this mythical prophetess. As in other sheets final painting (fig. 6) she communicates a su-
of sonorous color that is characteristic of his system to work its magic in art. From the
style. Though he no doubt worked out the heavy outlines, it is apparent that Picasso
tinguishing it clearly from her windswept The Toilet of Venus bv the French Baroque art-
dress and the shaggy coat of Zeus disguised as ist Simon Vouet, fig. 306), but rarelv has it
a bull. To convey these tactile qualities, Titian been depicted with such disturbing over-
built up the surface of the painting in thin tones. Picasso's girl is anything but serene. On
coats, known as glazes. The interaction be- the contrary, her face is divided into two
tween these layers produces a richness and parts, one with a somber expression, the
complexity of color that are strikingly appar- other with a masklike appearance whose
ent in the orange drapery where it trails off color nevertheless betravs passionate feeling.
into the green seawater, which has a delicious She reaches out to touch the image in the
wetness. The medium is so filmy as to become mirror with a gesture of longing and ap-
nearly translucent in parts of the landscape prehension. Now, we all feel a jolt when we
20 ISTRODI CTION
est lies solely in the seemingly insignificant were. They require fundamentally different
22 • ISTRODL t 1 1 OX
11. El Greco. The Agony m the Garden. 1597-1600. Oil on canvas. 40 Ax44W (102.2 x 113.7 cm).
l
talents and attitudes toward material as well account, there is no single guideline, so that a
as subject matter.Although numerous artists third category, middle (mezzo) relief, is some-
have been competent in both painting and times cited.
sculpture, only a handful have managed to Low reliefs often share characteristics with
bridge the gap between them with complete painting. In Egypt, where low-relief carving
success. attained unsurpassed subtlety, many reliefs
Sculpture is categorized according to wheth- were originally painted and included elabo-
er it is carved or modeled and whether it is a rate settings. High reliefs largely preclude
relief or free-standing. Relief remains tied to this kind of pictorialism. The
figures on a col-
the background, from which it only partially umn drum from Greek temple (fig. 12) are
a
emerges, in contrast to free-standing sculp- so detached from the background that the ad-
ture, which is fully liberated from it. A dition of landscape or architectural elements
further distinction is made between low (bos) would have been both unnecessary and un-
relief and high depending on
(alto) relief, convincing. The neutral setting, moreover, is
how much the carving projects. However, in keeping with the mythological subject,
since scale as well as depth must be taken into which occurs in an indeterminate time and
INTRODUCTION 23
imprisoned in stone.
Free-standing sculpture— that is, sculpture
that is carved or modeled fullv in the round —
is generally made by either of two methods.
One is carving. It is a subtractive process that
starts with a solid block, usually stone, which
is highly resistant to the sculptors chisel. The
brittleness of stone and the difficulty of cut-
ting it tend to result in the compact, "closed"
bringing people together to share goals, pur- proach or not, the building testifies to the
suits, and values. An extreme case is the Sol- strength of Wright s vision by precluding any
omon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York other way of seeing the art.
INTRODUCTION • 25
Meaning
a single element without upsetting the deli-
Art has been called a visual dialogue, for cate balance.
though the object itself is mute, it expresses The composition is controlled in part by
its creator's intention just as surely as if the perspective. The vanishing point of the diag-
artist were speaking to us. For there to be a onals formed by the top of the mirror and the
dialogue, however, our active participation is right side of the table lies at the juncture of
required. If we cannot literally talk to a work the woman's little fingerand the picture
of art, we can learn how to respond to it and frame. If we look at the bottom of the frame,
question it in order to fathom its meaning. we see that it is actually lower on the right
Finding the right answers usually involves than on the left, where it lies just below her
asking the right questions. Even if we aren't hand. The effect is so carefully calculated
sure which question to ask, we can always that the artist must have wanted to guide our
start with, "What would happen if the artist eye to the painting in the background.
had done it another way?" And when we are Though difficult to read at first, it depicts
through, we must question our explanation Christ at the Last Judgment, when every soul
according to the same test of adequate proof is weighed. The parallel of this subject to the
that applies to any investigation: have we woman's activity tells us that, contrary to our
taken into account all the available evidence, initial impression, this cannot be simply a
and arranged it in a logical and coherent scene of everyday life. The meaning is never-
way? There is, alas, no step-by-step method to theless far from Because Vermeer treat-
clear.
guide us, but this does not mean the process is ed forms as beads of light, it was assumed until
entirely mysterious. We can illustrate it by recently that the balance holds items ofjewelry
looking at some examples together. The and that the woman is weighing the worthless-
demonstration will help us gain courage to try ness of earthly possessions in the face of death;
thesame analysis the next time we enter a hence, the painting was generally called The
museum. Pearl Weigher or The Gold Weigher. But if we look
The great Dutch painter Jan Vermeer has closely, we can see that the pans contain noth-
been called The Sphinx of Delft, and with ing. This is confirmed by infrared photogra-
good reason, for all his paintings have a de- phy, which also reveals that Vermeer changed
gree of mystery. In Woman Holding a Balance the position of the balance: to make the com-
(fig. 16), a young woman, richly dressed in at- position more harmonious, he placed it paral-
home wear of the day and with strings of lel to the picture plane instead of allowing it to
pearls and gold coins spread out on the table recede into space.
before her, contemplating a balance in her
is What, then, is she doing? If she is weighing
hand. The canvas is
painted entirely in grada- temporal against spiritual values, it can be
tions of cool, neutral tones, except for a bit of only in a symbolic sense, because nothing
the red dress visible beneath her jacket. The about the figure or the setting betrays a sense
from the partly open window is con-
soft light of conflict. What accounts for this inner
centrated on her face and the cap framing it. peace? Perhaps it is self-knowledge, symbol-
Other beads of light reflect from the pearls ized here by the mirror. It may also be the
and her right hand. The serene atmosphere promise of salvation through her faith. In
is sustained throughout the stable composi- Woman Holding a Balance, as in Caravaggio's
tion. Vermeer places us at an intimate dis- The Calling of St. Matthew (see fig. 271), light
tance within the relatively shallow space, might therefore serve not only to illuminate
which has been molded around the figure. the scene but also to represent religious reve-
The underlying grid of horizontals and verti- end, we cannot be sure, because
lation. In the
cals is modulated by the gende curves of the Vermeer's approach to his subject proves as
woman's form and the heap of blue drapery, subtle as his pictorial treatment. He avoids
as well as by the oblique angles of the mirror. any anecdote or symbolism that might limit us
The design is so perfect that we cannot move to a single interpretation. There can be no
26 • ISTKODL'CTIOX
16. Jan Vermeer. Woman Holding a Balance, c. 1664. Oil on canvas, 16-VtX 15" (42.6x38.1 cm).
The National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. Widener Collection. 1942
doubt, however, about his fascination with The ambiguity in Woman Holding a Balance
light. Vermeer's masterv of light's expressive serves to heighten our interest and pleasure,
qualities elevates his concern for the realitv of while the carefully organized composition ex-
appearance to the level of poetry, and sub- presses the artist's underlying concept with
sumes its visual and svmbolic possibilities. we to do when a
singular clarity. But what are
Here, then, we have found the real "mean- work deliberately seems devoid of ostensible
ing" of Vermeer's art. meaning? Modern artists can pose a gap be-
L
IXTRODUCTION • 27
THE
ANCIENT
WORLD
L
Art historv is more than a stream of art ob- invention of writing, we know a great deal
jects created over time. It is intimatelv related more about historv than about prehistory.)
to historv itself, that is. the recorded evidence Or was there a genuine change in the wav
of human events. For that reason, we must things happened— and in the kinds of things
consider the concept of historv. which, we are that happened— after history began? Ob-
often told, begins with the invention of writ- viously, prehistory was far from uneventful.
ing some 8,000 vears ago. And indeed, the Vet changes in the human condition that
invention of writing was an early accomplish- mark this road, decisive though thev are.
ment of the "historic" civilizations of Meso- seem incredibly slow paced and gradual when
potamia and Egvpt. Without writing, the measured against the events of the last 5,000
growth we have known would have been im- years. The beginning of history, then, means
possible. We do not know the earliest phases a sudden increase in the speed of events, a
of its development, but writing must have shifting from low gear into high gear, as it
been several hundred years in the making— were. It also means a change in the kinds of
between 3300 and 3000 B.C.. roughlv speak- events. Historic societies quite literally make
ing, with Mesopotamia in the lead— after the historv. They not only bring forth "great
new societies were alreadv past their first individuals and great deeds"— to cite one tra-
stage. Thus "historv " was well under wav bv ditional definition — bv demanding human
the time writing could be used to record effort on a large scale, but they make these
events. achievements memorable as well. And for an
The invention of writing makes a conve- event to be memorable, must be more than
it
nient landmark, for the absence of written "worth remembering." It must also be accom-
records is surelv one of the kev differences plished quickly enough to be grasped bv hu-
between prehistoric and historic societies. But man memorv, and not spread over manv
as soon as we ask whv this is so. we face some centuries. Collectivelv. memorable events
intriguing problems. First of all. how valid is have caused the ever-quickening pace of
the distinction between prehistoric and his- change during the past five millenniums,
toric? Does it mereh express a difference in which begin with what we call the ancient
our knowledge of the past? (Thanks to the world.
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MEDITERRANEAN SEA
THE FAIYUI
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THE
ANCIENT
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SITES AND CITIES
IPPER
:gypt
MAGIC AND RITUAL:
PREHISTORIC AND
ETHNOGRAPHIC ART
the same operation — whatever that may have called Aurignacians and Magdalenians who
been. The next step was to try chipping away stand out for the gifted artists they produced
at these tools-by-appointment so as to im- and for the important role art must have
prove their shape. This is the first craft of played in their lives.
which we have evidence, and with it we enter The most striking works of Paleolithic art
a phase of human development known as the are the images of animals incised, painted, or
Paleolithic, or Old Stone Age. sculpted on the rock surfaces of caves, such as
PREHISTORIC AND ETHNOGRAPHIC ART • 33
the wonderful Wounded Bison from the cave at insouthern France, characteristically enough,
Altamira in northern Spain (fig. 18). The was discovered purely by chance in 1940 by
dying animal has collapsed on the ground, its some neighborhood boys whose dog fell into
legs no longer able to carry the weight of the a hole that led to the underground chamber.
body, its head lowered in defense. What a Hidden away as they are in the bowels of the
vivid, lifelike picture it is! We are amazed not earth to protect them from the casual in-
only by the keen observation, the assured, truder, these images must have served a pur-
vigorous oudines, and the subtly controlled pose far more serious than mere decoration.
shading that lends bulk and roundness to the There can be little doubt, in fact, that they
forms, but even more perhaps by the power were produced as part of a magic ritual, per-
and dignity of this creature in its final agony. haps to ensure a successful hunt. We gather
How did this extraordinary art develop? this not only from their secret location and
What purpose did it serve? And how did it from the lines meant to represent spears or
happen to survive intact over so many thou- darts that are sometimes found pointing at
sands of years? The last question can be an- the animals, but also from the peculiar, disor-
swered easily enough — for the pictures never derly way the images are superimposed on
occur near the mouth of a cave, where they one another, as in our example (fig. 19). Ap-
would be open to easy view (and destruction), parently, people of the Old Stone Age made
but only in the darkest recesses, as far from no clear distinction between image and real-
the entrance as possible. Some can be reached ity. By making a picture of an animal they
only by crawling on hands and knees, and the meant to bring the animal itself within their
path is so intricate that one would soon be lost grasp, and in "killing" the image they thought
without an expert guide. The cave at Lascaux they had killed the animal's vital spirit. Hence
34 PREHISTORIC AND ETHNOGRAPHIC ART
a "dead" image lost its potency after the kill- crease their supply, perhaps through seasonal
ing ritual had been performed, and could be ritualsrepeated year after year. In some of
disregarded when the spell had to be re- the weapons associated with the animals, im-
newed. The magic worked, too, we may be ages of plants have recendy been recognized.
sure. Hunters whose courage was thus for- Could it be that the Magdalenians practiced
tified were bound to be more successful when their fertility magic in the bowels of the earth
slaying these formidable beasts with their because they thought of the earth itself as a
primitive weapons. Nor has the emotional living thingfrom whose womb all other life
basis of this kind of magic been lost even to- springs? Such a notion is familiar to us from
day. We carry snapshots of those we love in the cults of earth deities of later times; it is
our wallets because this gives us a sense of not impossible that its origin goes back to the
their presence, and people have been known Old Stone Age. If it does, this would help
to tearup the photograph of someone they explain the admirable realism of the cave
have come to hate. paintings, for an artist who believes that he is
Even so, there remains a good deal that actually "creating" an animal is more likely to
puzzles us about the cave paintings. Why did strive for this quality than one who merely
they have to be in such inaccessible places? sets up an image for the kill.
Couldn't the hunting magic they serve have Some of the cave pictures may even provide
been performed just as well out in the open? a clue to the origin of this tradition of fertility
And why are they so marvelously lifelike? magic. In a good many instances, the shape of
Would not the magic have been equally ef- the animal seems to have been suggested by
fective if the "killing" had been practiced the natural formation of the rock, so that its
upon less realistic images? We know of count- body coincides with a bump or its contour
less later instances of magic that require only follows a vein or crack as far as possible. We
the crudest and most schematic kind of repre- all know how our imagination sometimes
sentation, such as two crossed sticks for a hu- makes us see all sorts of images in chance
man figure. formations such as clouds or blots. A Stone
Perhaps we should regard the Magdalenian Age hunter, his mind filled with thoughts of
cave pictures as the final phase of a develop- the big game on which he depended for sur-
ment that began as simple killing magic at a vival, would have been even more likely to
time when big game was plentiful but shifted recognize such animals as he stared at the
its meaning when the animals became scarce rock surfaces of his cave and to attribute deep
(there is evidence that the big herds withdrew significance to his discovery. Perhaps at first
northward as the climate of Central Europe he merely reinforced the outlines of such im-
grew warmer). At Altamira and Lascaux, ages with a charred stick from the fire, so that
then, the main purpose may no longer have others, too, could see what he had found. It is
been to "kill" but to "make" animals — to in- tempting to think that those who proved par-
^
PREHISTORIC AND ETHNOGRAPHIC ART • 35
1
36 • PREHISTORIC AXD ETHXOGRAPHIC ART
21. Stonehenge (aerial view), c. 2000 b.c. Diameter of circle 97' (29.6 m).
Salisbury Plain (Wiltshire), England
order, permanence, or solemnity of purpose. easier to find. They include all the so-called
A Greek, therefore, would certainly have ac- primitive societies of tropical Africa, the is-
knowledged Stonehenge as architecture. And lands of the South Pacific, and the Americas.
we, too, shall have no difficulty in doing so "Primitive" is a somewhat unfortunate word:
once we understand that it is not necessary to it suggests— quite wrongly— that these so-
enclose space in order to define or articulate it. cieties represent the original human condi-
If architecture is "the art of shaping space to tion, and has thus come tobe burdened with
human needs and aspirations," then Stone- many conflicting emotional overtones. The
henge more than meets the test. term "ethnographic" will serve us better. It
stands for a way of life that has passed
through the Neolithic Revolution but shows
ETHNOGRAPHIC ART no signs of evolving in the direction of the
"historic" civilizations. Ethnographic societies
There are few human groups for whom the perpetuate themselves by custom and tradi-
Old Stone Age lasted until modern times. tion; hence, the entire pattern of their life is
Modern survivors of the Neolithic are far static rather than dynamic.
-j
38 • PREHISTORIC AXD ETHXOGRAPHIC ART
Guardian Figures
Masks
In dealing with the spirit world, people were
not content to perform rituals or to present
offerings before their spirit traps. They
needed to act out their relations with the
spirit world through dances and similar dra-
matic ceremonials in which they could them-
selves temporarily assume the role of the
spirit trap by disguising themselves with elab-
orate masks and costumes. In these early so-
cieties, the costumes, always with a mask as
phasis on the mysterious and spectacular not nocturnal ceremonies by dancers carrying
only heightened the dramatic impact of the snakes. Even stranger is the Eskimo mask
ritual, but also permitted the makers of masks from southwest Alaska (fig. 26), with its non-
to strive for imaginative new effects, so that symmetrical design of seemingly unrelated
masks in general are less subject to traditional elements, especially the dangling "leaves" at-
restrictions than other kinds of ethnographic tached to curved "branches." The single eye
sculpture. and the mouth full of teeth are the only rec-
The few samples reproduced here can con- ognizable details to the outsider; yet to those
vey no more than the faintest suggestion of who know how to "read" this assembly of
the wealth of the available material. African shapes it is the condensed representation of a
masks, such as the one in figure 24, are distin- tribal myth about a swan that drives white
guished for symmetry of design and the pre- whales to the hunters.
40 • PREHISTORIC AXD ETHSUCR.\PHIC ART
Painting
each occasion that demands them, the designs
Compared to sculpture, painting plays a are rigidlv fixed bv tradition. The various
subordinate role in ethnographic societies. compositions are rather like recipes, pre-
Though the technique was widely known, its scribed by the medicine man and "filled" un-
use was restricted in most areas to the color- der his supervision by the painter, for the
ing of wood carvings or of the human bodv, main use of sand paintings is in ceremonies of
sometimes with intricate ornamental designs. healing. That these ceremonies are sessions
As an independent art, however, painting of great emotional intensity on the part of
could establish itself only when exceptional both doctor and patient is well attested by our
conditions provided suitable surfaces. Thus, illustration. Such a close union— or even, at
the Indian tribes inhabiting the arid South- times, identitv— of priest, healer, and artist
west of the United States developed the may be difficult to understand in modern
unique art of sand painting (fig. 27). The Western terms. But for people trying to bend
technique, which demands considerable skill, nature to their needs bv magic and ritual, the
consists of pouring powdered rock or earth functions appear as different aspects of a sin-
of various colors on a flat bed of sand. Despite gle process. And the success or failure of this
(or perhaps because of) the fact that thev are process is to them virtually a matter of life
L
ART FOR THE DEAD:
EGYPT
have remained indefinitely: the forces of cope with human environment have proved a
nature— at least during that geological era- far greater challenge than the earlier struggle
would never again challenge men and women with nature.
as they had Paleolithic peoples. And in many
parts of the globe, as we saw in the previous
chapter, people were content to stay on a THE OLD KINGDOM
"Neolithic plateau."
In a few places, however, the Neolithic bal- Egyptian civilization has long been regarded
ance between humans and nature was upset as the most rigid and conservative ever. Plato
by a new threat, posed not by nature but by said that Egyptian art had not changed in
people themselves, so that they began to build 10,000 years. Perhaps "enduring" and "con-
fortifications. What was the source of the hu- tinuous" are better terms for it, although at
man conflict that made them necessary? Com- first glance all Egyptian art between 3000 and
petition for grazing land among tribes of 500 b.c. does tend to have a certain sameness.
herdsmen or for arable soil among farming There is a kernel of truth in this: the basic
communities? The basic cause, we suspect, pattern of Egyptian institutions, beliefs, and
was that the Neolithic Revolution had been artistic ideas was formed during the first few
too successful, permitting the local popula- centuries of that vast span of years and kept
tion to grow beyond the available food sup- reasserting itself until the very end. We shall
ply. This situation might have been resolved see, however, that as time went on this basic
in a number of ways. Constant tribal warfare pattern went through ever more severe crises
could have reduced the population; or the that challenged its ability to survive. Had it
42 • ART FOR THE DEAD: EGYPT
been as inflexible as supposed, would have it forever; yet we must not make the mistake of
succumbed long before it Egyp-
finally did. concluding that the Egyptians viewed life on
tian art alternates between conservatism and this earth mainly as a road to the grave. Their
innovation but is never static. Some of its preoccupation with the cult of the dead is a
great achievements had a decisive influence link with the Neolithic past, but the meaning
on Greek and Roman and thus we can
art, they gave was quite new and different: the
it
still feel ourselves linked to the Egypt of dark fear of the spirits of the dead that domi-
5,000 years ago by a continuous, living nates primitive ancestor cults seems entirely
tradition. absent. Instead, the Egyptian attitude was
that each person must provide for his or her
own happy afterlife. The ancient Egyptians
Dynasties
would equip tombs as a kind of shadowy
their
The history of Egypt is divided into dynasties replica of their daily environment for their
of rulers, in accordance with ancient Egyp- spirits (ka) to enjoy, and would make sure that
tian practice, beginning with the First Dy- the ka had a body to dwell in (the individual's
nasty, shordy after 3000 B.C. (the dates of the own mummified corpse or, if that should be
earliest rulers are difficult to translate exactly destroyed, a statue of the person).
into our calendar). The transition from pre- There is a curious blurring of the sharp
history to the First Dynasty known as the
is linebetween life and death here, and perhaps
predvnastic period. The Old Kingdom forms that was the essential impulse behind these
the major division after that, ending
first mock households. A man who knew that after
about 2155 B.C. with the overthrow of the death his ka would enjoy the same pleasures
Sixth Dynasty. This method of counting he did, and who had provided these pleasures
historic time conveys at once the strong Egyp- inadvance by his own efforts, could look for-
tian sense of continuity and the overwhelm- ward to an active and happy life without be-
ing importance of the pharaoh (king), who ing haunted by fear of the great unknown. In
was not only the supreme ruler but also a a sense, then, the Egyptian tomb was a kind
god. The pharaoh transcended all other peo- of life insurance, an investment in peace of
ple, for his kingship was not a duty or priv- mind. Such, at least, is the impression one
ilege derived from a superhuman source, but gains of Old Kingdom tombs. Later on, the
was absolute, divine. This belief remained serenity of this concept of death was dis-
the key feature of Egyptian civilization and turbed by a tendency to subdivide the spirit
largely determined the character of Egyptian or soul into two or more separate identities,
art.We do not know exactly the steps by and by the introduction of a sort of judg-
which the early pharaohs established their ment, a weighing of souls. Only then do we
claim to divinity, but we know their historic also find expressions of the fear of death.
achievements: molding the Nile valley from
the first Assuan to the Delta into a
cataract at
Sculpture
and increasing its fertil-
single, effective state,
ity by regulating the river waters through Palette of King Narmer. At the threshold of
dams and canals. Egyptian history stands a work of art that is
also a historic document: a carved palette
(fig. 28) celebrating the victory of Narmer,
Tombs and Religion
king of Upper Egypt, over Lower Egypt, the
Of these vast public works nothing remains oldest known image of a historic personage
today, and very litde has survived of ancient identified by name. It already shows most of
Egyptian palaces and cities. Our knowledge the features characteristic of Egyptian art.
of Egyptian civilization rests almost entirely But before we concern ourselves with these,
on the tombs and their contents. This is no let us first "read" the scene. The fact that we
accident, since the tombs were built to last are able to do so is another indication that we
a
man on the left stands for a fortified town or of significance who move in the aura of his
citadel). Facing the king in the upper right we divinity) in the most complete way possible.
see a complex bit of picture writing: a falcon And since the scenes depictsolemn and, as it
standing above a clump of papvrus plants were, timeless rituals, our artist did not have
holds a tether attached to a human head that to concern himself with the fact that this
"grows" from the same soil as the plants. This method of representing the human bodv
composite image actually repeats the main made almost any kind of movement or action
scene on a svmbolic level: the head and pa- practically impossible. In fact, the frozen
pyrus plant stand for Lower Egvpt. while the quality of the image would seem especially
44 ART FOR THE DEAD: EGYPT
veying the fact that the body is dead but the started out by drawing the front and side
spirit is and aware of the pleasures of
alive views on the faces of a rectangular block and
this world, though the man can no longer then worked inward until these views met.
participate in them directly. We should also Only in this way could he have achieved fig-
note that these scenes of daily life do not rep- ures of such overpowering three-dimensional
resent the dead man's favorite pastimes. If firmness and immobility. What magnificent
they did, he would be looking back, and such vessels for the ka to inhabit! Both have the left
nostalgia is quite alien to the spirit of Old foot placed forward, yet there is no hint of a
Kingdom tombs. It has been shown, in fact, forward movement. The pair also affords an
that these scenes form a seasonal cycle, a sort interesting comparison of male and female
of perpetual calendar of recurrent human ac- beauty as interpreted by a fine sculptor, who
ART FOR THE DEAD: EGYPT • 45
knew not only how to contrast the structure possible and to emphasize the portrait char-
of the two bodies but also how to emphasize acter of the faces.
the soft, swelling form of the queen through a
thin, close-fitting gown. The group must have
Architecture
originally shared with other statues a vivid
coloring, which lent them a strikingly lifelike When we speak of the Egyptians' attitude to-
appearance but which has survived com- ward death and afterlife as expressed in their
pletely intact only in a few instances. Accord- tombs, we must be careful to make it clear
ing to the standard convention of Egyptian that we do not mean the attitude of the aver-
art, the king would have had a darker body age Egyptian but only that of the small aristo-
color than the queen. Their eyes, too, would cratic caste clustered around the royal court.
have been painted, and perhaps inlaid with The tombs of the members of this class of
shining quartz, to make them look as alive as high (who were often relatives of the
officials
royal family) are usuallv found near the pha-
raohs' tombs, and their shape and contents
reflect, or are related to, the funerary monu-
ments of. the divine kings. We still have much
to learn about the origin and significance of
Egvptian tombs, but the concept of afterlife
we find in the so-called private tombs did not
apply to ordinary mortals, only to the priv-
ileged few because of their association with the
immortal pharaohs. The standard form of
these tombs was the mastaba, a squarish
mound faced with brick or stone, above the
burial chamber, which was deep underground
and linked to the mound by a shaft. Inside the
mastaba is a chapel for offerings to the ka and
a secret cubicle for the statue of the deceased.
31. Imhotep. Step Pyramid of King Zoser, Saqqara. 3rd Dynasty, c. 2600 B.C.
they are mere surface decoration. But let us which they project, all share in this task.
look at the slender, tapering, fluted columns
in figure 31, or the papyrus-shaped half- Giza. The development of the pyramid
columns in figure 32: these do not simply dec- reaches its climax during the Fourth Dynasty
orate the walls to which they are attached, but in the famous triad of great pyramids at Giza
interpret them and give them life. Their pro- (fig. 33), of the familiar, smooth-sided
all
portions, the feeling of strength or resilience shape. They originally had an outer casing of
L
ART FOR THE DEAD: EGYPT
33. The Pyramids of Mvcerinus. c. 2470 b.c; Chefren. c. 2500 B.C.; and Cheops, c. 2530 B.C., Giza
carefully dressed stone, which has disap- pyramids as well as at the technical accom-
peared except near the top of the Pyramid of plishment they represent; but they have also
Chefren. Clustered about the three great pyr- come to be regarded as symbols of slave
amids are several smaller ones and a large labor — thousands of men forced by cruel
number of mastabas for members of the royal masters to serve the aggrandizement of abso-
family and high officials, but the unified fu- lute rulers. Such a picture may well be unjust:
nerary district of Zoser has given way to a certain records have been preserved indicat-
simpler arrangement. Adjoining each of the ing that the labor was paid for, so that we are
great pyramids to the east is a funerary tem- probably nearer the truth if we regard these
ple, from which a processional causeway leads monuments as vast public works providing
to a second temple at a lower level, in the Nile economic security for a good part of the
valley, at a distance of about a third of a mile. population.
Next to the valley temple of the Pyramid of
Chefren stands the Great Sphinx carved from
the live rock (fig. 34), perhaps an even more
impressive embodiment of divine kingship
than the pyramids themselves. The roval
head rising from the body of a lion towers to a
height of sixty-five feet and once bore, in all
probability, the features of Chefren (damage
inflicted upon it during Islamic times has ob-
scured the details of the face). Its awesome
majesty is such that a thousand years later it
could be regarded as an image of the sun
god.
Enterprises of this huge scale mark the
high point of pharaonic power. After the end
of the Fourth Dvnasty (less than two centuries
after Zoser) thev were never attempted again,
although pyramids on a much more modest
scale continued to be built. The world has 34. The Great Sphinx, Giza. c. 2500 b.c
always marveled at the sheer size of the great Height 65' (19.8 m)
48 • ART FOR THE DEAD: EGYPT
Tomb Decorations
THE NEW KINGDOM
A loosening of established rules also makes The hundred years following the expul-
five
itself felt inMiddle Kingdom painting and sion of the Hyksos and comprising the Eigh-
relief, where it leads to all sorts of interesting teenth, Nineteenth, and Twentieth dynasties
departures from convention. They occur represent a third Golden Age of Egypt. The
most conspicuously in the decoration of the country, once more united under strong and
tombs of local princes at Beni Hasan, which efficient kings, extended its frontiers far to
have survived destruction better than most the east, into Palestine and Syria (hence this
Middle Kingdom monuments because they period is also known as the Empire). New
are carved into the living rock. The mural Kingdom art covers a vast range of styles and
Feeding the Oryxes (fig. 35) comes from one of quality, from rigid conservatism to brilliant
these rock-cut tombs, that of Khnum-hotep. inventiveness, from oppressively massive os-
(As the emblem of the prince's domain, the tentation to the most delicate refinement. As
oryx antelope seems tohave been a sort of with the art of imperial Rome 1,500 years
honored pet in his household.) According to later,it is almost impossible to summarize in
the standards of Old Kingdom art, all the fig- terms of a representative sampling. Different
ures ought to share the same groundline, or strands are interwoven into a fabric so com-
the second oryx and its attendant ought to be plex that any choice of monuments is bound
placed above the first. Instead, the painter to seem arbitrary. All we can hope to accom-
has introduced a secondary groundline only plish is to convey some of the flavor of its
slightly higher than the primary one, and as a variety.
L
ART FOR THE DEAD: EGYPT • 49
36. Court and pylon of Ramesses 1260 b.c, and colonnade and court of Amenhotep
II, c. III, c. 1390 b.c.
37. Akhenaten (Amenhotep IV). c. 1360 B.C. Limestone, workmanship of the coffin cover, with the
height 3V»" (7.9 cm). Agyptisches Museum, rich play of colored inlays against the pol-
Staatliche Museen, Berlin ished gold surfaces, is even more impressive.
40. The "White Temple" on its ziggurat, Uruk (Warka), Iraq. c. 3500-3000 b.c.
Architecture
forms soon reached the height of true moun- are sufficiently well preserved to suggest
tains, comparable to the pyramids of Egypt in something of the original appearance of the
the immensity of effort required for con- structure. The main room, or cella, where
struction and in their effect as great land- sacrifices were offered before the statue of
marks that tower above the featureless plain. the god, is a narrow hall that runs the entire
They are known as ziggurats. length of the temple and is flanked by a series
The most famous of them, the biblical of smaller chambers. But the main entrance
Tower of Babel, has been completely de- to the cellais on the southwest side, rather
stroyed, but a much earlier example, built than on the side facing the stairs or on one of
shortly before 3000 b.c. and thus several cen- the narrow sides of the temple, as one might
turies older than the first of the pyramids, expect. In order to understand the reason for
survives at Warka, the site of the Sumerian this, we must view the ziggurat and temple as
city of Uruk (called Erech in the Bible). The a whole: the entire complex is planned in
mound, its sloping sides reinforced by solid such a way that the worshiper, starting at the
brick masonry, rises to a height of forty feet; bottom of the stairs on the east side, is forced
stairs and ramps lead up to the platform on to go around as many corners as possible be-
which stands the sanctuary, called the "White fore reaching the cella. The processional
Temple" because of its whitewashed brick ex- path, in other words, resembles a sort of an-
terior (figs. 40, 41). Its heavy walls, articulated gular spiral. This "bent-axis approach" is a
by regularly spaced projections and recesses, fundamental characteristic of Mesopotamian
42. Statues, from the \bu temple, TellAsmar. c. 2700-2500 b.c. Limestone, alabaster, and gvpsum. height
of tallest figure c. 30" (76.2 cm). Iraq Museum, Baghdad, and The Oriental Institute. University of Chicago
AXCIEXT XEAR EASTERX ART • 55
Sculpture
sons thev portraved. offering pravers or combining such varied substances as wood,
transmitting messages to the deity in their gold leaf, and lapis lazuli). Some pieces of the
stead. Vet none of them indicate anv attempt latter kind, roughlv contemporarv with the
to achieve a real likeness. The bodies as well Tell Asmar figures, have been found in tombs
as the faces are rigorouslv simplified and at Ur. Thev include the fascinating object
schematic, in order to avoid distracting atten- shown in figure 43. an offering stand in the
tion from the windows of the soul."
eves, "the shape of a ram rearing up against a flowering
If the Egvptian sculptor's sense of form was tree. The animal, marvelouslv alive and ener-
essentiallv cubic, that of the Sumerian was getic, has an almost demonic power of ex-
based on the cone and cvlinder. Arms and pression as it gazes at us from between the
legs have the roundness of pipes, and the branches of the svmbolic tree. And well it
long skins worn bv all these figures are as might, for it is sacred to the god Tammuz and
smoothlv curved as if thev had been turned thus embodies the male principle in nature.
on a lathe. Even in later times, when Meso- Such an association of animals with deities
potamian sculpture had acquired a far richer is from prehistoric times. We find
a carryover
repertory of shapes, this qualitv asserted itself it not onlv in Mesopotamia but in Egvpt as
again and again. well (see the falcon of Horus in fig. 28). What
The conic-cvlindrical simplification of the distinguishes the sacred animals of the Sume-
Tell Asmar statues is characteristic of the rians is the active part thev plav in mvthology.
56 • A SCI EXT XEAR EASTERS ART
statesbegan to decay. The local "stewards of rian stock in many places. They had adopted
the god" had in practice become reigning Sumerian civilization but were less bound to
monarchs, and the more ambitious among the tradition of the city-state. It was they who
them attempted to enlarge their domain by produced the first Mesopotamian rulers
conquering their neighbors. At the same who openly called themselves kings and pro-
time, the Semitic inhabitants of northern claimed their ambition to rule their neigh-
Mesopotamia drifted south in ever larger bors. Few of them succeeded; the second
numbers, until they outweighed the Sume- millennium b.c:. was a time of almost continu-
AXCIEXT SEAR EASTERX ART • 57
ous turmoil. Central power was held bv native TheAssvrians. it has been said, were
from about 1760 to 1600 b.c.
rulers onlv to the Sumerians what the Romans were to
Hammurabi (c 1792-1750 B.C.). the founder the Greeks. Assyrian civilization drew on the
of the Babylonian dvnastv. is bv far the great- achievements of the south but reinterpreted
est combining militarv
figure of the age: them to fit its own distinctive character. Much
prowess with a deep respect for Sumerian of Assvrian art devoted to glorifying the
is
tradition,he saw himself as "the favorite power of the king, either bv detailed depic-
shepherd" of the sun god Shamash. whose tions of his military conquests or bv showing
mission was "to cause justice to prevail in the him as the killer of lions. The latter were
land."Under him and his successors. Babvlon more in the nature of ceremonial contests
became the cultural center of Sumer. The citv than actual hunts: the animals were released
was to retain this prestige for more than a from cages into a square formed bv troops
thousand vears after its political power had with shields for the king to kill, (Presumably.
waned. at a much hunting of lions in
earlier time, the
Hammurabi's memorable achieve-
most the field had been an important duty of
ment is famous as the
his law code, justlv Mesopotamian rulers as the "shepherds" of
earliest uniform written bodv of laws and the communal flocks.) Here the Assyrian
amazingly rational and humane in concep- relief sculptor rises to his greatest heights. In
tion. He had it engraved on a tall diorite stele figure 46. from the Palace of Ashurnasirpal
whose top shows Hammurabi confronting the II (died 860? b.c.) at Nimrud (Calah). the lion
sun god (fig. 45). The ruler's right arm is attacking the roval chariot from the rear is
The most copious archaeological finds date flowering between 612 and 539 b.c. before it
from the third major phase of Mesopotamian was conquered bv the Persians. The best
historv. between c. 1000 and 500 b.c. which known of these Neo-Babvlonian rulers was
was dominated bv the Assyrians. Under a Nebuchadnezzar (died 562 b.c). the builder
series of able rulers, the Assyrian domain of the Toyver of Babel.
graduallv expanded until it embraced not Whereas the Assyrians had used caned
onlv Mesopotamia proper but the surround- stone slabs, the Neo-Babvlonians (yvho yvere
ing regions as well. At the height of its power. farther removed from the sources of such
from about 1000 to 612 b.c... the Assvrian em- slabs) baked and glazed brick.
substituted
pire stretched from the Sinai peninsula to Ar- This technique, too. had been developed in
menia: even Lower Egvpt was successfullv Assyria, but now it was used on a far larger
invaded in 671 B.C. scale, both for surface ornament and for ar-
58 • AS'CIENT NEAR EASTERN ART
46. Ashurnasirpal II Killing Lions, from the Palace of Ashurnasirpal II, Nimrud (Calah), Iraq. c. 850 b.c.
Limestone, 3'3"x8'4" (99.1 cm x 2.54 m). British Museum, London
L
AXCIEXT XEAR EASTERX ART • 59
47. Ishtar Gate (restored), from Babvlon, Iraq. c. 575 B.C. Glazed brick.
Yorderasiatisches Museum der Staadichen Museen. Berlin
chitectural reliefs. Its distinctive effect is evi- and became the heirs of what had been the
dent Gate of Nebuchadnezzar's
in the Ishtar Assyrian empire. Today the country is called
sacred precinct in Babylon, which has been Iran, its older and more suitable name, since
rebuilt from the thousands of individual the Persians, who put the area on the map of
glazed bricks that covered its surface (fig. 47). world history, were latecomers who had ar-
The stately procession of bulls, dragons, and rived on the scene only a few centuries before
other animalsof molded brick within a thev began their epochal conquests. Inhab-
framework of vividly colored ornamental ited continuously since prehistoric times, Iran
bands has a grace and gaietv that remind us seems always have been a gateway for mi-
to
again of that special genius of ancient Meso- grator) tribesfrom the Asiatic steppes to the
potamian art for the portrayal of animals, north as well as from India to the east. The
which we noted in earlv dvnastic times. new arrivals would settle down for a while,
dominating or intermingling with the local
population, until they in turn were forced to
PERSIAN ART move on— to Mesopotamia, to Asia Minor, to
southern Russia— by the next wave of mi-
Persia, the mountain-fringed high plateau to grants. These movements form a shadowv
the east of Mesopotamia, takes its name from area of historical knowledge; all available in-
the people who occupied Babylon in 539 b.c. formation is vague and uncertain.
60 • ANCIENT NEAR EASTERN ART
buckles, fibulas and other articles of adorn- of the ibexes, whose necks have been pulled
ment, cups, bowls, and the like. They have out to dragonlike slenderness.
been found over a vast area, from Siberia to
Central Europe, from Iran to Scandinavia.
The Achaemenids
They have in common not only a jewellike
concentration of ornamental design but also a After conquering Babylon in 539 B.C., Cyrus
repertory of forms known as the "animal (c. 600-529 B.C.) assumed the title King of
style." Its main feature, as the name suggests, Babylon along with the ambitions of the As-
is the decorative use of animal motifs in a syrian rulers.The empire he founded contin-
rather abstract and imaginative manner. And ued to expand under his successors. Egypt as
one of the sources of the animal style appears well as Asia Minor fell to them, and Greece
escaped the same fate only by the narrowest
margin. At its high tide, under Darius I
(c. 550-486 b.c.) and Xerxes (519-465 B.C.),
L
ANCIENT NEAR EASTERN ART 61
throughout the vast complex. Yet they do not Their repetitive, ceremonial character em-
determine the character of the building, for phasizes a subservience to the architectural
they have been combined with influences setting that is typical of all Persian sculpture.
from every corner of the empire in such a Even here, however, we discover that the
way that the result is a new, uniquely Persian Assyrian-Babylonian heritage has been en-
style. Thus, at Persepolis columns are used on riched by innovations stemming from the Io-
a grand scale. The Audience Hall of Darius, a nian Greeks, who had created such figures in
room 250 had a wooden ceiling
feet square, the course of the sixth century b.c, so that
supported by thirty-six columns forty feet the style of the Persian carvings is a softer and
tall, a few of which are still standing (fig. 49). more refined echo of the Mesopotamian
Such a massing of columns suggests Egyptian tradition.
architecture (compare fig. 36), and Egyptian Persian art under the Achaemenids, then,
influence does indeed appear in the orna- is a remarkable synthesis of many diverse ele-
mental detail of the bases and capitals, but the ments; yet it lacked a capacity for growth.
slender, fluted shaft of the Persepolis col- The formulated under Darius I about
style
umns is derived from the Ionian Greeks in 500 continued without significant change
b.c.
Asia Minor, who are known to have furnished until the end of the empire. The main reason
artists to the Persian court. for this failure, it seems, was the Persians' pre-
The double stairway leading up to the Au- occupation with decorative effects regardless
dience Hall decorated with long rows of
is of scale, a carryover from their nomadic past
solemnly marching figures in low relief. that they never discarded.
AEGEAN ART
If we sail from the Nile Delta northwestward Among the many strange qualities of Aegean
across the Mediterranean, our first glimpse of art,and perhaps the most puzzling, is its air
Europe will be the eastern tip of Crete. Be- of freshness and spontaneity, which makes us
yond it, we find a scattered group of small forget how little we know of its meaning.
islands, the Cyclades, and, a little farther on,
the mainland of Greece, facing the coast of
Asia Minor across the Aegean Sea. To archae- CYCLADIC ART
ologists, "Aegean" is not merely a geograph-
ical term. They have adopted it to designate The people who inhabited the Cycladic Is-
the civilizations that flourished in this area lands between about 2600 and 1 have
100 b.c.
during the third and second millenniums left hardly any trace apart from their modest
B.C., before the development of Greek civili- stone tombs. The things they buried with
zation proper. There are three of these, their dead are remarkable in one respect
closely interrelated yet distinct from each only: they include a large number of marble
other: that of the small islands north of Crete, idols of a peculiarly impressive kind. Almost
known as Cycladic; that of Crete, called Mi- all of them represent a standing nude female
noan after the legendary Cretan King Minos; figure with arms folded across the chest, pre-
and that of the Greek mainland, called Hel- sumably the mother and fertility goddess
ladic, which includes Mvcenaean civilization. known to us from Asia Minor and the ancient
Each of them has in turn been divided into Near East, whose ancestry reaches far back to
three phases, Early, Middle, and Late, which the Old Stone Age. They also share a distinc-
correspond, very roughly, to the Old, Middle, tive shape: the flat, wedge shape of the body,
and New Kingdoms in Egypt. The most im- the strong, columnar neck, and the tilted oval
portant remains, and the greatest artistic shield of the face, featureless except for the
achievements, date from the latter part of the long, ridgelike nose. Within this narrowly de-
Middle phase and from the Late phase. fined and stable type, however, the Cycladic
Aegean civilization was long known only idols show wide variations in scale (from a few
from Homer's account of the Trojan War in inches to lifesize) as well as form.
the Iliad and from Greek legends centering The best of them, such as that in figure 50,
on Crete. Since then, a great amount of fas- have a disciplined refinement utterly beyond
cinating material has been brought to light — the range of Paleolithic or ethnographic art.
far more than the literary sources would lead The longer we study this piece, the more we
us to expect — but our knowledge of Aegean come to realize that its qualities can only be
civilization even now is very much more lim- defined as "elegance" and "sophistication,"
ited than our knowledge of Egypt or the an- however incongruous such terms may seem
cient Near East. We thus lack a great deal of in this context. What an extraordinary feeling
the background knowledge necessary for an for the organic structure of the body there is
understanding of Aegean art. Its forms, al- in the delicate curves of the oudine, in the
though linked both to Egypt and the Near marking the knees and ab-
hints of convexity
East on the one hand and to later Greek art domen. Even if we discount its deceptively
on the other, are no mere transition between modern look, the figure seems a bold depar-
these two worlds. They have a haunting ture from anything we have seen before.
beauty of their own that belongs to neither. There is no dearth of earlier fertility idols.
L
AEGEAN ART • 63
MINOAN ART
Minoan civilization is by far the richest, as
well as the strangest, of the Aegean world.
What sets it apart, not only from Egypt and
the Near East but also from the Classical civi-
lization of Greece, is a lack of continuity that
appears to have deeper causes than archae-
ologicalaccident. In surveving the main
achievements of Minoan art, we cannot really
speak of growth or development. Thev ap-
pear and disappear so abruptly that their fate
must have been determined by external
forces — volcanic eruptions or other sudden
violent changes affecting the entire island —
about which we know little or nothing. Yet the
character of Minoan art, which is gay, even
playful, and full of rhythmic motion, convevs
no hint of such threats.
Architecture
from the bulbous, heavy-bodied "Venus" figu- destroyed at the same time, about 1700 b.c.
rines of the Old Stone Age (see fig. 20). In After an interval of a hundred vears, new and
fact, the earliest Cvcladic idols, too, were of even larger structures began to appear on the
64 • AEGEAX ART
same sites, only to suffer destruction, in their gance to this day. The masonry construction
turn, about 1500 B.C. of Minoan palaces is excellent throughout,
These "new" palaces are our main source but the columns were always of wood. Al-
of information on Minoan architecture. The though none have survived, their charac-
one at Knossos, called the Palace of Minos, teristic form (the smooth shaft tapering
was the most ambitious, covering a large terri- downward, topped by a wide, cushion-shaped
tory and composed of so many rooms that it capital) is known from representations in
survived in Greek legend as the labyrinth of painting and sculpture. About the origins of
the Minotaur. It has been carefully excavated this type of column, which in some contexts
and pardy restored. We cannot recapture the could also serve as a religious symbol, or
appearance of the building as a whole, but we about its possible links with Egyptian archi-
can assume that the exterior probably did not tecture, we can say nothing at all.
that we hardly ever have a complete composi- on during these performances, we find it
tion, let alone the design of an entire wall. A strangely ambiguous. Do the three figures
great many of them were scenes from nature show successive phases of the same action?
showing animals and birds among luxuriant How did the youth in the center get onto the
vegetation, or creatures of the sea. back of thebull, and in what direction is he
Not only was marine life (as seen in the fish moving? Scholars have even consulted rodeo
and dolphin fresco in fig. 51) a favorite sub- experts without getting clear answers to these
ject of Minoan painting. The marine feeling questions. All of which does not mean that
pervades all Minoan art. We sense it even in the Minoan was deficient— it would be
artist
"The Toreador Fresco," the largest and most absurd to find fault for failing to accomplish
dynamic Minoan mural recovered so far what was never intended in the first place—
(fig. 52). (The darker patches are the original but that fluid, effortless ease of movement
fragments on which the restoration is based.) was more important to him than factual pre-
The conventional title should not mislead us: cision or dramatic power. He has, as it were,
what we see here is not a bullfight but a ritual idealized the ritual by stressing its harmo-
game in which the performers vault over the nious, playful aspect to the point that the par-
back of the animal. Two of the slim-waisted ticipants behave like dolphins gamboling in
athletes are girls, differentiated (as in Egyp- the sea.
tian art) mainly by their lighter skin color.
That the bull was a sacred animal and that
bull-vaulting played an important role in Mi- MYCENAEAN ART
noan beyond doubt. Scenes
religious life are
such as this still echo in the Greek legend of Along the southeastern shores of the Greek
the youths and maidens sacrificed to the mainland there was during Late Helladic
Minotaur. If we try, however, to "read" the times (c. 1600-1 100 b.c.) a number of settle-
fresco as a description of what actually went ments that corresponded in many ways to
(t
52. "The Toreador Fresco." c. 1500 b.c. Height including upper border c. 24 '/V (62.2 cm).
Archaeological Museum, Heraklion, Crete
66 • AEGEAS ART
53. Interior. Treasury of Atreus, coverer thought it far too ambitious for a
Mvcenae, Greece, c. 1300—1250 b.c. tomb and gave it the misleading name Trea-
sury of Atreus. Burial places as elaborate as
this can be matched only in Egypt during the
same period.
Apart from such details as the shape of the
columns or decorative motifs of various sorts,
Mycenaean architecture owes little to the Mi-
noan tradition. The palaces on the mainland
were hilltop fortresses surrounded by defen-
sive walls of huge stone blocks, a type of con-
struction quite unknown in Crete. The Lion
Gate Mycenae (fig. 54) is the most im-
at
pressive remnant of these massive ramparts,
which inspired such awe in the Greeks of
later times that they were regarded as the
work of the Cyclopes (a mythical race of one-
eyed giants). Even the Treasury of Atreus, al-
though built of smaller and more precisely
shaped blocks, has a Cyclopean lintel (see
fig. 53).
grouped around palaces. Their inhabitants fluence from the ancient Near East. We may
have come to be called Mycenaeans, after My- at this point recall the Trojan War, which
cenae, the most important of these setde- brought the Mycenaeans to Asia Minor soon
ments. Since the works of art unearthed there after 1200 b.c. It seems likely, however, that
by excavation often showed a strikingly Mi- they began to sally eastward across the Ae-
noan character, the Mycenaeans were at first gean, for trade or war, much earlier than
regarded as having come from Crete, but is it that.
GREEK ART
The works of art we have come toknow so far our memories of their countless later imita-
are like fascinating strangers: we approach tions get in the way.
them fully aware of their alien background The Mycenaeans and other clans described
and of the "language difficulties" they pre- by Homer were the first Greek-speaking
sent. If it turns out that, after all, we can un- tribes towander into the peninsula, around
derstand something of what they have to say, 2000 b.c. Then, around 1100 B.C., others
we are surprised and grateful. As soon as we came, overwhelming and absorbing those
reach the Greeks, our attitude undergoes a who were already there. Some of the late ar-
change: they are not strangers but relatives, rivals, the Dorians, settled on the mainland;
we feel, older members of our own family others, the Ionians, spread out to the Aegean
whom we recognize immediately. It is just as islands and Asia Minor. A few centuries later
well to remember, as we turn to these "ances- they ventured into the waters of the western
tors" of ours, that the continuous tradition Mediterranean, founding colonies in Sicilv
that links us to the ancient Greeks is a hand- and southern Italy. Though the Greeks were
icap as well as an advantage: we must be care- united by language and religious beliefs, old
ful, in looking at Greek originals, not to let tribal loyalties continued to divide them into
Museum of Art, New York. Rogers Fund, 1914 (142.2 cm). Archaeological Museum, Eleusis
68 • GREEK ART
growth of ideas and institutions. In the end, tive. Here lies a worthy man, it tells us, who
they paid dearly for their inability to compro- was mourned by many and had a splendid
mise. The Peloponnesian War (431-404 B.C.), funeral. Did the Greeks, then, have no con-
in which the Spartans and their allies de- ception of a hereafter? They did, but the
feated the Athenians, was a catastrophe from realm of the dead to them was a colorless, ill-
which Greece never recovered. defined region where the souls, or "shades,"
led a feeble and passive existence without
making any demands on the living.
PAINTING
Orientalizing Style
The formative phase of Greek civilization
embraces about four hundred years, from Representation and narrative, entirely absent
c. 100 to 700 b.c. Of the first three centuries
1 from the Dipylon Vase of a hundred years ear-
of this period we know very little, but after lier (see fig. 55), demand greater scope than
about 800 b.c. the Greeks rapidly emerge the conservative tradition of the Geometric
into the full light of history. The earliest spe- style The dam finally burst to-
could provide.
cific dates that have come down to us are ward 725 when Greek art entered an-
B.C.,
from that time: 776 B.C., the founding of the other phase, which we call the Orientalizing
Olympic Games and the starting point of style, and new forms came flooding in. As its
Greek chronology, as well as several slightly name implies, the new style reflects powerful
later dates recording the founding of various influences from Egypt and the Near East,
cities. That time also saw the full develop- stimulated by increasing trade with these re-
ment of the oldest characteristically Greek gions.Between c. 725 and 650 B.C. Greek art
style in the fine arts, the so-called Geometric. absorbed a host of Oriental motifs and ideas
We kjiow_kjmJy_fron^j)ainted pottery and and was profoundly transformed in the pro-
small-scale sculpture (monumental architec- cess.The change becomes very evident if we
ture and sculpture in stone did not appear compare the large amphora (a vase for stor-
until the seventh century). ing wine or oil) from Eleusis (fig. 56) with the
Dipylon Vase.
Geometric ornament has not disappeared
Geometric Style
from this vase altogether, but it is confined to
Aj-firsXjhe potter y had been decorated only the peripheral zones: the foot, the handles,
w^th__ahs_trac^designs— triangles, checkers, and the lip. New, curvilinear motifs— such as
concentric circles— but toward 800 b.c. hu- spirals, interlacing bands, palmettes, and
man and animal figures began to appear rosettes — are conspicuous everywhere. On
within the geometric framework, and in the the shoulder of the vessel we see a frieze of
most mature examples these figures could fighting animals, derived from the repertory
form elaborate scenes. Our specimen (fig. of Near Eastern art. The major areas, how-
55), from the Dipylon cemetery in Athens, ever, are given over to narrative^ which has
belongs to a group of very large vases that become the dominant element. Ornament of
served as grave monuments. Its bottom has anysorrnow belongs t o a separate and lesser
holes through which liquid offerings could realm, clearly distinguishable from that of
filter down to the dead below. On the body of representation, so that the decorative pat-
the vessel we see the deceased lying in state, terns scattered among the figures can no
flanked by figures with their arms raised in a longer interfere with their actions.
gesture of mourning, and a funeral pro- Narrative painting tapped a nearly in-
cession of chariots and warriors on foot. exhaustible source of subjects from Greek
The most remarkable thing about this myths and legends. These tales were the re-
GREEK ART • 69
suitof mixing local Doric and Ionic deities style. Once the new elements from the East
and heroes into the pantheon of Olympian had been fully assimilated, there emerged an-
gods and Homeric sagas. They also represent other style, as well defined as the Geometric
a comprehensive attempt to understand the but infinitely greater in range: the Arch aic,
world. The Greeks grasped the internal which lasted from the later seventh century to
meaning of events in terms of fate and hu- about 480 B.C., the time of the famous Greek
man character rather than as the accidents of victories over the Persians at Salamis and
which they had little interest before
history, in Plataea. During the Archaic period, we wit-
about 500 B.C. The main focus was on ex- ness the unfolding of the artistic genius of
plaining why the legendary heroes of the past Greece not only in vase painting but also
seemed incomparably greater than men of in monumental architecture and sculpture.
the present. Some were historical figures — While Archaic art lacks the balance, the sense
Herakles, for example, was the king of My- of perfection of the Classical style of the later
cenaean Tiryns— but all were believed to be fifth century, it has a freshness that makes
descendants of the gods, themselves often many people consider it the most vital phase
very human in behavior, who had children of Greek art.
with mortals. This lineage explained the
hero's extraordinary powers.
Black-Figure Style
Such an outlook understand
also helps us
the strong appeal exerted on the Greek imag- By about the middle of the sixth century b.c,
ination by Oriental lions and monsters. These vase painters in particular were so highly es-
terrifying creatures embodied the unknown teemed that the best of them signed their
forces of life faced by the hero. This fascina- works. The scene of Herakles killing the lion,
tion is clearly seen on the
Eleusis amphora. on an amphora attributed to Psiax (fig. 57), is
The figures are a far cry from the conven- all grimness and violence. The two heavy
tionalized forms of the Geometric style. They- bodies almost seem united forever in their
have gai ned gr eatly intod^size_arid_descrip- grim struggle. Incised line and touches of col-
tive precision. As a result, the blinding of the ored detail have been kept to a minimum so
giant Polyphemus by Odysseus and his com- as not to break up the compact black mass;
panions—the scene on the neck of the am- yet both figures show such a wealth of ana-
phora—is enacted with memorable directness tomical knowledge and skillful use of fore-
and dramatic force. If these men lack the shortening that they give an amazing illusion
beauty we will later expect of epic heroes in of existing in the round. The work of Psiax is
art, their movements have an expressive vigor the direct outgrowth of the forceful Orien-
that makes them seem thoroughly alive. The talizing style of the blinding of Polyphemus in
slaying of anothermonstrous creature is de- the Eleusis amphora. Herakles in his struggle
pictedon the body of the vase, the main part reminds us of the hero on the sound box of
of which has been badly damaged, so that the harp from Ur (see fig. 44). Both show hu-
only two figures have survived intact. They mans facing the unknown forces of life em-
are Gorgons, the sisters of the snake-haired, bodied by terrifying mythical creatures. The
terrible-faced Medusa, whom Perseus killed Nemean lion likewise serves to underscore
with the aid of the gods. Even here we notice the hero's might and courage.
an interest in the articulation of the body far
beyond the limits of the Geometric style.
Red-Figure Style
L
GREEK ART • 71
ground. This red-figure techniq ue gradually Xemean lion. But just as the stvle has
replaced the older method toward 500 b.c. changed, so has the meaning of this combat:
Its advantages are well shown in figure 58. a the painting now stands for the victory of civi-
kvlix (drinking cup) of c. 490—480 B.C. bv an lization over barbarianism and ultimately of
unknown master nicknamed the Foundry humanity's rational and moral sides over its
59. The Battle of Issus or Battle of Alexander and the Persians. Mosaic copy from Pompeii of a Hellenistic painting.
1st century b.c. 8'll"x 16'9'/2" (2.78x5.12 m). Museo Archeologico Xazionale, Naples
tried to reproduce large-scale compositions in Actually, there are only two, the Corinthian
a kind of shorthand dictated by its own lim- being a variant of the Ionic. The Doric (so
ited technique. We can get some idea of what named because its home is the region of Doris
Greek wall painting looked like from later on the Greek mainland) may well claim to be
copies and imitations. According to the Ro- the basic order, since it is older and more
man writer Pliny, Philoxenus of Eretria at the sharplv defined than the Ionic, which devel-
end of the fourth century painted the victory oped on the Aegean islands and the coast of
of Alexander the Great over Darius at Issus. Asia Minor.
An echo of that work may survive in a famous What do we mean by "architectural order"?
Pompeian mosaic (fig. 59). The scene is far Bv common agreement, the term is used for
more complicated and dramatic than anv- Greek architecture only (and its descen-
thing from earlier Greek art. And for the first dants); and rightly so, for none of the other
time, we have a depiction of something that architectural systems known to us produced
actually happened, without the symbolic over- anvthing like Perhaps the simplest wav to
it.
tones of Herakles Strangling the Nemean Lion or make clear the unique character of the Greek
the Lapith and Centaur. In character and even orders is this: there is no such thing as "the
in appearance, it is close to Roman reliefs Egyptian temple" or "the Gothic church"—
commemorating specific historic events (see the individual buildings, however much they
figs. 96, 97). mav "lave fh common, are so varied that we
cannot distill a generalized type from them—
whikT"the Doric" "real entity that
TEMPLES inevitably forms in our minds as we examine
the monuments themselves. We must be care-
Orders and Plans
ful, of course, not to think of this abstraction
In architecture, the Greek achievement has as an ideal that permits us to measure the
been identified since ancient Roman times degree of perfection of any given Doric tem-
with the creation of the three Classical archi- ple. It simply means that the elements of
tectural_orders, Doric. Ionic, and Corinthian. which a Doric temple is composed are ex-
•
GREEK.ART • 73
Temple Plans
The plans of Greek temples are not direcdy then known as peripteral. The very largest
linked to the orders, which concern onlv the temples of Ionian Greece may even have a
elevation, or side view. Thev may vary accord- double colonnade.
ing to the size of the building or regional
preferences, but their basic features are so
Doric Order
much alike that it is useful to studv them from
a generalized "tvpical" plan (fig. 60). The nu- The term Doric order refers to the standard
cleus is the cella or naos (the room in which parts, and their sequence, constituting the ex-
the image of the deitv is placed) and the terior of any Doric temple (fig. 61). Let us first
porch (pronaos) with its two columns flanked look at the three main divisions: t he stepped
by pilasters (antae). Often we find a second p latform, the columns, and the entablature
porch added behind the cella to make the de- (which includes evervthing that rests on the
sign more symmetrical. In the larger temples, columns).The Doric column consists of
the central unit is surrounded by a colon- marked by shallow venical grooves
the shaft,
nade, called the peristyle, and the structure is known as flutes, and the capital, which is
:
--.•?-.-••
Z^md
made up of the flaring, cushionlike echinus that they were an organic part of the stone
and a square tablet called the abacus. The en- structure.
tablature is the most complex of the three
major units. It is subdivided into the ar- Paestum. We can see the evolution of tem-
chitrave (a series of stone blocks directly sup- ples in two examples near the southern Ital-
ported by the columns), the frieze with its ian town of Paestum, where a Greek colony
triglyphs and metopes, and the projecting flourished during the Archaic period: the
cornice. On the long sides of the temple, the older is the "Basilica" (fig. 62, background);
cornice is on the short sides
horizontal, while the "Temple of Poseidon"— it was probably-
(or facades), open in such a way as to
it is split dedicated to Hera— was erected about a hun-
enclose the pediment between its upper and dred years later (fig. 62, foreground). How do
lower parts. the two temples differ? The "Basilica" looks
How did the Doric originate? Its essential low and sprawling— and not only because its
features were already well established about roof is lost— while the "Temple of Poseidon,"
600 B.C., but how they developed and why by comparison, appears tall and compact.
they congealed so rapidly into a system re- The difference is partly psychological, pro-
main a puzzle to which we have few reliable duced by the outline of the columns which, in
clues. The notion tha t temples ought to be the "Basilica," are more strongly curved and
built of stone, with large numbers of col- are tapered to a relatively narrow top. This
umns, must have come from Egypt; the fluted swelling effect, known as entasis, makes one
half-columns at Saqqara (see fig. 31) strongly feel that the columns bulge with the strain of
suggest the Doric column. Egyptian temples, supporting the superstructure, and that the
it is true, are designed to be experienced slender tops, even though aided by the widely
from the inside, while the Greek temple is flaring cushionlike capitals, are just barely
arranged so that the exterior matters most up to the task. The sense of strain has been
(religious ceremonies usually took place out explained on the grounds that Archaic ar-
of doors, in front of the temple facade). But chitectswere not fully familiar with their new
might not a Doric temple be interpreted as materials and engineering procedures, but
the columned hall of an Egyptian sanctuary such a view judges the building by the stan-
turned inside out? The Greeks also owed dards of later temples— and overlooks the ex-
something to the Mycenaeans— we have seen pressive vitality of the building, as of a living
an elementary kind of pediment in the Lion body, the vitality we also sense in the Archaic
Gate, and the capital of a Mycenaean column Kouros (see fig. 65).
is rather like a Doric capital (compare fig. 54). In the "Temple of Poseidon" t he exa gger-
There is, however, a third factor: to what a ted curvatures have been modified. This,
extent can the Doric ord er be umleTsluuct combined with a closer ranking oT the col-
as a reflection of^wooden st ructures? Our umns, literally as well as expressively brings
answer to this thorny question will depend on the stresses hefwg*aw-mppQ rts andjveight into
whether we believe that architectural form more harmonious balance. Perhaps because
follows function and technique, or whether the architect took fewer risks, the building is
we accept the striving for beauty as a motivat- better preserved than the "Basilica." Its air of
ing force. The truth may well lie in a com- self-contained repose parallels developments
bination of these approaches. At the start, in the field of Greek sculpture.
Doric architects certainly imitated in stone
some features of wooden temples, if only be- Athens; The Parthenon. In 480 B.C., shortly
cause these features served to identify the before their defeat, the Persians had de-
building as a temple. But when they became stroyed the temple and statues on the Acrop-
enshrined in the Doric order, it was not from olis, the sacred hill above Athens which had
blind conservatism. By then, the wooden been a fortified site since Mycenaean times.
forms had been so thoroughly transformed The rebuilding of the Acropolis under the
L
—
GREEK ART • 75
62. The "Basilica." c. 550 B.C.. and the "Temple of Poseidon." c. 460 B.C.. Paestum. Italv
63. Ictinus and Calibrates. The Parthenon iviev, from the eastt. Acropolis. Athens. 44S 152 b.c.
76 • GREEK ART
leadership of Pericles during the later fifth standard interval adopted for the colonnade
century, when Athens was at the height of its as a whole. Such intentional departures from
power, was the most ambitious enterprise in strict geometric regularity are not made of
the history of Greek architecture's well as its necessity. They give us visual reassurance that
artistic climax. Individually and collectively, the points of greatest stress are supported,
these structures represent the Classical phase and provided with a counterstress as well.
of Greek art in full maturity.
The greatest temple, and the only one to be Propylaea. Immediately after the comple-
completed before the Peloponnesian War tion of the Parthenon, Pericles commissioned
(431-404 b.c), is the Parthenon (fig. 63), another splendid and expensive edifice, the
dedicated to the virginal Athena, the patron monumental entry gate at the western end of
deitv in whose honor Athens was named. The the Acropolis, called the Propylaea (fig. 64,
architects Ictinus and Callicrates erected it in left and center). It was begun
437 b.c. un- in
448-432 b.c, an amazingly brief span of time der the architect Mnesicles, who completed
for a project of this size. Built of gleaming the main part in five years; the remainder
white marble on the most prominent site had to be abandoned because of the Pelopon-
along the southern flank of the Acropolis, it nesian War. Again the enure structure was
dominates the entire and the surround-
city built of marble and included refinements
ing countryside, a brilliant landmark against comparable to those of the Parthenon. It is
the backdrop of mountains to the north of it. fascinating to see how the familiar elements
As the perfect embodiment of Class ical of a Doric temple have here been adapted to a
Doric architec ture the Parthen on ™?lr*»g a n
r
totally different task and difficult terrain.
"
instructive contrast with the Temple o f Po- Mnesicles has indeed acquitted himself nobly.
seidon" (see fig. 62). Despite its greater size, it His design not only fits the irregular and
seems far less massive. Rather, the dominant steeply rising hillside, but also transforms it
themselves are a good deal more slender, Temple of Athena Nike (fig. 64, right), dis-
their tapering and entasis less pronounced playing the enderer proportions and -the
sl
and the capitals smaller and less flaring; yet of the Ionic ^>rder. The pre-
scr oll capitals
the spacing of the columns is wider. We might vious development of the order is known only
say that the load carried by the columns has in very fragmentary fashion. Of the huge
decreased, and as a consequence the supports Ionic temples that were erected in Archaic
can fulfill their task with a new sense of ease. times on Samos and at Ephesus, litde has sur-
These so-called refinements, intentional vived except the plans. The Ionic vocabulary,
d epartur es from the strict geometric regular- however, seems to have remained fairly fluid,
ity of th edesign for aesthe tic reaso ns, are~an- with strong affinities to the N ear E ast, and it
other feature_of tin Classical Doric j tyje did not really become an order in the strict
that can be observed in the Parthenon better sense until the Classicajjaerjod. Even then it
than anywhere else. Thus the stepped plat- continued to be rathermore flexible_than_the
form and the entablature are not absolutely Dorjc^order. Its most strikingTeature is the
straight but slightly curved, so that the center co lumn, w hi ch Doric not
differ? from__the
is a bit higher than the ends; the columns lean only in body but also, as it were, in spirit (see
inward; and the interval between the corner fig. 61). It rests on an orjiajeJy_profiled^ase
column and its neighbors is smaller than the of its own. The shaft is more slender, and
L
GREEK.\RT • 77
64. Mnesicles. The Propvlaea. 437-432 b.c. and the Temple of Athena Nike. 427-424 b.c.
(view from the westi. Acropolis. Athens
there is les s tapering arud entasis. T he capital ing capitals. It mav well be. then, that the
shows a large double scroll, or volute be- , Ionic column, too. had its ultimate source in
tween the echinus and abacus, w hich projects Egvpt. but instead of reaching Greece bv sea,
strongly beyond The width of the shaft. as we suppose column did, it
the proto-Doric
That these details add up to an entitv vers traveled a slow and tortuous path bv land
distinct from the Doric column becomes clear through Svria and Asia Minor.
as soon as we turn from the diagram to an In the end. the greatest achievement of
actual building, such as the Temple of Athena Greek architecture was much more than just
Nike. How shall we define it? The Ionic col- beautiful buildings. Greek temples are gov-
umn is. of course, lighter and more graceful erned bv a structural logic that makes them
than its mainland cousin; it lacks the latter's look stable because of the precise arrange-
muscular qualitv. Instead, it evokes a growing ment of their parts. The Greeks tried to regu-
plant, something like a formalized palm tree. temples in accordance with nature s
late their
And this vegetal analogv is not sheer fancv. harmonv bv constructing them of measured
for we have earlv ancestors, or relatives, of units that were so proportioned that thev
the Ionic capital that bear it out. If we
were to would all be in perfect agreement. ("Perfect"
pursue these plantlike columns all the way was as significant an idea to the Greeks as
back to their point of origin, we would even- "forever" was to the Egyptians.) Now archi-
tuallv find ourselves at Saqqara. w here we en- tects could create organic unities, not bv copy-
counter not onlv "proto-Doric" supports but ing nature, not bv divine inspiration, but bv
also thewonderfully jgaceful papvrus hal f- design. Thus their temples seem to be almost
columns of figure 32. with their curved, flar- alive. Thev achieved this triumph chiefly bv
78 • GREEK ART
expressing the structural forces active in Egyptian standards, the_Arc haic stat ue seem s
buildings. In the Classical period, expressions somewhat " primit ive" — rigid oversimplified, ,
of force a nji_coynter forc e m both Doric and awkward, less close to nature. But the Greek
Ionic temples were proportioned so exactly statue also has virtues of its own that cannot
that^their oppositionproduced the effect of a be measured in Egyptian terms. First of all. it
perfect balancing of forces and harmonizing is truly free-stan ding— the earliest large stone
of sizes .ind shapes. This is the real reason image of the human form in the entire his-
why, for so many centuries, the orders have tory of art of which this can be said. The
been considered the only true basis for beau- Egyptian carver had never dared to liberate
tiful architecture. They are so perfect that such figures completely from the stone. They
they could not be surpassed, only equaled. remain immersed in it to some degree, as it
were, so that the empty spaces between the
legs and between the arms and the torso (or
SCULPTURE between two figures in a double statue, as in
fig. 30) always remain partly filled. There are
While enough examples of metalwork and never any holes in Egyptian stone figures. In
ivory carvings of Near Eastern and Egyptian that sense, they do not rank as sculpture in
origin have been found on Greek soil to ac- the round but as an extreme case of high re-
count for their influence on Greek vase paint- lief. The Greek carver, on the contrary, does
ing, the origins of monumental sculpture and not mind holes in the least. He separates the
architecture in Greece are a different matter. arms from the torso and the legs from each
To see such things, the Greeks had to go to other, and goes to great lengths to cut away
Egypt or Mesopotamia. There is no doubt everv bit of dead material (the only excep-
that they did so (we know that there were tions are the tiny bridges between the fists
small colonies of Greeks in Egypt at the time), and the thighs). Apparently it is of the great-
but this does not explain why the Greeks est importance to him that a statue consist
should have developed a sudden desire dur- only of stone that has representational mean-
ing the seventh century B.C., and not before, ing within an organic whole. The stone must
to create such things for themselves. The be transformed; it cannot he perm,itted'To~re-
mystery may never be cleared up, for the old- main inert, neutra l mat ter.
est existing examples of Greek stone sculp- This is not, we must insist, a question of
ture and architecture show that Egyptian technique but of artistic intention. The act of
tradition had already been well assimilated, liberation achieved in our figure endows him
and that skill to match was not long in with a spirit basically different from that of
developing. any of the Egyptian statues. While the latter
seem becalmed by a spell that has released
them from every strain for all time to come,
Archaic Style
the Greek image is tense, full of hidden-life.
Let us compare a very early Greek statue The direct stare of his huge eyes offers the
of a nude youth of c. 600 B.C., called a most telling contrast to the gende, faraway
Kouros (fig. 65), with the statue of Mycerinus gaze of the Egyptian figures.
(see fig. 30). The similarities are certainly The Kore, as the Greek female statue type
striking: we note the block-conscious, cubic is called, shows more variations than the
character of both sculptures, the slim, broad- Kouros. A clothed figure by definition, it
shouldered silhouette of the figures, the posi- poses a different problem — how to relate
tion of their arms, their clenched fists, the body and drapery. It is also likely to reflect
way they stand with the left leg forward, the changing habits or local differences of dress.
emphatic rendering of the kneecaps. The for- The Kore of figure 66 was carved a full cen-
malized, wiglike treatment of the hair is a tury after our Kouros. She, too, is blocklike,
further point of resemblance. Judged by with a strongly accented waist. The heavy
L
GREEK ART • 79
Architectural Sculpture
over the shoulders in soft, curb strands, is buildings (for example, figs. 46, 49). There
more organic. Most noteworthy of all is the existed, however, another kind of archi-
full, round face with its enchantinglv gav tectural sculpture in the ancient Near East:
expression — the "Archaic smile." great guardian monsters protruding from
Whom do they represent? The general the blocks that framed the gateways of for-
names of KorejAiaiden ) and Kour os (Youth) tresses or palaces. This tradition must have
are noncommittal terms that gloss over the inspired, although perhaps indirectly, the
difficulty of identifving them further. Nor carving over the Lion Gate at Mycenae (see
can we explain why the Kouros is always nude fig. 54). We must nevertheless note one
a
80 • GREEK ART
67. Battle of the Gods andGiants, from the north frieze of the Treasury of the Siphnians, Delphi, c. 530 B.C.
Marble, height 26" (66 cm). Archaeological Museum, Delphi
important feature that distinguishes the The Greeks followed the Mycenaean exam-
Mvcenaean guardian figures from their pre- ple. In their temples, stone sculpture is con-
decessors: although they are carved in high fined to the pediment (the "empty triangle"
relief on a huge slab, this slab is thin and light between the ceiling and the sloping sides of
compared to the enormously heavy, Cyclo- the roof) and to the zone immediately below
pean blocks around it. In building the gate, it (the "frieze"), but they retained the narra-
the Mycenaean architect left an emptv tri- tive wealth of Egyptian reliefs. The Battle of
angular space above the lintel, for fear that the Gods and Giants (fig. 67), part of a frieze
the weight of the wall above would crush it, from the Siphnian Treasury at Delphi, is
and then filled the hole with the compara- executed in very high relief, with deep under-
Here, then, we
tively lightweight relief panel. cutting. The sculptor has taken full advan-
have a new kind of architectural sculpture— tage of the spatial possibilities offered by
work integrated with the structure yet also a this technique. He uses the projecting ledge
separate entity rather than a modified wall at the bottom of the frieze as a stage on
surface or block. which he can place his figures in depth. The
68. Dying Warrior, from the east pediment of the Temple of Aphaia. Aegina. c. 490 b.c
Marble, length 72" (182.9 cm). Staatliche Antikensammlungen, Munich
GREEK ART • 81
arms and legs of those nearest the beholder all-around balance and self-sufficiency.
are carved completely in the round. In the Early Greek statues have an unintentional
second and third layer, the forms become military air, as if they were soldiers standing
shallower; yet even those farthest removed at attention. It took over a century after our
from us are never permittecL to-merge with Kouros was made before the Greeks discov-
theb^ckgrcaindTThe result is a limited and ered the secret to making a figure stand "at
condensed but very convincing space that ease." Kritios Boy (fig. 69), named after the
permits a dramatic relationship between the Athenian sculptor to whom it has been attrib-
figures such as we have never seen before in uted, is the first statue we know that "stands"
narrative reliefs. Any comparison with older in the full sense of the term. Just as in military
examples (such show us
as figs. 29, 46) will drill, this is simply a matter of allowing the
that Archaic art has indeed conquered a new
dimension here, not only in the physical but
also in the expressive sense.
Meanwhile, in pedimental sculpture, relief
has been abandoned altogether. Instead, we
find separate statues placed side by side in
complex dramatic sequences designed to fit
the triangular frame. The most ambitious en-
semble of this kind, that of the east pediment
of the Temple of Aphaia at Aegina, was cre-
ated about 490 b.c, and thus brings us to the
final stage in the evolution of Archaic sculp-
ture. Among the most impressive figures is
Classical Style
^
82 • GREEK ART
70. Poseidon (Zeus?), c. 460-450 b.c. Bronze, height 6' 10" (2.08 m). National Archaeological Museum, Athens
weight of the body-to- shift fr orn equal di s- in motion, of maintaining its stability. Life
tribution on both legs (as is the case with the now suffuses the entire figure. Hence, the Ar-
Kouros, even though one foot is in front of chaic smile, the "sign of life," is no longer
the other) id one leg, The resulting stance- needed and has given way to a serious, pen-
called umtxapfxisto (or counterpoise)— brings The forms, moreover, have a
sive expression.
about all kinds of subtle curvatures: the bend- new naturalism and harmonious proportion
ing of the "free" knee results in a slight swiv- which together provided the basis for the
eling of the pelvis, a compensating curvature strong idealization characteristic of all subse-
of the spine, and an adjusting tilt of the quent Greek art.
shoulders. Like the refined details of the Par- Once the concept of contrapposto had been
thenon, these variations have nothing to do established, the solution to showing large,
with the statue's ability to maintain itself erect free-standing statues in motion no longer
but greatly enhance its lifelike impression. In presented serious difficulties. Such figures
repose, it will still seem capable of movement; are the most important achievement of the
GREEK ART • -
moment in a continuous motion as anawe- than horrifies .u s. Late Archaic art may ap-
inspiring gesture that rev eals the power of~ proach it now and then, vet the full force of
the goci. Hurting a weapon thus becomes a pathos car. be tehonh m Classical works such
divine attribute, rather than an act aimed at a as the Dung Niobid.
specific foe in the heat of batde. The group
largest, as well as the greatest,
of Classical sculptures our disposal consists
at
of the remains of the marble decoration of
Architectural Sculpture
the Parthenon, most of them, unfortunately,
The conquest of movement in a free-standing in battered and fragmentary condition. The
statue exerted a liberating influenceon pedi- east pediment represents various deities wit-
mental sculpture as endowing it with a
well, nessing the birth of Athena from the head of
new spaciousness, fluiditv. and balance. The
Dying Siobid (fig. 7 a work of the 440s. was
1 ).
84 • GREEK ART
72. Three Goddesses, from the east pediment of the Parthenon, c. 438-432 B.C.
Marble, over lifesize. British Museum, London
in the soft fullness of the three goddesses, "shelved" upon the pediment. Evidently the
enveloped in thin drapery that seems to share sculptors who achieved such lifelike figures
the qualities of a liquid substance as it flows also found this incongruous. The sculptural
and eddies around the forms underneath. decoration of later buildings tended to be
The figures are so freely conceived in depth placed in areas where they would seem less
that they create their own aura of space. boxed in and be more readily visible.
73. Scopas (?). Bailie of the (Weeks and Amazons, from the east frieze of the Mausoleum, Halicarnassus.
359-351 b.c:. Marble, height 35" (88.9 cm). British Museum, London
L
1
GREEK ART • 85
defeat of Athens by Sparta in the Peloponne- ancestor in the Siphnian Battle of the Gods and
sian War. Building and sculpture continued Giants (see fig. 67).
in the same tradition for another three cen- In many instances, unfortunately, the most
turies, but without the subtleties of t he C lassi- famous works of Greek sculptors of the fifth
cal age whose achievements we have just and fourth centuries b.c. have been lost and
discussed. There is, unfortunately, no single only copies are preserved. There is some
word, like Archaic or Classical, that we can doubt whether the famous Hermes by Prax-
use to designate the third and final phase in iteles (fig. 74) is the original, or a copy made
the development of Greek art. The seventy- some three centuries later. If the latter, how-
five-year spanbetween the end of the Pel-
oponnesian War and the rise of Alexander
the Great used to be labeled "Late Classical,"
and the remaining two centuries and a half,
"Hel lenistic ," a term meant to convey the
spread of Greek civilization southeastward to
Asia Minor and Mesopotamia, Egypt, and the
borders of India. However, the history of
stvle is not always in tune with political his-
tory. We
have come to realize that there was
no decisive break in the tradition of Greek art
at the end of the fourth century, and that
Hellenistic art was the direct outgrowth of de-
velopments that occurred well before the
time of Alexander. The art of the vears 400-
325 b.c. nevertheless can be better under-
stood if we view it as pre-Hellenistic rather
than as Late Classical.
The contrast between Classical and pre-
Hellenistic is strikingly demonstrated bv the
only project of the fourth century that corre-
sponds to the Parthenon in size and ambition.
It is not a temple but a huge tomb erected
Hellenistic Style
nounced realism and expressi veness, as we ll Bronze, height 12 S/T (32.4 cm).
National Archaeological Museum, Athens
as a greater experimentation with drapery
and pose, which often shows considerable tor-
sion. These changes should be seen as a valid,
even necessary, attempt to extend the subject certainly existed earlier in the Greek world,
matter and dynamic range of Greek art in just as they do today. Yet it is significant that
accordance with a new temperament and out- such complexity could be conveyed in art
look. The difference in psychology is sug- onlv when Greek independence, culturally as
gested by the Portrait Head in figure 75. The well as politically, was about to come to an
serenity of Praxiteles' Hermes is replaced by a end.
troubled look. And
first time, we have
for the This more human is found
conception
an individual something that was in-
portrait, again in the Dying Gaul from a Ro-
(fig. 76),
conceivable in earlier Greek art, which em- man copy in marble of the bronze groups
phasized ideal, heroic types. It was not made dedicated by Attalus I of Pergamum (a city in
as a bust but rather, in accordance with Greek northwestern Asia Minor) shortly before 200
custom, as part of a full-length statue. The B.C. to commemorate his victory over the in-
identity of the sitter is unknown. Whoever he vading Gauls. The sculptor who conceived
was, we get an intensely private view of him: the figure must have known the Gauls well,
the fluid modeling of the somewhat flabby for he has carefully rendered the ethnic type
features, the uncertain, plaintive mouth, the in the facial structure and in the bristly shock
unhappy eyes under furrowed brows reveal of hair. The torque around the neck is an-
an individual beset by doubts and anxieties, other characteristically Celtic feature. Other-
an extremely human, unheroic personality. wise, however, the Gaul shares the heroic
There are echoes of noble pathos in these fea- nuditv of Greek warriors, such as those on
tures, but it is a pathos translated into psycho- the Aegina pediments (see fig. 68). If his ag-
logical terms. People of such inner turmoil onv seems infinitely more realistic in compar-
GREEK ART • 87
ison, it still has considerable dignity and on the Siphnian Treasury (compare fig. 67).
pathos. Clearlv, the Gauls were not consid- At Pergamum, however, it has a novel signifi-
ered unworthy foes. "They knew how to die. cance, since the victor) of the gods is meant to
barbarians though they were," is the idea con- svmbolize the victories of Attalus I. Such a
veved bv the statue. Yet we also sense some- translation of history into mythology had
thing else, an animal quality that had never been an established device in Greek art for a
before been part of Greek images of men. long time: victories over the Persians were ha-
Death, as we witness it here, is a very concrete bitually represented in terms of Lapiths bat-
physical process: no longer able to move his ding Centaurs or Greeks fighting Amazons.
legs, the Gaul puts all his waning strength But to place Attalus I in analogy with the gods
into his arms, as if to prevent some tre- themselves implies an exaltation of the ruler
mendous invisible weight from crushing him that is Oriental rather than Greek in origin.
against the ground. Since the time of Mausolus (see p. 85), who
Two decades later, we find a second sculp- may have been the first on
to introduce it
tural style flourishing at Pergamum. About Greek soil, the ide a of divine kin gship had
180 B.C., the son and successor of Attalus I been adopted by Alexander the Great, and it
had a mighty altar erected on a hill above the continued to flourish among~The lesser sov-
to commemorate his father's
citv victories. ereigns who divided his realm, such as the
Much of the sculptural decoration has been rulers of Pergamum. The huge figures, cut to
recovered by excavation, and the entire west such a depth that they are almost detached
front of the altar is to be seen in Berlin. from the background, have the scale and
The subject of the frieze covering the base weight of pedimental statues without the con-
(fig. 77), the batde of the gods and giants, is fining triangular frame— a unique compound
traditional for Ionic friezes: we saw it before of two separate traditions that represents a
76. Dying Gaul. Roman copv after a bronze original of c. 230-220 b.c. from Pergamum, Turkey.
Marble, lifesize. Museo Capitolino, Rome
88 • GREEK ART
77. Athena and Alcyoneus, from the east side of the Great Frieze of the Altar of Zeus at Pergamum.
c. 180 b.c. Marble, height 7'6" (2.29 m). Pergamonmuseum, Berlin
thundering climax in the development of great victor)' monument of the early second
Greek architectural sculpture. The carving of century b.c, the Nike of Samothrace (fig. 78).
the-frjeze, though not very subtleTn detain The goddess has just descended to the prow
has tremendous dramatic force. The heavy, of a ship. Her great wings spread wide, she is
muscular bodies rushing at each other, the stillpardy airborne by the powerful head
strong accents of light and dark, the beating wind against which she advances. The invis-
wings and windblown garments are almost ible force of onrushing air here becomes a
overwhelming in their dynamism, though to- tangible reality. It not only balances the
day the pathos seems somewhat calculated forward movement of the figure but also
and rhetorical. A writhing movement per- shapes every fold of the wonderfully ani-
vades the entire design, down to the last lock mated drapery. As a result, there is an active
of hair, linking the victors and the vanquished relationship— indeed, an interdependence—
in a single continuous rhythm. This sense of between the statue and the space that en-
unity disciplines, the _physical jmd emo tional velopsit, such as we have never seen before.
violence of liie struggle and thus keeps it— Nor shall we see it again for a long time to
but just barely — from exploding its architec- come. The Njke-of^arMihxace deserves all of
tural frame. her fame as the greatest masterpiece o£-Hel-
Equally dramatic in its impact is another lenistic sculpture.
GREEK ART • 89
78. Xike of Samothrace. c. 200-190 B.C. Marble, height 8' (2.44 m). Musee du Louvre, Paris
ETRUSCAN ART
We know surprisingly little about the early chaic influence had displaced Orientalizing
Etruscans. According to the Classical Greek tendencies, but Etruscan artists did not sim-
historian Herodotus, had left their
they ply imitate their Hellenic models. Working in
homeland of Lydia Minor and setded
in Asia a very different cultural setting, they retained
in the area between Florence and Rome,
which to this day is known as Tuscany. But
their presence on Italian soil may go back
much further. If so, the sudden flowering of
Etruscan civilization from about 700 b.c. on-
ward could have resulted from a fusion of
this prehistoric Italian stock with small but
powerful groups of seafaring invaders from
Lydia in the course of the eighth century b.c.
Be that as may, the Italian peninsula did
it
Sculpture
80. She-Wolf. c. 500 b.c. Bronze, height 33'/2 " (85.1 cm).
Museo Capitolino, Rome
their own clear-cut identity, as we can see city of the dead and therefore not haunt the
from the Apollo in figure 79, which has long realm of the living. How else are we to under-
been acknowledged as the masterpiece of stand the purpose of the wonderfully rich ar-
Etruscan Archaic sculpture. His massive ray of murals in these funerary chambers?
body, completely revealed beneath the or- Figure 8 1 from the Tomb of the Lionesses in
namental striations of the drapery; the sin- Tarquinia shows a pair of ecstatic dancers. As
ewy, muscular legs; the hurried, purposeful in the Apollo, the passionate energy of their
stride— all these betray an expressive power movements strikes us as characteristically
that has no counterpart in free-standing Etruscan rather than Greek in spirit. Of
Greek statues of the same date.The bronze particular interest is the transparent garment
figure of the she-wolf that nourished Romu- of the woman, which lets the body shine
lus and Remus, the legendary founders of through. The contrasting body color of the
Rome (fig. 80; the two babes are Renaissance two figures continues a practice introduced
additions), has thesame wonderful ferocity of by the Egyptians more than 2,000 years be-
expression, the physical power of the body fore (see p. 45). In Greece, this differentiation
and legs, and the awesome quality we sense in appears only a few years earlier, during the
the Apollo. final phase of Archaic vase painting. Since
nothing of the sort has survived in Greek ter-
ritory, such paintings are uniquely important,
Tombs and Their Decoration
not only as an Etruscan achievement but also
We do not know precisely what ideas the as a possible reflection of Greek wall painting.
Archaic Etruscans held about the afterlife. During the fifth century b.c, the Etruscan
They seem to have regarded the tomb as view of the hereafter must have become a
an abode not only for the body but for the good deal more complex and less festive. The
soul as well (in contrast to the Egyptians, change is reflected by the group in figure 82,
who thought of the soul as roaming freely a cinerary container carved of soft local stone
and whose funerary sculpture therefore re- soon after 400 B.C. A woman sits at the foot of
mained "inanimate"). Perhaps the Etruscans the couch, but she is not the wife of the young
believed that by filling the tomb with ban- man. Her wings indicate that she is the de-
quets, dancing, games, and similar pleasures mon of death, and the scroll in her left hand
they could induce the soul to stay put in the records the fate of the deceased. The young
92 • ETRISCAS ART
81. Musician and Two Dancers. Detail of a wall painting, c. 480—470 B.C.
Tomb of the Lionesses, Tarquinia, Italy
Architecture
balustrade of dwarf pilasters alternating with
According to Roman writers, the Etruscans round from the
shields, a pattern derived
were masters of architectural engineering triglyphsand metopes of the Doric frieze; it
and of town planning and surveying. The supports a second arched opening (now filled
Etruscans must also have taught the Romans in) flanked by two larger pilasters.
how to build fortifications, bridges, drainage The arches here are true, which means
systems, and aqueducts, but very little re- they are constructed of wedge-shaped blocks,
mains of their vast enterprises in these fields. called voussoirs, each pointing toward the
That the Romans learned a good deal from center of the semicircular opening. Although
them can hardly be doubted, but exactly how the true arch had been invented in Egypt as
much the Etruscans contributed to Roman early asc. 2700 b.c, its use had been confined
only impressive surviving monument is the which arches were integrated with the vocab-
Porta Augusta in Perugia, a fortified city gate ulary of the Greek orders into a monumental
of the second century b.c. (fig. 83). The gate whole. The Romans were to develop this
itself, recessed between two massive towers, is combination in a thousand ways, but the
not just an entry but a true architectural merit of having invented it, of having made
facade. The opening is spanned by a semi-
tall the arch respectable, as it were, seems to be-
circular arch framed by a molding. Above is a long to the Etruscans.
clearly recognizable in every other sphere of came to supplying the citizenry with every-
human activity, becomes oddly elusive when thing needed, from water to entertainment
it
Roman Empire was an extraordinarily com- alone made possible the vast architectural
plex and open society which absorbed enterprises that are still the chief reminders
national or regional traits into a common all- of "the grandeur that was Rome." The Ro-
Roman framework that was homogeneous mans knew how to hide the unattractive
and diverse at the same time. The "Roman- concrete surface behind a facing of brick,
ness" of Roman art must be found in this stone, or marble or layers of smooth plaster.
complex pattern, rather than in a single and Today, this decorative skin has disappeared
consistent quality of form. from the remains of most Roman buildings,
leaving the concrete core exposed and thus
depriving these ruins of the appeal that
ARCHITECTURE Greek ruins have for us. They speak to us in
other ways, through massive size and bold-
If the autonomy of Roman sculpture and ness of conception.
painting has been questioned, Roman archi-
tecture is a creative feat of such magnitude as Sanctuary of Fortuna Primigenia. The old-
to silence all doubts of this sort. Its growth, est monument in which these qualities are
moreover, from the very start reflected a spe- fully in evidence is the Sanctuary of Fortuna
ROMAXART 95
84. Sanctuary of Fortuna Primigenia, Praeneste (Palestrina). Early 1st centurv B.C.
once an important Etruscan stronghold, a first century b.c. A series of ramps and ter-
a flight of steps arranged like the seats of a stone.There is a fine balance between vertical
Greek theater, to the semicircular colonnade and horizontal elements in the framework
that crowned the entire structure. Arched of engaged columns and entablatures that
openings, framed by engaged columns and contains the endless series of arches. The
entablatures, play an important part, as do three Classical orders are superimposed
semicircular recesses. Except for the columns according to their intrinsic "weight": Doric,
and architraves, all the surfaces now visible the oldest and most severe, on the ground
are of concrete, and it is indeed hard to imag- floor, followed by Ionic and Corinthian. The
ine how a complex as vast as this could have
been constructed otherwise.
What makes the sanctuary at Palestrina so
imposing, however, is not merelv its scale but
the superb way it fits the site. An enure hill-
lightening of the proportions, however, is type standard to Roman temples. The junc-
barely noticeable; the orders, in their Roman tion of these two elements seems rather
adaptation, are almost alike. Structurally, abrupt, but we no longer see the building as it
they have become ghosts; yet their aesthetic was meant to be seen; today the level of the
function continues unimpaired, for through surrounding streets is a good deal higher
them this enormous facade is related to hu- than it was in antiquity.
man scale. That the architects did not have an easy
Arches, vaults, and concrete permitted the time with the engineering problems of sup-
Romans, for the first time in the history of porting the huge hemisphere of a dome may
architecture, to create vast interior spaces. be deduced from the heavy plainness of the
These were explored especially in the ther- exterior wall. Nothing on the outside, how-
mae, or great baths, which had become im- ever, gives any hint of the airiness and ele-
portant centers of social life in imperial gance of the interior; photographs fail to
Rome. The experience gained there could capture it, and even the painting (fig. 87) that
then be applied to other, more traditional we use to illustrate it does not do it justice.
types of buildings, sometimes with revolu- The height from the floor to the opening of
tionary results. the dome (called the oculus, or eye) is exactly
that of the diameter of the dome's base, thus
Pantheon. Perhaps the most striking exam- giving the proportions perfect balance. The
ple of this process is the famous Pantheon in weight of the dome is concentrated on the
Rome, a very large round temple of the early eight solid sections of wall (fig. 88). Between
second century a.d. whose interior is the best them, with graceful columns in front, niches
preserved as well as the most impressive of are daringly hollowed out of the massive con-
any surviving Roman structure (fig. 86). crete,and these, while not connected with
There had been round temples long before each other, give the effect of an open space
this time, but their shape is so different from behind the supports, making us feel that the
that of the Pantheon that the latter could not walls are less thick and the dome much
possibly have been derived from them. On lighter than is actually the case. The multi-
the outside, the cella of the Pantheon ap- colored marble panels and paving stones are
pears as an unadorned cylindrical drum, sur- still essentially as they were, but originally the
mounted by a gently curveddome. The dome was gilded to resemble "the golden
entrance is emphasized by a deep porch of a dome of heaven."
As its name suggests, the Pantheon was
dedicated to all the gods or, more precisely, to
the seven planetary gods (there are seven
niches). It seems reasonable, therefore, to as-
sume that the golden dome had a symbolic
Dome
meaning, that it represented the Dome of
Heaven. Yet this solemn and splendid struc-
ture grew from rather humble antecedents.
The Roman architect Vitruvius, writing more
than a century earlier, describes the domed
Drum
steam chamber of a bathing establishment
that anticipates (undoubtedly on a very much
Pendentive smaller scale) the essential features of the
Pantheon: a hemispherical dome, a propor-
tional relationship of height and width, and
the circular opening in the center (which
could be closed by a bronze shutter on chains
88. Parts of a dome to adjust the temperature of the steam room).
98 • ROMAS ART
Portraits
later copies of the lost originals (differences represents a god or a human being. This
in style andshape of the bust indicate
in the doubt is entirely appropriate, for the figure is
that the original of the head on the left is meant to be both. Here, on Roman soil, we
about thirty years older than that of its com- meet a concept familiar to us from Egypt and
panion). The work has little distinction, yet a the ancient Near East: that of the divine ruler.
peculiar "father-image" spirit can be felt here. It had entered the Greek world in the fourth
This quality was not present in the wax im- century b.c. Alexander the Great made it his
ages themselves. It came to the fore when own, and so did his successors. They, in turn,
they were translated into marble, a process transmitted it to Julius Caesar and the Roman
that not only made the ancestral images per- emperors.
manent but monumentalized them in the The idea of attributing superhuman stat-
spiritual sense as well. ure to the emperor, thereby enhancing his
Nevertheless, what mattered was only the authority, became official policy, and while
facial "text," not the "handwriting" of the art- Augustus did not carry it as far as his suc-
ist who recorded it. For that reason, these cessors, the Primaporta statue clearly shows
portraits are characterized by a serious, pro-
saically factual quality. The term "unin-
spired" suggests itself, not as a criticism but as
a way to describe the basic attitude of the Ro-
man artist in contrast to the attitude of Greek
or even Etruscan portraitists. That serious-
ness was consciously intended as a positive
value becomes clear when we compare the
right-hand ancestral head in our group with
the fine Hellenistic portrait from Delos in
figure 75. A more telling contrast could
hardly be imagined. Both are extremely per-
suasive likenesses, yet they seem worlds apart.
Whereas the Hellenistic head impresses us
with its subtle grasp of the sitter's psychology,
the Roman may strike us at first glance as
nothing but a detailed record of facial to-
diversity of types and styles mirrors the ever Piazza del Campidoglio, Rome
more complex character of Roman societv. If
we regard the Republican ancestral image of the earth had been a firmlv established tra-
tradition and the Greek-inspired Augustus of dition ever since Julius Caesar permitted such
Primaporta as opposite ends of the scale, we a statue of himself to be erected in the Forum
can find almost any varietv of interbreeding Julium. Marcus Aurelius. too. was meant to
between the two. Augustus still conformed be seen as ever victorious, for beneath the
to age-old Roman custom by being clean- right front leg of the horse (according to me-
shaven. His later successors, in contrast, dieval accounts) there once crouched a small
adopted the Greek fashion of wearing beards figure of a bound barbarian chieftain. The
as an outward sign of admiration for the wonderfullv spirited and powerful steed ex-
Hellenic heritage. It is not surprising, there- emperor
presses this martial spirit. But the
fore, to find a strong classicistic trend, often himself, without weapons or armor, presents
of a peculiarly cool, formal sort, in the sculp- a picture of stoic detachment— a bringer of
ture of the second century a.d., especiallv peace rather than a militarv hero. And so in-
during the reigns of Hadrian and Marcus Au- deed he saw himself and his reign (161 — 180
relius, both of them private men deeplv inter- A.D.).
Portrait Heads
Equestrian Monuments
It was the calm before the storm. The third
We can sense this introspective qualitv in the centurv saw the Roman Empire in almost
sculpture of Marcus Aurelius on horseback perpetual crisis. Barbarians endangered its
than documentary: all the dark passions of standing achievements in narrative reliefs on
L
ROMAN ART • 103
monumental altars, triumphal arches, and from the third century b.c. on. Rendered on
columns. Similar scenes are familiar to us panels, these pictures seem to have had the
from the ancient Near East (see figs. 28, fleeting nature of posters advertising a hero's
45, and 46) but not from Greece. Historic triumphs. Sometime during the late years of
events— that is, events that occurred only the Republic the temporary representations
once, at a specific time and in a particular of such events began to assume more monu-
place— had not been dealt with in Classical mental and permanent form by being carved
Greek sculpture. If a victory over the Persians and attached to structures intended to last in-
was to be commemorated, it would be repre- definitely. They were thus a ready tool for the
sented indirectly, as a combat of Lapiths and glorification of imperial rule, and the emper-
Centaurs, or Greeks and Amazons— a mythi- ors did not hesitate to use them on a large
cal event outside any space-time context. scale.
96. Spoils from the Temple in Jerusalem. Relief in passageway, Arch of Titus, Rome. 81 a.d.
Marble, height 7' 10" (2.39 m)
a
triumphal arch placed obliquely to the back- follow the narrative, and can hardly see any-
ground plane so that only the nearer half thing above the fourth or fifth turn without
actually emerges from the background— binoculars. The spiral frieze was a new and
radical but effective device. demanding framework for historic narrative
which imposed a number of difficult condi-
Column of Trajan. The purposes of Impe- tions upon the sculptor. Since there could
rial art, narrative or symbolic, were some- be no clarifying inscripdons, the pictorial
times incompatible with a realistic treatment account had to be as self-sufficient and ex-
of space. In terms of the number of figures plicit as possible, which meant that the spatial
and the density of the narrative, the continu- setting of each episode had to be worked out
ous spiral band of relief covering the Column with great care; visual continuity had to be
of Trajan (fig. 97), erected in 106-1 13 a.d. to preserved without destroying the inner co-
celebrate that emperor's victorious campaigns herence of the individual scenes; and the
against the Dacians (the ancient inhabitants of actual depth of the carving had to be much
Romania), is by far the most ambitious frieze shallower than in reliefs such as those on the
composition attempted up to that time. It is Arch of Titus, otherwise the shadows cast by
also themost frustrating, for viewers must the projecting parts would make the scenes
"run around in circles like a circus horse" (to unreadable from below. Our artist has
solved
borrow the apt description of one scholar) to these problems with great success, but at
the cost of sacrificing all but the merest rem-
nants of illusionistic spatial depth. Landscape
and architecture are reduced to abbreviated
"stage sets," and the ground on which the fig-
ures stand is tilted upward. The scenes in our
detail are a fair sampling of the events de-
picted on the column: among the more than a
hundred fifty separate episodes, actual com-
bat occurs only rarely, while the geographic,
logistic, and political aspects of the campaign
receive detailed attention, much as they do in
PAINTING
We know infinitely less about Roman painting
than we do about Roman architecture or
sculpture. Almost all of the surviving exam-
ples consist of wall paintings, and the great
majority of these come from Pompeii, Her-
culaneum, and other setdements buried by
the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 a.d., or
from Rome and its environs; their dates cover
a span of less than two hundred years. That
there was copying of Greek designs, and that
Greek paintings as well as painters were im-
ported, nobody will dispute. But The Battle of
97. Lower portion of the Column of Trajan, Rome.
106-13 a.d. Marble, height of relief band Issus (see fig. 59) is one of the few instances in
98. The Ixion Room, House of the Vettii. Pompeii. 63-79 a.d.
Roman Illusionism
Apparently he never intended us to en-
itself.
The style that prevailed at the time of the ter the space he has created. Like a promised
eruption of Mount Vesuvius can be seen in land, it remains forever beyond us.
the painting that adorned a corner of the Ix- When landscape takes the place of architec-
ion Room in the House of the Vettii at Pom- tural vistas, exact foreshortening becomes
peii (fig. 98): combines imitation marble
it less important, and the virtues of the Roman
paneling, conspicuously framed mythological painters approach outweigh his limitations.
scenes intended to give the effect of panel This is most strikingly demonstrated by
pictures set into the wall, and fantastic archi- the famous Odyssey Landscapes, a continuous
tectural vistas seen through make-believe stretch of landscape subdivided into eight
windows, creating the effect of a somewhat compartments by a framework of pilasters.
disjointed compilation of motifs from various Each section illustrates an episode of the ad-
sources. The architecture, too, has a strangely ventures of Odysseus (Ulysses). One of the
unreal and picturesque quality that is be- adventures with the Laestrygonians is re-
lieved to reflect the architectural backdrops produced in figure 99. The airy, bluish tones
of the theaters of the time. The illusionof create a wonderful feeling of atmospheric,
surface textures and distant views has an ex- light-filled space that envelops and binds
traordinary degree of three-dimensional re- together all the forms within this warm Medi-
ality, but as soon as we try to analyze the terranean fairyland, where the human fig-
relationship of the parts to each other, we ures seem to play no more than an incidental
quickly realize that the Roman painter has no role. Only upon further reflection do we real-
systematic grasp of spatial depth, that his per- ize how frail the illusion of coherence is even
spective is haphazard and inconsistent within here: if we were to try mapping this land-
106 ROMAS ART
99. The Laestrygoniajis Hurling Rocks at the Fleet of Odysseus. Wall painting from the Odyssey Landscapes
series in a house on the Esquiline Hill. Rome. Late 1st centurv b.c. Musei Yaticani. Rome
100. Scenes o/ a Dionysiac Mystery Cult. Wall painting Frieze, i. 50 b.< . \ 'ilia <>t the Mysteries, Pompeii
ROMAN ART • 107
vived. The only coherent group of painted of reality as anyone might wish. The artist has
portraits at our disposal comes instead from emphasized certain features, for example, the
the Faiyum district in Lower Egypt. We owe eyes. But in this happy instance, the styliza-
them to the survival (or revival) of an ancient tion has been made with the intention only of
Egyptian custom, that of attaching a portrait recalling the attractive personality of a be-
of the deceased to the wrapped, mummified loved child.
EARLY CHRISTIAN
AND BYZANTINE ART
In 323 a.d. Constantine the Great made a versal Church, while the Orthodox Church
fateful decision, the consequences of which was based on the union of spiritual and secu-
are still felt today— he resolved to move the lar authority in the person of the emperor,
capital of theRoman Empire to the Greek who appointed the patriarch. We will recog-
town of Byzantium, which thenceforth was to nize this pattern as the Christian adaptation
be known as Constantinople, and today as of a very ancient heritage, the divine kingship
Istanbul. In taking this step, the emperor of Egypt and the Near East. If the Byzantine
acknowledged the growing strategic and eco- emperors, unlike their pagan predecessors,
nomic importance of the eastern provinces. could no longer claim the status of gods, they
The new capital also symbolized the new retained an equally unique and exalted role
Christian basis of the Roman state. Constan- by placing themselves at the head of the
tine could hardly have foreseen that shifting Church as well as of the State.
the seat of imperial power would result in It is the religious even more than the politi-
splitting the realm; yet within less than a hun- cal separation of East and West that makes it
dred years the division had become an ac- impossible to discuss the development of
complished fact, even though the emperors at Christian art in the Roman Empire under a
Constantinople did not relinquish their claim single heading. "Early Christian" does not,
to the western provinces. The latter, ruled by strictly speaking, designate a style. It refers,
western Roman emperors, soon fell prey to rather, to any work of art produced by or for
invading Germanic tribes. By the end of the Christians during the time prior to the split-
sixth century, the last vestige of centralized ting off of the Orthodox Church— or,
authority had disappeared. The eastern, or roughly, the first five centuries of our era.
Byzantine, Empire, in contrast, survived "Byzantine," on the other hand, designates
these onslaughts,and under Justinian (527— not only the art of the eastern Roman Empire
565) reached new power and stability. but a specific quality of style as well. Since this
The division of the Roman Empire soon style grew out of certain tendencies that can
led to a religious split as well. At the time of be traced back to the time of Constantine or
Constantine, the bishop of Rome, deriving his even earlier, there is no sharp dividing line
authority from St. Peter, was the acknowl- between Early Christian and Byzantine art.
edged head, the pope, of the Christian Thus the reign of Justinian has been termed
Church. His claim to preeminence, however, the First Golden Age of Byzantine art. Yet the
soon came to be disputed by the patriarch of monuments he sponsored, especially those on
Constantinople; differences in doctrine be- Italian soil, may be viewed as either Early
gan to develop; and eventually the division of Christian or Byzantine, depending on which
Christendom into a Western, or Catholic, and frame of reference we select.
an Eastern, or Orthodox, Church became all Soon after, it is true, the political and reli-
but final. The differences between them went gious cleavage between East and West became
very deep. Roman Catholicism maintained its an artistic cleavage as well. In western Europe,
independence from imperial or any other Celtic and Germanic peoples fell heir to the
state authority and became an international civilization of late antiquitv. of which Earl)
institution reflecting its character as the Uni- Christian art had been a part, and trans-
EARLY CHRISTIAX AXD BYZAXTIXE ART • 109
102. Painted ceiling. 4th centur\ ad. Catacomb of SS. Pietro e Marcellino. Rome
Christian art until we reach the reign of Con- The burial rite and the safeguarding of the
stantine the Great. The painted decorations tomb were of vital concern to the earlv Chris-
of the Roman catacombs, the underground tian. whoseTaithrested on theJyipe_of_eternal
burial places of the Christians, provide the life in paradise. The lmag^ryofthe cata-
only sizable and coherent bodv of material, c o mbsTas canbe sraaynthe painted ceiling in
but these are merelv one among various pos- figure 102. clearly expresses this outlook, al-
sible kinds of Christian art. Before that time. though the forms are in essence still those of
Rome did not embodv the faith. Older and pre-Christian mural decoration. Thus we rec-
larger Christian communities existed in the ognize the division of the ceiling into com-
1 10 • EARLY (HRISTIAX AND BYZANTINE ART
a jtr E EoE9
jJ|i>J(
jL
112 • EARLY CHRISTIAN AND BYZANTINE ART
private house. It also has the qualities of an Kingdom of God. The steady rhythm of the
original creation that cannot be wholly ex- nave arcade pulls us toward the great arch at
plained in terms of its sources. It owes to the the eastern end (called the triumphal arch),
Imperial basilicas of pagan times the long which frames the altar and the vaulted apse
nave flanked by aisles and lit by clerestory beyond.
windows, the apse, and the wooden roof. Our
view, taken from the west, shows the entrance
Mosaics
hall (narthex) but not the colonnaded court
(atrium), which was torn down a long time The rapid growth of Christian architecture
ago; the round bell tower, or campanile, is a on a large scale must have had an almost rev-
medieval addition. (Many basilican churches olutionary effect on the development of Early
also include a transept, a separate compart- Christian painting. All of a sudden, huge wall
ment of space placed at right angles to the surfaces had be covered with images
to
nave and aisles forming a cross plan, though worthy of their monumental framework. The
this feature is frequently omitted, as here.) heritage of the past, however, was not only
The pagan was a uniquely suitable
basilica absorbed but also transformed to make it fit
model for Constantinian churches, since it its new physical and spiritual environment. In
combined the spacious interior demanded by the process, a great new art form emerged,
Christian ritual with imperial associations the Early Christian wall mosaic, which to a
that proclaimed the privileged status of large extent replaced the older and cheaper
Christianity as the new state religion. But a medium of mural painting. The Hellenistic
church had to be more than an assembly hall. Greeks and the Romans had produced mostly
In addition to enclosing the community of floor mosaics. The vast and intricate wall mo-
the faithful, it was the sacred House of God, saics of Early Christian art thus are essentially
the Christian successor to the temples of old. without precedent. The same is true of their
In order to express this function, the de- material, for they consist of small cubes of
sign of the pagan had to be given a
basilica colored gla ss kno wn as tesserae. These of-
new which was placed in front
focus, the altar, fered colors of far greater range and intensity
of the apse at the eastern end of the nave, and than the marble employed in The Battle ofhsus
the entrances, which in pagan basilicas had (see fig. 59), including gold, but lacked the
usually been on the flanks, were shifted to the fine gradations in tone necessary for imitat-
western end. The Christian basilica was thus ing painted pictures. The shiny (and slightly
oriented along a single, longitudinal axis that irregular) faces of glass tesserae act as tiny
is curiously reminiscent of the layout of Egyp- reflectors, so that the overall effect is that of a
tian temples (compare fig. 36). glittering, immaterial screen rather than of a
S. Apollinare in Classe shows another es- solid, continuous surface. All these qualities
sential aspect of Early Christian religious ar- made glass mosaic the ideal complement of
chitecture: the contrast between exterior and the new architectural aesthetic in Early Chris-
interior. The plain brick exterior remains tian basilicas. The brilliant color, the light-
conspicuously unadorned. It is merely a shell filled, transparent brightness of_gold. the
whose shape reflects the interior space it severe geometric order of the images in a mo-
encloses— the exact opposite of the Classical saic complex such as that of S. Apollinare in
temple. This ascetic, antimonumental treat- Classe fit the spirit of these interiors to perfec-
ment of the exterior gives way to the utmost tion. One might say, in fact, that Early Chris-
richness as we enter the church proper tian and Byzantine churches demand mosaics
(fig.105). Here, having left the everyday the way Greek temples demand architectural
world behind, we find ourselves in a shim- sculpture.
mering realm of light and color where pre- In Early Christian mosaics the flatness of
cious marble surfaces and the brilliant glitter the wall surface is denied, not in order to sug-
of mosaics evoke the spiritual splendor of the gest a reality beyond the surface of the wall,
EARLY CHRISTIAX AND BYZANTINE ART -113
salvation. The reality they illustrate is the liv- on the Word of God as revealed in Holy Writ,
ing word of the Scriptures (in this instance, the early Christian Church must have spon-
Genesis which is a present reality shared
13), sored the duplicating of the sacred text on a
by artist and beholder alike, rather than vast scale. Every copy of it was handled with a
something that happened only once in the reverence quite unlike the treatment of any
space-and-time context of the external world. book in Graeco- Roman civilization.
Hence the artist need not clothe the scene The history of books begins in Egypt—
with the concrete details of historic narrative. we do not know exactly when— with the dis-
Glances and gestures are more important to covery of a paperlike material, but rather
him than dramatic movement or three- more britde, made from the papyrus plant.
dimensional form. The symmetrical composi- Books of papyrus were in the form of rolls.
tion, with its cleavage in the center, makes Not until late Hellenistic times did a better
clear the symbolic significance of this parting: substance become available: parchment, or
the way of Abraham, which is that of righ- vellum (thin, bleached animal hide). Far
teousness and the Covenant, as against the more durable than papvrus, it was strong
way of Lot, destined for divine vengeance. enough to be creased without breaking, and
And the contrasting fate of the two groups is thus made possible the kind of bound book
'
iew cvycxcM^xkey^i&'i>AH«?HlyN»fR
i
w
-
(
r*#fr
107. Page with Jacob Wrestling the Angel, from the Vienna Genesis. Early 6th century a.d.
13'/4x9'/2" (33.7x24.1 cm). Osterreichische Nationalbibliothek, Vienna
we know today, technically called a codex. Be- mination—the small-scale counterpart of mu-
tween the first and the fourth century a.d., mosaics, and panel pictures.
rals,
L
EARLY CHRISTIAN AND BYZANTINE ART -115
sumptuous effect not unlike that of the mosa- graven images was thought to apply with par-
ics we have seen. Figure 107 shows several ticular force to large cult statues, the idols
scenes from the story of Jacob; in the worshiped in pagan temples. If religious
foreground, we see him wrestling with the sculpture was to avoid the pagan taint of idol-
angel and receiving the angel's benediction. atry, it had to eschew lifesize representations
The picture, then, does not show a single of the human figure. It thus developed from
event but a whole sequence, strung out along the very start in an antimonumental direc-
a single U-shaped path, so that progression in tion: away from the spatial depth and massive
space becomes progression in time. This scale of Graeco-Roman sculpture toward
method, known as continuous narration, may shallow, small-scale forms and lacelike surface
reflect earlier illustrations made for books in decoration. The earliest works of Christian
roll form. For manuscript illustration, the sculpture are marble sarcophagi, which were
continuous method offers the advantage of produced from the middle of the third cen-
spatial economy. It permits the painter to tury on for the more important members of
pack a maximum of narrative content into the Church. Before the time of Constantine,
the area at his disposal.Our artist apparently their decoration consisted mostly of the same
thought of his picture as a running account to limited repertory of themes familiar from cat-
be read like lines of text, rather than as a acomb murals— the Good Shepherd, Jonah
window demanding a frame. The painted and the Whale, and so forth— but within a
forms are placed directly on the purple back- framework borrowed from pagan sarcoph-
ground that holds the letters, emphasizing agi. Not until a century later do we find a
the importance of the page as a unified field. significantly broader range of subject matter
and form.
Sculpture
Sarcophagus of Junius Bassus. A key exam-
Compared to painting and architecture, ple for those years is the richly carved Sar-
sculptm^_played_a^iecondary role in Early cophagus of Junius Bassus, made for a prefect
Christian art. The biblical prohibition of of Rome who died in 359 (fig. 108). Its colon-
naded front, divided into ten square com- hand, during this period paganism still had
partments, shows a mixture of Old and New many important adherents who may have
Testament scenes: in the upper row (left to fostered such revivals as a kind of rearguard
right), the Sacrifice of Isaac, St. Peter Taken action. Recent converts (such as Junius Bassus
Prisoner, Christ Enthroned Between Sts. Pe- himself, who was not baptized until shortlv
ter and Paul, Christ Before Pontius Pilate before his death) often kept their allegiance
(two compartments); in the lower row, the and otherwise.
to values of the past, artistic
Misery of Job, the Fall of Man, Christ's Entry There were also important leaders of the
into Jerusalem, Daniel in the Lions' Den, and Church who favored a reconciliation of
St. Paul Led to His Martyrdom. This choice, Christianity with the heritage of classical an-
somewhat strange to the modern beholder, is tiquity. The imperial courts, too, both East
highly characteristic of the Early Christian and West, always remained aware of their
way of thinking, which stresses the divine institutional links with pre-Christian times,
rather than the human nature of Christ. and could thus become centers for revivalist
Hence His suffering and death are merely impulses. Whatever its roots in any given in-
hinted at. He appears before Pilate as a stance, classicism had its virtues in this age of
youthful, long-haired philosopher expound- transition, for it preserved— and thus helped
ing the truewisdom (note the scroll), and the transmit to the future— a treasury of forms
martyrdom of the two apostles is represented and an ideal of beauty that might otherwise
in the same discreet, nonviolent fashion. The have been irretrievably lost.
two central scenes are devoted to Christ the
King: as Ruler of the Universe He sits en-
throned above the personification of the fir-
Ivory Diptychs
mament, and as an earthly sovereign He
enters Jerusalem in triumph. Adam and Eve, This holds true particularly for a class of ob-
the original sinners, denote the burden of jects whose artistic importance far exceeds
guilt redeemed by Christ, the Sacrifice of their physical size: ivory panels and other
Isaac is the Old Testament prefiguration of small-scale reliefs in precious materials. De-
Christ's sacrificial death, while Job and Daniel signed for private ownership and meant to be
carry the same message as Jonah— they for- enjoyed at close range, they often mirror a
tify the hope of salvation. The figures in their collector's taste, a refined aesthetic sensibility
deeply recessed niches betray a conscious at- not found among the large, official enter-
tempt to recapture the statuesque dignity of prises sponsored by Church or State. The
the Greek tradition. Yet beneath this super- ivory leaf (fig. 109) done soon after 500 in the
imposed classicism we sense an oddly be- eastern Roman Empire is just such a piece. It
calmed, passive air in the scenes calling for shows a classicism that has become an elo-
dramatic action. The events and personages quent vehicle of Christian content. The ma-
confronting us are no longer intended to tell jestic archangel is clearly a descendant of the
their own story, physically or emotionally, but winged Victories of Graeco- Roman art, down
to call to our minds a higher, symbolic mean- to the richly articulated drapery (see fig. 78).
ing that binds them together. Yet the power he heralds is not of this world;
nor does he inhabit an earthly space. The ar-
chitectural niche against which he appears
has lost all three-dimensional reality. Its rela-
Classicism
tionship to him is purely symbolic and orna-
Classicizing tendencies of this sort seem to mental, so that he seems to hover rather than
have been a recurrent phenomenon in Early of the feet on the
to stand (notice the position
Christian sculpture from the mid-fourth to steps). It isdisembodied quality, conveyed
this
the early sixth century. Their causes have through classically harmonious forms, that
been explained in various ways. On the one gives him so compelling a presence.
EARLY CHRJSTIAX AXD BYZAXTIXE ART -117
BYZANTINE ART
The First Golden Age
l
EARLY CHRISTIAX AXD BYZAXTIXE ART • 119
112. Emperor Justinian and His Attendants, c. 547 a.d. Mosaic. S. Yitale
Hagja_Sophia (the Church of Holy Wisdom), weight to the great piers at the corners of the
me ^rchjtj^uT^jnast§ipiece^-e€ that jage square, so that the walls below the arches have
and one of the great creative triumphs of am no supporting function at all. The transition
age (figs. 113, 114). Built in 532-537, it from the square formed bv these arches to the
achieved such fame that the names of the ar- circular rim of the dome is achiev ed_bv spher-
chitects, too, were remembered— Anthemius ical triangles called pendentives- This device
of Tralles and Isidorus of Miletus. After permits the construction of taller, lighter, and
the Turkish conquest in 1453, it became a more economical domes than the older
mosque (the four minarets were added then). method (as seen in the Pantheon and S. Vi-
The design of Hagia Sophia presents a tale) of placing the dome on a round or po-
unique combination of elements: it has the lygonal base. The plan, the buttressing of the
120 • EARLY CHRISTIAN AND BYZANTINE ART
1
UAUl
^
f
2
_ *L!L
win^u '
^ F
EB^V^ ^""^ L_
^
rr^^j^^j-, .
-** - "-
main piers, and the vast scale of the whole upon a closely spaced ring of windows, and
recall the Basilica of Constantine (see hg. 89), the nave walls are pierced by so many
the most ambitious achievement of Imperial openings that they have the transparency of
Roman vaulted architecture and the greatest lace curtains. The golden glitter of the mosa-
monument associated with a ruler for whom ics must have completed the "illusion of
shape in S. Apollinare in Classe (see fig. 105) The development of Byzantine painting
has achieved a new, magnificent dimension. and sculpture after the age of Justinian was
Even more than previously, light plays a key disrupted by the Iconoclastic Controversy,
role: thedome seems to float— "like the radi- which began with an imperial edict of 726
ant heavens," according to a contemporary prohibiting religious images as idolatrous and
description of the building— because it rests raged for more than a hundred years. The
EARLY CHRISTIAN AND BYZANTINE ART -121
roots of the conflict went very deep. On the out altogether, so that there was a fairly rapid
plane of theology they involved the basic issue recovery after the victory of the Iconophiles
of the relationship of the human and the in 843. While we know little for certain about
divine in the person of Christ. Socially and how the Byzantine artistic tradition managed
politically, they reflected a power struggle be- to survive from the early eighth to the mid-
tween State and Church, and between the ninth century, Iconoclasm seems to have
Western and Eastern provinces. The Contro- brought about a renewed interest in secular
versy also marked the final break between Ca- art, which was not affected by the ban. This
tholicism and the Orthodox faith. The edict interest may help explain the astonishing re-
did succeed in reducing the production of sa- appearance of Late Classical motifs in the art
cred images very greatly, but failed to wipe it of the Second Golden Age.
122 • EARLY CHR1STIAS AM) HYZA.XTI.XE ART
to those of the Justinian mosaics at S. Vitale these elements have become oddlv abstract.
(see fig. 112). The throne, despite its foreshortening, no
The most important aspect of these figures' longer functions as a three-dimensional ob-
Classical heritage, however, is emotional ject, and the highlights on the drapery resem-
rather than physical. It is the gentle pathos ble ornamental sunbursts, in strange contrast
conveyed by their gestures and facial expres- to the soft shading of hands and faces. The
sions, a restrained and noble suffering of the total effect is neither flat nor spatial but trans-
kind we first met in Greek art of the fifth parent, somewhat like that of a stained-glass
century b.c. (see pp. 83-84). Early Christian window; the shapes look as if thev were lit
EARLY CHRISTIAN AND BYZANTINE ART 123
from behind. And this is almost literally true, Christian mosaics. Panels such as ours, there-
for they are painted in a thin film on a highly fore, should be viewed as the aesthetic equiva-
reflective gold surface, which forms the high- lent, on a smaller scale, of mosaics, and not
lights, the halos, and the background, so that simply as the descendants of the ancient
even the shadows never seem wholly opaque. panel painting tradition. In fact, the most
This all-pervading celestial radiance, we will precious Byzantine icons are miniature mosa-
recall, is a quality first encountered in Early ics done on panels rather than paintings.
1
CHRONOLOGICAL CHART I
2000
Middle Kingdom. Egypt. 2134-1785 Code of Hammurabi c. 1760 Bronze tools and weapons in Egypt
Hammurabi founds Babvlonian dynasty Monotheism of Akhenaten (r. 1372- Canal from Nile to Red Sea
c. 1760 1358) Mathematics and astronomy flourish
Flowering of Minoan civilization Book of the Dead, first papyrus book, in Babylon under Hammurabi
c. 1700-1500 XVIII Dynasty Hyksos bring horses and wheeled
New Kingdom. Egypt, c. 1570-1085 vehicles to Egypt c. 1725
1000
Jerusalem capital of Palestine: rule of Hebrews accept monotheism Coinage invented in Lvdia (Asia Minor)
David: of Solomon (died 926) Phoenicians develop alphabetic writing c. 700—650; soon adopted bv Greeks
Assyrian Empire c. 1000-612 c. 1000; Greeks adopt it c. 800 Pythagoras. Greek philosopher(fl.c.520)
Persians conquer Babvlon 539; Egypt First Olympic games 776
525 Homer (fl. c. 750-700). Iliad and Odyssey
Romans revolt against Etruscans, set up Zoroaster. Persian prophet (born
republic 509 c. 660)
Aeschvlus. Greek playwright (525-4561
500 -
Persian Wars in Greece 499-478 Sophocles. Greek playwright (496-406) Travels of Herodotus. Greek historian,
Periclean Age in Athens c. 460-429 Euripides. Greek playwright (died 406) c. 460-440
Peloponnesian War, Sparta against Socrates, philosopher (died 399) Hippocrates. Greek phvsician (born
Athens. 431-404 Plato, philosopher (427-347); founds 469
Alexander the Great (356-323) Academy 386 Euclid's books on geometry (fl. c. 300—
occupies Egypt 333: defeats Persia Aristotle, philosopher (384-322) 280)
331; conquers Near East Archimedes, phvsicist and inventor
(287-212)
200
Rome dominates Asia Minor and Egypt; Invention of paper. China
annexes Macedonia (and thereby
Greece 147 l
100
Julius Caesar dictator of Rome 49—44 Golden Age of Roman literature: Vitruvius' De archtteclura
Emperor Augustus (r. 27 B.C.- 14 A.D.) Cicero. Catullus. Vergil, Horace,
Ovid. Livy
A.D.
I Jewish rebellion against Rome 66-70; Crucifixion of Jesus c. 30 Plim the Elder. Xatural Histon. dies
destruction of Jerusalem Paul (died c. 65) spreads Christianin to in Pompeii 79
Eruption of Mt. Vesuvius buries Asia Minor and Greece Seneca. Roman statesman
Pompeii. Herculaneum 79
100
Emperor Trajan (r. 98-1 17) rules Ptolemv. geographer and astronomer
Roman Empire at its largest extent (died 160)
Emperor Marcus Aurelius (r. 161-80)
200
Shapur I (r. 242-72), Sassanian king of Persecution of Christians in Roman
Persia Empire 250-302
Emperor Diocletian (r. 284-305) divides
Empire
300
Constantine the ('.real (r. 324-37) Christianity legalized bv Edict of Milan
Roman Empire split into Eastern and 313; state religion 395
Western branches 395 St. Augustine (354-430), St. Jerome
(c. 347-420)
400
Rome sacked bv Yisigoths 410 St. c. 461) founds Celtic
Patrick (died brought to eastern
Silk cultivation
Fallof Western Roman Empire 476 Church Ireland 432
in Mediterranean from China
"Golden Age" of Justinian 527-65 Split between Eastern and Western
Churches begins 451
NOTE: Figure numbers of black-and-white illustrations are in (italics). Colorplate numbers are in (bold face).
Duration of papacy or reign is indicated by the abbreviation r. The abbreviation fl. stands for flourished.
3000
Step pyramid and funerary district of Palette of Narmer (28)
Zoser, Saqqara. by Imhotep (31 32) , Statues from Abu Temple. Tell Asmar
Sphinx, Giza (34) (42)
Pyramids at Giza (33) Offering stand and harp from L'r (43,
44)
Mycerinus and His Queen (30)
Cycladic idol from Amorgos (50)
2000
Stonehenge, England (21, 22) Stele of Hammurabi (45) "Toreador Fresco" (52)
Palace of Minos, Knossos, Crete (51) Heads of Akhenaten and Nofretete (37,
Temple of Amun-Mut-Khonsu, Luxor 38)
(36) Coffin of Tutankhamen (39)
Treasury of Atreus, Mycenae (53) Lion Gate, Mycenae (54)
1000
Ishtar Gate, Babylon (47) Pole-top ornament from Luristan (48) Dipylon vase (55)
"Basilica," Paestum (62) Relief from Nimrud (46) Black-figure amphora by Psiax (57)
Standing Youth (Kouros) (65)
Kore in Dorian Peplos (66)
North frieze from Treasury of the
Siphnians, Delphi (67)
Apollo from Veii (79)
500
Palace, Persepolis (49) She-Wolf from Rome (80) Lapith and Centaur, red-figure kylix (58)
Temple of Poseidon, Paestum (62) East pediment from Aegina (68) Tomb of Lionesses, Tarquinia (81)
Temples on Acropolis, Athens: Standing Youth (Kritios Boy) (69) The Battle of Issus (59)
Parthenon (63); Propylaea and Poseidon (Zeus?) (70)
Temple of Athena Nike (64) East pediment from the Parthenon (72)
East frieze from the Mausoleum,
Halicarnassus (73)
Hermes bv Praxiteles (74)
Cinerary container (82)
Dying Gaul (76)
200
Porta Augusta, Perugia (83) Nike of Samothrace (78)
100
Roman Patrician (91) Odyssey Landscapes (99)
Portrait Head from Delos (75) Villa of the Mysteries, Pompeii (100)
A.D.
' Colosseum, Rome (85) Arch of Titus, Rome (96) House of the Vettii, Pompeii (98) 1
100
Pantheon. Rome (86, 87) Column of Trajan, Rome (97) Portrait of a Boy, the Faivum (101)
Equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius,
Rome (93)
200
Philippus the Arab (94)
300
Basilica of Constantine, Rome (89, 90) Colossal statue of Constantine (95) Catacomb of SS. Pietro e Marcellino,
Sarcophagus of Junius Bassus, Rome Rome (102)
(108)
400
S. Vitale, Ravenna (110, 111) Archangel Michael, diptych leaf (109) Mosaics, Sta. Maria Maggiore, Rome
Hagia Sophia, Istanbul (113, 114) (106)
S. Apollinare in Classe, Ravenna (103, Vienna Genesis (107)
104) Mosaics, S. Apollinare in Classe and S.
Vitale, Ravenna (105, 112)
PART TWO
THE
MIDDLE
AGES
When we think of the great civilizations of a tremendous and completely unforeseen
our we tend to do so in terms of visible
past, new force had made itself felt in the East: the
monuments that have come to symbolize the Arabs, under the banner of Islam, were over-
distinctive character of each: the pyramids of running the Near Eastern and African prov-
Egypt, the ziggurats of Babylon, the Par- inces of Byzantium. By 732, within a century
thenon of Athens, the Colosseum, Hagia after the death of Mohammed,
they had swal-
Sophia. The Middle Ages, in such a review of lowed all of North Africa as well as Spain, and
climactic achievements, would be represented threatened to add southwestern France to
by a Gothic cathedral — Notre-Dame in Paris, their conquests.
perhaps, or Chartres, or Salisbury. We have It would be difficult to exaggerate the im-
many to choose from, but whichever one we pact of the lightninglike advance of Islam on
pick, it will be well north of the Alps, al- the Christian world. The Byzantine Empire,
though in territory that formerly belonged to deprived of its western Mediterranean bases,
the Roman Empire. And if we were to spill a had to concentrate all its effortson keeping
bucket of water in front of the cathedral of Islam at bay in the East. Its impotence in the
our choice, this water would eventually make West (where it retained only a precarious
its way Channel, rather than to
to the English foothold on Italian soil) left the European
the Mediterranean. Here, then, we have the shore of the western Mediterranean, from the
most important single fact about the Middle Pyrenees to Naples, exposed to Arabic raid-
Ages: the center of gravity of European civili- ersfrom North Africa or Spain. Western Eu-
zation has shifted to what had been the north- rope was thus forced to develop its own
ern boundaries of the Roman world. The resources, political, economic, and spiritual.
Mediterranean, for so many centuries the The Church in Rome broke its last ties with
great highway of commercial and cultural ex- the East and turned for support to the Ger-
change binding together all the lands along manic north, where the Frankish kingdom,
its shores, has become a barrier, a border under the energetic leadership of the Car-
zone. olingian dynasty, rose to the status of imperial
We have already observed some of the power during the eighth century.
events that paved the way for this shift — the When the pope, in the year 800, bestowed
removal of the imperial capital to Constan- the title of emperor upon Charlemagne, he
tinople, the growing split between the Cath- solemnized the new order of things by plac-
olic and Orthodox faiths, the decay of the ing himself and all of Western Christianity
western half of the Roman Empire under the under the protection of the king of the-
impact of invasions by Germanic tribes. Yet Franks and Lombards. He did not, however,
these tribes, once they had settled in their subordinate himself to the newly created
new environment, accepted the framework of Catholic emperor, whose legitimacy de-
late Roman, Christian civilization, however pended on the pope, whereas hitherto it had
imperfectly; the local kingdoms they founded been the other way around (the emperor in
—the Vandals in North Africa, the Visigoths Constantinople had formerly ratified the
in Spain, the Franks in Gaul, the Ostrogoths newly elected pope). This interdependent du-
and Lombards in Italy— were all Mediterra- alism of spiritual and political authority, of
nean-oriented, provincial states on the pe- Church and State, was to distinguish the West
riphery of the Byzantine Empire, subject to from both the Orthodox East and the Islamic
the pull of military, commercial, and cul-
its South. Its outward symbol was the fact that
tural power. As late as 630, after the Byz- though the emperor had to be crowned in
antine armies had recovered Syria, Palestine, Rome, he did not reside there; Charlemagne
and Egypt from the Sassanid Persians, the built his capital at the center of his effective
reconquest of the lost Western provinces re- power, in Aachen, located, on the present-day
mained a serious possibility. Ten years later, map of Europe, in Germany and close to
the chance had ceased to exist, for meanwhile France, Belgium, and the Netherlands.
BRITISH ISLES
MEDITERRANEAN SEA
NORTH AFRICA
THE
MIDDLE AGES
SITES \\l)< [TIES
ASIA
ARABIA
i
EARLY
MEDIEVAL
ART
THE DARK AGES called animal style (see p. 60). This style,
The labels we use for historical periods tend shapes, of formal discipline and imaginative
to be like the nicknames of people: once freedom, became an important element in
established, they are almost impossible to the Celtic-Germanic art of the Dark Ages,
change, even though they may no longer be such as the gold-and-enamel purse cover
suitable. Those who coined the term "Middle (fig. 117) from the grave, at Sutton Hoo, of an
Ages" thought of the entire thousand years East Anglian king who died between 625 and
from the fifth to the fifteenth century as an 633. On it are four pairs of symmetrical
age of darkness, an empty interval between motifs: each has its own distinctive character,
classical antiquity and its rebirth, the Renais- an indication that the motifs have been as-
sance in Italy. Since then, our view of the sembled from four different sources. One
Middle Ages has changed completely. We motif, the standing man between confronted
now think of the period as the "Age of Faith." animals, has a very long history indeed— we
With the spread of this positive conception, first saw it in Sumerian art more than 3,000
the idea of darkness has become confined years earlier (see fig. 44). The eagles pounc-
more and more to the early part of the Mid- ing on ducks also date back a long way, to
dle Ages. Whereas a hundred years ago, the similar pairings of carnivore and victim. The
"Dark Ages" were generally thought to ex- design above them, on the other hand, is of
tend as far as the twelfth century, today the more recent origin. It consists of fighting ani-
term covers no more than the two-hundred- mals whose tails, legs, and jaws are elongated
year interval between the death of Justinian into bands forming a complex interlacing
and the reign of Charlemagne. Perhaps we pattern. Interlacing bands as an ornamental
ought to pare down the Dark Ages even fur- device occur in Roman and Early Christian
ther. In the course of the century 650-750 along the southern shore of the
art, especially
The Germanic
Celtic-Germanic Style
Hiberno-Saxon Style
throughout the European countryside. Al- north from Italv during the seventh and
though their Continental foundations were eighth centuries, Irish influence was to be felt
taken over before long by the monks of the within medieval civilization for several hun-
Benedictine order, who were advancing dred years to come.
EARLY MEDIEVAL ART • 133
Manuscripts
with a jewelers precision, has poured into the National Museum of Ireland. Dublin
compartments of his geometric frame an ani-
mal interlace so dense and vet so full of con-
trolled movement that the fighting beasts on in Earlv Christian manuscripts, the Hiberno-
the Sutton Hoo purse cover seem childishlv Saxon illuminators generallv retained onlv
simple in comparison. It is as if the world of the svmbols of the four evangelists, since
paganism, embodied in these biting and claw- these could be translated into their ornamen-
ing monsters, had suddenlv been subdued bv tal idiom without much difficulty. The hu-
the superior authoritv of the Cross. In order man on the other hand, remained
figure,
to achieve this effect, our artist has had to bevond the Celuc or Germanic artist's reach
impose an extremely severe discipline upon for a long time. The bronze plaque of the
himself. His "rules of the game" demand, for Crucifixion (fig. probablv made for a
120).
instance, that organic and geometric shapes book cover, shows how helpless the artist was
must be kept separate: also, that within the when faced with the image of a man. In his
animal compartments everv line must turn attempt to reproduce an Earlv Christian com-
out to be part of an animals bodv. if we take position, he suffers from an utter inabilitv to
the trouble to trace it back to its point of ori- conceive of the human frame as an organic
gin. There are complex to go
also rules, too unit, so that the figure of Christ becomes dis-
into here, svmmetrv. mirror-
concerning embodied in the most literal sense: the head,
image effects, and repetitions of shapes and arms, and feet are all separate elements
colors. Onlv bv working these out for our- joined to a central pattern of whorls, zigzags,
selves bv intense observation can we hope to and interlacing bands. Clearlv. there is a wide
enter into the spirit of this strange, mazelike gulf between the Celtic-Germanic and the
world. Mediterranean traditions, a gulf that the Irish
Of the representational images thev found artist who modeled the Crucifixion did not
134 • EARLY MEDIEVAL ART
CAROLINGIAN ART
The empire built by Charlemagne did not en-
dure for long. His grandsons divided it into
three parts, and proved incapable of effective
rule even in these, so that political power
reverted to the local nobility. The cultural
achievements of his reign, in contrast, have
proved far more lasting. This very page
would look different without them, for it is
printed in letters whose shapes derive from
the script in Carolingian manuscripts. The
fact that these letters are known today as "Ro-
man" rather than Carolingian recalls another
aspect of the cultural reforms sponsored by
121. Odo of Metz. Interior of the Palace Chapel of
Charlemagne: the collecting and copying of Charlemagne, Aachen. 792-805 a.d.
ancient Roman literature. The oldest sur-
viving texts of a great many classical Latin
authors are to be found in Carolingian manu-
scripts, which, until not very long ago, were venna. His own capital at Aachen, he felt,
mistakenly regarded as Roman, hence their must convey the majesty of Empire through
lettering, too, was called Roman. buildings of an equally impressive kind. His
This interest in preserving the classics was famous Palace Chapel (fig. 121) is, in fact, di-
part of an ambitious attempt to restore an- rectly inspired by S. Vitale (see fig. 111). To
cient Roman civilization, along with the impe- erect such a structureon Northern soil was a
rial title. Charlemagne himself took an active difficult undertaking. Columns and bronze
hand in this revival, through which he ex- gratings had to be imported from Italy, and
pected to implant the cultural traditions of a expert stonemasons must have been hard to
glorious past in the minds of the semibarbaric find. The design, by Odo of Metz (probably
people of his realm. To an astonishing extent, the earliest architect north of the Alps known
he succeeded. Thus the "Carolingian revival" to us by name), is by no means a mere echo of
may be termed the first— and in some ways S. Vitale but a vigorous reinterpretation. with
the most important — phase of a genuine fu- piers and vaults of Roman massiveness and a
sion of the Celtic-Germanic spirit with that of geometric clarity of the spatial units very dif-
the Mediterranean world. ferent from the fluid space of the earlier
structure.
Architecture
Plan of a Monastery, St. Gall. The impor-
The fine arts played an important role in tance of monasteries and their close link with
Charlemagne's cultural program from the the imperial court are vividly suggested by a
very start. On his visits to Italy, he had be- unique document of the period, the large
come familiar with the architectural monu- drawing of a plan for a monastery preserved
ments of the Constantinian era in Rome and in the Chapter Library at St. Gall in Switzer-
with those of the reign of Justinian in Ra- land (fig. 122). Its basic features seem to have
EARLY MEDIEVAL ART • 135
been determined at a council held near two beside the western apse, others on the
Aachen in 816—17; this copy was then sent to north and south flanks.
the abbot of St. Gall for his guidance in re- This entire arrangement reflects the func-
building the monastery. We may regard it, tions of a monastery church, designed for the
therefore, as a standard plan, intended to be liturgical needs of the monks rather than for
modified according to local needs. a lay congregation. Adjoining the church to
The monastery is a complex, self-contained the south is an arcaded cloister, around which
unit, filling a rectangle about 500 by 700 feet. are grouped the monks' dormitory (on the
The main path of entrance, from the west, east side), a refectory and kitchen (on the
passes between stables and a hostelry toward south side), and a cellar. The three large
a gate which admits the visitor to a colon- buildings north of the church are a guest
naded semicircular portico flanked by two house, a school, and the abbot's house. To the
round towers, a sort of strung-out westwork east are the infirmary, a chapeland quarters
that looms impressively above the low outer for novices, the cemetery (marked by a large
buildings. It emphasizes the church as the cross), a garden, and coops for chickens and
center of the monastic community. The geese. The south side is occupied by work-
church is a basilica, with a transept and choir shops, barns, and other service buildings.
in the east but an apse and altar at either end. There is, needless to say, no monastery ex-
The nave and aisles, containing numerous actly like this anywhere— even in St. Gall the
other altars, do not form a single continuous plan was not carried out as drawn— yet its
space but are subdivided into compartments layout conveys an excellent notion of such es-
by screens. There are numerous entrances: tablishments throughout the Middle Ages.
Bl oodle tting
j
1 Uomn Mills '
GO
llilj
122. Plan of a monastery. Original c. 820 a.d. in red ink on parchment, 28x44'/8" (71.1 x 112.1 cm).
Stiftsbibliothek, St. Gall, Switzerland (inscriptions translated into English from Latin)
136 • EARLY MEDIEVAL ART
Charlemagne, c. 800-10 a.d. 13 x 10" (33 x 25.4 cm) author's portrait. Whoever the artist was—
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna Byzantine, Italian, or Frankish— he plainly
was fully conversant with the Roman tradi-
tion of painting, down to the acanthus orna-
ment on the wide frame, which emphasizes
the "window" treatment of the picture.
The St. Matthew represents the most ortho-
dox phase of the Carolingian revival. It is the
visual counterpart of copying the text of a
Classical work of literature. A miniature of
some three decades later for the Gospel Book of
Archbishop Ebbo of Reims (fig. 1 24) shows the
Classicalmodel translated into a Carolingian
idiom. The St. Mark will remind us of the
Enthroned Christ from the sarcophagus of
Junius Bassus (see fig. 108) made some five
hundred years earlier in the seated "stance"
with one foot advanced, the diagonal drape
of the upper part of the toga, and the square
outline of the face. The hands, too, are simi-
lar, with one holding a scroll or codex, the
other a quill pen, which is added to what must
125. Upper cover of binding, Lmdau Gospels, c. 870 a.d. Gold and jewels.
13 3/4X lO 1/^* (34.9x26.7 cm). The Pierpont Morgan Librarv. New York
by a whirlwind, and even die acanthus pat- gaze is fixed not upon his book but upon his
tern on the frame assumes a strange, flame- symbol (the winged lion with a scroll), which
like character. The Evangelist himself has acts as the transmitter of the Sacred Text.
been transformed from a Roman author set- This dependence on the Will of the Word, so
ting down his own thoughts into a man seized powerfully expressed here, marks the con-
with the frenzv of divine inspiration, an in- trast between Classical and medieval images
strument for recording the Word of God. His of humanity. But the means of expression —
138 • EARLY MEDIEVAL ART
tradition of the Dark Ages adapted itself to In Germany, meanwhile, after the death of
the Carolingian revival. The clusters of monarch in 91 1, the cen-
the last Carolingian
semiprecious stones are not mounted directly power had shifted north to
ter of political
on the gold ground but raised on claw feet or Saxony. The Saxon kings (919-1024) rees-
arcaded turrets, so that the light can pene- tablished an effective central government,
trate beneath them to bring out their full bril- and the greatest of them, Otto I, also revived
liance. Interestingly enough, the crucified the imperial ambitions of Charlemagne. Af-
Christ betrays no hint of pain or death. He ter marrying the widow of a Lombard king,
seems to stand rather than to hang, His arms he extended his rule over most of Italy and
spread out in a solemn gesture. To endow had himself crowned emperor by the pope in
Him with the signs of human suffering was 962. From then on the Holy Roman Empire
not yet conceivable, even though the means was to be a German institution— or perhaps
were at hand, as we can see from the eloquent
expressions of grief among the small figures
in the adjoining compartments.
OTTONIAN ART
when the Lindau
In 870, about the time
Gospels was made, the remains of
cover
^^\ li | W fffj* '
jt
Charlemagne's empire were ruled by his two
surviving grandsons: Charles the Bald, the
West Frankish king, and Louis the German,
the East Frankish king, whose domains corre-
sponded roughly to the France and Germany
of today. Their power was so weak, however,
that Continental Europe once again lay ex-
posed to attack. In the south, the Moslems
resumed their depredations; Slavs and Mag-
yars advanced from the east; and Vikings
from Scandinavia ravaged the north and
west. These Norsemen (the ancestors of to-
day's Danes and Norwegians) had been raid-
ing Ireland and Britain by sea from the late
eighth century on. Now they invaded north-
western France as well, occupying the area
that ever since has been called Normandy. 126. Gero Crucifix, c. 975-1000 a.d.
Once established there, they soon adopted Wood, height 6'2" (1.88 m). Cologne Cathedral
EARLY MEDIEVAL ART • 139
we ought to call it a German dream, for Otto's tine image into large-scale sculptural terms
successors never managed to consolidate and to replace its gende pathos with an ex-
their claim to sovereignty south of the Alps. pressive realism thathas been the main
Vet this claim had momentous consequences, strength of German art ever since.
since it led the German emperors into cen-
turies of conflict with thepapacv and local
Architecture
Italian rulers, linkingNorth and South in a
love-hate relationship whose echoes can be The tutor of Otto II 's son and heir. Otto III,
felt to the present day. was a cleric named Bernward, who later be-
came bishop of Hildesheim. It was under
Sculpture
129. Adam and Eve Reproached by the Lord, from the Bronze Doors of Bishop Bernward. 1015.
c. 23x43" (58.4 x 109.2 cm). Hildesheim Cathedral
Bernward that the Benedictine Abbey Church apparendy a special sanctuary of St. Michael,
of St. Michael, later designated Hildesheim which could be entered both from the tran-
Cathedral 127, 128), was built. The
(figs. sept and from the west.
plan, with two choirs and lateral entrances,
its
ing towers and stair turrets, but the supports gathered from the fact that he commissioned
of the nave arcade, instead of being uniform, a pair of richly sculptured bronze doors
consist of pairs of columns separated by which were probably meant for the two en-
square piers. This alternate system divides trances leading from the transept to the am-
the arcade into three equal units of three bulatory (they were finished in 1015, the year
openings each; the first and third units are the crypt was consecrated). The idea may
correlated with the entrances, thus echoing have come to him as a result of his visit to
the axis of the transepts. Since, moreover, the Rome, where he could see ancient Roman
aisles and nave are unusually wide in relation (and perhaps Byzantine) bronze doors. The
to their length,Bernward's intention must Bernwardian doors, however, differ from
have been to achieve a harmonious balance their predecessors: they are divided into
between the longitudinal and transverse axes broad horizontal fields rather than vertical
throughout the structure. The Bernwardian panels, and each field contains a biblical scene
western choir was raised above the level of the in high relief.
restof the church, so as to accommodate a Our detail (fig. 129) shows Adam and Eve
half-subterranean basement chapel, or crypt, after the Fall. Below it, in inlaid letters re-
EARLY MEDIEVAL ART • 141
130. Christ Washing the Feet of Peter, from the Gospel Book of Otto III. c. 1000.
13X9H - - ^csbibliothek. Munich
—
markable for their classical Roman character, (fig. 130) contains notable echoes of ancient
ispart of the dedicatory inscription, with the painting, transmitted through Byzantine art.
date and Bernward's name. In these figures The soft pastel hues of the background recall
we find nothing of the monumental spirit of the illusionism of Graeco-Roman landscapes
the Gero Crucifix: they seem far smaller than (see fig. 99), and the architectural frame
thev actually are, so that one might easily mis- around Christ is a late descendant of the kind
take them for a piece of goldsmith's work of architectural perspectives we saw in the
such as the Lindau Gospels cover (compare House of the Vettii (see fig. 98). That these
fig. 125). The entire composition must have elements have been misunderstood by the Ot-
been derived from an illuminated manu- tonian artist is obvious enough; but he has
script; the oddly stylized bits of vegetation also put them to a new use, so that what was
have a good deal of the twisting, turning once an architectural vista now becomes the
movement we recall from Irish miniatures. Heavenly City, the House of the Lord filled
Yet the storv is conveyed with splendid direct- with golden celestial space as against the at-
ness and expressive force. The accusing fin- mospheric earthly space without. The figures
ger of the Lord, seen against a great void of have undergone a similar transformation. In
blank surface, is the focal point of the drama: ancient art, this composition had been used to
it points to a cringing Adam, who passes the represent a doctor treating a patient. Now St.
blame to his mate, while Eve, in turn, passes it Peter takes the place of the sufferer, and
to the serpent at her feet. Christ that of the physician (note that He is
ments into a new style of extraordinary scope the most active figures, are larger than the
and power. The most important center of rest; Christ's "active" arm is longer than His
manuscript illumination at that time was the "passive" one; and the eight disciples, who
Reichenau Monastery, on an island in Lake merely watch, have been compressed into a
Constance. Perhaps its finest achievement tiny space, so that we see little more than their
and one of the great masterpieces of medi- eyes and hands. Even the Early Christian
eval art— is the Gospel Book of Otto III. The crowd-cluster from which this derives (see
scene of Christ washing the feet of St. Peter fig. 106) is not quite so literally disembodied.
ROMANESQUE
ART
Looking back over the ground we have cov- heavy (as against the pointed arches and the
ered in this book so far, a thoughtful reader soaring lightness of Gothic structures), rather
will be struck by the fact that almost all of our like the ancient Roman style of building, and
chapter headings and subheadings might the term "Romanesque" was meant to convey
serve equally well for a general history of civi- just that. In this sense, of medieval art
all
and Classical are primarily terms of style. imperial court. Ottonian art, too, had this
They refer to qualities of form rather than to sponsorship, and a correspondingly narrow
the setting in which these forms were created. base. The Romanesque proper (that is, medi-
Why don't we have more terms of this sort? eval art from about 1050 to 1200), in contrast,
We do, as we shall see— but only for the art of sprang up all over western Europe at about
the past nine hundred years. the same time. It consists of a large variety of
Those who first conceived the idea of view- regional styles, distinct yet closely related in
ing the history of art as an evolution of styles many ways, and without a central source. In
started out with the conviction that art in the this respect,it resembles the art of the Dark
ancient world developed toward a single cli- Ages rather than the court styles that had
max: Greek art from the age of Pericles to preceded it, although it includes the Carolin-
that of Alexander the Great. This style they gian-Ottonian tradition along with a good
called Classical (that is, perfect). Everything many other, less clearly traceable ones, such
that came before was labeled Archaic, to indi- as Late Classical, Early Christian, and Byzan-
cate that it was still old-fashioned and tradi- tine elements, some Islamic influence, and
tion-bound, not yet Classical but striving in the Celtic-Germanic heritage.
the right direction, while the style of post- What welded all these different compo-
Classical times did not deserve a special term nents into a coherent style during the second
since it had no positive qualities of its own, half of the eleventh century was not any sin-
being merely an echo or a decadence of Clas- gle force but a variety of factors that made for
sical art. a new burgeoning of vitality throughout the
The early historians of medieval art West. There was a growing spirit of religious
followed a similar pattern. To them, the great enthusiasm, reflected in the greatly increased
climax was the Gothic style, from the thir- pilgrimage traffic to sacred sites. Christianity
teenth century to the fifteenth. For whatever had triumphed everywhere in Europe.
at last
was not yet Gothic they adopted the label Ro- The Vikings, still largely pagan in the ninth
manesque. In doing so, they were thinking and tenth centuries when their raids ter-
mainly of architecture. Pre-Gothic churches, rorized the British Isles and the Continent,
they noted, were round-arched, solid, and had entered the Catholic fold, not only in
144 ROMANESQUE ART
Normandy but in Scandinavia as well. The generally larger, more richly articulated, and
Moslem threat subsided after 1031. And the more "Roman-looking." Their naves now had
Magyars settled in Hungary. vaults instead of wooden roofs, and their ex-
Equally important was the reopening of teriors, unlike those of Early Christian, Byz-
Mediterranean trade routes by the navies of antine, Carolingian, and Ottonian churches,
Venice, Genoa, and Pisa; the revival of com- were decorated with both architectural orna-
merce and manufacturing; and the conse- ment and sculpture. Geographically, Roman-
quent growth of city life. During the turmoil esque monuments of the first importance are
of the early Middle Ages, the towns of the distributed over an area that might well have
western Roman Empire had shrunk greatly represented the world — the Catholic world,
in size (the population of Rome, about one that is — to Raoul Glaber: from northern
million in 300 a.d., fell to less than 50,000 at Spain to the Rhineland, from the Scottish-
one point); some were deserted altogether. English border to central Italy. The richest
From the eleventh century on, they began to crop, the greatest variety of regional types,
regain their former importance. towns New and the most adventurous ideas are to be
sprang up everywhere, and an urban middle found in France, but throughout Europe we
class of artisans and merchants established it- are presented with a wealth of architectural
self between the peasantry and the landed no- invention unparalleled by any previous era.
bility as an important factor in medieval
society.
In many respects, then, western Europe be-
tween 1050 and 1200 became a great deal
more "Roman-esque" than it had been since
the sixth century, recapturing some of the in-
ternational trade patterns, the urban quality,
and the military strength of ancient imperial
times. The central political authority was
lacking, to be sure (even the empire of Otto I
much farther west than mod-
did not extend
ern Germany does), but the central spiritual
131. Plan of St.-Sernin, Toulouse (after Conant)
authority of the pope took its place to some
extent as a unifying force. The international
army responded to Urban II's call in
that
1095 for the First Crusade to liberate the
Holy Land from Moslem rule was more pow-
erful than anything a secular ruler could have
raised for the purpose.
ARCHITECTURE
The greatest difference between Roman-
esque architecture and that of the preceding
centuries is the amazing increase in building
activity. An eleventh-century monk, Raoul
Glaber, summed up well when he
it trium-
phantly exclaimed that the world was putting
on a "white mantle of churches." These
churches were not only more numerous than
those of the early Middle Ages, they were also
ROMA.XESQLE ART • 145
135. West facade, St.-Etienne, Caen. aisles and without a clerestory, as at St.-
Begun 1068
Sernin. While he was doing so, it suddenlv
occurred to him that by putting groin vaults
over the nave as well as the aisles, he would
buttresses divide the front of the church into gain a semicircular area at the ends of each
three vertical sections, and the vertical impe- transverse vault, which could be broken
tus continues triumphantly in the two splen- through to make a clerestory because it had
did towers, whose height would be impressive no essential supporting functions (fig. 137).
enough even without the tall Early Gothic Each nave bay contains a pair of Siamese-twin
helmets. St.-Etienne is cool and composed: a groined vaults, divided into seven compart-
structure to be appreciated, in all its refine- ments; the weight of the whole vault is con-
ment of proportions, by the mind rather than centrated at six securely anchored points on
the eye. the gallery level. While the transverse arches
The thinking that went into Norman archi- at the crossing are round, those to the west of
tecture is responsible for the next great it are slightly pointed, indicating a continuous
breakthrough in structural engineering, search for improvements. By eliminating the
which took place in England, where William part of the round arch that responds the
most
started to build as well. Durham Cathedral to the pull of gravity, the two halves of a
(fig. 136), begun in 1093, isamong the largest pointed arch brace each other. The pointed
churches of medieval Europe. Despite its arch thus exerts less outward pressure than
148 ROMANESQUE ART
Italy
the semicircular arch, and can be made as New centers of prosperity, whether arising
steep as possible. The potentialities of the en- from seaborne commerce or local industries,
gineering advances that grew out of this dis- tended to consolidate a number of small prin-
covery were to make possible the soaring cipalities, which competed among themselves
churches of the Gothic period. The ribs were or aligned themselves from time to time, if it
necessary to provide a stable skeleton for the seemed politically profitable, with the pope or
groined vault, so that the curved surfaces be- the German emperor. Lacking the urge to
138. Pisa Baptistery, Cathedral, and Campanile (view from the west). 1053-1272
re-create the old Empire, and furthermore of Pisa, which was not planned that way but
having Early Christian church buildings as soon began to tilt because of weak founda-
readily accessible as Classical Roman architec- tions), still continue much as we see them in S.
ture, the Tuscans were content to continue Apollinare.
what are basically Early Christian forms, but The only deliberate revival of the antique
enlivened them with decorative features in- Roman style in Tuscan architecture was in the
spired by pagan architecture. use of a multicolored marble "skin" on the
If we take one of the best preserved Tuscan exteriors of churches (Early Christian exam-
Romanesque examples, the Cathedral com- ples tended to leave the outsides plain). Little
plex of Pisa (fig. 138), and compare it on the of this is left in Rome, a great deal of it having
one hand with S. Apollinare in Ravenna and literally been "lifted" for the embellishment
on the other with St.-Sernin Toulouse (see
in of later structures. But the interior of the
figs. 103, 132), we are left in little doubt as to Pantheon (see fig. 87) still gives us some idea
which is its closer relation. True, it has grown of it, and we can recognize the desire to emu-
taller than its ancestor, and a large transept latesuch marble inlay in the Baptistery in
has altered the plan to form a Latin cross, Florence (fig. 139), whose green and white
with the consequent addition of the tall lan- marble paneling follows severely geometric
tern rising above the intersection. But the es- lines. The blind arcades, too, are eminently
sential features of the earlier basilica type, classical in proportion and detail. The entire
with its files of flat arcades and even the de- building, in fact, exudes such an air of classi-
tached bell tower (the famous Leaning Tower cism that the Florentines themselves came to
150 • ROMANESQUE ART
Southwestern France
believe a few vears later that it was originally a close look at late Roman sculpture (of which
temple of Mars, the Roman god of war. there are considerable remains in southern
France). On the other hand, the design as a
whole — the solemn frontality of the figure,
SCULPTURE its placement in the architectural frame-
tion but not its spirit. Its truly large-scale one. To the mind of a cleric steeped in the
sculptural efforts, represented bv the impres- abstractions of theology this might seem ir-
-
sive Ciero Crucifix (see fig. 126), were limited relevant, or even dangerous. St. Bernard of
almost entirelv to wood. Clairvaux, writing in 1127. denounced the
ROMANESQUE ART -151
140. Apostle, c. 1090. Stone. 141. South portal (portion), St. -Pierre, Moissac.
St.-Sernin, Toulouse Earlv 12th centurv
sculptured decoration of churches as a vain magnificent trumeau (the center post support-
folly and diversion that tempts us "to read in ing the lintel)and the western jamb. Both
the marble rather than in our books." His was have a scalloped profile, and the shafts of the
a voice not very much heeded, however. For half-columns applied to jambs and trumeau
the unsophisticated any large piece of
laity, follow this scalloped pattern, as if they had
sculpture inevitably had something of the been squeezed from a giant pastry tube. Hu-
quality of an idol, and it was this very fact that man and animal forms are treated with the
gave it such great appeal. same flexibility, so that the spidery prophet
Another important early center of Roman- on the side of the trumeau seems perfectly
esque sculpture was the abbey at Moissac, adapted to his precarious perch. (Notice how
some distance north of Toulouse. The south he, too, hasbeen fitted into the scalloped out-
portal of its church, carved a generation later line.) He even remains free to cross his legs in
than the Apostle from St.-Sernin, displavs a a dancelike movement and to turn his head
richness of invention that would have made toward the interior of the church as he un-
St. Bernard wince. In figure 141 we see the furls his scroll.
152 • ROMANESQUE ART
of the main portal of Romanesque churches is unchecked; they enjoy themselves to the full
usually given over to a composition centered in their grim occupation. No visitor, having
on the Enthroned Christ, most often the "read in the marble" here (to speak with St.
Apocalyptic Vision (or Last Judgment), the Bernard), could fail to enter the church in a
most awesome scene of Christian art. At chastened spirit.
Autun Cathedral, the latter subject has been
visualized with singularly expressive force.
The Meuse Valley
Our shows part of the right
detail (fig. 142)
half of the tympanum, with the weighing of The emergence of distinct artistic person-
the souls. At the bottom, the dead rise from alities in the twelfth century is a phenomenon
their graves in fear and trembling; some are that is rarely acknowledged, perhaps because
already beset by snakes or gripped by huge, it contravenes the widespread assumption
clawlike hands. Above, their fate quite liter- that all medieval art is anonymous. It does not
ally hangs in the balance, with devils yanking happen very often, of course, but it is no less
at one end of the scales and angels at the significant for all that.
other. The saved souls cling like children to We find the revival of individuality in Italy
the hem of the angel's garment for protec- and in one particular region of the north, the
ROMAXESQL'E ART • 153
liefs make an instructive contrast with those its graceful turning movement and Greek-
of Bernward's doors (see fig. 129), since thev looking draperv. might almost be taken for
are about the same height. Instead of the an ancient work.
rough expressive power of the Ottonian
panel, we find here a harmonious balance of
Germany
design, a subde control of the sculptured sur-
faces, and an understanding of organic struc- The one monumental free-standing statue of
Romanesque art— perhaps not the only one
made, but the only one that has survived — is
that of an animal, and in a secular rather than
a religious context: the lifesize bronze lion on
top of a tall shaft that Duke Henry the Lion
of Saxony had placed in front of his palace at
Brunswick in 1166 (fig. 144). The wonder-
fully ferocious beast (which, of course, per-
sonifies the duke, or at least that aspect of his
personalitv that earned him his nickname) re-
minds us in a curious way of the archaic
bronze she-wolf of Rome (see fig. 80). Per-
haps the resemblance is not entirely coinci-
dental, since the she-wolf was on public view
in Rome at that time and must have had a
strong appeal for Romanesque artists.
145. St. John the Evangelist, from the Gospel Book of Abbot Wedricus. Shortly before 1 147.
Societe Archeologique et Historique. Avesnes-sur-Helpe. France
ROMANESQUE ART 155
Nor does it look more "Roman" than Car- been influenced by Byzantine style (note the
olingian or Ottonian painting. This does not ropelike loops of drapery, whose origin can
mean, however, that in the eleventh and be traced back to such works as the relief in
twelfth centuries painting was any less impor- fig.109), but without losing its energetic
tant than it had been during the earlier Mid- rhythm. It is the precisely controlled dy-
dle Ages; it merely emphasizes the greater namics of every contour, both in the main
continuity of the pictorial tradition, especially figureand in the frame, that unite the varied
in manuscript illumination. Nevertheless, elements of the composition into a coherent
soon after the year 1000 we find the begin- whole. This quality of line still betrays its ulti-
nings of a painting style that corresponds mate source, the Celtic-Germanic heritage. If
to— and often anticipates— the monumental we compare our miniature with the Lindis-
qualities of Romanesque sculpture. farne Gospels (see fig. 1 19), we see how much
the interlacing patterns of the Dark Ages
have contributed to the design of the St. John
The Channel Region
page. The drapery folds and the clusters of
While Romanesque painting, like architec- floral ornament have an impulsive yet disci-
ture and sculpture, developed a wide variety plined aliveness that echoes the intertwined
of regional styles throughout western Eu- snakelike monsters of the animal style, even
rope, its greatest achievements emerged from though the foliage is derived from the Classi-
the monastic scriptoria of northern France, cal acanthus and the human figures are based
Belgium, and southern England. The works on Carolingian and Byzantine models. The
produced in this area are so closely related in unity of the entire page, however, is conveyed
style that it is at times impossible to be sure on not only by the forms but by the content as
which side of the English Channel a given well. The Evangelist "inhabits" the frame in
manuscript belongs. Thus the style of the such a way that we could not remove him
wonderful miniature of St. John (fig. 145) has from it without cutting off his ink supply
been linked with both Cambrai and Canter- (proffered by the donor of the manuscript,
bury. The abstract linear draftsmanship of Abbot Wedricus), his source of inspiration
early medieval manuscripts (see fig. 124) has (the dove of the Holy Spirit in the hand of
146. The Battle of Hastings. Detail of the Bayeux Tapestry, c. 1073-83. Wool embroidery on linen,
height 20" (50.8 cm). Centre Guillaume le Conquerant, Bayeux, France
156 • ROMAXESQIE ART
147. The Building of the Tower of Babel. Detail of painting on the nave vault,
St.-Savin-sur-Gartempe. Early 12th century
God), or his identifying symbol, the eagle. fallen from the horsethat is somersaulting
The other medallions, less directly linked with hind legs in the air is, in turn, top-
its
with the main figure, show scenes from the pling his adversary by yanking at the saddle
life of St. John. girth of his mount.)
The linearity and the simple, closed con-
tours of this painting style lent themselves
Southwestern France
readily to other mediums and to changes in
scale: murals, tapestries, stained-glass win- Firm outlines and a strong sense of pattern
dows, sculptured reliefs. The so-called Bayeux are equally characteristic of Romanesque wall
Tapestry is an embroidered frieze 230 feet painting. The Building of the Tower of Babel
long illustrating William the Conqueror's in- (fig. 147) is taken from the most impressive
vasion of England. In our detail (fig. 146), surviving cycle, on the nave vault of the
portraying the Battle of Hastings, the main church at St.-Savin-sur-Gartempe. It is an in-
scene is enclosed by two border strips that tensely dramatic design, crowded with stren-
perform a framing function. The upper tier uous action. The Lord Himself, on the far
with birds and animals is purely decorative, left, participates directly in the narrative as
but the lower strip is full of dead warriors and He addresses the builders of the colossal
horses and thus forms part of the story. De- structure. He is counterbalanced, on the
void of nearly all the pictorial refinements of right,by the giant Nimrod, the leader of the
Classical painting (see fig. 59), it nevertheless enterprise, who frantically hands blocks of
manages an astonishingly vivid and
to give us stone to the masons atop the tower, so that the
detailed account of warfare in the eleventh entire scene becomes a great test of strength
century. The massed discipline of the Graeco- between God and man. The heavy, dark con-
Roman scene is gone, but this is due not so tours and the emphatic play of gestures make
much to the artist's ineptitude at foreshorten- the composition eminently readable from a
ing and overlapping, as to a new kind of indi- distance; yet the same qualities occur in the
vidualism that makes of each combatant a illuminated manuscripts of the region, which
potential hero, whether by dint of force or can be equallv monumental despite their
cunning. (Observe how the soldier who has small scale.
ROMANESQUE ART • 157
148. Nicholas of Verdun. The Crossing of the Red Sea, from the Klosterneuburg Altarpiece. 1181.
Enamel on gold plaque, height bVi" (14 cm). Klosterneuburg Abbey, Austria
The term "Gothic" was first coined for ar- this skeleton outline to guide us, we can now
chitecture, and it is in architecture that the explore the unfolding of Gothic art in greater
characteristics of the style are most easily rec- detail.
ognized. For a century— from about 1 150 to
1250, during the Age of the Great Cathe-
drals— architecture retained its dominant
role. Gothic sculpture was at first severely ar-
ARCHITECTURE
chitectural in spirit, but became less and less
France
so after 1200; its greatest achievements occur
between the years 1220 and 1420. Painting, St.-Denis and Abbot Suger. We can pinpoint
in turn, reached a climax of creative endeavor the origin of no previous style as exactly as
between 1300 and 1350 in central Italy. that of Gothic. It was born between 1 137 and
North of the Alps, it became the leading art 1 144 in the rebuilding, by Abbot Suger, of
from about 1400 on. We thus find, in survey- the royal Abbey Church of St.-Denis just out-
ing the Gothic era as a whole, a gradual shift side the city of Paris. The only area ruled di-
of emphasis from architecture to painting or, rectly by the kings of France was the Ile-de-
better perhaps, from architectural to pictorial France, and they often found their authority
qualities. challenged even there by the nobles. Not until
Overlying this broad pattern is another the early twelfth century did royal power be-
one: international diffusion as against re- gin to expand; Suger, as chief adviser to
gional independence. Starting as a local de- Louis VI, played a key role in this process. It
velopment in the Ile-de-France, Gothic art was he who forged the alliance between the
radiates from there to the rest of France and monarchy and the Church, which brought
to all Europe, where it comes to be known as the bishops of France (and the cities under
opus modernum or francigenum (modern or their authority) to the king's side, while the
French work). In the course of the thirteenth king, in turn, supported the papacy in its
century, the new style gradually loses its im- struggle against the German emperors.
ported flavor and regional variety begins to Suger championed the monarchy not only
reassert Toward the middle of the four-
itself. on the plane of practical politics but also on
teenth century, we notice a growing tendency that of "spiritual politics." By investing the
for these regional achievements to influence royal office with religious significance and
each other until, about 1400, a surprisingly glorifying it as the strong right arm of justice,
homogeneous "International Gothic" style he sought to rally the nation behind the king.
prevails almost everywhere. Shortly there- His architectural plans for the Abbey of St.-
after, this unity breaks apart: Italy, with Denis must be understood in this context, for
Florence in the lead, creates a radically new the church, founded in the late eighth
art, thatof the Early Renaissance, while north century, enjoyed a dual prestige that made it
of the Alps, Flanders assumes an equally com- ideally suitable for Suger s purpose: it was the
manding position in the development of Late shrine of the Apostle of France, the sacred
Gothic painting and sculpture. A century protector of the realm, as well as the chief
later, finally, the Italian Renaissance becomes memorial of the Carolingian dynasty. Suger
the basis of another international style. With wanted to make the abbey the spiritual center
L
GOTHIC ART • 159
of religious as well as patriotic emotion. But were taken from the various regional schools
in order to become the visible embodiment of of the French and Anglo-Norman Roman-
such a goal, the old edifice had to be enlarged esque, even though we never encounter them
and rebuilt. The great abbot himself has de- all combined in the same building until St.-
scribed the entire campaign in such eloquent Denis. The Ile-de-France had failed to de-
detail that we know more about what he de- velop a Romanesque tradition of its own, so
sired to achieve than we do about the final that Suger— as he himself tells us— had to
result, for the west facade and its sculpture bring together artisans from many different
are sadly mutilated today, and the choir, regions for his project. Gothic architecture
which Suger regarded as the most important originated as more than
a synthesis of
part of the church, retains its original appear- Romanesque however. Suger's account
traits,
ance only in the ambulatory (fig. 149). of the rebuilding of his church insistently
The ambulatory and radiating chapels sur- stresses strict geometric planning and the
rounding the apse are familiar elements from quest for luminosity as the highest values
the Romanesque pilgrimage choir (compare achieved in the new structure at St.-Denis.
fig. 133). Yet these elements have been inte- "Harmony" (that is, the perfect relationship
grated in strikingly novel fashion. The cha- among parts in terms of mathematical pro-
pels, instead of remaining separate entities, portions or ratios) is the source of all beauty,
are merged so as to form, in effect, a second since it exemplifies the laws according to
160 • COTHK ART
which divine reason has constructed the uni- that seem to carry the weight of the vaults to
verse. The "miraculous" light that floods the the church floor. But in order to know what
choir through the "most sacred" windows be- constituted beauty, harmony, and fitness, the
comes the Light Divine, a mystic revelation of medieval architect needed the guidance of
the spirit of God. This symbolic interpreta- ecclesiastical authority. In the case of a patron
tion of numerical harmony and of light had as actively concerned with architectural
been established over the centuries in Chris- aesthetics as Suger, it amounted to full par-
dan thought. For Suger, the light-and- ticipation in the design process. Thus Suger's
number symbolism of this theology must desire to "build theology" is likely to have
have had a particularly strong appeal. His been a decisive factorfrom the very begin-
mind was steeped in it, and he wanted to give ning: it shaped his mental image of the kind
it visible expression when he rebuilt the of structure he wanted, we may assume, and
church of the royal patron saint. That he suc- determined his choice of a master of Norman
ceeded is proved not only by the inherent background. This man, a great artist, must
qualities of his choir design but also by its have been singularly responsive to the abbot's
extraordinary impact. Every visitor to St.- ideas and instructions. Together, the two cre-
Denis, it seems, was overwhelmed by Suger's ated the Gothic style.
built the choir of St.-Denis under Suger's su- extraordinarily compact and unified com-
pervision, the technical problems of vaulting pared to that of major Romanesque churches.
must have been inextricably bound up with The double ambulatory of the choir contin-
considerations of form (that is, of beauty, har- ues direcdy into the aisles, and the stubby
monv, fitness, and so As
a matter of
forth). transept barely exceeds the width of the fa-
fact, hisdesign includes various elements that cade. The sexpartite nave vaults over squar-
express function without actually performing ish bays, although not identical with the
it, such as the slender shafts (called responds) "Siamese-twin" groin vaulting in Durham Ca-
GOTHIC ART -161
151. Nave and choir, Notre-Dame, Paris original appearance. The design reflects the
162 • GOTHIC ART
general disposition of the facade of St. -Denis, wonderfully balanced and coherent whole.
which in turn had been derived from Nor- The meaning of Suger's emphasis on har-
man Romanesque facades such as that of St.- mony, geometric order, and proportion be-
Etienne at Caen (see fig. 135). Comparing the comes evident here even more strikinglv than
latter with Notre-Dame, we note the per- This formal discipline also
in St. -Denis itself.
sistence of some basic features: the pier but- embraces the sculpture, which is no longer
tresses that reinforce the corners of the permitted the spontaneous (and often uncon-
towers and divide the front into three main trolled) growth so characteristic of the Ro-
parts; the placing of the portals; and the manesque but has been assigned a precisely
three-story arrangement. The rich sculptural defined role within the architectural frame-
decoration, however, recalls the facades of work. At the same time, the cubic soliditv of
western France and the elaborately carved the facade of St.-Etienne at Caen has been
portals of Burgundy (see fig. 142). transformed into its very opposite. Lacelike
Much more important than these resem- arcades, huge portals, and windows dissolve
blances are the qualities that distinguish the the continuity of the wall surfaces, so that the
facade of Notre-Dame from its Romanesque approximates that of a weightless
total effect
ancestors. Foremost among these is the way openwork How rapidly this tendency
screen.
all the details have been integrated into a advanced during the first half of the thir-
GOTHIC ART • 163
i
155. Nave and choir. Chartres Cathedral. 1 145-1220
GOTHIC ART • 165
both countries have acclaimed Gothic as a pe- 157. Axonometric projection of a High Gothic
culiarly "native" style. A number of factors cathedral (after Acland). 1) Bay; 2) Nave;
3) Side aisle; 4) Nave arcade; 5) Triforium;
contributed to the rapid spread of Gothic art:
6) Clerestory; 7) Pier; 8) Compound pier;
the superior of French architects and
skill
9) Sexpartite vault; 10) Buttress; 11) Flying buttress;
stone carvers; the vast intellectual prestige of 12) Flying arch; 13) Roof
r J
166 • GOTHIC ART
French centers of learning; and the influence ple far removed from the cultural climate of
of the Cistercians, the reformed monastic or- the I le-de- France.
der founded by St. Bernard of Clairvaux,
which promulgated an austere version of the
England
Gothic throughout western Europe. The ulti-
mate reason for the international victory of That England should have proved particu-
Gothic art, however, seems to have been the larly receptive to the new style is hardly sur-
extraordinary persuasive power of the style prising. Yet English Gothic did not grow
itself, its ability to kindle the imagination and directly from Anglo-Norman Romanesque
to arouse religious feeling even among peo- but rather from tbe Gothic of the Ile-de-
GOTHIC ART • 167
form an ornamental network that screens the with aisles and nave of the same height. In the
boundaries between the bays and thus makes large hall choir added in 1361-72 to the
the enure vault look like one continuous sur- church of St. Sebald in Nuremberg (fig. 160),
face. This, in turn, has the effect of emphasiz- the space has a fluiditv and expansiveness
ing the unitv of the interior space. Such that enfold us as if we were standing under a
decorative elaboration of the "classic" quad- huge canopv. There isno pressure, no direc-
ripartite vault is characteristic of the so-called tional command to prescribe our path. And
r~*
168 • GOTHIC. ART
architecture, even
is also a masterpiece of Gothic
though it has wooden ceil-
Italy
162. Florence Cathedral (Sta. Maria del Fiore). Begun bv Arnolfo di Cambio. 1296.
dome bv Filippo Brunelleschi. 1420-36
technical or economic necessity— a choice windows at the eastern end conveys the domi-
made not onlv on the basis of local practice nant role of light forcefully as Abbot
as
(wooden ceilings were a feature of the Tuscan Suger's choir at St. -Denis. Judged in terms of
Romanesque) but also perhaps from a desire its emotional impact. Sta. Croce is Gothic be-
to evoke the simplicity of Earlv Christian yond doubt. It is also profoundly Francis-
basilicas and. in doing so, to link Franciscan can—and Florentine — in the monumental
povertv with the traditions of the early simplicity of the means bv which this impact
Church. Since the wooden ceilings do not re- has been achieved.
quire buttresses, there are none. This allows If in Sta. Croce the architect's main concern
the walls to remain intact as continuous was an impressive interior. Florence Cathe-
surfaces. dral was planned as a monumental landmark
\\"h\. then, do we speak of Sta. Croce as to civic pride towering above the enure city
Gothic? Surely the use of the pointed arch is (fig. 162). The original design, bv the sculptor
not sufficient to justify the term. A glance at Arnolfo di Cambio, dates from 1296, about
the interior will dispel our misgivings. For we the same time construction was begun at Sta.
sense immediately that this space creates an Croce; although somewhat smaller than the
effect fundamentally different from that of present building, it probably showed the
either Early Christian or Romanesque archi- same basic plan. The building as we know it.
"transparent" quality we saw in Northern cesco Talenti. who took over around 1343.
Gothic churches, and the dramadc massing of The most striking feature is the great octago-
170 GOTHIC ART
tors in 1367; the actual construction, how- length with the sculptural decoration of the
ever, belongs to the early fifteenth century church, he must have attached considerable
(see p. 225). importance to this aspect of the enterprise.
Apart from the windows and the doorways, The three portals of his west facade were far
there is nothing Gothic about the exterior of larger and more richly carved than those of
Florence Cathedral. A separate campanile Norman Romanesque churches. Unhappily,
takes the place of the facade towers familiar their condition today is so poor that thev do
to us in Northern Gothic churches. It was not tell us a great deal about Suger's ideas of
begun by the great painter Giotto, who man- the role of sculpture within the total context
aged to finish only the first story, and contin- of the structure he had envisioned.
ued by the sculptor Andrea Pisano, son of
Nicola Pisano (see p. 176), who was responsi- Chartres Cathedral, West Portals. Suger's
ble for the niche zone. The rest represents ideas paved the way for the admirable west
the work of Talenti, who completed it by portals of Chartres Cathedral (fig. 163), be-
about 1360. gun about 1145 under the influence of St.-
||!'!l vh
1
T»
163. West portals, Chartres Cathedral, c. 1 145-70
GOTHIC ART -171
Denis, but even more ambitious. Thev proba- gram underlying the entire scheme. While
bh represent the oldest full-fledged example the subder aspects of this program are acces-
of Earlv Gothic sculpture. Comparing them sible onlv to those fullv conversant with the
with a Romanesque portal (see fig. 141 we 1. theology of the Chartres Cathedral School, its
are impressed first of all with a new sense of main elements can be readilv understood.
order, as if all the figures had suddenly come The jamb statues, a continuous sequence
to attention, conscious of their responsibilitv linking all three portals, represent the
to the architectural framework. The dense prophets, kings, and queens of the Bible.
crowding and the frantic movement of Their purpose is both to acclaim the rulers of
Romanesque sculpture have given wav to an
emphasis on svmmetrv and claritv. The fig-
ures on the lintels, archivolts, and tympa-
nums are no longer entangled with each
other but stand out as separate entities, so
165. The Death of the Virgin, tympanum of south transept portal. Strasbourg Cathedral, c. 1220
France as the spiritual descendants of Old tion: the classicism of the Meuse valley, which
Testament royalty and to stress the harmony we traced in the previous chapter from Re-
of secular and spiritual rule, of priests (or nier of Huy to Nicholas of Verdun (compare
bishops) and kings— an ideal insistendy put figs. 143, 148). At the end of the twelfth cen-
forward bv Abbot Suger. Christ Himself ap- turv this trend, hitherto confined to metal-
pears enthroned above the main doorwav as work and miniatures, began to appear in
Judge and Ruler of the Universe, flanked by monumental stone sculpture as well, trans-
the symbols of the four evangelists, with the forming it from Early Gothic to Classic High
apostles assembled below and the twenty-four Gothic. The link with Nicholas of Verdun is
elders of the Apocalypse in the archivolts. striking in The Death of the Virgin (fig. 165), a
The right-hand tvmpanum shows His incar- tympanum at Strasbourg Cathedral contem-
nation— the Birth, the Presentation in the porary with the Chartres transept portals.
Temple, and the Infant Christ on the lap of Here the draperies, the facial types, and the
the Virgin (who also stands for the Church) — movements and gestures have a classical
while in the archivolts we see the personifica- flavor that immediatelv recalls the Kloster-
tions and representatives of the liberal arts: neuburg Altarpiece (see fig. 148).
human wisdom paying homage to the divine What marks it as Gothic rather than Ro-
wisdom of Christ. In the left-hand tympa- manesque, on the other hand, is the deeply
num, we see the timeless Heavenly Christ (the felt tenderness pervading the enure scene.
Christ of the Ascension) framed by the ever- We sense a bond of shared emotion among
repeating cycle of the year: the signs of the the figures, an ability to communicate by
zodiac and their earthly counterparts, the glance and gesture such as we have never met
labors of the twelve months. before. This qualitv of pathos, too, has classi-
cal roots— we recall its entering into Christian
Gothic Classicism. Gothic sculpture came to art during the Second Golden Age in Byzan-
incorporate another, equallv important tradi- tium. But how much warmer and more elo-
GOTHIC ART • 173
quent it is at Strasbourg than at Daphne (see upon the services of masters and workshops
fig. 115)! from various other building sites, and so we
The climax of Gothic classicism is reached encounter several distinct stvles among the
in some of the statues at Reims Cathedral, of Reims sculpture. Two of these styles, both
which the most famous is the Visitation group clearlv different from the classicism of the
(fig. 166, right). To have a pair of jamb fig- Visitation, appear in the Annunciation group
ures enact a narrative scene such as this (fig. 166, left). The Virgin exhibits a severe
would have been unthinkable in Early Gothic manner, with a body axis and
rigidlv vertical
sculpture. The fact that thev can do so now straight, tubular folds meeting at sharp an-
shows how far the sustaining column has re- gles, a stvle probablv invented about 1220 bv
ceded into the background. Characteristicallv the sculptors of the west portals of Notre-
enough, the S-curve. resulting from the pro- Dame in Paris. The angel, in contrast, is con-
nounced contrapposto (see p. 81). dominates spicuously graceful: we note the tinv, round
the side view as well as the front view, and the face framed bv curlv the emphatic
locks,
phvsical bulk of the body is further empha- smile, the strong S-curve of the slender body,
sized bv horizontal folds pulled across the ab- the ample, richlv accented draperv. This "ele-
domen. The relationship of the two women gant style." created around 1240 bv Parisian
shows the same human warmth and svmpa- masters working for the roval court, was to
thv we found in the Strasbourg tvmpanum. spread far and wide during the following de-
but their classicism is of a far more monu- cades. It soon became, in fact, the standard
mental kind. Thev make us wonder if the art- formula for High Gothic sculpture.
istwas inspired direcdv bv large-scale Roman
sculpture. The influence of Nicholas of Ver-
Germany
dun alone could hardlv have produced such
firmly rounded, solid volumes. The spread of the Gothic stvle in sculpture
The vast scale of the sculptural program bevond the borders of France began onlv to-
for Reims Cathedral made it necessarv to call ward 1200— the stvle of the Chartres west
portals had hardlv anv echoes abroad— but,
once under wav. it proceeded at an astonish-
inglv rapid pace. England mav well have led
the wav. as it did in evolving its own version of
Gothic architecture. Unfortunately, so much
English Gothic sculpture was destroved dur-
ing the Reformation that we can studv its de-
velopment onlv with difficulty. In Germanv.
the growth of Gothic sculpture can be traced
more easilv. From the 1220s on. German mas-
ters trained in the sculptural workshops of
the great French cathedrals transplanted the
new stvle to their homeland, although Ger-
man architecture at that time was still
predominantly Romanesque. However, even
after the middle of the centurv. Germanv
failed to emulate the vast statuarv cvcles of
France. As a consequence. German Gothic
sculpture tended to be less closelv linked with
its architectural setting (the finest work was
French models.
Nicola Pisano. Such was the background of 170. Nicola Pisano. Xatnity, detail of pulpit.
1259-60. Marble. Baptistery. Pisa
Nicola Pisano, who went to Tuscanv from
southern about 1250 (the year of Fred-
Italy
erick Us work has been well de-
death). His
fined as that of "the greatest— and in a sense
the last— of medieval classicists." In 1260 he
completed the marble pulpit in the Baptistery
of Pisa Cathedral, which was covered with re-
liefs of narrative scenes such as the Nativity
(fig. 170). The classical flavor is so strong that
the Gothic elements are hard to detect at first
craftsmanship, which reflects his training as a vanni Pisano. In Giovanni's Nativity panel (see
goldsmith. The silky shimmer of the surfaces, fig. 1 7 1 ) we noted a bold new emphasis on the
the wealth of beautifully articulated detail, spatial setting. The trial relief carries this
make it easv to understand why this entrv was same tendency a good deal further, achieving
178 GOTHIC ART
mm *mm PAINTING
Stained Glass
with the great cathedral workshops, the de- stained-glass workers borrowed in mapping
signers came to be influenced more and more out their own compositions. Gothic architec-
bv architectural sculpture, and in this wav. tural design, as we recall from our discussion
about the vear 1200. arrived at a distinctively of the choir of (see pp. 158—60).
St. -Denis
encourages an abstract, ornamental stvle. so it like those in the Iohel window, and of an archi-
tends to resist anv attempt to render three- tectural setting remarkablv similar to the
dimensional effects. Vet. in the hands of a choir screen bv the Naumburg Master (see
master, the maze of lead strips could resolve fig. 167). Against this emphaticallv two-
itself into figures having the looming monu- dimensional background, the figures are "re-
mentalitv of our Iohel. lieved" bv smooth and skillful modeling. But
Apart from the peculiar demands of their their sculptural qualitv stops short at the
medium, the stained-glass workers who filled outer contours, which are defined bv heaw
the windows of the great Gothic cathedrals dark lines rather like the lead strips in
had to face the difficulties arising from the stained-glass windows. The figures them-
enormous scale of their work. No Roman- selves show all the characteristics of the ele-
esque painter had ever been called upon to gant stvle originated about twentv vears
cover areas so vast — the Iohel window is more before bv the sculptors of the roval court:
than fourteen feet tall— or so firmlv bound graceful gestures, swaving poses, smiling
into an architectural framework. The task re- faces, neatlv waved strands of hair. Of the
quired a technique of orderlv planning for expressive energv of Romanesque painting
which the medieval painting tradition could we find no trace (see fig. 145). Our miniature
offer no precedent. Onlv architects and exemplifies the subde and refined taste that
stonemasons knew how to deal with this made the court art of Paris the standard for
problem, and it was their methods that the all Europe.
180 • GOTHIC ART
174. Sahash the Ammonite Threatening the Jews at Jabesh, from the
Psalter of St. Louts, c. 1260. 5 x 3'/2 " (12.7 x 8.9 cm).
Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris
tion. As a result, panel painting, mosaic, and \er\ different course; untouched bv the
GOTHIC ART • 181
revolutionary
ures and the render gl ances bv which thev Museo dell'Opera del Duomo. Siena
Siena from 1285 to 1295 as the sculptor- three-dimensional qualifies. In Christ Entering
architect in charge of the cathedral facade. Jerusalem, the architecture keeps its space-
Christ Entering Jerusalem shows us some- creating function. The diagonal movement
thing we have never seen before in the history into depth is conveyed not bv the figures —
of painting: Duccios figures inhabit a space which have the same scale throughout — but
that is created and defined bv the architec- bv the walls on either side of the road leading
ture. Northern Gothic painters, too, had tried to the citv. bv the gate that frames the wel-
to reproduce architectural settings, but thev coming crowd, and bv the structures bevond.
could do so onlv bv flattening them out com- Whatever the shortcomings of Duccios per-
pletely (as in the Psalter of St. Louis, fig. 174). spective, his architecture has the capacity to
The Italian painters of Duccios generation, contain and enclose, and for that reason
trained as they were in the Greek manner. strikes us as more intelligible than similar
had acquired enough of the devices of Hel- vistas in ancient art (compare fig.
182 • GOTHIC ART
Giotto. —
Turmng^_ixom Dnccio—-to, Giotto in common, since they both ultimately derive
(1267?- 1336/37). we meet an artist of far from the same Byzantine source. But where
bolder and more dramatic temper. Ten to fif- Duccio has enriched the traditional scheme,
teen years younger, Giotto was less close to spatially as well as in narrative detail. Giotto
the Greek manner from the .start, and he was subjects it to a radical simpli ficatio n. The ac-
a wall painter by instinct, rather than a panel tion proceeds parallel to~tIle picture plane.
painter. Of his surviving murals, those in the LxmdsanDe^jnrhjtecture, and figures have
Arena Chapel Padua, done in 1305-6, are
in been reduced-io_thejssen tiaJ min imum. The
the best preserved as well as the most charac- sober medium of fresco painting (water-
teristic. The decorations are devoted prin- based paint applied to the freshly pla stef&d
cipally to scenes frcuzLdj^JifejafChrist, laid in wall), with its limited range and intensity of
a carefully arranged program consisting of tones, fu rther emphasizes the_austeglY7of
three tiers of narrative scenes (fig. 176). Giotto's art, as against the jeuellike brilliance
Giotto depicts many of the same subjects that picture,, which is executed in egg
of Duccio's
we find on the reverse of Duccio's Maesta, in- tempera on gold-grounds Yet Giotto's work
cluding Christ Entering Jerusalem (fig. 177). has by far the more powerful impact of the
A single glance at Giotto's painting will con- two: it makes us feel so close to the event that
vince us that we are faced with a truly revolu- we have a sense of being participants rather
tionary development. How, we wonder, could than distant observers.
a work of such intense dramatic power be How does the artist achieve this extraordi-
conceived by a contemporary of Duccio? To nary effect? He does so, first of all, by having
be sure, the two versions have manv elements the entire scene take place in the foreground
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177. Giotto. Christ Entering Jerusalem. 1305—6. Fresco. Arena (Scrovegni) Chapel, Padua
and— even more important— by presenting it ship. Duccio, certainly, does not yet conceive
insuch a way that the beholder's eye level falls his picture space as continuous with the be-
within the lo wer hal f of the pictu re. 1 rTTrs~Tve holder's space; hence we have the sensation of
can imagine ourselves standingon the same vaguely floating above the scene, rather than
ground plane asTtgSBZpainted figures, ev en of knowing where we stand. Even ancient
though^w^^e^jh^rn^ft^mwell below, whereas painting at its most illusionistic provides no
Du^do__rjaaJi^e^-4ii__sjiryeythe^_scene from more than a pseudocontinuity in this respect
above^_in_b ird's-eye p erspective. The conse- (see fig. 98). Gjotto, on t hf-Qtherjiand, tells us
quences of this choice of viewpoint are truly w here we s tandr^nd4ie^ajs^&tMlo ws_hjs_iorms -
ture space. As a result, this space is more lim- neo-By zantine__sryle_p^^t'^erl by paintejsjn
ited than Duccio's— its depth extends no Rpjrne,-pardy under the influence of ancient
further than the combined volumes of the Roman and Early Christian mural decora-
overlapping bodies in the picture— but within tions, and it is likely that he became ac-
its limits it is very much more persuasive. To quainted with such older monuments as well.
Giotto's contemporaries, t he tac tile q u ality, of Classical sculpture, too, left an impression on
his art must have seemed a near miracle. It him. More fundamental than any of these,
was this quality that made them praise him as however, was the influence of the Pisanos—
equal, or even superior, to the greatest of the Nicola, and especially Giovanni — the found-
ancient painters, because his forms looked so ers of Italian Gothic sculpture. They were the
lifelike that they could be mistaken for reality chief intermediaries through whom Giotto
itself. Equally significant are the stories link- first came world of North-
in contact with the
ing Giotto with the claim that painting is su- ern Gothic art. And the latter remains the
perior to sculpture— not an idle boast, as it most important of all the elements that en-
turned out, for Giotto does indeed mark the tered into Giotto's style. Without the knowl-
start of what might be called "the era of paint- edge, direct or indirect, of Northern works
ing" in Western art. The symbolic turn ing such as that in figure 165, he could never have
point is the year 1334, when he was ap- achieved such powerful emotional impact.
pointed the" head of the FTorenceJCathedral
workshop, an h onor and responsibil ity_hith- Martini. There are few artists in the entire
erto reserved for arcMiecisjyr sculpto rs. history of art who equal the stature of Giotto
Yet Giotto's aim was not simply to trans- as a radical innovator. His very greatness,
plant Gothic statuary into painting. By creat- however, tended to dwarf the next generation
ing a radically new kind of picture space, he of Florentine painters, which produced only
had also sharpened his awareness of the pic- followers rather than new leaders. Their con-
ture surface. When we look at a work by temporaries in Siena were more fortunate in
Duccio (or his ancient and medieval pre- Duccio never had the same
this respect, since
we tend to do so in installments, as
decessors), overpowering impact. As a consequence, it
it were. Our glance travels from detail to de- was they, not the Florentines, who took the
tail at a leisurely pace until we have surveyed next decisive step in the development of
the entire area. Gjottos jm the contrary, in- Italian Gothic painting. Simone Martini
vites us to spp_the whole at uv gl ance. His (c. 1284-1344) may well claim to be the most
large, simple forms, the s^rojigj£mipjng_of distinguished of Duccio's disciples. He spent
his figures, the limiteddepth of-his-"stage," all the last \ ears of his life in Avignon, the town
these factors help endow-his scen e s with an in southern France that served as the resi-
inner coherence such as we_have never found dence-in-exile of the popes during most of
before. Notice how dramatically the massed the fourteenth century. The Road to Calvary
verticals of the "block" of apostles on the left (fig. 178), originally part of a small altar, was
are contrasted with the upward slope formed probably done there about 1340. In its spar-
bv the welcoming crowd on the right; how kling colors, and especially in the architec-
Christ, alone in the center, bridges the gulf tural background, our tiny but intense panel
between the two groups. The more we study still echoes-the arr_of__D-iiCcio (see fig. 175).
the composition, the more we come to realize The vigorous modeling of the figures, on the
its majestic firmness and clarity. other hand, as well as their dramatic gestures
The art of Giotto is so daringly original that and_ expre ssions, betray the influence of
its sources are far more difficult to trace than Giotto. WhTle^STmbhe^MartinTTs not much
those of Duccio's Apart from his Floren-
style. concerned with spatial clarity, he proves to be
tine background in the Greek manner, the an extraordinarily acute observer. The sheer
young Giotto seems to have been familiar variety of costumes and physical types and
with the more monumental, albeit cruder the wealth of huma n incident create a sense
GOTHIC ART 185
179. Pietro Lorenzetti. The Birth of the Virgin. 1342. Tempera on panel,
6'1WX5'UW (1.88 x 1.82 m). Museo dell'Opera del Duomo. Siena
space. The boldest spatial experiment is which leads to a vast and only partially
:
glimpsed architectural space suggesting the the artist, in order to show the life of a well-
interior of a Gothic church. ordered city-state, had to fill the streets and
What Pietro Lorenzetti achieved here is the houses with teeming activity. The gay and
outcome of a development that began three busy crowd gives the architectural vista its
decades earlier in the work of Duccio, but striking reality by introducing the human
only now does the picture surface assume the scale.
The same procedure enabled Ambrogio nal upheavals shoo k the government there ,
Lorenzetti, in his frescoes of 1338-40 in the we re re peatgd_cjop failures, and in 1348 the
Siena city hall, to unfold a comprehensive epidemi(L_oX--bubonic plague^that^spread
view of the entire town before our eyes throughout Fiirope r_the-BIac k Death, w iped
,
(fig. 180). Again we marvel at the distance out more than half their urban population.
that separa tes this piecisely arri cuJated^P 01'' Many people regarded these events as signs
trait"_of Siena from Ducc io's Jerusalem (see of divine wrath, warnings to a sinful human-
fig. 1 75). Ambrogio's mural forms part of an ity to forsake the pleasures of this earth; to
elaborate allejroHral^p^o^T^jr^depirting Hie others, the fear of sudden death merely in-
^c ontrast Osg ood and ba d government; hence tensified the desire to enjoy life while there
180. Ambrogio Lorenzetti. The Commune of Siena (left). Good Government in the City and
Good Government in the Country (right), frescoes in the Sala della Pace, Palazzo Pubblico. Siena. 1338—40
188 OIHH ART
181. Francesco Traini. The Triumph of Death (portion), c. 1325-50. Fresco. Camposanto. Pisa
was yet time. Th£se_-i^mjhcting^uuuides Ambrogio Lorenzetti, although the forms are
are reflected an xhe pictorial theme—of the harsher, more expressive.
Triumph of Death. Traini retains a strong link with the great
masters of the second quarter of the century.
Traini. The most impressive treatment of The Tuscan painters who reached maturity
this subject is an enormous fresco, attributed after the^Tack^DeatfT around the 1350s, can-
to the Pisan master F rancesco Traini (docu- not compare with the^arheFjStists whose
mented c.T52 1-1363), in the Camposanto, work we have discussed. Their style, in com-
the cemetery building next to Pisa Cathedral. parison, seems_dr}- and form ulaj-ridden, al-
In a particularly dramatic detail from this though at its best it _did express the j omber
work (fig. 181), the elegantly costumed men mood of rhp Hmp with rriern^r aj^ intensitv.
and women on horseback have suddenly
come upon three decaying corpses in open
North of the Alps
coffins. Even the animals are terrified by the
sight and smell of rotting flesh. Only the her- We are now in a position to turn once more to
mit, having renounced all earthly pleasures, Gothic painting north of the Alps. What
calmly points out the lesson of the scene. But happened there during the latter half of the
will the living accept the lesson, or will they fourteenth century was determined in large
turn away from the shocking spectacle more measure by the influence of the great Italians.
determined than ever to pursue their own Toward the middle years of the fourteenth
hedonistic ways? The artist's own sympathies century, Italian influence becomes ever more
seem curiously divided. His style is far from important in Northern Gothic painting.
being otherworldly, and recalls the realism of Sometimes this influence was transmitted by
GOTHIC ART • 189
183. Melchior Broederlam. Annunciation and Visitation; Presentation in the Temple; and Flight into Egypt.
1394-99. Tempera on panel, 53 5/4x49'/T (136.5 x 125.1 cm). Musee des Beaux-Arts, Dijon
Italian artists working on Northern soil; an tures and facial expressions convey an inten-
example is Simone Martini (see p. 184). An- sity of emotion that represents the finest
other gateway of Italian influence was the city heritage of Northern Gothic art. In this re-
of Prague, which in 1347 became the resi- spect, our panel is far more akin to The Death
dence of Emperor Charles IV and rapidly de- of the Virgin at Strasbourg Cathedral (see
veloped into an international cultural center fig. 165) than to any Italian work.
second only to Paris. The Death of the Virgin
(fig. 182), made by an unknown Bohemian
The International Style
painter about 1360, again brings to mind the
achievements of the great Sienese masters, al- Toward the year 1400, the merging of North-
though these were known to our artist only at ern and Italian gave rise to a
traditions
second- or third-hand. Its glowing richness single dominant throughout western
style
of color recalls Simone Martini (see fig. 1 78), Europe. This International Style was not con-
and the carefully articulated architectural in- fined to painting— we have used the same
terior betrays its descent from such works as term for the sculpture of the period— but
Pietro Lorenzetti's The Birth of the Virgin (see painters clearly played the main role in its
fig. 179), although it lacks the spaciousness of development.
its Italian models. Italian, too, is the vigorous
modeling of the heads and the overlapping of Broederlam. Among the most important was
the figures, which reinforces the three- Melchior Broederlam (flourished c. 1387-
dimensional qualitv of the design but raises 1409), a Fleming who worked for the court of
the awkward question of what to do with the the duke of Burgundv in Dijon. Figure 183
halos. Still, the Bohemian master's picture is shows the panels of a pair of shutters for an
not a mere echo of Italian painting. The ges- altar shrine that he did in 1394-99. Each
GOTHIC ART • 191
184. The Limbourg Brothers. October, from Les Tres Riches Heures du Due de Berry. 1413—16.
8 7/s x 5 s/b" (22.5 x 13.7 cm). Musee Conde, Chantilly, France
192 • COTHH \RT
wing presents two scenes. As a result, the details of the landscape are quite out of scale
temple of the Presentation and the landscape with the figures. Vet the panels convev a far
of the Flight into Egypt stand abruptlv side bv stronger feeling of depth than we have found
side, even though the artist has made a in anv previous Northern work. The reason
halfhearted effort to persuade us that the for this is the subtlety of the modeling. The
landscape extends around the building. Com- softly rounded shapes and the dark, velvety
pared to paintings by Pietro Lorenzetti and shadows create a sense of light and air that
Simone Martini, Broederlams picture space more than makes up for anv shortcomings of
still strikes us as naive in manv ways— the ar- scale or perspective. The same soft, pictorial
chitecture looks like a doll's house, and the quality— a hallmark of the Internationa]
GOTHIC ART 193
Style— appears in the ample, loosely draped Figure 184 shows the sowing of winter
garments with their fluid curvilinear patterns grain during the month of October. Land-
of folds, which remind us of Sluter and scape and architecture are harmoniously
Ghiberti (see figs. 169, 172). united in deep, atmospheric space. It is a
Our panels also exemplify another charac- bright, sunny day, and the figures — for the
teristic of the International Style: its "realism first time since classical antiquity— cast visible
of particulars," the same kind of realism we shadows on the ground. We marvel at the
encountered first in Gothic sculpture (see wealth of realistic detail, such as the scare-
p. 175). We find it in the carefully rendered crow in the middle distance or the footprints
foliage and flowers, in the delightful donkey of the sower in the soil of the freshly plowed
(obviously drawn from life), and in the rustic field. The sower is memorable in other ways
figure of St. Joseph, who looks and behaves as well. His tattered clothing, his unhappy air,
like a simple peasant and thus helps empha- go beyond mere description. He is meant to
beauty of the Vir-
size the delicate, aristocratic be a pathetic figure, to arouse our awareness
gin. This painstaking concentration on detail of the miserable lot of the peasantry in con-
gives Broederlam's work the flavor of an en- of the aristocracy, as symbol-
trast to the life
larged miniature rather than of a large-scale ized by the splendid castle on the far bank of
painting, even though the panels are more the river. (The castle shown is the Gothic
than five feet tall. Louvre, the most lavish structure of its kind
at that time; see pp. 283-84.)
The Limbourg Brothers. That book illumi-
nation remained the leading form of painting Gentile da Fabriano. From Broederlam's
in northern Europe at the time of the Inter- panels it is but a step to the altarpiece with the
national Style, despite the growing impor- three Magi and their train (fig. 185) by Gen-
tance of panel painting, is well attested by the tile da Fabriano (c. 1370-1427), the greatest
miniatures of Les Tres Riches Heures du Due de Italian painter of the International Style. The
Berry. Produced for the brother of the king of costumes here are as colorful, the draperies
France, a man
of far from admirable charac- as ample and softly rounded, as in Northern
ter but the most lavish art patron of his day, painting. The Holy Family, on the left, almost
this luxurious book of hours represents the seems in danger of being overwhelmed by the
most advanced phase of the International gay and festive pageant pouring down upon
Style. The artists were Pol de Limbourg and it from the hills in the distance. We admire
his two brothers, a group of Flemings who, the marvelously well observed animals, which
like Sluter and Broederlam, had settled in now include not only the familiar ones but
France early in the fifteenth century. They also hunting leopards, camels, and monkeys.
must have visited Italy as well, for their work (Such creatures were eagerly collected by the
includes numerous motifs and whole com- princes of the period, many of whom kept
positions borrowed from the great masters of private zoos.) The Oriental background of
Tuscany. the Magi is further emphasized by the Mon-
The most remarkable pages of Les Tres golian facial cast of some of their compan-
Riches Heures are those of the calendar, with ions. It is not these exotic touches, however,
their elaborate depiction of the life of hu- that mark our picture as the work of an Ital-
mans and nature throughout the months of ian master but something else, a greater sense
the year. Such cycles, originally consisting of of weight, of physical substance, than we
twelve single figures each performing an ap- could hope to find among the Northern rep-
propriate seasonal activity, had long been an resentatives of the International Style. Gen-
established tradition medieval art. The
in tile, despite his love of fine detail, is obviously
1200
Fourth Crusade (1202-4) conquers St. Dominic (1170-1221) founds Marco Polo tra\els to China and India
Constantinople Dominican order; Inquisition c. 1275-93
Latin Empire in Constantinople 1204- established to combat heresy Arabic (actually Indian) numerals
61 St. Francis of Assisi (died 1226) introduced in Europe
Magna Carta limits power of English St.Thomas Aquinas. Italian scholastic First documented use of spinning wheel
kings 1215 philosopher (died 1274) in Europe 1298. replaces distaff and
Louis IX (r. 1226-70), king of France Dante Alighieri. Italian poet (1265— spindle
Philip IV (r. 1285-1314), king of 1321)
France
1300
Exile of papacv in Avignon 1309-76 John Wycliffe (died 1384) challenges Firs! large-scale production ol paper in
Hundred Years' War between England church doctrine; translates Bible Italv and Germain
and France begins 1337 into English Large-scale production of gunpowder;
Black Death throughout Europe 1347- Petrarch, first humanist (1304-1374) earliest known use ot cannon 1326
50 Canterbury Tales bv Chaucer c. 1387 Earliest cast iron in Europe
Decameron bv Boccaccio 1387
1400
Great Papal Schism (since 1378) settled Jan Hus, Czech reformer, burned at Gutenberg invents pi muni; with
1417: pope returns to Rome stake for heresy 14 15; Joan of Arc movable type 1446—50
burned at slake for heresy and
sorcery 113 1
SOTE: Figure numbers of black-and-white illustrations are m (italics). Colorplate numbers are in (bold face)
Duration tf fmpmey or reign is indicated by the abbreviation r.
800
Palace Chapel of Charlemagne. Oseberg ship-buna. Gospel Book of Charlemagne 123
Crucifixion relief, cover ot Lindau Gospel Book of Archbishop Ebbo of Reims
Monaster, plan. St. Gall Gospels (125 124
900
Gero Crucifix, Cologne Cathedr
1000
Hildesheir
hael's. 27 _ Bronze doors of Bishop Bernward. Gospel Book of Otto III ( 130>
Pisa Cathedral complex Hildeshein Mosul s. Daphne
Baptistery. Florence 139 Apostle. Si.-Sernin. Tool Bayeux Tapestr
St.-Euenne. Caen
nin. Toulouse 131, 132
-
Durham Cathedral
1100
St.-Denis. F South portal. St. -Pierre. limn Nave vault murals. St.-Savin-sur-
Nocre-Dame I Baptismal font. St Barthelemv Cartempe
Chartres Cathedra bv Renier of Hu'- Gospel Book of Abbot Wedn,: 145
Reims Cathedral I Last Judgment umpanum. Autun
Cathedral
West portals. Chartres Cathedr :
1300
"
Arena Chapel frescoes. Padua, bv
Pulpit. Pisa Cathedral. b\ Giovanni Giono 176. 177
Pisan. Maestd Altarptece. Siena, bv Duccio il75i
Mm Well. Dijon, bv Claus Slurc esco, Palazzo
Pubblico. Siena, bv Ambrogio
Lorenzetti 180 1
>
THE
RENAISSANCE,
MANNERISM,
AND THE
BAROQUE
In discussing the transition from classical an- diversity of views on the Renaissance. Per-
tiquity to the Middle Ages, we were able to haps the only essential point on which most
point to the rise of Islam as a great crisis experts agree is that the Renaissance had
marking the separation between the two eras. begun when people realized they were no
No comparable event sets off the Middle longer living in the Middle Ages.
Ages from the Renaissance. The fifteenth This statement brings out the undeniable
and sixteenth centuries, to be sure, witnessed fact that the Renaissance was the first period
far-reaching developments: the deep spiritual in history to be aware of its own existence and
crisis of the Reformation and Counter Refor- to coin a label for itself. Medieval people did
mation, the fall of Constantinople and the not think they belonged to an age distinct
Turkish conquest of southeastern Europe, from classical antiquity; the past, to them,
and the journeys of exploration that led to consisted simply of "b.c." and "a.d.": the era
the founding of overseas empires in the New "under the Law" (that is, of the Old Testa-
World, Africa, and Asia, with the subsequent ment) and the era "of Grace" (that is, after the
rivalryof Spain and England as the foremost birth of Christ). From their point of view, his-
colonial powers. None of these events, how- tory was made in Heaven rather than on
ever vast their effects, can be said to have earth. The Renaissance, by contrast, divided
produced the new era. By the time they hap- the past not according to the divine plan of
pened, the Renaissance was well under way. salvation, but on the basis of human achieve-
Even if we disregard the minority of scholars ments. It saw classical antiquity as the era
who would deny the existence of the animal when civilization had reached the peak of its
altogether, we are left with an extraordinary creative powers, an era brought to a sudden
end by the barbarian invasions that destroyed interposing the concept of "a thousand years
the Roman Empire. During the thousand- of darkness" between themselves and the an-
year interval of "darkness" that followed, little cients, theyacknowledged (unlike the medi-
was accomplished, but now, at last, this "time Graeco-Roman world
eval classicists) that the
in between" or "Middle Age" had been super- was irretrievably dead. Its glories could be
seded by a revival of all those arts and sci- revived only in the mind, by nostalgic and
ences that flourished in classical antiquity. admiring contemplation across the barrier of
The present, the "New Age," could thus be the "dark ages," by rediscovering the full
fittingly labeled a "rebirth": rinascita in Italian greatness of ancient achievements in art and
(from the Latin renascere, to be reborn), renais- thought, and by endeavoring to compete with
sance in French and, by adoption, in English. these achievements on an ideal plane.
The origin of this revolutionary view of The humanists, however great their enthu-
history can be traced back to the 1330s in siasm for classical philosophy, did not become
the writings of the Italian poet Francesco neo-pagans but went to great lengths trying
Petrarca, the first of the great individuals who to reconcile the heritage of the ancient think-
made the Renaissance. Petrarch, as we call ers with Christianity. In the arts, the aim
him, thought of the new era mainly as a "re- of the Renaissance was not to duplicate
vival of the classics," limited to the restoration the works of antiquity but to equal and, if
of Latin and Greek to their former purity and possible, to surpass them. In practice, this
the return to the original texts of ancient au- meant that the authority granted to the an-
thors. During the next two centuries, this cient models was far from unlimited. Writers
concept of the rebirth of antiquity grew to strove to express themselves with Ciceronian
embrace almost the entire range of cultural eloquence and precision, but not necessarily
endeavor, including the visual arts. The lat- in Latin. Architects continued to build the
ter, in fact, came to play a particularly impor- churches demanded by Christian ritual, not
tant part in shaping the Renaissance, for to duplicate pagan temples; their churches
reasons that we shall explore later. were designed all'antica, "in the manner of
That the new historic orientation should the ancients," using an architectural vocabu-
have had its start in the mind of one man is lary based on the study of classical structures.
itself a telling comment on the new era. The people of the Renaissance, then,
Individualism— a new self-awareness and found themselves in the position of the leg-
self-assurance— enabled him to proclaim, endary sorcerer's apprentice, who set out to
against all established authority, his own con- emulate his master's achievements and in the
viction that the "age of faith"was actually an process released far greater energies than he
era of darkness, while the "benighted pagans" had bargained for. Since their master was
of antiquity really represented the most en- dead, rather than merely absent, they had to
lightened stage of history. Such readiness to cope with these unfamiliar powers as best
question traditional beliefs and practices was they could, until they became masters in their
to become profoundly characteristic of the own right. This process of forced growth was
Renaissance as a whole. Humanism, to Pe- replete with crises and tensions. The Renais-
trarch, meant a belief in the importance of sance must have been an uncomfortable,
what we still call the "humanities" or "humane though intensely exciting, time in which to
letters," rather than divine letters, or the live. These very tensions, it appears in ret-
study of Scripture; that is, the pursuit of rospect, called forth an outpouring of cre-
learning in languages, literature, historv, and ative energy such as the world had never
philosophy for its own end, in a secular rather experienced. It is a fundamental paradox
than a religious framework. that the desire to return to the classics, based
We must not assume, however, that Pe- on a rejection of the Middle Ages, brought to
trarch and his successors wanted to revive the new era not the rebirth of antiquity but
classical antiquity lock, stock, and barrel. By the birth of modern civilization.
ATLAXT1C OCEAS
S
/
THE
9& C5
RENAISSANCE
SITES AND CITIES
LATE GOTHIC. RENAISSANCE,
MANNERIST, BAROQUE
RUSSIA
rVurzbu
CARPATHIANS
BAVARIA '
• Nuremberg
,/ Augsburg Mell_
Vienna^
Munich *
AUSTRIA
Wolfgang
\gf CONSTANCE
St
TYROL
ALPS
• Parma
[ Ravenna
Bologna*
.Rimini
TUSCANY
^^^^^^ Orvieto /
ADRIATIC SEA
*l APENNINES
' Rome
ITALY
^Naples
GREECE
<&
TYRRHENIAN SEA
IONIAN SEA
fc
^
STRAJT OF MESSINA
^VcgTi^
KM 200
"LATE GOTHIC"
PAINTING, SCULPTURE, AND
THE GRAPHIC ARTS
For painting, however, an even older tradi- ture, so that the break with the past was less
tion argues that the new era began with abrupt in the North than in the South. More-
Giotto. We hesitate to accept such a claim at over, their artistic environment was clearly
face value, for we must then assume that the "Late Gothic." Fifteenth-centurv architecture
Renaissance in painting dawned about 1300, outside Italv remained firmly rooted in the
a fullgeneration before Petrarch. Nor, as we Gothic tradition. How could they create a
have seen, did Giotto himself reject the past. genuinelv post-medieval stvle in such a set-
Renaissance art was born of a second revo- ting, one wonders? Would it not be more rea-
lution, a century after Giotto, which began sonable to regard their work, despite its great
simultaneously and independently in Italv importance, as the final phase of Gothic
and in Flanders about 1420. We must think of painting? Italian Renaissance art. after all,
two events, linked bv a common aim— the made very little impression north of the Alps
conquest of the visible world— but sharply during the fifteenth century.
separated in almost every other respect. The If we treat Northern painters of this time as
Italian, or Southern, revolution was the more the counterpart of the Early Renaissance, it is
systematic and, in the long run, the more fun- because the great Flemish masters whose
damental, since it included architecture and work we are about to examine had an impact
sculpture as well as painting. The movement that went far beyond their own region. In
that originated in Florence is called the Early Italy the\ were as admired as the leading Ital-
Renaissance. The same term is not generally ian artists of the period, and their intense re-
applied to the new style that emerged in the alism had a conspicuous influence on Early
Netherlands. We have, in fact, no satisfactory Renaissance painting. The Italians them-
"LATE GOTHIC 201
selves associated the exact imitation of nature guishes between the diffused light creating
in painting with a "return to the classics." To softshadows and delicate gradations of bright-
their eyes, "Late Gothic" painting appeared ness,and the direct light entering through the
definitely post-medieval. two round windows, which produces the twin
shadows sharply outlined in the upper part of
the center panel and the twin reflections on
NETHERLANDISH PAINTING the brass vessel and candlestick.
The Merode Altarpiece transports us abruptly
The Master of Flemalle. The first phase, and from the world of the Interna-
aristocratic
perhaps the decisive one, of the pictorial rev- tional Style to thehousehold of a Flemish
olution in Flanders is represented hy an artist burgher. The Master of Flemalle was no court
whose name we do not know for certain. We painter but a townsman catering to the tastes
callhim the Master of Flemalle (after the of such well-to-do fellow citizens as the two
fragments of a large altarpiece from Fle- donors piously kneeling outside the Virgin's
malle), although he was probably identical chamber. This is the earliest Annunciation in
with Robert Campin, the foremost painter of panel painting that occurs in a fully equipped
Tournai, whose career we can trace in doc- domestic interior (compare fig. 179), as well
uments from 1406 to his death in 1444. honor Joseph, the humble car-
as the first to
Among his finest works is the Merode Altar- penter, by showing him at work next door.
piece (fig. 186), which he must have done soon This bold departure from tradition forced
after 1425. Comparing it with one of its rela- upon our artist a problem no one had faced
tives among the Franco-Flemish pictures of before: how to transfer supernatural events
the International Style (see fig. 183), we see from symbolic settings to an everyday envi-
that it belongs within that tradition and, at ronment, without making them look either
the same time, we recognize in it a new pic- trivial or incongruous. He has met this chal-
the panel into a spatial world that has all the carry a symbolic message. Thus the flowers in
essential qualities of everyday reality: un- the wing and the center panel are associ-
left
limited depth, stability, continuity, and com- ated with the Virgin: the roses denote her
pleteness. The painters of the International charity, the violets her humility, and the lilies
Style, even at their most adventurous, had her chastity. The shiny water basin and the
never aimed at such consistency, and their towel on its rack are not ordinary household
commitment to reality was far from absolute. equipment but further tributes to Mary as the
The pictures they created have the enchant- "vessel most clean" and the "well of living
ing quality of fairy tales where the scale and waters."
relationship of things can be shifted at will, The significance of these well-established
where fact and fancy mingle without conflict. symbols would have been readily understood
The Master of Flemalle, in contrast, has un- by the artist's patrons. Clearly, the entire
dertaken to tell the truth, the whole truth, wealth of medieval symbolism survives in our
and nothing but the truth. To be sure, he picture, but it is so completely immersed in
does not yet do it with ease. His objects, overly the world of everyday appearances that we
foreshortened, tend to jostle each other in are often doubt whether a given detail
left to
space. But with almost obsessive determina- demands symbolic interpretation. Perhaps
tion, he defines every last detail of every ob- the most intriguing symbol of this sort is the
ject to give it maximum concreteness: its candle next to the vase of lilies. It was ex-
individual shape and size; its color, material, tinguished only moments before, as we can
surface textures; its degree of rigidity and tellfrom the glowing wick and the curl of
way of responding to light. He even distin- smoke. But why, in broad daylight, had it
202 • "LATl C.Ol'HIC"
Oil on wood panels, center 25 3/ie x 24 7/8" (64. 1 x 63.2 cm), each wing 25 s/s x lOVs" (64.5 x 27.6 cm).
c.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. The Cloisters Collection, 1956
been lit, and what made the flame go out? neously what we tend to regard as two op-
Has the divine radiance of the Lord's pres- posite goals, realism and symbolism? To him,
ence overcome the material light? Or did the apparently, the two were interdependent,
flame of the candle itself represent the divine rather than in conflict. For him to paint
light, now extinguished to show thatGod has everyday reality, he had to "sanctify" it with a
become man, that in Christ "the Word was maximum of spiritual significance. This
made flesh"? Equally mystifying is the little deeply reverential attitude toward the physi-
on Joseph's workbench and a
boxlike object cal universe as a mirror of divine truths helps
similarone on the ledge outside the open us understand why in the Merode panels the
window. They have been identified as mouse- smallest and least conspicuous details are ren-
traps intended to convey a specific theological dered with the same concentrated attention
message. According to St. Augustine, God as the sacred figures; potentiallv at least,
had to appear on earth in human form so as everything is a symbol and thus merits an
to fool Satan: "the Cross of the Lord was the equally exacting scrutiny. The disguised
devil's mousetrap." symbolism of the Master of Flemalle and his
The freshly extinguished candle and the successors was not an external device grafted
mousetrap are unusual symbols that the Mas- onto the new realistic style, but ingrained in
ter of Flemalle himself introduced into the the creative process. Their Italian contempo-
visual arts. He must have been either a man raries must have sensed this, for they praised
of unusual learning, or had contact with theo- both the miraculous realism and the "piety"
logians and other scholars who could supply of the Flemish masters.
him with references that suggested the sym- If we compare the Merode Annunciation
bolic meanings of everyday things. Our artist,
then, did not merely continue the symbolic
tradition of medieval art within the frame- 187. Hubert and/or Jan van Eyck.
The Crucifixion and The Last Judgment, c. 1420-25.
work of the new realistic style. He expanded
Oil on canvas, transferred from panel; each panel
and enriched it bv his own efforts. 22'/i x 7 5/T (56.5 x 19.7 cm). The Metropolitan
Why, we wonder, did he pursue simulta- Museum of Art, New York. Fletcher Fund. 1933
"LATE GOTHIC" • 203
.
with an earlier panel painting (see fig. younger and much more famous artist than
ve see that, all other differences aside, the Master of Flemalle. We know a good deal
the Master of Flemalles picture stands out for about Jan's and career. Born about 1390,
life
its distinctive tonality. The jewellike bright- he worked Holland from 1422 to 1424.
in
ness of the older work, with its patterns of in Lille from 1425 to 1429, and thereafter in
brilliant hues and lavish use of gold, has given Bruges, where he died in 1441. He was both
wav to a color scheme that is far less decora- a townsman and a court painter, highly
tive much more flexible and differenti-
but esteemed by Duke Philip the Good of
ated. The subdued palette of muted greens Burgundy, who occasionally sent him on con-
and bluish or brownish grav tints shows a new fidential diplomatic errands. After 1432. we
subdetv. and the scale of intermediate shades can follow Jan's career through a number of
is smoother and has a wider range. All these signed and dated pictures.
effects are essential to the realistic style of the Jan's earlier development, however, re-
Master of Flemalle. They were made possible mains disputed. There are several "Evckian"
bv the use of oil. the medium he was among works that mav have been painted bv him or
the first to exploit. his older brother Hubert, a shadowy figure
who died in 1426, or both. The most fascinat-
Tempera and Oil Techniques. The basic ing of these is a pair of panels showing the
medium of medieval panel painting had been Crucifixion and the Last Judgment (fig. 187),
tempera, which the finelv ground
in which date from between 1420 and 1425.
pigments were mixed ("tempered") with di- The style of these panels has many qualities in
luted egg yolk to produce a tough, quick- common with that of the Merode Altarpiece: the
drving coat of colors that cannot be smoothly all-embracing devotion to the visible world,
blended. Oil, a viscous, slow-drving medium, the unlimited depth of space, the angular
could produce a vast varietv of effects, from drapery folds, less graceful but far more real-
thin, translucent films (called glazes) to a istic than the unbroken loops of the Interna-
thick layer of creamy, heaw-bodied paint tional Style. At the same time, the individual
(called impasto). The tones could also yield a forms are not starkly tangible, like those char-
continuous scale of hues necessarv for ren- acteristic of the Master of Flemalle, and seem
dering three-dimensional effects, including less isolated, less "sculptural." The sweeping
rich, velvetv dark shades previously un- sense of space is the result not so much of
known. The medium offers a unique advan- violent foreshortening as of subtle changes of
tage over egg tempera, encaustic, and fresco: light and color. If we inspect the Crucifixion
oils give artists the unprecedented ability to panel closelv. we see a gradual decrease in the
change their minds almost at will. Without oil. and in the contrast of
intensity of local colors
the Flemish masters' conquest of visible real- lightand dark from the foreground figures to
ity would have been much more limited. Al- the far-off city of Jerusalem and the snow-
though oil was not unfamiliar to medieval capped peaks beyond. Even. thing tends to-
artists, it was the Master of Flemalle and his ward a uniform tint of light bluish gra\. so
contemporaries who discovered its artistic that the farthest mountain range merges im-
Thus, from the technical point of
possibilities. perceptiblv with the color of the sk\
view, too, thev deserve to be called the "fa- This optical phenomenon is known as
thers of modern painting." for oil has been "atmospheric perspective." The Limbourg
the painters basic medium ever since. brothers had already been aware of the effect
(see fig. 184). but theVan Eycks were the first
Jan and Hubert van Eyck. The full range of to utilize it and systematically. This
fully
effects made possible bv oil was not discov- phenomenon results from the fact that the
ered all at once, nor bv am one individual. atmosphere is never wholly transparent. Even
The actual "invention" of oil painting was on the clearest dav. the air between us and the
long credited to Jan van Evck. a somewhat things we are looking at acts as a hazy screen
LATE GOTHIC 205
singularly devoid of drama, as if the scene (26 x 19.1 cm). The National Gallerv. London.
Reproduced bv court esv of the Trustees
had been gentlv becalmed bv some magic
spell. Onlv when we concentrate on the
189. Jan van Eyck. Wedding Portrait. 1434. Oil on panel, 33x22'// (83.8x57.2 cm).
1 he National Gallery, London. Reproduced by courtesy of the Trustees
LATE GOTHIC" 207
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208 • "LATE GOTHIC"
his portraits surely reflects his conscious ideal predecessors, the emotional drama, the pa-
of human character rather than indifference thos, of the Gothic past. In the Descent from the
or lack of insight. Cross (fig. 191), his early masterpiece painted
The Flemish cities of Tournai, Ghent, and around the same time as Jan's Wedding Por-
Bruges, where the new
style of painting flour- trait, the modeling is sculpturally precise, with
van Eyck painted his remarkable Wedding Por- artists. Whatever he owes to them (and it is
trait (fig. 189). The young couple is solemnly obviously a great deal) he uses for ends that
exchanging marriage vows in the privacy of are not theirs but his. The external events (in
the bridal chamber. They seem to be quite this case, the lowering of Christ's body from
alone, but in the mirror conspicuously placed the cross) concern him less than the world of
behind them is the reflection of two other human feeling. This Descent, judged for its
persons who have entered the room (fig. 190). expressive content, could well be called a
One of them must be the artist, since the Lamentation.
words above the mirror, in florid legal letter- The artistic ancestry of these grief-stricken
ing, tell us that "Johannes de eyck fuit hie" gestures and faces is in sculpture rather than
(Jan van Eyck was here) in the year 1434. in painting. It descends from the Strasbourg
Jan's role, then, is that of a witness. The Death of the Virgin and the Naumburg Crucifix-
picture claims to show exactly what he saw ion to the Bonn Pietn and Sluter's Moses Well
and has the function of a pictorial marriage (see figs. 165, 167—69). It therefore seems pe-
certificate. Though persuasively realistic, the culiarlv fitting that Rogier should have staged
domestic setting is filled with disguised sym- his scene in a shallow architectural niche or
bolism of the most subde kind, conveying the shrine, asif his figures were colored statues,
sacramental nature of marriage. The single and not against a landscape background.
candle in the chandelier, burning in broad This bold device gave him a double advan-
daylight, stands for the all-seeing Christ tage in heightening the effect of the tragic
(the mirror frame is decorated with Passion event. It focused the viewer's entire attention
scenes). The shoes the couple has taken off on the foreground, and allowed him to mold
remind us that they are standing on "holy the figures into a coherent, formal group. No
ground" (for the origin of the theme, see wonder that Rogier's art, which has been well
p. 43). Even the little dog is an emblem of described as "at once physically barer and
marital faith, and the furnishings of the room spiritually richer than Jan van Eyck's," set an
invite similar interpretation. As in the Merode example for countless other artists. When
Altarpiece, the natural world is made to con- he died in 1464, after thirty years as the
tain the world of the spirit in such a way that foremost painter of Brussels, his influence
the two actually become one. was supreme in European painting north of
the Alps. Such was the authority of his style
Van der Weyden. In the work of Jan van that its echoes continued to be discernible
Eyck. the exploration of the reality made vis- throughout Northern Europe until the end of
ibleby light and color had reached a limit that the century.
was not to be surpassed for another two cen-
turies. Rogier van der Weyden (1399/1400- Van der Goes. Few of the artists who came
I lt> \ ), the third great master of early Flemish after Rogier van der Weyden succeeded in
painting, set himself a different though escaping from the great master's shadow. The
equallv important task: to recapture, within most dynamic of these was Hugo van der
the framework of the new style created by his Goes (c. 1440-1482), an unhappy genius
"LATE GOTHIC 209
192. Hugo van der Goes. Portinari Afterpiece (open), c. 1476. Tempera and oil on panel,
center 8'3'/2"x 10' (2.53x3.05 m), wings each 8'3'/2"x4'7 /2" (2.53 x 1.41 m). Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence
1
whose tragic end suggests an unstable per- ture and to the ox and ass. The angels are
sonality especially interesting to us today. drawn to the same scale as the donors and
After a spectacular rise to fame in the cosmo- thus appear abnormally small.
politan atmosphere of Bruges, he decided in This variation of scale, although its sym-
1478, when he was near forty years of age, to bolic and expressive purpose is clear, stands
enter a monastery as a lay brother. He contin- outside the logic of everyday experience
ued to paint for some time, but increasing fits affirmed in the environment the artist has
of depression drove him to the verge of sui- provided for his figures. There is another
cide, and four years later he was dead. striking contrast between the frantic excite-
Hugo van der Goes' most ambitious work, ment of the shepherds and the ritual solem-
the huge altarpiece he completed about nity of all the other figures. These field
1476 for Tommaso Portinari, is an awesome hands, gazing in breathless wonder at the
achievement (fig. 192). While we need not newborn Child, react to the dramatic miracle
search here for hints of Hugo's future mental of the Nativity with a wide-eyed directness
illness, it nonetheless evokes a nervous and never attempted before. They aroused partic-
restless personality. There is a tension be- ular admiration in the Italian painters who
tween the artist's devotion to the natural saw the work after it arrived in Florence in
world and his concern with the supernatural. 1483.
Hugo has rendered a wonderfully spacious
and atmospheric landscape setting, with a G-eertgen tot Sint Jans. During the last quar-
wealth of precise detail; yet the disparity in ter of the fifteenth century there were no
the size of the figures seems to contradict this painters in Flanders comparable to Hugo van
realism. In the wings, the kneeling members der Goes, and the most original artists ap-
of the Portinari family are dwarfed by their peared farther north, in Holland. To one of
patron saints, whose gigantic size character- these, Geertgen tot Sint Jans of Haarlem, who
izes them as being of a higher order. The lat- died about 1495, we owe the enchanting
ter figures are not meant to be "larger than Nativity reproduced in figure 193, a picture as
life," for they share the same huge scale with daring, in its quiet way, as the center panel of
Joseph, the Virgin Mary, and the shepherds the Portinari Altarpiece. The idea of a noctur-
of the Nativity in the center panel, whose nal Nativity, illuminated mainly by radiance
height is normal in relation to the architec- from the Christ Child, goes back to the Inter-
210 "LATE GOTHIC
(219.7 x 195 cm), wings each 86'/2 x 38" the Lord introduces Adam to the newly cre-
(219.7x96.5 cm). Museo del Prado, Madrid ated Eve. The landscape, almost Eyckian in
"LATE GOTHIC 211
its airy vastness, is filled with animals, among water; most of them are closelv linked with
them such exotic creatures as an elephant enormous birds, fruit, flowers, or marine ani-
and a giraffe, and also hybrid monsters of mals. Only a few are openly engaged in love-
odd and sinister kinds. Behind them, the dis- making, but there can be no doubt that the
tant rock formations are equally strange. The delights in this "garden" are those of carnal
right wing, a nightmarish scene of burning desire,however oddly disguised. The birds,
ruins and fantastic instruments of torture, fruit,and the like are symbols or metaphors
surely represents Hell. But what of the cen- which Bosch uses to depict life on earth as an
ter, the Garden of Delights? unending repetition of the Original Sin of
Here we see a landscape much like that of Adam and Eve, which dooms us to be the
the Garden of Eden, populated with count- prisoners of our appetites. Nowhere does he
less nude men and women performing a vari- so much as hint at the possibility of Salvation.
ety of peculiar actions. In the center, they Corruption, on the animal level at least, had
parade around a circular basin on the backs already asserted itself in the Garden of Eden
of all sorts of beasts; many frolic in pools of before the Fall, and we are all destined for
Hell, the Garden of Satan, with its grisly and cific part of the shore of Lake Geneva, it is
ist who intended his pictures to be visual mous of all fifteenth-century French pictures,
sermons, every detail packed with didactic the Avignon Pieta (fig. 196). As its name indi-
meaning. Unconsciously, however, he must cates, the panel comes from the extreme
have been so enraptured by the sensuous ap- south of France. It is attributed to an artist of
peal of the world of the flesh that the images that region, Enguerrand Quarton. He must
he coined in such abundance tend to cele- have been thoroughly familiar with the art of
brate what they are meant to condemn. That, Rogier van der Weyden, for the figure types
surely, is the reason why The Garden of Delights and the expressive content of the Avignon
still evokes so strong a response today, even Pieta could be derived from no other source.
though we no longer understand every word At the same time, the magnificentlv simple
of the pictorial sermon. and stable design is Italian rather than North-
ern: these are qualities we first saw in the art
of Giotto. Southern, too, is the bleak, feature-
SWISS AND FRENCH PAINTING less landscape emphasizing the monumental
isolation of the figures. The distant buildings
The new realism of the Flemish masters be- behind the donor on the left have an unmis-
gan to spread after about 1430 into France takably Islamic flavor, suggesting that the art-
and Germany until, bv the middle of the cen- istmeant to place the scene in an authentic
tury, its influence prevailed everywhere from Near Eastern setting. From these various fea-
Spain to the Baltic. Among the countless art- tures he has created an unforgettable image
ists who turned out provincial adaptations of of heroic pathos.
Netherlandish- painting, many of them still
able panel shown in figure 195. To judge standards applv to manuscript illumination,
from the drapery, with its tubular folds and stained glass, and even, to a large extent,
sharp, angular breaks, he must have had close sculpture. was the influence of the Master
It
contact with the Master of Flemalle. But the of Flemalle and Rogier van der Weyden that
than the figures, attracts our
setting, rather ended the International Style in Northern
and here the influence of the Van
interest, European sculpture. The carvers, who quite
Eycks seems dominant. Witz, however, did often were also painters, began to reproduce
not simply follow these great pioneers. An ex- in stone or wood the style of those two mas-
plorer himself, he knew more about the opti- ters, and continued to do so until about 1500.
cal appearances of water than any other
painter of his time, as we can see from the Pacher. The most characteristic works of
reflections and especially the bottom of the the "Late Gothic" carvers are wooden altar
lake in the foreground. The landscape, too, is shrines, often large in size and incrediblv in-
an original contribution. Representing a spe- tricate in detail. Such shrines were especially
UTE GOTHIC 213
popular in the Germanic countries. One of bodies and therefore choose to meet him in
the richest examples is the St. Wolfgang Altar- the pictorial realm, bv extracting the max-
piece (fig. 197) Tvrolean sculptor
bv the imum of drama from contrasts of and
light
and painter Michael Pacher (c 1435- shade? Support for this view comes from
Its lavishly gilt and colored forms make a Pacher's own work: some vears after complet-
dazzling spectacle as thev emerge from the ing the St. Wolfgang shrine he made another
shadowy depth of the shrine under spikv altarpiece. this time with a painted center.
Flambovant canopies. We enjov it. but in pic-
torial rather than plastic terms. We have no
experience of volume, either positive or
negative. The figures and setting seem to
THE GRAPHIC ARTS
melt into a single pattern of agitated, twisting
Printing
lines that permits onh the heads to stand out
as separate entities. The development of printing, for pictures as
If we compare this altarpiece with Rogiers well as books, north of the Alps was an impor-
Descent from the Cross (see fig. 191). we realize tant event that had a profound effect on
that the latter, paradoxically, is a far more Western civilization. Our earliest printed
"sculptural" scene. Did Pacher. the "Late books in the modern sense were produced in
Gothic" sculptor, feel unable to compete with the Rhineland soon after 1450 (we are not
the painter's rendering of three-dimensional certain whether Gutenberg deserves the pri-
2H • 'LATE GOTHIC
Woodcut
for woodcuts. Especially in the Upper Rhine of invention. His finest engravings have a
region, we can trace a continuous tradition of complexity of design, spatial depth, and rich-
fine engravers from the time of Conrad Witz ness of texture that make them fully equiva-
to the end of the century. lent to panel paintings. In fact, lesser artists
often found inspiration in them for large-
Schongauer. The most accomplished of these scale pictures.
is Martin Schongauer (c. 1430-1491). the first The Temptation of St. Anthony (fig. 199). one
printmaker whom we also know as a painter, of Schongauer s most famous works, master-
and the first to gain international fame. fullv combines savage expressiveness and
Schongauer might be called the Rogier van formal precision, violent movement and or-
der Weyden of engraving. After learning the namental stability. The longer we look at it,
goldsmiths craft in his father's shop, he must the more we marvel at its range of tonal
have spent considerable time in Flanders, for values, the rhythmic beautv of the engraved
he shows a thorough knowledge of Rogier line, and the artist's abilitv to render every
art. His prints are filled with Rogierian motifs conceivable surface— spik\. scaly, leathery,
and expressive de\ ices and reveal a deep tem- furrv — mere I \ by varying the burin's attack
peramental affinit) to the great Fleming. Vet upon the plate. In this respect he was not to
Schongauer had his own impressive powers be surpassed In any later engraver.
THE
EARLY RENAISSANCE
IN ITALY
We do not yet fully understand the link be- self not a guarantee of artistic quality, but,
tween the great Flemish painters and the so- stirred by such civic enthusiasm, it provided a
cial, political, and cultural setting in which splendid opportunity for the emergence of
they worked to explain why the new style of creative talent and the coining of a new style
painting arose in Flanders about 1420. We worthy of the "new Athens."
have far more insight into the special cir- From the start, the visual arts were consid-
cumstances that help explain why Early Re- ered essential to the resurgence of the Flor-
naissance art was born in Florence at the entine spirit. Throughout antiquity and the
beginning of the fifteenth century, rather Middle Ages, they had been classed with the
than somewhere else or at some other time. crafts, or "mechanical arts." It cannot be by
In the years around 1400, Florence faced an chance that the first explicit statement claim-
acute threat to its independence from the ing a place for them among the liberal arts
powerful duke of Milan, who was trying to occurs about 1400 in the writings of the
bring all of Italy under his rule. He had al- Florentine chronicler Filippo Villani. A cen-
ready subjugated the Lombard plain and tury later, this claim was to win general accep-
most of the Central Italian city-states; only tance throughout the Western world. What
Florence remained a serious obstacle to his does it imply? The liberal arts were defined
ambition. The city put up a vigorous and suc- by a tradition going back to Plato and com-
cessful defense on the military, diplomatic, prised the intellectual disciplines necessary
and intellectual fronts. Of these three, the for a "gentleman's" education: mathematics
intellectual was by no means the least impor- (including musical theory), dialectics, gram-
tant. The duke had eloquent support as a new mar, rhetoric, and philosophy. The fine arts
Caesar, bringing peace and order to the were excluded because they were "handi-
country. Florence, in its turn, rallied public work" lacking a theoretical basis. Thus, when
opinion by proclaiming itself as the champion artists gained admission to this select group,
of freedom against unchecked tyranny. The the nature of theirwork had to be redefined.
humanist Leonardo Bruni concluded in They were acknowledged as people of ideas
1402-3)
Praise of the City of Florence (written in rather than mere manipulators of materials,
that it had assumed the same role of political and works of art came to be viewed more and
and intellectual leadership as Athens at the more as the visible records of their creative
time of the Persian Wars. The patriotic pride, minds. This meant that works of art need
the call to greatness, implicit in this image of not— indeed, should not— be judged by fixed
Florence as the "new Athens," aroused a deep standards of craftsmanship. Soon everything
response throughout the city, and just when that bore the imprint of a great master—
the forces of Milan threatened to engulf drawings, sketches, fragments, unfinished
them, the Florentines embarked on an am- pieces— was eagerly collected, regardless of
bitiouscampaign to finish the great artistic its incompleteness.
enterprises begun a century before, at the The outlook of artists underwent impor-
time of Giotto. The huge investment was it- tant changes as well. Now in the company of
218 • THE EARLY RENAISSANCE IN I"I'M )
w1 -~*
j
of the new style, retained the undisputed 1410-14 one of the niches on the exterior
for
leadership of the movement. To trace its of the church of Or San Michele, demand to
beginnings, we must discuss sculpture first, be compared not with the work of Nicola
for the sculptors had earlier and more plenti- Pisano but with the Reims Visitation (see
ful opportunities than the architects and fig. 166). The figures in both groups are ap-
painters to meet the challenge of the "new proximately lifesize, yet Nanni's give the im-
Athens." pression of being a good deal larger than
those at Reims. Their quality of mass and
Di Banco. The artistic campaign had opened monu mentality was quite beyond the range of
with the competition for the Baptistery doors, medieval sculpture. This is so, even though
and for some time it consisted mainly of Nanni depended less directly on ancient
sculptural projects. Ghiberti's trial relief, we models than had the sculptor of the Visitation
recall,does not differ significantly from the or Nicola Pisano. Only the heads of the sec-
International Gothic (see fig. 172). His admi- ond and third of the Coronati recall specific
ration for ancient art, evidenced by the torso examples of Roman sculpture. Nanni was ob-
of Isaac, merely recaptures what Nicola Pi- viously much impressed by their realism and
sano had done a century before (see fig. 170). their agonized expression (see fig. 94). His
A decade after the trial relief, we find that ability to retain the essence of both these qual-
this limited medieval classicism has been sur- ities indicates a new attitude toward ancient
passed by a somewhat younger artist, Nanni art, which unites classical form and content,
di Banco (c. 1384-1421). The Quattro Coronati no longer separating them as medieval classi-
or Four Saints (fig. 200), which he made about cists had done.
THE EARLY RENAISSANCE IN ITALY 219
lisfTthislittitude was Donatello (1386-1466), George can take off his clothes. Also unlike
the greatest sculptor of his time. We have any Gothic he can be taken away from
statue,
clearlv entered a new epoch when we look at his architectural setting and lose none of
his 5/. G eorge (fig. 201), carved in marble for his immense authority. His stance, with his
another niche ot the Church of Or San weight placed on the forward leg, conveys the
Michele around 1415.TTere is the firststatue idea of readiness for combat (the right hand
we liave seen since ancienTTimeT that can originally held a weapon). The controlled en-
stand__hi-U5erf; or, put another way,TKe~firsTto ergy of his bodv is echoed in his eyes, which
recapture the full meaning of classicaLron- seem to scan the horizon for the approaching
txqpposto (see p7 »Z). 1 he artisthas mastered enemy. For this St. George, slayer of dragons,
at one stroke the central achievement of an- is a proud and heroic defender of the "new
c. 1425-30.
203. (nght) Donatello. David,
Bronze, height 62 V 158.1 cmi. ;
<
fig. 200), with whom Luca may have worked 6 1 m). Sta. Croce, Florence
THE EARLY RESAISSASCE IX ITALY • 223
tors in the Florence of the 1440s. This gap be viewed as an attempt to reconcile two
was by a group of younger men from
filled contrasting attitudes toward death — the
the little hill towns to the north and east of retrospective, commemorative outlook of
Florence that had long supplied the city with the ancients (see pp. 99-100), and the Chris-
stonemasons and carvers; now, the most tian concern with afterlife and salvation.
gifted of them developed into artists of con- Bernardo's design is admirably suited to such
siderable importance. a program, balancing architecture and
sculpture within a compact and self-contained
Bernardo Rossellino. The oldest of these, framework.
Bernardo Rossellino (1409-1464), seems to
have begun as a sculptor and architect in Pollaiuolo. By 1450 the great civic campaign
Arezzo. He established himself in Florence of art patronage came to an end, and Floren-
about 1436, but received no commissions of tine artists had to depend mainly on private
real consequence until some eight years later, commissions. This put the sculptors at a dis-
when he was entrusted with the tomb of advantage because of the high costs involved
Leonardo Bruni (fig. 207). This great human- in their work. Since the monumental tasks
ist and statesman had played a vital part in were few, they concentrated on works of
the city's affairs ever since the beginning of moderate size and price for individual pa-
the century (see p. 217). When he died in
1444, he received a grand funeral "in the
manner of the ancients." His monument was
probably ordered by the city governments of
both Florence and Arezzo, where he and
Rossellino were born.
Although the Bruni monument is not the
earliest Renaissance tomb, nor even the ear-
liest large-scale tomb of a humanist, it can
i9h
it is
Medici Palace (our statuette also belonged to larity to its enduring charm. It was designed
tlit- Medici). as the center of a fountain for one of the Me-
THE EARLY RESAISSASCE IS ITALY • 225
did villas near Florence: the dolphin spouts a earlier and could be altered only in details,
jet of water, as if responding to the hug it has but its posed a difficult problem of
vast size
to endure. The term "putto" (plural, "putti") construction. Brunelleschi s proposals, al-
designates one of the nude, often winged though contrary to all traditional practice, so
children that accompany more weighty sub- impressed the authorities that this time he
jects in ancient art. They personify spirits won out over his rival. Thus the dome de-
(such as the spirit of love, in which case we serves to be called the first work of post-
call them cupids), usually in a merry and play- medieval architecture, as an engineering feat
ful way. They were reintroduced during the if not for style.
Early Renaissance, both in their original iden- In 1419, while he was working out the final
titv and as child angels. The dolphin associ- plans for the dome, Brunelleschi received his
ates Verrocchio's Putto with the classical kind first opportunity to create buildings entirely
(note the small putto and dolphin in fig. 92). of his own design. It came from the head of
Artistically, however, he is closer to Pol- the Medici family, one of the leading mer-
laiuolo's Hercules and Antaeus than to ancient chants and bankers of Florence, who asked
art, despite his larger size and greater sense him develop a new design for the church of
to
of volume. Again the forms fly out in every S. Lorenzo. The construction, begun in 1421,
direction from a central axis, but here the was often interrupted, so that the interior was
movement is graceful and continuous rather not completed until 1469, more than twenty
than jagged and broken. The stretched-out years after the architects death (the exterior
leg, the dolphin, and the arms and wings fit remains unfinished to this dav). Nevertheless,
into an upward spiral, making the figure the building in its present form is essentially
seem to revolve before our eves. what Brunelleschi had envisioned about
1420, and thus represents the first full state-
ment of his architectural aims (figs. 210, 21 1).
ARCHITECTURE The plan may not seem very novel, at first
glance. The unvaulted nave and transept link
Brunelleschi. Although Donatello was its it to Sta. Croce (see fig. 161). What dis-
greatest and most daring master, he did not tinguishes it is a new emphasis on symmetry
create the Earlv Renaissance stvle in sculp- and regularitv. The entire design consists of
ture by himself. The new architecture, on
all square units: four large squares form the
the other hand, did owe its existence to one choir, the crossing, and the arms of the tran-
man, Filippo Brunelleschi (1377-1446). Ten sept; four more are combined into the nave;
vears older than Donatello, he too had begun other squares, one-fourth the size of the large
his career as a sculptor. After failing to win ones, make up the aisles and the chapels at-
the competition of 1401-2 for the Bap- first tached to the transept (the oblong chapels
tistery doors. Brunelleschi reportedlv went to outside the aisles were not part of the original
Rome with Donatello. He studied the archi- design). We notice, however, some small de-
tectural monuments of the ancients, and viations fromscheme. The transept arms
this
seems to have been the first to take exact mea- are slighdy longer than they are wide, and the
surements of these structures. His discovery length of the nave is not four but four and
of scientific perspective (see pp. 221—22) may one-half times its width. These apparent in-
well have grown out of his search for an accu- consistencies are easilv explained: Brunelle-
rate method of recording their appearance schi in his scheme made no allowance for the
on paper. What else he did during this long thickness of the walls. In other words, he con-
"gestation period" we do not know, but in ceived S. Lorenzo as a grouping of abstract
1417—19 we again find him competing with "space blocks," the larger ones being simple
Ghiberti, this time for the job of building the multiples of the standard unit. Once we un-
Florence Cathedral dome (see fig. 162). Its derstand this, we realize how revolutionary
design had been established half a centurv he was, for his clearlv defined, separate space
226 • THE EARLY RENAISSANCE IN ITALY
Clearly then, Brunelleschi did not revive the remains of their monuments. What he found,
architectural vocabulary of the ancients out of and how he applied his theory to his own de-
mere antiquarian enthusiasm. The very qual- signs, we do not know for sure. He may have
ity that attracted him to the component parts been the first to think out what would be ex-
of classical architecture must have seemed, plicitly stated a few decades later in Leone
from the medieval point of view, their chief Battista Alberti's Treatise on Architecture: that
drawback: inflexibility. Not that the classical the mathematical ratios determining musical
vocabulary completely rigid; but the disci-
is harmony must also govern architecture, for
plined spirit of the Greek orders, which can be they recur throughout the universe and are
felt even in the most original Roman build- thus divine in origin.
ings, demands regularity and consistency, and Even Brunelleschi's faith in the universal
discourages sudden, arbitrary departures validity of harmonious proportions did not
from the not in tell him how to allot these ratios to the parts
THE EARLY RENAISSANCE L\ ITALY • 227
luitv of the wall surface. Thev are of two which occupies the site of an older basilican
The smaller ones sustain the arch over church, does not conform to the ideal shape
the huge center niche; the larger ones form of sacred buildings as denned in Alberti's
what is known as a colossal order spanning all Treatise on Architecture. There he explains that
three stories of the facade wall, balance _ the plan of such structures should be either
actly the horizontal and vertical impulses circular, or of a shape derived from the circle
witiiin the design. So intent was Alberti on (square, hexagon, octagon, and so forth),
stressing the inner cohesion of the facade that because the circle is the perfect, as well as
he inscribed the entire design within a square. the most natural, figure and therefore a di-
t* ::. ".!-: ugh is appreciable
it lower in he ght rect image of divine reason. This argument
than the nave of the church. (The effect of rests, of course, on Alberti's faith in the God-
die west wall protruding above the pediment given validity of mathematically determined
b ore disturbing in photographs than at proportions.
street leveL where it is nearlv invisible Alberti's ideal church demands a design so
:i -'.- ::-'• in sxact 'preview" >f the inte- harmonious that it would be a revelation of
rior,, where the same colossal order, the same divinitv. and would arouse pious contempla-
proportions, and the same triumphal-arch tion in the worshiper. It should stand alone,
motif reappear on the nave walls. elevated above the surrounding every dav life,
Aflbertfs facade design interprets his classi- and light should enter through openings
228 • JUL EARLY lit VAISSAN( I IN ITALY
W
its
both ancient temples and Christian churches, Lorenzo. Its inception, however, was the most
and relied instead on the Pantheon and simi- extraordinary of all. This new style was,
lar structures. launched single-handedly by a young genius
named Masaccio (1401-1428), who was only
Giuliano da Sangallo. When Alberti formu- twenty-one years old at the time he painted
lated these ideas in his treatise, about 1450, The Holy Trinity fresco in Sta. Maria Novella
he could not yet cite any modern example of (fig. 214). Because the Early Renaissance was
them. Toward the end of the century, after already well established in sculpture and ar-
his treatise became widelv known, the central- chitecture, Masaccio's task was easier than it
plan church gained general acceptance, and would have been otherwise, but his achieve-
between 1500 and 1525 it became a vogue ment remains stupendous nevertheless.
reigning supreme in High Renaissance archi- Here, as of the Merode Altarpiece,
in the case
tecture. is no coincidence that Sta. Maria
1 1 we seem plunge into a new environment.
to
delle Carceri in Prato (fig. 213), an early and But Masaccio's world is a realm of monu-
distinguished example of this trend, was mental grandeur rather than the concrete,
begun in 1485, the date of the first printed everyday realitv of the Master of Flemalle. It
edition ot AJberti's treatise. Its architect. seems hard to believe that only two years
THE EARLY RESA1SSASCE IN ITALY • 229
215. Left wall of Brancacci Chapel, with frescoes bv Masaccio. Sta. Maria del Carmine. Florence, c. 1427
before, in this city of Florence, Gentile da plicate the structure in three dimensions. It
Fabriano had completed The Adoration of the is, in short, the earliest example of a rational
Magi (see fig. 185), one of the masterpieces of picture space. For Masaccio, like Brunelle-
the International Gothic. What the Trinitx schi, it must have also been a symbol of the
fresco brings to mind is not the style of the universe ruled by divine reason. This barrel-
immediate past, but Giotto's art. with its sense vaulted chamber is no mere niche, but a deep
of large scale, its' compositional severity and space wherein the figures could move freely if
sculptural vo lume. Masaccio's renewed alle- thev wished. Thus, in Masaccio's Trinity, as
giance to Giotto was only a starting point, well as in Ghiberti's later relief panel The Story
however. For Giotto, bodv and drapery form of Jacob and Esau (see fig. 205), the picture
a single unit, as if both had the same sub- space is independent of the figures: thev in-
stance. In contrast, Masaccio's figures are habit it but do not createTake away theit.
"clothed nudes.'' like Donatello's, their drap- architecture and you take away the figures'
ery falling like real fabric. space. We could go even further and say that
The setting, equally up-to-date, reveals a geometric perspective depends not just on
complete command of Rrunelleschi's new ar- architecture, but on this particular kind of
chitecture and of scientific perspective. For architecture, so different from Gothic.
the first time in history, we are given all the The largest group of Masaccio's works to
data needed to measure the depth of this come down to us are frescoes in the Brancacci
painted interior, to draw its plan, and to du- Chapel in Sta. Maria del Carmine (fig. 215).
m
>.RLi' REXA.
Ill Trm^u Mm rjs m the -ctter tint; the have been in svmpathv with the
spirit of Early
here are exactly those employed by the Mas- whfle echoing the formal solemnity of
ter of FlemaDe and the Van Evcks. He con- their setting, are linked with each other and
rrob the flow of bght (which comes from the with us by a thoroughly human awareness.
right, where the window of the chapel is actu- But although we are admitted to their pres-
aDV located! and be uses atmospheric per- ence, thevdo not invite us to join them: like
spective in the subtly changing tones of the spectators in a theater, we are not allowed
"onstage." In Flemish painting, by contrast,
7" -...:/ .'<( y - -r. rr. re the picture space seems a direct extension of
• tres: : *.:<z .- Vi-.t :- the viewer's evervdav environment (compare
dos ahum to mergi r the weight and volume
of Giotto's figures nth the new functional The basic elements of our panel were al-
re- : : :. iz. t :: --:-.- A„ fur. t h. ret- ..- ready present in Masaccios Hoh Trinity fresco.
tihuih :a_Lr :eh -..r mpp*sto and dose inspec-
r
r Domenko must have studied it carefully, for
"•: r. re' ri_s ~. r. e :" ical fines scratched in the his St. John looks at us w hile pointing toward
c^ter :•- the •::.-:. r<".jt.:.v".;r.; the z~"~'\\z- the Madonna, repeating the glance and
tr:r.h_ ix:i ::'t::;.
h ntre from the head to the gesture of Masaccios Virgin. Domenicos
r.ee. ::' -_-.e ::.;-:: d leg. In accord with a perspective setting is worthy of the earlier
-hhr: zz z r : i :.". the narrative is conveyed master, although the slender proportions and
:' ..hrr.K ,h:: :
_-. ::t r. :
• : r..- architecture ire less
: :rr. jihes r.:> :r.rh.ert:e ~tth Like Masaccio. Domenko treats color as an
:s : t the htterhit:: rth. v .e integral part of his work, and the sacra conver-
gifted pafntfT from Venice, sazione is quite as remarkable for its color
ano. settled in Florence. We scheme as for its composition. The blond to-
• ~ .-
J.Z- r.e •
ii z r :oht:h nality, its harmonv of pink, light green, and
:•: rh hr< .. and he died in 1461)T train- white set off bv strategically placed spots of
zz l'.'. z . T . .. .> work. He must, however. red. blue, and vellow. reconciles the decora-
'232 • THE EARLY RENAISSANi 1 IN ITALY
tive brightness of Gothic panel painting with knew. In this sacra conversazione, the discovery
the demands of perspective space and natural has been applied to a far more complex set of
light. Ordinarily, a sacra conversazione is an in- forms, and integrated with Domenico's exqui-
door scene, but this one takes place in a kind site color sense. The influence of its distinc-
of loggia covered open-air arcade) flooded
(a tive tonality can bethroughout Florentine
felt
with sunlight streaming in from the right, as painting of the second half of the century.
we can tell from the cast shadow behind the
Madonna. The surfaces of the architecture Piero della Francesca. When Domenico Ve-
reflect the light so strongly that even the ne/iano settled in Florence, he had as an
shadowed areas glow with color. Masaccio assistant a young man from southeastern
had achieved a similar quality of light in one fuse any named Piero della Francesca(c. 1420-
of his paintings, which Domenico surely 1492), who became his most important disci-
THE EARLY RENAISSANCE IN ITALY 233
217. Piero della Francesca. The Discovery and Proving of the True Cross, c. 1460. Fresco. S. Francesco, Arezzo
pie and one of the truly great artists o f enters the scene at a low angle, in a direction
thf> parly Rpriaj ssanrp. Surprisingly enough, almost parallel to the picture plane, it serves
Piero left Florence after a few years, never both to define the three-dimensional char-
to return. The seem to have
Florentines acter of every shape and to lend drama
regarded his work
somewhat provincial
as to the narrative. But Piero's figures have a
and old-fashioned, and from this point of harsh grandeur that recalls Masaccio, or even
view they were right. Piero's style, even more Gio tto, morejjian-Uomenico. These men and
strongly than Domenico's, reflected the aims women seem to belong to a lost heroic race,
of Masaccio. Hg_ rptai iiejjjhis ^a llegianc e to beautiful and strong — and silent. Their inner
the founder of .Italian Renaissance painting life is conveyed by glances and gestures, not
throughout his long career. by facial expressions. Above all, they have a
Piero's most impressive achievement is the gravity, both physical and emotional, that
fresco cycle in the choir of S. Francesco in makes them seem kin to Greek sculpture of
Arezzo, wni ch he painted from about 14 52 to the Severe stvle (see fig. 70).
1459^ Its many scenes represent the legend of How did Piero arrive at these memorable
the True Cross (that is, the story of the cross images? Using his own testimony, we may say
used for Christ's crucifixion). The section in that they were born of his passion for per-
figure 217 shows the empress Helena, the spective. More than any artist of his day, Piero
mother of Constantine the Great, discovering believed in scientific perspective as the basis
the True Cross and the two crosses of the of painting. In a rigorousmathematical trea-
thieves who died beside Christ (all three had tise, the first of its kind, he demonstrated how
been hidden by enemies of the Faith). On the it applied to stereometric bodies and architec-
left, they are being lifted out of the ground, tural shapes, and to the human form. This
and on the right, the True Cross is identified mathematical outlook permeates all his work.
by its power to bring a dead youth back to life. When he drew a head, an arm, or a piece of
Piero's link with Domenico Veneziano is drapery, he saw t hem as variations or com -
readily apparent from his colors. The tonality pounds of spheres, cvlinder8 eoncs^-cubes . .
of this fresco, although less luminous than in and pyramids, thus en dowing the vis ible
Domenico's Madonna and Child with Saints, is world. wtfh-CTTinp c^J^prrnpf-r^r]^] rUwty and
similarly blond, evoking early morning sun- permanenc e of sTereom etrjc-bedies. In this
light in much the same way. Since the light respect, he may be called the earliest ancestor
234 • THE EARLY Rl NAISSANt I IN ITALY
this group, Botticelli did The Birth of Venus Roman times of the nude goddess in a pose
(fig. most famous picture. The
219), his derived from classical statues of Venus. More-
shallow modeling and the emphasis on out- over, the subject of the picture is clearly
line produce an effect of low relief rather meant to be serious, even solemn. How could
than of solid, three-dimensional shapes. We such images be justified in a Christian civiliza-
note, too, a lack of concern with deep space. tion, without subjecting both artist and pa-
The grove on the right-hand side of Venus, tron to the accusation of neo-paganism?
for example, an ornamental
functions as To understand this paradox, we must con-
screen. Bodies are attenuatedand drained of sider the meaning of our picture, and the
all weight and muscular power; they seem to general use of classical subjects in Early Re-
float even when thcv touch the ground. All naissance art. During th e Middle Ages^ classi-
this seems to denv the basic values of the cal form had become divorced from classical
founders of Earh Renaissance art, yet the subject matter. Artists could only draw upon
picture does not look medieval. The bodies. the ancient repertory of poses, gestures, ex-
ethereal though they be, retain their volup- pressions, and types by changing the identity
tuousness. They are genuine nudes enjoving of their sources: philosophers became apos-
full freedom of movement. tles, Orpheus turned into Adam, Hercules
THE EARLY RESAtSSASCE IX ITALY • 235
was now Samson. When medieval artists had linked to God bv a spiritual circuit continu-
occasion to represent the pagan gods, thev and descending, sothat all
ous1y~~a5Cfc tiding
Ages, moreover, classical myths were at times claime d that beauty, love, and bea titude^ be-
however remote' "te ing^ phases of this same /jrri " t w*» r *». one.
""
interpre ted didactically,
analogy, as allegories ot Christian precepts. Thus Neo-Platonists could invoke the "celes-
FTuropa aTxIucted G) the bull, tot instance, tial Venus" that is. the nude Venus born of
i
could be declared to signify the soul re- the sea. as in our picture) jmfM~han geablv
deemed bv Christ- But such pallid construc- with th eVirgin Marv. as the source of "di-
tions were hardlv an adequate excuse for _yjun lmi:(rneaning the cognition of divine
reinvesting the pagan gods with their ancient beautv). This celestial Venus, according to
beauty and strength. Ficino. dwells purelv in the sphere of Mind,
To fuse the Christian faith with ancient mv- while her twin, the ordinary Venus, engen-
thologv. rather than merelv relate them, re- ders"human love."
quired a more sophisticated argument. This Once we understand that Botticelli's pic-
was provided bv the Neo- Platonic philoso- ture has this quasi-religious meaning, it seems
phers, whose foremost representative. ^lar- less astonishing that the two wind gods on
s ilio Ficin o. enjoved tremendous prestige the left look so much like angels and that the
during the later vears of the fifteenth centurv personification of Spring on the right, who
and after. Ficino s thought was based as much welcomes Venus ashore, recalls the tradi-
on the mvsticism of Plotinus as on the authen- tional relation of St. John to the Saviour in
tic works of Plato. He belie ved that t he life the Baptism of Christ (compare fig. 143). As
of the universe, including human life, was baptism is a "rebirth in God." the birth of
219. Sir.dr The Birth of Venus, c. 1480. Tempera on can'. ; 5'85t '
_ "9 m).
Galleria degli Uffizi. Florence
236 • THE EARL) RE\Wss\ \< f IN ITALY
Venus evokes the hope for "rebirth" from Piero di Co simo. The Discovery of Honey (fig.
which the Renaissance takes its name. Thanks 220) by younger contemporary
Botticelli's
Flemings. Domenico Ghirlandaio (1449— his early development was decisively shaped
1494), another contemporary of Botticelli, by the impressions he received from locally
shared this attitude. His touching panel An available Florentine works and (we may as-
Old Man and His Grandson (fig. 221), though sume) by personal contact with Donatello.
lacking the pictorial delicacy of Flemish por- Next to Masaccio, Mantegna was the most im-
traits (compare fig. 188), reflects their precise portant painter of the Early Renaissance. He.
attention to surface texture and facial detail. too. was a precocious genius, fully capable at
But no Northern painter could have ren- seventeen of executing commissions of his
dered the tender relationship between the lit- own. Within the next decade, he reached ar-
tle boy and his grandfather with Ghirlandaio's tistic maturity. His greatest achievement, the
human understanding. Psychologicallv. our frescoes in theChurch of the Eremitani in
panel plainly bespeaks its Italian origin. Padua, was almost entirelv destroved bv acci-
)
222. Andrea Mantegna. St. James Led to His Execution, c. 1455. Fresco.
Ovetari Chapel, Church of the Eremitani, Padua. Destroyed 1944
dental bombing during World War II. The of ancient literature. No Florentine painter
scene we reproduce in figure 222, St. James or sculptor of the time could have transmit-
Led to His Execution, is the most dramatic of ted such an attitude to him. The same desire
the cycle because of its daring "worm's-eye for authenticity can be seen in the costumes
view" perspective, which is based on the be- of the Roman soldiers (compare fig. 97); it
holder's actual eye-level (the central vanishing even extends to the use of "wet" drapery pat-
point below the bottom of the picture,
is Romans from Classical
terns, inherited by the
somewhat to the right of center). The archi- Greek sculpture (see fig. 72). But the tense
tectural setting consequently looms large, as figures, lean and firmly constructed, and
in Masaccio's Trinity fresco (see fig. 214). Its especially their dramatic interaction, clearly
main feature, a huge triumphal arch, al- derive from Donatello. Mantegna's subject
though not a copy of any known Roman mon- hardly demands this agitated staging. The
ument, looks so authentic in every detail that saint, on the way to his execution, blesses a
it might as well be. paralytic and commands him to walk. Many
Here Mantegnas devotion to the visible re- of the bystanders express by glance and ges-
mains of antiquity, almost like an archaeolo- ture how deeply the miracle has stirred them.
gist's, shows his close association with the The large crowd generates an extraordinary
learned humanists at the University of Padua, emotional tension that erupts into real physi-
who had the same reverence for every word cal violence on the far right, as the great spi-
THE EARLY RENAISSANCE IS ITALY • 239
raJ curl of the banner echoes the turbulence barefoot on holy ground (see p. 43). The con-
below. tours in Bellini's work are less britde than
those in Mantegna's, the colors are softer and
Bellini. If Mantegna was a master of power- the light more glowing. Bellini's interest in
ful drama, his brother-in-law in Venice, Gio- light-filled landscape testifies to the
lvrical,
vanni Bellini (c. 1431-1516), was a poet of impact of the great Flemish painters; thev
light and color. Bellini was slow to mature; his were much admired in Venice, which had
finest pictures, such as St. Francis in the Desert strong trade links with the North. Bellini
(fig. 223), date from the final decades of the surelv knew their work, and he shares their
centurv and later. The saint is here so small in tender regard for every detail of nature.
comparison to the setting that he seems al- Unlike the Northerners, however, he can de-
most incidental, yet his mystic rapture before fine the beholder's spatial reladonship to the
the beauty of the visible world sets our own landscape. The rock formations of the
response to the view that is spread out before foreground are structurally clear and firm,
us. ample and intimate at the same time. He like architecture rendered by the rules of sci-
has left his wooden pattens behind and stands entific perspecti%e.
223. Giovanni Bellini. St. Francis in the Desert, c. 1480. Oil and tempera on pan
49x55 7/«" (124.5 x 141.9 cm). The Frick Collection, New York (Copvright)
24(1 •
fHE EARLY RE\Mss\\( /• /.\ ITALY
224. Pietro Perugino. The Delivery of the Keys. 1482. Fresco. Sistine Chapel, The Vatican, Rome
It used to be taken for granted that the High while in other respects it represented a depar-
Renaissance followed upon the Early Renais- ture. Certainly the tendency to view the artist
yet-perfect High Renaissance," any more At the same time, their faith in the divine
than an Archaic Greek statue can be satisfac- origin of inspiration led artists to rely on sub-
torily viewed from a classical standpoint. Nor jective, rather than objective, standards of
is it very useful to insist that the subsequent truth and beauty. If Early Renaissance artists
post-classical phase, whether Hellenistic or felt bound by what they believed to be univer-
"Late Renaissance," must be decadent. The sally valid rules, such as the numerical ratios
image of the ballistic curve has now been of musical harmony and the laws of scientific
abandoned, and we have gained a less as- perspective, their High Renaissance suc-
sured, but also less arbitrary, estimate of cessors were less concerned with rational
we still call the
what, for lack of another term, order than with visual effectiveness. They
High Renaissance. evolved a new drama and a new rhetoric to
In some fundamental respects, we shall engage the emotions of the beholder, whether
find that the High Renaissance was indeed sanctioned or not by classical precedent. In
the culmination of the Early Renaissance, fact, the works of the great High Renaissance
241! •
THE HIGH Rt:.\MS.s.\\( 1 IN ITALY
Leonardo da Vinci
semidarkness of the grotto, enveloped in a ures? Perhaps the kev is the interplay of
moisture-laden atmosphere that delicately gestures. Protective, pointing, blessing, they
veils theirforms. This fine haze (called sfu- tellingly convey the wonderment of St. John's
mato), more pronounced than similar effects recognition of Christ as the Saviour, but with
in Flemish and Venetian painting, lends a pe- a tenderness that raises the scene above the
culiar warmth and intimacy to the scene. It merely doctrinal.
also creates a remote, dreamlike qualitv, and
makes the picture seem a poetic vision rather The Last Supper. Despite its originality. The
than an image of reality. The subject of the does not yet differ clearlv in
Virgin of the Rocks
infant St. John adoring the Infant Christ conception from the aims of the Early Renais-
in the presence of the Virgin and an angel sance. Leonardo's The Last Supper (fig. 226),
THE HIGH RENAISSANCE IN ITALY • 243
226. Leonardo da Vinci. The Last Supper, c. 1495—98. Tempera wall mural,
15'2"x28'10" (4.62x8.79 m). Sta. Maria delle Grazie, Milan
later by a dozen years, has al ways been recog- framework of the scene almost entirely in re-
nized as the first classic statement of the ideals lation to the figures, rather than as a pre-
of ~High~Renajg<;flnrr p-""*'"p Unhappily, the existing entity. How vital this relationship is
famq us__rpiiral began to deteriorate a few can be seen by covering the upper third of the
years after its completion. TTie artist wa s dis- picture. The composition then takes on the
satisfied with the limitations of the traditional character of a frieze, and the grouping of the
fresco technique, and experimented in an oil- aposdes is less clear. Above all, the calm tri-
tempera medium that did not adhere well to angular shape of Christ becomes merely pas-
the wall 1_V^e thus need some effort to imagine sive, instead of acting as a physical and
tion, and the architecture had merely a sup- rendering of the biblical narrative, for he
porting role from the start. Hence, it is the crowded together all the disciples on the far
very opposite of the rational pictorial space of side of the table, in a space quite inadequate
the Early Renaissance. The central vanishing for so many people. He clearly wanted to con-
point, which governs our view of the interior, dense his subject physically by the compact,
is located behind the head of Christ in the monumental grouping of the figures, and
exact middle of the picture, and thus be- spiritually by presenting several levels of
comes charged with symbolic significance. meaning at one time. The gesture of Christ is
Equally plain is the symbolic function of the one of submission to the divine will, and of
main opening in the back wall: its projecting offering. It is a hint at Christ's main act at the
pediment acts as the architectural equivalent Last Supper, the institution of the Eucharist:
of a halo. We thus tend to see the perspective "And as_ they were_eajirig, Jesus took bread
244 THE UK. /I lit \ l/ss.\ \( I IN ITALY
. and gave
. . it Take
to the discipleSr-ancLsaid, man's soul" through gestures and movements
and eat; this is nn body. And he look the cup of the limbs. This dictum is to be interpreted
. . . saying, Drink ye all of it; for this is my as referring not to momentary emotional
blood . . .
." The apostles do not merely react states but to the inner life as a whole.
to these words. Each of them reveals his own
personality, his own relationship to the Sav- Mona duchy of Milan fell
Lisa. In 1499, the
iour. For example, although Judas is not to the French,and Leonardo, after brief trips
segregated from the rest, his dark, defiant to Mantua and Venice, returned to Florence.
profile sets him apart
enough. They ex- well He must have found the cultural climate very
emplify what the in one of his
artist wrote different from his recollections of it. The
notebooks, that the highest and most difficult Medici had been expelled, and the cit\ was
aim of painting is to depid "the intention of briefly a republic again, until their return.
THE HIGH RENAISSANCE IN ITALY 245
Z>
There Leonardo painted most famoushis
portrait, the Muna Lisa (fig. The delicate
227).
sfumato of The Virgin of the Rocks is here so
perfected that it seemed miraculous to the
artist's contemporaries. The forms are built
blurs her character. On ce ag ain_the arti st has while the ext erior, with its clu ster "f dgrfv^i is
broughxtwx^ opposites into harmonious bal- more monumenta than any l earlierjjfi^enth-
ance. The smile, also, may be read in two centurv building. In conception, this design
ways: as the echo of a momentary mood, and stands halfway between the dome of Florence
as a timeless, symbolic expression, akin to the Cathedral and the most ambitious structure
"Archaic smile" of the Greeks (see fig. 66). of The sixteenth century, the new basilica of
The Mono Lisa seemingly embodies a qualitv St. Peter's m Rome (compare figs. 162, 229,
of maternal tenderness, which was to Leo- and 230). It gives evidence, too, of Leonardo's
nardo the essence of womanhood. Even the close contact during the 1490s with the archi-
landscape in the background, composed tect Donato Bramante (1444—1514), who was
mainly of rocks and water, suggests elemental then also working for the duke of Milan. Af-
generative forces. ter Milan fell to the French. Bramante went to
Rome where, during the last fifteen years of
Architecture. Contemporary sources attest his life, he became the creator of High Re-
that Leonardo was esteemed as an architect. naissance architecture.
Actual building seems to have concerned
him less, however, than problems of structure
Bramante
and design. The numerous architectural proj-
ects in his drawings were intended, for the St. Peter's. Most of the great achievements
most part, to remain on paper. Nonetheless. that made Rome the center of Italian art dur-
these sketches, especially those of his Mila- ing the first quarter of the sixteenth century
nese period, have great historic importance, belong to the decade 1503—13, which corre-
for only inthem can we trace the transition sponded to the papacv of Julius II. It was he
from the Early to the High Renaissance in who decided to replace the old basilica of St.
David. The unique qualities of Michelangelo's artist was twenty-six, the huge figure was de-
art are fully present in his David (fig. 231), the signed to be placed high above the ground, on
earliest monumental statue of the High Re- one of the buttresses of Florence Cathedral.
naissance. Commissioned in 1501, when the The city fathers chose instead to put it in front
J
248 •
THE HIGH RENAISSANCE IS IIM)
232. Interior of the Sistine Chapel showing Michelangelo's ceiling fresco. The Vatican, Rome
of the Palazzo Vecchio, the fortresslike palace with pent-up energy, he faces the world like
of the Medici near the center of town, as the Donatello's St. George (see fig. 201). although
civic-patriotic s\ mbol of the Florentine repub- his nudity links him as well to the older mas-
lic (it has since been replaced by a modern ter's bronze David (see fig. 203). The stvle of
233. Michelangelo. Tlie Creation of Adam, portion of the Sistine Ceiling. 1508—12. Fresco
muscular bodies of Hellenistic sculpture. the Creation of the World to the Drunken-
Their heroic scaleT their superhuman beauty ness of Xoah (at the far end of the chapel in
and pow er, and the swelli ng Volum e of their our illustration).
forrhsKeramp part of Michelangelo's own The theological scheme of these scenes is
st'vlejmd, through him, of Renaissan ce art in accompanied by a complex arrav of nude
general. The David could never be taken for youths, prophets, sibyls (see figs. 5, 6), medal-
an ancient statue, however. In Hellenistic stat- lions, and scenes in the spandrels. This rich
ues (compare fig. 77) the body "acts out" the program has not been fullv explained, but we
spirit's agony, i#hi\e-the-Da.vid. at once . calm know that it links early history and the com-
andtense, shows the action-in- repos e so char- ing of Christ, the beginning of time and its
acteristic <ai Michelangelo. end. We do not know how much respon-
sibilitv Michelangelo had for the program,
The Sistine Chapel. Soon after, Michelan- but he was not a man to submit to dictation.
gelo was called to Rome
by Pope Julius II, the The subject matter of the ceiling, moreover,
greatest and most ambitious of Renaissance fits his cast of mind so perfectly that his own
popes, for whom he designed an enormous desires cannot have conflicted stronglv with
tomb. After a few vears, the pope changed his those of his patron. What greater theme
mind and set the reluctant artist to work in- could he wish than the Creation of the World,
stead on the ceiling fresco of the Sistine Cha- the Fall of Man, and our ultimate reconcilia-
pel (fig. 232). Driven bv his desire to resume tion with the Lord?
work on the tomb, as well as by pressure from The Creation of Adam (fig. 233) must have
Julius Michelangelo completed the entire
II, stirred Michelangelo's most
imagination
ceiling in four years, 1508-12. He produced deeply. It shows not the phvsical molding of
a masterpiece of truly epochal importance. Adam's body but the passage of the divine
The ceiling is a huge organism with hundreds spark— the soul— and thus achieves a dra-
of figures rhvthmically distributed within the matic juxtaposition of Man and God un-
painted architectural framework, dwarfing rivaled by any other artist. The dynamism of
fig. 224) bv its size, and
the earlier murals (see Michelangelo's design contrasts the earth-
still more bv
compelling inner unitv. In the
its bound Adam and the figure of God rushing
central area, subdivided bv five pairs of through the sky. This relationship becomes
girders, are nine scenes from Genesis, from even more meaningful when we realize that
HE HIGH RENAISSANCE IX ITALY
Adam strains not only toward his Creator but ceive with shocking directness how the mood
also toward Eve, whom he sees, yet unborn, in has changed as we turn from the radiant vi-
the shelter of the Lord's left arm. Michelan- of Michelangelo's ceiling fresco to the
tality
gelo has been called a poor colorist, quite un- somber vision of his Lastjudgment. The
justly as the recently undertaken cleaning of Blessed and Damned alike huddle together in
the frescoes has revealed. The Creation of Adam tight clumps, pleading for mercy before a
shows the bold, intense hues typical of the wrathful God. Straddling a cloud just below
whole ceiling. The range of Michelangelo's the Lord is the Apostle Bartholomew, holding
palette is astonishing. Contrary to what had a human skin to represent his martyrdom by
been thought, the heroic figures have any- flaying (fig. 234). The face on that skin, how-
thing but the quality^of- painted sculpture. ever, is not the saint's but Michelangelo's own.
Full of life, the\' act out th£ic-epic roles in In this grimly sardonic self-portrait, so well
illusionisuc "windows" that puncture the ar- hidden that it was recognized only in modern
chitectural Michelangelo does not
setting. times, the artist has left his personal con-
simplv color the areas within the contours but fession of guilt and unworthiness.
builds up his forms from broad andjvigorous
brushstrokes in the tradition of Giotto and The Medici Chapel. The interval between
Masaccio. the Sistine Ceiling and The Last Judgment coin-
cides with the papacies of Leo X (1513-21)
The Last Judgment. When Michelangelo re- and Clement VII (1523-34). Boih_-j*ere
turned to the Sistine Chapel in 1534, over members of the Medici family and preferred
twenty years later, the Western world was to e mploy~lJi cheTangelo in Florence. His~a~C-
enduring the spiritual and political crisis of tivities centered 75rr-ST"L~orenzo, the~"Medici
the Reformation, (see pp. 281—82). We per- church^~wfiere^Le o X decidedto^ulSIa cha-
pel to house four tombs. Michelangelo took
early charge of this project and worked on it
for fourteen years, completing the architec-
ture and two of the tombs. The design of the
tomb of Giuliano (fig. 235) still shows some
kinship with such Early Renaissance tombs as
that of Leonardo Bruni (see fig. 207), but the
differences weigh more heavily. There is no
inscription, and the effigy has been replaced
bv two allegorical figures: Day on the right,
Night on the left. The statue of Giuliano, in
classical military garb, bears no resemblance
237. Raphael. The School of Athens. 1510—11. Fresco. Stanza della Segnatura. Vatican Palace. Rome
Bramante had planned his dome as a few domes built between 1600 and 1900 fail
projecting buttresses accented by double col- surelv to the opposite tvpe: the artist as a per-
umns, the ribs, the raised curve of the cupola, sori_of_the--werid. The contrast between the
the tall lantern— all contribute to this ver- two was as clear to their contemporaries as it
ticalitv. Michelangelo borrowed both the is to us. Although each had his partisans, they
double-shell construction and the Gothic pro- enjoyed equal fame. Today our sympathies
file from the Florence Cathedral dome (see are less evenlv divided:
fig. 162), but to immensely different effect.
In the room the women come and go
The smooth planes of Brunelleschi's dome Talking of Michelangelo.
give no hint of the internal stresses, while Mi- (T. S. Eliot)
chelangelo finds a sculptured shape for these
contending forces and relates them to those So do a lot of us, including the authors of
in the rest of the building. (The impulse of historical novels and fictionalized biogra-
the paired colossal pilasters below is taken up phies, while Raphael is usually discussed only
by the double columns of the drum, contin- by historians of art. The younger masters ca-
ues m the ribs, and culminates in the lantern.) reer is too much a success story, his work too
The logic ol this design is so persuasive that marked by seemingly effortless grace, to
THE HIGH RENAISSANCE IN ITALY 253
match the tragic heroism of Michelangelo. As than in the early ones from Perugia and Flor-
an innovator, Raphael seems to contribute ence. At the time Michelangelo began to paint
less than Leonardo, Bramante, and Michelan- the Sistine Ceiling, Julius II summoned the
gelo, the three artists whose achievements younger artist to Rome and commissioned
were basic to his. Nevertheless, he s the cen-
i , him to decorat e a series of roo ms in the Vati-
tral painter of the High Renaissance. Our c an Palace The first room, the Stanza della
coTlc^pTIoTroTthe entire style restsmore on Segnatura, may have housed the pope's li-
his work than on any other master's. brarv, and Raphael's cycle of frescoes on its
The genius of Raphael was a unique power walls and ceiling refers to the four domains of
of synthesis that enabled him to merge the learning: theology, philosophy, law, and the
qnaliii<»fr-^pf Leonardo and Michel angelo. arts.
perfect embodiment of the classical spirit of austere idealism of The School of Athens. Its
the High Renaissance. Its subject is "the Athe- composition recalls The Birth of Venus (see
nian school of thought," agroup of famous fig. 219) by Botticelli, a picture Raphael knew
Greek philosophers gathereaaround Plato from his Florentine days; yet their very re-
and Aristotle, each in a characteristic pose or semblance emphasizes their profound dissim-
activity. Raphael must have already seen the ilarity. Raphael's full-bodied, dynamic figures
Sistine Ceiling, then nearing completion. He take on their expansive spiral movement
evidently owes to Michelangelo the expressive from the vigorous contrapposto of Galatea,
energy, the physical power, and the dramatic whereas in Botticelli's picture, the move-
grouping of his figures. Raphael has not sim- ment is not generated by the figures but
ply borrowed Michelangelo's repertory of imposed on them from without, so that it
gestures and poses. He has absorbed it into never detaches itself from the surface of the
his own style, and thereby given it different canvas.
meaning.
Body and spirit, action and emotion, are
Giorgione
now balanced harmoniously, and every mem-
ber of this great assembly plays his role with The distinction between Early and High Re-
magnificent, purposeful clarity. The total naissance art, so marked in Florence and
conception of The School of Athens suggests the Rome, is far less sharp in Venice. Giorgione
spirit of Leonardo's The Last Supper (see (1478-1510), the first Venetian painter to be-
fig. 226) rather than the Sistine Ceiling. long to the new, sixteenth century, left the
This holds true of the way Raphael makes orbit of Giovanni Bellini only during the final
each philosopher reveal "the intention of his years of his short career. Among his very few
soul," distinguishes the r elatio ns amo ng indi- mature works, The Tempest (fig. 239) is both
vidualsand groups, and links them in formal the most individual and the most enigmatic.
_
rhythm. Also T7eortardesque ir"tTie central- Our first glance may show us litde more than
ized, symmetrical design, and the interdepen- a particularly charming reflection of Bellin-
dence of the figures and their architectural esque qualities, familiar from the St. Francis
setting. With its lofty dome, barrel vault, and in the Desert (see fig. 223). The difference is
colossal statuary, Raphael's classical edifice one of mood, and in The Tempest this mood is
shares far more of the compositional burden subtlv, pervasively pagan. Bellini's landscape
than the hall of The Last Supper. Inspired by is meant to be seen through the eyes of St.
Bramante, it seems like an advance view of Francis, as a piece of God's creation. Gior-
the new St. Peter's. Its geometric precision gione's figures, by contrast, do not interpret
and grandeur bring to a climax the
spatial the scene for us. Belonging themselves to
tradition begun by Masaccio, continued by nature, they are passive witnesses of the
Domenico Veneziano and Piero della Fran- thunderstorm about to engulf them. Who are
cesca, and transmitted to Raphael by his they? So far, the young soldier and the nude
teacher Perugino. mother with her baby have refused to disclose
their identity, and the subject of the picture
Galatea. Raphael never again set so splendid remains unknown. The present title is a con-
an architectural stage. To create pictorial fession of embarrassment, but it is not inap-
space, he relied increasingly on the move- propriate, for the only "action" is that of the
ment of human figures, rather than perspec- tempest. Whatever its intended meaning, the
tive vistas. In the Galatea of 1513 (fig. 238), scene is like an enchanted idyll, a dream of
the subject is again classical— the beautiful pastoral beauty soon to be swept away. Only
nymph Galatea, vainly pursued by the cyclops poets had hitherto captured this air of nostal-
Polyphemus, belongs to Greek mythology— gic reverie. Now, it entered the repertory of
but here the exuberant and sensuous aspect the painter. Thus, The Tempest initiates what
of antiquity is celebrated, in contrast to the was to become an important new tradition.
THE HIGH RESAISSASCE IS ITALY -255
in The Tempest. He bequeathed this task to Ti- Bacchanal. Titian's Bacchanal of about 1518
tian (1488 90-1576). who was decisively in- (fig. 240) is franklv pagan, inspired bv an
fluenced by Giorgione and surelv worked in ancient author's description of such a revel.
J
HF HIGH RF.S.\1S\.\\( F IN ITM)
The landscape, rich in contrasts of cool and of the natural world, inhabited not by ani-
warm tones, has all the poetrv of Giorgione's mated statues but bv beings of flesh and
The Tempest, but the figures are of another blood. The figures of the Bacchanal are ideal-
breed. Active and muscular, thev move with a izedbevond evervday reality just enough to
joyous freedom that recalls Raphael's Galatea persuade us that thev belong to a long-lost
(see fig. 238). Bv this time, manv of Ra- golden age. Thev invite us to share their bliss-
phael's compositions had been engraved (see ful state in a way that makes Raphael's Galatea
fig. and from these reproductions Ti-
368), seem cold and remote by comparison.
tian became familiar with the High Renais-
sance in Rome, which he was soon to absorb Portraits. Titian's prodigious gifts made him
at firsthand. A number of the celebrants in the most sought-after portraitist of the age.
his Bacchanal also reflect the influence of The dreamv intimacy of Man with a Glove
classical art. approach to antiquity,
Titian's (fig. 241). with its soft outline and deep
however, is very different from Raphael's. He shadows, still reflects the stvle of Giorgione.
visualizes the realm of classical myths as part Lost in thought, the voting man seems quite
THE HIGH RENAISSANCE IN ITALY • 257
of an interval between two high points, much of the utmost refinement that emphasized
as the Renaissance viewed the Middle Ages. grace, variety, and virtuoso display at the ex-
According to such an interpretation, this in- pense of content, clarity, and unity. This taste
terim was dominated by shallow imitators of for affected elegance and bizarre conceits
the great masters of the previous generation. necessarily appealed to a small but sophisti-
Today we have a far more positive attitude cated audience, but in a larger sense Man-
toward the artists who reached maturity after nerism signifies a major change in Italian
1520, and generally discard the term "Late culture. The quest for originality as a projec-
Renaissance" as misleading, but we have yet tion of the individual's personality had a liber-
to agree on a name for the eighty years ating influence that gave artists license to
separating the High Renaissance from the explore their imaginations freely. This inves-
Baroque. We have run into this difficulty be- tigation of new modes was ultimately healthy,
fore, in dealing with the problem of Late although the style itself came to be regarded
Classical versus Hellenistic art (see pp. 85- as decadent. Given such subjective freedom,
89). Our dilemma is that any label implies it hardly surprising that Mannerism pro-
is
that the period has only a single style, but duced extreme personalities which today
nobody has succeeded in defining one for the seem the most "modern" of all sixteenth-
years 1520-1600. This period was a time of century artists.
Rosso. The first signs of disquiet in the High by one less overtly anticlassical, less laden
Renaissance appear shordy before 1520 in with subjective emotion, but equally far re-
Florence. Art had been left in the hands of a moved from the confident, stable world of the
younger generation that could refine but not High Renaissance. The Self-Portrait (fig. 244)
further develop the styles of the great innova- by Parmigianino (1503—1540) suggests no
torswho had spent their early careers there. psychological turmoil. The artist's appear-
Having absorbed the lessons of the leading ance is bland and well groomed, veiled bv a
masters at one remove, the first generation of delicate Leonardesque sfumato. The distor-
Mannerists was free to apply High Renais- tions, too, are objective, not arbitrary, for the
sance formulas to a new aesthetic divorced picture records what Parmigianino saw as
from its previous content. By 1521, Rosso he gazed convex mir-
at his reflection in a
Fiorentino (1495-1540), the most eccentric ror. Why was he so fascinated by this view
member of this group, expressed the new at- "through the looking glass"? Earlier painters
titude with full conviction in The Descent from who used the mirror as an aid to observa-
the Cross (fig. 243). Nothing has prepared us tion had "filtered out" the distortions (see
for the shocking impact of this latticework, of fig. 188), except when the mirror image was
spidery forms set against the dark sky. The contrasted with a direct view of the same
figures are agitated yet rigid, as if frozen by a scene (see figs. 189. 190). But Parmigianino
sudden, icy blast. Even the draperies have substitutes his painting for the mirror itself,
and became "a bearded, long-haired, ne- (see fig. 242). Its leading exponent. Jacopo
glected, and almost savage or wild man." Cer- Tintoretto (1518-1594). was an artist of
tainlv his strange imagination is evident in his prodigious energy and inventiveness, who
most famous work. The Madonna with the Long combined qualities of both its anticlassical
Xeck (fig. 245). painted after he had returned and elegant phases in his work. He report-
to hisnative Parma after several vears in edly wanted "to paint like Titian and to de-
Rome. He had been deeplv impressed with sign like Michelangelo." but his relationship
the rhvthmic grace of Raphael's art. but to these two masters, though real enough,
he has transformed the older master's fig- was as peculiar as Parmigianino's was to
ures into a remarkable new breed. Their Raphael. Tintoretto's last major work. The
limbs, elongated and ivorv-smooth. move Last Supper (fig. 247 is also his most spec-
1.
with effortless languor, embodving an ideal tacular. This canvas denies in every possible
of beauty as remote from nature as any wav the classic values of Leonardo's version
Bvzantine figure. Their setting is equallv (see fig. 226). painted almost exacdv a century
arbitrary, with a gigantic (and apparendv before. Christ, to be sure, still occupies the
purposeless) row of columns looming behind center of the composition, but now the table is
the tiny figure of a prophet. Parmigianino placed at a sharp angle to the picture plane in
seems determined to prevent us from mea- exaggerated perspective. His small figure in
suring anvthing in this picture bv the stan- the middle distance is distinguishable mainlv
dards of ordinary experience. Here we have bv the brilliant halo. Tintoretto has gone to
approached that "artificial" stvle for which great lengths to give the event an every dav
the term Mannerism was originallv coined. setting, cluttering the scene with attendants,
The Madonna with the Long Xeck is a vision of containers of food and drink, and domestic
unearthlv perfection, its cold elegance no animals. There are also celestial attendants
less compelling than the violence in Rosso's that converge upon Christ just as He offers
Descent. His bodv and blood, in the form of bread and
wine, to the disciples. The smoke from the
Bronzino. Keved to a sophisticated, even blazing oil lamp miraculously turns into
rarefied taste, the elegant phase of Italian clouds of angels, blurring the distinction be-
Mannerism appealed particularlv to aristo- tween the natural and the supernatural and
cratic patrons like the grand duke of Tuscanv turning the scene into a magnificendy orches-
and the king of France, and soon became trated vision. Tintoretto's main concern has
international. The stvle produced splendid been to make visible the miracle of the Eucha-
portraits, like that of Eleanora of Toledo rist—the transubstantiation of earthly into di-
(fig. 246). the wife of Cosimo I de' Medici, bv vine food — the institution central to Catholic
his court painter Agnolo Bronzino (1503— doctrine, which was reasserted during the
5 1 - The sitter here appears as the member Counter Reformation. He barelv hints at the
of an exalted social caste, not as an indivi- human drama of Judas' betrayal, so impor-
dual personalitv. Congealed into immobility tant to Leonardo: Judas can be seen isolated
behind the barrier of her lavishly ornate on the near side of the table, but his role is so
costume. Eleanora seems more akin to Par- insignificant that he could almost be mistaken
migianino's Madonna (compare the hands) for an attendant.
than to ordinarv flesh and blood.
El Greco. The last, and todav most famous.
Mannerist painter was also a member of
Mannerism in Venice
the Venetian school for a while. Domenikos
Tintoretto. Mannerism did not appear in Theotocopoulos (1541-1614), nicknamed El
Venice until the middle of the centurv: there Greco, came from Crete, which was then un-
it became allied to the visionary tenden- der Venetian rule. His earliest training must
cies alreadv manifest in Titian's late work have been from a Cretan artist still working in
262 • MA WERISM AND OTHER TRENDS
major works, and the only one for a public works in salvation and of the saints as inter-
chapel, is The Burial of Count Orgaz (fig. 248) cessors with heaven. This huge canvas honors
in the church of Santo Tome. The program, a medieval benefactor so pious that St. Ste-
which was given at the time of the commis- phen and St. Augustine miraculously ap-
sion, emphasizes the traditional role of good peared at his funeral and themselves lowered
MANNERISM AND OTHER TRENDS • 265
the body into its grave. The burial took place which felt as a nervous exaltation occurring
is
the picture. The beholder, then, perceives His masterpiece, St. Matthew and the Angel
three levels of reality: the grave itself, sup- (fig. 249), must be contemporary with Par-
posedly set into the wall at eye level and migianino's The Madonna with the Long Neck
closed by an actual stone slab; the contempo- (see fig. 245). The broad, fluid manner of
rary reenactment of the miraculous burial; painting reflects the dominant influence of
and the vision of celestial glory witnessed by Titian, but the great Venetian master would
some of the participants. El Greco's task here never have placed the Evangelist in so thor-
was analogous to Masaccio's in his Trinity oughly domestic an environment. The hum-
mural (see fig. 214). But whereas the Renais- ble scene in the background shows the saint's
sance master creates the illusion of reality milieu to be lowly indeed, and makes the
through his command of rational pictorial presence of the angel doubly miraculous.
space which appears continuous with ours. El This tendency to visualize sacred events
Greco summons an apparition that remains among ramshackle buildings and simple peo-
essentially separate from its architectural ple had been characteristic of "Late Gothic"
surroundings. painting, and Savoldo must have acquired it
El Greco has created a spiritual counter- from that source. The nocturnal lighting, too,
part to his imagination, in contrast to Coun- recalls such Northern pictures as the Nativity
ter Reformation images of saints, which were by Geertgen tot Sint Jans (see fig. 193). But
given a convincing physical presence. Even the main source of illumination in Geertgen's
passage is alive with his peculiar religiosity, panel is the divine radiance of the Child,
266 • MAXXERISM AXD OTHER TRENDS
for his similarly magic and intimate effect. present title only after he had been sum-
moned by the religious tribunal of the In-
Veronese. In the work of Paolo Veronese quisition on the charge of filling his picture
(1528-1588), North Italian realism attains with "buffoons, drunkards, Germans, dwarfs,
the splendor of pageantry. Born and trained and similar vulgarities" unsuited to its sacred
in Verona, Veronese became, after Tinto- character. The tribunal thought the painting
retto, the most important painter in Venice. represented the Last Supper, but Veronese's
Both found favor with the public, though testimony never made clear whether it was
they were utterly unlike each other in style. the Last Supper, or the Supper in the House
Proto-Baroque
to Italyabout 1555 for further training; he Woman. Completed 1583. Marble, height 13'6"
(4.11 m). Loggia dei Lanzi, Florence
staved and became, under the Italianized
name of Giovanni Bologna, the most im-
portant sculptor in Florence during the last
third of the century. His over-lifesize marble day, who finally settled on The Rape of the
group, The Rape of the Sabine Woman (fig. 254), Sabine Woman as the most suitable tide. Here,
won particular acclaim, and still has its place then, is another artist who is noncommittal
of honor near the Palazzo Yecchio. about subject matter, although his unconcern
Actually, the artist designed the group with had a different motive than Veronese's. Like
no specific subject in mind, to silence those Cellini's, Bologna's purpose was virtuoso dis-
critics who doubted his ability as a monu- play. His self-imposed task was to carve in
mental sculptor in marble. He selected what marble, on a massive scale, a sculptural com-
seemed to him the most difficult feat, three position that was to be seen not
from one but
figures of contrasting character united in a from all sides; this had hitherto been at-
common action. Their identities were dis- tempted only in bronze and on a much
puted among the learned connoisseurs of the smaller scale (see figs. 208, 209). He has
J
270 • MASSERISM AXD OTHER TREXDS
solved this formal problem, but at the cost of chitecture lacks a consistent integration be-
insulating hisgroup from the world of human tween elements. It places an emphasis on
experience. The figures, spiraling upward as encrusted decoration in order to create pic-
if confined inside a tall, narrow cylinder, per- turesque effects, with the occasional dis-
form their well-rehearsed choreographic ex- tortion of form and novel, even illogical
ercise with ease; yet, like much Hellenistic rearrangement of space. By this standard,
sculpture (compare fig. 77), it is finally devoid most late-sixteenth-century architecture can
of emotional meaning. We admire their hardly be called Mannerist at all. Indeed, the
discipline but find no trace of genuine pathos. work of Andrea Palladio (1518-1580), next
to Michelangelo the most important architect
of the century, stands in the tradition of the
ARCHITECTURE humanist and theoretician Leone Battista Al-
berti (see pp. 226-28).
Mannerism
The term Mannerism was first coined to de- Palladio. Although his career centered on
scribe painting of the period. We
have not his native town of Vicenza, Palladio's build-
encountered any difficulty in applying it to ings and theoretical writings soon brought
sculpture. But can it usefully be extended to him international status. Palladio insisted that
architecture as well? And if so, what qualities architecture must be governed both by rea-
must we look for? These questions have son and by certain universal rules that were
proved surprisingly difficult to answer pre- perfecdy exemplified by the buildings of the
cisely. Only a few buildings are generally ac- ancients. He thus shared Alberti's basic out-
knowledged today as Mannerist, because of look and his firm faith in the cosmic signifi-
their reliance on idiosyncratic gestures that cance of numerical ratios (see p. 226). The
depart from Renaissance norms, but this does two differed in how each and
related theory
not provide a viable definition of Mannerism practice, however.With Alberti, this relation-
as an architectural period style. Mannerist ar- ship had been loose and flexible, whereas Pal-
ladio believed quite literally in practicing How could he justify a context so purely secu-
what he preached. His architectural treatise, lar for thesolemn motif of the temple front?
The Four Books of Architecture, is consequendy Like Alberti, he sought support in a selective
more practical than Alberd's (this helps ex- interpretation of the historical evidence. He
plain its huge success), while his buildings are was convinced, on the basis of ancient literarv
linked more direcdy with his theories. It has sources, that Roman private houses had
even been said that Palladio designed only porticoes like these (excavations have since
what was, in his view, sanctioned bv ancient proved him wrong). But Palladio's use of the
precedent. Indeed, the usual term for both temple front here is not mere antiquarianism.
Palladio's work and theoretical attitude is He probablv persuaded himself that it was
"classicistic," todenote a conscious striving legitimate because he regarded this feature as
for classic qualities, though the results are not desirable for both beautv and utility. Beau-
necessarily classical in style. tifulh correlated with the walls behind, the
The Villa Rotonda (fig. 255), one of Pal- porches of the Villa Rotonda are an organic
ladio's finest buildings, perfecdy illustrates part of his design that lend the structure an
the meaning of his classicism. An aristocratic air of serene dignity and festive grace.
country residence near Vicenza, it consists of
a square block surmounted by a dome and is
Proto-Baroque
faced on all four sides with identical porches
in the shape of temple fronts. Alberti had de- Vignola and Della Porta. When it came to
fined the ideal church as such a completely church design, Palladio was less successful.
svmmetrical, centralized design (see pp. 227— Because of his allegiance to the antique or-
28), and it is evident that Palladio found in ders, he was unable to solve the problem of
the same principles the ideal countrv house. how to fit a classical facade onto a basilican
272 • MA.Wt RISU AXD OTHER TRESDS
church, although he was undoubtedly famil- device, taken from Michelangelo, forms a
iar with Alberti's compromise at S. Andrea graceful transition to the large pediment
(see fig. 212). The
church in which this
first crowning the facade, which retains the classic
union was accomplished was II Gesu (Jesus) in proportions of Renaissance architecture (the
Rome, designed by Giacomo Vignola (1507- height equals the width).
1573) and Giacomo della Porta (c. 1540— What is fundamentally new here is the inte-
1602), architects who had assisted Michelan- gration of all the parts into one whole. Delia
gelo at St. Peter's and were still using his ar- Porta, freed from classicistic scruples by his
chitectural vocabulary. II Gesu is a building allegiance to Michelangelo, gave the same
whose importance for subsequent church ar- rhythm to both stories of the facade.
vertical
chitecture can hardly be exaggerated. Since II This rhythm is obeyed by all the horizontal
Gesu was the mother church of the Jesuits, its members (note the broken entablature), but
design must have been closely supervised so the horizontal divisions in turn determine the
as to conform to the aims of the militant new size of the vertical members (hence no co-
order. We may thus view it as the architec- lossal order). Equally important is the em-
tural embodiment of the spirit of the Counter phasis on the main portal: its double frame —
Reformation. The planning stage of the two pediments resting on coupled pilasters
structure began in 1550, only five years after and columns — projects beyond the rest of the
the Council of Trent (see p. 265). Michelan- facade and gives strong focus to the entire
gelo himself once promised a design, but design. Not since Gothic architecture has the
never furnished it. The present plan, by entrance to a church received such a dramatic
Vignola, was adopted in 1568. concentration of features, attracting the at-
Della Porta was responsible for the bold fa- tention of the beholder outside the building
cade (fig. 256). The paired pilasters and bro- much as the concentrated light beneath the
ken architrave on the lower story are clearly dome channels that of the worshiper inside.
derived from the colossal order on the exte- What are we to call the style of II Gesu?
rior of St. Peter's (see fig. 236), and with good Obviously, it has little in common with Pal-
reason, for it was Delia Porta who completed ladio. The label Mannerist will not serve us
Michelangelo's dome. In the upper story the either. As we shall see, the design of II Gesu
same pattern recurs on a somewhat smaller willbecome basic to Baroque architecture; by
scale, with four instead of six pairs of sup- calling it Proto-Baroque, we suggest both its
ports. The difference in width is bridged by a special place in relation to the past and its
pair of scroll-shaped buttresses. This novel seminal importance for the future.
THE RENAISSANCE
IN THE NORTH
Most fifteenth-century artists north of the "war of styles" took place during the first
Alps remained indifferent to Italian forms quarter of the centurv. Between 1475 and
and ideas. Since the time of the Master of 1500, it had produced such important mas-
Flemalle and the Van Eycks they looked to ters as Michael Pacher and Martin Schon-
Flanders rather than to Tuscany for lead- gauer (see figs. 197, 199), but these hardly
ership. This relative isolation ended sud- prepare us for the astonishing burst of cre-
denly, toward the vear 1500. if a dam had
As ative energy that was to follow. The range of
burst, Italian influence flowed northward in achievements of this period, which was com-
an ever wider stream, and Northern Renais- parable in its brevity and brilliance to the Ital-
sance art began to replace "Late Gothic." ian High Renaissance, is measured by the
Northern Renaissance, however, has a less contrasting personalities of its greatest artists:
well-defined meaning than "Late Gothic," Matthias Griinewald and Albrecht Durer.
which refers to a single, clearly recognizable Both died in 1528, probably at about the
stvlistic tradition. The diversity of trends same age, although we know only Diirer's
north of the Alps even greater than in Italy
is birth date (1471). Durer quickly became in-
in the sixteenth century. Nor does Italian in- ternationallv famous, while Griinewald, who
fluence provide a common denominator, for was born about 1470-80, remained so ob-
this influence is itself diverse: Early Renais- scure that his real name, Mathis Gothart
sance. High Renaissance, and Mannerist, all Nithart, was discovered only at the end of the
from Lombardv, Venice,
in regional variants nineteenth centurv.
Florence, and Rome. Its effects, too, mav varv
greatly. They mav be superficial or profound, Griinewald. Griinewald's fame, like that of
direct or indirect, specific or general. El Greco, has developed almost entirely
The "Late Gothic" tradition remained within our own main work, the
century. His
much alive, if no longer dominant, and its Isenheim Altarpiece, is Northern
unique in the
encounter with Italian art resulted in a kind art of his time in its abilitv to overwhelm us
of Hundred Years' War among stvles that with something like the power of the Sistine
ended only when, in the early seventeenth Ceiling. Long believed to be by Durer, it was
century, the Baroque emerged as an interna- painted between 1509/10 and 1515 for the
tional movement. Its course, moreover, was monastery church of the Order of St. An-
decisively affected bv the Reformation, which thonv at Isenheim, in Alsace, and is now in
had a far more immediate impact on art the museum of the nearby town of Colmar.
north of the Alps than in Italy. Our account This extraordinary altarpiece is a carved
necessarily emphasizes the heroic phases of shrine with two sets of movable wings, which
the struggle at the expense of the lesser give it three stages, or "views"; two of them
skirmishes. are shown here. The first, visible when all
fig. 168). But the pitiful body on the cross, genius achieved miracles through light that to
with its twisted limbs, its countless lacerations, this day remain unsurpassed in the lumines-
it> rivulets on a heroic scale that
of blood, is cent angels of the Concert, the apparition of
raises it beyond the human, and thus reveals God the Father and the Heavenly Host above
the two natures of Christ. The same message the Madonna, and, most spectacularly, the
is conveyed by the flanking figures. The three rainbow-hued radiance of the Risen Christ.
historic witnesses on the left mourn Christ's How much did Griinewald owe to Italian
death as a man, while John the Baptist, on the art? Nothing at all, we are first tempted to
right, points with calm emphasis to Him as reply, yet he must have learned from the
the Saviour. Even the background suggests Renaissance in more ways than one. His
this duality. Golgotha here is not a hill outside knowledge of perspective (note the low hori-
Jerusalem, but a mountain towering above zons) and the physical vigor of some of his
lesser peaks. The Crucifixion, lifted from its figures cannot be explained by the "Late
familiar setting, thus becomes a lonely event Gothic" tradition alone, and occasionally his
silhouetted against a deserted, ghostly land- pictures show architectural details of South-
scape and a blue black skv. Darkness is over ern origin. Perhaps the most important effect
the land, in accordance with the Gospel, yet of the Renaissance on him, however, was
brilliant light bathes the foreground with the psychological.
force of sudden revelation. This union of We know little about his career, but he ap-
time and eternity, of reality and symbolism, parently did not lead the settled life of a
in response to the heavenly music; and the the expressive aspects of the "Late Gothic" in
Risen Christ shoots from His grave with a st\le of unique intensity and individuality.
explosive force. This vibrant energy has
thoroughly reshaped the brittle, spiky con- Diirer. For Diirer (1471-1528), the Renais-
tours and angular drapery patterns of "Late sance held a richer meaning. Attracted to
Gothic" art. Griinewald's forms are soft, Italian art while still a young journeyman, he
elastic, fleshy. His light and color show a cor- visited Venice in 1494/95 and returned to his
responding change. Commanding all the re- native Nuremberg with a new conception of
sources of the great Flemish masters, he the world and the artist's place in it. The un-
employs them with unexampled boldness and bridled fantasy of Griinewald's art was to him
flexibility. His color scale is richly iridescent, "a wild, unpruned tree" (a phrase he used for
its range matched only by the Venetians. painters who worked by rules of thumb, with-
Griinewald's exploitation of colored light was out theoretical foundations) that needed the
altogether without parallel at that time. His discipline of the objective, rational standards
257. Matthias Griinewald. The Crucifixion, from the henheim Altarpiece (closed), c. 1510-15.
Oil on panel, 8'10"x 10' 1" (2.69x3.07 m). Musee Unterlinden, Colmar, France
258. Matthias Griinewald. The Annunciation, The Angel Concert for the Madonna and Child, and
The Resurrection, from the henheim Altarpiece (open), c. 1510-15. Oil on panel, each
wing 8'10"x4'8" (2.69x 1.42 m); center panel 8'10"x 1 l'2'A>" (2.69x3.42 m)
276 ////• RENAISSANCE IN I'HE SORTH
of the Renaissance. Taking the Italian view- ued toproduce self-portraits throughout his
that the fine arts belong among the liberal career. Most impressive, and uniquely reveal-
arts, he also adopted the ideal of the artist ing, is the panel of 1500 (fig. 259). Pictorially,
as a gentleman and humanistic scholar. By it belongs to the Flemish tradition (compare
steadily cultivating his intellectual interests he Jan van Eyck's man in a Red Turban, fig. 188),
came to encompass in his lifetime a vast vari- but the solemn, frontal pose and the Christ-
ety of subjects and techniques. And since he like idealization of the features assert an au-
was the greatest printmaker of the time, Dii- thority quite beyond the range of ordinary
rer had a wide influence on sixteenth-century portraits. The picture reflects not so much
art through his woodcuts and engravings, Diirer's vanity as the seriousness with which
which circulated everywhere in Europe. he regarded his mission as an artistic re-
The first artist to be fascinated by his own former. (One thinks of Martin Luther's "Here
image, Diirer was in this respect more of a I stand; cannot do otherwise.")
I
Renaissance personality than any Italian art- The didactic aspect of Diirer's art is clearest
ist. His earliest known work, a drawing made perhaps in the engraving Knight, Death, and
;ii thirteen, is a self-portrait, and he contin- Devil (fig. 260), one of his finest prints. The
THE RESMSSASCE IS THE SORTH • 277
261. Albrecht Diirer. The Four Apostles. 1523-26. later, albeit lesser, Griinewald. Although Alt-
Oil on panel, each 85x30" (215.9x76.2 cm). dorfer, too, was an architect, well acquainted
Pinakothek, Munich with perspective and the Italian stylistic vo-
cabulary, his paintings show the same unruly
imagination as the older master's. But Alt-
dorfer is also unlike Griinewald: he makes
today for his portraits and his delightfully in- the human figure incidental to its spatial set-
congruous mythological scenes, which em- ting,whether natural or architectural. The
body a peculiarly Northern adaptation of tiny soldiers of The Battle of Issus have their
humanism. In The Judgment of Paris (fig. 262), counterpart in his other pictures, and he
nothing could be less classical than the painted at least one landscape with no figures
wriggly nakedness of these three coquettish at all, the earliest known "pure" landscape.
damsels. Paris is a German knight clad in
fashionable armor, indistinguishable from Holbein. Gifted though they were, Cranach
the nobles at the court of Saxony who were and Altdorfer both evaded the main chal-
the artists patrons. The playful eroticism, lenge of the Renaissance so bravely faced (if
small size, and precise, miniaturelike detail of not always mastered) by Diirer: the human
the picture make it plainly a collector's item, image. Their style, antimonumental and min-
attuned to the refined tastes of a provincial iaturelike, set the pace for dozens of lesser
aristocracy. masters. Perhaps the rapid decline of Ger-
man art after Diirer's death was due to a fail-
Altdorfer. As remote from the classic ideal, ure of ambition, among artists and patrons
but far more impressive, is The Battle of Issus alike. The career of Hans Holbein the Youn-
(fig. 263) by Albrecht Altdorfer 1480- (c. ger (1497-1543), the one painter of whom
1538), a Bavarian painter somewhat younger this is not true, confirms the general rule.
than Cranach. Without the text on the tablet Born and raised in Augsburg, a center of in-
suspended in the sky, and the other inscrip- ternational commerce in southern Germany
tions, we could not possibly identify the sub- particularly open to Renaissance ideas, he left
1
THE RENAISSANCE IN THE NORTH 279
at the age of eighteen for Switzerland. By this doctor of humane letters: intimate vet
1520, he was firmly established in Basel as a monumental, he has an intellectual authority
designer of woodcuts, a splendid decorator, formerly reserved for the doctors of the
and an incisive portraitist. Holbein's likeness Church.
of Erasmus of Rotterdam (fig. 264), painted Holbein must have felt confined in Basel,
soon after the famous author had settled in for in 1523-24 he traveled to France, appar-
Basel, gives us a truly memorable image of ently intending to offer his services to Francis
THE RENA1SSAXCE IN THE SORTH • 281
Hff ""' ~~
} THE NETHERLANDS
^ The Netherlands in the sixteenth century had
1
'
-• ^
empire of the Hapsburgs under Charles V,
who was also king of Spain. Protestantism
MBN| quicklv became powerful in the Netherlands,
Wf¥-
MM m and the attempts of the crown to suppress it
led to open revolt against foreign rule. After
^•jSw w*\. * 1 > %J
#
a bloody struggle, the northern provinces
(today's Holland) emerged at the end of
the century as an independent state, while
the southern ones (roughly corresponding
1 to modern Belgium) remained in Spanish
hands.
265. Hans Holbein the Younger. Herw} \ ///. 1540.
The religious and political strife might
Oilon panel, 32'/2x29" (82.6x73.7 cm).
Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Antica, Rome have had catastrophic effects on the arts, yet
this, astonishingly, did not happen. Six-
teenth-century Netherlandish painting, to be
sure, does not equal that of the fifteenth in
brilliance, nor did it produce any pioneers of
282 • THE RENAISSANCE IN THE XORTH
266. Pieter Bruegel the Elder. The Blind Leading the Blind, c. 1568. Oil on panel, 34'/2x60 5/8" (87.6 x 154 cm).
Museo di Capodimonte, Naples
the Northern Renaissance comparable to Dii- church commissions became steadily scarcer
rer and Holbein. This region absorbed Ital- in the Netherlands, where Protestant icon-
ian elements more slowly than Germany, but oclastic zeal was particularly widespread.
more steadily and systematically, so that in-
stead of a few isolated peaks of achievement Bruegel the Elder. Pieter Bruegel the Elder
we find a continuous range. Between 1550 (1525/30-1569), the only genius among these
and 1600, their most troubled time, the Netherlandish painters, explored landscape,
Netherlands produced the major painters of peasant life, and moral allegory. Although his
Northern Europe; these artists in turn paved career was spent in Antwerp and Brussels, he
the way for the great Dutch and Flemish mas- may have been born near 's Hertogenbosch.
ters of the next century. Certainly the work of Hieronymus Bosch
Two main concerns, sometimes separate, deeply impressed him, and he is in many ways
sometimes interwoven, characterized six- as puzzling to us as the older master. What
teenth-century Netherlandish painting. One were his religious convictions, his political
was to assimilate Italian art from Raphael to sympathies? We know little about him, but his
Tintoretto (though this was often accom- preoccupation with folk customs and the
plished in a dry and didactic manner). The daily life of humble people seems to have
other was to develop a repertory that would sprung from a complex philosophical atti-
supplement the traditional religious subjects. tude. Bruegel was highly educated, the friend
All the secular themes that loom so large in of humanists, and patronized by the Haps-
Dutch and Flemish painting of the Baroque burg court. Yet he apparently never worked
era— landscape, siill life, genre (scenes of ev- for the Church, and when he dealt with re-
eryday life) — were first defined between 1500 ligious subjects he did so in an oddly ambig-
and 1600. The process was gradual, shaped uous way.
less by the achievements of individual artists The Blind Leading the Blind (fig. 266). one of
than by the need to cater to popular taste as Bruegel's last pictures, shows a philosophical
THE RENAISSANCE IN THE NORTH • 283
detachment from religious and political fa- come forth from the heart; and they defile
naticism. Its source is the Gospels (Matt. the man. For out of the heart proceed evil
15:12-19): Christ says, speaking of the Phar- thoughts, murders blasphemies." Perhaps
. . .
isees, "And if the blind lead the blind, both Bruegel thought that this applied to the con-
shall fall into the ditch." This parable of hu- troversies then raging over details of religious
man folly recurs in humanist literature, and ritual.
tion, but the tragic depth of Bruegel's forceful to define. A trip to the South in 1552-53 took
image gives new urgency to the theme. Per- him Rome, Naples, and the Strait of Mes-
to
haps he found the biblical context of the sina, monuments admired by
but the famous
parable especially relevant to his time: the other Northerners seem not to have inter-
Pharisees had asked why Christ's disciples, vi- ested him. He returned instead with a sheaf
wash their
olating religious traditions, did not of magnificent landscape drawings, especially
hands before meals; He answered, "Not that Alpine views. He was probably much im-
which goeth into the mouth defileth a man; pressed by landscape painting in Venice,
but that which cometh out of the mouth." particularly its integration of figures and scen-
When this offended the Pharisees, He called ery and the progression in space from fore-
them the blind leading the blind, explaining ground background (see figs. 239, 240).
to
that "whatsoever entereth in at the mouth Out of memories came sweeping land-
these
goeth into the belly, and is cast out. But . . . scapes in Bruegel's mature style. The Return of
those things which proceed out of the mouth the Hunters (fig. 267) is one of a set depicting
267. Pieter Bruegel the Elder. The Return of the Hunters. 1565. Oil on panel, 46'/> x 63%" (118.1 x 161.9 cm).
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna
HI RENAlSSANt E DV THE SORTH
268. Pierre Lescot. Square Court of the Louvre. Paris. Begun 1546
subject of the picture. Men and women in ple of Northern Renaissance architecture.
their seasonal occupations are incidental to
the majestic annual cycle of death and rebirth Lescot. The details of Lescot's facade (fig.
that is the breathing rhythm of the cosmos. 268) have an astonishing classical purin. yel
we would not mistake it for an Italian struc-
ture. Its distinctive qualitv comes not from
FRANCE Italian forms superficiallv applied, but from a
genuine synthesis of the traditional French
In architecture and sculpture, it took the chateau with the Renaissance palace. Italian,
Northern countries longer to assimilate Ital- of course, are the superimposed classical or-
ian forms than in painting. France, more ders, the pedimented window frames, and the
closely linked with Italv than the rest (France, arcade on the ground floor. But the continu-
we had conquered Milan in 1499),
will recall, ity of the facade is interrupted by three pro-
was the first to achieve an integrated Renais- jecting pavilions that have supplanted the
sance style. In 1546 K.ing Francis I, who had chateau turrets, and the high-pitched roof is
shown his admiration for Italian art earlier by also traditionally French. The vertical accents
inviting first Leonardo in 1517 and then the thus overcome the horizontal ones, and
Mannerists to France (see p. 269), decided to their effect is reinforced by the tall, narrow-
replace the old Gothic royal castle, the Louvre windows.
THE RENAISSANCE IN THE NORTH • 285
THE BAROQUE
IN ITALY AND SPAIN
What is Baroque? Like Mannerism, the term deeds of these reformers, the new princes of
was originally coined to disparage the very the Church were known primarily for worldly
style it designates: it meant "irregular, con- splendor.
torted, grotesque." Art historians otherwise Another reason why we should guard
remain divided over its definition. Should Ba- against overemphasizing the Baroques ties to
roque be used only for the dominant style of the Counter Reformation is that, unlike Man-
the seventeenth century, or should it include nerism, the new style was not specifically Ital-
other tendencies, such as classicism, to which ian (although historians generally agree that
it bears a problematic relationship? Should it was born in Rome during the final years of
the time frame be extended to cover the pe- the sixteenth century), nor was it confined to
riod 1700—1750, known as the Rococo? More religious art.Baroque elements quickly pene-
important, is the Baroque an era distinct trated the Protestant North, where they were
from both Renaissance and modern, or the applied primarily to other subjects.
final phase of the Renaissance? On this last Equally problematic is the assertion that the
question, we have chosen the first alternative Baroque is "the style of absolutism," reflecting
as a matter of convenience, while admitting the centralized state ruled by an autocrat
that a good case can be made for the second. of unlimited powers. Although absolutism
Which position we adopt on all these issues is reached its climax during the reign of Louis
perhaps less important than an understand- XIV it had
in the later seve nteenth century,
ing of the forces underlying the Baroque. been maktngsince the 1520 s under
in jjie
!
The fact is that the Baroque eludes simple Francis I in France and the^le^lci^cUtk-es-in
classification; rather, it incorporates an ex- Tuscany. Mofeoyer^JBaroque arj^jlourished
treme range of contradictions. Hence, we run in bourgeo is Hollan djTOJess-thaa in the a bso-
into a series of paradoxes tvpical of the con- lutist monarchies, and the style_officially
flicting nature of the Baroque. It has been spojisored~un der_ Louis Al V~was_ a notably
claimed that the Baroque style expresses the siihdued^classicistir kind-of Baroqu e^^
spirit of the Counter Reformation; yet the We encounter similar difficulties when we
Counter Reformation had already done its try to relate Baroque art to the science and
work by 1600. Catholicism had recaptured philosophy of the period. A direct link did
much of its former territory, and Protestant- exist in the Early and High Renaissance,
ism was on the defensive, so that neither side when an artist could also be a humanist and a
any longer had the power to upset the new scientist. During th e seventeen th century,
balance. As if to signify the triumph of the however^ srjenfrfjf andp hilo^^ph^n^^ngtrr
old faith, in 1622 the heroes of the Counter became to o complex, abstra ct, and system .it
Reformation — Ignatius of Loyola, Francis Xa- fo r theartist to share. Gravitation and cal-
vier (both Jesuits), Theresa of Avila, Filippo culus could not stir t he a rtistes,
Neri, and Isidoro Agricola — were named am more than Descartes'
saints (Carlo Borromeo had been made one sum ("I think, therefore I am").
in 1610), beginning a wave ot canonizations There is neverthele ss a re ationshi p be- l
that lasted through the mid-eighteenth cen- tweejijJaroque art a nd science which^ thou^h
tury. In contrast to the piet) and good subtle, is essential to an understanding of the
— k
271. Caravaggio. The Calling of St. Matthew, c. 1599-1602. Oil on canvas, ll'Px 11'5" (3.38 x 3.48 m).
Contarelli Chapel. S. Luigi dei Francesi. Rome
entire age. The medieval outlook, which had Renaissance science and philosophy, which
persisted through the Renaissance, was grad- could trace" their origins (and au thonty^-bac
ually overthrown by Baroque science. The t o antiquity, alsohad the e ttect of supplanting
complex metaphysics of the Neo-Platonists, natural magic, a recursor ul moaem science
which endowed evervthing with religious th at included bothastrolog y and alchemy.
import, was replaced bv a new cosmologv, The difference was that natural magic sought
beginning with Ni colaus Copernicus _aad to exercise practical control of the world
Galileo Galilei Rene O es-^
and culminatin g in through prediction and manipulation, bv un-
cartes a nd Sir Isaac New tun. In-addition^o coven ng nature's "secret s" instead_pf its la ws
placing the su n, not the earthj and human- To be sure, the magical worTdview, linked as
ity), at th e cente r of th e universe they d efined
, it was to traditional religion and morality,
und erlying relationships mathe matics ^"^
in continued to live on in popular literature and
geomefric a] terms as parL-Of—the simple, folklore long afterward. We may nevertheless
OrderTy System of mechanics The affack on sav that, thanks to advances in optical phvsics
,
and physiology, the Baroque literally saw with pecially from northern Italy, and they created
new eyes, for its understanding of visual real- the new style.
roque stvle asone among other basic features his birthplace near Milan. The Calling of St.
that distinguish the period from what had Matthew (fig. 271), part of a series of monu-
gone before: the refortified Catholic faith, the mental canvases he painted for a chapel in S.
absolutist state. qndjrh e_new role of scien ce^ Luigi dei Francesi from 1599 to 1602, is re-
These combined in volatile mix-
factors are mote from both Mannerism and the High
tures that give the Baroque its fascinating va- Renaissance. The only antecedent of this ex-
riety. Such diversity was perfectly suited to traordinary picture is the North Italian real-
express the expanding view of humanity. ism of Savoldo (see fig. 249).
artists like
What ultimately unites this refractory £ra is a Caravaggio's realism, however, is such that a
reevaluation of people and their relation to heWteTm, 'jiaturjlism, "^ neeiiEdjYidistin-
the universe. Central to this image is the new guish iLTrojiLJiie-earlier kind.
psychology reflected quite clearly in Baroque Never have we seen a sacred subject de-
art, where the tensions of the era often erupt picted so entirely in terms of contemporary
into open conflict. A prominent role was now low life. Matthew, the tax gatherer, sits with
assigned by philosophers to human passion, some armed men (evidendy his agents) in
which encompasses a wider range of emo- what is a common Roman tavern as two fig-
tions and social levels than ever before. The ures approach from the right. The arrivals
scientific revolution culminating in Newton's are poor people, their bare feet and simple
unified mechanics responded to the same im- garments contrasting strongly with the color-
pulses, for it assumes a more active role for ful costumes of Matthew and his companions.
the individual in his or her ability to under- Why do we sense a religious quality in this
stand and in turn affect the surrounding scene and not mistake it for an everyday
world. Remarkably, the Baroque remained an event? The answer is that _£araYaggiQ!s. .North
age of great religious faith, however divided it Italian realism is w e dded to elements de rived
may have been in its loyalties. The counter- frornjri s study of Renaissance art in _Rome
point between passions, intellect, and spir- whi ch lend the sc e ne its sur prising^ dignity.
ituality may be seen as forming a dialogue His^styje, inothe r word s is clas skak-without ,
which has never been truly brought to a close. being classicizing. The compositioftr for ex-
ample, is disposed across the picture surface,
its forms sharply highjighleii, much as-in a
PAINTING IN ITALY relief (see fig. 96). For Caravaggio, moreover,
najuralism is not an endjn itself but a m eans
Around 1600 Rome became the fq untain- of conveying profoundly religious content.
head of the Baroque, as it had of the High WliaTTdemrfies one of the figures as Christ?
Renaissance a century before, by gathering It is surely not the Saviours halo, the only
artists from other regions to perform chal- supernatural feature in the picture, which is
lenging new tasks. The papacy patronized an inconspicuous gold band that we might
art on a large scale with the aim of making well overlook.Our eyes fasten instead upon
Rome the most beautiful city of the Christian His commanding gesture, borrowed from
world "for the greater glory of God and the Michelangelo's The Creation of Adam (see
Church." This campaign had begun as early 233), which "bridges" the gap between the
fig.
as 1585, but the artists then on hand were late two groups and is echoed by Matthew, who
Mannerists of feeble distinction. Soon, how- points questioningly at himself.
ever, it attracted ambitious young masters, es- Most decisive is the strong beam of sunlight
THE BAROQUE IN ITALY AND SPAIN • 289
272. Artemisia Gentileschi. Judith and Her Maidservant with the Head of Holofernes.
c. 1625. Oil on canvas, 72'/2 x 55 3/4 " (184.2 x 141.6 cm).
above Christ that illuminates His face and What separates the Baroque from the later
hand in the gloomy interior, thus carrying Counter Reformation is the externalization of
His call across to Matthew. Without this light, the mystic vision, which appears to us com-
so natural yet so charged with symbolic mean- plete, without any signs of the spiritual strug-
ing, the picture would lose its magic, its gle in El Greco's art.
power to make us aware of the divine pres- Carayaggio's paintings have a "lay Chris-
ence. Caravaggio here gives moving, direct tianity/^mitourfiejfcdij^^
form to an attitude shared by certain great which app^aled_ii>^rol^5raiTB~~ncLjess than
saints of the Counter Reformation: that the Catholics. This quality made possible his
mysteries of faith are revealed not by intellec- strong, though indirect, influence on Rem-
tual speculation but spontaneously, through brandt, the greatest religious artist of
an inward experience open to all people. the Protestant North. In Italy, Caravaggio
290 • THE BAROQUE IN ITALY AND SPAIN
fared less well. His work wasac claimed by a rt- ular during the Baroque which delighted
era,
istsand connoisseurs, but the ordinary peo- in erotic and violent While Gen-
scenes.
ple for whom it was intended, as well as tileschi's early paintings of Judith take her fa-
some conservative critics, regarded it as lack- ther's and Caravaggio's work as their points of
ing propriety and reverence. They resented departure, our example (fig. 272) is a fully
meeting their own kind in these paintings, mature, independent work. The inner drama
preferring religious imagery of a more ideal- is uniquely hers, and no less powerful for its
ized and rhetorical sort. For that reason, restraint in immortalizing Judith's courage.
Caravaggism largely ran its course by 1630, Rather than the decapitation itself, the artist
when it was assimilated into other Baroque shows the instant after. Momentarily dis-
tendencies. tracted, Judith gestures theatrically as her ser-
vant stuffs Holofernes' head into a sack. The
Gentileschi. We
have not yet discussed a object of their attention remains hidden from
woman artist, although this does not mean view, heightening the air of intrigue. The
that there were none. Pliny, for example, hushed, candlelit atmosphere in turn estab-
mentions in his Natural History (bk. XXXV) lishes a mood of exotic mystery that conveys
the names and describes the work of women Judiths complex emotions with unsurpassed
artists in Greece and Rome, and there are understanding.
records of women manuscript illuminators
during the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. Annibale Carracci. The conservative wishes
We must remember, however, that the vast of the simpler people in Italy were met by
majority of all artists remained anonymous artists less radical, and less talented, than Ca-
until the "Late Gothic" period, so that all but ravaggio. They took their lead instead from
a few works by womenhave proved impossi- another recent arrival in Rome, Annibale
ble to identify. Women b egan to emerge as Carracci (1560-1609). Annibale came from
distinct artistic personalities about 1550;_Unj Bo logn a where, since the 1580s, he and two
til the middle of the nineteenth century, how- other mernrjerT of his family had evolved an
ever, women artists were largely restricted to anti-Mannerist style bas^oCan~Nofth-Ttalian
painting portraits, genre scenes, and still lifes. reatisTrnrhcTVenetian art. He was a reformer
Many nevertheless carved out successful ca- rather than a revolutionary r Jke Cafavaggio,
reers, often emerging as the equals or supe- who app^errrfy^aTlmlfecriiifnT ?as Armi-
riors men in whose styles the) were
of the bale's experience of Roman classic-ism that
trained. The obstacles they met in getting in- transformecLhis art. He, too, felt that art must
struction in figure drawing and anatomy ef- return to nature, but his approach was less
fectively barred them from painting narrative single-minded, balancing studies from life
subjects. The exceptions to this general rule with a revival ofThe~riassk«1-Avliidi_te^ him
were several Italian women born into artistic meantTrie an of antiquity, and of Raphael,
families who were encouraged to cultivate Michelangelo, Titian, and Correggio. At his
their talents, though they did not receive the best, he succeeded in fusing these diverse ele-
same training as men. Their major role began ments, although their union always remained
in the seventeenth century with Artemisia somewhaJLprecarieus.
Gentileschi (1593-C.1653). Between 1597-a«d-J£0A_Ajinibale_pro-
The daughter of painter Orazio Gen- duced the ceiling fresco in tlie_gallei^_of_the
tileschi, she was born in Rome and became Palazzo Farnese, his most ambitious and im-
one of the leading painters and personalities portant work. Our illustration (fig. 273)
of her day. Her characteristic subjects are shows Annibale's rich and intricate design:
Bathsheba, the unfortunate object of King the narrative scenes, like those of the Sistine
David's obsessive passion,and Judith, who Ceiling, are surrounded by painted architec-
saved her people by beheading the Assyrian ture, simulated sculpture, and nude youths
general Holofernes. Both subjects were pop- holding garlands. The Farnese Gallery does
THE BAROQUE IN ITALY AND SPAIN • 291
not rely solely on Michelangelo's masterpiece, glorification of the reign of the Barberini
however. The style of the main subjects, the pope, Urban VIII (fig. 276). As in the Farnese
Loves of the Classical Gods, is reminiscent of Gallery, the ceiling area is subdivided by a
Raphael's Galatea (see fig. 238), and the whole painted framework simulating architecture
is held together by an illusionistic scheme that and sculpture and filled with figural scenes;
reflects Annibale's knowledge of Correggio but beyond it we now see the unbounded sky,
and the great Venetians. Carefully foreshort- as in Guercino's Aurora. Clusters of figures,
ened and illuminated from below (as we can perched on clouds or soaring freely, swirl
judge from the shadows), the nude youths above as well as below this framework, creat-
and the simulated sculpture and architecture ing a dual illusion: some figures appear to
appear real. Against this background the my- hover well inside the hall, perilously close to
thologies are presented as simulated easel our heads, while others recede into a light-
pictures. Each of these levels of reality is han- filled, infinite distance. Cortona's source of in-
dled with consummate skill, and the entire spiration was surely Correggio's The Assump-
ceiling hasan exuberance that sets it apart tion of the Virgin (see fig. 251), in which a
from both Mannerism and High Renaissance similar effect is achieved. In the Barberini
art. ceiling, the dynamism of the Baroque style
reaches a resounding climax.
Reni; Guercino. To artists who were in- Cortona's frescoes provided the focal point
spired by it, the Farnese Gallery seemed to for the rift between the High Baroque and
offer two alternatives. Pursuing the Raphael- Baroque classicism. The classicists asserted
esque style of the mythological panels, they that art serves a moral purpose and must ob-
could arrive at a deliberate, "official" classi- serve the principles of clarity, unity, and de-
cism; or they could take their cue from the corum. And supported
by a long tradition
sensuous illusionism present in the frame- reaching back to Horace's famous dictum ut
work. Among the earliest responses to the pictura poesis, they further maintained that
first alternative is the ceiling fresco Aurora painting should follow the example of tragic
(fig. 274) by Guido Reni (1575-1642), show- poetry in conveying meaning through a mini-
ing Apollo in his chariot (the Sun) led by Au- mum of figures whose movements, gestures,
rora (Dawn). Despite its rhythmic grace, this and expressions can be easily read. Cortona,
relieflike design would seem like little more though not anticlassical, presented the case
than a pallid reflection of High Renaissance for art as epic poetry, with many actors and
art were it not for the glowing and dramatic episodes that elaborate on the central theme
light that gives it an emotional force that the and create a magnificent effect. He was also
figures alone could never achieve. The Aurora the firstargue that art has a sensuous ap-
to
ceiling (fig. 275) painted less than ten years peal which exists as an end in itself.
later by Guercino (1591-1666) is the very op- Although it took place on a largely the-
posite of Reni's. Here architectural perspec- oretical level, the debate over illusionistic
tive, combined with the pictorial illusionism ceiling painting represented more than fun-
of Correggio and the intense light and color damentally divergent approaches to telling a
of Titian, converts the entire surface into one story and expressing ideas in art. The issue
limitless space, in which the figures sweep lay at the very heart of the Baroque. Illusion-
past as if propelled by stratospheric winds. ism enabled artists to overcome the apparent
With this work, Guercino started what soon contradictions of the era by fusing separate
became a veritable flood of similar visions. levels of reality into a pictorial unity of such
overwhelming grandeur as to sweep aside any
Da Cortona. The most overpowering of differences between them. Despite the inten-
these is the ceiling fresco by Pietro da Cor- sity of the argument, in actual practice the
tona (1596-1669) in the great hall of the Pa- two sides rarely came into conflict over easel
lazzo Barberini in Rome, which presents a paintings, where the differences between
292 • THE BAROQCE IN ITALY AND SPAIN
274. Guido Reni. Aurora. Ceiling fresco. 1613. Casino Rospigliosi, Rome
Cortona and the classicism of Carracci's High Baroque was neither a fresco painter,
followers were not always so clear-cut. Never- nor was he an Italian, but a French artist liv-
theless, the leader of the reaction against ing in Rome: Nicolas Poussin (see pp. 317-
what were regarded as the excesses of the 19).
294 •
THE BAROQLE IS ITALY AXD SPA1.X
277. St. Peters (aerial view), Rome. Nave and facade by Carlo Maderno, 1607- 15;
colonnade by Gianlorenzo Bernini, designed 1657
tury, the most talented young architect to (see fig. 256). Maderno made it the dominant
emerge was Carlo Maderno (1556-1629). In principle of his facade designs, not only for
1603 he was given the task of completing, at St. Peter's but for smaller churches as well. In
long last, the church of St. Peter's. The pope the process, he replaced the traditional con-
had decided to add a nave to Michelangelo's cept of the church facade as one continuous
building (see fig. 236), converting it into a ba- wall surface, which was not yet challenged by
silica. The change of plan (which may have the facade of II Gesu, with the "facade-in-
been prompted by the example of II Gesu) depth," dynamically related to the open space
made it possible to link. St. Peter's with the before it. The possibilities implicit in this new
Vatican Palace~(to the rightof the~church in concept were not to be exhausted until a hun-
figure 277). dred and fifty years later.
Maderno's design for jji e facade fol lowsjthe
pattern esiabltsfiedby MichelangelQ_forj:he
-
Bernini. Maderno's work at St. Peter's was
exteTioTiJQ£jhe^hIuxb^4rconsists of a-cojossal completed by Gianlorenzo Bernini (1598—
order supportin g an attic, but with a_ch~amatic 1 680lthe_greatest sculpto r-architect of tb^
296 • THE BAROQUE IN ITALY AND SPAIN
century. It was he who molded the open space spirit, of motion and emotion, which Michel-
in frontof the facade into a magnificent oval angelo so conspicuously avoids JThis_dpes not
"forecourt" framed by colonnades, which mean Bernini is more classical than Michel-
Bernini himself likened to the motherly, all- angelo. It indicates, rather, thaT~both the
embracing arms of the Church. For sheer im- Baroque and the High Renaissance ack nowl-
pressiveness, this integration of the building edged the authority of ancient art, bu t each
with such a grandiose setting of "molded" period drew inspiration from a different as-
open space can be compared only with the pect of antiquity.
ancient Roman sanctuary at Palestrina (see Bernini's David, obviously, is in no sen se an
fig- 84). echcToFthe Pergarrium altar. What makes it
This is not the only instance of an affinity Baroque is the implied presence of Goliath.
between Baroque and ancient art. A simi- Unlike earlier statues of TiaAicL_jncluding
lar relationship can be discovered between Donatello's (see lig. 203), Ber nini's _js— con-
Hellenistic and Baroque sculpture. If we ceive d not a s one sel f-contained figure but as
compare Bernini's David (fig. 278) with Mi- half^f^jiaju^jii^entireaction focused on his
chelangelo's and ask which is closer to the Per- advpryiry, Did Bern ini, we wonder, plan a
gamum frieze (see figs. 231, 77), our vote statue of Goliath to complete thegroup? He
must go to Bernini. His fij£uj^_jhjue^_with never did, for his David tells us clearlyenough
Hellenistic workj^thaLJinisQ«--of-bQdy and where he sees the enemy. Consequently, the
space between David and his invisible oppo-
nent is charged with energy: it "belongs" to
the statue.
Bernini's David shows us what distinguishes
Baroque sculpture from the sculpture of the
two preceding centuries: its new, prrive rpla,
tionship_wi th the space it inhabits. It rejects
self-sufficiency for the illusiorTof inces or
forces that are implied by the behavior of the
statue. Because it so often presents an "invis-
ible complement" (like the Goliath of Ber-
nini's David), Baroque sculpture is a tour de
278. Gianlorcnz( Bernini. David. 1623. Marble, church of Sta. Maria della Vittoria. Theresa
lifesize. Galleria Borghese, Rome of Avila. one of the great saints of the Coun-
THE BAROQUE IN ITALY AND SPAIN 297
PAINTING IN SPAIN
During the sixteenth century, at the height of
itspolitical and economic power, Spain had
produced great saints and writers, but no art-
ists of the first rank. Nor did El Greco's pres-
ence prove a stimulus to native talent. The
impetus came, rather, from Caravaggio. We
do not know exacdy how his style was trans-
mitted, for his influence was felt in Spain by
the second decade of the century, even before
he fled Rome for Naples, then under Spanish
rule, after slaying a man in a duel (see p. 120).
has been working? This ambiguity shows glazes setting off the impasto of the high-
Velazquez' fascination with light. The artist lights. The glowing colors have a Venetian
challenges us to find the varieties of direct richness, but the brushwork is even freer and
and reflected light in The Maids of Honor. We sketchier than Titian's. Velazquez was con-
are expected to match the mirror image cerned with the optical qualities of light
against the paintings on the same wall,and rather than its metaphysical mysteries; these
against the "picture" of the man in the open he penetrated more completely than any
doorway. other painter of his time. His aim is to show
Although the side lighting and strong con- the movement of light itself and the infinite
of light and dark still suggest the influ-
trasts range of its effects on form and color. For
ence of Caravaggio, Velazquez' technique is Velazquez, as for Jan Vermeer in Holland
far more varied and subtle, with delicate (see pp. 25-26), light creates the visible world.
THE
BAROQUE IN FLANDERS
AND HOLLAND
In 1581, the six northern provinces of the Holland was proud of its hard-won free-
Netherlands, led by William the Silent of dom. While the cultural links with Flanders
Nassau, declared their independence from remained strong, several factors encouraged
Spain, capping a rebellion that had begun fif- the quick development of Dutch artistic tradi-
teen vears earlier against Catholicism and the tions. Unlike Flanders, where all artistic ac-
attempt by Philip II to curtail local power. tivity radiated from Antwerp, Holland had a
The southern Netherlands, called Flanders number of flourishing local schools. Besides
(now divided between France and Belgium), Amsterdam, the commercial capital, we find
were soon recovered; but after a long strug- important groups of painters in Haarlem,
gle the United Provinces (today's Holland) Utrecht, Leyden, Delft, and other towns.
gained their autonomy, w hich was recognized Thus, Holland produced a bewildering vari-
by the truce declared in 1609. Although hos- ety of masters and styles.
tilities broke out again in 1621, the freedom The new nation was one of merchants,
of the Dutch was ratified by the Treaty of farmers, and seafarers, and its religion was
Minister, which ended the Thiriy^Years' War Reformed Hence, Dutch artists
Protestant.
> -~^~
in 1648. did not have the large-scale commissions
The division of the Netherlands had very sponsored by State and Church that were,
different consequences for the economy, so- available throughout the Catholic world.
cial structure, culture, and religion of the While municipal authorities and civic bodies
north and the south. After being sacked by provided a certain amount of art patronage,
marauding Spanish troops in 1576, Antwerp their demands were limited, so that the pri-
lost half its population. The city gradually re- vate collector now became the painter's chief
gained its position as Flanders' commercial source of support. This condition had al-
and artistic capital, as well as its leading port, ready existed to some extent before (see
until the Scheldt River leading to its harbor p. 282), but its full effect can be seen only
was closed permanently to shipping as part of after 1600. There was no shrinkage of out-
the Treaty of Miinster, thereby crippling put; on the contrary, the general public devel-
trade for the next two centuries. (Only then oped so insatiable an appetite for pictures
did Brussels, the seat of the Spanish regent, that the whole country became gripped by a
come to play a major role in the country's kind of collectors' mania. Pictures became a
cultural life.) Because Flanders continued to commodity, and their trade followed the law
be ruled by the Spanish monarchy, which was of supply and demand. Many artists pro-
staunchly Catholic and viewed itself as the de- duced "for the market" rather than for in-
fender of the true faith, its artists relied heav- dividual patrons. The collectors' mania in
ilv on commissions from Church and State, seventeenth-century Holland caused an out-
although the patronage of the aristocracy and pouring of comparable only to
artistic talent
wealthy merchants was also of considerable Early Renaissance Many Dutch
Florence.
importance. were lured into becoming painters by hopes
1
of success that failed to materialize, and even In his life, Rubens epitomized the extro-
the greatest masters were sometimes hard- verted Baroque ideal of the virtuoso for
pressed. (It was not unusual for an artist to whom the entire universe is a stage. He was,
keep an inn, or run a small business on the on the one hand, a devoudy religious person
side.) Yet they survived— less secure, but and, on the other, a person of the world who
freer. succeeded in ever)' arena by virtue of his
character and Rubens resolved the
ability.
shadowed by the majestic personality of the ciled seemingly incompatible opposites. His
great painter Peter Paul Rubens ( 577— enormous intellect and vitality enabled him to
1640). It might be said that he finished what synthesize his sources into a unique style that
DiirerTiad started a hundred years earlier: unites the natural and supernatural, reality
the breakdown of the artistic barriers be- and and spirituality. Thus,
fantasy, learning
tween North and South. Rubens' father was a his epic canvases defined the scope and the
prominent Antwerp Protestant who fled to style of High Baroque painting. They possess
Germany to escape Spanish persecution dur- a seemingjyjxHi ndless ene rgvjiti3~my£Bth:e-
ing the war of independence. The family ness, which, like his heroic nudes, express life
returned to Antwerp after his death, when atits fuuest. TKe._presentation^of- this h e ight-
Peter Paul was ten years old, and the boy grew ened existence required the expanded arena
up a devout Catholic. Trained by local paint- that onlv Baroque—theatrjcaiity, in ihg__best
ers, Rubens became a master in 1598, but sense of the ter nij could_provide, and-R-ubens'
developed a personal style only when, two sense of drama was- as highly developed as
years later, he went to Italy. Bernini's.
During his eight years in the South, he ea- The Raising of the Cross (fig. 286), the first
gerly studied ancient sculpture, the master- major altarpiece Rubens produced after his
pieces of the High Renaissance, and the work return to Antwerp, shows just how much he
of Caravaggio and Annibale Carracci, absorb- owed to Italian art. The muscular figures,
ing the Italian tradition far more thoroughly modeled to display their physical power and
than had any Northerner before him. He passionate feeling, recall those in Michelan-
competed with the best Italiansof his day on gelo's Sistine Ceiling and Annibale Carracci's
even terms, and could well have made his Farnese Gallery, while the lighting suggests
career in Italy. When in 1608 his mother's Caravaggio's (see figs. 233, 273, and 271).
illnessbrought him back to Flanders, he re- The panel nevertheless owes much of its suc-
ceived a special appointment as court painter cess to Rubens' remarkable ability to unite
from local taxes and guild regulations. Ru- more heroic in scale and conception than any
bens had the best of both worlds. Like Jan van previous Northern work, yet it is unthinkable
Eyck before him (see p. 204), he was valued without Rogier van der Weyden's Descent from
at court not only as an artist, but also as a the Cross (see fig. 191). Rubens is also a meticu-
confidential adviser and emissary. Diplomatic lous Flemish realjsj>Jui_suiJi_details_as_jhe
errands gave him entree to the royal house- foliage, the armor ojLthe—soldier, and—the
holds of the major powers, where he pro- curb haired dog in the foregro und. These
cured sales and commissions. Aided by a varied elements, integrated with sovereign
small army of assistants, he also carried out a mastery, form a composition of tremendous
vast amount of work for the city of Antwerp, dramatic force. The unstable pyramid of
for the Church, and for private patrons. bodies, swaying precariously, bursts the limits
304 • THE BAROQUE IN FLANDERS AND HOLLAND
senting the sovereign at ease, it might be ing his studio. His most characteristic subjects
called a "dismounted equestrian portrait," are mvthological themes. Throughout his ca-
less rigid than a formal state portrait but reer, Jordaens emulated Rubens in depicting
hardlv less grand. The fluid Baroque move- the revels of nymphs and satyrs. Like his eat-
ment of the setting contrasts oddly with the ing and drinking scenes, which illustrate pop-
self-conscious elegance of the king's pose, ular parables of an edifving or moralizing
which still suggests the stylized grace of Man- sort, they reveal him to be a close observer of
nerist portraits (compare fig. 246). Van Dvck people and epitomize the Flemish gusto for
has brought the Mannerist court portrait up- life. These denizens of the woods, however,
to-date, rephrasing it in the pictorial lan- inhabit an idvllic realm, untouched bv the
guage of Rubens and Titian. He created a cares of human affairs. While the painterly
new aristocratic portrait tradition that contin- execution in The Surture of Jupiter (fig. 290)
ued inEngland until the late eighteenth cen- acknowledges a strong debt to Rubens, the
turv, and had considerable influence on the monumental figures possess a calm dignity
Continent as well. that dispenses with Rubens' rhetoric and
lends them a character all their own.
< i
*£
t *
1 1» 1 f
£.
295. Rembrandt. The Sight Watch (The Company of Captain Frans Banning Cocq). 1642.
Oil on canvas, 12'2"x 14 7" (5.71 x4.45 m). Rijksmuseum. Amsterdam
seem themselves to have become images of indirect contact with Caravaggio. His earliest
death— gentle, inexorable, and timeless. pictures are small, sharply lit, and intensely
importance was Judith Leyster (J fiflQ— lfififh Rembrandt viewed the-STOTievoTThe Old les-
The enchanting Boy Playing a Flute (fig. 293) tament in the same lay Christian spirit that
is her masterpiece. The rapt musician is a governed Caravaggio's approach to the New
memorable expression of a gentle activity. To Testament: as direct accounts of God's ways
convey this spirit, Leyster investigated the po- with His human creations. How stronglv
etic quality of light with a quiet intensity that these stories affected him is evident from The
anticipates the work of Jan Yermeer a gener- Blinding of Samson (fig. 294). Painted in the
ation later (see fig. 301). full-blown High Baroque style he developed
in the 1630s, shows us the Old Testament
it
Rembrandt. Like Hals, Rembrandt (1606^ world in Orientalsplendor and violence. The
1669), the greatest genius of Dutch art, was flood of brilliant light pouring into the dark
stimulated at the beginning of his career by tent is unabashedly theatrical, heightening
D
The Frick Collection. New York (Copyright) Northern candor found in Jan van Eyck's Man
in a Red Turban (see fig. 188). This self-
regular design, he made the picture a vir- the drawings he habitually made throughout
tuoso performance of Baroque movement his career. Here, as in Caravaggio's The Call-
and lighting; in the process some of the fig- ing of St. Matthew (see fig. 271). it is the magic
ure plunged into shadow, and some of light that endows Christ Preaching with spir-
hidden b\ overlapping, itual significance.
decline in Rembrandt's fortunes after
sas less sudden and complete than his Etching and Drypoint. Rembrandt's impor-
romantic admirers would have us believe. tance as a graphicartist is second onl\ to
THE BAROQUE IS FLASDERS ASD HOLLASD -311
». - * *Ss. /
Diirer's.although we get no more than a hint a needle, which leaves a raised "burr" (the
of this from our
single example. Like other metal displaced bv the needle) along the
creative printmakers of the dav. he preferred shallow line. Since the burr quicklv breaks
etching, oftencombined with dr\ point, to the down, a drvpoint plate yields far fewer prints
techniques of woodcut and engraving, which than an etched plate.
were employed mainly to reproduce other
works. An etching is made bv coating a
Landscape and Still Life Painters
copperplate with resin to make an acid-
resistant "ground," through which the design Rembrandt's religious pictures demand an in-
is scratched with a needle, laving bare the sight that was bevond the capacitv of all but a
metal surface underneath. The plate is then few collectors. Most art buyers in Holland
bathed in an acid that etches (or "bites") the preferred subjects within their own experi-
lines into the copper. To scratch a design with ence: lajids^ajie^^^ajxlutectjjual^yiews. still
a needle into the resinous ground is, of lifes.evervdav scenes. These v ariou~s~-tvpefrr
course, an easier task than to gouge it using a we recall, originated in die Latter halt\nf the
burin (see p. 215): hence, an etched line is sixteenth century (see p. 283). As thev became
smoother and more flexible than an engraved fulT\
r defined. an unheard-of srjecialization
line, and preserves a sketchlike immediacv. began. The trend was not confined to Hol-
As a result of its greater densitv of line, etch- land, and is found throughout Europe to
ing permits a wide tonal range, including vel- some degree. In both volume and variety,
vety dark shades not possible in engraving or however, Dutch painters produced far more
woodcut. Drvpoint is made bv scratching the subtvpes within each major division than anv-
design directlv into the copperplate itself with one else.
312 • //// BAROQUE IN FLANDERS AND HOLLAND
Van Ruisdael. The richest of the newly de- 298. Jacob van Ruisdael. The Jrwish Cemetery.
veloped "specialties" was landscape, both as a 1655-60. Oil on canvas, 4'6"x6'2'/2" (1.37 x 1.89 m).
The Detroit Institute of Arts. Gift of
portrayal of familiar views and as an imagina-
Julius H. Haass in memory of his brother
tive vision of nature. The Jewish Cemetery Dr. Ernest W. Haass
(fig. 298) by Jacob van Ruisdael (1628/29-
1682), the greatest Dutch landscape painter,
is franklv imaginary. Natural forces dominate
the scene. The thunderclouds passing over a
wild, deserted mountain valley, the medieval
ruin, the torrent that has forced its way be-
tween ancient graves, all create a mood of
deep melancholy. Nothing endures on this
earth, the artist tells us: time, wind, and water
grind all to dust, the feeble works of human
hands as well as the trees and rocks. Ruis-
dael's vision of nature in relation to civi-
300. Jan Steen. The Feast of St. Xicholas. c. 1660-65. Oil on canvas,
32'/t x 27%" (81.9 x 70.5 cm). Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam
a melancholy air. As a result of Holland's Vanitas (the vanity of all earthly things), either
conversion to Calvinism, these visual feasts overtly or implicitly: they preach the virtue of
became vehicles for teaching moral lessons. temperance, frugality, and hard work by ad-
In them, the disguised symbolism of "Late monishing the viewer to contemplate the brev-
Gothic" painting lives on in a new form. Most ity of life, the inevitability of death, and the
Dutch Baroque still lifes treat the theme of passing of all earthly pleasures. The imagery
i
5H • THt BAROQUE IN FLANDERS AND HOLLAND
derives in part from emblem books, as well as money are soon parted," and illustrated by
other popular literature and prints, which en- flowers, shells, and other exotic luxuries. The
compass the prevailing ethic in words and presence in Vanitas still lifes of precious
pictures. The stern Calvinist sensibility is ex- goods, scholarly books, and objects appealing
emplified by homilies like, "A fool and his to the senses suggests an ambivalent attitude
THE BAROQUE IN FLANDERS AND HOLLAND
toward their subject. Such symbols, more- stems from the tradition of Pieter Bruegel the
over, usually take on multiple meanings. In Elder (compare fig. 266).
their most elaborate form, these moral allego-
ries become visual riddles that rely on the Vermeer. In the genre scenes of Jan Ver-
very learning they sometimes ridicule. meer (1632-1675), by contrast, there is
The banquet (or breakfast) piece, showing hardly any narrative. Single figures, usually
the remnants of a meal, had Vanitas connota- women, engage in simpTe, everyday tasks;
tions almost from the beginning. The mes- when there are two, as in The Letter (fig. 301),
sage may such established symbols as
lie in they do no more than exchange glances.
death's-heads and extinguished candles, or be They exist in a timeless "still life" world,
conveyed by means. Willem Claesz.
less direct seemingly calmed by some magic spell. The
Heda's Sri// Life (fig. 299) belongs to this wide- cool, clear light that filters in from the left in
spread type. Food and drink are less empha- our picture is the only active element, work-
sized here than luxury objects, such as crystal ing its miracles upon all the objects in its path.
goblets and silver dishes, which are carefully As we look at The Letter, we
had feel as if a veil
juxtaposed for their contrasting shape, color, been pulled from our eyes. The everyday
and texture. Virtuosity was not Heda's only world shines with jewellike freshness, beauti-
aim: he reminds us that all is vanity. Heda's ful as we have never seen it before. No
"story," the human context of these grouped painter since Jan van Eyck saw as intensely as
objects, is suggested by the broken glass, the this.
half-peeled lemon, the overturned silver dish. Unlike his predecessors, Vermeer perceives
The unstable composition, with its signs of a reality as a mosaic of colored surfaces; per-
hasty departure, is itself a reference to tran- haps more accurately, he translates reality
sience: whoever sat at this table has been into a mosaic as he puts it on canvas. We see
suddenly forced to abandon the meal. The The Letter as a perspective "window," and as a
curtain that time has lowered on the scene, as plane, a "field" composed of smaller fields.
it were, invests the objects with a strange Rectangles predominate, carefully aligned
pathos. with the picture surface; there are no "holes,"
no undefined empty spaces. These interlock-
ing shapes give Vermeer's work a uniquely
Genre Painters
modern quality. The carefully "staged" en-
Steen. The vast class of pictures terme d trance serves to establish our relation to
genre is asra~ried as that~njf-jancls capes and the scene. We
more than privileged by-
are
stftlffijesTi It r ange s" from tavern brawls to re- standers: we become the bearer of the letter
fined domestic interidrs7~Tkr7east of St. Nich- that has just been delivered to the young
oTaTjhg. 300) byJanSteen (1625/26-1679) is woman. Dressed in sumptuous clothing, she
midway between. St. Nicholas has just paid has been playing the lute, as if awaiting
his pre-Christmas visit to the household, leav- our visit. This instrument, laden with erotic
ing toys, candy, and cake for the children. meaning, traditionally signifies the harmony
Everybody is jolly except the bad boy on the between lovers, who play each other's heart-
left, who has received only a birch rod. Steen strings. Are we, then, her lover? The amused
tells this story with relish, embroidering it expression of the maid suggests just such an
with many delightful details. Of alljhe Dutch anecdotal interest. Moreover, the lover in
painters of daily life, he wasjhg^sharpest, tmd Dutch art and is often compared to
literature
thevmost good-humored, observer. To sup- a ship at sea, whose calm waters depicted in
plement his earnings he kept an inn, which the painting here indicate smooth sailing. As
perhaps explains his keen insight into human usual with Vermeer, however, the picture re-
behavior. His sense of timing and his charac- fuses to yield a final answer (see p. 25), since
terization often remind us of Frans Hals the artist has concentrated on the moment
(compare fig. 291), while his storytelling before the letter is opened.
THE BAROQUE IN FRANCE:
THE AGE OF VERSAILLES
Under Louis XIV, France became the most tual heritage of reason and Stoic virtue.
powerful nation of Europe, militarily and cul- TtTes^l^tor^jgtgjfjert tTie spr ead of_jhe
turally. By the late seventeenth century, Paris Ba roqu e in Franc, and modified its interpre-
was wing with Rome as the worldcapjtal_of_ tation. Rubens' Medici Cycle (see fig. 287),
the major and minor arts, a position the Holy for example, had no effect on French art
Citv had held for centuries. How did this until end of the century. In the
the very
change come about? We are tempted to think 1620s, when he painted it, the young artists
of French art in the age of Louis XIV as the in France were suJL^ssirnilatin g the E arly
303. Nicolas Poussin. The Rape of the Sabine Women, c. 1636-37. Oil on canvas, 60 7/8x82V8" (154.6x209.9 cm).
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Harris Brisbane Dick Fund, 1946
absorbed his style isfar from clear. They were clarity, balance, and restraint of De La Tour's
for the most part minor artists toiling in the art might be termed "classical," especially
provinces, but a few developed highly origi- when measured against other Caravaggesque
nal styles. The finest of them was Georges painters, but he was certainly not a "classi-
de La Tour (1593-1652), whose importance cist." The artist who did the most to bring the
was recognized only two hundred years later. rise of classicism about was Nicolas Poussin
His Joseph the Carpenter (fig. 302) might be (1593/94-1665). The greatest French painter
mistaken for a genre scene, were it not for of the century, and the first French painter in
its devotional spirit, which has the power history to win international fame, Poussin
of Caravaggio's The Calling of St. Matthew nevertheless spent almost his entire career
(see fig. 271). The boy Jesus holds a can- in Rome. There, under the inspiration of Ra-
dle, a favorite device with De La Tour, which phael, he formulated the style that was to be-
lights the scene with an intimacy and tender- come the ideal model for French painters of
ness reminiscent of Geertgen tot Sint Jans the second half of the century.
(compare fig. 193). De La Tour also shares The Rape of the Sabine Women (fig. 303)
Geertgen's tendency to reduce his forms to shows the severe discipline of Poussin's intel-
geometric simplicity. lectual style. The strongly modeled figures
are "frozen in action" like statues, and many
Poussin. Why was De La Tour so quickly are, in fact, derivedfrom Hellenistic sculp-
forgotten? The reason is simply that after the ture. Poussin has placed them before recon-
1640s, classicism was supreme in France. The structions of Roman architecture that he
J
rHF BAROQUE IN FRAtH t.
*
<
~^"
^^tn^^jM~j
3§
304. Nicolas Poussin. of Bacchus, c. 1657. Oil on canvas. 48% x 70V4" (123 x 179 cm).
7fo- Birth
Fogg An Museum. Harvard Universitv Art Museums. Cambridge. Massachusetts.
Gift of Mrs. Samuel Sachs in memorv of her husband, Mr. Samuel Sachs
believed to be archaeologically correct. The if nature were perfect. To this end, the artist
composition has an air of theatricality, and must strive for the general and typical. In ap-
with good reason: it was worked out bv mov- pealing to the mind rather than the senses, he
ing clay hgurines around a miniature stage- should suppress such incidentals as color, and
like setting until it looked right to the artist. stressform and composition. In a good pic-
Emotion is abundandy displayed, but it is so ture, thebeholder must be able to "read" the
lacking in spontaneity that it fails to touch us. exact emotions of each figure, and relate
Clearly, the attitude reflected here is Ra- them to the story. These ideas were not new.
phael's. More precisely, it is Raphael as fil- We recall the ancient dictum ut pictura poesis
tered through Annibale Carracci and his and Leonardo's statement that the highest
school (compare figs. 273. 274). Venetian aim of painting is to depict "the intention of
qualities, which asserted themselves earlv in man's soul" (see pp. 244, 291). Before Poussin.
his career, haye been consciously suppressed. howeyer, no one made the analogy between
Poussin max strike us as a man who knew painting and literature so close, nor put it
his own mind only too well, an impression into practice so single-mindedlv. His method
confirmed by the numerous letters in which accounts for the cold and overexplicit rhet-
he expounded his views to friends and pa- oric inThe Rape of the Sabine Women that
trons. The highest aim of painting, he be- makes the picture seem so remote, much as
to represent noble and serious we may admire its rigor.
human actions. These must be shown in a log- Poussin also painted "ideal landscapes" ac-
• d orderly wav; that is. not as they really cording to this theoretical view, with sur-
•
ned, but as the) would have happened prisingly impressive results, for they have an
THE BAROQUE IN FRANCE -319
austere beauty and somber calm. This severe dinary powers of observation. He is also doc-
rationalism lasted until about 1650, when he umented as having sketched in oils from
began of landscapes that
to paint a series nature, the first artist known
have done so. to
return to the realm of mythology he had Sketches, however, were only the raw material
abandoned in middle age. These unite the for his paintings, which do not aim at to-
Titianesque style of his early work with his pographic exactitude but evoke the poetic es-
later, Raphaelesque classicism to produce a sence of a countryside filled with echoes of
new kind of mythological landscape, close in antiquity. Often, as in A Pastoral Landscape
spirit to Claude Lorraine's (see below) but (fig. 305), the compositions are suffused
rich in personal associations that lend them with the hazy, luminous atmosphere of early
multiple levels of meaning. Indeed, the art- morning or late afternoon. The space ex-
ist's late ruminations have rightly been called pands serenely, rather than receding step-by-
transcendental meditations, for they contain step as in Poussin's ideal landscapes. An air of
archetypal imagery of universal significance. nostalgia hangs over such vistas, of past expe-
The Birth of Bacchus (fig. 304), among his most rience gilded by memory. Hence, they ap-
profound statements, takes up the great Stoic pealed especially to the English who had seen
theme (which Poussin had treated twice al- Italy only briefly or even not at all.
tage, and The Birth of Bacchus represents the ular in Venice from Titian to Veronese.
purest realization of expressive intent in Vouet's figure looks back as well to Correg-
painted form. It is full of serene lyricism con- gio's Io (see fig. 252), but without her frank
veying the joy oflife on the one hand, and eroticism. Instead, she has been given an ele-
dark forebodings of death on the other: to gant sensuousness that could hardly be fur-
the right, the nymph Echo weeps over the ther removed from Poussin's disciplined art.
dead Narcissus, the beautiful youth who Ironically, The of Venus was painted
Toilet
spurned her love and instead drowned kiss- around 1640, toward the beginning of Pous-
ing his reflection. sin's ill-fated sojourn in Paris, where he
had gone at the invitation of Louis XIII.
Claude Lorraine. If Poussin developed the He met with no more success than Bernini
heroic qualities of the "ideal landscape," the was to have thirty years later (see pp. 323-
great French landscapist Claude Lorraine 24); after several years Poussin left bitterly
(1600-1682) brought out its idyllic aspects. disappointed by his cool reception at the
He, too, spent almost his entire career in court, whose taste and politics Vouet under-
Rome. Like many Northerners, Claude ex- stood far better. In one sense, their rivalry
plored the countryside outside that city (the was to continue long afterward. Vouet's deco-
Campagna) more thoroughly and affection- rative manner provided
the foundation for
ately than any Italian. Countless drawings the Rococo, but was Poussin's classicism that
it
made on the spot bear witness to his extraor- soon dominated art in France. The two tradi-
THE BAROQl E ISt FRANCE
royal style. Ironically, this great example Lebrun, who became supervisor of all the
proved too pure, and Perrault soon faded king's artistic projects. As chief dispenser of
from favor. royal jrrt patronage, he commanded so much^
power that for all pra ctical purposes jie^tfas
Palace of Versailles. The king's greatest en- the dictator of the arts in France. Lebrun had
terprise was the Palace of Versailles, just over spent several years studying under Poussin in
eleven miles from the center of Paris. It was Rome; but the great decorative schemes of
begun in 1669 by Le Vau, who died within a the Roman Baroque must also have im-
year, then turned over to Jules Hardouin- pressed him, for they stood him in good stead
Mansart (1646-1708), who expanded the en- twenty years later, both in the Louvre and at
tire project enormously to accommodate the Versailles. He became a superb decorator, uti-
ever-growing royal household. The Garden lizing the combined labors of architects,
Front (fig. Le Vau to be the
308), intended by sculptors, painters, and artisans for ensem-
principal view of the palace, was stretched to bles of unheard-of splendor. To subordinate
an enormous length with no modification of all the arts to the single goal of glorifying
the architectural membering, so that his orig- Louis XIV was in itself Baroque. Lebrun
inal facade design, a less severe variant of the drew on his memories of Rome for the
freely
East Front of the Louvre, now looks rep- Salon de la Guerre (fig. 309), which seems
etitious and out of scale. The whole center close in many ways to the Cornaro Chapel
block contains a single room, the famous (compare fig. 280), although Lebrun ob-
Galerie des Glaces (Hall of Mirrors), with the viously emphasized surface decoration far
Salon de la Guerre (War) and its counterpart, more than did Bernini. As in so many Italian
the Salon de la Paix (Peace), at either end. Baroque interiors, the separate ingredients
Baroque features, although not officially are less impressive than the effect of the
acknowledged, reappeared inside the palace. whole.
This difference corresponded to the king's Apart from the magnificent interior, the
own taste. Louis XIV was interested less in most impressive aspect of Versailles is the
architectural theory and monumental exte- park extending west of the Garden Front for
riors than in the lavish interiors that would several miles (the view in figure 308 shows
make suitable settings for himself and his only a small part of it). Its design, by Andre
court. Thus the man to whom he really lis- Le Notre (1613-1 700), is so strictly correlated
was not an architect, but the painter with the plan of the palace that it becomes a
THE HAROQLE IN FRANC£. • j^P
SCULPTURE
Sculpture arrived at the official royal style in
much the same way as architecture. While in
Paris, Bernini carved a marbleJiusLof^ Louis
309. Hardouin-Mansart, Lebrun, and Covsevox.
Salon de la Guerre, XI V and was commissioned to do_an eques-
Palace of Versailles. Begun 1678 trian slatoe_oLJEujn7"TKe latter project shared
324 • THE BAROQUE IN FRANCE
has been treated as the end of~the Baroqu e: a cism. To its credit, however, the Rococo dis-
long twilight, deliciousbuTdecadent, that was covered the world of love and broadened the
cleaned away by the Enlightenment and Neo- range of human emotion in art to include, for
classicism. In Fra nce, the Rococo is jinke d the first time, the family as a major theme.
with the reign of Louis XV (1715-65), with
which it corresponds roughly in date. How-
eveCtTcannot be identified with the absolutist
PAINTING
state or the Church any more than can the
France
Baroque, even though these continued to
provide the main patronage. Moreover, the "Poussinistes" versus "Rubenistes." It is
essential characteristics of Rococo style were hardly surprising that the straightjacket sys-
created before the king was born: its first tem of the French Academy (see pp. 320-21)
symptoms begin as much as fifty years earlier, produced no significant artists. Even Lebrun,
during the lengthy transition that constitutes as we have seen, was far more Baroque
the Late Baroque. Nevertheless, the view in his practice than we would expect from
of the Rococo as the final phase of the Ba- his classicistic theory. The absurd rigidity
roque is not without basis: as the philosopher of the official doctrine generated, more-
Francois-Marie Voltaire acknowledged, the over, a counterpressure that vented itself as
eighteenth century lived in the debt of the soon as Lebrun's authority began to decline.
past. In art, Poussin and Rubens cast their Toward the end of the century, the members
long shadows over the Rococo. The contro- of the Academy formed two warring factions
versy between their partisans, in turn, goes over the issue of drawing versus color: the
back much further to the debate between the "Pou&iwdes" (or conservatives) against the
supporters of Michelangelo and of Titian "Rubenistes." The conservatives defended
over the merits of design versus color (see Poussin's view that drawing, which appealed
p. 19). In this sense, the Rococo, like the Ba- to the mind, was superior to color, which ap-
roque, still belongs to the Renaissance world. pealed to the senses. The Rubenistes advo-
To overemphasize the similarities and sty- cated color, rather than drawing, as being
listic debt of the Rococo to the Baroque, how- more true to nature. They also pointed out
ever, risks ignoring a fundamental difference that drawing, admittedly based on reason, ap-
between hem. What is it? In a word,_it__
t peals only to the expert few, whereas color
is/fantasyjf the Baroque_presents theatcr-en— appeals to everyone. This argument had rev-
a 1 grap d scaTePth e_JJQc oco stage^issmaller, olutionary implications, for it proclaimed the
more intimate. At the same time, the Ro- lavpersoa-io^b^iJie^ltknate judge of artistic
coco is"~both more Tighthearted and tender- values, and challenged the Renaissance no-
minded, ^rrarked equally by playful whimsy tion that painting, as a liberal art, could be
and wistful nostalgia. Its artifice conjures up appreciated only by the educated mind.
an enchanted realm that presents a tempo-
rary—-diversion from real life. Be cause the Watteau. By the time Louis XIV died in
modern age is the product of the Enlighten- 1715, the dictatorial powers of the Academy
326 • ROCOCO
had already been overcome, and the influ- about to board the boat, accompanied by
ence of Rubens and the great Venetians was swarms of cupids.
everywhere. Two years later the Rubenistes The scene at once recalls Rubens' The Gar-
scored their final triumph when the painter den of Love (see fig. 288), but Watteau has
Jean- Antoine Watteau (1684-1721) was ad- added a touch of poignancy, lending it a po-
mitted to the Academy on the basis of his A etic subtlety reminiscent of Giorgione (see
Pilgrimage Cythera (fig. 312). This picture
to fig. 239). His figures, too, lack the robust vi-
violated academic canons, and its subject
all tality of Rubens'. Slim and graceful, they
did not conform to any established category. move with the studied assurance of actors
To accommodate Watteau, the Academy in- who play their roles so superbly that they
vented the new category of fetes galantes (ele- touch us more than reality ever could. They
gant fetes or entertainments). The term recapture an earlier ideal of "mannered"
refers less to this one canvas than to the art- elegance.
ist's work in general, which mainly shows
scenes of elegant society or comedy actors in Boucher. The work of Watteau signals a shift
parklike settings. He characteristically inter- in French art as a whole to the Rococo. The
weaves theater and real life so that no clear term originally applied to the decorative arts
distinction can be made between the two. A (see p. 332), but it suits the playful character
Pilgrimage to Cythera includes yet another ele- of French painting before 1 765 equally well.
ment: classical mythology. These young cou- By about 1720 even history painting becomes
ples have come to Cythera, the island of love, intimate in^scale and delightfully ebullient in
to pay homage to Venus, whose garlanded style and subject. The finest painter in this
appears on the far right. They are vein is Francois Boucher (1703-1770), who
rococo •
327
Chardin. The stvle of Jean-Baptiste-Simeon 313. Francois Boucher. The Toilet of Venus. 1751.
wertf the
values.
artist's
To the rising middle class
patrons, his genre scenes
who
and
§
kitchen proclaimed the virtues of
still lifes
J
328 • ROCOCO
any Dutch artist's. Devoid of bravura, his made all the more persuasive by the artist's
brushwork renders the light on colored sur- ravishing treatment of her clothing. At the
faces with a creamy touch that is both analyti-
cal and subtly lyrical. To reveal the inner
nature of things, he summarizes forms, subtly
altering their appearance and texture, rather
than describing them in detail. Chardin dis-
covered a hidden poetry in even the most
humble objects and endowed them with time-
less dignity. His still lifes usually depici-the
same modest environment, eschewing the
"object appeal" of their Dutch predecessors.
In Kitchen Still Life (fig. 315), we see only the
common objects that belong in any kitchen:
earthenware jugs, a casserole, a copper pot, a
piece of raw meat, smoked herring, two eggs.
But how important they seem, each so firmly
placed in relation to the rest, each so worthy
of the artist's— and our— scrutiny! Despite his
concern with formal problems, evident in the
beautifully balanced design, Chardin treats
these objects with a respect close to reverence.
Beyond their shapes, colors, and textures,
the) are to him symbols of the life of common
people.
317. William Hogarth. The Orgy. Scene III of The Rake's Progress, c. 1734.
Oil on canvas. 24V<> x 29'/>" (62.2x74.9 cm). Sir John Soane's Museum, London
same time, there is a sense of transience in the Hogarth. The earliest of these painters. Wil-
engaging mood that exemplifies the Rococo's liam Hogarth (1697-1764). made his mark in
whimsical theatricality. Interrupter! in h^r the 1 730s with a new kind of picture, which
singing, the lyrical duchesse becomes a real-li fe he described as "modern moral subjects . . .
J
330 • ftl
318. Thomas Gainsborough. Robert Andrews and His Wife. c. 1748-50. Oil on canvas,
27 '
•> x 47" (69.9 x 1 19.4 cm). The National Gallery, London. Reproduced by courtesy of the Trustees
320. Sir Joshua Reynolds. Sarah Siddons as the Tragic Muse. 1784.
Oil on canvas, 93 x 57W
(236.2 x 146.1 cm).
Henry E. Huntington Library and Art Gallery, San Marino, California
have a lyrical charm that is not always found (fig. 319), have other virtues: a cool elegance
in his later pictures. Compared to Van Dyck's that translates Van Dyck's aristocratic poses
artifice in Portrait of Charles I Hunting (see into late-eighteenth-century terms, and a
fig. 289), this country squire and his wife are fluid, translucent technique reminiscent of
unpretentiously at home in their setting. The Rubens.
landscape, although derived from Ruisdael
and his school, has a sunlit, hospitable air Reynolds. Gainsborough painted Mrs. Sid-
never achieved (or desired) by the Dutch dons in conscious opposition to his great rival
masters. The casual grace of the two figures on the London scene, Sir Joshua Reynolds
indirectly recallsWatteaus style. Later por- (1723-1792), who just before had portrayed
traits by Gainsborough, such as the very fine the same sitter as the Tragic Muse (fig. 320).
one of the famous actress Mrs. Siddons Reynolds, the president of the Royal Acad-
J
332 • ROCOCO
J
334 ROCOCO
ROCOCO - 335
Baroque. The vaults and walls seem thin and Wiirzburg frescoes (fig. 324), his powers were
pliable, like membranes easily punctured by at their height. The tissuelike ceiling so often
the expansive power of space. gives way openings of every
to illusionistic
sort that we no longer it to be a spatial
feel
Tiepolo. Just as the style of architecture in- boundary. These openings do not reveal,
vented in Italy achieved its climax north of however, avalanches of figures propelled by
the Alps, so the last, and most refined, stage dramatic bursts of light, like those of Roman
of Italian illusionistic ceiling decoration is ceilings (compare fig. 276), but rather blue
represented in Wiirzburg by its greatest mas- sky and sunlit clouds, and an occasional
ter,Giovanni Battista Tiepolo (1696-1770). winged creature soaring in this limitless ex-
Venetian by birth and training, he blended panse. Only along the edges are there solid
that city's tradition of High Baroque illusion- clusters of figures. Tiepolo proved himself a
ism with the pageantry of Veronese. His mas- worthy successor to Pietro da Cortona, and
tery of light and color, the grace and felicity followed in his footsteps to Madrid, where he
of his touch, made him famous far beyond his spent his later years decorating the Royal
home territory. When Tiepolo painted the Palace.
1450
Hapsburg rule of Holy Roman Empire Marsilio Ficino, Italian Neo- Platonic Bartholomeu Diaz rounds Cape of
begins 1452 philosopher (1433-1499) Good Hope 1488
End of Hundred Years' War 1453 Pius II, humanist pope (r. 1458-64) Christopher Columbus discovers
Constantinople falls to Turks 1453 Sebastian Brant's Ship of Fools 1494 America 1492
Lorenzo de'Medici, "the Magnificent," Savonarola virtual ruler of Florence Vasco da Gama reaches India, returns
virtual ruler of Florence 1469—92 1494; burned at stake for heresy to Lisbon 1497-99
Ferdinand and Isabella unite Spain 1498
1469
Spain and Portugal divide southern
New World 1493-94
Charles VIII of France invades Italy
1494-99
Henry VII (r. 1485-1509), first Tudor
king of England
1500
Charles V elected Holv Roman Erasmus of Rotterdam's In Praise of Folly Vasco de Balboa sights Pacific Ocean
Emperor 1519; Sack of Rome 1527 1511 1513
Hernando Cortes wins Aztec Empire in Thomas More's Utopia 1516 First circumnavigation of the globe
Mexico for Spain 1519; Francisco Martin Luther (1483-1546) posts 95 by Ferdinand Magellan and crew
Pizarro conquers Peru 1 532 theses 1517; excommunicated 1521 1520-22
Henry VIII of England (r. 1509-47) Castiglione's Courtier 1528 Copernicus refutes geocentric view of
founds Anglican Church 1534 Machiavelli's Prince 1532 universe
Wars of Lutheran vs. Catholic princes Ignatius of Loyola founds Jesuit order
in Germany; Peace of Augsburg 1534
(1555) lets each sovereign decide John Calvin's Institutes of the Christian
religion of his subjects Religion 1536
SOTE: Figure numbers of black-and-white illustrations are in (italics). Colorplate numbers are in (bold face).
Duration of papacy or reign is indicated by the abbreviation r.
J
POLITICAL HISTORY RELIGION, LITERATURE SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY
1550
Ivan the Terrible of Russia (r. 1547-84) Montaigne, French essayist (1533-1592)
Charles V retires 1556; son Philip II Council of Trent for Catholic reform
becomes king of Spain, Netherlands, 1545-63
New World St. Theresa of Avila, Spanish saint
Elizabeth I of England (r. 1558-1603) (1515-1582)
Lutheranism becomes state religion in Giorgio Vasari's Lives 1564
Denmark 1560, in Sweden 1593 William Shakespeare, English dramatist
Netherlands revolt against Spain 1586 (1564-1616)
Spanish Armada defeated by English
1588
Henry IV of France (r. 1589-1610);
Edict of Nantes establishes religious
toleration 1598
1600
Jamestown, Virginia, founded 1607; Miguel de Cervantes' Don Quixote 1605- Johannes Kepler establishes planetary
Plymouth, Massachusetts, 1620 16 system 1609-19
Thirty Years' War 1618-48 John Donne, English poet (1572-1631) Galileo (1564-1642) invents telescope
Cardinal Richelieu, adviser to Louis King James Bible 1611 1609; establishes scientific method
XIII, consolidates power of king Rene' Descartes, French mathematician William Harvey describes circulation of
1624-42 and philosopher (1596-1650) the blood 1628
Cardinal Mazarin governs France
during minority of Louis XIV 1643-
61 (civil war 1648-53)
Charles I of England beheaded 1649;
Commonwealth under Cromwell
1649-53
1650
Charles II restores English monarchy Moliere, French dramatist (1622-1673) Isaac Newton (1642-1727), theory of
1660 Blaise Pascal, French scientist and gravity 1687
English Parliament passes Habeas philosopher (1623-1662)
Corpus Act 1679 Spinoza, Dutch philosopher (1632-
Frederick William, the Great Elector (r. 1677)
1640-88), founds power of Prussia Racine, French dramatist (1639-1699)
Louis XIV absolute ruler of France (r. John Milton's Paradise Lost 1667
1661-1715); revokes Edict of Nantes John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress 1678
1685 John Locke's Essay Concerning Human
Glorious Revolution against James II of Understanding 1690
England 1688; Bill of Rights
1700
Peter the Great (r. 1682-1725) Alexander Pope's Rape of the Lock 1714 Carolus Linnaeus, Swedish botanist
westernizes Russia, defeats Sweden Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe 1719 (1707-1778)
English defeat French at Blenheim 1704 Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels 1726
Robert Walpole first prime minister Wesley brothers found Methodism 1738
1721-42 Voltaire, French author (1698-1778)
Frederick the Great of Prussia defeats
Austria 1740-45
1750
Seven Years' War (1756-63): England Thomas Gray's Elegy 1750 James Watt patents steam engine 1769
and Prussia vs. Austria and France, Diderot's Encyclopedia 1751-72 Priestley discovers oxygen 1774
called French and Indian War in Samuel Johnson's Dictionary 1755 Coke-fed blast furnaces for iron
America; French defeated in Battle Edmund Burke, English reformer smelting perfected c. 1760-75
of Quebec 1769 (1729-1797) Benjamin Franklin's experiments with
Catherine the Great (r. 1762-96) Jean-Jacques Rousseau, French electricity c. 1750
extends Russian power to Black Sea philosopher and writer (1712-1778)
ARCHITECTURE SCULPTURE PAINTING
1550
Palladio. VillaRotonda, Vicenza (255) Giovanni Bologna, Rape of the Sabine Bronzino, Eleanora of Toledo and Her Son
Delia Porta, Facade of II Gesu. Rome Woman, Florence (254) Giovanni de'Medici (246)
(256) Bruegel, Return of the Hunters (267)
Titian, Christ Crowned with Thorns (242)
Veronese, Christ in the House of Levi
(250)
El Greco, Burial of Count Orgaz (248)
Tintoretto. Last Supper (247)
Caravaggio, Calling of St. Matthew,
Contarelli Chapel, Rome (271)
Annibale Carracci, Farnese Gallery
ceiling, Rome (273)
1600
Maderno, Nave and facade of St. Bernini. David (278): Cornaro Chapel. Rubens, Raising of the Cross (286); Marie
Peter's, Rome: Bernini's colonnade Rome (279, 280) de'Medici, Queen of France, Landing in
(277; Marseilles (287)
Borromini, S. Carlo alle Quattro Artemisia Gentileschi,ytw/irA and Her
Fontane, Rome (281, 282) Maidservant with the Head of
Holofernes (272)
Zurbaran, St. Serapion (284)
Hals,/o//y Toper (291 1
Leyster, Buy Playing a Flute (293)
Pietro da Cortona. Palazzo Barberini
ceiling, Rome (276)
Heda, Still Life (299)
Van Dvck, Portrait of Charles I Hunting
(289)
Rembrandt, Blinding of Samson (294)
Poussin. Rape of the Sabine Women (303)
Rubens, Garden of Love (288)
De La Tour, Joseph the Carpenter (302)
1650
Perrault. East front of Louvre, Paris Puget, Milo of Crotona (311) Lorraine. Pastoral Landscape (305)
(307) Covsevox. Charles Lebrun (310) Rembrandt, Christ Preaching (297)
Hardouin-Mansart and Le Vau, Palace Ruisdael.yeu'isA Cemetery (298)
of Versailles, begun 1669 (308); with Velazquez, Maids of Honor (285)
Covsevox, Salon de la Guerre (309) Rembrandt, Self-Portrait (296)
Guarini. Palazzo Carignano, Turin (283) Steen, Feast of St. Sicholas (300)
Hals. Women Regents of the Old Men's
Home at Haarlem (292)
Vermeer, The Letter (301)
1700
Fischer von Erlach, St. Charles Watteau, Pilgrimage to C\thera (312)
Borromaeus, Vienna (322) Chardin. Kitchen Still Life (315)
Neumann, Episcopal Palace, Wurzburg Hogarth, Rake's Progress (317)
(323) Gainsborough. Robert Andrews and His
Burlington and Kent, Chiswick House, Wife (318)
London (332)
Boffrand, Hotel de Soubise, Paris (321)
1750
Tiepolo, Wurzburg ceiling fresco (324)
Boucher, Toilet of Venus (313)
Vigee-Lebrun, Duchesse de Polignac (316)
Revnolds, Sarah Siddons as the Tragic
Muse (320)
PART FOUR
THE
MODERN
WORLD
The era to which we ourselves belong has not relationship and trace their historic roots, the
yet acquired a name of its own. Perhaps this more paradoxicalthey seem. Both are
does not strike us as peculiar at first. We are, founded on the idea of progress; but whereas
after all, still in midstream. Considering how progress in science during the past two cen-
prompdy the Renaissance coined a name for turies has been continuous and measurable,
itself, we may well wonder why no key con- we can hardly make this claim for our pursuit
cept comparable to the "rebirth of antiquity" of happiness, however we choose to define it.
has emerged for the modern era since it be- Here, then, is the conflict fundamental to
gan two hundred and twenty-five years ago. our era. Today, having cast off the frame-
It is tempting to call ours "the age of revolu- work of traditional authority which confined
tion," because rapid and violent change has and sustained us before, we can act with a
indeed characterized the modern world. Yet latitude both frightening and exhilarating. In
we cannot discern a common impulse behind a world where all values may be questioned,
these developments, for the modern era be- we search constantly for our own identity and
gan with revolutions of two kinds: the Indus- for the meaning of human existence, individ-
trial Revolution, symbolized by the invention ual and collective. Our knowledge about our-
of the steam engine, and the political revolu- selves is now vastly greater, but this has not
tion, under the banner of democracy, in reassured us as we had hoped. Modern civili-
AFGHANISTAN
CHINA __f^*
MEDITERK
^PHILIPPINES
BENT
. (.1 ;.vti GAZELLE PEMNSLLA
NEW BRITAIN
GABON
CONGO
i
NEOCLASSICISM
is a new revival of classical antiquity, more tles of reason"? The first to formulate this
consistent than earlier classicisms, and one view was Johann Joachim Winckelmann, the
that was linked, at least initially, to Enlighten- German arT-+mtoTiaT> and theorist who popu-
ment thought. Romanticism, bv contrast, re- larized the famous phrase about the "noble
fers not to a specific style but to an attitude of simplicity and calm grandeur" of Greek art
mind that may reveal itself in any number (in-his Thoughts on thY~fmifation of Greek Works
of ways, including classicism. Romanticism, of 1755). Because Classical art offered little
therefore, is a far broader concept and is cor- specific guidance, to most painters a return to
respondingly harder to define. To compound the classics meant the style and "academic"
the difficulty, the Neoclassicists and early Ro- theory of Poussin, combined with a maximum
mantics were exact contemporaries who in of archaeological detail newly gleaned from
turn overlapped the preceding generation of ancient sculpture and the excavations of Her-
Rococo artists. David and Gova, for example, culaneum and Pompeii.
were born within a few vears of each other.
And in England the leading representatives
of the Rococo, Neoclassicism, and Romanti-
cism—Reynolds, West, and Fuseli — shared
PAINTING
many of the same ideas, although they were
France
otherwise separated bv clear differences in
style and approach. Greuze. In France, the thinkers of the En-
lightenmentTwho were the intellectual fore-
runners of the Revolution, strongly fostered
The Enlightenment
the anti-Rococo trend in painting. This re-
If the modern era was born during the Amer- form, at jvr st a matter of content rather than
ican Revolution of 1776 and the French Revo- style^juxounts for the sudden fame around
lution of 1789, these cataclysmic events were 1760 of Je an-Bapti s tr Greuze 11725- 18051.
preceded by a revolution of the mind that The Milage Bride (rig7325), like his other pic-
had begun half a centurv earlier. Its stan- tures of those years, is a scene of lower-class
dard-bearers were those thinkers of the family life. What distinguishes it from earlier
Enlightenment in England, France, and genre paintings (compare fig. 300) is its
ire. His pictorial sermon illustrates the social David. Diderot modified his views later,
gospel of Jean-Jacques Rousseau: that the when a far more gifted and rigorous "Neo-
poor, in contrast to the immoral aristocracy, Poussinist" appeared on the scene: Jacgues-
are full of "natural" virtue and honest senti- Lmm^av4d-(+T4&a82_5). In The Death ofjpc-
ment. Everything is intended to remind us of rates (fig. 326), of 1787, David seems more
this, from the declamatory gestures and ex- Poiissw&ie than Poussin himselfj(see fig. 303).
pressions of the actors to the smallest detail, ThVc^6Trrp^3sTtl6n~Trnfb1cirirke a relief, parallel
such as the hen with her chicks in the fore- to the picture plane, and the figures are as
ground: one chick has left the brood and sits solid, and as immobile, as statues. David has
alone on a saucer, like the bride who is about to added one unexpected element: the lighting,
leave her "brood." The Village Bride was ac- sharply focused and casting precise shadows.
claimed a masterpiece, and the loudest praise It is derived from Caravaggio, and so is the
came from Denis Diderot, that apostle of Rea- firmly realistic detail. Consequently, the pic-
son and Nature. Here was a painter with
at last ture has a quality of life rather astonishing in
a social mission who appealed to the beholder s so doctrinaire a statement of the new ideal
moral sense, instead of merely giving pleasure style. The very harshness of the design sug-
like the frivolous artists of the Rococo! In his gests that its creator was passionately engaged
first flush of enthusiasm, Diderot accepted the in the issues of his age, artistic as well as politi-
narrative of Greuze's pictures as "noble and cal. Socrates, refusing to compromise his
serious human action" in Poussin's sense. principles, was convicted of a trumped-up
346 NEOC1 \SSIt ISM
328. Benjamin West. The Death of General Wolfe. 1770. Oil on canvas, 59'/2 x84" (151.1 x 213.4 cm).
National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa. Gift of the Duke of Westminster
rial to the martyred hero, classical art coin- years later, he was in command of the most
cides with devotional image and historical up-to-date style. He became first a founding
account. Here, far more than in The Dea th of member of the Royal Academy, then, after
Socrates, the artist has drawn on theCaravag^ the death of Reynolds, its president. His ca-
ge5que tradition of religious art.~It is no acci- reer was thus European rather than Ameri-
dehnhat Ytts~Marat reminds us so stronglv of can, but he always took pride in his New
Zurbaran's St. Serapion (see fig. 284). World background.
We can sense this in The Death of General
Wolfe, hismost famous work. Wolfe's death in
England
1759, which occurred in the siege of Quebec
West. The martyrdom of a contemporary during the French and Indian War, had
secular hero was first immortalized by Ben- aroused considerable feeling in London.
jamin West (1738-1820) in The Death of Gen- When West, among others, decided to repre-
eral Wolfe (fig. 328). West traveled to Rome sent this event, two methods were open to
from Pennsylvania in 1 760 and caused some- him.He could give a factual account with the
thing of a sensation, since no American maximum of historic accuracy; or he could
painter had appeared in Europe before. He use "the grand manner," Poussin's ideal con-
relished his role of frontiersman: on being ception of history painting (see p. 318), with
shown a famous Greek statue he reportedly figures in "timeless" classical costume. Al-
exclaimed, "How like a Mohawk warrior!" He though he had absorbed the influence of the
also quickly absorbed the lessons of Neoclassi- Neo-Poussinists in Rome, he did not follow
cism, so that when he went to London a few them in this painting— he knew the American
348 • SEOCMSSICISM
less successors during the nineteenth century. of Design Listening to the Inspiration of Poetry. 1782.
Oil on canvas, circular, 24" diameter (61 cm).
The Iveagh Bequest, Kenwood, London
Copley. West's gifted compatriot, John Sin- (English Heritage)
gleton Copley of Boston (1738-1815), moved
to London just two years before the American
Revolution. Already an accomplished por- chael fighting Satan; and the nude youth, re-
traitist,Copley now turned to history painting calling a fallen gladiator, flounders helplessly
in the manner of West. His most memorable between the forces of doom and salvation.
effort in that field is Watson and the Shark This kind of moral allegory is typical of Neo-
(fig. 329). As a young man, Watson had been classicism as a whole: despite its charged emo-
dramatically rescued from a shark attack tion, the picture has the same logic and clarity
while swimming in Havana harbor, but not found in David's The Death of Socrates.
until he met Copley did he decide to have this
gruesome event memorialized. Perhaps he Kauffmann. One of the leading Neoclassi-
thought that only a painter newly arrived cistsin England was Swiss-born Angelica
from America would do full justice to the ex- Kauffmann (1741-1807). A founding mem-
otic flavor of the incident. Copley, in turn, ber of the Royal Academy, she spent fifteen
must have been fascinated by the task of years in London among the group that in-
translating the story into pictorial terms. cluded Reynolds and West, whom she had
Following West's example, he made every de- met in Winckelmann's circle in Rome (see
tail as authentic as possible (here the black p. 331). From the antique she developed a
man has the purpose of the Indian in The delicate style admirably suited to the interiors
Death of General Wolfe) and utilized all the ex- of Robert Adam (see pp. 351—52), which she
pressive resources of Baroque painting to in- was often commissioned to adorn. Neverthe-
vite the beholder's participation.Copley may less, Kauffmann's most ambitious works are
have remembered representations of Jonah narrative paintings, of which the artist John
and the Whale, which include the elements of Henry Fuseli (see p. 363) observed, "Her her-
his scene, except that the action is reversed oines are herself." The Artist in the Character of
(the prophet is thrown overboard into the Design Listening to the Inspiration of Poetry
jaws of the sea monster). The shark becomes a (fig. 330), one of her most appealing pictures,
monstrous embodiment of evil; the man with combines both aspects of her art. The subject
the boat hook resembles an Archangel Mi- must have held particular meaning for her,
350 •
ARCHITECTURE
The Palladian Revival
by Jacques-Germain Souf-
in Paris (fig. 333),
Unlike painters, Neoclassical sculptors were flot (1713-1780), was built as the church of
overwhelmed by the authority accorded, Ste. -Genevieve, but secularized during the
since Winckelmann, to ancient statues. How Revolution. The smooth, sparsely decorated
could a modern artist compete with these surfaces are abstracdy severe, akin to those of
works, which were acclaimed as the acme of Chiswick House, while the huge portico is
332. Lord Burlington and William Kent. Chiswick House, near London. Begun 1725
the daily life of the ancients and the full range Adam. From this came a new style of interior
of their arts and crafts. Richly illustrated decoration, seen at its finest in the works of
books about the Acropolis at Athens, the the Englishman Robert Ada m (1728-1 792),
temples at Paestum, and the finds at Hercula- such as the front drawing room of Home
neum and Pompeii were published in House (fig. 334). Adapted from Roman
England and France. Archaeology caught ev- stucco ornament, it echoes the delicacy of
eryone's imagination. Rococo interiors but with a characteristically
352 • SEOCLASSICIWI
;
THE ROMANTIC
MOVEMENT
a general trend. Those who. in the mid-eigh- self, so that revivals became the "style" of Ro-
teenth centurv. shared a revulsion against the manticism in art (and. to a lesser deg
established social order and religion— against literature and music).
established values of any sort— could either Seen was sim-
in this context. Neoclassicism
trv to found a new order based on their faith ply the phase of Romanticism, a revival
first
in the power of reason, or they could seek that continued all the way through the nine-
release in a erasing for emotional experience. teenth centurv. although it came to represent
Their common denominator was a desire to conservative Perhaps it is best, then, to
taste.
'return to Nature." The rationalist acclaimed think of them as two sides of the same mod-
nature as the ultimate source of reason, while ern coin. If we maintain the distinction be-
the Romantic worshiped it as unbounded, tween them, it is because, until about 1800,
wild, and ever-changing. If people would Neoclassicism loomed larger than the other
onlv behave "naturallv," the Romantic be- Romantic revivals, and because of the En-
lieved, giving their impulses free rein, evil lightenment's dedication to the cause of lib-
would disappear. In the name of nature, the ertv as against the cult of the individual
Romantics exalted libertv. power, love, vio- represented bv the Romantic hero.
lence, the Greeks, the Middle Ages, or anv-
thing else that aroused them, although
actually thev exalted emotion as an end in
PAINTING
itself. This attitude has motivated some of the
Spain
noblest— and vilest— acts of our era. In its
most extreme form. Romanticism could be It is one of the many apparent contradictions
expressed only through direct action, not of Romanticism that it became, despite the
through works of art. No artist, then, can be a untrammeled freedom of individual creativ-
wholehearted Romantic, for the creation of a itv. art for the rising professional and com-
work of art demands some detachment, self- mercial class which effectively dominated
awareness, and discipline. What William nineteenth-century society and which re-
Wordsworth, the great Romantic poet, said of placed state commissions and aristocratic pa-
poetrv in 1798 — that it is "emotion recollected tronage as the most important source of
in tranquilitv" — applies also to the visual arts. support for artists. Painting remains the
r.4 • lilt ROMANTIC MOVEMENT
greatest creative achievement of Romanti- Hugo, were capable draftsmen, and William
cism in the visual arts precisely because it was Blake cast his visions in both pictorial and lit-
less dependent than architecture or sculpture erary form (see fig. 349). Art and literature
on public approval. It held a correspondingly thus have a complex, subde, and by no means
greater appeal for the individualism of the one-sided relationship within the Romantic
Romantic artist. Moreover, it could better ac- movement.
commodate and ideas of Roman-
the themes
tic literature. Romantic painting was not Goya. We begin our account with the great
essentially illustrative. But literature, past and Spanish painter Francisco Goya (1 746-1 828),
present, now became a more important David's contemporary and the drily artist ot
source of inspiration for painters than ever the age who may be called, unreservedly, a
before and provided them with a new range genius. His early works, in a delightful late
of subjects, emotions, and attitudes. Roman- Rococo vein, reflect the influence of Tiepolo
tic poets, in turn, often saw nature with a and the French masters (Spain had produced
painters eye. Many had a strong interest in no painters of significance for over a cen-
art and theory. Some, notably
criticism tury). During the 1780s, Goya became more
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Victor of a libertarian. He surely sympathized with
336. Francisco Goya. The Family of Charles IV. 1 800. Oil on canvas,
9'2" x 1 1' (2.79 x 3.35 ni). Museo del Prado. Madrid
THE ROMANTIC MOVEMENT • 355
337. Francisco Goya. The Third of May, 1808. 1814-15. Oil on canvas,
8'9"x 13'4" (2.67x4.06 m). Museo del Prado, Madrid
the Enlightenment and the Revolution, and descent sparkle rivaling that of The Maids of
not with the king of Spain, who had joined Honor. Goya does not utilize the Caravag-
other monarchs in war against the young gesque Neoclassicism of David, yet his paint-
French Republic; yet Goya was much es- ing has more in common with David's work
teemed at court, especially as a portrait than we might think. Like David, he practices
painter. He abandoned the Rococo for aNeo- a revival style and, in his way, is equally de-
Baroque style based on Velazquez and Rem- voted to the unvarnished truth: he uses the
brandt, the masters he had come to admire Neo-Baroque of Romanticism to unmask the
most. It is this Neo-Baroque style that an- royal family.
nounces the arrival of Romanticism. Psychologically, The Family of Charles IV
The Family of Charles IV (fig. 336), Goya's is almost shockingly modern. No longer
largest royal portrait, deliberately echoes shielded by the polite conventions of Baroque
Velazquez' The Maids of Honor (see fig. 285). court portraiture, the inner being of these in-
The entire clan has come to visit the artist, dividuals has been laid bare with pitiless can-
who is painting in one of the picture galleries dor. They are like a collection of ghosts: the
of the palace. As in the earlier work, shadowy- frightened children, the bloated king, and —
canvases hang behind the group and the light in a master stroke of sardonic humor— the
pours from the side, although its subtle
in grotesquely vulgar queen, posed like Velaz-
gradations owe as much to Rembrandt as to quez' Princess Margarita (note the left arm
Velazquez. The brushwork, too, has an incan- and the turn of the head). How could Goya
a
and these academic principles. Consequendy, restored after Napoleon— and a modern
he never achieved David's authority and tragedy of epic proportions. Gericault went
ended his life by suicide. to extraordinary lengths in trying to achieve a
maximum of authenticity. He interviewed
Gericault. The Neo-Baroque trend initiated survivors, had a model of the raft built, even
in France by Gros aroused the imagination of studied corpses in the morgue. This search
many talented younger artists. For them, pol- for uncompromising truth is like David's, and
iticsno longer had the force of a faith. The The Raft is indeed remarkable for its power-
chief heroes of Theodore Gericault (1791- fully realistic detail. Yet these preparations
1824), apart from Gros, were Michelangelo were subordinate in the end to the spirit of
and the great Baroque masters. Gericault heroic drama that dominates the work.
painted his most ambitious work, The Raft of Gericault depicts the exciting moment when
-
the "Medusa" (fig. 339), in response to a politi- the rescue ship is first sighted. From the pros-
cal scandal and a modern tragedy of epic pro- trate bodiesof the dead and dying in the
portions. The Medusa, a government vessel, foreground, the composition is built up to a
had foundered off the West African coast climax in the group that supports the fran-
with hundreds of men on board; only a hand- tically waving black man, so that the forward
ful were rescued, after many days on a surge of the survivors parallels the movement
makeshift raft, which had been set adrift by of the raft itself.
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forcing us to suspend our disbelief. While we nated the artistic scene in Paris. The same
revel in the sheer splendor of the painting, we contrast persists in the portraiture of these
do not quite accept the human experience as perennial antagonists. Delacroix rarelv paint-
authentic. We react, instead, much as we do ed portraits on commission. He felt at ease
to J. M. W. Turner's The Slave Ship (see onlv when portraving his friends and fellow
fig. 351). One reason may be the discontinuity victims of the "Romantic agony." Like other
of the foreground, with its dramatic contrasts Neo-Baroque Romantics, he emphasized the
of light and shade, and the luminous sweep of psychological aspect to such a degree that his
the landscape behind (Delacroix is said to portraits tended to become records of his per-
have hastily repainted part of the back- sonal relationship with the sitter. In a paint-
ground after viewing Constable's The Hay- ing of the famous Polish composer F rederic
aum; see fig. 350). Chopin (fig. 343), we see the Romantic hero
344. Honor* Daumier. The Thtrd-Class Carriage, c. 1862. Oil on canvas. 26x35%" (66x90.2 cm).
Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York.
The
Bequest of Mrs. H. O. Havemever. 1929. The H. O. Havemever Collection
THE ROMANTIC MOVEMENT • 361
He turned to painting in the 1840s but found thought but on subjective experience, and the
no public for his work. Only a few friends appeal to the emotions rather than the intel-
encouraged him and, a year before his death, lect made those lessons all the more compel-
arranged his first one-person show. Dau- ling. In order to express the feelings inspired
mier's mature paintings have the full pictorial by nature, the Romantics sought to transcribe
range of the Neo-Baroque, but the subjects of landscape as faithfully as possible, in contrast
many of them are scenes of daily life like to the Neoclassicists, who subjected landscape
those he treated in his cartoons. Tfeg Third- to prescribed ideas of beauty and linked it to
Clgss_jCaxtiage (fig. 344) is such a work. historical subjects. At the same time, the Ro-
Daumier's forms reflect the compactness of mantics felt equally free to modify nature's
Francois Millet's (see p. 362), but are painted appearance to^exQke heighteriecLsiaies of
so freely that they must have seemed raw and mind in accordance with the dictates of the
"unfinished" even by Delacroix's standards. imagin atio n^ the~~onry^~standard^ they ulti-
Yet Daumier's power derives from this very mately recognized^ Landscape inspired the
freedom. His concern is not for the tangible Romantics with passions so exalted that only^
surface of reality but for the emotional mean- in the hands of the greatest history painters
ing behind it. In this picture, he has captured could humans equal nature in power as pro-
a peculiarly modern human condition: "the tagonists.Hence, the Romantic landscape lies
lonely crowd." These people have in common outside the descriptive and emotional range
only that they are traveling together in a rail- of the eighteenth century.
way car. Though they are physically crowded,
they take no notice of one another— each is Corot. The first and surely the greatest
alone with his or her own thoughts.Daumier French Romantic landscape painter was
explores this state with an insight into charac- Camille Corot (1796-1875). In 1825 he went
ter and a breadth of human sympathy worthy to Italy for two years and explored the coun-
of Rembrandt, whose work he revered. tryside around Rome, as did Claude Lor-
raine. What Claude recorded only in his
French Landscape Painting. Thanks to the drawings— the quality of a particular place at
cult of nature, landscape painting became a particular time— Corot made into paintings,
the most characteristic form of Romantic small canvases done on the spot in an hour or
art. The Romantics believed that God's laws two (fig. 345). In size and immediacy, these
could be seen written in nature. While it arose pictures are akin to Constable's oil sketches
out of the Enlightenment, their faith, known (see p. 365); yet they stem from different tra-
as pantheism, was based not on rational ditions. If Constable's view of nature, which
362 • / HF. ROM \\ 1 1( U()\ FMEXT
emphasizes the sky as "the chief organ of sen- though he was not actually a member. This
timent," is derived from seventeenth-century group of painters, all younger than Corot,
Dutch landscapes, Corot's instinct for archi- settled in the village of Barbizon near Paris to
tecturalclarity and stability again recalls paint landscapes and scenes of rural life. En-
Claude. But he, too, insists on "the truth of thused, however, by Constable, whose work
the moment." His exact observation and had been exhibited in Paris in 1824, they
readiness to seize on any view that attracted turned to the NorthernBaroque landscape as
him during his excursions show the same com- an alternative to the Neoclassical tradition.
mitment to direct visual experience that we Their landscapes are filled with a simple ven-
find in Constable. The Neoclassicists had also eration that admirably reflects the rallying cry
painted oil sketches out-of-doors. Unlike of the French Romantics: sincerity. The Sower
them, Corot did not initially transform his (fig. 346) by Francois Millet (1814-1 875)Tone
sketches into idealized pastoral visions, though of the artists of the Barbizon school, has a
he was to do so later in his career. His willing- somewhat self-conscious flavor. Blurred in
ness to accept them
independent works of
as the hazy atmosphere, this "hero of the soil" is
art marks him unmistakably as a Romantic. nevertheless a timeless image. (Could Millet
have known the pathetic sower from the Oc-
Millet. Corot's fidelity to nature was an tober page of the Tres Riches Heures du Due de
important model for the Barbizon school, Berry} Compare fig. 184.) Ironically, the
look, the popular revolution of 1848 elevated had an extraordinary impact on his time.
them to a new prominence in French art. more perhaps because of his adventurous
That same vear Rosa Bonheur (1822-1899). and forceful personality than the merits of
also an artist who worked out-of-doors, re- his work. Fuseli hrrxiLbJ irylc on Mil In rrr
'<
1
ceived a French government commission that gelQ and ih^Tan r|pri<;r«y not on Poussin and
led to her first great success and helped estab- the antique. A German acquaintance of those
lish her as a leading painter of animals— and years described him as "extreme in every-
eventually as the most famous woman artist thing, Shakespeare's painter." Fuseli was a
of her time. Her painting Plowing in the Xner- transitional figure. He espoused many of the
nais (fig. 347) was exhibited the following same Neoclassical theories as Reynolds. West.
vear. after a winter spent making studies and Kauffmann. but bent their rules virtually
from life. The theme of humanity's union to the breaking point. We see this in The
with nature had already been popularized in. Nightmare (fig. 348). The woman,sleeping
among other works, the country romances of more Mannerist than Michelangelesque. is
George Sand. Bonheur's picture shares Mil- Neoclassical. The grinning devil and the lu-
lets reverence for peasant life, but the real minescent horse, however, come from the
all her paintings, is the ani-
subject here, as in demon-ridden world of medieval folklore,
mals within the landscape: these she depicts while the Rembrandtesque lighting reminds
with a convincing naturalism that later placed us of Reynolds (compare fig. 320). Here the
her among the most influential Realists. Romandc quest for terrifying experiences
1
3(34 • THE ROM.WTIi MOVEMENT
a painter. Although he painted the final ver- most spectacular visions, illustrates how he
sions in his studio, he prepared them bv mak- translated his literary sources into "tinted
ing oil sketches from nature. The sky. to him, steam." First entided Slavers Throning Over-
remained "the kev note, standard scale, and board the Dead and Dying— Typhoon Coming On.
the chief organ of sentiment," as a mirror of the painting contains several levels of mean-
those sweeping forces so dear to the Roman- ing. Like Gericault's The Raft of the "Medusa"
tic view of nature. In The Haywain (fig. 350), (see fig. 339). which had been exhibited in
he has caught a particularly splendid England in 1820, it has to do, in part, with a
moment— a great sweep of wind, sunlight, specific incident about which Turner had re-
and clouds playing over the spacious cently read: when an epidemic broke out on a
landscape. The earth and sky seem to have slave ship, the captain jettisoned his human
become organs of sentiment informed with cargo because he was insured against the loss
the artist's poetic sensibilitv. At the same time, of slaves at sea, but not bv disease. Turner
there is an intimacy in this monumental com- also thought of a relevant passage from The
position that reveals Constable's deep love of Seasons, by the eighteenth-century poet James
the countrvside. This new, personal note is Thompson, which describes how sharks fol-
characteristically Romantic. Since Constable low a slave ship during a tvphoon, "lured bv
has painted the landscape with such convic- the scent of steaming crowds, or rank disease,
tion, we see the scene through his eyes and and death." But what is the relation between
believe him. even though it perhaps did not the slaver's action and the typhoon? Are the
look quite this way in realitv. dead and dying slaves being cast into the sea
against the threat of the storm, perhaps to
Turner. Joseph Mallord William Turner lighten the ship? Is the tvphoon nature's ret-
(1775M851) aimed at-a-srvfe that Constable ribution for the captain's greed and crueltv?
depTecatinglv but acutely described as "airv Of the many storms at sea that Turner
visions, painted with tinted steam." Turner painted, none has quite this apocalyptic qual-
began as a w atercolorist, and the use of trans- it\. A cosmic catastrophe seems about to en-
lucent tints on white paper mav help explain gulf everything, not merely the "guilty" slaver
his preoccupation with colored light. Like but the sea itself with its crowds of fantastic
Constable, he made copious studies from na- and oddlv harmless-looking fish.
ture (though not in oils), but the scenerv he While we still feel the force of Turner's
selected satisfied the Romantic taste for the imagination, most of us enjoy, perhaps with a
picturesque and the sublime: mountains, the twinge of guilt, the tinted steam for its own
sea. or sites linked with historic events. In his sake rather than as a vehicle of the awesome
full-scale pictures he often changed these emotions the artist meant to evoke. Even in
views so freely that they became quite unrec- terms of the values he himself acknowledged.
ognizable. Many of Turner's landscapes are Turner strikes us as "a virtuoso of the Sub-
related to literary themes. When thev were lime" led astrav bv his very exuberance. He
exhibited, he would add appropriate quota- must have been pleased bv praise from the
tionsfrom ancient or modern authors to the theorist John Ruskin, that protagonist of the
catalogue, or he would make up some lines moral superiority of Gothic style, who saw in
himself and claim to be "citing" his own un- The Slave Ship, which he owned, "the true, the
published poem. "Fallacies of Hope." These beautiful, and the intellectual"— all qualities
canvases are nevertheless the opposite of his- that raised Turner above older landscape
tory painting as defined bv Poussin: the tides painters. Still, Turner may have come to won-
indeed indicate "noble and serious human ac- der if his tinted steam had its intended effect
tions-." but the tinv figures, lost in the seething on all beholders. Soon after finishing The
violence of nature, suggest the ultimate de- Slave Ship,he could have read in his copv of
feat of all endeavor— the "fallacies of hope." Goethe's Color Theory, recendv translated into
The Slave Ship (fig. 351), one of Turner's English, that yellow has a "gav, softlv exciting
366 • THE ROM.WTIC MOVEMEST
350. John Constable. The Haywain. 1821. Oil on canvas. 51'/ix73" (130.2 x 185.4 cm).
The National Gallerv. London. Reproduced bv courtesv of the Trustees
352. Caspar David Friedrich. The Polar Sea. 1824. Oil on canvas,
38'^x50'/2" (97.8 x 128.2 cm). Kunsthalle, Hamburg
character," while orange red suggests too static for him, but Friedrich was attracted
"warmth and gladness." Would these be the by this immobility. He has visualized the
emotions aroused by The Slave Ship in a piled-up slabs of ice as a kind of megalithic
viewer who did not know its title? monument to human defeat built by nature
itself. Infinitely lonely, it is a haunting reflec-
tion of the artist's own melancholy. There is
Germany
no hint of tinted steam — the very air seems
Friedrich. In Germany, as in England, land- frozen — nor any subjective handwriting. We
scape waTThe hnest achievement of Romantic look right through the paint-covered surface
painting, and the underlying were
ideas, too, at a reality that seems created without
often strikingly similar. WhenCaspar David Friedrich's intervention. This technique, im-
Friedrich (1774-1840), the most important personal and meticulous, is peculiar to Ger-
German Romantic artist, painted The Pola r man Romantic painting.stems from the
It
to change only as the surrounding wilderness a vast and often hostile continent, these hardy
was gradually tamed, allowing people for the pioneers live in an ideal state of harmony
first time to see nature as the escape from with nature, symbolized by the waning day-
civilization that inspired European painters. light. The picture carries us back to the river
Pantheism virtually became a national reli- life of Mark Twain's childhood. At the same
gion during the Romantic era. Spurred by the time,it reminds us of how much Romantic
poets, who by 1825 were calling on them to adventurousness went into the westward ex-
depict the wilderness as the most conspicuous pansion of the United States. The scene owes
feature of the New World and its emerging a good deal of its haunting charm to the sil-
civilization, American painters elevated the houette of the black cub chained to the prow
forests and mountains to symbols of the and its reflection in the water. This master-
United States. While it could be frightening, stroke adds a note of primitive mystery that
nature was everywhere, and was believed to we shall not meet again until the work of
play a special role in determining the Ameri- Henri Rousseau (see p. 404).
can character.
Fur Traders Descending the Missouri (fig. 353)
by George Caleb Bingham (1811-1879) SCULPTURE
shows this close identification with the land.
The picture, which is both a landscape and a The development of Romantic sculpture fol-
genre scene, is full of the vastness and silence lows the pattern of painting. However, we
of the wide-open spaces. The two trappers in shall find it muchventuresome than ei-
less
their dugout canoe, gliding downstream in ther painting or architecture. The unique vir-
the misty sunlight, are entirely at home in this tue of sculpture — its solid, space-filling reality
idyllic setting. The assertion of a human pres- (its "idol" quality)— was not congenial to the
ence portrays the United States as a benev- Romantic temperament. The rebellious and
olent Eden in which settlers assume their Romanticism could
individualistic urges of
Ful place. Rather than being dwarfed by find expression in rough, small-scale sketches
THE ROMANTIC MOVEMENT • 369
but rarely survived the laborious process of from the lofty ideals of the Enlightenment
them into permanent, finished
translating that had given rise to Neoclassicism. The
monuments. Moreover, the new standard of glorification of the hero as a noble example,
uncompromising, realistic "truth" was embar- such as in Houdon's statue of Voltaire (see
rassing to the sculptor. When a painter ren- fig. 331), is abandoned in favor of the Roman-
ders clothing, anatomical detail, or furniture tic cult of the individual. There is no longer
with photographic precision, he or she does any higher authority — neither religion nor
not produce a duplicate of reality but a repre- reason is invoked. Only the imperative of
sentation of it. To do so in sculpture comes Greek art remains unquestioned as a style
dangerously close to mechanical reproduc- divorced from content. Not to be outdone,
tion, making it a handmade equivalent of the Napoleon's sister Pauline Borghese permitted
plaster cast. Sculpture thus underwent a crisis Canova to sculpt her as a reclining Venus
that was resolved only toward the end of the (fig. 354). The statue is so obviously idealized
nineteenth century. as to still any gossip. We recognize it as a
precursor, more classically proportioned, of
Canova. At the beginning of the Romantic Ingres' Odalisque (see fig. 340). Both ex-
era, we find at first an adaptation of the Neo- emplify early Romanticism, which incorpo-
classical style to new ends by sculptors, espe- rated Rococo eroticism but in a less sensuous
cially older ones? The most famous of them, form. Strangely enough, Pauline Borghese as
Antonio Canova (1757-1822), produced a Venus seems less three-dimensional than the
colossaTriude statue of Napoleon inspired by painting. She is designed for front and back
portraits of ancient rulers whose nudity indi- view only, like a "relief in the round," and her
cates their status as divinities. The elevation considerable charm radiates almost entirely
of the emperor to a god marks a shift away from the fluid grace of her contours. Here we
354. Antonio Canova. Pauline Borghese as Venus. 1808. Marble, lifesize. Galleria Borghese, Rome
HE ROMAXTIC MOYEMEST
intact in Canova.
ARCHITECTURE
Given the individualistic nature of Romanti-
cism, we might expect the range of revival
stvles to be widest in painting, the most per-
sonal and private of the visual arts, and nar-
ean-Baptiste Carpeaux. The Dance. 1867-69.
Plaster model, c. 15' x 8'6* (4.57 x 2.64 m).
rowest in architecture, the most communal
i6e de l'Opera, Paris and public — vet the opposite is true. Painters
THE ROMASTIC MOVEM EST
357. Horace Walpole. with William Robinson and others. Strawberry Hill. Twickenham. 1749-
linked with the cult of the picturesque, and lated." like a medieval romance, or the
with the vogue for medieval (and pseudo- Chinese motifs that crop up in Rococo
medieval) romances. decoration.
After 1 800, the choice between the classical
Walpole. In this spirit Horace Walpole and Gothic modes was more often resolved
1 17 17-I79 ~j enlarged and "gothicized" his in favor of Gothic. Nationalist sentiments.
country house. Strawberry Hill (figs. 357. strengthened Napoleonic wars, became
in the
358) midwav in the eighteenth century. De- important factors. England. France, and Ger-
spite its studied irregularity, the rambling many each tended to think that Gothic ex-
structure has daintv. flat surfaces that remind pressed its particular national genius. Certain
us strongly of Robert Adam i compare theorists i.notablv John Ruskin) also regarded
fig. 334): the interior looks almost as if it were Gothic as superior for ethical or religious rea-
decorated with lace-paper doilies. This play- sons on the grounds that it was "honest" and
fulness, so free of dogma, gives Strawberry "Christian."
Hill charm. Gothic here is still an
its special
"exotic" stvie. appeals because it is strange.
It Barry- and Pugin. All these considerations lie
but for that verv reason it must be "trans- behind the design, bv Sir Charles Barn
HE ROMANTlt MOVEMENT
359. Sir Charles Barrv and A. N. Welbv Pugin. The Houses of Parliament. London. Begun
Gothic.
THE KO.VM.Y77f. MOVE VEST • 37.J
and sculpture, photography participates in making the first permanent photographic im-
aspects of the same process of seek-and-find. age, although his earliest surviving example
Photographers may not realize what they re- (fig. 361) dates from four years later. He then
spond to until after thev see the image that joined forces with a younger man. Louis-
has been printed. Jacques-Mande Daguerre (1789—1851), who
Like woodcut, etching, engraving, and li- had devised an improved camera. After ten
thography, photography is a form of print- more years of chemical and mechanical re-
making that is dependent on mechanical search, the daguerreotype, using positive ex-
processes. But in contrast to the other graphic posures, was unveiled publicly in 1839 and
mediums, photography has alwavs been taint- the age of photography was born. The an-
ed as the product of a new technology. For nouncement spurred the Englishman Wil-
this reason, the camera has usually been con- liam Henrv Fox Talbot (1800-1877) to
sidered litde more than a recording device. complete his own photographic process, in-
Photography, however, is by no means a neu- volving a paper negative from which positives
tral medium: its reproduction of realitv is could be made, that he had been pursuing
never completely faithful. Whether we realize independently since 1833.
it or not. the camera alters appearances. Pho- What motivated the earliest photogra-
tographs reinterpret the world around us, phers? Thev were searching for an artistic
making us literally see it in new terms. medium, not for a device of practical utility.
Photographv and painting represent paral- Though Niepce was a research chemist rather
lel responses to their times and have gen- than an artist, his achievement was an out-
erally expressed the same world view. growth of his efforts to improve the litho-
Sometimes the camera's power to extend our graphic process. Daguerre was a skilled
way of seeing has been realized first by the painter, and he probably turned to the cam-
painter's creative vision. The two mediums era to heighten the illusionism in his huge
nevertheless differ fundamentally in their painted dioramas, which were the sensation
approach and temperament: painters com- of Paris during the 1820s and 1830s. Fox Tal-
municate their understanding through tech- bot saw in photography a substitute for draw-
niques that represent their cumulative ing, as well as a means of reproduction, after
response over time; photographers recognize using a camera obscura as a tool to sketch
the moment when the subject before them landscapes while on a vacation.
llh ROMASTIC MOYEMFST
It was as if the Industrial Revolution, having painting, extreme liberties yvere willinglv
forever altered civilization's way of life, had taken yvith topographical truth.
now to invent its own method for recording The invention of photography yvas a re-
itself, although the transience of modern sponse to the artistic urges and historical
existence was not captured bv "stopping the forces that underlie Romanticism. Much of
action" until the 1870s. Photography under- the impulse came from a quest for the True
went a rapid series of improvements, includ- and the Natural. The desire for "images
ing inventions for better lenses, glass plate made bv Nature" can already be seen in the
negatives, and new chemical processes, which late-eighteenth-centurv vogue for silhouette
provided faster emulsions and more stable portraits (traced from the shadoyv of the sit-
images. Since many of the initial limitations ter's profile), yvhich led to attempts to record
of photography were overcome around mid- such shadoyvs on light-sensitive materials.
centurv. it would be misleading to tell the David's harsh realism in The Death of Marat
earlv historv of the medium in terms of tech- (see fig. 327) had already proclaimed the
nological developments, important though cause of unvarnished truth. So did Ingres'
thev were. Louis Bertm (see fig. 341), yvhich established
The mechanics and chemistry of pho-
basic the standards of physical reality and char-
tography, moreover, had been known for a acter portrayal that photographers yvould
long time. The camera obscura, a box with a follow.
small hole in one end, dates back to antiquity.
In the sixteenth century was widely used for
it
Portraiture
visual demonstrations. The camera was fitted
with a mirror and then a lens in the Baroque Like lithography, yvhich yvas invented only in
period, which saw major advances in optical 1797. photography met the groyving middle-
science culminating in Newtonian physics. Bv class demand for images of all kinds. Bv
the 1720s had become an aid in drawing
it 1850, large numbers of the bourgeoisie yvere
architectural scenes; at the same time, silver having their likenesses painted, and it was in
salts were discovered to be light-sensitive. portraiture that photography found its readi-
Why, then, did it take another hundred est acceptance. Soon after the daguerreotype
lor someone to put this knowledge yvas introduced, photographic studios sprang
THE ROSUSTIC MOYEMEST • 375
painting. Nadar has treated her in remark- with one eve. When the halftone plate was
376 THE ROMANTIC MOVEMENT
363. Tsar Cannon Outside the Spassky Gate, Moscow (cast 1586; world's
largest caliber, 890 mm; presently inside Kremlin). Second half 19th century.
Stereophotograph. Courtesy Culver Pictures
invented in the 1880s for reproducing pic- its horrors with unprecedented directness.
tures on a printed page, stereophotographs Home of a Rebel Sharpshooter, Gettysburg (fig.
cess of reproduction. From then on, single- landmark in the history of art. Never before
lens photography was inextricably linked had both the grim reality and, above all, the
with the mass media of the day. significance of death on the battlefield been
conveyed so inexorably in a single image.
Compared with the heroic act celebrated by
Photojournalism
Benjamin West (see fig. 328), this tragedy is as
Fundamental to the rise of photography was anonymous as the slain soldier himself. The
the pervasive nineteenth-century sense that photograph is all the more persuasive for
the present was already history in the mak- having the same harsh realism of David's The
ing. Only with the advent of the Romantic Death of Marat (see fig. 327), and the limp fig-
hero did great acts other than martyrdom be- ure, hardly visible between the rocks framing
come popular subjects for contemporary the scene, is no less poignant.
painters and sculptors, and it can hardly be
surprising that photography was invented a
year after the death of Napoleon, who had
been the subject of more paintings than any
secular leader ever before. At about the same
time, Gericault's The Raft of the "Medusa" and
Delacroix's The Massacre at Chios (see figs. 339,
342) signaled a decisive shift in the Romantic
attitude, toward representing contemporary
events. This outlook brought with it a new
kind of photography: photojournalisrn s
Its first great representative was Mathew
cient god of thunder and lightning was now man's face is averted, the old one's half hid-
in jeopardy through science. We felt a similar den by a hat.He cannot have picked them
dilemma between art and life in The Dance by casually, however; their contrast in age is
the sculptor Carpeaux. The French poet and significant— one is too old for such heavy
art critic Charles Baudelairewas addressing work, the other too young. Endowed with the
himself to the same problem when, in 1846, dignity of their symbolic status, they do not
he called for paintings that expressed "the turn to us for sympathy. Courbet's friend
heroism of modern life." At that time only Proudhon likened
the socialist Pierre-Joseph
one painter was willing to make an artistic them from the Gospels. Courbet's
to a parable
creed of this demand: Baudelaire's friend Realism, then, was a revolution of subject
Gustave Courbet (1819-1877). matter more than of style. The conservatives'
rage at him as a dangerous radical is under-
Courbet and Realism. Courbet was born in standable nonetheless. He treated everyday
Ornans, a village near the French-Swiss bor- life with the gravity and monumentality tradi-
der, and remained proud of his rural back- tionally reserved for narrative painting. His
ground. A socialist in politics, he had begun sweeping condemnation of all traditional sub-
as a Neo-Baroque Romantic in the early jects drawn from religion, mythology, and
1840s. By 1848, under the impact of the revo- history spelled out what many others had be-
lutionary upheavals then sweeping over Eu- gun to feel, but had not dared to put into
rope, he came to believe that the Romantic words or pictures.
emphasis on feeling and imagination was During the Paris Exposition of 1855, where
merely an escape from the realities of the works by Ingres and Delacroix were promi-
time. The modern artist must rely on direct nently displayed, Courbet brought his pic-
experience and be a Realist. "I cannot paint tures to public attention by organizing a
an angel," he said, "because I have never seen private exhibition in a large wooden shed and
one." As a descriptive term, "realism" is not by distributing a "manifesto of Realism." The
very precise. For Courbet, it meant some- show centered on a huge canvas, the most
thing akin to the "naturalism" of Caravaggio ambitious of his career, entitled Studio of a
(see p. 288). As an admirer of Rembrandt he Painter: A Real Allegory Summarizing My Seven
had, in fact, strong links with the Caravag- Years of Life as an Artist (fig. 366). "Real alle-
gesque tradition, and his work, like Caravag- gory" something of a teaser; allegories,
is
gio's, was denounced for its supposed after all, are unreal by definition. Courbet
vulgarity and lack of spiritual content. meant either an allegory couched in the terms
The storm broke in 1849 when he exhib- of his particular Realism, or one that did not
ited The Stone Breakers (fig. 365), the first can- conflict with the "real" identity of the figures
378 • REALISM AND IMPRESSIONISM
366. Gustave Courbet. Studio of a Painter: A Real Allegory Summarizing My Sewn Years of Life
Artist. 1854-55. Oil on canvas, H'10"x 19'7" (3.6x5.79 m). Musee d'Orsay, Paris
REALISM AND IMPRESSIONISM • 379
368. Edouard Manet. Luncheon on the Grass (Le Dejeuner sur t'herbe). 1863.
Oil on canvas, 7' x 8'10" (2.13 x 2.64 m). Musee d'Orsay, Paris
370. Claude Monet. The River (Au Bord de Veau, Bennecourt). 868. Oil on canvas,
1
32'/8x39 5/8" (81.6 x 100.7 cm). The Art Institute of Chicago. Potter Palmer Collection
J
-
Courbet is said to have remarked that created. When his followers began calling
Manet's pictures were as flat as playing cards. themselves Impressionists, he refused to ac-
Looking at The Fifer (fig. 369), we can see cept the term for his own work.
what he meant. Done three years after the
Luncheon, it is a painting without shadows, Monet and Impressionism. The term Im-
modeling, or depth. The figure looks three- pressiojfisjriwas c oined in 1874- after a hos-
dimensional only because contour renders
its tile critic had looked at a picture entitled
the forms in realistic foreshortening. Other- Impression: Sunrise by Claude Monet (18 40-
wise, Manet neglects all the methods devised 1926)J_aiid it certainly fits Monet better than
since Giotto's time for transforming a flat sur- it does Manet. Monet had adopted Manet's
face into pictorial space. The undifferenti- concept of painting and applied it to land-
ated light-gray background seems as near to scapes done out-of-doors. Monet's The River
us as the figure, and just as solid. If the fifer of 1868 (fig. 370) is flooded with sunlight so
stepped out of the picture, he would leave a bright that conservative critics claimed it
hole, like the cutout shape of a stencil. made their eyes smart. In this flickering net-
Here, then, the canvas itself has been re- work of color patches, the reflections on the
defined. It is no longer a "window," but rather water are as "real" as the banks of the Seine.
a screen made up of flat patches of color. Even more than The Fifer Monet's painting is .
How radical a step this was can be readily a "playing card." Were it not for the woman
seen if we match The Fifer against Delacroix's and the boat in the foreground, the picture
The Massacre at Chios or even Courbet's The would be almost as effective upside down.
Stone Breakers (see figs. 342, 365), which still The mirror image here serves a purpose con-
follow the "window" tradition of the Renais- trary to that of earlier mirror images (com-
sance. We realize in retrospect that the revo- pare fig. 195): instead of adding to the
lutionary qualities of Manet's art were already illusion of real space, it strengthens the unity
to be seen, if not yet so obviously, in the Lun- of the actual painted surface. This inner co-
cheon. The three figures lifted from Raphael's herence sets Tb" *?""*- apart from Romantic
group of gods form a unit nearly as
river "impressions" such as Corot's Papigno (see
shadowless and stencillike as in The Fifer. fig. 345), even though both have the same on-
They would be more at home on a flat screen, the-spot immediacy and fresh perception.
for the chiaroscuro of their present setting,
which is inspired by the landscapes of Cour- Renoir. Scenes from the world of entertain-
bet, no longer fits them. ment—dance halls, cafes, concerts, the the-
What brought about this "revolution of the ater—were favorite subjects for Impressionist
color patch"? We do not know, and Manet painters. A uguste
Renoir (184 1Q1Q ) an- 1
himself surely did not reason it out be- other important member of the group, filled
forehand. It is tempting to think that he was his work with the joie de vivre of a singularly
impelled to create the new style by the chal- happy temperament. The flirting couples
lenge of photography. The "pencil of na- in Le Moulin de la G alette (fig. 371), dappled
ture," then known for a quarter century, had with sunlight and shadow, radiate a human
demonstrated the objective truth of Renais- warmth that is utterly entrancing, even
sance perspective, but it established a stan- though the artist permits us no more than a
dard of representational accuracy that no fleeting glance at any of them. Our role is that
handmade image could hope to rival. Paint- of the casual stroller, who takes in thisjJjte-of
ing needed to be rescued from competition life in
England
The Pre-Raphaelites. Bv the time Monet
came to admire his work. Turner's reputation
was at a low ebb in his own country. In 1848
the painter and poet Dante Gabriel Rossetti
(1828-1882) helped found an artists' society
called the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. Their
basic aim: to do battle against the frivolous art
of the day bv producing "pure transcripts . . .
ments that create an effect of quiet intimacy. the picture from any outside sort of inter-
Despite Morris' self-proclaimed champion- est. ... It is an arrangement of line, form,
ship of the medieval tradition, he never imi- and color, first, and I make use of any inci-
tated its forms directly but instead sought to dent of it which shall bring about a symmet-
capture its spirit. He invented the first origi- rical result." The last phrase has special
nal system of ornament since the Rococo— no significance, since Whistler acknowledges
small achievement.
United States
J
388 RFM ls.\l AND IMPRESSIONISM
Eakins. Thomas
Eakins ( 844- 1916) arrived
1
380. James Abbott McNeill Whistler. Nocturne m studies at the Pennsylvania Academy of the
Black and Gold: The Falling Rocket, c. 1874. Oil on Fine Arts. To him. Rush was a hero for basing
wood panel, 23% x 18%" (60.3x46.7 cm). The his 1809 statue for the Philadelphia Water
Detroit Institute of Arts. Gift of Dexter M. Ferry, Jr.
Works on the nude model, though the figure
itself was draped in a classical robe. Eakins no
381. Winslow Homer. The Morning Bell. c. 1870. Oil on canvas, 24 x 38" (61 x 96.5 cm).
Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, Connecticut. Stephen C. Clark Collection
382. Thomas Eakins. William Rush Carving His Allegorical Figure of the Schuylkill River. 1877.
Oil on canvas, 20'/8x26'/>" (51.1 x67.3 cm). The Philadelphia Museum of Art.
Given bv Mrs. Thomas Eakins and Miss Marv A. Williams
390 • Rf- MJSM AND IMPRESSIONISM
gradually. Henry O. Tanner (1859-1937). Rodin, the first sculptor of genius since Ber-
the first important black painter, studied with nini, redefined sculpture during the same
F.akins in the early 1880s. Tanners master- years that Manet and Monet redefined paint-
piece. The Banjo Lesson (fig. 383), painted af- ing. In so doing, however, he did not follow
terhe moved permanently to Paris, avoids the these artists' lead. How indeed could the ef-
mawkishness of similar subjects by other fect of such pictures as The Fifer or The River
American painters. The scene is rendered be reproduced in three dimensions and with-
with the same direct realism as Eakins' Wil- out color?
liam Rush Carving His Allegorical Figure of the
Schuylkill River. Rodin. What Rodin (1840-1917) did accom-
plish is strikingly visible in The Thinker
(fig. 384). originallv conceived as part of a
SCULPTURE large unfinished project called The Gates of
Hell. The welts and wrinkles of the vigorouslv
Impressionism, it is often said, revitalized creased surface produce, in polished bronze,
sculpture no less than painting. The state- an ever-changing pattern of reflections. But is
- .11 once true and misleading. Auguste this effect borrowed from Impressionist
REALISM AND IMPRESSIONISM 391
J
392 •
REALISM AND IMPRESSIONISM
and inspiration found in drawings and oil tempted to do. The ungainliness of the young
sketches, which had long appealed to collec- adolescents body is subtly emphasized by her
tors. For the first time sculptors felt em- pose, a standard ballet position that is none-
boldened to violate time-honored standards theless difficult to assume. Yet, rather than
of naturalism and craftsmanship for stat- awkwardness, the statuette conveys a simple
uettes, and to leave the impress of their fin- dignity and grace that are irresistible. The
gers on the soft material as they
molded it. openness of the stance, with hands clasped
Nevertheless, when Degas showed the wax behind the back and legs pointing in opposite
original of The Little Fourteen-Year-Old Dancer directions, demands that we walk around the
386) at the Impressionist exhibitions of
(fig. dancer to arrive at a complete image of it. As
1880 and 1881, the public was scandalized by we view the sculpture from different angles,
its lack of traditional finish and uncompro- the surface provides a constantly shifting im-
mising adherence to unvarnished truth, al- pression of light comparable to that in Degas'
Ji the response from critics was less numerous paintings and pastels of the ballet.
REALISM A.\D IMPRt 393
ARCHITECTURE
Industrial Architecture and the
Machine Aesthetic
389. Sir Joseph Paxton. The Crystal Palace (interior view looking north). London. 1851;
reerected in Sydenham 1852; destroyed 1936 (lithograph by Joseph Nash).
Victoria and Albert Museum, London. Crown copyright reserved
bv structural steel and ferroconcrete. Its use "form follows function" found advocates
here is a peculiarly appealing final chapter in from the mid-nineteenth century on.
the history of Romantic architecture. The authority of historic modes had to be
broken if the industrial era was to produce a
Paxton. Within a year of the completion of trulv contemporary style. It nevertheless
the Bibliotheque Ste. -Genevieve, the Crystal proved extraordinarily persistent. The "ar-
Palace (fig. 389) was built in London. A pio- chitecture of conspicuous display" espoused
neering achievement far bolder in conception bv Gamier (see p. 372) was divorced, even
than Labrouste's library, the Crystal Palace more than previous revival stvles. from the
was designed to house the first of the great needs of the present. And Labrouste, pioneer
international expositions that continue today. though he was of cast-iron construction,
Its designer. Sir Joseph Paxton (1801-1865), could not think of architectural supports as
was an engineer and builder of greenhouses. anything but columns having proper capitals
The Crvstal Palace was, in fact, a gigantic and bases, rather than as metal rods or pipes
greenhouse— so large that it enclosed some (see p. 393). It was only in structures that
old trees growingon the site— with its iron were not considered "architecture" at all that
skeleton freelv displayed. Still, the notion that new building materials and techniques could
there might be beautv. and not merely utility, be explored without these inhibitions. In this
in the products of engineering made head- regard. Paxton's Crystal Palace was a har-
en though the doctrine binger of things to come.
m
POST-IMPRESSIONISM
PAINTING
In J882, just before hm ^"*h Visn^t w^
m ade a ch e^nlicr of rhr I rgion nfjjonor by
the Fren ch government; four years la ter, the
I pressionists. w h rt Mfj h** en ex hibiting to-
geth er sinc e 1874, held their last gro up <h"^
These two events mark the turn of the tide.
Impressionism had gained wide acceptance
among artists and the public, but by the
same token it was no longer a pioneering
movement. The future now belonged to the
"Post-Impressionists." This colorless label
designates a group of artists who passed
390. Paul Cezanne. 1879-82.
Still Life with Apples.
through an Impressionist phase in the 1880s Oil on canvas. 17'/8X21W (43.5x54 cm).
but became dissatisfied with the style and ex- N'v Carlsberg Glyptotek, Copenhagen
tended it in various directions. Because they
did not have a common goal, it is difficult to
find a more descriptive term for them than and durable, like the art of the museums."
Post-Impressionists. They certainly were not Thisqile"sl foTthe "solid and trarJBle" can be
"anti-Impressionists." Farfrom trying to seen in Cezanne's still lifes, such as Still Life
undo the effects of the "Manet Revolu- with Apples Not since Chardin have
(fig. 390).
tion," they wanted to carrv it further. Post- simple everyday objects assumed such impor-
Impressionism is in essence just a later stage, tance in a painter's eve. The ornamental back-
though a very important one, of the develop- drop is integrated with the three-dimensional
ment that had begun in the 1860s with such shapes, and the brushstrokes have a rhythmic
pictures as Manet's Luncheon on the Grass. pattern that gives the canvas its shimmering
texture. We also notice another aspect of
Cezanne. Paul Cezanne (1839-1906), the Cezanne's stvle that may puzzle us at first.
oldest of the Post-Impressionists, was born in The forms are deliberately simplified and
Aix-en-Provence, near the Mediterranean outlined with dark colors, and the perspective
coast. A man of intensely emotional tempera- is incorrect for both the fruit bowl and the
ment, he went to Paris in 1861 imbued with horizontal surfaces, which seem to tilt up-
enthusiasm for the Romantics. Delacroix was ward. Yet the longer we study the picture, the
his first love among painters, and he never more we realize the lightness of these appar-
admiration for him. Cezanne quickly
lost his ently arbitrary distortions. When Cezanne
grasped the nature of the "Manet Revolution" took these liberties with reality, his purpose
through a Neo-Baroque
as well. After passing was to uncover the permanent qualities be-
phase, he began to paint bright outdoor neath the accidents of appearance. All forms
scenes, but did not share his fellow Impres- in nature, he believed, are based on the cone,
sionists' interest in "slice-of-life" subjects, in the sphere, and the cylinder. This order un-
movement and change. Instead, his goal was derlying the external world was the true sub-
iiiniiimi 'nun ihiii|i Milj|l ji of his pictures, but he had to interpret it
1 1
396 • ms-/-/.\//ws\/m/.sA/
391. Paul Cezanne. Mont Sainte-Yicloire Seen from Bibemus Quarry, c. 1897—1900.
Oil on canvas, 25'/8 x32" (63.8x81.3 cm). The Baltimore Museum of Art. The Cone
Collection, formed bv Dr. Claribel Cone and Miss Etta Cone of Baltimore, Maryland
to fit the separate, closed world of the canvas. equilibrium, subdued by the greater power of
To apply this method to landscape became the artist's will. This disciplined energy, dis-
the greatest challenge of Cezanne's career. from the trials of a stormy youth, gives
tilled
From 1882 on, he lived in isolation near his the mature style of Cezanne its enduring
hometown of Aix-en-Provence, exploring its strength.
environs as Claude Lorraine and Corot had
explored the Roman countryside. One motif, Seurat. Georges Seurat (1859-1891) sh ared
,
the distinctive shape of the mountain called CezafTne's aim to make Impressi oni s m 7: s cTiid
Mont Sainte-Victoire, seemed almost to ob- and durable," but he went about it very dif-
sess him. Its craggy profile looming against iJexetuhp His career was as brief as those of
the blue Mediterranean sky appears in a long Masaccio, Giorgione, and Gericault, and his
series of compositions culminating in the achievement just as astonishing. Seurat de-
monumental late works such as that in figure voted his main efforts to a few very large
391. There are no hints of human presence paintings, spending a year or more on each
here; houses and roads would only disturb of them. He made endless series of prelimi-
the lonely grandeur of the view. Above the nary studies before he felt sure enough to
wall of rocky cliffs that bars our way like a tackle the definitive version. This painstaking
chain of fortifications, the mountain rises in method reflects his belief that art must be
triumphant clarity, infinitely remote, yet as based on a system. Like Degas, he had stud-
solid and palpable as the shapes in the ied with a follower of Ingres, and his theoreti-
foreground. For all its architectural stability, cal interests came from this experience. But,
ene is alive with movement; but the as with all artists of genius, Seurat's theories
s at work here have been brought into do not really explain his pictures; it is the
POST-lMPRESS/0.\IS\t • 397
392. Georges Seurat. A Sunday Afternoon on the Grande Jatte. 1884—86. Oil on canvas.
6'9' 4~x 10' (2.06 x 3.05 m). The Art Institute of Chicago (Helen Birch Bartleti Memorial Collection)
pictures, rather, that explain the theories. Afternoon on the Grande Jatte from a comfort-
The subject of A Sunday Afternoon on the able distance (seven to ten feet for the origi-
Grande Jatte of 1884-86 (fig. 392) is of the sort nal), we find that the mixing of colors in the
thathad long been popular among Impres- eve remains incomplete. The dots do not
sionist painters. Impressionist, too. are the disappear, but are as clearlv visible as the
brilliant colors and the effect of intense tesserae of a mosaic (compare fig. 112).
sunlight. Otherwise, however, the picture is Seurat himself must have liked this unex-
the verv opposite of a quick "impression." pected effect, which gives the canvas the
The firm, simple contours and the relaxed, quality of a shimmering, translucent screen;
immobile figures give the scene a timeless sta- otherwise, he would have reduced the size of
bilitv that recalls Piero della Francesca (see the dots.
fig. 217). Even the brushwork demonstrates The bodies have litde weight or bulk. Mod-
Seurat's passion for order and permanence: elingand foreshortening are reduced to a
the canvas surface is covered with svstematic. minimum, and the figures appear mostly in
impersonal dots of were
brilliant color that either strict profile or frontal views, as if
supposed to merge in the beholder's eve and Seurat had adopted the rules of ancient
produce intermediarv tints more luminous Egyptian art (see pp. 43-44). The ma-
than anvthing obtainable from pigments chinelike quality of Seurat's forms, achieved
mixed on the palette. This procedure was through rigorous abstraction, is the first ex-
variously known as Neo-Impressionism. Poin- pression of a peculiarly modern oudook that
tillism. or Divisionism (the term preferred bv would lead to Futurism (see pp. 423-24).
Seurat). The actual result, however, did not Seurat's systematic approach to art has the in-
conform to the theorv. Looking at A Sunday ternal logic of modern engineering, which he
398 • POST-IMPRFSSlOXIsU
POST-IMPRESSIOSISM • 399
a creative force animating all forms of life— (20.4 x 35.5 cm). Collection, The Museum of
Modern Art. New York. Lillie P. Bliss Collection
faith no less ardent than the sectarian Chris-
tianity of his earh years. The missionary had
now become a prophet. We see him in that
role in the Self-Portrait (fig. 394). Diirer had Gauguin and Symbolism. The quest for re-
portrayed himself as a Christlike reformer ligious experience also plaved an important
(see fig. 259); but how much greater is the part in the work, if not in the life, of an-
visionary intensity of Van Gogh's luminous other great Post-Impressionist, Paul Gauguin
head, with its emaciated features and burning (1848—1903). He began as a prosperous
eyes, set off against a whirlpool of darkness! stockbroker in Paris and an amateur painter
"I want to paint men and women with that and collector of modern pictures. At the age
something of the eternal which the halo used of he became convinced that he
thirty-five,
to symbolize," Van Gogh had written, grop- must devote himself entirelv to art. He aban-
ing to define for his brother the human es- doned Kis business career, separated from his
sence that was his aim in pictures such as this. familv, and by 1889 was the central figure
At the time of the Self-Portrait, he had already of a new movement called Svnthetism or
begun to suffer fits of a mental illness that embolism. _
Svmbolisi_
made painting increasingly difficult for him. GaTTguin began as a follower of Cezanne
iguin b<
Despairing of a cure, he committed suicide a and once owned one of his still lifes. He then
year later, for he felt very deeply that art developed a style that, though less intensely
alone made his life worth living. personal than Van Gogh's, was in some ways
/'rA\/-/\f/7iY wm/vw
an even bolder advance beyond Impression- stems from the Romantic myth of the Noble
ism. Gauguin believe d that Western ci vili- Savage, propagated by the thinkers of the En-
/anon )intually bankrup t, because lightenment more than a century before, and
industrial society had forced people into an its ultimate source is the age-old belief in an
incomplete life dedicated to material gain, earthly paradise where human societies once
while their emotions lay neglected. To re- dwelled, and might one day live again, in a
discover for himself this hidden world of state of nature and innocence. No artist be-
feeling. Gauguin left Paris to live among the fore Gauguin had gone as far to put the
peasants of Brittany, in western France. He doctrine of primitivism into practice. His pil-
noticed particularly that religion was still part grimage to the South Pacific had more than a
of the everyday of the country people,
life purely private meaning: it symbolized the
and in pictures such as The Vision After end of the four hundred years of colonial ex-
the Sermon (Jacob Wrestling with the Angel) pansion, which had brought most of the
(fig. he tried to depict their simple, di-
395), globe under Western domination. The "white
rect faith. Here at last is what no Romantic man's burden," once so cheerfully, and ruth-
painter had achieved: a style based on pre- lessly, shouldered by the empire builders, was
ouUined heavily in black, and the brilliant col- The Nabis. Gauguin's Symbolist followers
ors are equally unnatural. This style, inspired called themselves Nabis, from the Hebrew
bv folk art and medieval stained glass, is
meant to re-create both the imagined reality
of the vision, and the trancelike rapture of
the peasant women. Yet we sense that al-
though Gauguin tried to share this experi-
ence, he remained an outsider. He could
paint pictures about faith, but not from faith.
Two years later, Gauguin's search for the
unspoiled life led him even farther afield. He
-^
POST-IMPRESSIONISM 4<W
401. Edvard Munch. The Scream. 1893. Tempera and casein on cardboard,
36x29" (91.4x73.7 cm). Nasjonalgalleriet, Oslo
were greatly admired in France. Redon's moved from its socket and converted into a
lithographs do not illustrate Poe. They are, balloon that drifts aimlessly in the sky. Dis-
rather, "visual poems" in their own right, quieting visual paradoxes of this kind were to
evoking the macabre, hallucinatory world of be exploited on a large scale by the Dadaists
Poe's imagination. In our example, the artist and Surrealists in our own century (see figs.
has revived a very ancient device, the single 430, 437).
eye representing the all-seeing mind of God.
But, in contrast to the traditional form of the Toulouse-Lautrec. Van Gogh's and Gau-
symbol, Redon shows the whole eyeball re- guin's discontent with the spiritual ills of
404 • POST IMPRESSIONISM
Western civilization was part of a sentiment of the picture, making of earth and sky one
widely shared at the end of the nineteenth great sounding board of fear.
century. A self-conscious preoccupation with
decadence, evil, and darkness pervaded the Picasso's Blue Period. Pablo Picasso (1881-
artistic and literary climate. Even those who 1974), arrived in Paris in 1900, and felt the
saw no escape analyzed their predicament in spell of the same artistic atmosphere that had
fascinated horror. Paradoxically, this very generated the style of Munch. His so-called
awareness proved to be a source of strength Blue Period (the term refers to the prevailing
(the truly decadent, we may assume, are color of his canvases as well as to their mood)
unable to realize their plight). The most re- consists almost exclusively of pictures of beg-
markable instance of this strength was Henri gars, derelicts, and other outcasts or victims
de Toulouse-Lautrec (1864-1901). An ugly of society whose pathos reflects the artist's
dwarf, he was an artist of superb talent who own sense of isolation. Yet these figures, such
led a dissolute life in the night spots of Paris as that in The Old Guitarist (fig. 402), convey
and died of alcoholism. At the Moulin Rouge poetic melancholy more than outright de-
(fig. 400) shows his great admiration for spair. The aged musician accepts his fate with
Degas: the zigzag form recalls Degas' The a resignation that seems almost saintly, and
Glass of Absinthe (see fig. 372). Yet this view of the attenuated grace of his limbs reminds us
the well-known nightclub is no Impressionist of El Greco (compare fig. 248). The Old Gui-
"slice of life." Toulouse-Lautrec sees through tarist is amalgam of Mannerism and
a strange
the gay surface of the scene, viewing per- the art of Gauguin and Toulouse-Lautrec,
formers and customers with a pitilessly sharp imbued with the personal gloom of a twenty-
eye for their character, including his own: two-year-old genius.
he is the tiny bearded man next to the very
tall one in the back of the room. The large Rousseau. A few years later, Picasso and his
areas of flat color, however, and the em- friends discovered a painter who until then
phatic, smoothly curving outlines reflect the had attracted no attention, although he had
influence of Gauguin. Although Toulouse- been exhibiting his work since 1886. He was
Lautrec was no Symbolist, the Moulin Rouge Henri Rousseau (1844—1910), a retired cus-
that he shows here has an atmosphere so joy- toms collector who had started to paint in his
less and oppressive that we have to wonder if middle age without training of any sort. His
the artist did not regard it as a place of evil, ideal— which, fortunately, he never achieved
for all its fascination. —was the arid academic style of Ingres' fol-
lowers. Rousseau is that paradox, a folk artist
Munch. Something of the same macabre of genius. How else could he have done a pic-
work of Edvard
quality pervades the early ture like The Dream (fig. 403)? What goes on
Munch (1863-1944), a gifted Norwegian in the enchanted world of this canvas needs
who went to Paris in 1889 and based his stark- no explanation, because none is possible. Per-
ly expressive style on those of Toulouse- haps for that very reason its magic becomes
Lautrec, Van Gogh, and Gauguin. He settled believably real to us. Rousseau himself de-
in Berlin, where the controversy raised by his scribed the scene in a little poem:
paintings led to the Secession movement. The
Scream (fig. 401) is an image of fear, the ter- Yadwigha, peacefully asleep
rifying, unreasoned fear we feel in a night- Enjoys a lovely dream:
mare. Unlike Fuseli (see fig. 348), Munch She hears a kind snake charmer
visualizes this experience without the aid of Playing upon his reed.
402. Pablo Picasso. The Old Guitarist. 1903. Oil on panel, 47 3/ix32 /2" (121.3x82.6 cm).
1
403. Henri Rousseau. The Dream. 1910. Oil on canvas, 6'8 /2"x9'9 /2" (2.05x2.99 m).
, l
Collection, The Museum of Modern Art. New York. Gift of Nelson A. Rockefeller
SCULPTURE
Maillol. No tendencies equal to Post-
Impressionism appear in sculpture until
about 1900. Sculptors in France of a younger 405. Aristide Maillol. Seated Woman (Mediterranee).
generation had by then been trained under c. 1901. Stone, height 41" (104.1 cm). Collection
the dominant influence of Rodin, and were Oskar Reinhart, Winterthur, Switzerland
ARCHITECTURE
The search for a modern architecture began
in earnest around 1880. It required wedding
the ideas of William Morris and the machine
aesthetic, first explored tentativelv some fif-
had a profound effect on public taste, but did turally, it is a tour de force of old-fashioned
not lend itself easily to architectural designs craftsmanship, an attempt at architectural re-
on a large scale. form from the periphery, rather than from
the center. Gaudi and Sullivan stand at op-
Gaudi. The most remarkable instance is the posite poles, although they strove for the
Casa Mila in Barcelona (fig. 408), a large same goal— a contemporary style indepen-
apartment house by Antonf Gaudi (1852- dent of the past.
409. Henri van de Velde. Theater, Werkbund Exhibition, Cologne. 1914. Destroyed
ciation) in 1914 (fig. 409), makes a telling torial essay. The press reacted to the same
contrast with the Paris Opera (see fig. 360), conditions that had stirred Courbet (see
completed only forty years before. Whereas p. 377), and its factual reportage likewise fell
the older building tries to evoke the splendors within the Realist tradition— only its response
of the Louvre Palace, Van de Velde s exterior came a quarter century later. Hitherto, pho-
is a tautly stretched "skin" that both covers tographers had been content to present the
and which the
reveals the individual units of romanticized image of the poor like those in
internal space composed. The Werkbund
is genre paintings of the day. The first photo-
exhibition was a watershed in the develop- documentary was John Thomson's illustrated
ment of modern architecture. It provided a sociological study Street Life in London, pub-
showcase for a whole generation of young lished in 1877. To get his pictures, he had to
German architects who were to achieve pose his figures.
prominence after World War I. Many of the
buildings they designed for the fairgrounds Riis. The invention of gunpowder flash ten
anticipate ideas of the 1920s. years later allowed Jacob Riis (1849-1914) to
rely for the most part on the element of sur-
prise. Riis was a police reporter in New York
City, where he learned firsthand about the
REALIST PHOTOGRAPHY
crime-infested slums and their appalling liv-
ing conditions. He kept up a steady campaign
Documentary Photography
of illustrated newspaper exposes, books, and
During the second half of the nineteenth cen- lectures which in some cases led to major revi-
turv, the press played a leading role in the sions of the city's housing codes and labor
social movement that brought
the harsh reali- laws. The unflinching realism of his photo-
tiesof poverty to the public's attention. The graphs has lost none of its force. It would be
camera became an important instrument of difficult to imagine a more nightmarish scene
reform through the photodocumentary, than Bandits' Roost (fig. 410). With good rea-
which tells the story of people's lives in a pic- son we sense a pervasive air of danger in the
POST- /.If PRESS IOMSM -411
Pictorialism
414. Edward Steichen. Rodin with His Sculptures "Victor Hugo" and "The Thinker."
1902. Gum print. The Art Institute of Chicago, Alfred Stieglitz Collection
415. Eadweard Muvbridge. Female Semi-Xude in Motion, from Human and Animal Locomotion,
vol. 2, pi. 271. 1887. George Eastman House. Rochester, New York
eras capa ble ofphotographing action at_suo photographs must nevertheless have come as
cessive points.Photography had grown from a revelation to artists. The simultaneous views
such marriages; another instance had oc- present an entirely new treatment of motion
curred earlier when Nadar used a hot-air bal- across time and space that challenges the
loon to take aerial shots of Paris. After some imagination. Like a complex visual puzzle,
trial efforts.Muvbridge managed in 1877 to thev can be combined in any number of ways
produce a set of pictures of a trotting horse that are endlesslv fascinating. Muybridge's
which forever changed artistic depictions of photographs convev a peculiarly modern
the horse in movement. Of the 100,000 pho- sense of dynamics, reflecting the new tempo
tographs he devoted to the study of animal of the machine age. However, because
life in
and human locomotion, the most remarkable the gap was then so great between scientific
were those taken from several vantage points fact on the one hand and visual perception
at once (fig. 415). The idea was surelv in the and artistic representation on the other, their
air.for the art of the period occasionally far-reaching aesthetic implications were to be
shows similar experiments, but Muybridge's realized only by the Futurists (see pp. 423-24).
TWENTIETH-CENTURY
PAINTING
have already discussed a succession of "isms": imagination, art would be deadly dull; with-
Neoclassicism, Romanticism, Realism, Im- out some degree of order, it would be chaotic;
comprehend the art of our time unless we Moreover, each current embraces a wide
immerse ourselves in a welter of esoteric doc- range of approaches, from the realistic to the
trines. Actually, we can disregard all but the completely nonrepresentational (or nonob-
most important "isms." Like the terms we jective). Thus these three currents corre-
have used for the styles of earlier periods, spond to general attitudes rather than to
they are merely labels to help us sort things specific styles. The primary concern of the
out. If an "ism" fails the test of usefulness, we Expressionist is the human community; of
need not retain it. This is true of many "isms" the Abstractionist, the structure of reality;
in contemporary art. The movements they and of the artist of Fantasy, the labyrinth of
designate either cannot be seen very clearly as the individual human mind. And we shall
separate entities, or have so little importance find that Realism, which isconcerned with
that they can interest only the specialist. It has the appearance of reality, has continued to
always been easier to invent new labels than to exist independently of the other three, espe-
create a movement in art that truly deserves a the United States, where art has often
cially in
new name. pursued a separate course from that of Eu-
Still, we cannot do without "isms" alto- rope. These currents bear a shifting relation
gether. Since the start of the modern era, the to each other that reflects the complexity of
Western world (and, increasingly, the rest of modern life. To be understood, they must be
the world) has faced the same basic problems seen in their proper historical context. After
everywhere, and local artistic traditions have 1945, it is no longer meaningful to trace the
steadily given way to international trends. evolution of these strands separately. The art
Among these we can distinguish three main of our times has become too complex for that.
currents, each comprising a number of "isms," In addition, we will encounter modernism,
that began among the Post-Impressionists a concept peculiar to the twentieth century,
and have developed greatly in our own cen- though its roots can be traced to Romanti-
tury: Expressionism, Abstraction, and .Fan- cism. To it is a trumpet call that both
artists
tasy. Expressionism stresses artists' emotional asserts theirfreedom to create in a new style
attitudes toward themselves and the world. and provides them with the mission to define
Abstraction stresses the formal structure of the meaning of their times, and even to re-
thetPi nk i if * i fY'antafty explorestKe realm of shape society through their art. This is a role
tl(i • TWENTIETH-CENTURY PAINTING
for which the problematic term "avant-garde" (wild beasts), a label they wore withpride. Ac-
vanguard) is hardly sufficient. Of
(literally, tuaTTy7lPwas not a common program that
course, artists have always responded to the brought them together, but their shared
changing world around them, but rarely have sense of liberation and experiment. As a
they risen to the challenge as now, or with so movement, Fauvism comprised a number of
fervent a sense of personal cause. loosely related individual styles, and the
group dissolved after a few years.
Expressionism
Matisse. Its leadings member was Henri
The twentieth century may be said to have Matisse (1869^T954), the oldesTdflheTound-
begun five years late, so far as painting is con- ers of twentieth-century painting. The Joy of
cerned. Between 1901 and 1906, several com- Life (fig. 416) sums up the spirit of Fauvism
prehensive exhibitions of the work of Van better than any other single work. It derives
Gogh, Gauguin, and Cezanne were held in its flat planes of color, heavy undulating out-
Paris. For the first time trie achlevementVof lines, and the "primitive" flavor of its forms
these masters became accessible to a broad from Gauguin (see fig. 395). Even its subject
public. suggests the vision of humanity in a state of
Nature that Gauguin had pursued in Tahiti
The Fauves. The young painterswho had (see fig. 396). But we soon realize that Ma-
grown up in the "decadent," morbid mood of tisse's figures are not Noble Savages under the
the 1890s (see p. 401) were profoundly im- spell of a native god. The subject is a pagan
pressed by what they saw, and several of them scene in the classical sense: a bacchanal like
developed a radical new style, full of violent Titian's(compare fig. 240). Even the poses of
colorand bold distortions. When their work the figures have for the most part a classical
appeared in 1905, it so~"sfiocked critical
first origin, and in the apparently careless drafts-
opinion that they were dubbed the Fauves manship resides a profound knowledge of
TWENTIETH-CENTURY PAINTING -417
the human body (Matisse had been trained in ures or objects, the empty spaces around
the academic tradition). What makes the pic- them, the proportions, everything plays a
ture so revolutionary is its radical simplicity, part." What, we wonder, does The Joy of Life
its "genius of omission." Everything that pos- express? Exactly what its title says. Whatever
siblv can be has been left out or stated by his debt to Gauguin, Matisse was never stirred
implication onlv, vet the scene retains the es- by the same agonized discontent with the dec-
sentials of plastic form and spatial depth. adence of our civilization. He was concerned
Painting. Matisse seems to say. is the rhvth- above all with the act of painting. This to him
mic arrangement of line and color on a flat was an experience so profoundly joyous that
plane, but it is not onlv that. How far can the he wanted to transmit it to the beholder.
image of nature be pared down without de- Matisse's "genius of omission" is again at
stroying its basic properties and thus reduc- work in The Red Studio (fig. By reducing
417).
ing it to mere surface ornament? "'What I am the number of tints to a minimum, he makes
after, above all." he once explained, "is ex- color an independent structural element. The
pression. . . . [But] . . . expression does not result emphasize the radical new balance
is to
consist of the passion mirrored upon a hu- he struck between the "two-D" and "three-D"
man face. . The whole arrangement of my
. . aspects of painting. Matisse spreads the same
picture is expressive. The placement of fig- flat red color on the tablecloth and wall as on
417. Henn Matisse. The Red Studio. 1911. Oil on canvas. 5'1 IVt'X 7'2'/4 * (1.81 x2. 19 m).
Collection. The Museum of Modern Art. New York. Mrs. Simon Guggenheim Fund
A\> TWENTIETH-CENTURr PAINTING
spired by Gauguin. The thickly encrusted than literature or painting because it is inher-
surfaces of Rouault's canvases also come to entlv nonrepresentational. This is a point of
mind, as does the mute intensity of Barlach's view with a tradition that goes back to Plato
peasants (see fig. 406). and includes Plotinus, St. Augustine, and
their medieval successors. The attitude of the
Kandinsky. The most daring and original nonobjectivists might thus be termed "secular
step beyond Fauvism was taken in Germany iconoclasm": they do not condemn images as
by a Russian, Wassily Kandinsky (1866- wicked, but denounce them as non-art.
1944), the leading member of a group of The case is difficult to argue, and it does
Munich artists called Der Blaue Reiter (The not matter whether this theory is right or
Blue Rider). Kandinsky began to forsake rep- wrong; the proof of the pudding is in the
resentation as early as 1910 and abandoned it eating, not in the recipe. Any artist's ideas are
altogether several vears later. Using the rain- not important to us unless we are convinced
bow colors and the free, dynamic brushwork of the significance of the work itself. Kan-
of the Paris Fauves, he created a completely dinsky undoubtedly created a viable style,
nonobjective style. These works have titles as though work admittedly demands an intu-
his
abstract as their forms: our example, one of itive response thatmay be hard for some of
the most striking, is called Sketch I for "Com- us. The painting reproduced here has density
position VII" (fig. 420). and vitality, and a radiant freshness of feeling
Perhaps we should avoid the term "ab- that impresses us even though we may be un-
stract," because it is often taken to mean that certain what exactlv was the artist's intent.
the artist has analyzed and simplified the
shapes of (compare Cezanne's
visible reality Hartley. Americans became familiar with the
dictum that all natural forms are based on the Fames through exhibitions from 1908 on. Af-
cone, sphere, and cylinder). Kandinsky 's aim, ter the pivotal Armorv Show of 1913, which
however, was to charge form and color with a introduced the latest European art to New
purelv spiritual meaning (as he put it) by York, there was a growing interest in the Ger-
eliminating all resemblance to the physical man Expressionists as well. The driving force
world. Whisder, too, had spoken of "divesting behind the modernist movement in the
the picture from any outside sort of interest"; United States was the photographer Alfred
he even anticipated Kandinsky 's "musical" ti- 485-88), who almost single-
Stieglitz (see pp.
des (see fig. 380). The liberating influence of handedlv supported manv of its early mem-
the Fauves permitted Kandinskv to put this bers. To him. modernism meant abstraction
theorv into practice, for the possibilitv was and its related concepts. Among the most sig-
clearly implicit inFauvism from the start. nificant achievements of the Stieglitz group
How valid is the analogv between painting are the canvases painted by Marsden Hartley
and music? When a painter like Kandinskv (1887-1943) in Munich during the early
carries it through so uncompromisingly, does years of World War I under the direct influ-
he really lift his art to another plane? Or ence of Kandinsky. Portrait of a German Officer
could it be that his declared independence (fig. 421) is a masterpiece of design from
from representational images now forces him 1914. the year Hardey was invited to exhibit
instead to "represent music," which limits him with Der Blaue Reiter. He had already been
even more severely? Kandinsky's advocates introduced to Futurism and several offshoots
like to point out that representational paint- of Cubism (see pp. 422-25), which he used to
ing has a "literarv" content, and thev deplore discipline Kandinskv's supercharged surface.
such dependence on another art; but thev do The emblematic portrait is testimony to the
not explain why the "musical" content of non- militarism Hardey encountered evervwhere
objective painting should be more desirable. in Germany. It incorporates the insignia,
Is painting less alien to music than to litera- epaulets, Maltese cross, and other details
ture? They seem to think music is a higher art from an officer's uniform of the dav.
420 • TWENTIETH-CENTURY PA1STING
Abstraction
422. Pablo Picasso. Les Demoiselles d'Avignon. 1907. Oil on canvas, 8' x 7'8" (2.44 x 2.34 m).
The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Acquired through the Lillie P. Bliss Bequest
Collection,
into the making of any work of art, whether to imagine the birth of modern abstraction
the artist knows it or not. The process was not without Pablo Picasso. About 1905, stimu-
conscious and controlled, however, until the lated as much by the Fauves as by the retro-
Early Renaissance, when artists first analyzed spective exhibitions of the great Post-
the shapes of nature in terms of mathematical Impressionists, he gradually abandoned the
bodies (see p. 233). Cezanne and Seurat re- melancholy lyricism of his Blue Period (see
vitalized this approach and explored it fur- pp. 404-5) for a more robust style. He shared
ther. They are the direct ancestors of the Matisse's enthusiasm for the work of Gauguin
abstract movement in twentieth-centurv art. and Cezanne, but he viewed these masters
422 • TWENTIETH-CENTURY PAIXTING
kind of matter, which imposes a new integrity 423), painted three years later. The facets are
and continuity on the entire canvas. The Dem- now small and precise, more like prisms, and
oiselles, unlike The Joy of Life, can no longer the canvas has the balance and refinement of
be read as an image of the external world. a fully mature style.
Its world is its own, analogous to nature but Contrasts of color and texture, so pro-
constructed along different principles. Pi- nounced in the Demoiselles, are now reduced
t evolutionary "building material," to a minimum; the subdued tonality of the
compounded of voids and solids, is hard to picture approaches monochrome, so as not
TWESTIETH-CEXTLRY PMSTISG • 423
to compete with the design. The structure as scraps of material, "outsiders" in the world
has become so complex and systematic that of art. Their function is both to represent (to be
it would seem whollv cerebral if the "im- a pan of an image) and to present (to be them-
prismed" sitter's face did not emerge with selves). In this latter capacity, thev endow the
such dramatic force. Of the "barbaric" distor- collage with a self-sufficiency that no Analytic
tions in the Demoiselles thereis no trace; thev Cubist picture can have. A trav. after all. is a
had served their purpose. Cubism has be- self-contained area, detached from the rest of
come an abstract stvle within the purelv West- the physical world. Unlike a painting, it can-
ern sense, but its distance from observed not show more than is actually on it.
reality has not significantlv increased. Picasso The difference between the two phases of
mav be plaving an elaborate game of hide- Cubism mav also be defined in terms of pic-
and-seek with nature, but he still needs the ture space. Analvtic Cubism retains a certain
visible world to challenge his creative powers. kind of depth, so that the painted surface acts
The nonobjective realm held no appeal for as a window through which we still perceive
him. then or later. the remnants of the familiar perspective
space of the Renaissance. Though frag-
ubism. Bv 1910. Cubism was well mented and redefined, this space lies behind
established as an alternative to Fauvism. and the picture plane and has no visible limits.
Picasso had been joined bv a number of other Potentiallv. it mav contain objects that are
artists, notablv Georges Braque (1882-1963). hidden from our view. In Svnthetic Cubism,
with whom he collaborated so intimatelv that on the contrary, the picture space lies in front
their work from this period is difficult to tell of the plane of the "trav." Space is not created
apart. Both of them (it is not clear to whom bv illusionistic devices, such as modeling and
the chief credit belongs) initiated the next foreshortening, but bv the actual overlapping
phase of Cubism, which was even bolder than of lavers of pasted materials. The integrity of
the first. Usuallv called Svnthetic Cubism be- the nonperspective space is not affected
cause it puts forms back together, it is also when, as in Le Coumer, the apparent thick-
known as Collage Cubism, after the French ness of these materials and their distance
word for "paste-up." the technique that from each other is increased bv a bit of shad-
started it all. Within a vear. Picasso and ing here and there. Svnthetic Cubism, then,
Braque were producing still lifes composed offers a basically new space concept, the first
poet Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, issued a Dadaists' non-sense; see p. 432) language
series of manifestos violently rejecting the based on new word forms and syntax. In the-
past and exalting the beauty of the machine." ory, zaum could be understood universally,
At first- they used techniques developed since it was thought that meaning was implicit
from Post-Impressionism to convey the surge in the basic sounds and patterns of speech.
of industrial society, but these were other- When applied to painting, zaum provided the
wise static compositions, still dependent upon artist with complete freedom to redefine the
representational By adopting the
images. style and content ofart. The picture surface
simultaneous views of Analytic Cubism in Dy- was now seen as the sole conveyer of meaning
TWESTIETH-CESTURY PAIST1SC, • 425
picture plane— he emphasized the painting as and fragmentation of Russian art, its fol-
a painting even more radically than had his lowers defected to other movements, above
predecessors. At the same time, he trans- all to the Constructivism led by Vladimir Tal-
formed it into a concentrated symbol having lin (see pp. 460-61).
multiple layers of meaning, thereby provid-
ing the content missing from Cubo-Futurism.
Fantasy
The inspiration for Black Quadrilateral came
in 1913 while Malevich was working on de- The third current, which we term Fantasy,
signs for theopera Victory over the Sun, a pro- follows a less clear-cut course than the other
duction that was one of the important artistic two, since it depends on a state of mind more
collaborations in the modern era. In the con- than on any particular style. The one thing all
text of the opera, the black quadrilateral rep- painters of fantasy have in common is the be-
resents the eclipse of the sun of Western lief that imagination, "the inner eye," is more
painting and of everything based on it. Fur- important than the outside world. Since the
ther, the work can be seen as the triumph of artist's imagination is a private domain, the
the new order over the old, the East over the images it provides are likely to be equally pri-
West, humanity over nature, idea over mat- vate, unless the artist subjects them to a delib-
ter. The black quadrilateral^wiiiciijsjioteven erate process of selection. How can such
a true rectangle j^aTirrtended to stand as a "uncontrolled" images have meaning to the
modern icon. It- supersedes the traditional beholder, whose own inner world is not the
Christian trinity and symbolizes
"supreme" a same as the artist's? Psychology has taught us
reality, because geometry is an independent that we are not so different from each other
abstraction in itself; hence the movement's in this respect as we like to think. Our minds
name, Suprematism. are all builton the same basic pattern, and the
According to Malevich, Suprematism was same is true of our imagination and memory.
also a philosophical color system constructed These belong to the unconscious part of the
in time and space. His space was an intuitive mind where experiences are stored, whether
one, with both scientific and mystical over- we want to remember them or not. At night,
tones. The flat plane replaces volume, depth, or whenever conscious thought relaxes its vig-
and perspective as a means of defining space. ilance, our experiences come back to us and
Each side or point represents one of the three we seem to live through them again.
dimensions, with the fourth side standing for However, the unconscious mind does not
the fourth dimension: time. Like the universe usually reproduce our experiences as they ac-
itself, the black surface would be infinite were tuallv happened. They will often be admitted
it not delimited by an outer boundary which into the conscious part of themind in the
is the white border and shape of the canvas. guise of dream images. In this form they
Black Quadrilateral thus constitutes the first seem less vivid, and we can live with our
satisfactory redefinition, visually and concep- memories more easily. This digesting of ex-
tually, of time and space in modern art. Like perience by the unconscious mind is sur-
Einstein's formula E = mc 2 for the theory of prisingly alike in all of us, although it works
relativity, it has an elegant simplicity that be- better with some individuals than with others.
lies the intense effort required to synthesize a Hence, we are always interested in imaginary
complex set of ideas and reduce them to a things, provided they are presented to us in
fundamental "law." When it first appeared, such a way that they seem real. What happens
Suprematism had much the same impact on in a fairy tale, for example, would be absurd
Russian artists that Einstein's theory had on in thelanguage of a news report, but when it
scientists. It unveiled a world never seen be- is it should be told, we are en-
told to us as
fore, one that was unequivocally modern. chanted. We need only recall The Dream by
The heyday of Suprematism was over by the Henri Rousseau (see fig. 403) to realize that
1920s. Reflecting the growing diversity the same is true of paintings.
TWESTIETH-CESTVRY PMSTJSG • 427
be several interlocking causes. First, the cleav- and reshaped them for vears without their
age that developed between reason and imag- persistence being diminished.
ination in the wake of rationalism tended to
dissolve the heritage of nmh and legend that Duchamp. In Paris on the eve of World War
had been the common channel of private fan- I. we encounter vet another artist of fantasv.
tasv in earlier rimes. Second, the artist's the Frenchman Marcel Duchamp (1887—
greater freedom— and insecuritv — within the 1968). After basing his earlv stvle on Ce-
social fabric give rise to a sense of isolation zanne, he initiated a dvnamic version of
and favors an introspective attitude. Finallv. Analvtic Cubism, similar to Futurism, bv su-
the Romantic cult of emotion prompted the perimposing successive phases of movement
artist to seek out subjective experience, and to on each other, much as in multiple-exposure
accept its validitv. We saw the trend begin- photographv. Soon, however. Duchamps de-
ning at the end of the eighteenth centurv in velopment took a more disturbing turn. In
the an of 34S k In nineteenth-
Fuseli \ see fig. The Bride (fig. 430 we look in vain for anv
.
centurv painting, private fantasv was still a resemblance, however remote, to the human
minor current. After 1900, it became a major form. What we see is a mechanism that seems
one. part motor, pan dbtilling apparatus. It is
Realism
432. Pablo Picasso. Three Musicians. Summer 1921. Oil on canvas, 6'7"x7'3W (2x2.23 m).
Collection. The Museum of Modern Art. New York. Gift of Mrs. Simon Guggenheim Fund
4*0 • TWENTIETH-CENTURY PAINTING
bodied figures. To many of his admirers, this The Tate Gallerv. London
seemed a kind of betrayal, but in retrospect
the reason for Picasso's double-track perfor-
mance is clear. Chafing under the limitations
of Synthetic Cubism, he wanted to resume sovereign freedom as the fragments of exter-
contact with the classical tradition, the "art of nal reality in Braque's Newspaper, Bottle,
Joy of Life, fig. 416). They are an even more naled the broad retreat of abstraction after
violent assault on convention than the figures 1920. The Utopian ideals associated with
in Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (see fig. 422). Hu- modernism, which it embodied, had been
man anatomv is here simply the raw material largely dashed by "the war to end all wars."
for Picasso's incredible inventiveness. Limbs, The Futurist spirit nevertheless continued to
breasts, and faces are handled with the same find adherents on both sides of the Adantic.
TWENTIETH-CENTURY PAINTING • 431
geometric shapes of modern machinery. In Woogie, which hint at some degree of relation-
this instance, the term abstraction applies ship, however indirect, with observed reality.
more to the choice of design elements and Unlike Kandinsky, Mondrian did not strive
their manner of combination than to the for pure, lyrical emotion. His goal, he as-
shapes themselves, since these are "prefabri- serted, was "pure reality," and he defined this
cated" entities, except for the two figures on as equilibrium "through the balance of un-
the staircase. equal but equivalent oppositions."
Perhaps we can best understand what he
Demuth. The modern movement in America meant if we think of his work as "abstract
proved short-lived. One of the few artists to collage" that uses black bands and colored
continue working in this vein after World rectangles instead of recognizable fragments
War I was Charles Demuth (1883-1935). A of chair caning and newsprint. He was inter-
member of the Stieglitz group (see pp. 485— ested solely in relationships and wanted no
90), he had been friendly with Duchamp and distracting elements or fortuitous associa-
exiled Cubists in New York during World tions. By establishing the "right" relationship
War I. A few years later, influenced by Futur- among bands and rectangles, he trans-
his
ism, he developed a style known as Pre- forms them as thoroughly as Braque trans-
cisionism to depict urban and industrial formed the snippets of pasted paper in Le
architecture. / Saw the Figure5 in Gold (fig. Courrier (see fig. 424). How did he discover
435) incorporates aspects of all of these the "right" relationship? And how did he de-
movements. The title is taken from a poem by termine the shape and number for the bands
Demuth's friend William Carlos Williams, and rectangles? In Braque's Le Courrier, the
whose name also forms part of the design, as ingredients are to some extent "given" by
"Bill," "Carlos," and "W. C. W." In the poem chance. Mondrian, apart from his self-im-
the figure 5 appears on a red fire truck, while posed rules, constantly faced the dilemma of
in the painting it has become the dominant unlimited possibilities. He could not change
432 • TWEXTIETH-CEXTIRYPAIXTISG
439. Joan Mir6. Painting. 1933. Oil on canvas, 51'/4X64" (130.2 x 161.3 cm).
Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, Connecticut. © Wadsworth Atheneum.
Ella Gallup Sumner and Mary Catlin Sumner Collection
(fig. 438), Ernst certainly found an extraordi- shapes in Miro's pictures have their own
nary wealth of images to elaborate on among vigorous life. They seem to change before
his stains. The end result has some of the our eyes, expanding and contracting like
qualities of a dream, but it is a dream boro- of amoebas until they approach human individ-
a strikingly romantic imaginatiQn_(compare uality closely enough to please the artist.
Moreau's The Apparition, fig. 397). Their spontaneous "becoming" is the very op-
posite of abstraction as we defined it above
Miro. Surrealism, however, has a more (see pp. 420-21), though Miro's formal dis-
boldly imaginative branch. Some works by Pi- cipline is no less rigorous than that of
casso, such as Three Dancers (see fig. 433), have Cubism — in fact, he began as a Cubist.
affinities with it, and its greatest exponent
was also Spanish: Joan Mir6 (1893-1983), Klee. Thp Perm an -Swiss painter. Paul Klee
who painted the striking Painting (fig. 439). (1879-1940), too, had been influenced by
His style has been labeled "biomorphic Cubism, but ethnographic art and the draw-
abstraction," since his designs are fluid and ings of small children held an equally vital
curvilinear, like organic forms, rather than interest for him.During World War I, he
geometric. Actually, "biomorphic concretion" molded these disparate elements into a pic-
might be a more suitable name, for the torial language of his own, marvelously eco-
THESTIETH-CE.STLRY PMSTISC • 435
Expressionism
state of modern civilization, which found its had lived through World War I. In his trip-
principal oudet in Expressionism. George tvch Departure (fig. 442), completed when he
Grosz (1893-1959), a painter and graphic was at the point of leaving his homeland un-
ardst, studied in Paris in 1913, then joined der Nazi pressure, the two wings show a
Dadaism in Berlin after the end of the war. nightmarish world crammed with puppedike
Inspired by the Futurists, he used a dyna- figures, as disquieting as those in Bosch's Hell
mized form of Cubism to develop a bitter, (see fig. 194). Its symbolism, however, is even
savageh satiric manner that expressed the more difficult to interpret, since it is neces-
disillusionment of his generadon. In Germany, sarily subjective. In the hindsight of today,
A Winter's Tale (fig. 441), the city of Berlin the topsy-turvy quality of these two scenes,
forms the kaleidoscopic and chaotic back- full of mutilations and meaningless rituals,
ground for several large figures, which are has acquired the force of prophecy. The sta-
superimposed on it as in a collage: the mar- ble design of the center panel, in contrast,
ionettelike "good cidzen" at his table, and the with its expanse of blue sea and its sunlit
sinister forces that molded him (a hypocritical brightness, convevs the hopeful spirit of an
clergvman, a general, and a schoolmaster). embarkadon for distant shores. After living
through World War II in occupied Holland,
Beckmann. Max Beckmann (1884-1950), a under the most trying conditions, Beckmann
robust descendant of the Brikke artists, did spent the final three years of his life in
not become an Expressionist until after he America.
442. Max Beckmann. Departure. 1932-33. Triptvch. oil on canvas, center panel
; (215.3 x 115.3 cm), side panels each 84'/4x39W (215.3x99.7 cm).
Collection. The Museum of Modern Art, New York.
Given anonymousf) (bj exchange)
TWENTIETH-CENTURY PAINTING • 437
Realism
split intotwo camps, the Regionalists and the these facades. We almost expect to see one of
Social Realists. The Regionalists sought to re- the window shades raised as we look at them.
vive idealism by updating the American Apart from its poetic appeal, the picture
myth, defined, however, largely in Mid- shows an impressive formal discipline. We
western terms. In their pictures, the Social note the strategy in placing the fireplug and
Realists captured the dislocation and despair barber pole, the subtle variations in the treat-
of the Depression era, and were often con- ment of the row of windows, the precisely cal-
cerned with social reform. Both movements, culated slant of sunlight, the delicate balance
although bitterly opposed, drew freely on the of verticals and horizontals. Obviously, Hop-
Ash Can school (see pp. 428-29). per was not unaware of Mondrian.
I \\ EST1ETH-CESTIRY PAIST1SI,
The term Abstract Expressionism is often ap- Gorky. Arshile Gorky (1904-1948). an Ar-
plied to the style of painting that prevailed menian who came to America at sixteen, was
for about adozen vears following the end of the pioneer of the movement and the single
World War II. It was initiated by artists living most important influence on its other mem-
in New York City parti v in reaction to the bers. It took him twenty vears to arrive at his
anxietv brought on bv the nuclear age and mature stvle. painting first in the vein of
the cold war. L'nder the influence of existen- Cezanne, then in that of Picasso. We see it in
tialist philosophy. Action painters, the first of The Liver Is the Cock's Comb (fig. 445). his great-
the Abstract Expressionists, developed from est work. The enigmatic tide suggests Gorky's
Surrealism a new approach to art. Painting close contact with the poet Andre Breton and
became a counterpart an ongoing
to life itself, other Surrealists who found refuge in New
process in which artists face comparable risks York during the war. Distraught bv the car-
and overcome the dilemmas confronting nage, which threatened the very existence of
them through a series of conscious and civilization, the earlv Abstract Expressionists
unconscious decisions in response to both in- were mvthmakers who sought to evoke ar-
ner and external demands. The Color Field chetypal images that expressed their sense of
painters coalesced the frenetic gestures and impending disaster. Gorkv developed a per-
violent hues of the Action painters into broad sonal mythology that underlies his work: each
of poetic color that partlv reflect the form represents a private symbol within this
spirituality <>l Oriental mysticism. In a sense. hermetic realm. Everything here is in the pro-
TWENTIETH-CENTURY PAINTING 439
445. Arshile Gorky. The Liver Is the Cock's Comb. 1944. Oil on canvas, 6T/4"x8'2" (1.86x2.49 m)
The Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York. Gift of Seymour H. Knox, 1956
446. Jackson Pollock. Autumnal Rhythm: Number 30, 1950. 1950. Oil on canvas, 8'8"x 17'3" (2.64x5.26 m).
The Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York. George A. Hearn Fund, 1957
447. Lee Krasner. Celebration. 1959-60. Oil on canvas, 7'8Wx 16'4'/j" (2.34x4.99 m).
Private collection. Courtesy Robert Miller Gallery. New York
of its impact upon the canvas, its interaction rest to chance. He is himself the ultimate
with other layers of pigment. The result is a source of energy for these forces, and he
surface so alive, so sensuously rich, that all "rides" them as a cowboy might ride a wild
earlier painting looks pallid in comparison. horse, in a frenzy of psychophysical action.
When he "aims" the paint at the canvas in- He does not always stay in the saddle; yet the
stead of "carrying" it on the tip of his brush — exhilaration of this contest, which strains
or, if you will, releases the forces within the every fiber of his being, is well worth the risk.
paint by giving it a momentum of its own— Our simile, though crude, points up the main
- does not simplv "let go" and leave the difference between Pollock and his prede-
TWENTIETH-CENTURY PAINTING • 441
his long shadow only after undergoing sev- 448. Willem de Kooning. Woman II. 1952.
Oil on canvas, 59x43" (149.9 x 109.3 cm).
eral changes in direction and destroying
Collection, The Museum of Modern Art, New York.
much of her early work. After Pollock's death, Gift of Mrs. John D. Rockefeller 3rd
she succeeded in doing w hat he had been at-
tempting to do for the last three years of his
life: to reintroduce the figure into Abstract (fig. 448)? It is as if the flow of psychic im-
Expressionism while retaining its automatic pulses in the process of painting has un-
handwriting. The potential had always been leashed this nightmarish specter from deep
there in Pollock's work; in Autumnal Rhythm, within the artist's subconscious. For that rea-
we can imagine wildly dancing people.
easily son, he has sometimes been accused of being
In Celebration (fig. 447), Krasner defines these a woman-hater, a charge he denies. Rather,
nascent shapes from within the tangled net- she is like a primordial goddess, cruel vet
work of lines bv using the broad gestures seductive, who represents the dark, primitive
of Action painting to suggest human forms side of our makeup.
without actually depicting them.
Expressionism in Europe
De Kooning. The work of Willem de Koo-
ning (born 1904), another prominent mem- Action painting marked the international
ber of the group and a close friend of Gorky, coming-of-age for American The move- art.
always retains a link with the world of images, ment had on European
a powerful impact
whether or not it has a recognizable subject. art. which in those years had nothing to show
In some paintings, the image emerges from of comparable force and conviction. One
the jagged welter of brushstrokes. De Koo- French artist, however, was of such prodigal
ning has in common with Pollock his furious originality as to constitute a movement all by
energy, the sense of risk, of a challenge himself: Jean Dubuffet, whose first exhibition
successfully— but barely— met. What are we soon after the Liberation electrified and an-
to make of his wildlv distorted Woman II tagonized the art world of Paris.
442 • TWENTIETH-CENTUR1 f.MMIM.
life, and he turned to other pursuits. Onlv in . . . been associated with a very
has long . . .
middle age did he experience the break- specious notion of beautv which I find miser-
through that permitted him to discover his able and most depressing. Surely I am for
creative gifts. Dubuffet suddenly realized beauty, but not that one. ... I intend to sweep
that for him true art had to come from out- away evervthing we have been taught to
side the ideas and traditions of the artistic consider— without question — as grace and
elite, and he found inspiration in the art of beauty [and to] substitute another and vaster
children and the insane. The distinction be- beauty, touching all objects and beings, not
tween "normal" and "abnormal" struck him excluding the most despised.
as no more tenable than established notions
of "beauty" and "ugliness." Not since Marcel
Color Field Painting
Duchamp (see pp. 427-28) had anyone ven-
tured so radical a critique of the nature of art. B\ the late 1940s, a number of artists began
Dubuffet made himself the champion of to transform Action painting into the style
what he called Vart brut, "art-in-the-raw," but called Color Field painting, in which the can-
he created something of a paradox besides.
While extolling the directness and spontane-
450. Mark Rothko. Ockn and Red m Red 1954.
the amateur as against the refinement Oil on canvas, 7'8Wx5'3W (2.36 x 1.62 m).
of professional .mists, he became a profes- The Phillips Collection, Washington. D.C.
TWENTIETH-CENTURY PAINTING • 443
444 •
TWENTIETH-CENTURY PAINTING
vas is stained with thin, translucent color tions of hue. Not every beholder responds to
washes. These may be oil or even ink, but the the works of this withdrawn, introspective
favored material quickly became acrylic, a artist. For those who do, the experience is
451. Morris Louis. Blue Veil. 1958-59. Acrvlic resin paint on canvas, 8'4'/2*x 12'5" (2.65x3.79 m).
Fogg An Museum. Harvard University Art Museums. Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Gift of Lois Orswell and Gifts for Special I'ses Fund
TWENTIETH-CENTURY PAINTING • 445
452. Ellsworth Kelly. Red Blue Green. 1963. Oil on canvas, 6'1 l 5/8 "x 1 1'3%" (2.12x3.43 m).
Collection San Diego Museum of Contemporary Art. Gift of Dr. and Mrs. Jack M. Farris
Stella. The brilliant and precocious Frank format, so as to make quite sure that his pic-
Stella (born 1936) began as an admirer of tures bore no resemblance to windows. The
Mondrian, then soon evolved a nonfigurative shape of the canvas had now become an inte-
style thatwas even more self-contained. Un- gral part of the design. In one of his largest
like Mondrian (see pp. 431-32), Stella did not works, the majestic Empress of India (fig. 453),
concern himself with the vertical-horizontal this shape is determined by the thrust and
balance that relates the older artist's work to counterthrust of four huge chevrons, identi-
the world of nature. Logically enough, he cal in size and shape but sharply differenti-
also abandoned the traditional rectangular ated in color and in their relationship to the
453. Frank Stella. Empress of India. 1965. Metallic powder in polymer emulsion on shaped canvas,
6'5"x 18'8" (1.96x5.49 m). Collection, The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Gift of S. I. Newhouse, Jr.
446 • TWENTIETH-CENTURY PAINTING
the "handmade" look of easel pictures. In or black, art, only good art. Consequently,
fact, to speak of Empress of India as a picture they have been denounced by activist artists
seems decidedly awkward. It demands to be who, stirred by social consciousness as well
called an object, sufficient unto itself. as by political ideology, have adopted highly
expressive representational styles as the means
Williams. The contribution of the lyrical Ex- for communicating a distinctive black perspec-
pressionists from the early 1970s has been tive directly to the people in their com-
largely overlooked. Their legacy can be seen munities. Mediating between these two ap-
in the work of William T Williams (born proaches is a very decorative form of art that
1942), a member of this "lost" generation. Af- frequently incorporates African, Caribbean,
ter a period of intense self-scrutiny, he devel- and sometimes Mexican motifs. No hard-and-
oped the sophisticated technique seen in fast principles separate these alternatives,
Batman (fig. 454). His method can be com- and aspects of each have been successfully
pared to jazz improvisation, a debt that the combined into separate individual styles. Ab-
artisthimself has acknowledged. He inter- straction has nevertheless proved the most
weaves his color and brushwork within a clear fruitful path, for it has opened up avenues of
two-part structure that permits endless varia- expression that allow the black artist, however
u
Op Art
Art's chief theoretician as well as its most in- metric shapes. His gifted pupil Richard
ventive practitioner. Much of his work is in Anuszkiewicz (born 1930) developed his art
stark black and white, such as the large canvas by relaxing Albers' self-imposed restrictions.
Vega (hg. 455), named after the brightest star In Entrance to Green (fig. 45fi), the ever-
in the Lyraconstellation. It huge checker-
is a decreasing s eries of rectangles c reates a sense
board whose regularity has been disturbed by oTtrrfmTtgT^ f<<ir>n toward the renter This is
bending the lines that make the squares. But counterbalan ced by the color pattern, which
since many of these squares have been sub- brings tn e center rinse fn **$ by th " gr^ini
jected to distortion, their sizes vary consider- shift from cool to warm (ones as we move
ably. As a consequence, no matter what our imvar H fi
, n
m tJjr-Tfe»phr ry Surprising for
viewing distance, our eyes receive contradic- sueh-"aTTavowedly theoretical work is its ex-
tory data. The picture thus practically forces pressive intensity. The resonance of the col-
us to move back and forth, and as we do so, ors within the strict geometry heightens the
the field itself seems to move, expanding, un- optical push-pull, producing an almost mysti-
dulating, contracting. If Vega w ere a three- cal power. The painting can be likened to a
dimensional object, the variety of effects modern icon, capable of providing a deeply-
would be greater still. moving experience to those attuned to its
vision.
Anuszkiewicz. Op Art involves the beholder
with the work of art in a novel, dynamic way.
Pop Art
Josef Albers, who came
America after to
1933, when Hitler closed the Bauhaus school Other artists who made
a name for them-
at Dessau (see p. 477), became the founder of selves in the mid-1950s rediscovered what
another, more austere kind of Op Art based the layperson continued to take for granted
on subtle color relations among simple geo- despite all efforts to persuade otherwise: that
•*•*••••.
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irx ±1 ••••••••,
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77 ••••••••
* ^ ** ••••••••
..!.»...
1 . .
l
457. Jasper Johns Three Flap. 1958. Encaustic on canvas, 30 7/8X45'/>x 5" (78.4 x 115.6x 12.7 cm).
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. 50th Anniversary Gift of the Oilman Foundation, Inc.,
be Lauder Foundation, A. Alfred Taubman, an anonymous donor, and purchase
I
TWESTIETH-CESTCRY PMSTISG • 449
a picture is not "essentially a flat surface cov- Johns. Jasper Johns (born 1930), one of the
ered with colors." as Maurice Denis had pioneers of Pop An in America, began by
insisted, but an image wanting to be recog- painting, meticulouslv and with great preci-
nized. If an was bv its ven nature representa- sion,such familiar objects as flags, targets,
tional, then the modern movement, from numerals, and maps. His Three Flags (hg. 457)
Manet to Pollock, was based on a fallacv. presents an intriguing problem: just what is
no matter how impressive its achievements. the difference between image and realitv? We
Painting, it seemed, had been on a kind of instantlv recognize the Stars and Stripes, but
voluntarv starvation diet for the past hun- if we trv to define what we actuallv see here,
dred vears. feeding on itself rather than on we find that the answer eludes us. These flags
the world around us. It was time for the artist behave "unnaturallv." Instead of waving or
to give in to this "image hunger"— a hunger flopping thev stand at attention, rigidly
from which the public at large had never suf- aligned with each other in a kind of reverse
fered, since its demand for images was abun- perspective. There is movement of another
dandv supplied bv photographv. advertising. son as well: the reds, whites, and blues are
magazine illustrations, and comic strips. not areas of solid color but are subdv modu-
The artists who felt this wav seized on these lated. Can we is an
reallv say. then, that this
products of commercial art catering to popu- image of three flags? Clearlv. no such flags
lar taste. Here, thev realized, was an essential can exist anvwhere except in the artist's head.
aspect of our centurv's visual environment The more we think about it. the more we
that had been entirelv disregarded as \ulgar marvel at the picture as a feat of the imagina-
and antiaesthetic bv the representatives of tion, which is probablv the last thing we ex-
highbrow culture, a presence that cried out to pected to do when we first looked at it.
source of pictorial subject matter, rather than draw the girl's nose so it would look "right" in
as an evil to be attacked. Nor did Pop An comic-strip terms, or how to space the colored
share Dada's aggressive attitude toward the dots so thev would have the proper weight in
established values of modern an. relation to the outlines.
450 TWENTIETH-CENTURY PAINTING
the viewer consider the aesthetic qualities of 459. Andy Warhol. Gold Marilyn Monroe. 1962.
Synthetic polymer paint, silk-screened, and
everyday images, such as soup cans, that we
oil on canvas, 6' 1 1 W
x 4'7" (2.11x1 .45 m).
readily overlook. He did much the same thing Collection, The Museum of Modern Art, New York.
with the subject of death, an obsession of his, ( iiti of Philip Johnson
TWENTIETH-CENTURY PAINTING • 451
cination with camera images. Photographs 460. Don Eddy. New Shoes for H. 1973-74. Acrylic
had been utilized by nineteenth-century on canvas, 44 x 48"
( 1 1 1 .8 x 1 2 1 .9 cm). The'
rich and novel visual experience by the com- photograph, Eddy's canvas shows everything
bined displacement, distortion, and reflection in uniformly sharp focus, articulating details
of these panes. lost in the shadows in the photograph. Most
When we compare the painting with the important of all, he gives pictorial coherence
452 • TWF.XTIETH-CEXTURY PAIXTIXG
462. Audrey Flack. Queen. 1975—76. Acrylic on canvas, 6'8" (2.03 m) square.
Private collection. Courtesy Louis K. Meisel Gallery, New York
to the scene through a brilliant color scheme larly texdles, or incorporated crafts into a
whose pulsating rhythm plays over the entire collage approach known as Pattern and Deco-
surface. At the time he painted New Shoes for ration. In painting, however, the majority
H, color had become newly important in have pursued different forms of realism for a
Eddy's thinking. The H of the tide pays hom- variety of ends.
age to Henri Mausse and to Hans Hofmann,
an Abstract Expressionist whom Eddy had Flack. Women artists such as Audrey Flack
come to admire. (born 1931) have used realism to explore the
Photorealism was part of a general ten- world around them and their relation to it
dency that marked American painting in the from a personal as well as a feminist view-
1970s: the resurgence of realism. It took on a point. Like most of Flack's paintings, Queen
wide range of themes and techniques, from (fig. 462) an extended allegory. The queen
is
the most personal to the most detached, de- is the most powerful figure on the chess-
pending on the artist's vision of objective real- board, vet she remains expendable in defense
ity and its subjective significance. Its flexibility of the king. Equally apparent is the meaning
made realism a sensitive vehicle for the femi- inherent to the queen of hearts, but here the
nist movement that came to the fore in card also refers to the passion for gambling in
the same decade. Beyond the organizing of members of Flack's family, who is represented
groups dedicated to a wider recognition for by the locket with photos of the artist and her
women artists, feminism in art has shown tit- mother. The contrast of youth and age is cen-
le of the unity that characterizes the social tral to Queen: the watch is em-
a traditional
vement. Many feminists, for example, blem of life's brevity, and the dewy rose stands
•
to traditional women's crafts, particu- for transience of beauty, which is further con-
TWENTIETH-CENTURY PAINTING • 453
veyed by the makeup on the dressing table. these pieces provide a jigsaw puzzle of our
The suggestive shapes of the bud and fruits times. Another indication of the state of flux
can also be taken as symbols of feminine is the reemergence of many traditional Euro-
sexuality. pean and regional American art centers.
Queen is successful not so much for its pro- From all the recent ferment, a new direc-
vocative statement, however, as for its com- tion in art has begun to appear, at least for
pelling imagery. Flack creates a purely artistic the time being. Much recent art has been
realityby superimposing two separate photo- concerned with appropriation and decon-
graphs. Critical to the illusion is the gray bor- struction. Appropriation looks back self-
der, which acts as a framing device and also consciously to earlier art, both by imitating
establishes the central space and color of the previous styles and by taking over specific
painting. The seem to project
objects that motifs or even entire images. Artists, of
from the picture plane are shown in a dif- course, have always borrowed from tradition,
ferent perspective from those on the tilted but rarely so systematically as now. Such
tabletop behind. The picture space is made plundering is nearly always a symptom of
all the more active by the play of its colors deepening cultural crisis, suggesting bank-
within the neutral gray. ruptcy. The first sign of this historicism actu-
ally occurred in the early 1970s with the
widespread use of "Neo-" to describe the
Post- Modernism
latest tendencies. Unbound as it is to any sys-
Art since 1980 has been called Post-Modern. tem, Post-Modernism is free not only to adopt
The term itself is anomalous: modernity, af- earlier imagery but also to alter its meaning
ter can never be outdated, because it is
all, radically through deconstruction, by placing
simply whatever is contemporary. The word it in a new context. The traditional impor-
nevertheless suggests the paradoxical nature tance assigned to the artist and object is de-
of the trend, which seeks out incongruity. emphasized in this approach, which stresses
Post-Modernism is marked by an abiding process over content. Hence, Performance
skepti cism tha t reje cts m
oderjusm as an ideal Art (which isdiscussed with sculpture on
defining twentieth-century culture as we have pp. 473-74), became perhaps the most char-
known it. In challenging tradition, however, acteristic art form of the 1980s.
Post-Modernism resolutely refuses to define a
new meaning or impose an alternative order Clemente. The Italian Francesco Clemente
in its place. It represents a generation con- (born 1952) is representative in many re-
sciously not in search of its identity. Hence, it spects of his artistic generation. His asso-
is not a coherent movement at all, but a loose ciation with the Arte Povera ("Poor Art")
collection of tendencies which, all told, reflect movement in Italy led him to develop a po-
a new sensibility. tent Neo- Expressionist style. His career took
We are, in a sense, the new Victorians. a decisive turn in 1982 when he decided
to go
A century ago, Impressionism underwent a to New York order "to be where the great
in
like crisis, from which Post-Impressionism painters have been," but he also spends much
emerged as the direction for the next twenty of his time in India, where he has been in-
years. Behind its elaborate rhetoric, Post- spired by Hinduism. His canvases and wall
Modernism can be seen as a stratagem for paintings sometimes have an ambitiousness
sorting through the past while making a deci- that can assume the form of allegorical cycles
sive break with it that will allow new possi- addressed directly to the Italian painters who
bilities to emerge. Having received a rich worked on a grand scale, starting with Giotto.
heritage, artists are faced with a wide variety His most compelling works, however, are
of alternatives. The principal features of the those having as their subject matter the artist's
new art are a ubiquitous eclecticism and a be- moods, fantasies, and appetites. Clemente is
wildering array of styles. Taken together, fearless in recording urges and memories
154 • Ml/-' S 111 111 (EMI RY PAINTING
that the rest of us repress. Art becomes for personal moods he confronts moral issues
him an act of cathartic necessity that releases, posed by Nazism that have been evaded by
but never resolves, the impulses that assault other postwar artists in his country. By ex-
his acute self-awareness. His self-portraits ploring from a modern perspective the major
(fig. 463) suggest a soul bombarded by drives themes of German Romanticism, he has at-
and sensations that can never be truly en- tempted to reweave the threads broken by
joyed. Alternately fascinating and repellent, history. That tradition, which began as a no-
his pictures remain curiously unsensual, yet ble ideal based on a similar longing for the
their expressiveness is riveting. Since his mythical past, ended as a perversion at the
work responds to fleeting states of mind, hands of Hitler and his followers because it
catastrophe presented by World War II. Con- ica. More Than You Know (fig. 465) makes a
ceptually as well as compositionally was in- it fascinating comparison with Audrey Flacks
spired by the paintings of Caspar David Queen (see fig. 462), for both are filled with
Friedrich (see p. 367), of which it is a worthy autobiographical references. While it is at
successor. To express the tragic proportions once simpler and more abstract than Flack's,
of the Holocaust, Kiefer works on an appro- Murray's composition seems about to fly apart
priately epic scale. Painted in jagged strokes under the pressure of barely contained emo-
of predominantly earth and black tones, the tions. The table will remind us of the one in
charred landscape is made tangible by the in- Picasso's Three Musicians (see fig. 432), a paint-
clusion of pieces of straw. Amid this destruc- ing she has referred to in other works from
tion stands a somber ruin; it is shown in the same time. The contradiction between the
woodcut toproclaim Kiefer's allegiance to the flattened collage perspective of the table and
German Renaissance and to Expressionism. chair and the allusions to the distorted three-
The fortresslike structure is a suitable monu- dimensionality of the surrounding room es-
ment for heroes in recalling the tombs and tablishes a disquieting pictorial space. The
temples of ancient civilizations (see fig. 31). more we look at the painting, the more we
But instead of being dedicated to soldiers begin to realize how eerie it is. Indeed, it
who died in combat, it is a memorial to the seems to radiate an almost unbearable ten-
painters whose art was equally a casualty of sion.The table threatens to turn into a fig-
Fascism. ure surmounted by a skull-like head, which
moves with the same explosive force of Pi-
Murray. Neo-Expressionism has a counter- casso's Three Dancers (see fig. 433). What was
part in Neo- Abstraction, which has yielded Murray thinking of? She has said that the
less impressive results thus far. The greatest room reminds her of the place where she sat
success in the Neo-Abstractionist vein has with her ill mother. At the same time, the de-
been achieved by those artists seeking to in- monic face was inspired by Munch's The
fuse their formal concerns with the personal Scream (see fig. 401), while the sheet of paper
meaning of Neo-Expressionism. Elizabeth recalls Vermeer's paintings of women reading
Murray (born 1940) has emerged since 1980 letters (see fig. 301), which to her express a
as the leader of this crossover style in Amer- combination of serenity and anxiety.
TWENTIETH-CENTURY
SCULPTURE
length 18" (45.7 cm). Private collection Because he concentrated on two basic forms
of such uncompromising simplicity, Brancusi
has at times been called the Mondrian of
His majestic Two Forms of 1936 (fig. 467) are sculpture. This comparison is misleading,
i ond-generation offspring of Brancusi's however, for Brancusi strove for essences, not
The Kiss. More abstract and subtle in shape, for relationships. He was fascinated by the
TWEST1ETH-CESTURY SCILPTURE • 459
shovels and exhibit them as works of art. In since, especially in junk-ridden America (see
Advance of the Broken Arm (fig. 473) pushed the fig. 482).
462 • I \\ I- Mil III ( I STURY SCULPTURE
474. Julio Gonzalez. Head. c. 1935. Wrought iron, Calder. Surrealism in the early 1930s led
17 3/4X 15'/r" (45.1 x 38.7 cm). Collection, The
to still another important development, the
Museum of Modern Art, New York. Purchase
mobile sculpture of the American Alexan-
der Calder (1898-1976). Called mobiles for
short, they are delicately balanced construc-
Surrealism. Ready-mades are certainly ex- tions of metal wire, hinged together and
treme demonstrations of a principle, but the weighted so as to move with the slightest
principle itself— that artistic creation depends breath of air. They may be of any size, from
neither on established rules nor on manual tiny tabletop models to the huge Lobster Trap
craftsmanship — was an important discovery. and Fish Tail (fig. 475). Kinetic sculpture had
The Surrealist contribution to sculpture is been conceived by the Constructivists. Their
harder to define. It was difficult to apply influence is evident in Calder's earliest mo-
the theory of "pure psychic automatism" to biles,which were motor-driven, and tended
painting, but still harder to live up to it in toward abstract geometric configurations.
sculpture. How
indeed could solid, durable Calder was also affected early on by Mon-
materials be given shape without the sculptor drian, but it was his contact with Surrealism
being consciously aware of the process? Thus, that made him realize the poetic possibilities
apart from the devotees of the ready-made, of "natural" rather than fully controlled
few sculptors were associated with the move- movement. He borrowed biomorphic shapes
ment, and the effect produced by those who from Miro and began to think of mobiles as
were cannot be directly compared with Sur- similes of organic structures: flowers on flex-
realist painting. ible stems, foliage quivering in the breeze,
marine animals floating in the sea. Such mo-
Gonzalez. Surrealism contributed to the as- biles are infinitely responsive to their envi-
tonishing sculptural imagination ofJulio Gon- ronment so that they seem more truly alive
zalez ( 1H72-1942). Trained as a wrought-iron than any fabricated thing. Unpredictable and
craftsman Gonzalez
in his native Catalonia, ever-changing, they incorporate the fourth
rtie Although he was a
to Paris in 1900. dimension as an essential element of their
! of both Brancusi and Picasso, he pro- structure.
TWESTIETH-CEXTLRY SCLLPTl RE 46:*
475. Alexander Calder. Lobsttrr Trap and Fish Tail. 1939. Hanging mobile: painted steel wire and
sheet aluminum, c. 8'6" high X 9'6" diameter (2.6 x 2.9 mt. Collection. The Museum of Modern Art.
New York. Commissioned b\ the Advison. Committee for the stairwell of the Museum
Like painting, sculpture since 1945 has been previous sculpture and relates them to archi-
notable for its epic proportions. Indeed, scale tecture. Thev are the modern successors, in
assumed fundamental significance for a sculp- structural steel and concrete, to such pre-
tural movement that extended the scope — historic monuments as Stonehenge (see figs.
indeed, the verv concept— of sculpture in an 21, 22).
entirely new direction. "Primary Structure."
the most suitable name suggested for this Bladen. Often, these sculptors limit them-
type, conveys its two salient characteristics: selves to the role of designer and leave the
extreme simplicity of shapes and a kinship execution to others, to emphasize the imper-
with architecture. The radical abstraction of sonality and duplicabilitv of their invention.
form is known as Minimalism, which implies If no patron is found to foot the bill for carry-
an equal reduction of content. Another term. ing out these cosdv structures, thev remain on
"Environmental Sculpture" (not to be con- paper, like unbuilt architecture, but some-
fused with mixed-medium "environments"). times such works reach the mock-up stage.
464 • TWESTIETH-CESTURY SCULPTURE
477. David Smith. Cubi series. Stainless steel. From left to right:
Cubi XVIII. 1964. Height 9'8" (2.95 m). Museum of Fine Arts, Boston:
Cubi XVII. 1963. Height 9' (2.74 m). Dallas Museum of Fine Arts;
Cubi XIX. 1964. 9'5" (2.87 m). The Tate Gallery, London
fej
TWEXT1ETH-CENTURY SCULPTURE 465
Oldenburg. On a large scale, Primary Struc- Smithson. The ultimate medium for Envi-
tures are obviously monuments. But just as ronmental Sculpture is the earth itself, since it
obviously they are not monuments commem- provides complete freedom from the limita-
orating or celebrating anything except their tions of the human scale. Some designers of
designer's imagination. To the uninitiated, Primary Structures have, logically enough,
they offer no ready frame of reference, noth- turned to "Earth Art," inventing projects that
ing to be reminded of, even though the origi- stretch over many miles. These latter-day suc-
nalmeaning of "monument" is "a reminder." cessors to the mound-building Indians of
Monuments in the traditional sense died out Neolithic times have the advantage of mod-
when contemporary society lost its consensus ern earth-moving machinery, but this is more
of what ought to be publicly remembered; yet than outweighed by the problem of cost and
the belief in the possibility of such monu- the difficulty of finding suitable sites on our
ments has not been abandoned altogether. crowded planet.
The Pop artist Claes Oldenburg (born 1929) The few projects of theirs that have ac-
has proposed a number of unexpected and tually been carried out are mostly found (and
imaginative solutions to the problem of the the finding is itself often difficult enough)
monument. He is, moreover, an exceptionally in remote regions of western America. Spiral
precise and eloquent commentator on his Jetty, the work of Robert Smithson (1938-
ideas. All his monuments are heroic in size, 1973), jutted out into Great Salt Lake in Utah
though not in subject matter. All share one (fig. 480) and is now partly submerged.
feature, their origin in humble objects of Its appeal rests in part on the Surrealist
everyday use. irony of the concept: a spiral jetty is as
In 1969 Oldenburg conceived a work self-contradictory as a straight corkscrew.
shaped like a gigantic ice bag (fig. 479) with But it can hardly be said to have grown out of
TUEXTIETH-CESTLRY SCULPTURE • 467
Nevelson. Although it is almost ahvavs made however, when the sentimental, idealizing
entirely of wood, the work of Louise Nevel- Neoclassical style fell out of favor after the
son (1900—1988) must be classified as assem- Philadelphia Centennial of 1876.
blage, and when extended to a monumental In the 1950s Nevelson rejected external re-
scale, it acquires the status of an environment. ality and began to construct a private one,
Before Nevelson, there had not been impor- using her collection of found pieces of wood.
tant women sculptors in twentieth-century At first these self-contained realms were min-
America. Women had traditionallv been ex- iature citvscapes. They soon grew into large
cluded from this medium because of the environments of free-standing "buildings,"
manual labor involved. Thanks to the wom- encrusted with decorations that were inspired
en's suffrage movement in the second half of bv the sculpture on Mayan ruins. Nevelson's
the nineteenth centurv, Harriet Hosmer work generally took the form of large wall
(1830-1908) and her "White Marmorean units that flatten her architecture into reliefs
Flock" (as the novelist Henrv James called (fig. 483). Assembled from individual com-
her and her followers in Rome) had suc- partments, the whole is always painted a sin-
ceeded in legitimizing sculpture as a medium gle color, usually a matte black to suggest the
for women. This school of sculpture lapsed. shadowy world of dreams. Each compart-
470 • T\\ i X IIHH-C.EXTURY SCULPTURE
dium or size (unless we can enter it. in which subject of Cinema (fig. 485) is ordinary enough
cesses involved, but no single term that cov- Segal's invention and retains its ghostlv white
ered them all. Maybe it is time to revive such plaster surface. Thus it is one crucial step re-
distinctions and to modify the all-inclusive moved from our world of dailv experience,
definition of sculpture by acknowledging "en- and the illuminated sign has been carefullv
vironments" as a separate category, distinct designed to complement and set off the
from both painting and sculpture in their use shadowed figure. Moreover, the scene is
of heterogeneous materials ("mixed me- brought down from its natural context, high
diums") and their blurring of the borderline above the entrance to the theater where we
between image and reality. The differences might have glimpsed it in passing, and is pre-
are underscored by "installations," which are sented at eye level, in isolation, so that we
expansions of environments into room-size grasp it completely for the first time.
settings.
De Andrea. John De Andrea (born 1941)
Segal. George Segal (born 1924) creates life- pursues very different ends than Segal un-
size three-dimensional pictures showing peo- derstood. The Artist and His Model (fig. 4) has
ple and objects in everyday situations. The the subtle content and almost classical puritv
that make him a worthv successor to Antonio
Canova, but with a difference (see pp. 369—
70). Here the Romantic sculptor's dilemma of
representation versus duplication is reversed.
Without confusing the two, De Andrea's hy-
perrealism expresses an ideal, while leaving
us in just enough doubt to make the illusion
convincing.
Conceptual Art
489. Joseph Beuvs. Coyote. Photograph of performance at Rene Block Gallerv. New York. 1974.
Photograph S* 1974 Caroline Tisdall. Courtesv Ronald Feldman Fine Arts. New York
The technical and aesthetic basis for a truly 491. 492). The exterior, so unlike anything
modern architecture was laid bv the eve of seen before, instantlv proclaims the building's
World War I. Much of twentieth-century ar- modernitv. However, its "Cubism" is not
chitecture is distinguished bv an aversion to mereh a matter of the clean-cut rectangular
decoration for its own sake. Instead, it favors elements composing the structure, but of
a clean functionalism, which expresses the Wright's handling of space. It is designed as a
machine age with its insistent rationalism. Vet number of "space blocks" around a central
modern architecture demanded far more core, the chimnev. Some of the blocks are
than a reform of architectural grammar and closed and others are open, yet all are defined
vocabulary. To take advantage of the ex- with equal precision. Thus the space that has
pressive qualities of the new building tech- been architecturally shaped includes the bal-
niques and materials that the engineer had conies, terrace, court, and garden, as well as
placed at the architect's disposal, a new phi- the house itself. Voids and solids are regarded
losophv was needed. The leaders of modern as equivalents, analogous in their way to
architecture have characteristically been vig- Analytic Cubism in painting, and the entire
orous and articulate thinkers, in whose minds complex enters into an active and dramatic
architectural theory is closely linked with relationship with its surroundings. Wright
ideas of social reform to meet the challenges did not aim simplv to design a house, but
posed bv industrial civilization. To them, ar- to create a complete environment. He even
chitecture's abilitv to shape human experi- took command of the details of the interior.
ence brings with it the responsibilitv to plav Wright acted out of a conviction that build-
an active role in molding modern societv for ings have a profound influence on the people
the better. who live. work, or worship in them, making
the architect, consciouslv or unconsciouslv. a
molder of people.
Earh Modernism
Wright. The first indisputablv modern archi- Rietveld. The work of Frank Llovd Wright
tect was Frank Llovd Wright (1867-1959). attracted much attention in Europe bv 1914.
Louis Sullivan's great disciple. If Sullivan Among the first to recognize its importance
and Van de Yelde could be called the Post- were some voung Dutch architects who. a few
Impressionists of architecture. Wright took vears later, joined forces with Mondrian in
architecture to its Cubist phase. This is cer- the De Stijl movement (see pp. 431—32).
tainh true of his brilliant earlv stvle. which he Among their most important experiments is
developed between 1900 and 1910 and had the Schroder House, designed bv Gerrit Riet-
broad international influence. In the begin- veld (1888-1964) in 1924 for a woman artist.
ning Wright's main activity was the design of The facade looks like a Mondrian painting
suburban houses in the upper Midwest. transposed into three dimensions, for it
These were known as prairie houses, because utilizes the same rigorous abstraction and
their low. horizontal lines were meant to refined geometry (fig. 493). The lively ar-
blend with the flat landscape around them. rangement of floating panels and intersecting
His last, and his most accomplished, example planes is based on Mondrian's principle of dy-
in this series is the Robie House of 1909 (figs. namic equilibrium: the balance of unequal
476 • rwtsni- rat tsTiRv architecture
7F7T
LOWKR FLOOR
Stijl architects represented the most advanced but he could not yet free himself from the
ideas in European architecture in the early traditional notion of the window as a "hole in
1920s. They had a decisive influence on so the wall." Gropius frankly acknowledged, at
many architects abroad that the movement that in modern architecture the wall is no
last,
soon became international. The largest and more than a curtain or climate barrier, which
most complex example of this International may consist entirely of glass if maximum day-
Style of the 1920s is the group of buildings light is desirable. The result is rather surpris-
created in 1925-26 by Walter Gropius (1883- ing: since such walls reflect as well as transmit
1969) for the Bauhaus in Dessau, the famous light, their appearance depends on the inter-
German art school of which he was the direc- play of these two effects. They respond, as it
tor. (Its curriculum embraced all the visual were, to any change of conditions without
arts, linked by the root concept of structure, and within, and thus introduce a strange
Bau.) The complex consisted of three major quality of lifeinto the structure. (The mir-
blocks for classrooms, shops, and studios. rorlike finish of Brancusi's Bird in Space serves
The most dramatic is the shop block, a four- a similar purpose.) The same principles have
story box with walls that are a continuous sur- been used on a much larger scale for sky-
face of glass (fig. 494). This radical step had scrapers ever since.
ITS • / HEX 1 IETH-CEXTCRY ARCHITECTURE
Le Corbusier's Early Work. In France, the square box resting on stilts— pillars of rein-
most distinguished representative of the In- forced concrete that form part of the struc-
ternational Style during the 1920s was the tural skeleton and reappear to divide the
Swiss-born architect Le Corbusier (Charles "ribbon windows" running along each side of
Edouard Jeanneret, 1886-1965). At that time the box. The flat, smooth surfaces, denying
he built only private homes (from necessity, all sense of weight, stress Le Corbusier's pre-
not choice), but these are worthy successors occupation with abstract "space blocks." The
to Wright's prairie houses and Rietveld's functionalism of the Villa Savoye governed
is
Schroder House. Le Corbusier called them by a "design for living," not by mechanical
machines a habiter (machines to be lived in), a efficiencv. Within the house, we are still in
term intended to suggest his admiration for communication with the outdoors, but we en-
the clean, precise shapes of machinery, not a joy complete privacy, since an observer on the
desire for "mechanized living."(The paint- ground cannot see us unless we stand next to
ings of his Fernand Leger during
friend a window.
those years reflect the same attitude; see
fig. 434.) Perhaps he also wanted to im- Aalto. Although the style and philosophy of
ply that his houses were so different from the International Style were codified around
conventional homes as to constitute a new 1930 by an international committee of Le
ies. Corbusier and his followers, soon all but the
The most famous of them, the Villa Savoye most purist among them began to depart
at Pbis me (fig. 495), resembles a low, from this standard. One of the first to break
TWENTIETH-CESTLRY ARCHITECTURE • 479
Postwar Architecture
Urban Planning
turies ago, cities began to grow explosively. Piano and Rogers. One approach is to reject
Much of growth was uncontrolled. The
this the formal beauty of the International Style.
unfortunate result can be seen in the over- The Centre Georges Pompidou (fig. 499), the
crowded, crumbling apartment blocks that national arts and cultural center in Paris,
are the blight of vast urban areas. Architects, looks like the Bauhaus turned inside out (see
however, have generally failed in their social fig. 494). Selected in an international compe-
mandate to replace the slums of our decaying tition, the design by the Italian-English team
cities with housing that will provide a socially of Renzo Piano (born 1937) and Richard
healthful environment for very large num- Rogers (born 1933) eliminates any trace of Le
bers of people. Corbusier's elegant facades (see fig. 495), ex-
posing the building's inner mechanics while
Niemeyer. Nowhere are the issues facing disguising the underlying structure. The inte-
modern civilization put into sharper relief rior itself has no fixed walls, so that tempo-
than in the grandiose urban projects con- rary dividers can be arranged to meet any
ceived by modern architects. These Utopian need. This stark utilitarianism reflects a pop-
visions may be regarded as laboratory experi- ulist sentiment current in France. Yet it is en-
ments that seek to redefine the role of ar- livened by eye-catching colors, each keyed to
chitecture in shaping our lives and to pose a different function. The festive display is as
new solutions. Limited by their very scope, vivacious and imaginative as Leger's The City
few of these ambitious proposals make it off (see fig. 434), which, with Paris' Eiffel Tower,
the drawing board. Among the rare excep- can be regarded as the Pompidou Center's
tions is Brasilia, the inland capital of Brazil true ancestor.
built entirely since 1960. Presented with
an unparalleled opportunity to design a ma- Stirling. The Pompidou Center represents a
jor city from the ground up and with vast reaction against the International Style with-
resources at its disposal, the design team, out abandoning its functionalism. Other Post-
headed by the Brazilian Oscar Niemeyer Modern have sought to create more
architects
(born 1907), achieved undeniably spectacular human environments by reverting to what
results (fig. 498). Like most projects of this can only be called Pre-Modernist architec-
sort, Brasilia has a massive scale and insistent ture: their chief means of introducing greater
logic that make it curiously oppressive, so that expressiveness has been to adopt elements
despite the lavish display, the city provides a from historical styles rich with association.
chilling glimpse of the future. The Neue Staatsgalerie in Stuttgart (fig. 500)
has the grandiose scale befitting a "palace" of
the arts, but instead of the monolithic cube of
Post- Modernism
the Pompidou Center, English architect
Spurred by radical social theories, Post-Mod- James Stirling (born 1926) incorporates more
ernism— as its misleading name implies (see varied shapes within more complex spatial
p. 453)— constitutes a broad repudiation of relationships. There is, too, an overfly de-
the mainstream of twentieth-century archi- corative quality that will remind us, how-
tecture. It represents an attempt to reinstate ever indirectly, of Garnier's Paris Opera (see
meaning in architecture, as against the self- fig. 360). The similarity does not stop there.
contained designs espoused by the modern Stirling has likewise invoked a form of histor-
tradition. Post-Modernism rejects not only icism through paraphrase that is far more
the vocabulary of Gropius and his followers, subtle than Garnier's opulent revivalism, but
but also the social and ethical ideals implicit in no less self-conscious. The primly Neoclassi-
their lucid proportions. As in the visual arts, cal masonry facade, for example, is punc-
Post-Modernism includes a variety of tenden- tured by a narrow arched window recalling
cies, but acquires a subtly different meaning the Italian Renaissance and by a rusticated
when applied to architecture. portal that has a distinctly Mannerist look.
482 TWENTIETH-CENTURY ARCHITECTURE
TWEXTIETH-CEXTLRY ARCHITECTURE - 483
not abandon modern architecture and its Clearlv such buildings push modern archi-
principles altogether. Unlike some other tecture to its This sort of
practical limits.
avant-garde investigations that seek a decisive questioning has gone on before. It happened,
break with tradition, it remains an architec- for example, under Mannerism, when archi-
ture of the possible based on structural engi- tects introduced an element of decadence
neering. As the term suggests, Deconstruc- into the classical vocabulary inherited from
tivism dismandes modern architecture, which the Renaissance. Architects, like artists, have
it then puts back together again in new ways. repeatedlv plundered the past in search of
fresh ideas. Deconstructivism is no mere his-
Tschumi. Although Deconstructivist designs toricism. however, but a transition much like
have won major awards, their experimental Art Xouveau at the turn of the century, which
approach and ambitious scale have discour- provided the foundation for modern archi-
aged their actual construction. Among the tecture. It is a necessary part of the process
most advanced designs to get off the drawing that will redefine architecture as we have
board is the Pare de La Yillette in Paris, an come to know it.
ing its aesthetic assumptions and posing a terest. He himself was a humble man whose
new challenge to its credentials as one of the studio sign read simply, "Atget— Documents
arts. Like the other arts, photographv re- for Artists," and, indeed, he was patronized
sponded to the three principal currents of bv the fathers of modern art: Braque, Picasso,
our time: Expressionism. Abstraction, and Duchamp. and Man Ray, to name only the
Fantasy. But because it has continued to best known. It is no accident that these artists
be devoted for the most part to the world were also admirers of Henri Rousseau, for
around us, modern photography has adhered Rousseau and Atget had in common a naive
largely to realism and, hence, has followed a vision, though Atget found inspiration in un-
separate evolution. We must therefore discuss expected corners of his environment rather
twentieth-century photography primarily in than in magical realms of the imagination.
terms of different schools and how they have Atget's pictures are marked by a subtle in-
dealt with those often-conflicting currents. tensity and technical perfection that heighten
The course pursued bv modern photogra- the realitv. and hence the significance, of even
phv was facilitated by technological advances. the most mundane subject. Few photogra-
It must be emphasized, however, that these phers have equaled his ability to compose si-
have increased but not dictated the photogra- multaneously in two- and three-dimensional
George Eastmans invention of
pher's options. space. Like Pool, Versailles (fig. 502), his scenes
the hand-held camera in 1888 and the advent are often desolate, bespeaking a strange and
of 35mm photography with the Leica camera individual outlook. The viewer has the haunt-
in 1924 made it easier to take pictures that ing sensation that time has been transfixed by
had been difficult but by no means impossible the stately composition and the photogra-
to take with the traditional view camera. Sur- pher's obsession with textures. Atget's photo-
prisingly, even color photography did not graphs are directly related to a strain of
uch revolutionary importance as might magic realism that was a forerunner of Sur-
be expected. Color, in fact, has had a rela- realism, and it is easy to see why he was
TWENTIETH-CENTURY PHOTOGRAPHY • 485
rediscovered by Man Ray, the Dada and Sur- have a nearly universal appeal. His photo-
realist artist-photographer. graphs are distinguished by an interest in
composition for its own sake, derived from
Cartier-Bresson. The culmination of the modern abstract art. He also has a particular
Paris school no doubt Henri Cartier-Bresson
is which he invests with
fascination with motion,
(born 1908), the son of a wealthy thread man- all the dynamism of Futurism and the irony
ufacturer. He studied under a Cubist painter of Dada. The key to his work is his use of
in the late 1920s before taking up photogra- space to establish relations that are suggestive
phy in 1932. Strongly affected at first by and often astonishing. Indeed, although he
Atget, Man Ray (see p. 493), and even the deals with reality, Cartier-Bresson is a Sur-
cinema, he soon developed into the most in- realist at heart. The results can be disturbing,
of his time. His pur-
fluential photojournalist as in Mexico, 1934 (fig. 503). By omitting the
pose and technique are nevertheless those of man's face, Cartier-Bresson prevents us from
an artist. identifving the meaning of the gesture, yet we
Cartier-Bresson is the master of what he respond to its tension no less powerfully.
has termed "the decisive moment." This to
him means the instant recognition and visual
United States
organization of an event at the most intense
moment of action and emotion in order to Stieglitz. The founder of modern photog-
reveal its inner meaning, not simply to record raphy in the United States was Alfred Stieg-
its occurrence. Unlike other members of the litz, whose influence remained dominant
Paris school, he seems to feel at home any- throughout his life (1864-1946). From his in-
where in the world and always to be in sympa- volvement with the Photo-Secession onward
thy with his subjects, so that his photographs (see p. 413), he was a tireless spokesman for
rWE.STlETH-CESTLRY PHOTOGR.\PHY
movement. He backed his words by pub- This kind of "straight" photography is de-
lishing the magazine Camera Work and sup- ceptive in its simplicity, for the image mirrors
porting the other pioneers of American the feelings that stirred Stieglitz. For that rea-
photography through exhibiting their work son, marks an important step in his evolu-
it
in his New York galleries, especially the first tion and a turning point in the history of
one. known as "291." The bulk of his early- photography. Its importance emerges onlv in
work adheres to Secessionist conventions, comparison with earlier photographs such as
treating photography as a pictorial equivalent Steichen's Rodin and Riis' Bandits' Roost (see
to painting. During the mid- 1890s, however, figs. 414, 410). The Steerage is a pictorial state-
he took some pictures of street scenes that are ment independent of painting on the one
harbingers of his mature photographs. hand and free from social commentary on the
His classic statement, and the one he re- other. It represents the first time that docu-
garded as his finest photograph, is The Steer- mentary photography achieved the level of
age (fig. 504). 1907 on a trip to
Taken in art in America.
Europe, it captures the feeling of a voyage by Stieglitz' straight photography formed the
letting the shapes and composition tell the basis of the American school. It is therefore
storv. The gangway bridge divides the scene ironic that it was Stieglitz, with Steichen's en-
visually, emphasizing the contrasting activi- couragement, who became the champion of
ties of the people below in the steerage, which abstract art against the urban realism of the
was reserved for the cheapest fares, and the Ash Can school (see pp. 428-29), whose
observers on the upper deck. What it lacks in paintings were at face value often similar in
content and appearance to his photographs. lents." In 1922 Suegliu began to photograph
The resemblance is misleading. For Stieglitz. clouds to show that his work was independent
photography was less a means of recording of subject and personality. A remarkabh lyri-
things than of expressing his experience and cal cloud photograph from 1930 (fig. 505)
philosophy of life, much as a painter does. corresponds to a state of mind waiting to find
This attitude culminated in his "Equiva- full expression rather than merely respond-
188 • IWESTIETH-CESTI'RY PHOTOGRAPHY
A
TWESTIETH-CESTURY PHOTOGR.\PHY • 489
507. Ansel Adams. Moonnse. Hernandez, New Mexico. 1941. Gelatin-silver print.
15 x 18" • 1 :mi. Collection.The Museum of Modern An. New York. Gift of the artist.
£ 1991 bv the Trustees of The Ansel Adams Publishing Rights Trust
corporations. Time-Life
-»«.» > • TWFXTIETH-CEXTIRY PHOTOGR.\PHY
Margaret Bourke- White (1904-1971) was Van Der Zee. The nature of the Harlem Re-
the first staff photographer hired by Fortune naissance, which flourished in the 1920s (see
magazine and then by Life magazine, both p. 446), was hotly debated by black critics
published bv Henry Luce. Her cover photo- even in own
day. While its achievement in
its
graph of Fort Peck Dam in Montana for the literature beyond dispute, the photography
is
inaugural November 23. 1936, issue of Life of James Van Der Zee (1886-1983) is often
remains a classic example of the new photo- regarded today as its chief contribution to the
journalism (fig. 508). The decade witnessed visual arts. Much of his work is commercial
enormous building campaigns, and with her and variable in quality, yet it remains of great
keen eye for composition, Bourke-White documentary value and, at its best, provides a
drew a visual parallel between the dam and compelling portrait of an era. Van Der Zee
the massive constructions of ancient Egypt had an acute understanding of settings as re-
(compare fig. 36). In addition to their archi- flections of people's sense of place in the
tectural power, Bourke-White's columnar world, which he used to bring out a sitters
forms have a remarkable sculptural quality character and dreams. Though posed in ob-
and an almost human presence, looming like vious imitation of fashionable photographs of
colossal statues at the entrance to a temple. white society, his picture of the wife of the
But unlike the pharaohs' passive timelessness, Reverend George Wilson Becton (fig. 509),
these "guardian figures" have the spectral taken two years after the popular pastor of
alertness of Henry Moore's abstract mono- the Salem Methodist Church
Harlem was in
liths (see fig. 467). Bourke-White's rare ability murdered, shows Van Der unique ability
Zee's
to suggest multiple levels of meaning made to capture the pride of African Americans
this cover and her accompanying photo essay during a period when their dreams seemed
a landmark in photojournalism. on the verge of being realized.
Germany
With the New Objectivity movement in Ger-
many during the late 1920s and early 1930s
(see p. 437), photography achieved a degree
of excellence that has not been surpassed.
Fostered by the invention of superior Ger-
man cameras and the boom in publishing
everywhere, this German version of straight
photography emphasized materiality at a
time when manv other photographers were
turning away from the real world. The intrin-
sic beautv of things was brought out through
L
r\\F.\TIFTH-( FSTl R) PHOTOGRAPHY
which use the camera to record and probe the most acerbic anti-Nazi commentaries were
meaning of reality. Dada photomontages provided by John Heartfield (1891-1968),
might be called "ready-images," after Du- who changed his name from the German
champ's ready-mades. Like other collages, Herzfeld as a sign of protest. His horrific
thev are literally torn from popular culture poster of a Nazi victim crucified on a swastika
and given new meaning. Although the photo- (fig. 512) appropriates a Gothic image of
montage relies more on the laws of chance humanity punished for its sins on the wheel
(see p. 433), the Surrealists later claimed it to of divine judgment. Obviously, Heartfield
be a form of automatic handwriting on the was not concerned about misinterpreting the
grounds that it responds to a stream of original meaning in his montage, which com-
municates its new message to powerful effect.
TWE.XTIETH-CEXTIRY PHOTOGRAPHY • 493
Fittinglyenough, he discovered the process stands for, but the meaning we sense is there
by accident. The amusing face in figure 513 remains elusive.
was made according to the laws of chance by
dropping a string, two strips of paper, and a Frank. The new form of straight
birth of a
few pieces of cotton onto the photographic photography United States was largely
in the
paper, then coaxing them here and there be- the responsibility of one man, Robert Frank
fore exposure. The resulting image is a witty (born 1924). His book The Americans, com-
494 TUFXTIETHCESTCRY PHOTOGIUPHY
Benicia, California
His work was marked consistently by a liter-
ary, even theatrical, cast of mind, which drew
on the cinema for some of its effects. His
early photodocumentaries were often staged
as re-creations of personal experience for the tion of despair: this is no romantic knight in
purpose of social commentary based on Vic- shining armor, but a grim reaper.
torian models. Brandt's fantasy images man-
ifest a strikingly romantic imagination. Yet, Hockney. The most recent demonstrations
there is an oppressive anxiety implicit in his of photography's power to extend our vision
landscapes, portraits, and nudes. London have come, fittingly enough, from artists.
Child (fig. 516) has the haunting mood of nov- The photographic collages that the English
els by the Bronte sisters Charlotte, Emily, and painter David Hockney (born 1937) has been
Anne. At the same time, this is a classic dream making since 1982 are like revelations that
image fraught with troubling psychological overcome the traditional limitations of a uni-
overtones. The spatial dislocation, worthy of fied image, fixed in time and place, by closely
De Chirico, expresses the malaise of a person approximating how we actually see. In Greg-
who is alienated from both himself and the ory Watching the Snow Fall, Kyoto, Feb. 21, 1983
world. (fig. 518), each frame is analogous to a dis-
518. David Hockney. Gregory Watthing the Snow Fall, Kyoto, Feb. 21, 1983.
Photographic collage, 43 /^x46 /2"(110.5xll8.1 cm). © David Hocknev. 1983
, l
linear, but fluid. Moreover, by including his as it is opulent. Hockney has recorded his
own feet as reference points to establish our friend several times to suggest his reactions to
position clearly, Hocknev helps us realize that the serene landscape outside the door. Hock-
vision is less a matter of looking outward than ney 's approach is embedded in the histoid of
an egocentric act that defines the viewers vi- modern shows a self-conscious
painting, for it
sual and psychological relationship to the sur- awareness of earlier art. It combines the fac-
rounding world. The picture is as expressive eted views of Picasso and the dvnamic energy
^
TWEXTIETH-CE.XTURY PHOTOGRAPHY • 497
ACOJIb
of Popova (see figs. 423, 426). Gregory Watch- photograph, derived from a book on the his-
ing the Snow Fall is nonetheless a distinctly tory of radio, is a visual counterpart to the
contemporary work, for it incorporates the saying, "Hear no evil, speak no evil, see no
illusionistic potential of Op Art and the fas- evil." Transferred to canvas, it acquires a very
cinating effects of Photorealism (see figs. 455, different meaning in its new context. This
460). process is known as deconstruction. Stenciled
in bold letters is the Russian proverb, "Eat
Lemieux. Unlike Hockney, most artists today bread and salt but speak the truth," which
do not take their own photographs but means roughly, "Be frank when accepting
appropriate them from other mediums. someone's hospitality." The lettering trans-
Because their pictures are intended as coun- forms the image from an amusing publicity
terparts to paintings, they are enlarged on an photograph into an ominous-looking propa-
unprecedented scale, using commercial pro- ganda poster. Contrary to initial impressions,
cesses developed for advertisements, which the issue is neither Russia nor communism —
may also serve as sources. Many of these "re- the photograph features the famous Ameri-
photographers" are conceptual artists, such can entertainer Jack Benny— but the role of
as Annette Lemieux (born 1957), whose work the media in modern life. They enter our
conveys a message, served with the aid of homes as guests without being candid: here
texts. Her themes are thought-provoking. the performer covers his mouth in order to
Centering on social issues, they address the speak no evil. Shielded by the medium itself,
human condition without engaging in po- he distorts truth by selectively concealing in-
lemic. Lemieux has a gift for perceiving new formation, not by telling a deliberate false-
possibilities of meaning in old photographs hood. Truth emerges as a matter of relative
and illustrations. Truth (fig. 519) is an image perspective, determined as much by who con-
about sound — or, rather, the lack of it. The trols it as bv who hears it.
CHRONOLOGICAL CHART IV
1800
Louisiana Purchase 1803 Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's Faust Lewis and Clark expedition to Pacific
Napoleon crowns himself emperor 1804; (part I) 1808 1803-6
exiled to St. Helena 1815 George Gordon Byron's Childe Harolds First voyage of Fulton's steamship 1807;
War of 1812 Pilgrimage 1812-18 first Adantic crossing 1819
Greeks declare independence 1822 John Keats, English poet (1795-1821) Stephenson's first locomotive 1814
Monroe Doctrine proclaimed by U.S. Percy Bysshe Shelley, English poet Faraday discovers principle of electric
1823 (1792-1822) dynamo 1821
Jane Austen, English novelist (1775—
1817)
Walter Scott's Waverly novels 1814-25
1825
Revolution of 1830 in France Aleksandr Pushkin, Russian writer Erie Canal opened 1825
Queen Victoria crowned 1837 (1799-1837) First railway completed (England) 1825
U.S. treaty with China opens ports 1844 Victor Hugo, French writer (1802-1885) McCormick invents reaper 1831
Famine in Ireland, mass emigration Stendahl's The Red and the Black 1831 Daguerreotype process of photography
1845 Ralph Waldo Emerson, American introduced 1839
U.S.annexes western land areas 1845- essayist (1803-1882) Morse perfects telegraph 1844
60 Margaret Fuller, American reformer
Revolution of 1848; fails in Germany, (1810-1850)
Hungary, Austria, Italy; France sets Charles Dickens' Oliver Twist 1838
up Second Republic (Louis George Eliot, English novelist (1819—
Napoleon) 1880)
Gold discovered in California 1848 William Thackeray's Vanity Fair 1847
Karl Marx's Communist Manifesto 1848
Edgar Allan Poe, American poet (1809-
1849)
1850
Louis Napoleon takes tide of emperor Herman Melville's Moby Dick 1851 Darwin publishes Origin of Species 1859
1852 Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin 1851 Bessemer patents tilting converter for
Perrv's visit ends Japan's isolation 1854 Thoreau's Walden 1854 turning iron into steel 1860
Frederick Douglass (c. 1817-1895) Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass 1855 Pasteur develops germ theory 1864
becomes American abolitionist leader Flaubert's Madame Bovary 1856 Mendel publishes first experiments in
Russia abolishes serfdom 1861 Charles Baudelaire, French poet (1821- genetics 1865
US. Civil War (1861-65) ends slavery; 1867) Nobel invents dynamite 1867
Lincoln assassinated 1865 Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace 1864-69 First transcontinental railroad complete
Susan B. Anthony (with Elizabeth Cady Feodor Dostoyevsky's Crime and in America 1869
Stanton) organizes National Woman Punishment 1867 Suez Canal opened 1869
Suffrage Association 1869 Karl Marx's Das Kapital 1867-94
Franco-Prussian War 1870-71
Disraeli British prime minister
1874-80
NOTE: Figure numbers of black-and-white illustrations are in (italics). Colorplate numbers are in (bold face).
Duration of papacy or reign is indicated by the abbreviation r.
1775
Jefferson, Monticello, Houdon, Voltaire (331) Copley, Watson and the Shark
Charlottesville (335) (329)
David, Death of Socrates
(326); Death of Marat
(327)
Gros, Napoleon at Arcole (338)
1800
Canova, Pauline Borghese as Goya, Family of Charles IV
Venus (354) (336)
Ingres, Odalisque (340)
Goya, Third of May, 1808
(337)
Gericault, Raft of the
"Medusa" (339)
Constable, Haywain (350)
Friedrich, Polar Sea (352)
1825
Barry and Pugin, Houses of Rude, La Marseillaise, Arc de Delacroix, Massacre at Chios Niepce, View from His
Parliament, London Triomphe, Paris (355) (342) Window at Le Gras (361)
(359) Corot, Papigno (345)
Labrouste, Bibliotheque Ingres, Louis Bertin (341)
Ste. -Genevieve, Paris Turner, Slave Ship (351)
(387, 388) Bingham, Fur Traders
Descending the Missouri
(353)
Bonheur, Plowing in the
Nivernais (347)
Courbet, Stone Breakers (365)
1850
Paxton, Crystal Palace (389) Carpeaux, The Dance (356) Rossetti, Ecce Ancilla Domini Rejlander, Two Paths of Life
Gamier, Opera, Paris (360) (377) (411)
Millet, The Sower (346) Nadar, Sarah Bernhardt (362)
Daumier, Third-Class Gardner, Home of a Rebel
Carriage (344) Sharpshooter, Gettysburg
Manet, Luncheon on the Grass (364)
(368); The Fifer (369) Cameron, Portrait of Ellen
Homer, Morning Bell (381) Terry (412)
Monet, The River (370) Tsar Cannon Outside the
Whistler, Artist's Mother Spassky Gate, Moscow
(379); Falling Rocket (380) (363)
POLITICAL HISTORY RELIGION, LITERATURE SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY
1875
Peak of colonialism worldwide 1876- Mark Twain's Tom Sawyer 1876 Bell patents telephone 1876
1914 Henrik Ibsen. Norwegian dramatist Edison invents phonograph 1877;
First pogroms in Russia 1881-82 (1828-1906) invents electric light bulb 1879
First Zionist Congress called bv Theodor Emile Zola. French novelist (1840-1902) First internal combustion engines for
Hertzl 1897 Oscar Wilde. Irish writer (1854-1900) gasoline 1885
Spanish-American War 1898; L'.S. gains Henrv James, American novelist (1843— Roentgen discovers X-rays 1895
Philippines. Guam. Puerto Rico. 1916) Marconi invents wireless telegraphv
annexes Hawaii G. B. Shaw. British writer (1856-1950) 1895
Emil\ Dickinson (1830-1886), poetry Edison invents motion picture 1896
published 1890, 1891 The Curies discover radium 1898
1900
President T. Roosevelt (1901-9) Marcel Proust, French novelist (1871- Planck formulates quantum theory 1900
proclaims Open Door policv; Panama 1922) Freud's Interpretation of Dreams 1900
Canal opened 1914 W. B. Yeats. Irish poet (1865-1939) Pavlov's first experiments with
8,800,000 immigrate to L'.S. 1901-10 Andre Gide, French novelist (1869- conditioned reflexes 1900
Internal strife, reforms in Russia 1905 1951) Wright brothers' first flight with power-
Revolution in China, republic set up Gertrude Stein, American writer (1874- driven airplane 1903
1911 1946) Einstein's theory of relativity 1905
First World War 1914-18; U.S. enters T. S. Eliot. British poet (1888-1964) Victor Yictrola available 1906
1917 James Joyce, Irish writer (1882-1941) Ford begins assemblv-line automobile
Bolshevik Revolution 1917; Russia signs Eugene O'Neill, American dramatist production 1909
separate peace with Germany 1918 (1888-1953) First radio station begins regularly
Gandhi agitates for Indian D. H. Lawrence, English novelist (1885- scheduled broadcasts 1920
independence after First World War 1930)
Woman Suffrage enacted in U.S. 1920;
in England 1928; in France 1945
Irish Free State established 1921
Mussolini's Fascists seize Italian
government 1922
Turkey becomes republic 1923
1 1 1
(437)
Picasso. Three Musicians (432)
Klee. Twittering Machine
(440)
O Keeffe. Black Iris III (443)
POLITICAL HISTORY RELIGION, LITERATURE SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY
1925
Stalin starts Five-Year Plan 1928 Sinclair Lewis. American novelist (1885- First regularly scheduled TV broadcasts
Hitler seizes power Germany 1933
in 1951) in U.S. 1928, in England 1936
Roosevelt proclaims New Deal 1933 Virginia Woolf, English author (1882- Motion pictures with sound appear in
Mussolini conquers Ethiopia 1936 1941) theaters 1928
Spanish Civil War 1936-39; won by William Faulkner. American novelist Margaret Mead*s Coming of Age in Samoa
Franco (1897-1962) 1928
Hitler annexes Austria 1938 Ernest Hemingway. American writer Atomic fission demonstrated on
Second World War 1939-45 (1898-1961) laboratory scale 1942
Atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima Thomas Wolfe, American novelist Penicillin discovered 1943
1945 (1900-1938) Computer technology developed 1944
United Nations Charter signed 1945 Bertolt Brecht, German dramatist
Israel becomes independent 1948 (1898-1956)
Apartheid becomes government policy Jean-Paul Sartre, French philosopher
in South Africa 1948 (1905-1980)
NATO founded 1949 Simone de Beauvoir, French author
Communists under Mao win in China (1908-1986)
1949 Albert Camus, French novelist (1913-
1960)
1950
Korean War 1950-53 Wallace Stevens, American poet (1879— Genetic code cracked 1953
I S Supreme Court outlaws racial 1955) First hydrogen bomb (atomic fusion)
segregation in public schools 1954 Samuel Beckett, Irish author (1906- exploded 1954
Common Market established in Europe 1989) Sputnik, first satellite, launched 1957
1957 Jean Genet, French dramatist (1910-
African colonies gain independence 1986)
after 1957 Eugene Ionesco, French dramatist (born
Castro lakes over Cuba 1959 1912)
Lawrence Durrell, English novelist
(1912-1990)
Jack Kerouacs On the Road 1957
1960
Sit-ins protest racial discrimination 1960 Jorge Luis Borges, Argentinian author First manned space flight 1961
Berlin Wall built 1961 (1899-1986) First manned landing on the moon 1969
John F. Kennedy assassinated 1963 John Steinbeck awarded Nobel Prize
Johnson begins massive U.S. 1962
intervention in Vietnam 1965 Betty Friedan*s The Feminine Mystique
Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution in 1963
China 1965-68
Martin Luther King, Jr., assassinated
1968
Russia invades Czechoslovakia 1968
1970
Massacre of student demonstrators at Gabriel Garcia Marquez' One Hundred First orbiting laboratory (Skylab) 1973
Kent State University, Ohio, 1970 Years of Solitude 1970 Viking I and II Space Probes land on
Civil war in Pakistan gains independence First non- Italian pope elected since Mars 1976
for People's Republic of Bangladesh Adrian VI in 1522 — Pope John Paul Personal computers available 1978
1972-73 II (from Poland) 1978 Yovager I Space Probe orbits Jupiter
Vietnam War ends 1973 1979
Nixon resigns presidency 1974
Death of Franco 1975
Iranian Revolution 1979
1980
Socialization of French banks 1981 Alice Walkers The Color Purple 1982 AIDS virus recognized 1981
Lech Walesa, Polish Solidarity leader. Space shuttle initiated by U.S. 1981
wins Nobel Peace Prize 1983 First artificial heart implanted 1982
Gorbachev begins implementing reform Compact discs available 1983
policy of perestroika (restructuring) Explosion of space shuttle Challenger
and glasnost (openness) in U.S.S.R. 1986
1985
Tiananmen Square massacre 1989
Reform movements develop throughout
Eastern Europe; Romanians
overthrow Ceausescu; Havel elected
president of Czechoslovakia; Berlin
Wall demolished 1989
1990
Walesa elected president of Poland 1990
Reunification of Germany 1990
Persian Gulf War 1991
f\
1
Le Gorbusier. Villa S Calder, Lobster Trap and Fish m 6435 4 Stiegliu, Equivalent (505)
195
Potssv-sur-Seine 7; 475 Hopper. Earl-i Sundai Weston. Pepper | I
Aalto. Via
Mairea. Picasso. Bull's Hea.: 2 Morning 444 Heartfietd. A> in rA<r Middle
Noormarkku (496) Hepv»orth. Sculpture with Mondnan, Composition with vj m fA* Third Retch
C*U(46S) Red. Blue, and Yellow
436 Van Der Zee, Wy<r o/tA*
Beckmann. Departure (442) Inmd Breton (509;
Miro. Pointing 439 Carder-Bresson, .VfcxKo,
Ernst, Attirram/ o/tA* Brwk /9J-<
Bourke-White. Fort Peck
Gorkv. The Liver Is the Cock's Dam, Montana (508)
Comb 445 Lange, Migrant Mother.
California (51 ll
1950
Mies »an der Rohe. Lake Rauschenberg. CWc. 4 Pollock, AiiftiiiiTui/ Rhythm Brandt. London Child (516)
Shore Drive Apartment 446 Frank. Santa Fe. Mm
.V/«iro
Houses, Chicago ( 497) Dubuffet. L* Mna£
De Kooning. Woman II (448) White. flirtui/ BrancA (5JfJ
Guggenheim Museum. Rochko. OcAr* and Red on
Newl ::< H M Rtd^AbO
Vasarelv. Veg-i i ! S
1960
\;c-<r-e- Bnoffia - -•
Segal. Cmemc
"
Warhol. Gold Menhn
Smith. Cubi series - 459
Nevelson, Black Cor i Lichtenstein. Ctrl at ,
1970
Piano and Rogers, Centre Smithson. Spiral Jetty. Great Anuszkiewicz. Entry
National d"Art et de Salt Lake Green 456
Culture Georges Chase-Riboud. Confessions for Eddv. Mm
Shoes for H 460,
Pompidou. Pans 499 1
Flack. Queer.
Williams. Batman i454
1980
Tschumi. Fobe P6. Pare de Shapiro. L'nti:, Him Clemente. Untitled 1
463 Leonard. Romanticism Is
1990
GLOSSARY
Cross-references are indicated by words in small capitals.
abstract. Having little or no reference to the appear- with prayers for different hours of the day; often elab-
ance of natural objects; pertaining to the nonrepresen- orately illuminated,
tational art styles of the twentieth century. buttress, buttressing. A masonry support that coun-
\( RYUC. A plastic binder medium for pigments that is teracts the thrust exerted by an arch or a vault. See
soluble in water, developed about 1960. flying buttress, pier buttress.
altarpiece. A painted or carved work of art placed be-
hind and above the altar of a Christian church. It may camera obscura. Latin for dark room. A darkened en-
be a single panel, or a triptych or polyptych having closure or box with a small opening or lens on one wall
hinged wings painted on both sides. through which light enters to form an inverted image
ambulatory. A passageway, especially around the chan- on the opposite wall. The principle had long been
cel of a church. An ambulatory may also be outside a known but was not used as an aid in picture-making
church. undl the sixteenth century.
amphora. A Greek vase having an egg-shaped body, a capital. The crowning member of a column, pier, or
narrow cylindrical neck, and two curving handles pilaster on which the lowest element of the entabla-
joined to the body at the shoulder and neck. ture rests. See Corinthian column, doric column,
apse. A large niche facing the nave of a church, usually at ionic column.
the east end. See basilica. cartoon. A preliminary sketch or drawing made to be
arcade. A series of arches and their supports. transferred to a wall, panel, or canvas as a guide in
arch. A structural member, often semicircular, used to painting a finished work.
span an opening; it requires support from walls, piers, casting. A method of reproducing a three-dimensional
or columns, and buttressing at the sides. object or relief. Casting in bronze or other metal is
archaic. A relatively early style, as Greek sculpture of often the final stage in the creation of a piece of sculp-
the seventh and sixth centuries B.C.; or any style adopt- ture; casting in plaster is a convenient and inexpensive
ing characteristics of an earlier period. way of making a copy of an original. See sculpture.
architrave. The main horizontal beam, and the lowest chancel. In a church, the space reserved for the clergy
part of an entablature. and choir, set off from the nave by steps, and occa-
assemblage. Two or more accidentally "found" objects sionally by a screen.
placed together as a construction. See ready-made. chapel. A compartment in a church containing an altar
atmospheric perspective. A means of showing distance dedicated to a saint.
or depth in a painting by changing the tone of objects chiaroscuro. Italian for light and dark. In painting, a
that are far away from the picture plane, especially by method of modeling form primarily by the use of light
reducing in gradual stages the contrast between lights and shade.
and darks. choir. See chancel.
classical. Used generally to refer to the art of the
baptistery. A building or part of a church, often round Greeks and the Romans.
or octagonal, in which the sacrament of baptism is ad- clerestory. A row of windows in a wall that rises above
ministered. It contains a baptismal font, a receptacle of the adjoining roof.
stone or metal that holds the water for the rite. collage. A composition made by pasting cut-up textured
barrel vault. A semicylindrical vault. materials, such as newsprint, wallpaper, etc., to form all
base. The lowest element of a column, wall, dome, etc. or part of a work of art; may be combined with painting
basilica. In the Roman period, the word refers to the or drawing or with three-dimensional objects.
function of the building— a large meeting hall— rather colonnade. A series of columns placed at regular
than to its form, which may vary according to its use; as intervals.
an official public building, the Roman basilica had cer- color. The choice and treatment of the hues in a
tain religious overtones. The term was used by the painting.
Early Christians to refer to their churches. An Early column. A vertical architectural support, usually consist-
Christian basilica had an oblong plan, flat timber ceil- ing of a base, a rounded shaft, and a capital.
ing, trussed roof, and an apse. The entrance was on composition. The arrangement of form, color, line,
one short side and the apse projected from the op- etc., in a work of art.
posite side, at the far end of the building. compound pier. A pier with columns, pilasters, or
bays Compartments into which a building may be sub- shafts attached.
divided, usually foi med by the space between consecu- contrapposto (counterpoise). Italian for set against. The
tive architectural supports. disposition of the parts of the body so that the weight-
BLACK-FIGURE. A type of Greek vase painting, practiced in bearing leg, or engaged leg, is distinguished from the
the seventh and sixth centuries B.C., in which the design raised leg, or free leg, resulting in a shift in the axis
ainted mainly in black against a lighter-colored between the hips and shoulders. Used by the Greek
-ground, usually the natural clay. sculptors as a means of showing movement in a figure.
k fori vidual private devotions Corinthian column. First appeared in fifth-century
GLOSSARY • 505
Greece, apparently as a variation of the ionic. The larly permanent form of painted decoration.
capital differentiates the two: the Corinthian capital frieze. In classical architecture an architectural ele-
has an inverted bell shape, decorated with acanthus ment on the architrave and is immediately
that rests
leaves, stalks, and volute scrolls. The Corinthian order below the cornice; also, any horizontal band decorated
was widely used by the Romans. with moldings, relief sculpture, or painting.
cornice. The crowning, projecting architectural feature,
especially the uppermost part of an entablature. gable. The triangular part of a wall, enclosed by the lines
crossing. In a cross-shaped church, the area where the of a sloping roof. See pediment.
nave and the transept intersect. gallery. A roofed promenade. See ambulatory, colon-
cupola. A rounded, domed roof or ceiling. nade.
genre. French for kind or sort. A work of art, usually a
daguerreotype. Originally, a photograph on a silver- painting, showing a scene from everyday life that is
plated sheet of copper that had been treated with represented for its own sake.
fumes of iodine to form silver iodide on its surface and, gospels, gospel book. Contains the four Gospels of the
after exposure, was developed by fumes of mercury. New Testament that tell the life of Christ, attributed to
The process, invented by L.J. M. Daguerre and made the Evangelists Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Often
public in 1839, was modified and accelerated as da- elaborately illustrated.
guerreotypes gained worldwide popularity. groin. The sharp edge formed by the intersection of two
dome. A large cupola supported by a circular drum or VAULTS.
square base. groin vault. A vault formed by the intersection at right
doric column. The Doric column stands without a base angles of two barrel vaults of equal height and diam-
directly on the top of the stepped platform of a temple. eter so that the groins form a diagonal cross.
Its shaft has shallow flutes.
GROUND plan. See PLAN.
drawing. A sketch, design, or representation by lines.
Drawings are usually made on paper with pen, pencil, hieroglyphics. The characters and picture-writing used
charcoal, pastel, chalk, etc.
by the ancient Egyptians.
drum. One of several sections composing the shaft of a
column; also a cylindrical wall supporting a dome. icon. A panel painting of Christ, the Virgin, or saints;
encaustic. A method of painting in colors mixed with
regarded as sacred, especially by Eastern Christians.
wax and applied with a brush, generally while the mix- illumination. A term used generally for manuscript
paintings. Illuminated manuscripts may contain sepa-
ture is hot. The technique was practiced in ancient
rate ornamental pages, marginal illustrations, orna-
times and in the Early Christian period and has been
revived by some modern painters.
ment within the text, entire miniature paintings, or
engaged column. A column that is part of a wall and any combination of these.
projects somewhat from it. Such a column often has no
illusionism, illusionistic. The effort of an artist to rep-
resent the visual world with deceptive reality.
structural purpose.
engraving. A design incised in reverse on a copperplate; illustration. The representation of an idea, scene, or
text by artistic means.
this is coated with printer's ink, which remains in the
incised lines when the plate is wiped off. Damp paper is
impasto. From the Italian word meaning "in paste."
Paint, usually oil paint, applied very thickly.
placed on the plate, and both are put into a press; the
paper soaks up the ink and produces a print of the ionic column. The Ionic column stands on a molded
base. The shaft normally has flutes more deeply cut
original.
entablature. The upper part of an architectural order. than doric flutes. The Ionic capital is identified by its
pair of spiral scroll-like ornaments.
etching. Like engraving, etching is an incising process.
However, the design is drawn in reverse with a needle
on a plate thinly coated with wax or resin. The plate is
jamb. The side of a doorway or window frame.
placed in a bath of nitric acid; the etched lines are
produced on the plate by the coating. The coating is kore. An archaic Greek statue of a draped maiden.
then removed, and the prints are made as in engraving. kouros. An archaic Greek statue of a standing nude
youth.
facade. The front of a building.
flute, flutes. Vertical channels on a column shaft; see line. A mark made by a moving tool such as a pen
DORIC COLUMN, IONIC COLUMN or pencil; more an outline, contour, or
generally,
flying buttress. An arch that springs from the upper silhouette.
pan of the pier buttress of a Gothic church, spans the linear perspective. A mathematical system for repre-
aisle roof, and abuts the upper nave wall to receive the senting three-dimensional objects and space on a two-
thrust from the nave vaults; it transmits this thrust dimensional surface. All objects are represented as
to the solid pier buttresses. seen from a single viewpoint.
foreshortening. A method of representing objects as if
seen at an angle and receding or projecting into space; mass. The expanse of color that defines a painted shape;
not in a frontal or profile view. the three-dimensional volume of a sculptured or archi-
form. The external shape or appearance of a representa- tectural form.
tion, considered apart from its color or material. medium. The material with which an artist works, such as
free-standing. Used to refer to a work of sculpture in marble, oil paint, terra-cotta, watercolor, etc.
the round, that is, in full three-dimensionality; not at- metope. An oblong panel between the triglyphs on the
tached to architecture and not in relief. entablature of the doric order.
fresco. A technique of wall painting known since antiq- miniature. A painting or drawing in an illuminated
uity; the pigment is mixed with water and applied to a manuscript; also a very small portrait, sometimes
freshly plastered area of a wall. The result is a particu- painted on ivory.
506 • GLOSSARY
mobile. A type of sculpture made of movable parts that See acrylic, encaustic, fresco, oil painting, tem-
can be set in motion by the movement of air currents. pera, WATERCOLOR.
MODELING. See sculpture. In painting or drawing, the pilaster. A flat vertical element having a capital and
means by which the three-dimensionality of a form base, engaged in a wall from which it projects. Has a
is suggested on a two-dimensional surface, usually decorative rather than a structural purpose.
through variations of color and the play of lights and plan. The schematic representation of a three-
darks. dimensional structure, such as a building or monu-
monumental. Frequently used to describe works that are ment, on a two-dimensional plane. A ground plan
larger than lifesize; also used to describe works giving shows the outline shape at the ground level of a given
the impression of great size, whatever their actual building and the location of its various interior parts.
dimensions. portal. An imposing doorway with elaborate ornamen-
mosaic. A design formed by embedding small pieces of tation in Romanesque and Gothic churches.
colored stone or glass in cement. In antiquity, large post and beam. A system or unit of construction consist-
mosaics were used chiefly on floors; from the Early ing solely of vertical and horizontal elements.
Christian period on, mosaic decoration was increas- proportion, proportions. The relation of the size of any
ing!) used on walls and vaulted surfaces. part of a figure or object to the size of the whole. For
motif. A distinctive and recurrent feature of theme, architecture, see order.
shape, or figure in a work of art. pylon. In Egyptian architecture, the entranceway set be-
mural. A wall painting. See fresco. tween two broad oblong towers with sloping sides.
nave. The central aisle of a basilican church, as disun- ready-made. A manufactured object exhibited as being
guished from the side aisles; the part of a church be- aesthetically pleasing. When two or more accidentally
tween the main entrance and the chancel. "found" objects are placed together as a construction,
the piece is called an assemblage.
red-figure. A type of Greek vase paindng in which the
oil painting. Though known to the Romans, it was not design was oudined in black and the background
systematically used unul the fifteenth century. In the painted in black, leaving the figures the reddish color
oil technique of early Flemish painters, pigments were of the baked clay after firing. This style replaced the
mixed with drying oils and fused while hot with hard black-figure style toward the end of the sixth century
resins; the mixture was then diluted with other oils. B.C.
order. In architecture, a classical system of proportion relief. Forms in sculpture that project from the back-
and interrelated parts. These include a column, usu- ground, to which they remain attached. Relief may be
ally with base, shaft, and capital, and an entabla- carved or modeled shallowly to produce low relief, or
ture with architrave, frieze, and cornice. deeply to produce high relief; in very high relief, por-
tions may be entirely detached from the background.
painting mediums. See acrylic, encaustic, fresco, oil representational. As opposed to abstract, means a
PAINTING, TEMPERA, WATERCOLOR. portrayal of an object in recognizable form.
pantheon. A temple dedicated to all the gods, or housing rhythm. The regular repetition of a particular form;
tombs of the illustrious dead of a nation, or memorials also, the suggestion of motion by recurrent forms.
to them. rib. An arch or a projecting arched member of a vault.
pastel. Powdered pigments mixed with gum and molded ribbed vault. A compound masonry vault, the groins
into sticks for drawing; also a picture or sketch made of which are marked by projecdng stone ribs.
with this type of crayon.
pediment. In classical architecture, the triangular part
of the front or back wall that rises above the entabla-
sarcophagus. A coffin made of stone, marble, terra-
ture. The pediments at either end of a temple often
cotta frequendy, of metal). Sarcophagi are often
(less
decorated with paintings or relief.
contained sculpture, in high relief or free-standing.
scale. Generally, the relative size of any object in a work
peristyle. A colonnade (or arcade) around a building
or open court.
of art, often used with reference to human scale.
perspective. See atmospheric perspective, linear
sculpture. The creadon of a three-dimensional form,
usually in a solid material. Traditionally, two basic tech-
PERSPECTIVE.
niques have been used: carving in a hard material such
photogram. A
shadowlike picture made by placing
opaque, translucent, or transparent objects between
as marble, and modeling in a soft material such as clay,
wax, etc. For types of sculpture, see free-standing and
light-sensitive paper and a light source and developing
RELIEF.
the latent photographic image.
photomontage. A
photograph in which prints in whole shaft. A cylindrical form; in architecture, the part of a
column or pier intervening between the base and the
or in part are combined to form a new image. A tech-
nique much practiced by the Dada group in the 1920s. capital. Also, a verdcal enclosed space.
pier. A vertical architectural element, usually rectangular sketch. A rough drawing represendng the main fea-
tures of a composition; often used as a preliminary
used with an order, often has a base and
in section; if
study.
capital of the same design.
pier buttress. An exterior pier in Romanesque and stained glass. The technique of filling architectural
Gothic architecture, buttressing the thrust of the openings with glass colored by fused metallic oxides;
vaults within. pieces of this glass are held in a design by strips of lead.
still life. A paindng or drawing of an arrangement of
P1ETA. In painting or sculpture, a representation of the
inanimate objects.
Virgin Mary mourning the dead Christ whom she
i
. A dry, powdered substance that, when mixed tempera. A painting process in which pigment is mixed
.1 suitable liquid, or vehicle, gives color to paint. with an emulsion of egg yolk and water or egg and oil.
GLOSSARY • 507
Tempera, the basic technique of medieval and Early- the arch of a medieval portal or doorway; a church
Renaissance painters, dries quicklv. permitting almost tympanum frequendv contains relief sculpture.
immediate application of the next layer of paint.
terra -COTTA. Clav. modeled or molded, and baked until vault. An arched roof or covering, made of brick, stone,
verv hard. L'sed in architecture for functional and dec- or concrete. See barrel vault, groin vault, ribbed
orative parts, as well as in potterv and sculpture. vault.
Terra-cotta mav have a painted or glazed surface. vellum. Thin, bleached calfskin, a type of parchment on
thrust. The downward and outward pressure exerted which manuscripts are written or printed.
bv an arch or vault and requiring buttressing.
transept. In a cross-shaped church, an arm forming a watercolor. pigments mixed with water instead of oil
right angle with the nave, usuallv inserted between the or other mediums, or a picture painted with water-
latter and the chancel or apse. color, often, on paper.
triglyph. A vertical block with V-cut channels, placed woodcut. A printing process in which a design or letter-
between metopes on the entablature of the doric ing is carved in reliee on a wooden block; the areas
ORDER. intended not to print are hollowed out.
trume.au. A central post supporting the lintel of a large
doorway, as in a Romanesque or Gothic portal, where ziggurat. An elevated platform, varying in height from
it was frequendv decorated with sculpture. several feet to the size of an artificial mountain, built by
tympanum. The space above the beam and enclosed by the Sumerians to support their shrines.
BOOKS FOR
FURTHER READING
This list includes standard works and the most recent and com- Lange, Kurt, and Max Hirmer. Egypt: Architecture. Sculp-
prehensive books in English. Books with material relevant to ture, Painting in Three Thousand Years, 4th ed., Phaidon,
sexfral chapters are cited only under the first heading. Asterisks London, 1968
(*) indicate titles available m paperback: for publishers, distribu- Michalowski. Kazimierz, Art of Ancient Egypt, Abrams,
tors, and the like, see Paperbound Books in Print IR.R. N.Y., 1969; reprint 1985
Bowker, annual). *Panofsky, Erwin, Tomb Sculpture: Its Aspects from Ancient
Egypt to Bernini, Abrams, N.Y., 1969
*Smith. William S.. and William K. Simpson, The Art and
Architecture of Ancient Egypt, rev. with additions. Pelican
INTRODUCTION History of Art. Penguin, Baltimore, 1981
*Arnheim. Rudolf, Art and Visual Perception, 2d ed.. Univ.
of California Press, Berkeley, 1974 ANCIENT NEAR EASTERN ART
Gombrich. Ernst H., Art and Illusion, 4th ed.. Pantheon
Books. N.V., 1972 Akurgal, Ekrem, Art of the Htttites, Abrams, N.Y., 1962
*Holt, Elizabeth G., A Documentary History of Art, 2d ed., 2 Amiet. Pierre, Art of the Ancient Xear East. Abrams, NY..
vols., Doubleday, Garden City, 1981
1980
*Frankfort. Henri, The Art and Architecture of the Ancient
*Panofsky, Erwin, Meaning in the Visual Arts, Doubleday,
Orient, 4th rev. impression with additional bibliogra-
Garden Citv. 1955: reprint. Overlook Press, Wood-
'
*Rosenberg, Harold, The Anxious Object: Art Today and Its McGraw-Hill, N.Y., 1965
Audience, 2d ed., Horizon, N.Y., 1966 Porada, Edith. The Art of Ancient Iran: Pre-Islamic Cultures,
*Tavlor. Joshua C, Learning to Look: A Handbook for the Crown. NY.. 1965
Visual Arts, 2d ed., Univ. of Chicago Press, 1981
Strommenger, Eva. and Max Hirmer, 5000 Years of the Art
of Mesopotamia, Abrams, N.Y.. 1964
AEGEAN ART
PART ONE:
*Graham. The Palaces of Crete, expanded ed..
THE ANCIENT WORLD J. W.. et al..
.
BOOKS FOR FURTHER READISG • 509
ROMANESQUE ART
ETRUSCAN ART Demus, Otto, Romanesque Mural Painting, Abrams, N.Y..
*Boethius, Axel, and B. Ward-Perkins, Etruscan and 1971
J.
Early Roman Architecture, 2d integrated ed., Pelican *Dubv, Georges, The Age of the Cathedrals: Art and Society,
History of Art. Penguin. Harmondsworth, 1978 980-1420. Inn. of Chicago Press, 1981
*Brendel, Otto J., Etruscan Art, Pelican History of Art, Focillon, Henri, The Art of the West m the Middle Ages, ed. by
Penguin, Harmondsworth, 1978 Jean Bony, 2 vols., Phaidon, N.Y., 1963
Pallottino, Massimo, Etruscan Painting, Skira, Geneva, *Grabar, Andre, Romanesque Painting from the Eleventh to the
1953 Thirteenth Century: Mural Painting, Skira, Geneva, 1958
Sprenger, Maja, Gilda Bartolini, Max Hirmer, and Albert Kubach, Hans E., Romanesque Architecture, Abrams, N.Y.,
Hirmer. The Etruscans: Their History, Art, and Architec- 1975
ture, Abrams, NY., 1983 Saalman, Howard, Mediei*U Cities, Braziller, N.Y., 1968
Schapiro, Mever, Romanesque Art, Braziller, N.Y., 1977
Stoddard, Whitnev S.. Art and Architecture in Medieval
ROMAN ART France, Harper and Row, NY., 1972
*Swarzenski, Hans, Monuments of Romanesque Art: The Art of
Andreae. Bernard, The Art of Rome, Abrams, N.Y., 1977
Church Treasures in Sorth-Western Europe, 2d ed., Univ.
*Brilliant, Richard, Roman Art from the Republic to Constan-
of Chicago Press, 1967
tly, Phaidon. N.Y.. 1974
Zarnecki, George, Romanesque Art, Universe Books, N.Y.,
*L'Orange, Hans P., Art Forms and Civic Life in the Late
1971
Roman Empire, Princeton Univ. Press, 1965
MacDonald, William, The Architecture of the Roman Empire,
Vol. 1, rev. ed., Yale Univ. Press, New Haven. 1982 GOTHIC ART
Strong, Donald E., Roman Art, Pelican History of Art, *Baxandall, Michael, Giotto and the Orators: Humanist Ob-
Penguin, Harmondsworth, 1976
and the Discovery of Pictorial
servers of Painting in Italy
Yermeule, Cornelius C, III, Greek Sculpture and Roman 1350-1450, Clarendon Press, Oxford,
Composition,
Taste, Univ. of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor, 1977
1971
*Ward-Perkins, John B.. Roman Imperial Architecture, Peli-
*Bonv, Jean, French Gothic Architecture of the 12th and 13th
can History of Art, Penguin, Harmondsworth, 1981 Centuries, Univ. of California Press, Berkeley, 1983
*Branner, Robert, and Shirlev P. Branner. Gothic Architec-
ture, Braziller. NY., 1961
EARLY CHRISTIAN AND BYZANTINE ART Deuchler, Florens, Gothic Art, Universe Books, N.Y., 1973
*Beckwith, John, Early Christian and Byzantine Art, 2d inte- Frankl, Paul, Gothic Architecture, Pelican History of Art,
grated ed.. Pelican History of Art. Penguin, Har- Penguin. Baltimore, 1962
mondsworth, 1979 Grodecki, Louis. Gothic Architecture, Abrams, N.Y., 1977
Demus, Otto, Byzantine Art and the West, New York Univ. Henderson, George, Gothic Style and Civilization, Penguin,
Press, 1970 Baltimore, 1967
Grabar, Andre, Early Christian Art, Braziller, N.Y., 1971 *Holt, Elizabeth G, ed., A Documentary History of Art, Vol. I,
*Krautheimer, Richard. Early Christian and Byzantine Archi- The Middle Ages and the Renaissance, 2d ed., Doubledav.
tecture, Pelican Historv of Art, Penguin, Baltimore, Garden City, 1957
1965 Krautheimer, Richard, and Trude Krautheimer-Hess.
*MacDonald, William L., Early Christian and Byzantine Ar- Lorenzo Ghiberti, 2d ed., Princeton Univ. Press, 1970
chitecture, Penguin, Baltimore, 1965 Male. Emile, The Gothic Image: Religious Art in France of the
*Mango, Cyril, Byzantine Architecture, Abrams, N.Y., 1976 Thirteenth Century, Harper, N.Y., 1958
*Runciman, Steven, Byzantine Style and Civilization, Pen- *Meiss, Millard, Painting in Florence and Siena After the Black
guin, Harmondsworth, 1975 Death, Princeton Univ. Press, 1951
*Weitzmann, Kurt, Late Antique and Early Christian Book Petersen, Karen, and J. J. Wilson, Women Artists: Recogni-
lUumtnatwn, Braziller, NY.. 1977 tion and Reappraisal from the Early Middle Ages to the Twen-
510 • BOOKS FOR FURTHER READIS'G
tieth Century. Harper and Row, NY., 1976 *Lee, Rensselaer W., Ut Pictura Poesis: The Humanistic The-
Pope-Hennessv, John, Italian Gothic Sculpture, 2d ed., ory of Painting, Norton, N.Y., 1967
Phaidon. NY. 1970 *Levey, Michael, Early Renaissance, Penguin, Harmonds-
Sauerlander, VVillibald, Gothic Sculpture m France, 1140- worth, 1967
1270, Abrams, N.Y., 1973 Murray, Peter, Renaissance Architecture, Abrams, N.Y.,
Stubblebinc, James H., Ducao di Buoninsegna and His 1976
School, 2 vols., Princeton Univ. Press, 1979 Panofsky, Erwin, Renaissance and Renascences in Western
Watson, Percy, Building the Medieval Cathedrals, Cam- Art, Humanities Press, N.Y., 1970
bridge Univ. Press, 1976 *Pope-Hennessv, John, Italian Renaissance Sculpture, Phai-
White, John, Art and Architecture in Italy, 1250-1400, Peli- don, N.Y., 1971
can History of Art, Penguin, Balumore, 1966 Seymour, Charles, Jr., Sculpture in Italy, 1400-1500, Peli-
can History of Art, Penguin, Baltimore, 1966
Vasari, Giorgio, The Lwes of the Painters, Sculptors and Ar-
chitects, tr. bv Gaston Du C. De Vere, 4 vols., Abrams,
Netherlandish Painting, Phaidon, N.Y., 1969 Hibbard, Howard, Michelangelo, new ed., Penguin, Har-
*Hind, Arthur M., History of Engraving and Etching, 3d ed., mondsworth, 1978
rev., Houghton Mifflin, Boston, 1923 Levey, Michael, High Renaissance, Style and Civilization,
*
,An Introduction to a History of Woodcut, 2 vols., Penguin, Balumore, 1975
Houghton Mifflin, Boston, 1935 Panofsky, Erwin, Studies in Iconology: Humanistic Theories
Ivins, William M., Jr., How Prints Look, Metropolitan Mu- in the Art of the Renaissance, Harper and Row, N.Y., 1972
seum of Art, N.Y., 1943 Pignatu, Terisio, Giorgione, Phaidon, N.Y., 1971
Meiss, Millard, French Painting in the Time ofJean de Berry: Pope-Hennessy, John, Italian High Renaissance and Ba-
The Limbourgs and Their Contemporaries, 2 vols., Bra- roque Sculpture, 3 vols., Phaidon, London, 1963
ziller, N.Y., 1974
, Raphael, New York Univ. Press, 1970
*Panofsky, Erwin, Early Netherlandish Painting, 2 vols., Har- Rosand, David, Painting in Cinquecento Venice: Titian, Ve-
vard Univ. Press, Cambridge, 1958 ronese, Tintoretto, Yale Univ. Press, New Haven and Lon-
*Antal, Frederick, Florentine Painting and Its Social Back- Italian Painting, Columbia Univ. Press, N.Y., 1957
ground, Boston Book and Art Shop, 1965 Harris, Ann S., and Linda Nochlin, Women Artists, 1550-
*Baxandall, Michael, Painting and Experience in Fifteenth- 1950, Knopf, N.Y., 1976
Century Italy, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1972 Holt, Elizabeth O, ed., A Documentary History of Art, Vol.
*Berenson, Bernard, Italian Painters of the Renaissance, rev. II, Michelangelo and the Mannerists: The Baroque and the
ed., Phaidon, London, 1967 Eighteenth Century, 2d ed., Doubledav, Garden City,
Blunt, Anthony, Artistic Theory in Italy, 1450-1600, Ox- 1957
ford Univ. Press, N.Y., 1956 Shearman, John K. C, Mannerism, Style and Civilization,
*Burckhardt, Jacob C, The Civilization of the Renaissance in Penguin, Balumore, 1967
Italy, 3d ed., rev., Phaidon, London, 1950 Smyth, Craig H., Mannerism and Maniera, Augustin,
Clark, Kenneth, Piero della Francesca, 2d ed., Phaidon, Locust Valley, 1963
London, 1969 Valcanover, Francesco, and Terisio Pignatti, Tintoretto,
*Gombrich, Ernst H., Norm and Form: Studies in the Art of the Abrams, N.Y., 1984
Renaissance, Phaidon, London, 1966
Hartt, Frederick, History of Italian Renaissance Art, 3d ed.,
Abrams, N.Y., 1987
THE RENAISSANCE IN THE NORTH
Heydenrcich, Ludwig, and Wolfgang Lotz, Architecture in Benesch, Otto, The Art of the Renaissance in Northern Eu-
Italy, 1400-1600, Pelican History of Art, Penguin, Har- rope, rev. ed., Phaidon, London, 1965
nmndsworth, 1974 Blunt, Anthony, Art and Architecture in France, 1500-1700,
H. W., The Sculpture ofDonatello, 2 vols., Princeton 4th ed., Pelican History of Art, Penguin, Harmonds-
Press, 1957 worth, 1981
BOOKS FOR FURTHER READING -511
Christensen, Carl C, Art and the Reformation in Germany, THE BAROQUE IN FRANCE
Ohio Univ. Press, Athens, 1979
Blunt, Anthonv, Nicholas Poussin, 2 vols., Pantheon Books,
Ganz, Paul, The Paintings of Hans Holbein the Younger, 1st
NY.. 1967
comp. ed., Phaidon, London, 1956
Friedlaender, Walter F., Nicholas Poussin, A New Approach,
Panofsky, Erwin, The Life and Art of AlbrechtDurer, 4th ed.,
Abrams, N.Y., 1966
Princeton Univ. Press, 1955
Nicolson, Benedict, and Christopher Wright, Georges de
Pevsner, Nikolaus, and Michael Meier, Griinewald,
La Tour, Phaidon, London, 1974
Abrams, N.Y., 1958
Stechow, Wolfgang, Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Abrams, N.Y.,
1969 ROCOCO
Waterhouse, Ellis K., Painting m 1530-1790, 4th
Britain,
Gaunt, William, The Great Century of British Painting:
ed.. Pelican History of Art, Penguin, Baltimore, 1978
Hogarth to Turner, Phaidon, London, 1971
Hitchcock, Henry-Russell, Rococo Architecture in Southern
THE BAROQUE IN ITALY AND SPAIN Germany, Phaidon, London, 1968
Brown, Jonathan, Francisco de Zurbardn, Abrams, N.Y., Laing, Alastair, et al., Francois Boucher, 1703-1770,
1974 Abrams, N.Y., 1986
Velazquez: Painter and Courtier, Yale Univ. Press,
, *Levev, Michael, Rococo to Revolution: Major Trends in Eigh-
New Haven, 1986 teenth Century Painting, Oxford Univ. Press, N.Y., 1977
*Freedberg, Sydney J., Circa 1600: A Revolution of Style in Paulson, Ronald, Hogarth: His Life, Art and Times, 2 vols.,
Italian Painting, Harvard Univ. Press, Cambridge, 1983 Yale Univ. Press, New Haven, 1971
*Friedlaender, Walter F., Caravaggio Studies, Princeton Posner, Donald, Antoine Watteau, Cornell Univ. Press,
Univ. Press, 1955 Ithaca, 1984
*Haskell, Francis, Patrons and Painters: A Study in the Rela- Rosenberg, Pierre, Fragonard, Abrams, N.Y., 1988
tions Between Italian Art and Society in the Age of the Ba- Wildenstein, Georges, and Daniel Wildenstein, Chardin,
roque, rev. and enl. ed., Yale Univ. Press, New Haven, rev. and enl. ed., New York Graphic Society, Green-
Daval, Jean-Luc, Photography: History of an Art, Skira and l)oi\.Robert, Photo-Secession: Stieglitz and the Fine Arts
Rizzoli, Geneva and N.Y.', 1982 Movement in Photography, Dover, N.Y., 1978
Eitner, Lorenz E., Gericault: His Life and Worts, Cornell Gibson, Michael, The Symbolists, Abrams, N.Y., 1988
Univ. Press, Ithaca. 1982 Haas, Robert Bartlett, Muybridge, Man in Motion, Univ. of
Gernsheim. Helmut, Julia Margaret Cameron: Her Life and California Press, Berkeley, 1976
Photographic Work, 2d ed., Aperture, Millerton, N.Y., Hamilton, George Heard, Painting and Sculpture m Europe
1975 1880-1940, 3d ed., Pelican History of Art, Penguin,
Honour, Hugh, Romanticism, Icon Ed., Harper and Row, Harmondsworth, 1981
NY.. 1979 Homer, William I., Seurat and the Science of Painting, MIT
Licht, Fred, Canova, Abbeville, N.Y., 1983 Press, Cambridge, 1964
* Rewald, John, Post-Impressionism: From Van Gogh to
, Goya: The Origins of the Modern Temper in Art, Icon
Ed., Harper and Row, N.Y., 1983 Gauguin, 2d ed.. The Museum of Modern Art, N.Y.,
Parry, Elwood C, III, The Art of Thomas and
Cole: Ambition 1962
Imagination, Univ. of Delaware Press, Newark, 1988 Roskill, Mark, Van Gogh, Gauguin, and the Impressionist
Powell, Earl A., Thomas Cole, Abrams, N.Y., 1990 Circle, New York Graphic Society, Greenwich, 1970
*Revnolds, Graham, Constable, the Natural Painter, Schapiro, Meyer, Paul Cezanne, 3d ed., Abrams, N.Y.,
Schocken, N.Y, 1969 1965
* Turner, World of Art, Thames and Hudson; distr. Van Gogh, rev. ed., Abrams, N.Y., 1982
,
,
by Norton, N.Y., 1985 Scharf, Aaron, Art and Photography, Penguin Books, Balti-
Rosenblum, Naomi, A World History of Photography, Ab- more, 1974
beville, NY., 1984 Schmutzler, Robert, Art Nouveau, Abrams, N.Y., 1962
Rosenblum, Robert, Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, new Sutter, Jean, ed., The Neo-lmpressionists, New York Graphic
ed., Abrams, N.Y, 1985 Society, Greenwich, 1970
Shapiro, Michael Edward, et al., George Caleb Bingham,
Abrams, N.Y., 1990 TWENTIETH-CENTURY PAINTING
*Welling, William, Photography in America: The Formative Arnason, H. H., History of Modern Art: Painting, Sculpture,
Years, 1839-1900, Crowell, N.Y., 1978 Architecture, Photography, 3d ed., Abrams, N.Y., 1986
Wilton, A., J. M. W. Turner: His Life and Art, Rizzoli, N.Y., Arp, Hans, Arp on Arp: Poems, Memories, Viking, N.Y.,
1979 1972
Baker, Kenneth, Minimalism, Abbeville, N.Y., 1989
REALISM AND IMPRESSIONISM Barr, Alfred H., Jr., ed., Cubism and Abstract Art, reprint of
Washington, D.C., 1982 Daix, Pierre, Cubists and Cubism, Rizzoli, N.Y., 1982
Hanson, Ann Coffin, Manet and the Modern Tradition, Yale De Francia, Peter, Fernand Leger, Yale Univ. Press, New
Univ. Press, New Haven, 1977 Haven, 1983
Herbert, Robert L., Impressionism: Art, Leisure and Parisian Doty, Robert, ed., Contemporary Black Artists in America,
Society, Yale Univ. Press, New Haven, 1988
Whitney Museum of American Art, N.Y., 1971
*Hilton, Timothy, The Pre-Raphaelites, Abrams, N.Y., 1971 Fine, Elsa H., The Afro-American Artist: A Search for Identity,
Holt, Rinehart and Winston, N.Y, 1973
Johns, Elizabeth, Thomas Eakins and the Heroism of Modern
*Francis, Richard, Jasper Johns, Abbeville, N.Y., 1984
Life, Princeton Univ. Press, 1984
Kelder, Diane, The French Impressionists and Their Century, *Frank, Elizabeth, Jackson Pollock, Abbeville, N.Y., 1983
Praeger, N.Y., 1970 *Goldwater, Robert, Primitivism in Modern Art, rev. ed..
*Nochlin, Linda, Realism, Style and Civilization, Penguin, Vintage, N.Y, 1967
Harmondsworth, 1972 *Gowing, Lawrence, Matisse, Oxford Univ. Press, N.Y.,
Rewald, John, The History of Impressionism, 4th rev. ed., 1979
New York Graphic Society, Greenwich, for The Mu- *Gray, Camilla, The Russian Experiment in Art, 1863-1922,
seum of Modern Art, N.Y., 1973 rev. ed., Abrams, N.Y., 1970
Reynolds, Graham, Victorian Painting, Macmillan, N.Y., Homer, William I., and Violet Organ, Robert Henri and
1966 His Circle, Cornell Univ. Press, Ithaca, 1969
Weisberg, Gabriel P., The Realist Tradition: French Painting Hunter, Sam, and John Jacobus, American Art of the Twen-
and Drawing, 1830-1900, Cleveland Museum of Art, tieth Century: Painting. Sculpture, Architecture, Abrams,
1981 N.Y, 1974
Wilmerding, John, American Art, Pelican History of Art, Jaffe\ H. L. C, De Sttjl, 191 7-193 1: Visions of Utopia,
b
BOOKS FOR FURTHER READISC -513
"Lippard. Lucv. Pop Art. Praeger. NY.. 1966 Johnson. Philip, Mies van der Rohe, 3d ed.. rev.. New York
Meisel. Louis K.. Photorealism, Abrams. NY.. 1989 Graphic Society, Boston, for The Museum of Modern
*Papadakis, Andreas, et al.. reconstruction: The Omnibus Art. NY., 1978
Volume. Rizzoli. NY.. 1989 *Kallir, Jane. Viennese Design and the Wiener Werkstdtte, Bra-
Pincus-W'itten. Robert. Postmimmalism into Maxrmalism: ziller. NY.. 1986
American Art. 1966-1986. UMI. Ann Arbor. 1987 Klotz. Heinrich. History of Postmodern Architecture, MIT
*Rose. Barbara. American Art Since 1900. rev. ed.. Praeger. Press, Cambridge, 1988
NY.. 1975 Pevsner. Nikolaus. The Sources of Modern Architecture and
Rosenberg, Harold, The De-Definition of Art: Action Art to Design, Oxford Univ. Press, NY., 1977
Pop to Earthworks. Horizon. NY.. 1972 *Scullv, Vincent, Modern Architecture, rev. ed., Braziller.
*Rosenblum, Robert, Cubism and Twentieth-Century Art. rev. NY.. 1974
ed., Abrams. N.Y., 1976
•Rosenthal. Nan. Robert Rauschenberg, Abbeville. N.Y..
TWENTIETH-CENTURY PHOTOGRAPHY
1984
Rubin. William. Dada and Surrealist Art, Abrams. N.Y.. Coke, Van Deren. The Painter and thePhotograph from De-
1968 lacroix to Warhol, rev. ed., Univ. of New Mexico Press,
Sandler, Irving. The Triumph of American Painting: A His- Albuquerque. 1972
tory of Abstract Expressionism. Praeger, N.Y.. 1970 Freund. Gisele. Photography and Society, Godine, Boston.
The .\'e-w York School: The Painters and Sculptors of the
. 1980
Fifties, Harper and Row. New York. 1979 Gidal, Tim N.. Modern Photojournalism: Origins and Evolu-
•Vergo. Peter. Art m Vienna, 1898-1918: Klimt, Kokoschka, tion 1910-33. Macmillan. NY.. 1973
Schiele and Their Contemporaries, Cornell Univ. Press, *Goldberg. Vicki. ed.. Photography in Print, Simon and
Ithaca, 1981 Schuster. NY.. 1981
Waldman. Diane. Mark Rothko, 1903-1970: A Retrospec- Green. Jonathan. American Photography: A Critical History.
tive, Abrams. NY.. 1978 1945 to the Present, Abrams. NY.. 1984
Haus. Andreas. Moholy-Sagy: Photographs and Photograms,
Pantheon. NY.. 1980
TWENTIETH-CENTURY SCULPTURE Hurlev. F. Jack. Portrait of a Decade: Roy Striker and the
*Burnham, Jack. Beyond Modern Sculpture. Braziller. NY.. Development of Documentary Photography in the Thirties.
1968 Louisiana State Univ. Press, Baton Rouge. 1972
* Marzona. Egidio. and Roswitha Fricke. Bauhaus Photogra-
, Great Western Saltworks: Essays on the Meaning of
Post-Formalist Art. Braziller. NY.. 1974 phy. MIT Press. Cambridge. 1987
Geist. Sidnev. Brancusi: The Sculpture and Drawings, Szarkowski, John, Mirrors and Windows: American Photog-
Abrams. NY.. 1975 raphy Since I960, The Museum of Modern Art. N.Y..
*Goldberg, RoseLee. Performance Art from Futurism to the 1978
Present, rev. and enl. ed., Abrams. NY.. 1988 . and Maria Morns Hambourg, The Work of Atget, 4
Hammacher. A. ML, Modern Sculpture: Tradition and Inno- vols.. The Museum of Modern Art. NY.. 1981
vation. Abrams. NY.. 1988
Kxauss. Rosalind E.. Terminal Ironworks: The Sculpture of
David Smith. MIT Press. Cambridge. 1971
Marcus. Stanlev E.. David Smith: The Sculptor and His Work,
Cornell Univ. Press. Ithaca. 1983
Melville. Robert. Henry Moore: Sculpture and Drawings.
1929-69, Abrams. NY.. 1970
Read. Herbert. Henri Moore, Thames and Hudson, Lon-
don. 1965
with Barbara Hepworth. Barbara Hepworth: Cart-
.
TWENTIETH-CENTURY ARCHITECTURE
*Baver. Herbert. Bauhaus 1919-1928. New York Graphic
Greenwich, for The Museum of Modern Art.
Societv.
NY.. 1976
*Dal Co. Francesco, Figures of Architecture and Thought: Ger-
man Architectural Culture, 1890-1920, Rizzoli. NY..
1986
*Drexler. Arthur. Ludwis Mies van der Rohe, Braziller. N.Y..
1960
*
Transformations in Modern Architecture. New York
.
Aachen, Germany, 127, 134, 135, 136; Ancient Near Eastern art, 52-6 1 com- ; Arrangement in Black and Gray: The Art-
Palace Chapel of Charlemagne (Odo pared to: Greek, 68, 78, 79; My- ist's Mother (Whistler), 387; 379
of Metz), 134; 121 cenaean, 66, 79; Roman, 103; art academies, 321
Aalto, Alvar, 478-79; Villa Mairea, Romanesque, 152 art brut, 442
Noormarkku, Finland, 479; 496 Ancient of Days (Blake), 354, 364; 349 Artemis, Temple of. See Ephesus
Abbatini, Guidebaldo: fresco, Cornaro Andachtsbild. See Pieta Arte Povera, 453
Chapel, Rome, 297-98; 280 Andrews, Robert: portrait of (Gains- Artist and His Model (De Andrea). 14,
Abstract Expressionism, 19, 438-41, borough), 330-31; 318 471; 4
444-47, 493 Angel Concert for the Madonna and Child Artist in the Character of Design Listening
Abstraction, 234, 415, 419, 420-26, (Grunewald), 274, 278; 258 to the Inspiration of Poetry (Kauff-
430-32, 446, 457, 484, 492-93 Animal Head, from Oseberg Ship- mann), 349-50; 330
Abu Temple statues. See Tell Asmar Burial, 131; 118 artists:vs. craftspeople, 11-13, 217;
Acropolis, Athens, 74-76, 96, 351; animal style, 60, 65, 130-31 early roles, 10, 34-35, 40; Renais-
Parthenon (Ictinus and Callicrates), Annunciation (Broederlam), 190-93, sance view of, 17, 217-18, 241; as
74-76, 85, 127; 63; pediment sculp- 201,204; 183 social critics, 329-30
ture from, 83-84, 238; 72; Propylaea Annunciation (Grunewald), 274; 258 Art Nouveau, 408-10, 483
(Mnesicles), 76; 64; Temple of Annunciation (Master of Flemalle), Ash Can school, 428-29, 437, 486-87
Athena Nike, 76, 77; 64 201-4,231; 186 Ashurnasirpal II, king of Assyria, 57;
Action painting, 438-41 442, 444,, 472 Annunciation, portal sculpture, Reims Palace of, Nimrud, relief, Ashurnasir-
Adam, Robert, 349, 35 1-52, 37 1 ; front Cathedral, 173; 766 pal II Killing Lions, 57, 81, 103; 46
drawing room, Home House, Lon- Annunciation (Ecce Ancilla Domini) As in the Middle Ages, So in the Third Reich
don, 351-52, 371; 334 (Rossetti),386,412; 377 (Heartfield), 492, 493; 572
Adam and Eve Reproached by the Lord, Anthemius of Tralles: Hagia Sophia, assemblages, 461, 467-71
from Doors of Bishop Bernward, Istanbul, 119-20, 127,228; 7 13, 1 14 Assumption of the Virgin (Correggio),
Hildesheim Cathedral, 140-42, 150, Antwerp, Belgium, 302; Cathedral, al- 268,291;257
153; 129 tarpiece (Rubens), 303-4, 310, 349; Assyria, 57, 59, 60; art, 57, 79
Adams, Ansel, 488; Moonrise, Her- 286 Atget, Eugene, 484-85; Pool, Versailles,
nandez, New Mexico, 488; 507 Anuszkiewicz, Richard, 448; Entrance 484-85; 502
Adoration of the Magi (Gentile da to Green, 448; 456 Athena and Alcyoneus, from Altar of
Fabriano), 193, 210, 230; 185 Aphaia, Temple of. See Aegina Zeus, Pergamum, 87-88, 249, 270,
Aegean art, 62-66 Apollo, from Veii, 91; 79 278, 296; 77
Aegina, Greece: Temple of Aphaia, Apostle, from St.-Sernin, Toulouse, Athena Nike, Temple of. See Acropolis
pediment sculpture, 81, 83, 86, 407; 150, 151; 140 Athens, Greece, 68, 74-76, 85, 127,
68 Apparition (Dance of Salome) (Moreau), 217. See also Acropolis
African American artists, 388-90, 401, 434; 397 atmospheric perspective, 204-5, 231
446-47, 470, 490 apprenticeship system, 321 Atreus, Treasury of, Mycenae, 66; 53
African masks, 39, 422, 458, 470; 24 appropriation, 453 Attalus 1, king of Pergamum, 86, 87
Agony in the Garden (El Greco), 21; 77 Arc de Triomphe, Paris: sculpture for At the Moulin Rouge (Toulouse-
Akhenaten (Amenhotep IV), king of (Rude), 370; 355 Lautrec), 404; 400
Egypt, 49-50; portrait of, 50, 79; 37 Archaic smile, 79, 82, 245 Atttrement of the Bride (Ernst), 433-34,
Albers, Josef, 448 Archaic style, 69, 74, 76, 78-8 1 83, 85,
, 439; 438
Alberti, Leone Battista, 226, 227-28, 90-91, 143,407 Au Bord de I'eau, Bennecourt (River)
240, 246, 270-71; S. Andrea, Man- Archangel Michael, from Early Chris- (Monet), 382, 384, 386, 388, 390,
tua, 227, 251. 272; 272 tian diptych, 16, 150, 155; 709
1 399; 370
Alexander the Great, king of Mac- architectural proportions, 226-27 Audience Hall of Darius. S^Persepolis
edonia, 60, 72, 85, 87, 100, 103, 143 architectural sculpture: Gothic, 163, Augustine, St., 236, 419
Alkestis Leaving Hades, from Temple of 165, 170-73; Greek, 79-81, 83-84, Augustus, Roman emperor, 100-101
Artemis, Ephesus, 22-23; 72 87-88; Romanesque, 150-52; Ro- Augustus of Primaporta, 100-101, 225;
all'antica, 197, 223, 224 mantic, 370 92
Altamira, Spain: cave art, 33, 34; 18 architecture: Classical orders, 72-78, Aurignacians, 32
Altar of Zeus. See Pergamum 93, 96-97, 226, 352; 67; industrial, Aurora (Guercino), 291; 275
Altdorfer, Albrecht, 278; Battle oflssus, 393-94; megalithic, 36-37; and Aurora (Reni), 291, 318; 274
278; 263 space, 24; and urban planning, 480- Austria: Rococo architecture, 332-33
Amenhotep III, king of Egypt, colon- 81 Autumnal Rhythm: Number 30, 1950
nade and court of. See Luxor Arch of Titus, Rome, 103-4; relief (Pollock), 388, 439-41; 446
Amenhotep IV. See Akhenaten from, 72, 103-4, 221, 222, 288; 96 Autun, France: Cathedral, 146, 147;
American Revolution, 341, 344 Arena Chapel, Padua: frescoes 134; tvmpanum sculpture from, 152,
Americans (Frank), 493-94 (Giotto), 182-84; 776, 777 162; 742
American Scene painting, 437 Arezzo, Italy, 223; S. Francesco, choir Avignon, France, 184
Amorgd.-. Cvclades: Harpist (Orpheus), frescoes (Piero della Francesca), 233, Avignon Pieta (Quarton), 212; 796
10; 7; idol, 62-63; 50 397; 277
amphorae, 68, 69; 56, 57 Armory Show (1913), New York, 419,
Amun-Mui-Khonsu, Temple of. See 428 Babel, Tower of, 54, 57, 156; 147
Luxor Arnolfo di Cambio: Florence Cathe- Babylon, Iraq, 57, 59, 60; Ishtar Gate,
Analytic (Fac Cubism, 422-23, 424,
1
1 1 dral (Sta. Maria del Fiore), 169-70; 59; 47
427.431,460, 475 762 Babylonian art, 56-59, 79, 127
K
; 1 . ;
ISDEX -515
lofConstantine. Rome, 98. 102. Blinding of Polyphemus, on amphora ment. 153: 144
120 - from Eleusis. 88 Building of the Tower of Babel, from St.-
basilicas 110-12. 113. 149
98 Blinding of Samson (Rembrandt). 309— Savin-sur-Gartempe. 156: 147
Bath (Cassatt). 384 975 10. : Bulls Head (Picasso). 10-1 1. 27. 467; 2
Batman (Williams). 446 Blind Leading the B/m4 (Bruegel 282- Burgundv. France. 146. 152. 190
Battle of Hastings, detail of Bayeux Tapes- 83. 315: 266 Bunal of Count Orgaz (El Greco). 264-
try. 156; 146 Blowing Bubbles (Chardin). 21: 10 65. 298. 404: 248
Battle oflssus (Altdorfer). 273: 263 Blue VVii( Louis 44- >. Burlington. Lord. 350. 352; Chiswick
BaOU oflssus (Battle of Alexander and the Boccioni. Umberto. 424. 459-60: Dy- House, near London, 350; 332
Persians). Pompeian mosaic. 72. 103. namism of a Cyelat. 424. 425; Unique Bvzantine art. 108-9. 117-23: com-
104. 112. 156. 278: 59 Forms of Continuity m
Space. 459—60; pared to: Earlv Christian, 118, 122;
Battle of the Gods and Giants,
from Trea- 478 Earlv Medieval. 134. 139. 142:
sury of the Siphnians. Delphi. SO— 3 I Boffrand. Germain: Hotel de Soubise, Gothic. 172-73. 180. 181; Roman-
n .- Pans, 332. 333; Salon de la Princesse esque. 143. 144. 150, 155
Battle of the Greeks and Amazons in. 332. 333: 321 Bvzantine Empire. 108. 109. 127. 138
(Scopas?-). 85; 73 Bohemian Master: Death of the Virgin, Bvzantium. 103, 127. See also Con-
Baudelaire. Charles. 377. 379. 388. 190. : stantinople: Istanbul
402 Bologna, Giovanni. 269-70, Rape of the
Bauhaus. Dessau. 409. 443. 477. 490; Sabine Woman. 2f
Shop Block (Gropiusi. 4 " 1 Bonheur. Rosa. 363; Plowing m the Caen. France: St.-Etienne. 146 —17.
Bayewt Tapestry. 156: detail. 156: 146 Xivernais, 363 162: 135
Be'ardslev. Aubrev. 401. 408: Salome. books. 113-15. 133. 133. 213-15. 5*- Caesar. Julius. 96. 100. 101. 104
40 also illuminated manuscripts Calder. Alexander. 462. 467. 472; Lob-
Beckmann. Max. 436: Departure. 436; Borghese. Pauline: statue of iCa ster Trap and Fish Tail. 462. 4". 475
369-" Callicrates: Parthenon. Athens. 74—76.
Becton. Mrs. George Wilson: portrait Borromini. Francesco. 298-99. 332. 85. i;"
of (Van Der Zee )." 490: 509 333: S. Carlo alle Quattro Fontane. Calling of St. Matthew (Caravaggio). 25.
Bellmi. Giovanni. 239. 254: Si. Francis Rome. 299. 333 28: 2 : . -6. 303. 310. 317: 271
" :
-/ Bottle.Packet of Tobacco (Le Coumer). Head of Goliath. 20. 300: 9
Beuvs. Joseph, 473-74; Coycu 174 423. 430. 431; 424 Carolingian art. 134—38. 143. 150:
.
516 • IXDEX
compared to Romanesque. 144. 146. Christ Entering Jerusalem (Giotto), 182- Coplev, John Singleton. 349, 363; Wat-
153-55 84; 177 son and the Shark. 349: 329
Carolingian dvnasn. 127, 134, 158 Christianity 108, 109. 110, 112, 113. Cordav, Charlotte, 346
Carpeaux. Jean-Baptiste, 370. 391; 116. 118, 121, 127, 131. 143. 197, Corinthian order. 72. 96; 61
Dance. 370. 372, 377. 391; 356 234-35. 289. See also Roman Catholic Cornaro Chapel, Rome (Bernini),
Carracci. Annibale, 290-91, 293. 303. Church 296-98, 322; 280; sculpture for.
318. 319: fresco. Palazzo Farnese, Christ in the House of Levi (Veronese). 296-98; 279; fresco for (Abbatini),
Rome, 290-91, 303. 318; 273 266-67; 250 297, 298; 280
Cartier-Bresson, Henri, 485: Mexico, Christ Preaching ( Rembrandt), 310; 297 Corot, Camille, 361-62. 388, 396; Pa-
1934.485: 503 Christ Washingthe Feet of Peter, from Gos- pigno, 361, 382.388; 345
Casa Mila. Barcelona (Gaudi), 409; 408 pel Book of Otto III. 142. 146; 130 Corps de dames series (Dubuffet). 442;
Casino Rospigliosi. Rome: fresco churches, 110-12. 117-20, 135. 140, 449
(Reni). 291.318; 274 143, 144-50, 160-62, 168-69,225- Correggio. 268. 290. 29 1 Assumption of
;
Cassati. Marv. 384: Bath. 384; 375 28. 245. 271-72. 295, 299, 333 the Virgin, 268, 291; 2 5 1 Jupiter and
;
Casta gno. Andrea del. 224. 234: David. Church of the Eremitani, Padua: fres- lo, 268,297, 319; 252
224,234; 218 coes (Mantegna), 237-39; 222 Cortona, Pietro da. 29 1 293. 298. 335;
.
Catacomb of SS. Pietro e Marcellino, Cinema (Segal), 471; 485 Glorification of the Reign of Urban VIII,
Rome: painted ceiling, 109-10; 102 Cistercians, 166, 167, 168 291,335:276
cathedrals. Gothic, 127, 160-68. 169- City (Leger). 431. 478, 481; 434 Counter Reformation, 196. 260, 261.
70: 150-60. 162. See also Gothic stvle Civil War. 376, 388 263. 265, 272, 286, 289, 296-97. 303
cave art, 32-35 Classical stvle, classicism, 143; Ba- Courbet, Gustave. 377-79, 382, 388,
Celebration (Krasner). 441; 447 roque, 291; Bvzantine, 122; Car- 398. 410; Stone Breakers. 377, 382:
Cellini, Benvenuto. 268-69, 285; Salt- olingian. 136: Earlv Christian, 116; 365; Studio of a Painter. 377-79, 388;
cellar of Francis I. 268-69: 253 French Baroque. 316. 317. 319-20, 366
Celtic-Germanic stvle, 130-31. 133, 321-22; Gothic, 172-73, 176, 177; Courrier (S'ewspaper. Bottle, Packet of To-
134, 138. 155 Greek. 71-78. 81-83, 85, 86, 143; bacco) (Braque), 423. 430, 431; 424
Centre Georges Pompidou. Paris High Renaissance, 241. 254: Roman. Coyote (Beuys), 473-74: 489
(Piano and Rogers), 481; 499 96-97, 103 Covsevox, Antoine. 324. 350: Charles
Cezanne, Paul. 395-96, 398, 399. 407, Claude Lorraine, 319, 361, 362, 364, Lebrun, 324, 350; 310; relief. Salon
416. 418. 419. 421. 422. 427. 438; 396; Pastoral Landscape. 319: 305 de la Guerre. Versailles. 324; 309
Mont Sainte-Vtctoire Seen from Bibemus Clement VII, pope, 250 Cranach, Lucas, the Elder, 277-78:
Quarry, 396, 422; 391: Still Life with Clemente. Francesco. 453-54: un- Judgment of Pans, 278; 262
Apples. 395-96.418:390 titled self-portrait. 454; 463 Creation of Adam (Michelangelo), 249—
Chagall. Marc. 427. 461: / and the Vil- Colbert, Jean-Baptiste, 320-21. 324, 50, 288,303,413; 233
427: 429
lage, 332 Crete, 62. See also Minoan art
Chamberlain, John. 468: Essex, 461, collage. 423, 431, 432-33. 452, 460. Crossing of the Red Sea Nicholas of Ver-
(
fessions for Myself, 470; 484 concrete, 94. 97 485, 492, 493
Chefren. Pyramid of, Giza, 46-47; 33 Confessions for Myself (Chase-Riboud), Daguerre, Louis-Jacques-Mande\ 373
Cheops. Pvramid of. Giza. 46-47; 33 470; 484 daguerreotvpe. 373
'
-o, 20 Constable, John, 359, 361-62, 364- Dance (Carpeaux 370. 372.377,391;
I.
Chicago, 408; Lake Shore Drive Apart- 65; Haywam, 360. 365; 350 356
ment Houses Mies van der Rohe), Constantine the Great, Roman em- Dance of Salome (Apparition) (Moreau),
479: 497; Robie House (Wright). 475 peror, 102. 108. 109, 110, 117, 118, 401,434; 397
491. 492 120. 134; Basilica of, Rome, 98, 102, Daphne, Greece: Monasterv Church,
Chirico. Giorgio de. 427. 454. 495; 120, 226, 246: 89, 90; portrait of, mosaic from. 122. 139. 173; 115
and Melancholy of a Street. 427:
. 102; 95 Darius I. kingof Persia. 60. 6 1,72, 103:
428 Constantinople, 108, 110. 117, 119, Audience Hall of. 61. 64. 79; 49
Chiswick House, near London (Bur- 127. 196 Dark Ages, 130. 130-34. 138. 143. 197
lington ind Kent). 350. 352: 332 constructions, 467-70 Daumier. Honore. 361. 399. 418;
Chopin, -6denc: portrait of (De-
.
Constructivism. 426. 460-61, 462. Third-Class Carnage. 361, 399. 418;
lacroix 143 465.483 344
Christ Crt>;. ! horns (Tiliai Contarelli Chapel, Rome: painting David, Jacques-Louis. 344. 345-47.
261; 242 (Caravaggio), 288-89, 296, 303, 310, 354. 355, 356, 357, 358. 359; Death of
Christ Entering Irrusalem (Duccn 317; 271 Marat. 346-47. 374. 376; 327; Death
182-84. IX- contrapposto, 82-83. 173.219.221.231 of Socrates, 345-46. 347. 349; 326
7 ;
;
ISDEX -517
David (Bernini), 296, 324, 370; 278 St. George Tabernacle, 219, 228, 248; 96; Sumerian, 55, 56; 20th-century.
David (Castagno), 224, 234; 218 201 483
David (Donatello), 220-21, 248, 296, Dorians, 67, 69 Einstein, Albert. 424, 426
203 Doric order, 72-76, 78, 93, 96, 352; Eleanora of Toledo and Her Son Giox'anni
David (Michelangelo). 247-49, 251. 61 de Medici (Bronzino), 261, 281, 306;
296; 231 Dragons (Pfaff). 472; 487 246
David with the Head of Goliath (Cara- drawing: vs. color, 325; and line, 17 elegant stvle, Gothic, 173, 176
vaggio), 20, 300; 9 Dream (Rousseau), 404-6. 426; 403 Eleusis, Greece: amphora, 68, 69: 56
Day (Michelangelo), 250-51, 269; 235 Dreams and Xightmares. See Leonard El Greco (Domenikos Theotoco-
De Andrea, John, 471; Artist and His drv point. 310-11 poulos), 257. 261-65, 268, 273, 289,
Model. 14, 471; 4 Dubuffet. Jean, 441-42; Le Metafsyx. 300. 404; Agony in the Garden, 21; IT,
Death of Marat (David). 346-47, 374. from Corps de dames series. 442; 449 Burial of Count Orgaz, 264-65, 298,
376; 327 Duccio, 181. 184. 186, 187; Maestd Al- 404: 248
Death of Socrates (David), 345-46, 347, tarpiece, 181; Christ Entering Jerusalem Eliot, T. S., 252
349; 326 from. 181. 182-84. 187; 175 Emperor Justinian and His Attendants, S.
Death of the Virgin (Bohemian Master), Duchamp. Marcel. 427-28. 431. 433, Vitale. Ravenna. 118, 122, 397; 112
190; 182 442, 449, 460. 461, 468, 472, 473. Empress of India (Stella), 445-46; 453
Death of the Virgin. Strasbourg Cathe- 484, 492; Bride, 403, 427-28. 433; England (Britain). 131. 133, 138, 143,
dral.172-73, 174, 184. 190,208; 165 430: In Advance of the Broken Arm, 461. 196; art: Gothic, 165, 166-67, 173;
decalcomania, 433—34 473; 473 Gothic 371-72, 386-87;
revival,
deconstruction. 453. 497 Duchamp-Villon, Ravmond. 460; Neoclassical. 347-52: 19th-
344.
Deconstructivist architecture, 483 Great Horse, 460, 468; 471 century photography, 410, 411-13;
Degas, Edgar. 382-83, 384, 387, 392. Duchesse de Polignac (Vigee-Lebrun). Post-Impressionist, 401; Rococo,
396, 398, 404; Glass of Absinthe. 382- 328-29: 316 329-32, 344; Romanesque, 147-48;
83. 404; 372. Little Fourteen-Year-Old Durer, Albrecht, 273, 274-77, 278, Romantic, 344. 363-67, 371-72;
Dancer, 392; 386: Tub, 383; 373 282, 303, 311; Four Apostles, 277:261 20th-century. 457-58. 495
Dejeuner sur I'herbe [Luncheon on the Knight, Death, and Dei ti, 276-77; 260; English Channel (Anglo-Norman) re-
Grass) (Manet). 379-80. 382, 395; Self- Portrait, 276, 281. 399: 259 gion, Romanesque art, 155-56, 157,
367 Durham. England: Cathedral, 147 — 159
De Kooning. VVillem. 441; Woman //, 48, 160-61; 136 English Late Gothic style, 167
441. 442: 448 Dvck, Anthonv van, 305-6. 331; Por- engravings, 215-16, 311
Delacroix, Eugene, 356, 359-61. 377. trait of Charles I Hunting, 305-6, 33 1 Enlightenment, 325, 344, 353, 355,
395, 401, 451; Frederic Chopin, 360- 289 361, 369,400
61; 343. Massacre at Chios, 359-60. DvingGati/.Pergamum. 86-87, 103; 76 Entrance to Green (Anuszkiewicz), 448;
376. 382; 342 Dying Xiobtd, Greek, 83; 71 456
Delivery
' of
the Keys ( Perugino), 240. 249; Dying Warrior, from Temple of Aphaia, Environmental Sculpture, 463-64,
224 Aegina, 81,83, 86,407; 68 466-67
Delos, Greece: Portrait Head, 86, 100, Dynamism of a Cyclist (Boccioni), 424; environments, 469, 470-72
102; 75 '425 Ephesus, Greece, 76; Temple of Ar-
Delphi, Greece: frieze sculpture, Siph- temis, column drum sculpture, 22-
nian Treasury, 80-8 1 85, 87, 22 1 67
, ; 23; 12
Demoiselles dAvignon (Picasso), 407, Eakins, Thomas, 388, 390, 428, 429; Episcopal Palace. See Wiirzburg
422-23, 430; 422 William Rush Carving His Allegorical Equestrian Monument of Gattamelata
Demuth, Charles, 43 1 437, 494; / Saw
, Figure of the Schuylkill River, 388, 390. (Donatello), 221; 204
the Figure 5 in Gold, 431, 494; 435 428; 382 Equestrian Statue of Marcus Aurelius, Ro-
Denis. Maurice. 401, 449 Earlv Christian art, 108, 109-16. 1 17; man, 101,221; 93
Departure (Beckmann), 436; 442 compared to: Bvzantine, 117, 122, Equivalent (Stieglitz), 487-88; 505
Depression. Great, 437, 489, 491 123; Earlv Medieval, 130, 142; Earlv Erasmus of Rotterdam, 277, 281 por- ;
Descartes, Rene\ 286, 287 Renaissance, 226; Gothic, 169; Ro- trait of (Holbein), 280; 264
Descent from the Cross (Rosso Fioren- manesque. 143, 144, 149 Eremitani. See Church of the
tino), 260, 261; 243 Earlv English stvle, 167 Eremitani
Descent from the Cross Van der VVevden
( ). Earlv Gothic style, 167, 171, 172, 173 Ernst, Max. 432-34, 439, 492; Attire-
208,213, 303, 349; 191 Earlv Medieval art, 130-42. See also ment of the Bride, 433-34, 439; 438; 1
Dessau, Germanv: Bauhaus (Gropius), Carolingian art: Ottonian art Copper Plate 1 Zinc Plate 1 Rubber Cloth
477: Shop Block at, 477, 481; 494 Earlv Modernist architecture. 475-77 2 Calipers 1 Drainpipe Telescope 1 Pip-
Diderot, Denis, 345 Earlv Renaissance art, 158, 178, 200. ing Man, 403, 433, 492; 437
Dijon, France: Chartreuse de Champ- 2 1 ^-40. 273, 42 1 compared to High
: Eskimo mask, 39; 26
mol, sculpture (Sluter), 175, 208, Renaissance, 241, 242. 243. 245 Essex (Chamberlain), 461, 468; 482
219; 169 Early Sunday Morning (Hopperi. 437; etching, 310-11
Diocletian, Baths of, Rome, 98 444 ethnographic art, 37-40, 422
Dipylon Vase, from Athens, 68; 55 Earth Art. 466-67 Etruscan art, 90-93, 94, 100
Discourses (Reynolds). 332 Eastman, George, 484 Europe, A Prophesy (Blake): frontis-
Discovery and Proving of the True Cross Ebbo, archbishop of Reims, Gospel Book piece, 354, 364; 349
(Piero'della Francesca), 233, 397; 21 of, 136-38, 152, 153, 155; 124 Expressionism, 398, 407, 415, 416-19,
Discovery of Honey (Piero di Cosimo). Ecce Ancilla Domini (Annunciation) 435-36, 437, 439, 441-42, 446, 454.
236-37; 220 (Rossetti). 386, 412; 577 456, 457, 484. See also Abstract
disguised svmbolism, 201-2, 208, 313 Ecole des Beaux- Arts, 401 Expressionism
divine kingship concept. 42. 44. 48, 49, Ecstasy of St. Theresa (Bernini), 296-98; Evck. Hubert van, 204-5, 212, 231.
87, 100. 108. 119. 369 279" 273. See also Evck, Jan van
Divisionism, 397, 398 Eddv, Don, 451-52; New Shoes for H., Eyck, Jan van, 204-8, 210, 212, 231,
documentary photographv, 410-11, 451-52,497; 460, 461 273, 303, 315; Crucifixion and Last
491 Edgar A. Pbe (Redon), 402-3; 399 Judgment (with or bv Hubert van
domes, 88: of Heaven, 97, 110, 228 Egypt. 29, 52, 57, 60, 63, 85, 1 13, 127, Evck?), 204-5, 207; 187; Man in a Red
Donatello, 219-21, 222, 224, 225. 227, 131; art: 22, 41-50, 93, 107; com- Turban (Self-Portrait}), 205-8, 237,
230, 231. 237, 238, 247, 248; David, pared to: Aegean, 65, 66; Earlv 260, 276, 310; 188; Wedding Portrait,
220-21, 248, 296; 203; Equestrian Christian, 112; Etruscan, 91, 93; 208, 260; 189, 190
Monument of Gattamelata, 221; 204; Greek, 68, 74, 77. 78, 79, 80; Persian, Eye Like a Stra nge Balloon Mo unts Towa rd
Prophet (Zutcone), 219-20, 231; 202; 61: Post-Impressionist. 397; Roman. Infinity (Redon), 402-3; 399
;, ;
518 • I\DEX
Face of Our Time (Sander), 490-9 1 ; por- 158-66. 167, 170-73, 174; Impres- Gentileschi, Artemesia, 290; Judith and
trait from. 491: 570 sionist,379-86; "Late Gothic," 212; Her Maidservant with the Head of
Family of Charles IV (Gova). 355-56, Mannerist, 269; Neoclassical, 344- Holofernes, 290; 272
379; 336 47, 350, 358; Post-Impressionist, Geometric style, Greek, 68, 69
Fantasy. 415, 426-28, 432-35, 457, 395-400, 402-6, 407; Realist, 377- Georgian style, 352
484, 492-93, 495 79; Renaissance. 284-85; Rococo, Ge>icault, Theodore, 357, 359, 396;
Farnese Gallery, Rome: fresco (Car- 325-29, 332; Romanesque, 144, Raft of the "Medusa," 357, 359, 365,
racci), 290-91, 303. 318; 273 145-47, 150-52, 156; Romantic, 376; 339
Fauves, Fauvism, 407, 416-19, 421, 356-63; 20th-century: architecture, Germany, 131, 138-39; art: Gothic,
422,423,431,457 478, 481-83; painting, 416-18. 165, 167-68, 173-75, 371; Post-
Feast of St. Nicholas (Steen), 315, 330, 421-23, 427-28, 429-30, 431-34, Impressionist, 406-8, 409-10; Re-
344; 300 44 1 -42, 447-48; photography. 484- naissance, 273-81; Rococo, 332-35;
Feeding theOryxes, from Tomb of 85,492, 493; sculpture, 457. 458-59, Romanesque, 153; Romantic, 367;
Khnum-hotep, Beni Hasan, 48; 35 460,461-62 20th-century, 418-19, 432, 435-36,
Female Semi-Nude in Motion (Muy- Francis I, king of France, 269, 280-8 1 437, 454, 477, 481-83, 490-91, 492
bridge), 414; 415 284, 285, 286; Saltcellar of (Cellini), Germany, A Winter's Tale (Grosz), 436,
fetes galantes, 326 268-69; 253 491; 441
Ficino, Marsilio, 235, 241, 247 Franciscans, 168, 169 Gero Crucifix, Cologne Cathedral, 139,
Fifer (Manet), 382, 390; 369 Francis of Assisi, St., 168 142, 150; 126
Fischer von Erlach, Johann, 333; St. Frank, Robert, 493-94; Santa Fe, New Gesu, II. See II Gesu
Charles Borromaeus, Vienna, 333; Mexico, 494; 515 Ghiberti, Lorenzo, 177-78, 193, 221-
322 Frederic Chopin (Delacroix), 360-61; 22, 224, 225; Florence Baptistery
Flack, Audrey, 452-53; Queen, 452- 343 bronze doors: 1st pair, 177,218,220,
53, 456; 462 Frederick II, Holv Roman emperor, 22 1 panel
; for, Sacrifice of Isaac, 177-
Flamboyant Gothic style, 167 176 78, 193, 218, 221; 772; 2nd pair,
Flanders, 273, 302; art: Baroque, 303- Frederick the Wise, elector of Saxonv, "Gates of Paradise," Story of Jacob and
6; "Late Gothic," 158, 200, 201-9, 277 Esau from, 221, 230; 205
212, 217, 237; Renaissance, 200 French Academy, 320-21, 325-26, Ghirlandaio, Domenico, 237; Old Man
Fl^malle. See Master of Flemalle 401 and His Grandson, 237; 221; frescoes,
Flight into Egypt (Broederlam), 1 90-93, French Revolution, 1 6 1 34 1 344, 346,
, , Sistine Chapel. Rome, 240
201,204; 183 355, 358 Giorgione, 241, 254, 255, 265, 326,
Florence. Italy. 158, 187, 200, 208, Friedrich, Caspar David, 367, 456; 396; Tempest, 254, 255, 256, 257. 283.
217, 218, 220, 222, 223, 225, 244, Polar Sea, 367; 352 326; 239
258-61; Baptistery (S. Giovanni), frottage, 433 Giotto, 182-184, 186, 187, 200, 212,
149-50, 226; 139, bronze doors for Fur Traders Descending the Missouri 217, 230, 231, 233, 247, 250, 382,
(Ghiberti): 1st pair, 177, 218, 220, (Bingham), 368; 353 453; frescoes, Arena Chapel, Padua,
221; competition for, 177,225; panel Fuseli (Fussli), John Henry, 344, 349, 182; 176; Christ Entering Jerusalem
for, 177-78, 193, 218, 221; 172; 2nd 363-64, 404, 427; Nightmare, 363- from, 182-84; 177; Florence Cam-
pair, 221, 230; 205; Campanile 64, 404, 427, 495; 348 panile, 170
(Giotto; A. Pisano; Talenti), 170; Futurism, 397, 414, 419, 423-24, 425, Girl at Piano (Lichtenstein), 449-50,
162; statue for (Donatello), 219-20, 427, 428, 430, 43 1 436, 459-60, 485,
, 451; 458
231; 202; Cathedral (Sta. Maria del 489, 492 Girl Before a Mirror (Picasso), 19-20; 8
Fiore) (Di Cambio; Talenti), 169-70; gisants, 285
162; Cantoria for (Delia Robbia), 222; Giza, Egypt: Great Sphinx, 47; 34;
206; dome of (Brunelleschi), 170, Gainsborough, Thomas, 330-31, 332, sculptural portrait, 44-45, 78; 30;
225, 245, 252; 162; sculpture for (Mi- Robert Andrews and His Wife, 330-3 1 pyramids, 46—47; 33
chelangelo), 247; workshop of, 184; 318; Mrs. Siddons, 331; 319 Gla'ber, Raoul,144
Or San Michele, sculpture for (Do- Galatea (Raphael), 254, 256, 291; 238 Glass of Absinthe (Degas), 382-83, 404;
natello), 219, 228, 248; 201; (Nanni Garden of Delights (Bosch), 210-12, 372
di Banco), 218, 222; 200; Palazzo 436; 194 Glorification of Reign of Urban VIII
the
Vecchio, sculpture for (G. Bologna). Garden of Love (Rubens), 304-5, 326; (Da Cortona), 291, 335; 276
269-70; 254; (Michelangelo), 247- 288 Gloucester, England: Cathedral, choir,
49, 25 1 296; 231 (Verrocchio), 224-
, ; Gardner, Alexander, 376: Home of a 167; 159
25, 269; 209; Sta. Croce, 168-69, Rebel Sharpshooter, Gettysburg, 376; Goes, Hugo van der, 208-9; Portman
225; 161; Bruni tomb in (Rossellino), 364 192
Altarpiece. 209, 237;
223. 250; 207; S. Lorenzo (Bru- Gamier, Charles, 394; Paris Op£ra, Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, 354,
nelleschi). 225. 227, 228, 250; 210, 370.372,410,481; 360 365—67
211; Medici Chapel and tomb in (Mi- Gates of Hell (Rodin), 390-91 Gogh, Theo van, 398, 399
chelangelo), 250-51, 269; 235; Sta. "Gates of Paradise" (Ghiberti), panel Gogh, Vincent van, 19, 398-99, 403,
Maria del Carmine, Brancacci Cha- from, 221,230; 205 404, 4 16, 4 18, 43 Self-Portratt, 399;
1 ;
pel frescoes (Masaccio), 230-3 1 215; ; Gattamelata, Equestrian Monument of 394; Wheat Field and Cypress Trees,
Sta. Maria Novella, fresco (Masaccio), (Donatello), 221; 204 398-99; 393
228-30,231, 238, 265; 214 Gaudi, Antonf, 409; Casa Mila\ Bar- Gold Marilyn Monroe (Warhol ), 450-5 1
art: Baroqu. !86, 316-24; Gothic, the Magi, 193, 210, 230; 185 Gospel Book of Otto 111, 142. 146; 130
,
INDEX -519
Gothic revival, 371-72, 386, 393 Head (Gonzalez), 462, 464; 474 Room, 105, 142, 183; 98
Gothic style, 143, 157, 158-93; archi- Heartfield (Herzfeld), John, 492; As in Houses of Parliament, London (Barry
tecture, 127, 143, 148, 158-70, 200, the Middle Ages, So in the Third Reich, and Pugin), 372; 359
226, 272; painting, 158, 178-93; 492, 493; 512 Hugo, Victor, 354; portrait of (Rodin),
sculpture, 158, 170-78, 184, 219, Heda, Willem Claesz., 312-15; Still 413; 414
285 Life, 315; 299 Human and Animal Locomotion (Muy-
Goya, Francisco, 344, 354-56, 380, Helladic art, 62; Mycenaean, 65-66 bridge), 414; 415
402; Family of Charles IV, 355-56, Hellenistic art, 85, 86-88, 98, 113; humanism, 197, 277, 278, 303, 316,
379; 336; Third of May, 1808, 356; compared to: Baroque, 296, 317, 321
337 324; Gothic, 181; High Renaissance,
Graeco-Roman art, compared to: By- 248; Roman, 100, 103
zantine, 122; Early Christian, 115, Henri, Robert, 428, 437 / and the Village (Chagall), 427; 429
116; Ottonian, 142; Romanesque, Henry II, king of France: Tomb o/(Pri- Ice Bag-Scale A (Oldenburg), 466; 479
145, 156 maticcio and Pilon), 285; 269, 270 Iconoclastic Controversy, 120-21, 122
graphic arts, 17, 213-16, 372 Henry IV, king of France, 304 icons, 122-23
Great Horse (Duchamp- Villon), 460, Henry VIII, king of England, 281; Ictinus: Parthenon, 74-76, 85, 127; 63
468; 471 portrait of (Holbein), 281; 265 idol, from Amorgos, Cyclades, 62-63;
Great Sphinx, Giza, 47; 34 Henry the Lion, duke of Saxony, 153 50
Greece, 36-37, 57, 60, 62, 65, 90, 360; Hepworth, Barbara, 458; Sculpture with Ignatius of Loyola, St., 265, 286, 298
art: 22-23, 67-88, 93; compared to: Color (Oval Form), Pale Blue and Red, ile de France, 158, 159, 166-67, 168
Byzantine, 109, 122; Early Christian, 458; 468 II Gesu, Rome (Vignola and Delia
110, 112, 116; Etruscan, 90-91,92; Herakles, king of Tiryns, 69 Porta), 272, 295; 256
Post-Impressionist, 407; Renais- Herakles Strangling the Nemean Lion illuminated manuscripts, 152, 290;
sance, 233, 241, 248, 249; Roman, (Psiax), 69, 71, 72; 57 Early Christian, 113-15; Early Medi-
94, 96, 98-99, 100, 101, 102, 103, Herculaneum, 104, 344, 350-51 eval, 133, 136-38, 142; Gothic, 179,
104, 107; Romanesque, 143, 150, 153 Hercules and Antaeus (Pollaiuolo), 224, 193; Romanesque, 152, 155
Greek, manner, 180, 181, 184 225, 269; 208 illusion ism: Baroque, 291-93; Early
Greek revival, Neoclassical, 350-51, Hermes (Praxiteles), 85-86, 221; 74 Christian, 110, 113; Gothic, 181; Ot-
352 Herodotus, 90 tonian, 142; Roman, 105-7
Green Dining Room (Morris), 387; 378 Hiberno-Saxon style, 131-32, 133 Imhotep, 45-46, 49; Funerary District
Gregory Watching the Snow Fall, Kyoto, Hierakonpolis, Egypt: Palette of King of King Zoser, Saqqara, 45—46;
Feb. 21, 1983 (Hockney), 495-97; Narmer, 42-44, 50, 55, 103; 28 North Palace, papyrus half-columns,
518 High Baroque style, 291-93, 303, 309 46, 49, 77; 32; Step Pyramid, 45, 55,
Greuze.Jean-Baptiste, 344-45; Village High Gothic style, 163-65, 167, 172- 74, 456; 31
Bride, 344-45; 325 74; 157 Impressionism, 377-86, 387-92, 395;
Gropius, Walter, 477, 479, 480, 481; High Renaissance art, 228, 241-57, and Post-Impressionism, 396, 397,
Bauhaus, Dessau, 477; Shop Block at, 258, 260, 266, 273, 296 398, 453
477,481; 494 Hildesheim, Germanv: Cathedral (St. Impression: Sunrise (Monet), 382
Gros, Antoine-Jean, 356-57, 359; Na- Michaels), 140, 145; 127, 128; Doors In Advance of the Broken Arm (Du-
poleon at Arcole, 356, 358, 361; 338 of Bishop Bernward, 140-42, 150, champ), 461, 473; 473
Grosz, George, 435-36, 491 Germany, ; 153; 129 Independent Group, London, 449
A Winter's Tale, 436. 491; 441 history painting, 72, 103, 321, 326, industrial architecture, 393-94
Group f/64, 488 345_49 359>
Industrial Revolution, 341, 361, 363,
Griinewald, Matthias (Mathis Gothart Hitler, Adolf, 448, 454, 479, 492 372, 374, 388
Nithart), 273-74, 277, 278; Isenheim Hockney, David, 495-97; Gregory Ingres, Jean-Auguste-Dominique,
Altarpiece, 273-74, 278; 257, 258 Watching the Snow Fall, Kyoto, Feb. 21, 357-59, 360, 377, 383, 396, 404,
guardian figures, 38-39, 79-80; 23 1983, 495-97; 518 430; Louis Berlin, 359, 374; 341;
Guarini, Guarino, 299, 332; facade, Hofmann, Hans, 452 Odalisque, 358-59, 360, 369; 340
Palazzo Carignano, Turin, 299; 283 Hogarth, William, 329-30, 344; Orgy, inlay panel, soundbox of harp. See Ur
Guercino, 29 1 Aurora ceiling, 29 1 275
; ; in Rake's Progress, 330, 344, 41 1; 377 installations, 470-72, 473
Guggenheim Museum (Wright), 24; Holbein, Hans, the Younger, 278-81, Interior of the Pantheon (Pannini), 97,
14, 15 282; Erasmus of Rotterdam, 280; 264; 149; 87
Gutenberg, Johannes, 213-15 Henry VIII, 281; 265 International Style: Gothic, 158, 165-
Holland, 153, 281, 302; art: Baroque, 66, 175, 177-78, 190-93, 200, 201,
286, 302-3, 306-15; "Late Gothic," 209-10, 2 12, 215, 231; 20th-century,
Hadrian, Roman emperor, 101 209- 12; 20th-century, 431-32, 475- 477-79,481
Hagia Sophia, Istanbul (Anthemius of 76. See also Netherlands (Low lohel, stained-glass window, Bourges
Tralles and Isidorus of Miletus), Countries) Cathedral, 179, 215, 418; 173
119-20, 127, 228; 113, 114 Holy Roman Empire, 134, 138-39 Ionian Greeks, 61, 67, 69
Halicarnassus, Turkey: Mausoleum, Holy Trinity with the Virgin, St. John, and Ionic order, 72, 76-78, 96; 61
85; frieze sculpture (Scopas?), 85; 73 Two Donors (Masaccio), 228-30, 231, Ireland, 131-33, 138
Hallenkirche (hall church), 167 238, 265; 214 / Saw the Figure 5 in Gold (Demuth), 43 1
Hals, Frans, 306-9, 315, 380; Jolly Home House, London: front drawing 494; 435
Toper, 307-8, 315; 291; Women Re- room (Adam), 351-52, 371; 334 Isenheim Altarpiece (Griinewald), 273-
Home at Haarlem,
gents of the Old Men's Home of a Rebel Sharpshooter, Gettysburg 74, 278; 257, 258
308-9; 292 (Gardner), 376; 364 Ishtar Gate, Babylon, 59; 47
Hammurabi, king of Babylon; 57; stele Homer, 62, 67, 69 Isidorus of Miletus: Hagia Sophia, Is-
with Law Code of, 57, 103; 45 Homer, Winslow, 388; Morning Bell, tanbul, 1 19-20, 127, 228; 113, 114
Happenings, 472, 473 388; 381 Islam, 127, 196; art, 143, 146, 212
Hardouin-Mansart, Jules: Palace of Hopper, Edward, 437; Early Sunday Istanbul, Turkey, 108; Hagia Sophia
Versailles, 322; Garden Front of, Morning, 437; 444 (Anthemius of Tralles and Isidorus
322; 308; Salon de la Guerre in, 322; Horace, 291 of Miletus), 119-20, 127, 228;
309 Hosmer, Harriet, 469, 470 113, 114. See also Byzantium;
Harlem Renaissance, 446, 490 Hotel de Soubise, Paris (Boffrand), Constantinople
Harpist (Orpheus), from Amorgos, 10; 7 332, 333; 321 Italy, 67, 90, 117, 127, 138, 139, 217,
Hartley, Marsden, 419; Portrait of a Ger- Houdon, Jean-Antoine, 350; Voltaire, 246, 356; art: Baroque, 286, 288-93,
man Officer, 419; 421 350, 369; 331 295-99; Futurist, 423-24, 459-60;
Haywain (Constable), 360, 365; 350 House of the Vettii, Pompeii: Ixion Gothic, 158, 168-70, 175-78, 180-
;;
Wi
520 • IXDEX
88; Mannerist, 258-65, 268-71; Knossos, Crete: early palaces, 63-64; 298; Last Supper, 242-44, 254, 261;
Proto-Baroque, 267-68, 271-72; Palace of Minos, 64; Queen's Mega- 226; Mono Lisa, 244-45; 227; Project
Renaissance, 158, 160, 200, 217-40. ron in, 64; 51; with fresco, 65; 51 for a Church. 245; 228; Virgin of the
241-57, 274-76, 277, 316, 481; Ro- Kore m Dorian Peplos, 78-79, 245; 66 Rocks, 242, 245; 225
manesque, 148-50; 16th-century re- Kosuth, Joseph, 473; One and Three Lescot, Pierre, 284; Louvre, 284, 321,
alist, 265—67. See also Etruscan art; Chairs, 473; 488 333; 268
Roman art Kouros (Standing Youth), 73, 74, 78, 79, Letter (Vermeer), 309, 315, 456; 301
Ixion Room, House of the V'ettii, Pom- 81.82; 65 Le Vau, Louis, 321; Louvre, East
peii, 105. 142, 183; 98 Krasner, Lee, 441; Celebration, 441; Front, 32 1 Palace of Versailles, 322;
;
Hasan Lecture (Reading) (Morisot), 383-84; Louis XIII, king of France, 304, 319
Kiefer, Anselm, 454-56, 474; To the 374 Louis XIV, king of France, 286, 316,
Unknown Painter, 454-56; 464 L6ger, Fernand, 431, 478; City, 431, 320, 321, 322, 323-24, 332, 401;
Kienholz, Edward, 471-72; State Hos- 478,481; 434 portraits of (Bernini), 323-24;
pital, 471-72; 486 Lemieux, Annette, 497; Truth, 497; (Coysevox), 324, 350; 310; Style of,
Kiss (Brancusi), 457. 458; 466 519 . 286,316,321-22
Kitchen Still Life (Chardin), 328; 315 Le Notre, Andr£: park, Versailles, Louis XV, king of France, 325, 327;
Klee. Paul 434-35, 442; Twittering Ma- 322-23 Style of, 332
chine. 43". Leo X, pope, 250 Louis, Morris, 444; Blue Veil, 444; 451
Klosterneubui g Altarpiece (Nicholas of Leonard, Joanne, 495; Romanticism Is Louis Berlin (Ingres), 359, 374; 341
Verdun), 157. 172, 179; 148 Ultimately Fatal, 495; 517 Louvre, Paris, 284, 410, 321 Bernini's ;
Knight, Death, and Devil (Durer), 276- Leonardo da Vinci, 224, 241, 242-45, designs, 321; East Front (Perrault),
77; 260 247, 253, 257, 260, 268, 274, 284, 321-22, 372, 410; 307; Gothic pre-
'
3 ;:
ISDEX • 521
decessor. 193.284; 184: Renaissance 254. 277. 396, 423; frescoes. Bran- Minos, king of Crete. 62: Palace of.
facade (Lescoti. 284. 321. 333; 268 cacci Chapel. Florence. 230-3 1 215: ; Knossos. 64, 65; 51
Luncheon on the Grass (Le Dejeuner sur Tribute Money from. 230; 215: Holy Minotaur. 64. 65
Ikerbe) (Manet). 379-80, 382, 395; Trinity with the Virgin, St. John, and Two Miraculous Draught of Fishes (YV'iiz). 212.
367 Donors, 228-30. 231. 238. 265; 214 382; 195
Lunstan. Iran: pole-top ornament. 60; masks, ethnographic. 39. 422. 458; 24- Mini. Joan. 434. 439, 462; Patnting,
48 26 434, 439: 439
Luther. Martin. 274. 276 ." Massacre at Chios (Delacroix). 359—60. mirror paintings, 207, 208. 260, 382
Luxembourg Palace. Paris: Medici Cy- 376. 382: 342 Mnesicles: Propvlaea. Athens, 76; 64
~
cle Rubensi. 304. 308. 316; mastabas. 45. 47 mobiles. 462. 467
Luxor. Egvpt: Temple of Amun-Mut- Master of Flemalle (Robert Campin ; >, modernism. 401. 415. 419
Khonsu. roval courts, pvlon, and col- 201-4,205.208.212.228.231.273; Modersohn-Becker. Paula. 406-7; Self-
onnade. 49. 55.61, 112.490; 36 Merode Altarpuce. 201-4. 205. 208. Portrait, 406-7; 404
228, 231; 186 Moissac. France: St. -Pierre, portal
Matisse. Henri. 40 1.407.4 16- 13. 421. sculpture. 151-52. 171; 141
machine aesthetic. 393-94. 408 422. 452. 457; Joy of Life. 416-17. Mono Lisa (Leonardo da Vinci). 244-
maektnes a habiter - 422. 430: 416: Red Studio. 4 45 _
Maderno. Carlo. 295: nave and facade. 417 monasteries. 131-33. 134-35, 140;
St. Peters. Rome. 295. 277 Mausoleum, Halicarnassus. 85; frieze 122
Marfan mi and Child on a Curved Throne. sculpture (Scopasri. 85. 73 Mondnan, 43 1 -32. 437. 445, 447,
Piet.
Late Bvzantine. 122-23: 116 Mausolus. BE al 462. 475-76. 479: Composition
Madonna and Child with Saints (Vene- Medici Chapel. Florence Michelan- i with Red. Blue, and Yellow. 431-32;
ziano), 231-32. 233; 276 gelo). 250; tomb for. 250-51. 269; 436
Madonna with the Long Seek Par- Monet. Claude. 382. 384-86. 388, 390,
migianino). 261. 265. 269, 359: 245 Medici Cvcle. See Rubens 391; Impression: Sunrise. 382; River
Maestd Altarpuct (Duccio). 181. 182- Medici familv. 225. 234. 244. 250. 286; lAu Bord de I'eau, Bennecourt), 382,
84. 187; 175 Catherine. Tomb of (Pnmaticcio and 386, 388. 390. 399: 370: Water
Magdalenians. 32. 34 Pilon). 285; 269. 270: Cosimo I. 261 Lilies. 384-86; 376
Magic Crystal Kasebier). 4 3. 488: 41
( 1 Giovanni, portrait of (Bronzinoi. Monticello (Jefferson). 352; 335
Maids of Honor (Velazquez), 300-301. 26 1 28 1 306; 246: Giuliano. Tomb of
. , Mont Sainte-Victotre Seen from Bibemus
355. 379. 388: 285 (Michelangelo). 250-51. 269; 235: Quarry (Cezanne). 396, 422; 391
Maillol. Arisude. 407; Seated Woman Lorenzo the Magnificent. 234: Monument to Balzac (Rodin). 392: 385
.erranee), 407. 457: 405 Marie. 304 portrait of Rubens). 304.
; ( Monument to the Third International, pro-
Male Figure Surmounted In a Bird, from 308.316; 287 ject for (Tatlin). 461; -*72
Sepik River. New Guinea. 38-39; 23 Medici Palace. 5** Palazzo Yecchio Moonnse. Hernandez. Sew Mexico
Malevich. Kazimir, 425-26: Black Mediterranee {Seated Woman) Maillol). l (Adams), 488; 507
Quadrilateral, 425-26 - - 407. 457: 405 Moore. Henrv. 409. 457-58. 490: Two
Mallia. Crete: palaces at. 63—64 megaliths. 36 Forms. 409. 458. 490: -
Man Drawtnga Sword I Barlach). 407-8. Merode Altarpuce (Master of Flemalle), Moreau, Gustave. 401. 402; Apparition
419; 406 201-4. 205. 208. 228. 231: 186 l Dance of Salome). 401. 434: 397
Manet, Edouard, 379-82. 383. 387. Mesopotamia, 29. 4 1 52. 56. 57.59, 85.
. More Than You Know Murrav ). 456; 465
(
390. 391. 395, 449; Fifer. 382. 390; See also Ancient Near Eastern art Morisot. Berthe. 383-84: La Lecture
369: Luncheon on the Grass [Le De- Metafisyx (Dubuffet), 442; 449 (Reading), 383-84; 3 74
jeuner sur Vherbe). 379-80, 382. 395: metalwork. 131. 140-42. 153. 157 Morning Bell (Homer). 388; 381
367 Meusevallev. 152-53. 157. 172 Morris. William. 386-87, 408, 409;
Matt in a Red Turban iSelf-Portrait'r) Mexico. 1934 iCartier-Bresson). 485: Green Dining Room, 387; 378
(J. van EvckK 205-3. 237^ 260. 276. 503 mosaics. 112-13. 118. 122. 123
310; 188 Michelangelo. 11.17-18, 19.241 242. Mosan sculpture. 153
Mannerism. 258-65. 263-7: 21 246-52.253.257.253.261.263.268. 'W/iSluten. 175. 208. 219; 769
nfluence of. 285. 306. 3 1 6. 363. 269. 270. 272. 235. 290. 29- motion photographv. 413—14
364. 404 325. 356. 357. 363. 391. 413. 473: Moulm de la Galette (Renoir). 382; 577
Man 15, 493. 495: Rayo- Captive. 11. 23; 3: David. 247-49. idons (Gainsborough). 331 ; 379
graph. 493; 513 251. 296: 231: Medici Chapel and Munch. Edvard. 404. 408. 454: Scream.
Mantegna. Andrea. 237-39; frescoes. tomb. S. Lorenzo, Florence. 250—51. 404. 403, 456: 401
Ovetari Chapel. Padua. 237-39; St. 269; 235: St. Peters. Rome. 251-52. Murrav. Elizabeth, 456, 465; More Than
James Led to Hu Execution. 238-39; 27S 295: 256: Sisune Chapel. Rome: You Know. 456: 465
222 ceiling frescoes. 249-50. 254. 290- Musician and Two Dancers, from Tomb
Mantua. Italv: S. Andrea lAlberti), 91; 232: Creation of Ada w frorr. .- of the Lionesses, Tarquinia, 91; 81
227.251. 272: 212 50. 288. 303. 413: 233: Libyan Sibyl Muvbndge. Eadweard .413-14: Female
manuscript illumination. See illumi- from. 17-18. 249; 5. 6: wall fresco. Semi-Sude in Motion, from Human and
nated manuscripts Last Judgment. 250. 267: 234 Animal Locomotion. 414; 415
Man with a Glove (Titian). 256-57. 310; Middle Ages. 127. 130. 144. 196. 197. Mvcenae. Greece: Lion Gate. 66, 74.
241 217. 234-35 79. 152: 54: Treasury of Atreus. 66:
Marat. Jean-Paul. 346-47: Death of Mies van der Rohe. Ludwig. 479. 480; 53
(David I. 346-47:527 Lake Shore Drive Apartment Mvcenaean art, 62, 65-66, 74. 79-80
Marcus Aurelius. Roman emperor. Houses. Chicago. 479; 497 Mvcenaeans. 66. 67
101 Equestrian Statue of 101,221:93
: , Migrant Mother, California Lange 49 1
( 1. Mvcerinus. Pyramid of, Giza, 46 17 —
Marie Antoinette, queen of France. 511 33
328 Milan. 217. 220. 244. 245: Sta.
Italv. Mycennus and His Queen, Giza. 4
Mane de'Mediei, Queen of France, Land- Maria delle Grazie, mural Leonardo ( 78; 30
ing in Marseilles (Rubens). 304. 303. da Vinci). 242-44. 254. 261: 226 Mystery and Melancholy of a Street
:•"
316: Millet. Francois. 361. 362-63 'De Chincoi. 427: 428
Marinetti. Filippo Tommaso, 424 Sower, 362; 346
Marseillaise (Rude). 370; 355 Milo ofCrotona (Puget), 324. 370; 311
Martini. Simone. 184-86. 190. 192; miniatures. 114-15. 136-33. 152. See Nabis. 400-401
Road to Calvary. 184-86. 190; 178 Nadar (Gaspard Felix Tournachon
" also illuminated manuscripts
1
Marx. Karl Minimalism. 463, 465. 473 375, 414: Sarah Bernhardt, 375; 362
Masaccio. 223-31. 233. 237. 247. 250. Minoan art. 62. 63—65. 66 S'ahash the Ammonite Threatening the Jews
1 ;;
Wl 522 • INDEX
atjabesh, from Psalter of St. Louis, 1 79, Sightmare (Fuseli), 363-64, 404, 427, Pacher, Michael, 212-13, 273; St. Wolf-
181; 174 495; 348 gang Altarpiece 213, 273; 797
,
Nanni di Banco, 218, 222; Four Saints Sight Watch (Company of Captain Frans Padua, Italy, 237; Arena Chapel, fres-
(Quattro Coronati), 218, 222; 200 Banning Cocq) (Rembrandt), 3 10; 295 coes (Giotto), 182-84; 7 77; Church
Napoleon, 356, 357; statue (Canova), Sike of Samothrace, 88, 1 16, 460; 78 of the Eremitani, Ovetari Chapel,
369 Nimrud (Calah), Iraq: Palace of Ashur- frescoes (Mantegna), 237-39; 222;
Xapoleon atArcole (Gros), 356, 358, 36 1 nasirpal 57, 81, 103; 46
II, relief, Gattamelata monument (Donatello),
338 Soctume Black and Gold: The Falling
in 221; 204
Narmer, king of Egypt, 42-44; Palette Rocket (Whistler), 387-88, 419; 380 Paestum, Italy, 74; "Basilica," 74, 351;
of, 42-44, 50, 55, 103; 28 Nofretete, queen of Egypt: portrait of, 62; "Temple of Poseidon," 74, 76,
narrative art, 68-69, 102-4, 113, 173, 50; 38 35 1 62
;
182, 321, 344-45; continuous, 115, Nolde, Emil, 4 1 8- 1 9; Last Supper, 4 1 8- Paik, Nam June, 474; TV Buddha, 474;
231 19; 419 490
Nativity (Geertgen tot Sint Jans), 209- Noormarkku, Finland: Villa Mairea Painting (Mir6), 434, 439; 439
10,265,317; 193 (Aalto), 479; 496 painting techniques: encaustic, 107;
Nativity (G. Pisano), 176, 177; 171 Normandy, Normans, 138, 144; Ro- fresco, 182; tempera and oil, 204
Nativity (N. Pisano), 176, 218; 770 manesque architecture, 146-47, Palace Chapel of Charlemagne,
naturalism, Baroque, 288 161, 162, 170 Aachen (Odo of Metz), 134; 727
Naumburg, Germany: Cathedral, Northern Gothic style, 184, 188-190 Palace of Ashurnasirpal II. See Nimrud
choir screen sculpture, 174, 179, Northern Renaissance art, 273-85 Palace of Minos, Knossos, 64; Queen's
208; 167 Notre-Dame, Paris, 127, 160-64, 173; Megaron with marine fresco, 64, 65;
Navajo sand painting ritual, 40; 27 150-54 51
Nazis, 436, 454, 491, 492 nudes, 18, 83, 220, 234-35, 369, 379, Palace of Versailles. See Versailles
Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babvlon, 57, 388, 391 Palazzo Barberini, Rome: fresco (Da
59 Nuremberg, Germany, 277; St. Sebald, Cortona), 291, 335; 276
Neo-Abstraction, 456 choir, 167-68; 160 Palazzo Carignano, Turin: facade
Neo-Babvlonian art, 57—59 Surture of Jupiter (Jordaens), 306; 290 (Guarini), 299; 283
Neo-Baroque stvle, 355-57, 358, 359, Palazzo Farnese, Rome: fresco (Car-
360,361, 370,' 372, 377 racci), 290-91, 303, 318; 273
neo-Bvzantine style, 180, 181, 184 OchreandRedonRed(Rolhko),444;450 Palazzo Pubblico, Siena: frescoes (A.
Neoclassicism, 325, 344-52, 353, 358, October (Limbourg Brothers), 193,204, Lorenzetti), 187; 7 80
361 362, 469, 481 20th-century, 430
, ; 284, 364; 184 Palazzo Vecchio (Medici Palace), Flor-
Neo-Expressionism, 453, 456 Odalisk (Rauschenberg), 467-68, 472; ence: sculpture (G. Bologna), 269-
Neo-Impressionism, 397 481 70; 254; (Michelangelo), 247-49,
Neolithic art, 35-37 Odalisque (Ingres), 358-59, 360, 369; 25 1 296; 23 1 ( Verrocchio), 224-25,
, ;
New Objectivity, 437, 490 Opera, Paris (Gamier), 370, 372, 410, 377; Hotel de Soubise (Boffrand),
Sew Shoes for H. (Eddy), 451-52, 497; 481; 360; facade sculpture (Car- 332, 333; 321; Luxembourg Palace,
460, 461 peaux), 370, 372, 377, 391; 356 Medici Cycle (Rubens), 304, 308,
Newspaper, Bottle, Packet of Tobacco (Le Orgy (Hogarth), 330, 344, 411; 317 316; 287; Montparnasse Cemetery,
< ier) (Braque), 423, 430, 431; Orientalizing style, Greek, 68-69, 90 tomb sculpture (Brancusi), 457, 458;
4. Orpheus (Harpist), from Amorgos, 10; 1 466; Notre-Dame, 160-64, 173;
New Stone Age, 35-37 Or San Michele, Florence: sculpture 150-54; Opera (Gamier), 370, 372,
Newton, Sir Isaac, 287, 288 (Donatello), 219, 228, 248; 201; 410, 481; 360; facade sculpture for
New York City, 410-1 1, 428, 432, 438; (Nanni di Banco), 218, 222; 200 (Carpeaux), 370, 372, 377, 391 356;
;
Guggenheim Museum (Wright), 24; Orthodox Christianity, 108, 118, 121, Pantheon (Soufflot), 350; 333; Pare
14, 15 127 de la Villette (Tschumi), 483; 507;
Nicholas of Verdun, 157, 172, 173, Oseberg Ship-Burial: Animal Head, school of, photography, 484-85. See
179; Crossing of the Red Sea, from 131; 118 also Louvre; St. -Denis
Klostemruburg Altarpiece, 157, 172. Otto I, Holy Roman emperor, 138, 144 Parliament. See Houses of Parliament
179; ,
Otto III, Holy Roman emperor, 139; Parma, Italy: Cathedral, dome fresco
Niemever War, 481; Brasilia, 481; Gospel Book of, 142, 146; 130 (Correggio), 268, 291; 257
498 Ottonian art, 138-42, 143, 150, 167; Parmigianino, 260-61, 268, 269, 359;
Niepre. |n~ t'phore, 373; View
i
compared to Romanesque, 144, 146, Madonna with the Long Seek, 26 1 265,
,
from a Wh Was, 373: 361 153-55 269, 359; 245; Self- Portrait, 260; 244
Sight (Michelangelo). 250-51, 269; Ovetari Chapel, Padua: frescoes (Man- Parthenon, Athens (Ictinus and Calli-
235 tegna), 237-39; 222 crates), 74-76, 85, 127; 63; pediment
;
ISDEX • 523
sculpture. 83-84. 238. 72 Pieta (Andachstbild), Bonn. 174-75. 75; Rococo. 328-29, 330-31. 374:
Parting of Lot and Abraham, mosaic, Sta. 208, 273-74; 168. See also Avignon Roman, 99-102, 107: Romantic.
Maria Maggiore. Rome. 113. 142; Pieta 355. 359, 360, 374-75
106 pilgrimage choir. 145. 159 Poseidon (Zeus}), Greek, 83, 233; 70
Pastoral Landscape (Claude Lorraine), Pilgrimage to Cythera (Watteau), 326, "Poseidon. Temple of." Paestum. 74;
319; 305 329. 330; 312 62
Pastn Cook, Cologne (Sander), 491 510 ; Pilon, Germain, 285; Tomb of Henry II posters. 492-93
pathos. 83, 86, 122. 172. 174 and Catherine de Medici, 285; 269, 270 Post-Impressionism, 383, 395-414.
Pattern and Decoration. 452 Pisa. Italv. 144; Baptistery 149; 138 415. 421. 424. 428. 453
Pauline Borghese as Venus (Canoval, pulpit for (N. Pisanoi. 176,218: 170 Post-Minimalism. 465
369-70; 354 Campanile (Leaning Tower), 149 Post-Modernism, 453-56, 465. 479.
Paxton. Sir Joseph: Crvstal Palace. 138: Camposanto, fresco (Traini). 481-83
London. 375. 394; 389 188; 181: Cathedral. 149; 138: pulpit Poussin. Nicolas, 293, 298, 317-19.
Peloponnesian War, 68, 76, 85 for (G. Pisano). 176; 171 321. 322. 325, 344, 345. 347. 359,
Pennsylvania Academy, 388. 428 Pisano. Andrea, 170 363. 365: Birth of Bacchus, 319; 304:
Pepper (Weston). 488: 506 Pisano. Giovanni. 176. 177. 181. 184: Rape of the Sabine Women, 317-18.
Performance Art. 453. 473-76 Pisa Cathedral pulpit. 176; detail. 345: 303
Pergamum. Turkev, 86, 87. 103: Altar Sativity. 176. 177; 171 Poussinistes, 325. 345, 358
of Zeus, 87; frieze sculpture from. Pisano. Nicola. 170. 176. 177. 184,218; Praeneste(Palestnna). Italv: Sanctuary
87-88, 249, 270. 278. 296: 77; Dying Pisa Baptistery pulpit. 176; detail. of Fortuna Primigenia, 94-96, 296;
Gaul. 86-87. 103: 76 MUfiffj, 176.218: 170 84
Pericles. 76, 143 Plato, 41. 217, 235. 321. 419 Prato. Italv: Sta. Maria delle Careen
peripteral temple. 73: 60 Plinv. 72. 107. 290 (Sangallo), 228; 213
Perpendicular Gothic style. 167 Plotinus, 235. 419 Praxiteles. 86, 407; Hermes, 85-86.
Perrault, Claude. 321-22: East Front, Plouingin the Stvernais (Bonheur), 363; 221; 74, Standmg Youth, 23; 13
Louvre. 321-22. 372; 307 347 Precisionism. 431. 437. 489
Persepolis, Iran: Palace, 60-61; Audi- Poe. Edgar Allan: lithographs dedi- pre-Hellenistic stvle. 85
ence Hall of Danus in. 61 64. 79; 49
. cated to (Redon). 402-3: 399 prehistoric art, 10, 32-37
Persia. Persians. 57. 60. 69. 74. 87. 127 Pointillism, 397 Pre-Modernist architecture. 481
Persian art, 59-61. 64, 79 Poissv-sur- Seine, France: Villa Savove Pre-Raphaelites, 386, 401. 412
Persian Wars. 69. 74. 103. 217 (Le Corbusien. 478. 479. 481: 495 Presentation in the Temple (Broederlam),
perspective: atmospheric, 204-5. 23 1 Polar Sea (Fnednch). 367: 352 190-93.201, 204: 183
scientific linear, one-point). 2 1 22 1 -
( . pole-top ornament, from Luristan, 60; Primary- Structures, 463-67
22,225.230,231.233,239 48 Primaticcio, Francesco, 285; Tomb of
Perugia, Italv: Porta Augusta, 93; 83 Polignac, duchesse de: portrait of Henry II and Catherine de' Medici. 285:
'
310, 349; 286 347. 349: Sarah Siddons as the Tragic 280; Sta. Maria Maggiore. mosaic.
Rakes Progress (Hogarth). 330, 344. Muse. 331,332; 320 113, 142; 706: Villa Farnesina. fresco
411; 317 rib vaults,147-48; 137 (Raphael), 254, 256. 291; 238; Villa
Ram and Tree, from Ur, 55, 56; 43 Rietveld, Gerrit, 475-76; Schroder Ludovisi, fresco (Guercino), 291;
Ramesses II. king of Egvpt, court and House. L'trecht. 475-76, 477, 478, 275. See also St. Peter's; Sistine Cha-
p\lon of. See Luxor 479; 493 pel; Vatican
Ramesses III. king of Egypt, 49 Riis, Jacob, 410-11; Bandits' Roost. Rome. Italv (republic and empire), 57,
Rape of Europa (Titian), 19; 7 Mulberry Street. 4 10-1 1 486; 410
, 90,93.94.96.99. 101, 103, 107, 108,
Rape of the Sabine Woman (G. Bologna), Rilke, Rainer Maria. 406 110, 120, 127, 130, 144, 197
70; 254 Ritual Branch (White). 493; 514 Rossellino, Bernardo. 223, 224; Tomb
Rape of the Sabine Women (Poussin). River [Au Bord de I'eau, Bennecourt) of Leonardo Brum, 223, 250; 207
317-18. 345; 303 (Monet). 382, 384, 386, 388, 390, Rossetti, Dante Gabriel. 386; Ecce An-
Raphael. 240. 241. 252-54. 256. 257. 399; 370 cilla Domini (Annunciation). 386. 412;
261, 263. 268. 282, 290. 291. Road to Calvary'(Martini). 184-86, 190; 577
317,318.319.321, 359; Galatea. 254. 178 Rosso Fiorentino, 260, 261, 268, 269;
256. 291; 238. Judgment of Parts, en- Robbia, Luca della. 222: Cantoria. 222; Descent from the Cross. 260, 261 24 3 ;
graving after, 256, 379, 382; 368: panel from, Singing Angels. 222: 206 Rothko, Mark, 444: Ochre and Red on
frescoes. Stanza della Segnatura. Robert Andrews and His Wife (Gains- Red. 444; 450
253; School of Athens from, 253-54; borough), 330-31: 318 Rouault, Georges, 401. 418, 419; Old
Robie House. Chicago (Wright), 475; Kmg.4\»; 418
Rauschenberg. Robert. 467-68. 472; 491, 492 Rousseau, Henri, 368, 404-6, 484;
Odalisk. 467-68. 472; 481 Robinson, William. Se t Strawberrv Hill Dream. 404-6, 426; 403
Ravenna, Italv. 117. 34; S. Apollinare
1 Rococo stvle, 286, 319, 325-35. 344. Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 344. 345
in Classe. i 10-12. 117, 120, 145, 374 Roval Academv. London. 33 1-32. 347,
149; 103-5: S. Vitale, 117-19. 134; Rodin, Auguste, 390-92, 406, 407; 349
110. Ill: mosaic from, 118, 122, Monument to Balzac. 392; 385: Roval Academv. Paris. 320-21. 325-
397; 112 Thinker. 390-91, 392. 407; 384 26, 401
Rayograph (Man Rav), 493; 513 Rodin with His Sculptures "Victor Hugo" Roval Photographic Societv, London,
Readmg(La Lecture) (Morisot), 383-84; and "The Thinker" (Steichen). 413, 411,412
374 486: 414 Rubentstes. 325, 326, 327, 358, 360
readx-mades. 432. 461. 462, 467, 468, Rogers. Richard, 48 1 Centre Georges
; Rubens, Peter Paul, 19, 300, 303-5,
473 Pompidou. Paris. 481; 499 306. 307. 310. 325. 326. 331; Garden
realism: Baroque, 288. 303-4: Early Roman art, 93. 94-107: compared to: of Love. 304-5. 326; 288: Medici Cv-
Renaissance. 219; Gothic. 171. 175. Baroque. 296, 333; Bvzantine, 117; cle, Luxembourg Palace, 304, 316;
193; "Late Gothic." 202, 212; Late Earlv Christian, 110. 112, 113; Earlv sketch for. Mane de'Medici. Queen of
Renaissance, 265-68; 19th-centur\. Medieval. 130. 136-37; Gothic, 170, France, Landing m Marseilles, 304,
363, 377-79. 410-14; Ottonian. 176, 184; Greek. 72. 94. 96, 100, 101, 308, 316; 287; Raising of the Cross,
1 39; 20th-centurv. 4 1 5. 428-29. 437, 103. 107; Renaissance. 2 18. 2 19. 222. 303-4,310,349; 286
451-53,484 246: Romanesque. 143, 145-46, 149 Rude, Francois, 370: Marseillaise, 370;
Red Blue Green (Kellv), 444; 452 Roman Catholic Church, 108, 121, 355
red-figure stvle. 69-71 127, 131, 158, 286, 302, 303, 325 Ruisdael, Jacob van, 3 1 2, 33 1 364; Jew- ,
Redon, Odilon, 402-3; Eye Like a Romanesque stvle, 143—57, 167, 178, ish Cemetery. 312: 298
Strange Balloon Mounts Toward In- 226; compared to Gothic, 143, 159, Rush, William, 388; portrait of
finity. 402-3: 399 160, 161, 162. 171. 172, 179 (Eakins) 388, 390, 428: 382
Red Studio (Matisse), 417-18; 417 Roman Patrician with Busts of His Ances- Ruskin. John, 365. 371. 387, 439
Reformation, 173, 196, 250, 260, 273, tor*. 99-100, 219; 91 Russian art, 424-26, 460-61, 483
277,281,303 Romanticism Is Ultimately Fatal Russian Revolution, 461
Regionalists, American, 437 (Leonard), 495; 517
Reichenau Monasterv. Switzerland. Romantic movement, 344, 353-76.
142 377, 386. 394, 415. 427. 454 sacra conversazione. 231-32
Reims. France: Cathedral. 163-65; Rome. Italv (citv). 94. 96, 134, 144, Sacrifice of Isaac (Ghiberti), 177-78,
156: portal sculpture from, 173, 174. 208. 240, 245. 258-65. 269, 286. 288. 193,218.221; 172
176. 179, 218; 166 316; Arch of Titus, 103-4; relief Saint: 5., 55.. St.. Sta.. and Ste. are
Reims school, 136-38, 153 from. 72. 103-4. 221. 222, 288; 96; alphabetized as if spelled Saint
Rejlander, Oscar, 411-12. 492; Two Basilica of Constantine, 98, 102, 120, S. Andrea, Mantua (Alberti), 227, 251,
Paths of Life, 411-12: 411 226, 246; 89. 90; Casino Rospigliosi, 272; 212
reliefs, tvpes 22 of. fresco (Reni), 291, 318; 274; Cata- S. Apollinare in Classe. Ravenna. 1 10-
Rembrandt, 289, 308, 309-11. 332, comb of SS. Pietro e Marcellino. ceil- 12, 117. 120. 145. 149: 103-5
355, 361, 363, 377. 418; Blinding of ing. 109-10; 102; Colosseum. 96- St.-Barthelemv. Liege: baptismal font
Samson. 309-10; 294; Christ Preach- 97, 122. 127. 145; 85; Column of (Renier of Huv). 153, 157, 172.235;
ing. 310; 297; Night Watch (Company of Trajan. 72. 104. 1 13, 133, 238, 333; 143
< IM Frans Banning Cocq). 310; 97; Equestrian Statue of Marcus Au- S. alle Quattro Fontane, Rome
Carlo
!f- Portrait. 308, 310, 418; 296 retius, 101,221; 93; 11 Gesu (Vignola (Borromini), 299, 333: 281. 282
Renaissance. 17.21. 127. 196-97.200. and Delia Portal. 272. 295; 256; Odys- St. Charles Borromaeus (Karlskirche),
286. 287. 325 See also Early Renais- sey Landscapes. 105-7. 142: 99; Pa- Vienna (Fischer von Erlach), 333;
sance; High Renaissance: Late Re- lazzo Barberini. fresco (Da Cortona). 322
inte: Northern Renaissance
-
291. 335: 276; Palazzo Farnese. Sta. Croce, Florence. 168-69, 225;
Renaissance revival stvle. 393 fresco (Carracci), 290-91. 303, 318; 161; Bruni tomb (Rossellino). 223.
Rem. Guido, 291: Aurora. 291. 318: 273; Pantheon. 97, 117, 119. 149. 250; 207
274 170. 228. 246, 333: 86, 87; S. Carlo St. -Denis. Paris, 158-60, 162, 169,
Renier of Huv. 153. 172; baptismal alle Quattro Fontane (Borromini). 179; 149; sculpture, 170-71;
font, 153. 157. 172. 235; 143 299. 333; 281,282; S. Luigi dei Fran- stained-glass windows. 178: Tomb of
Renoir, Auguste, 382; Is Moulin de la cesi, Contarelli Chapel, painting Henry II and Catherine de'Medici (Pri-
Galette. 37 (Caravaggio), 288-89, 296, 303. 3 1 0. maticcio and Pilon). 285: 269, 270
Resurrection (Grilnewald), 274; 258 317; 271; Sta. Maria della Vittoria. St. Dorothy, woodcut. 215; 198
Return of the Hunters (Bruegel). 283- ( ornaro Chapel (Bernini). 296-98. St.-Etienne. Caen. 146-47. 162: 135
267 322: 280; sculpture for. 296-98; S. Francesco, Arezzo: choir frescoes
Reynolds, Sir | ihua. 331-32. 344. 279; fresco for (Abbatini), 297. 298; (PierodellaFrancesca).233.397;2/7
. ,
ISDEX -525
St. Francis m the Desert (Bellini). 239, 167; 158; Stonehenge, 36-37, 458, borough), 33 1 31 9; (Reynolds), 33 1
:
St. John the Evangelist, from Gospel Book Time, 490-91; portrait from. Pastry chelangelo), 250, 267; 234;
of Abbot Wedncus, 155-56, 179; 145 Cook, Cologne, 491; 510 (Perugino), 240, 249; 224
S. Lorenzo, Florence (Brunelleschi), sand painting ritual. Navajo, 40; 27 Sketch I for "Composition VII" (Kan-
225-26, 227, 228, 250; 270, 211; Sangallo, Giuliano da, 228; Sta. Maria dinskv), 419, 439, 488; 420
Medici Chapel and tomb (Michelan- delle Carceri, Prato, 228; 213 skyscrapers, 408, 477. 489
gelo), 250-51, 269: 235 Santa Fe, Sew Mexico (Frank), 494; 515 Slave Ship (Turner), 360, 365-67, 387;
St. Louis, Missouri: Wainwright Santiago de Compostela, Spain, 145, 351
Building (Sullivan), 408; 407 150 Sluter.Claus, 175. 193; Moses Well, 175,
S. Luigi dei Francesi, Rome: Contarelli Saqqara, Egvpt: Funerarv District of 208.219; 769
Chapel, painting (Caravaggio), 288- KingZoser (Imhotep): North Palace, Smith, David. 464-65; Cubi series,
89,296, 303, 310, 317; 271 papyrus half-columns, 46, 49, 77; 32 465; 477
Sta. Maria del Carmine, Florence: Step Pyramid, 45, 55, 74, 456; 31 Smithson, Robert, 466-67; Spiral Jett\.
Brancacci Chapel, frescoes (Masac- Tomb of Ti, relief, 44, 50, 57, 79, 81 466-67; 480
cio),230-31; 215 29 Social Realism. 437, 491
Sta. Maria del Fiore. See Florence: Sarah Bernhardt (Nadar), 375: 362 Socrates, 345-46: Death of (David),
Cathedral Sarah Siddons as the Tragic Muse (Reyn- 345-36. 347. 349; 326
Sta. Maria della Vittoria, Rome: Cor- olds), 331, 332: 320 Soufflot, Jacques-Germain, 350; Pan-
naro Chapel (Bernini). 296-98, 322; sarcophagi, 115-16,223,250-51 theon (Ste. -Genevieve). Paris, 350;
280; sculpture for, 296-98; 279; Sarcophagus of Junius Bassus. 115—16, 333
fresco for (Abbatini). 297, 298; 280 136, 176; 108 South Pacific, 400; guardian figure.
Sta. Maria delle Carceri, Prato (San- Savoldo, Girolamo, 265-66, 288; St. 38-39; 23; mask. 39, 422; 25
228; 213
gallo). Matthew and the Angel, 265-66, 288; Sower (Millet), 362; 346
Sta. Maria delle Grazie. Milan: mural 249 space, 24; Cubist, 423; in Gothic sculp-
(Leonardo da Vinci), 242-44, 254, Savonarola, Girolamo, 236, 247 ture, 176; Suprematist, 426
261; 226 Scenes from a Dtonssiac M\stery Cult, Spain. 127. 196, 302, 355. 356; art: Ba-
Sta. Maria Maggiore, Rome: mosaic, from Villa of the Mysteries. Pompeii. roque, 300-30 1 Mannerist, 263-65:
;
St. Wolfgang Altarptece (Pacher), 213, She-Wolf Etruscan. 91. 163; 80 328, 423
273; 197 Sicily, 67, 90, 138, 176 Still Life with Apples (Cezanne). 395-96,
Salisbury, England: Cathedral, 127, Siddons, Sarah: portraits of (Gains- 418; 390
;
526 • INDEX
Stirling, James: Neue Staatsgalerie, Thinker (Rodin), 390-91, 392, 407, Truth (Lemieux), 497; 519
Stuttgart, 481-83; 500 413; 384, 414 Tsar Cannon Outside the Spassky Gale,
Stone Breakers (Courbet), 377, 382; 365 Third-Class Carriage (Daumier), 361, Moscow, stereophotograph, 375; 363
Stonehenge, 36-37, 458, 463; 21, 22 399,418; 344 Tschumi, Bernard, 465, 483; Pare de la
Story of Jacob and Esau (Ghiberti), 221, Third of May, 1808 (Goya), 356; 337 Villette, Paris, 483; 501
230; 205 Thirty Years' War, 302, 333 Tub (Degas), 383; 373
Strasbourg, France: Cathedral, portal Thompson, Florence: portrait of Turin, Italy, 299; Palazzo Carignano,
sculpture, 172-73, 174, 184, 190, (Lange), 491; 491 facade (Guarini), 299; 283
208; 165 Thompson, James, 365 Turner, Joseph Mallord William, 365-
Strawberry Hill, Twickenham (Wal- Thomson, John: Street Life in London, 67, 384, 386, 387; Slave Ship, 360,
pole and Robinson), 371; 357, 358 410 365-67, 387; 351
London (Thomson), 410
Street Life in Three Dancers (Picasso), 430, 434, 456, Tuscany, 90; art: Baroque, 286;
Stryker, Roy, 491 462; 433 Gothic, 188, 193; Romanesque, 149,
Studio of a Painter (Courbet), 377-79, Three Flags (Johns), 449; 457 169, 226. See also Etruscan art
388; 566 Three Goddesses, pediment sculpture, Tutankhamen, king of Egypt, 50; cof-
Study for the Libyan Sibyl (Michelangelo), Parthenon, Athens, 83-84, 238; 72 fin of, 50; 39
17-18,249; 5 Three Musicians (Picasso), 430, 456; 432 TV Buddha 474; 490
(Paik),
Stuttgart, Germany: Neue Staats- Tiepolo, Giovanni Battista, 335, 354; Twickenham, England:
Strawberry
galerie (Stirling, Wilford, and Associ- frescoes, Kaisersaal, Wiirzburg, 335; Hill (Walpole and Robinson), 371;
ates), 481-83; 500 323, 324 357, 358
style, 13-14 Tintoretto, Jacopo, 257, 261, 263, 266, Twittering Machine (Klee), 435; 440
Suger, Abbot, 158-60, 161, 162, 163, 282, 290, 291, 300, 301, 304, 305, Two Forms (Moore), 409, 458, 490; 467
165, 169, 170, 172, 178 306, 310, 319, 325; Last Supper, 261, 291 Gallery, New York, 486
Sulla, Roman dictator, 96, 99 265, 266; 247 Two Paths of Life (Rejlander), 411-12;
Sullivan, Louis, 408, 409, 475, 477; Titian, 19, 241, 242, 255-57; Baccha- 411
Wainwright Building, St. Louis, 408; nal, 255-56, 268, 283, 304, 416; 240;
407 Christ Crowned with Thorns, 257, 261
Sumerian art, 52-59, 130 242; Man with a Glove, 256-57, 310; Unique Forms of Continuity in Space (Boc-
Sunday Afternoon on the Grande Jatte 241; Rape of Europa, 19; 7 cioni), 459-60; 470
(Seurat), 397; 392 Titus, Roman emperor, 103; Arch of, United States: Impressionism, 387-
Suprematism, 425-26, 460-61, 483 relief, 72, 103-4, 221, 222, 288; 96 90; Neoclassicism, 352; 19th-century
Surrealism, 403, 433-34, 438, 439, Ti Watching a Hippopotamus Hunt, photography, 410-1 1, 413-14; Ro-
454, 458, 462, 466, 484, 485, 492, Tomb of Ti, Saqqara, 44, 50, 57, 79, manticism, 367—68; 20th-century
493, 495 81; 29 art: architecture, 475, 479; painting,
Sutton Hoo Ship-Burial: purse cover, Toilet of Venus (Boucher), 327, 328, 370; 415, 419, 428-29, 431, 437, 438-41,
130, 133; 117 313 444-47, 448, 449-53; photography,
Symbolism, 399-402, 406-7, 454. See ToiletofVenus{Vouel),\9,3\9-20,327; 485-90, 493-94, 497; sculpture,
also disguised symbolism 306 464-74
Synthetic Cubism, 423, 430, 433, 492 Toledo, Spain, 262; S. Tome, painting Ur, Iraq, 52; inlay panel from sound-
Svnthetism, 399 (El Greco), 264-65, 298, 404; 248 box of harp, 56, 69, 130, 152; 44;
Tomb of Henry II and Catherine de'Medici, Ram and Tree, offering stand, 55, 56;
St. Denis, Paris (Primaticcio and 43
Talenti, Francesco: Florence Cathe- 270
Pilon), 285; 269, Urban II, pope, 144
dral (Sta. Maria del Fiore), 169-70; Tomb of Khnum-hotep. See Beni Urban VIII, pope, 290; Glorification of
162 Hasan the Reign of (Da Cortona), 291; 276
Tanner, Henry O., 388-90; Banjo Les- Tomb of Leonardo Bruni (Rossellino), urban planning, 93, 480-81
son, 390; 383 223, 250; 207 Uruk (Warka), Iraq: "White Temple,"
Target with Four Faces (Johns), 27; 17 Tomb of the Lionesses, Tarquinia: 54-55; 40, 41
Tarquinia, Italy: Tomb of the Li- painting, 91; 81 Utrecht, The Netherlands, 302;
onesses, wall painting, 91; 81 Tomb of Ti, Saqqara: relief, 44, 50, 57, Schroder House (Rietveld), 475-76,
Tallin, Vladimir, 426,460-61; project 79,81; 29 477, 478, 479; 493
for Monument to the Third Interna- tombs, 42, 44, 45-46, 48, 50, 52, 62,
tional, 461; 472 66, 85, 90, 91-92, 223, 250-51, 285
Tell Asmar, Iraq: Abu Temple, statues, tonalism, 18-19 van names with van, van de, and van der
:
55, 57; 42 "Toreador Fresco," Minoan, 65; 52 are listed under next element of
Tell elAmarna, Egypt, 49 To the Unknown Painter (Kiefer), 454- name
Tempest (Giorgione), 254, 255, 256, 56; 464 Van Der Zee, James, 490; Wife of the
257, 283, 326; 239 Toulouse, France: St.-Sernin, 145-46, Reverend Becton, Pastor of Salem Meth-
Temple of Amun-Mut-Khonsu. See 147, 149, 159, 161; 131-33; sculp- odist Church, 490; 509
Luxor ture from, 150, 151; 140 Vanitas still lifes, 313-15
Temple of Aphaia, Aegina: pediment Toulouse-Lautrec, Henri de, 403-4; Vasarely, Victor, 447-48; Vega, 448,
sculpture, 81, 83, 86, 407; 68 At the Moulin Rouge; 404; 400 497; 455
Temple of Artemis, Ephesus: column Tournachon, Gaspard F£lix. See Nadar Vasari, Giorgio, 260-61
drum sculpture, 22-23; 12 Tower of Babel, 54, 57, 156; 147 vase painting, Greek, 68, 69
Temple of Athena Nike, Athens, 76, Traini, Francesco, 188; Triumph of Vatican, Rome, Italy, 240, 295; 277;
77; 64 Death, 188; 181 Stanza della Segnatura, frescoes
"Temple of Poseidon," Paestum, 74, Trajan, Roman emperor, 104; Column (Raphael), 253-54; 237. See also St.
76; 62 of, Rome, 72, 104, 113, 238, 333; 97 Peter's; Sistine Chapel
temples, 53-55, 49, 55, 74, 97, 227; Traveler (Popova), 425, 497; 426 Vega (Vasarely), 448, 497; 455
Greek, 72-78, 80; 60 Treasury of Atreus, Mycenae, 66; 53 Veii, Italy: Apollo from, 91; 79
Temptation of St. Anthony (Schongauer), Treasury of the Siphnians. See Delphi Velazquez, Diego, 300-301, 355, 380
216,273; 199 Treatise on Architecture (Alberti), 226, 388; Maids of Honor, 300-301, 355
Terry, Ellen: portrait of (Cameron), 227-28, 240 379, 388; 285
412; 412 Due de Berry (Lim-
Tres Riches Heures du Velde, Henri van de, 409-10, 475
Theater (Van de Velde), Werkbund bourg Brothers), 193, 204, 284, 362; Theater, Werkbund Exhibition, Co
Exhibition, Cologne, 409-10; 409 184 logne, 409-10; 409
Theresa of Avila, St., 286, 296-97; Ec- Tribute Money (Masaccio), 231 215 ; Veneziano, Domenico, 231-33, 254
stasy of (Bernini), 296-98; 279 Triumph of Death (Traini), 188; 181 Madonna and Child with Saints, 231-
1SDEX • 527
32, 233; 276 416; 395 ure of the Schuylkill River (Eakins), 388,
Venice, Italy, 144, 208, 221, 237, 239, Visitation (Broederlam), 190-93. 201, 390, 428; 382
254, 261-65, 266 204; 183 William the Conqueror, king of En-
Venus of Willendorf, Austria, 35, 63; 20 Visitation, portal sculpture, Reims Ca- gland, 138, 146, 147, 156
Vermeer, Jan, 25, 301, 315, 327, 456; thedral, 173, 174, 176, 179, 218; 166 William the Silent, count of Nassau,
Letter, 309, 315, 456; 301; Woman Vitruvius, 97 302
Holding a Balance, 25-26; 16 Vollard, Ambroise: portrait of (Pi- Williams, William Carlos, 431
Veronese, Paolo, 266-68, 269, 319, casso), 422-23, 430, 497; 423 Williams, William T, 446; Batman,
335; Christ in the House of Levi, 266- Voltaire, Francois-Marie, 325, 344; 446; 454
67; 250 portrait of (Houdon), 350, 369; 331 Winckelmann, Johann Joachim, 344,
Verrocchio, Andrea del, 224-25, 240, Vouet, Simon, 319-20; Toilet of Venus, 349, 350
242; Putto with Dolphin, 224-25, 269; 19, 319-20, 327; 306 Witz, Conrad, 212, 216; Miraculous
209; tombs for St. Peter's, Rome, 224 Draught of Fishes, 212, 382; 195
Versailles, France: Palace of, 316, 322- Wolfe, Gen. James: Death of (West),
23, 324, 332; Garden Front (Le Vau Wainwright Building, St. Louis (Sul- 347-49, 376; 328
and Hardouin-Mansart), 322; 308; livan), 408; 407 Woman Holding a Balance (Vermeer),
park (Le N6tre), 322-23; pool (Atget Walpole, Horace, 37 1 ; Strawberry 25-26; 16
photograph), 484-85; 502; Salon Hill,Twickenham. 371; 357, 358 Woman 11 (De Kooning), 441. 442; 448
de la Guerre (Hardouin-Mansart, Warhol, Andy, 450-51; Gold Marilyn women artists, 290, 383, 384, 425, 452,
Lebrun, and Covsevox), 322, 324; Monroe, 450-51; 459 469, 470
309 Water Lilies (Monet), 384-86; 376 Women Regents of the Old Men's Home at
Vettii, House of. See Pompeii Watson and the Shark (Copley), 349; 329 Haarlem (Hals), 308-9; 292
Vicenza, Italy: Villa Rotonda (Pal- Watteau, Jean-Antoine, 325-26, 327, woodcut, "Late Gothic," 215
ladio),271,350:255 329, 330, 331; Pilgrimage to Cythera, Wordsworth, William, 353
Victor Hugo (Rodin), 413; 414 326, 329, 330; 312 World War I, 419, 424, 432, 435-36,
Victoria, queen of England, 412 Wedding Portrait (J. van Evck), 208, 461
Sun (opera), 426
Victory over the 260; 189, 190 World War II, 238,456
Vienna, Austria: St. Charles Bor- Wedricus, Abbot: Gospel Book of, 155- Wounded Bison, Altamira, Spain, 33; 18
romaeus (Fischer von Erlach), 333; 56, 179; 145 Wright, Frank Lloyd, 475, 478, 479;
322 Weimar School of Arts and Crafts, 409 Guggenheim Museum, New York,
Vienna Genesis, 114-15; 107 Werkbund Exhibition, Cologne, 409- 24; 14, 15; Robie House, Chicago,
View from a Window at Gras (Ni^pce), 10; Theater (Van de Velde), 409-10; 475; 491, 492
373; 361 409 Wiirzburg, Germany: Episcopal Palace
Vigee-Lebrun, Marie-Louise-£lisa- West, Benjamin, 344, 347-49, 363. (Neumann), 333; Kaisersaal, 333-
beth, 328-29; Duchesse de Polignac, Death of General Wolfe, 347-49, 376; 35; 323; frescoes for (Tiepolo), 335;
328-29; 316 328 323, 324
Vignola.Giacomo: IlGesu, Rome, 272; Weston, Edward, 488; Pepper, 488; 506
256 Wevden, Rogier van der, 208, 212,
Vikings, 131, 138, 143 2i6; Descent from the Cross, 208, 213,
Villa Farnesina, Rome: fresco 303, 349; 191
X (Bladen), 464; 476
(Raphael), 254, 256, 291; 238 Xerxes I, king of Persia, 60
Wheat Field and Cypress Trees (van
Village Bride (Greuze), 344-45; 325 Gogh), 398-99; 393
Villa Ludovisi, Rome: ceiling fresco Whistler, James Abbott McNeill, 387-
(Guercino), 291; 275 88, 412, 419, 439; Arrangement in Youth and Demon of Death, Etruscan cin-
Villa Mairea, Noormarkku, Finland Black and Gray: The Artist's Mother, erary container, 91-92; 82
(Aalto), 479; 496 387; 379; Nocturne in Black and Gold:
Villani, Filippo, 217 The Falling Rocket, 387-88, 419; 380
Villa of the Mysteries, Pompeii: wall White, Minor, 493; Ritual Branch, 493;
painting, 107'; 100 514 zaum, 424
Villa Rotonda, Vicenza (Palladio), 271, "White Temple," Uruk. 54-55; 40, 41 Zeus. See Poseidon
350; 255 Wife of the Reverend Bee ton. Pastor of Zeus, Altar of. See Pergamum
Villa Savoye, Poissv-sur-Seine (Le Cor- Salem Methodist Church (Van Der Zee), ziggurats, 53-54, 127
busier), 478, 479, 481; 495 490; 509 Zoser, Step Pyramid of. See Saqqara
Virgin of the Rocks (Leonardo da Vinci), Wilde, Oscar, 401 Zuccone (Prophet) (Donatello), 219-20,
242, 245; 225 Wilford, Michael. See Neue Staats- 231; 202
Sermon (Jacob Wrestling
Vision After the galerie Zurbaran, Francisco de, 300; St. Sera-
with the Angel) (Gauguin), 400, 408, William Rush Carving His Allegorical Fig- pion, 300, 347; 284
LIST OF CREDITS
The author and publisher wish to thank the libraries, Marburg, Marburg/Lahn: 126, 155, 156, 163, 164, 165,
museums, galleries,and private collectors named in the 387; Fototeca Unione, Rome: 82, 84, 85, 86, 89; Alison
picture captions for permitting the reproduction of Frantz, Princeton, New Jersey: 54, 64; Gabinetto
works of art in their collections and for supplying the Fotografico Nazionale, Rome: 278; G.E.K.S., New York:
necessary- photographs. Photographs from other sources 15, 97, 113, 152; Copvright Courtesv Gemini GEL, Los
are gratefully acknowledged below. Angeles: 479; Giraudon, Paris: 147, 184, 225, 228, 257,
258, 331, 333, 338, 341, 368, 372; Lucien Herve, Paris:
Alinari, Florence: 59, 76, 83, 93, 96, 98, 106, 192, 200, 495; Hirmer Fotoarchiv, Munich: 29, 31, 32, 33, 34, 36,
202, 203, 204, 205, 209, 210, 222, 226, 231, 234, 235, 51, 52, 53, 66, 70, 71, 78, 95, 114; Timothy Hursley,
236, 281; Courtesy Department of Library Services, Litde Rock, Arkansas: 500; A. F. Kerning, London: 136,
American Museum of Natural History: 27; Wayne An- 159, 357; Nikos Kontos, Athens: 1, 56, 69, 74; Jannes
drews, Grosse Pointe, Michigan: 335; Copyright Ar- Linders, Rotterdam, Holland: 493; Copyright Peter
chives Centrales Iconographiques, Brussels: 143, 286; Mauss/Esto: 501; Rollie McKenna, Stonington, Connecu-
Art Resource, New York: 377, 433, 477; Arxiu MAS (A. v cut: 212; Ministry of Works, London, Crown Copyright:
R. MAS. Barcelona): 191, 194, 285, 288, 336, 337, 408; 332; National Monuments Record, London: 359; Nip-
Bildarchiv Oesterr, Nationalbibliothek, Vienna: 103; pon Television Network Corporation: 232, 233; Cour-
Joachim Blauel/Artotl]ek: 261, 287, 294; Hedrich Bless- tesy Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago: 35,
ing, Ltd., Chicago: 491; Arnold von Borsig, Berlin: 161; 49; Eric Pollitzer, New York; 394; Josephine Powell, Rome:
Brassai, Galerie Louise Leiris, Paris: 2; Bulloz, Paris: 142; 115; Antonio Quattrone, Florence (Courtesy Olivetti):
Caisse Nationale des Monuments Historiques, Paris: 19, 215; Mario Quattrone, Florence: 219, 245; Rheinisches
134, 141, 154, 169, 241, 264, 269, 270, 355, 356, 373; Bildarchiv, Cologne: 168; R.M.N., Paris: 45, 178, 179, 196,
Cameraphoto, Piero Codato, Venice: 176, 250; Ludovico 221, 227, 289, 302, 31 1, 312, 314, 325, 339, 340, 342, 343,
Canali: 9, 62, 80, 81, 91, 99, 100, 105, 1 10, 112, 139, 180, 347, 366, 369, 371, 379; Roger-Viollet, Paris: 360; Jean
181, 207, 213, 214, 224, 238, 243, 246, 247, 251, 266, Roubier, Paris: 133, 135, 151, 166; Scala, Florence: 177,
271, 273, 274, 275, 276, 279, 354; Canali Bertoni: 172, 217, 237; Helga Schmidt-Glassner, Stuttgart: 322; Marco
201, 208; Canali Rapuzzi: 57; Copyright Country Life, and Toni Schneiders, Lindau: 324; S. Sunami, New York:
London: 334, 358; Courtesv Culver Pictures, New York: 23; WimSwaan, New York: 3, 39, 138,153, 160, 162, 173,
363; Deutscher Kunstverlag, Munich: 121, 167; 254, 282, 308, 309, 321; Copyright Caroline Tisdall, Cour-
Deutsches Archaologische Institut, Rome: 40, 111; Jean tesv Ronald Feldman Fine Arts, New York: 489; Marvin
Dieuzade, Toulouse: 132; Fischbach Gallery, New York: Trachtenberg. New York: 63, 255, 323, 388; Yan Photo
476; Fotocielo, Rome: 277; Foto Grassi, Siena: 175; Foto- Reportage, Toulouse: 140.
ILLUSTRATION
COPYRIGHTS
Copyright by the Trustees of the Ansel Adams Publish- right ARS, N.Y./SPADEM, 1991: 2, 8, 370, 376, 402, 405,
ing Rights Trust. All rights reserved, 1991: 507; Copy- 422, 423, 432, 433, 434, 437, 438, 455, 502; Copvright
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477; Copvnght ARS, N.Y./ADAGP, 1991: 375, 418, 420, Kunst/VAGA, 1991: 441, 442, 489, 512; Copvright Mag-
424, 430,' 439, 449, 466, 469, 473, 474, 475, 513; Copv- num, N.Y.: 503; Copvright Nolde-Stiftung Seebiill, Neu-
right ARS, N.Y./Cosmopress, 1991: 440; Copvright ARS, kirchen: 419; Copvright SIAE/VAGA, 1991: 428;
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The revised and enlarged fourth edition of the brings life to it. By adding new examples of
new
highly acclaimed A Basic History of Art offers the expression and revising the text to in-
artistic
reader many important new features: clude the most recent scholarly thought, he
makes the book even more relevant to our com-
A
completely new, elegant design that makes plex modern world.
the book more attractive and useful than ever
519 illustrations, including 219 in full color
New illustrations of works in situ, as well as ABOUT THE AUTHORS
improved diagrams and plans
An expanded introduction, which features a H. W. Janson was Professor of Fine Arts at New
section on art appreciation, intended to help the York University and its graduate school, the In-
beginner become more sensitive to the visual stitute of Fine Arts, until his death in 1982. For
components of art more than twenty-five v°ars he served as Chair-
Concise, informative introductions to each of man of the Department of Fine Arts at Wash-
the four parts of the book, which provide a his- ington Square College of New York University.
torical context for the discussions that follow His publications include the world-famous
Expanded contextual treatment of the Ba- History of Art, The Story of Painting for Voung
roque period and revised discussions of Man- People (with Dora Jane Janson), Key Monuments
nerism and the Rococo of the Histon of Art, Apes and Ape Lore in the
An enlarged and updated section on modern Middle Ages and the Renaissance, The Sculpture of
art, with separate chapters devoted to twentieth- Donatello, 19th-century Art (with Robert Rosen-
century sculpture, architecture, and photog- blum), and 19th-century Sculpture.
raphy Anthony F. Janson is Chief Curator at the
An updated chapter on twentieth-centurv North Carolina Museum of Art in Raleigh. A son
painting, which now also has a more direct of H. W. Janson, he worked closely with his father
chronological organization on the second edition of .4 Basic History of Art
Revised chronological charts listing key works and was responsible for the third edition as well.
of art and contemporaneous events in literature, In addition he has recently brought his consid-
science, and historv erable skills as a teacher, curator, and writer to
An expanded glossary and up-to-date bibli- bear on a major revision of History of Art.
ography
For more than twenty years .4 Basic History of Art Front cover:
has remained unsurpassed as an introduction to
Fernand Leger. The City (detail). 1919.
the fascinating world of artistic creation. Here, Oilon canvas, 7'7"x9'9" (2.31 x 2.97 m).
in one comprehensive volume, is a marvelous The Philadelphia Museum of Art.
overview of the complete range of Western art A. E. Gallatin Collection.
history. From the cave art of our earliest ances- © S.P.A.D.E.M. Y.A.G.A., New York
(figure 434)
tors and the inspiring achievements of ancient
Egypt, Greece, and Rome, the book takes us
Back cover:
through a wide array of Gothic and Renaissance
masterpieces and on to the rich variety of today's Corner of the "Basilica" at Paestum,
Italy, c. 550 B.C. (see figure 62)
art and architecture.
The intelligence and freshness of H. W. Jan-
of A Basic History of Art re-
son's original edition
main. In the fourth edition, Anthony Janson
retains all the virtues of this classic work and Printed in Japan
S V
ISBN 0-13-062878-ti