ART HISTORY

WHAT IS ART HISTORY?

When I rst began learning about the history of art, I remember I wanted to understand one thing above all. I wanted to know the timeline. In other words, the grand story
of one-style-followed-by-the next: Romanticism, Impressionism, Post-Impressionism, Cubism, and so on.

I had the sense that art history was like a relay-race of artists, each passing the baton on from one to another, building up a cause-and-e ect chain of history and
development.

Beyond wanting to know about the -isms, I had other questions too: What was ‘Baroque’ and did it come before or after the Renaissance? Actually, come to think of it,
what was the Renaissance? Did ‘Classical’ refer to classical music or something else altogether? What’s the di erence between ‘modern art’ and ‘contemporary art’?

The truth is, nobody begins to think about the history of art without having rst come across some art in the rst place. Maybe it was a Jackson Pollock drip painting.
Perhaps it was a visit to the Sistine Chapel in Rome. Maybe someone gave you a postcard with a Claude Monet painting on the front.

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 Art history is a stepping stone into various ways of interpreting and
understanding the past.

It uses:

• the object itself;

• history and its artefacts (writings and documents);

• archaeology.

Art history, also called art historiography, historical study of the visual arts, being concerned with identifying, classifying, describing, evaluating, interpreting, and
understanding the art products and historic development of the elds of painting, sculpture, architecture, the decorative arts, drawing, printmaking, photography, interior
design, etc.

Art historical research has two primary concerns. The rst is (1) to discover who made a particular art object (attribution), (2) to authenticate an art object, determining
whether it was indeed made by the artist to whom it is traditionally attributed, (3) to determine at what stage in a culture’s development or in an artist’s career the object
in question was made, (4) to assay the in uence of one artist on succeeding ones in the historical past, and (5) to gather biographical data on artists and documentation
(provenance) on the previous whereabouts and ownership of particular works of art.

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 There are different approaches:

• the ‘great men (and women)’ approach;

• the style approach (Renaissance, Baroque);

• the movement approach (impressionism, futurism).

The second primary concern of art historical research is to understand the stylistic and formal development of artistic traditions on a large scale and within a broad
historical perspective; this chie y involves the enumeration and analysis of the various artistic styles, periods, movements, and schools of the past.

An extensive knowledge of the historical context in which the artist lived and worked is also necessary, as well as empathy with and understanding of a particular artist’s
ideas, experiences, and insights. Attribution plays a key role in art historical research, because when one art object can be conclusively authenticated (by a signature,
contemporary accounts, or other forms of provenance), other works of a similar or closely related character can be grouped around it and assigned to that particular
artist or period.
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 What is ‘taste’?

good vs. bad taste

‘(good) taste’ is socially and culturally conditioned

on the next slides: Wallis - The Death of Chatterton

and Santos’s C. R. bust

In sociology, taste is an individual's personal, cultural and aesthetic patterns of choice and preference. Taste is drawing distinctions between things such as styles, manners, consumer goods, and works of art and relating to these. Social inquiry of taste is about the human ability to judge what is beautiful, good,
and proper.

Aesthetic preferences and attendance to various cultural events are associated with education and social origin. Di erent socioeconomic groups are likely to have di erent tastes. Social class is one of the prominent factors structuring taste.

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The Death of Chatterton is an oil painting on canvas, by the English Pre-Raphaelite painter Henry Wallis, now in Tate Britain, London. Two smaller versions, sketches or
replicas, are held by the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery and the Yale Center for British Art.

The subject of the painting was the 17-year-old English early Romantic poet Thomas Chatterton, shown dead after he poisoned himself with arsenic in 1770. Chatterton
was considered a Romantic hero for many young and struggling artists in Wallis's day.

Wallis's method and style in Chatterton reveal the importance of his connection to the Pre-Raphaelite movement, seen in the vibrant colours and careful build-up of
symbolic detail. He used a bold colour scheme with a contrasting palette and he exploited the fall of the natural light through the window of the garret to implement his
much loved style at the time, chiaroscuro. Wallis painted the work in a friend's chamber in Gray's Inn, with St Paul's Cathedral on the skyline visible through the window.
Art history is not an elitist exercise of determining what is ‘good,’ ‘the
best’ or ‘bad’ art.

art history vs. art appreciation/connoisseurship

Three layers:

- aesthetics (what you like);

- criticism (what you think is good — also a moral judgment);

- history (who, what, where, when, how).

 What is the ‘canon of art’?

The conventional timeline of artists who are sometimes considered as ‘Old Masters’ or ‘Great Artists’. Today’s art history attempts to question these rules of ‘greatness’, considering issues of gender, race, class, and geography among others.
 Problems:

• working backwards from the present means that a style becomes

inevitable;

• the idea of progress, that art is headed in some way ever forward.

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El Greco, The Vision of Saint John (1608-1614)

The painting is a fragment from a large altarpiece commissioned for the church of the hospital of Saint John the Baptist in Toledo. It depicts a passage in the Bible, Revelation (6:9-11) describing the opening of the Fifth Seal at the end of time, and the distribution of white robes to "those who had been slain for
the work of God and for the witness they had borne." The missing upper part may have shown the Sacri cial Lamb opening the Fifth Seal. The canvas was an iconic work for twentieth-century artists and Picasso, who knew it in Paris, used it as an inspiration for Les Demoiselles d’Avignon.

El Greco's dramatic and expressionistic style was met with puzzlement by his contemporaries but found appreciation by the 20th century. El Greco is regarded as a precursor of both Expressionism and Cubism, while his personality and works were a source of inspiration for poets and writers such as Rainer
Maria Rilke and Nikos Kazantzakis.
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Jean Fouquet - Arrival of the Emperor Charles IV in front of Saint-Denis - 1460

Earlier, less mathematically precise versions can be seen in the work of the miniaturist Jean Fouquet. Leonardo da Vinci in a lost notebook spoke of curved perspective lines.[2]

Examples of approximated ve-point perspective can also be found in the self-portrait of the mannerist painter Parmigianino seen through a shaving mirror. Other examples are the curved mirror in the Arnol ni Portrait (1434) by the Flemish Primitive Jan van Eyck, or A View of Delft (1652) by the Dutch Golden
Age painter Carel Fabritius.
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 ‘high art’ vs. material culture: utilitarian objects are not high art

but!

• this does not work with many non-Western cultures

• many cultures have no word for art: ‘handthought’

 the hierarchy of genres

• history painting
• portraits
• genre
• landscapes
• still life

The hierarchies in gurative art are those initially formulated for painting in 16th-century Italy, which held sway with little alteration until the early 19th century. These were formalized and promoted by the academies in Europe between the 17th century and the modern era, of which the most in uential became
the French Académie de peinture et de sculpture, which held a central role in Academic art. The fully developed hierarchy distinguished between:[1]

History painting, including historically important, religious, mythological, or allegorical subjects

Portrait painting

Genre painting or scenes of everyday life

Landscape and cityscape art (landscapists were called "common footmen in the Army of Art" by the Dutch theorist Samuel van Hoogstraten)

Animal painting

Still life

The hierarchy was based on a distinction between art that made an intellectual e ort to "render visible the universal essence of things" (imitare in Italian) and that which merely consisted of "mechanical copying of particular appearances" (ritrarre).[2] Idealism was privileged over realism in line with Renaissance
Neo-Platonist philosophy.
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The Surrender of Breda (1634)

SUNFLOWERS

Vincent van Gogh (1853 - 1890), Arles, January 1889

oil on canvas, 95 cm x 73 cm

Credits (obliged to state): Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam (Vincent van Gogh Foundation)

Van Gogh’s paintings of Sun owers are among his most famous. He did them in Arles, in the south of France, in 1888 and 1889. Vincent painted a total of ve large canvases with sun owers in a vase, with three shades of yellow ‘and nothing else’. In this way, he demonstrated that it was possible to create an
image with numerous variations of a single colour, without any loss of eloquence.

The sun ower paintings had a special signi cance for Van Gogh: they communicated ‘gratitude’, he wrote. He hung the rst two in the room of his friend, the painter Paul Gauguin, who came to live with him for a while in the Yellow House. Gauguin was impressed by the sun owers, which he thought were
‘completely Vincent’. Van Gogh had already painted a new version during his friend’s stay and Gauguin later asked for one as a gift, which Vincent was reluctant to give him. He later produced two loose copies, however, one of which is now in the Van Gogh Museum.
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Still life (by Francisco Zurbarán, 1633)

This extraordinary painting by Zurbarán, the only signed and dated still life by this great master of the school of Seville, has been widely admired as a masterpiece of the genre. To devout Spanish Catholics in the 17th century, the apparently humble objects portrayed here contained signi cant religious meaning.
The measured placement of the three motifs, for example, would have been instantly understood as an allusion to the Holy Trinity. The painting has also been interpreted as an homage to the Virgin, with the oranges, their blossoms, and the cup of water symbolizing her purity, and the thornless rose referring to
her Immaculate Conception.

Zurbarán depicted the physical character of the objects, and the space they inhabit, with unparalleled focus and skill. By modeling the rough-skinned yellow citrons with hints of green and russet, he suggests the fruit’s protuberance and weight. The arrangement of the orange leaves creates a rhythm of light and
shadow, echoed again in the re ective surfaces of the pewter plates. Presented as a quiet, meditative piece within a shallow, minimally described space, this still life evokes a mystical intensity that transcends time in its appeal.

A recent cleaning has removed opaque layers of varnish and discolored retouches, revealing once again the clearly de ned edges of the table, the four decorative inlays at each corner, and Zurbarán’s characteristic skill in describing the rough, textural skin of the citrus fruit. The welcome balance between the
dark, atmospheric background, the warm tones of the fruit and basket, and the cooler tones of the silver plate and ceramic cup have been restored.

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I have seized the light. I have arrested its ight.

LOUIS DAGUERRE, 1839

The exposure time for the image was around seven minutes, and although the street would have been busy with tra c and pedestrians, it appears deserted. Everything
moving was too fast to register on the plate.

The exception is the man at the lower-left who sat still long enough to appear in the photograph. The person cleaning his boots is also visible, although not as distinctly.

It has been speculated that instead of a shoeshine boy, the man stood at a a pump. However, comparison with another image taken by Daguerre of the same spot at
noon reveals boxes used to hold brushes and polishes.

Like every Daguerreotype — the rst publicly announced photographic process, and named after Daguerre — the photograph was a mirror image. Here is the image
reversed back to show the view as Daguerre saw it:
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Claude Monet painted The Poppy Field in 1873 on his return from the United Kingdom (in 1871) when he settled in Argenteuil with his family until 1878. It was a time that
provided the artist with great ful llment as a painter, despite the failing health of Camille. Paul Durand-Ruel, Monet's art dealer, helped support him during this time,
where he found great comfort from the picturesque landscapes that surrounded him and provided him with plenty of subject matter from which to choose. It was a time
that Monet's Plein air works would develop, and this particular painting was shown at the rst Impressionist exhibition of 1874.

This beautifully depicted summer's day is captured in all its glory with the vibrant poppies complementing the wispy clouds in a clear blue sky. In the landscape, a mother
and child pair in the foreground and another in the background are merely a pretext for drawing the diagonal line that structures the painting. Two separate color zones
are established, one dominated by red, the other by a bluish-green. The young woman with the sunshade and the child in the foreground is probably the artist's wife,
Camille, and their son Jean.

Monet diluted the contours and constructed a colorful rhythm with blobs of paint starting from a sprinkling of poppies; the disproportionately large patches in the
foreground indicate the primacy he put on visual impression. A step towards abstraction had been taken.
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Old Woman Frying Eggs is a genre painting by Diego Velázquez, produced during his Seville period. The date is not precisely known but is thought to be around the turn of 1618 before his de nitive move to Madrid in 1623.

Velázquez was eighteen or nineteen when he painted this remarkable picture. It clearly demonstrates his air for painting people and everyday objects directly from life. His fascination with contrasting materials and textures and the play of light and shadow on opaque and re ective surfaces resulted in brilliant
passages of painting, especially the eggs cooking in hot oil and the varied domestic utensils. At the start of his career Velázquez painted a number of these kitchen or tavern scenes, called 'bodegones' in Spanish.

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Portrait of Pope Innocent X (1650)

Perhaps the most famous portrait ever to be executed in the history of art, Velázquez's Portrait of Pope Innocent X is a fascinating and profound revelation of the personality and psychology of one of the bitterest Popes ever to haunt the Vatican.

Pope Innocent X, also known as Jambattista Pan li, was born in Rome on May 6, 1574 to parents Camillo Pan li and Flaminia de Bubalis. The Pamphilis were historically one of the most powerful families in Europe, and little Jambattista was groomed from birth to assume his role as the most powerful man in
Christendom.

After studying jurisprudence at the Collegio Romano and serving as a member of the Council of Trent, the Inquisition, Jurisdiction, and Immunity, Jambattista was elected as the successor to Urban VIII on September 15, 1644, when he o cially became Pope Innocent X.

His papal reign was marred by violence and suspicions of impropriety: he legally attacked the Barberini (the major rivals of the Pamphilis in Rome) for "misappropriation of public moneys," o ended France to the point that the country invaded the Ecclesiastical States, helped Venice (with whom the papacy had
held a rocky relationship at best) to ght the Turks, and refused to acknowledge the succession of Portugal in 1640.

Making matters even worse, Innocent X was accused of immoral relations with the wife of his late brother, one Olimpia Maidalchini. Contemporary accounts relate how this woman held the Pope completely under her sway, manipulating him in his political decisions. In short, Innocent X was a suspicious,
crotchety and relatively ine ective leader.

The Commission:

Velázquez executed this enormously in uential portrait around 1650, during his second trip to Italy. By painting the Pope, Velázquez entered a prestigious lineage of papal painters, including two of the principal inspirations for this painting, those masters of the Italian Renaissance Raphael and Titian.

Perhaps most importantly, however, Velázquez was also courting papal favor as part of his e orts to gain admission into the most prestigious of Spanish societies, the Order of Santiago.

This portrait not only won him the Pope's favor in this pursuit, but in 1650 also gained Velázquez entry into the most prestigious arts organizations in Rome: the Accademia di San Luca, and the Congregazione dei Virtuosi al Pantheon.
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As the title suggests, Francis Bacon’s Study After Velazquez’s Portrait of Innocent X (1953) was inspired by the 17th century portrait Pope Innocent X (1650) by Spanish
painter Diego Velazquez. In fact, Bacon was fascinated with the gure of the Pope throughout the 1950s and and the early 1960s, painting around fty portraits of the
subject matter. One of the starting points for this series was Velazquez’s portrait: Bacon was trans xed with the painting keeping several reproductions in his studio.
However, while visiting Rome in 1954, he chose not see the original painting at the Galleria Doria Pamphilj. Velazquez, who painted the Pope at the height of his political
power, created a portrait that embodied his authority and status as a spiritual leader. Bacon’s Study After Velazquez’s Portrait of Innocent X shatters this image with the
depiction of the screaming Pope.

His papal portrait presents a critical perspective of traditional papal portraits, as well as a broader critique of Christianity. For Bacon, the Pope is a kind of tragic gure,
that renounces all individuality and self-identity to uphold a public role of a sti ing belief system. This system of oppression is the source of violence Bacon portrays in
Study After Velazquez’s Portrait of Innocent X. By painting vertical folds of color, he creates a unique pictorial space that gives the illusion of an isolated space or cage - a
pictorial device known as ‘space frames’. Bacon’s use of ‘space frames’ relates to the work of his contemporary, Italian sculptor Alberto Giacometti. The ‘space-frame’
was a motif in Giacometti’s sculpture Cage (1930-31) and a framing device in his later paintings like Diego Seated (1948). The technique of distancing the gure was
applied by Old Masters, for instance Titian in his Portrait of Cardinal Filippo Archinto (ca. 1558).

In Bacon’s case the ‘space frame’ can be a visual representation of psychological entrapment, which is also conveyed through the Pope’s chilling cry of horror. The
screaming Pope can be linked to post existential angst and Friedrich Nietzsche’s concept of the ‘death of God’. Bacon, a staunch atheist, exposes the Pope as an empty
symbol by visually deconstructing the powerful gure portrayed by Velazquez.

The disintegrated gure in Study After Velazquez’s Portrait of Innocent X is traced to Bacon’s earlier painting Head VI (1949). This was the rst time Bacon referenced
Velazquez’s Pope Innocent X. The study of the head develops into a full portrait in Study After Velazquez’s Portrait of Innocent X. In both paintings color played an
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important role in transforming Velazquez’s digni ed portrait painted in soft and muted tones. Bacon used a garish purple to replace the lush red of the Pope’s cape, and
he heightened the color contrast with the translucent yellow and gold throne. The purple cape in particular is recurring in Bacon’s papal portraits, for example Pope I
(1951) and Untitled (Pope) (c.1954). The glaring colors against the dark background heighten the sense of drama, and enhance the disturbing atmosphere evoked by
Bacon’s portrait.

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The Surrender of Breda (1634)

Composition[edit]

Velázquez addresses the details of many individuals by painting the setting across two halves, where the battle takes place in the background.[6] The surrender portion of the scene takes place in the foreground, with the leading individuals placed clearly in the center. The focus of the composition is in the
foreground, where the exchange of the keys is shown in the very front, while in the background, the smoky sky shows evidence of destruction and death.

Exchange of the key to Spain

The painting depicts many Spanish soldiers in comparison to the fewer number of Dutch soldiers, and the Dutch weapons appear to have been either destroyed, thrown away, or even surrendered as a result of their performance of the battle. In contrast, the victorious Spaniards stand before a mass of upright
lances on the right side of the composition. José Ortega y Gasset described these lances as "the backbone of the entire picture and largely responsible for the impression of calm permeating this essentially lively scene."[7] Velázquez used e ective perception and aerial techniques that support The Surrender of
Breda as one of the nest works by Velázquez. [8]

Color[edit]

The painting's relatively light tonality and bright colors reveal the in uence of Venetian painting.[9] There is no use of violent reds or bright blues; rather calm brown colors with dark shadows in the foreground are used. Also, there is believed to be a connection between Velázquez's use of color, as he had taken a
trip to Italy to study Renaissance art. In addition to the color techniques he became equipped to, Velázquez also gained improved skills with space, perspective and light. [10]

Subject matter[edit]

At the center of the composition, Justinus van Nassau is seen surrendering and handing over the key of the city to Spinola and Spain.[11] Spinola, the Genoese general, commanded the Spanish tercios which included pikeman, swordsman, and musketeers as displayed in the painting. [12]

Historical accuracy[edit]

Detail from the painting

The painting illustrates the exchange of keys that occurred three days after the capitulation between Spain and the Netherlands was signed on June 5, 1625. Hence, the focus of the painting is not on the battle itself, but rather the reconciliation. At the center of the painting, literally and guratively, is the key
given to Ambrogio Spinola by Justin of Nassau. This battle painting is notable for its static and sentimental qualities, as Velázquez left out the blood and gore that would normally be linked to the violence of such battles.[19]

According to the statement made by eye-witnesses, both [Spinola and Nassau] had dismounted and Spinola awaited the arrival of Justin surrounded by a “crown” of princes and o cers of high birth. The governor then presented himself with his family, kinsfolk and distinguished students of the military
academy, who had been shut up in the place during the siege. Spinola greeted and embraced his vanquished opponent with a kindly expression and still more kindly words, in which praised the courage and endurance of the protracted defense.[20]

One of Spinola's ags in the painting

The extraordinary respect and dignity Spinola demonstrated towards the Dutch army is praised through The Surrender of Breda. Spinola “had forbidden his troops to jeer at, or otherwise abuse the vanquished Dutch, and, according to a contemporary report, he himself saluted Justin.” The painting
demonstrates the glimpses of humanity that can be exposed as a result of the war and commends Spinola's consideration for Nassau and the Dutch army.[21]

Velázquez's relationship with Spinola makes The Surrender of Breda especially historically accurate. The depiction of Spinola is undoubtedly accurate, and Spinola's memory of the battle contributed to the perspective with which Velázquez composed the painting.[22] Velázquez “desired in his modest way to
raise a monument to one of the most humane captains of the day, by giving permanence to his true gure in a manner of which he alone had the secret.”[23]

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