Philolog

Fig. 1 Orestes at Delphi, Python Painter, Paestan Red-Figure, circa 345 BCE, British Museum, London (1)

In the Oresteia of Aeschylus (c. 525-455 BCE), his "last and greatest work", (2) Greek literature develops the new kind of justice – marked by reason, juried decision and extenuating circumstances – that eventually superseded the chthonic justice of simplistic vengeance pursued by the mythical Furies (Erinyes), in some way paralleling the legendary precedent of Solon’s (c. 638-558 BCE) legal reforms (3) over Draco (c. 640-20 BCE) and his Draconian harsh legal tradition in Athens. According to Plato (Protagoras 342e-343b), Solon is upheld as one of the legendary Seven Sages of Greece.

Among many other ideas Aeschylus seems to examine in his dramatic tragic trilogy (Agamemnon, Libation Bearers and Eumenides), he might be probing what kind of laws and punishments appear to follow different types of homicide. One of the playwright’s questions may also be whether his Greek society rightly prioritized types of homicide: could one homicide trump another in terms of severity? How could one ultimately find justice in punishing violent crime and where will it all end? Are there ever extenuating circumstances in a violent crime? This is one of the first literary inklings of the rational basis of modern law, however tenuous it may appear to us.

Fig. 2. W.-A. Bouguereau. The Remorse of Orestes, 1862. 227 x 278 cm. Chrysler Collection, Norfolk, Virginia

There is at least one triangulation of familial relationships in the Oresteia between father, mother and son, (also implied between father, daughter, mother), as well as another between husband, wife and offspring. This kinship is reduced here in some way to the meme of the nuclear family as the core of society in the polis. Aeschylus also shows that unchecked violence gives birth to further violence, murder begets murder.

First, although the sacrifice of Iphigenia is described in the tragedy (Agamemnon 200-45, 1503-04, 1525-26) - the tragedy is named after him, although ironically it could as easily have been named Clytemnestra since she is by far the more visible protagonist - Agamemnon has allowed their daughter Iphigenia to be sacrificed for his pride (Agamemnon 223-24). This is filicide, slaying of a child by the parent.

Second, following and stemming from the death of Iphigenia, in the first play Agamemnon is then "justifiably" murdered (Agamemnon 1340-45) by his angry wife Clytemnestra and her lover Aegisthus. This is uxoricide, slaying of a spouse.

Third, their son Orestes - conspiring with his sister Electra - kills his mother Clytemnestra, matricide in Greek society (Libation Bearers 990-95 ff.) because she slew his father. But Aeschylus may suggest this murder may have been seen by some Greeks as mitigated by Apollo's complicity in ordering it (Eumenides 83-84, 594).

Although we do not really see them earlier through the other murders as Aeschylus portrays them, the Erinyes or Furies immediately spring up from the earth after Orestes to hunt him down (Libation Bearers 1048-50). One of them is Tisiphone, specifically the “Avenger of Homicide”, her name literally meaning that very task, like a bloodhound as she tracks the smell of blood (Eumenides 245-47). In the Oresteia, they are Gorgon-like and described as such (Eumenides 47-49).

This is roughly where the Eumenides begins. Even if Apollo has ordered Orestes to punish his mother with death (Eumenides 83-84, 594) – because Clytemnestra has putatively contaminated the family even further in her allotted social role by killing her husband (Agamemnon 1400-01, 1407-14, 1426-30)- nonetheless Orestes is mercilessly hunted by the Furies and flees to Delphi for refuge and purification. Here Apollo informs him the Furies are at least as great as he is; he is a later Olympian, implying they are earlier, more powerful Titans, so he cannot merely call them off (Eumenides 70-73). Instead Apollo tells Orestes to go to Athens for sanctuary. Orestes then obeys Apollo, fleeing to Athens for refuge, with the Furies hot on his trail, where he implores Athena, goddess of wisdom, to intercede on his behalf.

Why do the Furies not visibly pursue Agamemnon or Clytemnestra in the tragic trilogy? Although Cassandra sees their invisible force around the palace in more than mere prolepsis, because her prophecies are cursed in never being believed, Clytemnestra cannot see this warning. Yet why do the Furies appear fully embodied to actively pursue only Orestes? Is it partly possible that Clytemnestra and Orestes are linked by blood, the domain of the Furies, through her womb and her blood in birth, unlike the others? Or is there something far more primal in their vengeance? In their own words put in their collective mouth by Aeschylus, whether he truly agrees or not, Clytemnestra was "not of the same blood as Agamemnon" (therefore less culpable?) but Orestes slew his mother "that nearest bond, a mother's blood" (Eumenides 605-08). This relationship may also render Clytemnestra less culpable for killing Agamemnon in their eyes, not the least because Iphigenia was also thus closer to her mother than her father by the same blood argument. Orestes asks if he is blood kin to his mother, and the Furies seem to answer in the affirmative. How much of this reflects a contemporary or earlier Greek view is difficult to establish, but it certainly has a bearing on the tragic trilogy, one of whose dominant themes is "blood guilt". One can find a likely paronomasic word play in Agamemnon between guilt or "error" (in Aeschylus' Greek ‘αμαρτων hamarton) and "blood" (Greek ‘αιματος haimatos) only one line apart in Agamemnon 214-15. Whether or not the patriarchalisms of the text are justifiable or what the whole story meant in its own time is a whole separate problem, but one amply discussed in Komar, especially in terms of patriarchal vs. matriarchal tensions in the trilogy and Greek society at large seen through the lens of this and related Classical literature. (4)

Finally in the remainder of the Eumenides, taking place at the newly initiated Areopagus ("Mars Hill") court at Athens, Orestes’ trial by a jury of twelve men ensues against the angry demands of the Furies. Apollo comes in the precedent role as advocate, witnessing he has purged his suppliant Orestes of blood (Eumenides 577-79). (5) A hung jury results in equal votes for and against Orestes. Athena herself casts the deciding vote in favor of Orestes (Eumenides 734-44). From this point forward, hung juries should be acquittals to protect the potentially innocent if insufficient compelling evidence is shown. Thereafter after a reasoned speech by the gods, especially Athena, the Erinyes-Furies will be euphemistically known as the “Kindly Ones” (Εὐμενίδες) "retired", but only if they agree, persuaded by her wisdom, to a cave shrine made to them under the Acropolis, which finally appeases them (Eumenides 1043-45).

In the second work of art above, Figure 2, by W.-A. Bouguereau (circa 1862), The Remorse of Orestes, Orestes flees from the murder of his mother Clytemnestra (his knife is seen in her breast). He is pursued by the foul and ugly Furies, always angry, and whose unkempt hair is writhing with snakes because they represent chthonicity, “earth power” (from chthonos, χθονος) derived in or under the earth where snakes reside. Orestes covers his ears from their terrifying screams that will make anyone mad whom they pursue, their potent immediate effect seen in his eyes. They will range the earth after their prey and generally carry burning torches or snakes, just as the artist Rubens has also earlier depicted the Fury Tisiphone in his Tarquin and Lucretia of 1610. (6) Bouguereau has added another iconographic detail for the Furies: their breasts are often suggested as having purplish dark nipples, heavy and taut as if in passion, because the smell of human blood gives them joy (Eumenides 253). It is a night scene because they are the "Children of Night" (Eumenides 322, 416).

In the first work of art above, Figure 1, attributed to the Python Painter (circa 345 BCE), a Paestan red-figure late Classical vase, the scene depicts two conflated venues of Oresteia, Delphi and Athens, although mostly Delphi. The fugitive Orestes - holding the murder weapon in his right hand - crouches for sanctuary at the omphalos or navel stone of Apollo at Delphi, which he bloodies with the gore of homicide (Eumenides 43-44). At his left (our right) is Apollo himself holding a laurel branch. To the right of Orestes (our left) is Athena, to whom he looks and will soon flee in the next development of narrative at Athens. Above and between Orestes and Athena is the tripod of Apollo at Delphi. Above and behind Athena, who stands with one foot on her boundary stone of Athens, where Orestes will be safe at least until judgment, is most likely the ghost or shade of his dead mother Clytemnestra (top left), egging on the Furies (Eumenides 114-16). Above the tripod of Apollo is one Fury, with another Fury next to Apollo, at whom the god gazes. Some suggest instead this winged figure on the far lower right is instead a Nike, winged goddess of victory. If it is truly a snake above her head, however, arguable to some, it should be a Fury. It is clear that the duet of framing gods protect Orestes from the Furies, who are always iconographically depicted with snakes to represent their chthonicity in death-avenging associations. The Delphic moment is depicted near the opening of the Eumenides,(80-175 & ff) a climactic episode where it is still indeterminate which justice will prevail, the old avenging justice of the Furies or the new rational justice of Apollo, god of reason, and Athena, goddess of wisdom. The proleptic Athens moment presupposes the impending trial where Orestes will be acquitted on a "hung jury" vote, which rule Athena imposes and then reinforces by casting the final vote herself for Orestes, a triumph of new law over old.

Notes:

(1) British Museum GR 1917.12-10.1, Python Painter, Paestan Red-Figure (Italian) circa 345 BCE.

(2) H. J. Rose. A Handbook of Greek Literature. Wauconda, IL: Bolchazy Carducci (originally Methuen, 1950), 1996, 154.

(3) R. J. Hopper. The Early Greeks. New York: Harper and Row, 1977, 190

(4) Kathleen Komar. Reclaiming Klytemnestra: Revenge or Reconciliation. University of Illinois Press, 2003, esp. 139& ff.

(5) See Rush Rehm. Greek Tragic Theater. New York, London: Routledge, 1994, 97-104

(6) Elizabeth McGrath. Rubens' Subjects From History II. Corpus Rubenianum Ludwig Burchard, Part XIII (1), vol. II London: Harvey Miller, 1997, 226-27; Patrick Hunt. Roman Use of the Rape of Lucretia and Artists’ Mythic Reuse: Where Britten’s Opera Departs and Returns. Copenhagen: Royal Danish Opera Theater, 2008.

Photo Credits: Figure 1, courtesy of British Museum, London; Fig. 2 public domain, both in Wikimedia.

Copyright © 2009 Dr. Patrick Hunt
Stanford University

http://www.patrickhunt.net

Posted by Patrick Hunt at 10:18 PM | Permalink

Fig. 1 John William Waterhouse, Ulysses and the Sirens, 1891, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, 201 x 99 cm

John William Waterhouse (1849-1917) was an influential and highly acclaimed British painter of historic and antiquarian subjects. He was especially attracted to Classical mythology, painting various scenes from Homer, including his Circe Offering the Cup to Ulysses, 1891, and scenes from the Argonauts (Hylas and the Nymphs, 1896), among others.

The above painting, Ulysses and the Sirens, 1891, is derived from a Greek vase in the British Museum (below), (1) which it both faithfully echoes while radically changing the flatter line of sight of the vase into a deeper perspective where viewers can see into the boat and with Odysseus (Ulysses is his Roman name) tied to the ship's mast in the opposite direction than in the vase scene. The literary narrative of which this is an ekphrasis - a visual rendition of a literary text, like its earlier Greek precedent - is taken from Homer's Odyssey 12.165-217 where Odysseus risks his own and his crew's lives by sailing so close to the Sirens (Seirenes, Σειρηνες). Earlier, the sorceress Circe has told Odysseus exactly how to survive if she cannot talk him out of his adventure, since he is adamant to hear the Sirens and live (12.37-58). He repeats her instructions to his men:

"You must bind me with tight-chafing ropes
so I cannot move a muscle, bound to the spot,
erect at the mast block, lashed by ropes to the mast.
And if I plead, commanding you to set me free,
then lash me faster, rope on pressing rope." (2)

Perhaps the most haunting modern literary retelling of a siren's power is Lampedusa's magical story, Il Professore e la Sirena, the compelling tale of the Siren named Lighea (Ligeia in Greek) who loves a scholar, so unforgettably divine that he finally jumps ship as an old man, a very different twist than imagined here. (3) Even her ancient name recalls a Greek word λιγεια for "clear, shrill sound". Waterhouse depicts a mostly realistic Greek ship with its protective apotropaic pair of eyes guarding the boat stern and the one on the side of the bow (bottom right), paralleling the eye on the ship's side in the original Greek vase painting. Where the Greek vase places Odysseus slightly left of center in the boat image, Waterhouse has placed Odysseus slightly off center to the right. Waterhouse has also made interesting allusions to Greek archaeological artifacts on his ship. In one interesting example, Waterhouse uses Archaic period Greek temple lion head roof rainspouts for the ship's oarholes, where they might also function protectively along with being visually powerfully decorations.

Fig. 2 Archaic temple lion-headed rainspout, Archaeological Museum, Agrigento, Sicily, stone, 6th c. BCE

Close to steep cliffs where danger lurks as Homer describes, "just offshore as far as a man's shout can carry" (Fagles), the Sirens would lure ships into rocks after maddening sailors overboard with their ecstatic songs. Only Odysseus can hear the Sirens because his men's ears are stuffed with beeswax just as Circe commanded. Odysseus strains at his ropes tied to the mast because he intends to survive the experience. This same detail is naturally found on this Greek vase (below) that inspired the painting, showing the influence of Greek literature on Greek art as vehicles of myth narrative, especially the Odyssey (4) where at least one siren swoops low around the sailors while they chatter away to each other, oblivious to the enchantments of the eerie music that would be more than they could handle if their beeswax earplugs were not there. In Waterhouse's vision sailors have added head wraps covering their ears. Also in the modern painting paralleling the Greek vase, one siren hovers directly over a sailor in midship, her face only inches from his. Odysseus proves the strength of his mind and will in that he does not go completely crazy even though his mind is taken to the very edge of sanity and perhaps temporarily beyond by the otherness of the music. The Greek vase also shows Odysseus straining at the ropes, but a detail lacking in Waterhouse's powerful image seems present in the much older vase painting: the Greek image of Odysseus shows his head thrown back, and not looking at a siren or anything in particular. This may be ambiguous but is a realistic portrayal of ecstasy, which same iconographic clue Greek artists often depict in trancelike moments of dance and related divine madness.

In Greek myth, the Sirens were the daughters of the Muse Terpsichore by the river god Akheloos; other myths associate them with Persephone prior to her abduction by Hades. Their usual abode was near the Straits of Messina between mainland Italy and the island of Sicily. (5) The original Homeric idea of a siren was not this "bird woman" but mythological femmes fatales nonetheless lying as monstrous lures on rocky shores. (6)

Fig. 3 Odysseus and the Sirens, Greek Red-Figure Stamnos Vase, c. 480-460 BCE, British Museum (7)

Fig. 4 Greek siren, National Museum, Athens, marble, 4th c. BCE

Although arguable, many mythographers consider the visual source of a Greek siren to derive from the East, notably Egypt, like other iconographic myth creatures, where an early borrowing probably took place in the form of the ba bird. The Egyptian ba bird was a part of funerary motif, representing various ideas still not completely understood, something akin to an animated manifestation of the deceased person, able to fly through tombs and elsewhere to reunite with the mummy whenever necessary, and "often appearing above the head of the deceased". The example from the 13th c. BCE Papyrus of Ani shows one of its more typical forms. The Egyptian ba was identified with mobility of the human personality at death, among other things, but a mostly non-physical manifestation, hence its mobility was emphasized in a winged, birdlike body with a human head. (8) At times the ba appears to be rendering a stylized sparrow hawk (Accipiter nisus) or a small falcon (Falco peregrinus), but is usually so generic as to not refer to any one bird, only its mobility. That the ba has an association with death or funerary ideas is perhaps one tenuous reason why the Greeks identified its image for a siren with danger.

Fig. 5 Ba bird, Papyrus of Ani, XIXth Dynasty, Thebes, circa 1250 BCE. British Museum Papyrus BM 10470

In Waterhouse's version of Odysseus confronted by sirens, a half circle of sirens forms an open mouthed choir with wind-whipped hair around the listening hero, who leans forward for his unparalleled experience of their beguiling "high thrilling song" (Fagles) or "beautiful" voice or song (Murray and Dimock, McCrorie, Lombardo) or as Homer describes their song in καλλιμον (kallimon) (Odyssey 12.192) or elsewhere λιγυρην (from Greek ligura) (Odyssey 12.183) as "sweet, clear-toned, shrill" and thus variously translated above.

While some have criticized Waterhouse's mythological subjects as being "too pretty", Treuherz defends Waterhouse for those who often "overlook the brutality of his female protagonists (Hylas and the Nymphs)". (9) These sirens only look harmless, underscoring the danger of underestimating their deadly effects on men by their voices, not their hybrid looks.

Odysseus faces toward the rear of the boat, and its sails billow with heavy wind that also causes whitecaps on the waves, just as Homer tells it, their oars "churning the whitecaps stroke on stroke" (Fagles). There is an urgency throughout the painting as his men pull hard on their oars, a tautness in this dramatically imagined scene that the Greek vase lacks, only because its intention seems to be showing Odysseus in a moment of madness he will survive, straining in ecstasy at which any other human, less heroic, could only wonder. This is the moment both the Greek painter and Waterhouse chose, a tantalizing image of musical madness that ravished the soul until the body gave in and men threw themselves overboard, often to drown in churning seas. Odysseus is rapt, internally safe from their "honeyed voices" (Fagles) only as long as the external ropes hold him tight:

"So they sent their ravishing voices out across the air
and the heart inside me throbbed to listen longer." (10)

Notes:

(1) Anthony Hobson. J. W. Waterhouse. London: Phaidon, [1989] 2007 repr., 45, 46, 49, Plate 30.

(2) Homer. The Odyssey. Robert Fagles translation. London: Penguin, 1996. Introduction and notes by Bernard Knox, 12.175-180. Also see Homer, Odyssey, tr. Stanley Lombardo. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, 2000, 182-3; Homer, Odyssey. A. T. Murray and George Dimock, tr. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Loeb Classical Library, 1998, repr., 450-53, 461-63.

(3) Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa. The Siren (Il Professore e la Sirena) and Selected Writings. David Gilmour, ed., Archibald Colquhoun, tr. London: The Harvill Press, 1995, originally written in 1957, 57-94.

(4) Dyffri Williams. Greek Vases. London: British Museum Press, 1999, 2nd ed., 91; Lucilla Burn. Greek Myths. London: British Museum Press, 1990, especially Odysseus, 34-6, 38-40, 43-58; Lexicon Iconographicum Mythologiae Classicae (LIMC), Bildlexikon der Antiken Mythologie, Forschungsstelle der Heidelberger Akademie der Wissenschaften, BAND I-VIII, "Odysseus", "Siren"; Beazley Archive, Oxford, #202628, see "Siren".

(5) Richard P. Martin. Myths of the Ancient Greeks. New York: Penguin/New American Library, 2003, 222, 306-7. Illustration by Patrick Hunt, 306; I. Aghion, C. Barbillou, F. Lissarrague. Gods and Heroes of Classical Antiquity. Flammarion Iconographic Guide. Paris: Flammarion, 1996 ed., 272-74.

(6) Seirenes Σειρηνες, see H. J. Rose. A Handbook of Greek Mythology. Routledge, 1990, 6th ed., 245, 252 note 55; Homer, The Odyssey. Edward McCrorie, tr., and Richard Martin, intro and notes. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005, 386.

(7) British Museum GR 1843.11-3.31, Vase E440.

(8) Ian Shaw and Paul Nicholson, eds. The Dictionary of Ancient Egypt. New York and London: Harry Abrams / British Museum, 1995, 47; Stephen Quirke and Jeffrey Spencer, eds. The British Museum Book of Ancient Egypt. London: British Museum Press, 5th impr. 1997, 65, 90, 97, 106, 215; Philippe Gremond and Jacques Livet. An Egyptian Bestiary: Animals in the Life and Religion of the Land of the Pharaohs. London: Thames and Hudson, 2001, 132ff., 166-72, 196.

(9) Julian Treuherz. "J. W. Waterhouse (Groningen, London, Montreal Exhibitions)" The Burlington Magazine CLI 1279 (October, 2009), 718-19.

(10) Odyssey 12.208-09 (Fagles tr.)

Photo Credits: Fig. 1, in the public domain; Fig. 2, courtesy of Archaeological Museum, Agrigento, Sicily; Fig. 4, courtesy of National Museum, Athens; Figs. 3 & 5, courtesy of British Museum London.

Copyright © 2009 Dr. Patrick Hunt
Stanford University

http://www.patrickhunt.net

Posted by Patrick Hunt at 9:53 PM | Permalink

Lucas Cranach the Elder. Adam and Eve, 1526. Courtauld Institute of Art Gallery, London, oil on panel, 117 x 80.5 cm.

Lucas Cranach the Elder (1472-1553) painted during the early German Reformation in ducal courts at Wittenberg and elsewhere in Saxony. His work was transitional in that it often retained some Northern traits of relict Medievalism while bringing Renaissance realism and humanism to many of his subjects, especially mythological personae and biblical narratives. This pictorial hybridity might not be unusual in a German principality distant from Renaissance Italy, essentially an aesthetic balancing act for Cranach when “the spirit of reform was to be hostile to Renaissance eroticism.” (1) On the other hand, biblical texts made possibly salacious nude subjects like Adam and Eve acceptable.

Cranach’s Adam and Eve (1526) is one of quite a few versions of this biblical story he produced, a conflated visual ekphrasis from the narrative of Genesis 3, also in this case an amalgam of devotional meaning and exquisite artistic invention. (2) In the main, Cranach follows the narrative iconographically. Cranach depicts the Garden of Eden, where the serpent – apparently a spade-headed viper to boot - sinuously hangs from the fruitful Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. In typical Hebrew literary fashion, the subtlety of the serpent is manifest in a clever exposition of developing the art of lying. “Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the Lord God had made” (Gen. 3:1). Here the Hebrew word for “crafty or cunning” is ערומ ‘arûm, intensified by the superlative מכל mikkol “more than any other”, which Cranach’s friend Martin Luther would have known as calladior from the Latin Vulgate although his 1523 German Bible translation mostly used the Greek Septuagint via Erasmus. (3) Among Cranach's engravings and woodcuts, his other endeavor, he also shows an earlier, more traditionally German rendering for this biblical moment.

Lucas Cranach, Adam and Eve, woodcut, 1509.

Some see in Gen. 3 a crescendo of increasing dissembling and planned deceit, commencing with the lie by exaggeration (its familiar partner being the lie by omission). The serpent disingenuously converses with Eve, initiating as if a talking snake is commonplace, implanting doubt. “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden’?” (Gen. 3:1). Here the serpent conveniently emphasized not the positive of what God provided but only the negative of what was banned, and grossly stretched at that. In the narrative with Adam and Eve, God only barred one tree from their diet (Gen. 2:17), the one in question and under which Cranach places his version of the story. This certainly caught Eve’s attention. Eve, thus ensnared and showing the result of already beginning to doubt God’s benevolence, partly “corrects” the serpent but adds her own error long before tasting the fruit, going to the other extreme in another lie by exaggeration : “We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden, but of the fruit of the tree in the middle of the garden, God said ‘You cannot eat of it, or even touch it, because in that day you will die.’ ” (Gen. 3:2-3). The "not even touching" is her exaggeration. The serpent responds with the lie by negation, “You shall not surely die in that day,” (Gen. 3:4) and adds the possible lie by distortion, “For God knows that in the day you eat of it, your eyes will be opened...” (Gen. 3:4a), thus possibly distorting what "eyes opened" (and to what) might mean. The serpent follows this with the final whopper lie by fabrication, “…and you will be as gods, knowing good and evil” (Gen. 3:4b), contingent on what being "as gods" means. Ironically, later commentators suggest the Devil may tell a little truth in order to promote a greater lie. On the other hand, there is sufficient interpretive "truth" that the serpent may not be so much lying, but rather proposing some form of godlikeness too easily accessible but only in a limited way; certain kinds of knowledge would be epistemologically limited to deity, and humans would always be a far cry from gods. Experiential knowledge did not transform humans into gods. Of course, the serpent says "be like gods", not "be gods". Evidently this kind of logic was irresistible for Eve in three quick steps now that she had swallowed the theological ad hominem bait. “For she saw the fruit was good for food and pleasing to the eyes and desirable for making one wise. She took of the fruit, ate it, and gave also to her husband, and he ate. And the eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew they were naked…” (Gen. 3:6-7).

This is the moment Cranach illuminates, the climax of Eve having tasted and handing the fruit to Adam. Eve looks so knowing, appearing like the cat that swallowed the bird, and now looks downright crafty herself. Adam, however, isn’t in the know yet, so he scratches his head stupidly with his left hand, the exact opposite of Eve. The painterly complementarity is heightened by their skin tones, with earthy Adam the color of soil as his name implies in Hebrew (אדמ ’adam “man” and אדמה ’adamah “ground”) and Eve the hue of palest marble, as in Egyptian and even Greek art. With her left arm bending down the branch, she passes the fruit with her right hand to puzzled Adam who reaches for it, vacantly not looking exactly at Eve, or perhaps equally at the forbidden fruit, whereas Eve now looks slyly and directly at him.

Other intriguing details suggest traces of Medieval scholasticism - from which some conservative Protestantism had sprung rather than from Renaissance humanism - still somewhat prevalent in Saxony. For example, the Latin Vulgate translates the Hebrew “fruit” פרי perî as fructus (from the Greek Septuagint as καρπος), which many Medieval commentaries and artistic depictions often render as an apple. This is mostly because apple, malum in Latin, is nearly homophonous with Latin malus as “evil” – malum is also a neuter adjective or case ending for “evil”; sometimes the only difference is the length of the u vowel, entrenched when Medieval taxonomy identified the apple as Malus pumila. (4) This near equivalence of interpretation is in accord with the principle of linguistic similitude, in other words, Medieval scholiastic lexical root fallacies could drive hermeneutics. The 12th century French play Mystère d’Adam explicitly refers to the forbidden fruit of Eden as apple. Cranach’s fruit is ambiguous but could certainly be an apple as often suggested, and many examples of the fruit here - especially on the lowest branches - seem too elliptical to be citrus or other fruit. According to Gaster, medieval Jewish superstition held that even the sap of an apple tree could cause conception in a previously barren woman. (5) The apple was often symbolic of fertility from at least the Classical world onward. Greek lyrical poetry like Sappho's often makes the connection of apples to love gifts. But here in Eden, too much knowledge was not empowering but ultimately limiting, the tradeoff being fatal with ensuing mortality. It may be biologically necessary in human evolution that when we are finally capable of reproduction we are also at the point when the number of old cells dying begins to catch up with the number of new cells being formed, otherwise known as the aging process.

The animals in Cranach's painting are not mentioned in the biblical text other than as beasts previously named by Adam, but none are found in this passage by name, so other reasons for his including them are merely speculative. Medieval bestiaries derived from the Classical Physiologus often suggested moral lessons associated with certain animals. The majority of animals in Cranach’s foreground around Adam and Eve are artiodactyls or similar mammals, horned beasts like the stag and its mate and a pair of male and female gazelles, in direct symmetry with Adam and Eve. These particular beasts and stags in particular are also often allegorically symbolic of lust, rampant desire and concupiscence in medieval bestiaries. The boar, also present here behind Eve, often corresponds with gluttony or desire for food (“she saw the fruit was good for food and pleasing to the eyes” Gen. 3:6), and the sheep behind Adam can often be emblematic for docility or even stupidity (he is ignorant until tasting the fruit). (6) The idiosyncratic animal moral allegories Cranach may have implied were often shared by his age. The presumptive medieval syllogism would go something like this: eating the forbidden “evil” fruit is sinful and eating it imparts knowledge - especially a revelation that they are naked – therefore it must be imbued carnal knowledge partaken here. If the medieval idea – not at all necessarily biblical from ancient texts - of clerical celibacy impinges herein, carnal knowledge itself may be suspect or even sinful. Therefore this new knowledge was perceived as the sin of carnal knowledge and somehow contemporary viewers and text readers could have been meant to infer that an originally forbidden sexuality may have been involved in the Fall of Adam and Eve from Grace. This peculiar interpretive hang-up was quickly reinforced in Gen. 4:1 in that once banished from Eden, when Adam has sex with his wife Eve and she conceives a son Cain, the text reads literally, “And the man knew his wife Eve and she conceived and bore a son…” The Hebrew verb ידע yada‘ usually translates “knew” for their sexual union. So much for dogmatic literalism.

Another corroborating detail is that usually Adam and Eve cover their nakedness themselves by the textual fig leaves as read in Gen. 3:7b. This is a fascinating biblical parallel because figs are often visually synonymous with testicles in Mediterranean cultural puns, but also uniquely flower internally, akin to female ovulation, (7) as if physical resemblance might determine semantic choices even in the biblical narrative. Cranach’s tree, however, has a fertile grapevine bearing clusters of grapes covering their genitals. The indirect link is that grapes produce inebriating wine, also a biblical allegory of desire in Canticum Canticorum (Song of Songs) 4:10, “your lovemaking is better than wine.” (8)

Cranach has concocted here a conflation of biblical textuality, Renaissance anatomical realism and perhaps some theologically rich, even if Medieval at times, interpretative details in his Adam and Eve, choosing the moment of mutual quandary and resulting horrific consequence before Eden is lost to humanity. If Cranach's religious vision is mostly tied to Reformation conservatism, it should be no surprise given his close relationship with Martin Luther. Here the serpent both uncoils downward and looks down, almost appearing to some commentators like a Medieval illuminated capital letter, albeit apropos in inversion, for the sinister letter S in Latin Serpens and, for them, Satan's name also read therein in eisegesis (since Satan is not read in this early text but only in subsequent biblical texts to which they suggest this text is proleptic). This downward direction of the serpent is for them allusive of his own future where he will henceforth crawl (Gen. 3:14) in the divine curse this painting leads toward, an imagined landscape immediately beyond this visual narrative of a lush Eden that will soon become only a trope for lost innocence.

Notes:

(1) George Holmes. Renaissance. (Weidenfield and Nicolson, 1996). London: Phoenix / Orion House, 1998, 207.

(2) Caroline Campbell, ed. Temptation in Eden: Lucas Cranach's Adam and Eve. London: Paul Holberton Publishing, 2007. This is most likely the best explication of the painting and its meanings in the Anglophone world.

(3) Philip Baldi and Pierlugi Cuzzolin. New Perspectives on Historical Latin Syntax. Berlin, New York: Mouton de Gruyter, 2009, 211.

(4) Charlton Lewis and Charles Short. A New Latin Dictionary (from Freund’s Latin-German Lexicon), 1907, 1104.

(5) T. H. Gaster. Myth, Legend and Custom in the Old Testament. New York: Harper and Row, 1969, §333, 812.

(6) Pliny, Historia Naturalis 8.41 [stag]; Margaret B. Freeman. The Unicorn Tapestries. New York: Metropolitan Museum of New York / E. F. Dutton, 1976, 74 [stag]; A. H. Collins. Symbolism of Animals and Birds in English Church Architecture. New York: McBride and Nast, 1913, 8, as an uprooting, devouring beast [boar] and in Isidore of Seville, Etymologies, De Animalibus, XII.i.125 [boar], XII.i.9 [sheep].

(7) Maud Grieve. A Modern Herbal, vol 1. New York: Dover, 1971, 311.

(8) Patrick Hunt. “Sensory Images in Song of Songs.” Beiträge zur Erforschung des Alten Testaments und des Antiken Judentums, Band 28. XIVth IOSOT Congress at Sorbonne-College de France, Paris, 1992. Frankfurt, 1996, 73.

Copyright © 2009 Dr. Patrick Hunt
Stanford University

http://www.patrickhunt.net

Posted by Patrick Hunt at 12:47 AM | Permalink

Caravaggio, Penitent Magdalen, c. 1596-97, Doria Pamphilij Gallery 122.5 x 98.5 cm

An evolved Baroque Mary Magdalene is curiously seen in Caravaggio’s uniquely sensitive Penitent Magdalen of 1596-97, now in the Doria Pamphilij Gallery in Rome. Caravaggio’s treatment here is both sympathetic and idiosyncratic but visually correct only in regard to iconographic traditions of the Magdalene, This tradition, however, conflates four gospel texts that may have nothing to do with one composite woman nor do they necessarily all refer to the persona of Mary Magdalene, who is often said in modernity to be degraded into a sexual object of male fantasy.

The iconography Caravaggio employed here is both clever and innovative in many respects for its adherence to biblical text. In Caravaggio’s warm-colored tones bespeaking both her passion and Christ’s Passion, the Magdalene’s most typical visual attribute is the unguent vessel containing nard (Greek ναρδος from Hebrew or Aramaic נרד ) with which she is associated in tradition (rather than clearly supported from text) as having washed Christ’s feet with her sensuously long and lustrous reddish hair – and red is the color of sanguinity - after sacrificially pouring out its precious perfume (although here Caravaggio may be painting in advance of that biblical narrative moment). The same perfume nardus in Latin known from Pliny’s Natural History XXI.70 is probably from the Indian or Near Eastern desert plant Nardostachys jatamansi and is also called spikenard, its liquid color being golden red or orange like the Magdalene’s hair and the golden perfume hue seen here in Caravaggio’s painting. Other attributes are conveyed in the Magdalene’s putative life as a courtesan, implied by rich clothes and extravagant jewelry, and her body language of penitence is marked by her humble position, in this case close to the ground on a very low chair. What the Magdalene renounces in Caravaggio’s image is consonant with what has been noted in typical Pauline testimonia of the modest new woman of God - often suggested as a misogynistic text - who is unadorned by anything but grace: “not with their hair braided, or with gold, pearls or expensive clothes” as St. Paul writes in I Timothy 2:9.

Many pictorial details encourage closer inspection. The biblical texts state that the perfume vessel which the woman (Mary Magdalene?) used on Christ – often mistranslated from the Koiné Greek New Testament as being of alabaster stone - was a glass alabastron (Greek ’αλαβαστρον), probably sealed in ampule form against desiccating air and oxidation; terribly expensive because vessel and perfume were to be used only once, the glass needing to be broken to release its perfume inside. Caravaggio depicts a glass vessel here, either deliberately or accidentally in closer accordance with the text, but perhaps better to highlight the gold transparence of the nard perfume as symbolic of the Magdalene’s pouring her life out. On her dress is another vessel or receptacle noted by Cinotti as a possible simile of the Magdalene herself and which she fills here in Caravaggio’s schemata. In this instance, the vessel on her dress bears a shell-like form as possibly representative of the Classical notion that shells (extrapolated from Hesiod’s Theogony) were one of the visual attributes of sea-born Venus to whose sacred cult most courtesans belonged either professionally or by practice as those who live for amor sacer. The perfume vessel shown in two distinct forms may be an accommodation of both traditions: the translucent glass form at her feet and also as an opaque white alabaster form on her dress. Vegetal motifs on her clothing may depict the source of the perfume as floral – and flowers are another attribute of Venus - but could in any case merely indicate the fertility which courtesans explicitly evoke. However one views Caravaggio's Magdalene, on the one hand his naturalism gives us opportunity to agree with Bellori that it is mostly a seated woman who could be anybody and on the other hand to disagree because Caravaggio's iconographic subtlety allows us to identify her by her perfume and hair and almost the moment of penitence when she rejects her former life as a voluptuary as the long traditions suggest.

Sources:

Giovan Petro Bellori. Le Vite de pittori, scultori et achitetti moderni. Rome, 1672 ed., Evelina Borea, Torino, 1976.

S. Benedetti. Caravaggio: The Master Revealed. Dublin, 1995, 212-13. Benedetti explores the importance of Classical statuary to Caravaggio and his probable models of Classical sarcophagi such as the Revenge of Orestes and the Roman Meleager’s Companions Carrying His Body, among at least three other Classical images, either from Del Monte’s Roman Antiquarium or his country estate Vigna di Ripetta or from the nearby Giustiniani Collection accessible to Caravaggio in Rome.

Ann Graham Brock. Mary Magdalene, The First Apostle: The Struggle for Authority. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2003.

F. T. Camiz. "Music and Painting in Cardinal Del Monte's Household." Metropolitan Museum Journal 23, 1991.

Mia Cinotti. Caravaggio: tutte le opere. Bergamo, 1983.

J. Dillenberger. “The Magdalen: Reflections on the image of the saint and the sinner in Chrsitian Art” in D. Apostolos-Cappadona, ed. Image and Spirit in Sacred and Secular Art. New York, 1990. 28-50.

Bart D. Ehrman. Peter, Paul and Mary Magdalene: Followers of Jesus in History and Legend. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006, Part III, 179-255, 259 & ff.

John Gash. Caravaggio. London: Jupiter Books, 1980.

Patrick Hunt. Caravaggio. Life and Times Series. London: Haus Publishing, 2004, 42-47, 55-57. Portions of the discussion here are excerpted directly from the author's 2004 book.

Katherine Ludwig Jansen. The Making of the Magdalen: Preaching and Popular Devotion in the Later Middle Ages. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2000.

F. Mormando, ed. Saints and Sinners: Caravaggio and the Baroque Image. McMullen Museum of Art, Boston College, 1999.

Lynn F. Orr. Classical Elements in the Paintings of Caravaggio. Ph.D. Dissertation, UCLA, 1982.

Elaine Pagels. The Gnostic Gospels. New York: Vintage, 1989, 64-7.

Catherine Puglisi. Caravaggio. London: Phaidon, 1998.

John Spike. Caravaggio. London / New York: Abbeville, 2001.

Jacobus Faber Stapulensis (in French, Jacques Lefèvre Étaples). Two Treatises on St. Mary Magdalene, especially De Maria Magdalena et traduo Christi disceptatio, 1517 (both Paris, 1517 and 1518). Cf F. M. Cross and E. A. Livingstone. The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church. Third ed. Oxford, 1997: 593, 1049.

Jacobus de Voragine. The Golden Legend (Legenda Aurea): Lives of the Saints. William Caxton, tr. (from Latin). Selected and edited by George V. O'Neill. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1914. Vol. IV, 36-42.

Copyright © 2009 Dr. Patrick Hunt
Stanford University

http://www.patrickhunt.net

Posted by Patrick Hunt at 4:09 PM | Permalink

Fig. 1 Albrecht Dürer, Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, 1498.

Dr. Patrick Hunt, Stanford University

"The Lamb broke the first seal...and I looked and saw a white horse, and seated on him was one carrying a bow, and a wreath was given to him and he went out out conquering in order to conquer...and when he broke the second seal...another horse came out fiery red and to him seated on it was given power to take peace from the earth and internecine strife and he was given a great sword...and when he broke the third seal... I looked and saw a black horse and him seated on it carried a pair of scales in his hand and I heard a voice in the middle of the creatures calling, 'A quart of wheat for a denarius and three quarts of barley for a denarius and do not injure the oil and the wine"...and when he broke the fourth seal... I looked and saw a yellowish-green horse and the name of him seated on it was Death, and Hades followed him, and authority was given to them over a quarter of the earth to kill with sword and famine and plague and by wild beasts of the earth." Apocalypse 6:1-7 (1)

This brief note is a mostly sobering assessment in the form of historical observation about ancient precedents and possible modern parallels for the metaphor of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. As an elected Fellow of the Royal Geogrpahical Society (since 1989), and some of my alpine research has also been sponored by the National Geographic Society's Expedition Council (2007-2008), the scenario of snowballing cataclysmic ecological phenomena has long occupied my thinking since studying paleoclimatology in graduate study. The cause-effect interrelationships between war, famine and plague and death are hardly lost on the historian, The above enigmatic biblical passage has been subject to so many bizarre and contradictory literary and theological misinterpretations, like so much of religious writ, and its apocalyptic genre does little to discourage a wide range of visionary hermeneutics. At least this musing is on somewhat common ground in the long view of concatenated cyclical or cause-effect related catastrophes.

Dürer's above image is perhaps the most famous of any attempts to visualize this difficult passage and easily also one of the most dramatic with its gaunt and skeletal pair of deathly horse and rider in the foreground with sad people underfoot - even the religious leaders and kings are not spared - as the very pillars of society and foundations of civilization seem to be swallowed up. Naturally, it is unlikely for the biblical author[s] to derive an environmental application - as this brief note extrapolates - from the possibly allegorical literature here with an implied sequencing of drought, famine, pestilence and death or with war inserted at the beginning or somewhere along the downward-spiraling process.

I prefer to interpret the above biblical passage where it refers to the indirect object "them" in the last verse "authority given to them " as a somewhat interlocking operation by sword, famine, plague and so on since so many are affected, possibly each one individually reducing population by a quarter in a snowball effect. Most interpretations equate the third seal and black horse and rider as famine, especially with the scales and selling of food commodities in quarts of grain. The paucity of agricultural food supply referenced is understandable because a Roman denarius was about the equivalent of a daily wage in the late first century Roman world of the biblical text. That a daily wage's earning power would only buy a quart of wheat - the more valuable grain here - speaks to the meager supply of food and therefore an extended figure for famine.

Few realize the interconnections of how the legendary “Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse” might also function as a collective metaphor for the ravages of humankind and the environment in history, often found together in war, famine, disease and death. In figurative language here, however, the four horsemen can manifest such cause-effect relationships that one can easily lead even galloping into the other.

As mentioned, historians attempt to understand the cause-effect interrelationships between war, famine and plague and death. In fact, it is fairly easy to recognize a terrible sequence too often familiar in war-ravaged states. The sequence may or may not replicate the exact sequence in the literary text above. Historically, war generally upsets the agricultural stability such that famine often results from the chaos of marauding, the privations of siege, or the policy of scorched earth. Famine follows, as does plague and death. Plague, however, is the least recognized, the last diagnostically-validated link described in antiquity because of ignorance of microbial activity other than contagion deduced from proximity.

By no means the only quotable text, Polybius describes, for example, in his History III.30.1-4 the narrative of Hannibal's Battle of Saguntum, with just such a sequence of war, famine and death, although any related plague is invisible and not mentioned. As a prelude to the Second Punic War, the people of Saguntum are besieged in their fortress city. Food runs out until, if in credible detail, a diminishing and dying population even resorts near the end to familial cannibalism. Finally the broken walls of the long-weakened city fall to the force of Hannibal's army and even a hardened army is horrified by what they see of the mountain of burning carcasses, which may be the only way to reduce an invisible contagion although Polybius does not record this. (2)

But there is also another observable sequence that deserves mention, one that may or may not be deducible from the above text in Apocalypse 6 but is equally recognizable and may become far more so in the 21st century as increasing feuds over water rights and possibly exponential change in global climates seem imminent, where drought, famine and malnutrition are already visible links in a chain of consequences. (3)

Extended drought - or rain at the wrong times or other disruptions of climatic patterns - can ultimately bring down a civilization, as was likely in ancient history and never too far from present reality even in a world where globalization provides food overnight from seven (or more) thousand miles away. Coupled with rising population, the resulting decreasing per capita grain production is even a looming current problem:

"Confirm[ing] the serious nature of the global food supply...the per capita availability of world cereal grains, which make up 80-90% of the world's food supply, has been declining for the past 17 years (2002)." (4)

Fig. 2 USDA 2007: Stocks-Use Ratios Indicators: note lowered supply even with 2007 factored

It is well attested that both global demand for and global food costs rose sharply in 2007-2008, gravely affecting the poorer, developing countries of the world. (5) While I am not be the first to present this ancient and possibly contemporary sequence suggested by the above literary text - many have also alluded to this metaphor in climate change projections and carbon sequestration models (6) - and a reasonable study of paleoclimatology based on palynology, the carbon record, evaporitic basins, oxygen isotopic studies and other data, I hope to summarize it briefly in accessible terms. Pointing out how humans have at times influenced this chain of events, others have posited parts of the sequence as links of the anthropogenic chain, however generalized but no less real. (7)

Here is a hypothetical situation that must have actually also happened in history, possibly at the interstices of what we often term the end of the Late Bronze Age in the Mediterranean world when mass migrations and general chaos suggest a possible scenario like below. (8) In antiquity, it was recommended that a portion of every seed harvest be reserved for the next year's planting seed. Purely for example, if on any given small to medium-sized farm, a normal crop yield was 100 bushels, it was practical to save 10% or 10 bushels of grain for planting. Given the same expected amount of mouths to feed, if conditions are good, expectations would be at least that 10 bushels of grain seed would yield another 100 bushels the following year, guaranteeing some form of stability provided that rainfall or climatic circumstances did not change radically. But if drought or freakish bad weather occurred, dramatically lowering the crop yield to 70 bushels, and if the same ratio of seed grain was put aside for planting the next year and the population remained the same, this resulted in only 70% of the comestible grain for the same number of mouths to feed. Naturally, agriculture did not produce the only food sources of antiquity, but grazing or fed livestock would also suffer accordingly from drought and famine. What results is understood by the principle of diminishing returns.

Presumably, if this drought were limited to only a local disaster, the opportunity might exist to purchase someone else's surplus. But if this became a regional disaster of widely-suffered drought or crop-afflicted change, the consequences were far more dire and more difficult to mitigate depending on the volume of total farmland affected. If it were a severe drought and water was scarce over an extended several years, the resulting problems could be catastrophic across a society. If the 10% of the crop yield of 70 bushels was reserved for seed for the following year, having eaten the diminished 70%, and if the drought gained severity so that there was again a lower harvest of only 50 bushels of grain from the 7 bushels of planted seed grain, this means that the same number of mouths to feed were now having to live on 50% of the yield even before the seed grain was yet again to be reserved, and it is more likely the reserve of 5 bushels would have been eaten too because people and farm animals would now be in trouble (a forget-the-future-we-must-survive-the-present radical philosophy). In the second year of such a drought, there would already have been some incipient malnutrition, a lowering of immune systems and resistance to disease, but now it would become especially hard for the weak, particularly the aged and infants. By the third year of extended drought, famine could easily lead to plague and pestilence and beyond to widespread death. If the social structure was also undermined by such a deepening crisis where laws or a ruler could no longer provide parameters of stable behavior for a people, the stability of the state or dynasty was greatly threatened and civil war may ensue. In any case, applying the basic scenario where drought led to famine, which led to disease and this either led to war (or in some cases followed it) and to death, it is not hard to imagine the havoc.

Fig. 3 Harvested grain - a diminishing, more costly commodity?

The above hypothetical scenario is derived from a generic grain. Agronomy in antiquity was unlikely to know, except by empirical experience, that some grains are more or less sensitive to drought and to salinization, especially salinity that might result from cultivation in an evaporitic basin. Barley (8.0) and Rye (11.4), for example, have relatively high treshhold salinity levels known as EC values, whereas rice (3.0) and corn (1.7) are relatively sensitive in EC values. (9) There is also an obvious linear decrease in crop yield as salinity increases.

If everyone in a radius of a thousand miles is so afflicted today, we compensate by importing more foodstuff from abroad or across a continent. In antiquity, there was often no other recourse than to leave the territory in a mass migration after a social catastrophe following such an environmental disaster. Some deduce this very scenario for the Aegean with the migrations of the Sea Peoples in the 12th c. BCE southeast to Egypt and to Palestine. (10) The climatic swath of the Sahel on the continent of Africa today, however rich in mineral resources, is suffering in exactly these terms on the increasingly-desertified margins of the Sahara. (11) Every observer can easily note that the once-permanent snowpacks on Mt. Kilimanjaro are greatly reduced even in the last few decades. Alpine glaciers in Europe are projected to be reduced by 25% by the year 2025, and in 2008 there was a recorded higher temperature gain of 1.1 º Celsius (compared to previous years) and a reduction of at least an overall 1.5 meters on some of the highest glaciers around Col d'Ambin in the Cottian Alps relative to 2007 alone where this researcher also works on reconstructing paleoclimatic environments and where the National Geographic Society has been sponsoring my research in 2007-2008. (12) Although not the first in the modern world, for the first time ever in extended drought the State of South Australia has had to import necessary water because its own sources have dried up, purchasing 261 gigalitres. (13) One hardly has to wonder what could happen if the vast Himalayan and related montane snowpack that supplies water for half the world's population from such rivers as the Indus, Ganges, Mekong, Yangtze, etc., begin to melt as projected by even conservative hydrologists. The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse may indeed already be in the saddle.

In conclusion, while this brief note is not in any way intended as a Doomsday scenario, the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse seem to have ridden together through the ancient world and can easily ride again, with or without a prophetic trumpet to announce them. "Amber waves of grain" may be at more risk than we think.

Notes:

(1) Revelation, vol. 38, Anchor Bible. New York: Doubleday, 1975, 96 & ff. Commentary by J. Massyngberde Ford, excerpted by the author of this brief article. As a possible precedent, in the Hebrew scriptures, another set of four horses - now in chariots - with similar colors appears in Zechariah 6:1-7 although without such negative connotations or direct associations with these dire horses in the New Testament passage.

(2) Thomas Madden. Empires of Trust. New York: Penguin, 2008, esp. 98-108. An excellent study of the circumstances of the siege.

(3) C. Rosenzweig and D. Hillel. Climate Change and the Global Harvest. Oxford University Press, 1998; Brian Dawson and Matt Spannagle. The Complete Guide to Climate Change. London: Routledge, 2009, 215-216

(4) David Pimentel. "Malnutrition, Infectious Diseases and Global Environmental Change" in Ian Douglas, ed. Encyclopedia of Global Environmental Change: Causes and Consequences of Global Environmental Change. John Wiley & Son, 2002, 441.

(5) Martin Wolf, "Food crisis is a chance to reform global agriculture." April 30, 2008. Financial Times Economists Forum, 2008: http://blogs.ft.com/economistsforum/2008/04/food-crisis-is-a-chance-to-reform-global-agriculture/

(6) Dr. Margaret Chan, Director-General of the World Health Organization, "Climate change and health: preparing for unprecedented challenges." 12/10/07, http://www.who.int/dg/speeches/2007/20071211_maryland/en/index.html?language=; also see Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, "IMPACTS: On the Threshold of Abrupt Climate Changes", Paul Preuss, 9/17/08, http://newscenter.lbl.gov/feature-stories/2008/09/17/impacts-on-the-threshold-of-abrupt-climate-changes/

(7) J. V. Thirgood. Man and the Mediterranean Forest: A History of Resource Depletion. London: Academic Press, 1981; R. Meiggs. Trees and Timber in the Ancient Mediterranean World. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982; A. W. Crosby. Ecological Imperialism: the Biological Expansion of Europe, 900-1900. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1986; Jared Diamond. Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed. New York: Viking, 2004. Diamond has his critics, to be sure, and this author will be neutral on this matter, but Diamond does present an ample group of case studies and a bibliography of specialists' research supporting some anthropogenic change.

(8) M. Williams. "Dark Ages and Dark Areas: Global deforestation in the Deep Past." Journal of Historical Geography 26 (2000) 28-46; A. J. McMichael. Planetary Overload: Global Environmental Change and the Health of the Human Species. Cambridge University Press, 1993; R. R. Colwell. "Global Climate Change and Infectious Disease." Science 274 (1996) 2025-2031.

(9) R. A. Fischer and R. Maurer. "Drought resistance in spring wheat cultivars. I. Grain yield responses." Australian Journal of Agricultural Research 29.5 (1978) 897 - 912. Drought experiments were conducted in northwest Mexico on a wide range of cereal cultivars, mostly durum wheats; T. Ameda and S. Schubert. "Mechanisms of drought resistance in grain legumes: I. Osmotic adjustment." SINET: Ethiopian Journal of Science 26.1 (2003) 37-46. Drought experiments in Germany in 1994-95 on diverse grain legumes to determine osmotica and alternative mechanisms; Donald Sparks. Environmental Soil Chemistry. London: Academic Press, 1995, 231, Table 10.2. Note that in Sparks citations these are relative salinity tolerances and that "absolute tolerances vary, depending on climate, soil conditions and cultural practices." EC (salinity threshold) is expressed as ECe (dS m-1).

(10) Trude and Moshe Dothan. Peoples of the Sea. New York: Scribner's, 1992, 87-96 & ff., esp. 87; Joseph Maran. "The Spreading of Objects and Ideas in the Late Bronze Age Eastern Mediterranean: Two Case Examples from the Argolid of the 13th and 12th centuries BC," Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research 336 (Nov. 2004) 11-30; Ayelet Gilboa. "Sea Peoples and Phoenicians along the Southern Phoenician Coast - A Reconciliation: A Representation of Sikila (SKL) Material Culture." Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research 337 (Feb. 2005) 47-78; S. Wachsmann. "The Ships of the Sea Peoples." International Journal of Nautical Archaeology 11.4 (2007) 297-304.

(11) "Micronutrient Malnutrition: Half the World's Population Affected" WHO: The World Health Report 1996, World Health Organization 13 Nov. 1996 (78) 1-4.; also see Lester Brown, "World Grain Stocks Fall to 57 Days of Consumption: Grain Prices Starting to Rise" 2006, http://www.earth-policy.org/index.php?/indicators/C54/ (source of USDA figure).

(12) Luca Mercalli, President, Italian Meteorological Institute, Busseoleno, pers. comm., September, 2008; Patrick Hunt. Alpine Archaeology, New York: Ariel Books, 2007, chs. 1-3; Patrick Hunt. Field Report to Expeditions Council, National Geographic Society, 2008 (Hannibal Expedition); Mateo Gutierrez. Climatic Geomorphology. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 2005, on soils and humans in climatic change, 349, 601.

(13) "Climate Watch: Australia" Geographical Magazine. Royal Geographical Society, London, February, 2009, 10.

Photo and image credit:
Fig. 1 www.uic.edu/depts/ahaa/classes/ah111/durer1.jpg; Fig. 2 USDA Economic Research Service 2007; http://www.ers.usda.gov/AmberWaves/September07/Indicators/Charts/Indicators_market_fig2.gif; Fig. 3 Purdue University CES.

copyright © February 2009 Dr. Patrick Hunt
Stanford University

http://www.patrickhunt.net
phunt@stanford.edu

Posted by Patrick Hunt at 1:07 PM | Permalink

Woman With a Veil, album folio attributed to Riza-i 'Abbasi, circa 1590-95. Isfahan. Sackler Gallery, Smithsonian, H x W (image): 34.2 x 21.5 cm (13 7/16 x 8 7/16 in)

"The rose garden which today is full of flowers,
when tomorrow you would pluck a flower
it may not have one for you." Firdawsi (10th-11th c.)

“From the bounty of the rose,
the nightingale learned speech, for if not,
there had not been in his throat
all this sweet speech and singing." Hafez (14th c. ) (1)

The haunting images of both Firdawsi and Hafez on roses and nightingale song remind us about the retrieval of beauty through memory. This is a perfect distillation of sensory richness found alike in the best poetry of the world, shared with Sappho and the Hebrew Song of Songs, where striking visual kinesis is mingled with music and fragrance and where so many impressions (sight, sound, smell, movement) conjoin in lyrical mastery as a sensory cluster. (2) Since visual imagery is important in verbal poetry, how much poetic ambience can be found in visual painting?

Lyricism is clearly found not only in poetic word but also in visual poetic image. Persian painting in the Safavid period of Persia under Shah ‘Abbas (1587-1629) rose to its zenith in the art of painters such as Sadiqi Beg (1533-c. 1610) and especially Riza-i ‘Abbasi (1565-1635) at Isfahan. (3) For reference and study, the magisterial, gemlike books of Sheila Canby are the best sources on Persian painting for the Anglophone world. (4) Along with rich textiles and grand architecture, Persian paintings are one of the primary expressions of Safavid greatness even in microcosm (5), influencing Mughal art in India while newly examining ideas imbibed from European drawing and perspective. (6)

The Safavid master, Riza-i ‘Abbasi, was trained by his artist father, the court painter Ali Asghar, and much stylistic innovation and later influence is attributed to the son Riza, who was able around 1603 to append ‘Abbasi as a title “of ‘Abbas” to his name from his service to the court of Shah ‘Abbas although he left the shah’s service to paint on his own before returning to court and its kitabkhaneh workshop of poets, painters and other artists. (7) Similar in rebellious temperament to the sublime but realistic chiaroscuro Italian painter Caravaggio – who also preferred the company of rowdies and courtesans (8) - the lyricism of Riza can be seen in album folio paintings such as Woman with a Veil, circa 1590-95, one of his earlier attributed works now in the Sackler Gallery of the Smithsonian, where descriptions of the work examined here even include the idea of "visual poetry."

Perhaps the viewer’s first impression is made from the distinct arching bow of the woman’s body as Riza bends her body strongly to the left with a movement that shows great kinesis on a large scale. Similar contours are often typical for his early courtly personages.(9) Perhaps this woman's gracefully-bowed body even alludes to her standing against wind or a strong breeze, accentuated by the tilt of her head in the opposite direction to the right. Descriptive details abound on the small scale as well. Using opaque watercolor, gold and ink, such bright primary pastel colors – one of his earlier hallmarks (10) – as red, yellow and blue are deliberately chosen and separated for maximum effect in the woman’s garments, shown from ankles upward above her black shoes and decorated gold undertrousers. A lavender shawl veil covers her from head to hip, open in the front. The concerted movement of her clothes with her body – even the many folds of the fairly tightly wrapped shawl veil and her blue-sleeved arm - implies both the mobility and clinging manner of light silk. Although pinned at the upper neck hem, her dark red blouse undergarment is narrowly open at her hinted breast. A gold forehead bangle and bright red and blue spangled headscarf are just visible under the shawl head veil, expressing different layers of emphasis relative to the bright pastel color garments. For lighter effect as counterpoint, her modest dainty necklace jewelry is answered by her heavier gold cloth belt sash tied at her waist, and gold buttons and gold cloth rosettes embroidered on her blue coat all simultaneously express Riza’s love of detail as well as visual economy, especially with only her bent left thumb seen under the held veil.

In subdued and subtle contrast to the woman, the natural light-brown paper background of an almost golden hue is balanced with calligraphic ink style in the lighter fronded and flowering plants in the rocks on either side of the woman, carefully placed in the empty spaces of the paper background at lower left and middle right. Above her, dramatic yet faint calligraphic swirls in the sky may represent moving air and cumulus clouds.

Similar finesse and balance of larger context with intricate detail are seen in many Persian paintings from the Safavid court. Almost certainly known to Riza-i 'Abbasi was an older artist who preceded him in leadership of the kitabkhaneh when it was in Qazvin, Sadiqi Beg (1533-c. 1610). One of Sadiqi's attributed paintings 'Balqis and the Hoopoe' now in the British Museum and contemporary with Riza's work here also shows a marvelous detail. Balqis, legendary Queen of Sheba, is reclining and wearing a beautiful garment Canby observantly identifies as a "remarkable waqwaq design" because it bears calligraphic animal and human heads interspersed with embroidered floral patterns. (11) Such detail is truly mesmerizing and shows these Safavid artists were attentive in such paintings to many aspects of the crafts in their culture.

Continuing Riza’s customary boldness tempered with subtlety in the above painting at hand, Woman with a Veil, perhaps the consummate artist in Riza now brings the viewer to the likely crux of the painting. The woman’s mostly properly hidden left hand holds her veil open in a protective shell between her hand and covered forehead. Like a candle kept out of the breeze, her pear-shaped right hand gently holds and shields between thumb and second finger the stem of a fragile spray of white flowers and her slightly-smiling oval face bends down to the flowers as if to both see its tiny blossoms and smell its scent, a meditative moment of acute sensory appreciation and the philosophic realization that attends this sensuality. The wind – ambiguous in direction but swirling on either side and behind - would tear away its petals and disperse the flowers’ fragrance. With her almond eyes focusing directly on the flower stem she seems to realize bent in the wind herself that she is just like that flower, fragile and ephemeral. A well of sympathy brings the viewer to a mutual poignant universal: the tragedy of Beauty is its brevity. (12)

Notes

(1) Firdawsi: "King Nishavir's Address to the Grandees of Persia" and "Ode of Hafez". E. S. Holden, tr. Flowers from Persian Gardens. Cambridge, MA: University Press, 1901, 54, 131; also see Rumi on the rose, Mehdi Khansari, M. Reza Moghtader, Minouch Yavari. The Persian Garden: Echoes of Paradise. Washington, DC: Mage Publishing, 2004, 171.

(2) Patrick Hunt. Poetry in the Song of Songs: A Literary Analysis. New York: Peter Lang, 2008, ch. 2, pp. 55-56 and ch. 4, pp. 83-101.

(3) Sir Lawrence Gowing, ed. A Biographical Dictionary of Artists. Abingdon: Andromeda Oxford, 2002 repr., 581-82.

(4) for example, Sheila R. Canby. The Rebellious Reformer: The Drawings and Paintings of Riza-yi-Abbasi of Isfahan. London: Azimuth Editions, 1996; Sheila R. Canby. Safavid Art and Architecture. London: British Museum Press, 2002. Also see (7) and (10) below.

(5) Barbara Brend. Islamic Art. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1991, 148 & ff, 164 & ff.

(6) Anjan Chakraverty. Indian Miniature Painting. New Delhi & Roli & Janssen BV, Netherlands, 2005, 34, 48.

(7) Sheila R. Canby. Persian Painting. London: British Museum, 1993, 94, 98.

(8) Patrick Hunt. Caravaggio. London: Haus, 2004, chs. 4-5 & 7-8, pp. 29-67, 92-107

(9) Canby, 1993, 99.

(10) Sheila R. Canby. The Golden Age of Persian Art 1501-1722. London: British Museum, 2002 ed., 107.

(11) ibid. Canby, 2002, 106. Also see Glossary, 187 for waqwaq. Sadiqi Beg's painting is 9.9 by 19.2 cm, British Museum OA 1948.12-11.08. In Canby's book, this illustration is Plate 93, also page 106.

(12) Patrick Hunt. Laws of Nature (Aphorisms), 2000. See http://www.jamesgeary.com/blog/aphorisms-by-patrick-hunt/

Image courtesy of the Smithsonian (http://www.asia.si.edu/). Lent by the Art and History Collection; Courtesy of the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.: LTS1995.2.80 (permisssion granted by Betsy Kohut, Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Smithsonian Institution).

copyright © 2008 Dr. Patrick Hunt
Stanford University

http://www.patrickhunt.net
phunt@stanford.edu

Posted by Patrick Hunt at 4:14 PM | Permalink

The reception of Classical antiquity has become quite a hot topic in recent years. It helps that there are lots of examples of the use and appropriation of Classical themes and motifs in modern art and architecture that can be studied through this approach. The field of reception studies has also increasingly been accepted as part of Classics ‘proper’. I have a lot of sympathy for this interest in Classical reception, although I occasionally feel that it contributes more to a communal sense of nostalgia (i.e. longing for a time when the public still appreciated the ‘true’ value of Classics, and Latin was taught as the first foreign language in schools, etc.) rather than ‘enlivening’ the subject and rendering it relevant in the present. It is perhaps because of this that I often find that the most interesting examples of the use (and occasional abuse) of Classics are those that you come across (almost) at random and in contexts where you hadn’t expected them.

I was therefore pleasantly surprised by the extremely interesting decorative programme of the Old City Hall in Poznan when I visited this summer. Across the facade of its loggia runs a series of portrait roundels of various Classical authors, scientists, politicians, a Byzantine emperor and even a rebel slave. Read on at www.iconoclasm.dk

Posted by Troels Myrup Kristensen at 9:17 AM | Permalink

Caravaggio, The Raising of Lazarus, Museo Regionale, Messina, 1609

Every time I see Caravaggio's Raising of Lazarus (1609) again in Messina, Sicily - such as just this week in the middle of June - new evidence of his genius appears from this late canvas. Many of these observations I've published in a recent book (Hunt, 2004:125 ), but although noticed before and mentioned in lectures at Stanford and elsewhere, the confirmation of such ideas usually comes from repeated direct reflection many times in front of the canvas after one's eyes adjust to the tenebrism of his dark style palpably employed here. Indeed, the passage of John 11:1-43 even refers to this miracle of the raising of Lazarus in the context of light versus darkness (John 11:9), which seems not to have been lost on Caravaggio.

Exemplary prior studies have long discussed Caravaggio's treatment of Lazarus as commissioned by the Genoese merchant Giovanni Battista de' Lazzari (Caravaggio's likely intended name pun noted) for the Church of the Padri Crociferi or "Cross-Bearing Fathers" in Messina (e.g., Langdon, 1998:370-3), often commenting on Lazarus's crosslike pose as an allusion to the "Cross-Bearing Fathers" and some have also long commented on Caravaggio's allusion to Michelangelo's creation of Adam in the Sistine Chapel with life returning to Lazarus's hand from the command of Christ while the rest of his body is still in the sleep of death. But several possibly new observations can be suggested here as well as to develop further or respond to others' ideas.

First, the contrasting light and darkness on the hand of Lazarus also reminds one of the famous passage in Genesis 1:3 when God says "Let there be light". That God (in Christ) may also divide the light from the darkness here is possibly alluded by opposition: divine light returns warm life to Lazarus where the cold dark side of his hand is still in absolute shadow and death and the side facing Christ is in light and returning to life. Caravaggio's chiaroscuro is nowhere so dramatic as in this gesture of a dead hand responding to Christ's verbal command to move again. If God is light - Caravaggio's artistic manifest - and also life, Lazarus will rise again starting from this hand in its dual state of light and darkness.

Second, also in parallel with the darkness of Christ's face hidden in like shadow on the left - also suggestive of his yet hidden deity both before and after his Transfiguration - the body of Lazarus is held almost tenderly by his sisters Mary and Martha on the far right (his family members can endure the smell of corruption of his flesh only because of their great grief and loss). But when the lungs of Lazarus refill with air in a few seconds after the moment Caravaggio has painted, his sisters will be the first spectators to notice his breath, their faces being so close to his face about to be reanimated by this resurrection.

Third, the depth and intensity of the darkness of those holding Lazarus is finally enlightened when one studies the painting for a long time in its Messina context and one's eyes dilate to the proper level. With all due respect, John Spike - hugely authoritative - reports that the person often believed to be a self-portrait of Caravaggio is the man above Christ's pointing hand and facing Christ with praying hands, although Spike is clearly not endorsing this view (Spike, 2001: 221). Puglisi, for example, in her magisterial book supports this identification for a self-portrait (Puglisi, 1998: 327). In my opinion, however, this man is not nearly as interesting a candidate for a self-portrait as another candidate suggested below, nor does the bearded resemblance of this candidate seem as compelling as another. Furthermore, my strongest concern about the identification of the praying man as a Caravaggio self-portrait is that it seems to push piety for this rebellious artist a little too far, especially since the artist refused holy water to absolve venial sin in the Messina church of the Madonna del Pilero, as Sussino related, purportedly saying, "I don't need it because all my sins are mortal" (Hunt, 2004, 128).

On the other hand, the person who holds Lazarus's torso is usually forgotten because there is more light on the spectators around Jesus and also on Mary and Martha at either end of the canvas. If one looks very closely at this individual holding Lazarus in the middle of his body (and he is also in the darkest center of the painting), his bearded face is almost entirely in shadow yet fascinatingly lit by the light reflected off Lazarus. He is also in subtle opposition to the more easily recognizable Jesus and the sisters of Lazarus. Given Caravaggio's other self-portraits, this visage is so similar to the face of Caravaggio (equally possible given Puglisi's hallmarks "short dark hair, low forehead, beard and moustache") that it is very plausible as the painter himself in some puzzling act either akin to vicarious faith or at least a voyeur of death. Paranoid and sleeping with a dagger under his pillow at this time in Messina, as his local Sicilian chronicler Susinno relates in 1724, Caravaggio is all too aware of his own mortality.

This painting does not need to in any way suggest an intended point on the continuum of faith (however feeble or strong) or be interpreted as redemptive by its artist who is a fugitive for murder and with a death sentence all too real, but it is nonetheless a mystery about faith where Caravaggio seems to place himself in the middle of a desperately-neeeded miracle.

Notes

F. Susinno. Le vite de' pittore messinesi, 1724. Florence: V. Martinelli, ed. (1966).

Helen Langdon. Caravaggio: A Life. New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1998, 370-3 & 376.

Catherine Puglisi. Caravaggio. London: Phaidon, 1998, 327.

John Spike. Caravaggio. New York: Abbeville, 2001, 221.

Patrick Hunt. Caravaggio. Life and Times Series. London: Haus Publishing, 2004, 125, 128.

John Varriano. Caravaggio: The Art of Realism. Pennsylvania State University, 2006.

copyright © 2007 Patrick Hunt
Stanford University

http://www.patrickhunt.net
phunt@stanford.edu

Posted by Patrick Hunt at 1:49 PM | Permalink

Introduction

Bartolomeo Montagna’s nearly forgotten contribution to Renaissance Painting of the Veneto merits revisiting through a brief examination of the controversial Monte di Pietà as related to an altarpiece he painted for the Franciscan Church of San Marco in Lonigo, near Vicenza, Montagna attained status of celebrated painter in Venice after he received his first public commission in 1482. By 1485 Montagna’s altarpiece production thrived in Vicenza, Padua, Verona and throughout the Veneto, which made him an industrious and recognized painter by 1500. Here The Virgin and Child Enthroned with Sts. Francis and Homobonus, Bernardino da Feltre and Beggar, circa 1512, tempera on canvas, now in the Berlin, Gemäldegalerie shall be given primary focus with respect to the influence of Bernardino da Feltre.

Bernardino da Feltre, the Monte di Pietà and Vicenza

The figures of Blessed Bernardino da Feltre, who was never canonized, and St. Homobonus (1) were employed with some frequency in Northern Italy, though Homobonus less so than Bernardino. The presence of Bernardino da Feltre may appear innocuous as a Franciscan advocate of charity upon first glance; however, the beholder should consider that he became one of the most passionate Franciscan preachers from the 1470-90s. The effects of his fervent preaching against Jewish money-lending, especially in Mantua, Cremona, Pavia, Padua, Treviso, Vicenza and throughout northern and central Italy, inspired the flourishing of Monti di Pietà, or Christian money-lending establishments. The Monti di Pietà provided a Franciscan alternative in an attempt to interrupt the loan businesses of Jewish lenders, and Bernardino da Feltre advocated donations for the Monti di Pietà as a step toward salvation. (2) As Bernardino preached from town to town, funds poured into the local Monti di Pietà. Vicenza was no exception, and Bernardino gave sermons on numerous occasions in 1493 and 1494 at the request of its citizens. He preached as many as ninety sermons at Vicenza’s cathedral. (3) Nearby Lonigo is registered as having had a Monte di Pietà by the time of the Pope Leo X (1513-1522). Ultimately, the Monte di Pietà was not so much a charitable alternative to usury, but in point of fact, according to Franciscan scholar Vittorino Meneghin, it developed into another lending/earning establishment. (4) It is relevant that Bernardino da Feltre was the son of a wealthy noble notary, and therefore wise to finance; often arguing in support of the Monti di Pietà charging an interest rate to support its administration. Thus, the distinction between the two established loan systems becomes blurred. In the literature, it is fascinating to observe that the motives of Bernardino da Feltre are historicized differently. In one camp, Bernardino da Feltre is seen as preaching fervidly about the Monte di Pietà and its connection to Christian salvation. (5) In the other, scholars have argued that Bernardino preached only in towns with significantly populated Jewish communities with the objective of one, dispersing the Jewish community, and two, destroying their businesses. (6) In one particular case, Bernardino preached in Trent on Easter just before nine Jews were arrested, accused of the murder of a boy named Simon, and tormented until they confessed. As a late fifteenth-century depiction shows, the local Jews were charged - typically falsely - with having tortured and killed the two and half year-old Simon in order to use his blood for making Passover matzo. (7) Regrettably, the practice of charging Jews with ritual murder created an epidemic of similar cases in Northern Italy and Austria. (8) After Bernardino’s death in 1494, the Monti di Pietà continued to thrive; however, the War of the League of Cambrai, 1508-1517, in addition to the growing population in the Veneto, had disastrous effects and put the Franciscan institution in peril. (9)

In looking to fifteenth-century images of Bernardino da Feltre including Montagna’s, one finds that they are not extremely common. According to Meneghin’s survey of Bernardino da Feltre’s iconography, the incidence of Bernardino’s portraits from the late fifteenth century typically correspond to where he gave sermons and established Monti di Pietà throughout the Veneto, Umbria, and Emilia Romagna. (10) A number of visual examples present a window into the depth of Bernardino’s effectual nature as a speaker, a proponent of the Monte di Pietà and Franciscanism in the Veneto and beyond. As was the case in Vicenza, Bernardino gave sermons on a variety of occasions in Faenza, as this canvas was to commemorate his memorable orations.

The portrait shows Bernardino dressed as a Franciscan, hooded with presumably golden rays that issue from his head, a standard iconographical feature indicating the image postdates his life. Meanwhile, a donor is portrayed kneeling in the left lower corner. Bernardino holds a cartouche in his left hand with the maxim written, “Diligere Mundum,” which refers to the First Epistle of John’s “Do not love things of this world (2:15)”, and a clear allusion to the steps taken towards salvation. These same features are seen in another painting of Bernardino by an unknown Ferrarese painter, dated to 1507. Bernardino holds the typical sign for the Monte di Pietà, a mound topped with a standard flying the flag of the Resurrection, which bears an image invoking pathos: Christ, Man of Sorrows. Usually the emblem of the Monte di Pietà also contains the words “Curam illius habe,” or “Give them to the Host,” allusive to the request for charity as seen in the Umbrian example painted by Giovanni di Pietro, otherwise known as “Lo Spagna” The Veronese painter Paolo Morando, called Cavazzola, painted a profile portrait intended as one of a cycle of paintings for a chapel in the Church of San Bernardino in Verona. Here Bernardino gestures as if in the act of sermonizing. Filippo Mazzola, father of the famous Parmigianino, painted a half-length sacra conversazione with Bernardino da Feltre in Parma. While the original context of this oil on panel is uncertain, it is known that Bernardino gave sermons in Parma between 1485 and 1492. Thus, the possibility remains that Mazzola himself might have had contact with the Franciscan missionary. Here Bernardino’s physiognomy is very similar to the features seen in Lo Spagna’s portrait, taking into account the round bulbous eyes and mustache, though the symbol of the Monte di Pietà is an abbreviated Man of Sorrows. Because in many instances the paintings of Bernardino da Feltre were intended as ex-votos honoring his sermons, I pose the following question: Where does Montagna’s sacra conversazione, incorporating Bernardino da Feltre, fit into this tradition? Undoubtedly, the presence of this figure forces us to observe this understudied work in a new light.

State of Conservation

In Montagna’s San Marco altarpiece, the beggar, pendant figure to Bernardino, appears original, as is the miniature figure of St. Catherine of Alexandria. The apparent diminished size of Bernardino is curious, though interesting to note that according to his biographies, he was apparently diminutive in stature. The Bishop of Padua was recorded as having called him, affectionately, “piccolino,” or “parvulo.” (11)

As a part of the recent technical investigation conducted by the Berlin Gemäldegalerie in 2004, the x-ray assemblage reveals that Bernardino da Feltre was likely added later, due to the fact that the figure is extremely light in intensity, almost invisible compared to the other figures in the painting. (12) Further examination reveals that the podium and socle were finished before Bernardino was added, thus he is most likely not a part of the originally planned painting. The letters “M.D.” on the throne base likely refer to Mater Dei, given the titular dedication to the Immaculate Conception. The Church of San Marco was re-consecrated and three additional altars were built on June 3, 1512. (13) Given the evidence of Montagna’s stylistic maturity observed in this work, such as his interest in saturated tones, movement of human form and the blurring of hard contours, it seems probable that Montagna would have produced this altarpiece for the new structure, and thus a date of 1500 for Montagna’s painting is premature. Vicentine Church historian, Francesco Barbarano, gives an account of San Marco’s six altars and describes them as they appeared in the mid-eighteenth century. According to Barbarano, the confraternities of Lonigo maintained these six altars, though Barbarano does not specify patrons to altars. (14)

By 1512 Vicenza and its provincial territory, including Lonigo, had long since restored its allegiance to the Venetian Republic, yet the war of the League of Cambrai persisted. It is known that the Monte di Pietà in Vicenza was affected adversely during these years. If the loan establishment in urban Vicenza had exhausted its funds in this time of extreme need, then can we assume that there were similar conditions in rural Lonigo during the League of Cambrai years? I suggest here that Montagna finished the altarpiece around 1512 and upon presentation to his patron, a local confraternity in Lonigo, it was decided to augment the composition to include Bernardino da Feltre in the interest of re-awakening his memory and donations given to the local Monte di Pietà. Bernardino’s presence in Lonigo was never documented, however he spoke many times in nearby Vicenza, Padua and Verona. Moreover, as his ex-voto portraiture tradition suggests, imagery of Bernardino da Feltre is strictly connected to commemorating his sermons, thus the appeal for donations.
Regrettably, the specifics of Bartolomeo Montagna’s commission remain obscured by the lack of archival information, as none of the convent’s inventories mention the painting. The San Marco in Lonigo altarpiece thus stands as a cultural marker of Franciscan rhetoric: promoting propaganda against Jewish money lending practices, and endorsement for the use of Monti di Pietà reflects Vicentine local piety.

NOTES:

(1) George Kaftal, Saints in Italian Art: Iconography of the Saints in the Paintings of North East Italy. Florence: Sansoni, 1978, 425. In North Eastern Italy, Kaftal cites only two others in addition to Montagna, one in the Basilica San Marco and another by Domenico da Tolmezzo (1479) in Udine at the Museo Civico.

(2) Renata Segre, “Bernardino da Feltre: I Monti di Pietà e I Banchi Ebraici,” Rivista storia italiana, vol. 90, Issue 4, (1978): 888.

(3) Vittorino Meneghin, Bernardino da Feltre e I Monti di Pietà (Vicenza: 1974), 393-5.

(4) Ibid.

(5) Meneghin, 388-90.

(6) Segre, 825. For example, oddly Bernardino da Feltre never preached sermons in his native Feltre. Monte di Pietà was founded as late as 1542.

(7) Dana E. Katz, “The Contours of Tolerance: Jews and the Corpus Domini Altarpiece in Urbino,” The Art Bulletin 55 4 (December 2003): 652.

(8) Leon Poliakov, The History of Anti-Semitism (New York, Shocken Books, 1965), 148. Here is an exerpt from the Franciscan preacher’s sermon at Trento, “Jewish usurers bleed the poor to death and grow fat on their substance, and I who live on alms, who feed on the bread of the poor, shall I then be mute as a dog before outraged charity? Dogs bark to protect those who feed them, and I, whom am fed by the poor, shall I see them robbed of what belongs to them and keep silent? Dogs bark for their masters; shall I not bark for Christ?” Furthermore, the site of Simon’s execution later became a pilgrimage site.

(9) Meneghin, 401-2.

(10) See Meneghin, Iconografia del B. Bernardino Tomitano da Feltre. Venice: San Michele in Isola, 1967.

(11) Meneghin, (1967), 11. Bernardino Guslino da Feltre was his earliest biographer in 1696 and Simone da Marostica in 1871.

(12) See Elizabeth Carroll. “La Pala Ritrovata: Una rivisitazione della Pala d’Altare di
Bartolomeo Montagna, già nella Chiesa di San Marco a Lonigo.” Arte Documento 20 (2004):112-117.

(13) Pomello, 68. Cites the documentation as, “…si legge nei atti di Pietro Giovanni da Schio.”

(14) Francesco Barbarano de Mironi, Historia Ecclesiastica della Città, Territorio e Diocesi di Vicenza 1649-1762, Vicenza: Carlo Bressan, 1761., vol. VI, 48

Images courtesy of Berlin Gemaldegalerie and Vittorino Meneghin

copyright 2007

Elizabeth Carroll Consavari, Ph.D.
Department of Art and Art History
Stanford University

Posted by Liz Consavari at 2:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Julian the Apostate, killed June 23, A.D. 363 in battle.

The capture of Pirisabora represented the first major victory for Julian's Persian expedition in A.D. 363. Ammianus Marcellinus, Zosimus, and Libanius all discuss the siege and the subsequent setback the Romans suffered the next day, when three squadrons of scouts were routed and a standard lost. Putting all three accounts together reveals substantial omissions in Ammianus' account which suggest the historian purposefully distorted his account to minimize the damage to the reputation of his hero, Julian.

On the second day of the siege of Pirisabora, Julian himself led an attack against one of the gates of the city but was repelled. He then ordered a helepolis “city-taker” siege engine to be built, the mere sight of which convinced the defenders to surrender under lenient terms of peace (24.2.18-22). Ammianus reports that the soldiers found a large stockpile of grain and weaponry in the citadel, since the city had been evacuated and 2500 men left behind to defend it from the Romans (24.2.22). Of this, the soldiers took what they needed and burnt the remainder as well as the city.

Ammianus’ chronology at this point becomes murky: he next recounts the loss of a standard by a reconnaissance force and the punishment of the men involved postera die “on day following” (24.3.1), and then he relates Julian’s speech which occurred incensa denique urbe, ut memoratum est “after the burning of the city, as I have said” (24.3.3). The reader is left to ask whether the loss of the standard (and punishment of the soldiers) occurred before or after the speech?

Ammianus seems to say that on the same day as the capture of the city, the citadel was found full of goods, the city burned, and Julian’s speech given. The following day, then, the reconnaissance force lost their standard, Julian routed the enemy, and punished the soldiers who had lost the standard. This interpretation means that Ammianus has reported the events of 24.3.1-2 out of sequence, jumping forward to the day after the city was captured and then jumping back to the day of the capture to relate Julian’s speech. Based on just the information he gives, this certainly is a possible interpretation of the sequence of events (1), but when Zosimus’ account is considered it becomes less plausible.

On the siege itself, Ammianus and Zosimus agree, but Zosimus gives much more detail following the city’s surrender. First, he says that in addition to grain and weapons, abundance τῆς ἄλλης ἀποσκευῆς “of other household stuff” was also found (3.18.5). He states that of the large amount of grain found, most was loaded onto ships and the rest split between the men. Of the weapons, the arms useful for Roman battle tactics were distributed to the men and the rest burned or thrown into the river (3.18.5-6). Zosimus' account makes good sense, but accepting it means that Ammianus’ sequence of events become awfully crowded for the day of the capture of Pirisabora: the troops had to have tried to attack the city in the morning, built a siege engine, negotiated terms with the inhabitants, found the stockpile, carried off most (if not all) of the grain and loaded it on the supply ships, burned the city, and then heard Julian’s speech.

On the other hand, the note that Julian’s speech occurred incensa denique urbe “after the city had been burned” does not necessarily place the Julian’s speech immediately before the loss of the standard by the scouts. Two alternatives are possible: either the first notice that the city was burned looks forward to the next day (having been dislocated to round out the climax of the seige in 24.2), or the second notice acts to remind the reader of the situation (the successful capture of an important city and the reason for the donative) and not act as a temporal marker. Indeed, Williams accepts without question that the speech occurred after the punishment of the soldiers (2). Zosimus’ version does not clearly put the loss of the standard either before or after Julian’s speech: while he narrates the speech before defeat of the scouts, he does not give any words which can confirm the ordering is chronological and not just topical (3.19.1).

The account of the attack and Julian’s counterattack also present difficulties when compared to Zosimus’ version, which again adds more details.

Continue reading "Julian's Spin Doctor: Ammianus Marcellinus 24.2.22-24.3.8 and the Persian Mutiny" »

Posted by Adam J. Bravo at 8:18 PM | Permalink