Philolog

Caravaggio, Penitent Magdalene, c. 1596, Doria Pamphilij Gallery 122.5 x 98.5 cm

An evolved Baroque Magdalene is curiously seen in Caravaggio’s uniquely sensitive Penitent Magdalene of 1596, 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.

Nonetheless, 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

While it is ironic that the passionate Magdalene could not easily seem to so synchronously lamenting her loss of virginity at this stage in her life, in a Caravaggian twist, she could also ambiguously and reflectively weep over newfound self-imposed chastity as her ultimate sacrifice. It is also not impossible that Caravaggio (or better yet his very literate patron Cardinal Del Monte) could have known the infamous Mary Magdalene material from the "heretical" 15th-16th century source Jacobus Faber Stapulensis. Faber published in Latin and was in Italy from 1492 onward for some years before being condemned by the Sorbonne as a heretic in 1521, likely due to insinuations of at least some form of "sanctified" intimacy between the Magdalene and Christ, an idea modernity has more commonly raised in secular media.

Caravaggio paints the Magdalene possibly ambiguously, choosing the moment after she has loosened her hair (sometimes perceived as a provocative act in which a courtesan would have usually prepared to bed a client-lover, but here in preparation to wash Christ’s feet). Bellori’s comment about the artist is merely depicting a girl “drying her hair” is more likely to be an instance of Caravaggio’s pervasive realism and even a possibly clever anticipation of the biblical narrative of the generally anonymous "sinner" woman who washed Christ’s feet with her hair as an act of contrite devotion (Luke 7:37-50).

Unlike Bellori above who observed it as the perfumed “ointment” (un vasello di unguenti), later commentators like Langdon interpret the glass vessel on the side as possibly a “small flask of wine”, or either according to Spike since both have Christian meanings, the oil for anointing and the wine for the Eucharist, although the symbolism of its association with nard in this abandonment of luxury and sensuality seems clearer if the Magdalene is renouncing the precious perfume for personal use, especially as she is distanced from the other objects clustered together in the painting and by her act of sacrificial devotion related in the Gospels and Legenda aurea.

Puglisi points out that this is one of Caravaggio’s first religious portraits and that the “naturalism of this painting sets it apart.” Subtle symmetries are repeated in many details: the glass perfume vessel is echoed in the small wooden finial of the chair in a direct vertical line; the russet color of her hair is seen again in the satin brocade of her mantle and waist sash; the highlighted pearly tear on her cheek – since Luke 7:38 clearly states her weeping which is later elaborated as proof of penitence - is also a likely simile of the vessel shape itself; her hair frames her body in a close ellipse to the vessel; the angle of the chair parallels the tiles of the floor pattern; the damask of her dress is similar to the brocade image on the mantle; and the pearls and other gold chains and jewels lie on the floor behind the vessel in close proximity. Although only a speculation, the chains here may be gold but they could nonetheless be interpreted as binding the Magdalene to a life of possession – even the putative "demonic possession” from which she was exorcised (Luke 8:2) which could thus be graphically illustrated. It is interesting that Peter Abelard in Sermo 13 in Die Pascha interpreted Mary’s weeping in Luke’s Gospel as tears of longing and love, not penitence, which view was also seen as somewhat heretical.

There are other pictorial details, however, which 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.

The way she holds herself, noted as “isolated self-containment” by Gash, suggests her encircling of empty space as if her lap and arms are bereft of or seeking a missing loved one, also a haunting image of the Magdalene as a receptacle now open in love and penitence. Recent comment calls the image an “empty mother’s cradle” and a “womb without life” as Spike opines. On self-containment, it has been pointed out that only women can experience two types; men merely one: a woman can be contained in her mother’s womb and contain a child in her own whereas a man can only be contained in his mother’s womb in Ricci’s words. The tradition of the Magdalene’s physical contact with Jesus – while controversial - was not atypical, since touch was characteristic of the way many people experienced Jesus in the Gospels. Caravaggio also has the Magdalene’s wrists tied with slender white threads, an elusive and seemingly ambiguous note, possibly evocative of commitment or even its antithesis in bondage, although a white thread around the wrists was also a possible common sign of betrothal in the medieval world akin to the chains lovers wore as bracelets.

Her jewelry also bears inspection. Pearls – also shell derived from the sea - are another reinterpretation of Classical attributes of Venus born from the sea as goddess of love, as are both perfume and bathing. Despite Bellori’s contention that Caravaggio scorned Classical sculpture like the work of Pheidias and Glykon and Roman art and his derogation of Caravaggio as “an illiterate”, Caravaggio’s knowledge of Classical iconography has been discussed elsewhere, notably his possible awareness of Philostratus’Imagines (Latin) and Eikones (Greek) which carefully describe Classical images as Camiz and Orr have shown and, according to Benedetti, his likely use of Classical sculpture for models in Cardinal Del Monte’s Antiquarium and the Giustiniani Collection. How much Caravaggio knew of Classical antiquity is confused by Bellori’s infamous anecdote noted above, where the artist preferred mimesis of nature to mimesis of convention. Of course, Cardinal Del Monte would have known many of the possible Classical allusions as one of the most erudite prelates of his day and could have easily communicated much of this to the artist if Del Monte was in any way connected to the commission.

It is also interesting that in parts of the Renaissance and Mannerist world a Jewess could be identified by mandatory pierced-ear loops or earrings, with her pearls now strewn on the ground and with a clear piercing of her earlobe visible, as Jean Weisz noted to this author in the Doria Pamphilj. This is also a possible allusion to Christ’s piercing in his Passion. The pearl necklace is broken in two sections, perhaps to show the abandonment of her life as courtesan. Curiously, there are 36 pearls total in the two strands and the break occurs between 20 and 16 or 16 and 20, possibly meaningful of a chronology where she encountered Christ in her prime at 20 years old and later lived beyond her conversion another 16 years, a likely timeline of the Classical world derivable from patristic tradition although Puglisi refers to a tradition which had her living as a hermit for the last twenty years of her life, which could also be applicable here, and the Legenda aurea states the Magdalene and many other disciples migrated to Marseilles 14 years after Christ’s Passion, which could yet also give meaning to the strand of 16 pearls as her conversion was some time before Christ’s trial and crucifixion according to all the gospel accounts cited earlier. Even her barocco earrings are shaped similarly to her body form. The chains she has discarded could remind of the medieval iconography of the La Dame à la Licorne tapestries where cast-off necklace symbolize sensual renunciation and denial of the passions. Perhaps the gold chain could represent the discarded and broken sensual life and the white thread around her wrists could represent the new pure life her tradition implies she will soon follow as an ascetic.

Even the term “penitent” suggests internal cognition that led to external behavior - became “to turn back" perhaps more reminiscent of the Greek verb metanoeō (Greek μετανοεω) “to change one’s or away from, to change direction”, easily translated into Latin as repedare to “turn back” and fits here as well with rependere “to ponder, consider or meditate upon” to become a source for repentance and resipiscentia from Lactantius (c. 250-325 CE) Patristic author of Divinae Institutiones 6.24,6 although here the Latin could even mean “turn away from” as Caravaggio has implicitly shown. Thus here Caravaggio’s bold innovation changes from the major Magdalene depictions followed by Titian and others in traditional narrative details from Legenda aurea, but is actually more intuitively or deliberately dependent on the biblical texts for his iconography. This is a work of genius rather than a mere commission from a Church prelate whose tastes were appreciably subtle. In short, there is striking antithesis again here in Caravaggio between the sweet and the bitter, pleasure and pain, past and present all admixed together in her name and in her life. Where she could be sweetness and rich beauty personified with all the floral and perfume fertility of eros, she is instead a paradox of profound unhappiness and in bitter tears despite all the loveliness her life represented up to this moment.

In one of the most striking coincidences in the painting, Caravaggio may be mischievously modeling his own courtesan girlfriend Anna Bianchini as the exemplary Magdalene in an overtly rebellious flaunting of Archbishop Gabriele Paleotti’s 1582 rule against painting cortigiani, concubini and meretrici (“courtesans, unmarried concubines and prostitutes”) portrayed as saints and/or as figuri nudi, especially in church-sponsored art. On the other hand, it might have been challenging to find any other women willing to be quiescent models for artists of dubious moral piety. Nonetheless, Caravaggio’s possible irony may be apparent in his choice of model: although here acceptably repentant and leaving all the trappings of her former life behind, what better person to depict a lovely "courtesan" with luxurious hair than a lovely courtesan (Anna Bianchini) with luxurious hair ?

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)

While this brief note is not a Doomsday projection, it 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. 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 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 denarius was 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.

The cause-effect interrelationships between war, famine and plague and death are hardly lost on the historian. 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)

While I am not be the first to present this ancient and possibly contemporary sequence suggested by the above literary text - visionary physicist James Lovelock, advocate of the Gaia hypotheses, and the CLIMOS™ group, for example among many others, have also alluded to this metaphor in their projections and carbon sequestration models (5) - 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. (6)

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. (7) 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.

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. (8) 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. (9) 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. (10) 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. (11) 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. (12) 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., began 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.

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) see Jeff Goodell's article, "The Prophet of Climate Change: James Lovelock" in Rolling Stone magazine, Nov. 1, 2007 (also online: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/16956300/the_prophet_of_climate_change_james_lovelock/print)

(6) 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.

(7) 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.

(8) 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).

(9) 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.

(10) "Micronutrient Malnutrition: Half the World's Population Affected" WHO: The World Health Report 1996, World Health Organization 13 Nov. 1996 (78) 1-4.

(11) 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; Mateo Gutierrez. Climatic Geomorphology. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 2005, on soils and humans in climatic change, 349, 601.

(12) "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

copyright © 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

Fig. 1 Rubens, Landscape with Philemon and Baucis, 1620

"Parfois, un arbre humanise mieux un paysage que ne le ferait un homme." Gibert Cesbron

Man and nature… The story of humanity has been an unending conflict between civilisation and that needing civilising. One is constantly assaulting the other: man with his axes and ploughs, and nature with its tempests and floods. Very rarely has man lived in complete harmony with his surroundings. Until the Renaissance in Western Europe, the kinds of emotions with which man associated nature centred on fear. And yet, over the course of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Western European man nurtured a different sort of relationship with his environment: a connection that was not based on necessity or the desire to tame, but an aesthetic appreciation of the mystery of nature’s wild beauties. Nature became “landscape”, and an artistic genre in its own right.

The rediscovery of ancient Greek and Roman literature after the fall of Constantinople in 1453 revived interest in the animist perspective of the great civilisations of the past. The Greeks believed not only that trees and brooks had spirits but also that natural phenomena could be explained by means of myths. Every element of nature stemmed from divine intervention. Storms, earthquakes, and plagues were physical manifestations of godly anger. Attributing emotions to nature helped man to understand the world around him. This tight understanding bridged a gap between man and nature, which enabled – with a small leap of imagination – the transformation of one matter into the other. Ovid illustrates this bond in his Metamorphosis, a compilation of poetry that had a profound influence on writers and artists of the Renaissance.

The myth that both dramatically and tenderly explores man’s relationship with nature in the Renaissance period is the story of Philemon and Baucis. Philemon and Baucis are an old mortal couple, still deeply in love after decades of marriage. Although they live very humbly, they offer hospitality to Jupiter and Mercury – travelling through the land in disguise – when the people of a nearby town had all turned the gods from their doorsteps. The gods punish the townsfolk by summoning a flood, but reward Philemon and Baucis by granting their wish: to be able to die together at the very same moment. When the old couple dies, they are transformed into trees that grow forever in each other’s embrace. The myth was the inspiration for two important artists of the seventeenth century: the French poet Jean de La Fontaine and the Flemish painter Peter Paul Rubens.

An analysis of the poem Philémon et Baucis by La Fontaine and the painting Landscape with Philemon and Baucis by Rubens (Fig.1) will illuminate the nature of the relationship between man and landscape. The term “man” encompasses many different bodies: the peasant, the urban-dweller, and for our purposes, even the gods. The works of art invite a comparison between the controlled power of the human body and the savage power of nature. Philemon and Baucis’ metamorphosis into trees unites the two worlds and humanises the landscape. Though, it is possible that the two spheres were not so different to begin with, as we consider the notion of landscape as the mirror of the human being.

I. Landscape and the Peasant

No link between man and nature is as deeply forged as the connection between the peasant and the land he cultivates. In his Court traité du paysage (Short Treaty on Landscape), Alain Roger states that the peasant does not appreciate the beauty of a landscape in an aesthetic capacity, but rather he judges the beauty of a landscape based on its usefulness. “This does not signify that the peasant is bereft of all ties to his country and that he does not feel any attachment towards his land, quite the contrary; but this attachment is all the more powerful because it is symbiotic” . Further in the text, Roger reassesses his idea of the “natural contract” that exists between peasant and landscape, defined as “either death or symbiosis.”

The myth of Philemon and Baucis corresponds to Roger’s theory. Philemon and Baucis live in peace with nature. La Fontaine writes that they “cultivated, without assistance, Their enclosure and their field for two score summers.” This wisdom is rewarded by “a bit of milk, of fruits, and the gifts of Ceres.” The earth is respected and well cared for; therefore, it reciprocates with its fertility. Moreover, the cabin belonging to Philemon and Baucis is described by La Fontaine as narrow and humble. With its broken table and used carpet, is so decrepit that it is practically an extension of nature itself.

In Rubens’ painting, the artist transmits by his use of colours the notion of commensalism between the old couple and nature. While Zeus and Hermes are garbed in vibrant blue and red, Philemon and Baucis’ clothes are coloured in tones nearly indistinguishable from the hues of the countryside. Rubens uses the same greys and browns to paint their clothing and skin as the shades he applies to the waterfalls and trees. Already, during their lifetimes, Philemon and Baucis blended in with nature. This link in life prefigures their bond beyond death.

Meanwhile, the city-dwellers of the nearby burg have lost their contact with the land and consequently, they perish as punishment. Is there a correlation between life in an urban environment and the corruption of its inhabitants? In Ovid’s time, cities were being built around the quintessential city, Rome. The poet would have been able to witness the degeneration of nature and the result of this rupture between men of the countryside and city-dwellers. In his work entitled Philémon et Baucis, author Ernst Jünger says of Ovid, “He was born in the Samnite village of Sulmo, and although he lived in Rome since his earliest youth, it is likely that he always spent a part of the year in his country estates. As always with the Latins, cultivated lands, labours and gardens were more familiar than the woods. The way in which one sowed, cultivated, harvested and consumed the fruit of the land held not the slightest secret from him.”

For Ovid, the myth of Philemon and Baucis might have represented the joy of civilising nature while still cultivating and appreciating the goodness of the earth. The danger lay only in building a civilisation to the detriment of nature. City-dwellers lose their roots, so to speak, and their connection to the land. And since the land is, in animist cosmology, simply a physical manifestation of spirits and gods, we can deduce that the city-dwellers lose a certain part of their faith.

After the fall of Constantinople to the Turks in 1453, scholars fled the great city with their manuscripts and knowledge, and Western Europe found itself flooded by the literature and philosophy of Antiquity. Authors of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries began to re-examine ancient literary themes, finding in the old stories material with which they could easily identify. Why did La Fontaine choose the myth of Philemon and Baucis in particular? As in Ovid’s era, large cities were developing in France. Consequently, the abundance of bodies, malnutrition and lack of hygiene contributed to the diseases that raged across Europe. Numerous illnesses, notably the bubonic plague, struck thousands of victims, particularly in overpopulated cities where maladies spread quickly. The punishment delivered upon the townspeople in the myth of Philemon and Baucis would have struck a chord with the public of La Fontaine’s Europe. We can consider the destruction wrought by Jupiter and Mercury as symbolic of the plague, which was also considered a punishment imposed by God: “God, irritated by the sins of an entire population had decided to extract vengeance…” Readers of La Fontaine’s poem might have hoped to be protected from divine retribution in the same way that Philemon and Baucis were spared by the gods. The health of the body depended on the respect that that body showed for its environment.

II. The Power of Men and Gods

In Homer’s Odyssey, the text describes only the voice of the sirens and neglects their entire physical description. This omittance only thickens their elusive and mysterious character. La Fontaine’s poem, however, often alludes to parts of the body in reference to its human and godly protagonists: hearts, front, wrinkles, feet, eyes, eyebrows, hand. Instead of distancing the characters, as Homer does with the sirens, these physical details humanise not only the mortal characters but also the gods. If it looks like a human and walks like a human… Although the gods possess abilities lacking in ordinary men, in art, we represent and thus consider them to be simply glorified humans: powerful undying men.

Fig. 2 Rubens, Self-Portrait with Isabella Brant, 1609

Artists employ many different kinds of visual strategies to depict the importance of a certain figure in relation to others present in a painted scene. For instance, in Rubens’ 1609 Self Portrait with his wife Isabelle Brant, the artist places himself in an elevated position. (Fig. 2) His wife is seated at his side; the top of her hat does not even reach the level of her husband’s nose. In this case, height designates Rubens’ superiority over Isabelle, and establishes in the mind of the observer a certain dynamic in the perception of their marriage.

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Posted by Naomi Levin at 4:33 PM | Permalink

From Robert Solomon's introduction to Existentialism (1974):

As Camus tells us, 'at any streetcorner the absurd can strike a man in the face.' Imagine yourself involved in any one of those petty mechanical tasks which fill so much of your waking hours--washing the car, boiling an egg, changing a typewriter ribbon--when a friend appears with a new movie camera. No warning: 'Do something!' he commands, and the camera is already whirring. A frozen shock of self-consciousness, embarrassment, and confusion. 'Do something!' Well of course one was doing something, but that is now seen as insignificant. And one is doing something just standing there, or perhaps indignantly protesting like a housewife caught in curlers. At such moments one appreciates the immobilization of John Barth's Jacob Horner, that paralyzing self-consciousness in which no action seems meaningful. In desperation one falls back into his everyday task, or he leaps into an absurd posture directed only toward the camera. It is the Kantian transcendental deduction with a 16mm lens: there is the inseparable polarity between self and object; but in this instance the self is out there, in the camera, but it is also the object. A sum (not a cogito) accompanies my every presentation. 'How do I look?' No one knows the existential attitude better than a ham actor.
Enlarge this moment, so that the pressure of self-consciousness is sustained. Norman Mailer, for example, attempted in Maidstone a continuous five-day film of himself and others which did not use a developed script, leaving itself open to the 'contingencies of reality.' His problem was, as ours now becomes, how to present oneself, how to live one's life, always playing to the camera, not just as one plays to an audience but as one plays to a mirror. One enjoys making love, but always with the consciousness of how one appears to be enjoying himself. One thinks or suffers, but always with the consciousness of the 'outer' significance of those thoughts or sufferings. A film of one's life: would it be a comedy? a tragedy? thrilling? boring? heartrending? Would it be, as Kierkegaard suggests, the film of 'a life which put on the stage would have the audience weeping in ecstasy'? Would it be a film you would be willing to see yourself? twice? infinitely? Or would eternal reruns force you to throw yourself down and gnash your teeth and curse this Nietzschean projectionist? And who would edit this extravagant film of every detail--of yet undetermined significances--of your life? How would the credits be distributed? Each of us finds himself in his own leading role--the hero, the protagonist, the buffoon. John Barth tells us that Hamlet could have been told from Polonius' point of view: 'He didn't think he was a minor character in anything.'
What does one do? 'Be yourself!' An empty script; myself sounds like a mere word that points at 'me' along with the camera. One wants to 'let things happen,' but in self-conscious reflection nothing ever 'just happens.' One seizes a plan (one chooses a self), and all at once demands controls unimaginable in everyday life. Every demand becomes a need, yet every need is also seen as gratuitous.

Posted by James Collins at 1:25 PM | Permalink

The Philosophical Stages project is featured in the January/February 2007 issue of Edutopia, the award-winning, national multimedia publication of the George Lucas Educational Foundation (GLEF) designed to celebrate and profile the stories and people behind innovation in education. GLEF is a nonprofit operating foundation that documents, advocates, and disseminates information about exemplary programs in K-12 education in order to help these practices spread nationwide.

Edutopia identifies the Philosophical Stages project as an exciting landmark in an ideal educational landscape, and explains how and why it is important that Philosophical Stages brings a new P to PBL.

(1) "Acting Up: Higher philosophical thinking through drama" and
(2) "How To: Use Performance-Based Learning in the Classroom"

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Posted by James Collins at 2:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)