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develops the new kind of justice – marked by reason, juried decision and extenuating circumstances – that eventually superseded the chthonic justice of simplistic vengeance pursued by the mythical Furies (Erinyes), in some way paralleling the legendary precedent of Solon’s (c. 638-558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 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. He was primarily pointing to superstition in the medieval Jewish community.

(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 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.

Continue reading "METAMORPHOSES OF MAN AND NATURE: The Myth of Philemon and Baucis as Represented by Rubens and La Fontaine" »

Posted by Naomi Levin at 4:33 PM | Permalink

Fig. 1 Titian, Bacchus and Ariadne, 1520-23, National Gallery, London 176 x 191 cm

Between 1520-23 Titian painted Bacchus and Ariadne, one of a series of mythological works for the ducal study [studiolo, the so-called 'Camerini d'Alabastro'] in the castle of Alfonso d'Este, Duke of Ferrara. (1) [Fig. 1]. Although the room was disassembled in 1598 after the d'Este family line in Ferrara died out and the castle reverted to the pope, the duke wanted these mythological paintings:

“to be explicitly all'antica in both style and content; indeed the subjects were largely based on descriptions of lost classical paintings." (2)

This is an intriguing idea where it might be asked which lost paintings and which ancient authors might describe them? This is an immediately reminder of Aristotle's comparison of the paintings of Zeuxis and Polygnotus [Poetics 6.27-28] or the paintings of Polygnotus at Delphi as recorded by Pausanias in his Description of Greece, Book 10.xxv.1 & ff., especially the Polygnotus portrait of Ariadne in 10.xxix.4 from the Lesche of Cnidos:

“You see a painting of Ariadne. Seated on a rock, she is looking at her sister Phaedra...Ariadne was taken away from Theseus by Dionysus, who sailed against him with superior forces, and either fell in with Ariadne by chance or set an ambush to catch her. This Dionysus was, in my opinion, the first to invade India.” (3)

Another Pausanias passage [Book 20. xx. 3-4] describes the paintings in the temple of Dionysus Eleuthereus in the theater precinct in Athens:

“The oldest sanctuary of Dionysus is near the theater...There are paintings here...Pentheus and Lycurgos paying the penalty of their insolence to Dionysus, Ariadne asleep, Theseus putting out to sea, and Dionysus on his arrival [at Naxos] to carry off Ariadne.”

This passage is similar in part to what Titian has depicted in Bacchus and Ariadne. Other source possibilities also abound. In Pliny [Nat. Hist. XXXV. 36, 65 & ff.] there is the story about Zeuxis that his painted grape clusters were so real that even birds tried to peck at his grapes, (4) where, admittedly speculative, such clusters might reference a painted Dionysian scene, since it was in a theater context. The probable source of the lost art applicable to Titian's work here, however, is usually thought to be that series of Naples wall-paintings described by Philostratus:

“Nor yet is it enough to praise the painter for things for which someone else too might be praised; for it is easy to paint Ariadne as beautiful and Theseus as beautiful; and there are countless characteristics of Dionysus for those who wish to represent him in painting or in sculpture...Having arrayed himself in fine purple and wreathed his head with roses, Dionysus comes to the side of Ariadne.“ (5)

Naturally, while extant Roman wall paintings or mosaics often have Dionysus (or Bacchus) and Ariadne or their sacred marriage as subjects [e.g., the 1st c. BCE Bacchus hieros gam[e]os panel in the Villa of the Mysteries, (6) the painting of Bacchus and Ariadne known from Boscoreale but now also lost; (7) and the 3rd c. CE Antioch mosaic pavements of Dionysus and Ariadne in the House of Dionysus and Ariadne, (8) to name only a few], many of these would have come to light only after the 18th c. [especially at Pompeii and Herculaneum], long after Titian. Even though many of the ancient paintings may now be lost or their influences untraceable, the classical iconography of the likely subject matter is still accessible. Although the question of lost classical paintings is quarry obviously worthy of the chase, it is not the subject of this brief paper on Titian's use of both classical iconography and literary sources in Ovidian and possibly Catullan narrative. Mosaics showing Bacchus returning from India are also known, such as the famous Sousse, Tunisia pavement with tigers (Fig. 2).

Fig. 2 Bacchus returns from India, Sousse, Tunisia

Additionally, while it is likely that Titian's sources were mostly from literary texts rather than from the surviving classical visual arts, this problem will be discussed later in conjunction with early 16th c. Venetian collections such as that of Cardinal Grimani, (9) in which light we should consider that: "There were probably more notable works of ancient art available to artists in Venice and other northern Italian cities in the first decades of the sixteenth century than is normally supposed" as Marilyn Perry has suggested (10) [following the trail of Otto Brendel] with her notation of the early collections of Grimani, di Martini and Isabella d'Este.

If visual referents are difficult to prove, what about classical literary influences on this painting? In his landmark collection Essays on Literature and Art, Walter Pater discussed the school of Giorgione and Titian and extrapolated that the early Renaissance transformed prior literary narrative. It was his idea that "we may trace the coming of poetry into painting by fine gradations upwards" and also that a painting of this period can be "quite independent of anything definitely poetical in the subject it accompanies". (11) That poetry here should not be limited to mere literary text is clear, nevertheless Pater distinguishes between inspired visual accompaniment and the inspiring source subject. As Lucilla Burn elaborates:

“With the rediscovery of classical antiquity in the Renaissance, the poetry of Ovid
became a major influence on the imagination of poets and artists. His were among the first classical texts to benefit from the invention of printing in the late fifteenth century; they were widely and enthusiastically translated, and remained a fundamental influence on the diffusion and perception of Greek myths through subsequent centuries. “ (12)

Hope details the Duke of Ferrara's prior interest in artists such as Bellini, especially for the illustration of familiar Ovidian narrative. In the case of Bellini, however, the Duke did not express communication in "detailed instructions" and was ignorant of the "casual attitude of Venetian artists to erudite subject matter". (13) This description of casual attitude might well fit other artists and works, such as Hope mentions in Bellini's Feast of the Gods [National Gallery, Washington], (14) but Titian's attitude is anything but casual in his depiction of Bacchus and Ariadne, particularly since the classical iconography of Bacchus [or Dionysus in the Greek tradition], more than that of Ariadne, is a complex one, with multiple attributes or recognizable traits consistently portrayed in Greek and Roman art via black and red figure vase paintings, wall paintings, sculpture and mosaics. (15)

In terms of all'antica in style, Hope also mentions that "in general, authentically classical subject matter was almost always important to patrons elsewhere in Italy" (16) Furthermore, he claims that after d'Este's experience with Bellini, Titian was provided with a specific text to follow in the case of Bacchus and Ariadne (17) which classical texts can probably be adduced, as has been often attempted. As G. H. Thompson showed, Ovid is the most likely classical literary source for Titian, with probable direct allusions to the Ars Amatoria as a primary inspiration for this painting. Thompson also related and challenged the long-held opinions of Giovanni Paolo Lomazzo [Trattato dell'Arte della Pittura, Scoltura et Architettura, 1585] and Carlo Ridolfi in 1648 that Catullus Carmen LXIV was the primary source for this Titian painting. (18)

Continue reading "Titian's BACCHUS AND ARIADNE (1520-23) from Classical Art and Literature" »

Posted by Patrick Hunt at 11:11 PM | Permalink

Fig. 1 Klimt, Pallas Athene, 1898, Historisches Museum der Stadt Wien, Vienna

“...Her terrible eyes shining...” (Iliad I.200)

Gustav Klimt's use of Classical myth iconography is directly derivative of antiquity in his many images of Athena. Perhaps the outstanding image of this goddess since Classical antiquity, however, is his Pallas Athene of 1898 [Fig. 1] (1). She is a very different persona from his famous femmes fatales whose sexuality is overwhelming, for example his Judith (1901) and Danae (1907-8). Here it is Athena’s divinity which Klimt finds more interesting, rather than her sexuality, which is not surprising given the gender ambiguities she demonstrated in Greek antiquity. Perhaps Klimt implies that power is a catalyst to sexual instincts, as history has long suggested that power is one of the most important sexual stimuli in human behavior and that the desire for power is strongly connected to sexual desire. In any case, this somewhat asexual Greek goddess becomes Klimt's most powerful female in his art.

Continue reading "Pallas Athene of Gustav Klimt: Eyes of a Goddess" »

Posted by Patrick Hunt at 12:00 AM | Permalink

Andrea Mantegna. Samson and Delilah, c. 1505. National Gallery, London

Andrea Mantegna painted this Samson and Delilah (circa 1505) with features that are unexpected. Most depictions of Samson and Delilah should be identifiable by merely a woman cutting a sleeping man's hair, as would be derived from the biblical text of Judges 16. This simple image is all that is needed for a straightforward iconographic identification. When additional, idiosyncratic elements beyond this simple image appear, several questions arise about the possible reasons. In this painting, for example, why does Mantegna include a fountain spring pouring from a rock into a water trough? Why is there a vine entwined around a tree and a rocky crevice just between the fountain spring and the water trough? These are not elements in the Samson and Delilah biblical source story of Judges 16 nor are they found in Josephus. Are there other iconographic elements in the painting that connect to different biblical and related texts such as Proverbs 5 and 7?

Continue reading "Andrea Mantegna’s Samson and Delilah" »

Posted by Patrick Hunt at 1:06 AM | Permalink