Burst of Light: Caravaggio and His Legacy

Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, Saint John the Baptist, 1604-05
(The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art) 302#

 "Burst of Light: Caravaggio and His Legacy" an exhibition demonstrating the lasting legacy of the infamous artist on 17th century art has traveled across the country from the Los Angeles County Museum of Art to the Wadsworth Antheneum in Connecticut, a much smaller collection but noteworthy nonetheless. As with any show of this magnitude foreign loans are a major issue which are missing except for two loans from the National Gallery in London and the National Gallery of Canada in the Wadsworth exhibit. The show includes five paintings by Caravaggio which are hung in the first of three galleries. Also in the first gallery are those artists who were Caravaggio's contemporaries or those artists that worked alongside him. The 'Caravaggisti' as his followers are known are divided into two galleries according to their geographic location. There is an audio guide for the exhibition which is accessed through a phone line. For you to enjoy the exhibition as any other visitor can do at the Wadsworth I am including the telephone number 1-860-760-9980 and the numbers on the works of art. Just dial this number from any phone and punch in the numbers on the paintings followed by the pound key. The main number for the overview of the exhibition is 300#.

As soon as visitors enter the main gallery of the exhibition they are confronted with a half-clad, young Saint John the Baptist, commanding attention in the middle of the facing wall. This painting is everything one expects from the infamous Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio - he is a full-length figure pushed to the front of the picture plane with a dark background that helps to project the figure into the viewer's space and a strong light coming from the top left. It is even possible to see the incisions above the right knee. This painting is flanked on both sides with two smaller, more intimate works - Martha and Mary Magdalene to the left and  Saint Francis of Assisi Ecstasy to the right.

The Renaissance Portraits from the Courts of Italy to the Ottoman Empire

Gentile Bellini, The Sultan Mehmet II, 1480
(National Gallery, London)

"Bellini portrayed Sultan Mehmed from life so well, that it was considered a miracle."

                                                                                                      - Giorgio Vasari

Of all the genres in the history of art, portraiture has a very special place due to its intimate nature of enabling vis-a-vis encounters with illustrious figures from the past.  The Renaissance Portrait from Donatello to Bellini exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art earlier this year was a great example of the art of depicting likenesses transcending centuries and making the absent present more than five hundred years after the portraits had been made. One of the highlights of the exhibit was the gallery devoted to portrait medals featuring primarily the works by Antonio Pisanello who is ascribed as the inventor of the portrait medal in Quattrocento. The portrait medal that was utilized by rulers of the Italian Renaissance to cultivate their image pertaining to their right to rule, lineage and intellectual capacity is a fascinating symbol of the philosophy of the the time.  It also is a great testament to the mobility of artists, ideas and influences as well as works of art - all of which can be garnered from examining Pisanello's body of work and it's effects as it pertains to the portrait medal. This mobility and influence seems to have extended out to the most eastern reaches of Europe, to a land that was ruled by Turks, the Ottoman Empire.

Antonio Pisanello,
Studies of Emperor John VIII Palaeologus and Members of the Greek Delegation to the Council of Ferrara and Florence, 1438-39
(Musee du Louvre, Paris)

In the absence of sources as to the artist or real intent of a work of art, most of the conclusions made have to be based on conjecture but following the visual clues that have survived enables even a novice a fascinating view into an enchanting period in history. I assume the best way to embark upon such a journey should be chronologically.  The medallion, John VIII Palaeologus by Pisanello is accepted as the first Renaissance portrait medal which was supposed to have been cast on the occasion of the Byzantine emperor's visit to Ferrara for the council to reunite the Eastern and Western Churches. The Eastern delegation is said to have really fascinated the Italians with their colorful costumes and interesting ways (the Emperor was out hunting instead of sitting in on the meetings) inspiring Pisanello to make the detailed drawings seen above.

The Sacred Made Real in Zurbaràn's Crucifixion

Francisco de Zurbaran, The Crucifixion, 1627
(Art Institute of Chicago)

We contemplate, analyze and even fall in love with works of art, but encountering them in sterile museum settings, away from their original locations, original intent, something vital of their true essence can get lost.  Especially when trying to recreate a narrative about people and events from four centuries ago involving the most sacred of subjects "feeling the love" can be quite challenging.  Zurbaràn’s Crucifixion however, is such a phenomenal painting that it can enchant a viewer despite differences in religion, culture, geography even centuries.    

Van Gogh - The Roulin Family

Vincent van Gogh, La Bercuese, 1889
(Metropolitan Museum of Art)

Sunflowers, 1888
(National Gallery, London)

Vase with Twelve Sunflowers,  1888
(Neue Pinakhotek, Munich)

Van Gogh was living in Arles, when he painted a series of portraits of his friend postmaster Joseph Roulin and his family.  Monsieur and Madame Roulin took care of van Gogh at a time when he was lonely, both of his parents having past away and his brother living in Paris, they had become his close friends as well as a surrogate family.

Sir Joshua Reynolds - Portrait of Mrs Siddon as the Tragic Muse

Sir Joshua Reynolds, Portrait of Mrs Siddons as the Tragic Muse,1784
(The Huntington Library, Pasadena, California)

In France, the Director-General of Buildings under Louis XVI, Count Charles-Claude d'Angiviller, as soon as he took office in 1774, issued a letter to the director of the Academy declaring that from the governments perspective, art's highest aim should be to promote virtue and to combat vice.  In order to achieve this he proposed to commission historical paintings with a strong moral impact.

Sir Joshua Reynolds, across the channel in England was preaching the same thing and calling for a return to a great style of painting that was simple, natural and beautiful in the style of the classical works of art.  Reynolds, one of the founders and the first president of the Royal Academy was a great portraitist and the leading figure in trying to elevate the art of portraiture to a grand style similar to history paintings.  In England, unlike France, the majority of works commissioned were from private patrons instead of the government, making the production of large-scale history paintings difficult.  Artists usually would attempt these to stand out at the academy exhibitions but otherwise concentrated on painting portraits which was always in demand.   His Portrait of Mrs Siddons as a Tragic Muse is a wonderful incorporation of the ideas for a grand style in portraiture.1

Mrs Siddons was at the height of her career when Reynolds painted this portrait.  In Greek Mythology every art had a corresponding muse or a goddess that inspired the artist and Reynolds must have found representing Mrs Siddons as the tragic muse, most appropriate.  There is a story that when she came into his studio Reynolds took her hand and led her to the chair uttering the words "Ascend your undisputed throne; bestow on me some idea of the tragic muse."  At which time she immediately sat and assumed the attitude in which she was painted.2  The pose is reminiscent of Michelangelo's depiction of one of the prophets on the Sistine Chapel.


Reynolds has depicted a fair Mrs Siddons, as a luminescent muse, amongst the dark shadows where the allegorical figures of Terror and Pity hover behind her. He has elevated her station by placing her on such a large scale painting, sitting on a throne with a little stool underneath her feet. The way one arm rests and the other is held with no effort adds to the sense of nobility. The scale of the painting and the  subject matter of  an allegory has made this painting almost on par with history painting.

Thomas Gainsborough, Portrait of Mrs Sarah Siddons, 1785
(The National Gallery, London)

Reynolds' innovations becomes even more pronounced when comparing this painting with Thomas Gainsborough Portrait of Mrs. Sarah Siddons painted in 1785.  In the Gainsborough portrait the influence of rococo is very apparent in the soft brush strokes and the finely worked textures and fabrics of her clothing. This is the perfect likeness of a well-bred woman with an averted gaze sitting with her powdered hair, in silks and furs placed at the very front of the canvas.    While Gainsborough displays his sensuous brushwork in this painting in the rococo style, Reynolds, by concentrating on what he calls a "nobleness of conception"  and "dignifying his figure with intellectual grandeur," has created a portrait akin to the grand history paintings that were beginning to be produced in France.  


1 Petra ten-Doesschate Chu, Nineteenth-Century European Art, second edition, Pearson Education 2006
2  Estelle May Hurll, Sir Joshua Reynolds, A Collection of Fifteen Pictures and a Portrait of the Painter with Introduction and Interpretation, Project Gutenberg E-Book, 31

Joseph Wright of Derby - A Classical Romantic in the Age of the Industrial Revolution

Joseph Wright of Derby, Three Persons Viewing the Gladiator by Candlelight, 1765
(Private Collection)

Joseph Wright of Derby, A Philosopher Giving a Lecture on the Orrery, 1766
(Derby Museum and Art Gallery, Derby, England)

Joseph Wright of Derby, Experiment with an Air Pump, 1768
(National Gallery, London)

Joseph Wright of Derby is an 18th century artist that really stands out due to his unusual depictions of dark interiors with a hidden light source a little reminiscent of Carvaggio and De La Tour, two artist I find incredibly fascinating.

An avid believer in the enlightenment, he was part of an intellectual group, the Lunar society, who believed in the unity of science, philosophy and art.  They got their name from their monthly meetings being held on the first Monday before a full moon.

Georges de La Tour, The Newborn, 1645
(Musee des Beaux-Arts, Rennes)

Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio,
The conversion of St. Paul, 1601
(Santa Maria del Popolo, Rome)

What I find worthy of observing here is that Derby painted these works, around the same time that in France Fragonard  was showing The Swing, 1767, Jean-Baptiste Greuze was showing, Septimius Severus and Caracalla, 1769 and in London, Benjamin West was displaying Agrippina Landing at Brundisium with the ashes of Germanicus, 1768, at the Royal Academy.

Fragonard, The Swing, 1767
(Wallace Collection, London)

Jean-Baptiste Greuze, Septimius Severus and Caracalla, 1769
(Musee du Louvre)

Benjamin West, Agrippina Landing at Brundisium with the Ashes of Germanicus, 1768
(Yale Univeersity Art Gallery)

Claude Monet - Gare St. Lazare

Claude Monet, Self-portrait, 1886

For Monet, the 1880's were a time of contemplation, doubts and a search for new avenues for his art.  He wanted to broaden his horizons, be able to reach new markets outside of Paris, find new avenues for the representation of nature caught in the transient moment and indulge his wanderlust.  There was also the issue of Georges Seurat and his followers who were trying to change the direction of the avante-garde art movement.  Monet was a well-known artist who had made a reputation for himself and wanted to go on pursuing new goals and taking Impressionism to the next level. This self-portrait with the furrowed brows and askance expression Monet painted around this time, seems to visualize his self-questioning.




Monet had to reassert Impressionism as the leading avant-garde style and reinforce his position as the leader of the modernist movement.  In order to do this, he set himself with very taxing goals and traveled in search of new places to paint and capture the light illuminated off these new landscapes.  His search led him to concentrate on specific sites and the differing conditions of  atmosphere.  At this time he started to paint the same landscape from different aspects that the critics started to call his series paintings.  But preceding his series paintings, Monet had already been thinking of making multiple paintings of the same subject when he had painted The Gare St Lazare ensemble in 1877.   These 12 painting were done over time and not meant to be exhibited together.  He had rented an apartment nearby and was given permission to paint by the train tracks.  He would start his paintings on site and then finish them in his studio.  Although these were focused extensively on one motif, they were differing perspectives some showing the trains under the shed, some showing the building behind the shed and in some smoke covering and rendering the shed invisible.  Some could even be classified as an interior space while others had the outside and inside feeling at the same time.

Claude Monet, The Gare St-Lazare, 1877
(National Gallery, London)

Claude Monet, The Gare Saint-Lazare:  Arrival of a Train, 1877
(Fogg Art Museum, Cambridge, Massachusetts)

Claude Monet, Gare Saint-Lazare, 1877
(Musee d'Orsay)

Claude Monet, Le Pont de l'Europe, Gare Saint-Lazare, 1877
(Musee Marmottan-Claude Monet, Paris)

                                                  http://smarthistory.org/france-1848.html

From studying a site in detail and painting it from different points of view, Monet would go on to paint the same exact site from the same exact point of view making the subject secondary to the effects of atmosphere in his Grainstack Series.

Edouard Manet - Music at the Tuileries

Edouard Manet, Music at the Tuileries, 1862

Edouard Manet, the artist who is considered the link between Realism and Impressionism, painted this lively outdoor scene, set in Tuileries Garden, of wealthy Parisians at their leisure.  Men in dark jackets and light pants with top hats and women in fancy dresses and hats attests to the social status of the group.  We can almost hear the music and the conversation.  Coming from an upper-class family himself, Manet would be present at such events and this was probably his own experience.

Leisure time and recreational activities like listening to music on a Sunday were all parts of modernity.  Manet actually painted himself into this painting in the position of the flaneur, observing the crowd from the left front corner. Manet came from a wealthy family and he was engaged with and knew his way around society, in this respect, he fit Baudelaire's description of a flaneur perfectly. Like Courbet did in  After Dinner at Ornans, he also incorporated his friends into the picture, Baudelair, Theophile Gautier and Baron Taylor as well as his brother Eugene Manet.  

As much as looking for new expressions of art, Manet still wanted to be traditional. He was balancing to see how much he could breakdown tradition and get away with it.  He still wanted to go through traditional channels for exhibiting his work and never wanted to exhibit with the Impressionists.  A lot of people think of him as the'father of modernism.'  The technique he used in this painting creates a really odd flatness.  He  removed the in-between, transitional tones and  butted one color next to the other.  Especially in the umbrella in the front, he used light and dark gray side by side just with a black outline.  

 In his own way he is borrowing from and paying homage to Gustave Courbet in this work. The collective distraction that is present in this painting is very similar to Courbet's Burial at Ornans. The little girls' elaborate dresses and the way they are playing in the ground recall the altar boys' standing on the left side of the Ornans painting.  In Courbet's painting there is a sea of black which is for mourning, here the context changes to become men going out on a city day.  The shock of red in the Beadles costumes in the middle of Courbet's painting is played off with the yellow and blue dresses of the women in the front.  In both paintings, the main elements for each event is hidden, we don't see the body of the deceased for the funeral nor see the music for listening.  The dog in Courbet is replaced by an umbrella in Manet and Manet's brother is in the position of the Veteran of 1783 in Courbet.

Manet's crowd is bigger than Courbet's and there is no sign of religion, it is a scene of leisure.  The people are already gathered in Music at the Tuileries unlike the moment before the burial at Courbet's painting. There is also a difference in their palettes, Manet uses a light palette to suit the occasion and the sunny day is reflected in his tones of yellow, blue and white. While in A Burial at Ornans there is a huge sky up above, Music at Tuileries is packed full of trees.

Manet liked to borrow from the past in his art while stylistically using modern techniques. In this painting he is acknowledging Courbet while leading the way for the young Impressionists with his sketchy brush-strokes, and light color palette.  Overall, it gives us a great picture of the recreation of upper-class society in 1862 Paris.