What we are going to look at now is the slow but clear translation, in painting particularly, of an illustrative conception of representation into an expressive one. Beginning with some late medieval examples, we will move through the Renaissance to the period of the Baroque. First though, what do we mean by these terms 'illustrative' and 'expressive'? In an earlier article, Painting versus Illustration, I attempted to illucidate what I meant by this term 'illustrative' but, in short, it is a formal approach in Western art (painting especially) which is based primarily on the use of line which itself implies a heavy reliance on drawing independently of colour. Naturally, as it happens, many types of illustration do make use of colour of course but, in fine art painting, line is, so to say the guide, the controlling element and colour has more the role of decoration. Illustrative work in fine art painting is drawn pictures, which are then coloured, and which have as their scope the clear visual explication or narration of a story or event, or even of a concept. I hope it's obvious that here we are not concerned with prints and drawings per se but rather, in the main, with painted fine art pictures; that said, line is used in sculpture as well and we will see some examples in this essay.
Expressive work on the other hand, in the periods under discussion, while still being fully capable of telling a story - and required by patrons to do so - has as its principal 'art' focus the emotional import of the image and, in painting, this means the at least equally important function or role of colour: often applied 'expressively', that is, robustly and with some force (as opposed to 'colouring-in' a drawing). The application itself of the colour is an expression of the painter's emotional involvement in the representation of the given subject (not necessarily in the subject per se however). This is not to say that line-dependent work is not expressive but, from a formal point of view, the expression is not in particular related to the colour nor its physical application.
This photo shows the remains of a wonderful medieval fresco, obviously extremely degraded, so much so that parts of the brick wall on which it sits are clearly visible. For our purposes though, it remains a good example of the importance of line - the original line drawing on the plaster - and the 'addition' of colour to complete the image. The colours are still beautiful despite their age and general condition but the narrative function of the image is not dependent on the colour. In some areas, for example the angel's left leg, the colour works to define the form of the thigh and to indicate the direction of the light; however, this is fundamentally a coloured-in drawing, especially if compared with pictures made in the Baroque period. In relation to the Donatello work below, we might notice here that the two figures, the angel and the Virgin Mary, are not so much in an environment, as they are rather placed on top of a symbolic suggestion of one.
It is believed that certain of the large frescos illustrating the life of Saint Francis in the upper church of the Basilica of Saint Francis in Assisi were painted by an artist known as the 'Saint Cecilia Master'; this is because the style of those two or three frescos - somewhat different from those thought to be by Giotto - resembles his style quite closely. In the Uffizi Gallery in Florence is a very beautiful work illustrating the life of Saint Cecilia; at present, the real name of the painter of that work is unknown so he is referred to as the Saint Cecilia Master. And, as just said, the style of some of the Life of Saint Francis frescos - for example, the Cure of the Man from Lerida - is so similar to the style of the Uffizi work that they have been attributed to that same master.
In the detail of the multi-panelled work shown in the photo above we see different episodes of the life of the early Christian martyr Saint Cecilia who was born and died in Rome (d.230 AD). At the period in which these small pictures were painted, around 1300, artists were expected to represent the stories and legends of the Christian faith in an easily comprehensible and attractive way, partly because illiteracy was common and uneducated people relied, in part, on the clarity of such representations for their knowledge of the lives of Christ and the saints. The story in the top section of the photo apparently represents both Saint Cecilia and her spouse, a certain Valerian, agreeing to respect her virginity! In 1300 the faithful would already have known the story from listening to the teachings of their priests and, in all probability - although perhaps obscure to us - would have recognised the particular event as part of the life of Saint Cecilia. These exquisite little paintings fulfil the brief as it were, very well and relate the events clearly and colourfully; that said, and as beautiful as the colour is, these pictures are essentially linear in character and could in fact function - certainly not as delightfully - without the colour. It might be observed incidentally that this master has made an attempt at 'correct' perspective in the drawing of the environments in which the events take place; as well, he has respected the relative sizes of the people vis-à-vis the buildings. This is a break from the norm of the time which very often had the human figures completely out of scale in relation to the buildings, that is, too large.
The next art history period we might consider is the Renaissance. By this time much had changed, both in art and in the general philosophical climate. With the renewed interest in and continual rediscovery of the 'classical' culture of the ancient Greco-Roman periods - in literature as well as in painting, sculpture and architecture - art moved away from the often simplistic story-telling of the medieval eras and became, gradually, more intellectual in tone and therefore more sophisticated in its representations. Although the fundamental dependence on line - or drawing - persisted, the manner of its use and the complexity of picture composition and content began to change. In early 15th century Florence, artists and theorists brought the pictorial rendering of space to a new level with their understanding and systemisation of linear perspective. In the little scene just referred to, painted by the Saint Cecilia Master, the artist has made a commendable attempt to represent the room in which the event occurs as a 'real' space, even if the effect is fanciful in various ways; roughly a century later, the associated problems valiantly but intuitively confronted by late-medieval artists have been overcome; artists, both painters and sculptors, now had a clear mathematical procedure with which to compose their images, and the coherent illusion of three-dimensional space on a two-dimensional surface became commonplace.
The photo above shows one of the many masterpieces of the great Renaissance sculptor Donatello (Donato di Nicolò di Betto Bardi, 1386?-1466); the panel is obviously not a painting but it demonstrates how the newly re-discovered knowledge of perspective was used not only in painting but in sculpture as well. Looking at this scene, we are very clear about the space in which the events occur and the thoroughly convincing way the different areas recede deeper into the image. In addition, the figures, whether in the foreground (where Herod is shown the decapitated head of John the Baptist) or in the different background spaces (musicians and, further back, where the Baptist's head is presented to Herod's wife), are of an entirely new 'realism' compared with the somewhat puppet-like ones of the Saint Cecilia Master. We know that Donatello studied (in Rome) ancient Roman sculpture, signs of which are visible not only in the figures - most obviously in those in the middle-ground - but patently in the architectural environment in which the story unfolds. We should also note the 'movement' of the foreground figures, varied and expressive of differing reactions and emotions, again quite at odds (in their 'realism') with the restrained if often elegant mode of the medieval period. Interestingly, a close look at this Banquet panel reveals, together with what has already been noticed, the critical use of line to define the perspective and the building materials of the various rooms that make up its environment (actually containing three separate scenes). And, like Nicola Pisano, Donatello anticipates some later developments.
Piero della Francesca is what might be called an archetypal Renaissance painter since his work exemplifies many of the concerns of Renaissance artists and thinkers. He was a master of perspective, writing books on the subject as well as mathematical texts; his paintings demonstrate his profound knowledge of perspective, and classical Roman architecture; his immobile and quiet figures and his major paintings are hierarchical in structure and portray a mystical sensibility, one also seen in medieval art, but 'modernised' in keeping with the prevalent humanist outlook among intellectuals of the time; in other words, preserving certain aspects of earlier christological thought but much tempered by a re-acquaintance with classical art and literature, contrasting (or imposing) a physical, science-centred world with the previously deity- and dogma-centred one.
The painting above uses a composition in which the viewer is, so to speak 'confronted with' a formalised religious statement, normally symmetrically balanced around a central axis, with at least one of the principal actors - in this case the Christ-child - looking directly at us. Piero has here placed the iconic group of the Mother and Child squarely in the centre of the image, but also right up against the picture-plane, that is, as close to us as is possible. The two 'spirit' attendants, two angels, stand quietly but attentively 'on guard' as it were, one of them also focused deliberately on us. The scene however recedes by degrees into another room, on our left, which more-or-less dramatically increases the 'space' we are observing. The high realism of the physical environment in which this scene is placed - especially as the Madonna's proximity to us pushes it into our space in a way - makes this representation completely different from that of the Saint Cecilia Master, increasing the sense that the sacred events and personages are, in a certain way, more 'real', closer to us as human beings. Piero della Francesca though was a particularly 'restrained' master and, with the exception of his main battle-piece in the cycle of frescos at Arezzo (the Legend of the True Cross) - and even there - would not normally be described as emotionally expressive even though his 'restraint' permits a strong appeal to the intellect.
These remarks apply largely to religious images of a certain type and the centrally-placed main actor is not an invention of the Renaissance, as can be seen in Byzantine and Gothic images of Christ Pantocrator; the difference lies in the 'humanity' of the divine beings and their proximity to us, their coming down to earth so to say, as opposed to their previous 'regal' distance. Another mark of this quasi-humanity is the size itself of the actors in religious art. Very often but not always, the main figures, be they Christ, the Madonna or saints, were shown as significantly larger than minor actors and especially so if there were any actual (human) person included in the image. This gradation continued into the Renaissance period but the relative sizes of, for instance Christ compared with a saint, began to be equalised. Given these considerations, Renaissance painters still relied upon line as a defining formal principle, that is, as an initial delineation of a figure's form and, with perspective, its position in the composition's space. Within this period however, in Italy, there were differences depending on whether or not the particular 'school' of painting was more or less influenced by Tuscan ideas (3); painters in Venice for instance tended over time to blur the edges of their figures, particularly as the paint itself became a more active element of the finished image (4).
This process of increasing realism stimulated, strangely enough, a compositional revolution in the succeeding period, that known as Mannerism. This revolution began in Florence under the influence of the never-ending researches of Michelangelo (1475-1564): notable, in relation to the remarked high realism of Piero della Francesca's spaces, because of his (Michelangelo's) almost total lack of interest in perspective - and by implication, buildings of any sort - or landscape. Michelangelo's 'events', at least in painting, are almost always devoid of a setting, in the usual sense; his focus was always on the human body as the vehicle of his ideas, the body as a locus of the divine, a focus which by implication increased the importance of the spiritual by removing the earthly from the equation (buildings, rooms, landscape). These omissions and Michelangelo's piling-up of figures, particularly in the Last Judgement in the Sistine Chapel, had earlier encouraged his admirers in Florence to do the same; in a way, this manner refocused the spiritual in religious pictures (by omitting an earthly context) even while the formal considerations - drawing, colour and especially the physically expressive human body - remained important. Still maintaining the dominance of Tuscan line, expressiveness appeared via the concentrated, even contorted, movement and crowding of human bodies - whether representing gods or men.
The photo above shows a detail of a very large picture by the Florentine Mannerist painter known as Bronzino (Agnolo di Cosimo di Mariano Torri, 1503-72), a disciple of Pontormo, another early Mannerist. The detail shows quite clearly the crowding of figures which almost completely fills the entire composition and, as such, makes this wonderful picture a typical Mannerist creation: beautiful drawing, absolute control of the rendering of the human body - even if somewhat stylised in Bronzino's work - and a wilful disregard for space as conceived of in the Renaissance proper. The sometimes unsubtle implied eroticism of much Mannerist painting (especially in Bronzino) tends to distract from, if not actually negate, the supposed religious or moral message! As in Michelangelo, Bronzino creates 'space' by the overlapping and, in this case, the 'interpenetration' of many figures; here as well, a fairly pronounced eroticism is at play, obvious in the so-to-say sensually luxuriating female figure in this detail, but expressed as well in some of the male figures, the one behind her for instance.
Implied or outright eroticism were common enough in the period which developed out of both the Renaissance and Mannerism and which is known as Baroque (Barocco in Italian). Even if this period had two branches, the classically-inspired and the, we might say, anti-classical, both have in common a quite robust sensuality, bordering from time-to-time on overt eroticism, and this eroticism could be expressed just as easily in sacred as in profane subjects; the same sacred subjects treated by many artists over previous centuries and not eroticised. It is possible to see the beginnings of this tendency again in the later work of Michelangelo, and here we might call to mind some of his Crucifixion drawings, made in Rome: the still-living Christ is, so to say, contorted into a kind of sensuous spasm, a spasm just as easily transferable to a figure on a bed! And if we go further back, to the Sistine Ceiling frescos, the image of Adam itself is one of languorous unabashed sensuality. In the 17th century Rome of the Barberini - Pope Urban VIII - the Borghese, the Del Monte and so on, sensuality as a 'lived experience' was the order of the day.
A major example of this sensual proclivity is Gian Lorenzo Bernini's sculptural group, the Ecstasy of Saint Teresa, in the Roman church of Santa Maria della Vittoria.
But clearly, there was something in the air of Rome at that time, the early and middle part of the 1600s, which permitted if not actually encouraged the overt sensuality (not necessarily always erotic), not only in painting and sculpture, but also in architecture. Sensuality per se did not suddenly appear in Rome, or elsewhere, because it had existed, perhaps always, in various guises - particularly in literature - but, in the visual arts, in sublimated or disguised form. And naturally, we are here referring mainly to religious images, possibly the vast majority of the art produced in Italy at that time and in the preceding centuries; but even in profane subjects, especially mythological ones with some sexual content, given the dominant influence of the Church, the eroticism was by-and-large suggested rather than stated.
But the nominal religious, historical or mythological content of images was obvious even if sometimes one had to be 'in-the-know' to understand the recondite references; but at the same time, in Rome and Naples, sensuality was expressed in the drawing and the colour of paintings; or rather, the actual application of the paint. More and more, the paint was not only the colour added to a drawing to complete the effect, it became the vehicle of expression itself. Oddly, in some cases, because of the influence of Caravaggio's strong discrimination of light and dark, colours per se were few, as large areas of black or nearly-black often reduced the number of colours necessary to make a composition 'work'. This frequently resulted in only one major colour note (often red) with shades of white serving as the substantive foil to the infinite space of black (as often in Caravaggio).
This image of Saint Sebastian - twice the victim of an emperor's displeasure, here after the first attempt at execution, with Saint Irena removing the arrows from his body - is a case in point. The implied eroticism is not only in the 'display' pose of the young man's body, but also in the application of the paint; this is not the illustrative manner of a painter 'filling-in' his or her drawing - beautiful as it may be - but the moulding of the figure, almost as though the painter were a sculptor working the clay of a figure with his or her bare hands. The expressiveness is therefore three-fold: in the pose itself; in the drawing, here without the clear, clean outline of 'Tuscan' heritage; and in the moulding application of the paint. None of these three is exclusive to Baroque art, nor did they originate then, but they do seem to have come together in a particular co-incidence of time and place, and with a particular coherence, resulting in an expressiveness which became characteristic of that same time-and-place.
Both Giordano and Vaccaro - respectively the authors of the two pictures above - were born in Napoli and were important masters of the Baroque in that city although Giordano also worked in Rome, Florence, Venice and Madrid. In this painting of the Lamentation by Vaccaro we have another example of an almost nude male body, in all probability the de facto subject of the painting, with the three (clothed) female figures helping to turn this study of the nude into a part of Christ's Passion. Like the Giordano Saint Sebastian, the figure of Christ is beautifully made but decidedly less, shall we say, sensuous. The contours of His body are soft, as are those of all the figures; this, as in the Giordano, has two causes: first, the figures are made to, as it were, emerge from the surrounding darkness - in Caravaggio's late manner - and secondly, the emotional sensuality of such pictures - independently of the subjects - required it.
Above is a photo of another, earlier Saint Sebastian, a large panel by the Renaissance painter Pietro Vannucci (c.1450-1524) known as Perugino, after his birthplace Perugia. The differences between this painting and the two Baroque examples above are fairly stark: firstly, we have what has been referred to here as 'Tuscan' drawing, a clear, well-defined outline of the figure; secondly, a permeating daylight which illumines not only the hapless saint but also the extensive background countryside; thirdly, small but important elements - for the Renaissance artist - of perspective drawing which help to establish not only the setting but also levels of space within the image (as well as a contrast between the man-made and the natural). Although quite restrained in terms of its colour, there are no deep blacks nor any bright whites; the tonal range is more-or-less from the middle of the scale down to well before we get to black. The subtle sensuality of this Saint Sebastian is that of spiritual transport, hardly comparable to 17th century eroticism. Rather, Perugino has invested this beautiful picture in his typically mystical mood, guided by the Renaissance models of nature and classical sculpture. The deep shadows, the indecipherable space, the physical mystery of Baroque painting are not to be found here.
It seems that some Baroque painters might conceivably trace their artistic heritage, their artistic sensitivity, back to Venice rather than to Florence. Paintings in Renaissance Florence tended to be light in tone with, like the Perugino above, a strong linear guiding principle. As mentioned in other places, while Venice also had its masters who clearly 'controlled' their paintings with line, relatively early-on they gradually began to favour a more sensuous use of the paint and therefore of colour. Venetian colour and the freer, more spontaneous brushwork appear to have migrated south, to Rome and Naples - partly through the powerful influence of Titian who was widely collected; his bravura use of the brush and his colour, when combined with the aesthetics of Caravaggio, produced what might be regarded as the formal visual characteristics of much of - not all however - Baroque easel painting.
1 'More advanced' here refers to advanced in time, ahead of its time; it does not refer to the quality of the work in question. None of the general comments in this article is to be taken as an opinion about the relative quality or appeal of any of the works discussed.
2 A very interesting question arises from one of the figures in this Crucifixion panel, the man immediately to our right of the Cross, the one holding his garment across his body while gesturing towards Christ; in the upper basilica of Saint Francis at Assisi Cimabue painted a well-known Crucifixion: in his painting there is a very similar man in the same position relative to the Cross, performing a very similar gesture and quite clearly holding his garment across his body! Nicola Pisano lived between 1210 circa and 1287 circa, his dates are not at all certain; Cimabue lived between circa 1240 and 1302. It seems that the elder of the two masters was Nicola and the date of the pulpit is put at between 1255 and 1260; Cimabue's fresco in Saint Francis is obviously before 1302 (when he died) so it would appear that Cimabue may have borrowed this gesturing figure, holding his cloak across his body, from Nicola's pulpit! This said, that same figure, or versions of him, appear in other contemporary pictures so who borrowed what from whom is an interesting question.
3 By the terms 'Tuscan ideas' and 'Tuscan line' or '-Drawing' I am referring in part to the concepts found in Giorgio Vasari's Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors and Architects, published in 1568. For Vasari, drawing was the basis of all three arts and line was the fundamental aspect or attribute of drawing; in essence, the outline - of figures, particularly the human body - was the element which defined the form. Tuscan painting, and in fact other north-Italian schools, relied on clearly-defined outlines, not only when planning a picture, the initial drawing on the panel, canvas or wall, but also in the final, painted version. As time passed, this dominance began to give way to much less-well-defined outlines and eventually, as in much Baroque painting, clear outlines per se virtually disappeared.
4 Venetian artists such as Giovanni Bellini (d. 1516) and Vittore Carpaccio (d. 1525/6) were obviously 'linear' painters in so far as their pictures are initially dependent on line, a dependence which co-exists with the colour in the finished pictures. These painters may be compared to their much less linear compatriots Titian and Tintoretto: a telling comparison may be made by putting side-by-side a typical Botticelli (Tuscan) and a late Titian (Venetian). Mention should also be made of the fact that Bernini, although born in Naples to a Neapolitan mother and a Florentine father, referred to himself as Florentine; his great patron, Maffeo Barberini, later Pope Urban VIII, was also from a Florentine family.
