The Backgound

 

The background of medieval religious paintings (those painted on wood as opposed to frescos), most usually being of gold leaf, has a particular significance. While the human or divine figures and their setting, if any, were normally painted in tempera (coloured pigments suspended in a solution made with egg), the background (lo sfondo in Italian), whether flat or, in the case of haloes, having a punched or indented pattern, was very often made of extremely fine sheets of pure gold (gold leaf). This background, once applied, was highly polished and therefore glowed with a sparkling, flickering light, especially when on an altar lit with candles.

The significance of this costly gold background was that, whatever the scene being represented, the image was imbued with a sort of 'divine' otherworldliness, a quality of being outside time, of timelessness, and in a symbolic way, separate from our normal space. Gold could also be applied to salient points or objects in a picture, for instance, an angel's wings as is the case in Beato Angelico's glittering Annunciation at Cortona.

Annunciation, 1434 by Beato Angelico (Guido di Piero, aka Fra Giovanni da Fiesole), 

c.1395-1455. Tempera on panel

Museo Diocesano del Capitolo, Cortona, Italy

The photo above shows the work of an extraordinary painter, a monk, who is technically regarded as a Renaissance artist although, as this work demonstrates, Beato Angelico maintained some of the traditions of late medieval painting, in this particular case, amongst other things the use of gold leaf: around the dove above Mary's head, in the fabric covering her chair, in the stars decorating the ceiling of her apartment, in the words issuing from the mouth of the angel, in the decorative elements of his clothing and, most spectacularly, in the angel's wings. The use of gold in the haloes of sacred figures continued, as here, even as it declined as a standard background. The effect of the gold in the wings is amazing, at least for me, as, when I first saw this painting in Cortona, it was dazzling; the picture had been restored and the gold undoubtedly exerted its power on me as a viewer of this profound image. Despite having by that time seen many other paintings where gold leaf had been used, especially as the 'flat' background, its force in this case was extraordinary.

Annunciation, by Sandro Botticelli (1445-1510) 

Tempera on panel, 1489-90. Gallerie degli Uffizi, Florence.

By way of contrast, as the Renaissance got into full swing, a painting of the same subject, the Annunciation, made about 56 years later, has almost no gold at all and depends entirely on its suggestion of reality for its effect. Note incidentally, that here we are observers, definitely not participants (discussed later).

The function of the gold background however, apart from the, so to speak 'mechanical' one of making certain things 'precious', as in the Angelico above, was to intimate the sublime, the divine, the other world of a paradise. In the Beato Angelico work just discussed, the entire ambience of the scene is painted in great detail - which could and did happen in medieval painting, especially in manuscript illumination - with no gold background and, through Angelico's use of the then 'new' perspective techniques, is rendered physically-spatially plausible in a way unknown to medieval artists. 

The Mourning over the Body of Christ by Giottino (Giotto di Stefano or Tommaso di Stefano, 

1324-69). Tempera on panel, c. 1360-65

Gallerie degli Uffizi, Florence

In this exquisite painting (above) by Giottino we have an example of the late medieval use of a flat gold-leaf background. Although the individual figures are convincing in their 'realism' (they are solidly modelled, they have space both as individual actors and between them), and a sense of the tragedy is evident especially (and dramatically) in the figure of Mary Magdalen in the lower right corner, the extent to which the foreground action is based on (earthly) reality is, so to say 'contradicted' by the flat gold background. As if to say, yes, we are dealing with a human tragedy but one which at the same time is taken into the sublime world of divinity. A reminder here that, as twenty-first century viewers of medieval artwork we need to keep in mind not only the much-changed attitudes concerning religious devotion and belief, but also that, as with so many works of this age, the effect of the gold has diminished considerably and the colours used in the figures have also undergone various changes. In other words, this picture does not look as it did when it left its maker's workshop and its present collocation, in an art gallery, is not that for which it was made.

But it has occurred to me (as perhaps to others) that, with the various changes in subsequent periods of art history - as we have already seen, by the time Botticelli was working, gold leaf had almost entirely disappeared from 'modern' painting - ultimately, we may say, a 'substitute' was found. Throughout the Renaissance proper the aim was to make one's images resemble as near as possible observable reality, what was referred to as Nature, a concept which referred as much to human bodies as to anything else 'natural'; Nature, under the stimulus of Greco-Roman art, was seen as the perfect model, even if, in fact, Nature idealised was often the ultimate result. Until that point, much religious art was produced by repeating given 'types' even if an artist's individual personality was still discernible; with the advent of the Renaissance, Nature and the Greco-Roman past became the guides for and the aspirations of contemporary artists. So Nature itself, that is, the landscape, differing weather and light conditions, rivers, the pastoral life and so on were all included in the images contrived by those artists, both painters and sculptors. And, incidentally, the personality of the artist actually became much more obvious, seemingly, at least in part, as a by-product of their 'liberated-scientific' observation of Nature (both landscape and the human figure).

Slowly then, the divine - and the sublime - were conveyed in painting by means other than by a gold background; this is perhaps most easily seen in the study of nature (independently of the human figure) in Venetian painting where the landscape and effects of light, particularly the twilight, introduced a readily appreciated 'poetical' element understood as mirroring the divine. But following these developments, Italian art arrived at the period known as the Baroque, a period and a style which also followed great upheaval in the Catholic Church, upheaval which required a different attitude in art.

Sacred and Profane Love, c.1515 by Titian (Tiziano Vecellio, 1488-90 - 1576)

Oil on canvas. Galleria Borghese, Rome

This painting is a good example of what is stated above concerning the 'poetry' of the twilight landscape; as well, note the position of the 'subject' in relation to the viewer of the picture: we are observers, not participants. This is a relatively early Titian compared with his image below.

Baroque painting made no use of gold even if individual pictures, especially in churches and religious houses, might be framed in various materials, including gold; but gold was not used as an expressive element in the paintings themselves. However something else was: black. As a result of political and religious changes and requirements, deep emotional expression became a hallmark of the religious painting of the period; Caravaggio, bringing a kind of synthesis of earlier masters along with his own artistic temperament, gave this period a cue as to how to express the new attitudes of the Church. One important change was that the subject of a given image might be placed so close to the viewer that he or she became a quasi participant in the event portrayed; not merely or usually an outside observer, as with most Renaissance work. Parts of bodies seemed to protrude into the 'real' space of the people looking at these pictures; in the case of sculpture, figures almost stepped out of their frames (The Death of Saint Cecilia by Antonio Raggi, in Sant'Agnese in Agone, Rome) or were suspended into our shared space (Bernini's Ecstasy of Saint Therese in Santa Maria della Vittoria, Rome).

The Death of Santa Cecilia by Antonio Raggi (1624-86), high-relief marble sculpture. 

The church of Sant'Agnese in Agone, Rome.

As we can easily see, the figures on either side of this wonderful work overlap the frame of the scene and 'exist' in our space, the real space of this beautiful church situated in the Piazza Navona. The high relief of those two figures in particular projects this event further into 'our' space. Obviously, no dark background here but the proximity of the foreground sculpted actors to their viewers (us) is marked.

Venus blindfolding Cupid, c.1560 by Titian

Oil on canvas. Galleria Borghese, Rome

This picture by Titian, painted about 45 years later than his work above, exemplifies the tendency to bring the actors in the narrative very close to the viewer; here we see half-figures, not full figures, suggesting that we are virtually participants in the action, not merely observers of it.

And the background in paintings, no longer the gold of preceding ages, was dark, very dark tending to black. A black which often ate-up the background, consumed the ambient space in anonymous darkness out of which figures emerged as though being drawn into life out of a nebulous nothingness. No longer the clear brilliance of light-reflecting precious metal, no longer the sheer symbolic splendour of sublime divinity; rather, the abstraction of an ill-defined, mysterious ambivalence - sometimes a 'space', often a void. The actors thrown into 'our' space, into our reality; bodies no longer simply admired or pitied, now so close as to be touched. The emotionally neutral gold, replaced first by the natural world of the Renaissance, is now superseded by an active presence in the background of many pictures, a (possibly malevolent) darkness enveloping time and space to sharpen and deepen our emotional response while simultaneously being part of our world; and reflecting not a divine light but perhaps the incomprehensibility of the divine together with the dark spaces of our inner life. In other words, from the change in focus begun in the Renaissance - a focus on Man as creator and discerner - , artists gradually incorporated more of Man even into their religious images, that is, a perception of Man (and his psychological life) as a deliberate actor and not merely subject to the divine.

Mary Magdalen contemplating Death by Domenico Fetti (1589 - 1623)

Oil on canvas. Galleria Palazzo Doria Pamphilj, Rome.

We might remind ourselves at this point that half-figures and dark backgrounds were not 'invented' in the Baroque period but we can say that these elements and others were brought together at that time to serve particular purposes. Nor were all paintings as dark as late Caravaggio and many did in fact have some kind of setting, usually architectural. But the proximity to the viewer of one or more actors in a religious drama was very common, even in pictures where there are full figures. The use of dark shadows, strengthening the modelling of both figures and clothing, was however ubiquitous during the Baroque. We should also remember that the extreme darkness utilised in oil paintings on canvas was not technically possible in fresco which means that in certain places, churches and convents mostly, the discrepancy in tone between Baroque frescos and Baroque oil pictures is marked. The small painting above by Fetti is a good example of several Baroque tendencies, especially the fact that the 'background' in a sense 'absorbs' the figure, enwraps it rather than 'staying put' so to speak, in the actual background, in the space behind the figure. The saint's book and elbow particularly are very close to us, the viewers, as are her left hand and the skull she holds in it. Here Fetti has allowed the strong contrasting light to fall mainly on Magdalen's face and right arm and the book it rests on.

Here I would once again remind readers that my observations are those of a painter and not those of a trained art historian. My interest is, for the most part, in the ways painters and sculptors worked, the way they saw things and how that changed, and the way they dealt with (mainly) religious imagery. Allowing for the vast diversity of artistic expression, that is to say, that while discussing certain trends in the continuous movement of art, we need to keep in mind the fact that beside the major schools and periods of art history there were always those artists working on the fringes, those who worked in somewhat older styles and those who were virtually unique in their expression. In the specific case here under discussion, that there is a discernible trend or propensity in Baroque oil painting to favour dark, often enveloping backgrounds, without doubt there are many instances, even in oil pictures (as opposed to the fresco technique), where the same artists and others did not use a dark background, and we will conclude with just such an image, painted by the Spanish-by-birth but Neapolitan-by-choice artist, Jusepe de Ribera.

Saint Januarius (Gennaro) emerges unscathed from the Furnace, 1646 by Jusepe de Ribera (1591-1652). Cappella del Tesoro in the Cathedral of Naples

As is obvious, this large masterwork is not in any sense particularly dark and certainly does not have a dark background, on the contrary; in fact the sky-blue background in this painting is actually at odds with the bulk of the Spanish master's output, often concerning ageing hermit saints immersed in or emerging from a near black background.

All photographs were taken by the author who reserves copyright.

Vertical versus ... not so much!

  As usual, I hope the reader will be aware that these observations, like others made in these articles, are to be taken as general and that they do not pretend to definitively describe or define the objects and movements referred to. In attempting to 'read' the artworks of the past, particularly those of subtle styles such as the multi-levelled, multi-facetted Renaissance, interpretations are difficult and specifically definitive statements are best avoided. In the case of the present writer, an initial, one might say 'devotion' to the Renaissance has gradually broadened into a much more complex understanding of what the term 'Renaissance' might actually mean; once this occurred, appreciation was opened into the extraordinary off-shoot that is Mannerism which then led into the Baroque, a period I had not grasped at all. The remarks that follow are based on a much greater exposure, both in Rome and Naples, and in Sicily, to the work of that period, the Baroque, but the comparison suggested here may be simply the result of an unrefined eye finally seeing the obvious; I hope though it's a bit more than that. Incidentally, dates regarding the beginning and 'end' of periods in art history are moot.

The title of this article sums up some observations which occurred to me while considering the differences between Renaissance painting and sculpture and those of the Baroque period. Although, as previously discussed, the triangle is a common structural form governing the composition of much Renaissance work, so too is verticality: that is, an arrangement of vertical elements (usually figures but also architecture) sometimes frieze-like, reading across the image, at others supporting the perspective depth (the recession) as understood from the implied central position of the viewer. In 15th century Florence, the epicentre of the most influential cultural changes then taking place on the Italian peninsula, clear, candid and straightforward presentation of observable fact (nature) and the confident 'statement' of concept and idea (religious, political, pragmatic) reflected the enthusiasm for and influence of the 're-born' culture of an almost-lost past: the 're-birth' of or openness to various branches of knowledge either abandoned or deliberately suppressed during the medieval period: the study of antique Greek and Roman art, classical literature (ad fontes), the development of humanism, perspective illusion, and so on.

The Holy Trinity, 1425-27? by Masaccio (1401-28) in the church of Santa Maria Novella in Florence

In this very large fresco (above) we can see, combined, the surface triangle element and the vertical element; the first is formed by the two figures of the donors on either side at the base and, following lines from them through the Madonna and Saint John on ether side of the Cross, we arrive at the apex which is Jesus' head and finally God the Father; each figure is however also vertical as are the Cross itself and the pilasters and columns of the 'triumphal arch' framing the divine figures. Horizontal elements are the architrave above the arch, the arms of the Cross (and Jesus), the ledge on which the donors are kneeling and the sarcophagus beneath containing a horizontal skeleton 1. This painting is typical of much Renaissance work in which many of the problems associated with representing the human body are gradually overcome, together with the difficulties of the convincing suggestion of three-dimensional space; and note also the arch and barrel vault in this image which are heavily influenced by ancient Roman architecture.

Verticality was not though an invention of the Renaissance as this compositional device may be observed in much medieval art, for example in the strongly vertical (and elongated) decorative figures of saints and biblical personages on Gothic buildings, and in much pictorial art produced over that long (and varied) historical period. In a sense then, the common vertical disposition of the actors in Renaissance paintings and sculpture was merely a continuation of an already established mode. What the Renaissance did however, was to look back to a much earlier period, the classical one, that of ancient Greco-Roman culture; Gothic art, on the other hand, at the risk of over-simplification, may be seen as a kind of development of the Byzantine rejection of 'pagan' styles.

Baroque Rome was beset by serious disturbance, both religious and, as ever, political, given the now challenged power of the Catholic Church: prior to but including Luther's protests (1517) and, in any case, a widespread awareness of the corruption within the Church, it was forced to make substantial changes, generally known as the [Counter] Reformation (a debated term), of variable duration and efficacy, not least in the field of art. The narratives in painting and sculpture, so as to refine the message of the (Catholic) Church, were to be clear, relatively straightforward in their content, and were to have an easy emotional appeal to the 'average' member of the congregation; and to be much less 'seasoned' with the abstruse references which certainly only appealed to an intellectual elite (this last not applying however to private secular work which was often loaded with such erudite material!). Is it possible that the fairly obvious frequency of painted images dependent upon a diagonal, as opposed to or combined with verticals, might be seen as reflecting a change in the general climate, in Rome at least?

What I would like to do now is look at some examples of how the painting produced during these two periods (Renaissance and Baroque) commonly made some use of two 'structural' elements: in the first case verticality, in the second, the diagonal line - with or without the structural triangle. To do this we are going to look at the work of two major painters, that is, Piero della Francesca (c1412-1492) -  Florentine Renaissance, and Michelangelo Merisi - known  to the world as Caravaggio (1571-1610) - proto-Baroque.

 The Baptism, 1442 (?) by Piero della Francesca, tempera on panel. National Gallery, London

The image above is of a painting by Piero della Francesca, his Baptism, which is in the National Gallery in London. The image below is also a painting by that same sublime master, the Flagellation, which is kept in Urbino, in Italy; the one below that is a detail of this latter, an enlargement of the left side which is where the Flagellation is actually taking place. What I would like us to notice is the 'verticality' which is common to both paintings.

In the Baptism, verticality runs across almost the entire foreground of the picture: reading from the left, the three attendant angels, the large white-trunked tree, the column-like figure of Christ himself, and then the equally up-standing figure of his cousin, John (the Baptist) are all vertical elements; even the acolyte further back is half vertical, taking the viewer to the other side of the picture plane (and into the middle distance). The verticality is 'contradicted' as it were, by the opening of the Jordan River at the bottom of the painting, at first only a dry river-bed occupying more than half the immediate foreground; its meandering banks take us then, with their articulate watery-blue reflection, into the middle ground; after, their serpentine course leads our eye further and further into the painting's illusionistic depth. The distant background hills provide with their (horizontal) wavy undulations another counterfoil to the 'still' verticality of the actors in the foreground 'frieze'.

The Flagellation, 1452 by Piero della Francesca, tempera on panel. Palazzo Ducale, Urbino.

The Flagellation, detail of the left side.

This verticality appears again throughout Piero's Flagellation even if, in this extraordinary painting, the putative subject (the Flagellation of Jesus) is set back from the foreground into what could be understood as a secondary or minor place. Be that as it may, the verticality here, again, begins at the left edge of the image: the great column of the portico and within that the four standing figures - apart from Pilate who is however sitting upright; here, two more columns, including the one Christ is tied to, and the door-frames; then, in the foreground, the other front column of the portico, the foremost of several, which also divides the narrative in two; and, very obviously, the three standing (and mysterious) men on the right side - supported by the various verticals of the background architecture of the street. Again, in this composition, there are elements which 'contradict' the vertical parts, most obviously the orthogonal lines running from the lower and upper edges on the left of the image - the floor and the ceiling (with their respective horizontal shapes) - and the roofs on the right. With this architecture on the left of the picture, Piero has contrived a series of box-like shapes which recede in a geometrically diminishing series beyond Christ to the rear wall; a geometry of straight lines, horizontal and vertical, which contains and complements the vertical but human forms. 

Thus, in this particular painting, Piero has managed an extremely unusual manipulation of the principal spatial elements of the architecture into which or across which he has placed his human actors; which elements however allow or rather, encourage movement, the eye being drawn immediately back into the (dimly-lit) fictive space of the portico before 'emerging' into the (brightly-lit) open foreground on the right: that said, the dependence on or dominance of the vertical elements is clear. As well, in comparison with the image below, Piero's pictures are filled with natural light, a representation of physical reality - as well as of theological significance. 

The Flagellation, 1607 by Caravaggio, oil on canvas. Museo di Capodimonte, Naples.

At first glance, the painting in the photo above may also seem to be basically vertical in structure; but, if we recall that column-like verticality of the figure of Christ in Piero's Baptism and then look at Caravaggio's Christ, we can't help but be struck by the pathetic crumpled figure He has become as the (once) centre of this picture 2. In fact, the difference is stark: the bent knees of Christ and that of the torturer on the right, together with the folded limbs of the one crouching in the lower left, all contribute (soft) angles to the misleading initial impression of verticality. Christ's body indeed, from the hanging head, through the strongly angled shoulders and down along his torso, creates a long curve, his left leg moving in the opposite direction; movement and counter-movement: no longer the steady equilibrium of, for instance, a Piero della Francesca.

What has happened, at least in art, in painting, to cause it to move from the stability of such compositions as Piero's Baptism to the convulsed emotion of a Caravaggio? In purely formal terms, one answer might be found in another Michelangelo: Michelangelo Buonarroti, a Florentine, who with his tormented 'Slaves' and contrapposto-filled Last Judgement, introduced into modern Italian art the troubled 'question mark' of the passionate intellectual - the 'anima sconsolata' to use Petrarch's phrase (the 'disconsolate soul'). Struggling with relentless pressure, constant self-abnegation to conform with an all-powerful hierarchy, self-doubt struggling with a clear awareness of his own genius, a never-ending battle between his religious beliefs and his personal inclinations, all these, due to his almost universal influence, at least in Italy, found contemporary expression first in the appearance of Mannerism, and later, in the 'rationalised' Baroque 'simplicity' of painters like Caravaggio: he, Caravaggio, actually a kind of bridge linking the three-island chain of Renaissance-Mannerism-Baroque.

Whereas Piero della Francesca's upright Baptism Christ of 165 years earlier is clear, candid and set into an easily comprehensible space, the open space of the Italian countryside doing sunny duty for 1st century Palestine, Caravaggio's question here - not an answer - has little or no time for anything but the deep unknowable space of dark human emotion, a space without a setting, as determined by the Florentine Michelangelo: almost no landscape, almost no architecture; and what there might be, for instance in Caravaggio's Calling of Saint Matthew in Rome, is little more than a kind of necessary minimal theatrical backdrop. 

Not in his Flagellation however! A vague hint at a straight-line vertical column, barely visible in the nothing-space of this horrific event, but scattered round with bent and angular forms, the struggling-to-stay-upright, stoic victim warmly and lovingly lit, the monstrous executioners unable to hide their grim work in spite of the darkness which is always trying to swallow them back in! Here, although the crown of thorns is in its place, there is no blood, there are no signs of a beating; as often occurs in Baroque pictures, the very 'normal' male body (neither especially muscular nor especially ascetic, elderly desert-dwelling saints excepted) is, it might be argued, the 'real' subject of the painting: from a painter's point of view, a chance to make a study of the male nude. Not as it happens, a new chance, as such use of both religious and mythological themes dates to not only the Renaissance itself but actually much further back, again to ancient Greece and Rome. Baroque painters such Jusepe de Ribera (1591-1652) and Luca Giordano (1634-1705, later Baroque-Rococo) both painted the scene of Saint Sebastian tended by Saint Irena which, apart from the required presence of this female saint and her assistant removing the arrows from Sebastian's body, is as well an 'excuse' or opportunity to paint the male (almost) nude body - and incidentally, the part of the composition in the strongest light.

A Renaissance fresco  of the Annunciation, 1428-31 by Masolino da Panicale (1383-1440). The Cappella di Santa Caterina in the Basilica di San Clemente, Rome

Detail of a Baroque Saint Sebastian tended by Saint Irena, c1653 by Luca Giordano

The National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne.    

As is clear from the two images immediately above, the principal observation of this article concerning the (gradual, occasional) introduction of the non-vertical as a structural device in Baroque painting is demonstrable; the earlier example by Masolino (perhaps assisted by Masaccio) is strongly vertical 3 (both the figures and the columns), while the later Giordano is (typically) structurally diagonal - at least, not vertical. It is important to keep in mind that circumstances had changed, both for the Church and for painters: for the Church politically and theologically; for artists because, apart from a 'natural' progression (not to be understood as improvement) in art theory and formal interests, their patrons, particularly the Church, required them to express new religious attitudes in a new way. Moving out of the somewhat confused and confusing modes of Mannerism and into the relative 'clarity' of Baroque imagery, painters were asked to make pictures which were clearly and immediately comprehensible as well as emotionally stimulating. 

1 I have here referred to the triangle as a 'surface triangle' meaning that, if we were to draw a triangle onto the image following the lines suggested, it would trace a triangular shape on the surface of the picture; however, it should be understood that that same triangle actually takes us simultaneously 'into' the depth of the illusion, moving from the kneeling donors into the space of Mary and John and then deeper to where Jesus is and then His Father. Another large inverted triangle begins in the depth of the painting, around the base of the Cross, and follows, 'upwards' the external diagonals of the vault as well as its main lines.  

2 This canvas has apparently been widened on the right side, possibly due to one or both of two events. Scientific analysis has shown that beneath the figure on the right there was initially a kneeling figure, possibly a donor (a person who commissioned the work); but, since we know that Caravaggio visited Naples twice, once fleeing a death sentence in Rome and once fleeing a serious problem in Malta - and probably ultimately heading for Rome - it is possible that, on his return, he reworked the original design, perhaps necessitating that addition of a strip of extra canvas on the right side (thereby shifting the figure of Christ from the centre of the canvas slightly to the left). Certain historians (e.g. Longhi) have suggested that he may have begun the painting in 1607 but left it unfinished when he went to Sicily and then Malta; according to this thesis, he then completed the picture on his return to Naples between 1609 and 1610, the year of his death.

3 As a final and somewhat tangential comment, while Masolino has in this Annunciation shown himself to have fully grasped the then new 'science' of perspective illusion with the 'correctly' receding ceiling and colonnades, the three actors (including God the Father) are however shown as though seen from directly in front, that is, not from a point of view looking up; this painting is on the high arch above the entrance to this chapel and therefore the view of the buildings in the image, as if seen from below, is coherent with our real point of view. But the two figures of the angel and the Virgin Mary (less so God, in the tondo between them) are not represented as if seen from below. Masolino is by no means unique in this, let's say, confusion of points of view; even during the Baroque period, when such views looking up from below (from the floor of a church for instance) into an imagined heavenly realm were perfected, this confusion occasionally persisted perhaps due, in the case of the Baroque, to the extreme foreshortening required by the logic of the viewpoint which would in fact render some figures - usually the principal ones - quite illegible! Whether or not Masolino inadvertently confused the two viewpoints we do not know but it is possible that he made a pragmatic decision concerning the three figures: given that his viewpoint for the architecture is extreme, and thus so would the view of the actors have had to be - making them appear distorted - he instead painted them from a different viewpoint. As far as the influence of this fresco's architecture is concerned, a compositional similarity is discernible in another Piero della Francesca painting, his Annunciation at the top of the Sant'Antonio polyptych altarpiece (before 1468) in Perugia! Although handled very differently by Piero, the general layout of the architectural spaces is not unlike Masolino's in San Clemente.

All photos taken by the author who reserves copyright.

Drama? Theatricality? In Baroque Painting?

 

The word 'drama' is often used in the description or explication of Baroque paintings as though it neatly summarised the essential difference between them and those of other schools. There is of course no doubt that Baroque art, and painting in particular, was dramatic, or rather, that it expressed itself in dramatic ways. Drama however, was not lacking in the periods which preceded the Baroque but what Baroque artists did was to 'activate' that drama.

When we talk of drama perhaps what we more precisely mean is 'dramatic events'; the paintings of the Renaissance are full of dramatic events as are those of the intermediate period, that of Mannerism. How could they not be? Given that a very large part of the work produced by artists in western Europe was dictated by their patrons, principally the Catholic church, and that many of the events in both the Old and New Testaments involved drama of some sort, often homicidal, it might be said that drama, or the depiction of drama and dramatic events, was broadly a common thread linking the main subject matter of all three periods so far referred to.

If that is the case, why then is the Baroque singled out as peculiarly dramatic? Let's have a look at some examples and see if we can answer that question. In Christian art, especially in Italy - and especially in Florence - the life of Saint John the Baptist is an ubiquitous subject and, perhaps most particularly, after representations of his baptism of Christ, his death, that is, his beheading. In a beautiful small cloister in Florence, the Chiostro dello Scalzo, is a wonderful fresco cycle representing the crucial events in the life of the Baptist; nearly all of these large images were painted - in monochrome, between 1509 and 1526 - by the Renaissance master Andrea del Sarto (1486-1530). 

In this splendid series there is, naturally, the scene of the decapitation of Saint John; if one were looking for a dramatic event then clearly that fits the bill. This image contains all the necessary ingredients for the staging of such a horrific episode, 'dramatic' being perhaps a slight understatement. On the left side we have two women, one of whom may be the indirect cause of this execution, that is Salome, and the other, a lady-in-waiting; or they might simply be servants of some kind, sent by Herod to collect the 'evidence' of the death of this troublesome prophet. On the right, a figure who seems to be a person in charge, and in the background porch, various onlookers; but in the centre we have the two persons immediately concerned with this tragedy: the hapless saint and his executioner.

The Beheading of Saint John the Baptist, 1509-1526, fresco by Andrea del Sarto (1486 - 1530)

The Chiostro dello Scalzo, Florence.

Drama is built-in to this event; the execution of any individual is, by its nature, dramatic but this particular execution is even more so as it is, in effect, a murder. John the Baptist was beheaded and what we are witnessing in Andrea del Sarto's painting is the moment immediately after the powerful executioner has swung his sword, the moment when he hands the decapitated head to the women waiting on the left. As I have pointed out elsewhere, the dramatic centre of attention is in fact the powerful figure of the executioner, most unusually with his back to us, the implied (supernumerary) spectators. The now-perishing body of the saint, still resting against the executioner's block, is spurting blood from the neck, a fact adding to the realism of the drama.

So, if the idea itself of decapitation is not dramatic enough then the 'realism' of this depiction - especially the gesture of the executioner as he hands over the head, and the gushing blood - definitely contributes to making it so. Thus it would seem that 'drama' is not a prerogative of the Baroque as it is obvious, here and in numerous other pictures from the Renaissance, that it too could treat drama. Another supposed characteristic of the Baroque was its 'theatricality'; a more theatrical staging of such a scene as Del Sarto has made here is hard to imagine. Figurative art, especially if dealing with a narrative (story telling), is of necessity theatrical. If by 'theatrical', in relation to the Baroque, what is meant is exaggerated gestures, exaggerated facial expressions as one often does see in theatrical performances, then yes, that is a reasonable observation; although, given that we are frequently observing dramatic events in Baroque pictures, then surely it follows that, at least sometimes, extreme gestures and facial expressions will be appropriate, will be dramatic - and possibly seeming 'theatrical' to the detached 21st century admirer of pictures.

But I believe there is a distinct difference between the drama in a Renaissance painting and that in a Baroque one: movement. In the fresco discussed above, in the Chiostro dello Scalzo, the image is fundamentally static; to use a modern expression, it is a 'still shot' from a movie; the action, complete and dramatic as it is, remains frozen, as though captured in a photograph. Baroque painting attempts, within the obvious limitations of a painted image, to convey the idea of movement. Naturally, there is no actual movement as we are dealing with a painted image on a canvas or wall; but the suggestion of sequential transition from one moment in time to another is I believe a defining characteristic of many Baroque paintings.

In place of the inherent stillness of the typical Renaissance pyramidal pictorial structure, many Baroque pictures make use of the diagonal, an inherently 'mobile' device as it encourages the eye to move from one position to another, normally upwards, across the image; and this upward direction is also unusual in Renaissance work as the general direction of observation was from the front plane into the depth of the (perspective) illusion. Caravaggio re-introduced to Rome, in his early pictures, the classical view, that of an image that could be 'read' from left to right, at the same time bringing the action of half-length figures right up to the picture plane itself while neutralising the depth behind the action in an amorphous void of black or near-black. And, like his namesake Michelangelo (Buonarroti), Caravaggio (Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio) normally dispensed with the background setting: no perspective meant no looking into depth, instead encouraging a reading across the image. He thus changed the viewer from being an observer of others - very often seen as complete figures - acting in a narrative, to being not quite a participant in the action but now a close proximity spectator of it: no longer truly an 'observer' as with much Renaissance work, but rather a passer-by, or bystander, witnessing the action at full size, so to speak. His half-figures, close up to the picture plane and virtually life-size, make the viewer a de facto witness, no longer a distant, detached observer.

Judith Beheading Holofernes, c.1599, oil on canvas by Caravaggio. 

Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Antica di Palazzo Barberini, Rome.

(Owing to the lighting in the gallery, the photo was taken from an angle resulting in the present distortion)

In the painting above, the drama takes place in a minimally described space, reading from left to right, with the large fore-shortened body of Holofernes suggesting what depth there might be with his green blanket and the heavy red drape hanging in the shallow distance. The three figures are in fact placed very close to the picture-plane, that is, to us! So much so that the dying man's left hand is almost in our space: it has almost left the fictive space of the illusion and 'penetrated' the actual space in front of the canvas! Compared with our relationship to the Andrea del Sarto Decapitation above, in this Caravaggio we are no longer simply watching, we are, willy-nilly, virtually participating witnesses in an expanded dramatic space. In addition, while reading from left to right we are simultaneously reading from 'below' to 'above': in other words, there is a diagonal compositional structure governing the 'movement' in this painting. Here the diagonal moves from the strong line of the sheet rising in the lower left, then continues through the sword and up into Judith's arms (her right arm leading to her determined face). This rising movement also takes us from the dying Holofernes, almost reaching into our space, slightly deeper into the fictive world, so that we can see more of Judith, standing further back and higher. Of course, it might be argued that the movement starts at the opposite end, that is, with the beautiful and arresting face of Judith and then continues downwards, through the same elements, to Holofernes and his tightly clenched bedding. Whichever direction one chooses, there is a direction and its a diagonal one.

We saw earlier that Caravaggio had re-introduced to Rome an ancient Roman way of composing images, that is in friezes which we read from left to right, and that the half-figure was another innovation of his, together with a diagonal structure, so the question arises as to where he might have got these ideas himself. The answer would seem to require us to shift our focus north from Rome to Lombardy where Caravaggio came from. This extreme northern region of Italy was linked, at least culturally, to the Veneto region and therefore to Venetian painting. At this point we must remind ourselves that pictures were commissioned and bought -  originals, duplicates and copies - from all over Italy and indeed Europe; and especially those of masters such as Titian and Veronese.

In the case of Veronese and other Venetians, it is clear that the diagonal was an established structural or compositional device. There seems to be some evidence that Caravaggio had visited Venice on his peregrinations towards Rome but, as just pointed out, Venetian paintings could be seen in many places other than in Venice itself.

The Mystic Marriage of Saint Catherine, 1565-70 by Paolo Caliari called Veronese

Gallerie dell'Accademia di Venezia (Venice).

(Image: from the Gallerie dell'Accademia di Venezia website: Creative Commons Attribuzione - Non commerciale - Non opere derivate 4.0 Internazionale)

The photo above is an example of Veronese using the diagonal as the principal structural device. Although the Renaissance triangle is still operative, the eye of the viewer is controlled, directed, by the diagonal rising in the lower right of the painting and ascending to the Madonna's face; the residual triangle may be continued then from the head of the Madonna down across her chest and along the shoulder of the 'instructing' angel in the lower left of the picture. Needless to say, this composition and many others have a more complex composition than just one or two lines but here the diagonal is a major structural element *. In fact, when we first look at this painting, the rather obvious diagonal movement is what initially strikes us; in addition, despite the horizontal stairs at the base, this diagonal - which passes through both the face of the Child and that of his mother - is reinforced by two of the major folds in the drapery wrapped around the corinthian columns behind and above the Madonna.

The Discovery of the Body of Saint Mark, 1562-66, oil on canvas by Jacopo Robusti called Tintoretto (1519-94). Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan

Another Venetian painter who made use of the diagonal is Tintoretto, as is clearly obvious in the image above. The almost too-strong diagonal beginning in the top right corner and its corresponding one at the lower right (forming the right wall of the arcade) pull our eyes forcefully into the fictive - but convincing - depth of this painting. The foreground figures however have virtually no relationship with the diagonals, spread out as they are more-or-less across the front plane of the image. In Caravaggio and much Baroque work by contrast, the figures themselves form the diagonal: it is not merely a geometrical structure, as above.

Here perhaps we should recognise again that many pictures, in many eras, including the Baroque and including some of those by Caravaggio himself, do not have a diagonal composition; many paintings have a central focus, a constant of Western painting from ancient Roman art onwards; in the wonderful MANN in Naples (the Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Napoli) there are many objects recovered from the unearthing of Pompeii and Herculaneum, including whole walls of frescos. Very interestingly, it is precisely in the marvellous architectural perspectives that we can see the importance of a central focus; in fact, in much Roman art, the importance of symmetry is plainly obvious, however, that said, in wall paintings of people in the countryside for example, the Roman painter still had some way to go in terms of composition: allowed the freedom from the constraints of painted architectural decoration, the Roman painter tended to place his or her figures somewhat haphazardly across the visual field of the composition.

An ancient wall fresco from Pompeii or Herculaneum in the collection of the MANN, Naples.

In the photo above, taken this year at the MANN, we see an example of such an architectural fresco (with my nephew beside it for scale). Close scrutiny reveals that every aspect of this painting is centralised, something we might expect in a Renaissance altarpiece made after the re-discovery of the principles of perspective drawing; 're-discovery' because, as is clear in this photo, the Romans were almost completely au fait with the required geometry. The fresco is damaged at the very top but, looking for example at the row of little figures painted on the projecting brackets or corbels (mensole) on either side of the (central) door, we see that their shadows, in  the space between the top corbels and the bottom ones, follow the logic of a central light source: on one side, falling from the left, on the other, falling from the right. Although not completely correct in terms of our later understanding of the rules of perspective illusion, we have to admit that, overall, it's pretty good! But back to Baroque painting.

In Naples, the popularity of the diagonal, and the profound influence of the ideas of Caravaggio, may be gauged by looking at two paintings, both of the same subject and both painted within a few years of each other: the Pietà, one by Andrea Vaccaro and one by Jusepe de Ribera.

The Pieta, 1640-50, oil on canvas by Andrea Vaccaro (1604-70)

Museum of the Pio Monte della Misericordia, Naples

In the first, by Andrea Vaccaro, the diagonal again moves from the lower right up through the centre of the image towards the top left of the canvas. The theme, the Pietà, or the Mourning over the dead body of Christ, is a very common one in Christian art; here however, rather than have the mourning figures placed around the central horizontal corpse of Christ, His body is stretched out in a diagonal linking (almost) the top left corner with the lower right. Instead of all being brightly illuminated as it might be in a (Renaissance) Perugino for instance, only the body is strongly illuminated - along with the heads of the other main actors - out of the depthless void of the surrounding darkness of their misery: the psychological drama!

Pietà, 1637, oil on canvas by Jusepe de Ribera (1591-1652)

Museum of the Pio Monte della Misericordia, Naples

Ribera, although from Spain, was one of the most influential painters in Baroque Naples - at that time in fact under the dominion of Spain; he has Christ stretched across the lower third of his canvas, with the diagonal moving from the opposite direction, that is, from left to right. Again, the light, perhaps not so strong as in the Vaccaro, illuminates the corpse and the faces of the women mourners, as well as a small angel in the top left, whose little body forms a cruciform shape. The importance of the suffering of Mary, Christ's mother, is accented in this picture, with her face, highlighted, almost in the centre of the composition. Both of these painters and others in Naples at this time - incidentally, after the death of Caravaggio in 1610 - make use of the diagonal composition and importantly, of the strong contrast between large areas of darkness (scuro) and relatively smaller but concentrated areas of light (chiaro). 

To point up the profound difference the compositional angularity makes (the diagonal), let's finish by returning to Venice and a smallish Pietà painted by one of its masters, Giovanni Bellini. The typically Renaissance (and earlier) frontal view of Christ being nursed by his grieving mother and assisted by the distraught Saint John, with its verticality and comparatively bright and very detailed landscape background, contrasts markedly with the principal tenets of the later Caravaggism of the Baroque. The poses are different, the angles are different, the light is different, the drawing is different; but the half-figures are common to early Caravaggio and to subsequent Roman and Neapolitan Baroque.

Pietà, c.1460, tempera on panel by Giovanni Bellini (1435 - c.1516)

Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan

Where does this leave us with our question concerning the origins of Caravaggio's 'revolution", or his ideas at least? From the little I have observed - and the even less that I know - it appears that, coming himself from Milan, that he must have, obviously had, taken certain cues from the art around him, most likely indicated by his first master Simone Peterzano. The dominant Venetian school with its various tendencies is possibly the most probable source of some of the typical elements which we associate with Caravaggio and caravaggism.

* The Veronese discussed here has in fact a rather complex surface structure: starting with the diagonal described above and the implied triangle and its base - the horizontal stairs - there are as well two or three other 'active' lines. The most obvious is the vertical of the two columns which, if continued downwards to meet the stairs, form a right-angle with them and therefore another triangle, completed with the dominant diagonal. But there is another 'minor' diagonal, formed this time from the shoulder of the large angel in the lower left corner which then passes through the Madonna's chest and face into the space between the small blue-winged angel and the larger blonde-haired one with his arms folded; at the same time intersecting the dominant diagonal, thus forming a Saint Andrew's Cross. This intersection creates an empty space on the right which has an arrow-head shape - or, yet another triangle - one which is a quite common by-product of the use of diagonals.

Veronese's Mystic Marriage of Saint Catherine with the principal compositional lines drawn by the author, again using the image from the Venetian Accademia.

Note: Except where indicated, all photographs were taken by the author.

 

Napoli: the Certosa di San Martino

 My second visit to the extraordinary Certosa di San Martino, which looks down across the Bay of Naples, was made last month in the company of my now grown-up nephew. We had decided to meet in Sicily, at Catania, and to then see Napoli together; I was particularly keen for him to experience the Certosa and so we went there one fine morning and passed several hours happily taking-in the wealth of visual stimulation housed in this de facto museum.

The Certosa di San Martino, as intimated, occupies the top of a high hill and, at certain points provides the unsuspecting visitor with a spectacular vista, in particular from the ex-Prior’s apartments. A massive, not quite 360 degree-view of the Bay, the city, the waterfront and Vesuvius takes one’s breath away and provides a much needed break from the Certosa's extensive collection of Baroque architecture, painting and sculpture; all of which is the result of the renewal of different areas of this Carthusian monastery, initiated towards the end of the 16th century.

The spectacular view from the Prior's quarters in the Certosa di San Martino, Naples

Hoping not to exaggerate, I would say that probably the majority of the pictures is from the Baroque period even if the renovation of the structures began in the preceding Mannerist style and indeed continued into the subsequent Rococo period, with  beautiful paintings by Francesco De Mura for example. But the original stimulus for visiting this place was its renowned collection of Baroque paintings, a personal late appreciation of which has developed over recent years, and especially after visiting Sicily and Naples (not to mention Rome, the undisputed centre of the Baroque).

Taking only one section of one room in one part of this very large complex, what we are going to consider today is some fresco work (around 1624) on the vault of this room - the Sala Capitolare - and some oil pictures in the lunettes below. The frescos were painted by the Greek-Italian artist Belisario Corenzio (1558-1646), a student of Tintoretto and the master of Massimo Stanzione (another important Baroque painter, see Note 2). In the section visible in the photograph below there are four frescos, each representing or personifying a ‘virtue’: Prudence, Merit, Obedience and Honour. Leaving aside any discussion of these virtues as ethical or moral attributes, what appealed to me as a painter is the, I think, fairly obvious use of portraiture for the Merit and Honour images. Remembering that this is a Certosa, a kind of monastery, and at the time, the 16th and 17th centuries, full of monks of all ages, the ready supply of men willing to sit for a painting - or, at least a drawing - could hardly have been ignored.

Frescos of the Virtues by Belisario Corenzio; oil pictures of Founding Fathers in the lunettes by Paolo Finoglio. Sala Capitolare, Certosa di San Martino, Naples

Whereas the female figures in this group could have required models, which the painter might have found anywhere in the city, their somewhat more generic appearance, particularly of the figure of Obedience, suggests that, as in many religious paintings, certain faces were adapted from a repertoire of pre-existing sketches and drawings. This fact is interesting because the habit and necessity of working from drawings, especially for frescos, meant that certain ‘types’ evolved within a given artist’s oeuvre, particularly for ‘minor’ actors in large compositions; as remarked elsewhere, the existence of a true portrait in such images is immediately apparent as it differs noticeably from the more generic ‘types’ surrounding it. Here, the male faces on the other hand, especially as they represent members of the community’s order, would seem to be portraits, the more successful of the pair being that of Merit although, that said, both faces appear to be from the same model. Thus, as portrait studies, in fresco, in the Baroque period, they are a little unusual and, in this case, remarkably bright, straightforward and ‘modern’!

Now let's consider the lunette pictures (1624-25?) painted in oil on canvas below the frescos just described (a ‘lunette’ is a crescent moon-shape lying horizontally, often situated above doors and windows or filling-in that shape created, as here, by the architecture of the ceiling). These wonderful pictures were painted by Paolo Finoglio (?1590-1645) and exemplify the strong influence of Caravaggio (d. 1610) on many painters in both Naples and Rome, and elsewhere. The strong contrast of light and dark, or perhaps better, the powerful complimentary rapport between areas of strong light and deep vague and dark space, virtually throws the subject out of the fictive world of the painted image into our own physical one. This characteristic of much Baroque painting is most obvious in the left-hand lunette in our photo above, the one with the saint wearing the white habit of his order (this series is made up of images of founding fathers of religious orders), cradling and contemplating the book in his right hand (detail below).

A slightly fuzzy detail of the San Romualdo (?) oil on canvas lunette by Paolo Finoglio

Sala Capitolare, Certosa di San Martino, Naples

Unlike the female virtues in the frescos above whom we seem to be regarding from below 1, Finoglio’s saints are seen as though we were looking at them from directly in front. These views, that is, an illusionistic one from below, looking up (dal sotto-in-su in Italian) and one as if seen from directly in front (‘quadri riportati’ if on ceilings) are commonly seen in Baroque painting - and in other periods; however, during the Baroque, the view from below, painted as if real, became very common, both in churches and in wealthy private homes (palazzi). Even though here we must look up to see these oil paintings on the walls (above eye level), the images are, as said, painted as though we were in front of the subject.

Needless to say I suppose, the drawing of these figures is completely confident and masterful, the poses appropriate to the confined area of the canvases and the expressiveness vibrant if contemplative, as would seem suitable for a religious house. In the image of this father in white (possibly San Romualdo), the light coming from the left fully illuminates the saint, specifically his white habit (and his accompanying cherub), as it glances across the objects on the table slightly further back - that is to say, a typically Caravaggesque treatment of the elements in a composition. Superfluous detail, even that describing the environment in which the action occurs - the setting - is reduced to a minimum, if suggested at all 2.

A detail showing both Corenzio's fresco 'portrait' of Merit (Meritum) and below, in the lunette, Finoglio's supposed San Romauldo oil on canvas.

Incidentally, we might notice the tonal difference between the fresco parts of the image above and the parts painted in oil. One of the beauties of 'buon fresco', or 'affresco' as it is known in Italian, is its clean light and pale colour: by its nature it makes use of the wet plaster (hence: fresco or 'fresh') which is white, and the water pigments which are absorbed into that plaster therefore have a relatively pale complexion. Oil colours on the other hand have a much greater tonal range, moving from pure white to deep black. The image above shows this difference very well; not simply because Finoglio has deliberately used dark colours in his picture is it darker than the frescos above it: the coloured pigments mixed with oil simply do have more depth. The resulting contrast between the two mediums produces, to my mind, two independent yet (here) complementary mental 'spaces' so to speak; the frescos offer clear 'factual' information; the oils a more inward, mediative model; keeping in mind that these images were to be seen principally by members of a religious house: the Certosa itself. That is, they were not made for 21st century tourists!

1 Looking at the first photo and the female Virtues, we notice that the corbels and the other architecture which surrounds them (their thrones) are seen from below; note also the 'carved' grotesque faces on the undersides of those corbels. Close scrutiny of the male Virtues also reveals that we are looking at them from below: notice for instance that we can see the underside of the book held by Meritum.

2 Just to point-up the importance of and interest in the colour white on the part of painters working at the Certosa, here is another painting in which white is a dominant theme: it was painted by Massimo Stanzione around 1633-37, as mentioned, a student of Finoglio. Of course, white seems to have been the colour of the habit of the Certosini, that is the members of that community and so it is natural, in paintings retelling the crucial events in the Order's history, that white would appear quite often; but the interest for a painter, or a student of painting, is the way that artists handled the white in their pictures.

The Appearance of the Virgin and St. Peter to the Certosini of Grenoble by Massimo Stanzione; oil on canvas. A difficult picture to photograph thus the unfortunate angle. Note the brilliant dispositions and gradations of the whites in this large painting making them, as in the Finoglio discussed above, almost abstract studies of 'still-life' form.