Art 'speaking'.

 

For some of us, artists in particular I imagine, art works take-on or have, as it were, an animated personality: that is to say, they become almost like a kind of living being. It is a commonplace that certain artists - not all - regard their artistic products as though they were their children. This idea of the particular personality of art works was reinforced for me on becoming aware of a common Latin phrase used by medieval and later artists when signing their work: so-and-so "me fecit": 'so-and-so made me'. In this manner, it is the artwork itself which is speaking to us - and continues to speak over the centuries! It is also the joining of the verbal onto the visual; the image exists, conveying the content it is supposed to represent - a visual content, whether painted or sculpted - and then, as if to give it the 'breath of life', the artist claims it by having the work itself state the artist's authorship. Very often, these few words, and others similar, are hidden, inconspicuous; they are certainly not meant to  distract from the principal significance carried by the image.

Pietro Lorenzetti (c.1280-1348), Polittico della Pieve, 

tempera and gold leaf on wood, 1320 -1324 circa

The church of Santa Maria della Pieve, Arezzo (Photo: the author)

Pietro has signed this great work in two places, both in Latin: one in a more formal and obvious manner, under the main central panel; the other, this one invisible from any distance, on the sword blade held by Saint Reparata in a minor panel (top register, extreme left): Petrus me fecit.

In relation to medieval or Renaissance art particularly, as well as more generally, it has been my experience that, wherever they might be, certain images seem to 'communicate', as it were personally, as one walks by or, more likely, as one stands to admire them. It is as though a figure or personage, possibly one out of many, had expressly decided to address a particular viewer! Obviously, the figure does not actually speak; the sensation one has is of a feeling that that figure possibly has some kind of personal significance; a riddle of course, especially so as this normally happens only with an individual figure - and which is more likely to occur when one is alone in front of the particular work. Needless to say, this effect was, at least in part, a desired one: that the holy figures (if the work be a religious one) should 'touch' us, as though personally; but the same thing can happen with secular images too1. At other times however, it would seem to be the artist him- or herself who 'communicates' in this mute fashion, again a kind of riddle. In this case, perhaps it is the utterly convincing nature of the image - the formal and textual coherence - which 'carries' so much of the 'anima' of its creator that it manages to 'speak' - so to speak! 

Giottino, The Lamentation over the Dead Christ, (detail) 1360-65, tempera on wood

The Uffizi, Florence (Photo: the author)

Here is an example of a painting, or rather, a figure which communicated with me in the special way I am describing. I like very much the whole image but was especially taken by this extraordinarily melancholy Mary Magdalene: seated somewhat apart, her right knee, shoulder and arm blocking her view of the horrific tragedy beside her. This profoundly lonely figure appealed to me.

The artist is however really speaking to us in the sense that art is a language and, as such, it is probably no surprise that we sometimes have the sensation that we are being personally addressed. In making art objects, artists are 'speaking' to the future viewers of that object through the vocabulary, grammar and syntax of the particular 'art language' they happen to be using. In certain respects, this effect may be taken as a sign of the artwork's - that is, the artist's - success; a given function of art is to communicate and so it follows that in communicating, it fulfils this basic function (what exactly is being communicated is, naturally, another topic). This is a generally recognized function of art but what I am referring to is, as said, a personal or individual contact established by the artwork with particular viewers and not perhaps with whomsoever happens to pass by. The question arises as to whether it is in fact the artwork that is doing the communicating, or whether it is the viewer reading something into the experience of studying the artwork; that is, is the viewer 'projecting' some special quality onto or into the specific art object, is it the viewer who is 'animating' the object beyond any objective criteria? Or, is this especial 'communication' perhaps really the result of understanding the 'language', of being schooled or instructed in not only the language itself, but in its interpretation?

A detail of the so-called Gates of Paradise made by Lorenzo Ghiberti,  1425-52, gilded bronze. Originals (replaced by copies at the Baptistry itself) now in the Museo dell'Opera del Duomo, Florence (Photo: the author)

Here is an example of another way in which artists signed their work, in this case, a self-portrait, of Ghiberti, on the left, and his son, Vittorio, on the right. Ghiberti also signed this masterpiece with his name, on the bar just to the left in this image (not visible). It is an example of the artist regarding us while we regard his work, a mutual exchange of studied interaction.

In this relation, I have recently been fortunate enough to have been reading two particularly interesting texts 2 and unfortunate enough to have been subjected to another (thankfully short) which, in terms of 'art literacy', could be termed the polar opposite of the other two! Given the very low level of appreciation - not to say knowledge - and the general confusion of the latter piece (whose details I don't wish to publicise), it could be taken as an example of why it is that so often, the untutored mind misses the point, that is, people like this often miss altogether or don't understand what is being communicated by a given artwork. On numerous occasions, the sight of crowds of people filing past some of the most important, not to say sublime, works of art, in major art galleries, has saddened me, knowing that with even a small amount of interpretive knowledge or learning, some more at least of these people would get so much more out of their experience.

A related obstacle, ironically, is, as the proverb goes, 'a little knowledge is a dangerous thing'; by this I mean that often it seems that the reaction to certain works of art is conditioned by the fame of the artwork. People will bill and coo in front of, for instance, a Raphael or a Michelangelo or a Picasso because they know it was made by that artist, but will be absolutely cold before the (possibly very good) work of someone they've never heard of. This suggests that what they are doing before the Raphael etcetera is exactly what they've been conditioned to do (and what they think they should do); when however, they are confronted with a work for which they have no yardstick (no fame, no verbal commonplaces), they are unable to form an independent judgement or opinion and remain silent - or worse, criticise the hapless work from the shallowness of their unschooled appreciation. 3

For me at any rate, whether this communication is a 'real' phenomenon or simply my mind fancifully projecting into the object is not of the greatest importance; what is important is that this effect continue to occur, to take me into a condition one might say of privilege, of individual dialogue with another person's thought and 'anima'.

1 My own experience is that, normally, the effect I am writing about occurs in relation to figurative works and, more exactly, works in which there is the representation of human figures, of people; the effect is not so strong nor so common with landscapes or still-life for instance, or with over-sized work, and perhaps even less so with regard to abstract pieces (no criticism implied). The phenomenon is completely absent when viewing 'installations', performance 'art', conceptual art and so forth (criticism implied)! 

2 The two particularly interesting texts referred to are: Michael Baxandall, Giotto and the Orators, Oxford, originally 1971, and Lorenzo Ghiberti,  I Commentarii, Giunti, 1998 (Introduzione e cura di Lorenzo Bartoli).

3 This condition, that is, of some people's appreciation of art being in some way conditioned by their expectations as opposed to being a reaction to the art per se, has been remarked on for some time. While preparing this article, I came across a reference to Francisco de Hollanda's (1517-85) Roman Dialogues (c. 1550 manuscript only) in which he imagines or recounts a conversation between Vittoria Colonna and Michelangelo in which she asks him his opinion of Flemish painting; Michelangelo replies, "Flemish painting pleases the pious better than any Italian style ... This is not due to vigour or merit in the painting but is entirely the fruit of pious sensibility". Although he goes on to a more detailed formal criticism of Flemish painting, Michelangelo here makes an observation concerning the fact that some people's preferences are based not on an appreciation of any given painting on its own terms, but rather on the power of the (in this case) religious sentiment it carries; the formal success or otherwise of the artwork in question, for viewers like these, is almost irrelevant and probably not understood. Reference and quotation found in The Critical Writings of Adrian Stokes,  Lawrence Gowing (Ed.), 1978, Vol III: 'Michelangelo', footnote #35 (p348).

Three Painted Portraits

 

This article is about portraits. I would like us to look at three painted portraits and see how they might be similar to each other and how they are different. The first is an image from Fayum, in Egypt, and dates to the early 1st century AD, a period in which Egypt was under the control of the Romans. This type of portrait was made and used a bit like we today might have a photo taken of a family member and which on his or her death, at least in some cultures, is attached to their tombstone. It is believed that most Fayum portraits were painted while the sitter was still alive - something I would say was pretty obvious - and then, on their death, were placed in the position of the face in an Egyptian-style mummy and held in place by the mummy wrappings; in this way, Greco-Roman realism was superimposed onto traditional Egyptian burial practices.

A typical Fayum portrait, artist and sitter unknown. 1st century AD. Encaustic on wooden panel. Walters Art Museum, Baltimore. (Image: Public Domain through Wikipedia)

Note that the top corners and the lower edge are left as exposed wood because it was anticipated that they would be covered by the mummy wrappings. *

What I would like us to examine however is the style of the portrait. The sitter is a youngish man, perhaps close to 30 years old, apparently of high rank judging from what we see of his clothing (especially his angusticlavius condition: wearing a narrow stripe of purple on the tunic, signifying a plebeian tribune). Being dressed in the Roman manner, this alone would set him apart from a typical Egyptian image; but there are other notable cultural differences. Egyptian burial masks are, first, just that, they are stylized masks of the deceased, not portraits as we - or the Romans - understand the term; secondly, they are, without fail, frontal: the Fayum portrait on the other hand, is nearly always a three-quarter view; that is, the sitter, as in the image above, often (not always) is seen by the painter slightly more from either the right or the left, usually not full-face, usually not frontally. The shoulders and chest of the man above indicate this positioning as does his face: although he is looking directly at us, we can in fact see more of his left cheek, ear, nose and neck, suggesting that, while his body is directed more towards his right - creating thereby an abstract diagonal (and therefore depth) into the very shallow illusionistic space of the image - his head is turned towards his left to look at the painter. The importance of this is that it has nothing to do with the indigenous art of the place where at least a good number of such portraits has been found, that is, in Fayum, in Egypt. Having said that however, one of the most important aspects of this portrait type is that it became the, we might say, standard portrait pose in western painting, particularly for a head-and-shoulders image.

Formally, the portrait above is strikingly life-like; it is obviously a representation of a real person (and not a stylized one). The light falls from the right side creating shadows on the left, especially along the longish nose and on the forehead. The shadows and light work together to mould the cheeks, the area around the mouth and the chin; they cause the face to appear in front of the neck. The top lip is in shadow and the slightly protruding lower lip is catching the light. The eyes are large and that general area indicates a somewhat pensive personality, although this often occurs when people sit for portraits: they sooner or later enter into a private world, especially if they are asked by the painter not to talk. All of these effects of the light together with the pose itself became absolutely standard elements in western representational art for the next two thousand years, in fact, for figurative artists, to this very day. Finally, we may notice as well that the colouring is naturalistic, something which varies, as is to be expected, from sitter to sitter and from painter to painter.

Perugino (c.1448-1523), Portrait of Francesco delle Opere, c.1494

Oil on wood. Uffizi, Florence. (Photo: the author)

I have chosen the next example (above), painted some 1400-odd years later than the Fayum portrait we have just discussed because, while it is a descendent of that Fayum style, it displays some marked differences as well. To begin with, we know who both the sitter was and who the painter was; this is not the work of an anonymous (at least to us) artisan, but rather the proud work of a recognized and influential Renaissance painter (it is signed and dated on the back). The perhaps most obvious formal difference between the Fayum and this portrait is that the sitter is placed before a kind of limitless but realistic space; in the Roman portrait, there is only the merest hint of any space except that concerned with the features of the face. Here, the landscape background is a typical Perugino one, disappearing as it does into a limitless, expansive blue twilight; there is the suggestion of closer landscape features but more or less only as silhouettes against the cool ethereal blues. This cool blue of course serves to contrast with the warm flesh-tones in the face - not dissimilar in fact from those in the Fayum picture - and with the strong red shirt which forms an obvious vertical counterpoint to the calm horizontality of the distant background. Partly as a result of this, the head and face appear very near the front edge of this image, accentuated itself by the sitter's hands resting, supposedly, on that same edge. Fayum portraits sometimes show the sitter's hands as well and there are examples occasionally in fresco portraits of the same period at Pompeii. Like the Fayum portrait, Perugino's sitter is turned at a slight angle to the picture plane although his shoulders and chest fill-up most of the lower half of the image.

In essence, the face of Perugino's sitter is also shown in a quasi-three-quarter view, in fact, like the Fayum example, from the right; on this occasion, he is lit from the left and much more subtly: apart from the strong shadow along the sitter's left forehead and cheek, the light is diffuse, undramatic but very very 'descriptive'. We can see clearly the undulations, the 'topography' of Francesco's middle-aged face, we can see the stubble of his beard and almost count the hairs on his head as they stream out from under his cap. There is a suggestion as well of a possible illness which may have caused the unusual lifting of his top lip, on his right side. Earlier, reference was made to photographic images and to continue with that analogy, we could say that the Fayum picture is like an early Polaroid print to Perugino's digital one! In addition, although we know almost nothing of our Fayum sitter's life (except that he was sufficiently well-to-do and, at one time at least, in Egypt) we do know something about Francesco delle Opere - from the painting (that is, apart from external documents): in his right hand he holds a piece of paper with the words Timete Deum on it; those words are associated with the radical Dominican preacher Savonarola (1452-98), active and successful in Florence until his ultimate execution. Displaying so obviously a possible adherence to the doctrines of the firebrand preacher identifies our sitter with his religious and political ideas - both dangerous.

A brief remark at this point concerning the mediums used in the two portraits discussed so far. The first was painted in encaustic, which means the pigments were mixed with wax which was applied while hot or cold (in an emulsion) to the wooden panel; as can be seen, under the right conditions, an extremely durable technique. The second painting was done in oils - again on wood - a technique far more familiar today, even to non-specialists. It has also been an extremely successful technique although it is susceptible to many dangers. Its advantages are that it is relatively flexible when it dries, and is capable of a huge variety of effects, more so than encaustic or fresco painting. Perugino was a master of the suffused light of twilight, making full use of the translucence possible with oil paint. It is somewhat fashionable these days to denigrate Perugino but I think portraits like this one of Francesco delle Opere demonstrate, amongst other things, his perspicacious psychological subtlety.

The third portrait we might look at is one made by the British artist Graham Sutherland between 1962 and 1964 of his friend, the great English art historian, Kenneth Clark, (Baron Clark). This work, painted in oil on canvas and typical of the style of Graham Sutherland, is interesting in several ways, not least because it revives the fifteenth-century Italian profile portrait which itself was a revival of those found on classical Roman coins.

Leon Battista Alberti, Self Portrait, c.1435, bronze

National Gallery of Art, Washington DC (Photo: the author)

Alberti's self portrait is one of the earliest of a style, which became popular in Italy at the time, of so-called 'profile portraits', based more or less closely on classical Roman coins which featured a profile of an emperor. Alberti's is not strictly a medal as it doesn't have a reverse side, nevertheless, subsequent exemplars did have, one of the most famous being that of Sigismondo Malatesta by Matteo de' Pasti (dated 1450 but struck in 1453).

Graham Sutherland (1903-80), Portrait of Kenneth Clark, Baron Clark (1903-83),

1962-64, oil on canvas. The National Portrait Gallery, London (Photo: the author)

The portrait of Clark takes up this ancient type of exact profile rendering as seen in the Alberti bronze. Here of course, it is a painting and as such, may be compared, so to say, as apples with apples, with both the Fayum and the Perugino pictures. The obvious difference with the Clark is that the sitter is shown in profile, and not in the three-quarter view we see in the other two instances; it is similar though in one respect at least to the Fayum portrait in that the 'background' is really hardly more than a flat colour: there is no attempt to suggest realistic depth behind the sitter and, as we have seen, this is true of the Fayum as well. But there is depth and this is where Sutherland has shown his mastery as a painter: apart from the naturalistic reddish tones in the face, both the colours and the shadows work to 'explain' the topography of Kenneth Clark's head as an almost sculpted mass in space. The light falls from above and from the front, so there is no definite 'dark side' or 'light side'; we can see shadows under Clark's eye-brow, his nose, his lower lip, his chin, and under his very explicit ear. There are clear shadows in his collar but also a light at the top edge of the button side; the light falls on his forehead, the top of his hair, the top of his ear, the bridge of his nose, the area above the top lip, the top of his chin. Within these more obvious observations, Sutherland has modulated his numerous colours and tones to 'sculpt' the topography of his sitter, from his right shoulder, across the hills and dales of the face to the distal collar; if we look at the ear and then the shadow in the space below the eye-brow beside the top of the nose, we realise what a distance has been travelled and therefore, what depth there really is in this apparently, at first, quite simple view. The overall greenish colour of both the cardigan and the background contrast strongly with the overall warm tones in the face, although, there too, there is a most subtle and elegant exchange between the warms and the cools.

Graham Sutherland was a lover of line and of the painted line in particular, as we can appreciate in the many 'linear' creases and wrinkles in Kenneth Clark's face: the clear age-related lines around the eyes and forehead, the line of the front of the cheek and that of the thin mouth. But perhaps the most marked is the one, again age-related, traversing the neck, almost as if cut with a knife! Sutherland's picture is a twentieth-century painting which brings into play a fifteenth-century mode (the strict profile) and, in that interplay of pinks and cool greens, also the faces in late-Gothic Italian frescos.

Much more could be said about portraiture of course, and where to stop would be the question, not to say the problem. Naturally, artists used models for their non-portrait faces and figures as well but that is yet another area of exploration.

* Although many 'Fayum" portraits were done in encaustic paint, there were quite a number done as well in tempera; both techniques are still used today, although oil and acrylic paints are by far much more popular now. The name 'Fayum' is that of a place in middle-Egypt where there was a large population of Greeks, or people who regarded themselves, or were regarded by the authorities, as in some way mainly Greek; however, such portraits have now been found in many other places in Egypt, and elsewhere in north Africa. It would seem that those who had such portraits made (in Egypt) belonged to the upper strata of Egyptian society and thought of themselves as in some way Roman while nevertheless still maintaining their 'Greek-ness' and sometimes also, their 'Egyptian-ness'! These portraits are especially significant in art history terms because they give us almost the only substantial idea of what ancient Greek panel painting (that is, portable pictures on wood) actually looked like, and of the extraordinarily high standard it had reached. The Greek connection, as far as these portraits are concerned, is highlighted by the occasional Greek inscription on either the painted surface itself, or on the mummy wrappings. Naturally, Roman officials stationed in Egypt on behalf of the Empire may also have had themselves portrayed in this same manner and therefore, not all of the images so far discovered need necessarily be of native-born Egyptians, whether 'Greek' or otherwise.