Portraits, 3

 

Continuing what has become a series of articles dealing with the portrait, this time let's begin with a 'modernist' picture painted by the Italian artist Giuseppe Capogrossi (1900-1972). It is Portrait of a Woman (in Italian, Ritratto muliebre) painted in 1932 and kept at the Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna in Rome. Capogrossi is interesting as, in his maturity, he changed tack completely, becoming a major abstract painter and it is for his abstracts that he may be better-known. In fact, the same gallery which houses our portrait also has a substantial collection of those later abstract pictures.

Giuseppe Capogrossi, Portrait of a Woman, 1932, oil on panel

Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna, Rome (Photo: the author)

I wanted us to look at this painting because, although it portrays a young woman, seated and dressed in a kind of patterned dress or smock (it's not clear exactly what the garment is), which the artist has made an important part of his composition, it could hardly be more different from the Moroni Portrait of a Lady seen in the previous essay (Portraits, 2). Structurally, the woman's body, and her two-toned clothing form a kind of cool central column which occupies, as a unit, the better part of the image. The cool blues of her clothes, and her eyes for that matter, contrast markedly with the reds distributed around the image and, particularly, those of her face; however, while the facial reds, oranges and pinks are 'warm', the apricot pink or orange of the seat (?) she appears to sit on, is cool; this has the optical effect of not competing with the warmer reds, as can be seen by contrasting that seat with the red of the fruit in her hand, another warm accent. That fruit and her very red lips, while seeming to exist in two different spaces or planes - that is, the fruit seems closer to us than do her lips - are virtually of the same intensity; and this observation brings us to another important formal or technical characteristic of this portrait, viz. that it is a tonal painting.

The description 'tonal painting', as a style or technique, signifies that the artist is primarily concerned with constructing forms by varying the intensity, the tones, of each colour, as opposed to the manipulation of black and white as monochrome elements onto which colours are then applied. The tonal painter, very much concerned with light, depends for his or her effects on a skilful control and manipulation of colour as such; that is to say, colour is not an adjunct to black and white but rather, so to speak, the 'substance' of light. Put simply, starting from a middle tone, forms are modelled in colours which are made lighter or darker, with the addition of white in the former case, and the addition of more of the pure colour (or a darker one) in the latter. Pure black and pure white, as modelling 'tools' as it were, are (usually) absent; this however, depends on the desired general tone 1. 

In the present example, we can see that the woman's face is composed entirely of areas of colour, with minimal suggestion of line; the background, an almost neutral tone applied as horizontal bands, contrasts thus doubly with the generally strongly-coloured and 'vertical' orientation of the figure. We may note incidentally, that in this portrait, most details of the face, the hands, the hair, etc., have been suppressed in a way unknown and probably unacceptable in earlier periods; a Perugino (or even a Sutherland later) would not have painted such a pared-down, simplified portrait 2. Interestingly, the hands holding the red object (fruit?) raise a question: are they merely an anatomical fact (that is, that we must be able to see her hands, given the length of the figure), or does the focus on both them and the face through the use of warm colour signify some symbolic content? 

Our next portrait is little more than a drawing although it is technically a painting; it is a fresco painted on a terracotta roofing tile!

Anonymous Florentine Painter (Filippino Lippi or Domenico Ghirlandaio ?), Portrait of an Old Man, last quarter of the 15th century, fresco on terracotta tile. Uffizi, Florence (Photo: the author)

Although the author of this marvellous 'drawing' is unknown, its supreme skill, both in the drawing itself and in its psychological observation, is clear to see. Even in its present state, which seems to be that of an unfinished work, it is absolutely arresting. An undoubted initial drawing has been gone over with veils of very thin monochrome paint, giving the image the effect of a tonal drawing. This portrait is another example of works which are dependent on line: the linear quality is obvious and the image's dependence on line, both for structure and form, is patent (especially compared to the previous picture just discussed). The painting is restricted to tones of fundamentally the same colour, a sort of light yellow ochre and/or red earth, the tones modulated to create light and shadow. As well as the depth implied by the sitter's left shoulder across to his right, the head is a kind of block, modelled as if sculpturally, with a definite left side, in shadow, and a definite 'front' side, as it were 'revealing' (in Michelangelo's sense 3) the facial features upon which the light falls. There is no white or black - except for perhaps the pupils - in this portrait.

An alert and, we might say, sanguine expression characterises this mature face drawn entirely of curves, in spite of the initial impression of blockiness (of the head). In fact, curves play the most important role in the structuring of the facial features (nose, eyes, chin, jowl) but also in the suggestion of the roundness of the forehead - the curve of his cap - the ear, and the neck - the curve of his 'collar' around to the back. Although there are no real straight lines in the human face, it is not often that we see a drawing or painting of one where the curvilinear quality is so well expressed; in this image, even apparently straight lines, for instance, those of the height of the cap, are actually very gradual curves.

Mention could be made here of the way the top of the ear is pushed down and forward by the rim of that cap, a curiosity which is often seen in paintings of this period! Our sitter looks as if he is wrapped-up in his heavy garment (he could be a monk or friar), with his thick hat on, as though to keep warm; even if the bright blue background and the overall lightness of the colours suggest spring or summer. The big slow curves indicating his body and folded arms also convey his form, his bulk: so much with so little! Of course, the articulation of the expression on the rocky landscape of the old man's face is no simple matter: this artist has 'seen' the sitter's face, not merely looked at it!

The final portrait is another fresco but this time, one still in its original position, on the wall of a chapel in the Florentine church of Santa Trinita.

Domenico Ghirlandaio (1449-1494), Portrait of Nera Corsi,  1483-86, fresco.

 Cappella Sassetti, Santa Trinita, Florence (Photo: the author)

Note: the date under the fresco reads 1480 in Roman numerals but others are missing: faintly visible, a Roman '5' (V). There is a shadow of the altarpiece, between the frescos of the wife and husband, covering the right side of this photo.

The elderly woman represented here is the left part of a double portrait, the right part being that of her husband Francesco Sassetti. It is an example of the 'profile portrait' discussed in the first essay in relation to the medal of Leon Battista Alberti; here however, our subject is represented as as an entire figure, kneeling as was common, before the holy work of which she and her husband were the donors or patrons. She is shown very modestly dressed although wealthy, her head covered with a type of veil that descends to cover her shoulders; her long dark dress covers her completely. Nera has her hands held before her, joined in prayer, and appears to be looking directly towards her husband on the other side of the altar.

The profile is exact, we see only the right side of her face; she has the large eyelids and sunken eyes indicative of a certain age, her mouth is pulled back towards her gums, her chin distinct from her lower cheek, now become jowly. She is impassive, lost in her own thoughts, perhaps religious ones, perhaps not; but the power of this portrait lies in this fact, that we don't know what she is thinking but the image is so attractive, that we do begin to question who this woman was, what she may have done, how much longer she may have lived after the portrait was made; in other words, the portrait interests us (like any good portrait), not only for its formal qualities as art, but also for what it represents, the life (or, a part thereof) of one of us.

Double portraits were not altogether unusual in the art of this period and earlier, famous examples being that by Piero della Francesca of the Duke of Montefeltro and his wife (in the Uffizi), and that by Masaccio in his Trinità fresco in Santa Maria Novella. In this last, the identity of the donors is in dispute (said by some to be Lorenzo Lenzi and his wife) and although the two people represented as patrons are normally husband and wife, in this case it has been suggested that the couple may be brother and sister. Also, of anecdotal interest, in relation to the pushed-down ears in the Portrait of an Old Man, in the Masaccio painting, the male donor, this time on the left, also has his ears pushed down by his headdress. 

Masaccio (1401-1428?) La Trinità (detail showing male donor), 1425-27, fresco.

Church of Santa Maria Novella, Florence (Photo: the author)

Again, an exact and excellent profile portrait, like the Ghirlandaio, a kneeling figure, hands in prayer. This fresco has been repositioned a couple of times and the lower portion of the donor's red cloak has apparently been repainted.

1 At some point in the making of a painting, the painter will decide on the tonal range of the particular picture; it may be quite light, as in this example, that is, its tones tend towards white; or it may, on the contrary, be quite dark and the tones will therefore tend towards the black end of the scale. Most tonal paintings work with a set of related tones operating somewhere or other along the scale between white and black, perhaps more frequently, somewhere closer to the white end; in Capogrossi's portrait, his darkest tones are in the darker blues; if we were to place a sheet of dead-black paper beside those 'dark' blues however, we would see immediately how far they are in fact from the black end of the scale. Tonal pictures, like all pictures really, create their own inherent reality, a reality which exists within the picture frame; within those borders, the painter must control all the elements so that the inherent reality is coherent - not with the 'real' world outside, but within the particular world of the painting itself. In this sense, pictures differ from free-standing sculpture: they are their own world, whereas, sculpture which projects into the real objective world must, in a way, fight for its place in that three-dimensional physical reality. Good pictures (and low-relief sculpture, as it were, 'pictorial' sculpture) invite us into another world, a different reality.

2 During the late 19th century and certainly into the early 20th, artists had been simplifying, for various reasons, the forms of the human body; and of course, simplification as a sort of short-hand notation had been common in sketches and preparatory work for centuries. In the present picture, the simplification has the effect somewhat of rendering the subject, the model, as a more generalised statement, perhaps that is, as less of a portrait per se.

3 Michelangelo's famous concept of 'liberating' the figure enclosed in the block of stone; he is also supposed to have said that sculpture was good to the degree that it distanced itself from painting (flatness), and painting to be good to the degree that it approached sculpture (suggestion of three dimensions). He also specified that, in relation to 'liberating' the figure from its stone, his work involved 'taking away', removing material, whereas, painting and modelled sculpture, such as with clay, involved the addition of material, something he apparently disapproved of. The whole discussion to be seen with reference to the contemporary (Renaissance) dispute as to the relative 'nobility' of painting and sculpture.