The Visit of the Queen of Sheba to King Solomon, c1890, by Edward John Poynter;
While visiting Sydney recently, I reacquainted myself with an old favourite of mine at the Art Gallery of New South Wales (AGNSW): The Visit of the Queen of Sheba to King Solomon. This large canvas, an academic 'machine', was painted by the English artist Edward John Poynter (1836-1919); it dates, after a prolonged gestation, from around 1891 and was purchased by the gallery in 1892. Seeing this tremendous picture again reminded me that it was this painting and another of the same subject which got me writing this blog, or at least in part. The other version was painted in about 1455 and, unlike Poynter's oil on canvas, is a fresco; it is part of a very well-known cycle of frescos called the Legend of the True Cross, in the church of San Francesco in Arezzo, Italy.
Piero della Francesca is the author of the large fresco showing first, the Queen of Sheba as she recognises the holy wood on which, much later, Christ will be crucified (the whole story is quite involved and is not relevant to our purpose here); and secondly, the scene next to this and attached to it is the Visit of the Queen of Sheba, the two scenes forming a kind of diptych. This version and that of Poynter, painted some 435 years later, could hardly be more different - not only in technique but also, and particularly, in treatment or attitude.
Now, even a casual glance at the images above will be enough to show that the two treatments of this one subject are entirely different; a more careful study will reveal that completely divergent approaches have been taken by the two painters concerned; let's start with the Poynter in the AGNSW.
Edward Poynter was what we might call a typical academic artist of the late 19th century. Academic painters were highly skilled, especially in drawing, were often well-educated, at least in classical mythology, and were serious students of archeology, a blossoming science at the time. Discoveries of ancient cities, ruins, tombs and so on were grist for the academic painter's mill. We should perhaps recall here that Impressionism had already been developed by this time (1891) and that post-Impressionism was also under way; whereas the Impressionists were looking at the life around them, including the landscape, academic artists on the other hand were focused on a kind of intellectual nostalgia for the by then long-gone Greco-Roman past, even if their work itself, particularly that of the painters, bore almost no resemblance to the art of the periods they admired. What they sought to portray was a re-imaging of that past supported by their knowledge of history and archeology; they were not especially interested in the artistic styles of the ancient world - except for Greco-Roman sculpture - although they included imitations of them in their narratives, for instance, as decoration on the wall of a painting set in ancient Egypt.
This love of history and archeology produced paintings which were erudite assemblages of sometimes discordant elements drawn from readings of history and archeology and the latest finds from digs happening throughout the Mediterranean basin. In Poynter's magnificent conjuring we have a wonderful example of just this attitude; historical accuracy - as far as possible - illustrating Biblical legends, Christian stories, pagan myth or actual historical events (battles and so forth), sometimes combined with first-hand experience from trips to Italy, Greece or north Africa. Poynter has apparently based his magnificent palace on contemporary discoveries in Iran and Iraq as well as other elements from Egyptian culture and so on. And naturally, some invention of his own, such as in some of the costumes and what he imagines might have been the ceremonial aspects of such an encounter. The Queen of Sheba - thought by modern scholars to have been in either present-day Ethiopia or Yemen - visited the King of Israel, Solomon, famous for his great wisdom (I Kings, 10). She is supposed to have taken a large caravan of costly gifts for Solomon and to have posed a number of difficult questions to him, eventually returning home convinced of his famed wisdom.
So Edward Poynter's painting is effectively an immense stage on which the Queen enters from the left, accompanied by some of her retinue, and begins to ascend a low marble staircase, a sort of ramp, on which Solomon is descending to greet her. Both are dressed as one might imagine such princes to be clothed at that time. The enormous palace-courtyard in which the event occurs is crowded with courtiers, soldiers, royal women - behind the throne and looking quite Egyptian - and presumably numerous servants. The great and wonderful columns supporting the surrounding arcade are decorated in red paint and gold or bronze adornments. In short, the scene is grandiose and spectacular. Interestingly, the artist's thought process is revealed to some extent by the addition of extra figures, now discernible as having been painted over the lower parts of at least two of the columns, that is, after their paint had dried, a not uncommon circumstance in older pictures where later additions were painted-in too thinly and, with time, have revealed the original thought underneath.
Now let's turn our attention to the Piero della Francesca fresco; to begin, that fact, that it is a fresco, means that it is technically a substantially different animal: generally the colours dry lighter than in many oil paintings and the image, due to the fresco technique, becomes a part of the wall on which it is painted; under normal conditions therefore, frescos can't be moved. Oil paintings on wood or canvas of course can be relatively easily moved and canvas even rolled-up. Oil pictures can and do suffer from a darkening of the oil in the paint and I suspect the Sydney picture has thus suffered. Piero's painting in Arezzo has been cleaned recently and is a bright and luminous image. But how does his version of the event differ from Poynter's? Well, in several extremely important respects; the first being that Piero has made no attempt whatever to stage his retelling in a historically 'accurate' setting. His only concession to any historical time - and not the one of Sheba and Solomon - is the Greco-Roman room, with its Ionic fluted columns and multi-coloured marble walls; his figures on the other hand are absolutely contemporary with his own time. There is not a single Egyptian hair style, or other (pseudo-) Biblical reference; there are no guards and no weapons; there are no wives or slaves; there is no reference to the near-East, the Levant. In other words, Piero has set his Visit in a contemporary Renaissance environment, even the clothes, or rather, especially the clothes are what one might have seen in 15th century Florence or Arezzo, worn by princes and the well-to-do: note the now unfortunately somewhat degraded cloak of Solomon. Also, the Queen and Solomon are on the same level, not, as in Poynter's picture, the one ascending to meet the other. In so far as historical fact is considered, we might mention the somewhat olive tone of both Solomon's and Sheba's skin - and her sub-Saharan African assistants - which Poynter has correctly included in his narrative; Piero's actors are all mid-fifteenth century Italians!
The determining psychology of these painters is to transform historical-mythological stories into 'actual' events but their approaches are quite different. Poynter has opted to create, before our very eyes, as though in a photograph or theatrical scene, an imagined 'reality'; he has tried to make a historical event a matter of flesh-and-blood and therefore something more than 'merely' words on a page. Piero della Francesca has attempted the same thing but his 'reality' is the one of his own period, the daily life of Renaissance Tuscany. He has set his re-telling in 'modern day' Arezzo - and, in one of the other scenes, has even included portraits of living contemporaries - thus making a story from the bronze-age an event occurring in a Renaissance court. In both cases, at least to some extent, both painters were fulfilling the expectations of their respective audiences although, with one particular difference: Piero was also indulging his own love of perspective and his theories of how to 'construct' human beings, in paintings. Piero's 'quiet' or stillness is due to this approach; his images are not simply retellings, they are equally demonstrations of his Renaissance rationality.
Given these quite marked differences in the psychological handling of the same event, a distinct divergence in approach, one might ask: which picture is, to our eyes, the more modern one? As splendid an imagining as Edward Poynter's is, I think the verdict has to be on the side of the Piero della Francesca. Not only is it, was it, absolutely up-to-date in terms of its setting at the time he painted it, but remarkably, it still seems, to my eyes, a completely modern picture even today. Amongst other things, the apparently casual circumstance of the Queen and the King, the woman and the man, being on the same level - even if the Queen is showing due respect to her host - makes it chime with our own contemporary attitudes to parity among the sexes. It is true that the ancient setting, as far as it goes, is a reference to Greco-Roman culture, that is, a time long before Piero's own but one which was, at his time, the model of contemporary 'modern' architecture in Italy. The apparent straightforwardness of his depiction of the event, the clarity of the effect, the 'statement' quality of the image, all combine to give Piero's painting a somehow 'modern' look.
Another obvious difference is in the treatment of light. Poynter has imagined a hot Mediterranean place, such as Palestine, and has covered the open space of the reception area with an enormous sun-shade, elements of which are visible in the top right of his painting; the arcade formed by the double rows of columns also provides shade for the multitude of participants in his retelling. The effect is one of shaded heat, also suggested by the blue sky seen through the tops of the left-hand columns. Piero's forecourt is also shaded but we can see that the light falling on all the participants in his image is entering through the gaps between the large columns on the left. His light not only illuminates the scene but actually forms the solid bodies of the King and Queen and their respective retinues; light here is not simply a pictorial necessity, it is the 'thing' which forms the physical masses.
Another not unimportant difference between the two pictures is their framing, or, in the case of Piero's fresco, lack of it - in so far as it is not surrounded, and thus isolated, by the 'normal' wooden frame. The Edward Poynter in Sydney has a splendid large gilt frame, typical of those into which were mounted such 19th century pictures; such a frame, a virtual work-of-art itself, is designed to replicate or support the era portrayed in the painting. The effect of the wooden frame is also to isolate the painted image from its surroundings and, to borrow the analogy adopted by L.B Alberti in about 1435, to create a kind of window through which the illusionistic picture is seen. Easel painters, that is, painters whose work is made on an easel or something similar - as opposed to fresco painters - consciously or not anticipate this effect when painting their pictures: the frame will eventually add to the illusion. Piero della Francesca's frescos in Arezzo are normally separated, one from the other and level from level - there are three levels of fresco pictures here, not counting the ceiling images - by a painted faux marble cornice although the two frescos concerning the Queen of Sheba are neatly separated by the large columns which mark the left wall of the room in which the meeting takes place (making it a kind of patio or forecourt).
*All photographs are the author's who reserves copyright.
