An excursion into Baroque music

It turns out that few art historians make excursions into music history, mainly because music can be rather technical. I am the first to admit some music articles are unfathomable without a degree in composition, maths or some such, and are rather off putting. It depends on what the musicologist is trying to convey. Are they talking about how the music is actually made; or are they describing the effects of certain musical combinations; or are they writing about theory? There are as many ways of writing about music as there are about art. When an analyst of paint does a technical report, someone of limited experience in this area would struggle to read it. So art can be just as technical as music in some respects.

I've spent a little time in choirs, and one of them concentrated on motets, masses and madrigals by well known early modern/Baroque composers such as Byrd, Tallis, Palastrina, Lotti etc. The sound, textures and rhythms of these pieces are relatively familiar; who has not felt the internal pulse of Tallis's 40 part motet Spem in Alium? Therefore I feel relatively well placed to apply a certain level of thought to how music like this works, and its effect on an audience and performer.

The Nativity by Torquato Tasso

Nativity of Christ, Santa Maria Maggiore, Rome

I looked everywhere for this poem online but it seems to be only in a fragile pamphlet 1907; I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I did.

I was very much struck with the mention of the study of nature. I enjoyed the allusions to truth and light, and the chasing away of pagan and pre Christian gods. But above all it was the 'flower of endless love' when all the imagery and 16th century language falls away, leaving nothing but warmth and sincerity. A stunning piece.

My Love Affair with Cardinal Alessandro Peretti Montalto Begins

Although the intellectual life of the artist is crucial, my focus this weekend has been on the patron and his concerns. I'm coming round full circle to my initial essay idea which focused purely on the Montalto Madonna - this would embrace all the thoughts I was having regarding the renewal of the church, private devotion, poetry, music, innovations in the creation of art and so on. The other paintings are interesting but I think I will end up using them as guest appearances to support the main feature. One of the reasons for this is we can only be certain of one of the commissions - I have been unable to find out who commissioned the other paintings and this would lead to a very unbalanced essay. These are my musings about the man who commissioned the Holy Family so far.

Visions, Families and Torments: Carracci and Saints

Perhaps it's just me, or the pernicious influence of academia but sometimes the actual paintings can get lost in the amount of theory whirring around. To clarify my thoughts, I've started by going to the paintings and looking at them carefully to see what is in them. The paintings I'm talking about are the ones mentioned in my previous post. They were all painted around the same time, using the same materials and have been well known, even when thought lost, through the written descriptions of Giovan Pietro Bellori and Carlo Cesare Malvasia from the 1600s.

Bellori was aware of the limitations of pictorial description, as he says, 'the delight of painting resides in sight, which has little to do with hearing', and I would add reading to that observation. However, he offers a brief overview of these works on copper and we are able to identify the three works of interest from his remarks,

Carracci on Copper: Initial essay ramblings

This post arises out of my initial essay ramblings about the artist Annibale Carracci (November 3, 1560 – July 15, 1609). I am setting out to investigate what his small paintings on copper tell us about religion and intellectual ideas of the period. 'The Montalto Madonna', the 'Temptation of St Antony Abbot' and the 'Vision of St Francis' are all dated to when he had been in Rome a few years, from 1597-1598. I shall be looking at the different subject matter of each painting and connecting it with a number of interesting issues. For example, St Francis and the renewed interest in the spiritual, possibly touching on St Teresa of Avila. I remain fascinated by the monsters in the St Antony Abbot piece so what can this tell us about real and psychological demons of the late 1500s. Finally how had the role of the Virgin Mary changed over the latter part of the century - what does his depiction of the Holy Family say about her?

Marrakech: a sketch in colour

It's my first time to the dark continent. I am sure this has been said before but the light here engulfs you, driving all thoughts of the damp gray miasma of London away. London, where the streets insidiously swallow you whole, like being banished to the underworld. Persephone would never have eaten so much as a crumb if she had been dragged down Mile End Road. Having seen London at its worst recently, I've never been so pleased to leave, and re-enter the world of not-London.

Marrakesh. This crazy, erratic, bountiful place where skeletal horses share the roads with tractors, lorries and motorbikes; and hungry eyed people are thrown bananas from the charitable stall owners. The abundance of colour hits you like the smell of the fumes, but like the skin of the exotic edibles, you have to work hard to get at the jewel-like interior. The green mottled oranges disguise the sweetness within; behind graffitied ancient frontages of winding faded peach/sand passageways you enter a world of silence and tranquility. And a fruit salad of colour.

Please Relics Me, Let Me Go....

Here, have some kittehs instead

This lecture was on relics and the cults of the saints and I was presenting – hence the post on propaganda. We have already touched on many of the topics related to saints and relics because they are so central to Catholic worship. Reaffirmed by the Council of Trent, in that particular session they discussed relics at the same time as images, so there is a mingling of ideas with many clerics not making a distinction between the two. 

On reflection and in my current state of mind – you try reading 20+books about Annibale Carracci in two days – the point our tutor made about Mary being the most miraculous was key. This is something I am going to revisit for my essay, however suffice to say that many icons of the Virgin were reframed and repositioned in Renaissance because of their perceived miraculous nature. For my real feeling on this entire subject, please see my concluding paragraph!

Migraine

The pain sizzles and spins,
Unreal rainbows rise and rotate
As the escalator in my head
Spews forth movement.

The earth doesn't turn as it should.
The disorientation in my mind
Unmaps, unravels, undermines,
Lost stumbling forward.

The stomach queases sickly and
The battering ram of pain unstills
And unceasing assaults my eye.
Unseeing arms outstretched.

Kemp on Leonardo: 'Space Time and Form'

Almost exactly a year ago I was at a University of London lecture listening to John Onians and in my blog I touched on the nature of connections with a brief mention of the Royal Institution and James Burke. It so happens that the first time I heard Professor Martin Kemp speak was at that same venerable institution in early Nov 2011 and so it continues; from one great art historian to another, connected over subject, time and space, the threads that hold my interests together just keep tightening.

Professor Kemp was presenting the 2013 Murray Memorial lecture at Birkbeck College. He was an appropriate person to deliver this lecture because he was taught by Peter Murray at the Courtauld Institute in the 60s. The Murray Bequest is an important part of the History of Art department which provides student financial support, acquisition of books for the library and public engagement with free lectures like this one.

Relics: Ideological Messengers of the Church?

True Cross, Santo Toribio de Liébana, Spain.
(photo by F. J. Díez Martín).

This post has come out of a preparation for a class presentation on relics. The module name is 'the art of persuasion' and yet it seems that we have launched straight into the art without actually thinking consciously about the persuasion. Preparation for this course took place in July 2013 at the British Library with the 'Propaganda: Power and Persuasion' exhibition and so finally I was able to draw on prior knowledge to apply to an area in which I am becoming increasingly familiar.[1] To see how relics were used by the king and state, I also read recent books and articles.[2] When I talk about 'relics' I'm referring to the bodily fragments and associated paraphernalia associated with the saint in question which are usually kept in reliquaries or altars in Catholic churches the world over. Given that my tutor will be talking about them specifically, I don't want to cover the same ground as her.

Lecture 5: Altar pieces

It seems timely that Monday’s class was about altar pieces. Given that Hasan Niyazi spent so much of his time investigating and writing about these hugely important paintings, it was soothing to connect with his memory and contemplate some of the wider issues of church art. Hasan concentrated on the pre-Trent period when, it might be argued, the images had a gloriously balanced aesthetic and an aura of beautiful unreality. You only have to look at The Madonna di Foligno to see the difference between Raphael’s abilities and some of the less than average artists we've seen this term.

The focus this week was the way that the altar pieces interacted with the rest of the church; that is to say everything from the liturgy, the architecture, iconographic program, saints patron as well as the wider community. After the Council of Trent, the Eucharistic became of central importance and the altar piece usually reflected this. Our tutor stated that they were more likely to have symbolism in them after Trent than before, a statement which has had me puzzling since I returned to my notes. I would heavily dispute this given the amount of iconographical studies of some difficult altar pieces pre-1563. However what I think the lecturer meant was that symbols were used in a different, more unsubtle way and became easier for the congregation to 'read'.

Book Review: The Sensuous in the Counter-Reformation Church

This book review is dedicated to the memory of my good friend, Hasan Niyazi. I just wish it had been a book on Raphael, about whom who he knew so much. Thank you for your help my dear...

With every new papal regime the Catholic Church undergoes a subtle change with attempts to re-engage and invigorate the hearts and minds of the faithful. For me, it seems that every fresh endeavour is nothing more than a manifestation of the ripple effect of sixteenth-century reformation Rome, where all means were employed to win back those tempted by the inflammatory protestant sects. A combination of enthusiastic new saints to venerate and an immersive theatrical experience to rival any playhouse would have given the average Catholic quite a jolt, if not a complete sensory overload.

Editors Marcia Hall and Tracy E Cooper bring together a collection of essays which explore ideas of sensuousness in the Catholic reformation church. Each author is a specialist in late sixteenth century religious subjects and well known for scholarly articles and/or monographs. The introduction makes it quite clear that the editors have defined ‘“sensuous” as related to, or derived from the senses, usually the senses involved in aesthetic enjoyment’ (p1). Some essays make reference to sexual pleasure, however they stress that is not their primary focus.

Lecture 4: The one in which Catholic churches justify their decor

Il Gesu

The title of this fourth lecture held a lot of promise: 'Space, Function and Decoration in a Catholic Church'. In it we examined the church's decoration and design and looked at what these implied in terms of how the space was used. We compared the use of church space pre- and post- catholic reformation and the changes this entailed in the light of new ways of worship. The case study revolved around the most Catholic of post-Trent organisation's churches, the Jesuit 'Church of the Most Holy Name of Jesus at the "Argentina"', or Il Gesù for short.

However this lecture was vaguely unsatisfactory and I was pleased that I had supplemented it with a lot of reading - there is too much to cover in depth in an hours lecture. I'd read Propaganda and the Jesuit Baroque which clearly sets out the subtle differences between rhetoric, persuasion and propaganda. It also discusses and dismisses the notion of 'the Jesuit style', a label which should definitely be avoided. I've also been reading the truly excellent The Sensuous in the counter-reformation church which covers in depth a number of issues that we merely touched upon in class. Art historians like to use the Jesuits as examples for various things so lecture and reading all tied in well.

Lecture 3: St Peter, the Pope and the Eternal City

Rome as a religious centre? Pardon? Ok, what exactly did I know about Rome as a place of pilgrimage? I’ve seen Gladiator and I, Claudius(!), been awestruck by Nero’s golden house, paid homage at the Pantheon and I’ve even been on a private tour of the Villa Medici. I’ve never been to the Vatican because of the crowds and ‘Look at me, I’m the Pope’ so for me Rome is antiquity, pagan glory and the best baba al rhums I’ve ever had. Last night’s lecture was yet another excursion into the unknown. 

We started at the symbolic centre of Catholic, holy Rome with the authority of the popes – the c17th façade of St Peters, where the power of the Church is represented visually, an architectural creation of sacred place/space. St Peters is not the cathedral of Rome but it is the most important church. The focus is on the tradition and establishment of St Peter as head of the church in Rome. 

Old Master Dialogues at the Collyer Bristow Gallery

'Hands' French, c18th, Richard Day

I am lucky enough to work in a place with an idiosyncratic and eclectic take on the arts. A dedicated curatorial partnership works with the firm's gallery to stage three varied exhibitions per year, and though generally small in scale, are large in personality. Old Master Dialogues is the latest offering and is a collection of selected and newly commissioned works responding to the Old Master prints and drawings collection of Richard Day.

The exhibition notes say that museums traditionally aim to observe the hierarchies of history, whereas collectors and artists acquire or visually consume anything and everything that appeals to them personally. And this goes straight to the heart of this show. The small, intimate pieces borrowed from the Day Collection demand your attention because they have this aura of love and care around them. They are all beautiful works of art and where artists have responded to a specific one, they could not fail to have been inspired by it and open a dialogue with the past.

Lecture 2: Reform and reformations

This course has piqued my interest in a huge way. After nearly spending the entire weekend – unintentionally – in the Warburg Library reading about reformation music and refreshing my memory regarding the Council of Trent, I am hooked. Happily the security guard escorted me out when he realised he’d locked me in.



Background

Last week I cast my mind back to the historians that my A-Level teacher talked about. I refreshed my memory concerning revisionist history books of the 80/90s which were all the rage in 1990-2 and we were encouraged to read JJ Scarisbrick, C Haigh, D Starkey and disregard J Elton and AG Dickson. So finally reading the latter, who was the set text this week, was quite an interesting experience. This continuous re-editing of history proves the reformations throughout Europe at this time were extremely complicated.

Christianity was not monolithic even in the 15th century. Devotion varied; in practice and belief which had evolved. After all, the New Testament is not a set of rules or a religion. The gospels are interpreted and even the bible is made up of council picked, selected texts. Church tradition, dogma and doctrine evolves throughout the Middle Ages

Lecture one in a new term: Am I persuaded?

No nudes thanks, we're post-Trent Catholics

It's that time of year again when we're dusting off the pencil cases and hole reinforcers and toddling off to university as if the summer didn't happen. This first term, second year, is shaping up to be purgatorial because the options were rather limited. I opted rather anxiously to do 'Art of Persuasion: Catholic art of the reformation'.

The reminder to treat the past (and religion) as a foreign country is never more important than in this tricky area. To distance yourself from your own faith (or lack thereof) and maintain an open minded historical perspective, concentrating on what they believed THEN is crucial. I'm thinking of the Catholic Church as a political entity rather than anything religious or spiritual and as we are supposed to be thinking about belief in context, this should work.

Selamat Makan! Or Good Appetite

I can't remember a time when I didn't read recipe books for fun. At home they sat on the most accessible book shelf, within easy reach of us all. My dad would turn to them for education, inspiration, travel guides and kitchen companions. Perhaps he'd bought some exotic new ingredient that had made it from wherever to Hereford. I haven't forgotten my first Christmas pomegranate, not to mention our first ugli fruit. Or he'd made friends with the chef of a new restaurant in town and been shown how to make something unusual. His collection of books now sits with my brother the chef but I still find it pleasurable to absorb new culinary ideas and culture whenever a recipe book comes my way.

The London Mappers: Thames Festival Talk

Stephen Walter 'London Subterranea' (2012)

After spending a virtual week in the troll-inhabited unmannerly wilderness of the internet, Friday took a turn for the civilised and I entered the world of maps and the City of London. As part of the Thames Festival 2013, Renaissance expert Jerry Brotton and map dealer Daniel Crouch told a cartographic story of London and its iconic river, from the first printed map of the city to recent artistic attempts at mapping the capital.

Jerry opened with statements regarding the different directions in which his and Daniel's experience of maps go. From a renaissance studies point of view his focus is the 'idea' or philosophy of maps, with emphasis on depicting the civil v barbaric. He is also interested in how maps define our identity or even imagining how the early moderns used maps. Daniel's interest is the materiality of maps - how they are presented aesthetically or how rare they are. This duality should have made for an illuminating partnership.

Journeys

Every funeral this year has started with a journey west. To Torquay in February and then Hereford yesterday. I don't mind travelling long distances to say goodbye; the physical miles ensure time and space to deal with memories. A retracing of the doodles or flourishes on the map of my mind, if you like. But first this.

We were sat in uncle Steven's gleaming car in the crematorium car park this morning. We watched a careless driver cut across a grassy corner and crash into a wooden 'no exit' sign. He stopped, eyed up the wreckage, raised his hands in disbelief/embarrassment/exasperation and then drove on. Happily for my uncle Steven's pride and joy, this mechanical menace decided to park a long way from us.

Elector and Engineer

A kindly pink face peers down at the bookish historians,

Handling mysterious metal pieces and glowing wood.

They give him an occasional glance, a flirtatious smile,

Comments made quietly as wunderkammer shimmers,

A nod to Papi, an acknowledgment of mastery.

A Saxon prince argues with his smouldering engineer.

Roles reversed as he belabours the capstan;

Pincers attack and pull at the gleaming wires,

'Nein, ziehen, sanft ziehen', croons the gentleman.

As in fairy tales, so magically the gold is woven.

The gruff engineer deftly adjusts the die, just so

And carefully wipes the hot wax from the cold steel

His hands see the bench, but his noble unskilled

Apprentice clumsily works, looking, checking, sweating.

An orderly world overturned by a mechanical universe.

An efficiency of tools and the process changes;

Sheets of fresh traded wood from the east, fragrant lie

To be tortured gently to make furniture pieces.

The engineer stands to the side and the Elector presses;

People, nobles, Emperors, timber bending to his will.

These Promethean princes each praying for knowledge;

Reforming Kingdoms under a new God of reading,

Remanufacturing their states and forcing their will with

Steely determination and ballistic intelligence.

Stamping paternal authority over the natural unnatural land.

Le banc d'orfèvre : L'électeur de Saxe: Book Review

This collection of essays is the eighth in the National Museum of the Renaissance series of specialist guidebooks. Covering fascinating exhibits such as petit point embroidery from 1570-1610, painted marriage chests or cassoni, renaissance bronze reliefs, and a 16th century Mexican crucifixion triptych, this new volume in the series is dedicated to one item from the museum's collection.

The Elector of Saxony's wire drawing bench arrived in Paris in the late 19th century's when the royal Dresden collection was dispersed after the economic disaster which succeeded the Napoleonic wars. In the 1880s the bench was initially destined for the Musee Carnavalet but when they decided to dedicate it to the history of Paris they looked to sell off the bench and its tools. In a sculptural exchange with the Musee de Cluny, it joined that collection until war broke out in 1939. Afterwards, the Cluny decided to focus on an earlier historic period, so the bench remained in safe storage until 1977 when the dedicated Renaissance museum in Ecouen was opened. From 1981, inspired by 16th century etchings, it was presented to the public as part of a goldsmith's workshop. However in 2010 both its technical and artistic aspects were reappraised and it was put in room reflecting the nature of a prince's kunstkammer - surrounded by beautiful scientific objects. 

Work in Progress: Digitisation Projects in Museums

This is part of a wider project that I am currently working on. I am about to start on the actual evaluation of what the National Museum of the Renaissance, has achieved with its partners regarding Leonhard Danner's goldsmith's bench. However the digital art history aspect has been fascinating to read about.

Of royal frills and furbelows

Fashion inspiration

I've had a passive interest in historical fashion for a long time and it was very much cultivated by my marvellous step mother, who remains one of the most elegant people I know. Therefore to lure her down to London, I told her I'd booked tickets for the Fashion Rules at Kensington Palace and In Fine Style at the Queen's Gallery. It worked, for the first time in years she came down and on Saturday we did both of the exhibitions.

We started in the modern times with dresses from the wardrobe of the Queen, Princess Margaret and Princess Diana, obviously covering the 1950s-80s. It was a fine selection of frocks which reflected the public role of the figure head/royal representative and the uniform that they have to wear - they have to be seen in a crowd, reflect the interests of the country they are visiting, and yet be utterly bland in a non controversial way.

Lowry: Painting the past

River Scene © The estate of L.S. Lowry

I have a vague personal connection with  artist L.S. Lowry. He lived opposite my playgroup in the mid seventies and would regularly walk past my parents as they all went about their business. And finally at his death in 1977, my dad and his partner in crime were dispatched to the artist's house to ensure that nothing went missing. He had a hugely valuable art collection so it seemed best to send two young police constables to guard the place. There is even a photo of them in the Salford Lowry museum which is a fabulous record of a moment in time, where the art world and my dad bizarrely collided.

Leonhard Danner; Designer, Engineer, Inventor

Leonhard Danner of Nuremberg (V&A)

There is something curiously and inevitably contrary about the figure of Leonhard Danner, the sixteenth century Nuremberger engineer/inventor. A tireless figure who we can only imagine through the machines he left behind, the scope of which indicates the breadth of his expertise, imagination, whilst channelling the vision of princely patrons. Biographical details of his life are scant and unreliable; as befits a successful, wealthy, gentleman engineer we know roughly what he looked like but his date of birth is either 1497 or 1507. What we do know is that by 1585, married to his second wife Dorothea, he died a wealthy citizen, enjoying for a brief time an Imperial Privilege derived from timber. 

Blue

I close my eyes and yet still see

The shimmer of blue horizon

And gentle furl of quiet water

The endless shifting of light-shapes

Imprinted on the camera of my mind

Now light pierces from a closer sun

Looking up at endless blue void

Shapes of tiny island disappearing 

Whilst clouds loom to merge sea-sky 

Light imprinted on the camera of my mind

Imagine embracing that watery state

Recurring dreams of blue depths

Ghostly fingers glowing quietly

Skin melting in sea, silk-light on skin

Imprinted on the camera of my mind

I now see both the above and the deep

Impossible blue beauty suspended

Words float away evading my grasp

Always chasing illumination: eyes close

Light imprinted on the camera of my mind

Your Black Horizon

Art is supposed to be an all encompassing sensory experience. When I came across Olafur Eliasson's 'Model of a Timeless Garden' this year it overloaded the eyes whilat delighting the ears and fingers (yes I touched the installation!). By stripping the colour from a renaissance fountain, it became an elemental fantasy where water was trapped in time.

Art could not have been further from my mind when briefly stopping off on the Croatian island of Lopud. A contemporary black sign pointing off the main promenade inland caught my eye. It said Olafur Eliasson and David Adjaye 'Your black horizon'. Immediately I was taken back to his monochromatic fountains, my interest piqued.

Following the hot dusty path up to the art pavilion, potable water could only be imagined; cactus flowers coloured the ground, insects flooded the sky. Here was the timeless garden indeed. A modern wooden construction offered shelter and in we went. The space could be any London gallery, fresh painted wood creaked and black curtains ensured darkness within. An inclined walkway lead into a black square, icy cold room. A line of light at my eye level went uninterrupted all the way round, giving the illusion the room was circular. 

As the eyes adjusted, you lost yourself looking into the horizon and as time passed the colour changed with the rising and setting sun; from yellows into orange, red, turquoise and deep blue. The white in contrast then seemed to fill the space. The heat and light outside was forgotten, just the cool inner focus remained. 

This installation, like his other one, uses light to focus on the very small to illustrate the bigger picture. The fountains stopped time, whilst this one seemed to capture space. Incredibly, when you emerged from the darkness, blinking, the blue and green horizon seemed very small and claustrophobic. 

So to return to the idea of the immersive experience, there can no better place to see contemporary art than on a tiny sun drenched island. Firstly there is no competing white cube space; secondly this would be stand out piece in London. Finally, the extremes of heat, light, dryness affect your perception and reception of the art.  

From June 15-Sept 29 2013, Lopud, Dubrovnik 

Moon Colours

We didn't watch the sunset tonight

We ignored the lurid display of light

Instead we sat entranced by the moon

Casting shadows on the igneous rock

Silver dancing on the shifting blacks;

Fish ripples adding the diamonds

Quiet copper mirrored boats hover,

Shifting; lightly kissing the gentle swell 

Count the varied subtle moon colours, 

Each one richly echoes its brighter light

Turquoise is hematite; vegetation jet.

Reflecting back I gleam black and white. 

A Place Called Sunrise

A landmark birthday inevitably leads to introspection and reflection. To be in the geographically same place as last year enables an easier comparison of the mental healing processes. The daily routine should be a comparator but when it has more of the treadmill feeling about it, that's unhelpful and unhealthful. 

I suppose there is a sense of sunshine being conduicive to warming and lifting any sense of depression and lingering grief. However I think everyone knows it doesn't work like that. There are rocks in the soul which enable shade to reside; an impermeable, hopeless darkness. 

It's been either years or days since the death of my dad. Ten years ago on my thirtieth we were all together in the Italian sunshine, without care or thought for what would happen. It hurts deeply that he's not here for this turning decade. It's been a massive time of learning and not of the academic type.  I was once accused of coldness because of my career and university focus but that's just my way of coping. The more buried in study I am, the more I'm hurting.

As I say and write this in a village called 'Sunrise', this passage of time leads to musings and turning over of lifeless mind spaces. Sometimes it turns out sunshine is a cure and though I don't pretend that all is well all of the time, when I compare how I was last year, it is better. 

From where I'm sitting the only way I can describe it, is that the dark rock pools in my mind are slowly being refreshed with the aquamarine clarity of time. And I can live with that.