Michelangelo's Pieta

One of the major movements and topics of art is Religion. Artists used their art to teach stories, both of what will happen if you are good and if you are bad, and in some cases, just told stories from the bible. A story from the bible that everyone seems to know is that of the crucifixion of Christ. The moment of this story that was popular to depict was that when Jesus’ body is taken down from the cross and is placed in his mother’s lap. This particular image has been expressed by many different artists over time, and is always known as the “Pieta.” The image of Mother Mary holding her dead, frail son has been sculpted and painted many times, but the most recognized sculpted image is that by Michelangelo. This marble statue from the Renaissance is now in St. Peter’s Basilica, and was once a monument for French cardinal Jean de Billheres’ funeral, and was commissioned by Cardinal Billheres in 1498. It was moved from the Chapel of Santa Peronilla  to St. Peters the year after Cardinal Billhere’s funeral.

When looking at Michelangelo’s Pieta, the time period is evident in both the emotional expression of the piece and the stylistic qualities of the piece.  Even though artists of the time were borderline obsessed with anatomy and portraying accuracy in their work, they did tend to get proportions off and their work ended up looking wonderful, but after studying it you could see that hands, feet, legs would be overly large if the subject was real. For example, we can see that if Mary stood up, she would easily be feet taller than Jesus. However, the piece does still display the strive for anatomical perfection in Jesus’ body and the Renaissance ideal for the classical, Roman and Greek beauty. The piece does display the common triangular structure from the period, with Jesus and the drapery of Mary’s clothing being the base of the pyramid and Mary’s head being the vanishing point.

Although this moment of the story is a very sad one, and the elderly mother of Christ is in great despair over her deceased son, Michelangelo did not portray the figures in such a way. He presented Mary as a young woman, and Jesus has next to no evidence of the violence he endured. I feel like he did this to be sure to portray the feeling and a message of the human sacrifice that was made by the Son of God and to make an easier emotional connection to see Jesus in a more humanly, lifelike and less gruesome manner.

Did you know?...

Did you know that this is one of the only pieces of work signed by Michelangelo? When this piece was made, many artists were beginning to get greedy and started taking credit for some work that was not theirs. In the time, people where talking about the Pieta after it had been revealed and in place at the Santa Petronilla Chapel and how Cristoforo Solari had done such a wonderful job. After Michelangelo had heard this, he went back to the sculpture and carved “Michelangelo Buonarroti, Florentine, made this” on a sash that crosses Mary’s chest.

Did you know that Jesus at one point has his foot broken off? In 1972, a mentally deranged man walked into the chapel and attacked the statue with a hammer. Many pieces flew off, including Mary’s nose and Jesus’ foot. Needless to say, the sculpture now sits in a bullet proof glass case.

Did you know that along with there being other interpretations of this scene, there are also numerous replicas of this exact interpretation? One of the first was made in 1964 to make sure that the original would be able to make the trek to New York for the World’s Fair. There are over 15 different replicas that are in numerous different churches and chapels all over the world.

Week 10: Dark Arts

I have really enjoyed learning about art and the history of art this quarter. I feel that the time period we just finished learning about is such an important time in history because it is such a time of transition for the art world, moving out of pieces of work having solely to do with religion to pieces both having so much meaning in them and having no meaning what so ever. I think that the techniques and styles developed in the Baroque and Rococo periods are some that are easily some of the techniques and styles still seen in work of artists of today. One of the genres I have really enjoyed learning about is the horror pieces from the Romantic era. I find these interesting because they have some of the characteristics of the Romantic era, with the detail and the emotional drama and the way that the art seems to be a scene from a dream. I find these pieces interesting because I, myself have been in a “dark state of mind” for a while now, and have had trouble making that apparent in my art, and then not liking the way my own art has turned out because if my inability to convey my dark emotions in my artwork. I really like that artists like Goya were able to portray their dark emotions and nightmares in a way that is elegant and meaningful for any viewer.

Some of these pieces are not about the inner turmoil of the artist, however. For example, The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters by Francisco Goya is a piece that was in response to the government during the Inquisition and its aftermath. This piece is Goya’s way of saying that when you ignore reason, it becomes a sleeping monster; that at any moment it could jump up and eat you whole.  This piece shows a man sleeping, reperesnting reason, and is being haunted by and picked on by demonic bats, owls, and a cat. All these things represent different stereotypical “educational” and things of wisdom. For example, some art historians have said that the owls represent the stereotype of mindless stupidity, instead of the more common wisdom. The bats are to show the evil, blood sucking demons of the society, which at the time linked to the people with the most education and “wisdom.”

John Henry Fuseli’s The Nightmare is another piece that shows a dream like scene gone wrong. His work is more based off of his study of the human mind, and how it reacts to certain situations. He spent many years studying the works of Dante, Shakespeare, and Homer, who themselves spent a significant amount of time producing works that had the capability to warp the dark twisty corners of the human mind. In The Nightmare, Fuseli shows a woman who is in the process of being possessed by an evil spirit. She is sprawled across the frame, with her head and arms thrown back in an uncomfortable but vulnerable position. The evil spirit sits on her pelvic area, where he will feed and fornicate with her helpless body. Fuseli places a wild horse with lit eyes peaking into the room through the curtains to convey more fear of the unknown, and the fear of the evil unknown spirit.

I feel that even though these pieces aren’t stated to be about the artist’s own inner turmoil, Goya’s piece is said to be a self portrait, so there has to be some sort of way of him saying that he is fighting some demons as well as participating in the fight against the government. I also feel that as an artist, your feelings do tend to come out on the canvas, whether you know it is or not.

The Creation of Eve

As the Baroque period faded out, the Rococo artists and architects added more and more flare and elegance to their work. Rococo buildings and rooms were elaborately decorated to what is now thought to be the most elaborate decorated and detailed work. The paintings that came out of the Rococo period had a softer quality then paintings had been before, and were becoming more and more beautiful and flowery. From the Rococo time period, the portraits and depictions of people or events became more dramatic in both their presentation and the content. Stories that were once shown with a delicate and carefully planned manor are now shown with emotional drama, and tend to portray a story or an event of something, as opposed to a portrait.

John Henry Fuseli was one of the most well known artists from this period, and got his influence from his study of theology, philosophy and Winckelmann’s neoclassical aesthetics (Stokstad, 927). Fuseli also spent a good amount of time studying in Rome, where he spent many years studying the art and statues of the area, including many of Michelangelo’s pieces of work, which also helped to influence Fuseli’s work later in his life as well. Even though Fuseli got his start with Romantic History paintings, he seemed to really enjoy and put more work into his dramatized work based off of works by Homer, Dante, Shakespeare, and Milton (Stokstad, 928).

Fuseli’s dramatized work is almost haunting. The way he presents his work to be in almost a dream state forces the viewer to be put into his dream world. He achieves this by using darker colors, presents the subject in a painterly manor, and he tends to hide things in the background, and leaves his main subject in a lighted area.

A piece of work that I find most interesting by John Henry Fuseli is his depiction of The Creation of Eve. He portrays the story of God giving life to Eve with Adam sprawled nearby. According to Luisa Calè, in their book, Fuseli’s Milton Gallery: ‘Turning Readers into Spectators,’ The Creation of Eve was made to go along with a series, to go with another painting, The Dream of Eve and are meant to be displayed next to each other. The two are very similar, the main difference being that in The Dream, Eve is being given life by what is presumably the devil. In both these pieces, we can see Michelangelo’s influence from his Creation of Adam; first in The Dream, we see the same diagonal composition between the devil giving Eve life; and in The Creation of Eve, the slumped bodies and the outreach between Adam, Eve and the image above. Calè talks about this figure in her book as well, saying that because Fuseli presented the figure in such a way that it was left ambiguous. For the people who believed in the biblical story of the creation, the figure was God or even the Son of God. The versitleness of this figure aloud the presentation to smooth over the argument of the story of creation for the people of the time, who were still recovering from the reformation. This was helpful to Fuseli because of his dependency of an income of the people and what they wanted to buy.

I really like the way Fuseli presents his subjects. Here, it makes sure we know that we are focusing on Adam and Eve, but mainly on Eve to make sure we know that the portrait is about Eve, and not Adam. I appreciate that he made the figure creating Eve so versatile. It makes it so anyone who as some sort of a creation story able to relate to this piece of work.

One of my favorite artists of all time is Albrect Durer. His work he created in prints are, in my opinion, some of the most detailed and best well done pieces of artwork and most fabulous prints in all of art history. When Albrect was studying art and taking his time in  his youth to travel, one of his trips was to Italy to learn about the art of the Italian Renaissance and he loved it. He liked the Roman and Greek idealized presentation the Italians used ad their subjects in their paintings, along with the religious content and all the different hidden and the clearly stated items that had meaning and were in the painting for specific reasons.

One of Durer's well known prints is his interpretation of Adam and Eve. He presents Adam and Eve in the center and up in the foreground. The first man and woman are etched in the idealized perfection of the Italian Renaissance, both being muscular, in perfect equal proportions, and showing them standing in loose, relaxed stances. Durer placed Adam and Eve in the setting of the Garden, and places many meaningful atributes and items that fit in with the idea of behaving or being punished by God, to enforce the message of having an etching of Adam and Eve. This etching is Durers first documented representation of ideal human figures in his prints.

Most of Durer's prints were scenes showing the result of what would happen if the community was to misbehave, with Adam and Eve, he is plainly showing the iconic story of the first sin. My favorite piece by Durer is The Apocalypse. It is an etching showing the actions that would lead to the Apocalypse. I like that he shows such epic, and meaningful scenes that are so full of meaning and invoke such a... scared and powerful message, yet are done so in a way that makes his work elegant and beautiful, and seem to be made for a very high, important class.

Week 5: Manneristic Art

As a student at Central, I have had the opportunity to embark on the fairly new and small Museum Studies Program. In the introduction course of this minor, we are required to study and learn how to make our own museum mission statement. The mission statement of a museum states the educational and communal goal of the institution. The mission statement of a museum can be quite long and lengthy or just a few sentences. The Seattle Art Museum has a fairly short mission statement, and gets to the point about what kind of art they show. The SAM mission statement reads, “From its early 20th-century roots as the Seattle Fine Arts Society to its growth into an internationally renowned museum with three distinct venues, explore how the Seattle Art Museum evolved into a vital Seattle institution.” For me, this means that the SAM collects and shows items as an institution to contribute to the evolution of Seattle, and that the items they collect will help to teach the community about art history and the different aspects of art.

Among the permanent collection in the SAM, are two pieces believed to be from the Mannerism period of the late Renaissance; Abraham Janssens’, The Origin of the Cornucopia, and Vincent Sellaer’s, Leda and the Swan and Her Children. When looking at a painting and attempting to determine the time from which it came, there are many things to look at and think about. For some periods, it is quite easy to pin point the time of origin. For art work done in the Mannerism time, it may be hard for some people to find the differences when comparing it to a piece from the late Renaissance. Seen as these art periods are about the same time in history, they have many of the same aesthetic characteristics. Both use bright, yet natural colors and the artists worked to portray the clarity of contours and used sharp details and showed pictorial boundaries and depth. . Both realms of artists use mostly humans as their subjects, even though both are not depicting actual humans (Renaissance artists painted angels and saints, and Mannerism artists depicted gods and the people they chose to contact on earth.) The artists of these times both paint in a fairly realistic way, showing the humans with real human features, with real human colors and real human expressions or actions.

Even though these two art periods are closely related, they do now, however, portray the same message as one another. The Renaissance was about The Church, and the rebirth of the people. It was important to use proportions and balance to convey human-heavens balance; they showed the normal and supernormal (angels and saints) to show the religious concepts of earth-universe dominance (Universe and church ruled all).The Mannerism art period, however, was the reaction to the rebirth. The artists and other people in the community began to reform and started to speak out against the church. The ideals of Greek Mythology came back to play in some people’s outlook on life and religion, while others took the Catholic faith and revamped it to make their own. Most Mannerism artists took the opportunity to paint depictions of stories not related to the bible. Some took Greek and Roman mythology stories to show their true feelings about the church and they way church officials were acting. Others were hired or just chose the opportunity to do paintings of Greek Mythology.

The two pieces in the Seattle Art Museum’s collection mentioned above, do belong in the Mannerism period. I feel that they do, because they both depict stories that are closer related to, if not actually are, Greek Mythology. Vincent Sellaer’s piece, Leda and the Swan and Her Children, is a depiction of when Zeus came to Leda in the form of a swan, causing Leda to bear Zeus’ children into eggs. This story is in no way related to the bible, the church, nor would they acknowledge this an accurate depiction of Leda and her children. The other piece, Abraham Janssens’, The Origin of the Cornucopia, would also fall into the realm of being a Mannerism painting due to that it also does not depict a story from the bible, but a legend about how the tradition of this presentation of Autumn harvest. Abraham shows four river nymphs moving slowly and majestically to place the harvest into the cornucopia.

Week 3: Italian Renassaince

• • When the Renaissance came into full swing, the study of anatomy and the body was at the forefront of the interest in artists, scientists and scholars in general. For artists, the study of anatomy allowed them to put elaborate detail in their at work, and present the ideal and the perfection of the human body. In Pollaiuolo’s engraving, The Battle of The Nudes, every human presented in the piece is given precise detail and muscle structure
    The study of the human body was steamed after the love and study of the body the Greeks and their perfection in their sculptures. In the presentation of the bodies in Pallaiuolo's engraving is thought to have been presented as a model of the human body for other artists of the time as apposed to be a presentation of a story. The piece does, however is thought to tell a story about an episode from the life of Hercules. According to an ancient Greek Myth, the Greek Hero Jason sowed a field with dragon's teeth, and armed men sprang up and started fighting each other.
    The battle depicted shows ten nude men fighting for what it seems like their life. Their bodies are tense, and every thing down to the looks on their faces have tension, showing that what ever battle they are fighting is a very deep and tragic one.
    I feel this piece is important to the Renaissance and to our time now because it shows every muscle in the human body tense and full of emotion. The amount of detail and precision Pollaiuolo puts into the work makes the bodies emanate the idea of body perfection, and allows the viewer to really understand the concept of perfection and take that knowledge into their own work.
    There is a part of me that doesn't like this piece because of the amount of tension. I feel that even the corn behind the men is in tension and I feel like it is unnecessary. I feel that the idea of human perfection and the story of the Greek Hero Jason could have been presented without the amount of tension in the background.
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Week 1: The Renaissance

When the Renaissance Art period surfaced, the ideal of bodily perfection and picture perfect paintings began to surface as the type of art people loved and wanted the most. Art of the Renaissance also began to depict more and more religious art then ever before. The Church of Rome began to take over Europe and wanted to stress the importance of themselves and of religion across the board. They began to commission paintings of themselves shown in a great standard, with markings and attributes to tell who they were and what they did. The Renaissance was named the period of “rebirth” due to the high volumes of paintings, sculptures, books and even buildings that were erected to promote the ideas and teachings of the church; and how heavily influenced the art was by the religion of the region.

I feel as students of art history, it is important to study The Renaissance and how it affected art after it. I feel that the art of The Renaissance is some of the most important art of our culture. (note, not THE most important…) I feel this way due to the amount of studying also occurred during the time period, and I think that if that study of the human body, both inside and out hadn’t occurred, we wouldn’t know now about how the body works or how to depict the body properly. I think that Michelangelo and da Vinci began paving the road for perfection in art and are some of the founding fathers of great art for us to learn about and how to do today.

I feel that our society likes to focus on art of this period because it was so important to The Church, and that people still heave a strong connection to the church, cannot find any better way to depict their images of angles, saints, or the stories of the bible. I also feel that people in the church like to remember the “happy, shiny, puppies and rainbows” version of the stories. Even in the paintings that are about sad or horrific events, the artist still shows the events in a… “Good light” for example, The Expulsion of Adam and Eve From Paradise by Masccio on Page 611, shows the story of Adam and Eve being tossed out of the garden, but the colors are still bright, and the sun shines. The only “down” part of the painting is the look on the faces of Adam and Eve.