My Monthly Archives: September 2016
A Moment in Time
This is a detail from one of the world’s most famous works of art: Lorenzo Ghiberti’s competition panel depicting the Sacrifice of Isaac, dating from around 1403. It’s famous not only because it’s a great work of art and it won Ghiberti the lucrative contract for the ‘Gates of Paradise’ doors of the baptistery of Florence, but because of the panel that hangs right beside it in the Bargello Museum–Filippo Brunelleschi’s competition panel depicting the same subject. Hoping to spur great artistic achievement, the Cathedral works department had sponsored the competition, setting the subject matter and frame of the pieces. Only these two survive. According to Vasari, the great biographer of Renaissance artists, Brunelleschi was livid when he lost to Ghiberti. Humiliated, he fled to Rome and lost himself in the study of ancient Roman buildings and the techniques used to construct them. Brunelleschi would return to Florence to gain the biggest commission of all: to build the dome of the cathedral. As good as his panel was, Ghiberti’s was better. He chose to depict the moment that Abraham is concentrating on the jugular where the Old Testament patriarch will thrust his knife. The wind blows on the mountaintop of Sinai; Abraham’s sleeve catches a gust. The angel has not quite arrived to stay Abraham’s hand. His determination to do god’s will is evident in his set features. Isaac has discerned the angel, and, while looking up, has exposed that very neck which is the knife’s target. Ghiberti chose the narrative moment of greatest tension and showed himself to be current with recent classicizing trends with the body of the boy being as well-muscled as a Greek demigod.
Behind the Mask
Naples is an enigmatic city. It is dirty and crime-ridden, yet it is my favorite Italian city; or at least in a tie with Palermo. The city does not reveal itself easily; it takes time and effort. But the rewards are many. The city’s art and architecture, its vibrant street life, and its unrivaled vernacular culture, all make it one of the world’s most engaging cities. Here fish mongers still break out into song in the streets. As a traveler, you must have a little courage to peel off the mask of Naples so that it may reveal itself to you in all its mystery and magnificence.
Trio of Davids
I’m on a roll (see previous posts). No need to identify this fellow. For starters, there’s a recent and excellent article by Sam Anderson on David, which appeared in an August, 2016 edition of the New York Times Magazine. Wonderful piece. In Donatello’s marble David the eyes are merely incised into the face, giving the statue a sort of blank and empty stare. What a contrast with Michelangelo, who places they eyes in deep sockets with furrowed brows. He filed out the pupils, leaving a tiny wedge shape hanging, like a gleam. This statue is really looking, and really thinking. While Michelangelo learned much from Donatello (Donatello died when Michelangelo was about ten years old; it’s not impossible that they may have met–the little boy and the old master) he also went beyond him, enlivening stone to degrees not seen since the ancient Greeks carved their masterpieces.
Donatello and His Other David
This is Donatello’s marble David from around 1408 (see previous entry). I’m convinced that Michelangelo learned something from this David and from Donatello’s St George, which is also in the Bargello in Florence. The way the figure gazes off into the distance reminds me of that most famous of all Davids. Donatello has made this David’s features soft, as if he is still a boy but on the cusp of manhood; indeed, perhaps having just crossed that very threshold with his killing of Goliath. His mouth is small, indicating boyhood, but his stance and gaze give him a confidence beyond years.
Donatello and his David
This is a detail of Donatello’s bronze David in the Bargello Museum in Florence, likely produced in the 1440s, though no really firm date exists for its creation. The art historian Laurie Schneider once suggested that this diminutive and sensuous bronze (click here for the full information) was an expression of the sculptor’s homosexuality. That it’s a pretty boy nobody can deny. I took this image, rather mischievously, thinking of her thesis. It’s the part of the body that most conveys the work’s cheeky sensuality. In the same room of the Bargello stands an earlier David, also by Donatello. It could hardly be more different. Made of marble, of an older David as a young man, it is also twice as tall as the diminutive bronze. While soft of features, indicating David’s youth, it is monumental and heroic in scale and pose. Both statues, however, share the same moment in David’s famous act: they stand victorious with Goliath’s head at their feet.
Taormina
Taormina, on the east coast of Sicily just south of Messina, has been a tourist destination for centuries. It has two spectacular vistas, one towards Mount Etna and another of the town itself from the castle above. In this shot you can see the medieval town and, in the top left, the curves of the Roman theater, which still attracts visitors and hosts performances today. I had to climb the switchback stairs to get this picture, which was taken from the terrace of the lovely little cave church of Santa Maria della Rocca.
Ilaria
One of the most beautiful tomb effigies ever sculpted was this one of Ilaria del Caretto of Lucca, by the artist Jacopo della Quercia in 1413. Ilaria’s fate was not, alas, so uncommon. She married at the age of 24 and died at 26 after giving birth to her second child. It was common practice among the noble classes to give a baby to a wet nurse so that the wife could return to fertility immediately and conceive again quickly. This practice led to the early deaths of many young women whose bodies could not endure the physical demands placed on them. She rests today in a chapel of the Cathedral of Lucca, admired by many, but not often pitied for her short life. Della Quercia may have made her sort of immortal, but she died before her time.
Lorenzetti’s Ladies
One of the greatest and without doubt the most interesting work of art in Siena is Ambrogio Lorenzetti’s fresco cycle of the Allegories and Effects of Good and Bad Government in the Palazzo Pubblico (ca. 1340). This is a detail from the fresco showing the effects of good government in the city: women dancing in the streets, a symbol of civic harmony. Note that on the backs of two of the ladies’ dresses are dragonflies and caterpillars. One interpretation of these motifs is that they support the allegorical function of the women, and their circular dance may allude to springtime festivities often held in medieval towns of Tuscany. Real women in elaborate costume may well have sung and kept rhythm with tambourines during such festivities. The caterpillar signifies metamorphosis into something beautiful, and thus the processes of nature towards the good parallel the metamorphosis of society when good government reigns.
Siena Cathedral
The facade of the Siena Cathedral is my second favorite in the country (the first is Orvieto). But it’s a close second. It’s such an exemplar of its Gothic moment, all recently cleaned and glowing. Believe it or not, what you see here was once planned only to be south end of one of the transepts of a much larger church. See the arches in the right background? Those arches were to be part of the bigger nave planned centuries ago. Yet work stalled and the large version was never completed. Today those partial elements of that unrealized project can still be seen. But what was built was plenty impressive and sufficiently monumental.
Slopes of Etna
I took this picture a couple of weeks ago on the flanks of the famous volcano of Mount Etna on Sicily. There were many cinder cones–in total, there are over 400 on the mountain’s slopes–in this area, some tinged rust with high iron content and others dark gray with pumice. There was even signs of old lava flows emanating from a couple of them. The scale is made evident when you notice the people in the distance. It’s one of the most impressive mountains of the world.
At the Races
This picture is of a detail of a Byzantine ivory in the Bargello Museum in Florence. It’s from the 5th century CE. In the whole piece, an emperor stands above this scene of the chariot races in the hippodrome in Constantinople. He’s embraced by an allegorical figure representing, I think, a city. You can see four teams of four-horse chariots zooming around the track, which is marked by the ‘spina’ or ‘spine’ along which obelisk-like monuments are arrayed (they resemble bowling pins). At the end, the emperor declares a winner. If you look closely at the chariot drivers, their torsos are hatched with horizontal lines, indicating the cords they wrapped around their tunics to keep them from fluttering in the wind.
Carrara
This may seem like a nice landscape picture, but it has some connection to art and architecture. What at first seems like it might be snow is in fact marble. These are the quarries of Carrara, the most famous marble quarries in the world. Look closely and you’ll be able to see them. From here the stone for Michelangelo’s masterpieces came, as did the material for Bernini’s stunning sculptures and many other works of art from ancient Roman times to the present. Of course, today kitchen counter tops are also made from the beautiful stone. Michelangelo might have been angered that such fine material was used for such a purpose.
Ancient Agrigento
The city of Agrigento, ancient Akragas, is on the south coast of Sicily. In the 4th and 5th centuries BCE great temples were built there in the Doric style, and today their impressive ruins can be seen in the legendary ‘Valley of the Temples’. This picture shows the Temple of Hera in the distance, but also shows the arched niche of an early Christian tomb that was carved into the cliffs that also served as part of the city’s defenses. The Christians carved so many tombs, however, that the cliff walls began to break apart and fall, as this one did, down the hillside.
