War, Religion and Art

Hi Robert,

That's so very funny ! My ribs are still moving up and down. Quite. At the end of the day, it doesn't matter for anyone who loses their legs if it was a " friendly " fire or not.
I didn't know you also had a surrealist humour !

"We would rather be ruled by our own people, even if we don't get much out of it " This is very true. Why would any country allow another one with a different language and culture to be dominated by another ? Anymore than the English didn't allow to be ruled by Germany. There are parallels there with the present situation in Iraq. When the American forces invaded Iraq, president Bush appeared on Iraqi television speaking in English to the Iraqis informing them that they had been " liberated " that was in 2001, now we are in 2008 and the American troops are expected to continue in Iraq until 2011.

Going back to Goya's time, during the period when the Duke of Wellington was general of the British forces in Spain trying to get rid of Napoleon; Goya had a lot of difficulties with his portrait since the Duke of Wellington insisted on having every medal added to his portrait and two years after the painting was finished, Wellington was showered with military honours and he wanted every blessed decoration added to his uniform. It is said to have been Goya's most frustrating commission !

Dear me ! 10 doughnuts ! that is way too many. Were they ring doughnuts or jam ones. Peter says if you can pass him some of your slimming secrets ! Robert, you have to keep cooking a good meal for yourself, even if its only baked beans on toast or a boil egg instead of eating too many sugary treats.

Hi Robert !

Well then, if you take a look at Goya's painting " The Second of May, 1808 " Where Goya commemorated the uprising of the people of Madrid against Napoleon's cavalry in one of the most terrifying and convincing battle scenes in the history of Art, you will see what I mean. There is no sense of good triumphing over evil; instead, Goya shows ghastly and bloody confusion. His theme is not patriotism, but horror at man's inhumanity. Also take a look at his other painting " The Third of May 1808 " this painting depics an execution, in here you can see the terrified eyes of the Spanish insurgent, the cruelty of it all. Goya focuses our attention on the man in their midst, who throws out his arms in a Christ-like gesture of martyrdom.

In the British Museum they have Goya's series of engravings " Disasters Of War " where a man is wielding an axe in the air and about to chop off the head of a French soldier, whilst in the background, there is another Spanish insurgent about to stick a knife in to another French soldier who has been knocked down on his knees. The savagery depicted on these drawings gives you a real glimpse of the horrors of that war.

I think you are craving for chocolates !

William Blake,

Hi Victoria, what you have said is very interesting :

" Art shows the mind of the artist his inner world is somehow portrayed. "
or as Blake put it. " As the man is, so he sees, as the eye is formed, such are its powers. "

This is absolutely right, the artist draws from his/hers living experience, in Blake's case, as well as Fuseli's they were both deeply influenced by religion. In Fuseli's case, he was pushed by his father to enter the church. However, he developed an aversion to religious dogma, preferring to read, Milton, Dante, Homer and Shakespeare.

In Goya's case, it was a cruel time for Spain, which became the latest victim of Napoleon's drive for a total domination of Europe. With the French troops occupying Spain's key fortresses, King Charles IV was forced to abdicate in favour of his son Ferdinand. Then both were deposed, as the Emperor Napoleon declared his brother Joseph the new King of Spain. And within weeks the entire country was engulfed in a savage guerrilla warfare. Goya had to witness the dead in the streets during the May riots in Madrid and the new French King soon instituted many reforms, but soon found that the situation in Spain was desperate and three months later he was forced to abandon Madrid.

Also, for 350 years, Spain lay in the grip of The Spanish Inquisition. By Goya's time, thousands had suffered torture and slow death in the cause of Catholic purity, as the Inquisition rooted out heresy. Goya himself was summoned before it when his painting ' The Naked Maja ' was judged both ' obscene ' and ' immoral '.

Victoria, so the monsters were in this case, real for Goya. The church was killing and torturing people, the Catholic church was lost in irracional thought and yes, reason was asleeping as well.

Good to see you two are choc-aholics ! my favourite chocolates are Du Rhone from Geneve who have been doing chocolates since 1875. Monthly dosis of this delicious treat are Belgium chocolates which come in a box from a chocolate Club. All my friends get a box of chocolates for Christmas !

William Blake

Yes, Robert William Blake the visionary and prophetic poet and artist proclaimed:

" The man who raises himself above all is the artist; the prophet is he who is gifted with imagination "

William Blake was a pupil to the Swiss born Henry Fuseli, who after settling in England, transformed the graceful and peaceful scenes of reassuring pastoral tranquility to paintings of raging living organisms like earthquakes, hurricanes and terrifying fires. He transformed the graceful symbolic fauna of Neoclassicism, such as butterflies and horses into strange, ambiguous monsters of the imagination. The dream, with all its irrational implications, became the realm of fantasy of disturbing terryfing images, and erotic temptations. Figures became less heavy and more inmaterial, less concreate and defined, in contrast to the precision of Neoclassicism. Figures no longer portrayed beauty, but were moulded by the energies of the human soul, sometimes distorted or uneasy, often disorderly and impulsive. Artists acquired a new responsibility, almost as the re-creators of a lost paradise, imparting a divine message that could only be revealed through the medium of art.

Victoria, Robert I do not know if you have ever seen Goya's painting: ' The Sleep Of Reason Produces Monsters ' which is an allegory of the irracional fears that lie behind rational thought.
or Henry Fuseli's : ' The Nightmare ' is an enigmatic image that transcends reason.

Robert, I suppose it may be surreal in the sense that I was day dreaming when I painted this picture, these are the red and lilac clouds you see in the tropical sunsets, mixed with the rural scenes we normally see in Wales. But it is not a dream like the Dali paintings are, where a bone is near a an egg yolk or things are in a puzzling way.

These are colours which exist in different countries, so it gives you a dreamy quality, but I am sure, if my Welsh neighbour saw this picture she would say: " The grass is not green, so its not Wales " and she would be right, it is not Wales, its somewhere in my imagination, or shall we say in my dreams as you put it. I like that green colour as a sky, so I put it there, only because I like it, regardless if it exists or not in nature, and it worked with the rest of the mood of the picture. The strangeness of the unrealistic colours, also lends a mystery to the picture giving it an unusual significance to an every day scene.

Autumnal Evening

Thanks Robert, it is an evening scene but an evening more of my imagination; a marriage between the evenings of the tropics and the bucolic scenes of Wales, the colours are autumnal in temperature with the mauves, blues in the horizon and the sheep grazing in the fields of my imagination.

Robert, Victoria, Yes, each picture is an experiment. This painting: Mother And Child, I set out to do it without greys nor blacks, to see what transpired and what I got, was a very luminous picture. All I wanted to have was a rainbow palette, of greens, violets, blues and yellows which are all high key colours. Blacks and greys have a lot of weight in a picture, so I do use black but sparingly and isolated from my very colourful compositions, like when I used it as a background for the yellow daffodils in order to achieve luminous flowers. ( dark against light )

I use black with respect and a great deal of care, and only for effect. Greys are easy to use, in the sense that if you become stumped with a colour harmony, you can always put grey on it, and it will balance any picture, it is, the easy way out.

My Spanish teacher Don Rafael Martinez Diaz, loved the colour grey, he thought grey was elegant. But in the end... it is what you FEEL about a colour, what really counts, and if greys make me sad, there is no point in using it, is there ? In the end a picture for me, it should bring happiness not sadness to have it hanging from your wall and I would not dream of having a grey picture hanging from my walls, when all I can see here, is grey skies, grey stone houses with grey roofs ! so something colourful its me.

That is very kind of you to say, Victoria. When I can, I will post a painting that was done without greys and without blacks; with a modern electric blue light which reflects on the white complexion of the sitter, a young mother and her baby. This painting is a bit like marmite,(vegemite) you either love it or hate it. Since then, I have changed my tactic and just paint people with a traditional old fashioned flesh colour, although, the portrait of the M.P., was done still with this idea, of blues and mauves on the white skin tones by the artificial light.

Peter's sketch

It is faint, for some reason it doesn't come as clear as it is in real life, but it gives you an idea
of how he looks on a near full length picture with him reading a book.

Hi Robert !

Well I think you have pretty much answered your own question. Yes, I have to agree with you it is incongruous ! It makes the poor baby look like a real monster. I have to confess that I was pretty horrified when I saw one of those Madonna pictures with the baby Jesus, half baby and half adult face by Leonardo da Vinci, no less ! at the Hermitage in Saint Petersburg.

I thoroughly recommend this current exhibition ' Renaissance Faces ' being shown at the National Gallery in London which has been organized in collaboration with the Museo Nacional del Prado in Madrid, I really did enjoy it, it has had very good reviews from the newspapers as well. I especially liked the section of Courtship and Friendship. There is one picture which I really loved of a Venetian couple, where she is shown extending her hand whilst her suitor is placing a golden ring on her finger. The ring is a symbol of love. In the background is cupid holding an ox-yolk behind their shoulders, another sign of marriage, this cupid's gaze is cheekily looking at him alone, rather than her, meaning that it is he who has to observe his marriage vows seriously and has to curb his wayward eyes and ways by accepting his new responsibilities.

This is the sketch I have done of Peter for the new portrait. What do you think ? Or should I do it more formal ? the trouble is that Peter hates formality, if he is portrayed the way you see it here, it would be how he always looks naturally, with his polo neck shirts.

Renaissance Paintings and Drawings

That is true. Before the renaissance there wasn't such an emphasis on painting an exact likeness.
Representing likeness was undoubtedly encouraged by the new emphasis Christianity placed on the humanity of Christ and the emotional response to his image by the worshippers, as portraits represented both outward appearance and, by interpreting a sitter's expression and likeness, the soul. But there was this other belief that a beautiful outward physiognomy was a reflection of the soul and a desired appearance for a woman was to have a blonde hair, pale skin and red lips were mandatory. Such ideals are reflected in the way both religious figures, such as the Virgen Mary and classical gods and goddesses are represented in Renaissance paintings.

Beauty was equated with virtue in the Renaissance. Portraits of real men and women that emphasised their physical perfection were acknowledgements of their virtue. Conversely, ugliness and physical imperfections of all kinds were poorly tolerated and might condemn the unlucky ones to social ostracism. ill-favoured old women were sometimes identified as witches;
A victim of disease was only too easily seen as a subject for mockery and a potential source of evil to be feared.

Actually, I was also thinking of poor Anne of Cleves as well when I wrote the last post ! In the Renaissance, drawings were usually the means of capturing a likeness in the presence of the sitter. They were highly portable and were often used to send information about individuals to friends or family - their state of health and how they had altered or aged. I have now sketched a small drawing of Peter sitting on his chair which I will post as soon as I photograph it.

The veracity of painted portraits was enabled by sophisticated oil techniques developed in Northern Europe, which were taken up in this period by artists around the Mediterranean.

Renaissance Faces

Robert, remember that there was no photography during the renaissance period. The whole business of painting a likeness is essencially exactly what it is today, you take photos to commemorate an occasion, a wedding, an engagement, meeting the Prince of Wales, a graduation and these are not reflections of the cult of the individual. You keep photos of your mum because every so often you want to remember her, without these pictures it would be difficult to remember how a loved one look like, to explain it in words to her Grand-great-great children would not be the same as it is seeing the vivid picture looking back at you. It really would not be the same.

Nowadays we can take pictures of everything and anything and it does not necessarily mean it is to commemorate something, but to illustrate an article for work or for fun. During the Renaissance period you were lucky if you could afford even one portrait ! so the sitter and the painter, made sure that the way the sitter would be portrayed said everything of the person that needed to be said like a biography, essencially it would include something that defined the character of that person, the same way we now include a verse or a frase underneath an email post on website.

It is true that the artists of that time acquired a new status approaching " stardom " but so did the tailors of the time, the same way that nowadays we see Jamie Oliver the chef on television who we see at all the celebrity parties and the gossip columns, he now has a special Jamie Oliver cooking range of utensils and he earns millions of pounds not only appearing on T.V. but selling his books and also cooking for private celebrity parties. So if he ever commissioned a painting, then he could appear with something that denotes why he has become so famous, maybe he could be portrayed looking at one of his cooking books or in a kitchen preparing something difficult like a baked Alaska cake, so in another 500 years from now, anyone who comes across his painting would say: Mmmm... his trade was cooking and if the book nearby has his name... then it will be easy to see what his name was.

The painters of that age acquired their celebrity status not just for painting a portrait of someone famous or for the aristocracy but his work was the means from which the courts of Europe could chose a foreign bride for a future king, so these painters were not just mere painters but were ambassadors as well and for more money, they could even embellish the face of a lady to marry a king for example.

Gold was used mostly on religious paintings and it is not considered a colour even though it does have a golden colour. Gold was used to decorate altars or frames. There are very few pictures with gold around them, like the halo of a saint for instance, but applying gold leaf is another tecnique usually for more decorative purposes. The only modern painter I can think of, who has used real gold leaf on his paintings is Gustave Klimt, and again sparingly.

Renaissance Faces

REMEMBERING

The German artist Albrecht Durer ( 1471-1528 )
Explained that portraiture ' preserves the likenesses of men after their deaths ' Remembering
people was the main purpose of portraiture in the Renaissance.

IDENTITY, ATTRIBUTES, ALLEGORY

Renaissance portraits are notable for their intriguing inclusion of objects not only as a commentary on the status or interests of their subjects, or as a means of their identification like coats of arms. Clothing too plays its part: a particular uniform or any other object can denote an occupation or profession like in the case of the tailor or the Art antiquarian merchant. Gloves, swords, even exotic pets, as well as newly fashionable possessions, such as antique sculptures or astronomical instruments, were all indicative of elevated status. Among the highly educated courtier classes, such objects might also carry hidden meanings, sometimes sophisticated references to classical texts.

Both painted and sculpted portraits, particularly in Italy, were increasingly shaped by the discovery of artefacts - coins and marble sculptures - surviving from ancient Greece and Rome, objects that had ensured that both the lives and times and the physical features of their subjects were remembered, centuries after their deaths.

Renaissance Faces

Robert that is exactly it. If you see the famous painting ' Giovanni Arnolfini and his wife ' by Jan van Eyck, this painting shows off the sumptuous expensive fabrics of their clothes, the chandelier, the mirror ( which in those days, only very wealthy people could afford ) as well as the four poster mahogony bed and even the tangerines which were exotic fruit imported from the Orient and therefore expensive. They wanted to show off their wealth.

Yes, imagine what honour it must have been to be able to paint the most famous and distinguished personalities of their day and since at that time, photography was not available, a painting was the only way they had, to leave a lasting image of themselves for posterity, this is why the artist often painted their coats of arms or anything that would identify them in later centuries to tell us whose image we are looking at today.

It was a two way thing Robert, the more famous the painter was, then the customers would want to be painted by him, so their own prestige would be assured as well. An artist who had painted royalty any member of the nobility would aspire to commission the same artist too.

How much a painting was worth, depended very much on the pigments to be used and that is true then as it is today, since the most expensive pigments are red, followed by blue which in those days could only be done by grinding lapis lazuli, a semi-precious stone, so the more red or blue you used on the painting, the more expensive the picture was going to be. On this day and age, a tiny tube of real lapis lazuli can set you off £80 pounds, but having said that, there are excellent artificial cheaper replacements like ultra-marine blue. The cheapest pigments to get are browns and all earth colours.

Renaissance Portraits from Van Eyck to Titian

The whole idea behind a portrait is: to be remembered. The faces I saw in this exhibition, date back from 1500 to the 1400's. In the years around 1400, the profile was seemingly the favoured format for portraits in the courts of Northern Europe, maybe to emulate the look of the profile portraits on medals and then later in Italy in particular where they became popular for much of the century. Antique portraits were employed as the tools of historical analysis-- image was allied to biography so that portraits came to stand for their virtuous ( and sometimes apalling ) behaviour, like Nero's image in a coin ! By employing a coin-derived profile formula for their own portraits, the pictures asserted similar virtue. This type of profile portrait paintings evokes not just ancient coins but classical bust portraiture.

The portraits were commissioned by the nobility, the church and the monarchs of the time but as the merchant classes later in the 1500's became affluent, they too were able to commission their own portraits depicting their trade. There was a painting called ' The Tailor At Work ' by Giovanni Battista Moroni where the tailor is shown with his scissors cutting the cloth as the tools of his work. He is portrayed wearing fine, sumptuous and expensive clothes like those of a prince, as the status he has reached in society has allowed him to be able to afford to commission his own painting as well.

Then, there was the painting of Andrea Odoni a member of the merchant classes. To some degree he was following fashion; he was not an aristocrat, he was trying to enhance his own status, Andrea Odoni was celebrated for creating a new Rome in Venice. He is shown extending his arm inviting us, to show us his art collection of fine ancient sculptures, where we can see the marble head of Hadrian and a torso of Venus in the foreground and he has enhanced this picture with sculptures which he doesn't own in the background of the painting. Some sculptures are chopped off, reminding us that even great art can crumble with the passage of time. With his left hand, in the middle of the painting, he is clutching a crucifix of Christ on his chest, near his heart which for him, is more prominent than the other sculptures all around him. The fragmented state of the sculptures represents the inevitability of death and the importance of memory. His evocation of human mortality is partly countered by the crucifix of Christ and the promise of eternal life.