Tuesday, January 31, 2017

Flemish Baroque

Jan Philip van Thielen
Angel in Garland
ca. 1650-1700
oil on panel
Hermitage, Saint Petersburg

Jacob Jordaens
Cleopatra's Feast
1653
oil on canvas
Hermitage, Saint Petersburg

Simon de Vos
Death of Decius Mus
1641
oil on copper
Hermitage, Saint Petersburg

"When Heinrich Wölfflin constructed formal stylistic categories to oppose Baroque and Renaissance art he did much to create a positive image of seventeenth-century art, but it is nonetheless significant that "Baroque" was still seen as the contrary of something else. Writing at a time when Impressionism was gaining acceptance, Wölfflin introduced the idea of a perpetual cycle of styles in which a classical phase is followed by a Baroque phase. Thus "Baroque" became an ahistorical term that defined the style that arose when the rules of art were broken and transformed, bringing dynamism to Renaissance forms. This was a notion coined in an enthusiasm for anti-academic Impressionism that turned out to be extremely efficacious  for the description of some seventeenth-century works, but it failed to grasp the transformation in content that necessarily accompanied changes in form." 

 from The Artist by Giovanni Careri, published in Baroque Personae, edited by Rosario Villari (Italian edition, 1991), translated by Lydia G. Cochrane (University of Chicago Press, 1995)

Gotfried Maes
Holy Family
ca. 1675-1700
oil on canvas
Hermitage, Saint Petersburg

Victor Wolfoet
Hercules and Minerva expelling Mars
ca. 1630-50
oil on canvas
Hermitage, Saint Petersburg

Theodor van Rombouts
Cephalus and Procris
ca. 1610-20
oil on canvas
Hermitage, Saint Petersburg

Peter Paul Rubens
Venus and Adonis
1610-11
oil on panel
Hermitage, Saint Petersburg

Jan Davidz. de Heem
Still-life with Oysters and Grapes
1653
oil on panel
Los Angeles County Museum of Art

Michiel Sweerts
Portrait of a man - Tempus fugit
before 1664
oil on canvas
Hermitage, Saint Petersburg

Pieter Thys
Portrait of a man holding a letter
ca. 1640-60
oil on canvas
Hermitage, Saint Petersburg

David Teniers
Dull Grief - Mad Meg
1640s
oil on canvas
private collection

follower of Anthony van Dyck
Andromeda chained to the Rock
ca. 1638-39
oil on canvas
Los Angeles County Museum of Art

Anthony van Dyck and Paul de Vos
Rest on the Flight into Egypt, or, Madonna with Partridges
ca. 1630-32
oil on canvas
Hermitage, Saint Petersburg
from Sir Robert Walpole's collection at Houghton Hall

The Van Dyck above  Madonna with Partridges hanging as it does in the Hermitage, happens to be the centerpiece of a sequence in Russian Ark, Alexander Sokurov's film of 2002 set entirely within the Hermitage. The art galleries were shot in ambient light, providing period murk. At that time the Van Dyck was still living under a coat of old brown-yellow varnish  from the photograph above it has obviously been cleaned since then. But the dirt on the picture served Sokurov's purpose very well  the infant dancing angels made to loom, one by one, out of dimness. The ghost-protagonist-narrator spoke to them  ". . . so live on, live on . . . you'll outlive them all, eternal people . . ."

Anthony van Dyck
Self-portrait with Sunflower (both a standardized symbol of love and the artist's personal emblem)
ca. 1632
oil on canvas
private collection