Thursday, May 4, 2017

Small Paintings on Copper from the Italian Past

Scarsellino
Discovery of Coral
ca. 1605
oil on copper
private collection

Scarsellino
Virgin adored by Saints
ca. 1609
oil on copper
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Annibale Carracci
Stoning of Stephen
1603-04
oil on copper
Louvre

"There are certain basic similarities between the Christian discourse on sex and the Christian discourse on images.  With the exception of an enlightened ascetic few, the vast majority of ordinary people are irremediably drawn to images, as they are to sex; those theologians who did not adhere to a rigorist position of complete abstention (or, mutatis mutandis, aniconism) had to remain content with setting guidelines that would keep this potentially explosive activity within licit bounds, and even guide it to productive purposes. . . . In his 1522 treatise, the first iconoclastic battle cry of the Reformation, Andreas Karlstadt had made much hay out of passages in Ezekiel 6 and 16 in which the prophet excoriates his community for becoming whores to their idols, "for Scripture calls such venerators of images whores and adulterous women, and such deceitful images men." At a basic level the metaphor of adultery and promiscuity was simply a way of describing the basic betrayal of one god for many.  But Ezekiel makes it clear that it also has to do with the nature of the encounter with the images themselves: in idolatry the image becomes protruberant, active, and male; the viewer is feminized as the whore, letting the idols have their way with "her." . . . Rehearsing a venerable list of legitimate uses for images, Johannes Eck, in his 1522 reply to Karlstadt's call for iconoclasm, explained that they were beneficial as means to instruct, to propagate the memory of the saints and their imitation by the faithful, and to move the faithful to devotion, emphasizing that such proper use depends on maintaining a distance "between the image and what it represents"  that is, on understanding that "the cult, veneration, and respect shown to an image does not go to the image itself but to the archetype; to that which is represented." To use images in other ways  to direct worship to the image itself  was idolatry; it was to enter into relations with the flesh of the image, as it were, and was consistently associated with wantonness, adultery, fornication, and whoring. . . . Anticipating Eck's argument, Karlstadt rejects the "prophylactic" defense of image worship.  Don't claim, he says, that you are not venerating the material image but only what it represents, because God knows that when people make images they develop feelings for them in their hearts.  Karlstadt is pointing to a real weakness in the legitimation argument, for, after all, the images that recommend themselves most effectively to the memory are the most striking ones, and the ones capable of stirring the viewer are by definition the ones that make the most powerful claims on his or her emotions.  For Karlstadt, the means of making images legitimate are also a source of their dangerous power."

 from The Controversy of Renaissance Art by Alexander Nagel (University of Chicago Press, 2011)

Giovanni Lanfranco
Annunciation
ca. 1615-16
oil on copper
Hermitage, Saint Petersburg

Cristofano Allori
Annunciation
before 1621
oil on copper
Hermitage, Saint Petersburg

Pier Francesco Mola
Rest on the flight into Egypt
1640s
oil on copper
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Giacomo Cavedone
Ascension of Christ
ca. 1640
oil on copper
Los Angeles County Museum of Art

Giovanni Francesco Romanelli
St John and St Peter at Christ's Tomb
ca. 1640
oil on copper
Los Angeles County Museum of Art

Giovanni Francesco Romanelli
Madonna and Child under an apple tree
1644
oil on copper
Hermitage, Saint Petersburg

Alessandro Turchi
Lamentation with the Magdalene and three Angels
before 1649
oil on copper
Hermitage, Saint Petersburg

Francesco Maffei
Rinaldo and the Mirror-Shield
ca. 1650-55
oil on copper
Getty Museum, Los Angeles

Francesco Maffei
Rinaldo's Conquest of the Enchanted Forest
ca. 1650-55
oil on copper
Getty Museum, Los Angeles

Sassoferrato
Holy Family
before 1685
oil on copper
Hermitage, Saint Petersburg

Luca Giordano
St John the Baptist preaching
ca. 1695
oil on copper
Los Angeles County Museum of Art