Sunday, December 17, 2017

Narratives in Oil Paint (before 1525)

Jan van Eyck
Annunciation
ca. 1434-36
oil on panel, transferred to canvas
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Jan van Eyck
Madonna and Child in a Gothic church
ca. 1438
oil on panel
Gemäldegalerie, Berlin

Jan Gossaert
St Luke painting the Madonna
ca. 1515-25
oil on panel
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

ENGLISH SPOKEN

"In my childhood, some elderly English ladies with whom my parents kept up relations often gave me books as presents: richly illustrated works for the young, also a small green bible bound in morocco leather.  All were in the language of the donors: whether I could read it none of them paused to reflect.  The peculiar inaccessibility of the books, with their glaring pictures, titles and vignettes, and their indecipherable text, filled me with the belief that in general objects of this kind were not books at all, but advertisements, perhaps for the machines like those my uncle produced in his London factory.  Since I came to live in Anglo-Saxon countries and to understand English, this awareness has not been dispelled but strengthened.  There is a song by Brahms, to a poem by Heyse, with the lines: O Herzeleid, du Ewigkeit! / Selbander nur ist Seligkeit.  In the most widely used American edition this is rendered as: O misery, eternity! / But two in one were ecstasy.  The archaic, passionate nouns of the original have been turned into catchwords for a hit song, designed to boost it.  Illuminated in the neon-light switched on by these words, culture displays its character as advertising."

  from Minima Moralia (1951) by Theodor Adorno, translated by E.F.N. Jephcott (1974)

Ludovico Brea
Virgin and Child Enthroned
1490
oil on panel
Museo Poldi Pezzoli, Milan

Cima da Conegliano
Madonna and Child in a Landscape
ca. 1496-99
oil on panel
Los Angeles County Museum of Art

Antonio Solario
Madonna and Child with St John the Baptist
ca. 1500-1510
oil on panel, transferred to canvas
National Gallery, London

Leonardo da Vinci
Virgin of the Rocks
ca. 1506-1508
oil on panel
National Gallery, London

Quinten Massys
Virgin and Child Enthroned with four Angels
ca. 1506-1509
oil on panel
National Gallery, London

Girolamo Marchesi
Virgin and Child Enthroned with St Michael, St Catherine of Alexandria, St Cecilia, and St Jerome
ca. 1507-1517
oil on panel
Museum of Fine Arts, Houston

SECOND HARVEST

"Talent is perhaps nothing other than successfully sublimated rage, the capacity to convert energies once intensified beyond measure to destroy recalcitrant objects, into the concentration of patient observation, so keeping a tight hold on the secret of things, as one had earlier when finding no peace until the quavering voice had been wrenched from the mutilated toy.  Who has not seen on the face of a man sunk in thought, far removed from practical objects, traits of the same aggression which is otherwise exerted practically?  Does not the artist feel himself, amid the transports of creation, brutalized, 'working furiously'?  Indeed, is not such fury necessary to free oneself from confinement and the fury of confinement?  Might not the very conciliatoriness of art have been only bullied out of its destructiveness?"  

  from Minima Moralia (1951) by Theodor Adorno, translated by E.F.N. Jephcott (1974)

Sebastiano del Piombo
Raising of Lazarus
ca. 1517-19
oil on panel, transferred to canvas
National Gallery, London

Hans Baldung
Crucifixion 
1512
oil on panel
Gemäldegalerie, Berlin

Josse Lieferinxe
Crucifixion
ca. 1500-1505
oil on panel
Louvre, Paris

Giovanni Antonio Boltraffio and Marco d'Oggiono
Resurrection of Christ with St Leonard of Noblac and St Lucia
ca. 1491-94
oil on panel
Gemäldegalerie, Berlin

Sebastiano del Piombo
Daughter of Herodias with the Head of John the Baptist
1510
oil on panel
National Gallery, London

Geertgen tot Sint Jans
Legend of the Relics of St John the Baptist 
ca.1484-90
oil on panel
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna