bartolommeo suardi, called “il bramantino” (italian, ca ... · the baby’s nudity would have...

RENAISSANCE AND MANNERISM

Bartolommeo Suardi, called “Il Bramantino” (Italian, ca. 1465-1530) Madonna and Child, ca. 1520 Oil on wood panel 61.71 Gift of the Samuel H. Kress Foundation (K337)

Bartolommeo Suardi became known as “Il Bramantino” (“the little Bramante”) after working in Milan wit

Bramantino worked in a typical High Renaissance style characterized by volumetric forms, pyramidal compositions, and subtle modeling. He was influenced by the Milanese works of Leonardo da Vinci who invented the technique of sfumato modeling. Sfumato literally means “smoky,” and with this technique painters created soft, smoky gradations of tone that suggested naturalistic light effects.

The Madonna and Child is a devotional painting in which the Virgin and Christ Child make direct eye contact with the viewer. This eye contact would have encouraged Renaissance Christians to contemplate their relationship with Jesus as savior and with Mary as intercessor. The baby’s nudity would have reminded these viewers of Christ’s humanity, and the Leonardesque atmospheric landscape would have linked the divine Christ with his incarnation into the natural world. (MAA 12/95)

MAA 6/2012 Docent Manual Volume 2 Renaissance and Mannerism 1


Attributed to Girolamo di Romano (Italian, ca. 1485-1560) Christ Blessing (Salvator Mundi), ca. 1510-1520 Oil and gilding on wood panel 61.76 Gift of the Samuel H. Kress Foundation (K1033)

Girolamo di Romano was born in Brescia and worked in the Northern Italian cities of Cremona, Padua and Venice. Stylistically, he combined both Lombard and Venetian elements in his work, producing paintings with luminous colors and atmospheric light effects.

Christ Blessing presents a three-quarter view of the Salvator Mundi or Savior of the World. In earlier, traditional images of this type, Christ was shown facing the viewer in an immediate, almost confrontational view. Romanino adapts conventional Salvator Mundi iconography by showing Jesus in a near three-quarter view. Three-quarter views became popular in the Renaissance in part because they implied a potential for movement. We sense that Christ may be turning his body to follow his outward gaze.

Appropriately, Jesus holds a gold and crystal globe representing the world he protects. The orb is topped by a cross that casts a prominent shadow on the savior’s chest, which reminds viewers of Christ’s bodily sacrifice on the cross and his later resurrection. Jesus’ triumph over death and his role as king of heaven are also reflected in his clothing. He wears a royal scarlet robe, embroidered with gold.

Romanino, like many of his Renaissance contemporaries, sought to transform Christ’s traditional golden halo into a more naturalistic and believable divine radiance. Light shines from the top and sides of Jesus’ head, as Christ’s conventional cruciform nimbus becomes a subtle cross-shaped aura of light. (MAA 12/95)



Altobello Melone (Italian, ca. 1490- before 1543) Madonna and Child, ca. 1520 Oil on panel 61.77 Gift of the Samuel H. Kress Foundation (K1097)

Published: Handbook, no. 120

Stack, Joan, “The Iconographic Implications in the Reconstructed Picenaidi Altarpiece: A Typological Interpretation,” Muse 33-35 (1999-2001) 33-61.

Land, Norman. “Reconstructing a Reconstruction: Altobello Melone’s ‘Picenardi Altarpiece,’” Muse 31-32 (1997-1998) 9-23.

This panel was probably once part of a polyptych, or multi-paneled, altarpiece. In modern times, altarpieces have often been dismantled, and modern historians have had to hypothetically reconstruct them. This panel has been identified with a polyptych seen in the nineteenth century by F. Sacchi. Sacchi described a work with "the Virgin and Child enthroned in the middle, St. Helen and Tobias and the Angel on the sides . . . sold to an English antiquarian in 1869." Art historians have linked this description with the Museum's panel and two other paintings (now in Oxford, U.K.) that depict St. Helen and Tobias and the Angel. There are several reasons that have led historians to link these panels.

First, the similar size of the panels and the consistent handling of the paint in the pictures support the reconstruction. Connoisseurs, experts who have examined large numbers of paintings close-up, are able to make such judgments by studying the subtle characteristics of different artists' styles. Second, thematic connections among the panels support the hypothesis. In the Tobias panel, for example, the child Tobias holds a fish. According to the Book of Tobit, the angel Raphael instructed Tobias to make a salve out of a fish's organs to cure his father's blindness. If the Oxford Tobias painting were placed to the left the museum’s Madonna and Child, the Jesus would be looking directly at the fish, thereby connecting Him with one of His conventional symbols. Christ, too, cured both physical and spiritual blindness.

We do not know why the altarpiece was made, or who commissioned it. It was probably in the Church of St. Helen in Italian city of Cremona, so the presence of St. Helen in the right-hand panel would reflect the patronage of the church. St. Helen (the mother of the Roman Emperor Constantine) was believed to have found the True Cross upon which Christ was crucified. The church may have processed a relic related to Helen or the True Cross. Raphael is sometimes considered a guardian angel of children, so the altarpiece may have



been made in gratitude for the birth or healing of a child

In addition to the fish, other symbolic animals are present in the panels. A dog accompanies Tobias (in accordance with the Biblical story), and Christ holds a goldfinch. In the Middle Ages and Renaissance, this bird was seen as a symbol of the Passion because it was thought to feed on thorns (a reference to Christ's Crown of Thorns).

When compared with the Virgin Mary in the Museum’s Madonna and the Man of Sorrows, Melone’s Madonna and Child seems much more naturalistic. The artist more convincingly models the forms and creates a convincing illusion of light and shadow. Single-point perspective, a drawing technique developed during Renaissance, is used to create the illusion of three-dimensional space. The architectural lines of the coffered ceiling and tiled floor appear to converge at a single vanishing point. This point is near the Madonna’s heart, so the formal qualities of the painting reinforce its spiritual message.

The image is painted with oil paint, a medium borrowed from northern artists that became popular in Italy in the sixteenth century. By using oils rather than tempera, artists were able to achieve a much broader range of tonal variation and intensify the naturalism of their paintings.

Joan Stack document:

Altobello Melone’s Madonna and Child is an outstanding example of High Renaissance naturalism and ecclesiastic decoration. Art historians believe the painting was once the central panel of a multi-paneled altarpiece or polyptych. The now lost Melone polyptych has been called the “Picenardi Altarpiece,” named for the Italian art dealership that owned it in the nineteenth century.

Two large paintings representing Tobias and the Angel and St. Helen (mother of the Emperor Constantine) once flanked the Museum’s Madonna. These paintings now hang in the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, England. In 1999, the Museum acquired two small paintings from the three-panel predella of the original Picenardi altarpiece: The Questioning of Judas and the Proving of the True Cross. A predella is a narrow, horizontal platform on which an altarpiece rests. Predellas were often painted with narrative scenes that illustrated episodes from the lives of the holy figures represented in the larger panels above the platforms. Our predella panels illustrate scenes from the life of St. Helen.

When compared with earlier representations of the Virgin Mary with the infant Jesus, Melone’s Madonna and Child reflects the new ways artists of the High Renaissance approached this traditional subject. Unlike artists of the medieval period, Melone convincingly modeled



the anatomy of his figures in three-dimensions. We can imagine the mass of the Virgin’s body under the naturalistic folds of her drapery, and we are convinced by the depiction of the nude body of the Christ child. Earlier artists often had difficulty portraying the immature proportions of infants, frequently representing babies as doll-like, miniature adults. One reason for the lack of naturalism in the Middle Ages was the accepted studio practice of copying figures from model books and from other artworks rather than from nature. During the Renaissance many painters began to make studies directly from life.

Melone’s Madonna and Child is also the earliest painting in our collection in which the artist demonstrates a clear understanding of mathematical perspective. Mathematical or linear perspective allows viewers to feel as though the pictorial space of a painting is an extension of real space. This system was unknown in antiquity, and was first discovered in the Renaissance. Artists began to use the system on a grand scale after 1436, when the architect and author Leon Battista Alberti wrote a treatise in which he explained how painters could create the illusion of special depth by using one-point and two-point perspective grids to organize their pictures. To achieve this illusion, one begins by establishing a horizon line and a vanishing point or points in one’s picture. All the straight lines that recede into space are represented as orthogonal lines that meet at the vanishing point(s). Throughout the fifteenth century, Italian Renaissance artists gradually became familiar with Alberti’s system. By 1500 virtually all Italian painters understood one-and two point perspective. In Melone’s Madonna and Child, we can clearly see the use of this perspectival system, as the architectural lines of the tile floor and the arched vaulted ceiling converge at a single point located on the Madonna’s chest.

Melone’s decision to situate the vanishing point on the chest of the Virgin (the locus of both her heart and her Christ-nourishing breast) was probably not accidental. Renaissance artists frequently used naturalistic devices to convey spiritual messages and focus their viewers’ attention on specific elements in their pictures. In the Madonna and Child, the artist abandoned old-fashioned devices for indicating the holiness of sacred figures (such as unnaturalistic gold backgrounds and elaborate plate-like halos) in favor of a perspectival system that focuses the viewers’ eyes on the Virgin. Moreover, Melone’s thin, unobtrusive gold-line halos are barely noticeable, and the arched form over the Virgin’s head calls attention to her face by naturalistically echoing the rounded forms of old-fashioned halos.

Despite its new Renaissance naturalism, Melone’s Madonna and Child served a very traditional religious function in its original ecclesiastic context. Images of Mary and the infant Jesus reminded worshipers of Christ’s bodily incarnation which was re-enacted during the Eucharistic Mass. In Melone’s painting, the Virgin presents Jesus to the viewer as she sits in an



apse-like space, her lap covered by a white, corporal-like cloth (corporal =altar cloth). The Madonna’s formal pose in this shallow architectural space may have encouraged viewers to associate her body with an altar in an apse. Like an altar, the lap of the Madonna supports the body of Christ. She stares out at the viewer, with a grave expression, seemingly aware that her child will be sacrificed for humanity. The infant Christ is also aware of his future fate, as he reaches forward, towards the space of the viewer, clutching and gazing intently at a goldfinch. In the medieval and Renaissance periods, the goldfinch was associated with Christ’s sacrifice. The bird was thought to feed upon the sharp spines of the thistle, and, according to legend, the red spot on its feathers came from the blood of Christ from whose brow the bird extracted a thorn. The goldfinch was thus a reminder of the baby Jesus’ future Passion and death. By grasping the bird, the Christ child accepts and looks forward to his sacrifice, which was re-enacted during the Mass that took place below the image. (MAA 1/09)



Paris Bordone (Italian, ca. 1500-1571) Athena Scorning the Advances of Hephaestus, ca. 1555-1560 Oil on canvas 61.78 Gift of the Samuel H. Kress Foundation (K1112)


Thede, Christine E. and Norman E. Land, “Erotica veneziana: Paris Bordon’s Athena Scorning the Advances of Hephaestus,” Muse 27-28 (1993-1994) 41-48.

This painting has elicited a lot of speculation, both in terms of its subject matter and its peculiar, shadowy underpainting. Bordone is well-known for mythological scenes such as this one. Often, however, it is difficult to tell precisely which myth is being depicted. One theory is that this painting depicts a scene from Homer's Iliad, book XVIII, in which, Thetis, sea nymph and mother of Achilles, comes to the forge of Hephaestus (whose Roman name was Vulcan) to secure armor for her son. Achilles' friend Patroclus, had borrowed his armor and had been killed by Hektor in the Trojan War. Achilles was enraged by the death of his friend, but Thetis convinced him to wait to fight until she could get new armor for him. In the Renaissance version of the myth, Hephaestus demanded that Thetis sleep with him in payment for Achilles' new armor. Thetis cleverly tricked Hephaestus, however. She convinced him that before she would live up to the agreement she wanted to make sure that the armor fit Achilles. She put it on and then ran from his advances.

According to another interpretation, the painting depicts Hephaestus and Athena, not Thetis. Because Homer says nothing about Athena putting on the armor to take it back to Achilles and it appears to belong to the woman herself, rather than to be a gift for someone else, and because of the scene's erotic overtones, it has been argued that the painting must represent the mythological sexual struggle between Hephaestus and Athena. Athena, having gone to Hephaestus to obtain new armor, is attacked by him. In the struggle which follows, Hephaestus spills his seed upon her thigh. She quickly wipes the semen off and throws it on the ground. Mother Earth is thus fertilized and produces a son, Erichthonius, who grows up to become a king of Athens. Whether the first or the second interpretation is correct remains to be seen. (See also Merian's Sophonisba for another example of iconographic ambiguity.)

Certain physical characteristics of the painting have also aroused curiosity-namely Hephaestus' “third hand” near his left side. Photographs of the painting taken sometime before the Museum acquired the piece, show no unnatural elements appearing in the painting. Yet now there are three elements of "underpainting" revealed, layers of pigment which are



normally covered by the final image. Close examination of the painting seems to have clarified the issue. By observing these questionable areas under ultraviolet light, researchers have determined that none of these areas have been cleaned since 1938. It must be concluded, then, that what is visible has occurred from the natural aging of the oil medium, and not, as might have been the case, from an overly harsh cleaning.

This reappearance of the original design is called “pentimento.” The term implies no loss of pigment or medium. The cause of the effect is the progressive rise of the refractive index of oil medium due to the natural aging and is known to occur in drying oils. As the medium (oil) ages, the rising index causes the paint layer to become translucent, revealing drawing and underpainting. While this occurrence is rare in paintings, especially at such late stages as Bordone altered his design, it is fascinating to be able to see how the artist conceived his figures and altered them. Originally the right hand of the male figure was painted near his left side as if to reach for something on the forge. This indicates an earlier, modified design. Perhaps the artist felt that the current arrangement of the figures, in which Hephaestus' hand grabs the woman's arm, was more dramatic. (MAA 12/95)



Bartolomeo Montagna (Italian, 1453/54-1523) Temptation of St. Anthony, ca. 1510 Oil on panel 61.84 Gift of the Samuel H. Kress Foundation (K1638)

This scene illustrates an episode from the life of St. Anthony the Abbot. The saint, who lived alone as a hermit, is approached by a beautiful woman, dressed in fashionable, contemporary attire. Upon closer examination, however, we can see that the woman is not as innocent as she at first -appears. Her hair is bound with thorns, rather than ribbons, and when she lifts her skirt and flirtatiously exposes her bare ankle, we see that her foot is hideously clawed. She is not an ordinary maiden, but a devil in disguise, sent by Satan to tempt the hermit. Anthony, however, remains steadfast and averts his gaze while warding off the temptress with a gesture of blessing. The devil appears to counteract this gesture with her outstretched palm.

The artist Montagna was known as an “egregio magistro,” an excellent master. His reputation was very great and he received many important commissions for altarpieces and frescoes in such cities as Venice, Vincenza, Padua and Verona. This panel may have been part of the predella, or pedestal, of an altarpiece. The predella was often decorated with small narrative scenes visible only at close range, which related to the piece's central scene. Since the only known altarpiece by Montagna in which St. Anthony figures prominently is now lost, however, it is not possible to reconstruct the original altarpiece at this time (see Melone's Madonna and Child). (MAA 12/95)



Francesco Segala (Italian, 1557-1593) The Annunciation, after 1573 Paper mache, wood, polychrome, and gilding 65.19 Gift of the Chorn Memorial Fund


The Annunciation is the depiction of the Archangel Gabriel coming to announce to the Virgin Mary that she will give birth to Christ. The scene is described in the Gospel of St. Luke: "And the angel came in unto her, and said, Hail, thou that art highly favored, the Lord is with thee: blessed art thou among women . . . thou shalt conceive in thy womb, and bring forth a son, and shalt call his name Jesus." (Luke 1: 28ff)

The scene usually takes place in Mary's house-here depicted as a Renaissance interior-and Mary is often shown as having been interrupted from her prayerful reading. God the Father sends the Christ Child, fully formed, down to her. He is shown amid a swirl of celestial Putti, small winged boys often found in Renaissance painting. The cross carried by the Child alludes to his later suffering and death. Often the Angel Gabriel is shown carrying a lily, a symbol of the Virgin's purity, though the flower is absent here. Perhaps a real flower or an olive branch was once inserted in Gabriel's hand.

The fact that this work is made of paper mache ("carta pesta" in Italian) is somewhat unusual. Segala most often worked in terracotta or bronze, but paper mache may have offered a less expensive and malleable, though less durable alternative to those materials. The bodies of the two figures were probably made in a would, while the heads and the protruding arms are made of wood. Paper mache was most often used to create works for festivals, processions and theatres, that is, for ephemeral events. Perhaps, then, this work was created as part of such a religious festival.

The artist has used the material to create a shallow relief in the background while the main figures of Gabriel and Mary project dramatically out from the surface. The overlapping of Gabriel's hand with the frame brings this three-dimensionality to the attention of the viewer. (MAA 12/95)



School of Heinrich Aldegrever (German, c. 1500-1570) Hercules Slaying the Nemean Lion, ca. 1550 Oil on wood panel 67.67 Museum Purchase

These two panels are characteristic of the Renaissance interest in Classical mythology. The painting of Hercules slaying the Nemean lion illustrates the first of the Labors of Hercules. Hera, the wife of Zeus, knew Zeus had fathered Hercules by another woman, Alcmene. She therefore harbored a great hatred and jealousy of the hero. Sending the Fury of madness to him, she caused Hercules to mistake his own wife and children for those of Eurystheus, the ruler of Greece and the rival whom Hera had set up against Hercules. Hercules proceeded to kill them all in a fit of rage. His penance for killing his own children was to serve his mortal rival Eurystheus, who commanded that he carry out a series of Twelve Labors.

First, Eurystheus sent Hercules into the forest of Nemea to destroy an enormous lion that had been killing the country's sheep. He shot the lion with his bows and arrows, but the lion's skin was too tough; it never felt a single sting. Hercules pulled up a huge olive tree to use as a club and struck the lion; the lion only shook its head. Finally Hercules decided to wrestle the fierce beast. Here we see him prying the creature's mouth open with his hands. After only a few minutes, the lion was defeated.

Two subsequent events from the story are shown in the background, including the lion lying dead on the ground. Behind this, Hercules is shown stripping the skin from the animal, which he wore from that day onward (see Hercules and Antaeus). (MAA 12/95)



School of Heinrich Aldegrever (German, c. 1500-1570) Hercules and Antaeus, ca. 1530-1570 Oil on wood panel 66.354 Museum Purchase

This image, though not of one of the Twelve Labors, illustrates another of Hercules’ victories. Antaeus, a monstrous bandit born of Poseidon and Gaia (Mother Earth), who forced all travelers to wrestle with him for life or death. Whenever Antaeus touched the Earth, his mother, he regained his strength. If a traveler then managed to wrestle him to the ground, he was able through this contact with the earth to revive himself for another round of battle. Hercules, wearing his lion's skin (see Hercules Slaying the Nemean Lion), held Antaeus up in the air and away from the earth, forcing the breath out of him. Antaeus' body is awkwardly contorted as he tries vainly to touch the ground with the tip of his left toe. Finally, Hercules triumphed, and the land was made safe for travelers once again. This act symbolized the superiority of civilized skill over savage brute force.

Interest in the minute details of the landscape was characteristic of Northern Renaissance painting. In this image, note the tiny shepherd with his flock in the forest at the left, who will be spared from an encounter with Antaeus due to Hercules' brave deed. (MAA 12/95)


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