#hydecollection

To be honest, I haven’t had time to chill out with a book since this all began for us in the North Country about three weeks ago. In the time before, I was dipping in and out of two books on Leonardo da Vinci (both available on Kindle):  

Walter Isaacson, Leonardo da Vinci. 

Martin Kemp and Guiseppe Pallanti, Mona Lisa.

I pre-ordered the final volume of Hilary Mantel’s Thomas Cromwell trilogy, The Mirror & the Light, but have yet to crack it open.

Our friends at Crandall Public Library have available for free download a number of books on art. Below, I list fifteen you might like. Here’s the link to the Crandall Public Library:  https://crandalllibrary.freading.com/listing/LzBBUlQ=/1. Don’t worry if you don’t have a library card, you can apply for a temporary card online.

Collection-related:

Anthony Bond, The Idea of Art.  The story of how an Australian museum went about collecting contemporary art. They didn’t have the good fortune of generous donors like Werner Feibes and Jim Schmitt.

Paul Cézanne (French, 1839 - 1906), Trees, ca. 1885, Graphite and watercolor, (16 3/4 × 13 3/4 in.), The Hyde Collection, Glens Falls, NY, Bequest of Charlotte Pruyn Hyde, 1971.62

Cezanne.  

Leonardo da Vinci (After), (Italian, 1452 - 1519), Study of the Mona Lisa, ca. 1503, Charcoal and graphite on laid paper,  (31 9/16 x 26 7/8 x 2 1/4 in.) The Hyde Collection, Glens Falls, NY, Gift of Charlotte Pruyn Hyde, 1971.71

Kenneth Clark, Leonardo. Again, a dated book, but Clark is a clear and concise writer.

Henricus Antonius (Han) van Meegeren (Dutch, 1889 - 1947), Girl with Blue Bow, ca. 1924, Gelatin-glue medium and pigment over an obscured 17th-century painting fragment (21 x 18 in.), The Hyde Collection, Glens Falls, NY, Gift of Charlotte Pruyn Hyde, 1971.56

Edward Dolnik, The Forger’s Spell. This is the story of the Han Van Meegeren, the Dutch forger, who sold Nazi collectors his fake Vermeers. Even after the war, collectors were misled, as was Mrs. Hyde. But if you can’t have an authentic Vermeer, it’s alright to have an authentic Van Meegeren fake!

Albert Pinkham Ryder (American, 1847 - 1917), Stag in the Forest of Arden, ca. 1897 Oil on canvas, (16 3/8 x 16 5/8 in.) The Hyde Collection, Glens Falls, NY, Bequest of Charlotte Pruyn Hyde, 1971.43

Lloyd Goodrich, Albert P. Ryder.  Goodrich’s book is a little old, published in 1959. There are more recent studies available including by the head of the department when I was a student at the University. Of Delaware, William I. Homer. But, if you’re interested in knowing more about the artist in the southeast guest bedroom, you can’t go wrong with reading Goodrich. 

Vincent van Gogh, (Dutch, 1853 - 1890), Orchard with Arles in the Background, Date: 1888, Reed pen, pen, ink and graphite on laid paper (28 5/8 x 21 5/8 x 1/2 in.) The Hyde Collection, Glens Falls, NY, Bequest of Charlotte Pruyn Hyde, 1971.81

James Grundig, Breaking Van Gogh. This is the story of Van Gogh’s time in the Saint-Rémy sanitarium, which he entered a year after executing the drawing in our collection, Orchard with Arles in the Background.

The Personal Recollections of Vincent Van Gogh.

Hyde exhibition-related:

Art Noveau Ornamentation and Art Nouveau Graphic Masterpieces.  Either book will let you relive the pleasure of The Hyde’s Alfonse Mucha show from 2018.

Goya’s Disasters of War. If you’re missing the darker more gruesome prints from our current exhibition, FRANCISO GOYA: LOS CAPRICHOS ETCHINGS AND AQUATINTS, this will suit you well.

Robert Henri, The Art Spirit. If you enjoyed our summer exhibition, From the Rooftops: JOHN SLOAN AND THE ART OF THE NEW URBAN SPACE, you might enjoy reading the art criticism of the artist and teacher who influenced him.

The Illustrations of Rockwell Kent.  You can relive the Kent print exhibition from the summer of 2018. I used this book for research

Posada’s Popular Mexican Prints. Prepare for the first Mexican art show at The Hyde, coming next summer (2021) JOSE GUADALUPE POSADA: LEGENDARY PRINTMAKER OF MEXICO.

Faith Ringold, A View from the Studio. This will give the reader a good head start for the next two winter shows:  THE HARMON & HARRIET KELLEY COLLECTION OF AFRICAN AMERICAN ART: WORKS ON PAPER in 2021, and Robert Blackburn & Modern American Printmaking in 2022.

Two great artists we don’t (yet) have in the collection:

Andrew Graham-Dixon, Michaelangelo and the Sistine Ceiling. The author is a clear and concise writer who is extremely good at distilling modern scholarship into a highly readable and enjoyable book. He also wrote an excellent book on Caravaggio: Caravaggio: A Life Sacred and Profane (available on Kindle).

Sargent’s Portrait Drawings.  I saw an exhibition of these graphic portrait drawings at The Morgan Library fairly recently. They are stunning. It is amazing how much presence he can capture and bestow on his sitters working just in pencil. They are no less commanding than his gorgeous painted portraits.

And now, for the art history.

Luca della Robbia (Italian, 1399-1482), Madonna and Child, ca. 1450, tin-glazed terracotta (18½ x 15¾ in.). Photo credit: Sothebys.com.

There were a number of items in Sotheby’s January 28 sale that caught my attention because of their association with Hyde pieces. The first was Lot 2, Luca della Robbi’s terracotta relief, Madonna and Child. Luca (1399-1482) founded a multi-generational family workshop that was famous for its terracotta sculptures covered in a gleaming, pure, white glaze—its formula, a closely-guarded family secret—that made the fired clay pieces impermeable to the elements and gave them the appearance of much more expensive marble. The reliefs were cast in molds, allowing for a degree of mass-production that expanded the clientele for such fine works of art to include the successful merchant and banking class of Renaissance Italy’s major cities.

Luca della Robbia (Italian, 1399-1482), Madonna of the Lilies, ca. 1450-1460, tin-glazed terracotta (20 1/4 × 16 1/8 in.) The Hyde Collection, Glens Falls, New York, Gift of Charlotte Pruyn Hyde, 1971.99. Photography by Michael Fredericks.

Like The Hyde’s Madonna of the Lilies, the Sotheby’s relief was intended for the domestic market. It was undoubtedly used in the home as the focus of private, family devotion to the Virgin and Christ Child, and indeed, Sotheby’s expert Giancarlo Gentilini proposes that the relief was commissioned by Bosio I, Count of Santa Fiora in Tuscany for this wife Cecilia, sometime between 1439 and 1451.  

It is striking how intimate the viewer’s relationship with the Madonna and Christ Child is, more so than in our terracotta. So high is the relief carving, the divine pair actually breaks out of their tightly constrained space into our world. The sculpture affirms the Christian belief that God was incarnate in Christ, here the robust child, tenderly held in his mother’s arms. His divinity and her purity are expressed through the terracotta’s unblemished white glaze.  

Surprisingly, the two reliefs “met” once. They were both included in an exhibition at the Detroit Institute of Arts in 1938 that was curated by William Valentiner, the museum’s director and Mrs. Hyde’s art advisor. Both sculptures have been praised by experts as being “autograph;” that is, they are so fine in their execution, even though other examples survive, that the hand of the master, Luca, has been discerned over that of his workshop assistants.  

Lot 14, Sano di Pietro, Nativity.

Sano di Pietro (Italian, 1405-1481), Nativity, tempera and gold ground on panel (20 5/8 by 15 7/8 in.). Photo credit: Sothebys.com.

There is a clear resemblance between the form of Virgin Mary’s head in this depiction of the Nativity and that of the Archangel Gabriel’s in The Hyde’s panel that formed one half of an Annunciation scene.  

Sano di Pietro (Italian, 1405 - 1481), Angel of the Annunciation, ca. 1450, tempera and gilding on panel (14 1/2 × 13 1/2 in.); The Hyde Collection, Glens Falls, New York, Bequest of Charlotte Pruyn Hyde, 1971.44. Photo credit: Mclaughlinphoto.com.

Sano di Pietro (1405-1481) was a leading painter in Siena in the first part of the fifteenth century. In the Sotheyb’s panel, we have the chance to examine his use of color and composition in constructing narrative scenes. The primary storyline, Christ’s birth in a stable, dominates the foreground. The secondary narrative, the annunciation to the shepherds, occurs in the middle distance. The principal figures, including the ox and ass, are modeled with evenly modulated light. They have a sense of early Renaissance volume and weight lacking in the rather flimsy Gothic architecture of the stable. A brightly colored choir of angels watches over the Christ Child, and God sends down the dove of the Holy Spirit in a shaft of divine light to illuminate the newborn, who lies in an aureole of straw and light that signals His divinity.  

There is some debate as to whether this panel was part of a small chapel altarpiece or intended for use in a domestic setting. Last year, a student from Florence wrote to The Hyde asking for particular information about our panel. She thought she might know the altarpiece from which our Angel came. The piecing together of dismembered altarpieces, often by studying physical elements such as the thickness of the panel and the pattern of growth rings, is an emerging field of research. It educates art historians in the more practical and physical aspects of art production. I have tried to follow up, but, as of yet, still await news of her findings.

Lot 15.  Sandro Botticelli, Portrait of a Young Man Holding a Roundel.

Sandro Botticelli (Italian, 1444-1510), Portrait of a Young Man Holding a Roundel, n.d., tempera on panel (23 x 15 ½ in.). Photo credit: Sothebys.com

This is the auction item that everyone is talking about. It sold for $80M (with commissions, etc., it came to $92,184,000).

There was little drama in the sale itself. The opening bid was $70M. The sale ended five bids later, in increments of $2M, at $80M. With commissions and fees, the work topped out at over $92M, the most ever spent for a Florentine Renaissance Master.

As in the della Robbia discussed above, the artist uses the architectural framing within the piece to push the figure forward. Through the illusion of a finger extending beyond the painted lower ledge, Botticelli suggests that the young man is real and actually standing in the viewer’s space. Elegance is the watchword for this painting. It is present in Botticelli’s use of line and form and in the artist’s self-assurance and that bestowed upon the figure and character of the sitter. These are qualities that we can sense in The Hyde’s small predella panel depicting the Annunciation.  

Sandro Botticelli (Italian, 1444-1510), Annunciation, ca. 1492, tempera on panel (7 x 10 9/16 in.). The Hyde Collection, Glens Falls, New York, Gift of Charlotte Pruyn Hyde, 1971.10. Photography by Joseph Levy.

Mary reacts in a graceful and demure manner as Gabriel glides in to the loggia where she was reading her devotional book. The angel’s robes flutter, perhaps a little fussily. Where our sadly abraded panel gives only a hint of Botticelli’s command of delicate shades and tones, the remarkably well-preserved Sotheby’s portrait gives ample evidence of Botticelli’s mastery of tempera painting.

The roundel the young man holds is a very peculiar detail. It is a separate work of art by the Sienese artist Bartolomeo Bulgarini from roughly a century earlier, and it has been pieced into Botticelli’s panel. Quite what Botticelli meant to signify by this is debated by scholars.  Was he suggesting a genealogical link between the two, a shared character trait, or perhaps a strong devotion by the young man to the unidentified saint?

School of Haarlem (Dutch, 1600-1699), Portrait of a young man holding his gloves and wearing a tall hat, his arm akimbo, oil on panel, an oval, (10 by 7 ½ in.). Photo credit: Sothebys.com.

I was curious about the next lot, rather cautiously identified by Sotheby’s as “School of Haarlem, Portrait of a Young Man Holding his Gloves, circa 1615.” I thought immediately of the small oval portrait in Hyde House dining room that we now attribute to the Circle of Frans Hals. 

Circle of Frans Hals, (Dutch, 1580-1666), Portrait of the Artist's Son, ca. 1630, oil on panel(7 7/16 × 6 1/2 in.). The Hyde Collection, Glens Falls, New York, Bequest of Charlotte Pruyn Hyde, 1971.21. Photography by Michael Fredericks.

Like ours, the Sotheby’s painting was once thought to be by Frans Hals himself. Hals (1580-1666) is famous for portraits that both in the manner of their execution and in the personality of their sitters, are full of dash and swagger. In the catalogue entry, Sotheby’s favored an attribution to a contemporary of Hals, Willem Buytewech (1591-1624). The market didn’t agree. Bidding started at $30,000 for this small oval work that measures 10 x 7½ inches. It finally came to a stop after helter-skelter bidding at $390,600 (with fees)! There were plenty of bidders, who evidently thought this to be by Frans Hals. Would someone care to reconsider our painting? Like the Sotheby’s piece, the Hyde portrait was authenticated as a Hals by William Valentiner, but subsequently downgraded by several scholars, among them Seymour Slive, who reattributed the Sotheby’s work to Buytewech.

Hubert Robert (French, 1733-1808), View of a Garden with a Large Fountain and View of a Walled Garden Courtyard, n.d., oil on canvas (99¼ x  56¼ in.). Photo credit: Sotheby’s.com

It was a detail in Lot 39, the eponymous fountain in Hubert Robert’s View of a Garden with a Large Fountain, that caught my attention. It recalled to mind the vertical jet fountain in The Hyde’s drawing, Château in the Bois de Boulogne, ca. 1780. 

Hubert Robert (French, 1733-1808), Château in the Bois de Boulogne, ca. 1780, graphite on paper (9 3/16 x 15 3/4 in.). The Hyde Collection, Glens Falls, New York, Bequest of Charlotte Pruyn Hyde, 1971.103. Photography by Steven Sloman.

Such powerful vertical jets of water first became popular in French garden design at Versailles, where they symbolized the power of the Sun King. By the eighteenth-century, pleasure rather than power was the primary objective of art, architecture, and garden design. Robert was popular among the French aristocratic elite for painting large-scale decorative schemes for their grand houses. He often depicted pleasure gardens, bucolic scenes, and romantic ruins. In 1778, the painter was appointed designer of the king’s gardens. In the  Sotheby’s piece the vertical jet of water makes a suitable compositional focal point in a panel that measure 8’ 3” in height.  

A similar jet fountain appears in a decorative room panel signed and dated by Robert in 1773, executed for the financier Jean-François Bergeret de Frouville. Exhibited at the Salon of 1775, it was entitled The Portico of a Country Mansion, near Florence, and is now in the possession of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Hubert Robert (French, 1733-1808), The Portico of a Country Mansion, near Florence, 1773, oil on canvas (80 3/4 x 48 1/4 in.). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Bequest of Lucy Work Hewitt, 1934, 35.40.2. Photo credit: Metmuseum.org.

In our drawing, Robert drew a actual fountain, one that dominated the parterre behind the Château de Bagatelle in the Bois de Boulogne, on the outskirts of Paris. The château was built by the Comte d’Artois, the brother of Louis XVI. Marie Antoinette had bet him that he could not build his little pleasure palace within three months. Designed by the architect Francois-Joseph Belanger (1744-1818) in the Neoclassical Style, the party house was constructed in just 63 days. Robert decorated its salle de bains with six panels that depicted the Italian countryside, classical buildings, and various forms of entertainment, like dancing, swinging, and bathing. These panels, too, now reside at the Met. 

Jacopo Robusti, called Jacopo Tintoretto (Italian, 1518-1594), Portrait of a Bearded Man, 1560s, oil on canvas (23 3/8 x 18 in.). Photo credit: Sothebys.com.

Jacopo Robusti, called Jacopo Tintoretto (Italian, 1518-1594), Portrait of the Doge Alvise Mocenigo, ca. 1570, oil on canvas (21 1/2 x 15 1/2″); The Hyde Collection, Glens Falls, New York, Gift of Charlotte Pruyn Hyde,, 1971.49.

I have taken this last work out of turn, but I thought I would end with a comparison of hipster beards. Lot. 23 was Jacopo Tintoretto’s, Portrait of a Bearded Man. It was probably painted within a decade of The Hyde’s Portrait of the Doge Alvise Mocentigo (ca. 1570). The two share many traits. They are both portraits of self-possessed, wealthy men. Their dark somber clothing signals that. They dress according to the dictates of the style-setter for courtiers, Baldasare Castiglione (1478-1529), who wrote that “ the most agreeable color is black, and if not black, then at least something fairly dark.” Presented at only bust length, their torsos turned slightly away from the viewer but engaging directly with their eyes, these portraits convey a sense of intimacy and dialogue. The sitter’s face emerges from a dark background, its features modeled in warm lighting.

There are no known preparatory drawings by Tintoretto for portraits. He seems to have worked directly on the canvas before him. This would have appealed to his primarily male sitters because it undoubtedly reduced the number and length of sittings. As a side note, while it was acceptable for a man to sit or his portrait in a painter’s studio, it was not for a woman. Inconveniently for the portraitist and patron, the painter had to set up his easel and paint with oils in a female sitter’s house. Thus, the cost of a woman’s portrait was often more expensive. The conservative taste of the Venetian elite ensured that the compositional characteristics of this portrait had not changed in a generation. Where Tintoretto excelled was in the mastery and boldness of his brushstrokes and the accompanying speediness of execution. Notice, particularly in the Sotheby’s painting, the freedom and liveliness of the white brushstrokes with which he defines the shirt collar, distinguishes between the sitter’s beard and dark clothing, and spatially locates the different elements of the body within the otherwise ill-distinguished depth of the painting. Patrons valued Tintoretto’s masterly touches with the brush, the contrasts between areas of thickly applied paint and those where it is so thinly applied that one can discern the weave of the canvas. Working with accepted conventions, Tintoretto was able to convey something of what made his bearded male sitter unique.

Recently, I heard a segment on NCPR about the Trout Lake artist Jeff Davis, who is in Florida during the pandemic lockdown. More accustomed to working in oils, he has taken up watercolors once again, a much trickier medium to manipulate and control. My mind immediately went to a pair of watercolors in The Hyde’s collection by an artist who also worked in both the Adirondacks and Florida: Winslow Homer (1836-1910).  

One of the country’s greatest artists, Homer worked in a variety of media. On leaving school, he apprenticed for a commercial printer in Boston, making images for sheet music and commercials. During the Civil War, he became famous for his wood engravings published in Harper’s Weekly that illustrated accounts of the conflict. We have seen in a number of recent exhibitions at The Hyde that commercial and illustrative work was the prelude to careers for several American artists including John Sloan (1871-1951) and Dox Thrash (1893-1965).

Homer first visited the Adirondacks in 1870. He may have come in response to the run-away best selling travel book Adventures in the Wilderness; or, Camp-Life in the Adirondacks (1869) by William H. H. Murray. Residents of East Coast cities responded to the book’s call to the wild in droves. But there had also been a tradition among American artists, at least half a century old, of traveling through the region, capturing its natural beauty, and lauding its unspoilt wilderness as a national attribute. My predecessor as Hyde curator, Erin Coe, addressed the topic in her 2005 Hyde exhibition and its accompanying catalogue, Painting Lake George, 1774-1900.

Thomas Cole (American, born England, 1801-1848), View on Lake George, 1826, oil on wood panel (25 13/16 × 32 3/16 × 3 7/16 in.) Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College: Purchased through a gift from Evelyn A. and William B. Jaffe, Class of 1964H, by exchange, 2017.11. © 2020 Trustees of Dartmouth College.

Winslow Homer (American, 1836-1910), Camping Out in the Adirondack Mountains, 1874, wood Engraving (9 11/16 x 15 1/2 in.) The Hyde Collection, Glens Falls, New York, Bequest of Charlotte P. Hyde, 1972.21. Photo credit: mclaughlinphoto.com.

Homer was a great outdoors man. He loved the comradery of camping trips. They are the subject of many of his prints and paintings, including Camping Out in the Adirondack Mountains (1874). Homer was also enamored of the lore around the year-round residents who acted as guides for city dwellers over the summer. Adirondack artist and author William James Stillman (1828-1901) described the guides as “rude men of the woods, rough and illiterate, but with all their physical faculties at a maximum acuteness, senses on the alert and keen as no townsman could comprehend.” They became heroic figures in the many books published about the region. Their principal characteristics were that they were extremely strong, dexterous with an axe, and able to build a lean-to within a few hours, or a hut in days. They were skilled at hunting, fishing, and tracking bear, cooking on an open fire, and story-telling around the campfire at night. Homer included Adirondack guides in many of his images of the region, including The Hyde’s little oil sketch of a commanding, statuesque figure executed during that first 1870 trip.

Winslow Homer (American, 1836 - 1910), Adirondack Guide, 1870, oil on canvas (8 1/2 x 13 1/2 x 1 1/4 in.) The Hyde Collection, Glens Falls, New York Anonymous Gift to The Hyde Collection, 1998.2. Photo credit: mclaughlinphoto.com.

On that occasion, Homer traveled in the company of fellow artist and keen angler Eliphalet Terry (1826-1896). They both produced fishing images on that trip. Angling was a major sport at the time and fishing images were popular. It was a passion that Homer shared with his brother Charles, and one that features in many of Homer’s paintings from the period, such as Crossing the Pasture (1872), in which two boys (Charles and the younger Winslow?) strike out across a field to go fishing. 

Winslow Homer (American, 1836 - 1910), Crossing the Pasture, 1871, oil on canvas ( 26 1/4 X 38 in.) Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Fort Worth, Texas, 1976.37.  ©  Amon Carter Museum of American Art.

The adult brothers became members of the North Woods Club, famous for its fishing, near Minerva in the Keene Valley in 1888. Between 1889 and 1902, Homer produced a series of angling watercolors that brought him popular and critical acclaim. The Hyde possesses two of these.

Winslow Homer, (American, 1836 - 1910), A Good One, Adirondacks, 1889, watercolor (21 x 28 1/4 x 1 1/4 in.), The Hyde Collection, Glens Falls, New York, Gift of Charlotte Pruyn Hyde, 1971.68. Photo credit: mclaughlinphoto.com.

The first is A Good One, Adirondacks, painted in 1889. That year, he stayed at the club twice: for nine weeks in late spring and early summer; and for seven in the fall. The Hyde’s watercolor was presumably painted in the autumn, as there is a hint of golden foliage in a tree along the water’s edge while others are still in full deep-green leafage. We see a fisherman in a boat; a fish caught upon his line that is bend back on itself in a dramatic curve; and his free hand outstretched holding a net, ready to scoop up his prize. In early 1890, Homer sent thirty-three of these watercolors to his dealer, Gustave Reichard, in New York. He wrote the latter suggesting that he advertise the exhibition specifically to anglers. Homer recognized the appeal the images would have for aficionados of the sport, and he was right. A New York Times reviewer wrote, “It is his trout-fishing pieces…that are richest in color and done with the greatest pleasure.” Thirty works were sold, each for $125.

At the very time he was enjoying such commercial success in New York, Homer was on another angling expedition. This time, to Florida. The Hyde’s second watercolor dates to this trip. Winslow had first traveled to Florida four years earlier, encouraged by his uncle, Arthur Benson, who was himself an avid angler. The state was popular among fly fisherman for its inland waterways and abundance of sea trout, channel bass, mangrove snapper, and largemouth black bass. Homer stayed near Enterprise on the St. John’s River. The tropical setting, the Spanish moss hanging from the trees, and the light and color reflected in the water evidently captivated the artist as much as the sport itself.

Winslow Homer, (American, 1836 - 1910), St. Johns River, Florida, 1890, watercolor (23 1/2 x 28 3/4 x 1 in.) The Hyde Collection, Glens Falls, New York, Gift of Charlotte Pruyn Hyde, 1971.68. Photography by Joseph Levy.

There was a third place to which Homer traveled to fish: Quebec. He and his brother Charles owned a camp there. In many ways, Quebec provided the true call of the wild against which the Homer brothers could pitch their skills and manliness. The Adirondacks, for all the bravado of the guidebooks, was a wilderness tamed. It was a landscape largely denuded of its first growth forests; its mountains ravaged by ore mining and smelting; and its rivers depleted of native fish. Indeed, the North Woods Club had to stock the local rivers. Over the course of six weeks in the summer of 1891, Homer caught a total of six fish. It was in the untamed wilderness of Quebec that Homer could truly experience the thrill of landing a mature and wily native fish. He captured that excitement in his Canadian watercolors and conveyed it through the vigorous handling of the medium. Many depict men in canoes navigating turbulent waters. In these works, Nature is the more powerful and primal force, always on the verge of overturning anglers in their boats.

Winslow Homer (American, 1836-1910), Shooting the Rapids, 1902, watercolor over graphite on off-white, thick, moderately textured wove paper with watermark (13 15/16 x 21 13/16 in.) Brooklyn Museum, Museum Collection Fund and Special Subscription, 11.537 (Photo: Brooklyn Museum, 11.537_PS1.jpg).

Before there was Tinder and the internet, there were artists and diplomats conveying images between potential suitors. There is nothing new in exchanging beguiling pictures.

Detail: Bartholomaeus (Barthel/Bartel) Bruyn, the Elder, (German, 1493 - 1555), Portrait of a Lady, ca. 1535, oil on panel (23 1/2 × 29 in.). The Hyde Collection, Glens Falls, New York, Bequest of Charlotte Pruyn Hyde, 1971.11. Photo credit: Joseph Levy.

It is possible that this portrait of a young woman by Barthel Bruyn the Elder (1493-1555) is just such a flirtatious, catch-me-while-I’m-free sort of picture. What tells me that? Firstly, she is not wearing a wedding ring. Secondly, her hair is in braids that escape her headdress. Well-to-do married women in sixteenth-century Germany covered their hair completely, only girls wore their hair loose, while virtuous, eligible maids wore their hair braided. That she comes from a prosperous family is evident from her clothing. The blouse beneath her velvet dress is embroidered with gold thread. Small pearls adorn a band in her headdress. The large sleeves are impractical. This young woman does not have to work.

She is in the market for a husband. It is possible that she has caught her man. The Metropolitan Museum possesses a portrait of a young woman by the same artist, presented in similar manner. She wears a dress and blouse of the same style; she holds a flower (a red carnation) in her right hand; her right index finger is adorned with a ring, but her left hand is bare. She, too, turns slightly to her right, but in this instance she turns towards her fiancé, who occupies a matching panel. Met curators believe the pair of portraits was commissioned to mark their engagement. We cannot know if there was a pendant, a boyfriend, to match The Hyde’s painting.

Barthel Bruyn the Elder (German, 1493–1555), Portrait of a Woman, 1533, oil on oak (12 x 8 7/8 in.). Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Gift of James A. Moffett 2nd, 1962, 62.267.2

Barthel Bruyn the Elder (German, 1493–1555), Portrait of a Man, 1533, oil on oak (12 x 8 7/8 in.). Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Gift of James A. Moffett 2nd, 1962, 62.267.1 

Barthel de Bruyn was the society portraitist in Cologne, Germany. Then as now, the city was a great industrial and trading center. Politically, it was under the suzerainty of the Archbishop of Cologne, one of the electors of the Holy Roman Emperor. Its mercantile class was extremely wealthy and well-connected across Europe. The Hyde’s young lady is likely to have come from that class. Her family had her on the market for a successful and advantageous marriage.

Barthel de Bruyn played a little known part in the most famous story of Tinder matchmaking in the sixteenth century: Henry VIII’s misalliance with Anne of Cleves. After the death of his third queen, Jane Seymour, Henry was on the hunt for a new bride. Jane had provided him with his longed-for male heir, the future Edward VI, but it would be nice to have a male spare. The three choices on the international marriage market for a king considered a heretic in Catholic Europe were the sixteen-year old, Danish-born and recently widowed Christina, Duchess of Milan, or one of the daughters of the Duke of Cleves: Anne (twenty-four years old) or Amelia (twenty-two). 

Henry sought diplomatic reports and portraits on all of them. Christina had no wish to marry Henry. The Cleves sisters were not so independent-of-mind. One would make the political alliance their brother negotiated. Henry’s ambassador, Christopher Mont, traveled to Düsseldorf, Germany to meet them. He reported back that “Everyman praiseth the beauty of the said Lady [Anne], as well for the face, as for the whole body, above all other ladies excellent.” The clincher may have been the comment, “She excelleth as far as the Duchess [of Milan], as the golden sun excelleth the silvern moon.” He returned to London with recent portraits of the two sisters by none other than Barthel de Bruyn. That of Amelia no longer survives, and that of Anne may be the panel painting preserved at St. John’s College, Oxford. A portrait of Anne by an artist in Barthel’s circle is kept at Trinity College, Cambridge.

Bartolomaeus Bruyn the Elder (German, 1493-1555), Anne of Cleves, oil on panel (50.2 x 36.8 cm). St John's College, University of Oxford, PP02. Photo credit: St John's College, University of Oxford.

Circle of Bartholomaeus Bruyn the Elder (German, 1493–1555), Anne of Cleves (1515–1557), ca. 1539, oil on panel (71 x 47 cm). Trinity College, University of Cambridge, Gift from Dr William Hepworth Thompson, TC Oils P 39. Photo credit: Trinity College, University of Cambridge.

Mont was unable to confirm the accuracy of Barthel’s portrait so Henry sent Hans Holbein the Younger to paint Anne himself. The portrait that caused all the trouble is now at the Louvre. With a few artistic tricks, Holbein airbrushed Anne’s flaws. By painting her face on, he reduced the prominence of her rather large nose, and he smoothed away the pockmarks caused by small pox that marred her face. Henry had fallen in love with the idea of Anne of Cleves. She was the right age for him, a man in his late forties. She was gentle and would obey. Holbein’s portrait showed she had a fine figure and regal bearing.

Hans Holbein the Younger (German, 1497-1543), Anne de Cleves, 1539, parchment on canvas (25½ x 18¾ in.) Musée du Louvre, Paris, France, INV. 1348. Wikimedia Commons.

But Henry fell out of love with her the minute he saw her. It was probably as much her lack of sophistication as her looks. Just after she landed in England, Henry appeared in disguise and unannounced. He wooed her in the manner of a courtly romance of old. Anne, embarrassed, perhaps not even understanding what he was saying, simply ignored him. The wedding went ahead for diplomatic reasons, but Henry quickly sued for divorce on the grounds that an engagement had been contracted years before between Anne and a French prince. It was a legal nonsense but a compliant English Church got Henry off the hook. Anyway, Anne and Henry became friends. She outlived him and his last two wives.

What’s interesting is to compare The Hyde painting with the others by Barthel. He had a formula. His figures stand in a shallow space against an undefined background with slight modeling of light and shadow. The woman turns to her right. And he takes particular care to portray the details of her costume.

This post is an experiment. Can our current use of online communications systems provide analogies for the way religious imagery worked on and for the viewer in the Middle Ages?   

While we’re at home, we can find any number of YouTube videos to watch that are intended to be educational and instructive. I have participated in a number of live webinars and meetings but my direct participation is oftenmoderated in some way. I have to raise a hand or type a comment that may, or may not, be noticed by a moderator. Finally, there is the direct form of communication via Facetime or Zoom. Distance constricts and all participants are together, responding to each other in real time.

 Anonymous, (Italian, 6th century) The Arrest of Christ, mosaic, S. Apollinare, Ravenna, Italy. Photo source: Web Gallery of Art.

When we first study medieval art history, we are shown the grand mosaic narrative cycles in S. Apollinare (before 526) and San Vitale (525-47) in Ravenna, Italy. The churches’ architecture asserted a continuation of the Christian Roman Empire, while their decorative schemes included narrative cycles, catechizing visualizations of doctrine, and imposing assertions of imperial authority through portraits of the Byzantine emperor and empress.  As the two halves of the old Roman Empire diverged, Christendom split into the western Latin Church based in Rome and the eastern Orthodox Church centered on Constantinople. The two developed different approaches to religious art. The Orthodox Church restricted the creative license of artists. God, not man, was the sole creator. Thus, tradition and authority governed religious art, more so than in the West.

Anonymous (Egyptian), Christ Pantocrator, 6th century, encaustic on panel, Mount Sinai, Egypt. Photo source: Wikimedia Commons.

The East also developed the icon. Primarily a devotional image, it was invested with a unique power. When you stand or kneel before an icon in veneration of the sainted or divine figure portrayed, you are in their presence. Communication is direct. The icon is, in a sense, Facetime. While the style and imagery of icons did infiltrate the West, we are usually taught that the West did not adopt the notion that the icon give you direct access to the person or event depicted. And yet, there were images and occasions in the western tradition when distance and time collapsed and the devout was present at a sacred event or before a holy or divine person.

As Christians have just marked Easter, I will use Crucifixion imagery to explore the analogue and digital powers of medieval art. At one level, the image of the Crucifixion signifies the story of Christ’s death, whether it tells that story in great detail, narrating the Gospel accounts, or it summarizes the story in the symbol of the figure of Christ on the Cross. Through their choice of details, the artist can elicit strong devotional and emotional sentiments in the viewer. Through the introduction of symbols, the image can become a vehicle for the articulation and propagation of theology and doctrine. But in the Latin West, when incorporated into the performance of the liturgy, the activated image can elide time and space and bring one into the Divine presence.

Anonymous (Italian), Equestrian Crucifixion, ca. 1350, tempera and gold leaf on panel (29 7/8 x 14 1/8 x 1½ in.), The Hyde Collection, Glens Falls, New York, Bequest of Charlotte Pruyn Hyde, 1971.4. Photo credit: Steven Sloman.

Known as the Equestrian Crucifixion (ca. 1350) because many of the Roman military are on horseback, this small Gothic panel at The Hyde hews closely to St. John’s account of the Crucifixion. Christ, His head wreathed with a mocking crown of thorns, is nailed to a cross atop which in Latin initials is Pilate’s scornful notice Iesus Nazarenus Rex Iudicorum (Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews). His mother Mary is present, accompanied by three other Marys. St. John also stands at the foot of the cross. He is the only Gospel writer to claim to have been present at the event. Christ entrusted His mother into his care. Two of the soldiers have the Latin initials of the Roman state – SPQR for Senatus Populusque Romanum (“The Senate and People of Rome”)– emblazoned on their tunics. One knight holds the reed with a sponge soaked in vinegar that was offered to Christ; another the lance by which His side was pierced. With his hands together in prayer, this knight must be the centurion all Gospel accounts record was converted to Christianity. Later, in an apocryphal account, he was given the name Longinus; his lance is a precious relic venerated in St. Peter’s Rome.  

The artist manipulates the viewer’s emotions. He enhances the pathos of the scene with the image of the Virgin Mary collapsing into the arms of the three Marys. Its gruesomeness was highlighted by the trails of vibrant red blood running from Christ’s wounds. Counselled by a priest or confessor in the more affective devotional practices of the fourteenth century, the devout onlooker would have responded to these visual cues. Encouraged to place themselves at the events, the believer would have felt the Virgin’s sorrow, endured the pain of crucifixion, and lamented the role their own sinfulness played in condemning Christ to His sacrifice.

In my analogy with modern communications, this is a powerful and affective narrative in HD, but it has not broken the bonds of time and space. The devotee remains in their sinful world and bound by earthly time. 

Master of Monte Oliveto (Italian, active ca. 1305-1350), Crucifixion, ca. 1325, Tempera, gesso, gold leaf on panel (20½ x 18¾ in.), The Hyde Collection, Glens Falls, New York, Bequest of Charlotte Pruyn Hyde, 1971.5. Photo credit: Joseph Levy.

However, The Hyde’s Crucifixion Triptych (ca. 1325) had the power to break through between the earthly and heavenly spheres. The altarpiece was commissioned by a Dominican nun. We see her dressed in the Order’s distinctive black and white habit in the bottom left panel, kneeling before her patron saint, St. Romauld. She would have been well-versed in the kind of affective devotional practices taught by Dominican confessors to well-to-do women across Europe. She probably placed herself in the role of Mary Magdalen and imagined herself at the foot of the cross, her hair becoming matted with Christ’s blood as it trickled down the cross. Dominican nuns were known to translate such affective devotion into physical acts, such as fasting on the Host alone, as St. Catherine of Siena was to do within a few decades of this altarpiece’s creation.

Painted onto the wings are the nun’s patron saints, among them her fellow Dominicans, Dominic and Thomas Aquinas. Their portraits helped to focus her prayers, though there is no sense here that they behaved like icons, transporting her to their presence in heaven.

However, there is evidence that Dominicans felt that Christ could come to them through the Crucifixion image. Within the convent, Dominicans slept, studied, and prayed in individual cells, and they most commonly had an image of the Crucifixion with them, whether a painting or a sculpture. From written accounts, we know that such images were used to direct prayer, but they were also a consolation, evidence of Christ’s personal compassion for the Dominican’s life of prayer. In addition, there are stories of how Dominican while they slept felt the presence of the divine enter their cell through the image they were accustomed to prayer before. In my modern analogy, communication can work through the image both ways, but not simultaneously.

Bartolomeo Caporali (Italian, c. 1420–c. 1505), assisted by Giapeco Caporali (Italian, died 1478), Missal (detail), Crucifixion, 1469, Ink, tempera, silver and burnished gold on vellum ( 35 x 25 cm). The Cleveland Museum of Art, John L. Severance Fund 2006.154. ©The Cleveland Museum of Art.

There was one specific Crucifixion image that could operate as a direct form of communication between the mortal and the divine. It was the image of the Crucifixion that adorns the Canon of the Mass in a missal. Alas, The Hyde does not, yet, possess one of these. I take my example from a stunning missal in the collection of the Cleveland Museum of Art. The Caporali Missal is a lavishly illustrated Mass book executed for the Franciscan church of San Francesco in Montone, Italy (1469). The manuscript was used by the officiating priest at the altar during the Mass. It contained the words and prayers he had to recite. The principal illuminations were the work of Bartolomeo Caporali (ca. 1420-ca. 1505), including the Crucifixion scene that opens the section of the missal called the Canon of the Mass. These are the unchanging words at the heart of the service, when the mystery of transubstantiation takes place, and the bread and wine become, in part through the agency of the ordained priest, the body and blood of Christ. The priest who officiates thus looks upon an image of the Crucifixion as it occurs anew at the altar. The sacrifice is made afresh for the benefit of those present. In that moment of the mystery of the Mass are telescoped sacred and earthly time, the eternity of Heaven and the particular moments on earth of the historical Crucifixion, the priest’s celebration, and all performances of the Mass entrusted to the care of the universal Church.

There are two particularly important details to notice in this image. Firstly, an angle holds up a chalice to collect the blood from Christ’s side wound. This is a visual assertion of the doctrine of transubstantiation. Secondly, St. Francis, who kneels in Christ’s blood at the foot of the cross, shows the marks of the stigmata, a favor shown him for his great devotion. What friar using this missal cannot have prayed for a similar benediction?

School of Hans Memling, (Flemish, ca. 1430-94), Head of Christ, ca. 1480, oil on panel, 4 13/16 x 3 9/16 in. The Hyde Collection, Glens Falls, New York, Bequest of Charlotte Pruyn Hyde, 1971.1.

A final image of Christ in the collection to consider is The Head of Christ (ca. 1480) attributed to the School of Hans Memling. In this small devotional panel painting, Christ stares directly out of the panel. There was such a desire to know the face of the Savior in fifteenth-century northern Europe that an official portrait was created, based upon a forged text known as the Letter of Lentulus. Purportedly a report sent to the Roman Senate about Christ, it described Him as having shoulder-length hair, parted in the middle, that was the color of “unripe hazelnut,” and a forked beard. Jan Van Eyck (1390-1441) first painted this image ca. 1438 and it was repeated by Dirk Bouts (1410/20-75), Hans Memling (ca. 1430-94), and their workshops throughout the remainder of the century.