Renaissance Cushions

A couple of years ago I got super excited because Emily Gilmore had a Raphael cushion, and now it turns out Monica Geller has a Leonardo one. Watching re-runs is pretty much educational.

Sistine Chapel

A photograph I took of the Sistine Chapel Ceiling in Rome a few years ago; Michelangelo's masterpiece is now 500 years old!

Here is an article from BBC News about the artwork.

Sistine Chapel ceiling at 500: The Vatican's dilemma

Alan Johnston, BBC News, Rome

31 October 2012

The Vatican has indicated for the first time that it might eventually need to consider limiting the number of visitors to the Sistine Chapel, 500 years after its completion.

Michelangelo's famous frescoes have been described as one of the world's supreme sights. In scene after scene, some of the Old Testament's most powerful stories unfold. And at the centre of this vast work is one of the best known images in Western art; the depiction of God reaching out to touch Adam into life.

But for some, the room has become a victim of its own fame and magnificence. They say it just attracts far too many tourists. Twenty-thousand visitors pour through the Chapel's doors every day; more than five million a year. And the Italian literary critic, Pietro Citati, recently launched a searing attack on the Vatican authorities for allowing in such huge numbers. Writing in the pages of Corriere della Sera newspaper he went as far as to describe the crowding on an average visit as an "unimaginable disaster". "In the universal confusion no-one saw anything," he wrote. And speaking to the BBC he reinforced his criticism. "The Sistine Chapel was full of people - a huge crowd, packed tightly together... and they were all breathing! There was this dense 'human-ness'! Human sweat. It was horrendous." Mr Citati said that this endless, rising, humid "wall of human breath" could be damaging for the priceless frescoes above.

Responding to this kind of criticism, the director of the Vatican Museums, Antonio Paolucci, acknowledged that there was a "serious problem". He said that the whole doctrine of the Catholic Church was set out in the images in the Sistine Chapel, and that he wanted everyone who visited to be able to appreciate that symbolic system. But Mr Paolucci accepted that that was not easy to do when the room is packed. "It becomes noisy, people are confused, bewildered - it's hard to understand." he said. "Too many people make it uncomfortable... and it also creates a problem for the conservation of the frescoes." Mr Paolucci said plans to improve the ventilation and counter the threat from humidity in the Chapel would be unveiled soon.

But he also said that, ultimately, steps might have to be taken to restrict the numbers allowed in. "We may get to that point - if necessary - a so-called 'limited number' of visitors," Mr Paolucci said. "But so far we've tried to avoid this because the Sistine Chapel for those who visit the Vatican is not only a place of art but also a spiritual, religious place."'A living death'

There is an argument that it should be made as easy as possible for any pilgrim coming to Rome to see this room that has such a significant place in the Catholic world. The Sistine Chapel is also a papal conclave where the College of Cardinals meets to elect a new Pope And just a matter of weeks ago, in a newspaper article, Mr Paolucci said it would be as "unthinkable" to limit access to the Sistine Chapel as it would be to limit access to the famous shrine at Lourdes.

But the critic, Mr Citati takes a darker view, arguing that it is all about money. The Church makes a significant amount out of visitors to the Chapel and the other delights of the Vatican Museums. Everybody in the long queues in St Peter's Square is paying more than 15 euros (£12.50) for a ticket. But it is possible though to avoid the masses if you can spare close to 220 euros for a private tour. Each involves about 10 people who are allowed into the Chapel outside the standard opening hours. Mr Citati is not the first person to take issue with the number of visitors being allowed into the Chapel. Writing shortly before his recent death, the art critic Robert Hughes recalled reading of the German writer, Goethe, visiting the Chapel 200 years ago. Back then the Sistine was "a place where one could be alone, or nearly so, with the products of genius," Hughes wrote. "The very idea seems absurd, today; a fantasy. Mass tourism has turned what was a contemplative pleasure for Goethe's contemporaries into an ordeal more like a degrading rugby scrum." He said that painting was a silent art, that deserved silence from those who came to view it.

But these days the Sistine Chapel is filled with the sound of its murmuring mass of visitors. And it is hard to ignore the conversations around you. "Can you imagine someone painting this... with a brush!" an American tourist exclaimed to his companions on a recent visit. Then they discussed what Michelangelo would have been paid. And soon afterwards they were laughing out loud, thoroughly enjoying themselves but prompting an angry security man to come stalking over, glaring at them, and "shushing". It was the sort of exchange that drains the place of the spiritual intensity that Michelangelo wanted to give it.

Robert Hughes said the modern atmosphere in the Sistine represented "a kind of living death for high culture" at the hands of mass culture. And with its talk now of the possibility of eventually limiting numbers, perhaps the Vatican is beginning to feel the same way.

Commissioned by Pope Julius II, Michelangelo began work in July 1508, and the ceiling was unveiled on 1 November 1512. Michelangelo accepted the commission unwillingly at first as he considered himself to be a sculptor rather than a painter. The Sistine ceiling was the first, but not the last fresco Michelangelo undertook. The central ceiling vault depicts nine scenes from the Book of Genesis: three of the Creation, three the fall of Adam and Eve and three of the story of Noah. The Sistine Chapel was named for Pope Sixtus IV, the uncle of Pope Julius II. Michelangelo later said: "After four tortured years, more than 400 over life-size figures, I felt as old and as weary as Jeremiah. I was only 37, yet friends did not recognise the old man I had become."

Ecce Homo

Ecce Homo recorded in three different states of condition; the original by Elias Garcia Martinez, the deteriorated version, and the 'restored' version by Cecilia Gimenez.

Cecilia Gimenez, a woman in her 80's, has made a simultaneously horrifying and hilarious 'restoration' of a fresco depicting Christ. The painting, titled Ecce Homo (Behold the Man) was painted in 1910 by Elias Garcia Martinez in the Sanctuary of Mercy Church, Borja, Spain, for over 100 years.

Gimenez began her unauthorised 'restoration' because she was upset at its moisture-inflicted deterioration, claiming to have had the permission of the priest. It is unsure what will happen next, art historians will meet and decide the fate of the fresco. The new version looks like a cross between Emil Nolde and Redon, with a dash of Munch, and some Tomie de Paola thrown in too.

Stendhal Syndrome

When visiting Italy in 2009, there were so many beautiful and incredible sights; it seemed that everywhere I turned was something else to wonder over. But one thing in particular moved me to the point of tears; Primavera by Botticelli. I had just finished studying an art history paper on the Italian Renaissance, and to be given the opportunity to see such an intricately detailed painting in real-life was overwhelming. I still remember standing in front of the painting for what must have been at least twenty minutes; just looking at each delicately painted flower, each perfect brush-mark. I was overcome with a strange sense of enchantment, and I don't know if it was purely obsession and wonder, or a touch of Stendhal Syndrome; a condition I did not read about until after I had returned home.

Stendhal was a French writer who adopted a German name and lived in Italy. The condition of 'Stendhal Syndrome' was named after him by Dr. Graziella Magherini, an Italian psychiatrist in 1979. Stendhal had visited Florence in 1817, and had described his first experience of the city in his book Naples and Florence: A Journey from Milan to Reggio:

'I was ecstatic with the idea that I was in Florence, close to the masters whose tombs I had seen. Deep in the contemplation of sublime beauty, I reached the point where we experience heavenly sensations. As I emerged from the porch of Santa Croce, I was seized with a fierce palpitation of the heart (that same symptom which, in Berlin, is referred to as an attack of the nerves); the well-spring of life was dried up within me, and I walked in constant fear of falling to the ground.'

Magherini realized many others felt the hastened heart-beat, nausea, dizziness, fainting, and sometimes even hallucinations, when overwhelmed by the intensity of Florence and its art, especially that of the Uffizi. The term describes a psychosomatic illness when one experiences beautiful or vast amounts of art in one place. Before the term had been coined, there had already been many descriptions and writings that revealed visitors to the city from the early 19th Century onward had experienced the same symptoms.

Magherini had worked at Santa Maria Nuova hospital in Florence for almost twenty years when she noticed a certain group of her patients shared particular pathological sensations. Many tourists who had come to the visually and culturally rich city had been overcome by strange and sudden psychosomatic episodes, triggered by their viewing of art; particularly that of the Renaissance. Dr. Graziella Magherini is interviewed by Maria Barnas, an artist and writer, in the August/September 2008 edition of Metropolism Magazine, and the following quotes come from this interview.

'Maria Barnas: How can the serene art of the Renaissance be a catalyst for the Stendhal Syndrome?

Graziella Magherini: Renaissance art is anything but serene. It just seems that way, with its beautiful forms. Florentine and Italian Renaissance art is incredible. Beneath these splendid forms are extremely powerful nuclei of communication, which can cause conflicts and disturbances in the psyche of the sensitive observer. This is why Renaissance art is so striking. It is often a detail that does it, as in Botticelli’s Spring or The Birth of Venus. Have you noticed the wind, the motion of the sea? These details allow you to understand how many disturbing elements underlie this beautiful form.

Maria Barnas: Can contemporary art have the same effect?

Graziella Magherini: An important aspect of the degree to which people can become confused by looking at art is a feeling of being completely overwhelmed. The Stendhal Syndrome occurs most frequently in Florence, because we have the greatest concentration of Renaissance art in the world. People seldom see just a single work, but overload themselves with hundreds of masterpieces in a short period. Renaissance art appeals to everyone, even those who know little about it. This is very different for modern, conceptual art. There are very few people who understand the message, because they do not know the code. Once they understand the code, a disturbance could theoretically occur and the message might be capable of striking something deep in the observer, but I have not yet seen it happen.’

In her book La sindrome di Stendhal, Magherini recounts many stories of patients who had succumbed to the illness, and writes extensively on the effects of artwork on the psyche.

'Kamil, whose last name I won’t mention, is the most memorable. We still keep in touch occasionally. He was from Prague, a student at the art academy. He had spent many days in Florence and each day, the emotions he experienced accumulated, seeing as he was very sensitive. He had visited Santa Croce, the Duomo and, of course, the Uffizi. On one of his last days in Florence, he visited the Chiesa del Carmine, with the Masaccio frescoes. He began to feel uncomfortable, was afraid he would faint. He felt like he was suffocating. He had to leave the church and lay down on the church steps. He was able to collect himself only when he managed to imagine himself at home, in his bed in Prague.

All these new emotions had made him lose his sense of identity. It was as if he were falling apart. When he came to me, he was no longer able to speak. It took months of careful therapy before he was again able to formulate his first new sentences. Stendhal had described a similar experience. When he became unwell at the Sibile di Volterrano, he too had to get away from the church. He went to Piazza Santa Croce and lay down on a bench. He managed to recover when he got a book of poems by Ugo Foscolo from his pocket and read what the poet had written about his own emotions at the church of Santa Croce.'

According to the doctor, when one feels a particular personal connection to art, in the case of Stendhal Syndrome patients, there is witnessed an overwhelming sense of the sublime. Through the research into individual cases, Magherini established there to be a relationship between art and repressed experiences of the viewer, which came to the fore when witnessing the art. This causes the viewer to feel distressed and shocked; resulting in the symptoms.

'There is a recently defined law governing the transformation of strong, uncontrollable emotion into symbols, or thought. When people are able to perform these transformations, they feel better, they can ‘free’ themselves. Psychoanalysts call this ‘mentalization’. To have a thought, it is necessary to begin from an emotion. Through this transformation in the mind, a strong emotion is turned into a symbol. Symbols are the building blocks of thought. Symbols are placed together, a thought is formed and thinking begins. This is what children do. A child’s emotional experiences are transformed, and he is able to think and speak. We have new thoughts all through life and can always make these transformations of feelings and strong perceptions. Affection, love and hate are transformed into symbols. A collection of symbols becomes a thought and a collection of thoughts can lead to reasoning, ultimately to philosophy and mathematics. However there is a hidden danger in this process, which should be a continuum. Sometimes emotions do not complete this transformation to surface as an idea, a thought. I have found from working with my patients that art can play a key role in this. A work of art may be able to pick up these past emotions and become their symbolic container.'

I discovered the concept of Stendhal Syndrome a few years ago, just after I had visited Florence, but have only just come across this interview ten minutes ago, and find it fascinating that Magherini mentions Botticelli's Primavera in particular. It seems like I was not alone in what I felt when viewing that painting. Psychology, and especially the psychology of art, is so interesting. I wish I had more papers left to do for my degree; as well as continuing to learn Italian, I would love the opportunity to take some psychology and philosophy papers. There are just so many exciting things to be learnt.

Veduta del Ponte e Castello Sant'Angelo

Veduta del Ponte e Castello Sant'Angelo

Piranesi

Eloquent Chronicles

'The contrast between Leonardo and Michelangelo is an allegory of the arts of modern times. Leonardo left copious notes of his observations on nature and the world around him, but little about his feelings or his inner life. Michelangelo, in his letters, his poetry, in biographies by his friends and students Vasari and Condivi, in conversations with Francisco de Hollanda and others, left us vivid revelations and eloquent chronicles of himself. Leonardo, the self-styled 'disciple of experience', was a hero of the effort to re-create the world from the shapes and forms and sensations out there. But Michelangelo, prophet of the sovereign self, found mysterious resources within. These two greatest figures of Italian Renaissance art dramatized a modern movement from craftsman to artist. If Leonardo could be called the Aristotle - practical-minded organizer and surveyor of experience - Michelangelo would be the Plato, seeker after the perfect idea.'

from The Creators by Daniel J. Boorstin

La belle jardinière

When I first saw this episode of the Gilmore Girls, I was so excited to see that Emily Gilmore had a Raphael cushion that I had to go back and screenshot it.

La belle jardinière

Raphael, 1507

Oil on panel, 122 x 80 cm

Musée du Louvre, Paris

La belle jardinière, also known as Madonna and Child with St. John the Baptist, was painted by Raffaelo Sanzio da Urbino, more famously known as Raphael, under commission by the Sienese patrician, Fabrizio Sergardi. Raphael's works depict a soft modelling of forms and figures with a graceful piety, and it is evident that he was influenced by the chiaroscuro techniques of Leonardo. Raphael painted many scenes of the Madonna and Child, but this one is among the most famous.

Modigliani

Woman in Yellow Jacket (The Amazon)

Modigliani, 1909

Oil on canvas, 92 x 65 cm, Private Collection

Portrait of Jeanne Hébuterne

Modigliani, 1919

Oil on canvas, 55 x 38 cm, Private Collection

Today I bought the Modigliani book by Doris Krystof, published by Taschen, who produce some of the best art history books available. About a year ago, I watched the Modigliani film and although the filmmakers had taken great liberties with the storyline of his life, they provided me with a fresh take of his artwork. I had seen his paintings over and over again in art history books, but never really paid them much attention or studied them closely. Now, Portrait of Jeanne Hébuterne is one of my favourite portraits to have ever been painted. Modigliani's strong use of line and flattened forms hint at a 'primitive' or ancient tribal artform, with  a calm beauty in the simplicity of the mask-like faces. His own personal life, however, was tragic.

Amadeo Clemente Modigliani was born in Livorno, Italia, but lived most of his adult life in Paris, France. It was here in France that Modigliani quickly began to descend into alcoholism, drug-use, and womanizing. He produced many works, but most have not survived his destruction of them, his losing of them when moving, or his gifting of them to girlfriends. He began an affair with Jeanne Hébuterne, an artist in her own right, of whom he famously made many portraits. They had a daughter, and she was expecting their second when Modigliani's tuberculosis and atrocious lifestyle finally caught up with him, dying at the age of thirty-five. Hébuterne was distraught, and the day after his death, she threw herself out of a fifth-storey window, killing both herself and her unborn child. She was only twenty-one. Modigliani and Hébuterne's orphaned daughter was sent to her aunt in Firenze, Italia, but as a child she knew nothing of her parents; it was not until she was older that she began to research their lives and wrote a biography of her father.

Primavera

Primavera

Botticelli, c. 1482

Tempera on panel, 203 x 314 cm, Galleria degli Uffizi, Firenze

Seeing this painting in real life made me cry. Maybe it was Stendhal Syndrome or maybe it was just bewilderment at the beauty and perfection of the artwork. After seeing it printed and reproduced on the internet, in books and calendars, I was overwhelmed by the richness of the colour and the precise modelling of form and figures.  Certainly nothing I had ever seen before had been so ethereal yet bold at the same time. The scale of the work and its sheer beauty created such grandeur that, upon entering the room in the Galleria degli Uffizi, it demanded attention. Also known as Allegory of Spring, the floral detailing is elaborate, with close to two hundred species being depicted. The origin of the work has been debated by art historians for many years, some claiming it was commissioned by Lorenzo de Medici, others say it was by his cousin Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco de Medici; with varying reasons among them, including the celebration of a birth and a wedding. Botticelli was inspired by poems written by Ovid, Poliziano, and Lucretius. The artwork showcases the clarity, grace, and fluid harmony of the artist's technique and style. Primavera continues to be one of the most important paintings in the world, the mystery and depth of its subject never fully understood.