A Rose by Any Other Name...

Hans Rottenhammer, 1626
Lucas Killian

Some artists choose their names. Great artists we know today as Donatello, Botticelli, and Tintoretto, among others, all changed their names. Some artist should have change their names, such as Franz Stuck (nothing to do with Stuckism), Hendrik Gerritsz Pot, Hieronymus Grimm, Cornelis de Man, and Ernest William Christmas. And who hasn't tried to mention Jacques Lipchitz with a straight face? Some artists seem to have come straight from "Loony Tunes"--Rupeert Bunny (no relation to Bugs), Willy Finch, Janet Fish, Gonzalo Endara Crow, and Jacob Duck. (One of Donald's ancestors, perhaps?) Meanwhile, Henry Tonks, George Bellows, and Wilhelm Bendz. Added to those, are names for which one has to be certifiably Polish to pronounce: Ferdynand Ruszczyc, Witold Wojtkiewicz, Aleksander Kobzdej, and Nína Tryggvadóttir (that one is Icelandic, I think). I chuckled a bit when I came upon the name of the American artist, "Doc" Hammer, but then practically fell out of my chair when I encountered the German painter, Hans Rottenhammer. I'm sorry. I know it's impolite to make fun of other people's names, but...funny is funny.

 

Feast of the Gods, 1600, Hans Rottenhammer (painted about 13 by 18 inches)

With a name like Rottenhammer, I just had to check this guy out. It turns out he was born in Munich, around 1564. 1594 found him in Rome; and then a year later, he settle in Venice where he lived and worked for the next ten years. In Venice Rottenhammer picked up the delicate art of cabinet painting. No, that's not pictures of cabinets, nor even pictures on cabinets, but pictures small enough to go in a cabinet, which, in any case, was not a piece of furniture but a very small room hidden away for the owner's private enjoyment. Usually such works were framed oil paintings on copper plates seldom more than eighteen inches (45cm) in either dimension. These works, such as his Feast of the Gods (above) usually involved nude mythological subjects with erotic overtones. During his time in Italy, Rottenhammer seems to have been influenced by Tintoretto, Veronese, and the Bamboccianti painters (a group of Dutch/Flemish genre painters living and working in Rome).

Flight into Egypt, after 1606, Jan Brueghel and Hans Rottenhammer

Around 1606, Rottenhammer returned to Germany, settling in Augsburg, where he graduated to larger scale altarpieces and palace decoration, shaking off his Italian influences, working in a Northern Mannerist style. Later he worked with the Flemish painter, Jan Brueghel (the elder), on The Flight into Egypt (above), which, strangely, seem not to refer to the holy family from the gospels as one might expect, but to Abram in Genesis 12:4. Despite the title of the painting, the scripture mentions nothing to do with Egypt. If, on the other hand, the scene is a depiction from the Gospels, the figure of the Christ-child seems a bit too old. Hans (sometimes listed as Johann) Rottenhammer died in 1526, an impoverished alcoholic. One has to wonder if his life and career might have been different had he opted to change his name.

Don Eddy

4 VWs, 1971, Don Eddy. Car lots were a recurring theme in his early works.

Don Eddy with a work in progress,
exposing the detailed under painting,
which is the first stage in each of
his works.

Whenever I encounter really outstanding photorealism, I have the urge to present it, one painting after another, perhaps indicating titles, dates, and artists, but foregoing any peripheral information regarding the artists, the works themselves, or even the style of painting and its place in the history of art. They're just so beautiful, so fascinating, so delightful, who needs all that other crap? Partially, at least, that comes from having tried my hand at such art on numerous occasions with varying degrees of success. I've got some real clunkers along this line that I can't bear to destroy, yet I keep well hidden so neither I nor anyone else has to confront my failures. In other cases, I've featured the more successful ones in my book, Art Think (available at right).

Don Eddy and I have quite a bit in common. We're roughly the same age. He was born in 1944, I was born almost a year later. We both have similar college degrees. We both like to paint shiny stuff. And, our style in painting, at least insofar as photo realism goes, is similar. There the similarities end. He's west-coast, I'm mid-western. Eddy became a professional painter right out of college in 1970. I began teaching in 1972, painting as time permitted, selling mostly locally. Don Eddy, is nationally known with major gallery representation (Nancy Hoffman Gallery, New York). Me...not so much.

G II, 1978, Don Eddy--Photorealism to the point of abstraction.

Dreamreader's Cabinet (detail),
 1985, Don Eddy.Photorealism
begins to drift toward Surrealism.

How does Photorealism differ from Realism? The obvious answer involves the photo(s) from which the Photorealist works. Very often they are simply drawn onto canvas from a projected transparency. Don Eddy uses a grid to draw a "map" of his images on the canvas rather than use projection. Photorealism nearly always involves still-life objects, either in a natural setting like 4VWs (top), or the highly contrived arrangements seen in Eddy's mature work Dreamreader's Cabinet (right). The size of these still-lifes may vary from almost microscopic to almost telescopic, but they are usually static in nature. Realism is much broader in terms of content, if not style, including landscapes, portraits, history, and genre scenes. Photorealism at its best, unlike Realism, flirts with abstraction as seen in Eddy's G II (above) which, at first glance, appears to be by Jackson Pollock, until the mind begins to recognize and arrange Eddy's familiar objects. It is at this point the proverbial WOW factor suddenly kicks in and the viewer begins to question personal preconceptions and the fine line between what would traditionally be considered diametrically opposing styles.

Broken Dreams, 2012, Don Eddy--
moving on to Photorealistic polyptychs.

Every painting has two basic elements, the content, and the execution. With Photorealism, all to often the initial attraction may be the content, but then we're quickly drawn to the execution, upon which we linger, and in the process, completely miss what the artist may be trying to say. Very often that's just as well in that such artists are simply showing off their eye-hand coordination and manual dexterity while, in fact, they have very little to say beyond the visual impact of their work. Eddy's early work, as seen in his 4VWs from 1971, falls into this realm. Some of my own pieces are equally guilty as charged. However the fact is, Photo Realism is a powerful style. The style and content is simple, mostly straight-forward, and unintimidating. Visually, it's exciting, stunning in terms of technique, and usually fairly attractive (often quite beautiful). Yet Photorealism can also be cold, unfeeling, even dehumanizing (Richard Estes, for example). However, at its best, the style has the potential to be quite confrontational, even controversial as to any message the artist chooses to impart. Don Eddy uses Photo-Realism intelligently.



Place Bandit IV, 2009,
Don Eddy 

Outstanding artists, regardless of style or genre are moving targets. Sometimes, like Picasso, they zip around, zigzagging like lunatic loons. Don Eddy's work has evolved at a steady, reasonable pace from German "bugs" to an ambiguous, questioning mode which imposes upon the viewer questions as to meaning rather than preaching a sermon. What does the white whistle in the middle of Dreamreader's Cabinet (above, right) mean in itself and in relation to all the delicate, mirrored transparency nearly overwhelming it? What does the painting's title mean? In fact, the painting begs the question: If the viewer has to struggle to find a message (meaning) does it make that message more or less meaningful? His Broken Dreams (above, left) explores the relationship of the related to the unrelated--four single compositions, two related, coming together to form a larger entity--that which is broken giving way to the unbroken vista of new construction.

If Photorealism sometimes flirts with abstraction, it very often does far more than flirt with it's cousin, Surrealism. They climb into bed together. Surrealism all but demands a technical prowess at least equal to that of Photorealism. However, it also demands a mind capable of divorcing itself from daily reality (and Realism) in search of a deeper, subconscious reality far more difficult to convey than even he most complex portrayal of transparent glassware on glass shelves fronting a mirrored wall. Dali had that knack. Eddy's Place Bandit IV (above, right) begins with the familiar, moves down to the less-so, then befuddles the mind, predisposed to recognition by the first two images, to do so with the third image. Moreover, recognizing that image is but a prelude to recognizing it in relation to the other two. This is not the "easy" art of Photorealism, but the challenging mental gymnastics of Surrealism and abstraction.

After the Storms, 1993, Don Eddy. Is it real or is it memory?

Christoffer Wilhelm Eckersberg

Ulysses Fleeing the Cave of Polyphemus, 1812, Christoffer Wilhelm Eckersberg

Christoffer Wilhelm Eckersberg
Self-portrait, 1803, age 20.

For quite some time I've been writing intermittently about the Dutch Golden Age of painting during the 17th century. I guess it never occurred to me that other countries might have such a "Golden Age" as well. I suppose much of the 20th century might be considered the "Golden Age" of American painting while the French might claim the whole of the 19th century. Christoffer Wilhelm Eckersberg was Danish, and is said to have presided over the Danish Golden Age, the first half of the 19th century. He's also been dubbed the "Father of Danish Painting." Eckersberg taught at the Royal Danish Academy of Art and was its head for two years (1827-29) until his eyesight failed him. However, one man does not a "Golden Age" make. Eckersberg counted as his students outstanding Danish artists such as Wilhelm Bendz, Christen Købke, Martinus Rørbye, Constantin Hansen, Wilhelm Marstrand, and the sculptor, Bertel Thorvaldsen. Don't feel bad if you've never heard of any of them. Except for Bendz, I never had either.

View Through Three Northwest Arches of the Coliseum in Rome,
Storm Gathering Over the City, 1815, Christoffer Wilhelm Eckersberg.

Christoffer Wilhelm Eckersberg was born in 1783 in the Jutland area of Denmark, his father being a painter and carpenter. Growing up in one of the most picturesque areas in the world, it's not surprising that, as a child artist, young Christoffer gravitated toward landscape painting and drawing. His family was not wealthy, but many who recognized his prodigious talents were. At the age of twenty (above) he enrolled in the Danish Academy tuition free. Numerous awards and stipends enabled him to paint and study in Copenhagen for seven years. Then, around 1810, he got a girl pregnant. In what must have been something akin to the Danish version of an American "shotgun wedding," Eckersberg married the baby's mother then three days later, set sail with a friend to go paint in Germany, and eventually, Paris, Florence, and Rome. His paintings of ancient Roman ruins, such as his View Through Three Arches of the Coliseum (above), and The Marble Steps Santa Maria Aracoeli Fachada (below), are among his best landscape works. In Italy too, he also picked up a fascination for painting mythology as seen in his Ulysses Fleeing the Cave of Polyphemus (top) from 1812.

Marble Steps Santa Maria Aracoeli Fachada, Rome, ca. 1813-16,
Christoffer Wilhelm Eckersberg

Julie Eckersberg, 1817, Christoffer
Wilhelm Eckersberg, his second wife.

Eckersberg returned to Copenhagen in 1816, shortly after his divorce from his son's mother was finalized. (The boy grew up to also become an artist.) Shortly thereafter he was made a member of the Academy and subsequently began teaching there. In 1817 Eckersberg married again, Julie Juel, the daughter of one of his colleagues (left). They had two sons and four daughters before her death in 1827, at which time he married his wife's sister, Suzanne. They had several more children. Christoffer Wilhelm Eckersberg died at the age of 70 in the great cholera epidemic of 1853.

Eckersberg's painting during his academic years centered around the nude figure, often times closely bordering on the naked, even the erotic. And unlike many such academicians (particularly in France) at the time, Eckersberg seemed to have no preference as to gender, his male nudes quite as plentiful and just as graphically explicit as his females. But then, Eckersberg, all his life, had been something of a stickler for details (as can be seen in his lengthy painting titles). For example, his painting of Marble Steps Santa Maria Aracoeli Fachada (above), is surprisingly accurate as compared to the photo of the same scene today (below).

Santa Maria Aracoeli Fachada today. Except for the encroachment of the
Vittoriano Palace (museum) on the left, built in 1911, the scene is much the same as painted by Eckersberg while studying in Rome between 1813 and 1816.
(I'd sure hate to climb that many steps to church every Sunday morning.)




 

 

The Lumiere Brothers, Auguste and Louis

The first movie poster, 1895. Actually, the headline was not the
name of the movie but that of the movie camera. 

Auguste and Louis Lumiere, here
photographed in color in 1914. The
Lumiere company later became
pioneers in color film development.

Yesterday I wrote exploring the venerable ancient art of movie posters (both venerable and ancient being relative). One of the more minor exhibits was the movie poster for the Lumiere Brothers' Cinematographie Lumiere (above), said to be the first movie poster ever printed. The film itself was a group of ten short clips each 38 to 49 seconds in length. The total running time was less than five minutes. The "Feature Presentation" was a cute little comedy skit titled The Sprinkler Sprinkled (or words in French to that effect). At 49 seconds in length, it gave rise to the comment that the "coming attractions" ran longer than the feature. In fact, the whole thing was something of a publicity stunt demonstrate the Lumiere camera and projector (basically one and the same). Following their successful debut in Paris on December 28, 1895, the Lumiere Brothers took their show on the road to five major cities around the world (as far away as Bombay and Buenos Aires).

 

A recreation of the Lumiere brothers making their film debut in the basement
of Paris's Salon Indien du Grand Café, December 28, 1895.

Cinematographie Lumiere. A huge light
source attachment and some reconfiguration
turned the camera into a projector.

Lumiere in French means "light." The two brothers, Auguste (born in 1862) and Louis (born in 1864), using light, came to their movie "careers" not by accident. Their father owned a company making cameras and film, and in fact had invented the "dry plate" process, a development critical to the advancement of motion picture technology. Both boys grew up working in the family business. It was a time in the late 1800s when photographic chemistry and camera improvement were moving forward at a breakneck pace as inventors in France, England, and the United States vied with one another to be the "first" to demonstrate various improvements, one-upping one another, often by merely a matter of days. In America, names like Muybridge, Edison, and Eastman were inventing and perfecting various critical aspects of motion picture technology on virtually a daily basis. By the 1880s, Ottomar Anschutz in Germany was producing pictures that moved (as opposed to moving pictures, which usually suggests projected moving pictures). In England, Robert W. Paul and Birt Acres created the first working 35 mm movie camera early in 1895. Their first demonstration in London of what they called the Theatrograph came less than three weeks after the Lumiere's Paris showing. However only Edison was providing the Lumiere brothers much in the way of competition. His Vitascope had its premier last, in New York in April, 1896, but eventually became the industry standard in both the U.S. and abroad.

The Lumiere Cinemagraphie projector. The wooden box in front is also part of the camera.

The Lumiere Cinemagraphe camera
like that used to shoot the workers
leaving the Lumiere factory, 1895.

What was it like, opening night in Paris as the brothers Lumiere demonstrated their new motion picture technology before a paying crowd for the first time? The klieg light hadn't been invented yet. The carpet wasn't red, there were no balcony seats, and what seats there were strongly resembled folding variety. The "screen" was a bed sheet, and their much-touted projector was something of a fire hazard. (Two years later, 125 people died in a Paris theater when ether, used to fuel the projector, caused the stage curtains to catch fire.)

The film itself (click below to view a portion of it) might best be termed "uneven." The first segment of Lumiere employees leaving work is fascinating for the first fifteen seconds or so but is overlong, and repeated twice. The second segment of the men disembarking a ferry is no better except in that it's blessedly short. The charming family scene as mom and dad feed their messy offspring would be considered cutesy and trite but for the fact it had never been done before. The comedic feature presentation, Sprinkler Sprinkled, is nothing short of a film classic. The guys playing poker are ho-hum except for the chaplinesque little waiter who, in what has to be the worst case of overacting ever filmed, nonetheless steals the show. The train arriving in the La Ciotat station is said to have been the first movie scene ever shot (March, 1895). Unaccustomed to such realism, legend has it the sight of the train appearing to bear down upon them, sent those in the front rows scrambling from their seats (probably apocryphal). Otherwise, the scene at the train station in is not much more than a Paris fashion show. Perhaps most interesting from a cinematic point of view is the segment of the workers breaking down a masonry wall. The Lumiere brothers also ran it in reverse. The wall pops back up. Six other segments have been eliminated from the clip below.



So, what did the talented Lumiere brothers do with their camera/projector and their highly successful movie debut after taking their show on the road. They dropped the ball. They decided that commercial film-making had no future, and instead, turned their attention to developing color photography. In 1903 they patented a process they called "Autochrome Lumière" (used in the portrait photo at top, left). Louis Lumiere died in 1948, Auguste in 1954. Their company continued making photographic products until its merger with the British firm, Ilford, in 1990. Ilford went bankrupt in December, 2013.

The Lumiere Maison in Lyon is now home to the Institute Lumiere,
a museum housing early films and motion picture artifacts.

 

Movie Poster Art

Guess the movie.

Would you want to see this movie?

This is not about movies. It's about what makes us want to see movies. Second only to the movie's trailer (coming attraction clip) that would be all about movie posters. Have you ever seen a movie poster and instantly decided, ohh man, this I gotta see. By the same token, you've no doubt seen a few movie posters in which, one look, and your reaction is something to the effect, "never in a million years." As with movies, and virtually all art, the artist creates for a particular audience. Inasmuch as motion pictures demand a rather broad audience to be financially successful, a similar criteria applies to those posters advertising them (or perhaps, a deep attraction by a relatively narrow base in the case of a film which becomes a cult classic like Rocky Horror Picture Show). Most movie posters, unfortunately fall somewhere in between this two extremes, conveying little more than "who, what, when, and where." If they excite the emotions, all the better, but let's face it, as time progresses, not to mention movies and their posters, that keeps getting harder and harder to do. 



Remember this?

It came in two formats.

One movie poster playing off
that of a competitor.

The movie poster, perhaps more than any other art form, demands that the designer create an image so iconic that it is instantly identified with the movie. Stephen Spielberg's Jaws is an example. The poster, in this case, may have had more to do with the success of the film than any other factor. If I were to mention Rocky Horror Picture Show (left), what first comes to mind? Lips, right--male lips and lots and lots of lipstick. One of the problems in discussing movie posters as an art form is the difficulty in separating the impact of the poster from that of the film itself. Gone With The Wind (above) had a broad variety of extremely effective movie posters, but was it the movie or the poster with Rhett and Scarlett in a steamy embrace which sold the millions of tickets? There are even numerous cases when the movie's poster was far more powerful, far better art, than the movie itself. The Attack of the 50 Ft. Woman (bottom, left), from 1958, for example. What male with a single drop of testosterone in his blood could resist that concept, much less the fantastic poster selling it? The movie? Uhh...disappointing. Think what they could do with an R-rated remake today, though.



1882--the cast mattered little, the
writer and director even less.
Early movie posters were similar. 

1902--the first true movie poster
features the most important
people in any movie.

Movie posters are actually older than the movies. The first appeared in 1882 advertising a stage play titled Ranch 10 (above, left). How does that make it a movie poster? I suppose, technically, it wasn't, but it certainly was the seed from which movie posters first appeared. The first poster actually promoting a movie was probably for a 1902 French experimental film titled Cinematographe Lumiere (above, right), from the pioneering Lumiere brothers. It featured the all-important audience watching the film.

Whoa...this I gotta see!

Some movie posters might actually
discourage attendance. A 100 ft.
tarantula doesn't have quite the
same appeal as a 50 ft. woman.

 

Karel Dujardin

Allegory, 1663, Karel Dujardin
 

Karel Dujardin Self-portrait 1662

In choosing to write about any Dutch "Golden Age" painter, I'm especially critical of their lives as much as their work. I have to be, there were so damned many of them and they all were so damned good at what they did, if I'm not careful, I could end up writing about little else. I've never done a headcount of just how many Golden Age painters there were during the 17th century; and in any case, such a census would be largely meaningless because of the difficulty in drawing a line between the amateurs and the professionals (much the same as today). I've talked before about the extreme specialization which took place in Dutch art around the same time. There were dozens, maybe more than a hundred, content specialties. And likewise, there were dozens, maybe more than a hundred, different artists working in each specialty. Karel Dujardin was one of the many, his specialty being mostly landscapes, though he was versatile enough to also handle portraits and religious subjects (which, alone, causes him to stand apart from most Dutch landscape painters).

Italianate Landscape with Travelers on Horseback, 1675, Karel Dujardin

The Sick Kid, ca. 1650, Karel Dujardin.

Karel Dujardin, despite the rather French sounding name, was thoroughly Dutch, born in Amsterdam in 1622. Like every good Golden Age painter, Dujardin had a respectable, "Dutch Master" (a painting instructor, not the cigar). But, more important than who he studied under was where he studied. Early in his formative years as an artist he headed to Italy, Rome in particular, for an extended period. The French frequently did this, the Dutch...not so much. Also, near the end of his life, he spent several years in Venice, where he died in 1678. Italianate Landscape with Travelers on Horseback (above) is from his encore sojourn. In some cases, Dujardin's landscapes were, in fact, of the Dutch countryside painted in such a manner as to make them look and feel Italian. Paintings of the Dutch landscape were little more than a "guilder a dozen," while "Italian" (Italianate) landscapes were much more exotic and probably brought a higher price.

The Herding Boy, 1663, Karel Dujardin. His boy seems to be lying down on the job.

Though seemingly quite fascinating to Dujardin's local patrons, the artist's Italianate landscapes (he painted hundreds of them) seem only mildly interesting to us. His Allegory (top) sometimes called Boy Blowing Soap Bubbles was the first of his paintings to catch my eye. Though titled, Allegory, any high-minded, deeper symbolism is lost on me. What was the artist trying to say? The sea, the bubbles, the half-shell, the androgyny, the large bubble beneath his bare feet--all clues, but, pretty vague ones, at best. Could it be that any supposed allegorical element was merely an excuse to paint a cute kid having fun? Allegories tended to bring more money than genre paintings such as The Sick Kid (above, right). We've all had to deal with sick kids, right? In The Herding Boy (above) Dujardin combines his flair for genre with an Italianate landscape.

Calvary, 1661, Karel Dujardin

The Dutch art market during the Golden Age was very much like ours today. There was excess wealth, an excess of artists, free enterprise, a vibrant international economy, and an infrastructure of galleries efficiently marketing the work of these highly specialized, highly talented artists. In fact, the Dutch Golden Age art market could be said to have been the fore-running model of that which we have today. Dujardin seems to have known what would sell and catered to that content and those clients. He painted few portraits, though he could, when called upon (Amsterdam was awash in portrait painters at that time). A landscape (especially and Italianate landscape) could be "knocked out" in a matter of hours. Portraits took weeks. At the same time, Holland's Protestant Calvinists were violently against religious painting (in churches, at least) but wealthy merchants still found them worthwhile. Dujardin's Calvary (above), from 1661 is not as deeply emotional at Rembrandt's, but a competent attempt to compete in the religious art market. (His "crucifiers" seem a bit more hyperactive than most such scenes.) However, Dujardin's St. Paul Healing the Cripple at Lystra (below), painted in 1663, demonstrates the monumental Baroque influences from Dujardin's years studying in Rome. When in Rome...


St. Paul Healing the Cripple at Lystra, 1663, Karel Dujardin.
Starring in the role of St. Paul is Michelangelo's sculpture of Moses.






 

Duccio

Virgin in Majesty Altarpiece, early 14th century, Duccio di Buoninsegna

Rucellai Madonna, 1285, Duccio

How would you like to go your entire career as an artist painting only one subject? For most painters today, the answer would involve switching to paint in gallon buckets first. Some might inquire as to the nature of that subject or the sums of money involved, but for most of us such a prospect would be totally unthinkable. Though he probably wasn't the only one, that was literally the case for the Italian Early Renaissance painter, Duccio (pronounced DOOT-chee-oh). This pillar of the Sienese painting community (Siena, Italy, that is) painted only pictures of Jesus and His mother sitting on an ornate throne covered in gold leaf. Actually, that's not quite true, usually there were some angels, saints, and apostles involved too, but you get the idea. Less than twenty of his paintings survive. Most are multi-paneled (polyptych) altarpieces. Among them all, there is one crucifixion and a surrender of a castle, but all others were Madonna and Child paintings with supporting images from the life of Christ.



Virgin in Majesty (detail), ca. 1300, Duccio

Duccio di Buoninsegna was born around 1255-60. As is so often the case with artists of the Early Renaissance, little is known of his early years other than the fact he was married, probably had in the neighborhood of seven kids, and (perhaps not surprisingly, with a brood like that) also had recurring money problems. It's believed he may have studied with the Florentine painting master Cimabue (pronounced Chee-ma-BOO--ee) and probably spent time in Constantinople learning to paint like a Byzantine. This training pedigree (mostly based upon circumstantial evidence) is why his work is usually classified as Byzantine Gothic. It certainly looks that way to me. His first major surviving work (also his largest) is the Rucellai Madonna (above left) from 1285. There are only six angels surrounding this early Madonna. That number later grew to around twenty in the Virgin in Majesty altarpiece (top) probably from the first decade of the 14th century.

The Last Supper (detail), Siena Duomo Altarpiece (below), 1308, Duccio

The works of Duccio are all the more astounding in that they are not painted in oils. Imagine mixing dry pigment with what you may have had leftover on your plate from morning breakfast--egg yolk. I've never tried it, but from what I've read, the stuff may have been about the nastiest, most confounding, most cantankerous concoction ever conceived by the creative consciousness of man. Mixed with a little water, the paint dried almost the instant it was applied in thin, transparent glazes allowing for little or no blending and quite unforgiving of even the most minor errors. Any painter who could have handled that has to be admired, if for no other attribute than sheer patience.

Stories of the Passion, Siena Duomo Altarpiece, 1308-11, Duccio 

Duccio's most important commission came around 1308, an altarpiece for the Siena Cathedral, referred to now as Stories of the Passion or sometimes the Siena Duomo Altarpiece. Consisting of around 40 combined panels, the altarpiece is something like the Gospels illustrated, centered around the crucifixion. (Literacy was not a common attribute among worshipers of that era.) The quality is somewhat uneven, some quite exceptional (perhaps explaining why two panels are missing) while others range from mediocre to "what was he thinking?" The conquest of linear perspective lay decades in the future, halos were the latest fashion in apostolic headgear, and landscape details barely rise above kindergarten "lollipop" trees. Still there is a lively, fascinating, chronological narrative of Christ's ministry never before attempted in religious painting. The chart below gives some idea of the visual "flow" intended by the artist. Duccio died around 1318-19.

Stories of the Passion, Siena Duomo Altarpiece (diagram)  

Diagram and key courtesy of Olga's Gallery