Giorgione

Giorgione (probable) Self-portrait

In preparation for our trip to Venice, Italy, in June, I've been brushing up on my Venetian art. Besides the Bellini father and sons, whom I'll deal with closer to the time we leave, and Titian, whom I covered ages ago (07-12-11), the artist, Giorgione (AKA Giorgio Barbarelli da Castelfranco), keeps cropping up. If you're familiar with the paintings bearing these three signatures, you'll have a fairly good understanding of what makes Venetian art Venetian, and what makes it distinctly different from Florentine art and that of the half-dozen or so other schools of the Italian Renaissance. In short, we're talking about the use of subdued color and a kind of misty, sfumato (smoky) quality seen in Giorgione's work, but also in that of Leonardo, Titian, and others, as opposed to the strong chiaroscuro of Michelangelo's paintings, for example. There's more to it than that, but that'll do for now.

Laura, 1506, Giorgione

Giorgione was born some thirty miles inland from Venice in the small town of Castelfranco around 1477. As is quite often the case when talented young artists arise from the hinterlands, little is known about Giorgione's childhood, only that he apprenticed with the Bellinis, probably starting around the age of twelve, according to the custom of the time. He and Titian (who was slightly younger) studied together under Bellini tutelage and became lifelong friends. Titian even completed several of Giorgione's unfinished paintings after the artist's untimely death from the plague around 1510 at the age of thirty-three. His painting, Laura, dating from 1506 is typical of Giorgione's portraits and might be considered something like a bare breasted Mona Lisa (painted roughly around the same time).

Castelfranco Madonna, 1504-05, Giorgione.

Giorgione is probably best known for his The Tempest of 1508 (11-22-12) or his Sleeping Venus from 1510 (05-08-11), but an earlier altarpiece for his hometown church, the Castelfranco Madonna (left) ,completed around 1505 is also worth studying. In it Giorgione depicts an enthroned mother and child with a surprisingly realistic landscape background and a triangular compositional arrangement with St. Francis on the right while the armored figure on the left is either the dragon slayer, St. George, or St. Liberalis (patron saint of Castelfranco). In any case, the work is light, bright, and quite an innovation for Venetian painting. The somewhat "rolling" appearance of the floor tile in the foreground would seem to indicate a novice artist not altogether comfortable with the relatively new science of linear perspective of the time.

Adoration of the Shepherds, 1505, Giorgione

Giorgione's The Adoration of the Shepherds (above) from around the same time, is an interesting primer in contrasting Venetian painting with that of Florence. Here we see the landscape painted somewhat stylized, the figures of the shepherds quite vividly, while the holy family is softly rendered and more Venetian in character. The cave, rather than the traditional stable is probably quite accurate, however the absence of the manger, leaving the baby lying on the ground seems strange and unnatural. Giorgione's Three Philosophers (bottom) from around 1507-09 stands apart from traditional Venetian painting in that it is neither religious nor a portrait, but seemingly Giorgione's painting for his own satisfaction, yet it too has its peculiarities, including the largely empty left third of the work and the unaccountably small head of the figure on the far right. As an artist who has struggled with both perspective and anatomy at various times in my work, it's comforting to know that great artists of the past have done likewise.

The Three Philosophers, 1507-09, Giorgione. One wonders if he considered cropping
it on the left and right, then retitling it, "The Two Philosophers." Of course there may be something to be said for philosophers (regardless of the size of their heads) contemplating and discussing the dark unknown.

Ravenna, Italy

Ravenna, Italy's Piazza del Popolo, so Italian you can almost smell the Ciechetti.

When you mention Ravenna, Italy, the famous Byzantine mosaics of San Vitale and Sant' Apollinare Nuovo come to mind. Okay, in truth, the most common reaction in mentioning Ravenna is a blank stare. Most people, indeed, I dare say most artists even, have never heard of the place. That's no reflection upon the city, which is a quite lovely locale just down the eastern coast of the Italian boot from Venice. The blank stare comes from the fact that Ravenna represents a period in history, and art history in particular, that is woefully ignored or at best, underappreciated. From the fall of the western Roman empire in 480 AD, to the Renaissance a thousand years later, there exists an enormous blind spot commonly referred to as the "dark ages" (with good cause, in that people are "in the dark" regarding this era) but more accurately termed the Medieval period.

Ravenna's San Vitale apse.

Ravenna once replaced Rome as the capital of the western Roman empire (briefly, 402-476) and again was the seat of the Byzantine empire in Italy from 550 to 761. It was during this latter period the city acquired its standing in the history of art with its spectacular mosaics housed in notably unspectacular Medieval architecture. Two major basilica churches dominate the list of surviving structures from this era along with a couple baptisteries, and a couple mausoleums. And, as mentioned from the top, apart from their extensive mosaics, these architectural artifacts would be unimpressive, indeed, fairly unimportant. I won't deal further with the history of Ravenna as it is mind-bogglingly complex, reflecting the ethnic, religious, and military conflicts in the vacuum left by the fall of the Roman Empire. Thus, it's little wonder few people know (or care) anything about this period.



Sant' Apollinare Nuovo mosaics, a sort of "who's who" of the Theodoric court.
(The curve is an optical distortion required by the narrowness of the nave.)

Sant' Apollinare Nuovo is the larger and arguably more important of the two basilicas. It's actually located in Classe, a suburb of Ravenna. The church was once the palace chapel of Ostrogoth King Theodoric the Great (471-526). The church was dedicated to Apollinaris, said to have been a disciple of the apostle, Peter. Theodoric also constructed a cathedral, a baptistery, and his own mausoleum, all of which feature slightly less impressive mosaics (this was before frescoes became popular).

Ravenna's San Vitale. Notice the slope down to the entrance, indicating how much the
structure has subsided in the past 1500 years.

San Vitale dates from roughly the same period as Sant' Apollinare Nuovo, though it was built by the Bishop Ecclesius in 527 so it's slightly older and slightly less impressive both architecturally and mosaically. However, as one of the few surviving examples of early Christian church design, its importance in the history of architecture cannot be overstated. San Vitale also contains what may be the most impressive examples of mosaic portraiture in the world, that of the Byzantine Emperor Justinian I and his court along with the Bishop Maximian (labeled just above his head) and generals from the Palatinae Guard (below, left). On a panel opposite the emperor is a mosaic depicting the Empress Theodora (below, right).
 

San Vitale's mosaic of the court
of the Byzantine Emperor, Justinian I.

And on a nearby panel,
his lovely wife, Theodora.

Kahlil Gibran

Khalil Gibran Self-portrait, 1911

As I've noted many times, creative urges find many outlets. Some write, some paint, some carve, some design, some compose. In rare cases, a single artist may be involved in two or more of these endeavors, sometimes with fairly equal talent displayed in each. Michelangelo painted and carved marble, but he also wrote sonnets. Leonardo painted, invented, wrote scientific treatises, and designed parade floats. Picasso painted, sculpted, wrote plays, designed theatrical sets, and displayed numerous other creative talents. It's difficult to say whether Kahlil Gibran was a poet who painted or a painter who...is there such a word as poeted? (My spell checker thinks not.) 



A self-portrait in words.

If you came of age in the 1960s, you've undoubtedly heard of his book, perhaps even read, The Prophet. Originally published in 1923; it has been translated into 40 languages; it's in its 163rd printing, having never been out of print, in fact; and has sold over one-hundred million copies. Even today the book sells 5,000 copies per week. In the heady world of poetry, only Shakespeare and the Chinese poet, Lao-Tzu have sold more. I'm no poet and have never been one to read much poetry, so I'm not going to pretend to know much about poetry or Kahlil Gibran's brand of prosaic poetry. I do know something about art so I'll limit myself to his painting.

Divine World, Kahlil Gibran

Actually, Gibran took up painting before writing (I started to say poeting). Born in 1883 in what is today, northern Lebanon (then under Ottoman control). His mother was the daughter of a Catholic priest (rare, but it happens), his father her third husband. Born into deep poverty, what little schooling he got came at the hands of other priests who taught him the Bible and Arabic and Syriac languages. His father was something of a political scoundrel, in and out of prison on a regular basis for embezzlement to pay off gambling debts. In 1895 his mother brought Kahlil, his brother, and sisters to the U.S., settling in Boston's South End Lebanese community where she worked at various forms of menial labor, a single mother providing for her family. It was in Boston, at the age of twelve, that Kahlil learned English and first studied art. There too, he came to know various avant-garde writers, photographers, and publishers, one of whom used some of his drawings to illustrate book covers.

Portrait of the Artist's Mother, Kahlil Gibran

Fearing he was becoming too "Americanized," Kamila Gibran sent her fifteen-year-old son back to Lebanon to absorb his own, native culture. There, in Beirut, Kahlil completed his education, returning to Boston in 1902 shortly before his brother and sister died of tuberculosis followed by his mother's death from cancer a short time later. In Boston, in 1904, Gibran first displayed his art. It was during this exhibition he met and fell in love with a school headmistress some ten years his senior. They had a discrete affair and twice he proposed to her. Twice she turned him down, though they continued their friendship the rest of their lives. Rejected, and to relieve his sister of the burden of supporting him, Kahlil journeyed off to Paris to once more study art. There, for the next two years, Kahlil also began writing in Arabic. His first book of poetry, The Madman, was published in English in 1918. The Prophet followed in 1923 while Garden of the Prophet was published after his death in 1931. He was 48.

He-She, H.C. Berann. The painting is sometimes
labeled, Lovers, and a few other titles as well.

Kahlil Gibran's art is very much like his poetry, visually rich, somewhat erotic, philosophical, and deeply imbued with a metaphysical sense of life now, and in the hereafter. It deals in large part with love, marriage, children, and giving. There's also the expression of sensual joy, sorrow, friendship, good and evil, prayer, pleasure, beauty, religion, and death. The Prophet devotes a chapter to each of these eternal elements. In reading his work, one has the feeling Gibran sought to say in words that which his art could not. His words below from The Prophet, regarding love bear this out:

When love beckons to you follow him,
Though his ways are hard and steep.
And when his wings enfold you yield to him,
Though the sword hidden among his pinions may wound you.
And when he speaks to you believe in him, though as dreams garden. For even as love crowns you so shall he crucify you.
Even as he is for your growth so is he for your pruning.
Even as he ascends to your height and caresses your tenderest branches that quiver in the sun,
So shall he descend to your roots and shake them in their clinging to the earth.
Like sheaves of corn he gathers you unto himself.
He threshes you to make you naked.
He sifts you to free you from your husks.
He grinds you to whiteness.
He kneads you until you are pliant;
And then he assigns you to his sacred fire,
All these things shall love do unto you that you may know the secrets of your heart, and in that knowledge become a fragment of Life's heart.
But if in your fear you would seek only love's peace and love's pleasure,
Then it is better for you that you cover your nakedness and pass out of love's threshing-floor,
Into the seasonless world where you shall laugh, but not all of your laughter, and weep, but not all of your tears.
Love gives naught but itself and takes naught but from itself.
Love possesses not nor would it be possessed; for love is sufficient unto love.
When you love you should not say, "God is in my heart," but rather, I am in the heart of God."
And think not you can direct the course of love, if it finds you worthy, directs your course.
Love has no other desire but to fulfill itself.
But if you love and must needs have desires, let these be your desires:
To melt and be like a running brook that sings its melody to the night.
To know the pain of too much tenderness.
To be wounded by your own understanding of love;
And to bleed willingly and joyfully.
To wake at dawn with a winged heart and give thanks for another day of loving;
To rest at the noon hour and meditate love's ecstasy;
To return home at eventide with gratitude;
And then to sleep with a prayer for the beloved in your heart and a song of praise upon your lips.

Graham Forsythe

Graham Forsythe on location

One of the lines I often used in teaching young people to paint, and to do so safely among pointed pencils, brush handles, palette knives, and the like, was: "Be careful with that, there's not much demand for blind artists." Indeed, art supplies can be dangerous. But the point I'm intent upon making here is the latter part of the quotation. Being an artist, most people would agree, presupposes that the individual can see. However art history is full of aging artists who continued to work long after their eyesight had largely failed them. Much more uncommon are those whose eyesight failed them from birth. One such artist is Graham Forsythe.

Voile de Montogne,
Graham Forsythe

For all intents and purposes, Graham Forsythe was born blind--1952, in a small town in Northern Ireland. What little vision he had was barely sufficient to allow him to move about unaided, mostly blurry, black and white shadows. At the age of six, Graham's family moved to the Toronto area of Canada where, from the time he was ten, the young boy worked at various jobs from harvesting potatoes to caddying at Toronto's exclusive Hunts Club. Despite his handicap, Graham worked his way through college, graduating in 1974 as a political science major. Often the physically handicapped and those who are visually impaired retreat into their own small, carefully contrived world where they engage in activities and occupations which lend themselves to whatever skills they've acquired reflecting their strengths rather than their limitations.

Safe Harbor, Graham Forsythe

That was not the case with Graham Forsythe. He decided to become a world traveler, working for periods of various length across Canada, the U.S., as well as Australia, and New Zealand. He worked as a logger, a commercial fisherman, and a farm hand, before returning to Toronto to open his own business as a paver. Around the same time, his creative urges got the better of him, whereupon he began to write mystery stories (his father was a homicide detective). Then, in 1970, at the age of 38, Forsythe became aware of a risky operation that might cure his visual impairment...or leave him with no vision whatsoever. Ever the adventurer, he took the risk. The operation was successful. He could see clearly for the first time in his life.


Somewhere I've heard the quotation, "No one appreciates beauty more than one who has never known it." Overwhelmed by the beauty he could never see, Graham Forsythe began to paint. Largely self-taught, Forsythe gravitated toward the landscape, painting nature, especially trees--lots and lots of trees. Woodland scenes almost completely dominate his work. And unlike the old saying, in Forsythe's case you can see the forest for the trees. There is the occasional abstract, the rare figure rendering, also still-lifes, fishing boats, beach scenes, and seascapes, but the vast majority of Forsythe's work reflects his wanderlust and his infatuation with the woodlands, all painted with a slightly soft focus reminiscent of his previous vision and his struggle to overcome it.


Forsythe is fond of the triptych, which here stands up quite nicely to the bright color competition of its environment.

Fra Bartolemeo

Fra Bartolomeo Self-portrait 

Yesterday I wrote of the plight of writers in dealing with personages having the same or similar last names. There's also a flipside to that, dealing with subjects who have gone by more than one name. For example, there's the Italian Renaissance painter Bartolomeo di Pagholo, who also went by the name Baccio della Porta, and is best known as Fra Bartolomeo. The man was born in a small town near Florence in 1472, coming of age around the beginning of the high Renaissance, and having the great good fortune to study with some of the best painters of the previous generation. He lived and working amid the likes of Leonardo, Botticelli, Perugino, Raphael (who taught him perspective) and Michelangelo (who refused to teach anyone anything). Young Baccio studied with one of the best of his time, Cosimo Rosselli. By the time he was twenty Baccio della Porta was collaborating with fellow student, Mariotto Albertinelli, a protégé of Florence's ruling Medici family. They shared a studio.



Girolamo Savonarla, 1498,
Fra Bartolomeo

The 1490s were a lively time in Florence for artists, writers, and those dealing with the vanities of the humanities. In that context, it's difficult to overstate the impact of another man young Baccio knew well, Girolamo Savonarola. Savonarola was not an artist--far from it, in fact. One might even call him an anti-artist who believed that the only virtue art possessed was in illustrating the Bible for the illiterate masses. Savonarola was what we might call today a "fire and brimstone" preacher. For better or worse (one might argue), the young Baccio della Porta was attracted to the fiery evangelist's social teachings and preachings, which was a precarious pursuit for a young artist attempting to establish himself in the effete social realm of Renaissance Florence at that time. Savonarola started a religious revolution. The Medici family was expelled from Florence, a republic took their place for a time, and the so-called "bonfires of the vanities" reigned, in which millions of dollars worth of great art, books, and other valuable "vanities" were literally burned in the streets. However, by 1498, it was Savonarola, himself (along with two followers) who was burning in the streets after a run in with Pope Alexander VI (the infamous Rodrigo Borgia).

Vision of St. Bernard, 1504-07, Fra Bartolomeo

Fortunately, our impressionable young artist was too insignificant to rate his own bonfire, but that did not mean his association with the late, great, Savonarola didn't have a profound effect on the rest of his life. It was at this point Baccio della Porta swore off painting, laying aside his brushes to become Fra Bartolomeo, joining Savonarola's followers, the Piagnoni, and later becoming a Dominican friar. From 1500 to 1504 the young friar devoted himself exclusively to things of God. Then having been made the head of the monastery workshop, at the behest of his superior, he began work on The Vision of St. Bernard. It was during this time Raphael taught him perspective while the good father taught the younger Raphael the use of color and how to paint drapery.



Pieta, 1516, Fra Bartolomeo

Friar or not, Bartolomeo's fame spread. He was called to Rome, leaving behind two unfinished paintings for Raphael to finish. By 1508 he was in Venice working on three paintings for the Dominicans of San Pietro Martire, who apparently expected freebies from one of their own. Unpaid, Fra Bartolemeo, instead took his paintings with him when he moved on to the small town of Lucca. For the remainder of his life, ever the devoted servant of the church, Fra Bartolemeo painted wherever he was called and whatever he was called upon to do, completing as many as a dozen major works, before his death in 1517.

St. Mark Evangelist, ca. 1516, Fra Bartolomeo, copy by Anton Domenico Gabbiani.
(The original of his work by Fra Bartolomeo, considered his best work, is associated
with the Pitti Palace in Florence, but may, in fact, be lost as no images of it other than copies seem to be available.)

 

Augustus Earle

Solitude, Augustus Earle Self-portrait, 1824--marooned with his dog.

One of the pitfalls of writing is that in doing the necessary research you often run into similar individuals with similar or identical names. At times I've found myself deleting entire paragraphs when it became apparent I was writing about two different individuals. That happened to me yesterday as I was researching the rapscallion portrait painter Ralph Earl. I stumbled upon his younger contemporary, Augustus Earle (with an "e"). Augustus Earle was born in 1793, about the same time Ralph Earl left London to go back to America with his second wife. Given Ralph Earl's penchant for philandering, perhaps they were father and son, which is another tricky research element common in families where the art gene runs strong and sons followed in their fathers' footsteps.

Life on the Ocean, ca. 1815, Augustus Earle
--not just the local color, but the endless days at sea.

Like old Ralph, Augustus Earle was an itinerant artists, though definitely a cut above. His travels took him all over the world as resident artist on any number of British discovery expeditions. Like Ralph Earl, Augusts' father was an American, who added the "e" at the end of his name (perhaps to avoid confusion with Ralph Earl). There any similarities, real or imagined, end. The "art gene" ran deep in the Earle family going back several generations and Augustus was anything but an untrained artist. He trained at the Royal Academy and was exhibiting there at the tender age of thirteen. By the time he was twenty-two, he was hitching a ride aboard a Royal Navy ship (captained by his older brother) on a voyage traveling the Mediterranean. He visited and painted Gibraltar, Sicily, Malta, and North Africa returning with an impressive portfolio, which turned out to be his ticket for an extended voyage to South America, across the South Atlantic and South Indian Ocean to New South Wales (New Zealand). From there he visited India and a number of exotic South Pacific locales before returning to England in 1830.

Punishing Negroes at Calabouco, 1822, Augustus Earle

Earle's lengthy around-the-world cruise also took him to New York and Philadelphia (where he exhibited a couple pieces) as well as Rio de Janeiro, Chile, Peru and Australia. The man painted pictures like tourists today snap them. He spent three whole years in Brazil where his paintings brought to light the tortured treatment of South American slaves (above). Later he visited islands no other artist had ever seen before. On one of them, Tristan da Cunha, in the South Atlantic, he found himself marooned for some eight months (top). He made the best of it however, painting until his supplies ran out and then tutoring the children of the island's six inhabitants.

Portrait of a Bungaree Native, 1826,
Augustus Earle

In Australia Earle found himself in demand as a society portrait painter, though his natural curiosity led him inland, both there and in New Zealand, where he also painted the natives (right). Upon returning to England, all this earned him the once in a lifetime opportunity in 1832 to travel with Charles Darwin as topographical artist aboard the Beagle. However Earle's one shot at greatness was not to be. His health forced him to return to England long before Darwin ever saw Galapagos. Augustus Earle died in 1838 at the age of 45.

Ralph Earl

Ralph Earl Self-portrait, probably
around 1770, the pose as strange
as the man himself, not to mention
his crudely rendered anatomy.

Sometimes I run across a relatively minor art personage with such an intriguing, (sometimes outrageous) story I can't resist writing about them. That's the case with the colonial era painter Ralph Earl. The man was born in 1751 in Massachusetts (there's some question as to exactly where in Massachusetts, but that's of little consequence). By 1774 he was working the state from town to town as an untrained itinerant portrait painter (and a rather poor one at that), the type I referred to a few days ago as a "limner." He also painted farms, the occasional sign, and decorated various household items as the market would allow. That same year he married his cousin, Sarah Gates. It's likely he got her pregnant before they were married, but in any case, shortly thereafter he left her with her parents in Leicester to take up residence in New Haven, Connecticut.

The British Army in Concord, 1775, Ralph Earl. Notice the British
officers in the foreground cemetery (burying their dead?)

Portrait of Roger Sherman, 1775,
Ralph Earl, probably his most
famous portrait was done before he
went to England to learn how to paint.

Once the American Revolution began, Earl made a quick trip to Lexington and Concord where, collaborating with an engraver, he painted battle scenes such as the one above, which were turned into pro-revolutionist propaganda prints. Strangely, though his father was a Revolutionary War colonel, the son was a loyalist. As the war got hotter (especially for loyalists) Earl disguised himself as the servant of a British army captain and took the boat to London for the duration. Though leaving behind a wife and daughter, it was probably a smart move on two levels. First, it took him far away from the shooting, and second, in London, he was able to study with another American expatriate, the famous Grand Manner painter, Benjamin West. There he picked up a few painting tips, eventually rendering a portrait of the King of England and several other British notables (especially their wives). He was apparently a fast learner, his work in England bearing no resemblance whatsoever to his self-portrait (top).

Ann Whiteside, 1784, Ralph Earl,
a portrait of the second wife.

Despite having a wife and daughter patiently waiting back across the sea, Ralph Earl married an attractive British lady named Ann Whiteside (left). "If you can't be with the one you love, love the one your with," except that around 1785, once the war was over, the jackass brought his new (second) wife back to the newly independent United States. Though he managed to get portrait commissions from several notable notables at the time, within a year he was within prison walls--not for bigamy, but for non-payment of debts. Even there he painted, apparently sufficient to get himself out a year later. There's no indication his two wives ever got together but, he was moderately successful from then on as one of the better New England portrait painters of his time. He died in 1801 of alcoholism, (brought on, perhaps, by one too many wives?)