Day 246 - 17th Century History Painting
May 3, 2021
As I was working on my Reflections entry, I realized that something was amiss with my gallery numbering. Sure enough, it turns out that I had missed gallery 621 - peered in and then forgot about it. The gallery, as I learned today, centers on Baroque "history painting." The term, as I should have known but didn't, refers to depictions of scenes from the Bible and from classical mythology. Considered the highest form of painting, it was pretty much closed to women, Artemisia Gentileschi being a notable exception.
The two paintings I've chosen for today are similar in their emphasis on gesture and movement, but also different from each other. The first is the well-known and enormous - perhaps 13 feet long and 9 feet high - wolf and fox hunt painted by Peter Paul Rubens and his workshop in oil on canvas around 1616. Ironically, it's not a history painting at all, but it possesses the grandeur and sweep of the genre. At the right of the composition, a lord and his lady, attired in elegant clothing (she wears a plumed hat, he a satiny green jacket) and mounted on rearing horses dispassionately observe the hunt taking place before and beneath them. As a huntsman blows a hunting horn, his rosy cheeks puffed outward, his fellows (I suppose they're the lord's servants) raise lances and swords against the wild beasts, while a hunting dog lunges at a wolf's thigh. The beasts' mouths are open in aggression (or is it terror?), revealing sharp fangs. With the exception of the straight, outstretched weapons, all is contortion and curvature and swirl. The only still point is a fox, in the lower lefthand corner, who seems immobilized as he looks out at two dogs. According to the caption, previous large hunting scenes were either models for or copies of tapestries; apparently this painting, a less expensive art form, was made for a burgher's large home. Would I want such an accomplished but violent scene in my home? I can't imagine it.
The second painting is a "Rape of the Sabines" painted by Nicolas Poussin around 1633. Measuring about 8 feet wide and 5 feet high, it also depicts a tangle of swirling bodies, with several of the women lifting their arms toward the lowering sky in a graceful gesture of desperation or despair. All this motion contrasts with two elements of stillness and stability. The first is the backdrop of columned and colonnaded ancient Roman buildings straight out of Poussin's imagination (although one building in the mid-distance looks like the Castel Sant'Angelo, already in ruins). The second is the figure of Romulus, clad in a red cloak in the upper lefthand corner, who has just given the order to attack and now stands surveying the mayhem; in contrast to the upward diagonal of the women's arms, his own arm points downward. In marked contrast to the free brushwork in the Rubens painting, what impresses here is the careful brushwork that outlines and defines every fold in the garments, every muscle in the men's calves and dimple in the women's elbows, and every curl on the heads of the infants who have presumably fallen to the ground from their mothers' arms.
The two paintings I've chosen for today are similar in their emphasis on gesture and movement, but also different from each other. The first is the well-known and enormous - perhaps 13 feet long and 9 feet high - wolf and fox hunt painted by Peter Paul Rubens and his workshop in oil on canvas around 1616. Ironically, it's not a history painting at all, but it possesses the grandeur and sweep of the genre. At the right of the composition, a lord and his lady, attired in elegant clothing (she wears a plumed hat, he a satiny green jacket) and mounted on rearing horses dispassionately observe the hunt taking place before and beneath them. As a huntsman blows a hunting horn, his rosy cheeks puffed outward, his fellows (I suppose they're the lord's servants) raise lances and swords against the wild beasts, while a hunting dog lunges at a wolf's thigh. The beasts' mouths are open in aggression (or is it terror?), revealing sharp fangs. With the exception of the straight, outstretched weapons, all is contortion and curvature and swirl. The only still point is a fox, in the lower lefthand corner, who seems immobilized as he looks out at two dogs. According to the caption, previous large hunting scenes were either models for or copies of tapestries; apparently this painting, a less expensive art form, was made for a burgher's large home. Would I want such an accomplished but violent scene in my home? I can't imagine it.
The second painting is a "Rape of the Sabines" painted by Nicolas Poussin around 1633. Measuring about 8 feet wide and 5 feet high, it also depicts a tangle of swirling bodies, with several of the women lifting their arms toward the lowering sky in a graceful gesture of desperation or despair. All this motion contrasts with two elements of stillness and stability. The first is the backdrop of columned and colonnaded ancient Roman buildings straight out of Poussin's imagination (although one building in the mid-distance looks like the Castel Sant'Angelo, already in ruins). The second is the figure of Romulus, clad in a red cloak in the upper lefthand corner, who has just given the order to attack and now stands surveying the mayhem; in contrast to the upward diagonal of the women's arms, his own arm points downward. In marked contrast to the free brushwork in the Rubens painting, what impresses here is the careful brushwork that outlines and defines every fold in the garments, every muscle in the men's calves and dimple in the women's elbows, and every curl on the heads of the infants who have presumably fallen to the ground from their mothers' arms.
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