Day 381 - International Gothic


 


October 22, 2024

Gallery 603 focuses on paintings in the International Gothic style.  I've heard this term before but couldn't have defined it, and I'm still not sure I can, but it seems to be characterized by backgrounds that frequently entail the lavish use of gold,  figures that are often attenuated and clothed in elegant fabrics, and a mix of fantastic and realistic elements. It's not surprising that, as the introductory signage explains, the style especially appealed to members of the aristocracy.

I'm moved by a Fra Filippo Lippi panel depicting the Madonna and child enthroned and flanked by two angels.  The work, which was originally the centerpiece of a triptych, was painted around 1440 and measures perhaps 60 inches high and 26 inches wide.  I'm not quite sure what it's doing in this gallery,  because the bodies of Mary and the bambino have a rounded solidity that the figures in most of the other paintings lack. The Madonna and child are seated on an elaborately patterned marble throne whose rounded arch echoes the arch of the frame; the angels stand at the rear of the throne and are smaller in scale, both because they are farther from the viewer and because they are of lesser importance. For me, the overwhelming mood of the painting in solemnity: the Christ child, a pudgy baby with gold ringlets, holds an open book and looks out of us unsmiling, while Mary gazes downward, perhaps already foreseeing her son's death.

In contrast, a group of four panels, each about 32 inches high and 22 inches wide, painted by Lorenzo Monaco around 1408-10, makes me smile, not least because I instantly recognize two of the figures they depict: David, shown with a psalter, and Moses, who holds a stone tablet in each hand. I need the description of the work to identify the other two "Old Testament prophets" (as the Met terms them, a designation most Jewish Bible scholars would reject, I bet).  The man who seems to be holding a model house is Noah; the house is, in fact, the ark, which takes the form of a church, the means of salvation. I think I would have gotten that the older man and young boy are Abraham and Isaac if I had seen that the flaming object in the man's right hand is a sword. But I also like the paintings because, besides being a welcome relief from Christian iconography, they are highly decorative, with their brilliant gold backgrounds and figures clothed in delicately colored robes in surprising combinations, including blue and salmon, lime green and salmon, and blue and lavender.  






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