Leda and the Swan by Heinrich Lossow

Knowing what we do of German artist Heinrich Lossow (1840-1897), it is perhaps not surprising that he would eventually tackle one of the most sexual myths of antiquity: the story of Leda and the Swan.

According to myth, Zeus seduced (or raped) Leda on the same night she slept with her husband King Tyndareus (King of Sparta).  The union bore several children, including Helen and Polydeuces, the children of Zeus, as well as Castor and Clytemnestra, the children of her husband, Tyndareus.  In some versions of the story, Leda laid two eggs from which the children were hatched.

The tale seemed to fire the Renaissance imagination.  Leonardo da Vinci (1452 – 1519) painted a picture illustrating the story – a painting which no longer exists.  (There is a copy, though, by Cesare da Sesto [1477–1523], which gives us a good idea of what it was like.)  Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475 -1564) painted it in tempera – it, too, no longer exists, though copies were made from the cartoon.  It is not beyond supposition that both of these pictures were deliberately destroyed by later generations who found the story (and its graphic depiction) wince-inducing.

The power of the story outlasted the Renaissance – W. B. Yeats (1865-1939) wrote a version of the story in verse, and the image has also been coopted by Cezanne and other Modernists.

Lossow’s painting is not going to erase any daydreams we may have of lost Leonardos or Michelangelos, but it does have points of interest.  The composition is simple, but effective.  Starting with Leda’s boots, the central figure forms an impressive S, leading all the way to the bend in the swan’s neck.  The quality of the swan’s feathers is rendered with a few deft strokes in the dark hollow of the wing, and the animal’s head is (thankfully!) mostly obscured by Leda’s throat.

Leda, for her part, is clearly enraptured by the disguised god’s attention, and it is no mistake that a blossom buds directly overhead.  Perhaps what I find most interesting is that it seems probable that the model for Leda was the same model for the monstrous, sexually rapacious Enchantress that we looked at in a previous post – even the headdress is similar.

Again, I’m not quite sure that I am entirely comfortable with Lossow’s grasp of anatomy.  Surely Leda, when standing, would have dumpy piano legs for a glamour-puss; nor am I sure where the one visible wing of the swan drops to when obscured by her leg.

But Lossow wears his erotic obsessions on his sleeve.  In addition to the profusion of blossoms, it is not too much of a stretch to liken the rolling fields of grass to pubic hair, and Leda’s outstretched right hand is not warding off her attacker, but taut with ecstasy. 

Lossow’s Leda is an easy picture to study, but a hard one to like – which, in in the final analysis, may be my ultimate summation of his entire body of work.  There is a great deal going on in much of it – but not much of it is interesting or admirable.  My initial choice to close out this look at the artist was to examine A Precarious Game in some depth (see below); but looking at it closely, I didn’t think there was anything to say about it worth saying.

My Life, By Benvenuto Cellini

Cellini's Perseus

I have just spent the past week in the remarkable – if exhausting – company of the great Renaissance artist, Benvenuto Cellini (1500-1571).  Though many of the great Renaissance masters were equally famous for writing as well as the fine arts – Leonardo with his notebooks, Michelangelo with his sonnets, Vasari with his biographies – perhaps the great literary achievement of them all was Cellini with the story of his own life.

Cellini was a master goldsmith, creating many beautiful works of jewelry and coins, as well as being quite a formidable draftsman.  But such work was often relegated to the realm of mere craftsmanship, and Cellini wished to create heroic sculptures, much like his mentor and artistic hero, Michelangelo.

Cellini would realize his ambition when he cast the heroic bronze figure Perseus with the Head of Medusa for the Duke Cosimo de Medici (see above), an undertaking that is vividly brought to life in his autobiography.  Other works – including medallions, rings and busts -- have been lost to time, mostly because of their ephemeral nature, and also because the precious metals involved were often melted down and refashioned for other purposes.

But even if Cellini’s artistic works did not survive, he would still be vividly remembered today for his autobiography, arguably one of the most important (and vivid and bawdy and violent) documents to survive that remarkable era.  There are several excellent translations, and perhaps the most poetic and decorous is that of Renaissance scholar and poet John Addington Symonds (1840-1893).  Symonds, translating for a Victorian audience, was often unable to recreate Cellini’s earthy language.  If you want all the “dirt,” I heartily recommend the translation by Peter and Julia Conaway Bondanella, available through Oxford World’s Classics.

Why has a week with Cellini left your correspondent exhausted?  Well, imagine if you would, a Renaissance artist with a taste for swordplay, court intrigue, whoring, young boys, young girls, street brawling, litigation, illegitimate children, attempted homicide, and endless self-aggrandizing.  Think of a murderous Errol Flynn on speed, and you get the idea.  If he were alive today, he’d be the darling of the New York art scene.

Cellini’s story also has a curious circular quality – he will find the protection of an important patron (the Pope, the French King, a Medici), do everything he could to make himself impossible, and then end up once again on the run.  He never seemed to learn from his past mistakes, and always portrayed himself as a victim.  Here is a taste of Cellini, courtesy of the Bondanella translation:

I had no sooner dismounted when one of those fine people who take delight in uncovering evil came to tell me that Pagolo Micceri had taken a house for that little whore of a Caterina [his former girlfriend]and her mother, that he went there continually, and that in speaking about me he always said, with scorn: “Benvenuto set the geese to guard the lettuce, and he thought I wouldn’t eat it; it’s enough that he now goes around acting brave and believing that I’m afraid of him:  I have strapped on this sword and this dagger by my side to give him to understand that my sword cuts too, and that I’m a Florentine just like him, from the Micceri family, a much better family than his Cellinis.”  The scoundrel who brought me this story told it so effectively that I immediately felt a fever coming on – and I mean a real fever, not a figure of speech.  And since I might have died from such a bestial passion, I found a remedy by giving it the outlet such an opportunity had afforded me, just as I wished.  I told my worker from Ferrara, who was called Chioccia, to come with me, and I had my horse brought behind me by the servant, and when I reached the house where this spiteful man was living, I found the door half-closed and went inside.  I saw that he had his sword and dagger by his side, and that he was sitting on a chest with his arm around Caterina’s neck.  I had hardly arrived when I heard him joking with her mother about my affairs.  I pushed in the door, and at the same time I put my hand to my sword and placed its point at his throat, not giving him time even to think about the fact that he had a sword too, and all at once I said: “Vile coward, commend yourself to God, for you are a dead man!”  Paralyzed, he cried out three times: “Oh, Mother, help me!”  I wanted to murder him no matter what, but when I heard his silly cries half of my anger left me.  Meanwhile, I had told my workman Chioccia not to allow either Caterina or her mother to leave, for once I had attended to him, I wanted to do equal harm to these two whores.

No wonder Oscar Wilde found the rough men of the Wild West enamored of Cellini’s exploits.   Cellini inspired a wonderful book by Alexandre Dumas, pere, an opera by Berlioz, movies and plays.  But he also stands as an important reminder that the hand that crafts beautiful things is not always connected to a noble heart, and that the most gifted artist can also be the most loathsome human being. 

The Angel Prevents the Sacrifice of Isaac by Rembrandt van Rijn (c. 1635)

Yesterday we looked at how Dutch artist Jan Lievens envisioned the Biblical story of God’s edict to Abraham to murder his own son, Isaac, as a sign of his devotion.  Lievens was a contemporary (and sometime studio partner) of Rembrandt van Rijn, who also painted his own version of the story.  Unlike Lievens, who painted the scene after Abraham spared Isaac and killed a ram instead, Rembrandt, like Caravaggio before him, chose the more dramatic moment of the story when the angel appears and stops Abraham in his murderous intent.

Rembrandt (1606 – 1669), of course, is one of the world’s most famous and celebrated painters.  His is one of the few names (like Leonardo and Michelangelo) that have become shorthand for “artist.”  His revolutionary use of light and color, in addition to the sensitivity with which he portrayed the human condition, were combined with a supreme sense of composition and narrative.  He is truly one of the great masters.

Rembrandt was born into a middle class family; he showed an early aptitude for art and studied first with Jacob van Swanenburgh, and later (alongside Jan Lievens) with Pieter Lastman.  Lastman was deeply impressed by Caravaggio’s use of light and color, and it’s probable that Lastman held up the Italian Renaissance master as a model to his students.  (Caravaggio himself painted a deeply disturbing version of the Abraham and Isaac story.)

Rembrandt became one of history’s most celebrated portrait painters.  He married Saskia van Uylenburg in 1634 and her father, an art dealer, was able to secure a great deal of work for his son-in-law.  The couple lived and worked in the Breestraat, a busy street on the boarder of the Jewish neighborhood.  Rembrandt studied many of the faces he saw there, and this study stood him in good stead for his masterful pictures depicting Old Testament figures.  Rembrandt created more than 300 Biblical works, including drawings and etchings. 

Despite his success, Rembrandt was never very competent when it came to financial affairs.  He lived way beyond his means, using much of his money to buy art and antiquities.  He sold much of his collection to avoid bankruptcy in 1656 including Roman busts, Japanese armor and his collections of minerals and gems.  The art establishment, always out to get him, represented by the painters guild actually created a rule that artists in Rembrandt’s financial position could not trade as painters.   Rembrandt was forced to move into a smaller house and he died in dire financial straits.

The Angel Prevents the Sacrifice of Isaac was painted around 1635 and, as is usually the case with Rembrandt, he finds the decisive, dramatic moment of the story to illustrate with his brush.

Rembrandt was much the same age as Lievens when he painted his version of Abraham and Isaac.  And though both men are great masters in their own right, I think that the Rembrandt is by far the superior picture of the two.  Both artists focus on Isaac, but where Lievens pinpoints the ambiguity of the boy’s emotions, Rembrandt details his lily white youth and supple boyhood.  Indeed, the bleached white of Isaac’s torso shows that the heavenly light is not on Abraham, but on Isaac.

Nor is Isaac any willing murder victim; like Caravaggio’s possible self-portrait in the same role, this is an Isaac who is clearly being abused by his father.  Abraham’s hand covers the boy’s face and mouth – he cannot cry out, nor can he breathe.  His hands are tied behind his back, but his body and legs twist and squirm in terror. 

It is curious, too, that Rembrandt’s Isaac, like Caravaggio’s, is nude or mostly nude.  This curious fetishizing of Isaac links the work of these two masters, and will also be in evidence tomorrow when we look at Titian.

Where Caravaggio paints Abraham as an emotional blank, though, Rembrandt creates a very different picture of the prophet.  Here, Abraham is clearly a confused old duffer, dropping his knife in surprise at the arrival of the angel.  There is no sense of purpose, as with Caravaggio, or perhaps continued malign intent, as with Lievens, but, rather, simply infirmity and, possibly, dementia.  One wonders how the old man managed to subdue the boy in the first place.

Also interesting is the angel.  It appears here that the angel arrives in the proverbial nick of time – and the look on its face seems to indicate more than a touch of disapproval of the entire incident.  (What, it seems to ask, are you crazy…?)

I would draw your attention to the hands of both Abraham and the angel – they seem, to me, curiously deliberate.  The hand smothering Isaac is quite massive, and the hand that held the knife seems quite powerful indeed – hardly the hands belonging to so old a man as Abraham.  The angel’s hand clutching Abraham’s wrist also seems powerfully delineated, with dark patches between fingers, while the hand heavenward seems curiously feminine and small. 

As is often the case with this story, one wonders what happens once the angel drifts heavenward.  Isaac is already tied and lying on what would be his funeral pyre.  The ram that will be killed in his stead is nowhere in evidence – so we have to ask, how does one move from this moment of supreme drama and religious mania back to normalcy?

Oscar Wilde: Detective!

Yesterday we looked at Built of Books: How Reading Defined the Life of Oscar Wilde, one of the most original and fascinating biographies of Oscar Wilde in years.  But … fiction writers have also pursued the shade of our favorite Victorian aesthete.  Have they fared as well as biographer Thomas Wright?

In short, no.  There is no shortage of novels that “star” or feature Oscar Wilde, and too many of them are hardly worth the time and effort necessary to read them.  Here are some to avoid.

Writer Gyles Brandreth has his own cottage industry of Oscar Wilde mysteries, with four already on bookshelves and more on the way.  They are (as of this writing): Oscar Wilde and a Death of No Importance, Oscar Wilde and a Game Called Murder, Oscar Wilde and the Dead Man’s Smile and, of course, Oscar Wilde and the Vampire Murders.  These books have the fairly original conceit of being “narrated” by Robert Sherard, a real-life poet and man of letters who wrote several volumes of reminiscence regarding his friendship with Wilde.  Various other luminaries of the period make appearances in the books, including Dracula author Bram Stoker, actress Sarah Bernhardt and, naturally, Sherlock Holmes creator Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

There has been an enormous vogue for mixing historical figures and detective fiction ever since Nicholas Meyer wrote of Sigmund Freud and Sherlock Holmes in his 1974 novel The Seven Percent Solution.  The Freud-Holmes novel is actually a very strong one, presenting a fresh look at two fascinating personalities, one actual the other fictional.  The downside of the book has been its long-ranging influence.  We have now been treated to a crime-busting Teddy Roosevelt, Leonardo da Vinci as detective, the poet Longfellow solving crimes, even, believe it or not, the sleuthing team of Edgar Allen Poe and Davy Crockett.  Conan Doyle and magician Harry Houdini has been paired together in so many novels, I’m sure their ghosts have taken up housekeeping.  I keep waiting for a mystery solved by LBJ’s dog.

It’s not the Brandreth’s Wilde mysteries are bad … they are often entertaining trifles.  But his concept of Wilde is in keeping with your secretary’s monthly book club: velvet jackets, a few tired epigrams and a touch of twee charm.  In addition, the frequent collaboration in these books between Doyle and Wilde rings false – they may have inhabited the same historic space, but they lived in different worlds.

Moving from the ridiculous to the more serious, we have Desmond Hall’s I Give You Oscar Wilde.  This biographical-novel is told from the point of view of one of Wilde’s acquaintances, and hits all the highs and lows of Wilde’s life.  It commits the one unpardonable sin when writing about Wilde: it’s dull.

Perhaps the most egregious offender in the Wilde-in-fiction sweepstakes is author Louis Edwards for his book, Oscar Wilde Discovers America.  Edwards writes of Wilde’s American lecture tour and his real-life valet, an African-American named Traquair.  Of course, the two become fast-friends (Wilde calls his manservant Tra) and when the young son-of-slaves is not whispering epigrams into the great man’s ear, he is opening him up to the possibilities of life.  At one point, deep under Tra’s influence, Wilde even predicts the advent of jazz.  (I swear I’m not making this up.)  Yes – you guessed it – Oscar Wilde Discovers America is The Help dressed with a green carnation.  And, like Kathryn Stockett’s novel, Edwards’ book is alternately tedious and ridiculous.

Others have used Wilde as a fictional character – and more successfully.  We’ll be looking at some of those books in future weeks.

A Fake Leonardo at the National Gallery?

While my readers are well aware that most of the nonsense, hogwash and jiggery-pokery in the arts today largely revolves around Modernism, Post-Modernist theory and the art ‘business,’ there is sometimes a refreshing bit of unmitigated bleat to liven things up for those of us genuinely interested in the fine arts.  I refer, of course, to the upcoming show at London’s National Gallery (November 11- February 5) featuring their recently discovered painting of Christ by Leonardo.

Let’s take a moment first to think of Leonardo da Vinci, one of the greatest minds of the Italian Renaissance.  Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci (1452-1519) was an illegitimate child who grew up to be a painter, sculptor, architect, inventor, scientist, musician, engineer, mathematician – indeed, simply listing his many accomplishments can make lesser men feel woefully inadequate, so I’ll stop here. 

Because da Vinci was both a perfectionist and a tireless tinkerer, not many of his artistic achievements survive to the present day.  His experimental methods sometimes led to the ruination of his own works soon after completion, or, as is more often the case, he seldom moved beyond conception because of technical difficulties or simple lack of follow-through.  His mind was too filled with ideas – for improving our understanding of anatomy, or creating a new varnish or devising a new weapon of war, whatever – for him to have been completely successful at anything.  Indeed, Leonardo was the kind of guy who dreamed of how to finish a project before he had even begun it.

Though there are several hundred surviving pages from Leonardo’s notebooks – including designs, random notes, quick sketches and his shopping lists – there are very few finished Leonardo paintings, and even there some doubt remains on attribution.  So when the National Gallery promised to unleash the lost Leonardo, Salvator Mundi (Savior of the World),the art world took notice.

Perhaps the most depressing facet of this entire debacle has been how willing Dr. Nicholas Penny, Director of the National Gallery, has been to trash his own reputation and his hard-earned expertise.  Dr. Penny was the previous Clore Curator of Renaissance Painting at the National Gallery, with a doctorate from the Courtauld Institute.  He was also an Andrew W. Mellon Professor at the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts.

But it seems that anyone with the necessary £16 ticket fee is as much of an expert as Dr. Penny.  Here is what Dr. Penny said in an October 9 London Times interview comparing Salvator Mundi to The Lady with the Ermine and the Mona Lisa:

They respond, but hold something back. You can’t think about them except in relationship to the viewer. They imply a narrative of which you are a part. That was not true of portraiture before Leonardo. The Salvator Mundi radiates intense presence. But because it’s Leonardo you do wonder if you’re going mad–and you certainly want people whose opinions you respect to look at it.  People can judge for themselves.

Perhaps that radiated presence was something in the ventilation system, for here we have a man who has seriously devoted his life to art and art history, saying to the world that an uninformed opinion is as good as an informed one.  Only in this Post Modernist World, where arguments that are “faith based” hold as much water as those built upon science, experience and knowledge, could such a distinguished scholar so debase himself.

Is it a real Leonardo?  (No … I’m not going to say judge for yourself.)  I do not have the real expertise necessary to make a determination like that, nor have I physically seen the picture.  But, as long as Dr. Penny invites us to make a judgment, let’s open that door and walk right through it.

The face of the Salvator Mundi Christ seems to be familiar to those of us who have looked at Leonardos because of the eyes, which seem both sleepy and knowing, and have that quality of ‘mystery.’  However, I find it extraordinarily unlikely that Leonardo would paint Christ against so dark and empty a background.  Look at Leonardo’s Virgin of the Rocks or Mona Lisa or even the unfinished St. Jerome, and you’ll see that he was a great believer in some kind of misted background that perhaps commented on the foreground figures.  (Yes, Lady With an Ermine is also against a neutral background, but she is the ringer.)

Also, just what is that in His hand?  A crystal globe?  We know Leonardo was interested in optics, but if he were making some kind of in-joke, wouldn't it perhaps be a little more clear?

Also – I have two perfectly good eyes, and have been using them for many, many years.  No ‘radiated presence’ comes through my optic nerve (whatever the hell a radiated presence may be), and I certainly don’t feel as if I am in contact with an interesting and profound mind, as I do with other of Leonardo’s works.

I also have a perfectly good nose – and it detects the faint, sweet odor of horse puckey.  The National Gallery’s show, Leonardo da Vinci: Painter at the Court of Milan, is a huge, expensive undertaking for the museum.  It is only natural (too natural!) to want to up the ante a bit with news of a possible new Leonardo.  The ‘discovery’ of this ‘lost’ masterpiece has created considerable coverage for them (evidence: this column) and it shows no signs of stopping.  If you are in London sometime in the next two months and have a spare £16, take a look and feel the radiated presence.  And then, you to, my son, can be an art expert.