The Sacrifice of Isaac, Franz Anton Maulbertsch

To Your Correspondent, it’s one of the most inexplicable passages in the Old Testament.  In order to assure himself of Abraham’s devotion, God orders him to kill his son, Isaac.  And … Abraham agrees. 

In Genesis 22, you will find the tale of how God had Abraham take Isaac up to the land of Moriah (a great distance away), separate the boy from the bearers and others that travelled with them, and then had the poor boy cut and carry wood for his own sacrifice.

Abraham readies the alter and wood, only to then bind Isaac and place him upon the pyre.  He is about to stab the boy to fulfill God’s command when God sends an angel to stop him.  God provides a ram, stuck in the nearby bushes, as a substitute, and one assumes that they went home, with Isaac never to turn his back on his father or trust him again for an instant.

It is stories like this that make Your Correspondent, a product of 13 years of private Catholic schooling, wonder if anyone reads this stuff critically.  The Biblical point here is that Abraham, after luring his son away from witnesses and making the poor boy carry the wood for his own funeral pyre, is viewed heroically because he valued God’s word more than he did the life of his own son.  The religious reading of the story puts a smiley face on an act of stupefying barbarism.  It’s an act of religious obligation counter to common sense, ethics and even fundamental morality.  This is the kind of thinking that leads to jihadism, suicide bombings, and the murder of abortion providers, much less countenancing child abuse.

We have looked at a number of brilliant depictions of this fable in the past, and to that list we must add that of Franz Anton Maulbertsch (1724-1796), currently in the Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest, Hungary.

Looking at Maulbertsch’s work, one marvels at his ability to tell a story vertically.  For much of his work, the story sweeps up and down, rather than across.  Maulbertsch packs a great deal of drama in this picture, mostly communicated through composition and coloration.  Indeed, though Maulbertsch was a capable painter, his true genius lie in color and composition.  Weaknesses in drawing and painting are more than compensated for by his use of both to drive the narrative.  He has an artistic point of view – something that some more technically skilled painters lack, leaving their work sterile or unmoving.

The painting swoops from lower left (the angel’s wings and Isaac’s wonderfully lit legs), though the body of the boy and leading up to Abraham’s face, the light reflected on his helmet, and his upraised knife.  In that bottom to top arc, we have the entire story of the near sacrifice, told with impressive narrative thrust and significant drama.

No one would accuse Maulbertsch of delicacy when rendering the human face; indeed, many of his faces are indistinct or only adequately drawn.  Look, however, at Abraham’s face, which is very striking indeed.  Shown only in half light, this is the look of religious mania at its worst – the satisfaction evident on his face is consistent with people who have gone blood simple, and relish the act of murder.

Another reading is, of course, that Abraham’s face is lustful.  Time and again in depictions of Abraham and Isaac from artists as diverse as Caravaggio, Rembrandt and Titian, we have seen something in the myth that seems to inspire dark contemplations of parental abuse, sexual and otherwise.  All of these painters have fetishized Isaac to some degree, and Maulbertsch is no different.  Note the radiant, heavenly light specifically highlighting his muscular legs and flat stomach, focusing its spotlight on his private parts.  Discreetly covered by the torn fragments of his robe, there is no mistaking that the focal point of the painting is Isaac’s groin. Indeed, if the eye flows up in a straight line, Abraham’s knife is directly over Isaac’s genitals.

Though rendered without “fussiness” or fine detail, Maulbertsch’s take on the Abraham/Isaac myth has an almost Mannerist monumentality and epic feel.  It is not my favorite painting of the myth, but it may be one of the most idiosyncratic.

The Taking of Christ, by Caravaggio (1602)

We are closing the week (and marking Good Friday) with this stunning picture by Caravaggio, The Taking of Christ, commissioned by nobleman Ciraco Mattei in 1602, and currently found in the National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin.

Born Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio (1571-1610), Caravaggio was the original ‘bad boy’ of art.  His remarkable body of work, with its heightened drama and use of differing levels of dark paint, created the bridge between the High Renaissance and the Baroque school of painting.

There is a compelling quality of Caravaggio’s art that makes him entirely modern.  He took his models for saints and angels from the Italian streets; he was a painter of the people, dressing the most heightened figures of religious myth in the clothes of the everyday, so that the public would recognize themselves on a spiritual plane.

His intense focus on human interaction also isolates him from his High Renaissance brethren – never one to be fussy or painterly in his effects, he shines the hot light of focus on the interplay between dramatically lit figures and ignores backgrounds.

Caravaggio studied in Milan under a master who had trained with Titian.  He moved to Rome while still a young man in his 20s and quickly set up a reputation as a painter of considerable skill.  He also established his reputation as a wild man – drinking, brawling and having a string of affairs with young boys.  He killed a man in 1606 during an argument, and fled Rome with a price on his head.  He was involved in serious fights in 1608 and 1609 (in Malta and Naples, respectively), and died at 38 from a fever in Porto Ercole, near Grosseto in Tuscany, while on his way to Rome to receive a pardon.  (Even then, it paid to have friends in official places.)

The stunning The Taking of Christ presents seven figures: John, Jesus, Judas, three soldiers and Peter, holding a lantern (from left to right).  We cannot fully see their bodies, but clearly Judas has just kissed Jesus as a means to betray him to the soldiers.  As with much of Caravaggio's work, the background is dark and indistinct, drawing complete attention to the human drama.  Also, the light source is unclear – it would seem to come from the upper left, though the lantern light does not seem to be significant.  St. Peter holds the lamp; he also betrayed Christ, and spent the remainder of his life repenting and spreading his gospel to the world.

Let’s contrast the two figures at opposite ends of the painting.  St. Peter, holding the lamp, is said to be a self-portrait of Caravaggio.  The man running away (his cloak held by a restraining soldier) is said to be St. John.  If Peter is indeed a self-portrait of the artist, what is Caravaggio trying to tell us?  That he, a sinner (and what a sinner!), is better equipped to shed light on the divine than a saint?  That his clear vision is aligned with that of God Himself?

Equally striking is the stark, white light on the foreheads of Christ, Judas and Peter.   There are two lines on Christ’s brow, but the forehead of Judas is a network of lines.  Peter, in contrast, is nearly clear-browed.  Even in these little details, Caravaggio speaks to us from across the centuries.  The lines on Christ’s head clearly indicate suffering, or, perhaps, the full realization of the suffering to come.  The clear-head of St. Peter is clearly the clear-head of the artist; he sees and records, but does not necessarily judge.

But Judas – his forehead is a complex pattern of lines, befitting one of the most complex figures in New Testament mythology.  Judas is key to the story of Christ, because without the him, there is no crucifixion, and no resurrection.  There is an argument to be made that Judas was the most courageous of all the apostles, for he willingly took on the role of betrayer to ensure the death and resurrection of Christ, making the entire Christian tradition possible.  If that is the case, then Judas is indeed the most misunderstood figure in the Christian mythos.

Even more interesting, look at the hands in this picture.  The soldier restraining Christ wears a gauntlet and is invisible; the hands of the solider holding St. John’s cloak are in shadow (probably by Caravaggio using a glaze of burnt umber or some other transparent brown paint) – so we can eliminate those hands.  But, look at the hands of St. Peter, St. John, Judas and Christ.  Compositionally, good pictures ‘read,’ drawing the eye in a consistent pattern.  We follow Peter’s hand to John’s, down to the hand of Judas, and finally to those of Christ.  According to myth, Christ was praying when identified by Judas, and his clasped hands look as if they are already under police restraint.  Not only do these hands help the ‘flow’ of the viewer’s eye, but notice that the hands of Peter, John and Judas indicate one direction, while those of Christ indicate another.  This going against the tidal flow of humanity also helps underscore the look on pain on the face of Jesus.

Finally, let’s look at the dramatic, white-hot reflection off of the soldier’s armor that runs through the center of the picture.  The face of that solider is undefined in the picture, but the reflected bar of light is fully depicted.  There are some scholars who believe that Caravaggio’s intention is to replicate a mirror, and that those gazing at the solider should feel as if they are gazing into a mirror, seeing their own faces.  It is a compelling argument, as the biggest patch of reflection is dead-center in the picture.

Whatever the interpretation, though, this is a stunning picture rewarding prolonged examination.  There is something mysterious, uncanny even, in Caravaggio’s best work, and this picture is no exception.  I don’t think I have fully exhausted everything it has to say.

(More on Caravaggio’s works can be found on this blog on links to the right.)

Saint Michael, by Luca Giordano (1663)

We return to our look at some of the work by one of history’s most prolific painters, Luca Giordano (1634-1705). 

During his 10 year period in Spain (1692-1702), Giordano carried out major decorative commissions in Madrid, Toledo and the Escorial.  He grew to greatly admire the Spanish painter Velázquez, and painted A Homage to Velázquez (circa 1692, now in the National Gallery London).  Giordano had an incredible ability to mimic the work of other artists, and for some time his Homage was attributed to Velázquez himself.  Indeed, after a trip to Venice he painted an Annunciation (now in the collection at the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art) in the manner of Titian, and Giordano’s ability as a mimic are clearly apparent.

Giordano was an incredibly active painter, prolific until the end of his life, and is currently credited with some 2000 paintings.  As such, some are quite wonderful and others, less so.  One of the great challenges with prolific genius is to separate the great from the near-great from the best-left-forgotten.

Giordano painted St. Michael several times.  One depiction, dating roughly to 1660-65, clearly owes its inspiration to the painter Raphael; and while that is certainly a beautiful picture (showing a profound understanding of the color blue), I much prefer the one here, from 1663, as it owes its greatest debt to Giordano’s first master and mentor, the painter Ribera.

St. Michael, along with Gabriel and Raphael, is one of only three angels liturgically venerated by the Church.  He appears twice in the Old Testament as a helper to the early Christian peoples; he appears twice in the New Testament, once first arguing Satan over Moses’ body, and again when he and his angels fought Satan and his dragons and hurled him and his followers from heaven. 

He appears repeatedly in apocryphal literature and was regarded by the early Church as the captain of the heavenly host, the protector of Christians against the devil (especially at the time of death, when the soul is most vulnerable), and the leader of Christian armies against the heathen. 

The cult of St. Michael started in Phrygia, but soon spread to the West, where it gained traction when it was recorded that Michael appeared at Mt. Garganus during the rein of Pope Gelasius.  He is always depicted with a sword or lance, and often standing over conquered devils and dragons.  He is the ultimate conception of the warrior angel in all his glamor and strength, valor and might.

Like much of Ribera’s work, there are hints of the dark, brooding genius of Caravaggio, as well as the influence of Spanish and Venetian masters.  The work is heavily reliant on the dramatic use of shadow, and a moody sense of coloration.  The picture is both … unsettling and startling; despite the heroic visitation of Michael, the overall image is somewhat horrific.

The triumphant Michael is perhaps somewhat fleshy and feminine to the contemporary eye, but the manly torso and powerful legs indicate the strength of a warrior of Christ.  The golden tresses of the angel, along with the girlish face perhaps still owe something to Raphael, as do the draping of his cape behind him. 

Curious about the cape: its pinkish color reflecting the lights of Hell seems as if the brighter, pinker side should be on the viewer’s right, rather than the left.  Also odd, too, is that on Michael’s left hip (or on the right side, to the viewer) the dragon-headed hilt of a sword is clearly visible, but the corresponding blade seems no where in evidence behind the angel.

No, the real triumphs here are the wonderfully bestial devils and the hellish landscape.  The fingers of our devils taper into wonderfully pointy fingernails, and the eyes register as dead black.  Also wonderful is the devil’s cavernous mouth, which seems genuinely otherworldly with its snake-like note of two teeth visible at the bottom.  His leathery, bat-like wings are in marked contrast to the feathery white clouds provided for Michael.  Curiously, the spear of St. Michael pieces the side of the devil almost exactly where the Roman spear pierced the side of the dying Christ.

The background has a sulfuric quality; one could almost choke on the red and brown mists.  Between the serpent wrapped around one unfortunate’s arm, a howling beast and the foot of a plummeting body, Giordano’s hell is truly a fearsome creation.

More Luca Giordano tomorrow.

Portrait of Alessandro Vittoria at the Metropolitan Museum of Art

Here is one of my favorite pictures at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art: the portrait of sculptor Alessandro Vittoria by Paolo Veronese (1528-1588).  Vittoria was one of the most celebrated sculptors of the Venetian Renaissance, and he is shown in the painting holding the model for his statue of St. Sebastian, carved in 1561-2 for the church of San Francesco dell Vigna in Venice.  Vittoria’s Sebastian was so successful that he later cast it as a bronze statuette, which can be seen at the Metropolitan.

 

Like many a great artist, Vittoria was not shy – he has multiple portraits of himself painted by the leading artists of the time, and five of them hung near the studio in his home where they could be seen by clients and visitors.  This portrait dates to c1580, when the sculptor was 55 years old.

The easy collaboration between sculptor and painter may be inferred not only by the sympathetic depiction, but also by the fact that Vittoria collaborated with Veronese on the decoration of Palladio’s Villa Barbaro at Maser some 20 years earlier.

Veronese ranks, alongside Titian and Tintoretto, as the greatest of Venetian Renaissance painters.  He is celebrated for his work as a colorist, and for his ability to create teeming, multi-figure canvases on a heroic scale.  His taste for ornamentation and excess got him into a bit of trouble with the Holy Inquisition, which was appalled at the excesses to be found in his representation of The Last Supper.  After questioning by the church, Veronese was ordered to fix the picture to something more decorous and within the austere teachings of the church over the next three months.  Instead of touching the picture, he simply renamed it The Feast in the House of Levi, sidestepping obsessive – and dangerous – ecclesiasticals.  (See below.)

Vitorria was born in Trent, son of a tailor.  He was heavily influenced by Michelangelo (who was, in turn, heavily influenced by antiquity and the Belvedere Torso); he was trained in the atelier of architect/sculptor Jacopo Sansovino. 

It must be remembered that the Renaissance was not just a reawakening of human potential and artistic and intellectual ideals, but a rediscovery of the ancient world.  The broken statue next to the sculptor represents a fragment of our Greco-Roman heritage, and serves as a bridge between the ancient world and the modern.

Why do I love this picture so?  On one hand, it is one of Veronese’s more quiet pictures.  A sense of serene and studied mastery pervades both the pose and the execution.  Vitorria’s delicately depicted hands (especially the strong and tapering fingers) are significant, of course, but not more so than the look of bland sophistication and … sprezzatura on the sculptor’s face.  One can well imagine Vitorria murmuring, “Oh this?  Yes, it’s a little something I put together.  Do you like it?”

Veronese’s love of decoration can be seen in the elaborate tablecloth and is barely hinted at in the faint traces of wall decoration over the sculptor’s right shoulder.  The expression on Vittoria’s face is much like the one the sculptor later used when depicting himself in three dimensions.

Titian’s Abraham and Isaac

Like the earlier David and Goliath we examined by Titian, this representation of Abraham and Isaac is now in the church of Santa Maria della Salute in Venice. It was originally made as a ceiling painting for the Santo Spirito in Isola; Titian’s other ceiling painting for that church depicted Cain and Abel.  (If the composition and foreshortening seems “funny,” remember this would ideally be seen from below.)

Titian was born Tiziano Vecellio in Pieve di Cardore in 1489 (dying in 1576, quite an old man by Renaissance standards).  He was perhaps the greatest Venetian painter of his era; his contemporaries called him The Sun Amidst Small Stars (after the final line of Dante’s Paradiso).  Titian was equally at home with landscapes, portraits and large narrative pictures.  Despite his compositional felicity and superior draughtsmanship it is perhaps is his unique mastery of color upon which his reputation rests.  His style changed often throughout his lifetime, but his serious study and application of color was a constant throughout his career.  His later works were, perhaps, muted compared to his earlier pictures, but his overall approach also grew in subtlety.

By any yardstick, this is a remarkable picture.  The painting is characterized by the spiraling movement of the figures, the counterpoised pose and the strong intersecting diagonals.  Like Caravaggio and Rembrandt, Titian chooses the moment when the angel appears just before Abraham can murder his son in an act of devotion to God.  But it would be hard to imagine a painting more unlike the other two – let’s start by looking at his characterization.

If Caravaggio’s Abraham is an unthinking zealot and Rembrandt’s a confused duffer, Titian’s muscled prophet seems to our eyes more like Samson or Hercules.  Though he holds Isaac’s head down (like Rembrandt), this sword thrust would most likely cleave Isaac’s head from his body.  (And note, too, that this is no simple knife – it is a sword.  This Abraham is a figure of potency, indeed.)

The angel here is unlike the celestial interlopers of Caravaggio (who seems oddly human) and Rembrandt (who is definitely otherworldly) – this angel is more in line with the putti seen decorating various religious paintings of the period.  That so simple and childlike an angel can stop so massive a human seems incredible; however, the face of Titian’s angel seems to us the most urgent of the three.  This angel will stop this madness, regardless of his relative size.

Which brings us, as is almost always the case in this story, to the artist’s depiction of Isaac.  Caravaggio showed us an adolescent clearly terrified and abused; Rembrandt a heavenly youth of beautiful whiteness, his face brutally hidden by his father’s massive fist.  The Isaac of Lievens is clearly conflicted, unable to see the angel above him and clearly uncomfortable in his father’s grasp.  But Titian’s Isaac is different – this is no adolescent, it is a young boy.  And despite straddling a funeral pyre, with his father holding his head and face away, he seems curiously nonplussed.  This Isaac is too innocent of his father’s intention, too young to fully appreciate that he is about to die, and that makes the scene doubly horrible.  (Indeed, his face is eerily similar to that of the ass and the lamb, all of them, to Abraham, little better than dumb animals.  Note that the older man seems to stand on one and put his full weight on the other.)

Note, too, that, like Caravaggio and Rembrandt, here Isaac seems to be lit from another source.  Caravaggio’s Isaac is horribly white – perhaps in terror, perhaps rendered so by the artist in a mode of self-identification.  Rembrandt’s Isaac looks as if a hot spotlight lit his youthful lines, focusing the picture on his boyish innocence.  Titian, however, aligns the light of heaven alongside his Isaac – the clouds are highlighted with white, heavenly light, throwing Isaac’s simple robe into stark outlines.

Interesting, too, and again like Caravaggio and Rembrandt, Titian cannot help but fetishize Isaac.  The most luminous focal point of the picture is Isaac’s bottom, and it can not be unintentional.  There is something in this myth that seems to inspire in even the most devout of souls dark contemplations of parental abuse, sexual and otherwise.

Though this is bound to raise hackles, to my eye Titian’s picture is far superior to that of Caravaggio, Rembrandt and Lievens.  Possibly because of its intended use as a ceiling picture, the composition is more dynamic, more energetic and more frenetic than the other pictures we’ve looked at in this series.  (Note the train of Abraham’s robe trailing behind him.)  Titian was also a draughtsmam of prodigious ability: the rich musculature of Abraham and the soft lines of both Isaac and the angel are wonderfully captured, and the triangular quality of the composition keeps the eye going from victim to angel with zealot locked between them.

Also, Titian’s sense of color cuts through the haze of sanctity that usually envelops the story, making more clear and more terrible just what was about to happen here.

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?

Michelangelo’s David

Michelangelo’s David is, of course, the most famous male nude figure in the world.  It has been photographed, recast, and rendered into kitschy souvenirs.  But despite five centuries of familiarity and more recent efforts to render the masterwork irrelevant or banal, this 17 foot colossus maintains its power to enthrall, inspire and move.

Its gestation was not easy.  The work was originally entrusted to Agostino di Duccio (1462) and then to Antonio Rossellino (1476), but both gave it up as a bad job.  The block of marble mined from the Opera del Duomo of Florence was flawed with veins, was too tall and too narrow, and otherwise unacceptable.  Leonardo also turned down the job (no surprise there) and the marble slab was left in the courtyard of the Opera del Duomo until 1501.

When the David project was resurrected by the gonfalonier Pier Soderini, who was engaged in another artistic and intellectual revival of Florence, he approached Michelangelo.  That artist – an incredibly difficult, arrogant, argumentative man – could not resist the opportunity to succeed where other artists had failed.  He was only 26 years old and would complete the commission in two years.

David was originally commissioned to be one of a series of statues lining the roof of the Florence Cathedral, but David was placed instead in a public square outside the Palazzo della Signoria.  Its reception was both rapturous and censorious.  Soderini thought the nose too big – Michelangelo went up to the face and pretended to chisel away at it.  Soderini was satisfied and Michelangelo secretly cursed him as a fool.  Some conservative factions – and philistines seem to be with us in every age – threw stones at it.

Where to begin writing about this, perhaps the greatest achievement of Western art?  That David is beautiful is a given, but what can we glean about the statue other than youth and beauty?

First, let’s see where this David is different from the David of Donatello and Titian.  The first thing you’ll notice is what is missing – Goliath.  There is no headless body, no foot resting on the severed head.  Indeed, Michelangelo depicts David before killing the giant – his hand holding the stone that will kill Goliath close to his thigh, sling at the ready, eyes on his adversary.

Note, too, David is heroically nude, in the Classical mode.  This David is not just the Biblical David, but also every hero from antiquity through to the present day.  The statue is Perseus and Achilles and Hercules as well as David – he represents an ideal of young heroism.

Unlike most statues of antiquity (or those based on a Classical ideal), Michelangelo eschews the placid beauty of the face for one of handsome intensity.  Seen from the front, David has a handsome and resolute profile.  But approach the statue from other angels and the face alters – intensity turns to thoughtful composure to a face coldly assessing a great danger.  It is this human dimension that elevates Michelangelo’s David from some chilly ideal of humanity and breathes life into the figure.

The head and hands seem to be slightly too large to accommodate the figure.  The common view is that, since it was meant to be viewed from below, that Michelangelo made them too large to accommodate the change in perspective.  I, myself, do not agree with this theory.  Rather, I think the head and the hands are accentuated because they are the organs of thought and action.

Michelangelo’s David is such a part of our environment that it seems almost impossible to imagine the world without it.  It is my favorite work of art, and a large porcelain copy is on my desk as I write these words.  The figure of David provides both solace and inspiration, and remains an ideal – physical, spiritual and intellectual – to which we can all aspire.

Titian’s David and Goliath

Simply a magnificent painting by the Venetian painter, draughtsman and designer Titian (born Tiziano Vecellio 1489-1576).  Perhaps the greatest Venetian painter of the Renaissance, Titian was called by his contemporaries The Sun Amidst Small Stars (after the final line of Dante’s Paradiso).  He was a remarkably versatile painter, equally at home with landscapes, portraits and large narrative pictures.  He is particularly important to art history because of his unique mastery of color.

Titian was born in Pieve di Cardore, in Venice, and lived to be quite an old man by Renaissance standards.  His style changed often throughout his lifetime, but his serious study and application of color was a constant throughout his career.  His later works were, perhaps, muted compared to his earlier pictures, but his overall approach also grew in subtlety. 

This painting is now in the church of Santa Maria della Salute in Venice. It was originally made as a ceiling painting for the Santo Spirito in Isola; Titian made two other ceiling paintings for that church, Cain and Abel and the Sacrifice of Isaac. 

Look at the barren landscape Titian uses for his tableaux – nothing save some rocks and the merest hint of vegetation and blasted scrub to the right.  The place – and perhaps not even the time – are not important in this picture, rather, the only reality of the picture is the eternal struggle between boy and monster that take up frame.

Unlike Donatello’s bronze David (or Michelangelo’s, which we will look at later this week) David is mostly clothed.  (Indeed, he wears more clothing than the traditionally heavily armored Goliath.)  Curiously, his simple tunic rides heavenward, revealing his leg and the curve of his bottom.  His arms, too, are extended heavenward, obscuring his face and placing emphasis on his musculature.  I find this fascinating – the Biblical text specifically describes David as ‘beautiful,’ but it seems as if Renaissance artists make a point of eroticizing the boy hero.  This is not surprising as David was the patron saint of the Florentine state, and the Renaissance put a very high premium on male beauty.

David’s physical proximity to the fallen giant is surprisingly intimate, as if here were straddling the corpse of his foe.  The size and musculature of the brute are clearly contrasted to that of the boy; this painting includes a particularly gratuitous wound where the head was severed from the body.

Titian’s superlative use of color is also demonstrated by the exsanguinated body of Goliath.  The arms and head are already white marble, the blood having run from his dreadful neck wound.  The face of Goliath, though fierce, seems curiously at peace.  One cannot help but wonder if this monster is glad to finally be free of his own brutality.

Titian again uses vibrant color in the sky and the heavenly light it sheds on the scene below.  Look at how the clouds draw in white-yellow radiance close to the opening, and build into brownish grays moving away from the light.   More importantly, look at how the light plays on the arms of the triumphant David, also highlighting part of his torso and his leg – as if God sends a signal of approval to His champion.  The same light falls on Goliath, but rather than adding tints of celestial color, the light of heaven renders him yellowed or dead white.

One last thing before we stop looking at this extraordinary picture – note Titian’s command of drawing.  The basis of all great painting is sound draughtsmanship, and take particular note of Goliath’s toes and fingers, the curve of his great sword or the extreme foreshortening of the composition.  This is a splendidly drawn painting, and Titian’s anatomy and composition – his entire dramatic narrative – are unlike any other depiction of the story.  Titian’s David and Goliath is, simply, one of a kind.