|
    
<<
Back to Conferences | Session
Abstract | Speaker Abstracts
ASSOCIATION FOR
TEXTUAL SCHOLARSHIP IN ART HISTORY
CAA 89TH ANNUAL CONFERENCE
CHICAGO, IL
FEBRUARY 27 - MARCH 3, 2001
Corinne Mandel
Associate Professor of Art History
Department of Visual Arts
University of Western Ontario
London, Ontario, N6A 5B7, CANADA
e-mail: cmandel@julian.uwo.ca
tel. (519) 667-0450
Text and Intertextuality in il Poppi's 'Alexander Giving Campaspe to Apelles'
The story of Alexander the Great, Apelles and Campaspe, as told by Pliny the Elder in Book XXXV of the Natural History, was depicted on numerous occasions in the early modern period. It appealed to the artist, who wished to see himself as another famed Apelles, able to create beautiful imagery and to be honoured as a result; and it appealed to the powerful patron, who liked to imagine himself as another world ruler and magnanimous sponsor of the arts. Such was certainly the case when Francesco Morandini, called Il Poppi, painted his version of the story for the Scrittoio of Francesco I
de' Medici circa 1572. Yet, Il Poppi's version entailed much more than a simple illustration of the three protagonists described by Pliny. Scholars have recognized that he commemorated Apelles' illustrious contemporaries, the sculptor Lysippus and the mint-master Pyrgoteles, and that he celebrated the Florentine Accademia del Disegno, founded by
Francesco's father in 1563, by including the arts of painting, sculpture and architecture in the scene. So, too, scholars have found evidence in the correspondence of the
Scrittoio's iconographer, Vincenzio Borghini, that Alexander giving Campaspe to Apelles functioned as an art of memory, reminding Francesco of the precious medals he kept in the cupboard behind the painting. However, no one has addressed another important facet of this painting, namely the animals leashed with chains in the foreground, in proximity to the
artist's prominent, centrally-placed signature. I should like to demonstrate that this seemingly unrelated vignette defers to a passage in
Pliny's Natural History that is unrelated to the story of Alexander, Apelles and Campaspe. In the final analysis, this vignette functions as a kind of impresa, clarifying the
painting's essential message, and providing a rationale for its pairing with Il
Poppi's Bronze Foundry, located directly above, on the Scrittoio's northern wall.
Caroline P. Murphy
Assistant Professor
Dept. of Art History
University of California
Riverside, CA, 92521
e-mail: Caroline.Murphy@ucr.edu
tel. (617) 661-9535
Jerusalem to Bologna, via Mantua; Lavinia Fontana's 'Visit of the Queen of Sheba to
Solomon'
The subject of this paper is The Visit of the Queen of Sheba to Solomon, an allegorical history painting by Lavinia Fontana. This work, of c.1598-1600, was taken from Bologna by Napoleon in the nineteenth century and it now resides in the National Gallery of Ireland. The subject of the picture can be identified through an inscription in Latin on the base of the steps leading up to
Solomon's throne, which gives the biblical citation from which the scene is taken, in which the Queen of Sheba visited Solomon in Jerusalem and presented him with gifts. However, all of the figures depicted wear contemporary dress, and the painting was understood by Luigi Lanzi in 1789 to be an allegorical depiction of the Duke and Duchess of Mantua with their retinue.
The positioning of this textual inscription ensures that on one level, the picture is viewed as a history painting, as an image of Solomon and Sheba. At the same time, it functions as a representation of the Gonzaga by the incorporation of a dwarf, a large grey hunting dog, and most importantly,
Sheba's close physical resemblance to other portraits of the Gonzaga Duchess, Eleonora de Medici. That there were connections between the Gonzaga and the story of Solomon and Sheba has been ascertained by other scholars. Elenaor Tufts demonstrated that the family possessed an onyx vase that they believed came from the Temple of Solomon. Additionally, Torquato
Tasso's Discorso della virtù feminile e donnesca of 1582 was dedicated to
Eleonora's mother-in-law Margherita Gonzaga, in it he had praised Sheba for the virtuous nature of her love for Solomon. Tufts also speculated, correctly, that Eleonora visited Bologna, where Lavinia Fontana could have painted her from life.
However, one can add further facets to the meaning of the painting's narrative and iconography. Here, I will probe further textual relationships between the picture,
Tasso's writing and Eleonora de'Medici. I will also demonstrate the relevance of the
painting's imagery to its possible patron, a member of the Bolognese nobility affiliated with the Gonzaga family, who was host to Eleonora during her visits to his city. Finally, I will suggest that the viewer of this picture is meant to understand that the scene is set in Bologna, and as such, the choice of subject matter allows the city of Bologna to appear as the new Jerusalem.
Kate Benzel
Professor
Department of English
University of Nebraska-Kearney
Kearney NE 68849
e-mail: benzelk@unk.edu
tel. (308) 865-8294 (home: (308) 234-6758
Virginia Woolf and Walter Sickert: Pen and Paintbrush
This paper investigates Virginia Woolf's depiction of Sickert's paintings as a means of exploring the aesthetic experience of a
painting's "atmosphere" that moves beyond language and representation. This subject is one that she pursues throughout her career, often using language of painting to describe her own writing. For instance, in a 1920 review in the Athenaeum,
"Pictures and Portraits," Virginia Woolf struggles rather unsuccessfully to connect viewing art to a special language:
"…after a prolonged dumb gaze, the very paint on the canvas begins to distil itself into words—sluggish, slow-dropping words that would, if they could, stain the page with colour; not
writers' words" (p. 164, italics mine). Further she suggests language "is a question of design, texture, handwriting, the relations of this and that, of art in
short…." (Essays, p.165). In the conclusion she leaves off her challenge of finding words corresponding to painting in favor of a silent appreciation of
atmosphere--"wordless voices." "But words, words! How inadequate you are! How weary one gets of you! How you will always be saying too much or too little! Oh to be silent! Oh to be a
painter!" (p.166).
During this same time Walter Sickert was peripherally part of the Bloomsbury Group through his connections with painters Duncan Grant and Vanessa Bell, but he was also interested in the writers of Bloomsbury, especially Virginia Woolf (novelist and Vanessa
Bell's sister). Though they often came in contact with each other at dinner parties, music events, and gallery exhibitions, Woolf and Sickert met twice (in 1923 and 1933) to talk particularly about painting and its connections to language and literature. Woolf records the 1933 meeting in a letter to Quentin Bell (her nephew, Vanessa
Bell's son), citing Walter Sickert's assessment of himself as a "literary
painter" (Letters, 26 November 1933, pp. 253-54). Prompted by viewing
Sickert's 1933 exhibition at Agnew's Gallery in London, Woolf wrote an essay
"Walter Sickert: a conversation" in which she continues to investigate the relationship between visual and verbal, suggesting
"they have much in common" ("Walter Sickert," p. 32); "the arts flirt and joke and pay each other
compliments" (p. 36).
In this essay Woolf constructs an imaginary after-dinner conversation among seven or eight people who discuss
Sickert's exhibition, talking specifically about paintings in the exhibit (e.g., Lady in Red, Mrs. Swinton (c. 1906); Ennui (c.1914). They use literary terms to conclude that Sickert is a novelist and biographer:
"As I remember it, his show was full of pictures that might be stories … it is difficult to look at them and not to invent a plot, to hear what they are
saying" (p. 23). When she compares Sickert to Coleridge, Dickens, Balzac, and Turgenev, she suggests that the aesthetic goal of all is to create atmosphere,
"a zone of silence in the middle of every art" (p. 17), like the "wordless
voices" mentioned earlier. Thus, using the language of literature, Woolf depicts the paintings of Walter Sickert in an attempt to render not accurate descriptions of his paintings but explorations in constructing meaning without words.
Works Cited
Woolf, Virginia. 'Pictures and Portraits.' The Essays of Virginia Woolf, Vol 3, 1919-1924. Ed. Andrew McNeillie. London: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1988. 163-166.
---. 'Walter Sickert: a conversation.' Ed. Richard Shone. London: The Bloomsbury Workshop, 1992.
|