Visual stories
Still life is one of the genres most extensively practised by these artists, although it attracted little attention from contemporary commentators. The accurate depiction of fruit, vegetables, flowers, game and fish served to refine an artist’s skills, since resolving problems such as the incidence of light on different objects and surfaces is a real creative challenge. This often took the form of reworking effects achieved by the great painters of the past, whose technical virtuosity was such that unsophisticated viewers found it hard to distinguish natural reality from its representation in pigment. Humanism encouraged artists to measure themselves against their ancient predecessors and made a virtue of healthy competition as a process of technical betterment.
Baroque painting, influenced by the Counter-Reformation, promoted the subgenre of the Vanitas, which stressed the ephemeral nature of human existence and transmitted an idea of the superiority of the contemplative life and the transience of material possessions.
Francisco de Zurbarán, Still Life with Vessels, between 1650-1660 |
Garlands and Flowers: Symbols of Life’s Fleeting Transience
The discovery of exotic species created an upsurge of interest in botany in Europe. In Flanders, floral themes acquired an autonomy in the genre of still life in the early seventeenth century, and the garland, for instance, came to constitute an immensely popular subgenre within flower painting in the context of the Counter-Reformation. These garlands had a central figurative composition surrounded by flowers in the trompe l’oeil style. These were usually painted by two specialist artists, one for each part of the picture. In Spain, such models were fully established by the middle of the seventeenth century.
In keeping with the Vanitas, flowers symbolised the brevity and fragility of life, with the rose as the most evident paradigm. The lily alludes to the purity of the Virgin Mary, and the carnation evokes Mary’s divine love at the Crucifixion, when her tears were transformed into these flowers.
Juan de Arellano, Basket of flowers, circa 1670 |
Bartolomé Pérez, Garland of Flowers with Saint Gabriel Archangel, circa 1676 |
Zeuxis and Parrhasius, the rivalry between two classical masters
For the classical historian’s theory of Renaissance and Baroque art, Pliny the Elder was a scholar who had to be consulted. He had enhanced the liberal status of artistic practice and the social recognition of the ancient masters and his model was used to champion contemporary authors, capable, like the ancients, of achieving a high degree of perfection.
In his writings, Pliny the Elder values pictorial virtuosity, as he does in the story of the competition between the Greek painters Zeuxis and Parrhasius. The rivalry began with a bunch of grapes painted by Zeuxis, which looked so real that some birds pecked at the bunch. Proud of his success, he asked for the curtain that his rival Parrhasius had painted to be drawn, thinking that it hid his work. Upon realizing his mistake, Zeuxis acknowledged his rival’s success: he had fooled the birds, but Parrhasius had fooled him.
Juan de Zurbarán adapts perfectly to the parameters of this type of work. The paintings of the Neapolitan Tomaso Realfonzo, who accentuated the pictorial illusion by resorting to a wide variety of animal types, are a derivation.
Juan de Zurbarán, Still Life with Fruit and Goldfinch, 1639-1640 |
The portrait was one of the genres most widely practised by the artists of the period. Deriving from the Renaissance vogue for the medallion, portraits were one of the principle signs of identity of the new culture of the period, and the museum’s collection reflects the range of symbolic uses that were made of it. Some signified the subject’s religious virtue, associated with the model of the donor or benefactor, while others served a memorial purpose in recalling the departed or were linked to the idea of power. The affirmation of individuality is evident in the appearance of a new worldview, in which the portrait is an expression of the subject’s prestige and social standing.
The increasing importance of the self-portrait in this period bears witness to a shift in the perception of the artist’s place in society. It also reflects an increase in self-assurance, as it was around this time that artists began to sign some of the works commissioned from them.
Jean-Honoré Fragonard, Portrait of Charles-Michel-Ange Challe (?), circa 1769 |
Jacopo Robusti (Tintoretto), Portrait of a Gentleman, circa 1554 |
The Picture of the Donor
Relations between artist and client reflect the dominant situation of the wealthy patron who commissioned a work of art. The person that paid for the work would choose the artist, the theme to be depicted and in some cases even the colours that would be used. Such intrusive interventions indicate the power of the patron or client, and the perception of the work of art as a signifier of social standing, fame and the recognition of virtue. Opulence and ostentation were expressed in the choice of unusual or expensive colours, which had a symbolic charge, and the inclusion of the donor in the scene depicted reinforced this tendency. The circumstances and typologies vary in the depiction of the benefactor, who may be alone, or surrounded by family, or kneeling in front of Christ, the Virgin Mary or a saint. This type of depiction is the origin of the modern portrait.
Francisco Martínez, known as «the Younger», Donors in front of a Crucified Christ, 1594 |
Patricio Cajés, Adoration of Christ with the Ayala Family, 1600-1610 |
Self-referential gazes: the game of mirrors
The affirmation of the dignity of painting is linked to the appearance of the self-portrait, an expression of the social acknowledgment that the work of the artist achieves. The act of portraying oneself, apart from the egocentric implications, acquires a more prosaic dimension, associated with painters’ need to make up for the lack of commissions by painting their own portraits, gazing upon their own reflections in a mirror that they use as an instrumental resource.
The self-portrait, however, cannot be understood only from a perspective of self-assertion towards society, since the most interesting examples often correspond to the artist’s most intimate work, that which describes his personal universe. The painter begins a process of introspection and portrays himself more or less sincerely on the canvas according to his degree of humility, or he protects himself with a series of masks. Moreover, he situates himself in time with the desire to overcome the fleeting nature of life thanks to the immortality of art. This concept goes further when series of self-portraits done at different times are analysed, which record different stages of life and personal states of the artist.
Manuel Bayeu, Self-portrait, between 1780-1790 |
Hyacinthe Rigaud, Self-portrait [?], between 1700-1710 |
Imaginary portraits
The humanist maxim Gloria Dei, vivens homo (The glory of God is a living man) attests to the process by which the will of God is present in the individual. Thus the gradual need would emerge to abandon idealizations and embody the principle of verisimilitude in the religious figures depicted and to make them more realistic. The literary sources established conventions for describing pious figures, maintaining, nevertheless, the intention to respect the authentic true likeness.
Thus, without renouncing the poetic licence that brought them closer to secular models, artists chose the most canonical models when painting saints, patriarchs and prophets. One must understand these fictitious productions as a type of para-portrait that pushes back the boundaries of the genre.
Pedro Berruguete, Saint Gregory the Pope, circa 1495 |
Paolo Caliari (Il Veronese), Saint Catherine, 1580-1585 |
Humanistic beauty
The female figure portrayed by Sebastiano del Piombo (Venice 1485 – Rome 1547) has been identified with Vittoria Colonna, a poetess and the platonic lover of Michelangelo Buonarroti, and also with her friend Giulia Gonzaga. Despite the fact that we do not know the sitter’s identity for sure, the attributes accompanying her show that she is a well-read person.
There is the book, an element defended by the lady, which inherently contains Horace’s topos Ut pictura poesis (As is painting so is poetry). On the other hand, the woman subtly slides her index finger between her cleavage, pointing delicately to the breast, a symbol of her profoundly intellectual and spiritual nature. This gesture corresponds to an iconography that is rich in significance, determined by the rules of decorum prevalent at that time. The landscape that can be seen through the half-open window may be a reference to the model of natural beauty, in which the painter is obliged to look at himself, or a mere visual resource used by Piombo to suggest the effect of spatial depth.
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Sebastiano Luciani (Sebastiano del Piombo), Vittoria Colonna [?], 1520-1525 |
The collection possesses a number of important mythological and allegorical compositions, which reflect the significance of narratives taken from Classical literature in this period. The revival of such Classical models is manifested in the work of artists open to the incorporation of a more diverse visual repertoire. However, the process of assimilation was far from uniform, and ranges from perfunctory or episodic responses to a truly structural engagement embodying a more open and receptive worldview.
The emblematic and foundational nature of myth, as a symbolic representation of certain universal archetypes, is presented in some cases with a moralizing or pedagogical purpose, with the iconography disseminating humanist principles that were to contribute to the moral edification of the viewer.
Damià Campeny, Lucretia, 1803 |
Damià Campeny, Death of Cleopatra, circa 1804 |
The incorporation of perspective prompted the creation of scenes framed in a landscape or an architectural setting, both of which made the stories depicted more lifelike. It also made visible the metaphor of the pictorial work as a window open to the world coined by the Renaissance theorist and architect Leone Battista Alberti. Without abandoning their narrative condition, some works achieved a more naturalistic formal treatment, embracing a more accurate description of reality. This approach ushers in the progressive emancipation of a naturalistic background, initially subordinated to the representation of a literary narrative, which becomes an increasingly autonomous motif, and in due course takes on an entity of its own, as landscape painting in its own right.
The introduction of perspective or the illusion of depth
The collection conserves clear examples of the use of perspective as a resource for depicting space. They are compositions that record a use, in some cases still embryonic and at an early stage, of linear or mono-focal perspective: a vanishing point on which the observer’s gaze converges, standing still in front of the composition. The Annunciation by the Master of La Seu d’Urgell is a good example. The system arranges the shapes and the size of the objects on a flat surface, and generates an optical illusion of depth and gives the image that is depicted a realistic appearance. In some cases, the fake buildings or the floor, with its chessboard pattern, help to heighten the effectiveness of visual perception.
Paolo Caliari (Il Veronese), Annunciation, 1580-1582 |
Master of La Seu d'Urgell, Annunciation, circa 1495 |
The myth of Venice
In eighteenth-century Venetian painting, the depiction of celestial Jerusalem is contrasted with the image of Venice, the symbol of the worldly city. The iconic views of a unique place popularized a genre, vedutti, which would help to spread a clichéd and stereotyped view of an emblematic place. The dissemination of this theme consolidated the city’s fame as an obligatory stop on the route of European travellers. In the context of the Grand Tour, the depiction of Venice, a mixture of reality, imagination and fantasy, eventually prefigured the appearance in the West of the orientalist myth, to whose cultural and patrimonial idiosyncrasy it is indebted. The role of painters in this process is crucial; with their depictions and a fertile imagination they helped to spread this propagandistic ideal.
Giovanni Antonio Canal (Canaletto), Return of 'Il Bucintoro' on Ascension Day, 1745-1750 |
The appearance in Western art of a new class of person is one of the main innovations in the repertoire of the period, as people from the humbler strata of society aroused artists’ interest and curiosity, and figured as the protagonists of their pictorial narratives. The increase in the number of works of this kind testifies to the existence of a clientele that appreciated them.
While some of these images have an implicity moralizing purpose, the vast majority of pieces are more or less light-hearted exercises intended to engender feelings of sympathy, from the vantage point of an assumed moral superiority. The characters are depicted in a great variety of ambivalent and even contradictory situations, and the evident indications of want and vulnerability are viewed from a perspective of moral distancing that invites a response which is neither paternalistic nor compassionate.
Quinten Metsys, Head of an Old Man, circa 1525 |
Pieter Quast, Cellar Interior, 1636 |