ATHANOR XXXII florida state university department of art history

FOVRNEAY. COSMIQ..VE•

Cosmic oven or Athanor from Annibal Barlet, Le Vray Cours de Physique, Paris, 1653.

Cover: Unidentified Artist, Seville, Spain, The Virgin Mary Spinning, c. 1700, oil on canvas, 25 x 20 Inches. Denver Art Museum Collection: Gift of Engracia Freyer Dougherty for the Frank Barrows Freyer Collection, 1969.353. Image courtesy of the Denver Art Museum, Denver, Colorado. ATHANOR is indexed in Bibliography of the History of Art and ARTbibliographies Modern.

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The next Art History Graduate Symposium will be held in Fall 2014; symposium paper sessions cover a wide variety of topics. Students from universities nation-wide make presentations which frequently become published essays in ATHANOR. The format of the symposium includes a keynote address by major scholars. Since 1993 keynote speakers have been: Fred Licht, Boston University and the Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice (1993); Gerald Ackerman, Pomona College (1994); Marcel Roethlisberger, University of Geneva (1995); Robert Farris Thompson, Yale University (1996); Oleg Grabar, Institute for Advanced Study (1997); Phyllis Bober, Bryn Mawr College (1998); Carol Duncan, Ramapo College (1999); Bogomila Welsh-Ovcharov, University of Toronto at Mississauga (2000); Neil Stratford, ret. Keeper of Mediaeval Antiquities, British Museum (2001); Debra Pincus, Professor Emerita, University of British Columbia (2002); Jonathan Brown, Institute of Fine Arts, NYU (2003); David Summers, University of Virginia (2004); Thomas B.F. Cummins, Harvard University (2005), W.J.T. Mitchell, University of Chicago (2006); Michael Leja, University of Pennsylvania (2007); Pamela Sheingorn, City University of New York (2008); Alexander Nemerov, Yale University (2009); Richard Shiff, University of Texas at Austin (2010); John T. Paoletti, Wesleyan University (2011); Maria Gough, Harvard University (2012); and Magali Carrera, University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth (2013). For details of date and for précis submission, please contact. Department of Art History, Florida State University, 1019 William Johnston Building, 143 Honors Way, Tallahassee, FL 32306-1233.

The essays contained in ATHANOR are articles by graduate students on topics of art history and humanities. As such, ATHANOR exists as a critical forum for the exchange of ideas and for contrast and comparison of theories and research and is disseminated for non-profit, educational purposes; annotated allusions, quotations, and visual materials are employed solely to that end.

Athanor and the Museum Press

In 1980 Professor François Bucher (University of Bern, Medieval Art) asked Allys Palladino-Craig (formerly of the variorum editions of The Collected Works of Stephen Crane, 10 vols., Fredson Bowers, Editor, University of Virginia Press) to take on the responsibility of general editor and publisher of the first volume of Athanor (1981). Professor Bucher served as faculty advisor until his retirement. During that time, Palladino-Craig won several grants for the publication, and in 1994 established the Mu- seum Press of the Florida State University Museum of Fine Arts with Julienne T. Mason as principal editorial assistant and graphic designer. From 1998-2002, Patricia Rose served as faculty advisor to this annual journal, which is a project of the Museum Press. From volume 26 to 27, Richard K. Emmerson, the Editor of Speculum from 1999 to 2006, served as co-editor of Athanor.

Papers Copyright 2014 by the Authors

Athanor XXXII Copyright 2014 by Florida State University / Tallahassee, FL 32306 All Rights Reserved L.C. #81-68863 F l o r i d a S t a t e U n i v e r s i t y

Garnett S. Stokes Interim President Sally E. McRorie Interim Provost Peter Weishar Dean, College of Visual Arts, Theatre & Dance

Graduate Faculty in the History of Art and Architecture:

Art History Paul Niell, PhD Florida State University University of New Mexico Museum of Fine Arts Doron Bauer, PhD Assistant Professor Johns Hopkins University Spanish Colonial Arts and Architecture Allys Palladino-Craig, PhD Assistant Professor and Material Culture of the African Florida State University Early Medieval and Diaspora Director, Museum of Fine Arts Islamic Art and Architecture Editor-in-Chief, Museum Press Lauren S. Weingarden, PhD Museum Studies Karen A. Bearor, PhD University of Chicago University of Texas at Austin Professor Teri R. Abstein, PhD Associate Professor Modern Art and Architecture Florida State University Modern American Art and Theory Word and Image Studies Coordinator, Specialized Study History of Photography and Film in Museum Theory and Practice Art History Faculty Emeriti Museum Studies Michael D. Carrasco, PhD University of Texas at Austin J. L. Draper, PhD John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art Associate Professor University of North Carolina Pre-Columbian Art and Architecture Steven High, Executive Director Paula Gerson, PhD MA, Williams College Jack Freiberg, PhD Columbia University MBA, Virginia Institute of Fine Arts, New York University Commonwealth University Professor Roald Nasgaard, PhD Museum Studies Italian Renaissance Art and Architecture Institute of Fine Arts, New York University David Berry, DPhil Adam Jolles, PhD Patricia Rose, PhD University of Oxford University of Chicago Columbia University Assistant Director, Curatorial Associate Professor and Chair and Academic Affairs Modern European Art and Classics Museum Studies the History of Photography Nancy de Grummond, PhD Virginia Brilliant, PhD Lynn Jones, PhD University of North Carolina Courtauld Institute of Art University of Illinois Professor University of London Associate Professor Etruscan, Roman, and Associate Curator of European Art Byzantine Art and Architecture Hellenistic Archaeology Museum Studies

Stephanie Leitch, PhD Daniel J. Pullen, PhD Matthew McLendon, PhD University of Chicago Indiana University Courtauld Institute of Art Associate Professor Professor University of London Northern European Renaissance Art Bronze Age, Aegean, and Associate Curator of Modern and the History of Prints Egyptian Archaeology and Contemporary Art Museum Studies Robert Neuman, PhD Christopher A. Pfaff, PhD University of Michigan Institute of Fine Arts, New York University Fan J. Zhang, PhD Professor Associate Professor Brown University 17th- and 18th-Century Art Greek Art and Architecture Associate Curator of Asian Art and Architecture Museum Studies Günther Stamm Prize for Excellence

Sabena Kull was awarded the Günther Stamm Prize for Excellence for “Spinning a Common Thread: Popular Paintings of the Child Virgin in Seventeenth and Eighteenth-Century Seville and Peru“ presented at the 2013 Art History Gradu- ate Student Symposium.

A T H A N O R X X X I I

Allys Palladino-Craig Julienne T. Mason Editor Designer

Colleen Bowen Durra-Print, Tallahassee, FL Graduate Editorial Assistant Printing

Project Support This program sponsored in part by The Dean, College of Visual Arts, Theatre & Dance and the Museum of Fine Arts Press, and by the City of Tallahassee, Leon County and through the Council on Culture and Arts. A T H A N O R X X X I I

JUSTIN GREENLEE  Quod Vocatur Paradiso: The Pigna and the Atrium at Old St. Peter’s 7

SARAH C. SIMMONS  The Seal of Approval: Visualizing Patriarchal Power and Legitimacy in Ninth-Century Constantinople 17

SABENA KULL  Spinning a Common Thread: Popular Paintings of the Child Virgin in Seventeenth and Eighteenth-Century Seville and Peru 25

KRISTI M. PETERSON  Discourses of Power: Andean Colonial Literacies and The Virgin Mary of the Mountain 37

AKEEM FLAVORS  Framing the Botanical: Picturing Nature and Painting the Castas of Eighteenth-Century Mexico 45

J. CABELLE AHN  The Ruins of Iconologie: Redefining Architecture in Jean-Charles Delafosse’s Desseins 53

NAOMI SLIPP  For the Edification of All: Nineteenth-Century American Medicine, Art, and the Role of the Classical Cast in Cultural Life 65

ALISSA R. ADAMS  Politics, Prints, and a Posthumous Portrait: Delaroche’s Napoleon in his Study 75

CARLEE S. FORBES  Creativity in the Congo Free State: Nineteenth and Twentieth-Century Funerary Mats 83

JENNIFER BAEZ  Constructing the Nation at the 1955 Ciudad Trujillo World’s Fair 93

SAMANTHA KARAM  Challenging Ideologies: Contrasting Dorothea Tanning’s Mid-Twentieth Century Animal Paintings with Contemporaneous Zoo Designs 103

MICHAEL SPORY  Looking Back, Standing Still, Moving Forward: Monument, Stadium, and Social Narrative in Contemporary South Africa 111

Quod Vocatur Paradiso: The Pigna and the Atrium at Old St. Peter’s

Justin Greenlee

Today, a monumental ancient bronze pigna, or pinecone, pigna served as the essential and unifying water feature of rests on a marble capital in the Cortile della Pigna of the a fountain located in the center of the atrium of Old St. Vatican Museum in Rome (Figures 1 and 2). It sits at the top Peter’s in Rome.4 The eighth century is a critical time in of a double flight of stairs, and though the sculpture is eleven the pigna’s history, marking the ancient Roman sculpture’s feet tall and five feet around, it remains oddly inconspicu- insertion into a pre-existing fountain structure and providing ous to modern viewers.1 The pigna is appreciated largely a time and place to study a work with a complex history of as a curiosity, or merely as an ornament to Pirro Ligorio’s movement and meaning. This paper addresses the pigna sixteenth-century exedra. What is often overlooked, by the sculpture’s eighth-century incorporation into the atrium casual visitor and the art historian alike, is the sculpture’s rich of Old St. Peter’s and examines its symbolic value within history and the meanings assigned to it over the two thou- the architectural ensemble of which it once formed an es- sand years it has spent in the vicinity of the Ager Vaticanus.2 sential part. It explores the pigna’s soteriological, or salvific, The exact origins of the pigna are a mystery, but a sig- meaning, and suggests that the addition of the sculpture nature on the sculpture’s base suggests that it was produced transformed the atrium into the embodiment of an earthly in the first century CE.3 There is no specific, textual docu- and celestial Paradise. mentation of the pigna in the Vatican precinct prior to its The earliest visual record of the pigna fountain is a draw- description in the thirteenth-century Mirabilia Urbis Romae, ing in pen and ink, dating from c. 1515-25 CE, which is now or Marvels of Rome, but an eighth-century account of early in the Uffizi in Florence (Figure 3).5 The unattributed sketch church renovations suggests that, beginning c. 755 CE, the has received little scholarly attention and was formerly as- I would like to thank Dr. Tanja Jones for her guidance in the devel- antiken Pignen-Brunnen,” Romische Mitteilungen 19 (1904): 87-116. opment of this paper. I am also deeply indebted to Pat Causey, the Other useful sources include Sergio Angelucci, “Il restauro della pigna Interlibrary Loan Specialist at the University of Alabama, who helped vaticana,” Bollettino: Monumenti musei e gallerie pontificie 6 (1986): me locate many important resources. I am also grateful to the organiz- 5-49; Paolo Liverani, “La Pigna Vaticana. Note Storiche,” Bollettino: ers and attendees of Florida State University’s 31st Annual Art History Monumenti musei e gallerie pontificie 6 (1986): 51-63; and Richard Graduate Student Symposium, who created a welcoming atmosphere Krautheimer, Corpus Basilicarum Christianarum Romae (Vatican City: for the presentation of this research. This article is dedicated to my Pontificio Istituto di Archeologia Cristiana, 1977), 5:261-71. wife, Jessie. 3 For a detailed analysis of this inscription, see Ivan Di Stefano Manzella, 1 For basic facts about the pigna, see: Census of Antique Works of Art “Le inscrizioni della pigna vaticana,” Bollettino: Monumenti musei e and Architecture Known in the Renaissance, s.v. “Colossal Pine Cone,” gallerie pontificie 6 (1986): 65-78. The Marvels of Rome is critical to the accessed 2 January 2014, http://www.census.de/census/database; study of the pigna, but the text has also caused a great deal of scholarly and Phyllis Bober and Ruth Rubinstein, Renaissance Artists & Antique confusion. First, it offers an often-repeated myth as fact, stating that Sculpture: A Handbook of Sources, 2nd ed. (London: Harvey Miller the pigna was once attached to a grate that covered the oculus of the Publishers, 2010), 238-39. Pantheon; on this see Margherita Guarducci, The Tradition of Peter in the Vatican: In the Light of History and Archeology, trans. Edward Egan 2 Modern scholarship on the pigna is primarily concerned with the (Rome: Vatican Polyglot Press, 1963), 34. The text is also mistaken sculpture’s origins and its location before it arrived at Old St. Peter’s about how water was dispensed from the fountain, stating that spouts in the eighth century. The most recent publications on the pigna emanated from each of the pigna’s spines rather than from a single are Margaret Finch, “The Cantharus and Pigna at Old St. Peter’s,” pipe emerging from the top of the sculpture. This method of delivery Gesta 30, no. 1 (1991): 16-26; and Finch, “The Stones of the Mons is contradicted by physical evidence; see Angelucci, “Restauro della Vaticanus” (PhD diss., Bryn Mawr University, 1987), 16-34. I am very pigna,” 5-49. grateful to Dr. Finch for making portions of her dissertation available to me. Early studies on the pigna include Georges Lacour-Gayet, 4 Pope Stephen II’s (r. 752-57) biography records a renovation of the “La Pigna du Vatican,” Mélanges d’archéologie et d’histoire 1, no. 1 fountain. See: Raymond Davis, trans., The Lives of the Eighth-Century (1881): 312-21; and Hartmann Grisar, “I monumenti del paradiso Popes (Liber Pontificalis) (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2007), nell’antica basilica Vaticana,” La Civiltà Cattolica 18, no. 12 (1903): 74-75; and Louis Duchesne, Le Liber Pontificalis. Texte, introduction et 460-69. These contributions were followed by a series of early German commentaire, ed. Ernest Thorin (Paris: Libraire des Écoles françaises articles that focused on the genre of pinecone fountains and Old St. d’Athènes et de Rome, du Collège de France et de l’École Normale Peter’s example specifically. See: Josef Strzygowski, “Der Pinienzap- Supérieure, 1955), 1:455. fen als Wasserspeier,” Romische Mitteilungen 18 (1903): 185-206; E. Petersen, “Pigna-Brunnen,” Romische Mitteilungen 18 (1903): 5 The best reproductions of the drawing are found in: Alfonso Bartoli, I 312-28; and Ch. Huelsen, “Der Cantharus von alt-St.-Peter und die monumenti antichi di Roma nei disegni degli Uffizi di Firenze (Florence: athanor xxxii justin greenlee

signed to Simone del Pollaiuolo.6 In the image, the pigna is walled entry space in the late fifth and early sixth centuries.8 covered with smooth, pyramid-shaped spines that are larg- Over time, the expansive, open interior of the atrium was est at its base and decrease in size as they move upwards. maintained while its boundaries became more and more Four low-lying walls surround the base of the pigna to form densely ornamented.9 The Liber Pontificalis was an important a basin or cantharus. Each wall is made up of two panels source for the church canon Tiberio Alfarano (1525-95), in low relief; each depicts griffins holding candelabra. Eight who referenced the text when creating a ground plan of columns support a canopy above the pigna that is, in turn, Old St. Peter’s (Figure 4). Alfarano’s map is fundamentally a ornamented with two bronze peacocks. The birds face one reconstruction, documenting the appearance of the atrium another, necks crossed, in imitation of the christogram above. and church before the rebuilding projects of the sixteenth Dolphins at the four corners likely served as rainspouts. The century.10 Significantly, Alfarano’s plan emphasizes two key top of the canopy is decorated with crockets which may be features of the atrium—the fountain’s position in the center generic buds, fruits, or tiny pinecones. of the space and a boundary defined by porticoes.11 To begin, it is helpful to briefly trace the history of the Both the Liber Pontificalis and Alfarano make it clear that atrium and fountain prior to the pigna’s eighth-century ad- embellishments to the atrium always concerned the center— dition. A single text, written by Bishop Paulinus of Nola in c. in other words, the fountain—and the margins of the space. 397 CE, confirms the presence of a fountain in the atrium in However, the Liber Pontificalis also implies that the atrium’s the fourth century.7 The medieval Liber Pontificalis also con- fountain shaped the space around it, including language of tains references to many church renovation projects at Old centering and surrounding, suggesting that the atrium’s four St. Peter’s. Entries from the pontificates of Pope Symmachus marble colonnades actually belonged to the fountain—they I (r. 498-514) and Pope Stephen II (r. 752-57) document are the fountain’s supporting columns, multiplied.12 changes involving the atrium and its central fountain.From While no text explicitly mentions the pigna’s addition to them we learn that the atrium, originally an open area, or the pre-existing fountain, it was likely incorporated during campo, in the fourth century, was only gradually defined as a the papacy of Stephen II, in c. 752-57 CE. Its presence can Bontempelli, 1914), 6:9; Finch, “The Cantharus and Pigna,” 16; and antica di S. Pietro in Vaticano (1620): “Sub Paolo V pontifice maximo, Dale Kinny, “Spolia,” in St. Peter’s in the Vatican, ed. William Tronzo dum ad templi frontem erigendam pinea praedicta loco suo mota fuit (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 33. et in hortos Vaticanos translata….” Giacomo Grimaldi, Descrizione della Basilica antica di S. Pietro in Vaticano: Codice Barberini latino 6 In spite of this change, the drawing’s most commonly assigned date 2733, ed. Reto Niggl (Vatican City: Biblioteca apostolica vaticana, still reflects the time Pollaiuolo spent in Rome. For the debate over the 1972), 32:186-87. Today, six of the eight porphyry columns and all the drawing’s date and attribution, cf.: Hubertus Günther, Das Studium griffin panels making up the collecting basin are lost; on their removal der antiken Architektur in den Zeichnungen der Hochrenaissance and subsequent relocation, see Tiberio Alfarano, De basilicae vaticanae (Tübingen: Ernst Wasmuth Verlag, 1988), 69-70; Finch, “Cantharus antiquissima et nova structura, ed. D.M. Cerrati (Rome: Tipografia and Pigna,” 16; Finch, “Stones of the Mons Vaticanus,” 16; and Kin- Poliglotta Vaticana, 1914), 26:109. Two bronze peacocks are now ney, “Spolia,” 44n108. in the Vatican Museum—the examples exhibited in the Cortile della Pigna are copies—and a pair of porphyry columns known as “Les 7 For an English translation of Paulinus’ letter, see Annewies van de Deux Philippes” are preserved in the Louvre. The fountain’s bronze Hoek and John J. Hermann, Jr., “Paulinus of Nola, Courtyards, and canopy was melted down in the seventeenth century and recast as Canthari,” The Harvard Theological Review 93, no. 3 (July 2000): the statue of the Madonna atop the column that stands before the 174-75. For the original Latin, see Wilhelm von Hartel, Sancti Pontii Church of Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome. Meropii Paulini Nolani (Vienna, 1894), 29.94-95, Ep. 13.13. 11 On Alfarano’s map, the pigna fountain is numbered “116” and bisects 8 Duchesne, Liber Pontificalis, 262 and 455. the atrium on a north-south and east-west axis. The plan also shows porticoes running along the north (“L”), south (“K”), east (“M”), and 9 The emphasis on the atrium’s boundary began with Pope Simplicus I (r. west (“I”) sides of the atrium. Alfarano’s marginal notes mention how 468-83), who likely attached covered porticoes to the atrium’s lateral the pigna is located “in the middle of the atrium” (in medio Atrij), and and eastern sides to protect pilgrims from the rain; see Krautheimer, tells how the fountain was adorned with bronze peacocks (aeneum Corpus 5, 267. These three-sided—and likely wooden—porticoes tegmen pavonibus), dolphin rain spouts (delphinis deauratis aquam were then replaced by Pope Symmachus I’s (r. 498-514) four-sided, fundentibus), and marble panels carved with griffins (spondis marble porticoes, which are described in the pope’s biography and marmoreis quae griffones incisos habent). He also comments on said to enclose (compaginavit) the atrium. Duchesne, Liber Pontificalis, how water was brought to the fountain through underground lead 262. Other popes who made renovations to the atrium are John I (r. tubes (plumbeas fistulas), but incorrectly states that water issued 523-26), who further embellished the space, and Donus I (r. 676-78), from the body of the pigna through fissures (foramina) in each nut who paved the forecourt with marble flagstones; William Dudley (nucum). Alfarano, Basilicae Vaticanae antiquissima, 108-10. For a Foulke, trans., History of the Lombards / Paul the Deacon, ed. Edward treatment of Alfarano’s plan, see Grisar, “Monumenti del Paradiso,” Peters (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2003), 235; and 460-69. Krautheimer, Corpus 5, 174-75. 12 The vita of Symmachus I tells how the pope “embellished the area 10 For scholarship on the gradual destruction of Old St. Peter’s, see: J.A.F. around the cantharus of Saint Peter with a quadruple porch made out Orbaan, Der Abbruch Alt-Sankt Peter’s (Berlin: G. Grote’sche Verlags of marble and adorned it with lambs and crosses and palms made of Guchhandlung, 1918), 1-139. The pigna sculpture was removed mosaics” (Ad cantharum cum quadriporticum… marmoribus ornavit from Old St. Peter’s in c. 1608-10, and following its translation the et ex musivo agnos et cruces et palmas ornavit). Van Den Hoek and last remnants of the old church were destroyed. The pigna’s move is Hermann, “Paulinus of Nola,” 184; and Duchesne, Liber Pontificalis, described in detail in Giacomo Grimaldi’s Descrizione della Basilica 262.

8 quod vocatur paradiso: the pigna and the atrium at old st. peter’s

be inferred through a close reading of Stephen’s biography, end. While not in the exact space of the ancient circus, it which mentions how the pope “renewed” (renovavit) the is possible that the pigna’s addition to the fountain alluded fountain structure to include eight supporting columns, rather to both the topography of the site and the circumstances of than the initial four.13 Margaret Finch realized, as Richard Peter’s martyrdom.16 had before her, that the pigna must have been added to the Beyond these theories, this paper suggests that the structure prior to that restoration, since the narrowed gaps pigna’s inclusion in the space transformed the atrium into between the additional columns would have prohibited the a heaven on earth and achieved this meaning through its object from being inserted.14 In some ways, the change was form and basic function. The key to understanding this ef- minimal, since the pigna sculpture merely replaced a water fect is contained in an interpolation in the life of Pope Paul feature belonging to the earlier, fourth-century fountain I (r. 757-67) from the Liber Pontificalis. As a living document ensemble, but the effort it took to transport the monumen- with collective authorship, the book underwent constant tal pinecone to this site—and the decision to insert it into revisions, particularly during the eighth century, when it was a prominent, centrally located fountain—suggests that the completely rewritten.17 In an early version of the text, likely change was significant and implies that the pigna’s symbol- written around 767 CE, the forecourt of Old St. Peter’s is ism contributed to a message that had been communicated referred to as the “atrium.” Then, in a subsequent edition, since the church’s founding. written no later than 791-92 CE, equivalence is made be- There are several explanations for why a giant pinecone tween the word “atrium” and another term, more recently was chosen to mark one of the most important religious sites minted—the “paradiso.”18 Here, the text made clear that in the Christian world. The use of pinecones as grave markers, a chapel dedicated to the Virgin Mary abutted the atrium or metae, dates back to the first century BCE, and since Old “quod vocatur Paradiso”—known as the paradiso.19 Impor- St. Peter’s essential function was to serve as a mausoleum tantly, this identification of the forecourt as a Paradise, and for the bones of the saint, the object’s funerary associations not simply an atrium, was made just after the pigna’s addition were fitting.15 The form of the pigna also referred to the his- to the fountain structure at Old St. Peter’s.20 tory of the site by engaging in a kind of symbolic excavation. To modern readers, the use of paradiso as an architec- Half of the church of Old St. Peter’s was built on top of the tural term is somewhat surprising. More common usages Circus of Gaius and Nero, next to the killing field where refer to heaven or Eden, but these significances are fairly Peter was crucified. This circus functioned as a racetrack, recent and only begin to touch upon the word’s etymological with conical fountains that acted as turning posts at each roots. In Latin, the word paradisus is derived from the Greek

13 “Meanwhile in the atrium called the quadriporticus, in front of For the later date and edition, see Duchesne, Liber Pontificalis, ccxxix the doors of St. Peter’s, he renewed 8 marble sculpted columns of n20. The interpolation is also discussed in: Jean-Charles Picard, “Les wondrous beauty; he linked them on top by stone blocks, and over origines du mot Paradisus-Parvis,” Mélanges de l’École Française de the top he placed a bronze roof” (…renovavit in atrium ante fores… Rome 83, no. 2 (1971): 161n1. qui quadriporticos dicitur, columnas marmoreas VIII… sculptas quae desuper quadrio composuit et aereum desuper conlocavit tegnum…). 19 “In front of the tower of S. Maria ad Grada, in the atrium called Para- See: Davis, Lives, 74-75; and Duchesne, Liber Pontificalis, 455. dise, he built with wondrous work a chapel in front of the Savior in honor of God’s mother St. Mary, and he decorated it magnificently” 14 Krautheimer, Corpus 5, 271; and Finch, “Cantharus and Pigna,” 18. (Fecit autem et in atrium, ante turrem sanctae Mariae ad Grada, quod vocatur Paradiso, oraculum ante Salvatorem, in honore sanctae Dei 15 Eugenia Strong, Apotheosis and Afterlife (Freeport: Books for Libraries genitricis Mariae miro opere et decoravit magnifice”). For this, see: Press, 1915), 196. The pigna’s symbolic use as a tombstone also fit Davis, Lives, 83; and Duchesne, Liber Pontificalis, 465. easily into Christian theology, since it had optimistic connotations. In the pagan world, the pinecone symbolized regeneration, resurrection, 20 At this time the Latin paradisus was a completely new architectural and immortality. For Christians, the pinecone would have signified term, and was used exclusively to refer to the atrium at Old St. Pe- Christ’s triumph over death and the believer’s own hope in an afterlife. ter’s. After its inclusion in the life of Pope Paul I, it appeared for the For a similar conclusion see, Finch, “Cantharus and Pigna,” 21-22. second time in the History of the Lombards, written by Deacon Paul sometime before 800. In this text, Pope Donus I (r. 676-78) is said 16 The pigna may have also been brought to Old St. Peter’s to reinforce to have “covered with large white blocks of marble in a wonderful an architectural connection between the cantharus structure and the manner the place which is called Paradise in front of the church of baldachin and aedicule of St. Peter inside the church. The location the blessed apostle Peter.” Foulke, History of the Lombards, 235. The of Old St. Peter’s had been determined by the presence of a shrine term then appeared in a sylloge, or book of inscriptions, which is now (c. 170) that protected the tomb of St. Peter. Excavations at St. Peter’s contained in the Vatican Library. This collection transcribes an epigraph have uncovered remnants of this structure where the nave and transept to Pope John I (r. 523-26) which was once “in paradiso beati Petri,” of New St. Peter’s intersect. This structure was surmounted by the and also the inscription on the cantharus by Pope Simplicus I (r. 468- original baldachin at Old St. Peter’s, built in c. 400 and destroyed c. 83), which was also located “in parad(iso).” The sylloge is catalogued 604. It is depicted in the Pola Casket, which is now kept in the Museo as Vat. Lat. Pal. 833, and is known as the Corporis Laureshamensis, Civico in Rome. sylloge I, or the Sylloge Laureshamensis prima. Excerpts are contained within G.B. De Rossi, Inscriptiones Christianae Urbis Romae septimo 17 Davis, Lives, xi. saeculo antiquiores (ICUR) (Rome, 1888), 2:148, 220; and Picard, “Origines du mot Paradisus-Parvis,” 159-64. 18 The early date of 767 is determined by the death of Pope Stephen II.

9 athanor xxxii justin greenlee

παράδεισος, used by Xenophon to describe the enclosed interaction with water was hygienic—after a long journey, parks or orchards of the Persian kings.21 In that usage, the they were unclean, but repeated cleansings also evoked the word is closely related to the Latin vīvārium, an enclosure for symbolism of baptism, and thus salvation. wild game, and also the Old Iranian pairidaēza. The word’s The pigna also interacted with the atrium’s eighth- components reflect its intrinsic meaning. It is a compound century decorative program, an effect best understood by of pari-, meaning “around,” and -daiz, meaning “wall.”22 imagining pilgrims’ arrival at the church. Devotees would This significance was inherited by Greek translations of the have reached the atrium of Old St. Peter’s by climbing a series Old Testament, where παράδεισος refers to the earthly and of steps—often on their knees—to an open landing. After celestial paradise. This garden is often depicted in Expulsion passing through the gatehouse and vestibule, they would scenes as surrounded by a wall, signified by a gate.23 Similarly, have been rewarded by the sight of the pigna shimmering medieval maps of the world, or mappa mundi, depict Adam under a fantastic bronze baldachin. The sculpture must have and Eve inside a walled Eden, reflecting the larger cosmogony had a stunning effect—it was gilded and massive, and a slight defined by the edges of the map.24 The architectural form of sheen of water would have made it oddly amorphous in the the earthly Eden is also closely related to that of the celestial sunlight. Behind the pigna, in a display that was equally daz- Heaven, which both the Old and New Testaments describe zling, was a mosaic of Paradise. This was the so-called Lamb as a walled structure. This city most often appears in images of the Apocalypse mosaic, a monumental vision of the End of the Last Judgment, where souls pass through a freestanding Times that was installed in c. 450 CE. Pope Gregory IX (r. arch or gateway into the New Jerusalem. Viewed within this 1227-41) replaced the fifth-century image with a depiction visual and etymological context, the renaming of St. Peter’s of the Twenty Four Elders in the thirteenth century, but its atrium as a paradiso appears to have served a definitive pur- appearance is preserved in a drawing kept at Eton College.26 pose. First, it acknowledged the emphasis that had already For those standing at the eastern end of the atrium, looking been placed on the porticoes as a defining border element. towards the façade, there would have been a definite optical Second, it established the space as a heavenly garden, with relationship between the pigna, the mosaic, and the burial the pigna at its heart. monuments of the popes located beneath the western por- The pigna’s status as a symbol of paradise was also re- tico of the basilica. In this line of sight, the pigna was literally flected in how it was used. Importantly, the pigna fountain in integrated into a pilgrim’s vision of paradise. the forecourt did not present an opportunity for pilgrims to This expanded analysis of the pilgrim experience at Old “wash up.” That would have been accomplished in a bath- St. Peter’s—and the role of the pigna in the devotee’s ar- house, such as the diaconia built for the poor in the vicinity rival—suggests new avenues for understanding the range of of Old St. Peter’s. The fountain was also not a drinking-well. meanings the interrelated spaces evoked. The walls of the The Liber Pontificalis describes another fountain, set up at the church become a threshold, separating earth and heaven. base of the church stairs, which was used for human neces- Pilgrims simultaneously become the beati, or blessed souls, sity.25 As a result, the atrium fountain likely served a purely entering the Heavenly Jerusalem, and the pueri, or children, ceremonial purpose. It was most probably used for ritual- of Matthew 18, entering the Kingdom of Heaven.27 The con- ized ablutions, presenting an opportunity to stop, reflect, nection was particularly strong at Old St. Peter’s, given that and perform a gesture that anticipated the placing of hands the door of the church was known as the Judgment Gate in a laver of holy water. In one sense, the pilgrims’ ongoing (portam Iudicij), and the Gate of Heaven is often referred 21 Xenophon, Hellenica, Books I – V (Loeb Classical Library), trans. Car- Clarendon Press, 1984), 155. Similarly, in The Apocalypse of Moses, leton Brownson (New York: G.P Putnam’s Sons, 1918), 269-71. For the the snake waits for Eve on “the wall of Paradise” since he cannot enter etymology of the term, see Oxford English Dictionary, s.v. “paradise,” without an invitation: “And I opened the gate for him, and he came accessed 2 January 2014, http://www.oed.com. inside, into Paradise.” H.F.D. Sparks, ed., “The Apocalypse of Moses,” in The Apocryphal Old Testament (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984), 22 Oxford English Dictionary, s.v. “paradise,” accessed 2 January 2014, 162-63. http://www.oed.com. 24 See, in particular, the Psalter World Map (c. 1265) now in the British 23 The tradition of a walled or gated Eden is not explicitly Biblical. The Library in London and Hanns Rüst’s mappa mundi (c. 1475-82) in the Bible records how Adam and Eve were “cast out” or “banished” Pierpont Morgan Library in New York. beyond the boundary of Eden, and mentions an angel with a flaming sword who guards the “east side” of Eden, but a wall is not explicitly 25 Duchesne, Liber Pontificalis, 267. described (Gen. 3:21-24). The boundary appears largely in apocryphal texts, particularly those involving the Expulsion or Seth’s Return to 26 This miniature appears within an eleventh-century version of the Life Paradise. In The Gospel of Nicodemus, Seth describes Adam’s sickness of St. Gregory, written by John the Deacon, which was originally kept and his journey “to the very gate of Paradise.” Willis Barnstone, ed., in the Abbey Church of Farfa. The larger volume is often referred to “The Gospel of Nicodemus,” in The Other Bible (San Francisco: Harper as the Codex Farfensis. Row, 1984), 375. In The Life of Adam and Eve, Seth says he “will go to the nearest of the gates of Paradise and put dust on my head and 27 This insight is deeply indebted to the work of Paul Barolsky. Paul prostrate myself before the gates of Paradise and lament and entreat Barolsky, Giotto’s Fathers and the Family of Vasari’s Lives (University the Lord with a loud and better lament….” H.F.D. Sparks, ed., “The Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1992), 5. Life of Adam and Eve,” in The Apocryphal Old Testament (Oxford:

10 quod vocatur paradiso: the pigna and the atrium at old st. peter’s

to as St. Peter’s Gate.28 Moving from the confines of the and was reflected in variety of medieval images depicting gatehouse to the open air of the atrium, visitors were likely a “living cross.” One example comes from a mosaic in the filled with a sense of their own relative smallness, and the twelfth-century apse of San Clemente in Rome (Figure 5). pigna’s macrocosmic scale would have aided in this effect. Here, the crucified Christ hangs on a cross that sprouts from The pigna’s symbolism can also be seen in its basic an acanthus plant. Vegetative scrolls, often called the “vines botanic function. A pinecone is fundamentally a container of paradise,” emanate from this bush. Closely related visu- for seeds, and the pigna is referred to as such in an anony- ally are the twelfth-century Cloisters Cross (Figure 6) and the mous poem from the sixteenth century. Beyond comparing thirteenth-century Harbaville Triptych (Figure 7). Although the pigna to gems (gemme), a half-moon (mezzallun), and later, this paper suggests that these images partake in an a bell (campanella), the poet describes the sculpture as iconographic tradition that the pigna was instrumental in being piantata—“planted”—in the atrium.29 The religious establishing. associations here are rich. As a seed, the pigna symbolized It is now possible to make one final connection relating new growth, fertility, and resurrection. The pigna’s spines to the visual resemblance between the pigna structure and are also ascended, suggesting that it is still green, and has the Tomb of Christ within the Church of the Holy Sepulchre yet to release its seeds. These connotations were particularly in Jerusalem. While the tomb exists today in highly altered strong within a fountain installation because the presence of form, its original appearance was translated into depictions water, combined with pigna’s enormous size, alluded to its of the Fountain of Life in medieval manuscripts, such as the remarkable potential for growth. In the world of botany, the eighth-century Godescalc Gospels (Figure 8).32 At first glance, pine tree was already seen as miraculous because it had the the Fountain of Life image in the manuscript could be a de- ability to renew itself from a tiny fragment, or slip. Through piction of the pigna structure—it also has a four-sided basin, a slight elision, the pigna seed becomes a tree, and given eight columns, a barrel vault, peacocks, and is surmounted by the paradiso’s significance as a garden, it can be argued that a cross.33 While the connection between the eighth-century the sculpture was the centerpiece of a decorative program pigna structure and depictions of the Fountain of Life is that recalled the Biblical account of the Tree of Life in the compelling, it merely serves to refer to their mutual source. Garden of Eden. In the fourth century, the Emperor Constantine was involved While the pigna may have started out as a piece of with numerous church building projects, including those at pagan spolia, its addition to the atrium transformed it into a Old St. Peter’s and the Lateran in Rome and the Church of Christian object capable of signifying important moments in the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. In the earliest days of the Biblical history. As a reference to the Tree of Life, the pigna Church of the Holy Sepulchre, before the Rotunda was built, was the visual expression of a tradition joined to the Cross the Tomb of Christ may have been located in the center of of Christ. After a period of gradual development, many of an open, three-sided atrium. In its basic construction, this the stories involving the wood of this Tree were codified in space was similar to the four-sided atrium being built in Jacobus de Voragine’s thirteenth-century Golden Legend. Rome. According to Eusebius, a baldachin was also erected In Voragine’s text, Seth sees that his father, Adam, is dying over the Tomb of Christ, which was supported by columns.34 and returns to Eden to seek a cure.30 Somewhat tangentially, Given this description, and medieval quotations of the Tomb the angel in the garden gives him a twig—or alternately, a in pilgrims’ ampullae and memory boxes, it is apparent that seed—from the Tree of Life. When Adam dies, Seth puts this the structure closely resembled the pigna fountain at Old seed in his father’s mouth, and it grows into a Tree.31 After St. Peter’s (Figure 9). several historical twists and turns, the wood from the Tree The pigna fountain’s relation to the Tomb of Christ is used to fashion the Cross that was used in the Crucifix- unifies its significance. For Christians, the empty Sepulchre ion. The story symbolizes Christ’s redemption of mankind was the greatest expression of God’s redemptive power, 28 See, for example, Alfarano, Basilicae Vaticanae antiquissima, 109. Barbara Baert, A Heritage of Holy Wood: The Legend of the True Cross in Text and Image (Boston: Brill, 2004), 312-17. 29 For a transcription of the text, see: Liverani, “Pigna Vaticana,” 56; and Gilberto Govi, Intorno a un opuscolo rarissimo della fine del secolo 31 Baert, Heritage of Holy Wood, 310-12. XV intitolato antiquarie prospettiche romane composte per prospet- tivo milanese dipintore (Rome, 1875-76), 3:51. Some scholars have 32 The relationship between the pigna structure and images of the Foun- suggested that this so-called “Prospettivo” is Donato Bramante, but tain of Life are also explored in Finch, “Cantharus and Pigna,” 17. Creighton Gilbert disagrees in his prose transcription of selections from the poem. Cf. Creighton Gilbert, “A Painter Comes to Rome to See the 33 For an in-depth discussion of the iconography of the Fountain of Life, Sights,” in Italian Art 1400-1500: Sources and Documents (Evanston, see Paul Underwood, “The Fountain of Life in Manuscripts of the Illinois: Northwestern University Press, 1980), 101-103. Gospels,” Dumbarton Oaks Papers 5 (1950): 41-138.

30 Seth’s journey back to Paradise is described in the Latin Life of Adam 34 “Above all, he [Constantine] embellished the sacred Grotto, the divine and Eve (c. 70) and the Gospel of Nicodemus (5th century). Flavius monument as the principle point of the whole…. The Emperor’s Josephus (39-100) also calls Seth the “seed” of Adam in his Antiqui- magnificence in decorating this centerpiece with selected columns ties, and this may be the inspiration behind later descriptions of Seth of abundant ornamentation, made the venerable grotto shine under planting a branch from Eden at Adam’s grave. On this tradition, see a glittering ornament.” Charles Couasnon, “The Church of the Holy

11 athanor xxxii justin greenlee

and the pigna’s connection to this potent symbol elevated ornamented spaces around it, and a sacred locus for pil- the sanctity of the space. In this heightened discourse, the grims preparing to enter the church. In the eighth century, pilgrim’s movement towards the pigna was analogous to the Rome was in a state of disintegration, but pilgrimage was journey towards salvation. The pigna’s layered symbolism at its height, and this industry brought a massive amount of made this religious experience possible. It transformed the revenue into the city. The city’s sense of importance, rela- fountain and the surrounding space into a kind of sculptural tive to the Byzantine East, was also rising, and Pope Stephen palimpsest, evoking individually and simultaneously the Per- II’s alliance with the Frankish Empire attempted to rescue sian pairidaēza, the Garden of Eden, the celestial Paradise, Rome’s identification as caput mundi.35 The pigna’s evoca- the Tree of Life, the Cross, and the Tomb of Christ. tion of Jerusalem also recalls that travel to the Eastern sites This paper has emphasized the pigna’s meaning and a associated with Christ’s Passion was extremely dangerous in multitude of potential referents, but a discussion of the “mo- the eighth century. The pigna’s integration into the fountain ment” of the pigna’s inclusion in the eighth century begs the effectively collapsed this distance, and allowed for a kind of question, “why then?” The answer is contained within the virtual pilgrimage that encouraged more and more followers symbolism suggested here. The pigna was, fundamentally, to pass within its sacred walls. a centrifugal object. It established a center for the liminal, University of Alabama

Sepulchre in Jerusalem,” trans. J.P.B. Ross and Claude Ross (London: 35 Richard Krautheimer, St. Peter’s and Medieval Rome (Rome: Unione British Academy, 1974), 15. internazionale degli istituti di archeologia, storia e storia dell’arte in Roma, 1985), 19-23.

pFigure 2. Nicchione and Pigna, Cortile della Pigna, Pirro Ligorio (c. 1500-83) and Donato Bramante (1444-1514 CE), the nicchi- one (apse) was added in 1560 by Pirro Ligorio to the courtyard designed by Bramante, Cortile della Pigna, Vatican Palace, Vatican State, Italy © Vanni Archive / Art Resource, New York.

tFigure 1. Pirro Ligorio (c. 1500-83), Nicchione (and Pigna), Cortile della Pigna, 1st century CE, bronze with traces of gilding, 356 cm x 175 cm. Cortile della Pigna, Vatican Palace, Vatican State, Italy © Vanni Archive / Art Resource, New York.

12 quod vocatur paradiso: the pigna and the atrium at old st. peter’s

pFigure 3. Anonymous, formerly Il Cronaca (Simone del Pollaiuolo), Cantharus and Pigna of Old St. Peter’s, c. 1515-25 CE, sketch in pen and wash, h. 245 mm x w. 342 mm. Gabinetto Disegni e Stampe, Santarelli Collection 157v, Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence, Italy © Gabinetto Fotografico Uffizi.

uFigure 4. Giovanni Battista the Elder and Giovanni Battista the Younger, en- graving after Tiberio Alfarano’s plan of the basilica of Old St. Peter’s, engraving originally from c. 1589-90 CE and based on a drawing from c. 1571-82, Harris Brisbane Dick Fund, 1945 (45.82.2, pl. 6) © The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Image source: Art Resource, New York.

13 athanor xxxii justin greenlee

• • • 14 quod vocatur paradiso: the pigna and the atrium at old st. peter’s t[facing page, upper left] Figure 5. Apse mosaic of San Clemente, detail of the cross, 12th century CE, Photo Luciano Romano © Scala / Art Resource, New York. t[facing page, upper right] Figure 6. Cloisters Cross, c. 1150-60 CE, walrus ivory, 57.5 x 36.2 cm (overall), created in England. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Cloisters Collection, New York © The Metropolitan Museum of Art. t[facing page, bottom] Figure 7. Reverse of the Harbaville Triptych: Deesis and Saints, Byzantine ivory from Constantinople, 10th century CE, 24 x 27 cm, Inv.: OA 3247, Photo: Daniel Arnaudet © RMN-Grand Palais / Art Resource, New York.

uFigure 8. The Fountain of Life, illuminated manuscript page from the Godescalc Gospels MS nouv. acq. nal. 1203 fol. 3v, c. 781-83 CE, Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris © The Art Archive at Art Resource, New York.

uFigure 9. Top left, Tomb of Christ, surmounted by the Rotunda. Reverse of lid from pilgrim’s box with stones from the Holy Land, 6th century CE, created in Syria or Palestine, painted wood, stones, wood fragments, and plaster, h. 24 cm x w. 18.4 cm (overall), Museo Sacro Vaticana (inv. no. 61883a), Vatican State, Italy © Vatican Museum.

15

The Seal of Approval: Visualizing Patriarchal Power and Legitimacy in Ninth-Century Constantinople

Sarah C. Simmons

The so-called end of Iconoclasm in 843 initiated a significant mately elected as patriarch.2 This created two camps: those shift in the way art was used in the society of ninth-century who supported Photios and those who supported Ignatios.3 Constantinople. This paper discusses the political career of Ignatios’s supporters argued that patriarchs must be culled Patriarch Photios (r. 858-867, 877-886), the leader of the from ecclesiastical institutions, which conveniently supported Byzantine church, within this context and focuses specifi- Ignatios and his monastic background.4 This contrasted with cally on how his seals functioned as one strategy of a larger Photios’s lay background as an elite civil administrator.5 Thus campaign to validate Photios’s patriarchal legitimacy and throughout Photios’s terms as patriarch he was required to authority. Building upon the work of John Cotsonis, this dis- establish and promote his own legitimacy and authority to cussion situates Photios’s seals within the historical context of counteract these accusations: this was achieved in part by his patriarchate.1 The analysis of Photios’s seals reveals how the denigration of his opponent, Ignatios, as an Iconoclast the Patriarch’s decision to feature particular iconography through verbal, textual, and visual means.6 Within this tenu- and inscriptions asserted his validity as an Iconophile leader ous stability, elite members of the Byzantine aristocracy and and launched a visual campaign that framed his patriarchal the imperial administration would have seen Photios’s seals predecessor and political opponent, Ignatios (r. 847-858, and recognized the featured iconography and inscription.7 867-877), as an Iconoclast. A description of the seals of Methodios (r. 843-847) The controversy between Ignatios and Photios began illustrates the precedent of Iconophile patriarchal iconogra- during the reign of the Emperor Michael III (r. 842-867). phy that was established after the end of Iconoclasm and to When Michael III exiled Ignatios and appointed Photios which the seals of Ignatios and Photios can be compared. as his replacement in 858, Ignatios continued to vie for his Upon the Triumph of Orthodoxy in 843, Empress Theodora, reinstatement on the grounds that Photios was not legiti- the regent empress and mother to Michael III, appointed

I thank my advisor, Lynn Jones, for her guidance and dedication 3 Francis Dvornik, “Ignatius’s Resignation and Photius’s Canonical Elec- through this paper’s evolution. I extend my appreciation to John tion,” in The Photian Schism, 39-70. Cotsonis and his generosity in providing access to his work. I also thank Brad Hostetler and Christopher Timm at Florida State Univer- 4 Karlin-Hayter, “Gregory of Syracuse,” 143. sity and the graduate students at the Centre for Byzantine, Ottoman, and Modern Greek studies at the University of Birmingham for their 5 Alexander Kazhdan, “Photios,” in Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium, questions and suggestions. ed. Alexander Kazhdan (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2005), 3:1669. Photios was born into a Constantinopolitan aristocratic family. 1 For John Cotsonis’s work on patriarchal seals see: John Cotsonis, “The His family held elite positions within the Byzantine political structure; Imagery of Patriarch Methodios I’s Lead Seals and the New World his uncle was the Iconophile Patriarch Tarasios (r.784-806). Despite his Order of Ninth-Century Byzantium,” in Legacy of Achievement: Met- family’s ecclesiastical connections, Photios began his career as a secular ropolitan Methodios of Boston Festal Volume on the 25th Anniversary intellectual. It is unconfirmed whether he held a position at Constanti- of his Consecration to the Episcopate, 1982-2007, ed. G. Dragas nople’s university, but his fame in Constantinople’s intellectual sphere (Palmyra, VA: Newrome Press, 2008), 366-387; and John Cotsonis, is well known. Prior to Photios’s appointment to the Patriarchate, he “The Imagery of Patriarch Ignatios’ Lead Seals and the Rota Fortunae served as the protasekrites, or the head imperial secretary, an elite of Ninth-Century Byzantine Ecclesio-Political Policies,” in Servant of civil position within the Byzantine bureaucracy. Alexander Kazhdan, the Gospel: Studies in Honor of His-All Holiness Ecumenical Patriarch “Photios,” 1669. Photios’s lay background required that he complete Bartholomew, ed. T. Fitzgerald (Brookline, MA: Hellenic College, all the degrees of priesthood within a week of his consecration. This 2011), 52-98. was against canon law and was thus used by Ignatios’s supporters to claim Photios as illegitimate. Francis Dvornik, “Ignatius’s Resignation,” 2 Patricia Karlin-Hayter, “Gregory of Syracuse, Ignatios and Photios,” in in The Photian Schism, 50. Iconoclasm: Papers Given at the Ninth Spring Symposium of Byzantine Studies, University of Birmingham, March 1975, ed. Anthony Bryer and 6 Cyril Mango, “The Liquidation of Iconoclasm and the Patriarch Pho- Judith Herrin (Birmingham, UK: Centre for Byzantine Studies, 1977), tios,” in Iconoclasm: Papers Given at the Ninth Spring Symposium of 143. For the political tension between Ignatios and Photios also see Byzantine Studies, University of Birmingham, March 1975, ed. Anthony Francis Dvornik, The Photian Schism: History and Legend (Cambridge, Bryer and Judith Herrin (Birmingham, UK: Centre for Byzantine Stud- UK: Cambridge University Press, 1948), 1-70. ies, 1977), 140.

7 Cotsonis, “Imagery of Patriarch Methodios,” 367. athanor xxxii sarah c. simmons

Methodios as patriarch.8 He used one seal type; only two Methodios rather than Ignatios. Photios used two seal types, of his seals remain.9 The obverse features the iconography though only four are extant; they all feature iconography of the Hodegetria, an icon type characterized by the pose of the Theotokos.17 Like Ignatios, Photios served two patri- and gesture of the Theotokos, the mother of God (Figure 1). archal terms but his consistent iconography again suggests A comparison to a tenth-century ivory, featuring the same Iconographic continuity. The majority of his seals, three out iconography of the Hodegetria clarifies the seal’s degraded of four, directly copy the iconography of Methodios’s seals image (Figure 2). On Methodius’s seal, a full length Theotokos by featuring a full-length Hodegetria (Figure 4). Photios’s stands holding the Christ Child centered before her torso; her obverse inscription reads “Most Holy Theotokos, help” and right hand gestures toward him. The obverse inscription on the reverse reads, “Photios, Archbishop of Constantinople, the seal reads, “Most Holy Theotokos, help.”10 The reverse New Rome.”18 completes the invocation on the front, “Methodios, bishop Photios separated himself from Ignatios and his con- of Constantinople, servant of servants of God.”11 troversial policies by visually emulating Methodios through Ignatios used two seal types, of which only three remain; his seals’ shared iconography. Methodios instituted many they feature either half or full-length images of Christ.12 Igna- anti-Iconoclast policies—the most controversial being the tios served two terms as patriarch; his seals give no indication removal of former Iconoclasts or those with Iconoclast affili- of the date of production, but his consistent use of the image ations from all levels of the ecclesiastical hierarchy.19 When of Christ suggests that his seals changed little between terms. Ignatios succeeded to the patriarchate, he overturned most On each seal, Christ blesses with his right hand and holds the of Methodios’s policies in hopes of seeking peace with Gospel book in his left (Figure 3). There are two versions of the former Iconoclasts.20 Instead of dissolving the tension, Ignatios’s obverse inscriptions; they read “Jesus Christ Lord, Ignatios angered those who supported Methodios’s actions lead” or “God, lead.”13 The reverse inscription is the same against the Iconoclasts.21 Photios’s alignment with the legacy for all three seals, “Ignatios, Archbishop of Constantinople, of Methodios through his patriarchal emblem did more than New Rome.”14 establish his loyalty; it also allowed him to visually alienate Of the extant Byzantine seals, John Cotsonis observed and reinforce Ignatios as an unorthodox patriarch who chal- that Methodios is the first patriarch to feature an image of the lenged Methodios and the Triumph of Orthodoxy. Theotokos and the first to use the epithet “Most Holy” in his In addition to the Hodegetria, Photios’s appropriation invocation.15 He also identifies Ignatios as the only patriarch of Methodios’s obverse inscription, “Most Holy Theotokos, to feature an image of Christ, the first patriarch to refer to help,” appears as a conscious choice to establish himself himself as an Archbishop, and the first to refer to Constanti- as the legitimate successor to the revered Iconophile patri- nople as New Rome on his seal.16 This paper moves Cotsonis arch. The epithet “Most Holy” reinforced the Hodegetria’s observations forward by discussing why Photios chose to Iconophile significance as the preeminent intercessor.22 As emulate certain aspects of Methodios and Ignatios’s seals to Cotsonis demonstrates, the Hodegetria’s rise to become the establish his patriarchal identity and promote his legitimacy. Iconophile symbol par excellence was accelerated by Metho- An analysis of Photios’s iconography and inscriptions dios’s celebration of the Theotokos’s role in providing Christ’s reveal how he used the Hodegetria to establish an Iconophile human nature.23 Methodios composed epigrams and canons visual tradition to support his legitimacy as the successor to in her honor.24 One such epigram was located on the Chalke

8 Karlin-Hayter, “Gregory of Syracuse,” 141. 17 Ibid., 58-59.

9 Cotsonis, “Imagery of Patriarch Methodios,” 370; and Nicolas Oiko- 18 Obverse: [Υ]ΠΕ[ΡΑ]ΓΙΑ ΘΕΟΤΟΚΕ ΒΟΗΘΕΙ nomides, A Collection of Dated Byzantine Lead Seals (Washington, Reverse: ΦWΤΙW ΑΡΧΙΕΠΙCKOΠW KWNCTANTINOY ΠΟΛΕWC NEAC DC: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection), 58-59. PWMHC.

10 [ΥΠΕΡΑ]ΓΙΑ ΘΕΟΤΟΚΕ ΒΟΗΘΕΙ. All transcriptions and translations are 19 Karlin-Hayter, “Gregory of Syracuse,” 141. published in Oikonomides, Dated Byzantine Lead Seals, 58-62. 20 Ibid., 142. 11 ΜΕΘΟΔΙW ΕΠΙCΚΟΠW ΚΩΝCΤΑΝΤΙΝΟΥ ΠΟΛΕΩC ΔΟΥΛW ΤWΝ ΔΟΥΛWΝ ΤΟΥ ΘΕ[ΟΥ] 21 Ibid.

12 Cotsonis, “Imagery of Patriarch Ignatios,” 53-55; Oikonomides, Dated 22 Cotsonis, “Imagery of Patriarch Methodios,” 370. Byzantine Lead Seals, 59-61. 23 Ibid., 369 and 375. 13 ΙV ΧΕ ΚΕ ΗΓΟV or O ΘΕΟV ΗΓΟV. 24 Ibid., 369. Methodios authored the Synodikon of Orthodoxy, a 14 ΙΓΝΑΤΙΟV ΑΡΧΙΕΠΙCΚΟΠW ΚΩΝCΤΑΝΤΙΝΟΥ ΠΟΛΕWC ΝΕΑC ΡWΜΗC. canon recited on the first Sunday of Lent, which became known in the Byzantine Church as the Feast of the Triumph of Orthodoxy. In 15 Cotsonis, “Imagery of Patriarch Methodios,” 374. this poem, Methodios condemned the heretical Iconoclast patriarchs and emperors and celebrated the restoration of the Icon of Christ on 16 Ibid., 55-56. the Chalke Gate. See Andrew Louth, Greek East and Latin West, AD 681-1071 (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2007), 133.

18 the seal of approval: visualizing patriarchal power and legitimacy in ninth-century constantinople

gate next to the icon of Christ, the icon understood to repre- cate its message of legitimacy to its intended audience, then sent the Triumph of Orthodoxy over Iconoclasm (Figure 5).25 its authority becomes compromised. Ignatios’s Christological Photios’s choice of iconography suggests that his appro- iconography failed to fully convey his Iconophile loyalty. priation of the Hodegetria retroactively defined Ignatios and This provided the Photian camp an opportunity to support his Christological iconography as a departure from an Icono- their accusations of his Iconoclast affiliations. By contrast, phile visual tradition initiated by Methodios. Ignatios’s seals, Constantinopolitan patriarchs continued to feature the The- when viewed within this constructed visual tradition appear otokos—most commonly in the form of the Hodegetria—on as an anomaly. Cotsonis explains that Ignatios likely chose their seals until after the fall of the Byzantine Empire in 1453 to feature Christ on his seals to enhance his own legitimacy thus demonstrating that Photios’s choice of iconography was and authority through his family connections to the imperial a successful expression of Iconophile patriarchal authority.28 office.26 At this time, imperial seals also featured images of A comparison of the inscriptions on Ignatios’s and Pho- Christ, illustrated by the seal of the Emperor Michael III (Fig- tios’s seals illustrates that Photios did not completely abandon ure 6). The half-length image of Christ on Ignatios’s seal mir- his predecessor’s sigillographic innovations. On the reverse rors Michael’s. Here, Ignatios’s imitation of the imperial seal of his seals, Photios adapted the inscription from Ignatios’s cultivates a different source of patriarchal legitimacy culled seals. It reads “Photios, Archbishop of Constantinople, New from imperial lineage rather than the ecclesiastical issues of Rome.” Photios’s appropriation of Ignatios’s title Archbishop the period. This reveals new questions concerning the nature continued Ignatios’s claim that Constantinople held pre- of patriarchal power during the new political realities created eminent ecclesiastical authority. In the context of Photios’s by the Triumph of Orthodoxy. Did the end of Iconoclasm patriarchate, this title is a direct challenge to the contempo- cause the patriarch and emperor to reconfigure their visual rary Pope Nicholas I’s same assertion for Rome, a conflict expressions of power in order to maintain the status quo of that will be addressed (below in this paper).29 It is possible power relations? Or did the Triumph of Orthodoxy provide that Photios’s choice to use the title Archbishop has another the patriarchal office a new visual language to express author- specific meaning in Constantinople. With every patriarchal ity and thus new grounds to claim legitimacy independent letter and decree that Photios sent, his seals served to usurp from the emperor? The answers to these questions remain Ignatios’s claim as the preeminent ecclesiastical authority. beyond the purview of this discussion, but their significance The passionate response from Photios’s supporters to to this paper lies in understanding that the implications of the Ignatios and his political threats shows that mudslinging was Iconoclast controversy continued to shape political ideologies already occurring. According to Ignatios’s vita, composed by and rhetoric of the mid-ninth century. Nicetas the Paphlogonian, Gregory Abestas was believed to In the tense political atmosphere of Photios’s patriarch- have illustrated a now lost parody of Ignatios that portrayed ate any inclination toward an unorthodox act or belief—now the former patriarch as Satan and the Anti-Christ.30 Abestas defined by loyalty to the Triumph of Orthodoxy—became further fueled the anti-Ignatian campaign by declaring that ammunition for one’s political adversaries. In the Byzantine Ignatios’s reversal of Methodian policies intentionally ma- Church, innovation was synonymous with heresy.27 The seals ligned the memory of the revered Iconophile patriarch.31 of Ignatios and Photios exemplify the power of images to Byzantine records suggest that Photios also accused Ignatios define a patriarchate—if the chosen image fails to communi- of committing parricide toward Methodios.32 Patricia Karlin- 25 Cyril Mango translates Methodios’s Chalke epigram as “Seeing thy 26 Cotsonis, “Imagery of Patriarch Ignatios,” 65. stainless image, O Christ, and Thy cross figured in relief, I worship and reverence Thy true flesh. For, being the Word of the Father, 27 In his discussion of Basil I’s Nea Ekklesia in the Great Palace, Paul timeless by nature, Thou wast born, mortal by nature and in time, to Magdalino demonstrates how innovation, considered heretical by a mother. Hence in circumscribing and portraying Thee in images, I the Byzantine Church, could be avoided through “implied imitation.” do not circumscribe Thy immaterial nature—for that is above repre- Magdalino explains, “it was a way of authenticating something new by sentation and vicissitude—but in representing Thy vulnerable flesh, O giving it a traditional identity.” Paul Magdalino, “Observations on the Word, I pronounce Thee uncircumscribable as God. Yet the disciples Nea Ekklesia of Basil I,” Jahrbuch der Österreichischen Byzantinistik of Manes’ teachings, who chatter foolishly in their imaginings to the 37 (1987): 53. point of saying ignominiously that the Incarnation (by assuming which Thou hast saved the human race) was but a phantom, enduring not 28 Cotsonis, “Imagery of Patriarch Ignatios,” 58. to see Thee portrayed in roaring anger and leonine insolence, cast down Thy most-venerable likeness, formerly portrayed here in holy 29 George Ostrogorsky, History of the Byzantine State (New Brunswick, form. Refuting their lawless error, the empress Theodora, guardian of NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1986), 225. the faith, with her scions arrayed in purple and gold, emulating the pious among the emperors, and shown to be the most pious of them 30 Leslie Brubaker, Vision and Meaning in Ninth-Century Byzantium: Im- all, has re-erected it with righteous intent at this gate of the palace, to age as Exegesis in the Homilies of Gregory of Nazianzus (Cambridge, her own glory, praise and fame, to the dignity of the entire Church, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1999): 238. to the full prosperity of the human race, to the fall of the malevolent enemies and barbarians.” Cyril Mango, The Brazen House: A Study of 31 Cotsonis, “Imagery of Patriarch Ignatios,” 65. the Vestibule of the Imperial Palace of Constantinople (Copenhagen: I Kommission Hos Ejnar Munksgaard, 1959), 126-127. 32 Karlin-Hayter, “Gregory of Syracuse,” 143.

19 athanor xxxii sarah c. simmons

Hayter demonstrates how Ignatios’s time as the abbot of a In the context of the strong anti-Ignatian slander and monastery with Iconoclast connections became the evidence contention with Rome, Photios used his seals to portray for explicit accusations of Ignatios being an Iconoclast.33 In Ignatios’s Christological iconography as anti-Iconophile and this context, we can see how Photios’s seals fit within the thus evidence for his Iconoclast sympathies. Photios’s seals, larger anti-Ignatios campaign. first, conveyed him as a legitimate Iconophile patriarch Photios’s supporters also took advantage of the Patri- via the image of the Hodegetria, and second, asserted his archate’s contentious relationship with Rome to build their universal ecclesiastical authority over Ignatios and Nicholas accusations against Ignatios. Upon his election the same I via the title Archbishop. year Photios began his first term, Pope Nicholas I declared By maligning Ignatios, Photios secured his own le- supreme authority over ecclesiastical matters in the West and gitimacy and asserted himself as the superior Archbishop of the East.34 The title of Archbishop on Photios’s seals clearly Orthodoxy. Photios’s seals thus function as one part of his demonstrates his response to Nicholas’s claim. It is in the larger campaign to answer Ignatios’s threats and establish context of this argument between Photios and Nicholas over his patriarchal legitimacy. Photios achieved this by con- which patriarchate had the most power that the Ignatios fac- sciously choosing to feature the Theotokos on his seals and tion appealed to the Pope to declare Photios as illegitimate.35 constructing an Iconophile patriarchal visual tradition that Nicholas seized this opportunity to interfere in the Orthodox functioned to alienate Ignatios’s own Christological emblem. Church. He summoned a council in 863 to denounce Pho- Defining Ignatios as an innovator who departed from Icono- tios’s canonicity despite the East’s resolution of the matter phile tradition gave credence to anti-Ignation slander that in Photios’s favor two years earlier.36 Thus when Ignatios’s framed him as an Iconoclast, thus indicating the importance supporters appealed to Nicholas, they too defied the author- of the Iconoclast Controversy in Byzantine politics beyond ity of the Orthodox Church. This undesirable link with the its conclusion in 843. West in the eyes of Photios’s supporters provided another target to attack Ignatios and his tenuous loyalty to Orthodoxy. Florida State University 33 Ibid., 142. 85-88. See also Milton V. Anastos, “The papal legates at the Council of 861 and their compliance with the wishes of Emperor Michael 34 Ostrogorsky, History of the Byzantine State, 225. III,” in Aspects of the Mind of Byzantine Political Theory, Theology, and Ecclesiastical Relations with the See of Rome, ed. Speros Vryonis 35 Karlin-Hayter, “Gregory of Syracuse,” 142. Francis Dvornik argues Jr. and Nicholas Goodhue (Burlington, VT: Ashgate Variorum, 2001), that Ignatios never personally appealed to Pope Nicholas I. What is 185-200. important here is that Ignatios’s supporters’ appeal to the papacy made it possible for the Photian faction to link the deposed patriarch with 36 Dvornik, “Synod of 861,” 89. Nicholas. Francis Dvornik, “The Synod of 861,” in The Photian Schism,

20 the seal of approval: visualizing patriarchal power and legitimacy in ninth-century constantinople uFigure 2. Hodegetria, icon with Theotokos and Child, mid-10th to mid-11th century, ivory, 9 3/16 x 2 3/4 x 1/2 inches (23.4 x 7 x 1.3 cm). The Metropolitan Museum of Art: Gift of J. Pierpont Morgan, 1917 (17.190.103). Available from www. metmuseum.org

tFigure 1. Obverse and reverse of the seal of Patriarch Methodios. Obverse featuring the icon type of the Hodegetria and inscription, “Most Holy Theotokos, help.” Reverse features inscription, “Methodios, bishop of Constantinople, servant of servants of God.” 843-847 CE, lead, 37 mm diameter. Zacos Collection, Basel. Photo credit: Nicolas Oikonomides, A Collection of Dated Lead Seals (Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection), 59. Drawing: Sarah C. Simmons.

21 athanor xxxii sarah c. simmons

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. • -. . .~- ·-...t,r/l.I {!_,~-,,..~, .-, ~'.-: I ;~:-.' . J: (" ....i ; ,r.~. ' -(. l, 11 ·( i},• • ~.,i- ,·,:.\· J. ·1,_ :_ ' •'t, .'; .·. . "'· .• . "1•, ., I • ,. I '·1-,- •, , .'( . ·,< rt:.', ..~t . r.;. -::. .·.__,;'J . .! 1/.:,\j'r''·:t •"'"• '. .," .'. ·.. t.X ·. ; ·;_ - ---i". j;. . . J, J ~-, • '-, .: A J';", - •, J;r , ; .J . I !'! .t - ·, - .., - . • ~ ,..... ""·., .... .11 t •- ' -• , .- ltj ;,..1,W·;). . . ··.'i·. \ .,:_ '. - . ;--: •. . I''• ·""°,fr: .,n,.....,,:; ' """·•.,.;,, •, i " ,, • ·/ tr .1~ '.,,,. t•.,1; ~,...;.,,; "¥--'•'i .-~ •i: ... ·'-.. '-t: ·.:.&. ·1,l'i.. ·. r. :•.J.·••. ,~,. '·Ii I ..).. - ., ' '·. ·r'.I' , ,.,...~~' _,. .rr,r~- ;.. , - •' f. J"h . ·, ' -\ ••,,· "1 • I\, ;i ·•,: ' I/; ;, ~1 ~-.. ; ,,,. ', -~ I • i .~ . • . _;._ -~; ~I J ,J . . ' ' .' , . , ' ' . .. _,. -. : ·.-. ~·-_•. _..,;,,. .-:. '' ,,~":1 ,• ./~1/~ ~~· t."'.'...... 1'.. · -,.,/,, .. <" ·.• •,, . ·-· /,-:.. ; • -~1'7.~,(!!, '..' . -

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Figure 3. Obverse (left) and reverse (right) of the seal of Patriarch Ignatios. Obverse featuring bust of Christ and the inscription, “Jesus Christ Lord, lead.” Reverse features inscription, “Ignatios, Archbishop of Constantinople, New Rome.” 847-858, 867-877 CE, lead, 34 mm diameter © Dumbarton Oaks, Byzantine Collection, Washington, D.C.

+ct,WTl lJAPX \€ n \C. KOnWKWNC TANTINcSno /\€~CN(AC PW r¥\H C

Figure 4. Drawing of the obverse (left) and reverse (right) of the seal of Patriarch Photios. Obverse featuring the icon type of the Hodegetria and inscrip- tion, “Most Holy Theotokos, help.” Reverse featuring inscription, “Photios, archbishop of Constantinople, New Rome.” 858-867, 877-886 CE, lead, 35 mm diameter. Photograph published in Nicolas Oikonomides, A Collection of Dated Lead Seals (Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection). Drawing: Sarah C. Simmons. 22 the seal of approval: visualizing patriarchal power and legitimacy in ninth-century constantinople

Figure 6. Obverse (left) and reverse (right) of the seal of the Emperor Michael III. Obverse featuring bust of Christ and the inscription, “Jesus Christ.” Reverse featuring bust of Michael III and the inscription, “Michael, imperator and basileus.” 856-867 CE, lead, 35 mm diameter © Dumbarton Oaks, Byzantine Collection, Washington, D.C.

coNS1AN1\NOP LE HAG\A soPH\A

,,,•...... , , ... , ...CHALKE , , ...... ,' ...... , , ...... , ...... , ...... / ...... / '; I ' , I I ; I I I , , I I , , I , I ,I / GREAT I / PALACE ,, I / / / / I / / ...... / ...... I , -----...... ~ ,' _,,',/ Figure 5. Map of Constantinople showing location of the Chalke Gate. Drawing: Christopher Timm.

23

Spinning a Common Thread: Popular Paintings of the Child Virgin in Seventeenth and Eighteenth-Century Seville and Peru

Sabena Kull

While depictions of the Virgin Mary spinning are known to on a crown of thorns (Figures 2, 4, 6, 8), the paintings were have been made since the Middle Ages, a particular image commissioned by churches and convents, as well as wealthy of the Virgin spinning as a child was exceptionally popular private patrons. in both Seville, Spain, and the Spanish-ruled Viceroyalty of Despite the prevalence of the iconography on both Peru in the late-seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In continents, the scholarly discourse surrounding the subject these devotional paintings—each nearly identical in pose has chiefly centered on the paintings from Peru, particularly and composition—the young Virgin, depicted as not older those made by artists of the Cuzco School in the eighteenth than three or four, looks out of the canvas, directly at the century (Figures 1 and 2).1 Only two Spanish examples, viewer with a childlike, yet knowing, gaze (Figures 1-8). those attributed to the Sevillian artists Juan de Roelas2 and She sits in a red-upholstered armchair, facing to her left in Juan Simón Gutiérrez,3 have regularly been discussed in the three-quarters view, while she delicately and expertly spins scholarship (Figures 3 and 4). By drawing upon thirty-four wool from a distaff held under her left arm onto a spindle Spanish paintings of the child Virgin spinning (eight of which resting in her lap. Her garments are simple yet luxurious, and include a pendant painting of the Christ child) that were include a small cape or mantle worn over her shoulders held recently identified and compiled by the Author, this paper together by a decorative clasp. Almost always, an embellished seeks to remedy the previously lopsided scholarship.4 Along headband encircles her head, and a red bow tops a soft curl with archival records, the Spanish paintings—six of which are of hair resting on her broad forehead. Frequently coupled illustrated in this paper—serve as evidence that the image with a pendant image of the Christ child pricking his finger originated and proliferated in Seville and surrounding areas in This article stems from research for my forthcoming thesis, which Enrique Valdivieso, “Una Virgen Niña y un Niño de la Espina de Juan originated in a class taught by Dr. Michael Brown at the University Simón Gutiérrez,” Laboratorio de Arte 15 (2002): 395-398; Enrique of Denver. I thank especially Dr. Brown, as well as Dr. Donna Pierce, Valdivieso, Pintura Barroca Sevillana (Seville: Guadalquivir Ediciones, curator of Spanish Colonial Art at the Denver Art Museum, for their 2003), 56-57; and Jesús Manuel Carrasco Terriza, “Pintura Barroca valuable feedback and continued support. de la Casa Cuna de Ayamonte,” Jornadas de Historia de Ayamonte (Ayamonte: Patronato Municipal de Cultura, 2000), 11-44. 1 Paintings of the child Virgin spinning from Peru have been discussed numerous times in catalogue entries, book sections, and short ar- 2 I believe that the painting’s attribution to Roelas needs to be more ticles, but have never been the focus of a comprehensive study. See thoroughly investigated. It appears that the attribution rests, perhaps for example: Pál Kelemen, Baroque and Rococo in Latin America entirely, on a French inscription found on the back of the painting’s (New York: Dover Editions, 1951, 1967), 207; Katharina Schmidt, frame, likely added during its time at a Parisian gallery. The style of “Erläuterungen zum Ikonographischen Verständnis der Barocken the painting does not resemble that of Roelas’ other work. Further, Malerei in den Anden im 17./18. Jh.,” in Barocke Malerei aus den if the painting is by Roelas, it must have been made before 1625 Anden Dusseldorf, ed. Jürgen Harten (Düsseldorf: Städt, Kunsthalle, (Roelas’ death date). Yet other paintings of the child Virgin spinning 1977), 2:48-49; José de Mesa and Teresa Gisbert, Historia e la Pintura do not appear until the last half of the seventeenth century making Cuzqueña (Lima: Fundacion Augusto N. Wiese, 1982) 1:305; Anna the attribution to Roelas even more unlikely. Gradowska, Magna Mater: El Sincretismo Hispanomericano en Algunas Imagenes Marianas (Venezuela: Museo de Bellas Artes, 1992), 35-38, 3 While the Prado Museum currently lists the artist of this pair of paint- 122-131; Carol Damian, The Virgin of the Andes: Art and Ritual in ings as anonymous, Valdivieso has convincingly attributed them to Colonial Cuzco (Miami Beach, FL: Grassfield Press, 1995) 79-80; Luis Gutiérrez. Wuffarden has referred to the paintings as the work of the Eduardo Wuffarden, Los Siglos de Oro en los Vierreinatos de Ámerica painter Pedro Nuñez de Villavicencio, an attribution that appears to 1550-1700 (Madrid: Museo de las Ámericas, 1999), 346; Silvia Spitta, stem from a publication that was put out by the Prado Museum before Between Two Waters: Narratives of Transculturation in Latin America they were listed as the work of an anonymous artist. See Valdivieso, (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2005), 77-138; Luis “Una Virgen Niña,” 395-398; Valdivieso, Pintura Barroca Sevillana, Eduardo Wuffarden, “The Child Virgin at the Spinning Wheel,” in The 56-57; Wuffarden, “The Child Virgin,” 463; and Adela Espinos et al., Arts in Latin America: 1492-1820, ed. Joseph J. Rishel (Philadelphia: “El Prado Disperso: Cuadros Depositados en Madrid,” Boletin del Philadelphia Museum of Art, 2006), 463; Suzanne Stratton-Pruitt, ed., Museo del Prado 1 (5): 136-137. “The Child Mary Spinning,” in The Virgin, Saints, and Angels: South American Paintings 1600-1825 from the Thoma Collection (Milan: 4 The Spanish paintings I have identified and compiled are the result Skira, 2006), 182-83; and Victor Pimentel, et al., Peru: Kingdoms of of almost two years of research, and were variously “discovered” in the Sun and Moon (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 2013), 158, 170. auction listings from Spain, France, and the United States, as well as Several authors have written specifically on the paintings from Spain, museums, churches, and convents in southern Spain. but none has discussed them in relation to the Peruvian versions. See athanor xxxii sabena kull

the mid to late-seventeenth and early-eighteenth centuries, to look straight at her. She was dedicated where its popularity was likely even greater than in Peru. 5 to working in wool; and whatever the Some scholars have repeatedly suggested an identification old women were unable to do, she could of the child Virgin spinning in Peru with indigenous Inca untangle, even though she was of such a women’s roles such as ñustas, or imperial Inca princesses. tender age.”8 Yet the elements that have served as the basis for such an According to Pseudo-Matthew, the young Virgin spent a argument—such as the Virgin’s hair curl, headband, mantle third of her day spinning and weaving, while the remainder and clasp, as well as the floral garland border—are all clearly was spent in prayer.9 Another account of Mary’s young life present in the Spanish precedents, and suggests a more from the Proto-Evangelium of James tells how after Mary cautious reading is needed.6 Although it may be reasonable was betrothed to Joseph she was commissioned, along with to assume that images of the child Virgin spinning took on six other maidens of the Temple of Jerusalem, to spin the additional meanings in its new Andean context, it would purple and scarlet wool for the veil of the Temple, which be a mistake to view the elements already depicted in the would later be torn in two at the moment of Christ’s death Spanish precedents as evidence for cultural and religious on the cross.10 James describes how, as the Virgin was syncretic interpretations.7 engaged in spinning thread for the veil, the angel Gabriel This paper challenges the established scholarly discourse spoke to her, announcing the Incarnation of Christ in her on the subject and suggests that the previous focus on the virgin womb and her future role as Mother of God. Inspired Peruvian paintings has left us with an incomplete under- by this and similar stories, many early representations of standing of the subject. The following discussion presents a the Annunciation depict Mary holding a distaff and a skein broad overview of the iconography found in Spain, making of red wool, a detail that served as a visual reminder and note of the visual similarities to and differences from the typology of the reality of Christ’s Incarnation from the flesh paintings from Peru. Further, it will also speculate upon the of the Virgin, and visually suggested the idea that Mary form of the image’s trans-Atlantic transmission, suggesting “clothed Christ in the flesh of her womb.” Thus, images of that the Sevillian artist Andrés Pérez or one of his followers the young Virgin spinning provoke meditation upon Mary’s may have played a role in the iconography’s development humble and virtuousness nature, as evidenced by her early in Spain and the New World. life of great purity and industry spent working with cloth in Paintings of the child Virgin spinning are devotional im- the seclusion of the Temple. She is depicted as a model of ages intended to provoke private contemplation and prayer exemplary virtue to be imitated by all women. Yet the image in the viewer. The basis of the iconography appears to lie in of the child Virgin spinning, particularly when paired with accounts from the apocryphal gospels that detail the lives of the Christ child pricking his finger on a crown of thorns, the Holy Family, stories significantly missing from the canoni- also invites contemplation on Christ’s future Passion and cal Gospels of Matthew and Luke. The Gospel of Pseudo- ultimate sacrifice. The thread held in the hand of the child Matthew, an eighth-century Latin text, tells of Mary’s early Virgin is at once a reference to Christ’s corporeal concep- childhood as one of the Virgins of the Temple of Jerusalem: tion as well as his death. The paintings then can be seen as “Even though she was only three years rich in powerful metaphors for the discourse on the reality old, she walked with such a firm step and of Christ’s conception and the “intimate interrelationship spoke so perfectly and was so devoted to between Incarnation and Passion.” 11 the praise of God that she seemed not to Just as Psuedo-Matthew describes the young Mother be a little girl but an adult. She dedicated of God, the face of the child Virgin spinning is brightly illu- herself to prayers as if she were already minated by a soft light. Her chubby face and wide eyes are thirty years old. Her face shone so brightly those of a toddler, but her direct gaze appears to hold wisdom that is it was barely possible for anyone and virtue beyond her years. In addition to the previously

5 Valdivieso has noted that “hundreds” of pictures of the child Virgin solid basis. See Wuffarden, Los Siglos de Oro en los Vierreinatos de spinning were commissioned in and around Seville during the second Ámerica 1550-1700 (Madrid: Museo de las Ámericas, 1999), 346; half of the seventeenth century and the first quarter of the eighteenth and Wuffarden, “The Child Virgin at the Spinning Wheel,” 463. century, a claim that was apparently largely overlooked by previous scholarship, but is now visually supported by the large number of 8 Bart D. Ehrman and Zlatko Plese, The Apocryphal Gospels: Texts and Spanish paintings recently compiled. See Valdivieso, “Una Virgen Translations (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), 51-53. Niña,” 396. 9 Ibid., 53. 6 For example, authors who have put forth such an interpretation in- clude: Kelemen, Baroque and Rococo, 207; Mesa and Gisbert, Pintura 10 Ibid., 86-87. Cuzqueña, 1:305; Gradowska, Magna Mater, 35-38, 122-131; Damian, Virgin of the Andes, 79-80; and Spitta, Between Two Waters, 77-138. 11 Gail McMurry Gibson, “The Thread of Life in the Hand of the Virgin,” in Equally in God’s Image: Women in the Middle Ages, ed. Julia Bolton 7 Wuffarden has previously argued that interpretations that view the Holloway, Constance S. Wright, and Joan Bechtold (New York: P. Lang, Child Virgin Spinning as an expression of syncretism are without a 1990),48.

26 spinning a common thread: popular paintings of the child virgin in seventeenth and eighteenth-century seville and peru

described mantle, ornamental clasp, hair ornaments and and veracity. These ideas, when combined with the sheer curl, she wears a skirt and a form-fitting cuerpo, or bodice quantity of paintings of the child Virgin spinning produced that is usually red and laced up the front. Underneath, the in both Spain and Peru, a number likely in the hundreds, full sleeves of her camisa, a T-shaped garment of linen, is suggests a similarity to other Marian iconographies popular visible. In many of the paintings, the Virgin wears rings on at the same time, such as the Virgin of Guadalupe and the her fingers and red beaded bracelets around her wrists. Divine Shepherdess. These cult images were only realized Reminiscent of rosary beads, the red coral is also likely a in paint after a miraculous apparition of the Virgin Mary es- talisman to ward off evil.12 The New World paintings follow tablished their visual form and popular devotion. Currently the same visual conventions as those found in the Spanish little evidence has been found to support such a supposition, precedents, but often include further embellishment. For yet the possibility that images of the child Virgin spinning are example, the Virgin’s clothing is usually more brightly colored derived from a holy image is worth further investigation, and and elaborately patterned, perhaps an influence of Andean if found to be true would certainly help explain the image’s textile traditions. Many of the Peruvian paintings, particularly exceptional popularity on two continents. those made in Cuzco, include lavish gold-leaf detail that While the reasons for the widespread devotion to the defines the Virgin’s halo and her clothing with geometric image in Seville are not yet understood, the image was designs. This contributes to the flattened perspective and clearly in line with the popular visual culture of the period. decorative quality seen in many of the New World pictures. In seventeenth-century Seville, devotional paintings of child The specific outfit worn by the child Virgin spinning is saints, including those of Christ and the Virgin Mary, were almost wholly exclusive to the iconography, found in only especially common, and artists such as Juan de Roelas, one painting of a different, although related subject (Figure Francisco de Zurbarán, Bartolomé Esteban Murillo, and Juan 9, briefly discussed later). While attributes of the Virgin’s Simón Gutiérrez, were among those to paint them.14 Paint- attire, in particular the small cape, headband, and hair curl, ings by Zurbarán of the young Virgin Mary in the Temple—in have drawn considerable interest from scholars on account which she is depicted praying, reading, and embroidering, of their peculiarity (leading in part to the interpretation that although never spinning—and those by the same artist of these elements were derived from pre-Hispanic traditions), the Christ child with the crown of thorns likely served as it is unclear if they hold any specific significance or mean- thematic and visual prototypes for the child Virgin spinning ings. Perhaps the Virgin’s red headband is meant to echo the and its pendant. For example, the Child Virgin Sleeping, crown of thorns held by the Christ child and function as a painted by Zurbarán around 1655-1660, in the collection metaphor for the mental anguish Mary will suffer during her of Fundación Santander Central Hispano in Madrid, is set son’s death, a parallel to Christ’s physical suffering. Yet the in a domestic space that includes a vase of symbolic flow- headband might denote nothing more than a mere adorn- ers, sitting on a small table to the Virgin’s left, similar to that ment, perhaps something commonly worn by children of depicted in several paintings of the child Virgin spinning (see the period. In any case, when taken as a whole the young Figures 3 and 5, for example). While domestic settings are Virgin’s clothing appears to be the typical at-home, non-gala found in at least six Spanish paintings, and include baskets garb of a seventeenth-century Spanish gentlewoman.13 Her of cloth-making supplies and even a small dog at the feet of clothing is suitable for the domestic chore she is performing, the Virgin, the interior space appears to be entirely absent in as well as a signifier of her humble and virtuousness nature. the New World images, which almost invariably represent the Yet her simple garments are also luxurious, adorned in rich Virgin against a dark background free of domestic imagery. embroidery and decoration, and are fitting for the daughter Mindy Nancarrow has argued that Zurbarán’s paintings of a rich man and the future Mother of God. of the child Virgin in the Temple made particular meaning What may be of special significance in these paintings for nuns since their withdrawn existence paralleled, and is the observation that the child Virgin’s unique garments was likely modeled on, that of Mary’s childhood.15 Images and decorations, as well as her specific pose and posture, of the child Virgin spinning, conceptually and theologi- are repeated nearly identically in every single depiction of cally similar to Zurbarán’s, were also likely appropriate for the subject in both Spain and Peru. The artists’ apparent the eyes of cloistered women, whose daily activities often insistence in conforming to these particular iconographic included the manufacture of textiles. Indeed, the paintings constraints suggests that each image was based on some appear to have been common in convents, and some still particular model or formula. It also suggests that this specific hang on the walls of nunneries in the cities of Granada, and depiction was in some way important to the image’s meaning Llerena, Spain (Museo Monasterio de la Concepción, and 12 For a discussion on coral as a talisman against evil see Jacqueline Marie de la Real Academia Sevillana de Buenas Letras: Minervae Baeticae 36 Musacchio, The Art and Ritual of Childbirth in Renaissance Italy (New (2008): 9-32. Haven: Yale University Press, 1999), 131-132. 15 Mindy Nancarrow, “Theology and Devotion in Zurbarán’s Images 13 James Middleton, email correspondence with the Author, April 2013. of the Infant Virgin in the Temple,” South Atlantic Review 72, no. 1 (Winter 2007): 76-92. 14 Valdivieso, “La Santa Infancia en la Pintura Barroca Sevillana,” Boletín

27 athanor xxxii sabena kull

Iglesia Museo de Santa Clara, respectively), as well as Cuzco, as the domestic setting and the halo of disembodied putti. Peru, and Córdoba, Argentina (Convento de Santa Clara, and More likely, the image or images that inspired the New Iglesia y Monasterio de Santa Catalina de Siena de Córdoba, World paintings were similar to a pendant pair currently respectively). The painting in Córdoba includes an inscrip- being sold at auction in Las Palmas, Gran Canaria, in the tion beneath the image of the young Virgin, a dedication to Spanish-held Canary Islands (Figure 8).21 Two other paintings Leonora de Tejeda, who founded the convent in 1613.16 of the child Virgin spinning, one in a church in Azuaga, Spain Paintings of the child Virgin spinning also appear to have (Parroquia de Nuestra Señora de la Consolación) and the been commonly commissioned for the private devotion of lay other sold at auction in Madrid,22 are remarkably similar to women in domestic settings. Records indicate that pendant the one in Las Palmas. Together, the three paintings appear pairs of the child Virgin spinning and the Christ child with a to constitute a particular “type” of painting of the Child Virgin crown of thorns were often included in Sevillian women’s Spinning. For example, in each the Virgin wears the same dowries. For example, on April 28, 1693, Juan Joseph de striped brown mantle, white camisa with gold embroidery Salinas, a master gilder in Seville recorded in an inventory on the sleeves, while the same two gold ornaments adorn of his newlywed wife’s dowry two small canvases of the the Virgin’s red headband. Mary’s heart-shaped face, nar- child Virgin spinning and the Christ child, each bordered by row nose and heavily lidded eyes are also similar in each a garland of flowers.17 Similar records extend from at least painting. These pictures also bear remarkable similarity to 1693 to 1717 and suggest not only the image’s popularity the Peruvian paintings: set against a dark background, the among women, but provide precise evidence as to when the Child Virgin wears the headband and hair curl, and is framed paintings were being produced and circulated in Seville.18 by a lavish floral garland that includes flowers similar both in One painting on panel of the child Virgin spinning includes species and style to those in the New World images (compare an inscription on its back that reads: “I give to my daughter Figure 8 with Figures 1 and 2). Among the flowers depicted Maria Manuela.”19 Perhaps given for the women’s dowry are white lilies, pink tulips, and white and red anemone, all or as payment for the privilege of entering a convent, the symbols of the Virgin’s purity and virtue. Additionally, these painting and its inscription further suggest the iconography’s paintings also depict the Virgin’s smallest finger on her left close association with women. hand as pointing directly up, just as it does in the majority of While scholars such as Mesa and Gisbert have specu- the Peruvian pictures. Not only does the striking resemblance lated that the painting attributed to Roelas (Figure 3) may between all three Spanish paintings indicate they may have have served as the model for the Peruvian pictures via an been modeled after a shared source, or perhaps even painted exported print, this now appears doubtful in light of newly by the same artist, but their close similarity to the Peruvian identified Spanish precedents that are more visually similar paintings suggests an image of this type served as a model to the New World images.20 For example, the “Roelas” does for the child Virgin spinning in the New World. not include several elements nearly ubiquitous to the Peru- Incidental evidence suggests that the Sevillian artist vian paintings, such as the Virgin’s headband and hair curl, Andrés Pérez may have played a role in the creation of this and the floral garland border. Nor does it appear to have type, and thus perhaps in the formation of the New World a pendant of the Christ child associated with it, as at least images. Likely born in either 1660 or 1669, Pérez lived and several pictures from Peru do. Further, the “Roelas” painting worked in Seville until his death in 1727.23 Although the cur- includes elements not found in the Peruvian paintings, such rent locations of the paintings are unknown, records indicate 16 The inscription reads: “DA. LEONOR DE TEXEDA FUNDADORA.” For 21 As of the writing of this paper, this pair of paintings was being sold at a discussion on the convent and its founding, as well as an image of auction by Los Corotos, Las Palmas, Spain. Las Palmas was the main the painting, see Sergio Barbieri and Héctor H. Schenone, Patrimonio port city on the island of Gran Canaria in the Spanish-held Canary Artístico Nacional: Inventario de Bienes Muebles; Iglesia y Monasterio Islands and a stop-over point for Spanish trade ships sailing to South de Santa Catalina de Siena de Córdoba (Córdoba, Argentina: Academia America in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, a perhaps Nacional de Bellas Artes, 2006), 15-21, 50. intriguing detail in light of the likely export of paintings of the child Virgin spinning from Seville to Peru. This pendant pair and one other 17 “2 lienzos pequeños de una Niña Hilando y un Niño Jesus con unos are listed in the exhibition catalogue Arte Retrospectivo: Exposición Globos de Flores con sus molduras de jugeutes en blanco en 100 de Galerías Privadas de Gran Canaria (Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, reales cado uno…,” Duncan T. Kinkead, Pintores Doradores en Sevilla, Spain: Ayuntamiento de Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, 1965), 3-4, 1650-1699, Documentos (Bloomington, IN: AuthorHouse, 2009), 490. http://mdc.ulpgc.es/u?/MDC,44268.

18 For examples, see Fernando Quiles García and Francisco J. Her- 22 Sold at auction by Ansorena Subastas, Madrid, Spain, October, 2011. rera, Fuentes Para la Historia del Arte—Andalucía (Seville, Spain: Guadalquivir, 1990), 1:202, 1:211, 2:97. 23 Ana Aranda Bernal and Fernando Quiles, “Una Serie del Pintor Sevil- lano Andres Pérez (1669-1727) en la Parroquia de Puerto Serrano,” 19 The inscription reads: “Pe[?] lo regale a mi hija Ma Manuela.” The Laboratorio De Arte 18 (2005): 249-57. The dates given for Pérez’s painting was sold at auction by Subastas Imperio, Madrid, Spain, June birth are contradictory. According to Juan Agustín Ceán Bermúdez, 9, 2013, lot no. 73860. he was born in Seville in 1660, while José Gestoso y Pérez notes his birth year as 1669 when he was baptized in the parish of San Marcos. 20 Mesa and Gisbert, Pintura Cuzqueña, 305. See Juan Agustín Ceán Bermúdez, Diccionario Histórico de los Más Ilustres Profesores de las Bellas Artes en España, 1800 (Madrid: Edi-

28 spinning a common thread: popular paintings of the child virgin in seventeenth and eighteenth-century seville and peru

that Pérez painted the subject of the child Virgin spinning 1967 notes that the paintings were acquired by Engracia at least twice.24 A painting by Pérez in the collection of the Freyer Dougherty, the paintings’ donor, during a trip to Se- Museum of Fine Arts in Córdoba, Spain, may provide an ville.28 Visually, the paintings are more similar to the images idea of how his pictures of the child Virgin spinning looked. from Spain than those from Peru. For example, several ele- Painted in the late-seventeenth and early-eighteenth cen- ments nearly universal to the Peruvian paintings are absent tury, Saint Joachim, Saint Anne and the Child Virgin depicts in the Denver pair—the gold leaf, floral border, and more Mary wearing the same distinctive garments as in images of elaborately detailed costume—while other elements, such the child Virgin spinning and is the only known painting of as the halo of disembodied putti, are only known in Spanish a different iconography to do so (Figures 9 and 10). A pen- versions of the subject. In particular, the Denver paintings are dant pair in Ayamonte, Spain, previously in the collection quite comparable in composition, if not in style, to the pair of a children’s hospital built in the seventeenth century, is by Gutiérrez (Figure 4). It appears likely then that the promi- attributed to a follower of Pérez because it bears similarity in nence of literature on the Peruvian paintings, combined with both garments and facial characteristics to the child Virgin in the dearth of scholarship on the Spanish versions, influenced Saint Joachim, Saint Anne and the Child Virgin,25 as does the the change in origin from Seville, Spain, to Cuzco, Peru. painting in Las Palmas and the others of its type. Pérez also If indeed produced in Seville, the painting at the Denver included floral borders similar to those surrounding the child Art Museum is now the only known example of a Spanish Virgin spinning in Las Palmas in his paintings, such as Niño version of the child Virgin spinning in a public institution in Jesus Pasionario y Eucarístio in a private collection in Seville.26 the United States. It is also unique in that it offers up a type The flowers in this painting, and those depicted among the of tangible evidence for the popular devotion inspired by trompe l’oeil stone cartouche that encircles Saint Joachim, the image: during conservation treatment an iron crochet Saint Anne and the child Virgin, include many of the same needle was found between the canvas and stretcher, perhaps species found in the paintings in Las Palmas and Peru: lilies, placed there as an offering to the Virgin, and her virtue and tulips, and the white and red anemone. This suggests that skill as a cloth-maker.29 This memento was likely left by a Pérez was involved in the formation of the particular “type” previous owner, whose days were perhaps also filled with of child Virgin spinning iconography that may have served as spinning and sewing, and who felt not only pious devotion the model and inspiration for the paintings in the New World. to, but an affinity with, the young Virgin. A painting in the collection of the Denver Art Museum This paper has presented an overview of the once (Figure 6) may serve as an example of how the scholarly popular but overlooked Spanish roots of a New World im- emphasis on the Peruvian paintings has overshadowed, age. While previous scholarship has focused on the paintings and perhaps overpowered, the study of the Spanish paint- from Peru, it is now evident that images of the child Virgin ings and a more global discourse on the subject. Thought spinning and the Christ child with the crown of thorns are to have been made in Peru, perhaps a work of the Cuzco an iconographic tradition shared by two related yet distinct School, the Denver painting has been presented as a fine cultures, underscoring the global nature of artistic transmis- example of the popular New World iconography, yet recent sion and influence found in the early modern Spanish world. research by the Author suggests it was instead produced in The Denver paintings and others of the child Virgin spinning Seville, Spain. Original accession documents indicate that from Seville and surrounding cities will provide new opportu- when the painting and its pendant (since deaccessioned) nities for scholarly investigation in which the paintings from were first acquired by the Denver Art Museum in 1969 they both continents are studied in dialogue with one another, were actually believed to have been produced in Seville; laying the groundwork for a more comprehensive and truly only later, perhaps in the 1990s, was the location amended trans-Atlantic study. to Cuzco, Peru.27 Additionally, an exhibition catalogue from University of Denver ciones ISTMO, 2001), 71-2; and José Gestoso y Pérez, Ensayo de un Cuna de Ayamonte,” Jornadas de Historia de Ayamonte (Ayamonte: diccionario de los Artífices Que Florecieron en Sevilla Desde el Siglo Patronato Municipal de Cultura, 2000): 11-44. XIII al XVIII Inclusive (Seville, 1889-92), 2:77. 26 See Valdivieso, Barroca Pintura Sevillana, 494. 24 Curtis Charles Boyd notes that two “Hilanderas” (Spanish for “spinners”—a common term for the iconography) were painted by 27 See object file for Virgin Mary Spinning, 1969.353, Denver Art Mu- Pérez and were previously in the collection of Don Pedro García in seum, Denver, Colorado. Seville. See Curtis Charles Boyd, Velazquez and Murillo; A Descriptive and Historical Catalog of the Works of Don Diego de Silva Velazquez and 28 The catalogue notes that Freyer purchased the paintings because, Bartolomé Estéban Murillo (New York: J.W. Bouton, S. Low, Marston, intriguingly, they resembled a painting of the child Virgin spinning Searle, and Rivington, 1883), 351. she previously had acquired in Peru. See Treasures from Peru: Span- ish Colonial Paintings from the School of Cuzco, exhibition catalogue 25 Interestingly, the children’s hospital in Ayamonte, Spain, had close ties (Columbus: The Gallery of Fine Art, 1967), 3-4. to Peru because Galdames Francisco Cano, who made his fortune in Lima, left in his will in 1655 funds to build the hospital in his native 29 While the precise date of the needle is unknown, its oxidized state city. Cano’s uncle, and the executor of his will, was also a resident of suggests it was made in the nineteenth century or prior, and is perhaps Lima. See Jesus Manuel Carrasco Terriza, “Pintura Barroca de la Casa even contemporary to the painting.

29 athanor xxxii sabena kull

Figure 1. Unidentified workshop, Cuzco, Peru, The Child Mary Spinning, eighteenth century, oil on canvas, 36 x 28 inches. Collection of Marilynn and Carl Thoma, Chicago, Illinois.

Figure 2. Unidentified artist, Child Virgin Spinning (left) and Christ Child of the Thorn (right), eighteenth century, oil on canvas, dimensions unknown. Convento Santa Teresa, Potosí, Bolivia. Images courtesy of Suzanne Stratton-Pruitt.

30 spinning a common thread: popular paintings of the child virgin in seventeenth and eighteenth-century seville and peru

Figure 3. Attributed to Juan de Roelas, The Child Mary Spinning, seventeenth cen- tury, oil on canvas, 84.4 x 61.8 cm. Städel Museum, Frankfurt am Main, Germany.

Figure 4. Attributed to Juan Simon Gutiérrez, The Virgin Child Spinning (left) and Christ Child with the Crown of Thorns (right), late seventeenth century, oil on canvas, 72 cm x 52 cm. Museo del Prado, Madrid, Spain. Gift of the Marquesa Viuda de Cabriñana, 1894, © Museo Nacional del Prado / Art Resource, New York. 31 athanor xxxii sabena kull

Figure 5. Unidentified artist, Spain, The Child Virgin Spinning, seventeenth century, oil on canvas, 30 x 27.5 cm. Image courtesy of Balclis, Barcelona, Spain.

32 spinning a common thread: popular paintings of the child virgin in seventeenth and eighteenth-century seville and peru

Figure 6. (Left) Unidentified artist, Seville, Spain, The Virgin Mary Spinning, c. 1700, oil on canvas, 25 x 20 Inches. Denver Art Museum Collection: Gift of Engracia Freyer Dougherty for the Frank Barrows Freyer Collection, 1969.353. Image courtesy of the Denver Art Museum, Denver, Colorado. (Right) Unidentified artist, Seville, Spain, Christ Child of the Thorn, seventeenth century, 25 x 20 inches. Formerly Denver Art Museum (deaccessioned 1995, current location unknown). Images courtesy of the Denver Art Museum.

Figure 7. Unidentified artist, Spain, The Child Virgin Spinning, seventeenth century, oil on canvas, 24 1/2 x 18 3/4 inches. Image courtesy of Skinner Inc., Marlborough, Massachusetts, www.skinnerinc.com.

33 athanor xxxii sabena kull

Figure 8. Attributed to Francisco de Antolínez and Juan de Arellano, The Virgin Child Spinning (left) and Christ Child of the Thorn (right), seventeenth century, oil on canvas, 80 x 61 cm each. Collection of Mr. Javier de la Fuente and Mrs. Maria Isabel Sotomayer, Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Spain.

Figure 9. Andrés Pérez, Saint Joachim, Saint Anne and the Child Virgin (San Joaquín, Santa Ana y la Virgen Niña), late seventeenth-early eighteenth century, oil on canvas, 87 x 67 cm. Museo de Bellas Artes de Córdoba, Córdoba, Spain. 34 spinning a common thread: popular paintings of the child virgin in seventeenth and eighteenth-century seville and peru

Figure 10. Detail of Andrés Pérez, Saint Joachim, Saint Anne and the Child Virgin (San Joaquín, Santa Ana y la Virgen Niña), late seventeenth-early eighteenth century, oil on canvas, 87 x 67 cm. Museo de Bellas Artes de Córdoba, Córdoba, Spain. 35

Discourses of Power: Andean Colonial Literacies and The Virgin Mary of the Mountain

Kristi M. Peterson

Images of the Virgin Mary, as exported from Europe to the In the colonial Andean world this strategy served as a Americas in the sixteenth century, performed similar func- means of reorganizing the worldviews and everyday lives of tions as those for the Catholic monarchs of Spain in the face native South Americans.2 Literacy is thus a multivalent term of Reformation threats in Europe and in the Reconquista on and is not confined solely to written texts.3 As regards The the Iberian Peninsula. The narratives subsequently employed Virgin Mary of the Mountain this paper takes a revisionist in the New World were defined by a language of Christianity view by acknowledging native regard for the work as an and conquest. By invoking the Virgin in new locations and issue of visual literacy in a complex colonial situation. The contexts, priests and conquistadors alike adapted patterns of painting thus occupied a position within a re-negotiated European devotion to build a system of colonial order and social space of multiple literacies. This paper contends that Spanish supremacy. Through integration into their ceremo- the significance of the painting is recognized as a part of a nies and activities, the Virgin Mary began to be substituted for multidimensional colonial discourse and as such creates a and syncretized with formerly indigenous representatives of social space in which cultural codes and practices were re- the feminine sacred. This paper argues not for the survival of negotiated by native peoples and Europeans alike. Pre-Columbian sacrality in the face of conquest, but rather its The Virgin Mary of the Mountain resembles other Mar- synthesis, re-negotiation, and engagement with new colonial ian imagery in the Americas formally and iconographically. literacies in the Andean territories of South America. This The painting is unique, however, in that the body of the discussion will therefore situate the circumstances of The Vir- Virgin is completely inscribed within the mountain. The gin Mary of the Mountain of Potasiama (before 1720) within landscape, punctuated by veins of silver, lush vegetation, emerging perspectives in the field that consider how images and miniature figures, forms the rich brocade of her gown.4 function as a form of literacy in colonial societies (Figure 1). In the upper register, the Archangel Michael (far left) stands Following the definition of Tom Cummins and Joanne next to the figures of Jesus Christ, the Holy Ghost, and God Rappaport, literacy corresponds to a complex system of both the Father, the three of whom crown the dual figuration visual and textual communication that functions within an of the mountain peak and the Virgin’s head. The sun and encompassing ideological system, in this case what has been moon iconography of the pre-Conquest Inca are shown identified as “colonial discourse.” With the work of scholars on either side of the mountain in the middle ground. Two such as Michel Foucault, Franz Fanon, and Homi Bhabha, native figures stand just left of center as representatives of among others, in mind, “colonial discourse” encompasses the the indigenous settlement at Potosí, while, just to the right, cultural language that serves to maintain unequal relation- two European figures represent the Spanish founding of the ships of economic and political power. This is accomplished contemporary city. In the lower register, directly in front of through a variety of strategies, of which literacy is but one. the mountain, a globe contains an aerial view of the colonial The colonial situation serves to cultivate a dependency by city of Potosí. To the left stand the figures of the Pope and guaranteeing a position of superiority for the colonizer vis- a cardinal, while to the right stands the Emperor Charles V à-vis the colonized.1 and an indigenous cacique. I would first like to express my gratitude to Dr. Paul Niell, under whose 2 For a full explanation of their approach to “literacy” in the Andes, see direction this essay was first conceived, for his generous guidance on the “Introduction,” to Tom Cummins and Joanne Rappaport, Beyond this project in its numerous stages. I would also like to acknowledge the Lettered City: Indigenous Literacies in the Andes (Durham, NC: my professors and colleagues in the Department of Art History at Duke University Press, 2012), 1-26. Florida State University for their exceptional scholarship that inspires my own every day. Finally, I would especially like to thank Alexandra 3 Ibid., 19. Cummins and Rappaport further define the term as, “...a set Challenger for her editorial eye and helpful suggestions. of practices deeply embedded within social, political, and economic realities.” 1 David Spurr, The Rhetoric of Empire: Colonial Discourse in Journalism, Travel Writing, and Imperial Administration (Durham: Duke University 4 This is an intentional invocation of indigeneity through the Virgin’s Press, 1993), 7. direct and physical incorporation into the sacred landscape (i.e., the Incan association of body parts with aspects of nature). athanor xxxii kristi m. peterson

In colonial Latin American art, the representation of the The Virgin Mary of the Mountain is essentially a painting Virgin Mary was also one tied to practices of colonial order.5 of space and landscape, but one concerned with a narrative The Virgin Mary of the Mountain communicates the order- of claiming. The mountain of Potosí was the single largest ing function of the colonial city, the crusading ambitions of source of silver ever discovered: 45,000 tons of the precious colonization, and the Virgin’s central role in the economy metal was extracted from the establishment of the mining of salvation. This places the painting within a larger colonial settlement up to 1783. Because of the value of its natural discourse that operated to reshape epistemologies and resources, the Spanish were determined to lay claim to Po- subjectivities by co-opting pre-contact signs and conflating tosí and accomplished this partly through the imposition of them with aspects of the new colonial reality. a new built environment. By this time, the area already had Within the new colonial reality, pre-conquest Incan a history of being manipulated by political entities. Potosí literacies still maintained a presence. A strong element of was a settlement within the Aymara Empire when the Inca the indigenous concept of quariwarmi (or complementarity) arrived on their own mission of imperial expansion in the features through the presence of the sun and moon, and the fifteenth century. Throughout its history, Potosí was continu- juxtaposition of the highlands and the coastal shore visible ously engaged with the establishment and re-negotiation of in the valleys flanking the mountain. In addition there is the political agendas. notable element of uncoursed masonry pictured directly The construction of the Spanish colonial city involved the behind the globe. The Incan built environment was consis- re-inscription of the landscape into a new colonial discourse. tently integrated with the natural one. Many Inca settlements The visual program of the colonial built environment can be employed outcrops of living rock (rock in its natural state) seen in the drawings accompanying Felipe Guamán Poma in their foundations. These rocks could also be sacred for de Ayala’s First Chronicle and Good Government (1615). a variety of reasons. As Carolyn Dean notes, through the Three hundred ninety-eight line drawings accompany the integration of these rocks into manmade constructions the written account of the contemporary state of the Andean Inca symbolically possessed any sacred elements as well as territories.11 In the plates, cities like Lima, Riobamba, and the landscape.6 Spanish colonial culture effectively reframed Potosí are represented as plazas, often surrounded by nature indigenous visual systems through the use of the Virgin and (Figures 3, 4, and 5). The colonial cities are visually presented other tropes. as clones of the “Divine City” featured in the Apocalypse of A defining feature of The Virgin Mary of the Mountain Saint John. Throughout the sixteenth century, imperial edicts is its associations with the mountain of Potosí. Located in such as the Laws of the Indies (1573) established rules for present-day Bolivia, the area was originally under the aegis of construction. This involved the imposition of the Christian the Viceroyalty of Peru.7 The city itself stands directly beneath faith and the designation of the city as a perfectly sacred and the mountain Cerro Rico (Cerro de Potosí), as pictured in geometrical space.12 Gaspar Miguel de Berrio’s 1758 View of Potosí (Figure 2).8 Poma’s illustration of Potosí highlights both the plaza The Spanish settlement was established in 1545 as a mining and the mountain. The plaza was the space of public ritual town and eventually became the location of the Spanish in the American colonial city, a void activated by social per- colonial mint. 9 This soon made the city not only one of the formance.13 Prior to colonization Inca settlements contained largest in the Americas but also (within a century of its found- a main square-like space called the huakaypata that served ing) larger than many of its European counterparts (including as a sacred and political center and the site of events such London and Paris).10 as victory celebrations and the investiture of rulers.14 The

5 Cummins and Rappaport, Beyond the Lettered City, 6. Cummins and c.100,000. Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann, Towards a Geography of Art Rappaport state that in its imposition of Western European systems of (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2004) 276. sociability, colonial cultural politics, “imparted a system of referentiality that fostered the expression of a divine and secular power that was 11 Title translation: First Account and Good Government. Poma (1532- embedded within a hierarchy of natural authority.” 1615) was an indigenous noble. Poma’s work is additionally a petition for legislative reforms that would recognize the physical and moral 6 Carolyn Dean, “The Inka Married the Earth,” Art Bulletin 89, no. 3 rights of the indigenous population and protect them from colonial (2007): 514. abuses. The text is written in Spanish with occasional uses of Quechua.

7 The Viceroyalty of Peru was established in 1542. 12 Jean-Francois Lejeune, “Dreams of Order: Utopia, Cruelty, and Mo- dernity,” Cruelty and Utopia: Cities and Landscapes of Latin America, 8 “Cerro rico” translates literally to “rich mountain.” Unless otherwise ed. Jean-François Lejuene (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, noted, all translations are by the Author. 2005), 31.

9 From Potosí, the precious metal was taken by llama and mule train 13 Cummins and Rappaport, “The Reconfiguration of Civic and Sacred to the Pacific Coast where it was shipped north to Panama City. From Space: Architecture, Image, and Writing in the Colonial Northern there it travelled again by mule train across the isthmus to either the Andes,” Latin American Literary Review 26, no. 52 (1998): 80. The port of Nombre de Dios or Portobelo where it was handed over to the plaza also served to reframe the Andean reference of vision. treasure fleet and sailed for Spain, entering through the port of Seville. 14 Carolyn Dean, Inka Bodies and the Body of Christ: Corpus Christi in Co- 10 Within a century of its founding, the city had a population of lonial Cuzco, Peru (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1999) 28-89.

38 discourses of power: andean colonial literacies and the virgin mary of the mountain

Hispanicization of the space converted it to one for Chris- coming of a world emperor or angelic pope. The Habsburg tian festivals and public acts. In replacing indigenous public dynasty was conceptualized in terms of this perceived need performances these new rituals recast the action of the plaza for a savior, as Jaime Lara has suggested.18 The prevailing in terms of conversion and instruction. notion was that, as Europe would fall to the Apocalypse, the The principal roads leading to the plaza defined the Pope and Spanish King would flee to the New World. From limits of the city’s grid, itself a spatialization of the political this sanctuary, Christ and Catholicism would re-conquer lost order. The plaza’s space of public ritual, however, was physi- lands.19 The fall of New World empires (the Aztecs in 1521 cally surrounded by the material trappings of colonialism. and the Inca in 1532) was taken as an indication that God By entering the grid the individual passed into a colonially- had indeed chosen the Spanish to conquer the New World configured space, ostensibly to become part of the Christian and its peoples in order to bring them into the faith.20 community.15 It is worth considering that the image of the Outside of political propaganda, the religious commu- Virgin may in fact be able to do what the city cannot, that nity actively campaigned in the New World by identifying is, always frame the mountain as controlled by the Spanish. indigenous practices as diabolical. The religious war to be The colonial city sat in shadow of the mountain, and the waged in the Americas was cast as one against the devil. grid terminated at the city’s edge, dissipating into the sur- The indigenous populations were portrayed not as inher- rounding landscape. ently evil, but childlike and easily manipulated by Satan The social action of the plaza, and the city at large, was who encouraged them to practice idolatry. Much primary ideologically determined, but was in actuality obstructed documentation exists in which clergy members bemoaned (and left unfulfilled). The function of the built environment, the fact that, although the Gospel had been spread, the read through the actual city and visual depictions such as Amerindians continued to worship the sacred landscape. As Poma’s examples and The Virgin Mary of the Mountain, Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra argues, colonization was justified served the broader ideological goal of reorganizing both the as an ongoing struggle against Satan, “a biblically sanctioned individual’s worldview and the indigenous body. The goal interpretation of expansion.”21 of the new spatial order was not only to impose control, but Luis de Riaños’s mural, The Road to Heaven and the also to develop the indigenous population into Christian or Road to Hell (c.1626), located in the Church of San Pedro, Europeanized individuals and thus full members of the new Andahuaylillas, exemplifies the parallels drawn between Bib- society. However, the indigenous individual could never fully lical enemies and the spiritual enemies of the Church in the realize this goal since that same body was always marked Americas (Figure 6). The scene on the left of the bifurcated as Other. This is akin to what Homi Bhabha described as mural is a copy of an engraving by Hieronymus Wierix (1553- the operation of “mimicry.” According to Bhabha, “colonial 1619) illustrating Psalm 106, which refers to the idolatrous mimicry” emerges from the desire for “a reformed and corruption of the nation of Israel among the Canaanites. The recognizable Other” on the part of the colonizer. What is path leading to the gates of Hell is remarkably similar to the occurring is a complex system of cultivating individuals who mountainside in The Virgin Mary of the Mountain; both have are “almost the same, but not quite.”16 The colonized group the same floral pattern. In addition, this path leads directly to is positioned to emulate their colonizers without ever joining a medieval European-style castle complete with fortifications. their ranks. Therefore, in navigating the new social spaces This stands in direct visual contrast to the light and orderly of the city, the indigenous person was perpetually in a state space of the colonial grid, represented by contemporary of incomplete social and political development and was architecture and a paved walkway in The Road to Heaven thought to be “naturally” incapable of achieving full, i.e., on the right side of the mural. adult, realization of self. For the European colonist of the seventeenth century, For European ecclesiastics, the fifteenth century was the overwhelming presence of the demonic in the New defined by a sense of apocalyptic crisis.17 This often took World was a philosophical certainty.22 The Virgin was given political form such as the Joachite prophecy of the imminent a central role in the symbolic economy of salvation. In the 15 Kaufmann, Towards a Geography of Art, 294. and Tradition, 1531-2000 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001) 34-36. 16 Homi Bhabha, “Of mimicry and man: The ambivalence of colonial dis- course,” in The Location of Culture (London: Routledge, 2004), 85-92. 20 Note that this was not unique to the Spanish, as Jorge Cañizares- Esguerra convincingly argues: there were similar discourses employed 17 Jacques LaFaye, Quetzalcóatl and Guadalupe: The Formation of by the northern European colonists to impose new political and Mexican National Consciousness, 1531-1813 (Chicago: University of spiritual orders. Chicago Press, 1987) 23. 21 Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra, Puritan Conquistadors: Iberianizing the At- 18 Jaime Lara, City, Temple, Stage: Eschatalogical Architecture and Liturgi- lantic, 1550-1700 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2006), 9. cal Theatrics in New Spain (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2004) 53. 22 As Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra notes, “Satan had more than Protestant dissenters to threaten the survival of the New Israelites in the Ameri- 19 David A. Brading, Mexican Phoenix: Our Lady of Guadalupe, Image can Canaan, for his true minions were the Amerindians.” Ibid., 9-10.

39 athanor xxxii kristi m. peterson

various conquests of major pre-Columbian cities appari- Additionally, the specific angelic iconographic type tions of the Virgin were credited as divine agents of military represented here was used as a visual symbol in allusion to victories. Artistic productions of the period included visual divine dominion and the heavenly hierarchy. The figure of cues, such as the crescent moon shape that is often featured St. James on the right is a direct descendent of earlier ex- beneath the feet of the Virgin, as demonstrated in the c. amples of St. James Matamoros (which literally translates as 1735 painting Our Lady of the Victory of Málaga (Figure 7). “Moor killer”). In the Americas, this figure became St. James Art historian Rose Demir argues that such visual elements Mataindios and, like the Virgin, was often an apparition at allowed images of the Virgin Mary to function as not only the fall of major pre-Columbian cities. In The Virgin Mary of protagonist and protector, but also as a sign of conquest.23 the Mountain, this figure is not actually present but may be This overarching rhetoric justified the conquest and also read through a surrogate figure. The cacique kneeling directly became an absolution. The Virgin Mary of the Mountain is behind Charles V is wearing a cloak that mimics the costume a direct visual invocation of such a narrative. In choosing to of St. James as he is typically featured in colonial paintings. depict Charles V in the image, the artist situated the scene This message of conquest justified by faith served to con- within the rhetoric of early colonization. Beyond the Span- sistently remind the colonial viewer of the larger ideological ish Crown’s status as divinely chosen to conquer the New system in which colonization was divinely sanctioned and a World, the Andean landscape and the city painted within necessary mission. A colonial situation, no matter the actors, the globe are presented as gifts. The Spanish are thus not involves unequal power relations in which a dominant group mere stewards of the land, but are the blessed recipients of attempts to subdue and subordinate another. The colonial its wealth as their just reward. discourse serves to keep the subordinate group in a perpetual In comparison, consider The Conquest of Peru, a seven- state of social incompletion, a position of dependence. Indig- teenth-century example from the Cuzco school of painting enous people might be able to refute this discourse in some currently housed in the Coleción Polí in Lima, Peru. As in cases, but they certainly have to negotiate it on a daily basis. The Virgin Mary of the Mountain, there are three registers In conclusion, colonial literacies address the set of cues, of figures. In the upper register: the Archangel Michael, the in this case visual, that serves to impose and reaffirm the Virgin, and St. James Mataindios (also known as Santiago). overarching ideological system. In the painting discussed, A group of indigenous persons stands in the middle-ground, these cues are given form through the ordering of the colo- and there are two groupings of figures in the foreground, nial city and the visual markers of conquest and a justified one religious (left) and one secular (right). The figures in colonization. Within The Virgin Mary of the Mountain, the the foreground represent the legions of this world that will viewer encounters the markers of colonial order and the impose colonial and Christian order upon pre-Columbian imposition of a new political and sacred space. In the het- forces. In the background, visible through the forest of spears erogeneous community in which this painting would have held by the conquistadors, stands a fortified city, presumably existed, familiarity with visual elements may have been se- the site being defended by the Inca. Here one should recall lective. A newly-arrived peninsular Spaniard may have only Riaños’s The Road to Hell. The city’s fortifications await the been able to decipher those elements of European origin, destruction by Spanish forces that is necessary for the sub- while an indigenous viewer may have read the landscape sequent realization as an ordered, sanctified, and Christian dominated by the body of the Virgin. Through the integration colonial city. of these elements the painting demonstrated new inscriptions This painting is a visual epic of the challenge the Spanish and the evolving rhetoric of political order. The European ap- represent to Satan’s dominion in the Americas. The figures in propriation and renegotiation of the terms contained within the upper register represent the divine forces overseeing this the visual and built environment of the Americas constituted challenge. Along with the Virgin, who gazes with calm benefi- a conscious manipulation of space and the constant visual cence upon the scene, the archangel Michael is depicted in retelling of a very specific narrative. The Virgin Mary of the the act of slaying Satan, while on the right St. James rides in Mountain participated in the recasting of a language of co- to join the battle. Both of these figures represent additional lonial subjectivity and a new colonial reality. Christian archetypes that were visually appropriated for the conquest of the Americas. The archangel Michael represents the Andean association of angels with heavenly armies.24 Florida State University

23 Rose Demir, “Redefining the Crescent Moon: Symbolic Resonance in upon the crescent’s position at the base of a shaft-like pattern on the Muslim Spain and Indo-Christian Art” (PhD diss., University of Texas at Virgin’s gown. See also, Carol Damian, The Virgin of the Andes (Miami San Antonio, 2004), 20. Carol Damian points out that in this particular Beach: Grassfield Press, 1995). image the crescent shape also denotes Incan sacrificial knives based 24 Kaufmann, Towards a Geography of Art, 294.

40 discourses of power: andean colonial literacies and the virgin mary of the mountain

Figure 1. Anonymous, The Virgin Mary of the Mountain of Potasiama, before 1720, oil on canvas, 53 x 41 ½ inches. Casa Nacional de Moneda, Potosí, Bolivia. Image from Carol Damian, The Virgin of the Andes: Art and Ritual in Colonial Cuzco (Miami Beach: Grassfield Press, 1995), page 52.

41 athanor xxxii kristi m. peterson

-~ PI ... MU-. •1'- " v..... I• : ::.:~ :1 ~~::::. ., i ~ ., r-,r1,fV46-'\- \\\ 1•.. ,,,_,.,__ ,, <" 11•.. "C--t°'~t:4 n ?<::p11_it6 <::nla mimia\till~ ii cosl:a de D I lr.nAul u,,t., OrteSt1.-fl>ftlMrO.. C.,p11 M1 ~url ?:,am·~ I i'/.J~.J, , ., 1', ~ tn1Hl•¥a11,~

Figure 3. Guaman Poma de Ayalá, Ciudad de Los Figure 4. La villa de Riobamba, drawing 349 Figure 5. La villa rica enpereal de Potocchi, draw- Reyes de Lima, drawing 362 from Poma, Primer nue- from Poma, Primer nueva corónica y buen gobi- ing 375 from Poma, Primer nueva corónica y buen va corónica y buen gobierno, 1615; National Library erno, 1615; National Library of Denmark and gobierno, 1615; National Library of Denmark of Denmark and Copenhagen University Library. Copenhagen University Library. and Copenhagen University Library.

42 discourses of power: andean colonial literacies and the virgin mary of the mountain

Figure 6. Luis de Riaños, The Road to Hell and The Road to Heaven, c.1618-26, fresco. Church of San Pedro, Andahuaylillas, Department of Cuzco, Peru. Image courtesy of Daniel Giannoni.

Figure 7. Luis Nino, Our Lady of the Victory of Málaga, oil on canvas, region of Potosí, c. 1735. Image from Carol Damian, The Virgin of the Andes: Art and Ritual in Colonial Cuzco (Miami Beach: Grassfield Press, 1995), page 64. 43

Framing the Botanical: Picturing Nature and Painting the Castas of Eighteenth-Century Mexico

Akeem Flavors

The tradition of casta painting is one of the most captivat- with Mörner, but argues that Cabrera, and other artists work- ing—and enigmatic—artistic genres from Mexico’s colonial ing in the second half of the century, were also painting for period. Typically painted as a series of sixteen separate a highly intellectual audience, a particular audience that, canvases, the first sets began to appear during the reign of during the Enlightenment, would have been well-versed in Spanish King Phillip V (1700-46), and production grew in understanding the visual conventions that make up casta variation and circulation throughout the remainder of the paintings and other pictures intended to diagram and better eighteenth century. Currently, at least a hundred partial or understand not only the natural world, but that which was full casta sets have been accounted for and more continue foreign, exotic, and not easily reduced to written descrip- to surface—attesting to their overwhelming popularity dur- tion. Considering this, the tradition of natural history and ing the period.1 the practice of botanical illustration will be examined with The myriad of casta paintings executed during this regard to the similarities, both visual and theoretical, that period can be seen as an attempt to visualize the complex they share with casta painting. process of mestizaje (race mixing) that occurred among the In Spain, the eighteenth century was the golden age of three most prominent ethnic groups in the Spanish American transatlantic exploratory surveys and the plant illustrations colonies: Spaniards, Indians, and Africans. These paintings they produced—a consequence of European botanical prac- almost always depict a mother, father, and child—each tices that were dominated by the work of Swedish taxonomist representing a different racial category found within the Carl Linnaeus (1707-78).5 While it is known that interests sistema de castas (racial lineages) acknowledged by, and stemming from taxonomic classification (the sole purpose conceived in, colonial society. Primarily commissioned by of botanical illustration) and a larger “culture of curiosity” elite Spaniards and executed by New Spanish painters, many dominated European mentalities during the seventeenth sets were sent to the Royal History Cabinet in Madrid to be and eighteenth centuries, little has been pursued in terms exhibited. Casta paintings were thus being produced largely of connecting Spanish participation in this cultural exchange for overseas consumption.2 Existing somewhere between with the development of casta painting.6 Art historian Dan- export item and colonial artifact, these paintings sparked an iela Bleichmar has demonstrated that, in eighteenth-century interest among the Spanish public for exotic objects from its Spain, images were the privileged media for embodying American empire.3 and transporting both the object of an observation and the The focus of this paper is to emphasize how such a curi- observation itself —an insight applicable and relevant to the ous and foreign audience might have read these paintings. status of casta sets as export items to Europe.7 Historian Magnus Mörner saw casta paintings primarily as The majority of art historical scholarship on casta paint- “products of a few intellectual artists.”4 In this brief analysis of ing does not focus on Enlightenment taxonomic systems, or a casta series by Miguel Cabrera, this paper not only agrees the status of casta sets as export items, as an explanation for This article originated in research for my forthcoming thesis. I thank 3 María Concepción García Sáiz, Las castas mexicanas: Un género especially my advisor Dr. Stacie Widdifield for her invaluable feedback pictório Americano (Milan: Olivetti, 1989), 47-49. and guidance throughout this project. I am also grateful to Dr. Emily Umberger and Amy Hamman for their insightful observations and 4 Magnus Mörner, Race Mixture in the History of Latin America (Boston: constant support. Finally, I thank Dr. Magali Carrera and those in at- Little, Brown, 1967), 59. tendance at the 31st Annual Art History Graduate Student Symposium at Florida State University for their comments and helpful suggestions. 5 Martyn Rix, The Art of the Botanist (London: Lutterworth Press, 1981), 78.

1 Susan Deans-Smith, “Creating the Colonial Subject: Paintings, Collec- 6 Ken Arnold, “Trade, travel, and treasure: Seventeenth-century artificial tors, and Critics in Eighteenth-Century Mexico and Spain,” Colonial curiosities,” in Transports, Travel, Pleasure and Imaginative Geography, Latin American Review 14 (2005): 169. 1600-1830, ed. Chloe Chard and Helen Langdon (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996), 266. 2 Nina M. Scott, “Measuring Ingredients: Food and Domesticity in Mexican Casta Paintings,” Gastronomica: The Journal of Food and 7 Daniela Bleichmar, “The Geography of Observation: Distance and Vis- Culture 5 (2005): 73. ibility in Eighteenth-Century Botanical Travel,” in Histories of Scientific Observation, ed. Lorraine Daston and Elizabeth Lunbeck (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2011), 376. athanor xxxii akeem flavors

the genre’s development or its content.8 However, it should the painting. Also immediately recognizable, carefully sliced, be noted that these systems and the transatlantic practices and precariously positioned on display is an avocado. As if they inspired are only being considered with regard to the simultaneously collected from larger, pre-existing traditions human figures found in these paintings. It is the overall goal of both still life painting and botanical illustration, the fruits of this paper to suggest that these paintings are fundamen- found in de Mena’s painting produce an odd, yet mesmer- tally concerned with diagramming—not only interracial izing, effect. Additionally, as opposed to the castas presented coupling and its idealized reality—but human reproduction above, the fruits depicted here can be viewed as illustrations and biological sexual systems as they were beginning to be of actual, individualized objects that exist in nature—an understood in the eighteenth century. Considering the visual observation that might explain the presence of botanical conventions of botanical illustration—via Linnaean botany— imagery in this, and other, casta paintings. this paper will reframe the botanical imagery found in casta Much like botanical illustrations, casta paintings imply paintings in a manner that forges a relationship between both that knowledge of the natural world can be visually contained the natural products and human figures that share countless in a network of signs, symbols, and representational conven- compositions. tions—despite the reality of what is being depicted.10 This It is not difficult to surmise the unprecedented level implication comes from the fact that both casta painters and of interest casta paintings would have produced for any plant illustrators were working from two separate models eighteenth-century audience given the amount of visual that gave way to practices codified in pictorial conventions information they contain. Consider a casta painting credited that remained largely unchanged throughout the century— to Luis de Mena from the middle of the century that not only the sistema de castas and Linnaeus’s taxonomic system, attempts to summarize the sistema de castas, but features respectively. In order to frame the cultural and intellectual depictions of the Virgin of Guadalupe, fruits native to the atmosphere of eighteenth-century Mexico and Spain, a New World, and famous Mexico City landmarks (Figure 1). visual examination of the pictures these models inspired is The majority of the canvas, and the central area of its com- necessary. position, illustrates the progressive dilution of “pure” Span- In the time period between Charles III’s accession to the ish, Indian, and African blood via the presentation of family Spanish throne in 1759 and Spain’s invasion by Napoleon groupings. Neatly compartmentalized and arranged in two in 1808, a total of fifty-seven scientific expeditions were rows of four, eight lavishly dressed, interracial couples are mounted by the Spanish Crown to investigate the natural shown with their consequent offspring in a chart-like man- history of the Americas—every single one of which employed ner—while inscriptions set beneath each grouping identify artists who produced a staggering number of botanical illus- the racial classification of each figure.9 trations. 11 It is also of interest to note that by the middle of Often discounted in the reading of this image is the the eighteenth century, the Spanish Crown had imposed the entire bottom third of the composition—a portion dedicated Linnaean system on all botanical practices, including New exclusively to presenting fruits and vegetables found in the World expeditions.12 Natural history practices also collided Americas. In this clearly delineated register of the painting with the larger European “culture of curiosity” that inspired more than a dozen visually identifiable fruits and plants are the production of encyclopedic travel manuscripts not shown. Placed against the background of an unarticulated necessarily or officially associated with the Spanish Crown. interior much like the casta scenes above, this grouping pro- Regardless, all of these works aimed to document certain duces relatively dynamic properties. The fruits shown here visible realities of the New World for a particular European are not only numbered, but also arranged alphabetically in a audience. keyed inscription placed directly beneath them. Additionally, A botanical illustration of an avocado (Figure 2) comes by varying the proportion, color, and texture of these fruits from the chapter on the “Trees, Fruits, Birds, and Animals” in an appropriately scaled space, de Mena creates several of New Spain from one such manuscript commissioned visually stimulating illusions. by Spanish merchant Pedro Alonso O’Crouley in 1774. 13 At the forefront, a sliced pineapple and flower are O’Crouley, who was not only a renowned art collector but placed as if tumbling over the edge of the scene and out of a well known member of various scientific societies in Eu- 8 Ilona Katzew, Casta Painting: Images of Race in Eighteenth-Century Politics in the Early Modern World, ed. Londa Schiebinger and Claudia Mexico (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004), 203. Swan (Philadelphia: University of Philadelphia Press, 2005), 134.

9 Not all casta paintings fit the basic design scheme that has come to 11 Daniela Bleichmar, Visible Empire: Botanical Expeditions & Visual characterize the genre. Uncommon, but not unique, are casta paint- Culture in the Hispanic Enlightenment (Chicago and London: The ings such as de Mena’s that arrange multiple casta scenes on a single University of Chicago Press, 2012), 18. compartmentalized surface that illustrates a typology of races together. There are also other instances in which castas are presented alongside 12 Lafuente and Valverde, “Linnaean Botany,” 136. or within city views, usually labeled as market scenes. 13 O’Crouley, Pedro Alonso, A Description of the Kingdom of New Spain 10 Antonio Lafuente and Nuria Valverde, “Linnaean Botany and Spanish (Dublin: Allen Figgis, 1972), 23. This chapter is the eighth of twenty- Imperial Biopolitics,” in Colonial Botany: Science, Commerce, and nine total chapters, and four appendixes, that make up this manuscript.

46 framing the botanical: picturing nature and painting the castas of eighteenth-century mexico

rope, had the manuscript made to be added to his already wealthy, educated men in Europe.18 For the first time, the existing cabinet of curiosities in Spain.14 The end product ability to magnify, isolate, and separate entirely the object of includes written and visual accounts of Mexico’s geography, one’s study was made readily available. Here, the biologist’s government, local products, and even pre-Conquest history. petri dish is made comparable to the white paper of the The manuscript also includes illustrated renditions of casta artist’s sketchbook. In this sense, isolation of the botanical paintings.15 allowed for an easier (and solely visual) dissection, examina- Figure 2 was created by an anonymous artist and utilizes tion, and classification of the natural world. the key conventions of botanical illustration, the most stan- In casta paintings, however, the inclusion of the botanical dard feature being the de-contextualization, or total isolation, alongside human figures complicates what other, alternative of the depicted specimen on a blank (usually white) back- function depictions of natural products may have represented ground.16 The illustration is also monochromatic, although to their original audience. One could argue that the inclusion this was not a general rule so much as a style.17 Suspended of these products may have acted to compliment and help in the middle of the composition, two branches from an explain the more unique, not easily understood, aspects of avocado tree are rendered as if having just been cut from mestizaje—by attempting to diagram the inherently sexual the larger plant. One branch contains only leaves while the relationship depicted in casta paintings. other holds the growing buds of the fruit as well as a single, Their inclusion was certainly a conscious decision on ripe, avocado. Directly beneath this, one half of the same behalf of Miguel Cabrera, one of the most celebrated and fruit is shown—carefully sliced open and pitted. A pit from renowned New Spanish painters of the eighteenth century. the fruit is positioned to the right of this and stands on end. During his lifetime, he was not only recognized as the great- Simply dissected and placed before the viewer, the avo- est painter in all of New Spain, but also considered to be cado’s affected presentation points to a sort of process that is among the most educated and culturally informed men of fleshed out, seemingly from beginning to end. This process his day.19 Thus, it is safe to assume that Cabrera would have is a fundamental element of Linnaean botany because it is been familiar with the practice of botanical illustration and representative of the sexual systems on which the practice its visual conventions. In fact, a number of his paintings is founded. Here, the branch and buds of the avocado plant confirm this assumption. In his noteworthy casta set from would have indicated, to the eighteenth-century viewer, 1763, fruits, plants, and vegetables are consistently placed that from which one came. It would have also indicated in the foreground of the image. that the natural process diagrammed here is cyclical—that Typically situated in the lower left or right corners of planting the avocado’s seed would continually yield the the image and on top of a raised platform, the fruits and same product. vegetables presented in his series are few in number and Considering this, it would be beneficial to note the unique in their exclusivity to certain racial mixtures. No two presentation of the avocado found in de Mena’s casta paint- canvases in this set utilize the same, or even similar, botanical ing. Despite the similarities to the avocado depicted for combinations in their composition. Thus, one could argue O’Crouley, the largest difference appears to be a visual one. that Cabrera both selected and carefully depicted these It may be of interest to ask: what can the white space and products to aid the viewer in defining the human figures isolated qualities of the botanical illustration accomplish that they appear alongside. de Mena’s rendition cannot? Or asked in reverse, what does In the first canvas from this set, From Spaniard and the treatment of the avocado in a casta painting allow for that Indian, Mestiza (Figure 3), the gap between human figure the conventions of botanical illustration purposefully avoid? and botanical specimen is closed dramatically. The depicted For both practices, and the natural specimens they offspring (a mestiza) is not only placed directly next to the present, context is key. According to French historian and labeled pineapple but holds a slice of the fruit in her right social theorist Michel Foucault, the white space of botanical hand. The slice both mimics the pleats in her dress and illustrations would have recalled the then recent invention indicates that she has taken a bite of the fruit. In a way, of the microscope, an instrument whose optics would have this interaction shifts the pineapple’s status from dissected been familiar to the target audience of scientific illustrations: natural specimen to actively consumed agricultural product. 14 Katzew, Casta Painting, 189. representation (generally monochromatic). Although a colored image conveys different information from a monochromatic outline, neither 15 O’Crouley, Description of the Kingdom, 17. Due to their abbreviated is necessarily considered better than the other. For example, while nature, an example of these casta paintings is not included here. color might aid the purposes of a gardener or amateur botanist, the However, it may be of importance to note that many of the castas in supposed clarity afforded an outlined drawing would better suit a O’Crouley’s work are also depicted alongside natural products. scientist studying plant morphology.

16 Gill Saunders, Picturing Plants: An Analytical History of Botanical Il- 18 Michel Foucault, The Order of Things: An Archeology of the Human lustration (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995), 15. Sciences (New York: Vintage, 1994), 133.

17 Ibid. The two basic styles in botanical illustration are the illusionistic 19 Katzew, Casta Painting, 17. pictorial representation (generally colored) and the outline schematic

47 athanor xxxii akeem flavors

Given the importance of racial hierarchy to casta painting, it consuming the product that foregrounds the composition. is worth mentioning that in Spanish America the pineapple Presented on the platform in the foreground of the scene (inscribed here with the word “Piña”) was associated with the are two different plants that are not labeled but appear in wealthy Spanish elite—a direct nod to the mestiza’s clearly multiple parts. However, it is not too much of a stretch to stated racial origin.20 assume that the fruit on top is a tamarind. Jumbled together The presentation of this fruit also lends itself to com- on the edge of the pedestal they also appear as if they could parison with the sliced pineapple in de Mena’s painting. In fall off of the stand and out of the painting at any moment. both cases a whole pineapple, indicated by the leaves on its Placed at the top of this heap are two bean stems: one that crown, is situated behind a sliced fragment of the same fruit is carefully sliced lengthwise in half rests on top of the other, whose upper segment is not accounted for. It is seemingly whole stem. common knowledge for modern viewers that, growing a The tamarind that is splayed open appears to be missing pineapple plant only requires planting the top portion of the its beans. In this regard, it is important to note that the repre- leafy side of the fruit directly in fertilized soil. However, it is sented offspring holds a small bowl filled with what appear to problematic to assume the same for an eighteenth-century be the missing seeds from the bean stem on display. As with audience, particularly one that was most likely European the previously discussed pineapple and avocado, the seed and probably unfamiliar with the plant. Additionally, while from which one is able to cultivate the larger plant is promi- it is odd that two of the same fruit are shown, the inclusion nently featured. However, the child in this canvas forges a recalls the sexual process visually diagrammed in botanical more direct connection with the diagrammed process by illustrations. Is it possible, then, that both pineapples are to be taking part in the consumption. In considering Linnaean understood as a single entity at different stages of a similarly botanical practices, this action raises questions similar to sexual process? How, too, is this notion complicated by the those posed by the mestiza who consumes a pineapple slice depicted mestiza’s explicit consumption of the pineapple in the first canvas. How does the represented offspring enter in this manner? into the sexual process that is so carefully diagrammed here? A similar treatment is provided in Cabrera’s depiction of Returning to de Mena’s casta painting, a new reading an avocado in the fifth canvas of this set, From Spaniard and can be proposed—from the bottom, upward—that frames Mulatto, Morisca (Figure 4). An avocado is carefully sliced the botanical suggestions presented here in a manner that open and placed on the edge of the platform on which the forges a relationship between both the natural products and depicted offspring (a morisca) stands. Due to its situation on human figures that share this composition. Somewhere in the corner of this pedestal the avocado appears as if it is about this medley of fruits, plants, and vegetables there may exist to tumble off the edge of the platform. Inscribed on the lip a botanical combination, or suitable referent, for each of of the of the pedestal, just below the two halves, is the word the casta groupings situated above, helping to articulate the “aguacate.” Behind this avocado and situated in the shadows complex (yet entirely natural) process that inspired an entire caused by the surrounding figures is yet another avocado. artistic genre. Compared to de Mena’s representation of this fruit and By considering the practice and art of botanical illustra- the botanical illustration from O’Crouley’s manuscript, a tion in relation to the genre of casta painting, this paper has standard format for depicting an avocado can be outlined. attempted to highlight the importance of pictorial conven- Like the pineapple in the previous canvas, this avocado is tions to an eighteenth-century audience. In this regard, a whole and seems to function as an alternative view of the common ground has been established and the intersection same specimen—one that shows the fruit in its entirety. Like between these two practices explored. Casta painting may the pineapple, the means by which one grows an avocado very well be the visual manifestation of two, quasi-scientific (the pit that remains in its right half) is displayed yet again. ordering theories that demonstrated an overwhelming degree However, in this scene the human figure does not interact of influence during the eighteenth century. If not, and at the with the fruit aside from standing on the same, raised surface. very least, the unprecedented amount of visual information The same cannot be said for the figure depicted in the present in casta sets is certainly part of a larger discourse on seventh canvas, From Spaniard and Albino, Return-Backwards how to order and explain the natural world. (Figure 5). Similar to the mestiza shown before, here, too, the offspring (a return-backwards) is shown as if in the act of University of Arizona

20 Ilona Katzew, New World Orders: Casta Painting and Colonial Latin was sent to Spain in the early sixteenth century for King Ferdinand; America (New York: Americas Society Art Gallery, 1996), 21. The reputedly upon tasting it, he claimed it was superior in taste to all pineapple is noted for being among the fruits that interested Spaniards other fruits from Mexico. most. This is probably because it was known that a form of the fruit

48 framing the botanical: picturing nature and painting the castas of eighteenth-century mexico

Figure 1. Luis de Mena, casta painting, c. 1750, oil on canvas, 120 x 104 cm. Museo de América, Madrid.

49 athanor xxxii akeem flavors

Aguac;ite.

p[upper left] Figure 2. Avocado (Aguacate), from Pedro Alonso O’Crowley’s Idea compendiosa del reino de la Nueva España (1774). Biblioteca Nacional, Madrid.

p[upper right] Figure 3. Miguel Cabrera, From Spaniard and Indian, Mestiza, 1763, oil on canvas, 132 x 101 cm. Private Collection.

tFigure 4. Miguel Cabrera, From Spaniard and Mulatto, Morisca, 1763, oil on canvas, 132 x 101 cm. Private Collection.

50 framing the botanical: picturing nature and painting the castas of eighteenth-century mexico

Figure 5. Miguel Cabrera, From Spaniard and Albino, Return-Backwards, 1763, oil on canvas, 132 x 101 cm. Private Collection. 51

The Ruins of Iconologie: Redefining Architecture in Jean-Charles Delafosse’s Desseins

J. Cabelle Ahn

I advise you to be wary of the talents of an architect who is not a great draftsman. —Denis Diderot, Sur la Peinture (1765)1

In eighteenth-century France, the word dessein denoted of which he became a member in 1774), an engraver, and drawing, draftsmanship, and design, with the orthographic a decorator; he operated a drawing school for artisans, and and theoretical division between drawing (dessin) and design from 1781, was an academician at Académie Royale de Bor- (dessein) only established later in the century. This paper deaux.4 He was one of the most prolific ornemaniste, a term explores this dual meaning in the context of the social and designating an artist or an artisan whose principal production cultural debates on the definition of architectural authority is the creation of ornamental motifs, of the second half of the during this period. Architecture in late eighteenth-century eighteenth century. To date, he is considered a progenitor of France equally signaled two dichotomous practices—the the goût grec, the so-called Greek style that came into fash- design process, which was regarded as a production of ion in the late 1750s that was characterized by ornamental artistic imagination, and the mechanical activity of building motifs derived from Greek and Roman architecture such as as its after-effect.2 With this in mind, this paper studies a heavy garlands, Greek keys, vases, antique bands and friezes. series of seventeen architecture and ruin fantasy drawings Previous scholarship has focused on Delafosse’s project, by the French architecte-décorateur Jean-Charles Delafosse Nouvelle Iconologie Historique (1767, with later editions (1734-89) in light of his professional navigations among the continuously published until 1785), which was an ambitious debates and conflicts between artists, architects, and artisans publication in scope, invention, and comprehensiveness.5 concerning bon goût—proper taste. More specifically, it in- In his preface, Delafosse explained that in this publication terprets these drawings as a tool of professionalization, as a he sought to present “the most memorable events from the means for Delafosse to align himself with the high academic creation of the world to the present, following the major rather than the artisanal tradition, with the drawings forming epochs in both sacred and profane history.”6 The Nouvelle a bridge between Delafosse’s practice as an architecte and Iconologie Historique merged the ornamental pattern books as a décorateur.3 used by marchand-merciers and artisans with the iconologi- Born in Paris in 1734, Delafosse worked as an architect, a cal tradition exemplified by Cesare Ripa’s Iconologia (first professor of geometry and perspective at the city’s Académie published without illustrations in 1593, with many later de Saint-Luc (the school of the painters’ and sculptors’ guild revised and expanded editions), with the latter serving as a 1 “Je vous conseille de vous méfier du talent d’un architecte qui n’est pas 4 Delafosse realized architectural designs in Paris from 1776-83, in- un grand dessinateur.” Denis Diderot, “Sur la Peinture,” in Oeuvres cluding the still surviving Hôtel Titon and Hôtel Goix (1776-83) and de Denis Diderot. Salons (Paris: Chez J. L. J Brière, Libraire, 1821), now destroyed houses in Pantin and Rue Saint-Apolline. In the last 1:491. years of the 1780s, he proposed plans to build barracks for the Garde Nationale. Svend Eriksen, Early Neo-classicism in France (London: Faber 2 The architect Étienne-Louis Boullée outlined this division in his and Faber, 1974), 170; and Michel Gallet, Les Architectes parisiens posthumous publication, Essai Sur Art (c. 1794), as noted in Alberto du XVIIIe siècle: dictionnaire biographique et critique (Paris: Mengès, Pérez Gómez, L’architecture et la crise de la science moderne (Liège: 1995), 174-5. P. Mardaga, 1987), 139. 5 Full title of the recueil is Nouvelle iconologie historique ou Attributs 3 It may be possible that there are more ruin drawings by Delafosse hiéroglyphiques, qui ont pour objets les quatre éléments, les quatre in private collections. Due to the lack of a comprehensive catalogue saisons, les quatre parties du monde et les différentes complexion de raisonné, as of yet, the complete number of ruin and architectural l’homme. The plates were published in 1767 with descriptions added fantasy drawings remains indefinite. In this article, I have chosen to in 1768. The first edition was sold at Delafosse’s own house as well as illustrate six of the seventeen drawings. Out of the seventeen, six Chez Delalain, Rue St. Jacques; Chez Daumont, Rue Saint-Martin; and of the drawings are in the collection of the Royal Institute of British chez Chéreau, Rue des Mathurins. The Nouvelle Iconologie Historique Architects in London while ten of the larger drawings are conserved was the first in a series of publications that Delafosse continued to at Musée d’Arts Décoratifs in Paris, and one ruin drawing is at the work on until 1785. British Museum in London. Close to 400 drawings by Delafosse are dispersed throughout public collections worldwide with 233 draw- 6 “Je présente à l’imagination tout ce qui s’est passé de plus mémorable ings conserved at Musée d’Arts Décoratifs in Paris, alone. The title depuis la Création du Monde jusqu’à présent, en suivant les Époques “architecte-décorateur” is taken from the 1771 advertisement of his principales de l’Histoire, tant Sacrée que Prophane.” Jean-Charles De- publication, Nouvelle Iconologie Historique, in the journal Mercure lafosse, “Avant-propos,” in Nouvelle iconologie historique, ou Attributs de France and the L’avant-coureur in June 1771 and May 1771, re- hiéroglyphiques qui ont pour objets les quatre éléments, les quatre spectively. saisons, les quatre parties du monde et les différentes complexions athanor xxxii j. cabelle ahn

reference for grand manner paintings in France during the ing from architectural plans, furniture designs, ornamental long eighteenth century.7 As such, the publication integrated motifs, allegorical emblems and fantastical landscapes. The emblematic and allegorical images with designs for seating latter are outliers in his repertoire in both draftsmanship and standing furniture, fountains, monuments, mausoleums, and style and have been largely overlooked in scholarship.11 as well as architectural ornaments for interiors and exteriors. These fantastic ruin drawings can be dated to 1765-1775, There is thus an inherent conflict within the Nouvelle a particularly prolific time in Delafosse’s career, when he Iconologie Historique since it was a pattern book for decora- was teaching, exhibiting, and publishing. They were likely tors in the guise of allegorical emblems intended for grand personal references since they were not contemporane- manner paintings. In fact, the publication illustrates grand ously published, but some may have been exhibited in manner painting topics such as the fall of Rome in the format public through Salons at Académie de Saint-Luc. Based on of a proposal for a cartouche design. The advertisements the dimensions, the seventeen drawings can be sorted into for the Nouvelle Iconologie Historique mirror Delafosse’s two sets, six smaller architectural fantasies dated 1765-70 dual orientation toward two distinctive markets: the high (Figures 1-3), and eleven larger ruin drawings dated 1770- academic-sanctioned arts and the “low” artisanal practices. 75 (Figures 4-6).12 All seventeen drawings are executed with One of the first advertisements of Delafosse’s publication in graphite, pen, ink and grey or blue wash, standard media the journal Année littéraire in 1767 claimed that the Nouvelle for eighteenth-century architects. They are largely mono- Iconologie Historique would not only serve the high arts of chromatic and decrease in tone from the foreground to the painting, sculpture, and architecture, but would also be use- background, with the adumbrations of the buildings in the ful to artisans and designers.8 The tensions between fine arts background merging with the washed sky, thus destabilizing and artisanal practices can be traced back to Delafosse’s own the perspectival space. Moreover, the élan of his draftsman- affiliation with Académie de Saint-Luc, which remained the ship suspends the drawings in non-finito. Compared to the domain of artisans, and his professional work as an architect technical execution in his designs and architectural proposals, unaffiliated with the Académie Royale d’Architecture in the activity of drawing becomes primary rather than subser- Paris.9 Close examination of Delafosse’s public reputation vient to the composition on the sheet. As a result, the ruin unveils this diverging gap: in the advertisements for his and architectural fantasy drawings may be seen to document publications he is referred to often as an architect, while Delafosse’s activity as a dessinateur. in his dealings with the Académie Royal d’Architecture, he Furthermore, the drawings are highly textural, with ink is continuously described as a sculptor, decorator, or as an layers visible on the surface, and the fluidity of line and the engraver.10 loose deployment of wash can even be considered “paint- Following the extensive number of published designs, erly.” The emphasis on the material condition of the drawings Delafosse left behind a sizable number of drawings, rang- can be considered alongside the French art critic Roger de de l’homme. (Paris: chez l’auteur, rue Poissonnières, en la maison de as “Architecte, ancien Adjoint à Professeur de Géométrie et Perspec- M. Menan, paveur, entre la rue de la Lune et celle de Beauregard, et tive,” in the description for the Salon of 1774 at the Académie de chez Delalain, libraire, rue St. Jacques, 1768), n.p. Saint-Luc, and finally as “Architect Académicien,” in the description for the Salon of 1787 at the Académie de Bordeaux. Conversely, the 7 For example, the painter Charles Le Brun based his allegorical program Académie Royale d’Architecture in Paris referred to him as “Sculpteur for Versailles on Ripa’s publication, with the latter popularized in décorateur et professeur de dessin,” in 1768 and Jacques-François France through Jean Baudoin’s translation in 1644. As for Delafosse, Blondel, the Professor of Architecture at the Académie in Paris, referred direct references to Ripa’s publication can be seen in plates 80-1 to him in 1774 still as “Dessinateur, Sculpteur & Graveur.” and 84-5 in Nouvelle Iconologie Historique in which allegories are presented in small circles, mirroring Ripa’s mode of presentation. 11 Monique Mosser has noted that this particularly series of ruin and architectural fantasy drawings have been ignored in scholarship al- 8 Élie-Catherine Fréron, ed. “Nouvelle Iconologie Historique,” in L’Année though some analyses can be found in Gilbert Erouart, L’architecture au Littéraire (June, 1767), 4:65-66. pinceau: Jean-Laurent Legeay, un piranésien français dans l’Europe des lumières (Paris : Electa Moniteur, 1982); and in Bruno Reudenbach: 9 Delafosse presented his publication to a group at the Académie Royale G.B. Piranesi: Architektur als Bild. Der Wandel der Architekturauffas- d’Architecture which included the architects Jacques-François Blondel, sung des achtzehnten Jahrhunderts (Munich: Prestel, 1979). Georges Étienne-Louis Boullée, Julien-David Leroy, Jean-Rodolphe Perronet, Brunel, ed., Piranèse et les Français: 1740-1790 (Rome: Académie de Marie-Joseph Peyre, Jacques-Germain Soufflot, and Charles De Wailly. France à Rome, Edizioni Dell’Elefante, 1976), 105. It was received as “une oeuvre étrange, mais admirablement. A copy of Delafosse’s publication can be found under lot 91 in Soufflot’s 12 Delafosse’s drawings were contemporaneously purchased by J-B. Fl. après-décès. In “Du Lundy 21e Novembre 1768,” in Procès-verbaux G. de Meyran, Marquis de Lagoy (1764-1829), Prince Albert Casimir de l’Académie Royale d’Architecture, 1671-1793, ed. Henry Lemon- August of Saxony, Duke of Teschen (1738-1822) ; Prince Charles de nier (Paris: J. Schemit, 1911), 8:34. Ligne (1735–1814), J. L. Soulavie (1752-1813), Marquis de Calvière (1693-1777), and the draftsman and engraver Pierre-Nicolas Ranson- 10 Delafosse is given the title “Architecte & Professeur pour le Dessein,” nette (1745-1810). Eriksen, Early Neo-classicism in France, 175. and “Architecte, Décorateur et Professeur en Desseins” in advertise- ments in the Avant-Coureur and the Année Littéraire in 1767, as “Ar- 13 “Ce qu’on nomme ordinairement dessein…s’est premierement formé chitecte, Décorateur et Professeur en Desseins,” in the preface of the dans l’imagination.” In Roger de Piles, Élémens de peinture pratique Nouvelle Iconologie Historique in 1768, as “Architecte-décorateur,” in (Paris: Jombert 1766), 31. the advertisements in Mercure de France and L’Avant-coureur in 1771,

54 the ruins of iconologie: redefining architecture in jean-charles delafosse’s desseins

Piles’s assertion, “that which we commonly call drawing… Servandoni’s composition including the long colonnade, is first formed in the imagination.”13 De Piles proposed that the foreground ruins, and the statue-topped column in the drawing signified the entire thought, plan and execution of background.15 Delafosse’s drawings thus invoke the visual a given work with both the act and medium of drawing as history of classicism itself, led by Claude to its later revival the site where artistic imagination was manifested. It may under Piranesi. even be proposed that the primacy of the act of drawing in Unlike Piranesi, Servandoni, and the artists in their mi- the seventeen sheets locate them under the mantle of artistic lieu, Delafosse had never travelled to Italy. In this context, the imagination, closer to the Académie-led fine arts rather than drawings may have been a virtual experience of the Grand the guild-led mechanical arts. Tour. In fact, Delafosse likely owned drawings by Piranesi The drawings can be linked to the on-going pedagogical since he provided Piranesi’s drawings for Campo Marzio to system at the royal academies of paintings and architecture the Bibliothèque du Roi (King’s Library) in 1783.16 For Dela- in Paris and in Rome. The ruinous and fantastic landscapes fosse, the ruin drawings can be seen as exercises by means are filled with architectural fragments, uprooted trees (evoca- of which he became familiar with antique landscapes and tive of Vitruvius—and later Filarete’s—visualization that ornaments that artists at the Académie de France in Rome columns originated from tree trunks), mausoleums, tombs, would have acquired in person. At this time, the academic and crumbling antique temples and monuments.14 Although tradition in Rome, according to Thomas Crow, symbolized Delafosse never travelled to Italy, the drawings are sugges- “a unified and universal body of traditions by which French tive of antique landscapes. For example, elements in Figure art would continually check its bearings,” and subsequently 5 can be identified as the Temple of Vesta and the Pyramid served as a marker of the bon goût.17 The experience of of Cestius in Rome, and in Figure 6, the equestrian statue, Rome through prints and drawings was an on-going strat- the columns with relief bands wrapped around it and the egy for many artisans and draftsman in Paris. During this obelisk are objects that have classical counterparts in Rome. period, measured drawings of ruins would even be studied The composition and subject matter in Delafosse’s drawings as stand-ins for the actual models. As such, both scientific can even be compared to capricci and vedute produced by and imaginary renderings of the views of Rome, produced French artists and architects studying in Rome in the early and circulated by artists such as Piranesi, would profoundly eighteenth century. Visual similarities between such drawings influence the contemporary French cultural imagination of have led scholars to label Delafosse as part of the genera- Italy. For example, the printmaker and draftsman Gabriel tion of architects and artists strongly influenced by Giovanni de Saint-Aubin channeled his failed ambitions to become a Battista Piranesi—an extensive list that includes Jean-Laurent history painter by illustrating Philippe de Prétot’s Le Spectacle Legeay, Charles-Louis Clérisseau, Charles Michel-Ange de l’histoire romaine (1760). Like Delafosse, Saint-Aubin Challe, Louis-Joseph Le Lorrain, and Charles de Wailly. The had never been to Rome and in his designs he appropriated trope of the bridge leading into the palace-temple in Figure monuments from Piranesi’s Antichità-Romane (1756), result- 2 is a compositional device favored by Claude Lorrain and ing in the inclusion of anachronistic elements in his composi- adapted by artists such as Piranesi, Challe, and Legeay and tions.18 Saint-Aubin’s illustrations for Histoire Romaine were later in the century, by the French painter Hubert Robert. published and circulated, and similarly, Delafosse’s antique Even preceding Piranesi’s generation, explicit comparisons landscapes were also exhibited in public. They were likely can be drawn between Figure 6 and Giovanni Niccolò shown at the Académie de Saint-Luc’s Salon of 1774 because Servandoni’s Ruines Antiques (Figure 7). The two draw- the description of works exhibited by Delafosse included “Ar- ings are created with similar media and Delafosse echoes chitectural ruins, perspective view of a funerary monument, 14 Reudenbach, Piranesi: Architektur als Bild, 109. 17 Thomas Crow, Painters and Public Life in Eighteenth-century Paris (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985), 28. 15 Servandoni studied in Rome with Giovanni Paolo Panini from 1715-24. Servandoni worked mainly as an artist and architect in Paris and was 18 Saint-Aubin also taught drawing, human proportions, historical at- part of the generation preceding Piranesi. As Servandoni exhibited his tributes, and secular and sacred allegories at Blondel’s École from paintings at the Salon of 1765 at the Académie Royale de Peinture 1747 to 1764. Saint-Aubin was affiliated with the same institutions et de Sculpture, Delafosse may have been familiar with some of as Delafosse in that he learned to draw at the studio of Jean-Baptiste Servandoni’s artistic vocabulary. Sarrazin (a professor at the Académie de Saint-Luc) before going on to study at Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture in Paris. Like 16 There is a drawing at the National Gallery of Scotland in Edinburgh Delafosse, Saint-Aubin was particularly interested in the creation of by Delafosse (Inv. no.D 1039r) which is very similar in composition to allegory and emblems. Émile Dacier, Gabriel de Saint Aubin, peintre, Piranesi’s Carcere Oscura, with the latter etched as part of Piranesi’s dessinateur et graveur (1724-1780), Catalogue raisonné (Paris: G. Van Prima Parte (1743). The practice of copying after Piranesi’s engravings Oest, 1929), 27; Colin B. Bailey, “The indefatigable, unclassifiable art and etching was a didactic exercise that even English artists such as lover: Saint-Aubin’s curiosité,” in Gabriel de Saint-Aubin: 1724-1780, Joseph Mallord William Turner participated in. Madeleine Bargin, Colin B. Bailey, ed. (Paris: Musée du Louvre, 2007), 72n27; and Victor “Les collectionneurs de Piranèse en France au XVIIIe siècle d’après le Carlson, Ellen D’Oench, and Richard S. Field, Prints and Drawings by catalogues de vente et les inventaires,” in Georges Brunel, ed., Piranèse Gabriel de Saint-Aubin, 1724-1780 (Middletown: Davison Art Center, et les Français: colloque tenu à la Villa Médicis, 12-14 mai 1976 (Rome: 1975), 28. Edizioni dell’Elefante, 1978), 44.

55 athanor xxxii j. cabelle ahn

and a temple of Mars.”19 While none of Delafosse’s known Paris and made lessons available to amateurs, craftsmen, drawings has been directly tied to the Salon of 1774, it is connoisseurs, and the interested public. The curriculum quite possible that any of the seventeen drawings were dis- encompassed the principles of architecture, drawing, math- played under the vague description of “Architectural ruins.” ematics, perspective, masonry, and stereotomy. 23 Blondel Delafosse’s emphasis on the art and architecture of particularly emphasized drawing, writing that without it, Rome can be considered in context of the eighteenth-century “even the most ingenious of architects is halted.”24 Students connoisseur, collector, and critic Charles-Nicolas Cochin: in drew landscapes, figures, ornaments, trophies, and topics 1755 he blamed the artisans who had never been to Rome from sacred and profane histories with lessons supplemented as the perpetrators of the “bad taste” of the period. Two by class trips to study first-hand the exterior and interior of decades later, in 1771, Cochin criticized the architects who Parisian buildings. Students were instructed to make drawings had never left Paris who were promoting and exercising the on the spot inside the Hôtel de Soubise, Hôtel du Lassay, Greek style, particularly since the latter was coming under and the Notre-Dame Cathedral.25 scrutiny by the 1770s.20 By publically exhibiting his ruin Delafosse’s drawing follows the typology of this latter drawings, Delafosse distances his architectural and decora- class of drawings. However, rather than the then-fashionable tive projects from Cochin’s criticism and rather presents them rococo style, Delafosse’s interior makes reference to the as production of erudition and training in Rome, rather than classical past and overflows with relief ornaments, furniture, another in a long queue of uninformed works à la grecque.21 and decorations derived from his personal decorative vo- The ruin and architectural fantasy drawings are reincar- cabulary. The emblematic trophies flanking the architectural nated as a proposal for a painting in his 1769 drawing of a fantasy painting are lifted from his iconography for nations Grande Galerie (Figure 8). Executed in the same media as in his Nouvelle Iconologie Historique, and the vases on his ruin drawings, the Grande Galerie is the only surviving the pedestals, the architectonic console tables with heavy drawing of a full interior view by Delafosse. It is signed “J.C. garlands, and sphinxes and roundels over the door can be Delafosse Inv. Fecit. 1769,” in the lower left corner. In the traced to his published designs. Because the drawing is an drawing, a ruined architectural fantasy composition just off imagined interior rather than a pre-existing space, it becomes center is a collage of elements from his ruined fantasy land- a fictitious place showcasing Delafosse’s novel ornamental scapes: the circular Ionic temple and obelisk can be found vocabulary. In quoting the format of an architectural study, in Figure 1, the architectural fragments and the crumbling Delafosse’s drawing can be simultaneously considered as bridge in Figure 5, and the equestrian statue and ruined an existing interior that could have been recommended for arch in Figure 6.22 The format of the drawing mirrors that of study by Blondel, thus elevating his decorations to the type of drawings produced as part of the pedagogical program at ornaments that were considered as the bon goût—the proper Jacques-François Blondel’s École des Arts, where Delafosse academic taste. Additionally, Delafosse’s drawing was likely began his first forays into architecture. Opened in 1740 shown, at least to a small audience of students, since Mary and officially sanctioned in 1743, Blondel’s school on Rue Myers has linked the drawing to his pedagogical program as de la Harpe was the first full-time school of architecture in a professor at Saint-Luc.26 In this grand gallery, Delafosse thus 19 “Ruines d’architecture…Vue Perspective d’un Monument funéraire… see Nina L. Dubin, Futures & Ruins: Eighteenth-century Paris and the Ruine d’un temple de Mars.” Jules Marie Joseph Guiffrey, ed., Académie Art of Hubert Robert (Los Angeles: Getty Research Institute, 2010). St. Luc, Livrets des expositions de l’Académie de Saint-Luc à Paris: pendant les années 1751, 1752, 1753, 1756, 1762, 1764 et 1774 23 The class list for Blondel’s École has not survived, as noted by Richard (Paris: Baur et Détaille, 1872), 149. Cleary. Delafosse had an apprenticeship to the sculptor Jean-Baptiste Poulet, the directeur garde at Académie de Saint-Luc in Paris in 1747. 20 “Architectes anciens qui n’avoient pas sorti de Paris voulurent faire voir He never completed it, instead switching to architecture sometime qu’ils seroient bien aussi dans ce goust grec.” Charles-Nicolas Cochin, before 1766. In Richard Cleary, “Romancing the Tome; Or an Acad- “Lettre à m. l’abbé R***,” in Mercure de France (February, 1755), 157; emician’s Pursuit of a Popular Audience in 18th-Century,” Journal of and Charles Henry, ed., Mémoires inédits de Charles Nicolas Cochin the Society of Architectural Historians 48, no. 2 (June, 1989), 140; sur le comte de Caylus, Bouchardon, les Slodtz (Paris: Baur, 1880), 142. Daniel Rabreau, Claude-Nicolas Ledoux, 1736-1806: l’architecture et les fastes du temps (Bordeaux: Wm. Blake & Co, 2000), 52; and 21 In fact, modern day scholarship often includes Delafosse into the Alberto Pérez Gómez and Louise Pelletier, Architectural Representa- generation of the 1740s (as part of the artists and architects who led tion and the Perspective Hinge (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1997), 217. the revival of classical art), without recourse to detailed exegeses or The “Ordre des leçons,”at Blondel’s school can be found in Jacques- historical evidence. In this respect, Delafosse’s engagement with the François Blondel, Cours d’architecture, ou Traité de la décoration, capriccios produced at the Académie de France may be seen as a distribution & construction des bâtiments (Paris: Chez Desaint, 1773), successful strategy, at least from a current contemporary standpoint. 3:lxxxj-xc.

22 The equestrian statue may be a reference to his own design for an 24 “L’artiste le plus ingénieux se trouve arrêté,” in Jacques-François Blondel, equestrian statue of Louis XV (1763). See Jean-Charles Delafosse, Discours sur la Manière d’étudier l’Architecture (Paris: Mariette, 1747), 66. Projet de piédestal pour la statue de Louis XV, conserved at École nationale supérieure des beaux-arts, Paris (Inv. No. EBA 1944). The 25 Blondel, Cours d’architecture, 3:lxxxv; lxxxvij. adaptation of a ruined architectural fantasy composition as a possible painting panel follows the vogue for ruin paintings popularized by 26 The drawing features the following inscription in the lower center: Hubert Robert. For more information on the popularization of ruins “Grand galerie de l’ordre Corinthien avec Sallon aux Extrémités/ Echelle

56 the ruins of iconologie: redefining architecture in jean-charles delafosse’s desseins

employs drawing to demonstrate his entrenchment within same master masons for deforming antique ornaments with the Blondel-led academic tradition since the format of the a thousand blunders.30 His continued reference to master Grande Galerie both invokes academic pedagogy as well as masons derives from the instability in the very title of the the very practice of familiarizing oneself with bon goût by architecte during this period, since anyone could purchase drawing in assigned interiors. or freely appropriate the title without membership in Acadé- This relation to Academic practices can be considered mie Royale d’Architecture in Paris.31 Delafosse may be seen alongside increasing criticisms against the Greek style, the as precisely the kind of self-made architect so vehemently very style displayed in Delafosse’s Grande Galerie. The dis- criticized by Cochin. As noted earlier, Delafosse styled him- semination of the style in France was fueled by the extensive self as an architect from 1766, while the Académie Royale archaeological discoveries and subsequent publications by d’Architecture referred to him as sculptor, decorator, or James Stuart and Nicolas Revett, Pierre d’Hancarville, and engraver, rather than as an architect.32 Thomas Major, as well as by the financial prosperity follow- The Académie Royale’s reluctance is connected to ing the end of the Seven Years War (1756-63). Despite this, Delafosse’s affiliations with Académie de Saint-Luc. From the the cognoscenti largely considered goût grec as a decorative 1750s, Saint-Luc was seen as the progenitor of “bad taste” phenomenon. By the 1760s, the style had completely inun- because the vogue for decorative styles from the rococo to dated the Parisian market with Nicolas-Thomas Barthélemy the goût grec entitled artisans to usurp the role traditionally in writing in 1764 in L’Amateur that “All but our souls are in the purview of the Académie-affiliated architects.33 Blondel the Greek manner.”27 The style was particularly criticized too blamed the architecte à la mode at the Académie de for collapsing the distinction between high architecture and Saint-Luc for disfiguring architecture and “substituting caprice banal everyday decorative objects. As early as 1763, Baron in the place of rules and good taste.”34 In response, the nor- Friedrich Melchior de Grimm traced the hierarchical transfu- mative distinction of architectural authority was established sion of the style from architects to artisans, stating that the by competency in draftsmanship, a standard acknowledged style originated from architectural exteriors to be followed by Diderot who advised in 1765 to be wary of architects by interiors—ornaments, furniture, and even jewelry—from who were not great draftsmen.35 Amidst such contentions, classical architecture to boutiques run by merchants.28 Goût Delafosse’s ruin drawings enabled him to separate himself Grec was suspended between its origins in historic archaeol- from the type of architectes à la mode condemned by Cochin ogy and architecture and its eighteenth-century applications and Blondel. The subject matter, format, and conditions as a decorative typology. of display allowed Delafosse to demonstrate his familiarity This tension is highlighted in two instances by Cochin. with the bon goût, and by extension present his desseins as In an acerbic criticism of the rococo style, in 1755, Cochin productions of erudition rather than fashion. lamented that while architecture derived from the study While the ruin fantasy drawings are evidence of his of antiquity was replete with difficulties, the modern style engagement with the on-going dialogue with history, and would easily transform master masons with little taste into academic pedagogy, they are at once firmly connected to architects at no cost.29 In 1770, Cochin denounced the very his decorative publication: many of his drawings star his de 12 pieds.” Mary Myers has linked this inscription to Delafosse’s 32 Jean-Charles Delafosse, Mémoire pour une boucherie et tuerie gé- practice of routinely executed designs given as student assignments nérale, servant à la consommation de la ville de Paris, laquelle tuerie at Académie de Saint-Luc as a display of his own virtuosity. Mary L. serait placée dans l’île des Cygnes, projeté et présenté par J.-C. Dela- Myers, French Architectural and Ornament Drawings of the Eighteenth fosse (1766), Bibliothèque nationale de France, Joly de Fleury- 584 Century (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1991), 55. fol. 224; Lemonnier, ed., “Du Lundy 21e Novembre 1768,” 34; and Jacques-François Blondel, L’ Homme Du Monde Éclairé Par Les Arts 27 “Tout est Grec, excepté nos âmes,” in Maurice Badolle, L’abbé Jean- (Paris: Chez Monory, 1774), 2:316. Jacques Barthélemy et l’hellenism et France dans la second moitié du XVIIe siècle (Paris: Les Presses universitaires de France, 1926), 224. 33 Katie Scott, “Hierarchy, Liberty and Order: Languages of Art and Cochin, too, traced the development from architecture à la grecque Institutional Conflict in Paris,” Oxford Art Journal 12, no. 2 (1989), 65. to ribbons à la grecque in Cochin, Mémoires inédits, 142. 34 “Ces licences qui défigurent l’Architecture, en substituant le caprice 28 Baron Friedrich Melchior de Grimm and Denis Diderot, “Mai 1763,” aux règles & au bon goût.” Jacques-François Blondel, Discours sur la in Correspondance littéraire, philosophique, critique, adressé à un manière d’étudier l’architecture, 64; and Freek H. Schmidt, “Expose souverain d’Allemagne, par Grimme et Diderot (Paris: Longchamps, Ignorance and Revive the ‘Bon Goût’: Foreign Architects at Jacques- F. Buisson, 1813), 3:362. François Blondel’s École des Arts,” Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 61, no. 1 (March, 2002), 15. 29 Cochin, “Lettre à m. l’abbé R***,” 151-2. 35 Denis Diderot, “Sur la Peinture,” 491. This reliance on drawing to 30 Cochin, Mémoires inédits, 142-3. uphold professional hierarchies backfired, as Roland de Virloys noted in his entry for Architecte in his Dictionnaire d’architecture (1770-71) 31 Roland de Virloys, Dictionnaire d’architecture, civile, militaire et navale, that “as soon as a man can draw, he calls himself an architect.” In antique, ancienne et moderne: et de tous les arts et métiers qui en Virloys, Dictionnaire d’Architecture, 1:91. dépendent (Paris: Chez les Libraires Associés, 1770-1), 1:91-2.

57 athanor xxxii j. cabelle ahn

personal creations.36 Figures 3 and 4 feature a mausoleum prevailing ideas of classical ornament and style, along with composed of four veiled female herms integrated into a Palladio’s own desire to reconstruct an ideal typology of hybrid base comprised of a pedestal, entablature, architrave architecture. In Delafosse’s drawings, too, the ruins become and topped with a fragment of a fluted column. Variations a site that fosters artistic and architectural invention and of this design are revived as fountains in his other ruin imagination, particularly since he collaged together elements landscapes and are similar to his proposal for a mausoleum from his landscapes into monumental structures (Figure (Figure 9), a version of which was etched and published from 10). Here, the veiled herm, tomb, column and stele from 1771 to 1775 as part of Delafosse’s recueil. Within the ruin Figure 4 undergo permutation into a new model for a tomb landscapes, Delafosse’s inventions are given a virtual patina design. In this respect, the ruin drawings inspire and enable of age and, by extension, are elevated to the same level of his decorative projects—the dessin thus facilitating dessein. historical value ascribed to pre-existing monuments in the To conclude, Delafosse’s monuments are suspended compositions such as the Pyramid of Cestius and Trajan’s in potentia, appropriated from their original historical and Column. Moreover, Delafosse’s monuments are given visual chronological contexts and await future transformation into gravitas in the drawings—emphasized through shadows and decorative structures—with the said forms once again in- compositional placements—with their relative structural scribed and historicized into the ruin landscapes. Delafosse’s soundness, in contrast to the crumbling backdrop, present- decorative vocabulary thus operates in a cycle, as both the ing them as survivors of the historical ravages of time. In this origin and the regeneration of architecture, allowing him virtual space, his creations are both nouvelle creations by to monopolize the production of art—at least in the virtual Delafosse responding to the mode for goût grec, but also archaeological site contained within his fantasy landscapes. historical monuments. This strategy allows Delafosse to posi- In this gap between destruction and construction, between tion his ornamental language as a historically authenticated invention and reproduction, is Delafosse’s desire to lay claim one rather than a decorative fancy as expressing both Zeit to the very origin of art and architecture itself, a claim echoed and Zeitgeist.37 in the preface of the Nouvelle Iconologie.39 Consequently, The fluid and multivalent functions of the drawings are his architectural and ruin fantasy drawings can be seen as partly due to the very fact that they are of ruinous landscapes. the epicenter of his own architectural ambitions—as docu- Ruins held visual, cultural and even political currency in the ments conveying his own command over artistic imagination, second half of the eighteenth century. The Encyclopédie as- experience, and pedagogical fluency requisite for eighteenth- serted in 1765 that “ruins are beautiful to paint,” and Diderot century architects. proposed in his review of the Salon of 1767 that “one must In the preface to The Antiquities of Athens (1762) James ruin a palace in order to make it an object of interest.”38 Ruins Stuart and Nicolas Revett wrote, “Architecture lay for Ages during this period embodied both destruction and creation, buried in its own ruins; and altho’ from these Ruins, it has or creative potential in the aftermath of destruction. In ar- Phenix-like received a second birth.”40 Similarly, Delafosse’s chitectural history, ruins were generative sites due to the fact ruin drawings allow his monuments and decorations to be that the idea of classical architecture was constituted from considered as historic forms in their own right, as a forgotten material remains. For example, the sixteenth-century Italian aesthetic recovered from the ruins and primed for their intro- architect Andrea Palladio reconstructed the Baths of Agrippa duction into the eighteenth-century French decorative canon. on paper by combining the surviving fragments, a thorough study of Vitruvius’s building techniques and theories, and Bard Graduate Center

36 There is a drawing by Delafosse at the Musée des Beaux-Arts in 38 “Les ruines sont belles à peindre”; “il faut ruiner un palais pour en Nancy of a possible project for a frontispiece (Inv. no.1502). This faire un objet d’intérêt.” In “Ruine,” in Encyclopédie Ou Dictionnaire drawing is similar in draftsmanship and echoes familiar iconography Raisonné Des Sciences, Des Arts Et Des Métiers, Denis Diderot and such as an obelisk, mausoleum, sphinx, antique vases, and a round Jean Le Rond d’Alembert, eds. (Neufchastel: Samuel Faulche, 1765), temple. It may be possible that the Nancy drawing was intended as 14:433 ; and Denis Diderot, “Salon de 1767,” in Oeuvres de Denis a frontispiece for engraved versions of ruin and architectural fantasy Diderot. Salons (Paris: Chez J. L. J Brière, Libraire, 1821), 2:385. Ruins drawings. However, in the case of Delafosse’s overall oeuvre, there also held cultural currency and were deployed as political and social are few correspondences between the frontispieces for his ornamental allegories in works such as Jacques Philippe le Bas’s Recueil des plus pattern books and the designs inside. Still, the presence of this drawing belles ruines de Lisbonne (1757) and Louis Sebastien Mercier’s L’an further cements correlations between Delafosse’s decorative publica- 24440, Rêve s’il nen fut jamais (1771), a tradition tracing back to tions and the ruin fantasy drawings. Montesquieu who uses the ruin as a financial metaphor in Les letters persanes (1721). Contemporaneously, disasters and demolitions were 37 This phrase is appropriated from Mike Gubser’s “Time and History occurring in Paris, including the burning of the Hôtel de Dieu in 1772. in Alois Riegl’s Theory of Perception,” and the original quotation is as follows: “Art in other words expressed Zeit as well as Zeitgeist.” In 39 “J’ai remonté jusqu’à l’origine de plusieurs choses.” Delafosse, “Avant- his article, Gubser expands on Alois Riegl’s essay “Modern Cult of propos,” Nouvelle Iconologie Historique, n.p. Monuments” (1903). My formulations on value making at an historical, temporal, and artistic level is also based on Riegl’s essay. Mike Gubser, 40 James Stuart and Nicholas Revett, The Antiquities of Athens (1762; “Time and History in Alois Riegl’s Theory of Perception” Journal of the repr. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2008), i. All spelling History of Ideas 66 (2005): 464; and Alois Riegl, The Modern Cult of and grammatical errors in the French quotations are present in the Monuments: Its Character and Its Origin (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1982). original eighteenth-century texts.

58 the ruins of iconologie: redefining architecture in jean-charles delafosse’s desseins

(,~ ( / / 7 ti' (,, .,• ! f \ ! i ' i' /· "") , ·~ \...... I i I \ / i I ~ I ~-----

p[above, left] Figure 1. Jean-Charles Delafosse, Fantastic architectural compositions: Corinthian portico with a flight of steps flanked by statues on pedestals leading up to it, a rotunda and obelisk in the background, c. 1760, pen and ink with blue-gray washes and watercolor on paper, 5.75 x 3.5 cm. RIBA Library Drawings Collection.

p[above, right] Figure 2. Jean-Charles Delafosse, Fantastic architectural compositions: monu- mental entry to a bridge with ascending flights of steps, 5.75 x 3.5 cm, c. 1760, pen and ink with blue-gray washes and watercolor on paper. RIBA Library Drawings Collection.

t[left] Figure 3. Jean-Charles Delafosse, Fantastic architectural compositions: view of part of a triumphal bridge with sphinxes and caryatid figures in the foreground, c. 1760, pen and ink with blue-gray washes and watercolor on paper, 5.75 x 3.5 cm. RIBA Library Drawings Collection.

59 athanor xxxii j. cabelle ahn

Figure 4. Jean-Charles Delafosse, Paysage avec ruines, second-half of the eighteenth century, pen, black ink, gray wash on paper, 17.5 x 21.5 cm. Les Arts décoratifs—Musée des Arts décoratifs, Paris. Photo credit: Les Arts décoratifs.

u[facing page, top] Figure 5. Jean Charles Delafosse, Imaginary landscape with classical ruins, 1734-89, pen, black ink, grey wash with watercolor on paper, 16.0 x 23.7 cm. ©Trustees of the British Museum.

u[facing page, bottom] Figure 6. Jean-Charles Delafosse, Paysage avec ru- ines, second-half of the eighteenth century, ink, watercolor and gray wash on paper, 15.6 x 24.4 cm. Les Arts décoratifs—Musée des Arts décoratifs, Paris. Photo credit: Les Arts décoratifs.

60 the ruins of iconologie: redefining architecture in jean-charles delafosse’s desseins

61 athanor xxxii j. cabelle ahn

Figure 7. Jean Nicolas (Giovanni Niccolò) Servandoni, Ruines antiques, eighteenth century, before 1766, pen, gray ink, gray cash and black chalk, 12.1 x 19.0 cm. Musée du Louvre département des Arts graphiques, Réunion des musées nationaux. © RMN-Grand Palais/Art Resource, New York. Photo credit: Michel Urtado.

(,,.,,,; L~t!trlt .), ,., .~Jr.: {;'f'i,,(l,,m ,,n,· · 'J.,i'~n "'T fr1r,•Hi/<.)

...~[, J, ...,_ ,.....

Figure 8. Jean-Charles Delafosse, Design for a “Grande Galerie,” 1769, pen and black ink, brush and gray and brown wash, over traces of black chalk, 37.5 x 82.4 cm. Overall view. Purchase, Joseph Pulitzer Bequest, 1973 (1973.638). Image courtesy copyright © The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Image source: Art Resource, New York.

62 the ruins of iconologie: redefining architecture in jean-charles delafosse’s desseins

tFigure 9. Jean-Charles Delafosse, Projet de mausolée, eighteenth century, pen, ink, watercolor on paper, 27.9 x 11 cm. Les Arts décoratifs—Musée des Arts décoratifs, Paris. Photo credit: Les Arts décoratifs.

uFigure 10. Jean-Charles Delafosse, Projet de tombeau, eighteenth century, pen, black ink, gray wash on paper, 17.6 x 9.6 cm. Les Arts décoratifs—Musée des Arts décoratifs, Paris. Photo credit: Les Arts décoratifs. 63

For the Edification of All: Nineteenth-Century American Medicine, Art, and the Role of the Classical Cast in Cultural Life

Naomi Slipp

During the nineteenth century, elite Americans went on a of this elite rite of passage a step further. The display of clas- Grand Tour to Europe to view significant cultural works from sical casts in American galleries, academies, and libraries Antiquity and the Renaissance.1 Greek sculptures—or, more greatly expanded cultural viewership.4 Once solely for the accurately, Roman reproductions—were praised for their wealthy, by mid-nineteenth century classical cast collections ideal beauty, which demonstrated a canon of proportion were promoted as for the edification of all.5 through corporeal balance and were described as “the very Considered the “standards of beauty for the entire hu- alphabet of art.”2 Cultural tourists with means purchased man race,”6 copies of the Apollo Belvedere and Venus de carved or cast copies of antique sculpture, which they Medici were installed in ante-bellum Boston both in the displayed at home. These were not viewed negatively as reading room of the Boston Athenæum (founded in 1807) “copies,” but were viewed positively as “copies from the and, first in the anatomical theater of Harvard Medical Col- original.”3 Public cast collections took the didactic function lege, and then the surgical theater of Massachusetts General

I am grateful to those who generously read this manuscript and and sought after it would be. The cast of the Apollo Belvedere at improved it for the better with their insightful comments, including: Massachusetts General Hospital retains an origin myth linking it to Professor Keith N. Morgan and the members of the Boston University Napoleon’s Italian conquest and the production of classical cast copies History of Art & Architecture Dissertation Reading Group. In addi- created after it by the formatore of the Musée du Louvre. tion, I would like to acknowledge David Dearinger for his important work on this material in “‘Lordly Strangers’: Classical Casts in Boston, 4 One of the earliest and largest collections in the United States was that 1729-1860,” in Teaching the Body: Artistic Anatomy in the American of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, which, in 1805, charged Academy, from Copley, Rimmer, and Eakins to Contemporary Artists, Nicholas Biddle to purchase seventeen statue casts, twenty-five casts exhibition catalogue, ed. Naomi Slipp (Boston: Boston University Art of busts, and six sets of hands and feet from the studio of Getti, the Gallery, 2013). This article provides an introduction to topics examined plaster cast maker for the Louvre. Included in this group were the in depth in my forthcoming dissertation, “‘The Secret Figure’: Artistic Belvedere Torso, the Borghese Gladiator, the Venus de Medici, and Anatomy and the Search for the Medical Body in Nineteenth-Century the Apollo Belvedere. Cheryl Leibold, “The Historic Cast Collection American Art.” at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts,” Antiques & Fine Art (Spring 2010): 186-191. 1 The Grand Tour was a significant vehicle for the display of cultural hegemony by the British and American ruling classes. It has been 5 While this phrasing is my own, the ideas expressed within it, that is theorized as a method for performing cultural hegemony and also the promotion of education for all citizens inspired by a charitable or establishing national dominance. As E. P. Thompson stated, “ruling- benevolent attitude (or Christian virtue) on the part of the elite citizen, class control in the 18th century was located primarily in a cultural was expounded by theologians and politicians of the period. For ex- hegemony, and only secondarily in an expression of economic or ample, in British Methodist theologian John Fletcher’s “The Portrait of physical (military) power.” E.P. Thompson, The Making of the English Saint Paul,” he writes: “Charity avoids all appearance of haughtiness… Working Class (London: Penguin, 1991), 43. For further reading on the on the contrary…she labours for the edification of all.” John Fletcher, Grand Tour as a British cultural practice see Bruce Redford, Dilettanti: The Works of the Rev. John Fletcher (New York: B. Waugh and T. Mason, The Antic and the Antique in Eighteenth-Century England (Los Angeles: 1833), 3:48. Fletcher’s writings were widely published and read in J. Paul Getty Museum, Getty Research Institute, 2008), while an excel- America, certainly true of “The Portrait of Saint Paul,” first published lent survey of the state of the field can be found in the review essay on its own in New York in 1804. As to the American understanding of of John Wilston-Ely, “‘Classic Ground’: Britain, Italy, and the Grand the edifying effects of art on its citizenry, Dell Upton writes: “Early in Tour,” Eighteenth-Century Life, 28, no. 1 (2004): 136-165. Finally, for the antebellum era republicans conceived art as a form of manual and the American Grand Tour see Theodore E. Stebbins, Jr., The Lure of intellectual accomplishment that should be directed to the edification Italy: American Artists and the Italian Experience, 1760-1914, exhibi- of fellow citizens, who in turn were expected to support art for patri- tion catalogue, (Boston, MA: Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 1992). otic reasons.” Dell Upton, “Inventing the Metropolis: Civilization and Urbanity,” in Art and the Empire City: New York, 1825-1861, ed. Cath- 2 Quoting Franklin Dexter, member of the Fine Arts Committee, Boston erine Hoover Voorsanger (New Haven: Yale University Press for the Athenæum in Katherine Wolff, Culture Club: The Curious History of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000), 34. This principle becomes espe- Boston Athenæum (Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, cially applicable to classical casts due to their collection and display by 2009), 93. In addition, art historian Johann Winckelmann famously educational institutions and public art museums in the post-bellum era. extolled the virtues of classical sculpture in his History of Ancient Art (1764) in speaking of Roman copies of Greek originals; he praised sculp- 6 Julia Thomas and Annie Gregory Thomas, Psycho-Physical Culture tures including the Apollo Belvedere, Laocöon, and Venus de Medici. (New York: Edgar S. Werner, 1892), 229. This is a primer on physical development intended for children. The quotation is from a chapter 3 Indeed, the closer the cast was to its original, the more highly prized titled “Class Talk: Physical Perfection, Personal Beauty.” athanor xxxii naomi slipp

Hospital (founded in 1811).7 Whereas the Boston Athenæum prisingly similar ideological ends, operating to buttress the catered to Boston’s wealthiest, Massachusetts General Hos- cultural capital of two nascent institutions and a generation pital served a very different purpose. Established to serve of Boston elites. working class residents of Boston’s overcrowded neigh- Before turning to the casts, it is necessary to situate borhoods and as a teaching hospital for Harvard medical Boston historically, which by 1820 had a population of students, the Hospital highly regulated the diseased bodies over 43,000 and was a busy port city made wealthy by the that entered. While admittance was likewise controlled to activities of ship owners and merchants. The sprawl of the keep working class Bostonians out, Athenæum members city is evident in Boynton’s 1844 map, which labels the performed their elite status through studied corporeal and Hospital on the Charles River and the Athenæum by Fort intellectual pursuits. Casts of the Apollo Belvedere and Venus Hill, making it clear that these were significant institutions in de Medici exemplified corporeal aestheticization, expounded the city landscape (Figure 1). Self-described as the “Athens the virtues of the classical world, and illustrated idealized of America” by its residents, Boston sought to emulate the physical perfection, yet what kind of cultural work might ideals and republican values of the classical world.9 In post- classical sculptures of a male and female nude have done Revolutionary New England, those who sought to shape at the Hospital and Athenæum? Did they accomplish similar a new nation envisioned themselves as the inheritors of a aesthetic or intellectual functions or did their reception and classical legacy.10 The centrality of the classical world to the effect differ? self-identity of Boston and its citizenry was also influenced by While scholars have ably considered nineteenth-century Harvard University, where the curriculum revolved around American public cast collections, especially in the Gilded Latin and Greek, Debate and Rhetoric.The connection Age,8 this essay examines how ante-bellum Bostonians between Boston and Athens was not an empty aspiration, displayed and interpreted the Apollo Belvedere and Venus but a lived challenge: Bostonians established institutions, de Medici at the Athenæum and Hospital. Through an benevolent societies, and philanthropic organizations, in exploration of the sculptures’ intended audiences and the order to bolster their reputation as the “Athens of America.” contradictions posed by their institutional display, this paper One such institution was the Boston Athenæum, estab- questions how these classical casts might have played a role lished as a “publick” reading room “useful to the various in shaping period beliefs regarding idealized corporeality in classes of our citizens” and “a fountain, at which all, who conflict with the bodies of patients or visitors. Ultimately, choose, may gratify their thirst for knowledge.”11 Yet the term this essay claims that the deployment of classical casts in “publick” in the founding prospectus does not imply open these two radically divergent institutions accomplished sur- access to all.12 Admittance was by subscription, and mem-

7 The Apollo Belvedere is a Roman copy (c. 120-140) of a lost bronze “The Canon is Cast: Plaster Casts in American Museum and University original, discovered in 1489 at Anzio and installed in the Cortile delle Collections,” Art Documentation 21, no. 2 (Fall 2002): 8-13. Statue of the Belvedere palace in the Vatican in 1511 by Pope Julius II. The Venus de Medici is a 1st century BCE marble copy of a bronze 9 This topic is examined in Thomas H. O’Connor, The Athens of America: original Hellenistic sculpture depicting the Greek goddess of love Boston, 1825-1845 (Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, Aphrodite. The date and place of discovery are not known. As David 2006). Dearinger recounts: “It was possibly in the collection of the Medici family as early as 1598 but definitely there by 1638. By the mid-1680s 10 In 1819, William Tudor wrote a letter describing the town: “[Boston] is it had been installed in the Tribuna, a centrally located room within perhaps the most perfect and certainly the best-regulated democracy the Uffizi that was dedicated to the best works in the collection. There, that ever existed. There is something so impossible in the immortal the sculpture ‘was revered as the most beautiful Venus and one of the fame of Athens, that the very name makes everything modern shrink half-dozen finest antique statues to have survived.’ Copies of it were from comparison; but since the days of that glorious city I know of made in almost every conceivable form, and a visit to the Tribuna, none that has approached so near in some points, distant as it may specifically to see the Venus, was mandatory for anyone on the Grand still be from that illustrious model.” Edwin Bacon, Bacon’s Dictionary Tour.” David Dearinger, Acquired Tastes: 200 Years of Collecting for of Boston (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, & Co., 1886), 30. the Boston Athenæum (Boston: Boston Athenæum, 2006): 256-258. 11 Hina Hirayama, ‘With Éclat’: the Boston Athenæum and the Origin 8 For more on nineteenth-century American cast collections see: Hima of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (Boston: the Boston Athenæum, Bindu Mallampati, “Acquiring Antiquity: The Classical Collections at 2013), 18; Memoir of the Boston Athenæum: With the Act of Incor- the University of Michigan and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, ca. poration (Boston: Monroe & Francis, 1807), 8. 1850-1925” (PhD diss., University of Michigan, 2010), especially chapter 2 “From Collecting Casts to Ancient Artifacts,” which gives 12 The Athenæum’s contradictory use of the term “public” was examined a broad overview of the historical context and scholarly discussion as early as 1817, in a letter to the library from a young citizen miffed surrounding cast collecting. In addition see: Francis Haskell and at being withheld entry. Wolff, Culture Club, 58. Wolff addresses the Nicholas Penny, Taste and the Antique: The Lure of Classical Sculpture, contradiction between the use of “public” by Athenæum members 1500-1900 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1981); Betsy Fahlman, and the meaning of the word today in “Pamphlet War,” 130-167. As “A Plaster of Paris Antiquity: Nineteenth-Century Cast Collections,” Wolff explains, the crisis came to a head in 1848, when the City of Southeastern College Art Conference Review 12, no. 1 (1991): 1-9; Boston voted to create a public library and proposed a union with the Alan Wallach, Exhibiting Contradiction: Essays on the American Mu- Athenæum. Hirayama also examines the term public and writes: “It seum in the United States (Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts was ‘public’ only in the early nineteenth-century sense of the word: a Press, 1998), especially “The American Cast Museum: An Episode in library was ‘public’ or ‘communal’ when it was not based in a home the History of the Institutional Definitions of Art”; and Pamela Born, and served a constituency larger than a private household. ‘Public’ did

66 for the edification of all: nineteenth-century american medicine, art, and the role of the classical cast in cultural life

bership was limited to men who could afford dues.13 While Significantly, in Emerson’s view, the casts communicate Athenæum use was restricted, the charter also declared that: their classical origins to an educated audience, one with “love of intellectual improvement and pleasure…which are knowledge of Latin and Italian, mythology, and archeology. capable of being diffused through considerable portions of The quotation also suggests an ideal audience of gentlemen the community, should be… promoted with zeal among a connoisseurs who recognize the aesthetic beauty of the civilized and flourishing people.”14 In other words, the edi- classical casts. Finally, it refers to the scholar who sneers at fication of members ultimately affected the edification of a the “ignoble vulgus,” the humble commoner, whose social broad swath of Bostonians through a cultural trickle-down position and lack of education prevent him from appreciating cultivated by those born to privilege. the beauty, history, and context of the casts. Thorndike’s and Located in the former Perkins Mansion and seen in Emerson’s quotes suggest that for early nineteenth-century Bowen’s Picture of Boston, in 1822 the Athenæum was the Bostonians, classical casts were meant to be edifying, un- third-largest American library with over 12,000 books (Figure derstood as territory for gentlemen viewers grounded in an 2).15 That same year Augustus Thorndike, son of a Boston elite aesthetic vocabulary and privy to a classical education. merchant, donated eleven plaster casts to the Athenæum, The reverse implication is that the classical casts would prove including the Apollo Belvedere, Borghese Gladiator, and unintelligible to an uneducated audience. Venus de Medici,16 stating that they were: “for the accom- This conflict was expressed in an 1826 letter to a local modation of such professional gentlemen as might desire paper: “What literary advantages has the mass of our citizens to exercise themselves in drawing.”17 Thus while the casts derived from the Athenæum? Who gets to peep within its were installed in the Athenæum’s reading room—territory lofty walls without a ten-dollar bill?”20 The contradiction strictly defined as for members only—the room was open between the ideal stated aims of the Athenæum, as a public three nights a week to “gentlemen” artists.18 place, and the actual membership was fraught and conflicted. Of the Thorndike casts in situ, Ralph Waldo Emerson While the Athenæum’s governing board wanted, intellectu- wrote to a friend: ally at least, to edify Boston’s wider citizenry, in practice they Mr. Thorndike has presented the institution maintained the reading room as a privileged space, buffering with a beautiful collection of casts of the members from the coarseness of urban life. In the reading ancient statues, which attract the eye in room, the Athenæum’s membership comported themselves every corner from the tedious joys of writ- with care; their bodies illustrated their social position through ing & reading. The beholder instantly feels posture, dress, and deportment. Historian Richard Bush- the spirit of the connoisseur stealing over man illustrates the importance of corporeal discipline in his him, &, ere he can exorcise it, rubs up his study on the culture of refinement, writing: “Ease of bearing Latin & Italian lore, & among the gazers, was as important to the gentleman as ease of the company you may see the scholar, at pains to show was to a brilliant entertainment.” Artistic control over one’s his acquaintance with the lordly strangers, physical body, combined with books and fine dress “became & his disdain of the ‘ignoble vulgus’ who instruments of power, a superior culture to parade before stare & stare, & are never the wiser.19 the eyes of a deferential population.”21 With this in mind,

not imply, as it does today, universal access.” Hirayama, ‘With Éclat,’ 19. scale casts were of the Discobolus (National Museum of Rome), the Apollino (Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence), and the Capitoline Antinous 13 Hannah Adams was the first woman granted access to the reading (Capitoline Museum, Rome).” Finally, refer to Susan Sutton Smith, ed., room in 1829. As Wolff explains, Adams was an exception: “women Topical Notebooks of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Columbia, MO: University were not routinely welcomed into the reading room until after 1856.” of Missouri Press, 1990), 1:128: “said (by Mr Folson) to have been Wolff, Culture Club, 65. Nineteenth-century members included Ralph according to a list furnished by Canova, and at a cost of $4000.” Waldo Emerson, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Bronson Alcott, Na- thaniel Hawthorne, Oliver Wendell Holmes, and Louis Agassiz. 17 “Catalogue of Books in the Boston Athenæum,” North American Review 25 (1827): 479. 14 Josiah Quincy, The History of the Boston Athenæum (Cambridge, MA: Metcalf and Company, 1851), 31. 18 These artists were professional gentlemen associated with the ranks of the elite membership, such as Washington Allston and Chester Hard- 15 Hirayama, ‘With Éclat,’19. ing. See: Leah Lipton, “The Boston Artists’ Association, 1841-1851,” American Art Journal 15, no. 4 (Autumn, 1983): 45-57. 16 See “Painting & Sculpture at the Boston Athenæum,” accessed 6 December 2013, http://www.bostonAthenæum.org/node/127. It is 19 Emerson to John B. Hill, 3 July 1822, in Ralph L. Rusk, ed., The Letters noted here that Thorndike’s gift of “eight full-size and three small casts, of Ralph Waldo Emerson (New York: Columbia University Press, 1939), including copies of the Apollo Belvedere, the Borghese Gladiator, and 1:119-120. the Venus de Medici,” joined two casts given by Solomon Willard five years earlier, the Laocöon and the Dying Gaul. Also see Hirayama, 20 Charles Knowles Bolton, The Athenæum Centenary (Boston: the Boston ‘With Éclat,’ 179n29: “The full-scale casts were of the Apollo Belvedere, Athenæum, 1907), 30-31. the Belvedere Torso, and the Laocöon (Vatican Museum, Rome); the Venus de’ Medici (Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence); the Capitoline Venus 21 Richard L. Bushman, The Refinement of America (New York: Vintage (Capitoline Museum, Rome); and the Borhese Gladiator, Diana the Books, 1993), 65 and 404. Huntress, and Hermaphrodites (Musée du Louvre, Paris); the small

67 athanor xxxii naomi slipp

the graceful contrapposto of the Apollo Belvedere and the Beginning in 1816, the amphitheater of Harvard Medical corporeal elongation of the Venus de Medici on display in College displayed “a beautiful statue of the Venus of Medici, the Athenæum’s reading room mirrored the proper comport- and a noble cast of the Apollo of Belvedere, designed to il- ment of the members’ bodies. In this way, the classical casts lustrate the external forms of the human body.”23 Used as at the Athenæum reinforced members’ corporeal prowess. didactic comparative tools during anatomical lectures and The positive comparison between their bodies and these exhibited with anatomical and live specimens, the two casts sculptural bodies, combined with the performance of intel- were displayed for the edification of elite male medical stu- lectual knowledge they inspired, solidified elite status while dents. By 1845, Massachusetts General Hospital displayed throwing those on the outside of the comparison, Emerson’s an Apollo Belvedere in its surgical amphitheater, along with “ignoble vulgus,” into direct relief. a human skeleton and an Egyptian mummy, donated in While the Athenæum proved an intellectual and cultural 1823. Here Harvard students and medical professionals enclave for Boston’s elite, Massachusetts General Hospital (many of them also Athenæum members) would observe fulfilled an alternate agenda. As Boston’s first hospital, surgical procedures. In both locations, the Venus and the founded in affiliation with Harvard Medical College, it treated Apollo (Figures 5 and 6) proved central participants in these the city’s working class population. The institutional linkages didactic performances: whether flanking the operating table, between the Hospital and College are made evident in Annin presiding over surgeries, demonstrations, or lectures, they & Smith’s engraving, delineated by John Ritto Penniman and provided a distinct contrast between their perfectly propor- likely completed to mark the official opening of the Hospital tioned marble and plaster bodies and the diseased bodies of in 1821 (Figure 3). Not only do the two buildings appear patients, whose fleshy exteriors and complex internal systems paired on facing pages, but also the demonstration theaters were revealed to students via scalpel and saw. are dominant in both illustrations, denoted by a central dome Casts of the Venus and Apollo in both medical institu- and lit via a clerestory. The divergent institutional goals of the tions presented to an elite male audience idealized male Hospital and Athenæum were highlighted when the College and female bodies defined by human perfection. Integral to and then the Hospital, installed classical casts within these anatomical demonstrations, the Venus presented a female amphitheaters: a marble Venus de Medici, loaned to the nude with a natural and idealized figure, while the male Medical College by Harvard surgeon John Collins Warren, Apollo revealed attenuated musculature after the release of and a plaster Apollo Belvedere, donated to the Hospital by an arrow.24 Their display exposed contradictions between Greek scholar Edward Everett (Figures 4 and 5).22 the bodies of patients and the bodies of the classical ana-

22 The history of casts is somewhat convoluted and requires further sprang at once into life in a region not unlike our own New England careful study, beyond what can be briefly outlined here. Hannah Saw- —iron-bound, sterile, and free.” Quoted in: “Professor Everett’s Ora- yer Lee donated the marble Venus de Medici to the Boston Athenæum tions,” The North American Review 20 (Boston: Cummings, Hilliard, in 1861; prior to this, it was owned by her brother, Mr. William Sawyer and Co., 1825), 431. (1771-1859) who purchased it in Italy. It was then sent to Boston to be “overseen” by Dr. John Collins Warren, who deposited it with the 23 James Thacher, American Medical Biography (Boston: Richards and Harvard Medical College in 1816. Lee’s brother gave it to her in 1840, Lord, 1828), 1:35. A Harvard Medical School student wrote of the however he died in 1859 and she gifted it two years later. Where it was two classical casts: “the anatomical lecture which followed, delivered between 1840 and 1861 is unclear and open to speculation. Due to by John C. Warren … always secured a crowd of eager students. The its size and weight, I suspect that it remained at the Medical College. Venus de Medici and Belvidere Apollo (the first in marble, the second Provenance from a letter quoted by Dearinger, Acquired Tastes, 256. in plaster) stood sentinels at each side of the door, which he entered. Of the casts at the Medical College, John Collins Warren wrote: A long table for the reception of any specimens or preparations which “the new college was built on his land in Grove Street with an ample he designed to exhibit, and before which he stood when lecturing, museum…I also put all my preparations in good order when they were a number of carefully prepared diagrams and models, were all that presented; as well as the Venus de Medicis, given by President Everett, disturbed the simple character of the room.” Warren, John Collins and the Apollo Belvidere [sic], which I purchased from Solomon Wil- Warren, M.D., 390. lard, given by myself.” Edward Warren, The Life of John Collins Warren, M.D. (Boston: Ticknor and Fields, 1860), 416. Edward Everett officially 24 The Venus de Medici and Apollo Belvedere were common props for gave the Apollo to the Hospital in March of 1845, but it was seen by anatomical demonstrations and were often found in medical collec- Frederick Marryat at Everett’s home in 1838. Fredrick Maryatt, A Diary tions of the nineteenth century. The Venus would often be discussed in in America (London: Longman, 1839), 2:244-245. relation to the damage of corsets on female interior organs, while the A German-trained classicist Everett was arguably one of the most Apollo demonstrated attenuated musculature. See Dr. Hayes Agnew, influential figures in Boston’s classical renaissance. Appointed Harvard “The Relation of Social Life to Surgical Disease,” in Transactions of Professor of Greek Language & Literature, he travelled throughout Eng- the American Surgical Association, ed. J. Ewing Mears (Philadelphia: land, Europe, Greece, the Ionian Islands, and Constantinople before Printed for the Association, 1888), 6:2-3, which invokes the Apollo assuming his teaching post in 1819, where he inspired Harvard men and Venus in demonstrating these social dangers. He wrote: “I have, including Ralph Waldo Emerson and Charles Francis Adams. Everett however, some knowledge of human anatomy…when I look upon also wrote articles and served as editor for the North American Re- the masterpieces of the human form …a Belvidere Apollo or a Venus view, gave a series of fifteen public lectures to the Boston Mercantile de Medici, and contrast these… I am forced to admiration.” Another Association on “Antiquities” and “Ancient art” during the winters of example of the pairing of an Apollo Belvedere and Venus de Medici for 1823 and 1824, and was, of course, a member of the Athenæum. anatomical exploration can be found in Dr. Joseph Kahn’s 1863 hand- Everett declared: “the noble and elegant arts of Greece grew up in no book to his Anatomical Museum advertising life-size dissectible models Augustan age, —enjoyed neither royal nor imperial patronage…they the Apollo Belvedere and Venus de Medici. This handbook is in the

68 for the edification of all: nineteenth-century american medicine, art, and the role of the classical cast in cultural life

logues. Contrary to the genteel bodies of the membership at from above. Taken from the theater’s stadium seating, the the Athenæum and the idealized bodies of the Apollo and daguerreotype presents a view of surgery as seen by the Venus, the working class bodies used for demonstrations nineteenth-century medical audience. The identity of the during College lectures or admitted to the public hospital patient has been lost, however Dr. Warren places his hand for treatment were diseased and imperfect. The first patient on the boy’s thigh to imply the location of the coming treated at the Hospital in 1821 was a sailor with syphilis, surgery for treatment of necrosis of the tibia and looks up which the admission record notes he contracted in New at the audience of student spectators and photographers. York, prompting one to ask if there was an ideal patient for Warren’s theatrical gesture reminds the viewer that this is an Boston’s public hospital. educational demonstration for a student audience and that The 1810 founding circular benevolently described the sleeping patient is actively being viewed. The patient’s the Hospital’s ideal patient as: “an honest working man unconscious body thus becomes the subject of scrutiny in this on a borderline income…decent women abandoned by picture, replicating photographically the repeated voyeurism intemperate husbands…the young apprentice…caught of surgical demonstrations in the Hospital amphitheater and unprepared by accident or illness…[or] domestic servants College lecture hall. who can scarcely be adequately attended if they are sick The Apollo Belvedere, donated to the Hospital by the in their rooms.”25 However, when the hospital opened in famed orator, statesman, and Harvard Classics professor 1821, patients had to apply for admission in writing, prov- Edward Everett, is seen in the upper right corner of the ing that they were literate, and could be turned away for daguerreotype and acts as a visual reminder of the ideal “bad morals” or discharged for spitting, drinking, smoking, and healthy classical form (Figure 7, right detail). It stands in or swearing. Lists were kept of those admitted that noted direct contrast to the ill and diseased body presented on the name, address, and disease, making it easier to regulate table. Augmenting the peculiarity of the image is the position the bodies of the ill working classes within the hospital and of the patient’s unruly body, which contrasts strongly with control the spread of disease outside the hospital. An indica- the classical contrapposto pose and healthy and muscular tion of the conflicted benevolent goals of the institution and physique of the Apollo, along with the poses of the surgeons its administrators, the bodies of the Hospital’s patients were and assistants. The male patient, with a flushed, glistening regulated and contested. face, is dressed in a small white gown but retains his long These working class patients were operated on in the dark socks. His mouth is wide open from the Ether-induced surgical dome of the Hospital, where resident surgeons sleep and his awkward body is too long for the operating opened bodies and cut away disease while lecturing to an table, making his sock-clad feet dangle off the edge (Figure audience of Harvard medical students seated in the amphi- 7, left detail). theater. From there, these students, educated in Classics and Once again, as at the Athenæum, the contradictions be- Rhetoric at Harvard, had a view of the classical cast of the tween the legibility of the classical cast and its audience and Apollo Belvedere standing sentinel over the body of the ex- the conflict between the unruly patient (or “ignoble vulgus”) posed, working class patient, allowing for a studied physical and the idealized classical body isolate a central aspect of contrast. The intellectual contemplation of this contrast could the Hospital’s mission. While certainly established to assist lead some viewers to the opinion that the modern medicine working class patients deemed worthy by administrators, being demonstrated before their very eyes in the Hospital’s the Hospital also sought to train young doctors—students operating room sought to create corporeal perfection in the at Harvard Medical College—who were educated in a clas- bodies of working class patients. sical vocabulary and the idealized aesthetics of the antique. An 1847 Southworth & Hawes daguerreotype, commis- For them, the inclusion of the Venus de Medici and Apollo sioned to mark the final operation by Dr. John Collins Warren Belvedere, first in the lecture hall and then in the surgical before his retirement, presents a young boy anesthetized on amphitheater of the hospital, functioned to remind them of the Massachusetts General Hospital amphitheater operating the ideal corporeal subject—one who was proportioned, table (Figure 7). A founding member and benefactor of the healthy, and vigorous. Indeed, the Apollo Belvedere remained Athenæum, Warren was Professor of Anatomy and Surgery on display in the Hospital amphitheater, where over 8,000 at Harvard Medical College and a founder of Massachusetts operations were performed between 1821-1868, and op- General Hospital.26 In the image, sunlight floods the middle erated as an affirmation of the medical mission that these ground, surgical instruments are laid out, a temporary wall young men undertook (Figure 7). Each Harvard student was encloses the scene, and the room is presented at an angle familiar with the Hippocratic oath, which begins: “Apollo

collection of the Wellcome Library, London (ICV No. 3368). Finally, 26 Warren, John Collins Warren, M.D., 316. Warren actually saw the Venus British surgeon William Cheselden’s Osteographia (1733) included de Medici at the Uffizi and wrote of it on 5 March 1838: “Florence engravings of the Venus de Medici and Apollo Belvedere as skeletons. Gallery—Here the Venus de Medicis stands pre-eminent. She was dug up at Adrian’s Village; was in fourteen pieces; was put together, 25 Massachusetts General Hospital: By-Laws, Rules and Regulations, Acts so that there is nothing new but the hands. The figure is much more and Resolves (Boston: James Cotter & Co., 1874), 19. beautiful than it appears in the copies, and is very captivating.”

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Physician and Asclepius and Hygieia and Panacea and all As art historian Alan Wallach has argued, nineteenth- the gods and goddesses, making them my witnesses, that I century American public art collections should be under- will fulfill according to my ability and judgment this oath.”27 stood as a “recurring impulse to establish institutional bases In this manner, the idealized objectives of professional medi- for high art.”30 A significant vehicle for the performance of cine and the healing arts were invoked by the presence of cultural capital at Boston institutions was the acquisition and the Apollo in the operating theater, reminding students and display of casts of antique sculpture, including in both cases, surgeons of the corporeal ideal and of their professional oath. the Venus de Medici and Apollo Belvedere. Considered the In conclusion, Boston offers a unique case study for pinnacle of corporeal perfection, these reproductions com- public cast collecting; the city’s elite sought to demonstrate municated to an elite audience of medical students, profes- the validity of their self-proclaimed status as the “Athens sionals, connoisseurs, and scholars, affirming the viewer’s of America,” via the establishment of cultural institutions intellectual and scholarly acumen and advertising that status including the Boston Athenæum and Massachusetts Gen- to patients and visitors who were denied that knowledge. eral Hospital.28 While the former was a private library open Installed in institutional spaces that were troublingly both only to men of good breeding, the latter was established public and private, the rhetoric surrounding the casts and the to provide medical training for Harvard students and care agendas of their institutional owners reveals the conflicted for the city’s working classes. The two institutions, while and contested nature of that middle-ground, both ideologi- functionally distinct, established social hierarchies through cally and physically. The casts on display at both institutions, cultural performance; the status of the upper class was solidi- while proclaimed as for the edification of all, ultimately acted fied by membership in the Athenæum or their role at the for the edification of the few. hospital, while the position of the middle and working class Bostonian was likewise defined when denied entrance to the Athenæum or admitted as a Hospital patient.29 Boston University

27 David J. Rothman, Steven Marcus, and Stephanie A. Kiceluk, eds., 29 Of course, the ideological agendas of these two institutions have Medicine and Western Civilization (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers Uni- drastically changed over the course of two centuries, as is evident versity Press, 1995), 261-262. by a broader consideration of the Boston Public Library, the Boston Athenæum, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and the Massachusetts 28 These two institutions only serve as examples of the abundance of cul- General Hospital as they operate today. tural institutions founded in ante-bellum Boston that sought to solidify Brahmin cultural capital: others include Perkins School for the Blind, 30 Alan Wallach, Exhibiting Contradiction: Essays on the Art Museum in 1829, Boston Museum of Natural History, 1830, Mt. Auburn Cem- the United States (Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, etery, 1831, and Boston Public Library, 1848. The term Brahmin was 1998), 11. coined by Oliver Wendell Holmes in 1861 to describe Boston elites.

70 for the edification of all: nineteenth-century american medicine, art, and the role of the classical cast in cultural life

[above] Figure 1. George W. Boynton, “Plan of the City of Boston,” 1844, engraving, 24 x 28 cm. Reproduction Courtesy of the Norman B. Leventhal Map Center at the Boston Public Library.

[left] Figure 2. Abel Bowen, “The Athenæum,” c. 1828, wood engraving, image size: 6.5 x 5.5 cm. Published in Bowen’s Picture of Boston (Boston: A. Bowen, 1829), il- lustration facing page 188.

[right] Figure 3. Annin & Smith, Massachusetts General Hospital/Massachusetts Medical College, c. 1821, hand colored engraving, sheet size: 27.3 x 21.9 cm. Boston Athenæum.

71 athanor xxxii naomi slipp

Figure 5. “Apollo Belvedere at Massachusetts General Hospital,” copy after the original in the Vatican Museum, plaster, height: 224 cm. Photo credit: Naomi Slipp.

Figure 4. Southworth & Hawes, “Statue of Roman Man,” c. 1850, daguerreotype, whole plate: 20.5 x 15.4 cm. Courtesy of George Eastman House, International Museum of Photography and Film.

Figure 6. Venus de Medici, copy of the original in the Uffizi, Flor- ence, marble, 158.4 x 43.8 x 47.6 cm. Gift of Hannah Sawyer Lee, 1861, Boston Athenæum.

72 for the edification of all: nineteenth-century american medicine, art, and the role of the classical cast in cultural life

[above] Figure 7. Southworth & Hawes, “Untitled (Early Operation Using Ether),” 1847, daguerreo- type, whole plate: 15 x 20 cm. Harvard Art Museums/Fogg Mu- seum, Loan from the Massachusetts General Hospital Archives and Special Collections. Photo: Imag- ing Department © President and Fellows of Harvard College.

[left and right] Details of Figure 7.

73

Politics, Prints, and a Posthumous Portrait: Delaroche’s Napoleon in his Study

Alissa R. Adams

For fifteen years after he was banished to St. Helena, Na- By the time Delaroche was commissioned to paint Na- poleon Bonaparte's image was suppressed and censored by poleon in his Study he had become known for his uncanny the Bourbon Restoration government of France.1 In 1830, attention to detail and his gift for recreating historical visual however, the July Monarchy under King Louis-Philippe culture with scholarly devotion. Throughout the early phase lifted the censorship of Napoleonic imagery in the inter- of his career he achieved fame for his carefully rendered est of appealing to the wide swath of French citizens who genre historique paintings.2 These paintings carefully repli- still revered the late Emperor—and who might constitute cated historical details and, because of this, gave Delaroche a threat if they were displeased with the government. The a reputation for creating meticulous depictions of historical result was an outpouring of Napoleonic imagery including figures and events.3 This reputation seems to have informed paintings, prints, and statues that celebrated the Emperor the reception of his entire oeuvre. Indeed, upon viewing an and his deeds. The prints, especially, hailed Napoleon as a oval bust version of the 1845 Napoleon at Fontainebleau hero and transformed him from an autocrat into a Populist the Duc de Coigny, a veteran of Napoleon’s imperial army, hero. In 1838, in the midst of popular discontent with Louis- is said to have exclaimed that he had “never seen such a Philippe's foreign and domestic policies, the Countess of likeness, that is the Emperor himself!”4 Although the Duc Sandwich commissioned Paul Delaroche to paint a portrait de Coigny’s assertion is suspect given the low likelihood of of Napoleon entitled Napoleon in his Study (Figure 1) to Delaroche ever having seen Napoleon’s face, it eloquently commemorate her family’s connection to the Emperor. The attests to the perceived accuracy that was habitually used portrait was closely modeled on an earlier work from 1812 of to describe Delaroche’s paintings. the same name by Jacques-Louis David (Figure 2), but made Such accuracy would have been of interest to the several simple but effective changes to the composition that woman who commissioned Delaroche’s Napoleon in his reflected the idealization of the Emperor's features that was Study. The woman in question was Louisa Montagu. Montagu typical in Populist prints. Although Delaroche's portrait was was not only the Countess of Sandwich, but also a patron clearly inspired by the David painting, its details and handling of the arts, mother of the first wife of Napoleon’s natural of the Emperor's face suggest that, rather than attempting to son Alexandre Walewski, and a liberal-minded supporter of replicate the historical depiction of Napoleon's visage, Dela- Polish emigrés who had fled to France after the November roche meant to evoke the idealized version of the Emperor Uprising against Russia. Delaroche scholar Stephen Bann that had become a staple of Populist print culture. By making has suggested that it was in the company of these Polish this decision Delaroche revealed his familiarity with—and emigrés that she met Delaroche and decided to commission perhaps even his approval of—Populist reconfigurations of Napoleon in his Study.5 Although her daughter had passed Napoleon’s image. away shortly after marrying Napoleon’s son, the Countess I would like to express my gratitude for the advice, assistance, and op- 3 Ibid., 160. portunities to which I had access while writing this essay. Dr. Dorothy Johnson’s suggestions and encouragement were vital resources when 4 Quoted in Stephen Bann, “Delaroche, Napoleon, and English Collec- I originally wrote on this subject for my thesis. Her comments and tors,” Apollo (1 October 2005): 24-31. suggestions continue to be invaluable contributions as I expand my work on this subject. I would be remiss if I did not also acknowledge 5 For Delaroche and the dowager countess meeting in this context and the influence of Stephen Bann, whose work on Delaroche has been Delaroche visiting Prince Czartoryski see Bann, “Delaroche, Napo- a touchstone of and major influence on the research presented here. leon,” 26. Finally, I am extremely grateful to the Department of Art History at Delaroche’s proximity to these emigrés, especially Prince Adam Florida State University and the organizers of its Annual Graduate Czartoryski, is especially interesting in the context of this study. The Symposium for the opportunity to present my findings. Polish uprising against Russia occurred when it attempted to force the Polish army to suppress popular uprisings abroad (including the 1 Sudhir Hazareesingh, The Legend of Napoleon (London: Granta Books, July Revolution), thus violating the Polish Constitution. Czartoryski 2005), 73. was a prominent member of the new Nationalist government that was established after the Uprising and had been banished after the 2 Norman Ziff, Paul Delaroche: A Study in Nineteenth-Century French Russians overpowered the Uprising. He was, therefore, a kind of History Painting (New York: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1977), 22. Populist hero. Moreover, Czartoryski wrote in favor of enfranchising Polish peasants. Delaroche’s decision to visit the Prince suggests that athanor xxxii alissa r. adams

seemed to view her connection to the Bonaparte family as attempt to create an accurate record for his patroness. Yet, a source of pride, for she saw fit to engage the services of despite the Countess’s insistence on accuracy, Delaroche Delaroche, one of most prominent artists of his time. His did not seem to use the Davidian Study—possibly the most reputation for accuracy made him an appropriate choice, accurate extant portrayal of the Emperor—as a reference. since she wished to create an archaeological record of her Instead of transcribing the drawn, tired mien in David’s work, family tie to Napoleon. This idea is best conveyed in the Delaroche painted the Emperor with smooth, even features inscription she added to the back of the portrait. It reads: that echo the style of Roman imperial portraiture. Broad The uniform of the old guard was lent by smooth planes compose his cheeks, his lips form a cupid’s Baron Merchant, the Emperor’s valet de bow, and his eyes are clear. David’s Napoleon, in contrast, chambre; the sword is the one that Napo- has bleary eyes, tousled hair, and deeply lined cheeks that leon carried at Waterloo… verge on fat rather than full. The second version (c.1812) of The furniture is what existed in the Em- the work contains a nearly identical treatment of Napoleon’s peror’s study in the Tuileries. face (Figure 3) and adds a greenish cast to the entire composi- The snuff-box, ornamented with two me- tion, an effect that lends a sickly quality to the Emperor’s face. dallions fixed on the cover, is the one which These differences suggest that instead of working directly he gave to the Comte de Flahaut.6 from either iteration of David’s painting, Delaroche had a The Countess’s inscription leaves a detailed catalogue of different source for his first portrait of Napoleon. the exact items that acted as models for Delaroche’s paint- Delaroche’s use of a different source should not be ing. At the countess’s insistence, then, Delaroche painted surprising, for the art world of post-imperial France likely directly from historical artifacts. It can therefore be presumed did not become familiar with David’s work by viewing the that accuracy was of primary importance in the genesis of painted version. David had sent the first version to England this painting. shortly after its completion, and there it remained throughout In contrast to the artifacts the Countess of Sandwich Delaroche’s lifetime.8 The dearth of scholarly attention paid provided for Delaroche’s study, Delaroche had no access to to the exhibition history of the second version has made Napoleon’s face. The Emperor died long before the advent it unclear when and where—or if—the French under the of photography, and portraits painted during his lifetime are regime of Louis-Philippe may have seen the repetition. The unreliable in their flattery. Numerous versions of Napoleon’s second version had, until 1825, remained in David’s atelier death mask do survive from the period, but it is not clear in Brussels. Eventually it reached Napoleon III’s collection, how widespread these objects were or if Delaroche would but its history between David’s death and its acquisition by have had access to them. David’s Napoleon in his Study, Louis-Napoleon has not been well documented. A catalogue the inspiration for Delaroche’s work, may have been the of the 1969 exhibition of Napoleonic art at the Grand Palais most reliable record of the ruler’s face available. In a letter gives only a perfunctory review of its provenance before it to his Scottish patron David wrote, “I can thus assure your came to Louis-Napoleon, stating only that, after David’s lordship…that no one until now has ever made a better like- death, “it then appeared in several sales.”9 The initial sale was ness in a portrait….”7 David may have had ulterior motives probably made to private collectors either openly outside of for lauding the exactitude of his own work. However, the France or discreetly within the painter’s home country, for painting’s lack of idealization of Napoleon paired with its the sale and display of Napoleonic and Bonapartist works reasonably objective tone toward its subject suggests that the was prohibited by the censorship of the Bourbon Restoration artist was not exaggerating. David, in his portrait of Napo- government. Although Louis-Philippe’s juste milieu politics leon, probably sought to create a painting of Napoleon that led to the relaxation of anti-Napoleonic censorship, the humanized him through a studied naturalism and a removal degeneration of the King’s popularity in the late 1830s may of imperial idealization. have created a political atmosphere in which the exhibition David’s Napoleon in his Study, in its preoccupation with of this painting, with its celebration of the diligent Napoleon naturalism, would seem a necessary resource for Delaroche’s working late to ensure the safety and prosperity of his people,

he was sympathetic to the Populist cause in Poland and possibly the 8 The National Gallery of Art, which is now in possession of David’s origi- same movement in France. nal portrait, has recorded the provenance of the painting and made it For more on the November Uprising and Prince Czartoryski’s available to the general public on their website. See Unknown Author, liberalism see Macej Janowkski, Polish Liberal Thought Before 1918 “The Emperor Napoleon in His Study at the Tuileries-Provenance,” (New York: Central European University Press, 2004). 2012, accessed 26 December 2013, http://www.nga.gov/collection/ gallery/gg56/gg56-46114-prov.html. 6 Stephen Bann, Paul Delaroche: History Painted (London: Reaktion Books, Ltd. 1997), 247. 9 For more on the provenance of the second version of David’s painting see the exhibition catalogue Napoleon: Grand Palais Juin-Décembre 7 Quoted in A.A. Tait, “The Duke of Hamilton’s Palace,” The Burlington 1969 (Paris: Ministère d’État Affaires Culturelles, 1969), 51. Magazine (July 1983): 400-402.

76 politics, prints, and a posthumous portrait: delaroche’s napoleon in his study

would have been a misstep.10 Delaroche, then, probably did An etching by Philippe Josephe Auguste Vallot (1796- not have access to either version. 1870) may be Delaroche’s actual source. Documentary He did, however, have access to printed reproductions evidence of the exact date of Vallot’s etching of the Study is of the image and could choose from several engravers’ and scarce, but at least one source, Henri Beraldi’s Les Graveurs etchers’ adaptations of the original painting. His choices, as is du XIXe Siécle, dates it to 1834, one year before the earliest the case of any artistic decision, are revealing. There are two available dating of Laugier’s engraving.13 Beraldi’s source works in particular that can be identified as possible sources links Laugier’s work to this print and suggests that the Laugier for Delaroche’s painting: an 1835 engraving by Jean-Nicolas is a derivation of the Vallot.14 However, a comparison of Laugier (Figure 4) and an 1834 etching by Philippe Josephe the two prints quickly eliminates the possibility that Laugier Auguste Vallot (Figure 5). Stephen Bann has suggested that worked from Vallot, for the former work bears a much greater Delaroche may have worked, if not from the second David, resemblance to David’s original than to that of the latter. then from Laugier’s engraving.11 Laugier, a highly regarded While Laugier’s engraving is a faithful reproduction, Vallot’s engraver who had direct access to David in the master’s etching takes a number of liberties with the original paint- workshop in Brussels, first published his engraving of David’s ing. Most notable among these changes is the idealization work in 1835.12 He likely worked directly from the second of the Emperor’s features and de-emphasis of his paunch. Study, for Napoleon wears the green uniform of the chas- Indeed, the same features that suggest that Delaroche could suers à cheval in both the second painting and in Laugier’s not have used the Laugier print as a model—the softened print. Additionally, the engraving’s treatment of Napoleon’s features, tight jaw, and plumped lips—are the same features face exactly replicates the treatment in the second version of that differentiate Vallot’s etching from Laugier’s engraving. David’s work. This feature of the engraving may have con- Vallot and Delaroche’s representations of the Emperor, then, tributed to its fame and popularity in the nineteenth century. can be linked together by the nature of their deviations from Delaroche’s lack of faithfulness to the original work the original composition. also suggests that he did not use the Laugier engraving Although their similar approach to idealizing Napoleon’s as his source. Delaroche idealized Napoleon’s face in his form does not prove that Delaroche worked from Vallot’s painting and depicted him in the blue-and-white uniform etching instead of the more accurate Laugier engraving, the of the Imperial Guard, not the green uniform of the chas- fact that the two men moved in similar circles lends weight suers à cheval. The faces in each work differ dramatically. to the connection. Like Delaroche, Vallot was a member of Delaroche sharply defined Napoleon’s jawline, giving the the French Academy. His first documented exhibition at the illusion of taut skin. Laugier’s Napoleon, in contrast, features Salon coincided with Delaroche’s first Napoleonic commis- a much wider face that makes the Emperor appear slightly sion. The exhibited piece was an etching of Bonaparte before bloated. Moreover, the painting shows no sign of the thin the Battle of the Pyramids after Delaroche's teacher, Baron lips with downturned corners from the Laugier engraving Gros.15 Although his work has faded from the narrative of and instead portrays the Emperor’s pout as a plump cupid’s nineteenth-century European art, Vallot enjoyed popularity bow that curves almost imperceptibly upward. The hair, as and favor during his lifetime. He even found favor among the painted in Delaroche’s work, has been smoothed. Laugier, in most influential members of the Academy, including Horace a faithful reproduction of the detail in David’s work, shows Vernet, Delaroche’s mentor and father-in-law.16 Given this the Emperor’s hair tousled and unevenly textured. The idea relationship with Delaroche’s father-in-law, Vallot’s career- that Delaroche, whose patron was so invested in accuracy, making turn etching the works of Delaroche’s master, and would use the basic composition and details of a source but his presence in the same institution of which Delaroche not take advantage of an accurate record of the Emperor’s was a member, it is likely that the two men would at least face, even if it was from a copy of a copy of said visage, is have known of each other, even if they were not closely suspect. He seems, instead, to have chosen to use a differ- acquainted. In combination with the strong similarities be- ent, more flattering image as his reference. tween Delaroche’s painting and Vallot’s etching, it seems 10 Louis-Philippe’s policy of favoring the middle class and tendency to 13 Henri Beraldi, Les Graveurs du XIXe Siécle: Guide de l’Amateur support initiatives that took advantage of farm and factory workers led d’Estampes Modernes (Paris: Libraire L. Conquet, 1891), 170. to a growing discontent among the lower classes. This discontent took the form of political and social upheaval that eventually culminated 14 Ibid., 171. in the Revolution of 1848. For more on this subject see H. A. C. Collingham and R. S. Alexander, The July Monarchy: A Political History 15 Frédéric Villot, Notice des peintures, sculptures, gravures et lithog- of France 1830-1848 (London: Longman Group UK, Limited, 1988). raphies de l’École moderne de France exposées dans les galeries du Musée national du Luxembourg (Paris: Vinchon, 1855), 63. 11 For Bann’s brief discussion of this possibility see Bann, Paul Delaroche, 292n.52. 16 For a general biography of Vallot see Michael Bryan, Dictionary of Painters and Engravers: Biographical and Critical (London: George 12 For biographical information about Laugier and an account of Laugier’s Bell and Sons, 1899), 2:608. For Vallot’s proximity to Horace Vernet visit to David’s studio in Brussels, see Gustave Lambert, “J.-N. Laugier, et al., see Charles Gabet, Dictionnaire des artistes de l’école française Graveur d’Histoire: Sa Vie et ses Oeuvres,” Bulletin de la Société au XIXe siècle, 671. Academique du Var: Nouvelle Serie 7 (1874), 22.

77 athanor xxxii alissa r. adams

likely that Vallot’s work was, indeed, the source for the 1838 viewer to observe him in unguarded reflection. However, Napoleon in his Study. a more typical example of le petit corporal can be seen in Vallot’s idealized vision of the Emperor was not unique in an 1837 print by Etienne Achille Réveil after Nicholas Tous- the visual culture of the July Monarchy, but may—alongside saint Charlet (Figure 6). An enthusiastic and loving crowd Delaroche’s painting—instead be a conscious effort to reflect envelops Charlet’s Napoleon. Although above the crowd, a wider trend in Napoleonic representation. With the remov- Napoleon leans down to make eye contact with his subjects. al of Bourbon Restoration era censorship came a plethora of He is both surrounded by and engaged with them. The title Napoleonic prints and paintings that were displayed without of this image, “Is it true, as they say, that things are going so fear of reprisal.17 The government even commissioned a cycle badly?” positions him as a savior. In combination with the of Napoleonic paintings from Horace Vernet.18 However, the title, the date of the original’s production, 1824, establishes government’s embrace of Napoleon’s image should not be the Emperor as an anti-Royalist champion. Although the read as an acceptance of all things Bonaparte. The decision regime the Emperor is meant to counteract in the original was much more in the vein of self-preservation. By 1838 it is the Bourbon dynasty, Réveil’s repurposing of the image had long been clear that Louis-Philippe’s initial promise to in 1837 pitted Napoleon against Louis-Philippe. The image champion the revolutionary cause was hollow, for his poli- of Napoleon among the common people quickly became a cies favored the bourgeoisie, exploited the work force, and symbol of the brewing Populist revolution. avoided the glorious war desired by the general populace.19 The importance of proximity to petit corporal images The July Monarchy’s adoption of Napoleonic imagery was, mirrors the function of the prints that popularized the im- in large part, an attempt to recode the abundant images age itself. Where Napoleon was accessible to the common of Napoleon, who gained popularity when Louis-Philippe people in the world of the prints, the prints were accessible to proved to be an enemy of the common man. The term for a massive audience—including, it would seem, Delaroche— the enormously popular and idealized image of Napoleon in the real world. In his study of the legend of Napoleon, that so threatened the July Monarchy was “le petit corpo- Sudhir Hazareesingh notes that Napoleonic prints, because ral.” Despite the quaint connotations of this term, it was the of their portable nature, occupied a unique space in the little corporal of popular prints that the government most political world.20 Because they could travel, they acquired feared—and which Delaroche and Vallot evoked in their a popular, democratic power that could be harnessed to painting and print, respectively. pass ideas—like the Napoleon of the people—quickly and Le petit corporal had been a feature of Napoleonic visual effectively. A sense of community arose from this privatiza- culture for years by the time Delaroche began painting his tion of Napoleonic images and persisted after they were portrait of Napoleon. Although shades of his form can be made public. Delaroche may have initially been exposed seen even as early as in Gros’s Battle of Eylau from 1808, to this community through his father-in-law Horace Vernet, le petit corporal did not acquire a consistent iconographic who used his atelier as an informal meeting ground for form until years after Napoleon’s death. In its most com- Bonapartists and produced a series of Napoleonic lithographs mon form, le petit corporal is an image of Napoleon as a during the Bourbon Restoration.21 It was in contexts such as middle-aged man. Although his age would suggest that he is Vernet’s Bonapartist club that le petit corporal grew strong an Emperor, he seldom wears imperial garb. Instead a simple in the minds of the French people. To have access to these soldier’s uniform covers his rounded torso. In addition to the images, even during the July Monarchy, implied a familiarity uniform, the Emperor typically wears the famous bicorn hat with the Cult of Napoleon or the Bonapartist circle. Further and a long gray greatcoat. Although the July Monarchy at- evidence for Delaroche’s affiliation with the Napoleonic cult tempted to coopt this image, most notably on Seurre’s statue can be found in his own self-presentation. Many commenta- from Vendôme Column, it consistently failed or deliberately tors noted that he habitually wore his hair in a Napoleonic chose not to replicate the most important quality of le petit style and went about town in a gray coat reminiscent of le corporal images: a sense of Napoleon’s accessibility to the petit corporal’s greatcoat.22 Although it is possible that, as common man. More than the hat, uniform, or coat, the Stephen Bann suggests, Delaroche simply felt a personal placement of Napoleon in close proximity to the common affinity for the Emperor, his Napoleonic dress and coiffure people was the defining characteristic of petit corporal im- may also point to his sympathy for the plight of the masses ages. Delaroche evokes this proximity by bringing an ideal- who saw Napoleon as their champion. It is near-impossible ized Napoleon close to the picture plane and allowing the to prove that such an interpretation is accurate, however,

17 For more on this subject see Chapter 3 of Hazareesingh’s The Legend 20 Hazareesingh, Legend of Napoleon, 96. of Napoleon. 21 Derin Tanyol, “Histoire Anecdotique—The People’s History? Gros and 18 Michael Marrinan, Painting Politics for Louis-Philippe: Art and Ideology Delaroche,” Word & Image: A Journal of Verbal/Visual Inquiry 16, no. in Orléanist France, 1830-1848 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1 (2000): 7-30. 1988), 164. 22 Bann, “Delaroche, Napoleon,” 28. 19 Collingham and Alexander, The July Monarchy, 334.

78 politics, prints, and a posthumous portrait: delaroche’s napoleon in his study

Delaroche’s decision to style himself in a Napoleonic mode of the idealized and less-than-historically accurate etching strongly suggests that, at the least, he was familiar with the by Vallot. Delaroche’s decision to base his version of Da- Cult of Napoleon and its iconography. vid’s celebrated painting on an idealized reproduction of Previous scholarship has traced a straightforward heri- the image rather than an accurate one suggests that he was tage for Delaroche’s Napoleon in his Study that argues that familiar with the reconfiguration of the Emperor’s image the artist used an historically accurate source. It suggests enacted by Napoleonic print culture. It also demonstrates that the progression began with David’s original paintings his willingness to engage with a visual milieu geared toward and continued with Vallot’s etching after which Laugier’s affecting revolution rather than preventing it. Both Vallot’s engraving, the ostensible inspiration for Delaroche’s paint- etching and Delaroche’s painting reflect the conventions of ing, was modeled. It is more likely, however, that the sec- popular prints that depicted Napoleon as le petit corporal. ond Davidian Study served as the original source for both Delaroche’s decision to eschew his interest in replicating Vallot and Laugier. Rather than continuing in a direct line, historical sources by using an idealized reproduction of the “pedigree” of Delaroche’s painting shows a divergence. David’s painting as a reference suggests that his Napoleon Laugier and Vallot’s works represent two separate direc- in his Study ought to be read as a political statement rather tions of development: one accurate and one idealized. than a simple study of physiognomy. Delaroche’s work seems to have sprung from the tradition University of Iowa

Figure 1. Paul Delaroche, Napoleon in his Study, 1838, oil on canvas, 91m x 1.21m. Private Collection. Photo © Agnew’s London. The Bridgeman Art Library.

79 athanor xxxii alissa r. adams

80 politics, prints, and a posthumous portrait: delaroche’s napoleon in his study

Figure 6. Etienne Achille Réveil after Nicholas Toussaint Charlet, “Is it true, as they say, that things are going so badly?” 1837, after an 1824 original, engraving, 8 cm by 12 cm. Collection of the Author. t[facing page, top left] Figure 2. Jacques Louis David, Napoleon t[facing page, lower left] Figure 4. Jean-Nicolas Laugier after David, in his Study at the Tuileries, 1812, oil on canvas, 2.04 m by 1.25 Napoleon in his Study at the Tuileries, 1835, engraving, 88.9 cm by m. National Gallery of the Arts, Washington, D.C. The Bridgeman 66 cm. Library of Congress. Art Library. t[facing page, lower right] Figure 5. Josephe Auguste Vallot after t[facing page, top right] Figure 3. Jacques Louis David, Une Répé- David, Napoleon in his Study at the Tuilieries, 1834, etching, 13.5 tition of Napoleon in his Study at the Tuilieries, c.1812, oil on canvas, cm by 9.5 cm. Collection of the Author. 2.05 m by 1.28 m. Private Collection. The Bridgeman Art Library.

81

Creativity in the Congo Free State: Nineteenth and Twentieth-Century Funerary Mats

Carlee S. Forbes

Mention of the Congo at the turn of the twentieth century This study focuses on the funerary practices of the often brings forward thoughts of oppression and desolation. Kongo people. This is not to be confused with the modern From 1885-1908, Belgian King Léopold II had exclusive states the Democratic Republic of Congo (Congo-Kinshasa) control over this vast area in Central Africa. The area, located or the Republic of Congo (Congo-Brazzaville).1 Instead, this around the Congo River, is rich in rubber and ivory. Léo- paper discusses Kongo with a “K,” a reference to speakers pold II took great advantage of these resources. He granted of the Kikongo language, who live in both the Democratic concessions to different companies, essentially giving them Republic of Congo and in Northern Angola. Their practices the right to act as they wished and to extract whatever they and location correspond with the historic Kingdom of Kongo desired. Léopold II and the companies placed harsh demands that flourished in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. upon the indigenous Congolese people to collect resources. If quotas were not met, the people would be severely pun- The Finest Velvet ished (Figure 1). It is through this lens that most stories of Raffia products have a long history within the Kongo the Congo at the turn of the century are set. Congo is seen Kingdom. Both the material and the designs of raffia textiles stripped of her natural resources, her people are broken, have long-standing significance and meaning for the Kongo. and the colonial powers are in complete control. However, Fine textiles served as indicators of prestige, wealth, and this paper examines a case in which the Congo people were spirituality. Understanding the historic uses of raffia estab- not completely browbeaten or defeated. lishes the base from which it is possible to understand the One demonstration of the people’s agency is the deliber- importance of the twentieth-century funerary mats. ate adaptation and transformation of their artistic practices The Kingdom of the Kongo is well known for its pro- to fit changing situations. Kongo funerary practices morphed duction of raffia textiles. European visitors continually com- and changed in the late nineteenth and early twentieth mented on them. In 1508, Duarte Pacheo Pereira, one of centuries. Raffia mats, one of the many materials used in the early explorers to Kongo, states funerals, may be used as a case study demonstrating the …in this kingdom of the Kongo they pro- changing funerary art, funerary practices, and the role of duce cloths from palm fibers with velvet the artist in the Lower Congo region around the turn of the like decoration, of such beauty that better century. The Kongo people have a long history of producing ones are not made in Italy. In no other part raffia materials. Examining finely made and decorated raffia of Guinea is there a country where they textiles produced during the height of the Kongo Kingdom are able to weave these clothes as in this in the seventeenth century creates a context through which Kingdom of Kongo.2 it is possible to interpret the twentieth-century raffia mats. Such historic textiles were made from exceptionally fine By questioning how the mats were used in funerals and raffia threads. Raffia fibers are extracted from palm leaves. their meaning in Kongo society, the mats become a platform Palm leaves are harvested just before the new leaves unfurl. through which it is possible to better understand the turbulent The midrib is then removed, separating the leaves into indi- period of the Congo Free State. vidual units. The skin of the leaf is removed to reveal the fiber

I am grateful to my advisor Dr. Victoria Rovine for her continued guid- 1 In terms of spelling, Kongo equates to the cultural group, kingdom, ance, constructive critiques, and support through the project. I also and language, whereas Congo indicates geographical location, the thank Susan Cooksey, Robin Poynor, and Hein Vanhee, curators of river, and the modern country. The region just north of the lower the Kongo across the Waters exhibition co-organized by the Samuel Congo was not part of the kingdom, but the people are nonetheless P. Harn Museum of Art in Gainesville, Florida, and the Royal Museum Kongo. This will be further complicated by quotations from historical for Central Africa in Tervuren, Belgium. Research for that exhibition texts that do not necessarily follow this pattern. sparked this project, and finally, many thanks to my art history peers at the University of Florida for their academic, moral, and personal 2 Translated and quoted from Duarte Pacheco Pereira, Esmeraldo de Situ support. Orbis 1505-1508 in Ezio Bassani, African Art and Artefacts in European Collections 1400-1800 (London: British Museum Press, 2000), 279. athanor xxxii carlee s. forbes

within. That fiber is then dried and is ready for use.3 Due to the difficulty of this quality identification: the limitations of the leaf’s size, each fiber is, at maximum, There are four kinds of cloths. The best and two meters long.4 These threads were then woven into plain most refined has figures…it takes fifteen or cloth using an upright loom. sixteen days to make one. Only the king, The woven designs of the early objects were created in and those whom he gives permission, may two ways, and a single textile could include examples of both wear the cloth. The second type is not techniques. The first method, embroidery, involved sewing as refined as the first, but the two types the design into the woven cloth. This embroidery was done greatly resemble one another, and unless in such a way that the design is only visible on the front. one is an expert, one may be fooled at first Embroidery created a raised surface and allowed for extra sight since the second type also contains embellishments that were difficult to obtain through the figures. You must examine the back to see process of weaving. The second method is “piling.” In this the difference.13 process, extra palm fibers were added to the weft in loops The production itself can be used to affirm the prestige or rings. These loops would later be cut—leaving the trace of the wearer as one who has the favor of the king, one of small tufts.5 When rubbed back and forth, piling creates who can afford to acquire the materials, and one who can the velvet-like texture mentioned in the travelers’ accounts. commission the weaver. With this labor-intensive process, it would take fifteen to In addition to the decorated cloths being used as clothing eighteen days to create a textile that is about 20 x 20 inches and markers of status, undecorated cloths were used as cur- (50 x 50 cm) (Figure 2).6 rency. The cloths were thin, but tightly woven. They could be In the Kongo Kingdom, the finest textiles were reserved single units, or sewn into “books” by attaching several cloths for nobles with high status. Only the Kongo king and the in the corner.14 It is of note, that this was not necessarily a members of the court whom he appointed were permitted currency in the full sense of the term since it is unlikely that to wear or display the finest quality textiles.7 One impor- raffia was used in the buying and selling of goods.15 However, tant form of the decorated cloths is the mpu cap worn by there is evidence that the cloth could be collected as a tribute kings and chiefs (Figure 3).8 A report from the 1491 visit of tax.16 Other important events also included the exchange of Portuguese emissaries indicates that textiles were also hung raffia textiles in a marriage agreement, or as a sign of friend- on the wall, much like the tapestries that were displayed in ship.17 Thus, raffia may not necessarily be used as currency Europe at that time.9 In addition, these textiles were traded in everyday transactions, but its exchange signaled ideas of and presented to foreign dignitaries as objects of prestige.10 prestige, status, or respect. The hierarchy of textiles and the regulations surrounding Not only were these earliest textiles important signs of them were so important that if a person was found selling status, but their function and designs perhaps also reflected a high-grade textile without the king’s permission, he or Kongo beliefs. In Kongo thought, the realm of the living is she could be executed.11 The Kongo people knew well and integrally connected with the world of the dead. Chiefs, understood the differences between the different grades of diviners, and banganga, or ritual specialists, were important textiles.12 As an outsider, Olfert Dapper described in 1686 connectors between the world of the living and the spiritual 3 Émile Jean Baptiste Coart, Vannerie et tissage (Bruxelles: Renaissance 9 Mario Pereira, African Art at the Portuguese Court (PhD diss, Brown d’Occident, 1926), 11-14; and Jan Vansina, “Raffia Cloth in West University, 2010), 149. Central Africa, 1500-1800,” in An Expanding World, ed. Maureen Fennell Mazzaoui, vol. 12 of Textiles: Production, Trade, and Demand 10 Pereira, African Art, 150. (Aldershot: Variorum, 1998), 266-267. 11 Phyllis M. Martin, “Power Cloth and Currency on the Loango Coast,” 4 Joseph Maes, Vannerie au Lac Leopold II (Bruxelles: Commission pour African Economic History 15 (1986), 2. la protection des arts et metiers indigènes, 1936), 3-4. 12 Phyllis M. Martin. The External Trade of the Loango Coast, 1576-1870; 5 Bassani, Art and Artefacts, 278. the Effects of Changing Commercial Relations on the Vili Kingdom of Loango (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972), 117. 6 Translated and quoted from Olfert Dapper, Description de l’Afrique: contenant les noms, la situation & les confins (Amsterdam: Wolfgang, 13 Dapper, Description de l’Afrique, 324. Author’s translation. Waesberge, Boom & van Someren, 1686) in Bassani, Art and Artefacts, 278. 14 Vansina, “Raffia Cloth,”16.

7 Dapper, Description de l’Afrique, 324. 15 Ibid., 17.

8 For more on mpu caps see: Ezio Bassani, “A note on Kongo high-status 16 Ibid., 9. caps in old European collections,” RES: anthropology and aesthetics 5 (1983): 74–84; Gordon D. Gibson, “High Status Caps of the Kongo 17 Ibid. and Mbundu Peoples,” Textile Museum Journal 4 (1977): 71–96; and Zdenka Volavka, “Insignia of the Divine Authority,” African Arts 14, 18 Wyatt MacGaffey, “The Eyes of Understanding: Kongo Minkisi,” in no. 3 (May 1, 1981): 43–92. Astonishment and Power, ed. Wyatt MacGaffey and Michael D. Harris (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1993), 59-60.

84 creativity in the congo free state: nineteenth and twentieth-century funerary mats

realm of ancestors, and simbi spirits.18 These cloths were but it is important to understand the kings and chiefs had to used and owned by such individuals, thus their designs may be affirmed by the ancestors and simbi spirits and that the reflect this spiritual connection. ancestors and spirits had great power in the world of the The Kongo cosmogram (dikenga dia Kongo in Kikongo) living. Therefore, the king was an important spiritual node is frequently referenced as the core symbol for understand- connecting the world of the living and the world of the dead. ing Kongo cosmology and design patterns, and it could be His high status is integrally connected to his spiritual role. used to explain spiritual significance of the raffia designs.19 Furthermore, there is a long history of using the interlock- In its simplest form, the dikenga is represented as a cross or ing patterns on objects of prestige and status. De Maret and X, two simple crossed lines.20 The centerline, or the kalunga, Denbow report findings of ceramic shards pre-dating and represents the divide between the living and the dead. The contemporary to the Kongo Kingdom.25 The interlocking textiles’ twisting, interlocking patterns may be seen as a com- motif appears frequently on objects of prestige—such as ivory plicated variation on the simple cross motif. Wyatt MacGaffey mpungi trumpets, scepters, and of course textiles, from the calls for a more critical approach to understanding Kongo early Kongo Kingdom and continuing into the nineteenth iconography instead of simply relegating everything to being century. This design continuity illustrates the long-standing understood as a representation of the dikenga.21 MacGaffey practice associating the geometric patterns with objects of recognizes Kongo scholar Fu-Kiau Bunseki’s 1960s publica- prestige and rulership. tions as the first appearance of the term dikenga; the term Thus, through these complex, difficult to create designs, is absent from previous KiKongo dictionaries. The dikenga is made in a valued material, these textiles confirm and reaf- more than just a visual motif; it is the embodiment of spiritual firm the king’s spiritual and social power. However, with the practices in which an nganga moves between the spiritual introduction of European cloth, the fine raffia textiles fell out and living worlds.22 Bunseki’s dikenga cosmogram became of use, and the production of other raffia materials (except for an abstraction to represent this spiritual practice. However, the funerary mats and mpu caps) declined as the Kingdom scholars have adopted the dikenga to explain the prevalent splintered in the late eighteenth century. use of the cross motifs in Kongo arts. In recognizing each cross motif as a dikenga, scholars imply that the motif has Funerary Mats had cosmological importance throughout the entire history The finely woven seventeenth-century textiles from the of the Kongo Kingdom. Through this interpretation, scholars Kongo Kingdom have been much studied, although left out have de-historicized the term. This overuse of the dikenga of these conversations are the raffia mats that began to be disregards earliest evidence of crosses in the Kongo motifs collected in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. and also the role of Christianity (and its cross imagery) in There is little doubt that raffia mats were used in an earlier Kongo society.23 Beginning with (Nzinga a Nkuwu) King João time period. Dapper’s 1647 account speaks of raffia wall I’s conversion in 1491, Christianity has played in important coverings, and Cappuchin missionaries in the seventeenth role in defining identity.24 century write of raffia mats being used to wrap bodies While the textile’s interlocking patterns cannot simply before funeral ceremonies.26 However, it was not until the be understood as dikenga, it is important to note here that late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries that the mats Kongo society does not easily separate status and spiritual- began to be collected. The collection of the Royal Museum ity. As previously stated, these textiles were prestige objects, for Central Africa in Tervuren, Belgium, holds a fantastic 19 See Wyatt MacGaffey, Religion and Society in Central Africa: The Poynor, and Hein Vanhee (Gainesville: University of Florida Press, BaKongo of Lower Zaire (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986), 2013), 34-39; Geoffrey Heimlich, “Lower Congo Rock Art Revisited,” 43-49. Nyame Akuma 74 (2010): 42–50.

20 The dikenga may be broken down to represent the four cardinal points. 24 John Thornton and Cécile Fromont have focused extensively on the On the right (east) the rising sun signals the beginning of life, the top Kongo Kingdom as a Christian Kingdom and its use of cross motifs. In (north) is midday and maturation, the left (west) the setting sun and particular, see: Cécile Fromont, “Under the Sign of the Cross: Religious death, and finally the bottom (south) midnight and the existence in Conversion and Visual Correlation in early modern Central Africa,” the spiritual realm—only to be reborn to begin again. RES: Anthropology and Aesthetics 59-60 (2011): 109-123; and John K. Thornton, “The development of an African Catholic Church in 21 Wyatt MacGaffey calls for a more critical approach to studies of Kongo the Kingdom of Kongo, 1491-1750,” Journal of African History 25.2 iconography. Wyatt MacGaffey, “Kongo Atlantic Dialogues” (discussant (1984): 147–167. remarks, Gwendolen M. Carter Conference, University of Florida, Gainesville, 21-22 February 2014). 25 James Denbow, A Manima-Mobouha, and N Sanviti, “Archaeological Excavations Along the Loango Coast,” NSI: Bulletin De Laison Des 22 This spiritual action is similar to the diyowa (cruciform trench) Bit- CICIBA 3 (1988): 37–42; Pierre de Maret, “The Ngovo Group: an tremieux describes in his 1911 account of Khimba initiation practices. industry with polished stone tools Lower Zaire,” The African Archaeo- Leo Bittremieux, La Société secrète des Bakhimba au Mayombe (Brus- logical Review 4 (1986): 103-133. sels: Institute Royal Colonial Belge, 1936), 37-38. 26 Dapper, Description de l’Afrique, 343; and Jean-François De Rome, La 23 Geoffroy Heimlich, “Rock art as a Source for the History of the Kongo Fondation de la mission des Capuchins au Royaume de Congo (1648), Kingdom,” in Kongo across the Waters, ed. Susan Cooksey, Robin quoted in Robert Farris Thompson, “Kongo Civilization and Kongo

85 athanor xxxii carlee s. forbes

inventory showing the variety of raffia mats created at the raffia mats is typified in the elaborate late-nineteenth and turn of the century; this collection is the basis for this study. early-twentieth-century creations of niombo mummies by Many examples can be used to explore the persistence of the Bembe people in the northern Kongo region (Figure 6). the geometric patterns (Figure 4). This continuation of geo- The bodies of nobles were wrapped in layers of raffia mats metric motifs—but also the introduction of new figurative and finally covered in imported, European red flannel. The motifs—says much about the Kongo artists who made them entire bundle took the shape of a body in the symbolic pose and the Kongo people who used them. with one arm extended upward and the other downward, Before the twentieth century, the Kongo Kingdom had suggestive of the link between the world of the living and fallen apart and broken into smaller chieftaincies. Op- the world of the dead.30 Ritual symbols were painted and portunities for European trade had created a rising upper embroidered on the body of the likeness of the ruler, or class throughout Kongo. Kongo traders and chiefs desired adorned with ritual symbols. The combined use of raffia to demonstrate their newly acquired wealth and power mats and imported European flannel in the niombo shows through the accumulation of imported prestige goods and the new importance of both types of cloth in Kongo society. the commissioning of art objects.27 Chiefs still had powerful The outward flannel material proclaimed the importance connections to the spirit world, and they displayed their of European trade and European materials. The new role spiritual connection and their riches on their graves. Graves of imported material and the importance of success/status of Kongo chiefs would be covered in objects—from European that may be gained from trade was a central theme in funer- ceramics, to imported gin bottles, to European textiles, to als—as seen in the presence of many European objects on wooden sculpture, and finally to raffia mats (Figure 5). Col- graves.31 Raffia mats, however, suggest the historical use of lectively, these materials not only served spiritual purposes to raffia products to signal prestige and status.32 communicate with the simbi spirits and with the deceased, The other use of raffia mats was to display them, along but they also display the deceased’s wealth and connections with the other objects, on graves of chiefs (Figure 7). Raffia to Europe. mats displayed on the grave in the nineteenth and early twen- As a transitory period for the deceased, funerals created tieth centuries continued to employ the geometric patterns of close contact between the living and spiritual worlds. It is the past, but new figurative imagery was introduced as well. because of their funerary uses that the production of raffia Since funerals are a time of spiritual power and connection mats persisted when most other raffia art forms fell out of to the world of the dead, the visual representations on the use after the dissolution of the Kongo Kingdom in the late mats, like the iconography of their earlier counterparts, could eighteenth century. Overall, textiles continued to play a large be used both to explain and understand Kongo cosmological role in funerals. In one study of the coastal Boma region, beliefs and to demonstrate the deceased’s status. Taking two Scrag notes conspicuous consumption habits among the examples from the Royal Museum for Central Africa’s large new nobility. Traders spent their acquired wealth on objects collection of raffia funerary mats, it is possible to see how that clearly showed their status, and this included cloth.28 mats continue the geometric patterns but also introduced In addition to amassing objects, the most opulent display of new designs—all of which present similar messages of pres- wealth one could make was in the context of lavish funerals, tige and status. burials, and gravesite decoration. Funerals could be delayed The first example shows the intersection between geo- for years while the heirs secured the amount of cloth to metric and figurative designs and also describes the funerary wrap the body.29 process (Figure 8). Two past studies one by Coppée and Although Scrag focuses on the collection of European another by Mantuba-Ngoma help to explain such compli- cloth in the Boma region, the continued use of raffia mats cated imagery.33 The central image on the mat shows a large in the niombo mummy bundles of the Bembe people (far- mummy bundle. Boxes at the center represent the body of ther north) suggests that raffia mats remained important in the deceased. The interlocked cross pattern in the center of the context of burials. The practice of wrapping bodies in the coffin is intended to represent the presence of the body. Art,” in The Four Moments of the Sun: Kongo Arts in Two Worlds, 31 Martin, “Power Cloth and Currency,” 6. exhibition catalogue, ed. Robert Farris Thompson and Joseph Cornet (Washington, DC: National Gallery of Art, 1981), 52. 32 The idea of the mats evoking or recalling the history triggers a question of a possible connection to the whole history (and therefore ances- 27 MacGaffey, “The Eyes of Understanding,” 31. tors and past kingdom). For example, Kuba barkcloth is not used in everyday, but it references ancestors. It is used to decorate the Ngwadi 28 Norman Schrag, Changing Perceptions of Wealth among the Bamboma, a moosh mask—an ancestor mask. However, I do not view that the ed. Phyllis Martin (Bloomington, IN: African Studies Program, Indiana mats functioned in this manner. Yes, they reference Kongo spiritual University, 1990), 3. ideas, but I do not think that it is possible to assert that they function as a representative of the entire Kongo history. 29 Schrag, Changing Perceptions of Wealth, 21-22. 33 R. P. Coppée, “La Veillée Funèbre,” Brousse 9 (1956): 25–26; and 30 Thompson, “Kongo Civilization,” 62-66. Mabiala Mantuba-Ngoma, Frauen, Kunsthandwerk und Kultur bei den Yombe in Zaïre (Göttingen: Edition Re, 1989), 290-291.

86 creativity in the congo free state: nineteenth and twentieth-century funerary mats

This interlocking pattern is almost identical to patterns found to show the connection with European luxury goods and the on earlier textiles. The whole coffin assemblage seems to be affluence of the deceased. Bottles were often left on graves carried by the two figures connected to it via lines. The red to honor the deceased.38 The depiction of bottles shows squares over the bundle’s shoulders represent the wives of this important connection to the spiritual world, but also the deceased. The dots in the center of the lozenges indicate recognizes status and wealth. that the wives are crying. The bundle is surrounded by fig- Finally, the geometric motifs and raffia material itself ures in mourning. The clasping of the hands over the head cannot be ignored in analysis. The historic importance and indicates extreme mourning (as opposed to simply grasping meaning of geometric patterns persists in the lozenges placed behind the neck that indicates only a lesser degree of mourn- beneath the leopard and to the right of the image. The his- ing).34 One hand raised and one hand pointing to the ground tory of the meaning of raffia as a much-coveted material signals a connection of the world of the living to the spirit and one that denotes exalted position must be taken into world.35 One must also note the appearance of the inverted consideration. Fine textiles and clothing were available only figures. These could refer to simbi spirits, below the kalunga to the chiefs and the elite. Thus, the fact that this mat is made line, in other words, the realm of the spirits. With all of this from raffia and that it includes geometric patterns along with imagery, the scene supports ideas similar to those enacted figuration, reminds us of the long-standing identification of in actual niombo practices. The deceased has great wealth raffia with wealth and status. (as seen through the creation of his mummy and elaborate What we can ascertain from an examination of these funeral), but he is also connected to the spiritual world (as three examples (Figures 4, 8 and 9) is that raffia textiles con- seen in the mourner’s poses and use of geometric patterning). tinued as a means of marking status and making spiritual and The funerary scene seems an obvious choice for an political statements throughout Kongo history. In the seven- object used in the funeral setting. What is less obvious is teenth century, finely woven raffia textiles served as markers the use of other imagery to reflect similar ideas of status of royal status and the complex geometric designs focused and spirituality. In Figure 9, all elements of the image refer on the interconnectivity of the living and spirit realms. For to the deceased’s status and point to the deceased’s spiritual that time period, records do not indicate how such textiles connection. The leopard is associated with many aspects of or how lesser mats may have been used in funerals or com- status. Mantuba-Ngoma documents numerous proverbs that memoration. As raffia textiles fell out of use, and as the illustrate a ruler’s obligation to keep serving his people so Kingdom crumbled, chiefs continued the use of certain raffia that they will not wander away or act against him, as they textile ideas (such as using mpu caps to indicate status). The did when the leopard ran away, wildcats took over and the use of raffia mats in funerals and their placement on graves hens cackled at him.36 The leopard is also an animal that can however demonstrate more explicitly this continuity. Like touch the spirit world. Because of this status, many Kongo the historic textiles, mats displayed the status and spirituality objects relating to chiefs contain references to leopards. of the deceased. However, these ideas were conveyed by Some mpu caps and other headdresses employ leopard using new, figurative imagery in combination with geometric claws. Chiefs’ and kings’ thrones are placed atop leopard patterns of the past. pelts. Some carved ivory pendants were created in the shape Connecting these mats to past Kongo practices—but also of leopard claws. The leopard signals the king’s prestigious recognizing their innovation—creates a view of the Kongo role in this world and his spiritual connection. The leopard people that is in opposition to mainstream understanding is believed to be able to move between worlds. The chief is of the time period. Descriptions of early twentieth-century even sometimes viewed as a leopard, able to communicate Congo are full of stories of severe oppression and terror. between the living world and the world of the dead.37 Thus, While history cannot deny that these horrific events took the appearance of the leopard here shows the deceased’s place, credit is due to the Kongo people and artists: they were status and spiritual connection. not completely defeated. They upheld their past traditions The bottles depicted play dual roles as well. Bottles and continued to innovate. could be containers to store spirits and were often placed on graves. Additionally, objects, such as gin bottles, served University of Florida

34 K.E. Laman, The Kongo (Upsala: Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis, 1953), 36 Mabiala Mantuba-Ngoma, Frauen, Kunsthandwerk und Kultur, 279. I:43-44; Robert Farris Thompson, African Art in Motion: Icon and Act (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1974), 73 ; and MacGaffey, 37 Thompson, “Kongo Civilization,” 34. “The Eyes of Understanding,” 86. 38 MacGaffey, “The Eyes of Understanding,” 61; Robert Farris Thompson, 35 Thompson, “Kongo Civilization,” 63-64. “The Structure of Recollection: The Kongo New World Visual Tradi- tion,” in Four Moments of the Sun, 179-180.

87 athanor xxxii carlee s. forbes

IN TilE RUBBER COILS.

p[above, left] Figure 1. Linley Sambourne, “In the Rubber Coils,” 1906, Punch. Public Domain.

p[above, right] Figure 2. Mat, c. 18th century, Kongo peoples, Democratic Republic of Congo/Angola, raffia fiber, 20.4 x 21.65 inches. Collection of the British Museum, Af, SLMisc.424.

t[left] Figure 3. Chief’s headdress (mpu), late 19th century, Kongo peoples, Lower Congo, DRC, vegetal fiber, leopard claws, 13.2 x 7.1 inches. Collection of Royal Museum for Central Africa, Tervuren, Belgium, EO.0.0.17797.

88 creativity in the congo free state: nineteenth and twentieth-century funerary mats

Figure 4. Woven Mat with geometric patterns, early 20th century, Kongo peoples, Boma, Lower Congo, DRC. vegetal fiber, 41.33 x 63.78 inches. Collection of Royal Museum for Central Africa, Tervuren, Belgium, EO.0.0.29225.

Cimetiere indigene du Bas-Congo,

Bruxelles, Serie 14- No._ 52------~------~~------• ~~ Figure 5. Congo-Belge Cemetery Postcard, early 20th century. Collection of Holly W. Ross. 89 athanor xxxii carlee s. forbes

Figure 6. Photograph of a Niombo mummy bundle, early 20th century, Photographic Archives of the Royal Museum for Central Africa, Teruvren, Belgium, AP.0.2.13219.

Figure 7. Photograph of a Yombe tomb with bottles, human figures, a European textile, and a woven mat, 1925, Mayombe, Lower Congo, DRC. Photographic Archives of the Royal Museum for Central Africa, Teruvren, Belgium, AP.0.0.5111. 90 creativity in the congo free state: nineteenth and twentieth-century funerary mats

Figure 8. Mat with funerary scene reproduced in Émile Jean Baptiste Coart and Alphonse de Haulleville, Notes analytiques sur les collection ethnographiques du Musée du Congo. T. II. Les industries indigènes. F.II Les Nattes (Tervueren: Spineux, 1927), plate 50. Royal Museum for Central Africa, Tervuren, Belgium, EO.0.29227.

Figure 9. Woven mat with leopard and bottles, Kongo peoples, early 20th century, Luvituku, Lower Congo, DRC, vegetal fiber, 44.1 x 60.63 cm. Collection of Royal Museum for Central Africa, Tervuren, Belgium, EO.0.0.29259.

91

Constructing the Nation at the 1955 Ciudad Trujillo World’s Fair

Jennifer Baez

On December 20, 1955, the year-long Free World’s Fair of followed the postwar International Style that boasted anti- Peace and Confraternity was inaugurated in Ciudad Trujillo communist ideological underpinnings. Trujillo was a trooper in commemoration of the twenty-fifth anniversary of dictator trained by the U.S. Marines during their first occupation Rafael L. Trujillo’s rise to power. The fair featured perfor- of the Dominican Republic (1916-24), and he adopted mances, parades, art exhibits, and trade shows highlighting the theme of freedom, peace, and anti-communism for the artistic, commercial, and military feats achieved during the fair in a bid to align State ideology with the Cold War the regime (1930-1961). This essay explores how the fair discourse. However, at the fair the rhetoric of democracy constructed the idea of a Dominican nation by defining a was belied by the overwhelming insertion of busts, statues, cultural and spatial geography that was described by a solid and plaques paying homage to the Generalissimo and his partition in the geopolitical border with Haiti, and a fluid family. The rhetoric of democracy was further belied by marine threshold for tourists along the coastline. The fair the royalist semantics in place, where buildings were being also shaped the idea of the nation by defining modernity called palacios (palaces). Choosing the theme of political in terms of a hierarchical relationship between the city and freedom while commissioning grand manner portraiture the colonial quarters, establishing viewing parameters and and employing semantics for the built environment that was regimenting the gaze with a walking tour that took visitors on best suited for a monarchical regime was contradictory. This a trek from the old colonial ruins to the modern fairgrounds. contradiction illustrated architect Omar Rancier’s claim that Objects examined in this essay include José Vela Zanetti’s the regime used a “double code”—architecturally and ideo- mural The Dominicanization of the Border (1955), as well as logically—in the transition to modernity.2 In fact, throughout photographs from the Official Guidebook of the International the city, classical buildings were being erected, such as the Peace and Progress Fair (1955) and the Album de Oro de National Palace (1947) and the Palace of Fine Arts (1956), la Feria de la Paz y Confraternidad del Mundo Libre (1956, and Modernist urban planning projects like the fair, which 1957).1 The curatorial program for the Pavilion of Foreign attempted to make the city more efficient and motor vehicle Affairs and Religion is also examined and contextualized. ready, simultaneously rendered it “a medium to promote the dictatorship’s power and presence.”3 General Overview of the Fairgrounds Built upon a north-south axis and against the backdrop The Walking Tour: From Old to New of the Caribbean Sea, the fairgrounds (Figure 1) contained Speaking at the inauguration of the fair, Trujillo declared: seventy-one buildings within an area of 8,000 cubic meters "We have not built [only] for the present, but for the future and were characterized by stark open spaces and func- as well.”4 This concern with facing the future is reflected tional structures designed by Dominican architect and Yale in the statue by Antonio Toribio entitled The Era of Trujillo graduate Guillermo González. The architectural ensemble (Figure 2). This statue is located at the base of the Symbol of This essay is an abbreviated version of a chapter from my MA thesis, de Vela Zanetti 1939-1981 (1981), a catalogue of all the works he entitled Constructing the Nation at the 1955 Ciudad Trujillo World’s produced while in exile in the Dominican Republic. Jeanette Miller, Fair: Tours, Parades, and Exhibitions (2013). I am deeply grateful to my Vela Zanetti: La Obra Dominicana de Vela Zanetti: 1939-1981 (Santo advisor and mentor, Dr. Stacie G. Widdifield, art history professor at the Domingo: Galeria de Arte Moderno, 1981). I decided upon the Vela University of Arizona, for the creative editing solutions she provided Zanetti attribution based on stylistic similarities in composition and throughout the entire thesis-writing process. I am also indebted to Dr. rendition of figures shared with other paintings attributed to Vela Sarah J. Moore, art history professor at the University of Arizona, for Zanetti. A likely possibility is that Vela Zanetti designed the mural and ushering me into the world of international expositions and allowing someone else executed it. me to nurture my thesis project within the framework of her courses on nineteenth-century European art and nineteenth-century American art. 2 Omar Rancier, “Santo Domingo: Modernity and Dictatorship,” Do- comomo Journal 33 (2005): 53. 1 This mural is attributed to José Vela Zanetti in Official Guidebook of the International Peace and Progress Fair (1955), pages 9 and 19. Do- 3 Ibid. minican State Publication, Official Guidebook of the International Peace and Progress Fair (New York: Amador A. Marin, 1955), 8. However, 4 Dominican State Publication, Album de Oro de la Feria de la Paz y it is not listed among his works in Vela Zanetti: La obra dominicana Confraternidad del Mundo Libre (Ciudad Trujillo: n.p., 1956), 1:14. athanor xxxii jennifer baez

the Fair at the south entrance to the fair. It is a monochrome lege established in the Americas; the oldest sculpture made of cement and stone covered with a white Cathedral in the Americas; St Nicolas de bronze patina.5 The statue depicts a female walking forward, Bari's Hospital; the Palace of the Captain her long stride caught in mid-action while her undulating General built during the early Spanish rule; tunic reveals part of her chest. the Convent of St Claire and the Church The statue seems to move through space with a steady of Regina Angelorum. Now, in the modern glide, suggesting a continuity of motion that evokes Umberto section of the city, the foremost places of Boccioni’s 1913 Italian Futurist Unique Forms of Continuity interest might well be the National Palace, in Space (Figure 3). The Futurist Manifesto6 offers a qualified the University City, the Palace of Fine Arts, parallel to Trujillo regime ideology not only in its preoccu- the Palace of "La Voz Dominicana", the pation with facing the future, but also in its glorification of Communications Palace and the Domini- war and war technologies, ultranationalist fervor, and the can Party Palace. All this is just a prelude to negation of history. Interestingly, Toribio’s statue maintains what is in store for you at the end of that its formal integrity instead of bearing signs of resistance to beautiful, almost endless George Washing- the elements it comes in contact with, as is the case with ton Avenue which leads to the Free World Boccioni’s sculpture—which seems to have been molded Peace and Brotherhood Fair.7 by the wind. Indeed, The Era of Trujillo raced ahead unper- Structuring a walk that started in the colonial quarters turbed just as Trujillo’s bureaucratic machine moved forward and ended at the fairgrounds emphasized contrasts and unfazed and unapologetically, crushing a long history of progression. Besides the fact that the walk itself took a visitor dissidence on its way to progress. physically forward in time, the visual comparison between This preoccupation with depicting the future while the broad uniform avenues that accommodated vehicles in contrasting it to a selective past is taken up again with the the fairgrounds versus the narrower streets made originally fair’s sightseeing tour. As part of the activities related to the for pedestrians and horse-drawn carriages in the colonial city fair, visitors were encouraged to tour the town and take a promoted a binary opposition between progress/modernity walk from the colonial city to the fairgrounds. The Official and tradition/heritage. Guidebook of the Fair provided photographs of landmarks Perhaps because of the walking tour and the projected with short captions. This guidebook included a recommen- number of international visitors, the colonial center and the dation for a route that began along the banks of the Ozama western border of the city were refashioned. This refashion- River in the eastern part of the city and concluded at the ing was carried out not only through a program of physical end of the ocean-lined George Washington Avenue on the construction, but through the written word and visual repre- western side, a peregrination that seemed to reinforce the sentation as well. In the colonial city, ruins were transformed importance of water in the history of the city. into museums. By 1957, the Alcázar de Colón (Palace of From the ruins of Diego Columbus' Castle Columbus), the oldest royal mansion in the Americas, built to the Tower of Homage, stopping for a in 1510, was refitted and turned into the viceroyal museum, while at Nicolas de Bari's Hospital, the old- and the former Iglesia de San Ignacio de la Compañía de est in the New World, you will admire the Jesús, a Jesuit monastery, which by then served as a theater Cathedral, a magnificent sample of Span- and tobacco warehouse, was restored and dedicated as the ish colonial architecture where Columbus' national pantheon. remains are buried. The Surprise in store The Guía de Ciudad Trujillo (Ciudad Trujillo Guidebook) for you is that while you enjoy your visit used language and images to restructure the relationship to those places you can also admire the between the colonial quarters and the city center.8 The modern part of the city based on correctly Guía was published in 1940 following a tradition that began lined streets, tropical green vegetation and as early as 1906 with the first guidebook published to at- the blue waters of the Caribbean. This tract foreign investors.9 The Guía divided the city into two wonderful composition is climaxed by sections: the Ciudad Trujillo Antigua (the colonial quarters) the beautiful buildings of the Free World and Ciudad Trujillo Moderna (the newly built administrative Peace and Brotherhood Fair. Trujillo's center). According to the Guía, the beginnings of modernity monuments worth visiting are: Columbus' dated back to 1930, the year Trujillo came to power and Castle; the Homage Tower; the First Col- began reconstruction after Hurricane San Zenón had razed 5 Dominican State Publication, 8. 8 Dirección Nacional de Turismo, Guía de Ciudad Trujillo, capital de la República Dominicana (Ciudad Trujillo: Ucar, García y cía., 1940), 25. 6 “Manifesto of Futurism,” Encyclopedia Britannica Online, accessed 8 December 2012, http://www.britannica.com.ezproxy1.library.ari 9 Lauren Derby, The Dictator’s Seduction: Politics and the Popular zona.edu/bps/additionalcontent/8/435828/. Imagination in the Era of Trujillo (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2009), 276n13. 7 Dominican State Publication, Official Guidebook, 41.

94 constructing the nation at the 1955 ciudad trujillo world’s fair

the city to the ground, sparing the colonial core and the known as the Bahamas. In this mural, however, the notorious concrete buildings made by the Americans in the 1920s.10 conquistador is replaced by an anonymous dark skinned, Thus modernity was associated with the city and with over- loincloth-wearing figure, and the sword and the royal banner coming the destructive power of nature. This man versus of Spain have been swapped with the Dominican escudo or nature dialectic resonated with Taylorism, a theory of sci- national shield, which literally shields or conceals the figure’s entific management that was popularized during the early face. To the right, another group of male figures—peasants twentieth century. According to Taylorism, humans were and engineers—actively work at building the nation, literally a wild variable in the industrial production equation, and block by block. Next to this vignette, the family unit meets they had to be subdued by the standardizing power of the scientific progress and discards traditional healing practices machine. The rationalizing mechanics of the Taylor method by seeking medical care for their infant. The scene shows predicated control over unruly human behavioral patterns the mother handing the child over to the nurse while the in the same way that Trujillo poised himself as the engineer doctor looks into a microscope. At the very left, a priest who could fix the havoc caused by the unpredictability of evangelizes a family, standing as a sentinel with his back weather patterns. to the border with Haiti; tall and thick fortress walls rise Photography and the guidebook played a major role behind him effectively sealing off the territory; to the right in establishing the terms of the relationship between the of the priest and family a teacher gives a geography lesson modern city and the colonial core. Guidebook maps al- to a group of attentive schoolchildren: on a blackboard he lowed the viewer to recognize that the colonial ruins were traces the map of the Dominican Republic, emphasizing the politically part of the city, while the photographs, in revealing borderline. These figural groups inhabit a space encumbered contemporary clusters of modernity—such as a chain divider by the rubble, false idols, and torn pieces of a desecrated or a moving car—inform the viewer that the ruins are in es- society. The outline that encloses this space is shown from sence surrounded and supported by modernity (Figure 4). a three-dimensional bird’s eye perspective, conveying the These photographs also expose the new function of these sense that the island is a chunk of earth that has broken off ruins: they are an object of scientific study and observation, from a larger structure, and that the area it occupies—like a signaling that Dominican society at this point in time has the jigsaw puzzle piece—has been predetermined and precut. technological and intellectual tools to interpret the past with The island nation depicted here is locked into a rigid struc- scientific rigor. Ciudad Trujillo laid claim to its colonial his- tural grid sanctioned by geography, its confines patrolled tory by controlling the visualization of its ruins, emphasizing since colonial times by the ever-vigilant Ozama fortress. that Spanish colonial architecture constituted Dominican Vela Zanetti, a Spanish muralist whose Socialist father monuments which, in turn, stood on a territory that had was murdered in Gen. Francisco Franco's Spain, went into fully entered into the age of modernity. exile in the Dominican Republic in 1939.13 Vela Zanetti was one of many Spaniards and Jews who fled persecution in José Vela Zanetti’s Dominicanization of the Border Europe and found refuge in the Caribbean island. Trujillo's Dominicanization of the Border was created by José policy of granting asylum to European citizens came on the Vela Zanetti (1913-1999) for the Pavilion of Foreign Rela- heels of the 1937 Parsley Massacre, when Trujillo ordered the tions and Religion, and, according to the Album de Oro, slaying of any person suspected of being a Haitian national the painting symbolized Dominican progress throughout caught on the Dominican side of the border. Soldiers killed history.11 The polychrome mural (Figure 5 and Figure 5a) anywhere from 10,000 to 20,000 people by machete if the measures approximately six by fourteen feet and follows suspect failed to pronounce the word perejil (parsley) with a triptych format.12 The center panel features a group of the Hispanicized rolling "r." The genocide provoked a global male peasants contemplating a muscular kneeling man as wave of indignation, and his agreement to receive refugees he brandishes the national emblem. His right leg is firmly was seen as an appeasement of the international community, grounded, and his pose is reminiscent of depictions of Co- and an attempt to whiten the Dominican population by re- lumbus upon disembarkation at the islands that are now locating many of the European communities in agricultural

10 San Zenón hurricane killed 2,000 to 3,000 people, destroyed 90% be hampered by poverty and superstition. In this work one may see of the buildings in Ciudad Trujillo, and was hailed as an omen and a great figure, which raises aloft the National Escutcheon, lifting it signaled that Trujillo was a force to be reckoned with. For more, see through the efforts of Trujillo. Over the boundary line, which serves as Derby, The Dictator’s Seduction, 66. base for the mural, are raised churches, hospitals, school and villages. On the side one sees a mask, and the spire of a Christian church, as 11 Dominican State Publication, Album de Oro de la Feria dela Paz y symbols of the mental confusion in which our frontiersman formerly Confraternidad del Mundo Libre (Ciudad Trujillo: n.p., 1957), 2: 129. lived before he was rescued by the statesmanship of Trujillo.”

12 The mural is described in Official Guidebook, page 19, as follows: “An 13 For more on European artists exiled in the Dominican Republic in the interesting and significant mural by the famous painter Vela Zanetti 1940s, see Danilo de los Santos, Memoria de la pintura dominicana holds first place. This mural represents the sense of national pride in (Santo Domingo: Grupo León Jiménez, 2003), 2: 101-193. our frontier regions, where the Dominican and his qualities used to

95 athanor xxxii jennifer baez

colonies near or on the border.14 The immigrant scholars and in which she lives as an equal, working… artists such as Spanish painters Eugenio Granell and Josep in defense of its democratic and Christian Gausachs, and Jewish intellectuals such as archaeologist ideals, which are the two greatest drivers Erwin Walter Palm, made lasting contributions to the intellec- of western civilization. [Author’s translation tual climate of the nation. For example, Palm, a student and and emphasis] friend of renowned art historian Erwin Panofsky, compiled a This statement demonstrates that uniting church and compendium of colonial architecture,15 while Vela Zanetti foreign policy in an exhibition was a strategic move. At a had his own teaching studio and later became the director time when the Trujillo government was beginning to be of the Academy of Fine Arts.16 isolated in the region, it was fitting to remind the world that Vela Zanetti’s work fits into the canon of Social Real- its transgressions were committed under the watchful eye ism, an art movement that gained popularity during the of the international community. The Parsley Massacre was early twentieth century through the work of the Mexican being justified in the name of Western Christian civilization muralists. Social Realist works were characterized by the with the aim of stamping out voodoo and superstitious naturalized treatment of subjects and the humanist subject practices in the eastern part of the island. The list of lavish matter focusing mostly on the plight of the working classes, gifts the Church received from Trujillo is a public reminder of the oppressed, and the indigenous population. Vela Zanetti the deep ties that unite them. The international community drew inspiration from Mexican muralism, traveling to Mexico was also singled out as a collaborator via the display of the City in 1953 to learn from the masters after finishing a mu- coats of arms which identified each one of the participating ral he was commissioned to paint for the United Nations. States as being part of the Western Christian civilization in Mankind's Struggle for a Lasting Peace (1953) was painted for whose name the massacre had been executed. Likewise, the inauguration of the U.N. through the sponsorship of a the anti-communist stance was wielded enthusiastically to Guggenheim Fellowship.17 The mural is Vela Zanetti’s most remind the U.S. that the Dominican Republic was a strong highly acclaimed piece; its content and form firmly inscrib- political ally in the region. Trujillo was thus able to challenge ing it within the category of Social Realism. The mural is a U.S. supremacy openly, declaring the small island to be on chilling depiction of torture, war, and destruction as expe- equal footing with these other great, free, and larger Western rienced by the family unit in a space that vaguely evokes a civilized countries. Nazi concentration camp. The center features a four-armed The set of items exhibited in this pavilion attempted figure placing the emblem of the U.N. on the head of a man to justify Trujillo's genocide policy at home and abroad by who holds a pendulum, symbolizing a world that has finally suggesting that these measures were carried out in the name found the path to balance and common sense. of preserving Christian values and eradicating communism, Dominicanization of the Border was displayed at the Pa- initiatives that the Church and the U.S.-led coalition of demo- vilion of Foreign Affairs and Religion, a venue that showcased cratic countries had signed off on. Vela Zanetti’s mural elo- developments related to the consolidation of Christianity as quently captures the genius of this ultranationalist campaign well as a layout of the major foreign policy decisions pur- by not portraying the brutal means through which the goal sued by the government. Items in the pavilion included: an of an ideal society would be achieved. Murder is omitted, exhibit of the coats of arms and emblems of the democratic the excluded are not represented, and a set of core values countries of the West (Figure 6); the Trujillo-Hull Treaty that is emphasized in an effort to craft a national identity. These cancelled foreign debt; the Vatican Covenant that defined the values include patriotism and loyalty to the nation, a strong diplomatic relationship between the Vatican and Dominican work ethic, Christian morality, and confidence in orthodox Republic; and the statistical data on federal cash donations medicine practices. It is also interesting that the man hold- to the Catholic Church.18 The juxtaposition of church and ing the emblem in the center of the mural is a shade darker foreign policy, two seemingly disparate areas of national than the rest, which reintroduces into the dialogue about life, makes sense in terms of Trujillo's political strategy. The nationhood the African heritage that the state’s Hispaniciz- Album de Oro defines the purpose of the Pavilion as follows: ing policies sought to deny. The production context for the …the pavilion… is a graphic synthesis of mural is also revealing considering that an artist who had the current position that the Dominican Re- fled from rightwing nationalist persecution was chosen to public occupies in relation to the free world, depict a glorified justification for a similar type of persecu-

14 Information on the 1937 Parsley Massacre was obtained from Carlos 16 De los Santos, Memoria de la pintura, 2:156. Julio Féliz, La frontera de la isla compartida (Santo Domingo: CON- ADEX, 2008). 17 “José Vela Zanetti Dies at 85; Painter of Mural at the U.N.,” New York Times, accessed 8 December 2012, http://www.nytimes. 15 Erwin Walter Palm, “Introduction,” in Santo Domingo, Arte y Urban- com/1999/01/06/arts/jose-vela-zanetti-dies-at-85-painter-of-mural- ismo Colonial, ed. Miguel D. Mena (Santo Domingo: CieloNaranja, at-the-un.html. 2007), I-XIV. 18 Dominican State Publication, Album de Oro, 1:365-368.

96 constructing the nation at the 1955 ciudad trujillo world’s fair

tion. In fact, the Dominican government maintained strong built and American-managed hotels set up shop along the diplomatic ties with the Franco regime.19 coast.22 Hotel Hamaca (1951), for example, was a seaside This emphasis on the border with Haiti came in contrast state-built hotel that catered to a growing number of inter- to the emphasis being placed on the country’s other border, national (and also domestic) tourists seeking leisure at the its coastline. The Album de Oro features photographs of beach. The road to the fetishization of the beach as a place beaches (Figures 7 and 8) that seek to promote international reserved for people who can afford leisure begins with the tourism. Popular landscape conventions constructed the im- construction of commercial oceanfront hotels, and it also age of the beach as a place that was at once different and traces back to the dissemination of tourist maps in which familiar: the explorer scene with the voyeuristic framing beaches are marked with a logo of umbrellas or women in device of exotic palm trees; the man-coexisting-in-nature bikinis, a utilitarian emblem that defined the beach’s function convention; and now the modern-hotel-amenities conven- and the identity of its users. tion that turned nature into natural resources by framing the The Ciudad Trujillo World’s Fair set out to define a beach within the utilitarian lens of commercial activity. This cultural and spatial geography with a perimeter that was conceptualization of the coastline as a fluid and welcoming variable at the coastline but permanent at the border with border stood out against the rigidity of the borderline in the Haiti. Modernity was an important part of the discourse that western frontier. fashioned the body of the nation to face away from Haiti, Trujillo had in fact encouraged international tourism square up to the United States, and stare directly into the from the beginning of his time in office. In 1937, the first eyes of Spain. The walking tour, the beach tourism campaign, major luxury tourist vessel had arrived from Canada with and Vela Zanetti’s mural shaped the contours of national hundreds of tourists eager to explore the city.20 The Guía territory by providing a framework from which to see this de Ciudad Trujillo, published by the National Bureau of new central-periphery relationship, and a vantage point Tourism as early as 1940, offered practical advice to visi- from which to explore discursive notions of race, landscape, tors: everything from where to eat and what to visit, to bus geography, and social relations. schedules and a comprehensive list of one-way streets in the city.21 And then in the early 1950s, Pan-American Airlines University of Arizona began direct bargain flights from New York as lavish state-

19 Dominican State Publication, Album de Oro, 1:371-372. 21 Dirección Nacional de Turismo, Guía de Ciudad Trujillo, capital de la República Dominicana (Ciudad Trujillo: Ucar, García y cía., 1940), 25. 20 Derby, The Dictator’s Seduction, 123-124. 22 Ibid.

Figure 1. Guillermo González, Ciudad Trujillo fairgrounds, 1955, Archivo General de la Nación, from Album de Oro de la Feria de la Paz y Confraternidad del Mundo Libre, 1 (Ciudad Trujillo: n.p., 1956), page 21.

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Figure 2. Antonio Toribio, The Era of Trujillo, 1955, cement and stone, Figure 3. Umberto Boccioni, Unique Forms of Continuity in Space, 1913, bronze, h. from Official Guidebook of the International Peace and Progress Fair 48, w. 151/2, d. 36 inches (121.9 x 39.4 x 91.4 cm). The Metropolitan Museum of (New York: Amador A. Marin, 1955), page 26. Art, bequest of Lydia Winston Malbin, 1989 (1990. 38.3). Available from: ARTstor, http://artstor.org (accessed 16 April 2013).

Figure 4. Santa María de la Encarnación Cathedral, c.1521-1541, Archivo General de la Nación, from Album de Oro de la Feria de la Paz y Confraternidad del Mundo Libre, 2 (Ciudad Trujillo: n.p., 1957), page 94. 98 constructing the nation at the 1955 ciudad trujillo world’s fair

Figure 5. José Vela Zanetti, Dominicanization of the Border, c. 1955, mural, Archivo General de la Nación, from Album de Oro de la Feria de la Paz y Confraternidad del Mundo Libre, 1 (Ciudad Trujillo: n.p., 1956), page 367.

Figure 5a. A recreation of the Dominicanization mural by the author, 2013.

Figure 6. Coats of Arms exhibit at the Ciudad Trujillo world’s fair, 1955, Archivo General de la Nación, from Album de Oro de la Feria de la Paz y Confraternidad del Mundo Libre, 1 (Ciudad Trujillo: n.p., 1956), page 368.

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El mar Caribe acaricia la playa de Boca Chica, uno de los lugares predilectos del turismo inter­ nacional.

Figure 7. Boca Chica beach, c.1955, Archivo General de la Nación, from Album de Oro de la Feria de la Paz y Confraternidad del Mundo Libre, 2 (Ciudad Trujillo: n.p., 1957), page 159. 100 constructing the nation at the 1955 ciudad trujillo world’s fair

Figure 8. Juan Dolio beach, c. 1955, Archivo General de la Nación, from Album de Oro de la Feria de la Paz y Confraternidad del Mundo Libre, 2 (Ciudad Trujillo: n.p., 1957), page 175. 101

Challenging Ideologies: Contrasting Dorothea Tanning’s Mid-Twentieth Century Animal Paintings with Contemporaneous Zoo Designs

Samantha Karam

Insomnias (Figure 1), painted in 1957 by American-born in modern Western culture; they uproot animals from their artist Dorothea Tanning, presents a prismatic arrangement natural habitats and relocate them to controlled, artificial of shifting planes, multidirectional lines, and non-illustrative environments, which often suit humans’ aesthetic and func- patches of color. The composition bears minimal figura- tional preferences for design and architecture, but largely tion, save for the semi-apparent human and animal bodies ignore animals’ basic needs. Although zoos are just one of coupled together. For example, the child-like human body many instances of animal marginalization and exploitation just below the canvas’s center and the dog to the left of the in the West, this paper focuses on them because zoological child intermingle as they struggle against the composition’s institutions most notoriously purport to bring humans and turbulent hues and meandering lines. In this and many of animals together, while actually expanding the schism be- Tanning’s subsequent works, the intermixing of human and tween them.3 Zoos perpetuate a distance between nature animal bodies in illogical, disordered space counters the and culture that has only increased in the decades since their rationalized and structured aesthetic of modern architectural inception, yet they do so in surreptitious ways that are not design at the time of the paintings’ production.1 immediately apparent to the average visitor. However, as it This paper will demonstrate how Insomnias and a similar often happens, art is capable of illuminating aspects of life painting from 1963, Dogs of Cythera (Figure 2), challenge that are otherwise concealed, and a close reading of Tan- the extreme disunion between humans and animals result- ning’s art may help uncover the anthropocentric mechanisms ing from nineteenth- and twentieth-century Machine Age by which zoos traditionally operate. initiatives to structure and master the natural environment, This article will examine two major ways in which Tan- and its nonhuman inhabitants, for human use. While the ning’s paintings subvert the physical and ideological struc- effects of the Machine Age on human life are well known tures of zoos: first, her disorienting compositions counter the and widely discussed, this article will address some of the rationalized, Modernist zoos of the early twentieth century, consequences of the Machine Age for nonhumans. A number which created both physical and mental barriers between of practices, including the utility of animals in both World humans and animals; second, Tanning’s intentionally con- Wars and the emergence of factory farming, have contributed founding and chaotic paintings demand an active way of to the marginalization and exploitation of animals in the last looking at them, which opposes the passive observation century.2 However, the anthropocentric ideologies driving of animals facilitated by zoos. Ultimately, this paper cites these practices are perhaps most covertly embedded in the Tanning’s art as a starting point for both investigating and construction and development of public zoos. Zoos are, in challenging the physical and mental “othering” of animals fact, among the most pervasive forms of animal “othering” pervading the zoo experience. I owe special thanks to my graduate adviser, Dr. Kathleen Chapman, frequently used animals, such as horses and dogs, to carry ammuni- for her continued guidance and academic support. This article syn- tion, detect traps and mines, and serve as messengers, among other thesizes research conducted for two of Dr. Chapman’s seminars as tasks. For more information on the history of animals used in battle, well as my Master’s thesis, which was written under her direction. I see: Juliet Gardiner, The Animals’ War: Animals in Wartime from the would also like to thank VCUarts for generously funding my trip to First World War to the Present Day (London: Portrait, 2006); and the 31st Annual Art History Graduate Student Symposium at Florida Jilly Cooper, Animals in War: Valiant Horses, Courageous Dogs, and State University. Finally, I am grateful to the faculty and students in Other Unsung Animal Heroes (Guilford, CT: The Lyons Press, 2002). the art history department at Florida State University for giving me Additionally, for an excellent article on the history of factory farming the opportunity to share my research. and its ideological and metaphysical underpinnings, see Drew Leder, “Old McDonald’s Had a Farm: The Metaphysics of Factory Farming,” 1 The existing scholarship on Tanning tends to focus on her more figu- Journal of Animal Ethics 2 (Spring 2012): 73-86. rative Surrealist paintings from the 1940s and early 1950s. Tanning developed her more prismatic, nonrepresentational style around 1955 3 David Hancocks, “Zoo Animals as Entertainment Exhibitions,” in A when she debuted The Ill Forgotten. Of her later paintings, the present Cultural History of Animals in the Modern Age, ed. Randy Malamud article will focus on Insomnias and Dogs of Cythera because these two (Oxford: Berg, 2007), 115; and David Hancocks, A Different Nature: works strongly exemplify Tanning’s motif of intermingling human and The Paradoxical World of Zoos and Their Uncertain Future (Berkeley: animal (especially canine) bodies. University of California Press, 2001), xv.

2 Beginning with the First World War, American and European countries athanor xxxii samantha karam

In order to fully understand the contrasts between the Thus, from the 1920s until approximately the 1960s, experiences and ideas presented by Tanning’s paintings and zoo development in America and Europe mainly echoed those manifested in zoo construction, a brief history of the the highly rationalized, Modernist architecture of the Ma- development of zoos is useful. Zoos are predated by royal chine Age—a fact that becomes clear when comparing, for menageries, which, prior to the nineteenth century, had example, the penguin pool at the London Zoo from 1933 already been in existence for thousands of years in both (Figure 3) to Le Corbusier’s famous Villa Savoy in France, the East and West as “demonstrations of an emperor’s or completed just two years earlier (Figure 4): both structures king’s power and wealth.”4 The first proper zoos emerged display stark white surfaces, sweeping planes, open spaces, in the mid-nineteenth century in Europe, and they were and minimal vegetation and decoration. distinguished from menageries based on their promises to Throughout the 1920s, many Modernist architects, such follow “a more scientific approach” to exhibiting animals.5 as Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Le Corbusier, celebrated However, according to cultural critic and writer John Berger, machine-driven production and sleek designs. The simplic- the only real difference between menageries and zoos was ity of their designs was meant to convey a sense of rational that, “like every other 19th century public institution, the order, since architecture was thought to possess the ability zoo, however supportive of the ideology of imperialism, had to improve daily life by giving the public a measure of unity to claim an independent and civic function. The claim was with their surroundings.9 In his 1929 book, The City of To- that it was another kind of museum, whose purpose was to Morrow and Its Planning, Le Corbusier writes, “When man further knowledge and public enlightenment…. Meanwhile, is free, his tendency is towards pure geometry. It is then that millions visited the zoos each year” merely to pacify their he achieves what we call order…. [The] modern sentiment personal curiosity.6 In other words, zoos have always claimed is a spirit of geometry, a spirit of construction and synthesis. to promote such ideas as conservation, scientific research, Exactitude and order are its essential condition…. This is the and cultivating a greater awareness of the importance of passion of our age.”10 To be sure, this spirit of the age was animals in human life, yet these are all eclipsed by zoos’ manifested in zoo architecture no less than in other forms of more basic motives of entertaining mass audiences and commercial and residential architecture; for example, both satisfying curiosity. the gorilla house at the London Zoo, designed in 1933 by the “At their most basic level zoos are for people and not Bauhaus-inspired Tecton Group, and the elephant house at for animals,” argues animal studies scholar Nigel Rothfels.7 the Whipsnade Zoo in England, incorporated “simple lines Especially in the Machine Age, cultural efforts to embrace and plain surfaces…[and a] respect for function.”11 Modern technology and to use architectural design for the improve- materials like steel and concrete were also used. This idiom of ment of human life often came at the animals’ expense, geometric forms, reinforced concrete, and restrained, simple and zoos were no exception. Historically, zoo construction surfaces—evident in the London and Whipsnade Zoos—sub- echoed concurrent trends in other types of architecture. sequently became a pervasive trend in zoo architecture and According to David Hancocks, a former zoo director and design. Other examples of this trend include the previously scholar, mentioned minimalistic penguin pool at the London Zoo, For almost the entire modern era of the and the Tecton-inspired penguin pool at the Warsaw Zoo. twentieth century, zoos persisted in em- According to Hancocks, the London penguin pool, ploying architects to design their exhib- designed by the Tecton leader Berthold Lubetkin, was es- its…. Unfortunately, architects tend not to pecially praised in the 1930s for its “elegance and technical be the best profession to design facilities virtuosity.”12 While the bare, concrete structure succeeded for animals in zoos. Their principal focus, in embodying the Modernist aesthetic, it largely failed to as with the buildings they produce for hu- suit the penguins’ fundamental needs. In fact, the penguins’ mans, is characteristically upon appearance wellbeing appears to have been a minute factor in Lubetkin’s and aesthetics and is thus often superficial.8 overall design for the pool, which ultimately functioned more 4 John Berger, “Why Look at Animals: For Gilles Aillaud,” in About in Le Corbusier’s 1923 book Vers Une Architecture; for an updated Looking (New York: Vintage International, 1991), 21. translation of this text, see Le Corbusier, Toward an Architecture, trans. John Goodman (Los Angeles: Getty Research Institute, 2007). 5 David Hancocks, Animals and Architecture (New York: Praeger Pub- Additionally, for a comprehensive volume of similar Modernist views lishers, 1971), 105 and 112. on architecture, see Ulrich Conrads, ed., Programs and Manifestoes on 20th-Century Architecture, trans. Michael Bullock (Cambridge, MA: 6 Berger, “Why Look at Animals,” 21-22. The MIT Press, 1999).

7 Nigel Rothfels, Savages and Beasts: The Birth of the Modern Zoo 10 Le Corbusier, The City of To-Morrow and Its Planning, trans. Frederick (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002), 7. Etchells (New York: Dover Publications, 1987), 22 and 38.

8 Hancocks, “Zoo Animals as Entertainment,” 108. 11 Hancocks, Animals and Architecture, 125.

9 This understanding of modern architecture’s potential to improve daily 12 David Hancocks, A Different Nature, 76. life through sleek and rational simplicity is perhaps best displayed

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as a symbol for human rationality and superiority than as ately recede back into the hazy canvas, while the picture an animal’s habitat.13 According to the architect’s daughter plane fractures into multiple overlapping and interwoven Louise Kehoe, Berthold Lubetkin “liked the contrast between layers, causing any distinctions between foreground and the perfect man-made symmetry…and the wobbling idiocy background to disappear. The composition of Insomnias is of the animals. The penguins are just instruments to display similarly jumbled. As art historian Anna Lundström observes, man’s ability to control nature.”14 For Lubetkin and his con- “In these peculiar abstract paintings…details float in a spatial- temporaries, the exotic animal “others” served as props, ity that seems to operate outside our customary orientation which, when set against the simplified exhibition space, in terms of up and down, in front and behind, depth and highlighted human achievements in design, architecture, and surface.”17 Rather than organizing a succession of distinct technology. Thus, while mid-century zoological institutions forms and creating the illusion of spatial depth, as in striated purported to bring city dwellers a rewarding engagement and space, the smooth space in Tanning’s paintings creates a fluid, interaction with animals, their artificial and barren designs disordered, “continuous variation…of form[s].”18 Further, by only perpetuated the isolation of animals from humans, depicting human and animal bodies and body parts in flux, broadening the human/animal divide. the paintings prevent the fixed ordering of their subjects into However, to this point, Tanning’s paintings provide an static, stratified relations. Tanning’s smooth-space composi- illuminating contrast. By presenting human and animal bod- tions thus subvert the hierarchical categorization of human ies in close, intermingling poses, her abstract compositions and nonhuman animals and break down some of the power counter the rationalized and structured spaces of zoo exhib- relations separating them during the Machine Age. its. Unlike the obtrusive barriers forever separating humans In contrast to Tanning’s “smooth” paintings, zoo exhib- from animals in zoos, Tanning conflates human and nonhu- its are highly striated; they are fixed, ordered, and closed man bodies; her viewers cannot easily discern which body constructions. Common features of the average zoo include parts belong to humans and which to animals. Moreover, the careful organization and compartmentalization of differ- Tanning’s dynamic and fragmented compositions are noth- ent species, the use of trees and artificial rocks to enclose ing like the streamlined aesthetics of Modernist zoo design. individual exhibits like pictures in a frame, and the strategic The spaces conveyed in Tanning’s paintings and those placement of various types of barriers between the animals constructed in twentieth-century zoos are telling indicators and the human spectators. All of these organizational devices of the attitudes about animals that each supports, and Gilles contribute to the segregating nature of zoo layouts. Thus, Deleuze and Félix Guattari’s distinction between “smooth” while the smooth spaces of Tanning’s paintings break down space and “striated” space provides a useful method for de- barriers and present human and animal bodies close together, coding them. In their book, A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism zoos’ striated spaces create firmly situated barriers, inflating and Schizophrenia, Deleuze and Guattari conceive of smooth the distance between them; this inevitably perpetuates the space essentially as a fluid, disordered, and non-stratified marginalization of animals from Western society. conception of space. It is “infinite, open, and unlimited It is important to note that zoo exhibits in the early to in every direction…it does not assign fixed and mobile mid-twentieth century were designed not only with Modern- elements but rather distributes a continuous variation.”15 ist trends in mind, but also with the aim of privileging the Striated space, on the other hand, “produces an order and human spectator’s vantage point. While habitat conditions succession of distinct forms, and organizes horizontal…lines have improved immensely over the past three decades, and vertical…planes.”16 Unlike smooth space, striated space zoos are still built primarily so that animals can be displayed is highly stratified and structured. to human viewers. As such, zoos tend to be designed like Deleuze and Guattari’s definition of smooth and striated theatrical stage-sets in which the animals serve as fantastical space may be applied to both two-dimensional and three- props before the human spectators. Painted murals attempt dimensional configurations, and it is therefore a productive to replicate animals’ native habitats, fake trees are built, real tool for considering paintings as well as architectural spaces. plants are sometimes overrun with electrical wires so that Tanning’s paintings present overwhelmingly smooth spaces. animals cannot hide in the bushes, and, in more extreme For example, Dogs of Cythera possesses no horizon lines cases, such as the Paignton Zoo in England, “grids of metal or framing devices. Bodies come to the fore, but immedi- points protruding from the otherwise barren concrete floor… 13 Today, the penguin pool remains in the London Zoo because it is and Schizophrenia, trans. Brian Massumi (Minneapolis: University of protected from demolition due to preservation orders, but it currently Minnesota Press, 1987), 475-476. functions as a decorative fountain. 16 Ibid., 478. 14 Louise Kehoe in N. Walter, “What Sort of Man Designs a Penguin House that Children Can’t Even See Into?” The Observer (London), 22 17 Anna Lundström, “Bodies and Spaces: On Dorothea Tanning’s Sculp- September 1996, 9, quoted in Hancocks, “Zoo Animals as Entertain- tures,” Konsthistorisk tidskrift/Journal of Art History 78 (November ment,” 102. 2009): 122.

15 Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism 18 Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, 476.

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dissuade animals from sitting where the zoo director does and disrupt the audience’s comfortable territory of viewing- not want them to sit,” making it “more comfortable for the from-a-distance, engulfing the viewer in a constantly fleeting animals to sit near the viewing window than at the back oscillation of colors, lines, and ambiguous forms. of their room.”19 Significantly, in all of these instances, zoo Tanning’s maze-like images are like visual puzzles— exhibits benefit the human viewers more than the nonhu- scrambled and out of order—but cohesive in their ability man inhabitants. to break down visually stratified hierarchies if the viewer is There are undeniable power relations underlying zoo- willing to think through them. Regarding Insomnias, Tanning keepers’ methods for displaying their animals, and Michel explains, “I wanted to lead the eye into spaces that hid, Foucault’s well-known text, Discipline and Punish: The revealed, transformed all at once…. The viewer is caught in Birth of the Prison, is helpful for understanding how these a net from which there is no escape, save by going through power relations operate. For Foucault, “Observation [is an] the whole picture until he comes to the exit.”24 The com- apparatus in which the techniques that make it possible to position thus encourages viewers to participate, to put the see induce effects of power.”20 Writing mainly of Jeremy pieces together and contemplate the connections and link- Bentham’s Panopticon, but also of schools, prisons, and other ages between them—particularly between the human and disciplinary structures in general, Foucault argues, “Power animal figures. To be sure, the connections Tanning presents has its principle not so much in a person as in a certain between humans and animals are telling; in Insomnias, concerted distribution of bodies, surfaces, lights, gazes; in an for example, the composition—described by art historian arrangement whose internal mechanisms produce the rela- Charles Stuckey as a turbulent “color storm”—envelops the tion in which individuals are caught up.”21 Foucault’s writing human and animal bodies and prevents them from “reveal- emphasizes how certain architectural spaces, designed to ing themselves as full, tangible entities.”25 Bodies are indeed control their inhabitants by “render[ing] visible those who present in Insomnias, but they never fully emerge out of the are inside,” operate through passive surveillance.22 In other smooth space in which they float, nor do they become fully words, it is the ability for one person or a privileged group separated from one another. Compared to the structure of of people to maintain an unobstructed view of other beings Western zoos, Tanning’s dynamic, puzzling paintings deny that engenders power dynamics. Significantly, this occurs in viewers the kind of stable and passive visual consumption zoos no less than in prisons.23 Zoos, especially those built of animals that zoos enable; and by conflating human and prior to the 1970s and 1980s, were designed for optimal canine bodies, Tanning presents a concept of humanity that surveillance and observation; similar to prison cells, zoo cannot be fully detached from animality (and vice versa), and cages entrapped animals to facilitate effortless examination which, therefore, is inconceivable as being unambiguously of them. Thus, the entire edifice of the zoo as a place for distinct from animals. Hence, Tanning’s paintings reject the displaying and observing animals perpetuates dynamics of Western conception of humans as privileged and ontologi- unequal power between humans and nonhumans. cally superior to nonhumans. Yet, once again, Tanning’s paintings provide an illuminat- Notably, Tanning often expressed her concern for ing contrast to zoological structures. Both Insomnias and Dogs animals and the strained relations between humans and of Cythera deny viewers the privilege of effortless looking. nonhumans in the twentieth century. For example, in her By splintering her paintings into multiple overlapping planes, first autobiography, Birthday, the artist laments humans’ Tanning encourages an active rather than passive experience “hopeless pride and prideful hope…[of] Supremacy: a prob- of her works. Bodies and body parts shift through space, lem drug, widespread, habit-forming, unchecked, planetary while colors and lines blend together in some areas and turn poison.”26 Tanning’s literature does not express a concern sharply in others, eluding the viewer’s grasp at almost every about zoos specifically, nor is there any direct reference to point. Moreover, her paintings’ elimination of conventional zoos in her paintings. Nevertheless, her paintings subvert the pictorial planes decreases the gap between the viewer and anthropocentric structures that zoos embody and perpetuate. the work of art: in these paintings, the viewer does not As more zoos emerged in America and Europe through- observe from a distance a static representation of a spatio- out the mid-twentieth century, the customs related to temporal scene, but is instead confronted by a dynamic, building, operating, and visiting zoos became increasingly smooth space of exploding forms. Tanning’s paintings invade integrated into everyday life, and with them came their

19 Hancocks, A Different Nature, 74-76. 24 Dorothea Tanning, Between Lives: An Artist and Her World (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2004), 214 and 327. 20 Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, trans. Alan Sheridan (New York: Vintage Books, 1995), 170-171. 25 Charles Stuckey “Insomnias,” in Dorothea Tanning: Insomnias: Paintings from 1954-1965, Charles Stuckey and Richard Howard (New York: 21 Ibid., 202. Kent Gallery, 2005), 11.

22 Ibid., 172. 26 Dorothea Tanning, Birthday (Santa Monica, CA: The Lapis Press, 1986), 170. 23 Randy Malamud, Reading Zoos: Representations of Animals and Cap- tivity (New York: New York University Press, 1998), 117.

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ideological implications for human/animal relations. This is animals (and culture and nature), which dominated early- to inevitable, for, as Hancocks points out, “Architecture is the mid-twentieth century Machine Age ideologies. In contrast, physical reality of society’s beliefs and attitudes;” and the Tanning’s Insomnias and Dogs of Cythera dissolve the very “constant ambivalence of [humans’] attitudes” toward ani- hierarchization of humans and nonhumans that zoos sustain, mals is “clearly recorded in the buildings” humans provide offering in its place a more fluid model of coexistence. By all for them.27 Zoos reflect how carefully human/animal rela- accounts, these paintings present the same interrelationships tions have been manipulated and controlled in the modern between humans and animals that, historically, public zoos world. Alternatively, Tanning’s paintings offer a springboard have mostly suppressed. Tanning’s abstract paintings of inter- for reordering human relations with animals. They present mingling human and nonhuman bodies may be understood viewers with vertiginous and confounding webs of bodies and as tools for illuminating and subverting the anthropocentric body parts, which challenge the hierarchization of different ideologies embedded in the construction of public zoos in species. In so doing, they communicate a more bioegalitarian the twentieth century. interconnectedness of human and nonhuman beings than do zoos. Public zoos bolster the hierarchy between humans and Virginia Commonwealth University

27 Hancocks, Animals and Architecture, 9.

Figure 1. Dorothea Tanning, Insomnies (Insomnias), 1957, oil on canvas, 81 1/2 x 57 1/8 inches. © The Estate of Dorothea Tanning.

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108 challenging ideologies

Figure 4. Le Corbusier, lower court and ramp of the Villa Savoye, Poissy, France, 1928-1931. © F.L.C. / ADAGP, Paris / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York 2014. Photo credit: Anthony Scibilia / Art Resource, New York.

t[facing page, top] Figure 2. Dorothea Tanning, Chiens de Cythère (Dogs of Cythera), 1963, oil on canvas, 77 1/2 x 117 inches. © The Estate of Dorothea Tanning. t[facing page, bottom] Figure 3. Berthold Lubetkin and the Tecton Group, Penguin Pool at the London Zoo in Regent’s Park, 1933-1934. Photo credit: HIP / Art Resource, New York.

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Looking Back, Standing Still, Moving Forward: Monument, Stadium, and Social Narrative in Contemporary South Africa

Michael Spory

Our place is changing in us as we stand, and we hold up the weight that will bring us down. In us the land enacts its history. —Wendell Berry The Old Elm Tree by the River

In South African history, monuments have contributed to tion that has largely defined it as a nation over the past sixty both the development and implementation of the apart- years.2 Yet in trying to write a new social narrative of a post- heid social framework, yet monumental architecture has apartheid, post-racist nation, the country cannot overlook also redefined the complex cultural narrative surrounding this complicated, living history. The stadiums built for the this contested history, offering a path to reconciliation. As event, this collection of monumental architecture seen by spaces embedded with specific political and social meanings, a massive international audience, strike a balance between both past and present monuments offer particular insight forgetting and remembering, looking back and forging ahead. into South Africa’s dynamic cultural and racial landscape, These stadiums stand as some of the first monuments to a often helping to collect, embody, and communicate public new vision of a diverse, global, and equitable South Africa. memory and collective identity. Monuments can attempt However, their designs provide an indistinct narrative, inno- to establish an ideological narrative, such as the towering vatively progressive and technologically state-of-the-art, but Voortrekker Monument (1949) in Pretoria, which served as also containing architectural elements based on stereotypical a foundation for the racist platform of the Nationalist Party. patterns the nation has tried to overcome. Paradoxically, this Others are social and educational spaces of celebration and incoherence actually reflects the modern nation’s conflicted remembrance, such as Freedom Plaza (2005) in Kliptown, social climate as a developing nation still dealing with prob- which hearkens back to both pre-colonial African history lems of poverty, high crime, and inequality. and the nation’s new plural equality in the post-apartheid South Africa’s complex history, particularly its implemen- period. More recently, the stadiums for the 2010 World Cup tation of apartheid, provides a framework for its current and represent some of the first non-memorializing monumen- diverse social, political, and architectural climate. Photog- tal architecture since the first democratic elections almost rapher David Goldblatt graphically describes apartheid at twenty years ago. They are cultural monoliths of a tradition- its height, “To walk the streets or the veld, catch a bus, live ally egalitarian sport, built amid the tension and complexity in a house, rent an apartment, study, put a child in school, of a racially charged society. take a job, post a letter, go to a hospital, use a public toilet, At its most basic level, soccer is a simple enough game: enter a railway station, eat in a restaurant, buy a beer, travel, eleven players, one ball, and a singular objective to score copulate, marry, pay tax, register a birth or death, bury a more goals than your opponent. At global mega-events such loved one, indeed to live in South Africa at all, required as the World Cup, however, this game can encompass entire compliance with apartheid regulations.”3 While apartheid’s cultural, sociopolitical, and economic institutions, sparking structural racism largely defines South Africa’s recent history, political debate, infrastructural development, political postur- its roots go back to the fifteenth century. ing, and commercial investment for both international and A structural and social framework of “separate devel- host communities.1 Sporting mega-events require mega- opment,” apartheid was characterized by strategic and venues, and the host nation’s commitment is also a pledge systematic disenfranchisement and discrimination against to create monumental architecture that fulfills the functional non-white ethnic groups along racial lines, leaning heavily obligations while also representing the event itself and the on colonial mythologies for validity in a time of increased nation as a whole. societal modernization. In particular, it sought to control For the nation of South Africa, mired in complex social the lives of black Africans, who comprised over 80% of the changes since apartheid’s demolition in 1994, hosting the total population, as well as the Coloureds, an ethnic group 2010 World Cup represented an aspirational step into the of mixed race descended from European colonial settlers, global arena as it has attempted to overcome the segrega- Malay and Asian slaves, and Khoisan indigenous peoples.4 1 Scarlett Cornelissen and Kamilla Swart, “The 2010 Football World Cup World Cup in South Africa,” Tourism Management 34 (2012): 80-90. as a Political Construct: The Challenge of Making Good on an Afri- can Promise,” The Sociological Review, Special Issue: Social Scientific 3 David Goldblatt, South Africa: The Structure of Things Then (New York: Analyses of a Global Phenomenon 54, no. 2 (2006): 108-123. Monacelli, 1998), 14.

2 Matthew Walker and others, “ ‘Win in Africa, with Africa’: Social Re- 4 Basil Davidson, Africa in History (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1991), sponsibility, Event Image, and Destination Benefits. The Case of the 2010 266-269. athanor xxxii michael spory

The establishment of the Cape Colony, inward expansion of ideological racist narrative of divinely ordained domination the Great Trek, and the mining wealth for the South African over the African people.9 The Voortrekker Monument, the economy provided an historical framework that molded bastion of collective Afrikaner unity and identity in Pretoria, and shaped white Afrikaner identity and polity along lines “had a historical status as the centerpiece of an orchestrated of extremist racism and oppression. mass spectacle of Afrikaner unity and power.”10 Afrikaner Historian Nigel Worden traces the unique South African leadership utilized the detailed symbolism carved into the segregation from the original colonial settlements in the Cape Voortrekker Monument’s marble interior as an embodied through the inland conquest of the Boers and the rise of narrative of Afrikaner collective history and identity.11 The the politically powerful Afrikaner identity based on ideas of structure itself was embedded with traditional, idealized divine ordination and colonial mythology.5 When the Dutch symbols of Afrikaner culture, such as the ox wagon (laager) East India Company first landed at the Cape of Good Hope and materials from the Great Trek, scenes of everyday Boer in 1487, voyagers were only seeking a temporary settle- farm and family life, and carefully crafted lighting shafts and ment on their way to the East Indies. As the colony grew in openings connoting origin narratives of the Afrikaner carrying size and prosperity, the predominantly white Dutch settlers the “flame of civilization” into South Africa. This mythical viewed this new land with increased ownership, despite the symbolism helped bring a singular unity to the previously established native population. This sense of ownership, along dissonant Afrikaner identity, creating a powerful political with a fierce desire for autonomy, led to conflict when far-off force leading up to apartheid’s eventual implementation. British governance increased settlers’ taxes and regulation.6 In essence, apartheid was inherently spatial, explained Eventually, the settlers exited the Cape region in what is as the invisible barrier between races enforced through known as the Great Trek of 1836. In accordance with their tightening social, economic, and spatial politics. The Group newfound collective identity and language, they began call- Areas Act (1950), the Reservation of Separate Amenities Act ing themselves “Afrikaners.” To survive the rugged conditions (1953), and the Bantu Homelands Citizen Act (1970) used on the interior high plains, they relied upon their ingenuity, spatial factors to control the much larger black population.12 a strong Protestant-Calvinist faith, and ruthlessness towards Restrictions to mobility, employment, and land ownership the native populations they were displacing. These Boer for non-whites shackled Africans and Coloureds, who were (Afrikaans for “farmer”) trekkers believed in a divine right unable to own property, get jobs, accumulate wealth, or to South Africa, their “promised land,” and this worldview organize in groups, among other restrictions. Resistance “encouraged them to build their farming economy and their movements formed through groups such as the African social morals on the curious notion that all Africans, the National Congress (ANC) and the United Democratic Front biblical ‘children of Ham,’ were designed by God to labour (UDF), and historical events such as the Sharpeville Massacre as the white man’s slaves.”7 This belief was reinforced after (1960) and the Soweto Uprising (1976) brought increased the decisive Afrikaner victory at the Battle of Blood River violence and international attention to the nation’s seeth- in 1838, where fewer than five hundred Boers defeated a ing oppression. Eventually, the system began to collapse on Zulu army in excess of 15,000. Before the battle, the Boers itself. Economic levers from the mining industry, international had sworn a vow that if God provided them victory, they sanctions in the 1980s, and constant pressure from internal would build a church in His honor and celebrate the date as resistance movements led to apartheid’s eventual demolition. a holiday.8 This covenant, and the annual celebration of it, This decline culminated in F.W. de Klerk’s release of Nelson became the basis for the Voortrekker Monument inaugurated Mandela from prison in 1990 and Mandela’s successful bid in 1949 (Figure 1). Located in the seat of Afrikaner power for the presidency in the first democratic elections in 1994. and built a year after Afrikaner nationalists gained control of Since 1994, South Africa has attempted to step out from the government in the 1948 election, ushering in the begin- the shadow of oppression and enter the modern, globalized ning of formal apartheid and its systematic oppression, this world, becoming Africa’s largest economy due to fabulous monument proclaimed the singular Afrikaner identity and mineral wealth and massive growth in manufacturing, bank- 5 Nigel Worden, The Making of Modern South Africa (Oxford, UK: led to the Boer War in 1899. Eventually, the fallout from the war led Blackwell, 1994), 7-21. to the establishment of the Union of South Africa in 1910. Worden, Modern South Africa, 39. 6 Davidson, Africa in History, 266. 9 Andrew Crampton, “The Voortrekker Monument, the Birth of Apart- 7 Ibid., 267. heid, and Beyond.” Political Geography 20 (2001): 221–246.

8 The discovery of gold and diamonds and the subsequent explosion 10 Annie Coombes, History After Apartheid: Visual Culture and Public of the mining industry triggered a scaffolding of laws that began to Memory in a Democratic South Africa. (Durham, NC: Duke University restrict the basic rights of non-whites, due to the economic needs for Press, 2003), 25. controlling cheap labor and the tight asset regulations on the mining industry. These laws provided Afrikaners with a structural framework 11 Crampton, Voortrekker Monument, 221–246. and political capital for their already-formulated worldview of domina- tion over the native population. British annexation of the independent 12 Walter Peters, “Apartheid Politics and Architecture in South Africa,” Afrikaner republics (largely to acquire access to massive mining profits) Social Identities 10, no. 4 (2004): 537.

112 looking back, standing still, moving forward: monument, stadium, and social narrative in contemporary south africa

ing, and technology. Yet the nation has struggled with issues heroes and triumphs, victories and conquests, perpetually of crime, xenophobia, corruption, lack of affordable housing, present and part of life. The memorial is a special precinct power shortages and other issues more often associated with extruded from life, a segregated enclave where we honour less developed nations. Even with Mandela’s positive vision the dead. With monuments we honor ourselves.”17 Monu- of a “Rainbow Nation,” apartheid’s spatial effects linger mental architecture is focused outward rather than inward, through the separation of communities, contested history, more celebratory and self-aggrandizing than introspective and complex political environment. Hence, historical com- and healing. Monuments are public spaces embedded with memoration through monuments becomes both a curatorial specific meaning, rather than open to introspection in the act in writing past narratives and a directional gesture about way of memorials and museums. Thus, the design decisions the nation’s future. of monumental architecture carry narrative implications that Post-apartheid attitudes toward public architecture, are similar to the curatorial decisions for museum exhibitions including monuments and memorials, are particularly frac- and memorials. tious in South Africa. Because of this, very few monuments Hence, the stadiums built for South Africa’s 2010 World have been built to explicitly represent a new, post-apartheid Cup can be accurately labeled as monuments, since their South African narrative. However, the Freedom Plaza (2005) scale, social context, and the cultural rhetoric surrounding in Kliptown stands as one of these examples of attempts their construction (along with the political discourse about at architectural monumentality and memory (Figure 2).13 the mega-event itself) places additional meanings on their The winning design “joined large-scale urban strategies physical, technological, and metaphorical structures—mean- with symbolic interventions,” and attempted to feature the ings beyond just an arena to watch soccer matches.18 The authentic nature of the site and surrounding community for stadiums are transitional structures designed to facilitate its “complex, fragmented, and hybrid character.”14 The final South Africa’s attempted conversion from a nation recov- design combines the symbolism of x-shaped interventions ering from its past to an influential global power, affecting (relating to the mark black South Africans made on their first both the local stakeholders and outsiders (the “Other”) with ballots in 1994) with public spaces based on strong geometric their representative qualities concerning the culture and shapes; a circular tower referencing the ancient empire of social narrative they commemorate. The stadiums physically Great Zimbabwe; and functional programming of market, represent the country’s capacity to move past its traumatic museum, and income-producing rental units utilized to both history. Architectural historian Federico Freschi of the Uni- accommodate existing small businesses and theoretically versity of Johannesburg rightly states that the 2010 World incentivize increased economic growth. Cup stadiums are South Africa’s first true monuments since These recent monuments, while scarce, offer glimpses apartheid. He claims that while the stadiums are “constructed of the historical circumstances and complexity of collective to meet particular economic or social objectives, [they also] memory as the narratives surrounding those physical struc- have powerful political effects.”19 In South Africa’s case, the tures change over time. Traditionally, monuments are public connection with sporting monuments lends additional weight structures built to commemorate a past event; they are physi- due to the historically racial divide between sports, with soc- cal reminders of a shared cultural heritage. For this nation cer functioning largely as the sport of choice among blacks, in particular, Sabine Marschall, a professor in South Africa, as opposed to the predominantly white sports of rugby and states, “the term ‘monument’ is often understood to refer to a cricket. For observing nations, elevating soccer to the global historical building…on the basis of its age and its architectural stage within this dichotomy gave credence to South Africa’s merit or cultural significance.”15 She points to a distinction attempt to recognize equality in a racially charged environ- between “monument” and “memorial” in that “triumphalism ment, while also affirming a traditionally egalitarian sport and celebration [are] key features of monuments, whereas through governmental investment and support. memorials are about healing and reconciliation,”16 even Of the ten total venues used for the event, the renovated though the terms are often used interchangeably. Though Soccer City Stadium in Soweto and the five new stadiums these two types of spaces are often difficult to distinguish, constructed for this global event—Green Point Stadium in art historian Arthur Danto declares, “Monuments make Cape Town, Moses Mabhida Stadium in Durban, Nelson 13 Freedom Plaza commemorates the historic meeting and ratification of 16 Ibid. the Freedom Charter in 1955. The plaza was built as a monument to the local community’s historical influence in the resistance movement. 17 Arthur Danto, State of the Art (New York: Prentice Hall, 1987), 112. South Africa’s current Constitution (ratified in 1994) draws heavily from the original Freedom Charter. 18 Scarlett Cornelissen, “More than a Sporting Chance?: Appraising the Sport for Development Legacy of the 2010 FIFA World Cup,” Third 14 Jonathan Alfred Noble, ed., African Identity in Post-Apartheid Public World Quarterly 32, no. 3 (2011): 503-529. Architecture (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2011), 182. 19 Federico Freschi, “Dancing in Chains: The Imaginary of Global South- 15 Sabine Marschall, Landscape of Memory: Commemorative Monuments, Africanism in World Cup Stadium Architecture,” African Arts 44, no. Memorials, and Public Statuary in Post-Apartheid South-Africa (Leiden, 2 (2011): 42-55. Netherlands: Brill, 2010), 11.

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Mandela Bay Stadium in Port Elizabeth, Peter Mokaba (Figure 5) both indicate a sense of architectural regional- Stadium in Polokwane, and the Mbombela Stadium in ism moderated through their identity in local areas.22 In Nelspruit—stand as cultural monoliths of sport, as well as Durban, a seaside town on the eastern coast, a tremendous architectural monuments to a “new” South African identity. white arch dominates the structure’s sleek façade, in pos- While some aspects of these stadiums pander to the co- sible reference to ocean waves or ship’s rigging, or even lonialist and tourist tendency toward more stereotypically the more formal qualities of a sea vessel. In Port Elizabeth, “African” imagery, this group of monumental structures seeks white structural membranes contend with the shorefront to explicitly embody, through the built environment, the goal stadium’s high winds while connoting abstracted forms such of elevating South Africa onto the global stage. as the seashell or the protea, the national flower. While there Even though each stadium contains its own distinct sen- has been criticism of FIFA’s infusion of overt symbolism of sibility, they can be defined as a singular critical set due to the Mabhida arch by stating that this form “represent[s] the their common timeframe, context, and function; they were unity of this sport-loving nation,”23 the design’s regionalist built specifically for a single event, completed simultane- aspects are successfully restrained, based in both function ously, and commissioned by a single entity. Their various and context. Overall, “an abstract sense of regionalism is design successes and inadequacies as monuments, para- thus quietly incorporated into the overriding narrative of doxically, also represent accurately the complex culture of high-tech monumentality,”24 successfully incorporating local post-apartheid South Africa. Several threads weave through materials and color palettes while refraining from overtly the stadium designs: the growing desire to present a uniquely symbolic imagery. “African” visual identity, a sense of locality and regionalism, However, in Peter Mokaba Stadium in Polokwane (Fig- memorial representation of the freedom struggle, and the ure 6) and Mbombela Stadium in Nelspruit (Figure 7), the celebration rather than the conflicting nature of diversity. success and coherence of their designs are undermined by They are aspirational structures and “the grandeur of their overtly stereotyped “African” visual references. The selected scale, coupled with the sculptural monumentality of their motifs actually degrade the designs by invoking traditional sophisticated, highly engineered forms are an optimistic colonial and tourist perspectives rather than functionally- expression of the ostensibly mature, modern, and globalized based solutions, and undermine the overall sense that these identity of the post-apartheid, postcolonial state.”20 While stadium-monuments are representative of a new South Af- their modern forms are, in part, due to strict specifications rica. The giraffe-like structural features and zebra-stripped set by FIFA (soccer’s global governing body), all the designs seating pattern in Nelspruit, based on animal patterns found attempt to engage a uniquely African sense of place, and in nearby Kruger National Park, along with the baobab-based for the most part, do not subvert this emerging identity with imagery of the Polokwane stadium, are defined by the design clichéd cultural expressions. teams with “African” colonialist rhetoric. They pander to the In the design for Green Point Stadium, sited in the “tourist gaze,”25 recalling stereotypical attitudes about “wild- shadow of Cape Town’s picturesque Table Mountain (Figure ness” and the “exotic” rather than positively contributing 3), Freschi notes the German firm Von Gerkan, Marg, and to a decidedly modernized and complex national identity. Partner’s (GMP) restrained response to the massive structure, These design decisions clearly attempt to communicate with which could dominate an established natural skyline.21 As a World Cup tourists, rather than local citizens and communi- design solution, the stadium’s gentle rolling profile offers a ties. Interestingly, the Nelspruit stadium is the only structure subtle resemblance to Cape Town’s recognizable landscape. in the group with a lead design team based on the African The delicately translucent metal skin provides protection continent.26 This observation presents a broader criticism of for the inconsistent Cape weather patterns, allowing the South African architectural practice, that while contempo- structure to glow at night and reflect the harsh sun during rary South African architecture attempts to move forward the day. Similarly, the Moses Mabhida Stadium in Durban in its own unique ideas, visualizations, and material under- (Figure 4) and the Nelson Mandela Stadium in Port Elizabeth standings of “Africanness,” architecture within the country

20 Ibid., 45. 23 Freschi, Dancing in Chains, 50.

21 Ibid., 49. 24 Ibid., 51.

22 On critical regionalism in architecture as place-specific architecture, 25 Ibid., 52. which emerges from the architects’ critical response to physical, social, and cultural specifics of the given locale (“region”) see: Alexander 26 R&L Architects, headquartered in Cape Town, led the design for Tzonis and Liane Lefaivre, “The Grid and the Pathway. An Introduction Mbombela stadium in Nelspruit. Although this stadium was the only to the Work of Dimitris and Susana Antonakakis, with a Prolegomena one with an African-led design team, the Peter Mokaba stadium design to the History of the Culture of Modern Greek Architecture,” Archi- was led by UK-based AFL Architects in conjunction with Studio Prism, tecture in Greece 15 (1981), 164-178; Kenneth Frampton, “Towards a firm with offices in Polokwane, Johannesburg, and Pretoria. Freschi, a Critical Regionalism: Six Points for an Architecture of Resistance,” Dancing in Chains, 51. in Hal Foster, ed., The Anti-Aesthetic: Essays on Post-Modern Culture (Seattle: Bay Press, 1983), 16-30.

114 looking back, standing still, moving forward: monument, stadium, and social narrative in contemporary south africa

still struggles with integrations of history and modernity. Innovatively progressive and technologically state-of- Architects themselves remain largely members of the upper the-art, these stadiums were explicitly built to propel South classes, raising questions of access, diversity, and process to Africa’s world entrance as a global economic and cultural the highest circles of architecture, an ironic dichotomy that leader through design excellence and modern technologi- represents a lingering microcosm of segregation. In order for cal prowess. Yet some of these stadiums also contain ste- monumental architecture in South Africa to be successful reotypical elements based on patterns of colonialism and long term, both local and international design teams should exclusion that the nation has spent over fifteen years trying utilize a more inclusive approach, adequately responding to to overcome, thus providing a somewhat indistinct narra- local and international audiences and stakeholders. tive that reveals a nation conflicted with issues of inequality, Soccer City, the largest stadium, was a massive renova- globalization, and domestic conflict. While the historical tion of an existing stadium outside Soweto, rather than one proximity of apartheid’s trauma implicitly infuses a distinct built specifically for the World Cup itself (Figure 8). While racial context to South Africa’s architectural environment, containing assigned symbolism in its visual reference to monuments must respond to the past without reinforcing the African calabash pot, this structure combines historical outdated colonial rhetoric. As the most globally influential elements with modern technology in a successfully subtle structures since the end of apartheid, the stadiums represent and holistic way. The façade is built of alternating steel and a changing South African identity: incongruent and diverse, concrete panels, patterned and located for air circulation, but yet unified through significant shared experience. Indeed, intentionally aestheticized to refer to the flickering of a cala- much of the topic’s contemporary history is literally being bash as it glows in the fire. Freschi claims that the rounded built, as current designers continue to shape the nation form, the irregular exterior glass, concrete cladding, and the through their interpretation of the past. South Africa has no lighting features “combine to create a monumentally sculp- simple solutions, clear objectives, or conclusive remedies. tural form that has a particular African cultural resonance, Even with its inequality, violence, and poverty, it is still harshly but without resorting to cheap, touristy clichés.”27 Beyond beautiful as its shakes off the ashes. How does one record its successful integration of materials and functionality, the historic events in a country where no one remains untouched stadium’s location near soccer-crazed Soweto relates the by trauma? — by continuing to build, to question, to forgive, importance of the project’s local investment to the citizens and above all else, to remember. of Soweto and South Africa, solidifying their historical and modern relevance. Iowa State University

27 Ibid., 53.

Figure 1. Gerard Moerdijk, architect, Voortrekker Monument, Pretoria/Tshwane, South Africa, 1937-1949.

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116 looking back, standing still, moving forward: monument, stadium, and social narrative in contemporary south africa

Figure 4. gmp International GmbH – architects and engineers in consortium with Ibhola Lethu Consortium, Moses Mabhida Stadium, Durban, South Africa, 2010. Photo credit: Marcus Bredt. Used by permission.

t[facing page, top] Figure 2. StudioMAS (SM), architect/design, Walter Sisulu Square, Kliptown, South Africa, 2003-2005. t[facing page, bottom] Figure 3. gmp – von Gerkan, Marg and Partners Architects in cooperation with Louis Karol and Point Architects and Urban Designers, Green Point Stadium, Cape Town, South Africa, 2010. Photo credit: Bruce Sutherland. Used by permission. 117 athanor xxxii michael spory

118 looking back, standing still, moving forward: monument, stadium, and social narrative in contemporary south africa

Figure 7. R&L Architects, Mbombela Stadium, Nelspruit, South Africa, 2010.

Figure 8. Design by Boogertman & Partners in conjunction with HOK Sport (now Populous), Soccer City Stadium, Soweto, South Africa, 2010.

t[facing page, top] Figure 5. gmp International GmbH – architects and engineers in consortium with: ADA Architectural Design Associates, Dhiro Kalian; Dominic Bonnesse Architects; NOH Architects, Gapp Architects, Nelson Mandela Bay Stadium, Port Elizabeth, South Africa, 2010. Photo credit: Marcus Bredt. Used by permission. t[facing page, bottom] Figure 6. Design by AFL Architects in conjunction with Studio Prism, Peter Mokaba Stadium, Polokwane, South Africa, 2010. 119 ~hLAHASSEE COUNCIL ON CULTURE & ARTS FOR lAl.LAHASSEE LION COUNTY e THE PRESS ATHANOR XXXII FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY DEPARTMENT OF ART HISTORY Athanor XXxII

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