2006

Edited by

Amy R. Miller Dina The/eritis

Graduate/Undergraduate Journal of the Department of Art

Contrapposto 5 Editors' Note

Contrapposto © 2006 Production of this year's edition of Contrapposto would not have been possible without the support ofThe Department of Art, The Graduate History of Art Students' Union, and the Fine Art Stu­ Graduate Editor: Amy R. Miller dent Union. Thank you to the editorial committee members, who Undergraduate Editor: Dina Theleritis worked individually with contributors and without them this pub­ Editorial Committee: Leanne Dawkins, Anna Fischer, lication would not be possible. Candice Hamelin, Minna Lee, Amara Magloghim, Ashley Raghubir, and Karen Whaley Contrapposto seeks to public a wide variety of subject matter Design: Alexis Cohen and Amy Miller from a broad represtation of the student body of the University Layout: Amy Miller ofToronto on the subject of Art History. This year's contributions span almost five thousand years of history, and reflect a balance of graduate and undergraduate work. Contrapposto is the annual academic student journal of the Fine Art Department of the University of Toronto. The journal endeav­ ors to publish outstanding essays written by both graduate and Amy R. Miller and Dina Theleritis undergraduate students in the Department. The publication is funded by various student and administrative organizations at the University, and is produced entirely by students. The 2006 edition is the fifthvolume of Contrapposto.

On the cover: Derain, Andre, Standing Nude (Nu debout), winter 1907, limestone, 95 x 33 x 17 em. Musee National d'Art Moderne - Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, France (photograph provided by FADIS, Unviersity ofToronto)

ISSN 1715-846X Published March, 2007 Each essay in this publication is copyright of its respective author. Printed in Canada by The Learning Achievement Centre, www.tlac.ca Contents

1 Remembering in Kind: Memory and the Archive in the work of Christian Remembering in Kind: Memory and Boltanski, Bernd and Hilla Becher and Rachel Whiteread the Archive in the work of Christian Alexis Cohen Boltanski, Bernd and Hilla Becher

19 Joan Mir6: Dreams of Catalonia and Rachel Whiteread Celina Sinisterra Alexis Cohen 51 Fouquet and the Absent Frame: Pictorial and Textual Relationships in the Hours In conjunction with "the culture of memory"1 that of Etienne Chevalier continues to pervade political and cultural thought in the Nick Herman West, much of latter twentieth-century art reveals a deep concern for the expression of issues related to the 73 Alfredo Lam's Uncatalogued Oil on acts of documentation and preservation. While these Paper: An Examination of its Surrealist acts are in many respects inherent aspects of art and Influences artistic practice, as any physical mark becomes an Ady Gruner enduring manifestation of some thought, emotion or image, the overt exploration of these facets of art 89 Antoine Plamondon, Portraits of the making and their expressive implications have been tied Clergy in Nineteenth Century Lower to the memory discourses currently taking place. The Canada: Conquest, Church and archive, along with other forms of institutionalized Canadiens remembering such as monuments and museums, has Elizabeth Peden emerged as an expressive form in and of itself. The archive, in current artistic practice, stands as both a 121 A Study of Cycladic Figures or Marketing literal and metaphoric from; it operates simultaneously Illegal Antiquties? Ethics in Twentieth­ as a functional structure and as a mode of Century Art Historical Scholarship representation. Our cultural obsession with Danielle Cornacchia remembering and forgetting has frequently been played out through the image and concept of the archive as 135 Triumphant and Sacred: The Chapel of many contemporary artists have used some literal or the Archangel Michael at Lorsch conceptual manifestation of its form to express their Linda Stone ideas. The work of the multimedia French artist

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Alexis Cohen Alexis Cohen Christian Boltanski, the German objectivist photographers Bernd and Hilla Becher, and the post­ offers a sense of refuge from the flux of time and space minimalist British sculptor Rachel Whiteread, all in the modern world and allows us to remember the past incorporate aspects of the archive as a means of in concrete terms through the documents and objects it addressing issues about memory, time and their houses. As Huyssen writes: "Some have turned to the preservation. idea of the archive as counterweight to the ever­ While it is undeniable that the last twenty years increasing pace of change, as a site of temporal and have been dominated by a widespread concern for the spatial preservation."4 politics of memory, it is less certain how and why this The capacity for the archive to act as a cultural obsession emerged in the West. One possible stabilizing force is highlighted in Jacques Derrida's explanation for this trend is the general volatility of the etymological deconstruction of the word 'archive' itself. social, political and technological context of our times, a In his book Archive Fever: A Freudian Impression, context which leaves us yearning for the stability of Derrida reveals the archive as a starting point for the forms such as the archive, museum and monument, dissemination of order and thereby highlights a which in many ways have a static existence outside the traditional understanding of the archive as a rationally vicissitudes of time and history. In Present Pasts: organized collection of material culture. Urban Palimpsests and the Politics of Memory, Andreas Arkhr;, we recall, names at once the commence­ Huyssen argues that our obsession with memory is, in ment and the commandment. This name ap­ part, the product of the unstable relationship between parently coordinates two principles in one: the the past and the present that exists today and our principle according to nature or history, there reactionary desire to somehow stabilize this new and where things commence ... but also the prin­ unsettling relationship. 2 He also suggests that the ciple according to the law, there where men and instability caused by rapid technological change leaves god command, there where authority, social or­ us without a fixed sense of the present and therefore we der are exercised, in this place from which or­ must turn to images and concepts of the past to anchor der is given ...5 ourselves in the face of a world constantly in flux. " ... [M]emory and musealization together are called upon to However, the archive also has a distinctly irrational provide a bulwark against obsolescence and overtone since its contents, files, correspondence, disappearance, to counter our deep anxiety about the photographs, and objects are not inherently ordered. speed of change and the ever-shrinking horizons of The very function of an archive is to order and preserve time and space."3 The archive, a place where otherwise the physical facets of society that, if left 'un-kept', might perishable documents and objects of historical interest not be recognized as important nor survive through the are institutionally preserved for posterity, therefore generations. This preservationalpreservation capacity is also reflected in the external appearance of the archive,

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Alexis Cohen Alexis Cohen which projects a monumental order that is designed to push against the effects of time, all the while containing otherwise access, either because they are his own the organic and fragile documents of human life and which he has forgotten, or because they are the activity now decontextualized and hidden from public memories of others which are inherently inaccessible. view. It is this contrast between the rational and While Boltanski's method of investigation is propelled irrational aspects of the archive, however, that makes it by a desire for catharsis, this process and its artistic an effective means of addressing ideas about time and products are always shrouded in a sense of loss, as he memory. If there were no traces of human imperfection, is looking for something that can never truly be 'found' the austerity and institutionalized order of most archives or archived. The futility of this search is also could not be used to comment on such human themes, consciously exacerbated by the fact that Boltanski not nor would it offer us the reassurance of stability in the only works with his own lack of memory, 8 but also face of the destabilized relationship between the past incorporates fictional evidence of the lives of others, and present discussed by Huyssen. thereby engaging with the opacity of the very subject he The French multimedia artist, Christian Boltanski is attempting to explore. addresses these ideas through the exploration of In his 1971 work Photo Album of the Family D., memory and how it is constructed in the context of a 1939-1964 (figure 1), Boltanski assembled a massive post-Enlightenment industrial culture "committed to grid of one hundred and fifty family photographs from rationality."6 Born in Paris in 1944 to a Jewish family, the archives of Michel Durand-Dessert.9 Boltanski then Boltanski grew up in both the chaos and destruction of "rearranged memories which were not his own"10 in an the aftermath of the Second World War and the order that seemingly documented the life of this family desolation of having lost both his parents before the as it evolved over a course of several years. This work age of six. This environment had a lasting impact on embodies the inherent contradictions at work in any Boltanki's art and his corresponding desire to archive - the competing qualities of a rational investigate his own past. While he began as a painter, organization and irrational content. Here the rationality Boltanski soon probed the expressive possibilities of a of the grid system and the repetition of the pristine glass variety of other media as a means of exploring the ideas and tin frames stand in contrast to the organic nature of of memory and its potential reconstruction. In the 1970s random family snapshots, as well as the added Boltanski began to create works which were themselves knowledge that the whole construct is assembled by literal archives, a form he regarded as a means of Boltanski himself without regard for historical accuracy. gaining access to the past, which to him was a reality Boltanski establishes a similar dichotomy in Lost that only survives in memory as fragmented and Workers: The Work People of Halifax, 1877-1982, 1994 inaccurate recollections.7 The archive for Boltanksi thus (figure 2) in which he creates a large scale installation becomes a way of concretizing memories he cannot of an archive preserving the clothing of workers who were fired after their factory was shut down; "[W]hat I

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Alexis Cohen Alexis Cohen did was to create a room for them, and each worker had his one box in which he could put some kind of souvenir "engineering feats" of nineteenth and early twentieth­ of his past at the factory ... "11 Just as was the case in century industrialism. In the 1950s, the Bechers began Family D, this piece is not about a specific history, but is compiling a comprehensive photographic archive of rather a monument to memory, a monument in which the industrial buildings13 which they classified by reference artist and the viewer engage with the inaccessible past to functionY This project was initially started by Bernd and its inevitable erasure. While both works engage Becher who wanted to create a bank of images that he with some historical fact- the photos of Durand­ could use as source material for his paintings. When he Dessert's family are indeed real photos and the boxes met Hilla while studying typography at the Staatliche in Lost Workers are filled with the clothes of real people Kunstakademie in 1959, they began collaborating on - Boltanski obfuscates the strands of objectivity in his the photographs which quickly became their primary source material as a means of commenting on his artistic focus. Together they developed a documentary broader concerns with difficulties involved in approach to photographing their industrial subjects, remembering and forgetting. The ordered aesthetic of which raised cultural and aesthetic questions about the the archive and the conceptual pretence that it destruction of many late nineteenth-century buildings, preserves something real and identifiable then including those they were actually photographing. 15 buttresses this amorphous quality and lends a kind of Despite the fact that Bernd was no longer shooting to structure to the mourning that Boltanski attempts to generate source material for his work, the couple still invoke in the viewer. The authors of the book Deep considered their work an archive, and the "typologies" Storage also comment on this quality in Boltanski's that emerged from their classification system became work, writing: "In [his] art, the archive is an exposition of the organizing principle of their display. As in Water a continual process of sedimentation; individual Towers and Winding Towers (figures 3 and 4 ), the references are deposited and become traces that lose Bechers present their photographs of these structures their singular identity, only to function in mass as an in a grid format that allows for the direct comparison of archive of memory."12 This ordered aesthetic and subtle differences between their subjects. This highly process of remembering, in combination with this organized and rational approach to the visual amorphous sense of memory itself, also adds a level of presentation of the photographs is paralleled in the irony to his quest 'to remember' when any attempt at quality of the images themselves, which stand as concretizing the past is ultimately futile. architectural portraits done in the spirit of the 'great An equally unsettling relationship between the tradition of the "new objectivity" (Neue Schlichkeit).'16 present and the past is established in the work of Bernd The Bechers use the same shooting motif for all and Hilla Becher, the renownrenowned German their photographs - a direct frontal perspective in a photographers who document the now decaying gray, cloudless sky- as a means of de-emphasizing their presence as artists in favour of a direct

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Alexis Cohen Alexis Cohen representation of their subject. 17 Reyner Banham, in his essay accompanying the Becher's 1989 publication of shifting the viewer's sense of what is being preserved Water Towers comments on how this photographic and which losses should be mourned. quality is reinforced by the "systematic taxonomies of Similar questions about what is in fact being presentation" which he argues generate remembered and preserved when 'remembering' Entfremdugseffekt, a sense of alienation. 18 This almost images, objects and ideas through the form of the sterile feature of their work functions in a similar way to archive are raised by Rachel Whiteread, whose the grids and objective titles Boltanski attaches to his sculptural installations share many qualities with the works; here the sense of history and decay associated work of Boltanski and the Bechers. Her explicit concern with the subjects depicted, as well as the emotional for documenting and preserving the everyday along with motivation for their preservation, is combated by the the serial display of these acts of preservation situate cold and distanced character of the presentation. The Whiteread's work within the context of this discussion idea of memory is marked but, unlike in Boltanski's about the use of archives in the art of recent years. work, it is not intended to consume the viewer's Connotations of the archive very clearly emerge in her experience of the work. wo~k Untitled (One Hundred Spaces), 1995 (figure 5) in The Bechers' archival approach to photography which she cast the negative space underneath one is an essential component of their oeuvre which makes hundred different domestic chairs. Here, Whiteread has their commentary about decay and destruction unique. produced a work that seeks to document and preserve While they comment on the destruction of the industrial the everyday and perishable while simultaneously subjects they photograph by articulating a sense of loss memorializing the subject through its serial associated with the knowledge that these structures will presentation: "I wanted to give certain spaces an not be indefinitely preserved, their highly objective and authority they'd never had. But it's also to do with rational images have a kind of presence that suggests keeping a presence. In that sense it's definitely about 19 they can stand in for what is missing in reality. In this preserving ..." Like the work of both Boltanski and sense, the archive not only preserves what is lost in the the Bechers, Untitled (One Hundred Spaces) reveals a external world, but comes to subsume it and re-present concern for remembering something transient and it in a new aesthetic which has an identity of its own. fundamentally unremarkable through the act of The knowledge that the archive (i.e. their photographs) preserving it in archival forms. This specific mode of will survive long past the subjects it depicts reverses the preservation, distinct from a simple representation of a viewer's allegiance to the 'original' subject, since its subject through a single photograph or painting, creates existence will be usurped by its photographic a new category within which the subject in question can documentation. This archival quality in the Becher's exist. In the case of Untitled (One Hundred Spaces), the work thus comes to complicate ideas about memory by serial reproduction of the negative space underneath various chairs gives this particular space a new identity

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Alexis Cohen Alexis Cohen that is affirmed and reaffirmed through its successive preservation and documentation. This type of space, specific way - a way that is itself a physical for the most part an insignificant part of daily life, is not manifestation of the notions of preservation, just identified in a single cast, but, through its repetitive documentation and memory. Through the incorporation documentation, is asserted by Whiteread as a of the archive into their work, these artists suggest that significant category of "thing" that needs to be "remembering" can no longer be practiced through preserved and remembered. traditional artistic means of depiction and In her 1993 piece, House, (figure 6) questions of representation, be they figurative or abstract, and that memory and preservation are still at work, but the their subjects need to be documented and preserved monumentalization of these issues takes on a new through the medium of the archive as well as other character by virtue of the piece's scale. The work is a institutionalized forms of remembering, such as the life-sized replica of the interior of a condemned museum and monument. Despite the fact that many Victorian home in the East End of London made by assert that "memory fatigue" has set in, and that the spraying liquid concrete into the building's empty shell culture of memory is waning, the widespread use of the before its external walls were removed. Whiteread's archive in the art of recent years will no doubt leave a piece is a "monument to lost domestic space and to a permanent mark on the history of art. whole way of life"20 which she is able to make tangible and preserve as a public sculpture. Like Boltanski's installations and the Becher's large scale grid displays of their 'typologies', House reveals how concerns for Andreas Huyssen, Present Pasts: Urban Palimpsests and memory and its preservation come to be associated with the Politics of Memory (Stanford: Stanford University Press, the idea of a monument, a traditional physical marker of 2003), 15. memory. 2 Huyssen, 1. The archive, in its various manifestations, is a 3 Huyssen, 23. form that monumentalizes that which it preserves since 4 Huyssen, 26. it deems its subjects worthy of safeguarding from the 5 Jacques Derrida, Archive Fever: A Freudian Impression. Translated by Eric Prenowitz (Chicago, Illinois: The University external world and the inevitability of disintegration in of Chicago Press, 1996) 1. this context. In the work of Christian Boltanski, Bernd 6 Ingrid Schaffner and Matthia Winzen, eds. Deep Storage: and Hilla Becher and Rachel Whiteread, the archive Collecting, Storing, and Archiving in Art (New York, New York: and its various forms and aesthetic associations are Prestel, 1999) 78. used as a mode of expression used to preserve some of 7 Richard Hobbs, "Boltanski's Visual Archives," History of the the transitory and often inaccessible aspects of modern Human Sciences 11 (1998): 121-141. 8 Not only does Boltanski claim to have had a traumatic life. These subjects need to be remembered in a childhood, but he also asserts that he has no distinct childhood memories.

Contrapposto 2006 12

Alexis Cohen

9 Duran is the most common French surname, making Boltanski's selection one that emphasizes anonymity and conformity. His choice makes the work less about a specific person and more about the overwhelming mass of anonymous 'human life' and its accompanying memories. 10 Dider Semin, Tamar Garb and Donald Kuspit, Boltanski (London, England: Phaidon, 1997), 60. 11 Semin, Garb and Kuspit., 40. 12 Schaffner (as in 2), 78. 13 Schaffner (as in 2), 64. 14 Lynne Cooke, "Bernd and Hilla Becher," 21 April 2003, (24 March 2004 ). www.diacenter.org/exhibs_b/becher/essay.html 15 "Becher," Grove Dictionary of Art, < http://80- www.groveart.com.myaccess.library.utoronto.ca/shared/ views/a rti cl e. htm I ?from= search &session_ sea rch_id =85956335&hitnum=1 §ion=art.009760> (March 7, 2004.) 16 Kaus Bu~mann, "Preface," in Bernd & Hilla Becher: Typlogies, Bernd and Hilla Becher (Cambridge: Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts, Harvard University, 1991 ), 2. 17 The Bechers also work as a 'team', engaging in all aspects of their projects together. They find their sites together, arrange the shoots together and even photograph their subjects together, further eliminating the notion of a distinct personality behind their images. 18 Reyner Ban ham, 'The Becher Vision" in Water Towers, Bernd and Hilla Becher (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1989). 1 Christian Boltanksi, L'Aibum de Ia Famille D., 1971. (photo: 19 Rachel Whiteread, Rachel Whiteread (Eindhoven: Van Danilo Eccher, Christian Boltanksi (Milano: Charta, 1997)) Abbemus, 1992-3), 11. 20 Whiteread, 11.

Contrapposto 13 3 Bernd and Hilla Becher, Water Towers. (photo: Bernd and Hilla Becher, Typologies (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2004))

2 Christian Boltanksi, The Work People of Halifax, 1995, mixed media, Installation Henry Moore Foundation, Leeds, 1995. (photo: Danilo Eccher, Christian Boltanksi (Milano: Charta, 1997)) 14 15 :;..._':}>,C;.·r.,r·o:zv. ~t>G.•41>!«:l.t~i<<"On ,Jo·.<;~&cc.l·~.W·W!,, ~"'~~ ""'•<»~ "'~'"'"''~··! r<.>:•''.)r.t¥.~t,Dt~>ll s,,.,.,,,~ ",,;~ KH"''~ a•;m 5 Rachel Whiteread, Untitled (One Hundred Spaces), 1995, w.~'·''"''"- ~1:;.% >\~~i'O'!>I'.\1 ~~~•·< r,.;: lim':ocMl ;:.,.o:zoO::..,<"<·>::> ;~~ •• ,.,!!,,;;,;>..,,~"'"'''"'' }"'""" ?"''~""' t>::<;<>.01!ll6 ~·4~·~-~~.1.,.,." l>llll W~!!""'-'""'~'!.(l1i:OI resin, 100 units, size according to installation. (photo: installation (~"J",! t·~~ I) ~~1'.' Z..:H:. ...-)A'q <:t<'JO>"""'"""'?hl'«.. t~~h" i'!'. ~"'N'N•""'-l~~·•··~ F 1\l:i? f»·>:t01j>S;, view at the Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, 1995. ;;;, ...~.o \i'ti """"'"· ,, 1~"it Guggenheim Museum Publications, Rachel Whiteread: Transient Spaces (New York: Guggenheim Museum Publications, 2001))

4 Bernd and Hilla Becher, Winding Towers. (photo: Bernd and Hilla Becher, Typologies (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2004))

16 17 Joan Mir6: Dreams of Catalonia

Celina Sinisterra

Andre Breton once said that Joan Mir6 showed to be "the most Surrealist of [them] all," in his 1924-25 painting Harlequin's Carnival (figure 1), the Catalan painter's most Surrealist endeavour. 1

First Surrealist Exhibition In the 1924 Surrealist Manifesto, Breton defined Surrealism as "pure psychic automatism, by which it is intended to express, verbally, in writing, or by other means, the real functioning of thought, the dictation of thought in the absence of all control exercised by reason and outside all aesthetic or moral preoccupations."2 The first exhibition of Surrealist painting, held at the Galerie Pierre in Paris in 1925, included the works of Ernst, Mir6, Arp, Man Ray, 6 Rachel Whiteread, House, 193 Grove Road, London, 1993 and Masson, as well as those of three painters never (destroyed 1994 ), concrete. (photo: Guggenheim Museum formally affiliated with the movement but often recalled by Publications, Rachel Whiteread: Transient Spaces (New York: Breton: Klee, de Chirico, and Picasso. Each of them Guggenheim Museum Publications, 2001)) "derived imagery from an interior source."3

Mir6's "Entrance" into Surrealism Breton described that "the tumultuous entrance of Mir6 into Surrealism in 1924 marked an important stage in the development of the movement. Mir6, endowed with plastic 18 19 20 21

Selina Sinisterra Celina Sinisterra gifts of the highest order, cleared the obstacles which might 8 still have impeded an entire spontaneity of expression. Farm produced during 1921-22," and eventually From then on, his output displayed an innocence and purchased by Ernest Hemingway, who declared that he 9 freedom that have not been surpassed."4 His desire to "would exchange for no other in the world." Carolyn abandon himself "to that pure automatism [ ... ] of which Lanchner considers that The Farm can be thought of as 10 Mir6 himself has very summarily verified the profound "symbolic of Mir6's own person." As the critic Juan value and reason," prompted Breton to consider that "it is Perucho states, Montroig became the haven of Mir6's perhaps in this respect that he [Mir6] can pass for being dreams, where he discovered and examined the reality of the most surrealist of us all."5 all living things, which he closely observed, and thus learned how to calligraphically reproduce the little details, 11 following the folk art of the Catalan peasant culture whose Roots in Catalonia Joan Mir6 was born in Barcelona in 1893 into a family of painting flourished, "making the eyes dance along the 12 skilled craftsmen. His father was a prosperous goldsmith, rhythmic patterns." Another influence on Mir6's and his grandfathers were a blacksmith and a cabinet­ representation of figures were the Romanesque Catalan maker, both quite talented. By birth and by origin, he was paintings that he observed in local churches, where each a native of Catalonia, a province in north-east Spain, which figure had a characteristic life, a simplified form, flow of also included the Balearic Islands, from where both his curves, and bold distortions to enhance the emotional 13 mother and wife came. Roland Penrose believes that Mir6 effect. This disregard for homogeneity both in style and was an artist with deep roots in his homeland and the art scale, was handled by Mir6 with such control that it did 14 of its past, particularly in the countryside and its traditions. 6 not ruin the overall harmony of his compositions. The artist grew in a caring and supportive environment, From further back in the country's cultural tradition, and although his father had encouraged him to work as c~ve paintings influenced Mir6 in his spatial composition, an office clerk, when young Mir6 fell sick with depression w1th elements that danced over a blurred and ethereal after some months of working in an office, his parents sent background free of perspective. Temma Kaplan notes "the him to recover in the family's farm outside of Barcelona. It regional cult of art and pride in indigenous traditions really is in this place where Mir6 felt his soul and roots would dates to the turn ofthe century, when so many other forms 15 always be. Indeed, the farm at Montroig was the dream of local awareness also emerged." Moreover, folk arts in place to which Mir6 returned every year throughout his Catalonia came to be considered art after critics like life, whether living in Barcelona, Paris, or Palma de Santiago Russinyol proclaimed their ability to meet his Majorca. The family farm in Montroig was a place so definition of the word, that "they transform 16 essential to him that he would say "it was like a religion."7 consciousness." Young Mir6 absorbed this appreciation The whole of his vision of rural Catalonia was of folk art. He was also mesmerized by the quality of the "virtually encapsulated in one painting, the celebrated The Cat~lan light, which charged his countryside experience, particularly after dusk, when "the air becomes pure and

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Selina Sinisterra Celina Sinisterra diaphanous, allowing the mysterious growth of the nocturnal murmurings from the fields, the faint vibration contact with the poets and painters there. He had of things, the monotonous chirping of the cricket, while discovered poetry in Barcelona through the publications the stars shine forth like diamond points."17 of Les Soirees de Paris where Guillaume Apollinaire's Mir6 was fascinated by the country's silence and Calligrammes appeared in 1914. Once in Paris, Mir6 by the company of its humble, simple people, their absorbed the works of the French poets Rimbaud, traditions, and their character. The Catalan identity is Lautremont, Jarry, as well as Apollinaire. 22 He settled in a characterised by the high value placed on common sense. studio on the rue Blomet, where his neighbour Andre Mir6 would always claim that the psychic energy behind Masson introduced him to Tristan Tzara, Antonin Artaud, his work arose from the intensity of his feelings for his Robert Desnos, and Michel Leiris, and it was then that native Catalonia, that "the double-sidedness of his being Mir6 came to understand how poetry could liberate his -the artisanal and the visionary- embodied the seny i painting. 23 rauxa, the common sense and passion, imputed to the Mir6 admired the immediacy of poetry and the Catalan temperament."18 During an interview with James intimacy it establishes between the writer and the reader. Johnson Sweeney in 1948, Mir6 specified that, "the He appreciated the insistence of the Surrealist poets on Catalan character is very much down to earth. We creating a fusion between poetic and visual imagery, and Catalans believe you must always plant your feet firmly the effort placed in widening those perceptions that led to on the ground if you want to be able to jump up in the air. the exploration of the subconscious through dreams and The fact that I come to earth from time to time makes it hallucinations. Mir6 immersed himself in the Surrealist possible for me to jump all the higher."19 Penrose details metaphoric language that moved in a direction which was the experience stating that "it is from terra firma, the sun­ different from the literary tradition of rational association bleached soil, with its appetizing scent of plants, its dust, and deduction.24 Through his use of imagery, the Surrealist mud and weather-worn rocks, that we enter and enjoy the artist projected himself outside the boundaries of the real 25 great open spaces, the all-invading light of day and the world. Bataille declared that, "a dictionary begins when coolness of the stars by night, providing a springboard to it no longer gives the meaning of words, but their jobs."26 the mysterious flights of imagination."20 The painting of Thus, the Catalan painter opened his vision to the new The Farm was completed in Barcelona and later on in source of his imagination that provided him with 27 Paris, to where Mir6 took samples of stones and grasses "inexhaustible abundance of images." from Montroig, to keep his ties with his beloved country. 21 Even though Mir6 was excited by the possibilities of automatism as a way of realising poetry in a visual 28 Paris: Poetry and Painting form, his work did not represent the overflow of Surrealist Mir6's decision to move to Paris had been made before automatism, or thought's dictations in the absence of all the First War had ended, as he felt the need to be in close control governed by reason (although this does not imply an antithetical attitude of totally premeditated and rational

Contrapposto 2006 24 25

Selina Sinisterra Celina Sinisterra elaboration). He achieved a balance between inspiration and construction in the manifestation of his inner visions. 29 never completely broke with Breton, and did not join the His Painting of 1925 (figure 2) exemplifies the boldness attacks on him following the publication in December of and sparseness characteristic of the automatic manner. the second Surrealist manifest, his sympathies lay more He let his brush wander freely over the monochromatic with those around Bataille and his magazine Documents."34 washed ground, then found forms that began to suggest Whitney Chadwick identifies a gradual transformation in a human hand, a heart, a shooting star, and then he Masson's iconography of specific mythological themes enriched the composition. 30 Thus, there were two or three during the early 1930's, which the critic argues were stages: one free, unconscious, where the "sparks of the attributes to be "shaped by both [Masson's] reading and soul erupt," then a conscious organisation, and finally the his personal involvement with Georges Bataille and Michel compositional enrichment, the last two having been Leiris, mainly Bataille's publication of his Documents carefully calculated. 31 Roland Penrose explains Mir6's series, that pushed the limits of the irrational to the approach to his poetic images as starting with a extreme."35 A similar influence is evident in Mir6's work. spontaneous collection from his subconscious, eliminating His closeness to Bataille and Leiris is portrayed in his all additions introduced by conscious control, and reducing 1927 painting Musique, Seine, Michel, Batail/e et moi, colour to small spots against atmospheric backgrounds. 32 where the Catalan painter is depicted strolling with his However, this reduction and simplification does not fall two friends at night in Paris, by the Seine, surrounded by into abstraction, for Mir6 was convinced that he must keep music. Rosalind Krauss, analysing this painting, finds that, his feet on the ground in order to reach transcendental in Mir6's work, metaphor exists in the same universe as heights. 33 Bataille's, where the French author developed a "reconstitution of the metaphor" or its "transposition," Bataille's Influence parallel to Mir6's "metaphoric chains."36 In 1927 Mir6 moved into a studio in the rue Tourlaque in Montmartre, where his neighbours were Max Ernst, Rene Myth Magritte, Jean Arp, and Paul Elouard. The latter became Both Mir6 and Bataille placed an immense value on the his life-long friend. During Mir6's years in the rue need for myth in society. For Bataille, as he explains in Tourlaque, Georges Bataille was in the midst of developing his essay "The Absence of Myth," the profound sense of a philosophy whose concepts were found in Mir6's images Surrealism lay in the fact that it recognised the error of and perceptions, and developed in his themes. As Carolyn rationalism's ideological claims to define what is rea/. Lanchner explains, by 1929"strife within the Surrealist "Such a concept destroys the notion of myth. A society movement had become intolerable: Bataille, Leiris, that denies its mythical basis therefore denies part of its Desnos, Artaud, and Masson, among others of Mir6's good essence, and is living a lie ... a universe without myth is friends, had broken off relations with Breton. While Mir6 the ruin of the universe -reduced to the nothingness of things."37 Michael Richardson, in the Introduction to The

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Selina Sinisterra Celina Sinisterra

Absence of Myth, states that "Surrealism looked back to with the land and with its primal elements. He felt an the 'primitive'- not to re-create what had been lost, but ~o intense, almost supernatural communion with Mallorca's understand it and confront the absence of myth In Mediterranean landscape and Montroig in the Tarragone contemporary society."38 province."48 Juan Perucho confirms Mir6's attachment to Allan Stoekl explains in the Introduction to Visions his land when he comments that the painter maintained of Excess, that Bataille felt that after the failure of art, "a deep-felt fidelity to certain definite forms of life, to a scl·ence and politics myth is the way open to man to reach , , . 39 particular way of being in sensations and ideas ... he is the the essential human drives and thus, a true existence. heir to some traditional values without which his efforts to There was a need to regain a consciousness of collective find his exceedingly original language would be of no myths, as Bataille explains in the essay "!he ~orc~rer's avail."49 Apprentice," for they revealed true bemg. 4 Wh1t~ey Those traditional values were recreated in Mir6's Chadwick points out that the Surrealists were preoccupied painting, as "a poem inspired by the bucolic pleasures of with shared myths that transcend personal inclinationS.41 a Catalan peasant who lives between a sunlit sky and a Moreover, in France, myth, with its emphasis on feeling warm rose-coloured soil."50 Mir6 centred the myth of the rather than thought, had long been associated with poetic Catalan folklore in the figure of the peasant, represented expression.42 The images of Surrealist paintings. and by cryptic signs and fantastic shapes. Carolyn Lanchner poetry, originating in the imagination and the unconscious, observes that "Mir6's tight formal control of his composition emerged in the mind in coincidence with the development allows the vital specificity of each object to reverberate of dream and myth.43 "[The myth's] symbols are the means within a network of interdependent relationships, in a vivid of unravelling the Surrealist world view."44 Automatism and metaphor of his lived experience."51 The hunter's bearded the dream became involved in the creation of myths that 45 head, his moustache, his perceptive eye, attentive ear expressed the aspirations of Surrealism. . " and curved pipe are readily recognisable, as well as his During the 1930's, Surrealist myths had relied ?n gun and the prey. The folkloric theme was further pursued the Freud-oriented psychological content of myth and 1ts in the inscription of the first letters of a Catalan folk dance, structural relationship to dream and the poetic imagination, the sardana, and by the countryside's creatures, who, but as Surrealism gradually moved ... to poetic and pictorial represented by a unique language of signs, are gathered imagery ... the definition of myth was now extended to in a rhythmic composition over a unified bacl

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Selina Sinisterra Celina Sinisterra and heat suggests the freedom of the senses."53 ln Catalan Landscape, the yellow underpainting beneath the pink land sun, with a plant-like motion, and a horizontal one that creates the effect of "spatial penetration" that reinforces directs his ocular vision towards the surface, in an animal­ the sameness in substance between the rolling earth and like manner. 62 Mira's Head of a Catalan Peasant painted the yellow sea. 54 Likewise the hunter's body is made of a in 1925 is a continuation of the myth that inspired Catalan thin structure filled with the pink earth. In essence, the Landscape -the traditional peasant character- , who, in hunter blends with the land. 55 Mira's symbolic language the later work, is "reduced to a cross and a red cap created a poetic imagery where symbols, dots, letters or suspended upon a cosmic blue ground, in a liberation of graphisms recaptured memories, emotions, and ideas from colour and drawing, echoing the liberation by poets of his past in Catalonia. 56 Although the artist "broke absolutely sounds and words from their conventional sounds and free of the outer reality of nature," as he commented to J. meanings."63 Mira referred to the cosmic suspension of P. Rafols in 1923, his landscape was "more Montroig than his figure in an interview with Denys Chevalier in 1962, had it been painted from nature."57 His native countryside saying that, "during those years [1925] my painting no provided him with his most common motifs: "a mythical longer showed the pull of gravity; I wanted to give it an bestiary collected in his Catalan landscape,"58 the identity astral quality."64 Following Bataille's argument of the axial of the Catalan peasant, and the collective experience of distribution of man's structure, Mira's Catalan peasant the folkloric values. Freud stated that, "all the material displays the balance between the human attempt to making up the content of a dream is in some way derived ascend to the summit, where being reaches the universal,65 from experience that is reproduced or remembered in the and a realistic connection with the surrounding dream."59 Therefore, dreams give us the knowledge of the environment. past from which they arise. 60 Through his symbols, Mira In his essay "The Big Toe," Bataille develops his recreated his Catalan roots. As symbolism is not peculiar ideas about axial balance, stating that "the function of the to dreams, but is characteristic of unconscious ideation, it foot consists in giving a firm foundation to the erection of is also found in folklore, popular myths, and legends. 61 which man is so proud."66 Mira shared Bataille's recognition Thus, the symbols Mira recreated in his dreams had their of the big toe as a vital part of the body, being the element roots in the Catalan folklore and myths. that allows for the human verticality that separates humans from other animals. As Bataille said, and Mira's imagery Pineal Eye and Toe corroborated, the toe that makes possible the "noble" Another theme developed by both Bataille and Mira is the uprightness of human posture "is nonetheless not just position ofthe human body, particularly the eyes, in relation literally the lowest part of the body, but the most ludicrous, to the earth. Bataille explains in "The Pineal Eye" that mired in the earth, the part that least fits idealisation of there are two axes in a man's relationship with the the human form ... the toe was emblematic of our common environment: a vertical axis that guides him towards the humanity... the support that connects the terrestrial and the celestial."67 While Bataille considered the toe as the

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Selina Sinisterra Celina Sinisterra part of the human body "that resists the idealising," Mira saw it as "emblematic of our common humanity."68 Mira's would appear to be existence for nothing, without Personnage Throwing a Stone at a Bird, painted in 1926 influence, equivalent to the absence of being, were it not (figure 4 ), is an image of this motif. At the same time, the for the human nature that emerges within it to give a creature embodies Bataille's pineal eye, which detaches dramatic importance to being and life."73 Dog Barking at itself from the horizontal system of normal vision, like the the Moon, painted by Mira in 1926 explores the theme of eye of a tree. Bataille's pineal eye opened to the the search of oneself in the night, a place to where one incandescent sun and was blinded by it. 69 Thus, as Bataille wanted to escape. Jacques Dupin explains that the ladder warns in the essay "The Old Mole and the Prefix Sur," the symbolises escape, and Mira links the two realities sun assumes a dangerous role in human impulses, together without eliminating either of them, suggesting the causing a psychological obsession with ascending to a possibility that one may ascend to a higher reality without summit, causing one to lose sense, and to become sacrificing the familiar reality. 74 Breton explains that aggressive and contemptuous of vulgar human nature.70 "Surrealism expresses a desire to deepen the foundations The elevation to the summit is followed by a sudden and of the real; to bring about an ever clearer and at the same violent fall, recreating the myth of Icarus that "splits the time ever more passionate consciousness of the world rotten sun in two -the one that was shining at the moment perceived by the senses."75 Thus, Mira combines reality of Icarus's elevation and the one that melted the wax, and imagination with his rooted awareness of reality causing failure when he got too close."71 However, Mira's gained in his native countryside, and the imagination of personage is aware of Bataille's warning, and will not share its creatures, people, traditions and values. 76 This desire Icarus's fate, since it avoids the sun by moving at night to escape to our imagination and memory of lived and having not wax wings, but thin lines for arms. The experiences, and their reality, with the aid of a ladder that irony of this creature is that it is attempting to destroy would connect both realms, was a constant theme in Mira's nature. There is a note of horror in this simulation, where work since The Farm. the representation and the symbol are no longer differentiated. As Bataille states in "The Deviations of Spanish Civil War: Peintures Sauvages Nature," being an abomination of nature, the monstrous In 1934, Mira's search for truth in his beloved Catalonia, figure provokes great terror. 72 led him to what Penrose identifies as "a prophecy of crescendo of the horror" that was to begin in 1926 with Night the Spanish Civil War. 77 The painter declared years later, Both Bataille and Mira approached the theme of night in a "I had the unconscious feeling of impending disaster... I similar manner. In "The Labyrinth," Bataille declares that had a feeling a catastrophe was about to happen, but I "men discover their solitude at night. .. The universal night didn't know what: it was the Spanish civil war and the World in which everything finds itself -and soon loses itself- War."78 The characters in Mira's dreams became distorted, aggressive and terrifying, violently coloured over flat

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Selina Sinisterra Celina Sinisterra surfaces of black and red. Even though the titles of the paintings such as Personnages Rhythmiques of 1934 The Spanish Republican Government commissioned Joan Mir6 to create a work to be placed in suggest some dancing activity, we find "a world of conflict the Spanish Pavilion at the International Exhibition in Paris and absurdity inhabited by creatures of incredible together with Picasso's Guernica. Mir6's response ferocity,"79 who move over an undefined and blurred wa~ The Reaper, painted in 1937 (figure 5), where the myth of background that loses all hope of any liveliness. Bataille's the Catalan peasant is being attacked and threatened lines in "The Solar Anus" summarise this menacing absurdity where he states, "it is clear that the world is provoki~g th~ reaper's anger and denounce. The night: mto wh1ch M1r6 could previously escape in search of his purely parodic, that each thing is a parody of another, or imagin.e?, reality, now shattered. Its stars are crumbling the same thing in a deceptive form. Everyone is aware i~ and M1ro s folklonc peasant is totally distorted. However that life is parodic and that it lacks an interpretation."80 the insists on struggling to protect the myth, This nightmarish theme was also pursued by Mir6 peasa~t a~ he keeps h1s feet deeply rooted in his soil, and his Phrygian in Man and Woman in Front of a Pile of Excrement of cap. -even though crumpled- remains on his head, in hope 1935. Bataille always stressed the need for setting one's of liberty amid the explosions of the war. After all the feet on the base, in the surrounding mud and excrement, labourer. "is a man of another nature, of a and Mir6's personages are solidly planted "in the non-red~ced, 84 when he is outside the factory putrefaction of their own creation."81 When Bataille non-subjug~ted ~ature," the workmg .fields. As Bataille explains in the essay analysed his friend Masson's integration with the real ~r The Structure of Fascism," when "in a group world, he distanced Masson's art from the "expression of Psychol~g1cal of labourers, m an homogeneous society, man is at the thought disengaged from the world of pure Surrealism."82 mercy of the violence of the imperative elements that want Masson's approach of integration with the world paralleled to keep him under control," but when he is alone, the Mir6's engagement with it. The horror and cynicism of peasant keeps his identity, and thus, Mir6's Catalan Mir6's characters surrounded by excrement, was also a peasant courageously struggles to preserve his integrity. as foreboding of the war, as Bataille describes in the essay When analysing Catalonia and its capital Barcelona "The Use Value of D.A.F. de Sade" where he says, "the as a social and political background for Picasso's formation first phase of a revolution is separation ... of two groups or year.s, Temma .Kaplan identifies the city as "long known forces, each one characterised by the necessity of for .1ts commitment to human dignity and artistic excluding the other; the second phase is the violent 8 and, as its civic consciousness developed expulsion where each group gives the opposing one an ach1evement," ~ when faced w1th the Civil War, "folk elements became almost exclusive negative excremental character."83 Mir6 political."87 Indeed, Catalonia's nationalist consciousness was already imagining this situation in relation to his ~as pr~se~ved with its cultural life, from everyday homeland, in its exclusion and rejection of the opposing m.teract1on 1~ the plazas and cafes, to the folk culture groups as excrements of society. (ntuals, festivals, theatre, and dance), and these two

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Selina Sinisterra Celina Sinisterra elements created civic pride with a political content, which "helped Catalans survive the brutal repression of the revolution would therefore consist of the re-ordering and Franco years."88 The fight to retain a civil Catalan identity re-creation of the basic elements. And this was exactly used familiar symbols and practices, creating a common Mir6's approach in his Constellations (figure 6), where he symbolic language for all citizens in Barcelona. 89 With re-organised, with great sensibility, a microcosm of life much civic pride, Mir6 joined his fellow Catalan community and movement in space, condensing all that he loved most, in preserving their folk culture, and the symbol he found women, night, moon, stars, birds, dewdrops at dawn. The as being most rooted in his land, was the Catalan peasant Constellations are "a sublime expression of the spirit of and his identity. revolt, understood as unconstrained freedom, and of The female version of The Reaper is Woman's escape as transcendence of the external world, with its Head of 1938, where anger and frustration completely passing of human catastrophe."93 Breton wrote that Mir6, distort the character turning it into a violent, grotesque, at his moment of extreme anguish, let "the full range of and diabolical dream. The female attributes have suffered his voice" be heard, 94 and "he allows us to penetrate into a metamorphosis, transforming the woman into a beast­ the cosmic order with all that is involved in going beyond like creature, totally destroyed by the cruelty of war. our condition."95 Employing Bataille's parodic world of deceptive forms, this When the Germans entered into Paris, Mir6 sank work evidences the depths of Mir6's agony. into depression, as he felt that a victory of Nazism would destroy every reason for living, extinguishing any hope. Constellations The love of his soil had always reassured him, but the In "The Surrealist Revolution," Bataille admits that threat of its destruction led him to feel he was losing touch "Surrealism has given from the beginning a certain with reality, and he decided to escape the horrors of the consistency to the 'morality of revolt' and that its most war and seek refuge in the world of his imagination and important contribution is to have remained, in matters of "make hymns to the magic of the night and its creatures."96 morality, a revolution."90 However, he argued that the In 1940 he expressed, "I felt a deep desire to escape ... I Surrealists' revolution insisted on imposing values above closed within myself purposely... the night, music, and stars the world of facts. Indeed, in "The Old Mole and the Prefix began to play a major role in my paintings."97 He Sur," Bataille observed that, "instead of relying on presently communicated this mood with lyricism and sensibility, lower forms whose interplay will in the end destroy offering hopes of salvation in the intimacy of the night, bourgeois prisons, [the Surrealist] subversion seeks comforted by the reliable guide ofthe constellations. 98 Mir6 immediately to create its own values in order to oppose let his inspiration flow freely through the "uncharted established values,"91 and thus, he criticises Breton, channels of the subconscious,"99 allowing spontaneity and referring to him as "the old aesthete and false revolutionary chance to decide. his course. His Surrealist friends with the head of Christ... the Castrated lion."92 The effective discovered that Mir6 could enter the phenomenon of the night and bring out mysterious signs that reaffirmed the

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link between the conscious world and the unconscious dream. 10°For Mira, the night provided a spiritual freedom, atmosphere free from any gravitational force or escape from tyranny, and the possibility to unite solitude perspective, yet they are connected by a "system of filigree with universality. 101 The night's background is the starry tracery," that, according to the critic Laura Rosenstock sky, and since it is situated beyond our existential time Bret~n related to the idea of passage. 107 ln "The Labyrinth,': and space, we can only approach it in the imagination. Bata1lle wrote that "a man is only a particle inserted in an The stars have always been "reassuring to mankind: they unstable and untangled whole. Every isolable element of help him to orient, they accentuate his perception of his the universe always appears as a particle that can enter finite and ephemeral condition on earth ... help him ~nto a composition with a whole that transcends it... being understand the metaphysical dimension of the universe."102 IS only found as a whole composed of particles whose In his Story of the Eye, Bataille cites the universal value relative autonomy is maintained."108 One of the teachings ofthe symbol ofthe star, reflecting that, "if [he] were killed, of the influential thirteenth-century Catalan philosopher then the universe of [his] personal vision would certainly Ramon Llull was that every individual substance must be replaced by the pure stars, ... purely fulgurating with contain a replica of the universe, as a seed contains the their geometric incandescence, ... the coinciding point of totality of the being into which it will develop. 109 For Llull, life and death, being and nothingness."103 Furthermore, the passage from a microcosmic element to the greater he describes the convergence of stars as, "the milky way, cosmic universe should be, "from one place to another 110 that strange breach of astral sperm and heavenly urine without interval." Bataille shared this concept, as h~ across the cranial vault formed by the ring of ~tated, "in a general way, each element capable of being constellations: that open crack at the summit of the sky Isolated from the universe always appears like a particle ... bouncing back symmetrical images back to infinity."104 susceptible of entering into the constitution of a group 111 Mira's Constellations were published in a volume that transcends it." These particles are presented by where they appeared with twenty-two "proses paral/e/es" Mira through symbols and metaphors brought from both by Andre Breton, written between October and December the subconscious and the real world. 1958.105 Sometimes the elements in common between a symbol and its referent are obvious; while in others, the Mir6's Symbols and Syntax relationship is concealed and "the choice of the symbol is 112 Mira populated his cosmic landscape of the mind with small puzzling." 1n all cases, Mira's symbols attain universality organisms, birds, insects, people, and stars, in a and archetypal meaning and thus they come to belong to 113 constellated composition, where the disposition of the the collective unconscious. The signs employed by Mira motifs scattered in the space are governed by are calligraphic and ambiguous, resembling hieroglyphic imperceptible laws. 106 These geometric and biomorphic and alphabetical scripts, emotionally powerful due to the 114 forms of pure colour are floating in a luminous nocturnal eloquence of his lines. The creative act in Mira's work always presupposes a space initially empty, "awaiting for

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Selina Sinisterra Celina Sinisterra a cosmic impulse that will produce mutations and signs." The space holds the seeds of the forces of nature and Bataille's themes of concern, he had Breton's hopeful instinct that move animals and men (anger, exaltation, sex). attitude. However, Mira's proximity to Breton's hope is This process of creation makes one aware of a pre-rational perhaps indebted to Bataille. First, born out of the biological desire for truth and has its sources in instinct. Bataille's warnings against a blind obsession to ascend Mira uses this vocabulary to create a pure diaphanous to the summit and the sun, Mira ascends and escapes scheme that recalls the value of the sign and the symbol. 115 into the dreams and unconsciousness of the night. Mira's themes and symbols are unmistakable, but this Second, the artist is inspired by Bataille's respect for the originality did not isolate him from the art of his era. 116 In existence of myth as the society's only recourse after art, the Constellations, Mira not only purified his characteristic science, and politics fail humankind. Mira was always pictorial symbolism, but also discovered a new concept, dreaming of the myth of his Catalan peasant identity, and the a// over picture, which became a precursor for much thus he was saved from unhope. post-war abstract painting. 117 Mira's Constellations achieve purity, expressive strength and forcefulness, 118 with a rare intensity and economy of means which are never excessive. 119 Mira admitted that he "always [felt] the need to achieve the 120 1. Margit Rowell, "Joan Mir6: Campo-Stella," in Joan Mir6. maximum of intensity with a minimum of means," giving Campo de Estrellas, Exhibition Catalogue, Museo Nacional to his works a "timeless dimension, a sense of space open Centro deArte Reina Sofia. (Madrid: Museo Nacional Centro to the ethereal voyage of the spirit beyond the limits of de Arte Reina Sofia, 1993), 24. our material existence ... into a reality that exists in dreams 2. Andre Breton, What is Surrealism? (New York: Monad Press, and desires of the imagination,"121 within a hopeful night 1978), 122. that Mira conceived in a brilliant display of colour (not in 3. Whitney Chadwick, Myth in Surrealist Painting, 1929-1939 (Ann Arbor, Michigan: UMI Research Press, 1980), 3. darkness ). 122 4. Breton, What is Surrealism? 225. 5. Andre Breton, Le Surrealism et Ia Peinture (Paris: Gallimard, Conclusion 1965), 36-37. Patrick Waldberg wrote that "we could take Andre 6. Roland Penrose, Mir6 (London: Thames and Hudson Ltd., Breton and Georges Bataille as two poles of the surrealist 1985), 8. spirit... while Breton dreams of enchanted palaces ... and 7. Carolyn Lanchner, Joan Mir6 (New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 1993), 19. welcomes utopia and the 'paradise on earth' through 8. Carolyn Lanchner and Laura Rosenstock, eds. Four Modern Fourier's idea of history, ... Bataille, the black surrealist of Masters: de Chirico, Ernst, Magritte, and Mir6, Exhibition catastrophe, exalts in a mysticism of unhope."123 Mira Catalogue, Glenbow Museum, Calgary (New York: The reconciled the two poles. Although sharing most of Museum Of Modern Art, 1981 ), 98. 9. Quoted in Penrose, 44.

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10. Lanchner, 23. 11. Juan Perucho, Joan Mir6 y Catalw'ia (Barcelona: Ediciones Writings 1927-1939. (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Poligrafa), 88. Press, 1985). 12. Penrose, 15-16. 40. Bataille, Visions of Excess, 232. 13. Penrose, 16. 41. Chadwick, 19. 14. Penrose, 29. 42. Chadwick, 8. 15. Temma Kaplan, Red City, Blue Periods. Social Movements 43. Chadwick, 14. in Picasso's Barcelona (Berkeley, California: University of 44. Chadwick, 1. California Press, 1992), 37. 45. Chadwick, 107. 16. Kaplan, 38. 46. Chadwick, 97. 17. Perucho, 32. 47. Jose Marfa Faerna, ed., Mir6. (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 18. Lanchner, 19. Inc., Publishers, 1995), 17. 19. Margit Rowell, ed., Joan Mir6. Selected Writings and 48. Faerna, 5. Interviews (Boston: G. K. Hall & Co., 1986), 211. 49. Perucho, 18. 20. Penrose, 31. 50. Penrose, 38. 21. Penrose, 28. 51. Lanchner, Joan Mir6, 21. 22. Penrose, 46. 52. Penrose, 37-39. 23. Rowell, "Campo-Stella," 18. 53. Georges Bataille, Story of the Eye by Lord Auch. (New York: 24. J. H. Matthews, The Imagery of Surrealism (Syracuse, NY: Urizen Books, 1977), 68. Syracuse University Press, 1977), 10. 54. Lanchner, Joan Mir6, 24. 25. Matthews, 11. 55. Lanchner, Joan Mir6, 25. 26. Quoted in Rosalind E. Krauss, The Optical Unconscious 56. Rowell, Campo-Stella, 26. (Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press, 1993), 148. 57. Quoted in Rowell, Selected Writings and Interviews, 82. 27. Penrose, 34. 58. Rowell, Campo-Stella, 18. 28. Lanchner and Rosenstock, 100. 59. Freud, Sigmund. The Interpretation of Dreams. 29. Rowell, Campo-Stella, 14. (Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin Books Ltd., 1980), 69. 30. Lanchner and Rosenstock , 100. 60. Freud, 783. 31. Rowell, Campo-Stella, 30. 61. Freud, 467-468. 32. Penrose, 48-49. 62. Bataille, Visions of Excess, 83. 33. Penrose, 52. 63. Rowell, Campo-Stella, 24. 34. Lanchner, 53. 64. Quoted in Rowell, Selected Writings and Interviews, 265. 35. Chadwick, 51. 65. Georges Bataille, Inner Experience (Albany, NY: State 36. Rosalind E. Krauss, 'Michel, Bataille, et Moi, and I' in "Young University of New York Press, 1988), 89. at Art: Mir6 at 100" Art Forum (January 1994), 4. 66. Bataille, Visions of Excess, 20. 37. Georges Bataille, The Absence of Myth (London: Verso, 67. Lanchner, Joan Mir6, 56-57. 1994), 48. 68. Krauss, 'Michel, Bataille et moi, and I', 4. 38. Michael Richardson in Bataille, The Absence of Myth, 14. 69. Bataille, Visions of Excess, 82-84. 39. Allan Stoekl in Georges Bataille, Visions of Excess. Selected 70. Bataille, Visions of Excess, 42. 71. Bataille, Visions of Excess, 58.

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72. Bataille, Visions of Excess, 53. 73. Bataille, Visions of Excess, 172. 111. Bataille, Inner Experience, 85. 74. Lanchner, Four Modern Masters, 114. 112. Freud, 468-469. 75. Breton, What is Surrealism? 115. 113. Penrose, 195-200. 76. Perucho, 190-216. 114. Penrose, 109-112. 77. Penrose, 77. 115. Perucho, 114-126. 78. Quoted in Rowell, Selected Writings and Interviews, 292. 116. Faerna, 5. 79. Penrose, 80. 117. Faerna, 8. 118. Perucho, 246. 80. Bataille, Visions of Excess, 5. 119. Perucho, 144. 81. Penrose, 82. 120. Perucho, 238. 82. Bataille, The Absence of Myth, 180-181. 121. Penrose, 201. 83. Bataille, Visions of Excess, 100. 122. Penrose, 136. 84. Bataille, Visions of Excess, 138-139. 85. Penrose, 201. 123. Quoted by Michael Richardson in Introduction of Bataille, The Absence of Myth, 86. Kaplan, 1. 6. 87. Kaplan, 164. 88. Kaplan, 189-191. 89. Kaplan, 197. 90. Bataille, The Absence of Myth, 53. 91. Bataille, Visions of Excess, 33. 92. Bataille, The Absence of Myth, 28. 93. Lanchner, Joan Mir6, 70. 94. Quoted in Lanchner, Joan Mir6, 71. 95. Penrose, 102-105. 96. Rowell, Campo-Stella, 32. 97. Quoted in Lanchner, Four Modern Masters, 114. 98. Penrose, 106. 99. Penrose, 170. 100. Penrose, 181. 101. Penrose, 184-192. 102. Rowell, Campo-Stella, 14. 103. Bataille, Story of the Eye by, 38. 104. Bataille, Story of the Eye, 56-57. 105. Matthews, 250-251. 106. Rowell, Campo-Stella, 14. 107. Lanchner, Four Modern Masters, 116. 108. Bataille, Visions of Excess, 174. 109. Lanchner, Joan Mir6, 26. 110. Quoted in Lanchner, Joan Mir6, 27.

Contrapposto 2006 1 Joan Mir6, Harlequin's Carnival, 1924-1925, oil on canvas, 26 in. x 36 5/8 in. (66 em x 93 em). Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York (photograph provided by Albright-Knox Art Gallery, in Rowell, Margit, Joan Mir6. Campo de Estrellas. Madrid: Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, 1993, page 2 Joan Mir6, Painting, 1925, oil on canvas, 44 7/8 in. x 57 1/8 65) in. (114 em x 145.1 em). Mr. and Mrs. Morton G. Neumann, Chicago (photograph provided by owners, photo credit Michael Tropea, in Lanchner, Carolyn and Laura Rosenstock, eds. Four Modern Masters: de Chirico, Ernst, Magritte, and Mir6. New York: The Museum Of Modern Art, 1981, page 101)

44 45 3 Joan Mir6, Catalan Landscape (The Hunter), 1923-1924, oil on canvas, 25~ in. x 39~ in. (64.8 em x 100.3 em). The Museum of Modern Art, New York (photograph provided by the 4 Joan Mir6, Personnage Throwing a Stone at a Bird, 1926, oil Museum of Modern Art, New York, in Rowell, Margit, Joan Mir6. on canvas, 29 in. x 36% in. (73.7 em x 92.1 em). The Museum of Campo de Estrellas. Madrid: Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Modern Art, New York, purchase (photograph provided by Kate Reina Sofia, 1993, page 60) Keller, the Museum of Modern Art, in Lanchner, Carolyn. Joan Mir6. New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 1993, page 152)

46 47 6 Joan Mir6, The Ladder of Escape, 1940, gouache, watercolour, and ink on paper, 15% in. x 18% in. (40 em x 47.6 em). The Museum of Modern Art, New York, Helen Acheson 5 Joan Mir6. The Reaper, 1937, oil on celotex, 18ft v; in. x 11 Bequest (photograph provided by Kate Keller, the Museum of ft. 11 %in. (550 em x 365 em). Formerly on the pavilion of the Modern Art, New York, in Lanchner, Carolyn. Joan Mir6. New Spanish Republic at the Paris World's Fair, Paris, now lost York: The Museum of Modern Art, 1993, page 239) (photograph provided by Galerie Maeght, in Penrose, Roland, Mir6. London: Thames and Hudson Ltd., 1985. pg. 88)

48 49 Fouquet and the Absent Frame: Pictorial and Textual Relationships in the Hours of Etienne Chevalier

Nick Herman

The work of Jean Fouquet is in the midst of a critical re-evalu­ ation. Recent reappraisals of his work, instigated by mono­ graphic exhibitions held in 1981 and 2003, 1 have increased our knowledge of the artist by great strides. Even so, his biog­ raphy remains piecemeal and his few surviving works are hotly debated. The pith of these discussions concerns the sources of Fouquet's innovative images, which are situated at the junc­ tion of a trio of influences -Italian, Flemish, and natively French. Fouquet scholarship is problematic because the artist's ca­ reer is difficult to contextualize. Unlike his Flemish contempo­ raries, his work does not insert itself easily within an ongoing pictorial tradition, and the singularity of his surviving works makes them as enigmatic as they are valuable. Compared to the atmosphere in which his Italian peers were operating, there is precious little synchronous literary evidence relating to the artistic climate in fifteenth century France. The fact that Fouquet practiced both the art of the book and that of the panel also adds to the interest of his work. Furthermore, Fouquet's de­ velopment as a miniaturist seems far from linear, with his later works apparently displaying a certain regression, or at least a conscious re-evaluation, of his previous innovations. Nevertheless, endeavouring to reconstruct the artistic pathways of Fouquet's career is a worthy project. Tracing the origins of the various stylistic and iconographical influences employed by Fouquet is difficult, but can be of value if it is

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Nick Herman Nick Herman undertaken carefully, for it is clear that art historical scholar­ ship should serve to resurrect not only the most readily evi­ documented journey to Italy acquire considerable importance denced instances of creativity, but also those which, through when examining the artist's use of pictorial innovations hith­ lack of corroborating documentation, need to be surmised by erto unseen in France. In this vein, several further studies have other means. Unwritten networks of exchanges and ideas such focused on specific incidents of Italian ate influence in Fouquet's as these are a critical part of the humanistic record, and are work, using The Hours of Etienne Chevalier as starting point.6 all the more important when dealing with so poorly documented The most complete and successful survey of this kind was an artist as Fouquet. Traditional scholarship has, in examin­ undertaken by Mark Evans, who in his 1998 essay Jean ing his work, reached its own avowed limits, and new means Fouquet and Italy, recognized direct Italian prototypes for many of analyzing Fouquet's production have recently been brought of Fouquet's unusual or arcane stylistic elements. 7 The adop­ to the fore with some success.2 tion of the so-called "text placard," to use Evans' own termi­ Among the items that have long been securely attrib­ nology attributed in an earlier article of his to Fouquet's initial uted to Fouquet's hand are the forty-seven excised folios that training in France, is revealed as one of Fouquet's most novel once formed part of The Hours of Etienne Chevalier. Pro­ pictorial concepts. 8 duced between 1452 and 1460 for Man~chal Chevalier, the Evans identifies two principal models for the inclusion treasurer of Charles VII of France, these miniatures have taken of text within the miniature in Fouquet's work. The first, which their place at the core of the artist's oeuvre, and are recog­ has easily identifiable prototypes in earlier French illumina­ nized as some of the most innovative works of fifteenth cen­ tion, is characterized as relatively orthodox; in twenty-two of tury manuscript illumination.3 In this instance, Fouquet's origi­ the forty-seven full-page miniatures that survive from The Hours nality stems from his ability to create a cohesive pictorial space of Etienne Chevalier, Fouquet chose to include a small strip of within his miniatures; one that incorporates text, landscape, text running along the bottom edge of the illumination, con­ foliage and marginalia into a single unified composition. As tiguous to the image's border (figure 1). This was, by the 1450s, has been noted time and again, the very format of the book of a fairly common solution to the problem of integrating text into hours was conducive to experimentation since it was free from full-page miniatures. The Boucicaut Master, the Rohan Mas­ the constraints imposed on monumental painting. The Hours ter, and the Limbourg Brothers had each used a similar de­ of Etienne Chevalier is a case in point. vice earlier in the century. 9 The remaining twenty-five minia­ Previous to the recent monographic exhibitions, sev­ tures, however, demonstrate a highly innovative concern on eral scholars had attempted to explain more fully the sources behalf of Fouquet to integrate the initial and text within the of Fouquet's inventive spatial solutions, beginning with Otto content of the illustration itself. 10 In these instances, a Pacht's seminal discussion of the artist's style, published in historiated initial, along with several lines of text, is depicted 1941.4 John White and Charles Sterling, recognizing the de­ as an illusionistic placard existing within the rational pictorial gree to which the innovations introduced in the Hours of space of the miniature (figure 2). Within the picture, the three­ Etienne Chevalier betray cisalpine influences, each suggest dimensional tablet of text is always realistically supported, ei­ that these would not have been possible prior to the artist's ther by a topographical feature, small iron hooks, or caryatid stay in ltaly.5 Thus, the circumstances of Fouquet's sparsely figure s; it never floats unexplainedly before the picture plane. Where possible (Christ Before Pilate, The Entombment, The

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Consecration of Saint Nicholas), a shadow seemingly cast by the panel is depicted, further stressing its integration within the Virgin and Child from The Hours of Etienne Chevalier, ought the optical reality of the scene. Unfortunately, subsequent al­ to be viewed as a proclamation of the artist's confidence in his terations to these sections of the manuscript have obscured analogous, miniaturized composition, which predates the larger the original text, and, in some cases, the historiated initials, work. Fouquet's work as an illustrator of monumental histo­ but the figurative aspects of the illusionistic device survive in­ ries, however, was far different from these earlier, more inti­ tact. mate commissions. Proportionally, his share of the total work The originality of the spatial solutions arrived at in The in both the Grandes Chroniques and the twin-volumed Hours of Etienne Chevalier seems all the more remarkable Josephus was far lower than in his previous commissions, in­ when viewed in the context of what is presumed to be cluding, of course, his panel paintings. Accordingly, the former Fouquet's ensuing commissions, the miniatures of the Grandes were a less suitable platform for experimentation. The great Chroniques de France (BNF. FR. 6465), those of the double French-language histories were primarily textual monuments, volume of Josephus' Antiquites Judai"ques (BNF. FR. 247), and the Gallic equivalents of Virgil ian war epics, where there could La Guerre des Juifs (BNF. NAF. 21013), each of which has be no discussion of pictorial precedence. solicited lengthy debates regarding authorship. Images such Despite the changes apparent in his later work, as The Coronation of Louis VI from the Grandes Chroniques, Fouquet's intentions in The Hours of Etienne Chevalier re­ display a lack of one-point perspective in favour of a more main clear. In the second category of miniatures singled out multifocal view. Certain scholars, including Philippe Lorentz, by Evans, text is wholly subservient to image, and the devo­ have seen the variations in Fouquet's approach to perspec­ tional message of the prayer book evolves into a primarily vi­ tive evident in these later works as an indication of his chang­ sual one. Fouquet effectively introduced an entirely new con­ ing attitude towards Albertian perspective; that it was merely ception of the page in French manuscript illumination. The one of several possible conceptions of space. 11 Others have process of "depaginization", which arguably began over a cen­ posited that as the memories of his Italian sojourn faded, tury prior with the work of Jean Pucelle, had evolved to its Fouquet reverted to more traditional northern concepts of spa­ fullest potential by reducing the text to an epigraphical monu­ tiality.12 The more likely cause for discrepancies between each ment within the image. 13 Such was the case, not only with the of these three works, though, is their varying character and aforementioned text placard motifs, but also in the dedicatory differing circumstances of production. inscriptions that run along the architraves depicted in several The Hours of Etienne Chevalier was not a unique com­ of the miniatures (The Visitation, Etienne Chevalier Presented mission, as the remarkably similar and slightly ulterior Hours to The Virgin and Child, The Marriage of The Virgin). Thus, an of Jean Robertet (Pierpont Morgan Library, ms. M. 834) at­ item that previous generations of illuminators had relegated test, and there would have been no need to abandon the ap­ to marginal banderoles or textual colophons actually became parently successful spatial approach that had been devised. incorporated into the very image of biblical and celestial archi­ The Melun Diptych (Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten, tecture, further contributing to the synthesis of hitherto dispar­ Antwerp and Gemaldgalerie, Berlin), essentially a large-scale ate elements that individuates Fouquet's work in The Hours of version of the double-paged Etienne Chevalier Presented to Etienne Chevalier.

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These meta-textual motifs can be interpreted as pre­ 17 decessors of illusionistic devices used to similar ends in later placards. The first is a book of hours associated with the decades. They are in fact harbingers of what Victor Stoichita Boucicaut Master and his workshop, now at the Bibliotheque characterized as parergon, 14 illusionistic elements that are "nei­ Nation ale (lat. 10538), which contains a miniature of King David ther simply exterior nor simply within" the image, to borrow Praying to God the Father. Between the two principal sec­ from Jacques Derrida's definition of the literary term. 15 Re­ tions of the miniature, the block of text, clearly written by a gardless of superscribed terminology, the painter and his au­ separate artisan without giving thought to the illustrator's in­ dience were evidently pleased with the results of such cre­ tentions, is clumsily framed off. This approach to framing the ative subordination of the calligrapher's text. A closely subse­ text differs fundamentally from the text placards of Fouquet. quent commission, the aforementioned Hours of Jean The earlier master sought to isolate the block of text from the Robertet, made use of the same device. Soon emulated with surrounding image, and in doing so had no desire to include it a lesser level of understanding by members of Fouquet's work­ logically within the principal image. The text, clearly, is seen shop, the motif of the text placard became widespread in late as an impediment to the illustration, as evidenced by the awk­ fifteenth century French manuscript illumination. Examples ward semicircular extension of the frame in order to include directly inspired by Fouquet's models include books of hours the protruding serif from the q in quoniam. The second manu­ variously attributed to Jean Colombe and Jean Bourdichon, script cited by Evans is The Sobieski Hours, produced by the and the so-called Hours of Mary Stuart (Washington, private circle of the Bedford Master, and currently in the Royal Library collection and BNF. L. 1405), which was produced by Angevin at Windsor (figure 3). At first glance, the Last Judgment page illuminators. 16 In terms of its negation of the page as a plat­ that he discusses has closer parallels to Fouquet's work, form for two-dimensional texts, the text placard was essen­ though in this case as well the treatment of the text block is tially the direct precursor of pictorial inversions practiced by entirely different from what is found in The Hours of Etienne the Bruges-Ghent school of illumination in the final thirty years Chevalier. In The Sobieski Hours miniature, the figure s sur­ of the fifteenth century. Though Stoichita saw the Master of rounding the block of text ignore it completely and almost seem Mary of Burgundy himself as the instigator of such a tradition, to purposely avoid interacting with it. Compare this Last Judg­ in compartmentalizing the self-reflexive image as a fundamen­ ment to Fouquet's miniature of the Lamentation, in which two tally Flemish innovation he ignored its earlier, evidently French attendant angels each support the text placard with one hand prototypes. while brandishing instruments of the passion in the other. In Though its subsequent iterations can be chronicled this miniature, the textual block actually takes on an added readily, the origins of such a highly creative model of text inte­ level of significance, since it is interpreted as an additional gration within the pictorial field are difficult to trace. Evans' instrument of the passion, a duplicate lid of Christ's tomb. Unlike short article in Scriptorium attempts to locate the sources of the earlier Parisian examples, Fouquet's spatial constructions Fouquet's innovate illusionistic device in the production of the and the relationships between the various planes in his im­ 18 Bedford and Boucicaut master workshops active in Paris in ages, were always deliberate, never accidental or forced. the 1420s and 1430s. The author cites two specific manu­ This rational physical space, a distinguishing feature of scripts that seem to contain a precedent for Fouquet's text Fouquet's earliest miniatures, was accompanied by a cohe­ sive narrative structure that continued not only between vari-

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~us miniatures, but within each miniature as well, as the par­ cernible grandeur of Eugenius the fourth's Rome. Both Ro­ ticular case of the Lamentation attests. Just as the underlying man and early Renaissance architectural forms, juxtaposed geometry of his images was always carefully planned, so too wit~ late Gothic elements, make their appearance in The Hours were their various iconographical elements. of Etienne Chevalier, thirty years before the new Italian style Such an approach recalls Panofsky's observations re­ became actualized in structures north of the alps. garding Van Eyck's work and the increase in disguised sym­ Recently, Alexander Nagel and Christopher Wood have bolism that accompanied the illusionistic revolution of the fif­ challenged the integrity of Panofsky's concept of historicity,20 teenth century. 19 As the Albertian notion of the image as win­ but in a certain sense Fouquet's work provides an exception dow flourished, embraced by both Flemish and Italian paint­ to their findings. In various miniatures, such as the Presenta­ ers alike, it became necessary to eliminate iconographical el­ tion of Etienne Chevalier to the Virgin and Child and the Foun­ ements that did not corroborate a parallel temporal rationality. tain of the Apostles (figure 5), anachronisms are indeed cre­ In this sense, Fouquet's bas-de-pages are entirely different ated by the presence of two competing architectural styles, from those of his predecessors, not only in terms of their inte­ but have definite symbolic meaning. In the latter, the font from gration into the spatial structure of the miniature, but also by which the Apostles draw baptismal water is late gothic in style their subject matter. Only events that could plausibly be con­ while the architectural backdrop for the scene is classical in current with the principal scene are depicted as actually tak­ flavour. The chief sacrament of the new covenant, baptism, ing place in the lower part of the page. Such is the case with flows from the Gothic, the most genuine of Christian architec­ the parables ofthe blacksmith's wife and the carpenters, shown tural styles. The same is true of the Virgin's throne in the pre­ below the scenes of Christ Before Pilate and The Carrying of sentation miniature; its gothic qualities enforce Mary and the the Cross (figure 4 ), respectively. Other symbolic episodes that Christ child's status as emblems of the new covenant. The occurred at markedly different times are depicted as bas-re­ most overt example of the painter's historical lucidity, how­ ~iefs, either carved in stone or cast in bronze, effectively serv­ ever, occurs in the miniature of the Marriage of the Virgin, mg as sculptural mementoes or premonitors of important where the temple of Solomon is depicted in the guise of a events. Roman triumphal arch. His addition oftorquated columns and The disguised symbolism in Fouquet's work, and its an inner cella, however, implies an exoticism that would be concordance with Panofsky's hypothesis, becomes all the more appropriate to such a structure. Thus, the ancient architecture apparent when the artist's "historicazation" of architecture is of Rome, suitably modified, is equated with the ancient archi­ examined. Like Van Eyck, Fouquet was able to consider ar­ tecture of the Holy Land. Such an approach implies knowl­ chitectural styles with a greater degree of objectivity than had edge not just of variations in style, but also of variations in been done in the past. This ability to distinguish precise gra­ age. These observations, which deserve to be treated at dations in history through the filter of building styles is, in greater length elsewhere, are for the moment only of interest Panofsky's view, a distinguishing element of Renaissance inasmuch as they relate to Fouquet's sense of historical ap­ thought. In the case of the French painter, this keen sense of propriateness as a logical concomitant of his efforts to achieve historicity was likely engendered by his visit to the cantieri of perspectival verisimilitude. early Renaissance Florence, and the diminished but still dis-

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The tendency to integrate text creatively within the il­ lustration was the natural product of the tension between word when Fouquet arrived there in the mid 1440s.22 Leon Battista and image that had always existed in illustrated books of hours. Alberti, the Florentine architect, had published his treatise On In the particular case of The Hours of Etienne Chevalier, it Painting in 1436, a work that championed the emancipation of seems as though Fouquet, whom we know had achieved suf­ the painter from the status of an artisan towards that of a cre­ ficient fame in his lifetime to warrant the insertion of his minia­ ative, original individual. Under the influence of Alberti's publi­ tures into already complete books of hours, wished to exer­ cation and the work of artists such as Ghiberti and Brunelleschi, cise total artistic control over the pages he was responsible the use of scientific perspective was becoming widespread in for creating. Such was the case with another, concurrent com­ Tuscany. Fouquet's well thought-out sense of mass and pro­ mission that Fouquet undertook around 1455 - his tipped-in portion, together with the rational physical spaces that his char­ additions to The Hours of Simon de Varye. In this instance, acters inhabit, all undeniably indicate encounters with the work the three folios painted by Fouquet were left entirely free of of Tuscan contemporaries such as Masolino, Masaccio, and, text, allowing his pictorial compositions to cover the entire page. most importantly, Fra Angelico together with his pupil Benozzo A similar approach was taken in The Hours of Etienne Cheva­ Gozzoli. 23 lier, where the artisans responsible for the remainder of the The precious mention of Fouquet's name in the work book's rather orthodox batarde text and foliate borders left the of another influential Italian architect, Antonio Filarete's Trea­ pages intended for Fouquet blank. The varying size and place­ tise on Architecture, confirms that he was active in Rome as ment of the text placards in The Hours of Etienne Chevalier, well, and furthermore that he was well-respected enough to and their deviation in style from the plain text pages, demon­ paint a portrait, now lost, of Pope Eugenius IV. 24 Evidently, strate that they were not first written by a scribe and then trans­ Fouquet was able to insert himself into the predominant artis­ ferred over to the illustrator, as had been the case with earlier tic currents of the day, even as a newcomer in a distant land. books of hours. 21 Both the strips of text and, more significantly, It is interesting to note, moreover, that Filarete, writing in the the illusionistic placards that appear in Fouquet's images were mid-1460s, was among the first to codify the distinction in ar­ added during the painterly process, entirely under his direc­ chitecture between the maniera antica of the Romans and the tion, as they correspond tightly to his artistic vision. This inter­ maniera moderna, by which he meant gothic. Such a pretation fits well within our knowledge of Fouquet as a preco­ historicizing approach, we have seen, is a hallmark of the min­ ciously self-aware creative individual; the same man who in­ iatures Fouquet produced for The Hours of Etienne Cheva­ cluded an enamel self-portrait medallion in the frame of his lier. now dismembered Melun Diptych, itself a product of Etienne Evans keenly points out several direct linkages between Chevalier's patronage. Roman art and the works of Fouquet as a history painter, no­ If Fouquet's innovative solutions for incorporating text tably in his depiction of Caesar crossing The Rubicon from into the fabric of his images are bound up with his sense of the Histoire Ancienne, now in the graphic arts collection of the artistic self-reflexivity, then it would seem appropriate to look Louvre (RF 29493), which recalls almost exactly figure s of to Italy for explanation. In Italy the status of the artist as an Bacchus found in Late Imperial sarcophagi.25 In terms of ar­ independent creative entity had been evolving for some time chitecture, Fouquet is even more explicit in his allusions to Rome. His illustration of The Coronation of Charlemagne takes

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Nick Herman Nick Herman place in a perfectly accurate rendition of the interior of Old Saint Peter's basilica.26 These sorts of historicizing references own unquestionable skill as a conscious synthesizer of nu­ present in Fouquet's later work serve to confirm his ongoing merous predominant European artistic currents. More convinc­ use of motifs gleaned from his Italian journey, and tend to ing than these direct linkages, though, should be the notion disprove the notion that such experiences faded progressively that Fouquet's innovative concept of manuscript illustration, from the miniaturist's artistic vocabulary as he grew older. and his consequent reordering of traditional workshop prac­ Of a more intimate nature than his large scale Histo­ tice, were the products of his cisalpine experiences. It is pre­ ries, the decorative program devised for Etienne Chevalier was cisely for this reason that Fouquet's work in subsequent secu­ subtle and refined, as would befit the private tastes of such an lar volumes, which were proportionally far less under his con­ educated patron. Consequently, the stylistic references to Ital­ trol, do not exhibit such traits. If anything, the pictorial oddity ian art are less monumental but more generally diffused. The identified by Evans in both the Parisian books of hours he putti and grotesques that literally prop up the text placards in proposes as prototypes for Fouquet's work signals the grow­ several of the miniatures are doubtless a pictorial adaptation ing dominance of the miniaturist, struggling to find painterly of contemporary trends in Florentine sculpture, for they enjoy solutions whilst being held back by conservative workshop no precedent in Northern painting. The source for these cary­ practices that maintained the division of labour between scribe atid figure s may have been the sarcophagus of Giovanni de' and illustrator. Fouquet's importance, therefore, lay in his abil­ Medici in the Old Sacristy of San Lorenzo in Florence, a work ity to seek out a novel solution to a problem that had existed in of around 1434 that had been attributed to Brunelleschi's as­ French manuscript illumination for some time by invoking the sistant II Buggiano (figure 6)_27 In fact, a work such as this, experiences of his unique Italian journey. itself drawing on Roman funerary monuments, may have been the prime example for Fouquet's text placard innovation. A further Florentine source may be detected in Fra Angelico's trompe l'oeil painting of a crucifix panel in his San Marco altar­ piece, completed in the early 1440s, and no doubt seen by See, for the 1981 exhibition held at the Louvre: Nicole Fouquet himself.28 Essentially, Fra Angelico's illusionistically Reynaud, Jean Fouquet: Catalogue (Paris: Editions de Ia rendered devotional panel serves as a parergon to the sacra Reunion des musees nationaux, 1981 ), and, for the 2003 conversazione, a sort of intermediate break between the main exhibition held at the Bibliotheque Nationale: Fran~;ois Avril, image and its audience. The conceptual and pictorial leap in­ ed. Jean Fouquet: Peintre et enlumineur du xveme siec/e (Paris: BNF/Hazan, 2003). volved in using the devotional text placard as a parergon for 2 Nicole Reynaud, "Image et texte dans les Heures d'Etienne miniatures of the Passion is not a large one. Chevalier," 64-69, and Marie-Therese Gousset, "Fouquet et Based on the manifold connections to Italian art l'art de geometrie," 76-86, both in Jean Fouquet: Peintre et throughout The Hours of Etienne Chevalier many scholars enlumineur du xveme siecle, ed. Fran~;ois Avril (Paris: BNF/ have pointed out that it seems most convincing to attribute Hazan, 2003). Fouquet's illusionistic rendering of text within the pictorial space 3 Millard Meiss, French Painting in The Time of Jean de Berry: of his miniatures to his Italian experiences, coupled with his The Late Fourteenth Century and The Patronage of The Duke (London: Phaidon, 1967), 144-5, and: Charles Sterling and

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Claude Schaefer, The Hours of Etienne Chevalier (London: Thames and Hudson, 1972), 8. 13 By citing Jean Pucelle, I make reference to his continuation 4 Otto Pacht, "Jean Fouquet: A Study of His Style," Journal of of the principal narrative by means of allegorical bas-de­ the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes IV (1940-1 ): 85-102. page illustrations in The Hours of Jeanne d'Evreux and the 5 John White, The Birth and Rebirth of Pictorial Space (New Belleville Breviary, but also his innovative removal of frames York: Harper and Row, 1967), 225. Sterling and Schaefer, 8. surrounding certain scenes, such as the Crucifixion and 6 See Michel Laclotte, "A propos de Fouquet: des putti et un Annunciation in The Hours of Jeanne d'Evreux. I do not, boeuf," in Napoli, /'Europa: Richerche di Storia deii'Arte in however, mean to imply that Fouquet's innovations were onore di Ferdinanda Bologna, eds. Francesco Abbate and necessarily contingent upon those of Pucelle. Rather, both Fiorella Sricchia Santoro (Cantazaro: Meridiana, 1995), 95- painters, faced with similar challenges, arrived at related 100, and; Fiorella Sricchia Santoro, "Jean Fouquet en ltalie," conclusions. in Jean Fouquet: Peintre et enlumineur du xveme siecle, ed. 14 Victor Stoichita, L'instauration du tableau: Metapeinture a Franc;:ois Avril (Paris: BNF/Hazan, 2003), 50-63. Santoro's J'aube des Temps modernes (Paris: Meridiens Klincksieck, survey deals more particularly with supposed evidence of 1993), 23. Fouquet's activity in Italy, as opposed to he Italian influences 15 Jacques Derrida, La Verite en Peinture (Paris: Flammarion, in his French work. 1978), 63. Likewise quoted in Stoichita, 24. 7 Mark L. Evans, "Jean Fouquet and Italy:' ... buono maestro, 16 Avril, ed., 402-407. maxime a ritrare del naturale"' in Illuminating The Book: 17 Evans, "An Illusionistic Device," 81. Makers and Interpreters, Essays in Honour of Janet 18 Gousset, 77. Backhouse, eds. Michelle P. Brown and Scot McKendrick 19 Erwin Panofsky, Early Netherlandish Painting (New York: (London: British Library, 1998), 163-90. Harper and Row, 1953), 131-148. 8 Mark L. Evans, "An Illusionistic Device in the Hours of Etienne 20 Alexander Nagel and Christopher S. Wood, "Interventions: Chevalier," Scriptorium (1981 ): 81-3. Toward a New Model of Renaissance Anachronism," Art 9 Evans, 81. Specifically, The Boucicaut Hours, The Rohan Bulletin LXXXVII no. 3 (September 2005), 403-415. Hours, and The Tres Riches Heures de Jean, Due de Berry 21 Jonathan Alexander, Medieval /1/uminators and Their Methods all make use of a similar type of textual border. For a more of Work (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992), 40. detailed study of the subject, see David Byrne, "Manuscript 22 Evans, "Jean Fouquet and Italy," 169. Ruling and Pictorial Design in the Work of the Limbourgs, 23 Sricchia Santoro, 54. the Bedford Master, and the Boucicaut Master," Art Bulletin 24 AntonioAverlino, called Filarete, Trattato diArchitettura, eds. 66 (1984), 118-36. A. M. Finoli and L. Grassi (Milan: Edizioni il Polifio, 1972), 10 The twenty-one miniatures that sport text placards are, as 265. numbered in Sterling and Schaefer: 1, 14, 15, 16, 19, 20, 25 Evans, "Jean Fouquet and Italy," 175. 28,29,30,31,32,33,34,36,37,38,40,41,42,44,and45. 26 Avril ed., 219. 11 Philippe Lorenz, "Jean Fouquet et les peintres des anciens 27 Evans, "Jean Fouquet and Italy," 17 4. Pays-Bas," in Jean Fouquet: Peintre et enlumineur du xveme 28 Evans, 172. siecle, ed. Franc;:ois Avril (Paris: BNF/Hazan, 2003), 41. 12 White, 226.

Contrapposto 2006 1 Fouquet, Jean, The Ascension, Hours of Etienne Chevalier, 1452-1469, tempera and gold leaf on parchment, 19.4 x 14.6 2 Fouquet, Jean, The Lamentation, Hours of Etienne em, Robert Lehman Collection, 1975 (1975.1.2490) (photo: Chevalier, 1452-1469, tempera and gold leaf on Frangois Avril, ed. Jean Fouquet: Peintre et enlumineur du parchment, 19.4 x 14.6 em, Robert Lehman Collection, xveme siecle (Paris: BNF/Hazan, 2003)) 1975 (1975.1.2490) (photo: Frangois Avril, ed. Jean Fouquet: Peintre et enlumineur du xveme siecle (Paris: BNF/Hazan, 2003))

66 67 3 The Last Judgment, The Sobieski Hours, 1420-1425, tempera and gold leaf on parchment,28.9 x 20 x 6.5 em, Windsor, Royal 4 Fouquet, Jean, The Carrying of the Cross, Hours of Library (RCIN 1142248) (photo: Mark L. Evans, "An Illusionistic Etienne Chevalier, 1452-1469, tempera and gold leaf on Device in the Hours of Etienne Chevalier," Scriptorium (1981): 81- parchment, 19.4 x 14.6 em, Robert Lehman Collection, 83) 1975 (1975.1.2490) (photo: Franc;ois Avril, -~d. Jean. Fouquet: Peintre et enlumineur du xveme s1ecle (Pans: BNF/Hazan, 2003))

68 69 6 Attributed to II Buggiano, Sarcophagus of Giovanni de' Medici, c. 1430, marble, Florence, San Lorenzo (source: Mark L. Evans, "Jean Fouquet and Italy: ' ... buono maestro, maxi me a ritrare del naturale"' in Illuminating The Book: Makers and Interpreters, Essays in Honour of Janet Backhouse, eds. Michelle P. Brown and Scot McKendrick (London: British Library, 1998), 163-90) 5 Fouquet, Jean, The Fountain of the Apostles, Hours of Etienne Chevalier 1452-1469, tempera and gold leaf on parchment, 19.4 x 14.6 em, Robert Lehman Collection, 1975 (1975.1.2490) (photo: Franc;:ois Avril, ed. Jean Fouquet: Peintre et enlumineur du xveme siecle (Paris: BNF/Hazan, 2003))

70 71 Alfredo Lam's Uncatalogued Oil on Paper: An Examination of its Surrealist Influences

AdyGruner

There exists an un-catalogued oil on paper painting by the Cuban artist Wifredo Lam (figure 1 ). Stylistic and iconographic traits show that this undated work was likely painted during the year, 1942. The image of a horse, which is the primary icon of this work, was first painted by Lam in 1940, and ap­ peared frequently in his work of the 1940's, 50's and 60's. However, the distinctive features of these animals varied greatly as time elapsed, creating clearly defined groups of traits that can be associated with the horses of certain decades, epoques, and even specific years. The features of the horse in this un-catalogued work bear closest relation to those of the ones painted during 1942. The style of nostril definition found in the horse of is a perfect example of this, because it clearly conforms to the others of this year. Their nostrils tended to be shaped like circles, semicircles, ellipses, or a variation of these two-dimensional forms, and had a minimum of one in­ complete ring enclosing the area above each nostril. This characteristic can be observed in L'Homme a Ia vague, Les Yeux de Ia grille, Symboise, and L'Escalier (figure 2), all of which are horse-like figures painted by Lam in 1942 . The nostrils of later horses are much simpler in nature, and usu­ ally consist of small dots, tiny semicircles, short, thin lines, and sometimes are even inexistent. Femme Cheval of 1950, Le Cheval of 194 7 (figure 3), and Sans Titre of 1970 are clear

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Ady Gruner Ady Gruner examples of this trend in Lam's work. It is evident from the examples that the horse in the un-catalogued work is most this one in regards to the similarity of colours. For example, similar to those of 1942. L'Esca/ier, Sans Titre, Sans Titre, Bien appuye (figure 6), and There is a significant change in the style of lines used Desnudo en blanco, all from 1942, use the same shades of in Lam paintings that precede 1943 and 1944 to the ones pink and orange as those found in the un-catalogued work. utilized in the years around and shortly after this time. The The colour trends of other years clearly differ from the ones thick, rough lines depicting the figures in the un-catalogued mentioned above. An example of this is the brown domina­ work bear greatest resemblance to those drawn before 1943 tion seen in Lam's work of the 1960's and early 1970's, such and 1944, as the later ones become much narrower and more as Sans Titre of 1973 and A Ia fin de Ia nuit [Le lever du jour] ~h~rply defined. Although a few exceptions do exist, this sty­ of 1969. The deduced date of the un-catalogued painting listic change can be easily observed upon comparing the line continues to be 1942, as the colour schemes with closest re­ style in works painted before 1943, such as Femme Gauche lation to this work tend to come from that year, of 1940 (figure 4) and Nue sur Chase of 1942, to the more This un-catalogued oil on paper by Lam is a clear mani­ distinct thinner lines of later works such as Jnitiaion of 1945 festation of the Surrealist values instilled in the artist shortly and Umbra/ of 1950 (figure 5). The undoubted similarity of before the inferred time at which the work was painted. It is Lam's pre-1943 and 1944 lines to those of the un-catalogued apparent, upon observing this work, that Lam allowed his clas­ painting further validates its hypothetical date of 1942. sification as an exotic painter of Negritude to be glorified, he The colours utilized in this un-catalogued work are more explored Afro-Cuban voodoo rituals, and used vast amounts similar in nature to the ones in Lam's paintings from the early of metamorphic imagery in his oeuvre, all actions that prove 1940's than to those in works of other periods. The most promi­ his Surrealist influences. nently used colours in this composition are the earthy pink The imagery in this painting is reflective of Lam's con­ making up the background and the yellowed orange compris­ nection to the Negritude movement, as claimed by the Surre­ ing the majority of the horse's body, as well as the mysterious alists. Negritude started out in the early twentieth century as double-eyed creature on its back. The remaining fragments a literary movement among dark-skinned of African descent of the horse and creature are filled in with either a brownish who had assimilated into European Culture. Many proponents green, forest green, or red. These additional colours are of of this group received high levels of education in Western Eu­ striking difference to the pink and orange which make up the rope, especially in France, and embraced the local theories bulk of the painting, and when observed from a distance their that declared equality among individuals, even though they primary function appears to be the enhancement of the fig­ were never actually realized. Essentially, it was in the context ure-defining borders created by the black lines that depict the of this western thought that the fundamentals of Negritude composition. The pink and orange are of a similar palette to were established. For example, the social acceptance of Afri­ the ones composing many of Lam's paintings from the early can customs that resulted from European scholarship was what 1940's, of which an overwhelming number are from the year had allowed the 'blacks' to recoup the practice of their culture. 1942. Although later examples of works employing these Similar to the Surrealists, affiliates of the Negritude movement colours do exist, the paintings of no other year compare to were in search of an authentic, contemporary black-African art. They thought that "primitive" cultures produced art in its

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Ady Gruner Ady Gruner purest form, because it was not a product of European hypoc­ risy or the technically oriented traditions of art academies. Lam, people during the time that they were living under colonialist who was born in Cuba, had a mixture of Chinese and African oppression. The fact that these writings compared colonialist forebears, had conventional academic training in Spain, and life to castration sparked the interest of the Surrealists, caus­ moved to Paris with anti-colonialist ideas that resulted from ing them to look at African art as though it had some intellec­ having fought in the Spanish civil war. Thus, he fit into the tual similarities to their own. Breton thought that Lam, whom broad spectrum of what characterized members of the he regarded as a Negritude artist, possessed a form of inspi­ Negritude movement. This label became attached to him upon ration that light-skinned Europeans were unable to access, his arrival in Paris in 1938, when his newly found friend, Pablo further demonstrating the intrigue imposed upon him by Picasso, introduced him to numerous artists of the Parisian Negritude. This likely would have inspired Lam to familiarize avant-garde. The Surrealists, including Andre Breton who himself with African art, even if he had not previously felt a defined the movement's paradigms, became extremely inter­ strong connection to it. It is necessary to keep this in mind ested in Lam's work not only because of the fact that he was when considering the connection between the un-catalogued a friend of Picasso (who they wanted to claim as a Surrealist oil on paper and the Negritude movement. but he never accepted), but also because he appeared "ex­ It is important to place the work in the context of Lam's otic" to them. It was this "exoticism" that caused the Surreal­ life in 1942. The previous year, he had returned to his home­ ists to perceive him as an artist of Negritude. In their eyes the land of Cuba for the first time in eighteen years. However, his work of any foreign artist with dark skin and African ancestry, journey home from Nazi-Europe was not a direct one. Lam's no matter how distant, had to have been influenced by the trip back to Cuba was interrupted by a stop in Marseille that oppression experienced by people of colour in both France lasted nearly a year, and another in Martinique that lasted sev­ and Africa. Since Lam never lived in Africa, his experience eral months. Breton and other Surrealists took the same es­ was markedly different from those of the men of colour that cape route as Lam, when fleeing the Nazis' persecution of did. Europe's artists and racial minorities. As a result, Lam spent There exists great likelihood that Lam's images of horses, such about a year and a half (Aug. 1940 to late 1941) living among as the one found in the un-catalogued painting, were created Surrealist artists prior to returning to Cuba, meaning that his a result of the Surrealists' influence that caused him to look at mind was likely saturated with their ideas and interpretations African tribal sculpture. During the late 1930's and early 1940's, of his work. Any evidence of African values in the un-cata­ the Surrealists were intrigued by African, Negritude art for a logued work, which according to inference was painted shortly variety of reasons. Among them was the parallel that they after his arrival in Cuba, must therefore have been affected by thought existed between the concept of castration-fear that the Surrealists' consideration of Lam as an artist of the stemmed from Freud's theory of the Oedipus complex. Freud­ Negritude movement. ian psychoanalysis and the unconscious mind were important The horse-like figure, which is the primary image in the staples of Surrealist thought and French colonialist ideology work in question, is a perfect example of this. African art com­ in Africa. Potency was a common image of Negritude poems, monly depicted images that resembled animals used in ev­ which were meant to strengthen the spirits of dark-skinned eryday tasks and rituals, such as horses, donkeys, and birds, which consequently would have also been common images

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Ady Gruner Ady Gruner of Negritude art. Since the horse is a typical image of Negritude The un-catalogued oil on paper is an ideal example of art, it is arguable that its presence allowed the Surrealist idea the influence Santeria had on Lam's work during the year when of Lam being an artist of Negritude to perpetuate. he returned home to Cuba. Animals, especially mammals, Upon his return to Cuba at the end of 1941, Lam be­ played an extremely important role in Santeria, because they gan to investigate Afro-Cuban voodoo rituals. He immersed were needed in order to perform the sacrificial rituals of the himself in the ritualistic practices of Santeria, a syncretistic religion. The ceremonial process included collecting the blood voodoo religion that was brought to the Caribbean by African of the animal and offering it to the Orishas. This act was thought slaves who had been imported to work in sugar plantations. to please the Orishas, thus bringing good luck, purification, These slaves were denied the observance of their native reli­ and forgiveness of sins. Not only is there an animal depicted gion, and therefore created a method of disguising it within a in this work, but it also happens to be a mammal with a crea­ forged practice of Catholicism. They did this by equating each ture on top of it that appears as though he could either be Orisha, or head guardian, of their own religion with a Catholic performing a sacrifice, or he could be the Orisha to ~hom the saint, and thus managed to pray to their own deities without animal's blood, which could possibly be the red stnpe at the being caught. It is for this reason that the religion took on the bottom of the horse, is being given. This is a clear illustrator name Santeria, which in Spanish means "the way of the saints". of Lam's connection to Santeria. The slaves were able to preserve their true religion by mask­ The fact that Lam was drawn to Santeria, which is the ing it in such a clever way. form of Afro-Cuban voodoo that likely bears the closest rela­ There are components of Santeria rituals that bear tionship to Surrealist thought, did not happen by coincidence. great similarity to practices observed by the Surrealists. The It is extremely probable that it happened as a result of Breton's slaves of Santeria carried a religious tradition that involved influence on Lam during the time they were in Marseille and communicating with ancestors and deities by way of offering Martinique. In an interview, Breton was asked which sciences animal sacrifices and performing sacred drumming and he thought influenced avant-garde artists. He said that Wassily dances, all while in a trance-like states. In Breton's First Sur­ Kandinsky was influenced by metaphysics, Hans Arp by realist Manifesto of 1924, Surrealism is defined as a "Pure embryogenetics, Rene Magritte by optics, Jacques H~rold by psychic automatism by which it is intended to express, either mineralogy, Marie Toyen by cynegetics, Giorgio de Chirico by verbally or in writing, the true function of thought. Thought antiquity, Leonora Carrington by alchemy, and Lam by voo­ dictated in the absence of all control exerted by reason, and doo. This is a strong statement, especially since it was made outside aesthetic or moral preoccupations." This description by the intellectual who defined surrealism and impacted the is extremely similar to that of a trance, which the Oxford dictio­ work of many artists. The fact that Lam's godmother, whom nary defines as a "sleeplike, half-conscious state" or a "state he knew his entire life, was a priestess of Santeria, and that without response to stimuli". Both are states in which the con­ he did not bother to investigate this religion until after having scious mind has no control over the body's actions, resulting been influenced by Breton and other Surrealists, proves that in a condition which allows the observers of Santeria to con­ the links to Afro-Cuban voodoo in his work of 1942 is a result tact deities and ancestors, and enables artists to produce truly of this influence. Surrealist work. Another change in Lam's work after having met and

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Ady Gruner Ady Gruner

co-habited with the Surrealists, was that the images in his work Santena, and references to Negntude art, as seen m W1fredo became more metamorphic. His work shows evidence of a Lam's un-catalogued oil on paper, which is inferred to have greater transformation and transfiguration of shapes, which been painted in 1942. was a common trait of many surrealist artists. For example, Lam's Femme Gauche of 1940 (Figure 4) depicts a woman in a much more literal style than does Bien appuye of 1942 (Fig­ Lou Laurin-Lam, Wifredo Lam: Catalogue Raisonne of the ure 6), where the woman's head has morphed into that of a Painted Work (Lausanne; Paris: Acatos, 1996) 292-320. See also Geri Trotta, "Wifredo Lam Paints a Picture: The Horse," horse. It is curious that this change begins to happen at a ARTnews 49 (1950): 51. time just preceding Lam's journey with the Surrealists when 2 Laurin-Lam, 292-320. they escaped from Europe. The most likely explanation is 3 Robert Linsley, "Wifredo Lam: Painter of Negritude," Art that the appearance of metamorphic images in Lam's work History 11 (1988): 527. around the year 1941 can be attributed to influence of the 4 Linsley, 527. Surrealists in Marseille and Martinique. 5 Linsley, 527. While in Marseille, Lam took part in Surrealist games 6 Matthew Gale, Dada and Surrealism (New York; London: that were organized by Andre Breton. These games, which Phaidon, 1997) 50-52. included 'the Game of Truth,' 'the Exquisite Corpse,' and au­ 7 Linsley, 530. tomatic writing, were meant to penetrate the unconscious mind 8 Michelle Greet, "Inventing Wifredo Lam: The Parisian Avant­ Garde's Primitivist Fixation," Invisible Culture: An Electronic and abolish self-censorship. After having viewed the work Journal for Visual Culture 5 (2003) June 2005. chose him to illustrate his poem, Fata Morgana. In the draw­ 9 Andre Breton, "First Surrealist Manifesto" in Le Manifeste ings for this poem, Lam made the iconographic transitions that du Surrealisme, 1924, ed. rpt. in Surrealism, ed. Patrick led to the development of his signature style of painting and Waldberg (London: Thames and Hudson, 1997) 66-72. imagery. It was in the company of the Marseille Surrealists 10 Linsley, 536-537. that Lam began to experiment with metamorphic images such 11 Linsley, 536-537. as hybrid creatures with features of several different animals, 12 Linsley, 536-537, 539. animals with human sex-organs, and human beings with the 13 Linsley, 538. heads of horses and other animals. The images of a distorted 14 Laure Meyer, Black Africa (Paris: Edicions Pierre Terrail, 2003) 22, 67. horse, peculiar creature and unidentifiable matter surround­ 15 Mary Ann Clarke, Santeria, Rice University, 2000, revised ing them, as shown in his un-catalogued oil on paper of 1942, 2000, June 2005. is a clear manifestation of the Surrealists' influence on Lam to 16 Clarke, . create metamorphic images in his work. 17 B.A. Robinson, Santeria, A Syncretistic Caribbean Religion, In conclusion, Lam was profoundly influenced by the Ontario Consultants on Religious Tolerance, 1995, revised Surrealists during the time he spent with them in Marseille 2005 June and Martinique, from August of 1940 through to the end of 2005. 1941. This influence is made evident through the use of meta­ 18 Robinson, . morphic imagery, links to the Afro-Cuban voodoo religion of

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Ady Gruner

19 Breton, 66-72. 20 J. B. Sykes, The Oxford Concise Dictionary of Current English, 6th ed. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1976) 1231. 21 Robinson. 22 Greet. 23 Anonymous," Art of the 2oth Century" The Art Millennium, 1999, revised 1999 June 2005. 24 Greet, . 25 Greet, . 26 Greet, . 27 Greet, . 28 Laurin-Lam, 292-330.

1 Wifredo Lam, Untitled, c.1942. Oil on paper, 13 x 19in., 33 x 48cm. Gruner Collection, Toronto.

83 Contrapposto ~. 3 Wifredo Lam, Le Cheval, 1947. Oil on canvas, 125 x 155 em. Silvia Luzzatto Collection, Paris (photo: Wifredo Lam, Exposici6n anto/6gica "Homenaje a Wifredo Lam," 1902-1982. Museo Nacional de Arte Contemporaneo, Madrid, Musee d'art moderne de Ia ville de Paris, Musee d'lxelles, Bruxelles, (Spain and Havana: Ministerio de Cultura de Espana and Ministerio de 2 Wifredo Lam, L'Escalier, 1942. Gouache on paper, 42.1 x Cultura de Cuba, 1982)) 33in., 107 x 84 em. Collezione Sadun, Italy. Luciano Caprile (photo: Wifredo Lam: Cuba ltalia: Un percorso (Milano: Silvana Editoriale Spa, 2002))

85 84 4 Wifredo Lam, Femme couchee, 1940. Oil on paper, 72 x 87 em. Private Collection, Italy (photo: Wifredo Lam, Exposici6n anto/6gica "Homenaje a Wifredo Lam," 1902-1982. Museo Nacional de Arte Contemporaneo, Madrid, Musee d'art 5 Wifredo Lam, Umbra/, 1950. Oil on canvas, 188 x 173 em. moderne de Ia ville de Paris, Musee d'lxelles, Bruxelles (Spain Musee National d'Art Moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, and Havana: Ministerio de Cultura de Espana and Ministerio de Paris (photo: Wifredo Lam, Exposici6n anto/6gica "Homenaje a Cultura de Cuba, 1982)) Wifredo Lam," 1902-1982. Museo Nacional de Arte Contemporaneo, Madrid, Musee d'art moderne de Ia ville de Paris, Musee d'lxelles, Bruxelles (Spain and Havana: Ministerio de Cultura de Espana and Ministerio de Cultura de Cuba, 1982))

87 86 Antoine Plamondon, Portraits of the Clergy in Nineteenth Century Lower Canada: Conquest, Church and Canadiens

Elizabeth Peden

In the first half of the nineteenth century, Quebec was still in shock. This region, both tightly knit in its cultural and religious beliefs, had been conquered by the British in 1763. This Con­ quest unexpectedly made 65,000 French Catholics subjects of the British Empire. 1 Political and social leaders fled to France and with their very way of life threatened, the Canadiens drew closer together and came to rely on the Catholic Church, the only institution that remained. This essay will examine portraits of the clergy painted by Antoine Plamondon in the first half of the nineteenth cen­ tury in Quebec, and argue that these portraits played a vital spiritual and cultural role in the lives of Canadiens following the Conquest. By examining the social, political, economic and cultural changes that took place not only during this period, but in those immediately preceding and following it, these changes can be placed in context with the images Plamondon painted of various clergy members.

6 Wifredo Lam, Bien appuye, 1942. Gouache on paper, 94 x Portraits in Nineteenth-Century Quebec 61 em. Private Collection, Italy. (photo: Wifredo Lam, Portraits of the clerics, leading citizens and members of the Wifredo Lam ou "J'eloge du metissage" (Rome: Carte bourgeoisie largely dominated the field of secular art in nine­ Segrete, 1992)) teenth-century Quebec.2 Of all types of illustrations, portraits are the ones that immediately confront the viewer with ideol­ ogy as a means of representation. Portraits often reflect so­ cial values and therefore most closely reflect the ideology

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primary education and encouraged him to become a painter. 10 determining their codification or typology. 3 For these ~ery rea­ Plamondon signed his contract of apprenticeship to painter sons, portraits frequently act as the artist's self-portrait by de­ Joseph Legare on March 1, 1819. Learning to paint and draw picting what the subject thought about himself, as well as how during his six years of apprenticeship, Plamondon help to make he wished others to think about him.4 copies of religious paintings as well as to restore works from Likeness was unquestionably the primary criterion by the Desjardins collection. 11 which nineteenth-century portraits were judged and it was this Realizing that his training was limited, in July 1826, criterion of likeness that was repeatedly used by critics e~­ Plamondon left Quebec and went to Paris where he studied pressing their opinion on the quality of a given work. 5 _In this painting in the studio of Jean Baptise Guerin, a painter of por­ regard, Antoine Plamondon was particular!~ succ~ssfu! m con­ traits to Charles X, who worked in the classical style. 12 While veying the public personality of many of h1s subjects. in Paris, Plamondon was exposed to the work of Gericault, In the case of clergy portraits, the artist was often deal­ Delacroix and Bonington, and spent time traveling throughout ing with a knowledgeable clientele. Many member~ ofthe cle_rgy France and Italy. Despite his exposure to various European not only participated in ongoing debates regardmg esthetiCS, artists and cities, by the end of his stay, he was little, if at all, but were familiar with its underling principles and, therefore, affected by the style of the RomanticsY In 1830, following were usually knowledgeable about art and how they wi~hed the uprisings in Paris that saw the overthrow of Charles X, to be depicted.7 This often involved the use of conventions Plamondon returned to Quebec. which were utilized both for officially commissioned works or It was as a student of the French School that full-length portraits and for professional po~raits ~eaturing the Plamondon returned to paint in Quebec. Extremely confident subject in his workplace or carrying out h1s _duties. ~lathes, now in his natural talent and excellent European training, books and other accessories had a symbolic value m such Plamondon took advantage of the prestige attached to being paintings, as evidenced in many of Plamondon's clergy por­ the pupil of the painter to the King of France by readily adver­ traits. Clergy and bishops, in particular, were portrayed ~~ar­ tising this upon his return. 14 He soon began to produce copies ing their most elaborate vestments symbolizing both rellg1ous of religious paintings and accept commissions from churches 8 and social prestige. . and private patrons. For these commissions, Plamondon drew Additionally, portraits generally were not de~tmed to freely upon the Desjardins collection and upon engravings of grace the walls of homes, but were intended to_ be displayed the Old Masters.15 where the subjects carried out their regular dut1es and were, Plamondon's reputation as an artist began to grow and therefore, openly on display to parishioners. 9 in 1833, in an address before the Literary and Historical Soci­ ety of Quebec, the Reverend Daniel Wilkie described Antoine Plamondon Plamondon as "a skilled copyist and a masterly portrait Antoine Plamondon was born in 1804 and died in 1895, never painter."16 In 1836, Plamondon was commissioned to do work having married. He was the son of a farmer ~nd is believed to in Montreal and spent the summer there where he was de­ have enjoyed the protection of his parish pnest, Charles-J~­ scribed in La Minerve as "the most talented painter in the coun­ seph Brassard Deschenaux, who helped him to complete h1s try."17

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nature and he believed that superior church art instructed and By the mid-thirties, Plamondon was firmly established edified the faithful. 21 in Quebec as an artist. On the recommendation of Jerome Demers, the Vicar-General, he became Drawing master at both The Conquest, Quebec and the Church the Seminaire and the Hopitai-General, a position that he oc­ The first half of the nineteenth century was a tumultuous time cupied for ten years. During this period, Plamon?on was ~l~o in French Canadian history. In 1763, the British conquest of authorized by Demers to move into a more spac1ous studio In New France took place and this not only brought significant the Hotei-Dieu du Quebec and sitters came in great numbers changes to life for the Canadiens, but it also allowed the Church to have their portraits done by him. 18 In 1835, Plamondon took the opportunity to become both their spiritual and political on two pupils with promise, Theophile Hamel, who left in 1840, leader. 22 Following the Conquest, the French Canadian and Francis Matte who died a year later. In 1841, he gave economy and its merchants were unable to thrive and grow. drawing lessons to the novices at the Hopital General and. it One significant aspect of this difficulty was the emigration of was then that he was authorized to paint his famous portraits many of its ambitious leaders to France.23 It has been calcu­ of the sisters, which will form part of this investigation. lated that at least 2,000 Canadiens left their native land dur­ In 1842, Plamondon purchased property at Pointe-aux­ ing the ten years following the surrender of Montreal.24 The Trembles and in 1851, the Hopitai-General informed result was that the Canadiens, who had been nurtured under Plamondon that the studio space he had occupied for over a paternal government and were dependent upon the guid­ fifteen years would soon be needed for other purposes. It was ance of their leaders, suddenly experienced a significant void. at this time that Plamondon decided to build a two-storey The only French institution that remained in New France fol­ wooden house on his property in Pointe-aux-Trembles and lowing the Conquest was the Church. 25 although Plamondon became involved in farming, he contin­ The Church too experienced significant changes to its ued to paint. Neither his civil responsibilities nor his work run­ privileged position of authority and power in the colony.26 The ning the farm seem to have been much of an obstacle to his British were hoping to establish the Church of England and artistic endeavors and during the 1850s he produced more although they had promised the Church the continued right to than thirty copies of religious paintings. After his death in 1895, practice their religion, the Church now had to contend with he was buried in the crypt of the parish church. 19 both a strong Protestant element and changes to its legal and Plamondon was described as being ambitious, jeal­ official status in the community. It was not long, however, be­ ous and having a stern disposition that made him intolerant of fore the British realized how much they needed the support of levity. In matters of morality, religion and politics, he was de­ the Church in order to receive any cooperation from the com­ scribed as ultra-conservative and he had a morbid fear of munity. It was at this time that the power and authority of the change and of new ideologies.20 As a portraitist, he was skill­ Church began to grow. 27 Insecure about their future, and strug­ ful in capturing the distinctive features and character of th?se gling with the vacuum left by the emigration of its leaders, the who sat for him. He achieved distinction by proven technical Canadiens began to appeal to the Church and become more mastery, careful composition and harmonious use of col~ur. reliant on it.28 His conception of painting was inspired by his conservative

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take root in Rome and the rest of Europe.34 Ultramontanism The free exercise of the French laws, customs and re­ was especially useful to those who looked to Rome for deci­ ligion were paramount to the people and through a new alli­ sions, took their lead from the Papacy, and supported papal ance with the people and by championing their cause, the policy, often without question. 35 As the Church in Quebec be­ Church grew in unity and control. 29 In turn, the Church be­ came more closely linked with the Church in Rome came an essential element in maintaining, among the people, ultramontanism began to grow in Quebec at this time, first i~ unquestioning cooperation, docility and loyalty the British re­ the Seminare de Saint Hyacinthe and then in Montreal. 36 quired. 30 In 177 4, the Quebec Act successfully granted the Ultramontanism in Quebec advocated a conservative French Canadians the liberty to "have, hold and enjoy the free vision of the worldY Deeply conservative bishops worked to exercise of the religion of the Church of Rome and the right to suppress religious disturbances, while also striving to repress enjoy their property and possession."31 Thus, the Church, sexuality and popular culture, and relegating women to sepa­ strongly organized, well supported and unchallenged by any rate spheres. In general, the bishops opposed theatres, lot­ rival group, religious or otherwise, strengthened its influence teries, mixed pilgrimages, amusement parks, carnivals, baby and centralized its control. contests and dancing by young people. Girls were also not In 1791, the Constitutional Act was passed by the Par­ allowed to attend public gatherings, nor were women to wear liament of Great Britain separating the old Province of Que­ jewelry or watches. 38 Antoine Plamondon, for his part, was bec into two new colonies: Upper and Lower Canada. The extremely conservative and a staunch supporter of the Church former would be primarily English speaking, and was expected and its views. In 1830, while training in Paris under Guerin, to introduce English Common Law and establish the Church Plamondon became terrified by the political turmoil that saw of England officially; the latter would be primarily French speak­ the fall of Charles X. Upset, Plamondon left Paris a month ing, with French Civil Laws applied, and the Roman Catholic later and arrived in Quebec resolutely entrenched in his con­ Church would be the official religion, thereby leaving the popu­ servative political beliefs and religious devotion to the Church.39 lation of Lower Canada overwhelmingly French Canadian and Evidence of this could be seen in Plamondon's lifestyle Roman Catholic. 32 Although the Church continued to preach following his return to Quebec. On May 20, 1840, he directed submission to its British rulers, by the 1820s it had become an amateur group specializing in sacred music on the occa­ firmly entrenched as a powerful force in the lives of Canadiens. sion of a solemn mass in celebration of the anniversary of the consecration of the archbishop of Quebec. It was reported in A Meeting of Minds - Ultramontanism in the Church and Le Canadien that Plamondon deserved the credit for intro­ Antoine Plamondon ducing part signing into churches in Lower Canada. 40 As well, Following the Conquest, France could no longer supply clergy Plamondon was often cited by Church members as a moral and funds to the Church, leaving the Church to look elsewhere and civic example to the people of Quebec. When he settled to fulfill its needs. The result of this was a closer union be­ at Pointe-aux-Trembles, he prospered in farming, and in 1861, tween the Church and Rome from 1775 to 1817.33 During the his land was valued at $4,800, all of which led Abbe Leon same period, a movement known as ultramontanism, a doc­ Provancher to publicly cite Plamondon as an example to the trine that places the Church as predominant in all social af­ habitants of Quebec. 41 Later that year, Plamondon joined with fairs and as politically superior to a secular state, began to

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be found in his art as Plamondon prominently displayed his the parish priest in condemning the immorality of a brochure signature on many of his portraits.48 written in English and circulating in the parish that advocated By combining Plamondon's ambition, conservative the use of contraceptive methods. In 1855, he convinced the views, allegiance to the Church, and classical training in Eu­ town council to adopt a regulation forbidding the sale of in­ rope, there was no one more suited to paint portraits of the toxicating beverages. Finally, it was noted that Plamondon was clergy in a manner that conveyed both the ideas and ideals of held in high esteem by his new fellow parishioners who were both the sitter and the Church during this period. impressed by his moral authority.42 Not only was Plamondon a high profile painter entrenched in Quebec, he was also a Clergy Portraits devoted Church member, who was held up as a paradigm of Given all of the foregoing information, it is necessary, when moral and conservative authority. studying portraits of the clergy painted by Plamondon, that Plamondon's painting style was also highly respected they be seen within the social, political and religious context by members of the clergy. 43 By choosing Plamondon as their of Quebec in chronological order to analyze them visually and artist, one was choosing to identify himself with the intellec­ determine their reception. tual art of the capitals of the world. 44 Clergy in Lower Canada, at this time, shared a highly elevated status equal to that of Monseigneur Joseph Octave Plessis the bourgeoisie. The senior members of the clergy, important In March, 1825, after six years of apprenticing with Jo­ parish priests and leaders of religious communities held un­ seph Legare, Plamondon left Legare to set up on his own in a deniable social sway. In general, priesthood was synonymous studio on rue Saint-Helene in Quebec City. 49 Almost immedi­ with social recognition. Even the simple country priest had a ately Plamondon began to seek out commissions to establish 45 privileged status. This privileged status worked hand in hand his market and reputation. 5° One of Plamondon's earliest por­ with the role of painting in Quebec. Painting was recognized traits was of Monseigneur Joseph Octave Plessis, the 11th as an important tool to mold the colony to fit its own image.46 bishop of Quebec City, painted in 1826. (figure 1 ). 51 Plessis By combining their privileged status with the power of paint­ was known as a priest who instilled strong faith, rigorous mo­ ing, clergy members found an important tool with which tore­ rality, discipline and humilityY On a personal level, he was flect their own image and that of the Church. respected by rural inhabitants and the working class of Saint Finally, the relationship between art and commissioner Roch, as indicated by their veneration of him.53 It was a time also reflected certain important issues. If the sitter chose to be of high respect for the Church and it is clear that Plessis was painted, rather than some other form of representation, and if both respected and beloved by fellow clergy and parishioners he chose a particular artist over another, it was likely for very alike. After his death, he was highly acclaimed and therefore specific reasons. He may have been familiar with the artist's must have been highly influential with the Canadiens. 54 In this reputation or he may have liked the artist's paintings and pre­ image, Plamondon choose to depict Plessis in his official ca­ ferred his style over another. For the artist, gaining access to pacity within the Church. Plessis is shown wearing a stole, a clientele of a higher station than himself raised the artist to a richly embroidered with patterns of flowers and leaves, which status equivalent to that of the sitter.47 Evidence of this may

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precise line, lapidary modeling, clear colours and plain back­ is decorated with lace, while his hands hold the breviary closely ground, all of which are unmistakable features of the classi­ against his body. 55 The viewer can clearly see his Episcopal cist style which must have been inspired by his training in 64 ring on his right hand. His cross is visible and his dress is very Paris. decorative as can be seen from the detail in the stole of the sleeves.56 Plamondon's signature is clearly written in large Abbe David-Henri TetO cursive letters, like an advertisement, on the arm rest showing I have noted that Plamondon painted portraits of both the name, the year and the city. high and low members of the clergy and in 1835, he painted a Plamondon's images of Plessis appear provincial in portrait of Abbe David-Henri TetQ, the parish priest to Saint nature. To date, Plamondon had only trained with Joseph Roch (figure 3). At the time of this portrait, TetQ was 28 years Legare, an amateur painter who learned most of what he knew old. Plamondon chose to depict TetQ in a three-quarter length from the pictures he restored for and bought from the Abbe portrait, almost face on and looking directly at the view. 65 The Desjardins. 57 Legare's style has been described as na"ive standard of a three-quarter view of the subject looking directly eclecticism, and in simple compositions, he could occasion­ at the viewer to establish a sincere relationship was one that ally use a single element from an Old Master, such as a fore­ had been established since the Renaissance and between ground of foliage borrowed from Salvator Rosa. 58 It appears 1830-1835 portraits painted by Plamondon conform to this that this provincial method was absorbed by Plamondon and general rule, establishing the authority of the male sitter. In can be found in his early works. 59 these poses, light struck the model's face creating strong shad­ ows and sharp contrasts to give a more sculpted look.66 Abbe Abbe Philippe Jean Louis Desjardin TetQ wears his black soutaine and is standing in front of a In 1826, one year after setting out on his own, background of red drapes. He is lit from the upper left corner. Plamondon, most likely having experienced the artistic poten­ His right hand is depicted slipped inside the opening of his tial in Europe through his encounter with the Desjardins col­ soutane, like Napoleon, a convention frequently used in por­ lection, and realizing the limits of his training, began to ex­ traiture at this time. His left hand rests on a pile of books that press an interest in perfecting his skills in Europe.60 It was at are near sheets of paper, an inkwell, and a quill, to emphasize this time that Plamondon met Descheneaux, the Vicar-Gen­ that reading and writing are an integral part of a classical edu­ eral of Quebec, who recognized his talent and supplied the cation.67 The books form a pyramid and two of them are clearly funds for him to study in France. 61 While in France, Plamondon identified as: Imitation de Jesus-Christ and Histoire Sainte. painted the image of Abbe Philippe Jean Louis Desjardins of Imitation de Jesus-Christ was first published anonymously in 1826-1830 (figure 2). This image of Desjardins is a copy of 1418 and later credited to Thomas a Kempir. It is a work of 2 Guerin's portrait of Abbe Philippe Desjardins. 5 spiritual devotion whose purpose was to instruct the soul in The Guerin image, when compared to his rendering of Christian perfection with Christ as the Divine Model. With the Plessis, shows the change in Plamondon's artistic style that exception of the Bible, it is perhaps the most widely read Chris­ took place while in Paris. In both the Guerin image and others tian spiritual book in the world. 68 Histoire Sainte, written by paintings by Plamondon, there is a finish of execution that is Nicholas Talon, a French Jesuit and historian, was published astounding in the work of a student. 63 His work now shows a

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Elizabeth Peden Elizabeth Peden Plamondon's rendering of clerics including a seated position at Paris in 1640 and contained a history of the Bible with spe­ for the priest, liturgical robes, his left hand inside the opening 75 cial emphasis placed on the Old Testament. The book was of his soutane and his right hand holding a book half open . quite popular and was reprinted several times.69 The use of The priests Baillargeon, Bedard and Chiniquy painted by books with titles, philosophers' names, and other familiar head­ Plamondon, are generally also portrayed in this way making 76 ings prominently appearing on the binding of the books and Plamondon's rendering of TetO even more of an anomaly. surrounding the subject was a convention often used for both Nevertheless, this portrait remains an interesting aspect of officially commissioned works and full-length portraits to con­ Plamondon's work and one that requires more research. firm the sitter's role or position.7° Plamondon's rendering of TetO is somewhat unusual Monseigneur Pierre F/avier Turgeon for the artist in general and in respect to his portraits of clergy­ In 1835, the same year as the TetO's portrait, men. This portrait is one of the few in which the model is por­ Plamondon completed another cleric portrait, that of trayed upright from the knees up. Plamondon rarely made the Monseigenur Pierre-Fiavier Turgeon (figure 4). In this image background appear entirely covered in large drapes, thereby Plamondon returned to his traditional style of painting. Born in evoking a much more romantic rendering of TetO than resulted 1787, Turgeon belonged to the sixth generation of a family with Plamondon's usual classical style. 71 This use of a more from Quebec and in 1834 received Episcopal consecration romantic style by Plamondon is even more unusual when con­ from Bishop Signay. Bishop Turgeon shared sixteen years of sidering that the romantic style was sometimes used for authority with Bishop Signay through tumultuous political children's portraits, but was never used extensively in adult events in Quebec, including the Rebellions of 1837 and a gov­ portraiture in Quebec.72 ernment proposal recommending the reunification of the two A clue to Plamondon's reasons for portraying TetO in Canadas.77 Turgeon is described as conscious of the role of this way may lie with TetO's vicar at Saint-Rochar, Charles the Church in public life and he believed that the Church should Chiniquy.73 In Cinquante ans dan I'Eglise romaine, the famous intervene in the solution of any problems facing the country defrocked priest and renegade described the physique of his where the interests of religion were at stake. This was in keep­ former priest as follows: ing with the ever increasing role that ultramontanism played in He had a very beautiful appearance: tall and well-proportioned, Church beliefs throughout this period. In February, 1838, wide forehead, blue eyes, a remarkably handsome nose, pink Turgeon instructed clergy members to sign a petition which lips. He had very white skin, too white even for a man; but his was presented to the imperial parliament emphatically object­ short sideburns ... correct what could have been too feminine ing to the projected union of the two Canadas and asking that in his face and gave his entire person both a virility and pleas­ the Constitution of 1791 be maintained. Turgeon was prima­ antness.74 rily a priest devoted to social causes. He created ten new par­ The portrait painted by Plamondon appears to corre­ ishes and founded many missions in his time as a bishop. 78 spond to this description quite accurately. It is interesting to In this portrait, Turgeon is shown seated and his cross, note that while Plamondon did not use his typical conventions soutane and Episcopal ring are clearly visible to the viewer, in his rendering ofTetO, Hamel, a former student of Plamondon, suggesting that he is presented in an official capacity that elu- utilized several of the conventions generally seen in

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Canadiens felt their language and religion were under threat cidates his position within the Church. As well, Plamondon f~om the British, binding the francophone culture even more paints the sleeve and lower half of his robe with great detail in f1rmly to the Church.83 Shortly after the reunification of the order to show the elaborateness of the material. Turgeon ap­ Canadas, the power and prestige of the Church began to rise pears very much in the forefront of the picture plane and is to unprecedented heights. Beginning around this time period quite confident of his role within the Church. Given both the 18 new congregations of nuns and brothers were founded' growing movement of ultramontanism within the Church at this the establishment of classical colleges began, of which so% time and Turgeon's high profile involvement in these issues, of the graduates became priests, and a marked increase in this technique may have been used to emphasize these char­ attendance at mass was noted. 84 acteristics. Given this, it is not unlikely that the sitter chose to At the. same time, Plamondon completely dominated 79 be represented in this way. the Queb~c C1ty market and monopolized the city's clientele. as It was dun~g the years1841 and 1842 that Plamondon painted Monseigneur Joseph Signay the _portraits of the six members of the Guillet and Paradis 1836 was a very profitable year for Plamondon and f~~1les and_ of Fathers Chiniquy and Bedard. In 1841, while the significant addition of this prestigious commission from g1v1ng ~rawmg lessons at the Hopital General de Quebec, he the highest Episcopal authority must have flattered him and also pamted the portraits of three nuns, including Sister Saint encouraged him to surpass himself artistically. Signay was the Alphonse. 86 1 13 h bishop and the 3'd archbishop of Quebec from 1833, serv­ Thi~ period was undoubtedly the high point of 80 ing with Bishop Pierre Turgeon. Plamondon chooses to de­ Plamo_nd?n s care~r as a portraitist both in terms of quality of pict Signay (figure 5) with cold presence and bearing rather ~o~m1ss~o~s and 1n the rendering of his portraits. The change than providing a psychological and sensitive treatment of the ~~ h1s art1st1c style most likely occurred as a result of his new subject. Signay's portrait shows the bishop seated and it is VIeWs regarding portraiture.87 In the early 1840s, Plamondon distinguished by its official character, classical organization a~d some art enthusiasts became involved in a new esthetic and tight composition. Signay's bust dominates both the pic­ d1s~ou~se around portraiture which was not based as much ture plane and the viewer, while the richness of the taffeta and on 1ts likeness to life, as it was on the artistic qualities of the the delicate rendering of the patterns embroidered on the tight ~ark. Plamondon would now emphasize technical ability to sleeved rochet are quite evident to the viewer as well. This Invoke bo~h the living essence of the model and the presence 88 portrait of Signay is quite similar to Plamondon's rendering of o~ _matter 1n t~e r~ndering of clothing and objects. The sig­ Turgeon. Like Turgeon, Signay has the proud, haughty dispo­ nlflc~~ce of 1llus1on was now determined strictly by artistic 81 sition of an ecclesiastical dignity. qualities such as light, colour and brush stroke. Debates en­ su~d about this_ new esthetic criterion, but paintings from this Social and Stylistic Changes c. 1840 po1_nt on were JUdged on their power of illusion and on the Despite Turgeon and Signay's efforts, the provinces of artist's technical skill, showcased in the work.ag Lower and Upper Canada were reunified in 1840, under the Act of Union, erasing the separate provinces of Ontario and Quebec, and forming one combined legislature.82 Again, the

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book. It is unclear which book she holds, but it is speculated Portraits of Sister Saint Alphonse that it may well be the Constituions de Ia congregation des The result of these discussions becomes apparent in religeuses hospitalieres de Ia misericorde de Jesus which con­ the portrait of Sister Saint Alphonse (figure 6). 90 In this image, tains the Rule of Saint Augustine. 96 Showing the title of a book she is rendered with sensitivity and consummate skill, com­ in a portrait, as discussed earlier with the image of TetO, 97 was posed according to the artistic principles and formal conven­ a convention often used for officially commissioned works to tions of neo-classicism91 confirm the sitter's role or position and the presence of such a Almost all of the nuns painted by Plamondon were book in the nun's hands might also be an allusion to the choice young women from prosperous families in Quebec City, usu­ she made in leaving worldly things to enter an order and to ally serving at the Hopital General. Sister Saint-Alphonse was adopt a life of religious rule. 98 born Marie-Louise Emilie Pelletier on June 29, 1816, and was At first glance, this image of Sister Saint-Alphonse ap­ the daughter of Pierre Pelletier, a prosperous merchant and pears to be a simple rendering of young nun who has just Marie Madeleine Morin.92 Marie-Louise was a happy partici­ taken her vows, but I believe that a viewer need only spend a pant at all local balls and parties held by Quebec City's high few seconds gazing at this image in order to feel that they are society. In 1838, she was accepted at the Hopital General as viewing an incredibly special moment in the life of this young a postulant for the choir and in 1839 officially became a nun. lady, a moment that has been brilliantly captured and brought For this occasion, the gathering included Joseph Signay, to life by Plamondon. Bishop of Quebec, several priests and number of other people Finally, in terms of why portraits of nuns may have been who were important in Quebec City. 93 significant in relation to the Church at this time, it is important Plamondon's image of Sister Saint-Alphonse is solidly to note that nuns played an incredibly important role for the constructed according to a carefully planned composition and Church during this period. An example of this can be found in reveals a new conception of space. She is wearing a habit of the Articles of Capitulation of 1763 which show that the Church, the Augustinian nuns of the period, including the large black who played a significant role in the peace negotiations, fought muslin veil worn by those who had taken their vows. Her face hard to preserve the nuns in their constitution and privileges. appears pale, but is highlighted by the rosy complexion of her They were exempted from lodging any military officers or men cheeks. Plamondon renders her features in detail, including and were to be afforded sufficient protection. This may not the delicacy of her nose, but at the same time presents her seem incredibly relevant until it is observed that these privi­ with an air of determination.94 In terms of colour, Plamondon leges were not to be extended to the male orders including limits his palette essentially to red, white and black. The back­ the Jesuits and Recollets. 99 It is also important to note that ground of the picture is completely neutral and in the centre a most of these women did not fall blindly into the convent, but misty light suffuses the outlines of the sitter, accentuating her rather entered by choice. Religious communities were an im­ presence. 95 This image conveys a striking sense of realism in portant institutional means for women to achieve social, per­ the textures portrayed, as well as in the naturalism of the sub­ sonal and intellectual advancement and offered a celibate ject. The focus of the composition is placed lower than the existence as an alternative to motherhood. 100 Accordingly, centre of the picture and slightly to the left. She holds a prayer

2006 Contrapposto I I it 107 106 Elizabeth Peden Elizabeth Peden the nuns were as devoted to the Church in Quebec as the Church was devoted to them and, in this way, they too made an impact on the lives of Canadiens. T~ren~e J. Fay, "Catholic Roots in Canada," in Spiritual Roots: H1stoncal Essays on the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Conclusion 1 Toronto at 150 Years of Age. Edited by John Duggan and As Quebec approached the middle of the 19 h century, the Ter~nce .J. Fay (Toronto: Our Lady of Lourdes, 1991 ), 3. role of the Church grew to unprecedented heights both in privi­ 2 Mano Beland, Painting in Quebec 1820-1850: New Views leges and in power. With this increase in Church power, the New Perspectives (Quebec City: Musee du Quebec 1992), importance and influence of ultramontanism continued to grow 13. J J as well, and by 1850, the Church became steeped in what 3 Beland, 36. 101 has been described as a "triumphatist atmosphere." The 4 Kevin J. Hayes, "Portraits of the Mind: Ebenezer Devotion Rebellions of 1837-38, parliamentary democracy, a new fed­ a~d Ezra Stiles," The New England Quarterly 70 ( 1997): 620. eral system and the alliance of the clerical hierarchy and 5 Beland, 36. Canadiens left the province in the hands of conservative ele­ 6 Laurier Lacroix, "After the Conquest," Art and Artists London 15 {1980): 17 ments and forces that would effectively control it well into the 7 Beland, 65. For example, Plessis, in his writings about works 201h century. In retrospect, when looking at portraits of the displayed in churches and the standards they must meet, clergy, these historical changes cannot be overlooked. More­ wrote about the lack of properly trained artists, advising which over, the role played by the Church politically, socially and m~dels th~y should follow, and citing the lack of properly religiously in the lives of Canadiens, must be considered, when ~ram~d artists as a handicap that forced them to accept looking at portraits of the clergy, as a vehicle for the expres­ mfenorworks of art. In addition, trips to America and Europe sion of their insecurity, instability and reliance on the Church. were often made by members of the clergy for the purpose Given all of these changes, it seems appropriate that of study, business or simple pleasure. Antoine Plamondon, by his artistic talent, conservative nature 8 Beland, 38. and loyalty to the Church may have been the artist who most 9 Beland, 38. effectively conveyed the significant roles these clerical por­ 10 Diction~ry of ~anadian Biography, available from http:// www.blographl.ca/EN/ShowBio.asp?Biold=40490&query traits played in lives of Canadiens through this tumultuous =plamondon, [cited March, 2006]. period. John R. Porter most accurately described the impact 11 Dictionary of Canadian Biography [cited March, 2006]. of these portraits when he stated: "It is Plamondon's expertise 12 R.H. Hubbard, Two Painters of Quebec (Ottawa: National as a painter and as an analyst of human character that makes Gallery of Canada, 1970), 16. him a faithful and revealing chronicler of Quebec in the middle 13 Hubbard, 16. of the nineteenth century.1oz 14 Hubbard, 16. 15 Hubbard, 26. 16 Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online [cited January

2006]. J

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Elizabeth Peden Elizabeth Peden 34 Claude Belanger, Department of History, Marianopolis College, "The Roman Catholic Church and Quebec" 17 Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online [cited March, 2006]. available online at: 18 Hubbard, 27. http://www2.marianopolis.ed~/ quebechistory/readings/chu rch .htm. Ultramontanism 19 Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online [cited January, was the th_e?ry of those who rejected any 2006]. general!~ 20 John R. Porter and Mario Beland, Antoine Plamondon, (1804- compromise by. Catholicism with new modern thought, as 1895): Milestones of an Artistic Journey (Quebec City: Musee ~e~l as d_emandmg the supremacy of religious society over ?lVII Its' main doctrine was that the Pope was national des beaux-art du Quebec, 2006), 32. ~oc1ety. mfall1ble. Ultramontanes viewed the Church as a divine 21 Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online [cited February, institution and believed in the subordination of the State to 2006]. 22 Michel Brunet, French Canada and the Early Decades of Church authority. There were roughly three periods in the development of ultramontanism, but the initial growth phase British Rule 1760-1791 (Hull, Quebec: Leclerc Printers that lasted into the 1830s is described as ''Rome oriented." Limited, 1965), 5. 23 Brunet, 5. This has even been described by Canadian See Eric Yonke in Varieties of Ultramontanism, ed. Jeffrey historian, Michel Brunet, as a decapitation of French von Arx, (Washington DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1998), 13. Canadian society. Both the upper class and successful businessmen who had been financial leaders in the colony, 35 Jeffrey von Arx, Varieties of Ultramontanism, 4. Since the soon became aware that there was no place for them in this Church of Quebec became more closely linked with the new society and that their opportunities would be very ~hurch of ~orne during this period (fn 33), this may be a limited .. For more information of this theory see Brunet. highly plausible reason for ultramontanism to emerge in such a forceful way in Quebec at this time. 24 Brunet, 5. 25 Walter Alexander Riddell, The Rise of Ecclesiastical Control 36 Belanger[cited January, 2006]. Ultramontanists believed that in Quebec (New York: AMS Press, 1968), 145. the Church and State were united, but that the State was 26 Hilda Neatby, Quebec, the Revolutionary Art 1760-1791 subordinated to the Church, the Church determined the extent (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart Limited, 1966), 25. of its jurisdiction, authority and influence and that the Church had the right to intervene in political matters. [cited January 27 Neatby, 25. 2006]. ' 28 Riddell, 147. Riddell also argues that this Church authority worked in combination with the character of the Canadien 37 Belanger [cited January, 2006]. people, who were described as devoutly religious and ideo­ 38 Brian Young and John A. Dickinson, A Short History of emotional in mind, thereby making them largely swayed by Queb_ec: A Socio-Economic Perspective (Mississauga, feeling and readily subject to ecclesiastical control during Ontano: 1988), 159. 39 Porter and Beland, 17. this period. 29 Riddell, 147. 40 D~ct~onary of Canadian Biography Online [cited March, 2006]. 30 Cameron Nish, The French Canadians, 1759-1766; 41 D~ct~onary of Canadian Biography Online [cited March, 2006]. Conquered? Half-Conquered? Liberated? (Toronto: The Copp 42 DJ_ctJOnary of Canadian Biography Online [cited March, 2006]. Clark Publishing Company, 1966), 114. 43 Beland, 73. In 1819-1820, Plessis went to Europe and later 31 Riddell, 154. wrote the following: "I visited a faithful follower of Charles X 32 Riddell, 178. and the Restoration, Paulin Guerin, one of France's most 33 Fay, 5.

2006 Contrapposto 111 110 Elizabeth Peden Elizabeth Peden him, he sent nearly 200 paintings he had purchased from a :uined Parisian banker in 1817 to Canada to help decorate eminent artists under whom our excellent Antoine Plamondon 1ts churches. studies." 58 Hubbard, 15. 44 Beland, 45. 59 Hubbard, 15. 45 Beland, 36. 60 Porter and Beland, 14. 46 Beland, 70. 61 Beland, 410. 47 Beland, 36. In this respect, Mario Beland cites the fact that 62 Hubbard, 16. in larger format portraits at this time involving male models posed against a landscape, artists in Quebec frequently 63 In ~ddition to.the Desjardin image, Plamondon also painted integrated their signature into the forms of a stone or tree an Image entitled A Ladywhile in Paris. A Lady is one of the trunk, as if identifying themselves with their subjects and in f~w r~maining paintings completed by Plamondon during his t1me In France and in addition to the Desjardin image, is an order to associate themselves with nature. 48 John R. Porter, Antoine Plamondon: Soeur Sainte-Alphonse, ~xcellent example of the stylistic changes that can be seen (Ottawa: National Gallery of Canada, 1975), 7. For an In Plamondon's work in that period. See Hubbard 115 for this image. ' ' excellent example of Plamondon's signature incorporated 64 Hubbard, 16. into his paintings see Porter, 7, for a detail showing "A. 65 Beland, 39. Plamondon 1841" clearly signed on the right hand side of 66 Beland, 39. the armchair in the portrait of Sister Saint Alphonse. 67 Porter and Beland, 53. 49 Porter and Beland, 14. 68 Catholic Encyclopedia online, available from: http:// 50 Hubbard, 15. 51 Plamondon also painted an earlier version of Plessis dated www.n~wadvent.org/cathen/07674c.htm, [cited April, 2006]. to 1825. Mario Beland states that both the 1825 and 1826 69 Catholic Encyclopedia online, available from: http:// versions by Plamondon were copied from another painting ~.newadvent.org/cathen/07674c.htm. [cited April, 2006]. of Plessis by John James dated to 1824-1825. See Beland, 70 Beland, .38. Books with visible titles on the spine commonly 409-41 0 for both these images. appear In early American portraits. An example of this can 52 Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online, [cited March, 2006]. be found in the portrait of Ezra Stiles (1883) a pastor at the 53 Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online, [cited March, 2006]. Second Congregational Church at Newport, Rhode Island. 54 Beland, 410. This appears to be confirmed by the fact that See Kevin Hayes, 618. there are 29 known portrait of Monseigneur Plessis, but only 71 Beland, 418. Although paintings by Plamondon do exist with a few can be dated from his lifetime, which means that he p~rtial drapery similar to that shown in the TetO image, (see became an object of veneration after his death Beland, 419 for images of Mrs. Louis-Joseph Paineau and Her Daughter Ezilda and of Louis-Joseph Papineau, both 55 Beland, 409. 56 Beland, 409. Beland suggests that this technique may have dated to 1836), I have been unable to find any portraits of been used by Plamondon to stress the importance of Plessis clergymen where Plamondon utilizes a similar background 72 Beland, 42. · faith. 57 Desjardins, a Roman Catholic priest born in 1753 in France, 73 Po~~r a.nd Beland, 53. Plamondon painted a portrait of came to Quebec in 1793 as part of the French clergy fleeing Ch1mgy In 1841, but this image appears to have been lost the Revolution. In 1802, he was forced to return to France and I have been unable to locate a reproduction of it. due to ill health. Grateful to the Canadiens who welcomed

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94 Porter, 3. 74 Beland, 419. 95 Porter 4. 75 What makes Plamondon's rendering of depicting TetO even 96 Porter, 14. The H6pital General in Quebec City held several more controversial is the fact that TetO's family was critical editions of the Constitutions. of Plamondon's version of the priest and felt that other 97 Refer to footnotes 68 and 69. versions, such as the one painted by Theohpile Hamel in 98 Porter, 14. 1841, more accurately represented TetO as he was, robust 99 Riddell, 138. and strong. See Beland, 419 for this image. 100 Young and Dickinson, 210. 76 Beland, 419. 101 Beland, 24. 77 Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online [cited February, 102 Porter, 20. 2006]. 78 Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online [cited February, 2006]. 79 There is little information written on this image and I make these assumptions about Turgeon's portrait in the context of Plamondon's portraits of the time, especially that of Signay since both clerics worked together, held similar positions within the Church and were painted within a relatively short time of each other by Plamondon. 80 Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online [cited March, 2006]. 81 Beland, 424. 82 Fay, 44. 83 Fay, 44. 84 Belanger [cited March, 2006]. 85 Porter and Beland, 24. 86 Porter and Beland, 10. 87 Porter and Beland, 74. 88 Porter and Beland, 67. 89 Beland, 45. 90 The portrait of Sister Saint-Alphonse is the most famous of three portraits of nuns rendered by Plamondon during this period, the other two being Sister Saint Ann and Sister Saint Joseph both of which are similar in composition and style to the portrait of Sister Saint Alphonse. See Porter, 16-17. 91 Porter and Beland, 67. 92 In 1835, Plamondon painted Marie-Louise as a young woman entering society and prior to becoming a nun. For this image, see Porter, 11. 93 Porter, 14.

Contrapposto 2006 1. Antoine Plamondon, Portrait of Monseigneur Plessis, 1826, oil on canvas, 90 x 75.5 em, National 2. Antoine Plamondon, Portrait of Abbe Philippe Jean­ Gallery of Canada (no. 23168) (photo: National Gallery Louis Desjardin, 1826-30, oil on canvas (photo: Mario of Canada CyberMuse, http://cybermuse.gallery.ca/ Beland, Painting in Quebec 1820-1850: New Views, cybermuse/search/artwork_ e.jsp?mkey= 15667) New Perspectives (Quebec City: Musee du Quebec 1992)) '

115 114 4. Antoine Plamondon, Monseigneur Pierre-Fiavien Turgeon, 1835, oil on canvas (Photo: R.H. Hubbard Two Painters of Quebec (Ottawa: National Gallery ' 3. Antoine Plamondon, Portrait of Abbe David-Henri 1970)) ' TetO, 1835, oil on canvas, 121.8 x 101.4 em, National Gallery of Canada (no. 14895) (photo: Mario Beland, Painting in Quebec 1820-1850: New Views, New Perspectives (Quebec City: Musee du Quebec, 1992))

117 116 5. Antoine Plamondon, Monseigneur Joseph Signay, 1836, oil on canvas (photo: Mario Beland, Painting in 6. Antoine Plamondon, Sister Saint Alphonse, 1841, oil Quebec 1820-1850: New Views, New Perspectives on canvas, 90.6 x 72 em, National Gallery of Canada (Quebec City: Musee du Quebec, 1992)) (no. 4297) (photo: National Gallery of Canada CyberMuse, http://cybermuse.gallery.ca/cybermuse/ search/artwork_e.jsp?mkey=9484)

119 118 A Study of Cycladic Figures or Marketing Illegal Antiquties? Ethics in Twentieth-Century Art Historical Scholarship

Danielle Cornacchia

Illicit excavations have damaged much of the world's archaeo­ logical heritage in support of the illegal trade in antiquities over the course of the last few centuries. 1 Unfortunately, singular artifacts continue to be pursued at the expense of their site, which is destroyed in the process. 2 As a consequence, art historical scholarship of prehistoric cultures suffers as it de­ pends to a large extent on archaeological evidence. In par­ ticular, misleading historical conclusions are more likely inferred in this period of art history through the practice of studying unique artifacts lacking in a secure find-spot, which may or may not also be fake. 3 With this in mind, it is perhaps no surprise that during the late twentieth century a controversy within academia arose regarding the art historical scholarship of orphaned artifacts, specifically raising the question of whether or not these pre­ dominantly looted objects should be studied at all.4 Many art historians argued in favor of this scholarship, on the basis that the threat of a permanent loss of potential knowledge is too valuable to be chanced, and that many of these objects have an independent capacity to communicate this knowledge.5 On the other hand, one reason proposed to avoid their study was that the valid historical inferences which are the goal of such studies to begin with may be obscured by a lack of reliable physical evidence for their basis. However, the latter position was largely voiced from outside the discipline by archaeolo-

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museums, and exhibitionsY It is through these venues that gists whose research accords with more empirical methodolo­ art historians were once again compelled to study Cycladic gies and wider anthropological concerns, as opposed to art figures. 13 historical methodologies which to this day, despite shifting theo­ Keeping this situation in mind, art historians of the late retical trends, rely upon typological studies to a larger exten~. twentieth century faced a sensitive question regarding whether This concern on the part of archaeologists was further compli­ or not it would be in the best interest to study these objects cated by the role these objects played as looted artifacts in lacking in a secure source: have the benefits of the knowl­ the unethical commercial activity of illegal trade. The market's edge extracted from the study of looted artifacts outweighed commercial ends, free of any academic responsibility, allowed the hazards to art historical scholarship in searching for this its artifacts a blanket of more consumer-friendly meanings to knowledge? Considering the case of Cycladic figures in par­ further their salability, whether factual or not. Once in place, ticular, the dangers of studying these artifacts appear to have these fictional connotations were in the position of infiltrating been greater than their remuneration to scholarly research. scholastic views which, if successful, risked legitimizing the While their study has allowed academics to recreate a picture market's spurious claims through academic publication. of Bronze Age Cycladic culture, this may have unfortunately A case study for this complex issue and the concerns provided unintentional support for their illegal trade. it engenders centers on one of the regions in Greece worst By nature of the antiquity of its subject matter, prehis­ affected by illicit excavations, the archipelago of the Cyclades toric Aegean art historical scholarship requires archaeological within the central Aegean basin, home to the third century evidence to provide it with its research material. Consequently, B.C.E. Bronze Age Cycladic culture (fig. 1 ). 6 The looting of sound art historical research in this specific field of study largely the area's abundant funerary sites began in the eighteenth relies on archaeological research methodologies. That is, in century and continues to this day, mostly for the acquisition of order to take any assertions made about Aegean Bronze Age small anthropomorphic marble carvings known as Cycladic or art seriously, art historians of this culture/period rely on ar­ 'folded-arm' figures (fig. 2).7 Up until the twentieth century, chaeological records to determine attributions, chronology, and few figures had been excavated in relation to the entire known reconstructions of cultural contexts through controlled exca­ corpus, largely ignored when the attempt to connect them as vations and scientific analyses.14 In turn, if it is accepted that 8 precursors to later Hellenistic and Classical Greek arts failed. archaeologists are concerned primarily with provenience, that All this changed in the early 1900s when Modern art­ is an object's place of origin or original physical context, as ists such as Pablo Picasso declared them an inspiration for having perhaps the greatest significance for an artifact's un­ their sleek, minimal, and 'primitive' aesthetic. 9 As a result, the derstanding, then without at least this information an artifact 10 figures became permanently associated with Modern art. Not has little to no historical-interpretive value. 15 In this sense, as surprisingly, a sharp spike in their market value subsequently far as Aegean Bronze Age art is concerned, an artifact lacking occurred along with a surge in looting and forgery of these in provenience likewise loses considerable art historical value. figures to meet the new demandY These illegal activities As a result, such un-provenienced artifacts can contribute little peaked in the 1960s and 70s, resulting in the emergence of or nothing to understanding the role they played in their origi­ an enormous body of figures with indefinite find-spots, many nal context, and any ability to reconstruct such an artifact's of which were forgeries that spilled into private collections,

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Danielle Cornacchia Danielle Cornacchia deterioration.23 Thus the marketplace-friendly idea of a purity­ original meaning would therefore be lost. driven minimalism said to characterize these figures has been In light of these methodological restrictions, one m~st countered in part due to these investigations by art historians. realize that ninety percent of Cycladic figures known to ex1st This finding then also demonstrates that in studying these fig­ have been illicitly excavated, and a majority of these lacks ures and their individual capacity to communicate knowledge secure provenience as a result. 16 Nevertheless, this fact did about their original context, art historians working in the late not render these objects entirely useless according to some twentieth century have played a small role in demystifying the art historians working in the late twentieth century, who claimed illegal antiquities market's own fanciful meanings for these fig­ knowledge of provenience is valuable, but not essential for ures, although not to the same extent as controlled archaeo­ their studyY Instead, they maintained their research could logical investigation through its larger, more empirically-based proceed by relying on an object's independent capacity to com­ exploration of Bronze Age Cycladic culture. municate historical knowledge. 18 For example, James S. However, while the above reveals an artifact's inde­ Ackerman asserted that artifacts do indeed have "the capac­ pendent ability to communicate some historical information ity to communicate independently of the conditions in an~ f?r through art historical study, not much can be done with the which they were made." 19 This idea can be seen as valid m results as they pertain to the specific figures themselves in the sense that an object alone can be made to render general the face of no known provenience. The unique visual informa­ information through careful stylistic and technical analyses, tion gleaned from such a figure is left without a demonstrated for example to determine a chronological range often in com­ contextual framework in which it can be made sense. So in 20 parison to published catalogs of related findings. Thus, how­ the case of art historical interpretation of these un­ ever partial such information is, it can nevertheless be gleaned provenienced figures, one should not overestimate the value if there is an existing related body of research, in which case, of the little visual information gleaned from the artifacts alone. Ackerman's argument follows: it is worth taking a chance in For example, consider the now widely noted idea studying singular, even un-provenienced artifacts so as not among art historians that many Cycladic figures are reclining :a 24 lose the knowledge that, however obscure, is present and IS anthropomorphic representations of the dead (fig. 2). How the scholar's responsibility to protect-21 widely regarded this fact is today may be more a result of To the extent that similar studies on such artifacts have recent controlled archaeological excavation than art historical been successful, Ackerman's view can be granted a degree interpretation. Through excavation, figures were found in hu­ of validity. Consider for example how through first-hand stud­ man burials lying horizontally on their backs with the deceased, ies art historians have found traces of paint on many un­ seemingly mimicking them in their peculiar folded-arm posi­ pr~venienced Cycladic figures. This finding is notabl~ as it tions.25 Of course, the archaeological evidence available from has helped clear up a common misconception about their pre­ these investigations only deals with about ten percent of the historic creators' intentions; that they were deliberately left known Cycladic record. 26 However, despite questions regard­ undecorated hence reflecting a refined society with a prophetic ing just how representative these statistically-limited archaeo­ 22 appreciation for the simplistic aesthetic of Modern art. How­ logical findings are of the wider body of figures, the art histori­ ever their whiteness, like much later Greek sculpture, is some­ cal studies of un-provenienced Cycladic figures during the thing of an accident, a result of years of paint wearing and

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Without a secure find spot these forged "artifacts" could twentieth century are even more questionable due to issues find a place in private collections and even museums, where regarding the efficacy of typological studies undertaken on they would be studied by art historians as earnestly as any figures without a find-spot. other Cycladic figure without a documented source. 32 The well­ The problems with this provenience-free methodologi­ crafted fakes are hard to detect because they are manufac­ cal approach available to the willing art historian in this case tured from the same marble as the original figures, still found stemmed from the fact that some known figures were so bro­ in the Cyclades. Furthermore, there is currently no scientific ken up or abstract that their form and any resulting typology method to accurately discern between the same marble carved constructed there-from could be called into question without at different dates.33 This has lead to the alarming recognition the more recent empirical evidence from archaeological in­ that since the "eye" cannot be trusted in discerning the fake vestigations in which provenience played a key roleY Other­ from genuine Cycladic artifacts, how can it be trusted to infer wise, without provenience, the same conclusion that these fig­ ~ny ~uthentic historical understanding about the object in ques­ ures are reclining anthropomorphic representations of the dead tion 1n place of its lost provenience, even if contextual infor­ could have been arrived at through a careful visual explora­ mation was somehow justifiably inferred from singular artifacts tion of the known corpus, perhaps noting the fact that there is under normal circumstances? great similarity between figural forms, and that certain figures When the objectivity and expertise of the art historian are more clearly "reclining" than others, for example having is not enough to separate the genuine from the fake or fact pointed toes. Yet without contextual evidence uncovered by from fiction based on the artifact alone, one must wonder if archaeologists to elaborate the resulting findings this idea might any effective conclusions have been made in researching these remain speculation unworthy of notice. 28 un-provenienced figures free of sensory fallibility. To continue At the same time, the late twentieth century art histo­ supporting this kind of art historical research, then, is to ap­ rian undertaking research on these orphaned artifacts could peal to the issue of whether or not effective findings about not rule out that some extremely communicative figures may these homeless objects are being forever lost by overlooking be fakes. The possibility that fakes continue to flood collec­ them, as there were art historians active in the late twentieth tions of Cycladic figures is realistic, as their endemic lack of century who foresaw this as a major threat if their study was provenience means art historians are denied the privilege of denied. For example, one such art historian, Dr. Pat Getz­ knowing how any of the artifacts got into their respective col­ Preziosi, is an authority on the study of Cycladic figurines.34 lections to begin with. 29 Regarding this problem, Christopher She supports their study for any amount of "knowledge" that Chippindale and David Gill, in their article "Cycladic Figures: they can contribute to an understanding of early Bronze Age art versus archaeology?", voiced a serious concern: "If so much art. 35 In her own words, "I regard it as my responsibility to of the Cycladic corpus is corrupt, then the expert Cycladic eye learn as much from the illicitly found material as possible and will also have been corrupted by it."30 These scholars high­ to share the objects and my ideas about them through publi­ lighted the ever present role forgeries play in further obscur­ cation. This does not mean that I condone the looting of sites, ing an already doubtful collection of artifacts and their threat I do not."36 to art historical scholarship when lack of provenience is over­ But has her work really added anything at all to an looked as a secondary obstacle in the pursuit of knowledge. 31

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tirely different body of material objects with their own distinct understanding of Cycladic art as it functioned in its origin~l historical context, which was well documented by contrast, context? It has added quite of bit of conjecture, but there IS Getz-Preziosi clouded her attempted understanding of these hesitation in claiming that her ideas have contributed to a con­ un-provenienced Cycladic figures by imposing upon them, textual understanding of the figures she has surveyed, o~ of terms meant for artworks from an entirely different context. Cycladic art more generally. For example, alth~ugh the ~aJor­ Perhaps it was due to their lack of context that made ity of the figures she has studied lack any certam pro~en1ence.: such a terminology blur inevitable in this case. However, her she has attributed to Cycladic figures their very own masters mistake becomes more apparent if one considers the broader (figure-carvers) and workshops of production among other findings of Cycladic archaeologists working in controlled ex­ conclusions.37 To better understand this work for example, she cavations. According to Cycladic archaeologist Dr. Marisa claimed the "Goulandris Master" (named after a collection), Marthari, it is understood that most prehistoric cultures were was from the island of Naxos.38 That was a bold claim, con­ subsistence-based, unable to support the terms "master," sidering not all of the figures attributed to this hand have been "workshop," or "art" as one commonly understands these terms found on Naxos, some are instead "said to be" from Amorg?s today.44 Clearly Getz-Preziosi's chosen vocabulary took on a and Keros. 39 (For an idea of how the proximity of these IS­ "high art" feel very similar to those words used in their com­ lands may confuse the reconstruction of provenience see fig­ mercial posturing in the twentieth century, more suited to de­ ure 1 below.)40 So Getz-Preziosi's claim remains purely con­ scribing Modern art than prehistoric Cycladic culture. 45 In this jectural as the artifacts she has worked with have no secure way, Getz-Preziosi's scholarship also represents a terminol­ find spot, while no named carvers can be identifie? from these ogy blur between commercial literature on Cycladic figurines prehistoric artifacts. 41 What is more, it is impossible to know and that of art historical study. whether an individual master was in fact more than one per­ One is left with the realization that the basis of much son, or if distinct traits resulting from a master's work are a twentieth century art historical scholarship on Cycladic figures 42 result of specific functions for certain figureS. It w?uld ap­ is a body of mostly looted artifacts. When art historians used pear in this case, that her art historical ~esearch. mto un­ what was a profit-making body of looted artifacts for their re­ provienced artifacts has led to more frustrating questiOns than search, they ran into trouble in authentically interpreting the answers. . historical context of these objects. In absence of any known A more serious problem with Getz-Preziosi's work IS context, these un-provenienced objects accrued a "high art" that it may obscure further art historical_ scholars~ip. Th.~s. is set of descriptions whose vocabulary has supported their because in trying to discern an un-provemenced artifact~ dia­ market appeal. This is because the vocabulary used to de­ logue" the possibility of a greater risk of putting words m the scribe these un-provenienced artifacts was very similar to the object's figurative mouth arises. Consider the ter~s Getz­ general meaning initially conferred to them by dealers and Preziosi has used in describing these orphaned figunnes. The collectors likewise working with singular, un-provenienced fig­ very idea of the "master" was first applied to_ R_enaissance art ures. For this reason, it can be said that some art historians historical studies to attribute a body of art1st1c work to one working in the late twentieth century indirectly helped sustain hand on the basis of shared idiosyncratic details among these the illegal trade in these artifacts and other antiquities in gen- works.43 Using a term originally meant for the study of an en-

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14 Christopher Chippindale and David Gill, "Cycladic Figures: eral by supporting and legitimizing the collector's claims Art Versus Archaeology?" in Antiquities Trade Or Betrayed: through their choice of vocabulary. Thus in the case of twenti­ Legal, Ethical and Conservation Issues, ed. Kathryn Walker eth century art historical studies on early Bronze Age Cycladic Tubb (London, UK: Archetype Publications, 1995), 134. 15 Chippindale and Gill, "Cycladic Figures," 132. figures one thing becomes clear: by dealing with a body of 16 Chippindale and Gill, "Cycladic Figures," 132. un-provienced artifacts whose original contexts were illegal 17 Wiseman, "Scholarship and Provenience," 68. destroyed, the threat of historical misinterpretation prevailed 18 Wiseman, 68. over any threat of loosing potential knowledge worth record­ 19 Wiseman, 68. ing. If any benefit is to be located in all of this, it rests not with 20 Wiseman, 68. scholarship but with the collector/dealer. 21 Wiseman, 68. 22 Chippindale and Gill, "Cycladic Figures," 138. 23 Chippindale and Gill, 138. 24 Chippindale and Gill, "Material and Intellectual Christopher Chippindale and David Gill, "Material and Consequences," 627. Intellectual Consequences of Esteem for Cycladic Figures," 25 Chippindale and Gill, "Cycladic Figures," 141. American Journal of Archaeology 97 (1993): 602. 26 Chippindale and Gill, "Cycladic Figures," 132. 2 Chippindale and Gill, 602-605. 27 Chippindale and Gill, "Cycladic Figures," 139. 3 James Wiseman, "Scholarship and Provenience in the Study 28 Chippindale and Gill, "Cycladic Figures," 139. of Artifacts," Journal of Field Archaeology 11, no. 1 ( 1984 ): 29 Chippindale and Gill, "Material and Intellectual 68. Consequences," 606. 4 Wiseman, 67. 30 Chippindale and Gill, "Cycladic Figures," 139. 5 Wiseman, 68. 31 Chippindale and Gill, "Cycladic Figures," 138-140. 6 Marisa Marthari, "Altering Information from the Past: Illegal 32 Chippindale and Gill, "Cycladic Figures," 138-140. Excavations in Greece and the Case of the Early Bronze 33 Chippindale and Gill, "Material and Intellectual Age Cyclades," in Trade in Illicit Antiquities: The Destruction Consequences," 611-612. of the World's Archaeological Heritage, ed. Neil Brodie, 34 Chippindale and Gill, "Material and Intellectual Jennifer Doole and Colin Renfrew (Oakville, CT: David Brown Consequences," 621. Book Company, 2001), 164. 35 Chippindale and Gill, "Material and Intellectual 7 Marthari, 164. Consequences," 621. 8 Marthari, 165. 36 Chippindale and Gill, "Material and Intellectual 9 Chippindale and Gill, "Material and Intellectual Consequences," 621. Consequences," 620. 37 Chippindale and Gill, "Material and Intellectual 10 Chippindale and Gill, 620. Consequences," 622-627. 11 Chippindale and Gill, 621-22. 38 Chippindale and Gill, "Material and Intellectual 12 Chippindale and Gill, 622-23. Consequences," 623. 13 Chippindale and Gill, 623. 39 Chippindale and Gill, "Material and Intellectual Consequences," 623.

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40 Chippindale and Gill, "Material and Intellectual Consequences," 623. 41 Chippindale and Gill, "Material and Intellectual Consequences," 622-627. 42 Chippindale and Gill, "Material and Intellectual Consequences," 623. 43 Chippindale and Gill, "Cycladic Figures," 136. , 44 Marisa Marthari, "Altering Information from the Past, 166. 45 Chippindale and Gill, "Cycladic Figures," 135-138. ·~· .. v ~

1 Map of the Cyclades, Greece (map: Marisa Marthari, "Altering Information from the Past: Illegal Excavations in Greece and the Case of the Early Bronze Age Cyclades," in Trade in Illicit Antiquities: The Destruction of the World's Archaeological Heritage, ed. Neil Brodie, Jennifer Doole and Colin Renfrew (Oakville, CT: David Brown Book Company, 2001 ), fig. 1)

133

Contrapposto Triumphant and Sacred: The Chapel of the Archangel Michael at Lersch

Linda Stone

Continuous debate has surrounded the function of a mysteri­ ous structure, the so-called "Torhalle" or "Konigshalle," at Lorsch (figure 1). The purpose of this paper is to provide a systematic analysis, thus far lacking, arguing that this Carolingian edifice with its distinctive niche is not a royal audi­ ence hall but rather a chapel dedicated to the Archangel Michael. The architectural language reveals a focus on the triumph of Christianity, an idea expressed using the Carolingian conceptions of terrestrial and heavenly kingship, triumph, and devotion to Christ that are articulated through a conscious re­ vival of classical forms speaking to the past golden ages of Imperial Rome and early Christianity. The problem of the niche - as a form used in both reli­ gious and secular structures - will be addressed by contrast­ ing the architectural type of the chapel with that of the Aula Regia. Having thereby established the Archangel's Chapel 2 Cycladic figurine of Parian marble, height 30cm (from L.A. as a sacred edifice, it can then be situated within the conven­ Hitchcock and D. Preziosi, Oxford History of Art: Aegean Art tion of dedicating chapels to the archangels, leading to a larger and Architecture, New York, 1999, pl. 26) discussion of the role of the archangels, particularly Michael, in architecture and religious belief. Finally, concerns pertain­ ing to the design of the chapel will be addressed and consid­ ered in relation to Charlemagne's program of imperial and Christian renewal.

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Linda Stone Linda Stone analyses of the capitals and friezes have argued consistently The History of the Lorsch Monastery and overwhelmingly for the stone chapel being constructed The Lorsch monastery was an extremely popular pilgrimage after the Lorsch basilica and prior to the palace at Aachen, site in the medieval era, constructed to accommodate the mas­ generating a timeframe coinciding with Richbod's governance. 5 sive crowds passing through it. 1 Located in an atrium (figure 4), the Archangel's chapel is positioned closely behind the now The Problem of the Aula Regia demolished towered entranceway that connected to the en­ Officially under Charlemagne's protection, this close connec­ circling ring-wall and the walls lining the atrium (later devel­ tion between ruler and monastery has led some scholars to oped into porticoes) which were joined to the church. argue that the Archangel's Chapel instead functioned as an The Archangel's Chapel is a two-story structure that Aula Regia where the emperor could receive and be received has been considerably altered although it still maintains its by religious and secular officials. Furthermore, it has been basic form. The lower level is marked by a triple arcade rest­ proposed that this audience would have been extended to ing on piers while the upper level is enclosed to create the include members of the general public, as Charlemagne could chapel space, accessed by two flanking side-towers with their hold court and deal with legal or other civic matters while vis­ spiral staircases and rough-stone exteriors. 2 Gothic in con­ iting this site. The first problem with this argument is that the ception but of modern restoration, the current roof with its eigh­ space would have had to be entirely symbolic as Charlemagne teenth century bell tower replaced the gently sloping is only known to have visited the Lorsch monastery once, on Carolingian saddle-roof. A reminder of the original slope of the day of the basilica's consecration, and no mention is made the roof remains in the lowest portion of the main and tower of the chapel or 'Torhalle". roofs, before the gradation changes abruptly and angles The difficulty in accepting the chapel as a "Konigshalle" steeply upward to fit the later gable. The use of arcades and lies in its architectural form. As mentioned above, the chapel roughly hewn towers in conjunction with the building's diminu­ is accessed by two spiral staircases located on either short tive stature and elegant ornamentation generates the unusual side of the building. Inside the upper level, there are three impression of stability and preciousness. windows on the west fa~_;:ade and two on the east. The fenes­ The Archangel's Chapel dates to the abbacy of Rich bod tration on the east side flanks an interior niche that extends (784-804 ), the man responsible for a massive building and into the wall to meet the front edge of the exterior face (figure rebuilding campaign at the Lorsch monastery.3 Replacing 2).6 This means the niche is just less than 60 em deep.7 Using wooden structures with stone edifices, Richbod also built the the scaled drawings provided by Jacobson, it would be fair to enormous gated enclosure-wall and gave the basilica a new approximate the feature as being 1.38 m across. 8 Extending fa~_;:ade, often referred to as the Ecclesia Triplex. 4 In light of down to the floor and upward to approximately the top of the this campaign, the Archangel's Chapel could either have been inner arches of the windows, the niche also shares in the a new addition to the complex or the replacement of an earlier rounded curvature of these elements at its peak. Some au­ wooden chapel. The latter case would serve to substantiate thors advocate the idea that this space formerly housed a the argument for its function as a chapel further since throne to Charlemagne.9 Charlemagne would not yet have been involved with the project when the wooden structure was built. Technical and visual

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Linda Stone Linda Stone only then was it possible to access the atrium and from there Examining the details of the various Aulae Regiae used pass around or through the lower portion of the Archangel's by Charlemagne, one finds that their designs are very similar Chapel in order to get to the basilica. It is highly unlikely that to one another and that together they stand in dramatic con­ a purely secular structure would be erected in the middle of a trast to the Archangel's Chapel. At Aachen (figure 3), the sacred space. The secular structures of the monastery were emperor's throne hall is located at the north end of the impe­ located to the south of the basilica, completely segregated rial complex, oriented lengthwise on an east-west axis. Al­ from the religious buildings, and were not accessible from the though the apse is opposite the entranceway, it stands in con­ atrium. It must also be kept in mind that crowds of pilgrims trast to the usual alignment of religious structures since the seeking St. Nazarius' relics would have traversed this atrium. apse is situated in the western, not eastern, end of the room. The two towers of the chapel would facilitate a continual pro­ This is the reverse of the placement of the niche at Lorsch gression of people through the space honouring the Archan­ (figure 4). In the same way, the overall conception of the spa­ gel Michael whereas this manner of approach would pose tial experience is diametrically opposed to the Archangel's security problems for the emperor. Kerstin Merkel raises the Chapel. Whereas a visitor to Aachen would walk the length of issues of sight-lines and space in the context of royal recep­ the long, narrow hall to approach Charlemagne enthroned at tion; if Charlemagne were seated on a throne within the niche, the very end, a visitor to Lorsch would enter on the short side he would not be far enough away from his audience to pre­ and would then immediately be forced to turn and orient him­ vent turning his back at least partially to people on his left to self towards the east, in alignment with the broader sides of speak with those on his far right, for instance. One would also the structure in order to face the niche. The Aula Regia at have to approach him from the side as opposed from the front, Aachen mirrors Constantine's Aula Regia at Trier in both its creating a different dynamic than at Aachen or Trier. orientation and overall design, implying a standardized form. Perhaps the biggest discrepancy between the There is room within the Lorsch atrium to have constructed a Archangel's Chapel and the Aula Regia at Aachen is the dif­ building composed in the same fashion as the audience halls ference in size. The chapel is 10.88 m long, 7.5 m deep, and at Aachen and Trier; the designers, however, chose not to 7.06 m in height while its supposed counterpart is 47.42 m adopt this plan. Even if they had chosen to do so, either the long by 20.76 m wide. 11 Furthermore, the audience hall at direction of approach or the cardinal direction of the niche still lngelheim was 38.20 m long and 14.50 m across with an apse would not accord with the other Aulae Regiae. 9.80 m in diameter that had a raised stone platform for the Considering the palace at Aachen in its entirety, the king's throne as is likewise found at Aachen. 12 This stands in audience hall sits at the opposite end of the complex from the stark contrast to the less than 1.5 m breadth of the niche at chapel. A long walkway and living quarters separate the reli­ Lorsch. There is no such platform in the considerably smaller gious edifices from the official secular structures. 10 This for­ structure nor would the original height of the room have been mat is markedly different from what one finds at the Lorsch able to accommodate this dramatic arrangement. While the monastery where the Archangel's Chapel is situated in the palace halls, especially that at Aachen, are known for their atrium in front of the church. This locates it distinctly within grandeur and were obviously intended to impress upon the sacred confines, establishing its direct relationship to the viewer the emperor's wealth and power through scale, mate- church. Entering through the gateway set within the ring-wall,

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Linda Stone Linda Stone officials are recorded along with brief notes about Richbod's rial, and form, the Archangel's Chapel is instead an intimate building campaign. If the Archangel's Chapel were really an environment that would allow for a much more personal expe­ edifice closely linked to Charlemagne, one would expect that rience with the Frankish ruler. This would suggest a very dif­ its highly unusual design and significance in this context would ferent type of audience than he received at his other sites if warrant mention, whether positive or negative, yet the text re­ indeed Charlemagne had ever gone inside and sat in the niche. mains silent. It is therefore reasonable to conclude that the Even if the Archangel's Chapel had been intended to structure is something that one would expect to find at a mon­ fulfill a less prestigious function specifically related to the im­ astery in association with the church. This, combined with the perial court, not necessarily as an Aula Regia per se, it would presence of a niche, argues forcefully for its identification as a be reasonable to expect the same type of structure at other chapel. places the emperor was likely to visit since he would have to carry out these duties wherever he travelled. As the Lorsch The Decoration of the Chapel building stands out with no secular comparendi, this is clearly Analyzing the appearance of the short sides of the Archangel's not the case. Once again, the presence of a secular structure Chapel presents a quandary that can only be resolved se­ in the midst of a religious atrium, literally blocking the view of curely by another excavation. According to Friedrich Behn's the primary church, would simply not be acceptable to the re­ archaeological investigation, the foundation of the towers and ligious order. Beyond a gatehouse or entranceway framing the central body are fused, meaning that they were constructed an atrium, there does not seem to be a single example of a at the same time and are original to the structure.13 During secular structure occupying such a position in front of a church. the nineteenth century, the north tower collapsed due to the The same problem of uniqueness occurs if one seeks digging of a road near the chapel and it was only rebuilt in the to explain the chapel as a location for royal participation in next century. 14 The south tower is accepted as being unal­ liturgical ritual since the building type would be necessary at tered, based on observations made by Behn, with the notable other religious sites. The Lorsch basilica already hosted an exception of Rudolf Adamy who argues that there were origi­ early form of westwork from which the king could watch the nally no towers. This consensus presents a problem when liturgical proceedings and the public from a raised vantage one examines the upper region of the south wall. While the point. As expected, this feature is repeated at countless other roof was extended upward during the gothic period and clearly sites and comes to be a dominant architectural form. affected the highest portion of the Carolingian structure, the There is no record ofthe construction of the Archangel's present form of this wall suggests that further alterations were Chapel, even within the Codex Laureshamensis, the text con­ made than have formerly been contended. 15 taining accounts of monastic and imperial activities at Lorsch. The first discrepancy deals with the sandstone edg­ Documenting significant events such as Charlemagne's visit ing; on the upper portion of all four corners of the structure it is and the construction of the basilica, the lack of any mention of brown, while that on the lower is red. This is the case on the the chapel in the monastery's records has serious implications. north wall and it disrupts the chromatic flow. More importantly, It suggests that the building played a less important function the vegetal frieze resting on the composite capitals ofthe lower than previous scholarship has supposed since visits to the level continues across the south wall until it reaches the tower Lorsch site by subsequent emperors and various important

2006 Contrapposto 143 142 Linda Stone Linda Stone tiles have been unearthed. Paul Schnitzer notes that the build­ on either side. This does not happen on the north wall. The ing is known to have suffered extensive damage in the early 2 corbelled course running just under the roofline breaks at the thirteenth century. ° Could the south tower and perhaps even southwest corner and abruptly angles sharply upward on the its wall have required mending at this time necessitating the south wall, creating an awkward gap between the straight line alterations to the south side? These questions will have to of the uppermost corner stone and this embellishment. Schol­ wait for further technical analysis. Regardless, it appears that ars have been especially quick to praise the skilful techniques the towers were continually segregated from the main body of used in the carving of the friezes and capitals, demonstrating the structure by means of the decorative scheme, signalling a the care taken in the construction and decoration of this build­ functional hierarchy culminating in the chapel room. ing, making this discontinuation quite concerning. When this Turning now to the interior of the building, the only or­ oddity is compared with the careful and very regular nature of namentation is in the single room of the upper story. Compli­ the two broad faces, one must question what happened. It is cating the sacred function proposed for the chapel, the fres­ here that the tiles and pieces of frieze found elsewhere be­ coes adorning its walls have long been seen as a problematic come so important. 16 feature in dating and determining the purpose of the struc­ During the demolition of the so-called "forest house," ture. Illusionistic ionic columns sit on a base level of decora­ two pieces of a frieze were uncovered in its foundations. Ad amy tion composed of two rows of large coloured squares. The argues that these belong to the short sides ofthe chapel, ex­ columns carry a rather heavy entablature and the space be­ plaining that they were removed when the towers were added. 17 tween them is left unadorned. These frescoes have been dated Either the same frieze motif- since these pieces are identical to the mid to late ninth century on the basis of the handwritten in size and design -was used elsewhere in the monastic com­ script scrawled on the plaster support beneath this first layer plex or the towers were rebuilt or modified at an earlier time of paint. Only a small percentage of the original illusionistic than was previously thought. Given the expense of applying architectural fresco remains intact as it has been painted over the sandstone veneer, the few tiles found on site, and the ab­ many times. sence of similar tiles at the principle entryway into the monas­ Given the discrepancy in time between the construc­ tery, it is possible that the chapel was the only structure given tion of the chapel in the last decades of the eighth century this ornate fa<;:ade. and the earliest suggested date for the frescoes (c. 840), it is During his excavations, Adamy uncovered a pathway possible that this is not the ornamental scheme that would between the chapel and the forest house composed of tiles have been recognized in Charlemagne's time. In this case, a identical to those found on the Archangel's Chapel. 18 The completely different fresco cycle, or even tapestries or panel ring-wall, the walls of a warehouse used to store tithe pay­ paintings if this small space was considered luxurious enough, ments, and the debris found beneath the southern end of the could have been removed from the walls and replaced with tower-hall on the site all contain identical tiles. 19 Is it possible the current frescoes. that these tiles belong to the short sides of the Archangel's If one is to entertain the idea that the dating of the Chapel that have subsequently been removed for alterations frescoes is incorrect, that the handwriting is an early example made to or the rebuilding of the structure? The sides may of a new phase of script, then it is appropriate here to discuss have been decorated whereas the towers were not; no curved

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hangings on the walls, in the text he composed on his monas­ why this system of ornamentation might have been chosen. tery.24 This is critically important given the apparent lack of Comparisons can be drawn with the fresco cycles in the decoration in the Archangel's Chapel prior to the painting of westwork of the church at Carvey and in the crypt of St. the architectural frescoes. Susan Rabe asserts that beyond Germain in Auxerre. 21 The architecture depicted in the crypt the presence of four reliefs depicting key events in Christ's life echoes the actual columns and capitals in this space; it seems and the mobile treasure, there is no enduring or extensive the real and fictive spaces were united through ornamenta­ use of decoration within the church of St. Riquier during this 25 tion, and in the case of the Archangel's Chapel, the exterior time. She suggests that since every other sort of lavish and interior could be connected through these common forms. addition is mentioned with great care, it is very likely that if The upper level of the exterior is adorned with an order of fresco or stucco ornamentation existed in the church, it too ionic pilasters while the inside reveals ionic columns. At St. would have been included in Angilbert's account_26 This lends Germain, as at Lorsch, the areas between the fictive architec­ further support to the idea that the Archangel's Chapel may tural elements are left blank (save for a few illustrations from have been decorated with expensive hangings and luxurious the life of St. Stephen in the former). This demonstrates that precious objects prior to the addition of the fresco work. seemingly mundane decoration could be used in a sacred space without diminishing the religiosity of the site. As well, The "Torhalle" as a Chapel to the Archangel Michael adopting a classical Roman style of decoration fits within the The mysterious nature of the structure at Lorsch loses some ideology of the Early Christian Roman Empire that of its mystique when compared with chapels dedicated to the Charlemagne and his court were seeking to associate with archangels. This is because it resembles these edifices more the emperor and his rule. 22 closely than any other type of religious or even secular build­ Culminating in an image of the Coronation of the Vir­ ing. Emphasising the role of the "Torhalle" as a sacred struc­ gin, tiers of brightly coloured angels celebrate the event with ture is its form. Viewed from the east or west, the building their musical instruments on the upper portion of the north resembles a reliquary27 ; its decoration evokes the precision wall of the chapel. Mary and Christ occupy a very tiny portion and colour of patterned metalwork and both the tiles and met­ of the wall and even within their small frames they are attended alwork speak of expense through the quantity of time, mate­ by angelic beings. Heinrich Walbe dates these frescoes to c. rial, and labour needed to produce them. The dressed stone 1385 and uses their presence to argue that the chapel was edging at the ends of the chapel recalls the plate metal used only at this point dedicated to the Archangel Michael. 23 How­ to hold the reliquary's panels together at its corners. Both the ever, he does not provide any evidence for a new dedication building and chasse are intended to be viewed from the broad­ of the structure, basing his assessment solely on the pres­ side as can be gleaned from the placement of the decoration ence of the new frescoes. This absence of evidence for a on both and through the orientation of the Archangel's Chapel new dedication suggests that the association of the building in relation to the church. Underscoring this comparison is the with angels was a continuation or transformation of an estab­ sense of visual segregation between the core structure of the lished dedication and therefore of an older heritage. chapel and its towers, whose rough-stone facing emphasizes Angilbert, Abbot of Saint-Riquier, gives an extensive the box shape of the chapel. This decorative scheme and the description of his church and its environment, down to the

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In his description of the Archangel Michael and his du­ chapel's elevation signal importance and indicate a holy pres­ ties, Carol Heitz explains that Michael is given the responsibil­ ence through visual association, be it conscious or uncon­ ity of watching over the Heavenly Jerusalem which is symbol­ scious, with other sacred forms. ized by the church in the terrestrial realm. 29 The fore-church The problem of access also contributes to the under­ -its porch, westwork, towers or independent chapel- formed standing of this site. It would be interesting to know if the a type of liminal space between the house of God and the towers had doors in Carolingian times to restrict access to the houses of men, making the area occupied by the angels a upper floor of the chapel, which could have heightened the type of boundary that also separates good and evil, the saved admiration for and the sacredness of the material inside. The and the unsaved. 30 It is for this reason that chapels or sanc­ structure need not have been specifically for the emperor to tuaries dedicated to the Archangel Michael were commonly allow for his association with the building since he helped to built on city-walls, beginning early in the medieval era, to en­ fund the complex. Public or clerical access to the chapel would sure the continual presence of the archangel and as a show reflect the situation at other monastic and civic sites that had of gratitude for his protection. 31 These structures continued sanctuaries dedicated to the archangels. to be built into Charlemagne's time, as is evidenced by the By the sixth century, the cult of the archangels had oratory dedicated to St. Michael and built into the walls of Reims already developed a strong following. The Archangel Michael by St. Rigobert in 749. 32 received particular attention since he was determined to be The concept of the liminal space is emphasized fur­ the protector of the church. However, the angels could also ther through the design of the atrium at Saint Riquier in Centula, function together as a unit. The precedent set by Milan Ca­ France (figure 5). 33 This "paradisio" can be accessed by one thedral is important for the conceptual arrangement of the of three portals that are located in the center of the west, north church and its chapels as well as for the design chosen for the and south walls. Each portal is crowned by a tower containing chapels. a chapel dedicated to the Archangel Michael, Gabriel, or In the case of Milan Cathedral, the primary church is Raphael. Textual descriptions of the site suggest that Michael's surrounded by four sixth century chapels dedicated to the arch­ chapei was situated directly opposite the church, as at angels: the north chapel is dedicated to Raphael, the north­ Lorsch. 34 This plan can be dated to 790-799, concurrent with west to Gabriel, the south to Uriel and the south-east to Michael. the erection of the chapel to the Archangel Michael at Lorsch. The cathedral is literally encircled by these chapels, which Aside from these chapels, the westwork of the princi­ Bayle argues is a symbolically defensive or protective group­ pal church at Centula held three altars dedicated to Michael, ing that demonstrates the relationship of the archangels to Raphael, and Gabriel although their exact placement within God and the church. 28 Each of these chapels is a two-story the structure is unknown. This repetition demonstrates that structure that echoes the general form of the Archangel's an altar within the church does not preclude the possibility of Chapel at Lorsch. The Frankish chapel also occupies a de­ an exterior chapel dedicated to the same or a similar heav­ fensive position directly in front ofthe church and what emerges enly host. 35 Such was the importance accorded these guard­ is a much richer sense of function, especially in the case of ians. the Archangel's Chapel.

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Peter's was the Christian church to emulate, given its vener­ Another example can be found in the plans of the now able age and provenance, it would not be surprising to find ruined church of St. Gall in present day Switzerland (figure 6). the Carolingians content to encourage this association al­ The church possessed two imposing round towers at its west though it is evident in the form of the building that the major end that have been dated to c. 820, just prior to a significant source of inspiration for the Archangel's Chapel had come from transformation that occurred in the west end of the church. elsewhere. Each of the towers housed a chapel in its uppermost story; While the upper room ofthe unusual structure at Lorsch the north was dedicated to the Archangel Michael and the south served as a chapel to the Archangel Michael, the lower area to the Archangel Gabriel. Similarly, in the monastic church of offered a site for religious rituals and ceremonial greetings Saint-Germain-des-Pres, Paris, the western entrance was which could take place before a crowd. The absence of solid capped by a tower containing an oratory dedicated to the Arch­ piers and individual passageways allows for lateral movement angel Michael where the mass of the Feast of the Archangel through the lower level, encouraging the understanding of this would be read. 36 enclosure as a functional space where liturgical activities could Akin to the design at Centula, the church at Saint­ take place. 39 It is easy to imagine this area as having served Benoit-sur-Loire possesses a Carolingian westwork with an as a liturgical station, as it was normal practice for proces­ upper-story that has three altars in three niches within the sions to travel from one station to another. eastern wall; the middle altar was dedicated to the Archangel MichaeiY These niches were complimented with flanking St. Michael Triumphant columns recalling the classicized form of the chapel at Lorsch. 38 Considering the form of the Archangel's Chapel, scholars have At this point in history, archangels were viewed as sought to connect the building directly to the emperor. In these armed guardians charged with the protection of the church instances, the erection of the chapel (or 'Torhalle" to these and chapels with towers seem to be the dominant form deemed authors) is the product of military events or royal honours that appropriate for these heavenly patrons. However, there is become problematic when contemplating the earlier portion another source for the detached chapel that must be addressed of the chronological range for the edifice's construction. As due to its centrality to the Christian faith. At Old St. Peter's in authors such as Krautheimer have argued, the triumphal as­ Rome, the atrium in front of the church was preceded by a pect may serve a larger ideological purpose that is conceptu­ triple-bay gateway that contained a chapel to the Virgin in its ally linked to the emperor and not necessarily to a specific upper story. Offering another precedent for an individual time or place.40 chapel located in a structure outside of the principal church Although a careful inspection of the structure does not that remains in direct relation to it, this edifice has a dissimilar support this single purpose, the architectural language used composition to the examples discussed thus far. During the is that of the Roman triumph. The Archangel's Chapel would Carolingian era this building was fully connected to the por­ have born a stronger resemblance to a Roman triumphal arch tico framing the atrium and has continually been understood in the Carolingian era when the chapel had its saddle-roof as a gateway, distinguishing it from the Archangel's Chapel with its much flatter roofline.41 The triple bay entrance recalls which had a gateway of its own. The edifice also lacks the the Arches of Constantine and Septimius Severus located in towers characteristic of Lorsch and other sites. Since Old St.

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strates that things had fragmented or disintegrated to a point Rome.42 Whereas the arches have freestanding columns and where action on this front was unavoidable. It is reasonable much of their surfaces are covered by sculpture and inscrip­ in this situation to look back to a time when these problems tion, the chapel is adorned with half-columns and its colourful did not exist, when society was functioning properly, and to tiles distinguish it from its monochromatic counterparts. Ap­ draw on the authority of tradition to re-establish religious, po­ plied in emulation of the opus reticulatum or opus seetHe build­ litical, and social practices. ing techniques, the designers are using compositional elements The use of classicizing forms evoking a triumphal arch that do not recall recent or Merovingian motifs and practices, and its ideology would fit nicely into Charlemagne's program but Roman ones. Whether or not the Carolingian designers of religious renewal and kingship except that the result simul­ of the Archangel's Chapel had a particular arch in mind, both taneously accords with the ideology surrounding the Archan­ monuments employ the same triumphal vocabulary through gel Michael. In the angelic hierarchy, Michael holds the high­ their use of arches, columns and applied ornamentation as est position next to God. In many ways, his responsibilities well as through their free-standing identity. mirror those of the king or emperor in the earthly realm. Both Establishing a visual and ideological link to the ancient are successful warriors who act on behalf of God in order to triumph would serve the emperor in at least two very specific protect the innocent and vanquish evil. It is Michael, meaning ways. First, the Carolingian association of the Roman triumph "He who is like God", who conquerors the devil in the form of with contemporary times would allow people to connect a dragon and banishes him to hell. As discussed above, Charlemagne with the glory of Imperial Rome and call to mind Michael is also the protector of the church and it is likely that ideal notions of kingship and life, evoking the image of a past both Charlemagne and the clergy wished to see the emperor golden age that could be reclaimed through the newest heir. fulfill this role as well. Aiding the faithful in battle on countless Associations with a great lineage of emperors would also occasions, the archangel's support would come in handy for a strengthen Charlemagne's claim to the throne by subtly argu­ king seeking to secure his territory. ing for his legitimacy. Second, the chapel's tripartite form calls Combined, these characteristics created a suitable to mind two arches in particular, and only one if considered in model for the king to emulate and be associated with by the a Christian context; the Arch of Constantine. public. This may be the reason that the Cult of the Archangels Tolerant to Christianity, Constantine created conditions was promoted in the late eighth and early ninth centuries, par­ for the fostering of the faith, building many churches and col­ ticularly by the Synod of Aachen held in 789.43 The Archangel lecting holy relics. Evidence for Charlemagne's program of Michael may also act as a guide for (future) rulers to be edu­ Christian revival can be found in the number of gospel books cated or remind them of their proper role. In this way, the made and churches built during his reign in addition to his Archangel's Chapel would function as a triumphal monument amassing a collection of objects believed to hold special his­ to both warriors, the Archangel Michael and Charlemagne, for torical and religious significance. As both an ally of the Chris­ those able to recognize the correlations that are suggested in tian faith and an emperor, Constantine provides another model the architecture. For the general populace the concepts of for reference and emulation. Simply looking back to the an­ old and holy are conveyed through ancient Roman forms and cient past, to a purer time, also brings one closer to Christ and the elaborate decoration that recalls other sacred objects they his disciples. The necessity of a Christian renewal demon-

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suited current beliefs and needs. The considerable contro­ would have seen in churches and chapels. Although some of versy raised by this structure is a testament to the ingenuity of these more symbolic associations may have been absorbed its designers, who were able to unite tradition and innovation unconsciously or not at all, they certainly would not be lost on to create a unique product which touches upon late eighth the dignitaries and religious officials who visited Lorsch. and early ninth century concepts of religion and rulership. Not The triumphant figure of the Archangel Michael would only does this challenge the notions of the "simple" medieval serve to embody the triumph of Christianity as a whole. What mind, it requires a re-evaluation of how Carolingian monu­ better proclamation to make in front of a church holding un­ ments and objects have been categorized and interpreted thus usually precious relics that symbolized the Carolingian em­ far. peror and populace's connection to arguably the most impor­ tant Christian center, next to Jerusalem, as well as the clergy's connection to the papacy.

The relic of St. Nazarius served to strengthen the ties between The Archangel's Chapel and the Carolingian Era the Frankish Empire and the Roman Papacy; that the Pope Rather than playing a role as an independent monu­ had allowed a very special relic to leave Rome was a highly ment to Charlemagne, it is clear that the Archangel's Chapel significant event and the reception of the relics demonstrated participated in larger theological and architectural traditions the Carolingians' dedication to the Roman religious tradition. that paid respect to the ruler in more generalized terms. Given Furthermore, the nature of St. Nazarius' life plays into its two-towered, two-story composition and centralized loca­ Charlemagne's program of Christian revival. As a tion in the atrium in front of a pilgrimage church, it is critical Merovingian abbot, St. Nazarius had taken it upon himself that the structure be considered in its monastic context. On to rid an area of France from the vestiges of paganism; his the basis of its scale, form, and position in relation to the ba­ work was completely devoted to the dissemination of the silica, the building clearly belongs in the tradition of chapels word. Both the emperor and abbot sought to establish Christianity in their realms and ensure the proper observance dedicated to the archangels. Its prominence and singularity of ritual and doctrine. argue for a dedication to the Archangel Michael in particular. 2 Over the doorway leading to the staircase in the lower level The edifice and its honouree play an important role in guard­ of the southern tower there is an inscription on a wooden ing the church and its worshippers while proclaiming the tri­ plaque. According to Behn only a single word remains legible umph of Christianity. Only after serving this primary function and reads "IMPERIALIS" (Behn, 1949, 18). This inscription does the structure refer to imperial or royal victory. The vo­ goes unmentioned elsewhere (including by Adamy) and so cabulary and ideology of the Roman triumph was modified its dating and provenance remain in question. However, it and applied to a Christian context in order to call to mind the is not surprising to find an imperial reference at a highly Early Christian Empire. trafficked center funded by a variety of Frankish rulers. As is evidenced by the opus veneer, authenticity or 3 Richbod was appointed to his post by none other than Charlemagne after having studied under Alcuin. Earning accuracy was not as important as the broader conceptual as­ the nickname Macarius for his fervent dedication to the sociations evoked by the form. The Carolingians were adopt­ monastic life, Rich bod was a respected member of the royal ing only selected aspects of the antique models, those which

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Jacobson argues for a dating between 830 and 865 court. He is also the author of the part of the Codex on the basis of stylistic comparison to fit the building into his Laureshamensis written between 785 and 803. Compiled in theory that it served as a tomb for the later kings [Jacobsen, the twelfth century, the Codex contains material pertaining Werner "Die Lorscher Torhalle. Zum Problem ihrer Datierung to the Lorsch monastery and includes texts from the eighth und Deutung. Mit einem Katalog der bauplastischen and ninth centuries. Fragmente als Anhang," Jahrbuch des Zentralinstitues tar Unfortunately, the Archangel's Chapel goes Kunstgeschichte 1 {1985): 19]. He does so despite the fact unmentioned in the Codex. This is possibly because the that the later kings were buried in a chamber constructed stone structure replaced an earlier wooden edifice, as specifically for this purpose at the east end of the church scholars like Conant have suggested, or perhaps because the Ecclesia Varia. Despite Jacobson's efforts, his argument the structure was a feature expected to be found on the site serves to highlight the disparity between his comparendi and and did not warrant mention. Under these circumstances, it the reliefs at Lorsch. is more likely that the building is a chapel; a secular structure 6 According to Behn, both the windows and the niche are placed in the middle of a well-traversed atrium would call integral to the Carolingian design (Behn, 1949, 18). attention to itself and be worthy of mentioning since it would 7 The walls of the Archangel's Chapel are 60 em thick [Hans be extremely unusual. Michael Hangleiter and Stefan Schopf, "Optische 4 Roswitha Zeilinger-BOehler, "Kunstgeschichtliche Untersuchung der Martel- und Malschichten im lnnerraum Betrachtungen zur Datierung der Lorscher Konigshalle," des ersten Obergeschosses der Torhalle in Lorsch " Kunst Beitrage zur Geschichte des Klosters Lorsch, Edited by Paul in Hessen und am Mittelrhein 32-33 (1992-1993): 83]. Schnitzer (Lorsch: Laurissa, 1978), 90. Carol Heitz, 8 Only an estimate can be provided since measurements of Recherches sur les rapports entre Architecture et Liturgie a the niche are strangely excluded from the documentation. l'epoque carolingienne (Paris: S.E.V.P.E.N, 1963), 160-3. 9 The presence of the niche narrows the possible purpose of McClendon states that Richbod also installed a the room down to two options: either the space functioned marble pavement around the high altar in the basilica that as a chapel or as a throne-room. has since been lost and suggests that this might have been Included among other theories of the structure is done using the opus sectile technique as well [Charles B. the idea thatthe 'Torhalle" is a gate-hall through which people McClendon, The Origins of Medieval Architecture: Building would enter into the monastery. I take issue with this since Europe, A.D. 600-900 (New Haven: Yale University Press, there was a gateway through which people would pass in 2005), 102]. order to access the "Torhalle". According to Behn's 5 See Ruth Meyer, Fruhmittelalterliche Kapitelle Und Kampfer illustrations, this structure was in place prior to 800 [Friedrich in Deutschland: Typus, Technik, Stil, 2 Vols. (Berlin: Behn, Der Karolingische Kloster Kirch von Lorsch an der Deutscher Verlag fOr Kunstwissenschaft, 1997), Mario Bergstrasse (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1934), plan 8]. Not D'Onofrio, "La Torhalle di Lorsch," C. 3, In: Roma e only is the Archangel's Chapel inside the walls of the Aquisgrana (Naples: Liguori, 1996), 41-65, Josef monastery complex, it is not connected with the ring wall or Fleckenstein, "Erinnerung an Karl den Grossen: ZurTorhalle any other wall as gateways were per their function. von Lorsch und zum Kaisertum Karls," Beitrage zur It has also been suggested that the Torhalle Geschichte des Klosters Lorsch, Edited by Paul Schnitzer functioned as a crypt. Between 876 and 882, Louis Ill the (Lorsch: Laurissa, 1978), 63-77, and Roswitha Zeilinger­ Young had the Ecclesia Varia (a crypt) constructed for the BOehler, 79-91.

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does not offer any further explanation of his assertion burial of his father, Louis the German. Subsequently, other (McClendon, 92). members of the family were interred within this crypt. 16 At the eastern end of the monastery complex, the excavation Evidently, this king and other members of the family did not by Behn uncovered the foundations of a towered entranceway build the "Torhalle" to be buried there - they are properly that had four passages running through it. Here Behn found housed within the church- and there is no record of anyone evidence for this gateway having had a fa9ade composed of ever being buried within the chapel. red and white sandstone done using the same technique as Kerstin Merkel suggests that the chapel is instead a is found on the Archangel's Chapel (Zeilinger-BOehler, 90). library, used to house the precious materials copied at the For third and fourth century examples of decorative Lorsch scriptorium. The problem with this theory is that the coloured patterning in the design of an edifice see scriptorium is located nowhere near this building, which would McClendon, figs. 100-102. He also includes an image of a require the monks to go through the church or gateway, into floor in San Vitale, Rome, done in the opus sectile manner the atrium, and up into the "library" to retrieve materials. It (from the fifth century) showing hexagons and triangles, appears that most libraries, such as that at St. Gall, were evoking the type of patterning seen in the uppermost band located on the floor directly above the scriptorium itself for of decoration on the Archangel's Chapel. easy access {Kenneth John Conant, Carolingian and 17 Adamy, 7. Romanesque Architecture BOO to 1200 (Markham: Penguin 18 Jacobson, 1985, 18. Ad amy provides an illustration of where Books, 1987 [1959]), 58}. As well, the books would be within the path was located but does not go into any detail with reach of the hoards of people passing through the atrium to regard to this path in his text. view the relics of St. Nazarius. Since books were such 19 Ibid. valuable items, this theory seems highly unlikely. Merkel 20 Paul Schnitzer, "FOr die Rettung der Konigshalle," Beitrage then contradicts her own thesis by arguing that secular zur Geschichte des Klosters Lorsch, Edited by Paul Schnitzer structures would never be placed within sacred confines (Lorsch: Laurissa, 1978), 99. [Kerstin Merkel, "Die Antikenrezeption der sogenannten 21 Merkel, 30. Lorscher Torhalle," Kunst in Hessen und am Mittelrhein 32- 22 Merkel provides an extensive discussion of possible sources 33 (1992-1993): 34]. that the designers of the Archangel's Chapel could draw from, 10 Merkel, 34. The distance between the two components of as well as insight into the style of decoration itself. the complex measures about 125 m (McClendon, 109). 23 Walbe, 61. The author offers no explanation for the date he 11 McClendon, 120. supplies. 12 McClendon, 107. 24 Angilbert was Abbot of Saint-Riquier from 790 until his death 13 Behn, 1949, 17. in 814. There is much debate surrounding the nature of his 14 Zeilinger-BOehler, 82. The southern tower and the lower relationship with Charlemagne's unmarried daughter, Bertha, portion of the north tower are part of the first phase of with whom he had two children. Carolingian construction (Hangleiter & Schopf, 83). Adamy, 25 Construction of the church took place in the last decade of the however, states that when crews decided the tower would eighth century. Susan A. Rabe, Faith, Art, and Politics at not be rebuilt, the lower portion of the north tower was pulled Saint-Riquier: the Symbolic Vision ofAngilbert (Philadelphia: down and not rebuilt until much later (Adamy, 13). University of Pennsylvania Press, 1995), 117 & 121. 15 McClendon states that this roof is from the eighteenth century and is the only one this author is aware of that does so; he

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40 Richard Krautheimer, 'The Carolingian Revival of Early 26 Rabe, 121. Christian Architecture," Studies in Early Christian, Medieval 27 For examples of Carolingian metalwork including reliquaries, and Renaissance Art, Translated by Alfred Frazer (New York: see Jean Hubert, J. Porcher and W. F. Volbach, Europe of University Press, 1969), 233. the Invasions (New York: George Braziller, 1969). 41 Zeilinger-Buchler, 83. 28 Maylis Bayle, "L'Architecture Liee au Culte de L'Archange," 42 As Krautheimer indicates, there were few arches accessible Cuffe et Pelerinages a Saint Michelen Occident, Directed by to the Carolingians (Krautheimer, 233). While the chapel Pierre Bouet, Giorgio Otranto and Andre Vauchez (Rome: has an arcade of three arches of even height, in both the Ecole Fran<_;:aise de Rome, 2003), 455. Arches of Constantine and Septimius Severus the central 29 Heitz, 1963, 226. Heitz refers to an Italian monk from Monte opening is of greater stature than the two archways on the Cassino paying a visit to Lorsch and in his notes, making sides. Charlemagne and his retinue would have had the reference to a Chapel to the Archangel Michael. In his opportunity to study these forms on their official visit to Rome footnote, he cites the Annates ordinis Sancti Benedicti, Vol. in 774. 1, edited by Johanne Mabillon (Lucae: De Superiorum 43 Rabe, 187. Popular cults could serve as a means to unite Licentia, 1703), 117 as recording this important journey and direct the activities of the masses. (Heitz, 1963, 231, no. 1). This Latin text makes no reference to events at Lorsch but instead deals with the history of the Abbey of Glanfeuil now known as St. Maur-sur-Loire. The whereabouts or nature of the account Heitz details remains unknown and can therefore not be considered in this study. I would like to thank Amy Miller for assistance in translating the Latin. 30 Heitz, 1963,231. 31 Bayle, 456. 32 Bayle, 456. 33 The church was built by the aforementioned AbbotAngilbert, otherwise known as Homer in Charlemagne's court. In 800 he received Charlemagne at Centula. 34 Rabe, 115. 35 Rabe, 459. 36 Hans Eckstein, "DerTurm des Gauzlinus und die gestalt der VorhallentOrme," Architectura 5 (1975): 18. 37 Bayle, 460. 38 Eckstein, 20. 39 This stands in contrast to the triumphal arches of ancient Rome that had individual passageways that prevented free movement beneath the structure. Whereas one may argue that the arches are meant to be moved through, it is evident that the ground floor of the chapel was perceived as a utile space.

2006 Contrapposto j.tl ":;:--" ""r h! ~~ ..:L/·· G~E:f ... : L .. ,

I Ir 0 .•• ~·J [fJ' r

- ·-1 ~-···· ~---·~·-- ... ; 1 Archangel's Chapel, exterior from west, Lorsch monastery, Lorsch, Germany, c. 784-804 (photo: ???) 3 Detail of Plan of St. Gall Monastery, St. Gall monastery library, St. Gall, Switzerland, c. 819-826 (image: ???)

4 Plan of the Lorsch monastery complex, Lorsch monastery, 2 Archangel's Chapel, upper level interior, Lorsch monastery, Lorsch, Germany, c. 784-804 (plan: http://www.kloster-lorsch.de/ Lorsch, Germany, c. 784-804 (image: ???) lingua/englisch.html)

161 160 Contributors

Alexis Cohen Alexis Cohen graduated from the University of Toronto in May 2006 with an Honours Bachelor of Arts in Art History and English. She is currently conducting independent research in Germany on a DAAD Study Scholarship and will be pursuing graduate studies in Art History next fall.

10 Danielle Cornacchia Danielle Cornacchia is a fourth-year student completing a 5 Plan of the Lorsch monastery complex, Lorsch monastery, Specialist in Fine Art History and Major in Prehistoric Ar­ Lorsch, Germany, c. 784-804 (plan: http://www.kloster-lorsch.de/ chaeology. She became obsessed with prehistoric lingua/englisch.html) Mediterranean archaeology through her studies as an Art History student at the University of Toronto. She hopes to do some archaeological fieldwork in the summer.

Ady Gruner Ady Gruner is currently completing her Hans. B.A. with a specialist in Art History and hopes to pursue graduate studies in Modern Art.

Nicholas Herman Nicholas Herman is Erwin Panofsky Fellow at New York University's Institute of Fine Arts. He is currently a Master's candidate and he received an honours B.A. from the University of Toronto, Trinity College, in June of 2006. His current topics of interest include fifteenth century French manuscript illumination and early Sienese painting.

6 Reconstruction of the Carolingian monastery, Saint Riquier monastery, Centula, France, c. 790-799 (photo: Pracchi,Attilio, La cattedrale antica di Milano: if problema delle chiese doppie fra tarda antichita e medioevo, Rome: Laterza, 1996, figure 36) 163

162 Elizabeth (Lisa) Peden Elizabeth (Lisa) Peden completed her undergraduate degree with an specialist in Art History and minors in anthropology and history at University of Toronto in 2005, with distinction. She received the University of Toronto Scholar Award Schol­ arship and the University of Toronto Book Box Award Scholar­ ship. In her graduate work, she is focusing on Canadian Art and is due to complete her M.A. in art history in December, 2006.

Celina Senisterra Celina Senisterra received a Diploma of Architect from Universidad Nacional de La Plata, Argentina. She has worked in private architectural firms, art galleries, and cultural institu­ tions. Celina is currently studying towards a M.A. in Art History at the University of Toronto, and her primary area of interest is the preservation of historic architectural monuments.

Linda Stone Linda Stone is currently working on her Ph.D. in the Art De­ partment at the University of Toronto. Her interests are in Re­ naissance images of magic and the occult. She received her B.A. and her M.A. from the University of Toronto.

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