A World of Art, Sixth Edition, by Henry M
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chapter 11 Painting Fig. 280 Giorgio Vasari, The Art of Painting, 1542. Fresco of the vault of the Main Room, Arezzo, Casa Vasari. Canali Photobank, Capriolo, Italy. arly in the fifteenth century, a figure known geometry, astrology, and music. While the liberal arts as La Pittura—literally, “the picture”—began were understood to involve inspiration and creative to appear in Italian art (Fig. 280). As art his- invention, painting was considered merely a mechani- Etorian Mary D. Garrard has noted, the emer- cal skill, involving, at most, the ability to copy. The gence of the figure of La Pittura, the personification of emergence of La Pittura announced that painting was painting, could be said to announce the cultural arrival finally something more than mere copywork, that it of painting as an art. In the Middle Ages, painting was was an intellectual pursuit equal to the other liberal ISBN never included among the liberal arts—those areas of arts, all of which had been given similar personifica- 0-558-55180-7 knowledge that were thought to develop general intel- tion early in the Middle Ages. lectual capacity—which included rhetoric, arithmetic, 220 A World of Art, Sixth Edition, by Henry M. Sayre. Published by Prentice Hall. Copyright © 2010 by Pearson Education, Inc. Fig. 281 Artemisia Gentileschi, Self-Portrait as the Allegory of Painting, 1630. 1 Oil on canvas, 35 /4 ϫ 29 in. The Royal Collection. © 2007 Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II. Photo: C. Cooper Ltd. possessing all the intellectual authority and dignity of a Leonardo or a Michelangelo. Though in her time it was commonplace to think of women as intellectually inferior to men— “women have long dresses and short intellects” was a popular saying—here Gentileschi transforms painting from mere copywork, and, in the process, transforms her own possibilities as a creative person. Nevertheless, from the earliest times, one of the major concerns of Western painting has been representing the appearance of things in the natural world. There is a famous story told by the historian Pliny about a contest between the Greek painters Parrhasius and Zeuxis as to who could make the most realistic image: Zeuxis produced a picture of grapes so dexterously represented that birds began to fly down to eat from the painted vine. Whereupon Parrhasius designed so lifelike a picture of a curtain that Zeuxis, proud of the verdict of the birds, requested that the curtain should now be drawn back and the picture dis- In her Self-Portrait as the Allegory of Painting played. When he realized his mistake, with a modesty (Fig. 281), Artemisia Gentileschi presents herself as that did him honor, he yielded up the palm, saying that both a real person and as the personification of La whereas he had managed to deceive only birds, Pittura. Iconographically speaking, Gentileschi may be Parrhasius had deceived an artist. recognized as La Pittura by virtue of the pendant around her neck that symbolizes imitation. And This tradition, which views the painter’s task as Gentileschi can imitate the appearance of things very rivaling the truth of nature, has survived to the well—she presents us with a portrait of herself as she present day. really looks. Still, in Renaissance terms, imitation In this chapter, we will consider the art of paint- means more than simply copying appearances: It is the ing, paying particular attention to how its various representation of nature as seen by and through the media developed in response to artists’ desires to imi- artist’s imagination. On the one hand, Gentileschi’s tate reality and express themselves more fluently. But multicolored garment alludes to her craft and skill as a before we begin our discussion of these various paint- copyist—she can imitate the effects of color—but on ing media, we should be familiar with a number of the other hand, her unruly hair stands for the imagina- terms that all the media share and that are crucial to tive frenzy of the artist’s temperament. Thus, in this understanding how paintings are made. painting, she portrays herself both as a real woman From prehistoric times to the present day, the and as an idealized personification of artistic genius, painting process has remained basically the same. As 0-558-55180-7 ISBN Chapter 11 Painting 221 A World of Art, Sixth Edition, by Henry M. Sayre. Published by Prentice Hall. Copyright © 2010 by Pearson Education, Inc. in drawing, artists use pigments, or powdered colors, used by the Greeks. A transplanted Greek artist may, suspended in a medium or binder that holds the par- in fact, have been responsible for Mummy Portrait of a ticles of pigment together. The binder protects the Man (Fig. 282), though we cannot be sure. pigment from changes and serves as an adhesive to What is clear, though, is the artist’s remarkable anchor the pigment to the support, or the surface on skill with the brush. The encaustic medium is a which the artist paints—a wall, a panel of wood, a demanding one, requiring the painter to work quickly sheet of paper, or a canvas. Different binders have dif- so that the wax will stay liquid. Looking at Mummy ferent characteristics. Some dry more quickly than Portrait of a Man, we notice that while the neck and others. Some create an almost transparent paint, while shoulders have been rendered with simplified forms, others are opaque—that is, they cannot be seen which gives them a through. The same pigment used in different binders sense of will look different because of the varying degrees of each binder’s transparency. Since most supports are too absorbent to allow the easy application of paint, artists often prime (pre-treat) a support with a paint- like material called a ground. Grounds also make the support surface smoother or more uniform in texture. Many grounds, especially white grounds, increase the brightness of the final picture. Finally, artists use a solvent or vehicle, a thinner that enables the paint to flow more readily and that also cleans brushes. All water- based paints use water for a vehicle. Other types of paints require a different thinner—in the case of oil-based paint, turpentine. Each painting medium has unique character- istics and has flourished at particular historical moments. Though many media have been largely abandoned as new media have been discovered— media that allow the artist to create a more believ- able image or that are simply easier to use—almost all media continue to be used to some extent, and older media, such as encaustic and fresco, sometimes find fresh uses in the hands of contemporary artists. ENCAUSTIC Encaustic, made by combining pigment with a binder of hot wax, is one of the oldest painting media. It was widely used in classical Greece, most famously by Polygnotus, but his work, as well as all other Greek painting except that on vases, has entirely perished. (The contest between Zeuxis and Parrhasius was prob- ably conducted in encaustic.) Most of the surviving encaustic paintings from the ancient world come from Faiyum in Egypt, which, in the second century CE, was a thriving Roman province about 60 miles south of present-day Cairo. The Faiyum ISBN paintings are funeral portraits, which were attached to Fig. 282 Mummy Portrait of a Man, Faiyum, Egypt, c. 160–170 CE. 0-558-55180-7 the mummy cases of the deceased, and they are the Encaustic on wood, 14 ϫ 18 in. only indication we have of the painting techniques Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York, Charles Clifton Fund, 1938. 222 Part 3 The Fine Arts Media A World of Art, Sixth Edition, by Henry M. Sayre. Published by Prentice Hall. Copyright © 2010 by Pearson Education, Inc. strength that is almost tangible, the face has been discovered at Pompeii and nearby Herculaneum, painted in a very naturalistic and sensitive way. The where they had been buried under volcanic ash since wide, expressive eyes and the delicate modeling of the the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius in 79 CE. A series of still- cheeks make us feel that we are looking at a “real” per- life paintings was unearthed in 1755–57 that proved son, which was clearly the artist’s intention. so popular in France that they led to the renewed pop- The extraordinary luminosity of the encaustic ularity of the still-life genre. This Still Life with Eggs medium has led to its revival in recent years. Of all and Thrushes (Fig. 283), from the Villa of Julia Felix, contemporary artists working in the medium, no one is particularly notable, especially the realism of the has perfected its use more than Jasper Johns, whose dish of eggs, which seems to hang over the edge of the encaustic Three Flags (see Fig. 19) we saw in Chapter 1. painting and push forward into our space. The fact that all the objects in the still life have been painted FRESCO life-size adds to the work’s sense of realism. Wall painting was practiced by the ancient Egyptians, The preferred medium for wall painting for cen- Greeks, and Romans, as well as by Italian painters of turies was fresco, in which pigment is mixed with the Renaissance. Numerous examples survive from limewater (a solution containing calcium hydroxide, Aegean civilizations of the Cyclades and Crete (see or slaked lime) and then applied to a lime plaster wall Fig. 568), to which later Greek culture traced its roots. that is either still wet or hardened and dry. If the paint In the eighteenth century, a great many frescoes were is applied to a wet wall, the process is called buon Fig.