1. the Significance and Importance of the Resurrection
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Specialist Advisor Report: The Hogarth Altarpiece 1. The significance and importance of The Resurrection and Ascension of Christ in the context of Hogarth’s oeuvre and Baroque religious painting in the UK and internationally. The Resurrection and Ascension of Christ was described by Edward Croft Murray, the Curator of Prints & Drawings at the British Museum as: “one of the most splendid pieces of religious art to have been executed by an Englishman since the Reformation.” It has been an orphan since its removal from St. Mary Redcliffe in 1853 largely because of its colossal scale. It represents a critical moment in the development of British art. In the hierarchy of the visual arts History Painting (including sacred subjects) was considered the supreme expression of the academic values of the Renaissance. In post-Reformation Britain, there was no native tradition of History Painting nor the academic infrastructure to support it. European artists were routinely employed for “Grand Manner” works of this kind to the chagrin of British artists like William Hogarth who yearned to challenge their supremacy and the prejudice of contemporary British patrons. The first stirrings of a native English school are seen in the work of James Thornhill (1676 – 1734) who had learnt the basic principles and techniques of decorative figure painting from Antonio Verrio (1636-1707) and Louis Laguerre (1663 – 1721) two prominent European artists then working in England embellishing the houses and chapels of the aristocracy. In 1715 Thornhill was commissioned to decorate the dome of St Paul’s Cathedral with scenes from the life of St. Paul by: "a Whig, low-church dominated committee inspired by a moral Anglican nationalism". Thomas Tenison, The Archbishop of Canterbury, said: "I am no judge of painting, but on two articles I think I may insist: first that the painter employed be a Protestant; and secondly that he be an Englishman". The expectation was that commissioning Thornhill would "put to silence all the loud applauses hitherto given to foreign artists." Hogarth was caught up in this nationalist fervour. He joined Thornhill’s drawing academy in Covent Garden in 1724 and married his daughter Jane in 1729. When Thornhill died in 1734, Hogarth inherited both the academy and his father-in law’s passion to raise the status of English painting. His reputation rested upon his work as a satirical social commentator and engraver of moralising, sequential narratives like The Harlot’s and Rake’s Progress and Industry and Idleness. They were rooted in his observation of contemporary London life but he was also an art theorist, enraged by the system of patronage that gave European artists a monopoly of History Painting commissions. In 1736, to demonstrate that a British painter could equal or excel the work of foreign artists he undertook, free of charge, the production of two colossal religious paintings for St. Bartholomew’s Hospital in Spitalfields. Christ at the Pool of Bethesda and The Good Samaritan. This was followed in 1747 by Moses Brought Before Pharoh’s Daughter for the Foundling Hospital of which he was a governor. He aimed at a high classical style which requires the suppression of incidental detail in favour of dramatic clarity and an idealised, emblematic approach to the figure. But he only partly succeeded. In Christ at the Pool of Bethesda for example the crowd of invalids resemble the denizens of the streets of London, individualised figures that distract attention from the central drama. On this scale the 1 .