Among The Arboreal: Herman Van Swanevelt, Trees, and the Early Modern Landscape Item Type text; Electronic Thesis Authors Marquis, Jonathan Publisher The University of Arizona. Rights Copyright © is held by the author. Digital access to this material is made possible by the University Libraries, University of Arizona. Further transmission, reproduction, presentation (such as public display or performance) of protected items is prohibited except with permission of the author. Download date 24/09/2021 07:09:11 Link to Item http://hdl.handle.net/10150/632567 AMONG THE ARBOREAL: HERMAN VAN SWANEVELT, TREES, AND THE EARLY MODERN LANDSCAPE by Jonathan Marquis ____________________________ Copyright © Jonathan Marquis 2019 A Thesis Submitted to the Faculty of the DEPARTMENT OF ART HISTORY In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements For the Degree of MASTER OF ARTS In the Graduate College THE UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA 2019 1 2 TABLE OF CONTENTS List of Figures …………………………………………………...……. 4 Abstract ……………………………………………………………….. 6 Introduction …………………………………………………………… 7 Encounters beneath the branches of art history……………………….. 14 Biography and literature review ……………………………………….19 Seeing landscape: a stroll in the forest of art history…………………. 33 Drawing Swanevelt’s forest ………………………………………….. 46 Extending the forest ………………………………………………….. 53 Conclusion …………………………………………………………… 64 Figures ……………………………………………………………….. 70 Notes …………………………………………………………………. 81 Bibliography …………………………………………………………. 92 3 LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1 – Herman van Swanevelt, View of the Palatine in Rome, c. 1650, etching, 7.3 x 11.1 inches, University of Arizona Museum of Art, Tucson. Figure 2 – Herman van Swanevelt, Landscape with Ruins and Woman with a Parasol, c. 1650, etching, 7.2 x 10.9 inches, University of Arizona Museum of Art, Tucson. Figure 3 – Herman van Swanevelt, Drawing of the Palatine, ink on paper. The Hague. Figure 4 – Herman van Swanevelt, Nature Study (possibly Palatine Ruins), National Gallery, Oslo. Figure 5 – Claude Lorrain, Ruins of the Palatine, Landscape Sketch. c. 1640. Figure 6 – Albrecht Dürer, Fir, c. 1495, watercolor and gouache on paper, 29.5x19.6 cm. British Museum, London Figure 7 – Leonardo Da Vinci Tree Study, c. 1498, red chalk on paper, 19.1x15.3 cm, Royal Library, Windsor Castle. Figure 8 – Leonardo da Vinci, Tree Drawings from da Vinci’s Notebooks. Figure 9 – Matthus Merian, Panoramic Map of Rome (Detail), c 1641. Figure 10 – Herman van Swanevelt The Arch of Constantine, Oil on canvas, 89.5x116.2 cm, 1645, Dulwich Picture Gallery, London. Figure 11 – Herman van Swanevelt, A Roman View of the Ruins of the Temple of Venus and Rome with the Colosseum and the Arch of Constantine, 1634, oil on canvas, 52”x67”, The National Museum of Western Art, Tokyo. Figure 12 – Claude Lorrain, A Study of an Oak Tree, c. 1638, Chalk, ink, 330 x224 mm. The British Museum, London. Figure 13 – Herman van Swanevelt, Martyrdom of a Dominican (St. Peter?), Fresco, Sacristy, S. Maria Sopra Minerva, Rome. Figure 14 – Herman van Swanevelt, Jacob travels into Egypt, c. 1635 Fresco, Sala di Giuseppe, Palazzo Pamphilj, Rome. Figure 15 – Herman van Swanevelt, Jacob Hiding the Branches and The Flight of Jacob, Fresco, Palazzo Mancini, Rome Figure 16 – Charles Estienne, De dissection partium corporis humani, 1545. Figure 17 – Charles Estienne, De dissection partium corporis humani, 1545. 4 Figure 18 – Giustiniani medicine chest, ca. 1560-70 or early seventeenth century. The Science Museum, London. Figure 19 – Albrecht Altdorfer, Landscape with Castle or Danube Landscape, c. 1522-25, oil on parchment mounted to panel, 30.5 x22.2 cm, Alte Pinakothek, Munich. Figure 20 – Albrecht Altdorfer, Landscape with Woodcutter, c. 1522, watercolor and gouache on paper, 20.1 x 13.6 cm, Kupferstichkabinett, Berlin. Figure 21 – Paul Bril, Fantastic Landscape¸ 1598, oil on copper, 21.30 x 29.20 cm, National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh. Figure 22 – Herman van Swanevelt, Performance of Two Singers in a Village, 24 October 1623, Ink on paper, 173 x 247 mm, Herzog Anton Ulrich-Museum, Braunschweig. Figure 23 – Herman van Swanevelt, View of the Palatine in Rome. University of Arizona Museum of Art, Tucson. (Detail). Figure 24 – Herman van Swanevelt, View of the Palatine in Rome. University of Arizona Museum of Art, Tucson. (Detail). Figure 25 – Herman van Swanevelt, View of the Palatine in Rome. University of Arizona Museum of Art, Tucson. (Detail). Figure 26 – Herman van Swanevelt, View of the Palatine in Rome. University of Arizona Museum of Art, Tucson. (Detail). Figure 27 – Herman van Swanevelt, View of the Palatine in Rome. University of Arizona Museum of Art, Tucson. (Details). Figure 28 – Herman van Swanevelt, View of the Palatine in Rome. University of Arizona Museum of Art, Tucson. (Detail of zig zag path of observation). 5 ABSTRACT The lifeworlds of humans and trees entangle in an ecology of relations to give shape to early seventeenth-century developments in landscape painting. Yet, trees are given little academic consideration, in favor of broad, ahistorical frameworks like the pastoral and sublime, even though the gnarled forms of trees dominate the earliest instances of the landscape genre. This thesis considers an arboreal-turn toward art history and examines early modern trees from a post-human, new materialism, and somatic perspective to shed light as to why trees are so profuse at a formative moment in the development of autonomous landscape pictures. Trees are dynamic sites of encounter and exchange in the landscape, whose meaning takes form through a range of disciplines and bodily activities that include labor, leisure, walking, contemplation and drawing. According to Tim Ingold, it is only after this mutually generative exchange does one get to thinking about the landscape. The landscape, it must be remembered, is inhabited before it is painted, and inhabitation, at its root, is a sensorial and somatic process unfolding within a landscape. Nicknamed the “Hermit” for his predilection to solitary wanderings near Rome, Herman van Swanevelt (1604-1655) is remembered for being one of the first to render specific atmospheric conditions of light, free of the religious subject matter that long defined the genre. However, trees dominate Swanevelt’s entire oeuvre. A close examination of Swanevelt’s etching View of the Palatine in Rome reveals the therapeutic efficacy of early modern arboreal landscapes, enacted through the activities of the print’s figures. 6 Among the Arboreal: Herman van Swanevelt, Trees, and the Early Modern Landscape by Jonathan Marquis Introduction The Landscape is not a totality that you or anyone else can look at, it is rather the world in which we stand in taking up a point of view in our surroundings. And it is within the context of this attentive involvement in the landscape that the human imagination gets to work in fashioning ideas about it. For the landscape, to borrow a phrase from Merleau-Ponty, is not so much the object as ‘the homeland’ of our thoughts. – Tim Ingold, The Perception of the Environment Late afternoon light falls on a hill in Rome. The sun rakes a gnarled mass of trees and illuminates the walls of the ancient ruins that inhabit the hillside. The trees grow wildly and nearly overwhelm the ruins accelerating their slow journey to the ground. The processes of growth and ruination intertwine, and that which animates leaf, limb, and root transforms the ruins from a mere heap of rubble into a pleasing landscape to walk among the arboreal.1 The atmosphere is pleasant, and people are out. Small groups and a few solo wanderers gather up the day’s last light as they meander amongst the trees and remnants of antiquity. A pair of men casually relax in the shade of a large, twisted oak, pointing toward the complex of ruins before them. Two men of noble stature stroll down the dirt road with the warm sun on 7 their back – their long shadows cast before them. One of them gestures to the small path that diverges from the road and leads to the slopes harboring the ruins. Further ahead a solitary woman with a large bushel on her head moves slowly toward a gate. The wooden door propped open grants access to the walled enclosure. A large dead snag reaches over the entry portal, signaling the temporal threshold the figures must cross. Several people already amble about the trees and ruins. A small figure awash in the warm light of the sun climbs a steep incline. Two figures on the summit breathe in the sky and point beyond the cypress trees that frame a view of the ancient city beyond. The intense afternoon light nearly engulfs the identity of a lone, ambling figure on the edge of a great arch above the temporal chasm of trees and ancient architecture. Another figure in the shadow of an old guard tower looks on, lost in contemplation, and appears to have already succumbed to the ancient depths. And so is described the scene of the seventeenth-century etching, View of the Palatine in Rome by Herman van Swanevelt (Fig. 1). For whether in print or in life, here on this sun- drenched hillside in the Eternal City, the terrain is to be traversed and the trees and ruins meant to be experienced and contemplated, the warmth of the sun felt in the flesh; the fresh air inhaled deeply. The hillside and pathways strengthen one’s body and offer renewal. The verdant plants extend their vigor upon the eyes, and the forces that give life to the trees and bring the ruins toward the earth are beheld. For walking among the robust growth of trees and the silent, ancient memories of ruins do the early modern artists and patron encounter the ennobling, mental health benefits and therapeutic properties of the landscape. However, the early modern environment was not all sunshine and roses as suggested by the account of the print. For fear that France would quite literally die for lack of wood, the French king ordained the French Forest Ordinance of 1669.2 The ordinance prevented wood cutting, collection and 8 livestock foraging to preserve the forests of the king.