Author: Zoe Hoang (Page 3 of 3)

The most prominent figure in this lecture, at least for me, was Jan van Eyck. Recognized even by his contemporaries as one of the best and most influential (artistically and otherwise, since he’s working at service of the Duke of Burgundy). Despite not having invented oil painting, Jan van Eyck had created some highly foundational pieces of art, his detailed, realistic and natural manner of painting as well as his usage of disguised symbolism has become a great source of inspiration and admiration. One distinct example of this being the wonderful Arnolfini Portrait. Secular as its subject matter is, this painting retains a sense of otherworldliness and divinity by the artist’s symbolist portrayal of love, marriage, and fidelity, rendered to the most minute of detail, up to the point where if we close in quite enough, we could see the painter himself standing at the couple’s door as one of their witnesses. 

We could see clearly his influence on other younger artists of the same period, one being Hans Memling. His Diptych of Maarten van Nieuwenhove, with the implementation of a mirror and the revelation of the coexistence of the two depicted figures clearly being inspired by that of van Eyck’s, still managed to engender a sense of development. By using a clearly naturalistic and familiar space (as opposed to van Eyck’s dark, detail-less background), the artist situates their figures into a believable, existing world, thus allowing the observers to engage in the reality of the piece of work. This is made even more incredible by the fact that that exactly was the point of this commission: it’s a religious diptych that Martin himself uses to pray with.

An artist that has both a similar and completely contrasting stylistic approach to van Eyck is Rogier van der Weyden, the official painter of the town of Brussel. Rogier’s St. Luke drawing the Virgin is one instance where this artist depicts the divine and classic, but through a contemporary scenery and style: the garments of the characters, their manners, the buildings, all is put into the painting to represent this fresh, new way of veneration. Rogier’s way of creating symbols is also distinct from Jan van Eyck. Other than making these symbols subtle and barely noticeable, he decides to put them right next to the main subjects, aligning them with the meanings while leaving no room for misinterpretation.

As we continued looking at Italian liturgical artworks, we examined the resemblance, or rather, inspiration being taken by one artist of another – as in the case of Giotto’s and Cimabue’s Madonna Enthroned altarpieces, while also seeing the differentiation of these pieces, in terms of style and their different approach to telling a narrative. Cimabue aimed to represent the divine by referring to ideas and suggestions of reality, while still trying to bridge the ancient origin (the Hebrew text) and the new iteration of the text (by depicting the old prophets as pillars of the church itself. Giotto, however, went further into realism and created a sense of harmony through interaction of different players in the painting – the angels overlapping each other, looking at the Virgin… He also rendered the painting much more realistically, creating a sense of volume and weight to the fabric and the figures. In some sense, Giotto’s general stylistic approach seems more emotional, more grounded. This is proven even further by his Lamentation, in his creative usage of space and corner-heavy composition, Giotto pulled the viewers in and had them observe the emotional weight of the event.

Moving over to the 15th century in Europe, we looked at a few pieces in the Burgundy aristocrat’s collection, one of those being The Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry (subtle), or the book of hours that belongs to the Duke of Berry – apparently one of the best art collector of all time (?). In many of these paintings, the ground was tilted up, allowing for more space to represent and depict more subjects. This emphasis on creating as many details of the story as possible is presented in the very way one of the walls is removed to show the viewers its inside – realism, then, is a hindrance to observation (even though the painters, Pol de Limbourg and his brothers, Herman and Jean, did still render the figures quite realistically). 

On our first lecture, we went through some of the key features of the 12 – 13th century Italian Art movements. With the unique geographical and political condition of being a ‘mosaic’ of fragmented states, the constant state of unsettlement within the 12th century leading to the eventual economic progress of the 13th century, we’ve seen constantly portrayed the concept of highly localized, birth-place pride, or campanilismo. This could be identified in the importance placed upon the campanile, and how, for example, the one built with the Palazzo Pubblico in Siena is intentionally made to be higher than that at the Palazzo della Signoria in Florence. I found this competitive air fascinating, especially taking into consideration one of the reasons why the town hall in Florence was constructed with battlements and fortified architecture: political struggle. The fact that of all mediums, architecture was chosen to convey this don’t-mess-with-us message to the losing party, the fact that it’s shown in the subtlest of manner, down to the choice of material – pietra forte, strong stone. 

What I also think is interesting in regards to how Italian people of these periods perceived architectural sites is human’s relationship with the spiritual world. When the economy is prosperous and people have money to spare, they invest in the Art, more specifically arts that serve, and of, religious purposes. Despite some works of arts originally being created merely due to the fact that there’s a space that needs decoration (eg. the altarpiece). The physical development of a human being at this time was also highly intertwined with their religious development, which was shown clearly in the process of individual baptism, signifying the utmost connection between one becoming part of the economy and part of the church.  This, along with the rise in interest with ancient culture, philosophy and art, otherwise known as humanism, created a wave of highly distinctive artworks that was influenced by elements from arts from a variety of different regions and ideologies, from Byzantine arts to French Gothic architectures.