In class on Tuesday, we discussed two pieces Scenes from the Life of St. Ursula: Arrival of the English Ambassadors and St. Ursula with her Father and The Communion of the Apostles + Miracle of the Profaned Host. Both of these artworks find ways to bring the viewer closer to the composition compared to earlier Northern and Italian Renaissance works. In Carpaccio’s piece, he positions the viewers close by railings and places other spectators on the other side of the railing, mirroring each other. This gives viewers a clearly defined place in the painting. Viewers are also placed closer to the subjects in Paolo Uccello’s Miracle of the Profaned Host where he incorporated a predella, a painting on the bottom of the altarpiece. In both of these pieces, we see a move towards artwork becoming closer and approachable to the viewer. Both of these artworks also depict the movement of time taking place in the scenes through a left to right progression of the scenes and the same subject is wearing the same outfit to show continuity. 

Finally, I also felt the difference in the main focus between the two latter artworks to be interesting. Carpaccio’s piece includes two scenes with one scene taking up the majority of the panel. On the other hand, Memlinc’s piece includes many smaller scenes; however, it tells a  more complete narrative.

Scenes from the life of St. Ursula by Carpaccio show the journey of St Ursula and her ultimate demise. However, the story stresses the divinity that St. Ursula embodied, as she convinced a paigan king to convert and led a caravan of 11,000 women on a religious journey. Carpaccio adds a level of intimacy for the viewer, as the members of the background in these scenes are engaged similar to the viewer. In the reading, the question of whether there is a true religious nature to a piece of art or if it is just a flex of wealth is brought up. For example, prayer books while seemingly religious are in fact a display of affluence. While objects may seem to embody a divine nature, patrons sometimes use the iconography to show the vast amount of money they have. In case I want to have a religious theme in my exhibition, I have to consider the context in which the art was created, as it may not always seem as simple as it first appears. 

In today’s class, I found it interesting how history repeats itself. Much as the apocalyptic fears that surrounded Y2K, there was a similar fear leading up to the year of 1500. Artist Albrecht Durer took advantage of this fear to promote his own art. Thanks to the medium of woodcuts that he worked in, he was able to amply reproduce his works and distribute them. He made his signature prominent within all of his works, using Europe’s vast distribution networks to spread his work and his name all over. His themes of famine, pestilence, and death attracted his patrons with a morbid fascination brought about by the impending fear of apocalypse.

In this class, we talked about Vittore Carpaccio’s scenes from the Life of St. Ursula: Arrival of the English Ambassadors and St. Ursula with her Father. Although we have talked about the interaction between the viewer and the painting before, I was interested in the unique ways the painting invited the viewer to gaze into the scene and become a part of it. The way the subjects in the painting lean into the railing, combined with the openings in the railing, allow the viewer to perceive it intimately. This, combined with the depth in the painting, and the opening on the other side of the painted building continues this illusion, showing the ship and other civilians in the backdrop. Additionally, we talked about Joos van Ghent’s The Communion of the Apostles. The painting, which presents an impossible situation of Christ giving communion before or not during the Last Supper, is paired with a predella by Paolo Ucello. The collaboration was interesting to me, but I’m curious to see how the antisemitic imagery functions with the piece. Typically, we discussed that predellas were meant to give context to a piece, but besides adding antisemitism themes to a piece that otherwise didn’t feel like it had a message that was antisemitic – although it may help to facilitate our discussion into the shift into this kind of imagery. The last concept that I’m excited to explore further was our discussion of Johnson’s opinion that altarpieces like Raphael’s painting were both secular and not, as they were painted for Churches, but contained messages and themes exclusive to the patron’s experience and specifications.

The use of narrative in scenes was introduced through Vittore Carpaccio’s Scenes from the Life of St. Ursula in this class. The work utilizes our natural viewing patterns to tell a story. While only two distinct scenes are overtly depicted, the piece implies both past and future events in the story. Continuity is established within the story in time through the use of identical clothing, but also in space. Entry points for the viewer and carefully placed figures that look on within the image tie it to the space around it. This is similar to the way feet standing outside of the scene were used in other works we have seen. Viewers feel they are part of the same environment as the events depicted. Another interesting aspect of the piece is its combination of secular and religious iconography and meaning. Its purpose within the confraternity is reflected in the formal and processionary way figures are presented. This reflection of real people’s societal roles is reminiscent of Raphael’s Entombment, which transmitted the grief of the patron. Attention to the events, people, and interactions that lead to the creation of works of art adds a deeper and more significant layer to our understanding.

During class we discussed the story of St. Ursula and the Golden Legend which prompted the making of a series of paintings to illustrate her story. This piece was depicted like a still frame in a movie, and as it goes from left to right, it is almost animated and said to have “cinematic progression”. One thing I found interesting was how these images can be related to the confraternity that commissioned them. The ceremonial structure of the picture mirrors the confraternity’s own rituals. It also highlights the divide of secular and sacred. This is a common theme that is becoming apparent, the seperation of the secular and sacred. In St. Lucys Altarpiece the predella underneath each saint shows political loyalty of the commissioner. Also the Entombment was a product of Baglioni’s personal and political concerns and was also to be used during Mass.

In this class, we mainly discussed Vittore Carpaccio’s Scenes from the Life of St. Ursula. The artist used the same outfit of characters to show that two scenes in the piece happened at different times, thus indicated the narrative of the story in the painting. Comparing this piece to Hans Memlic’s Shrine of St. Ursula, we find Carpaccio’s piece was more formal and ceremonial. The reason for such a feature had very direct relevance for the patron, as the visual narrative structure mirrored the actual ceremonial structure of the confraternity’s own ritual. A confraternity in Venice is a religious and social organization that holds ceremonies and had masses together. The notion that sacred and secular meanings were embedded in the same piece at the same time was not new. In Raphael’s Entombment, we have already seen that a significant religious scene was combined with a personal emotion of regret and care from the patron whose son died.

During this class we discussed St. Ursula and how paintings depicting them often told a story or narrative. Oftentimes, these paintings would be painted for confraternities of St. Ursula. We also learned that it was because these paintings often depicted narratives that would progress across either horizontally or on panels, artists found ways on how to make characters recognizable. This was by dressing the characters, or people depicted in the painting, dress the same across the entire narrative. Clothes and the details of their outfits helped to make them stand out and be recognizable especially considering facial features were oftentimes too small to be used as a differentiating factor.

We also touched upon symbolism that is often used in painting of the time. For example, we were told that scorpions were a symbol of duplicity and were used as a symbol for the Jews. The predella we discussed during class also had many symbols that referenced “the others” and equated them to being bad. This to me was very interesting because it seems as if they used a lot of symbols and things would often haven more than one meaning.

Today in class we discussed storytelling and narrative in the pieces that we explored. An interesting topic we discussed that stuck with me was the cross between secularism and religiosity in these pieces. For example, Raphael’s Entombment was a depiction of a significant religious scene but it included the personal touch of the patron, featured in a prominent position in the piece. This was quite troubling to me as it is so clearly out of sync with what the altarpieces would’ve needed to be for. I can understand why Luther would’ve had problems with the rich and the richer creating these private worship spaces that were altarpieces or works that were depicting traditionally sacred scenes with a secular twist. The cinematic character of these more narrative pieces was very interesting, especially the use of the different moments in time cued by the same clothing and/or identical objects in different spacings in the pieces. Something that I really enjoyed today as well was the history of the saints and the fact that Visari actually used that same format to create his compilation of acclaimed artists.

In Tuesday’s class, we began to talk about pieces of art that have narrative elements and tell a story. We began by talking about Vittore Carpaccio’s Scenes from the Life of St. Ursula. As noted in our textbook, the painting has a cinematic progression to it, since Carpaccio takes advantage of viewers being used to reading from left to right, the narrative he is portraying progresses from left to right. We can confirm this because we see the king depicted twice in the painting—once when he is meeting St. Ursula with his son, and once when he is with the Virgin. This affirms that there are two moments in time being represented in this work. We discussed that this painting had been commissioned for the Confraternity of Sant’Orsola. Confraternities were a vitally important element of Medieval socialization, since they were community-centered places where lay people could get together to do regular community service or to have a mass and a banquet once a year. This work is yet another example of a piece of art which has additional meaning infused with the characteristics and desires of the patron.