Judith and Holofernes

The Return of Judith to Bethulia, Sandro Botticelli, 1472

Speaking of beheading, let's talk a little bit about Judith and Holofernes. This classic Bible story tells of a beautiful, young, Jewish widow whom was called upon by her community to entice the Assyrian general, Holofernes, to withdraw his army from their siege on Israel. 

The story was particularly popular during the Counter Reformation because it upheld chastity and virtue in the symbol of Judith. Although asked to seduce Holofernes, Judith uses her wit instead of her body to trick Holofernes. She visits his tent over a course of three nights. On the third night she gets him abundantly drunk until he passes out - think Elizabeth Swan tricking Captain Jack Sparrow to drink himself to sleep on the marooned island. While he is asleep, Judith cuts off his head and brings it back to her town as a new hero. 

Judith, Jan Sanders van Hemessen, 1540

Many early depictions of Judith only show the aftermath of the beheading. Considered to be painted from the male perspective, some paintings show her nude and even as a femme fatale even though that goes against the message of the story. Caravaggio was the first painter to deviate from this tradition. He captures the psychological moment of the killing - providing a truer illustration to the Bible story. Judith holds the sword incorrectly, like a woman who had never held a sword before, which gives an authenticity to the moment. Caravaggio is the first to show the gore of the scene, though his blood is far from realistic compared to his usual naturalism. This Italian painter was inspired by Northern traditions, including the juxtaposition of young and old to emphasize the Neo-platonic virtues of the young and beautiful. 

Judith Beheading Holofernes, Caravaggio, 1598

Artemisia Gentileschi furthers Caravaggio's realistic approach to the Judith story. Her painting is an obvious emulation of his composition and style, but with a few touches that could only be captured from a woman's perspective. In this version, Judith is a common woman with dark hair and a strong build, similar to Artemisia's own body. Her glower is more believable for the act than the questioning look of Caravaggio's ideal beauty. In Artemisia's painting, the maid is not an onlooker, but actively takes a part in the murder, helping to hold down the struggling Holofernes. Artemisia's painting was actually commissioned by a woman, but her husband said it was unseemly for a woman to kill a man, and the painting was hidden away in a back hall until after his death. 

Judith and Holofernes, Artemisia Gentileschi, 1611

Artemisia was well known for painting female subjects through a gaze different than her male counterparts. The comparisons of such paintings make for an easily researched paper. So I will leave you to continue your research on your own. 

Resources: 
Doot Bokelman, "Art History Survey II" (lecture, Nazareth College, Rochester, NY, Spring 2012).
Doot Bokelman, "17th Century Baroque Art" (lecture, Nazareth College, Rochester, NY, Spring 2014).

The Four Humors

I’m surprised I’ve been able to go this long without writing about my favorite artist, Beth Cavener Stichter. She is an amazing ceramic artist whom uses animal figures to convey very human emotions. She first sculpts her giant animals with solid clay on armatures. The sculpture is then cut into segments, hollowed, fired, and reassembled. 

I discovered her work around the same time that I was in my first Art History class. We were learning about Albrecht Dürer’s print, Adam and Eve, which features the animal personifications of the Four Humors. I couldn’t help but connect the print to Beth Cavener Stichter’s Four Humors series, and the association has always stuck.

The Four Humors are the liquids once believed to make up the human body: blood, black bile, yellow bile, and phlegm. Depending on the season of your birth, you were prone to an overabundance of a particular humor, which contributed to your personality. When a person got sick, birth charts were used to decide if their humors were imbalanced compared to their natural ratio. Adam and Eve were believed to be the only humans with perfectly balanced humors, but they became imbalanced after indulging in temptation.

Albrecht Dürer, Adam and Eve
Can your spot all the animals in Dürer’s print?

The four personality types based on the humors are:

Sanguine - Those born in the spring have too much blood, which makes them overly lusty. This is represented by a rabbit.

Melancholic - Those born in the autumn have too much black bile, making them susceptible to various mental illnesses/imbalance. This is represented by an elk.

Choleric - Those born in the summer have too much yellow bile, which results in uncontrollable rage. This is represented by a cat.

Phlegmatic - Those born in the winter have too much phlegm, and so embody sloth and laziness. This is represented by a cow.

The rabbit is the only traditional animal used by Stichter, but her other animals still successfully embody the nature of each personality. Look at the way each animal interacts with its black form – they fit so well!

The Sanguine

The Melancholic

The Choleric

The Phlegmatic

Resources:
Doot Bokelman, "Art History Survey II" (lecture, Nazareth College, Rochester, NY, Spring 2012).

Don’t Send Me Flowers

I was never really big on receiving flowers for birthdays or holidays. Although I appreciate them visually now, I am still under the impression that they’re just going to die, so they’re not really an uplifting symbol of unending love. And to be honest, I’ve never been too fond of floral scents – you’ll never see me stopping to smell the roses. While I’m sure part of my original aversion to flowers was just teen angst, I have to say that I was pretty smug to learn that my excuse that “flowers just die” actually has historical backing.

Shortly after the Reformation, Calvinism became the official religion of the Dutch Republic. This threw the function of religious art into chaos because depictions of religious figures were considered idols, and thus forbidden. Meanwhile, Amsterdam and Antwerp were becoming centers of trade and a new, wealthy middle class was growing. These rich and religious people needed something to spend their money on, and artists met that need with flower still life paintings.

Ambrosius Bosschaert the Elder (Dutch, 1573 - 1621) Flower Still Life, 1614, Oil on copper. 30.5 x38.9 cm (12 x 15 5/16 in.) The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles

Individual artists specialized in specific genres of paintings. Flower still life painters developed a simple formula to quickly churn out paintings to meet the demands of the market. The first step was to simplify the background. Most flower still lifes are set on a simple stone ledge with a dark, ambiguous background. The Dutch people wanted perfect, glass-like surfaces on their paintings. Although the Dutch painters achieved visual naturalism, these are not realistic flower arrangements. The flowers come from all different regions and different seasons, so they could never be found together in a live arrangement. The pictured vases could also never hold such a surplus of flowers without tipping over. In reality, artists collected sketches and paintings of flowers from all different angles in a self-made “pattern book.” They would then pick and choose from their pattern books to create flower arrangements, saving the time and money of needing a live arrangement as reference for every painting.

Ambrosius Bosschaert the Elder (Dutch, 1573 - 1621) Flower Still Life in a Wan-Li Vase, 1609-1610. The National Gallery, Trafalgar Square, London

Paintings of flowers served many purposes during the Dutch Baroque era (1600 – 1700).

• A painting of flowers was much cheaper than buying flowers, so the middle class could afford to plaster their walls with paintings even if they couldn’t fill their houses with flowers.
• The more luxury items in the painting, the more expensive it was – but it would still be cheaper than owning those items.
• The paintings were filled with religious symbolism since blatantly religious paintings were now forbidden.
• Cut flowers are a momento mori – once the stem is cut, they are dying and their beauty will fade (aka “flowers just die”)
• However, the variety of flowers are a celebration of the abundance and creativity of God
• Seashells and other small treasures are reminders of material goods that are meaningless after life
• Caterpillars and butterflies are symbols of Jesus’ three days in the tomb and his resurrection from death

Rachel Ruysch, Roses, Convolvulus, Poppies and Other Flowers in an Urn on a Stone Ledge, ca. 1680s. National Museum of Women Artists, Washington D.C.

One notable flower still life painter is Rachel Ruysch. As a rare woman painter, she was considered a “curiosity” and her paintings were collected by kings and queens across Europe. Her father was a botanist so she had been studying and sketching plants from a young age. Since her father was wealthy, she had the privilege of a private painting tutor – still life specialist Van Aelst. Ruysch’s paintings adhere to a certain recognizable trademark. You can spot a Ruysch painting by its larger than average size, black background, and her center spotlight. Almost every Ruysch painting starts with dark edges that encompass a white flower so bright that it seems to emanating the light itself. The pattern is easy to see when looking at a mass amount of images like in this Google image search. 

The Dutch knew that flowers don't last forever, but this didn't make them cast them aside like I did. Instead, they embraced flowers as symbols of their religion after their visual vocabulary was wiped out by Calvinism. 

Resources:
Doot Bokelman, "Art History Survey II" (lecture, Nazareth College, Rochester, NY, Spring 2012).
Doot Bokelman, "18th and 19th Century Europe" (lecture, Nazareth College, Rochester, NY, Fall 2014).

Movie Day!

You walk into 7^th grade Biology and at the front of the room is a big tube TV on a black rolling cart. A buzzed excitement fills the classroom – you know what that TV means – it’s a movie day! Whether it’s because you have a substitute, or because your teacher just really isn’t feeling it, you don’t care, because today’s curriculum is going to be taught by Bill Nye.

Well, this teacher is getting overwhelmed with preparing to sell at the Corn Hill Arts Festival, so a movie day it is!

Today I am presenting to you the German film Die Abenteuer des Prinzen Achmed (The Adventures of Prince Achmed) by Lotte Reiniger. There are lots of reasons that this movie is really cool:

1. Lotte Reiniger is a lady. 

2. Her animation studio only had five staff members!¹

3. Lots of people think Disney’s Snow White is the first full length animated movie, but The Adventures of Prince Achmed came out 11 YEARS before Snow White! (1926)²

4. The movie is a great example of Neo-platonic beliefs. The villain is boney and hook-nosed while the protagonists are the most realistic – humanizing them in comparison to the stylized supporting characters.

5. I wrote about Reiniger’s film in my senior thesis as a bridge between Wayang Kulit shadow plays and modern animation. She used stop-motion photography and cut paper on a backlight screen to produce an animation very similar to shadow puppet performances. While you watch the movie, try to imagine the meticulous work that had to go into constructing each frame.

P.S. this is a silent film and the caption screens are in German, but, you should still have no problem following the narrative and there are tons of plot summaries online.

Enjoy!

(1926) Lotte Reiniger - 'The Adventures of... by FILMandCLIPS

Notes:

1. Rachel Palfreyman, "Life and Death in the Shadows: Lotte Reiniger's Die Abenteuer des Prinzen Ahmed," German Life and Letters 64, no. 1 (January 2011): 13.
2. Palfreyman, "Life and Death in the Shadows," 6-11.