Enigmatic Painting Research Articles

Pieter de Hooch’s window shutter with the Habsburg Emperor Charles V (1661)

This article deals with Pieter de Hooch’s enigmatic painting Woman holding a basket with beans in a garden of 1661 (Kunstmuseum, Basel), and, more specifically, with the identity of the man depicted on the window shutter of the building in the foreground of the painting. The author argues that this portrait, which was hidden behind a layer of paint for a long time and only uncovered sometime between 1913-1927, represents the Emperor Charles V, whose portrait still decorates many buildings in the Netherlands. It is also argued that the building in the background of the painting can be typified as a ‘hofje’ or almshouse, and that its architecture resembles that of the Leiden Eva van Hoogeveenshofje, built by the architect Arent van ‘s-Gravesande in the 1650s. This suggests that De Hooch did not only paint locations in Delft and Amsterdam, but also in Leiden. The Dutch Republic’s seventeenth-century ‘hofjes’ were renowned, eliciting praise from foreign visitors, not only because of the way the Dutch Calvinist elite took care of the needy but also because of their superb architecture that enhanced the beauty of the Republic’s cities. Interestingly, De Hooch painted a servant girl in the garden of the almshouse, which at first may seem incongruous with an institution intended for the poor. However, as will be shown, residents of almshouses in the seventeenth-century Dutch Republic were not as poor as is generally thought. Some were even quite well-off and did indeed keep servants. In fact, some contemporaries even likened the Dutch almshouses to palaces. The portrait of the emperor on the window shutter may thus have criticised this type of ‘poor relief’ and could well have been intended to bring out the resemblance between the ‘hofje’ and an emperor’s palace. The word ‘hofje ‘ after all means ‘small court’. As such an overt criticism is unique in De Hooch’s oeuvre, it may have been the artist himself who blotted the emperor’s portrait out, thus changing the image into a straightforward genre scene. It was precisely this type of scene that was to bring De Hooch some success following his move to Amsterdam in 1660.

Artificial orpiment, a new pigment in Rembrandt\u2019s palette

This paper reports on how the application of macro X-ray fluorescence (MA-XRF) imaging, in combination with the re-examination of existing paint cross-sections, has led to the discovery of a new pigment in Rembrandt’s palette: artificial orpiment. In the NWO Science4Arts ‘ReVisRembrandt’ project, novel chemical imaging techniques are being developed and applied to the study of Rembrandt’s late paintings in order to help resolve outstanding questions and to gain a better understanding of his late enigmatic painting technique. One of the selected case studies is the Portrait of a Couple as Isaac and Rebecca, known as ‘The Jewish Bride’, dated c. 1665 and on view in the Rijksmuseum. During the re-installation of the Rijksmuseum in 2013, the picture was scanned using the Bruker M6 Jetstream MA-XRF scanner. The resulting elemental distribution maps made it possible to distinguish many features in the painting, such as bone black remains of the original hat (P, Ca maps), and the now discolored smalt-rich background (Co, Ni, As, K maps). The arsenic (As) map also revealed areas of high-intensity in Isaac’s sleeve and Rebecca’s dress where it could be established that it was not related with the pigment smalt that also contains arsenic. This pointed to the presence of a yellow or orange arsenic-containing pigment, such as realgar or orpiment that is not associated with the artist’s palette. Subsequent examination of existing paint cross-sections from these locations taken by Karin Groen in the 1990s identified isolated, almost perfectly round particles of arsenic sulfide. The round shape corresponds with published findings on a purified form of artificial orpiment glass obtained by dry processing, a sublimation reaction. In bright field, the particles characteristically exhibit a dark cross in the middle caused by internal light reflections. The results of additional non-invasive techniques (portable XRD and portable Raman) are discussed, as well as the implications of this finding and how it fits with Rembrandt’s late experimental painting technique.

La paradoja del comentario sobre arte: Jacques Derrida ante el Greco, Henri Michaux antes de René Magritte

This paper analyzes the rethinking of art criticism during French post-structuralism and deconstruction in the second half of the XX century. From Michel Foucault to Gilles Deleuze, from Jacques Derrida to Jean-Claude Lebensztejn, the article develops several conceptions and functions of art criticism by means of paradox, paying special attention to Henri Michaux’s essay on Rene Magritte En revant a partir de peintures enigmatiques [Dreams like Enigmatic Paintings].

The Golden Chain: Rembrandt’s Cologne Self-Portrait, or The Tragicomic Excellence of Painting*

The author offers a new interpretation of Rembrandt’s famous Self-Portrait in Cologne. He questions previous interpretations proposed by scholars, relying on a close reading of this enigmatic painting and comparing it with other analogous works by Rembrandt and his disciples. In arguing his thesis, the author explores the concept of pictorial excellence and the ways in which pictorial props (such as the golden chain) convey this notion.

Vermeer's women: secrets and silence

Centring on the extraordinary Lacemaker from the Musee du Louvre, this beautiful book investigates the subtle and enigmatic paintings by Johannes Vermeer that celebrate the intimacy of the Dutch household. Moments frozen in paint that reveal young women sewing, reading or playing musical instruments, captured in Vermeer's uniquely luminous style, recreate a silent and often mysterious domestic realm, closed to the outside world, and inhabited almost exclusively by women and children. Three internationally recognized experts in the field explain why women engaged in mundane domestic tasks, or in pleasurable pastimes such as music making, writing letters, or adjusting their toilette, comprise some of the most popular Dutch paintings of the seventeenth century. Among the most intriguing of these compositions are those that consciously avoid any engagement with the viewer. Rather than acknowledging our presence, figures avert their gazes or turn their backs upon us; they stare moodily into space or focus intently on the activities at hand. In viewing these paintings, we have the impression that we have stumbled upon a private world kept hidden from casual regard. The ravishingly beautiful paintings of Vermeer are perhaps the most poetic evocations of this secretive world, but other Dutch painters sought to imbue simple domestic scenes with an air of silent mystery, and the book features also works by some of the most important masters of seventeenth-century Dutch genre painting, among them Gerard ter Borch, Gerrit Dou, Pieter de Hooch, Nicolaes Maes, and Jan Steen.

Chains: David, Canova, and the fall of the public hero in postrevolutionary France

One of Jacques-Louis David's most ambitious and darkly enigmatic paintings, Leonidas at the Pass of Thermopylae, hangs today in the Louvre, largely ignored. Focusing on this painting, Chains embarks on a discourse about the perception of the body, sexuality, and subjectivity in early nineteenth-century European art. In addition to David, Chains explores the sculptural oeuvre of David's contemporary and rival, Italian sculptor Antonio Canova. Padiyar argues that, like David's postrevolutionary work, Canova's innovative sculptures embodied a new, distinctively modern type of subjectivity. The book aims to take a fresh view of the status of the male body in the work of these two late neoclassical artists by linking them in novel, sometimes unexpected ways with key figures of the late Enlightenment. In postrevolutionary Europe, philosophical and literary figures such as Immanuel Kant and the Marquis de Sade pushed the language of neoclassicism to its limits. Chains argues that such innovations produced a new, distinctively sexed, politicized, and aestheticized heroic male body that emerged as an incidental aftereffect of the French Revolution.

The paintings on the Hermes tomb under San Sebastiano: a new Interpretation

How early did Christians make their presence felt in the ancient cemetery under the present church of San Sebastiano in Rome? In this present article I will argue that enigmatic paintings on the attic of a second-century tomb, the tomb of Clodius Hermes, whose subject-matter and provenance is much disputed, are best interpreted as Christian and as representing three Lukan parables from chapters 14–15 (the Lost Sheep, the Great Supper and the Prodigal Son). I will suggest they were the work of a Christian slave or freedman of the household, perhaps a member of the titulus Byzantis on the Clivus Scauri, seeking to win over those coming to honour their dead relatives in the cemetery. It was such a community that was responsible for choosing the site for the joint cult of Peter and Paul in 258. My methodology will be, in the light of scholarly disagreement over the interpretation of the paintings as Christian, (a) to demonstrate the logic of the three scenes as representing linked parables, the likely identity of their author(s) and their apologetic function, with literary support from Tertullian; (b) to show the lack of obvious pagan parallels and argue for the plausibility of parables in the light of their occurrence and function elsewhere; (c) to suggest that such evidence of a Christian presence makes more comprehensible the later choice of the site for the joint cult.

IS THE BEARDED MAN DROWNING? PICTURING THE FIGURATIVE IN A LATE-FIFTEENTH-CENTURY PAINTING FROM HERAT

In the study of Persian miniature painting and its development through the fifteenth century, it is dif ficult to overestimate the importance of the illustra tions in the 1487 manuscript of the Mantiq al-tayr in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.1 Three of the illustrations in this manuscript are among the earliest specimens of the style of painting ush ered in by the artists at the famed atelier of Sultan Husayn Bayqara, the last Timurid prince in Herat.2 Over the years, aside from the usual debates about attribution, these enigmatic paintings have enticed art historians' curiosity and generated a number of largely inconclusive interpretations. general tendency to explain their content symbolically is ostensibly due to the designation of the Mantiq al-tayr as mystical poetry. Translated into English under such titles as Speech of the Birds or Conference of the Birds, the Mantiq al-tayr was written by Farid al-Din cAttar in rhyming couplets some three centuries before this manuscript was copied and illustrated.3 'Attar's twelfth century work was indeed an explicit contribution to the discourse of Sufism, which like its counterparts in Jewish Kabala and medieval Christian mysticism, sought a direct, individual experience of God. Advo cating the pursuit of the real?as opposed to the phe nomenal?truth, 'Attar's work is an allegorical tale presenting the various stages that a seeker of truth must go through in his or her quest for unity with the divine. paintings in the Metropolitan Museum manuscript have for the most part been understood as literal depictions of events from a handful of 'Attar's numerous parables, which elaborate the importance of these stages on the path to Sufism. Of the eight illustrations in the Metropolitan Museum manuscript, the first four are early seventeenth-cen tury additions. Of the four original illustrations, one does not display the characteristics that distinguish the other three paintings as early examples of the new style. Rather, this fourth painting, The Beggar before the King, has been characterized as depict ing a scene, which has been an integral part of the art of Iran from the Sasanid dynasty onward and appears in all schools of all periods of Persian miniature painting.4 My concern here is with The Man Drowning,5 one of the other three fif teenth-century illustrations, which are stylistically sim ilar enough to one another to be attributed to the same artist or group of artists. According to Priscilla Soucek, the advice given to students of calligraphy by Qazi Ahmad in the sixteenth century reveals the conservatism of artistic education in Iran, which jus tified two basic mechanisms of continuity in manu script illustration: literal reproduction and selective adaptation.6 Taking into account this tradition-bound artistic practice, I have assumed the content of the Bearded Man Drowning, and, except for the court scene, of all the paintings original to the manuscript, to have been provided by 'Attar's text. Nevertheless, although all three adhere to the convention of depict ing the events of the accompanying text, half of each of these three paintings contains images that do not appear to bear any direct link to that text?at least not on the literal level.

The white dodo of Réunion Island: unravelling a scientific and historical myth

ABSTRACT: The supposed white dodo of Réunion Island (Indian Ocean) arose from a merging of travellers' tales of large whitish birds with some enigmatic paintings of white dodos painted in mid- to late- seventeenth-century Holland. Sub-fossil bone discoveries in the 1970s onwards revealed that the bird which travellers called a solitaire was a large, quasi-flightless ibis, while the Dutch paintings turn out to have been based on a much earlier picture by Roelant Savery of a whitish specimen of a Mauritius dodo (Raphus cucullatus), painted in Prague around 1611. Savery's dodo images impact on this story at various points and are discussed in detail. There are geological reasons for believing dodos, evolving in Mauritius, would have been already flightless before Réunion emerged and hence could not have colonised that more recent volcanic island. No contemporary images are known of the Réunion solitaire (the ibis, Threskiornis solitarius) and no specimens were brought to Europe alive or dead.

L'animal dans la peinture de Chardin

Officially, in the Academy's terms, a specialist in the painting of animals and fruits (still life), Chardin was clearly interested in animals. His pictures display a very coherent treatment of the theme which culminated in the celebrated Raie, his academic reception piece, herald of his future career. This enigmatic painting fascinated his contemporaries, probably owing to its subject and most particular mode of representation with its unexpected inherent violence. The article attempts further to elucidate the nature and power of this effect and to link it to the new current of sensibility to the living which began in the 18th century.

Surprises et leçons d'un inventaire : la prose féminine non-fictionnelle au 18e siècle

Officially, in the Academy's terms, a specialist in the painting of animals and fruits (still life), Chardin was clearly interested in animals. His pictures display a very coherent treatment of the theme which culminated in the celebrated Raie, his academic reception piece, herald of his future career. This enigmatic painting fascinated his contemporaries, probably owing to its subject and most particular mode of representation with its unexpected inherent violence. The article attempts further to elucidate the nature and power of this effect and to link it to the new current of sensibility to the living which began in the 18th century.

Impressions of an enigmatic painting

Summary The article discusses an enigmatic, anonymous painting deposited in the Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest. On grounds of style and with regard to the figures' attire it can be dated to the first third of the 17th century. Its master is supposedly German, who was both inspired by Italian Renaissance portraiture and the art of his 16th century German predecessors, Hans Holbein the Younger and Hans von Aachen. The painting can be regarded a double portrait coupled with a still life. It depicts possibly the painter himself, who, assuming the century-old role of the fools, mocks a man for his obesity. Taking also in consideration the frugal meal before him and the inconsistency of his clothes, it expresses the dichotomy between temperance and intemperance, Christian moderation and earthly abundance, vitaactiva and vitacontemplativa.

Horatian Landscape in the Louvre's "Concert Champetre"

Like other enigmatic paintings of the Renaissance, the Louvre's Concert Champetre has been variously interpreted as either allegory or poesia, and most recently (Christiane Joost­Gaugier, 1999) as a sentimental tribute to Giorgione by Titian by completing an unfinished work of his late lamented teacher and friend. This paper identifies two specific sources of literary inspiration for the figures and setting of the painting in the Augustan poets Horace and Sextus Propertius, and in woodcut illustrations from contemporary printed editions of their works, chosen per­haps by an unknown committente. The Muse with the flute is identified here (in agreement with E. Motzkin) as Horace's Euterpe (Ode 1.1); the other, holding the gleaming pitcher of water and wearing a trailing diadem and a ring, as Calliope, Horace's 'Queen' of Muses (Ode 3.4). Those two musicians, then, the elegant Propertius (with the lute and garbed in red, left) and Horace (the plainer rustic, right) are engaged in a friendly competition as described in Horace's Epistle 2.2 (the unnamed elegist there was identified in the Renaissance as Propertius). The goatherd with a bagpipe (background, right) represents Horace's Faunus, here to visit the Sabine farm from his beloved Arcadia (as the poet boasts in Ode 1.17) and piping to the goats on the slopes of Lucretilis. Calliope stands at the well preparing to consecrate her poet with sacred water as in Propertius 3.3, but the elegist's Hippocrene has been transformed here into Horace's Bandusian spring, with its glassy waters and shading ilex (Ode 3.13). At the far right an ilex shades the figure of Faunus as well. The Sabine landscape Horace loved, with its ilexes, spring, villa, neighbouring towns, hills,even perhaps Tivoli and the River Aniene in the background, is imaginatively recreated by the artist.

New Garden Friends Meeting: The Christian People Called Quakers , and: White Plains Friends Meeting, 1850-1982 (review)

54Quaker History historian would wish to see more fully explored, this volume on Hicks so expands our information on Hicks' life and spiritual concerns and on the meaning of his once enigmatic paintings that it will be a necessary resource for anyone interested in Hicks as either an artist or, more especially, the Quaker minister his contemporaries chiefly thought him to be. Swarthmore CollegeConstance Cain Hungerford New Garden Friends Meeting: The Christian People Called Quakers. By Hiram H. Hilty. North Carolina Friends Historical Society, 1983. 134 pp. $6.00. White Plains Friends Meeting, 1850-1982. By Frederic R. Crownfield , Hurley T. Simpson and Margaret E. Crownfield. North Carolina Friends Historical Society, 1982. 136 pp. $6.00. Nowadays there is a welcome trend to preserve, in a world where change has become so rapid, histories of individual Friends meetings , compiled while a few are still living whose parents and grandparents were active in the founding days. North Carolina Friends Historical Society has undertaken a series of such histories, and here are two of them. Hiram Hilty has carried the New Garden story back more than two hundred years, to the arrival of the first settlers from Pennsylvania (the name comes from Chester County, to which it was earlier brought by Friends from Ireland). Some also came from Virginia and Nantucket. The volume tends to be more anecdotal than analytical, which will undoubtedly serve a useful purpose for some but makes it less valuable for historians. Some of the earliest family names are Mendenhall from Ireland by way of Pennsylvania, and Coffin from Nantucket. How many of us realize that John Payne of New Garden was the father of Dolley Madison? The story runs through the revolutionary war period, the struggle over slavery (Levi Coffin, after his move to Indiana, was called the president of the Underground Railroad), and the founding ofNew Garden Boarding School which became Guilford College. In the early twentieth century New Garden became a pastoral meeting, but it has continued to emphasize traditional Quaker practices in its meeting for worship and in the relationship between the minister and the meeting. New Garden has a strong sense of outreach which is expressed both in missionary work and in a concern for service. It is an active supporter of the American Friends Service Book Reviews55 Committee, as well as the Friends World Committee for Consultation which held its Fourth World Conference at Guilford College in 1967. New Garden Friends were active in supporting the sit-ins which in 1960 launched the national drive for integrated lunch counters. The history ofWhite Plains Meeting goes back not quite so far. The first Friends arrived from Virginia in 1850, but there were not enough of them to form a Preparative Meeting until 1 870 and the Monthly Meeting was finally established only in 1890. The meeting was pastoral almost from its inception for this much smaller meeting needed the support and leadership of a paid minister. The pastoral system was adopted in many North Carolina meetings at this time. Much ofthe book concerns meeting activities from about 1920 up to the present, including the development of local missionary work and the organiztion and training of a choir. Again, the book is primarily descriptive, including the list ofa good many individual Friends. Kendal-at-LongwoodNorma Jacob Mr. Sidwell's School: A Centennial History 1883-1983. By William R. MacKaye and Mary Anne MacKaye. Washington, D.C, The Sidwell Friends School. 1983. 254 pages. $15.00. The significance of the title of the Centennial history—Mr. Sidwell 's School—Mes in the realization that what many of us consider to be "Sidwell Friends" was more Sidwell than Friendly for well over halfofits life. This excellent book by William R. and Mary Anne MacKaye, graduates of the class of 1951, will be of value to those interested in Friends' educational institutions and in the changing patterns ofeducational administration and governance in general. The MacKayes have not flinched from reporting what was, and what often is, kept from public view: ineptness, conflict, unpleasant exercise ofpersonal power—those human qualities that obviously can and do surface as often in Quaker schools as elsewhere. And they report with equal...