| Renaissance Treasures Gloriously Glisten at Getty Center | |
| Special Exhibitions Review by Stan Parchin |
About the shows:
The Getty Center in Los Angeles, California currently has two special exhibitions that aptly describe the world of Renaissance Europe through remarkable illuminated manuscripts. A third show, opening shortly, will focus on drawings by High Renaissance masters while they worked in northern Italy. Briefly at the Getty Center simultaneously, all three presentations will provide the viewer with a vast visual panorama of artistic achievement from this period, not likely to be recreated in one location again anytime soon.
Painted Prayers: Books of Hours from the Morgan Library goes far to explain the structure of a typical prayerbook through 58 painted and printed editions of personal devotional texts from late-medieval and Renaissance times. The exhibition introduces the viewer to a typical prayerbook's contents: the calendar commemorating the feast days of saints' martyrdoms; Gospel lessons; the eight Hours or prayers of the Virgin Mary recited throughout the day; Penitential Psalms and the Litany of saints whose intercession was sought by the sinful; accessory texts for personalized devotion; Suffrages (short prayers) dedicated to individual saints; and the Office of the Dead, psalms from the Old Testament Book of Job, read to reduce the length of one's stay in Purgatory. In a world of scientifically unexplained plague, social turmoil, political unrest, religious tensions and pervasive notions of witchcraft, it's no wonder why so many of these small portable books were more popular in their own time than the Bible.
Jean Bourdichon
(French, 1457-1521)
The Nativity, ca. 1515
Tempera and gold on parchment
19 x 15 cm (7 1/2 x 5 7/8 in.)
The Pierpont Morgan Library, Purchased 1927
©The Pierpont Morgan Library, 2005
Photography by David A. Loggie
llluminations on display from the prestigious New York institution are largely examples of the International Style of manuscript painting. Many vignettes include graceful courtly figures fashionably attired, created with profound precision and jewel-like colors. Notable miniaturists represented in the show include: Frenchmen Jean Fouquet (ca. 1415/20–1478/81) and Jean Poyet (active 1483-1503); the French-born Flemish master Simon Marmion (ca. 1425-1489); and the Croatian Guilio Clovio (1488-1578). Marmion's The Coronation of the Virgin (ca. 1480) depicts a seated delicate Virgin Mary having been crowned Queen of Heaven by Jesus Christ, her son. Beneath them is a throng of adoring angels. The bottom third of the page has calligraphic text encapsulated by one of Marmion's painstaking botanical studies, executed with the optical exactitude of his early Netherlandish contemporaries.
Simon Marmion
(Flemish, active 1450-1489)
The Coronation of the Virgin, ca. 1480
Tempera and gold on parchment
16.5 x 11 cm (6 1/2 x 4 5/16 in.)
The Pierpont Morgan Library, Purchased 1900
©The Pierpont Morgan Library, 2005
Photography by David A. Loggie
A Masterpiece Reconstructed: The Hours of Louis XII is necessarily smaller than the Morgan Library exhibition, yet just as important. Created for Louis XII, king of France (r. 1498-1515), his royal book of hours was illustrated by French painter and miniaturist Jean Bourdichon (ca. 1457-1521). The artist was a student of Jean Fouquet and court painter to four successive French kings. Bourdichon painted Louis XII's private prayerbook in 1498/99. In Louis XII Kneeling in Prayer, a miniature from the royal Hours, the king kneels reverentially in front of Saints Michael, Charlemagne, Louis and Denis. The four religious figures stand quietly by Louis, symbolically sanctifying his ascension to the throne of France.
Jean Bourdichon
(French, 1457-1521)
Louis XII Kneeling in Prayer, 1498/99
Leaf from the Hours of Louis XII
Tempera on parchment
24.3 x 15.7 cm (9 9/16 x 6 3/16 in.)
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, California
By 1700, the miniatures were separated from their text. The leaves were dispersed (as was customary then). Some showed up in England shortly thereafter. The show successfully reunites 15 of the book's miniatures with some of its text. It displays the book's calendar with depictions of seasonal activities and astrological signs. Many of the intimate illuminations demonstrate Bourdichon's keen interest in the effects of light in his compositions. Images from the Hours of the Virgin, the core of Louis XII's devotional text, include a serene Virgin of the Annunciation and a dramatically lit Nativity.
Finally, the Getty Center will present Drawings from Leonardo to Titian: A North Italian Itinerary from December 6, 2005 to February 26, 2006. The fragile works on paper will be arranged in a unique sequence suggesting a trip through the major artistic centers of northern Italy during the High Renaissance. The geographic regions to be explored in the show include: Lombardy (Milan, Cremona and Mantua); Emilia-Romagna (Parma and Bologna); and Venice and the Veneto (Verona). More than 30 works from the Getty Museum's collection will explain the drawing methods of the artists represented in the show and how some of them influenced each other.
Though known largely for his corpus of works produced in Florence, Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) was also employed at the politically despotic yet intellectually enlightened court of the Sforza family in Milan. The exhibition's section on Lombardy will feature one of his esoteric "brainstorm" sheets produced while he worked there. Studies for the Christ Child with a Lamb (ca. 1503/06) features three sensitive renditions in increasing size of the same subject on the sheet's recto or right-hand side. All were perhaps preparatory studies for a lost painting of the Virgin and Child with Saint John. In the second figural study, Leonardo changed the angles of the heads of the infant Jesus and lamb from those in the first drawing. The third very detailed rendering on the bottom left of the page is visibly more complex than the other two in terms of pose. Taken as a whole, one can observe how Leonardo arrived at solutions to different problems in his design. Unrelated to the drawings, the top of the sheet includes some of Leonardo's notes, handwritten backwards as was typical of many of his recorded observations.
Leonardo da Vinci
(Italian, 1452-1519)
Studies for the Christ Child with a Lamb , (recto),
ca. 1503/06
Pen and brown ink and black chalk
21 x 14.1 cm (8 1/4 x 5 9/16 in.)
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, California
Parma and Bologna in the Emilia-Romagna region of central northern Italy were the artistic centers of Correggio (Antonio Allegri, ca. 1489/94-1534) and Parmigianino (Francesco Mazzola, 1503-1540). Correggio's sketches exude grace. They also reveal his debt to Leonardo by his use of the master's technique of sfumato, in which smoky tones are blended together to create imperceptible transitions, depth, volume and form in a composition. At the same time, Parmigianino's red chalk Studies of Saint John the Baptist and Jerome, a Crucifix, and Various Heads (ca. 1525-1527), through the elongation of the left-hand figure's raised arm, anticipate the artist's eventual exaggerated distortions of the human anatomy (characterized by large bodies with small heads and stretched limbs). This is exemplified by the Getty Museum's Studies of the Madonna and Child (ca. 1535), not exhibited in this show. Parmigianino drew them in preparation for his famous Mannerist masterpiece, the Madonna of the Long Neck (1534-1540).
A singularly breathtaking Pastoral Scene (ca. 1565) executed by Titian (ca. 1480/90-1576) is a highlight of the sketches in the Venetian part of the exhibition. Its presence itself is remarkable because unlike Leonardo, Titian drew very little in his lifetime. The sheets by Titian that survive reflect his overwhelming interests in atmospheric effects, light and shade. The Venetian artists largely emphasized atmosphere over precise detail. In Titian's Pastoral Scene, he was able to express both atmosphere and texture by the use of various kinds of line. Some lines are loose and sketchy, such as those in the billowing tree tops of the landscape's left-hand side. Conversely, the drapery of the partially covered nude woman seated on the right is executed with a more detailed and fluid line. The sketch's subject matter is enigmatic. The two shepherds eluding the sun's heat by reclining in the trees' shade possibly represent Indolence (laziness), the sin of Sloth. To the medieval and Renaissance mind, Idleness led to Lust, symbolized graphically by the naked female figure. Her shameful face and upper torso are draped by a cloak with meticulously drawn folds. The goat and boar in the foreground were attributes of Lust, hence a possible reason for their presence.
Titian (Tiziano Vecellio)
(Italian, ca. 1480/90-1576)
Pastoral Scene, ca. 1565
Pen and brown ink, and black chalk,
heightened with white gouache
19.5 x 30.2 cm (7 11/16 x 11 7/8 in.)
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, California
Drawings from Leonardo to Titian... will describe the wide range of techniques and media used by the artists to achieve specific visual effects in their works. The show will explore the drawings of other Italian High Renaissance artists, emphasizing stylistic cross-fertilization across geographic regions and time.
Seen together, the Getty Center's three shows offer the viewer a special opportunity to examine the rich and varied artistic output from a truly spectacular period in the history of art. One will also gain valuable insight into the culture of the Late Middle Ages and the Renaissance through small-scale artworks frequently overshadowed by the plethora of panel paintings, sculpture and architecture from the same era.
For further reading:
Kren, Thomas (ed.), et al. A Masterpiece Reconstructed: The Hours of Louis XII.
Los Angeles, CA: J. Paul Getty Trust, 2005.
Kren, Thomas, et al. Illuminating the Renaissance: The Triumph of Flemish Manuscript Painting in Europe (exh. cat.).
Los Angeles, CA: J. Paul Getty Trust, 2003.
Wieck, Roger S. Painted Prayers: The Book of Hours in Medieval and Renaissance Art.
New York: George Braziller, Inc., 1999.
"Painted Prayers: Books of Hours from the Morgan Library" and "A Masterpiece Reconstructed: The Hours of Louis XII" remain on view through January 8, 2006 at the Getty Center. "Drawings from Leonardo to Titian: A North Italian Itinerary" will be on view from December 6, 2005 through February 26, 2006 in the same venue. The Getty Center is located at 1200 Getty Center Drive, Los Angeles, CA 90049-1681 (Telephone: 310-440-7300; Website: www.getty.edu). The museum is open Tuesday through Thursday and Sunday from 10:00 AM to 6:00 PM and Friday and Saturday from 10:00 AM to 9:00 PM. Admission to the museum is free. Paid parking is based on availability and costs $7.00 per car, cash only.
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From your Guide: Stan Parchin, Senior Correspondent for Museums and Special Exhibitions, is a specialist in ancient, late-medieval and Renaissance art and history, and a regular contributor to About Art History. You may read all of his Special Exhibition and Catalogue Reviews here.
