Art for Christmas (13): ‘The Adoration of the Magi’ by Peter Paul Rubens

The Adoration of the Magi, by Peter Paul Rubens ... the Altarpiece in the Chapel of King’s College, Cambridge

Patrick Comerford

This Christmas season comes to a close today [6 January 2014] with the Feast of the Epiphany. The readings for today in the Revised Common Lectionary are: Isaiah 60: 1-6; Psalm 72: 1-7, 10-14; Ephesians 3: 1-12; and Matthew 2: 1-12.

My choice of work of Art for Christmas this morning is The Adoration of the Magi, by Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1644). This version of the painting can be seen above the altar in the Chapel of King’s College, Cambridge.

Rubens was a Flemish baroque painter, and worked in an extravagant Baroque style that emphasised movement, colour, and sensuality. Although born a Calvinist in Germany, he is well known for his Counter-Reformation altarpieces, as well as his portraits, landscapes, and historical paintings of mythological and allegorical subjects.

As well as running a large studio in Antwerp, he was a classically educated humanist scholar and diplomat who was knighted by both King Philip IV of Spain and King Charles I of England.

Rubens painted The Adoration of the Magi, recounted in today’s Gospel reading (Matthew 2: 1-12), more often than any other episode in the life of Christ. The theme offered Rubens, as a supporter of the Counter-Reformation, the opportunity to depict the richest worldly panoply, rich textiles, exotic turbans and a range of human types caught up in a dramatic action that express the humbling of the world before the Church, represented by the Madonna and Christ Child.

This version of The Adoration of the Magi was originally painted by Rubens in 1634 for the Convent of the White Nuns at Louvain in Belgium. It measures 4.2 metres high by 3.2 metres wide.

The three magi are full-length figures backed by a frieze-like crowd. The oldest magus kneels to kiss the foot of the Christ Child with a tender gesture, as the Child, who is pushed forward by the Virgin Mary, appears to offer a blessing with his right hand.

The property millionaire and racehorse owner Major Alfred E. Allnatt (1889-1969) bought this version The Adoration of the Magi at Sotheby’s in 1959 for a then world-record price of £250,000 from the estate of the Duke of Westminster.

That year, Major Allnatt also bought Sandbrook House, a Queen Anne Irish country house near Ballon, on the borders of Co Carlow and Co Wicklow. His herd of Blonde d’Aquitaine cattle was among the top prize winners at agricultural shows throughout Britain and Ireland, including the RDS Spring Show in Dublin and the Royal Ulster Show.

Two years later, in 1961, Major Allnatt offered the painting to King’s College, Cambridge. King’s College accepted “this munificent gift” with the intention of displaying the painting in the chapel, possibly as an altarpiece.

The painting was initially displayed in the antechapel, but a significant group of the college’s fellows – including Michael Jaffé, future Director of the Fitzwilliam Museum and a world expert on Rubens, and the Provost, Noel Annan – were determined to have the painting become the focal point of an entirely redesigned east end.

As the first stage of this project, the Edwardian reredos and the 17th century wood panelling in the chapel were removed and the painting was installed behind the altar in April 1964. The painting was so large that the raised floor of the chapel’s east end had had to be levelled to prevent the masterpiece obscuring the bottom of the Tudor east window. Yet the will of the founder of King’s College, King Henry VI, in 1448 required the steps and stated that the high altar should be raised three feet above the choir floor.

Rwenty fellows and the writer EM Forster, who was an honorary fellow, signed a letter urging the college to reverse its plan and to “admit that it has made a mistake.” Despite these protests, the floor was levelled and the newly refitted east end opened in 1968. By then, the painting had been removed from its original frame and was given blank wings to make a pseudo-triptych to give it a greater presence.

When the sanctuary floor was dug up, it was found to rest on Tudor brick arched vaults, which were then destroyed. Human remains were also found, with lead coffins dating back to the 15th century. These had to be removed so the floor could be lowered, but the workers refused to continue until this was done properly and a service held. Surprisingly, King’s College seems to have kept no records of the number and positions of these discoveries.

The alterations were highly controversial, with the Architects Journal criticising it as “motivated not by the demands of liturgical worship but by those of museum display.” In order to accommodate the painting, the former sanctuary was completely destroyed, the beautiful high altar, the three steps leading up to it, and the fine wooden communion rails were removed. Only the communion rail survives, but it now stands on either side of the sanctuary.

In June 1974, the painting was damaged by vandals who used a coin to scratch the initials “IRA” in 2-foot-high (0.61 m) letters across the front.

Sandbrook House is now a private country house hotel standing in the midst of 25 acres.

The Chapel of King’s College is one of the most popular tourists attractions in Cambridge, and is known throughout the world for the Christmas Eve Service of Nine Lessons and Carols.

The Feast of the Epiphany is being celebrated in Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin, this evening with the Cathedral Eucharist at 6 p.m. The Archbishop of Dublin, the Most Revd Dr Michael Jackson, is the celebrant. The cathedral choir returns this evening when, under the leadership of Organist and Director of Music, Ian Keatley, they sing Tomás Luis da Vitoria’s Missa O Magnum Mysterium. The communion motet is Magi veniunt ab oriente Jerosolimam, by Jacobus Clemens non Papa.

The cathedral website, under the heading ‘Christmas Isn’t Over Yet,’ currently says: “For some reflection on the season of Epiphany, when we celebrate the coming of the Magi and the Light to lighten the gentiles, please visit the Revd Canon Patrick Comerford’s blog here.”

King’s Parade, Cambridge, with the East End of the Chapel of King’s College on the left (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2013)

Collect:

O God,
who by the leading of a star
manifested your only Son to the peoples of the earth:
Mercifully grant that we, who know you now by faith,
may at last behold your glory face to face;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Post Communion Prayer:

Lord God,
the bright splendour whom the nations seek:
May we, who with the wise men
have been drawn by your light,
discern the glory of your presence in your incarnate Son;
who suffered, died, and was buried,
and who is alive and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit,
now and for ever.

Series concluded

Art for Christmas (12): ‘The Adoration of the Shepherds’ by El Greco

‘The Adoration of the Shepherds’ by El Greco

Patrick Comerford

Today is the Second Sunday of Christmas [5 January 2015] and the readings in the Revised Common Lectionary are: Jeremiah 31: 7-14; Psalm 147: 12-20; Ephesians 1: 3-14; John 1: [1-9], 10-18.

The Gospel reading, the Collect and the Post-Communion Prayer emphasise Christ’s coming into the world as the Light. My choice of a work of Art for Christmas and for meditation this morning is The Adoration of the Shepherds in which the great Greek artist El Greco (1541-1614), uses light and shade brilliant colours to heighten the awe and majesty of the birth of the Christ Child.

This great masterpiece was painted by El Greco in 1612-1614 to hang over his own tomb in the church of Santo Domingo el Antiguo in Toledo. The painting was later transferred to the high altar of the Monastery of Santo Domingo el Antiguo, and it was acquired by the Museo del Prado in Madrid in 1954. It is painted in oil on canvas and measures 319 cm × 180 cm (126 in × 71 in).

El Greco was born Δομήνικος Θεοτοκόπουλος (Doménikos Theotokópoulos) in 1541 in Crete, then a part of Venetian Empire and the centre of post-Byzantine art. Although most biographers say he was born in Iraklion, tradition in Crete says he was born in the village of Fodele west of Iraklion, on the road to Rethymnon.

After Constantinople fell to the Turks in 1453, many Byzantine iconographers and artists moved to Venetian-ruled Crete. In the late 15th century, the principles of Renaissance art were introduced from Venice into Crete, giving rise to the Cretan School of Icon Painting, distinguished by the perfection of figures, which are depicted as more human, and the attention to detail, rendered in rich colours.

One of the leading exponents of the Cretan School in Iraklion, then known as Candia, was Michael Damaskinos (Μιχαήλ Δαμασκηνός, ca1535-ca1592-1593), who lived and worked in Venice for many years. He probably established the rules of the Cretan School, and six of his icons are in the Church of Saint Catherine in Iraklion. Other representatives of the Cretan School are Georgios Klontzas (Γεώργιος Κλόντζας) and Theophanes the Cretan (Θεοφάνης Στρελίτζας, Theophanis Strelitzas).

Saint Catherine’s Church, Iraklion ... at the centre of the Cretan School of Iconography (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

It was against this background that Doménikos Theotokópoulos (El Greco) was trained in Iraklion. He became a master in the post-Byzantine tradition before leaving Crete at in his mid 20s for Venice. where he met the great Titian. He was following in the footsteps of many other great Greek artists and would never return to Crete.

In 1570, he moved to Rome, where he opened a workshop and painted a series of works. During this time in Italy, El Greco enriched his style with elements of Mannerism and the Venetian Renaissance. Yet he was so individual an artist that he belongs to no conventional school.

El Greco continued to sign his name in Greek when he was working in Toledo

In 1577, he moved to Toledo, Spain, where he lived and worked until his death. “El Greco” (The Greek) was a nickname, a reference to his Greek origins, and he normally signed his paintings with his full birth name in Greek letters, often adding the word Κρής (“Cretan”).

He is best known for tortuously elongated figures and often fantastic pigmentation, marrying Byzantine traditions with those of Western painting. His dramatic and expressionistic style was met with puzzlement by his contemporaries but found appreciation in the 20th century.

In Toledo, El Greco received several major commissions and produced his best-known paintings. But he painted The Adoration of the Shepherds for the altarpiece of his own tomb in Santo Domingo el Antiguo in Toledo.

El Greco began working on the The Adoration of the Shepherds in 1612, finishing it two years later, just before his death. El Greco’s signature in Greek is in the lower left corner. His assistant, Luis Tristán, said El Greco was working on The Adoration of the Shepherds until his death. He died on 7 April 1614.

There is a great deal of contrast between light and shade in this work, with the combination of this and the picture’s brilliant colours intended to further heighten the sense that we are witnessing a world-changing event. The bright, dissonant colours and the strange shapes and poses create a sense of wonder and ecstasy, as the shepherds and the angels celebrate the birth of the Christ Child.

The artist’s profound religiosity and hit ever-increasing mysticism are reflected in the expressions of astonishment on the faces of the shepherds as they contemplate the luminous image of the Christ Child shown to them with great care by the Virgin Mary.

His combination of the angels and the shepherds is intended to convey an image of ecstatic wonder.

The image of the kneeling shepherd with hands joined in prayer and veneration is probably a self-portrait that reflects El Greco’s own piety. His eyes are level with the Christ Child and seem to establish an intense dialogue through their gaze.

In a style that is typical of El Greco’s final works, the bodies of the shepherds are considerably distorted, contrasting with the more classical appearance of the angels who fly above. The angels hover over the scene One holds a banderole with words that were probably added later: “Glory to God in the Highest, and on earth peace.” Another crosses his arms in a pose similar to that of the shepherd below.

The Christ Child radiates a light that plays off the faces of the barefoot shepherds who are paying their homage, and the dazzling white cloth on which the child lies illuminates the figures of the Virgin Mary and the shepherds. A rhythmic energy brings the painting to life and is expressed in the dance-like motions of the figures. There are striking contrasts between light and dark passages and these help to heighten the sense of drama.

A monument to El Greco in El Greco Park in the centre of Iraklion (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

El Greco is seen as a precursor of both Expressionism and Cubism. His personality and works have inspired poets and writers from Rainer Maria Rilke to Nikos Kazantzakis.

In Iraklion, the Historical Museum of Crete has two original works by El Greco, the only original works by the artist in Crete: The Baptism of Christ (1567) and Landscape of the Mountain and the Monastery of Saint Catherine, Mount Sinai (1570). The Museum of El Greco, opposite a chapel in Archontiko on the edge of Fodele, is housed in what is said to be his birthplace. The museum exhibits include copies of his works and documents associated with El Greco. The original building was in ruins before it was restored from 1982 on, and it opened in 1998.

In 1990, I attended a major exhibition of El Greco’s works organised by the City of Iraklion to mark the 450th anniversary of his birth.

The Greek composer Vangelis has worked on three projects about El Greco. His album Φόρος Τιμής Στον Γκρέκο (Foros Timis Ston Greco, Tribute to El Greco) was released in 1995, when I attended a concert by the composer in Athens. I still treasure my copy (415/3,000) of the album which was published in 1995 as a limited edition of 3,000 CD-audios by the National Art Gallery and Alexandros Soutzos Museum in Athens to raise funds to buy El Greco’s Saint Peter.

Vangellis expanded this work with three more tracks on El Greco in 1998. Then in 2007, he composed the soundtrack for the movie El Greco, released on CD as El Greco Original Motion Picture Soundtrack in Greece in 2007.

The 2007 Greek biographical movie El Greco is based on the fictionalised biographical novel, El Greco Δομήνικος θεοτοκόπουλος Ο Ζωγράφος του θεού (El Greco: o Zografos tou Theou, El Greco: the Painter of God), by Dimitris Siatopoulos. It is directed by Yannis Smaragdis and written by Jackie Pavlenko. The main cast includes Greek actors Lakis Lazopoulos, Dimitra Matsouka, Dina Konsta, Sotiris Moustakas and Katerina Helmi, along with Juan Diego Botto, Laia Marull and others, with Nick Ashdon playing El Greco.

To mark the 400th anniversary of El Greco’s death on 7 April 1614, an exhibition, ‘The Greek of Toledo,’ will be held from March to June this year [2014] in the city where he spent the last period of his career. The exhibition is being staged at the Museum of Santa Cruz, and different ‘El Greco Venues’ throughout Toledo, including the Vestry of Toledo Cathedral, the Chapel of San José, the Convent of Santo Domingo el Antiguo, the Church of Santo Tomé and the Tavera Hospital.

A seafront exhibition in Iraklion in 2013 on the making of the movie El Greco (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2013)

Collect:

Almighty God,
in the birth of your Son
you have poured on us the new light of your incarnate Word,
and shown us the fullness of your love:
Help us to walk in this light and dwell in his love
that we may know the fullness of his joy;
who is alive and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

Post Communion Prayer:

Light eternal,
you have nourished us in the mystery
of the body and blood of your Son:
By your grace keep us ever faithful to your word,
in the name of Jesus Christ our Lord.

Tomorrow: ‘The Adoration of the Magi,’ by Peter Paul Rubens.

Art for Christmas (11), ‘Salisbury Cathedral from the Meadows’ by John Constable

Salisbury Cathedral from the Meadows,’ by John Constable

My choice of a work of Art for Christmas is Salisbury Cathedral from the Meadows by John Constable. This large masterpiece was painted in oil on canvas in 1831 and measures 151.8 x 189.9 cm. It has been on display for many years in the National Gallery, London, on loan from a private collection, and was bought by the Tate last year for £23.1 million.

Constable (1776-1837) is best-known for his landscapes, including The Hay Wain (1821), which are mostly of the Suffolk countryside, where he was born and lived. He was born in East Bergholt, and was largely self-taught. Like Thomas Gainsborough, Constable was influenced by Dutch artists such as Jacob van Ruisdael and Peter Paul Rubens.

However, the realism and vitality of his work make him highly original. “I should paint my own places best,” he wrote to his friend John Fisher in 1821, “painting is but another word for feeling.”

In 1816, when he was 40, he married his childhood friend Maria Bicknell, whose grandfather, the Revd Dr Durand Rhudde, was the Rector of East Bergholt. They were married in Saint Martin-in-the-Fields, with the Bishop of Salisbury, John Fisher (1748-1825), officiating, and spent their honeymoon in Fisher’s house in Salisbury and in Osmington Vicarage with John and Mary Fisher.

Constable died on 31 March 1837 and was buried in the graveyard of Saint John-at-Hampstead with his wife Maria, who died in 1828.

Salisbury Cathedral from the Meadows was on loan to the National Gallery for 30 years, and was at risk of being sold abroad before it was bought last year. “It’s one of the quintessential images of 19th century British art and it’s worth every penny,” Tate Britain’s Director, Sir Nicholas Serota, told the BBC.

“This is one of Constable’s most important paintings,” he said. “He regarded it as one of his masterpieces and always wanted it to be in the national collection.”

The BBC Arts Editor, Will Gompertz, said: “It is arguably the most accomplished work by one of the finest, most exciting painters of the Romantic period.” Constable’s The Lock became one of the most expensive British paintings ever sold when it fetched £22.4 million at auction in July 2012.

Salisbury Cathedral from the Meadows is one of a series of monumental six-foot canvases painted by Constable, who reserved this scale for his finest compositions. It was painted shortly after his wife’s death, and depicts Salisbury Cathedral under a stormy sky and a striking rainbow viewed from across the River Avon.

Constable first exhibited the painting at the Royal Academy in 1831 and later in a regional exhibition in Birmingham, but he continued working on it in 1833 and 1834.

When it was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1831, it was accompanied by a quotation from James Thomson’s poem Summer, which refers to a “danger past” before describing how “a glittering robe of joy … invests the fields and nature smiles revived.”

Constable first visited Salisbury in 1811 at the invitation of Bishop John Fisher. The bishop later invited him to paint Salisbury Cathedral from the Bishop’s Gardens, and that painting in is now in the Frick Collection in New York.

Constable visited Salisbury many more times in course of the years that followed, producing over 300 paintings and watercolours of the area. In Salisbury, he also formed a close friendship with the bishop’s nephew, John Fisher, and he turned to Fisher after the great shock of his wife’s death in the autumn of 1828. These events provide keys to interpreting this morning’s painting.

The scene depicts Salisbury Cathedral seen from across the River Avon. The vantage point was well-considered, and for many months, Constable produced sketches from different viewpoints as he prepared for the final work.

The painting is a composite construction based on these sketches, with topographical features artfully put into place, such as Leadenhall, where the rainbow ends and where John Fisher lived, and the Church of Saint Thomas to the left. Neither of these is visible from this viewpoint.

The painting has an extraordinary vitality, with closely observed topography and markers such as the framing foliage and the three neatly-placed cows. However, the rainbow provides the most noticeable feature from nature, softening the horizon and creating rich echoes with the curve of the river, and uniting the different elements in the painting. It is surprising, then, that X-rays reveal the rainbow was an afterthought for Constable.

A year after the painting was exhibited, his friend John Fisher died at the age of 44.

It is interesting that while Constable was putting his finishing touches to this painting, the architect AWN Pugin moved to Salisbury after his second marriage in 1833, he converted to Roman Catholicism in 1835 while living there, and he continued to live there until 1837.

Pugin, who first visited Salisbury Cathedral as a 13-year-old, saw it as “both an inspiration and an agony,” and regarded it as “the supreme work” of church architecture and the beau idéal if Early English Gothic. Saint Mary’s Cathedral in Killarney, Co Kerry, is Pugin’s homage to Salisbury Cathedral.

Saint Mary’s Cathedral, Killarney ... Pugin’s homage to Salisbury Cathedral (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Constable was a devout Anglican, and this painting has been interpreted as a metaphor for pressure felt by the Church of England from its waning political importance in the early 19th century.

At the time Constable was working on this painting, the Prime Minister, the Duke of Wellington, and others were seen as pulling down the steeple of the church. The Catholic Emancipation Act of 1829 allowed Roman Catholics to sit in Parliament, and Fisher and Constable who saw this as an assault on the fabric of the establishment.

In 1833, John Keble preached his Assize Sermon in Oxford on “national apostasy,” criticising state interference in the affairs of the Church, denouncing the nation for turning away from God, and for regarding the Church as a mere institution of society, rather than as the prophetic voice of God.

These circumstances may explain why Constable painted the sky bearing down ominously on a masterpiece of English church architecture, representing the Church of England.

Other critics attribute political meanings to this painting, including the clash of industrialisation and nature represented through the clash of elements.

But was Constable was a religiously intolerant reactionary who opposed reform and rights for minorities? And why have I chosen this painting to contemplate as we come towards the end of the Christmas season?

The painting can be seen as a personal statement of Constable’s turbulent emotions and his changing states of mind. The sky reflects this turbulence and shows his emotional state of being; but the rainbow is a symbol of hope after a storm.

Some of the symbols we can see in this painting include: a grave marker, as a symbol of death; an ash tree as a symbol of life; the church as a symbol of faith and resurrection; and the rainbow as a symbol of renewed optimism.

Constable worried about the future of the Church of England. So Salisbury Cathedral is not allowed to dominate this painting in a smug, triumphant way. The largest form confronting us is the ancient tree on the left, and it seems shaken by the impact of the storm. It may even be in danger of falling into the darkness beyond, where a small church tower and houses look threatened by the black sky.

The dog isolated in the muddy foreground stares back at this tree, as if to wonder where the storm will strike next. Lightning flashes to the left of the cathedral spire, and the man in the wooden cart looks hunched, as if bracing himself for another apocalyptic storm.

The three horses pulling his cart through the water appear burdened by their task. Directly behind the cart, a tiny cottage is being smothered by a tangle of foliage growing over its vulnerable white wall and orange roof. The withered stump of a willow on the far right is perilously close to the water’s edge.

But Constable did not sink into despair about the future of the Church. In a series of lectures on the history of landscape painting in 1834, he referred in particular to this painting, Salisbury Cathedral from the Meadows, and said: “I mean more than the rainbow itself, I mean dewy light and freshness, the departing shower, with the exhilaration of the returning sun.”

Tomorrow: ‘The Adoration of the Shepherds,’ by El Greco.

Art for Christmas (10): ‘Starry Night’ by Vincent van Gogh

‘Starry Night’ by Vincent van Gogh

Patrick Comerford

A well-known Dutch brand of beer has been advertising itself throughout this Christmas holiday season with the slogan “Starry, Starry Night.”

It is sad when beer becomes confused with Christmas cheer, when songs from the 1970s become confused with the work of artists, and when Dutch breweries try to convince us they are making as much a contribution to our society as Dutch artists.

Last year [2013], the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam celebrated its 40th year and reopened its doors to the public on 1 May 2013. For several years, the Van Gogh Museum daily played Don McLean’s Vincent (the real title for Starry Starry Night). It was written not as a Christmas song but as a tribute to Vincent van Gogh and was the No 1 record in Britain in 1972. The Van Gogh museum holds a copy of the sheet music alongside a set of Van Gogh’s paint brushes and the hat he wore while painting Starry Night.

This morning [3 January 2014], continuing my series on works of Art for Christmas to meditate on, I have chosen Vincent van Gogh’s Starry Night, and two related paintings by the same artist, Starry Night Over the Rhône and Café Terrace at Night.

Vincent Willem van Gogh (1853-1890) was a Dutch-born post-Impressionist painter whose work, with its rough beauty, emotional honesty and bold colour, has been influential throughout the last century.

He was born on 30 March 1853, in Groot-Zundert, in the southern Netherlands, the oldest child of the Revd Theodorus van Gogh, a minister in the Dutch Reformed Church, and Anna Cornelia Carbentus.

At an early stage, he felt a call to ordained ministry, and he went to Amsterdam to study theology in 1877. His uncle, Johannes Paulus Stricker (1816-1886), was a theologian and author of Jezus van Nazareth volgens de Historie Geschetst (Jesus of Nazareth, Drawn according to History), the first historical approach to the biography life of Jesus Christ in the Netherlands, published in 1868. When Van Gogh failed the exam, and then failed a three-month course at a Protestant missionary school near Brussels.

In 1879, he began working as a missionary in Petit Wasmes, a coal-mining village in Belgium. But in 1880, he decided to become a full-time artist. He aspired to become an artist in God’s service, in order “to try to understand the real significance of what the great artists, the serious masters, tell us in their masterpieces, that leads to God; one man wrote or told it in a book; another in a picture.”

Starry Night (De sterrennacht) was painted by Van Gogh in June 1889 while he was in an asylum. It measures 73.7 cm × 92.1 cm and has been in the Museum of Modern Art in New York City since 1941.

The painting shows the night view through the window of the artist’s room in the sanatorium at Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, in southern France, although it was painted from memory during the day from memory. This painting is one of Van Gogh’s best-known works and marks a decisive turn towards greater imaginative freedom in his art.

In December 1888, Van Gogh suffered a breakdown that ended with him being taken to hospital in Arles. In May 1889, he decided to enter the asylum at Saint-Rémy, where he stayed for the next year. His time there was very productive, although interrupted by incapacitating nervous attacks. Inspired by the landscape surrounding the asylum, he painted Starry Night in June 1889.

In the centre of the painting we see the village of Saint-Rémy under a swirling sky, seen from the asylum looking north. The Alpilles are to the far right, but the hills in between seem to be those to the south of the asylum, and the cypress tree to the left was added to the scene. During his time in Arles, Van Gogh had already moved the constellation Ursa Major from the north to the south in his painting Starry Night Over the Rhône.

‘Starry Night Over the Rhône’ by Vincent van Gogh

In Starry Night Over the Rhône, painted in Arles in September 1888, Van Gogh depicts the River Rhône at night. This oil on canvas painting measures 72.5 cm × 92 cm and is in the Musée d’Orsay in Paris.

Working by night under a gas lamp, Van Gogh painted this work directly from nature. “It does me good to do what’s difficult,” he wrote at the time. “That doesn’t stop me having a tremendous need for, shall I say the word – for religion – so I go outside at night to paint the stars.”

‘The Cafe Terrace on the Place du Forum’ by Vincent van Gogh

The first painting in which Van Gogh used a starry background is Café Terrace at Night, also known as The Cafe Terrace on the Place du Forum. This is a coloured oil painting on an industrially primed canvas, measuring 80.7 cm x 65.3 cm. The painting is on view in the Kröller-Müller Museum in Otterlo in the Netherlands.

This work was painted in Arles in mid-September 1888. The painting is not signed, but described and mentioned by the artist in his letters on many occasions. When it was first exhibited in 1892, the painting was entitled Coffeehouse, in the evening (Café, le soir).

Visitors to Arles can still stand at the north-east corner of the Place du Forum, where Van Gogh set up his easel. He looked south towards the artificially-lit terrace of the popular coffee house, as well as into the enforced darkness of the rue du Palais leading up to a building to the that is not seen in the painting. Beyond this building is the tower of a former church, now the Musée Lapidaire. To the right, Van Gogh also indicates a lighted shop and some branches of the trees surrounding the square, but he omits the remains of Roman monuments beside the little shop.

Van Gogh also painted a star-lit background in his Portrait of Eugène Boch.

On 27 July 1890, Van Gogh is believed to have shot himself in the chest with a revolver. However, no gun was ever found, there were no witnesses and the place when he shot himself is unclear. He died two days later on 29 July 1890 at the age of 37, and was buried in the municipal cemetery in Auvers-sur-Oise.

In the first two choruses of Vincent (the proper title for Starry, Starry Night), Don McLean pays tribute to Van Gogh by reflecting on his lack of recognition:

They would not listen
they did not know how
perhaps they’ll listen now.

In the final chorus, McLean sings:

They would not listen
They’re not listening still
perhaps they never will.

Van Gogh was not recognised as an artist until after his death. Although the lyrics suggest “This world was never meant for someone as beautiful as you,” they recognise that Van Gogh was trying to “set [people] free” with the message in his work.

And I find Van Gogh’s starry nights, in his various paintings, are a joyful way of preparing for the Gospel reading (John 1: 1-18) next Sunday [5 January 2014]: “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it” (John 1: 5).

Tomorrow: http://www.patrickcomerford.com/2014/01/art-for-christmas-11-salisbury.html, by John Constable.

Art for Christmas (9): ‘New Year’s Festival’ by Kunisada Utagawa

‘New Year’s Festival’ by Kunisada Utagawa

Patrick Comerford

My choice for these meditations on Art for Christmas this morning [2 January 2014] is New Year’s Festival by Kunisada Utagawa (1786-1864), a 19th century Japanese woodblock print that can be seen in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

This piece dates from he time Japan was beginning to reopen to the West.

Kunisada Utagawa, Utagawa Kunisada or Utagawa Toyokuni III (1786-1865) was the most popular, prolific and financially successful designer of ukiyo-e woodblock prints in 19th-century Japan, and in his own time, his reputation far exceeded the reputations of his contemporary artists such as Hokusai, Hiroshige and Kuniyoshi.

Kunisada Hiroshige and Kuniyoshi are the three best representatives of the Japanese colour woodcut in Edo (now Tokyo) the end of the Edo Period (1603–1867), before the rise of Meiji dynasty. In recent decades, Western art historians and critics have come to recognise Kunisada as one of the giants of the Japanese print.

Kunisada was born in 1786 in Honjo, an eastern district of Edo, and his given name was Sumida Shōgorō IX. His father, who was a poet of some renown, died a year after his birth.

Kunisada developed an early talent for painting and drawing, and ca 1800 he was accepted by Toyokuni I as an apprentice in his workshop.

His first known print dates from 1807. By 1808, he had started working as an illustrator of ehon or woodblock print illustrated books and his popularity rapidly increased, and he was soon considered equal to his teacher.

Kunisada was one of the trend-setters of the Japanese woodblock print until he died on 12 January 1865 in the same neighbourhood in which he had been born.

His productivity was extraordinary, with about 14,500 individual catalogued designs. He is best known for his kabuki and actor prints, and for his portraits of sumo wrestlers. His landscape prints and samurai warrior prints are rare.

Vincent van Gogh was interested Japanese ukiyo-e woodblock prints, and this interest influenced many of his paintings. I plan to look at three his paintings tomorrow morning.

Tomorrow: ‘Starry Night’ by Vincent van Gogh.

Art for Christmas (8): ‘Love Among the Ruins,’ by Edward Burne-Jones

‘Love Among the Ruins,’ by Sir Edward Burne-Jones ... the original sold for a record £13.2 million at Christie’s last summer

Patrick Comerford

As we look back on the past year and look forward to the New Year that has arrived, my choice of Art for Christmas this morning, New Year’s Day [1 January 2014], is Love Among the Ruins, by the Pre-Raphaelite painter, Sir Edward Burne-Jones (1833-1898).

This painting was inspired by a poem of the same title by Robert Browning, published in 1855. Both are appropriate for contemplating on New Year’s Day for the painting and the poem set a striking contrast between the monumental achievements of the powerful, now crumbling, and the inexorable strength of love and the “plenty and perfection” of natural life.

In the seven-year period 1870-1877, Edward Burne-Jones exhibited only two works, two watercolours that were shown at the Dudley Gallery in 1873. One of these watercolours was Love among the Ruins.

Love Among the Ruins, which was painted ca 1873, is a watercolour-cum-gouache, measuring 96.5 cm x 152.4 cm. An earlier variant of this painting provided an illustration for an illuminated manuscript of Edward Fitzgerald’s translation of The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam produced by William Morris in the 1870s.

Although the title of this painting is taken from Browning’s poem, it is not a direct illustration of the text, but is a more elusive allegory that is typical of the artist.

The setting was possibly influenced by a 15th century Venetian text, Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, written by Fra Colonna. This romantic story was illustrated with woodcuts, some of which show lovers seated amongst fallen pillars and stones. The book takes the form of a mediaeval romance full of adventures and allegories but with classical setting, details and language.

In a dream, Poliphilus sets out on a quest for his lost love, Polia, and at last finds her. The lovers are joined at the altar of Venus, and a miraculous briar rose begins to grow. For ultimate happiness they must travel to the Isle of Cythera, where they wander through ruins and graves of those who have died for love. But it is all a deception: the Dreamer awakes to disappointment.

The picture therefore illustrates the ephemeral nature of love and youth, showing the lovers among the ruins of Cythera with the briar rose around them. Its melancholy beauty epitomises Burne-Jones’s work. He said that a picture was “a beautiful dream of something that never was and never could be.”

It has an obvious similarity with the Briar Rose series of paintings of the Sleeping Beauty legend (1873 and 1890) at Buscot Park, Oxfordshire.

The male lover portrayed by Burne-Jones is believed to be either Gaetano Meo (1849-1925), although the Christie’s catalogue last year suggests he was Alessandro di Marco. Both men were favourite models for artists in the late Victorian period.

The female lover was probably the Antonia Caiva. But she also recalls Maria (Kassavetti) Zambaco (1843-1914), who had a tumultuous affair with Burne-Jones 20 years earlier. However, Alison Smith in the catalogue for the Pre-Raphaelites exhibition in 2012, suggests the female model is Bessie Kee[a]ne (born ca 1866/1869) who also posed for The Golden Stairs and Verpertina Quies, both at the Tate. The Christie’s catalogue last year [11 July 2013] suggests she was Antonia Caiva.

The two lovers, in blue robes, are seated together at right on a stone capital. At their feet is part of a broken column overgrown with a briar rose. In the left background is a door decorated with a frieze of putti, and behind is a vista of arches.

Love Among the Ruins shows how far Burne-Jones had moved away from his Pre-Raphaelite origins. His work was increasingly influenced by the Italian High Renaissance artists the Pre-Raphaelites had despised, particularly Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, Botticelli, Raphael and Mantegna, especially following his visits to Italy in 1871 and 1873.

This is clearly reflected in the classically patterned drapery and the pose of the figures, and the Renaissance classicism of the architectural setting. The distant perspective view through a doorway contrasts with the tightly enclosed shallow space characteristic of many of Burne-Jones’s pictures. The classicism, subtle colouring, and dream-like poetic quality are far away from the bright colours, mediaevalism and intense realism of Pre-Raphaelite paintings.

The story of a painting

This large painting became one of the most admired and exhibited works by Burne-Jones.

However, it was damaged in a photographic studio in Paris in August 1893. It was in a private collection and was being prepared exhibition at the Societé National des Beaux Arts. While it was in the studio of the photographer Goupil for reproduction in photogravure, it was severely damaged by a cleaner. The highlights were treated with egg white and the paint came away.

The calamity was a severe blow to Burne-Jones at a time when he was already unsettled and unhappy. He wrote to his wife Georgiana: “It is quite irreparable, but it is life, and all in the bargain – I don’t know who made the bargain.”

However, his former studio assistant, Charles Fairfax Murray, and the owners of the original watercolour, persuaded Burne-Jones there was a way to repair the damage, and used ox gall to lift off the egg white. Burne-Jones then redrew the face of Maria Zambaco so it looked like new. “It seemed like a miracle,” wrote Lady Burne-Jones wrote.

But it was to be his last work of art. Five weeks later, he was dead.

Meanwhile, however, Burne-Jones had reproduced the painting in oils. This well-known reproduction, signed and dated 23 April 1894, is in oil on canvas, measures 953 mm x 1600 mm, and is signed and dated on the bottom right: ‘EBJ 1894.’

There is a hand-written note by Burne-Jones on the back of the picture: “This oil painting of ‘Love Among the Ruins’ is the same design as the one of the same name which I painted in watercolours, twenty one years ago, but which was destroyed in August last year. The present picture I began at once, and have made it as like as possible to the other, and have finished it this day. APRIL 23. 1894.Edward Burne Jones.”

A friend of Burne-Jones, Stopford Brooke, said of the second 1894 version: “It’s better painted, but the ineffable spirit of youth which was in the other, is not there.” Burne-Jones agreed: “O that is true, and it will not come back again.”

A friend of Burne-Jones, Stopford Brooke, said of the second 1894 version: “It’s better painted, but the ineffable spirit of youth which was in the other, is not there.” Burne-Jones agreed: “O that is true, and it will not come back again.”

The original came up for auction at Christie’s, London, last year, and was sold on 11 July 2013 for £13.2 million, a record auction price for a Pre-Raphaelite work of art. Christie’s had put the estimated value at between £3 million and £5 million, while art critics were expecting a record £5 million.

The story of a house and a second painting

‘Love Among the Ruins’ ... the second painting hangs on Wightwick Manor, Wolverhampton

By 1898, the second painting, dated 1894, was owned by Mrs Robert Henry Benson. It was bought in 1913 at Christie’s by Sir Marcus Samuel 1853-1927), 1st Viscount Bearsted, and passed to Walter Samuel (1882-1948), 2nd Viscount Bearsted, who presented it to the National Trust in 1948. It was moved immediately to Wightwick Manor, in Wolverhampton.

It remains in the ownership of the National Trust and can be seen at Wightwick Manor, and was exhibited last year at the Tate exhibition, Pre-Raphaelites: Victorian Avant-Garde.
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In 1937, Geoffrey Mander MP persuaded the National Trust to accept Wightwick Manor, a house that was just 50 years old. Mander was a local paint manufacturer and Liberal MP had been left the timber-framed, Tudor-style house by his father, Theodore Mander.

Inspired by a lecture by Oscar Wilde on “the House Beautiful, Theodore and his wife Flora decorated the interiors with designs by William Morris and his Arts and Crafts and Pre-Raphaelite friends.

After giving Wightwick Manor to the Trust, Geoffrey and Rosalie Mander became the live-in curators. They opened the house to the public and added to its contents with a remarkable collection of Pre-Raphaelite paintings by Rossetti, Burne-Jones and their followers. The house still has a collection of treasures that includes William Morris wallpaper, Pre-Raphaelite art and De Morgan pottery, a portrait of Jane Morris by Dante Rossetti and works by Ford Madox Brown.

Love among the Ruins, by Robert Browning

Where the quiet-coloured end of evening smiles,
Miles and miles
On the solitary pastures where our sheep
Half-asleep
Tinkle homeward thro’ the twilight, stray or stop
As they crop—
Was the site once of a city great and gay,
(So they say)
Of our country’s very capital, its prince
Ages since
Held his court in, gathered councils, wielding far
Peace or war.

Now the country does not even boast a tree,
As you see,
To distinguish slopes of verdure, certain rills
From the hills
Intersect and give a name to, (else they run Into one)
Where the domed and daring palace shot its spires
Up like fires
O’er the hundred-gated circuit of a wall
Bounding all
Made of marble, men might march on nor be prest
Twelve abreast.

And such plenty and perfection, see, of grass
Never was!
Such a carpet as, this summer-time, o’er-spreads
And embeds
Every vestige of the city, guessed alone,
Stock or stone—
Where a multitude of men breathed joy and woe
Long ago;
Lust of glory pricked their hearts up, dread of shame
Struck them tame;
And that glory and that shame alike, the gold
Bought and sold.

Now—the single little turret that remains
On the plains,
By the caper overrooted, by the gourd
Overscored,
While the patching houseleek’s head of blossom winks
Through the chinks—
Marks the basement whence a tower in ancient time
Sprang sublime,
And a burning ring, all round, the chariots traced
As they raced,
And the monarch and his minions and his dames
Viewed the games.
And I know, while thus the quiet-coloured eve
Smiles to leave
To their folding, all our many-tinkling fleece
In such peace,
And the slopes and rills in undistinguished grey
Melt away—
That a girl with eager eyes and yellow hair
Waits me there
In the turret whence the charioteers caught soul
For the goal,
When the king looked, where she looks now, breathless, dumb
Till I come.

But he looked upon the city, every side,
Far and wide,
All the mountains topped with temples, all the glades’
Colonnades,
All the causeys, bridges, aqueducts,—and then
All the men!
When I do come, she will speak not, she will stand,
Either hand
On my shoulder, give her eyes the first embrace
Of my face,
Ere we rush, ere we extinguish sight and speech
Each on each.

In one year they sent a million fighters forth
South and North,
And they built their gods a brazen pillar high
As the sky
Yet reserved a thousand chariots in full force—
Gold, of course.
O heart! oh blood that freezes, blood that burns!
Earth’s returns
For whole centuries of folly, noise and sin!
Shut them in,
With their triumphs and their glories and the rest!
Love is best.

Tomorrow: ‘New Year’s Festival,’ by Kunisada Utagawa.

Art for Christmas (7): ‘Carols’ by Nikiphoros Lytras

‘Τα κάλαντα’ (‘Carols’), Νικηφόρος Λύτρας (Nikiphoros Lytras)

Patrick Comerford

The most acclaimed picture by a Greek painter depicting the Christmas tradition of singing carols is Carols by the 19th-century Greek painter Nikiphoros Lytras, who is regarded as the “Founder and Patriarch” of modern Greek art. This painting is simple in its austerely and is in sensitive manner, heavy with symbolism and with disarming sincerity. It is one of the major works of art depicting Greek life, customs and traditions.

Nikiphoros Lytras (Νικηφόρος Λύτρας, 1832-1904) was born in 1832 in Pyrgos on the Greek island of Tinos, the son of a popular marble sculptor. At the age of 18, he went to Athens to train at the School of Arts, where he studied painting with Ludwing Thierch and Raffaelo Ceccoli. In 1855-1856, he assisted Thiersch in the decoration of the Saviour’s Russian Orthodox Church in Athens.

After Lytras graduated in 1856, he began teaching a course in Elementary Writing. In 1860, he won a Greek government scholarship to the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of Munich, where studied under Karl von Piloty. He was accepted into Piloty’s class after passing the German professor’s stringent requirements. As Piloty’s student, Lytras focused on the history of painting, and his subjects were inspired by Greek mythology and history.

Lytras’s scholarship was danger of coming to an abrupt end in 1862 with the Greek coup that overthrew King Otto. However, after a coup in 1862, King Otto was sent into exile the scholarship came to an end for Lytras, but the Greek Ambassador in Vienna, Simon Sinas, continued to take care of his expenses of his studies.

In the summer of 1865, Lytras met the Greek painter Nikolaos Ghyzis (Νικολάου Γύζη, 1842-1901), in Munich. Ghyzis was also born in Tinos, and together they visited and studied many great European masterpieces.

Later that year, Lytras returned to Greece, and in 1866 he was appointed a professor at the School of Arts in the Technical University in Athens, a position he held until his death. Many of his students, including Georgios Iakovidis (1853-1932), Periklis Pantazis (1849-1888) and Georgios Roilos (1867-1928), became distinguished artists.

In 1873 and for four years he travelled to Smyrna and Asia Minor, Munich and Egypt with his friend Nikolaos Ghyzis.

After his return to Greece, he gave most of his attention to scenes from Greek everyday life and to portrait painting, reflecting the ideology of the ruling class of the time. His most famous portrait is of the royal couple, Otto and Amalia and his best-known landscape is a depiction of the region of Lavrio.

His travels in Minor Asia and Egypt enriched his paintings with dark-skinned children and other elements of Anatolia.

In 1879, he married Irene Kyriakidi, the daughter of a trader in Smyrna, and they had six children, including the actor Lysandros Lytras (1885-1921) and the successful painters Nikolaos Lytras (1883-1927) and Perikles Lytras (1888-1940).

In later life, he founded the ‘Art Group,’ which later exhibited in Paris in 1919 and whose members included the engraver Demetrios Galanis, a friend of Derain, Braque and Picasso and a member of the French Academy.

In the last period of his life, Lytras painted many scenes about aging, loneliness and the fear of death. He was decorated with the Greek Golden Cross of Saviour. After a short illness brought about by inhaling the toxic fumes from the chemicals substances in the colours he used for painting, Nikiphoros Lytras died at the age of 72 on 13 June 1904 in Athens.

He was succeeded at his post by one of his students, Georgios Iakovidis. His son Nikolaos Lytras followed in his footsteps, studying in Munich and heading the School of Art in Athens.

This morning’s painting is in oil on canvas and measures 90 × 59 cm (35.4 × 23.2 in), and the signature in the bottom left reads: ‘Ν. Λυτρασ’. It was painted in 1872 and is now in a private collection.



Greek Christmas carols or calanda are a very old custom that remains practically unchanged to this day. Children, in groups of two or more, still go from house to house singing carols, usually accompanied by the triangle or guitars, accordions or harmonicas, knocking on each door and asking: “Shall we say them?”

If the homeowner answers yes, the children sing the carols for several minutes before finishing with the wish: “And for the next year, many happy returns.” In the past, homeowners gave the children holiday sweets and pastries, but today they usually give them some money.

The carols are sung on Christmas Eve, today, New Year’s Eve, and on 5 January, the Eve of Epiphany, and they are different for each holiday.

The word calanda stems from the Latin calenda, which means “the beginning of the month.”

Greek New Year’s Eve Carol:

First of the month and first of the year
My tall rosemary
Let our good year begin
Church with the holy throne

It is the beginning when Christ
Holy and spiritual
Will walk on earth
And cheer us up

Saint Basil is on his way
And will not deign on us
From Kesaria
You’re a Lady milady.

Tomorrow:

Art for Christmas (6): ‘The Holy Family with a Shepherd,’ by Titian

‘The Holy Family with a Shepherd,’ by Titian

Patrick Comerford

The year is drawing to a close and a new year approaches. But this is still the season of Christmas, and my choice of a work of Art for Christmas this morning [30 December 2013] is ‘The Holy Family with a Shepherd’ (ca 1510), by the great Venetian Renaissance painter, Titian.

This early work by Titian in the National Gallery, Trafalgar Square, London, and is part of the Holwell Carr Bequest (1831). It is in oil on canvas, and measures 99.1 cm x 139.1 cm.

Tiziano Vecelli or Tiziano Vecellio, known generally as Titian (ca 1488/1490-1576), was the greatest painter in 16th-century Venice, and the first painter to have a mainly international clientele. During his long career, he experimented with many different styles of painting that reflect the development of art at that time.

Titian was born ca 1488/1490 in Pieve di Cadore, a small town near Belluno at the foot of the Dolomites on the Venetian side of the Alps. The Vecellio family had lived in Cadore since the 14th century. His older brother Francesco was also a painter.

When he was about 10 years old, Titian arrived in Venice, then one of the wealthiest and most prosperous cities in the world. His training as an artist began in the mosaic workshop of Sebastiano Zuccato’s. Later, he worked briefly with Gentile Bellini in his workshop. When Gentile died in 1507, Titian joined the workshop of his brother, Giovanni Bellini, then the most important workshop in Venice.

In 1508-1509, he worked with Giorgione on the decoration of the external walls of the ‘Fondaco dei Tedeschi’ in Venice. After Giorgione’s death in 1510, and Sebastiano del Piombo’s departure for Rome in 1511, Titian began an independent career in Venice, and found himself without rivals.

In 1511 Titian painted his celebrated frescoes in the ‘Scuola del Santo’ in Padua. He then became famous as a portrait painted and as the painter of many secular subjects.

His skills drew the attention of Italy’s intellectually ambitious political, church and aristocratic leaders, who commissioned him to paint public and religious works. His success in Venice came with his altarpiece for Franciscan Church of Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari. His ‘Assunta,’ depicting the Assumption of the Virgin Mary, is almost seven metres high and first went on show in 1518. The dynamic, three-tier composition and colour scheme established Titian as the pre-eminent painter north of Rome.

He continued to work in this church until 1526, painting his celebrated Pala Pesaro, an asymmetrical composition that strongly influenced the painting of altarpieces in Venice well into the 18th century.

Meanwhile, in 1516 Titian began his professional relationship with Alfonso d’Este, Duke of Ferrara, and spent time in his castle. The duke wanted Titian to create a private room, the camerino d’alabastro (the alabaster room), decorated with mythological scenes from classical poetry.

The other painters commissioned for this project included Raphael, Fra Bartolomeo and Dosso Dossi. After Raphael and Fra Bartolomeo died, Titian became increasingly involved in the project. Some of the scenes he executed are now in the Prado, Madrid, and the National Gallery, London.

Titian also worked for the court of Mantua. In 1523, he began painting for the future Duke of Mantua, Federico II Gonzaga, a nephew of Alfonso d’Este.

In 1525, he married Cecilia and they had three children, Pompeo, Orazio and Lavinia, before her tragic death in 1530.

That year in Bologna, he met the Holy Roman Emperor, Charles V, and painted full-length, life-size portraits of the Emperor and his son, King Philip II of Spain. He became the principal painter in the imperial court, and was in demand in courts throughout Europe. From 1531, he painted celebrated mythological series of paintings or poesie for Philip. His portrait of Philip II was sent to England and helped secure Philip’s marriage to Queen Mary I.

In 1532, Titian started to work for the Duke of Urbino, Francesco Maria della Rovere, and his successor, Guidobaldo II. In the 1530s, he was also working for Pope Paul III, but his only visit to Rome was in 1545-1546, when met Michelangelo and was made a citizen of Rome.

Starting from the late 1550s, Titian developed a much freer use of the brush and a less descriptive representation of reality.

In the late 1560s and early 1570s, in his old, age he moved towards abstraction in a style that has been defined as “magic impressionism.” His work at this time included his Pietà, originally designed for his own tomb in the Church of Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari but now in the Gallerie dell’Accademia in Venice.

He died of the plague on 27 August 1576. He was the only victim of the Venice plague to be given a church burial, and was buried in the Church of Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari. His contemporaries referred to him as “The Sun Amidst Small Stars,” recalling the final line of Dante’s Paradiso.

Last year, the National Gallery in London celebrated the recent acquisition of Titian’s Diana and Callisto by hosting an exhibition of this influential work (Titian’s Diana and Callisto, 1 March to 1 July 2012) and a second exhibition of Titian’s The Flight into Egypt (4 April to 19 August 2012).

My choice of painting this morning, The Holy Family with a Shepherd, is an early work by Titian. By the 1520s, gatherings of the Virgin Mary with the Christ Child and saints in a landscape had become one of the most popular themes in Venetian paintings. But Titian had completed this painting a decade earlier when he was in his early 20s, and it shows the influence of Giovanni Bellini and of Giorgione on the work of Titian.

In this painting, Titian shows only one shepherd in adoration. But the other shepherds can be seen to the right in the distance, hearing the Good News of the Incarnation as they tend their sheep in the fields, by daylight.

In one way, Titian is telling us that the Good News of the Incarnation comes to us both individually and collectively. But as I look at this painting, I also think of those people who have been on their own, or have felt lonely and abandoned at Christmas this year.

How does the Good News of the Incarnation come to you afresh this year? And how do you share it with others?

If you have felt lonely this Christmas or have felt an outsider, Christ comes to you in particular this Christmas and tells you that you are no longer on the margins. If you have felt unloved this Christmas, the coming of Christ tells you that you are truly loved and that you are worth loving.

Tomorrow: ‘Carols’ by Nikiphoros Lytras.

Art for Christmas (5): ‘Rest on the Flight into Egypt’ by Luc-Olivier Merson

‘Rest on the Flight into Egypt’ (1879), by Luc-Olivier Merson

Patrick Comerford

This morning [29 December 2013] is the First Sunday of Christmas. The readings in the Revised Common Lectionary are: Isaiah 63: 7-9; Psalm 148; Hebrews 2: 10-18; Matthew 2: 13-23.

We have yet to read about the Circumcision and Naming of Christ (1 January 2014) and the Epiphany (6 January 2014), so this morning’s Gospel reading, with its story of Saint Joseph’s dream and the Flight into Egypt, may seem out of sequence.

But for my work of Art for Christmas to meditate on this morning I have chosen ‘Rest on the Flight into Egypt’ (1879), by Luc-Olivier Merson (1846–1920), a painting I drew on six years ago to illustrate a sermon in Christ Church Cathedral six years ago [30 December 2007].

This painting in the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston is in Oil on Canvas and measures 71.8 cm x 128.3 cm. It was bought in Paris by George Golding Kennedy (1841-1918) of Boston, who bequeathed it to museum in 1918.

The scene Merson depicts is haunting and full of fatigue. An exhausted Saint Joseph is asleep, perhaps suffering from mental and physical exhaustion in his flight from danger with his wife and her baby, stretched out on the desert sands as he tries to doze off.

The Virgin Mary is resting in the arms of the Sphinx, cradling the Christ Child, both unable to sleep because of their plight, because of what they have witnessed.

The Christ Child seems to light up the whole scene but is beginning his life in exile, in homelessness, a refugee, an immigrant, a stranger in a strange land.

The donkey – that little donkey who becomes a domestic pet in children’s carols – is worn out from the journey from Bethlehem, and scavenges in the dark in the desert soil, seeking what few blades of grass he can find to eat.

By the time the 12 days of Christmas have passed, most of us will be tired of the seven swans a-swimming, the six geese a-laying … and only too happy to get back to work, and to begin looking at the summer holiday brochures.

However, this is not what it is like for the Holy Family in the days after their first Christmas. That first Christmas was not one filled with tedium and boredom. Their first Christmas was the very opposite to our comfortable holiday season in Northern Europe.

This painting by Luc-Olivier Merson reminds us of the stark reality of the hardship and deprivation suffered by a family on the run. Who among us would swap the tedium and boredom of the coming week for that time Mary and Joseph had with the Christ Child?

Harried by Herod’s army, they barely escaped a maniacal plot for mass murder, and ended up in exile where their ancestors had once been slaves, seeking succour and refuge with the Jewish diaspora by the Nile and the Pyramids.

The Flight into Egypt was no bargain package holiday. Rather, it was an ordeal that inspired artists throughout the centuries. It has been painted by Fra Angelico, Giotto, Carpaccio, Durer, Claude Lorrain, Tintoretto, Barbieri, Tiepolo … the great Dutch and Italian masters, indeed most of the great Western artists.

Saint Matthew’s unique account of this event in this morning’s Gospel reading had many resonances for his first readers: it is a powerful restructuring of the story of Joseph forced into exile in Egypt because of the evil plots hatched against him. And the exodus from Egypt in later, safer, days, would point anew towards redemption from slavery and sin and offer the hope of imminent salvation.

Later legends surrounding the Flight into Egypt include the family hiding in a cave and being protected by a spider’s web, the beasts of the desert bowing in homage to the Christ Child, an encounter with two thieves who would be crucified beside Christ on the Cross on Calvary, and palm trees bending in reverence as Mary and Joseph passed by with the Child Jesus.

Legend says that when they found shelter on the banks of Nile the Holy Family lived in an area known as Babylon in Egypt, where there was a long, continuous Jewish presence. Although those stories of flight and exile are unique to Saint Matthew’s Gospel in the New Testament, they also appear in the Quran, and are part of the way Muslims come to own the story of Jesus within their own religious traditions.

On various visits to Egypt, I was aware that the stories of the flight into Egypt, the refuge, the welcome and the asylum offered to the Holy Family there, are stories shared and definitive for all Egyptians, including Muslims, the large Christian community, and the dwindling but ancient Jewish community.

Many shrines and churches are claimed as places where the family rested or dwelt, none more so than Abu Sergha or the Church of Saint Sergius and Saint Bacchus, one of the oldest Coptic Churches in Egypt, and the place where many Patriarchs of Alexandria or Coptic Popes were elected.

Every Egyptian today – Jew, Christian and Muslim – identifies with both the Holy Family and those who offered them asylum. But who would we here in Ireland identify with if you and I were hearing this story of mass murder and enforced exile for the first time?

Would I have been among the innkeepers who first refused them a welcome at my inn or hostel in Bethlehem?

Would I have been willing to work with the political apparatus around the Herod of my day, holding onto power and privilege, inspiring fear rather than respect and loyalty, no matter who had to be trampled on, no matter who suffered, no matter how the innocent would be counted among the victims?

Would I have had the courage of the wandering Magi, not only to seek truth, even if it is outside my own area of learning and knowledge, but also willing to take the risks involved in refusing to respect the immoral demands of those holding the reins of power when they are lawful but patently immoral?

When was I last like Joseph, realising that God’s promptings are not idle dreams but that they demand discipleship and action, even if this puts my personal security at risk?

When did I listen to the voice of today’s Rachels, the weeping mothers and widows, whether at a local level it was listening to the grief of someone who has lost a dear family member at Christmas time, or at a global level it was listening to those who are weeping in grief in Syria and the refugee camps in Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan and Iraq?

The story of Herod’s jealous plot, and of a family fleeing in search of refuge continue to have radical relevance today.

We cannot be open to the plight of the fleeing Holy Family unless we are open to the plight and needs of the families who have come to live among us in Ireland in recent years – whatever their political, social or ethnic backgrounds may be.

We cannot understand the plight of families who saw the hope of future generations sacrificed in the interest of political greed unless we too are willing to stand against political and personal greed today.

We cannot praise the disobedience of the Magi unless we are willing to say regularly that morality in politics must overrule the personal interests, gain and profit of those who hold office.

We cannot rejoice in the welcome the Egyptians gave to Mary, Joseph and the Baby Jesus, unless we are also willing to rejoice in every initiative, every stage in the process of dialogue that brings Jews, Christians and Muslims together in our own country.

We cannot pity the plight of that family in exile unless we can acknowledge the needs of the new families living among us today.

Christmas is the story of the true insider who becomes a real outsider in order that we who in our reality are outsiders may truly become insiders.

A year before his death, the great missionary bishop in Zanzibar, Bishop Frank Weston, declared in 1923: “You have begun with the Christ of Bethlehem, you have gone on to know something of the Christ of Calvary – but … it is folly – it is madness – to suppose that you can worship Jesus in the Sacraments and Jesus on the Throne of glory, when you are sweating him in the souls and bodies of his children. It cannot be done.”

To paraphrase Bishop Weston, if we cannot realise the presence of Christ among us in the refugee, the asylum seeker, the immigrant and the person of another faith, that Christ who identifies with those who suffer and are persecuted as brothers and sisters, [Hebrews 2: 10-18], how can we be aware of his presence among us in Word or Sacrament?

Collect:

Almighty God,
who wonderfully created us in your own image
and yet more wonderfully restored us
through your Son Jesus Christ:
Grant that, as he came to share in our humanity,
so we may share the life of his divinity;
who is alive and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

Post Communion Prayer:

Heavenly Father,
you have refreshed us with this heavenly sacrament.
As your Son came to live among us,
grant us grace to live our lives,
united in love and obedience,
as those who long to live with him in heaven;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Tomorrow: ‘The Holy Family with a Shepherd,’ by Titian.

Art for Christmas (4): ‘The Levy of Christian Children,’ by Nikolaos Ghyzis

‘Το παιδομάζωμα’ (ή ‘το σκλαβοπάζαρο’) του Νικολάου Γύζη ... ‘The Levy of Christian Children,’ by Nikolaos Ghyzis

Patrick Comerford

This morning [28 December 2013] the calendar of the Church remembers the Massacre of the Innocents at the orders of Herod. Saint Matthew’s Gospel recalls how Herod ordered the execution of all young male children in the area around Bethlehem because he imagined a threat to his throne with the reports of a new-born king (see Matthew 2: 16-18).

Although these Holy Innocents could not possibly have been Christians, yet the Church has traditionally revered them as martyrs for Christ.

On this morning, we should be conscious of the many thousands upon thousands of children who are the innocent victims of war and strife around the world. I think this morning in particular of the distressed and displaced children of Syria, living in appalling conditions this winter in makeshift camps in Syria and in neighbouring Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq and Turkey.

But as news fashions change day-by-day, we are soon going to forget the displaced children of South Sudan, the Central African Republic, Egypt and Libya. Who among us woke up this morning remembering the displaced boy soldiers who wandered for years around the countries of Central Africa? Who knows what has happened to them?

Remembering the innocent children who are caught up in war, I have chosen as my work of Art for Christmas the painting Το παιδομάζωμα (ή το σκλαβοπάζαρο), The Levy of Christian Children, by the Greek painter Nikolaos Ghyzis (Νικολάου Γύζη).

I drew on the imagery in this painting many years ago, as I was preparing a paper, ‘Defining Greek and Turk: Uncertainties in the Search for European identities,’ for publication in the Cambridge Review of International Affairs (Vol XIII, No 2, Spring/Summer 2000).

‘The Secret School’ by Nikolaos Ghyzis on the former Greek 200 drachma note

Nikolaos Ghyzis (1842-1901), from the island of Tinos, is one of Greece’s most important 19th-century painters, and is the major representative of the so-called “Munich School,” the major 19th-century Greek art movement. His painting The Secret School featured on the reverse of the Greek 200 drachmas banknote from 1996 until the drachma gave way to the Euro in 2001.

As part of its educational programme, the National Gallery of Greece brought a collection of significant 19th century Greek paintings to its Sparta annexe in the late 1990s, and the catalogue and poster for the exhibition were illustrated by The Levy of Christian Children by Nikolaos Ghyzis.

The Janissaries were introduced to the Turkish army in the 14th century as a permanent component in an army raised by means of feudal levies. The best of Christian boys, both in brain and brawn, were taken from their families as tribute in the levy known as the devsirme. The Janissaries were feared even by the sultans: Osman II in 1622, and Selim III in 1807 were killed by Janissaries, and it was not until 1826 that Mahmut II had the power and the strength to disband the Janissaries.

The Church of Santa Sophia or the Ibrahim Mosque in Rethymnon … was converted into a mosque by a Janissary (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

When the town of Rethymnon in Crete was captured by the Turks, the church was converted into a mosque by a Janissary, Yahya Ibrahim (John Abraham). But the innocent children taken in this levy were not all boys, nor did they all end up as Janissaries. Perhaps the most famous Muslim from Rethymnon was the Valide Sultana or Queen Mother Emetullah Rabia Gulnus Sultan, who was born a Christian in the town, the daughter of a Greek Orthodox priest.

Emetullah Rabia Gulnus Sultan (1642-1715) was the wife of Ottoman Sultan Mehmed IV and Valide Sultan to their sons Mustafa II and Ahmed III (1695-1715). She was born Evmania Voria in 1642 in Rethymnon, and grew up here when it was still part of the Venetian empire.

When Rethymnon fell to the Turks, she was taken captive and in 1646 she was sent as a slave to Constantinople. There she was given a Turkish and Muslim education in the harem department of Topkapi, where she soon caught the eye of Sultan Mehmed IV.

However, the blood of Greeks flowed through the veins of Janissaries, the viziers, and even the Ottoman sultans. Despite the subsequent claims by Ataturk in the 20th century to a pure Turkish identity, forced conversions, the wholesale transfer of villages and communities, and the families of the Janissaries and even the sultans themselves are guarantees even today that there are many Turks whose ancestry is Greek.

I wonder whether in generations to come, will the descendants of the Syrian children who are fleeing war be found among the descendants of the people who failing them politically today?

Tomorrow: ‘Rest on the Flight into Egypt’ by Luc-Olivier Merson.

Art for Christmas (3): ‘The Vision of Saint John the Evangelist on Patmos’ by Correggio

‘The Vision of Saint John the Evangelist on Patmos’ by Correggio (Photograph: The Yorck Project)

Patrick Comerford

This morning [27 December 2013], the calendar of the Church remembers Saint John the Evangelist. As a wok of Art to meditate on this third day of Christmas I have chosen The Visions of Saint John the Evangelist on Patmos, a set of frescoes painted in 1520-1523 by Antonio Allegri da Correggio in the cupola of the Church of San Giovanni Evangelista, in Parma.

Antonio Allegri (ca 1489-1534), was born ca 1489 in Correggio, near Parma. In 1503-1505 he was apprenticed to Francesco Bianchi Ferrara in Modena, where he probably became familiar with the classicism of artists like Lorenzo Costa and Francesco Francia. His early works show the influence of Andrea Mantegna in his chromatic shading, and of Leonardo da Vinci in his use of light and shade.

These influences can be clearly seen in the Nativity (1512), the Adoration of the Magi (1518) in Brera, the Wedding of Saint Catherine in the National Gallery, Washington, the Virgin and Child in Glory and the Rest on the Flight to Egypt in the Uffizi, Florence.

Correggio may have moved to Rome at a later date, and his first major commission, the decoration of the Room of the Abbess at the Convent of Saint Paul in Parma, Giovanna Piacenza, shows how he was influenced in Rome by Raphael and Michelangelo.

Back in Parma, Correggio also painted the frescos in the cupola of the Benedictine Church of Saint John the Evangelist, showing The Visions of Saint John the Evangelist on Patmos in 1520-1523.

His other works include Noli me tangere (1518), now in the Prado in Madrid, and the Virgin’s Adoration of the Child (1524-1526) in the Uffizi.

His last works are based on themes in Greek and Roman classical mythology. He died in 1534.

The Visions of Saint John the Evangelist on Patmos (1520-1523) is a series of frescoes in the interior of the dome and on the adjacent pendentives in the Benedictine church in Parma. The scene is based on Saint John’s visions in the Book of Revelation.

The centre of the cupola is occupied by an illusionistic space based on series of concentric planes indicated by the clouds, from which the apostles stretch out. Starting from the border of the dome, the clouds thin out and open to a brightly shining Christ descending towards the floor of the nave.

The figure of Saint John leans from the drum of the dome. This part of the fresco was hidden to people in the church, and was only visible to the monks in the choir and under the dome.

In the four pendentives, Correggio painted the Four Evangelists, each coupled with one of the Four Doctors of the Church. These are:

1, Saint Matthew with an angel, coupled with Saint Jerome, translator of the Latin Vulgate Bible, depicted with a white beard and red garments;

2, Saint Mark with a winged lion, coupled with Saint Ambrose with a staff;

3, Saint Luke with an ox, coupled with Saint Gregory the Great, crowned with the Papal crown or tiara;

4, Saint John with an eagle, and coupled with Saint Augustine of Hippo.

Correggio was responsible for some of the most vigorous and sensuous works of the 16th century. But he was known to his contemporaries as a shadowy, melancholic and introverted character. He had little immediate influence, but his works are now considered revolutionary and his style prefigured the Rococo art of the 18th century and many elements of Mannerist and Baroque stylistic approaches.

Tomorrow: ‘The Levy of Christian Children,’ by Nikolaos Ghyzis.

Art for Christmas (2): ‘Saint Stephen’ by Giotto di Bondone

Saint Stephen, by GIotto di Bondone

Patrick Comerford

This morning in the Calendar of the Church we remember the martyrdom of Saint Stephen [26 December]. It is an important that this day follows Christmas as reminder that there is a Cost of Discipleship, in the words of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and that there can be no such thing has cheap grace.

My choice of a work of art for today, the second day of Christmas, is a painting of Saint Stephen by the great Florentine painter and architect GIotto di Bondone (1267-1337). Giotto painted this wood panel in tempera on ca 1320-1325. It measures 84 x 54 cm, and is in the Museo Horne in Florence.

This wood panel, which is in good condition, was originally part of a polyptych that is now scattered through several museums. The central panel of the Madonna is in the National Gallery of Art in Washington, and other panels can be seen in the Musée Jacquemart-André in Chaalis.

Giotto paid close attention to the transparency of the colours on this panel of Saint Stephen. These colours were applied with delicate brushstrokes that reveal Giotto’s awareness of the increasingly fashionable Gothic style.

Saint Stephen is dressed in a deacon’s dalmatic and carries a bound book. Although the tone is not worldly or courtly, there is a feeling that Giotto is challenging his contemporary, Simone Martini of Siena.

Dante regarded Giotto as the leading artist of his day. He is the first in a line of great artists who contributed to the Italian Renaissance, and he influenced Renaissance painters such as Masaccio, key figures in the High Renaissance, including Raphael and Michelangelo, and later the Pre-Raphaelites in Victorian England.

His work is marked by his clear, grave, simple solutions to the problems of representing space and the volume, structure, and solidity of three-dimensional forms, especially the human form. He got to the heart of events in Biblical and Church history so he could express their inner spiritual meaning in simple ways.

His frescoes of the Life of Saint Francis on the lower walls of the Upper Church of San Francesco in Assisi were probably paint in the mid-1290s, and mark the early work of Giotto.

His mosaic in Rome of the Navicella (ca 1300) was regarded as his most important work. But it is now cut-down and a shadowy echo of its former glory.

His signed altarpieces include the Stigmatisation of Saint Francis (The Louvre, Paris), the Baroncelli Altarpiece (Santa Croce, Florence) and the polyptych of the Madonna and Saints (Pinacoteca Nazionale, Bologna). His other great works include the Ognissanti Madonna (The Uffizi, Florence), the Dormition of the Virgin (Berlin) and a Crucifix in Santa Maria Novella, Florence.

But his greatest masterpiece must be the frescoes in the Arena Chapel, Padua (ca 1304-1313), depicting scenes from the lives of Saint Joachim and Saint Anne and the Virgin Mary, and from the Life and Passion of Christ. These frescoes are unsigned and undocumented, as are his Life of Saint Francis and his Lives of Saint John Baptist and Saint John the Evangelist in the Bardi and Peruzzi Chapels and in Santa Croce, Florence.

The Campanile or “Giotto’s Tower” at the cathedral or duomo in Florence (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

In the last years of his life, Giotto was commissioned to design the Campanile or “Giotto’s Tower” at the cathedral or duomo in Florence. He died in Florence in January 1337, and may have been buried in duomo, although other sources, he was buried in the Church of Santa Reparata. He is represented among the many statues outside the Uffizi.

When he died, he had only finished the lower floor of the bell tower with its marble external revetment: geometric patterns of white marble from Carrara, green marble from Prato and red marble from Siena. But this work made Giotto, along with Brunelleschi and Alberti one of the founding fathers of Italian Renaissance architecture.

Tomorrow: ‘The Vision of Saint John the Evangelist on Patmos,’ by Correggio.