Original subtitles

Good afternoon. We have not spoken of the city of Parma before, because there was no reason to do

so artistically. The northern Italian city of Parma was absorbed briefly into the Papal States

from 1512 to 1515 and then again from 1521 to 1545, and this led to a brief but important cultural

revival. In Parma at this time some remarkable artists appeared. The Mannerist style, which we saw

in the last lecture in paintings by Rosso Fiorentino and Pontormo, was also strongly manifest in

Parmigianino, the nickname of Francesco Mazzola, who was born in 153 and died in 1540. This short-lived

artist had gone to Rome when he was 20, absorbed the lessons of the Sistine ceiling and of antiquity,

when he was unfortunately captured during the sack of Rome. He escaped and by 1530 he had returned to

Parma. He painted several works in the Mannerist style, none more striking than this Madonna of the

Long Neck, now in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, painted between 1536 and 1540. This is perhaps the

most famous of his extraordinarily distorted but elegant inventions. The elongations, and not only of the

neck, I might point out, the elongations in these bodies is matched in artificiality by the utter collapse

of logical space. Let me point out that space for a moment here. It is from the foreground where the

Madonna is to the background where this tall, tall row of columns is, and a prophet apparently here at the

bottom, look how small that prophet is, and yet there is no measurable space from the foreground to the

background. You just leap there in one gigantic and very disconcerting leap from this huge foreground

figure to this tiny background figure, and beyond him to the columns, which as I say are not one,

but one can see, if you look closely, they're actually a row. It is in, the painting was not finished,

and so at the top in this area this is an unfinished part of the painting. Incidentally, there was also a

religious literary conceit at play here. In some medieval hymns to the Virgin, her neck is compared

to a white column. This may derive from the Song of Solomon, thy neck is as a tower of ivory, and this in

turn, this idea, is apposite to the idea that the Virgin stands for the church. By the way, it's worth

noting, I think, a little odd, but worth noting that there are echoes of the Laocoon, which we know he

copied in Rome, detectable in this utterly unrelated subject. The position of the Madonna's legs

is, echoes that of the Laocoon's himself, and this long-legged angel, the bare-legged angel at the left,

relates to one of the sons, and the billowing clay cloak on the right-hand side takes the place

formally of the other son in the Laocoon. I think if you check it out, you'll find the remarkable

similarity. Before he went to Rome, before his Roman sojourn, Parmigianino had worked on frescoes

in the recently built church of San Giovanni Evangelista in Parma, where his older contemporary,

Correggio, born in 1494 and died in 1534, was frescoing the cupola with the vision of Saint John.

Between 1520 and 24. Correggio's vision of Saint John is one of two remarkable ceiling paintings

that he did in the city of Parma. His emergence as a great painter has never been adequately explained.

He didn't come from the studio of a noted artist or from a major artistic center, but for this

particular work, this dome painting, his point of departure was probably Mantegna's illusionistic

oculus, which you will recall from the Camera dell'Isposi, dell'Isposi, in nearby Mantua. Let me show

you a comparison of the two. You remember in the early 1470s, we're looking at the image on the left now,

we have Mantegna's wonderful illusionistic opening to the sky. His illusionism, Mantegna's depended on this

apparent opening of the ceiling up to a view of the sky, and then he deployed his figures around that

opening, standing near it, leaning over it in a variety of witty poses, strongly foreshortened,

to delight and startle the viewer. Correggio, in the image on the right, relied less on architecture

and more on figures. Apostles and angels seated on clouds, and there are a fair number of them here,

form concentric circles that seem to rise into space, where rapidly ascending in the center of the cupola,

Christ is seen in a radically foreshortened position from the bottoms of lower part of his legs on up.

The evangelist, this is called the Vision of Saint John, well, the evangelist of the title

is crouched almost unseen at the rim of the cupola here. He just peeks up over the edge almost invisibly

from most, in most photographs, and he's crouched there with his eagle, and he looks up at astonishment,

just as we do, at the receding figure of the ascending Christ. This remarkable fresco, and one in the dome

of the cathedral, which was done immediately after and which is next door to this church, appeared not

merely to open up to the sky, but to be blown into it, as though the ceiling were blown out. The dome is

gone and the sky is there, not something casual or gentle, but something very dramatic and, as I say,

explosive. This was the inspiration for many of the great illusionistic dome frescoes of the following

century, of the 17th century. Since we have just completed our extended look at Venice, it is easy to

recall the different artistic situation that pertained there when compared to Florence and Rome. The Renaissance

had arrived late in Venice, and the Republic was an unusually stable institution, so it proved less

susceptible to the turmoil of the century, less affected by the turbulent shifts of power that

characterized the rest of Italy. Its political independence translated into a remarkable degree

of artistic independence, in which outside trends were assimilated, but assimilated gradually. Thus,

it was mostly able to continue the expansive, optimistic, lyrical style that had marked Venetian art thus far.

Titian, in particular, seemed to answer to no impulse but his own, and his opulent, chromatic painting

developed according to its own law. This does not mean that Titian was unaffected by the work of artists

outside of Venice. Michelangelo, for example, had a notable impact upon Titian, but even before that,

Titian showed interest in the asymmetrical and centrifugal compositions that became more common

after 1520. His Madonna of the Pesaro family, which you see here, painted between 1519 and 1526 in the Church of the Frari,

followed his own impossible-to-match achievement in that Church of the Assumption, which we saw in an earlier

lecture. Set in a prominent location in the North Isle, this very large painting, about 16 feet high,

contrasted in several ways with the assumption in the apse of the Church. It is asymmetrical,

first and foremost, with the Madonna and child enthroned at the right side, at the top of a rising

diagonal, while St. Peter dominates the center of the canvas. Here is the diagonal movement up,

Madonna here, St. Peter here, members of the Pesaro family below. The displacement of the Madonna from

her traditional central position is so striking that it needs to be explained. This painting is,

in the Church, is located near the tomb, very near the tomb, of Jacopo Pesaro, who in 1502 had defeated the

Turks at the Battle of Santa Maura. Now, although he was a Venetian aristocrat, he was serving as

commander of the navy of the Pope, the Borgia Pope Alexander VI, when he had this victory. Therefore,

behind Jacopo, who kneels here in the left foreground in adoration of the Madonna and of St. Peter, behind

him, there is a Moorish prisoner, and then there is the banner, which has not the Pesaro arms, but the

arms of the Borgia family, of the Papal family. He, Jacopo Pesaro, offers his victory to St. Peter,

who represents the Catholic Church and therefore takes center stage. Peter, whose keys, his attributes,

by the way, are on the step just below him, is associated, as it were, visually, with a huge column

behind him, while the Madonna and child are matched with another enormous column. And despite the cap of

clouds with small angels, the remarkable thing about these columns is that they thrust upward through

those clouds and beyond the confines of the picture, swelling the effect of space in this picture. It's

dynamic and it's open-ended. It is not contained, even as the assumption was contained at the top.

This one is not. The elements, the architectural elements go out of it. It is an invention of

Titians, and it became much used by Venetian high Renaissance painters, and it was an essential element

in Baroque art in the next century. It should be mentioned, by the way, I shouldn't ignore the

other Pesaro family members in the lower right-hand corner. These are all male members of the family,

some of them children, and some of them adults, and they kneel, and they are recommended to the

Madonna here by St. Francis, who gestures toward them and looks at the Madonna. This is, remember,

a Franciscan church. A moving religious artist, a great portraitist, Titian is also, as we have

already seen, a dazzling painter of mythological paintings. One famous example is The Rape of Europa,

painted in 1562, a sensual work of his old age. When he was almost 75, Titian painted this,

one of the most luscious, sumptuous, coloristically triumphant paintings, not only of the Venetian

Renaissance but of any era. It was painted for Philip II of Spain, and it eventually, amazingly,

found its way to Boston, to the collection of Isabella Stewart Gardner, in whose museum it

still remains, the greatest Titian in an American collection. The story, according to Ovid, found both

in his Metamorphoses and in the Fausti, Jupiter desired Europa. Europa was the daughter of the King of Tyre.

And so, he took, he always was taking the form of something other than himself, so he took the form

of a white bull, and he joined Europa and her attendants by the seashore. She was captivated, as her,

as her handmaidens were, by the docile nature of the bull, and so eventually, after decking him with

garlands and so forth, she climbed onto the back of the bull, and was thereupon taken out to sea. The title,

by the rape of Europa, and the word rape, which is used very often in both literature and art of this

time, means abduction. It has to be understood in that rather less modern way, though it certainly

has its sexual element, but it is an abduction by the god in disguise. Titian revels in this richly

erotic story. He treats it as a, as a lighthearted fantasy, really. This painting is about seven feet

wide, and it's composed on this long, low diagonal, which runs from the Cupid on the, at the lower left,

up through the figures and toward the head of the bull. The bull is Jupiter, of course, and you see his

head turns toward us, toward the viewer, at the right edge of the canvas. They seem about to exit the scene,

again, this open-ended quality, this asymmetry, this feeling that the painting moves beyond its boundaries.

It's painted with an astounding technique, simply so free and, and inventive, and his command of color

is so indescribable, so breathtaking. There's a cute little mimicry going on here. As the, as Jupiter carries the

figure of Europa on his back, so the little Cupid down here, rides on the back of a fish. It's a kind

of visual echo in, in small, and he treats it, as I say, quite light-heartedly. Here are the handmaidens of

Europa, back on the shore, um, uh, hopelessly, uh, watching her being carried, uh, carried away.

One could spend, go to Boston and see this, one could spend hours with it. Paolo Veronese,

uh, Titian's closest stylistic counterpart, though he was 40 years younger than Titian,

worked most of his career in the shadow of Titian, of the aged Titian. Veronese was a great decorative

painter. He created elegant illusionistic scenes on the walls of villas on the Venetian mainland,

and vast canvases for the huge refectory walls of Venetian churches.

This is the wedding at Cana. Now in the Louvre, it was taken by Napoleon, and, uh,

unlike many of the things that were returned after Napoleon's fall, this remained in Paris.

Painted, uh, between 1562 and 1568, it is 33 feet wide. It covers the end of one of the largest

galleries in the Louvre. For the monks' refectory, this was painted, the monks' refectory in the

monastery of the Palladian church of San Giorgio Maggiore on the island of San Giorgio. A great

church, uh, and in its monastery, a, uh, in its refectory of the monastery, a great and joyful

masterpiece. The setting is thoroughly theatrical, literally so, since the stage is constructed with a

terrace and stairs at the side, like stage designs in contemporary theaters in Venice.

Christ is here, you have to, he's in the center, but one wonders at first. He's here very still,

very calm, very solemn in the center of the, of the, uh, composition together with, uh, his mother,

um, at the center of this wedding banquet. Uh, but he seems almost, to me, out of place amid the

celebration of, of about a hundred guests, more than in most, uh, uh, other images of the marriage

at Cana. He doesn't seem to take credit, by the way, for the miracle of turning water into wine, which

goes on in the lower right-hand corner here. Lots of water, lots of wine, uh, and presided over,

it seems, by this splendidly costumed, rather elegant, foppish, Venetian, uh, gentleman who stands right here.

The painting has, uh, or it could claim to have plenty of serious religious significance, but

frankly, it's impossible to ignore the theatrical sweep of the scene, its glorious color, its, its

activity. As one, one writer nicely said, it has a grandiose choral effect, and music is often

apropos in discussing the art of Veronese. In fact, in the center of this, the lower center right here,

you find a quartet of musicians, and I show them to you now. A quartet of musicians, artists all,

for he has painted Titian, at the right, wonderful, in this red costume, the old man,

on the viola da gamba. Jacopo Bassano, uh, plays the flute, behind, uh, Tintoretto is playing a viol here,

uh, and Veronese himself, in this wonderful white costume, uh, has the viola da braccio. So they are,

they are shown here as musicians. It's a wonderful, it's a wonderful, uh, cross-cultural or cross-artistic

reference that he makes. The Benedictine monks, can you imagine how thoroughly they must have enjoyed

their meals in the refectory, uh, at San Giorgio, quite different from other Last Suppers we have

seen. But not everyone approved of the liberties that Veronese took with such subjects. He, uh, in the

refectory for Santa Giovanni e Paolo, the church outside of which Verrocchio's great, uh, equestrian

monument is, he painted in 1573 a Last Supper, which is much more sober than this painting, and nonetheless,

it contained extraneous figures that didn't belong in the Last Supper, and that bothered the Counter-Reformation

church authorities. The Inquisition had been given new papal authority in 1542, and it had the job of

investigating departures from doctrine, including in paintings. In 1573, after Veronese painted that

particular Last Supper, he was called to account by the Inquisition. He had to appear and answer their

questions about his unscriptural editions, and in brief, and it is in brief because the whole thing

is recorded and you may read it all, but in brief he said, the painting is large and it seemed to me it

could hold many figures. And then at one point he added, we painters are all a little mad. Uh, ordered

nonetheless to make changes in it, he made one. He changed the title from the Last Supper to the feast

in the House of Levi, where all those figures that he had would not be out of place. Veronese's Summa,

if you will, the painting which was surely his most prestigious commission, is the Apotheosis of Venice,

a painting of 1583. This is a 30-foot oil painted mounted on the ceiling of the great council hall of

the Doge's Palace, but it's not a fresco. They'd given up on fresco in the climate, uh, and so it's an oil

painting that is mounted on the ceiling. The Apotheosis of, Apotheosis of Venice, in one important respect,

is as important a product of the Venetian High Renaissance, uh, as Titian's assumption was 65 years before.

It is symmetrical and enclosed, and its serene nobility is not that far removed from either Titian,

or, for that matter, Raphael. But there's something here that we've never seen before. Although it had

already been introduced by Titian in paintings we haven't seen, the illusionism in this scene is very

strong. It creates a vision of reality above us, but it's not like the extreme foreshortening in

Correggio's Cupola in Parma, where we saw almost the lower part of the legs of the figure of Christ

looking very sharply upward. Instead, Veronese used a compromise illusionism, which works perfectly from

only one viewpoint on the floor, although it's adjusted so that you can move back and forth

without, uh, without having the composition collapse completely. But basically there's a 45 degree angle

more or less, which is painted into the picture. You can see that here, and you have to be just at that

point on the floor to, for everything to fall perfectly into place. This modified illusion, illusionism,

was the favored Venetian illusionistic treatment for ceilings. And it also carried on into the 17th

century. It became, in the Baroque, an alternative to the more extreme dramatic foreshortening in

Correggio's illusionism. Before I let it go, I should point out where Venice is, because this, of course,

is an apotheosis of a figure who is personified. Here is Venice, a female figure representing Venice,

being crowned, enthroned here, on clouds, these great columns going up on either side. And at the

very bottom, flanking, as it were, the opening, uh, to this space, you have these great rearing horses

and men, and a dog, and men, controlling them all. Um, I'll point out one further thing quickly,

and that is these columns. I haven't had a chance to point out these twisted columns. They occur a lot

in the 16th century, and more in the 17th century, and they are properly called, not just twisted or

serpentine. They're properly called Solomonic columns, because they refer to the Temple of

Solomon, and to columns which theoretically came from that temple, which were given to the

Constantinian Basilica of Saint Peter's, and, and still exist. Uh, so they became, whenever you see

them, it has a Solomonic, and their, uh, attribute to it, and therefore it suggests the,

the authority which comes from such, from such a great, um, uh, from such a great distance, from such

great reference, references as these, uh, as the Temple of Solomon. Of the great trio of Venetian painters

in the second half of the century, only Jacopo Tintoretto, who was born in 1518 and died in 1594,

fully embraced the stylistic language of mannerism. He used it brilliantly in the service of violent

emotional drama and mystical expression. Here is his carrying, the carrying of the body of Saint

Mark, painted between 1562 and 65. It's a famous painting, one of a series, formerly in the Scuola

di San Marco, uh, therefore all about the history of the, of the saint, depicting the crucial moments in

the recovery and return of Mark's body from Alexandria, that drama that had been the founding myth of

Venice now for seven centuries. Once more, asymmetry is at the heart of this design. Uh, the main group

of figures is off to the right, throwing the whole weight to that side, and is countered by the

spatial manipulation, this great rush of space, like a wind tunnel, which rushes back in space and which

imparts an immense emotional charge to the painting. It's a wind tunnel that seems to have been created

by that storm you see in the sky, a storm sent by God to enable the liberation, the, uh, freeing of the,

by the way, fully preserved body of Saint Mark. As Tintoretto arranges this composition, the Venetian

merchants who, who, uh, remove the body display the body to us, to the viewer, to the worshiper, even as

it's removed. And by the way, all of the Alexandrians in the courtyard, when this occurs, flee into the

arcade to the left. They're very ghost-like. They're all as white and gray as the architecture is,

and it's as though they were sucked into this space by some vortex on the left-hand side. It is a painting

of incredible drama. We have now seen briefly the radical changes in Italian art of the last three

quarters of the 16th century. To a large degree, those changes reflected the schism of the Reformation

and the Counter-Reformation, and the tremendous tensions of that epical confrontation. To help

illuminate the artistic situation around 1600, let's first look back. Look with me at three masterpieces,

two of them known to you, and one which will be new. Three vastly different interpretations of the

same subject, the Last Supper. You remember Castaño's Last Supper of 1447 in San Apollonia in Florence.

When he painted this Last Supper on the con- convent wall, the refectory wall of the convent of San Apollonia,

his startling achievement was to open the wall into, as it were, another room, to give a convincing

box of space beyond the refectory itself, at the back of which sat Christ and the apostles at this long

table with Judas isolated on the near side. Expressively, Castaño hit upon the wonderful

device of the dramatically veined marble slab, which formed the backdrop for Jesus and Peter and Judas.

The fictive space and the architecture are the true protagonists of this scene. The overall effect is static

and solemn. Half a century later, Leonardo da Vinci reimagined the sacred event and its setting

in the refectory of Santa Maria delle Grazie in Milan. His apostles became dramatic actors of a kind

never seen before in this sacramental subject. All of them, including Judas, were integrated into the

drama, which was staged in a room both deep and shallow, simultaneously deep and shallow, established

by a perspective scheme, which collapsed the space and at the same time thrusts the viewers toward the

figures in the painting toward the viewer. The overall effect is one of surging drama, both sides,

for instance, the activity of the apostles on both sides, like little waves moving toward the center,

and then held in check by the serene transforming center, the figure of Christ, as celebrant and

subject of the mass, both priest and subject of the mass. And this gap, which is placed between the groups on either side of him,

allows everything to stop, as it were, at that point, and everything to be contained, all of that energy, all of that rush.

At the end of the 16th century and at the end of his life, Tintoretto painted a last supper also, not for a refectory, by the way, but for the presbytery of San Giorgio Maggiore,

which had already a last supper in the refectory, which had already a last supper in the refectory, we've just looked at it by Veronese, where this painting in the presbytery flanks the high

altar to the right. There's a painting by him to the left and another to the right, and they are displayed at a slight, let's call it a 45-degree angle, so that they are visible, of course, to the congregation, but visible from elsewhere as well.

The subject here is central, of course, to the doctrine of transubstantiation, because this church, this church had a particular dedication to the doctrine of the

transubstantiation of the miracle that the mass represents. The event takes place in a dark and dimly seen room, lit by spiritual light, that seeps into the room from the

hanging lamp above, from the cloud-like angels, which are here to the right and elsewhere, and in the center, the light emanating from Christ himself.

The table, in a literal, literally revolutionary change, thrusts back into the space, not across the space, as every other Last Supper you've seen and will see, is across the space, but no, back strongly into the space.

It's no longer the altar table of the mass, but like the agitated apostles, it's a participant in the mystical event. The table is an active participant. We saw this violent rush into space in the carrying of the body of St. Mark.

But here, the space design is also connected to the placement of this painting. The church has a double-sided main altar. The front faces the congregation, while the back altar faces the monks' choir, and of course was in use many times throughout the day.

The viewpoint in this painting that initiates this plunge into space is the viewpoint from the monks' choir. Imagine, in other words, that you are behind the high altar, looking at the reverse side where there's another altar, and you are aligned with the beginning of that spatial rush from the left.

Whereas if you are out among the congregants, you are not directly aligned with it. You see the picture, but you are not in, as it were, the perspective chain and the perspective continuum.

It's only from the monks' choir where the monks are celebrating mass that the perspective plunge of this Last Supper makes visual and spiritual sense.

The institution of the mass is thus directed principally at the monastic audience. In this respect, it's important to notice that Christ, here at the back, is in fact the celebrant of the mass.

He is giving communion to an apostle. Among the agitated apostles at the near end of the table, you can find a direct quotation from Leonardo da Vinci's Last Supper.

But the emotion of the apostles in Tintoretto's interpretation is not in response to the revelation of imminent betrayal, but rather to the mystical event of transubstantiation.

To make theological ritual, rather than narrative climax, the engine of high drama, is an interpretation of the Last Supper unimaginable before the needs and dictates of the Counter-Reformation appeared on the historical scene.

We have come a very long way, indeed, in the painted interpretation of a single, central, Christian subject.

Well, art history, like all history, is a continuum. And in our attempts now at summary, we find ourselves well into another period in the history of art,

one with its own genius, its own fascination, its own beauty. On the other hand, you are well aware that our introduction to Italian Renaissance art has been just that,

an introduction, an introduction, which, I hope, will develop into a long, deep, and cherished relationship.

And as I have so often before, I thank you for your very kind attention.