Modern Times
Moreover, the works of della Francesca are of a piece with the passions and traditions of Sansepolcro. Its biggest festival involves men carrying banners attached to spears, like his rising Christ. So it’s not just one flash of genius against a bland “dark ages.” There’s a lot going on, and not just in Sansepolcro. Piero della Francesco died in one of the most momentous years in modern history: 1492, the same year Lorenzo the Magnificent died in Florence, and a visionary explorer unexpectedly landed in the New World.
Years ago a very smart man I met on an airplane to California bragged that he and his colleagues at the Rand Corporation were looking into such profound questions as “Why is there a history of art?” It was a way of getting at the fact that artists represented things differently at different moments of history, or in different cultures at the same moments. Is that due to changes in our vision, or changes in our capacity and desire to portray our world, or what?
Whatever the answer to that one, it seems pretty clear that there have been “schools” of painting and sculpture, and that the artists therein more or less agreed with how the world should be portrayed. That warrior Christ has the sort of physical strength you can find in those strong men Michelangelo liberated from the marble in the Accademia in Florence, the ones you see as you walk down toward the David.
OK, we knew that. But look at della Francesca’s Christ or at his Madonna, and you see something apprently totally outside the world-view of the time.
The same time Leonardo was doing things that neither art historians nor historians of science can fully explain. One of my favorite science fiction authors suggested that Leonardo had invented time travel, and brought back future inventions to his own world.
Well maybe Piero della Franesca was on those jaunts with Leonardo.
Just get yourself to Sansepulcro and immerse yourself…off the beaten path.
Just the link to the two pages of wikipedia about the paintings.
http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polittico_della_Misericordia
http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resurrezione_(Piero_della_Francesca)
Amazing column, thank you.
here it is the photo:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c2/Resurrection.JPG
I’ve always believed that how events are perceived comes before how the perceiver depicts them later on.
As for time travel, that is dubious, but there is something to be said about how the artist prepares before he, or she, paints, or sculpts.
– Italian essays have been your best work ever, Michael. If the end is near, you and Barbara might as well stay in Italy and we here can experience through you.
What a wonderful xperience! I have been to Italy, as a visitor, several times since 1967. It remains my favorite destination abroad. I regret that I can no longer travel (due to age) but I wish that I could. I was unaware of Sansepolcro. Mr. Ledeen, thank you for your report.
Sometimes I think all Americans should be forced to visit Italy at least once in their lives. If we all did that, maybe we would take life a little less seriously, take the time to enjoy and appreciate beauty more, and have enough time to be with our families and eat well. The Italians do this and seem to get a lot more out of life than we do. True, they are by no means the most powerful nation on the planet, nor are they even a very powerful nation. But that doesn’t really matter to most Italians. Living well does. There is a lesson in that for all of us.
Yes, socialized Italians live “la dolce vita” — “dolce far niente” and all that — and are going broke in the process.
True, but they don’t seem to care as much. And that’s the difference between them and us.
Nothing to kill or die for…
This is a nice essay, but Piero and his art were not “totally outside the world-view of the time.” He learned a great deal from Domenico Veneziano and Fra Angelico when he was briefly in Florence in his youth. On the other hand, there is something timeless about Piero’s art that is impossible to fully describe.
If you are in London, Piero’s “Baptism of Christ” in the National Gallery will knock your socks off. It, too, is arguably the most beautiful painting in the world.
“Why is there Art History”? Because not only do sensibilities differ over time, but because some periods far outweigh others in fertility. Cultures not only conceive different things, but perceive them differently– in many ways, medieval Aristotelian absolutes are simply incomprehensible to benighted contemporary relativists.
For whatever reason, despite Boomerdom’s self-congratulatory assertions to the contrary, artistic endeavors over the past half-century –in literature, music, painting, sculpture & etc.– has degenerated to a degraded pop-cult fixated on PCBS cliches. Odds are that future generations will flag this wretched hiatus as The Great Dearth, when words meant nothing; music was but tinkle-and-bang; painting an arbitrary melange of purposefully ugly denigrations, technically proficient sculpture a mere engineering proposition devoid of any spiritual dimension whatsoever.
Compared with (say) 1850 – 1950, late 20th Century works offer nothing but rote narcissism designed explicitly as ill-willed, self-referential propaganda stunts. When creativity in Pierro della Francesca’s sublime spirit surfaces again, its originators will initially be marked as heretics for daring to expose Big Brother’s feet-of-clay.
Don’t blame “boomers” for Andy Warhol. Or Picasso. The rot set in much earlier than you appear willing to recognize.
Do read Tom Wolfe’s The Painted Word some time.
(You don’t really know who “boomers” are, do you?)
Leonardo: Behold my latest invention! I call it the “microwave oven”.
Citizens: What does it do?
Leonardo: It heats food quickly, without itself becoming warm.
Citizens: How is that possible?
Leonardo: Allow me to demonstrate. First I’ll plug it … uh … oops.
He made the same mistake with the helicopter, the airplane, and the submarine.
Revealed: Hundreds of words to avoid using online if you don’t want the government spying on you (and they include ‘pork’, ‘cloud’ and ‘Mexico’)
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2150281/REVEALED-Hundreds-words-avoid-using-online-dont-want-government-spying-you.html
Mr. Ledeen,
The business as to why there is a HISTORY of art is simple really. Most people think of art as cultural treasures; what art really is is a cultural fingerprint. The best art, the masterpieces, give eloquent ineffable vision to the soul of any given age and culture. Unfortunately, most art history classes do little more than demonstrate the history of style when, in reality, changes in art are evidence of the evolution of the soul.
True, Liberty, it’s the creditors they intend to stiff who are sweating. The Italians, just like the Greeks intend to walk out on their tab.
Art is a communication of truth as the artist perceives it. Art is self-ish in that way. “Art” for commercial purposes is produced by a breathing Xerox machine, a minor amusement, gone and forgotten when it’s era passes.
Truths of a person endure the centuries. You are in the presence of something more than insurance payments or traffic jams. They beckon and you respond.
Ansel Adams by the way thought that you should “preconceive” your image before tripping the shutter not just document what was in front of you. Following his advice I took a picture of a lowly tuft of grass and when the print came out of the wash everything else in life paled.
The truth of art “is” man, it has always been and will always be. The oldest incidence that I know of is a flute, found and estimated at 57,000 years old.
Mr. L your essays are always my favorites. Thank you again.
I don’t think my original post went through.
Art is a communication of truth as the artist perceives it. Art is self-ish in that way. “Art” for commercial purposes is produced by a breathing Xerox machine, a minor amusement, gone and forgotten when it’s era passes.
Truths of a person endure the centuries. You are in the presence of something more than insurance payments or traffic jams. They beckon and you respond.
Ansel Adams by the way thought that you should “preconceive” your image before tripping the shutter not just document what was in front of you. Following his advice I took a picture of a lowly tuft of grass and when the print came out of the wash everything else in life paled.
The truth of art “is” man, it has always been and will always be. The oldest incidence that I know of is a flute, found and estimated at 57,000 years old.
Thank you for another great essay.
If you can’t get to Italy, but you can get to Pittsburgh, stop by the beautiful Frick Fine Arts Building on the University of Pittsburgh campus. Its been a few years since I was there, but it had, and should still have a Renaissance-style courtyard with several beautiful reproductions of Renaissance paintings, including “The Resurrection” by Piero della Francesca.
I also highly recommend the nearby Cathedral of Learning at Pitt, with its Nationality Rooms and Gothic chambers.
The “Misecordia” looks like this. From Wikipedia.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b3/Misericorde.jpg
“Odds are long that you never heard of a Tuscan town called Sansepolcro, let alone visited it.”
Don’t you mean “ever” instead of “never”?
Iconography that long pre-dates either Tuscany or Christianity showed the highest of the Gods, Zeus in some places, Apollo in others, as a virile warrior. The outstanding example of this iconography was Olympian Zeus the sculpture by Phidias.
When Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire, it took over the iconography of the previous dominant cults. Christ Pantocrator (Christ Almighty) an icon of Christ as the Almighty is found in most orthodox churches to this day. The picture you show above has the beefcake of Olympian Zeus, and the face of Christ Pantocrator. The coloration of Christ is interesting too. Jesus was a Jew from the Kinnaret. Most of them were olive skinned, with dark hair, and dark eyes. The conventional icons of Christ do not bear that type of coloration.
My guess is that historical accuracy was not on Piero’s agenda as an artist.
“Beefcake” is in the eye of the beholder. Christ is not presented as a warrior, much less Zeux-like. He is shown to be triumphant over death, a belief that is central to Christianity.
Walter Sobchak
The inconvenient truth is that Jesus the Christ probably looked a lot like Yassar Arafat and Mary, the Madonna looked a lot like Golda Mier….just sayin…..
Fanciful.
You got it. Poor Harris Tweed has internalized the iconography to the point where he thinks things that make no genetic sense. If Mary and Jesus were Galilean Jews of their time they were probably short and dark. The types of the Pantocrator and the Theotokos were from a distant land and a different gene pool.
Michael, I ever and always appreciate you.