Renaissance Art Map

PART I PART II -

The Early Renaissance

The High Renaissance and Mannerism The High Renaissance and Mannerism

PART III -

PART III

The High Renaissance and Mannerism

Leone Leoni

Collection: Francois Clouet

Collection: Jacopo Bassano

Collection: Mabuse

Collection: Lucas van Leyden

Bartolomeo Ammanati

Collection: Hans Burgkmair

Hans von Aachen

Collection: Francesco Salviati

Collection: Albrecht Altdorfer

Collection: Quentin Massys

Collection: Hendrik Goltzius

Collection: Lucas Cranach the Elder

Collection: Bartholomaeus Spranger

Lambert Sustris

Collection: Matthias Grunewald

Collection: El Greco

Collection: Alessandro Allori

Collection: Hans Baldung Grien

Pellegrino Tibaldi

Collection: Cornelis van Hearlem

Collection: Joos van Cleve

Girolamo Savoldo

Collection: Jean Massys

Pirro Ligorio

Collection: Joachim Wtewael

Collection: Arostino Veneciano

Collection: Dosso Dossi

Collection: Giulio Romano

Collection: Domenico Beccafumi

Collection: Jacopo Zucchi

Collection: Giorgio Vasari

Giorgio Vasari "Lives of the Artists" (selections)

Exploration: Introduction

Hieronymus Bosch

"Between Heaven And Hell"

Life and Milieu Artistic Origins and Early Biblical Scenes The Mirror of Man The Triumph of Sin The Pilgrimage of Life The Imitation of Christ The Triumph of the Saint

Exploration:

Leonardo da Vinci
(Encyclopaedia Britannica)

Leonardo da Vinci - biography

1452-1481 Leonardo in the Florence of the Medici 1482-1499 At the court of Ludovico il Moro 1500-1508 The return to Florence 1508-1513 The Milan of Charles d'Amboise

1513-1519 The last years: Rome and France

Exploration: Introduction

Michelangelo

The middle years The Medici Chapel The last decades Sistine Chapel The Last Judgement Drawings and Architectural works

Exploration: Introduction

Pieter Bruegel the Elder

A Brief Life in Dangerous Times Antwerp: a Booming City The Holy Family in the Snow Exploring the World

Demons in Our Midst Village Life Nature as Man's Environment Not only Peasants Pieter the Droll? Life and Work

Exploration:

Giuseppe Arcimboldo

Life and work of Acimboldo Arcimboldo's Pictures Arcimboldo's Vertumnus Arcimboldo as a Scientist Arcimboldo's Drawings

The High Renaissance & Mannerism

Mabuse

Mabuse
born c. 1478, County of Hainaut died c. 1532, Breda, Brabant [now in Neth.]

original name Jan Gossaert, or Jenni Gossart, also called Jan Malbodius Flemish painter who was one of the first artists to introduce the style of the Italian Renaissance into the Low Countries. He derived the name Mabuse from his family home, Maubeuge, in northern France. He is most likely to be identified with one Jennyn van Hennegouwe, who is registered as a master in the Guild of St. Luke at Antwerp in 1503. His most important early work extant is the Adoration of the Kings (National Gallery, London), which is painted in the ornate style of the Antwerp school. Other early works, such as Jesus, the Virgin, and the Baptist (Prado, Madrid), reflect his interest in the works of Jan van Eyck and Albrecht Durer. Another early work, famous for its sense of mood, is the Agony in the Garden (Staatliche Museen Preussischer Kulturbesitz, Berlin). In 1508 Mabuse accompanied his employer, Philip of Burgundy, to Italy, where he was strongly impressed by the art of the High Renaissance. After his return from Italy in 1509, he continued to study Italian art through the engravings of Marcantonio Raimondi and Jacopo de' Barbari. Mabuse's subsequent work shows a continuous effort to develop a fully Italianate style. This is evident in such works as the Neptune and Amphitrite (1516; Staatliche Museen Preussischer Kulturbesitz) and the Hercules and Deianira (1517; Barber Institute, Birmingham, Eng.), in which his early, complex designs have given way to a comparatively simple and direct conception. Sculpturesque nudes become common in Mabuse's later paintings, but they seldom avoid the stiff, lapidary quality ofhis earlier figures. In his Danae (Alte Pinakothek, Munich), Mabuse employs an elaborate architectural setting as a foil for the seminude figure, a device he frequently used. Throughout his life, he retained the jewellike technique and careful observation that were traditional in Netherlandish art. Mabuse was also a renowned portrait painter. His portraits, such as the Charles de Bourgogne (Staatliche Museen Preussischer Kulturbesitz), Eleanor of Austria (c. 1525; H.A.Wetzlar Collection, Amsterdam), and Jean Carondelet (1517; Louvre, Paris), reveal his facility for psychological perception and are particularly notable for their expressive depiction of hands.

St Anthony with a Donor 1508 Oil on panel (arched), 40,2 x 22 cm Galleria Doria-Pamphili, Rome

Lady Portrayed as Mary Magdalene Oil on wood, 51,5 x 39,8 cm Museum Mayer van den Bergh, Antwerp

The Adoration of the Kings 1500-15 Oil on wood, 177 x 161 cm National Gallery, London

The Agony in the Garden 1510 Oak Gemaldegalerie, Berlin

The High Renaissance & Mannerism

(Renaissance Art Map)

See collection:

Quentin Massys
see also collection:

Quentin Massys

Quentin Massys born c. 1465, /66, Louvain, Brabant [now in Belgium] died 1530, Antwerp Massys also spelled Matsys, Metsys, or Messys Flemish artist, the first important painter of the Antwerp school. Trained as a blacksmith in his native Louvain, Massys is said to have studied painting after falling in love with an artist's daughter. In 1491 he went to Antwerp and was admitted in to the painters' guild. Among Massys' early works are two pictures of the Virgin and Child. His most celebrated paintings are two large triptych altarpieces, The Holy Kinship, or St. Anne Altarpiece, ordered for the Church of Saint-Pieter in Louvain (150709), and The Entombment of the Lord (c. 150811), both of which exhibit strong religious feeling and precision of detail. His tendency to accentuate individual expression is demonstrated in such pictures as The Old Man and the Courtesan and The Money Changer and His Wife (see photograph). Christus Salvator Mundi and The Virgin in Prayer display serene dignity. Pictures with figures on a smaller scale are a polyptych, the scattered parts of which have been reassembled, and a later Virgin and Child. His landscape backgrounds are in the style of one of his contemporaries, the Flemish artist Joachim Patinir; the landscape depicted in Massys' The Crucifixion is believed to be the work of Patinir. Massys painted many notable portraits, including one of his friend Erasmus. Although his portraiture is more subjective and personal than that of Albrecht Durer or Hans Holbein, Massys' painting may have been influenced by both German masters. Massys' lost St. Jerome in His Study, of which a copy survives in Vienna, is indebted to Drer's St. Jerome, now in Lisbon. Some Italian influence may also be detected, as in Virgin and Child (Nationalmuseum, Pozna, Pol.), in which the figures are obviously copied from Leonardo da Vinci's Virgin of the Rocks (Louvre). Massys' two sons were artists. Jan (150975), who became a master in the guild of Antwerp in 1531, was banished in 1543 for his heretical opinions, spent 15 years in Italy or France, and returned to Antwerp in 1558. His early pictures were imitations of his father's work, but a half-length Judith with the Head of Holofernes of a later date, now in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, shows Italian or French influence, as does Lot and His Daughters (1563; Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna). Cornelis Massys (1513 79), Quentin's second son, became a master painter in 1531, painting landscapes in his father's style and also executing

engravings.

Quentin Massys

Old Woman (The Queen of Tunis)

(Norbert Schneider)

Massys Portrait of an Old Man 1517

Although there was rationalism in the impulse to produce empirically correct representations of external reality, the portrait was still imbued with talismanic properties in the minds of most spectators. The likeness had a magical ability to "act" vicariously, as a kind of proxy for the absent person. A new art form, the caricature, which first appeared in the early sixteenth century - long before the brothers Agostino and Annibale Carracci, the artists who are said to have invented it - clearly shows that the visual distortion of the human likeness, especially the face, was used as a means of vicariously satisfying the need to express hatred or aggression towards certain persons. Thus the objects of hatred were scorned and ridiculed by disfiguring their "effigies". In 1956, Werner Hofmann showed that new norms of beauty and bodily proportion must already have evolved for distortions of this kind - the distension or shrinking of ears, nose, mouth or forehead, for example - to be considered at all funny. Particular ideals of beauty became socially acceptable, making it possible to discriminate against deviants on the grounds that their conduct was unconventional, or unnatural. This development had evidently reached most of Europe by the last third of the fifteenth century. Its parallel in literature was Grobianism, or the Rabelaisian style, which amounted to a satirical attack on behaviour which did not conform to social decencies and rules of courtly etiquette which had filtered down from the aristocracy to the bourgeoisie.

This painting generally attributed to Quentin Massys or one of his circle - of an old woman whose face appears to have been deliberately distorted in the interests of grotesque humour, makes full use of compositional techniques developed by fifteenth-century Netherlandish and Italian portraitists. Wearing an immense horned bonnet, and with a corset pressing together her flabby breasts, the old woman sits with her left hand on a parapet in front of her, while her right engages in some form of gesticulation. But is this really a portrait, a painting purporting to represent the likeness of a particular person? The painting is based on a model which is now lost and which Leonardo may have used in an early drawing (Windsor Castle, N 12492). Giorgio Vasari reports that Leonardo was moved by an insatiable desire to observe unusual and deformed faces. His interest in these phenomena sprang from his work on a canon of ideal bodilv proportions. The new standards of beauty no longer allowed for natural irregularities in a person's appearance, but disqualified these as infringements against the social ideal. Despite their emphatic "semantics of individuality" (Niklas Luhmann), Renaissance humanists criticised the individual as ultimately defying classification, and therefore social integration. Whenever beauty is linked to intelligence or ethical integrity, anything that does not correspond to the aesthetic ideal is viewed not only as ugly, but as an expression of abject stupidity, or immorality.

Van Eyck's ruthless registration of the "unbeautiful" details of his sitter's appearance, which was evidently quite acceptable to his patrons, shows that the idea of ugliness as an aesthetic category had not entered contemporary thinking on art or everyday life by the early fifteenth century. Massys, on the other hand, painted his Old Woman by engaging in systematic deviation from the norm. The method that he evolved had much in common with the experiments in deformation to be found in Durer's sketchbooks on proportion. Moreover, the old woman's costume would also have amused Massys's contemporaries, since they would have found it quite old-fashioned. Her bonnet, a "hennin" as it was called, "was worn in, or shortly before, 1450, as can be seen from Jan van Eyck's portrait of his wife Margaret in 1439 (Bruges). The artist's satirical attention to the woman's age would also have ridiculed her in the eyes of his contemporanes, who had begun to think of age as something ugly, and youth as a positive quality, as revealed by paintings which show different human ages, or the portraits of "unequal lovers". Leonardo's and Massys's grotesque studies of human disproportions created a precedent which could - without a second thought for the problems of mimesis or verisimilitude - be used, or abused, in all kinds of satire. Graphic reproductions of these works have reappeared under various guises ever since: in Wenzel Hollar's King and Queen of Tunis, for example, or as the likeness of "Countess Margaret of Tirol" (died 1369). Massys's painting was even passed off in the seventeenth century as a portrait of Pope Pius VI's sister, Princess Porcia, who was supposed to have attempted to rescue religion with an army of Jesuits (Paris, Bibliotheque Nationale, Cabinet des Estampes).

Massys Portrait of an Old Man (detail) 1517

Leonardo da Vinci Grotesque Heads (details) 1494

Leonardo's caricatures were a side product of studies he undertook to establish ideal human proportions. They also illustrate the precept of diversity ("varieta"), which he had outlined in his treatise on painting. Here, Leonardo was referring to the great variety of natural forms, to which the creative artist was capable of adding by inventing new ones.

See collection:

Quentin Massys

Money Makes the World Go Round

Trade and coins in early modern times

When the little "moutons d'or" were devalued to twelve "sous parisis", there was no bread, no wine nor anything else. The money changers refused to pay a decent rate of exchange. And people hoarded their money although it was worth nothing. Many simply tossed their coins right over the money changers' shops into the river. From the diary of an anonymous Parisian, 1427

Massys The Moneylender and his Wife 1514

The term "trade" was first used in the modern sense in ancient Egypt. From the fourth millennium BC, the land of the Pharaohs maintained trade links with other civilisations. These commercial ties consisted primarily of the bartering of goods, such as raw materials, hides, tools, even the brightcoloured feathers of exotic birds, valuable shells and, of course, precious stones. The Persians were the ones to invent the mintage of coins. The bartering of goods gradually yielded to payment in currency, although the heyday of the coin did not arise until the Middle Ages, when importing goods became of primary importance. Suddenly Venetian, Genoese and Pisan ships were sailing across the Mediterranean to meet caravans bringing silk overland from China or spices from India. On returning to their home ports, the Italian manners sold their valuable cargoes to merchants. In the Holy Roman Empire, for instance, powerful mercantile enterprises sprang up everywhere. The Hanseatic League controlled trade to and from the North Sea and the Baltic coasts. Once the era of overseas discovery and exploration was well underway, trade became a global matter. At that time, paper money (a Chinese invention) was used in Europe merely as a receipt for monies tendered, and the material value of coins still corresponded to their nominal value. Yet money looked different depending on where one went. Only money changers were able to determine the value of a coin by looking at it through a magnifying glass and by placing it on the scales to find out its exact gold or silver content. For this reason money changers were an indispensable part of life in the great trade centres and market towns. Even the man in the street required their services. Without the money changers a soldier who wanted a tankard of beer in the town where he was garrisoned would have had to drink water if he had carned only the currency of his native city. Flemish painter Quentin Massys observed a money changer at work in Antwerp. At that time the city was the main port of the Low Countries, and bustled with economic

The Money Lenders, after Massys by Jan Ravestyn

activity. Money changers enjoyed high status. Nevertheless, they were always suspected of being stingy, avaricious and of charging exorbitant interest. Perhaps the wife of the money changer depicted is contemplating a prayer book in the pious hope that she and her husband will not be led into temptation by the lure of riches....

Massys The Moneylender and his Wife (detail) 1514

The High Renaissance & Mannerism

(Renaissance Art Map)

See collection:

El Greco

EL GRECO
Domenicos Theotokopoulos, known as El Greco (1541-1614), moved to Venice from Greece in about 1567. He worked with Titian and admired the work of Tintoretto, before visiting Rome in about 1570. He then moved to Madrid to work on the palace-monastery of San Lorenzo at El Escorial. He lived in Spain for the rest of his life. The luminosity and inherent spiritualism in his work, the innovative layout in some of his paintings, and the sumptuous use of colour make El Greco one of the great masters of the passage between High Renaissance and Baroque.

born 1541, Candia [Iraklion], Crete died April 7, 1614, Toledo, Spain

byname of Domenikos Theotokpoulos master of Spanish painting, whose highly individual dramatic and expressionistic style (see ) met with the puzzlement of his contemporaries but gained newfound appreciation in the 20th century. He also worked as a sculptor and as an architect.

Early life and works

El Greco never forgot that he was of Greek descent and usually signed his paintings in Greek letters with his full name, Domenikos Theotokpoulos. He is, nevertheless, generally known as El Greco (the Greek), a name he acquired when he lived in Italy, where the custom of identifying a man by designating country or city of origin was a common practice. The curious form of the article (El), however, may be the Venetian dialect or more likely from theSpanish. Because Crete, his homeland, was then a Venetian possession and he was a Venetian citizen, he decided to go to Venice to study. The exact year in which this took place is not known; but speculation has placed the date anywhere from 1560, when he was 19, to 1566. In Venice he entered the studio of Titian, who was the greatest painter of the day. Knowledge of El Greco's years in Italy is limited. A letter of Nov. 16, 1570, written by Giulio Clovio, an illuminator in the service of Cardinal Alessandro Farnese, requested lodging in the Palazzo Farnese for a young man from Candia, a pupil of Titian. On July 8, 1572, the Greek painter is mentioned in a letter sent from Rome by a Farnese official to the same cardinal. Shortly thereafter, on Sept. 18, 1572, Dominico Greco paid his dues to the guild of St. Luke in Rome. How long the young artist remained in Rome is unknown, because he may have returned to Venice, c. 157576, before he left for Spain. The certain works painted by El Greco in Italy are completely in the Venetian Renaissance style of the 16th century. They show no effect of his Byzantine heritage except possibly in the faces of old menfor example, in the Christ Healing the Blind. The placing of figures in deep space and the emphasis on an architectural setting in High Renaissance style are particularly significant in his early pictures, such as Christ Cleansing the Temple. The first evidence of El Greco's extraordinary gifts as a portraitist appears in Italy in a portrait of Giulio Clovio and Vincentio Anastagi.

Middle years
El Greco first appeared in Spain in the spring of 1577, initially at Madrid, later in Toledo. One of his main reasons for seeking a new career in Spain must have been knowledge of Philip II's great project, the building of the monastery of San Lorenzo at El Escorial, some 26 miles (42 km) northwest of Madrid. Moreover, the Greek must have met important Spanish churchmen in Rome through Fulvio Orsini, a humanist and librarian of the Palazzo Farnese. It is known that at least one Spanish ecclesiastic who spent some time in Rome at this periodLuis de Castillabecame El Greco's intimate friend and was eventually named one of the two executors of his last testament. Luis' brother, Diego de Castilla, gave El Greco his first commission in Spain, which possibly had been promised before the artist left Italy. In 1578 Jorge Manuel, the painter's only son, was born at Toledo, the offspring of Dona Jeronima de Las Cuevas. She appears to have outlived El Greco, and, although he acknowledged both her and his son, he never married her. That fact has puzzled all writers, because he mentioned her in various documents, including his last testament. It may be that El Greco had married unhappily in his youth in Crete or Italy and therefore could not legalize another attachment. For the rest of his life El Greco continued to live in Toledo, busily engaged on commissions for the churches and monasteries there and in the province. He became a close friend of the leading humanists, scholars, and churchmen. Antonio de Covarrubias, a classical scholar and son of the architect Alonso de Covarrubias, was a friend whose portrait he painted. Fray Hortensio Paravicino, the head of the Trinitarian order in Spain and a favourite preacher of Philip II of Spain, dedicated four sonnets to El Greco, one of them recording his own portrait by the artist. Luis de Gongora y Argote, one of the major literary figures of the late 16th century, composed a sonnet to the tomb of the painter. Another writer, Don Pedro de Salazar de Mendoza, figured among the most intimate circle of El Greco's entourage. The inventories compiled after his death confirm the fact that he was a man of extraordinary culturea true Renaissance humanist. His library, which gives some idea of the breadth and range of his interests, included works of the major Greek authors in Greek, numerous books in Latin, and others in Italian and in Spanish: Plutarch's Lives, Petrarch's poetry, Ludovico Ariosto's Orlando Furioso, the Bible in Greek, the proceedings of the Council of Trent, and architectural treatises by Marcus Vitruvius Pollio, Giacomo da Vignola, Leon Battista Alberti, Andrea Palladio, and Sebastiano Serlio. El Greco himself prepared an edition of Vitruvius, accompanied by drawings, but the manuscript is lost. In 1585 and thereafter El Greco lived in the large, late-medieval palace of the Marques de Villena. Although it is near the site of the now-destroyed Villena Palace, the museum in Toledo called the Casa y Museo del Greco (Home and Museum of El Greco) was never his residence. It can be assumed that he needed space for his atelier more than for luxurious living. In 1605 the palace was listed by the historian Francisco de Pisa as one of the handsomest in the city; it was not a miserable ruined structure, as some romantic writers have presumed. El Greco surely lived in considerable comfort, even though he did not leave a large estate at his death. El Greco's first commission in Spain was for the high altar and the two lateral altars in the conventual church of Santo Domingo el Antiguo at Toledo (157779). Never before had the artist had a commission of such importance and scope. Even the architectural design of the altar frames, reminiscent of the style of the Venetian architect Palladio, was prepared by El Greco. The painting for the high altar, Assumption of the Virgin, also marked a new period in the artist's life, revealing the full extent of his genius. The figures are brought close into the foreground, and in the Apostles a new brilliance of colour is achieved. The technique remains Venetian in the laying on of the paint and in the liberal use of white highlights; yet the intensity of the colours and the manipulation of contrasts, verging on dissonance, is distinctly El Greco. For the first time the importance of his assimilation of the art of Michelangelo comes to the

fore, particularly in the painting of the Trinity, in the upper part of the high altar (now in the Prado Museum, Madrid), where the powerful sculpturesque body of the nude Christ leaves no doubt of the ultimate source of inspiration. In the lateral altar painting of the Resurrection, the poses of the standing soldiers and the contrapposto (a position in which the upper and lower parts of the body are contrasted indirection) of those asleep are also clearly Michelangelesque in inspiration. At the same time, El Greco created another masterpiece of extraordinary originalitythe Espolio (Disrobing of Christ). In designing the composition vertically and compactly in the foreground he seems to have been motivated by the desire to show the oppression of Christ by his cruel tormentors. He chose a method of space elimination that is common to middle and late 16th-century Italian painters known as Mannerists, and at the same time he probably recalled late Byzantine paintingsin which the superposition of heads row upon row is employed to suggest a crowd. The original altar of gilded wood that El Greco designed for the painting has been destroyed, but his small sculptured group of the Miracle of St. Ildefonso still survives on the lower centre of the frame. El Greco's tendency to elongate the human figure becomes more notable at this timefor example, in the handsome and unrestored St. Sebastian. The same extreme elongation of body is also present in Michelangelo's work, in the painting of the Venetians Tintoretto and Paolo Veronese, and in the art of the leading Mannerist painters. The increased slenderness of Christ's long body against the dramatic clouds in Crucifixion with Donors foreshadows the artist's late style. El Greco's connection with the court of Philip II was brief and unsuccessful, consisting first of the Allegory of the Holy League (Dream of Philip II; 157879) and second of the Martyrdom of St. Maurice (158082). The latter painting did not meet with the approval of the king, who promptly ordered another work of the same subject to replace it. Thus ended the great artist's connection with the Spanish court. The king may have been troubled by the almost shocking brilliance of the yellows as contrasted to the ultramarine in the costumes of the main group of the painting, which includes St. Maurice in the centre. On the other hand, to the modern eye El Greco's daring use of colour is particularly appealing. The brushwork remains Venetian in the way that the colour suggests form and in the free illusionistic and atmospheric creation of space. The Burial of the Count de Orgaz (158688; Santo Tome, Toledo is universally regarded as El Greco's masterpiece. The supernatural vision of Gloria (Heaven) above and the impressive array of portraits represent all aspects of this extraordinary genius's art. El Greco clearly distinguished between heaven and earth: above, heaven is evoked by swirling icy clouds, semiabstract in their shape, and the saints are tall and phantomlike; below, all is normal in the scale and proportions of the figures. According to the legend, Saints Augustine and Stephen appeared miraculously to lay the Count de Orgaz in his tomb as a reward for his generosity to their church. In golden and red vestments they bend reverently over the body of the count, who is clad in magnificent armour that reflects the yellow and reds of the other figures. The young boy at the left is El Greco's son, Jorge Manuel; on a handkerchief in his pocket is inscribed the artist's signature and the date 1578, the year of the boy's birth. The men in contemporary 16th-century dress who attend the funeral are unmistakably prominent members of Toledan society. El Greco's Mannerist method of composition is nowhere more clearly expressed than here, where all of the action takes place in the frontal plane.

Later life and works

From 1590 until his death El Greco's painterly output was prodigious. His pictures for the churches and convents of the Toledan region include the Holy Family with the Magdalen and the Holy Family with St. Anne. He repeated several times the Agony in the Garden, in which a supernatural world is evoked through strange shapes and

brilliant, cold, clashing colours. The devotional theme of Christ Carrying the Cross is known in 11 originals by El Greco and many copies. El Greco depicted most of the major saints, often repeating the same composition: St. Dominic, Mary Magdalen, St. Jerome as cardinal, St. Jerome in penitence, and St. Peter in tears. St. Francis of Assisi, however, was by far the saint most favoured by the artist; about 25 originals representing St. Francis survive and, in addition, more than 100 pieces by followers. The most popular of several types was St. Francis and Brother Leo Meditating on Death. Two major series (Apostolados) survive representing Christ and the Twelve Apostles in 13 canvases: one in the sacristy of Toledo Cathedral (160510) and another, unfinished set (1612 14) in the El Greco House and Museumat Toledo. The frontal pose of the Christ blessing in this series suggests a medieval Byzantine figure, although the colour and brushwork are El Greco's personal handling of Venetian technique. In these works the devotional intensity of mood reflects the religious spirit of Roman Catholic Spain in the period of the CounterReformation. Although Greek by descent and Italian by artistic preparation, the artist becameso immersed in the religious environment of Spain that he became the most vital visual representative of Spanish mysticism. Yet, because of the combination of these three cultures, he developed into an artist so individual that he belongs to no conventional school but is a lonely genius of unprecedented emotional power and imagination. Several major commissions came El Greco's way in the last 15 years of his life: three altars for the Chapel of San Jose, Toledo (159799); three paintings (15961600) for the Colegio de Dona Maria de Aragon, an Augustinian monasteryin Madrid; and the high altar, four lateral altars, and the painting St. Ildefonso for the Hospital de la Caridad at Illescas (160305). Extreme distortion of body characterizes El Greco's last

worksfor example, the Adoration of the Shepherds (Prado Museum, Madrid), painted in 161214 for his own burial chapel. The brilliant, dissonant colours and the strange shapes and poses create a sense of wonder and ecstasy, as the shepherd and angels celebrate the miracle of the newly born child. In the unfinished Vision of St. John, El Greco's imagination led him to disregard the laws of nature even more. The gigantic swaying figure of St. John the Evangelist, in abstractly painted icy-blue garments, reveals the souls of the martyrs who cry out for deliverance. In like manner, the figure of the Madonna in the Immaculate Conception (160714; Santa Cruz Museum, Toledo), originally in the Church of San Vicente, floats heavenward in a paroxysm of ecstasy supported by long, distorted angels. The fantastic view of Toledo below, abstractly rendered, is dazzling in its ghostly moonlit brilliance, and the clusters of roses and lilies, symbols of the Virgin's purity, are unalloyed in their sheer beauty. In his three surviving landscapes, El Greco demonstrated his characteristic tendency to dramatize rather than to describe. The View of Toledo (c. 1595; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York) renders a city stormy, sinister, and impassioned with the same dark, foreboding clouds that appear in the background of his earlier Crucifixion with Donors. Painting in his studio, he rearranged the buildings depicted in the picture to suit his compositional purpose. View and Plan of Toledo (161014; Greco House and Museum, Toledo) is almost like a vision, all of the buildings painted glistening white. An inscription by the artist on the canvas explains quite fancifully that he had placed the Hospital of San Juan Bautista on a cloud in the foreground so that it could better be seen and that the map in the picture shows the streets of the city. At the left, a river god represents the Tagus, which flows around Toledo, a city built on rocky heights. Although El Greco had lived in Italy and in Rome itself, he rarely used such classical Roman motives.

The one picture by El Greco that has a mythological subject, so dear to most Renaissance artists, is the Laocoon (1610 14; National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.). For ancient Troy he substituted a view of Toledo, similar to the one just discussed, and he displayed little regard for classical tradition in painting the highly expressive but great, sprawling body of the priest. Although El Greco was primarily a painter of religious subjects, his portraits, though less numerous, are equally high in quality. Two of his finest late works are the portraits of Fray Felix Hortensio Paravicino (1609; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston) and Cardinal Don Fernando Nio de Guevara (c. 1600; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York). Both are seated, as was customary after the time of Raphael in portraits presenting important ecclesiastics. Paravicino, a Trinitarian monk and a famous orator and poet, is depicted as a sensitive, intelligent man. The pose is essentially frontal, and the white habit and black cloak provide highly effective pictorial contrasts. Cardinal Nio de Guevara, in crimson robes, is almost electrical in his inherent energy, a man accustomed to command. El Greco's portrait of Jeronimo de Cevallos (1605 10; Prado, Madrid), on the other hand, is most sympathetic. The work is half-length, painted thinly and limited to black and white. The huge ruff collar, then in fashion, enframes the kindly face. By such simple means, the artist created a memorable characterization that places him in the highest rank as a portraitist, along with Titian and Rembrandt. No followers of any consequence remained in Toledo after El Greco's death in 1614. Only his son and a few unknown painters produced weak copies of the master's work. His art was so personally and so highly individual that it could not survive his passing. Moreover, the new Baroque style of Caravaggio and of the Carracci soon supplanted the last surviving traits of 16th-century Mannerism. Harold E. Wethey

Encyclopaedia Britannica

See collection:

El Greco

____________________________ ____________________________ El Greco: The Burial of Count Orgaz, 1586 Two saints bury the munificent donor Rose-Marie and Rainer Hagen

The Burial of the Count of Orgaz 1586-88 Oil on canvas, 480 x 360 cm Santo Tome, Toledo

The canvas, 4.8 metres high and 3.6 metres wide, covers the entire wall of a chapel, reaching from the arch of the ceiling alm the ground. The figures are life-sized, painted in 1586 for the Santo Tome church in Toledo by the Cretan artist Domenikos Theotokopulos, known in Spain as El Greco, the Greek. According to legend, St. Stephan and St. Augustine appeared and laid the mortal remains of Gonzalo Ruiz in the grave.

El Greco's painting shows a miracle, said to have occurred in the Santo Tome church at the burial of Don Gonzalo Ruiz in 131

Ruiz, erstwhile Chancellor of Castile and governor of Orgaz, was a man of great wealth and influence, whose beni-ficence had

especially apparent towards institutions of the church. Through his good offices, the Augustiman Order acquired a developab

within the Toledo town walls. He gave financial support to the construction of a monastery, too, and to the building of the ch

Santo Tome. He even made provision that the town of Orgaz should, after his death, make an annual donation to both churc

monastery of two lambs, sixteen chickens, two skins of wine, two loads of firewoood and 800 coins. According to the testimo vanishing, they are said to have left a divine fragrance on the air.

saints who attended his funeral, their presence there conferred high distinction upon one who had "served his God and saints

El Greco made no attempt to clothe his figures in medieval dress. Social or political change was little understood at the time, historical event, but to encourage contemporary spectators to follow the worthy example it honoured.

attention to detail of this kind would, in any case, have conflicted with his patron's wishes: the painting was not intended to r

Emphasis on the contemporary relevance of the subject probably contributed to the artist's realistic rendering of many detail among the gentlemen in black, several of their most well-known citizens.

lower, more worldly half of the painting: ruffs, lace cuffs, the transparent supplice. Furthermore, the Toledans would have re

El Greco gives to the two returned saints the appearance of ordinary persons (showing them without the nimbus which typica

invested such figures). He portrays Augustine, the great church father, as a venerable greybeard in a bishop's mitre, while S

reputed to be the first Christian martyr, appears as a young man. A further painting is inset in his mantle: the lapidation of S

Stephan. Stephan was the patron saint of the monastery to which Gonzalo Ruiz had given his support. The robe of the priest whose attribute was usually a builder's square.

at the right edge of the painting carries a series of emblems referring to St. Thomas, patron saint of the church and also of a

It seems the artist chose the theme of the miracle in order to deliver a lesson in ha-giology. This may explain why, confronte

such an extraordinary event, the figures maintain their composure: not one is shown throwing up his hands in fright, or sinki as if illustrating a tenet of doctrine.

state of shock to his knees. On the contrary, the monks on the left are engaged in discussion, while others calmly point to th

Indeed, to 16th-century Toledans that was exactly what the painting meant. The legend was part of general religious knowle past and present, simultaneously showing the miracle and its incorporation into ecclesiastical doctrine. El Greco's Heaven comes in muted tones; only the Virgin Mary is somewhat brighter in colour. The figure behind her is Peter

related and reinterpreted each year in a service held on St. Stephan's day at the church of Santo Tome. The artist's vision co

keys; further down are the Old Testament "saints": King David with his harp, Moses and the stone tablets of the decalogue, N Ruiz as the transparent figure of a child borne up in the arms of an angel. The soul's progress appears obstructed, however, restricted to a narrow strait between two converging clouds. This might seem surprising, given the high distinction conferred upon the pious man at the burial of his mortal remains. An inconsistency perhaps? In fact, the artist had good reason not to take for granted the soul's unimpeded progress to heaven. reason lay in the political predicament of the church at the close of 16th century.

his ark. John the Baptist kneels opposite Mary, while Jesus Christ is enthroned on high. El Greco depicts the soul of the dead

Fighting for the Holy Virgin

El Greco painted in the century of the Reformation. Protestant thought had found few followers on the Iberian peninsula, but the Netherlands, where it had spread v and where Spaniards and Netherlandish mercenaries fought each other over towns, ports and the true faith, was part of the Spanish empire.

News from their northern province filled pious Spanish souls with terror: church statues of saints had been cast down from their pedestals, paintings of the Virgin p tearing the saints to shreds and leaving the demons at their feet intact.

lances - satanic forces were at work. That the events had less to do with the revival of the church than with the work of the Devil was confirmed by reports of icono

It was the demotion of their most highly venerated Virgin Mary that disturbed the Spaniards most. Luther, so it was reported, had said Mary was no holier than any who prayed to the Virgin was committing blasphemy by exalting a woman to the rank of a god.

Christian believer, while yet another Reformer had said that if Mary had been a purse full of gold before Christ's birth, she was an empty purse afterwards, and that

The great respect commanded by the Holy Virgin south of the Pyrenees stood in peculiar contrast to the disregard shown to women in Spanish society. Their status

below that of women in Italy, Germany or France. One explanation may lie in the fact that large tracts of Spain, including Toledo itself, had been under Moorish ru king, by contrast with her French peer, had no influence whatsoever. Women had no place in the public sphere, as El Greco's painting so ably demonstrates: Mary large-scale female figure among countless men in Heaven and on earth. to her.

centuries. The Moors thought of women as base creatures who, easily tempted, required constant surveillance. Although there were famous nuns in Spain, the mist

In the 16th and 17th centuries the Virgin Mary was the most significant religious and cultural figure in Spanish life: many works by Lope de Vega and Calderon ar

The militant adoration of the Virgin climaxed in the dispute surrounding her Immaculate Conception. This did not, as might be imagined, refer to the begetting of J

but to Mary's own procreation. Her mother was said to have conceived her either without male contribution, or, if a man's presence at the event were conceded, wit a dogma in Spain long before. In 1618 the Spanish universities were put under obligation to teach and actively defend the Immaculate Conception.

original sin, for the man was merely God's instrument. Although the pope did not raise the Immaculate Conception to a dogma until the 19th century, it had been ta

From a Spanish point of view, however, the Protestants had not only debased the Holy Virgin, they had also got rid of the saints, who were tremendously importan

Catholic faith. To say that El Greco underlines the integral function of the saints in this painting would be an understatement. Together with the Virgin, it is they w

with the distant, enthroned figure of Christ on behalf of the souls of the dead; only through their supplication can the barrier of clouds dissolve and the soul find its

paradise unhindered. The painting's theological intervention demonstrates the rupture of the vital dynamic suggested in the brightly lit undersides of the clouds: the The Burial of the Count of Orgaz (detail) effectively demonstrate their significance.

surge through the vortex of light to Jesus Christ is obstructed. Since the Reformation had degraded the Virgin and the saints, it was now the task of the Counter-Re

A king among saints

The Burial of the Count of Orgaz (detail)

The painting also contains a portrait of Philip II of Spain, who, in 1586, was still on the throne. He is shown sitting among the who, gathered behind John, are interceding for the soul of Ruiz. Philip's empire was the largest of all European states. It not borderless. This was the empire on -which - in the words of the well-known dictum - the sun never set.

included the Netherlands and Naples with southern Italy, but colonies in Central and South America, some of which "were lite

Of course, his life was as remote from his many subjects as any god. Furthermore, the court etiquette he had inherited from

ensured that court and government officials kept their distance. Only a small elite was ever admitted to his presence, and an

who handed something to him in person was obliged to do so on his knees. However, there was one important element of his

etiquette which, characteristically, Philip altered: priests were no longer obliged to genuflect before him. He gave to the amb

of the kingdom of God, though appointed by himself, a status far greater than that accorded to the representatives of worldly

This was altogether typical of Philip's rule. He set greater store by defending his faith than his empire. No personal loss could

more deeply, he wrote upon receiving news of the Netherlandish iconoclasts, than the slightest insult or disrespect to the Lor service of God and in testimony to his Catholic faith and the power and honour of the Apostolic See."

effigies. Even "the ruin" of all his lands could not hinder him from "doing what a Christian and God-fearing sovereign must do

Philip II had a powerful instrument at his disposal: the Inquisition. In other countries the authorities who condemned apostat

unbelievers and witches were purely clerical; afterwards, offenders were handed over to the state authorities, who would the

the penalty. In Spain even the trial was subordinate to the throne. The king appointed the Grand Inquisitor, and the persecu

non-Catholics served interests of state. For over 700 years the Moors, finally defeated in 1492, had ruled over almost the wh They, too, suffered enforced baptism.

Iberian peninsula. Only families who converted from Islam to Christinity were permitted to remain in Spain. The same applie

Though hundreds of thousands of Jews and Muslims had left the country, or were in the process of doing so, Philip still saw C

Spain threatened by unbelievers who merely paid lip-service to Christ, or by heretics secretly plotting insurrection. The Inqui

acted as a secret police force, defending the status quo and transferring to the state the wealth and property of those it cond

Combined religious and racial persecution was one of the chief factors leading to the decline of the Spanish empire. The Jews

been specialists in foreign trade and finance; the country's best physicians were Jews, and they constituted the cream of its u Arabic into Latin, thus becoming available to Christian theologians.

teachers. It was thanks to Jewish scholars and translators that forgotten manuscripts by antique philosophers "were translate

For their part, the Muslims had farmed vast areas of the country, and the success of agriculture depended on Moorish irrigati

systems. Now that they were gone, the fields were bare, the villages depopulated, and the businesses of the merchants colla defending the faith.

Philip, however, as for the clergy, the Spanish grandees and a large section of the Spanish population, this was less importan

Monument to a priest

The Burial of the Count of Orgaz (detail)

Yet Philip's unrealistic religious zeal was not the only factor that earned him a place among the saints in Heaven in El Greco's Other artists, too, for example Durer in his All Saints' Altarpiece of 1511, gave a place in Heaven to their most prominent contemporaries. In so doing, they enjoyed the support of St. Augustine's "City of God", in which the domains of Heaven and were interwoven, providing theological justification for the depiction of mortals as the inhabitants of Heaven.

The priest portrayed reading is Andres Nunez, who, at the time in question, was responsible for the parish of Santo Tome. It conducted for decades in an attempt to bring just renown to Gonzalo Ruiz and -lest it be forgot - himself.

that we owe the existence of this painting. Commissioning El Greco to execute the work was the final act in a campaign Nune

His first undertaking of this kind had been the attempt to move Gonzalo's grave. The pious Castilian chancellor had chosen a

inconspicuous corner of the church of Santo Tome as the resting place of his earthly remains apparently a sign of his mod not touch the body of one who had been "touched by the hands of saints".

Nunez wanted his bones moved to a more auspicious place, but his superiors rejected the request, for "the hands of sinners"

Consequently, Nunez decided to build a chapel with a high dome over the immured coffin. Soon after this demonstrative dee

memory of the lord of Orgaz (it was his descendents who received the title of count), the citizens of Orgaz decided to annul t

year-old legacy of two lambs, 16 chickens, two skins of wine, two loads of firewood and 800 coins. Nunez instituted legal pro referring to the rebuttal of the town of Orgaz through "the vigorous efforts of Andres Nunez". commission a painting of the miracle of the interment. El Greco was commissioned in 1586 and delivered the painting in the

winning the case in 1569. In order to record his triumph he had a Latin text mounted above the grave, recounting the legend

The smart priest thus created a monument to himself. After applying to the archbishopric in 1584, he was granted permissio

year. Whatever the work may owe to the personal ambition of a priest, it has to be said that propagation of the miracle of th

was also fully in keeping with Counter-Reformation church policy. It was seen as important not only to exalt the Virgin and s

to defend the need for charitable donations and the worship of relics. According to Catholic belief, the route to Heaven was p

"good deeds", a view rejected by Reformers, for whom faith and divine mercy were all that counted. The Reformers also veh

opposed the veneration of relics, a cult of considerable significance in Catholic countries. It was at this time, too, that Gaspar

Quiroga, appointed archbishop in 1577, brought the bones of St. Leocadia and St. Ildefonso to Toledo, thereby greatly addin

status of its cathedral. Santo Tome's painting of the burial extolled the piety of charitable donations, at the same time defend The Burial of the Count of Orgaz(detail) all Christians should honour the mortal remains of the pious, the saints and the martyrs?

worship of relics. For had not two saints touched, and thereby honoured, the mortal frame? Was it not therefore correct to in

The painting's gigantic format complied with Counter-Reformation propaganda in yet another sense: its stunning visual impa

Protestants, by contrast, wished to see their churches purified of all ornamentation. Places of worship were to be free of grav

images, or at least not crowded with visual distractions from God's word. But the Catholics thought otherwise: since the chur least, a reaction against the plain churches of the Reformation.

God's house, why not use every means possible to decorate it in His honour? The exuberant splendour of Baroque churches w

The Burial of the Count of Orgaz (detail)

Reality as a stage set

The Burial of the Count of Orgaz (detail)

The boy pointing so meaningfully at the saint was El Greco's son; his year of birth, 1578, can be deciphered on his handkerch

When his father painted the miracle, he was eight years old. The contract was concluded on 18th March. El Greco finished th

whose value was estimated by two experts at 1200 ducats, by Ghristmas. Since the price was too steep for the parish counci parties agreed - on the lower sum.

Tome, it appointed two experts of its own, only to find that they arrived at a value of 1600 ducats. It was not until July 1588

El Greco was dogged by financial problems almost all his life. He was not a prince among painters, like Titian, in whose Venic

he had trained. "The Greek" was born in 1541 on Crete, which, at that time, was under Venetian rule. He learned icon paintin

Venice where he became a master of spatial representation and architectonic perspective, then moved to Rome. When Pius V

disturbed by the nudity of some of the figures in Michelangelo's Last Judgement, wanted some of the frescos in the Sistine C

painted over, El Greco is reputed to have offered to paint an equally good, but more decent, work if the original were destroy

It is not known when, or why, El Greco settled in Spain. It is possible he felt ill at ease with the Italian artists' exaltation of c

and architectural beauty; perhaps he hoped his celebrations of the afterlife would find greater recognition in Spain. Spanish c

resident in Rome, are likely to have spoken of the Escorial, Philip II's palatial monastery, and El Greco may have hoped to fin from him - the only order he received from that source. Philip apparently disliked the Greek's paintings.

there. Instead he settled in the old religious capital of Toledo, the seat of the archbishop. In 1579 the king commissioned a p

Spiritually they had much in common. For both, the afterlife was more important than this life. Philip longed to rule from the

in the company of monks, and to be able to see an altar even from his bed. This view meant more to him than his empire: h northern provinces of the Netherlands were already as good as lost. El Greco's whole life's work, and this painting in particular, bears witness to his belief that the kingdom of heaven was more

was defeated in 1588; in 1598, the year of his death, financial pressures forced him to give up his war against France, and th

and more real than the world in which we live. Though he is painstakingly exact in his detailed rendering of the lower, worldl

the painting, the realistic heads and dress have the effect of drawing the burial scene into the foreground, while the isocepha

arrangement of onlookers' heads gives the appearance of the top of a stage set. It is only here, behind this dividing line, tha and line that draws the eye upward.

life begins. Only the upper half is dynamic, vital through and through, an effect achieved with the help of lighting and a use o

It remains to be said that not all Spaniards ceded to the uncritical renunciation of reality. The writer Miguel de Cervantes, for his character Don Quixote, a chivalrous and deluded idealist, illustrates the dangers that may befall a person who inhabits a fantasy rather than facts, someone who, in pursuit of ideals, loses sight of the ground beneath his feet.

a contemporary of El Greco and Philip II, took a different point of view. Though he did not attack the religious zeal of his com

See collection:

El Greco

____________________________ ____________________________

EL GRECO: passionate visionary

Sister Wendy

The greatest Mannerist of them all is the Spanish painter El Greco (Domenicos Theotokopoulos, 1541-1614, called "El Greco"

he was born in Crete). His artistic roots are diverse: he traveled between Venice, Rome, and Spain (settling in Toledo). The C

doctrines of Spain made a crucial impact on his approach to painting, and his art represents a blend of passion and restraint,

fervor and Neo-Platonism, influenced by the mysticism of the Counter-Reformation. El Greco's elongated figures, ever straini

upward, his intense and unusual colors, his passionate involvement in his subject, his ardor and his energy, all combine to cr

style that is wholly distinct and individual. He is the great fuser, and also the transfuser, setting the stamp of his angular inte form but in spirit (although he did in fact train as an icon painter in his early years in The Madonna and Child with St. Martina and St. Agnes sweeps us up from our natural animal level, there at the bottom with acts like a signal, as do the long, impossibly slender fingers of Agnes.

upon all that he creates. To the legacies of Venice, Florence, and Siena, he added that of the Byzantine tradition, not necessa

Crete). El Greco always produces icons, and it is this interior gravity of spirit that gives his odd distortions a sacred Tightness

Martina's pensive lion and St. Agnes's lamb, balancing with unnatural poise on the branch of her arm. Martina's palm of mart

We are drawn irresistibly up, past the flutter of cherubic wing and the rich swirl of virginal robe, kept to the pictorial center b

strangely papery or sheetlike clouds peculiar to El Greco. Up, up, rising through the curve of Mary's cloak, we are drawn to th

of the work, the Child and, above Him, the oval serenity of the Madonna's countenance. We are continually on the move, but

left to our own devices. We are guided and directed by El Greco, with praying figures at the corners to hold us in the right po

Unresolved questions

Laokoon 1610 Oil on canvas, 142 x 193 cm National Gallery of Art, Washington

Such a dramatic and insistent art can seem too obtrusive: we may long to be left to ourselves. But this psychic control is ess

El Greco, the great in the nicest sense manipulator. Even when we cannot really understand the picture, as in the Laoc

have no doubt that something portentous is taking place and that we are diminished to the extent we cannot participate. The

reference to the Trojan priest and his sons is clear enough. But who are the naked women, one of whom seems to be double

Even if the extra head is indicative of the work being unfinished, it is still uncannily apposite. The Laocoon was overpainted loincloths. Later, these features were restored to the form that we see now. The serpents seem oddly ineffectual, thin and meager; we wonder why these muscular males have such trouble overcoming

Greco's death, and the "second head" that looks into the painting was obliterated, while the two standing frontal nudes were

And we feel that this is an allegory more than a straightforward story, that we are watching evil and temptation at work on t sky.

unprotected bodies of mankind. Even the rocks are materially unconvincing, made of the same non-substance as the high an

The less we understand, the more we are held enthralled by this work. It is the implicit meaning that always matters most in

that which he conveys by manner rather than by substance, gleaming with an unearthly light that we still, despite the unreso Greco.

mysteries, do not feel to be alien to us. No other of the great Mannerists carried manner to such height or with such consiste

LAOCOON

El Greco's painting depicts events best known to us from Virgil's Aeneid, but El Greco probably knew them from

Greek writer Arctinus of Miletus. Laocoon tried to dissuade the Trojans from letting in the treacherous wooden h breaking his priestly rule of celibacy (in Virgil the gods intervened openly on the Greek side).

(which led to the sacking of Troy). In the Arctinus version Laocoon, a priest, was killed by serpents sent by Apol

OILED SERPENT

El Greco's wonderful circular invention of the boy wrestling with the serpent

powerful physical tension. We are kept in suspense as to whether the boy will

same way as his brother lying dead on the ground. El Greco's unique and uno

style admits an unprecedented freedom. Around the boy's outstretched arm th rigidity of the arm and the desperate efforts of the boy. The line flows around stone-colored figures.

broad band of black, which has no spatial "meaning" as such, and which emp

Laokoon (detail)

MYSTERY WITNESSES
The figures who appear to watch the scene with indifference are a mystery. One, a woman, seems to be two-headed, with one head looking out of the painting. The figures could be Apollo and Athena, come down to witness the judgment on Laocoon.

Laokoon (detail)

A SPANISH TROY

The allegorical horse in the middle distance trots toward the city, which is spread out under a doom-laden sky. It is a beautiful landscape, in which the vibrant red-earth ground is covered

lattice of silvers, blues, and greens. However, this is not the ancient city of Troy, but El Greco

hometown of Toledo in Spain. El Greco painted Laocoon during the time of the Spanish Cath

Counter-Reformation, and his allegorical drama, of transgressing mortals and vengeful gods

unequivocally in his own modern Spain, is an indication of the orthodoxy of the artist's religio Laokoon (detail)

THE EPONYMOUS SUFFERER

The anguished head of Laocoon is an example of the artist's characteristic light, rapid, feathery brushwork. Where skin meets skin - in between toes, lips, nostrils - he has applied crimson or vermilion, breathing life and a suggestion of lifeblood into the deathlike steely grays of the flesh.

Laokoon (detail)

El Greco

El Greco
(b Candia [now Herakleion], Crete, c. 1541; d Toledo, 7 April 1614). Greek painter, designer and engraver, active in Italy and Spain. One of the most original and interesting painters of 16th-century Europe, he transformed the Byzantine style of his early paintings into another, wholly Western manner. He was active in his native Crete, in Venice and Rome, and, during the second half of his life, in Toledo. He was renowned in his lifetime for his originality and extravagance and provides one of the most curious examples of the oscillations of taste in the evaluation of a painter, and of the changes of interpretation to which an artists work can be submitted.

The Entombment of Christ late 1560s Oil and tempera on panel, 51,5 x 43 cm Alexandros Soutzos Museum, Athens

Christ Healing the Blind c. 1567 Oil on panel, 65,5 x 84 cm Gemaldegalerie, Dresden

The Modena Triptych (front panels) 1568 Tempera on panel, 37 x 23,8 cm (central), 24 x 18 cm (side panels) Galleria Estense, Modena

The Modena Triptych (detail) 1568 Galleria Estense, Modena

Baptism of Christ 1568 Tempera on panel, 24 x 18 cm Galleria Estense, Modena

The Modena Triptych (back panels) 1568 Tempera on panel, 37 x 23,8 cm (central), 24 x 18 cm (side panels) Galleria Estense, Modena

The Modena Triptych (detail) 1568 Galleria Estense, Modena

Annunciation 1568 Tempera on panel, 24 x 18 cm Galleria Estense, Modena

Mount Sinai 1568 Tempera on panel, 37 x 23,8 cm Galleria Estense, Modena

Hieronymus BOSCH

Renaissance Art Map Hieronymus Bosch

Introduction Life and Milieu Artistic Origins and Early Biblical Scenes The Mirror of Man

Between Heaven And Hell

The Last Judgement The Triumph of Sin The Pilgrimage of Life The Imitation of Christ The Triumph of the Saint

Hieronymus Bosch
1450-1516 Germany

Netherlands painter. Documentary evidence connects him at various periods between 1480 and 1516 with his birthplace Hertogenbosch (Bois-le-Duc), where he belonged to the Brotherhood of the Holy Virgin; he designed the stained-glass windows and a crucifix for the Chapel of the Brotherhood (1511-12) and was presumably a highly respected member of the community. He was referred to at his death as the 'famous artist', which is borne out by a commission in 1504 for a Last Judgment by Philip the Handsome of Burgundy. B. was a religious painter with a strong bent towards satire, pessimistic comment and great interest in everyday life. This has made his work, a unity in form and content, one of the last profound expressions of the medieval world view. Landscape plays an important part in his compositions, it sets the mood and it is seen with directness. Religious iconography is reinterpreted freely in the mood of popular prints, and the unbridled fantasy of the artist explores, not so much the world of the subconscious but every thematic variation, allusion and symbol available to his contemporaries. These were not puzzle pictures in their time, but picture books which could be read and understood. Only when the tradition and the understanding were lost did they increasingly require interpretation of some kind, until in our own time, with the advent of Surrealism, attempts have been made to 'explain' B. by means of dream analysis. He was also referred to as a heretic by later generations. It is impossible to date and arrange his work in chronological sequence as much of his original work is now lost, many copies were made in his lifetime and even his signature forged. The Haywain and The Garden of Delights are triptychs fully authenticated and so is the table panel of the Escorial, which once belonged to Philip II as one of his intimate possessions. Other important paintings by B. are: Christ Mocked, and a portrayal of the Ship of Fools, a common contemporary theme.

Bosch was a pessimistic and stern moralist who had neither illusions about the rationality of human nature nor confidence in the kindness of a world that had been corrupted by man's presence in it. His paintings are sermons, addressed often to

initiates and consequently difficult to translate. Unable to unlock the mystery of the artist's works, critics at first believed that he must have been affiliated with secret sects. Although the themes of his work were religious, his choice of symbols to represent the temptation and eventual ensnarement of man in earthly evils caused many critics to view Bosch as a practitioner of the occult arts. More recent scholarship views Bosch as a talented artist who possessed deep insight into human character and as one of the first artists to represent abstract concepts in his work. A number of exhaustive interpretations of Bosch's work have been put forth in recent years, but there remain many obscure details. An exact chronology of Bosch's surviving work is difficult because, of the approximately 35 to 40 paintings attributed to him, only 7 are signed and none are dated. There exists little documentary information on the early life of the artist, other than the fact that he was the son and grandson of accomplished painters. His name does appear on the register of the Brotherhood of Our Lady, located in the city of his birth, and there is mention of him in official records from 1486 until the year of his death, when he was acclaimed an Insignis pictor ("distinguished painter"). In addition to painting he undertook decorative works and altarpieces and executed designs for stained glass. Works attributed to his youthful period show an awkwardness in drawing and composition and brushwork somewhat limited in its scope. Such paintings as "The Cure of Folly," "Crucifixion," "The Adoration of the Magi," "The Seven Deadly Sins," "The Marriage at Cana," "Ecce Homo," and "The Conjurer" are representative of this period. The presence of certain motifs, expanded in the more sophisticated works of the artist's middle period, and a limited technique, unsure yet bold, provide a beginning from which to view Bosch's artistic origins. Between the first painting in this early group, "The Cure of Folly," and the last, "The Conjurer," a steady development can be seen. The iconography of the latter is more complex, and the characteristic themes that received their fullest expression in the great masterpieces of his late period have begun to emerge. In these early paintings Bosch had begun to depict humanity's vulnerability to the temptation of evil, the deceptive allure of sin, and the obsessive attraction of lust, heresy, and obscenity. In calm and prosaic settings, groups of people exemplify the credulity, ignorance, and absurdities of the human race. However, the imagery of the early works is still relatively conventional, with only an occasional intrusion of the bizarre in the form of a lurking demon or a strangely dressed magician. To Bosch's fruitful middle period belong the great panoramic triptychs such as the "Hay Wain," "The Temptation of St. Anthony", and the "Garden of Earthly Delights." His figures are graceful and his colours subtle and sure, and all is in motion in these ambitious and extremely complex works. These paintings are marked by an eruption of fantasy, expressed in monstrous, apocalyptic scenes of chaos and nightmare that are contrasted and juxtaposed with idyllic portrayals of mankind in the age of innocence. During this period Bosch elaborated on his early ideas, and the few paintings that survive establish the evolution of his thought. Bosch's disconcerting mixture of fantasy and reality is further developed in the "Hay Wain," the outside wings, or cover panels, of which recall the scenes of "The Seven Deadly Sins." The cursive style that he worked out for the triptych resembles that of watercolour. In the central panel, a rendition of the Flemish proverb "The world is a haystack from which each takes what he can," Bosch shows the trickery of the demon who guides the procession of people from the earthly paradise depicted on the left wing to the horrors of hell shown on the right one. Bosch's "The Temptation of St. Anthony" displays his ascent to stylistic maturity. The brushstrokes are sharper and terser, with much more command than before. The composition becomes more fluid, and space is regulated by the incidents and creatures that the viewer's attention is focused on. His mastery of fine brush-point calligraphy, permitting subtle nuances of contour and movement, is fully evident. Bosch portrays man's struggle against temptation, as well as the omnipresence of the Devil, in his "St. Anthony," one of the best keys to the artist's personal iconography. The hermit saint in this work is cast as the heroic symbol of man. In the central panel St. Anthony is beset by an array of grotesque demons, their horrible bodies being brilliantly visualized amalgamations of human, animal, vegetable, and inanimate parts. In the background is a hellish, fantastically bizarre landscape painted with the most exquisite detail. Bosch's development of the theme of the charlatan deceiving man and taking away his salvation receives its fullest exposition in the "St. Anthony," with its condemnation of heresy and the seductions of false doctrines. The "Garden of Earthly Delights," representative of Bosch at his mature best, shows the earthly paradise with the creation of woman, the first temptation, and the fall. The painting's beautiful and unsettling images of sensuality and of the dreams that afflict the people who live in a pleasure-seeking world express Bosch's iconographic originality with tremendous force. The chief characteristic of this work is perhaps its dreamlike quality; multitudes of nude human figures, giant birds, and horses cavort and frolic in a delightfully implausible, otherworldly landscape, and all the elements come together to produce a perfect, harmonious whole. Bosch's late works are fundamentally different. The scale changes radically, and, instead of meadows or hellish landscapes inhabited by hundreds of tiny beings, he painted densely compacted groups of half-length figures pressed tight against the picture plane. In these dramatic close-ups, of which "The Crowning with Thorns" and the "Carrying of the Cross" are representative, the spectator is so near the event portrayed that he seems to participate in it physically as well as psychologically. The most peaceful and untroubled of Bosch's mature works depict various saints in contemplation or repose. Among these works are "St. John the Evangelist in Patmos" and "St. Jerome in Prayer." Bosch's preoccupation in much of his work with the evils of the world did not preclude his vision of a world full of beauty. His adeptness at handling colour harmonies and at creating deeply felt works of the imagination is readily apparent. Though a spate of imitators tried to appropriate his visual style, its uniqueness prevented his having any real followers.

Bibliography Explications of Bosch's paintings include D. Bax, Hieronymus Bosch: His Picture-Writing Deciphered (1979), a pioneer Dutch study originally published in 1949; Wilhelm Fraenger,Hieronymus Bosch (1983), a controversial viewpoint; and Carl Linfert, Bosch, rev. ed. (1989). Walter S. Gibson, Hieronymus Bosch: An Annotated Bibliography (1983).

Encyclopaedia Britannica

Hieronymus Bosch

Between Heaven And Hell

by Walter Bosing

Introduction

The strange world of Hieronymus Bosch ist best studied in the Museodel Pradoin Madrid. Here, in one of the upper galleries, are gathered no less than three major altarpieces and several smaller pictures by Bosch and his workshop. They present a dramatic contrast to the other Netherlandish paintings hanging in the room. The coolly observed and precisely rendered details of Robert Campin's Betrothal of the Virgin and the dignified restraint of Roger van der Weyden's Descent from the Cross have nothing in common with the devil infested landscapes of Bosch's Haywain or his Garden of Earthly Delights. The art of the older masters is firmly rooted in the prosaic, substantial world of everyday experience, but Bosch confronts us with a world of dreams, nightmares in which forms seem to flicker and change before our eyes. Bosch's pictures have always fascinated viewers, but in earlier centuries it was widely assumed that his diabolic scenes were intended merely to amuse or titillate, rather like the grotteschi of Italian Renaissance ornament. Philip II, it is true, collected his works more for edification than for entertainment, but the Spanish were in the minority. As the Spaniard Felipe de Guevara* complained in the earliest account of Bosch's art, written about 1560, most people regarded him merely as the inventor of monsters and chimeras. About a half-century later, the Dutch art historian Carel van Mander* described Bosch's paintings chiefly as wondrous and strange fantasies...often less pleasant than gruesome to lookat. In our own century, however, scholars have come to realize that Bosch's art possesses a more profound significance, and there have been many attempts to explain its origins and meaning. Some writers have seen him as a sort of fifteenth-century Surrealist who dredged up his disturbing forms from the subconscious mind; his name is frequently linked with that of Salvador Dali. For others, Bosch's art reflects esoteric practices of the Middle Ages, such as alchemy, astrology or witchcraft. Perhaps most provocative, however, are the attempts to connect Bosch with the various religious heresies which existed during the Middle Ages. An example can be found in the thesis proposed by Wilhelm Fraenger*. Because of their popularity, Fraenger's theories deserve consideration; they also vividly illustrate the problems encountered in interpreting Bosch. According to Fraenger, Bosch was a member of the Brethren of the Free Spirit, a heretical group which flourished throughout Europe for several hundred years after their first appearance in the thirteenth century. Little is known about this sect, but it is supposed that they practised sexual promiscuity as part of their religious rites, through which they attempted to achieve the state of innocence possessed by Adam before the Fail; hence they are also called Adamites. Fraenger assumes that the Garden of Earthly Deligths was painted for a group of Adamites in 's-Hertogen-bosch, where Bosch lived, and that the unabashedly erotic scene of the central panel represents not a condemnation of unbridled sensuality, as is generally believed, but the religious practices of the sect. Fraenger has also linked other works by Bosch to the Adamites and their doctrines. Although most scholars object vigorously to Fraenger's thesis, it has received widespread attention in the public press and popular magazines where, in fact, the central panel of the Garden of Earthly Delights is reproduced almost as frequently as the Mona Lisa and the Night Watch. The great appeal of this interpretation lies partly in its novelty and its sensational character, but even more in the fact that it accords well with twentieth-century conceptions of free love and uninhibited sexuality as positive values in themselves, and as remedies for various psychic and social ills. Indeed, one advocate of what might be called "therapeutic sexuality", Norman 0. Brown (Love's Body, 1966), points to Bosch's Garden of Earthly Delights as an illustration of his own theories put into practice. Despite the attraction which Fraenger's interpretation exerts on modern sensibilities, however, his basic premise is very questionable. We have no historical Head of a Woman (fragment) Museum Boumans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam evidence that Bosch was ever a member of the Adamites or that he painted for them. In fact, the last certain reference to this group in the Netherlands appears at Brussels in 1411. But even if the Adamites survived somehow undetected into the early sixteenth century, Bosch himself can hardly have been anything other than an orthodox Christian. He was a member of the Brotherhood of Our Lady, a guild of clergy and laity devoted to the Virgin Mary and quite different This small, keenly observed portrait seems to have, been part of a from the Brethren of the Free Spirit. Bosch executed several commissions for this brotherhood and was also patronized by highly placed members of the larger composition now lost. It was probably painted about 1 500 Church and nobility, one of whom probably commissioned the Garden of Earthly Deligths itself. The religious orthodoxy of these patrons can scarcely be and is an early example of Bosch's mature style. Although it doubted. After the middle of the sixteenth century, a number of Bosch's works, including, once more, the Garden of Earthly Delights, were acquired by the carries none of the more obvious characteristics of his work, it is most conservative Catholic of them all, Philip II of Spain. This was the time of the Reformation and the Counter-Reformation, when the Inquisition took on generally accepted as being by Bosch. What may surely be said is new life and men everywhere were peculiarly sensitive to questions of dogma and doctrine. Thus, it is highly unlikely that Bosch's pictures would have been that it shows a gentle, sympathetic side of his nature and that he member of his family. Alternatively, what may be seen of the costume and the upward glancing pose may indicate that it was acquired so avidly had there been any suspicion that he was associated with any heretical sect. Only towards the end of the sixteenth century were his works Fraenger's theories may thus be dismissed for lack of historical proof. The attempts to see Bosch as a secret adept of one of the more esoteric arts can be challenged on similar grounds. This ist not to deny that he may have derived some of his imagery from these sources; but the assertion by some writers that he had some affection for the sitter, which may suggest that she was a regarded by some in Spain as tainted with heresy, but this charge was soundly refuted by the Spanish priest Fray Jose de Siguenza in 1605.

part of an altarpiece and that the subject was in a religious order. was a practising alchemist, for example, cannot be proved. Equally unfounded are suggestions that Bosch painted under the influence of hallucinogenic drugs. All the speculation does not detract from the delicacy of this rare Finally, the tendency to interpret Bosch's imagery in terms of modern Surrealism or Freudian psychology ist anachronistic. We forget too often that Bosch portrait. An earlier attribution of the work to Pieter Breughel the never read Freud and that modern psychoanalysis would have been incomprehensible to the medieval mind. What we choose to call the libido was denounced Elder is now discounted. by the medieval Church as original sin; what we see as the expression of the subconscious mind was for the Middle Ages the promptings of God or the Devil. Modern psychology may explain the appeal Bosch's pictures have for us, but it cannot explain the meaning they had for Bosch and his contemporaries. Likewise, it is doubtful that modern psychoanalysis can help us to understand the mental processes by which Bosch developed his enigmatic forms. Bosch did not intend to evoke the subconscious of the viewer, but to teach him certain moral and spiritual truths, and thus his images generally had a precise and premeditated significance. As Dirk Bax* has shown, they often represented visual translations of verbal puns and metaphors. Bosch's sources, in fact, should rather be sought in the language and folklore of his day, as well as in the teachings of the Church. If we examine the Garden of Earthly Delights and his other pictures within the contemporary culture, we will discover that, no less than the altarpieces of Robert Campin and Roger van der Weyden, Bosch's art mirrored the hopes and fears of the waning Middle Ages.

Head of a Halberdier (fragment) Museo del Prado, Madrid

* Felipe de Guevara: Commentarios de la pintura, Madrid 1788. * Carel van Mander: Das Leben der niederlandischen und deutschen Maler, Munchen/Leipzig 1906. *WilhelmFraenger: Hieronymus Bosch. DasTausend-jahrige Reich. Grundzuge einer Auslegung, Coburg 1947. - The Millennium of Hieronymus Bosch. Outlines of a New Interpretations, Chicago 1951, London 1952. * Dirk Bax: Ontcijfering van Jeroen Bosch, 's-Graven-hage 1949. - Hieronymus Bosch, his picture-writing deciphered Rotterdam 1979.

Life and Milieu

Hieronymus Bosch lived and worked in 's-Hertogenbosch, the place from which he takes his name, an attractive but fairly quiet Dutch city not far from the presentday Belgian border. In Bosch's day, 's-Hertogenbosch was one of the four largest cities of the duchy of Brabant, which formed part of the extensive territories of the ambitious dukes of Burgundy. The other chief Brabantine cities, Brussels, Antwerp and Louvain, lie to the south, in what is now Belgium; 's-Hertogenbosch is in the north, geographically close to the provinces of Holland and Utrecht and the Rhine and Maas rivers. In the late Middle Ages, 's-Hertogenbosch was a thriving commercial town, the centre of an agricultural area, with extensive trade connections with both Northern Europe and Italy. Although its cloth industry was important, the city was especially famous for its organ builders and bell founders. The predominantly middle-class commercial population must have determined much of the city's character, for 's-Hertogenbosch lacked the active court life of Brussels or Malines; unlike Louvain, it possessed no university, nor was it the seat of a bishopric, as were the other major cities of Brabant. Yet a vigorous cultural life was by no means absent. 's-Hertogenbosch had a famous Latin school and, by the end of the fifteenth century, could boast of five rederijker kamers or chambers of rhetoric, literary associations which presented poetic and dramatic performances on various public occasions. Religious life seems to have been particularly flourishing; a great number of convents and monasteries were situated in and around the city. Of special interest are the two houses established by the Brothers and Sisters of the Common Life. A modified religious order without vows, this brotherhood originated in Holland in the late fourteenth century in an attempt to return to a simpler and more personal form of religion, which was called the Devotio Moderna. Its character is well exemplified in the famous devotional treatise, the limitation of Christ, generally attributed to Thomas a Kempis, which, as we shall see, must have been well known to Bosch and his patrons. The Devotio Moderna played an important role in the religious revival of the fifteenth century and probably contributed to the extraordinary increase in the number of religious foundations in 's-Hertogenbosch. Indeed, by 1526, just ten years after Bosch's death, one out of every nineteen persons in 's-Hertogenbosch belonged to a religious order, a much higher proportion than can be found in other Netherlandish cities at that time. The presence of so many cloisters and their economic competition seem to have attracted considerable hostility from the townspeople, an attitude which we shall also see reflected in Bosch's art. Despite frequent criticism of the religious order, however, the moral authority of the medieval Church had not, as yet, been seriously shaken. Religion still permeated all aspects of everyday life. Each guild had its own patron saint, and every citizen participated in the great feasts of the Church and in the annual religious processions. The two impulses of life in 's-Her-togenbosch, the sacred and the secular, found their finest expression in the great church of St John, at once the symbol of the still-intact medieval faith and a testimony to the civic pride and commercial prosperity of the city. Begun in the late fourteenth century on the site of an older structure and only completed in the sixteenth, it is a fine example of Brabantine Gothic, noteworthy for its wealth of carved decoration. Of particular interest are the rows of curious figures, monsters and workmen, sitting astride the buttresses supporting the roof, some of which bring to mind the fantastic creatures of Bosch. The church of St John was in the early phases of construction when Bosch's ancestors settled in 's-Hertogenbosch in the late fourteenth or early fifteenth century. Their family name, Van Aken, suggests that they originally came from the German town of Aachen (Aix-la-Chapelle). In 1430 - 31 appears the first certain reference to Bosch's grandfather, Jan van Aken, who died in 1454. Jan had five sons, at least four of whom were painters; one of these, Anthonius van Aken (died c. 1478), was the father of Hieronymus Bosch. Unlike Albrecht Durer, Bosch left no diaries or letters. What we know of his life and artistic activity must be gleaned chiefly from the brief references to him in the municipal records of 's-Hertogenbosch and especially in the account books of the Brotherhood of Our Lady. These records tell us nothing about the man himself, not even the date of his birth. A portrait of the artist, perhaps a self-portrait, known only through later copies, shows Bosch at a fairly advanced age. On the assumption

that the original portrait was done shortly before his death in 1516, it has been supposed that he was born around 1450. Bosch first appears in a municipal record of 1474, where he ist named along with his two brothers and a sister; one brother, Goossen, was also a painter. Some time between 1479 and 1481, Bosch married Aleyt Goyaerts van den Meervenne, evidently some years his senior. She came from a good family, however, and had considerable wealth of her own; in 1481 there occurred a lawsuit between Bosch and Aleyt's brother over family property. It is assumed that Bosch and his wife lived in 't Root Cruys (the Red Cross).

Portrait of Hieronymus Bosch Pencil and sanguine Bibliotheque Municipale d'Arras, Arras

In 1486-87, Bosch's name appears for the first time in the membership lists of the Brotherhood of Our Lady, with which he was to be closely associated for the rest of his life. This brotherhood was one of the many groups devoted to the veneration of the Virgin which flourished in the late Middle Ages. Founded sometime before 1318, the Brotherhood at's-Herto-genbosch comprised both lay and religious men and women. Their devotions were centred on a famous miracleworking image of the Virgin, the Zoete Lieve Vrouw, enshrined in the church of St John where the Brotherhood maintained a chapel. Attracting members from all over the northern Netherlands and Westphalia, this large and wealthy organization must have contributed significantly to the religious and cultural life of 's-Hertogenbosch. Its members engaged singers, organists and composers to supply music for their daily masses and solemn feasts. They also commissioned works of art to embellish the chapel of Our Lady, and in 1478 they decided to construct a new and more splendid chapel attached to the north side of the unfinished choir of St John. The project was entrusted to the church architect, Alart du Hamel, who later engraved some Boschian designs. Most of Bosch's family belonged to the Brotherhood, and were employed by them in various tasks, frequently to gild and polychrome the wooden statues carried in the annual processions. Bosch's father, Antho-nius van Aken, seems also to have acted as a sort of artistic adviser to the Brotherhood. In 1475-76, for example, heand his son were present when the Deans of the Brotherhood discussed the commission of a large wooden altarpiece, completed in 1477 for their chapel. Hieronymus Bosch may have been one of Anthonius's sons present at these negotiations. However, his first recorded transactions with the Brotherhood occur in 1480-81, and thereafter he received a number of commissions from them. These included several designs, one in 1493-94 for a stained-glass window in the new chapel, another in 1511-12 fora crucifix, and a third in 1512-13 for a chandelier. The small fee he received for executing the last-named project suggests that he did it mainly as a benevolent gesture. There is no documentary evidence that Bosch ever left his home town. However, a sojourn in Utrecht is suggested by certain aspects of his early work, while the influence of Flemish art on his mature style indicates that he may also have travelled in the southern Netherlands. It has been proposed that Bosch painted his Crucifixion of St Julia during a trip to northern Italy, where the cult of this saint was especially popular, but it is more likely that this work was commissioned by Italian merchants or diplomats residing in the Netherlands, as was, for example, the Portinari triptych of Hugo van der Goes. One final entry in the accounts of the Brotherhood of Our Lady records Bosch's death in 1516; on 9 August of that year, his friends in the Brotherhood attended a funeral mass in his memory in the church of St John. There are only a few other references to Bosch's works. From several seventeenth-century sources we learn that other paintings by him were to be seen in St John's church. In 1504, finally, Philip the Handsome, duke of Burgundy, commissioned an altarpiece from Jeronimus van Aeken called Bosch, the first time, incidentally, that the painter was referred to by his place of origin. The altarpiece was to depict the Last Judgment flanked by Heaven and Hell; its huge dimensions (nine feet high by eleven feet wide) would have approached those of Roger van der Weyden's Last Judgment in the Hospital at Beaune. This work is lost, but some scholars believe that a fragment of it survives in a small panel now in Munich, while others identify the LastJudgment triptych in Vienna as a reduced replica by Bosch of Philip's altarpiece. Neither suggestion is entirely convincing. Of Bosch's paintings in the church of St John there remains no certain trace today. They probably disappeared when 's-Hertogenbosch was taken from the Spanish in 1629 by Prince Frederick Henry and his Dutch troops, and Catholic splendour was replaced by Calvinist austerity.

Numerous paintings bearing Bosch's name can be found in museums and private collections in Europe and the United States. Many of these are only copies or pastiches of his original compositions, but over thirty pictures and a small group of drawings can be attributed to him with reasonable certainty. Except for his early works, however, the chronology of these paintings is difficult to determine with any precision. None are dated, and some have been so heavily damaged and overpainted that it would be hazardous to base a chronology on subtle nuances of style and technique. It is more rewarding to study Bosch's paintings according to their subject-matter; only after a thorough examination of his imagery may some insight be gained into the nature of Bosch's artistic development.

Two Male Heads Oil on panel, 14,5 x 12 cm Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam

Two Caricatured Heads Pen and bistre, 133 x 100 mm Lehmann Collection, New York

Artistic Origins and Early Biblical Scenes

Ecce Homo 1490s Oil on panel, 52 x 54 cm Museum of Art, Philadelphia

If we know little about Bosch's life, we know even less about his artistic background. It is generally assumed that he was trained by his father or one of his uncles, but all their paintings have been lost, including those commissioned by the Brotherhood of Our Lady. Some light can be cast on the stylistic origins of Bosch's earliest works, however, by considering them within the context of fifteenth-century Netherlandish painting in general. By the time his name began to appear in the records of 's-Hertogenbosch, the first great masters of the Flemish school, Jan van Eyckand Robert Campin, had been dead some thirty years. Roger van der Weyden had also died, but his cool and restrained art was continued, somewhat ineptly, by his followers in Brussels; it had also profoundly influenced Dirk Bouts, now at the end of his career in Louvain, and Hans Memling in Bruges. A more independent style was emerging in the powerful compositions of Hugo van der Goes in Ghent. During Bosch's lifetime, the northern provinces of the Netherlands were neither as wealthy nor as politically powerful as Brabant and Flanders, and they had neither the extensive patronage nor the large workshops of the cities to the south. Many early Dutch paintings, moreover, were destroyed in the iconoclastic riots of the Reformation and so relatively few have survived. Nevertheless, it is evident that a fairly significant school of painting existed at Haarlem under Geertgen tot Sint Jans and his followers, while the anonymous Master of the Virgo inter Virgines worked in Delft during the last two decades of the century. Although only a few panel paintings can be connected with Utrecht, this ancient city, seat of a bishopric, seems to have been an important centre of manuscript illumination whose originality and significance have yet to be fully recognized. The stylistic unity of Flemish painting, dominated as it was by the genius of Roger van der Weyden, is absent in the northern Netherlands, where local and individual styles were more predominant. The Dutch artists, nevertheless, have many qualities in common, including deeply felt, expressive interpretations of biblical narrative and, especially in the case of Geertgen tot Sint Jans and the illuminators, a vision of man and the world based more on direct experience than on artistic convention. Because 's-Hertogenbosch was a part of Brabant and the church of St John represents the high point of Brabantine Gothic, many writers have sought the origins of Bosch's art in the traditions established by Robert Campin, Roger van der Weyden and other artists who worked in the southern Netherlands. Bosch's later works, it is true, show many connections with Brabant and the south, but his earliest paintings display more affinities with Dutch art, particularly with the manuscript illuminations. Among the works generally ascribed to Bosch's first period of activity (c. 1470-85) may be included several small biblical scenes: the Epiphany (Adoration of the Magi) in Philadelphia, the Ecce Homo in Frankfurt (with a related version in Boston, Museum of Fine Arts) and an altar wing in Vienna, the Christ Carrying the Cross. Their early date is suggested by their relatively simple compositions and their adherence to traditional compositional types. This early style is especially well exemplified in the charming Epiphany in Philadelphia.

Epiphany 1475-80 Oil on panel, 74 x 54 cm Museum of Art, Philadelphia

The dignified comportment of the Kings is set off by the impulsive gesture of the Christ Child, while the aged Joseph stands discreetly to one side, removing his hood as if abashed by the presence of the splendidly dressed strangers. From behind the shed two shepherds look on with shy curiosity. At this early date, Bosch's grasp of perspective was apparently none too firm; particularly ambiguous is the spatial relationship of the stable to the figures in the foreground, although the crumbling walls and thatched roof have been painted with a loving attention to detail. In the distance at the upper right can be seen a pasture filled with grazing cattle and the shimmering towers of a city. The intimate, almost cosy atmosphere of the Philadelphia Epiphany is replaced in the Frankfurt Ecce Homo by the brutality of his Passion.

Ecce Homo 1475-80 Tempera and oil on oak panel, 71 x 61 cm Stadelsches Kunstinstitut, Frankfurt

Crowned with thorns and his flesh beaten raw by the scourge, he now stands with Pilate and his companions before the angry mob. The dialogue between Pilate and the crowd is indicated by the Gothic inscriptions which function not unlinke the balloons in a modern comic strip. From the mouth of Pilate issue the words Ecce Homo (Behold the Man). There is no need to decipher the inscription Crufige Eum (Crucify Him), the cry which rises from the people below; their animosity is unmistakably conveyed by their facial expressions and threatening gestures. The third inscription Salve nos Christe redemptor (Save us, Christ Redeemer) once emerged from two donors at lower left, but their figures have been painted over. As with the Magi in the Philadelphia Epiphany, the heathen character of the men surrounding Christ is suggested by their strange dress and headgear, including pseudo-oriental turbans. The scene's essential wickedness is further indicated by such traditional emblems of evil as the owl in the niche above Pilate and the giant toad sprawled on the back of a shield carried by one of the soldiers. In the background appears a city square, the Turkish crescent fluttering from one of its towers. The enemies of Christ have been identified with the power of Islam which in Bosch's day, and long afterwards, controlled the most holy places of Christendom. The buildings, however, are late Gothic; only the oddly bulging tower in the distance evokes a feeling of far-off places. The Dutch character of these two early works is unmistakable. The Philadelphia Epiphany represents a reworking of a composition which had long been used by the Dutch manuscript illuminators. Likewise, the homely faces and animated gestures of Christ's tormentors in the Ecce Homo recall Passion scenes in Dutch manuscripts of the second and third quarters of the fifteenth century, where we encounter similar physical types, slight in proportion, flatly modelled and often unsubstantial beneath their heavy robes. The same style appears in the Vienna Christ Carrying the Cross, where the head of Christ is silhouetted against a dense mass of grimacing soldiers and ill-wishers, one of them bearing the familiar toad on his shield. Christ's physical agony is heightened by the spike-studded wooden blocks which dangle fore and aft from his waist, lacerating his feet and ankles with every step. This cruel device was frequently represented by Dutch artists well into the sixteenth century. The high horizon is old-fashioned, as is the lack of spatial recession in the middle distance. In the foreground, soldiers torment the bad thief while the good thief kneels before a priest. The almost frantic intensity of his confession, well-expressed by the open-mouthed profile, contrasts vividly with the passive response of the priest who seems to suppress a yawn. The very presence of the priest is, of course, an anachronism, probably inspired by what Bosch had witnessed at contemporary executions; the same motif appears in the great multi-figure Christ Carrying the Cross which Pieter Bruegel the Elder was to paint almost a century later.

Christ Carrying the Cross 1480s Oil on panel, 57 c 32 cm Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

This urge to embellish the biblical text with details drawn from everyday life is characteristic for the later Middle Ages, it appears in the mystery plays and in such devotional books as the Meditations on the Life of Christ attributed to St Bonaventure. The Dutch illuminators, above all, frequently interpreted the sacred stories in common everyday terms in order to make them more immediate to the spectator. This very human quality is no less apparent in another work which, although not a biblical subject, belongs to Bosch's early paintings. This is the Conjuror, now lost but known through a faithful copy at Saint-Ger-main-en-Laye (right). A mountebank has set up his table before a crumbling stone wall. His audience watches spellbound as he seems to bring forth a frog from the mouth of an old man in their midst; only one of the crowd, the young man with his hand on the shoulder of his female companion, appears to notice that the old man's purse is being stolen by the conjuror's confederate. The myopic gaze of the thief and the stupid amazement of the frog-spitting victim are superbly played off against the amused reactions of the bystanders, while the slyness of the mountebank is well conveyed in his sharpnosed physiognomy. As in the Christ Carrying the Cross, Bosch exploits the human face in profile for expressive purposes. Although the Conjuror may possess a moralizing significance, as we shall see, it must have been inspired by a real-life situation closely observed. The perceptive, spontaneous humour of this little picture would be difficult to match in contemporary Flemish painting, but parallels can again be found among Dutch manuscript illuminators, such as the Master of Evert van Soudenbalch, active in Utrecht during the 1450s and 1460s. Other biblical scenes may be ascribed to Bosch's early years: the Marriage Feast at Cana (Rotterdam) and the badly damaged Crucifixion of St Julia (Venice, Palace of the Doges), of which only the central panel is from Bosch's hand (p. 84). In addition, there are several compositions which have survived only in copies of indifferent quality, including the Christ among the Doctors and Christ with the Woman Taken in Adultery both of which recall the Conjuror in style. Among the early drawings are a sheet of animated male figures looking towards the right (New York, Morgan Library), perhaps a study for an Ecce Homo scene, and a monumental, relief-like Entombment (London, British Museum).

Group of Male Figures Pen, 124 x 126 mm Pierpont Morgan Library, New York

The Entombment 1507 Ink and grey wash, 250 x 350 mm British Museum, London

Only a few of the early paintings depart significantly from traditional iconography, but these exceptions anticipate the innovations of his later work. The treatment of the two thieves in the Christ Carrying the Cross is apparently without precedent, but still more unusual is the reverse of this panel, depicting a naked child pushing a walking-frame. This is the Christ Child, whose first halting steps clearly parallel Christ struggling with his Cross on the obverse, while the toy windmill or whirligig clutched in his hand probably alludes to the Cross itself. Thus Bosch gives us a touching picture of Christ in all his human frailty as he begins the road to his Passion.

Christ Child with a Walking Frame 1480s Oil on panel, diameter 28 cm Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

Even less traditional is the Marriage Feast at Cana, painted towards the end of Bosch's early period. The picture is not in good condition; the upper corners have been cut off, many heads have been repainted, and a pair of dogs at the lower left may have been added as late as the eighteenth century. In the large Dutch bible previously mentioned, an assistant of the Soudenbalch Master had presented the first miracle of Christ, the transformation of water into wine, as a rustic wedding feast; with characteristic humour, he showed one guest thirstily emptying a pot of wine, as if to explain just why Christ's miracle was so urgently required. Bosch's interpretation, on the other hand, is more serious in mood and much more complex in meaning. The marriage banquet has been placed in a richly furnished interior, most probably a tavern, the setting for the Cana story in at least one Dutch Easter play of the period. The miracle of the wine jars takes place at lower right; the guests are seated around an L-shaped table dominated at one end by the figure of Christ, behind whom hangs the brocaded cloth of honour usually reserved for the bride; he is flanked by two male donors in contemporary dress. Next to the Virgin at the centre of the table appear the solemn, austerely clad bridal couple; the bridegroom must be John the Evangelist, for his face closely resembles the type which Bosch employed elsewhere for this saint. Although the bridegroom remains nameless in the New Testament account, he was frequently identified as Christ's most beloved disciple. It was believed that at the conclusion of the feast, Christ called to him, saying: Leave this wife of yours and follow me. I shall lead you to a higher wedding. According to some writers, moreover, the abandoned bride was none other than Mary Magdalene. Thus the feast at Cana embodied the medieval ideal of chastity as more perfect in the sight of God than carnal union. This medieval dualism between the flesh and the spirit receives further elaboration in the Rotterdam panel. Christ and his friends are pensively absorbed in some inner vision, unaware of the evil enchantment which seems to have fallen upon the banquet hall. The other wedding guests drink or gossip, watched by the bagpiper who leers drunkenly from a platform at the upper left. On the columns flanking the rear portal, two sculptured demons have mysteriously come to life; one aims an arrow at the other who escapes by disappearing through a hole in the wall. From the left, two servants carry in a boar's head and a swan spitting fire from their mouths; an ancient emblem of Venus, the swan symbolized unchastity. This unholy revelry seems to be directed by the innkeeper or steward who stands with his baton in the rear chamber. On the sideboard next to him are displayed curiously formed vessels, some of which, like the pelican, are symbolic of Christ, while others possess less respectable connotations, such as the three naked dancers on the second shelf. The precise meaning of all these details remains unclear, as does that of the richly gowned child, his back turned to the viewer, who seems to toast the bridal couple with a chalice. However this may be, Bosch has undoubtedly employed the tavern setting as an image of evil, a comparison popular in medieval sermons, thereby contrasting the chaste marriage feast at Cana with the debauchery of the world. In its transformation of a biblical story, the Marriage Feast of Cana introduces us for the first time to the complexity of Bosch's thought. It presents, on the one hand, a moral allegory of man's pursuit of the flesh at the expense of his spiritual welfare, and on the other, the monastic ideal of a life secure from the world in contemplation of God. These two themes were to dominate almost all Bosch's later art.

Marriage Feast at Cana Oil on panel, 93 x 72 cm Museum Boumans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam

Painted by Bosch towards the end of his early period, this is not a traditional treatment of the subject. The marriage at Cana is the story of Christ's first miracle - turning water into wine. The bride and bridegroom are central while the figure of Christ is placed on the right in front of the brocaded cloth of honour, customarily the bride's place. Christ's hand is raised in blessing. Although not mentioned in the Bible, the groom has been identified by Bosch as St John. It has also been contended that the bride is Mary Magdalene. There was a tradition that at the end of the feast Christ called to the groom to leave his bride and follow him. The fact that St John is known as Christ's best loved disciple lays a special emphasis on the interpretation. The symbolism is of a spiritual chastity more elevated and pure than the carnal union of marriage. The incidentals also attract great interest: the water jug filling wine jars; the drunken bagpiper suggesting a tavern, a licentious setting; a swan (an emblem of Venus) spitting fire, suggesting the opposite of chastity. Each part of the painting carries such messages, often hidden to us but recognizable to Bosch's contemporaries.

Between Heaven And Hell

The Mirror of Man

The Conjuror 1475-80 Oil on panel, 53 x 75 cm Musee Municipal, Saint-Germain-en-Laye This is an unusual work for Bosch, whose subjects arc almost all religious, and dates from his early period before 1480. Although this picture is believed to be a careful and accurate copy of a lost original, the quality of the drawing, particularly of the conjuror and his bending-forward victim, docs not appear to be of the standard that we encounter in even the early Bosch paintings. There are, however, one or two suggestions of Bosch: note the owl looking from the basket the conjuror is holding and the small dog or monkey in jester costume. The story is not the straightforward one that it appears. The conjuror is apparently materializing a frog from the mouth of his subject; evidently a second one, since one already sits on the table. The onlookers show a variety of emotions from disbelief and lack of interest to the fascination the small child evinces. But the man standing behind the victim and gazing to the heavens is at the same time removing the purse he is obviously the conjuror's confederate.

In his Oration on the Dignity of Man, composed around 1486, the young Florentine humanist Pico della Mirandola celebrated the excellence and felicity of mankind. Man is unique among creatures in possessing a free will, the power to determine his nature and destiny; and through the proper exercise of this will he can attain the state of angels. For it is on this very account, exclaims Pico, that man is rightly called and judged a great miracle and a wonderful creature indeed. Some eight years later, Sebastian Brant published the first edition of his Ship of Fools, a series of poems satirizing humanity's failings and foibles. The whole world lives in darksome night, Brant complains, in blinded sinfulness persisting, while every street sees fools existing. The difference between these two conceptions of man is vast but explicable. Pico reflects the optimistic faith of the Italian Renaissance in man's abilities. Brant, however, like many of his contemporaries in Northern Europe, still lived in the shadow of the Middle Ages which took a much dimmer view of human nature: corrupted through the sin of Adam, man struggles weakly against his evil inclinations, more likely to sink to the level of beasts than to rise with the angels. It is this medieval attitude which inspired Bosch's transformation of the Marriage Feast at Cana, and which he developed more comprehensively in the Tabletop of the Seven Deadly Sins and the Four Last Things (Madrid, Prado; left). Here the condition and fate of humanity is presented in a series of circular images. The central image, formed of concentric rings, represents the Eye of God, in whose pupil Christ emerges from his sarcophagus, displaying his wounds to the viewer. Around the pupil are inscribed the words Beware, Beware, God sees; and just what God sees is mirrored in the outer ring of his eye, where the Seven Deadly Sins are enacted in lively little scenes taken from everyday life. The Latin name of each sin is clearly inscribed at the bottom, but the inscriptions are as superfluous here as in the Frankfurt Ecce Homo. There is no need to inform us, for example, that the men greedily consuming all that the housewife brings to the table represent the sin of Gluttony, or that the well-fed gentleman dozing by the fire personifies Sloth; in this case, the neglect of spiritual duties is indicated by the woman who enters the room from the left, reproachfully holding out a rosary. Lust shows several pairs of lovers in a tent; and in Pride a vain lady admires her new hat, unaware that her mirror is held by an extravagantly bonneted demon. Similar genre scenes illustrate Anger (two men quarrelling before a tavern), Avarice (a judge accepting bribes) and Envy (a rejected suitor gazing jealously at his rival). For the most part, these little dramas are placed against views of the Dutch countryside, or within well-constructed interiors. The short, sturdy, and rather awkward figures are generally unlike those which we encounter elsewhere in Bosch's art; equally untypical are the hard surfaces, dark outlines and flat, bright colours, dominated by green and ochre. The general crudeness of the execution formerly led scholars to place this picture among Bosch's earliest works, but, as later observers have pointed out, certain details of costume in the Prado Table-top reflect styles which did not come into fashion until around 1490. Therefore it is more likely that the Tabletop represents a workshop production from Bosch's middle period (c. 1485-1500). However, Bosch must have been responsible for the original design, and perhaps his collaboration in the actual painting may also be discerned in some passages of higher quality, such as the Avarice scene and several figures in Envy. The circular disposition of the Seven Deadly Sins conforms to a traditional scheme. As many writers have assumed, this wheel-like arrangement probably alludes to the extension of sin throughout the world, but the motif was immeasurably enriched when Bosch transformed the circular design into the Eye of God which mirrors what it sees. Here, too, he had ample precedent. The comparison of the Deity to a mirror occurs frequently in medieval literature. That those who have abandoned God have just reason to dread his glance is affirmed by the banderols which unfold above and below the central image of the Prado Tabletop. The upper one reads: For they are a nation void of counsel, neither is there any understanding in them. 0 that they were wise, that they understood this, that they would consider their latter end. On the lower banderol is written: l will hide my face from them, I will see what their end shall be (Deuteronomy 32:2829,20). What their end will be is shown in no uncertain terms in the corners of the panel. Here, in four smaller circles, appear Death, Last Judgement, Heaven and Hell, the Four Last Things of all men as understood by Bosch and his contemporaries, and popularized by Denis the Carthusian (1420-71) who spent his last years in a Dutch monastery. The execution of these scenes is even coarser than that of the Deadly Sins and must be attributed entirely to Bosch's workshop. No hint of his apocalyptic nightmares appears in the Hell circle, where the Deadly Sins are punished in separate tableaux, all carefully labelled and arranged like displays at a country fair. The notion of God spying on mankind from the sky may strike us as unpleasant, but to medieval man it appeared as a salutary deterrent to sin. The German humanist Jakob Wimpheling (1450-1528) tells us that the sight of an inscription in a church at Erfurt, God Sees, was enough to turn him from youthful follies towards a more devout life. Bosch's Eye of God was intended to achieve a similar effect, for in reflecting the Seven deadly Sins, it functions as a mirror wherein the viewer is confronted by his own soul disfigured by vice. At the same time, however, he beholds the remedy for this disfigurement in the image of Christ occupying the centre of the Eye. It seems likely that the Prado Tabletop was used as an aid to meditation, particularly that intensive examination of one's conscience which every good Christian was urged to undertake before going to Confession. Within its framework of the Seven Deadly Sins, the Prado Tabletop embraces all men and conditions of life; in Avarice, however, the reference is more specific, for the vice is represented by a dishonest judge, one of the types of persons deemed particularly susceptible to this sin. In other pictures Bosch further developed this criticism of specific social classes, sometimes in terms of one or more of the Deadly Sins. He castigates charlatans and quacks and their foolish victims, loose-living monks and nuns, and the rich man more concerned for his property than for his soul, themes which find echoes in many sermons and satirical writings of the period. One of these pictures, the Conjuror, belongs to the early works previously discussed. At first glance, it seems to present no more than an amusing episode of medieval street life, but while the subject cannot be obviously identified with any of the Deadly Sins, it, too, was intended to hold up a mirror to human folly- in this instance, to man's gullibility. Human gullibility is also the subject of another picture, the Stone Operation (Madrid, Prado), whose allegorical nature is more apparent. In the midst of a luxuriant summer landscape, a surgeon removes an object from the head of a man tied to a chair; a monk and a nun look on. This little picture may not be entirely by Bosch; the awkward and inexpressive figures are perhaps by an inferior hand, but only Bosch could have been responsible for the landscape background whose delicately painted forms recall the vista in his early Epiphany. The open-air operation, its circular shape once more suggesting a mirror, is set within a framework of elaborate calligraphical decoration containing the inscription: Master, cut the stone out, my name is Lubbert Das.

The Stone Operation 1475-80 Oil on panel, 48 x 35 cm Museo del Prado, Madrid

At first sight this looks like an ordinary if dangerous operation, curiously being performed in the open air by a surgeon who wears a funnel as a hat. The large, ornate inscription surrounding the picture reads, 'Master, cut out the Stone. My name is Lubbert Das.' It was a common belief in Bosch's day that an operation to remove a stone from the head of a patient would cure his inherent stupidity. The name Lubbert was applied to those with an unusual and identifiable degree of stupidity. What is emerging, however, is not a stone but a flower, and another of the same kind may be seen on the table. These have been identified as tulips, which carried a connotation of folly The figures of the priest and nun have not been explained, but the closed book on the nun's head and the funnel are symbols respectively of the futility of knowledge in dealing with human stupidity and of deceit in a false doctor. The attribution to Bosch would be somewhat doubtful were it not for the beautiful and characteristic distant landscape.

The Stone Operation (detail) 1475-80 Museo del Prado, Madrid

In Bosch's day, the stone operation was a piece of quackery in which the patient was supposedly cured of his stupidity through the removal of the stone of folly from his forehead. Fortunately, it was performed only in fiction, not in fact, for in literary examples of this theme it generally left the patient worse off than before. The name Lubbert, on the other hand, frequently appears in Dutch literature to designate persons exhibiting an unusually high degree of human stupidity. The stone operation was occasionally represented by later Netherlandish artists, including Pieter Bruegel the Elder. This subject undoubtedly inspired Bosch's picture, but no extant version of it accounts for the funnel and the book perched on the heads of two of the characters, nor does it explain the presence of the monk and the nun, although their apparent acquiescence in the quackery certainly places them in an unfavourable light. It will be noted, too, that what the surgeon extracts from Lubbert's head is not a stone, but a flower; another flower of the same species lies on the table at the right. Bax has identified them as tulips and explains their presence as a play on the Dutch word for tulip which in the sixteenth century also carried the connotation of stupidity and folly. A more overt condemnation of those in religious orders can be seen in the so-called Ship of Fools (Paris, Louvre), generally dated as belonging to Bosch's middle period (right). It shows a monk and two nuns or beguines carousing with a group of peasants in a boat. The oddly constructed boat carries a tree in full leaf fora mast, while a broken branch serves as a rudder. A fool is seated in the rigging at the right. The presence of the fool has inevitably led many scholars to see a connection between the Louvre panel and Sebastian Brant's Ship of Fools, whose great popularity is demonstrated by the six editions and numerous translations which appeared even during the author's lifetime. Bosch might well have known Brant's poem, but he need not have turned to it for inspiration, as the ship was one of the most beloved metaphors of the Middle Ages. A popular image was the Ship of the Church manned by prelates and the clergy, which brings its freight of Christian souls safely into the port of Heaven. In Guillaumede Deguilleville's Pilgrimage of the Life of Man, the Ship of Religion bears a mast symbolizing the Crucifix, and contains castles representing the various monastic orders. A Dutch translation of this famous work was published at Haarlem in 1486, and it is tempting to suppose that Bosch was familiar with Deguilleville's ship of the monastic life, of which his own boat could easily be a parody. The flapping pink banner carries a Turkish crescent instead of the cross, and we find an owl lurking in the foliage at the top of the mast. Three representatives of the cloistered life have abandoned their spiritual duties to join the other revellers. The monk and one of the nuns are singing lustily, the latter accompanying herself on a lute; they resemble the amorous couples depicted in medieval love gardens, who make music as a prelude to making love. The allusion to the sin of Lust is reinforced by other details drawn from the traditional Garden of Love-the plate of cherries and the metal wine jug suspended over the side of the boat -which Bosch had employed for the same sin in the Prado Tabletop. Gluttony is undoubtedly represented not only by the peasant cutting down the roast goose tied to the mast, but also by the man who vomits over the side of the boat at the right, and by the giant ladle which another member of the merry party wields as an oar. Alongside the boat appear two nude swimmers, one holding out his wine cup for replenishment. The tree-mast may refer, as some authorities believe, to the Maypole or May tree of the spring folk festivals, generally a time of moral licence for folk and clergy alike. The disreputable nature of the boat is conveyed, finally, by the guzzling fool in the rigging. For centuries the courtjester or fool had been permitted to satirize the morals and manners of society, and it is in this capacity that he appears in prints and paintings from the midfifteenth century on, distinguished by his cap adorned with ass's ears and carrying a baton topped by a small replica of his own vacantly grinning features. He frequently cavorts among revellers and lovers, as in the Lust scene of the Prado Tabletop, pointing to the folly of their lewd behaviour. Lust and Gluttony had long been pre-eminent among the monastic vices; and these and other charges were levelled against the religious orders with increasing frequency during the fifteenth century. This period saw the rapid growth of religious houses, some of which supported themselves through weaving and other crafts. That they were more dissolute than before, despite various attempts at monastic reform, would be difficult to determine with any certainty, but it is clear that their considerable wealth and economic competition with the craft guilds brought them into conflict with the secular authorities. In 's-Hertogenbosch, the town fathers sought to limit the possessions and economic activity of the cloisters within their jurisdiction. While other cities of the time took comparable measures, the situation must have been particularly acute in 's-Hertogenbosch, given the unusually high proportion of its population in religious orders. It is against this background of hostility that we must view Bosch's

frequent condemnation of immorality among monks and nuns, not only in the Ship of Fools and the Stone Operations but also in the later Haywain. The intimate association between Gluttony and Lust in the medieval moral system was expressed by Bosch once more, although without a specific reference to monastic life, in a fragment of a painting at Yale University. Gluttony is personified by the swimmers at the upper left who have gathered around a large wine barrel straddled by a pot-bellied peasant. Another man swims closer to shore, his vision obscured by the meat pie balanced on his head. This scene is followed, on the right, by a pair of lovers in a tent, another motif reminiscent of the Lust scene in the Prado Tabletop. That they should be engaged in drinking wine is entirely appropriate: Sine Cerere et Libero friget Venus (Without Ceres and Bacchus, Venus freezes); this tag from Terence was well known to the Middle Ages, and that Gluttony and Drunkenness lead to Lust was a lesson that the moralizers never tired of driving home to their audiences.

Allegory of Gluttony and Lust Oil on panel, 36 x 32 cm Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven

That man persists in his folly even at the moment of death, when the eternities of Heaven and Hell hang in the balance, is the subject of the Death of the Miser (left). The dying man lies in a high, narrow bedchamber, into which Death has already entered at the left. His guardian angel supports him and attempts to draw his attention to the crucifix in the window above, but he is still distracted by the earthly possessions he must leave behind; one hand reaches out almost automatically to clutch the bag of gold offered by a demon through the curtain. Another demon, delicately winged, leans on the ledge in the foreground, where the rich robes and knightly equipment probably allude to the worldly rank and power which the miser must also abandon. The battle of angels and devils for the soul of the dying man occurs also in the Prado Tabletop (where the traditional figure of Death armed with an arrow likewise appears), and both scenes reflect a popular fifteenth-century devotional work, the Ars Moriendk orCraft of Dying, which was printed many times in Germany and the Netherlands. This curious little handbook describes how the dying man is exposed to a series of temptations by the demons clustered around his bed and how, each time, an angel consoles him and strengthens him in his final agony. In this book, the angel is ultimately successful and the soul is carried victoriously to Heaven as the devils howl in despair below. In Bosch's painting, however, the issue of the struggle is far from certain. An opened money chest can be seen at the foot of the bed, where an elderly man, perhaps the miser shown a second time, places a gold piece into a bag held by a demon. He seems little concerned with the rosary hanging from his waist. Death, no less than Folly, was a major preoccupation of the waning Middle Ages. The fashionable court poets dwelt upon the dissolution of the flesh and of all fair things in this world. It was also the theme of countless treatises of moral instruction, and the same morbid interest appears in the decaying corpses who seize their victims in scenes of the Dance of Death or recline on sculptured tombs. l was as you are now, you will be as I am, they seem to say to the living, repeating a favourite phrase of the period. But this obsession with death was compounded by a still greater horror: the firm conviction that after the physical dissolution of the body, the soul continued to exist, possibly doomed to eternal suffering in Hell. And it is in the depiction of this afterlife of the soul and its torments that Bosch made perhaps his most significant contribution to the history of painting.

Death and the Miser c. 1490 Oil on wood, 93 x 31 cm National Gallery of Art, Washington

Here the moral message is that people will persist in their deadly sins to the point of death. This panel shows a miser on his deathbed still dedicated to grasping more wealth regardless of the gruesome figure of Death, on the left, entering the chamber with a pointing arrow. The miser still puts out a hand to take the bag of gold with which a little demon tempts him. The death chamber is peopled with demons, each representing some aspect of the miser's life; for example, the little cowled and winged demon monk in the foreground who leans on rich clothing indicates the miser's rank which he also must leave, as his Church, in the person of the monk, cynically suggests. The angel behind the miser fails to attract his attention to the crucifix in the window, while another demon waits to torment him from the canopy. In what is perhaps a second image of the miser placing gold in a bag, more demons inside and outside the chest are waiting to provide other menial or physical tortures.

Death and the Miser (detail) c. 1490 National Gallery of Art, Washington

Death and the Miser (detail) c. 1490 National Gallery of Art, Washington

Death and the Miser Drawing, 256 x 149 mm Musee du Louvre, Paris

The Last Judgement

While sin and folly occupy a prominent place in Bosch's art, their significance can be fully appreciated only within the context of a larger medieval theme, the Last Judgment. The Day of Judgment marks the final act of the long, turbulent history of mankind which began with the Fall of Adam and Eve and their expulsion from Eden. It is the day when the dead shall rise from their graves and Christ shall come a second time to judge all men, rewarding each according to his merits. As Christ himself foretold (Matthew 25:34, 41), the elect will enjoy the eternal bliss prepared for them from the foundation of the world, while the damned will be condemned to the everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and hisangels. Time will cease and eternity begin. The preparation for this Final Day was one of the chief concerns of the medieval Church. It taught the faithful what conduct would enable them to be numbered among the blessed; it warned backsliders and evildoers of the awful punishment which awaited them if they failed to reform. The majority opinion is represented by Thomas a Kempis who told the readers of the lmitation of Christ, it is good that, if the love of God does not restrain you from sin, the fear of Hell at least should restrain you. Thus, the unending torments of the damned were described, in lurid details, in countless books and sermons, while meditations on the Last Judgment and Hell played an important part in various spiritual exercises, including those of the Devotio Modema. The terrors of the Final Reckoning were intensified by a general sense of its imminence. There had always been prophets who insisted that the world was nearing its end, but the feeling of impending doom grew particularly acute in the late fifteenth century. For Sebastian Brant, the sins of mankind had multiplied to such an extent that the Last Judgment must surely be close at hand. Other writers represented the world on the threshold of the final age, in which the prophecies described in the Revelation of St John would soon come to pass. Plagues, floods and other natural disasters were regarded as manifestations of the wrath of God and current political events were searched anxiously for signs of the Last Emperor and of Antichrist. In 1499, a German astrologer confidently asserted that the world would be destroyed by a second Deluge on 25 February 1524. In 1515, Albrecht Durer made a watercolour recording his famous dream in which he saw the final catastrophe brought about by huge columns of water crashing to the earth; somewhat earlier, Leonardo da Vinci made drawings of whole cities swept away by raging floods whose dynamic structure was observed with scientific detachment. Nowhere, however, was this chronic anxiety of the age given more vivid expression than in Bosch's imposing Last Judgment triptych in Vienna, executed probably during his middle period. The largest of his surviving works, the Last Judgment is prefaced on the outer wings by the figures of St James the Greater and St Bavo, painted in grisaille (left and right). Despite the gloomy and threatening landscape through which St James moves, neither this panel nor its companion prepares us for the apocalyptic scenes which unfold within. Here, across the three inner panels, appear the First and Last Things, beginning with the Fall of Man on the left wing.

Triptych of Last Judgement Akademie der Bildenden Kunste, Vienna

This, the largest of Bosch's paintings (163.7 x 127 cm/ 66 x 50 in), is also one of the most revealing and accomplished. The familiar story is clear. Every one of his contemporaries, poor, trusting, illiterate peasants as well as educated burghers, would have grasped the significance of almost all the details and believed the basic message implicitly. But some of the images must have been frighteningly new and distressing, if not actually inducing despair. Other painters had treated the same subject powerfully, but no one, before or since, has had the creative intensity and ability to actualize the dreaded unknown in such fantastic images. This is particularly true in the devils, demons, evil spirits and unnerving monsters that Bosch created to inhabit the nether world. His contemporaries, if they thought he saw (and they would have believed it possible) and accurately represented the monsters and denizens, and the hellish regions they inhabited, must have been convinced that hell was a place to avoid at all costs. The deadly sins are all depicted a number of times and erotic symbolism abounds.

Triptych of Last Judgement. St James the Greater (left outer wing) Grisaille on panel, 167 x 60 cm Akademie der Bildenden Kunste, Vienna

Triptych of Last Judgement. St Bavo (right outer wing) Grisaille on panel, 167 x 60 cm Akademie der Bildenden Knste, Vienna

Depicted as a pilgrim on the Road of Life, St James the Greater is carrying the symbols associated with Bavo was born in Brabant, probably in the late 6th century, and died in 653. He was a rich landowner, made a good him: the staff, the large-brimmed hat and, on it, the scallop shell, his special identification. St James, brother of St John. was the first of the Apostles to be martyred (AD 44). According to legend, after his martyrdom his body was brought from Jerusalem to Spain, where a shrine set up at Santiago de Compostella became one of the great attractions for Christian pilgrims in the later Middle Ages. The landscape in the background carries details of significant reference: on the top left reminding the marriage, fathered a daughter but led a disorderly life until the early death of his wife induced a dramatic change. He gave away all his possessions to the poor, put himself under the direction of Bishop (and Saint) Amand of Maastricht and devoted the rest of his life to good works, becoming known as the Protector of Flanders. He became a greatly revered saint in the northern Netherlands and a number of churches, including the Groote Kik - the most impressive church in Haarlem are dedicated to him. In Bosch's grisaille panel Bavo is depicted in elegant dress carrying a hawk on one

faithful of death as punishment in life; in the middle left , the long and difficult journey of the blind, hall hand and a purse in the other, representing pleasure and good works respectively, as he gives to the poor, young and and lame; and on the right the warning of robbers and murderers on the path through life. This panel, old. The significance of the mummified foot and the bowl balanced on the child's head has not been determined. and that of St Bavo (opposite), are painted in grisaille, a method of using grey monochrome that often gives the impression of sculpture. The closed triptych would merge with the surrounding sculpture, giving no indication of the colourful and frightening images inside.

Triptych of Last Judgement. Paradise (left wing - detail) Akademie der Bildenden Kunste, Vienna

Bosch has set the scene of the Fall in a rich landscape and shows the progress of the action from the lower to the upper levels. At the base the creation of Eve is treated somewhat similarly in design to Michelangelo's composition in the Sistine Chapel, which was painted at about the same time, although the feeling in each work is very different. Bosch, in the waning of the Middle Ages in northern Europe, had a strong sense of the actuality of hell fire, while Michelangelo, in the High Italian Renaissance, placed strong emphasis on the human values in the story. On the second level we see the Temptation: Eve holds out the apple from the Tree of Knowledge to Adam, while a singularly unserpent-like creature, female it may be noted, holds out another. Note too, the ubiquitous owl of evil on a branch to the left. The third level shows the couple driven from the Garden of Eden by a sword-wielding angel. Above the landscape is empty. The fourth level, the sky, shows God driving the rebel angels out of Paradise, in the process of which they are transformed from humans to insect monsters.

Triptych of Last Judgement. Last Judgement (central panel - detail) Akademie der Bildenden Kunste, Vienna

Triptych of Last Judgement. Last Judgement. Frying Bodies (central panel - detail) Akademie der Bildenden Kunste, Vienna

In this panel of the painting Bosch has created some of his most powerful images. There appears to be no limit to his visual imagination nor any restraint in depicting it. The metamorphosis of one thing into another is a constant device, as can be seen in this and the following illustrations taken from this panel. In the centre of this detail an old woman with lizard-like feet is frying human remains, while two eggs (symbols of sexual creativity) are waiting to go in the frying pan. Behind, another monstrous hag is turning a body on a spit and another body can be seen already prepared. On the right a beetle-like creature is dismembering another figure for the frying pan. This is truly hell's kitchen. Another figure in the foreground, repenting too late, has his hands clasped in prayer while a monster is spitting him for the knife. There also seems to be a mouse metamorphosing into a porcupine or vice versa.

The Triumph of Sin

Traditional Last Judgement scenes usually represented the resurrected divided into approximately equal numbers of the saved and the damned. This vision of mankind's prospects at the bar of Divine Justice seems almost frivolously optimistic, however, when compared with the grim interpretation of Doomsday presented in the Vienna triptych. For Bosch, sin and folly are the universal conditions of mankind, Hellfire its common destiny. This deeply pessimistic view of human nature was further developed by Bosch in two other triptychs, the Haywain and the Garden of Earthly Delights, both probably later in date than the Vienna Last Judgments but related to it in format.

Triptych of Haywain 1500-02 Oil on panel, 135 x 190 cm Museo del Prado, Madrid

We have seen, in many of the subjects so far considered, Bosch's warnings of the wages of sin. His Last Judgment has a particularly gruesome version of the Fall and the subsequent lodgings of the damned in hell. His unique imaginative powers were at their most characteristically effective in such works. But the paintings by Bosch with which most people are familiar are those concerned with the lifetime sins themselves. The two works most representative of this aspect of Bosch's work are The Haywain and The Garden of Earthly Delights. There arc two versions of The Haywain, both in Spain, one in the Escorial Palace and one in the Prado Museum. Although not identical, they are almost so and it is not known which is the original and which the copy; indeed they could both be originals. The subject, a central concern for Bosch, is his belief that the follies and sins of humankind are endemic and that hell is our ultimate destiny.

Triptych of Haywain. Paradise (left wing - detail) 1500-02 Museo del Prado, Madrid

Triptych of Haywain. The Lovers (central panel - detail) 1500-02 Museo del Prado, Madrid

The central feature of the panel is the scene on the top of the haystack. In a grouping reminiscent of paintings of the Holy Family, two pairs of lovers illustrate the ubiquitous sin of lust. As they follow the music, a symbol of self-indulgence, in this idyllic vignette their souls are being contested for by the praying angel on the left and by the devil's seductive music on the right. The devil is an endearing creature, significantly closer to the lovers than the angel, with butterfly wings, circular genitals and a peacock-eye tail. Behind the more elegant seated lovers, a second pair of peasants are kissing in the bushes in a bucolic prelude to a coupling. This little scene is depicted with a sympathy that is at variance with almost all the emotions displayed elsewhere and devoted to the sins of the flock. There the emphasis is on this world rather than the afterlife, although a warning that pain may accompany pleasure is indicated.

Triptych of Haywain (central panel - detail) 1500-02 Museo del Prado, Madrid

Bosch shows as a triumphal progress the passage of a simple hay wagon, seen centrally placed, as it moves through a fantasy landscape towards its ultimate hell. The cart is tow ed by demons and in the following retinue can be seen the 'great and good' of this world, including an emperor (possibly Maximilian I of Germany) and a pope (convincingly identified as Pope Alexander VI, the notorious Roderisfo Borgia). All those with the cart regard it covetously, some snatching handfuls of hay and fighting among themselves. It seems curious that a hay cart should figure so prominently in an important triptych unless one knows that it was a traditional symbol for God's goodness. Being of little worth in itself, it also emphasizes the futility of gathering worldly possessions. A contemporary proverb was 'The world is a haystack; everyone grabs whatever he can.'

Triptych of Haywain (central panel - detail) 1500-02 Museo del Prado, Madrid

Triptych of Haywain (right wing) 1500-02 Museo del Prado, Madrid

The progress of the haywain, conducted by demons in human, animal and fish-like forms, leads inexorably to hell. In this typically Boschian example poor damned, naked souls, the protection of clothing removed, are suffering torments at the hands of vicious demons and mythological animals, such as the antelope with scaly human legs. There is fire and destruction and the gaping maw to the lowest regions of hell in the bottom right corner. Although a dolorous and frightening scene, it is perhaps less effective than other examples and again shows the work of assistants, who, using the same imagery, are not able to create the same power and conviction that Bosch himself achieves. The scene is nevertheless full of symbol and suggestion. Look, for example, at the man lying on the ground with a toad devouring his genitals, suffering the fate of all lechers. Since the toad looks at first sight like a fig leaf, it carries, perhaps, echoes of the Fall of Man.

Triptych of Haywain (right wing) 1500-02 Museo del Prado, Madrid

The Haywain triptych exists in two versions, one in the Escorial, the other in the Prado, Madrid. Both are in poor condition and have been heavily restored, and scholars disagree as to which is the original. In each instance, however, the outer wings, to which we will revert, can only have been executed by a rather clumsy workshop hand. As in the Vienna Last Judgments the left inner wing presents the Creation and Fall of Man (reversing, however, the sequence of episodes from foreground to background) and the expulsion of the Rebel Angels, while the right wing is occupied by a view of Hell. The central panel, however, presents a new image: agreathaywain lumbering across a vast landscape and followed by the great of this world on horseback, including an emperor and a pope (who has been identified as Alexander VI). The lower classes-peasants, burghers, nuns and clergy-snatch tufts of hay from the waggon or fight for it among themselves. In a variation of the theme of the Prado Tabletop, this frantic activity is witnessed by Christ who appears, insignificant and resigned, in a golden glory above. Except for an angel praying on top of the haycart, however, no one notices the Divine Presence; and, above all, no one notices that the waggon is being pulled by devils towards Hell and damnation.

Triptych of Haywain. The Wayfarer. The Road of Life (outer wings) 1500-02 Oil on panel, 135 x 90 cm Monasterio de San Lorenzo, El Escorial

The symbol of the pilgrim on the precarious, threatening road of life was common in medieval painting. The two outer wings of The Haywain depict a poor, fearful and emaciated middle-aged peasant, with his possessions strapped to his back, glancing behind him at a scene of robbery while fending off a vicious dog. He is about to step on a bridge that is too thin to carry even his weight - a reminder that the next step in life may bring disaster or death. On the right of the painting carefree peasants dance to a bagpiper seated under a tree. In the background a crowd is gathered for a hanging while nearby stands a tall pole surmounted by a wheel on which the bodies of executed criminals were displayed. Altogether it is a scene of threat and fear. Although the work is badly painted and probably all by assistants, the design is certainly by Bosch, who used it in a later circular panel.

Scenes in Hell Pen and bistre, 163 x 176 mm Staatliche Museen, Berlin

The Pilgrimage of Life

Triptych of Haywain. The Wayfarer (detail) 1500-02 Oil on panel, 135 x 90 cm Monasterio de San Lorenzo, El Escorial

The Haywain and the Garden of Earthly Delights show mankind trapped by its age-old enemies, the World, the Flesh and the Devil. The precarious situation of the human soul in this life was represented again, although in somewhat different terms, on the outer panels of the Haywain triptych. These panels are inferior in quality to the rest of the triptych and were probably completed by workshop assistants, but Bosch must have designed the composition. The foreground is dominated by an emaciated, shabbily dressed man who is no longer young, carrying a wicker basket strapped to his back; he travels through a menacing landscape. A skull and several bones lie scattered at lower left; an ugly cur snaps at his heels, while the footbridge on which he is about to step appears very fragile indeed. In the background, bandits have robbed another traveller and are binding him to a tree, and peasants dance at the right to the skirl of a bagpipe. A crowd of people gather around an enormous gallows in the distance, not far from a tall pole surmounted.by a wheel, used for displaying the bodies of executed criminals. A countryside similarly filled with violence can be seen behind St James on the exterior of the Vienna Last Judgments serving to remind us that James was the patron saint of pilgrims who invoked his protection against the dangers of the road. In the Middle Ages, however, every man was a pilgrim in a more spiritual sense. He was but a stranger on earth, an exile searching for his lost homeland. This poignant image of the human condition is almost as old as Christianity itself, for St Peter had already described Christians in similar terms, and these were repeated with countless variations by later writers. The German mystic Henry Suso, for example, saw men as miserable beggars who still wander so verry wretchedly in oursorrowfulexile. In Deguilleville's Pilgrimageof the Lifeof Man,the pilgrimage is employed as a framework for the life and spiritual temptations of a monk.

Bosch's pilgrim makes his way through the treacherous world whose vicissitudes are represented in the landscape. Some of the dangers are physical, such as the robbers or the snarling dog, although the latter may also symbolize detractors and slanderers, whose evil tongues were often compared to barking dogs. The dancing peasants, however, connote a moral danger; like the lovers on top of the haywain, they have succumbed to the music of the flesh. In expressing the spiritual predicament of all mankind, the pilgrim thus resembles Everyman and his Dutch and German counterparts Elckerlijc and Jedermann, whose spiritual pilgrimages form the subjects of contemporary morality plays. In a circular painting now in Rotterdam, Bosch reworked the figure of the Prado wayfarer a decade or so later, this time placing him against one of his most delicately conceived landscapes. The rolling sand dunes at the right and the subdued tonalities of grey und yellow are sensitive transcriptions into paint of the raindrenched Dutch countryside. There is little reason to believe, as some scholars do, that the picture represents an episode from the parable of the Prodigal Son. The large foreground figure closely recalls the Haywain pilgrim, except that he appears even more haggard and poorly dressed. There are, however, some subtle differences. Except for the snarling dog, with its possible allusion to slander, the dangers of the world are here chiefly spiritual. They are embodied first of all in the tavern at the left, whose ruinous condition echoes the ragged clothes of the wayfarer. As in Bosch's earlier Marriage Feast at Cana, the tavern symbolizes the World and the Devil in general, its dubious nature revealed by the man urinating at the right, and by the couple embracing in the doorway. Another inmate of the house peers curiously through one of the dilapidated windows.

The Wayfarer Oil on panel, diameter 71,5 cm Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam

In the Late Middle Ages the course of a person's life on Earth was understood to be a pilgrimage from birth to death. The idea of the wayfarer was, therefore, of great significance to the Christian life. Depictions of this allegory were studied with great care for indications of dangers and pitfalls, of what and what not to do in this life. Bosch had treated the subject on the outside panels of The Haywain, and the same pose with different background messages is seen in this circular panel painted about 10 years later. Set in one of Bosch's most delicate and sensitively observed Dutch landscapes, the tattered scarecrow figure is pausing as he passes a dilapidated tavern. Possibly he is wondering if the woman gazing from the broken shuttered window has the same interest in him as the two 'lovers' in the doorway have in each other. The sordid scene is emphasized by the peasant urinating on the corner of the inn. The painting is different from The Hayixam panels in showing only the spiritual and sensual dangers that the wavfarer encounters.

The Wayfarer. The House of the Ill Fame (detail) Oil on panel Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam

The customer for whom the second woman waits may very well be the traveller himself. As Bax has perceptively observed, he has not just emerged from the tavern, but has passed it in his journey and now halts on the road, as if allured by its promise of pleasure. Bax further suggests that the garments of the traveller and the various articles he carries are a symbolic commentary on his poverty, the sinful tendencies which led to his present condition, and his readiness to succumb to temptation once more. However this may be, the spiritual state of the wayfarer is also conveyed in less symbolic terms. Bosch has transformed the defensive movement of the Haywain pilgrim into an attitude of hesitation, while the wayfarer's head is turned towards the tavern with an almost wistful expression. In the Rotterdam panel Bosch does not make the moral alternatives quite so explicit, but they can be discerned nonetheless. If the wayfarer looks back in the direction of the tavern, his path leads towards a gate and the tranquil Dutch countryside beyond. Unlike the violencefilled landscape of the Haywain wings, the background contains no suspicious incidents, and, except for the owl perched on a dead branch directly above the wayfarer's head, no overt symbols of evil. We are probably justified in seeing in the gate and fields a reference to Christ who, in John 10:9, speaks of himself as the door through which those who enter shall be saved, and shall go in and out, and find pasture. In the Haywain, the pilgrim appears as a neutral figure, neither good nor bad. In the Rotterdam panel, Bosch made the image more profound by showing the pilgrim in the grip of a spiritual crisis. But whether the pilgrim will turn away from the tavern to pass through the gate is as doubtful as the issue of the struggle between angel and devils in the Death of theMiser. This ambiguity of the Rotterdam Wayfarer exemplifies perfectly the pessimism of Bosch's age concerning the human condition. The same attitude predominates in a pair of small panels, perhaps altar wings, also at Rotterdam. On the reverse, Bosch painted four little monochrome scenes showing mankind beset by devils. They possess a farm and drive away the inhabitants, throw a ploughman from his horse and fall upon an unwary traveller. In the fourth scene, however, the Christian soul finds asylum: he kneels before Christ while a companion, like the just souls described in Revelation 6:11, receives a white robe from an angel.

The Fall of the Rebel Angels (obverse) 1500-04 Oil on panel, 69 x 35 cm Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam

Mankind Beset by Devils (reverse of Rebel Angels panel) 1500-04 Oil on panel, diameter 32,4 cm (each) Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam

Two small panels that may have formed, or been intended to form, the wings of an altarpiece, each carry a full picture on one side: The Fall of the Rebel Angels and Noah's Ark on Mount Araratt. On the reverse side are four circular paintings showing scenes of people being beset by devils during the mundane pursuit of their ordinary working lives. In one, devils have driven a farmer from his farm; in another, they have attacked a traveller; and in the one illustrated here they have knocked a ploughman from his horse. (In the fourth painting the Christian soul finds asylum.) It epitomizes in many ways the medieval belief in the real unseen existence of devils and demons everywhere. For Bosch, who all evidence shows to have been a depressive, morbid character, it is the simplest message of an evcrpresent danger. Constant vigilance must accompany everyone everywhere; devils are really ready to pounce. The ploughman sees the devil or did he just fall off his horse?

Noah's Ark on Mount Ararat (obverse) 1500-04 Oil on panel, 69 x 38 cm Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam

Mankind Beset by Devils (reverse of Noah panel) 1500-04 Oil on panel, diameter 32,4 cm (each) Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam

It was during Bosch's lifetime that belief in devils reached a new height. Erasmus could scoff at the demons of hell as mere bogeymen and empty illusions, but most of Bosch's contemporaries believed that devils actively and maliciously intervened in human affairs, both directly and through their agents, the witches and sorcerers. These beliefs were codified in the infamous Malleus Maleficarum, or Witches' Hammer, of Jacob Sprengerand Heinrich Kramer, published at Nuremberg in 1494. In scholastically precise terminology, the Malleus Maleficarum examines the nature of witches and their relationships with the Devil, as well as the means by which they were to be recognized and punished. This immensely popular book influenced a great many witch trials of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and may also have inspired the pictures on the obverse of the two panels at Rotterdam just discussed. Here we see the Rebel Angels, already transformed into monsters, tumbling into a desolate landscape; and the landing of Noah's Ark on Mount Ararat, from which animals descend by pairs among the corpses of the drowned. These two curious scenes may allude to a medieval interpretation of Genesis 6:1-6, describing the corruption of the earth which resulted in the Flood. In those days, we are told, the sons of God took to wife the daughters of men who bore a mighty race of giants. The sons of God were frequently identified with the Fallen Angels, and the Malleus Maleficarum, following an opinion of St Thomas Aquinas, asks if their mighty progeny were not, in fact, the first witches, born of the pestilent mutual association of men with devils. To Bosch's contemporaries, the melancholy spectacle of sin and folly could be explained only in terms of the Devil and his followers seeking to drag mankind into perdition. Against such overwhelming odds, what chance did the pilgrim have to reach his homeland? The answer of the medieval Church may be summed up in the title of Thomas a Kempis's book, the limitation of Christ. By renouncing the world and following the examples set by Christ and his saints, the pilgrim could hope to pass through the dark night of this world into Paradise. And although Bosch painted many pictures mirroring the tragic condition of humanity, he produced almost as many others which illuminated this path to salvation.

Beggars Pen and bistre, 285 x 205 mm Albertina, Vienna

Beggars and Cripples Pen and bistre, 264 x 198 mm Bibliotheque Royale Albert I, Brussels

The Imitation of Christ

(Adoration of the Magi)

Although Bosch contributed many new themes to Netherlandish painting, it must be remembered that well over half of his pictures are devoted to traditional Christian subjects: the lives of the saints and the life of Christ, especially episodes of the Passion. As might be expected, many of his Christological scenes are fairly conventional, conforming to types which had been current in Northern Europe for several generations. They offer nothing new beyond, perhaps, an increased intensity of expression. This is true, as we have seen, of such early works as the Philadelphia Epiphany and the Frankfurt Ecce Homo. In representing Christ carrying the Cross, he occasionally depicted the good thief confessing to a friar or priest, but this anachronism was only a natural development of the late medieval tendency to clothe sacred history in contemporary modes and manners. Several paintings show his knowledge of the Flemish schools to the south. His Nativity, now lost but represented by a good copy in Cologne, reflects the compositions of Hugo van der Goes, whose influence is to be seen also in several Passion scenes discussed below. Likewise, the influence of Dirk Bouts and his followers can be discerned in a votive picture in Brussels, the Christ on the Cross with Donors and Saints (left), although Bosch has characteristically transformed the conventional distant view of Jerusalem into the homely forms of a simple Dutch town, perhaps 's-Hertogenbosch itself, veiled in atmospheric greys and lavenders. In a number of important instances, however, Bosch transcended the limits of the biblical narrative to present a more universal image of the conflict between good and evil. This has already been observed in the devil-haunted tavern which serves as a setting for the early Marriage Feast at Cana, and Van Mander describes a Flight into Egypt, now lost, whose landscape contained an inn similarly possessed by demons. This idea also inspired one of Bosch's most enigmatic works, the Epiphany triptych in the Prado.

Epiphany. Triptych of the Adoration of the Magi The Donor with St Peter and St Joseph (left wing) The Virgin and Child and the Three Magi (central panel) The Donor with St Agnes (right wing) c. 1510 Oil on wood, 138 x 72 cm (central), 138 x 34 cm (each wings) Museo del Prado, Madrid

The Epiphany, also known as the Adoration of the Magi, is an early work dating before 1480. The painting depicts the presentation of the child Christ by Mary to the three wise men from the East, who bring gold, frankincense and myrrh to the stable in which he was born. Joseph is watching, and two other figures and animals may be seen in the stable. The highly personal inventive imagination of Bosch's later work is not evident here, but this loving treatment of the landscape of the Lowlands is seen in many of his later works.

Triptych of the Adoration of the Magi (detail) c. 1510 Oil on wood, 138 x 72 cm Museo del Prado, Madrid

Triptych of the Adoration of the Magi (detail) c. 1510 Oil on wood, 138 x 72 cm Museo del Prado, Madrid

Triptych of the Adoration of the Magi (detail) c. 1510 Oil on wood, 138 x 72 cm Museo del Prado, Madrid

Triptych of the Adoration of the Magi (detail) c. 1510 Oil on wood, 138 x 72 cm Museo del Prado, Madrid

Triptych of the Adoration of the Magi (detail) c. 1510 Oil on wood, 138 x 72 cm Museo del Prado, Madrid

Triptych of the Adoration of the Magi (closed) c. 1510 Oil on wood, 138 x 72 cm Museo del Prado, Madrid

The inner wings of this altarpiece are occupied by the kneeling figures of the donors, husband and wife, attended by their patron saints Peter and Agnes. The coats of arms behind them identify the couple as members of the Bronckhorst and Bosshuyse families, but nothing is known of these names which would help determine the date of the work or its original destination. The central panel displays the adoration of the Christ Child by the three Kings or Magi. Many details of the composition, including the ruined stable and the sumptuous dress of the Magi, bring to mind Bosch's Epiphany in Philadelphia, but the casual mood of the earlier version has completely disappeard. Instead of reaching out impulsively towards the Magi, the Infant Christ now sits solemnly enthroned on his mother's lap. The Virgin, too, has acquired a new dignity and amplitude of form, perhaps inspired by Jan van Eyck's Madonna of Chancellor Rolin (Paris, Louvre). Set apart from the other figures by the projecting roof of the stable, the Virgin and Child resemble a cult statue beneath its baldachin, and the Magi approach with all the gravity of priests in a religious ceremony. The splendid crimson mantle of the kneeling King echoes the monumental figure of the Virgin. That Bosch intended to show a parallel between the homage of the Magi and the celebration of the Mass is clearly indicated by the gift which the oldest King has placed at the feet of the Virgin: it is a small sculptured image of the Sacrifice of Isaac, a prefigu-ration of Christ's sacrifice on the Cross. Other Old Testament episodes appear on the elaborate collar of the second King, representing the visit of the Queen of Sheba to Solomon, and on the Moorish King's silver orb, depicting Abner offering homage to David (not David's reception of the three heroes, as commonly assumed). In the Biblia Pauperum, a popular religious picture book of the period, both scenes prefigure the Epiphany. A group of peasants have gathered around the stable at the right. They peer from behind the wall with lively curiosity and scramble up to the roof in order to get a better view of the exotic strangers. The Shepherds had seen Christ on Christmas Eve, but they frequently reappear as spectators in fifteenth-century Epiphany scenes. Generally, however, they display much more reverence than do Bosch's peasants, whose boisterous behaviour contrasts strongly witht the dignified bearing of the Magi. This difference is significant, for the Shepherds were frequently identified with the Jews who rejected Christ, while the Magi represent the Gentiles who accepted him as the true Messiah. The most curious detail of Bosch's Epiphany is the man standing just inside the stable behind the Magi. Naked except for a thin shirt and a crimson robe gathered around his loins, he wears a bulbous crown; a gold bracelet encircles one arm, and a transparent cylinder covers a sore on his ankle. He regards the Christ Child with an ambiguous smile, but the faces of several of his companions appear distinctly hostile. Because they stand within the dilapidated stable, time-honoured symbol of the Synagogue, these grotesque figures have been identified as Herod and his spies, or Antichrist and his counsellors. Although neither identification is quite convincing, the association of the chief figure with the powers of darkness is clearly suggested by the demons embroidered on the strip of cloth hanging between his legs. A row of similar forms can be seen on the large object which he holds in one hand; surprisingly, this can only be the helmet of the second King, and still other monsters decorate the robes of the Moorish King and his servant. These demonic elements undoubtedly refer to the pagan past of the Magi, recalling the medieval belief, echoed in the Golden Legend, that they had practised sorcery before their conversion to Christ. In an unpublished paper, Charles Scillia has plausibly suggested that the mysterious figure in the stable represents still another pagan sorcerer, Balaam, who was instructed by God to announce: l shall see him, but not now: I shall behold him, but not nigh: there shall come a Star out of Jacob and a Sceptre shall rise out of Israel. (Numbers 24:17.)Traditionally interpreted as referring to the Star of Bethlehem and the coming of Christ, this prophecy was thought to have inspired the perpetual watch for the Star which centuries later resulted in the journey of the Magi. If this identification is correct, the crystal-encased wound on the leg of Bosch's figure may allude to the injured foot which Balaam suffered in the Old Testament episode, and his companions are perhaps the Moabite ambassadors sent to him by King Balak. But if Balaam thus appears as a precursor of the Magi, he also possesses a more unfavourable significance in the Prado Epiphany. Although he refused Balak's request to curse the Israelites, he seems later to have conspired with the Moabites to seduce them away from the Lord into idolatry (Numbers 31:16). To the Middle Ages, therefore, he was not only a prophet but also typified the false preacher, the teacher of heresy. This latter aspect would account for his presence within the stable, whose sinister nature is indicated by the owl and lizard half hidden in the caves; and it is surely no accident that this thorny crown closely resembles the headdress of the blue devil serenading the lovers in the Haywain. Through Balaam, perverter of the Jews, Bosch once more reminds us of the antithesis between Church and the Synagogue. The stable and its inhabitants seem to be the source of the malevolent influences contaminating almost every part of the majestic landscape which unfolds in the background of all three panels. Demons haunt the ruined portal in the left wing, where Joseph sits hunched over a fire. The crumbling walls around him are the remains of King David's palace, near which the Nativity was popularly supposed to have occurred; like the stable, it represents the Synagogue, the Old Law collapsing at the advent of the New. In the field beyond, peasants dance to the sound of bagpipes, a familiar symbol of the carnal life. On the right wing, wolves attack a man and a woman on a desolate road. Behind the stable in the centre, the followers of two of the Magi rush towards each other like opposing armies; the host of the third King appears beyond the sand dunes. The gently rolling countryside contains, in addition, an abandoned tavern and a pagan idol. Even the distant grey-blue walls of Jerusalem, one of Bosch's most evocative renderings of the Holy City, appear vaguely sinister. A little roadside cross leans precariously to one side at the left, and the two watch-towers are architecturally similar to the demonic city which Bosch depicted in the St Anthony triptych in Lisbon. The Epiphany had for centuries been closely associated with the Mass. Just as the incarnate Christ appeared to the Shepherds and the Magi, so does he continue to appear to the faithful in the form of the bread and wine. In the Philadelphia Epiphany, Bosch had alluded to the Eucharist by depicting the Gathering of Manna, a prefiguration of the Last Supper, on the sleeve of the Moorish King. The relationship between Epiphany and Eucharist, however, is more explicitly stated on the outer wings of the Prado triptych, which, when closed, display the Mass of St Gregory (left). The tall, narrow panels are painted in a greyish-brown monochrome, except for the two male donors who appear in natural colour. They may represent father and son, but neither can be identified with the husband on the left inner wing. The legend of the Mass of St Gregory concerns a eucharistic miracle which attached itself rather late in the Middle Ages to the name of Pope Gregory the Great (c. 540-604). One day, when Gregory was celebrating Mass, an assistant doubted the true presence of Christ in the host. At the earnest prayer of the Pope for some sign from Heaven to refute the unbeliever, Christ himself appeared suddenly on the altar, displaying his wounds and surrounded by the instruments of his Passion. Bosch represents this miracle in the form of a spiritual dialogue between the kneeling Pope and the Man of Sorrows emerging from the sarcophagus above, unnoticed by the spectators behind the altar, and sensed, but not actually seen, by the acolyte and the two donors. The basic elements of this composition, the frontal placement of the altar and the prominence of the sarcophagus and the great arch behind, were probably inspired by an engraving which Israhel van Meckenem made in the 1480s. Bosch, however, achieved a monumentality absent in his model by lowering the viewpoint and by increasing the distance between Gregory and his vision; in addition, he exchanged the usual instruments of the Passion for the biblical episodes which they symbolize. Beginning with the Agony in the Garden and the Betrayal, these scenes are presented as pictures painted on the lower part of the arch whose upper part becomes a mountain from which the Crucifixion emerges into the space of the church itself. Gregory's vision, in fact, fills the entire church; instead of vaults, we see a cloudy night sky from which an angel descends to receive the soul of the good thief. The crucifixion of the bad thief, however, has been replaced by the suicide of Judas Iscariot whose limp figure dangles from a tree on the right-hand slope, his soul borne away by a black devil. In this detail, Bosch alludes once again to the conflict between Church and Synagogue, reminding us that it was Judas's treachery which precipitated the events of the Passion and death of Christ. By comparison with the Prado Epiphany, whose iconographical complexities are exceeded only by the Garden of Earthly Delights and the Lisbon St Anthony, the Passion scenes which Bosch painted during his middle and later years are simpler, their imagery more easily grasped by the viewer. One such work is the Christ Carrying the Cross in the Palacio Real, Madrid. Christ dominates the foreground, almost crushed beneath the heavy Cross which the elderly Simon of Cyrene struggles to lift from his back. The ugly heads of his executioners rise steeply in a mass towards the left; in the distance, the sorrowing Virgin collapses into the arms of John the Evangelist. Whereas Bosch's earlier composition of this subject in Vienna had been diffuse and primarily narrative, the Madrid version is

concentrated, and the way that Christ ignores his captors to look directly at the spectator gives it the quality of a timeless devotional image. Perhaps, as some critics claim, Bosch equated the historical tormentors of Christ with mankind at large, whose daily wickedness continues to torture Christ even after his Resurrection. This notion of the Perpetual Passion was not uncommon in Bosch's day. In the Madrid picture, however, Christ's gaze is not so much an accusation as an appeal, as if to say, in the words of Matthew 16:24: lf any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me. Simon of Cyrene had been compelled by the soldiers to take up the Cross of Christ, but for centuries the Cross had been willingly embraced by pious Christians who sought to emulate the Saviour in their own lives. To imitate Christ was to submit to the assaults of this world with the same patience and humility displayed by Christ himself during his Passion; for temporal affliction, as the mystics and moralizers never tired of telling their audience, purifies the soul just as fire tempers steel and refines gold. This religious ideal is well known to us through Thomas a Kempis's famous book, but a more succinct expression of it can be found in a prayer attached to a fifteenth-century German woodcut representing Christ Carrying the Cross: O dear Lod Jesus Christ, as thou hast carried thy cross, so grant me, dear Lord, that I also patiently bear all adversity and sorrows which may befall me, that I therewith lay low all villainy and temptation of the body and of the battle over the evil spirit.

Adoration of the Child Oil on wood, 66 x 43 cm Wallraf-Richartz Museum, Cologne

The Triumph of the Saint

In his pictures of the saints, Bosch seldom depicted those miraculous exploits and spectacular martyrdoms which so fascinated the later Middle Ages. Except for the early Crucifixion of St Julia, he showed the more passive virtues of the contemplative life: no soldier saints, no tender virgins frantically defending their chastity, but hermits meditating quietly in a landscape. Three variations of this theme appear in the sadly damaged triptych ofthe HermitSaints in Venice, painted towards the middle of his career. In the centre St Jerome fastens his gaze on a crucifix, secure against the evil world symbolized by the remains of a pagan temple scattered around him on the ground and by two monstrous animals engaged in a death struggle below. On the left, St Anthony the Hermit resists the amorous advances of the Devil-Queen, an episode to which we shall return. Snugly ensconced in a cave chapel on the right wing, St Giles prays before an altar, the arrow piercing his breast commemorating the time when he was shot accidentally by a passing hunter. All three saints reflect the monastic ideal as set forth, for example, in the limitation of Christ: a life spent in mortification of the flesh and in continuous prayer and meditation. How strict and self-denying was the life of the holy Fathers in the desert! exclaims Thomas a Kempis, How long and grievous the temptations they endured! How often they were assaulted by the Devil! How frequent and fervent their prayers to God! ... How great their zeal and ardour for spiritual progress! How valiant the battles they fought to overcome their vices! In the St Jerome at Prayer, Bosch gave an even more telling image of this ideal. Jerome has cast himself down, a crucifix cradled in his arms; his splendid red

cardinal's robe lies abandoned on the ground. Absent are the dramatic gestures-the breast-beating and the eyes raised adoringly to the Cross - with which other artists represented the penitent saint, but in this still, intent figure, Bosch has nonetheless poignantly expressed Jerome's spiritual anguish. The peaceful background panorama contains no hint of evil, but the swampy grotto in which the saint lies is rank with corruption and decay. In his autobiography, Jerome describes how his meditations in the wilderness were interrupted by visions of beautiful courtesans. These lustful thoughts are undoubtedly symbolized by the large decomposing fruits near the saint's cave, reminiscent of the flora in the Garden of Earthly Delights. Only by surrendering completely to the will of God could Jerome subdue his rebellious flesh. In another picture (Madrid, Museo Lazaro-Galdiano), Bosch shows St John the Baptist seated in a humid summer landscape. The composition may well have been influenced by a painting done some years earlier by Geertgen tot Sint Jans. Geertgen represented the thoughtful prophet staring abstractedly into space, rubbing one foot against the other, but Bosch shows him pointing purposefully towards the Lamb of God crouching at lower right. This gesture traditionally identifies John as the forerunner of Christ, the precursor Christi. In this instance however, it also indicates a spiritual alternative to the life of the flesh symbolized in the great pulpy fruits hanging near him on gracefully curving stems, and in the equally ominous forms rising in the background.

Triptych of the Crucifixion of St Julia Oil on panel, 104 x 119 cm Palazzo Ducale, Venice

Hermit Saints Triptych St Anthony, St Jerome, St Giles c. 1505 Oil on panel, 86 x 60 cm Palazzo Ducale, Venice

Hermit Saints Triptych. St Jerome (central panel) c. 1505 Oil on panel, 86 x 60 cm Palazzo Ducale, Venice

Temptation of St Anthony Pen and bistre, 257 x 175 mm Staatliche Museen, Berlin

Studies for the "Tempation of St Anthony" Pen and bistre, 205 x 263 mm Musee du Louvre, Paris

St Jerome in Prayer c. 1505 Oil on panel, 80,1 x 60,6 cm Museum voor Schone Kunsten, Ghent

Jerome was born about AD 342 and died in Bethlehem in AD 420. He studied philosophy at Rome and became one of the most learned of the Latin Fathers of the Church, a great biblical scholar who revised the Latin version of the New Testament and worked over or translated the whole Bible, known since the 13th century as the Vulgate. He was ordained a priest but did not exercise his priestly office. In 374 he retired to the desert near Antioch and spent some years among the hermits. While there he was visited by temptations and lustful visions of the flesh. Most representations of St Jerome show him in a state of penitence in the desert. Bosch's painting depicts Jerome as a reclining praying figure, having cast aside his cardinal's robe and hat. which are often shown as indications of both his service to the Church and his rejection of the priestly office. Around him are familiar symbols of the bodily temptations: broken fruit, an evil smelling swamp, indicating decay and corruption, and a lurking owl. There is also a small dog-like creature at the bottom left, which probably represents a lion, Jerome's symbol.

St John the Baptist in the Wilderness (Meditation) Oil on panel, 48 x 40 cm Museo Lazaro Galdiano, Madrid

St John the Baptist was the son of Elizabeth, cousin of Mary, the mother of Christ. Known as precursor Christi, he prophesied the coming of Christ and is often associated pictorially in his youth with Christ. It was he who later baptized Christ. Also traditionally associated with the Lamb of God, the symbol of the Redeemer, in Bosch's painting St John is depicted in the wilderness lying in meditation and pointing to the Lamb, quietly seated in the bottom right. Again the traditional, endemic temptations of the flesh are indicated by the exotic luscious fruit, symbols of carnal pleasure, growing close to the Saint. The presence of monsters in Bosch's paintings is not always explicit, often seen only in that form of metamorphosis characteristic of modern Surrealism. One example is the elongated rock on which St John is leaning, which transforms at its left into a rat-like head, the rat being another symbol for sex as well as for general filth and lies against the Church.

Leonardo da Vinci
1452 - 1519

Renaissance Art Map

Leonardo da Vinci - biography Leonardo da Vinci CONTENTS: 1452-1481 Leonardo in the Florence of the Medici 1482-1499 At the court of Ludovico il Moro 1500-1508 The return to Florence 1508-1513 The Milan of Charles d'Amboise 1513-1519 The last years: Rome and France

Self-Portrait c. 1512

Leonardo da Vinci - biography

(Encyclopaedia Britannica)

Italian painter, draftsman, sculptor, architect, and engineer whose genius, perhaps more than that of any figure, epitomized the Renaissance humanist ideal. His "Last Supper" (1495-97) and "Mona Lisa" (1503-06) are among the most widely popular and influential paintings of the Renaissance. His notebooks reveal a spirit of scientific inquiry and a mechanical inventiveness that were centuries ahead of their time. The unique fame that Leonardo enjoyed in his lifetime and that, filtered and purified by historical criticism, has remained undimmed to the present day is based on the equally unique universality of his spirit. Leonardo's universality is more than many-sidedness. True, at the time of the Renaissance and the period of humanism, many-sidedness was a highly esteemed quality; but it was by no means rare. Many other good artists possessed it. Leonardo's universality, on the other hand, was a spiritual force, peculiarly his own, that generated in him an unlimited desire for knowledge and guided his thinking and behaviour. An artist by disposition and endowment, he found that his eyes were his main avenue to knowledge; to Leonardo, sight was man's highest sense organ because sight alone conveyed the facts of experience immediately, correctly, and with certainty. Hence, every phenomenon perceived became an object of knowledge. Saper vedere ("knowing how to see") became the great theme of his studies of man's works and nature's creations. His creativity reached out into every realm in which graphic representation is used: he was painter, sculptor, architect, and engineer. But he went even beyond that. His superb intellect, his unusual powers of observation, and his mastery of the art of drawing led him to the study of nature itself, which he pursued with method and penetrating logic--and in which his art and his science were equally revealed.

Life and works

Early period: Florence

The illegitimate son of Ser Piero, a Florentine notary and landlord, Leonardo was born on his father's family estate. His

mother, Caterina, was a young peasant woman who shortly thereafter married an artisan from that region. Not until his third and fourth marriages did Ser Piero's wives have children, the first one in 1476, when Leonardo was already an adult. Thus, Leonardo grew up in his father's house, where he was treated as a legitimate son and received the usual elementary education of that day: reading, writing, and arithmetic. As for Latin, the key language of traditional learning, Leonardo did not seriously study it until much later, when he acquired a working knowledge of it on his own. Not until he was 30 years old did he apply himself to higher mathematics--advanced geometry and arithmetic--which he studied with diligent tenacity; but here, too, he did not get much beyond the beginning stages. Leonardo's artistic inclinations must have appeared early. When he was about 15, his father, who enjoyed a high reputation in the Florence community, apprenticed him to Andrea del Verrocchio. In Verrocchio's renowned workshop Leonardo received a many-sided training that included not only painting and sculpture but the technical-mechanical arts as well. He also worked in the next-door workshop of Antonio Pollaiuolo, where he was probably first drawn to the study of anatomy. In 1472 Leonardo was accepted in the painters' guild of Florence but remained five years more in his teacher's workshop. Then he worked independently in Florence until 1481. In the few extant works of this early period one may clearly trace the development of the artist's remarkable talent. Keenness of observation and creative imagination stand out. His early mastery is revealed in an angel and a segment of landscape executed by him in Verrocchio's painting the "Baptism of Christ" (Uffizi, Florence) and in two Annunciations (Uffizi, as well as the Louvre, Paris), both of them done in Verrocchio's workshop, as were the "Madonna with the Carnation," the "Madonna Benois," and the "Portrait of Ginevra de' Benci." This mastery reached its peak in two paintings that remained unfinished: "St. Jerome" and a large panel painting of "The Adoration of the Magi." In addition to these few paintings there are a great many superb pen and pencil drawings, in which Leonardo's mastery blazed new trails for this graphic art. Among the drawings are many technical sketches--for example, pumps, military weapons, mechanical apparatus--evidence of Leonardo's interest in and knowledge of technical matters at the outset of his career.

Unfolding of Leonardo's genius: first Milanese period (1482-99)

In 1482 Leonardo entered the service of the Duke of Milan--a surprising step when one realizes that the 30-year-old artist had just received his first substantial commissions from his native city of Florence: the above-mentioned unfinished panel painting of "The Adoration of the Magi" for the monastery of S. Donato a Scopeto (1481) and an altar painting for the St. Bernard Chapel in the Palazzo della Signoria, which was never fulfilled. That he gave up both projects despite the commitments he had undertaken--not even starting on the second named--seems to indicate deeper reasons for his leaving Florence. It may have been that the rather sophisticated spirit of Neoplatonism prevailing in the Florence of the Medici went against the grain of his experience-oriented mind and that the more realistic academic atmosphere of Milan attracted him. Moreover, there was the fascination of Ludovico Sforza's brilliant court and the meaningful projects awaiting him there. Leonardo spent 17 years in Milan, until Ludovico's fall from power in 1499. He was listed in the register of the royal household as pictor et ingeniarius ducalis ("painter and engineer of the duke"). Highly esteemed, Leonardo was constantly kept busy as a painter and sculptor and as a designer of court festivals. He was also frequently consulted as a technical adviser in the fields of architecture, fortifications, and military matters, and he served as a hydraulic and mechanical engineer. In this phase of his life Leonardo's genius unfolded to the full, in all its versatility and creatively powerful artistic and scientific thought, achieving that quality of uniqueness that called forth the awe and astonished admiration of his contemporaries. At the same time, in the boundlessness of the goals he set himself, Leonardo's genius bore the mark of the unattainable so that, if one traces the outlines of his lifework as a whole, one is tempted to call it a grandiose "unfinished symphony."

Painting and sculpture

As a painter Leonardo completed only six works in the 17 years in Milan: portraits of Cecilia Gallerani ("Lady with an Ermine") and a musician, an altar painting of "The Virgin of the Rocks" (two versions), a monumental wall painting of the "Last Supper" in the refectory of the monastery of Sta. Maria delle Grazie (1495-97), and the decorative ceiling painting of the Sala delle Asse in the Milan Castello Sforzesco (1498). Three other pictures that, according to old sources, Leonardo was commissioned to do have disappeared or were never done: a "Nativity" said to have belonged to Emperor Maximilian; a "Madonna" that Ludovico Sforza announced as a gift to the Hungarian king Matthias Corvinus; and the portrait of one of Ludovico's mistresses, Lucrezia Crivelli. Also unfinished was a grandiose sculptural project that seems to have been the real reason Leonardo was invited to Milan: a monumental equestrian statue in bronze to be erected in honour of Francesco Sforza, the founder of the Sforza dynasty. Leonardo devoted 12 years--with interruptions--to this task. Many sketches of it exist, the most impressive ones discovered only in the mid-20th century, when two of Leonardo's notebooks came to light again in Madrid. They reveal the sublimity but also the almost unreal boldness of his conception. In 1493 the clay model of the horse was put on open display on the occasion of the marriage of Emperor Maximilian with Bianca Maria Sforza, and preparations were made to cast the colossal figure, which was to be 16 feet (five metres) high--double the size of Verrocchio's equestrian statue of Bartolomeo Colleoni! But, because of the imminent danger of war, the metal, ready to be poured, was used for cannon instead, and so the project came to a halt. Ludovico's fall in 1499 sealed the fate of this abortive undertaking, which was

perhaps the grandest concept of a monument in the 15th century. The ravages of war left the clay model a heap of ruins.

As a master artist Leonardo maintained an extensive workshop in Milan, employing apprentices and students. The role of most of these associates is unclear. Their activity involves the question of Leonardo's so-called apocryphal works, in which the master collaborated with his assistants. Scholars have been unable to agree in their attributions of these works, which include such paintings as "La Belle Ferronnire" in the Louvre, the so-called "Lucrezia Crivelli" in the Pinacoteca Ambrosiana, Milan, and the "Madonna Litta" in the Hermitage, St. Petersburg (formerly Leningrad). Among Leonardo's pupils at this time were Giovanni Antonio Boltraffio, Ambrogio de Predis, Bernardino de' Conti, Francesco Napoletano, Andrea Solari, Marco d'Oggiono, and Salai.

Art and science: the notebooks

The Milan years also saw Leonardo's decided turn toward scientific studies. He began to pursue these systematically and with such intensity that they demanded more and more of his time and energy and developed into an independent realm of creative productivity. Within him there arose now a growing need to note and write down in literary form every one of his perceptions and experiences. It is a unique phenomenon in the history of art. Undoubtedly, the several treatises on art that appeared or were made available during those decades provided an external stimulus. Leon Battista Alberti's De re aedificatoria (Ten Books on Architecture) was first printed in 1485; Francesco di Giorgio's treatise on architecture was available in its first manuscript versions, and Leonardo had received a copy from the author as a gift. Moreover, Piero della Francesca in his De prospectiva pingendi ("On Perspective in Painting") had provided for his contemporaries a model text on the theory of perspective. Finally, there was the mathematician Lucas Pacioli, who had become an acquaintance of Leonardo's. In 1494 Pacioli published his Summa de arithmetica geometria proportioni et proportional it, followed by his Divina proportione ("On Divine Proportion"), for which Leonardo drew figures of symmetrical bodies. In this ambience Leonardo began to nourish the desire to write a theory of art of his own, and there arose in him the farreaching concept of a "science of painting." Alberti and Piero della Francesca had already offered proof of the mathematical basis of painting in their analysis of the laws of perspective and proportion and thereby buttressed painting's claim to being a science. But Leonardo's claims went much further. Proceeding from the basic conviction that sight is the human being's most unerring sense organ, yielding immediate, accurate, and reliable data of experience, Leonardo--equating "seeing" with "perceiving"--arrived at a bold conclusion: the painter, doubly endowed with subtle powers of perception and the complete ability to pictorialize them, was the prime person qualified to achieve knowledge by observing and to reproduce that knowledge authentically in a pictorial manner. Hence, Leonardo conceived the staggering plan of observing all objects in the visible world, recognizing their form and structure, and pictorially describing them exactly as they are. Thus, drawing became the chief instrument of his didactic method.

In the years between 1490 and 1495 the great program of Leonardo the writer (author of treatises) began. In it, four main themes, which were to occupy him for the rest of his life, could be discerned and gradually took shape: a treatise on painting, a treatise on architecture, a book on the elements of mechanics, and a broadly outlined work on human anatomy. His geophysical, botanical, hydrological, and aerological researches also belong to this period and constitute parts of the "visible cosmology" that loomed before Leonardo as a distant goal. Against speculative book knowledge, which he scorned, he set irrefutable facts gained from experience--from saper vedere. All these studies and sketches were written down in Leonardo's notebooks and on individual sheets of paper. Altogether they add up to thousands of closely written pages abundantly illustrated with sketches--the most voluminous literary legacy any painter has ever left behind. Of more than 40 codices mentioned in the older sources--often, of course, rather inaccurately--21 have survived; these in turn sometimes contain notebooks originally separate and now bound together so that 31 in all have been preserved. To these should be added several large bundles of documents: an omnibus volume in the Biblioteca Ambrosiana, Milan, called Codex Atlanticus because of its size, was collected by the sculptor Pompeo Leoni at the end of the 16th century; its sister volume, after a roundabout journey, fell into the possession of the English crown and was placed in the Royal Library, Windsor Castle. Finally there is the Arundel Manuscript (British Museum, MS. 263), which contains a number of Leonardo's fascicles on various themes. It was during his years in Milan that Leonardo began the earliest of these notebooks. He would first make quick sketches of his observations on loose sheets or on tiny paper pads he kept in his belt; then he would arrange them according to theme and enter them in order in the notebook. Surviving are a first collection of material for the painting treatise (MSS. A and B in the Institut de France, Paris), a model book of sketches for sacred and profane architecture (MS. B, Institut de France, Paris), the treatise on elementary theory of mechanics (MS. 8937, Biblioteca Nacional, Madrid), and the first sections of a treatise on the human body (Anatomical MS. B; Windsor Castle, Royal Library). Two special features make Leonardo's notes and sketches unusual: his use of mirror writing and the relationship between word and picture. Leonardo was left-handed; so mirror writing came easily and naturally to him. It should not be looked upon as a secret handwriting. Though somewhat unusual, his script can be read clearly and without difficulty with the help of a mirror--as his contemporaries testified. But the fact that Leonardo used mirror writing throughout, even in his fair copies drawn up with painstaking calligraphy, forces one to

conclude that, although he constantly addressed an imaginary reader in his writings, he never felt the need to achieve easy communication by using conventional handwriting. Yet occasional examples of normal handwriting (drafts of letters, notes, and comments to be submitted to third parties) show that Leonardo was completely at home in it. In the overwhelming majority of his notes in mirror writing, therefore, one gets the strong impression of "monologues in writing." Finally, then, his writings must be interpreted as preliminary stages of works destined for eventual publication, which Leonardo never got around to completing. In a sentence in the margin of one of his late anatomy sketches, he implores his followers to see that his works are printed. The second unusual feature in Leonardo's writings is the new function given to illustration vis--vis the text. Leonardo strove passionately for a language that was clear yet expressive. The vividness and wealth of his vocabulary were the result of intense self-study and represented a significant contribution to the evolution of scientific prose in the Italian vernacular. On the other hand, in his teaching method Leonardo gave absolute precedence to the illustration over the written word; hence, the drawing does not illustrate the text; rather, the text serves to explain the picture. In formulating his own principle of graphic representation--which he himself called dimostrazione ("demonstrations")--Leonardo was a precursor of modern scientific illustration. Thus, during Leonardo's years in Milan the two "action fields"--the artistic and the scientific-developed and shaped his future creativity. It was a kind of "creative dualism," with mutual encouragement but also mutual pressure from each field.

Second Florentine period (1500-06)

In December 1499 or at the latest January 1500--three months after the victorious entry of the French into Milan-Leonardo left that city in the company of Lucas Pacioli. He stopped first at Mantua, where, in February 1500, he drew a portrait of his hostess, Marchioness Isabella d'Este, and then proceeded to Venice (in March), where the Signoria (governing council) sought his advice on how to ward off a threatened Turkish incursion in Friuli. Leonardo recommended that they prepare to flood the menaced region. From Venice he returned to Florence, where, after a long absence, he was received with acclaim and honoured as a renowned native son. In that same year he was appointed an architectural expert to a committee investigating damages to the foundation and structure of the church of S. Francesco al Monte. A guest of the Servite order in the cloister of SS. Annunziata, Leonardo began there a cartoon for a painting of the "Virgin and Child with St. Anne," the composition of which won admiration from artists and art lovers of the city. He also painted (1501) a "Madonna with the Yarn-Winder," which has survived only in copies and which he probably never finished. Mathematical studies seem to have kept him away from his painting activity much of the time, or so Isabella d'Este, who sought in vain to obtain a painting done by him, was informed by Fra Pietro Nuvolaria, her representative in Florence. Only his omnivorous "appetite for life" can explain Leonardo's decision, in the summer of the following year (1502), to leave Florence and enter the service of Cesare Borgia as "senior military architect and general engineer." Borgia, the notorious son of Pope Alexander VI, had, as commander in chief of the papal army, sought with unexampled ruthlessness to gain control of the Papal States of Romagna and the Marches. Now he was at the peak of his power and, at 27, was undoubtedly the most compelling and at the same time most feared person of his time. Leonardo, twice his age, must have been fascinated by his personality. For 10 months he travelled across the condottiere's territories and surveyed them. In the course of his activity Leonardo sketched some of the city plans and topographical maps that laid the groundwork for modern cartography. At the court of Cesare Borgia, Leonardo also met Niccol Machiavelli, temporarily stationed there as a political observer for the city of Florence. In the spring of 1503 Leonardo returned to Florence to make an expert survey of a project for diverting the Arno River behind Pisa so that the city, then under siege by the Florentines, would be deprived of access to the sea. The plan proved unworkable, but Leonardo's activity led him to a much more significant theme, one that served peace rather than war; the project, first advanced in the 13th century and now again under consideration, was to build a large canal that would bypass the unnavigable stretch of the Arno and connect Florence by water with the sea. Leonardo developed his ideas in a series of studies; with panoramic views of the river bank, which are also landscape sketches of great artistic charm, and with exact measurements of the terrain, he produced a map in which the route of the canal (with its transit through the mountain pass of Serravalle) was shown. The project, considered time and again in subsequent centuries, was never carried out, but centuries later the express highway from Florence to the sea was built over the exact route Leonardo chose for his canal. That same year (1503), however, Leonardo also received a prized commission: to paint a mural for the Hall of the Five Hundred in Florence's Palazzo Vecchio; a historical scene of monumental proportions . For three years he worked on this "Battle of Anghiari"; like its intended complementary painting, Michelangelo's "Battle of Cascina," it remained unfinished. But the cartoon and the copies showing the main scene of the battle, the fight for the standard, were for a long time, to quote the sculptor Benvenuto Cellini, "the school of the world." These same years saw the portrait of "Mona Lisa" and a painting of a standing "Leda," which was not completed and has survived only in copies. The Florentine period was also, however, a time of intensive scientific study; Leonardo did dissections in the hospital of Sta. Maria Nuova and broadened his anatomical work into a comprehensive study of the structure and function of the human organism. He made systematic observations of the flight of birds, concerning which he planned a treatise. Even his hydrological studies, "on the nature and movement of water," broadened into research on the physical properties of water, especially the laws of currents, which he compared with those pertaining to air. These were also set down in his

own collection of data, contained in the so-called Leicester Codex in Holkham Hall, Norfolk, England.

Second Milanese period (1506-13)

Thus, during these years in Florence, Leonardo's productivity was also marked by his "creative dualism." Only sporadically did he work at his paintings. When, in May 1506, Charles d'Amboise, governor of the King of France in Milan, asked and was granted permission by the Signoria in Florence for Leonardo to go for a time to Milan, the artist had no hesitation about accepting the invitation. But what was originally a limited period of time became a permanent move under the stress of political circumstances. Florence let Leonardo go, and the monumental "Battle of Anghiari" remained unfinished. Unsuccessful technical experiments with paints seem to have impelled Leonardo to stop working on the mural. One cannot otherwise explain his abandonment of this great work--great both in conception and in realization. Leonardo spent six years in Milan, interrupted only by a six-month stay in Florence in the winter of 1507-08, where he helped the sculptor Giovanni Francesco Rustici execute his bronze statues for the Florence Baptistery but did not resume work on the "Battle of Anghiari." Honoured and admired by his patrons Charles d'Amboise and King Louis XII, who gave him a yearly stipend of 400 ducats, Leonardo never found his duties onerous. They were limited to advice in architectural matters, tangible evidence of which are plans for a palace-villa for Charles d'Amboise and perhaps also sketches for an oratory for the church of Sta. Maria alla Fontana, which Charles funded. Leonardo also looked into an old project revived by the French governor: the Adda canal that would link Milan with Lake Como by water. In Milan he did very little as a painter: two Madonnas, which he promised the King of France, were never painted. He continued to work on the paintings of the "Virgin and Child with St. Anne" and "Leda," which he had brought with him from Florence, as copies from the Lombard school of that period attest. Again Leonardo gathered pupils around him. With Ambrogio de Predis he completed a second version of "The Virgin of the Rocks" (1508), in the course of which protracted litigation between the purchasers and the artists had a happy ending. Of his older disciples, Bernardino de' Conti and Salai were again in his studio; new pupils came, among them Cesare da Sesto, Giampetrino, Bernardino Luini, and the young nobleman Francesco Melzi, Leonardo's most faithful friend and companion until his death. An important commission in sculpture came his way. Gian Giacomo Trivulzio had returned victoriously to Milan as marshal of the French army and a bitter foe of Ludovico Sforza. He commissioned Leonardo to sculpt his tomb, which was to take the form of an equestrian statue and be placed in the mortuary chapel donated by Trivulzio to the church of S. Nazaro Maggiore. But after years of preparatory work on the monument, for which a number of significant sketches have survived, the Marshal himself gave up the plan in favour of a more modest one; so this undertaking, too, remained unfinished. Leonardo must have felt keenly this second disappointment in his work as a sculptor. Compared with his almost cursory work in art, Leonardo's scientific activity flourished. His studies in anatomy achieved a new dimension in his collaboration with a famous anatomist from Pavia, Marcantonio della Torre. He outlined a plan for an overall work that would include not only exact, detailed reproductions of the human body and its organs but would also include comparative anatomy and the whole field of physiology. He even thought he would finish his anatomical manuscript in the winter of 1510-11. Beyond that, his manuscripts are replete with mathematical, optical, mechanical, geological, and botanical studies that must be understood as data for his "perceptual cosmology." This became increasingly actuated by a central idea: the conviction that force and motion as basic mechanical functions produce all outward forms in organic and inorganic nature and give them their shape and, furthermore, the recognition that these functioning forces operate in accordance with orderly, harmonious laws.

Last years (1513-19)

In 1513 political events--the temporary ouster of the French from Milan--caused the now 60-year-old Leonardo to move again. At the end of the year he went to Rome, accompanied by his pupils Melzi and Salai as well as by two studio assistants, hoping to find employment there through his patron, Giuliano de' Medici, brother of the new pope Leo X. Giuliano gave him a suite of rooms in his residence, the Belvedere, in the Vatican. He also gave him a considerable monthly stipend, but no large commissions came to him. For three years Leonardo remained in the Eternal City, off to one side, while Donato Bramante was building St. Peter's, Raphael was painting the last rooms of the Pope's new apartments, Michelangelo was struggling to complete the tomb of Pope Julius, and many younger artists such as Peruzzi, Timoteo Viti, and Sodoma were active there. Drafts of embittered letters betray the disappointment of the aging master who worked in his studio on mathematical studies and technical experiments or, strolling through the city, surveyed ancient monuments. A magnificently executed map of the Pontine Marshes (Royal Library, Windsor Castle; 12684) suggests that Leonardo was at least a consultant for a reclamation project that Giuliano de' Medici ordered in 1514. On the other hand, there were sketches for a spacious residence for the Medici in Florence, who had returned to power there in 1512. But this did not go beyond the stage of preliminary sketches and never came to pass. Leonardo seems to have resumed his friendship with Bramante, but the latter died in 1514. And there is no record of Leonardo's relations with any other artists in Rome. In a life of such loneliness, it is easy to understand why Leonardo, despite his 65 years, decided to accept the invitation of the young king Francis I to enter his service in France. At the end of 1516 he left Italy forever, together with his most devoted pupil, Francesco Melzi. Leonardo spent the last three years of his life in the small residence of Cloux (later called Clos-Luc), near the King's summer palace at Amboise on the Loire. Premier peintre, architecte et mchanicien du Roi ("first painter, architect, and mechanic of the King") was the proud title he bore; yet the admiring King left him complete freedom of action. He did no more painting or at most completed the painting of the enigmatic, mystical "St. John the

Baptist," which the Cardinal of Aragon, when he visited Amboise, saw in Leonardo's studio along with the "Mona Lisa" and the "Virgin and Child with St. Anne." For the King he drew up plans for the palace and garden of Romorantin, destined to be the widow's residence of the Queen Mother. But the carefully worked-out project, combining the best features of Italian-French traditions in palace and landscape architecture, had to be halted because the region was threatened with malaria. Leonardo still made sketches for court festivals, but the King treated him in every respect as an honoured guest. Decades later, Francis I talked with the sculptor Benvenuto Cellini about Leonardo in terms of the utmost admiration and esteem. Leonardo spent most of his time arranging and editing his scientific studies. The final drafts for his treatise on painting and a few pages of the anatomy appeared. Consummate drawings such as the "Floating Figure" (Royal Library, Windsor Castle; 12581) are the final testimonials to his undiminished genius. In the so-called "Visions of the End of the World," or "Deluge" (Royal Library, Windsor Castle), he depicts with overpowering pictorial imagination the primal forces that rule nature. Leonardo died at Cloux. He was laid to rest in the palace church of Saint-Florentin. But the church was devastated during the French Revolution and completely torn down at the beginning of the 19th century. Hence, his grave can no longer be located. Francesco Melzi fell heir to his artistic and scientific estate.

Analysis and evaluation of Leonardo's achievement Painting

Leonardo's total output in painting is really not large; only 17 of the paintings that have survived can be definitely attributed to him, and several of them are unfinished. Two of his most important works--the "Battle of Anghiari" and the "Leda," neither of them completed--have only survived in copies. Yet these few creations have established the unique fame of a man whom Vasari, in his Lives, dividing art history into three ages, placed in the last "golden age of the arts." His works, unaffected by all the vicissitudes of aesthetic doctrines in subsequent centuries, have stood out in all periods and all countries as consummate masterpieces of painting. The many testimonials to Leonardo, ranging from Vasari to Peter Paul Rubens, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, and Eugne Delacroix, make it unmistakably clear that it has been, above all, Leonardo's art of expression that has called forth the utmost admiration. It is, in fact, the core of his formation as a painter--from his earliest beginnings to his last work. This expression was nurtured by his power of invention but also by every technical means: drawing, colour, use of light and shadow. To Leonardo, expression became a key concept of art; it also included the basic demands of truth, beauty, and accuracy in everything depicted. What Leonardo was striving for was already revealed in his angel in Verrocchio's "Baptism of Christ" (c. 1474-75): in the natural structuring of the angel's body based on movement in several directions, in the relaxation of his attitude, and in his glance, which takes in what is occurring but at the same time is directed inward. In his landscape segment in the same picture, Leonardo also found a new expression for "nature experienced," in reproducing the forms he perceived as if through a veil of mist. The landscape study (Uffizi, Florence) dated 1473, a pen drawing, foreshadows in its treatment of transparent atmosphere by a 21-year-old his telling ability to transform perceived phenomena into convincing graphic forms. In the "Madonna Benois" (1478) Leonardo succeeded in giving an old traditional type of picture a new, unusually charming, and expressive mood by showing the child Jesus reaching for the flower in Mary's hand in a sweet and tender manner. His "Portrait of Ginevra de' Benci" (c. 1475-78) opened new paths for portrait painting with his singular linking of nearness and distance. The emaciated body of his "St. Jerome" (c. 1480) is presented with realistic truth based on his sober and objective studies in anatomy; gesture and look give Jerome an unrivalled expression of transfigured sorrow. The interplay of mimicry and gesture--"physical and spiritual motion," in Leonardo's words--is also the chief concern of his first large creation containing many figures, "The Adoration of the Magi" (1481). Never finished, the painting nevertheless affords rich insight into the master's subtle methods of work. The various aspects of the scene are "built up" from the base with very delicate, paper-thin layers of paint in chiaroscuro (the balance of light and shadow) relief. The main treatment of the Virgin and Child group and the secondary treatment of the surrounding groups are clearly set apart with a masterful sense of composition; yet thematically they are closely interconnected: the bearing and expression of the figures--most striking in the group of praying shepherds--depict all degrees and levels of profound amazement. "The Virgin of the Rocks" in its first version in the Louvre is the work that reveals Leonardo's painting art at its purest. The painting, according to Leonardo's first contract with the Confraternity of the Immaculate Conception, was to be the central panel of a large work for their chapel in the church of S. Francesco and was done in the years c. 1483-85. It never arrived, however, at the place it was originally destined for. It seems to have been prematurely taken from the Confraternity, perhaps by some highly placed interested party who removed it from Leonardo's workshop. Instead of this first painting, Leonardo and Ambrogio de Predis painted a second, slightly revised version, probably begun around 1494. This one gave rise to a 10-year litigation between the artist and the Confraternity regarding the price, a dispute that was not settled until 1506 in favour of Leonardo; whereupon, two years later, the painting was delivered as per contract. This

second version remained in the chapel of S. Francesco until the Confraternity was dissolved (1781), and then, after changing owners frequently, it came finally in 1880 to the National Gallery in London. "The Virgin of the Rocks" depicts the apocryphal legend of the meeting in the wilderness between the boy John and the equally young Jesus returning home from Egypt. Leonardo's artistry makes of this theme a vision that the true believer experiences when he contemplates the devotional picture. In the visionary character of the picture lies the secret of its effect: it presents not a "reality" but a "manifestation." Leonardo uses every artistic means at his disposal to emphasize the visionary nature of the scene. The soft colour tones (his famous sfumato), the dim light of the cave from which the figures emerge bathed in light, their quiet attitude, the meaningful gesture with which the angel (the only one facing the viewer) points to John as the intercessor between the Son of God and humanity--all this combines, in a patterned and formal way, to achieve an effect of the highest expressiveness.

The "Last Supper"

Leonardo's "Last Supper" is among the most famous paintings in the world. In its monumental simplicity, the composition of the scene is masterful; the power of its effect comes from the striking contrast in the attitudes of the 12 disciples as counterposed to Christ. Leonardo did not choose the portrayal of the traitor Judas customary in the iconographic tradition; he portrayed, rather, that moment of highest tension as related in the New Testament, "One of you which eateth with me will betray me." All of the Apostles--as human beings who do not understand what is about to occur--are agitated, whereas Christ alone, conscious of his divine mission, sits in lonely, transfigured serenity. Only one other being shares the secret knowledge: Judas, who is both part of and yet excluded from the movement of his companions; in this isolation he becomes the second lonely figure--the guilty one--of the company. In the profound conception of his theme, in the perfect yet seemingly simple arrangement of the individuals, in the temperaments of the Apostles highlighted by gesture and mimicry, in the drama and at the same time the sublimity of the treatment, Leonardo attained a height of expression that has remained a model of its kind. Untold painters in succeeding generations, among them great masters such as Rubens and Rembrandt, marvelled at Leonardo's composition and were influenced by it. The painting also inspired some of Goethe's finest pages of descriptive prose. It has become widely known through countless reproductions and prints, the most important being those produced by Raffaello Morghen in 1800. Thus, the "Last Supper" has become part of humanity's common heritage and remains today one of the world's outstanding paintings. Technical deficiencies in the execution of the work have not lessened its fame. Leonardo was uncertain about the technique he should use. He bypassed fresco painting, which, because it is executed on fresh plaster, demands quick and uninterrupted painting, in favour of another technique he had developed: tempera on a base mixed by himself on the stone wall. This procedure proved unsuccessful, inasmuch as the base soon began to be loosened from the wall. Damage appeared by the beginning of the 16th century, and deterioration soon set in. By the middle of the century the work was called a ruin. Later, inadequate attempts at restoration only aggravated the situation, and not until the most modern restoration techniques were applied after World War II was the process of decay halted.

The "Mona Lisa" and other works

In the Florence years between 1500 and 1506, four great creations appeared that confirmed and heightened Leonardo's fame: the "Virgin and Child with St. Anne" (Louvre), "Mona Lisa," "Battle of Anghiari," and "Leda." Even before it was completed, the "Virgin and Child with St. Anne" won the critical acclaim of the Florentines; the monumental plasticity of the group and the calculated effects of dynamism and tension in the composition made it a model that inspired Classicists and Mannerists in equal measure. The "Mona Lisa" became the ideal type of portrait, in which the features and symbolic overtones of the person painted achieved a complete synthesis. The young Raphael sketched the work in progress, and it served as a model for his "Portrait of Maddalena Doni." Similarly, the "Leda" became a model of the figura serpentinata ("sinuous figure")--that is, a figure built up from several intertwining views. It influenced such classical artists as Raphael, who drew it, but it had an equally strong effect on Mannerists such as Jacopo Pontormo. In the "Battle of Anghiari" (1503-06) Leonardo's art of expression reached its high point. The preliminary drawings-many of which have been preserved--reveal Leonardo's lofty conception of the "science of painting"; the laws of equilibrium that he had probed in his studies in mechanics were put to artistic use in this painting. The "centre of gravity" lies in the group of flags fought for by all the horsemen. For a moment the intense and expanding movement of the swirl of riders seems frozen; this passing moment, the transition from one active movement to the next, is uniquely interpreted. On the other hand, Leonardo's studies in anatomy and physiology influenced his representation of human and animal bodies, particularly when they were in a state of excitement. He studied and described extensively the baring of teeth and puffing of lips as signs of animal and human anger. On the painted canvas, rider and horse, their features distorted, are remarkably similar in expression. The highly imaginative trappings take the event out of the sphere of the historical into a timeless realm. Thus, the "Battle of Anghiari" became the standard model for a cavalry battle. Its composition has influenced many painters: from Rubens in the 17th century, who made the most impressive copy of the scene from Leonardo's now-lost cartoon, to Delacroix in

the 19th century.

Later painting and drawing

After 1507--in Milan, Rome, and France--Leonardo did very little painting. He did resume work on the Leda theme during his years in Milan and sketched a variation, the "Kneeling Leda." The drawings he prepared--revealing examples of his late style--have a curious, enigmatic sensuality. Perhaps in Rome he began the "St. John the Baptist," which he completed in France. Bursting all the boundaries of usual painting tradition, he presented Christ's forerunner as the herald of a mystic oracle; his was an "art of expression" that seemed to strive consciously to bring out the hidden ambiguity of the theme. The last manifestation of Leonardo's art of expression was in his "Visions of the End of the World," a series of pictorial sketches that took the end of the world as its theme. Here Leonardo's power of imagination--born of reason and fantasy-attained its highest level. The immaterial forces in the cosmos, invisible in themselves, appear in the material things they set in motion. What Leonardo had observed in the swirling of water and eddying of air, in the shape of a mountain boulder and in the growth of plants now assumed gigantic shape in cloud formations and rainstorms. The framework of the world splits asunder, but even its destruction occurs--as the monstrously "beautiful" forms of the unleashed elements show--in accordance with the self-same laws of order, harmony, and proportion that presided at its creation and that govern the life and death of every created thing in nature. Without any model, these "visions" are the last and most original expressions of Leonardo's art--an art in which his perception based on saper vedere seems to have come to fruition.

Sculpture

That Leonardo worked as a sculptor from his youth on is borne out by his own statements and those of other sources. In the introduction to his Treatise on Painting he gives painting precedence over sculpture in the hierarchy of the arts; yet he emphasizes that he practices both arts equally. A small group of generals' heads in marble and plaster, works of Verrocchio's followers, are sometimes linked with Leonardo because a lovely drawing on the same theme from his hand suggests such a connection. But the inferior quality of this group rules out an attribution to the master. Not a trace has remained of the heads of women and children that, according to Vasari, Leonardo modelled in clay in his youth. The two great sculptural projects to which Leonardo devoted himself wholeheartedly stood under an unlucky star; neither the huge, bronze equestrian statue for Francesco Sforza, on which he worked until 1494, nor the monument for Marshal Trivulzio, on which he was busy in the years 1506-11, were brought to completion. Leonardo kept a detailed diary about his work on the Sforza horse; it came to light with the rediscovery of the Madrid MS. 8936. Text and drawings both show Leonardo's wide experience in the technique of bronze casting but at the same time reveal the almost utopian nature of the project. He wanted to cast the horse in a single piece, but the gigantic dimensions of the steed presented insurmountable technical problems. Indeed, Leonardo remained uncertain of the problem's solution to the very end. The drawings for these two monuments reveal the greatness of Leonardo's concept of sculpture. Exact studies of the anatomy, movement, and proportions of a live horse--Leonardo even seems to have thought of writing a treatise on the horse--preceded the sketches for the monuments. Leonardo pondered the merits of two types, the galloping or trotting horse, and in both cases decided in favour of the latter. These sketches, superior in the suppressed tension of horse and rider to the achievements of Donatello's Gattamelata and Verrocchio's Colleoni sculptures, are among the most beautiful and significant examples of Leonardo's art. Unquestionably--as ideas--they exerted a very strong influence on the development of equestrian statues in the 16th century. A small bronze of a galloping horseman in Budapest is so close to Leonardo's style that, if not from his own hand, it must have been done under his immediate influence (perhaps by Giovanni Francesco Rustici). Rustici, according to Vasari, was Leonardo's zealous student and enjoyed his master's help in sculpting his large group in bronze of "St. John the Baptist Teaching" over the north door of the Baptistery in Florence. There are, indeed, discernible traces of Leonardo's influence in John's stance, with the unusual gesture of his upward pointing hand, and in the figure of the bald-headed Levite. Moreover, an echo of Leonardo's inspiration is unmistakable in the much-discussed and much-reviled wax bust of "Flora" in Berlin. It may have been made in France, perhaps in the circle of Rustici, who entered Francis I's service in 1528.

Architecture
Leonardo, who in a letter to Ludovico Sforza applying for service described himself as an experienced architect, military engineer, and hydraulic engineer, was concerned with architectural matters all his life. But his effectiveness was essentially limited to the role of an adviser. Only once--in the competition for the cupola of the Milan cathedral (148790)--did he actually consider personal participation; but he gave up this idea when the model he had submitted was returned to him. In other instances, his claim to being a practicing architect involved sketches for representative secular buildings: for the palace of a Milanese nobleman (around 1490), for the villa of the French governor in Milan (1507-08), and for the Medici residence in Florence (1515). Finally, there was his big project for the palace and garden of

Romorantin in France (1517-19). Especially in this last named, Leonardo's pencil sketches clearly reveal his mastery of technical as well as artistic architectural problems; the view in perspective (at Windsor Castle) gives an idea of the magnificence of the site. Leonardo was also quite active as a military engineer, beginning with the years of his stay in Milan. But no definite examples of his work can be adduced. Not until the discovery of the Madrid notebooks was it known that in 1504, sent probably by the Florence governing council, he stood at the side of the Lord of Piombino when the city's fortifications system was repaired and that Leonardo suggested a detailed plan for overhauling it. Finally, his studies for large-scale canal projects in the Arno region and in Lombardy show that he was also an expert in hydraulic engineering. But what really characterizes Leonardo's architectural studies and makes them stand out is their comprehensiveness; they range far afield and embrace every type of building problem of his time. Furthermore, there frequently appears evidence of Leonardo's impulse to teach: he wanted to collect his writings on this theme in a theory of architecture. This treatise on architecture--the initial lines of which are in MS. B (Institut de France, Paris), a model book of the types of sacred and profane buildings--was to deal with the entire field of architecture as well as with the theory of forms and construction and was to include such items as urbanism, sacred and profane building, and a compendium of the important individual elements (for example, domes, steps, portals, and windows). In the fullness and richness of their ideas, Leonardo's architectural studies offer an unusually wide-ranging insight into the architectural achievements of his epoch. Like a seismograph, his observations sensitively register all themes and problems. For almost 20 years he was associated with Bramante at the court of Milan and again met him in Rome in 1513-14; he was closely associated with such other distinguished architects as Francesco di Giorgio, Giuliano da Sangallo, Giovanni Antonio Amadeo, and Luca Fancelli. Thus, he was brought in closest touch with all of the most significant building undertakings of the time. Since Leonardo's architectural drawings extend over his whole life, they span precisely that developmentally crucial period--from the 1480s to the second decade of the 16th century--in which the principles of the classical style were formulated and came to maturity. That this genetic process can be followed in the ideas of one of the greatest men of the period lends Leonardo's studies their distinctive artistic value and their outstanding historical significance.

Science Science of painting

Notwithstanding Leonardo's abundant scientific activity, one must never lose sight of the fact that it was the intellectual output of a man who proudly and consciously felt himself an artist throughout his life. And he described himself as such. He first came in contact with science as an artist, in the task he set himself of writing a treatise on painting. Leonardo's famous book on painting, in the form known and read today, is not an original work by the master but a compilation of texts from various manuscripts by Leonardo, collected and arranged with loving care by his disciple and heir, Francesco Melzi. It is the Codex Urbinas Latinus 1270, now in the Vatican Library. It was prepared around 1540-50, but from its form one can see that it was still an unfinished rather than a completed manuscript. Many original texts known to exist are missing; whole sections of Leonardo's overall plan are not included. The first printed edition of the treatise in Melzi's version, omitting the long introductory chapter concerning the "pecking order" among the arts, appeared in a luxurious binding in 1651 in Paris, published by Raffaelo du Fresne with illustrations after drawings by Nicolas Poussin. The first complete edition of Melzi's text did not appear until 1817, published by Guglielmo Manzi in Rome. The two standard modern editions are that of Emil Ludwig, three volumes, Vienna, 1882 (with German translation); and that of A. Philip McMahon, Princeton, 1956, two volumes (facsimile of the Codex Urbinas and English translation). Leonardo's plan envisaged a much broader treatment of the theme, as his own allusions to it indicate. For, in addition to detailed practical instructions for painting and drawing, the treatise was to deal with every area involving the artist's perception and experience, which he could then convey as acquired criteria. Three main problems form the keynote of the work: the definition of painting as a science, which is briefly outlined above; the theory of the mathematical basis of painting--that is, geometry, perspective, and optics--with the systematic study of light and shadow, colour, and aerial perspective; and the theory of forms and functions in organic and inorganic nature, as they are explained and made comprehensible to the painter trained in saper vedere. This theory of the forms and functions of the visible world sought first of all to describe the animal world, including man; next it sought to include the plant world; finally it endeavoured to explain how such phenomena of inorganic nature as water and earth, air and fire came into being. In the drawings for the Treatise on Painting, extending from the earliest Milan period to the final years of Leonardo's life in France, the progressive broadening and deepening of the theme can be followed. Many drawings were placed by the side of the text, and some of them were coloured; many studies of nature that are admired as art works, such as the famous rain landscape (Windsor Castle; 12409) or the "Foliage" (Royal Library, Windsor Castle; 12431), can be identified as illustrations for the treatise. Manuscript C in the Institut de France, Paris, with its diagrams of the blending of lights and shadows, likewise represents a segment of this textbook. Leonardo's so-called grotesque heads are also closely linked with the treatise. They have often been erroneously described as caricatures; but actually, for the most part, they represent types and only occasionally individuals. They are variations of the human face in its gradations between the poles of the beautiful and ugly, the normal and abnormal, the dignified and vulgar. They are also related to anatomicalphysiological studies, in which old age--with wrinkled skin and bulging tendons--is contrasted with youth. Representation

of the human being was to be treated at length: his body, his proportions, his organs and their functions but also his attitudes in physical and spiritual movement. Here Leonardo's artistic and scientific aims intertwine.

Anatomical studies and drawing

Leonardo's anatomical studies are perhaps the best way of revealing the process by which, in Leonardo's mind, an increasing differentiation set in among his diverse spheres of interest; but it was a differentiation in which the seemingly divergent areas of study--likewise on a higher level--always remained interrelated. Thus, Leonardo's study of anatomy, originally pursued for his training as an artist, quickly grew into an independent area of research. As his sharp eye uncovered the structure of the human body, Leonardo became fascinated by the figura istrumentale dell' omo ("man's instrumental figure"), and he sought to probe it and present it as a creation of nature. The early studies dealt chiefly with the skeleton and muscles; yet even at the outset Leonardo combined anatomical with physiological researches. From observing the static structure, Leonardo proceeded to study the functions exercised by the individual parts of the body as they bring into play the organism's mechanical activity. This led him finally to the study of the internal organs; among them he probed most deeply into the brain, heart, and lungs as the "motors" of the senses and of life. He did practical work in anatomy on the dissection table in Milan, then in the hospital of Sta. Maria Nuova in Florence, and again in Milan and Pavia, where he received counsel and inspiration from the physician-anatomist Marcantonio della Torre. By his own admission he dissected 30 corpses in his lifetime, thus acquiring an astonishing range of experience on his own. This experience was distilled in the famous anatomical drawings, which are among the most significant achievements of Renaissance science. These drawings, among his dimostrazione, are based on a curious connection between natural and abstract representation; sections in perspective, reproduction of muscles as "strings" or the indication of hidden parts by dotted lines, and finally a specifically devised hatching system enable him to represent any part of the body in transparent layers that afford an "insight" into the organ. Here Leonardo's mastery of drawing proved most useful. The genuine value of these dimostrazione and their superiority to descriptive words--as Leonardo proudly emphasized--lay in the fact that they were able to synthesize a multiplicity of individual experiences at the dissecting table and make the data immediately and accurately visible. The effect is unlike that of all dead anatomical preparations; in this way the "live quality" of the organism is retained. This great picture chart of the human body was what Leonardo envisaged as a cosmografia del minor mondo ("cosmography of the microcosm"). From the advanced portions that have survived, it is apparent how much and how long it occupied his mind. And it provided the basic principles for modern scientific illustration. Leonardo has not sufficiently received his due in this domain. Thanks to a method of seeing that was peculiarly his own, he elevated the art of drawing into a means of scientific investigation and teaching of the highest quality.

Mechanics and cosmology

With Leonardo, mechanics also proceeds from artistic practice, with which he became quite familiar as an architect and engineer. Throughout his life Leonardo was an inventive builder; he was thoroughly at home in the principles of mechanics of his epoch and contributed in many ways to advancing them. His model book on the elementary theory of mechanics, which appeared in Milan at the end of the 1490s, was discovered in the Madrid Codex 8937. Its importance lay less in its description of specific machines or work tools than in its use of demonstration models to explain the basic mechanical principles and functions employed in building machinery. Leonardo was especially concerned with problems of friction and resistance. These elements--screw threads, gears, hydraulic jacks, swivelling devices, transmission gears, and the like--are described individually or in various combinations; and here, too, drawing takes precedence over the written word. As in his anatomical drawings, Leonardo develops definite principles of graphic representation--stylization, patterns, and diagrams--that guarantee a precise demonstration of the object in question. In the course of years his interest in pure mechanics merged increasingly with an interest in applied mechanics. Leonardo realized that the mechanical forces at work in the basic laws of mechanics operate everywhere in the organic and inorganic world. They determine animate and inanimate nature alike as well as man. Leonardo wrote on a page of his treatise on anatomy: See to it that the book of the principles of mechanics precedes the book of force and movement of man and the other living creatures, for only in that way will you be able to prove your statements. So, finally, "force" became the key concept for Leonardo; as virt spirituale ("spiritual property"), it shaped and ruled the cosmos. Wherever Leonardo probed the phenomena of nature, he recognized the existence of primal mechanical forces that govern the shape and function of the universe: in his studies on the flight of birds, in which his youthful idea of the feasibility of a flying apparatus took shape and led to exhaustive research into the element of air; in his studies of water, the vetturale della natura ("conveyor of nature"), in which he was as much concerned with the physical properties of water as with its laws of motion and currents; in his researches on the laws of growth of plants and trees as well as the geological structure of earth and hill formations; and finally in his observation of air currents, which evoked the image of the flame of a candle or the picture of a wisp of cloud and smoke. In his drawings, especially in his studies of whirlpools,

based on numerous experiments he undertook, Leonardo again found a stylized form of representation that was uniquely his own: this involved breaking down a phenomenon into its component parts--the traces of water or eddies of the whirlpool--yet at the same time preserving the total picture, analytic and synthetic vision. Thus, for all the separate individual realms of his knowledge, Leonardo's science offered a unified picture of the world: a cosmogony based on saper vedere. Its final wisdom is that all the workings of nature are subject to a law of necessity and a law of order that the Primo Motore, the divine "Prime Mover," created. "Marvelous is Thy justice, O Prime Mover! Thou hast seen to it that no power lacks the order and value of your necessary governance."

Leonardo as artist-scientist

As the 15th century expired, Scholastic doctrines were in decline, and humanistic scholarship was on the rise. Leonardo, however, was part of an intellectual circle that developed a third, specifically modern form of cognition. In his view the artist--as transmitter of the true and accurate data of experience acquired by visual observation--played a significant part. With this sense of the artist's high calling, Leonardo approached the vast realm of nature to probe its secrets. His utopian idea of transmitting in encyclopaedic form the knowledge thus won was still bound up with medieval Scholastic conceptions, but the results of his research were among the first great achievements of the thinking of the new age because they were based on the principle of experience in an absolutely new way and to an unprecedented degree. Finally, Leonardo, although he made strenuous efforts to teach himself and become erudite in languages, natural science, mathematics, philosophy, and history, as a mere listing of the wide-ranging contents of his library demonstrates, remained an empiricist of visual observation. But precisely here--thanks to his genius--he developed his own "theory of knowledge," unique in its kind, in which art and science form a synthesis. In the face of the overall achievements of Leonardo's creative genius, the question of how much he finished or did not finish becomes pointless. The crux of the matter is his intellectual force--self-contained and inherent in every one of his creations. This force has remained constantly operative to the present day.

Paintings

"The Annunciation" (c. 1472-77; Uffizi, Florence); "The Annunciation" (c. 1472-77; Louvre, Paris); "Madonna with the Carnation" (c. 1474; Alte Pinakothek, Munich); "Portrait of Ginevra de' Benci" (c. 1475-78; National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.); "Madonna Benois" (1478-after 1500; Hermitage, St. Petersburg); "St. Jerome" (c. 1480; Vatican Museums, Rome); "The Adoration of the Magi" (1481; Uffizi); "The Virgin of the Rocks" (c. 1483-85; Louvre); "The Musician" (c. 1490; Pinacoteca Ambrosiana, Milan); "Lady with an Ermine" ("Cecilia Gallerani"; c. 1490; Muzeum Narodowe, Krakw, Poland); "The Virgin of the Rocks" (1494-1508; National Gallery, London); "Last Supper" (1495-97; Sta. Maria delle Grazie, Milan); decoration of the Sala delle Asse (1498; Castello Sforzesco, Milan); "The Virgin and Child with St. Anne" (cartoon, c. 1499; National Gallery); "Virgin and Child with St. Anne" (c. 1501-12; Louvre); "Mona Lisa" ("La Gioconda"; 1503-06; Louvre); "St. John the Baptist" (before 1517; Louvre). Lost: "Madonna with the Yarn-Winder" (1501; best copy in the Duke of Buccleuch Collection, Boughton, Kettering); "Leda" (1503-06; best copy at Galleria Borghese, Rome); "Battle of Anghiari" (1503-06; copy at Palazzo Vecchio, Florence).

c. 1512

1452-1481
Leonardo in the Florence of the Medici

Medicean Florence: Lorenzothe Magnificent

Statesman, writer, and patron of the "tatesman, writer, and patron of the arts, Lorenzo de' Medici, lord of Florence (1469-92), was a key figure in 15th-century Italian political life and in humanist and Renaissance culture. When the pope cancelled the Medici bank concession in Rome, Lorenzo used public money to enlist the support of the wealthy middle classes and encouraged a radical revival of interest in philosophy, literature, and the visual arts. Crushing the conspiracy of the Pazzi family (1478), in which his brother Giuliano was murdered, Lorenzo consolidated his personal power. Aiming for a political balance between the Italian states, he ensured that the precept and example of the Florentine Renaissance spread to Rome, Venice, Milan, and Naples. The Careggi Academy, of which he was patron, and whose members included Ficino, Pico della Mirandola, and Politian, was the centre from which the concepts of Neo-Platonism were diffused throughout Europe.

Giovanni Delle Corniole (?), Portrait of Lorenzo Medici, late 14th-early 15th century, onyx cameo, Museo degli Argenti, Florence.

Stefano Bonsignori, Plan of Florence, 1483, Museo Storico Topografico Firenze Com'era, Florence. During this time the city of Florence was the most literate in Europe.

Leon Battista Alberti, Facade of Santa Maria Novella, Florence, completed in 1470. Classical architecture in Florence revived the use of inlaid marble in geometrical shapes.

Sandro Botticelli, Portrait of a Youth, (1470-77), detail with the medal of Cosimo Medici, Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence. Cosimo (1389-1464), known as pater patriae, was much concerned with business affairs and owned a notable collection of antique vases, carvings, cameos, "unicorn" horns, and other priceless artefacts. Lorenzo enriched the family collection with medals, antique statues, and objects of applied art.

Sandro Botticelli, The Birth of Venus, 1480, Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence. This painting, which derives its subject from Homeric literature, and from Ovid's Metamorphoses and Fasti, is a return to classical paganism, with allegorical overtones.

Patrons and workshops

The Chronicles of Benedetto Dei tell us that in about 1472 Florence boasted the presence of 40 workshops devoted to painting, 44 to goldsmithery, 50 to engraving in relief and half-relief, and more than 80 to inlaid and carved woodwork. A city bustling with commerce, Florence profited from the building fervor of Cosimo's day, and developed a culture exemplified by the products of workshops and corporations that found a market beyond the immediate region and were also exported abroad. There was a demand not only for painting and sculpture but also for goldsmiths' work, coffers, banners, stained-glass, miniatures, carvings, marquetry, wax ex votos, furniture, decorations for fireplaces and basins, wool and silk materials, leather and ceramics. The shops produced both objects of general everyday use and expensive specialized articles, publicly or privately commissioned: as well as the lords of the city, patrons included families known locally for their generosity, like the Tornabuoni, the Strozzi, the Sassetti, the Portinari, and the Vespucci.

Monte di Giovanni, St Zenobius, mosaic from the crypt of Santa Maria del Fiore, 1496, Museo dell'Opera del Duomo, Florence.

Maso di Bartolomeo, Reliquary of the Sacro Cingolo Chapel, 1446, Museo dell'Opera del Duomo, Prato. This object reproduces on a small scale the putti of Donatello's Cantoria in Florence, effectively demonstrating the successful application of Donatello's style to cabinet work and tapestry. Florentine 15th-century Cupboard, inlaid walnut, Home Museum, Florence. Production of cupboards in the following century moved from Florence to Liguria.

Donatello, The Head of Goliath, detail of the David, controversially dated 1430 to 1450, Bargello, Florence, formerly in the centre of the courtyard of the Medici Palace, built by Cosimo in 1444, in the Via Larga. The sallet of the helmet is decorated with a triumphal scene, worked in onyx, showing Bacchus and Ariadne. Luca della Robbia, Madonna of the Rose Garden, Bargello, Florence. The workshop founded by Luca della Robbia operated until the end of the century on something approaching an industrial scale.

1482-1499
At the court of Ludovico il Moro

The letter

Leonardo, who was received in Milan as cultural ambassador of the Signory of Florence, sent Duke Ludovico a letter of introduction that listed his abilities and his extraordinary range of interests. The dukedom was going through a period of expansion and appeared to offer him opportunities he could not realize in Florence. Skilled in the crafts of peace and war, he enumerated ten points that qualified him as an engineer of war machinery and a technical adviser: a builder of "very light and strong" bridges, "cannon, mortars, and light ordnance, of very beautiful and useful shapes, quite different from those in common use", "armored cars, safe and unassailable". He only casually mentioned his artistic talents "in the construction of buildings both public and private", painting and "sculpture in marble, bronze, or clay". The letter concluded by offering to build the equestrian monument to the head of the "illustrious house of Sforza", Francesco.

Leonardo da Vinci, Lute Made from a Horse's Skull, Manuscript B, Institut de France, Paris.

Leonardo da Vinci, Rain of Cannonballs, Codice Atlantico, Biblioteca Ambrosiana, Milan.

Leonardo da Vinci, Study of Hydraulic Instruments, c.1482, Codice Atlantico, Biblioteca Ambrosiana, Milan. The Codice Atlantico, the most comprehensive collection known of Leonardo's manuscripts - 550 of them assembled into a single volume in the late 16th century - covers forty years' work on mechanics, mathematics, astronomy, physical geography, botany, chemistry, and anatomy.

1500-1508

The return to Florence

The republic of Savonarola

When Leonardo returned to Tuscany, Florence was no longer ruled by the Medici. On the death of Lorenzo (1492) the invasion of Italy by Charles VIII upset the balance of power among the Italian states. In Florence, after Lorenzo the Magnificent's son had been expelled, a Republic was proclaimed led by the Dominican monk from Ferrara, Girolamo Savonarola, previously invited by Lorenzo at the request of Pico della Mirandola. The ensuing period of social and moral austerity determined new directions in the arts: a new genre of sacred painting took hold, as practised by Lorenzo di Credi, Perugino, Mariotto Albertinelli, and Fra Bartolomeo. The late style of Botticelli also reflected the penitential overtones of the "bonfire of the vanities": abandoning his classical manner, the painter turned with growing emotionalism to religious and allegorical subjects, breaking up compositional rhythms and exaggerating figurative gestures. Excommunicated by Alexander VI Borgia in 1497 as "the instrument of the devil and ruin of Florence", Savonarola was burned at the stake the following year in the Piazza della Signoria. The event is commemorated by a pavement inscription.

Giovanni delle Corniole, Savonarola, Museo degli Argenti, Pitti Palace, Florence.

Anonymous 19th-century artist, from a late 15th-century painting, The Execution of Savonarola, Galleria Corsini, Florence. Among Savonarola's writings were the poems De ruina mundi (1472) and De ruina ecdesiae (1475), the Trattato divoto e utile delle umilta (1491), the Trattato dello amore di Cristo (1492), the Libra delta vita viduale (1495), and the Triumphus crucis, published in Latin and in the vernacular (1497).

Mariotto Albertinelli, Crucifixion, 1506, Certosa del Galluzzo, Florence. A pupil of Cosimo Rosselli, Mariotto ran a workshop with Fra Bartolomeo from whom he derived his taste for classical monumentality. The feeling for symmetry, the grandeur of scale, and the sensitivity to color link him to Perugino and Piero di Cosimo.

Sandro Botticelli, Pieta, c.1495, Alte Pinakothek, Munich. This painting, from the Florentine church of San Paolino, is an example of the tendency of the late Botticelli to overemphasize the gestures and expressions of his figures; by this time the influence of Savonarola had alienated Botticelli from Neo-Platonic and humanist culture.

Fra Bartolomeo, Tondo of Madonna and Child, Private Collection. A prime exponent of (he High Renaissance pictorial style in Florence, Baccio della I'orta, known as Fra Hartolomeo, inherited Irom Leonardo a talent lor harmoniously intertwined figures. A devoted follower of the deas of Savonarola, and Irom 1500 a Dominican friar, he then formed a workshop with Albertinelli, modelling his work on Roman ind Venetian examples.

1508-1513
The Milan of Charles d'Amboise

The years of French domination

The cultural and political ambition of Charles d'Amboise, Count of Chaumont and governor of Milan on behalf of the French king Louis XII, heralded a revival of the golden age of patronage associated with Ludovico il Moro. As a sign of continuity with the Sforza tradition, Charles requested Pietro Soderini, gonfalonier (chief magistrate) of the Florentine Republic, to invite Leonardo to Milan, where he spent the years 1508 to 1513. Involved in the plans for Santa Maria alia Fontana, he designed for the governor a suburban villa with gardens and water displays. He painted a Madonna and Child for King Louis, supervised the second version of the Virgin of the Rocks, and created his highly original St John, on the precedent of his Florentine Angel of the Annunciation. He made studies for the Trivulzio Monument, and pursued his research into subjects that had always occupied his mind, codifying and arranging his notes on a broad range of scientific topics.

Francesco de' Tatti, The Crucifixion of the Bosto Polyptych, 1517, detail, Sforza Castle, Milan. This provincial painter, with his robust, immediate style and folkloric approach, provides some interesting military detail in the background to this scene, notably the outlines of the Sforza Castle and troops of the French army. The French, who had conquered the duchy in 1499, ruled until 1513 when they were overthrown briefly by Massimiliano Sforza, son of il Moro.

King Louis XII and his wife Anne of Brittany were portrayed by the French medallistLeclerc. The bronze medals, belonging to the Carrand Collection, are today housed in the Museo Nazionale, Florence.

Andrea Solario, Portrait of Charles d'Amboise, after 1507, Musee du Louvre, Paris. Summoned to the court of the French king (1507), the Lombard painter applied lessons learned from Leonardo. The thematic choice of landscape, the rhythmical handling of space, and the psychological interpretation of the subject were modelled upon Antonello and the Flemish school, still strongly rooted in local tradition.

Giovan Gerolamo Savoldo, Portrait of a Gentleman in Armour (traditionally identified as Gaston de Foix), c.1510-20, Musee du Louvre, Paris, from the royal collections at Fontainebleau. The nephew of Louis XII, and the king's deputy in Lombardy, the valiant young commander, fought against the armies of the Holy League brought together by Pope Julius II. He was killed at the victorious battle of Ravenna in 1512.

The Trivulzio Monument

From 1508 to 1510 Leonardo made plans for the monument to be erected in the Trivulzio Mausoleum in San Nazaro, Milan, in memory of Marshal Gian Giacomo Trivulzio. The commission was never completed, and all that is left is a series of drawings embodying new ideas for representing the heroic theme of the horse and the man on horseback, previously addressed in the Adoration of the Magi, the Sforza Monument, and the Battle of Anghiari. While tackling the problems that this project entailed, Leonardo returned to the never-realized idea of a Treatise of the Horse. Alongside the naturalistic and scientific studies of equine anatomy, poses, and attitudes, were sketches modelled upon the subjects depicted on antique coins and jewels remembered from the Medici collections in Florence, and consonant with the heroic and celebratory nature of the subject in hand.

Interior of the Trivulzio Mausoleum, built after 1512 by Bramante.

Leonardo da Vinci, Studies for the Equestrian Monument, 1508-10, Royal Library, Windsor. A kind of "cinematic design", these sketches show the varied movement and rhythm of the horse. Sometimes Trivulzio was depicted as an ancient hero, nude, with his cloak swirling in the wind.

Leonardo da Vinci, Rearing Horse, 1503-04, Royal Library, Windsor. The opportunity to revive a sculptural project abandoned years before led Leonardo to look afresh at themes that had already interested him in the latter years of the 15th century.

Leonardo da Vinci, Study for an Equestrian Monument, 1510-12,

Royal Library, Windsor. Underneath the group there is an arch of triumph in the antique style.

Leonardo da Vinci Study of horses 1504-06 Red chalk on paper Royal Library, Windsor

Leonardo da Vinci, Studies for the Equestrian Monument, 1508-10, Royal Library, Windsor. Four prisoners were envisaged by the sides of the tomb, as in the sepulchre of Julius II.

Leonardo da Vinci, Study for the Trivulzio monument 1508-12 Pen, ink and red chalk on paper Royal Library, Windsor

Leonardo da Vinci, Equestrian monument 1517-18 Black chalk on paper Royal Library, Windsor

1513-1519
The last years: Rome and France

Leonardo in Rome

Possibly already residing in Rome at the time of Cesare Borgia (1502-03) and under the pontificate of Julius II (1504-05), Leonardo returned to the papal city between 1513 and 1516 when Giuliano, duke of Nemours, brother of Leo X, offered him protection. In this deeply intellectual and creative milieu, artists could meet notable figures such as Pacioli, Bramante, Giocondo da Verona, Giuliano da Sangallo, and Raphael. Leonardo's work, however, remained confined to an almost private circle: having completed the De ludo geometrico, he studied Archimedes, drew up plans for the drainage of the Pontine Marshes, completed a drawing of the Villa Adriana at Tivoli, and submitted plans for the gate of Civitavecchia. There is no trace of the two small pictures of the Roman period mentioned by Vasari. His studies of military architecture continued: in Latium he familiarized himself with the most recent defensive works, the fortresses of Ostia, Nettuno, and Civita Castellana.

Leonardo da Vinci, Study of Dancing Figures, c.1515, Gallerie dell'Accademia, Venice.

Leonardo da Vinci, Scheme for the Draining of the Pontine Marshes, 1514-15, Royal Library, Windsor. In 1515 Giuliano obtained from his brother, the pope, possession of this flooded area.

Leonardo da Vinci, Studies for Civitavecchia, Codice Atlantico, c.1514, Biblioteca Ambrosiana, Milan. From 1508 Bramante was occupied with the harbor structures of Civitavecchia, in particular the defensive system and the dockyard. On Bramante's death, Leonardo was invited to the city (1513-14); this drawing may have aimed to re-evoke a harbor city of antiquity based on the configuration to be found on Roman coins. Initiated under Julius II, the reconstruction of the fortress was continued by Giuliano da Sangallo, on the initiative of Leo X, and was subsequently completed by Michelangelo.

Leonardo da Vinci Map of Tuscany and the Chiana Valley c.1502 Black chalk, pen, ink and colour on paper Royal Library, Windsor

Giovanni Antonio Dosio, View of the Courtyard of the Belvedere, Gabinetto dei Disegni e delle Stampe, Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence. Leonardo lived in the Vatican where Pope Leo X had given him an apartment. With Giuliano de' Medici Leonardo went to Parma (1514) and Florence (1515) where he worked on restoration plans around San Lorenzo and in the Medici Palace.

The High Renaissance & Mannerism

(Renaissance Art Map)

collection:

MICHELANGELO

Michelangelo (Buonarroti)
(b Caprese, ?6 March 1475; d Rome, 18 Feb 1564). Italian sculptor, painter, draughtsman and architect. The elaborate exequies held in Florence after Michelangelos death celebrated him as the greatest practitioner of the three visual arts of sculpture, painting and architecture and as a respected poet. He is a central figure in the history of art: one of the chief creators of the Roman High Renaissance, and the supreme representative of the Florentine valuation of disegno. As a poet and a student of anatomy, he is often cited as an example of the universal genius supposedly typical of the period. His professional career lasted over 70 years, during which he participated in, and often stimulated, great stylistic changes. The characteristic most closely associated with him is terribilita, a term indicative of heroic and awe-inspiring grandeur. Reproductions of the Creation of Adam from the Sistine Chapel Ceiling (Rome, Vatican) or the Moses from the tomb ofJulius II (Rome, S Pietro in Vincoli) have broadcast an image of his art as one almost exclusively expressive of superhuman power. The man himself has been assimilated to this image and represented as the archetype of the brooding, irascible, lonely and tragic figure of the artist. This popular view is drastically oversimplified, except in one respect: the power and originality of his art have guaranteed his prominence as a historical figure for over 400 years since his death, even among those who have not liked the example he gave. For such different artists as Gianlorenzo Bernini, Eugne Delacroix and Henry Moore, he provided a touchstone of integrity and aesthetic value. Although his reputation as a poet has not been so high, his poetry has been praised by such diverse figures as William Wordsworth (17701850) and Eugenio Montale (18961981).

MICHELANGELO: "CREATION OF ADAM"

1508-12 vault of the Sistine Chapel, Vatican City

Michelangelo painted the frescos for the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel (built by Pope Sixtus IV) between
May 1508 and October 1512. They were commissioned by Pope Julius II. who wished to compensate Michelangelo for a previously abandoned project. The Creation of Adam is one of nine central panels in the highest part of the vault. Alternately small and large, these panels depict the main stories from the book of Genesis. This large fresco measures 4.8 by 2.3 metres. It is the fourth in the series but was among the last to be completed. The scene illustrates God suffusing Adam, his new creation, with the gift of life. He extends His forefinger to touch that ol Adam. The "paternal right hand" (papal hymn Veni Creator Spiritus) of God transfers immense power to the waking "first man". God's index finger points with authority and definition, while Adam, who is not yet hilly alive, can barely lift his hand. The might of God is confirmed in his stern gaze, fixed on Adam, who in contrast looks awe-struck and submissive.

The composition is based on a rectangular layout, which can he roughly divided into two squares. The right-hand side is dedicated to the Creator, and the left to Adam. The name Adam is derived from the Hebrew word for "ground", and the figure rests on a stable, triangular area of barren earth. God, in the other section, is borne aloft by angels, and surrounded by dramatic swirls of fine cloth. The empty sky in the centre of the picture is important, as it provides the background to the joining of the two hands, the point of communication and the focal point of the painting. It emphasizes the division between the infinite power and divinity of God and the finite world of man, his creation.

There is a symmetry and a connection between the two figures that is fundamental to the work. This can be shown by long, gently curved lines joining the figures. The main line follows the curve of the arms, passes through the bauds, and joins the shoulders. The eyes of God gaze directly into those of Adam, and the bodies and limbs of the two figures are also linked along parallel planes. The viewer's eye is directed from right to left and back again, in a pendulum-like arc, which creates subtle associations and references between the two figures in what is almost an illusion of curved space. The Creation and the Last Judgment are the two situations in which the mystery of contact between humankind and Creator can be contemplated. Here, the artist has approached the enigma of this subject and given it form.

Michelangelo was clearly intent on adhering strictly to the story in Genesis, to which the nine central panels of the ceiling in the Sistine Chapel are dedicated: "So Cod created man in his image, in the image of God he created them " (Gen. 1:27). Michelangelo's representation of the Creation of Adam perfectly encapsulates these words. The physical forms of the two figures are the same, their strong, well-muscled physiques precisely depicted- Michelangelo made numerous life studies for this scene- with a careful use of light and shade. The dolled lines showing the centre of gravity of the bodies flow in the same direction, as do the lines along the lower edges of the bodies. Positioned in this way, the divine form is convex and the human concave, almost as if the imprint of God is being transferred to man.

Much has been said about the contact that is about to lake place between the two index fingers. There is almost a spark between them, as if a transmission of energy is taking place. The divine breath of life is translated into physical contact, or, more exactly, virtual contact. Between the two fingers lies the love of the Father for his creation, and, simultaneously, the unbridgeable gap between the divine and the human. The impression of a current flowing through the arms is produced by the undulating line connecting the bodies through the arms. The power and life that flow from Cod's finger recall the words of a papal hymn: "Thou... Finger of the paternal right band... Pour thy love into our hearts. Strengthen us infirm of body...." Michelangelo's pupil Ascanio Condivi said: "Where Cod is seen with his arm and band extended, He is almost giving Adam the rules of what he should or should not do."

Michelangelo has endowed Adam with a perfect anatomical form, one that epitomizes the glory of the Renaissance figure. The muscular, rigorous body encapsulates bulb strength and elegance. In accordance with Genesis, Michelangelo has directly modelled the figure of Adam on that of God: his hands and legs mirror those of the father. Chiaroscuro is very important in this painting, and the quality of the modelling reaches heights of great excellence. This is in spite of the limitations of the medium -shading and, above all, glazing were particularly difficult to achieve in fresco work. Recent restoration of the chapel has revealed that the colours used were strong, varied, and surprisingly bright. Vasari described Michelangelo as the climax of a gradual evolution since Giotto.

PROPHETS AND SIBYLS IN THE SISTINE CHAPEL Michelangelo's decoration of the Sistine Chapel between 1508 and 1512 involved a wide variety of images, the sources and interpretation of
which are still debated. Scenes from Genesis, the Old Testament prophets and sibyls (female seers), and the ancestors of Christ record the Creation of mankind and the road to salvation initiated by the Jewish people and completed in Christ's Incarnation. There are also clear allusions to the role of the Church and the Papacy at a time of great difficulties for the ruling pope. Michelangelo's composition uses classical architectural elements to frame episodes and support the figures. Particularly imposing and colourful are the sibyls and the prophets. As Vasari wrote: "These figures...are shown in varied attitudes, wearing a variety of vestments and beautiful draperies; they are all executed with marvellous judgment, and invention, and they appear truly inspired to whoever studies their attitudes and expressions." These attributes of Renaissance painting - variety, invention, and expressiveness - led to the creation of powerful characters that would have an impact on all subsequent art.

The Delphic Sibyl

1509

MICHELANGELO'S SLAVES
In 1505, Pope Julius II summoned Michelangelo to Rome to work on his tomb, an ambitious scheme for a magnificent monument to be placed in the old St Peter's. Over time, the plans for the project were repeatedly modified, and many of the sculptures for the work were never completed: the artist himself spoke of ''the tragedy of the tomb".

Michelangelo's Slaves, which were to be placed under a group of Victories, were completed in two stages; the first in 1512 to 1513
(presently in the Louvre, Paris) and the second in about 1532 (in the Accademia in Florence). These figures, which emerge out of the stone as if they are trying to escape from it, representMichelangelo's expression of ideal form recovered by "freeing" the figures from the marble. The unfinished state of these figures has led to many symbolic meanings being given to their dramatic forms. They were subsequently acquired by Duke Cosimo I, who had them installed in a grotto in the Boboli Gardens.

Slave "Crossed-Leg"
Captive, 1530-34

"And the Lord God Called unto Adam, and Said unto Him, Where Art Thou?"
Michelangelo recreates man

And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.... And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul. Genesis (1:26-27,2:7); heading: Genesis (3:9)

Michelangelo was born in Florence in 1475. As a boy of thirteen he was apprenticed to the workshop of the painter Domenico Ghirlandaio (14491494). There his talent was discovered and furthered by Lorenzo de' Medici, a great lover and patron of the arts. As a young man Michelangelo was allowed to live in the Medici palace as a guest, where he could study the ancient statues in the garden and was instructed by the ruler, Lorenzo, himself. However, by the time he reached the age of eighteen, that was not enough for Michelangelo Buonarroti. How was a sculptor to represent a human body in motion without knowing how the muscles functioned under the skin? He wished to study anatomy, but he needed corpses to do so. He knew he would not be admitted into a charnel house, as it went against his contemporaries' sense of propriety and moral principles. The popular American novelist Irving Stone whose book about Michelangelo, The Agony and the Ecstasy (1961), was a bestseller allowed chance to drop a key into his hero's hands: the key to the hospital of Santo Spirito. Eagerly, yet terrified of being caught, he set to work at night. By the flickering light of a candle, he carefully dissected corpses to study the way muscles were formed and how they worked, how the spinal column was arranged and where the organs were located. Without empirical observation and active study, no matter how he may have gone about it, Michelangelo would never have become the model that he has been for subsequent generations of artists. Nor would he have been revered in his own lifetime as a sculptor, a painter, a writer of profoundly moving sonnets and a thinker in the Platonic mould. To him the idea, the conception of a work of art and this was especially true of sculpture was latent in the material, waiting to be recognised by the artist and wrested from it in the creative process. Michelangelo's Creation of Adam is surely one of the most sublime portrayals of man ever achieved. On 10 May 1508 Michelangelo began to work on this fresco on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican. Initially he had misgivings about accepting the commission because he viewed himself primarily as a sculptor. He suffered agonies while painting the Sistine ceiling, as his contemporary, Giorgio Vasan, sympathetically relates: "From keeping his head bent back for months on end to paint the vaulted ceiling, he ruined his eyes so that he was no longer able to read even a letter and could not look at any object without holding it up above his head." But that was not all. Michelangelo, then thirty-five years old, had to placate his sixty-seven-year-old patron, Pope Julius II, who "was of an impatient, choleric temperament and could not wait until the work was finished". By 31 October 1512, Julius II was finally able to marvel at the completed fresco, with its over 300 figures. K. Reichold, B. Graf

The High Renaissance

Renaissance Art Map Michelangelo (Encyclopaedia Britannica)

Introduction The middle years The Medici Chapel The last decades Sistine Chapel The Last Judgement

Drawings and Architectural works

Michelangelo Buonarroti
Encyclopaedia Britannica

born March 6, 1475, Caprese, Republic of Florence [Italy] died Feb. 18, 1564, Rome, Papal States

in full Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni Italian Renaissance sculptor, painter, architect, and poet who exerted an unparalleled influence on the development of Western art.

I Michelangelo was considered the greatest living artist in his lifetime, and ever since then he has been held to be one of the greatest artists of all times. A number of his works in painting, sculpture, and architecture rank among the most famous in existence. Although the frescoes on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel (Vatican) are probably the best known of his works today, the artist thought of himself primarily as a sculptor. His practice of several arts, however, was not unusual in his time, when all of them were thought of as based on design, or drawing. Michelangelo worked in marble sculpture all his life and in the other arts only at certain periods. The high regard for the Sistine ceiling is partly a reflection of the greater attention paid to painting in the 20th century and partly, too, of the fact that it, unlike many of the artist's works in the other media, was completed. A side effect of Michelangelo's fame in his lifetime was that his career was more fully documented than that of any artist of the time or earlier. He was the first artist whose biography was published while he was alive, and there were two rival biographies. The first was the final chapter in the series of artists' lives (1550) by the painter and architect Giorgio Vasari. It was the only chapter on a living artist and explicitly presented Michelangelo's works as the culminating perfection of art, surpassing the efforts of all those before him. Despite such an encomium, Michelangelo was not entirely pleased and arranged for his assistant Ascanio Condivi to write a brief separate book (1553); probably based on the artist's own spoken comments, this account shows him as he wished to appear. After Michelangelo's death Vasari in a second edition (1568) offered a rebuttal. While scholars have often preferred the authority of Condivi, Vasari's lively writing, the importance of his book as a whole, and its frequent reprintingin many languages have made it the most usual basis of popular ideas. Michelangelo's fame also led to the preservation of countless mementos, including hundreds of letters, sketches, and poems, again more than of any contemporary. Yet despite the enormous benefit that has accrued from all this, in controversial matters often only Michelangelo's side of an argument is known.

Early life and works

Michelangelo Buonarroti was born to a family that had for several generations been small-scale bankers in Florence but had in the case of the artist's father failed to maintain its status. The father had only occasional government jobs, and at the time of Michelangelo's birth he was administrator of the small dependent town of Caprese. A few months later, however, the family returned to its permanent residence in Florence. It was something of a downward social step to become an artist, and Michelangelo became an apprentice relatively late, at 13, perhaps after overcoming his father's objections. He was apprenticed to the city's most prominent painter, Domenico Ghirlandajo, for a three-year term, but he left after one year, having (Condivi recounts) nothing more to learn. Several drawings, copies of figures by Ghirlandajo and older great painters of Florence, Giotto and Masaccio, survive from this stage; such copying was standard for apprentices, but few examples are known to survive. Obviously talented, he was taken under the wing of the ruler of the city,

Lorenzo de' Medici, known as the Magnificent. Lorenzo surrounded himself at table with poets and intellectuals, and Michelangelo was included. More important, he had access to the Medici art collection, which was dominated by fragments of ancient Roman statuary. (Lorenzo was not such a patron of contemporary art as legend has made him; such modern art as he owned was to ornament his house or make political statements.)

Entombment c. 1510 Tempera on wood, 159 x 149 cm National Gallery, London

The Holy Family with the infant St. John the Baptist c. 1506 Tempera on panel, diameter 120 cm Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence

View of the Chapel Cappella Paolina, Palazzi Pontifici, Vatican

The Conversion of Saul 1542-45 Fresco, 625 x 661 cm Cappella Paolina, Palazzi Pontifici, Vatican

Martyrdom of St Peter 1546-50 Fresco, 625 x 662 cm Cappella Paolina, Palazzi Pontifici, Vatican
IV

The middle years

After the success of the David in 1504 Michelangelo's work consisted almost entirely of vast projects. He was attracted to these ambitious tasks while at the same time rejecting the use of assistants, so that most of these projects were impractical and remained unfinished. In 1504 he agreed to paint a huge mural for the Florence city hall to form a pair with another just begun by Leonardo. Both murals recorded military victories by the city, but each also gave testimony to the special skills of the city's much vaunted artists; Leonardo's design shows galloping horses, Michelangelo's active nudessoldiers stop swimming and climb out of a river to answer an alarm. Both works survive only in copies and partial preparatory sketches. In 1505 the artist began work on a planned set of 12 marble Apostles for the Florence cathedral, of which only one, the St. Matthew, was even begun. Its writhing ecstatic motion for the first time shows the full blend of Leonardo's fluid organic movement with his own monumental power. This is also the first of Michelangelo's unfinished works that have fascinated later observers. His figures seem to suggest that they are fighting to emerge from the stone. This would imply that their incomplete state was intentional, yet he undoubtedly did want to complete all of the statues. He did, however, write a sonnet about how hard it is for the sculptor to bring the perfect figure out of the block in which it is potentially present. Thus, even if the works remained unfinished due only to lack of time and other external reasons, their condition, nonetheless, reflects the artist's intense feeling of the stresses inherent in the creative process. Pope Julius II's call to Michelangelo to come to Rome spelled an end to both of these Florentine projects. The Pope sought a tomb for which Michelangelo was to carve 40 large statues. Recent tombs had been increasingly grand, including those of two popes by the Florentine sculptor Antonio Pollaiuolo, those of the doges of Venice, and the one then in work for Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I. Pope Julius had an ambitious imagination, parallel to Michelangelo's, but because of other projects, such as the new building of St. Peter's and his military campaigns, he evidently became disturbed soon by the cost. Michelangelo believed that Bramante, the equally prestigious architect at St. Peter's, had influenced the Pope to cut off his

funds. He left Rome, but the Pope brought pressure on the city authorities of Florence to send him back. He was put to work on a colossal bronze statue of the Pope in his newly conquered city of Bologna (which the citizens pulled down soon after when they drove the papal army out) and then on the less expensive project of painting the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel (150812). The Sistine Chapel had great symbolic meaning for the papacy as the chief consecrated space in the Vatican, used for great ceremonies such as electing and inaugurating new popes. It already contained distinguished wall paintings, and Michelangelo was asked to add works for the relatively unimportant ceiling. Twelve Apostles were planned as the themeceilings normally showed only individual figures, not dramatic scenes. Traces of this project are seen in the 12 large figures that Michelangelo produced: seven prophets and five sibyls, or female prophets found in classical myths. The inclusion of female figures was very unusual though not totally unprecedented. Michelangelo placed these figures around the edges of the ceiling and filled the central spine of the long curved surface with nine scenes from Genesis: three of them depicting the creation of the world, three the stories of Adam and Eve, and three the stories of Noah. The se are naturally followed, below the prophets and sibyls, by small figures of the 40 generations of Christ's ancestors, starting with Abraham. The vast project was completed in less than four years; there was an interruption perhaps of a year in 151011 when no payment was made. The work began at the end, with the Noah scenes placed over the entrance door, and moved toward the altar in the direction opposite to that of the sequence of the stories. The first figures and scenes naturally show the artist reusing devices from his earlier works, such as the Pieta, since he was starting on such an ambitious work in an unfamiliar medium. These first figures are relatively stable, and the scenes are on a relatively small scale. As he proceeded, he quickly grew in confidence. Indeed, recent investigations of the technical processes used show that he worked more and more rapidly, reducing and finally eliminating such preparatory helps as complete drawings and incisions on the plaster surface. The same growing boldness appears in the free, complex movements of the figures and in their complex expressiveness. While remaining always imposing and monumental, they are more and more imbued with suggestions of stress and grief. This may be perceived in a figure such as the prophet Ezekiel halfway along. This figure combines colossal strength and weight with movement and facial expression that suggest determination to reach a goal that is uncertain of success. Such an image of the inadequacy of even great power is a presentation of heroic and tragic humanity and is central to what Michelangelo means to posterity. Nearby the scene of the creation of Eve shows her with God and Adam, compressed within too small a space for their grandeur. This tension has been interpreted as a token of a movement away from the Renaissance concern with harmony, pointing the way for a younger generation of artists like Pontormo, often labeled Mannerists. Michelangelo's work on the ceiling was interrupted, perhaps just after these figures were completed. When he painted the second half, he seemed to repeat the same evolution from quiet stability to intricacy and stress. Thus he worked his way from the quietly monumental and harmonious scene of the creation of Adam to the acute, twisted pressures of the prophet Jonah. Yet in this second phase he shows greater inward expressiveness, giving a more meditative restraint to the earlier pure physical mass.

David 1504 Marble, height 434 cm Galleria dell'Accademia, Florence

David (detail)

1501-04 Marble Galleria dell'Accademia, Florence

David (Apollo) 1530 Marble, height: 146 cm Museo Nazionale del Bargello, Florence

St Matthew 1503 Marble, height: 271 cm Galleria dell'Accademia, Florence

Crouching Boy

1530-33 Marble, height: 54 cm The Hermitage, St. Petersburg

Victory 1532-34 Marble, height: 261 cm Palazzo Vecchio, Florence

Brutus 1540 Marble, height 95 cm Museo Nazionale del Bargello, Florence

The Medici Chapel

The immediate occasion for the chapel was the deaths of the two young family heirs, named Giuliano and Lorenzo after their forebears, in 1516 and 1519. Michelangelo gave his chief attention up to 1527 to the marble interior of this chapel, to both the very original wall design and the carved figures on the tombs; the latter are an extension in organic form of the dynamic shapes of the wall details. The result is the fullest existing presentation of Michelangelo's intentions. Windows, cornices, and the like have strange proportions and thicknesses, suggesting an irrational, willful revision of traditional classical forms in buildings. Abutting these active surfaces, the two tombs on opposite walls of the room are also very original, starting with their curved tops. A male and a female figure sit on each of these curved bases; these are allegories symbolizing on one tomb day and night, according to the artist's own statement, and dawn and dusk on the other, according to early reports. Such personifications had never appeared on tombs before, and they refer, again according to Michelangelo, to the inevitable movement of time, which is circular and leads to death. The figures are among the artist's most famous and accomplished creations. The immensely massive figures of Day and Dusk are relatively tranquil in their mountainous grandeur, though Day perhaps implies inner fires. Both female figures have the tall, slim proportions and small feet considered beautiful at the time, but otherwise they form a contrast: Dawn, a virginal figure, strains upward along her curve as if trying to emerge into life; Night is asleep, but in a posture suggesting stressful dreams. These four figures are naturally noticed more immediately than the effigies of the two Medici buried there, placed higher and farther back in wall niches. These effigies, more usual in execution, also form a contrast; they are traditionally described as active and thoughtful, respectively. Rendered as standard types of young soldiers, they were at once perceived not as portraits but as idealized superior beings, both because of their high rank and because they are souls beyond the grave. Both turn to the same side of the room. It has naturally been thought that they focus on the Madonna, which Michelangelo carved and which is at the centre of this side wall, between two saints. The heads of the two effigies, however, are turned in differing degrees, and their common focus is at a corner of the chapel, at the entrance door from the church. On this third wall with the Madonna the architectural treatment was never executed. During the same years Michelangelo designed another annex to the same church, the Laurentian Library, required toreceive the books bequeathed by Pope Leo; it was traditionalin Florence and elsewhere that libraries were housed in convents. The design for this one was constrained by the existing buildings, and it was built on top of older structures. A small available area on the second floor was used as an entrance lobby and contains a staircase leading up to the larger library room on a new third floor. The stair hall,

known as the ricetto, contains Michelangelo's most famous and original wall designs. The bold and free rearrangement of traditional building components goes still further, for instance, to place columns recessed behind a wall plane rather than in front of it as is usual. This has led to the work's being cited frequently as the first and a chief instance of Mannerism as an architectural style, when it is defined as a work that intentionally contradicts the classical and the harmonious, favouring expressiveness and originality, or as one that emphasizes the factors of style for their own sake. By contrast the long library room is far more restrained, with traditional rows of desks neatly related to the rhythm of the windows and small decorative detail in the floor and ceiling. It recalls that Michelangelo was not invariably heavy and bold but modified his approach in relation to the particular case, here to a gentler, quiet effect. For that very reason it has often been less noticed in the study of his work. At the opposite end of the long room, across from the stairway, another door led to a space intended to hold the library's rarest treasures. It was to be a triangular room, a climax of the long corridor-like approach, but this part was never executed on the artist's plan. The sack of Rome in 1527 saw Pope Clement ignominiously in flight, and Florence revolted against the Medici, restoring the traditional republic. It was soon besieged and defeated, and Medici rule permanently reinstalled, in 1530. During the siege Michelangelo was the designer of fortifications. He showed understanding of modern defensive structures built quickly of simple materials in complex profiles that offered minimum vulnerability to attackers and maximum resistance to cannon and other artillery. This new weapon, which had come into use in the middle of the 14th century, had given greater power to the offense in war. Thus, instead of the tall castles that had served well for defensive purposes in the Middle Ages, lower and thicker masses were more practical. The projecting points, which also assisted counterattack, were often of irregular sizes in adaptation to specific hilly sites. Michelangelo's drawings with rapid lively execution reflecting this flexible new pattern have been much admired, often in terms of pure form. When the Medici returned in 1530, Michelangelo returned to work on their family tombs. His political commitment probably was more to his city as such than to any specific governmental form. Two separate projects of statues of this date are the Apollo or David (its identity is problematic), used as a gift to a newly powerful political figure, and the Victory, a figure trampling on a defeated enemy, an old man. It was probably meant for the never forgotten tomb of Pope Julius because the motif had been present in the plans for the Julius tomb. Victor and loser both have intensely complicated poses; the loser seems packed in a block, the victorlike the Apolloforms a lithe spiral. The Victory group became a favourite model for younger sculptors of the Mannerist group, who applied the formula to many allegorical subjects. In 1534 Michelangelo left Florence for the last time, though the always hoped to return to finish the projects he had left incomplete. He passed the rest of his life in Rome, working on projects in some cases equally grand but in most cases of quite new kinds. From this time on a large number of his letters to his family in Florence were preserved; many of them concentrated on plans for his nephew's marriage, essential to preserve the family name. Michelangelo's father had died in 1531 and his favourite brother at about the same time; he himself showed increasing anxiety about his age and death. It was just at this time that the nearly 60-year-old artist wrote letters expressing strong feelings of attachment to young men, chiefly to the talented aristocrat Tommaso Cavalieri, later active in Roman civic affairs. These have naturally been interpreted as indications that Michelangelo was a homosexual, but such a reaction according to the artist's own statement would be that of the ignorant. The idea seems even less likely when one considers that no similar indications had emerged when the artist was younger. The correlation of these letters with other new events seems consistent instead with the view that he was seeking a surrogate son, choosing for the purpose a younger man who was admirable in every way and would welcome the role. Michelangelo's poetry is also preserved in quantity from this time. He apparently began writing short poems in a way common among nonprofessionals in the period, as an elegant kind of letter, but developed in a more original and expressive way. Among some 300 preserved poems, not including fragments of a line or two, there are about 75 finished sonnets and about 95 finished madrigals, poems of about the same length as sonnets but of a looser formal structure. In English-speaking countries people tend to speak of Michelangelo's sonnets, as though all of his poems were written in that form, partly because the sonnets were widely circulated in English translations from the Victorian period, partly because the madrigal is unfamiliar in English poetry. (It is not the type of song well known in Elizabethan music, but a poem with irregular rhyme scheme, line length, and number of lines.) Yet the fact that Michelangelo left a large number of sonnets but only very few madrigals unfinished suggests that he preferred the latter form. Those written up to about 1545 have themes based on the tradition of Petrarch's love poems and a philosophy based on the Neoplatonism that Michelangelo had absorbed as a boy at Lorenzo the Magnificent's court. They give expression to the theme that love helps human beings in their difficult effort to ascend to the divine.

In 1534 Michelangelo returned after a quarter century to fresco painting, executing for the new pope, Paul III, the huge Last Judgment for the end wall of the Sistine Chapel. This theme had been a favoured one for large end walls of churches in Italy in the Middle Ages and up to about 1500, but thereafter it had gone out of fashion. It is often suggested that this renewal of a devout tradition came from the same impulses that were then leading to the Counter-Reformationunder the aegis of Paul III. The work is in a painting style noticeably different from that of 25 years earlier. The pervasive colour harmony is a simple one of brown bodies against dark blue sky. The figures have less energy and their forms are less articulate, the torsos tending to be single fleshy masses without waistlines. At the top centre Christ as judge lifts an arm to save those on his right and drops the other arm to damn those on his left, suggesting in the idiom of the period a scale to weigh men in the balance. The saved souls rise slowly through the heavy air, as the damned ones sink. At the bottom of the wall skeletons rise from tombs, a motif taken directly from medieval precedents.

To the right Charon ferries souls across the River Styx, a pagan motif which Dante had made acceptable to Christians in his Divine Comedy and which had been introduced into painting about 1500 by the Umbrian artist Signorelli. Michelangelo admired this artist for his skill in expressing dramatic feeling through anatomical exactitude.

Tomb of the Medicis

View of the Medici Chapel 1526-33 Marble Sagrestia Nuova, San Lorenzo, Florence

Tomb of Giuliano de' Medici 1526-33 Marble, 630 x 420 cm Sagrestia Nuova, San Lorenzo, Florence

Tomb of Giuliano de' Medici (detail) 1526-33 Marble Sagrestia Nuova, San Lorenzo, Florence

Night 1526-33 Marble, length: 194 cm Sagrestia Nuova, San Lorenzo, Florence

Day 1526-33 Marble, length: 185 cm Sagrestia Nuova, San Lorenzo, Florence

Tomb of Lorenzo de' Medici 1524-31 Marble, 630 x 420 cm Sagrestia Nuova, San Lorenzo, Florence

Tomb of Lorenzo de' Medici (detail) 1524-31 Marble Sagrestia Nuova, San Lorenzo, Florence

Twilight 1524-31 Marble, length: 195 cm Sagrestia Nuova, San Lorenzo, Florence

Dawn 1524-31 Marble, length: 203 cm Sagrestia Nuova, San Lorenzo, Florence

The last decades

In his late years Michelangelo was less involved with sculpture and, along with painting and poetry, more with architecture, an area in which he did not have to do physical labour. He was sought after to design imposing monuments for the new and modern Rome that were to enunciate architecturally the city's position as a world centre. Two of these monuments, the Capitoline Square and the dome of St. Peter's, are still among the city's most notable visual images. He did not finish either, but after his death both were continued in ways that probably did not depart much from his plans. The small Capitoline Hill had been the civic centre in ancient Roman times and was in the 16th century the centre of the lay municipal government, a minor factor in a city ruled by popes, yet one to which they wished to show respect. Michelangelo remodeled the old city hall on one side of the square and designed twin buildings for the two sides adjacent to it. He gave them rich and powerful fronts, using as his main device the juxtaposition of colossal columns, which rise through two stories to the top, with much smaller one-story columns crowded next to them. This invention creates a forcefully dynamic rhythm while also articulating in a rational way the structure behind the facades. He also produced a special floor design for the square between these two new buildingsan oval pattern that frames a statue at its centre (the ancient Roman monument of the emperor Marcus Aurelius) and gives the whole area the effect of a monumental room. Because of the hilly site, the square is not rectangular but wider on the city hall side and narrower on the opposite side, which was left open. This open side is the entrance for the public, reached by climbing a long flight of stairs. The visitor finds the two facades to his left and right inclined away from each other as they recede from the entrance; this counteracts the tendency of perspective to make walls seem to move nearer each other as they are farther off and so reinforces the effect of a grand expanse. The dome of St. Peter's functions chiefly as a visual focus for the observer at a distance, representing a physical goal as well as expressing the dominant meaning of the city. It has been copied for this dual purpose many times, as, for instance, in the Capitol at Washington, D.C. It derives from the dome of the

cathedral of Florence, which is 100 years older, perhaps the first great dome to be oriented chiefly outward in its effect rather than being meant chiefly to coverthe interior. But it was Michelangelo's dome that gave this shift its universal acceptance. The dome, however, was not built until after Michelangelo's death, and the extent to which it follows his intentions has been much debated. As built by his successor, the dome is more pointed than the pure hemisphere seen in Michelangelo's best known project. But Michelangelo changed his ideas and may well have moved in that direction too. During his life Michelangelo's major energy in working at St. Peter's was given to the lower part. He discarded the ideas of the architects who had been working on it just before him, approving only those of the original designer, Bramante. He reverted to the earlier plan for a church with four equal cross arms instead of the more conventional Latincross plan of the more recent altered scheme. He also disliked the quantity of repeated smaller decorative elements added by the most recent architect, which diminished the effect of great size. He modified Bramante's interior in specifics, making it still more nearly a unified space. This is enclosed by huge semicircular sections of wall on the four sides, creating spaces comparable to the hemispherical space inside the dome. Most of his actual construction work was on the curving wall behind the altar, and there he carried still further the contrast between colossal and smaller supports next to each other, seen already on the Capitoline Hill. This time they are not load-carrying columns but thin pilasters that fit against the continuously curving walls on the exterior. They thus impart both a strong upward thrust and an equally strong horizontal rhythm as the direction of the wall continuously changes, producing an architecture of pulsing dynamism on a gigantic scale. One still can see the approach of the sculptor, who uses the projections and recessions of stone as his vehicle. Around the base of the dome Michelangelo placed a columned walkway. The tops of the columns are tied to the dome by beams, but there is no roofing of the intervals between columns. Thus, the columns have the effect of flying buttresses on Gothic buildings, supporting the dome's heavy downward thrust. Yet the design is formally classical, and its horizontal aspect as a colonnade solves the problem of a visual transition between the dome and the horizontal lower structure of the building. While remaining head architect of St. Peter's until his death, Michelangelo worked on many smaller building projects in Rome. He completed the main unit of the Palazzo Farnese, the residence of Pope Paul III's family. The top story wall of its courtyard is a rare example of an architectural unit fully finished under his eye. Some very imaginative and distinctive late designs, such as those for a city gate, the Porta Pia, and for the church of the Florentine community in Rome, were either much reworked later or never went beyond the plan stage in the form Michelangelo had proposed. His last paintings were the frescoes of the Pauline Chapel in the Vatican, which still is little accessible to the public. Unlike his other frescoes, they are in the position normal for narrative painting, on a wall and not exceptionally high up. They consistently treat spatial depth and narrative drama in a way that brings them closer to other paintings of the age than to the artist's previous paintings. Among the artists Michelangelo came to know and admire was Titian, who visited Rome during the period of this project (154250), and the frescoes seem to betray his influence in colour. The poetry of his last years also took on new qualities. The poems, chiefly sonnets, are very direct religious statements suggesting prayers. They are no longer very intricate in syntax and ideas. There are only two late sculptures, which Michelangelo did for himself, both presenting the dead Christ being mourned, neither one finished. The first and larger one was meant for his tomb, and the figure of the mourning Joseph of Arimathea (or, possibly, Nicodemus) is a self-portrait. (Michelangelo had introduced himself earlier in his works in the role of a sinner or penitent, notably in the Last Judgment in the face on the flayed skin of the martyred St. Bartholomew.) Becoming dissatisfied with this sculpture, Michelangelo broke one of the figures and abandoned the work. This constitutes still another variation on the theme of incompletion running through the artist's work. His last sculpture also went through several revisions on the same block of stone and in its current state is an almost dematerialized sketch of two figures leaning together. Michelangelo certainly had a powerful sense of his own imperfection, yet he was also aware of the quality of his work and angry at patrons for not meeting what he judged to be their obligations. Assessment and influence For posterity Michelangelo has always remained one of the small group of the most exalted artists, who have been felt to express, like Shakespeare or Beethoven, the tragic experience of humanity with the greatest depth and universal scope. In contrast to the great fame of the artist's works, their visual influence on later art is relatively limited. This cannot be explained by hesitation to imitate an art simply because it appeared so great, for artists like Raphael were considered equally great but were used as sources to a much greater degree. It may be instead that the particular type of expression associated with Michelangelo, of an almost cosmic grandeur, was inhibiting. The limited influence of his work includes a few cases of almost total dependence, the most talented artist who worked in this way being Daniele da Volterra. Otherwise, Michelangelo was treated as a model for specific limited aspects of his work. In the 17th century he was regarded as supreme in anatomical drawing but less praised for broader elements of his art. While the Mannerists utilized the spatial compression seen in a few of his frescoes, and later the serpentine poses of his sculpture of Victory, the 19th-century master Auguste Rodin exploited the effect of unfinished marble blocks. Certain 17th-century masters of the baroque perhaps show the fullest reference to him, but in ways that have been transformed to exclude any literal similarity. Besides Bernini, the painter Rubens may best show the usability of Michelangelo's creations for a later great artist.

Creighton E. Gilbert Encyclopadia Britannica

Tomb of the Medicis

Medici Madonna 1521-31 Marble, height: 226 cm Sagrestia Nuova, San Lorenzo, Florence

Sts Cosmas 1521-31 Marble Sagrestia Nuova, San Lorenzo, Florence

Damian 1521-31 Marble Sagrestia Nuova, San Lorenzo, Florence

Pieta

Pieta 1499 Marble, height 174 cm, width at the base 195 cm Basilica di San Pietro, Vatican

Pieta (detail) 1499 Marble Basilica di San Pietro, Vatican

Pieta (detail) 1499 Marble Basilica di San Pietro, Vatican

Palestrina Pieta Marble, height: 253 cm Galleria dell'Accademia, Florence

Pieta

c. 1550 Marble, height: 226 cm Museo dell'Opera del Duomo, Florence

Pieta Rondanini (unfinished) 1552-64 Marble, height: 195 cm Castello Sforzesco, Milan
VIII

Sistine Chapel

papal chapel in the Vatican Palace that was erected in 147381 by the architect Giovanni dei Dolci for Pope Sixtus IV (hence its name). It is famous for its Renaissance frescoes by Michelangelo. The Sistine Chapel is a rectangular brick building with six arched windows on each of the two main (or side) walls and a barrel-vaulted ceiling. The chapel's exterior is drab and unadorned, but its interior walls and ceiling are decorated with frescoes by many Florentine Renaissance masters. The frescoes on the side walls of the chapel were painted from 1481 to 1483. On the north wall are six frescoes depicting events from the life of Christ as painted by Perugino, Pinturicchio, Sandro Botticelli, Domenico Ghirlandajo, and Cosimo Rosselli. On the south wall are six other frescoes depicting events from the life of Moses by Perugino, Pinturicchio, Botticelli, Domenico

and Benedetto Ghirlandajo, Rosselli, Luca Signorelli, and Bartolomeo della Gatta. Above these works, smaller frescoes between the windows depict various popes. For great ceremonial occasions the lowest portions of the side walls were covered with a series of tapestries depicting events from the Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles. These were designed by Raphael and woven in 151519 at Brussels. The most important artworks in the chapel are the frescoes by Michelangelo on the ceiling and on the west wall behind the altar. The frescoes on the ceiling, collectively known as the Sistine Ceiling, were commissioned by Pope Julius II in 1508 and were painted by Michelangelo in the years from 1508 to 1512. They depict incidents and personages from the Old Testament. The Last Judgment fresco on the west wall was painted by Michelangelo for Pope Paul III in the period from 1534 to 1541. These two gigantic frescoes are among the greatest achievements of Western painting. A 10-year-long cleaning and restoration of the Sistine Ceiling completed in 1989 removed several centuries' accumulation of dirt, smoke, and varnish. Cleaning and restoration of the Last Judgment was completed in 1994. As the pope's own chapel, the Sistine Chapel is the site of the principal papal ceremonies and is used by the Sacred College of Cardinals for their election of a new pope when there is a vacancy. Pope Julius II's call to Michelangelo to come to Rome spelled an end to both of these Florentine projects. The Pope sought a tomb for which Michelangelo was to carve 40 large statues. Recent tombs had been increasingly grand, including those of two popes by the Florentine sculptor Antonio Pollaiuolo, those of the doges of Venice, and the one then in work for Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I. Pope Julius had an ambitious imagination, parallel to Michelangelo's, but because of other projects, such as the new building of St. Peter's and his military campaigns, he evidently became disturbed soon by the cost. Michelangelo believed that Bramante, the equally prestigious architect at St. Peter's, had influenced the Pope to cut off his funds. He left Rome, but the Pope brought pressure on the city authorities of Florence to send him back. He was put to work on a colossal bronze statue of the Pope in his newly conquered city of Bologna (which the citizens pulled down soon after when they drove the papal army out) and then on the less expensive project of painting the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel (1508-12). The Sistine Chapel had great symbolic meaning for the papacy as the chief consecrated space in the Vatican, used for great ceremonies such as electing and inaugurating new popes. It already contained distinguished wall paintings, and Michelangelo was asked to add works for the relatively unimportant ceiling. Twelve

Apostles were planned as the theme--ceilings normally showed only individual figures, not dramatic scenes. Traces of this project are seen in the 12 large figures that Michelangelo produced: seven prophets and five sibyls, or female prophets found in classical myths. The inclusion of female figures was very unusual though not totally unprecedented. Michelangelo placed these figures around the edges of the ceiling and filled the central spine of the long curved surface with nine scenes from Genesis: three of them depicting the creation of the world, three the stories of Adam and Eve, and three the stories of Noah. These are naturally followed, below the prophets and sibyls, by small figures of the 40 generations of Christ's ancestors, starting with Abraham. The vast project was completed in less than four years; there was an interruption perhaps of a year in 1510-11 when no payment was made. The work began at the end, with the Noah scenes placed over the entrance door, and moved toward the altar in the direction opposite to that of the sequence of the stories. The first figures and scenes naturally show the artist reusing devices from his earlier works, such as the Pieta, since he was starting on such an ambitious work in an unfamiliar medium. These first figures are relatively stable, and the scenes are on a relatively small scale. As he proceeded, he quickly grew in confidence. Indeed, recent investigations of the technical processes used show that he worked more and more rapidly, reducing and finally eliminating such preparatory helps as complete drawings and incisions on the plaster surface. The same growing boldness appears in the free, complex movements of the figures and in their complex expressiveness. While remaining always imposing and monumental, they are more and more imbued with suggestions of stress and grief. This may be perceived in a figure such as the prophet Ezekiel halfway along. This figure combines colossal strength and weight with movement and facial expression that suggest determination to reach a goal that is uncertain of success. Such an image of the inadequacy of even great power is a presentation of heroic and

tragic humanity and is central to what Michelangelo means to posterity. Nearby the scene of the creation of Eve shows her with God and Adam, compressed within too small a space for their grandeur. This tension has been interpreted as a token of a movement away from the Renaissance concern with harmony, pointing the way for a younger generation of artists like Pontormo, often labeled Mannerists. Michelangelo's work on the ceiling was interrupted, perhaps just after these figures were completed. When he painted the second half, he seemed to repeat the same evolution from quiet stability to intricacy and stress. Thus he worked his way from the quietly monumental and harmonious scene of the creation of Adam to the acute, twisted pressures of the prophet Jonah. Yet in this second phase he shows greater inward expressiveness, giving a more meditative restraint to the earlier pure physical mass. In 1534 Michelangelo returned after a quarter century to fresco painting, executing for the new pope, Paul III, the huge "Last Judgment" for the end wall of the Sistine Chapel. This theme had been a favoured one for large end walls of churches in Italy in the Middle Ages and up to about 1500, but thereafter it had gone out of fashion. It is often suggested that this renewal of a devout tradition came from the same impulses that were then leading to the Counter-Reformation under the aegis of Paul III. The work is in a painting style noticeably different from that of 25 years earlier. The pervasive colour harmony is a simple one of brown bodies against dark blue sky. The figures have less energy and their forms are less articulate, the torsos tending to be single fleshy masses without waistlines. At the top centre Christ as judge lifts an arm to save those on his right and drops the other arm to damn those on his left, suggesting in the idiom of the period a scale to weigh men in the balance. The saved souls rise slowly through the heavy air, as the damned ones sink. At the bottom of the wall skeletons rise from tombs, a motif taken directly from medieval precedents. To the right Charon ferries souls across the River

Styx, a pagan motif which Dante had made acceptable to Christians in his Divine Comedy and which had been introduced into painting about 1500 by the Umbrian artist Signorelli. Michelangelo admired this artist for his skill in expressing dramatic feeling through anatomical exactitude.

Sistine Chapel
papal chapel in the Vatican Palace that was erected in 147381 by the architect Giovanni dei Dolci for Pope Sixtus IV (hence its name). It is famous for its Renaissance frescoes by Michelangelo. The Sistine Chapel is a rectangular brick building with six arched windows on each of the two main (or side) walls and a barrel-vaulted ceiling. The chapel's exterior is drab and unadorned, but its interior walls and ceiling are decorated with frescoes by many Florentine Renaissance masters. The frescoes on the side walls of the chapel were painted from 1481 to 1483. On the north wall are six frescoes depicting events from the life of Christ as painted by Perugino, Pinturicchio, Sandro Botticelli, Domenico Ghirlandajo, and Cosimo Rosselli. On the south wall are six other frescoes depicting events from the life of Moses by Perugino, Pinturicchio, Botticelli, Domenico and Benedetto Ghirlandajo, Rosselli, Luca Signorelli, and Bartolomeo della Gatta. Above these works, smaller frescoes between the windows depict various popes. For great ceremonial occasions the lowest portions of the side walls were covered with a series of tapestries depicting events from the Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles. These were designed by Raphael and woven in 1515 19 at Brussels. The most important artworks in the chapel are the frescoes by Michelangelo on the ceiling and on the west wall behind the altar. The frescoes on the ceiling, collectively known as the Sistine Ceiling, were commissioned by Pope Julius II in 1508 and were painted by Michelangelo in the years from 1508 to 1512. They depict incidents and personages from the Old Testament. The Last Judgment fresco on the west wall was painted by Michelangelo for Pope Paul III in the period from 1534 to 1541. These two gigantic frescoes are among the greatest achievements of Western painting. A 10-year-long cleaning and restoration of the Sistine Ceiling completed in 1989 removed several centuries' accumulation of dirt, smoke, and varnish. Cleaning and restoration of the Last Judgment was completed in 1994. As the pope's own chapel, the Sistine Chapel is the site of the principal papal ceremonies and is used by the Sacred College of Cardinals for their election of a new

Exterior of the Sistine Chapel 1475-83 Cappella Sistina, Vatican

Interior of the Sistine Chapel 1475-83, 1508-12 Cappella Sistina, Vatican

pope when there is a vacancy.

Interior of the Sistine Chapel 1475-83, 1508-12, 1535-41 Cappella Sistina, Vatican

The ceiling 1508-12 Fresco Cappella Sistina, Vatican

The ceiling (detail) 1508-12 Fresco Cappella Sistina, Vatican

The ceiling (detail) 1508-12 Fresco Cappella Sistina, Vatican

The ceiling (detail) 1508-12 Fresco Cappella Sistina, Vatican

The ceiling (detail) 1508-12 Fresco Cappella Sistina, Vatican

The ceiling (detail) 1508-12 Fresco Cappella Sistina, Vatican

Detail of the wall decoration 1475-83, 1508-12 Fresco Cappella Sistina, Vatican

Frescoes in the Sistine Chapel

The Last Judgement

Last Judgment 1537-41 Fresco, 1370 x 1220 cm Cappella Sistina, Vatican

Last Judgment 1537-41 Fresco, 1370 x 1220 cm Cappella Sistina, Vatican

Last Judgment (detail) 1537-41 Fresco Cappella Sistina, Vatican

Last Judgment (detail) 1537-41 Fresco Cappella Sistina, Vatican

Last Judgment (detail) 1537-41 Fresco Cappella Sistina, Vatican

Last Judgment (detail) 1537-41 Fresco Cappella Sistina, Vatican

Drawings & Architectural works

The Damned Soul c. 1525 Black ink, 35,7 x 25,1 cm Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence

The Rape of Ganymede c. 1533 Black chalk, 19 x 33 cm Fogg Art Museum, Cambridge

Tityus c. 1533 Black chalk, 19 x 33 cm Royal Library, Windsor

Leda and the Swan Engraving, 305 x 407 mm British Museum, London

The Fall of Phaeton c. 1533 Black chalk, 41,3 x 23,4 cm Royal Library, Windsor

The Fall of Phaeton c. 1533 Chalk British Museum, London

Portrait of Vittoria Colonna 1540s Chalk British Museum, London

Study of a Nude Man Chalk Muse du Louvre, Paris

Back View of a Woman Chalk Muse du Louvre, Paris

Study of a Seated Woman Chalk Muse Conde, Chantilly

Nude Woman on her Knees Chalk Musee du Louvre, Paris

PIETER BRUEGEL

the Elder

1525 - 1569

Peasants, Fools and Demons

Renaissance Art Map Pieter Bruegel the Elder

Introduction A Brief Life in Dangerous Times Antwerp: a Booming City The Holy Family in the Snow Exploring the World Demons in Our Midst Village Life Nature as Man's Environment Not only Peasants Pieter the Droll? Life and Work

Peasants, Fools and Demons

Self-Portrait

INTRODUCTION

Pieter Bruegel the Elder

Encyclopaedia Britannica

born c. 1525, , probably Breda, duchy of Brabant [now in The Netherlands] died Sept. 5/9, 1569, Brussels [now in Belgium]

by name Peasant Bruegel, Dutch Pieter Bruegel De Oudere, or Boeren Bruegel, Bruegel also spelled Brueghel, or Breughel the greatest Flemish painter of the 16th century, whose landscapes and vigorous, often witty scenes of peasant life are particularly renowned. Since Bruegel signed and dated many of his works, his artistic evolution can be traced from the early landscapes, in which he shows affinity with the Flemish 16th-century landscape tradition, to his last works, which are Italianate. He exerted a strong influence on painting in the Low Countries, and through his sons Jan and Pieter he became the ancestor of a dynasty of painters that survived into the 18th century.

Life
There is but little information about his life. According to Carel van Mander's Het Schilderboeck (Book of Painters), published in Amsterdam in 1604 (35 years after Bruegel's death), Bruegel was apprenticed to Pieter Coecke van Aelst, a leading Antwerp artist who had located in Brussels. The head of a large workshop, Coecke was a sculptor, architect, and designer of tapestry and stained glass who had traveled in Italy and in Turkey. Although Bruegel's earliest surviving works show no stylistic dependence on Coecke's Italianate art, connections with Coecke's compositions can be detected in later years, particularly after 1563, when Bruegel married Coecke's daughter Mayken. In any case, the apprenticeship with Coecke represented an early contact with a humanistic milieu. Through Coecke Bruegel became linked indirectly to another tradition as well. Coecke's wife, Maria Verhulst Bessemers, was a painter known for her work in watercolour or tempera, a suspension of pigments in egg yolk or a glutinous substance, on linen. The technique was widely practiced in her hometown of Mechelen (Malines) and was later employed by Bruegel. It is also in the works of Mechelen's artists that allegorical and peasant thematic material first appear. These subjects, unusual in Antwerp, were later treated by Bruegel. In 1551 or 1552, Bruegel setoff on the customary northern artist's journey to Italy, probably by way of France. From several extant paintings, drawings, and etchings, it can be deduced that he traveled beyond Naples to Sicily, possibly as far as Palermo, and that in 1553 he lived for some time in Rome, where he worked with a celebrated miniaturist, Giulio Clovio, an artist greatly influenced by Michelangelo and later a patron of the young El Greco. The inventory of Clovio's estate shows that he owned a number of paintings

and drawings by Bruegel as well as a miniature done by the two artists in collaboration. It was in Rome, in 1553, that Bruegel produced his earliest signed and dated painting, Landscape with Christ and the Apostles at the Sea of Tiberias. The holy figures in this painting were probably do ne by Maarten de Vos, a painter from Antwerp then working in Italy. The earliest surviving works, including two drawings with Italian scenery sketched on the southward journey and dated 1552, are landscapes. A number of drawings of Alpine regions, produced between 1553 and 1556, indicate the great impact of the mountain experience on this man from the Low Countries. With the possible exception of a drawingof a mountain valley by Leonardo da Vinci, the landscapes resulting from this journey are almost without parallel in European art for their rendering of the overpowering grandeur of the high mountains. Very few of the drawings were done on the spot, and several were done after Bruegel's return, at an unknown date, to Antwerp. The vast majority are free compositions, combinations of motifs sketched on the journey through the Alps. Some were intended as designs for engravings commissioned by Hieronymus Cock, an engraver and Antwerp's foremost publisher of prints. Bruegel was to work for Cock until his last years, but, from 1556 on, he concentrated, surprisingly enough, on satirical, didactic, and moralizing subjects, often in the fantastic or grotesque manner of Hieronymus Bosch, imitations of whoseworks were very popular at the time. Other artists were content with a more or less close imitation of Bosch, but Bruegel's inventiveness lifted his designs above mere imitation, and he soon found ways to express his ideas in a much different manner. His early fame rested on prints published by Cock after such designs. But the new subject matter and the interest in the human figure did not lead to the abandonment of landscape. Bruegel, in fact, extended his explorations in this field. Side by side with his mountain compositions, he began to draw the woods of the countryside, turned then to Flemish villages, and, in 1562, totownscapes with the towers and gates of Amsterdam. The double interest in landscape and in subjects requiring the representation of human figures also informed, often jointly, the paintings that Bruegel produced in increasing number after his return from Italy. All of his paintings, even those in which the landscape appears as the dominant feature, have some narrative content. Conversely, in those that are primarily narrative, the landscape setting often carries part of the meaning. Dated paintings have survived from each year of the period except for 1558 and 1561. Within this decade falls Bruegel's marriage to Mayken Coecke in the Church of Notre-Dame de la Chapelle in Brussels in 1563 and his move to that city, in which Mayken and her mother were living. His residence recently was restored and turned into a Bruegel museum. There is, however, some doubt as to the correctness of the identification. In Brussels, Bruegel produced his greatest paintings, but only few designs for engravings, for the connection with Hieronymus Cock may have become less close after Bruegel left Antwerp. Another reason for the concentration on painting may have been his growing success in this field. Among his patrons was Cardinal Antione Perrenot de Granvelle, president of the council of state in the Netherlands, in whose palace in Brussels the sculptor Jacques Jonghelinck had a studio. He and Bruegel had traveled in Italy at the same time, and his brother, a rich Antwerp collector, Niclaes, was Bruegel's greatest patron, having by 1566 acquired 16 of his paintings. Another patron was Abraham Ortelius, who in a memorable obituary called Bruegel the most perfect artist of the century. Most of his paintings were done for collectors. Bruegel died in 1569 and was buried in Notre-Dame de la Chapelle in Brussels.

Artistic evolution and affinities

In addition to a great many drawings and engravings by Bruegel, 45 authenticated paintings from a much larger output now lost have been preserved. Of this number, about a third is concentrated in the Vienna Kunsthistorisches Museum, reflecting the keen interest of the Habsburg princes in the 16th and 17th centuries in Bruegel's art. In his earliest surviving works, Bruegel appears as essentially a landscape artist, indebted to, but transcending, the Flemish 16th-century landscape tradition, as well as to Titian and to other Venetian landscape painters. After his return from Italy, he turned to multifigure compositions, representations of crowds of people loosely disposed throughout the picture and usually seen from above. Here, too, antecedents can be found in the art of Hironymus Bosch and of other painters closer in time to Bruegel. In 1564 and 1565, under the spell of Italian art and especially of Raphael, Bruegel reduced the number of figures drastically, the few being larger and placed closely together in a very narrow space. In 1565, however, he turned again to landscape with the celebrated series known as Labours of the Months. In the five of these that have survived, he subordinated the figures to the great lines of the landscape. Later on, crowds appear again, disposed in densely concentrated groups. Bruegel's last works often show a striking affinity with Italian art. The diagonal spatial arrangement of the figures in Peasant Wedding recalls Venetian compositions. Though transformed into peasants, the figures in such worksas Peasant and Bird Nester (1568) have something of the grandeur of Michelangelo. In the very last works, two trends appear; on the one hand, a combined monumentalization and extreme simplification of figures and, on the other hand,an exploration of the expressive quality of the various moods conveyed by landscape. The former trend is evident in his Hunters in the Snow (1565), one of his winter p aintings. The latter is seen in the radiant, sunny atmosphere of The Magpie on the Gallows and in the threatening and sombre character of The Storm at Sea, an unfinished work, probably Bruegel's last painting.

He was no less interested in observing the works of man. Noting every detail withalmost scientific exactness, he rendered ships with great accuracy in several paintings and in a series of engravings. A most faithful picture of contemporary building operations is shown in the two paintings of The Tower of Babel (one 1563 [see photograph], the other undated). The Rotterdam Tower of Babel illustrates yet another characteristic of Bruegel's art, an obsessive intere st in rendering movement. It was a problem with which he constantly experimented. In the Rotterdam painting, movement is imparted to an inanimate object, the tower seeming to be shown in rotation. Even more strikingly, in The Magpie on the Gallows, the gallows apparently take part in the peasants' dance shown next to them. The s everal paintings of peasant dances (see ) are obvious examples, and others, less obvious, are the processional representations in The Way to Calvary and in The Conversion of St. Paul. The latter work also conveys the sensation of the movement of figures through the constantly changing terrain of mountainous regions. This sensation had appeared first in the early mountain drawings and later, in different form, in The Flight into Egypt (1563). Toward the end of his life, Bruegel seems to have b ecome fascinated by the problem of the falling figure. His studies reached their apogee in a rendering of successive stages of falling in The Parable of the Blind. The perfect unity of fo rm, content, and expression marks this painting as a high point in European art. The subject matter of Bruegel's compositions covers an impressively wide range. In addition to the landscapes, his repertoire consists of conventional biblical scenes and parables of Christ, mythological subjects as in Landscape with the Fall of Icarus (two versions), and the illustrations of proverbial sayings in The Netherlands Proverbs and several other paintings. His allegorical compositions are often of a religious character, as the two engraved series of The Vices (155657) and The Virtues (1559 60), but they included profane social satires as well. The scenes from peasant life are well known, but a number of subjects that are not easy to classify include The Fig ht Between Carnival and Lent (1559), Children's Games (1560), and Dulle Griet, also known as Mad Meg (1562). It has recently been shown how closely many of Bruegel's works mirror the moral and religious ideas of Dirck Coornhert, whose writings on ethics show a rationalistic,

commonsense approach. He advocated a Christianity free from the outward ceremonies of the various denominations, Roman Catholic, Calvinist, and Lutheran, which he rejected as irrelevant. In an age of bitter conflicts arising out of religious intolerance, Coornhert pleaded for toleration. Bruegel, of course, castigated human weakness in a more general way, with avarice and greed as the main targets of his criticism that was ingeniously expressed in the engraving The Battle Betwee n the Money Bags and Strong Boxes. This would have been in keeping with Coornhert's views as well, which permitted taking part out wardly in the old forms of worship and accepting the patronage of Cardinal Granvelle.

Jan and Lucas van Doetecum after Pieter Bruegel the Elder Hieronymus in Deserto (Saint Jerome in the Wilderness) ca. 1555

Joannes and Lucas van Doetecum after Pieter Bruegel the Elder Magdalena Poenitens (Penitent Magdalene) ca. 1555

Landscape with the Penitence of Saint Jerome 1553

Doetechum, Johannes and Lucas van after Pieter Bruegel the Elder Fuga Deiparae in Aegyptum (The Flight into Egypt) c. 1555

Rabbit hunt 1560

The Adoration of the Magi

Wooded Landscape with a Distant View toward the Sea

1554

View of a Town 1566

A Brief Life in Dangerous Times

Pieter Bruegel was about forty years old when the Duke of Alba entered Brussels. The painter was married, and had a son. His reputation as an artist was not as widespread across Europe as that of the recently deceased Michelangelo, nor again as that of Titian, by whom every prince sought to have his portrait painted. Many knew of Bruegel, however, and his works had a recognized cash value in his immediate home area, as can be deduced from the inclusion of sixteen Bruegels in the list of possessions which a Netherlands merchant gave as surety. Bruegel was living in Brussels when Alba led his army into the city in August 1567. The Duke had been sent by Philip II, the Spanish king, to whose empire the Netherlands provinces belonged. The commander's orders were to forcibly convert the Protestants; during the years that followed, he would have several thousand Netherlanders sentenced to death. This extreme harshness resulted first in an uprising, and then in a war which was to last eighty years, ending with the division of the land into Catholic Belgium (as it would later become known) in the south and Protestant Holland in the north. King Philip of Spain was a staunch Catholic: "I would rather sacrifice the lives of 100,000 people than let up in my persecution of the heretics. "He regarded Catholicism as the state religion; accordingly, heretics also constituted a political threat. In 1566, Netherlands Protestants - in particular Calvinists - had destroyed the religious images in Catholic churches, using spears and axes to pull statues of saints from their pedestals and tear altar paintings to pieces. For them, worshipping material images was nothing less than idolatry. What the Calvinists regarded as a struggle for the true faith amounted to rebellion in Philip's eyes, and he therefore despatched Alba as his commander, a man known - indeed, notorious - for his ruthlessness. 1567, the year in which he entered Brussels, would bring the great turning-point in the history of the Portrait of Duke of Alba (1507-1582) Netherlands provinces; and Bruegel was to witness the events from close to. We possess no clear written indications as to whether the painter supported the Protestant or the Catholic side in this struggle. Nor is it readily apparent what message his pictures convey: we must search for hints. In the year of the "breaking of the images", Bruegel painted The Sermon of St. John the Baptist (1566), of whom the Bible tells us that he had announced the appearance of Christ on earth. Bruegel has portrayed St. John preaching in the woods. We can make out a river, mountains, and a church in the background; some of the many listeners in the foreground are clad in striped garments, characterizing them as coming from the Middle East - yet the scenery and the clothing of the other figures point to a setting in the Netherlands of Bruegel's day. It was nothing unusual at that time to place biblical events in a contemporary setting, in the painter's own surroundings; occasionally, however, religious motifs were also given political topicality. Such is the case here: non-Catholics were compelled to practise their religion in secret gatherings as long as the authorities forbade them freedom of religion. This particularly affected the socially radical sect of the Anabaptists. Like St. John, who had baptized the adult Christ, they too practised adult baptism, meeting in the open air. A critical contemporary wrote of one such meeting in the woods: "... it was primarily the common folk one saw there, people with an immoral way of life... to be honest, however, one also came across people there who enjoyed good reputations and led blameless lives. One would never have believed that such people would go to these sermons."Bruegel, too, has painted not only the "common folk". The bearded listener at the right-hand edge of the picture resembles the artist himself - a furtive self-portrait? At any rate, he has left a memorial in the form of this picture to the secret religious meetings and their sermons.

The Sermon of St John the Baptist 1566 Oil on wood, 95 x 160,5 cm Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest Protestant preachers roamed the Netherlands, propagating their new teachings in the open air. The same was true of the Anabaptists, who based their religious teachings on those of St John the Baptist. In depicting a contemporary gathering, Bruegel has put the biblical John the Baptist in the place of the preacher. His left arm is indicating Jesus, who clearly stands out among the crowd through his lightcoloured garment.

The Sermon of St John the Baptist (detail) 1566 Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest

The Sermon of St John the Baptist (detail) 1566 Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest

The Sermon of St John the Baptist (detail) 1566 Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest

The Sermon of St. John the Baptist (detail) 1566 Unlike such painters as Albrecht Durer. Pieter Bruegel produced no self-portraits, being disinclined to glorify his own person. Occasionally, however, one may find a bearded figure occupying an unassuming position at the edge of a picture, a figure who might possibly be the painter himself.

The Sermon of St John the Baptist (detail) 1566 Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest

Kristus uddriver krmmerne af templet

Antwerp: a Booming City

We know neither where nor precisely when Bruegel was born. There were no state birth registers, and church baptismal records were more the exception than the rule. The first written mention of "Peeter Brueghels" dates from 1551, when he was enrolled as a master in the Guild of St. Luke in Antwerp. New masters were usually between 21 and 26 years of age, so Bruegel could have been born between 1525 and 1530. To put this in perspective, it would be some fifty years before Rubens (1577) and some eighty years before Rembrandt (1606) were born. Bruegel's birthplace is assumed to have been Breda or some nearby village with a name similar to that of the painter. He would settle down twice in especially wealthy cities, first in Antwerp and later in Brussels, the residence of the Habsburg Skating outside St. George's Gate, Antwerp 1559 Antwerp was to develop in the 16th centun from a small port to Europe's business metro polis. Artists also profited from the rapid financial transactions. Bruegel lived here from 1554 to 1563. Spanish regent. Antwerp was the city with the highest growth rate in Europe, the new financial and economic centre of the western world, the focal point for businessmen from many countries. The discovery of the sea routes via Africa to Asia, and over the Atlantic to America, had helped Antwerp to a position of prominence, with the old trade routes via the Mediterranean losing and the ports along the Atlantic coast gaining in importance. Antwerp was also favourably situated for north-south traffic, involving such goods as silk and spices from the Middle East, grain from the Baltic countries, wool from England. Artists and craftsmen also profited from the turnover of goods and rapid financial transactions. It is believed that 360 painters were at work in Antwerp in 1560, an unusually high number. Given a population of some 89,000 inhabitants (the figure for 1569), this would work out at approximately one painter per 250 citizens. For many decades, there was no better place for painters to be north of the Alps than in Antwerp. The painters' exceptionally high numbers also

made them particularly crisis-prone, however. A temporary economic slump could have been the reason for Bruegel's journey to Italy in 1552. There are no written records of this journey, but we do have sketches, drawings and paintings which bear witness to its having taken place. Virtually every contemporary painter went travelling, visiting Venice, Florence, and Rome to learn from the pictures of the Italian masters and especially to study the works of antiquity. Many of these Netherlands painters, as "Romanists", brought Renaissance ideas and ideals back with them to the north. Bruegel was not one of them, however; he returned to Antwerp from Italy in 1554, to stay there until 1562. The boom-town atmosphere of the rapidly growing city will have been frightening for many of its inhabitants. The people of the 16th century were accustomed to life in small, manageable communities in which the population was relatively stable and everyone knew everyone else. This was not the case in the metropolis of world trade. The population of Antwerp wellnigh doubled between 1500 and 1569. Some one thousand souls of this host were foreigners, speaking different languages and practising different customs; they were watched with suspicion. The loss of church unity further contributed to the general insecurity and disquiet, with Catholics living next to Calvinists, Lutherans and Anabaptists. The result was a "multicultural" society with problems of communication, especially with respect to matters of religion. Contemporaries saw a possible allegory for this unaccustomed situation in the biblical story of the Tower of Babel, as related in Genesis 11. King Nimrod had wanted to build a tower, the top of which would reach to heaven. God, regarding the construction as an act of arrogance, of hubris, had punished the people by stripping them of their common language. Having lost the ability to communicate with one other, the builders scattered, leaving the work unfinished. Bruegel painted the Babylonian tower no less than three times. The Tower of Babel (1563) and The"Little" Tower of Babel (c. 1563) have survived; the former may be seen in Vienna, the latter in Rotterdam. A gigantic edifice has been depicted twice. Never before had a painter successfully rendered the dimensions of the tower so vividly, nor the extent to which it surpassed everything previously known to man. Bruegel has portrayed the construction work in both paintings not as some distant event but rather as a contemporary building project, complete with a wealth of realistic details. The pictures are brought to life, for example through his selection of a riverside location for the building site: it was along waterways that bulk goods such as stones were customarily transported. Bruegel's depiction of lifting devices is almost pedantic. A powerful crane stands on one of the ramps in the Vienna picture, with three men treading away in the front drum and a further three - albeit invisible - in the rear one; such cranes were quite capable of raising stone blocks weighing several tons. The painter will have been familiar with the pier buttresses from Gothic cathedrals, where they provided resistance to the side thrust of the walls. He has put several huts on the ramps spiralling up to the top of the tower; this, too, was in keeping with the reality of

contemporary large-scale building projects, where each guild or construction team would have had its own on-site hut. In the Vienna picture, Bruegel has spread out a city at the foot of the edifice towering up into the clouds. This is one of his rare urban landscapes. In the foreground, King Nimrod is inspecting the work of the stonemasons, one of whom is down on his knees before the monarch. In Europe, subjects went down before potentates on only one knee; going down on both, the kowtow, is Bruegel's sole indication that the king in question here is from the Middle East. Nimrod's presence in the picture from Vienna recalls the King's arrogance and the motif of hubris. The King is absent in the darker, seemingly more threatening painting in Rotterdam; instead, a procession with a red baldachin, scarcely visible to the naked eye, has been inserted on one of the ramps. It was customary for Catholic dignitaries to proceed under such baldachins - an indication that not even the higher ranks of the clergy are immune to arrogance? These dabs of colour must have been important for Bruegel, since he has placed them on the same level as the horizon line, at the very midpoint of the picture seen from the side.

The Tower of Babel 1563 Bruegel has placed the building site in a coastal landscape; the Netherlander acquired a considerable proportion of their wealth from maritime activities. The tower is also situated near a river, since it was along the waterways, and not via the unpaved country roads, that bulk goods were transported in those days. The painter has given the biblical account many realistic features, among them the city panorama.

The Tower of Babel (details) 1563 King Nimrod is paying a visit to the building site, stonemasons going down on their knees before him. Performing the kowtow was not common practice in Europe; Bruegel made use of it to point to the story's oriental origins. He remained true to his surroundings for most of the other details, however: a treadwheel crane of the type to be seen in the detail on the right is believed to have stood in the Antwerp marketplace.

The Tower of Babel (detail) 1563 Foreign merchants, new religious groupings, and the city's rapid growth led to problems of orientation and communication in Antwerp. An allegory for this situation was seen in the biblical account of the Tower of Babel: intended to reach up to heaven, it displeased God, who stripped humankind of their common language, thereby preventing the comletion of the tower's construction.

The Tower of Babel (details) 1563

The Holy Family in the Snow

For centuries past, churches and monasteries had been among the most important clients commissioning art. The Reformation put an end to this tradition, the Protestants considering the rich pictorial ornamentation of Catholic buildings to be symptoms of secularization, or even of a forbidden display of magnificence and power. Theological objections were also raised, albeit not by Luther but by Calvin. Maintaining that "every pictorial representation of God contradicts His nature", he stated that "it is sinful to give God visible form; to create graven images is to completely break away from the true God." Bruegel worked with others on an altar in his early years, in 1550/51; we know this from documents, although the altar itself is lost. As far as can be ascertained, not one of his paintings was executed for a church. One reason for this may be seen in the political and religious situation at the time, Lutheran and Reformed Church communities being uninterested in such works and Catholics holding back - in those cases where they had actually been able to keep their buildings. Another reason was Bruegel's style, which was such as to exclude him from consideration by Catholics. The strategy of the Counter-Reformation, as formulated at the Council of Trent in 1545-63, required artists to portray saints in a way which emphasized their sainthood and clearly distinguished them from other mortals. Bruegel did the very opposite. This is even true of a work which at first appears to correspond to Catholic requirements: The Adoration of theKings (1564). Mary is depicted sitting in the centre of the picture, holding the Christ child on her lap. Her face is as beautiful as that of a young girl, quite capable of fulfilling the traditional Madonna ideal. One of her eyes is hidden, however; her posture is bowed; and the Christ child seems to be pulling back in fear. Furthermore, the face of the left-hand king - one of the saints after all has very earthly features, while the brightly coloured robe of the right-hand king renders its wearer more prominent than Mary. The final straw - in the eyes of CounterReformation severity -is the depiction of Joseph: instead of giving himself over completely to the holy event, he is leaning towards an unknown person so that the latter may whisper something in his ear. One could reply that it is precisely through this act of whispering that respect is shown the Adoration. It is too human an act, Christ in Limbo c. 1562 however; it distracts the observer, and would undoubtedly have fallen victim to the religious censorship of art. Bruegel painted the Adoration of the Christ child by the Three Kings or Magi three times; none of the works reveals the splendour and idealization considered It was not the belief in Jesus Christ that Bruegel appropriate in Catholic circles. The earliest painting, The Adoration of the Kings (between 1556 and 1562), which is in a poor state of preservation, is characterized was criticizing in his pictures, but rather the by a large crowd of Netherlands and Middle Eastern people, the last, The Adoration of the Kings in the Snow (1567), by a natural event, namely by falling snow. Catholic Church. This last version is also the boldest, the religious scene almost disappearing, integrated like some everyday occurrence into the life of a wintertime village.

The Adoration of the Kings 1564 Bruegel depicts the Adoration as it could have been staged in a Passion play. It was admissible within the context of such plays that someone whisper something in Joseph's earnot, however, in the case of pictures, according to the guidelines laid down by the Counter-Reformation.

The Adoration of the Kings (detail)

1564

The Adoration of the Kings between 1556 and 1562 Unlike the other two depictions of the Adoration, this work was painted not on wood but on canvas, and is in poor condition. It is the earliest of the surviving Adorations. Bruegel has surrounded the central event with a large crowd of people, dressed partly in Netherlands dress, partly in oriental fashion.

The Adoration of the Kings in the Snow 1567 Bruegel has shifted the Adoration from the centre to the left-hand edge of the picture, depicting it rather indistinctly behind a curtain of snow. The work is characterized not by the religious motif but by a natural event and the life of the people in a village in wintertime. It is possible that we have here the first painting in the history of European art to depict falling snow.

Landscape with the flight into Egypt 1563 As is the case with many of his paintings, Bruegel has treated the biblical motif here as if it were merely of minor importance.

Exploring the World

Mediaeval paintings primarily depicted biblical figures, the saints, Heaven and Hell. Such works, most of them in churches and monasteries, were meant to show the faithful what they could not see with their own eyes. They thus served a devotional and didactic purpose. In the Renaissance (which began in Italy some 100 years before Bruegel's birth), the focus of attention turned to man. The mediaeval concept of Earth, as a vale of tears filled with wretched sinners, faded. The status of man was enhanced; painters showed that he possessed a body, and placed him - with the aid of perspective - in a three-dimensional earthly environment. Reality was studied not only by the artists but also - even more so - by empirical scientists. The first circumnavigation of the world, undertaken by Magellan, had proved in 1521 that the Earth was round; in 1548, Pierre Coudenberg had laid out a Botanical Gardens in Brussels for the purpose of studying exotic plants, one of many such study gardens in this century; in 1560, the Church lifted its ban on the dissection of corpses, releasing the human body for examination; and in 1570, Abraham Ortelius published the first atlas of the world. The Antwerp geographer Ortelius was a friend of Bruegel. Thanks to this man and others, the painter was familiar with the exploratory enthusiasm of his century. He too explored, after his own manner, presenting in his works areas of life previously neglected or even held in contempt. One rather peculiar example of this is the picture Children's Games (1560). The subject of childhood had hitherto been virtually ignored in western painting and thought. Childhood was not viewed as a phase of life with any requirements of its own, but merely as the preliminary stage to adulthood. Children were treated as little adults, as the clothing portrayed in Bruegel's picture indicates: the girls' aprons and bonnets resembled those of their mothers, while the boys' trousers, jerkins and jackets echoed those worn by their fathers. Moreover, there were hardly any toys: only tops, hobby-horses, dolls, and windmills on long sticks. Most of Bruegel's children are managing without toys or making do with pigs' bladders, knucklebones, caps, barrels, hoops - such things, in other words, as could be found simply lying about. Emotional affection was probably slight in comparison with that exhibited by parents and relations in the nuclear families of today. It was simply a matter of too many Warship Seen Half from Left The Netherlanders possessed one of the largest merchant fleets, and mercantile initiative led to children being born, and too many dying in early childhood. Something of this lack of interest, this absence of any deep feeling, is conveyed in Bruegel's picture. The childlike element is stressed neither in the faces nor in the physique of the children. Some of them seem dull and rather stupid, all of them ageless. There is no trace of

the idealizing manner with which children would be portrayed in the pictures of the centuries to come. the reconnaissance of distant lands. Bruegel took Bruegel has depicted more than 250 children here. Such a catalogue of games, such an enumeration of children's methods for exercising the body and preparing for the great pains with his technically exact depictions adult world through imitation, is without parallel in the history of art. of ships.

The Ass in the School 1556 The population of the Netherlands provinces had a high level of education - indeed, an Italian traveller even ventured the opinion that everyone could read and write. Bruegel is laughing at his countrymen's eagerness to learn: the caption comments that "An ass will never become a horse, even if he goes to school."

This picture can, however, be seen differently: not as a folkloristic inventory, but as a warning to adults not to fritter their life away as if it were a childlike game. One factor supporting this second interpretation is the absence of childlike elements in the faces of most of the children. The two interpretations are not mutually exclusive, however. If this picture is of interest for us today, then it is not because of its possible moral or innovative technique, but Bruegel's skilled mastery of colour and form. The work fascinates, yet it also disturbs, for reasons both of content and of form. There is no ideal vantage point from which the picture should be viewed, for example. The observer is required simultaneously to come close up to the work and to remain at a certain remove from it: only at a distance can he maintain the necessary overall view, yet only in close-up do the many little activities, figures and faces really come to life. The perspective causes additional problems; we customarily take up a position in front of the centre of a picture, assuming that the painter is showing us his world from this position. Bruegel does not. To follow the perspective, one would have to adopt a position in front of the right-hand half of the painting. Here the walls of the building meet in an equiangular manner in the long street, the painter drawing the observer's gaze upwards. Although the perspective leads the eye to the right, the picture does not "tip over". The edge of the houses leads diagonally down towards the left and forwards. The buildings at the left-hand edge of the picture, their dark mass making them especially prominent, create a balance, and also a relationship between foreground and background that is charged with tension. Bruegel places his children play in a complex space; he fascinates us through artistic means, without our being immediately aware of what holds us for so long in front of this picture.

Children's Games 1560 Bruegel has portrayed over 250 children on this panel. They are playing with pieces of wood, with bones, with hoops and barrels -specially crafted toys were rare in the 16th century. Their faces often appear ageless: perhaps the painter wished to warn the observer against frittering away his life as if it were a childlike game.

Children's Games (detail) 1560

Children's Games (detail) 1560

Demons in Our Midst

Bruegel's century saw the exploration of the Earth's surface, a fresh survey of the heavens, the examination of the human body, and the cataloguing of the animal and plant worlds. People's interest was focused upon what we today would call reality. At that time, however, many will have regarded as real, as existing, not only trees and animals, the liver and the spleen, but also demons. Scientific studies were unable to dispel handed-down popular belief. Many celestial phenomena, physical deformities, diseases and epidemics were as yet inexplicable, and were accordingly put down to the influence of devils and demons, together with their human accomplices. The latter alone, the witches and sorcerers, could be caught and punished. Thousands supposedly in league with the forces of evil - in particular women -were tortured, found guilty, and burnt at the stake. Confessional reports and biographies reflect the great extent to which devils and demons were experienced as part of everyday reality. In the visual arts, they are given striking expression in the work of Hieronymus Bosch, likewise a Netherlander. Bruegel used his own fantasy to develop the tradition established by Bosch. He drew models for the prints of The Seven Deadly Sins (1558, detail p. 39) under commission from his publisher, Cock. Bruegel produced disturbing, unnatural landscapes filled with magical beings, in part playfully fantastical, in part genuinely threatening. It was presumably this mixture between the two elements, perhaps the thrill of fear, that was so sought after at the time.

Gula (detail) 1558 Gula means immoderation or gluttony and is numbered among the Seven Deadly Sins, which Bruegel portrayed in seven sheets full of fantastic figures and terrifying visions.

The Seven Deadly Sins, or The Vices: Desidia (Sloth) 1557

Avaritia (Greed) 1558

The playful element is given less prominence in the artist's paintings, which are more serious in nature. Bruegel has depicted the origin of the demons in The Fall of the Rebel Angels (1562), in which the Archangel Michael, together with his followers, is driving the angels who have rebelled against God out of Heaven. Falling to Hell, they are transformed into devils and demons. The proximity of God is indicated at the top edge by a brightly lit semicircle; furthermore, the upper - more heavenly - part of the picture is more clearly arranged and less congested than the lower one, approaching hell, in which the figures are chaotically falling past each other. A comparison of the angels and the devilish figures reveals that the former are clothed in lavishly swirling garments, leaving only their heads and hands visible. In contrast, most of the "evil ones" are naked, opening wide their mouths or tearing open their own bodies and - in some cases - presenting their buttocks to the observer's gaze. Bruegel has painted them merely as bodies, demonstrating the distance that lies between them and the spiritual beings, the angels.

The Fall of the Rebel Angels 1562 The Archangel Michael, portrayed in golden-brown armour in the middle of the picture, is driving the angels who have rebelled against God out of Heaven. The angels in white garments are fighting on his side, while those who have broken away from God are metamorphosing into the mostly naked bodies of fantastic figures.

The Fall of the Rebel Angels (detail) 1562

Pieter van der Heyden after Pieter Bruegel the Elder Battle about Money after 1570

Village Life

The subjects most frequently treated by European painters in Bruegel's day and age were taken from the spheres of religion and classical antiquity. These included scenes from biblical history, repeatedly Christ on the cross, and - in Catholic realms - the Assumption of the Virgin Mary and the martyrs, along with the heroes and gods of the Greeks and Romans. "Venus and Amor" or "Adam and Eve" became favourite subjects for painters from Cranach to Titian on account of the opportunities they represented for portraying beautiful bodies. A third group was concerned with the portraits of high-ranking personages and self-portraits. The buildings to be seen in these pictures were commonly palaces and town or city halls - magnificent edifices, in other words, not crofts and thatched houses, not such dwellings as would call to mind the arduous life in the country. The only exception here was the Adoration of Christ by the shepherds or the Wise Men from the East. However, the stable buildings in such pictures were generally idealized, and had little in common with the painter's actual environment. It was only in the Netherlands that things differed in this respect. Many artists in this country incorporated their everyday milieu into their pictures, painting not only rich and important men but also nameless people - the peasants, the agricultural workers, their dwellings, their villages. In his day, Bruegel was the most important of these painters displaying a pronounced realistic touch. It is true that he included a biblical scene in his painting of The Census at Bethlehem (1566); he depicted it so completely integrated into the pastoral life, however, that it can scarcely be made out at first glance. Mary on the donkey and Joseph in front of her differ neither in size nor in coloration from the other figures. The description of the village square struck the painter as being of greater urgency than the significance of the biblical characters. Bruegel selected an afternoon in winter, with the red sun already touching the horizon and the square full of people despite the cold. Such an outdoor life corresponded to everyday reality: while it was warmer in the houses, there was but little light indoors. Living conditions were cramped, all the members of a household often dwelling together in one single room. For these reasons, people in the 16th century spent more time on the streets and in the village square than in their houses, even in the north - a custom still followed today in southern countries. Children are enjoying themselves on the ice in Bruegel's painting; a hollow tree with a sign depicting a The Fair at Hoboken (detail) 1559 The dead were buried in the immediate proximity of the church; however, graveyards were not considered to be particularly solemn places. swan is serving as an open-air inn; and pigs are being slaughtered in the foreground, as was customary at the end of the year. The fact that this snowy day occurs before 24 December may be deduced from the account in Luke's Gospel, Chapter 2, in which Joseph and Mary travel to Bethlehem because the Emperor Augustus has ordered a census and everyone is to go to "his own town". Mary is in an advanced stage of pregnancy. The inn in the stable of which Jesus will be born could be the one in Bruegel's picture towards which Mary and Joseph are making. A wreath indicates that the building is an inn or tavern. In Bruegel's painting, it also serves as the census-taking station. However, the painter has presumably taken not one of the rare registration actions but the collection of taxes as his source of inspiration: those standing in front of the window are paying their taxes, while the people behind the window-sill are receiving the coins and registering the amount in books. The office of tax collector was usually leased; however, the plaque next to the window with the Habsburg double eagle reveals in whose name the official is acting.

The Census at Bethlehem 1566 There was next to no lighting within houses, apart from that thrown by the fire in the grate; accordingly, children and adults alike conducted their lives out of doors, even when it was cold. In the left-hand foreground, a pig is being slaughtered, a customary event with the onset of winter. Alcohol is being distributed at a treeside inn in the background, while the fires along the walls have a double function, not only warming the people but also roasting corn.

The Census at Bethlehem (detail) 1566 The sun is setting over a Flemish village. The wreath hanging over a building in the left foreground is an inn sign; the plaque next to it displays the double eagle, the crest of the Habsburgs. Philip II in Madrid was of

the House of Habsburg, and taxes are being collected here in his name. Mary with the Christ child is sitting on a donkey, the ox visible behind her. Joseph is striding out in front of them in the direction of the inn where the tax collectors or census officials are. Otherwise, no one in Bruegel's depiction of a winter village square is interested in the biblical figures. No one pays them any attention; children are enjoying themselves on the ice with skates, tops, and a stool which has been pressed into use as a toboggan.

It is said that the financially flourishing Netherlands were required to find half of the taxes due from the huge Spanish Habsburg empire. The immensity of the sum gave rise to constant protests. Bruegel painted this peaceful picture in 1566; one year later Alba was to arrive, demanding additional contributions, a demonstrative act of oppression which would become one of the causes of the rebellion by the Netherlanders against Madrid. Whenever Bruegel painted a village, he included a church in his depiction. This may be because of a wish on the part of the artist to comment in general terms on the importance of faith. It is more likely, however, that he painted or drew it every time because it represented a very real part of the village. The church was the community centre; it offered the possibility of coming together under one roof outside one's own cramped quarters, signalled the size and wealth of a village, performed not only a religious but also a social function. The same was true of the graveyard. The engraving The Fair at Hoboken (1559) contains nothing of the gravity with which we enter graveyards today. Bruegel has depicted it as a general meeting-place. People are chatting, urinating, here and there even dancing. Almost incidentally, a procession is crowding through the church door, for the reason behind the origination of a fair is always a religious festival. The main area of the drawing is filled with people enjoying themselves, dancing, drinking, playing marbles or practising archery. The banner of the inn is billowing out for all to see. At the bottom edge of the picture, a man in fool's costume is leading two children by the hand. By including this figure, Bruegel is seeking to tell the observer that he is not only endeavouring to entertain with his portrayal of people enjoying themselves at a religious festival but also wishes to admonish him: Foolishness leads people astray.

The Fair at Hoboken 1559 We know regarding the Netherlanders that they were fond of extravagant celebrations, and would cover considerable distances in order to participate in the festivities of other places. At the bottom edge of the picture, a fool is leading two children by the hand, in accordance with the motto "Folly leads men"

Peasants and Cattle near a Farmhouse c. 1553

Elck or Everyman 1558

Nature as Man's Environment

In order to differentiate more easily between Pieter Bruegel the Elder and his painting sons," the former was later christened "Peasant Bruegel". "Landscape Bruegel" would have been equally fitting, since his depictions of landscapes are at least as original as those that he did of peasants. Today we would probably call him "EcoBruegel", after the sober and vivid manner in which he painted landscapes, portraying nature as man's environment. It was not until Bruegel's century that the history of landscape painting really began. It had played a subordinate role in Christian painting towards the end of the Middle Ages; the subject of importance for mediaeval times was not so much one's visible surroundings as Heaven and Hell, and how one arrived at the one or the other. While landscapes were indeed reproduced in the book illuminations in the possession of the aristocrats, they were intended to show property ownership or profitable ground - woods for hunting, fields for agricultural working. Not until one or two generations before Bruegel did people discover the attractive sight and aesthetic pleasure that a landscape could offer. The first master of this subject is generally acknowledged to be Joachim Patinier (c. 1485-1524). The Netherlander Patinier is credited, among other things, with the decisive development - if not the invention - of certain techniques in the depiction of landscape. An example of this may be seen in the representation of distance, of spatial depth. While this can be depicted by means of foreshortening, such a technique works better in the case of buildings with straight lines than in the context of natural forms. Patinier achieved the effect of depth by using colours, painting the foreground dark, generally in earth brown, the middle ground green, and the background, where earth and sky flow into each other, light blue, thus proceeding from dark to light. Bruegel usually adopted a similar pattern. Furthermore, Patinier used an elevated vantage-point to fit a broad area of land into his picture. It is only from above that one's gaze can pass over houses, trees, hills. Bruegel imitated him in this, almost all of his landscapes depicting the view from a mountain or some otherwise undefined height. Not only painters and their patrons felt the need to chart as big a section of the Earth's surface as possible. For purely practical reasons, sea-captains and merchants with far-reaching trading connections required maps for long-distance routes. Bruegel's friend Abraham Ortelius was among those offering such items; indeed, he became famous for producing the first world atlas to come onto the market. This atlas included not only regional maps but also a map of the world, which, while of no practical value, was adorned with quotations of Roman philosophers. One of these states that man seems small if he considers "the entire eternity and size of the whole world". Another maintains: "The horse was created to pull and to carry, the bull to plough, the dog to keep watch and to hunt; man, however, was born to embrace the world with his gaze." Spring (detail) 1570 Bruegel has depicted people working in the garden; he produced the drawing for this posthumous engraving in 1565. Both quotations belong to the body of ideas originating with the Stoa, the Graeco-Roman school of philosophy. The Stoics regarded the universe as a rationally ordered and beautiful structure in which every living thing has its allotted place and even man must fall into line and calmly accept his fate. Bruegel was doubtless familiar with these ideas of a rational universe, and there are indications that something of them or of the Stoic lifestyle found its way - whether consciously or not - into his pictures. Ortelius says of his friend that he "painted much that simply could not be painted. All of the works by our Bruegel always imply more than they depict." The philosopher's abstract, imaginary cosmos was the artist's visible nature, to which man must adapt and of which he is as much a part as the plants and the animals as can be seen in The Return of the Herd (1565), for example. Cows, trees and people are all portrayed in the same hues. As observers, we of course know that the drovers have a particular responsibility; ultimately, however, they are of the same matter as the other living beings and must fulfil their predestined task, whether they will or not.

The Return of the Herd 1565 Many of Bruegel's paintings show people not so much as the masters of nature but rather as a part of it: there is hardly any difference here between the coloration of the cattle and that of their drovers. The Return of the Herd is one of a cycle depicting either the seasons or the months, five paintings of which have survived. This picture presumably depicts November.

The Suicide of Saul (1562) can also be interpreted in terms of Stoic thought. King Saul was guilty of arrogance: he did not obey Yahweh, God of the Old Testament; alternatively, in the sense of the Stoics, he offended against the laws of the universe. Accordingly, he had to die. We see on the left of the picture how, threatened by a superior enemy, he has fallen upon his sword. His squire is in the process of following suit. However, the struggle between the two armies is depicted as that between two caterpillar-like armoured entities equipped with prickles. It is a battle not of individuals but of masses. Nature and the cosmos resolve the affair; anyone rising up

against them will perish.

The Suicide of Saul 1562 Bruegel has shifted the scene of the battle between the Israelites and the Philistines to an extensive landscape, portraying not the struggle between individual soldiers but that between masses of fused armoured entities equipped with prickles. People like King Saul and his squire, who have both thrown themselves upon their swords, appear small and insignificant against the broad expanse of nature.

The Suicide of Saul (detail) 1562

The Suicide of Saul (detail) 1562

The Three Soldiers 1568

Not only Peasants

We may learn a great deal about an artist by identifying the things he does not paint. As far as we are aware, Bruegel painted no portraits on commission, nor - even more significant - any nudes. The nude human body had been a favourite subject since the Renaissance. Artists vied with each other in their search for the perfect body, and young painters in the 16th century were advised to construct an ideal figure from the particularly beautiful limbs of different persons, that they might thereby "achieve a harmony such as Nature only seldom affords."16 People should be more perfect than Nature, for - as one argument ran - man is made in God's image, and it is the task of the artist to bring out this similarity. In Bruegel's art, by contrast, the only naked beings are demons. His people are dressed and often so wrapped up that their bodies are quite unrecognizable - a far cry from the well-proportioned or elegantly stretched figures of the Italians and their followers in Spain and the north. Of the portraits ascribed to him, only one is indisputably by Bruegel: the Head of a Peasant Woman (after 1564). This work, like with many figures in his other paintings, reveals his great talent for capturing faces. We may be sure that Bruegel did not lack requests for portraits, the newly wealthy citizens being all too eager to have themselves and their families immortalized in this manner. However, he was evidently unwilling to bother himself with that sort of thing.

Head of a Peasant Woman after 1564 Bruegel painted no commissioned portraits, nor any of prominent contemporaries. He was uninterested in any cult of personality. However, this portrait of a peasant woman reveals just how capable he was of portraying faces with highly individual features.

The emphasis upon the importance of the individual, which emerged in the Renaissance did not fit in with his artistic concept. Indeed, Bruegel often hid the faces of the figures in his drawings and paintings, rendering them unrecognizable as individuals. Of the six persons in the foreground of the drawing Summer (1568), only one face is visible, and that foreshortened; in The Beekeepers and the Birdnester (c. 1568), the observer feels it was precisely this display of anonymity which so attracted Bruegel. A similar tendency may be observed in his biblical figures. He pushes them to one side, or hides them between secular figures of the same size. Thus we encounter Mary and Joseph in the village square, St. John the Baptist with Christ in a crowd of people, and the Adoration of the Kings behind a curtain of falling snow. Over 30 of some 45 pictures by (or attributed to) Bruegel are characterized by Nature, by the village and its peasants; the anonymous representatives of the rural lower stratum become the principal characters in his oeuvre. No painter before him had dared produce such works. Contemporary art generally regarded peasants as figures of mockery, considering them stupid, gluttonous, drunken, and prone to violence. It is as such that they appear in satirical poems, tales, and Shrovetide plays: as a well-known negative type, an object of laughter. They were used by authors to amuse the reader, and also to warn him to beware of bad qualities and wrong behaviour.

Summer 1568 Here, too, Bruegel has avoided depicting people as individuals, hiding or foreshortening the faces and concentrating upon the human body at work.

The Beekeepers and the Birdnester c. 1568 Bruegel will have found a special attraction in the opportunity offered him by the beekeepers of portraying them as anonymous, faceless people. Honey was the most important sweetener in those days. The colonies of bees were smoked out in autumn; the peasants would then catch new colonies in spring.

As has already been observed, a desire to warn and instruct is still regarded by some as the primary aim of Bruegel's work. Yet we must ask if The Peasant Wedding Banquet (1568) in the barn - to take but one example - was really painted with the intention of keeping the observer from gluttony. Men and women are sitting solemnly and thoughtfully at table; the helpers are carrying round a simple porridge on a door which has been taken off its hinges; the bride is sitting motionless under her bridal crown. On the right, a monk is conversing with a gentleman dressed in black. Though wine or beer is being poured into jugs in the foreground, there is no trace of drunkenness or gluttony among the wedding party. Indeed, they do not even appear particularly cheerful. Eating is portrayed as a serious activity. Moreover, the wall of straw or unthreshed corn and the crossed sheaves with a rake serve to keep in mind the labour by which the food is wrested from the soil. In Bruegel's time, such a scene depicting people at table will have reminded observers of the Wedding at Cana, as described in the second chapter of St. John's Gospel. The story of Christ turning water into wine was often referred to in contemporary works. Traditional representations required a large company at table and - as in Bruegel's painting - a man filling jugs. Jesus and the wedding guests were not portrayed in the act of eating, however - not even in those instances where the artist had shifted the wedding to his own time. It was a fundamental given in Bruegel's century that saints, nobles and burgher families were never depicted eating; they might be shown sitting at table, but were not allowed to touch the fare

before them, nor even to open their mouths, let alone put anything into them. This drawing a veil over the act of eating must have been in accordance with an unwritten rule. In all probability, people found it disconcerting to be reminded of the fact that no-one, no matter how rich, or how powerful, or how spiritual he may be, can live without nourishment - for eating reminds us of our dependence upon Nature, our dependence upon our digestive organs. This was at odds with a concept of art in which man was idealized, one seeking to make man in God's image, to render him a superior individual.

The Peasant Wedding Banquet 1568 The bride is sitting under her bridal crown; it is unclear which of the others is the bridegroom. The feast is taking place in the barn, the wall behind the guests consisting of stacked-up straw or corn. Two ears of corn with a rake call to mind the work that harvesting involves. The plates are being carried around on a door taken off its hinges. The principal form of nourishment in those days consisted of bread, porridge and soup.

Paolo Veronese The Wedding at Cana (detail) 1562/63 The Peasant Wedding Banquet

1568 Painters who idealized people as beautiful or cerebral beings did not depict them eating -no spoon or bite to eat on its way mouthwards was visible; instead, people sat chatting in front of their plates. Quite the opposite was true in the case of Bruegel, who emphasized the material existence of people, showing the body's need of nourishment.

The Peasant Wedding Banquet 1568

The Peasant Wedding Banquet 1568

Pieter the Droll?

Almost all the 45 or so paintings experts now attribute to Pieter Bruegel the Elder were executed in the 12 years between 1556 and 1568. Bruegel was a good 40 years old when he died; it is impossible to say what else he would have painted, what further development his art would have undergone... Many of his later pictures reveal his growing interest in single figures. Where we previously saw a multitude of small forms embedded in an expansive landscape, we now encounter individual large-scale figures, to whom the background is subordinated. One such picture is The Parable of the Blind; another is The Peasant and the Birdnester (1568). Bruegel has depicted a boy hanging from a branch while engaged in the attempt to steal the eggs from a bird's-nest, and a peasant pointing to the boy. The painting illustrates a proverb David Vinckeboons Allegory of Robbery (detail), undated Vinckeboons (1576 - after 1632) has done a variation upon the theme of robbing a nest which Bruegel treated in one of his later paintings: instead of one spectator, there are two here, one of whom is also being robbed. challenging one to take action: "He who knows where the nest is, knows it; he who takes it, has it." It is not the active person, the man of deeds, whom Bruegel has placed in the foreground, however, but the pensive man, perhaps rather unworldly, who, looking upwards into the distance, has not noticed that he is about to fall forwards into the water. Bruegel has painted him three times as large as the birdnester and placed him along the vertical middle axis, thereby giving him so much significance that he dominates the picture. Furthermore, by positioning him almost on the lower border of the picture, he has moved him into a position of direct proximity to the observer. The clumsy body has acquired additional weight through the artist's painting it in a blocklike manner. This huge figure with a curious expression on his face almost seems to be tumbling out of the picture towards the observer. Yet the proverb of the birdnester will have served Bruegel at most as an incentive; he was primarily preoccupied with something quite different, namely the artistic problem of depicting a human body about to lose its balance. He had already shown considerable interest in the act of falling in The Parable of the Blind , portraying it in six phases seen from side-on. In The Peasant and the Birdnester, he depicts the initial stage of the fall head-on, adding to the forwards movement by means of the arm crooked backwards over the man's shoulder and thus - if we include the man's gaze - combining three directions in one single body: forwards, backwards, upwards. Everything else in the picture is necessarily subordinated to such a dynamic central field. Bruegel has kept the landscape flat; the eye can relax on the thatchcovered roofs of the houses in the background.

The Peasant and the Birdnester 1568 It is not the birdnester whom Bruegel has placed in the foreground but the pensive man, who, his head slightly raised, has not noticed that he is about to fall into the brook. Bruegel will presumably have been interested less in the proverb than in the body of the young man, who is on the point of losing his balance and will fall forwards. In The Parable of the Blind, from the same year, the artist presents the observer with a side-on view of the different stages of falling. This painting was probably inspired by a proverb distinguishing between active and passive people: ''He who knows where the nest is, knows it; he who takes it, has it." The detail shows the nest robber, the active person; boldly and without a moment's hesitation, he has climbed up the tree.

Other artists, mainly south of the Alps, were also working on the portrayal of complicated movements by this time; they had broken away from the rather static Renaissance standards of beauty and are commonly described as Mannerists. However, their great gestures, their floating, twisted figures, were still beautiful or spiritualized forms. Despite shared interests with Bruegel, the difference between their work and his is unmistakable. The late works with large-scale figures include The Cripples (1568) and The Misanthrope (1568). An old man in a dark habit, whose purse is being stolen by a ragged figure in a glass globe, feels himself hard done by and deceived. At the bottom are the words: "Since the world is so unfaithful, I am in mourning." Thorns lie in his way; he is about to tread on them. Bruegel leaves the question open as to whether we are looking here at someone pursued by misfortune or at a wealthy man who favours the outward appearance of an unfortunate. It may well be that the painter's contemporaries laughed amusedly over such a deceiver deceived or over the birdnester and the skygazer. At any rate, van Mander comments that Bruegel painted many "humorous scenes", and that this led to his being nicknamed "Pieter the Droll" by a considerable number of people. Van Mander continues: "There are few works by his hand which the observer can look upon and thereby keep a straight face.. ," A straight face in the case of only a few works? Van Mander is presumably referring primarily to the pictures of peasants, for the peasant was fundamentally presented in contemporary literature and on stage as a stupid figure, uneducated, clumsy, quick to resort to violence - in short, a figure causing

amusement. Those observers with this cliche, of the peasant in their heads and with no eye for the serious side of Bruegel's portrayals will perhaps indeed have found something "droll" about the dancing, eating, working countryfolk, their tendency to dress, attend to their appearance, and move in a different way to that customary in urban circles. As well as this one public, prone to laughter, there was another, however, one represented by Bruegel's friend Abraham Ortelius. the famous geographer. Ortelius wrote that Bruegel had "painted much that simply could not be painted. All of the works by our Bruegel always imply more than they depict." In formulating his opinion in this way, Ortelius was presumably referring to Stoic thought as it may be identified in Bruegel's work, the concept of a universe in which each person should accept his predestined place. However, Ortelius equally praises Bruegel for having refrained from refining and prettifying people, expressing himself (translated from the Latin) as follows: 'Those painters who, painting graceful creatures in the prime of life, seek to superimpose on the painted subject some further element of charm or elegance sprung from their free imagination disfigure the entire portrayed creation, are untrue to their model, and thereby deviate to an equal extent from true beauty. Our Bruegel is free from this fault."

The Misanthrope 1568 A ragged figure in a glass globe is cutting the purse strings of an old man wearing a dark habit. Under the picture are the words: "Since the world is so unfaithful, I am in mourning." The question remains open whether it is the world which is deceiving the old man or vice versa. A shepherd is watching over his flock in the background; he is not complaining but is content to accept his fate, as the Stoics recommend.

The Misanthrope

Storm at Sea (1568) is one of Bruegel's last paintings. It is unfinished and, like so many of his works, defies unambiguous interpretation. On the one hand, we see ships threatened by a storm - man not as master of Nature, in other words, but as its victim. On the other hand, the sailors have poured oil onto the water to calm the sea, and have sacrificed a barrel from their cargo to distract the mighty whale. Yet the barrel could be interpreted in a similar way to the nutshells in the picture of the Two Monkeys: in each case, animals - meaning mankind - allow themselves to be distracted by something of little importance, instead of pursuing that which really matters. A comparison of this work with the earlier painting of a View of Naples (c. 1558), recalling Bruegel's journey to Italy, underlines the overpowering manner in which he has depicted the sea and the force of Nature here.

Storm at Sea 1568 One of the vessels has poured oil overboard in order to calm the sea; another has thrown a barrel over the side in hopes of

distracting a gigantic whale. Both attempts by the crews to save themselves appear in vain in the light of the waves and clouds: man is powerless compared with the forces of nature.

View of Naples c. 1558 A comparison of Storm at Sea from 1568 with a commemorative picture of a journey to Italy, painted roughly a decade earlier, clearly reveals the extent to which Bruegel's artistic interests had meanwhile developed. Even if a sea battle is raging before Naples, the extensive landscape and the protective circle of the harbour communicate a sense of order and security.

Frans Huys after Pieter Bruegel the Elder Four-Master and Two Three-Masters Anchored near a Fortified Island with a Lighthouse ca. 1561

View of Antwerp from the sea 1559

LIFE AND WORK

Dominicus Lamponius

Portrait of Pieter Bruegel the Elder 1572

Pieter Bruegel c. 1525-1569 Life and Work

Milites requiescentes

1525 Pieter Bruegel's year of birth is unknown; it presumably lay somewhere between 1525 and 1530. Nor do we know where he was born, but it was probably in Breda, in the north of Brabant. 1527 Birth of Philip II of Habsburg, son of Emperor Charles V, to whose family belong not only Spain but also the Netherlands. 1528 Death of Albrecht Durer: birth of Paolo Caliari, known as Veronese. 1540 Michelangelo paints The Last Judgement in Rome. Gerhard Mercator, the most important Netherlands cartographer along with Abraham Ortelius (later Bruegel's friend), publishes his "Globus Terrae". 1545 Bruegel probably studies under Pieter Coeck van Aelst in Antwerp, until 1550.

Mountain landscape with a deep valley

1550 Bruegel at work on a (lost) altar for the Mecheln glovers' guild. 1551 "Peeter Brueghels" is accepted as a master into the Antwerp artists' guild, the Guild of St. Luke. 1552 (or 1551) Bruegel travels via Lyons to Italy, returning over the Swiss Alps. While in Rome, he is believed to have worked together with Giulio Clovio, the miniaturist. 1556 Bruegel produces drawings in Antwerp for Hieronymus Cock's printing shop, "The Four Winds". Among works of his to be printed there are The Big Fish Eating the Little Fish and The Ass in the School. 1557 A series of seven engravings with the Deadly Sins follows. 1559 A series of seven engravings with the Virtues appears. The painter changes the way he spells his name, signing himself no longer Brueghel but Bruegel. He paints The Fight between Carnival and Lent. King Philip II of Spain, successor since 1556 of Charles V. leaves the Netherlands, where he has been dwelling for some considerable time, never to return. He makes Madrid his seat of government. Margaret of Parma, his half-sister, is appointed Regent of the Netherlands. The Netherlander demand the removal of Spanish troops.

Prospectus Tyburtinus

1560 The dissection of corpses, previously forbidden by the Church, is henceforth permitted for research purposes. 1562 Bruegel paints The Fall of the Rebel Angels, The Suicide of Saul and Two Monkeys, among other works. He probably travels to Amsterdam, and thereafter settles in Brussels. 1563 The wedding takes place in the Brussels Church of Notre-Dame de la Cha-pelle between "Peeter brugel" and "Mayken cocks", the latter the daughter of the painter's former teacher, Pieter Coeck. The Netherlands refuse to pay King Philip higher taxes. 1564 Birth of his son Pieter (later known as "Hell" Bruegel)

Insidiosus auceps (The Crafty Bird Catcher

1565 The paintings of the months or seasons are executed. 1566 The Antwerp merchant Nicolas Jong-helinck hands over 39 paintings to the city as surety; 16 of the works are by Bruegel ( The Tower of Babel, The Procession to Calvary and The Twelve Months.) Religious fanatics, carrying out the so-called "breaking of the images", plunder churches and monasteries. 1567 King Philip II despatches Duke Alba with 60,000 soldiers. Margaret of Parma resigns as Regent. Alba's "Council of Troubles" sentences 8,000 Netherlands "rabblerousers" to death; Counts Egmont and Hoorne are arrested. 1568 Birth of the artist's second son, Jan (later known as "Velvet" Bruegel). Bruegel paints The Parable of the Blind, The Magpie on the Gallows, The Misanthrope, The Peasant and the Birdnester, The Cripplesand Storm at Sea. Egmont and Hoorne are executed. 1569 Pieter Bruegel dies, supposedly on 5 December. He is buried in the Church of Notre-Dame dc la Chapelle in Brussels. Open rebellion by the Netherlanders against Spain. 1604 Carel van Mander publishes Het Schilderboeck, a description of various artists and their works, among which are those by Pieter Brueeel the Elder.

Pagus nemorosus

Alpine landscape

Alpine landscape

Landscape with a castle on a rock

Landscape with a town

Landscape with an artist sketching

Landscape with two mules

Rocky landscape with a castle

Giuseppe Arcimboldo

1527 - 1593

Renaissance Art Map Giuseppe Arcimboldo

Life and work of Acimboldo Arcimboldo's Pictures Arcimboldo's Vertumnus Arcimboldo as a Scientist Arcimboldo's Drawings

Arcimboldo also spelled ARCIMBOLDI Italian Mannerist painter whose grotesque compositions of fruits, vegetables, animals, books, and other objects were arranged to resemble human portraits. In the 20th century these double images were greatly admired by Salvador Dali and other Surrealist painters.

Beginning his career as a designer of stainedglass windows for the Milan Cathedral, Arcimboldo moved to Prague, where he became one of the favourite court painters to the Habsburg rulers Maximilian II and Rudolph II. He also painted settings for the court theatre there and developed an expertise for illusionistic trickery. His paintings contained allegorical meanings, puns, and jokes that were appreciated by his contemporaries but lost upon audiences of a later date. His eccentric vision is epitomized in his portraits"Summer" and "Winter" (Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna).

Encyclopdia Britannica

Life and work of Arcimboldo

There is an entry in the register of deaths at the Magistro della Sanita of Milan which states that the painter Giuseppe Arcimboldo died on 11 July 1593, at the age of about 66, with "retention of urine and kidney stones" as the cause of his death.

It also mentions that he had not died from the plague. Arcimboldo was probably born in Milan in 1527, the same year in which Rome was conquered and plundered by Charles the Fifth's mercenaries.

His father, who worked as a painter for Milan Cathedral, was called Biagio Arcimboldo or Arcimboldi. It is still uncertain which version is the correct one, because Giuseppe himself used to write it differently. Sometimes he would sign his name as Arcimboldo, then again Arcimboldi or Arcimboldus. Sometimes he would put Giuseppe, then Josephus, Joseph or Josepho. I have decided to use the name Arcimboldo, which has been common in France and everywhere else, though not in Italy. Like all Italian names with the ending -baldo or -boldo, Arcimboldo is Southern Germanic in origin. The history of the Arcimboldo family was recorded by Father F. Paolo Morigia, who faithfully wrote down everything the artist told him. And according to Father Morigia it goes back as far as Charlemagne, in whose services there was said to have been a certain Southern German nobleman by the name of Saitfrid Arcimboldi. Of his sixteen children three were said to have excelled so much that they were also ennobled. One of these three subsequently emigrated to Italy, where he established the Italian line of the Arcimboldi family. This story is undoubtedly a mixture of history and legend, but the following words of Morigia's seem to be more securely grounded in facts: "Everything I have been saying about the Arcimboldis comes from Mr. Giuseppe Arcimboldi, a trustworthy gentleman with an impeccable lifestyle, who has served two German Emperors (which will be expounded further), and he has copied these details about the ancestry and origins of the Arcimboldi family from an ancient parchment in the German language which was read to him by the physician of the Emperor Maximilian, and he declares furthermore that he has visited two places which are called Arcimboldi. He also says that in the city of Augsburg, near its biggest church, there is a big cemetery with a large chapel, and on entering through the gate one can see an ancient tombstone of red marble bearing the coat of arms of the Arcimboldi family with its characteristic letters. Likewise he firmly asserts that, in the city of Regensburg in the large cathedral churchyard, he saw a big and very ancient tomb with the coat of arms of the Arcimboldis and its typical letters etched into it, and that there are many Arcimboldis all over Germany." Thus spoke Morigia. And it is indeed true that Arcimboldo was commissioned by the Emperor Rudolph II to make a journey to Kempten, so it is quite plausible that he went via Augsburg and Regensburg. In his Nobilita di Milano Father Morigia gives a very detailed account of the history of the noble family of Arcimboldo, and so we learn that Guido Antonio Arcimboldo, Giuseppe's great-great-grandfather, was elected Archbishop of Milan as a widower in 1489, thus becoming the successor of his deceased brother Giovanni. Guido Antonio's son Filippo was the father of Pace, Giuseppe's grandfather. Biagio, Giuseppe's father, was Pace's illegitimate son. Guido Antonio's brother Giovanni, who died in 1489, was the grandfather of Gianangelo Arcimboldo, who was born in 1487 and held the position of Archbishop of Milan from 1550 until his death in 1555. This great-uncle must have been quite influential in Giuseppe's life when he was young. He introduced him to artists, scholars, writers and important humanists who used to come to his house. These contacts probably helped to lay the foundation for that turning point which was to take place in Arcimboldo's art and which was regarded by many as somewhat eccentric. It is likely that Giuseppe also knew the German artists who were working on Milan Cathedral or who were producing tapestries for the Medicis. Apart from that we know very little about young Giuseppe's development. However, considering that he became quite a famous and erudite artist, we have reason to assume that the foundation must have been laid in his youth. One of Arcimboldo's early contacts is mentioned by Benno Geiger. Giuseppe's father was a friend of the painter Bernardino Luini, a pupil of Leonardo da Vinci's. However, Giuseppe had no direct relationship with either of the two: Leonardo had left Milan in 1516 and then gone to France, where he died in 1519; and Bernardino Luini died as early as 1532, when Arcimboldo was only five years old. Nevertheless, a link with Leonardo via Luini did exist. When Leonardo left Milan, he handed his notes and sketch books to Luini, and it was through Luini's son that Giuseppe saw them. We can imagine that a lot of it must have left a deep impression on the young artist. Because of the expulsion of Duke Ludovico (il Moro) from Milan, as well as a plague epidemic at the beginning of the 16th century, Milan had lost its leading position in the world of art. However, there were still links with other cities and artists in the whole of Italy, as well as Germany, the Netherlands and France. We can safely assume that Arcimboldo cultivated his contacts not only with painters, but also with philosophers and other scholars. In 1549, at the age of 22, Giuseppe Arcimboldo made his debut as an artist. The records of Milan Cathedral tell us that, together with his father, he was paid for designing several stained glass windows. In 1551 he painted five coats of arms for Ferdinand of Bohemia; the duke was passing through Milan and was probably told about Arcimboldo. This was before he became Emperor Ferdinand I. It is possible that Arcimboldo was already more famous than we are aware. This conclusion is in fact justified when we read an account by Paolo Morigia, a friend and contemporary of Arcimboldo's. When the painter went to Prague in 1562, Paolo Morigia assessed his fame in these words: "This is a painter with a rare talent, who is also extremely knowledgeable in other disciplines; and having proved his worth both as an artist and as a bizarre painter, not only in his own country but also abroad, he has been given the highest praise, in that word of his fame has reached the Emperor's court in Germany."

Spring 1573 Oil on canvas, 76 x 64 cm Musee National du Louvre, Paris

Arcimboldo's Spring is completely framed by garlands which were painted in a style distinctly different from that of the figure. A. Pieyre de Mandiargues was probably right when he wrote that the garlands must have been added later. When we look at the painting from a distance, we notice that the face is that of a young woman with a gentle smile. A close look, however, reveals that her skin, hair and clothes are only an illusion and that the woman is in fact composed of the petals and stalks of spring flowers, which are rendered in minute detail. Her skin consists of blossoms ranging from white to pink, her hair is made up of a magnificent array of colourful flowers, and her dress is a collection of green plants. Her nose is the bud of a lily, her ear a tulip, and her eye is a couple of black nightshades and their blossom. White flowers are arranged to form a ruff, which separates face from dress.

From 1551 onwards only Giuseppe is mentioned in the cathedral documents, probably because that was the time when his father died. Until 1558 there were regular entries about a whole series of cathedral assignments. But the only design which has been preserved and identified is that of a number of stained glass windows to illustrate the history of St. Catherine of Alexandria in 48 parts. This seems to be all that is left of the work of the two Arcimboldos at Milan Cathedral. Geiger points out that "the stories concerning St. Catherine, which were started by both painters together and finished by the son, did not go beyond the confines of the typical style of the time, the style in which the lives of saints were usually depicted. These and other stained glass windows clearly show the influence of Gaudenzio Ferrari more than anybody else's." But Geiger also believes that there are "Arcimboldesque" elements in some of the windows, so maybe there are also some in at least one of the examples shown in this book. Also, it is quite possible that among the large number of unidentified stained glass windows there are quite a few which were designed by Arcimboldo. After all, the number of designs for which he was paid far exceeds that of his St. Catherine windows. According to Geiger, these windows contain some clear elements of the style he was to adopt later. In 1559, Arcimboldo is mentioned in the documents of Milan Cathedral for the last time. The clue to this is an entry in the account book of Como Cathedral.

1558:

Lire 159.19 to Master Giuseppe Arcimboldo, painter from Milan, for the design and model of the Celone (Gobelin tapestry), as mentioned in the account book of that year.

So this first Gobelin tapestry was undoubtedly designed by Arcimboldo. And there is no reason why we should doubt the authenticity of seven others. They are all equal in size and colour scheme. A simple comparison confirms their similarity: "The sumptuously ornamental paintings full of fruit and blossom, flower bunches and garlands, angels and little cherubs, as well as an abundance of scroll-shaped ornaments which do not leave space for anything else" - all these elements show clearly the hand of one single artist. Also, they show even more clearly than his stained glass windows what kind of style he was to adopt later. The ornamental sumptuousness of his pictures as well as his depiction of various scenes can be called "Arcimboldesque". Geiger believes that Arcimboldo might have been influenced by the two Flemings Johannes and Ludwig

Karcher, who used to make the Gobelin tapestries to his designs, or, alternatively, that "his Germanic heritage was aroused" in the artist.

Summer 1573 Oil on canvas, 76 x 64 cm Musee National du Louvre, Paris

Like Spring, this picture belongs to the complete series of the Four Seasons which is now in the Musee National du Louvre in Paris. What is said about the garlands around the first picture also applies to this one. Both Summer and Spring are human heads in profile. Summer consists entirely of different kinds of summer fruit and vegetables. The glowing colours of the head stand out in bold relief against the dark background. On the broad, stiff collar he has delicately woven the words "Giuseppe Arcimboldo - F." The F stands forfecit ("he has done it"). This is the painter's way of authenticating his work of art. On the shoulder there is the date of the painting: 1573.

In 1562 Giuseppe gave in to the repeated requests of Emperor Ferdinand I and went to Prague. Benno Geiger's source study confirms that Arcimboldo must have continued to be famous even after the Emperor had asked him to be the court artist. To give an idea of the relationship between Arcimboldo and Ferdinand I as well as his successors, the Emperors Maximilian II and Rudolph II, I shall quote Morigia again, who says in his Historia dell'Antichitd di Milano of 1592: "In 1562 he (Arcimboldo) left his country and joined the Emperor's court, where he was liked and treated well (by the Emperor) and received with great kindness, and the Emperor gave him a good salary worthy of his merits and also showed his affection in many other ways. And so our Arcimboldo lived a very fulfilling and honourable life at the Imperial court, not only for him (Ferdinand), but also the entire court, not only with his paintings, but also many other works of art and pieces of woodwork for occasions such as tournaments, games, weddings, coronations, and especially when Archduke Charles of Austria took a wife. This noble and inspired man fashioned a great number of rare and delicate works of art which caused considerable amazement among all the illustrious noblemen who used to congregate there, and his lord and master (Ferdinand) was very pleased with him. It is also worth mentioning that when Maximilian succeeded his father on the Imperial throne, Arcimboldo was never refused permission to see the Emperor at any hour of the day, for he was counted among those who were in particular favour with the Emperor, and indeed the whole of the Austrian court befriended him and loved him for his art as well as his impeccable disposition. When Maximilian died, he was succeeded by his son Rudolph, who extended the same favour and love to Arcimboldo as his father had done. When, after twenty-six years of service to these two great monarchs and to the whole House of Austria, this noble and honourable Giuseppe asked the Emperor several times over a period of two years if he might very kindly be granted leave to return to his home country in order to enjoy his old age there, he was finally granted this favour, albeit very reluctantly, for His Imperial Majesty had become so fond of him that he was loath to deprive himself of his presence." From 1562 onwards we have a clearer picture of Giuseppe Arcimboldo's life, thanks especially to the entries in the Archiv fur Kunde osterreichischer Geschichtsquellen ("Archive of Austrian Historical Sources") and the Urkunden und Regesten aus dem Jahrbuch des Allerhochsten Kaiserhauses ("Documents and Records from the Almanac of the Most High Imperial House"). During the two years when Arcimboldo served Ferdinand I he painted several portraits of the Imperial family as well as the first series of his Four Seasons. Two of these, Summer and Winter, are in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna.Spring can be seen in the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando in Madrid,

and Autumn has been lost.

Autumn 1573 Oil on canvas, 76 x 64 cm Musee National du Louvre, Paris

The notes on the previous two paintings also apply to Autumn, which was painted in the same year. A broken old tub is held together by some wicker branches in a somewhat makeshift arrangement, and a head protrudes from it. It is the head of a rather rough sort of fellow, and is made up of autumn produce. His bulbous nose is a juicy pear, his healthy-looking cheek is a ripe apple, his chin is a pomegranate and his ear is a large mushroom, which could be a russula. It seems appropriate that the ear-ring should be an over-ripe, burst fig. His head is crowned with red and white grapes, reddish vine-leaves and a gigantic squash, thus reminding us of Arcimboldo's earlier depictions of Bacchus. The sumptuousness of the fruit is an indication of the fertility of autumn, and the sharp tongue which comes through the prickly lips seems to signal Autumn's joyful anticipation of culinary delights.

The artistic concept of these pictures of 1563 was unique and laid the foundation of Arcimboldo's success as a painter. The documents of the time bear witness to the fact that monarchs and his contemporaries in general were quite enthusiastic about his art. We do not know why there was this sudden turning point. As I pointed out above, Geiger believes that there were elements of it in his earlier paintings. And during his time at the Imperial court, these tendencies were undoubtedly reinforced by his acquaintance with pictures by Bosch, Brueghel, Cranach, Grien and Altdorfer. When Ferdinand I died in 1564 and was succeeded by Emperor Maximilian II, Arcimboldo continued as his court artist, with a monthly salary of twenty guilders. On special occasions the Emperor sometimes gave him a special supplement. It could be that he particularly liked a certain painting or that he gave him money for a special journey, such as a trip to Italy in 1566, which he sponsored with a hundred guilders. There is little doubt that a large number of pictures must have been painted between 1564 and 1576, but only very few of them are known to us. We do know that in 1566 Arcimboldo painted the Four Elements. Two of them, Water and Fire, are now in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, whereas the other two, Earth and Air, have still not been located. Research has shown that Arcimboldo also painted the following pictures during the reign of Maximilian II: The Lawyer(1566), another series of the Four Seasons in 1572, an Autumn and a Winter, two series of Four Seasons in 1573, and in 1574 The Cook and The Wine Steward. The last two pictures are lost. But apart from painting, Arcimboldo also had other duties at the Imperial court. As he was a man of many talents, he also served the Emperor as an architect, stage designer, engineer, water engineer and art specialist. Because of his extensive knowledge he was able to exert his influence on Maximilian II. According to Lomazzo, Maximilian valued Arcimboldo's views so much that he not only listened to his judgement but also adapted his own taste to that of the artist. With Arcimboldo's help he extended his art and curio cabinets, thus creating the nucleus of a museum. Later they became Rudolph II's famous Art and Wonder Chambers, which will be mentioned in more detail later. It was customary among Renaissance monarchs to hold tournaments and feasts. These were always occasions of enormous pomp at the European courts. Everyone who had a high rank or a title came to these festivities: the aristocracy, church dignitaries, academics, artists and other ladies and gentlemen of high social standing. The monarch was always at the centre of the feast. He was the hero and the victor. For this reason, a tournament and a triumphal entry were always part of the show. The hero was always victorious in a tournament and returned home in a triumphal procession. The characters who took part were taken from ancient history or mythology. There were also

references to the political conditions of the time, with the intention of glorifying the monarch and strengthening his political power. The common people were always thrilled by such a spectacle, which served its purpose of making them believe that everything was alright with their world and of diverting their attention from their misery.

Winter 1573 Oil on canvas, 76 x 64 cm Musee National du Louvre, Paris

Winter is the final picture in the series of the Four Seasons which Arcimboldo painted in 1573. Although only Summer was signed by the artist, there are so many similarities between the pictures that there can be no doubt about the authenticity of the other three paintings. Winter is depicted as an ancient tree stump, which has almost died, with cracked bark, partly detached from the tree. It is easy to make out a pathetic old man whose nose is peeling and whose swollen, toothless mouth - a mushroom - sits crookedly on a chin full of warts. His face is covered with a stubbly beard and is full of scars and scabs. His eye seems to be hiding in a deep crack in the bark, and what we recognize as an ear is nothing but the remainder of a broken-off branch. A thick straw mat protects the old man from the cold. However, Arcimboldo does not see winter just as the cold season; his picture also contains an element of comfort. Hanging from a broken branch there are an orange and a lemon: with their glowing colours they introduce a glimmer of sunshine and warmth into the cheerless atmosphere. The green ivy growing from the back of the old man's head, as well as the tangle of branches resembling a crown, reinforce the feeling of hope that winter will not last for ever. If we take a closer look at the straw mat that envelops Winter like a cloak, we can make out a coat of arms. Arcimboldo often received commissions from the Emperor to paint the Four Seasons, and this was how he sometimes indicated the recipient of the picture.

The order of the Seasons is full of symbolical symmetry. There are always two matching heads in profile, one of them facing left, the other right and expressing a special relationship between the seasons they symbolize.

Air Oil on canvas, 74.5 x 56 cm Private collection, Basle

Air, like the Four Seasons and the other three elements, has been depicted in the form of a human head in profile. To express his ideas on the nature of air, Arcimboldo has populated this picture with a large number of birds. Most of them have only their heads visible and can hardly be identified, whereas others can be recognized immediately. The goose, for example, is quite easy to make out, and together with the tail feathers of a rooster gives a vague impression of an ear. The turkey with its swelled breast is the nose, and a pheasant, hiding partly under the wings of the rooster, provides a goatee beard with his tail feathers, thus decorating the chin of the figure. The little bird whose eye serves as the pupil of the human head remains a mystery, however, while the upper and lower eye-lid of the head is formed by the open beak of a duck. Arcimboldo's Four Elements contain some obvious references to the House of Hapsburg, such as the peacock and the eagle, which are both symbols of the dynasty.

Arcimboldo became the most prominent organizer of such festivities. The imagination he showed in designing new costumes, inventing new forms of entertainment, bizarre figures and grotesque masques was simply inexhaustible. One of his festive processions included horses disguised as dragons and a real elephant. As Andreas Beyer points out, the sixteenth century saw a considerable increase in tournaments and festivals under the influence of classical humanism. "Florence, which was the centre of the philosophical revival, also became the most significant focal point for festive ceremonies." For the House of Hapsburg these festivities were of particular importance, because the area over which they ruled covered a large number of different nationalities, and such ceremonies gave the Emperor an opportunity to demonstrate the political power of his dynasty. The games usually consisted of three parts. First, there was the joust or tilting, in which two knights on horseback, separated by a fence, attempted to throw each other from their saddles with lances; then there was the free tournament, where the knights had to engage in hand-to-hand combat; and finally the socalled foot fight, where they had to attack each other with different kinds of weapons across a fence. These three disciplines went back to mediaeval types of combat which were specially cultivated by the Imperial troops and demonstrated by them. As fewer and fewer knights were actually involved in real wars, these tournaments gradually took on the function of spectacles designed to lull both the Emperor and the guests into thinking that the House of Hapsburg did not have any political problems. Although quite a few tournaments and festivals took place under Maximilian II, we only have documentary evidence for two occasions on which Arcimboldo participated as an organizer: the wedding feast of 1571 and the coronation of Rudolph as King of Hungary in 1572. On the other hand, Arcimboldo had painted several pictures for Maximilian II by the time the Emperor died in 1576. This can be seen in the following document: The Records from the Almanac of the Most High Imperial House has the following entry for 28 July, 1574: Joseph Arcimboldo, Artist and Painter to the Roman Imperial Court, hath received 65 Rhenish Guilders for sundry work and painting which he hath wrought for the Elector of Saxony at the behest of Emperor Maximilian II. However, most of his pictures seem to have been lost. In 1575 Arcimboldo made several paintings for the private chambers of the Emperor and was paid a commission of 75 thalers. In the same year his illegitimate son Benedict was given official recognition by Maximilian II. And in 1576, Arcimboldo was paid 200 guilders as a special and final gift from the Emperor. We do not know of any other works. Like his two predecessors, Emperor Rudolph II also took Arcimboldo into his service. The eleven years which the artist spent with Rudolph II were probably the peak of his career. The Emperor was extremely fond of Arcimboldo and showed great appreciation for him. A peculiar mixture of irrational and scientific thought prevailed at Rudolph's court and was somehow reflected in Arcimboldo's pictures.

Fire 1566 Oil on limewood, 66.5 x 51 cm Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

There is an inscription in the lower right-hand corner of the gunbarrel which reads: "Josephus Arcimboldus Menensis. F" The date and the title are on the other side of the painting: 1566 Ignis". In this allegory Arcimboldo depicted several different types of fire, ranging from the small light of an oil-lamp or a candle to the tremendous power of cannons and guns. A flame can be kindled by striking the two pieces of steel (the nose and ear) against the flint which decorates the Golden Fleece. This will light the little oil-lamp (the chin of the figure), the bundle of spills (the moustache), the rolled-up taper candle (the forehead complete with wrinkles) and finally the pile of firewood, whose flames surround the head like a crown. There is hardly any other work of Arcim-boldo's which is more explicit in its references to the Hapsburgs. The neck is separated from the body by the chain of the Golden Fleece, which was one of the most important orders of the time. Duke Philip of Burgundy gave it to the Hapsburgs on the day of his wedding in 1429. Like many others, he became one of the Hapsburgs through marriage. What is even more significant is the presence of the double eagle, the symbol of the Holy Roman Empire of which the Hapsburgs were emperors at the time of Arcimboldo. Finally there are the gun and the cannons. These may well have served the purpose of emphasizing the great military power of the Hapsburg rulers, then at war with Turkey.

Rudolph II was an eccentric. Weak, depressive and introverted, he preferred to avoid problems. He was not a warlike character, but always tried to find a compromise between the feuding Catholics and Protestants. He loved the fine arts, especially painting and sculpture, and took an interest in every academic discipline. Many scholars came to his court, including Tycho de Brahe and Kepler. There were astrologers who studied the course of the stars, alchemists who tried to produce gold, and others who attempted to prove that a circle could be reduced to a square or to construct a machine that was continually in motion, a so-called perpetuum mobile. His museum contained the works of famous painters, and artists from all over Europe used to work for him. All this meant that Prague had now become a major European cultural centre. But, Rudolph IPs interest lay mainly in his Art and Wonder Chambers. It contained everything that was regarded as exotic at that time, all sorts of unusual objects and animals. Benno Geiger gives some examples in his book on Arcimboldo: stuffed birds (from the world as it was known then), gigantic mussels, sword- and sawfish, precious stones, demons imprisoned in blocks of glass, mummies, objects from the newly discovered continent of America, precious things from India and a whole zoo of exotic animals. Everywhere the Emperor had his agents whose job it was to search for the extraordinary. And we know from two sources that Arcimboldo travelled to a place called Kempten in Southern Germany, where he bought a number of objets d'art, as well as exotic birds and animals. There had in fact been Art and Wonder Chambers for a long time. Maximilian II and Rudolph II kept extending them, and they provided exactly the right environment for Arcimboldo to thrive as an artist. It was in these chambers that he studied every detail of the animals and plants which he used for his paintings. (Incidentally, Rudolph II was a great gardening enthusiast.) All we know about Arcimboldo's activities as an artist at the Imperial court is that he painted The Four Seasons twice in 1577, that he dedicated a red leather folio containing 150 pen-and-ink drawings to the Emperor in 1585, and that he organized a number of festive processions and tournaments in the same year. We have no knowledge of any further pictures which he might have painted at the court in Prague after 1585. Documents tell us that, in 1580, Rudolph II reconfirmed the aristocratic status of the Arcimboldo family and that he granted the artist the privilege of upgrading his coat of arms.

In 1587, after eleven years of service and a number of urgent requests, Arcimboldo finally received permission from Rudolph II to return to his native Milan. For his "long, faithful and conscientious service" he was rewarded with 1500 Rhenish guilders. And so he went back in the same year, but honoured the Emperor's request to continue working for him even though he was no longer in his service. In 1591 he painted two of his most famous pictures, Flora the Nymphand Vertumnus, which he sent to Prague. There are two versions of Flora, and the first one has probably been lost, but - according to Mandiargues - the second one is no worse than the first. Rudolph II must have been delighted with these paintings, because he awarded Arcimboldo one of his highest orders in 1592. A year later, on 11 July 1593, Giuseppe Arcimboldo died.

Earth ca. 1570 Oil on wood, 70.2 x 48.7 cm Private collection, Vienna

Benno Geiger thought that this painting depicted a hunter. Nowadays, however, it is generally acknowledged to be an allegory of Earth. Comanini's Figino describes this picture so vividly that is seems worth quoting the passage from Geiger's book: "The forehead contains all these animals: an Indian gazelle, a fallow doe, a leopard, a dog, a fallow buck, a red deer, and the 'big animal'. The ibex, an animal which lives in the Tyrolean mountains, has been inserted in the back of the neck, together with the rhinoceros, the mule, the monkey, the bear and the wild boar. Above the forehead are the camel, the lion and the horse. And the nice thing is that all the animals with antlers have arranged their weapons around the forehead, thus forming a king's crown: that was an amazingly clever idea, and it decorates the head very nicely, too. The area behind the cheek (the head being in profile) is formed by an elephant whose ear is large enough to be the ear of the whole figure. A donkey underneath the elephant fills out the lower jaw. For the front portion of the cheek a wolf was forced to render its service, its mouth wide open and about to snap at a mouse: its open mouth is the eye, and the mouse the pupil of the eye. The tail and the leg of the mouse form a moustache just above the upper lip. On the forehead, sitting among the other animals, there is a fox with its tail curled up, which forms the eyebrow. There is a hare on the wolfs shoulder, forming the nose, and a cat's head which is the upper lip. Instead of a chin there is a tiger, held up by the elephant's trunk. The trunk is rolled up and forms the lower lip of the figure's mouth. A lizard can be seen coming out of the open mouth. The curvature of the entire neck is formed by a recumbent ox, together with a fawn."

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There is an abundance of allegorical and symbolical allusions which Arcimboldo, as it were, wrote into his paintings and series of paintings. His series of Elements and Seasons share several features, including the number four, and Arcimboldo's colleague Fonteo revealed some further correspondences in a poem. Fonteo sees the connection between the Elements and the Seasons partly in terms of common features or pairs of features - cold/ warm and wet/dry - which can be combined in four different ways so that the following correspondences can be established: "Summer is hot and dry, like Fire. Winter is cold and wet, like Water. Air and Spring are both hot and wet, and

Autumn and the Earth are cold and dry." Fonteo's comparison of Arcimboldo's Elements and Seasons is not limited to the features hot/ cold and dry/wet. The following interpretation is based on the world of the ancient gods and the Renaissance understanding of nature: Proserpina, the goddess of winter, is a close friend of the god of water, Neptune, and so Winter and Water belong together. The Air of Spring shows up the glowing colours of flowers in blossom. Summer and Fire both share a common star as their point of reference - the sun, while Earth and Autumn share the moon. The correspondences between Arcimboldo's heads in profile -Autumn and Earth, Water and Winter - suggest that they can be interpreted as dialogues between the Elements and the Seasons. These dialogues, according to Fonteo, serve to glorify the Hapsburg Emperor. The two series of the Seasons and the Elements were topics which Arcimboldo frequently painted at the Emperor's request. This certainly seems to confirm Fonteo 's interpretation of Arcimboldo's art as something that was meant to glorify the Emperor. The Hapsburg rulers apparently turned their enthusiasm for his work to good use and presented Arcimboldo's pictures as gifts to various relatives and dignitaries, so that his art served partly - or even mainly - as an "advertisement" for the policies of the House of Hapsburg. Thus it was possible to maintain old links and to establish new ones - though probably not always to the unsullied delight of the recipients. However, it is difficult to imagine exactly how much of Arcimboldo's artistic activity was influenced by this sociological, utilitarian aspect of his art. Arcimboldo's paintings, which have been interpreted mainly in terms of the history of human thought, have been subject to a good deal of discussion and have therefore given rise to a considerable variety of approaches and ideas. The artist's cultural background, i. e. his immediate environment at the Emperor's court should be noted. The Art and Wonder Chambers, in particular, with their numerous rare species and collector's items, must have influenced Arcimboldo quite considerably. There was always a large number of stuffed animals among them - documentary evidence of an approach to natural science that was as yet rather unsystematic. Even at the Emperor's court, a considerable portion of educated society consisted of alchemists and magicians, thus showing that the distinction between the arts and sciences was not as clear-cut as it is today. Indeed, it was by no means rare for an artist to take an interest in "nature study" and in contemporary technology, as did Leonardo da Vinci and also Arcimboldo. ________________________________

Water 1566 Oil on limewood, 67 x 52 cm Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

It is impossible to list all the aquatic animals that make up this head, which is an allegory of the element water. The upper part of the body appears to be formed by a coat of arms consisting of a giant crab (the breastplate), a turtle and a large mussel (the shoulder-piece) to which an octopus has attached itself with its tentacles. The neck is decorated by a pearl necklace. The cheek is a ray, and an oddly shaped pearl decorates the mussel-like ear. A squill, another member of the crab family, takes the place of the eyebrows, and the mouth is formed by that of a shark, wide agape and with sharp teeth. The top part of the head is rounded off by some kind of crown, which seems to include one or two whales, two spout fish, a walrus, a young seal, a sea horse and, somewhat hidden from view, the arms of a

starfish. The impression of a crown is re-inforced by the presence of long spikes coming out of a fish's spine and crown-shaped coral next to the spout fish. As in the other pictures, the individual animals are painted extremely realistically, though without regard to their respective sizes. The impression of chaos and confusion is only superficial; it does not take long to discern the apparent harmony which underlies this host of very diverse animals, some of which are indeed enemies of one another. Their peacefulness, too, is deceptive. The crown-like formation of animals, the harmony among them and the presence of the pearl necklace make this depiction of the element water a panegyric in honour of Maximilian. There are a number of paintings in which the artist depicts the Emperor as the lord and master of the elements and the seasons. It is only because of his benevolent rule that they and the people can live in peace and harmony.

Chronology
1527 Birth of Giuseppe Arcimboldo in Milan. His mother's name is Chiara Parisi. His father is Biagio Arcimboldo, a painter. Birth of Maximilian II. 1549 24 December: first mention of Arcimboldo's name in the register of the workshop at Milan Cathedral, where he is working as one of his father's assistants. 1552 Birth of Rudolph II, son of Maximilian II. 1558 Arcimboldo finishes his work at Milan Cathedral. Designs for a gobelin tapestry for Como Cathedral. 1562 Arcimboldo moves to Vienna, where he is appointed to the court as a portrait artist and copyist. Maximilian is crowned King of Bohemia and of the Roman Empire. 1563 Arcimboldo paints his first series of Seasons. 1564 Maximilian becomes Holy Roman Emperor. 1565 Arcimboldo is named in the Imperial court register as the court taker of likenesses. 1566 Arcimboldo paints The Lawyer and begins his series of The Four Elements. Travels to Italy. 1568 Giambattista Fonteo becomes Arcimboldo's assistant. 1569 Maximilian is given the Seasons and Four Elements at New Year. Arcimboldo and Fonteo write a poem to accompany the paintings. 1570 Maximilian II's daughter Elizabeth marries Charles IX of France and a grand festival is put on in Prague. Arcimboldo is one of the organizers and participants. 1571 Archduke Charles of Austria marries Maria of Bavaria in Vienna, and Arcimboldo, together with Fonteo and Jacopo Strada, takes charge of the organization. 1572 Copies of the Seasons. 1573 Arcimboldo paints the third and fourth versions of the Seasons, which Maximilian II has ordered as a gift of homage to the Prince Elector of Saxony. 1575 Rudolph II is crowned King of Bohemia in Prague, and shortly afterwards King of the Roman Empire in Regensburg. 1576 Death of Emperor Maximilian II, Rudolph II becomes Emperor. 1580 Rudolph II ennobles the Arcimboldo family. 1584 G. Lomazzo's commentary on Arcimboldo, the first on the artist, is published in Lomazzo's Trattato dell' Antichita della Pittura. 1585 Arcimboldo makes Rudolph II a present of 148 designs for costumes, headgear and decorative wear. 1587 Arcimboldo leaves Prague and goes to Milan. The Emperor gives the artist 1550 guilders in recognition of his services. 1589 Arcimboldo sends his Flora from Milan to Prague. It is accompanied by a poem by Gregorio Comanini. 1591 Comanini publishes Il Figino in Mantua. Arcimboldo's portrait of Rudolph II as Vertumnus is sent to Prague with a poem by Comanini. 1592 Paolo Morigia's Historia dell' Antichita di Milano is published in Venice. 1593 Giuseppe Arcimboldo dies in Milan.

Arcimboldo's Pictures
Although Arcimboldo was extremely famous during his lifetime, he was soon forgotten after his death. There was

almost no mention of him in the 17th and 18th centuries, and it was not until 1885 that a treatise by Dr. Carlo Casati appeared, called Giuseppe Arcimboldi, pittore milanese, in which he is mainly seen as a painter of portraits.

A little later he was also discovered by artists. The surrealists in particular regarded him as a precursor. In his book Die Welt als Labyrinth ("The World as a Labyrinth") Gustav Rene Hocke shows how pictures by Salvador Dali and Max Ernst contained some surprising, though rather superficial similarities. Several articles on Arcimboldo were published in the first half of the 20th century, and several more detailed ones in the second half. In 1954 Benno Geiger published his extremely thorough analysis I dipinti ghiribizzosi di Giuseppe Arcimboldi, and the same year saw the publication of Arcimboldo et les Arcimboldesques by Francine-Claire Legrand and Felix Sluys. In 1977 Andre Pieyre de Mandiargues wrote his poemArcimboldo le merveilleux, and in 1978 Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann published a doctoral thesis called Variations on the Imperial Theme in the Age of Maximilian II and Rudolph II. Then there was Arcimboldo in 1980, with a text by Roland Barthes, and a book by Andreas Beyer called Giuseppe Arcimboldo. Figurinen, in 1983. There have been several other publications which cannot, however, be referred to in this book. There has been a growing interest in Arcimboldo, which is reflected in the large number of exhibitions which have been arranged in his honour, not to mention the prices which are paid for his pictures today. We do not know why people ever lost interest in Arcimboldo's art. Perhaps he was misunderstood by the generation that followed, because they regarded him as no more than a clown who used to paint rather odd, abstruse and fantastic pictures, of which we only have a very few originals nowadays. Apart from these fantastic pictures, he probably painted quite a few more traditional ones. But many of these, too, seem to have disappeared. As far as I know, it has only been possible to identify two self-portraits (one of them a drawing), the stained glass windows in Milan Cathedral and the Gobelin tapestries in the Cathedral of Como. Stained glass windows and tapestries were very popular at the time and regarded as important in the history of art.

The Librarian ca. 1566 Oil on canvas, 97 x 71 cm Skoklosters Slott, Balsta, Sweden

Benno Geiger describes this Librarian as a "triumph of abstract art in the 16th century" and says he knows of "nothing more witty or closer to contemporary art than this clever painting". It is indeed quite clever, but more in the sense that Arcimboldo had a bright idea; the individual objects were painted quite realistically and in the classicist tradition of imitating nature. It was the artist's idea that turned them into a librarian. Hocke, who regards Arcimboldo as one of the "most obvious forerunners" of modern

art, thinks of his pictures as simple, easily understandable translations. They were, however, "painted with intelligence as well as elegance, especially when we consider the curtain, which has been lovingly draped over the left shoulder of this fleshless man who is suffering from the cold."

Present-day publications are mainly concerned with an understanding of Arcimboldo's comical pictures, as Geiger calls them, which were enthusiastically admired by the painter's contemporaries and which are now studied with great interest by art historians and critics. This is hardly surprising: they really are unique. There have been innumerable copies and imitations, but Arcimboldo's stature has never been reached. At the Emperor's request, Arcimboldo repeated his series ofThe Four Seasons and Elements quite frequently. There was obviously a lot of enthusiasm for these pictures, and the Hapsburgs knew how to make use of it, by giving away paintings as presents. Their intention was not only to give pleasure but also to win supporters of Hapsburg political ideas.

Spring 1572 Oil on canvas, 76.6 x 57 cm Private collection, Bergamo

This picture of Spring belongs to the second of four series shown in this book. Two are complete, and two are without Autumn. When we compare several paintings of the same theme, we notice that they are very similar to the first ones that Arcim-boldo made, but never mere copies. The overall composition was always the same, but occasionally he changed the format, and also the colour scheme, though he always preferred a dark background. Individual shapes were changed with regard to size and colour. Just as in a musical composition, we can speak of variations on a theme.

What is it that makes Arcimboldo's pictures so unique? A head in profile consisting of a thousand flowers is called Spring, another head made up of all kinds of fruit is called Summer. Water is the title of a painting in which all the creatures of the sea seem to have congregated in complete chaos. Then there is Earth, a head which consists of over forty different animals. A half-length portrait made up of books is a librarian. And there are many other compositions of this kind. The individual shapes, whether they are flowers, animals or fish, are always rendered accurately with regard to detail as well as delicate colours. Some of the pictures are in fact quite confusing. One particular painting, for instance, includes a pot full of different kinds of vegetables, but when you look at it upside down, it turns into the figure of a market-gardener. If we inquire into the uniqueness of Arcimboldo's pictures, we are at the same time trying to understand them, and asking about the artist's cultural background and his philosophy. The publications of the experts listed above do not share a common approach. I shall therefore confine myself to a brief summary of their views, together with some quotations, and then leave the final conclusion to the reader. Geiger, whose book started off the entire discussion, shares the view of Arcimboldo's contemporaries. The title makes this quite clear: The Comical Pictures of Giuseppe Arcimboldi. The book itself fully corroborates the impression that Arcimboldo's pictures are "comical". Geiger's chief witnesses are, above all, Lomazzo, Comanini and Morigia, who described the paintings as precursors of "bar-room pictures" (DaCosta Kaufmann) and as

"scherzo" or "bizarrie". This view was also held by E A. Orlandi, who, in the 18th century, described Arcimboldo as an extravagant painter; and Luigi Lanzi spoke of his paintings as "capricci", i. e. jokes, which the artist had conjured up with his paintbrush. And there is of course Geiger himself, who uses the word "comical", although he does not intend any negative meaning.

Summer 1572 Oil on canvas, 74.7 x 56.5 cm Private collection, Bergamo

The comments on Arcimboldo's Summer in the Louvre also apply to this painting. There are only minor differences.

That he does in fact think very highly of Arcimboldo's ability as an artist can be seen in a paragraph from the same page. He has a rather low opinion of the kind of "buffoons" who exist today and compares them with Arcimboldo: "I think if there are buffoons today, then that is nothing new. There have always been eccentrics who were probably also buffoons. But there is an important difference: if nowadays someone suddenly discovers the genius in him, even though yesterday he could not even draw, then that seems a bit insincere to me. When, on the other hand, the early pioneers discovered beauty in ugliness or vice versa, they were in fact faultless masters of their craft and, partly because they were relative beginners, had a certain straightforwardness about them. And because they were straightforward, they were original. Indeed, this ugliness surpassed all beauty and included the sort of satire that delighted the artist's customer, the jokes that were told again and again among the bored inhabitants of the various courts, it included those optical illusions and that artistic mimicry which Ficino, the famous Plato translator, used to call simulacrum. For me all this is just one more reason why it is worthwhile spending time and effort studying a painter who was indeed a genius, who used to entertain three emperors at the time of Titian and Tintoretto and who still entertains us today."

Autumn 1572 Oil on canvas, 76.8 x 56.7 cm Private collection, Bergamo

This picture of Autumn differs from the one in the Louvre through its sharp contrasts of light and darkness. Some of the grapes, for instance, are almost black, whereas the face is generally very bright indeed. The change of format is made necessary by the tub, which is longer than in the other picture. What is particularly striking, however, is the relatively light background, which is rare in Arcimboldo's art. Beyond that, there are only very few differences. The level of artistic quality is the same in both paintings.

Geiger points out that his view of Arcimboldo's art is shared by Adolfo Venturi, a specialist in Italian art, who maintains that Giuseppe Arcimboldo's grotesque ideas have their roots in German etchings and in Leonardo da Vinci's cartoons: "It really seems as if Leonardo had guided the master's hand." Geiger also believes that Arcimboldo's art was influenced by his environment, the Imperial court, his activities in the Art and Wonder Chambers and the company of learned men, including alchemists and magicians, who constantly surrounded the Emperor. Furthermore, he thinks it is quite likely that Arcimboldo was influenced directly "from above", that he received advice and suggestions from the Emperor himself. He says that the emperors had so much political discontent on their hands, so much internal strife caused by warring religous factions, that in the midst of all this they wanted to have some entertainment, relaxation and peace, at least within their families, and so they took great delight in the artistic jokes and comical pictures that Arcimboldo provided. Elsewhere in the book, however, Geiger expresses himself more cautiously about the influence of the court on the artist's style: "Whether Arcimboldo had a natural tendency towards cartoons and an illusionist style of painting or whether he had received instructions from his employers, who wanted to make fun of certain individuals - it is certainly true to say that he took a completely new path during his time in Prague, that he stubbornly persisted in creatin a style of his own which had never been seen before and was so unique that he is still famous for it today."

Winter 1572 Oil on canvas, 76.8 x 56.7 cm Private collection, Bergamo

As in the corresponding picture of Autumn, Arcimboldo emphasized the vertical dimension far more than he did in the painting of Winter in the Louvre, especially with regard to formal composition. But there are also differences in colour and surface structure. Take the bark of the tree stump: in his Louvre picture Arcimboldo emphasized the sharp contours and the ruggedness of the bark, whereas in this one he preferred a more blurred and gentle depiction of the surface.

Literary movements and the fine arts have always influenced each other. Geiger points out one particular link which, he says, shows Arcimboldo's ideas of art. A contemporary of Arcimboldo's, Rabelais, had written a novel in which he "cracked his satirical whip at everyone and everything like no one before him". The book was subsequently translated into German by Fischart, who also wrote a number of satires himself. These books were later illustrated by Tobias Stimmer. Geiger describes one of these illustrations, which is indeed very similar to Arcimboldo's paintings. It is a picture of the Pope, whose figure, as in Arcimboldo's art, consists of individual objects, with the intention of ridiculing the Pope. However, the similarity is purely superficial, because Arcimboldo's intention in his pictures was completely different, with the exception of one painting which Geiger sees as a take-off of Calvin. He admits, however, that he cannot really be sure that it is a picture of Calvin. Opinions do vary. Neither can we be certain about the satirical intention of a number of other paintings quoted by Geiger, because they no longer exist. To conclude my summary of Geiger's approach to Arcimboldo, let me quote a passage from his book which shows that even Geiger regarded the artist as more than a painter of comical pictures. According to Geiger, a line from a sonnet, There's Neither Shape nor Form in it, reveals "the painter's secret intention, which was more that of a philosopher than a superficial glance might lead us to believe. His method was to cast a cloak of art over nature, that is, to present the truth by disguising it. It was the logical consequence of the surrealist style he had acquired, or, as Comanini's Figino puts it: "Arcimboldi's skilful depiction of the imperceptible by means of perceptible illusions was quite unique."

The Lawyer 1566 Oil on canvas, 64 x 51 cm Statens Konstsamlingar, Gripsholm Slott, Stockholm

Benno Geiger thinks this is a portrait of Calvin, whereas Sven Alfons maintains that Arcimboldo painted the lawer J. U. Zasius, who was one of Rudolph II's closest advisors. According to Comanini, it is the protrait "of a certain scholar whose entire face had been eaten by the French disease, so much so, in fact, that only a few little hairs had remained on his chin... He composed his face entirely of meat and fried fish; and it turned out to be such a successful picture that everyone who looked at it immediately recognized the true face of the law scholar." The man's face is indeed a ghastly sight, especially the eye of the plucked chicken which, still alive, is also that of the man in the portrait. Although his body is robed in a magnificent cloak, it contains nothing but thick books and files.

DaCosta Kaufmann looks at a completely different aspect in his thesis Variations on the Imperial Theme in the Age of Maximilian II and Rudolph II. DaCosta Kaufmann advocates a serious interpretation of Arcimboldo's art in the context of the culture in which he lived. He believes that recently discovered texts correct the view that Arcimboldo's pictures are amusing, eccentric and imaginative brainwaves. He sees the portrait of Rudolph II, Vertumnus, not as a "bizarre" joke to make the Emperor laugh, and he rejects Geiger's view who regards Arcimboldo's paintings as "dipinti ghiribizzosi". Neither does he accept Francine-Claire Legrand and Felix Sluys' approach to Arcimboldo's art as "bizarreries picturales", or Paul Wescher's, who sees these paintings as "parodistic expressions of the microcosm-macrocosm idea." Rather, he prefers the interpretation given by Sven Alfons, Pavel Preiss and R. I. W. Evans, who regard Arcimboldo's paintings as a "system of correspondences between microcosm and macrocosm, the Aristotelian theory of the elements." However, DaCosta Kaufmann develops his approach to Arcimboldo's art on the basis of a newly discovered poem by Giovanni Battista Fonteo, called The Paintings of the Four Seasons and the Four Elements by the Imperial Painter Giuseppe Arcimboldo, as well as a compendium of documents in connection with the festivities in Prague 1570 and Vienna 1571. He takes it for granted that Arcimboldo, who used to work closely with Fonteo, approved of Fonteo's ideas. Fonteo's manuscripts give us quite a lot of insight into Arcimboldo, explaining his art in terms of "Imperial allegories" which went beyond the purely visible and telling us how the subjects of the pictures were related to daily life at the court. They culminate in the statement that the depiction of Rudolph II as Vertumnus constituted a glorification of the Emperor. That there was indeed a close link between Fonteo's poem and Arcimboldo's pictures became obvious in the New Year celebration of 1569. It was customary for the Emperor's subjects to give him a New Year present. Fonteo's poem accompanied The Four Seasons and The Four Elements which Arcimboldo gave to Maximilian II. This shows that the pictures must have been Imperial paintings. The Emperor liked them so much that he had them put in his bedroom. What could have been more appropriate as a present to the "King of Kings" than the seasons and the elements of which the year and the earth consist?

The Lawyer Oil on canvas, 70 x 54 cm Private collection, Milan

Recent research has revealed that this second version of The Lawyer is probably not by Arcimboldo, even though it is very similar to the first one. The two most striking similarities are in the face and the large fur collar, whereas the plain chest in the first picture is quite different from the richly decorated one in the imitation. A thick chain with a large medal, almost reaching the man's stomach, hangs over an elaborately ornamental chest. The man in the portrait is probably Dr. J. U. Zasius, one of the closest advisors of the Emperor, and he may well have been given this particular medal and also the picture for his service.

DaCosta Kaufmann believes that the word grilli must have led to the wrong interpretation of Arcimboldo's works, even though Fonteo's poem should have made it quite obvious that the pictures were a glorification of the Emperor. The wordgrilli as used by Fonteo was understood by Lomazzo and his successors in its normal sense of "capricious", "amusing", "facetious". But pictures can hardly glorify the Emperor if they are meant to be amusing or facetious. On flirther investigation, DaCosta Kaufmann came to the conclusion that grilli must have had a different meaning in connection with Arcimboldo's pictures. The word could really only refer to the unique and unusual way in which an idea is expressed in the form of heads consisting of different objects, such as a farmer shown by his plough, a cook by his cooking utensils. This was certainly unique. According to Fonteo, there had never been anything like it, even if one went back to Alexander the Great and his legendary painter Apelles. Art historians have always found it difficult to identify Arcimboldo's pictures. DaCosta Kaufmann only recognizes four pictures which can be regarded as originals because of the artist's signature. A number of paintings were described in the same way by contemporaries, and there is therefore little doubt that they are genuine. Others are part of series of paintings that were never separated. But there are also several pictures which are not uniformly acknowledged as genuine by all art historians. The greatest difficulty is that Arcimboldo was often asked to repeat his series, and he always did this with a number of differences of varying importance, so that we often have more than one original. According to DaCosta Kaufmann, the idea of the glorious majesty of the Emperor was based on the Renaissance concept of the relationship between microcosm and macrocosm. There is a principle of equality which unites the different parts of nature, i. e. the world at large (the macrocosm), and it also exists between macrocosm and microcosm. The microcosm is the smaller world of man himself. "Similar things are seen as related to one another." Thus what seems at first sight rather exaggerated becomes acceptable allegory. The Emperor rules over the state, over the microcosm, over man. But as there are many levels on which the microcosm corresponds to the macrocosm, he can also be said to rule over the seasons and the elements.

The Cook, a visual pun which can be turned upside down, ca. 1570 Oil on canvas, 52.5 x 41 cm Private collection, Stockholm

Lurking in a big dish there is the head of a rather rough-looking chap, but when we look at it more closely it turns out to be composed of chunks of fried meat. When we look at the picture upside down, the helmet turns into a meat dish, with a slice of lemon lying on the edge and piles of fried meat in the middle. We can easily make out a sucking pig and an oddly distorted chicken. Somebody is about to cover the meat with a lid, to stop it from getting cold.

The Vegetable Gardener, a visual pun which can be turned upside down, ca. 1590 Oil on wood, 35 x 24 cm Museo Civico Ala Ponzone, Cremona

The picture as we see it here is upside down, in a sense. It shows a dark green bowl rilled to overflowing with various root vegetables. When we turn the picture round by 180, this bowl full of vegetables turns into a head, chubby-faced and unpolished like the vegetables themselves.

Arcimboldo's Vertumnus
As Arcimboldo had promised Rudolph II, he continued to paint for the Emperor after his final return to Milan. His pictures of that period include one that was particularly appreciated by everyone, especially by Rudolph himself. It is a head-and-shoulder portrait of the Emperor, this time not in profile, showing him in the form of Vertumnus, the ancient Roman god of vegetation and transformation. Rudolph consists entirely of magnificent fruits, flowers and vegetables representing the four seasons. Plants and produce of the whole year have been gathered together "in perfect harmony", to glorify the Emperor who rules over them like the god Vertumnus. This picture is the crowning achievement among all the paintings that Arcimboldo made for the glory of Rudolph II or the other Hapsburg rulers. Nobody ever succeeded in giving a better interpretation of the portrait than Arcimboldo's friend and contemporary Comanini, whose poem is given here in an English translation of Geiger's German version.

Vertumnus
Don Gregorio Comanini Whoever you may be, when you behold This odd, misshapen picture which is me, And there is laughter on your lips, Your eyes are flashing with hilarity, And your whole face is seized by mirth As you discover yet another monstrous detail In him who bears the name Vertumnus, Being thus called in poems of the ancients And by Apollo's learned sons; Unless you clearly see that ugliness Which makes me beautiful, You cannot know that there's a certain Ugliness more beautiful than any beauty. There's diversity within me, Though despite my diverse aspect, I amone. That diversity of mine Renders faithfully and truly Diverse things just as they are. Raise your eyebrows now and frown, Listen hard with concentration, Lend your ear to what I say That I may entrust you, friend, With the secret of new art. In the beginning there was chaos, Shapeless, void and dark the Earth, Even heaven was mixed with fire, Fire with heaven, and heaven with fire. Air and water intermingled With each other and with Earth, Which, in turn, was mixed with Fire And with Air and Water, too: There was chaos without order, Without shape and without form. Then came Jove and raised his arm Lifting up the Earth above the water. Air was now upon the water, Water round the Earth, 1590 or 1591 Oil on wood, 68 x 56 cm Skoklosters Slott, Balsta, Sweden

Vertumnus

And Fire round the Air: Each surrounded by the other, Firmly sealed and closely knit, Dryness, moisture, warmth and cold, Like four rings surrounding firmly Many precious, costly stones. Heaven, though, received the honour Of the noblest of all thrones, Ruling, dominating, gath'ring All the other elements. Thus, from shapeless chaos. From confused and formless waters. Like a new-born animal. Noble, perfect, full of life, Born as of a fertile womb, Into being came this world. And its face is called Olympus, Eyeing us with many stars, Air's the chest, and Earth the belly. Mountain valleys are its feet, And the soul which warms and quickens And enlivens this great body Is the element of Fire; Clothed in produce of the earth, Wearing plants and fruit and grass. How then, do you think, my friend, Did the painter go about it, How did Arcimboldo paint me, The inventive genius, With a brush that far surpasses That of Zeuxis or of those Who created veiled deceptions, Delicately beautiful, I n their contest for great fame? Boldly imitating Jove, Joyfully he set to work, Went through fields and woods, and chose A thousand flowers, thousand fruits, Set to weave this cheerful mixture, This great product of creation, Into an artistic garland Of his own, and himself creating limbs. Cleverly deceiving you. Come, behold my temples. And admire that which makes them beautiful Colourfully decked they are By so many ears of corn, Spiky, full of Junius' pollen, Golden, ripened by the sun, Finally cut down and reaped By the farmer's mighty scythe, That sharp sword in his clenched fist. Fields of corn are thus prostrated, Golden millet which in winter Serves the shepherd in the mountains As a sweet delicious meal For his wife and for his children. In his humble little hut. Grapes are hanging from my temples, Softly contoured, warmly painted, Gently stroked by rays of sunshine, By the sun's great brush conceived, Painted red and painted yellow, Reaped and harvested at last In Lyaeus golden month. See how this arrangement decks me, Decks my temples high and round, Sumptuously and beautifully Like that famous Thracian 's features, Who adorned his kingly head With a long and twisted ribbon, Twisted like a thousand loops, He whose eyes would glow with ardour The way in which the various heads in Arcimboldo's pictures are composed of certain elements confirms Fonteo's idea that the Empereor rules over the seasons and the elements. Thus, the harmony of the fruit or the animals that make up a head symbolizes the harmony which We only have the second picture now, which, according to Mandiargues, is a "high-quality later replica" of the original. He praises the "pure beauty of the figure, the subtle way in which the shades of colour have been attuned to one another so harmoniously". A well-proportioned, handsome face looks at us from the darkness of the background. The delicately coloured petals subtly range from white to pink, and the fine transitions between light and dark highlight the youthful face of a woman whose hair consists of a multitude of colourful flowers that frame her head like a wreath or a crown. Round her neck she is wearing a collar consisting of white blossom which is livened up by a number of yellow dots, the stamens of the flowers. This collar separates the leaves that form her dress from her neck and face. The woman's chest is adorned by a yellow lily, traditionally a symbol of fertility. ______________ Apart from Vertumnus, Arcimboldo also painted Flora the Nymph in Milan in 1588, followed by a second version two years later. The first picture bears the inscription on the other side: "La flora dell' Arcimboldo". According to B. Geiger, this painting was "praised by many spirited people in Latin and with popular poems". Don Gregorio Comanini welcomed it with the following madrigal: Son'io Flora o pur fiori? Se fior, come di Flora Ho col sembiante il riso? E s'io son Flora, Come Flora e sol fiori? Ah non fiori son'io; non io son Flora. Anzi son Flora, e fiori. Fior mille, una sol Flora; Vivi Fior, viva Flora. Pero che i fior fan Flora, e Flora i fiori. Sai come? I flori in Flora Cangio saggio Pittore, e Flora in fiori. ca. 1591 Oil on wood, 73 x 56 cm Private collection, Paris

Flora

And with lofty royal pride. Behold that summer fruit, the melon: When the dog is barking at the sky, When the lion in the mountains Draws deep breath and roars out loud So that here below we hear him, In our houses, hostels, caves, By the river, at the spring, Then the melon will refresh us, Will revive our dried-up throats, With its sweetness and its moisture It revives a noble king, As it does a lowly peasant And a nymph's large company, Also thirsty warriors Are refreshed by its sweet juice. Look, how with its furrowed pattern, With its tough and wrinkled skin, It produces wrinkles on my Forehead so that I am like The old ploughman in the mountains, Whom Bohemia's soil sustains And his labour hard and toilsome, Twixt the ice and stone and wood, Sombre, dark and oddly shapen. Behold the apple and the peach: See how my two cheeks are formed, Round and full of life. Also have a good look at my eyes, Cherry-coloured one and mulberry the other Though there may be no resemblance With Narcissus, yet I share With this healthy, cheerful brother Both his youthful, joyful vigour And his potent manfulness, For his eyes would gleam and sparkle With the harvest of the grapes, When he wined and dined, enjoying Fellow-warriors' company, Till the wineskins were all empty. Look at those two hazelnuts: With their green and empty skins, Side by side above my lip, Though they're useless otherwise, Yet they render service as two sides Of a nicely trimmed moustache. As a complement to these There's a chestnut's spiky case Clinging to my chin and making It a perfect miracle Of adornment, fitting for a man. Ha, where is Iberia's master Who so aptly moulds and fashions All that wool upon his head, Long and sharp and fine to touch, Which he often with his fingers Playfully, artistically, Twists and strokes till, Like an eyelash, it points upward? Where then is he who might want To compete with this new beard? Also, friend, I beg you, take Notice of this fig which ripened, Then burst open and now dangles From my ear, so that you may Well mistake me for a little Frenchman who, as he is standing By the Seine, puts bright pearls Upon his earlobe, and, thus proudly decked, Struts around, as pretty now As a little flower, breathing Loveliness and charm and splendour. Finally behold this sash - not to

exists under the benevolent rule of the Hapsburgs. Similarly, there is also harmony between the elements and the seasons, symbolizing peace under the rule of Maximilian II. Always based on the principle that similar things must be related, Fonteo talks at great length about the harmonious relationship between elements and seasons. Thus, both seasons and elements are linked to one another and share the same properties. "Summer is hot and dry like fire, winter is cold and wet like water, both the air and spring are hot and wet, and autumn and the earth are cold and dry." Fonteo goes even further in his interpretation. Proserpina, the goddess of winter, and Neptune, the god of water, are friends, and that is why winter and water belong together. In spring it is the air that makes the flowers blossom. Summer and fire have a common planet, the sun; earth and autumn have the moon. The seasons and the elements enter into a number of dialogues in Fonteo's poem, extolling and glorifying the monarch. And if we take a close look at Arcimboldo's pictures, we can see something of these dialogues in them, too. The various elements and seasons are all in profile and seem to be facing one another: Winter and Water, Spring and Air, Summer and Fire, Autumn and Earth. Each series also contains a certain symmetry. Two heads are always looking to the left and two to the right. But the correspondences go even further. The world consists of the elements, and whoever rules over the elements will control the world, and so the Emperor will break the power of the Turks. The four seasons return every year, thus symbolizing the eternal order of nature as well as the idea that the Hapsburgs will reign forever. This also explains the shape of the heads in Arcimboldo's pictures. However, we must bear in mind that there had already been a long tradition of depicting the four seasons in the form of heads. Roman coins in particular used to have decorated heads on them, and there must have been Roman coins in Rudolph II's coin collection. According to Arcimboldo and Fonteo, however, there was one particular classical source for these heads: an ancient legend connected with the construction of the Jupiter temple on the Capitol. The tale is told by Dionysios of Halicarnassos - and also, in a slightly different version, by Livy - that the builders of the Jupiter temple suddenly hit upon a head that kept bleeding, but, according to Livy, still had its facial features completely intact. A soothsayer explained that the place where the head was found was to be the "head" (caput) of all Italy. Hence the name Capitolium and the Latin word capita for "heads". Livy says that this place was to be the centre of the empire as well as the "head" (caput) or capital of the whole world. Thus the heads of the seasons and of the elements stand for the eternal rule of the House of Hapsburg. According to Fonteo, the political significance of these pictures is further emphasized by the large number of Hapsburg symbols, such as the peacock and the eagle as part of Air. The element air is ruled by these two animals. Fire, too, can be shown to have such a double meaning. On the one hand, the element fire is symbolized by the chain of the Golden Fleece, a chain which consists of flintstone and forged steel which can be knocked together to light a fire. But on the other hand, there was also the Order of the Golden Fleece - a Hapsburg order. And the same picture contains a number of obvious military references. Earth is another picture which is full of Hapsburg symbols, such as the lion's hide of Hercules and the skin of a ram. The lion, says Fonteo, is in fact a symbol of the Kingdom of Bohemia, one of the provinces that belonged to the Hapsburgs. There may also be some symbolical significance of the precious pearls of Water, as well as antlers and a number of other details. The Four Seasons contain similar references. Winter, for example, is shown to be wearing a coat which is adorned by a sign symbolizing forged steel and also by a capital letter M. Thus we can safely assume that the forged steel of the Golden Fleece is meant and that the M stands for Maximilian. And if, in another painting of Winter which was meant for the Elector of Saxony, Arcimboldo included the coat of arms of Saxony, then it seems sensible to interpret the picture in the same way. But, as Fonteo explains, winter also has a second meaning. For the Romans winter was always the beginning of the year, and they therefore called it caput anni. Caput, however, also means "head". This means that if a depiction of winter can be directly related to Maximilian, then this is a pun on winter as the caput anni, the beginning of the year, as well as Maximilian as the caput (head) of the whole world. In fact Maximilian II took part in the festive procession of that year, 1571, dressed up as "winter". DaCosta Kaufmann emphasizes the close link between Arcimboldo's pictures and his designs for processions. Both his paintings and his feasts are allegories of the power of the Emperor and the harmony of the world under his benevolent rule. Andre Pieyre Mandiargues has his own attitude towards the various attempts to "understand" or "comprehend" Arcimboldo's art: "I have not been seized by the mad desire to classify everything; in my opinion, if one loves and respects the history of art, one should be quite happy for it to remain a little obscure." Mandiargues believes that Arcimboldo is "perfect in his uniqueness, as are only the great". That his affinity with the artist was of a very personal kind can be seen in his comment when he saw his pictures for the first time. This was at the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna in autumn 1931: "All of a sudden I found myself face to face with four pictures: two 'seasons', one 'winter' and one 'summer', and two 'elements' 'fire' and 'water'. I stood as if touched by a magic hand." And a little further on: "The structured chaos of those odd faces was animated by such incredibly lively eyes and those eyes were so incredibly powerful and expressive that it is hardly surprising that one should be absolutely thunderstruck at first sight." This is Mandiargues' approach throughout the whole book, and it explains why he refuses to classify or pigeonhole Arcimboldo's style in any way whatsoever. He discusses a number of options, but does not take any sides. For example, he does not reject the term "mannerist", because almost the entire sixteenth century can be called mannerist, with the exception that Arcimboldo's pictures do not tell stories or dreams. Similarly, he also accepts the term "baroque artist" for Arcimboldo, because of his "ability to shock and his tendency towards masquerades". On the other hand, however, he points out that the "convulsive" element of the baroque period is missing in Arcimboldo's art. Mandiargues would be prepared to accept "pre-romantic" as a description, were it not for the lack of a "feeling for nature" and of the "lyrical" element. He does agree with the term "fantastic", as used by Plato in Sophistes and also by Comanini, "who made use of Plato's arguments in the neo-platonic dialogue Figino and applied them to our painter." He rejects any comparison with Hieronymus Bosch's "pre-surrealist" style, because he cannot see anything in Arcimboldo's art that might have come from his subconscious mind or that might have been created automatically. "Playful, humorous at times" seems to be all right as a description, but Mandiargues thinks it would be wrong to see the artist entirely in those terms, as many of his contemporaries used to. He would not want to see Arcimboldo's pictures classified as "symbolist", among other reasons because he believes that "nothing is veiled anywhere" in his paintings. The most appropriate term, he says, might be that of "anthropomorphic still lifes" because it applies to nearly all the figures he painted, including the two pictures that can be looked at upside down. Geiger was enthusiastic about Arcimboldo's comical and mysterious pictures, DaCosta Kaufmann saw in his art mainly the glorification of the Emperor and support for the existing power structures, and Mandiargues was simply full of enthusiastic euphoria. In his book Die Welt als Labyrinth ("The World as a Labyrinth"), Gustav Rene Hocke tried to interpret Arcimboldo's art in the context of mannerism. But before discussing this, we must have a brief look at Arcimboldo as a Renaissance artist. Every artist develops under the influence of the cultural environment in which he lives. And as Arcimboldo was born during the transition period between the Renaissance and Mannerism, we can find traces of both movements in his art. His first pictures were painted in the

Mention all the other strong and Handsome limbs - woven, so it seems, from Many flowers, fine as gold, Draped around my chest and my right shoulder Thus you'll surely value and appreciate As a loyal vassal me, As a warrior proud and strong, Riding boldly, cheerfully and proudly On my path to victory in battle, Holding forth triumphantly my Sovereign's Colours and his coat of arms. What uplifts me even more, though. Is the way in which I proudly And with joy aspire unto heaven, Like Silenus, that young Grecian Who delighted his good king, Who was honoured, too, by Plato. Though my aspect may be monstrous, I bear noble traits within. Hiding thus my kingly image. Tell me now if your are willing To discern what I conceal: Then my soul I will reveal.

traditional style of the Renaissance. Even later, as a court artist, he used to paint in this style again and again, and possibly was even required to do so in his portraits. To give a comprehensive view of Arcimboldo, I have included not only mannerist pictures but also some of his traditional paintings. They can be regarded as typical of the Renaissance. As Geiger points out, there was a decisive turning point in Arcimboldo's art: in Prague he trod a completely new path, stubbornly persisting in creating a style of his own which had never been seen before and was "so unique that he is still famous for it today". To show the difference between his pictures before and after his turning point, it will be necessary to give a short summary of the main features of Renaissance art.

Spring 1563 Oil on oakwood, 66 x 50 cm Museo de la Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando, Madrid

This picture, which is now in the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando in Madrid, was painted by Arcimboldo for Ferdinand I in 1563, and is thus part of the first known series of the Four Seasons, two of which are in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna (Summer and Winter). This painting of Spring may have reached Spain as a gift to Philip II. The reverse side bears the incomplete inscription: "Spring, accompanied by Air, which...", thus confirming DaCosta Kaufmann's suggestion that the Four Seasons and the Elements formed certain pairs which were linked in a special way. The inscription obviously suggests that Spring and Air belonged together. It also explains why Arcimboldo depicted those heads in profile: the members of each pair were meant to face one another. This 1563 series was painted by Arcimboldo, as Geiger puts it, after he had "taken a completely new path during his time in Prague", where he "stubbornly persisted in creating a style of his own which had never been seen before and was so unique that he is still famous for it today."

Summer 1563 Oil on limewood, 67 x 50.8 cm Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

This picture of Summer, which is now in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, forms part of Arcimboldo's first series of the Four Seasons, together with Winter (also in Vienna) and Spring (Madrid). Like other pictures of Summer, it bears the inscription "Giuseppe Arcimboldo F" on the collar of the figure. There are only minor differences from the one in Paris, whereas it differs more obviously from Arcimboldo's Summer in Bergamo, both with regard to composition and in the design of the head dress.

Winter 1563 Oil on wood, 66.6 x 50.5 cm Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

Winter was conceived rather differently from the other four seasons. It is not a tete composee in the same strict sense as Spring, Summer or Autumn. The other three seasons are presented as a variety of equally important plants, fruits and flowers, whereas Arcimboldo's picture of Winter consists of a central element, a tree stump in the shape of a head, which dominates the entire composition. Both in form and structure there is a strong similarity between the tree stump and the wrinkled hand, stubbly beard and thick lips of an old man, thus arousing sympathy in us and involving us personally far more than the plants and flowers which, on closer inspection, tend to lose their function within the picture as a whole.

The Renaissance marked a clear break with the Middle Ages as well as an interest in nature and antiquity. Leonardo da Vinci maintained that "the most praiseworthy painting is one which has the highest degree of similarity with the subject, in spite of what some painters say who want to improve nature." This shows that nature was taken as the starting point for any artistic activity. The idealistic paintings of the Renaissance, however, used to go beyond a mere study of nature, perspective and anatomy; the artist aimed at "harmony of colours, dimensions and qualities" in his pictures. And although he would imitate nature, he also went beyond it by selecting only those features which he believed to be beautiful. But even his ideas of beauty were based on his studies of nature. What the artist needed were the technical and imitative skills of a craftsman. Those were the sources of his gift or his genius. In his attempt to interpret Arcimboldo's art in the context of Mannerism, Gustav Rene Hocke begins by showing the differences between this movement and the Renaissance. The Renaissance, says Hocke, brought about not only an interest in antiquity but also the birth of something completely new which he calls "non-naturalist abstraction". The forces of the late Middle Ages had come back to life again. A kind of "fantasy art" developed. "Psychological experiences and emotions were rated higher than exact correspondences with sensory perception". The art of idealized nature is seen as being in contrast with the work of art as the enactment of an idea. According to Zuccari, as Hocke understands him, our mind first gives rise to a concetto, that is to say, the concept of a picture or the picture of a concept. A concetto is not abstract. It is a pre-existent mental image, a disegno interno, or internal sketch. In the next step, the disegno esterno, we put this into practice. "Zuccari distinguishes three forms of disegno esterno, i. e. of an applied concetto: (1) the disegno naturale, in which art imitates nature; (2) the disegno artificial, where the mind uses nature to create its own artistic picture; (3) and the disegno fantastico-artificiale: the origin of all 'oddities', surprising turns, capricci (literally, the leaps and bounds of a goat), 'inventions', 'fantasies' and ghiribizzi, i. e. the extraordinary." An artistic idea is the manifestation of the divine in the artist's soul. "God creates natural things, the artist artificial things. The human imagination - just as in a dream and also like God - forms new shapes and new things." A work of art is the result of an artist's idea. For Hocke there can be no doubt that Arcimboldo, too, used to have concetti, that is to say, images or concepts in the sense of disegnometaforico-fantastico. In other words, Arcimboldo painted metaphorical fantasy pictures. He even regards Arcimboldo's works as absolutely

typical of this kind of art. However, the artist did not paint "mannerist emblems" but simple "mannerist allegories".

Spring Oil on wood, 84x57 cm Bayerische Staatsgemaldesammlungen, Munich

Legrand and Sluys' book Arcimboldo et les Arcimboldesques begins with an essay on the painter. In it the authors praise Arcimboldo's ability as an artist, his expertise in harmonizing the colours and his confident use of the brush. However, they find his tetes composees rather difficult to understand. They are impressed by the extraordinary magic of those pictures, but they find his "biting sense of humour" almost unbearable. They rather feel that Arcimboldo has mocked and scorned the idea of the human face as a "mirror of the soul". They accuse him of depriving man of his human nature, and objects of their meanings. As Arcimboldo never left anything written about his pictures or himself, the authors try to find access to him through his contemporaries. This led them to think of him as a typical representative of Mannerism, which - they assume - must have been the reason why he sank into oblivion so rapidly after his death. It was not until Surrealism that the shock effect of these bizarrieries plastiques was re-discovered. Arcimboldo was highly educated, well-read and familiar with the philosophical ideas of the ancient Greeks. This was particularly apparent in the processions which he organized for the Hapsburgs, such as the one in Vienna in 1571, of which we still have records. At that time, people were becoming more and more interested in Platonism, particularly in Italy, and the Platonic Academy of Florence was founded. This must have made a considerable impression on Arcimboldo and aroused or re-inforced his interest in Plato. It is quite likely, in fact, that he was familiar with Plato's Timaeus and his ideas about the origin of the world, and that these philosophical writings influcenced his tetes composees. This can be substantiated by a number of passages from Timaeus. Plato's basic idea is that of "an eternal god" who created the world from chaos: the heavens, the earth, the planets and the lesser gods. He also maintains that everything was created from four basic elements: fire, water, air and earth.

Summer Oil on wood, 84 x 57 cm Bayerische Staatsgemaldesammlungen, Munich

This depiction of Summer is the most unusual one among the four paintings shown in this book. A close study of the individual elements may reveal that in a number of places the paint was applied rather more spontaneously.

"As we said at the beginning, these things were in disorder till God introduced measurable relations, internal and external, among them, to the degree and extent that they were capable of proportion and measurement. For at first they stood in no such relations, except by chance, nor was there anything that deserved the names - fire, water, and the rest -which we now use. But he reduced them to order, and then put together this universe out of them, a single living creature containing in itself all other living things mortal and immortal. He made the divine with his own hands, but he ordered his own children to make the generation of mortals." These young gods followed their father's instructions, "and in imitation of their own maker borrowed from the world portions of fire and earth, water and air - loans to be eventually repaid - and welded together what they had borrowed; the bonding they used was not indissoluble, like that by which they were themselves held together, but consisted of a multitude of rivets too small to be seen, which held the, part of each individual body together in a unity. And into this body, subject to the flow of growth and decay, they fastened the orbits of the immortal soul." The following passage shows that animals were made from the same substance. "For those who framed us knew that later on women and other animals would be produced from men, and that many creatures would need claws and hoofs for different purposes; so they provided the rudiments of them in men at their first creation, and for this reason and by these means caused skin, hair and nails to grow at the extremities of their limbs." Just as the world, the gods and mankind consist of the same substance, plants and animals also consist of fire, water, air and earth. "The parts and limbs of the mortal creature were thus brought together into a whole which must of necessity live its life exposed to fire and air, be worn away and wasted by them, and finally perish. And to support it the gods devised and brought into being a substance akin to it, but with different form and senses, another kind of living thing, trees, plants and seeds. These we have today schooled and domesticated to our purposes by agriculture, but at first there were only the wild varieties, which are the older of the two. Everything that has life has every right to be called a living thing." It seems obvious that, like Plato, Arcimboldo saw the entire universe, mankind, animals and plants, as a unit, and that he painted his pictures with this unity in mind.

Winter Oil on wood, 84 x 57 cm Bayerische Staatsgemaldesammlungen, Munich

Arcimboldo as a Scientist

When we think of Leonardo da Vinci, we admire him not only for his art, but also his many scientific activities.

Arcimboldo was in fact very similar. Not only was he valued as a painter, art connoisseur and organizer of tournaments, but also as a first-class scientist and engineer.

His friends thought of him as a man of the "sharpest intelligence" and someone who was "extremely well-read". His contemporaries used to praise his resourcefulness as an architect and a builder of fortresses as well as his ingenuity and inventiveness. For example, he was said to have developed a method of crossing a river quickly without a bridge or a ferry. Through Don Gregorio Comanini, we know about the scientific side of Arcimboldo's work. In Benno Geiger's book we find a discussion of Arcimboldo by Lionello Levi, a music critic, who discusses what he calls "this somewhat nebulous account" by Comanini. Lionello Levi shows that Arcimboldo took as his starting point the "pythagorean harmonic proportions of tones and semitones" which he subsequently translated into their corresponding colour values, using both his artistic "instinct" and a scientific method. And indeed Arcimboldo must have been quite successful in his endeavour, because, according to Comanini, Arcimboldo once gave instructions to Mauro Cremonese, Rudolph II's court musician: having painted a number of chords on paper, he asked the musician to locate them on his harpsichord, which he did with success. "This extremely inventive painter," wrote Comanini, "knew not only how to find the relevant semitones, both small and large, in his colours, but also how to divide a tone into two equal parts; very gently and softly he would gradually turn white into black, increasing the amount of blackness, in the same way that one would start with a deep, heavy note and then ascend to the high and finally the very high ones." In this way, step by step, starting from the purest white and adding more and more black, he managed to render an octave in twelve semitones, with the colours ranging from a "deep" white to a "high" black. He then did the same for a range of two octaves. "For just as he would gradually darken the colour white and use black for indicating heights, he did the same with yellow and all the other colours, using white for the lowest notes that one could sing, then green and blue for the middle ones, then brightly glowing colours and dark brown for the highest notes: this was possible because one colour really merges into another and follows it like a shadow. White is followed by yellow, yellow by green, and green by blue, blue by purple, and purple by a glowing red; just as tenor follows bass, alto follows tenor and canto follows alto." This account of Gregorio Comanini's probably only describes the beginning of Arcimboldo's research. As the artist himself did not leave any notes, we can only speculate that he intended to extend the system along the lines of a "theory of perception". It is unlikely, however, that Giuseppe Arcimboldo wanted to abolish the system of musical notation, which had already been fixed at the time, and substitute his own colour scale for it. In fact Gregorio Comanini probably gives us the best id of his aims: "So you can see that the art of music and the art painting walk along the same path and follow the same laws of creation."

The Birth of St. Catherine Stained glass window, 116 x 67 cm Milan Cathedral, pane no. 6 in the 14th window of the southern apse.

To a design by Arcimboldo (ca. 1551), executed in Cologne, 1566.

To show that Arcimboldo also used to work within the stylistic conventions of his time, we have included two pictures of stained glass windows at Milan Cathedral. It is not known how many designs were made by Arcimboldo. Even the ones that were actually used cannot all be identified with absolute certainty, because Arcimboldo was not the only artist working for Milan Cathedral. His design for The Birth of St. Catherine forms part of a cycle based on the legend of St. Catherine of Alexandria, who was martyred for refusing to sacrifice to the statues of Zeus and Aphrodite. This design, which was executed by the Cologne master Konrad de Mochis, shows no indication of Arcimboldo's later development. Nevertheless, he received a lot of praise for these pictures from his contemporaries, just as he did for his other works.

St. Catherine Talks to the Emperor about the True Faith Stained glass window, 116 x 67 cm Milan Cathedral, pane no. 57 of the 14th window in the southern apse. To a design by Arcimboldo (ca. 1551), executed in Cologne, 1566.

This second example of Arcimboldo's traditional style has been taken from the same legend. It shows St. Catherine talking to the Emperor and his scholars. When the Emperor had heard of Catherine's refusal to sacrifice to the gods, he called upon fifty learned men to make her change her views. As a result, however, they were all defeated by the witness of this young follower of the Lord and became Christians themselves. Like Catherine, they were all put to death.

Eve and the Apple, with Counterpart 1578 Oil on canvas, each 43 x 35.5 cm Private collection, Basle

The Passing of the Virgin Mural tapestry, 423 x 470 cm

Como Cathedral Inscription at the top: The Wool Weavers' Guild of Como Inscription in the lower left-hand corner: made in Ferrara 1562

This mural tapestry, which Arcimboldo had designed for Como Cathedral, is a further example of his art before he moved to Prague. There are eight designs with themes from the Old and New Testament, all of which are almost certainly by Arcimboldo. Surrounded by a fantastic landscape and the twelve apostles, the Virgin Mary is lying on her death-bed. Geiger maintains that, although the general approach is traditional in these designs, they already contain elements of the painter's later development. Geiger points out that there is a similarity between the elaborate decorations that form the frame and Arcimboldo's later pictures.

Maximiliano II y su familia 1553

Arcimboldo's Drawings
In 1585 Arcimboldo presented Emperor Rudolph II with a folio of red morocco leather containing about 150 blue pen-and-ink drawings. This folio is now in the Uffizi in Florence and bears the following Latin inscription:

Dedicated to

THE INVINCIBLE EMPEROR OF THE ROMANS HIS EVERLASTING AND MOST BENEVOLENT SOVEREIGN AND MAJESTY RUDOLPH II
by Giuseppe Arcimboldo of Milan: sundry different ideas designed by his own hand for the furnishing of tournaments.

IN THE YEAR OF OUR LORD 1585.

These sketches are drawings which Arcimboldo made specially for the processions and balls of the Hapsburg emperors. Most of them were designed for the wedding celebrations of Archduke Charles of Styria and Mary of Bavaria in 1571, some of them for several other feasts, and the remaining ones cannot be dated. The sketches were made in the traditional style, with their plasticity heightened by the use of blue prepared paper. The costumes and hairstyles were modelled on contemporary designs. We have to bear in mind, of course, that the sketches were meant to serve as instructions for the tailors and seamsters who made the costumes, and it is therefore more appropriate to look at them from a historical point of view, rather than an artistic one. The diversity of these drawings gives us a good idea of Arcimboldo's wealtbof imagination. The festive processions which Arcimboldo helped to organize as a designer served to glorify the Emperor, and this was also the function of the artist's pictures. According to DaCosta Kaufmann, the political function and the sumptuous style of such festivities have been well documented by Giovanni Battista Fonteo's poems and descriptions. Archduke Charles' wedding festivities of 1571 are described in a panegyric by Fonteo, who gives a very graphic and detailed account of the feast. The following description is taken from Andreas Beyer, Arcimboldo, Figurinen, where a summary of the panegyric can be found. At the beginning of the ceremonies there was always what was known as a circle race, which took place in an open field outside the city walls. An artificial hill was erected there, as well as two pyramids to mark the tilting-ground. Juno, the patron goddess of weddings, was the first to enter the scene, standing in a carriage pulled by peacocks. She was accompanied by the three kings of the continents Africa, Asia and America. All four characters were played by members of the Imperial family. During the games that followed the procession they acted as mantenitori, i. e. as observers and referees. Juno was followed by Iris, who descended from a cloud and gave the call to begin the contest. Other goddesses then entered the scene. There was Europa riding a horse disguised as a bull, followed by the Sirens and the Seven Liberal Arts. In Fonteo's poem these artes liberates are described as the children of Mercury, played by seven noblemen, the Emperor's chamberlains. Each of the arts was accompanied by two of its most typical representatives. Rhetorick, for example, appeared together with Demosthenes and Cicero. The Florence folio included all seven designs. At the top of each sketch there is a description of the festive garments as well the names of the two accompanying representatives of the discipline. Then there was Diana, accompanied by a unicorn and a group of attendants and followed by her entourage of noblemen disguised as wild animals. In her train were a group of wild men with horn and amazons carrying bows, arrows and spears. Next came Neptune, surrounded by men who were disguised as the kinds offish that could be found in the waters around Europe. Neptune's group was followed by that of Pallas Athene, who was standing on the platform of a carriage, side by side with an owl which had four placards fastened to it. These placards bore the names of four vices. There were also the Cardinal Virtues, accompanied by a figure which personified Victory. Justice, Fortitude and Temperance were always played by members of the Imperial family and nobility. Together with Venus, who was surrounded by Amori, there was also an allegorical figure symbolizing Greed. In the records of the festivities it is mentioned that Bacchus was played by a man in a tub and that he and his entourage caused a lot of hilarity among the spectators. Bacchus was followed by four noblemen symbolizing the four elements. These appeared together with four men representing the four winds, and four gods bearing the four metals that belonged to them; and there were also four European rivers and four European nations disguised as four different ages of mankind. The four nations were accompanied by the four seasons as well as some horn players representing the east wind and Mars holding a piece of iron. After an allegorical figure representing Spring there was another carriage with a platform. Representing the river Po, it characterized the whole group which preceded it as the Italian contingent. The Spanish group was led by Zephyrus and two other west winds. The figure of Fire was followed by the Sun carrying the Spanish element, gold. Rudolph II, who was the heir to the throne and had been brought up at the Spanish court, was the personification of the Sun in this group. The river Iberus concluded the Spanish group. The south wind which, together with the south-west and south-east winds, led the Gaulish group was represented by horn players. The Earth was followed by Jupiter bearing a gift from Gaul: tin. Before the river Rhone concluded this group, there were some more noblemen, including one disguised as a French knight and symbolizing Autumn. The last group was the German one, led by the north winds. The goddess Luna, who was bearing the German metal, silver, was preceded by a personification of the element water. Maximilian II, dressed as Winter, was the leader of the German group, which was concluded by the Danube. The first day ended with a dinner and a ball, to which all the guests came dressed in magnificent costumes. On the second day the allegorical fun was concluded with a further procession.

Design of a sledge Blue pen-and-wash drawing, 19 x 23 cm

Design of a custome for Cerberus, probably from Diana's group in the festive procession in Vienna, 1571. Blue pen-and-wash drawing, 29 x 19 cm,

Design of a dragon-like costume for a horse Blue pen-and-wash drawing, 25 x 19 cm

Drawing of an elephant Ink drawing, 24 x 18.7 cm The procession of 1570 was the first occasion in Europe when an elephant was shown.

Design of a costume for "Geometry" in the festive procession in Vienna, 1571. Blue pen-and-wash drawing, 39 x 20 cm Inscription at the top: "Geometry, led by Archimedes the Sicilian and Archita the Calabrese. Dark grey garment."

Design of a costume for "Musick" in the festive procession in Vienna, 1571. Blue pen-and-wash drawing, 30 x 20 cm Inscription at the top: "Musick, led by Boethius the Roman and Arion the Greek. Yellow garment with red stripes, the tassels of the bodice in gold, and the others in silver."

Design of a costume for "Rhetorick" in the festive procession in Vienna, 1571. Blue pen-and-wash drawing, 30 x 20 cm Inscription at the top: "Rhetorick, led by Cicero the Roman and Demosthenes the Athenean. Red garment."

Design of a costume for "Astrology" in the festive procession in Vienna, 1571. Blue pen-and-wash drawing, 30 x 20 cm Inscription at the top: "Astrology, led by Ptolemy the Alexandrian and Julius Hyginus the Roman. White garment, the edges in red with gold stars."