Adoration of the Lamb, by Jan Van Eyck

'Adoration of the Lamb', by Jan Van Eyck, is the lower central panel from his Ghent Altarpiece

Hailed as "the first evolved landscape in European painting" by Kenneth Clark, 'Adoration of the Lamb' by Jan Van Eyck is a masterpiece that reveals much about the spirit of the day in late medieval Europe. There was a distinctly sweaty-lipped drive to tame the wanton strumpet of Nature at every turn, and we can see it reflected here in the landscape behind the lamb.

There's nothing less Godly than an untidy wilderness

The Church at the top of the hill, overlooking its kingdom

"Looking at the Tuscan landscape with its terraces of vines and olives and the dark vertical accents of the cypresses, one has the impression of timeless order. There must have been a time when it was all forest and swamp - shapeless, formless; and to bring order out of chaos is a process of civilization".

Check out the detail in the embossed damask pattern

"Since Giorgione first mythologized Arcadia by showing us naked women in an idealized landscape, we have been captured by the comforting illusion that nature is a mirror of human perfection."

The "pastoral fallacy" had inspired Theocritus and Virgil (who seems to have made an appearance in this panel dressed in white), and might have it's roots even further back: Pre-Historic man is said to have been subject to a vision of paradise genetically encoded as "The Savannah Hypothesis". It's a fascinating theory that suggests that we respond to this kind of landscape because it most closely resembles our old hunting grounds as knuckle-dragging simians.

You could even make the argument that artificial landscapes from stately homes to our lowly city parks are designed according to this same theory: visible water sources, easily navigable pathways, open vistas and vantage points (for hunting) and reference markers (so we don't get lost) were all necessary for survival for hundreds of thousands of generations.

All photos this article, source: 'Closer To Van Eyck' Project

Detail from lower right panel

Raphael Loggia Ornament

What's the most fun you can have without a King-sized bed and a rubber chicken? Yep, you guessed it: I just spent a day studying an original set of hand-painted engravings from 1770 of Raphael's designs for the painted ornament for the loggia at the Vatican.

It took three of us just to carry the first volume onto the viewing table. This thing looked like the Queen Mary hoving into view. Raphael himself could have delivered it on a unicorn and I'd be no more impressed. It was the most awesome object I've ever seen.

Three volumes, (the first of which measured about 24" x 36"), meticulously engraved, and subsequently painted in vibrant gouache of Raphael's panel, ceiling and pilaster designs for the Vatican in a riotous mixture of earthy fauna, gauzy maidens, beardy gods and grotesque ornament of every imaginable type.

Can somebody please explain the Universe to me, because I'm a little confused: How is it that one of only three complete sets in the world of these spectacular engravings can sell in November of last year for only $25,000, when Damien Hirst can sell horse manure for a million? It makes me so mad. And why am I finding out four months too late? I would have gladly cashed in my daughter's college fund if I'd known.

"The loggia, or colonnaded porch, on the second story of the Apostolic Palace is one of the Vatican’s most remarkable art treasures; its decoration, designed by Raphael (1483—1520) and executed by his workshop in 1517- 1519, epitomizes the spirit of the Italian Renaissance in its synthesis of Christian and classical themes. The thirteen square vaults of Raphael’s loggia each contain four frescoes of scenes from the Bible, from the Creation to the Last Supper." [source] 

Noah's Ark scene from the Vatican loggia...

... and the same scene as depicted in the set of engravings

"These splendid, large-size copperplate engravings, from the suite Le Loggie di Rafaele nel Vaticano (Rome: 1772-77), after the celebrated frescoes by Raphael in the loggia of the Vatican, are scarce, with OCLC recording only two complete copies in libraries worldwide.

"The Raphael Loggia consists of thirteen arches forming a gallery sixty-five meters long and four meters wide. Its construction was begun by architect and painter Donato Bramante in 1512, under Pope Julius II and was completed by Raphael under the reign of Leo X. Raphael began work on the frescoes in 1517.

"The plates, designed by P. Camporesi, G. and L. Savorelli Teseo and engraved by G. Volpato (1733-1803) and G. Ottaviani (1735-1808), depict, in a vibrant color gouache, the pilasters, paneling, ceiling panels and two doorways with floral, figural and architectural motifs. Where human figures in the original frescoes were compromised by weathering and erosion, engravers Volpato and Ottaviani replaced them with elements from the Vatican tapestries designed by Raphael.

"While Raphael's Vatican frescos were admired in their time, they were ultimately overshadowed by the work of Michaelangelo until the Neoclassicists of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries rediscovered the Renaissance, and Raphael earned his place as the era's greatest artist of them all.

""Raphael is categorically the greatest painter of the last millennium, and the Loggia is his most significant legacy," says Antonio Paolucci, director of the Vatican Museums and esteemed art historian.

"And yet the Loggia is the least known of Raphael's works. Millions of visitors to the Vatican Museums pass by it every year, but cannot go inside. Looking from Saint Peter's Square, it is in the second of the three glassed-in hallways across from the building in which the pope resides. When it was constructed, in the early part of the sixteenth century, it overlooked a garden. The thirteen arches of the Loggia frescoed by Raphael were not enclosed in glass until the nineteenth century. Originally, they were open to the luminous Roman sky, which made their colors even more brilliant" (Sandro Magister, Chiesa Espressonline)."

[source]

It has been notoriously difficult to find any images of Raphael's loggia work - the fact that the loggia are closed to the public and sealed behind glass has not helped - but Abbeville Press has published what looks like a fine book on the subject.

The Frescos of Oleg Supereco

Oleg Supereco has spent nearly a decade living in Italy. Though he's starting to develop an Italian accent, his roots are firmly planted in Moscow, where he was born and raised. 

Yet despite his Russian origin, Oleg is a painter who has come to be known as one of the leading proponents of the Italian art of buon fresco, and was recently commissioned to paint the pennacchi and the cupola of the Cathedral Church of St. Nicholas, in Noto (all images here) after it collapsed one night in 1996.

The buon fresco technique has now been virtually abandoned because of the difficulty of the procedure (once the mortar is spread on the wall you have only two or three hours to paint before it is dry), and for the lack of large clients with deep pockets. Accepting the proposed project in Noto brought many challenges, but was one of those opportunities that occur only once in life.

Still, it was a mammoth undertaking. The dome itself has an area of ​​about three hundred square meters, and is considered the largest contemporary fresco in Italy.

Working on a scaffold 32 meters off the deck, the first step was to remove the earlier plaster because it was cement-based, and replace it with traditional lime-based plaster, which allows more flexibility and better breathability. Supereco then started transferring his drawings of the thirteen figures that make up his scene of the descent of the Holy Spirit.

 

"The iconography of the entire project was drawn up by the Rev. Charles Chenis, then Secretary of the Pontifical Commission for Cultural Heritage of the Church, who proposed an organic cycle in which was proposed: the Heavenly Jerusalem with the Assumption (the nave Central), Pentecost and the Evangelists (dome with its plumes); Christ Blessing (apse), the seven sacraments (glass dome); saints venerated in the Diocese (windows of the nave), the Ladder of Paradise Madonna patroness of the Diocese and four local saints (right transept); Cross with four fathers of the Church (left transept).

A course that will make the vast Cathedral of Noto a rare example of a stylistic blend of the baroque and the present."

His father, realizing Oleg's passion for the Visual Arts, took him to see his first museum at a young age, intending to visit only those halls showing the modern art of the day. Oleg, however, had other plans. He spotted, in another separate area, some old Russian icon paintings and was immediately entranced. Despite Oleg's insistence, his father would not let him get a closer look. These were the first years of perestroika, after all.

That first meeting with Russian icons left a permanent impression. "I was immediately taken by the expressive power - remember - I do not get enthusiastic about Impressionism, Realism and Soviet art that speaks of everyday life. I was just struck by the faces of the icons; it was something higher, not made ​​with hands. Something clicked. I said 'I have to do that.'" If you ask him when he realized that he would become a painter, he has no doubts: "Always."

After finishing art school, Oleg enrolled in the Academy of Fine Arts in Moscow. It was there that he met a pivotal figure in his artistic life; Ilya Glazunov, present rector of the Academy and one of the most important contemporary Russian painters. The old man saw something of a kindred spirit in young Oleg, who described him as "a fighter against the dark forces." By that he meant the "dark forces" of secularism and modernism in art. "A great man, before whom you feel small. One of those people who happen along once every hundred years. He was perhaps the only one who understood me." The two men shared a deep religious faith that bonded them. "Painting is a prayer through which I communicate with the Lord and He communicates with me. I am only an instrument."  

When asked why he paints, he replies simply: "Because I can't not paint." 

His inspiration is clear; so what does he say about his style?

"It's certainly a (style of) painting that is based on the idealized concept of mimesis, that is, an art that is inspired by nature which brings out only the good parts." His work, as he wrote the Rev. Chenis in 2004, is "heedless of the seasons of contemporary art."

Gladunov grasped the potential of the young student, yet other teachers accused of being too Western and too Italianate, and artistically too "Catholic". But his teacher defended him and today, among the many students he had during his long career, Gladunov appoints only three or four as being the best. Oleg is one of them. Supereco traveled to Italy, where he continued his studies with a scholarship to the Academy of Fine Arts of Venice, graduating in 2004, and where he lives and works to this day.

A monograph, sponsored by the Prince Sebastian Von Furstenberg, his patron, is available from Amazon.  

Transferring the day's cartoon

Supereco's initial sketch for one of the pennacchi figures

 

John Vanderlyn: Panorama of Versailles

John Vanderlyn spent his later years whipping out his wares for anyone who'd take a look at them. I love the idea of him as a sort of Nineteenth Century Tall Grass artist pimping for cash like some itinerant rough tradesman. I'm not sure why that appeals to me. Maybe because the back-story injects a bit of life into work that's a bit stale and dry otherwise.

Things weren't always rough for him, though. Upon seeing Vanderlyn's copy of Gilbert Stuart's portrait, Aaron Burr pledged to pay any expenses necessary for the young artist "to cultivate his genius to [the] highest point of Perfection." Well that's quite a difference of opinion from his write-up in Appleton's Cyclopedia, which called his work "hardly more than respectable." Ouch.

^{[On a side note: Appleton's Cyclopedia of American Biography was the original Wikipedia. Museum Of Hoaxes claims that, out of the thousands of biographies at least 200 have been found to be false. The entries were not checked for content. Sounds familiar, ahem].}

Vanderlyn's panorama at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City

<sup>Time Magazine, upon the installation of the mural into it's current location at the Met, called it "one of the biggest, most elaborate and most thoroughly forgotten paintings in American history." 

At 165 feet in length and some 3,000 square feet of canvas, you might expect it to have more of a presence. It's cold neo-Classical style is partly to blame. It's more of a mathematical exercise in visual perspective than painting, and it's telling that the most flattering adjective Time came up with to describe it was "big".</sup>

His portrait paintings had fallen flat commercially, so he turned to painting grand panoramas (including Paris, Athens and Mexico), the only surviving example of which is this panorama of Versailles in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. This project was no different to his others and never made money, embroiling Vanderlyn in money problems with Burr (among others) for many years.

“The whole history of Vanderlyn’s life from that period to 1836 is a record of straits and struggles, repeated efforts and disappointments, and cruel injustice withal,” wrote a sympathetic (historian) Benjamin Myer Brink. “It is enough to say that the entanglements of the rotunda and kindred panorama projects were fatal to his peace and paralyzed his pencil.” [source]

The artist depicted himself pointing out Czar Alexander I and King Frederick William II of Prussia to the right of the Basin de Latone (above).

"The painting was originally intended for display in the Rotunda built by Vanderlyn in 1818 at the northeast corner of City Hall Park in New York. Its showing there was not as successful as Vanderlyn had wished. In search of some profit, Vanderlyn toured intermittently with the panorama until his death." [Met]

He died in 1952, a block-and-a-half from where he was born, a broken and embittered man. His grave at Wiltwyck Cemetary lay neglected for years. He did receive something of a eulogy from Brink some years later, who called him “a man of genius, an artist of renown, an honor to his country, (who) achieved broad and enduring fame.” Kind of a lie really, but nice of him to say.