European Paintings

European Paintings
From Leonardo to Rembrandt to Goya

European painting from 1400 to 1828 
Universidad Carlos III de Madrid

edX Courses
Pietro Perugino, The Delivery of the Keys, 1481-1482, Rome, Vatican City, Sistine Chapel
Lecture 1: The Renaissance - A Fundamental Break with the Past
The Renaissance is a period in the cultural history of Europe that follows the late Middle
Ages. It took place during the fifteenth and the sixteenth centuries.
During the Medieval period, all areas of life had been dominated by the Christian religion.
It was the Renaissance that initiated the path from a religious explanation of things to
reason and science.
Human beings developed a new confidence in their own abilities and an attitude of
curiosity towards nature and reality. This was a dynamic time defined by a new faith in
progress.
EUROPEAN PAINTINGS 1
The Renaissance is the beginning of the modern era. The ideas about life in the world that
were forged at this time, slowly but surely developed into our own scientific rationalism.
They paved the way for discoveries in medicine, biology, physics, mathematics,
engineering, geography and many other fields from which we have benefited.
The art of painting occupied an important place in society at the time and a prestige, that
it still enjoys, derives in part from that time.
One thought on all this before we start talking about painting. The idea that
the Renaissance is the opening bracket of a historical period, that we still live in, is
changing. Our faith in progress which we have inherited from the Renaissance is more in
doubt at the beginning of the twenty-first century than it was in the past. We now know
that progress can lead not only to good but also to dangerous places. It has made us
capable of destroying ourselves on the planet through war, excessive population and
consumption and through the abuse of natural resources.
It increasingly seems that the period that started with the Renaissance has ended and that
we now live in postmodern times. Only time will tell if this is true.
This will affect how we think about Renaissance art. It now seems as the art from the
beginning of the era in which we still live as the art of a period that's one of the pillars of
our culture. But in the future it may seem as the expression of a more disconnected past.
In terms of the history of art, we use the term Renaissance to refer to art made

in Europe during the fifteenth and the sixteenth centuries.
The most important centers for the production of paintings and the creation of artistic
trends, during this period, were in Italy and in what is now Belgium.
The image on the screen shows Florence, one of the focal points of Renaissance art and
culture. By the sixteenth century, the Renaissance style had spread throughout Europe and
also to the Americas. As it mixed with different cultures it lost some of it's defining
features and it gave way to new hybrid artistic languages.
Several features define Renaissance painting. One is the will to be more realistic than
painting had been in the past. This reflects the new curiosity about the natural
world that we have mentioned. Artists achieved this goal by studying their surroundings,
by learning to reproduce the three dimensional nature of objects and space and by
representing humans that moved and expressed their feelings.
An image like this with such a close and careful

study of an animal and of the plants, trees and
insects around it would not have made sense in
earlier periods.
It was made by Hans Hofmann, a German artist at
the end of the Renaissance.
Hans Hoffmann, Hare in the Forest, c. 1585, 62 x 78 cm, Los

Angeles, The J. Paul Getty Museum, digital image courtesy of
the Getty's Open Content Program
A second defining feature of Renaissance art is a strong will to recover what was
perceived as the greatness of classical antiquity. It is this feature that is reflected in the
word Renaissance which means rebirth in French. Sculptors and architects copied ancient
buildings and sculptures that existed in Europe, but very few ancient paintings remain.
Painters filled their works with motifs, borrowed from ancient sculpture and architecture,
and they also imitated works by ancient painters that they learned about from
ancient Roman texts.
Most important was an encyclopedia titled

“Natural History” by Pliny the Elder. Here we see a
print by the late Renaissance Dutch artist Hendrick
Goltzius from 1592. It shows two men studying the
giant sculpture known as the 'Hercules Farnese’
which was discovered in Rome in the 1540s. Artists
from all of Europe traveled to Italy to see ancient
remains and in Rome and other cities there was an
avid search for antique monuments.
Hendrick Goltzius, Hercules Farnese, engraving,

1592, 41.8 x 30.1 cm
It is important to remember that admiration for pagan antiquity

coexisted with a Christian faith at this time and that much of the art made during
the Renaissance was Christian. This can seem like a paradox to us but for most
contemporaries it was simply how they understood life.
Because of the interesting classical antiquity many

Renaissance paintings showed mythological subjects.
There was also a huge increase in portraits.
This reflects a central place that was assigned to
human beings during this time. This detail of a self
portrait by Dürer shows the artist in front of the
world that he studied and painted.
He has proudly signed his work just under the
window.
Detail, Albrecht Dürer, Self-portrait, 1498, 52 x 41 cm,
Madrid, Museo Nacional del Prado
Renaissance artists in Italy and the North did not paint in the same way. The Northern
version of the Renaissance aimed primarily at being realistic and expressive.
We will explain this more carefully later in the course.
The Italian Renaissance was more drawn to the reproduction of ancient ruins because
more existed there.
Detail, Leonardo da
Vinci, Annunciation,
1472-1475, 98 x 217 cm,
Florence, Galleria degli Uffizi
Italian artists also placed a greater emphasis than their Northern counterparts in creating
ideal beauty, based on the ideas of a harmony and proportion, as manifest in ancient art.
In this detail from Leonardo's “Annunciation”painted in the 1470s, we find a strong and
obvious effort to create beauty. Look at the melodious pattern formed by the trees and
look at the curves formed by the profile of the face of the Angel. And look also at the
beautiful gestures of his hands. Rarely in the entire history of art has the creation of
beauty been as important for painters as it was during the Renaissance in Italy.
This is one of the most rewarding features of the art of painting. Beauty makes us soar and
brings happiness. We will see in this course that beauty was not always understood in the
same way and that at times artists fought to liberate themselves from it.
Finally a word on chronology. Even though we speak of the Renaissance as one single

period, important changes occurred during this time. In this course we will study
Renaissance artists who worked at different moments during the fifteenth and the
sixteenth centuries.
Lecture 2: Fra Angelico (c.1400-1455). Painting Piety in 15th century in Italy
This painting is by Fra Angelico, one of the leading artists

of the early Renaissance. He was active mainly in Florence,
but for a time he was also painter to the Popes in Rome.
This is a religious work like many paintings during
the Renaissance, when the Church was among the main
clients for painters.
It shows Mary and the Child Jesus. She's dressed in blue
and he's dressed in pink. Let's consider in this painting
what comes from the past and what announces the future,
or said in different words, let's see how this painting fits
into the sequence that we call the history of art.
The materials used by the painter are somewhat old-
fashioned. We see a lot of expensive gold and blue made
from the expensive mineral lapis, which was mined in
Afghanistan.
Fra Angelico, The Virgin of Humility, c. 1433-1435,

147 x 91 cm, Madrid, Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza
Contemporaries would have recognised the material cost of the painting. They would
have valued it for how expensive the materials were.
What is new, what comes with the Renaissance, is value placed on the talent of the artist
and not on the cost of the materials. A bit of this is already visible here. In an earlier
painting the gold cloth in the background typically would have been flat, nothing but a
gold surface. Here gold is used, but it looks like a real curtain. We see its folds as it is held
by two angels in the background. The blue garments worn by the Virgin also fold
realistically. The use of symbols in the painting is an aspect of Renaissance art that is
linked with the past. Here we see that the Virgin and Child carry flowers. They are
symbols that refer to their purity. Remember that paintings cannot use words, written or
spoken, to tell their stories. They need to use symbols. But there was a general tendency in
the history of art towards a less symbolic and more realistic way of painting. Symbolism
will continue to be used, but it will be more disguised, less apparent as we move into the
future.
What is modern about this painting is what can be considered realistic, two things
mainly. One is the psychological rendering of expression, in the Virgin, for example.
We feel the tenderness of her gesture. We can believe in her. She offers protection to her
son and to us. We don't need to be religious to empathise with this aspect of the painting.
The picture's also somewhat realistic in the rendition of a realistic looking three-
dimensional space, especially in comparison with older paintings. Look at the ledge in the
foreground. It looks like a step that leads into the depth of the picture.
Look also at the figures, especially the Baby Jesus. He looks round, three-dimensional.
In the past he would have looked flat. This painting, like all paintings, shows features that
are characteristic not only of a time and place but also of an individual artist.
Contemporaries wrote about Fra Angelico as someone who was especially pious and who
was able to transmit this to his paintings and to make his public feel it.
Indeed, we can sense this ourselves. We can feel the genuine and sweet feelings of the
figures in the painting.
This picture's also by Fra Angelico. It is

a painting that includes
various paintings. It is called a
polyptych.
Paintings with three paintings are called
triptychs, with two paintings
they're called diptychs. This type of
painting would soon become outdated,
Fra Angelico, The Virgin and Child Enthroned with

Angels and Saints, 1437-1438, polyptych Perugia,
Galleria Nazionale dell´Umbria
as painters and patrons gradually showed a preference for paintings with one single
scene.
The beautiful golden frame is also somewhat old-fashioned. The pointed arches are
typical of Gothic or late Medieval architecture and not of the Renaissance. The range of
colors is typical of the early Renaissance. They are light and opaque with much gold.
You will learn to recognise late Medieval or early Renaissance Italian paintings, when you
see this type of color. To some extent, these colours are a matter of taste, but it also has to
do with technique. Paintings in the early Renaissance in Italy were painted in a technique
that we call tempera. Pigments were diluted in water and then mixed with egg yolk.
The result was the range of tones that we see here. The small scenes that we see in the
bottom are known as predella paintings. Predella was the Italian name given to the
bottom of these large structures or frames.
Here we see the predella from the

lower left of the large polyptych that
we just saw.
It shows images from the life of Saint
Nicholas, the Saint that was
represented immediately above.
To the left we see his birth. He already
looks like a Saint with a halo above his
head.
Fra Angelico, Scenes from the Life of Saint Nicholas
of Bari (predella of the previous polyptych)
In the center we see his education and to the right one of the miracles that he is said to
have conducted. He's leaving money at a window. Through the door we see a sleeping
man, he's a father who was said to have lost all his money and to have prostituted his
daughters to gain it back. The daughters are in bed in the background sleeping.
For our purpose of explaining early Renaissance paintings, the content of the image
matters less than its form. It matters less than how it is painted. I want you
to focus on two features of this picture.
One is the emphatic effort to create the impression of recession into a three-dimensional
space. Renaissance artists thought of paintings as windows that opened up into a realistic
looking space. Much of the effort of Fra Angelico here goes into showing his ability to
make the painting look realistic in this sense.
Look at the side walls of the two buildings in the painting, at the right and left.
They recede into very exaggerated angles, to make sure that we feel this recession into a
three- dimensional space. This would have made the painting look very modern when it
was created.
A second feature of the painting that I want you to notice is the type of building that we
see here. The arches, the ornaments, the round shape of the building in the background,
the triangular shape of the top of another building, they're all inspired by the very latest
developments in modern architecture, which in turn was inspired by the architecture of
ancient Greece and Rome. It is surprising to see that such contemporary architecture is
used in a polyptych with a very Gothic or late Medieval frame. Perhaps it was easier for
the artist or the patron to look modern in a small secondary image and not in a large
frame. We don't know. But the tension between past and present, between tradition and
innovation, is very obvious here, as it very often is in the history of art.
Lecture 3: Sandro Botticelli (1444/45 - 1510). Painting Beauty in 15th century Italy
Botticelli was a Florentine artist who very much admired during his lifetime. He worked
for the Medici in Florence, one of the important patron families that we will see during
this course. He also worked for the Pope in Rome. He's active during the second half of
the fifteenth century. His main works were painted between fourteen seventy and
fourteen ninety.
The picture that you see on the screen is an

annunciation. It's a small picture. Ignore the
surrounding space which was originally
occupied by a frame. It shows the moment when
the Virgin Mary is said to have received news
from the Angel Gabriel that she will be the
mother of Jesus Son of God.
Sandro Botticelli, The Annunciation, c. 1485,

19 x 31 cm, New York, The Metropolitan
Museum of Art, Robert Lehman Collection
As is fitting Botticelli creates an air of quiet mystery for this event. Let your eyes wonder
through the painting. Both the Angel and Mary bend their heads in humble gestures.
The Angel holds his cloak as he kneels. The Virgin modestly covers herself with her robes.
We see her through a drawn curtain. This type of image, where we look into a room
uninvited, will appear again in our course in several weeks in the art of Vermeer, a
seventeenth century Dutch painter. Notice the contrast between the hard stone and the
straight angles of the architecture and the softness and curves of the white fabric.
Over the furniture behind the Virgin the cloth is so thin that we can see what lies behind
it. We're seduced by the particular magic of this painting as we're drawn into the painted
world through this kind of detail.
As in the last paintings that we saw by Fra Angelico, notice the emphasis on the idea
that the painting is a window that opens into a space that seems realistic. It seems to have
three dimensions. This is achieved through a system called linear perspective which is
characteristic of the early Renaissance. Lets use this painting as an example to explain this
system. If we extend the lines that in the illusion of the painting are perpendicular to the
picture plane, that is to the panel or the canvas support, they would coincide in one or in a
few points. By using this system, the painter creates the impression that the Angel is
inside of a realistic three-dimensional space.
Like when pop artists inserted the Coca Cola logos in their painting of the early nineteen
sixties, this kind of perspective made the painting look up-to-date. It looked very modern
to contemporaries. Notice also another feature at the time of the painting that was seen as
very modern for the time, the use of classical architecture, and look also at the landscape
barely visible behind the windows, incorporating landscapes like these was an idea
imported from the Netherlands, as we will see later on in this course. Remember, there's
always a lot of borrowing in the history of art.
Sandro Botticelli, Venus and Mars, c. 1485, 69 x 173

cm, London, The National Gallery
This painting is called Venus and Mars and it's also by Botticelli. The long format of the
painting shows that it was adapted to the shape of a piece of furniture, such as a bed or
a Chester bench.
This is a reminder that art at the time had a function. It was made for specific places and
its themes made sense in those places. When looking at the art of Fra Angelico we saw
religious paintings which were made for private devotion in a home or for churches. Here
we see Mars asleep on the right. He was the God of War. His spear and helmet had been
taken from him. Opposite is Venus, the Goddess of Love according to ancient mythology.
Love here seems to have conquered war. She is awaken, he's asleep. This may have been
painted for a bedchamber and the painting may refer to the power of love, specifically of
carnal love. The sleep of Mars here suggests that this is a moment that follows
lovemaking.
In Botticelli we find more mythological themes than we did in Fra Angelico. During
the Renaissance there was a true obsession with bringing back the life of classical
antiquity. Its remains around Italy and other parts of Europe spoke of its greatness and
their goal of making buildings and statues look like Greek and Roman architectures and
sculptures. Sculptors could rely on the remains that lay in their midst, so could architects.
Very few ancient paintings had survived, so what did painters do? They painted ancient
themes and also they found inspiration in statues.
Here the dress of Venus is inspired in clothing from classical statues as is the pose of
the two figures which draws from an ancient sarcophagus that was actually known at the
time.
The painting is also about beauty. The whole picture shows the smooth beauty
characteristic of Botticelli. The triumph of Venus over Mars is achieved through her
beauty. Look at her hair and her dress. The picture's a beautiful poetic invention. It's an
idea, a mood turned into an image.
Sandro Botticelli, The Birth of Venus, c. 1486, 172 x

279 cm, Florence, Galleria degli Uffizi
The title of this painting is the birth of Venus. It's one of the most famous pictures by
Botticelli. It shows the arrival of Venus from the sea on to the earth. It's hard to imagine a
more important message. Just try to think of a world without love and without beauty.
Those are the concepts that Venus represents here. Botticelli has given this his best effort.
Venus is pushed ashore by a man who is blowing on her. He represents the gentle
breeze that brings the Spring. He actually carries the Spring in his arms. The arrival
of Venus means the beginning of life. The woman who receives her is probably Flora,
Goddess of Flowers. Ancient myths such as this can bring to us profound truths about the
forces that rule the world and they rule our conduct. Here we see the power of love and of
beauty, forces that generate life, just as Spring brings life to nature.
Venus is based on Greek and Roman statues. Graceful movements and proportions, the
decorative use of line, the ornamental charm of the image are qualities characteristic of
this artist. What Botticelli paints is different from what is found in nature or in works of
art that inspired him. It's a translation of the natural world and of his sources
into a different form. That translation into an original form is what we call art.
Notice in this image how the neck of the goddess is too long or her shoulders too low.
Botticelli transforms reality at the service of his message. The woman is made exceedingly
graceful and delicate so that she can express the idea of beauty and love, the greatest of
gifts.
Lecture 4: Andrea Mantegna (1430 - 1506). Painting Antiquity in 15th century Italy
Andrea Mantegna worked in the second half of the fifteenth century, mainly in the
northern Italian cities of Padua and Mantua. His work is probably the best witness that we
have of the enthusiasm that existed during his time for the art and the history of
ancient Rome.
This image shows Dido, first Queen of Carthage, who plays

a leading role in one of the great texts of the history of
literature, The Aeneid by the Roman poet Virgil.
Dido fell in love with the Trojan hero Aeneas and was left
desolate when he left her to fulfill his divine duty, the
foundation of what would become ancient Rome. It is an
incredibly moving story of love which ends with the Queen's
suicide.
Here we see her, victim of love, preparing for her death.
Behind her is a funeral pyre and she holds a sword that
Aeneas has left behind and which she will use to kill herself.
The painting is exquisite. Precision in the definition of forms
and lines is characteristic of Mantegna. The pose of the
figures is based on ancient prototypes. Mantegna brings up a
notch the antiquarian standards of the time. He was close to
contemporary students of antiquity and he was himself very
interested in ancient monuments, such as triumphal arches
and triumphal columns.
Andrea Mantegna, Dido, c. 1500, 65 x 31 cm, Montreal, The Montreal

Museum of Fine Arts, purchase, John W. Tempest Fund, Photo MMFA
A striking aspect of this picture is that nearly the whole image is made of a single color, a
mixture between yellow and orange. Monochrome paintings were a specialty at the time
and they're known as grisaille, a term that comes from the French word for the color grey.
They became fashionable, because in the Renaissance they were very often used to imitate
ancient Roman relief sculptures. The term grisaille is applied to this picture, even though
the color here is not grey. What this painting is trying to do is to imitate not stone but
bronze. The ability of painters to imitate different materials with their art was praised by
contemporaries.
This painting shows Jesus Christ displaying the wounds of

his crucifixion on his hands and feet. He is held up for
contemplation by two angels. Different types of angels are
described in Christian texts. Here we see a Seraph dressed in
red and a Cherub dressed in blue. Christ rests at the edge of
an ancient looking sarcophagus. Next to his right hand you
can barely see that it is open and on the ground nearby, next
to the edge of the painting, you can see the lid. The beautiful
landscape extends to a horizon showing the light of dawn.
The clouds are lit from underneath. To the right we see a hill
crowned with the three crosses.
Andrea Mantegna, The Man of Sorrows with Two Angels, c.

1500, 78 x 48 cm, Copenhagen, Statens Museum for Kunst
The depiction of drapery is amazing. Look at the cloth held by the angel to the right. We
have a sense here that the artist enjoyed himself, that he is showing off, that this is like a
signature with a distinctive flourish. The careful study of the anatomy of Christ
and the careful description of nature are characteristic of the Renaissance which favored
these qualities, overgeneralized and schematic approaches to representation. The
expressions of the three faces denote grief and pain. They seem a bit forced. This is a
reminder that we're still in the early stages of the Renaissance.
Learning is not only an individual accomplishment. We learn many things collectively.
The history of art teaches this. Painters at this time were still not able to paint human
expression in a way that seemed entirely realistic. But thanks to the effort of this artist and
of his contemporaries the next generation would be able to achieve that goal. It is an
interesting paradox that we can appreciate and be deeply moved by aspects of a painting
that fall short of its own goals.
Here the figures seem frozen, rocklike. To my eye, this translates into a sense of
permanence, as if we were witnesses to something immovable. We feel that we are seeing
something that is historically distant, eternal.
What we see here is a closed room in the Ducal Palace
of Mantua that Mantegna has painted with fictive
landscape views and people. When one is in this
room, it seems as if the ceiling and the sidewalls open
onto the sky and the countryside. It is a feed of
illusionism and it's worth traveling to Mantua to see
it. We're going to focus only on what is painted on the
ceiling. We're looking up at a ceiling that appears to
open up onto a blue sky. The figures are kept safe
behind a balustrade, if not they would fall onto us.
In fact, somethings here actually look like they are
about to fall.
Detail, Andrea Mantegna, Camera Picta, 1465-1474, showing

only the oculus on the ceiling Mantua, Palazzo Ducale
Look at the large pot with plants to the left. It is barely held in place by a stick. It could
fall at any moment.
On the opposite side of the opening, a small naked child holds an apple that could also
fall on us. Some of the figures in the image smile. They seem humored by all this.
Clearly Mantegna had a sense of humor and he enjoyed this kind of trickery, but
something else is at stake here. By engaging us so directly, the artist turns us from passive
viewers to viewers that participate more actively in the scene. We're almost physically
involved with it. We feel that we should move away from the objects that may fall.
Mantegna is a master at this. By engaging our attention he achieves two different goals.
First of all, he makes us more alert to what he's painting, to his story or his message.
Secondly, he makes us more aware of his art and of his ability as a painter. Future
generations of artists, especially in the seventeenth century, will work even harder at
making us seem like active participants in the scenes that they paint and at making us
appreciate their skills. One final idea, painters are makers of visual fictions, of visions.
They each create a world that we look at and that we believe in and that we enter with our
minds. This is a great thing. It makes our own lives infinitely greater. Instead of having
only one vision or one version of life, our own, we can find many created by individuals
that were shaped by their times and places and also by their individual geniuses.
Lecture 5: The Fifteenth Century in the Netherlands
Together with Italy the leading region of Europe for the production of paintings during
the fifteenth century was an area that roughly coincides with modern-day Belgium.
Several of the greatest painters of the fifteenth century worked there. We will study two of
them in this course, Jan van Eyck and Rogier van der Weyden.
We can use this image on the screen to
describe the main characteristics of
Netherlandish painting.
It shows part of a picture by van Eyck that
shows a man named Arnolfini. It is in
the National Gallery in London. It was
painted in 1434.
Like their Italian counterparts,
Netherlandish artists from the beginning
of the fifteenth century wanted to be more
realistic than their medieval predecessors.
This is what made them modern. Instead
of emphasizing the illusion of depth
through the use of linear perspective, as
has happened in the early Renaissance in
Italy, they emphasized the careful
rendition of details in the objects and the
materials that they included in their
paintings.
Jan van Eyck, The Arnolfini portrait, 1434, 84 x 57

cm, London, The National Gallery
Look here for example at the lamp and at the mirror. This realism in the details is very
effective in creating the illusion that what we see is real. The will to represent things in a
way that looks realistic co-existed in Netherlandish painting of the fifteenth century
with a strong symbolism. Painters wanted to look modern by making things look real, but
they did not want to give up other ways of communicating that they had developed in the
past. An important one was associating symbolic meanings with different things.
We can see a good example of this in this

image. It is a detail of another painting by
van Eyck, made around 1435. It's title is the
Virgin of Chancellor Rolin. It's in the Louvre
Museum in Paris. Behind the hands on the left
we see a landscape made up of vineyards.
We could think that this was simply there, but
always keep in mind that paintings don’t
reproduce reality. They are ideas that have
taken on a visual form.
Jan van Eyck, The Virgin of the Chancelor Rolin, c.

1435, 66 x 62 cm, Paris, Musée du Louvre
This is obvious, but part of the magic of painting lies in the fact that it is so
convincing that we are always fooled by it.
Let's go back to the vineyards which we see again in this detail of the same painting.
Art historians have learned that the man who commissioned it, who we see here, earned
part of his money from his extensive vineyards in the region of Burgundy. Clearly this
landscape was included in the painting not because it happened to be there, but to remind
viewers of the wealth and power of the man placed in front of it. So remember. A new and
meticulous attention to detail co-exists in Netherlandish painting of the fifteenth century
with disguised symbolism.
Before we focus on the achievements of van Eyck and van der Weyden in the next
videos, two concepts need to be explained: one is the term Netherlandish painting that I
have been using, the second is the technique of oil painting that was used by painters in
the Netherlands.
The term Netherlandish painting, or sometimes early Netherlandish painting,
is used in the history of art and in museums to refer to artists who worked during the
fifteenth century and the early years of the sixteenth century in a region then known
as The Netherlands. This included the country that we still know by that name, The
Netherlands, but it also included an area just to the south, that roughly coincides with
present day Belgium, as I have said. In fact, the most populated and important cities were
there, in the Southern Netherlands, and it was there that most of the leading painters
worked. So remember, we use the term early Netherlandish painting to refer to pictures
made in the fifteenth century and the early sixteenth century, primarily in a region that
coincides with what is now Belgium, especially in the cities of Brugge, Ghent, Brussels
and Leuven.
The second concept that we need to explain is the technique of oil painting. This was
used by Netherlandish painters of the fifteenth century instead of tempera which was
used in Italy. The difference between oil painting and tempera is simple.
The pigment or coloring agent is mixed with a binding medium that is not egg yoke as in
tempera, but a type of oil that will dry when in contact with the air. The most commonly
used was linseed oil.
What is special about this is that most pigments, when mixed in oil, become translucent,
when applied to a panel or a canvas they have a characteristic gloss and depth of colour
very different from tempera which is opaque. Even though oil paint had been used earlier
to supplement other techniques, it was developed and refined during the fifteenth century
by Netherlandish artists, and it was specifically associated by writers with the art of Jan
van Eyck who achieved great fame throughout Europe. The way Netherlandish artists
used oil paint was by applying it over an underlying white layer used to prepare the
panel support for painting. The effect achieved by this was once explained to me by
restorer. Think of a piece of toast with butter on it. Over this apply a layer of dark jam.
This would be the oil paint. The white underneath seems to glow through the covering
layer, creating a luxurious looking surface. When making a painting, very thin layers of
paint could be applied over and over, adding to the sense of depth.
Aside from the appearance of a surface, the second feature of oil paint, that made it
different from tempera, is that it allowed for a smooth continuous modelling of volume.
This was because oil dried slowly, as opposed to the fast drying tempera, and different
strokes of varying colors or tones could be blended and used to create smooth transitions.
Look at the belly and the legs in this detail on the screen (last picture). The volumes look
around because the artist can blend darker with lighter tones, as he shapes the three-
dimensional body. If this were painted with tempera, small strokes of slightly
different tones would be painted next to each other and would blend in our eyes only
when seen from a distance.
By the sixteenth century oil had become the predominant technique in all of Europe, but
its use evolved with artists focusing on different properties of the medium, such as its
consistence, which allowed them to work up the texture of paintings. Oil paint would
never be used again with a meticulous precision of Netherlandish artists.
Lecture 6: Jan Van Eyck (c. 1390 - 1441). Beauty is in the details
Jan van Eyck, The Crucifixion and The Last Judgment, c. 1430, 56 x 20

cm each panel, New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art
The image on the screen is a painting by van Eyck. On the left we see a Crucifixion and
on the right a Last Judgment. Van Eyck was one of the most famous painters in all
of Europe during the fifteenth century. He made this picture around 1430. He was active
mainly in the city of Brugge where he was court painter to the Dukes of Burgundy, rulers
of The Netherlands, and one of the most wealthy and powerful families in Europe. Van
Eyck's art is characterized by its meticulous realism. Look at the picture on the screen.
It shows how he concentrated on looking carefully at things around him, maybe more
than any other artist before him did, and on representing what he saw in the most detailed
way possible.
It is this very strong realistic vocation that makes van Eyck modern for his time. The
careful visual exploration of all things was a part of the emerging modern mindset. By
looking and representing things realistically, artists felt like they were conquering the
world. We can appreciate better on a screen the meticulous attention to detail that is
typical of this artist in this picture which is small. It measures fifty-six centimeters in
height and each panel twenty centimeters in width. It is probably a diptych, even though
we're not sure that the painting always had this format that it has now. It was made for
someone to pray and to meditate. It was small enough that it could be moved around and
taken on the road if traveling. The lustre of the paint surface is characteristic of oil paint,
as used in Netherlandish painting. The frames are original. This is unusual.
They're inscribed with text in Latin from the Bible and the Gospels that relate to the
scenes painted inside. Notice here the extraordinary attention to detail. The picture needs
to be seen very close up. Look for example at the mountains in the background painted in
tiny strokes, very likely inspired by knowledge of the awesome high peaks of the Alps
which van Eyck probably crossed on a trip that we think he took to Italy, where his art
would become well known with time.
Look also at the spear that pierces the side of Christ and, just below, at the sponge with
vinegar that was said to have been offered to him to quench his thirst. Look also at the
expressions of the horses. Some seemed fearful of the crowds. There's one, just next to the
foot of the cross, with an attitude that seems to echo the mocking fury of the mob. Some of
the laughing figures in the crowd, such as the man in yellow near the bottom of this
image, show large noses that we're likely meant to be identified as Jewish, promoting a
negative stereotype of the people that were often associated at the time with the killing of
Jesus.
Art was often used as propaganda by those who paid for it. They used it to express their
views and beliefs and to oppose others. Below the crucifixion is Mary, dressed in blue, and
a group of followers of Jesus including the young St John and the
weaping Mary Magdalene. John consoles the Virgin. He wrinkles his forehead and brings
his eyebrows together expressing his spiritual pain. Intensity of expression is typical of
van Eyck and of other Netherlandish artists.
Generally speaking, we can say that Netherlandish artists prefer intensity of expression
over ideal beauty which is more typical of Italian artists at this time. Look
at Mary Magdalene dressed in green. She extends her arms forward, her hands joined.
The position of the arms seems a bit artificial. What the artist is doing here is searching for
a way to communicate emotions through the movement of the body. It is likely that van
Eyck was inspired in this pose by another artist who we will see soon in this course,
Rogier van der Weyden. Above the head of Mary Magdalene notice the reflection on the
round shield that hangs from the belt and sword of a soldier.
In painting such minute details van Eyck is showing off his skill. The shield is like a
mirror. Something is reflected on it, probably our own presence looking at the painting.
This idea of incorporating viewers into the painting, by including their reflection in a
mirror, was used by several Netherlandish artists at the time and it's repeated by van Eyck
in one of his most famous paintings, Arnolfini Portrait. Look for it, it's in
the National Gallery in London.
Van Eyck very probably worked at times making miniature illustrations for manuscript
books that were collected as luxury items by wealthy patrons at the time. This art form is
known as manuscript illumination. It was practiced by leading artists, especially
in Northern Europe. A taste for nearly microscopic detail was inherited from this tradition
of illustration in very small detail.
At the top of the right panel is an image of Heaven. Below the Virgin and Christ are
the Twelve Apostles dressed in white and those who have been saved at Judgment Day.
One of the apostles is Judas who was said to have betrayed Christ. Van Eyck identifies
him through his expression. Try to find him.
On the lower part of the left panel is an absolutely amazing scene. Skeleton that
represents death seems to act as a funnel through which sinners fall into Hell.
They are received there by monsters that eat them and destroy them. Some of the images
are gruesome. Around mid height on the left side is an example of this. A man is being
split in half by a monster who pulls his legs apart. You may be thinking that this is not
very realistic and you're right, but think about it this way. Even when representing images
that seem to come from dreams, or nightmares, or just from the fantasy of the artist there's
realistic vocation here. The details of the monsters are meticulous. They are presented to
us not as abstractions but as if they existed, and look at the landscape just above the
skeleton.
The artist has worried about painting the waves of the ocean washing onto the shore
and also the distant horizon. Again a realistic impulse is at work here. The message is
similar to that found in Christian art before the Renaissance, but the way it is conveyed,
the form that it takes, is modern.
RECOMMENDED READINGS:
- “The Story of Art”, by Ernest Gombrich
- “Oxford History of Art”, by Oxford University Press
- “Art and Ideas”, by Phaidon Press
- “The dictionary of Art” / “The Grove Dictionary of Art”, by Jane Turner
- “Renaissance Portraits”, by Lorne Campbell
- “Style in the Art Theory of Early Modern Italy” by Philip Sohm
- “The Civilization of Europe in the Renaissance”, by John Hale*
- “Worldly Good - A New History of the Renaissance”, by Lisa Jardini*
* Cultural and History books.
Lecture 7: The Pictorial Intelligence of Van der Weyden (c. 1399 - 1464)
Rogier van der Weyden was born in Tournai, Belgium. He was trained there and he
worked mainly in Brussels. He was very successful during his lifetime. His works date
from the 1430s to the 1460s. We're gonna concentrate on what is probably his most famous
painting.
Rogier van der Weyden, The Deposition, c. 1435, 220 x 260 cm, Madrid, Museo Nacional del Prado
It shows the deposition of Christ. It was painted sometime around 1435. It is in The
Prado Museum in Madrid. It's a large work for the 15th century. It measures two twenty
by two sixty centimeters. The figures are nearly life-size.
The image shows a moment when Jesus, his nails just removed from his hands and feet,
has been brought down from the cross. His mother Mary has fainted. Painters usually
received instructions on what to paint. It was left to them to decide how to turn these into
images. Van der Weyden must have been told to draw a parallel between the suffering of
Christ and that of his mother Mary. The compassion of a mother is perhaps easier to
comprehend than the death of a god It brings the story on the feelings associated with a
story closer to us.
Notice how the figure of Jesus and the Virgin are parallel to each other. The right hand of
Christ lays next to the hand of the Virgin, which seems equally lifeless.
The other hand of Christ, the left, near the top of the picture, and the right hand Mary
near the bottom, both curve inward. As a result of this double gesture we perceive the
two bodies of Jesus and Mary as one, bracketed by the two hands. This is how the artist
has translated into a visual form the idea of the shared pain between Jesus and Mary.
On the upper right and left corners of the picture, as part of a painted frame, perhaps
you can see tiny crossbows reminder that the painting was commissioned by the
crossbowmen's guild in the Belgian city of Leuven, near Brussels. This type of guild was
an exclusive men's club of the time. Their gift of the painting to the church was a way of
making others take notice of their wealth and power.
The painting soon became famous and in the middle of the 16th century, some hundred
and twenty years after it was painted, it was purchased by the woman who ruled The
Netherlands as regent Mary of Hungary in exchange for the painting she gave the church
an identical copy and a new organ. She took the picture to Spain when she retired there.
That's why it's in Madrid today.
The attention that the artist pays to the most painstaking details is amazing. And it is
characteristic of Early Netherlandish painting. Notice in the figure of Christ the stubble on
his face. The artist wanted to be so realistic in his rendition of details that he has even
painted some pubic hair just above the cloth that covers Jesus. On his side, and also on his
right hand, we can see the blood that flows from the wounds. It's in the process of
changing direction, as the body of Christ is brought down from the vertical position he
had on the cross and is prepared to be laid horizontally. In contrast with the realism of
these details, the arms of the cross are obviously too small to have supported Christ.
And the legs of the Virgin are too long. If she stands up she won't fit in the painting.
When one stands in front of this work in The Prado in Madrid you constantly hear
viewers say how amazingly realistic it looks, rendering details such as hair or clothing
hyper realistically goes a long way towards making us feel that what we see is real.
The woman in the far right of the image acts out her grief in an elegant pose that is
similar to one that we have seen in an earlier video, in a painting by Van Eyck.
Van Eyck and Van der Weyden were in the forefront of artistic innovation at that time, and
they looked at each other's work for inspiration.
The folds and the garments in this figure add to her psychological tension. Folds are
among the most beautiful features of this picture. One has a sense that the artist enjoyed
painting them that he could concentrate on them as pure, abstract forms.
Let's move back from the painting for a moment. It is surprising that it looks like the
inside of a shallow box filled with figures. Why crowd all the figures in such an
impossibly tight space if one is trying to be realistic?
There's an explanation for this: religious scenes made for churches in Europe at the time
were very often sculptures, not paintings. Here you see a slightly later example, but you
get the idea. Groups of wooden figures are inset in a shallow box-like space, as in this
example figures were usually painted. Van der Weyden is imitating this. He has made a
painting that looks like an altarpiece with carved wood figures. Even though known to us
mainly as a painter he also worked adding the final paint to wooden and stone sculptures.
It's also very likely that he designed sculptures that were carved in wood by others.
It is clear that his work with the art of sculpture influenced what he decided to do in this
case. He has imitated a multi-figure sculpture which is what the public was used to
seeing. Try to put yourself in the place of contemporaries who saw this. If you're expecting
to see sculptures this figures look amazingly real. They look like they're made of flesh not
painted wood. Their impact must have been very strong.
Finally I want to focus on the formal language of the deposition. Think of paintings as a
sentence made up of different parts, the subject, the predicate, the different words and
type of words used. Each person, each writer uses languages differently. The same is true
with paintings. Let's look at some of the components of this one. The angles of the heads
and bodies of the figures relate to each other. They form a pattern, a rhythm. The man and
woman on the left and right of the image are not only a man and woman, they are also
brackets that enclose the entire composition with their postures. I have already mentioned
the parallel drawn by formal means between the figures of Jesus and Mary. They
dominate the composition Notice the toe of Christ in the middle of this image.
It nearly touches a white cloth above. Other similar points of contact can be seen in the
painting. In this same image we can see how the red sleeve of the woman barely touches a
white vessel nearby. The same thing happens with the left hand of Christ. It nearly
touches the dark headpiece next to it.
Van der Weyden's creativity, his pictorial intelligence made him intuit that by doing this
he brought cohesion to the scene. As these points of contact each other they bring different
sections of the painting together. They also shape the way we perceive the scene.
We look quickly and generally at some areas, and we stop our eyes in others.
We experience connections of the type that I have described with a sense of discovery.
A very few paintings in the entire history of art bring to us a sense of awareness; this is
one of them. It seems to open up to us. It makes us feel that we've gained some insight
into the language of art.
Lecture 8: Hieronymus Bosch (c. 1450 - 1516). Painter of Sins
Today we will look at the art of Hieronymus Bosch, made at the end of the 15th and the
beginning of the 16th century in The Netherlands. He is an artist, author of fantastic and
moralizing works. They are more closely linked to medieval art and the medieval
mentality than to the Renaissance. Bosch was very much a man of his times. His art was
highly appreciated by his contemporaries and it was widely imitated. It was even forged
from early on. Evidently he struck a chord. The differences between Bosch and other
artists of the time reminds me of something that I want to comment on. The order that we
impose on history as we analyze it from a distance is artificial. Art history, as a branch of
the humanities, it's not nearly a summary or a perfect reflection of events that happened,
it's a theory, and interpretation of those events that we develop, so that we can make sense
of them. Bosch is not an easy fit in a history of art that looks for what is modern in
each generation. But he was successful and he stirred the things up in the
art world. Also his creativity makes him one of the most fascinating artist of his or any
other time.
Bosch was born en 's-Hertogenbosch in The Netherlands. He married a wealthy woman
and had no children. Maybe this allowed him the freedom to develop a very original
way of painting. Because of the fantastic nature of his works we can think that Bosch was
an esoteric or marginal artist. This was not the case. His works were owned by important
courtiers and wealthy collectors. Scholars that have studied the art of Bosch have been
concerned mainly with interpretation of his pictures, and that's where we will also
concentrate on.
Bosch was inspired by medieval theology and art and by popular folklore in the form of
tales, sayings and proverbs. He also drew from his own fantasy.
Hieronymus Bosch, The Garden of Earthly Delights, c1500, 205 x 386 cm, Madrid, Museo Nacional del
Prado
This is The Garden of Earthly Delights. It's a large painting. It measures 205 x

386 centimeters. It was painted around 1500. It is probably his most famous work.
The picture has three sections. It's a triptych. This was a common format for religious
works for churches but it was unusual in a large private painting. When the side wings
are closed they show an imaging of the world created by God. When opened, we see these
three scenes. On the left there is an image of earthly paradise with the creation
of Adam and Eve. In the center, there is a world populated by young men and
women engaged in playful activities. At the right is hell.
What we are offered is a highly pessimistic paranoid view of life. Men and women are
created innocent and in the image of God. But they are led to sin and to chaos by the
ubiquity of evil and the devil. The goal of the painting is to shed light on our sinful
behavior and its consequences. And to make us realize that evil is everywhere.
Let's look in more detail at the painting. In the left panel we see that the features
of God are those usually associated with Christ. And notice also the feet of Adam. They
are in a position that reminds us of the feet of Christ on the cross. The artist wants to plant
in our minds the idea that faith in Christ is the way to avoid the consequences of evil.
Bit further up there is a strange pink fountain. And around opening nearest base we see
an owl. This is an animal of night and darkness. We even here in paradise cast its evil eye
on the world. To the right a rock has the shape and the features of a human head.
This type of image by Bosch influenced surrealist painters in the early 20th century.
The central scene of the triptych is very different from other paintings that we have
seen in this course. Neither perspective, nor the size of figures, or their placement guides
our sight. We are given few hints of what is more and what is less important. The theme
here is probably the sinful behavior of mankind. We are governed by our passions and
lusts and are thus distanced from God.
But interpretations of Bosch's works vary greatly. Some scholars believe that this shows
something very different: the happy world that could have been had we not sinned.
Contemporary culture took pleasure in trying to decipher enigmatic text and images.
It is likely that many of Bosch's paintings were designed with the idea of resisting
interpretation. Into a large extent they still do. In spite of how difficult it is in some cases
to be sure of their meaning, Bosch's images fuel our imagination and we see them with
wonder.
In the center you can see a round pool full of seductive naked women. They are blonde
and black, most with long hair, as seductive women were described in literature at the
time. Around the pool we see only young men. They ride on animals, symbols of their
unruly passions. In the blue sphere at the middle of the lake, near the top, several figures
are involved in erotic play. No children exist in this scene. The amorous activity that we
see does not lead to offspring.
At the bottom right, a man who looks at us points to a woman with an apple in her hand.
That the man looks at us suggests that he's a self-portrait of the artist. He seems to blame
the woman for something, perhaps for sinning.
She may be Eve. Spend some time looking at the figures' interactions in this painting.
It is full of unexpected things.
At the top, for example, we see figures in acrobatic poses. They seem to come right out
of a circus. We don't know why they are here.
Very close to the center of the painting, just below the central pool, there's a large egg.
This is another of the many features of this image that we cannot explain. Here we see the
rewards that await those who have preferred a brief moment of pleasure to faith. A bird-
headed monster seems like a king of this place. He eats humans and sits on what looks
like a combination of a throne and a toilet. Near his feet a tempting woman is embraced
by a devil and looks at herself in a mirror on the buttocks of another monster.
Below still a pig dressed as a nun seduces a man to get him to sign a will in her favor.
Musical instruments look like instruments of torture. Two sinners are crucified on a
hybrid between a lute and a harp. The tree man has long been seen as a self-portrait. They
were not entirely sure that he is. He looks at us with an attitude of an ironic commentator.
He doesn't take sides, simply shows us what is there, what we are. Hell is dark, a night
scene, full of war and death and devil.
Hieronymus Bosch, The Haywain, c. 1515, 135 x 190 cm, Madrid, Museo Nacional del Prado
This is another painting by Bosch. It is called The Haywain. It tells a similar story. It

relates to a text from the Book of Isaiah in The Old Testament.
All flesh is grass, and all the goodliness thereof is as the flower of the field. The grass
withers, the flower fade, but the word of our God shall stand forever. The idea of this text
is that we all pursue fleeting rewards instead of faith. Here we see a huge wagon loaded
with hay. It's carried by monsters from the side of creation, on the left wing of the triptych,
towards the side of hell, on the right wing. Bosch is great at painting characters that we
can believe in.
At the bottom, near the signature, figures earn hay from their dishonest practices. Just
above, a man cuts the throat of another who lies with spread arms.
The spokes of the wagon will break the leg of another man nearby as it rolls on. He's part
of a group that fights for the hay. On top of the hay wagon frolicking couples act
frivolously, at the tune of music played by the devil. Music was often associated in
painting with temptation and seduction. A man looks from behind the bush.
It may be the artist or ourselves, the viewers.
The angel is beautiful and innocent. He leads our sight towards heaven. Here's the key to
the whole scene. Only faith in Christ can redeem humans. As in the previous painting
here we find again Bosch's pessimistic view of life. But we also find again that the spirit of
the painting, its colors, the actions depicted, appear playful. There's an explanation to this
paradox. Bosch is a satirist. He criticizes the world through ridicule and exaggeration and
humour.
Finally take a close look at the landscape that extends towards the distance. It provides
the link between the art of Bosch and the next artist in our course, Patinir.
Lecture 9: Patinir (c. 1480 - 1524) and the Invention of Landscape Painting
Joachim Patinir, Landscape with Saint Jerome, c. 1516-1517, 74 x 91 cm, Madrid, Museo Nacional del
Prado
This is a painting by Patinir. It was painted around 1520. As this example shows, his
pictures are dominated by landscapes that combine a rare sense of mystery with a realism
that was a consequence of the new renaissance mentality. The conditions that
made Patinir's art possible have a lot to do with the art market. He is a reminder that
artists do not work in a void. They are subject to their context in every sense including
economically. Even though born in southern Belgium Patinir worked in Antwerp, where
he's documented from 1515 until his death in 1524.
Antwerp at the beginning of the 16th century had become the leading commercial and
artistic center of The Netherlands and of all northern Europe. It is one of the most
important artistic centres that we will see in this course. Growing wealth in Europe at the
time led to an increase in the production and exchange of all sorts of goods including
works of art. Paintings became specialty of Antwerp, with artists flocking there from other
cities, and pictures being exported into all of Europe. With a growing market came
increased competition. Painters responded by enlarging their workshops with assistance
thus helping to increase production.
Theodor Galle after Johannes Stradanus, A painters´ workshop, engraving, c. 1550, 203 x 272 mm
This engraving shows the workshop of a painter around 1550. Another response to this

new economy was product innovation. Artists came up with new types of paintings that
could catch the attention of clients. This is what Patinir did. He came up with a
revolutionary idea of making paintings where the landscapes were no longer relegated to
the background, but rather occupied most of the scene. To judge by how soon he was
imitated by others, his idea was a success. We know of one important client of Patinir, an
important banker named Lucas Rem. A new product such as a landscape painting was
appealing to entrepreneurs. Let's see what painted landscapes look like immediately
before Patinir came onto the stage.
This is a tiny painting by van der Weyden, the
Saint George, only ten centimeters wide. It was
painted about eighty years before the works by
Patinir. It shows a beautiful landscape rendered
with great care, but it occupies a secondary place;
it is subordinate to the figures.
Rogier van der Weyden, Saint George and the Dragon, c.

1432-1435, 14.3 x 10.5 cm, Washington D.C., National
Gallery of Art
The Patinir’s Landscape with St Jerome again from about 1520. It's much larger 74
x 91 centimeters. As happens here, there are always stories in Patinir's paintings, most
often christian stories. But they occupy less space than the landscape. Patinir is usually
credited with inventing landscape painting. Dürer, one of the leading artists at the time,
who visited him in Antwerp referred to him as he good landscape painter. No artist has
been described in this way before.
As we have just seen, landscapes were painted before Patinir. In the strict sense of the
word he did not invent them, but he was the first painter to specialize in landscapes.
Before him there was no such thing as a landscape painter. After him there were many.
He showed the world that there was a place for this. Look again at this painting by Van
der Weyden. He and other artist of his generation had already figured out how to paint
landscapes that seemed realistic. They placed the horizon high up in the painting.
They often included large rock formations and mountains. And they used brown and
green colors near the foreground and then blue in the distance. This last feature was based
on observation. Mountains indeed look blue in the distance. Beyond the horizon they
often used white. Figures, houses and rocks are seen from eye level, but the landscape is
seen from above, at an angle. Patinir inherited these ideas.
We see the same features in this painting, but he also added something of his own.
The deep hues in his paintings are very characteristic. And the contrast with the bright
light beyond the horizon is intense. The large rocks play an important part in Patinir's
esthetic. Very similar rocks exist in southern Belgium close to Dinant, where he was born.
He evidently studied them there.
This painting shows episodes from the life of Saint Jerome. We see him next to a cave
removing a thorn from a lion's paw. In gratitude the lion will help him recover some
stolen goods. The story mattered to the artist and to contemporary viewers,
but it was the unprecedented amount of space devoted to the landscape that was a
novelty that made Patinir stand out.
Joachim Patinir, Charon crossing the River Styx, c. 1520-1524, 64 x 103 cm, Madrid, Museo Nacional del
Prado
This is another picture by the artist, one of the close to thirty that still exist. Here we see
some of the features that we have described, such as the high horizon. The deep green and
blue are very characteristic of this artist. On the boat is Charon, a character from ancient
mythology who ferried the souls of the dead across the river from the world of the living.
The roman poet Virgil and also Seneca described him with a long beard. The use of
classical sources reminds us that we're in the renaissance. By the 16th century classical
themes were making inroads into northern Europe. The art and culture
of The Netherlands will become increasingly italianized.
On the boat there's also a small figure. It's a human soul. It seems confronted with a
choice between two options separated by the large body of water in the middle of the
painting. To our left is paradise. Small angel tries to lure the boat his way. The Bosch-like
fountain is a fountain of paradise. But access is not easy to find. It's hidden by rocks and
trees. On the other side is hell. Again painted in a way that reminds us of Bosch. Access
seems easier here for a while. In open water way leads directly to the entrance of a tower.
This in fact seems to be where the boat is going. Behind the seductive landscape in the
tower lurks darkness and evil, punishment and destruction.
Patinir incorporated into his paintings creatures and strange constructions inspired
by Bosch because of the enormous success of that artist. It probably helped him sell his
paintings. Division of life and the world that we find in Patinir is similar in some ways to
the one created by Bosch, but in Patinir we find not only menace but also hope. I see this
in the intense white light that he always paints beyond the horizon. This light is like an
offering. Life on earth is burden with difficulties but beyond is heaven, and heaven is
light. For the offer to be convincing for contemporaries it needed to be beautiful, to really
feel like a promise of a better place. To the credit of the artist still does hundreds of years
later.
Lecture 10: Pieter Bruegel the Elder (c. 1525 - 1569). The Human Face of Course
Pieter Bruegel the Elder was born around 1525 and he died in 1569. He worked mainly in
Antwerp and Brussels. He was a painter and also a very important draftsman. He was
very much attuned to new ideas about the world, which he reflects on the content of many
of his pictures. But in terms of style he is perhaps the least italianized of all the great
European artists of the 16th century.
Pieter Bruegel the Elder, The Harvesters, 1565, 119 x 162 cm, New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art
As we see in this picture, called The Harvesters, his figures don't remind us of classical
statues. And he painted no nudes. His style follows the example of Bosch and Patinir. And
in his themes he also draw from popular culture and from folklore.
Bruegel is the key figure in the growth of the way of painting that was seen as an
alternative to the classical tradition.
Many of his works focus not on the heroes of religion or ancient mythology or history,
but on common folk. And they are shown participating in scenes that appear taken from
everyday life.
We know this type of painting as genre painting. It became very popular in the 17th
century especially in The Netherlands. The Harvesters is one of close to forty paintings
that we know by Bruegel. It was painted 1565 near the end of his life. Belongs to a group
of six works showing different times of the year. It's in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in
New York. Most of the other scenes in this group of the seasons are in one of Europe's
great collections of paintings, The Kunsthistorisches Museum or Museum of the History
of Art in Vienna. You need to go there to see Bruegel properly.
It was common in the 16th century to represent parts of the year. It was a way of
organizing time. This scene shows the humid heat of a summer day. We don't see any
heroes or gods or saints here, just peasants who go about their everyday life. A number of
them are working in the fields, harvesting hay. Some don't show their faces, which makes
them seem mechanical. In the foreground a group eats and drinks. One person naps.
In addition to seeing a moment in the life of peasants we have a sense here that we are
witnessing something else, that there's a different level of meaning where judgment is
involved.
A lot has been written about the meaning of Bruegel's paintings of peasants, which
remain unclear. This and other similar paintings were made for city dwellers. We know
that they had conflicting ideas about peasants. They could be seen as unpolished and
uncivilized, or on the contrary as uncontaminated and pure. The latter's more likely the
case here. Implicit in the realism of this picture is a respect for a way of life. Nature and
those who work the land are seen as part of the same time tested all-encompassing
system. The round eyes of the man next to the tree who looks out at us are very
characteristic of this artist. There's something quizzical about him.
Bruegel's art is characterized by its deep sense of humanity. Notice the expansive
landscape inspired by the example of Patinir. One of the great qualities of Bruegel's works
does not show in reproductions. It is the enormity that he conveys when painting nature.
And the smallness of our presence in comparison. The word cosmic is often used by
writers commentating the art of Bruegel. I don't know of any other artist who can rival as
well as Bruegel does the sense of immensity that one feels when looking at a night sky full
of stars, the sense that we belong to something larger than ourselves. To get a full sense of
this you need to look at other works by Bruegel in the same series of different months of
the year, or at a painting entitled The Conversion of Saint Paul. They're all in Vienna.
Another key feature of Bruegel's art can be appreciated in this painting. In spite of its
apparent realism, his paintings are highly designed. We see this in the sinuous shape of
the large patches of hay that still wait to be harvested. Their contours merge with a
curving path that extends towards the background at the left. The large tree carefully
placed off-center overlaps with other trees behind it, and with the church in the
background. All these elements are unnecessarily clustered. This is very characteristic of
the artist. The confusing pattern of the intertwining branches effectively echoes the
endless variety of nature and emphasizes its effect on us. In many other paintings by the
artist trees and houses also define the character of the composition.
Bruegel made many drawings. Someone

meant to be transformed into prints. This
is Big Fish Eat Little Fish and follows a
drawing by Bruegel of 1556.
Pieter van der Heyden, after Pieter Bruegel the

Elder, Big Fish Eat Little Fish, published by
Hieronymus Cock in 1557, engraving, first state of
four, 261 x 337 mm, New York, The Metropolitan
Museum of Art
The technique used to make this print is engraving. A specialist was responsible for
reproducing the drawing on a copperplate by incising or cutting into the metal with a tool
known as a burin. That's the tool that you see in this image. When ink was applied over
the plate it filled the incised lines. When the plate was pressed onto a paper these lines
were reproduced there showing the original image in reverse.
The engraving was published by man named Hieronymus Cock, an art dealer artist and
a very important publisher based in Antwerp. In the lower left he has included an
inscription that claims that the design of the scene is by Bosch.
He was a businessman and art was an important business. At this time he thought that
he could make more money selling this as Bosch than as Bruegel. The inscriptions at the
bottom of the image explain its theme. In Latin it says: "little fish are the food of big fish".
And in Dutch it says: "look son I have long known that the big fish eat the small”
Throughout the scene we see images that confirm this idea. A child on the boat points to a
man who extracts the fish from the stomach of another. On the left a fish with legs carries
another in his mouth. It is clear that what we see applies not only to fish but also to man.
This print shows the side of Bruegel's art that is closest to Bosch. He also made a number
of paintings that resemble his predecessor.
Pieter Bruegel the Elder, The Triumph of Death, c. 1562-1563, 117 x 162 cm, Madrid, Museo Nacional del
Prado
This is one of the best examples. It's a large painting known as The Triumph of Death,
painted in 1562. It's in The Prado Museum. In the middle of the painting a skeleton on
horseback with a sickle leads the troops that bring life on earth to its end. Armies of dead
come from the distance and emerge from the ground.
The hellish landscape is inspired by Bosch, and also by the constant reality of devastating
religious wars that contemporaries lived with. At the bottom left the king is reminded of
the triumph of time and death over his power by skeleton with an hour glass. His riches
are being taken by another skeleton. Notice that four other similar groups of two or three
figures are spread at the bottom of the painting forming a pattern. The group in the
middle shows a skeleton cutting the throat of a pilgrim. Like the king, the pair of lovers at
the right adapts to the angle formed by the corner of the painting.
It is because of works such as this that Bruegel was sometimes referred to as a new
Bosch. Spend some time looking at the details in this painting.
Lecture 11: Leonardo da Vinci (1452 - 1519). Knowledge and Beauty in the High
Renaissance
We are moving back in time a bit in this lecture. Bosch and Pieter Brueghel developed
their styles independently from the main current of European painting during the 16th
century. What most artistic did at the time was follow the example set by three artists:
Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo and Raphael. We will now turn our attention to them
beginning with the oldest of the three: Leonardo.
He is possibly the man portrayed here but we're not

sure.
Leonardo is best known today as a painter, but he was
also a scientist, an engineer, an architect, a sculptor, a
musician and a courtier. He epitomizes the boldness of
the Renaissance, when the confidence in the capabilities
of man led to the idea that they could excel in many
activities.
Born in 1452, Leonardo was trained in Florence, and he
was very much the product of the cultural and artistic
environment of that city. He worked for the court of the
Medici family there.And also for many years in Milan for
the ruler of the city, Ludovico Sforza, as an artist and as a
military engineer.
Detail, Leonardo da Vinci?, Possible

self-portrait, c. 1513, drawing, red
chalk, Turin, Biblioteca Reale
At the end of his life he was called to France by king Francis I.

He died during 1519. His interest in art and science were linked to each other, like two
sides of the same coin.
This is part of a drawing by Leonardo. It shows studies of the

way water behaves when interrupted by foreign object and, at
the bottom of the image, when falling from some height on to a
pool.
Detail, Leonardo da Vinci, Studies of water passing

obstacles and falling into a pool, c. 1508-1509,
drawing, 298 x 207 mm, Windsor Castle, Royal
Collection
The intention of the artist is not to draw a snapshot of a beautiful thing, it is to
understand the way the current of water behaves. His tool for doing this is drawing. He
did the same thing with the human body, drawing many parts of it.
As is the case today, imaging was in the forefront of scientific research at the time, and
Leonardo was a leader in this field. As I've said painting was only one of the many
activities in which he excelled. We only know some thirteen paintings by Leonardo,
depending on whether we accept or not a few attributions, and several of these paintings
are damage or unfinished. In spite of this he was enormously influential. More than any
artist Leonardo embodies the transformation of Renaissance painting that took place from
the 15th to the 16th centuries.
As we have seen, several generations of artists had worked with the goal of achieving in
their art something close to the grandeur and apparent realism of the art of antiquity, as it
was known mainly from ancient sculptures.
Leonardo da Vinci, The Last Supper, c. 1495, 460 x 880 cm, Milan, convent of Sta Maria delle Grazie
This is The Last Supper. Leonardo began work on this around 1495, in a wall of the
Convent of Santa Maria delle Grazie, in Milan. It is still there. But unfortunately it's in a
very damaged state. This happened because Leonardo used an experimental technique for
painting on plaster. A technique which have not worked well. With time paint has flaked
off in very large areas. But we can still see enough few to realize that in the art of
Leonardo, for the first time, the goal of early Renaissance artists was achieved.
His figures are imposing, monumental, and their expressions and movements make
them seem lifelike to an unprecedented degree. Together with his younger colleagues,
Michelangelo and Raphael, Leonardo set the standards for ambition and achievement that
defined the goals of artists in Europe for over three centuries.
Let's use this image to point to two key features in Leonardo's art. One is the depiction of
expression. Since antiquity, one of the stated goals of the arts was the representation of the
passions and feelings of human beings. In his fascinating notes, which were gathered after
his lifetime and made into a treatise on painting, Leonardo wrote that an artist must paint
man in the intention of his soul. This painting shows how he went about this.
Think of what's going on here. Christ has just told his twelve closest followers that one of
them will betray him. He seems sad but serene. The rest of the figures react to his words in
a variety of ways. Earlier pictures of this theme were usually solemn and quiet. This is
high drama. It's the perfect theatre in which to represent the full range of human
emotions. Some of the figures react in terror, others in disbelief. Some seem to ask others
for an explanation of what seems impossible. At the left end of the table one figure stands.
He doesn't seem to believe what he has heard. He tries to get closer. Not far Judas lifts his
head and makes a gesture of denial. He clearly feels identified. He's the man who
according to the scriptures will turn Christ in, in exchange for money.
Follow the gestures and movements of the figures. In each one of them you will feel the
presence of a real-live spirit. This painting became very famous and many copies were
made. Prints of it were used for generations to teach painters how to paint expression.
Pieter Soutman, after Leonardo da Vinci, The Last Supper, etching, c. 1615-1620, 298 x 1000 mm
This one was made in Flanders, over a hundred years after the original. The expressions
of the figures are somewhat exaggerated. But they show us some of the qualities of the
damaged original.
The reactions of the apostles take on a categorical quality. They are paradigms of each of
the psychological states involved. They make us understand not one specific moment of a
story, but something more universal, something about ourselves as human beings.
A second important aspect of this painting is how carefully the artist has worked out the
relation of each figure to the others. In spite of the variety of movements and gestures
there's a strong sense of order here. The gestures of the characters are strongly linked to
each other. They contribute to the harmony of the whole.
It seems odd to talk about Leonardo and not talk at all about the Mona Lisa, which is
probably the most famous painting in the world. But I'll just dedicate a very few words to
it.
To me the most interesting thing about this painting right now is its fame. The painting
has qualities is not simply an image of a person, but an idea of a person. Leonardo wrote
that art was a mental thing. The famous smile of the Mona Lisa and the atmosphere that
surrounds the figure makes this a poetic image. But this is probably not why all these
people go to see it. It is more likely because of its fame. Because it has become a sight, a
thing to see, like the great wall of China or the Eiffel Tower.
This fascination with a famous icon is a sign of our times. It imposes a mental filter that is
not very conducive to the contemplation of paintings. And there's also practical problem
here. It is simply impossible to properly see a painting of the size of this from the distance
imposed by barriers and a glass wall.
Let's finish this video looking at another portrait by Leonardo that is not as famous as the
Mona Lisa, but that I find more beautiful. I'm not discovery this. It's also a very famous
work.
It's the portrait of the Lady with an Ermine, painted

about 1490. It probably shows the mistress of
Ludovico Sforza, the ruler of Milan for whom
Leonardo worked.
According to his own writings, Leonardo tried to
paint beauty and grace. These are subjective qualities,
it would be hard to know exactly what he meant if we
had no pictures by him.
But this painting can help us understand them.
Beauty for Leonardo has to do with ideal shapes. We
can see that he regularizes or idealizes forms, that the
contours of this face, or the shoulders, or the hands
Leonardo da Vinci, Portrait of a Lady with an Ermine, c. 1490,

53 x 39 cm, Krakow, The Princes Czartoryski Museum
are highly idealized. That they live behind the imperfections of reality. That they aim at
something more perfect. What they aim at are the shapes that conform to Leonardo's idea
of beauty. Shapes in the painting are made to relate to each other. Look at the relation of
the face of the ermine to the hand and face of the woman for example. They rhyme with
each other. This arrangement of the parts into a coherent unified whole also brings beauty
to the image.
Grace was singled out as a quality of bearing or behavior at the time. A widely circulated
book, called the Book of the Courtier by a man named Baldassare Castiglione said that
grace was a consequence of effortless refinement. What we see in this beautiful painting is
this concept turned into an image.
Lecture 12: Michelangelo (1475 - 1564). Renaissance Grandeur
Michelangelo Buonarroti who is usually referred to as Michelangelo lived a long life

from 1475 to 1564. He was trained in Florence and worked there and in Rome for most of
his life. He was a sculptor, architect and painter, and also a great draughtsman
We're going to focus on Michelangelo's paintings, but to assess his achievement it is
important to keep in mind that he was the author of some of the most important
sculptures and buildings ever made. Among them are the famous David and the Moses
and also the dome of St Peter's Basilica in The Vatican.
Michelangelo is the first artist who was generally recognized as a genius by his
contemporaries. This is an important landmark in the history of what it has meant to be
an artist in Europe. His dedication to the different arts, the sense that he culminates in his
work, a quest for an ideal of beauty, began in the early Renaissance. And his enormous
influence made Michelangelo the central figure of the high Renaissance together with
Leonardo and Raphael.
He made few usual paintings and devoted most of his energy to mural painting. His
most important work in this area are the paintings in The Sistine Chapel of The Vatican,
which included murals on the vault, which you see here at the top of the image, and on
the altar wall across the room.
The Sistine Chapel is a large chapel in The Vatican used by the Pope. It is also the place
where still today cardinals gather and elect the new Pope. It's named after Pope Sixtus IV,
who had it built in the 15th century. Michelangelo painted the vault here between 1508
and 1512, on commission from another Pope, Julius II.
The central space shows nine scenes from the Book of Genesis in The Old Testament.
Surrounding these are many figures and fictive architecture and sculpture.
Let's see a couple of images from the vault up close.
Michelangelo, The Creation of Adam, detail from the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, c. 1511. Rome, Vatican
City, Sistine Chapel
This shows the creation of the first man. God is surrounded by a group of figures. Adam
on the opposite side is alone. The space around the figures is barren. They both look like
gods or heroes from Greek or Roman mythology. They are inspired by the great sculptures
of classical antiquity that would have been discovered at the time, such as this: the
Laocoön.
It was excavated in Rome in 1506, and was

displayed in The Vatican when Michelangelo
worked there.
Ancient art had used the human body very
often in the nude, as the main element of its
vocabulary. The grandeur and expressiveness of
this and similar sculptures and their particular
idea of beauty set the standards for
Michelangelo.
Detail, The Laocoon, 1st century AD, Rome, Vatican

City, Musei Vaticani
What the artist represents here (Michelangelo’s painting) is the moment when God has
moulded the body of man and is about to animate it, to give it spirit. We can almost feel
an electric tension as the figures are about to touch. This is a beautiful idea expressed in an
image. It's a very clear way of highlighting the difference between matter and spirit.
The spirit is what is missing when life is gone. What is mysteriously no longer present in
the body of a person just deceased. It is what Adam is about to receive. We can feel that
his entire body will be activated.
One more thing about this image. Look at the body of Adam. It's very typical of how
Michelangelo paints. The contours are clearly delineated. And the modeling of form, the
use of light and shade to create volume, is very emphatic, very noticeable.
Because of these two factors Michelangelo's painted figures look very sculptural. He once
wrote: “painting is to be considered the better, the more it approaches relief.” We can see
this goal of his here.
This is another image from the same ceiling.
It shows a Sibyl, a figure from Greek mythology
who foresaw the future, and who Christians
believed had foretold the coming of Christ.
Look at how the different parts of the body are
twisted in opposing directions. The face looks left.
Shoulders and torso look right. And the legs turn
left again. Setting parts of the body against each
other was considered beautiful.
There was a name for this, contrapposto, which
means counterpose in Italian. It was a compositional
device used by Greek classical sculptors to animate
their figures. It was recovered by the artists of the
Renaissance, and was used extensively by
Michelangelo.
Detail, Michelangelo, The Libyan Sibyl, c. 1511.

Rome, Vatican City, Sistine Chapel
This sheet of paper shows some of the preparatory

drawings that Michelangelo made for this one
figure. Imagine the amount that he made for the
entire ceiling.
Even though sibyls were women, the model used
by Michelangelo appears to be a man. Look at the
careful modeling of volume. One of the toes of the
figure at the bottom seems to have needed more
work than the rest.
Michelangelo, Studies for the Libyan Sibyl, c.

1510-1511, drawing, red chalk, with small accents of
white chalk on the left shoulder of the figure in the
main study, 289 x 214 mm, New York, The
Metropolitan Museum of Art
The quality of Michelangelo's drawings contributed to raising the standards of artistic

practice for centuries, and they highlighted the importance of skill for the reputation of
artists.
In 1534 Michelangelo received the commission to paint the altar wall of the same large
chapel in The Vatican with the scene of The Last Judgment. He finished it in 1541.
Important changes had taken place in Michelangelo's mind and in religious attitudes in
general since he painted the vault over twenty years earlier.
Michelangelo, The Last Judgment, 1534-1541 Rome, Vatican City, Sistine Chapel
This seems more pessimistic. It expresses Michelangelo's worries about death and
redemption at the time. The central figure is the resurrected Christ. He shows the wounds
of the crucifixion on his feet and hands. He looks down to where the damned are. With his
raised right hand he cast them all to hell. With his other hand he calls the blessed to
heaven. He's surrounded by saints and prophets who seem alarmed of him, and strangely
powerless. Next to him is the Virgin. She looks towards the side, where the blessed are
shown being lifted from their graves, and flounder pulled up to heaven. She recoils from
looking at the opposite side. There, at the bottom, are the damned. Charon, who we saw
in a painting by Patinir, delivers a group from his boat with his oar. Just below Christ, to
his left, in Saint Bartholomew, who according to Christian tradition had being skinned
alive for preaching. In one hand he holds his skin. The face bears the features of
Michelangelo.
Life judged by God is seen here as an epic quest. We see in this scene a combination of
sombre, almost terrifying mood, and an awesome physical and psychological presence.
Contemporaries identify this combination as typical of this artist. They refer to it as
Terribilità. A word on technique.
As was usually the case when painting large walls, the technique used in these works by
Michelangelo is fresco painting. Fresco means fresh in Italian. In this technique pigments
were mixed in water and applied directly onto wet plaster. When the plaster dried the
colours became an integral part of the wall. Only enough wet plaster for a day's work was
applied at a time, so that it would not dry before painting. The daily patches of plaster are
still visible when wall paintings are seen close up.
Lecture 13: The Ideal World of Raphael (1483 - 1520)
There are many parallels between the life and career of Raphael and those of Leonardo
and Michelangelo. He was a painter and draughtsman and also an architect, like they
were. He worked for popes and princes, and he attained a very high status during his
lifetime. He was more productive as a
painter than his peers and he set up a large
workshop.
Some of the assistants that he trained, such
as Giulio Romano, went on to become
important artists. Raphael was younger
than Leonardo and Michelangelo and was
influenced by both of them.
This painting of the Virgin and Child was

made around 1505, when Raphael was about
twenty-two years old. He had recently
arrived in Florence from Perugia, in the
region of Umbria, where he was trained by a
leading artist called Perugino.
Raphael, Madonna and Child, c. 1505, 60 x 44

cm,Washington D.C., National Gallery of Art
The delicate features of the Virgin and Child owe something to his master. The influence
of Leonardo and Michelangelo, whose work he saw in Florence for the first time, is also
visible here.
In spite of their features, the figures appear monumental, physically powerful. There is a
grandeur here that we do not find in the 15th century. The arrangement of the figures into
a single compact group that has the shape of a triangle or a pyramid was a lesson learned
from Leonardo, who had come up with this type of arrangement in several of his
paintings. This makes the image appear stable. That a sense of stability, of permanence
was desirable at this time, has to do with the optimism of the period. The light that softens
the contours of the figures is also learned from Leonardo.
What is unique to Raphael here is the sense of effortlessness. This stems from the mood
expressed by the figures, who seem exceedingly calm, even melancholic. Their idealised
figures also make us feel at ease. Raphael once wrote that when painting a beautiful
woman, he made use, and I quote him, "of some sort of idea which comes into my mind”.
It was that idea that he was trying to paint. Try to think about words to define what is
particular about this "idea" of Raphael, about the imagined world that he paints.
Calmness, reserve, measure, elegance come to my mind. Nothing is excessive here.
Giorgio Vasari, a late Renaissance painter, who is also the most important writer about
the arts at the time, refers to the "lovable simplicity" of the figures in another painting by
Raphael. This is also a good description of this one. The balance of the composition is also
one of its important features; it is very characteristic of this artist.
Look at how the position of one head, set at an angle, is balanced by the other. Notice
also, that the fact that one head is higher than the other is compensated by the placement
of the landscape elements on the two sides of the painting. The scene is very artful, it is
very carefully calculated and made. Yet it seems natural to us, it seems plausible; it is the
realism of a higher realm.
Approximately four years after arriving in Florence, in 1508, Raphael was called to Rome
to work for Pope Julius II, for whom Michelangelo also worked at the time. He spent the
last twelve years of his short life there. He was given the highest artistic post in the city,
which included that of architect of Saint Peter's Basilica, which was a colossal ongoing
project. And he was also put in charge of surveying and charting the ancient monuments
in the city.
Raphael, The Disputa, c. 1510, Rome,
Vatican Place, Stanza della Segnatura
Shortly after his arrival, Raphael was asked to paint a group of murals in a section of the
Vatican Palace, that was probably the Pope's private library. This is one of them.
It is known as the "Disputa", which means something similar to disputation or discussion
in Italian. The figures are a bit less than life-size. If you stand in front of this, just behind
you is another similar scene. The effect when seen live is much more imposing than in a
photo.
In the painting are groups of figures contemplating and debating the mystery of the
Eucharist. This was a central tenet of the Church of Rome. The idea is that Christ is
miraculously present in the Host, when it is consecrated by a priest. This idea derived
from the words pronounced by Christ during the Last Supper, when he lifted the bread
and said "this is my Body”.
On the lower level in the painting, we see an altar on which the Eucharist is displayed
inside a monstrance. On either side are groups of figures, discussing. We see in their head
gear that some of them are religious authorities. Just above the monstrance is the Trinity,
first the dove of the Holy Ghost, then Christ, and then, at the top, God the Father. Christ is
flanked by the Virgin and St. John the Baptist. To their sides, sitting on what looks like a
bench made of clouds, are figures from the Old and the New Testaments.
One critic calls attention to the lucid composition of geometry of Raphael´s paintings.
We see this here: notice that there's a very clear vertical axis down the middle of the
painting. Along this axis, notice the diminishing size of the golden discs, from the largest
one behind God at the top, through the ones behind Christ and the dove, and down to the
Host. This provides geometric structure, but it also has a meaning.
The downward movement, emphasized by the diminishing discs and also by the dove,
says that the word of God is delivered down to Earth. The geometric emphasis of the
composition is also visible in the two large semicircles that open towards us, and are
formed by the people on the clouds and below them.
Look also at how Raphael uses linear perspective, in a way that reminds us of earlier art;
of art that we have seen in Boticelli earlier in this course.
The white lines of the tiles on the floor, all converge on the monstrance. This is a way of
emphasizing this object. The figures show a variety of attitudes. They're beautifully
painted. I specially like one leaning over the door, to the right. There's a real door here,
which Raphael had to try to conceal somewhat.
We know close to forty drawings made by

Raphael in preparation for this one painting, and
he probably made more. This one that I show you,
is for some figures that he finally didn't use as we
see them here. The method of painting used by
most artists at the time consisted in making many
study drawings of everything that would be in a
painting.
When all the figures in details had been worked
out, large drawings of the size of the figures in the
final painting were made. They were transferred
by tracing or some other method onto the plaster
wall. This would change later in time, when artists
would paint more spontaneously.
Raphael, Studies for The Disputa, c. 1510, pen and

brown ink, 311 x 208 mm, Los Angeles, The J. Paul
Getty, digital image courtesy of the Getty's Open
Content Program
In this drawing we see one of the most admired features of Raphael: his quality as a
draughtsman. This was drawn with a quill pen, made from feathers of a bird. The ink was
very probably closer to black, when the drawing was made, and has turned brown with
time.
Notice that we can see the body of the man in this drawing beneath his clothes. This is
not because Raphael was planning on painting transparent draperies, but because he
believed that in order to paint a dressed body convincingly, he needed to draw the
anatomy of the figure first. The high standards of Raphael’s drawings, have very rarely
been matched in the entire history of art.
Lecture 14: Albrecht Dürer’s Signature Style (1471 - 1528)
This is Dürer, a German artist. He was born

in 1471 in Nüremberg. He died in 1528. He
was a very original artist, who enlarged the
expressive possibilities of image-making. He
was also the first Northern European artist to
have a deep and first hand knowledge of the
Italian Renaissance.
Here we see him at age 26, as the inscription
on the painting says. He was a young but
already successful artist. Dürer had a very
high opinion of himself and portrayed himself
often. Here we see him not as an artist, but
fashionably outfitted, with expensive clothes.
Albrecht Dürer, Self-Portrait, 1498, 52 x 41 cm,

Even though artists and artworks were highly appreciated by princes, there was a strong
prejudice against them in many circles, especially among the aristocracy. Dürer fought
hard against this. This portrait, where he shows himself not as a painter but as a
gentleman, is an example. The fame that he attained would be used by later painters in
their own struggle for recognition.
Dürer travelled twice to Italy: in 1494 to 95 and in 1505 to 1507. He learned about the art
of Mantegna, Leonardo, Michelangelo and Raphael, among others, and back in Germany
he sent a portrait to Raphael. He also travelled extensively in Germany and the
Netherlands, leaving written record of his taste for the art of Van Eyck and Patinir, among
others. And he described objects from Aztec Mexico that he saw in Brussels.
This is a reminder of the link that exists between the curiosity and confidence of the
Renaissance mentality and the exploration and conquest of foreign lands by Europeans.
Dürer’s art shows an incredible range in terms of style and subject matter. This is the
result of his intense curiosity about things which he transmits to his images. We can feel
this in this drawing from 1493, when he was about 22 years old. It shows Dürer, looking at
himself in a mirror.
He lifts his right hand to paint. In the
mirror it is reflected as if it was the left.
The fingers are in a position to hold the
pen, which is not drawn. The pillow was
one of several he sketched.
Six more are drawn on the back of this
same sheet of paper. He seems to have
punched them, to observe and learn how
to paint the play of light on the different
forms.
This is a simple but marvelous work of
art. The artist makes us feel the
experience of attentive looking. Look
also at the very rich variety of the drawn
lines and how he drew the silhouette of
the thumb for example; of how the lines
cross in some areas creating shade.
Albrecht Dürer, Self-Portrait and Pillow Study, 1493,

drawing, 278 x 202 cm, New York, The Metropolitan
Museum of Art, Lehman Collection
Dürer understood that drawn lines were expressive in themselves and not only because
of what they represented. This is one of the keys to his art.
Dürer wrote texts on ideal beauty and on harmony and proportion. They show us how
well he knew the idealistic concerns of contemporary Italian art But in drawings such as
this he also shows his interest in the particular. We have a sense that Dürer loved the
world and the experience of living in it, for all its incredible variety; that it provided him
with an infinite array of material to ponder and to represent.
Look at this unsparing self-portrait. It's from around 1500 or

1505. Again, we see him looking at himself in a mirror.
Think of a man writing and thinking about the ideals of harmony
and proportion, and then also doing this.
There's something very personal here: a level of self exposure
rarely seen then. In fact, no artist had ever represented himself
naked at this point in time. Dürer is extremely original; he offers
us a very unusual look at things. There's a very deep
individuality in this artist. This is enriching and it also gives us
freedom. It tells us that we all have personal view to offer.
Albrecht Dürer, Nude Self-Portrait, c. 1500-1505, pen

and brush heightened with white, on green-grounded
paper, 291 x 153 mm,Weimar, Klassik Stiftung
Weimar, Graphische Sammlungen Weimar
Compare this to what we saw in Raphael. He was trying to reduce reality to an ideal.
Dürer magnifies it, so that it can include all individual accidents.
Where does Dürer’s originality come from? It's always interesting to ask this question. Of
course, his own personality is probably paramount, as is his formation as a goldsmith,
with his father. The artistic tradition that he was exposed to during his youth is also a
factor. Several generations of Early Netherlandish artists had carefully sought that which
was singular in objects and textures, persons and landscapes and had thought about how
best to represent it. By the time of Dürer’s birth this tradition had spread to Germany.
Dürer is heir to it.
As great as his many drawings and

paintings are, it was Dürer’s prints that
gave him fame and economic wealth and
independence.
He revolutionized the art of printmaking.
He turned what had been a mere vehicle
for the transmission of images into an art
form. Dürer catered to the needs of artists,
who very often used prints as a source of
inspiration in their own works. And he
was the first printmaker whose prints
were purchased by elite art collectors, not
only for the information they provided,
but because of their artistic worth.
Albrecht Dürer, Samson and the Lion, c. 1497-1498,

woodcut, 282 x 278 mm, New York, The Metropolitan
Museum of Art
The most important collector of prints was the son of Christopher Columbus, a man
named Hernando Colón, who probably met the artist.
Dürer made two types of prints: woodcuts and engravings. This that we see here on the
screen is a woodcut. It shows the Old Testament hero Samson slaying the lion, a story that
was appreciated because it set an example of courage and strength.
In woodcuts the artist draws the image on the surface of a woodblock. The background is
then cut away with a chisel. The raised parts of the block are inked. When the block is
pressed onto a paper, the image is printed in reverse.
Dürer may have hired specialists to cut his designs onto the woodblock. This was
common practice in Nüremberg shops. Or he may have done that work himself. We don't
know. The incredible quality of his woodcuts has been used as an argument for and
against his own participation in cutting the block. Look at how beautiful the sinuous,
flowing lines are in this image. The thick lines and strong contrasts between the lines in
the white paper is typical of woodcuts.
This is the actual woodblock used for this

print. It belongs to the Metropolitan
Museum of Art in New York. It's one of
several of Dürer’s woodblocks that have
survived. Look at the monogram on the
bottom of the block, in the center, with the
letters AD (for Albert Dürer), in reverse.
You can see that the wood has been cut
around the letters leaving them raised.
Now look at the print again. We can see
how the raised letters held the ink that
marked the paper, and how the area
around them had no ink and thus left the
paper white.
Dürer was so famous that his monogram
was often used illicitly. He once sued a
very famous Italian printmaker for
reproducing his images without
permission. The court ruled that the
copyist could not use Dürer’s monogram
(think of it as a brand or logo), but that he
Pear wood block for the woodcut Samson and the could continue copying the images if they
Lion, New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art had no monogram.
This is an engraving. It shows Saint Jerome,

a Christian saint who in the 4th century
wrote a Latin version of the Bible, translated
from Greek and Hebrew. We saw him earlier
in a painting by Patinir. Again, he’s
accompanied by the lion.
Engraving is the technique that we saw
when we studied Peter Bruegel the Elder.
The lines shown in the print have been cut
with exceptional subtlety into a copperplate.
Dürer had an incredible skill at conveying a
variety of tones and surface textures in his
engravings.
Albrecht Dürer, St Jerome in His Study, 1514,

engraving, 249 x 189 mm, New York, The Metropolitan
Museum of Art
Look at the way in which, with only black and white, he captures the texture of the wood
on the ceiling. Or the variety of effects created by the light that enters through the
window. Look also at the fur of the lion and the dog. Dürer’s monogram lies on the floor,
inside a frame. It seems to imply that he has been there; that he has left this in the room.
This engraving became very famous, and was praised by Giorgio Vasari, among many
others. It would influence Vermeer and other painters of interior scenes in the 17th
century.
Lecture 15: Titian (1488/1490 - 1576). The Venetian Version of High Renaissance
Titian is generally considered one of the leading painters of the High Renaissance,
together with Leonardo, Michelangelo and Raphael. He differs from them in that his
career was centered in Venice, instead of Florence or Rome. Also, in the last part of his
very long life, he developed a sketchy style that was extremely original, and that would
influence artists for generations.
This is a self-portrait of Titian, painted late in his

life, around 1562, when he was between seventy-
three and seventy-five years of age.
As a young painter, he studied with several
artists in Venice, among them Giovanni Bellini
and Giorgione.
Titian grew to become highly successful and he
worked for many of the most powerful men of
the period. The golden chain that he shows
around his neck in this portrait, was a gift from
the Emperor Charles V.
Titian's talent as a portrait painter was one
reason why he was so successful in high circles.
Titian, Self-portrait, c. 1562, 86 x 65 cm,

Here we see a beautiful sensitive portrait
of a young man from the powerful Farnese
family. His name is Ranuccio Farnese, and
he was painted in 1542, when he was
twelve years old. The cross on his black
cape is the symbol of the order of Malta,
an elite club-like congregation that
signaled high birth.
Organizations of this type are a reminder
that this was a time obsessed with social
status, and that paintings were used to
display and maintain such status. Look
here at the vivid expression of the boy.
His alert gaze still holds a child's curiosity.
Titian, Ranuccio Farnese, 1542, 90 x 74 cm,

Washington D.C., National Gallery of Art
A contemporary wrote that this was done partly in the presence of the boy and partly
not. This was typical of how portraits were made. Usually, doing one or just a few sittings,
the painter would sketch only the face and maybe draw the bare outlines of the body.
He would later be given access to the dress or other elements that the client wanted in the
image, such as a sword or an armor. The alluring red of the costume is a beautiful example
of Titian's ability with color and the effect of light on it.
Titian is among the most influential portrait painters of the history of art. His idea of
elegance shaped nearly all other portrait painters of the time and of the following
centuries.
This large painting, 'The Bacanal

of the Andrians', is one of several
scenes that Titian painted about
1523-24, for a room in the palace
of a man named Alfonso d’Este,
Duke of Ferrara. He was an
example of a Renaissance patron,
who devoted much of his life to
collecting art and to learning
about antiquity.
Titian, The Bacchanal of the Andrians, c.

1523-1524, 175 x 193 cm, Madrid, Museo
Nacional del Prado
The painting is based on a written description by a Greek writer of the 3rd century AD,
named Philostratus. He described an ancient painting that showed an island called
Andros, where there was a river of wine created by the God Bacchus. The picture
celebrates the pleasures that come with drinking wine. The river in the foreground is filled
with wine, not water. Some figures dress in contemporary garbs. Most are nude
or wear classical clothing.
This is a land where Mithology and contemporary life mix. Wine leads to dance and
sleep, and imbues all with an atmosphere of pleasure and love. One critic has called
this "an image of a golden age of pleasure” and so it seems. Figures gaze at each other and
dance. A lush vegetation frames and gives shade to the scene. Like the rest of the picture,
the beautiful clouds in the sky seem highly charged. They're about to erupt into a storm.
Titian has painted a mood, a state of youthful happiness, which he has associated with a
pagan world. The nude woman in the lower right is especially alluring.
Titian became somewhat of a specialist in painting naked women. They were very much
to the taste of his nearly exclusively male clients. The figure here seems a bit disconnected
from the rest of the painting. One reason why Titian painted it probably has to do with
another picture that hung in the same room. It's title is 'The Feast of the Gods', and it was
by his master, Giovanni Bellini. It is now in the National Gallery of Art in Washington.
Bellini's picture included a seminude woman in the lower right corner. Perhaps, Titian
painted his figure in a spirit of competition with his master.
This is 'The Flaying of Marsyas',

painted by Titian shortly before
his death in 1576. It is an example
of Titian's tendency, late in his life,
to paint in a surprisingly sketchy
manner.
The image shows an episode
from classical mythology. The
satyr (a half human, half goat
creature), is named Marsyas, and
he was flayed alive by the god
Apollo, who had defeated him in
a musical contest. As the satyr is
skinned alive, blood falls onto the
ground. A small dog licks the
blood. Ancient statues of Marsyas
about to be flayed were known at
the time.
Titian, The Flaying of Marsyas, c. 1575, 212 x 207 cm,

Kroměříž, Archbishop's Palace
They may have provided stimulus for a painting of this theme. The exact meaning of the
story and of all the figures in this scene is not clear to us. This is one of the many examples
of the Renaissance taste for images that were difficult to interpret, and that allowed
viewers to speculate and to flaunt their antiquarian culture.
What matters to us most about this picture is the radically original way in which the paint
is applied. As opposed to the carefully modeled figures in most paintings of the time, from
the 1530s onwards, approximately, Titian began producing paintings were forms and
outlines look blurry. In this painting a myriad of strokes are left unblended on the surface.
They don't fully coincide with what they describe. This is hard to see a photo, but you can
get some sense of what I mean in this detail.
Let's go back to the full painting. The scene looks somewhat like an unfinished sketch.
The strokes of the brush look as if applied forcefully and very expressively, as if applied
out of an impulse, instead of carefully thought out. This makes the painting looks
spontaneous. It gives it a great sense of vitality. But we know from contemporaries
that Titian actually made paintings such as this in a very premeditated manner. He would
paint a first layer and then let it dry before painting over it again. And he would continue
with this process, until he reached the desired effect. A fundamental change has taken
place with this manner of painting. Rather than trying to conceal the strokes of the brush,
the painter calls attention to them. As a result, the making of the painting gains
prominence.
Titian's sketchy late style baffle contemporary critics and art lovers, who argued in favor
and against it. But in time, Titian would become very influential for artists such as Rubens
and Velázquez, and all the way to the 19th century impressionists.
Titian has become a model of a painter's painter, an artist whose pictures show qualities
that are especially appreciated by other artists. The reason for this is his focus on how
paintings are made. But it is important to remember that Titian did not wish to separate
how he painted from what he painted. The mentality of the 16th century artist did not
allow for this. His way of applying paint was at the service of the stories that he depicted;
of the impact that he wanted to have on viewers. His intention is to connect with us, to do
so, he concentrates on how he does that, on his art, on how he paints. Titian liberated
artists from the need to conceal the traces of their art, and he opened new roads for them.
Lecture 16: El Greco (1541 - 1614). From the Outside Looking In
During the late Renaissance, a number of artists felt freed from the constraints of
canonical taste defined by Leonardo, Michelangelo and Raphael. These artists had fulfilled
the goal of representing a world that seemed realistic and harmonious, and their
successors can now define their expressive goals in a wider and more personal terms.
The art of Titian during the last decades of his life is one example of this. The art of the
man who we know as El Greco is another. He was born in 1541, in the Mediterranean
Island of Crete. Throughout his life Greco signed his works with his full Greek name:
Domenikos Theotokopoulos, written in Greek characters.
As all artists from Crete, he was trained in a style of bright colors and unrealistic space
that is closer to medieval painting than to the Renaissance.
At age twenty-six he left for Venice where he stayed about three years. There, he learned
about Titian's latest paintings, and he was also heavily influenced by Tintoretto. The mix
that is Greco's art was completed during his 6 years in Rome.
By 1576, when he was thirty-five, he seems to have become a bit impatient with his
status. He was a proud man, as proven by later lawsuits where he vehemently defended
his professional rights. Even though he had managed to open a workshop in Rome, he
had not achieved the reputation that he felt he deserved, and he decided to travel
to Spain. There, after trying to gain royal patronage in Madrid, he moved to Toledo.
That's the city that you see in this

painting, by Greco. He would
remain there until his death
in 1614. And it was there that the
mixture of artistic traditions, that
were the result of his biography,
would coalesce into a very original
style.
Greco painted mainly portraits
and religious paintings; this was
what his clients asked for.
El Greco, A view of Toledo, c. 1597, 121 x

109 cm, New York, The Metropolitan
Museum of Art, H.O. Havemeyer collection
Here we see his mature style, fully
formed. The image shows the moment
when, according to Christian doctrine, the
Angel Gabriel announced to Mary that she
would be the mother of Jesus, son of God.
The subject is known as
“The Annunciation”.
This was originally part of a group of six
paintings that were installed in an
architectural structure, in the end wall of a
church. The effects that the colors and
forms have on us would have been
magnified by the other paintings.
Typical of the art of El Greco here
are the elongated forms, the unrealistic
rendition of space and the bright colors.
The late absorption by Greco of the
Renaissance tradition, together with the
influence of Titian, explains the freedom
with which he paints.
El Greco, Annunciation, c. 1597, 315 x 174

cm,Madrid, Museo Nacional del Prado
The pose of the angel is an example of how he's linked to the Renaissance art and how he
deviates from it. The pose is based on the contraposto poses of classical statues and
Renaissance paintings (by Michelangelo, for example). But this is a very free interpretation
of the pose, defined by the strange shape and proportions of the body.
Also characteristic of Greco are the brushstrokes. In a manner reminiscent of the late
Titian they're very conspicuous, very visible on the surface of the painting. Look at the
strokes that appear to explode into sheer pictorial energy around the dove;
or at how the nearly inmaterial heads of the angels are painted.
In many places we can see a reddish-brown colour underneath the paint layers. This is
the colour used by Greco to cover the entire canvas before he began to paint. It was an
underlying tone that gave warmth to the scene. And it also did not look bad (as bad as
white would have looked, for example) if it was not entirely covered up. It allowed him,
it allowed the artist to achieve the sketchy look that he was after. If you look carefully at
the left edge of this image, you'll see a narrow vertical band of this red brown colour with
just a few strokes painted over it. Greco uses this to clean his brush and to try out colours.
When the painting was finished, this band would be covered by the frame.
From a historical point of view, one of the most interesting things about Greco is his
rediscovery in the 19th century, and his influence on Picasso and other modern masters at
the beginning of the 20th century. They saw him as a precursor of modern art.
This painting, 'The Vision of Saint John’, was left unfinished when Greco died in 1614, and
it has been cut up at the top. In spite of this, it's an important testimony of Greco´s
influence on early 20th century art. The painting was in Paris, in a collection of a Spanish
artist named Zuloaga, in the early 20th century. Picasso saw it there.
In 1907 it inspired him to paint one of his most important works, 'The Demoiselles
d’Avignon', a painting now in the Museum of Modern Art, in New York. Decades later,
the same painting by Greco inspired Jackson Pollock. What modern artists found
inspirational in Greco was his faith in the possibility of creating images that followed a
logic different from that imposed by reality and by traditional art. They admired his
subjective interpretation of scale, and space and proportion, and his expressive use of
color. For them, Greco proved that art had to follow its own rules; that it needed to be
freed from imitation of reality and of ancient art, in order to achieve its full expressive
potential.
Lecture 17: Painting in the Seventeenth Century
The end of the 16th century is generally used in art history as a dividing point between
two different artistic periods. This is a useful convention which we follow in this course.
But it's important to realize that the changes that took place at this time are not of a
fundamental nature they're not as deep as the differences that separate the Renaissance
from the prior medieval era.
Establishing the year 1600 as a border data is somewhat arbitrary, other such dates could
be just as reasonable. And the entire period that goes from the early Renaissance to the
start of the 19th century, roughly the period covered in this course, could sensitively be
considered as a unity. But dividing these centuries in shorter periods is useful; it allows
us a closer focus and helps us to understand better how art evolved.
Let's focus now on the period that concerns us. By the end of the 16th century some
important changes that had been gathering force in the recent past, had the effect of
making artists and art patrons feel the need for a different kind of art. Developments in
the world of thought and science gradually changed the perception of nature and reality.
Here I show
you part of a
painting by
Vermeer with an
image of a
scientist, a
geographer in
this case.
Johannes Vermeer, The Geographer, 1669, 52 x 45 cm, Frankfurt am Main,

Städelsches Kunstinstitut und Städstiche Galerie
The philosophy and science of Descartes, who was born in 1596, insisted on the

importance of reason versus revelation as a source of knowledge. Francis Bacon, who died
in 1626, established the importance of the scientific method, to which Galileo,
and later Isaac Newton, gave further impulse. The precursors of the modern telescope and
microscope were also invented at this time. In short: the fundamental shift towards a
rationalistic view of the universe that had begun with the Renaissance, gained force in the
17th century.
Art is sensitive to underlying cultural changes. When a generation feels that they're
sufficiently different from the past, they ask for novelty; for something different;
something of their time. And if the perception of difference is great, so is the demand for
novelty. This sense existed in Europe at the beginning of the 17th century. The radical
novelty that is Caravaggio's art, for example, reflects this. He wants to be modern,
different from the past. He wants to define his time in a new way.
Let's look at two of the most important ways in which historic and cultural changes
influence painting. At the end of the 16th century, and the first couple of decades of
the 17th, there was a generalized sense of crisis, which came from the changes just
mentioned. Questions such as: what is truth, or were does authority come from, were
harder to answer now than they had been in the past.
One answer to this sense of uncertainty is very conspicuous in the art of painting: the
production of powerful emphatic images, which provided assurance, which tried to
overpower doubt. This painting by Rubens is an example. Art commissioned by
the Catholic Church in this period is another example.
Peter Paul Rubens, Saint George battles the Dragon, c. 1606-1608, 309 x 257
cm,Madrid, Museo Nacional del Prado
The Protestant reform of the early 16th century had questioned the authority of the
Church of Rome, and the validity of religious images, which were seen as excessive and
idolatrous. The reaction of the Catholic Church was slow in coming; but when it did,
it came in full force. By the end of the 16th century, the Church, which was the largest
patron for artists in many parts of Europe, had decided that it would invest heavily in
paintings, which would be used as propaganda. In order to serve this purpose, artists
were encouraged to paint in a way that would pass on the messages, in the most forceful
way possible; that would convince the viewer. The result is an art of great visual power
and intensity. These are qualities that make this art very attractive.
Even though I feel far removed from the ideology behind the images, their intensity
makes them seem full of energy, full of life, as if they were louder in volume than
anything that had been painted before. Of course, we can't expect that all people in all of
Europe during the entire century thought in the same way and were sensitive to the same
issues. Together with a taste for theatricality, intensity and a large size, we find much art
that is quiet and small in size. One example is this beautiful landscape by Velázquez.
This and other paintings

reflect the growing interest
in the "here and now”,
which is part of a growing
materialism in European
culture of the time.
Art from the 17th
century is enormously
varied, echoing equally
large differences in religion,
economy, class and origin.
Diego Velázquez, View of the Garden of the Villa

Medici in Rome, 1629-1630, 48 x 43 cm, Madrid,
Museo Nacional del Prado
Finally, I want to clarify a term that beginning in the 19th century has been used to
describe the art of the 17th and part of the 18th century: the term Baroque.
This is a confusing term, because it is used in two different ways: on the one hand, it is
used to describe the art of this entire period, the art of the 17th and the early 18th century.
But on the other hand, it is used to identify a certain type of art; an art that follows a
specific set of aesthetic norms; an art of dynamic and abundant forms, that expresses
dramatic and intense feelings. It is this usage that we still sometimes find today, when a
dress, or a building, or a piece of music are said to be "very baroque”, meaning formally
very busy, very opulent.
As we have seen, only some of the art made in the 17th century can be included in this
aesthetic category. Imposing the term Baroque on all art made then is forcing historical
reality into a theory, rather than adapting the theory to historical reality. It is, therefore,
more useful to use the term 17th century art for the entire period, and to reserve the term
Baroque for only some of the art that was made at the time.
Lecture 18: The Revolution of Caravaggio (1571 - 1610)
Caravaggio's name was Michelangelo Merisi. His family came from the town of
Caravaggio, near Milan, and he would become known by that name. He was born in 1571.
Around the turn of the century, and until he died in 1610, he made paintings that were
seen as radically different from what had been done in the past, and as paintings of a new
time. They would soon become very influential in all of Europe.
Caravaggio was trained in Milan, but painted most of his works in Rome. He did well
there professionally, painting for churches and for individuals who belonged to the church
hierarchy. But contemporary documents show that his character got in the way of his
career. He was arrested or tried numerous times for street fights and assaults, for insulting
authorities and for illegal possession of arms. In 1606, when he was in his mid-thirties, in
a dispute over a tennis match, he killed his opponent, and was wounded himself. He was
forced to flee Rome. From then until his death he painted in Naples, in Malta and in Sicily.
In 1610, when traveling back to Rome hoping for pardon, he died, "as miserably as he
had lived", according to an early biographer.
Many of Caravaggio's paintings show traces of a troubled mind.
In one case, he painted a picture of the young David with the severed head of the giant
Goliath, a story from the Old Testament. The severed head in the painting has
Caravaggio's own features
Caravaggio, Beheading of Saint John, 1608, 361 x 520 cm, Malta, Cathedral of St John
The painting on the screen is one of Caravaggio's late works. It was painted in 1608, in
Malta, just two years before he died. It shows the execution of Saint John the Baptist,
an episode in the life of this saint told in medieval sources. In the painting, blood spills
from the cut throat onto the ground, and becomes the letters of Caravaggio´s signature (its
hard to see this on the screen). The empty space around the figures creates a strange
quietness, a sense of isolation.
In his most successful years in Rome,

Caravaggio's paintings were somewhat less stark.
This is an example: it shows the Crucifixion
of Saint Peter. It was painted for a church in Rome,
Santa Maria del Popolo, in 1600-1601. It is still there, as
you see in this slide (it's on the left side). This is
unusual, because most paintings have been
moved from churches to museums. It's very
interesting to see a painting in the context for which it
was painted, where they are closely surrounded by
many other things.
Caravaggio, Crucifixion of Saint Peter, 1600-1601,

230 x 175 cm, Rome, Santa Maria del Popolo, Cerasi
Chapel
The majority of Caravaggio's pictures were made for the Catholic Church, the main client
then for painters. Seeking to counter the messages of the protestant reformers, the
Catholic Church wanted images of high impact; images that would be noticed and that
would be very convincing. In this painting we see Caravaggio's particular way of
adapting to these demands. He brings the figures very close to the foreground. They seem
to invade our space. He also makes them seem not from a distant past, but like normal
people. Their hands and feet are even dirty; their hands and face are tanned by the sun;
the rest of the body is not. In doing this, he makes it easy for viewers to identify with the
story in the picture. This was all very new. Past art had been idealistic, it showed figures
that look like inhabitants of a higher and better place.
At that time, during the Renaissance, it made no sense to paint things that looked as they
actually were. What was the point of that? a Renaissance artist would have asked. For the
17th century, the point was impact. I want you to notice how carefully crafted this is; how,
in spite of looking real, it's very unreal, very artistic. The figures are powerful; even
though at first sight they seem very different from Michelangelo, they are
actually inspired by his art. It's odd that Caravaggio finds inspiration in the heroic figures
of a prior artist, and then seems to gloss the image with an antiheroic vein. This is typical
of the poetics of his art.
Notice also how the composition is carefully designed in the shape of an X. And notice
another thing: the clever use of light. There's a very sharp contrast between light and dark
areas. This makes the figure stand out against the dark background. The light is very
artificial. It looks as if the scene was eliminated with spotlights. This way of painting light,
which art historians refer to as "chiaroscuro" (or light-dark in Italian), is one of the most
characteristic features of Caravaggio's art. So as we see in this painting, Caravaggio's
apparent realism is actually the result of very careful planning. We're not in the realm of
reality here, but in the realm of art.
This painting, titled 'The Inspiration of Saint

Matthew’, shows many of the same features as the
previous image. We see that the Evangelist Mathew is
a common man. And we see the strongly lit figure
against the dark background. Notice also that one of
the legs of the bench it's not leaning on the floor. The
man could fall at any moment into the place where we
stand. This is a trick by Caravaggio, to make
the scene seem real, in the sense that it seems to occur
in our own space. The first version of this picture was
rejected by the church for which it was made, because
the saint seemed too common; almost brute. This is the
second version.
Caravaggio, The Inspiration of Saint Matthew,

1602-1603, 295 x 195 cm, Rome, Church of San Luigi
dei Francesi, Contarelli Chapel
Caravaggio's first idea was that the evangelists were not wise men in themselves.
They wrote out of inspiration from Heaven, which was represented in the form of an
angel. But he had to temper this idea down a bit in the second version; he had to make it
less radical for the painting to be accepted. Other paintings by Caravaggio were also
rejected because they seemed inappropriate.
The painting that he did of the death of the Virgin was rejected, because the body was
considered too common, too realistic, as if he had used a real cadaver from a local morgue
as a model. We see in this picture something unexpected; a feature of Caravaggio's art that
can go unnoticed: in spite of this reputation for being a non-idealist, in spite of his taste for
common types, the search for beauty is a key aspect of his art. Here we see it
in the beautiful contrast between the dark background and the orange drapery. And also
in the figure of the angel and the swirl of the white cloth around him.
What we find in many paintings by Caravaggio is a peculiar combination of a raw
directness and a very subtle sense of beauty. The result is a kind of beauty that's new to
painting; and because it is new, I have a sense that it fills a new space in us. It reminds me
of the contrast that we find in other art forms, for example, in rap, or hip hop music,
where there's often a striking contrast between an aggressive foreground of percussion
and words and a very lyrical sound in the background.
Caravaggio, The Denial of Saint Peter, c. 1610, 94 x 125 cm, New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art
As was the case with the first painting that we saw, 'The Beheading of Saint John’, this is
one of Caravaggio's latest works: it's called 'The Denial of Saint Peter’. Saint Peter's
accused here of being a follower of Christ and he denies it. His life is at stake. As in many
paintings of this time, religion is no longer the peaceful place of many earlier artists,
like Fra Angelico. Religion in the 17th century is more of a struggle, it's more militant.
The protagonists of Caravaggio's art are regular human beings. The setting of this biblical
tale in contemporary times is emphasized by the contemporary helmet worn by the
soldier. A Roman soldier would have been more historically accurate for the story, but
historical distance would have tempered the effect. The authority, the police we could say,
that the public saw here, was part of their own lives.
The dramatic effect in Caravaggio's last works still depends on the contrast of light and
dark areas. But the mood is different: drama is expressed in a more introverted way; it is
less physical and more psychological.
One last issue: Caravaggio is the first great European artist that fits the mold of the
bohemian artist. The idea that artists were marginal and difficult figures, men and women
whose creativity made them different from the rest of us, emerged in the 19th century
during the Romantic period. Most painters from the 15th to the 18th century did not
consider themselves marginal or different from their contemporaries, and they worked
with the intention of earning money and success. Caravaggio, as we have seen, was
somewhat different.
- Raphael: A very good general survey is Roger Jones and Nicholas Penny, “Raphael”,
published in 1983;
- Dürer: Campbell Hutchison, Jane. “Albrecht Dürer. A Biography”, Princeton University
Press, 1990.
- Titian: “Titian”, edited by David Jaffe, from the National Gallery, London, of 2003 (this
was published to accompany an exhibition devoted to the artist). For a broader
look at painting in 16th century Venice, I recommended Peter Humfrey, “PAinting
in Renaissance Venice”, of 1995.
- El Greco: Section devoted to him in Painting in the book by Jonathan Brown, “Spain,
1500-1700”; “El Greco of Toledo”, by Fernando Marías.
- 17th Century: “17th and 18th Century Art; Baroque Painting, Sculpture, Architecture”,
by Julius S. Held, Donald Posner, 1976.
Lecture 19: The Wake of Caravaggio in Naples: Jusepe de Ribera (1591 - 1652) and Mattia
Preti (1613 - 1699)
Caravaggio's influence was so widespread that an international style based on his

pictures soon emerged, with followers in all of Italy as well as in Spain and France and in
both the Northern and the Southern Netherlands.
Throughout the continent there was a feeling that a new time needed a new pictorial
language and Caravaggio provided this. One of the most important artists who based
their style on Caravaggio was Jusepe Ribera whose painting of Saint Andrew I show you
here. It was painted around 1631.
When different artists paint in a similar

style, when they all follow the same set of
norms in terms of color range, figure type,
basic compositional features and the like,
the differences in their creative
personalities stand out. They become more
apparent.
Here we clearly see the influence of
Caravaggio in the strong contrast between
the brightly lit figure and the dark
background and also in the non idealised
figure type. These features were shared by
many artists in Europe.
Jusepe de Ribera, Saint Andrew, c. 1631, 123 x 95

cm, Madrid, Museo Nacional del Prado
Ribera can seem more stark than most others, more severe. Saint Andrew here is
unheroic, unadorned. His only company is the cross on which he was martyred and the
fish that identifies him as a fisherman. Ribera's paintings seem quieter for the most part
than Caravaggio’s and than paintings by most of his contemporaries. His images are
contemplative. They invite prolonged meditation.
Also characteristic of this artist is that his paintings awaken in us an awareness of their
compositional structure, of how parts of the composition relate to each other. Here, the
right arm of the Saint echoes one arm of the cross and his head and body echo the other.
Often in Ribera we are made aware of such formal echoes.
Another characteristic trait of Ribera is his selective use of very thick paint.
We always find areas of his paintings, the head in this case, where we can see the texture
of the thick heavy paste. Ribera used texture for expressive effect. He makes the surface of
his paintings look peculiar, different from other painters. As light hits the textured areas it
creates minute contrast of light and dark. Ribera's textured surfaces can be a problem
because dirt tends to accumulate in the grooves and it's hard to clean.
Ribera was born in 1591 in Spain near Valencia.
At around age fifteen he moved to Italy where he stayed for the rest of his life.
Very soon he was identified by contemporaries as an artist who painted in the manner
of Caravaggio. In 1616 he moved from Rome to Naples and he lived there for the rest of
his life.
Naples, one of the largest cities in Europe by that time, larger than Rome for example,
belonged to the Spanish monarchy. Ribera was always close to the Spanish administrators
there. Many of his works were sent from Naples to Spain and he became very influential
in that country.
In this painting from 1628,

we see again the emphatic
angles and the formal echoes
that define the composition.
The Saint is Andrew again,
like in the previous picture.
He's being nailed onto a cross
and prepared for execution.
In spite of the action, the
mood is quiet. The brightly lit
body of the Saint invites
contemplation rather than
physical reaction.
Throughout the painting we
see the expressive use of
heavily textured paint. It's
hard to see this in a photo but
you can get a sense of it
in this detail of the lower part
of the painting, especially in
the hand and in the back of
the foot.
Jusepe de Ribera, Martyrdom of Saint Andrew, 1638, 285 x 183

cm, Budapest, Szépmüvészeti Múzeum
In the context of this somber scene, the bright accents of color in the blue of the sky, in
the orange of the cloth add a subtle note and contribute to the beauty of the whole.
Ribera so dominated the artistic scene in Naples that the other local painters had to adapt
to his style in order to find clients. He thus reinforced the influence
of Caravaggio secondhand.
We can see this in the art of Mattia Preti who was born in 1613, that is twenty-two years
after Ribera and forty-two years after Caravaggio. He painted in Rome early in his career
in a style influenced by Caravaggio. When he moved to Naples in 1656, shortly after
Ribera's death, this Caravaggisti tendency was strengthened as a result
of Ribera's dominance there.
I'm prompted to include this

image in this lecture because of a
recent visit to the Capo di
Monti Museum in Naples where it is
housed. This one of the great
collections of paintings in Europe
with very important works
by Titian, by Pieter Brueghel
the Elder, by Raphael, by
Caravaggio and by many others.
But even in that context the beauty
of this painting stands out.
Preti lived a very long life and was
very prolific.
I'm not always as strong to his
works as I am to this one. I say this
as a reminder that we can become
interested or drawn to only some
works by a given artist and not to
his or her entire production, just like
we feel that we can be moved by a
specific tune by a musician whose
other songs don't affect us so much.
Mattia Preti, Saint Sebastian, c. 1657, 238 x 167 cm,

Naples, Museo Nazionale di Capodimonte
This can seem obvious but it is good to remember when we structure our study of the
history of art around artists. The outstanding quality of Preti's painting of Sebastian is the
plasticity of the figure. A sense of the powerful body is subject to being shaped or
moulded. We feel its heavy weight held up by the ropes that tie the Saint to a dead tree
and by his sitting on a ledge from which he seems to slip.
Sebastian was a Christian saint from Roman times who was shot with arrows because of
his faith. He was often painted from the Renaissance onwards, because this story allowed
for the depiction of nude anatomy, something very much to the taste of a period, drawn to
ancient sculptures of nude figure.
Preti creates a sense of pathos by contrasting the powerful body of the young man with
his helplessness. The face of the Saint also elicits our compassion. A gaze directed towards
Heaven seems to hold some hope.
The realism of this scene is a feature that is typical of seventeenth century painting. But
remember the obvious, we're in the realm of art not reality. It is the translation of the
feelings mentioned into visual form, together with a plasticity characteristic of this artist
and the dramatic chiaroscuro lighting that communicates with us and seduces us.
One last thought, the paintings seen in this video are all from Catholic Europe, made
during a time of military reaction against perceived enemies, mainly the Protestant
reformers. Part of the power of these images stems from that. It is an art meant to transmit
and to reinforce a message of a powerful and absolute truth.
Lecture 20: The Divine Guido Reni (1575 - 1642)
Guido Reni was born in 1575. He's part of the first generation of painters who made the
most important works in the seventeenth century. He represents a trend in seventeenth
century Italian art that is a continuation of the highly idealistic style of Raphael.
Reni was trained in Bologna and worked mainly there during his life. As his fame grew,
he was also called to work in Rome where he stayed for several years. He traveled
to Naples to paint in the city's cathedral, but he was scared away after being physically
threatened by a local painter. Even though an extreme case, this is an example of the
violent competition that existed in the art world in Italy at the time.
Guido Reni, Sacred and

Profane Love, 1623, 132 x 163
cm, Genoa, Palazzo Spinola
This painting shows the triumph of sacred over profane love, a theme that was often
painted during the Renaissance and the seventeenth century. Titian, for example, had
painted a famous picture with this subject. Profane love, identified with sensual pleasures,
is represented by Cupid, the child god of love. He's been tied and blindfolded and his
arrows are being thrown into a fire. The lighting reflects the influence of Caravaggio.
Reni only occasionally used this type of chiaroscuro effect. The dark, deep hues are
characteristic of his paintings until he introduced a very light palette, late in his life.
Reni was highly praised by contemporaries for the elegance of his figures. The term
grazia or grace was often applied to him by contemporaries. The mannered poses of the
figures here are meant to stress the idea of elegance. Notice also the idealised facial
features of the older boy. They're very characteristic of Reni's figures throughout his
career.
This is one of Guido's most famous paintings

and shows many of the ingredients that are
characteristic of his art. Like is often the case
during the period, the theme is religious.
According to the gospel, when Jesus was born,
King Herod ordered the death of all children in
and near Bethlehem, fearing for his power. The
theme became common in Christian art
with the children venerated as the first martyrs.
The two angels at the top of the scene
hold palm leaves, the symbol of the triumph of
martyrs.
The focus here's on the reaction of the
mothers. The concept that painters and critics
had valued since the Renaissance, especially in
Raphael and Leonardo, was the ability to
paint figures that express different feelings or
passions through their gestures.
Guido Reni, Massacre of the Innocents, 1611, 268 x

170 cm, Bologna, Pinacoteca Nazionale
Reni's working hard here to follow this precept. The faces of the women expressed grief
and fear and hope.
The composition is so symmetrical as to seem nearly abstract, the feeling emphasized
by the stark architectural shapes in the background. The greatest challenge of an artist at
the time was to paint figures, and painting many of them together was especially difficult
and valued. Paintings were most often paid by figures, the more figures the more
expensive the painting was.
We perceive in this picture Reni's emphasis on the relation of figures to each other.
They almost look like interlocking forms. The figures are highly idealised. They reflect the
study of the art of Raphael and also of classical statues. The head of the woman who looks
upwards, with her hands held together, offers us a beautiful version of neoclassicism.
Think of what this means. For many centuries and until very recently, Europeans and
Americans have built government buildings, banks, houses of justice and churches to look
like Greek and Roman buildings. The reason for this is that we have developed the idea of
the classical past as a place of virtue and order. It's a version of civilization that we admire.
This woman is inspired by the same ideal past and stands for the same principles. Her
face reflects Reni's careful study of ancient statues. In the midst of the chaos and terror
around her, this version of a Greek or Roman woman is the best way to convey the moral
strength necessary to overcome this episode.
When looking at Guido Reni's pictures we have a sense that we're in touch with an
elevated version of life, that high sounding words makes sense. His painted world
combines physical vigor and spiritual purity. The sentiments that he paints aim towards
the sublime.
Here we see a very

original combination of
pale tonalities. This type
of cool color became
gradually more
frequent in
Reni's works.
The theme of the
painting is Charity. She's
a woman. Reni has
turned this concept into
a set of actions. It can be
seen as a story. The
boy who sucks on her
breast is the most pale
of the three, the least
healthy, the most in
need of feeding. The one
who sleeps is darker. He
seems healthier. He's
just eaten. The third
infant has an even
warmer skin color.
Guido Reni, Charity, c.
1628-1629, 137 x 106 cm,
New York, The Metropolitan
Museum of Art
He's the healthiest of all. He was the first to suckle and he seems to want his turn again.
Charity, a motherlike figure, gently holds him back.
The talent to animate a concept, such as Charity, into this kind of story was highly valued
by contemporary art lovers. The public would have noticed this and praised it. Here again
we see the sense of interlocking figures and the highly idealised figures typical of Guido
Reni. Contemporaries saw this type of image as an expression of Reni's refined sensibility.
To his critic it can seem excessively stylized, too artificial. I bring up Reni's critics because
his is one of the most notable cases in the entire history of art of reversal of critical fortune.
During his lifetime his fame was unmatched in Italy. Not even Caravaggio was as highly
acclaimed as he was. He was also the highest paid artist in Italy. The person who
negotiated with him a contract for painting in the Vatican wrote that they should be
careful in how they paid him, so that other painters will not feel encouraged to make
similar claims, he said.
In the nineteenth century critics began to turn on Reni. His art was considered
excessively sentimental, insincere. This type of criticism continued into the early twentieth
century. Art history is concerned, among many other things, with the history of taste. It is
fascinating to see how qualities considered central to art in Reni's period, such as
conceptual and formal clarity, elegance and refinement, and the ability to give form to
high ideals, can be diminished to the point of ridicule by other times more interested in
flesh and bone reality.
One of the great things about the history of art is that it allows us to travel to times when
things were different from our own in fundamental ways. The art of Reni feels distant
from us, more distant than the art of some painters of his time such
as Caravaggio or Rembrandt. That distance can be seen in a positive light. When we
contemplate the art of Reni we travel to a distant and fascinating place.
Lecture 21: The Classical Ideal in Poussin (1594 - 1665) and Claude Lorrain (1605 - 1682)
In the seventeenth century Rome was the international capital of the European art world.
Most ambitious painters traveled there at some point to learn about current and past art.
Some of them stayed and developed their entire careers or much of them in that city.
In this video we will look at the art of two of them, both originally from what is
now France, Nicolas Poussin and Claude Lorrain. Both are important figures in the long
line of repeated interpretations of the classical tradition.
Poussin was born in 1594 and traveled from Paris to Rome when he was thirty in 1624.
He remained there nearly all his life until he died in 1665. In Rome he received the
patronage of the city's major art lovers and collectors. The art world in Rome was
contentious at the time, with some critics, patrons and artists advocating a stern classical
style, and others a more decorative sensuous one. Poussin found his place among the
former.
Nicolas Poussin, The Abduction of the Sabine Women, c. 1633-1634, 155 x 210 cm, New York, The
Metropolitan Musuem of Art
This scene, from the 1630's, shows the abduction of the Sabine woman, an event taken
from a Roman legend. Romulus, the founder of the city, who we see dressed in red to the
left, ensured that Rome had enough population by inviting the neighboring tribe of the
Sabines. During the festivities, young Roman men broke into the crowd and carried away
the unmarried Sabine women.
Seen with a predisposition towards one-sided epic, this was a crucial moment in the
history of Rome, involving the heroism of the young man and the sacrifice of the women.
This is the type of subject matter that Poussin really liked. Here we see his mature
style. The cool colors that stand out against that nearly monochrome background are very
characteristic. The forms are hard. They seem chiselled.
As in Raphael and Guido Reni, two important precedents for his style, the
composition is structured following clear geometric patterns. Notice, for example, the
pyramid formed by the three figures in the lower right, or look at how the staff that
Romulus carries is at a right angle to several swords in the picture.
The clear expression of the feelings involved in the story is another quality admired in
this artist. This makes the figures seem like allegories that stand for emotional states.
We have to make an effort to believe in this world, but if we allow ourselves to be
seduced, it's truly dramatic. Look at the struggle and the pain of the mothers and fathers
who lose their daughters. The stern architecture says that this was for a greater good, the
survival of Rome.
Antiquity was not necessarily this harsh. It was actually a very long period lasting nearly
a thousand years and it had many different faces. The severe discipline version of the past
that we see in Poussin is not a revival of a past that existed, but rather the creation of a
new version of it. We have a sense that this is a very militant art, that it responds to a
specific artistic and aesthetic creed and even to ideas about what is good and bad in life,
about how we should behave.
Nicolas Poussin, Landscape with buildings, 1648-1650, 120 x 187 cm, Madrid, Museo Nacional del Prado
Poussin painted some beautiful landscapes where his view of the ancient world was
softened. This is a good example of it. History paintings, like the one that we just saw, can
seem a bit like a lecture. His landscapes, and this is one of the most beautiful, are a real
pleasure to contemplate. It's not clear if this is just a landscape with some random figures
or if it represents a story. It's been suggested that the man dressed like a beggar is
Diogynese, but we're not sure. We see here the geometric emphasis characteristic of
Poussin. The strong horizontal and vertical accents make the composition very stable. It
conveys a sense of calmness.
Look also at the beautiful range of tonalities. The tones of the sky are echoed in the
buildings and the trees. The harmony of the composition and the colors symbolizes the
perfect harmony between man and nature.
Paintings give expression to moods in a marvelous way. That's one of their strengths.
This landscape does that. Very few paintings convey, as this one does, the sense of a place
where one would like to live, a place that one longs for, even if it never existed.
Poussin worked for learned patrons who appreciated his version of antiquity. Among
them were many French aristocrats and officials based in Rome who sent his works
back to France. He became very influential there, not only in the seventeenth century but
beyond. We will see his influence in the art of Jacques-Louis David, the leading French
painter of the late eighteenth century, later in this course. The debates between proponents
of the classical style and their detractors, that had taken place in Rome, were reproduced
in France in the late seventeenth century.
Poussin was championed by the neoclassical camp which took the name of the
Poussinists. This type of idyllic landscape was painted only occasionally by Poussin, but it
was a speciality for the painter known as Claude Lorrain.
One of his paintings

is on the screen. It
shows an episode from
classical mythology,
known as the
Judgement of Paris.
Paris was a Trojan
shepherd. He's made
to choose the most
beautiful among three
goddesses. He's bound
to run into trouble.
Claude Lorrain, The Judgement of Paris, 1645-1646, 112 x 149 cm,

Washington D.C., National Gallery of Art
I won't go into the details or the reason for painting this story here, because this specific
theme is not as important in Claude's pictures as the landscape.
Claude, as he's often known in English, was from the Duchy of Lorrain which would
later become part of France. He moved to Rome, when he was a young teenager around
1620 or a bit earlier, and he painted there all his life. He's one of the most influential and
greatest landscape painters of the entire history of art.
What gives Claude's landscapes their characteristic glow is their luminosity. All is bathed
by a golden and unifying light. The light adds sentiment to the grand historical settings
conveyed, in this case, by the mythological figures and, in other paintings, by the presence
of ruins. His paintings seem like images of an ideal past, of a Golden Age.
Claude Lorrain, Landscape with Saint Paula of Rome in Ostia,
1639-1640, 211 x 145 cm, Madrid, Museo Nacional del Prado
In this painting the figures are from a Christian story, but the real content is the imagined
view of the harbor city of Ostia in Roman times. The picture's from the late 1630’s. It's
a large image just over two meters high. We see the ancient buildings in the characteristic
golden light that emerges from behind the architecture. It makes the atmosphere glow.
This is the colour of nostalgia, quite literally the color of a golden past. This nostalgic
view of the past has always existed. Already Virgil in Roman times spoke of a lost pastoral
Golden Age. In the fourteenth century, Petrarch wrote about his worthless time
in comparison to antiquity.
It is this kind of notion, this idea of the past as a better place, that Claude turns
into images. His paintings, more than any others, have created the idea of antiquity held
by Europe's cultural elite from the seventeenth to the nineteenth century.
Claude was especially influential in England. Turner was one of his great followers in the
early nineteenth century. The vision that Claude paints became what early travellers
suspected to find in Italy. He was so influential that an entire style of garden design
emerged in England which was heavily influenced by his landscapes. Claude's
painted visions worked beautifully. Running into one of his paintings in a museum is a
promise of a great moment, a taste of an ideal and wonderful place.
Lecture 22: The Vitality of Rubens (1577 - 1640)
In the ambition and scope of his artistic career Rubens is the true heir of the four great
masters of the high Renaissance, Leonardo, Michelangelo, Raphael and Titian. Like them
he worked for the greatest patrons of the time. He specialized in what were considered the
most important subjects for paintings, historical, mythological and religious scenes. He
very often painted on a very grand scale and he was very productive. We still know over
fifteen hundred paintings painted by him plus very many drawings. He worked with the
assistance of a large workshop, probably up to twenty-five assistants worked for him at its
most productive time. He was also an amazing draftsman. Like his Renaissance
forerunners, the human figure's his main tool.
In his paintings he creates a world of rare and intellectual intensity, where human beings
appear to express their characters to their full potential. Rubens was more than a painter,
he was a cosmopolitan. He could read and write in at least five languages and he once
said that he felt at home everywhere. He was also a diplomat who worked in
favor of bringing peace to Europe. He had a library larger than any other artist at the time.
In the eyes of his own contemporaries, he was the most successful painter of the
seventeenth century.
Rubens was a Flemish artist. That's how we know painters from what is now Belgium.
He was born in 1577 and he developed slowly as an artist. In 1600 at age twenty-three he
traveled from Antwerp where he received his early training to Italy where he stayed for
eight years. He spent most of his time there studying the art of the ancient and the recent
past.
This drawing is from
his Italian years and
shows Rubens searching for
ways to express feelings. The
man on the bench to the left
was taken from a painting
by Caravaggio that he studied
in Rome.
Peter Paul Rubens, Three groups of Apostles in a Last Supper,

1600-1604, pen and brown ink, 296 x 439 mm, Los Angeles, The
J. Paul Getty Museum, digital image courtesy of the Getty's Open
Content Program
Look at the vitality of the drawn lines in this detail and at the wonderful expressions.
The inscription on the upper right in Latin says that the gestures should be larger and
broader with arms extended. Rubens studied many artists but his greatest focus when
trying to learn how to paint facial expression was Leonardo da Vinci's 'Last Supper’.
This is from about the same time. Rubens is

studying his other main tool, the human body.
Movement and volume are his concern here.
This figure's in motion and is seen from three
different angles. This drawing is not made after a
person but a sculpture and a very peculiar type of
sculpture, one that shows the body without the
flesh.
You can see this best in the heads. This type of
sculpture responded to the interest in the study of
anatomy that existed at the time.
Peter Paul Rubens, Anatomical studies, c. 1606-1608,

pen and brown ink, 280 x 190 mm, Los Angeles, The
J. Paul Getty Museum, Digital image courtesy of the
Getty's Open Content Program
The two drawings that we have seen summarize Rubens' main tools, the expression of
the face and the movement of the body. How ably and creatively a painter was able to use
these tools define the quality of his art at the time.
Rubens painted many altarpieces and religious paintings in the service of
the Catholic Church. Most of these were for churches in Antwerp where he
had his studio and where he based his career.
This painting of Saint Thomas is part of a

group of thirteen paintings of the
Twelve Apostles and Christ that were
meant to hang together. It was painted
by Rubens shortly after he returned
from Rome to Antwerp.
At that time he was under the influence
of Michelangelo and the great sculpture
from antiquity that he had studied in Italy.
This shows a monumental figure.
It looks more like a classical Greek or
Roman God than like Christian saint.
In Rubens' mind, the combative stance of
the Church in the early seventeenth
century made this powerful looking image
appropriate.
Peter Paul Rubens, Saint Thomas, c. 1610-12,

108 x 83 cm, Madrid, Museo Nacional del Prado
If we get close to the beard we notice two things. In spite of the powerful sense of form,
this is very thinly painted. The orange yellowish color that you see underneath the paint is
the color applied over the panel on which this is painted, before Rubens started to work.
A second thing to notice, in the beard and hair behind the head, is the contrast of convex
and concave forms. This is a key ingredient in Rubens' way of painting. The contrasting
curves create the feeling of gathering momentum, of a gathering force. It seems to
concentrate energy. It makes for an incredibly powerful, formal language.
This is Clara, Rubens' first child. She was
born in 1611. She must be about five years
old here. She will die twelve years later.
It's very beautiful tender image, as much
a portrait of the girl as the expression of
the loving gaze of her father.
In Rubens we very often have a sense of a
height and vitality, of a man who felt love
and beauty in life, more deeply and
intensely than the rest of of us. His
paintings express an intense love of life.
Peter Paul Rubens, Clara Serena Rubens, c. 1614, 34

x 276 cm, Sammlungen des Fürsten von und zu
Liechtenstein, Vaduz and Vienna
Look here at how the eyes and the smile of the girl sparkle. Notice also the powerful
opposing curves in the hair and the contours of the face and the nostrils and in the mouth.
Rubens painted many mythological scenes throughout his entire career. It was one of his
specialties.
This is not one of

the most famous but
it's one of the most
beautiful. The Sun
God Helius, who
rode his chariot
every day lighting
up the skies, had a
son, Phaethon, who,
after much
insistence,
persuaded him to let
him drive the golden
chariot.
Peter Paul Rubens, The fall of Phaeton, c. 1605, 98 x 131 cm, Washington

D.C., National Gallery of Art
Phaeton was not prepared to gear the car. As he was driving through the skies he lost the
reins. The chariot fell from Heaven setting the Earth on fire. You can see it on the lower
right of this image. Zeus, ruler of the Gods, was forced to destroy the chariot with a
thunderbolt to avoid destruction of the Earth. Phaeton was destroyed as well.
The scene is charged with tragic emotional energy with intense feeling. Rubens is great at
animating what he paints, at making it seem alive. Another quality of Rubens, of all great
artists really, is his boldness. Look here at the daring way in which he paints the
thunderbolt for example. The precision of the figures and especially the horses is amazing
and extremely difficult to paint. This is a type of thing that Rubens worked at in the
drawings that we have seen. The young women are the hours. Some try to control the
horses. Look at their beautiful wings. They show the same insect wings that were used for
the hours in ancient art which Rubens had carefully studied.
Peter Paul Rubens, The Garden of Love, c. 1630, 199 x 286 cm, Madrid, Museo Nacional del Prado
This is a pretty large painting, close to three meters wide. It is from the last part of
Rubens' career. By then the mood of many of his paintings had become very sensuous.
It's known as 'The Garden of Love’.
We see figures in contemporary dress in a garden where they mingle with small cupids.
To the left, one of these cupids pushes a couple towards the garden. Some couples
embrace and are involved in erotic play. The sculpture to the right shows Venus, Goddess
of Love, sitting on a dolphin. Inside a temple in the background are the Three Graces who
are associated with love also in ancient mythology.
Rubens here's the heir of Titians paintings of ideal places where humans devote their life
to pleasure. After losing his first wife Rubens had remarried in 1630. This painting may
relate to that event. The child flying at the top of the scene is not a cupid. He carries a
torch and crown of flowers which identify him as Hymen, the god that presided over
marriage ceremonies.
In any event, the painting clearly reflects the happy state of affairs during the last decade
of Rubens' life, before he died in 1640. Rubens' late style contributed to the artistic change
that took place in Paris, at the end of the seventeenth century. In the debates taking place
there he was seen as a counterpoint to the strict classicism of Poussin. His paintings have a
pleasant mood, often showing amorous enjoyment multiplied there using this very
picturistic model.
Lecture 23: Van Dyck’s Stylized Elegance (1599 - 1641)
Anthony van Dyck is a Flemish painter from the seventeenth century. He was born in
Antwerp in 1599 and was formed as a painter in that city, under the influence of Rubens
who was twenty-two years older than him. He may have been a pupil of Rubens. We're
not sure. But he was certainly his assistant by age seventeen. He was a child prodigy. By
the time when he was twenty-two he had painted over a hundred and sixty paintings,
many of them large, ambitious compositions.
This painting by van Dyck shows

Christ carrying the cross. It shows
the influence of Rubens in the
massive muscular anatomy of the
man on the right. But the painting
also shows that van Dyck had a very
strong personality. The unidealised
crude faces of the figures are
different, or even contrary to Rubens'
idealism.
Van Dyck paints the event as a
moment of alarm caused by the fall
of Jesus, with arms flung in all
directions to convey the drama of the
moment. The emotional heart of the
painting is the helpless gaze that
Christ directs at his mother.
Anthony van Dyck, Christ Carrying the

Cross, c. 1618, 216 x 161 cm,
Antwerp, Sint-Pauluskerk
It really pierces our hearts. Van Dyck painted this when he was nineteen. He made it for a
church in Antwerp, where it hung together with fourteen other paintings by the city's
main artists. It's still there in St Paulus Kirk. It's one of the paintings, installed side by side,
in the interior of the church. That van Dyck was grouped together with the cities major
masters is a sign of the high reputation that he had at a young age.
During his youth van Dyck also
showed his mastery at painting
portraits. This is from 1621 and is a
beautiful example.
The biographer of van Dyck
accuses Rubens of having steered his
young assistant toward portraiture
which, at the time, was considered a
less important type of painting than
religious or historical scenes. This is
probably not true. The facts show
that Rubens was very supportive
of van Dyck during his youth. But
one thing is true. After his youthful
period was over, and for much of his
life, van Dyck painted mainly
portraits, and Rubens probably had
something to do with this.
Anthony van Dyck, Susanna Fourment and

Her Daughter, 1621, 172 x 117 cm,
Washington D.C., National Gallery of Art,
Andrew W. Mellon Collection
Not because he purposely forced van Dyck into that niche, but because his success was so

overwhelming that it left little room for other painters.
Van Dyck is one of the great natural talents of the time. Look here at the stylized
pose of mother and child and at the splendid dress and drapery. This grand appearance
was very much liked at the time. These are a woman and a child from the burger class
of Antwerp. But their pose, the grand column base and the theatrical curtain make them
seem aristocratic or regal. Quite soon, actually, van Dyck would become a favorite portrait
painter of Kings and other people with great status and power in Europe.
Van Dyck was in Italy from 1621 to 1627 when he was in his twenties. He made all sorts
of pictures there and studied local art, being especially drawn towards the paintings of
Titian. As a portrait painter he's Titian's main heir.
This is a portrait of a Flemish merchant
who lived in Venice. Here we see him in
front of a table, posing with objects that
make him look like a learned gentleman
who enjoys the arts.
Look at the drawing and classical
sculpture of the head on the table. And
who also enjoys the sciences. There's also a
celestial globe on the table. If we compare
this with Titian, or with other Renaissance
artists, we have a sense that the same kind
of ideas, elegance, refinement, detachment
are presented here a bit more forcefully,
more theatrically.
Anthony van Dyck, Lucas van Uffel, c. 1622, 124 x

101 cm, New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art,
Bequest of Benjamin Altman, 1913
There's also a purposeful display of style here that was very much to the taste of
contemporaries. It's a splendid image. It shows van Dyck's great talent. Look at the
hand that leans on the chair and the pattern of the heavy cloth that covers the table.
For nearly all the last decade of

his life from 1632 to 1641 van
Dyck lived in England, where
he was the main painter at the
court of King Charles I. There he
devoted his career almost
exclusively to painting portraits.
This double portrait is from
that time, from around 1635. It
shows van Dyck himself to the
right, together with an
important member of the
English court that became his
friend, a man called Endymion
Porter.
Anthony van Dyck, Endymion Porter and Van Dyck, c. 1635,

The proportions of the bodies and the outfits worn by these men with their beautiful
subtle colors, and also the column and cloth in the background, emphasize the idea of
elegance. The hands of the two sitters are close to each other, both leaning on a rack. Van
Dyck does this for a reason. He's telling us something. What do you think it is? What he's
saying is that the friendship of these two men is as solid as a rock. Van Dyck often
introduced elements in his portraits that seem natural but that have a symbolic meaning.
From about the same time is this portrait

of another English aristocrat, the Duke
of Richmond and Lennox, a cousin
of Charles I. On his left sleeve is a large
silver star, a sign of his belonging to one of
the exclusive organizations
characteristic of Europe at the time.
In the context of van Dyck’s use of
symbolic elements in his portraits, it is
logical to look for a possible meaning for
the presence of the dog. These animals
were traditionally associated with fidelity
and if they were hunting dogs, with
hunting privileges held by the aristocracy.
In this case it could refer to either of these
two things or it could also simply
be a favored dog. We just don't know.
Anthony van Dyck, James Stuart, Duke of

Richmond and Lennox, c. 1633-1635, 216 x 128
cm, New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art,
Marquand Collection, Gift of Henry G. Marquand,
1889
On a less specific level, the dog's adoring submission has the effect of making the
superiority of the man seem natural, inevitable as if God given. Indeed, that is the way
aristocrats felt about themselves.
From a formal point of view, the stylized body of the dog adds elegance to the portrait.
Van Dyck is very important for the history of taste in England. Having a van Dyck portrait
hanging from a wall, perhaps next to a painting by Claude, became an almost necessary
sign of distinction for the English aristocracy.
Van Dyck's dazzling elegance influenced practically all English portrait painters for
generations, such as Thomas Gainsborough in the eighteenth century. Van Dyck's
influence on English taste goes beyond the art of painting. It can even be traced in the
fashion and style conscious image of icons of British pop culture, such as David Bowie
or Bryan Ferry or the new romantics.
Lecture 24: Velázquez (1599 - 1660). Paintings that We can Walk Into
Velázquez was born in Seville in Southern Spain in 1599. He received his first training
there. Among his formative influences are the paintings by Jusepe Ribera that arrived in
Spain from Naples in the first decades of the seventeenth century. From them he learned
the latest trends from Italy which consisted in painting solid volumes and in contrasting
light and dark areas. He would gradually leave these traits behind later in his career.
Velázquez moved to Madrid in 1623 to become court painter to King Philip IV, a post
which he retained until his death in 1660.
This portrait of a member of the Court

in Madrid is from about 1631. It is
characteristic in its apparent simplicity.
Compare this with the portraits of van
Dyck who was Velázquez's exact
contemporary. The flare and theatricality
of van Dyck makes Velázquez's portrait
seem understated, and truthful.
We see no columns or draperies in the
background here. A somber black dress
is adorned only with a cross of the Order
of Calatrava which distinguished this
man as a member of this aristocratic
organization.
The illusion of physical presence is
amazing. This is a quality that we
always find in Velázquez.
Painting portraits was the main duty of
the royal painter, but in King Philip IV
Velázquez found a passionate art lover
and an understanding and supportive
patron who allowed him to paint
different types of works.
Diego Velázquez, Portrait of Don Pedro de

Barberana, c. 1631, 198 x 111 cm, Fort Worth,
Kimbell Art Museum
Diego Velázquez, The Fable of Aracne (also known as The Spinners), c. 1655-1660, Madrid,
Here we see one of his masterpieces. From the eighteenth century it was known as 'The
Spinners’ and was believed to show women working in a tapestry factory at Court. This is
an example of how we can lose track of the meaning of the painting after it was made. It
was later discovered that contemporary inventories described the painting as a
mythological story, starring the Goddess Pallas Athena and the mortal woman Aracne.
They're both shown in the background, the Goddess with the helmet and Aracne in front
of her. Arachne had dared challenge the Goddess to a competition in weaving and she
lost. She was turned into a spider.
Behind the figures is a tapestry. It is easy to confuse with the figures themselves. It is
meant to be the piece that Aracne wove in her challenge to Athena. Velázquez did not
make this tapestry up. The children flying in the sky that you can kind of make out allow
us to identify this with a famous painting by Titian that was in the Royal Collection in
Madrid at the time. It's called 'The Rape of Europa’. It's now in the Isabella Stewart
Gardner Museum in Boston. That painting by Titian was copied by Rubens during a trip
that he made to Madrid in the 1620’s. A time when he shared a studio with Velázquez.
Rubens' copy now hangs in the Prado Museum in Madrid next to Velázquez's 'Fable of
Aracne'.
By copying this particular painting in the tapestry, Velázquez was paying homage to the
two painters that most influenced his career. The contrapposto poses of two of the women
in the picture, one dressed in black to the left and the other with a white shirt to the right,
are directly inspired by figures in Michelangelo's Sistine ceiling in the Vatican.
Velázquez was not a classicist in the sense that many sixteenth and seventeenth century
painters were. He combines knowledge of the classical and Renaissance artistic traditions
with a direct confrontation with reality as he paints. The result is very original. It is very
characteristic of Velázquez's brand of realism to bring the other worldly down to earth.
That's why the mistake of thinking that this is nothing more than a group of woman
spinning and weaving is easy to make.
The importance given to common objects such as a bench or the wool lying on the floor
contribute to make this mythological story seem near. The same is true with the treatment
of color and light and with a technique of the artist. Notice the spinning wheel. It is
extremely realistic. It truly appears to be in motion. The impressionist painter Mary
Cassatt said of this, and I quote her, "Velázquez's Spinners. Good heavens! You can walk
into the picture."
The technique of Velázquez is very painterly. Contours are blurred and many
brushstrokes are left visible on the paint surface. They seem to float on top of each other
calling attention to themselves. This way of painting is characteristic of Velázquez's
mature work that was learned from Titian.
This is a large
painting. It measures
over three meters in
height and nearly
three meters in width.
It shows an actual
room in the Royal
Palace in Madrid in
the year 1656 when the
picture was made.
You see Velázquez
himself painting on a
canvas. We don't see
what he's painting.
Diego Velázquez, Las
Meninas, 1656, 318 x 276
cm,Madrid, Museo Nacional
del Prado
It could be a scene involving the young girl near the center of the image, perhaps the
very painting we're looking at. The girl is called Margarita. She's the daughter of
King Philip IV of Spain. The King and his second wife Mariana of Austria are reflected in
the mirror hanging from the back wall. It could be them that Velázquez paints.
This is known as 'Las Meninas' after a Portuguese word used for the noble women who
acted as maids of honor to the King's daughter.
This painting reflects the taste for enigmatic concepts and for testing the knowledge of
viewers that was part of seventeenth century culture. We also find this in literature from
the time. Velázquez is a master as this. We have already seen that the subject of the 'Fable
of Arachne’ was misinterpreted for a long time.
If you spend time looking at it you will see that as soon as you think you could settle on
an answer to the question of what is going on here, you will start doubting yourself and
start looking again for a new explanation.
If Velázquez is painting the royal couple, for example, the canvas seems too large and
there's the problem that we don't know any double portrait of the King and Queen by
him. Looking at this painting is like listening to rumors that cannot be confirmed. There's
no definitive answer to what is going on here but we're lead to try to figure it out.
It's an exciting game and awakens an awareness in our minds. The illusion of reality
achieved by the painting invites us to a similar guessing game.
A limited range of colors, a light that enters through the side windows and the back door
and the sense of a three-dimensional volume all contribute to the realism of the scene.
Most surprising perhaps is how we can feel the air in the picture.
Look for example at the space between the figures and the wall behind them. The
painter's ability to make us feel the atmosphere is referred to as aerial perspective. The
mirror on which the King and Queen are reflected contributes to the impression of reality
caused by the painting. It seems to reflect figures that stand where we stand, that see what
we see. This is reinforced by the fact that several figures react to a presence located where
we stand. They direct their gaze at us.
One woman starts to bow. As soon as we realize this we feel transported into the
painting. We feel that the room extends under and beyond our feet and over our heads.
We feel that if we stomp the ground with our feet will lift the dust in the painted space.
The mirror, by the way, was an idea taken from a painting by Jan van Eyck, the 'Arnolfini
Portrait’. It is now in the National Gallery in London but it was in the Spanish royal
collection when Velázquez worked there and he knew it well.
The strong impression of reality that stems from this painting is contradicted by the very
way it is painted. Look here at the hands and sleeves of the figures. There's no possibility
of confusing this with reality. This is clearly nothing but paint. Look at the thin white line
that goes from one of these figures to the other above their hands. It is paint that has been
dragged by the brush over a rough canvas and that's exactly what it looks like. But if we
move away a bit, it is so convincing as the illusion of light entering the room from the
background door that we cannot remove this impression from our minds.
The contradiction between realistic and painterly elements makes the scene float in the
boundary between reality and illusion. We're left in a dizzy state by the constant shifting
of our minds as we try to push the image to one side or the other of this boundary. The
effect can be electrifying.
Seeing this picture, not being able to make sense of it, has the paradoxical effect of
heightening our consciousness, of stimulating our minds. The subtle and contradictory
realism of 'Las Meninas’ has made it one of the most highly acclaimed paintings in the
entire history of European art. Velázquez was admired to the point of reverence by
painters such as Manet and Degas and Whistler and Sargent in the nineteenth century.
His sureness of touch, the creative use of the artistic tradition and the self-awareness that
is present in his art, both in his way of applying paint and in how he makes us focus on
the act and the logic of looking, have made him a favorite painter of artists and art lovers
until this day.
For Caravaggio’s followers, see the catalogue of the exhibition Painting in Naples. From
Caravaggio to Guiordano, which was held at the National Gallery of Art in
Washington in 1983, and J. T. Spike: Painting in Naples from 1653–1747, A Taste for
Angels: Neapolitan Painting in North American Collections, 1650–1750 (this is also
an exhibition catalogue, of a show held at the Yale Art Gallery in 1987.
For Ribera specifically, see the relevant section in Jonathan Brown, The Golden Age of
Painting in Spain, 1991.
For the great, and too often forgotten Guido Reni, see the book by R. E. Spear: The ‘Divine’
Guido: Religion, Sex, Money and Art in the World of Guido Reni, of 1997.
For Poussin and Claude, Anthony Blunt: Art and Architecture in France, 1500–1700, remains
a great introduction (even though the first edition is from 1953). For Poussin, see also
E. Cropper and C. Dempsey: Nicolas Poussin: Friendship and Love of Painting (1996),
and Poussin and Nature: Arcadian Visions (catalogue of an exhibition at the
Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2008). For the landscapes of Claude Lorrain, see H.
Wine, Claude: The Poetic Landscape (this is a catalogue of an exhibition held at the
National Gallery in London in 1994).
For Rubens two very good introductions in English are C White: Peter Paul Rubens: Man
and Artist (1987), and P. Sutton, The Age of Rubens(catalogue of an exhibition held at
the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston in 1993),
For Van Dyck, you can read the catalogue of the exhibition Van Dyck, 1599-1641, held at
the royal Academy of Arts in London in 1999.
For Velázquez, see Jonathan Brown, Velázquez. Painter and Courtier, of 1986.
Lecture 25: The mysterious realism of Francisco de Zurbarán (1598 - 1664)
Zurbarán was a Spanish painter from the 17th century. He worked for most of his life
in Extremadura, in southwestern Spain where he was born, and in Seville, which was an
important artistic center at the time. For a while he also worked in Madrid.
Many paintings made in his workshop were exported to the Spanish colonies
in America. He painted mainly for religious clients and mainly religious subjects. One of
his most important commission was to paint a series of works in 1638 and 1639 for the
sacristy of the Monastery of Guadalupe in Spain, where they still remain.
Here I show you an image of the sacristy with some of the paintings on the left wall.
Sacristy, Monastery of Santa María, Guadalupe, Spain
And here one of the painting in the group.
It shows a 15th century man, Gonzalo de
Illescas. He was prior of the Monastery
and later bishop of Córdoba, a high
ecclesiastical post. That is how Zurbarán
paints him.
Here we see some of the characteristics of
his art, such as the strong contrast between
light and dark, and the taste for
incorporating many common objects in his
paintings, which contributes to
make them seem realistic. These are
elements learned secondhand from
Caravaggio and from the realistic trend in
vogue at the beginning of the 17th century
in Europe.
Francisco de Zurbarán, Bishop Gonzalo de

Illescas, 1639, 290 x 222 cm, Guadalupe, Spain,
Sacristy, Monastery of Santa Maria
These traits, which are common to many painters at the time, are turned into very
personal and original visions by Zurbarán. Striking here are also the simplified
architecture in the background and especially the large size and heavy folds of the curtain
on top of the picture.
This is a much smaller painting, made not

for a large room in a monastery but for private
devotion. The subject is the young Virgin Mary.
This was popular in Catholic Europe.
Here we see again the characteristics that make
Zurbarán stand out in history of art. Notice the
contrasting light on the curtains. And still life
objects on the table and the floor. The draperies
on the corners of the painting have a very
strong presence. The atmosphere that softens
the rest of the scene does not seem to affect
them.
Francisco de Zurbarán, Young Virgin, c. 1632-1633, 117 x

94 cm, New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art,
Fletcher Fund, 1927
The strong tactile quality in physical presence of materials and objects is characteristic of
this paint.
The unique aesthetic charm of Zurbarán's art is explained, at least in part, by
shortcomings in his formation as an artist. The figure of the girl shows a limited
knowledge of anatomy. If you focus your attention on the red skirt, you will notice that
there seems to be nobody, no legs underneath. The head also is excessively schematic.
The foreshortening of the table is somewhat awkward. The drapery has an excessive
presence in comparison to the rest of the scene, and relative to its importance.
These inconsistencies are the result of Zurbarán's training far from the main artistic
centers of the time. His art is the result of a limited knowledge of the academic tradition,
and not having fully assimilated the study of the human anatomy or the depiction of three
dimensional space. For most of Zurbarán's clients this would not have been a problem.
They also were not used to seeing the art that had set the high standard from the
Renaissance until the 17th century: the art of Raphael or Michelangelo or Leonardo or
other artists close to them.
Zurbarán can be called a peripheral artist, as long as we do not think of this word
negatively. By far most artists at the time, or any time, are from the periphery in the sense
that I am using the term. They worked far from places were artistic trends were being
created, and they only partially understood and absorbed them. This can free artists from
narrow constraints of taste. It can allow them to be creative, to be original, to interpret
tradition in unexpected ways.
This is what happens to Zurbarán. His shortcomings are the foundations of a very
personal manner painting. An example that we have already seen are the curtains and
draperies in many of his paintings. They seem to have an excessive presence. They go
against the principles of a pleasing and logical arrangement of the parts within a
harmonious whole, which is a basic tenet of pictorial composition, as it was understood
since the Renaissance. But this excess turns into a quality in the paintings by our artist.
And makes them different and interesting.
The focus on the material quality of objects that we find in Zurbarán is very characteristic

of his, and very pleasing to the eye and the mind. In some paintings his concentration on
one, or only on a few objects, makes this quality stand out.
Francisco de
Zurbarán, Agnus Dei,
c. 1635-1640, 37 x 52
cm, Madrid, Museo
Nacional del Prado
Here we see a lamb, its legs tied in preparation for sacrifice. The stark simplicity of the
composition, the emptiness of the space, the concentration on the wool of the animal, the
dramatic lighting against the dark background, all have the effect of making this seem
transcendent, almost sacred.
We feel that we're looking at something more mysterious, more important than
just a lamb. The ability to charge objects with this mystical quality is one of the
achievements of this artist. There appears to be nowhere surrounding the lamb. The air
has been sucked down. The atmosphere is crisp, and as a consequence, focus on the
animal is very sharp.
Zurbarán painted several versions of the same composition. One of them in the San
Diego Museum of Art includes a halo over the head of the lamb, and the
inscription "Tanquam Agnus” which in Latin means as a lamb. This shows that lambs in
Zurbarán's paintings are symbols of Christ, who was sacrificed as a lamb.
In Christian writings and Christian art lamb was very often used as a metaphor
for Christ himself. The feature that makes Zurbarán's art stand out, his exaggerated focus
on the physical presence and material quality of objects, which gives them an
otherworldly feeling, was appealing to modern artists and art lovers at the beginning of
the 20th century, especially to those drawn to surrealism.
Lecture 26: Still-life Painting
The most common way to look at the history of art is to follow a chronological order and
to focus on the achievements of individual artists. But we can look from other points of
view. For example, how painters from different times and places painted one same
subject. That's what we will do in this video, focusing on still-life paintings.
By this term we mean paintings that show exclusively food, flowers, plants, kitchenware,
and other inanimate objects.
According to Pliny the Elder, the Greek painter Zeuxis made a painting of grapes so
skillfully that a bird tried to peck at them. After this, and a few other references of still-life
painters from antiquity, the gender disappeared for centuries. It was gradually revived
during the 16th century, and became very popular in the 17th.
This is a religious painting centered on

the image of the Virgin and child Christ.
There is a carefully painted pot of flowers
on the lower left. It would have made no
sense at the time to devote an entire
painting only to those flowers. But in a
religious image it complemented the
figures.
Religious texts, read in mass and
at home, very often used metaphorical
language to explain or reinforce concepts.
The purity of the Virgin, for example, was
made explicit by comparing her to a white
flower, such as a white lily. If her heavenly
nature was alluded to, she could be
compared to the blue sky.
Attributed to Gerard David, The Virgin and Child, c.

1520, 45 x 34 cm, Madrid, Museo del Prado
And the blood of the sacrifice of Christ was compared to a red rose. It is this type of
symbolic meaning that the flowers have in this painting.
Paintings like this gradually prepared artist to develop the specialized skills to pink
flowers and other objects and they also prepared collectors to appreciate them. The
competition in the art market, which led painters to look for new products to sell, together
with the increasing curiosity about reality, and a taste for illusionism, would help painters
at the end of the 16th century to take the next step, and paint the first still-life paintings.
This is from 1621, some hundred years
after the previous image, the bouquet of
flowers has grown to occupy the whole
picture, and the figures have disappeared.
This is by an artist named Ambrosius
Bosschaert. Throughout the 17th and the
18th century thousands of paintings of
flowers, plants and fruits were made. The
ones at the top level are truly
extraordinary.
Here we see a red and white tulip and
a yellow iris above the other flowers
an plants. They are all carefully and
artfully arranged. Insects were often
included in flower paintings. Here we see
a dragonfly above the iris at the top, and a
butterfly at the bottom at the right. This
satisfied the taste for realism of the time.
Ambrosius Bosschaert, Bouquet of Flowers in a Glass

Vase, 1621, 32 x 22 cm, Washington D.C., National
Gallery of Art, Patrons' Permanent Fund and New
Century Fund
A book by the Greek writer Philostratus the Elder described an ancient painting with

flowers and a bee. It was impossible to know when looking at that picture he wrote if he
once saw was a real bee that had been fooled by the skilful depiction of the flower, or if it
was us that were fooled by the realistic representation of both the flower and the bee.
This kind of story was well known and further spurred artists and collectors. Skill, not
only in painting the flowers, but in playing with the illusion of reality, became an
important part of the attraction of still-life painting. Painting in a way that made objects
seem real was referred to as “Trompe-l'œil", a French term that means "deceive the eye".
The inscription that we see on this painting on the edge of the table, immodestly
says "this is by the angelic hand of the great painter Ambrosius".
This was painted another hundred years
later in 1722. It is by Jan van Huysum a
painter from Amsterdam. I show it to you
as a testimony of the incredible level of
skill acquired by painters, specializing
in still lifes.
We know 241 similar still life paintings by
this artist. Spend some time looking at
this. It is amazing. It is an image of
overflowing abundance and overflowing
talent as well. It became a challenge to
paint flowers that were difficult to find or
that were from different seasons of the
year, which meant that this type of
painting took a long time to be completed.
Jan van Huysum, Vase of Flowers, 1722, 79 x 61

cm, Los Angeles, The J. Paul Getty Museum, digital
image courtesy of the Getty's Open Content
Program
The light colors and luxurious ambience that we see here is typical of 18th century
painting and taste. The presence of an antique vase is witness to the continuing style differ
the classical past.
Going back to the 16th century another

key impetus in the development of still-life
paintings came from the new scientific
attitude of the Renaissance towards the
natural environment.
As scientists began to catalogue all that
surrounded them, artists were hired to
draw very careful depictions of animals
and plants.
Detail of illustration under the title “Painters of the

Work”, in the book by Leonhart Fuchs, Notable
Commentaries on the history of Plants, 1542
This is a page from a book on plants from 1542, published by a Bavarian doctor

named Leonhart Fuchs. The book is full of detailed representation of plants. At the end are
these images of the artist responsible for the illustrations. They are not very well known:
they are Heinrich Füllmauer and Albert Meyer.
This kind of activity prepared artists to focus their talent on the representation of objects.
In the art of Joris Hoefnagel we see this type of

scientific illustration turned into art. He was
a Flemish painter who worked in different areas
of central Europe in the late 16th and early 17th
centuries.
He specialized in miniature images for high
patrons. This he made for Rudolf II, as part of a
book on calligraphy to which he added
watercolor images. In Hoefnagel we see the
fascination with illusionism, with the ability of
artists to trick our senses.
Joris Hoefnagel, Maltese Cross, Mussel, and

Ladybird, from the Mira calligraphiae monumenta,
illumination added 1591-1596, watercolors, gold and
silver paint, and ink on parchment, 166 x 124 mm,
Los Angeles, The J. Paul Getty Museum, digital image
courtesy of the Getty's Open Content Program
Not only what we see is painted in minute detail, If you could turn this page, on the
back, you would see that he has drawn the part of the stem of the flower that is covered
up here.
Another example of the skill and taste of Hoefnagel for Trompe-l’œil is a book where he
painted carefully detailed images of dragonflies. But instead of painting the wings he
attached real ones to the painted bodies.
Paintings of flowers are only one of the types of still lifes common in the 17th century.
Also popular were paintings of animals and utensils related to the hunt. And paintings
with arrangements of foods in kitchens, pantries and fancier dining rooms. And vanitas
still lifes.
This is by a man named Juan
Sánchez Cotán. He painted in
Toledo, in Spain, at the turn of the
century.
Typical of him, and of the whole
category of still-life paintings, is
the sparse setting in a pantry, the
intense focus on the objects,
and the geometric emphasis.
Juan Sánchez Cotán, Still-life with

Cardoon and Parsnips, c. 1604, 63 x 85
cm, Granada, Museo de Bellas Artes
This painting was made around 1604. It emerged from the interest in experimenting with
the illusionistic powers of the art of painting that existed in intellectual circles. Sánchez
Cotán's still lifes are humble but strong. They were very influential in Spain.
There is much discussion about whether this and similar paintings have a symbolic
meaning. If it is not made explicit they probably do not.
In vanitas still lifes, on the other hand, the objects depicted do have a symbolic meaning,
and the paintings make a didactic point. Objects were used to call attention to the vanity
of man's actions, and to the transient nature of life of all earthly goods.
Vanitas still-life paintings were especially popular in The Netherlands. The reason
why they became so popular has to do with a tension between two of the key values of the
time. On the one hand the impulse to accumulate wealth, and on the other the value
placed on simplicity and temperance. Some who commissioned these paintings may have
wanted to warn others of the dangers of worldly excess. Others may have felt that having
a picture of this theme nearby was enough to allow them to go about their business.
This is from 1603. Its author is Jacques de Gheyn who was

mainly a draughtsman and an engraver, but occasionally
also a painter. He was from Antwerp but worked most of his
life in Amsterdam and The Hague.
The skull refers to death. It seems to take on a mocking
attitude here. A large bubble above the skull, the flowers
and the smoking urn refer to the finite nature of all things.
A reference to the brevity of life. This renders worthless the
accumulation of wealth symbolized by the coins at the
bottom.
Jacques de Gheyn II, Vanitas Still-life, 1603, 83 x 54 cm, New York, The

Metropolitan Museum of Art, Charles B. Curtis, Marquand, Victor Wilbour
Memorial, and The Alfred N. Punnett Endowment Funds, 1974
At the top are the two Greek philosophers Democritus and Heraclitus, who reacted to the
absurd nature of human life by laughing and weeping. Between them on the arch is
an inscription that reads: "Humana Vana" or vain humanity.
Here I show you
another example of
this same type of still-
life painting. This was
painted on occasion of
the death of a famous
naval hero from
The Netherlands,
Admiral Tromp, whose
portrait we see printed
on a piece of paper.
Pieter Steenwijck, Vanitas Still-life

(Allegory of the Death of Admiral
Tromp) c. 1655, 79 x 101 cm, 
Leiden, Museum De Lakenhal,
inv. nr. S 409
The picture is by Pieter Steenwijck a Dutch artist. He made this around 1655.

There is no doubt here that the artist wants to make a reference to death. Look at the
candle that still smokes. And look at the skull.
Like always with still-life painting, this is also about the pleasing arrangement of the
objects and about the skill of the artist to make all these different things look realistic.
I haven't shown you two of them famous still-life paintings made in Europe.
One is by Caravaggio and is now in the Pinacoteca Ambrosiana in Milan.
The other is by Zurbarán and is in the Norton Simon Museum in California, in Pasadena.
Zurbarán, Still Life with Lemons, Oranges and a Rose,

Caravaggio, Basket of Fruit (c.1599), 46 cm 1633, 62.2 cm × 107 cm,Norton Simon Museum,
× 64.5 cm, Biblioteca Ambrosiana, Milan Pasadena
Lecture 27: Frans Hals (1581/5 - 1666). Faces of the Netherlands in the Seventeenth
Century
Together with Rembrandt and Vermeer, Frans Hals is one of the best known of all 17th
century Dutch painters. He was born in Antwerp but his parents migrated to
Haarlem in The Netherlands when he was very young. He was trained in Haarlem and
worked there throughout most of his life.
Halses was one of many families who migrated north from Antwerp because of war.
This led to the growth of cities in Holland and gradually to the emergence of important
artistic centers there.
Hals was a specialist in painting portraits.
Frans Hals and Pieter Code, The Company of Captain Reinier Reael and Lieutenant Cornelis Michielsz,
1633-1637, 209 x 429 cm, Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, on loan from the City of Amsterdam
This image shows a group portrait of what was known in The Netherlands as a

Militia Company. They were made up of volunteer members of the urban elite. They
existed in Holland from the late 16th century, assembling when their military services
were needed. They were not associated with a regular army controlled by the central state
and thus they show the strength of civil society.
In the 17th century these companies were only rarely involved in military conflict and
they were very popular. Hals himself belonged to two of them. The militias commissioned
group portraits of this type which they hung in their headquarters. They became very
popular in Amsterdam and Haarlem and other Dutch cities.
Rembrandt's famous painting of the night watch is also a group portrait of a militia
company. One has the sense that in the 17th century in The Netherlands more effort and
more money was spent on parades, on banquets and on commissioning paintings than in
actual battle.
This is one of Hals' most famous paintings, and one of the best examples of the portrait
of a militia company. It was painted between 1633 and 1637.
It shows a militia from Amsterdam, under the leadership of Captain Reinier Reael. He
is the man seated at the left. Position within the militias depended on the wealth and
status of the members. You may find this painting referred to as the Meagre Company
after an 18th-century description that found the figures remarkably thin.
Although Hals worked in Haarlem, this commission came from Amsterdam. That a
militia from another city asked a painter from Haarlem to do this work is proof of the
reputation that he had gained by this time.
Hals and his patrons disputed long and hard about this, with the clients arguing that the
painter was being too slow with the project. Hals had said that he needed to paint the
faces directly from the model but that the sittings would be very short.
There were discussions about how often Hals needed to go to Amsterdam or how
often the sitters needed to come to Haarlem. The two cities are about ten miles apart.
In 1637, when the painting was only about halfway done, the militia members broke
with Hals and hired the painter Pieter Codde to finish the work.
Painters were paid by figure so Hals loss some money with this dispute. Throughout his
career Hals was with very successful, but he died in economic hardship. His personality
may have got in the way of his business.
Even though we do not know exactly what was finished when Hals abandoned the
canvas, experts on the artist estimate that he painted the seven figures on the left.
Here we see Hals in his most brilliant mature style. A rapid sketch detected beneath the
picture surface reveals that he was responsible also for the preliminary design of the
entire composition, for the general positioning of all the figures.
The animated facial expressions and the positions of the heads and hands of the figures
suggests that they are engaged in action or conversation. This is a device typical of Hals.
Portrait painting was usually stiffer, with figures shown in rigid poses and, in group
portraits, with little the interaction among them. Hals animated his portraits. By making
the figures talk or react to each other he makes this look like something more important
than a portrait. This could be an important historical event, the signing of a peace treaty or
something like that.
It is a paradox that an artist who worked almost exclusively making portraits made his
paintings look like something else.
Also characteristic of Hals is the use of brushstrokes for expressive purposes. They are
primarily used to depict highlights and they are left very visible and unblended on the
paint surface. This way of handling paint would make Hals one of the favorite painters of
19th century French artists together with Velázquez.
Van Gogh, a fellow Dutch man, once said of this very painting that it was worth
traveling to Amsterdam just to see it. And he particularly singled out the orange banner in
the left corner and the man carrying it. Look at the strokes here, especially on the suit of
the figure, the one that Van Gogh mentioned.
Pieter Codde, the artist who finished this, was an important painter from Amsterdam,
who specialized in light hearted interior scenes and small-format portraits.

The part of this that he painted, the figures on the right, is notably different from his
usually detailed technique. This shows that he deliberately maintained Hals' style to
make the work as unified as possible.
Notice one thing in this large portrait, the figures are animated, lively. The proud even
confrontational stance of several men is defined by the position of their arms, with a hand
on the hip and the elbow pointing outwards.
In this other portrait by Hals we see the

same gesture of the elbow. It does
not reflect the personal trait of a man's
body language. It was a convention that
made men seem strong, self-assured. It
was used often in portraiture.
This is a simple half-length portrait.
but the sitter again looks animated,
spirited, as if captured in a fleeting
moment. The portrait style is bold.
The way in which the figure is posed,
the conspicuous strokes of his beautiful
grace silk suit, this reflects on the man. It
makes him look bold as well.
Frans Hals, Nicolaes Pietersz. Duyst van Voorhout,

c. 1636-1638, 81 x 66 cm, New York, The
Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Jules Bache
Collection, 1949
The portrait is from the same time as the first, from the 1630s. It probably shows a man
named Nicolaes Pietersz. He was a prominent citizen of Haarlem, typical of the people
who asked Hals to portray them.
We know that he owned a collection of paintings. His money came from a brewery that
he owned, the most common types of businesses at the time in The Netherlands. Keep in
mind that beer was safer to drink than water.
In the face and attitude of this man we see some of the character and pride of
the prospers progress of The Netherlands in the 17th century. They had just gained the
independence from the Spanish monarchy. The fact that Hals was favored as a
portrait painter by these people indicates that they liked how he made them look.

Lecture 28: Rembrandt (1606 - 1668). Pondering the Human Soul
Rembrandt is one of the giants of the history of art. He worked in all genres available

to painters at the time, from landscapes and still lives to portraits, history, religious and
mythological paintings. He was also an extraordinary talented and productive
draughtsman and printmaker.
His productivity and range are a measure of his creative energy and of his artistic,
economic and social ambition. But greatness is not measured in quantity. We think
of Vermeer as a great painter and we only know about 35 paintings by him. Rembrandt is
great because of the scope and depth of the version of humanity that he represents,
because of how original his art is. And because it seems close to us, close to life as we
experience it.
The image on the screen is a print that shows

Rembrandt at age 32 or 33, enjoying the success that he
had at that time.
Rembrandt, Self-Portrait Leaning on a Stone Sill,

1639, etching, 210 x 168 mm, Washington D.C.,
National Gallery of Art, Rosenwald Collection
This is another self-portrait. It shows him about ten

years earlier, at age 21 or 22.
Rembrandt was born in the university city of Leiden in
1606. And he trained there and in Amsterdam, where he
spent most of his life. He died in 1669.
It was becoming fashionable when he was a young
artist to paint small pictures of figures dressed in
historical costume with intense expressions. This is
what Rembrandt is doing here. He is following
contemporary trend with himself as a model.
Rembrandt, Rembrandt Laughing, 1628, 22 x 17

cm,Los Angeles, The J. Paul Getty Museum, digital
image courtesy of the Getty's Open Content Program

Notice the metal neck piece, which is part of an armor. It makes Rembrandt look
like a historical figure or like an actor in a historical play. The pose, with the elbow
pointing outwards, and the patch-like application of paint in the face makes the painting
look lively, full of energy. These features also indicate that the young Rembrandt was
probably looking at the portraits by Frans Hals and learning from them.
Rembrandt here seems full of vitality and optimism. His jovial expression is contagious,
and characteristic of the extroverted character of his art during the first half of his career.
This is a fitting image for the young artist who would soon become the most successful
painter in Amsterdam.
This and another similar portraits allow us to imagine Rembrandt as a passionate and
intense man with a contagious zest for life.
This is from about ten years later,

around 1630. It is still a youthful work.
The characters in the painting are buzzing
with internal life with intense feeling.
Their faces and body language are very
expressive. In a characteristic manner
heads seem to project outwards from the
bodies. This makes them seem probing,
inquisitive.
The painting shows a story from the
gospel according to which Lazarus was
resurrected by Christ, and a sign of his
divine power.
Rembrandt, The Raising of Lazarus, c. 1630-1632,

96 x 81 cm, Los Angeles, L.A. County Museum of
Art (www.lacma.org), gift of H. F. Ahmanson and
Company, in memory of Howard F. Ahmanson
Even if the subject is from the Christian Bible we have a sense here that Rembrandt's

main business is the exploration of human emotions.
The selective and expressive use of light is characteristic of the artist, and ultimately
learned from Caravaggio through Dutch artists who had known his works.
In the blonde woman, the contrast of the dark right hand against the bright light behind
is beautiful.

This is a self portrait of Rembrandt made
in 1659, almost thirty years after the
previous painting.
After about 1645 fortune had turned
for Rembrandt. He remained successful
even though no longer the most
fashionable artist in Amsterdam. But bad
investments had cost him serious financial
difficulties.
Also from about 1645 his style changed.
The mood of his paintings became much
quieter, the figures more introverted, as
if now he was searching for a way to
convey the inner life of human beings and
no longer the outward expression of it.
Rembrandt, Self-Portrait, 1659, 123 x 104 cm,

Washington D.C., National Gallery of Art, Andrew
W. Mellon Collection
Rembrandt's pose in this image was inspired by a portrait by Raphael that was

in Amsterdam and which he saw. It is the Portrait of Baldassare Castiglione which is now
in the Louvre museum in Paris. Find an image of it and compare it to this.
Rembrandt painted several pictures of

the Apostles. This is Saint Bartholomew,
who according to medieval Christian
sources was flayed alive. The knife that he
carries is a reminder of this.
In order to understand Rembrandt's
originality it is useful to compare this to
Italian renaissance art, to paintings of
saints in mythological figures by
Michelangelo for example.
Like was the case for most European
painters until the 19th century, Italian
renaissance art was Rembrandt starting
point. The focus on a monumental figure
comes from there. But except for that, the
painting is very different from its models.
Rembrandt, Saint Bartholomew, c. 1657, 123 x 100

cm, San Diego, The Putnam Foundation, Timken
Museum of Art

Rembrandt trained with an Italianate artist, but he never travelled to Italy. His is a very
personal and original version of Italian art. Like Michelangelo, he tries to add something
profound to the figure, a moral way. But he does it in a completely different way.
In Michelangelo's art, as in the art of Leonardo and Raphael, we seem to be in a high
place, untouched by human life. In Rembrandt all the weight of real life experience seems
to have fallen on the figure. It is expressed through incomplete forms and contours, and
especially through texture. I feel, when watching works by this artist, that there is value in
being in the everyday experience of living.
I want to point to the same characteristics of Rembrandt's late style in this painting. We
are not sure what it shows. It was long thought to represent two Old Testament figures,
Isaac and Rebecca, or a Jewish father and his daughter.
Now there is a tendency to think that

it is just a portrait of two figures that
dress in historical costume. We do
not know for sure.
Focus on the relationship between
the two figures, on the loving
embrace, and focus especially in the
technique, on the golden sleeve of the
man and the red dress of the woman.
Rembrandt, The Jewish Bride, or Isaac and

Rebecca, c. 1665-1669, 121 x 166 cm,
Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum
The paint there is very thickly applied. This technique of laying thick paint on the canvas
or panel is known as Impasto. Here the heavy paint is worked up with a palette knife.
Using this technique Rembrandt creates in this painting one of the most beautiful and
expressive surfaces in the entire history of European painting. It is impossible to do it
justice in a reproduction. And again here we feel the effect of texture on us. It shows traces
of the making of the picture. And that seems close. It seems of this world. It seems to
express the variations and imperfections of lived experience, of the reality of life.
To understand this, think of how different it is from its opposite, from the
polished idealism of Fra Angelico for example.

Rembrandt, Christ Crucified between the Two Rembrandt, Christ Crucified between the Two
Thieves: The Three Crosses, 1653, dry point, third Thieves: The Three Crosses, c. 1660, dry point,
state of five, 389 x 456 mm, New York, The engraving, fourth state of five, 382 x 444 mm, 
Metropolitan Museum of Art, gift of Felix M. New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, gift of
Warburg and his family, 1941 Felix M. Warburg and his family, 1941
Rembrandt is one of the greatest printmakers of the history of European art. And this is
one of his greatest prints. It is also the largest one that he made. It measures nearly half a
meter in width, a very large size for a print.
After he finished the design for the image on the copper plate he printed it onto a paper,
and then he made changes to the plate, and he printed again, up to five times. Here I show
you two different states. To the left is the third stage, which is dated in 1653. To the right is
the fourth state which is not dated.
Here we see only the third state. It is an awesome image of the crucifixion of Christ.
The bright light from heaven signs on the closest witnesses, including Mary to the right,
who is consoled by other woman. And also the Roman soldier who kneels having just
recognized the divinity of Jesus.
Look at what happens in the fourth state of the print. The light that allowed some hope
into the scene has now been turned into darkness. The gospel speaks of the
darkness that came over the world when Christ died. This has inspired Rembrandt.
What he paints is a mood, a tragic psychic state. In order to transform the previous print
into this end of the world image, Rembrandt has graved and added lines to the metal
plate. And he has also added ink to it.
Most of the lines fall vertically onto the scene. They are very expressive, charged with
meaning. As they fall they seem to carry a heavy moral weight.
Here we experience one of the most satisfying feelings that comes with contemplating
art, the perfect match of content and form, of the story being told with a way in which the
artist turns it into visible form.

Lecture 29: Vermeer’s Frozen Moments (1632 - 1675)
Vermeer was born in Delft, in the province of Holland, in the Netherlands, in 1632.

He lived there all his life and he produced a small but exquisite body of work, probably
less than fifty paintings of which only thirty five are known today. He was protected
by the favor of one devoted patron, who purchased about half of what he painted. And
also by the support of his wife and his mother-in-law, in whose house he lived and
worked.
The art of Vermeer and of some of his Dutch colleagues is very different from most
paintings made in Europe in the 17th century. The reason for this is the place where he
lived and worked, The Netherlands.
Government and economic power there were in the hands of prosperous merchants, not
kings and aristocrats. And there was a larger middle class than elsewhere.
There were paintings with the same kinds of subjects as other places in Europe, but there
was also a demand for something different, images that appeared to show common
people involved in leisurely or everyday activities. This is what Vermeer painted.
The Netherlands was also more urbanized than other parts of Europe. Vermeer paintings
were made for houses, not palaces or churches.
Vermeer was little known out of his home town of Delft until the late 19th century. After
that time, and until today, he has been extremely popular.
This picture, from the 1660s

shows Vermeer's style fully
formed. It is relatively small.
It measures 40 x 35 cm. And it
is a vertical format, as is nearly
always the case.
It shows a room lit by a
window to the left. It
is occupied by a woman in a
pensive, quiet attitude.
She is elegantly dressed in a
blue jacket with a fur trim.
Women engaged in different
kinds of leisurely activities are
most often the protagonist of
Vermeer’s paintings.
Johannes Vermeer, Woman Holding a

Balance, c. 1664, 40 x 35 cm,
Washington D.C., National Gallery of
Art, Widener Collection

From the 19th century paintings that show themes that appear taken from everyday life
are known as genre paintings, as opposed to portraits, still-life paintings, history
paintings, landscape paintings, or other subjects.
Vermeer's art fits into this category, genre paintings. But the impression that this is
directly taken from everyday life is deceiving. The picture is carefully designed and it has
a symbolic meaning. We see a careful balance of vertical and horizontal lines. The mainly
black frame of the painting behind the woman, the mirror on the wall in front of her, and
the tabletop echo each other.
The scale held by the woman in the dead center of the composition, places similar tune.
It is also made up of right angles. X-rays taken of some works by Vermeer show that he
moved elements around as he was painting, a curtain for example, or a map or a mirror
hanging from a wall.
Sometimes he painted this kind of object and then he covered them up. This shows
that Vermeer did not simply record a reality that existed before his eyes. He combined
elements at will to create carefully balanced compositions.
Colors in the picture relate to each other, and constitute another melody in this painting.
The golden curtain to the left, the skirt of the woman that shows under her jacket, just
above her left hand, and the vertical lines of the gilt moulding in the frame behind her, all
resemble each other. The blue of the coat and the cloth on the table also relate to each
other. The painting lures us into this web of echoing forms and colors and as it does
it quiets us down, slows our pace.
The hand that holds the scale participates in this careful order of things that we witness
here. The gesture of the woman as she holds the balance is among the most delicate
that I have ever seen in a painting. It seems to stop time. It makes the scene like a frozen
moment. This is a feeling often caused by Vermeer paintings.
With her other hand the woman steadies herself. The picture on the wall behind the
woman is the clue to the symbolic meaning of this picture. It shows a last judgment, a
theme that was usually represented in art by scales, where good and bad deeds were
weighed.
The analogy between the last judgment painting and the scale held by the woman, made
it obvious to anyone at the time that there was a meaning behind this image. It was meant
to remind viewers of the need to live moderately, to carefully weigh one's actions.
Whether the message of the painting was more specific we can only guess at without
contemporary documents to help us.
The woman prepares the scales before weighing the gold coins on the table. We also see
jewels, pearl necklaces, and a gold chain. All this may mean that the warning is against
the temptation of earthly riches.
In a characteristic manner Vermeer reduces to a bare minimum the symbolic elements
necessary for interpreting the painting. The focus is on the woman, her careful gesture
and her calm features indicate that she will easily conform to the ideal of moderation.

This is another example of Vermeer's
incredibly nuanced and poised paintings.
This is one of the most beautiful.
The careful observation of details makes
the scene look very real. But this does not
distract from the perfect harmony of the
whole. Vertical and horizontal shapes and
lines form an abstract pattern.
The geometric abstractions painted
by Mondrian at the beginning of the
20th century have prepared us to see this.
Mondrian was Dutch like Vermeer and
was inspired by him.
Johannes Vermeer, Woman in Blue Reading a

Letter, c. 1663, 47 x 39 cm, Amsterdam,
Rijksmuseum, on loan from the City of Amsterdam
(A. van der Hoop Bequest)
The soft light signs from the left onto the face of the woman, and highlights her blue
jacket and carefully lights up the texture of the back wall, and the left edge of the map that
hangs there.
Unifying light is a key to the sense of harmony in Vermeer's pictures. In many paintings
by Vermeer we see a woman reading a letter. Letter writing had become fashionable as the
number of people who could write and read grew. Manuals on how to write
correspondence were published. The most common were love letters, and that is probably
what we see here.
The map behind the woman is probably a reference to an absent husband, who is out in
the world. We know of the pair of matching paintings by a contemporary of Vermeer
named Gabriël Metsu that shows a man writing a letter in one picture, and a woman
reading it in another. They are in the National Gallery of Ireland in Dublin if you want to
see them.
In this picture the light that signs on the woman indicates that she is standing in front of
the window. In most other Vermeer paintings there actually is a window on the left. This,
again, evokes the absence of the sender.
The careful intense reading of the woman and her parted lips add a sense of suspense.
We can be pretty sure that this is a love letter. But we want to know more. Vermeer leaves
us guessing and hooked onto the painting.

This is also from the 1660s, like the other
two pictures that we have seen. To my eye
it is not as beautiful as those works, but is
very useful to explain Vermeer's art.
Allusions to music in paintings, as occurs
here with a lute, were associated with
love, because both implied harmony. This
indicates that the letter that the lady in
yellow shows her maid is a love letter.
The design of the space in this picture is
meant to make us feel as voyeurs,
as uninvited guests, that look
into a private space. This is typical of
Vermeer's art. We look through a door into
the main room from an adjacent dark
space.
Johannes Vermeer, Love Letter, c. 1667, 44

x 38 cm, Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum
Vermeer emphasizes the feeling that we are outsiders by using the system of linear

perspective that was invented in the early Renaissance. Several lines in this painting
would intersect if they were extended.
One is formed by the bottom limit of a map hardly visible in the dark area to the left.
Others are the receding tiles on the floor, the arm of the lute held by the woman, and
the stick of the broom in the lower right. They all converge above the chair that we see in
the right foreground, in the dark. Vermeer is trying to keep our sight away from
the broom in the background.
On the floor, near the door, are a broom and a pair of shoes. They also hold us back, who
would have to move them to walk in any further. By doing this Vermeer tries to
emphasize the sense that we do not belong in the other room, that we are looking at
something private.
Lecture 30: Gerard ter Borch (1617 - 1681) and Pieter de Hooch (1629 - 1684). Dutch
Domestic Interiors
Vermeer's paintings seem so definitive, so perfectly resolved, that there is a tendency to

see him as an isolated figure, a painter without a context. I often find this in conversations
with people who admire his art. But Vermeer's paintings emerged from a new type of
society that existed in The Netherlands in the second half of the 17th century.

It was made up of an elite of merchants and it had a larger middle class than other parts of
Europe. These people demanded a new type of art. And painters reacted by making new
products. One of them was paintings of domestic interiors. This includes Vermeer's works
but also similar pictures by many other artists.
In this video we will look at two of them, two Dutch 17th-century painters specialized in
domestic interiors: Gerard ter Borch and Pieter de Hooch.
Ter Borch actually met Vermeer once, even though he was not from Delft.
The Netherlands was a small country and it was easy to travel between cities. From
about 1645 Ter Borch specialized in scenes such as the one that we see here.
This is some five years earlier than

Vermeer's paintings of similar things.
Ter Borch influenced his younger
colleague.
He was the first to specialize in this type
of image of elegant interiors, with a few
figures involved in what appear to be
casual activities.
The figures here are concentrated in their
activities. They are unaware of our
presence. They make us feel that we
are peering into an intimate private scene.
Gerard ter Borch, A Young Woman at her Toilet with

a Maid, c. 1650, 47 x 35 cm, New York, The
Metropolitan Museum of Art, Gift of J. Pierpont
Morgan, 1917
There was a taste in The Netherlands at this time for poems and texts dealing with
women who are both attractive and out of reach. That is exactly the mood that we often
find in Ter Borch's paintings. Many of the women in his pictures have the same features.
This is because he very often used one of his sisters as a model.
The title of this painting is "A Young Woman at Her Toilet with a Maid”. We need titles to
refer to paintings to know what we are talking about. But in the vast majority of the cases,
titles were not given by the authors. They appear when paintings were first documented
in inventories of collections or catalogues of sales, or when they enter museums.

In this other painting we see Ter
Borch's mastery when painting
fabrics, especially sateen.
Many paintings of domestic
interiors like Ter Borch and other
Dutch specialists include young men
and women. In some cases
the presence of musical
instruments, unmade beds in the
background, playing cards or other
elements identified with indecent
behavior indicate that the
scenes deal with the theme of love
and the promise of sex. But in many
cases were left guessing.
Gerard ter Borch, Gallant Conversation, c. 1654, 71 x 73

cm, Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum
That is what happens here. A young man with a sword hanging from his belt shares a
room with two young women. He directs his gesture towards one of them, whose face we
do not see. We do not know what their talking about, but is easy to see this as a scene
of some kind of courtship. In the 18th century this was named parental admonition, as if
the man was the father of the woman that we see from the back. This is highly unlikely.
Pieter de Hooch is the other main

precedent for Vermeer. He worked in
Delft during his youth until he
left to Amsterdam in 1660. Delft had
25,000 inhabitants at the time. He and
Vermeer must have known each
other.
De Hooch's early interior scenes are
a few years earlier than Vermeer’s.
They show middle class interiors,
with figures most often involved in
homely duties. Here we see a
woman, dressed in modest clothes,
which may imply that she is a maid.
Pieter de Hooch, Woman with a Child in a

Pantry, c. 1658, 65 x 60 cm, Amsterdam,
Rijksmuseum

She is handing a jar over to a boy. Through a door we see a room with a chair on a
platform. It is meant to keep it from the damping cold floor.Above is a portrait of the
absent man of the house.
Spatial clarity, use of adjacent spaces, and a preference for earth tones are characteristic of
this artist. De Hooch was not as good at painting figures as Vermeer or ter Borch, but he
makes up for this by the tenderness with which he portrays domestic life.
Another very attractive feature of this artist is his taste for unpolished rough textures. In
de Hooch we find something that we do not see in paintings by his Dutch peers, a taste for
the wear and tear of everyday life.
Originally a painting hung on the wall behind the woman just above her head. You can
see it better in this detail, above the head of the woman and above the door. After
including it in the scene De Hooch decided to remove it. Even though they look very
realistic paintings of domestic interiors made in The Netherlands in the 17th century are
very carefully designed.
This is another painting by de Hooch,

painted around 1660. The light that comes
in from the background, the spatial
geometry, and the range of colors are
characteristic of the artist.
In the foreground there is a woman
preparing bread and butter for a child,
presumably her son. He seems to be
the praying.
Behind the door is a building with a sign
that says “Schole" or school, that must be
where the boy is preparing to go.
Between the room in the foreground and
the street outside is another room where
we can see the silhouette of a man,
presumably the father.
Pieter de Hooch, A Woman preparing Bread and

Butter for a Boy, c. 1660, 68 x 53 cm, Los Angeles,
The J. Paul Getty Museum, digital image courtesy
of the Getty's Open Content Program
This painting is like a diagram of what life should be like in the minds of 17th
century Dutchmen. It expresses an ideal of domestic life, based on maternal care, which
will prepare the child for his future in the outside world.

To me the beauty of the paintings of domestic interiors has to do with how they did so
much with so little, with noticing the difference between the particular key of each artist.
The stylized figures and beautiful surfaces of ter Borch for example, or the traces of life in
the textures of de Hooch, or the sense of timeless perfection in Vermeer. But for
contemporaries they must have also seen radically new. They put their own time and
place center stage. The differences in subject matter from traditional mainstream art must
have seemed conspicuous and exciting to them.
For Francisco de Zurbarán see the relevant section of Jonathan Brown, The Golden Age of
Painting in Spain.
The literature of still life painting tends to focus on specific countries (Still life painting in
the Netherlands, or Italy, or Spain, etc). An exhibition in 2010 at the Museu Calouste
Gulbenkian, In the Presence of Things. Four Centuries of European Still-Life
Painting tried to correct this. The authors of the catalog are Peter Cherry, John
Loughman, Lesley Stevenson.
For Frans Hals, see the book by Seymour Slive, Frans Hals, 2014.
For Rembrandt, see The Rembrandt Book, by Gary Schwartz, of 2006.
For Vermeer, see Walter Liedtke, Vermeer. The Complete Paintings, 2012.
For Gerard ter Borch, Pieter de Hooch and paintings of Dutch domestic interiors, try to
find the catalogue of an exhibition that I curated at the Prado in 2003, "Vermeer and
the Dutch Interior". These painters are also covered in a very good, and very
comprehensive (and large) survey of Dutch painting from the 17th century: "The
Golden Age: Dutch Painters of the Seventeenth Century", by Bob Haak, of 1996.

Lecture 31: The Eighteenth Century
In the history of art, the eighteenth century actually can be set to begin at the end of the
seventeenth. As the foundations of absolute monarchies were being weakened, the display
of splendor increased.
This is obvious in the reign of the most powerful man in Europe at the beginning of the
18th century, Louis XIV, king of France, whose reign had begun in 1643, and lasted
over 70 years. I show you here a portrait of his, dated in 1701.
He invested heavily in architecture, decoration, sculpture

and painting, with one single goal in mind: glorifying the
king, glorifying himself.
By the early eighteenth century, the sumptuous taste and
grand style favored by Louis XIV were being imitated in all
of Europe.
Hyacinthe Rigaud, Louis XIV, King of France, 1701,

238 x 149 cm, Madrid, Museo Nacional del Prado
A comparison between these two images is very telling of how much taste and style
changed at the beginning of the eigthteenth century.
Diego Velázquez, Las Meninas, 1656, Louis Michel Van Loo, La familia de Felipe V, 1743, 408 x
318 x 276 cm, Madrid, Museo Nacional 520 cm, Madrid, Museo del Prado
del Prado

On the left is 'Las Meninas’, an image of the Spanish court, painted in 1656. In aesthetic
terms, this is restrained. To the right is an image of the family of another Spanish king,
Philip V; this is two kings later (the painting is from 1743).
Clothes, architectural setting, colors, even the way in which the draperies are painted,
with a grand red curtain flowing behind the figures, they all act as a spectacular stage set,
meant to enhance the grandeur of the king. One hundred years earlier this would have
seemed tacky, ostentatious. In the 1700 all who could were renovating their house and
wardrobe to make it look like this.
Louis XIV died in 1715, and was succeeded by his

great-grandson Louis XV. Here we see the five-year-old
boy.
The face of the king now seems but secondary feature
of the grand display of symbols of his wealth and
power. The decorative richness of this kind of art was
so overwhelming that it became cumbersome, and
moderating trend soon appear. This is known as
the Rococo style.
Hyacinthe Rigaud and workshop, Louis XV at the Age of Five in the

Costume of the Sacre, c. 1716-24, 196 x 141 cm, New York, The
Metropolitan Museum of Art, Purchase, Mary Wetmore Shively
Bequest, in memory of her husband, Henry L. Shively, M.D., 1960
This is an example of a Rococo

interior decoration: it shows the 'Salon
de la Princesse', in the Hotel Soubise,
in Paris, from around 1740.
Rococo is similar to the late Baroque
or late seventeenth century style, but
toned down a bit; it tries to be
pleasing rather than imposing.
Salon de la Princesse, Hôtel de Soubise,

Paris, c. 1740
Paintings were very often subservient to larger decorative ensembles. Easel paintings,
paintings meant to be seen independently, became smaller in size, and more light-hearted
in tone. Works by Watteau and Boucher and Fragonard, the most successful painters
associated with the Rococo style, dealt with themes associated with the pleasures of life.

From 1737 public exhibitions of art were held periodically in Paris; they were known as
the Salon. This was still at a time when museums did not exist as they do today; in the
Salon exhibitions, more than ever before, art was seen publicly by large numbers of
people, and commented upon, subjected to criticism or to praise. Painting gained an
important place in public life in Paris at this time.
During the Renaissance and the seventeenth century, artistic trends were set in Italy.
From the late seventeenth century and throughout the eighteenth century, they came
from Paris. The preeminence of French taste is thus a defining feature of eighteenth
century art.
It's important that we keep in mind that this does not mean that there was more talent
there than elsewhere, or that art made in France is more interesting. Among the greatest
painters of the time are Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, from Venice, and other painters from
that city, such as Canaletto and Guardi, or the Spaniard Goya, to name but a few. But
during the eighteenth century, artistic trends were set in France, and followed in the rest
of Europe, and in the Americas.
In the enchanting and ornate Rococo style there's something evasive; a removal from a
social, political and cultural reality that was growing more and more menacing by the
second half of the eighteenth century, and the years leading up to the outbreak of the
French Revolution in 1789.
It was gradually replaced by the style that we know as Neoclassicism. This term can be
used in two ways. It can refer to any work of art that is based on classical Antiquity, even
works of art made today. Or can be used with a capital ’N', to refer to the style prevalent
in Europe from about 1760 to the beginning of the nineteenth century. That's how we're
using the term here. It is characterized by a renewed interest in Classical Antiquity, by the
rejection of superfluous decoration and a preference for straight lines and angles, and by
its serious tone.
This is a building made in France in

1775. Comparison with the
Rococo interior that we saw earlier, is
very telling of how drastic the change
was.
Neoclassicism was adopted by elegant
society all over the continent in dress
and architecture, sculpture and in
painting.
Building from the architectural complex of the

Royal Salt Works, Arc-et-Senans, France, 1775

This is a portrait of an English aristocrat painted
by Pompeo Batoni. He specialized in portraits of
wealthy men and women who travelled to Rome
to learn firsthand about the works of art of
Antiquity.
The statue and vase behind him are actually very
well-known works from Antiquity, the
Ludovisi Mars, and the Medici Vase.
While for many Neoclassicism was simply a new
trend, for others it became the style they identified
with a radically new era. For this faction it was an
art that was less superfluous, more truthful and
virtuous that the art of the past. It was this
faction that chose Neoclassicism as the art of
the Revolution.
Pompeo Batoni, Portrait of John Talbot, later 1st Earl Talbot,

1773, 274 x 182 cm, Los Angeles, The J.Paul Getty Museum,
digital image courtesy of the Getty's Open Content Program
This position is best exemplified by the painter Jacques-Louis David. I show you one of

his paintings here. We will see it again in a later lecture.
It is an interesting paradox that a radical revolution chose a style which looked back, way
back for inspiration. David's art is too close to the Revolution, too militant, to express the
complex reality of life that it was for Europeans at the end of the eighteenth century. It
is Goya who best does this.
The dizzying reforms of the Revolution were hard to digest, and they caused strong
reactions throughout the continent. The promise of a better, fairer, future, and the security
of the past, seemed for a while to be equally close. And they both seemed frightening
and tempting at the same time.
Some of Goya's paintings show a rococo aesthetic that seems from a distant past. But he
also made works that look very modern, surprisingly close to our own times. They make
us feel that a fundamental shift was underway in the history of Europe, that an era
was ending, and that a very different one was about to begin.

Lecture 32: The Grand and Pleasant Art of Giovanni Battista Tiepolo (1696 - 1770)
Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, or Giambattista Tiepolo as he is also called, was from Venice,

the most vital of all Italian artistic centers in the eighteenth century. Tiepolo was making
important works by 1720’s.
His art is very theatrical; we feel when looking at his pictures that we are witnessing
grand, staged events. He usually paints figures in grandiose settings, dressed in historical
outfits and often in heroic attitudes.
Together with the sense of a staged spectacle, the other defining feature of Tiepolo's art
is the intense southern-feeling light that bathes and unifies his scenes. He specialized in
painting large frescoes and cycles of paintings for churches and for palaces.
This is one of several paintings that

Tiepolo made for a palace in Venice, in the
1720’s. We are not entirely sure, but
it probably shows a key event in the
history of ancient Rome: the conquest of
the city of Carthage, in present day
Tunisia, by the Roman Scipio Africanus
the Younger.
Subjects of this type were painted
because they could be associated to feats
by the patrons or institutions
commissioning the paintings.
Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, The Capture of Carthage,

1725–29, 411 x 377, New York, The Metropolitan
Museum of Art, Rogers Fund, 1965
In this case the idea was probably to call to mind recent campaigns by Venice
against Turkey, a long standing Mediterranean rival.
Part of what is attractive about this is a sense of stoic heroism, of self sacrifice in the
name of the higher goal (in this case Rome). Figures strike emphatic poses; they're
involved in an intense physical struggle. Look at the horse in the foreground, with legs
and neck flexed. The ruins that we see behind the city ramparts contribute to the nostalgic
air of the scene, as do the weathered banners and costumes.
Strong sunlight fills the scene; it is typical of Tiepolo to isolate few accents of strong local
color; we see this here in the red and the blue and the yellow.
A very attractive feature of Tiepolo's art is the spirited handling of the paint; what stems
from this is the impression of a great technical skill, an ease.

Tiepolo's technical skill and creative imagination allowed him to be incredibly
productive. He was hired all over Europe, from Germany to Spain, to work on
monumental decorations. In these he was often assisted by designers who also work
making stages for the opera.
His most important work is probably the decoration from 1750 to 1753 of the palace in
Würzburg, in Southern Germany.
Among the extensive fresco
decorations is this image, showing
the marriage of Emperor Frederick I
Barbarrosa in the 12th century.
Here we see the dazzling
theatricality, so characteristic of this
artist. Notice the stucco and
gilt feigned curtains, which are
drawn back to show the scene of the
wedding.
Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, The marriage of the

Emperor Frederick I to Beatrice, daughter of
the Count of Burgundy, 1750-53, 500 x 400
cm, Würzburg, Residenz
The figures appear to extend beyond the frame and into our space. Typically, this is seen
from below. The pale colors are a delight to see; grand and pleasing qualities that come to
mind when seeing Tiepolo's art. They're very typical of the taste of the early eighteenth
century.
This is an end of an era type of art; Tiepolo is much closer to Renaissance and to
seventeenth century painting than he is to the art of just 50 years after his death.
His art is the result of centuries of accumulated painterly skill and intelligence. Seeing
Tiepolo is like seeing a grand Hollywood-style movie. His paintings run the risk of
seeming inconsequential. But when this type of art works its magic, and Tiepolo it often
does, it connects with us, it gives form to a vocation for grandeur. Or perhaps it is better to
call it a longing;
Because of the settings and costumes, and the golden light that bathes the paintings,
what we see seems out of reach; it seems from the distant past. One critic has called
Tiepolo the painter of "the fabulous age of long ago”.

Tiepolo is one of the great painters of
sketches of any period. This painting
measures 60 x 48 cm, is fairly small. This
type of smallish, somewhat unfinished
painting, originated as a tool for preparing
larger works. But by Tiepolo's time,
sketches were often made with no practical
goal in mind. They catered to the taste for
unfinished, apparently spontaneous
pictures. They had a particular
attraction of making viewers feel that they
were close to the creative imagination of
the artist.
Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, The Adoration of the

Magi, 60 x 48 cm, date unknown, New York, The
Metropolitan Museum of Art, Rogers Fund, 1937
The spirited handling typical of Tiepolo reaches its height in this type of work.
Here we see the nervous handling of the brush; it creates a sense of visual excitement. We
also take pleasure in the viscosity of the paint as it is dragged into life by the brush.
Throughout the entire history of art there're works that make us especially aware of the
transformation of matter into art. This awareness is a source of fascination, and of
pleasure; it makes us see the work of art as a process, not as a finished, static thing.
It reminds me of how I feel when I see glaciers, or volcanic landscapes; I cannot separate
what I see from a sense of how it was before, or how has been transformed.
Tiepolo is also one of the most admired

draughtsmen in the history of art. For the most part
his drawings show the seriousness of purpose that
we see in his great frescoes. But he also made
caricatures.
Punchinellos were popular characters from street
comedies in Italy. Tiepolo drew them in comical
situations. Drawings like this were made not as
preparations for paintings, but as independent
works, that where purchased by collectors of
drawings.
Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, Punchinello´s Approaching a Woman,

c. 1730, 184 x 140 mm, drawing, pen and brown ink with brown
wash over black chalk, Los Angeles, The J. Paul Getty Museum,
digital image courtesy of the Getty's Open Content Program

The fluid outlines and the grey washes are characteristic of Tiepolo's drawings. Tiepolo's
son Domenico made similar drawings to these; Lorenzo, his other son, was also a very
gifted artist who continued the style of his father.
Lecture 33: The Seductive Charm of Watteau (1684 - 1721) and Boucher (1703 - 1770)
Watteau and Boucher represent fashionable painting in Paris during a large part of the
eighteenth century. Their art forms part of an artistic movement known as Rococo (or
sometimes, in France, style Louis XV).
This was a style that emerged in the decorative arts (the term is used for furniture,
designs for fabrics, tapestries, glassware, silverware and the like). It was a style
characterized by playful use of the exuberant curved lines, and rounded shapes, that look
for inspiration in the natural world, in trees and plants and shells. It is also characterized
by a preference for asymmetrical compositions and for bright, light colors (especially
blues, and greens and pinks).
In comparison to the grandeur and serious mood of much art and taste of the
seventeenth century, from which it ultimately derives, the Rococo is more playful and
light-hearted.
Watteau was the leading painter in early eighteenth century in Paris. His paintings
typically show outdoor settings, with men and women walking, or conversing, or playing
music, and dressed in elegant attire. Very often they evoke a mildly erotic mood.
Life in these pictures seems to be about the escapist and amorous fantasies of the
fashionable French bourgeoisie. This type of scene received the name of 'fête galante’
or 'Galant festivity’.
Their mood, the outdoor settings, and the range of tones, drew inspiration from Venician
painting of the Renaissance, and from Rubens, especially from his painting 'The Garden of
Love'.
In this picture, two couples, one seated and one

strolling, and the man with a lute seen from behind,
are shown in a lush natural setting, probably a park.
One of the men plays a flute, while he reads the score
held by the woman. The couple in the background
seem to walk deeper into the park.
A statue of a herm is at the upper right. Herms were
a type of statute very popular in Classical antiquity
that were placed outdoors and were associated with
fertility.
Antoine Watteau, The Perfect Accord, 1719, 33 x 28

cm, Los Angeles, L.A. County Museum of Art
(www.lacma.org), gift of The Ahmanson Foundation

The presence of this statute here is probably meant to imply that this forest is a place of
love. Music also refers to love, as is often the case when it appears in a painting. Frank
Sinatra sung a song called 'Music leads the way to romance’. Something like this is going
on here.
The painting is known as 'The Perfect Accord’. This title, "Perfect Accord" or "Perfect
Harmony", but in French, is contemporary to the painting; it draws a parallel between
musical harmony and the harmony between these men and women. The sensuous mood
is helped by the handling of paint.
You will find that Watteau's paintings are often interpreted as being melancholic, but it
does not seem that they were seen in that way during his short lifetime (he died, probably
of tuberculosis, at age 36). We know that contemporaries found Watteau's art fun cheerful,
full of life.
These are the paintings of a hedonistic dream. Their success in Paris at the beginning of
the eighteenth century is explained by the playful and sensous mood that followed the
oppressive lifestyle imposed by the French court at the end of the seventeenth and in the
first years of the eighteenth century. Watteau's main clients were bankers and members of
the Paris bourgeoisie.
Watteau also often painted scenes with characters from the Commedia dell'arte, a
popular form of theatre that had originated in Italy, and was extremely successful
in France at the time.
While in Watteau seem like poetic dreams, in Boucher, who was greatly influenced by
him, often turn into specific erotic content.
Boucher was born in 1703 and he died in 1770. He was extremely successful from
the 1730's onwards. He painted for King Louis XV of France, and for his circle, and he
reached the two highest positions in the French arts establishment: he was painter to the
king and director of the Royal Academy.
His art expresses the mood of this time in Paris: a mood that oscillated between a
celebration of pleasure, and decadent excess.
In paintings by Boucher such as this one we

find the mood and a type of design characteristic of
the Rococo period.
Here we see Venus, the goddess of love in ancient
mythology, attended by winged children. The
painting was commissioned for the king's mistress,
Madame de Pompadour.
The carved and guilt shapes of Venus' bed are
perfect examples of Rococo decoration. The soft,
voluptuous, naked body of the goddess is as
appealing as the sumptuous fabrics around her.
François Boucher, The Toilette of Venus, 1751, 108 x 85

cm,New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Bequest of
William K. Vanderbilt, 1920

The scene has a clear erotic quality. This is a woman meant to be desired. Madame
de Pompadour had starred just a year before this picture in a play staged at Versailles
titled "The toilette of Venus", like this painting. This is not a literal portrait of her, but it
does allude to her indirectly.
Boucher's paintings and designs were used in a decorative arts, in porcelain and
tapestries, for example.
This painting, known as

"The Fountain of Love”, was
made by him as a model for
a tapestry. The
sensuality and eroticism of
the image are typical of
Boucher's art.
The idealization of country
life as a harmonious state of
being, where men and
women were free
and inclined towards love,
had a long tradition in art
(literature and painting of
this type were known from
Antiquity as Pastoral).
François Boucher, The Fountain of Love, 1748, 295 x 339 cm, Los

Angeles, The J.Paul Getty Museum, digital image courtesy of the
Boucher painted many scenes of this type. The sexual connotations of the flute held by the
young man, and the garland of flowers carried by the woman on her left arm, are so
blatant that they need no further explanation.
Rococo art and painting reflect the glamour, but also the corruption of the French
aristocratic elite of much of the eighteenth century. It was a society characterized by the
abuse of power, by the widespread attainment of sex for money (the King Louis XV was
supplied with prostitutes by his mistress Madame de Pompadour, for example), and also
by an exaggerated and growing difference in wealth between the wealthiest and all the
rest.
This society and this type of art caused a strong reaction: in politics, the reaction is
the French Revolution; in art, it is the style known as Neoclassicism.
One final comment. Diderot once wrote about Boucher saying "The man is capable of
everything, except the truth”. I also have a sense that there's something excessive here;
like powerful fireworks without a matching content. To my eye, the most stimulating art
produced in France in the middle years of the eighteenth century were the decorative arts.

When seeing Rococo fabric designs, or furniture, or
pieces such as this beautiful bronze lamp, I'm amazed
at the incredibly skilled craft that has gone into objects
that didn't really need it, and at the very delicate form
of beauty that one finds in them.
François-Thomas Germain, silversmith; after designs by Pierre-

Constant d’Ivry, Lamp, 1756, gilt bronze, 91.5 cm in height, Los
Angeles, The J. Paul Getty Museum, digital image courtesy of the
Lecture 34: Caricature and Character in the art of WilliamHogarth (1697 - 1764)
William Hogarth is a fascinating artist; an individualist with a keen eye in an original

style; he's remembered mainly as a painter of moralist themes with a satirical tone.
He was very successful, both as a painter and printmaker. He worked on a large range of
subjects, from formal society portraits to satirical images dealing with many different
themes, such as political corruption, sex, crime, and other customs and problems of
modern urban life.
Hogarth was from London; his art reflects the consequences of the rapid growth of the
city and the transformation of its society. In the mid-eighteenth century London had
become the largest city in Europe, with approximately 700.000 people. Just a century
earlier it had been ten times smaller.
In this painting, known

as ‘A Midnight Modern
Conversation’, we see an
exaggerated portrayal of
the drinking clubs that
existed in London,
where men (including
Hogarth himself) would
meet. Hogarth paints a
very humorous image of
the result of the
William Hogarth, A Midnight Modern Conversation, c.1732, 76 x 164 cm,
New Haven, Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection

excessive drink. This is a variation on the type of subject known at the time as
`conversation pieces´. These were group portraits painted in small scale that usually
showed groups of figures in polite attitudes, drinking tea, or playing cards, or simply
engaged in conversation.
This subject was very popular in England at the time. Hogarth and his English
colleagues were inspired in this by similar paintings made in Holland in the seventeenth
century. Hogarth painted some proper conversation pieces, but many, such as the one that
we see here, are satirical; they offer criticism of society through comical means.
William Hogarth, Before, c.1730–1, 39 x 34 cm, Los William Hogarth, After, c. 1730–1, 39 x 34 cm,

Angeles, The J. Paul Getty Museum, digital image Los Angeles, The J. Paul Getty Museum
courtesy of the Getty's Open Content Program
Hogarth made several versions of a pair of images known as 'Before and After’. In one of
the other pairs (in the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge, you can look for it in the
Internet), it is clear that he's poking fun at a type of painting fashionable in France at this
time, in the work of artists such as Antoine Watteau and Boucher, which showed an
elegant man trying to seduce women with clear sexual purposes.
In this pair of paintings on the screen, which belongs to the Getty Museum in Los
Angeles, the gravity of the situation is more obvious. The man is trying to rape the young
woman, the table that she tries to hold on to offers little help. In the other painting in the
pair, the one titled ‘After', the frantic dog has fallen asleep (symbolizes satisfied desire)
and the mirror has broken after falling on the ground (it means that the woman’s virginity
has been lost).

The rapid rise in population in London,
as people from the country came into the
city, created a sense of disorder. One
problem was a dramatic increase in the
abuse of alcohol, particularly gin. It was
so large that it became known as 'The Gin
Epidemic’, or 'The Gin Craze’, and took
place during the first half of the
eighteenth century.
William Hogarth, Gin Lane, 1751, etching and

engraving; third state of three, 389 x 322 mm, New
York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, gift of
Sarah Lazarus, 1891
Massive consumption of alcohol and extreme drunkenness became pervasive. The

political consequences of this, and the attempts at legislation to remedy the problem, have
been compared to the drug situation in our own times.
This print, known as 'Gin Lane’, was created in this context. Hogarth uses satire to offer
scathing view of the problem.
The location that we see here has been identified as an area of London to the North
of Covent Garden. The city and its dwellers are ravaged by the effects of a excess of
drinking.
The woman in the foreground ignores the peril of her child; because of the effects of the
alcohol she can worry only about the snuff, or ground tobacco, that she's about to take.
Through an opening on the broken side of a building, to the right, we see a dead man
hanging. We also see an impaled child, and a woman being put into a coffin.
This print was sold, and showed in shop windows. It was very well known and
influential and the passing of legislation known as The Gin Act, in 1751, which managed
to reduce the problem of the excessive alcohol consumption.
Hogarth's prints were also known outside of England: prints allowed for a wide
dissemination of images. The combination of critical, reformist and satirical tone that we
find in these images influenced Goya at the end of the 18th century in Spain.

In this print, known as 'The Bench’, we see a
group of four judges uninterested in the case
that they're supposed to be hearing. Two read
papers related to other things, and two have
fallen asleep.
The undignified judges have actually been
identified. The largest man is Sir John Willes,
Chief Justice, who had a reputation for
immorality and was said to have 26
illegitimate children. The importance of their
job conveyed by the wigs and robes contrast
with their attitudes.
William Hogarth, The Bench, 1758, etching and

engraving; fifth state of five, 324 x 217 mm, New York,
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, gift of Sarah Lazarus,
1891
Above the judges is an unfinished addition to the print, made just before Hogarth's
death. It shows eight heads. Some are taken from Leonardo da Vinci's 'Last Supper’; one
reproduces one of the judges. To the right, the four faces are painted as character studies;
to the left, the faces are drawn as caricatures.
Two of the four faces on the left repeat, in caricature form, the faces to the far right.
Hogarth did this for a particular reason. At several points during his career he expressed
his disgust with critics who consider that all this art was a caricature. He wanted to be
more; a painter of high-minded ideas. He argued that he painted caricatures, but also
characters. And that painting characters was what the art of painting had been about since
the Renaissance.
In this print he wanted to show what the difference was between the two. The text below
the image refers to this. "Caricature was about comical resemblance", he writes; the
depiction of real character for him was a higher or more demanding goal. "The face is the
index of the mind", Hogarth writes in the inscription. To paint this well is extremely
difficult, worthy only of the great masters. "Critics branding all his work as caricatures" he
says, "did not understand the difference between the two”.

Lecture 35: Jacques-Louis David (1748 - 1825). Painter of the French Revolution
The French Revolution of 1789, and the events leading up to it, brought violent and
radical change to the old political and social order, first in France and then in the rest of
Europe.
In painting, the reaction was as radical as in politics. The hedonistic, enchanting images
made by Boucher and by other Rococo artists were suddenly seen by many in the 1770’s
as images of a decadent world. Fun and games were substituted by subjects of exemplary
seriousness, which extolled civic virtue. Voluptuous forms were substituted by emphatic
angles and straight lines. We know this new style as Neoclassicism.
The painter that best exemplifies this is Jacques-Louis David, who was born in Paris in
1748. He has become known as the painter of the French Revolution. He trained a large
number of artists who arrived in his studio from different areas of Europe, and through
them he made Neoclassicism the dominant artistic style in the continent for several
decades.
(Léon-Mathieu Cochereau, The Studio of Jacques-Louis David, 1814, 91 x 103 cm,

Los Angeles, L.A. County Museum of Art (www.lacma.org), gift of the 1993 Collectors
Committee, web page) This image is by one of his students, named Cochereau and shows
David's studio.
David’s most famous paintings, such as this 'Death of Socrates’ or 'The Oath of the
Horatii’ (which is in the Louvre, look for it in the Internet), are stern and dignified, to the
point that they seem to admonish us, to want to teach us a lesson.
It is easy to see in these works that the author thought seriously about his mission as an
artist, that he thought he had something very important to say. This painting is from 1787,
just two years before the final outbreak of the French Revolution that would change
politics in the Western world forever.
During his youth David spent five years in Italy, carefully studying the art of the past.
Shortly after his return to Paris in 1780 he became the leading painter there.
This painting was exhibited publicly after it was finished, and it became immensely
successful. Its moralizing theme, centered in self-sacrifice, struck a nerve. The strict
geometric clarity of the composition was seen as the perfect complement for its stoic
theme.
Socrates, the father of Western philosophy, had been condemned by the government
of Athens for not recognizing the gods recognized by the state. He was said to have drunk
the poison given to him stoically, and to have died willingly for his principles.
Plato, his most famous disciple, wrote about this (he didn't, actually, witnessed these
events). He said that as those present began to cry, Socrates asked them to stop. "I have
heard that one should die in silence" he said. He became a symbol of honesty and self-
sacrifice that was referred too often throughout the centuries.

Jacques-Louis David, The Death of Socrates, 1787, 129 x 196 cm, New York, The Metropolitan Museum
of Art, Catharine Lorillard Wolfe Collection, Wolfe Fund, 1931
Here Socrates, his facial features inspired by ancient statues known to David, is about to
pick up the cup of poison, while he preaches to his followers. He is ready to die
courageously, in full control. He, apparently, told his students "You go on to live, and I to
die, which is better, the gods only know”. The death of Socrates is a great episode
in Western culture.
But we're here to talk about David. The Greek philosopher is painted here like a guiding
light; the focus is on his intelligent gaze, and also on his unlikely athletic body (he was 70
years old when this happened). Neoclassical art brings us back to a highly idealized form
of painting; something similar to what took place in the art of Raphael during the
Renaissance or in the pictures of Guido Reni in the seventeenth century.
One of the hands of the philosopher points to the instrument of his death. The other
point upwards, to something higher, to something beyond. In the context of
the French Revolution it is hard not to see this as a reference to a need for sacrifice in the
name of higher principles, to sacrifice in the name of the Revolution.
Around the philosopher are his grieving followers. The composition is strictly ordered.
The forms are solid, and linear; this was equivalent to the grave, exemplary subject. The
composition is monumental. The relations of geometric shapes to each other form a
beautiful melody. Look at the angle formed by the line of shade in the upper right, and
how it counters or relates to the arch at the left, and both in turn relate to the straight
angles formed by arms and sitting bodies and the stone bench below.

All this is reminiscent of the art of Poussin, who David admired and looked to for
inspiration. To make this distance seems appear closer David paints the cracked corners
and imperfections of the stone wall and floor.
David played a leading political and artistic role during and after the French Revolution.
He was a member of the Jacobins, the most radical group in the Revolution, and was close
to Robespierre and Marat. His painting of the death of Marat is probably the most famous
image of the Revolution (look for it in the Internet).
In 1792 he was elected to the Assembly, where he voted in favor of the execution
of King Louis XVI and of his wife, among many others. His fortunes changed as the
Revolution went through its dizzying phases. After being imprisoned, he came into the
circle of Napoleon, who he first portrayed in 1798. He would become his greatest
publicist, making spectacular images of him being crowned emperor, for example.
I'm limited in what I can show you at David's art by the restrictions placed on images by
most museums. But look for images of Napoleon by David in the internet. It's really
striking to see how a military officer of the Revolution became a God-like figure in a short
span of time. His portraits by David show this very well. Compared to some of the
other images of Napoleon by David, this one what we see on the screen is close and
discrete.
We see Napoleon dressed in formal uniform, but

somewhat informally posed. He seems to be taking
a short rest from his work on the table behind him.
His cuffs are unbuttoned, and his hair is uncombed.
The candles seem to have been burning for a long
time, perhaps he's been working all night. The clock
actually points to 4:13, it must be 4:13 AM.
Papers with the letters “COD" refer to the French
Civil Code that he implemented; the sword alludes
to his equally important military achievements. A
closed book under the desk is Plutarch's volume on
the lives of exemplary Greek and Roman figures, a
reminder of the Classical references that were
constant at this time.
Jacques-Louis David, The Emperor Napoleon in His Study at

the Tuileries, 1812, 204 x 125 cm, Washington, The National
Gallery of Art, Samuel H. Kress Collection
The design of the furniture is of a neoclassical style. This painting was not commissioned
by Napoleon, but by a Scotsman who was admirer of his. But before being sent away from
Paris, it was exhibited and became influential.

When Napoleon was definitely overthrown after his defeat at Waterloo in 1815,
David, along with other supporters and members of Napoleon's circle were exiled
from France.
David settled in Brussels. He was aided there by former Belgian pupils of his, and he
painted extensively, until he died in 1825.
This was painted in 1815 (it is signed

with that date), just a few months before
David had to leave France for Brussels.
He was a marvelous portrait painter. This
shows the most personal side of his work.
This man, Delahaye, was a lawyer friend
of the artist, who handled his affairs.
Among other things, we know
that he helped the painter sell some of his
paintings in Paris after he had left for
Brussels. The dignified air of the man is
inspired by Roman Republican sculpted
portraits, which David studied and
admired in Rome.
Jacques-Louis David, Portrait of Jean-Pierre

Delahaye, 1815, 61 × 49 cm, Los Angeles, L.A.
County Museum of Art (www.lacma.org), gift of The
Ahmanson Foundation
The simplicity of the portrait relates to the idea of nobility and virtue then in vogue.
But David manages to make the man seem real, human, engaging, not distant.
A final thought on David. When confronted with his great paintings, like 'The Death of
Socrates’, we feel his enormous faith in the importance of what a painting can convey. On
the other hand, the sense of truth, is so absolute, so beyond doubt, that it's frightening;
I fear minds and historical moments like the ones that produced this. They seem to leave
no room for tolerance, for difference. In the end, I think that one measure of a great work
of art is that it can bring up moral queries such as this. Paintings that try to do so can seem
ridiculous. In the case of David they seem dead serious.

Lecture 36: Goya’s Rebellion (1746 - 1828)
Some artists seem to impose an agenda on reality; they paint to make a point. Goya is the
opposite; he is curious and intuitive; he tries to make sense of the changing world around
him, using art as his vehicle. In creative terms, he's rebellious and free spirited; he pushes
the expressive limits of painting.
He was from a small town in Aragón, in northern Spain. He was trained in the capital of
that region, Zaragoza, and he traveled to Italy as a young artist. In spite of this travel, a
sense that the classical tradition was only half learned, pervades his works. The distortion,
rather than a strict following of this tradition, is one of the defining features of his art.
In 1774, at age 28, he was hired to work for the court in Madrid, designing scenes for
tapestries. From that point on he would receive the highest posts available to artists in
Spain, and he would go on to have a very successful public career.
This is one of the many designs that Goya

made for weavers to use as models for
tapestries.
The tapestry was intended for the dining room
of the palace of the prince, the future king of
Spain. It shows us an artist who seems perfectly
in tune with Rococo taste then coming to an
end, but still prevalent in Europe.
The taste for light colors, and innocent themes,
such as the harvest in the fall season, was
common.
The figures are beautifully painted;
look especially at the child who we see from the
back, and at the face of the young woman who
carries the basket on her head.
Francisco de Goya, The Wine Harvest, 1786, 267 x 190

cm, Madrid, Museo Nacional del Prado
This is a delightful picture; it could seem escapist, in view of the grave tension then
emerging in the social and political structure of Europe. Keep in mind that the French
Revolution broke out in 1789; the king that was beheaded in that revolution, Louis XVI of
France, was a relative of the king of Spain who employed Goya.
If we look closely we see that things in this image are not as innocent, as they seem at
first sight. Masters and servants seem to look differently at things; the man and woman
and child who pick at the bunch of grapes are dressed in better clothes than the rest,
they appear to simply enjoy a day out in the country. But the gaze of the working woman
directs at us is different; it seems troubled, it makes her seem shy.

One of the workmen to the right, in the background stands and looks at the foreground
group. There's a clear awareness of class difference here; and of the problems that this
entails. Goya himself, as court painter, was a court servant. Like the people that we see
here, his position forced him to be close, but invisible at the same time.
The combination of a refined sense of beauty with a critical eye is constant in Goya's
work.
This young three or four year old boy

was the son of an aristocratic family from
Madrid. Goya became the fashionable
portrait painter in the city.
He signs the portrait in a piece of paper
held by the magpie in its beak.
The portrait is very beautiful: it
shows Goya's deep knowledge of the
possibilities offered by the medium of oil
paint. We should remember that, as court
painter of the Spanish King, Goya was
responsible for the care of the royal
collection, which included huge holdings
of paintings by Titian, and Rubens and
Velázquez and many others. He knew
these paintings by heart.
Francisco de Goya, Portrait of Manuel Osorio,

1787-1788, 127 x 101 cm, New York, The
Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Jules Bache
Collection, 1949
The red dress and the silver colored sash worn by the boy are beautifully matched and
delicately painted. The nuances of the green background are very subtle. The child is cute,
doll-like.
There have been many discussions about the accompanying group of cats and birds. For
some they are symbols of evil, which is a menace for the innocence of childhood. For
others, they just represent household pets. Both interpretations could make sense if you
look at how animals such as these were usually used in paintings at the time. Whether or
not they're intended to convey specific symbolic meaning (and I'm inclined to think not),
what it is clear is that, in a way that is typical of this artist, the animals add an element of
tension to the picture; the eyes of the cats fix on the magpie as on a pray.
Cautious and menacing attitude of these cats express an attitude towards life, a way of
being in the difficult world.

Goya made many drawings and prints,
which he published individually or as
bound series, throughout his life.
This is a drawing made in preparation for
a print of the series known as ‘Los
Caprichos’. As is often the case with Goya,
it criticizes social customs.
The object of the critique is unequal,
arranged marriage. A young woman is
tightly surrounded by four figures; she
seems accosted by them.
We see a deformed, ugly old man (the
suitor), and probably the father, the
mother, and the priest, who are all part of
this ugly business; the mother's cries seem
hypocritical in this contest.
She is in effect, selling her daughter to a
wealthy old man, presumably in exchange
for money.
Francisco de Goya, Sacrificio de interés, 1796-97,

drawing, 238 x 170 mm, Madrid, Museo Nacional
del Prado
Goya remained committed to this and other themes supported by reformists all over
Europe at the time.
Here we see, some 25 years later, a drawing
with an inscription that reads “Bad Husband”
It is drawn with black chalk on a rough paper.
Here you see how Goya distorts anatomy for
the sake of expression. He's an amazing
draughtsman. His standards are very
different from those of most earlier and
contemporary artists, more closely linked to
the classical tradition. Instead of correct
anatomical rendition, and the use of ancient
status as aesthetic guides, he is subjective, he
seeks to create a personal version of
humanity. In this sense his precursors are
artists such as Pieter Bruegel the Elder, and
Rembrandt.
Francisco de Goya, “Mal Marido” (“Bad Husband”), c.

1824-28, drawing, 185 x 135 mm, Madrid, Museo
Nacional del Prado

Goya was not a political person in a specific, partisan sense; but he was deeply sensitive
to the human condition, and thus to all that affected it.
Before and during the French Revolution, like reformists all over Europe, he probably
looked to France as a political ideal. But in 1808, when the army is associated with the
Revolution, those of Napoleon, invaded Spain, a traumatic contradiction arouse in Goya:
those representing his ideals have become invaders. To make things more complicated,
Goya was royal painter; this meant that he would paint for the new king installed by
Napoleon, his brother Joseph Bonapart. And when Napoleon was finally defeated in 1814,
he would go back to paint for the reinstated Spanish king. But then an ultraconservative
reaction followed, and the aged Goya felt increasingly uncomfortable in that environment.
In 1824 he left Madrid for France. He settled in Bordeaux, and he died there in 1828.
This painting on the screen is

among the works he painted that
are directly connected to the war. It
shows events that took place on
May 3, 1808.
Francisco de Goya, The Third of May,

1814, 266 x 345 cm, Madrid, Museo
Nacional del Prado
After the French troops entered Madrid and were met by popular resistance, the
insurgents were defeated; this scene was inspired by the execution of these insurgents by
the French army.
We don't know if Goya witnessed these events; in any case, he did not paint this until 6
years later, in 1814, when the French troops had been expelled from Madrid. When the
war started Goya was 62 years old. His main business during the 6 years of war was
probably surviving. He made some prints where he seems like a baffled witness of the
barbaric behavior unleashed by war.
In this painting blame is played squarely on the French army. But the tone is not a
propaganda; the focus is on the anonymity of the modern executing army. And especially
on terror and death. Notice the eyes and hands; they carry much of the expressive weight
of the scene. And also notice the non-classical and subjective depiction of human bodies.
The man with a white shirt, and one of the dead bodies, are painted with extended arms.
They would have reminded contemporary viewers of the crucified Christ. The man in
white even has wounds in the palms of his hands. Goya is not making specific reference to
Christ; he's appealing to the idea of sacrifice, so strongly linked in the European tradition
to the crucifixion.

In Goya's biography, the trauma of war was added to the fact that he had become deaf
for life years earlier, in 1793.
There's a sense in Goya's very abundant in paintings and drawings and prints, of a
growing introspection and fantasy.
This is one of a group of etchings

that he probably made around
1815 or 1820. It shows a woman
being abducted by a horse.
In the background are two giant
rats; one is eating a woman.
Francisco de Goya, “Caballo raptor”, c.

1817-1819, etching with aquatint, 245 x
356 mm, Madrid, Museo Nacional del
Prado
Goya's imagination has taken over here: we don't have any clues to interpret the image.
It is dreamlike; it could seem frightening, but the woman been taken by the horse does not
appear scared.
In many of Goya's works images are ambiguous. This is a quality of his. Images, by
nature are more ambiguous than words. Yet in art very often they're forced to convey
something very specific. Goya seems to foster ambiguity; he uses images to let his, and
our imagination wonder.
Goya's curiosity and his ability to explore the

world through his art are marvelously shown in
this drawing, which he made late in his life.
It is the image of a man who is old and frail and
need of two sticks to walk. It's accompanied by
an inscription that reads "Aun aprendo" or "I'm
still learning".
Aged about 80 years old, he seems rebellious, in
this case against his age; as fascinated as ever
with everything around him.
Francisco de Goya, “Aun aprendo” (“I am still learning”),

1824-26, drawing, black chalk, 191 x 145 mm, Madrid,

(As always, remember that the bibliography on all the artists that we have covered in this
course is immense. What we suggest here is only a very basic guide to leading
general studies that exist in English on each artist)
A good introduction to the art of painting in the 18th century is provided by a book that
we recommended for the seventeenth century: 17th and 18th Century Art; Baroque
Painting, Sculpture, Architecture, by Julius S. Held, Donald Posner.
For Tiepolo, I recommend that you read Giambattista Tiepolo, 1696-1770, by Keith
Christiansen. This is the catalog of an exhibition held at the Metropolitan Museum of
Art in 1996. Try find this in the Metropolitan web page. Many of the museum´s
publications can be downloaded on-line.
For Watteau, see the book Antoine Watteau, by Donald PoAntoine Watteasner, of 1984. For
Boucher, see the publication that accompanied the exhibition devoted to the artist in
1986-87 at the Metropolitan Museum in New York, the Grand Palais in Paris, and the
Detroit Institute of Art: Alastair Lang, François Boucher (1703-1770).
The most complete study of Hogarth´s art is Ronald Paulson, Hogarth, 3 vols, published in
1991-93.
For Jacques-Louis David, see D. Johnson, Jacques-Louis David: Art in Metamorphosis, 1993.
For the artistic context from which this painter emerged, see also T. Crow, Painters
and Public Life in in Eighteenth-Century Paris, of 1985.
For Goya, see the catalogue of the recent exhibition (2015) held at the Museum fo Fine arts
in Boston, “Goya. Order and Disaster”. You can also use the monographic
study Francisco Goya y Lucientes 1746-1828, by Janis Tomlinson (1994). For the
fascinating late work by this artist, see also Goya´s Last Works, by Jonathan Brown
and Susan Grace Galassi.

Lecture 37: Women Painters
The number of women painters active in Europe from the 15th to the 18th century was
small. The main reason for this is that social prejudices did not allow women to freely
pursue artistic careers. Also, not enough attention has been devoted to those woman
painters that actually existed. A corrective trend has been underway since the 1960's or
70’s.
The image on the screen shows Sofonisba

Anguissola working on a painting. She
was an important artist, active during the
Renaissance. We will talk about her a little
more in a moment.
The roles assigned by society to women
in Europe during the 15th to the 18th
centuries allowed them little
independence from their fathers or
husbands. This affected not only the arts
but many other areas.
Sofonisba Anguissola, Self-portrait at the Easel

Painting a Devotional Panel, c. 1556, 66 x 57 cm,
Lancut, Muzeum-Zamek
We should remember, for example, that women did not start to practice as doctors or as
lawyers until the second half of the 19th century and that they were not given the same
voting rights as men until well into the 20th century. Since it was not generally accepted
that women could work outside of the house, it was difficult for them to be formed as
artists.
The standard training for painters involved moving into the house of a painter at about
age twelve for a period of three to four years. The apprentice would work in the master's
workshop providing assistance in practical matters, in exchange for professional
instruction and basic education. This was not acceptable for a girl at the time.
Another problem had to do with the actual practice that was necessary to become a
painter. Since the Renaissance, it was paramount for aspiring artists to learn how to draw
the human body. This was done from casts of ancient statues, from prints and increasingly
also from live models, often nude live models. Women were barred from this.
The few women that did become painters did so because of two main reasons, either
they were from noble families which allowed them exceptional freedom for that time, or

they were daughters of painters and could be taught at home. So, throughout the 15th to
the 18th centuries women painters remained exceptional.
What is important is that we realized that women don't have less artistic talent than men
they simply had fewer opportunities to develop it. We're going to see works by three of
the most important women painters in Europe, but I need to explain one thing first.
If we separate woman painters from painters in general, we're implying that if we don't
create this category we would not include their work in this survey of European art.
To some extent, who we consider important is a matter of taste and personal criteria, but
it is true that until recent times the history of European art has been overwhelmingly
dominated by men. If this is the case, why devote some time to the exceptions? There are
two reasons, one is that, since the 1960’s, recovering the place in history of women artists,
highlighting their achievements, and calling attention to their plight, had become the
goals of a number of art historians.
This is done with the intention of contributing to correct inequalities that persist in
society today, even if to a lesser degree than in the past.
The second reason has to do with bringing art history closer to the experience of at least
half of the public which is made up of women. It is logical that we all seek in the past
experiences close to around.
For example, it is typical for people to go to a museum in a foreign city, and look for
paintings by artists from their own countries. They feel proud of them.
Likewise, the experience of women painters at a time when their gender was a very
strong impediment for following their vocation, naturally, interests women today.
Sofonisba Anguissola, who we mentioned earlier and who we see in this delicate self
portrait of about 1556, may be the most important woman painter from the Renaissance.
She was from Cremona in Northern Italy. She was born in a noble family who took the
unusual step of forming her as a painter. When she was in her twenties she moved to
Spain to enter the service of the wife of King Philip II, the French Princess, Isabel of Valois.
It was customary at the time for members of the nobility to serve royalty. She stayed in
the Court over ten years and received the high praise as a courtier and also as a painter.
Even though it was not her main duty, we know that she painted portraits of members of
the royal family.
Sofonisba also worked in Genoa and in Sicily. She lived a very long life. When she was in
her nineties, Van Dyke, over sixty years younger than her, visited her in Palermo and
drew a portrait of her. Look for it in the Internet. It is a testimony of her fame.
Sofonisba painted many self portraits like the one that we see here, far more than most
other contemporary artists. Given that many other women painters that we know did the
same, this may reflect the need for self assertion. Sofonisba may also have been
encouraged to paint herself by a classical precedent that was mentioned by Pliny the Elder
in his book "The Natural History", the best known source for information that existed on
ancient painting. Pliny discussed several women painters, explaining that most of them
had been trained by their fathers. The one that he described more fully, named Liya, he
said painted many self portraits.

This is a painting by Clara Peeters.
She was from Antwerp and painted
at the beginning of the 17th century.
We don't know much about her
life. A few documents mention her
as practicing her art in Amsterdam
and in The Hague. All the paintings
that we know by her are still lives.
Clara Peeters, Still-life, 1611, 52 x 73 cm,

This genre was easy for a woman to practice because it did not need knowledge of human
anatomy.
This painting shows a table set with flowers, dried fruits, nuts, wine, biscuits and other
objects. All carefully and beautifully described. Notice the skill of the artist in drawing the
shapes and textures of the objects.
There are several tiny self portraits of the artist inside this painting, reflected on two of
the objects on the table. Here you see one of them, the center of this goblet and again here,
on the pitcher, next to the reflection of the window there's one tiny self portrait at the
bottom and another further up, on the concave part of the pitcher, upside down.
Artimisia Gentileschi is the most famous woman painter of the seventeenth century.
She is roughly contemporary with Clara Peeters. She was one of the leading Caravaggisti
in Europe, that is one of the leading painters that followed closely the style of Caravaggio.
Historians who specialized in the study of women painters have described her art as
showing a distinctly female perspective on themes commonly painted by other artists. She
painted women as persons at a time when they were usually depicted in a very
stereotyped way.
Artemisia worked in Rome, in Florence, in Venice, Naples and also in London for high
ranking patrons. She was the daughter of one of the leading painters of the time, Orazio
Gentileschi. The fact that he could train her provided a path towards a profession,
otherwise closed to women.
With Orazio Gentileschi and Artemisia, his daugther, there has been a change in fortune
similar to that which has occurred with Diego Rivera and his wife Frida Kahlo. Because
of the interest in the issue of the woman painter in recent decades, the two women, who
were relatively little-known half a century ago, have become more popular than their
father and husband respectively.
During her youth, Artemisia lived through a very traumatic incident. She was raped by a
well known painter named Agostino Tassi who had been hired to teach her to paint
architectural perspective. Detailed accounts of this event are recorded in documents from
the trial that followed which ended with Tassi being imprisoned, if only for eight months.

This picture was probably painted in
1612 or 1613, not long after the rape took
place. It is natural to see this spectacular
and horrific image as reflecting her
trauma.
The picture shows the biblical story of the
Jewish widow Judith who saved her city
by approaching the Babylonian General
Holofernes, enemy of Israel, getting him
drunk and then beheading him.
Artemisia Gentileschi, Judith and Holofernes, c.

1612, 159 x 125 cm, Naples, Museo di
Capodimonte
This was a fairly common theme at the time. Caravaggio and Rubens both painted it, a
work that Artemisia probably knew, but it was made especially violent by her. She seems
to take pleasure in the gory details of the beheading.
Lecture 38: The Role of Patrons
Artists and their creations are conditioned by circumstances beyond their actual practice.
One of the most important is the people they paint for, the patrons.
During the fifteenth to the eighteenth century, most art of the highest level, the kind of
art that has made it into the history of art, was made on commission. It was made for
either a private person or an institution which most often was the Church but it could also
be a guild or confraternity or another kind of organization.
These persons and institutions very often had much to say about the content and the
style of the works they paid for.
From the beginning of the sixteenth century the number of works of art made not on
commission, before the open market, began to grow, changing the dynamics of how artists
could make money for their work. But, it remained true that at the end of the eighteenth
century, most high-level art was made on commission.
Even though there are important precedents, it was during the Renaissance that
collecting art took off on a very grand scale. Rulers, aristocrats, and the urban elites spent
large sums of money as they competed to show their wealth and sophistication and fell
under the seductive power of great art.

Anonymous German painter, Christ Blessing, Surrounded by a Donor Family, c. 1573-1582, 80x 96 cm,
New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Gift of J. Pierpont Morgan, 1917
Here, I show you an anonymous German painting of the late sixteenth century. We don't
know who these people are.
This kind of portrait, where the person or persons paying for a painting have themselves
included in the image, is known as a donor portrait. These people paid to seem pious that
is why they share the space with Jesus and they also paid to be recognized as wealthy and
sophisticated art patrons.
Patrons very often had an important say even in creative aspects of a painting. There are
many examples of this.
We know of a contract from fifteenth century Padua in Italy where the patron set the
following conditions: The artist should fresco the ceiling of the chapel with four prophets
or evangelists, the contract says, against the blue background with stars and fine gold. In
the said chapel, the contract continues, he should make an altarpiece where he is to paint a
story similar to that in the design which is in this sheet. He's to make it similar to this but
to make more things than are in the set design.
Here's another example of a

patron giving instructions to
a painter about what he
wants.
It is for a painting by El
Greco, known as 'The Burial
of the Count of Orgaz’. It was
painted in the 1580's for a
church in Toledo where it still
hangs.
El Greco, detail, The Burial of the Count of Orgaz, 1586-1588, 480

x 360 cm, Toledo, Church of Santo Tomé

What you see in the image is the lower part of the painting. The priest who ordered the
picture gave Greco the following instructions:
The painting must show how St Augustine and St Steven came down to assist in the
burial of the Count of Orgaz. One holding his head and the other his feet with many
people around them.
The patron, in this case the church priest, wanted to show that because of the donations
that he had given to the church two saints had supposedly assisted in the actual burial of
the Count of Orgaz.
The way in which patrons affected art are as varied as life itself. We have just seen two
examples of patrons who wanted to control the content of a picture. There are also some
who are more interested in the quality of art than in its content.
In Rome, in the seventeenth century, a patron told an artist "as for the subject I leave it up
to you whether to make it sacred or profane, with men or with women".
It was typical for patrons to seek out an artist and then provide him or her with
instructions, before a contract was signed.
Based on these instructions, the artist would often make a sketch or a model or draw
plans of some sort for the patron to see, before making the final work.
It was also common for artists to be given information on things such as where a
painting would hang and where light would come from.
In the early Renaissance, careful specific cases where given by patrons about the use of
expensive materials such as ultramarine blue or gold but as time went by the cost of
materials lost importance and the creativity of the artist, his or her authorship, became
more and more important.
Studies that have been conducted in different cities show that, by and large, patrons
decided prices more than artists. This shows that patrons had the upper hand but there
were exceptions based on the fame and personality of an artist or on the economic
conditions of a given time and place.
In 1649 a famous patron from Messina, Don Antonio Ruffo, offered to pay Guercino, one
of the leading painters of the day, less than half what he was asking to make a picture for
him. The painter answered that in that case he would paint for him a little more than half
a figure. Guercino finally got paid what he was asking for.
Working for a Court was the highest post that one could aspire to at this point, specially,
where large important Courts existed in cities like London, Madrid and Paris. It meant a
steady salary and also prestige which helped secure other clients but it also meant being
subject to the strict hierarchy and etiquette of court society.
Andrea Mantegna worked for the Court of the Dukes of Mantua and later, in the late
fifteenth and early sixteenth century, Leonardo worked for the Courts in Milan and
France. In the seventeenth century Rubens, and Van Dyke, and Velázquez, were among
the many examples of court artists.

Where neither the Court nor the Church were important sources of patronage, as was the
case in Amsterdam in the seventeenth century, painters such as Rembrandt relied on the
patronage of civil institutions such as militia companies and on private collectors.
Some patrons have had an impact that goes far beyond an individual work of art or even
the career of an individual artist.
The city of Rome that we see today is largely the result of the combined visions of artists
and of the post that were their patrons and guided their works during the sixteenth and
the seventeenth centuries.
The image that we see on the screen

shows the square in front of St Peter's
Basilica, commissioned by Pope Alexander
VII in 1656, from Bernini one of the
greatest architects and sculptors in the
history of Europe.
St Peter's Basilica itself was the result of
the patronage of earlier Popes and
involved artists of the calibre of
Michelangelo.
Rome, Vatican City, Saint Peter's Basilica
He was appointed head architect of St Peter's by Paul III and he designed much of the
building including the spectacular dome.
The Medici family in Renaissance Florence, the Kings of Spain, especially Philip II, in the
second half of the sixteenth century, or Louis XIV of France, in the second half of the
seventeenth century, are other examples of great patrons who shaped the taste of a whole
period and place.
Louis XIV was a lavish patron

and he became a model for
royalty and aristocracy
throughout Europe. He put in
place a structure headed by some
of his Ministers to support a large
campaign of building and
decorating palaces and he created
factories to make tapestries and
other kinds of decorative arts.
Here you see the hall of mirrors,
one of the main spaces inside the
Palace of Versailles, Hall of Mirrors, 1678

Palace of Versailles. This room, over seventy meters in length and with nearly six hundred
mirrors, was built by Louis XIV beginning in 1678.
The King also dictated what was good and bad taste, through the control of academies
where painting and sculpture were taught.
The result is still visible in France today. The good side is that indeed one feels there that
there's a pervasive good taste. The negative is that this tight notion of good taste can seem
stifling.
It can seem to lack the individuality and creativity and freedom that we sense in other
places. But then again, it raised the standards of art to an exceptionally high level,
as all the examples that we have seen show patronage as a determining factor in the
history of art.
Lecture 39: The Painter in the Workshop
The terms workshop or studio refer to the physical place where painters work and also
to the most common way of organizing the production of art.
The activity of successful and productive painters falls somewhere between a poet and a
movie maker.
There's a moment of introspection and

inspiration, when ideas informed by
life experience and by learning are
turned into artistic form by the talent of
the artist.
But with the exception of some
isolated painters who made very little
work, the process of actually making
paintings takes place not in isolation
but in the context of a workshop and
with the assistance of a team.
Theodor Galle, after Johannes Stradanus, A Painter´s

Workshop, c. 1550, engraving, 203 x 272 mm
Young aspiring painters were trained in the workshop of their elders which they entered
at about age twelve. A young apprentice would do the more menial work from grind and
mix pigments to clean the shop.
This is an image of a workshop from the mid sixteenth century. You can see the master in
the center, painting large painting of Saint George slaying the dragon and around him are
some young apprentices and older assistants working.
In exchange for his work, the apprentice would learn from the master the skills necessary
to become a painter and he also received room and board.

Academies of art specializing in the formation of painters gradually emerged especially
from the seventeenth century onwards.
But, for the most part, artists would train in the workshops of other artists until the
nineteenth century. At about age nineteen or twenty a painter finished his or her training
and entered the guild which was required in early modern Europe.
Two professional paths were then possible. One could either become an assistant for life
or aspire to become a master and follow an independent career. If this was the case, he
would take an apprentice into his household and hire one or more assistants.
A story tells us that Raphael had fifty assistants working in his studio. This is an
exceptionally large number. We think that Rubens may have had up to twenty-five
assistants and apprentices at a given point, which is also unusually large, and in cases
such as this there would have been different ranks with chief assistants organizing others
below them.
It was much more common to have just one

or very few assistants and apprentices as in
the studio that we see in this detail from the
late seventeenth century print. While the
painter works, leaning his right hand on the
mall stick for stability, two young hands work
in the background preparing paints and
brushes.
In the lower left corner are some wood panels
stacked against a cabinet.
Adriaen van Ostade, detail, The Painter in His Studio, c.

1667, etching, 210 x 169 mm, New York, The
Metropolitan Museum of Art, purchase, Joseph Pulitzer
Bequest, 1917
Wood panels were gradually substituted by canvas as the preferred support for painting
during the sixteenth century.
On the stool to the right of the painter, we see an open book. This is probably book of
prints which painters used as a source of inspiration for their works or a sketchbook
containing anatomical studies, also a common item in painters' studios.
The pots and boxes on shelves and on a table probably hold resins used to make the
varnishes applied to finished paintings and the pigments used to make the few pure
colors used by painters at the time. By the seventeenth century many of these materials
could be purchased from an outside source and did not need to be made in the workshop.

Many of the apprentices that worked or painters became assistants, either in the shop
where they had first been taught or in the works of another painter. Depending on their
talent they would make less for more important contributions to the master art.
We know, for example, that Rubens was hired in 1620 to decorate a large church in
Antwerp, he said that he would work with his assistants and went on to mention only one
by name, van Dyck. He was clearly more highly regarded than the rest.
Assistants in the best workshops sometimes went on to become great artist, as the case
with Giulio Romano in Rapahel's workshop or again of van Dyke in Rubens’.
In addition to the painters working full time in their shops masters could also hire
itinerant painters, assistants who provided additional hands for specific projects or at
especially productive moments. With this type of organization artist were capable of
carrying out their tasks and of multiplying their production.
Raphael, in spite of dying at the young age of thirty-seven, made over one hundred
paintings, many of them very large and time consuming frescos, and approximately
fifteen hundred paintings by Rubens are still known today.
Organizational and business skills were needed to run studios of this size. From the
workshop system emerged very different kinds of products. Apprentices and especially
workshop assistants, not only helped the master be more efficient in the works that
he painted himself, but also collaborated in many works.
As a result of the collaborate of assistants, different kinds of products were in a studio.
There were originals made entirely by the master, where the canvas or panel was probably
prepared for painting by the apprentices and assistants.
There were also paintings made in collaboration between the master and a trusted
assistant.
A typical way of doing so was for the master to set the outlines of the design, then the
assistant to bring that design to a nearly finished state and then the master to provide the
finishing touches.
Another possibility was that the master could provide the idea and then make an outline
of a design and the painting be fully made by the assistant. These products were all from
the master's brand. They were all Rubens paintings, for example, but they had a different
status. One was an original by the master's hand, another was by the master and
his workshop and the third was by the master's workshop.

In this detail from a late eighteenth
century painting, we see a canvas
prepared with a greyish tone over which
two figures have been drawn. One of them
is in the process of being painted with oils.
This can give us some idea of the
different stages of making a painting. A
master could have made everything or
only the design and then some final
retouches, or only the design and nothing
else.
Marie Victoire Lemoine, The Interior of an Atelier of

a Woman Painter, 1796, 116 x 89 cm, New York,
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Gift of Mrs.
Thorneycroft Ryle, 1957
Listen to the way in which Rubens describes some paintings that he had for sale in a
letter to a client written in 1618 and I quote from the letter:
"A 'Daniel among the Lions' entirely by my hand, a picture of Achilles by my best pupil
and the whole retouched by my hand, some leopards taken from life with satyres and
nymphs original by my hand, except the most beautiful landscape done by a master
skillful in that department."
Originals were value more than paintings made in collaboration between a master and
his assistants and this was valued more than an entirely workshop painting. But the
difference in price was small.
Another way in which a master could take advantage of the collaboration of a workshop
assistant was by having specialists who would paint the landscape backgrounds of his
pictures, for example, or background buildings.
Assistants could also be used to make copies of the master's original, thus turning the
individual effort to make one painting into a greater advantage.

This is a copy of the ‘Monalisa'. It looks
very similar to the original. It's in the
Prado in Madrid.
Recent studies have shown that it was
made at the same time as the original. This
shows that as Leonardo was painting one
painting, his assistants were next to him
making this and maybe more copies.
The client may have asked for more than
one version or the artist may have
intended to sell the copies.
In this case, in the case of a portrait the
former seems to make more sense.
Leonardo da Vinci´s Workshop, Mona Lisa, c.

1503-1519, 73 x 57 cm, Madrid, Museo del Prado
This system of making paintings with the use of a team does not apply to absolutely all
artists. Some prefer to work alone. We have no record of any assistant working with
Vermeer, for example. It's not impossible that he trained someone at some point, maybe
one of his numerous children, but his few paintings did not need a workshop system to be
done.

Lecture 40: The Art Market, Then and Now
Even though most high end paintings were very often made on commission during the
fifteenth to the eighteenth centuries, paintings were also sold on the open market from an
early date.
In the fifteenth century, the market for many types of goods, including paintings, was
organized in annual fairs which took place in many cities. Specialized dealers would set
up shops there, in a way similar to what we see in this painting from the middle of the
fifteenth century, from a leading artist from the Netherlands, Petrus Christus.
It shows the shop of a jeweller, a pair

of potential buyers stands behind
them, inside the shop. Reflected in a
mirror, in the lower right, we see two
other elegant clients who look into
the stall from the street.
Petrus Christus, A Goldsmith in his Shop,

1449, 100 x 86 cm, New York, The
Metropolitan Museum of Art, Robert Lehman
Collection, 1975
At the beginning of the sixteenth century, the production of paintings greatly increased in
some areas of Europe, especially in cities of Italy and the Southern Netherlands, and new
ways of selling paintings appeared. Specialized dealers began to set up shops that
remained open, not only during the fairs but year around and where they accumulated
stock for sale. Clients could come here looking to buy art. As far as we know, this first
happened, at least on a grand scale, in Antwerp.
As the sale of paintings in the open market grew, painters began to adapt their products.
Sizes and subjects of paintings became more standardized and as a given image gained
success in the open market painters made many versions of it.
For example, we know of one hundred and twenty-seven copies of the painting 'Winter
Landscape with a Bird Trap’ by Pieter Brueghel the Elder.

This, on the screen, is one of these
copies.
What happened in this case is that
Brueghel's son, also called Pieter
Brueghel, run a business that
consisted of hiring painters to make
copies after paintings by his father,
responding to demand for them.
Copies were made by tracing the
originals or by using stencils.
Pieter Brueghel the Younger, Winter Landscape with a Bird

Trap, c. 1601, 40 x 57 cm, Madrid, Museo Nacional del Prado
In the seventeenth century the scale of collections grew and the ways of acquiring
paintings became more varied.
The figure of the art advisor, who was also a dealer, gained importance now, persons
who knew where to find art and who collectors trusted.
In this Flemish painting of
the 1630’s, we see a group of
elegant potential buyers and a
child who brings a painting to
them.
When in
the 1620's the young Prince of
Wales, the future King Charles I
of England, decided, almost
overnight, that he wanted to
become a great collector, he used
advisors to buy paintings in Italy.
Frans Francken, A Visit to the Art Dealer, 1636, 29 x 40 cm,

Stockholm, Hallwyl Museum
And advisors and agents again played an important role in the sale of the collection of the
same King, after he was executed in 1649.
Dealers were usually merchants who also traded other types of goods and often artists
became involved in the trade. One example is Pompeo Leoni, an Italian sculptor active in
Spain, in the late sixteenth century, who bought and sold works of art, including
important paintings by Titian and manuscripts by Leonardo da Vinci.

In the eighteenth century, a
dealer named Gersaint, whose
shop is shown in this print,
based on a painting by his
friend Watteau, set the
standards that would lead to the
highly professionalized dealer
of the future, publishing
catalogues, organizing auctions
with viewing periods and
traveling in search of stock.
Pierre Alexander Aveline, The Signboard of the Gersaint Gallery,

c. 1732, etching with line engraving, 587 x 865 mm
In the nineteenth century, the dispersal of works of art grew, due mainly to historical
circumstances, bringing into the market many works of art not originally made for it.
The armies of Napoleon confiscated numerous artworks, after invading Italy and Spain
and Belgium and other countries.
The most famous pictures were returned after the fall of Napoleon, but many works
made it into the art market, spreading the taste for artists that until then were not well
known internationally.
This flood of new types of paintings spurred dealers to travel to different parts of Europe
to find new stock. Also, confiscation of religious properties in different countries
in Europe brought into circulation many more artworks.
The dispersal of paintings had two important consequences for the art market.
Legislation gradually appeared in many European countries protecting local patrimony
from export. Other places, mainly England, maintained an open policy in this respect,
with a goal of attracting collectors and works of art and of becoming the capital of the art
market, as indeed has occurred.
Another consequence of the influx of a large number of paintings into the market was
the appearance of forgeries and false attributions. One of the most famous cases has
happened fairly recently, between the First and the Second World Wars.
A Dutch painter, Hans van Meegeren, devoted many years to learning the technique of
Vermeer, using old canvases and old formulas to make paints and he completely tricked
the experts.
In spite of this example, forgeries and problems with attributions have made the figure of
the art expert more necessary than ever. The expert is a person with an innate capacity for
visual analysis and a good visual memory, who has carefully studied the art of a given
painter, and trained her or his eye through years of study.
The ability of experts to recognize the author of paintings can seem perplexing. A good
way to explain it is by comparing it to voice recognition. We can recognize a voice that we
know without seeing its source, on the phone for example, but it would be impossible to

explain with words exactly what characteristics make that voice different from others that
are very similar.
It goes without saying that experts are not infallible. Also, some are less knowledgeable
than they pretend to be and if they have a vested interest in a sale they lose their
objectivity.
In our own day, dealers remain an option when buying and selling European old master
paintings. The most import art dealers in the world attend an annual fair that takes place
during the month of March, in the Dutch city of Maastricht. (TEFAF)
Attending this fair, or the important auctions that take place several times a year, is an
exciting experience for an art lover. The most important are held at the London and New
York venues of Christie's and Sotheby’s, the two leading auction houses, both founded in
the eighteenth century in England.
The most striking aspect of the art market, in recent times, are the remarkably high prices
reached by paintings, turning auctions into a spectacle that combines art, glamour and a
cacophony of opinions, as all involved scramble to make money.
In 1970, this portrait by

Velázquez was sold at an auction
for five and a half million dollars,
then a record for a painting.
Just thirty years later, in 2002, a
large Rubens painting, a 'Massacre
of the Innocents' sold for seventy-
six million dollars. By this time
paintings by Cézanne and Picasso
and Jackson Pollock, among many
others, were selling for
considerably higher prices, well
over a hundred million dollars.
The two paintings mentioned
by Velázquez and Rubens are
important pieces by two of the
great European artists, but they're
far from being their most
important works.
Diego Velázquez, Juan de Pareja, 1650, 81 x 70 cm, 

New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Purchase,
Fletcher and Rogers Funds, and Bequest of Miss Adelaide
Milton de Groot (1876–1967), by exchange, supplemented by
gifts from friends of the Museum, 1971

Rarely do the best paintings from history's greatest painters come up for sale. They are,
for the most part, already in museums, but a few well-known great works by painters
such as Titian and Rembrandt remain in private hands.
They will trickle down into the market in the future, making sure that it remains alive
and as exciting as ever.
Lecture 41: The History of Art History
In this lecture I want to make a simple but important point. When thinking and writing
about the art of the past, humans don't produce a perfect objective record of something
that had happened. Rather, the way we look at the past always reflects our own concerns
and interests, our biases and prejudices, and those of our times and places.
The history of Art History, or the history of writing about art, is revealing about our ways
of being in the world just like artists.
Let's review some of the key ideas that have been put forth in texts about art that are
relevant to the period that we are concerned with.
The ideas of ancient Greek and Roman authors were important for the understanding of
art during the Renaissance. The pursuit of beauty was considered by the ancients as the
highest goal of art. This idea was inherited by the Renaissance, especially in Italy.
The goal of art would gradually change throughout the centuries for most artists, turning
from beauty toward something that could express the experiences of real life.
Ancient thinkers, such as Socrates, Plato, Aristotle and Cicero, singled out specific
qualities for praise which influenced artists and writers in later centuries. Among them
are harmony and proportion, fantasy, elegance and vitality.
The idea of organizing the art made during a long period of time as a progression that
goes from less to more accomplished artists also comes from antiquity. It is first found in
an encyclopedia by the Roman writer Pliny the Elder titled "Natural History”.
In book thirty-five he included the history of ancient Greek painting which was very
influential during the Renaissance.
Pliny wrote about the famous statue ‘The Laocoon'. When in 1506 this statue was
discovered in Rome, it was seen to have the signatures of the three sculptors that
Pliny said had signed it. This gave him great credibility.
Ancient ideas about art were given new impulse during the
Renaissance. Giorgio Vasari, whose book 'The Lives of the Most
Excellent Italian Architects, Painters, and Sculptors’ was first
published in 1550, is probably the most quoted of all writers on
the art of painting. On the screen is the cover page of his
book. He organized the history of painting in Italy following a
biological model, based on the idea that art, like living beings, is
born, grows, ages and dies. This model remained very influential.
Giorgio Vasari, title page of The Lives Of The Most Excellent Italian Architects,
Painters and Sculptors, Florence, 1550

The most important contribution of Vasari, asides from the specific information that he
provides on Renaissance painters, is the focus on the personal style of artists, on what
made them different from each other, which was seen as the expression of their individual
personalities.
Distinguishing personal styles has remained a central concern for those who study art.
Giulio Mancini, an italian physician, wrote in the early 17th century that all persons have
personal habits which they cannot hide, even if they tried to, and that they are visible in
paintings, in areas such as, how they paint the eyes, or the folds of draperies, or locks of
hair.
Attributing paintings and distinguishing originals from copies, workshop paintings or
forgeries, and pictures of higher and lower quality, has remained an important way to
think about art, ever since.
This type of activity, the technique of identifying works of art based on visual analysis
and also when available on documents, is known as connoisseurship. The term comes
from the verb "to know" in french.
Nowadays X-rays, infrared images of paintings and chemical analysis of pigments, can
help by identifying date paintings.
The judgment of connoisseurs or art experts can seem arbitrary and it is not exceptional
to find charlatans that pose as connoisseurs. This is why they are ridiculed in this English
caricature from the 18th century (Matthew Darly, A Connoisseur Admiring a Dark Night
Piece, 1771, Etching, New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art), where a man is
carefully studying a black painting.
During the 18th century there was a tendency to move away from the biographies and
the personalities of artists and to focus on developments costs by what were viewed as
inevitable forces conducting history. The most influencial proponent of this was
Winckelmann.
He didn't only think of how to understand the evolution of art. Like Vasari and other
writers before him, he couldn't resist making judgments of taste (in his case he supported
art that seemed close to classical antiquity and he denigrated other styles).
He anticipates the figure of the art critic. The person who gains our trust and on whom
we defer our judgment about art. Art criticism can never be an entirely rational task,
because there are no universal objective rules for judging or for producing quality or
beauty in art.
In the nineteenth century, art history became linked to museums and universities and
was born as an academic discipline. This was a time of intense nationalism in Europe,
when emphasis was placed on what made nations different.
The History of Art was organized along national schools, and museums showed art in
ways to strengthen nationalistic points of view. Most museums still organize their
collections in this way, to some extent.
It is important, when you go to museums, that you realize that paintings did not just fall
onto the walls according to some natural order. They are organized as a result of decisions
that emphasize certain things and not others.

In museums with large international collections, for example, there's a tendency to
privilege works by local over foreign artists, by displaying more of them or by showing
them more prominently.
During the nineteenth and the early twentieth centuries, some important concepts that
had been hinted at in earlier writings were singled out as key ingredients in the
interpretation of painting and their evolution.
Formalism focuses on the formal language of art. It tries to make sense of the impression
that forms have a life of their own, that they evolve autonomously from what they
represent, following their own logic.
Think of the ‘Laocoon' as abstract forms, and then imagine that they're subjected to heat
and that they boil and change, according to their own natural rules. You will get a sense
that forms evolve according to their own logic, the idea that is at the heart of this way of
seeing art.
Another concept that gained importance in the 19th century was the idea that art reflects
the spirit of a time. Think of this painting by Pieter Bruegel the Elder (Pieter Bruegel the
Elder, The Triumph fo Death, c. 1562-1563, 117 x 162 cm, Madrid, Museo Nacional del
Prado), for example, as reflecting a generalized fear of violence and death as a
determining factor in the mentalities of people from the time when it was made. The
German term 'Zeitgeist' is often used to describe this concept, because it was coined by
German philosophers.
Other problems that interested historians, as the discipline of art history grew in the 19th
and 20th century, are the study of the context in which artists made, and in which painters
live and work, the phenomenon of the transmission of artistic styles, and the full range of
meanings that paintings had when they were made.
It was also during the late 19th and the early 20th centuries, that credible catalogues of
the works of many painters were compiled. This involved learning about who painted
what and when. It was a colossal task at a time when reproductions were not as easily
available as they are now, and when travel was more difficult.
The process of cataloging works of art is ongoing, as new tools and discoveries force the
reevaluation of past attributions.
In the 1930’s, and because of the rise of the Nazi Regime, approximately two hundred
and fifty leading German and Austrian art historians, mainly of Jewish origin, left their
countries to settle in the UK and the US. Because of this, universities and museums in
those two countries have become the leading centers for the study of art history.
Since the 1970’s, there's a growing skepticism towards universal, abstract categories and
towards overarching historical narratives, and there's a growing awareness of the fact that
history is varied and fragmented.

This image expresses this beautifully: it
is by a French illustrator, Guy Billout, and
it shows the French-Algerian philosopher,
Jacques Derrida, looking at his reflection
in a pool.
Derrida was the leading exponent of a
current of thought known as
‘deconstruction' which studies how
meaning and knowledge are built, and
which has been very influential in the
field of art history, as in other areas of the
humanities.
Guy Billout, Derrida
The drawing explains Derrida's thought by affirming that the seamless, clear images of
ourselves that we have projected, onto the history of art, for example, do not reflect how
complicated and fragmentary we and reality actually are.
Art historians are now more aware of the variety of conditions under which art was
made, and of the fact that different sectors of society have not been exposed and explored
in equal measure by the history of art. Women artists are an example of this.
Art history allows for as many interpretations as we're capable of coming up with. It's an
amazing instrument for exploring the concerns of human beings and theirs ways of being
in the world throughout the centuries.
My own interest in different theories and methods has changed throughout the years.
The preparation of this course has coincided with a time when I'm drawn to understand
the magnetic power of art, the reasons why contemplating paintings can be a life
enhancing experience. Only direct contemplation of art can show this. You need to go to
museums.
The poet and essay writer, Yves Bonnefoy, has writen that when confronted with
mediocre art he feels as if he has come to a meeting where the other person has not shown
up. This, by contrast, helps us to understand the strong presence of art, how it pulls us in,
in a nearly physical way. Think of the reasons why you are interested in art.

A very good survey for the relatively new subject of women artists is Whitney
Chadwick, Women, Art and Society, first published in 1990. There you will find
references to what in recent decades has become a very large bibliography.  
For art patronage, I recommend that you read the lively Kings and Connoisseurs, by
Jonathan Brown.  
For the subject of the artist in his workshop I have recently read a study devoted to
seventeenth century Italy that I found very informative: Patrizia Cavazzini, Painting
as Business in Early Seventeenth-century Rome, published in 2008. 

For the art market… stick to this course. This is a very broad theme that is not limited to
the history of art. For the issue of the art expert and connoisseurship, read the
inspiring On Art and Connoisseurship, by Max Friedländer. 

For the history of art history, two useful introductions are Michael Podro, The Critical
Historians of Art, of 1982, and Richard Stone and John-Paul Stonard eds., The Books
that Shaped Art History, of 2013. And best of all, read the originals of the sources cited
throughout the course, from Vasari to Winckelmann. 
On a personal note, I am currently much taken by trying to understand the effect that art
has on me as an individual, to understand art as an aesthetic experience. One way
into this approach that I highly recommend are three books by: John Armstrong, The
Secret Power of Beauty; Alexander Nehemas, Only a Promise of Hapiness. The Place of
Beauty in a World of Art, and George Steiner, The Poetry of Thought.
Also, I recently read a book only tangentially connected to art and art history, but I want
to recompensed it: Plato at the Googleplex. Why Philosophy won't go away, by Rebecca
Goldstein. It includes many pages on Plato´s thoughts on the notion of beauty
(which for the most part is not related to art, but rather to mathematics). The book is
a great (and long) door into the world of Plato. His ideas are crucial to understand
ideas of beauty current throughout the entire classical tradition, including many
artists in our course, among them Leonardo, Rubens, Guido Reni and David.

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European Paintings

From Leonardo to Rembrandt to Goya

Universidad Carlos III de Madrid

Lecture 1: The Renaissance - A Fundamental Break with the Past

In terms of the history of art, we use the term Renaissance to refer to art made

An image like this with such a close and careful

Hans Hoffmann, Hare in the Forest, c. 1585, 62 x 78 cm, Los

Most important was an encyclopedia titled

Hendrick Goltzius, Hercules Farnese, engraving,

It is important to remember that admiration for pagan antiquity

Because of the interesting classical antiquity many

Detail, Albrecht Dürer, Self-portrait, 1498, 52 x 41 cm,

Madrid, Museo Nacional del Prado

Finally a word on chronology. Even though we speak of the Renaissance as one single

This painting is by Fra Angelico, one of the leading artists

Fra Angelico, The Virgin of Humility, c. 1433-1435,

This picture's also by Fra Angelico. It is

Fra Angelico, The Virgin and Child Enthroned with

Here we see the predella from the

The picture that you see on the screen is an

Sandro Botticelli, The Annunciation, c. 1485,

Sandro Botticelli, Venus and Mars, c. 1485, 69 x 173

Sandro Botticelli, The Birth of Venus, c. 1486, 172 x

This image shows Dido, first Queen of Carthage, who plays

Andrea Mantegna, Dido, c. 1500, 65 x 31 cm, Montreal, The Montreal

This painting shows Jesus Christ displaying the wounds of

Andrea Mantegna, The Man of Sorrows with Two Angels, c.

Detail, Andrea Mantegna, Camera Picta, 1465-1474, showing

Lecture 5: The Fifteenth Century in the Netherlands

Jan van Eyck, The Arnolfini portrait, 1434, 84 x 57

We can see a good example of this in this

Jan van Eyck, The Virgin of the Chancelor Rolin, c.

Jan van Eyck, The Crucifixion and The Last Judgment, c. 1430, 56 x 20

* Cultural and History books.

Lecture 8: Hieronymus Bosch (c. 1450 - 1516). Painter of Sins

This is The Garden of Earthly Delights. It's a large painting. It measures 205 x

This is another painting by Bosch. It is called The Haywain. It tells a similar story. It

This engraving shows the workshop of a painter around 1550. Another response to this

Rogier van der Weyden, Saint George and the Dragon, c.

Bruegel made many drawings. Someone

Pieter van der Heyden, after Pieter Bruegel the

He is possibly the man portrayed here but we're not

Detail, Leonardo da Vinci?, Possible

At the end of his life he was called to France by king Francis I.

This is part of a drawing by Leonardo. It shows studies of the

Detail, Leonardo da Vinci, Studies of water passing

It's the portrait of the Lady with an Ermine, painted

Leonardo da Vinci, Portrait of a Lady with an Ermine, c. 1490,

Michelangelo Buonarroti who is usually referred to as Michelangelo lived a long life

It was excavated in Rome in 1506, and was

Detail, The Laocoon, 1st century AD, Rome, Vatican

Detail, Michelangelo, The Libyan Sibyl, c. 1511.

This sheet of paper shows some of the preparatory

Michelangelo, Studies for the Libyan Sibyl, c.

The quality of Michelangelo's drawings contributed to raising the standards of artistic

Lecture 13: The Ideal World of Raphael (1483 - 1520)

This painting of the Virgin and Child was

Raphael, Madonna and Child, c. 1505, 60 x 44

We know close to forty drawings made by

Raphael, Studies for The Disputa, c. 1510, pen and