Romanticism3a

Giaovanni Battista Piranesi, Prisons #14, 1746 - 1761
Many ambiguities: where do the vaults end? The staircases lead? The balconies go to?
Who are the wretched who wander up and down the stairs?
By whose authority are they in prison? For what reason?
Haunting, frightening, mysterious quality
Monumental compositions
Zigzag of contrasting diagonals
Deeply enclosed structures
Sketchy and mysterious figures
Darkly inked engraving
Spikes emerge ominously from lower left corner

Romanticism
Covers literature, painting, music, architecture, criticism, etc.
Rejection of the precepts of order, calm, harmony, balance, idealization and rationality (Classicism)
Reaction against the Enlightenment and physical materialism
Visual art has a fondness for medieval literature
Visible brushstrokes and rich color
Recalls High Renaissance and Baroque painting – esp. Michelangelo And Rubens

Romanticism Emphasized
the Individual
the Subjective
the Irrational
the Imaginative
the Personal
the Emotional
The Visonary
The Transcendental
Deepened appreciation of nature
Exaltation of emotion over reason
Senses over intellect
Examintion of human moods
Preoccupation with the genius and ther hero

Romanticism
Highly Influenced by Rousseau
Starts in Germany with Goethe
The Science of Light tells us nothing of the beauty of light
Work for the sheer intrinsic value of it
Emmanuel Kant – Science had left a philosophy that was too mechanical and indifferent to the human condition

Francisco Jose de Goya Spanish 1746 - 1828

Goya
Spanish Court Painter
Bold painting Techniques
Extreme Satire
Belief in Artist’s vision over tradition
Uncompromising Portrayal of his times
Permanently Deaf in 1792 after illness

Romanticism in Spain
Goya, The Family of Charles IV, 1800 - 1801
Goya used a mirror asking the sitters to compare their likeness to the painted likeness
Goya in shadow of painting, a reference of Velázquez’s Maids of Honor
Magnificent ceremonial costumes seem overplayed
Left group dominated by Prince Ferdinand in blue
Center group dominated by Queen Maria Luisa, who was cruel and ambitious in life, unfaithful to her husband
Right group dominated by King Carlos IV
Satire?
Background painting on left is of Lot and His Daughters: relationship to the main painting?

Family of Charles IV, 1800

Family of Charles IV
13 members of the Royal Family
Assembled in a Picture gallery
Influenced by Velazquez
Goya located at left in shadow
Unmasked as evil?
Documentary?

Romanticism in Spain
Goya, The Third of May 1808
Historical background: French army occupies Spain, and seizes King and Queen of Spain. The uprising is caused by the abandonment of the Royal Family, held in prison in France
Uprising in Madrid brutally crushed by the French
French round up suspects, killing 40-45 outside the city walls
Christ-like figure in crucifixion pose with stigmata on hands expresses frustration
French are faceless with robotic movements
French fire at extremely close range
Emphasis on gory details
Various human emotions displayed
Dark background surrounds church in distance
Spanish sacrifice for their country but are unheroic figures
Goya, Saturn Devouring One of His Children
Sinister blackness, panic stricken eyes
Voracious mouth
Symbol: monstrous self-destruction of humans
Symbol: time which destroys its creations

Executions of the 3 rd of May
Social Protest Art
Commissioned in 1814 by Madrid gov’t
Faceless soldiers vs. helpless victims

Goya, Saturn Devouring One of His Children
Sinister blackness, panic stricken eyes
Voracious mouth
Symbol: monstrous self-destruction of humans
Symbol: time which destroys its creations

Don Manuel Osorio Manrique de Zuñiga 1788

Majas on a Balcony 1810 - 1815

Los Caprichos – etchings with aquatint
Published in 1799 in a time of social repression and economic hard times
Denouncing superstition and social abuses
Revulsion towards ignorance and intellectual oppression
Ambivalence toward authority and the church
Themes of the Spanish Inquisition
Abuses of the Church and Nobility
Witchcraft
frivolity of the young (especially women)

Of What Ill Will He Die?

Goya in Appreciation to his friend Dr. Arrieta, 1820

Until Death

Birds of a Feather

Out Hunting for Teeth

Los Disastres de la Guerra Napoleonic Invasion and War of Independence 1808-1814

The Dark or Black Paintings 1819 - 1824

Saturn devouring his son 1819-23

Rubens 1636

Romanticism in France
Jean Gros, Napoleon at the Pesthouse of Jaffa, 1804
Event that took place March 11, 1799
Violent outbreak of bubonic plague in Napoleon’s army in the Middle East
Painted to respond to negative publicity Napoleon earned when he ordered the poisoning of prisoners whom he could not afford to house nor feed
Acting out his legend as a divinity he enters the pesthouse to calm the panic by demonstrating he is not afraid
Comforting them, touching them, in a reference to the Doubting Thomas of the Bible
Napoleon as Christ with the miraculous powers to heal
Sacred tradition of the healing king
Napoleon’s touching of the sick man was to disprove that the disease was contagious and incurable
Semi-nudity of figures
Cf. Oath of the Horatii
Architectural framework sets the scene
Gothic arches
Young doctor, himself stricken with plague, holds the body of a dying man in his lap at lower right
Napoleon’s trim figure is bordered by the naked flesh of two monumental plague-stricken men
Napoleon’s men hide their noses from the stink of decaying flesh

Antoine-Jean Gros, 'Napoleon in the Plague House at Jaffa' 1804

Gericault, The Raft of the Medusa, 1818
Government ship bound for Senegal wrecked in 1816
Life boats accommodated the wealthy, 149 other passengers were deserted by the captain, placed in a raft 65 by 35 and cut loose in the Atlantic
Only 15 survived
Géricault made scale model of raft in his studio, interviewed and painted survivors
Concentration on moment of rescue
Use of foreshortening
Pyramid structure
Heroic musculature
Delacroix upside-down in foreground
Monochromatic
Concentric zones: outer margin of green water and blue sky frames the brown mass of raft which, in turn, holds the grayish figures
Appears in twilight, warm diffuse glow of the morning sun
Foreground: weight of corpses and massive mourners
Middle ground: figures lifting and holding
Ascent: climax of the painting at the intersection of the diagonals
Painting dips down into our own space
References to Michelangelo

Gericault, Insane Woman
Insightful portrait of the insane
Artist’s own fragile mental health
History of insanity in his family
Suffered a mental disorder in October 1819
Painted 10 paintings of lunatics, 5 survive

Ingres, The Grand Odalisque
Criticized as “three too many vertebrae” and “no muscle, no bone, no life”
Exotic Turkish setting
Sculpturesque style
Raphael inspired head
Cool detachment
Arms are out of proportion with one another
Position of legs structurally impossible
Suppleness of her curves
Elongation: Italian Mannerism, i.e. Parmigianino, Bronzino
Flatness of forms
Cf. Canova, Pauline Borghese as Venus
http://cgfa.dotsrc.org/ingres/p-ingres8.htm

Ingres, The Grand Odalisque, 1814

Ingres, Apotheosis of Homer, 1827
Composition centered around the enthroned Homer, seated in front of an Ionic temple, crowned by Fame
On either side are personifications of Iliad (left) and Odyssey (right)
Inspired by The School of Athens
Symmetrical, balanced, orderly
Neoclassical style

Theodore Gericault (1791 – 1824) The Charging Chausser , exhibited at the Paris Salon of 1812

Raft of the Medusa, 1819

The Raft of the Medusa by Gericault New Monarchy established after Napoleon under Louis XVIII 4 Ships leave France in 1816 to repossess Senegal from British Medusa Captained by Chaumarey – a political appointee with no experience in 20 years at sea 152 initial members on the raft only 156 survivors after 13 days

Studies for the painting

Raft of the Medusa, 1819

Eugene Delacroix 1798-1863

Eugene Delacroix, Death of Sardanapalus, 1827
Inspired by a tragic drama by Byron, published in 1821
The satrap, on his bed of state, surrounded by a funeral pyre
Faced with defeat, he destroys all so that nothing will survive for the victors
Eunuchs, wives, concubines, pages, dogs, horses killed before his eyes
Pandemonium of passions
Whirling mixture of human and animal forms
King: cf. Etruscan Sarcophagus from Cerveteri
Vignette: an empty central part of the painting, clear in center and objects scattered toward edges
Tempestuous, crowded
Rubenesque women
Triangular composition

Massacre at Chios 1822-24 Ottoman fleet attacks island of Chios 100,00 inhabitants 20% killed All but 900 carried off into slavery

Death of Sardanaplaus – 1827

Liberty Leading the People: July 28, 1830 Revolution puts Louis Phillipe on the Throne – the Citizen King

Delacroix, Liberty Leading the People
July Revolution of 1830
Anecdote that Delacroix had witnessed a young girl who saw the nude corpse of her brother who had been shot by the Swiss Guards; she took up arms and killed nine Royalist troops before she was shot
Unity of structure
Dead man seems to have been dead eight days ago, critics said
Liberty: face similar to an ignudi on the Sistine Ceiling
Frieze-like arrangement of the background
Pyramid structure rises up and triangular grouping comes toward us
French tri-color atop Notre Dame
Cf. Venus de Milo
Figure with the cocked hat in the background symbolizes the role of the students from the Ecole Polytechnique for their role in helping the uprising
Middle class man with rifle and top hat
Proletariat with saber

Liberty Enlightening the World dedicated on October 28, 1886 Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi

England in the 19 th Century

Introduction to Romanticism
Henry Fuseli, The Nightmare, 1781
Girl: virginal white
Horse: peeks from behind curtain
Incubus: brown, cannot be seen by the girl even if her eyes were open, sits on her chest
She feels the suffocation of the incubus
Sexual overtones
Curtain: dark and theatrically red
Nightmare conveys what is felt, not what is seen, by the dreamer
Mirror reflects nothing
Mara: in Norse mythology a spirit who comes in the night and suffocates sleepers, stealing their breath away
Contemporary scene, not mythological: contemporary furnishings
Germanic violence and Italian Mannerism

Romantic Landscape
Constable, The Hay Wain
Painter of pastoral English scenery
Oneness with nature sought by Romantic poets
Man as a participant in the landscape
Sense of monumentality, rhythm, color, movement
Composed as if accidental
Clouds filled with color and light
Many colors in one: trees many shades of green, clouds, reflections, etc.
Cottage camouflaged by trees
Legend about the occupant of the cottage: he was 80 and spent only four nights of his life elsewhere. He and the cottage are part of the natural landscape
Colors and light are flecked and vibrant and tend to obscure details

John Constable, The Haywain

Romantic Landscape
Turner, The Slave Ship
1833: slavery ended in Britain, but guilt of slave trade cannot be erased by an act of Parliament
Slave traders are the sharks
In 1783 an epidemic broke out on a ship, The Zong
Slaves thrown over board so that the owners could collect insurance money. Slaves dying of disease were uninsurable
Shipwrecks a common theme in English painting, 5000 people a year died at sea
Color reflective of emotional state
Horror of man’s inhumanity to man is stressed
Fast sketchy brushwork
Blood red sunset acts symbolically
Blurred forms

Introduction to Romanticism
Blake, Ancient of Days, 1794
From Europe, A Prophecy
A sun, or a shield covering a sun, rays from behind
Strong lateral wind
Black abyss
Compass: makes order out of chaos
Influence of Italian Mannerism
Figure’s name is Urizen: play on “Your Reason”

Romantic Landscape
Caspar David Friedrich, Abbey in the Oak Forest
Landscapes as temples
Paintings as altarpieces
Landscape as a representation of the unrepresentable God
Gothic cathedral as Christendom, oaks as the pagan past
Landscape itself elegized as a monument
Row of monks carrying a coffin
Immediate foreground, remote background
Winter: skeletal and chilling
Irregularity of Gothic ruins in step with the adjacent oak trees
Feeling of melancholy
Divinity inherent in nature
Strong horizontals interrupted by verticals of trees and ruins
Many symbols of death

Romanticism in America
Thomas Cole, The Oxbow, 1836
Founder of the Hudson River School of landscape painting
Painted as reply to Captain Basil Hall’s book Travels in North America , 1829, in which he alleged that America was indifferent to its natural blessings
Also alleged that American painters were incompetent and could not capture American scenery
To Cole, America possesses the sublime and the beautiful in its landscape
Wildness of landscape on left compared to the domesticated landscape on right
Cole is seated with an easel between both landscapes, looking at us
Left: contorted trunk, receding storm, wild mountains, impenetrable forest
Right: cultivated, orderly, man taming nature, but remaining in harmony with her
Oxbow as a counterstatement to Hall’s book

Cole, The Oxbow , 1836

Romanticism in America
Frederick Church, Twilight in the Wilderness
Cole’s only pupil and his successor
Awe-inspiring view of the sun setting over a majestic landscape
No trace of humanity
Idealistic and comforting view
Affirmation of the divine in nature
Strong horizontals interrupted by verticals and diagonals
Color used as spectacle
Great detail in leaves of trees and feathery clouds
Is it a symbol of the oncoming Civil War?

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Romanticism3a

by bassmanb on Mar 29, 2010

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