Véronique Plesch – Who’s There?

Wandering through a museum and coming upon a portrait can be like meeting old friends. I took this photo in October 2014, while visiting the Museum of Modern Art with a group of students. This double portrait by Oskar Kokoschka (who happened to be a friend of my great-uncle), captured my attention because it represents two art historians, Hans Tietze and Erica Tietze-Conrat. I still remember my surprise upon discovering the features of fellow art historians I know and admire and to learn their connection to Kokoschka. At the time, painter and sitters were living in Vienna and Oskar was twenty-three years old, Erica twenty-six, and Hans twenty-nine. From the MoMA website we learn that the portrait was meant for the mantlepiece of the couple’s home, which explains the canvas’s elongated horizontal format. We also learn that husband and wife sat separately for the painter, which accounts for the lack of interaction between them. Although they do not look at each other, they hold their hands in front of them in a manner that resembles the kind of gestures one does when talking. Hans is in profile and occupies the composition’s left side, that is, to the right of his wife, in the place traditionally reserved to the male in couples’ portraits. Erica faces the viewer and stares into space. The bust-length sitters blend into their surroundings, figures and setting rendered in thin colorful glazes. Closer inspection of the apparently abstract background reveals that Kokoschka scratched the wet paint with his fingernails to suggest elements of landscape, such as flowers, mountains, clouds, and the sun. Although there is great specificity in the way the sitters’ features are rendered, there is a timelessness in their static poses.

Fundamental tensions underlie portraiture. As Erwin Panofsky, a German art historian born a decade after the Tietzes put it:

A portrait aims by definition at two essential and, in a sense, contradictory qualities: individuality, or uniqueness; and totality, or wholeness. On the one hand, it seeks to bring out whatever it is in which the sitter differs from the rest of humanity and would even differ from himself were he portrayed at a different moment or in a different situation; and this is what distinguishes a portrait from an “ideal” figure or “type.” On the other hand, it seeks to bring out whatever the sitter has in common with the rest of humanity and what remains constant in him regardless of place and time; and this is what distinguishes a portrait from a figure forming part of a genre painting or narrative.

Panofsky goes on to explain that “[a]ll portraitists, then, must balance these two postulates, and the manner in which this balance is achieved depends on period, nationality, and personal inclination.” The discussion appears in his book on Early Netherlandish Painting in the chapter dedicated to Jan van Eyck, whose portraits he deems “descriptive.” Indeed, a distinctive feature of Northern Renaissance portraits is an unflinching approach to transcribing every single distinctive feature—as the phrase goes, “warts and all”: whatever accidental detail, no matter how unattractive it might be, that is unique to the figure. In this painting by van Eyck, believed to be a self-portrait, every single minute detail such as wrinkles and stubble is painstakingly rendered, a feat made possible by oil paints.

At the other end of the spectrum, stand Italian Renaissance artists, who choose to embrace the figure’s totality and in so doing eliminate accidental details, “airbrushing” as it were the sitter’s features, as can be seen in Filippo Lippi’s double portrait of an woman and a man who appears in a window and is thought to be her betrothed. Although contemporaries, van Eyck and Lippi approach portraiture in diametrically opposed ways, exemplars of big-picture and detail-oriented artists. At the core of such fundamentally divergent conceptions, there are, I believe, philosophical underpinnings, with on one side an Aristotelian approach concerned with what the senses can reveal and on the other a Platonic quest for the ideal form. Not surprisingly, the Italians continued to paint profile portraits while the Northerners switched to three-quarter views. The first alludes to ancient coins but it also reduces and synthesizes the face into a line, while a three-quarter view displays a larger portion of the visage, making room for more significant details.

Flemish painters like van Eyck were not the first artists who aimed at representing sitters in all their imperfect individuality: many centuries earlier ancient Egyptians were already doing that—but discriminately, depicting the pharaohs in an idealized manner while reserving a more naturalistic depiction to  individuals of a lesser rank. A famous example is the scribe in the Louvre. Of course, scribes were important figures and usually priests (“hieroglyph” means “sacred carving”) but the man, depicted at work about to write on a papyrus stretched on his lap, shows signs of age, his breasts and belly sagging (note that his pudginess might be formulaic, suggesting that he was well-off). The polychromy that was applied over the limestone sculpture as well as the materials that were used for the eyes and nipples further enhance the life-like quality of the work.

 Dressing the Part

The Louvre sculpture presents the man at work for all eternity: his professional activity a central part of his identity. Likewise, in Hyacinthe Rigaud’s portrait of Louis XIV of France, the sitter is one with his function and it is this function that, to quote Panofsky, sets him apart “from the rest of humanity.” The king is dressed in his ermine-lined coronation mantle that bears the heraldic symbols of the French monarchy: gold fleur-de-lis on a blue ground. Regalia further confirms his kingly status: with his right arm Louis holds a scepter that rests on a stool where other insignia are placed: the royal crown and the “hand of justice” (a scepter symbolizing judicial power). This is not the portrait of a mere mortal, but of an absolute monarch by divine right. The larger-than-life figure (the canvas is over nine feet high), is slightly elevated on a platform and thus dominates the viewer. With his feet in fourth position, his upper body turned to the right and his head facing the viewer, his right arm outstretched and his left held akimbo and jutting into the beholder’s space, Louis’s body spreads out, taking over the large canvas—this is the king who built the palace of Versailles.

Sometimes the sitter voluntarily eschews the trappings of their status and chooses instead to be represented as they wish to be remembered. An example is this dedicatory page in which the royal chamberlain Jean de Vaudetar presents the very book in which this illumination appears to another king of France, Charles V. While the background and canopy bear the French fleur-de-lis, Charles wears no coronation mantle, regalia, or even military garb, but the robes of a scholar: he is a wise monarch. In fact, just four years before this illumination was painted, Charles turned the fortress of the Louvre into a royal palace and moved his library, which became the nucleus for the Bibliothèque Nationale de France.

Another ruler, Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II, is depicted as well in an unexpected but meaningful manner. Rudolf appears in one of Giuseppe Arcimboldo’s “composite heads” as the god Vertumnus, the ancient god of the seasons. The emperor’s features are made up of a whole array of flowers, fruits, and vegetables that bloom and grow at different times of the year. Equating him with Vertumnus and turning his likeness into a true cornucopia, we are made to understand that Rudolf ushers the eternal spring of a prosperous golden age.

The Artist is Present

One’s professional pursuit can be a source of pride as Diego Velázquez declares in Las Meninas. Not only does the artist appear at work, palette and brush in hand, but the setting and figures confirm that he is in his studio in the royal palace, surrounded by members of the court: a princess, courtiers, and even the king and queen, reflected in the mirror that hangs on the wall facing the viewer.

Just like his 17th-century predecessor, Robert Van Vorst Sewell inserted himself in the scene in front of his easel, palette in hand (he can be seen on the right side). Unlike Velázquez, Sewell is out-of-doors, working “on the motif”: the pier of Monhegan island, a popular Maine destination for artists (see my Fall 2022 Musings). When this painting was shown in 2018 in a show celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of Monhegan’s museum, it was accompanied by a wall copy that identified the owner of the horse-drawn carriage as one Hiram Cazallis and the portly mustachioed man who stands in front of it as the lighthouse keeper Dan Stevens. Although the painting captures the arrival of a boat with goods being unloaded and passengers (both tourists and islanders) disembarking, Sewell appears focused on his work and we can distinguish just enough of the painting on the easel to recognize its subject, the small island of Manana across Monhegan harbor. We might not see much of Sewell’s features, but he is present, in a real setting and among real people, performing an activity that both identifies him and belongs to the setting: today as in Sewell’s time, artists at their easel are a common sight on Monhegan.

Exactly three centuries earlier, Caravaggio included self-portraits in some of his paintings, similarly turning himself into a participant in the depicted scene. In his extraordinary Taking of Christ, he appears at the top right, holding a lantern that lights up the nocturnal scene. Besides following the Gospel of John (18:3) in which we read that Judas and the soldiers came to arrest Jesus “with lanterns and torches and weapons,” having Caravaggio himself hold a lantern offers a moving statement on the artist’s role, who makes it possible for the spectator to see holy history. Notice how the artist cranes his neck so he can witness the scene and transcribe it for his audience. This physical effort is a further commentary on how the artist should strive to envision a particular scene in order to effectively convey it to his audience.

Perpetuating Presence

The presence of Caravaggio witnessing a momentous episode in sacred history—the very beginning of Christ’s redeeming Passion—calls to mind devotional exercises in which the devout is invited to envision the scene in his mind’s eye and even step in it and interact with the holy figures. In this page from a prayer book for private devotion called a book of hours, Mary, the daughter of the duke of Burgundy Charles the Bold, is represented reading from such a book. Just like donors in religious art, she prays for all eternity, but we witness the results of her contemplative practice: a window opens to reveal the choir of a Gothic church in which the Virgin sits and holds the baby Jesus, accompanied by four angels who hold candles and a celebrant who swings a censer. Mary of Burgundy is there as well, kneeling before the Virgin, accompanied by three ladies from her retinue. The illumination thus illustrates that prayer makes such an encounter possible. But there is more: Mary, ever the elegant princess, wears a different outfit. As it turns out, at the time, books of hours had become, as L. M. J. Delaissé famously called them, a best-seller, but they were also a true “status symbol” and so here Mary displays not just her piety but also her good taste and high social standing.

Mary’s illumination records her remarkable encounter with the object of her prayers. In our own lives, we experience the same desire to perpetuate the memory of a meaningful meeting as we snap photos with our phone so we can remember this particular moment and person. This is exactly what happened in 1533 when Hans Holbein the Younger, then living in England, received the commission for a large double full-length portrait, recording the private visit that clergyman and diplomat Georges de Selve paid to fellow Frenchman Jean de Dinteville, ambassador to England. The two men flank a two-tier piece of furniture filled with objects carefully rendered, symbolically alluding to the heavenly and the earthly realms. On the upper shelf, we find a celestial globe, astronomical instruments, and sundials, and on the lower shelf, a terrestrial globe, instruments of the arts (a compass and a square), music (a lute and a music book), and of sciences (a book on arithmetic). But this is not the end of the story, for the lute has a broken string, and thus symbolizes disharmony. Furthermore, the music book is open, propped up, turned towards the viewer, and its contents rendered in minute detail so it can be easily identified: choral songs by Martin Luther. Similarly, the book of mathematics is opened at a page on mathematical division. As it turns out, the year the two men met is when king of England Henry VIII married Ann Boleyn. The marriage took place despite the pope’s refusal to annul Henry’s first marriage to Catherine of Aragon, a decision that played a decisive role in the schism that led to the English Reformation.

Holbein thus captures more than the men’s likenesses. Although they stand seemingly unmoved, we are made privy to what was on their minds at this precise moment in 1533 and we understand what pressing matters were discussed on the occasion of their meeting in London. But the painting’s message is not complete until one exits the room to the right and takes one last look: from that vantage point, the stain on the foreground, now viewed at an oblique angle, reveals itself to be an anamorphic image of a skull, a macabre motif repeated in the medallion on Dinteville’s cap. The whole painting assumes the meaning of a vanitas, placing the current crisis in perspective, yet another instance of the futility of human pursuits.

Indeed, as Michael Sweerts asserts in this self-portrait, life is fleeting and while alive, we are in flux: no matter how much cosmetic surgery, the aging process inexorably alters our features. Furthermore, as Panofsky wrote, a sitter “differ[s] from himself were he portrayed at a different moment or in a different situation.” Art has the remarkable ability to arrest time, to capture a figure at a particular moment (and place), in so doing, it challenges death. This might be the meaning of Sweerts’s perplexing gesture, poking his finger inside the skull’s nose.

The links between portraiture and funerary practices are known and obvious: likenesses honor and perpetuate the memory of the dearly departed, who remain intact despite the demise of their physical bodies (see my Winter 2023 Musings). We keep photos of people we love (whether we have met them or not) and of ourselves in special moments. A simple image triggers memories, transports us to a different place and time, and may even allow us to interact with long-deceased individuals, just like I did back in 2014 when I met the Tietzes in New York.

 

References

Delaissé L. M. J. “The Importance of Books of Hours for the History of the Medieval Book.” In Ursula E. McCraken, Lillian M. C. Randall, and Richard H. Randall, Jr., eds., Gatherings in Honor of Dorothy E. Miner, Baltimore, The Walters Art Gallery, 1974. 203–25. Quote is on page 203.

Panofsky, Erwin. Early Netherlandish Painting. Volume 1: Its Origins and Character. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1966. Quotes are on pages 194 and 195.

Sherman, Claire Richter, “Representations of Charles V of France (1338–1380) as a Wise Ruler.” Medievalia et Humanistica New Series no. 2 (1971): 83–96.

 

 

Image at top: Oskar Kokoschka, Hans Tietze and Erica Tietze-Conrat, oil on canvas, 30 1/8 x 53 5/8 in. (76.5 x 136.2 cm), 1909, Museum of Modern Art, New York, Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Fund, 1939 (photo: Véronique Plesch).