There aren’t many paintings of either Philopoemen or Titus Flaminius, from Plutarch’s Lives, but as two of them are by Rubens, are in major collections, and are fascinating, I will condense their biographies into this single article, to make sense of the art.

Philopoemen

Philopoemen was the orphan son of the illustrious Craugis of Megalopolis, who was brought up by Cleander.

When he was a general, Philopoemen was expected as a guest at a house in Megaria. With her husband out, the lady of the house set about preparing for her guest. When Philopoemen arrived, he was wearing an ordinary soldier’s cloak; his hostess mistook him for one of the general’s servants, so put him to work splitting firewood for her.

The woman’s husband, Titus Flaminius, then arrived and recognised Philopoemen, so asked him what this all meant. Philopoemen replied humorously that he was perhaps paying the penalty for his ill looks.

Oddly, it is this single and rather dubious story about Philopoemen which inspired two wonderful paintings by Rubens.

The earlier of the two, The Recognition of Philopoemen from about 1609 and painted with Frans Snyders, now in the Prado, Madrid, is the more finished. Titus and his wife are shown as being very old, although in fact Philopoemen was probably just over twenty years older than Titus. The fare they have brought in is lavish by any standards: there’s a swan, a peacock, and piles of other game. Under the table is a black cat, its eyes gleaming bright.

It is claimed that a few years later, Rubens painted the much smaller and more sketchy Philopoemen Recognised by an Old Woman (c 1616-18), which is now on the other side of the Pyrenees in the Louvre, Paris. I’d rather suspect that this was the earlier, and had been a preparatory study for the finished version now in the Prado. Both seem to be quite closely related to the spectacular series of the Five Senses, painted by Rubens between 1617-18 jointly with Jan Brueghel the Elder.

Philopoemen was fond of a soldier’s life from his youth, and possessed fine military skills. He first took part in incursions into Spartan territory, then at the age of thirty he helped the defence of Megalopolis against night attack by Spartan forces under King Cleomenes. During that action, he fought intelligently and bravely, and was wounded severely in both thighs by a javelin.

This earned him high repute, and he honed his skills of warfare on the island of Crete. On his return to the Achaeans, he was put in command of the cavalry, where he soon distinguished himself in battle against the Aetolians and Eleians at the river Larissus. Philopoemen changed the Achaean forces considerably, making them much stronger at a time when Greece was militarily quite weak.

Sparta was trying to gain control over the whole of the Peloponnesus, but Philopoemen and his army defeated them, and killed Machanidas, the tyrant of Sparta, in battle. This was commemorated in a bronze statue of Philopoemen set up at Delphi.

However, he was then summoned to lead the Gortynians as their general on Crete; while he was away, Megalopolis was under almost continuous attack, and his absence left its defence very weak. As punishment, it was proposed to send him into exile, but the Achaeans prevented that.

When Philopoemen returned from Crete, Philip of Macedon had been defeated by Titus Flaminius, and the Achaeans and Romans had become allies to fight Nabis and his Spartans. Philopoemen was immediately engaged as a general by the Achaeans, and won a major victory over the Spartans. Titus Flaminius was jealous of the recognition which he gained for that success.

Sparta fell into confusion, allowing Philopoemen and his cavalry to attack; this forced the city to become a member of the Achaean League – which was a remarkable and important achievement.

When he was seventy years old, Philopoemen again found himself general of the Achaeans, but was suffering the effects of age, and bouts of illness. Messene tried to revolt from the Achaean League, and Philopoemen rushed to defend a village from attack. While ill, he was thrown from his horse, and was captured by his enemy.

Philopoemen was confined in an underground prison known as the Thesaurus, with no windows and a huge stone for its door.

William Rainey’s colour lithograph of Philopoemen in Prison from before 1910 shows Philopoemen being given a cup of poison to drink, which killed him there in the Thesaurus. He was later buried with full military honours, and remembered in many statues around Greece.

Titus Flaminius

Titus Quintius Flaminius (Quinctius, or Quincticus) was also brought up as a soldier, and first served as a military tribune under the consul Marcellus against Hannibal. Marcellus died in an ambush, and Titus was made governor of Tarentum, which established his reputation. He was elected consul before he was thirty, and was sent to lead the Roman forces against King Philip of Macedon.

Unlike his predecessors, Titus intended a short and effective campaign. When he came upon the Macedonians, he ambushed them in a pass, and discovered that Philip was driving the inhabitants of Thessaly into the mountains, burning and looting their cities. Titus responded by telling his men to respect the locals, and win them over to the Romans, which proved very effective.

Titus attempted to negotiate with Philip, but the latter would not withdraw his garrisons from Greek cities. The Romans then won over the support of much of the rest of Greece, but Philip remained obdurate, even sending ambassadors direct to Rome to try to negotiate a better deal. Titus was supported by the senate, who agreed that he should continue his campaign against the Macedonians. Their large armies, of over 26,000 each, engaged near Scotussa.

The Romans got the upper hand in the battle, killing eight thousand Macedonians and taking five thousand prisoners, but Philip himself managed to escape. Eventually, Titus achieved peace by returning the kingdom of Macedon to Philip, but requiring him to keep away from Greece. The senate provided Titus with ten commissioners, who were to supervise the freedom of Greece, with three Roman garrisons.

At the Isthmian games, Titus was formally proclaimed proconsular general, and Greece made free within Roman supervision. This slowly brought a huge roar of approval from the spectators.

Jean Pierre Saint-Ours’ Titus Quincticus Flaminius Granting Liberty to Greece at the Isthmian Games from 1780 is a fine drawing of this event, which sadly doesn’t seem to have survived in any finished painting.

John Leech also turned it into the parody of Flaminius Restoring Liberty to Greece at the Isthmian Games in about 1850, as one of his illustrations in The Comic History of Rome.

But the most wonderful painting of it is Giuseppe Sciuti’s Titus Quinctius Offers Liberty to the Greeks from 1879. Sciuti was never a pupil of Gérôme, but seems to have had a similar liking for realist depictions of grand events in classical Greece and Rome. If this is anything to go by, we should perhaps unforget his work quickly.

Titus then made peace with Nabis, the lawless tyrant of Sparta, which disappointed other Greeks who had wanted him to be captured.

Later, Antiochus entered Greece, and stirred its people to revolt against the Romans. Titus was made lieutenant to Manius Acillius, who was sent as consular general to tackle this. As the Greeks had great affection for Titus, this brought strong support for the Roman cause, and Antiochus was defeated at Thermopylae.

Titus was then appointed censor, as the culmination of his career. At the time, Scipio Africanus and Marcus Cato were the most influential people in Rome, and opposed to one another. Titus appointed Scipio to be Dean of the Senate, but couldn’t make good relations with Cato. Titus fell into disfavour because of his treatment of Hannibal, who took his own life following his defeat and fall from power. Titus retired from public office, and died later, in peace.

References

Philopoemen, whole text in English translation at Penelope.
Flaminius, whole text in English translation at Penelope.

By 1560, Jacopo Tintoretto’s paintings had come to dominate the interior of the Madonna dell’Orto in Venice. I am only sorry that I have been unable to locate images of the five Virtues (one of which is now a later replacement) which completed his paintings there for the time being. However, these had not brought him much income, being supplied at near cost price. He began a more concerted campaign to win himself work from one of the richer of the Venetian fraternities: the Scuola Grande di San Rocco.

Over the next few years, his paintings came to grace more of the churches in Venice. In 1560, he painted a large organ shutter of the Annunciation to the Virgin for San Benedetto, which was later cut into sections; four fragments remain.

Because these fragments are of more modest size than the original canvas, it is perhaps easier to see his very painterly style in them. This Angel (E&I 85) is formed from what appear to be quick brushstrokes, which are most visible in the hair and its wings. The drawing of its right hand and arm is clean and resolute, with little time being spared to adjust or rework.

Another fragment shows the Virgin Mary (E&I 86). For such a central figure, she lacks the painstaking finish normally seen in religious works of the time.

In 1561, he designed another very large work showing The Wedding at Cana (E&I 89), which is thought to have been painted mainly by his studio and not his own hand. Described in the gospel of John, but not the three other gospels, tradition holds that this was the first miracle performed by Jesus, in which he turned water into wine.

Tintoretto adopts an interesting composition and a traditional style. The single-point perspective comes to a vanishing point directly above the head of Christ, in a markedly asymmetric position well over to the left. This balances the other main point of interest, where a small group of women are pouring water in the right foreground. The assumption is that this is being turned into wine, although this isn’t particularly visually clear, even in the detail below.

I also wonder whether Tintoretto has included a self-portrait, in the figure standing in front of the doorway close to the right edge.

The following year, Veronese started work on his own Wedding at Cana (1562-63), now in the Louvre, the more famous of the two very large paintings. The city of Venice has an interesting association with the Wedding at Cana, as tradition holds that Mark, the city’s patron saint, was one of those serving at that wedding feast.

Tintoretto followed this with two further paintings of The Assumption of The Virgin. This (E&I 90) is the version now in Bamberg, Germany, and is officially dated to the “early to mid 1560s”. Passages are reminiscent of his recent work for the Madonna dell’Orto in Venice: the swirl of angels at the top, in particular. It is considerably lighter and more dynamic than his Assumption for San Stin in the early 1550s, which I showed previously, and lacks the multitude of infant heads too.

Those infants return in the quite different version of The Assumption of The Virgin (E&I 91) which he painted at about the same time for the Cappella di Santa Maria Assunta, in the Gesuiti. It is thought that Tintoretto had promised to paint this work in the style of Veronese, which may explain its apparent reversion.

Tintoretto cast tradition aside in his next painting of The Last Supper (E&I 95), thought to have been made in about 1563-64, for the Chapel of the Sacrament, San Trovaso, in Venice. This is so radically informal that it still shocked John Ruskin when he saw it three centuries later.

Jesus is shown at a very informal occasion, leaning back and talking beside an almost square and low-set table. Twelve disciples sit, lounge, slump and lean around the table, of which one at the right is even eating his meal from his lap. There’s a rough assortment of seating, with a chair resting on its side under the table, as if hurriedly abandoned, which is perhaps a reference to Judas Iscariot.

The disciple at the far left is doing something to a serving dish which appears to contain a rabbit; to his left is a boy. In the far distance behind Jesus are two figures apparently seen in a vision, and over to the right is a pile of books and possessions. Almost at the top of the stairs, at the centre left, a woman sits, resting her head on her hands.

The informality and lack of symmetry are radical breaks from tradition, and show a Christ of the people – a theme which wasn’t properly explored again for over three hundred years. No wonder Ruskin was taken aback.

In about 1564, Tintoretto painted a series of three works showing episodes in the involvement of Saint Mark with the city of Venice – for the Scuola Grande di San Rocco at last. I haven’t been able to locate an image of his Finding of the Body of Saint Mark (E&I 97), which is now in Brera, Milan, but show the two works which are now in the Gallerie dell’Accademia in Venice.

Saint Mark the Evangelist and author of the gospel is thought to have died in what is now Libya in 68 CE. According to the Golden Legend, he was martyred in Alexandria, and Tintoretto’s Removal of the Body of St Mark (E&I 96) shows a small group of local Christians securing the body for burial in the catacombs there. Divine intervention in the form of a storm provided their cover.

In 828, two Venetian merchants are thought to have located the saint’s remains and taken them back to Venice, which Tintoretto shows in his Finding of the Body of Saint Mark. When the new basilica of Saint Mark was being built to house those remains in 1063, they could not be found; the following year, says tradition, the saint appeared and revealed their location, so that they could be laid to rest in a sarcophagus in the new basilica.

St Mark Rescues a Saracen (E&I 98) is another stormy nocturne, this time showing a story from the Golden Legend in which the saint is claimed to have saved a ‘Saracen’ (an Arab) from drowning in a shipwreck, as he made a vow that if so rescued, he would be baptised as a Christian. After his rescue, the Saracen failed to meet his promise, so Saint Mark appeared and reminded him of his vow, and the Saracen went to Venice and was baptised in the name of Mark.

Tintoretto’s commission for these paintings didn’t come directly from the Scuola Grande di San Rocco, but from a patron, Tommaso Rangone, who had independent tastes and means. In return for his support, Rangone appears in each of the paintings: he is the bearded man holding the shoulders of Saint Mark in the Removal, and holds two oars at the helm of the boat in the Rescue of a Saracen.

Tintoretto still had to win his commission from the Scuola itself – which will be the subject of my next article about his work.

References

Robert Echols and Frederick Ilchman (2009) Toward a new Tintoretto Catalogue, with a Checklist of revised Attributions and a new Chronology, in Falomir op cit.
Miguel Falomir (ed) (2009) Jacopo Tintoretto, Proceedings of the International Symposium, Museo Nacional del Prado. ISBN 978 84 8480 171 9.
Roland Krischel (ed) (2017) Tintoretto, A Star was Born, Hirmer (in German). ISBN 978 3 777 42942 7.
Tom Nichols (2015) Tintoretto, Tradition and Identity, 2nd edition, Reaktion Books. ISBN 978 1 78023 450 2.

Marthe Bonnard had died on 26 January 1942, leaving Pierre living alone in their villa at Le Cannet, during some of the most difficult years of the war. In north Africa – on the other side of the Mediterranean from le Midi – fighting finished at the end of 1943, with Allied victory. Just a few months later, the Allies reached Monte Cassino in their push up the Italian Peninsula towards Rome. Then in the summer of 1944 came the huge amphibious landings on the north coast of France – close to several of Bonnard’s old haunts in Normandy.

For Bonnard, 1944 was a year for appreciation of his art in print, with Formes et couleurs devoting much of its second issue to essays about his work. His friend Tériade also published a collection of fictional letters written by Bonnard evoking his childhood memories, which were illustrated by Bonnard. The photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson visited Bonnard to photograph him. At the end of the year, his graphic work was exhibited in Paris.

Panoramic View of Le Cannet or The Blue Mountain was painted in gouache and watercolour between 1942-44, and shows his favourite view from his villa above Le Cannet, with the distant hills cold in contrast to the rooves in the town.

Young Woman Painting (1944) might show his niece Renée Terrace, who went to stay with Bonnard in his villa in Le Cannet at the end of 1945.

In July 1945, Bonnard finally returned to Paris, where he designed the special issue of the magazine Verve which was to be devoted to him.

Bonnard painted this Afternoon Landscape down on the waterfront in about 1945. The sky is reminiscent of the Divisionist painting style of his friend Paul Signac.

Large Landscape, South of France (Le Cannet) from 1945 has been painted at the edge of the town, where its gardens give way to the surrounding countryside. Unusually, it is cropped below the skyline.

Villa Bosquet, Le Cannet, Morning from about 1945 is Bonnard’s strongest statement of his loneliness at home. The empty chair at the table and its even areas of paint are a marked contrast to his earlier domestic views.

Bonnard seems to have found greatest joy of expression in the mimosa: here a mere Bouquet of Mimosa (c 1945) loses all scale and could be huge shrubs, their brilliant flowers cascading down.

His mixed-media Self-Portrait from 1945 is bleak, his skin yellow, and eyes almost black hollows.

Bonnard returned to Paris in the summer of 1946, where he met André Lhote, Marc Chagall, and other artists. He then returned to Le Cannet, where in August the great photographer Brassaï photographed him in his studio. The following month, Giséle Freund took the only colour photos made of him. In the autumn, he made his final visit to the Louvre.

Another self-portrait is his Portrait of the Artist in the Bathroom Mirror from between 1939-46, which shows his body looking frail too.

Outside, though, the cascading yellow flowers filled the view from the window of The Studio at Le Cannet, with Mimosa (1938-46).

He sees a woman walking her dog on the Stairs at Le Cannet in 1946: the mimosa seems here to sprout from the surrounding walls, frothing over their tops.

Interior: Dining Room is claimed to date between 1942-46. It is dark outside. On the table inside Le Bosquet, there are bowls of fruit laid out, and at the right a blonde woman sits to eat.

The last dated painting I can find by Bonnard is this view of the waterfront in Cannes, which is claimed to be from 1947. It certainly appears to be winter, with cool temperatures meriting warm clothing, and a brisk wind blowing up small waves in the harbour there.

Pierre Bonnard died in Le Cannet on 23 January 1947, and was buried locally, alongside Marthe. The special issue of Verve devoted to Bonnard was published in August.

A heated debate arose between a friend of Picasso’s, the art critic Christian Zervos, and Matisse. The latter wrote that Bonnard “made some works of the highest quality and that will endure.” “As far as I’m concerned, he’s already to be accounted one of the great painters.”

Bonnard’s former muse, patron, and close friend Misia Natanson (later Sert) died in Paris on 15 October 1950, and Henri Matisse on 3 November 1954.

References

Guy Cogeval and Isabelle Cahn (2016) Pierre Bonnard, Painting Arcadia, Prestel. ISBN 978 3 791 35524 5.
Gilles Genty and Pierrette Vernon (2006) Bonnard Inédits, Éditions Cercle d’Art (in French). ISBN 978 2 702 20707 9.
Timothy Hyman (1998) Bonnard, World of Art, Thames and Hudson. ISBN 978 0 500 20310 1.

In the final decade of his career, Jean-Léon Gérôme’s paintings fell from favour, displaced by Impressionism and the modern styles which he had long opposed. He remained resolutely realist and academic, and turned to religious narratives.

Around 1895, Gérôme painted a series of eight works in grisaille which told stories from the Bible. One of the few survivors from these is The Disobedient Prophet, which tells an obscure story from the first book of Kings (chapter 13) in the Old Testament. This is by no means the only visual account of this story, but is unusual among religious paintings.

Following Jeroboam’s idolatry at Bethel, God commands that no one shall eat bread or drink water there, and must not return by the way that they came. When a prophet disobeys God’s command, he is given to a lion, which kills him and leaves his body on the road, with his donkey unharmed beside him. He is found there, as shown in this painting.

A couple of years later, Gérôme painted the event which classically marks the start of Christ’s Passion, The Entry of Christ into Jerusalem (1897). According to all four gospels, Jesus descended from the Mount of Olives, and as he proceeded towards Jerusalem, crowds laid their clothes on the ground to welcome his triumphal entry into the city.

Aside from being one of the major events in the Passion to be shown in paintings, for Gérôme this may have had another reading. But a few years before, his paintings were being welcomed by throngs at the Salon, and commanded huge sums when sold. A short time later, his work was largely ignored, and he may have seen himself as being prepared for a public crucifixion.

Moses on Mount Sinai (1895-99) shows a well-known episode during the forty years in which the Israelites wandered in the wilderness, following their exodus from slavery in Egypt. Moses their leader went up to the top of Mount Sinai to be given the ten commandments by God, during which the Israelites fashioned a graven image of a golden calf for their worship.

This is probably Gérôme’s last spectacle of his career: vast in its scope, and equally dramatic in its importance for the Israelites.

Gérôme may have been influenced by the writings of the scholar Charles Beke, who in 1873 proposed that what the book of Exodus referred to as Mount Sinai was actually a volcano. Controversy over its real location continues.

Then, in about 1902, Gérôme returned to his series of paintings of himself as a sculptor. His Self-Portrait Painting The Ball Player is a fascinating variation of the traditional form of self-portrait, in that he is here applying the colour to one of his polychromatic sculptures, a figure of a ball player, who closely resembles those seen earlier in his paintings of sculptures, including Pygmalion and Galatea.

His final visit to the martyrdom of Christians in classical Roman times, Removal of the Big Cats from 1902, is now considered to be in execrable taste, but I think is being misread. Unlike some other nineteenth century history painters, Gérôme had showed no tendency to mawkishness, nor predilection for gore.

This painting shows the wild beasts – Gérôme’s favourite ‘big cats’ in particular, which he painted in many of his Orientalist works – being herded back into the bowels of the Colosseum. The remnants of the crowd are making their way out, and the incinerated or dismembered bodies of martyrs are left behind.

It is, for all the blood in the sand, the logical conclusion to Gérôme’s series of works showing Roman spectacles, from their earliest beginning with his Cock Fight of 1846. For all those who enjoyed the earlier ‘sport’, it is also a grim reminder of the eventual outcome.

The last narrative painting which is securely attributed to Gérôme is a little joke of his which proved to be his greatest influence on twentieth century art: his Optician’s Sign from 1902. This plays on the French term opticien, and chien, the French for dog. He apparently entered this in a competition. Years later, is was seized upon by Surrealists, and proved an inspiration for several of them.

Given Gérôme’s career-long fascination with the truth and accuracy of images, this might have been an ideal work with which to end his painting. But there is one more narrative work, which may have been painted by those working in his studio, but must have come from Gérôme’s inner vision: Androcles (c 1902).

The story of Androcles (or Androclus) and the Lion was first recorded by Aulus Gellius and attributed to Apion, claimed to be a true account, but has become widespread in European folk tales. It was turned into the successful and still popular play Androcles and the Lion by George Bernard Shaw, but that was not published for a decade after Gérôme’s painting.

Androcles was a slave in Rome, with a mean master, so he decided to run away. Hiding in the woods, he became short of food, and weak. One night a lion came into the cave in which Androcles was sheltering. The lion was roaring, and scared Androcles, who thought that he was about to be eaten by the beast.

But it was clear that the lion had a very painful foot; eventually Androcles plucked up the courage to look at the animal’s foot, from which he extracted a large thorn (or splinter of wood). The lion was overjoyed and very amiable towards Androcles. They became firm friends, and the lion brought Androcles food, to build up his strength.

One day soldiers were passing, and found Androcles. They returned him to Rome, where the law prescribed that such runaway slaves were to be put in the arena with a hungry lion, recalling Gérôme’s earlier paintings of such scenes. The day came that Androcles was put in the arena, but when his lion was released, he turned out to be the same who Androcles had been so friendly with. Instead of the lion killing Androcles, they showed their friendship. When he explained how this came about, Androcles was made a free man, and took the lion as his pet.

Gérôme shows the salient event in the first part of this story, in which Androcles extracts the thorn or splinter from the lion’s paw.

Perhaps Gérôme’s career had a happy ending after all.

References

Ackerman GM (2000) Jean-Léon Gérôme, Monographie révisée, Catalogue Raisonné Mis à Jour, (in French) ACR Édition. ISBN 978 2 867 70137 5.
Scott Allan and Mary Morton, eds. (2010) Reconsidering Gérôme, Getty. ISBN 978 1 6060 6038 4.
Gülru Çakmak (2017) Jean-Léon Gérôme and the Crisis of History Painting in the 1850s, Liverpool UP. ISBN 978 1 78694 067 4.
de Cars L et al. (2010) The Spectacular Art of Jean-Léon Gérôme (1824-1904), Skira. ISBN 978 8 85 720702 5.

The scuole (plural of scuola) in Venice were fraternity institutions. There were numerous regular scuole, but a few rose to become officially recognised as Scuole Grandi, which had elaborate constitutions and were regulated by the Procurators of the city. In 1564, there were just six, of which the Scuola Grande di San Rocco was the second youngest, being founded in 1478.

In addition to their system of boards and officers, the Scuole Grandi had grand premises. In their main building was an androne or meeting hall, and its upper floor had two rooms for smaller gatherings: the larger one was used by its main board, and a smaller albergo for its supervising committees. There was usually an affiliated hospital, and of course the Scuola’s church. The Scuole Grandi also had a long history of commissioning music and musicians, and art, including architecture, sculpture, and painting.

San Rocco’s meeting house had undergone protracted and costly development, being started on its formation in 1478 and only ‘substantially’ completed seventy years later in 1549.

In 1549, in a bid to strengthen his hand with the Scuola Grande, Tintoretto donated his painting of Saint Roch Cures the Plague Victims to its Church of San Rocco, but it had been his patron Tommaso Rangone who commissioned his recent series of paintings of Saint Mark. Then in 1564, the brothers of the Scuola Grande called a competition between the leading painters of Venice to start providing paintings for its albergo.

Tintoretto, faced with hostility from some of the brothers, pre-empted the competition by donating what was intended to be the thematic centre panel of the ceiling: St Roch in Glory (E&I 101) (1564). The full story is given by Tom Nichols (2015, see references below), and resulted in Tintoretto stealing the commission, and completing twenty-two more paintings to complete that project. Over the following years, his paintings came to dominate the treasures of San Rocco, and his place in the history of art was assured.

Of the seventeen works provided by Tintoretto at this stage, for the albergo, this is the only one now believed to have been entirely his work. Twelve allegorical figures, four seasons, and various more decorative paintings were most probably painted by his studio.

The following year, commissioned again by the Scuola Grande for its albergo, Tintoretto painted one of the major religious works of the century: his vast Crucifixion (E&I 123) (1565). This is over 5 metres (17 feet) high, and 12 metres (40 feet) across.

With the experience of his previous Crucifixion of about 1558 behind him, and having at last convinced the sceptics of San Rocco that he was to be trusted, he applied the lessons learned in his tall works for the Madonna dell’Orto. He makes use of space and uses a narrative technique based on the traditional ‘multiplex’ form popular during the Renaissance, in which its single image shows events at more than a single point in time – but in an ingenious and modern manner.

Naturally, the painting centres on Christ crucified, but the two thieves executed beside him are not shown, as would be traditional, already hanging from their crosses.

Instead, to the right of Christ, the ‘bad’ thief is still being attached to his cross, which rests on the ground. To the left of Christ, the ‘good’ thief is just being raised to the upright position. There is nothing in the well-known gospel accounts which actually makes this view anachronistic, but it is most probable that the crucifixions were more simultaneous.

It is thus an ingenious artistic device which shows the three executions at different times, and is therefore ‘multiplex’ (or ‘continuous’) narrative. But here it avoids the archaic repetition of figures or other content, as Tintoretto applies it to discrete passages within the whole.

Spaced out around the canvas are relevant sub-stories from that whole. At the foot of Christ’s cross is his group of mourners, including the Marys. Each of the crosses has attendant workers, busy with the task of conducting the crucifixion, climbing ladders, hauling on lines, and fastening each victim to his cross. This mechanical and human detail brings the scene to life and adds to its credibility, and grim process.

The crowd on the left is more spread out than in his earlier depiction. In the distance is a flag bearing the letters SPQR representing the Roman Empire, and its link through Pilate. Most faces are turned towards Christ, with their eyes wide in awe.

On the right, in a small rock shelter suggestive of a tomb, two men are gambling with dice. To the right of them, a gravedigger has just started his work with a spade. The ruling class, perhaps Herod himself, have turned up on horseback, and they too stare wide-eyed at Christ.

Later, to accompany this vast centrepiece, Tintoretto painted other scenes from the Passion, which I will examine in the next article in this series.

References

Robert Echols and Frederick Ilchman (2009) Toward a new Tintoretto Catalogue, with a Checklist of revised Attributions and a new Chronology, in Falomir op cit.
Miguel Falomir (ed) (2009) Jacopo Tintoretto, Proceedings of the International Symposium, Museo Nacional del Prado. ISBN 978 84 8480 171 9.
Roland Krischel (ed) (2017) Tintoretto, A Star was Born, Hirmer (in German). ISBN 978 3 777 42942 7.
Tom Nichols (2015) Tintoretto, Tradition and Identity, 2nd edition, Reaktion Books. ISBN 978 1 78023 450 2.

Telling a story in a single painting isn’t easy. Indeed, some have claimed that it’s impossible. If a painting is a faithful view of a scene at a moment in time, strictly speaking it can only show that single scene.

For any art to be narrative, it needs to tell the viewer of at least two scenes in the story. Several techniques have been used to do that: for example, comics and graphic novels use long sequences of linked images which assemble into stories which are often more elaborate and detailed than purely literary works.

This series of three articles looks at one of the oldest techniques for storytelling in visual art, in which two or more moments from the narrative are shown within a single image. This is conventionally known as continuous narrative, but because that term doesn’t match its properties and often confuses, I prefer to refer to it as multiplex narrative, as two or more scenes are multiplexed into its single image.

Today, multiplex narrative is usually considered to be rare outside Renaissance art, and not a good way to tell a story in a painting. I’d like to show you that it has occurred in all periods and styles of painting, and that although it might look a little strange to the modern eye, it remains a highly effective way of telling a story in a painting. Indeed, once you’re accustomed to multiplex narrative, it’s good art and good reading.

This Roman painting from Boscotrecase, near the coast at Pompeii, dates from soon after 11 BCE, and is a fine example of multiplex narrative at work. It shows two distinct scenes from the myth in which Perseus rescues Andromeda from the jaws of the sea monster Cetus.

Andromeda is shown in the centre, on a small pedestal cut into the rock. Below it and to the left is the gaping mouth of Cetus, as Perseus flies down from the left to rescue Andromeda, kill the sea-monster, and later marry Andromeda in reward, as shown in the upper right.

The first time that you see a painting in which one or more of its actors appears twice (or more), it may seem odd and unreal. That is only because we have become accustomed to the many paintings which depict just a single moment in time. Distinguishing the different scenes which have been integrated into the single image is seldom difficult, and there are usually clear visual clues, such as the presence of the same actor wearing the same dress.

In common with all other visual narrative techniques, stories told in a single image, whether or not it shows multiple scenes, are much easier to read when you are already familiar with that story.

This relief shows the Death of Meleager using multiplex narrative. At the right, Meleager has killed one of the sons of Thestius, and is about to kill the other with his dagger. In the centre, Meleager lies on a couch, in the throes of death, his sisters beside him. At the left, Meleager’s mother Althaea throws a log or brand onto the fire to bring about her son’s death.

One aspect of multiplex narrative which has puzzled some is how to determine the order in which to read individual scenes. In general, there aren’t any rules, nor are they needed. Armed with a recollection of the outline of the story, the viewer proceeds in the same way that you might look through a photo album: oh look, there’s Meleager’s mother throwing a brand onto the fire; she did that to kill her son, when he murdered the sons of Thestius.

For much of the past, many of those reading paintings were largely or completely illiterate, but (like wandering bards and storytellers of all ages) they had an excellent memory for even long epics such as Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey – for which visual cues from multiplex narrative would have been excellent.

Duccio’s The Healing of the Man born Blind, from his Maestà Predella Panels of about 1310, is an excellent example of a narrative painting as art emerged from the Middle Ages. Much of the panel is taken up by the first scene, in which Christ is healing a man we know – from the Gospel story – is blind. Back to back with him being healed as a blind man, he is shown healed and sighted to the right.

Duccio made that panel at a time before modern perspective projection was understood, and his efforts at architectural perspective now look strange. Some have supposed that there is some inherent contradiction between the adoption of modern ‘correct’ projections and multiplex narrative. Nothing could be further from the truth: Masaccio, one of the earliest adopters of modern perspective, through his collaboration with Brunelleschi, the architect who first discovered it, was also an enthusiastic narrator using multiplex technique.

Among several superb examples of both techniques in the same painting, The Tribute Money (1425-8) is perhaps the most famous. One of his marvellous frescoes in the Brancacci Chapel in Florence, he packs three separate scenes into its non-linear arrangement.

In the centre, a tax collector asks Christ for temple tax. At the far left, as directed by Christ and Peter’s arms, Peter (shown a second time) takes a coin from the mouth of a fish. At the right, Peter (a third time) pays the tax collector (shown a second time) with that coin. And he had not the slightest difficulty in setting these three scenes in single-point perspective with its vanishing point at the head of Christ.

Multiplex narrative was popular in both the Southern and Northern Renaissance. My next example comes from the workshop of Rogier van der Weyden in Brussels, Belgium.

Sergius dreamed that an angel told him that Bishop Saint Lambert had been killed. The smaller figures here tell the story of the Pope’s subsequent actions: nearest the viewer, the Pope and two of his cardinals meet a noble and a friar as they leave the building. A cardinal is seen crossing the bridge, near which a woman is doing her washing in the river. In the distance, the Pope presents a bishop’s mitre and staff to Saint Hubert, successor to Saint Lambert, on the steps of Saint Peter’s Cathedral. Beyond that, other figures travel out of Rome along a road.

Some artists used exceptionally long panels so they could paint an array of almost separate scenes across them in ‘landscape’ orientation. The earliest example that I have of that is unfortunately not an image of particularly good quality.

Zanobi Strozzi’s account of the story of Susanna and the Elders from about 1450 consists of four scenes which are only gently integrated into the whole. In the central two scenes, Susanna enters her garden, and gets into the bath there, with the two elders physically grappling with her in their attempted rape. To the left of them are the two heads of the elders when they were earlier spying on Susanna.

The scenes at the left and right tell parts of the later story, but it is not entirely clear which. That on the left appears to be a trial, possibly the second trial of the two elders in which Daniel has intervened. That at the right may show the two elders taken out of town to be executed.

Benozzo Gozzoli’s The Dance of Salome (1461-62) tells the story of Salome’s dance before King Herod, and the presentation to her of the head of John the Baptist. Salome is shown twice in the single frame: once dancing in front of Herod, and again giving Herodias the head of John at the back of the room. The middle event in the chain, the beheading of John, is shown in a side-room at the left.

Here, it is possible to deduce the story without already knowing it. There must be at least two scenes included, as one actor appears twice. This allows the viewer to establish the three scenes, but not the order in which to read them. Knowing that the man at the left is about to be beheaded, and that his head appears on a plate at the back of the view, places those two in order, and it is then not hard to guess that the scene of Salome dancing must have preceded those.

Hans Memling painted two of the most extended and complex multiplex narratives of all: 23 Scenes from the Passion of Christ (1470-71), below, and 25 scenes from the life of Christ in his Advent and Triumph of Christ (1480).

Each of the individual scenes making up the Passion as a whole is located in a different part of a fictionalised aerial view of Jerusalem, with the same subject, Christ, appearing in each one. Even for the modern and non-religious viewer, this is a fascinating painting which many of us could explore for hours.

This superb panel by Jacopo da Sellaio tells much of the tragedy of Orpheus and Euridyce, played across an integrated fantasy landscape. Orpheus, Eurydice and Aristaeus dates from 1475-80, and is one panel of a series, now sadly dispersed across continents.

The start of the story is at the left, where Orpheus is tending a flock of sheep. To the right of that, his bride Euridyce is bitten by a snake very shortly after their wedding. At the far right, Orpheus, with the assistance of Aristaeus, puts the dead body of Eurydice in a rock tomb.

To tell the story given by Herodotus about the corruption of Sisamnes, known as the Judgement of Cambyses, Gerard David made two paintings which are now viewed as a diptych; the second work in the diptych employs multiplex narrative to extend its coverage of this grim tale.

Sisamnes was a notoriously corrupt judge under the rule of King Cambyses II of Persia, and accepted a bribe in return for delivering an unjust verdict.

King Cambyses sentences Sisamnes to be flayed alive, as shown in the foreground. In the upper right, the judge’s skin is then used to cover the official chair, as a reminder to all who sit in judgement of the fate that awaits them should they ever become corrupt or unfair.

The great Hieronymus Bosch was a not infrequent user of multiplex narrative. As his work straddles the divide with the next article, I will hold two examples over to that, and here show two earlier ones, the first the reverse side of an altarpiece, the other on the exterior cover of a triptych.

Bosch’s Passion Scenes (c 1490-95) consists of an outer background which is very dark here, containing various individual figures, surrounding a circular area in which he has painted scenes from the Passion. As the reverse of a panel for an altarpiece, it could only be viewed in one orientation, so the whole of this painting shares the same orientation.

The lower two-thirds of the scenes are carefully divided into frames, five in total, but the upper third merges its three scenes into a single multiplex image, in which Christ appears three times: at the left carrying his cross up to Golgotha, at the top on the cross, and at the right his body being laid in a coffin for burial. This uses a common location for those three scenes in an ingenious composition.

The central image of a pelican feeding its young from its own blood not only sets the moral theme of self-sacrifice, but also solves the problem of how to bring the peripheral scenes together in the centre.

The peculiarity resulting from this otherwise ingenious composition is that the narrative sequence begins at the five o’clock position, in order to accommodate the resurrection scene at the tomb, at the right. Bosch leaves the viewer to work that out, which should have been an easy task in this case, given the familiarity of contemporary viewers with the stories shown.

The exterior of Bosch’s Adoration of the Magi is a brown grisaille showing the Mass of Saint Gregory. Above and behind its altar is the figure of the resurrected Christ, still showing the marks of crucifixion on his side and hands, and wearing his crown of thorns.

Around Christ is a border of angels, and around those an arched area which contains seven scenes of the passion of Christ. These are read from the bottom left (Christ praying in Gethsemane), bottom right (the arrest), through the mid-left and mid-right, to the crucifixion at the top. Outside those narrative scenes are some more unconventional elements, including a winged devil flying off with Judas’s pale body impaled on a long lance.

In my cursory and highly unsystematic survey so far, I have shown you eleven paintings (and one marble panel) in which the multiplex technique has been used to tell a story in a single image. And we’ve only got to 1500.

References

Lew Andrews (1995) Story and Space in Renaissance Art, the Rebirth of Continuous Narrative, Cambridge UP. ISBN 0 521 47356 X.

The Story in Paintings: Modes of painted narrative
The Story in Paintings: Story circles – narrative form in Bosch’s Passion Scenes
Telling the story: narrative across media, including spoken, written, movies, graphic novels, paintings, photos, and music
The Story in Paintings: So what is a narrative painting?
Every picture tells a story: narrative paintings

In the first of these three articles about telling stories in paintings using the multiplex technique (or ‘continuous narrative’), I showed a series of examples stretching from classical Rome to Hieronymus Bosch just before 1500. According to some accounts of art history (the few which consider narrative modes), multiplex narrative declined during the 1500s, and by 1600 had vanished, an aberration of the past.

In fact, what I aim to show here is that it remained popular with the greatest narrative artists, and the subject of further innovative development.

Sandro Botticelli’s textbook demonstration of perspective projection and multiplex narrative is in one of his lesser-known works, The Story of Lucretia, painted in 1500-01.

This tells its story in three scenes which are integrated into its single architectural whole. At the left, Lucretia is raped at knifepoint by Sextus Tarquinius. She then commits suicide in shame, and anger erupts through Rome. Her body is carried from her house (right) and placed in the Forum. There, her husband and his friends swear to overthrow the king (centre), and this brings about the new constitution for the city of Rome.

Hieronymus Bosch was one of the first painters to use multiplex narrative to tell the story of the Fall of Man, in the left wing of his superb triptych of The Last Judgment, from about 1500-05.

This shows the Garden of Eden, with lush rolling countryside and lakes. At the top is God the Father, in a bright area, below which there is a host of angels tumbling from Heaven, from the darkening clouds. Some angels are shown white, and some (those who have been cast out from Heaven) are black, and engage in aerial combat with one another.

The story of Adam and Eve is told in three multiplexed scenes, read from front to back. In the foreground, God the Father (dressed in red robes) has just created Eve, while Adam rests on the grass. Behind that, Adam and Eve are at the foot of an apple tree. From its canopy, a naked figure hands them an apple to eat. In the middle distance, a red-robed angel brandishes a sword at Adam and Eve, as it chases them from the garden.

This account of the Birth of Adonis, painted on a cassone panel in around 1505-10, may well be one of Titian’s earliest works, although this is disputed and even Giorgione has been credited. At the left, Myrrha and her father Cinyras lie together in their incestuous union. In the centre, a baby is delivered from the woody womb of Myrrha, who was turned into a myrrh tree by the gods.

Fra Bartolomeo was one of the first artists to use an asymmetric variant of multiplex narrative which is more subtle, and may have been seen at the time as being progressive. In his Rest on the Flight into Egypt with St. John the Baptist, from about 1509, Joseph and Mary are shown in the dominant scene with the two infants.

In the distance at the right is a couple, dressed identically, undertaking the same journey. They too are Mary and Joseph, and remind the viewer of the underlying story.

Piero di Cosimo wasn’t in the least shy of being thoroughly multiplex in his Andromeda Freed by Perseus (c 1510-15). Centred on the great bulk of Cetus, Perseus stands on its back and is about to hack at its neck with his curved sword. At the upper right, Perseus is shown a few moments earlier, as he was flying past in his winged sandals. To the left of Cetus, Andromeda is still secured to the rock by red fabric bindings (not chains), and is bare to her waist.

He also shows scenes which are more peripheral to the story. In the foreground in front of Cetus are Andromeda’s parents stricken in grief. Near them is a group of courtiers with ornate head-dress. But in the right foreground the concluding marriage of Andromeda and Perseus is already in full swing, complete with musicians and dancers.

The left panel of Hieronymus Bosch’s late triptych The Haywain revisited the story of the Fall of Man from the Garden of Eden, with God the Father shown in the narrative content and in Heaven above, and the fall of angels occurring at the same time.

This is told in three scenes on grassy lawns amid the trees. This time, the story is read from the back to the front.

In the middle distance, God, standing in red robes, has just created Eve, who stands naked on his right. Adam, also naked, rests on the grass in front of them, facing away, in a posture similar to that in The Last Judgment above. Near the centre of the panel, Adam and Eve are stood at the foot of a large apple tree. Part way up its trunk is a serpent with a human head and arms, which is offering them an apple.

In the foreground, Adam and Eve are covering their crotches with their hands and leaves, and stand outside a stone arch beyond the edge of the Garden. A winged angel is brandishing a sword at them, banishing them from the Garden of Eden.

Lorenzo Lotto’s account of Susanna and the Elders from 1517 shows a closely integrated composite of at least two scenes from different sections of the story.

In the foreground, Susanna is naked in front of the two elders, who have entered the privacy of her walled garden and tried to blackmail her into having sex with them. Entering this walled section of garden at the right is Daniel, who in a later scene interrogates the two elders to reveal the lies behind their allegations about Susanna.

Telling the story of the integration of male and female bodies to form Hermaphrodite proved too great a challenge for a single scene in one painting. Jan Gossaert’s The Metamorphosis of Hermaphrodite and Salmacis (c 1517) shows the couple in their final battle. Union of their bodies then takes place on the bank at the far left, where they appear like Siamese twins, with two legs and two heads.

Jan Rombouts I shows three key scenes from the life and death of John the Baptist in his Beheading of St John the Baptist, from 1500-1550. In the distance, John baptises (possibly Jesus Christ); in the middle distance is Herod’s feast at which John’s head is being presented on a large salver, and in the foreground the executioner places John’s head in the salver held by Salome.

Lucas Cranach the Elder’s The Garden of Eden (1530) follows Bosch’s double precedent of telling the story of the Fall of Man using multiplex narrative. This time there are six scenes, which start in the centre distance with God and Adam, jump to the right for the creation of Eve, cross the centre, and end up at the left with the angel chasing Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden. Bosch’s influence can be seen in the posture of Adam when Eve is created from his rib.

Bronzino’s The Flaying of Marsyas (1531-32) is a detailed summary of the complex story of this mythical tragedy. At the right, the musical contest between Marsyas and Apollo is taking place, with a very human Marsyas playing a wind instrument resembling a clarinet.

In the left distance, Apollo subdues the defeated Marsyas and binds him. In the centre, Apollo is flaying the satyr, with Olympus in the left foreground expressing his grief.

In the later 1500s, some were starting to consider traditional multiplex narrative was archaic, preferring monoscenic painting. Jacopo Tintoretto found an innovative solution by which he told the story of Christ’s Crucifixion in detail without confusing his classical composition, or repeating any of the figures, in his vast Crucifixion of 1565 for the albergo of the Scuola Grande di San Rocco.

Its single image shows events at more than a single point in time by the depiction of each of the three being crucified at a different stage of the whole process. To the right of Christ, the ‘bad’ thief is still being attached to his cross, which rests on the ground. To the left of Christ, the ‘good’ thief is just being raised to the upright position. These also emphasise the figure of Christ, who is already nailed to his cross and in the fully upright position.

Turning back to the generally more twisting and twisted narratives of myth, Niccolò dell’Abbate’s The Rape of Proserpine (c 1570) shows Pluto carrying Proserpine up a hill. At the far right, he is about to drive his chariot into a huge cavern, which will take them down into the underworld.

In the foreground are associated scenes: Cyane is by her pool, and about to literally dissolve into tears in its water. Six other nymphs, the daughters of Achelous, are also protesting at the girl’s abduction.

Sometimes, the scenes included in multiplex narrative appear too contradictory to form a coherent image. Virgil Solis’ engraving of the Ovidian myth of Iphis and Anaxarete shows the body of Iphis discovered hanging outside the door to Anaxarete’s house, in the left foreground. In the right distance, Iphis’ corpse is carried to his funeral pyre, with his mother in close attendance, as Anaxarete looks on from her balcony, and is turned to stone.

When the Carraccis painted their frescoes of the story of Jason and Medea in the Palazzo Ghisilardi Fava in Bologna, in about 1583-84, several of their eighteen separate images used elaborate multiplex technique. In this example, two of the fire-breathing bulls are still yoked, in front of King Aeëtes, at the left, from the first of his tasks for the king. The army sprung up from the dragon’s teeth appear behind the wall, armed still with spears but no longer fighting, referring to the second of Jason’s tasks.

In the foreground, in the last task to acquire the Golden Fleece, Jason has put the dragon to sleep using Medea’s magic concoction, and is unhitching the Fleece while he can. At the right, two of the Argonauts offer to help Jason (shown a second time) carry the fleece away.

My last painting from the sixteenth century tells another story from Ovid’s Metamorphoses, in Cornelis van Haarlem’s Two Followers of Cadmus Devoured by a Dragon from 1588. This shows a very dragon-like monster killing and eating two of Cadmus’s men. But look carefully into the distance, and you will see the same beast being impaled by Cadmus with his javelin.

Together, these add another fifteen paintings and one engraving, bringing the total of paintings showing multiplex narrative to 26. In the third and final article, I’ll add further to that from art which was created after 1600, when this technique supposedly ceased altogether.

References

Lew Andrews (1995) Story and Space in Renaissance Art, the Rebirth of Continuous Narrative, Cambridge UP. ISBN 0 521 47356 X.

The Story in Paintings: Modes of painted narrative
Telling the story: narrative across media, including spoken, written, movies, graphic novels, paintings, photos, and music
The Story in Paintings: So what is a narrative painting?
Every picture tells a story: narrative paintings

In the two of these three articles about telling stories in paintings using the multiplex technique (or ‘continuous narrative’), I have shown examples stretching from classical Rome to the Renaissance, the period over which it is claimed to have been used. Far from it falling into disuse during the sixteenth century, the last article showed it alive and well right up to its end. This article shows what has happened since, and ends by looking briefly at its appearance in paintings in Asian art.

Hendrick van Balen the Elder’s Herse and her Sisters with Mercury (c 1600-32) tackles one of the lesser-known myths in Ovid’s Metamorphoses with a composite of two scenes on a single panel. At the right, Mercury is seen negotiating his way past Aglauros, Herse’s guardian. The majority of the painting shows the sisters preparing Herse to welcome Mercury in her best sandals and finest clothes, which is clearly an earlier moment in time.

Attributed to Karel Philips Spierincks in about 1630, this painting of Jupiter and Callisto follows a similar model. In the foreground, Jupiter, disguised as the goddess Diana, embraces Callisto during her seduction. In the distance, we see the jealous Juno (accompanied by her distinctive peacocks) later dragging Callisto along by her hair before the goddess transforms her into a bear.

The early seventeenth century was the time during which many great post-Renaissance narrative painters – Rubens, the Brueghels, and Poussin, for example – were active. Although not known for their use of multiplex narrative, even they succumbed to using it at times.

We have considerable insight into Nicolas Poussin’s painting of The Israelites Gathering the Manna in the Desert from 1637-39, thanks to the artist’s letter of about 1637 (repeated in a 1639 letter to Chantelou, who commissioned the painting). In that he revealed that he was showing three separate phases which the Israelites went through: the starved state to which the Israelites were reduced before the provision of manna, the joy they experienced when the manna was provided, and its effect in improving their respect for the leaders.

Poussin uses colour and light, together with signs in body language, to guide our gaze through the complexity of his painting. The details below show each of the scenes which it incorporates.

Closest to us, at the left, is a group of five figures who are still battling with starvation. Among these are a woman with a toddler, who is suckling not that infant, but her aged mother, wearing the yellow robes. To the left of the child is a man who might have come from Géricault’s Raft of the Medusa, propping his head against a stick. To the right is an elderly man, being helped up by a woman who is pointing to the right of the painting, although he is pointing back (towards Moses and Aaron), still asking what their leaders had done to address their predicament. This scene shows the earliest moment in time.

Follow the woman’s pointing arm across to the right of the painting, and there is a larger group who are brightly lit and brilliantly coloured. The foreground contains nine figures who are busy gathering the manna in the way prescribed by God. Two of them look up to heaven and express their gratitude, but two younger men (or older boys) are fighting to collect their day’s ration, and others seem to be reminding them of the rules. The woman in yellow is here pointing back at the first group to complete the link between them. This is the second moment in time.

Behind and to the left, a cluster of about eight men seem to be expressing their gratitude in deliverance, and some look left and up towards the figures of Moses and Aaron.

The two leaders, brightly lit and coloured, stand slightly further back. Behind them, to the left in the painting, are some fans, their hands raised to heaven, applauding Moses and Aaron.

For once, at least, Poussin abandoned temporal unity – this painting does not depict a single moment in time – in order to tell the complete story using multiplex narrative.

This remained controversial even after the artist’s death. The French Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture organised a series of lectures and debates on his paintings in 1667, and devoted one complete session, led by Charles le Brun, to consider this painting. Le Brun’s lecture was recorded by André Félibien, published in a book of the lectures and in Félibien’s biography of Poussin, and has been the basis for research, comment, and debate ever since.

We also have evidence that multiplex narrative was still acceptable in book illustrations towards the middle of the seventeenth century.

Johann Wilhelm Baur’s set of engravings to illustrate Ovid’s Metamorphoses include a particularly fine account of Chione (c 1639) which has three separate scenes. At the left, in the foreground, the vengeful Diana has just loosed an arrow, which is still in flight, at Chione, on the right. The arrow impales Chione’s tongue, as revenge for her boastfulness, and kills her.

Behind them, in the centre, Chione’s father Daedalion tries to throw himself on his daughter’s funeral pyre, following which he hurls himself from a sea cliff, and is transformed into a somewhat ungainly hawk.

Surviving examples of multiplex narrative become very sparse between 1650 and 1800, a period in which narrative painting became somewhat formulaic and lacking in innovation.

This didn’t stop Sebastiano Ricci from using it in The Battle of the Lapiths and Centaurs in about 1705, though. In the left background, he shows the event which sparked the battle off, with Hippodame being carried away by the centaur Eurytus. In the right middle distance is a later scene of centaurs raping other Lapith women at the wedding feast, and the foreground is filled with even later scenes of murderous fighting.

Philippe-Auguste Hennequin’s complex painting of The Remorse of Orestes from 1800 uses the Furies as a tool for showing multiplex narrative. Orestes is at the left, the centre of attention, and his right arm is holding his sister Electra. He is under attack by a small army of Furies and spirits, including the murdered body of Clytemnestra, on the floor, and Agamemnon.

Hennequin doesn’t use spatial separation of these scenes, but demarcates them with light. This encourages the viewer to see them as the more modern narrative device of flashback.

In 1836, as if to celebrate the two-hundredth anniversary of Poussin’s The Israelites Gathering the Manna in the Desert, the Father of Impressionism Camille Corot used blatant traditional multiplex narrative, in his Diana and Actaeon.

At the centre of Corot’s painting, Diana and her attendant nymphs are bathing in a stream, and soaking up the sunshine. At the right, Actaeon with one of his hunting dogs is just about to run straight into them. Diana, appropriately crowned, stands pointing to the distant figure at the left – which is again Actaeon, antlers growing from his head as she transforms him into a stag.

Actaeon appears twice in spatially separate scenes, with Diana and her group being part of both. In the first, they are simply bathing and larking about, but in the second Diana stands, points, and transforms Actaeon. This may be an archaic mode of narrative, but Corot has been innovative in its implementation.

Almost at the turn of the century, Edward Burne-Jones told the harrowing story of Philomela (1896) in this ingenious wood engraving to illustrate The Legend of Goode Wimmen in the famous illustrated edition of the works of Chaucer published by the Kelmscott Press that year.

Philomela was raped by her brother-in-law the king of Thrace. When she refused to keep silent, he cut her tongue out and abandoned her in a remote hut. She is shown here weaving her story, carefully labelled, as her only means of communicating it, making this remarkable print a unique embedding of multiplex narrative within a single scene from that same story.

Just on the turn of the century, one of the first great painters of the twentieth century, Edvard Munch, used another variant of multiplex narrative in his work Saint Hans Night (The Dance of Life) (1899-1900).

This shows the artist dancing with his lover ‘Mrs Heiberg’ (Millie Thaulow), who is depicted as a mature and passionate woman in red. To the right is a man engaged more passionately with his partner; this is thought to represent the writer Gunnar Heiberg. One woman, who lacks a partner, is shown twice, at the left and right edges: she is Tulla Larsen, Munch’s later lover. At the left, she reaches out towards the flower of love, which will not let itself be taken. At the right, her hands are clasped in front of her in acceptance of her rejection.

This multiplex narrative therefore shows Munch’s two failed relationships in its single image: with Millie Thaulow, who rejected him, and with Tulla Larsen, whom he rejected.

Just a year before the start of the First World War, Lovis Corinth’s Ariadne on Naxos (1913) combines passages from the whole of its story into a single image. Theseus (left) had promised Ariadne (naked on his thigh) that he would marry her after she helped him kill the Minotaur on Crete, but then sails away when she is still asleep, abandoning her on the island of Naxos. When he has gone, Bacchus arrives in his chariot (centre and right), falls in love with and marries her.

Until Munch’s painting of his troubled love life, multiplex narrative hadn’t been used in visual autobiography. That changed during the twentieth century, as my next example illustrates.

Without Peace (1921-22) is the late masterwork of Aksel Waldemar Johannessen in which he tells his life story in multiplex narrative. He appears at the centre, cradling the body of his dead wife on his thighs. Above are three separate self-portraits of him undergoing earlier crises, and other figures from his past crowd much of the rest of this large canvas.

Copyright prevents me from showing any more recent examples, apart from my last by the American artist Thomas Hart Benton.

At the centre of Benton’s Achelous and Hercules, Hercules, stripped to the waist and wearing denim jeans, is about to grasp Achelous’ horns. Immediately to the right, Deianira is shown in contemporary American form, with a young woman next to her bearing a laurel crown and seated on the Horn of Plenty.

To the left of centre, Benton shows a second figure of Hercules holding a rope, part of a passage referring to ranching and cowboys, and further to the left to the grain harvest. To the right, the Horn of Plenty links into the cultivation of maize (corn), the other major crop from the area.

These add another ten paintings and two prints to my collection of multiplex narrative, bringing the total number of paintings to 36, and spanning the period from classical Roman times to 1947.

Outside Europe and North America, multiplex narrative is also frequently encountered. I show here three of my favourite examples, from the Indian sub-continent and Japan.

This detail of a miniature, Krishna Storms the Citadel of Narakasura from about 1840, contains two near-identical representations of Krishna, making it multiplex narrative.

East Asian narrative scroll paintings might seem to be inevitably multiplex in their form. Although that is true of many, such as the Heiji Monogatari Emaki (Sanjo Scroll) from the late 1200s, scrolls were typically viewed and read in short sections. The viewer may thus not read them as being multiplex, but as a series of individual frames of similar length, equivalent to a modern comic strip.

This more complex tradition also gives rise to some unusual intermediates. Kitagawa Utamaro’s (喜多川 歌麿) (c 1754-1806) Girl Fishers and Bathers, is triptych from 1791 which spreads a continuous motif across its three sheets. But the same topless woman appears in each sheet, making the whole a multiplex narrative.

I hope this dispels any stories about multiplex narrative becoming extinct after the Renaissance, or considering it an archaic mode of storytelling in visual art. It still fascinates viewers, particularly in its most recent incarnation in photography, thanks to Eadweard Muybridge and Étienne-Jules Marey.

References

Lew Andrews (1995) Story and Space in Renaissance Art, the Rebirth of Continuous Narrative, Cambridge UP. ISBN 0 521 47356 X.

The Story in Paintings: Modes of painted narrative
Chinese Narrative Painting: Conclusions
Telling the story: narrative across media, including spoken, written, movies, graphic novels, paintings, photos, and music
The Story in Paintings: So what is a narrative painting?
Every picture tells a story: narrative paintings

In 1565, Jacopo Tintoretto took a short break from his painting for the albergo of the Scuola Grande di San Rocco to paint a commissioned work for the church of San Cassiano, also in Venice.

The Resurrection of Christ with Saints Cassian and Cecilia (E&I 124) features the church’s Saint Cassiano wearing his bishop’s rig at the left, and Saint Cecilia, the patron saint of music and musicians, at the right by a miniature pipe organ. Saint Cassiano is reputed to have been martyred in 303 CE when he was a bishop, during the persecutions of the Roman emperor Diocletian, and his relics were enshrined in Novellara, in central northern Italy.

Tintoretto then had three further paintings to make for the albergo in the Scuola Grande di San Rocco, large scenes from the Passion which hang close-packed on the wall opposite his vast Crucifixion. Unfortunately, the nature of the room prevents the viewer from seeing both walls at the same time, which has perhaps lessened their visual effect.

The right of the three shows Christ before Pilate (E&I 126), and like the others was completed between 1566-67. Pilate is the bald and bearded man in the red robe sat on a throne to the right of centre, and is talking to the High Priest or his representative at the lower right. Christ dominates the canvas as he stands, his face and eyes cast down, to the left of centre. His hands are bound by thick rope, a unifying theme through these three paintings.

In the centre is Ecce Homo (‘behold, the man’) (E&I 127), showing a bloody and battered figure of Christ exposed to an unseen crowd, of which the viewer is a member. Christ wears the crown of thorns, and his hair and beard are matted with dried blood. His wrists and ankles are again bound with rope. He gazes into the distance, here looking across the albergo to the image of himself on the cross, providing a subtle forward link in the narrative.

At the left is the Ascent to Calvary (E&I 128), which is unusual among paintings of this phase of the Passion for its inclusion of all three of those to be crucified bearing their crosses. Christ is naturally prominent in the upper half of a composition dominated by diagonals, formed by the winding path and the crosses themselves. He and the two thieves are each given assistants who help them with the burden of the crosses.

In the upper distance are banners declaring the oversight of the Roman authorities, in their inscriptions of SPQR. Tintoretto links this with the Crucifixion with the inclusion of the tradesmen and their tools who were shortly to be responsible for the mechanics of the executions. Here the thick ropes bind the figures together, as they are used to attach the crosses to their bearers, and to draw the three along to their deaths.

Individually, these are major Christian religious paintings. Taken as a series with the Crucifixion opposite, they must be one of the canonical depictions of the Passion.

Tintoretto then proceeded with some paintings for the Palazzo Camerlenghi in Venice. From among these, his Madonna of the Treasurers (E&I 131) from about 1567 is now in the Gallerie dell’Accademia. At first sight this votive may seem contrived, with the Virgin Mary and a large infant Christ seated in the middle of Saints Sebastian (impaled with the arrows of his martyrdom), Mark, and Theodore.

She is being venerated by three camerlenghi (hence its alternate title of the Madonna of the Camerlenghi), who have been identified as Michele Pisani, Lorenzo Dolfin and Marin Malipiero, the fiscal administrators or chamberlains of the day. They are shown in the centre of the painting, and echoing them to the right are their three secretaries.

In the lower left corner are the three heraldic shields of the camerlenghi, together with the inscription Tres et unus unanimis concordiae simbolus, expressing the unanimity and concord of the three. Tintoretto’s ingenious composition strengthens that feeling with its measured repetition.

The following year, Tintoretto made a pair of paintings to complete his work for the church of San Cassiano. The Crucifixion (E&I 143) (1568) is a marked contrast from that in the albergo at San Rocco in adopting a lateral view of the scene on Calvary.

This brings the figure of Christ into prominence, as two of his executioners use a ladder to affix the Latin inscription INRI, for Iesus Nazarenus, Rex Iudaeorum (‘Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews’). This puts the smaller group of mourners into the lower left corner, more distant from the foot of the cross.

Accompanying that is The Descent into Limbo (E&I 144), in which the crucified Christ descends triumphant into Hell, where he brings salvation to the righteous in a phase also known as the Harrowing of Hell, or Anastasis, prior to his resurrection from the dead. This is more characteristic of archaic depictions of the Passion.

Tintoretto shows Jesus flying in glory through a large hall with an arched roof, accompanied by two angels. He details three figures at the lower right, indicating that they represent donors or sponsors of the painting.

Over this period, Tintoretto and his studio had also been busy with paintings for ceilings in the Palazzo Ducale, and the Church of San Rocco. He made a series of philosophers for the library of the Biblioteca Marciana, and possibly around 1571 painted another Last Supper, this time for San Simeone Profeta, which starts my next article.

References

Robert Echols and Frederick Ilchman (2009) Toward a new Tintoretto Catalogue, with a Checklist of revised Attributions and a new Chronology, in Falomir op cit.
Miguel Falomir (ed) (2009) Jacopo Tintoretto, Proceedings of the International Symposium, Museo Nacional del Prado. ISBN 978 84 8480 171 9.
Roland Krischel (ed) (2017) Tintoretto, A Star was Born, Hirmer (in German). ISBN 978 3 777 42942 7.
Tom Nichols (2015) Tintoretto, Tradition and Identity, 2nd edition, Reaktion Books. ISBN 978 1 78023 450 2.

Pierre Bonnard (1867-1947) lived with Marthe Bonnard (1869-1942) for almost fifty years. Their relationship spanned the great majority of his professional career, and is reflected in a high proportion of his paintings and drawings. Here is a small selection which may help you trace their relationship as well as his artistic development. As this consists of over thirty paintings (for which I make no apology), I will keep my comments to a minimum.

Pierre and Marthe met in Montmartre, Paris in 1893. Her real name was Maria Boursin, but she lived under the name of Marthe de Méligny. She claimed to be sixteen when they met, but if the year of her birth is correct, she would have been ten years older.

Woman Pulling on her Stockings (1893), probably one of his first paintings of Marthe.

Man and Woman in an Interior (1898), known better from his later Man and Woman (c 1900), below.

Woman Dozing on a Bed or Indolence 1899.

Siesta (1900).

Man and Woman (c 1900).

Marthe on a Divan (c 1900).

Marthe in the Bathtub (1907), one of very many photos of Marthe taken by Bonnard.

El Tocador (The Dressing Table) (1908).

The Bathroom or The Dressing Room with Pink Sofa (1908).

Reflection or The Tub (1909).

Kneeling Woman or Nude with Tub (1913).

Resting in the Garden (1914).

The Provençal Carafe, Marthe Bonnard and Her Dog Ubu (1915).

Le Café (Coffee) (1915).

In 1916, Bonnard met Renée Monchaty, a friend of Marthe’s, and fell deeply in love with her; she modelled for several of his paintings, and threw Marthe into rages of jealousy on occasion. He also had an affair with Lucienne Dupuy de Frenelle, the wife of a doctor, who is the model for several other of his works.

The Spring (Nude in the Bath) (1917).

The Vigil (1921).

Nude Bending Down (1923).

In 1924, Marthe had her first exhibition of pastel paintings in the Druet Gallery; she signed herself Marthe Solange.

In 1925, Pierre Bonnard and Marthe finally married, in a quiet civil ceremony in Paris, in August. None of their friends attended the wedding. Within a month, Bonnard’s former lover Renée Monchaty shot herself in the chest, as she lay in a bath of white roses.

Pink Nude Reflected in a Mirror (c 1925).

Nu dans la baignoire or Nude in the Bath (1925). It is not known whether Bonnard painted this before Renée Monchaty’s suicide in a bath.

Baignoire (Le Bain) or The Bath (1925).

The Vestibule (c 1927). Marthe is deeper into the painting, on the right, and the woman with short hair at the left appears to be the Bonnards’ maid.

Nude with Radiator (1928). Marthe is almost sixty years old here.

Breakfast (c 1930).

Nude by the Bathtub (1931).

White Interior (1932). Marthe is on the far side of the table, almost blending in with the carpet.

Nude in Bathroom (Cabinet de Toilette) (1932).

Marthe in the Dining Room (1933).

Nude before a Mirror (c 1933).

The Pedicure (1936).

Nude and Chair (c 1936-38).

The Large Bath, Nude (1937-38).

Nude in Bathtub (c 1938-41).

On 26 January 1942, Marthe Bonnard died in their villa at Le Cannet in the south of France.

Marthe Entering the Room (1942).

The Bath (1942).

Young Women in the Garden shows Renée Monchaty, the blonde, and Marthe Bonnard, and is believed to have been painted between 1921-46. If those dates are correct, Marthe was at least 52 years old at the time.

References

Guy Cogeval and Isabelle Cahn (2016) Pierre Bonnard, Painting Arcadia, Prestel. ISBN 978 3 791 35524 5.
Gilles Genty and Pierrette Vernon (2006) Bonnard Inédits, Éditions Cercle d’Art (in French). ISBN 978 2 702 20707 9.
Timothy Hyman (1998) Bonnard, World of Art, Thames and Hudson. ISBN 978 0 500 20310 1.

The name of Pyrrhus may ring a bell: it appears in an English phrase, a Pyrrhic victory. He is another of Plutarch’s subjects who has left a lasting impression, although very few of us know quite why. Worse, the name Pyrrhus is a family name, and the Greek general who is the subject of this book in Plutarch’s Lives was a relative of another famous Pyrrhus, who had previously been known as Neoptolemus, the son of Achilles.

Indeed, my first painting is Pierre-Narcisse Guérin’s Andromache and Pyrrhus from 1810, which shows the Pyrrhus who had been Neoptolemus with Andromache, Hector’s widow, who was given to him as a concubine, and became the subject of two plays by Euripides.

Plutarch’s Pyrrhus was the son of Aeacides, who was expelled and replaced in power by the sons of Neoptolemus. During that coup d’état, friends of Aeacides were killed, and the life of the infant Pyrrhus was in danger. He was stolen away for his own protection. During the flight, the party accompanying him had to cross a river in full spate. They did so by sending a message written on bark to locals on the other side, who rigged a temporary bridge from felled trees.

Nicolas Poussin’s Rescue of Young King Pyrrhus from 1634 shows the party trying to rescue Pyrrhus throwing their message across the swollen river, in their bid to cross to safety on the other side. At the right, some are chopping down trees in their effort to build an improvised bridge over the waters.

Eventually Pyrrhus and his guardians reached King Glaucias of the Illyrians. The king was reluctant to shelter the young child, as he feared those who had seized power from Pyrrhus’ father. While the king was trying to make his decision, the infant Pyrrhus pulled himself up on the man’s robe, clung to his knees, and wept like someone pleading with a ruler. Glaucias was first moved to laughter, then to pity, and decided to raise the child as one of his own.

In a very painterly depiction which appears to have been a preparatory sketch, François Boucher’s undated The Young Pyrrhus Saved shows King Glaucias handing the infant to his wife, for her to bring up with the rest of their family. In the right foreground, one of the party who brought the child there is unwrapping a large gold plate which was intended as compensation for the king for taking the trouble.

When Pyrrus reached the age of twelve, King Glaucias took him back home with a military force, and restored him to the throne. Five years later, though, when he went to attend a wedding, he was stripped of his kingdom, so allied himself with Demetrius. They remained friends in the battle at Ipsus, where Pyrrhus fought bravely, and later served as hostage during peace negotiations with Ptolemy.

In time, Pyrrhus returned to share the throne of his birth with Neoptolemus, until he found the opportunity to invite Neoptolemus to supper and there kill him. Demetrius came to power in Macedonia, and his army challenged that of Pyrrhus, who with his Molossians overwhelmed the invaders. He pressed on into Macedonia, where the opposing army changed allegiance, allowing him to complete his invasion and to become king of Macedonia too, without a blow being struck.

He was forced to divide his newly-won kingdom with Lysimachus, though, and as the two could not get on together, they seemed perpetually to be at war with one another. Lysimachus attacked the logistic support for Pyrrhus’ army at Edessa, so Pyrrhus withdrew completely from Macedonia, leaving its rule to Lysimachus.

At that time, Rome was at war with Tarentum, whose people appealed to Pyrrhus to defend them, so that he could rule them too. Pyrrhus was persuaded to give them support, and sent forces in advance. When the king tried to cross the sea, though, their ships were scattered by a storm from the north. Eventually the whole of his army reached Tarentum, only to discover that its citizens would do nothing in their own defence, and Laevinus the Roman consul was on his way with his army.

In the protracted battle that ensued between Pyrrhus and the Romans, Pyrrhus himself was wounded, but the Romans were eventually defeated, with the loss of as many as 15,000 of their men. The Romans did not accept this as a defeat of their army, but blamed its leader, Laevinus. Pyrrhus sent Cineas as his representative to Rome, but he was unable to persuade its senate to accept any proposals for peace. Instead, the Romans demanded that Pyrrhus and his troops leave Italy, or they would continue to fight him so long as he remained.

Rome then sent Pyrrhus an embassy led by Caius Fabricius, who was held in high esteem in Rome but exceedingly poor. Pyrrhus showed the Roman great hospitality, and offered him gifts of gold as a mark of friendship and respect. Caius Fabricius declined them.

This is shown in Ferdinand Bol’s Scene from Ancient History: The Incorruptibility of Gaius Fabricius from about 1650. Pyrrhus is the old, bearded man sat on the throne at the right, as Caius Fabricius (standing, in helmet and armour) declines the large gold plates and vases being offered to him.

Next, Pyrrhus tried a different tactic. Like Hannibal, he used elephants in battle, so the following day, he had one of his war-elephants concealed behind a large drape near where he met to speak with the Roman. When Pyrrhus gave the signal, the drape was removed, unveiling the huge elephant, which raised its trunk and emitted a fearful cry.

As Bol shows in his second painting, of The Fearlessness of Fabricius in the Camp of Pyrrhus (1655-56), the Roman turned calmly to Pyrrhus and told him that neither the gold nor the elephant made any impression on him.

Pyrrhus and Caius Fabricius (who later became consul) developed great mutual respect, but found no acceptable solution. After Pyrrhus dealt with a threat to his life, he engaged the Roman army again at Asculum, where he was eventually able to deploy his elephants with effect. However, casualties were heavy on both sides, and when Pyrrhus was congratulated on his narrow victory, he said: “If we are victorious in one more battle with the Romans, we shall be utterly ruined” – the origin of the phrase Pyrrhic victory.

Pyrrhus then sailed to Sicily, where he hoped for and got easier pickings. From success there, he turned his attentions to Libya. To obtain sufficient men for that campaign, he started to behave as a tyrant, which lost him support, driving him to return to Italy instead. When trying to set out with his returning army, the Carthaginians combined forces with Sicilian ships and he lost many of the vessels in his navy. He ended up in a land battle, where only his personal leadership and valour won the day.

His next battle was against Roman forces once more, under Manius Curius at Beneventum, where Pyrrhus’ army was finally routed, and forced to return to Greece after six years of victorious but ultimately unsuccessful campaigning.

Once back in Greece, he was invited by Cleonymus the Spartan to help him supplant Areus, King of Sparta. This Pyrrhus was willing to do, as he thought it would bring him the whole Peloponnesus.

François Topino-Lebrun depicted this in The Siege of Sparta by Pyrrhus from 1799-1800. The Spartans had dug a huge trench to protect their city from the elephants, whose defence the women of Sparta handed over to the young men, and at each end they sank all their waggons up to their axles in soft ground as further obstruction.

After a day of pitched battle trying to negotiate these obstacles, Pyrrhus withdrew to rest for the night. The following day, reinforcements arrived for the Spartans, and he made no progress. He therefore decided to break camp and head to Argos. On their way, as they were being harried by Spartans, his son Ptolemy was killed in action. Pyrrhus led a cavalry charge against those Spartans, and killed its commander.

Pyrrhus entered Argos in the dead of night, but was delayed because he couldn’t get his elephants through the city gate without removing their fighting towers. This allowed the defenders to fight back, and when Pyrrhus saw the resulting carnage at first light, he decided to withdraw.

He was forced to turn and fight the enemy as they pursued him in retreat: the mother of one of the enemy threw a roof tile at Pyrrhus, which struck him below his helmet and crushed his lower neck. He fell from his horse, and an enemy soldier beheaded him with his sword.

References

Philopoemen, whole text in English translation at Penelope.

From about 1570 onwards, Jacopo Tintoretto was attracting enough work into his studio that much of it had to be carried out by his staff and apprentices. Among them were some of his own children: he had married the daughter of a noble (who was helpfully the guardian grande of the Scuola Grande di San Marco) in 1550, and his daughter Marietta became an accomplished portrait painter.

His son Domenico is thought to have become increasingly responsible for paintings from the studio from this time onwards. As neither painter signed their work, these are conclusions drawn from the study of the features and style of paintings attributed to Jacopo and his studio, and rely on Jacopo’s work being visibly superior to that of his son Domenico. They also account for the wide variation in quality between different works thought to be ‘Tintorettos’. In these articles, I concentrate on paintings in which Jacopo is thought to have been the primary creator, even though in many cases much of the execution may have been left to his studio.

Tintoretto’s next painting of The Last Supper (E&I 145) was made in about 1571, for the Church of San Simeone Profeta (San Simeone Grande), and is every bit as original as the previous one. It is as informal in its composition and content, and it is quite hard to distinguish all twelve disciples: one is only seen by his face and hands, behind the figure standing by the right end of the table.

Judas Iscariot is shown more conventionally, as the figure in yellow with his back to the viewer, just to the right of centre. He has his right hand behind his back, where it holds a small purse of silver. There are also a couple of people serving the meal, and the incongruous figure of a contemporary priest wearing a white cassock, at the left edge. At the lower right is a large dog.

Tintoretto’s small full-length portrait of Saint Jerome (E&I 155) from about 1571-72 is fairly conventional, although the saint here appears much younger and less ascetic than in most other paintings of him. He is surrounded by traditional attributes, including the head of a lion, his books, and the red cardinal’s hat at the right edge.

The Virgin and Child with Saints Mark and Luke (E&I 156) from about 1571-72 is another smaller painting which features particularly well-developed figures. Saint Mark the Evangelist, the patron saint of the city of Venice, is at the left, and behind is his attribute of a lion. Saint Luke, at the right, is accompanied by his animal attribute of an ox.

Tintoretto’s unfinished sketch for a much larger votive painting of Doge Alvise Mocenigo (1507–1577) Presented to the Redeemer (E&I 157), is thought to have been started in about 1571-72. The finished work was intended for the Sala del Collegio in the Doge’s Palace in Venice.

Doge Mocenigo had ruled the city during a period of turmoil, including the great naval victory over the Turks at the Battle of Lepanto in 1571, and the devastating epidemic of plague in 1576, which killed Titian.

The votive which was painted by Tintoretto and his studio is Doge Alvise Mocenigo and Family before the Virgin and Child (E&I 158), from about 1572, and now in Washington’s National Gallery of Art. The setting is quite spectacular here too, with a detailed landscape view featuring snowy mountains (something Tintoretto seems never to have seen for himself) and a wonderful sky.

At some time in the mid 1570s, Tintoretto returned to the gospel narrative of Christ Washing the Disciples’ Feet (E&I 160), in this large canvas which is now in London’s National Gallery. While there it has undergone extensive conservation work, which enabled Joyce Plesters to undertake its detailed examination.

The reason for its impenetrably dark appearance is that it was painted on a black ground, laid on a very thin coat of gesso. Tintoretto then sketched its underdrawing using white lead paint on top of the ground. Some passages, particularly in the drapery, consist of quite complex layering of paint, although most of the flesh was painted quite simply, using lead white tinted with ochre.

Among the pigments found were: natural ultramarine, azurite, smalt (in some underpainting), malachite, copper resinate glaze, red lakes based on kermes, lac, and madder (in Christ’s robe), lead-tin yellow (Christ’s halo), orpiment, realgar, lead white, and carbon black. The drying oil used is linseed.

Finally, in about 1574-75, Tintoretto painted another large Last Supper (E&I 162), this time for ‘San Polo’, the Chiesa di San Paolo Apostolo in Venice. For this, he has moved the scene almost out into the open air, and lowered the point of view. Oddly, he shows no less than fifteen adult figures in addition to Christ, and a young boy to the right.

The emphasis here is on Christ giving the sacrament to the disciples, as he holds out broken bread to the two who are standing at the table. The classical landscape seen at the upper right leads up to a hill which could be intended to be the Mount of Olives, perhaps, and there is a dramatic sunset over rocks and waterfalls.

Over the later 1570s, Tintoretto was to return to work for the Scuola Grande di San Rocco and the Palazzo Ducale, which I will look at in the next articles.

References

Robert Echols and Frederick Ilchman (2009) Toward a new Tintoretto Catalogue, with a Checklist of revised Attributions and a new Chronology, in Falomir op cit.
Miguel Falomir (ed) (2009) Jacopo Tintoretto, Proceedings of the International Symposium, Museo Nacional del Prado. ISBN 978 84 8480 171 9.
Roland Krischel (ed) (2017) Tintoretto, A Star was Born, Hirmer (in German). ISBN 978 3 777 42942 7.
Tom Nichols (2015) Tintoretto, Tradition and Identity, 2nd edition, Reaktion Books. ISBN 978 1 78023 450 2.
Joyce Plesters (1980) Tintoretto’s Paintings in the National Gallery Part II: Materials and techniques, National Gallery Technical Bulletin 4: 32-48.

When the viewer already knows the story behind a painting, it makes it much easier for them to read that painting. Stories with which we are all very familiar are fables, whether told by Aesop, La Fontaine, or someone more modern. My quest in this and the next article is to discover when and why painters depicted fables, and – perhaps even more significant – why they did not.

No one has come up with a robust definition of a fable. Perhaps the best way to understand what qualifies here is in comparison with their relatives:

• A myth is a semi-factual or fictional story involving deities from a mythological system.
• A legend is a semi-factual or fictional story about a named and famed figure of the vague past.
• A fairy story is a fictional story about ‘enchanted’ characters in an idealised land.
• A fable is a fictional story about mainly unnamed characters, often including anthropomorphised animals, which is usually associated with a derived observation about human character or life in general, or a straight moral.

Fables exist in every culture, and were among the earliest material to be recorded in written form. Although I will touch on non-European fables, most of my examples (from the Western canon of painting) are considered to derive from an early collection compiled by a possibly legendary Greek, Aesop, who may have lived between about 620-564 BCE. He is believed to have collated several hundred fables from oral tradition, but his writings were lost.

They next appeared in a collection of ten books by Demetrius of Phalerum in around 300 BCE, but they too have been lost. The earliest surviving collections of “Aesop’s Fables” date back to renderings in Latin verse by Phaedrus, and in Greek verse by Babrius, in about 50 CE and 200 CE respectively. Since then, numerous translations, mutations, and reinventions have taken place, of which the most famous (and most painted) are those of Jean de La Fontaine (1621-1695).

Since William Caxton’s early printed translation of 1484, Aesop’s Fables have been popularly provided with illustrations. Although many of those editions have been illustrated by fine artists, including Gustave Doré, those images have been intended to accompany and illuminate the text. Here I will try to confine myself to paintings which attempt to tell the stories without their text being adjacent.

Before the advent of woodcut prints, Aesop’s Fables had been popular with those who painted miniatures, here the ‘Master of François de Rohan’, who painted the story of the Crow and the Fox in his Flower of Virtue, Vice and Flattery from about 1530.

Surprisingly, I have been unable to find any paintings from the Renaissance which appear to tell these fables, although as they are neither religious nor from mainstream classical Greek or Roman culture, they presumably fell outside the interest of the patrons of the day. It wasn’t really until the Dutch Golden Age that there were a significant number of easel paintings telling stories from Aesop’s Fables.

Then, between Jacob Jordaens’ Satyr Visiting a Peasant in about 1625, until late in the seventeenth century, a succession of Dutch painters tackled stories from Aesop.

This painting tells the story of the Satyr and the Traveller, or the Man and the Satyr (Perry 35). A man made friends with a satyr; when the man’s hands were cold, he blew on them to warm them up. When the two were eating together, the man blew on his hot food in order to cool it. The satyr couldn’t trust a creature whose breath blew both hot and cold, so broke off the friendship.

As in the other paintings of this fable from this period, Jordaens shows the satyr at a meal in a family home, presumably when the hot food is cooled by blowing on it, as the satyr is giving his reason for leaving.

At some time during the first half of the century, Frans Snyders painted the still popular Fable of the Hare and the Tortoise (Perry 226).

The tortoise and the hare disputed which of the two was the faster, so agreed to run a race against one another. Although the hare was much faster when running, he laid down beside the path and slept. The tortoise, being aware of his relative slowness, ran as fast as he could, past the sleeping hare, until he won.

Snyders shows the hare at full pelt, and the tortoise crawling away in the distance, which gives little clue as to the surprising outcome or its cause.

Paul de Vos’s painting of The Fable of the Dog and the Dam from 1638-40 shows a fable known as the Dog and its Reflection, or the Dog with the Meat and its Shadow (Perry 133). In this, a dog acquired some food, such as a piece of meat, and was crossing a stream when it looked down at its reflection in the water. Seeing another dog there apparently carrying better food, it opened its mouth to bark at that reflection, and dropped the food into the stream.

De Vos shows this well, although his inclusion of so much sky prevents the viewer from seeing the dog’s reflection, only that of the falling meat.

In 1653, Constantijn à Renesse, a former pupil of Rembrandt, painted his version of the Satyr and the Traveller, in Satyr at the Peasant’s House. This is perhaps more helpful than Jordaens’ in showing one of the family blowing on the hot food in their spoon, although at that stage the satyr’s reaction is less overt.

It is perhaps Jan Steen, in his telling of The Satyr and the Peasant “Who Blows Hot and Cold” from about 1660, who strikes the best balance, with a satyr looking quite worried at the viewer, as a man (still wearing his hat) blows on a bowl of hot stew. He also has marvellous attention to details such as the cat skulking under the table, and a rich supporting cast.

La Fontaine’s collection of fables first appeared in 1668, shortly after this interest in painting Aesop’s Fables seems to have died away. The next significant paintings of fables seems to have been in the work of the great French animal artist, Jean-Baptiste Oudry (1686–1755). Between 1720 and 1750, Oudry made a set of two hundred drawings of La Fontaine’s fables which were then engraved for an illustrated edition. He also made five paintings, which he exhibited at the Salon in Paris in 1751.

Oudry’s drawings are themselves well worth tracking down and viewing. This, of The Fox, the Flies, and the Hedgehog from 1733, shows what is also known as the Fox and the Hedgehog (Perry 427, La Fontaine XII.13), and is claimed to have been told by Aesop at a public trial.

A fox became enfeebled (in La Fontaine, wounded during a fox hunt), and was being tormented by a swarm of ticks (or flies). A passing hedgehog offered to remove the ticks/flies, but the fox declined, saying that those on him were already gorged with his blood; if the hedgehog were to remove them, they would only be replaced by others who would drain every drop of blood left in the fox.

Oudry’s fine drawing demonstrates how much, as an illustration, it relies on the accompanying text to tell the story.

One of Oudry’s early paintings of fables, The Lion and the Spider (The Lion and the Fly) from 1732 shows a story which doesn’t appear in Perry’s list or the more popular fables of La Fontaine, although it is included in some more modern collections of “Aesop’s Fables”.

A gnat or fly was buzzing around the head of a lion, who became very annoyed as a result. The lion tried to kill the gnat/fly, without success. The gnat/fly stung the lion several times, only making the lion more upset. Defiantly, the gnat/fly told the lion that he wasn’t scared of him, and flew off to broadcast his success – straight into a spider’s web, where he was eaten by the spider.

Oudry’s lion is a magnificent beast, and studying the fly’s fate intently. As shown in the detail below, the spider is just reaching the captured fly, and the lion is about to savour his revenge.

Oudry’s undated The Wolf and the Lamb tells a very popular story (Perry 155, La Fontaine I.10) in which a wolf tries to justify killing the lamb on the strength of its criminal record. The lamb proves each crime claimed by the wolf to have been impossible, so the wolf says that the offences must have been committed by someone else in the lamb’s family, therefore it can proceed to kill the lamb in any case.

Although Oudry’s animals have superb expressions, this is a challenging story to depict visually, and not one that I would have chosen to try to paint.

The Fox and the Stork, from 1747, was one of Oudry’s later paintings of fables, and tells the story of that name (Perry 426, La Fontaine I.18).

A fox invited a crane or stork to eat with him, and served the meal in a large open bowl, from the which fox could eat easily, but the crane/stork couldn’t eat at all. The crane/stork then invited the fox to a meal, where the food was served in a vessel with a narrow neck, from which the fox was unable to eat, but the crane/stork could eat well.

This is another difficult story to tell in a single painting. Oudry opts to show the first half, but no clue is given as to the sequel.

One of Oudry’s last paintings of fables, The Dog Carrying his Dinner to his Master from 1751 tells La Fontaine’s fable of that name (La Fontaine VIII.7) which has no direct equivalent in Aesop.

A dog was trained to deliver his master’s dinner when the latter was at work, without eating the food that he was carrying. One day, while carrying his master’s meal, the dog was attacked by another dog. He stood and fought for it until other dogs turned up and joined in. Seeing that he was outnumbered, the trained dog offered to share the food out between them, and seized a large piece for itself.

Oudry again tackles a fable which is very difficult to tell in a single painting, and shows the two dogs fighting, with the food basket overturned by them.

La Fontaine had directed this fable at those in public office, particularly in city authorities, who defrauded money from public funds – a moral which is completely obscured in Oudry’s painting.

Oudry’s fine animal paintings and his illustrations secured his reputation. But those above are not good examples of narrative painting, and appear as dependent on the text as his illustrations are. Fables again became unusual themes for paintings until the nineteenth century, which I will examine in the next article.

References

Aesop’s Fables on Wikipedia.
La Fontaine’s Fables on Wikipedia.

Prior to the nineteenth century, fables had been prominent in two periods of painting: during the Dutch Golden Age, when they were based on contemporary versions of “Aesop’s Fables”, and in the work of Jean-Baptiste Oudry (1686–1755), a great animal painter.

Another well-known animal painter, Edwin Henry Landseer, told La Fontaine’s fable of the Monkey and the Cat (La Fontaine IX.17) in The Cat’s Paw from about 1824. This shows the climax of this tale which is thought to have originated in around 1560.

Bertrand the monkey was roasting chestnuts in the embers of a fire. Rather than risk burning himself retrieving the nuts from the heat, he promised Raton the cat a share of them if the cat would scoop them out for him. The cat agreed, and as Bertrand ate the chestnuts when they emerged from the fire, the cat’s paw became more and more burned. Before the cat could claim its reward, they were disturbed by a maid. The monkey then profited from the cat’s efforts and suffering, but the cat was cheated from enjoying its share.

This has entered the French language in the idiom tirer les marrons du feu, meaning to act as someone’s dupe, or to benefit from the work of others. In English, the phrase cat’s paw is applied figuratively to someone who is used by another as their tool.

Landseer shows the chestnuts roasting on the top of a stove, and the monkey using the cat’s paw to hook them back in to him, as the cat wails in pain.

Oudry’s earlier illustrations had been transformed into tapestries by the Gobelins factory in Paris, and decorative depictions of fables had become quite popular. This anonymous print of Aesop’s Fable: The Fox and the Crow is a fine example of the decorative materials available in the USA in 1840. It refers to the well-known fable of the Fox and the Crow (Perry 124, La Fontaine I.2).

A crow found some cheese, and flew to a branch to eat it. A fox who also wanted the cheese flattered the crow, admiring its beauty and asking whether its voice was a match for that beauty. The crow was duped into making a ‘caw’, whereupon it dropped the cheese from its beak, allowing the fox to eat it up instead.

Occasionally, established artists turned to fables for drawings and paintings. This marvellous drawing in Conté crayon and pastel by Jean-François Millet is usually titled The Cat at the Window, and dates from about 1857-58. It shows a man peering out from his bed-curtain at a black cat entering the bedroom through the window, as the moonlight casts a patterned shadow on the bare floor.

Millet refers to a fable of Indian origin, from the Panchatantra, which also appears as Aesop’s Venus and the Cat, or La Fontaine’s the Cat transformed into a Woman (La Fontaine II.18).

A man became infatuated with his cat, and convinced the goddess Venus to change it into a woman, following which the couple married. On their wedding night, Venus tested her by introducing a mouse into the bedroom. She then sprang out of bed and chased the mouse across the room.

I don’t know if Millet drew any further scenes from this odd story, or if this is his only hauntingly curious drawing of the tale.

Some of the great Russian painters of the nineteenth century also took to fables, such as modern tales by Ivan Krylov (1769-1844). Here, Andrei Andreevich Popov’s Demyan’s Fish Soup (Демьянова уха) from 1865 tells one of Krylov’s fables.

The peasant Demyan wanted to show his hospitality towards his friend Foka. Demyan egged Foka on until he had consumed four full bowls of Demyan’s fish soup. At the fifth, Foka could stand it no more, and ran away.

Popov shows Foka the guest with his back to the open window, protesting that he has already had too much of the soup, as Demyan and his wife press him to go the extra bowl.

In about 1878, Gustave Moreau was commissioned to paint a large series of watercolours illustrating the fables of La Fontaine for the very rich Antoni Roux. Sadly, these remain in a private collection and are only accessible as a handful of engravings, which are hardly fair reflections of Moreau’s originals. Much of Moreau’s time from 1879 to 1884 was occupied with the more than sixty paintings in this series.

I am unsure whether Moreau’s Peacock Complaining to Juno of 1881 was part of that commissioned series, or was painted additionally.

It shows one of Aesop’s fables (told in Phaedrus III.18), in which the peacock, Juno’s favourite bird, complained to the goddess that it did not have the voice of a nightingale. Juno responded by saying that fate had assigned each bird its properties, and the peacock should be content with its lot.

Moreau’s exquisite watercolour gives little insight into the exchange between the two figures, and adds the ominous form of Jupiter’s eagle, keeping a watchful eye on his wife from a nearby cloud.

At the start of his career, when he was only 21, Gustav Klimt was influenced by Hans Makart and his classicist style and motifs. In 1883, Klimt painted an academic nude surrounded by some of Aesop’s fabulous creatures, in his Fable. These visual references to Aesop’s Fables include a sleeping lion, white mice, storks, and a fox, but Klimt refrained from building them into narrative.

With the exception of Paul Cézanne, the Impressionists avoided conventional narrative, but in this characteristic impression of mothering, Berthe Morisot shows the telling of The Fable (1883).

Those who followed the Impressionists were less shy of painting narrative. Ferdinand Hodler’s The Miller, his Son and the Donkey from about 1888 tells this classical fable (Perry 721, La Fontaine III.1) delightfully.

A miller and his son set out on a journey with their elderly donkey, and were repeatedly corrected by those passing by for their treatment of the donkey, in particular which of the pair should ride the animal. At this point in the story, it was the miller who was being borne by the donkey, and his son who was driving the animal. Three women passing by were telling the miller what he should have been doing, which was apparently quite different.

Gustave Moreau revisited Aesop’s fables late in his career. The Wolf and the Lamb of 1889 is, I think, a monochrome image of a painting which was made in full colour, which looks much more threatening than the earlier painting by Jean-Baptiste Oudry.

Pierre Bonnard’s exquisite three-panelled Japoniste screen of The Stork and Four Frogs was painted at the outset of his career, in about 1889. Its story is thoroughly European, based on Aesop’s fable retold by Jean de La Fontaine’s The Frogs who Demand a King (Perry 44, La Fontaine II.4).

The version retold by La Fontaine centres on a colony of frogs, who ask Jupiter for a king. The god’s first response to their request is a laid-back and gentle leader, whom the frogs reject as being too weak to rule them. Jupiter’s second attempt is a crane, who kills and eats the frogs for his pleasure. When the frogs complain to Jupiter, he then responds that they had better be happy with what they have got this time, or they could be given something even worse.

Bonnard’s panel is traditionally interpreted not as showing the evil crane of the second attempt, but the first and gentle ruler.

The following year, the British animal painter Walter Hunt (1860-1941) painted Sour Grapes (1890), which tells the fable of the Fox and the Grapes (Perry 15, La Fontaine III.11).

A fox saw some grapes which he wanted to eat, but they were too high up on the vine for him to reach. He jumped as high as he could, but was still unable to get them, so he went away, remarking that they weren’t even ripe, and that he didn’t want sour grapes – and this is also the origin of that English phrase.

Although grapes are grown in the south of England, Hunt’s retelling centres on the acorn fruit of that traditionally British tree the oak, and introduces a couple of squirrels, who could be the object of the fox’s attention. As with Oudry before, Hunt’s skill in painting the animals is greater than his narrative turn.

Despite their widely-known and often quite visual stories, fables have not proved attractive to many narrative painters. They were relatively popular during the Dutch Golden Age, in the period following the publication of La Fontaine’s collection, and in the late nineteenth century. I venture to suggest that those were the times when market forces made fables most attractive as commissions.

Prior to the nineteenth century, the dominant determinants of the stories in paintings were wealthy patrons, and institutions such as the churches. The former aspired to appear erudite, and to show rich and powerful friends paintings of common or garden fables was not their intention. Neither did the churches see any purpose in perpetuating secular stories instead of religious ones.

The market was different in the Dutch Golden Age, when many of the middle class collected ‘cabinets’ of paintings. For an aspiring shopkeeper or merchant, stories from Aesop were far more meaningful than those of unknown Greek generals and gods.

In the late nineteenth century, involvement and interest in painting was also popular among the middle class, who flocked to the Salon in Paris, and could afford to buy works from dealers. It is no coincidence that Landseer, Klimt, Hodler and Bonnard all painted fables early in their careers, before they had secured rich patrons.

In Britain, in particular, the increasing involvement of the middle class in art led to moralising narrative paintings and ‘problem pictures’, which in some cases at least might be viewed as primarily visual fables – although examples of visual art being the first medium with which to tell a story are normally thought to be exceedingly rare. In the twentieth century, the paintings of Paula Rego, Peter Doig, and Stuart Pearson Wright, among others, tell novel fables of their own.

Hopefully painting fables is now here to stay.

References

Aesop’s Fables on Wikipedia.
La Fontaine’s Fables on Wikipedia.

Caius (or Gaius) Marius was unusual in having only the two names, and never seems to have earned himself a cognomen such as Africanus, according to Plutarch. He was born of a humble family living in the country well away from the city of Rome, and first came to attention when he was serving as a soldier under Scipio Africanus during his campaign against the Celtiberians in Spain. Marius excelled in his bravery, and Scipio tipped him as a future general.

Marius therefore launched his political career when he was made a tribune of the people, and quickly won the reputation of being a formidable champion of the people. When he sought election to higher office, though, he was not only unsuccessful, but ended up being prosecuted and acquitted of bribery.

He was next sent to serve in Spain, where his hard work and simple life won him back support, and married Julia, Julius Caesar’s aunt. He then went to Africa as legate, where his fame grew considerably, but he made an enemy in Metellus. Marius returned to Rome, where he was elected consul. In that high post he proved unpopular because of his bold and arrogant speeches against the patricians, and he became enemies with Sulla, as both men wanting the glory for the successful outcome of their campaign in Africa.

As Rome came under threat from the Teutones and Cimbri, Marius was again made consul. Plutarch speculates as to the origin of the Cimbri, but there was no doubt as to the danger that they posed Rome. Marius returned from Africa to celebrate his triumph, and to prepare to lead the army against the Cimbri.

Tiepolo’s painting of The Triumph of Marius from 1729 shows the general in a chariot drawn not by four but three horses, with the defeated and captured barbarian leader Jugurtha in front wearing chains.

Marius was thorough in preparing his army, and then had a stroke of luck when the Cimbri made for Spain first. The war was delayed further, and during this period Marius was repeatedly elected consul, ready for war. When the Cimbri started to approach northern Italy, Marius crossed the Alps and his huge army set up camp alongside the River Rhone.

Eventually, the Teutones, Cimbri, and other supporting tribes arrived and challenged Marius to battle. He would not rush into that, but kept his troops in their heavily fortified camp. After time, the Teutones made their way past the Romans, intending to cross the Alps. Marius broke camp and followed them closely until they were close to the Alps, at Aquae Sextiae.

The Romans’ first real contact with their enemy occurred there, unintentionally, when both sides were trying to get water from a river. The Romans slaughtered the Ambrones, whose blood made the river run red. Following that, the barbarians marshalled their forces and prepared to fight. Marius took that opportunity to put three thousand men out to attack the enemy’s rear.

Marius and his army quickly defeated the barbarians, but news then reached him that his colleague Catulus had not fared so well against the Cimbri, who had now moved on and were ravaging the countryside. Marius was summoned back to Rome, where he refused to celebrate a triumph while the war was still taking place.

At this time, Marius modified the design of the Roman javelin, using a wooden pin to secure its shaft. This altered its performance when it struck an enemy shield, and was a significant improvement.

The king of the Cimbri challenged Marius to set a day and a place for their armies to meet, and Marius broke with Roman tradition by telling them that they would do so in three days on the plain of Vercellae, which would allow the Roman cavalry to operate effectively. Marius and Catulus took their armies there, and battle commenced.

The day was hot and sunny, which sapped the strength of the Cimbri; the Romans were better accustomed to the conditions, and well-trained by Marius. The Romans overran the Cimbri in a great victory, which was attributed to Marius, but he insisted on celebrating his triumph together with Catulus.

Tiepolo’s The Battle of Vercellae (1725-29) shows a scene from the battle, in which the Roman cavalry are fighting with deadly effect.

Francesco Saverio Altamura’s Marius Victor over the Cimbri (1863) is a preparatory sketch for a finished painting which is now in the Museo Capodimonte in Naples, a commission by King Vittorio Emanuele II of Italy. It shows Marius raised on the shoulders of his men, being paraded through the battlefield, as the spoils of war are being gathered.

Marius was determined to enjoy a sixth period as consul, but made himself hated when he allied himself with Saturninus in murdering rivals and being deceptive. He then spent some time in Cappadocia and Galatia, where he tried to stir up the kings of Asia, in the hope that he would be recalled to Rome to lead its army against them. For Marius recognised that he was at his best leading an army, and at his worst when trying to engage in domestic politics.

When war came, against Italian peoples, Marius was hesitant and slow to attack, perhaps because he was growing old. He was made pro-consul in command of Roman forces who next had to tackle the threat from Mithridates. This brought Marius and Sulla into direct conflict, with Sulla leading an army of 45,000 against Marius and Rome. When Sulla entered the city with those troops, Marius fled.

He was pursued by land and on water, and several times abandoned by those he had to rely on for his escape. He found his way into the house of a woman, Fannia, whom he had tried when he was consul. Surprisingly, she held no resentment towards him despite the fine that he had imposed on her in the past.

Marius finally found a ship to take him on to Carthage, where the Roman governor forbade him to set foot, or he would treat him as an enemy of Rome. He told the governor’s envoy to pass on the message that he had seen Caius Marius a fugitive, seated amid the ruins of Carthage, in a scene which has been depicted in many paintings.

Pierre-Joseph François’ painting of Marius Sitting in the Ruins of Carthage from 1791-94 shows him looking surprisingly young and resolute for a man of over seventy who had been fleeing from certain death.

Pierre-Nolasque Bergeret perhaps captures the overgrown remains better, in his Marius Meditating on the Ruins of Carthage of 1807.

John Vanderlyn’s Caius Marius Amid the Ruins of Carthage, also from 1807, has the general stare into the distance, with his right hand grasping the handle of his sword. It is a curious coincidence that this and the previous painting were made in the same year, but I have not been able to discover a good reason (such as it being the subject of the Prix de Rome) which might account for this.

William Rainey prefers a rather obese, grey and balding figure for his illustration of Gaius Marius Sitting in Exile among the Ruins of Carthage, in around 1900.

The situation in Rome had deteriorated into its First Civil War, with Sulla away waging war against Mithridates, and Octavius and Cinna fighting one another over the consulship. Marius put together a force of a thousand Moorish horsemen, and sailed for Italy. There, he offered to join forces with Cinna, who made him pro-consul. He seized the port of Ostia, and set out for Rome.

The senate invited Cinna and Marius to enter the city, following which there was widespread bloodshed as they stamped their authority and murdered many of their enemies. Marius even went for Catulus, his former colleague against the Cimbri on the plain of Vercellae, driving the former general to suicide.

News reached Rome that Sulla had finally defeated Mithridates, and was returning to Rome with a large force. Marius was too old and weary to face another foe: he took to drink in his final days, and died seventeen days after he had been made consul for a record seventh time. The city of Rome rejoiced in the hope that his tyranny and bloodshed were over at last.

References

Marius, whole text in English translation at Penelope.

Jacopo Tintoretto’s next major project, in the late 1570s, was to provide paintings for the ceiling of the Sala superiore in the Scuola Grande di San Rocco. But before that, he and his workshop painted three works for the church of Santa Margherita, which has since been deconsecrated, and its paintings transferred to that of Santo Stefano.

In 1576, Tintoretto designed another Last Supper (E&I 169), most probably painted by his studio, which continues his series of innovative and informal treatments of this popular theme. It is another oblique view, which appears to seat Jesus at the end nearest the viewer, rather than in the middle of the more distant long side. He uses a similar cast to his previous versions, complete with an infant crawling up the steps, and a dog.

Tintoretto was now in good standing with the Scuola Grande di San Rocco. He had been admitted to the confraternity in 1565, and had served as one of its deacons, and as a syndic, and his paintings in its albergo were much admired. He still had his opponents, but when in July 1575 he offered to provide a very large painting to go in the middle of the ceiling of the Sala superiore, the Scuola gratefully accepted.

This remarkable centrepiece is known as The Brazen Serpent (E&I 173), and was completed in 1576 after about a year of planning and preparation. Being slightly more that 8 x 5 metres (26 x 16 feet) and mounted in the middle of the ceiling, it is very difficult to get a good and faithful image of it.

The Brazen Serpent is not only large in size, but is epic in its imagery. Based loosely on the Old Testament book of Numbers, chapter 21, 5-9, it refers to a period in which God sent ‘fiery serpents’ among the people, because they had spoken against both God and Moses. The cascade of figures in the foreground, filling much of the lower half of the canvas, are the victims of the many snakes seen among their bodies.

Above and beyond those writhing bodies, on the brightly-lit plateau, a serpent is ‘crucified’, and brings healing to those who remain enlightened. Above them is the figure of God, bearded and bald, flying with his swarm of angels.

Parallels have been drawn with the situation in Venice at the time: there had been another severe outbreak of plague in 1575-76, which on 27 August 1576 had claimed the life of the great Titian.

Provision of the remaining paintings to complete the ceiling took Tintoretto and his workshop remarkably little time. There are a dozen substantial works in addition to their centrepiece, and another eight smaller pieces, the majority of which were largely executed by Jacopo’s workshop between 1577-78. The whole cycle can be seen as detailing the preparatory steps which led up to Christ’s Passion, as shown in the albergo. Those paintings which are believed to have been designed and executed largely by Jacopo himself include the following.

The first two show episodes in which God, through Moses, provided for the Israelites during their protracted exodus. Moses Striking the Rock (E&I 174) (1577) shows water gushing from what had been dry rock after Moses had struck it with his staff, so relieving the people of their thirst.

The Gathering of the Manna (E&I 175) (1577) is even more spectacular, and probably the first depiction of this provision of food which is faithful to the Biblical account that the manna fell at night. It also shows very clearly that it came not just ‘from above’, but from God himself.

Set around those three major, rectangular canvases are ten smaller oval or extended oval tondi, showing key events from the Old Testament.

Jonah and the Whale (E&I 179) (1577-78) is one of the smaller tondi, and shows the prophet Jonah stepping out of the mouth of a huge whale, seen to the right.

Next are two paintings of visions recorded in the Old Testament, on extended ovals.

The Vision of Ezekiel (E&I 180) (1577-78) refers to that recorded in the book of Ezekiel chapter 37, popularly known as the ‘Valley of Dry Bones’. In this, the prophet saw himself standing in a valley full of dry human bones. As he carries a prophecy, on command, the bones are progressively covered with tendons, tissues, and skin. God reveals that these are the people of Israel in exile, and Ezekiel is commanded to carry another prophecy to bring those human figures back to life, and to the land of Israel.

Jacob’s Ladder (E&I 181) (1577-78) shows the dream of Jacob, when he was fleeing from his brother Esau. In this, a ladder connected that place with heaven, and on that there was a constant stream of angels descending and ascending. God stood beside Jacob and told him of the great future for his descendants, and promised never to leave him.

The final painting made by Jacopo Tintoretto is The Sacrifice of Isaac (E&I 182) (1577-78), showing Abraham ready to sacrifice his son Isaac on Moriah, at the command of God. Just as the knife is drawn and the father is about to kill Isaac with it, an angel, as messenger from God, interrupts and tells Abraham to sacrifice a ram instead.

Larger paintings completing the cycle which were mostly made by Tintoretto’s workshop include:

• The Temptation of Adam.
• The Vocation of Moses.
• The Pillar of Fire.
• Elisha Distributing the Loaves.
• Elijah Fed by the Angel.
• Passover.

Once these were completed, Tintoretto continued to move backwards in time, when he returned to painting classical Greek myths, mostly for the Palazzo Ducale, leading to one of his greatest works of all. I will show those in the next article.

References

Robert Echols and Frederick Ilchman (2009) Toward a new Tintoretto Catalogue, with a Checklist of revised Attributions and a new Chronology, in Falomir op cit.
Miguel Falomir (ed) (2009) Jacopo Tintoretto, Proceedings of the International Symposium, Museo Nacional del Prado. ISBN 978 84 8480 171 9.
Roland Krischel (ed) (2017) Tintoretto, A Star was Born, Hirmer (in German). ISBN 978 3 777 42942 7.
Tom Nichols (2015) Tintoretto, Tradition and Identity, 2nd edition, Reaktion Books. ISBN 978 1 78023 450 2.

Today, Pierre Bonnard is probably most famous for his paintings of women, particularly those of Marthe in the bath, which I surveyed last week. Throughout his career, even from the years before he met Marthe, he was an avid landscape painter. In researching this series, I have been amazed at the many landscapes which he painted, not just in his later years at Le Cannet, but throughout the period that he worked primarily in the north of France.

Bonnard started painting as a resident in central Paris, and maintained a flat and studio there into his late years. He travelled extensively, though, and in the early twentieth century started to migrate slowly to the south of France, settling in the small town of Le Cannet. In this small selection of some of his finest landscapes, I give simply the title, year, and approximate location of the view.

I hope that you enjoy this unusual overview of more than fifty years of his work, which demonstrates how his style evolved, but confirms how little his paintings really changed, in comparison to the huge changes which took place in art over this period.

A Red Roof, 1894, near Le Grand-Lemps, Isère, eastern France.

Dauphiné Landscape, about 1899, near Le Grand-Lemps, Isère, eastern France.

Vétheuil, about 1902, to the north-west of Paris.

In a Boat, about 1907, possibly in the south of France.

Early Spring, 1908, possibly the Terrasse family, probably northern France.

The Terrace at Grasse, 1912, Grasse, inland of Cannes, south-eastern France.

Blue Seine at Vernon, 1912, Vernon, near Giverny, north-west of Paris.

The Garden at Vernonnet, 1915, Vernon, near Giverny, north-west of Paris.

House by the Path on the Cliff, 1918, probably northern France.

Pastoral Symphony, 1916-20, location not known.

The Riviera, about 1923, southern France.

Landscape with Mountains, 1924, location not known.

Le Cannet, View from the Pink House, 1926, Le Cannet, south coast of France.

View of Le Cannet, about 1930, Le Cannet, south coast of France.

The Breakfast Room (Dining Room Overlooking the Garden), 1930-31, location not known.

In Summer, 1931, probably Le Cannet, south coast of France.

Landscape at Le Cannet, 1938, Le Cannet, south coast of France.

Panoramic View of Le Cannet or The Blue Mountain, 1942-44, Le Cannet, south coast of France.

The Studio at Le Cannet, with Mimosa, 1938-46, Le Cannet, south coast of France.

References

Guy Cogeval and Isabelle Cahn (2016) Pierre Bonnard, Painting Arcadia, Prestel. ISBN 978 3 791 35524 5.
Gilles Genty and Pierrette Vernon (2006) Bonnard Inédits, Éditions Cercle d’Art (in French). ISBN 978 2 702 20707 9.
Timothy Hyman (1998) Bonnard, World of Art, Thames and Hudson. ISBN 978 0 500 20310 1.

With few exceptions, such as the Pre-Raphaelites, nineteenth century painting is portrayed as centring on the city of Paris. For example, those Italian artists who are better-known, like Giuseppe De Nittis and Giovanni Boldini, only seem to have attained fame when they lived in Paris. My discovery for today is Giuseppe Sciuti (1834–1911), who not only doesn’t seem to have got to Paris, but was born in the shadow of the volcanic Mount Etna on the Italian island of Sicily.

Sciuti started his art studies locally at the age of fiteen, then went to the nearby city of Catania. He progressed from the workshop of a scenery painter, to that of a decorative artist, until he finally came to work in the studio of Antonino Gandolfo, a notable social realist and portrait painter. Just as he was hoping to make the break to Florence or Rome, his family’s farm was destroyed by one of Etna’s eruptions, and he had to spend the next eleven years working for a decorative painter instead.

It must have been in the mid 1860s before he eventually travelled to Florence, where he painted his first mature works. Towards 1870, he went to Naples, where his paintings met with critical success. He then made a mixture of history paintings showing notable events in the development of the Italian nation, and wonderful depictions of classical Greek and Roman times, which are of a quality comparable to those of his contemporary Jean-Léon Gérôme.

Sciuti’s Pindar Recognises a Victor in the Olympic Games (1872) was exhibited at a National Exhibition in Milan, and the following year won a medal at the World’s Fair in Vienna. Pindar the great lyric poet stands, no doubt in the middle of reciting one of his ‘victory odes’, to the left of centre, and the victor wears a laurel wreath and red cloak. Sciuti has a great eye and brush for fine detail, and his choice of spectators breathes life into the scene.

The Battle of Himera (1873) shows one of the battles in the Sicilian Wars, fought in about 480 BCE between Gelon, the Greek king of Syracuse, Sicily, and Hamilcar of Carthage. This is claimed to have coincided with the naval battle of Salamis, and/or the Battle of Thermopylae, and has been eclipsed by both of them.

This painting appears to be a late oil study for the finished work, still very painterly in passages, and is perhaps the more atmospheric as a result. Sciuti’s finished painting was exhibited and sold in London in 1888, but seems to have vanished without trace. Oh – and the Greeks won, inflicting heavy casualties on the Carthaginians.

The Funeral of Timoleon (1874) was another well-received painting which was bought by the city of Palermo. Timoleon was a great Greek general, who was formative in the history of the Greek colonies in Sicily, particularly the city of Syracuse. Sciuti here outdoes Gérôme’s spectacular recreations with his vast crowd and wide-screen vision. Timoleon’s funeral pyre burns in the right foreground, ready to cremate his body when it has been carried from the other side of the forum.

In 1875, Sciuti moved from Naples to Rome, where he was soon successful in a competition to paint two historical works for the province of Sassari, shown below.

Sciuti also painted scenes which are reminiscent of the contemporary works of Lawrence Alma-Tadema in Britain. The Temple of Venus (1876) is a good example, with its careful attention to details of costume and decor.

Over this period, he painted some domestic and genre scenes, such as this marvellous depiction of The Joys of the Good Mother, also known as The Geography Lesson, from 1877. Three children from a close-knit family are seen feeding at mother’s breast, learning to read with her, and (with the assistance of a nurse in traditional dress) learning about their country.

My first encounter with Sciuti’s work came through this spectacular painting of Titus Quinctius Offers Liberty to the Greeks from 1879, which features in one of my articles about Plutarch’s Lives. Sadly I can discover nothing of its history, but it shows the moment that this Roman governor of Greece gives freedom to its people, and guarantees them from the threat of Macedonian invasion.

Sciuti’s two paintings for the province of Sassari tell a little fascinating history of the Italian island of Sardinia. In 1284, the city of Sassari became the first and only independent city-state of Sardinia, joining more famous city-states such as Florence on the mainland. Proclamation of the Republic of Sassari (The Council of the Republic of Sassari) (1880) is Sciuti’s fresco in the Palazzo della Provincia, Sassari, showing his re-imagining of the moment of creation of that city-state.

Subsequently, Sassari came under Austrian rule in 1708, following which it was ruled feudally by the House of Savoy. In 1795, the Emissary of the Viceroy, Giovanni Maria Angioy, led an uprising which restored Sassari’s independence.

The Entry to Sassari of G.M. Angioy (1879) shows the Emissary entering the city in 1796, when he was greeted not as the administrator representing its landlord, but as a liberator. Angioy placated the revolt, demanded an end to the feudal system, and refused to collect taxes. He remains a national hero.

Then appears a long gap in Sciuti’s works: he still seems to have been active and successful, but his paintings from that periods have vanished.

In 1895, Sciuti continued with his classical Roman theme, in The Victim (The Christian Martyr), which shows a young Christian woman with her wrists bound being led to her eventual death: the man leading her and the shadowy figure inside the entrance are both holding the fasces (bundles of rods with an axe) indicating that they are lictors, the guards and officers of a magistrate.

The following year, Sciuti was commissioned to paint the ceiling of the cupola in the Basilica della Collegiata of Santa Maria dell’Elemosina, in Catania, Sicily. Images of this are fragmentary, but suggest the magnificence of this late work.

This section of the ceiling shows ‘Saint Mary of the Alms’, with Mary sat on a throne, surrounded by the poor.

Opposite that is a small group of musicians with angels, and above them is the unusual image of the Eye of (divine) Providence, or the ‘all-seeing eye of God’. This is set inside a triangle, representing the Trinity, in a symbol which appears in much older paintings, such as Jacopo Pontormo’s Supper at Emmaus of 1525.

Sciuti continued to paint until at least 1907, but in 1911 died in Rome shortly after his seventy-seventh birthday.

Reference

Wikipedia.

With the completion of his work on the magnificent paintings of Old Testament stories in the ceiling of the Sala superiore in the Scuola Grande di San Rocco, Jacopo Tintoretto painted another couple of religious works before he started on a succession of mythological narratives.

The Temptation of Saint Anthony (E&I 197) was probably painted by Jacopo himself in about 1577, for the Milledonne Chapel in the Chiesa di San Trovaso, Venice. This was commissioned by Antonio Milledonne, who is now buried at the foot of the altar of which this is the altarpiece.

Although deployed as an altarpiece, Tintoretto’s composition appears as if it was intended to be mounted high, with foreshortening of the flying figure. Otherwise it complies with established iconography, with Saint Anthony between two women, and the devil with his back to the viewer, behind.

Flying figures are a prominent feature of Tintoretto’s Saint Agnes Cures Licinius (E&I 198) from about the same date, which is I believe his last surviving work to have been painted for the Madonna dell’Orto.

This shows the story of Saint Agnes of Rome, who is one of only seven women who, together with the Virgin Mary, are named in the Canon of the Mass. By tradition, she was of noble birth and raised in a Christian family. The prefect’s son Licinius fancied her when she was only around fifteen years old, but she rejected his advances. For this, the boy’s father had Agnes dragged naked through the streets to a brothel, where Licinius and his friends tried to rape her.

God struck Licinius dead. The prefect then pleaded with Agnes to pray for his son to be brought back to life, which is the scene shown here. Licinius has just recovered consciousness in the lower left corner, Agnes is behind him and talking to the elegantly-dressed prefect. Above them are angels with Agnes’ crown ready for her subsequent fate, and at the very top is the white dove of the Holy Spirit.

After she had performed this miracle, the prefect had Agnes martyred as a witch.

In 1578, perhaps extending into the following year, Tintoretto painted six mythological works, in a break from his long series of religious scenes and portraits. The first of these was probably the Nine Muses (E&I 199) for the Palazzo Ducale not in Venice, but in Mantua, and now in the Royal Collection of the UK. This is unusually inscribed at the lower left corner. The vanishing point in its sky contains another woman’s head, which is probably that of their mother, Mnemosyne, the personification of memory, who has the appearance of a mandorla from a religious work.

The next four were for the Atrio Quadrato in Venice’s Palazzo Ducale. Mercury and the Three Graces (E&I 201) takes just three of those Graces, and places Mercury, the messenger of the gods, behind at the left. This composition is dominated by diagonals, which give the whole image a marked lean to the left, which may have been appropriate for its original location.

I regret that I have been unable to locate a suitable image of the second myth for the Palazzo Ducale, which shows the Marriage of Ariadne and Bacchus, after Ariadne had been abandoned on Naxos.

The third is this marvellous painting of Minerva and Mars (E&I 203), in which the goddess is pushing the god of war away from her, as her right hand rests on the shoulder of Peace, with Prosperity at the left edge of the canvas. This is an excellent example of the allegorical use of myth, for which Rubens became so famous fifty years later.

The fourth and last of this series shows Vulcan’s Forge (E&I 204), where Tintoretto’s brushwork is particularly prominent in the scant clothing.

Tintoretto’s workshop was busy with several other religious works, in most of which Jacopo himself was rather less involved.

One exception is The Annunciation (E&I 212) painted in about 1578 for outer organ shutters in the Church of San Rocco, Venice. This is an unusual composition, which includes natural rendering of contemporary brickwork, a wicker chair, and a splendidly realistic carpenter’s yard at the left. This is coupled with an aerial swarm of infants, at the head of which is the dove of the Holy Ghost in a small mandorla.

But for me, the highlight of this period in Tintoretto’s career is perhaps his finest mythological painting: The Origin of the Milky Way (1577-79).

This shows the infant Hercules being pulled away from Juno’s breast by an anonymous assistant, with fine streams of milk gushing upwards to generate individual stars, and downwards to form lilies. In the background, Jupiter’s eagle has a crablike object in its talons, perhaps representing the constellation of the Crab (Cancer), and Juno’s peacocks are at the right.

It has been proposed that Tintoretto painted this for the church of San Trovaso, which now has a full-size copy in its place, although others consider it was one of four scenes of the life of Hercules painted for Emperor Rudolph II in Prague. Joyce Plesters presents a detailed account of its last major conservation work, and considers that there is strong evidence that it underwent substantial reduction, losing its lower third, approximately. That is thought to have contained the reclining nude figure of Earth.

It has a thin brownish ground, in which there are particles of charcoal black, lake, vermilion, smalt, azurite, malachite, and ultramarine, in a medium of linseed oil. Its underdrawing was then brushed in lead white, with considerable adjustments being made in the body of Juno. Although the paint layer is nowhere thick, Plesters considers it to be “of enormous complexity”, arising largely from multiple overpainted pentimenti.

Pigments found in the paint layer include natural ultramarine, which is mixed with lead white in the sky, azurite, indigo dye (peacocks and as a final glaze), malachite, copper resinate glaze, vermilion, red lake, lead-tin yellow, orpiment, realgar, charcoal black, and lead white.

In the next article, I will look at another couple of secular works, following which Tintoretto resumed work on New Testament subjects for the walls of the Sala superiore in the Scuola Grande di San Rocco.

References

Robert Echols and Frederick Ilchman (2009) Toward a new Tintoretto Catalogue, with a Checklist of revised Attributions and a new Chronology, in Falomir op cit.
Miguel Falomir (ed) (2009) Jacopo Tintoretto, Proceedings of the International Symposium, Museo Nacional del Prado. ISBN 978 84 8480 171 9.
Roland Krischel (ed) (2017) Tintoretto, A Star was Born, Hirmer (in German). ISBN 978 3 777 42942 7.
Tom Nichols (2015) Tintoretto, Tradition and Identity, 2nd edition, Reaktion Books. ISBN 978 1 78023 450 2.
Joyce Plesters (1980) Tintoretto’s Paintings in the National Gallery Part II: Materials and techniques, National Gallery Technical Bulletin 4: 32-48.

Last weekend, I looked at the use of fables as the basis for narrative painting, and in doing so mentioned legends. Although there is considerable overlap between these two categories of story, and myths and fairy tales, in general a legend is a semi-factual or fictional story about a named and famed figure of the vague past.

There are many legends which have provided the narrative to paintings. For a change, I have chosen two of the best-known British legends which haven’t been formalised in well-known literary works: Robin Hood, and Lady Godiva.

The most popular British legends, even today, remain those of King Arthur, Camelot, and the Knights of the Round Table. They are also among the most complex legends, with multiple literary versions, some degree of absorption into non-English accounts, and a vast literature. I will perhaps return to them on another occasion.

Lady Godiva, which I cover in the next article, is a good example of a short and simple legend with a strongly visual story – she rode naked through the streets of Coventry – which was both highly attractive to the painter, but a tricky motif until the late nineteenth century.

The tales of Robin Hood are claimed to date back to around 1200, with the hero dying, by popular account, in 1247. Earliest surviving written accounts are from around 1500, in the form of a series of lengthy ballads which were first printed in Antwerp, and by Wynkyn de Worde in London.

They centre on Robert of Locksley, who lived on the edge of Sherwood Forest near Nottingham, England, and was dispossessed of his farm and made an outlaw. Under his nickname of Robin Hood, he assembled a group of friends who became known as his Merry Men, who lived in the forest preying on the many ‘bad’ and despotic landowners and nobles, for the benefit of the oppressed poor. His trademark skills were woodcraft and supreme accuracy with the longbow. Among the friends he defended against attack was Maid Marian, whom he married.

Robin Hood has been the subject of many illustrated books from 1500 onwards, although I will show only a small selection of more ‘artistic’ illustrations here. He has featured in at least thirty movies, been played by Errol Flynn (1938) and by Sean Connery with Audrey Hepburn (1976), and several television series.

Robin Hood doesn’t appear to have featured in any fine art painting until the nineteenth century. However, some of the illustrations made for printed editions of his tales have interesting pedigrees. This coloured engraving of Robin Hood & Clorinda was made in 1783 from an original by John Meheux, by the relatively young William Blake, when he was working primarily as an engraver.

It is also peculiar in confounding two completely unrelated stories: Clorinda is a Saracen woman warrior drawn from Torquato Tasso’s La Gerusalemme Liberata, first published in 1581, and a key literary heroine in Italian Post-Renaissance art and literature.

The earliest paintings related to the legend of Robin Hood originate in a partial retelling of some of his legends in Sir Walter Scott’s romantic mediaeval novel Ivanhoe, first published in English in 1820, and in French translation soon afterwards. Ivanhoe is a swashbuckling story of one of the remaining Saxon noble families in the predominantly Norman court of 1194, after the failure of the Third Crusade. Sir Wilfred of Ivanhoe, the hero, is opposed by Sir Brian de Bois-Guilbert, one of the Norman Knights Templar. Isaac of York is a Jewish moneylender with a beautiful daughter, Rebecca.

At the siege of Torquilstone Castle by the Black Knight (King Richard), Robin of Locksley (Robin Hood), and their Saxon forces, Rebecca is abducted by Brian de Bois-Guilbert. Meanwhile Ulrica, an old Saxon woman, sets fire to the castle, and revels in her vengeance on top of its tower.

The Abduction of Rebecca by a Knight Templar is Léon Cogniet’s account of one of the more enthralling scenes. It was exhibited in the Salon in 1831. It shows Brian de Bois-Guilbert, Rebecca, and Bois-Guilbert’s Saracen slave in the foreground. As their horses gallop away, the castle behind them is consumed by fire, with Ulrica’s figure seen on the top of the tallest tower.

In 1846 Eugène Delacroix turned this same scene from Ivanhoe into one of his greatest paintings.

Eugène Delacroix’s The Abduction of Rebecca was shown at the Salon of 1846 under the extended title of Rebecca Abducted at the Order of the Templar Bois-Guilbert during the Sack of the Castle of Front-de-Boeuf, but did not get a good critical reception. In 1858, Delacroix attempted an entirely different composition, which was shown in his final Salon the following year, and is now in the Louvre.

Other artists stuck to the simpler accounts in the ballads of Robin Hood.

The London-based Irish painter Daniel Maclise painted Robin Hood and His Merry Men Entertaining Richard the Lionheart in Sherwood Forest in 1839.

‘Good’ King Richard, to whom Robin Hood was loyal, sits drinking under an oak tree at the right, still wearing his armour from the Crusades, the only link between these legends and the ‘Saracens’ of the Middle East. Various of the ‘Merry Men’ and Maid Marian can be spotted in the crowd: at the left, with a deer over his shoulder is Little John, sat under the same chestnut tree is Friar Tuck, and Robin Hood stands in the centre, in red, with Maid Marian to the right.

George Cattermole was an artist and illustrator who moved in literary circles, and was a friend of Charles Dickens. His Interior (Tales from Robin Hood, Featuring Friar Tuck) from about 1850 shows, from the left, Friar Tuck, Robin Hood, and Little John in a strangely inappropriate indoor scene.

A couple of years later, during his long confinement in London’s Bethlem psychiatric hospital and asylum (‘Bedlam’), Richard Dadd painted this watercolour Sketch of Robin Hood (1852). The two figures are probably identical because of Dadd’s limited supply of suitable models, but the image of the longbow-wielding woodsman conforms to the stereotype.

Walter Crane, one of the most artistic British illustrators of the century, painted Robin Hood and Guy of Gisborne Fighting for a 1912 illustrated edition of Robin Hood and the Men of the Greenwood by Henry Gilbert. For once, Robin Hood has dropped his longbow to fight the villain with his sword. Both men bear horns at their sides, which Robin used to summon his Merry Men.

Louis Rhead was another prolific illustrator of these tales. This fine engraving of Robin Hood and Maid Marian in the Bower appeared in his 1912 edition of Robin Hood, and is rich with the visual associations made with the legends.

One of my favourite paintings of these legends was made by Newell Convers ‘NC’ Wyeth, the father of the even greater Andrew Wyeth, another prolific illustrator, and an under-rated painter. The Passing of Robin Hood was made for the epilogue of a 1917 edition of Robin Hood by Paul Creswick, and published in Philadelphia, PA.

It shows the last moments of the hero. In his old age, Robin Hood underwent blood-letting sessions at the Abbey of Kirklees, where his aunt had recently become the abbess. She gave him drugged wine, and left him to exsanguinate and die. But before he succumbed, he regained consciousness sufficient to loose one last arrow through the window, to mark the spot where he should be buried.

Comforting the dying Robin are Little John (standing) and Hob o’ the Hill.

Ironically, there are probably more paintings of one place on the coast of Yorkshire named after Robin Hood than of his legends.

John Brett, by far the greatest Pre-Raphaelite landscape painter, made this exquisite oil sketch of Robin Hood Bay, Yorkshire in 1890.

Tomorrow we travel further back in time, to an Anglo-Saxon noblewoman’s daring ride through the city of Coventry.

References

Wikipedia

Mike Dixon-Kennedy (2006) The Robin Hood Handbook, The Outlaw in History, Myth and Legend, Sutton. ISBN 978 0 750 93977 5.