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The Story of Joseph

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Biagio d’Antonio’s “The Story of Joseph” (ca 1485)

I loved this early Renaissance painting which shows, in the same frame, several incidents in the life of Joseph from the Book of Genesis. What caught my eye was the crowded landscape filled with Old Testament figures. According to the Getty Center website:

In the left-hand loggia, Jacob, seated on a throne, sends Joseph to his half-brothers tending sheep in the field. In the far left corner, the brothers, jealous of their father’s love for Joseph, strip him of his jacket and throw him into a pit. Passing merchants purchase the young boy from his brothers for twenty pieces of silver. In the background to the right, the merchants board the ship that will take them and their cargo to Egypt. In the right-hand loggia, the brothers show a blood-smeared coat to their father as evidence that Joseph is dead. With his head in his hand, Jacob mourns his son, whom he believes to be dead.

A companion panel in the Metropolitan Museum of Art depicts the next sequence of events in Joseph’s life. Originally framed next to one another, these two panels would have been inserted into the paneling of a room in a Tuscan family’s home.

There is always something picturesque and fanciful about the outdoor backgrounds in many Renaissance paintings, most particularly those by Giovanni Bellini (1430-1516). I particularly remember liking one of his paintings I saw in the Frick Collection in New York many years ago. It was called, I believe, “St. Francis in the Desert.”

The Father’s Curse

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A Drawing by Jean-Baptiste Greuze (1725-1805)

It was the Getty Center that turned me on to the art of Jean-Baptiste Greuze when they had an exhibit in 2002 on “French Drawings in the Age of Greuze.” He may be been something of a moralizer, but his drawings and his paintings are wonderfully dynamic. The above drawing is from a special exhibit at the Getty entitled “Virtue and Vice: Allegory in European Drawing.”

The vice in this case is a son (standing, right) announcing to his family that he has joined the army. He is embraced by his mother while his father (seated, left) curses him for his decision. The full name of the brush and gray wash over graphite drawing is: “The Father’s Curse: The Ungrateful Son.” The museum description of the drawing is as follows:

A father reacts furiously to his son’s decision to leave his family and join the army. With outstretched arms, he releases an angry curse that thrusts the young man toward the door, where a recruiting officer watches with indifference. The family’s pleading gestures and dramatic facial expressions communicate their anguish. Based on the popular painting the artist exhibited in 1777, this highly finished sheet served as the model for a print.

Here is the painting by Greuze that preceded the drawing:

This painting was praised by no less a critic than Denis Diderot, the famous French Encyclopedist. I actually like the drawing that ensued more than the painting because it looks more like a domestic scene rather than a stage proscenium.

I wonder why Greuze found it necessary to do a drawing after he did an oil painting. If, as the Getty description noted, the drawing was turned into a print, I would be very interested in seeing the print or engraving based on it.

The Artist as Martyr

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Artemisia Gentileschi’s “Self Portrait as a Female Martyr”

Of all the women artists before the 19th century, perhaps the greatest was Artemisia Gentileschi (1593-1654). Born in Rome, she was the daughter of a noted painter. According to the Getty Center’s website:

Artemesia Gentileschi is known as an ambitious and influential female painter of her time, when female artists were rare. She spread the Caravaggesque style throughout Italy and expanded the narrow possibilities for female artists. Artemesia was taught to paint by her father, Orazio Gentileschi, who painted directly on the canvas and used live models. Her paint-handling in her early works reflects her father’s influence, yet she also departed from him by choosing to paint tense, dramatic narratives with defiant female heroines. In 1612, Artemesia left Rome for Florence, after taking part in a trial against her art teacher, Agostino Tassi, who was convicted of raping her. Shortly after, she painted her interpretation of Caravaggio’s “Judith Beheading Holofernes,” taking a more arresting and gruesome approach to the subject than was common at the time. In the 1620s, Artemesia was living again in Rome, making brief trips to Genoa and Venice and continuing to paint narrative paintings as well as female nudes, a subject avoided by other female artists of the period. In 1630, Artemesia had moved to Naples where her style became less Caravaggesque and her themes turned to more conventional religious subjects. In 1638 Artemesia moved to London to care for ailing father. From then on, her work was less frequent and poorly documented. The last documentation of her was a painting commission dated January of 1654. She may have died in the plague that devastated Naples in 1656.

The self portrait of the painter as a martyr was a testimony to the difficulties she faced as a 17th century painter in what was typically an all-male profession. The painting was done around the year 1615. It was the Getty Center that introduced me to Gentileschi, whom I regard as one of the greatest artists of her time and place.

At the Getty Center

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The East Pavilion at the Getty Center (Currently Closed for Remodeling)

Every time I visit the Getty Center in Los Angeles, my imagination is rekindled. And, unlike the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), I can visit without spending a small fortune—$26.00 senior admission and almost as much for parking. That comes to almost $50.00 total. I spent a total of seventy cents ($0.70) for the round trip on the MTA 781 bus and the Getty does not charge admission. If you were a senior on a fixed income, which museum would you choose?

For this visit, there was no obvious special exhibition; but I didn’t care because there was always something interesting to see that piqued my curiosity. For instance, I was amazed by a ceramic basin from Italy dated approximately 1600:

Basin with Moses Striking Water from the Rock

Moses in shown in the bottom left of the interior of the basin. According to the Getty website, “Princess Isabella della Rovere (1552-1619), sister of the Duke of Urbino, commissioned this basin as part of a diplomatic gift for Catalina de Zúñiga y Sandoval (1555-1628), wife of the Viceroy of Naples.”

Note the ogre or monster face jutting out from the bottom of the basin. Or is it Satan planning to turn the Israelites escaping Egypt to worshiping a golden calf?

In any case, it is a lovely piece of work

The Getty website provides more details:

The depiction of narrative scenes, known as istoriato in Italian, along with the vivid color palette of the basin are characteristic of ceramics made in Urbino. The city was a major center for the production of tin-glazed earthenware (maiolica) in central Italy during the 15th and 16th centuries. The workshop of Francesco Patanazzi (d. 1616), a member of a renowned ceramicist family, crafted the vessel. Its elegant shape and sculpted decorations, like the satyr-head handles and the base with lion’s paws, attest to the workshop’s virtuosity.

“The Harmonious Universe of His Soul”

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Claude Lorrain’s “Coast View with the Abduction of Europa”

Goethe perhaps said it best: “Claude Lorrain knew the real world by heart, down to the minute details. He used it as a means of expressing the harmonious universe of his soul.”

Both Lorrain (1604-1682) and Nicolas Poussin (1594-1665) made a career of creating peaceful canvases that draw the viewer’s eye in and leave him or her in a meditative state. That is the case even though the subject matter of the above painting is of a violent rape:

The Abduction of Europa is a classical myth from Ovid’s Metamorphoses, in which Zeus transforms himself into a white bull to abduct the Phoenician princess Europa. He lures her onto his back and carries her across the sea to the island of Crete, where they have children, including Minos, who become the first king of Crete and one of the divine judges of the underworld.

Rembrandt also painted the scene in a much more dramatic fashion, but in Lorrain’s painting, it is almost an afterthought—as if it could have been replaced by dancing Naiads or a shepherd with his flock with no loss in overall effect.

Every time I visit the Getty Center in the Santa Monica Mountains, I feel a frisson of excitement as I take a fresh look at the museum’s incredible collection.

The Musicians’ Brawl

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“The Musicians’ Brawl” by Georges de la Tour (1593-1652)

This afternoon, I dropped in to the Getty Center to refresh my store of images. The one that stuck in my mind the most was a 17th century canvas entitled “The Musicians’ Brawl” by French painter Georges de la Tour.

There’s a lot happening in this picture. There are five figures depicted, all very nearly on the same plane. From left to right, we begin with an old woman who is appalled by the fracas. Moving rightward, we have a bearded blind musician with a knife in one hand and a hurdy-gurdy slung on his shoulder. He is being confronted by another bearded musician with a shawm (a predecessor to the oboe) in his left hand and a wedge of lemon in his right, which he is squeezing in the eyes of the hurdy-gurdy player not entirely believing he is blind.

Continuing to the right, we have two musicians who are spectators. The bearded one is barely paying attention, while his mustachioed companion stares drunkenly out at us while clutching his instrument. That rightmost figure is, to me, the most memorable one in the painting. He is clearly chuckling and looking at us with slightly glazed eyes.

I will never forget that drunken facial expression. It is the painterly version of an earworm.

An Architectural Marvel

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The Getty Center in Los Angeles

In general, I am not a big fan of contemporary architecture. I get tired of giant rectangles constructed of steel and glass. Ever since it opened its doors in 1997, I have come to love the Getty Center. (I also love the Getty Villa in Malibu, but I’ll save that for another time.)

Architect Richard Meier spent thirteen years designing the center, with the kind of attention to detail used to site ancient Egyptian or Meso-American temples. For instance, some of the buildings on the campus are oriented north/south. Others parallel the line of the I-405 freeway, which is 22.5° degrees off the north/south axis—which is exactly one-half of 90° and one-fourth of 180°.

The buildings are faced with blocks of travertine from Italy or aluminum tiles, both of which are 30 inches square (or 76.2 centimeters). Below is a close-up of one of the highly textured travertine walls:

Travertine Blocks Forming Getty Center Outer Wall

When I open the front door of my apartment in the morning to pick up my copy of the Los Angeles Times, I can actually see the Getty Center atop its hill some 4.5 miles (7.24 kilometers) as the crow flies. For more info about the Center’s design, click here.

Rambles, Dreams, and Shadows

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Two Men Cruising Central Park

In last Thursday’s visit to the Getty Center, I concentrated on the prints of William Blake, but I also checked the photography exhibits, which are always changing and always interesting. I particularly enjoyed the “Rambles, Dreams, and Shadows” exhibit consisting mostly of cityscapes by Arthur Tress (born 1940).

Tress had a particular vision of a New York City shrouded in mystery. In the photo above, only one human figure is readily visible, until you notice the shadow of another in the upper right of the image.

Boy on Bike Crossing Williamsburg Bridge

I love this image of the cyclist on the long straight bridge with no other human beings in sight. There is a sort of last man on earth feeling about this image that appealed to me.

Boy in Tin Cone, Bronx

What the … ? Another mysterious image, this time of a boy wearing a metallic cone that gives him an otherworldly aspect, especially as the feet do not quite seem to match with the boy’s head.

Tuesday at the Getty Center

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On the 781 Metro Bus to the Getty Center

In my retirement years, I sometimes drive where I’m going; sometimes I just take public transportation. The two Getty museums in Los Angeles are a good example of the advantage of traveling by bus. There is no admission fee, but parking at each museum costs twenty dollars. Compare that with an outlay of seventy cents for a round trip between Sepulveda & Exposition and the Getty Center. A big plus is that the 781 Metro bus runs every few minutes, so that waiting is not a big factor.

The reason for my visit is an exhibit entitled “William Blake: Visionary,” which closes on January 14. Organized with the cooperation of London’s Tate Museum, it includes a large number of Blake’s prints. I even dished out the money for the exhibit book. It costs a fortune, but I know I would have kicked myself had I passed up the opportunity.

In the next few days, I will write several posts about my visit to the Getty, particularly relating to William Blake, who is probably the only human being who is at one and the same time a great poet and a great visual artist.

The Getty’s Cactus Garden with Westwood and the 405 Freeway in the Background

I like to visit the Getty whenever they have a special exhibit that interests me. This time, I saw only the Blake exhibit and also a large selection of great photographs by Arthur Tress. (The Getty Center always has interesting photographic exhibits.)

Later this month, I will also trek to the Getty Villa in Pacific Palisades to see an exhibit on the Egyptian Book of the Dead. Unlike the Getty Center, the Getty Villa concentrates on ancient Greek and Roman art in a building whose design is a re-created Roman country home within view of the beach.

The Flight Into Egypt

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Aelbert Cuyp’s “The Flight Into Egypt” (ca. 1665)

Although I saw this painting at the Getty Center in Los Angeles, it is actually on loan from the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Apparently Aelbert Cuyp (1620-1691) painted several canvases of the Holy Family’s flight into Egypt to escape Herod’s massacre of the innocents born around Bethlehem. According to the Gospel of St. Matthew (2:16):

Then Herod, when he saw that he was mocked of the wise men, was exceeding wroth, and sent forth, and slew all the children that were in Bethlehem, and in all the coasts thereof, from two years old and under, according to the time which he had diligently inquired of the wise men.

This painting appealed to me because it moves its subject into an obviously European setting—certainly as far removed from the Sinai Peninsula as it is possible to be. At the same time, the scene is as peaceful as a bucolic Poussin or Lorrain painting of the same period.

Cuyp was noted for his landscapes. According to the Wikipedia entry on him, “he is especially known for his large views of Dutch riverside scenes in a golden early morning or late afternoon light.”