The Play’s The Thing or Is It The Perspective?
In looking at this piece, do you perhaps feel that you are looking at a stage setting with a drama in progress? The partially crumbled buildings lead your eye into the scene and in a certain way past the action. The combination of these colored structures stacked one behind the other have odd plays of bright light, with darker items in the background and a backdrop of dark blue/black that descends like a curtain. When the eye starts on the front left of this “stage” and travels across the picture plane to the broken light cream-colored wall, then on to the darker cream wall with windows and its broken side wall in almost bright white, one has the sense of also going deeper into the picture. These half broken structures surround the action that is taking place among its ruins. This begs the question, “What is the “play” about?”
Well, it’s about how Pope Sylvester 1 (285-335 C.E.) became St. Sylvester by calming a raging dragon (on the left side of the picture in a hole) when the Emperor Constantine’s magicians could not. They are the ones lying flat on their backs in apoplexy, though we see the continuation of the story with Sylvester about to raise them once again. For all these good deeds, Pope Sylvester I ultimately wound up being made a saint with his day celebrated on December 31st – New Year’s Eve or “Sylvester” as it is sometimes known in Europe.
In some ways it is no wonder that he might be working in such a way, as he was a pupil of Giotto di Bondone, the early 14th century painter of whom the artists of the Renaissance said, “It all began with Giotto.” In the picture here, we see the illusion of a chamber on the other side of an open arch. This painting and its companion were Giotto’s way of creating visual space within the narrow confines of the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua (1305) and an early example of excellent trompe l’oeil (trick the eye) painting.
However, let’s get back to that “stage” set. When the eye moves behind this scene of depth, things go flat again with a solid wall of a crenelated fortress and a tower oddly lit as if by moonlight. Beyond that is the bluish black of the night. The flatness in the rear of this painting is what one normally associates with the late Middle Ages, when backgrounds were sometimes solid colors or even solid gold leaf. However, Maso di Banco is doing something else here, something that is headed toward real perspective, that elemental illusion that makes two dimensions into three.
Maso di Banco’s work is in alignment with his master’s but with the added touch of creative use of color to move the eye through the painting. His pastel colors are reminiscent of those used in Sienese painting at that time, though not quite as fanciful. The column is an important element in that it reminds us as we enter the picture that there is a hole just beyond and in that hole a great activity is happening. Now in most painting of the late Middle Ages, and even into the Renaissance, the stories of holy figures and their miracles are told in blocks with dividing lines in between – yes, like in modern graphic novels. Here di Banco uses that column as a vestige of the normal system of dividing the story into parts. The viewer sees the activity that laid the court magicians low happening in that hole where Pope Sylvester ministers to the dragon and tames him. That happens to the left of the column.
We can see Sylvester, then, emerging from that hole on the right side of the column. We know it is he, as he wears the same cloak and mitre (?). So the story continues with the court of the Emperor looking on as Sylvester brings the magicians back to consciousness. We see one in an orange robe, reverently on his knees before the Pope who is making a gesture over him. One expects, of course, that the story continues with the raising of the other two magicians, but at this point we’ve got the picture. And the picture is quite something not just because of the story, but of how it is framed in this setting of half destroyed buildings with an odd lighting that we know not the origins of.
That odd lighting, however, is the use of color to help create the idea of perspective. The technique is actually known as chromatic perspective, a way of moving the eye along by having it follow similar colors. Here one notices how the use of those creams and whites moves the eye from up front on the left all the way over to the right of the painting. That color scheme moves the eye from in front of the human activity to areas behind that activity and by that, suggesting depth, since things placed one behind another indicate space which goes back into the scene.
Maso di Banco’s work in the Chapel of the Holy Confessors in Santa Croce in Florence, where the painting above exists, is considered his major body of work. This is known because of Lorenzo Ghiberti’s I Commentari, the autobiography of the man who created the Gates of Paradise for the Baptistry near Florence’s Duomo, in which he credited Maso di Banco with painting that chapel. Although di Banco was a key follower of Giotto and a very successful artist in his own right, he did not seem to have others who followed him. His working career is dated from 1335 to 1350 with nothing much else known about his life. The 1350 cut off date for his work is significant as the first instance of the Great Plague hit Europe in 1347 and lasted for about 5 years, carrying off 1/2 of the population of Florence and as much if not more of Siena. There such great Sienese painters as Pietro and Ambrosio Lorenzetti were affected, with Ambrosio making out his last will and testament, commenting that he, too, would probably die of the disease. He did. Perhaps the same happened to Maso di Banco.
But Wait! Everything Old Is New Again.
So along comes the 20th century some 600 years later, long after the rules of perspective had been securely figured out with many Renaissance works proving that the concept had been mastered and actual realism had been achieved by the end of the 1400s. However, it seems that there are certain landscapes of the mind, dreams and misty memories of by gone times and places that need a means of expression. Giorgio di Chirico (1888-1978), an Italian, born and raised in Greece, thus a visual inheritor of two classical cultures, came along founding his Scuola Metafisica in 1915, which touched off the Surrealist Movement. Surrealism is rather other worldly and cannot be expressed properly within the confines of ordinary reality, but what about that odd almost real representations of someone like Maso di Banco?
We see here in di Chirico’s Piazza d’Italia the arches of buildings with odd lighting. They follow the rules of perspective generally but the coloring gives a sense of dreamlike irreality. The stone sculpture in the center is of Ariadne, the princess who helped her lover, Theseus, find his way out of the labyrinth after he killed the Minotaur by having given him a spool of thread that he could use to mark his path going in and find his way out again. He later abandoned her on the island of Naxos. So this painting like di Banco’s tells a story. The recumbent statue seems consumed in woe, and its shadow casts a long and sorrowful trail of darkness, almost as though it pours out of the statue of the weeping woman. The odd acid-like colors, the two men shaking hands as if making a deal, and the exploding volcano in the distance on the right, all add tension to this surrealistic dream.
Giorgio di Chirico’s metaphysical and surrealist works were among his most popular, so much so that when a collector lamented not being able to buy one of his works, Les Muses Inquietanti (The Disquieting Muses, 1918), from the new owner, di Chirico just made a copy of it to sell to the collector. In fact, he got into the habit of copying his own works. He called these works verifalsi or true fakes, and thus struck a victory for the intellectual property of artists. We now have copyright laws that protect the images that artists create for certain periods of time so that the artist and his or her estate benefit from usage, regardless of who owns the original painting. However, works published before 1925, like the di Chirico above, are now in public domain, so we can enjoy it here.
Giorgio di Chirico was one of the most influential artists of the 20th century, touching the work of such great painters as Edward Hopper, film directors like Alfred Hitchcock, and the poet Sylvia Plath, who wrote a poem called “The Disquieting Muses.” He was a writer of poetry and a surrealist novel as well. For more on that, Stefania Heim has a great article in Paris Review on his poetry called “Giorgio di Chirico’s Italian Poetry” (click on this link www.theparisreview.org ) Fortunately for everyone, di Chirico had a wonderful knowledge of art and art history and the genius to bring things from the past forward into a new age. So Maso di Banco did have at least one follower of sorts after all.
Paintings are in Public Domain.
Marjorie Vernelle is an artist, writer, college professor, and traveler. For more see the Pages at ofartandwine.com or her author page at amazon.com and her art at Vernelle Art Boutique vernellestudio.com.
St. Sylvester’s is December 31st. Time for Some Prosecco!
This photo is of my very favorite glass of Prosecco, chilled to perfection, served on the outer terrace of a lovely restaurant (Dimna’s), and drunk while watching the city of Toronto’s chic stroll the boutiques of Yorkville. All that after I had spent a delightful summer afternoon checking out the art galleries that the area is so famous for. Unfortunately, in my reverie, I did not note down the name of the vintner. All I can say is that I still known where to go for a good glass of bubbly on a hot summer day in the big city. But you ask why Prosecco and not Champagne?
Well, first, I was in an Italian restaurant, and Prosecco comes from the Veneto, that lovely area of Italy that leads one to Venice, La Serenissima. Since the French were the discoverers of sparkling wine made from those tiny, pale, crystalline green grapes from Champagne, they patented the name for themselves, leaving others who signed that agreement to create their own names for their sparkling wines. This one takes on the name of a town, Prosecco, in the Veneto, though the grape it is primarily made from is now called the Glera and no longer much referred to as the Prosecco.
So What’s the Difference Anyway?
It is all in the process. As opposed to the French methode champenoise, Prosecco is made by a quicker, less expensive process called the “tank method.” Basically that means that everything is created inside a huge tank with a high pressure CO2 mechanism to make the bubbles. As I said, it is quicker and cheaper, which unfortunately has led to the creation of such a thing as bad Prosecco, caused not by the quality of the grapes, but by the cheap production methods. The bad ones are to be avoided like the plague unless you favor horrid headaches. It is best to look for DOC or DOCG markings for assured quality or the names Valdobbiadene or Conegliano.
Prosecco comes in a range from Brut, to Extra Dry, to Dry and finally Demi-Sec, representing levels from very dry to semi-sweet. One of the favorites of mine in La Marca Prosecco, which has a crisp taste with touches of fruit like peach and apple. A 5 oz glass has 80 calories, and a bottle ranges in price from $12.50 to $15.00. While Prosecco makes a wonderful celebratory toast, it is also great for making mimosas and spritzers. In terms of food pairings, it is called a “food-friendly” wine, so depending on how dry or sweet the bottle is, you can pair it with salty items like prosciutto, perhaps wrapped around a piece of melon for a sucré/salée treat, or seafood, fried foods, creamy sauces, Asian foods, and even popcorn!
So there is no excuse not to celebrate Sylvester, with this charming, tasty sparkler. Who knows? As the New Year rings in, you might meet a dragon who can be tamed by a glass of bubbly.
Here is another way to get into sparkling wines: join a sparkling wine club. You can take a look at the Cellars Wine Club information on the right, under Of Art and Wine Pages, or click here cellarswineclub.com. While you are looking, take note of their Give Back Program of vetted charities that wine club members can have Cellars donate to on their behalf. And remember with Cellars, there is a “No bad bottle” return policy.
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©marjorie vernelle 2019
Coming next on Of Art and Wine: Rain Paintings and Wineries of the Pacific Northwest.
Inclement weather may seem to be a surprising subject, but capturing the beauty of falling rain has fascinated many artists, including Van Gogh. In terms of wine and rain, one’s mind goes immediately to the Pacific Northwest, famous for its rains and now for its cool climate wines. Come along for the virtual tour of some famous rain paintings and wines from the rain swept Northwest Pacific Coast.