The Faerie Queene is an incomplete epic poem written by Edmund Spenser (1552/1553 – 13 January 1599), and first published in 1590. Spencer was born in London, but he was acquainted with Irish Faerie mythology. Faeries are legendary and mostly composite figures. In Beast Literature, these figures are referred to as les hybrides or zoomorphic. The image above, by Giovanni Battista Tiepolo (5 March 1696 – 27 March 1770), features a zoomorphic serpent and putti (little angels), composite figures.
Due to its length, The Faerie Queene is an epic poem, but it is not a mock epic. Reynard the Fox is a mock epic as well as anthropomorphic. Its dramatis personae consists of talking animals. As for the The Faerie Queene, it is allegorical. Its Knights each represent a virtue, virtues taught in the Trivium and the Quadrivium. The Faerie Queene is also fantastical (le fantastique)and the Quadrivium. The Faerie Queene is also fantastical (le fantastique). Here the French may use the word “le merveilleux”, and in the case of the Faerie Queene, “le merveilleuxchrétien.” We may also refer to chivalry. The Faerie Queene features Knights who are allegorical figures. Beneath are illustrations by Walter Crane.
Holiness defeats Error, Walter Crane, 1895-97 (Wiki)
The Middle Ages: Allegories, Hagiographies, Education
During the Middle Ages, readers loved books about the lives of saints and particularly martyrs: hagiographies and martyrologies. The early and Orthodox Church had catalogues instead of hagiographies. These were: the menaion, the synaxarion and paterikon. As for the Western Church, its most successful hagiography was Jacques de Voragine’s Golden Legend. The faithful enjoyed stories of miracles just as children love fairy tales. A belief in magic and miracles can save one from despair. The same is true of Faith and Hope, two of the theological virtues.
The currently neglected notion of virtue is a product of Greco-Roman antiquity Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, Marcus Aurelius and the Bible, but it was adopted by the Church Fathers of the Western Church and the Great Fathers of the Eastern Orthodox Church. (See Church Fathers, Wikipedia, scroll down to Great Fathers.)
The Faerie Queene (see Wikipedia) consists of six (6) Books:
Book One: the virtue of Holiness as embodied with Red Cross knight;
Book Two: on the virtue of Temperance as embodied in Sir Guyon;
Book Three: the virtue of Chastity as embodied in Britomart, a lady knight;
Book Four: a continuation of book four. A three-day tournament is held. When Britomart lifts her mask, Artegal falls in love with her;
Book Five: the virtue of Justice, as embodied in Sir Artegal;
Book Six: the virtue of Courtesy as embodied in Sir Calidore.
Comment
Would that current world leaders were familiar with the virtues, temperance, in particular. The Faerie Queene is about the virtues. Each Knight represents a virtue. Under a current leader, we need Faith, Hope, and Charity because he does not exercise the Cardinal virtues. To a certain extent, The Faerie Queene is rooted in Cortegiano’s The Book of the Courtier (1508-1528).
Griffin fresco in the “Throne Room,” Palace of Knossos, Crete, Bronze Age. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
The Griffin
The red Griffin “rampant” was the coat of arms of the dukes of Pomerania and survives today as the armorial of West Pomeranian Voivodeship (historically, Farther Pomerania) in Poland.
(Photo credit: Wikipedia)
When the griffin or other mythical/mythological animal is featured on a crest in a climbing position, he is called “rampant” (ramping, crawling).
Anthropomorphism
fables
beast epics
speaking animals
Animals in literature are, for the most part, humans in disguise, or anthropomorphic. As Jan M. Ziolkowski writes, “beasts override genre.”[1]Fables and fairy tales are genres, but beast literature is not.
Fables and Beast Epics
However, although beasts override genre, speaking animals are associated first with fables, such as Æsop’s Fables and Jean de La Fontaine’s, and, second, with beast epics, such as Reynard the Fox, or Le Roman de Renart, which narrows a much broader area of knowledge. Anthropomorphic animals are humans in disguise. In the Roman de Renart,all animalshave a name. In fact, Renart was so popular that foxes ceased to be called goupils in French. They became renards. Reynard the Fox is entitled Le Roman de Renart, where renard is spelled with a “t.”Renart is a trickster whose nemesis is the wolf named Ysengrin.
Le Roman de Renart, a French beast epic, is rooted in the Ysengrimus, a lengthy––6,574 lines of elegiac couplets––Latin mock epic written in 1148-1149 and attributed to Nivardus of Ghent. In the Isengrimus, Renart is Reinardus and will become the most famous and beloved animal in European beast literature. Renard is the fox of the “Fox and Crow” and other “fox” fables. In fact, the Roman de Renart, the first “branches” of which were written in the late twelfth century by Pierre de Saint-Cloud, is an outer fable containing inner fables (Ausserfabel and Innerfabeln), including Æsopic fables.[2]Æsopic fables preceded the Roman de Renart by a more than a thousand years.
Speech
“dire sans dire”
Aesopian
George Orwell
The main characteristic of anthropomorphic animals is their ability to speak a human language. Animals are very useful to writers because, when all said and done, animals have not said a thing. Jean de La Fontaine’s (1621-1695) fables have been described as a “dire-sans-dire” (to say without saying). They are “enveloped” tales, writes German scholar Jürgen Grimm. Therefore, anthropomorphism is an oblique literary discourse, a fiction within a fiction.
Russian satirist Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin (27 January 1826 – 10 May 1889) first used the word aesopian to describe a language unclear to outsiders, thereby allowing authors to say what they please with relative impunity. In 1945, George Orwell wrote an allegorical novella entitled Animal Farm. His animals are humans in disguise, hence their saying what they will not have said. Their own tongue is a language, but it is not a human language. Babe, the protagonist, a piglet, of a 1995 Australian film directed by Chris Noonan and produced by George Miller, is an anthropomorphic animal. The film is an adaptation of Dick King-Smith‘s 1983 novel: The Sheep-Pig.
The Story
La Fontaine did make each of his animals speak, but he also emphasized the power of fiction, in which he may have further distanced his speaking animals. In the Preface to his first collection of fables, books one to six, La Fontaine notes that Jesus of Nazareth spoke in parables. Parables are stories and, as such, they empower speech. To illustrate the power of stories, La Fontaine’s wrote a fable entitled Le Pouvoir des fables (2.VIII.4). It contains an inner fable about a speaker the people of Athens would not listen to until he turned to fiction, a story about Cerēs,the Roman goddess of agriculture. The moral of the “Power of Fables” is that we are all Athenians. La Fontaine writes that if Donkeyskin, a fairy tale, were told to him, it would give him enormous pleasure. The world is old, writes the fabulist, yet it is like a child we must amuse.
Moreover, a story is pleasurable and is not easily forgotten.
Nous sommes tous d’Athène en ce point, et moi-même, Au moment où je fais cette moralité, Si Peau d’âne m’était conté, J’y prendrais un plaisir extrême. Le monde est vieux, dit-on, je le crois; cependant Il faut l’amuser encor comme un enfant.
It should be noted, however, that La Fontaine believed in a “boundless universe,” where tout parle, everything speaks, which is anthropomorphism.
Car tout parle dans l’Univers; Il n’est rien qui n’ait son langage. (2.XI.Épilogue)
For in this boundless universe
Ther’s none that talketh, simpleton or sage
More eloquent at home than in my verse.
(2.XI.Epilogue)
Everything does speaks. For instance, Milo Winter‘s illustrations for “The North Wind [Boreas] and the Sun” (“Phoebus and Boreas”) constitutes an example of elements, the wind and the sun, who speak as though they were humans. In short, anthropomorphism resembles a form of personification, which it is in“Phoebus and Boreas .”
giving animal features to anything (e. g. furniture)
Zoomorphism is a more complex concept than anthropomorphism and may be the reverse of anthropomorphism. Mythologies and myths are home to zoomorphic animals that combine the features of a human and an animal or the features of many animals. The centaur of Greek mythology is part human and part beast. Centaurs have the lower body of a horse, but the upper body of a human.
The Minotaur is the offspring of Pasiphaë, the wife of Cretan king Minos and the Cretan bull. He is part human and part bull and so evil a creature that he is kept in a labyrinth built by Daedalus. He is slain by Theseus who finds his way through the labyrinth using Ariadne‘s thread. These two hybrid creatures, the centaur and the Minotaur, may hold a mirror to mankind’s duality. Humans possess a mortal body and an immortal soul.
However, mythology also features composite animals. Cerberus, the vigilant dog guarding the gates to the Underworld is a three-headed dog. J. K. Rowling used Cerberus in her Harry Potter series. Her fifth book in the Harry Potter series is entitled Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. Mythological animals have long inhabited the human psyche and are therefore somewhat familiar to readers. To my knowledge, no one escapes Cerberus’ attention, except Psyche. (See Cupid and Psyche, Wikipedia.) Pegasus, the winged horse, is also a well-known mythological being.
Mythologies are origin myths or aetiological. The Bible itself, the Scriptures or “the Word,” could be described as an aetiological text. It features fanciful angels who are human-like but have wings. In Greek mythology, for instance, animals have a lineage or a pedigree, as is the case with the above-mentioned Minotaur. In the growingly popular area of children’s literature, aetiological tales are called “pourquoi” tales. The most famous example of a “pourquoi” tale is Rudyard Kipling‘s (30 December 1865 – 18 January 1936) Just so stories.
Zoomorphic beasts may also be symbols. As mentioned above, those who mix the features of a human being may reflect the fall of mankind. Besides, an anthropomorphic serpent talked to Eve.
Mythologies and Myths
J. K. Rowling used not only Cerberus, but the Phoenix, a symbol of rebirth. Symbolic beasts are mostly mythical rather than mythological, but readers and scholars tend to blur that line. The distinguishing criterion would be lineage. By and large, mythological beasts, such as the above-mentioned Minotaur and centaurs have a pedigree.
Mostly mythical animals are the phoenix, the unicorn, the dragon, the griffin and the irresistible Sirens, mermaids mostly. Mermaids have the upper body of a woman and the lower body of a fish. These legendary beings may make an appearance in mythologies, but they are somewhat ubiquitous and often transcultural. The phoenix has often been described as a mythological animal and he has a story as does the Unicorn, but he does not possess the Minotaur’s lineage.
The dragon is our most ubiquitous imaginary animal and may be good or bad depending on his environment. In the West he is bad, but not so in the East. Unicorns and Sirens are also transcultural. These mythical animals are zoomorphic, but, in Medieval Bestiary, they are symbols.
The dragon‘s characteristics change from culture to culture. He is feared in the West, but not in China.
The griffin, shown at the top of this post, a lion mostly, with the head of an eagle, is a guardian. In antiquity, he was a symbol of divine power and a guardian of the divine.
The unicorn has one horn and plays various roles from culture to culture. In Western culture, he is emblematic of chaste love and faithful marriage.
Given that he rises from his own ashes, the phoenix is a symbol of rebirth and very popular.
The word zoomorphic is also used to describe pieces of furniture and architectural elements. For instance, the legs of wing chairs often imitate the feet of an animal. Besides wing chairs have wings. Among architectural element, the animal-like Gargoyle is a favourite. He is a waterspout with an open mouth. Bas-reliefs (shallow carvings on a flat surface, such as a wall) may also contain animal-like architectural elements. They embellish buildings. All animal-like creatures inhabiting the medieval bestiary are allegorical or symbolic.
The Order of the Dragon was created to defend Europe against the invading Ottoman Turks in the 15th century. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Other Beasts
metamorphosis
theriantropic beasts
lycanthropy
Both the terms anthropomorphism and zoomorphism include morphism. Morphism suggests a metamorphosis, or a transformation in a being’s appearance, which may be a wish human beings share, just as they share the wish to fly. Roman writer Ovid (20 March 43 BCE – CE 17/18) is the author of the extremely influential Metamorphosesand Berber Latin writer Apuleius (c. 124 – c. 170 CE) wrote The Golden Ass, which contains the lovely tale ofCupid and Psyche. Lucius, the protagonist of The Golden Ass, is mistakenly transformed into an ass when attempting to be transformed into a bird.
Beast literature features therianthropic animals, who are the victims of a curse. Beast in Beauty and the Beast is a therianthropic being. Enchantment is central to fairy tales. But shapeshifting animals bring to mind the werewolf (le loup-garou), a lycanthrope, rather than fairy tales.
Animals as Types
In the Preface to his translation of Æsop’s Fables, John Fyler Townsend writes that animals are types, much like the stock characters of the commedia dell’arte.
The introduction of the animals or fictitious characters should be marked with an care and attention to their natural attributes, and to the qualities attributed to them by universal popular consent. The Fox should be always cunning, the Hare timid, the Lion bold, the Wolf cruel, the Bull strong, the Horse proud, and the Ass patient. [EBook #21]
Zoomorphic animals are not types. However, there is commonality between animals and humans, Darwinism is a subject we will not discuss. Mythical and mythological animals may be up to no good, but they are not mutating. Moreover, I consider totemism, animal ancestry, the preserve of anthropologists.
Conclusion
Beast literature is a huge topic. We cannot escape any of the categories mentioned in this post. Yet, anthropomorphism is its chief characteristics because of the prominence of fables and the Roman de Renart, Reynard the Fox. One could define the usefulness of anthropomorphic animals by using Gertrude Stein‘s a rose is a rose is a rose.
Well, at the end of the day, a fox is a fox is a fox, therein the wizardry of a large part of beast literature. However, we remember the story. Dear La Fontaine.
[I] Jan M. Ziolkowski, Talking Animals: Medieval Latin Beast Poetry, 750 – 1150(The University of Pennsylvania Press, 1993), p. 1. [II]Jean Batany, Scène et coulisses du « Roman de Renart » (Paris: Cedes, 1989), p. 57.
I am using a new computer. Although I said I was buying a new computer a few months ago, I repaired the old one and continued using it until it perished. However, I am making mistakes. For instance, I erased the article I posted yesterday, but I had a copy of it. In the meantime, I accidentally posted an article containing the Marian Antiphons. This is a post I intended to use. It was published in 2011.
Marian Antiphons
My article on Candlemas was first posted in 2012. As for my post on the Marian Antiphons, it was published in 2011. On Candlemas, the seasonal antiphon (une antienne) is the Ave Regina Cælorum. It will be used until Good Friday.
In 2007, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York exhibited works displaying
“the exchange of art objects and interchange of artistic ideas between the great Italian maritime city and her Islamic neighbors in the eastern Mediterranean.” (MMA)
Venice had been a republic until it was conquered by Napoleon in 1797. It the year 828 CE ,
“two Venetian merchants stole St Mark‘s hallowed body from Muslim-controlled Alexandriaand brought it to their native city, and 1797, when the city fell to the French conqueror Napoleon[.]” (MMA)
We could give our story two starting-points. In the last decades of the 13th century, Venetian Marco Polo (1254 – 8/9 January 1324) travelled the silk road/route and reached China where he met Kublai Khan, the Mongol conqueror who would be Emperor of China. After the conquest of the Byzantine Empire, on 29 May 1453, by the Ottoman Turks, the silk road was longer used. It had deteriorated during the fragmentation of the Mongol Empire. The last merchants to use it may have died of the plague, the Black Death (1436 – 1453). In order to purchase silk, spices, coffee and other precious goods, merchants would henceforth use a sea route. Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama (c. 1460s – 24 December 1524), sailed to India following the west coast of Africa to the point, the Cape of Good Hope, where the Atlantic connects with the current Indian Ocean. A sea route had been traced.
Our topic, however, is Venice in the days when it traded with a not-too-distant Orient. So our second starting-point is Gentile Bellini‘s 1479 visit to Istanbul, where he made the portrait of Mehmed II, the Conqueror. Mehmed II was an Ottoman Turk and a Muslim. The people of the Byzantine empire had been Christians who spoke koine Greek. We barely remember there was an Anatolia, which, to a large extent, became modern-day Turkey. After Word War I, Constantinople was occupied. The Ottoman Empire had fallen, but Turkey declared its War of Independence (1919 – 1923) and won. The Ottoman Empire had fallen, but Turkey rose. (See Turkish War of Independence, Wikipedia.)
In 1453, Greek scholars fled to Italy (Venice to begin with), carrying books and they inaugurated the Renaissance, but the defeat of the Byzantine Empire was the fall the Holy See of Orthodox Christianity. It had been the eastern Rome. The fall of Constantinople was, therefore, mostly catastrophic. During the first millennium, the Byzantine Empire had been Arabised and during the second millennium, it would be turkified. Both Arabs and Ottoman Turks were Muslims. Mehmed II conquered the Christian Byzantine Empire in Anatolia and went on to conquer several Christian countries now located in Eastern Europe. Repercussions would be felt for centuries to come.
Venice “mirrored” the East, but the East would also “mirror” the West. In fact, the art the Byzantine Empire resembles Islamic art. Venice lacks minarets and an obélisque, but barely so. It is all lace or arabesques, arched windows and entrances, bas-reliefs, decorative tiles and domes. Venice begins in Alexandria, Egypt.
“Venice is also often referred to as ‘the mirror of the East’ because her architecture and urban plan incorporate typical Islamic features and ornamental flourishes.” (MMA)
Church of the Holy Apostles, Istanbul, Turkey (see Pinterest)
Works Exhibited at the MET
Venetian and Islamic works exhibited at the MMA were “[g]lass, textiles, carpets, arms and armor, ceramics, sculpture, metalwork, furniture, paintings, drawings, prints, printed books, book bindings, and manuscripts[.]” (MMA)
Jean Chardin, a French jeweler who traveled throughout Iran in 1664–70 and again in 1671–77, exclaimed that Isfahan was “the greatest and most beautiful town in the whole Orient.” He described the city’s population as a mix of Christians, Jews, fire-worshippers, Muslims, and merchants from all over the world. He counted 162 mosques, 48 colleges, 802 caravanserais, 273 baths, and 12 cemeteries, indicating ‘Abbas’ extensive architectural work in the city. Among the most scenic quarters was the area behind the Ali Qapu, where a series of gardens extended to the Chahar Bagh, a long boulevard lined with parks, the residences of nobles, and the palaces of the royal family. Tile panels and frescoes from the pavilions of the Chahar Bagh in the Museum’s collection are examples of the lavish decoration of these structures. (MMA)
Comments
Venice and the Islamic world is a very long story. It includes, for instance, the use of a lingua franca, a simplified hybrid language, mostly Italian, that was understood in every port in the Mediterranean Basin.
It also tells the story of the compulsory trip to the Orient young Venetians undertook. I should also stress the notion of exchange. It was not exploitation of the Orient but an exchange. The word “mirror,” used above, is appropriate. For instance, Venetians imitated the glass made in the Orient until Muslims bought Venetian glass for their Mosques. We could even suggest that the love for all things oriental, “turquerie” in our case, preceded 18th-century Europe. Merchants travelling to the Orient brought back souvenirs.
Works displayed in the exhibition depict a mostly joyful and somewhat diverse Orient as do the texts written for visitors to the exhibition. Each text leads to another text. The Orient, Syria for instance, was home to local and old Christian communities: Assyrians, Armenians, and Egypt, home to Coptic Egyptians, etc.
I discovered a Bellini album. It seems Gentile Bellini was the first Orientalist, but of a different breed than 19th-century Orientalists (see Orientalism, Wikipedia). Yet, the conquest of Constantinople was a catastrophe. It divided the population of the various countries of Eastern Europe between Christians and Muslims, and this fragmentation was reflected in the wars that followed the dissolution of the Soviet Union.
I am omitting the works of European artists: Gentile Bellini and his pupils, three of whom are Giovanni di Niccolò Mansueti, Vittore Carpaccio (15th century Venice) and Giorgione (1476 – 1510). They were influenced by the Orient. So was Albrecht Dürer (21 May 1471 – 6 April 1528), who lived shortly after the fall of Constantinople.
Venice was also a turning-point in music. The Franco-Flemish lands had been the cultural hub of Europe as polyphony developed, including the madrigal, a song in the mother tongue. The Netherlandish composer Adrian Willaert (c. 1490 – 7 December 1562), of the Franco-Flemish school taught music in Venice and was the kapellmeister of the Basilica di San Marco. He founded the Venetian School, music. Polyphony is a product of the West.
In fact, the Renaissance is the birthplace of a nationhood and nationalism based on the use of a common language. Johannes Gutenberg (c. 1398 – February 3, 1468) invented the movable type printing press (c. 1440) to the delight of Venetians. It all started in Venice. As of the Renaissance, the invention of the printing press allowed the development of literature written in the vernacular, the mother tongue. Greek scholars could have the works of antiquity copied rapidly, but so did authors who wrote in the vernacular, a national language. Associated with the validation of the vernacular are Venetian Cardinal Pietro Bembo (The Petrarchan Movement), Sperone Speroni (Dialogo delle lingue, a defense of vernacular languages instead of Latin, Joachim du Bellay (Défense et illustration de la langue française) and Geoffrey Chaucer.
The relationship between the Ottoman Empire and the West deteriorated, but for a very long time, as the port central to the economy of countries bordering the Mediterranean, Venice was rich and it never fell to the Ottoman Empire.
“Despite all of the wars, Venice remained a privileged partner, thanks to an almost perfect balance between religious spirit, chameleon-like diplomacy, and acute business sense.” (MMA)
The above quotation will be our conclusion.
Navigation
The link Venice and the Islamic World, 828 – 1797 takes one to the Bellini carpets. One then scrolls down to Venice and the Islamic World, 828 – 1797. One clicks on the link. To view each century click on Art, then Collection, and search Islamic Art or Venice and Islamic Art. We are exploring West Asia, various centuries, and the MMA refers to Constantinople as Istanbul, its name since 1928.
Mehmed II, the Conqueror by Gentile Bellini(National Gallery, London)
Emperor Suleiman the Magnificent by Titian, c. 1530 (Wikipedia)
An Older Orient
the Silk Road
the Spice Trade
Mehmed II the Conqueror
portraits
The West has an older Orient, older than the paintings of 19th-century artists, lured by East, but depicing a Eurocentric Orient, a colonized Orient.
Our older Orient is, for instance, Marco Polo’s Orient, the Orient of merchants. It is as traders that Europeans, the West, first interacted with the East. That Orient would lead to the age of discovery and, eventually, to colonialism. However, that Orient, the Far East, mesmerized Venetian merchant Marco Polo (1254 – 8-9 January 1324) who travelled the silk road (114 BCE – 1450s CE), a pathway that had been used for more than a thousand years and which Marco Polo probably improved.The silk road took Marco Polo to China. He met Kublai Khan (23 September 1215 – 18 February 1294), the Conqueror who established the Yuan Dynasty and was the first Emperor of China. In this case, the conqueror was Kublai Khan, the East, not Marco Polo. Marco Polo served Kublai Khan for twenty years.
Consequently, had a European artist made a portrait of Kublai Khan, it would have been the portrait of a conqueror as is the portrait of Mehmed II the Conqueror or Mehmet II (30 March 1432 – 3 May 1481) made by Gentile Bellini (c. 1429 – 23 February 1507) in 1480 and featured at the top of this post. Mehmed II conquered Constantinople, the current Istanbul, in 1453 vastly expanding the Muslim world to include Eastern Europe. In 1479, Venice summonedGentile Bellini, a portraitist of the School of Venice, to travel to Constantinople and make a portrait Sultan Mehmed II, or Mehmet II.
The Wikipedia entry on Gentile Bellini describes Gentile as one the “founders of the Orientalist tradition in Western painting.”
“In 1479 he was sent to Constantinople by the Venetian government when the Ottoman SultanMehmed IIrequested an artist; he returned the next year. Thereafter a number of his subjects were set in the East, and he is one of the founders of theOrientalisttradition in Western painting. His portrait of the Sultan was also copied in paintings and prints and became known all over Europe.” (See Gentile Bellini, Wikipedia.)
Here, it would appear the term Orientalism is used upside down. But it could be that the term Orientalism is pluralistic. One knows the meaning of the word because of the context in which it is used. Mehmed II was a Conqueror, not the conquered. If one had to attach tags to the portrait featured at the very top of this post, terms such as portraiture, Italian, and the school of Venice may well precede Orientalism. But Gentile Bellini’s famous portrait is nevertheless the portrait of a very powerful Ottoman Sultan, one of the most powerful Ottoman Sultans in history. The word “Orientalism” may be patronizing when applied to the 19th-century genre depicting the colonized and powerless East, but in cannot be when the content is the portrait of a Conqueror.
However, this portrait can be linked to the Sykes-Picot Agreement of 1916, when England, France, and a collapsing Imperial Russia patronizingly partitioned the Ottoman Empire, which it expected to defeat and defeated. In 1922, during the Turkish War of Independence (19 May 1919 – 24 July 1923), the Sultan was sent into exile and two years later the Caliph was removed. The Ottoman Empire had lasted 700 years, from the 13th century until the 20th, but it did not defeat the Byzantine Empire until 29 May 1453. It had survived the decline and fall of the Western Roman Empire (4 September 476), but it had broken with the Western Church in 1054 CE (See Fall of the Roman Empire, Wikipedia and Defeat and dissolution Fall of the Ottoman Empire, Wikipedia.)
So Gentile Bellini, was an Orientalist of a different orientation. When he was in Turkey and Greece, he could not resist sketching Turks and other Muslims, but he was not depicting colonized individuals. Other members of the Venetian School also painted the Orient.
A Janissary by Gentile Bellini, 1479-1480 (British Museum)
Turkish Woman by Gentile Bellini 1479-1480 (British Museum)
Merchants, Discoverers, and Conquerors
Marco Polo
In a sense Marco Polo resembles our 19th-century Orientalists. Marco Polo documented his Orient by narrating his travels. He was fascinated by the lands he travelled, the people he met, and the animals he saw, animals unknown in Europe. He therefore told his story to Rustichello da Pisa who became the co-author, or amanuensis, of The Travels of Marco Polo (c. 1300), also entitled Il Milione and Le Livre des merveilles du monde. Marco Polo’s Il Milione was written in Medieval French. Rustichello and Marco were prisoners in Genoa when Marco narrated his story, which means that Le Livre des merveilles du monde is an example of prison literature.
Venetian Fra Mauro and Christopher Columbus
The Travels of Marco Polo was a bestseller. The book inspired cartographer Fra Mauro, a Benedictine monk who died in 1464. More importantly, Italian navigator Christopher Columbus (31 October 1450 and 30 October 1451 in Genoa – died on 20 May 1506 in Valladolid) found a Latin copy of IlMilione which he annotated. Marco Polo was a merchant, so, as mentioned above, trade was the first way East and West interacted.
Vasco da Gama: Colonialism
Matters would change. Marco Polo’s book may also have influenced Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama (c. 1460s – 24 December 1524), who departed Lisbon on 8 July 1497 and was the first European to reach India by sea linking the Atlantic Ocean (the West) and the Indian Ocean (the East). Once again, trade was the motive: the spice trade. Portugal wanted to undermine the Republic of Venice whose merchants could travel safely by land to purchase the spices of the Orient. Vasco da Gama was appointed Viceroy of India in 1524, by the king of Portugal.
Vasco da Gama committed acts of cruelty. For instance, he locked 400 Muslim pilgrims, including 50 women and their babies,and after their ship was looted, he had his prisoners burned to death. This incident is named the Pilgrim ship incident. (See Vasco da Gama, Wikipedia.)
tapestries, the mille-fleurs (thousand flowers) motif
carpets
La Dame à la licorne, Mille-fleursmotif(Musée national du Moyen-Âge, Paris) (Wikipedia)
Beginning in the 11th century, Crusaders were influenced by the magnificent carpets of the Orient many of which contained silver and gold and displayed the mille-fleurs motif, which was a favourite.
The last Crusade was the conquest of the Constantinople, in 1453, but the Crusades began in the 11th century. Oriental motifs had therefore entered Europe quite early in the Middle Ages. The Apocalypse Tapestry, which consisted of large number of panels, 90, was made between 1377–1382, by Jean Bondol and Nicholas Bataille is undeniably astonishing. Several panels were damaged or destroyed, but those that survived are housed in the Château d’Angers, France. The more famous Lady and the Unicorn (La Dame à la licorne), which we have discussed, a long time ago, is housed in the Musée national du Moyen Âge, the former Cluny Museum, in Paris. But the following contains relevant information.
A tapestry resembling the Dame à la licorne, The Hunt of the Unicorn (seven panels), made in Liège, is housed in the Cloister (The Metropolitan Museum of Art).
Louis XIV, the French King, could have his tapestries and carpets made at the Gobelins Manufactory. A second factory, the Savonnerie Manufactory, a former soap factory (savon) was also established in the 17th century. The Savonnerie was established in 1615 by Pierre DuPont who had just returned from the Levant. The Savonnerie was incorporated with the Gobelins Manufactory in 1825. (See Savonnerie Manufactory, Wikipedia.)
Turquerie and Chinoiserie
Turquerie, a taste for all things reflecting the Ottoman Turks, was not popular in Europe until the 18th century, a late date if one considers that Francis I of France and Suleiman the Magnificent entered into an alliance, the Franco-Ottoman Alliance, in 1536. This entente would last until Napoleon’s campaign in Egypt. (See French Campaign in Egypt and Syria, Wikipedia). Similarly, Chinoiserie, an engouement, a craze, for all things Chinese, did not flourish until the 18th century.
Woman in Turkish Dress by Jean-Étienne Liotard, 18th century (Google Art Project)
There is an older Orient. Edward Said’s may be patronizing, but Bellini’s portrait of Mehmed II depicts a Conqueror and it suggests immense wealth. See the jewels, the ornate frame and the little crowns. Merchants travelled to the East to purchase its spices, its coffee and its fabrics. There was so much beauty to the East and there was opulence and mystery. It could be that we do not study the Orient sufficiently, but will the Orient ever reveal itself?
The knowledge crusaders took from the East was mostly scientific: algebra, architecture, medical practices, not to mention Arabic numerals…
Twelve Hours of the Green Houses (1794–1795)
(Photo credit: Wikipaintings)
I am once again posting an older article that leads to other posts. It is part of the Japonism series. They will then be given a pagewhich will make them easily accessible. These articles are not perfect, but I loved writing them. Japonisme is fascinating.
I am finishing a post about an older Orient.
Love to every one ♥
These are Utamaro’s depiction of each of the twelve hours of the traditional Japanese clock. The Hours constitute a series of ukiyo-e (“pictures of the floating world”) prints. Utamaro is the first of the three Japanese artists I have featured. His bijinga, or bi-jinga (“beautiful person picture”) earned him fame.
Animals
Each hour is named after an animal. Japan has its bestiary, except that the symbolism attached to Oriental animals often differs from the symbolism attached to animals inhabiting the Western bestiary. The significance of each animal has little to do with the “real” or mythical animal. These animals are anthropomorphic, i.e. humans in disguise.
Human beings have chronicled time, beginning with hours. However, months are also chronicled as are seasons: soltices and equinoxes. Meisho (“famous places”) prints show not only famous places, but people going about their everyday activities or domestic duties and some are divided according to seasons. Utagawa Hiroshige‘s series, One Hundred Famous Views of Edo is divided into seasons.
My post entitled Orientalism: Good or Bad suggested that one could no longer use the word Orientalism. It had referred to paintings created by Western artists such as Jean-Léon Gérôme and Horace Vernet who painted in a style called academicism, art as it was taught at the Académie des Beaux-Arts in Paris. However, the word Orientalism is still used and Orientalist paintings are sold at auctions and displayed in major museum Claude Piening describes Orientalism as a “genre.”
The link above takes one to publicity (3 minutes) about an auction at Sotheby’s in London. The auction took place in 2013. The word Orientalism was used to describe works by European artists depicting the East. Il was a two-day auction. On the first day, the works of Orientalists were sold. However, on the second day, Sotheby’s auctioned off Islamic art, rather than the paintings of 19th-century Europeans or Western artists featuring the Orient. Wikipedia gives a list of Orientalist Artists. (See List of Orientalist Artists.)
However, one now speaks of Oriental Studies, which includes Egyptology and the work of William Jones (28 September 1746 – 17 April 1794), the philologist who first recognized a relationship between European anguages and Indian languages. (See Indo-European languages, Wikipedia.)
Edward Said’s Orientalism
As for the patronizing Orientalism, studied in Edward Said‘s 1978 controversial Orientalism, it exists. The many depictions of voluptuous white nudes bathing and lounging in harems are examples of Dr Said’s Orientalism. Orientalism may be clichéd and, in this respect, can be associated with colonialism.
The East: Real or Borrowed
Despite its flaws, colonialism, British colonialism in particular, had the benefit of fostering an interest in the Orient, such as William Jones’ research Napoleon lost the Battle of the Nile, but the scholars who accompanied him founded Egyptology. Colonists, mostly British, also discovered objets d’art such as netsuke(s), small Japanese carvings used on belts for men, and cloisonnés, enamel, gems or glass poured into or inserted inside little metal walls called cloisons. They also discovered fine porcelain (now called china) and sumptuous Oriental rugs. These adorned their homes and to this day beautiful rooms often display fine Oriental vases and intricate rugs.
During the 19th century, members of the Arts and Crafts Movement replicated the motifs of the East. Artists and craftsmen associated with the Arts and Crafts movement could create homes decorated to reflect the East, Near or Far, including Japan. Ukiyo-e prints flooded Europe in the second half of the 19th century inaugurating Japonism. Oriental motifs adorned wallpapers, fabric, ceramic or class tiles made in the West. One could also purchase the finest china, made in England and other European countries.
Turquerie, however, was fashionable well before the 19th century. In 1453, Ottoman Sultan Mehmed II conquered Constantinople today’s Istanbul. Eastern Europe fell to the Ottoman Empire. The craze for chinoiserie also preceded the 19th century. As for Orientalism, it dates back to Napoleon’s campaign in Egypt and Syria (1798-1801). (See French Campaign in Egypt and Syria, Wikipedia.)
Harem by Théodore Chassériau
Harem by Théodore Chassériau
Reading the Letter, Ludwig Deutsch, 1899
Courtyard of House in Cairo, Willem de Farmas Festas, 1859
Orientalist Portraiture
I have focussed on Orientalist portraiture. We have seen Horace Vernet’s portrait of Mameluke Roustam Raza and Gérôme’s portrait of a black Bashi-Basouk. Both portraits are or will be housed in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but although taste varies, there are objective artistic standards. One may not wish to hang a reproduction of Gérôme’s black Bashi-Basouk in one’s home, but as a work of art, Gérôme’s Bashi-Basouk is an exceptional painting.
Conclusion
Therefore, although a work of art may be clichéd, it may nevertheless be beautiful. The West has depicted the East at times successfully and, at other times, less so. In other words, the art of European painters depicting the East can be good or bad.
I have featured Horace Vernet’s Head of an Arab Man. Today’s choice is Ludwig Deutsh’s Palace Guard.
Love to everyone ♥
Sources and Resources
Unless otherwise indicated, links are to Wikipedia
Photo credit: Chassériau, Wikipedia
Deutsch & Willem de Farmas, Pinterest
The Turkish Bath, 1862, oil on canvas, diam. 108 cm, Louvre. A summation of the theme of female voluptuousness attractive to Ingres throughout his life, rendered in the circular format of earlier masters. (Caption credit: Wikipedia; Photo credit: Google images)
Grande Odalisque, 1814, oil on canvas, 91 x 162 cm, Louvre. The subject’s elongated proportions, reminiscent of 16th-century Mannerist painters, reflect Ingres’s search for the pure form of his model. (Photo and caption credit: Wikipedia)
Orientalisme
We have seen a few examples of Islamic art and Orientalisme. The paintings featured above are by Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres (29 August 1780 – 14 January 1867) and constitute examples of orientalisme and exoticism, paintings associated with the Orient, the Near East. Several Europeans had gone to the Crusades centuries earlier. Their destination was Jerusalem, the Holy Land. But 19th-century orientalisme is associated with Napoléon‘s military campaigns. Napoléon took his Armée d’Orient to Egypt and Syria. (See French Campaign in Egypt and Syria, Wikipedia.) Egyptology was born at that time. Deciphering the Rosetta Stone, found in 1799, was one of its first and chief achievements.
We looked at the art of Jean-Léon Gérôme who had travelled to Egypt and returned with a large supply of ‘images,’ sketches. He depicted scenes from ordinary activities, genre painting. Ingres, however, had not travelled to the orient, the Near East. His style was the same as Gérôme: academicism. Moreover, both artists specialized in historical painting. Several artists travelled to the Near East, but no Orientaliste ever entered a harem, un sérail, where women were guarded by castrated servants called eunuchs. Yet, Orientalists did paint the interior of harems and Turkish baths, favourite scenes.
“Some of the most popular Orientalist genre scenes—and the ones most influential in shaping Western aesthetics—depict harems. Probably denied entrance to authentic seraglios, male artists relied largely on hearsay and imagination, populating opulently decorated interiors with luxuriant odalisques, or female slaves or concubines (many with Western features), reclining in the nude or in Oriental dress. Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres (1780–1867) never traveled to the East, but used the harem setting to conjure an erotic ideal in his voluptuous odalisques.”[1] (Orientalisme at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.)
Ingres’ Grande Odalisque shows anelongated female body. Painting elongated figures is a characteristic of 16th-century mannerism. However, Ingres’ odalisque is somewhat reminiscent of the curvy linear arabesque motifs of Islamic art. Yet, it isn’t busy. La Grande Odalisque has been an inspiration to several artists, one of whom is Matisse. It otherwise ressembles Jacques-Louis David‘s (30 August 1748 – 29 December 1825) depiction of Madame Récamier, an unfinished but celebrated portrait. For information on this painting, see Madame Récamier, Louvre. You may also visit the Wikipedia site on Juliette Récamier.
Madame Récamier by Jacques-Louis David, 1800 (Photo cedit: Wikipedia)
Juliette Récamier (4 December 1777 – 11 May 1849) was a salonnière who had married Jacques-Rose Récamier(1751 – 1830), a wealthy older man and banker, on 24 April 1793. The marriage was never consummated and rumour has it that he was her father. In 1805, Jacques-Rose sustained financial losses. (See Juliette Récamier, Wikipedia.) He and Juliette had a salon where they entertained distinguished guests, but she retired at l’Abbaye-aux-Bois. The salons survived the French Revolution. Juliette had befriended François-René de Chateaubriand (4 September 1768 –4 July 1848), the author of Le Génie du Christianisme(1802), a literary monument that incorporatedAtala andRené, exotic novellas based on Chateaubriand’s stay in North America. He was an aristocrat and therefore fled France during part of the French Revolution. When Chateaubriand started to live as a recluse, Juliette Récamier was the only person he visited. He visited her every day. In David’s painting, she is leaning on a sofa now called a récamier, after her. By clicking on Madame Récamier, one can read what the Louvre has to say about this very famous painting.
Arabesque motif (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Arabesques
Orientalisme also includes Arabesques in music.
Arabesques, Turkish music, are composed in the Phrygian mode. This form of music was used by Claude Debussy and other composers. It was orientalisme, “in the manner of,” rather than Turkish music. I have inserted two pieces by Debussy.
Let me conclude by recommending you read OrientalismeandMadame Récamier. At this point, my continuing to write about this topic would be repetitious and not as and complete and concise as the documents I have referred to. I will note, however, that interest in the Orient takes us back to Marco Polo and the above-mentioned Crusades. Moreover, Islamic art includes elegant calligraphy, Islamic calligraphy, and illuminated manuscripts.
[1] Meagher, Jennifer. “Orientalism in Nineteenth-Century Art.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000–. http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/euor/hd_euor.htm (October 2004)
My post on Jean-Léon Gérôme‘s Orientalism, Orientalisme: Mostly Gérôme, features several bashi-bazouk. This happened inadvertently.I wanted to show the whippet dogs and the character named Arnaut. I also wanted to show a hookah, a smoking and vaporizing instrument used in the various countries of the Ottoman Empire, as well as Pakistan and India. These were popular items in the 1960s and early 1970s, when smoking cannabis became fashionable.
Gérôme’s artwork also refers to pashas (see France in North Africa), persons who occupied a high rank in the Ottoman army and/or government. Some Europeans became honorary pashas whose title could be compared to that of an Earl in Britain. (See Pasha, Wikipedia.) Other familiar scenes are mosques and harems. As a history painter, Gérôme also recorded the trading of white women, la traite des blanches, going back to the Roman Empire. Arabs were fond of white women whom they bought and enslaved. Gérôme’s paintings of harems and women bathing show white women. (See Traite des blanches, FR Wikipedia.)
I will therefore feature a few paintings that are not portraits of bashi-bazouk, the very cruel irregular soldiers of the Ottoman Empire.
The Slave Market in Rome by Gérôme, 1884 (wikiart.org)
Prayer in Cairo by Jean-Léon Gérôme, 1865 (MMA, NY)
Harem Women Feeding Pigeons in a Courtyard by Gérôme, no date (wikiart.org)
Napoléon in Egypt by Gérôme, c. 1863 (Princeton University Art Museum)
Comments
Gérôme was a very prolific artist whose art was at times extremely engaging, which may explain why it appealed to Théophile Gautier. I have a favourite Gérôme, The Duel After the Masquerade, of which there are two copies. La Sortie du bal masqué cannot be classified as Orientalismbut it speaks to me, it is evocative.
In the second half of the 19th century, when American started to go to Paris and bought works of art, art such as Gérôme’s were not purchased frequently. It was academic art. The American colony in Paris bought the works of innovators whose art was rejected at the Paris Salon. Emperor Napoleon III authorized the 1763 Salon des Refusés, an exhibition held at the Palais de l’Industrie.
Gérôme is known mainly as an academic painter. He was very well-trained and he painted as he had been taught. He was nevertheless very successful as an artist and art teacher. As noted above, Gérôme specialized in history painting, but he also created art depicting Greek mythology and he became a prominent orientalist.
Works by Gérôme are housed in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY, the Walters Museum of Art, Baltimore, the J. Paul Getty Museum, Malibu, and other museums. Many have been purchased privately, and reproductions are available. A reproduction is not as valuable as the original work of art. However, the ‘image’ is the most important element in the visual arts and Gérôme was an accomplished artist.
I have inserted Rimsky-Korsakov‘s Scheherazade, Symphonic Suite (Op. 35, 2), composed in 1888. Scheherazade is based on the One Thousand and One Nights, Arabian fairy tales, and constitutes an excellent example of Orientalism in music.
A bashi-basouk by Jean-Léon Gérôme, 1869 (wikiart.org)
Black bashi-basouk by Jean-Léon Gérôme, 1868 (MMA, NY)
There have long been war artists. In North Africa, Horace Vernet (30 June 1789 – 17 January 1863) painted the battles that led to the French conquest of Algiers which had been part of the Ottoman Empire until 1830. The French did not conquer Lebanon and Syria, their future protectorates, but these countries had belonged to the Roman/ Byzantine Empire (330-1204 and 1261-1453) that fell to the Ottoman Empire in 1453. After World War I, Britain and France would partition the defeated Ottoman Empire into protectorates. (See Zykes-Picot Agreement, Wikipedia.)
Vernet had painted the battles that led to the conquest of Algiers, at which point he became an Orientalist. Colonialism was Eurocentrism, but exoticism was ethnocentrism and it is a characteristic of the 19th century, expressed in several areas: the fine arts, music, and design in general.
Jean-Léon Gérôme
I have mentioned Horace Vernet, the painter of battles fought in Algeria. There were in fact many Orientalists in various fields. However, our featured artist is French painter and sculptor Jean-Léon Gérôme (11 May 1824 – 10 January 1904).
French-born Jean-Léon Gérôme is associated with Academicism. He did not join avant-garde movements. He, in fact, applied for the coveted Prix de Rome, but he failed to be selected. However, having chosen Academicism, Gérôme could show his work at the Salon, the official art exhibition of the Académie des Beaux-Arts in Paris, held annually or bi-annually since the 17th century (1667) in Paris, held annually or bi-annually since the 17th century (1667). In 1846, he painted The Cock Fight (1846) which earned him a medal at the Salon of 1847, but, perhaps more importantly, the painting was praised by writer and critic Théophile Gautier.
Gérôme travelled to Egypt in 1856, but did not do so on an official basis. He travelled as a tourist and artist. Gérôme was a history painter. Consequently, he did paint Napoléon, although Napoléon’s campaign in Egypt and Syria (1798-1801) was a military failure. (See French campaign in Egypt and Syria, Wikipedia.)
Gérôme’s other subject matter was mythology, but in Egypt he became an Orientalist. In my last post, I featured the portrait of a black bashi-basouk. A bashi-basouk, also called delibaş, litterally a “crazy head,” was an irregular soldier in the Ottoman Army. Bashi-bazouk often chose to fight when they expected to rape and pillage. (See Bashi-basouk, Wikipedia.) As portrayed by Gérôme, bashi-basouk are colourful and seem harmless, but they committed atrocities, much as ISIL, Muslim radicals, does. One of their better-known massacres is the Batak massacre of 1876, in Bulgaria.
Bashi-bazouk chieftain by Gérôme, 1881 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Arnaut from Cairo by Gérôme, 1867 (Photo credit: wikiart.org)
Arnaut with Two Whippet Dogs, by Jean-Léon Gérôme, 1867 (wikiart.org)
Literature and Music
Gérôme did paint bashi-bazouk, but his range of oriental subject matter is wider and 19th-century exoticism straddles disciplines. It also includes Victor Hugo‘s Les Djinns, a famous and dazzling poem about invisible Arabian creatures, published in Hugo’s 1829 collection entitled Les Orientales.
Hugo’s Les Djinns inspired composers. One is Gabriel Fauré‘s Op.12, entitled Les Djinns. Les Djinns is also a Poème Symphonique for piano and orchestra, M 45, composed in 1884 by César Franck. Hugo’s poem is splendid and can be read online in French, English and German, at Les Djinns, Op 12.
Conclusion
We’ve devoted several posts to Japonisme and have now entered Orientalisme. Gérôme’s Orient is d’un goût étranger, as in Marin Marais‘ viol pieces. (See Suitte d’un goût étranger, Wikipedia). Exoticism may depict an inner truth in an oblique way, which is one of the characteristics of works of art. Fiction is oblique. Love to everyone.♥
