Still-life Paintings: Vanitas Vanitatum

29 Thursday Nov 2012

Tags

Balthasar van der Ast, Bartholomeus Assteyn, Dutch Art, Jacopo de' Barbari, Still life, The Netherlands, The Renaissance, Vanitas

Basket of Fruits Balthasar van der Ast, c. 1625, Staatliche Museen, Berlin
Pen and watercolor, British Museum, London

Still-life painting [1] is yet another story and among still-life painters is Balthasar van der Ast (1593/94–1657) who lived and worked during the Golden Age of Dutch painting: the seventeenth century. There is therefore artistic maturity to his paintings. However, given that he was a still-life painter, Balthasar was a pioneer. I should think there were still-life paintings long before Balthasar van der Ast, but still-life paintings were not an independent genre. As a result, many view the seventeenth-century in the Netherlands as both the birthplace of still-life painting and the time and place it reached its pinnacle.

Still-Life with Partridge and Gauntlets by Jacopo de’ Barbari

Such is not altogether the case. The cast of this little drama is made up of Dutch artists, but it would appear that we owe the first still-life painting to Jacopo de’ Barbari (c. 1440 – before 1516). Jacopo’s still-life painting represents a dead partridge and gauntlets, pinned against a wall by an arrow.[2]

Jacopo was Italian, but he had met Albrecht Dürer (21 May 1471 – 6 April 1528), which induced him to move north in 1500. Jacopo died in the Netherlands, probably at Brussels, at the court of Archduchess Margaret, Philip the Handsome.

The Renaissance: Perspective, Vanishing Point…

As we have seen in other posts, Greek scholars fled the Byzantine Empire in 1453, when it fell to the Ottoman Turks, which marked the beginning of the Renaissance, but the Renaissance did not move north until the sixteenth century, which is when Jacopo was active. However, the Netherlands had been the “cultural hub” of Europe, in music especially, polyphonic music, and it had also been home to exceptional miniaturists. Painters of the Netherlands must have benefited from notions associated with Greek scholarship, such as reflection on perspective, the vanishing point, and the Golden Section or Golden Ratio, but they were already accomplished artists.

The Starting Point: Vanitas Vanitatum

Although still-life painting started to flourish during the sixteenth century, i. e. the Renaissance in Northern Europe, its Golden Age was the seventeenth century and early still-life paintings were vanitas. Objects depicted in a vanitas are “allegories of mortality:” skulls, candles, and hourglasses. “Combined with flowers and fruits, they symbolized nature’s cycle. They were allegories of death and rebirth.”[3]

: Vanitas by Pieter Claesz, 1625

According to Britannica, “its [vanitas] development until its decline (1650) was centred in Leiden in the United Provinces of the Netherlands, an important seat of Calvinism, which emphasized humanity’s total depravity and advanced a rigid moral code.” The Vanitas vanitatum omnia vanitas is a central theme in 17th-century French Literature.

Decorative Purposes

However, in the case of Balthasar van der Ast and his students, their still-life paintings were often painted and bought for decorative purposes. These did not feature skulls, candles and hourglasses. There was wealth in the Netherlands, a growing middle-class, and money was spent on purchasing art. Flowers, fruit and grapes were deemed pleasant subjects to look at.

— Still Life with Plums, Cherries and Shells

by Balthasar van der Ast, c. 1628, British Museum

The Life of Balthasar Van der Ast: Three Periods

The “Bosschaert dynasty”

When his father died, in 1609, Balthasar went to live with his sister Maria who was married to prominent Dutch painter Ambrosius Bosschaert the Elder (1573–1621), Ast was therefore trained by Ambrosius the Elder and when Ambrosius died, Balthasar transmitted the knowledge he had acquired from Ambrosius to train his three sons: Abraham (1606-1683-84), Ambrosius the Younger (1609–1645), Johannes (ca. 1610-1650).

Utrecht

In 1615, the family moved to Utrecht. At the time there were guilds. Baltasar joined the Utrecht Guild of St Luke, thus named because St Luke is the patron of artists. He was influenced by Roelandt Savery (1576–1639), a member of the Guild, but he also influenced others: Jan Davidsz de Heem (1606-1683/84 and Bartholomeus Assteyn (Dordrecht 1607, probably Dordrecht 1669/1677).

Delft

— Balthasar van der Ast

Temporary Conclusion: Vanitas & Carpe Diem

Van der Ast’s paintings and those of most of his students are not vanitas and often served decorative rather than moralistic purposes: reminders of our mortality. However, flowers, the rose in particularly, have been used to invite humans to enjoy life. Such is the carpe diem. Horace wrote Carpe diem quam minimum credula postero, or “Seize the Day, putting as little trust as possible in the future.” But such an Epicurean invitation is like the proverbial coin. It has a reverse side that points to the brevity of life and to all things perishable. In the seventeenth century, life was extremely precarious. Children often died as infants or during childhood. Yet, the Kind is dead, long live the King.

I will provide examples of still-lives. It has become a major genre associated with “genre” painting, or the painting of familiar every day scenes.

RELATED ARTICLES

Thoughts on the United States (18 October 2012)
A Note, a Portrait by Peter Paul Rubens & Books of Hours (5 October 2012)
Pierre de Ronsard & the Carpe Diem (1 January 2012)

Sources

Balthasar van der Ast (Wikipedia)

____________________

[1] “still-life painting”. Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica Online.
Encyclopædia Britannica Inc., 2012. Web. 28 Nov. 2012
<http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/566313/still-life-painting>.

[2] “Jacopo de’ Barbari”. Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica Online.
Encyclopædia Britannica Inc., 2012. Web. 28 Nov. 2012
<http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/52720/Jacopo-de-Barbari>.

[3] “vanitas”. Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica Online.
Encyclopædia Britannica Inc., 2012. Web. 28 Nov. 2012
<http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/623056/vanitas>.

: Jan Davidsz de Heem

28 November 2012

WordPress

La Fontaine’s “Les Grenouilles qui demandent un roi” (The Frogs Who Desired a King)

18 Thursday Aug 2011

Posted by michelinewalker in Fables

≈ 52 Comments

Tags

CNN's Don Lemon, Ecclesiastes, Europe gasping for air, frogs and hardline Republicans, Hillary Clinton, Jean de La Fontaine, La Fontaine's Les Grenouilles qui demandent un roi (The Frogs Who Desired a King, Michele Bachmann, Ramsay Wood, United States, Vanitas

“Les Grenouilles qui demandent un roi”

“Le Chêne et le Roseau” is an exquisite fable, containing many lessons, one of which is the Vanitas vanitatum, omnia vanitas (Vanity of vanities; all is vanity, Ecclesiastes 1:2) that permeates French seventeenth-century literature. We all die, even kings. Death is the equalizer.

More timely, however, is a fable entitled “The Frogs w ho desired a King” (book three, number IV of La Fontaine’s first volume of Fables [1668]).

“Les Grenouilles qui demandent un roi” tells the story of “silly and frightened” frogs who live in a democracy, but, tired of democracy, ask Jupiter for a monarch. Jupiter acquiesces. From the skies descends a peace-loving king who makes a huge noise as he lands. This king is a beam (un soliveau) often represented as a log.

Frightened by the din, the frogs go into hiding, only to return slowly to look at the king. The peace-loving king is a beau, which is not very kingly. The frogs start jumping on the beam-king, which the king tolerates as Jupiter grumbles. The beam-king is a kindly monarch, but he does not move.

Dissatisfied, the people go back to Jupiter to ask for a king who moves. So Jupiter sends them a crane who starts eating them up. In Æsop’s version of this fable, the crame is a stork.

Our silly frogs complain, and Jupiter tells them, first, that they should have kept their government (a democracy), second, that they should have been pleased to be sent a gentleman-king, the beam-king, and, third, to settle for the king they have for fear of encountering a worse one, La Fontaine’s celui-ci (this one) pointing to the voracious crane.

The Moral

One of the morals of this fable is the eternal “Leave well enough alone,” but we are also reading a “Beware-of-your-wishes-as-they-may-come-true” narrative. I would therefore suggest that my neighbours to the south take a good look at their duly-elected President and count their blessings. President Obama’s first gesture when he came into office was to save an economy that is no longer confined to the United States. Furthermore, as the US borrowed a huge amount of money to pay a debt incurred by the previous administration, President Obama set about providing the citizens of his country with social programs, beginning with health care. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had not succeeded in allowing the US to take this gigantic step toward nationhood, but she had traced a path. I salute her and thank her on behalf of her nation.

Then came July 2011! America could not default on its debt and the Republicans knew it, but the Tea Party, Michele Bachmann’s turf, and hardline Republicans were so slow in coming up with a relatively acceptable plan that the US lost its triple-A credit rating and left Europeans gasping for air. What on earth was Congress doing?

However and fortunately, because the rest of the world knows the US has an extraordinary President, the consequences were not catastrophic. President Obama’s administration has credibility and America has great minds, people who, unlike Bachmann’s campaign aids, would not push CNN’s Don Lemon into a golf cart as he attempted to chronicle Bachmann’s campaign at the Iowa’s State Fair, in Des Moines.

Who are these pompous people? Could they be heirs to the “gent fort sotte et fort peureuse” (people so silly and so afraid) of La Fontaine’s fable, ready to throw stones mindlessly?

P.S. By the way, Ramsay Wood has continued to translate of The Tales of Kalila and Dimna (tales told by Dr Bidpai), the Arabic version of Vishnu Sharma’s Panchatantra. I own and cherish a 2000 paperback edition of the first volume of the Tales of Kalila and Dimna, published in 1986 by Inner Traditions (Rochester, Vermont). Ramsay Wood writes in a manner that makes the reader think Wood himself wrote Kalila and Dimna, and the stories sound as young as the morning dew. The first volume of Ramsay Wood’s translation of Kalila and Dimna has a brilliant and informative introduction by Doris Lessing. (See my post on “Le Chêne et le Roseau”).