Upon Closer Inspection
POSTED BY Troy K., ON December 10, 2010, 5 COMMENTS
A very notable recent acquisition just went up in the museum in the past few weeks: Ludovico Carracci’s Vision of Saint Francis (c. 1602). The painting is currently on view in gallery 212A as the centerpiece of a mini-exhibition of work by members of the Carracci family. Now, I’m just a humble copyright lawyer, with no formal art history education, so it amazes me that the museum lets me write anything about art, not to mention 17th-century Italian art. But, upon seeing the painting, there were a couple of things that piqued my interest and inspired me to write about it.
First, from the detail and monumental nature of the subject and composition–which I had previously seen only as a jpeg–I had imagined the painting to be on the scale of the larger works in nearby gallery 211. In fact, the painting checks in at a relatively small 14 5/8 x 11 1/4 inches. There’s an adage for that.
I was also struck by the smoooooth and luminous surface of the oil on copper painting. The smooth, seamless copper surface made me think of Salvador Dali’s Mae West’s Face which may be used as a Surrealist Apartment, which is stored horizontally to prevent the paint from very slowly and imperceptibly sliding down the surface of the slick magazine page on which it is painted. Excited by the possibility of writing a blog post titled “Slip n’ Slide,” I contacted a curator to find out if there were similar conservation concerns with this oil on copper painting. Here is the fascinating response I received from Eve Straussman-Pflanzer, the Patrick G. and Shirley W. Ryan Associate Curator of European Painting and Sculpture before 1750.
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In this instance, there is no risk of paint sliding down the copper surface. Coppers first appear as a surface for painting in the second half of the 16th century, probably around 1560. Though scholars disagree, it would seem that the support originated in Florence and then spread to the rest of Europe where it was very popular through the 18th century. The wonderful thing about these early coppers is that they are either in pristine condition or absolutely terribly condition. Or, another way to put it: the paint either adheres absolutely to the copper surface or it does not. Part of what makes these copper pictures so precious is their smooth and flawless surface. We get a much better sense of the actual colors used by an artist than in pictures of oil on canvas, where the color often recedes into the ground and the weave of the canvas. In other words, I often feel that works on copper bring us closer to the moment of creation than other media. Also, the surface preparations of coppers appear to have varied. Here, the ground appears to be a grayish yellow. It seems that the artist Guido Reni often had his copper surfaces prepared with a silver alloy before painting them, adding to the precious quality of the work. More research on this topic needs to be done in order to assess the full range of ground preparations for coppers.
It is also interesting to consider the relationship of copper paintings to copper plates used for engraving and then prints. One imagines that the readily available material made this new medium possible. One should also consider whether the birth of the Wunderkammer (Room of Wonder, meaning a cabinet of curiosities) lead to the development of this medium. This was a small and precious object that could be collected and marveled at along with precious stones and artifacts from the “New World.”
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This post is a good example of how a lawyer without an art degree can write about art with the help of lengthy blockquotes, but Eve’s response is great example of how much interesting information is often readily available if you take a moment to look at a work and ask a silly question. Have you ever been surprised by what you learned about an artwork upon closer inspection?
Image credit: Ludovico Carracci. The Vision of Saint Francis, c. 1602. Lacy Armour Fund.
More information (and a zoomable image!) of this piece can be found here:
http://www.christies.com/LotFinder/lot_details.aspx?intObjectID=5287506
While further discussion of Lucovico and the Carracci’s can be found here:
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/03374c.htm
“Lodovico’s paintings are pleasing in colour, and exhibit much intelligence and technical skill, but lack spontaneity, originality, and individuality. He was a teacher rather than an artist. His engravings, much more interesting than his other work, are very beautiful”
and here:
http://www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/auth/carracci/
“Ludovico left Bologna only for brief periods and directed the Carracci academy by himself after his cousins had gone to Rome. His work is unever and highly personal. Painterly and expressive considerations always outweigh those of stability and calm Classicism in his work, and at its best there is a passionate and poetic quality indicative of his preference for Tintoretto and Jacopo Bassano. His most fruitful period was 1585-95″
“The Caracci fell from grace in the 19th century along with all the other Bolognese painters, who were one of Ruskin’s pet hates and whom he considered (1847) had `no single virtue, no color, no drawing, no character, no history, no thought’. They were saddled with the label `eclectic’ and thought to be ponderous and lacking in originality. Their full rehabilitation had to wait until the second half of the 20th century (the great Carracci exhibition held in Bologna”
and here:
http://www.thearttribune.com/The-small-Pieta-by-Domenichino.html
” When the (Met) collection was developed, between 1900 and 1960, regard for this school had diminished, and was considered as too academic for modern taste. Since then, Denis Mahon along with other scholars have rehabilitated it and the Met has been attempting to fill in the gaps”
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An earlier version by Ludovico on the same theme is seen here:
http://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/ludovico-carracci-the-vision-of-saint-francis
And here is the Ludovico copper painting that the Met acquired three years ago:
http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/works-of-art/2007.330
Both of which, I think, by comparison make the A.I.C.’s recent acquisition appear more appropriate for a parish gift shop than the wall of a major art museum.
If the museum wants to go in this direction, it might well consider acquiring the saccharine Christian art of later centuries, including our own, in which, believe it or not, it is still being made.
One may also note, that unlike the Met’s Ludovico whose provenance goes back to Cardinal Benedetto Giustiniani in 1607, the earliest recorded sale of the A.I.C. piece occurred in 1973. Which is to say that it’s attribution to Ludovico is by consensus rather than hard proof.
Very interesting information about copper paintings– and a delightful aside about the Mae West Dali! I remember being quite stunned by some small painted-copper pieces when I was in the Louvre; they really are extraordinarily luminous. Some research leads me to believe they might have been Albani’s Apollo and Daphne from the early 1600s. Wikimedia has a good image, and it’s hi-res enough for me to notice that the surface does not appear to be as smoothly painted as the Carracci: note the tree in the upper right. I wonder if that’s just an artifact of the photo, or a chemical reaction of paint layers, or what?
one wonders why the paint “adheres absolutely to the copper surface” in some instances and does not in others.
Thanks for the comments!
Conservation Center: Thank you for your comments and the information about the Louvre’s Albani copper. It is interesting to note the apparent differences in texture between the paint of the Carracci and Albani paintings, but both seem to have the same characteristic luminosity. The Louvre curators and conservators would know much better about the interesting edge in the upper corner of the image that you mentioned, but my wild guess is that it is from a frame.
RJ: The surface preparation appears to be the key factor in whether the paint adheres. Eve recommended the exhibition catalogue “Copper as Canvas” for more information about copper paintings.
Copper is a funny medium. When clean, it is very easy to adhere to. But add any oxidation and nothing sticks. Try soldering copper and you will find that the most important step is the preparation and I can imagine it would be the same for paining.