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This
is Miscellaneous Art Article #1
revised Dec. 17. 2019
A Remarkable Coincidence
(1) E.A. Robinson
(2) In Death - a
painting (3) A Tale of Two
Academies
Believe it or not, what
follows touches on all three.
I'm not aware
that the American poet, E.A. (Edwin Arlington)
Robinson (1869–1935) (image) was
a painter, yet one of his poems is written from
the point of view of a painter:
Her Eyes
UP from the street and the
crowds that went, / Morning
and midnight, to and fro,
Still was the room where his
days he spent, /And
the stars were bleak, and the nights were
slow.
Year after year, with his
dream shut fast, /He
suffered and strove till his eyes were
dim,
For the love that his brushes
had earned at last, And
the whole world rang with the praise of
him.
But he cloaked his
triumph, and searched, instead, /Till
his cheeks were sere and his hairs were
gray.
“There are
women enough, God knows,” he said …“There
are stars enough—when the sun’s
away.”
Then he went back to the same
still room /That had held his dream in
the long ago,
When he buried his days in
a nameless tomb, /And the
stars were bleak, and the nights were
slow.
And a passionate humor
seized him there—/Seized
him and held him until there grew
Like life on his canvas,
glowing and fair, /A
perilous face—and an angel’s
too.
Angel and maiden, and all
in one,—/All but the eyes. They were
there, but yet
They seemed somehow like a soul
half done./What was the matter? Did
God forget? …
But he wrought
them at last with a skill so sure /That her
eyes were the eyes of a deathless woman
With a gleam of heaven to make
them pure, /And a
glimmer of hell to make them
human.
God never forgets.—And he
worships her /There
in that same still room of
his,
For his wife,
and his constant arbiter/Of the world that was
and the world that is.
And he wonders yet what
her love could be/To
punish him after that strife so
grim;
But the longer he lives with
her eyes to see, /The
plainer it all comes back to him.
I passed the
poem on to Selene Salvi. She is a friend, a
painter, and a writer and usually has insight on
these things. I told her only that, as far
as I knew, no one seemed to know who Robinson
was talking about in the poem, but it must have
been a woman he loved. I mentioned that he had
never married.
I got more than I bargained for. Selene replied:
Beautiful.
Thank you. It reminds me of the engraving
(image) by Saro Cucinotta that reproduces a
painting by Giovanni del Re. It was shown at
the first
exhibition of the Society to Promote Fine
Arts in Naples in 1862.
...It's a small painting
called Dopo morto [In death]
that shows a "painter who has just
died in poverty and misery. He is
spread motionless on his tiny bed that
takes up a corner of his small studio;
a small cross lies on his breast;
beside the bed you can barely see the
fading shadow of a woman's figure —the
Madonna, come for the pure soul of the
artist. In the background on the wall
hangs a canvas draped with a garland
of withered flowers; the painting is
of a young woman. No doubt she was the
love of his life. Strewn about are
canvasses, palettes of colors, brushes
and other items. A priest with a book
under his arm leaves across the
threshold; he has done what he came to
do. Through the window pane there are
some birds, heralds of death..."
[Selene cites that description from Artisti
napoletani viventi [Living
Neapolitan Artists by E.
Giannelli,1916].*1
The painting had
enormous success. They must have known it
would when they displayed it; it was the right choice to
represent the exhibition and certainly in
the spirit of the announced intent of the
Society to Promote Fine Arts —to
provide funds for poor artists or those
who... can no longer
practice their art or live from it. The work
was chosen and the engraving by Cucinotta
given to members of the Society as a memento
of the exhibit.2*
Selene reminded
me again that she was not talking about
the Naples Academy of Fine Arts, but a separate
organization founded just after the unification
of Italy (1861), not to combat the older
Academy, but to have their own say at the start
of a new age of Neapolitan art.
The time
period was critical; there was no real
market for art and only a few artists who
could avail themselves of traditional
religious or aristocratic commissions.
Many risked poverty, and the youngest,
with no financial means at all, had given
up hope. A lot of time was spent in
lengthy discussions on how to overcome the
crisis, how to help those who had been
left behind, how to open the way for a new
way of “doing” art. And then Annibale
Rossi proclaimed that the only true help
for artists lay not in meetings and
discussions but in finding a practical way
to help them sell their paintings and
statues.3*
After a few
years of "new Italy," the two organizations
merged.
She had a few words about the engraver,
Cucinotta.
He
was born in Messina in 1830 and was executed
by firing squad in Paris in 1871. As
Fusco writes, we have no way of knowing if he
was an active participant in the Communard
movement, or perhaps only a Red Cross
volunteer.4*
*The four notes are all from
the essay IDEALS OF THE SOCIETY TO PROMOTE FINE
ARTS IN NAPLES
(by Selene Salvi). The entire essay is on the Facebook
page of Opus Continuum here.
Firing squad?
What's going on? Readers should note that the
1860s and '70s were years of great agitation in
a century of extreme agitation going back to the
French revolution. The reference here is to the
Paris Commune in 1871, but in southern Italy of
the 1860s the tension of
post-unification was
just as bad. Life
in general in Naples
was
uncertain. The city and much of the
south was under martial law for the
rest of the decade in order to combat
lingering, active hostility from
forces still loyal to the old Bourbon
kingdom of Naples.
Yet art went on,
as it will, like the mounting pressure of
water behind a cracked dam (the dam here
is political repression). Sooner or later
the water finds its way through the cracks
and then —we
know what happens.
The similarity to the poem is remarkable. As to
the Academy of Fine Arts of Naples (see index at
top of this page):
a replica of Michelangelo's David
in the Academy
It is among the oldest
academies in Europe, founded in 1752 at the
behest of Charles III of Bourbon. It was on
the premises of the church of San Carlo
alle Mortelle, site of a pre-existing
sculpture workshop. In 1780 the academy was
moved to the university (now the National
Archaeological Museum) and moved again in 1864
(just after the Kingdom of Naples became part
of united Italy) to the current premises, the
ex-convent complex of S. Giovanni delle
Monache. The nucleus of that convent goes back
to 1593.
The convent was closed under the
reign of Murat in the early 1800s, but later
reopened. In the 1850s, a restructuring of this
ancient area (adjacent to the submerged Greek
walls of the city) included the demolition of a
city gate and laying of a new street, dividing
the convent church from the convent itself. The
convent was then closed by the new united Italy
and restored to become the new art academy by Errico
Alvino (1809-1876), professor at the
academy and the architect in charge of
rebuilding the entire area. Alvino was from Rome
but was very active in Naples. His architectural
output was stunning, both before and after the
unification of Italy in 1861.
Besides the Art Academy, his other works in the
city include designing the façade of the church
of S. Maria di Piedigrotta [1853], laying out
(with others) the vital, long east-west road, Corso Maria
Teresa (now the Corso Vittorio Emanuele II,
completed in 1870); planning
the restoration of the façade of the Naples
cathedral; redesigning (with others) the seaside
park, the Villa Comunale, and adjacent area; and
designing the main train station (1866),
eventually replaced in 1960).
(image,
above, left: Facade of the main academy
building on Via Santa Maria di Costantinopoli)
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This is Miscellaneous Art
Article #2
Jago
& the Veiled Son
"The truth is
that art cannot change events, cannot stop
atrocities. But art can stand alongside beauty
to foster togetherness and fellowship."
Those
are the words of Jago —name
in art of Jacopo Cardillo—
a sculptor born in Frosinone near Naples in
1987. He currently lives in New York and has
been exhibiting his works for about ten years.
He came to more heightened attention when
noted art critic Vittorio Sgarbi included him
as part of the Italian Pavilion of the 54th
edition of the Venice Biennale, where he
presented a bust of then Pope Benedict
XVI.
Jago is in Naples to donate his
latest sculpture il Figlio Velato (image,
right) not to a museum, but to a local
church in the Sanità
quarter of the city within the Chapel of
the church of San Severo (image, left) where
it will be on permanent display, starting on
21 December, 2019.
The reference of
the title is to the famous Cristo Velato (the
Veiled Christ) (image, right) in
the Sansevero chapel in Naples, which amazes
everyone. You can't look at it without being
moved in some way. Jago says: "That is one
of the world's great artistic masterpieces."
His work is called "Il figlio velato".
His title in English, however, is misleading.
He chose The Veiled Son, correct but
misleading because the upper-case Son (as in a
title) and Christ (in the original)
leads to you think of the "Son" here as
Christ, and that is not what his
sculpture is about. Jago says it is obviously
a citation of and tribute to the peerless
original,
but
it has nothing to do with the sacred spirit
of Christianity. I want to tell a different
story —
that of the innocent children in the world
whom we sacrifice and consciously discard to
violence, abuse, war and starvation. We
throw millions of innocent children away."
[A better title, in my
view, would be "The Veiled Child. jm]
Jago takes
his work very seriously. He worked 10 hours a
day for 4 years in New York using Danby marble
from the state of Maine...
...exceptional
material that lets me work as never before.
I went to the quarry, I know the workers who
cut the marble. I watched the whole process
from start to finish. Every little step
along the way is worth something.
And Jago's
little steps along the way continue to be
remarkable. Next year an Italian astronaut
will bring home to Earth Jago's sculpture of The
First Child, a small sculpture of a
human embryo that is now aboard the
International Space Station! Jago says he
doesn't worry about his destination. Raise the
bar every chance you get. The stops you make
as you move through life are what count.
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This is
Miscellaneous Art Article #3 added 15 March
2020 - still here!
The Case
of the Missing Door-Mouse
Sorry, I misread that, but now that you ask, a
door-mouse is (1) an incorrect (but much
better) spelling of "dormouse", a nocturnal
rodent known for its long periods of
hibernation, and (2) a rodenty-looking
character in "A Mad Tea-Party" from Alice's
Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll.
1. Ingres,
Jean-Auguste-Dominique -
drawing
from memory of la Dormeuse de Naples,
on the back of his 1832 letter to Caroline
Murat,
(French National Library, Dept. of
Manuscripts).
What we are looking for,
though, is a dormeuse (you can
well understand my confusion), specifically, La
dormeuse de Naples, (The Sleeping
Woman of Naples). Really, we want the
famous painting of that lady since
the lady, herself ―and there seems to be no
doubt that she was a real person― is, sadly,
as dead as a door-nail. A door-nail is a...
(...no, wait...sorry). The quarantine now in
effect in Naples is a good chance to stay
indoors and ransack what is left of your poor
home (where shelves and pantries have been
stripped bare of edibles (such as wood),
freeing up inedible nooks and crannies
(although a cool Corona served over a
fissure is pretty tasty) where The
Sleeping Lady might be hiding. Keep
washing your hands and search thoroughly. This
is either a case of big-time art theft or
someone is sitting on a fortune and doesn't
know it.
This is the royal couple of Naples.
It looks
like an earlier painting (they were
married
in 1802). It is not the work of Ingres.
La Dormeuse de
Naples (original name: Donna nuda
che dorme) was an 1809 painting by the
French artist Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres
(1780-1867), the French Neoclassical painter.
He was in Naples (then a Bonapartist
client-state of France) to paint ―and paint
about― the king
and queen, Gioacchino
Murat and Caroline (Napoleon's
sister) (image shown). The painting
was last seen in 1814 in the Royal Palace of
Naples. It disappeared in 1815 after that
palace was sacked following Murat's fall from
power. The work was exhibited a number of
times after its completion in 1809 and Murat
then bought the painting for his wife, who, in
1814, commissioned la Grande Odalisque*
as a pendant for the painting. A pendant is an
ornament to a main painting. In this case, it
was to be as large as the original Sleeping
Lady. Ingres also painted a portrait of
Queen Caroline, herself. It still exists. The
pendant La Grande Odalisque still
exists. Only the Sleeping Lady is
missing. In 1832 Ingres returned to Naples
with a sketch of the work done from memory to
help with the search. (That image is the
top image, above, on the right.)
His described it as "a nude life-size female
stretched out on a day-bed, her head resting
on her left arm, which in turn rests on a
cushion, with the right arm behind the head."
*Odalisque: a female slave or
concubine in an oriental harem. I don't know
whether "Grande" means that the
painting was big or she was big.
Just few year
ago in 2004 the painting was still missing, so
Veroniqe Burnod, the "General Conservator" of
the Museum of Cambrai in northeastern France
paid a visit to the Capodimonte museum in
Naples to see if they could help. She wanted
the painting for her exhibit on painters who
have depicted Napoleon (a long list that
includes Ingres). In Capodimonte they have
lots of stuff and, well... maybe in a
storeroom ...you know ... expensive
masterpieces sometimes slip down between the
sofa cushions... please ... come on. Have a
look. She was met with raised eye-brows and
assurances of "Madame, there must be some
mistake. Everything we have is rigorously
accounted for and listed. It is out of the
question that we have that work here."
No painting.
 Ingres used the
pose of the reclining female nude in other
works. Many such paintings in western art
derive from the posture of the Sleeping
Ariadne sculpture in the Vatican Museums
(image, right.) It is a Roman
copy of a Greek original. There are many
other Renaissance sources, as well, to compare
to the missing Ingres work. A good one is Sleeping
Venus (image, directly above) by
Giorgione (alias of Giorgio Barbarelli da
Castelfranco, 1477–1510). It is held in
the Art Gallery of Old Masters in Dresden,
Germany.
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This
is Miscellaneous Art Article #4 added Feb 17
2023
Justice
and Beauty
Currently
through March 15, 2023 at the Hall of
Justice in the Naples Civic Center (Centro
Direzionale): Art exhibit of
Baroque painting, "Giustizia e
Bellezza: drammaturgia del diritto
nella Pittura Barocca" -
(Justice and Beauty: the dramaturgy of
rights in Baroque Painting). On
display are 12 masterpieces of the
Italian Baroqe by these arists:
Carlo Sellitto
(1581–1614 Filippo
Vitale
(1585–1650);
Pietro
Novelli
(1603–1647);
Agostino
Beltrano
(1607–1665);
Giuseppe
Piscopo
(1609–1656);
Simone
Cantarini
(1612–1648); Johann
Carl Loth (1632–1698);
Luca
Giordano (1634–1705);
G.B. Beinaschi
(1636–1688); Giuseppe
Bonito (1707–1789).
The organizers of the
exhibition point out that the choice
of venue (the Hall of Justice) is not
an accident. The works on display are
ones that have been taken back from
the clutches of organized crime, as
ever deeply involved in illicit art
trafficking. So maybe there is something
we can do about it.
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