29

Jan

This small painting in a massive frame is somewhat mysterious. When the Louvre bought it in 1883, it was thought to be by Raphael. Meanwhile it is generally attributed to his teacher Pietro di Cristoforo Vannucci, better known as Pietro Perugino.

There are lots of contradictory dates for the picture. Most likely it was made in Florence during the lifetime (and maybe for) Lorenzo il Magnifico, who died in April 1492. Perugino was certainly in Florence from 1486 on, when he was fined ten florin for trying to mug someone, and maybe since 1483.

The picture might show Apollo and Marsyas, who challenged the god to a flute contest and was flayed for this hubris, but the flute player has been identified as Daphnis, the inventor of pastoral poetry, as well. Since Daphnis is the male form of Daphne, and Daphne is the Greek word for Laurel, this might be a witty hommage to Lorenzo.

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Paintings

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29

Jan

Alexander Pope: Imitation of Martial

AT length, my Friend (while Time, with still career,
Wafts on his gentle wing his eightieth year),
Sees his past days safe out of Fortune’s power,
Nor dreads approaching Fate’s uncertain hour;
Reviews his life, and in the strict survey,
Finds not one moment he could wish away,
Pleased with the series of each happy day.
Such, such a man extends his life’s short space,
And from the goal again renews the race;
For he lives twice, who can at once employ
The present well, and ev’n the past enjoy.

Referred to in a letter from Trumbull to Pope dated January, 1716. The epigram imitated is X, 23.

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Poetry

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29

Jan

This beautiful picture was discovered as recently as 1895, in one of the ante-rooms of the Pitti Palace, by Mr. William Spence of Florence, who at once recognized it as a work of Botticelli’s. After some renovation (it had already been painted over in parts) it was for a time exhibited at the Uffizi; but has since been removed to the private apartments of the Pitti Palace.

A. Streeter, from whose 1903 book Botticelli the above quote is taken, saw Pallas and the Centaur as an allegory of the peace that ended the war between Florence on one side and the Pope and the Kingdom of Naples on the other, but there are other interpretations as well.

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Paintings

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28

Jan

Vasari on Christianity and Art

BUT the most harmful and destructive force which operated against these fine arts was the fervent zeal of the new Christian religion, which, after long and sanguinary strife, had at length vanquished and abolished the old faith of the heathen, by means of a number of miracles and by the sincerity of its acts. Every effort was put forth to remove and utterly extirpate the smallest things from which errors might arise, and thus not only were the marvellous statues, sculptures, paintings, mosaics and ornaments of the false pagan gods destroyed and thrown down, but also the memorials and honours of countless excellent persons, to whose distinguished merits statues and other memorials had been set up in public by a most virtuous antiquity. Besides all this, in order to build churches for the use of the Christians, not only were the most honoured temples of the idols destroyed, but in order to ennoble and decorate S. Pietro’ with more ornaments than it then possessed, they took away the stone columns from the mold of Hadrian, now the castle of Sant’Angelo, as well as many other things which we now see in ruins.

— From the preface of the Vite, translation by Gaston C. DeVere.

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History/Prose

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28

Jan

Raphael painted this Triumph of Galatea as a fresco in a loggia of the Roman villa of Agostino Chigi, a very rich Sienese banker “who was much the friend of every man of excellence,” as Giorgio Vasari put it. The Farnese family later bought the villa, and it is now know as the Villa Farnesina.

The Triumph of Galatea is Raphael’s only bigger mythological work. His Three Graces are very small, and The Judgement of Paris is not a painting, but a drawing intended solely to be engraved by Marcantonio Raimondi.

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Paintings

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28

Jan

Sappho: Ode to a Loved One

BLEST as the immortal gods is he,
The youth who fondly sits by thee,
And hears and sees thee, all the while,
Softly speaks and sweetly smile.

’Twas this deprived my soul of rest,
And raised such tumults in my breast;
For, while I gazed, in transport tossed,
My breath was gone, my voice was lost;

My bosom glowed; the subtle flame
Ran quick through all my vital frame;
O’er my dim eyes a darkness hung;
My ears with hollow murmurs rung;

In dewy damps my limbs were chilled;
My blood with gentle horrors thrilled:
My feeble pulse forgot to play;
I fainted, sunk, and died away.

Translation by Ambrose Philips (1674–1749)

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Poetry

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28

Jan

An early Baigneuse by Renoir, before he developed the style he is now famous for. The painting is known as Baigneuse au griffon, the dog in the foreground is a griffon. Dimensions 184 cm × 115 cm, currently located at São Paulo Museum of Art, São Paulo, Brazil. The model for this painting was Lise Tréhot, Renoir’s mistress and inspiration for many of Renoir paintings.

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Paintings

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27

Jan

Father, dear father, you’ve done me great wrong
You have married me to a boy who is too young
I’m twice twelve and he is but fourteen
He’s young, but he’s daily growing.

Maria Leszczyńska might have sung this old Scottish ballad. When she was married to Louis XV in 1725, he was fifteen, and she was twenty-three. Nevertheless the marriage was happy for quite a while, it was eight years till the king took his first mistress.

This portrait was made in the year after the wedding by court painter François Albert Stiemart.

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Paintings/Portraits

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27

Jan

Charles Baudelaire was in his late twenties when he was portrayed by Gustave Courbet in the revolution year 1848 or slightly later. He had published art reviews and the novella La Fanfarlo, but no poems yet.

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Paintings/Portraits

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27

Jan

Charles Baudelaire: Exotic Perfume

WHEN with closed eyes in autumn’s eves of gold
I breathe the burning odours of your breast,
Before my eyes the hills of happy rest
Bathed in the sun’s monotonous fires, unfold.

Islands of Lethe where exotic boughs
Bend with their burden of strange fruit bowed down,
Where men are upright, maids have never grown
Unkind, but bear a light upon their brows.

Led by that perfume to these lands of ease,
I see a port where many ships have flown
With sails outwearied of the wandering seas;

While the faint odours from green tamarisks blown,
Float to my soul and in my senses throng,
And mingle vaguely with the sailor’s song.

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Poetry

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