Beyond the thunderous name is the logic of the development of art history - commenting on the "Renaissance to the Nineteenth Century - Exhibition of the Collection of the Italian Carrara Institute" held in Shanghai

Original title: Beyond the thunderous name is the logic of the development of art history - commenting on the "Renaissance to the Nineteenth Century - Exhibition of the Collection of the Italian Carrara Academy" held in Shanghai

Pietro Falca composed part of the Kissing Hand Ceremony (Visiting Grandmother) circa 1780

Jab

"Renaissance to the 19th Century - Collection of the Italian Carrara Academy" is currently on display at the Dongyi Art Museum in Shanghai, with 54 exhibits selected from the important collections of the Italian Carrara Academy. For the public, the most attractive thing is the series of thunderous names that appear in the exhibition, such as Raphael, one of the three masters of the Renaissance of the Literary World, Titian, the most important representative painter of the Venetian School, Giovanni Bellini, the founder of the Venetian School, Jan Bruegel, the most important representative painter of the Flanders School, rubens, the representative painter of the early Baroque, and so on.

Although the works of these famous artists are wonderful, in fact, there are two very important and very interesting clues in the exhibition that should not be ignored, from which people can glimpse the logic and overview of the development of art history.

- Editor

Insight into the gaps in history:

Painting like this craft took more than two hundred years to solve

The story of this exhibition begins in the Renaissance.

To understand the Renaissance, we have to start with the Middle Ages in Europe. The Middle Ages generally refer to the 5th century to the 15th century AD, a period of extremely harsh religious rule. The moderate Reformation of St. Francis in the 13th century and the weakening of the ruling authority of the Holy See led to a gradual relaxation of the religious and political environment, giving birth to a series of new changes from literature to painting, the Renaissance.

The achievements of the Renaissance were all-encompassing, definitely not just artistic. But it is clear that literature and art are the most obvious achievements left to posterity, and it goes without saying how brilliant, great, and important Dante, Boccaccio and Petrarch, the three masters of Renaissance literature, Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo and Raphael, are. If the artistic achievements of the Renaissance are to be summed up in the simplest way, it is that the Renaissance solved the problem of painting likeness.

Without contrasting with the Byzantine style, one cannot experience the vividness of the Renaissance. In the middle of the Millennium, the main function of painting was almost entirely in the service of religion, and the purpose of those biblical story paintings was to allow the illiterate to understand at a glance the teachings preached by the pictures and to understand god's revelation. Based on such functional needs, medieval art dominated by Byzantine art, like our Peking Opera face, is highly stylized, and its overall characteristic is that it is golden and shining, and generally lacks a sense of three-dimensionality and space.

Known as the "first man of the Renaissance", called Giotto (1266-1337), in a group of church frescoes he created, the characters in the story began to have a spatial layout of near and far, high and low, and began to use limbs and expressions to convey a more vivid atmosphere and emotion. At that time, I was afraid that it would be described in terms of stone breaking. But if you look at it from today's point of view, you will still feel that something is strange, the space is far and near, there is an inner taste, but obviously, it is not accurate enough, and the technology is not passed.

Who solved the spatial hierarchy? His name was Masaccio (1401-1428), and he learned perspective from his architect friend Brunelleschi and introduced it into painting. The perspective method is to scientifically solve the problem of far, small, near, and large through accurate calculations, and reproduce the three-dimensional space on the two-dimensional canvas.

After the problem of painting the space like it, the next problem is to paint people. This is even more difficult, the shape of the person is irregular, can not be calculated scientifically. This problem was solved by da Vinci (1452-1519), who invented the smudge method, which is the painting method of Mona Lisa's mysterious smile. What is the essence of the smudge method, which is that the boundaries are not clear, and the blurring of the shadows is drawn.

From Giotto to Masaccio, to Vinci and other Renaissance masters, this is a history of more than two hundred years. In public communication, as long as the Renaissance is mentioned, it will directly jump out of the three masters. In the history of art with thick lines, it is often said that Giotto is said, and Masacho is immediately said. In fact, Giotto was 134 years older than Masaccio.

The Renaissance is a history that has been repeatedly narrated and almost deified, but in this history, more than a hundred years have been completely forgotten like the black hole of history.

What happened in more than a hundred years? I don't know! There are no geniuses, no works that have been handed down. But you think, those generations, they must not be idle, thinking about how to make space, people, and objects more like every day.

To give a small example, let's see how slow and arduous this process of exploration is. In a sketch left by a 13th-century painter, the clumsiness of the painting technique is clearly visible, and the basic proportions and forms of people and animals cannot be grasped at all. More than a century later, the early Renaissance painter Pisanello also left a sketchbook for future generations, where Pisanello was able to reproduce natural objects very accurately. It's such a small thing as sketching and painting, it's almost a hundred years.

What has happened in these hundred years, in the exhibition "Renaissance to the Nineteenth Century", you can also see some traces, see that little bit of clumsy groping. For example, Giovanni Bellini's Portrait of a Young Man, the faces of the characters are very vividly depicted, but the neck looks very strange. Another example is Lorenzo Costa's "St. John the Preacher", which looks at a picture that is not wrong at all, but in the lower left corner, the relationship between St. John's hand and the wine glass can make people laugh out loud.

It is these clumsy, even somewhat amusing details, that remind us that behind those highlight moments, the arduous exploration of countless nameless people is the long and simple truth of history. It is because of more than two hundred years of continuous trial and error that the problem of painting images can finally be solved, and great painters such as Da Vinci, Michelangelo, Raphael, Titian, and Botticelli can be born, and only then can this highlight moment of the stars shining in the history of human art.

Combing through the veins of history:

The four works outline the whole process of the development of Western landscape painting

In terms of themes, this exhibition covers all types of Western paintings such as religious stories, mythological stories, historical stories, portraits, genre paintings, landscape paintings, and still life paintings. Among them, there are four paintings from different eras, which just string together the history of the development and change of landscape painting, an important painting category, and form an interesting correspondence with the important genres and styles in the history of Western art.

The first painting is Giovanni Bellini (1430-1516) 'The Virgin and Child.' The composition of this statue of the Virgin and Child is very classic, and Bellini himself later painted a series of "Virgins and Children" with similar compositions of this work. And this way that the Virgin Mother embraces the Holy Child, the mother is kind, and the baby is lovely has also become a standard illustration of the statue of the Virgin and Child in the future.

Here, I would especially like to remind the audience to see the scenery behind the Virgin and Child. The mountains and castles in the distance, the woods and lawns in the near distance, the boats on the lake, the hunters on horseback, and the two men who are talking nearby, are full of greenery and vitality. Such a rich detailed expression makes this background not only a landscape painting that expresses natural scenery, but also a genre painting that expresses earthly life.

From today's point of view, such a landscape is actually a problem with painting, and it is full of falsehoods. If the scenery is so far away and the characters are so small, the distance between the background and the main character should be very far, far enough to see the details so clearly even if the 2.0 eyes are not so clear.

Of course, we cannot judge from today's perspective, but we must return to the time when the work was created in order to see its meaning and value. What is the truth? Before the Venetian School, painters did not paint landscapes. Because it doesn't matter. What matters is God, God's metaphor. Yes, in an era when even people are not important, there is no scenery or anything.

In the paintings of Giotto, the "first man of the Renaissance", the landscape that has barely begun to appear as a background, but basically in the form of marker hints, quite abstract few strokes, a yellow block represents the mound, and a vertical line fork represents the tree. In contrast, looking at the landscape in Bellini's paintings, it is really bloody! Before Bellini, probably no painter would have put such a large amount of work in the landscape outside the main body. No painter would observe the mountains, lakes, and architectural figures in nature so carefully.

We can even boldly imagine that if the figures, window sills, and curtains in the foreground and middle scene of this painting are removed, then this is a pure landscape painting. Of course, this can only be a hypothesis. Painting a pure landscape painting that does not focus on man or god is, in Bellini's time, a brain hole that no one can open, and dare not think of it.

Of all the painters of the Renaissance, Bellini's fame should be classified only in the second echelon. But to say that he brought out his apprentice Titian (1490-1576) is worthy of the first echelon, and some views believe that Titian is the fourth master of the Renaissance.

Here, to add briefly, the Renaissance is generally divided into the Italian Renaissance and the Northern Renaissance. In the Italian Renaissance, there are two most important schools of painting, the Florentine school represented by Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo and Raphael, and the Venetian school represented by Titian and Giorgione, and Bellini is Titian and Giorgione's pro-master.

Titian was surprisingly long-lived, he lived to be 88 years old, and when he was alive, he gained great wealth, leaving behind many works and great fame. In this exhibition, there is a piece of Titian's work "Orpheus and Eurydice", which is not large in size, which may slightly disappoint some viewers who rush to Titian's thunderous name. But I would like to talk about this painting in the context of the development of landscape painting.

The names of Orpheus and Eurydice in the names of the paintings, who can be translated so awkwardly in the Chinese, are undoubtedly the gods and immortals of ancient Greece. These two people, right and call them Little Russia and Little Ou. Little Oh is a beautiful young man, he is the son of Apollo and the muse Kaliopa, the beautiful singing voice can confuse hundreds of beasts, and the singing skills are unparalleled in the world. Xiao Ou's wife, Xiao Ou, is a fairy, and the two men are talented and feminine, and they are harmonious. Later, a shepherd coveted Xiao Ou's beauty and wanted to do something wrong, and Xiao Ou was accidentally bitten by a poisonous snake when he fled, so he died. The next story is very famous, the little Russian who lost his beloved wife is sad and comes to the underworld to beg the king of Pluto to let his wife return to the human world. The Pluto King agreed, but on the condition that his wife could only follow Xiao Ru, and xiao Er was not allowed to look back until he reached the Yang Realm, and once he turned back, his wife would disappear forever and completely. But Xiao Ou did not hold back after all, and looked back. Titian's picture actually paints two scenes of the story, on the left is the scene where Xiao Ou is bitten by a poisonous snake, and the poisonous snake is painted in the form of a half snake and half beast. On the right, there is a look back at little Ohna who is about to die.

The characters and landscapes in "The Virgin and Child" are two skins, hard-stacked together. Without the scenery behind it, the radiance of the Virgin and Child will not be reduced by half a point. If there are no characters, it will be a pretty good pure landscape painting. But Titian's "Orpheus and Eurydice" is different, the characters and landscapes are completely integrated, they complete the narrative together, no one can be separated from the other, no longer dispensable. The importance of the landscape in the picture is obviously higher than before.

Further along the show is a painting of Zucarelli 's Landscape of the Bridge and the Riders' (1701-1788). There are three groups of images in this picture, in the middle of which is a mother with two children, one of whom is facing the right, interacting with the white horse knight, the horse's hooves raised, heading in the direction of the stone arch bridge. There was an old scalper and a cattle herder on the bridge who had just entered the picture, and their eyes were all looking in the direction of the mother and son sitting under the bridge.

Mother, child, knight, white horse, old cow and cattle herder form a complete interactive closed loop between these images, connecting three groups of images in different positions in the picture. Poetic space, rich natural landscapes, harmonious relationships between characters, people and animals, and nature, this is a standard Arcadia-like scene.

If you compare this painting with Titian's Orpheus and Eurydice, what are the similarities and differences? At a glance, their pictures are very close, the depth of field is similar, they are all in a medium-frame landscape with several characters, and the proportion relationship between the characters in the picture is also very close. But if we focus on the subject matter, we can easily find that Titian's landscape is the background of the mythological story. The scenery of Zucarelli is home to human habitation.

Finally, let's set our sights on the last work of this exhibition, Andrea Malenzi's Serio Falls in 1886. This is a pure landscape painting with a large panoramic view and a large bird's eye view, and the open valley is flowing down three thousand feet. There are also people in the picture, but these few people are obviously not the protagonists of the picture, but small embellishments, such as scale bars and references. By this point, landscape painting had become completely independent. Looking back at the course of the previous hundreds of years, from the dispensable patch background, to the scene where the mythological story takes place, to the poetic homeland inhabited by human beings, to the artistic theme with independent aesthetic value, this is a process in heaven and on earth.

Moving forward along the lines of history, what is landscape painting like? The next step is Impressionism. In fact, in 1886, when "Serio Falls" came out, the Impressionists represented by Monet were fully mature from the subject matter of creation to the technique. As an independent artistic subject, the scenery does not need to be grand and magnificent, it can be a flower field on the edge of a town, a bench in a park, or even a train that suddenly drives by with white smoke. Landscape, artistically acquired complete autonomy and freedom.

【Source: Wen Wei Po】

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