In the vast stars of the Italian Renaissance, Carlo Crivelli shines faintly. But his experimental use of perspective, optical illusion, and relief created visual fantasy. The Paper has learned that The Ikon Gallery in Birmingham, UK, recently launched the exhibition "Shadows on the Sky" with this as a focus, showing how he can elegantly dissolve exquisite craftsmanship, and also leading the public to rethink Kriveli's complex understanding of art and the meaning it represents.
Criveli, The Virgin and Child, circa 1480, collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A) in London
A woman placed her baby on a marble ledge in front of her. She wrapped her arms around the child and tucked him into the green silk lining of her lavish gold brocade cloak, keeping the child from touching the cold marble. Her gaze is soft and drooping downwards, avoiding the viewer's view. Holding an apple symbolizing the fall of mankind, the child gazes out of the painting and meets the viewer's gaze. The exquisite technique conveyed by this gentle image is breathtaking: the design of the lining uses plaster reliefs (the surface is constructed from plaster) to emboss, which are then covered with sparkling gold leaf; the veil on the woman's face is delicate and transparent, conveying a magnificent praise.
But the truth doesn't seem to be what it looks like. If you look closely at the background, you will find that the mother and son are just puppets carefully built on the stage. Behind them, red cloaks were mounted on beams, and the fruits on the top of their heads were strung together by ropes.
The Virgin and Child (circa 1480) is one of nine Kriverly works that make up the "Shadow of the Sky" exhibition and has also drawn public attention to the neglected Renaissance painter. Born in Venice in 1435, Criveli was imprisoned for six months for adultery with another man's wife, after which he had to leave Venice to earn a living south to a small town on the Adriatic coast. In the exhibition, "Mary of St. Magdalene" seems to be able to see the beginnings of his life. The eyes of the person in the painting are squinted, and the fingers are long and sexy. The exiled Venetian Criverly saw the small town clients as naïve hillbills who only looked at the number of gold leaves and did not ask why the female saints were so sexy, or why fruits often appeared in their works.
Although Kriverly's life was successful, his work soon fell out of favor—he was even excluded from Vasari's The Life of the Finest Painters, Sculptors, and Architects—and his astonishing personality made it difficult to be included in the ranks of artists during the Renaissance.
Criveli, Mary of St. Magdalene, circa 1491-1494, National Gallery, British
For almost 30 years, hosting an exhibition in The Iconostay has been the dream of curator Jonathan Watkins, which was finally made possible with the help of the inaugural Ampersand Foundation Award, which is awarded every two years with a £150,000 prize for Uk institutions to enable exhibitions and album publications. The Iconostay won the award in 2019, and the Venetian Renaissance painter's work has also come to Birmingham from major institutions in Germany, Italy and London, and one of the works on loan from the Wallace Collection is the first time he has left London since entering the collection.
Chryveli, St. Catherine of Alexandria, circa 1491-1494, National Gallery collection
At the heart of the exhibition is an exploration of Kriverly's use of trompe l'oeil paintings, which he tries to deceive the viewer's eyes through the means of visual illusion, making them think that what they see is three-dimensional. The nine paintings in the exhibition skillfully use this technique: Saint Benedict (circa 1490), immersed in reading, with his feet dangling in the air, ready to step out of the picture; and Saint Catherine of Alexandria (circa 1491-1494), where a fly is parked on a stone pillar, so realistic that the viewer wants to photograph it.
Trompe L'oeil continued Throughout Criverly's painting career, surpassing his contemporaries. But his paintings are not just deceptive, but actively draw people to think about why the painter did it. On the foreground steps of the Annunciation, a cucumber and an apple are placed, as if to imply that Kriverly forgot his afternoon snack; in The Annunciation, with Saint Emidius (circa 1489), a bunch of fruits cast a shadow that draws attention to the bright blue sky as a fictional existence.
Criveli, The Vision of Gabriel, circa 1489, Collection of the National Gallery
The title of the exhibition, "Shadow of the Sky," is taken from this work. A saint in the city of Ancona is depicted praying in the foreground, his pious beaded eyes almost coming out of his head. The landscape behind him was pushed back to the seashore, and the golden illusion of the Virgin and Child floated in the sky. But the picture is out of proportion and out of place hanging from Kriveli's beloved fruit and casting shadows on the sky. In Criverly's eyes, existence in the form of fruit is more real than the real world, while gabriel's vision is ironic.
Criveli, The Annunciation, 1486, Collection of the National Gallery, England
Kriveli's subversive trompe l'oeil paintings make us realize that this is a manifestation of reality, not reality itself. His treatment of painting space and perspective often leads us to disorient, but they also lead us to think about the nature of painting as a technique and to think critically about what is being asked to see. The exhibition gives enough space for these paintings, a whole wall of very small works to display, inviting the audience to spend more time on each work, seeing the deep work and meaning through appearances.
Exhibition site
In addition to the 15th century, the exhibition features the exploration of contemporary artist Susan Collis, who followed Crivelli in exploring the possibility of "trompe l'oeil". When visiting the exhibition, viewers may be puzzled by the sight of a painted broom leaning against a wall with a dust cloth on the side and a hook on the wall waiting to hang the painting. But if you look closely, you will find that this is not an unexpected situation in the exhibition, but a work. The "paint" on the broom is not paint, but is an effect carefully set with pearls, garnets, black diamonds, and the hooks are made of silver and jasper. In fact, the contemporary works were not in the original plan of the exhibition, but now due to the impact of Brexit and the new crown epidemic, some of Kriverly's works cannot reach Birmingham as originally planned, and the curators have to replace them with contemporary art works that can embody the spirit of Krivelly.
This fusion of the classical and the modern is also in line with the values of the Iconographic Museum, which attempts to achieve "historical intervention" in contemporary space. The exhibition design also reflects this: there is little guiding information for the exhibition, and the works are hung on sparse white walls. In fact, it is impossible to return to the "original" background of the works, because some of them were originally part of a larger altar, and Criveli used a lot of gold leaf in order to capture the candlelight that illuminated them and make the figures look like they were moving. When the original altar does not exist, the exhibition is presented in a sparse manner, when the works speak for themselves, and the viewer is encouraged to discover Krivigli in their own way.
Kriveli, St. Benedict, circa 1490, collection of the Berlin Rijksmuseum
Note: This article is compiled from the Apollo Magazine's Review of exhibitions by Breeze Barrington and The Guardian Jonathan Jones; this exhibition is organized by the Iconography of Birmingham in collaboration with the National Gallery of the United Kingdom and has received loans from the National Trust, the Vatican Museums, the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Wallace Collection and the National Museum in Berlin. The exhibition will run until May 29.