Northern Renaissance (1500-1600)

The sunny optimism of the Italian Renaissance didn’t quite penetrate the cold Northern lands. Italian humanists saw people as almost like Greek gods — strong, handsome, and noble — capable of standing on their own without the help of anyone, including God and the Catholic Church. Northern artists concentrated on the flip side of humanism — ordinary folks and their folly and travails.
Brueghel — The Triumph of Death (El Triunfo de la Muerte)

The brief flowering of the Renaissance couldn’t last. In the 16 th century, the bitter break between the Catholic Church and the “Protest”-ants sparked wars across Europe. In Germany alone, a third of the population died. The battles were especially brutal, with atrocities on both sides — the predictable result when politicians and generals claim God is on their side.

Pieter Brueghel (pron: BROY-gull) the Elder chronicled these violent times. His message is simple and morbid — no one can escape death.

The painting is one big chaotic, confusing battle. Death in the form of skeletons (led by one on horseback with a scythe) attacks a crowd of people, herding them into a tunnel-like building (prescient of a Nazi death camp). Elsewhere, other skeletons dole out the inevitable fate of all flesh. No one is spared. Not the jester (lower right, crawling under the table), not churchmen, not the emperor himself (at lower left, whose gold is also plundered), not even the poor man (upper right) kneeling, praying for mercy with a cross in his hands.

* Continue to Room 55a.

Matsys — Ecce Homo (Cristo Presentado al Pueblo)

The mob — a menagerie of goony faces — razzes the prisoner Christ before his execution. Christ seems quite fed up with it all. The painting is especially effective because of our perspective. We’re looking up at Christ on the balcony, making us part of the hooting mob.

* Stop by Room 54 to meet…

Dürer — Self-Portrait (Autorretrato)

Before looking into the eyes of 26-year-old Albrecht Dürer, look first at his clothes and hairdo — they say as much about him as his face. With his Italian hat and permed hair, he’s clearly a mod/hip/fab/rad young guy, a man of the world. The meticulous detail-work (Dürer was also an engraver) is the equivalent of preening before a mirror. Dürer (pron: DEWR-er) had recently returned from Italy, and wanted to impress his bumpkin fellow Germans with all that he had learned.

But Dürer wasn’t simply vain. Renaissance Italy treated its artists like princes, not workmen. Dürer learned not only to paint like a great artist, but to act like one as well.

Now look into his eyes, or rather, look up at his eyes, since Dürer literally looks down on us. We see an intelligent, bold, and somewhat arrogant man, confident of his abilities. The strong arms and hands reinforce this confidence.

This is possibly the first true self-portrait. Sure, other artists used themselves as models and put their likeness in scenes (like Bosch in hell), but it was a whole new thing to paint your own portrait to proudly show your personality to the world. Dürer painted probably ten of them in his life — each showing a different aspect of this complex man.

Dürer put his mark on every painting and engraving. Note the pyramid-shaped “A.D.” (D inside the A) on the windowsill.
Dürer — Adam and Eve (two separate panels)

These are the first full-size nudes in Northern European art. It took the boldness of someone like Dürer to bring Italian fleshiness to the more modest Germans.

The title is Adam and Eve, but that’s just an excuse to paint two nudes in the style of Greek statues on pedestals. Dürer splits the (one) scene into two canvases (Eve is giving Adam the apple, and their hair is blown by the same wind) so that each “statue” has its own niche.

Compared with Bosch’s smooth-limbed, naked little homunculi, Dürer’s Adam and Eve are three-dimensional and solid, with anatomically correct muscles. They’re a bold humanist proclamation that the body is good, man is good, the things of the world are good.
Hans Baldung Grien — The Three Graces and The Three Ages of Man

Three classical Graces teach a medieval Christian message — that all flesh is mortal and we’re all on the same moving sidewalk to the junk pile.

In the left panel are the Three Graces in youth — beautiful, happy, in a playful green grove with the sun shining, and surrounded by angelic babies. But with grim Northern realism, the right panel shows what happens to all flesh (especially that of humanists!). The Three Graces become the Three Ages of sagging decay — middle age, old age, and death. Death holds an hourglass of that devouring army, Time.

* Return to the long gallery (Room 49) and head to the rotunda. Go upstairs. Look down the long gallery. To reach Rubens’ work, take the first left, into Room 9b. But first, grab a seat in the long gallery and soak in Baroque.

Rubens and Baroque (1600s)

You’re surrounded by Baroque. Large canvases, bright colors, rippling bodies, plenty of flesh, violent scenes. This room contains more rapes per square foot than any gallery in the world.

Baroque art overwhelms. It play on the emotions, titillates the senses, and carries us away. Baroque was made to order for the Catholic Church and absolute monarchs who used it as propaganda to combat the dual threats of Protestantism and democracy. They impressed the common masses with beautiful palaces and glorious churches, showing their strength and authority.

Peter Paul Rubens of Flanders (Belgium) was the favorite of Catholic rulers. He painted the loves, wars, and religion of Catholic kings. Like Titian before him, he became rich and famous, a cultured, likable man of the world, who was even entrusted with diplomatic missions by his employers.

* Enter the first Rubens Room (#9b).

Rubens — St. George Slaying the Dragon (San Jorge)

Like a Counter-Reformation king, the Christian warrior fights to save the holy Church from the dragon of Protestantism.

Rubens freezes the action just as George spears the dragon and raises his sword to finish him off. The limp damsel in distress has a lamb, the symbol of Christ and His church.

Baroque art may look like a rippling mess, but it’s often anchored in Renaissance-style balance. This painting has an X-like composition, the rearing horse slanting one way and George slanting the other. Above where the X intersects are the two stars of the scene, George with his rippling plumed helmet and the horse, with its rippling mane.

All around these rooms are Rubens paintings of religious subjects. Glance at the series of smaller paintings with titles championing the Catholic cause — Triumph of the Church, Triumph of the True Catholic, and so on.

* In Room 9 (which is back-to-back with Room 9b), look for the following two paintings.

Rubens — Diana and Her Nymphs Discovered by a Satyr (Diana y sus Ninfas sorprendidas por Sátiros)

A left-to-right rippling wave of figures creates a thrilling chase scene. Four horny satyrs (half-man, half-beast — though why mythical creatures like this never have their human half at the bottom, I don’t know) have crashed a party of woodland nymphos who flee from left to right. Only the Greek goddess Diana, queen of the hunt, turns to face the predatory mutants. She stands with her spear to try to stem the tide of flailing limbs.

All the elements of a typical Rubens work are here — action, emotion, sensuality, violence, bright colors, fleshy bodies, and rippling clothes and hair with the wind machine on high.

Another typical feature is that it wasn’t all painted by Rubens. Rubens was in such demand that he couldn’t fill all the orders himself. In his home/studio/factory in Antwerp, he put assistants to work with the backgrounds and trivial details of his huge works, then, before shipping a canvas out the doors, Rubens would bring the work to life with a few final strokes.
Rubens — The Three Graces (Las Tres Gracias)

Rubens loved cellulite. The Three Graces have ample, sensual bodies, glowing skin, rhythmic limbs, grace, and delicacy, set against a pleasant background. His young second wife, the model for the Grace at left, shows up fairly regularly in Rubens’ paintings. This particular painting was for his own private collection. Remember that in later, more prudish years, many of Rubens’ nudes, like Titian’s, were wrapped in brown paper and locked in the closet.

* Return to the main gallery. Turn left midway down the gallery into the large lozenge-shaped Room 12.