Sunday, August 6, 2017

Scenes and Portraits from the 1690s

Crescenzio Onofri
Destruction of Niobe's Children
before 1698
oil on canvas
Dulwich Picture Gallery, London

David Teniers
Seven Corporal Works of Mercy
ca. 1690
oil on panel
Dulwich Picture Gallery, London

David Klöcker Ehrenstrahl
Family of  Charles XI with relatives from the duchy Holstein-Gottorp
1691
oil on canvas
Royal Armoury, Stockholm

"If there is an inherently Baroque costume, it is broad, in distending waves, billowing and flowing, surrounding the body with its independent folds, ever-multiplying, never betraying those of the body beneath: a system like rhingrave-canons – ample breeches bedecked with ribbons – but also vested doublets, flowing cloaks, enormous flaps, overflowing shirts, everything that forms the great Baroque contribution to clothing of the seventeenth century."

Alessandro Rosi
Allegory of Virtue
before 1697
oil on canvas
Museum of Fine Arts, Houston

Anonymous Dutch Painter
Portrait of a Woman
ca. 1690-95
oil on canvas
Dulwich Picture Gallery, London

Sebastiano Conca
Allegorical ceiling panels
ca. 1695-1705
oil on canvas
Museum of Fine Arts, Houston

"Yet the Baroque is not only projected in its own style of dress.  It radiates everywhere, at all times, in the thousand folds of garments that tend to become one with their respective wearers, to exceed their attitudes, to overcome their bodily contradictions, and to make their heads look like those of swimmers bobbing in the waves.  We find it in painting, where the autonomy conquered through the folds of clothing that invade the entire surface becomes a simple but sure sign of rupture with Renaissance space . . . "

Paolo de Matteis
Allegory of Knowledge and the Arts in Naples
ca. 1699
oil on canvas
Museum of Fine Arts, Houston

Giuseppe Maria Crespi
Sacrifice of Isaac
1690s
oil on canvas
National Gallery, Oslo

"This liberation of folds that are no longer merely reproducing the finite body is easily explained: a go-between – or go-betweens – are placed between clothing and the body.  These are the Elements.  We need not recall that water and its rivers, air and its clouds, earth and its caverns, and light and its fires are themselves infinite folds, as El Greco's painting demonstrates.  We have only to consider the manner by which the elements are now going to mediate, distend, and broaden the relation of clothing to the body.  . . . In every instance folds of clothing acquire an autonomy and a fullness that are not simply decorative effects.  They convey the intensity of a spiritual force exerted on the body, either to turn it upside down or to stand or raise it up over and again, but in every event to turn it inside out and to mold its inner surfaces."

David Richter the Younger
Portrait of Abraham Brahe
1696
oil on canvas
Skokloster Castle, Sweden

Giuseppe Passeri
Triumph of Semiramis
before 1698
drawing
British Museum

Giuseppe Passeri
Aurora in her Chariot
before 1698
drawing
British Museum

Francesco Stringa
Allegorical still-life with Bernini's bust of Francesco I d'Este, Duke of Modena
ca. 1690
oil on canvas
Minneapolis Institute of Art

Edward Collier
Letter-rack
ca. 1698
oil on canvas
Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide

"The usual formula for Baroque still life is: drapery, producing folds of air or heavy clouds; a tablecloth, with maritime or fluvial folds; jewelry that burns with folds of fire; vegetables, mushrooms, or sugared fruits caught in their earthly folds.  The painting is so packed with folds that there results a sort of schizophrenic "stuffing."  They could not be unraveled without going to infinity and thus extracting its spiritual lesson.  . . .  The law of extremum of matter entails a maximum of matter for a minimum of extension.  Thus, matter tends to flow out of the frame, as it often does in trompe l'oeil compositions, where it extends forward horizontally.  Clearly some elements, such as air and fire, tend to move upward, but matter generally always tends to unfold its pleats at great length, in extension."

– quoted passages are from The Fold: Leibniz and the Baroque by Gilles Deleuze, originally published in 1988, translated by Tom Conley and published in 1993 by University of Minnesota Press

Nicolaes Piemont
Cloudy sky with birds
(ceiling painting for a doll's house)

ca. 1690-1709
oil on canvas
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam