Infatuations

Anonymous French Artist
Abduction of Europa
ca. 1650-1700
oil on canvas
Musée d'Art et d'Histoire de Narbonne

Hendrik van Balen
Abduction of Europa
ca. 1610
oil on panel
Liechtenstein Museum, Vienna

Hendrik Goltzius
Jupiter and Europa
ca. 1590
drawing
Städel Museum, Frankfurt

Bernardino Luini
Europa and Companions picking Flowers
ca. 1520-22
drawing
(study for fresco)
Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

Antonio Canova
Venus and Adonis
1795
marble
Musées d'Art et d'Histoire, Genève

Marcantonio Franceschini
Venus discovering the Dead Adonis
ca. 1695
drawing
Liechtenstein Museum, Vienna

Pietro Bianchi
Apollo and Daphne
before 1740
oil on canvas
Musée Calvet, Avignon

Johann August Nahl the Younger
Cupid and Psyche
before 1825
drawing
Kupferstichkabinett-
Staatliche Kunstsammlungen, Dresden

Jacob Jordaens
Cupid and Psyche
ca. 1643-47
oil on canvas
Royal Museum of Fine Arts, Antwerp

Nicolas Bertin
Psyche abandoned by Cupid
ca. 1720
oil on canvas
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Carcassonne

Nicoletto da Modena
Leda and the Swan
ca. 1500-1510
engraving
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

James Pradier
Leda and the Swan
1851
ivory and bronze
with gold, silver and turquoises
Musées d'Art et d'Histoire, Genève

Johann Rudolf Schellenburg
Portrait of artist Jacques-Antoine Arlaud
(vignette of Leda and the Swan)
ca. 1769
drawing
(print study for book illustration)
Graphische Sammlung, Zentralbibliothek Zürich

Salomon Gessner
Leda and the Swan
ca. 1802-1803
etching
Graphische Sammlung, Zentralbibliothek Zürich

Giulio Bonasone
Leda and the Swan
(series, Loves of the Gods)
ca. 1545
engraving
Kupferstichkabinett,
Staatliche Kunstsammlungen, Dresden

Virgil Solis
Leda and the Swan
ca. 1550
drawing
Kupferstichkabinett, Kunstmuseum Basel

The Medieval distinction between universals and particulars was mainly a matter of logic.  In these terms, Leonardo had discovered a law about the biological class called "trees" to which every individual tree belonged.  Those who wanted to portray a tree in their garden had first to know about the structure and proportion of trees.  But thanks in part to the influence of Platonism, the whole distinction could be given a different twist.  For Plato, the universal is the idea, the perfect pattern of the tree exists somewhere in a place beyond the heavens, or, to use the technical term, in the intelligible world.  Individual trees or horses or men, such as the painter may encounter in real life, are only imperfect copies of these eternal patterns, imperfect because base matter will always resist the flawless seal and prevent the idea from realizing itself.  It was on these grounds that Plato himself denied art its validity, for what value can there be in copying an imperfect copy of the idea?  But on the same grounds, Neoplatonists tried to assign to art a new place that was eagerly seized upon by the emerging academies.  It is just the point, they argued, that the painter, unlike ordinary mortals, is a person endowed with the divine gift of perceiving, not the imperfect and shifting world of individuals, but the eternal patterns themselves.  He must purify the world of matter, erase its flaws, and approximate it to the idea.  He is aided in this by the knowledge of the laws of beauty, which are those of harmonious, simple geometrical relationships, and by the study of those antiques that already represent reality "idealized," i.e., approximated to the Platonic ideal.

I believe this doctrine, which held sway in the academies for at least three hundred years, from 1550 to 1850, rests on self-deception.  It endows the art of drawing, not a particular tree, but a tree, not a particular man, but a man . . . with a slightly specious philosophical halo.  Mere portrayal is menial and low.  You must recreate nature.  If the tree or the man in front of you does not conform to that geometrical scaffolding now presented as the perfect canon, so much the worse for the tree or the man.  The perfect painter is endowed with the gift of seeing the universal in the particular, of looking across the dross of matter at the "essential form" which –in Aristotelian rather than in Platonic terms – shaped the resisting clay from within.

We need not doubt that painters experienced this very thrill.  And yet one suspects that the pattern they found behind the visible world was not the one laid up in heaven but the remembered shapes they had learned in their youth.  Would not a Chinese call that orchid "perfect" which corresponds most closely to the rules he had absorbed?  Do we not tend to judge human bodies by their resemblance to those Greek statues that have become traditionally identified with the canon of beauty? 

– E.H. Gombrich, Art and Illusion: a Study in the Psychology of Pictorial Representation (Princeton University Press, 1960)

Nymphs

Roman Empire
Nymph
AD 125-150
marble
Musées d'Art et d'Histoire, Genève

Victor Müller
Model posed as Wood Nymph
ca. 1862
drawing
Städel Museum, Frankfurt

Jean-Baptiste Regnault
Sleeping Nymph spied upon by Satyr
ca. 1775-85
drawing
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Agostino Carracci
Satyr and sleeping Nymph
(Lascivie Series)
ca. 1590-95
engraving
Graphische Sammlung, ETH Zürich

Hans Thoma
Faun and Nymph
1888
watercolor on paper
Städel Museum, Frankfurt

Alexander Keirincx (landscape) and Dirck van der Lisse (figures)
Nymphs at Rest
ca. 1635
oil on canvas
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Carcassonne

François Boucher
Nymphs and River Gods
ca. 1735-40
drawing
Städel Museum, Frankfurt

attributed to Benedetto Bordone
Nymph leading Poliphilo
1499
woodcut and letterpress
(from the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili of Francesco Colonna
published by Aldus Manutius in Venice)
Hamburger Kunsthalle

Marco Dente
Vulcan with Nymph and Putti
(series, Antike Basreliefs)
ca. 1510-25
engraving
Graphische Sammlung, ETH Zürich

Christos Karas
Centaur and Nymph
1930
screenprint
National Gallery, Athens

Pietro Rotari
Marsyas discovered by Nymphs and Satyrs
before 1762
drawing
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Anselm Feuerbach
Children making Music while Nymph listens
1864
oil on canvas
Neue Pinakothek, Munich

Felice Torelli
Diana with Nymphs
ca. 1710
oil on canvas
National Museum, Warsaw

Cornelis van Poelenburgh
Diana with her Nymphs
1659
oil on panel
Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen

Peter Paul Rubens and workshop
Diana and Nymphs departing for the Hunt
ca. 1615
oil on canvas
Cleveland Museum of Art, Ohio

Jean-Antoine Watteau after Peter Paul Rubens
Satyr embracing Nymph
ca. 1714
drawing
Cabinet d'Arts Graphiques des Musées d'Art et d'Histoire, Genève

Leonardo was obviously dissatisfied with the current method of drawing trees.  He knew a better way.  "Remember," he taught, "that wherever a branch divides, the stem grows correspondingly thinner, so that, if you draw a circle round the crown of the tree, the sections of every twig must add up to the thickness of the trunk."  I do not know if this law holds.  I do not think it quite does.  But as a hint on "how to draw trees," Leonardo's observation is invaluable.  By teaching the assumed laws of growth he has given the artist a formula for constructing a tree – and so he can still feel like the creator, "Lord and Master of all things," who knows the secrets of nature and can "make" trees as he hoped to "make" a bird that would fly.   

I believe what we call the Renaissance artists' preoccupation with structure has a very practical basis in their need to know the schema of things.  For in a way our very concept of "structure," the idea of some basic scaffolding or armature that determines the "essence" of things, reflects our need for a schema with which to grasp the infinite variety of this world of change.  No wonder these issues have become somewhat clouded by a metaphysical fog which settled over the discussions of art in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.  

– E.H. Gombrich, Art and Illusion: a Study in the Psychology of Pictorial Representation (Princeton University Press, 1960)

Derivations

Jost Amman
Medea with Dragons
1578
woodcut
Herzog Anton Ulrich Museum, Braunschweig

Anonymous German Artist
Mermaid bearing Coat of Arms
ca. 1560
drawing
Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen, Dresden

Anonymous German Artist
Mythical Sea Creatures Battling
17th century
drawing
Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen, Dresden

Anonymous Artist after Parmigianino
Jason with the Golden Fleece
ca. 1590
woodcut
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Anonymous Ferrarese Artist
Theseus abandoning Ariadne
ca. 1540
oil on panel
Alte Pinakothek, Munich

Nicolaes Berchem
Death of Dido
1678
oil on canvas
Liechtenstein Museum, Vienna

Anonymous European Artist
Bacchanal
17th century
oil on canvas
Museum de Fundatie, Zwolle, Netherlands

Anonymous French Artist
Iphigénie en Tauride
17th century
oil on canvas
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Brest

Charles Brocas
Aristides
(as described by Herodotus)
1806
oil on canvas
Musée des Augustins de Toulouse

attributed to Domenico Campagnola
Bacchic Scene
ca. 1520-25
drawing
Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

Heinrich Friedrich Füger
Mythological Scene
ca. 1800
drawing
Städel Museum, Frankfurt

Tommaso Piroli
Theseus with slain Minotaur
(series, Antiquities of Herculaneum)
1789
etching
Hamburger Kunsthalle

Pierre Brébiette
Amphitrite assisting Venus descending from Shell Chariot
ca. 1640
engraving
Graphische Sammlung, ETH Zürich

Marco Carlone
Mythological Figures
ca. 1775-80
watercolor and gouache on paper
(after antique wall painting from the Baths of Titus, Rome)
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Laurent-Honoré Marqueste
Perseus and Medusa
1875
plaster
Musée des Augustins de Toulouse

Rudolf Jettmar
Liberation of Prometheus
1910
drawing
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

The Greek revolution deserves its fame.  It is unique in the annals of mankind.  This should be acknowledged even by those who side with Plato in their taste for the archaic and ritualistic.  What makes it unique is precisely the directed efforts, the continued and systematic modifications of the schemata of conceptual art, till making was replaced by the matching of reality through the new skill of mimesis.  We mistake the character of this skill if we speak of the imitation of nature.  Nature cannot be imitated or "transcribed" without first being taken apart and put back together again.  This is not the work of observation alone but rather of ceaseless experimentation.  For here too, the term "observation" has tended to mislead rather than enlighten.  

There is no reason to think Greek artists offered a more complete or more accurate visual inventory of the world than did the art of Egypt, Mesopotamia, or Crete.  On the contrary, in these early cultures the schemata of animals and plants were often refined to an astounding degree.  . . .  After all, Greek art of the classical period concentrated on the portrayal of man almost to the exclusion of other motifs, and even in the portrayal of man it remained wedded to types. This does not apply only to the idealized type of physique which we all associate with Greek art.  Even in the rendering of movement and drapery the repertoire of Greek sculpture and painting has turned out to be strangely limited.  There are a restricted number of formulas for the rendering of figures standing, running, fighting, or falling, which Greek artists repeated with relatively slight variations over a long period of time.  Perhaps if a census of such motifs were taken, the Greek vocabulary would be found to be not much larger than the Egyptian.  

It is not even necessarily true that individual observations, such as the existence of shadows or of foreshortening, were never made by pre-Greek artists.  There are certain striking examples of such observations in Mexican art that would refute [Heinrich] Shäfer's contention that all such departures from conceptual modes are directly dependent on the Greek revolution.  But it was Shäfer himself who rightly pointed out that what is interesting in the isolated instances of such deviations, which can even be found in Egypt, is that they remained without consequence.  They do not become part of the tradition to be improved and extended, as they do in Greece.  On the contrary, one has the impression that they are accidents, random mutations, which are weeded out by a process of natural selection.  . . .  Maybe taboos played their part in this sorting-out process.  But most of all, we may assume, tradition itself had this effect.  Nothing succeeds like success, and nothing survives like survival.  The very fact that certain images had survived for immeasurable periods must have appeared as a token of their magic potency. 

– E.H. Gombrich, Art and Illusion: a Study in the Psychology of Pictorial Representation (Princeton University Press, 1960)

Derivations

attributed to Simone Bianco
Idealized Classical Head
ca. 1540
marble
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

Carl Friedrich Lessing
Study of Classical Head
1825
drawing
Cincinnati Art Museum, Ohio

Annibale Carracci
Classical Figure with Vessel
ca. 1595
drawing
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Arvid Fougstedt
Classical Motif
1931
etching
Moderna Museet, Stockholm

Baccio Bandinelli
Frieze of Classical Figures
ca. 1519-25
drawing
Morgan Library, New York

Marcantonio Raimondi after Francesco Francia
Bathing Scene with Classical Frieze Figures
ca. 1510
engraving
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Augustus John
Four Figures in Antique Dress
ca. 1891
drawing
Swindon Museum and Art Gallery, Wiltshire

Johann August Nahl the Younger
Two Women in Classical Draperies
before 1825
drawing
Kupferstichkabinett,
Staatliche Kunstsammlungen, Dresden

Agostino Musi after Giulio Romano
Classical Couple holding Hands
ca. 1515-30
engraving
Graphische Sammlung, ETH Zürich

Anonymous Printmaker after Franz Ludwig Catel
Roman Woman applying Cosmetics, assisted by Slave
ca. 1798
etching
Herzog August Bibliothek, Wulfenbüttel

Salomon Gessner
Classical Vignette for Winckelmann's Letters
ca. 1802-1803
etching
(posthumously printed)
Graphische Sammlung, Zentralbibliothek Zürich

Ciro Ferri
Classical Scene before Enthroned Figure
ca. 1675
drawing
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Lyon

Federico Zuccaro
Classical Scene
(unidentified narrative)
ca. 1580
drawing
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Auguste-Barthélemy Glaize
Study for Classical Figure
ca. 1870
drawing
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Valenciennes

Francisque Millet
Classical Landscape with Water-Carrier
ca. 1660-70
oil on canvas
Landesmuseum, Hannover

Étienne Allegrain
Classical Landscape with Ruins
ca. 1690
oil on canvas
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Lyon

There is another famous passage in the writings of Pliny that also concerns an incomplete figure, but this time the appeal to the imagination is even greater: we hear that Timanthes painted the sacrifice of Iphigenia and expressed the grief of those around her in such a masterly way that when he came to represent her father Agamemnon, he had to suggest the climax of sorrow by representing him with his cloak drawn over his face, an enclosed world within the picture's world, which excited the admiration of the classical orators.  

There is a painting on one of the walls of a Pompeian house that reflects this motif.  It is not a great work of art, and the same criticism applies to many other copies of Greek works found in Italy and elsewhere.  But such criticism has tended to obscure the most astounding consequence of the Greek miracle: the fact that copies were ever made at all to be displayed in the houses and gardens of the educated.  For this industry of making reproductions for sale implies a function of the image of which the pre-Greek world knew nothing.  The image has been pried loose from the practical context for which it was conceived and is admired and enjoyed for its beauty and fame, that is, quite simply within the context of art.  For this is the final consequence of that great "chain reaction."  The creation of an imaginative realm led to an acknowledgement of what we call "art" and the celebration of those rare spirits who could explore and extend that realm.

It may sound paradoxical to say that the Greeks invented art, but from this point of view, it is a mere sober statement of fact.  We rarely realize how much this concept owes to the heroic spirit of those discoverers who were active between 550 and 350 B.C.  For the history of these years as it is reflected in Pliny or Quintilian was handed down like an epic of conquest, a story of inventions.  When Quintilian called the contorted attitude of Myron's Discobolos "particularly praiseworthy for its novelty and difficulty," he codified a standard of criticism that linked art with the solution of problems.  The names of the artists who discovered new effects to increase illusion and lifelikeness, the names of Myron and Phidias, Zeuxis and Apelles, lived on in history and have retained their magic despite the fact we do not know one work from their hands.  The legend of their triumphs remained as potent in the history of Western art as did the actual works that were recovered from the soil.  The writers of the Renaissance echoed the anecdotes that extolled the powers of painting to deceive the eye – the very character which made Plato disapprove of art and prefer the immutable laws of the Egyptian canon. 

– E.H. Gombrich, Art and Illusion: a Study in the Psychology of Pictorial Representation (Princeton University Press, 1960)