Christmas thoughts on painting and symbol...

Detail, Zanobi Strozzi, c.1433.

(Perhaps with some figure work by Fra Angelico?)

Predella to an altarpiece.

Tempera with gold on wood.

Wikipedia Creative Commons licence.

Image donated to CC by the Met.

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                                           Oh Thou, whose glorious, yet contracted light,

                                           Wrapt in night's mantle, stole into a manger;

                                           Since my dark soul and brutish is Thy right,

                                           To man of all beasts be not Thou a stranger

                                                 --from George Herbert, "Christmas" (I), 1633

I've long been friends with painters, and I love wandering among drawings and paintings. I have a particular affection for medieval paintings, and for the iconography of that era. One thing I especially find intriguing about medieval religious paintings is that the images possessed a function that was far more vital than that of paintings today. A painter in our time often wishes to have his or her painting in a static or traveling group show or a solo show. The painter desires to have images appear in an article or review, and longs to achieve the status of seeing his or her own paintings housed permanently in a museum. I dearly love to visit museums and would never dismiss them. But a medieval painter's labors joined a great variety of other crafted works to beautify and inspire in churches, cathedrals, synagogues, shrines, and castles. Art meant skill to make significant, beautiful creations. And many an artisan felt himself to be such a maker, part of a great body of people crafting and incarnating a house or way-station for God. Afterward, the made things were intimately connected to the highest spiritual feelings of many people, and they became an essential part of worship. Paintings, carvings, and sculpted pieces have frequently ended up in our museum collections, where they now have a more limited existence, drained of prior life and power, but yet... they once had that earlier glory. The symbolism in medieval paintings and icons likewise held meaning and a living power, where for most viewers today it remains merely a colorful mystery. 

So here's my Christmas greeting, rife with symbol and beauty: an adoration scene with ox and ass portraying the yoking of clean and unclean, centered on the infant Jesus. This iconography is extra-biblical, though reflected in St. Peter's highly symbolic dream of a sheet of clean and unclean foods let down from heaven. Such yokings reflect the baby's bringing of clean (Jewish) and unclean (Gentile) peoples together under the rule of Christ. Meanwhile the baby who binds the earthly and divine is radiant and haloed in gold, the metal at the top of the medieval hierarchy of metals. Perhaps he is so nearly naked and so radiant because painters of the era were inspired by a mystical vision from the prior century. St. Bridget of Sweden saw the baby lying naked on the ground, transfigured by light. 

St. Bridget may also be the source of the portrayal of Mary in prayer--and of her oddly blonde hair as well. Meanwhile, Joseph is less important, smaller, set back, crossing his arms in the attitude of one receiving a blessing. Mary wears a robe of heavenly, royal blue that discloses red, the color linked to Pentecost and the influx of the Holy Spirit. In Joseph, the colors are reversed. I imagine that for a Medieval viewer, the link from red to blood and martyrdom would have been clear as well--the fact that this strange, surprising child is born to die a martyr's death. Mary and Joseph are both serious-faced, befitting their role as guardians of the Messiah and the womb-tomb suggestions of the picture. I'm a little puzzled about the angels, as eleven is a peculiar choice, given medieval numerology. But there is another medieval piece that gives us eleven angels, the wonderful Wilton Diptych (and it has been argued that its heavenly court parallels Joseph's dream with sun, moon, and eleven stars, with Joseph himself honored as the twelfth.)

As in many medieval portrayals of the Nativity, the scene takes place before the shelter of a cave. The visual link between womb and tomb runs back to certain Neolithic passage tombs, and probably earlier. The womb is a place of transformation leading to new birth; the Christian vision of the tomb is also one of transformation and rebirth. The image of the cave (a mix of natural and altered stone) also reminds the viewer of the placing of the body of Christ in the cave (rock-hewn) tomb of Joseph of Arimathea. A cave being a piercing of the hard substance of the world by an ethereal body of air, the shape also suggests the divine that has come to pierce through the material world, and to be pierced in turn. The two support poles before the cave and the single bole of a tree may well have suggested the three "trees" on Golgotha to a medieval man or woman versed in the symbolism of the time. The tree is flourishing, again emblematic of new life. Far in the background, seven (a number of fullness and completion) towers on a hill and points the way toward heaven.

So there you go--a medieval Christmas card.

Have a joyous Christmas Eve and Day.

The Met site states that this tempera painting was originally attributed to the marvelous Fra Angelico but is now thought to be by his pupil, Zanobi Strozzi. Strozzi is known for his illuminations.

Fra Angelico at Easter

Update, 16 hours later: One thing I love about comments is that people say curious things, and then that helps me to know my own mind. Here's a bit of my reply to the ever-interesting poet (and more) with the alliterative name, Roderick Robinson, drawn from the just-prior post on Fra Angelico's Christ:

I look at Fra Angelico with a kind of relief, knowing that he would never, ever believe in "a senseless act of beauty," that beauty for him is always meaningful. So different from our own day. He's always so direct and clear and devoted to the art. Like George Herbert, he could have been much in a worldly sense but turned away from those chances. I admire that sort of understanding, one that sees so clearly what is important in life and what is not. And there we are veering closer to what you call "unfashionability as a virtue."

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I'm too tired to think in words, so here's a little more Fra Angelico to admire--a detail from a fresco, "Resurrection of Christ and the Women at the Tomb" at the Convento di San Marco, Florence, 1440-1441. Public domain image. Here are some more beautiful San Marco images from Fra Angelico.

Here is how Giorgio Vasari describes Fra Angelico in his Lives of the Most Excellent Artists, Sculptors, and Architects:

He would not follow the ways of the world, but lived purely and holily, and was a great friend of the poor. He painted constantly, and would never represent anything but the saints. He might have been rich, but did not care about it, saying that true riches are nothing else than being content with little... To sum up, this father, who can never be enough praised, was in all his works and words most humble and modest, and in his paintings facile and devout; and the saints whom he painted have more the air and likeness of saints than those of any one else. It was his habit never to retouch or alter any of his paintings, but to leave them as they came the first time, believing, as he said, that such was the will of God. 

And now good night! Or good morning, elsewhere.

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Nancy Olson, founder and 29-year owner of Quail Ridge Books of Raleigh.

 Requiescat in Pace

500-year art for Good Friday

A few years back, I was startled by a face looking out of the marvelous Fra Angelico show at the Met. It is a common enough compliment to say that images are arresting, even when they are not. I can say from experience that this one is.  ‪It's right for the day, right for a week that reminds us of murdered innocence and grief for the world.

The image also reminds me of painter Makoto Fujimura's essay, "Fra Angelico and the Five Hundred Year Question."

I entered the halls and the golden aura of a diminutive Virgin Mary painting greeted me, with her azurite robe, and the Christ child’s supple body, reflecting her humanity -- a simple work full of weighty colors. Then I had to close my eyes, after a few seconds of pondering the saturated surface. I realized this was too much to behold, all at once. As I staggered about looking for a blank wall to stare at, almost feeling ashamed to be in the presence of such greatness, I had a “500 year” question pop up in my mind.

What is the five hundred year question? Well, it’s a historical look at the reality of our cultures, and asking what ideas, what art, what vision affects humanity for over five hundred years. It’s the opposite of the Warholian “15 seconds of fame.”

It was, you see, inspired by his visit to the Fra Angelico show.

"Angelic brother"

A bit of work from the wondrous hand
of Fra Angelico (1395-1455) for Good Friday.
Detail from a crucifixion including both fall
and redemption, the blood of Christ
beginning to stream onto the skull of Adam.
Via Wikipedia, public domain.

Unworldliness

Fra Angelico (1395-1455) Annunciatory angel
Here's an account of the "sublime exhibition"
where I encountered this angel in 2005.

Rose at five to roust a boy for a faraway wrestling tournament and dry the singlet (ah! forgot.) The world is still deep-blue-and-night-on-snow. I've had a number of reasons of late to remember how strange it is to be an artist of any kind--how odd my concerns look in a worldly light. And yet I am so blessed and lucky to live when I do, in a time when I didn't die in childbirth (but would have, in an earlier age), a time when a woman is allowed to twist words into shapes and a man is allowed to cook her dinner.

In front of me is an image of one of Fra Angelico's angels, the reality encountered and the print bought at an extraordinary show at the Met some years ago. The shape between halo and wing is full of grace and beauty, and the flushed, alien skin and rich hair are still alive with an unworldly light. The wings are eyed like a peacock's, seeing everything. How wonderful that half a millenium later, this angel is still speaking, and I am alive and harking to its lovely gestures.

In his turbulent age, Fra Angelico found again and again the peace to make such radiant paintings, ballasted with what Makoto Fujimura calls "angelic weight." In our time, so rife with visual noise and loud, time-frittering leisure and the world's terrible alarms, that peace is an island of hush that still exists if we can only sit still and wait--as I wait now on words.

New York Diary

Illustration: Fra Angelico's
The Apostle Saint James the Great Freeing the Magician Hermogenes,
ca. 1429–30
Fra Angelico (Italian, 1390/5–1455). Tempera and gold on panel; 10 x 8 7/8 in. Collection of Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth, Texas


The Bus

Usually I drive or take the train, but this time I tried the bus. Chilly going south; warm going north. The bus is counter-intuitive. On the way down, all the riders seemed to know one another’s troubles and minor events, interacting with the driver, flamboyantly sharing the New York Times. On the way back, there were heaps of college students, particularly Japanese students going to Delhi.

Cell Phones (that nuisance, sometimes curious) on the return journey

A SUNY-Oneonta student was talking about his flight. The plane kept dropping by 700-foot increments until the oxygen masks deployed and everybody panicked. Behind me was a New Yorker heading upstate—a friend? girlfriend? relative?—had arrived home and found three armed men in the house. One held a gun to her head; one shot her father.

January 17

Sharyn November

Sharyn, the editor for my upcoming Firebird (Penguin) paperbacks, was exactly as I had imagined her, except slightly less Valkyriesque—that is, she proved a mere 5’9”. (Those of us on the hobbity side of height, of course, think it would be perfectly marvelous to be anywhere above 5’3”.) Scads of red hair, voluble, lots of gusto, interesting in appearance and manner: in fact, I think that she should have been a Robertson Davies character. She asked me for a story for the next Firebirds anthology. And she mailed off a batch of Firebirds for me, so I’ll know more about her sensibility soon.

January 18

Horrible wind and rain, so I didn’t go to the Fra Angelico show at the Met as planned. Instead I stayed in until the wind died down a bit—at the Incentra Village House on Eighth between 12th & Jane—and then walked to Union Square in the rain. On the way I bought R an elegant black velvet dress for the middle school Cotillion…

Margaret Ferguson & Sabeth Albert

We had lunch at the Blue Water Grill, and I was glad to find that FSG seems to be expecting another children’s book from me. It was a pleasant, peaceful spot in the day. I’d never met Margaret before and liked her very much.

Liz Darhansoff

An altogether satisfactory meeting with my agent, despite the fact that the scene for what is called “literary” fiction seems worse than ever… Evidently I left my umbrella as a memento, but it seems as though there’s plenty of use for it in the city.

Datlow & Schanoes & Vandermeer & the KGB Bar

Ellen Datlow is another interesting figure, easy to meet and very knowledgeable. She steered me around all evening. KGB was jammed to such an extent that I didn’t know Elaine and Stephanie had come from FSG until after the whole thing was over. I met heaps of editors and writers and sundry attached parties and got invitations to submit material and also to be on a radio show that starts at the ungodly hour of 5:00 a.m. Live. In NYC. Maybe someday…

I read my brand new story, “The Smaragdine Knot,” and Jeff Vandermeer read from Shriek and from his “Secret Lives”—all funny and well done. Veronica Schanoes introduced me and mentioned the fact that I used to wear lizard earrings. However, she didn’t say that I was a mere child at the time. She has a piece on line at Endicott Studio, “How to Bring Somebody Back from the Dead.” Jim Freund recorded the reading for WBAI 99.5, and I suppose one may be able to find it via www.hourwolf.com/.

I have no idea where we went for dinner, but there were hordes of people who came along, and the food was mostly Szechuan. Jeff gave me the nutshell version of his theory of marketing. Ann told me that he’ll often do four or five hours of “business” per day. He is notable for and somewhat unique in being such a good promoter of his books, I think; most writers don’t seem to be able to write and promote well. On the bus ride home, Rick Bowes told me that there used to be a Fenimore Cooper plaque on the St. Mark’s Bathhouse! Now there's a queer thought…

January 19

Elisabeth Dyssegaard

I had breakfast at French Roast with my elegant former editor at FSG, and we talked about the possiblility of a nonfiction book for her new house, Smithsonian Books. I do have some Templeton-related ideas. What a strange little village it is, with a good deal of history, more than most dots on a North American map.

Fra Angelico

The show: so marvelous that I almost missed my bus.

"This first major exhibition of Fra Angelico’s work since the quincentenary exhibition of 1955 in Florence—and the first ever in this country—reunites approximately 75 paintings, drawings, and manuscript illuminations covering all periods of the artist’s career, from ca. 1410 to 1455. Included are several new attributions and paintings never before exhibited publicly, as well as numerous reconstructions of dispersed complexes, some reunited for the first time. An additional 45 works by Angelico's assistants and closest followers illustrate the spread and continuity of his influence into the second half of the 15th century." --thus saith the Met

Flew back to the Incentra in a magic taxi and marched double-time to the subway. Blue line closed. Managed to take another to Times Square and walk the infinite underground corridor to the Port Authority. Miles of tile. It’s rather like walking through the world’s largest bathroom but never getting to the point.