The Tale of the Third Portrait

John Fisher and Thomas More
Possibly Italian, c. 1550-1600
London, Royal Collections Trust

“Beloved, do not be surprised that a trial by fire is occurring among you, as if something strange were happening to you.

But rejoice to the extent that you share in the sufferings of Christ, so that when his glory is revealed you may also rejoice exultantly.

If you are insulted for the name of Christ, blessed are you, for the Spirit of glory and of God rests upon you.”

1 Peter 4:12-14.  Excerpt from the First Reading of the Optional Memorial of Saint John Fisher, bishop and martyr, and Saint Thomas More, martyr for Masses celebrated on June 22.

New Yorkers have an amazing privilege in that they can see the actual faces of the trio of men who had a fateful encounter almost 500 years ago, all within a walk of about half a mile.  The three men are Thomas More and John Fisher, staunch defenders of Catholic doctrine and discipline at a time when it was under severe attack, and Thomas Cromwell, leader of the forces seeking to undo both.  At the time Cromwell was successful and both men died at the hands of the executioner.  In the long run, Cromwell’s personal victory was brief as he himself fell to the ax.  Further, he has been seen as the villain of the story ever since (barring Hilary Mantel’s recent trilogy of novels which cast him as a rather twisted hero).  His single minded drive to eradicate Catholicism in England, although never entirely successful, has, however, had a longer term effect.

Usual arrangement of the two Holbein portraits in the Living Hall of the Frick Collection
(Photo Credit -- Michelle Young for Untapped Cities)

Most New Yorkers interested in the Tudor period undoubtedly know that the portraits of More and Cromwell, both masterpieces of portrait art by the incomparable Hans Holbein the Younger, are owned by the Frick Collection.  My earlier piece on the clash of portraits across Mr. Frick’s fireplace is my most popular.

Most people are not aware, however, of a slightly earlier portrait of the other figure of the trio, Saint John Fisher, which is owned by the Metropolitan Museum of Art.  It has been in storage for many years, finally reappearing just before the onset of the pandemic closures as the first object one encounters in the newly reinstalled British Art galleries.

    

Pietro Torrigiano, Bishop John Fisher
Italian, c. 1510-1515
New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art

Saint John Fisher was, at the time of his execution, Bishop of Rochester.  His story is a fascinating one, for in his life he had moved among the very highest level of English society.  He was chaplain to Lady Margaret Beaufort, mother of King Henry VII and grandmother of Henry VIII.  He was also very involved in the establishment of new colleges at the University of Cambridge, where he also served as a teacher and as Vice-Chancellor, in addition to his other duties.  There is contemporary testimony about his piety and austere lifestyle in spite of his exalted company.  There is even the possibility that, due to the influence of Lady Margaret, he may have been, for a time, the tutor to the young Prince Henry who would become Henry VIII.

Philipp Galle, John Fisher
Dutch, 1572
London, National Portrait Gallery

When Henry VIII began his assault on his marriage to Catherine of Aragon, Bishop Fisher was one of those who defended the Queen and the marriage.  Indeed, it was he who represented her at the Legatine Court that assembled to try the case.  She herself ended this phase of his career by famously insisting that the case be referred to Rome.  

As the situation became more highly pressured, Bishop Fisher remained a staunch advocate for the validity of the marriage and for its indissolubility.   Needless to say, this angered the King greatly.  As the pressure increased with Parliament’s actions in denying the right to appeal to Rome, in declaring Henry to be head of the Church in England and then requiring an oath in support of the divorce of Queen Catherine and the remarriage to Anne Boleyn, Fisher found himself in prison in 1534. He was condemned as a traitor and beheaded in June 1535, a few weeks before Sir Thomas More also lost his life.  Both men saw the ultimate stupidity of the king’s moves in the light of eternity and truth and resisted to the end the efforts to convince them to “go along with the pack”.

 

Anonymous, The Pope Suppressed by King Henry VII
English, c. 1570
London, National Portrait Gallery

In this woodcut print you can see Henry VIII pressing down Pope Clement VII with the support of Thomas Cromwell and Thomas Cranmer.  Bishop Fisher is the kneeling figure on the left who is trying to support the Pope.  Various clerics, monks and ordinary people express shock and dismay.

I have examined the portraits of More and Cromwell in detail in the article called “The Tale of Two Portraits”.  The two remain together in their new setting at the Marcel Breuer building on Madison Avenue, the former home of the Whitney Museum.  The Frick’s treasures have been moved there to allow for them to be seen by the public during the extensive renovation and enlargement taking place at the Frick building on Fifth Avenue.  In the temporary installation the sumptuous trappings of the enormous parlor room in the Frick building have been removed and the two portraits face each other across empty space.  I’m not positive about whether this has been an enhancement or not, possibly since I have literally grown up with the opulent setting. *

 

Current installation of the Holbein portraits at the Frick Madison temporary location.
(Photo -- Art and Object)

The portrait of Bishop Fisher is in the form of a portrait bust by the Italian sculptor Pietro Torrigiano.  Torrigiano is probably most famous for an outburst of anger rather than for his work as a sculptor.  He and Michelangelo were fellow students and rivals in the “academy” set up for young Florentine artists by Lorenzo the Magnificent.  One day, when Michelangelo poked fun at the drawings of Torrigiano, the latter boy punched him in the face.  The blow broke Michelangelo’s nose, a disfigurement he carried for the rest of his life.   This put Torrigiano in great disfavor with the Medici and he soon looked for alternative places to perfect his art. 

Pietro Torrigiano, Bishop John Fisher
Italian, c. 1510-1515
New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art

In about 1509 he arrived in England to produce a terracotta bust of the recently deceased King Henry VII.  Such busts already had a long history among Florentine sculptors.  It was well received by the new young king Henry VIII.  Young Henry commissioned Torrigiano for the tombs of his father and mother and grandmother, all of which are still extant in Westminster Abbey in the beautiful chapel the older Henry had built for himself.  While in England Torrigiano also made portrait busts of several important churchmen, including Bishop Fisher and John Colet. 

It is presumably toward the beginning of his stay in England that he made the bust of Bishop Fisher.  The Metropolitan Museum is somewhat cagey about the attribution.  Some of the Met’s sources say that it is John Fisher, others say that it is simply “An Unknown Man”.1   So, I’ve done a little research in various English source websites and from the material available there I think that it is extremely reasonable to support the identification as Fisher.  

The objections seem to be based on a perception that the sculpture does not match the portrait sketches of Fisher done by Holbein during his stays in England in the late 1520s or early 1530s.  However, if one remembers that the bust is between ten and twenty years old at the time of the sketches, some of the difficulty vanishes.  

Hans Holbein the Younger, John Fisher
German, c. 1526-1534
London, Royal Collection Trust

Pietro Torrigiano, Bishop John Fisher
Italian, c. 1510-1515
New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art

Comparison between the known portrait of Fisher by Holbein and the Torrigiano bust reveal the same narrow chin, long narrow nose, thin lips and hazel eyes as are found in the portrait drawing and a “pattern” made from it.  

Face Pattern After Hans Holbein the Younger, Bishop John Fisher
German, 16th Century
London, National Portrait Gallery

The pattern is a survivor of one of the professional “tricks of the trade” used by painters in earlier centuries.  A tracing would be made from an original drawing and the copy would serve as the model or “pattern” from which painters and engravers would be able to work in creating multiple copies without harming the original.  The age difference between a man of 41 of the bust and the same man at around 60 in the drawing can easily account for any differences.  In this consideration it is useful to compare the portrait drawing of Thomas More with the finished portrait to see how the immediacy of the drawing can look quite different in the finished work.

Hans Holbein the Younger, Sir Thomas More
German, 1526-1527
London , Royal Collections Trust

j

Hans Holbein the Younger, Sir Thomas More
German, 1527
New York, Frick Collection

The feast day shared by the two men is June 22.  This is a compromise between the actual dates of their deaths.  Bishop Fisher was the first to die, on June 22, 1535.  Sir Thomas More followed a couple of weeks later, on July 6.  

Mistruzzi, Reverse of Medal Commemorating the Canonization of Saints Thomas More and John Fisher
Italian, 1935
London, Royal Collection Trust, Royal Library

Today, when there is continuing and increasing pressure being put on people of faith to “go along with the pack” on a host of serious issues, these determined and brave men stand as beacons of light and courage. 

 © M. Duffy, 2021

* UPDATE: 2025 -- The temporary displacement of the More and Cromwell portraits has come to an end.  They have been returned to their home in the renovated Frick Collection, which reopened in April 2025.

 1.  The Metropolitan Museum of Art Catalog of the Renaissance in Italy and Spain, Introduction by Frederick Hartt, New York, 1987, p. 117 calls it Bust of John Fisher, Bishop of Rochester.

Iain Wardropper, European Sculpture, 1400-1900, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 2011, pp. 47-49 calls it Portrait of an Unknown Man and gives some of the background for disputing the title. 

Wolf Burchard, Nation of Shopkeepers: A Very Brief History of British Decorative Arts, Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin, New York, Spring 2020, pp. 6-7 calls it Bishop John Fisher without referencing any ambiguity.

The exhibition primer for the new British galleries on the Metropolitan Museum website calls it Bishop John Fisher and includes a brief audio clip that includes some of Fisher’s own words in opposition to the divorce.  https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/197752?&exhibitionId=%7bb2bd281b-58c0-42e2-af3a-54dfb36fdd79%7d&oid=197752&pkgids=632&pg=0&rpp=20&pos=1&ft=*&offset=20

Thoughts on the Met Gala and the Vatican’s Loan, Some Perspective

Rihanna at the Met Gala

I was afraid of this.  Once I read the announcement that this year’s summer Costume Institute exhibition would be called “Heavenly Bodies:  Fashion and the Catholic Imagination” I was very afraid.  When I learned that the Vatican had loaned a large number of items for this show I confess to shaking my head. 

No doubt the show, which I have yet to see, as it was strictly off limits to non-involved staff and volunteers, will make some interesting and valid connections between the arts of painting and sculpture and especially the textile arts, that have been inspired, commissioned and displayed as part of Catholic worship and prayer through the centuries.  Indeed, as is being reported widely, the decision to make the show center on the Catholic influence on fashion came about when exploration of a larger show proposal about the influence of religion on fashion turned out to be massively tilted toward Catholicism.  Apparently, fashion has drawn very little from other religions, such as Protestantism, Buddhism, Islam or Judaism.  And fashion, it should be remembered, is primarily a Western, First World obsession.  It really isn’t the exhibition that troubled me.

 

What troubled me was the Gala which precedes it (and which causes the Met to incommode its visitors and close its doors to them for days in advance and days following to allow for the set up and knock down of the sumptuous decoration for the big party).  In this case, several heavily visited parts of the museum were off limits to view for nearly a month, while other portions, including the extremely popular Temple of Dendur, were totally closed for several days in advance of May 7.  The plaza in front of the museum has also mainly been off limits for all of the preceding week and will continue to be for several days as the very large number of tents to accommodate the arriving guests and the attending media, were set up and will be demolished.  This has forced visitors to ascend and descend the stairs by a very narrow channel running directly along the museum wall. 

The entire building was closed on Monday.  In the morning there was a press preview, the afternoon was devoted to the final set up of the interior, and the evening was, of course, the Event.  To get an idea of what the preparation entailed here’s a video from the Met’s Instagram account, showing the transformation of the main information desk near the main entrance in the Great Hall.  Easy to see why visitors and staff are not welcome!  Set up of the Great Hall

The Gala was instituted in the 1940s as a fundraiser for the Costume Institute, which is a self-funded entity within the Metropolitan Museum, supported by the fashion industry and the Gala.  Invitations to the do are limited to 500 or so people and tickets are $30,000 each.  If every ticket is paid for this should result in a gross take of $15 million dollars.  I assume the resulting net amount (after the deductions for the expenses of the event, which must be huge), plus whatever other funding the Institute raises, supports the conservation of the costumes themselves.  It most certainly does not support public access to the collection.  ¹

This was not always so.  When I was a child, teenager and young adult the Costume Institute actually maintained a number of ground floor exhibition galleries.  It used to be great fun to wander through and look at the manner of dress of people from several hundred years ago.  Like most of the museum in those far away days it was basically a fairly plain space that drew its interest from the items on display.   Lighting was kept fairly low, though not dark, on account of the effects of light on fabric.  There was not much razzmatazz.  Things began to change a bit in the 80s, when the great Diana Vreeland was the director of the Institute.  There was somewhat stronger lighting.  More revolving exhibitions took place, but there was still a fairly large space for the public to wander in and some permanence. 

Somewhere along the line, I’m not entirely sure when, the galleries were closed to the public.  I think some of them may have been given to enlarging the staff cafeteria, especially the area for tables, which happened around the same time.  Permanent exhibition of garments ceased and the cycle of publicity grabbing special exhibitions began.  However, these were small and generally confined to the Institute’s own galleries, still in their downstairs location.  I remember standing for a long time on the stairs leading to them with friends just in front of Sting for a show on rock and roll costumes.  (I think it indicative of Sting’s approach that he chose to stand on the stairs with everyone else rather than to demand special treatment.)

With the change of leadership during the 1990s from Ms. Vreeland to a succession of male curators (Richard Martin, Harold Koda and now Andrew Bolton) the exhibitions broke out of the confines of the ground floor galleries and invaded the body of the museum, starting with 2004’s “Dangerous Liaisons:  Fashion and Furniture in the 18^th Century”. 

Dress by Christian Siriano

Then, again at some point I’m not really sure of, the Galas, which have been a feature of the social calendar since the 1940s, began to change. From events involving mainly New York fashion and society they became “celebrity” events.  The invitees began to come, less from the more established New York milieu, than from the world of entertainment, pop and hip-hop music, sports and Hollywood and frequently from their most outrageous fringes.  Therefore, they are not very likely to be aware of much history, art history or of Catholicism, apart from the caricature of it which passes for knowledge among the general public.  Does anyone seriously think that Rihanna has any idea of the meaning of her "hat"?

Therefore, I would guess that more than 95% of the "celebrities" who came to the Gala this year have virtually zero interest in the items on display and even less knowledge.  It is up to the designers they hire (or who hire them, which is more like what actually happens) to draw some idea, no matter how perverse, from it.  And, since the point is to attract attention to the brand, the louder, the skimpier, the more vulgar the better.  One thing that should be borne in mind is that this event, in addition to raising money for the Costume Institute (not the Met, as some people mistakenly think), is all about brand names, something that the Times article I referenced makes very clear.  A lot of brand name recognition for the fashion designers is riding on this.  One nice looking dress that got virtually no publicity was by Christian Siriano, a former winner of TV’s Project Runway.  So, shall we say that “nice” didn’t cut it?

Sarah Jessica Parker by Dolce and Gabbana

In reality, some of the most outrageous outfits were also quite ridiculous, laughable indeed.  Sarah Jessica Parker was probably the funniest, as well as the saddest, covering herself in Dolce and Gabbana gold damask with embroidered images of the Sacred Heart (sort of) and wearing a silly crown chapel with a Nativity scene on top of her dramatically aging face.  

Even more stupid was Katy Parry, fresh from her encounter with Pope Francis and her successful (so far) attempt to evict a group of cloistered nuns.  She came as an angel, fallen perhaps, as she slumped down at the top of the stairs.

It is no surprise to me then, that there should be controversy about the 2018 gala, as there was about the 2015 “China, Through the Looking Glass”, which led to similar complaints about disrespect for a culture, or last year’s incredibly silly “Rai Kawakubo: Comme des Garcons”.

The Sistine Chapel Choir performing in the 

American Wing, underneath a projection of

Michelangelo's Last Judgment from the end

wall of the Sistine Chapel.

That the Vatican should have lent a significant number of items to the exhibition and, in the person of Cardinal Dolan and the Sistine Chapel Choir, lent their presence to the event is not too surprising.2 Loaning the objects, which include papal tiaras and vestments from the collection of the Sistine Chapel, is perfectly understandable.

These objects will be kept within the ground floor Costume Institute galleries, while the fashion garments will be displayed in the medieval galleries at the main Met building on Fifth Avenue and at the Cloisters branch in upper Manhattan.  However, I doubt sincerely whether any of the persons involved in Rome have any knowledge or understanding of the Gala (and the attendees it draws) or realized quite how provocative was the sly double entendre in a portion of the title, as in “Heavenly Bodies”.  * 

And I have never doubted that Cardinal Dolan is a good soldier for the Church.  At the morning press preview, he is quoted as saying “You may be asking, what’s the church doing here? You may be asking, what is the cardinal archbishop of New York doing here? Think about it just for a moment. It’s because the church and the Catholic imagination are all about three things: truth, goodness, and beauty. That’s why we have grade schools and universities, to teach the truth. That’s why we love to serve the poor, to do good. And that’s why we’re into things such as art, poetry, music, liturgy, and, yes, even fashion, to thank God for the gift of beauty.”3 Lots of luck with that, your Eminence!

Cardinal Dolan at the Gala with Stephen and Christine Schwarzman, the Honorary Chairs of the Gala.  To his left are Donatella Versace, Amal Clooney and Anna Wintour, all co-chairs of the Gala.  Co-chair Rihanna is missing.

No doubt the Cardinal hoped that his presence in the evening would be interpreted as a gesture of good will to the Met and not as an endorsement of the goings on.  But, I’m sure that many of the participants, with probably no idea of who he was, probably thought he was a chubby guy wearing one wild party frock.  However, not everyone there was entirely disrespectful and vulgar.  I think that the lovely Versace gown (thank you, Donatella) worn by actress Blake Lively was a nice adaptation of the theme.

Blake Lively in a beautiful bead embroidered gown from Versace.

In fact, based on the number of retweets of her gown, it was the clear public favorite, beating out all the coarse, vulgar, over-the-top competition.  And, of course, the press, in its desire for sensation, mostly showed us only the most outrageous of the costumes on the stairs.  The number of published photos is relatively small, when one considers the number of tickets, representing well under 1/5^th of the total possible.  No doubt most women wore regular evening wear.  Men, of course, had the default position of some iteration of the tuxedo, which no doubt the overwhelming majority of them wore.

Brook Shields in a simple but elegant gown.

Indeed, one comment that I read lamented the fact that so many women came plainly dressed, wearing, as the writer put it, exactly the same kind of dress they would have worn to any other gala.  But who would call Brooke Shields ladylike gown plain?  Or thought Colin Firth’s wife, Livia Giuggioli, was inappropriately dressed?  Probably the vast majority of the attendees were appropriately dressed and those that made themselves absurd and vulgar were a tiny, albeit heavily publicized, minority.  It is interesting to note that neither of the photos of these two referenced ladies came with designer information.  This gives you some clue about what was really going on at the Gala.   So let’s all take a deep breath and calm down.

Mr. and Mrs. Colin Firth

By far the funniest comment I read on the event was on the Met’s Twitter feed for the event.  The writer said “Sitting here judging these $273,927,293 dresses as if I don’t wear the same four shirts every week.”  That puts things into proper perspective, I think.  One should really think of this event as a costume party, with extremely expensive costumes.  Would that some of the cash for that bling could have been given to the Church to serve the poor of the Archdiocese!

The actual exhibition opens this week and will run until the beginning of October.  I’ll be going to a preview viewing tomorrow and will make up my own mind.*

1.  For some background on the event see:  Vanessa Friedman, “What Is the Met Gala, and Who Gets to Go?”, New  York Times, May 3, 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/03/fashion/what-is-the-met-gala-and-who-gets-to-go.html  and now also
Nancy Chilton, "The Met Gala:  From Midnight Suppers to Superheroes and Rihanna" on the Met's website at https://metmuseum.org/blogs/now-at-the-met/2018/met-gala-costume-institute-benefit-brief-history  Also, the Met's publicity department puts the profit of the 2018 Gala at "over $13 million".

2.  To the folks who were worrying on Twitter about what the boys might have seen I say, they probably could barely see anything due to the strength of the spotlights that were shining on them.  In circumstances like that anything beyond the immediate space appears as just a dark blur of heads.

3.  Quoted in H.W. Vail, “Inside the Met’s “Heavenly Bodies” Exhibit”, Vanity Fair, On the Scene, May 7, 2018 https://www.vanityfair.com/style/2018/05/met-exhibit-heavenly-bodies

*  Update:  Apparently  the Vatican is now acknowledging that they slipped up, regarding the Gala "as a “stand-alone event” and took little notice of it — indeed most knew nothing about it until this year".a While I find this excuse entirely in keeping with other similar flubs in recent Vatican history, it is appalling that no one made the minimal effort to search the internet for information about the Met Gala's history.  Not for the first time recently, the Vatican is coming up with a great deal of egg on its face.  

*  Quoted in Edward Pentin blog post "How the Vatican Became Enmeshed in the Met Gala" at the National Catholic Register website http://www.ncregister.com/blog/edward-pentin/how-the-vatican-got-involved-in-the-met-gala

* I did attend the preview.  However, the amount of time it took just to get through the Vatican items in the densely crowded ground floor rooms of the Costume Institute made it impossible to catch more than the briefest glimpse of the fashion part of the exhibition.  So, I will have to wait a bit before writing any kind of review of the whole.

Two Exhibitions at the Opposite Ends of Scale

Visitors viewing the altarpiece of Moses and the Brazen Serpent and the Transfiguration of Jesus
by Cristobal de Villalpando currently on view in the Lehman Wing at the Metropolitan Museum of Art
Photo: © M. Duffy, 2017

New Yorkers are blessed this summer with two exhibitions which center around paintings of religious subjects from the seventeenth century, one at the Frick and the other at the Met.  They share a century and are both expressions of the Baroque, but they couldn’t be more different, both in scale and in tone.

At the Frick

The first show centers around a tiny painting by Rembrandt, called “Divine Encounter:  Rembrandt’sAbraham and the Angels”.  This painting measures only 6-3/8 inches by 8-3/8 inches, about the size of a trade paperback book.  But into that small space Rembrandt poured a monumental composition in miniature that includes not only Abraham and the three angels, but also a landscape, the façade of Abraham’s house and his wife, Sarah.  Typically for Rembrandt, he uses variations in lighting to help tell the story, which is drawn from Genesis 18:1-15.  Abraham is visited by the Lord, who appears as three men to whom Abraham offers refreshment and food.  The visitors predict that Sarah will become a mother in her old age. 

A visitor to the Frick viewing  the tiny Abraham and the Angels
Photo:  © M. Duffy, 2017

In Rembrandt’s interpretation, the tent becomes a house, seen in shadow surrounded with plants and a tree, with Sarah peering from the door at the top of a small staircase.  Abraham is shown kneeling before the three, a bowl in one hand and a pitcher in the other.  The three visitors are reclining and seated in a semi-circle.  A long standing iconographic tradition, going back to the Byzantine empire, depicted the three visitors as identical angels, representing the Holy Trinity.  However, while Rembrandt does represent them as winged, his figures are not identical.  Clever use of lighting and action emphasizes their differences. 

Rembrandt van Rijn, Abraham Entertaining the Angels
Dutch, 1646
Private Collection

The figure closest to the viewer, shown with wings tucked behind his back is dressed in reddish robes and appears to have very short hair.  We cannot see his face, which is turned away from us.  Only a sliver of his profile is illuminated.  The middle figure is not so deeply in shadow, but not yet in full light either.  He is eating and his wings are unfurled, but not yet spread.  His reddish-blonde hair is chin length.  The third figure, shown in dazzling white garments in full light, appears with widespread wings and golden, shoulder length hair as he gestures toward the hidden Sarah.  It is the moment of revelation about the nature of his visitors and the moment of the promise to Abraham that Sarah will have a son.

This tiny painting is surrounded by a series of drawings and prints by Rembrandt that show other moments in the life of Abraham, and even another version of the same subject.  The exhibition is a charming and interesting exercise in Rembrandt connoisseurship and well worth the price of admission to the Frick.  It runs till August 20.

At the Met

Cristobal de Villalpando, Moses and the Brazen Serpent and the Transfiguration of Jesus
Mexican, 1683
Puebla, Catedral de Nuestra Senora de la Immaculada Concepcion

The other show is also well worth the admission price at the Met, but is at the opposite end of just about every scale you can imagine.  It is “Cristobal de Villalpando:  Mexican Painter of the Baroque”.  Although it includes 11 paintings (including one loaned by my undergrad alma mater, Fordham University) the centerpiece of the exhibition is an enormous, 28-foot tall, altarpiece, lent by the Cathedral in Puebla, Mexico and exhibited for the first time in a museum.  

This huge canvas depicts two different Biblical scenes.  In the lower half we see the scene from Numbers 21:5-9 wherein the wandering Israelites are attacked in the desert by serpents, resulting in the death of many people.  At God’s instruction Moses makes a serpent of bronze which he mounts on a pole.  Anyone who has been bitten and looks at it is cured.  In the upper half we see the scene of the Transfiguration of Jesus (which happens to be the Gospel for this Sunday, August 6, 2017, the feast of the Transfiguration of the Lord) in which Jesus reveals Himself in His full glory, accompanied by Moses (identified by the staff with the serpent) and Elijah on clouds as His disciples Peter, James and John look on.  

The relationship between the two scenes is made obvious by the inclusion in the Transfiguration scene of the Cross.  As the bronze serpent set upon a pole by Moses cures the snake bitten, so Jesus, when lifted up on the Cross, as He is lifted up at the Transfiguration will redeem and heal humanity.

A Change in Focus

The collections of paintings in this country were originally formed by wealthy patrons, like J. P. Morgan or Henry Clay Frick, whose tastes tended to focus on the art of Europe or of American artists who painted in the European tradition.  Their bequests and donations gave us the splendors of the Met and other large and small American museums.  However, as with every age, there were blind spots and gaps in what they provided, which our museums have been struggling to fill.  One area in which the Met was lacking for decades was in the area of later seventeenth-century French painting.  Several purchases over the last few years have filled that gap.  Another, much bigger, gap was in the area of Latin American art.  The Met has a good collection of pre-Columbian art and some modern Latin American art, but until recently very little Spanish Colonial art, leaving a large gap between the sixteenth and the twentieth centuries.  A small show called “Collecting the Arts of Mexico” , showcasing recent and not so recent acquisitions of Mexican work, has been on display in the American Wing galleries since last year,  It continues through September 4 and is worth seeing.  Now we have this splendid exhibition of the work of Villalpando which will be with us until October 15. 

Villalpando was a native of Mexico City and learned his craft there.  So, although he had access to the Baroque style through his training and through works of art, especially through prints of European works, his style does represent a truly American vision.  His figures are more ethereal, more agitated and much more colorful than anything produced during the equivalent period in Europe.  His compositions are often crowded with figures and frequently are organized in an almost medieval way.  Some of his motifs appear to have been his own inventions, and his pride in them is reflected in his highly visible signatures, which often read “Cristobal de Villalpando inventor”.  As the reviewer for the New York Times suggested “the outstanding altarpiece from Puebla should be a pilgrimage site of its own this summer”¹.  And so should the little painting at the Frick.

In a subsequent article I will discuss some of the other paintings by Villalpando that are included in the Met exhibition.

© M. Duffy, 2017

1. Farago, Jason.  “From Colonial Mexico, a Towering Vision of Grace”, The New York Times, July 26, 2017. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/26/arts/design/mexico-cristobal-de-villalpando-metropolitan-museum.html

Scripture texts in this work are taken from the New American Bible, revised edition © 2010, 1991, 1986, 1970 Confraternity of Christian Doctrine, Washington, D.C. and are used by permission of the copyright owner. All Rights Reserved. No part of the New American Bible may be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Go See "Unfinished" Before It Finishes!

Titian, The Flaying of Marsyas
Italian, 1570s
Kromeriz Castle (Czech Republic)
Archepiscopal Palace Picture Gallery

All summer I have been planning to say something about the inaugural exhibition at the Met Breuer, the Marcel Breuer building on Madison Avenue that was formerly the home of the Whitney Museum.  However, I have had difficulty organizing my thoughts about it, so I've been putting it off.  Now, with just two weeks remaining to the show, I feel I must say something or "forever hold my peace".  And what I have to say is this "GO SEE IT!"  The exhibition closes on Sunday, September 4.

One reason why I have had such difficulty in setting down my thoughts on the show is that it is, in a certain way, completely overwhelming.  First of all, stepping off the elevator on the third floor, at the beginning of the exhibition, one is immediately confronted with Titian's huge late work, The Flaying of Marsyas (the half man/half goat satyr who lost his foolish challenge to Apollo, who is shown fiddling on the left side of the picture), on loan from the Czech castle of Kromeriz.  That alone announces the quality of the exhibition.  The Met has contrived to blend works from its own enormous collection with major works from other museums and galleries around the world and has even succeeded in persuading numerous families and private collectors to share their riches.  The results are stunning.

Jan van Eyck, St. Barbara
Flemish, 1437
Antwerp, Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten

The premise of the exhibition is a meditation on the meaning of an unfinished work of art and how this meaning has changed over time.  The exhibition begins with works of the Renaissance period and ends with very contemporary works.  Some works were left incomplete because of circumstances:  the patron objected, the artist became ill, the subject refused to sit, the artist died.  Other works are records of the process by which an artist arrived at the final form for his or her thought, leaving unfinished sketches and drawings as his or her thoughts evolved.  Still others were left partially incomplete by artists who wanted to create texture in their works, especially important in an era that expected a high degree of finish for any painting.  This latter reason seems to be the reason for the inclusion of Titian’s Flaying of Marsyas, which includes areas of high finish and areas of broad visible brushwork.

I think the exhibition’s greatest strength lies in the earlier works, which are on display on the third floor of the Breuer building.  Indeed, it is the works done before the middle of the nineteenth century that are the most interesting.  With the advent of Impressionism and the movements that came after it, the focus of the artist changed from the creation of a somewhat objective view of reality to one dominated by the subjective attitude of the artist, with the Impressionist artists in the position of having one foot in both camps.  Their works are, therefore, the dividing line between the two approaches to the question of when a work of art is "finished".

Albrecht Durer, Salvator Mundi
German, c.1505
New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art

That said, it was a revelation to discover that, even in periods when a high state of finish was common and expected, there was a range of options for when a work could be considered "finished".  The exhibition includes all of these, including a variety in which some areas of a work, be it painting or sculpture, could be left in an unfinished state deliberately, a condition called "non finito". 

The first and most obvious meaning to the term "unfinished" are those works that were abandoned, for whatever reason, by the artist before completion.  For example, in the second room of the exhibition, a painting of Saint Barbara, which is the oldest object in the exhibition, shows the incredibly detailed underdrawing that van Eyck used to achieve the enchanting reality of his paintings.   Other, later works similarly showing the abandonment of a work before completion are works by Albrecht Dürer, Perino del Vaga, Federico Barocci, El Greco, Gonzales Coques, Joshua Reynolds, Anton Raphael Mengs, Thomas Lawrence, Jean-Louis-Andre-Theodore Gericault and James Drummond.   Very often these works were prized and even collected because of the respect felt for the artists who made them. 

Perino del Vaga, Holy Family with St. John the Baptist
Italian, 1528-1530
London, Courtauld Gallery

Federico Barocci, Assumption of the Virgin
Italian, 1604-1605
Urbino, Galleria Nazionale delle Marche

El Greco, Vision of St. John
Greco-Spanish, c.1609-1614
New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art

Sir Joshua Reynolds, Portrait of a Young Man
English, ca. 1770
Houston, The Menil collection

Sir Thomas Lawrence, Emilia, Lady Cahir,
Later Countess of Glegall
English, c.1803-1805
Private Collection

Jean-Louis-Andre-Theodore Gericault, Horace Vernet
French, 1822-1823
New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art

The works by Mengs and Drummond are rather eerie because they present highly polished representations of the clothing and surroundings of the figures, but these figures lack faces. Furthermore, the Mengs portrait also leaves an unpainted lapdog-shaped space, presumably for the lady's favorite pooch.

Anton Raphael Mengs, Portrait of Mariana de Silva y Sarmiento,
Duquesa de Huescar
German, 1775
New York, Private Collection

James Drummond, The Return of Mary Queen of Scots to Edinburgh
Scottish, c.1870
New York, Private Collection

No doubt this is a reflection of the practice of the artist, to paint the figures first and then the faces.  On the other hand, the Portrait of Michelangelo by Daniele da Volterra shows the opposite side of the coin.  The face and hands are highly detailed, while the clothing and setting are unfinished.   

Danele da Volterra, Michelangelo Buonarroti
Italian, c.1544
New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art

Perhaps the most interesting example of finished/unfinished in portraiture is the picture of a man and boy attributed to Gonzales Coques, in which faces and surroundings are highly finished, but the bodies are merely indicated, presumably to be completed at a later date, which never came.

Attributed to Gonzales Coques
Portrait of a man, full-length, handing a letter to a boy,
in an interior (The Young Messenger)
Belgian, c. 1640s
Private Collection

But, what happens if the figural subject refuses to sit for the artist? The exhibition includes an example that has a definite historical interest for Americans.  This is the unfinished group portrait of the American representatives to the Paris peace talks that ended the American Revolution.  Apparently, the American envoys all showed up for their portrait sittings, but the British representatives failed to come. Presumably this was by way of being a snub to the Americans and to West, the transplanted American painter.  Whatever the reason, West was never able to complete the picture.

Benjamin West, The American Commissioners of the Prelimnary Peace Negotiations with Great Britain
American, 1783 (begun)
Winterthur,DE, Winterthur Museum

Other objects in the exhibition represent the stages by which an artist plans for the finished work.  There are, therefore, drawings by both Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo, as well as sketches by Tintoretto and David. 

Leonardo da Vinci, Head of a Woman (La Scapigliata)
Italian, 1500-1505
Parma. Galleria Nazionale di Parma

Michelangelo. Studies for the Libyan Sibyl
Italian, c.1510-1511
New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art

Tintoretto, Doge Alvise Mocenigo Presented to the Redeemer
Italian, 1577
New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art

Jacques-Louis David, Death of Barat
French, 1794
Avignon, Musee Calvet

There are also roughly finished works, showing a loose handling of paint, part sketch, part finished work.  These are represented by works of Frans Hals, Nicolas Poussin, Rembrandt, Velazquez and Jacques-Louis David.  Similar effects in sculpture can be seen in the work of Auguste Rodin. 

Frans Hals, The Smoker
Dutch, c.1623-1625
New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art

Rembrandt, Hendrickje Stoffels
Dutch, mid-1650s
New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art

Nicolas Poussin, Midas Washing at the Source of the Pactolus
French, c.1627
New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art

Diego Velazquez. Peasant Girl
Spanish, c.1649-1650
Private Collection

Jacques-Louis David, Mme de Pastoret and Her Son
French, 1791-1792
Chicago, Art Institute

Auguste Rodin, Madame X (Countess Anna-Elizabeth de Noailles)
French, c.1907
New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art

The exhibition also includes a painting that has a fascinating history, which shows what could have happened to many of the unfinished paintings of the Old Masters.  It is a portrait of a woman and her daughter by Titian.  It is thought that the figures may be members of Titian's own family.

Titian, Portrait of a Lady and Her Daughter
Italian, c.1550
Private Collection

Overpaint of Titian painting
Tobias and the Archangel Raphael
Removed during restoration.

 Left unfinished at Titian’s death, the almost finished painting was overpainted by someone else and became a painting of Tobias and the Archangel Raphael, presumably so that it would be easier to sell.  The painting led a peripatetic life, ending up in a bombed out garage in the Bayswater section of London at the end of the Second World War.  It was x-rayed in 1948, which uncovered the original painting underneath.  Restoration to remove the overpainting took over 20 years.1    

J.M.W. Turner, Sunset from the Top of the Rigi
English, c.1844
c 2016 Tate, London

The exhibition also includes a room filled with prints, demonstrating the process of printmaking and the various levels of “finish” that can be produced by artists working in print media.  And there is a room filled with partially finished works of Joseph Mallard William Turner, on which I have commented previously.2 These paintings represent an early stage in Turner’s creation of the final work, which only ended at “varnishing day” at the Royal Academy gallery, when he would put his final touches on his work.  These are the atmospheric backgrounds, all fog and color, which were later transformed by the addition of shapes representing the narrative he had in mind.  Hence, they were for him part of the process, while for us they can stand alone as works of great beauty.

Gustav Klimt. Posthumous Portrait of Ria Munk #3
Austrian, 1917-1918
Private Collection

As artists adopted the aims and techniques of Impressionism and later of Abstraction in its many forms the idea of the “finished” work of art as the goal of the artist became less and less accurate.  The process became more important than the final product and a work was to be considered finished when the artist said it was finished or ready for presentation.  Still, even in this later world, some works can still be defined as “unfinished”.

One such is the Posthumous Portrait of Maria Munk III by Gustav Klimt.  This was the third posthumous portrait of the young woman that Klimt did.  The first two had been rejected by her family, who had commissioned the portrait after her suicide.  Alas, this third portrait was never completed either, since Klimt died while still working on it.  However, it does reveal the way in which he went about planning some of his best known works, such as the famous Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I (The Woman in Gold) of 1907.

Gustav Klimt, Adele Bloch-Bauer I
Austrian, 1907
New York, Neue Galerie

The later portions of the exhibition, from the Impressionists (on the third floor) to the most contemporary works on the fourth floor held less interest, I thought.  Once the principal of process over product, with completion at the caprice of the artist and lacking an objective definition of what is “finished” the work can be anything from a few lines on paper to a massive installation.  Such works are well represented, as are several that play with the concept of finishing itself.  One such is a pile of wrapped hard candies, which passersby are invited to dip into, thus changing the work of art endlessly as the candies are removed and replenished (Untitled (Portrait of Ross in L.A.) by Felix Gonzalez-Torres, 1991).  For this reason, this work can (theoretically at least) never be "finished".

Janine Antoni, Lick and Lather
American, 1993-1994
Private Collection

 Another example is composed of two self-portrait busts by the artist Janine Antoni, called Lick and Lather (1993-1994).  One bust is made of chocolate, the other of soap.  After completing them, Ms. Antoni licked the chocolate one and bathed using the soap one, thus eroding their “finish”.  Also, due to their organic nature both will continue to decay, even without licking or lathering, as opposed to being “finished” and “set in stone” like the traditional marble or bronze bust.

All in all, the “Unfinished” exhibition is at once spectacular, interesting and thought provoking.  It is definitely worth the trip to 75^th Street and Madison Avenue.  So, GO!

© M. Duffy, 2016

1. More information can be found at the following links:

• “Rediscovered Titian to Be Offered at Christie’s in December”, 16 September 2005 at http://www.christies.com/presscenter/pdf/09162005/09162005b.pdf
• “Uncovered Titian Wrapped in Mystery”, The Guardian, 17 September 2005 at https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2005/sep/17/arts.artsnews

2. “A Summer of Turner in New York” at http://imaginemdei.blogspot.com/2016/06/a-summer-of-turner-in-new-york.html