Enigmas in the Royal Collection

Trying to catch up with something of a backlog of exhibitions on my “to see” list, I started with the “Northern Renaissance” show at the Queen’s Gallery, slotted in at the side of Buckingham Palace.   This was a lovely show but an oddly difficult one to write about.   There were lots and lots of beautiful pieces on display but it was hard to detect an overarching theme; it wasn’t quite about art created explicitly for English monarchs in the 16^th century or even art from that period acquired later (though both elements were present).   It wasn’t just about painting.  There were a couple of magnificently engraved suits of armour on display, for instance, one of them belonging to Henry VIII and showing signs of the work which the Royal Armouries of the day had had to undertake in what amounted to letting the seams out to accommodate the ageing monarch’s  bloated body in the 1540’s.   I suppose it could be seen as a kind of survey show and those are always quite hard to summarise.

There were some intriguing details.  There were almost as many portraits of Erasmus in the show as there were of Henry VIII.  The media superstar aspect of the Dutch humanist was if anything underlined by the fact that a couple were in fact contemporary copies of portraits produced by others; there was clearly enough of a market for paintings of the great man to generate this kind of second order production.   In educated elite circles Erasmus must have had one of the most instantly recognisable faces in Europe around 1510.   Clearly people wanted to hang his picture on their wall.  Ironically a couple of books I’ve read recently have taken a somewhat less than adulatory line on Erasmus, painting a picture of a dedicated and somewhat craven hunter for patronage, a flatterer who lapped up flattery of himself, a bitchy old queen who ruthlessly exploited his relationship with major printers to squeeze those who crossed him out of the book market and a satirist who tended to go for soft targets (mocking Pope Julius II wasn’t particularly brave when done from a jurisdiction whose ruler was hostile to that Pope’s foreign policy) but panicked when others took his criticisms of the church to their logical conclusion.   I’m not sure how far this led me to see a complacent smugness in the famous Erasmian smile on display in all the portraits which I hadn’t spotted before but I’m sure it’s there…..

The show’s highlights were many.  Predictably there were lots of those wonderful Holbein portraits which give the feeling (or possibly the illusion?) that the leading and not-so-leading figures in the court of Henry VIII are real people whom one could imagine appearing in TV politics shows to explain their policies- and would be as shifty and untrustworthy as their modern successors.   There was a good showing of Durer engravings and sketches; full of fabulous draughtsmanship and observation by also of fantasy and imagination.   The famous rhino from India is there but I found myself drawn to the wonderful greyhound at the top of this entry- a piece of genuine observation from life in a way that the rhino wasn’t.   On the fantasy side, the engravings of the Apocalypse are wonderful confections- even if the heads of the Beast of the Apocalypse (below, mounted side-saddle by a glamorous but quite respectably looking Whore of Babylon) are by turns quizzical, goofy and even quite cute rather than terrifying.

Rather than try to summarise the whole show, I’ve decided to focus on three paintings, all of which repay slightly closer examination (the versions I’ve posted on Flickr possibly work better if you want to see the details- though I imagine they’re the starting point for many visitors here).  The first is “Adam and Eve”, painted by Jan Gossaert.   Gossaert was clearly a bit of a problem personality; we’re told he was notable for his debauched life and (suitably enough in the eyes of moralists, no doubt) died relatively young.   He packed quite a bit of travel into his 30 odd years- in particular visiting Italy where he seems to have seen a lot of the latest art as well as picking up on the fashion for classical statues.  The impact of the latter can be seen in the muscular bodies of both Adam and Eve (is it just me that wonders what might be revealed if the strategically placed leaf was removed from Eve- and whether an artist would really have been allowed to get away with working with nude female models in the 1520s?).   There’s a kind of instability about the way they stand, almost as if they’re about to lurch out of the frame on top of the viewer- a kind of visible correlative for the Fall.   It’s been suggested, on rather tenuous grounds, that John Milton may have had this painting in mind when describing Adam in “Paradise Lost”(it was in the Royal Collection early enough for this to be feasible).   There were some details however which bothered the more biblically minded in 17^th century England.   Why were Adam and Eve depicted with navels given that they had been created and not born in the conventional way?   Who exactly built the rather elaborate fountain to be seen in the background?   One could suggest that God might have chosen to create Adam and Eve with navels to set the pattern for future humans and that some of the angels could presumably have run up a fountain and the associated hydraulics in a matter of minutes but perhaps that’s getting a bit too literal…..  It does however show how differently people might analyse a painting in the past from the criteria they use now- and how details which would pass unremarked now could raise major discussions.

The second painting is a very different piece.  The artist isn’t known, but it’s a very creative reworking of a piece by a Dutch artist called Marinus van Rymerswaele.   It’s conventionally called “The Misers” though the latest view is that the two protagonists are probably tax collectors or just possibly merchants with debts to collect (other versions are explicitly called “The Tax Gatherers”). There was clearly a market for this kind of painting in the wider Dutch/Flemish/Northern French world during the first half of the 16^th century as a number of variations on van Rymerswaele’s piece and ones derived from a now-lost original by Quenten Massys survive.   The painting has recently been cleaned and restored and no reproduction quite conveys the sheer vividness of its colours or the way which it draws you into its world.   Some of this is due to the changes made to the template by the artist, who only partially follows a tracing from the original work.   In the original and some of the workshop copies, the right hand figure was much more separated from the book keeper on the left and could even have been a client handing over money.  In this version the pair are clearly a team- and the viewer is placed in the position of the defaulting tax payer, no doubt being told that, regrettably, the figures don’t add up and unless he comes up with the balance of the cash they will have no alternative but to send the boys round.   The pet parakeet (an introduction to the scene) watches and not doubt has plenty of tales to tell.   There are some strange dissonances in the picture.   The two central figures are richly dressed- but in the fashions of the late 15^th century, a good sixty or seventy years before the date of the picture.   This isn’t a period piece either- it’s possible to read the writing in the ledger and the exchange rates being applied to the piles of coins from different jurisdictions are ones which were in force from 1547 to 1551.   In this version the text is in French; other versions are in Flemish- which shows that it was possible for the artist (or customer?) to customise what could be seen as production line efforts churned out by workshop artists on the basis of tracings.   Just why this sort of scene was popular in one of the most urbanised and commercially advanced (and heavily taxed) parts of Europe is unclear.   Perhaps there are jokes in here at the expense of the taxman which are now no longer legible to us- the archaic costume might be part of that.   Perhaps the moral lesson about the transitory nature of worldly riches implied by the guttering candle on top of the cupboard is the key.  I wonder how many purchasers of van Rymerswaele clones were themselves in the tax farming business….

If there’s an air of implicit menace in the tax gatherers, something a lot scarier is going on in the third painting- indeed it’s much more ominous than Durer’s slightly cartoonish view of the End Times.   On the face of it things are bad enough.  A snow-covered Flemish village is being comprehensively sacked by a composite military force with a core of heavily armoured lancers backed up with German infantry in their distinctive landsknecht costumes.   Villagers run to and fro, trying to escape.  Others plead with authority figures.   The pillage goes on unhindered; the Germans are smashing their way into locked houses and dragging booty out.   Close inspection however shows overpainting in certain areas and more sinister violence going on in the background.  For this is an early, more or less original, version of Peter Bruegel the Elder’s “Massacre of the Innocents”.   As with several of Bruegel’s major works this was to have a very long afterlife as it became the basis for production line workshop production using tracings from the original with versions being produced many years after Breughel’s death (years ago I wrote about an exhibition in Brussels which looked at this aspect of the Bruegel family business, though this wasn’t one of the paintings covered in that show).   The overpaints are old- they seem to have been done when the painting entered the collection of the Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II some thirty years after it was created  around 1565 (there’s a view that the wintry landscape reflects a particularly cold winter in 1564/5).  

Quite why the Emperor (or those seeking to sell the painting to the cultured but eccentric and somewhat reclusive ruler?) had the overpaints done is just one of several puzzles associated with this piece.   Most of the modifications substitute animals or goods being stolen for children being murdered and turn a very specific and ghastly bit of Christian mythology in the remote into a generic scene from the wars of a war-filled age.   Its understandable why Rudolf would have wanted the tabard of the herald (the man on the horse in the centre right, surrounded by peasants appealing for mercy) overpainted- in the original his tabard bears the double headed eagle of the Holy Roman Empire (it’s not unusual for that symbol to stand in for the eagles of the original pagan Empire in medieval and Renaissance art but it was surely a bit too close to the knuckle in this context to imply that slaughter of children- or even the ravaging of a Christian village- was being done under Imperial auspices).   Perhaps he was uncomfortable with the overall subject matter as well- especially on one reading of the message which Bruegel was sending by placing the Massacre of the Innocents in a contemporary setting.   On this account, the biblical reference was itself cover for a protest against the repression visited on the Netherlands by the Spanish Duke of Alba and his army in the 1560’s when they were sent into the region by Philip II of Spain (the ruler of these territories- and cousin of the Holy Roman Emperor of the day) to repress Protestants and rebels against his authority.  

This interpretation was clearly current close to Bruegel’s own time and must have found favour with purchasers of workshop editions as many of these explicitly turn the face of the commander of the mounted unit into a portrait of Alba.  Bruegel’s own religious position is enigmatic and all sorts of claims have been made about him- not to mention attempts to find hidden meanings in other works.   It’s very tempting, even though there are some problems with it.  It’s not clear that the dates fit too well.   The painting is dated to 1565 or so.   Alba’s army only reached the Netherlands in 1567 in response to a Protestant uprising marked by violent image breaking the previous year; his army only really hit its repressive stride late in 1567-early 1568.  Bruegel died 1569.   If the painting is really a veiled comment on Alba’s exactions it has to be rather later than the date conventionally assigned to it.  There are other quirks.  The Imperial eagle doesn’t entirely fit - in a technical legal sense some of the provinces of the Netherlands were within the Holy Roman Empire but they hadn’t been treated as really belonging to the Empire for years and any herald working on behalf of Philip II in his role as ruler of the region would probably have carried the red knotty St Andrews cross of Burgundy on his tabard (admittedly not easy to work into a scene nominally set in the ancient world but the discrepancy would slightly weaken the message of the painting….).   On the other hand the rather washed out flag floating over the soldiers originally bore the arms of the Crusader of Jerusalem and Philip II was one of several 16^th century rulers who laid claim to that title- but so did others.  To my eye the soldiers look as if they belong in the 1530’s or 40’s rather than the 1560’s; landsknecht costume was going out of fashion by the later date, heavily armoured lancers were less common and Alba’s army was noted for its effective and disciplined infantry rather than its cavalry.   None of this entirely disproves the traditional “contemporary politics” reading of the painting but I wonder if it isn’t a bit too pat; Bruegel may well have been being deliberately somewhat generic about the horrors of war and the evil that powerful people can inflict on the powerless when he set out to paint the piece by making it both of his time and a bit timeless (the laws of anachronism aren’t entirely suspended- I can't see any firearms or even crossbows in the picture, for instance).

Have a wonderful Easter, folks.