by Alex Moore

This article was published in the May/June issue of ForeWord Reviews.

Flourishmasters, artists who succeed by their distinct manner of expression, impart an enduring influence that time mantles with immortality. These expressions seem divinely drawn, whether by palette, as by colorists Monet or Titian with his glittering necklaces of ruby and gold; by brushstroke, such as in Renoir’s trowelled swaths or Tintoretto’s bejewelment by impasto; or by architecture, with embellishments of steeples that soar and gargoyles that glitter. Masters of panache with purpose are always worthy of being revisited, not merely for appreciation, but for inspiration. These books are alive with sumptuous presentations and intelligent observation.

Renaissance
“The true Italy is to be found by patient observation,” Miss Lavish tells Lucy Honeychurch in E.M. Forster’s A Room With a View. They set off to explore the art that festooned the city of Florence, and Lucy is charmed. Readers will fall under a similar spell when perusing Art of Renaissance Florence: 1400-1600 (8 x 10, softcover, 150+ color and b/w illustrations, University of California Press, 978-0-520-25774-0). Loren Partridge, professor of Arts of the Italian Renaissance at the University of California, Berkeley, presents a panorama of Florentine art whose subjects include architecture, sculpture, and paintings. The Renaissance is a cultural and artistic style characterized by the revival of classical Greek and Roman ideals, and if there were an Olympics for beauty, the Renaissance artists would have won the gold. Florence, the city of flowers, is credited with its beginnings in the fourteenth century.

Partridge’s detailed observations make his text exciting. He describes Sandro Botticelli’s Primavera (ca.1482) which depicts Chloris being grasped by Zephyr, the god of the winds, with his sharply angled body and “massive wings slicing through the trees.” This book would make an excellent supplement to art history classes.

To the northeast of Florence lies Venice, the “city of bridges.” In Venice 697-1797: A City, A Republic, An Empire by (10 x 11½, hardcover, 340+ color illustrations, Overlook Press, 978-1-58567-132-8), Alvise Zorzi tells the story of “the Queen of the Adriatic” through its art. Zorzi, chairman of the Committee for the Publication of Source Material on the History of Venice, chronicles the Realtine Islands, the lagoons, and the “amphibious population who lived like marsh-birds.” The book traces the history of Venice from its beginnings in 697, when it became independent from the Byzantine Empire, to the Napoleonic era. The pinnacle was the Venetian Renaissance. The book is awash with details on popes, palaces, and paintings.

Wearing a ceremonial robe of silk fabric with raised patterns of filigreed gold and a matching “il corno d’uso,” or horned-shaped cap, a magistrate looks out from the Portrait of Doge Leonardo Loredan. Zorzi includes this image of the Renaissance doge as an example of the artwork of Giovanni Bellini (1430-1516), whose use of clear oil paints created luxurious tints.

Three more Venetian painters are detailed in Titian, Tintoretto, Veronese: Rivals in Renaissance Venice (10 x 11½, hardcover, 200 color and b/w illustrations, MFA Publications, 978-0-87846-739-6). Frederick Ilchman, assistant curator of painting at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, presents the art and lives of these virtuosos.

The recognizable brushstrokes of Titian (1488-1576), Tintoretto (1518-1594), and Veronese (1528-1588) were their “signatures”: “the soft caress of Titian, the brash zigzag of Tintoretto, the elegant stutter of Veronese.” Ilchman’s analyses of paintings are particularly absorbing. Saint Jerome, for example, was frequently represented as an “imitation of Christ,” and all three painted a Saint Jerome in the Wilderness. Titian’s is rendered with dramatically swaying trees that underscore the violence of Jerome’s devotion; Tintoretto emphasized the “contrasting decay of the saint’s body and the steadfastity of his devotion”; and Veronese contrasts landscape elements with the saint’s mortification to reinforce a devotional message. This fine art book is for students.

To the south again is Vatican City. Its architectural masterpiece is St. Peter’s Basilica, designed by Donato Bramante (1444-1514), with its centralized Greek cross plan. In St. Peter’s Square are the semicircular classical colonnades. Nearby is the Sistine Chapel.

Visitors sometimes lack the time to see beyond these monuments of art, but spreading behind them are gardens that were inspired by order and beauty using the classical ideals of proportion, symmetry, and perspective. Alberta Campitelli, manager of Rome’s Artistic Cultural Heritage Department, is the first to publish a complete study of these organic works of art. In The Vatican Gardens: An Architectural and Horticultural History (10 x 13, hardcover, 175 color and b/w illustrations, Abbeville Press, 978-0-7892-1048-7), the author covers the thirteenth through the early twentieth centuries.

In 1505 Pope Julius II asked Bramante to build a classical Roman pleasure garden: Belvedere. The Venetian ambassador described the garden in 1523 as a beautiful garden with “growing grass and bays and mulberries and cypresses” and “in every square a beautiful orange tree grows.” There was also the Belvedere Courtyard in which Pope Leo XII would exhibit Hanno, his pet elephant. Belvedere is the subject of chapter two, which includes more than two dozen historical and contemporary images of the garden and the courtyard. This is a book for gardeners, architects, and historians.

Impressionists
Many nineteenth-century artists took a Grand Tour as part of their education, traveling to cities such as Florence, Venice, and Rome. Several of these painters, however, were looking to move away from classical painting to depict the commonplace with an immediacy of impression. In 1874 Claude Monet exhibited a picture titled Impression—Sunrise, the derivation of the movement’s name.

Several new books add to our understanding of the Impressionists, including two colossal tomes about the Frenchman who said, “For me a picture should be something likeable, joyous and pretty—yes, pretty.” In Renoir (11 x 13, hardcover, slip case, 300 color illustrations, Abbeville Press, 978-0-7892-1057-9), Anne Distel, a specialist in Impressionist painting and exhibition organizer, notes that this statement by Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841-1919) fueled disdain by art historians for his “sensual and naive” approach. Distel’s goal with this book, based on new biographical and documentary publications, is to reexamine the artist’s background, artistic development, and the extent of his influence.

Renoir, who produced 4,000 works, wrote more than 1,000 letters to family and friends. In 1881 he sent a letter to art dealer Durand-Ruel: “I have seen Venice,” he wrote. While there he painted The Doge’s Palace, Venice (ca.1881) with waves of green-blue color, rocking gondolas, and shimmering heat. Venice—Fog (ca.1881) was rendered with a mist of yellowy gray.

Barbara Ehrlich White, adjunct professor emerita of art history at Tufts University, traveled to France to interview Renoir’s family members and friends, and visit the places where he lived and worked. A collector of letters from, to, and about the artist, White presents Renoir’s life and art in relation to each other and creates a clearer view of his personality, feelings, and thoughts. In Renoir: His Life, Art, and Letters (10½  x 13½, hardcover, 300 color and b/w illustrations, Abrams, 978-0-8109-9607-6), the author also references Renoir’s 1881 Grand Tour.

Renoir wasn’t one of the Impressionists fascinated with the coast of Normandy, but among the artists who were struck by its rugged atmosphere are Monet, Edouard Manet, and Gustave Courbot. Thanks to Daguerre’s invention in 1832, photographers, such as Gustave Le Gray and Henri Le Secq, were also able to capture the region’s boats, beaches, and buildings. The painters were aware of this new medium and debated whether technology had any place in the artistic sphere.

Carole McNamara, senior curator of Western art at the University of Michigan Museum of Art, “explores the dialogue between the two media and the backdrop against which both evolved” in The Lens of Impressionism: Photography and Painting along the Normandy Coast, 1850-1874 (10 x 12, hardcover, 200 color and b/w illustrations, University of Michigan Museum of Art/Hudson Hills Press, 978-1-55595-325-6).

Painters discovered that photographs could be used as a starting point to their art. Monet’s The Jetty at Le Harve in Bad Weather (ca.1867) depicts a three-masted vessel churning ahead of dark clouds. An anonymous photo of the same features suggests that Monet used it as inspiration. This is a book for photographers.

Also worthy of consideration is a unique book about the portraits of the wife of Paul Cezanne (1839-1906) by the artist, who painted her twenty-four times in twenty years. In Cezanne’s Other: The Portraits of Hortense (8½ x 10, hardcover, 100 color and b/w illustrations, University of California Press, 978-0-520-25745-0), Susan Sidlauskas, graduate director of the department of art history at Rutgers University, writes that the “Other” is Cezanne’s wife to his ever-evolving “self.” The author covers themes that include changing looks, “the psychology of color,” and mask-like faces. In Portrait of the Artist’s Wife (ca.1880), Hortense’s “dark irises swell to fill the narrow ellipses” in an expressionless, chalky face.

In the golden age of art, Renaissance artists and artisans created masterpieces with panache that influenced the Impressionists. New observations in these books reflect on the palettes of these artists and expand our own imaginative lives with the use of image and color.

Alex Moore, editor emeritus, is former managing editor of ForeWord Reviews. Among his interests are art and literature.

One Response to “Palette and Panache: Revisiting the Masters of the Past”