EXHIBITION: tintoretto

until the 10th june, balanced on the top of the quirinal hill, you will find tintoretto. unfortunately, the genius himself left us on 31st may 1594 and the last of the tintoretto family died in 1657, but as melania g. mazzucco tells us in the text in the final room 'they left no offspring. only - but perhaps this is everything - their works'. so here, in the 'scuderie del quirinale', we find tintoretto's offspring.
the old stables provide the perfect exhibition space with a naturally divided interior reached by a fantastic sweeping stone staircase. once fininished with tintoretto and all of his wondrousness, the journey back down to the ground floor gives the visitor what is probably one of the best views in rome. unfortunately my experience was tainted somewhat by a group of middle-aged gaggling women pressed up against the glass; but from what i could see through the blowdries, twinsets and tweed jackets, rome was looking pretty good.

jacopo robusti (more commonly known as tintoretto) was a man who liked to involve everyone, it seems. in his paintings, we see the plasticity and fullness of michelangelo's human figures, the deep penetration of space used by raphael in the vatican apartments, and the loose brushwork of contemporary venetian painters such as titian, bassano and el greco; his clientele included doges, but also the lame; and of course, his paradiso which resides in the great council hall of the palazzo ducale in venice includes no less than 500 figures.

but although tintoretto desired to be 'everybody's painter', he miraculously manages to create his own unique style. he often places his figures 'on stage', with dramatic backdrops and signifant levels of action. if we take the miracle of st. mark as an example:

here, we see st. mark descending from heaven to free a slave from torture after he had disobeyed his master in order to worship the saint's relics. as soon as our eye falls upon this painting, we become 'the audience': the action is happening right before us on a stage framed on all sides by temples, scenery and standing with us, other viewers (see bottom left corner). it reminded me of ancient greek theatre. not only did the greeks often set their theatres into the edge of hills and mountains in order to create a beautiful and natural stage set, but they also used an advanced system called a mechane which was a type of crane that enabled characters on stage to be lifted into the air. the effect was called deus ex machina, literally meaning 'god out of the machine', and it was adopted by a number of greek playwrights to represent the deification of certain characters.  st. mark swooping into the scene, and indeed other flying figures by tintoretto, reminds us of this greek theatrical tradition. so what does this all mean? well, we all know (spero...) that renaissance or rinascimento means 'rebirth' in reference to the emanation of classical culture in the 15th and 16th centuries. so whether it is conscious or subconscious, what we see tintoretto doing here is defining this term 'renaissance' pictorally by harking back to the traditions of ancient greece. secondo me...

on the other hand, whilst adopting this unique style, there are definitely elements of other artists work in his own. this got me thinking about the development of technique and style between one artist and another, leading me to see why caravaggio was perhaps so controversial... had anyone used a famous roman courtesan to model for a painting of the virgin mary before? no. had anyone decided to plunge their figures into complete darkness, lit only by a severe spotlight? no. he really was the first one to throw a massive spanner in the works. however, if we have a look at the following three paintings, we can recognise a strong thread between each artist's style:

perugino panel in sequence of the life of jesus in the sistine chapel, painted between 1477-1483.

raphael's school of athens, painted between 1510-1511.

tintoretto's st.mark's body brought to venice, painted between 1562-1566.

as well as seeing common ground (literally...) in the development of painting, i also noticed that a lot of the subject matter treated by tintoretto is not far off from the goings on of our own 21st century world. take his joseph flees from the advances of posiphar's wife, in which we see joseph rejecting poor old posiphar who lies naked and humiliated on a four poster bed; rejection being a subject matter  with which we are all familiar (not speaking from personal experience at all...). or if we look at his fantastic painting showing vulcan walking in on venus and mars having an affair, i could think of only two words: ryan giggs. and finally, something i found highly amusing, was a portrait done by domenico robusti, tintoretto's son. hung towards the end of the exhibition, next to tintoretto's last few works where his painting is of a mature style and subject matter, is the portrait of a woman bearing her breasts. in this painting, finely executed for a man of his age, a woman is shown in profile doing what it says on the tin: flashing. for me, this struck up a similarity between 25 year old men in the 16th century and 25 year old contemporaries of mine in the 21st...

the only difference is, it was domenico's sister...

for more information on the exhibition, as well as others taking place in the scuderie del quirinale, visit Scuderie del Quirinale.

EXHIBITION: i ghetti nazisti

as i marched out into the sunshine this morning, i spared a sorry thought for the thousands of people who had been unsuccessful in acquiring tickets to the hugely popular leonardo da vinci exhibition in london's national gallery this winter. i then smiled to myself in the knowledge that just steps from the front door of my apartment, i was able to spend a morning with 66 works of art by not only da vinci, but michelangelo as well. and people ask me why i live in rome...
on arrival at the capitoline museums i was abruptly told in the biglietteria that the exhibition did not in fact finish on the 19th february as a number of official art websites and magazines had told me (sorry, of course...who would trust them), but that it had finished on the 12th. sunday. just gone. two. days. ago. bitter with cold and anger, i stormed out of the campidoglio and down michelangelo's steps-having never appreciated them less-and headed to find the nearest copy of vedere a roma. apart from spitting at the fact that this giornale also told me that the exhibition of leonardo and michelangelo finished on the 19th february, i noticed an exhibition on i ghetti nazisti and knew that was where i was headed. having made the decision to study classical civilisation over my own at the age of 16, i have always been starved of (and thus highly interested in) a knowledge of modern history. for this reason, this post is not going to be a long one (as you can see i have already spent a whole paragraph managing to talk about artists of the renaissance), but i would like to share with you all how much of an impact this exhibition had on ignorant old me.
not only does my limited knowledge of the second world war impair this article, but the fact that the exhibition was entirely conducted in italian meant that my miniature minute tiny pocket-size dictionary and i had a few difficulties making out a fair amount of the information given. for me, being the visualista that i am, it was the photos, video footage and collection of items that made the big impression.

for those of you who are as ignorant as i, the term ghetto is used for a section in a city which is inhabited by a particular group of people who are separated from the surrounding society for legal, social or economic issues. the 'ghetti' that this exhibition refers to are those of the jews during the second world war which were set up by the nazis in the cities of occupied eastern europe. these are not to be confused with the ghetto that we have in rome, which was created earlier in the 16th century under pope paul iv in order to segregate the jews from the 'purer' christians; the irony lying in the fact that the former were here long before the latter. but this overlap of ideology between the 16th century popes (who at the time seemed to be more political leaders than spiritual ones) and the 20th century german government, although perhaps a futile observation, is one i find interesting and worth a mention.

we are constantly reminded of the horrors that took place in the nazi concentration camps through film, books, photographs and indeed survivors, but what i certainly hadn't realised was the extent to which these things had started to happen already in the ghettos beforehand. an aerial view of auschwitz emphasised the size of these hellish institutions and it seemed to me that these ghettos were simply an 'inbetween stage' whilst the camps were meticulously created by these nazi savages. 




before murdering 1.6 million jews at the polish concentration camps in 1942, the nazis imposed famine, maltreatment, humiliation and an extremely low quality of life upon those inhabiting the ghettos in the country. the physical effects of their treatment can quite clearly be seen from the distressing photo below. i pondered over whether to include this image in the article, but decided that it had been included in the exhibition for people to see and so i was to do the same thing. it is important for the world to recognise and understand what these victims suffered. when we refer to 'the holocaust' we must remember that within the broad term, there were millions and millions of individual people involved. although it is impossible to know and understand each and every one of their stories, we must remember as many as we can.



this photograph instilled me with fear, pain, grief and most notably, intense anger. the nonchalant expression on the nazi's face as he roughly handles the skeletal corpse of a woman is disgusting and inhumane. the same goes for the nazis in the image below. it shows five of them laughing heartily as they abuse a jewish man lying in the street. for me, not in any way intending to belittle the physical action taken upon the jews, it is the mental act of humiliation that distresses me the most. for all we know, the man in this photo may have been an expert in his professional field, a father whose children looked up to him, or simply a member of the jewish community; but here he is lying beneath a group of men who ignorantly believe that they are superior to him and have the right to treat him as they wish. the public embarrassment of being placed in these ghettos and being physically tagged as a 'jude' would have been unbearably humiliating and damaging to one's self-worth. it is this helplessness and subjugation of innocent and perfectly able human beings that i cannot fathom.

i found it difficult to swallow the meagre size of the last section on jewish resistance and survivors. stupidly expecting more of a happy ending to my visit, the exhibition finishes this final section almost as soon as it starts; accurately implying that although resistance was achieved and people did survive, it cannot be compared to all that had gone before.

i feel words do not do this period of history and my reaction to it any justice, hence i am keeping this entry particularly short. but i can assure you that your reaction will be much the same as mine (and a little more informed if you can speak half decent italian), but although i have tried to articulate it as best is possible, you need to place yourself into this gallery space to feel what i felt this morning.

EXHIBITION: the renaissance in rome. a token to michelangelo and raphael.

...or for a more efficient google search: il rinascimento a roma. nel segno di michelangelo e raffaello. this fantabulous exhibition is only running until the 12th february and is certainly a MUST if you are visiting rome in the next few weeks. the entrance to the exhibition is located just off the bustling via del corso in a lovely and cosy labyrinth-esque gallery space which allows you to escape from the world, his wife and all of their children who tend to spend the majority of their days shopping on this busy street. to be welcomed by a lovely looking italian cloakroom attendant also makes the escape all the more enjoyable... the central focus of the exhibition is the influence antiquity had on the artists of the 15th and 16th centuries. raphael encapsulates this connection in a single letter which he writes to pope leo X de' medici which includes a survey of rome's ancient monuments and subsequently describes the classical style to be applied to designs for the future. showing this relationship between the classical world and the renaissance period is something rome manages to do pretty effortlessly. whether it is the pantheon (pagan temple-come-church) or the baroque domes which form the backdrop to trajan's column, modern day rome synthesises all of these past eras as well as adding a few crazy italian drivers from our own day to fill in the gaps.

a hop step and a jump from corso are the famous vatican museums in which michelangelo's last judgement can be seen at one end of the sistine chapel (although there is a rather fantastic copy of this masterpiece by marcello venusti in the renaissance exhibition itself). it is through this monumental work of art, that one is able to recognise an explicit connection between the classical world and the renaissance, and the effect antiquity was having on 16th century art. it is the figures of jesus christ and the virgin mary that i want to zoom in on here.

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jesus christ and the madonna
in michelangelo's last
judgement, sistine chapel

the lely crouching venus,
a roman copy of a greek original
dating from the hellenistic period

the laocoon

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the head of the apollo belvedere

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the belvedere torso

the positioning of the lely crouching venus is almost identically imitated in michelangelo's depiction of the madonna here. similarly, his depiction of jesus has quite clearly been modelled on three of the most famous ancient greek sculptures in the world: jesus' torso can be compared to the belvedere torso, likewise the fair complexion and beardless face is comparable to the apollo belvedere, and finally the positioning of the arms are not far from those of laocoon's. in other words, michelangelo appears to be a bit of a fraud.

nevertheless, the man certainly knew how to draw. it was not the painted self-portrait that took my breath away in this exhibition, but it was the sketch below that really got my excitement cogs whirring.

there is something about pen on paper from years gone by that i find truly fascinating. whether it is a letter (such as raphael's letter to leo X) or a drawing, it is the simpler, more relatable pieces that allow me to feel a connection on a personal level with the artist. in the top half of this sketch by michelangelo, we can see an upside down male torso which, as usual, has been rendered with defined musculature. but it is the doodle in the lower right hand corner that i loved. here we see michelangelo sketching plans for the scaffolding he intended to erect in the sistine chapel. despite irving stone's insistence that the artist painted the ceiling of the chapel lying on his back (read/see the agony and the ecstacy), he actually created a structure which enabled him to paint from a standing position. craning his neck for four years meant that he developed a muscular bulge at the base of his neck over this period of time which subsequently took a year and a half to go down.

but how does michelangelo compare to raphael? in general terms we know they were very different; raphael being well educated and socially apt, in contrast to the working class background of the tempestuous hermit that was michelangelo. in artistic terms however, they tend to be bracketed together. but having seen the work of both artists side by side, i began to notice a major difference in their artwork. it is the unbelievably smooth skin that raphael endows onto the faces of his figures that contrasts greatly with the undulating musculature of michelangelo's subjects. although michelangelo is much more my cup of lapsang, i do find it extraordinary how raphael manages to create an almost digital blend of colours to create a 'rosy cheek' effect. this technique certainly gives even his male figures an effeminate streak, whereas michelangelo's fascination with the male physique tends to give both his men and women a masculine appearance. the images below may make my observation clearer:

madonna of the pinks, raphael

st.catherine (green dress) in the
last judgement, michelangelo



or perhaps it is easier to make a modern analogy:

        

so this exhibition is SLAP BANG in the centre of town. via del corso is sandwiched between the pantheon and the trevi fountain and apart from the 'no photo' rule (don't tell?) and the unfortunately over-attentive museum guards, there is absolutely no reason not to visit this exhibition. for more details, visit : Fondazione Roma Museo: Il Rinascimento a Roma