Background figures

This crucifixion scene by Joos van Cleve (c. 1525, Flanders) in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts has rather unusual background activity.



The crowd of tormentors are leaving, becoming progressively less exotic in appearance as they reach their (very Dutch) towns and villages; their leaving highlights the isolation of the three principal personages.


(This shot and the master are official. Blurry ones below are mine. The blues are really very cool, as in the museum's photographs; mine are much too yellow.)

The first travelers were still talking about the event, even interacting with it on the picture plane. One of them, perhaps the one is the red hat, is presumably the centurion, forever changed by the experience, but identification is unclear. Those further away (on Christ's left hand) are resolutely leaving, faceless (though their spears are more pointedly aimed towards the nearly dead Christ). 

Later the returning crowd melts into the day-to-day life of the background.

I'm very interested in the use of atmospheric perspective in this painting, which seems to connote more than mere distance: note how this cottage is lit in the same blue light, although it is in front of some still-green trees.

In the city behind, human figures are in full color. And look at the abrupt transition on the near side of the bridge! Below: another official detail, mostly for its beauty.

To give a totally spurious interpretation, i would suggest that the blue points to the overlap between the historical and the heavenly Jerusalem, one condemned to oblivion and the other created by the event shown in full color in the foreground. The real (walled cities and countrysides, more or less embellished) is rendered unreal. In either case, those who left the foreground can't fully return, are lifted from the distance in some way.

I do find this unsatisfactory, however, and the picture still appealingly puzzling.

Nothing, however, is as puzzling as this (to the left of the big rock; the wavy line above is Christ's loincloth). Is it the next step in the story? The cross does appear to bear no corpus. Or is it another, mundane crucifixion?

Throne of Wisdom

One of my favorite Marian genres is the Sedes sapientiae, the Throne of Wisdom. So imagine my surprise when, in the Boston MFA's small and jumbled medieval room, i saw this particularly beautiful (and late) example (click through for more official images):

Virgin and Child, wood with polychromy, 154.9 x 53.3 x 45.1 cm, French, 1210-25.

Medievalists (my former professor Jacqueline Jung is at the forefront of this movement) have been critiquing photography and display practices for their flattening effect on some sculpture. Here, for instance, the picture is taken from an unnaturally high angle. From lower down, it is possible to meet the Virgin's gaze, and the statue takes on a much more serious dimension:

(My apologies for the shoddy picture)

One should always, when encountering sculpture even more than two-dimensional work, move around, forward and backwards, and up and down. Although this is useful to get a grasp on the piece as a whole, it also helps to uncover the priviledged viewpoint(s): in this case, the moment(s) when the statues become interlocutors, engaged in a dialogue with us. This happened when my eyes were level with Mary's feet (incidentally, other museum visitors seem to frown on kneeling in galleries), which tells you something about at least some subset of original viewing conditions.
About another factor, however, i can only speculate: the effects of variable light. Lit by windows and candles, all medieval sculpture was much more mobile in situ than it is in museum galleries. In this case, for instance, the deep folds of the cloak at Mary's throat presumably caught more motion than the rest of the sculpture, leading to the appearance of movement in the head. Furthermore, i suspect that the very spare carving of facial features, much less detailed than the draperies, had a great deal to do with variable light as well: given that it is cast shadows which enable us to read the faces, having a relatively unspecified expression, but with a relatively deeply carved mouth in particular, might allow for manipulation in a ritual context.She seems benevolent and serene in this even lighting - might she not be somewhat foreboding in others? Without experiments, it is hard to say.

The Three Marys

Undoubtedly the strangest image I have yet seen of the empty tomb, from a small presentation of Mannerist print-making at the Boston MFA. Mannerism is extremely strange in general, of course. But this was the highlight of the room.

Jacques Bellanges, etching and engraving, 1613. Boston Museum of Fine Arts.