Reading Jan van Eyck

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Reading Jan van Eycks Portrait of Giovanni
Arnolfini and His Wife

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Section One 1800-1900

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• 2. ???? the concepts of photographic realism
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Section Two 1910-2100

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outline

• Problematic
• About Jan van Eyck
• Details of Portrait of Giovanni Arnolfini and His
  Wife
• Reading materials from Scientific American
• The Renaissance Episteme
• Students Presentation

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Problematic

• The formation of the Renaissance Episteme?

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The turning point

• The grand trajectory of Western painting, we see
  something very interesting taking place ?
• at the dawn of
• the Renaissance

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1425 before and after

• Before rough 1425, most images were rather
  stylized, even schematic, but afterward we see
  paintings that have an almost photographic
  realism.
• Ideal world? real world

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For instance,

• Jan van Eycks Portrait of Giovanni Arnolfini
  and His Wife
• Three-dimensionality, presence, individuality and
  psychological depth

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What happened?

• For the first time, we find portraits that really
  look like us!
• How can we explain such a paradigmatic shift in
  paintings?

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Jan van Eyck

• Flemish painter (b. before 1395, Maaseik, d.
  1441, Bruges)
• Biography http//www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/auth/ey
  ck

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Jan van Eyck. . .

• Is the greatest artist of the early Netherlands
  school.
• Had the outstanding skill as an oil painter
• Invented the medium to allow for the preservation
  of the colors
• built up layers of transparent glazes,
• captured objects in the minutest detail

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Glaze

• a transparent or translucent color applied to
  modify the effect of a painted surface
• a smooth glossy or lustrous surface or finish
• a glassy film

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luminous clarity

• He had an eye almost miraculously responsive to
  every detail or his world, not just in that he
  saw it, but that he understood its value.
• he saw the most ordinary things with a wonderful
  sharpness and a great sense of their awesome
  beauty.

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A Turning Point

• From the late medieval arts (the Gothic arts) to
  the early Renaissance Arts/ ? Late Gothic and The
  Early Renaissance
• Geographically, the Southern Europe (Italy) was
  going to take the place of artistic center.

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History of arts

• Medieval arts ? Renaissance Arts

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A comparative study
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The Gothic Style

• pointed arch
• vault rib
• flying buttress

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International Gothic style

• Illuminated manuscript in the Middle Ages

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Light and shadow

• The Middle Ages Divine light and intellectual
  light
• The Renaissance The corporeal light (the real
  world)
• God-centered world ? human-centered world

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Paintings by Jan van Eyck

• An analysis of his style

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The Virgin of Chancellor Rolin 1433-34 (170 Kb)
Wood, 66 x 62 cm (26 x 24 1/2 in) Musee du
Louvre, Paris
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The Ghent alarpiece
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Adoration of the Lamb detail bottom half of
panel depicting angelic musicians, 1432 (30 Kb)
Cathedral of St. Bavo, Ghent
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Crucifixion1420-25Oil on wood transferred to
canvas, 56,5 x 19,5 cmMetropolitan Museum of
Art, New York
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Last Judgment1420-25Oil on wood transferred to
canvas, 56,5 x 19,5 cmMetropolitan Museum of
Art, New York
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Stigmatization of St Francis 1428-29
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A New Realism

• fidelity in art and literature to nature or to
  real life and to accurate representation without
  idealizationPhoto-realism in painting
  characterized by extremely meticulous depiction
  of detail

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Fidelity

• when you copy the detail and quality of an
  original, such as a picture, sound or story
  exactly
• accuracy in describing or reporting facts or
  details

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Portrait of Cardinal Albergati ? painting media

• c. 1435Silverpoint, 212 x 180 mmKupferstichkabin
  ett, Dresden

• 1431-32Oil on wood, 34,1 x 27,3
  cmKunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

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Portrait of Giovanni Arnolfini and His Wife
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Portrait of Giovanni Arnolfinic. 1435Oil on
panel29 x 20 cmStaatliche Museen,
Gemaeldegalerie-Dahlem, Berlin
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Detailed analysis

• http//employees.oneonta.edu/farberas/arth/arth214
  _folder/Van_Eyck/Arnolfini.html

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More notes/ conflicting viewpoints

• Wedding? This work is not intended as a record of
  their wedding./ As today, marriages in
  15th-century Flanders could take place privately
  rather than in church.
• Pregnant? His wife is not pregnant, as is often
  thought, but holding up her full-skirted dress in
  the contemporary fashion.

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Jan van Eyck was here 1434

• The ornate Latin signature translates as 'Jan van
  Eyck was here 1434'.
• The similarity to modern graffiti is not
  accidental.
• Van Eyck often inscribed his pictures in a witty
  way.

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What is inside the mirror?

• The mirror reflects two figures in the doorway.
  One may be the painter himself. Arnolfini raises
  his right hand as he faces them, perhaps as a
  greeting.

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Reading

• Stork, David G.
• Optics and Realism in Renaissance Art.
• Scientific American (December 2004) 77-83.

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at the dawn of the Renaissance.

• When we consider the grand trajectory of Western
  painting, we see something very interesting
  taking place at the dawn of the Renaissance.

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Schematic style? photographic realism

• Before roughly 1425, most images were rather
  stylized, even schematic, but afterward we see
  paintings that have an almost photographic
  realism.

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Portrait of Giovanni Arnolfini and His Wife

• Three dimensionality
• Presence
• Individuality and psychological depth
• Portraits really look like us!

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New Art/ ars nova

• David Hockeys bold and controversial theory
• Artist used lenses and mirror to project images
  onto canvases or similar surfaces and then trace
  and paint over the results.

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Photographically?

• Literally,
• Metaphorically,

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David Hockneys Theory

• Secret Knowledge Rediscovering the Lost
  Techniques of Old Masters
• Mirror projection/ camera obscura

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camera obscura

• Etymology New Latin, literally, dark chamber
• a darkened enclosure having an aperture usually
  provided with a lens through which light from
  external objects enters to form an image of the
  objects on the opposite surface

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Camera obscura ? phtographic camera

• A traditional lens-based camera obscura is a
  precursor of the modern photographic camera, but
  without film.
• Mirror-based obscura at the time of van Eyke?
  would have be the most sophisticated optical
  system!!!

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Making a Concave Mirror Using 15th Century
Technology

• http//www.optics.arizona.edu/ssd/concave.html
• David Stork a different perspective
• Arts

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Optics and realism

• The History of Mirrors, Concaves, and Concaves
• Euclidean Geometry ? Projective Geometry ?
  Analytical Geometry

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Too photographically?

• His painting is photographically capturing the
  real world.
• Literal or metaphorical meanings?
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Why? The technological factors

• Flat tempora painting of medieval art ? oil
  painting
• Linear perspective
• Mathematical system/ projective geometry
• anatomy

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Cultural and economical factors

• Secularism or humanism
• The increase in patronage
• Growing prevalence of spectacles

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Perspective and viewpoints

• Part Two

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Raphael (1483-1520)The School of Athens
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Renaissance Art and Mathematical Perspective

• Early Attempts to Depict the Real World in Art

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Rembrandt painted his famous "Anatomical Lecture
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The Interaction of Artists and Scientists in the
Renaissance

• Applications of the Method of Perspective in
  Renaissance Art
• LEONARDO ENAISSANCE POLYMATH

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Leonardo da Vinci, the man of science
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Lady with an Ermine
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The Mona Lisa
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The Art of Renaissance Science

• Galileo and Perspective

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Cartesian Coordinates
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Renaissance episteme

• The four modes of resemblance are pretty
  straightforward 1) convenience spatial
  proximity, which relies upon and breeds
  resemblance 2) emulation resemblance at a
  distance 3) analogy resemblance of relation
  man is center of world 4) sympathy resemblance
  provoking spatial and qualitative change.

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• Signature is the being of the Renaissance sign, a
  resemblance that is sign of, that indicates,
  points the way toward, another resemblance.
  Obviously here we have an infinite task of
  chasing resemblances around, which yields
  abundant, yet empty knowledge since everything
  has a hidden resemblance to everything else, you
  can find (know) resemblances everywhere, but what
  do you find everywhere? Just another resemblance.
  The 16th C "condemned itself to never knowing
  anything but the same thing, and to knowing that
  thing only at the unattainable end of an endless
  journey."

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2

• Since resemblances spoke through signatures that
  were parts of the world and were themselves
  resemblances, then science, magic, and erudition
  (reliance on ancient authorities), which are all
  forms of interpreting natural signs, are on an
  equal footing this is not because of credulity,
  but because of the episteme.
• Classical Age

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Middle Ages? the Renaissance

• The age of faith ? the age of reason
• God-centered ? man-centered
• The age of wonder ? the age of science
• C.S. Lewis the bookish world ? the rational
  world
• M. Foucault the European ration from the
  Renaissance to our own age

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The Ambassadors
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Satire on False PerspectiveHOGARTH, WILLIAM
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Escher, Relativity
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Reading a painting?

• Ritual values and exhibition values (W. Benjamin)
• Epistemic turn and critical judgment (E. Kant)

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aletheia

• but Heidegger reads the original meaning as
  "unconcealment.
• If we translate aletheia as 'unconcealment'
  rather than 'truth', this translation is not
  merely 'more literal' it contains the directive
  to rethink the ordinary concept of truth in the
  sense of the correctness of statements and to
  think it back to that still uncomprehended
  disclosedness and disclosure of beings

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Take a break!

• Students Oral Presentation is forthcoming.