Books to the Ceiling

I’ve just brought home the art book to end all art books: 30,000 Years of Art. It’s subtitled The story of human creativity across time and space and is published by Phaidon, the venerable art book publisher. I should say more accurately that I carted him home. This splendid tome is three inches thick and weighs in at just under fifteen pounds. It’s the ultimate coffee table book - just make sure the coffee table is of sturdy construction!

The first work is The Lion Man of Hohlenstein-Stadel. Carved from mammoth ivory, the Lion Man was found in the caves of the Altmuhl valley in southern Germany. It dates from 28,000 B.C.

The book’s approach to art history is global and chronological. This results in fascinating and provocative juxtapositions. For instance, the following works, all listed as c. A.D. 750, appear on consecutive pages:

The Smiling Celebrant, a painted terracotta figurine, Mexico;

The Flying Dragon, gilt bronze, China;

Church of St. Stephen mosaic, Jordan;

Tangelgarda Picture Stone, Sweden;

Crucifixion with Saints Longinus and Stephen, a parchment from Ireland;

Zodiac Figure of a Boar, Korea;

Dinwoody Petroglyphs, USA.

Many famous works are included here, but the real joy comes from discovering previously unknown, stunning objets d’art. My favorite example so far is the Lamentation over the Dead Christ by Niccolo dell’Arca.

This sculpture group, dated, incredibly, about 1463, is in the Church of Santa Maria della Vita in Bologna, Italy.

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Many of the art books I’ve purchased over the years are exhibition catalogues. Four of my particular favorites among these are:

Manet/Velasquez: The French Taste for Spanish Painting (Metropolitan Museum of Art). This exhibition had more fabulous art per square foot than any I have ever attended. Here are some of the masterworks that were on display the memorable day that I was there:

Above, left to right: The Forge of Vulcan, Velasquez; Old Woman Poaching Eggs, Velasquez; Saint Francis in Meditation, Zurbaran]]]]

Above, left to right: Menippus, Velasquez; A Philosopher (Beggar in a Cloak), Manet; The Dwarf Don Diego de Acedoa “El Primo“, Velasquez

It is hard to find adequate vocabulary for singing the praises of the astounding Diego Rodriguez de Silva y Velasquez (1599-1660).

And BTW - one of my favorite works of historical fiction is about this painter as seen through the eyes of his manservant and fellow artist, Juan de Pareja (above, in a portrait by Velasquez).

This luminous novel, by Elizabeth Borton de Trevino, is entitled I, Juan de Pareja. It won the Newberry Award in 1966; I recommend it for readers of all ages.

UU
Samuel Palmer: Vision and Landscape (also the Met). When I first read about the upcoming Samuel Palmer retrospective, I had never heard of this 19th century British artist. I didn’t “get” these works at first; they seemed childlike and bizarre. But gradually I began to see the way in which Palmer’s paintings penetrate the mystical heart of rural England. and then, of course, I was well and truly hooked!

Left to right: Self-Portrait; Harvest Moon; The Magic Apple Tree; Coming from Evening Church

Americans in Paris 1860-1900 (yet again, the Met). I had a really fabulous experience with this particular exhibit: well, several fabulous experiences, actually. First off, the museum was letting members in a half hour before opening to the general public. I got there at 9:10, flashed my membership card, and sprinted through to the exhibit. Once there, I and two other people found ourselves standing before spectacular canvases by John Singer Sargent, James Abbott MacNeil Whistler, and others. The paintings hung in solitary splendor as we few gazed upon them and felt transported back to the world of Edith Wharton and Henry James.

Top row, left to right: Woman in an Interior, Julius Leblanc Stewart; Mrs. Henry White (Margaret Stuyvesant Rutherford), Jon Singer Sargent; La Mere (Mother and Child), Elizabeth Nourse; The Thankful Poor, Henry Ossawa Tanner

Middle row, left to right: Self Portrait, Ellen Day Hale; Afternoon in the Cluny Garden Paris, Charles Courtney Curran; Little Girl in a Blue Armchair, Mary Cassatt

Bottom row, left to right: Sita and Sarita (Jeune Fille au Chat), Cecilia Beaux; A Rose, Thomas P. Anshutz; Woman with a Glove, Carolus-Duran; Portrait of Carolus-Duran, John Singer Sargent

You can see quite a bit in a half hour. I stayed on at the museum until early afternoon; when I left, the lobby was a mob scene.

This exhibition featured many of my favorite artists of the period, such as the above named Sargent and Whistler. I also discovered many new ones, including quite a few women (in addition to the justly famed Mary Cassatt) and an African-American, Henry Ossawa Tanner, whose personal story is as remarkable as his paintings.

Portrait of Henry Ossawa Tanner by Thomas Eakins

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Finally, Fra Angelico, also at the Metropolitan. These profoundly beautiful paintings bespeak another world, one in which faith and beauty exist together in a radiant peace. If ever art could fulfill the soul’s deepest yearning, surely Fra Angelico shows us the path!

Left to right: The Day of Judgement; The Annunciation; The Flight into Egypt

The Adoration of the Magi, The Cook Tondo

How do I love thee, Metropolitan Museum of Art; let me count the ways. Here’s one of them: The Princesse de Broglie by Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres. (Don’t you just yearn to reach out and touch the fabric of that dress?)

The first time I tried to read this novel, I didn’t make it past the first three or four pages. I was bothered mainly by the tone, which seemed ironic, with an overlay of slapstick thrown in for good measure. But two people whose opinion I value highly urged me to give it another shot. As I often do in cases like this, I decided to try the audiobook. It was the right move, as it turned out. My reservations evanesced as I fell under the spell of Rosalyn Landor’s reading.

Mistress of the Art of Death starts out with a convoluted premise: at the request of England’s King Henry II, the King of Sicily has sent a deputation to Cambridge to investigate a series of murders. The victims were all children, and a hue and cry has been raised against the Jews of the region, in accordance with the allegations of blood libel. One prosperous moneylender has already been killed by a mob; as the novel opens, his co-religionists are under royal protection, waiting out the hysteria behind castle walls.

Henry has need of the Jews because Christians are barred from the practice of lending money with interest. The Jews are, in effect, the kingdom’s bankers. The king wants them cleared of any suspicion that they had a hand in the deaths of the children; once that end is accomplished, they can continue to practice their lucrative and useful profession. He needs a crack team to head up this investigation. He has heard tell that just a such a team could be furnished by the Sicilian monarch. Hence, the deputation, consisting of the rather splendidly named Vesuvia Adelia Rachel Ortese Aguilar; Simon of Naples, a highly skilled investigator and a Jew; and Mansur, a man of many useful trades and a Saracen.

Adelia, as she is commonly called, began life by very nearly leaving it while but an infant: she was a foundling, taken in and educated by enlightened parents. This little family had the good fortune to be living in Salerno, a city that, in the 1100’s, was tremendously advanced in medical learning and knowledge. Adelia has studied medicine in one of that city’s great institutions of learning. She is passionate about her obligation to relieve suffering, but rendering aid unto the living is not really her area of specialty. She has been trained to “read” the dead. Yes - what we have here basically is a sort of 12th century Kay Scarpetta.. And this was but the first of several premises that, for this reader anyway, required the famous willing suspension of disbelief.

There’s also the problem of Adelia’s precocious knowledge of the healing arts. She tells people to lose weight and get more exercise, to drink only boiled water. Would 12th century medical knowledge in fact be this sophisticated? I don’t know - but I do know that the author’s knowledge of this period is wide and deep, and despite my doubts, I’m inclined, at least in general, to trust to the accuracy of that knowledge.

One other caveat in regard to this novel: Franklin’s descriptions in certain scenes are explicit and gruesome. I’m thinking in particular of Adelia’s descent into what is almost literally the pit of Hell in pursuit of the murderer. There’s a mixture of sex and violence here that is especially revolting. If I had been reading rather than listening, I probably would have skipped ahead at this point.

That said, Adelia comes up with a terrific way to handle her dire situation in that same scene. She’s no match physically for her nemesis, but psychologically - well, that’s another story altogether. Adelia is the archetypal Plucky Heroine. The question is (willing suspension, etc.), is she too aggressively fearless to be credible? Looking at what I just wrote, I realize that it’s not accurate to call Adelia fearless. She was resourceful and courageous, but she was also terrified, and with every reason to be so.

She is also, by this point, in love. I was delighted by this development, but then, throwing a love story into the mix is an easy way for a novelist to win me over, and I suspect this is true for many other readers as well. Once again, though, we must ask the question: is this component of the novel believable? This relationship, and how to handle it, lands Adelia in a quandary: she loves her lover, but she loves being a doctor just as much, if not more. It seemed to me that she was exhibiting a temperament that would do credit to a 21st century feminist! (On the other hand, stranger things happened in the 12th century. See James Burge’s retelling of the immortal - and true! - story of Heloise and Abelard. )

Mistress of the Art of Death is a meaty novel with a large cast of characters and a complicated plot. Ariana Franklin has done a tremendous job of summoning forth the ghosts of medieval England and bringing them to busy, bustling life. This crowded canvas pits me in mind of those wonderful Bruegel paintings in which innumerable little people disappear into the distance - in this case, the distant past.

[Children's Games, by Pieter Breugel the Elder, ca. 1560]

Mysteries set in the Middle Ages are thick on the ground these days. I’m sure that most readers and writers would agree that Ellis Peters founded this subgenre with her luminous Brother Cadfael novels. A good source of information about crime fiction (and also nonfiction) set in this period is the Medieval Mysteries site.

In an interview in the Fall-Winter 2007 issue of Deadly Pleasures Mystery Magazine, Ariana Franklin comments on her fascination with the history of 12th century Europe. “‘ Maybe it was seeing Chartres Cathedral in France that did it for me, or maybe because there’s a beautiful simplicity to its songs and poetry that makes me fell the breath of God on my neck, maybe it was reading T.H. White’s “The Sword and the Stone” when I was a child.’”

[Ariana Franklin]

Naturally I was reading the above quote and saying to myself - or possibly aloud, As Miss Marple the cat was eyeing me strangely - “Yes! Oh yes!’ It is probably time to re-read The Once and Future King, and also the book by Barbara Tuchman that sparked my own fascination with the Middle Ages: A Distant Mirror.

And it’s always time to view, and view again, Ingmar Bergman’s masterpiece, The Seventh Seal.