Pompeii No.37: Painting the Legends

I thought it appropriate to label the roundel portraits (the last three of the Five Good Emperors), and so I cast about for a good label design to do them justice.

Here's how Michelangelo labeled each of the Sibyls in the Sistine Chapel. That's what I settled on, and as it turns out, my choice of colors is close to his as well.

This type of design is called "strapwork," because the shapes mimic the artful designs that leather and metal straps of Michelangelo's time featured. My blogging friend Theresa of Art's The Answer has posted extensively about strapwork, and you can read more about it at her site, here.

Below is the primary wall of the Pompeii Room, finished above the green bar. I'll be doing more work on the green and red areas a little later.

click to enlarge

Notice that the two roundel portraits on this wall balance the clipeus, or metal shield that hangs over the cityscape. Likewise, the bases of the muses balance the flowers and the white cloth behind them, in the identical stepped pattern. Finally, within the cityscape itself, the divided pediments in the background follow the stepped pattern as they relate to the foreground pediment.

I have one more element to add above Marcus Aurelius, and then we'll look at his wall, too. But first, I'll be sharing a Pompeian surprise that came my way recently. I hope you'll join me next week for that!

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Pompeii No.21: The Muse of Sculpture

The Muse of Sculpture was the Bürkner engraving that I thought most resembled a Michelangelo study.

academicnudes19thcentury.blogspot.com

Bürkner understood that Michelangelo's female bodies were probably all based on the male form (one wonders whether Michelangelo ever did use a female model). Bürkner also had a good sense of Michelangelo's rather heroic poses and the way he draped clothing.

click to enlarge

In fact I've made very few changes to Bürkner's engraved design. My only real critique of Bürkner's engraving is that the muse's sculpture is a weak design, and it's definitely reflective of the Victorian era. I also have an aversion to mythical entities with insect wings.

Only the tiniest of sprites —

like Tinker Bell — should merit them!

And so I've added a more classic sculpture. This type of sculpture, below, is known as a "term" (thanks, Stefan), and it very often incorporates the head of a god, but more usually the head of a satyr. Were the term used as a furniture leg, it would be known as a "terminal."

Because the children depicted with the Muse of Painting were not winged, I decided to drop the wings on this little attendant as well.

I looked at several renditions of blond hair by Michelangelo and noticed that he would sometimes add a tint of red or orange to the yellow. Perhaps the Muse of Sculpture is a strawberry blond.

The finished Muse of Sculpture is below.

click to enlarge

click to enlarge

Next week, we'll look at

the Muse of Architecture.

I hope you'll join me then!

In my last posting, several of my blogging friends suggested that something extra was needed around or above the muse. I want to assure my readers that I am still unveiling the Pompeii Room in its early stages, so please don't think for a moment that this is near completion!

Pompeii No.20: The Muse of Painting

academicnudes19thcentury.blogspot.com

As I studied this engraving by the 19th-century illustrator, Hugo Bürkner, it occurred to me that he had in turn studied Michelangelo, and that my color interpretation of Bürkner's engraving would benefit from my revisiting Michelangelo and his work.

The Sistine Chapel: A Glorious Restoration

The great irony of this resplendent painting by Michelangelo, the tondo of the Holy Family, is that its creator didn't consider himself a painter and vigorously resisted most painting assignments. Even more amazing is that the man who commissioned this as a wedding gift for his wife was dissatisfied with the result.

The Sistine Chapel: A Glorious Restoration

In all of Renaissance painting, one will be hard pressed to find a more sensitively rendered infant Jesus.

I've chosen the tondo primarily as a color reference, and in particular, I'm looking at Michelangelo's sumptuous fabrics.

I begin with lots of color reference at hand, and by working upon a light, neutral silhouette. To work directly on those dark background colors would be difficult for me (though I have known artists who do like to work from dark to light).

I've made a number of changes to Bürkner's original design to suit my own purposes:

• The image is reversed so that the shadows fall in the same direction as the mural's adjacent columns.
• I'm guessing that the two small figures, which are male and female, represent the yin and yang of creativity. But as all the muses will be feminine, I have decided to make all their attendants masculine. We'll just have to come up with a different allegory for these two.
• I've added height to the pedestal, and that has everything to do with adjusting the figures so that they bisect the two background colors in a pleasing manner.
• I've also lengthened the muse's paint brushes, just to add a little more generous dimension.
• The muses's face is more mature, and I've indicated that she actually does have a jaw!

• I wasn't sure what instrument the boy was resting his hand on, but I've painted it to look more like a prism. Then I added reflected light to the bottom of his leg.
• One of the biggest changes is getting rid of all that fussy Victorian underbrush. For a sparer, more classic foliage, I turned to Mr. Wedgwood, below.

source

 Below is the final Muse of Painting.

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No matter how much color correction I do, the purple of the base translates more vividly on the Internet. It is in actuality less intense.

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Next week we'll go to the opposite wall
and look at the Muse of Sculpture.

I hope you'll join me then!

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Pompeii No.19: Finding the Muse

In my last three postings, we looked at the trophy as an ornament, as well as my interpretations of the trophy, which now decorate both sides of the dining room window.

Now it's time to decorate the three panels that are x'd above. My thought all along was that these areas should have figures, as so many Pompeian murals did.

Italian Frescoes: The Flowering of the Renaissance  |  Roettgen

Originally, I was planning on three figures posed heroically, like this image by Domenico Ghirlandaio. If I used centurions, it would be a nice continuation of the trophy theme.

www.bythegods.net   |   Antiques in Italian Interiors, Verbavolant

I also considered using statues of Roman gods, like this one of Jupiter with his lightning bolts, and maybe putting them in alcoves like the image on the right. There were certainly a lot of Roman gods from which to choose!

Pompeii, Riverside

Another thought was to paint what I would call vignettes, figures on plain backgrounds. The painting on the right you might call a celebrity portrait; it's of the Greek playwright Menander, who authored more than a hundred comedies.

Karl Friedrich Schinkel: An Architecture for Prussia  |  Rizzoli

In Pompeian decoration — and its numerous revivals — such figures often float in the center of a panel, but in the back of my mind . . .

. . . I really liked the look of the grounded figures shown above. This is a screen-save from a video on British royal palaces. Fiona Bruce is walking through the Venitian lodging of the 18th-century British consul, Joseph Smith. (If you are like I am, you're always admiring the wallpaper at the very moment in a movie when someone gets killed!) I like those pedestals, and if I had figures at the bottom of the panels, there would still be room for ornamentation between the figures and the garlands.

click to enlarge  |  academicnudes19thcentury.blogspot.com

In my wanderings through the Internet, I came upon these engravings by a 19th-century German illustrator named Hugo Bürkner (1818-1897). What struck me about these images is that Bürkner obviously studied Michelangelo. You can see that especially in the central engraving, in the musculature and draping of cloth. I would make some changes, but I think these muses of painting, sculpture and architecture would make dandy Pompeian motifs.

100swallows.files.wordpress.com  |  photo by Wkinght94

And it would also be a nice nod to Michelangelo, whose tomb coincidentally bears the three muses of painting, sculpture and architecture. Michelangelo's tomb, by the way, was designed by Vasari, remembered today primarily for his biographies of other artists.

So it's settled.

Next week I'll unveil the first panel figure,

the Muse of Painting!

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Michelangelo's Revenge

Biagio da Cesena   |   seidenadvertising.com

Last month, after I posted about the trompe l'oeil aspects of Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel Ceiling, I was inspired to reread Irving Stone's The Agony and the Ecstasy, the best-selling biography of Michelangelo.

Michelangelo painted The Last Judgement — the altar wall directly below his ceiling — almost 30 years after he finished the ceiling. While Pope Julius II had commissioned the ceiling and intended Michelangelo to paint the wall, Pope Paul III was on the papal throne when the wall was actually painted.

Pope Paul III   |   wikipedia.org

Julius II and Michelangelo were continually at odds, in part because they were so alike in their temper and stubbornness. But Paul III, who had been a part of the Medici court — as Michelangelo had — liked, respected and supported Michelangelo.

dipity.com

When Pope Paul III heard that Michelangelo had finished the top part of the wall and was removing scaffolding, he came immediately to see the progress. His reaction was to fall to his knees and pray. The Pope's Master of Ceremonies, Biagio da Cesena, had also come to view The Last Judgement, and his reaction was to call it disgraceful! Da Cesena thought the multitude of nudes were sacrilegious, and he predicted that the wall would someday be destroyed.

Pope Paul III was astonished and angry, and he said that he'd excommunicate anyone who touched the wall.

Biagio da Cesena   |   seidenadvertising.com

Almost immediately, Michelangelo had an assistant stucco the lower right corner of the wall, and he painted da Cesena as Minos, the judge of Hades. Word got back to da Cesena and he demanded another visit, with the Pope in tow. Here, I quote from Irving Stone:

"You see, Holy Father," cried the Master of Ceremonies, "the report was true. Buonarroti has painted me into the fresco. With some kind of repulsive serpent for my genitalia."

"It's a covering," replied Michelangelo. "I knew you would not want to be portrayed wholly naked."

"A remarkable likeness," observed the Pope, his eyes twinkling. "Michelangelo, I thought you said you could not do portraiture?"

"I was inspired, Holiness."

Biagio da Cesena hopped up and down on either foot as though it were he instead of his picture standing over the fires of hell.

"Holiness, make him take me out of there!'

"Out of hell?" the Pope turned surprised eyes on the man. "Had he placed you in purgatory, I should have done everything in my power to release you. But you know that from hell there is no redemption."

censorshipinamerica.com

Biagio da Cesena and his followers did launch a campaign which eventually resulted in many little drapes to be added to Michelangelo's figures by another artist, Daniele da Volterra. Thereafter da Volterra was known as "Il Braghettone," or "the breeches maker."

Here's a quotation I found from Michelangelo; it could well be in reference to Biagio da Cesena:

Trompe l'Oeil From Michelangelo

michelangelo.com

I've been studying a richly illustrated book on the refurbished Sistine Chapel. It's entitled The Sistine Chapel: A Glorious Restoration, by Harry N. Abrams, Inc., Publishers. It not only documents the cleaning of the ceiling, but it also provides loads of information on the whole history of the original project.

muohio.edu

Before Michelangelo painted the ceiling, it looked like this, with a flat blue color and an arrangement of stars. You can see clearly in this engraving that the structure of the ceiling is vaulted, which of course means that all the surfaces curve inward.

The Sistine Chapel: A Glorious Restoration

Michelangelo wanted his images to be read as though they were on a flat surface, so he distorted the perspective of the painted architectural elements. With painted columns and an inner "crown moulding," he reconfigured the ceiling so that it would be viewed thusly:

click to enlarge   |   wga.hu

If you click to enlarge, an interesting thing to note is that Michelangelo worked from the back of the chapel towards the front and altar (or from left to right in this photo) — and as he did so, his figures became much larger. It's believed that Michelangelo did this so that the viewer's first impression would be that all the figures were the same size.

Jonah, before and after restoration  |  The Sistine Chapel: A Glorious Restoration

The posture of Jonah (it's a good guess that Michelangelo never saw a whale) masterfully completes the illusion of flatness. By having Jonah lean backwards, Michelangelo denied the curvature of the ceiling and convinces us that the niche is a flat surface.

Another note of interest about the Sistine Chapel ceiling is that, according to some sources, Michelangelo had never before painted a fresco. He delayed the project until artists from Florence arrived in Rome to teach him the method of painting on wet plaster.

We should all have such first efforts!

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