Paintings



that Changed the World




(by Klaus Reichold & Bernhard Graf)



From Lascaux to Warhol






Supreme art is a traditional statement of certain heroic and religious truth,
passed on from age to age, modified by individual genius,
but never abandoned.

William Butler Yeats


 

Plagued to Death
 

Consolation in suffering

 

Appear to me as my shield, my consolation in the hour of my death. And let me see thine image in thy sufferings on the cross. I will look up to thee, full of faith will I press thee fast to my heart: who thus dies, dies well.

Paul Gerhardt, 1656, after the Salve caput cruentatum of Arnulf of Louvain, before 1250

 

With the deep-cleft valleys of the Vosges Mountains, and the idyllic market towns which dot the eastern slopes with their charming half-timbered houses, Alsace-Lorraine is renowned for its quaint, picturesque scenery. Yet death haunted medieval isenheim, on what is now the Wine Route between Colmar and Guebwdler. Dedicated to caring for the sick, the monastery of St Anthony — whose name derived from the patron saint of lepers — maintained a hospice. In the Middle Ages lepers were spoken of as being branded by "hellfire" or the "burning disease". All they could do was await death, which gradually but inevitably devoured them. Fear of contagion made them outcasts in society. They were also regarded as sinners who were being punished for mortal sins by being afflicted with leprosy. Only the devoted care of committed monks and nuns relieved their suffering.

Monks and nuns cared even more for the souls in the disintegrating bodies of their patients. Communal prayer was the high point of weekdays in the hospice. In the Isenheim hospice, monks, nuns and their patients prayed together before the Crucifixion painted by Matthias Grunewald, a native of Wurzburg. The Abbot, Guido Guersi, had commissioned this work to adorn the central panel of a hinged altarpiece on view during the week in the hospice church. The visionary expressive power of Grunewald's sublime Crucifixion, his masterpiece, reveals the painter as one of the greatest of that or any age. Emperor Rudolf II desperately wanted to acquire the painting for his collection. The Prince Electors of Brandenburg and Bavaria also made attractive offers for it to enhance their collections. Nonetheless, for the time being, the luminous Grunewald Crucifixion remained in the setting for which it had been created: the church of the Isenheim lepers' hospice. Here it consoled those who could identify with what it portrayed. In Christ's martyred body as Grunewald had painted it, the lepers in the Isenheim hospice could find a personal relationship to their Lord. Not until the Isenheim monastery was disbanded in the secularisation that followed the French Revolution was the Colmar Crucifixion finally moved — to a museum.
 

Matthias Grunewald
(1480-1529)
The Crucifixion
c. 1515
Oil on wood, 269 x 307 cm
Musee d'Unterlinden, Colmar
 

Matthias Grunewald
The Crucifixion (detail)
c. 1515
 

Matthias Grunewald
The Crucifixion (detail)
c. 1515


 

"When Shall We Three Meet Again"
 

Europe swept by witch-burnings

 

Now I come to speak of the greatest of all heresies: of the mischief wrought by witches and fiends. By night they fly through the air on broomsticks, stove forks, cats, goats or other such things. Witchcraft is the most accursed of all errors - and it must be mercilessly punished by fire.

Mathias von Kemnat, Chronicle of Frederick the Victorious of the Palatinate, с. 1480;
heading: William Shakespeare, Macbeth, Act 1, Scene1

 

Hans Baldung Grien The Witches Sabbath

see collection:  The Witches; Brian Froud "Good faeries & bad faeries"

 

They concocted devilish ointments of toads' eyes, choke cherries, peppercorns and spiders. They poisoned the air with powders ground from intestines. They caused cataclysmic deluges to fall from the heavens. They set off avalanches and turned themselves into red-eyed goats. Their favourite food was pickled children. Imagination knew no bounds when it came to describing the monstrous things done by witches and their evil powers. Some early tales are inadvertently funny. Witches blew up storms by vigorously fanning them with their slippers or slid down into valleys on the backs of avalanches, the tails of their scarves flapping in the wind. In early Modern times, however, witches were no laughing matter. Enlightened bishops — who castigated belief in ghosts, witches and black magic and regarded it as utter nonsense that represented a revival of pagan practices — were not heeded. Most theologians not only promoted dark superstition; they were convinced that sorcery was a reality and the result of pacts with the devil. Witchcraft was heresy, which made it doubly important to prosecute it and to persecute practitioners. In 1487 a compendium of horror stories was published in Strasbourg, the Hexenhammer (Witches' Hammer), which continued to be read in Europe until the seventeenth century. Both Protestant and Catholic judges consulted it as a penal code for dealing with witchcraft. One can imagine King James, famously obsessed with witchcraft, having been sent a copy by his daughter from the Palatinate. At any rate, the book may be said to have sparked off much of the witch-burning madness of the early Modern age. Its authors approved of torture, maintaining that women in particular were inclined to the sin of witchcraft. Of course women who gave themselves up to "lust and carnal desire or even sodomy" were prime targets for persecution. The German painter Hans Baldung Grien, who from 1509 lived in Strasbourg — where Hexenhammer had been published not long before — most likely wanted to get in on the act with his Two Witches. Despite the continued call for moderation and reason, witch-burnings — which had ceased in England by 1685 — were still common practice on mainland Europe as late as 1749. Trials however continued until 1717 in England, whereas the last recorded trial of a witch took place in 1793 in Germany.

 

Hans Baldung Grien
(1484/84—1545)
Zwei Wetterhexen (Two Witches)
1523
Stadelches Kunstinstitut, Frankfurt


 

A Battle that Changed the World
 

An eyewitness to a cosmic event

 

Dreadful he may be, but Alexander possesses supernatural powers. If those eyes hadn't looked at me that way, that battle would not have been lost. I would not have fled.

Monologue spoken by King Darius, in Klaus Mann's Alexander: A Utopian Novel, 1929

 

Alexander, whom posterity styles "the Great", was twenty-three years old when he and his Greek troops encountered an adversary old enough to be his father, King Darius III of Persia. Battle was joined on the plain of Issus, an old Mediterranean port near what is now the Turkish-Syrian border, in 333 ВС. The brilliant Alexander, a pupil of the philosopher Aristotle, managed to break into the Persian left flank. He is said to have looked so piercingly into Darius s eyes that the Persian king fled. His troops panicked and the massacre that ensued lasted until late that night.

During the battle Darius's mother, wife and children were captured. Alexander treated them honourably, which earned him the respect of the Persians. As hostages, however, they did influence Darius's behaviour. Yet, when Darius showed readiness to compromise, Alexander refused his offer. His decision made world history. He wanted to conquer Persia, but much more he wanted to rule the world: "Should you desire to know what my aim is, you should know that the bounds of my new Empire will be those that God has set the earth." After defeating Darius a second time, he conquered Egypt, the kingdom of Babylon and eastern Persia, calling himself the "King of all Asia." He drove the borders of his vast empire far beyond what is now Pakistan, all the way east to India and the banks of the River Bias. His victories were not merely political. More importantly, he carried Hellenic culture with him everywhere he went. He also promoted religious tolerance, including of Judaism. Napoleon thought highly of him, admiring in particular Alexander's ability to win the hearts of the peoples he conquered.

Albrecht Altdorfer was the first great painter to take landscape as his exclusive subject matter. He represented the historic Battle of Issus as one of his contemporaries, the German physician and scholar Paracelsus, might have viewed it: an epic struggle of life and death fought out on a cosmic scale, whose drama is reflected in the swirling clouds above and the endless vista beyond.

 

Albrecht Altdorfer
(с 1480—1538)
The Battle of Alexander
1529
Alte Pinakothek, Munich


 

A Hotbed of Crime and Fornication
 

Martin Luther's "Ninety-Five Theses" and schism

 

Whatever happens on pilgrimages other than whores and knaves from all over the place get together for their fun? And does the Pope do anything other than defile and prostitute himself? We want neither to go on pilgrimages nor to heed the words of the Pope, but only to seek God in our hearts.

Martin Luther, "Table Talk", 1537

 

Trouble was brewing in Europe: abuse of authority, ostentation, debauchery and bribery. Or so some Christians viewed the state of affairs around 1500.They considered the Pope the devil incarnate and his Church a bastion of lust, stupidity, greed and corruption. The sermons of the Dominican Johann Tetzel were water on the critics' mill. In 1517 Tetzel proclaimed that the Pope had granted him such authority that he could grant absolution even to someone who confessed he had fathered the child of the Virgin Mary — that is, if the sinner was to pay.

For some time now pulpits had been resounding with sermons offering remission of sins for money and a direct path to Heaven without a detour through Purgatory. The sermons preached by Johann Tetzel, however, were the ones that provoked Martin Luther, an Augustine monk and professor of theology at Wittenberg. In mounting a challenge, Luther said it was utter nonsense to think God could be bought. He held that the only thing one could do for one's salvation was to believe in God and live accordingly. Luther was in a rage when he wrote out his "Ninety-Five Theses". He is said to have nailed them to the portal of Wittenberg Castle Church on 31 October 1517. All that has been conclusively proved by historians, however, is that he sent his "Theses" to his bishop on the Saturday that marks the beginning of the Reformation.

Luther's goal was a theological debate; the authorities would have none of it. But thousands of copies of the "Theses" had been made and distributed, thanks to the new technology of printing, and a popular movement coalesced around them. It was too late for the ancient Church: the Reformation became a revolution, scourging pilgrimages and liturgical practises as "senseless foolery". Led by Luther's rhetoric which was sometimes eloquent and religious, sometimes violent and vulgar, the Reformers went quickly from demanding the abolition of priestly celibacy to a thorough re-casting of the Church. And the movement assumed a political and social dimension, propagated under the slogan: "freedom of Christian people". Together with the Humanist movement, the Reformation effected cultural change on a hitherto unprecedented scale.

Luther had a broad following: he was joined by merchants, peasants, craftsmen and princes. Supported by the princes, Luther was able to stand up to the Pope and the Emperor. Among his followers was the Northern Renaissance painter Lucas Cranach the Elder. At the Wittenberg Court, Cranach became a personal friend of the Reformer. Cranach executed several portraits of Luther, among them one for St Mary's Church, Wittenberg. It portrays Luther in his office as preacher there. In much of northern Europe, the ancient Church was no match for Luther's movement. After the Schism with Rome had taken place, Protestantism was ready to grow into a world-wide movement.
 

Cranach Lucas the Elder
(1472-1553)
Martin Luther Preaching
(detail of the altar predella)
1539
Detail of the altar predella in St Mary's Church, Wittenberg


 

Give Yourself Body and Heart to Me
 

Henry VIII and his wives

 

If you would be a true loyal mistress and friend and give yourself body and heart to me, who will be, and has been, your most loyal servant (if your hardness does not forbid it), I promise you not only that the name will be yours by right, but also that I will take you for my only mistress, casting all others out of my thoughts and affections, and serving only you.

King Henry VIII of England, in a letter to Anne Boleyn, c. 1527/28

 

Fate and fortune: Henry VIII's six wives
 

Catherine of Aragon (unknown artis), Anne Boleyn (unknown artist) and Jane Seymour (Hans Holbein the Younger)
 

Anne of Cleves (Hans Holbein the Younger), Catherine Howard (Hans Holbein the Younger) and Catherne Parr (unknown artis)
 

Posterity has not thought highly of him.

Swiss historian Jacob Burkhardt called him a "clown and devil alike". Charles Dickens found him an unbearably bloodthirsty and swaggering bully, a fat, ruthless blot on the map of British history. King Henry VIII of England still epitomizes cruelty, gluttony and lust. During the thirty-seven years of his reign, some 70,000 people were sentenced to death and executed. Even his most distinguished English contemporary, the great Humanist and writer Sir Thomas More, who was his Lord Chancellor, was charged with high treason, dying a martyr under the executioner's axe.

The king's great girth is often attested to by historians. As a young man, Henry was good-looking and athletically built, to a Venetian observer "... the handsomest potentate I ever set eyes on. He is much handsomer than any sovereign in Christendom". By the end of his life, Henry was so corpulent he could hardly walk. The portrait of 1539/40 by the Court Painter to the English Court, Hans Holbein the Younger, a native of Augsburg, shows that the king was already quite portly. Only a few years after it was painted, it took four gentlemen of the bedchamber and a block and tackle to hoist Henry VIII into bed. Amorous escapades were now out of the question, though he probably had had more than enough of those anyway. Married six times, he became more notorious for his marriages than for any other reason. Not that Henry VIII, in his youth an excellent dancer and a witty raconteur, was the only Casanova in history to grace, or disgrace, a throne. History has known far worse characters.

Three of Henry's marriages ended harmlessly, or at least conventionally. His third wife died in childbirth; his fourth marriage ended in divorce and his sixth wife survived him.

What makes Henry VIII such a fascinating villain is the brutal way he rid himself of his other three wives. Because the Pope refused to annul his first marriage, Henry broke with the Church of Rome although he was a practising Catholic. He founded the Anglican Church, made himself sovereign head of it and declared his marriage vows null and void, which enabled him to marry Anne Boleyn without having to worry about Papal interference. Anne Boleyn, like his fifth wife, was executed in the Tower of London by the king's order. Both ladies were accused of having been unfaithful to their lord and sovereign. The truth is, Anne Boleyn was beheaded because Henry had fallen in love with another woman, whom he wanted to marry. The charge of infidelity may have been true in Catherine Howard's case. Only twenty when she married the king, she may well have been bored by the marriage. At forty-nine, he had bags under his eyes and was fat, surely not a man to die for.
 

Hans Holbein the Younger
(1497/98 — 1543)
Henry VIII
1540
Galleria Nazionale d'Arre Antica, Rome


 

Who Has Ever Read in His Soul?
 

The Emperor Charles V, his forces spent

 

In only a very few years the burden he bore had become too much for him. At thirty-three he fell ill of gout, only to be plagued all too soon by a host of other ills. And at fifty he marshalled many armies and ruled vast territories of this world - yet he was hardly able to control his own destiny. With neither his hands nor his feet nor his other faculties under control, he was a broken man, beset as he was by so many afflictions.

Prudencio de Sandoval, On the Emperor Charles V, before 1620

 

Norblin, after Antoine-Jean Gros, 1812, Francis I of Frame Shows
Emperor Charles V the Royal Tombs in Saint-Denis, 1837

The Entry of Charles V and Pope Clement VIII at the
coronation of the Emperor in Bologna, 1530
 

Although his physicians were appalled, they could do nothing to stop their sovereign, Charles V, from drinking ice-cold beer before breakfast and indulging in lavish repasts. Contemporaries reported that he was fond of fresh oysters, anchovies, eel pie, olives and hot, spicy Spanish sausages. Although his fingers were stiff from gout, he refused to let anyone cut up his meat for him.

The Holy Roman Emperor who, on the one hand, called for heretics to be burnt at the stake and, on the other, loved birds and flowers, was not admired — in fact he was often criticised and rejected. Yet, there has hardly ever been a ruler who has held so many lands under his sway. Born in Ghent in 1500, Charles V inherited the Duchy of Burgundy at the age of six. At sixteen he held the Spanish crowns and with them the Netherlands and the Kingdom of Naples and Sicily. His father bequeathed the Austrian crown lands to him. At nineteen he was elected king of the Germans and at thirty he was crowned Holy Roman Emperor in Bologna. Because the Spanish overseas colonies were founded during his reign, Charles V was also ruler of Mexico and Peru, while the Netherlands conquests in the Pacific made him King of the Philippines. He had over seventy titles and ruled an empire in which the sun never set. For all that, Charles V was not power-hungry.

Everything his ancestors had not managed to conquer in changing alliances and valiant campaigns simply fell into his lap through inheritance and complex family genealogies. Perhaps he dreamt of a worldwide Christian empire to which he might have wanted to add the coasts of Africa and even more mythical realms overseas, but his strength was no longer equal to the task. A "pious prisoner of power", as one French scholar called him, he was torn between the factions quarrelling over his empire. At the age of fifty-five — seven years before he had had Titian  paint the present portrait — he abdicated and retreated to his Spanish country estate.

The leading Venetian painter of his day, Titian  had been appointed Court Painter to Charles V and created him Count Palatine and Knight of the Golden Spur — an unprecedented honour for a painter. The Emperor is depicted sitting in an armchair. In his youth, he flaunted fashionable clothing; by now he has become a ruler who is so miserly that a visitor to his Court reported his hat was shabby and his cloak threadbare. He is contemplative, yet his eyes are blank, as if all the doubts he has entertained in his life are mirrored in them.
 

TIZIANO VECELLIO, called Titian
(с 1487/90—1576)
Emperor Charles V
1548
Alte Pinakothek, Munich


 

Let Us Build a Tower to the Heavens
 

The world as a construction site

 

King Nimrod, Chamas's grandson, Noah's son, said he wanted to revenge himself on God if God should again afflict the earth by visiting a second deluge upon it. Therefore he said he would build a tower so high that the flood-waters would not reach its top.

Josephus Ravius, Antiquities of the Jews, Book I, Chapter 4, first century AD
 

The Empire Stare Building, New York
 

Teeming with master builders, carpenters, stonemasons, mortar mixers and brick-masons, the enormous construction site depicted by Pieter Bruegel the Elder in The Tower of Babel recalls something like an anthill. It is clear that no expense was spared here. A tower was to be built, which would reach the Heavens. However, it was not intended merely to withstand the floodwaters of a second deluge. If one believes what is written in the Old Testament and in the writings

of Josephus Flavius, a Romanised Jewish historian, or even what is supposed to have been in The Sibylline Books, the tower primarily symbolised man's defiance against divine omnipotence. Evidently the act of building achieved its purpose: "The Lord waxed wroth and became enraged when for Hoffart the tower was engaged", quipped the Strasbourg Humanist Sebastian Brant in his Narrenschiff (1494), published in English as The Shyp of Folys of the Worlde in 1509. Needless to say, the Lord was not amused by these excesses. He descended from the Heavens to punish the construction workers who, until then, had spoken to each other in the same language.

After the visitation they were left with a confused babble of tongues. Since people could no longer communicate with each other, the tower was left unfinished. A gigantic monument to hubris, it crumbled into decay. Did such a tower actually stand in Babylon, then one of the world's oldest cities, long the political and cultural hub of the ancient Near East? Archaeologists are not in agreement on this point. Nevertheless, in 1899, the remains of a sanctuary were uncovered on the site of ancient Babylon. In the middle of the temple precinct traces were found of a square tower consecrated to the god Marduk. Its sides were 91.5 metres long and it was estimated to have been some 90 metres high. Was this the legendary Tower of Babel?

The Netherlandish painter Pieter Bruegel the Elder transplanted the Tower of Babel to Antwerp, where he joined the St Luke's Artisans' Guild in 1551. That Pieter Bruegel made the Tower of Babel the subject of a painting shows the painter felt he, too, was living in a time of social, political and religious unrest. He obviously thought a great deal about what the biblical tower symbolised: ambition, pride and the transience of human existence. His painting may, therefore, be a sign that some sane voices were calling for moderation and reflection in an exhilarating age of global exploration and of expanding trade links. On the other hand, The Tower of Babel might just as easily be taken to represent a manifesto against the denial of human rights, oppression and tyranny, a vision invoking the imminent end of the Spanish domination of the Netherlands. The painting might also be interpreted as moral support for the Reformation. Its leading exponents never ceased to censure the Papacy and the princes loyal to Rome for "resurrecting" the godless city of Babylon. The Reformers were of the opinion that it was high time for more linguistic diversity since, as they saw it, the Church of Rome no longer had anything worth saying.
 

Pieter Bruegel the Elder
(1525-1569)
The Tower of Babel
1563


 

Cowards Don't Go to Heaven
 

The first Christian victory at sea against the Ottomans

 

If two galleys ram each other with their bows, a seaman need only walk a two-foot-wide plank to enter the enemy galley. And even if he knows that he would plunge down into Neptune's lap at once should he miss his footing, he confronts the mighty mouths of fire-spewing cannon undaunted and, driven on by his sense of honour, he will cross this small plank to the enemy ship.

Miguel de Cervantes, The Adventures of Don Quixote, 1605
 

The victor of Lepanto: Don Juan d'Austria;
woodcut by Anton von Leest, end of the 16th century
 

Navpaktos is a charming little Greek town

at the entrance to the Gulf of Corinth. In the early morning, old men sit over glasses of Ouzo and cups of coffee on tottery blue chairs along the quay. Day after day they enjoy the spectacle of the peaks across the Gulf on the Peloponnesus emerging from the haze. This was where, on 7 October 1571, Christian navies battled Ottoman galleys bristling with canons to save, as the West saw it, the powers of Christendom from being subdued by Muslim forces. A bloodbath for both sides, the event went down in history as the "Battle of Lepanto", which is the Italian name for Naupactus, the name of the town in ancient times.

Renaissance Europe always feared — not without reason — the possibility of being invaded by Ottoman armies. Three centuries before the Battle of Lepanto, Crusaders laid waste entire regions of what is now Turkey at regular intervals. Now the tables had been turned. Whilst the West was imploring its Saints to intercede for its armies, the Ottoman forces were burning Belgrade. In 1526 they conquered Hungary and, by 1529, they had reached the gates of Vienna. This was the point at which the West retaliated. After morning mass on Sunday, 7 October 1571, the galleys of the "Holy League", an alliance of Venetians, Spaniards and Papal troops, were cautiously cruising the northern coast of the Gulf of Corinth when suddenly a murmur went up from ship to ship: the Ottoman fleet had been sighted. Numbering 274 men-o'-wars, it was drawn up in a broad crescent formation ten nautical miles to the east in the Gulf. At that time, the rules of naval warfare did not permit flagships to engage in combat. This convention was, however, jettisoned at Lepanto. By the time the Ottoman Sultana rammed the foredeck of the Spanish Real, splintering it under the blow, the battle had already been decided. Fighting ceased at 2 p.m., when a Spaniard beheaded the Ottoman commander in the fray and brandished his horrible trophy for the Turkish forces to see. Overcome at the sight, the Ottoman navy was paralysed. The Sultana was seized and the battle won by the Christian forces. The Holy League suffered 7,000 casualties, while 40,000 Ottoman seamen had been killed. One of the most distinguished survivors was Miguel de Cervantes. The Spanish writer, whose left hand was permanently maimed from injuries sustained in the fighting, recorded his experience in Don Quixote.

Yet, the hero of the day was John of Austria. The commander of the victorious Western forces was the illegitimate son of Emperor Charles V and Barbara Blomberg, the daughter of a belt-maker from Regensburg, Germany. The man who had been scorned as a bastard won renown as the saviour of Europe, and was even paid homage by the Pope.

 

ANDREA DE MICHIELIS VICENTINO
(с. 1542—c. 1617)
Battle of Lepanto
1603
Oil on canvas
Palazzo Ducale, Venice


 

Blessed Be the Fruits of Culture
 

Prague around 1600

 

Look at the apple, look at the peach, how round and full of life, cheeks to right and left; notice, too, my eyes, of which one cerise, the other mulberry. Outside I look a monster, inside I bear noble traits, concealing a royal portrait.

Don Gregorio Comanini, The Vertumnus of Arcimboldo 1591
 

The jewel in the Bohemian crown: The Hradcany castle ward m Prague
 

Alchemists attempting to make gold, astrologers studying the stars and the constellations and physicists desiring to build a machine of perpetual motion and to square the circle were amongst the Laputan circle of scholars that Emperor RudolfII (1576—1612) assembled at Hradcany castle in Prague. The most important member of the Habsburg dynasty ever to reside there, Rudolf II was renowned as a generous patron of the arts. Nonetheless, many of his contemporaries were convinced that his hobbies kept him from the more pressing business of rulmg. They were particularly suspicious of the Emperor's passion for all things arcane: mythology, occult phenomena and the mysterious powers of nature. In short, the Emperor was regarded as an introverted weakling who was incapable of making decisions. Needless to say, Rudolf could afford to ignore such objections. He was supported in all his interests by a fatherly friend, a man of the "keenest intellectual powers", who was as highly respected as widely read and scholarly. This cultured man came from Milan and was named Giuseppe Arcimboldo. In his youth, Arcimboldo had designed stained-glass windows for Milan Cathedral. In 1562 he was called by Emperor Ferdinand I, Rudolf's grandfather, to the Habsburg Court, where he stayed on to serve three generations of the dynasty with great loyalty. He is first mentioned in the imperial records of 1565 as an official portrait painter to the Court. However, he was not just a painter. "Arcimboldo's noble intellect invented a great many clever, charming and unusual things for the magnificent revels held at Court", a contemporary reported. The masques Arcimboldo designed as settings for those court festivities must have been impressive. He once staged a mythological parade with real elephants and fake dragons, which were really horses in disguise. Today Arcimboldo is remembered primarily for his witty allegorical paintings. Flowers, fruits, fishes, birds, roots and even books are ingeniously arranged to form recognisable portraits. Drawing on botany, landscape architecture and hunting, Arcimboldo found all the inspiration he needed in the Habsburg "Wunderkammer", or cabinet of curiosities, which was overflowing with marvels: giant shells, sword fish, mummies, rare precious stones, stuffed animals and exotic artefacts from India. There was even a "devil confined in a glass". Arcimboldo did not look on his paintings as mere conceits in the Renaissance tradition; he meant them to be profoundly symbolic. The portrait of Rudolf II as Vertumnus, the Roman god of vegetation and the seasons, was certainly not meant as a travesty or a parody. On the contrary, the court portrait painter's intention was to honour his Emperor as the personification of generous patronage and cultural enlightenment. Arcimboldo's homage to his patron did not help Rudolf politically, however, for his brother Matthias still succeeded in deposing him. His reason for doing so was that Rudolf was no longer capable of reigning, owing to so many other distractions.

 

Giuseppe Arcimboldo
(1527—1593)
The Habsburg Emperor Rudolf II as Vertumnus
1591
Skokloster Castle, Stockholm


 

Only a Storm Brewing?
 

Toledo between splendour and disaster

 

Accursed the day, о Lord, on which I saw the light of this world, abominable the night in which I was conceived. May no ray of light enlighten it! Nor the sun break victorious through her mists! Only night, always night, that I may not see the heavens. No moon, no stars. Only a storm brewing to make the darkness more profound.

"The Poor Man" in Calderon de la Barca's The Great Theatre of the World, с 1645

 

High above the Rio Tajo: The Alcazar in Toledo
 

El Greco, Laokoon, 1610
The allegorical horse in the middle distance trots toward the city, which is spread out under a glowering, doom-laden sky. It is a beautiful landscape, in which the vibrant red-earth ground is covered with a lattice of silvers, blues, and greens. However, this is not the ancient city of Troy, but El Greco's hometown of Toledo in Spain. El Greco painted Laocoon during the time of the Spanish Catholic Counter-Reformation, and his allegorical drama, of transgressing mortals and vengeful gods, set unequivocally in his own modern Spain, is an indication of the orthodoxy of the artist's religious beliefs.
 

Toledo is a unique open-air museum of Spanish history. The eastern slope of this oriental-looking city is crowned by the Alcazar, the citadel. To the left the cathedral's tower rises up out of a sea of medieval houses. A wreath of Moorish Gothic fortifications encircles the city like a diadem, and at the foot of the impressive granite outcropping, the River Tagus cuts through a magnificent gorge.

The city of Toledo has seen glorious times. Yet disaster loomed on more than one occasion, for the first time in 192 ВС when the city, which is one of Spain's most ancient, was conquered by the Romans. Nearly 700 years later, at the time of the Great Migrations, the West Goths subdued Toledo and made it the residence of their kings. Although the city was still brilliant, the West Gothic kingdom was tottering into decline. When the Arabs appeared on the Iberian peninsula, members of the Jewish community in Toledo opened the gates of the city to them on 11 November 711. This was their revenge for the hardship they had been made to endure by their fellow Toledans. Losing its status as a major city, Toledo was degraded to that of one of the five district capitals of Moorish Spain.

Pacified with great difficulty, Toledo eventually flowered into a centre of science and the arts, where a fruitful dialogue between Jewish, Christian and Islamic cultures took place. From 1085 the city was again governed by Christians. Not only did Toledo become Catalan's capital, it was noted for its policy of religious tolerance towards Jews and Arabs. As early as the twelfth century, an Arab scholar praised Toledo as being "the centre of Europe".

However, palace revolts, civil wars and excesses committed by the Church ensued, shaking the city. Its star was on the wane. The Inquisition moved in and Jews and Arabs were expelled. The royal residence was transferred to Madrid, and a century of troubles broke over the city.

Did El Greco, who settled in Toledo in 1577, wish to highlight the tragic side of his new home when he painted his View of Toledo (Storm over Toledo)? Born at Fodele on Crete, he went to Venice at the age of twenty-four to become a pupil of Titian. After long sojourns in Parma and Rome, El Greco moved to Toledo, a city that had lost its political importance. However, perhaps for this very reason it was able to focus on the role it had retained as the country's leading centre of Church activity. El Greco was a mystic and he may have found Toledo, where the opponents of the Reformation were more ardent than elsewhere, a bastion of the "true" belief, a place the painter saw as threatened by the very forces that were shaking the foundations of the old order.

 

DOMENIKOS THEOTOKOPOULOS called El Greco
(1541—1614)
A View of Toledo
1597-99
Oil on canvas, 121,3 x 108,6 cm
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York