Dictionary of Art and Artists












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


 

A City Rich in Gold
 

Venice and the sea

 

He saw it once more, that landing-place that takes the breath away, that amazing group of incredible structures the Republic set up to meet the awe-struck eye of the approaching seafarer: the airy splendour of the palace and the Bridge of Sighs, the columns with a lion and saint on the shore, the glory of the projecting flank of the fairy temple, the vista of gateway and clock.

Thomas Mann, Death in Venice, 1912

 

Venice and gondolas: An inseparable duo



Venice
 

No other city in the world has been so extravagantly praised as Venice. In 1495 the French ambassador Philippe de Commines praised it as being "the most joyously radiant city" he had ever seen. He mentioned white marble facades, apartments with gilt antechambers and sumptuously ornate fireplaces. When Napoleon conquered Venice in 1797, he thought St Mark's was "the best drawing-room in Europe and only Heaven is worthy of serving as its ceiling", Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, who stayed in the island-dotted lagoon in September 1786 while on his Italian journey, spoke with reverence of the "wonderful island city", which he "was privileged to visit" and in which he wished to reside "until I have satiated my desire to gaze on the image of this city". After endless warring with Genoa, Venice finally conquered her rival in 1380. From that date, the city was the unchallenged leader in world trade. In 1423 the Venetian Republic commanded a war fleet of 45 galleys specially built for combat and a merchant fleet of 300 galleys. With a population of over 200,000, Venice was one of the biggest, and certainly the richest, Western cities. Prosperity, optimism and cheerfulness reigned: "People sing in the squares, tn the streets and on the canals. Merchants sing when they are prizing then-wares; labourers sing when they leave their places of work; gondolien sing when they are waiting for customers", remarked the Italian dramatist Carlo Goldoni in the eighteenth century. One wonders whether the Doge, the ruler of the Republic, sang when conducting the affairs of state.

At any rate, he had to utter the same invocation each year on Ascension Day, which was the most important event in the city calendar: "O sea, we wed thee in the sign of our true and everlasting dominion". With this incantation, a vow renewed each year, the Venetians hoped to propitiate the primal forces of the sea to ensure their benevolence and willingness to do their share in securing the supremacy of the Republic in the Adriatic. In the days of the veduta painter Canaletto, the "nuptials with the sea" were staged as an opulent and colourful cavalcade. The Doge boarded his ceremonial ship, the bucintoro, and sailed to the Porto di Lido, the principal gateway to Venice, where the "nuptials with the sea" took place. There he poured holy water into the sea and cast a gold ring overboard. The ritual has been revived in recent years. Now, of course, something very different is at stake. No longer are the power, influence and wealth of Venice to be enhanced. The decaying city once called the Serenissima ("Most Serene Republic") must be prevented from subsiding into the sea should a raging storm unleash the forces of nature.

 

Canaletto
(1697-1768)
Return of the Bucentoro to the Molo on Ascension Day
1732
Royal Collection. Windsor





 

A Clever Mistress
 

Madame la Marquise de Pompadour and Louis XV

 

I am always being blamed for the general wretchedness, the Cabinet's unfounded policies, the disastrous war campaigns and the triumphs celebrated by our enemies. I stand accused of having sold everything, of having my fingers in every pie, of ruling behind the scenes. One day at dinner the King asked an old man to be so kind as to give his compliments to the Marquise de Pompadour. Everyone laughed at the poor man as a simpleton. But I did not laugh.

Madame la Marquise de Pompadour (1721-1764), Letters, 1922

 

Louis XV, King of France (1710—1774) by Louis-Michel van Loo;
Madame de Pompadour by Jean-Marc Nattier; Madame de Pompadour by Maurice Quentin de la Tour
 

There was a small secret staircase at Versailles that led from the king's Cabinet to the second floor. There dwelled a lady named Jeanne-Antoinette Poisson, who has gone down in history as the Marquise de Pompadour. Louis XV of France, the Sun King's great-grandson and his successor, frequently climbed the steps to visit her. He is said to have preferred to disappear from Cabinet meetings for trysts with his mistress. When that happened, the ministers had to sit and wait for the king until he returned as Court etiquette forbade their the room without the monarch. Thus Court lackeys could be deceived into thinking the king had spent the entire time m conference with his ministers. Witty, cultured and beautiful, Madame de Pompadour may have been the daughter of a head-groom working on a duke's estate; her mother was a beauty in her own right. Madame de Pompadour was the fourth official royal mistress. Although married to the Polish princess Maria Leszczynska since 1725, Louis XV seems to have embarked on his first extramarital affair in 1733. The first years of his marriage had been happy ones and six daughters and a son survived the union with Maria, who was deeply humiliated by her husband's infidelity. The first three royal mistresses to be established successively at Court from 1738 spent their time giving parties at the king's expense and behaving in a way that aroused public indignation. Years afterwards the queen was still complaining of having nightmares about her husband's dreadful mistresses.

Madame la Marquise de Pompadour was altogether different. She was unlike the others. No Bacchanalian parties took place in the private apartments of this grande dame. She gave exquisite little dinners with the king and invitations to them were coveted indeed. Moreover, Madame la Marquise was anxious to be on a good footing with the queen. She visited her every day, brought her flowers and chatted with her. The Marquise was even known to have served on occasion as an intermediary between the king and queen. When she heard one day that the queen had lost a considerable sum at gambling but was afraid to tell her husband what had happened, Madame de Pompadour asked the king for the privilege of paying the queen's debts of honour herself. Submitting to fate with gentle piety, Maria Leszcyriska allowed Madame de Pompadour to take her place at the king's side. The bourgeoise, whose paternity has never been satisfactorily established, became the power behind the throne at Versailles. When it came to appointing officials and ministers and making major decisions, Louis XV always consulted his mistress. For this reason Francois Boucher, once her drawing master and Court Painter to the king, painted a semi-official portrait of her. The seal and letter probably hint at her political ambition. That she was an accomplished singer is symbolised by the scores scattered at her feet. Even the little spaniel was not a prop provided by the painter. Her name was Mimi and she really did belong to Madame de Pompadour.

 

Francois Boucher
(1703—1770)
Portrait of Madame de Pompadour
1756
 

Francois Boucher
Portraits of Madame de Pompadour





 

She Turns My Head
 

The Garden of Earthly Delights

 

Happy face, nymph-like girl
Eyes like cherries, seventeen
Delightful prattle
She turns my head.

Bernard, Chevalier de Bonnard (1744-1784), Poesies diverses, published in 1791

 

One day in October 1766, the Parisian painter Jean-Honore Fragonard was summoned to the hunting lodge of Baron Samt-Julien. The aristocratic treasurer of the Catholic Church pointed to his mistress and commanded: "I want you to paint Madame on a swing kept in motion by a bishop. Put me in it where I can see the legs of this pretty girl or even closer, if you want to make the picture even more pleasing." A man of the world, Baron Saint-Julien had already been turned down by a painter who was probably squeamish about the consequences of carrying out his orders — someone who had made a name for himself with representations of saints and plague victims and felt the commission was indecent so he suggested Fragonard, who accepted. The result was The Swing. Fragonard had no qualms about damaging his reputation as a painter of blameless scenes by taking on this rather delicate commission. Of course Fragonard, who had been a spoilt child, was nothing if not urbane and sophisticated himself. "All his work is dedicated to women; why shouldn't his life have been so too?" asks a biographer. In 1756 the twenty-four-vear-old Fragonard took advantage of a grant from the Academic de France to study works of the Old Masters in Rome. He is said to have devoted himself at least as passionately to the licentious dark-eyed beauties of Trastevere as to the paintings he had gone to Rome to study. In fact, the president of the Academie de France in Rome began to worry about his protege. Fragonard's reputation followed him back to Paris, where all boudoirs were open to him on his return.The beauties of the day and dancers whose "hearts were not so constant" all sought the painter's attentions. Bernard, Chevalier de Bonnard advised the painters of the day to "court all lovely ladies you paint and be sure that you are paid for your portraits in the arms of your sitters". Nothing is really known about Fragonard's love life. However, he was so highly acclaimed as a painter that he was soon provided with his own studio in the Louvre. Begrudging him his marriage because it deprived them of gossip, his biographers characterised his wife as "a peevish termagant". However, he was devoted to her, tenderly calling her "the best of all wives". Despite his reputation with the ladies, the Fragonard did show reticence in one respect: he convinced the depraved Baron Saint-Julien that it was necessary to replace the bishop, who was originally supposed to push the swing in the painting, with a courtier.

 

Jean-Honore Fragonard
(1732—1806)
The Swing
1767
The Wallace Collection, London





 

A Question of Class
 

English society in the eighteenth century

 

A Youth to Fortune

   and to Fame unknown...

Thomas Gray, Elegy Written in a Country Church-Yard, 1751

 

Who was the young man who sat for Thomas Gainsborough's The Blue Boy! His identity was unknown for nearly two centuries. Recent research suggests that he was Jonathan Buttall, the teenage son of a rich London ironmonger. Gainsborough is thought to have made the family's acquaintance in Bath. The city in south-west England was renowned throughout the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries as a fashionable spa where affluent English families went to drink the healing waters of its springs.

The ultimate in elegant watering-places, Bath was even frequented by members of the royal family when they felt jaded. Visitors to the baths were subjected to a severe regimen. Forced to get up at six in the morning, women spent an hour in the warm water of the baths dressed in long garments made of heavy material that could not cling to their bodies and reveal their contours. Men, too, bathed fully dressed. Outside the baths, the city was the place for flirtations, balls and evening card parties. There were many official functions like the Assembly-Rooms Balls and places both indoors and out where people promenaded for the purpose of meeting and keeping up with the latest goings-on. Gambling was rife and the city boasted the dubious attractions of a bevy of demimondaines to charm away the boredom of gentlemen who were not in Bath with their families. Women had to content themselves with gossip over the tea table.

The city seethed with intrigue, which is why Horace Walpole remarked it was ten times better to leave the city than to enter it. The rich visitors tended to be vain and ostentatious. This was probably the reason why the young Thomas Gainsborough left Ipswich in the east of England to settle in Bath in 1759. The move paid off. Showered with portrait commissions from wealthy patrons, the painter was soon able to afford luxurious apartments in the beautiful and elegant Royal Circus.

However, the resort was not merely the haunt of the aristocracy. It was just as popular with rich tradesmen's and manufacturers' families. From 1750 English iron foundries and cotton mills had been flourishing and their owners could well afford to take the waters at Bath. One can imagine Gainsborough meeting Mr Buttall, the ironmonger, and his family at the Pump Room. Gains-borough had begun his career by copying and restoring Flemish paintings. It is therefore not surprising that he borrowed stylistic elements from the works of Anthony van Dyck to paint Jonathan Buttall, who is dressed in the fashion of the seventeenth century.

 

Thomas Gainsborough
(1727—1788)
The Blue Boy
1770





 

A Tea Party that Led to Democracy
 

The American Declaration of Independence

 

We hold these truths to be self-evident: That all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights; that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness ...; that whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute a new Government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

United States Declaration of Independence, 4 July 1776

 

An American version of London cartoon that denounces the "rape" of Boston in 1774 by the Intolerable Acts.
 

Washington and Lafayette look over the troops at Valley Forge
 

John Trumbull, The Battle of Bunker's Hill, (The death of the American General Warren),1786
 

The Declaration of Independence
 

The Boston Tea Party triggered the Revolution. In 1767 England had imposed new customs duties on her English colonies. The wrath of the colonists culminated in a boycott of English wares, which soon led to the abolition of most duties. England, insisting on a demonstration of authority, maintained the duty on tea. Ensuring the East India Company monopoly on tea and other staples, this policy left American tea merchants burdened with high duties on the goods they imported from England.

The American colonists, who had for some time considered declaring independence from England, took the duty on tea as a welcome excuse to do so. On 16 December 1773 open hostilities broke out. A group of Revolutionaries threw an entire ship's cargo of tea into the murky waters of Boston Harbor: 342 crates of tea worth 10,000 pounds sterling. Over 2,000 bystanders applauded the patriots' deed: "This is the most magnificent Movement of all. There is a dignity, a Majesty, a Sublimity, in this last Effort of the Patriots that I greatly admire. This destruction of the Tea is so bold, so daring, so firm, intrepid and inflexible, and it must have so important Consequences, and so lasting, that I cannot but consider it as an Epoch in History" was John Adams's enthusiastic response to this remarkable demonstration of colonial assertiveness. The English government retaliated swiftly, exacting harsh penalties. The thirteen American colonies reacted with open revolt. Weary of oppression and long accustomed to self-government on parliamentary lines, the American settlers refused to surrender their economic and political freedom to the English crown, which was thousands of nautical miles away. Knit together by the events in Boston, the Americans took their first united action as a free people by convening the First Continental Congress in Philadelphia in 1774. England remained intransigent; a war was inevitable.

While George Washington, the Commander-in-Chief of the American Continental Army, was marching his troops from one battle to the next, the Declaration of Independence was being drawn up. It was signed on 4 July 1776 in the Philadelphia State House. Among the signers were Thomas Jefferson, its author, and Benjamin Franklin. Jefferson is quoted as saying: "I am not a friend to a very energetic government", although he wholeheartedly espoused the cause of American liberty. Another fervent patriot was the painter John Trumbull, who later founded the American Academy of Fine Arts in New York and became its first president. The son of an English governor of Connecticut who supported the colonists' struggle for independence, John Trumbull served as an aide-de-camp to George Washington during the American Revolution.

His most celebrated painting, which has become a symbol of the idealism that America stands for, depicts the signing of the Declaration of Independence as Thomas Jefferson described it to the artist.

 

John Trumbull
(1756-1841)
The Declaration of Independence
1786-1797





 

I Believe in Marat, the Almighty
 

The French Revolution, 1789

 

I believe in Marat, the almighty, the Creator of freedom and equality, our hope, who strikes terror into the aristocracy, who has gone forth from the heart of the nation and is revealed in the Revolution, who was murdered by the enemies of the Republic, who poured forth upon us the breath of freedom, who has descended into the Elysian Fields, whence he will one day return to judge and condemn the aristocracy.

A contemporaneous anonymous "Creed" (July 1793-February 1795)

 

Guillotine model 1792
The guillotine, the instrument of choice for beheadings during the French Revolution, was still being used for executions this century
Between 18,000 and 40,000 people were executed during the Reign of Terro

Down with the Bastille! The destruction of the court prison, a symbol of Bourbon despotism, 14 July 1789
 

Execution of Louis XVI



Sketch by Jacques-Louis David of the National Assembly taking the Tennis Court Oath



Satirical cartoon lampooning the excesses of the Revolution as seen from abroad.
 

Jean-Paul Marat was sitting in the bathtub when his last hour struck on 13 July 1793. A teacher of languages, a journalist and a physician, Marat had turned out to be one of the most radical demagogues the 1789 Revolution produced. He spent much time in the tub to find relief from a chronic, itchy rash. He wore compresses on his forehead to relieve headaches from which he also suffered. While he was bathing on that fateful day, he was reading a letter from Charlotte Corday, the great-granddaughter of the playwright Pierre Corneille. The young noblewoman had tried in vain to gain admittance to Marat. Now she had sent him a letter in which she slyly suggested a tete-a-tete. He let her in and she stabbed him. Marat died instantly.

Some contemporaries must have been pleased at the deed. Marat had been a tough customer. He had had 860 gallows erected to deal with his political enemies and had sent over 200,000 of them to the guillotine. His opponents may have considered his death a just revenge. His adherents, however, celebrated him as the martyr of a just cause. Appointed master of ceremonies at the hero's funeral, painter Jacques-Louis David was a fervent revolutionary and a personal friend of Marat. He obliged by putting Marat's corpse on canvas just as he had had it put on display: with his bare chest and wounds visible. On 15 October 1793 David presented the picture to the National Assembly. It became the symbol of the French Revolution. Copies of it were placed on church altars, smothered under billowing clouds of incense. Even in public offices copies of the painting were supposed to replace Crucifixes and royal portraits. However, before it could get out of hand, the personality cult was stopped by Robespierre's fall and the arrest of Jacques-Louis David. On 10 February the painting was removed from the chamber of the National Assembly. Marat's heart, which had been kept in the Cordeliers Club, was burnt and the ashes scattered in the Montmartre sewer.
 

Jacques-Louis David
(1748—1825)
The Death of Marat
1793




 

As if Carried off by the Winds
 

The Rise to Power of the Corsican Devil

 

Soldiers, you are naked and ill nourished. I shall lead you to earth's most fertile plains. Rich provinces and great cities will fall into your hands. There you shall find honour, fame and wealth.

Napoleon Bonaparte, Speech to His Soldiers on Being Appointed General of the Republican Armies in Italy, 1796

 

Jean-Auguste Dominique Ingres, Portrait of Napoleon Bonaparte, The First Council, 1804
Jacques-Louis David, Napoleon in His Study, 1812
Jacques-Louis David, Napoleon Crossing the Alps
Jean-Auguste Dominique Ingres, Napoleon on his Imperial throne, 1806

His French spelling was shaky indeed and his strong Corsican accent marked him as provincial. Because he pronounced his first name "Napolion", his classmates at school dubbed him "la-paille-au-nez", "straw nose". He was an average student; his German teacher even regarded him as stupid. Yet he was a voracious reader, and the books he devoured did not make easy reading: Corneille, Montaigne, Montesquieu, Plutarch and Tacitus. Moreover, he had an astonishing memory and never forgot anything. A single teacher, who must have been more percipient than the rest, saw in him "granite which a volcano is heating up". Things were still simmering on the back burner then. Born on 15 August 1769 in Ajaccio on Corsica, Napoleon Bonaparte was regarded as a taciturn, gloomy and sensitive boy. Accepted as a cadet at the Paris military academy in 1784, he was commissioned lieutenant only a year and a half later. Transferred to an artillery regiment, he flirted with the idea of revolution.

At first a fervent Corsican nationalist, he took part in a revolt against the French authorities. However in 1793, he broke with the Corsican nationalist faction and was forced to flee with his family to the French mainland. Rejoining the army, he sided with Robespierre, becoming commander of an artillery battalion. Now that his career was well launched, a short sojourn in prison after Robespierre's fall did nothing to hinder it. At the age of twenty-six Bonaparte was appointed General of the Republican Armies in Italy, and was widely admired for his brilliant tactical skills, his schooled intellect and the leadership qualities he consistently displayed. Veteran field commanders were furious. A greenhorn had been promoted over their heads, a young man of small stature with long unkempt hair. Bonaparte, however, knew where he was heading. In the campaign against Austria, he won victory after victory in northern Italy. He grew famous as a "second Alexander" who "strode like a demigod from battle to battle and victory to victory".

The painter Antoine-Jean Gros captured a scene from that period: the Battle of Arcola, a village twenty-four kilometres south-east of Verona. Between 15 and 17 November 1796, Bonaparte defeated reinforcements dispatched to the aid of the Austrian troops encircled at Mantua. France celebrated him as "Fortune's favourite in battle". The poet Friedrich Holderlin was jubilant: "Holy vessels are poets in whom the wine of life, the spirit of heroes is held. But the spirit of that youth, that quick spirit, must it not burst the vessel that was to contain it?"

Napoleon kept cool, calm and collected. When an envoy sent by the Directoire, which was then the French government, sought him out after the victory at Arcole, he pronounced prophetically: "What 1 have accomplished here is a mere trifle. I am only at the beginning of my career. Do you think that I am winning laurels for my lance in Italy simply for the aggrandisement of the Directoire?" In his own words, he felt "as if he had been carried off by the winds".

 

Jean-Antoine Gros
(1771-1835)
Napoleon Bonaparte at the Bridge of Arcole, 17 November 1796|
1801




 

A Reflection of Horror
 

The Spanish Revolt against Napoleon

 

No one is innocent once he has seen what I have seen. I witnessed how the noblest ideals of freedom and progress were transformed into lances, sabres and bayonets. Arson, looting and rape, all supposed to bring a New Order, in reality only exchanged the garrotte for the gallows.

Francisco de Goya, from an entry in his diary, 1808

 

Francisco de Goya, Barbarians!. No. 38 from series "DISASTERS OF WAR"
 

see collection: Francisco de Goya "DISASTERS OF WAR"

 

Napoleon was furious. The "damned Spanish affair" was out of control. Early on, the power-mad Emperor of France had thought it would be a pushover. Charles IV of Spain, a weakling at best, had retreated into the background, leaving the government in the hands of his wife Maria Luisa and her lover Manuel Godoy. Napoleon could have won over the ambitious Godoy by making him viceroy of Spain. However, his links with Napoleon, which led to a disastrous war with Great Britain, made Godoy unpopular throughout Spain. He only barely escaped being lynched by fleeing to France.

Napoleon, cunning as he was, had always treated Spain, an ally of France, like a subject nation. He refused to admit defeat at the hands of a nation occupied by his troops. Pretending to seek reconciliation, he summoned the Spanish king and queen, with the crown prince in tow, to France. Napoleon's real intention was to keep the Spanish royals captive and put his eldest brother, Joseph Bonaparte, on the Iberian throne. When Napoleons treachery became known, a desperate revolt broke out in Spain on 2 May 1808. Hopelessly outnumbered, a band of people armed with knives and lances attacked a powerful French cavalry force in the Puerta del Sol, a square in the heart of Madrid. Begun in blind, impotent anger, the revolt was doomed from the outset to failure. Still it signalled to the world that a conquered people had dared to stand up to Napoleon, who was then at the zenith of his power. The French Emperor exacted a terrible revenge. That same night, everyone suspected of having taken part in the rebellion was executed by a French firing squad.

No one has come closer to showing the naked brutality of those events than Francisco de Goya, Court Painter to Charles IV, who had originally welcomed Napoleon's ideals. Imbued with the spirit of the French Revolution, he had not hesitated to show the Spanish royal family for what it was, painting them in a highly unflattering light. However, Napoleon turned out to be the opposite of what he had seemed to be. Although he had originally proclaimed freedom for his own and other peoples of Europe, he revealed himself as a despot. Perhaps his values had become corrupted and twisted. In any case, Goya depicted the scene with a twist: his hero is the victim who will be the next to be shot. The man in the white shirt spreads out his arms like Christ on the Cross. The wounds on his hands are like Christ's. His message is: I die that you may live. It was to take five years to drive the French out of Spain.
 

Francisco de Goya
(1746-1828)
The Third of May, 1808: The Execution of the Defenders of Madrid
1814
Museo del Prado, Madrid




 

The Force of Nature and the Power in a Painting
 

On the hubris of humankind

 

"What have we hit?" asked Captain Smith. "An iceberg, Sir," replied first officer Murdoch. "We steered hard to starboard and reversed the engines full speed. But we were already too close. I wanted to go around the iceberg. But it was already too late."

After the statement made by the second officer of the Titanic, Charles Herbert Lightoller,
before a subcommittee of the US Senate in April 1912

 

The news hit the world like a blow: "Titanic sinks four hours after collision with iceberg; 1,250 presumed dead." Thus read the New York Times headline of 16 April 1912. Only twenty-four hours before, an unprecedented tragedy had been enacted 400 nautical miles off Newfoundland in the Atlantic. More than hall the ship's passengers had died.

Not only had a stunningly elegant ship gone down; with her sank the myth of modern times. Industrial man had believed it could dupe nature with technology: the glittering new Titanic, on her maiden voyage from Southampton to New York, was regarded as a

marvel of engineering and as "unsinkable". Yet she fell victim to the vagaries of nature like so many expeditionary vessels that had sailed into perilous waters a century before.

In Caspar David Friedrich's The Polar Sea, the capsized ship caught in the ice may be the "Griper", which took part in expeditions to the North Pole that made the headlines in 1819—20 and 1824. British Polar explorer Sir William Edward Parry had become embroiled in a very dangerous situation whilst seeking the Northwest Passage. Caspar David Friedrich may well have been inspired by newspaper reports about Parry as well as by heavy ice floes on the Elbe in the winter of 1820—21.

The painting has occasionally been interpreted as having a religious meaning: the intransience of human life before divine eternity. There are also political interpretations: resignation in the face of the fruitless German wars of independence. And yet The Polar Sea remains in the first instance a symbol of the terrors of the icy wastes of the Polar regions - and of human presumption, which no longer stands in awe of nature.

 

Caspar David Friedrich
(1774-1840)
The Polar Sea
1824




 

One of the Wonders of the World
 

The mystery of Stonehenge

 

The band of silver paleness along the east horizon made even the distant parts of the Great Plain appear dark and near; and the whole enormous landscape bore that impress of reserve, taciturnity, and hesitation which is usual just before day. The eastward pillars and their architraves stood up blackly against the light and the great flame-shaped Sun-stone beyond them; and the Stone of Sacrifice midway. Presently the night wind died out, and the quivering little pools in the cup-like hollows of the stones lay still

Thomas Hardy, The Wessex Novels, vol. I, Tess of the D'Urbervilles (1891), 5th ed. 1896

 

Druid Ceremony at Stonehenge

Megaliths thousands of years old rise up against the southern English sky near Ames-bury in Wiltshire. Who erected them? Did human sacrifice take place here? Was the legendary sorcerer Merlin at work here?

The dressed sandstone megaliths erected to form a lintelled stone circle are approximately six metres high, some of them weighing up to forty-five tonnes. Standing on wind-swept Salisbury Plain, this mysterious monument to a world long forgotten was first called a "wonder of Britain" in the twelfth century. Since then, not a century has passed without fresh conjectures on what might have led to the building of this unique henge monument.

The Romantics were expounding lofty theories about Stonehenge when the great English landscape painter John Constable painted his famous watercolour of it based on the numerous preliminary sketches he had made on a visit in 1820. Even today the meaning of the circle of thirty uprights, some of which are still capped by massive lintels, surrounding a horseshoe arrangement of five trilithons (two upright stones connected by a lintel), is as much a mystery as ever. Archaeologists tend to believe that religious motives led to the erection of Stonehenge. In the cold grey light of dawn, the site with its towering megaliths is a menacing, almost apocalyptic place. With the sun's first rays, the uprights cast shadows forming eerie linear patterns on the ground. One legend has it that the power of the Druids was concentrated where the shadows converge.

Thought to have been Celtic priests, Druids were intermediaries between the gods and humankind, soothsayers, healers and judges, and, as tutors to the sons of the aristocracy, were allegedly the real rulers of the ancient Britons. Unfortunately, however, Latin accounts of the Druids fail to shed much light on these structures. Opponents of the theory that the Druids officiated at Stonehenge point out that the Wiltshire stone circle had already been standing for over 2,000 years before the heyday of the Celts and the Druids (100 ВС—AD 78). Besides, the latter are not known to have built temples. Instead, they held their ceremonies in glades. Knowledge of the stars may have been passed down by oral tradition to the Druids, who were wiped out by the Romans on Anglesey in the year 78.

One thing is certain: the people who built Stonehenge demonstrated a knowledge of astronomy. The original approach to the site is marked by a stone over which, when viewed from the centre of the circle, the sun rises on the Summer Solstice.

The stone circle is ringed by fifty-six pits. Radiocarbon dating of one of these as well as pottery finds indicate that the earliest structure on the site dates back to late Neolithic times (roughly 2,300 ВС). Whatever Stonehenge may have been, the site was more or less in continual use for thousands of years. Speculation on this most enthralling puzzle of all ancient monuments continues to abound today.

 

John Constable
(1776-1837)
Stonehenge
1836




 

With Brush and Palette on the Barricades
 

The Revolution of 1830

 

Ah that great week in Paris! The courage for freedom that wafted through here has, of course, overturned the night-lights so that the red curtains on some thrones have caught fire and the gold crowns have grown hot under the glow of the night-caps. But the old catch poles are already bringing up the dowsing buckets and sniffing about all the more vigilantly.

Heinrich Heine, English Fragments, November 1830

 

see also: "Between Two Revolutions" (From David to Delacroix)
 

Victor Hugo stayed at home. Busy researching for his novel, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, he did not wish to leave his wife alone, who had given birth to a daughter just four days before. The young Alexandre Dumas, on the other hand — later to achieve world renown for his swashbuckling The Count of Monte Cristo — bravely shouldered a double-barrelled musket, ready to risk his life for freedom with thousands of students, merchants, workers and actors.

Paris was once again on the brink of a revolution. The streets were full of agitated citizens confronting the royal guards with pistols and wooden cudgels, rifles and knives. The cause of the uproar was the citizens' fear that the old system of royal oppression, which had been abolished, was on the rise again. As early as 1814 the royal house of Bourbon had regained its former power. Lotus XVIII, younger brother to Louis XVI, who had been executed during the Revolution, had been summoned from exile to rule France after the fall of Napoleon. Moderate and cautious, he had pursued liberal policies, combining the modern feeling for liberty with the principles of the ancien regime. When Louis XVIII died in 1824, Charles X, the youngest of the three brothers, had himself crowned at Reims with medieval pomp and circumstance. Forward-looking contemporaries found him both reactionary and foolish. Desirous of reviving pre-Revolutionary France, he intended to restore the ancient titles and privileges to the aristocracy as well as one billion francs in reparations for the property lost by the nobility during the Revolution. After Charles X issued a series of repressive decrees on 25 July 1830, abolishing freedom of the press, dissolving the legislature and depriving the majority of citizens of suffrage, things came to a head. On 28 July 1830 revolt broke out not far from Eugene Delacroix's studio. While mercenaries deployed by Charles X fought their way through the narrow streets, supporters of the revolutionaries hurled furniture, wash-tubs, rooting tiles and tool chests down on them from windows, finally dumping entire cartloads of melons on the heads of the advancing royal troops to stop their progress. The street battles raged for three days. Painter and caricaturist Honore Daumier suffered a sabre-slash across his face during the fighting. On 3 August 1830 the citizens were victorious, forcing Charles X to abdicate and flee into exile.
 Delacroix, who had observed the revolt at a safe distance, took up his brushes and palette. In a letter to his brother written in October 1830, he confessed: "Although I didn't fight, I'll at least paint for our country!" And the result was Liberty Leading the People, the archetype of the Revolution.

 

Eugene Delacroix
(1798-1863)
Liberty leading the People (28 July 1830)
1830