Cephalas Carried Off by Aurora, by Pierre Claude Francois Delorme (1851)

Here is a wonderfully (and unexpectedly) tender painting by an artist we have not covered before, Pierre Claude Francois Delorme (1783-1859).  He is not as well known in the United States as he should be, but his relatively small oeuvre is replete with delicacy and grace.

Delorme was born in Paris and was a student of Anne-Louis Girodet-Trioson (1767-1824) – who was, himself, a student of Jacques-Louis David (1748-1825), whom we have covered many times in these pages.   The influence of both Girodet-Trioson and (once-removed) David are readily apparent.  Delorme was, in many ways, an exemplar of the classical style of painting of the Empire period.  He painted a number of significant works, including pictures for the palaces of Versailles, Fontainbleau, Neurilly and Compiegne, as well as various Parisian churches.

Like his masters, Delorme produced pictures featuring monumentally sculpted figures in a posed, almost tableaux-like composition.  His interests were historical and mythological, like others of the period, and he sought to tell universal truths about people through evocations of a more sublime ideal.

However, Delorme parts company with his contemporaries because he also carries within his worldview an earlier, Renaissance ideal.  Following his apprenticeship, Delorme spent many years in Italy, where he became enamored of the works of such later Renaissance figures as Raphael and Michelangelo.   The influence of these painters – more human, more emotional, more fluid -- lent his work an added depth; almost as if the Mannerist experiment added a touch of humanity and emotion to what is a technically brilliant, but emotionally cold, school of painting.

The story of Cephalus and Aurora is told in Book Seven of Ovid's Metamorphoses. Cephalus, an Athenian hero, falls in love with Procis, and marries her. Shortly afterwards, while hunting deer, he catches the eye of Aurora, Goddess of the Dawn.  Though a Goddess, Aurora was sexually adventurous and was frequently attracted to young mortal men.  Descending from her mountain home, Aurora carried Cephalus off with her. However, on finding that he remained faithful to Procris, she allowed him to return home, privately swearing vengeance. She caused a spirit of jealousy to infect their marriage and this eventually resulted in the accidental death of Procris who suffered a wound inflicted by Cephalus with his enchanted hunting spear. 

For a story with such a tragic ending, this is an exceptionally sweet and affecting picture.

Let’s start with Aurora.  The debt to Raphael is particularly strong in this picture, as is evidenced by the serene beauty of Aurora, and the delicate pansexuality of the putti.  The gossamer quality of her hair, along with the placidity of her gaze, mark Delorme’s Aurora as a Renaissance figure.  Look, too, at her delicately drawn feet, and the diaphanous quality of her dress, which renders her leg visible.  This is draughtsmanship of a high caliber, and the subtlety of the lighting effects are clearly influenced by Late Renaissance (or Mannerist) painting.

Cephalus also looks more like a Renaissance figure than a figure from the French Empire era.  Delorme paints a male figure of heart-breaking beauty.  Look at the graceful lines of the body and the angelically handsome face; it’s impossible to look at Cephalus without a sense of awe at his transformative beauty.

Delorme achieves this with strategic lighting effects:  his strong brow and sensitive line of nose are well lit.  The light then accentuates the wide, capacious breast, lilting down to the stomach and growing darker, darker around the powerful legs.  The artist also hints at the width of his body by the hot, white light of the right knee, popping up behind the shadowed foreleg.

But the real heart of the picture is Aurora’s hand, placed lovingly on the breast of Cephalus.  This component, if nothing else in the picture, is the work of pure genius.  That one touch denotes romantic love, sexual passion, possession, gentleness and protection.  The impression transcends the emotional and moves into the range of the elemental.

Artist Leon Kossoff (born 1926), would often look at the paintings of great masters, sketching his own conceptions of the art before him.  He would often sit before a painting of Cephalus and Aurora (though, the one he gazed at compulsively was by Poussin).  One day, he had a transformative experience before the painting, which he remembered thusly: It seemed as though I was experiencing the work for the first time.  I suppose there is a difference between looking and experiencing.  Paintings of this quality, in which the subject is endlessly glowing with luminosity, can, in an unexpected moment, surprise the viewer, revealing unexplored areas of self.

That is exactly how I react to Delomre’s depiction.  That glowing quality of luminosity completely takes me by surprise, and I feel as if I’m keying into some extraordinarily powerful emotional undercurrent.

Johann Friedrich Overbeck: Christ in the House of Mary and Martha (1815)

We return this week to the Nazarenes, a group of artists who sought to bring art back to the time of the early Renaissance, free from the influence of the later masters, such as Michelangelo and Raphael.  Just why the early Renaissance was held up as an ideal is an interesting question.

The leader of the movement, Johann Friedrich Overbeck (1789 – 1869), believed that art had been corrupted by Enlightenment-era thinking.  He thought that painters in the Academy were spurred by visions of artistic excellence, and not by divine inspiration or love of God.  He wrote a friend during his training to say that he was losing his faith in humanity while studying art, and was forging a closer connection to God as a way to cope with the rigors of contemporary life.  Overbeck was, in short, much like many people terrified by the real world:  looking for comfort in an idealized past or seeking solace in the myths of religion and the supernatural. 

Overbeck was born in Lübeck, the product of three generations of Protestant pastors.  Overbeck left Lübeck in 1806 to study art under Heinrich Füger in Vienna.  Füger was a teacher steeped in the Classical tradition (he had trained under Jacques-Louis David).  Overbeck absorbed the lessons taught in the Academy, but found the lack of religious focus inimical to his views on art.  He created a following of his own while at the Academy – eventually calling themselves the Nazarenes.  After four years, he and his followers would be expelled. 

Overbeck went to Rome in 1810, where he stayed mostly for the next 59 years.  (He became a Roman Catholic in 1813.)  He was joined by other artists attracted to his way of thinking, including Peter von Cornelius, Friedrich Wilhelm Schadow and Philipp Veit.  They lived in an old Franciscan convent, San Isidoro, where they worked hard and prayed harder.  A Holy Order of Artists is an idea not without charm, but I believe the Nazarenes rejected too much that was good and embraced quite a bit that was retrogressive.  They believed firmly in a hardness of outline which robs many of the figures of any feeling of being within their space, and used light, composition and color mainly as a means to further an argument rather than to create images of beauty. 

Today’s picture, Christ in the House of Mary and Martha, was painted in 1815.  The story can be found in Luke 10: Jesus visits the home of Martha and Mary.  Mary sits at His feet and listens to Him speak while Martha proceeded to "make all the preparations that had to be made."  Martha becomes upset that Mary did not help, and Christ says: "Martha, Martha ... you are worried and upset about many things, but only one thing is needed. Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her."  In short, one could call it a summation of the entire Nazarene philosophy.

There is much to admire in this picture but, to my mind, very little to love.  The attempt to reimagine an early Renaissance aesthetic is admirable, but it never looks like anything other than a pastiche.  Worse still, Overbeck’s high mindedness seems to rob the picture of any drama it might have: instead of sitting at Christ’s feet in raptures, Mary looks rather bored by it all.  And Martha, the scold, looks more like a harried house frau than a lost soul.  Christ seems rather patrician and formidable in profile – more Basil Rathbone than Prince of Peace.  And who is that standing behind him – looking for all the world as if she wished that she, too, were seated?

But … what Overbeck gets right he hits in spades.  The trio behind Jesus are depicted with the gentle lines of the early Renaissance Masters, and the room and furnishings reflect that period’s love of detail for its own sake.  The folds of the clothes are lovingly detailed and at the same time flat – aping the sometimes unsure sense of depth found in early Renaissance pictures.  Also present is an out-of-window view, another favorite trope of the early Renaissance, featuring something that comments on the foreground action.  Though I can’t be sure, it certainly looks to my eye like Jesus bringing Lazarus back to life … which justified the faith of both Mary and Martha.

Move Overbeck tomorrow.

Morpheus by Jean-Bernard Restout

Not many people today are familiar with Jean-Bernard Restout (1732-1796), but he belongs to that era of great painters who also happened to be adventurers in their own right.

Restout was born in Paris, the son of Jean Restout (1692-1768), one of the major religious painters of the first half of the century.  Young Jean-Bernard learned the science and craft of painting from his father and his brother-in-law, Noel Halle (1711-1781), a history painter. 

In 1755 he won second prize at the Prix de Rome competition, and won first prize three years later with his Abraham Leading Isaac to the Sacrifice, the money from which enabled him to go to Rome to study. Jean-Bernard was approved by the Académie Royale in 1765, received in 1769 and became a professor in 1771. Between 1767 and 1791 he frequently exhibited at the Paris Salon.

Jean-Bernard was an extraordinarily gifted painter and, with his abilities and family connections, seemed to be secure in a promising career.  However, young Jean-Bernard was appalled at what he considered to be the Académie’s draconian artistic strictures, and rebelled.

Jean-Bernard resigned from the Académie during the French Revolution in 1789 because of admission regulations that favored privileged candidates. In 1793 he became president of the Commune des Arts formed by Jacques-Louis David (1748-1825), which was dedicated to loosening the Académie’s stranglehold on teaching, exhibitions and commissions.

During the political turmoil of the Revolution, Jean-Bernard was thrown into prison, but was released at Robespierre’s downfall on July 27, 1794.  With the advent of Modernism, Jean-Bernard has fallen into obscurity, but his talent is a delight to true connoisseurs.

The masterpiece above is Jean-Bernard’s vision of Morpheus, which can be found today at the Cleveland Museum of Art.  It is a mid-sized canvas, about 38x51, and depicts the god of dreams asleep himself.  Morpheus had the ability to take any human form and appear in dreams, but his true visage was that of a winged daemon.  Daemons are benevolent spirits, often spirit guides or gods themselves.

Look at Jean-Bernard’s command of anatomy; the reclining Morpheus pivots at the waist, the breadth of his chest wide and flat, while his legs bunch below his twisting pelvis.  The laurel wreath on his head denotes that Morpheus is indeed a king of some variety, and the wings seem more angelic than pagan.  The crossed feet and outstretched arms are unmistakable cognates for images of the crucified Jesus – is Jean-Bernard connecting the blessing of sleep with the King of Peace? 

This sleep of Morpheus is indeed the sleep of oblivion – note how heavily the body rests, the complete unconsciousness in the face, the abandon of his unsteady perch on the bed.  It is also a sleep healthy and restorative – see how lovingly Jean-Bernard tints the body with delicate pinks, whites and red flesh tones.  Did Jean-Bernard muse upon his own dreams while painting the King of Sleep?  We’ll never know, but the figure’s complete surrender to sleep, along with its promise of other invisible worlds, make this a remarkable picture.