How Art Works: Recent Episodes
Amanda Brighton Payne
Join Amanda Payne, artist and historian, in a deep dive into art — how it’s made, who makes it, and what we get out of it. From pigments to painting techniques to the clues found in portraiture, from monumental public sculptures to carved miniatures, in each episode we delve into the mysteries of art and the motivation of the artists that create it.
Detail of Christina’s hands. From Holbein’s 1538 portrait.
Leonardo da Vinci lived from 1452 to 1519 (which means he was born about fifty years after the writing of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight).
Hans Holbein the Younger (his father was the Elder) lived from 1497/8 - 1543, a few years before Henry the Eighth died in 1547.
Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres was born in 1780 and died in 1867 (the year of Canada’s founding, apart from other things).
Christina of Denmark, Holbein 1538, in the National Gallery, London
Mademoiselle Jeanne Gonin, Ingres, 1821. In the Taft Museum, Cincinnati, Ohio.
Madame Moitessier, aged about 30, by Ingres, 1851.
Three paintings, three portraits of women dressed in black. The Mona Lisa, Christina of Denmark, and Madame Moitessier. The first by Leonardo, with a date of no later than 1519; the second by Hans Holbein in 1538; the third by Ingres, more than three centuries after the Mona Lisa, in 1851. What do they have in common, what makes them so compelling, and why are we looking at them today? Have a listen. It’s an interesting story….
“Belle et bonne.”
— Ingres on Madame Moitessier Notes
MONA LISA:
Sandra Šustić, “Paint handling in Leonardo’s Mona Lisa: guides to a reconstruction,”
https://journals.openedition.org/ceroart/3828#tocto1n1
“ ‘Mona Lisa’ The Best-Known Girl in the Whole Wide World,” Donald Sassoon (History Workshop Journal, Spring 2001, Oxford University Press, pp. 1-18).
Robert Browning quotation: “Mona Lisa,” Lionel Cust, The Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs, Vol. 28, No. 151 (Oct., 1915), pp. 29-31 (quotation is on p. 29).
Vasari “never having laid eyes on”, & the quotation of Cassiano del Pozzo: Kenneth Clarke, p. 145: “Mona Lisa,” The Burlington Magazine, Vol. 115, No. 840 (Mar., 1973), pp. 144-151.
CHRISTINA OF DENMARK:
Susan Foister, Holbein and England (Yale University Press, 2004).
Christina of Denmark, Holbein, 1538. Talk by Dr Susan Foister, National Gallery (UK):
https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/hans-holbein-the-younger-christina-of-denmark-duchess-of-milan
Imitation Portrait of Christina of Denmark:
https://www.rct.uk/collection/403449/princess-christina-of-denmark-1522-90-daughter-of-christian-ii-king-of-denmark
MADAME MOITESSIER, Numbers 1 and 2, and Mademoiselle Jeanne Gonin:
Aileen Ribeiro, Ingres In Fashion (Yale University Press, 1999).
Ingres: Moitessier sitting ‘chintz’ portrait (1844-1856): https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/jean-auguste-dominique-ingres-madame-moitessier
Ingres: Moitessier standing ‘black’ portrait (1851): https://www.nga.gov/collection/art-object-page.32696.html
Ingres: Mademoiselle Jeanne Gonin, in the Taft Museum, Cincinnati, Ohio. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki File:Ingres_Mademoiselle_Jeanne_Suzanne_Catherine_Gonin.jpg
Episode art: Portrait of a Woman on limewood, c. AD 55-70, British Museum. (Museum no. EA74716.)
https://amandabrightonpayne.com/how-art-works/egyptian-mummy-portraits
Show Notes:
2022 has been a big year so far for Egypt, with the spotlight on treasures and discoveries, new and old. It’s the centennial of Howard Carter’s discovery of King Tutankhamun’s tomb, and the bicentennial of Jean-François Champollion’s decipherment of hieroglyphs, using the three-language cheat sheet known as the Rosetta Stone. This year, there have also been fabulous archaeological finds, including hundreds of intricately painted coffins in Saqqara, and a kind of lost city near Luxor, the site of Tut’s tomb. But in this episode we’ll be talking about something in its own way just as wonderful, and that is the thousand or more portraits attached to mummies in the first centuries of the Common Era, known as mummy portraits. It helps if you have visuals, so please have a look at the websites linked below to see examples. Interested readers can also peruse the books listed, as well. I also recommend visiting The Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology, London.
CORRECTION: Cairo is substantially north of Memphis. I was under a different impression when recording.
Key terms:
Mummies: cartonnage/cartonage, bodyfield
Jewellery types: Medusa (local talisman), bulla (talisman for boys)
Painting types: tempera, encaustic
Physical traits: trachoma (eye condition), Morton’s toe
Tilia species = ‘lime’ or linden trees
Technology: CT scan = computed tomography. More modern term than CAT scan (computed axial tomography). Tomos is Greek for a cut or slice. Tomography ‘slices’ through objects in order to form images of them, top to bottom and end to end.
Links for visuals:
Art Institute of Chicago portrait and detailed description: https://publications.artic.edu/roman/reader/romanart/section/1966
Female mummy portrait: https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/Y_EA74706
Herakleides mummy: https://www.getty.edu/news/meet-the-portrait-mummy-of-herakleides/
The caption says that he was identified in Greek as ‘son of Thermos,’ but the book below suggests that it could have been a female name, i.e. his mother.
Boy’s part-shaven hairstyle:
https://www.metmuseum.org/exhibitions/listings/2000/mummy-portraits/photo-gallery
I didn’t mention it in the podcast, but this lady does have a delicate gilt wreath painted at the very top of her head: I hadn’t noticed it at time of recording. A beautiful finishing touch, and symbolically important for her transferral to the divine from the earthly realm.
Bibliography:
Mummy Portraits from Ancient Egypt, Paul Roberts (The British Museum, 2007).
Herakleides: A Portrait Mummy from Roman Egypt, Lorelei H. Corcoran and Marie Svoboda (J. Paul Getty Trust, 2010).
Portrait of a Child: Historical and Scientific Studies of a Roman Egyptian Mummy. Essi Rönkkö, Taco Terpsta, Marc Walton, eds (Block Museum of Art, Northwestern U., 2019).
‘Facing the Dead: Recent Reseach on the Funerary Art of Ptolemaic and Roman Egypt’, Christina Riggs, American Journal of Archaeology, Jan. 2002, pp. 85-101.
Leonardo’s Nephew: Essays on Art and Artists, James Fenton (University of Chicago Press, 2000).
Sir Henry Nelthorpe and his wife Elizabeth, c. 1746. Private collection.
Link to view picture: https://amandabrightonpayne.com/how-art-works/hce2ctsiw2zj031spwr4i1zqy8864m
The first in my ‘Reading Pictures’ feature of the podcast — where we examine a single painting and pursue the clues it gives us. There is a lot going on in this picture, and a whole culture that it represents. Books quoted in this episode include:
Shell Houses and Grottoes by Hazelle Jackson (Shire Library, 2001); Taste, The Story of Britain Through Its Cooking by Kate Colquhoun (Bloomsbury, 2007); The Jane Austen Cookbook by Maggie Black & Deirdre Le Faye (British Museum Press, 2002); How To Read A Suit: A Guide To Changing Mean’s Fashion From the 17th to the 20th Century by Lydia Edwards (Bloomsbury, 2020) and How To Read A Dress, also by Edwards, revised edition 2021. I also referred to Signs & Symbols in Christian Art by George Ferguson (Oxford University Press, 1961).
How do you know, as an artist, when a painting is done? That extra detail or stroke of the brush: is it the frosting on the cake, or a bridge too far? I reflect on the stages of making art — confidence through doubt through a sense of triumph, and then a critical reassessment — and consider the risks of being too ‘tight’ and too ‘loose’. Have a listen.
Episode illustration: A painting in its very early stages, propped on the easel of a pochade (sketch) box.
In episode 3, I read painterly poems and poems about paintings. Inspired by an event held by the Slade School of Fine Art in London, England. And then, I explore the various pigments mentioned in the poems: a mix of history, geology, tragedy, and weird invention. Have a listen!
Books featured in this episode: Mummies of the World, Wieczorek and Rosendahl, eds. (Prestel Publishing, 2010); Bright Earth: The Invention of Color, Philip Ball (Vintage, 2008). And, though I didn’t quote from it, I did learn many facts that pop up in one of the poems I read here from a wonderful book, The Brilliant History of Color in Art, by Victoria Finlay (J. Paul Getty Museum, 2014). It’s a sumptuously illustrated book, well and succinctly written, and if you have any interest in color, I highly recommend it.
Unfinished sketch of Elizabeth I, showing her more vulnerable side!
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Learn more UPDATE for listeners: I hope you enjoy the other episodes so far in this podcast. This episode has bee taken down for the time being, until a new one can be re-recorded: there were unexpected problems with the audio that made it seem best just to start again later!
In Episode 2, we discuss the elements of mastery in painting, and look to Nicholas Hilliard, Beatrix Potter, George Stubbs, Tom Hoffmann, and others for pointers. Books referred to in this episode: Elizabethan Treasures by Catharine MacLeod (National Portrait Gallery, 2019); The Art of Beatrix Potter by Emily Zach (Chronicle Books, 2016); George Stubbs, Painter: Catalogue Raisonné by Judy Egerton (Yale University Press, 2007); Watercolor Painting: A Comprehensive Approach to Mastering the Medium by Tom Hoffmann (Watson-Guptill, 2012); How Life Imitates Chess by Garry Kasparov (Bloomsbury, 2007).
Deluded Sunday painter or visionary genius: What is Rousseau’s place in the pantheon of artists? We take a quick look at his life and his rise to success — though, unlike Picasso, whom he knew, success for him never included wealth. We also, of course, discuss his paintings — in particular, The Football Players, Carnival Evening, and The Sleeping Gypsy.
Bibliography: My sources include not only the books I mention, i.e.The Banquet Years: The Origins of the Avant-Garde in France, 1885 to World War I, and the Taschen book simply titled Rousseau, but also an article by Roger Shattuck in a collection of essays published in English by the Museum of Modern Art in 1985. Though I highly recommend The Banquet Years (and the Taschen book by Cornelia Stabenow), interested readers may like to know that some of the details of Rousseau’s biography were changed, probably in view of more up-to-date research, in the article. For instance, we are told in the book that Rousseau had nine children; in the article, the number is six. In the book, his surviving son goes away with the one surviving daughter to live with relatives, but in the article, the son continues to live with Rousseau into his adulthood, after Rousseau had left the toll service. The details about the 70-hour work week and the sabre on the belt also come from the article rather than the book.