Divine Beauty: From Van Gogh to Chagall and Fontana

Divine Beauty: From Van Gogh to Chagall and Fontana is an exhibition at Palazzo Strozzi in Florence. This exhibition with over one hundred works by important Italian artists as Domenico Morelli, Gaetano Previati, Felice Casorati, Lorenzo Viani, Gino Severini, Renato Guttuso, Lucio Fontana and Emilio Vedova, together with international masters like Vincent van Gogh, Jean-François Millet, Edvard Munch, Pablo Picasso, Max Ernst, Georges Rouault and Henri Matisse, sets out to explore the relationship between art and the sacred from the mid-19th to the mid-20th century.

The curators argue that, while sacred art is traditionally linked with the period stretching from the Middle Ages to the seventeenth century, in reality, it has never completely vanished, and this exhibition retraces its history in the years between the 1880s and 1950, both in Italy and abroad. Divine Beauty investigates the relationship between art and the Church, a connection that had been unbreakable in previous centuries and that seemed to have been lost in the modern era. 

As a result, Divine Beauty investigates much of the ground that I have explored on this blog through my Airbrushed from Art History series and my Sabbatical Art Pilgrimage. This blog has also tried to regularly highlight places where discussion about faith and art has been occurring (see, for example,here, here, here, here, here and here).

Divine Beauty provides visitors with a unique opportunity to compare and contrast a number of famous works of art, observed in a new and different light, alongside pieces by artists whose work is perhaps less well-known today but who, in their own way, have helped to forge the rich and complex panorama of modern art as a whole, not simply in a religious environment. Religious art is presented here as a "genre" in its own right, as an art form that came down from the altar to play a direct role in the artistic debate between the 19th and 20th centuries while at the same time reviving the great themes on which religion and spirituality have been focusing from time immemorial. 

Curated by Lucia Mannini, Anna Mazzanti, Ludovica Sebregondi and Carlo Sisi, the exhibition, which is the product of a joint venture between the Fondazione Palazzo Strozzi, the former Soprintendenza Speciale per il Patrimonio Storico, Artistico ed Etnoantropologico e per il Polo Museale della città di Firenze, the Archdiocese of Florence and the Vatican Museums, is part of a programme of events devised to run concurrently with the Fifth National Bishops Conference, scheduled to be held in Florence from 9 to 13 November and in the course of which Pope Francis himself will be visiting the city. 

Divine Beauty analyses and sets in context almost a century of modern religious art stretching from the 1850s – when the Roman Catholic Church of Pope Pius IX actively encouraged the most innovative forms of artistic expression – to the 1950s, in a display hosting the best examples of that art to have been produced either in Italy or abroad, highlighting the dialogue, the ties, and at times even the clashes in the relationship between art and religious sentiment. This "divine beauty" takes on the significance of a grace that injects aesthetic substance into the form of works of art, each one of which emanates a different and unique kind of spirituality. 

After a period during which Christian art was associated with "historicism", an attempt began to be made in the late 19th century to identify an artistic vocabulary suited to modern times. This led in the course of the 20th century to the existence of multiple parallel yet different styles governing the representation of the sacred. This variety of expression is broadly illustrated by the works on display in the exhibition, which range from naturalism and the narrative style echoing the way history was depicted in the late 19th century to the Symbolist research of the early 20th century, and from the exploration of realism in the 19th and 20th centuries to interpretations bordering on the abstract and the downright controversial, as exemplified by the startling work of the Futurists or of Edvard Munch whose Madonna triggered such a storm of controversy that it represents one of the most provocative images of Mary to have emerged at any time in the course of the 19th century. 

The key pieces include masterpieces such as: Jean-François Millet's Angelus on exceptional loan from the Musée d'Orsay in Paris, a work that emanates an ancestral spirituality, a universal sense of the sacred that transcends all barriers; Vincent van Gogh's Pietà from the Vatican Museums, a crucial work because, despite his religious and mystic calling, Vincent rarely addressed the sacred in his art, and even when he did so, he took his cue from other artists' work; Renato Guttuso's Crucifixion from the collections of the Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna in Rome, an emblematic work with an intense political connotation which, like Picasso's Guernica, embodies a cry of pain and grief; and Marc Chagall's White Crucifixion from the Art Institute Museum in Chicago, one of Pope Francis's favourite works of art. 

The exhibition is divided into seven sections. In the introductory section (From Salon to Altar), large paintings of the highest quality testify to the eclecticism in the styles and approaches to the theme of the sacred in the second half of the 19th century, with such works as Antonio Ciseri's The Maccabees and William-Adolphe Bouguereau's Flagellation of Jesus Christ. At the turn of the century, the theme of the Virgin (Rosa Mystica) acquired special significance as the Symbolist aesthetic began to take hold, with artists imbuing the image with their strong desire for the ascetic – a trend effectively illustrated, for example, by Domenico Morelli's Mater Purissima. The exhibits in the very extensive central section are arranged to echo the narrative of the Gospels. The Annunciation to the Virgin Mary is followed by Nativity and Childhood of Christ, Miracles and Parables, The Passion, The Last Supper, The Way of the Cross and The Crucifixion, Deposition and Resurrection (with works by, among others, Glyn Warren Philpot, Maurice Denis, Giuseppe Capogrossi, Odilon Redon, Arturo Martini, Stanley Spencer, Georges Rouault, Otto Dix, Pablo Picasso, Marc Chagall, Renato Guttuso, Lucio Fontana and Emilio Vedova). 

The works are arranged throughout the exhibition in chronological order, comparing modes of artistic expression which are frequently very distant from one another and which, on occasion, address the theme of the sacred with significant and sweeping new takes on modernity, thus highlighting the different trends and clashes of expression in the relationship between art and religious sentiment. In this context, a special section is devoted to Gino Severini: Mural Decoration from Spirituality to Poetry, which uses a selection of Severini's works to clarify the artist's philosophical dialogue with Maritain. This is followed by a video-installation entitled Architecture, illustrating the multiple solutions adopted between the 19th and 20th centuries in the construction and decoration of Catholic places of worship, also underscoring the close link between architecture and ritual. The penultimate section in the exhibition analyses the depiction of The Church (illustrated in the work of Adolfo Wildt, Scipione and Henri Matisse) with a reflection on the public side of religion; while the final section explores the private and intimate dimension of Prayer (with paintings ranging from Millet's extremely well-known Angelus to Felice Casorati's extraordinarily elegant Virgin).

Several major works of art have been specially restored to mark this exhibition. They are Antonio Ciseri's The Maccabees, Giuseppe Catani-Chiti's The Saviour, Vittorio Corcos' Annunciation, Arturo Martini's Prodigal Son and Primo Conti's Crucifixion. 

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Delaney and Bonnie - Poor Elijah.

Airbrushed from Art History (19)

Divisionism, the application of pure colours to canvas in dots, lines or threads, was an expression of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century search for a scientifically based understanding of colour and form. The most well known instance of this search was the Pointillism or Neo-Impressionism of Georges Seurat which initially influenced the Italian Divisionists.

However, the wider search had a strongly spiritual underpinning; one that is revealed in the interest that Paul Sérusier and Gino Severini showed in the writings of the Benedictine painter, Desiderius Lenz, with his insistence on the use of elementary geometric forms in the construction of paintings and also in the cubism of Albert Gleizes who located his scientific formulations for art in the Romanesque Art of the early Middle Ages.

Italian Divisionism also had a strongly spiritual element expressed primarily in symbolist images drawn from Christian iconography but also in the still luminosity of landscapes and the expressive movement of the social realist works. This in turn found its way into the Futurist Art movement which was built on the achievements of the Italian Divisionists and which, through the work of Gerardo Dottori and Fillia, developed a strong strand of Futurist sacred art.

Gaetano Previati, "the most traditionally religious of the Divisionists," sought to develop a contemporary Christian Art which used the Divisionist technique of evoking the luminosity of light through the application of repeated lines of pure colour to suggest the spirituality of his subjects. His first major work using these motifs is entitled Motherhood and depicts a Madonna and child surrounded by angels. "Previati sought to suggest the religious mysticism of his subject through the evocation of light, which radiates non-naturalistically from the figure of the Madonna in a diffused aureole" (Lara Pucci in Radical Light).

This image stirred up considerable controversy when first exhibited at the 1891 Brera Triennale, an exhibition which marked the public debut of Divisionism and Modern Art itself in Italy. Contemporary critics expressed bafflement at the combination of contemporary techniques with a traditional religious image and failed to see the way in which Previati’s evocation of light spiritualised his image of maternal love. "Previati's reinterpretation of Christian iconography and his efforts to reassign a spiritual meaning to art had a significant influence on the next generation [the Futurists]."

Other Divisionists, such as Giovanni Segantini, also worked with symbolism which was mainly Christian in origin while Giuseppe Pellizza da Volpedo created realist works which often depicted aspects of Christian ritual and ceremony. Segantini's transcendent mountain scenes were often imbued with religious references while his "typically Symbolist dialectic of holy mother and fallen women" used "female characters who often represented the binary opposition of Mary and Eve" (Vivien Greene in Radical Light).

"Guiseppe Pellizza da Volpeda was able to sustain his passion for socially conscious subjects while also using Symbolist imagery that was imbued with Christian motifs and was based on Italiam medieval and Renaissance prototypes." The Procession "re-enacts the powerful rituals of Catholicism" while The Mirror of Life "suggests biblical passages in which sheep symbolise the followers of Christ" in order to conceive the sheep of the scene as a metaphor for humanity. The Procession depicts a Catholic procession in his hometown of Volpedo where the bright radiance of the sun envelopes the participants and, as with Previati’s work, creates a spiritual luminescence. The curve which defines the upper part of the painting and the gold border of the canvas recall the format of Quattrocento religious painting and are typical of another means by which the Italian Divisionists commonly create links to the great religious works of Italian art, even when the subject of their work appears entirely secular.

Most of the Italian Divisionists displayed an interest in the great social movements of their day as the unification of Italy resulted in turbulent social and political conditions. Some of the most forceful and vibrant Divisionist paintings are those which depict aspects of the political and social struggles of their day, such as Emilio Longoni’s immense figure of The Orator of the Strike or his poignant Social Contrasts depicting a homeless man observing an affluent couple in a restaurant. In works such as these, divisionist technique is used to created a sense of movement and it is this that is developed by the later Futurists in works such as Carlo Carra’s The Funeral of the Anarchist Galli and Umberto Boccioni’s The City Rises where the intensity of the layered lines of colour suggests the agitation and pace of urban life and social change.

Gino Severini in The Life of a Painter tells the story of his development as a futurist and cubist artist. Severini reconverted to Catholicism in the 1920s. He claimed that his thinking on this decision began prior to the conversions of the poets Jean Cocteau and Pierre Reverdy and before meetings with Maurice Denis and Jacques Maritain. He highlighted the writings of the Benedictine Desideratus Lenz as an influence of the direction of his work but not his conversion. The most significant influence on his decision seems to have been the Abbé Sarraute who Severini met at Denis' home and who conducted the Severini's marriage ceremony.

Severini was, therefore, a part of the French Catholic Renaissance, in which Denis and Maritain played major roles. Severini says of Maritain that he "effected the transformation of a number of somewhat atheist poets into Christian artists, chief among them Jean Cocteau, who was baptised in Maritain's private chapel in Meudon." Maritain played a part in the next stage of Severini's career by suggesting that the Swiss painter Alexandre Cingria visit Severini and encourage him to enter a competition for the decoration of a Church in the Fribourg Canton of Switzerland. Severini did so, won the competition and went on to work on several Swiss churches over the latter period of his career. So much so, that Denis spoke of him as "the most famous decorator of Swiss churches." Cingria who, together with Denis dreamed of "creating a movement of rebirth of religious art in France and in all Catholic countries", could also lay claim to that status, as the Groupe de Saint-Luc et Saint-Maurice which he founded, built, restored and decorated more than 70 churches in Switzerland during the interwar years.

Severini also played a part in the development of a Futurist sacred art. Between 1928 and 1930 the futurist artist Fillia spent time in Paris with Severini. During this time he also saw Severini's work in the Swiss churches of Semsales and La Roche. The end of 1930 then saw a decisive reorientation of Fillia's work towards sacred art which culminated in 1931 with the publication of the 'Manifesto of Futurist Sacred Art' on the occasion of the International Exhibition of Modern Christian Sacred Art in Padua, which had a Futurist section of twenty two works by thirteen artists.
 
By these means the anti-clerical art of the Futurists inspired a flowering of religious painting that constitutes one of the most unexpected episodes in the history of that movement. Futurism eulogised the beauty of speed and the energies and machines that produced it. Futurists saw themselves as “immersed in the chaos of an old, crumbling era” but “partaking of the vibrations of a new epoch in the process of formation.” They embraced continual progress and viewed Catholic priests as fatally associated with old order hating “the fleeting, the momentary, speed, energy and passion.” Not fertile ground for a flowering of religious art, one would have thought.

Yet Marinetti, the great theorist of Futurism, maintained a significant distinction between Christ and the Catholic Church that led to the explosion of Futurist religious art which appeared in the 1930s. The “precious essence of Christ’s morals,” he argued, “accorded every right, every pardon and every sympathy to the impassioned fervour, to the fickle flame of the heart.”

Marinetti’s ‘Manifesto of Futurist Sacred Art’ appeared in 1931 and further exacerbated the movement’s conflict with the Catholic Church by stating that “only Futurist artists … are able to express clearly … the simultaneous dogmas of the Catholic faith, such as the Holy Trinity, the Immaculate Conception and Christ’s Calvary.” Pope Pius XI responded in a speech of 1932 by saying that ”Our hope, Our ardent wish, Our will can only be … that such art will never be admitted into our churches …”

Marinetti had argued that only Futurists could express the simultaneous dogmas of the Catholic faith because only they had “addressed the complex matter of simultaneity” in their art. Accordingly, a key feature of Futurist sacred art is the bringing together within the same picture frame of key events from the life of Christ. The convoluted titles of many of these works, such as Fillia’s Madonna and Child / Nativity / Nativity-Death-Eternity, indicate clearly the telescoping of events that can be found in these works. This work sets an semi-abstract/cubist Madonna and Child in front of a sky-filled cross in front of a mountain in front of a rock in front of a globe ringed by the outlines of churches as seen through the ages. Marinetti described this work as “an impressive amalgamation of the concrete and the abstract; a synthesis of the long development of Catholicism through the centuries.”

It is, when set alongside other works by Fillia, an example of a set of identikit symbols – saint, cross, globe, mountain, churches – that several Futurists juggle in works that sit uncomfortably between the later cubism of Gleizes and the surrealism of Giorgio de Chirico. Not all Futurist sacred art is of the poster book style and imagery of Fillia however. Giuseppe Preziosi, for example, also used simultaneity in his Annunciation-Nativity-Death but here the subtler harmonies of his colours combine with the interpenetrating planes of his subjects to integrate Christ’s birth and death within the work.

Gerardo Dottori, known as the ‘mystic’ Futurist, made use of similar techniques to create in his Crucifixion of 1928 one of the genuine masterpieces of Futurist sacred art. His crucified Christ is picked out in a heavenly spotlight which also surrounds the two Mary’s grieving at his feet. Light also emanates from the upper half of Christ’s body and outstretched arms illuminating the darkened sky that has thrown the landscape of Calvary into turmoil. Dottori’s stylistic use of light symbolises both Christ’s obedience to God’s will and the light of salvation that his death brings into a world darkened by sin.

Dottori also makes use of a second key theme in Futurist sacred art; that of flight as a symbol of transcendence. His Annunciation in an Aerial Temple sees Mary literally caught up in her spirit by the news that Gabriel brings (an anticipation of her own Assumption, perhaps) and gives us an angelic perspective on the event. Aeropainting was a major strand of Futurist art and this interest in flight became a symbol firstly of physical liberation from the earth and then of spiritual ascent. The Trinity, the Madonna, as well as the expected Angels, all appear winged and in flight within the works collected here.

One of the most striking of all the flight images is Nino Vatali’s Ascension where Christ ascends on the cross in stop-frame images that build a Jacob’s ladder ascending to the heavens. Whether the imagery of the cross as a ladder from earth to heaven was consciously in Vitali’s mind as he painted or whether he was simply transposing a Futurist technique with a sacred theme, the image and imagery remain powerful.

Only Futurist aeropainters, Marinetti argued, “are able to express in plastic terms the abyssal charm and heavenly transparencies of infinity.” Again, his rhetoric tends to exceed the resulting works but, for all that, their art forms a fascinating subject that extends our understanding of the influence of sacred themes and imagery in early twentieth century European art even where artists and the Church were conflicted.

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Siobhan Maher Kennedy - When You Go Away.

Radical Light

Italian Divisionist painters of 1891-1910 suggests fairly estoteric fare and yet this modest exhibition (Radical Light: Italy's Divisionist Painters 1891-1910, National Gallery, 18 June - 7 September 2008 ) yields much that will be of interest both to those who seek to express faith through art and those who are appreciative of art that is expressive and symbolic.

Divisionism, the application of pure colours to canvas in dots, lines or threads, was an expression of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century search for a scientifically based understanding of colour and form. The most well known instance of this search was the Pointillism or Neo-Impressionism of Georges Seurat which initially influenced the Italian Divisionists.

However, the wider search had a strongly spiritual underpinning; one that is revealed in the interest that Paul Sérusier and Gino Severini showed in the writings of the Benedictine painter, Desiderius Lenz, with his insistence on the use of elementary geometric forms in the construction of paintings and also in the cubism of Albert Gleizes who located his scientific formulations for art in the Romanesque Art of the early Middle Ages.

Italian Divisionism also had a strongly spiritual element expressed primarily in symbolist images drawn from Christian iconography but also in the still luminosity of landscapes and the expressive movement of the social realist works. This in turn found its way into the Futurist Art movement which was built, as this exhibition demonstrates, on the achievements of the Italian Divisionists and which, through the work of Gerardo Dottori and Fillia, developed a strong strand of Futurist Sacred Art.

Gaetano Previati sought to develop a contemporary Christian Art which used the Divisionist technique of evoking the luminosity of light through the application of repeated lines of pure colour to suggest the spirituality of his subjects. The exhibition includes his first major work using these motifs entitled Motherhood and depicting a Madonna and child surrounded by angels. This image, which now appears to verge on the sentimental, stirred up considerable controversy when first exhibited at the 1891 Brera Triennale, an exhibition which marked the public debut of Divisionism and Modern Art itself in Italy. Contemporary critics expressed bafflement at the combination of contemporary techniques with a traditional religious image and failed to see the way in which Previati’s evocation of light spiritualised his image of maternal love.

Other Divisionists, such as Giovanni Segantini, also worked with symbolism which was mainly Christian in origin while Giuseppe Pellizza da Volpedo created realist works which often depicted aspects of Christian ritual and ceremony. The Procession depicts a Catholic procession in his hometown of Volpedo where the bright radiance of the sun envelopes the participants and, as with Previati’s work, creates a spiritual luminescence. The curve which defines the upper part of the painting and the gold border of the canvas recall the format of Quattrocento religious painting and are typical of another means by which the Italian Divisionists commonly create links to the great religious works of Italian art, even when the subject of their work appears entirely secular.

Most of the Italian Divisionists displayed an interest in the great social movements of their day as the unification of Italy resulted in turbulent social and political conditions. Some of the most forceful and vibrant Divisionist paintings are those which depict aspects of the political and social struggles of their day, such as Emilio Longoni’s immense figure of The Orator of the Strike or his poignant Social Contrasts depicting a homeless man observing an affluent couple in a restaurant. In works such as these, divisionist technique is used to created a sense of movement and it is this that is developed by the later Futurists in works such as Carlo Carra’s The Funeral of the Anarchist Galli and Umberto Boccioni’s The City Rises where the intensity of the layered lines of colour suggests the agitation and pace of urban life and social change.

The Italian Divisionists therefore provide contemporary artists with an example of how to be on the cutting edge of society with an art that is both socially engaged and spiritually uplifting.

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Lou Reed - Strawman.