Italian Art from Glasgow

During the run of “Botticelli, Titian, & Beyond” at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art I took a quick tour through the corresponding galleries of Italian painting at the Metropolitan Museum in New York. I know it’s not fair to compare Glasgow’s collection with the Met’s, but it’s equally naïve to judge the works from Scotland without some context. Before we ‘ooh’ and ‘ah,’ let’s see what we really have.

The short answer is, I don’t see a single painting in the SBMA show that would likely grace the walls in New York. While Titian and Botticelli, recognized in the show’s title, are, with Bellini and Guardi, artists who do hang at the Met, the works of the former two are interesting mainly for historical reasons while those of the latter are seriously flawed.

That said, the exhibition “Of Heaven & Earth: 500 Years of Italian Painting from Glasgow Museums,” as it was known elsewhere on its American circuit, is not without interest or, more to the point, paintings I like. Herewith are my ten favorites, in chronological order.

1. Giovanni Bellini, Virgin and Child (c. 1480). The subject and composition are routine for Bellini – indeed, a similar but more interesting Bellini is also in Glasgow but couldn’t travel – but there is no more beautiful woman or well-drawn baby in the exhibition. I could look at the Virgin’s face and exquisite left hand all day. Unfortunately, her right hand is a mess. The catalogue says her robe was overpainted; so perhaps there was damage that required a later painter to repair the right hand. For whatever reason, it is so chunky and ill proportioned that it draws the viewer’s eye away from all that is good in the work.

2. Paris Bordon, Virgin and Child with Saints John the Baptist, Mary Magdalen and George(?) (c. 1524). One of the miracles of the show is how a painter as bad as the one who did the Virgin and Child of 1522 could have, in two short years, become as good as the one who produced this. The first is blocky, with no rhythm, a confusing background and a homunculus for a Christ child. The five figures are looking in five different directions, for no apparent reason. The later work, by contrast, is dynamic. St. John’s glance brings you in, his left hand anchors the composition and his twisted back and extended right hand start an upward sweep that runs through the two Marys and a quite normal-looking Christ child to the armored saint with his lance and sword, pinning him in. The knight looks at the baby, the mother and baby look at John, he looks at us and Mary Magdalene looks dreamy. The background building is separate, not rising out of a head as in the earlier picture, and coursing hounds and a fisherman animate the middle ground. The architecture nicely sets off the Virgin and child and frames the knight. The bold foreground colors stand out against the cool landscape and harmonize with each other, unlike the earlier attempt, where Mary’s dress sets her apart.

3. Cavaliere d’Arpino, Archangel Michael and the Rebel Angels (c. 1592).

This is a thoroughly competent reprise of Michelangelo, rather dandified. The archangel Michael is a thing of beauty, and some of the falling angels don’t look all that bad, either.

4. Sassoferrato, Virgin and Child with St. Elizabeth and the Child Baptist (1640s?). I am a fan of the LeNain brothers, and this is the Italian work that comes closest, in the ragged brown shirt of the Baptist and the human expression and gesture of the Christ child. The blue-and-red-robed Virgin of course takes the picture out of LeNain peasant territory, but the simplicity and honesty of the composition stand out, especially given all the Baroque around it.

5. Salvator Rosa, St. John the Baptist Baptizing Christ in the Jordan (1656). There are two great Rosas, a pair, from Glasgow, and this one would be worthy of the Met were it to spend more time on the Italian Baroque. The rocks are majestic, the trees full of energy, and the river takes the composition, in good Claudean fashion, from the front right to the middle left then back to the hazy distant center. Best of all, the baptism scene in the left foreground blends into the picture, noticeable but not distracting. The companion work, also of St. John, is harsher, with lighting and foreground figures that jump off the canvas, and trees and rocks that are more of a muddle.

6. Carlo Dolci, Salome (c. 1681). Just as there is a good and bad Bordon and good and bad (from the SBMA collection) Rosas, we are shown a beautiful Dolci and a sickly one. Salome reminds me, in the delicious elegance of her costume, of one of my favorite Italians, Orazio Gentileschi, from a half-century before. Her translucent collar is laced with gold thread, the stones of her bracelet match the jewels of her cape, and the folds of her dress and puffs of her sleeves create volume. Even the severed head of John is peaceful, not gruesome, and the single red drop of blood dangling from the golden tray is there for beauty, not gore. The less said of Dolci’s earlier Adoration of the Magi the better: it’s schmaltzy, the figures are cramped, the setting makes no sense and the baby, as are so many in this exhibition, is a loser.

7. Pier Leone Ghezzi, The Purification of Aeneas in the River Numicius (c. 1725). Amid all the froth of Italian Baroque, where melodrama reigns and realism and good taste take a back seat, this work stands out, not so much for its moderation, though in that it compares well with Casali’s Triumph of Galatea, as for its sense of humor. The river god, a precursor to the Jolly Green Giant, looks wonderingly up to Athena, sitting comfortably on a cloud, while her posse of cherubs cavorts in the sky and on land, playing with pigeons and cast-off armor. Everyone has room to breathe and it’s one of the happiest pictures in the gallery.

8. Paolo Anesi, View of Ariccia (c. 1760). What a relief, after so many Virgins, gods, tragedies and moral lessons to come across this tranquil and seemingly realistic landscape, with a harmonious architectural array across the horizon. The trees are a bit repetitive, but the overall soothing tone brings to mind similar scenes that Corot will draw in Italy in the next century.

9. Luigi da Rios, Overlooking a Canal, Venice (1886). The artist has edited out all messy details but left enough realism – two ladies talking in the background – to convince and charm us. The two girls in the foreground – one taken straight from Renoir – and one’s younger brother are looking down the canal – at what? – creating an ambiguity that adds depth to an otherwise simple scene. This little vignette says “Venice” just as surely as the Guardi.

10. Every list must go to ten, so I have reserved the final spot for comments on the works that another visitor to the show might expect to find here. The Titian is the headliner, but part of the original composition has been sliced off, perhaps with good reason, for the missing figure on the right (a self-portrait?) is ungainly and obtrusive. None of the other figures work particularly well together, and individually each is more unattractive than the last. No one knows for sure who painted it or what the subject is, and it is hard to credit it as more than a student or workshop effort, albeit of interest if that student is Titian. The other headliner is the Botticelli, and this is of interest mainly because it is so different from what one expects from that master. There is little of the sexy, florid, full-bodied human figure, and indeed, most of the canvas is given over to grey, rather dull architecture. The picture is not without charm, but it is not what you want in your Botticelli. Guardi is the other “name” in the show, but View of San Giorgio Maggiore is not one of his better works. The façade of the church is about the only fully realized passage. The water and the other buildings appear unfinished, the gondoliers – too much in the foreground – are awkward and ill-proportioned, and the scene overall is a mess.

More challenging, but quite doable, would be a list of the ten worst, or more accurately, my ten least favorite. Some I have already suggested: the earlier Bordon, the earlier Dolci. The Niccolo is in such bad condition it probably shouldn’t be displayed. The two Camuccini show how hard it is to copy Poussin successfully, with his Death of Julius Caesar being especially hard to look at. The Gramatica is simply creepy and the Solimena is trite and looks like it should be painted on velvet. Other works, like the Sammachini, Girolamo da Carpi, the Locatelli and even the Balestra are maybe too trivial to be rated as bad, but at least they get my list to ten.

As a final word I should mention the out-of-catalogue additions the SBMA has added to the exhibition. One, by Salvator Rosa, would make my list of ten worst, as would a misguided confection by Baglione. The others are uniformly a notch above the Glasgow average. Agnolo Gaddi’s St. Ursula puts the Niccolo next to it to shame. The Lorenzo Monaco is more interesting in many ways than the Botticelli, Titian and Bellini with which it shares the space. And Michael Hammer’s Tintoretto is not merely the best portrait in the show, being the only portrait in the show, it is museum quality all the way.