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  • Lecture 1, Introduction to History Painting

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    Watch at: 00:00 / 00:00:20youWatch at: 00:20 / 00:40hello everyone I'm Pam Franks I'm thedeputy director for collections andeducation here at the gallery and I'mdelighted to welcome you all here thisafternoon today's lecture is the firstin a semester long series being offeredby John Walsh entitled let this be alesson heroes heroines and narrative andpaintings at Yale this series representsWatch at: 00:40 / 01:00an exciting new direction for thegallery in our public program theeducational offerings of our teachinghere at the gallery consistently focuson close observation of specific worksof art and prolonged engagement with thecollection each fall John WalshWatch at: 01:00 / 01:20collaborates with the members of thegallery's education department andespecially with Jessica sack thegalleries Jan and Frederick Mayer seniorassociate curator of public education toteach graduate students from acrosscampus to lead school groups that visitthe gallery this innovative program isour Wordle gallery teacher program andWatch at: 01:20 / 01:40is setting new standards in the pedagogyof teaching from original works of artthanks to John and Jessica's work alongwith many other colleagues from acrossthe museum and indeed across campus whocontribute to the training when westarted to think about whether a multilecture series on the collection mightWatch at: 01:40 / 02:00be a possibility our hope and intentionwas to extend the close focus onparticular artworks and the extendedengagement with the collection over timeto a broader audience through thegalleries galleries public programmaticofferings there are just a few businessitems that I'd like you to please noteWatch at: 02:00 / 02:20this lecture is being video recorded soif you wouldn't mind please turning offyour cellphone's at this point orturning them to vibrate I'd also like tomention that John will take questions atthe end of the lecture so kindly holdyour questions until the end theinvitations for this series and they'reWatch at: 02:20 / 02:40available at the back of the roominclude the list of the full schedule oflectures there's a stack of these andplease do take as many as you'd like todistributeto your friends the invitation also hasthe very useful information of thewebsite address ww art gallery led youWatch at: 02:40 / 03:00and on this website you'll find a linkto the lecture series on the home pagethe website includes the schedule oflectures of course but it also includesrecommended readings for each lecture sothat you can explore the ideas furtherWatch at: 03:00 / 03:20the video recordings of each of eachweek's lecture will be posted onlinewithin a few days of being delivered sothat if you miss one week you can stillview the lecture online also finally I'dlike to mention that John and our Wordlegallery teachers will be offering closelooking in gallery sessions in front ofWatch at: 03:20 / 03:40the paintings before and after eachlecture beginning next week the firstsession will be a held at 12:30 and thesecond at 3:00 p.m. and registration isrequired and if you look at thatinvitation with the schedule of lecturesyou can get the instructions on how toregisterthere's still a few slots left for theseWatch at: 03:40 / 04:00sessions and I strongly encourage you toconsider attending if you're availableso again in planning to develop a morein-depth program about the collectionthrough a lecture series complete withsupplemental materials we were reallythinking about how to extend some ofwhat happens in Neal courses and schoolclasses to a more open forum and thusWatch at: 04:00 / 04:20we've structured this series assomething of a public course it wasimmediately clear to us that no onewould be better to inaugurate this newapproach than John Walsh so let me justwrap up by taking one more moment tointroduce him a bit more fully JohnWatch at: 04:20 / 04:40Walsh is the director emeritus of theJay paul Getty Museum he graduated fromYale College in 1961 and received hisPhD from Columbia he was a paintingscurator at the Metropolitan Museum andat the Museum of Fine Arts Boston he'staught the history of art at ColumbiaHarvard and more recently at Yale and asWatch at: 04:40 / 05:00I mentioned before at the gallery heleads training sessions forgraduate students serving as Wordlegallery teachers this is his seventhyear at the gallery serving as aninstructor and mentor for the galleryteachers showing them the art of closedlooking by example and elucidating thislooking with his abundant knowledge andWatch at: 05:00 / 05:20wealth of experience as a scholarprofessor and curator John is also alongtime member of our galleriesgoverning board most recently serving ina special capacity as chair of theboards Education Committee John has beeninstrumental in keeping the museum'steaching mission forefront in all of ourWatch at: 05:20 / 05:40planning he is a tireless advocate forthe museum its collections and itspeople we thank him we thank you foryour abundant generosity and for thisvery special opportunity to learn overthe course of a full semester as youelaborate John on heroes heroines andWatch at: 05:40 / 06:00narrative and paintings at YaleWatch at: 06:00 / 06:20Pam thanks for the introduction thanksfor the chance to give these lectures atYale and thanks for this wonderfulaudience in these lectures I'm going togive you a careful look at some of themost powerful and interesting works ofart at Yale one at a time helping themWatch at: 06:20 / 06:40to reveal themselves to you not just byobserving them but by also consideringtheir context and their intendedfunction I'm going to pay particularlyattention in these lectures to subjectmatter particularly narrative subjectsacross four centuries when painting inits highest form served as a vehicle forWatch at: 06:40 / 07:00stories I want to show you that paintinga narrative picture was often likewriting an opera where the raw materialof a play is converted by poetry andmusic into something else into somethingstronger more concise as an expressionof the essence of the story and itsWatch at: 07:00 / 07:20action so I've chosen pictures thatillustrate stories it's my argument thatif we're going to understand what thepaintings were made to do and how theymight still teach us something we needto know those stories otherwise it's asthough we were at the Opera with noWatch at: 07:20 / 07:40libretto enjoying the music but havingno idea what's going on or what thewords mean or what the music is tryingto express the pictures were going tostudy in this series are part of a longtradition so-called history painting aspecies of narrative painting it wasWatch at: 07:40 / 08:00prefigured in antiquity it was definedduring the Renaissance and after thatwas regarded as the most elevatedcategory of art for 400 years and moreit was officially recognized as the mostimportant work a painter could do it washad the highest purpose to show peopleWatch at: 08:00 / 08:20what was sacred and what their dutieswere to each other to society andgod it was the most demanding branch ofart the most prestigious and the bestpaid and it was only in the middle ofthe 19th century that that kind ofhistory painting started to lose itsplace in the hierarchy in less than oneWatch at: 08:20 / 08:40person's lifetime the it was largelyovershadowed by subjects that had alwaysranked much lower that his scenes ofdaily life landscape still life by largemoral and ethical perched purposes forart gave way to the pleasures ofWatch at: 08:40 / 09:00observing and recognizing by World Warone abstract art had made representativepainting itself irrelevant this happenedin the name of artistic progress in thelast two lectures we'll look at how thisradical change came about the ideasWatch at: 09:00 / 09:20behind abstract art still affect the waymany people see older art that was trueof my teachers and their teachers andfor a whiletrue of me and probably most of yours Imean the idea that what really counts ina work of art is its design its shapesits colors its relationships and theWatch at: 09:20 / 09:40idea that those formal elements cancommunicate with usspectators directly no matter whetherthey depict anything or recognizable ornot let alone a story so why not justdispense with subjects altogether with asuited abstract art it also affected theWatch at: 09:40 / 10:00way people saw older art they lookedprimarily for its abstract strengths andthey found them but these ideas putblinders on several generations ofpeople who came to assume consciously orunconsciously that subject matter wasactually irrelevant to judging older artor taking pleasure in it I'll have moreto say about how we lost our taste forWatch at: 10:00 / 10:20narrative and art and didn't develop afamiliarity with the subjects thatartists expected us to recognize historypainting didn't die it survived inaltered form and was revived forparticular purposes in our ownmost often when issues of social justiceare involved I confess in this seriesWatch at: 10:20 / 10:40I'm leaving a lot out because the art ofvisual narrative is a lot older and morewidespread in the cultures of the worldthen you're going to see in theselectures and for one thing the deepbackground I won't have anything much tosay about the earliest historicalpictures may then more than fourWatch at: 10:40 / 11:00thousand years ago in ancientMesopotamia like this box on the leftinlaid with scenes scenes of war andpeace or this stele a on the right withcarving and relief that celebrates amilitary victory but while they're onthe screen let me just say a bit moreboth of these were made in the era ofWatch at: 11:00 / 11:20the famous epic of gilgamesh the firstepic literature that comes down to us inwriting about the great Gilgamesh theking of Uruk modern Iraq one-third humanand two thirds god of superhumanstrength these pictures remind us thatwe are a storytelling species stories ofWatch at: 11:20 / 11:40great events like these victories hadbeen memorized and recited and passeddown from one generation to the nextnot unchanged but morphing and mergingand being elaborated all the time longbefore they were compiled into writtenepics let alone picture and whatWatch at: 11:40 / 12:00functions did stories serve they carriedvital information that the people of onegeneration knew they needed to pass onto the next how the world arose howpeople perished in a great flood whatthe gods expected of humans how heroesand wise men and seers behaved how theWatch at: 12:00 / 12:20tribes won victories and sufferedcalamities the stories of the earliestliterature embodied the rules and taboosof society they were the primarymaterial for the education of childrenand they were a way for entire peoplesto preserve a body of common experienceand wisdomWatch at: 12:20 / 12:40well back to what I'm not covering inthese lectures for a moment thatincludespainted papyri made in ancient Egyptlike this one made for the scribe Hoonahfair showing the events that he hopedwere going to happen after he died he'sbeing led into the Hall of judgment hisWatch at: 12:40 / 13:00heart is being weighed and he then getspresented to the god Osiris I will alsonot be dealing much of if at all withminiature painting not only in Persia ishere but in the medieval West evenWatch at: 13:00 / 13:20though they're often really ingenious atthe way they picture complex narrativesand I'm going to neglect Chinese andJapanese narrative pictures like theseScrollsdespite their tremendous force anddelicacy instead of trying to present aglobal survey of narration and picturesWatch at: 13:20 / 13:40I'll be focused on one long tradition inEurope and America the DNA of thattradition is in ancient Greece and Romana painting we have only small fragmentsof Greek wall painting but we havethousands of painted vases like this onesome of them with terrifically vividWatch at: 13:40 / 14:00episodes from the narratives like thisone of King Phineas the blind prophet inthe story of the Argonauts here who'stormented by harpies who fly in to stealhis food every day many Roman wallpaintings survived like this one theseWatch at: 14:00 / 14:20in the villa de Ville of the mysteriesin Pompeii almost 1500 years before theRenaissance where there are largefigures performing ritual actions inconvincing poses and painted to appearweighty and grave the Romans also had amore fluent and expressive way ofWatch at: 14:20 / 14:40painting on walls that's best preservedin the rediscovered New Testament scenesby an unknown artist of the ninthcentury AD in this Carolingian churchnear varèse the strange and famous factof course is that the revival in historypainting in the Renaissance in Italytook place without the artistsWatch at: 14:40 / 15:00having any knowledge of the kind ofpictures I've just showed you fromantiquity all of them have disappearedwere buried or plastered up Greek andwall painting Greek and Roman wallpainting had to be summoned up from theancient literature strangely enough andthe man who did this was this man theWatch at: 15:00 / 15:20intellectual father of history paintingand the first person to describe it the15th century Florentine Leon BattistaAlberti this is his self-portrait inbronze looking every inch of forcefulRoman of antiquity his treatise of 1435de pictura on painting rested onWatch at: 15:20 / 15:40classical authority the painters and thewriters of more than a thousand yearsearlier it was a how-to book for artistsit explained perspective and other toolsof the trade and it was also a rulebookexplaining the correct way to do thingsAlberti wrote that what he calledAstoria Astoria are pictures based onWatch at: 15:40 / 16:00texts Greek and Roman and Christiantexts they don't necessarily depictactual historical events I'm showing youan episode from Christ's life bymasaccio of about ten years earlier alarge fresco that Alberti knew very wellWatch at: 16:00 / 16:19and admired the purpose of historypainting was to edify the public toinstruct them and only make them betterpeople these pictures says Alberti havenumerous figures he recommends nine orten of different ages and attitudeswhich he says the painter should studyin advance by making drawings theWatch at: 16:19 / 16:40figures aren't subject are a subjectrather to the rules of decorum thatmeans that they're not common oreveryday but instead they're elevated incostume and posture they're idealized intheir proportions - and in their facialfeatures the Alberti also says that theWatch at: 16:40 / 17:00spectator should feel that he's enteredinto the space of a picture and theexperience of the action that's beingrepresented he says that the painterneeds to give the picture a suitablesubject or have once applyby his educated friends he needs to givethe painting variety decorum that isappropriateness of appearance andWatch at: 17:00 / 17:20expression and dignity so in creatingthis new very explicit rationale forpainting Albert he turned to theultimate authority for people of histimes the writer of writers of classicalantiquityhe made a parallel with rhetoric thescience of persuading people with wordshe said a painter should make a plan forWatch at: 17:20 / 17:40the picture and he should aim to arousethe viewers emotions with figures whoutterly demonstrate their feelings asclearly as possible just as a goodspeech does he says that painters shoulddeliver beauty abundance and variety notonly of humans but also landscapeanimals still life and so on theWatch at: 17:40 / 18:00painting should be what he says charmingand attractive enough to hold the eye ofthe learned and the unlearned with asense of pleasure and emotion hementions long-lost paintings by thefamous artists of Greece and Rome likeAppel ease and Timothy's pictures thatwere described by Pliny the Elder andWatch at: 18:00 / 18:20encouraged painters to try their handsat reconstructing these lost picturesand they soon did the Three Graces byRaphael on the left is only thebest-known of many examplesAlberti also names a mosaic by a modernpainter Jacques doe that was in st.Watch at: 18:20 / 18:40Peter's Basilica and then laterdestroyed we know it from this drawingby a follower showing the calling ofSaint Peter with the Apostles in a shipin the background one of the foundingevents of the Christian Church Albert IIapplied Astoria to relief sculpture asWatch at: 18:40 / 19:00well as to wall painting the Rome Romanshad mastered that art of reliefsculpture for epic narratives the mostspectacular when you know is on thecolumn of Trajan in the forum in Rome ithas a band of relief sculpture woundaround it with scenes from the wars thatthe Emperor Trajan had been fighting inWatch at: 19:00 / 19:20DasiaRumania we see preparations for battlewe see sieges battles itself speechesover and over and there are manyappearances by the Emperor Trajan about60 and all lively skillful but notsculpture that's intended for reallyclose inspection which is hard to doWatch at: 19:20 / 19:40anyway by the way this idea of band orscroll format was adopted about athousand years later to depict theNorman conquest of England and 1066 inthe so called by you a tapestry andembroider the embroidery that's twohundred and thirty feet long that tellsWatch at: 19:40 / 20:00the story of course from the winnersside which is a pretty consistentfeature of historical narrative thatscenes though include the death of theEnglish King Edward the Confessor thefateful oath of his successor to WilliamWatch at: 20:00 / 20:20the successor to William that is theoath William the shipping across thechannel and even the appearance ofHalley's Comet which is a very bad signfor the English we're apt to think oftapestry and embroidery as a lesser artform but until a 19th century tapestrywas the most prestigious form of pictureWatch at: 20:20 / 20:40in fact the most expensive medium of allfor narrative art when for example louisxiii of france here had to present animpressive gift to Cardinal Francescoand Barberini it wasn't a painting byRubens painted painting it by RubensWatch at: 20:40 / 21:00exists but it wasn't the painting it wasa seven seven different 25 foot widetapestries woven from Rubens designedwith gold and silver thread which costmuch much more than paintings of thesame size the idea was magnificence notjust the story some of that actually isstill that magnificence is stillWatch at: 21:00 / 21:20preserved in the stair Hall of thePhiladelphia Museum where you can seethese tapestries now the great sculptorLorenzo Ghiberti used the term Astoriafor the reliefs on the baptistry doorsof the Cathedral of FlorenceI'm afraid I'm going to have very littlesay about sculpture including reliefsculpture which is after all a pictorialWatch at: 21:20 / 21:40art and which was regarded as at leastequal to painting and more challengingfor the artists and like tapestry muchmore expensive to get back to paintingmore than a century before AlbertiDevine defined Astoria and masaccioWatch at: 21:40 / 22:00realized his ideas a great masterpieceof monumental narrative painting hadbeen made here in Padua in the chapelbuilt for enrico scrovegni a banker andmoneylender here is giving a chapel toWatch at: 22:00 / 22:20the Virgin Mary and on the wall arelife-sized frescoes of episodes from thelife of Christ and these are atremendous leap for narrative paintingJonah showed how you could give a flatsurface the illusion of space and painthumans who look like they have actualvolume and weight and even suggests thatWatch at: 22:20 / 22:40they have living breathing and vitalityand individual personalities look forexample of how Joseph and Mary hand overtheir whoops come back back to me backhow how they the parents hand over theirWatch at: 22:40 / 23:00baby to the high priest in the templestory is from the Gospel of st. LukeMary is doing her sacred duty under theJewish law completing her ritualpurification 40 days after child's birththe old manSimeon here shown as the high priest hadWatch at: 23:00 / 23:20been promised that he wouldn't diebefore seeing his Savior here he's justsaid his famous prayer now let thyservant depart in peace for mine eyeshave seen thy salvation and he's tellingMary that a sword will pierce her soulthe child looks at the hairy strangerWatch at: 23:20 / 23:40just as any baby would and tries to getawayreaching for his mother just as shereaches impulsively for him we're notjust seeing the emotional bond of babiesand mothers we're not just seeing theold law and the new genre is actuallyshowing the terrible conflict thatWatch at: 23:40 / 24:00exists for this mother and child betweenhuman love and divine duty that frescois 12 feet highnow here's John Oh again the samesubject on the right on a tiny panelabout the size of an iPad concentratedon Christ's attempt to escape this thisWatch at: 24:00 / 24:20time but this time he gives Simeon theback of his hand and not incidentallyspreads his arms and a kind of innocentspontaneous reminder of the crucifixionin the future a lot of the expressivevocabulary that John who invents hereWatch at: 24:20 / 24:40for century and for centuries to come ishere already in in in Giotto in the 14thcentury there there are figures here ofpersuasive gravity variety there's atone of high seriousness there arelegible poses and expressions andWatch at: 24:40 / 25:00there's a high purpose to illustrate thecrux of an important story without acaption we understand what's going onand we understand at a human levelempathetically with our emotions we mayhave forgotten the passage in the gospelbut the images how people looked andfelt and behaved those things may wellWatch at: 25:00 / 25:20be unforgettable in our minds that's thegreat potential of narrative paintingimages that are indelible and we willsee it reached over and over again inthese series it is pictures in theseseries another Florentine antonio delpollo lo 440 years after Giotto pushesWatch at: 25:20 / 25:40the expressive possibilities fartherstudying the nude body and more and moredifficult attitudes he invents a newkind of Hercules not an overdevelopedbodybuilderbut instead a construed character with aWatch at: 25:40 / 26:00tough rupee body that says tightlystrong as his bow and it's a story of anew kind draw from the drawn from thelife of Hercules ones one that theartists contemporaries knew from Romanliterature bodies get more convincingWatch at: 26:00 / 26:20and expressive and so do the settingsand narratives this scene of Hercules isset just above the Arno Valley so thatyou can actually see the dome of thecathedral of Florence in the distancethe painter brings the story home to theaudience and makes it relevant to themWatch at: 26:20 / 26:40the Flemish painter Roger van der Weydenwas an exact contemporary of Albert IIand masaccio in Florence he paints st.Luke the patron saint of artists at workin a portrait of the Virgin and Childst. Luke'sWatch at: 26:40 / 27:00studio window looks out on a landscapeof a River City in contemporary Flandershe places the legend of Saint Luke inthe world of the painter and his patroninto the very particular here and nowsoon artists of narrative scenes areWatch at: 27:00 / 27:20inventing ways to suggest a more complexinner lifefor the actors in Venice in the early16th century a new generation ofpainters was producing states of mindthat hadn't been seen before in theentire history of art ambiguous shiftingdreamy unknowable and they reinforcedWatch at: 27:20 / 27:40the elusive moods of the characters bypainting settings that are not sharplydefined like Roger father Wyden butsoftened by subtle light and atmospherefor instance Dada see this is thiseccentric brilliant painter of Ferrarapresents a young man in armor with ahalo he stares out at us with a troubledWatch at: 27:40 / 28:00expression brow contracted mouth open ifyou take a second look you see a headhere up against his chest that sort oflike the west spaniel might put his headthere but it's it's a dragon's head andyou notice that he's holding a pole hereWatch at: 28:00 / 28:20that's been broken off at the top thisadds up he realize who this has to be ithas to be st. George but it's in acompletely different aspect than whatyou expect which is really the knight onhorseback in broad daylight spearing thedragon while the maiden watches andprays for her heroWatch at: 28:20 / 28:40this is Raphael's little picture in theNational Gallery it also imagines Georgeafter the battle alone at Twilightlooking at us as though he were troubledand wanted reassurances about what hehad done here's another isolatedparticipant this is a girl in exoticWatch at: 28:40 / 29:00costume with a drum mouth open evidentlysinging an educated spectator spectatoraround 1600 could probably tell you whothis is and probably tell you who's notin the picture but as part of the storyand again a conventional version clearsWatch at: 29:00 / 29:20this up she is the daughter of jetha theambitious Israelite general in the bookof Judges who challenged the enemy tobattle only after he swore to God thatif he won he'd sacrifice the firstperson he saw coming out of the door ofWatch at: 29:20 / 29:40his house he returns victorious ofcourse and out the door rejoicing comeshis only daughter what Peter Davilapaints here is what movie people call atight shot we see what the victoriousgeneral saw his beloved daughter happyWatch at: 29:40 / 30:00oblivious that's it his horror hisremorse for what his ambition would costthese things we have to imagine this isvery sophisticated storytelling well allthis leads me to make some generalpoints about narrative painting usingsome of the pictures at Yale that we'regoing to be talking about it greaterWatch at: 30:00 / 30:20length in this seriesit's kind of overture medley of tunesthat you'll hear later later at greaterlength the first point is that telling astory with a single picture is doing itthe hard way is definitely hard comparedto prose and poetry and drama on stageWatch at: 30:20 / 30:40you need some techniques to do it butthe single picture has great advantageswhich I'll be pointing out there is theproblem of time a story unfolds in timeand may have many episodes in a novelthose episodes are described one afterthe other as you turn pages perhaps withWatch at: 30:40 / 31:00interludes of commentary by the authorand there's often their author's voiceor somebody else's to guide you a playera film also presents the episodessuccessively but we see them in sequencein real time painters of the Middle Agesand the Renaissance could deal with along narrative by presenting individualWatch at: 31:00 / 31:20episodes in many separate scenes thelife of Christ for example here in thisbig altarpiece by GWAR en toe there area dozen episodes each occupying aseparate panels small panel on eitherside of this large coronation of thevirgin a story unfolds in each row leftWatch at: 31:20 / 31:40to right top to bottom and there arefour more events on top they're allframed in a structure that's somethinglike the cross section of a church withthe episodes fitted together as supportfor the central nave like zone thatshows the object of devotion Christcrowning his mother in heaven all theseWatch at: 31:40 / 32:00choices would have been worked out withthe artist and a frame maker by a manwho was paying the bill whose name wasprobably Nicholas we can guess thatbecause there's a picture of SaintNicholas up top and probably with thehelp of a priest in charge of the churchin the town of Padua dedicated to SaintWatch at: 32:00 / 32:20Martin who which is also he's also upthere at the top so longer narrativescan be spun out in a series of discreetepisodes like thisword can be compressed into a singleimage that's what we have in this DutchWatch at: 32:20 / 32:39painting here in the gallery up front inthe garden here is the Virgin and Childbut also Saint Anne prominently Mary'smother with and the picture is reallyabout Mary's lineage so we got familyWatch at: 32:39 / 33:00flashbacks over at the left outside thegarden is Mary's elderly father JoachimAnna had been barren for twenty yearsand in the distance Joachim is pleadingfor a child with God who appears in theform of an angel when Anna then becomesWatch at: 33:00 / 33:20pregnant she and Joachim meet at thegolden gate of Jerusalem and rejoicewhich is what's happening here at thetop so the events of a year happen in asingle frame another familiar subjectlives leads itself to a sequence in aWatch at: 33:20 / 33:39single image this is the stratsialtarpiece by Gentilly da Fabriano theaction as you can see I hope snakesaround the top starting with the magistanding on a mountain and seeing thestar they take horse they travel toWatch at: 33:39 / 34:00Jerusalem the top and there we don't seethis part they ask Herod about the birthof a king to the Jews which worriesHerod since he's the king so he asksthem to go out and report back at theupper right they come out again and theyWatch at: 34:00 / 34:20follow the star and at the bottomthey've arrived on a page you can see istaking off the Spurs of one of the kingsas the others crouch and then kneel downto be blessed the biblical story isstretched into a ribbon that movesthrough a vast landscape that makes itWatch at: 34:20 / 34:40clear that the whole worldinvolved in this event and most dramaticcontrast I can imagine is on tania'sviewer the same version of the sameversion of the same subject which againis a tight close-up all the pageantry isWatch at: 34:40 / 35:00gone there's no tour of the Holy Land nosequence of events here the focus is thetheological crutch of the story the cruxof the story that the wise and powerfulmen who represent the old order of theworld come to render homage to the neworder Christ in this compressed formatWatch at: 35:00 / 35:20our attention goes to the faces of thekings to the terrific solemnity of theirexpressions as though they already knewthe fate of the babyas his mother does there's nothing inthe New Testament accounts that suggeststhis possibility the artist invented itlike Giotto he imagines the intenseWatch at: 35:20 / 35:40human emotionsfelt by everybody here in a couple ofweeks we'll look at this picture of theconversion of Saul by the Italianpainter gareth fellowit also shows why a single image can beWatch at: 35:40 / 36:00so effective at putting a story acrosshe's chosen the key moment in the longstory of Saul's life the turning pointwhen he's knocked down and struck blindchosen by God without having done athing to deserve ithe's been solved the persecutor beforethis now he'll be Paul the preacher it'sWatch at: 36:00 / 36:20a strong and beautiful painting but toget its full force you have to know thebiblical accounts of Saul's life beforehe got on the road to Damascus lifebefore what he was doing what happenedafterward the painter assumed you wouldknow all that he assumed that hisWatch at: 36:20 / 36:40picture of this one incident wouldsummon up the rest of the story in yourmind that's going to be true of almostevery painting that we look at whetherthe subject comes from the classicalmythology or from the oldNew Testament or from recorded historymy first point was that telling a storywith a single image is the hard wayWatch at: 36:40 / 37:00the painter first needs to choose theepisode well and we spectators have tobe equipped to see itsecond point narrative painting has alot in common with drama on stage andeven more with opera the skills involvedare similar you have a story you chooseWatch at: 37:00 / 37:20an incident or an episode from it callit a scene you cast it with suitableactors you block out their movements onstage and you coach them withexpressions and gestures there's a wholerepertory of body language that's commonto both theatre and painting and is forseveral centuries well known notWatch at: 37:20 / 37:40surprisingly since actors and directorsoften use the same Illustrated textbooksin expressive expressing the thepassions many of you heard Robin Simon'smarvelous lectures on that subject atthe Yale Center for British art earlierthis year you need to have a setting ofcourse and scenery and props you needWatch at: 37:40 / 38:00lighting to heighten the action to putthe emphasis where you want it paintersdo without words and music but they haveall those other expressive devices andthey make a stationary thing they createsomething that doesn't change standstill and invites close slow looking andimmersion in the image the painter alsoWatch at: 38:00 / 38:20often picks a scene because it's theheart of the matter with a turning pointof the story light like this that theoath that leads to the creation of theRoman Republic or the moment of decisionjustice in theatre the scene is oftenchosen because it displays the characterof the heroine or hero or the villainWatch at: 38:20 / 38:40here the widow Agrippinadisplays her virtue as a faithful spouseby bringing home her murdered husband'sashes her virtue is a prolific motherwith her children and she displays herWatch at: 38:40 / 39:00virtue as a brave citizen coming back toItaly to seek justice from a corruptBenjamin West used it used dramaticdevices that he shared with directors ofcontemporary theater the use of theinclude of vocabulary of poses biggestures that signal grief piety horrorWatch at: 39:00 / 39:20despair all things that the audience canread easily from the back seats stagersstage designers also create illusionslike this one of deep space in thebackground and they use light that rakesacross the stage from an unseen sourceand picks out those figures that theyWatch at: 39:20 / 39:40need to have visible for expressivepurposes painters helped to make newkinds of theatrical experiences possibleto not only drama on stage butparticularly silent movies when theybegan to tackle historical stories andgot serious about set building the firstWatch at: 39:40 / 40:00film epic was from the novel Quo Vadisset in Nero's rome and what better modelcould you possibly find for the decor ofthe Colosseum and for the gladiators inthis and a dozen other Roman movies ofthe same type than the paintings ofJerome like the one here at YaleWatch at: 40:00 / 40:20speaking of decor we will be exploringthis picture and others by the mostastonishing creator of theatricalsettings for historical events inpainting John Martin almost a centurylater when DW Griffith was planning histhree-and-a-half-hour epic intoleranceWatch at: 40:20 / 40:40in 1916 and needed to reproduce Babylonat the time of King Belshazzar near thecorner of Hollywood and Sunsetboulevards he had to go no farther thanMartin's wonderful painting or the printreproducing it and take whatever heneeded which was actually quite a lot inWatch at: 40:40 / 41:00the last couple of lectures I'll havemore to say about how movies and TV andother media displaced painting as avehicle for storytelling but somecontemporary artists have combinedticular intensity of history paintingsand the narrative techniques of filmcomefind them with startling results thisWatch at: 41:00 / 41:20stills are from a 12-minute video pieceby the artist bill viola who is used oldmaster paintings as the starting pointfor silent scenes in slow motion ofmysterious new narratives my third pointis that spectators tell the storyWatch at: 41:20 / 41:40history painting gives us work to dowe need to look carefully at what thepainter included and how its treatedmaking sense of a narrative picture isakin to reading and for us that can meanreading a foreign languagefurthermore as I've said before they weneed to know the story all this work isWatch at: 41:40 / 42:00complicated by the truth that all of uslooking at the same picture of anarrative subject see it differentlyeach of its each of us reads its contentdifferently because we differ my versionof this picture by marco pinot thatwe'll be talking about my version of itis not going to be yours the same isWatch at: 42:00 / 42:20truth of true fiction plays dance operait's true whether we know the story ornot I can tell you a lot about what thegospel of st. John says about theraising of Lazarus and I will but noneof you will process my words or the textor the picture in the same way as otherswe each receive information throughWatch at: 42:20 / 42:40multiple filters of life experience ageeducation gender many more thesedifferences are going to turn up in theconversations that we have in front ofthe pictures themselves starting nextweek I said that the spectator tells thestory to help us spectators do that theartist puts us in our imaginations intoWatch at: 42:40 / 43:00the picture he paints the subject forexample seeing from a particular vantagepoint which becomes our vantage pointand which conditions our experience herewe see saul and his horse from close-upas though they had been almost passingus on the road just as the horse tookWatch at: 43:00 / 43:20just just a horse and rider nobody elsewhen it's staged this way the event ispersonal almost private when PieterBruegel paints the samesubject we see it entirely differentlyBri Oracles sets it in a great steepWatch at: 43:20 / 43:40Alpine landscape where there's an armytoiling up toiling up the slopeeverybody just getting on with the jobwe're far away and off to one side whichmeans we don't even see what's going onright away and neither do a lot of otherWatch at: 43:40 / 44:00people Saul's accident hardly interruptsthe March and there are just a few raysof light to suggest that what we'rewitnessing is a divine act the point ofputting this scene in a huge crowd ispartly that it's not a private event theWatch at: 44:00 / 44:20message is that the choice of this manwho was the scourge of Christians tobecome the greatest Christian missionaryaffects everybody though nobody knowsthat yet the effect of the setting isalso to suggest that its importanceimportance of the event is as broad andsweeping as the landscape itself artistsWatch at: 44:20 / 44:40can put us in the picture by includingour alter egos this is a device thatLeon Battista Alberti recommended topainters saying it's a good idea toinclude somebody in the picture lookingout at the spectator where is heWatch at: 44:40 / 45:00looking out at the spectatorestablishing a connection there's a manhere who does that and his costume inhis face looked very much to be of Pinosown time the sixteenth century notcrisis time he's there as a witness toan important event and he invites us toWatch at: 45:00 / 45:20be one too and to learn from it inhistory paintings the painter willsometimes show how a spectator can be agood witness and suggests how he or sheshould feel this is an engraving of apainting by a van Dyck for which theoriginal is lostthe French 18th century writer DenisWatch at: 45:20 / 45:40Diderotreported an argument he had with learnedfriends about this painting which showsthe Roman general Belisarius here whowas treated unjustly by the EmperorJustinian so the legend goes he wasWatch at: 45:40 / 46:00blinded abandoned to beg for alms andthen recognized by one of his formersoldiers who lamented his cruel fateDida rose friends judged there was afault of the painter that he gave thatsoldier so much prominenceDiderot said no that's not a faultWatch at: 46:00 / 46:20that's actually the point he said thatit's just that which made the paintingmoral and that the soldier was playingmy role soldier is completely absorbedin what he's seeing what he's doing isabsorbing the moral of the story he'slearning the learning has always been aWatch at: 46:20 / 46:40primary purpose of most history paintingI'm making the point that we spectatorstell the story I'm going to give a fewmore instances of pictures that imply asequence of episodes only one of whichwe see the rest we can deduce inJerome's in Jerome's arena scene allWatch at: 46:40 / 47:00that happens is that the gladiatorssalute the Emperor before they start tofight but there's evidence all over theplace about what's just happened isblood in the sand a pair of dead ordying men is there in the foregroundWatch at: 47:00 / 47:20there's another one farther backand farther back still a bunch of bodiesis being dragged out of there ahead ofthem two actors playing the roles of thegods of the underworld are leading themWatch at: 47:20 / 47:40towards the portal through which they'regoing to be dragged and disappeared sothe artist shows by these clues what'shappened just before and we spectatorsknow like the Romans and the Colosseum'sknow what's going to happen again veryshortly as soon as the playerintroductions are over withWatch at: 47:40 / 48:00in other 19th century paintings there'san even more explicit invitation for usto do the storytelling it's a new kindof narrative painting like the novelsthat appeared in serial form every weekthat Victorian exhibition and Victoriaexhibition go lovers go loved here's aWatch at: 48:00 / 48:20favorite here at the Yale gallerythe painting by Millay of a woman ofmarriageable age standing at a desk witha letter and an empty vase she's holdingWatch at: 48:20 / 48:40a portrait of a man behind her and she'sdeep in thought the title of the artistgave it was yes or no with a questionmark at the Royal Academy exhibition of1871 the critics thought it wasmarvelous and they hoped for a sequelanswering the question Millie held outWatch at: 48:40 / 49:00for three years and after a lot ofdiscussion the picture of the picture inthe press he exhibited a sequel calledno I have to show you a color engravingWatch at: 49:00 / 49:20of that one because the original is lostand it was more controversy and finallytwo years later Neil exhibited thispainting yes for the next time Asianpoint showing the guy showing up showingWatch at: 49:20 / 49:40up with a travelling a cloak andcarrying a beat-up suitcase he's beenaway more difficult to follow andcertainly more serious is this Enigma byGustave Courbet one of the majorpaintings at Yale but when I couldn'treally justify as a narrative paintingWatch at: 49:40 / 50:00for these lectures still a story isimplied there has been action and we cansee it in the snow a rider leans back inthe saddle as his horse lowers his headtowards the tracks of course himself andWatch at: 50:00 / 50:20also the tracks of a small animal withspots of blood we don't know is this atrapper is it a poacher possibly hedoesn't have any gun or traps and noteven an expression that we can read inthe shadow just body language tooWatch at: 50:20 / 50:40exhaustion at the end of a pursuit thehorse and rider are in the same isevidently in some situation thatinvolves tracking a wounded animal butdespite the clues we don't know what thestory wasor is and whether it might express somecondition of Kirby's own spirit we haveWatch at: 50:40 / 51:00to think about it that's the invitationto us a fourth point about narrativepictures is that they need to becompared with others that's how weunderstand better what the artists addedto the tradition of representing thesame subject or altered or just borrowedfrom art history thrives on comparisonsWatch at: 51:00 / 51:20and art historians love these exerciseslike a climber loves Rock Benjamin Westgave the scene of a group inés landing atremendous severity the central grouphas white robes here to distinguish itWatch at: 51:20 / 51:40and moves solemnly across from the shipstowards the temples and the city apicture on the right here by GavinHamilton of the same rare subjectpainted a little bit earlier gave Westthe same the basic layout that he usedbut it's the changes that WestWatch at: 51:40 / 52:00introduces that are important heeliminated the pointless climb up thesteps on the right his colors are moresomber the tone is more grave thefigures are more numerous and smallerand the architectural setting here ismuch grander all of this pulls ourattention to the heart of the matterWatch at: 52:00 / 52:20which is a group inés defenselessconfrontation with official Rome thesearen't just differences of form in otherwords they're differences of meaning wesaw that in the case of the st. Paulpictures verticals Longview vs. Garofaloas close uphere's another striking case there's anWatch at: 52:20 / 52:40amazing large painting in the gallerywhich you've probably seen by the Dutchpainter Abraham bloom art of the floodin Genesis we know that the waters mustbe rising but wedon't see that in fact we don't see muchelse except the doomed sinners most ofthem struggling to higher ground allWatch at: 52:40 / 53:00struggling gracefully others perform akind of ballet of dismay and despairshowing off their amazing physiques theemphasis here is not on the 40-day stormor on the flood waters or the Ark ofNoah but on the individuals of theoffending race of humans who are shortlyWatch at: 53:00 / 53:20to be wiped out and across the street inthe British Art Centre is a hugepainting of the same event by JohnMartin whose Belshazzar feast you saw afew minutes ago the contrast couldhardly be greater if it pictured adifferent subjecthis deluge is a terrifying vision ofWatch at: 53:20 / 53:40nature nature gone mad the earthcracking open and belching fire greatwaves about to sweep everybody away wedon't look at all this from high groundbut it's not going to be high enough tosave us from what's already happening tothe crowds of tiny people trying toclimb to safety our visceral reactionWatch at: 53:40 / 54:00comes from nature turned murderous herein the Martin whereas with bloom ourreaction is to the fear that we read inthe individual bodies and painting thereare many different ways to tell a storyWatch at: 54:00 / 54:20in other words the same story and myfifth pointat last is about narrative paintingespecially history painting it alwayshas a message for its intended audienceand often has a motive the question isfor us what were those messages and whatWatch at: 54:20 / 54:40if anything is left for us to thinkabout now that might apply to our liveslet's look at a few scenes of war tosharpen the point John Trumbull knewexactly what he was saying in his recordrecreation of the Battle of Bunker Hilland to whom and why he was saying toWatch at: 54:40 / 55:00posterity that the United States had wonits independence from Englandby the concertedof people of all classes binding tothemselves together being brave enoughto fight against great odds andsacrifice their lives if you had to andthere's another message about decencyand restraint in warfare something thatWatch at: 55:00 / 55:20Trumbull believed in even to the pointof inventing an incident of battlefieldgallantry will see that these ideas arethese are ideas about war that we 250years later might be thinking about 40years later the Dutch born FrenchWatch at: 55:20 / 55:40painter Ari Shaffir had a different viewof warfare he painted the scene of theretreat of Napoleon's army from Russiain the winter of 1812 making it clearthat this was not a moral victory butinstead a horrific defeat it was theWatch at: 55:40 / 56:00result of many blunders Napoleon hadalready left and returned to Parisleaving his best general in charge ofgetting the remains of the army out ofRussia out of every 200 men who wentinto Russia one came out chef Airespicture is without hope and it's withoutWatch at: 56:00 / 56:20Heroes it's about sacrifice for nothingit's an answer to the many images ofNapoleon's victories and it's a generalstatement about the futility andbarbarity of war a kind of never againaimed at an audience of liberals andundecideds in Paris people who couldWatch at: 56:20 / 56:40remember the ideals of revolutionaryFrance before Napoleon hijacked it andturned it into an overweening empire anda base for military adventurism you getsome hints from mocking my rhetoricabout what I think a modern audiencecould learn from such picturesWatch at: 56:40 / 57:00this pair by the Victorian painterAugustus Leopold egg hangs across thestreet it set two centuries earliersitting in the center of a sumptuousroom full of gorgeous women andobsequious looking men is a radiantWatch at: 57:00 / 57:20young man in white he is the second Dukeof Buckingham the favorite of charles iiand he rose to be the most powerful manat court in his peak at his peak therichest man in England except for theking and a famously dissolute characterright over its head out the window youWatch at: 57:20 / 57:40can see Buckingham star the moonproverbially fickle the companionpainting on the right shows the onceglorious Buckingham dead at the age of29 alone in what Alexander Pope calledWatch at: 57:40 / 58:00the worst ins worst room his white silkjacket thrown off the Order of theGarter there at his knee this is allvivid and plausible but I made it all upnot only the party scene but also theWatch at: 58:00 / 58:20death of Buckingham he was actually backat his grand country estate in Yorkshirewhen he died where he went hunting andcaught a chill then died in the cottageof one of his tenant farmers but squalorworks a lot better if you're showingrise and fall and Lord knows this was aperiod for moralizing in public the moreWatch at: 58:20 / 58:40graphic the punishment for sin thebetter sometimes the target audience forpainters was very small and helps toknow exactly who that audience was thisis a Van Dyke again painting them acommunist of religious subjects theMadonna and Child here with a donorfigure in adoration he is the a basegaya a former ambassador of the dukes ofWatch at: 58:40 / 59:00savoy a wily operator who'd been put outof his job by the new duke sky a new theDuchess however Christine Marie ofFrance and he had Van Dyck paid himpraying to the Virgin whose face is thatof the Duchess Scalia wanted to beWatch at: 59:00 / 59:20reinstated and he'd evidently had thepainting made to be presented to herspeaking of Flemish painterscommissioned by Italian politicalfigures to show them in a good light inorder to regain political advantage at aforeign court here's the most famouscase of all really a kind of epic ofWatch at: 59:20 / 59:40flattery Rubens's cycle of Maria deMedici in the 1916 20s Maria de Maedachief was the Queen Mother of Francewho's a Florentine and a widow of KingHenry the fourth got Rubens to paint herstory in 21 very large pictures theWatch at: 59:40 / 01:00:00story itself was fraught since she wasregent for her young son louis xiiiand wanted power for herself well othersdid toonotably the Cardinal Richelieu and shehad years of deadly struggle with thesepeople after attempting a coup or twoWatch at: 01:00:00 / 01:00:20and being banished Maria succeeded ingetting back in favor and in a positionto have her side of the story toldRubens used the allegorical language ofhis time to make it as a heroic storythis for example is obscene come backhere this is Maria and Henry her KingWatch at: 01:00:20 / 01:00:40King Henry who died but made her a widowMaria and Henry meeting for the firsttime like Jupiter and Juno in the skyMaria's role in the battle of the siegereally of yudish and in Germany wasWatch at: 01:00:40 / 01:01:00actually nil but she did visit once andRubens paints her as the victor givingher the trappings of equestrianportraits of men and she becomes theconquering hero of yudish herreconciliation with her son king louisWatch at: 01:01:00 / 01:01:20xiii was a political expedient to stablebut Rubens paints it as a divine eventwhere the devil's of envy here the rivalcourtiers are cast down mm-hmm the storyhung on the walls of Maria's GreatPalace it looks and bore in looks andwork palace for visiting ambassadors andWatch at: 01:01:20 / 01:01:40courtiers and the king himself to lookat this is a fully political rewritingof history it was propaganda with acapital P and painting like historyitself has often been a tool of politicsto finally I think we need to look atpaintings of historical events as aWatch at: 01:01:40 / 01:02:00species of fiction and just likehistorical fiction it needs to havethemes like the rise of democracy thefall of tyranny crime and punishment andso on themes determine the choice ofwhat episodes get shown and what areeliminated it's a mix of actual inventedWatch at: 01:02:00 / 01:02:20actual and invented of fact of spin andinvention not truth in a literal sensebut what that wise philosopher andobserver Stephen Colbert called truthtruthinessto be coherent both historical novelsWatch at: 01:02:20 / 01:02:40and history paintings need to bestructured to get their points across tobe credible and to be vivid to captureattention and hold it and to beremembered next week we will examinethis picture showing one of the manyAdventures of Hercules its historicalWatch at: 01:02:40 / 01:03:00fiction about the most durable hero ofall and one of the last episodes of hislegendary life the most fateful episodeof all so try to be here if you canthankWatch at: 01:03:00 / 01:03:20you