http://www.royalacademy.org.uk/exhibitions/cranach/
Cranach the elder
Several things of note:
- The women and the men are dressed mainly in Germanic clothing.
Sometimes in the big classical allegorical paintings, the central
figures wear classical robes in classical colours whilst the
surrounding figures are in Germanic clothing.
- The women are mostly generic, you've seen one Cranach female, you've
seen them all. Sure, they're un-classical but the men are, in this
context, privileged to get an almost brutal realist portrayal: flabby
chins, hook-noses, squints, side-burns, stomachs, mutton-chops the
lot. The men are individuals, German individuals. With the clothed
women, it's almost as if Cranach is interested more in the Germanic
garb than the woman. Some beautiful bits of deep gorgeous reds cloth
with wonderful, architectural folds. With the "nudes" - the wispy
bits of clothings - prudish, misogynistic. The beginnings of Kinder,
Küche, Kirche? I'm sure MJW would have something to say about this.
- A large proportion of the paintings are on a locally-source
redbeech-wood, none of that non-Germanic canvas for Cranach if he
could help it. I don't know whether this was poverty or scarcity or
choice, but the effect is to limit their size, thus intensifying the
blues and dark-greens into an almost hallucinagenic intensity.
- The LRB points out that Cranach was a printer. I think being a
printer allowed him to do non-commissioned pieces - some are just
un-named men or women painted, you guessed it, very Germanically.
I loved Cranachs wonderful reds, greens and blues, the voluptousness
of the clothing, even his portrayal of men. I wish he had extended
the same treatment to his women. I like his use of local materials for
painting. I think Cranach the Elder was shaping Germanic art in the
way that Luther was shaping the Germanic bible. No wonder the National
Socialists loved Cranach. He was one of Hitler's favourite painters,
along with Dürer and Holbein. I wonder, if I am wrong-headed in my
liking these aspects of Cranach, given the sometimes shabby history of
German nationalism. I wonder if I should be re-educated into
right-thinking and begin to hate Cranach, Dürer or Holbein?
I agree with Robin. I think the TLS writer had one to many cough-drops
when he wrote that article.
Roger
On Thu, Apr 17, 2008 at 2:13 AM, Max Richards <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> From Timothy Hyman's current TLS piece on Cranach:
>
> The same wit shines out in Cranachıs most famous contribution to world art,
> his almost laughable female nudes.
> The catalogue traces their origins in humanist circles, in Dürer and in
> works by Giorgione, Titian and Lorenzo di Credi, which Cranach may have
> encountered in Italy.
> But the synthetic being who first appears in the artistıs fifties, with her
> protruding tummy and rubber thighs, is an utterly unclassical conception of
> the human body.
>
> Sometimes she is cast as a forest-aboriginal, in that imagery of a naked
> Golden Age which usually signals as in Matisseıs ³Dance² the living hope
> of future liberty. But often, whether she is named Eve or Diana or Salome,
> Cranachıs Woman wears the same conniving expression, of sweetness and
> cruelty commingled.
> The marvellous Frankfurt ³Venus² (who currently lurks some seven foot high
> in the tunnels of the London Underground) turns out to be a very small
> picture; but she has a cosmic presence.
> She stands on the curved rim of our world, spread out against the black
> night, an immense dream-personification, perhaps not so much of Beauty, as
> of Temptation.
> Her gesture is enigmatic (is her final veil being held up, or is it about to
> be discarded?) and her striptease, like Salomeıs, seems certain to be
> followed by a beheading.
>
>
>
--
My Stuff: http://www.badstep.net/
"She went out with her paint box, paints the chapel blue
She went out with her matches, torched the car-wash too"
The Go-Betweens
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