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Allegorical figures, detail from Linder Gallery

GORMAN: So where does this picture sit in the genre of pictures of galleries?

MARR: Well, it’s interesting in light of the point Ren made about this being a moment when art becomes art, because this genre of gallery interiors is precisely about that. It’s about the moment at which art appreciation becomes a recognized phenomenon, a recognized and accepted thing to do. This particular genre of pictures of collections emerged at exactly the same time that the “liefhebbers van schilderen” — the so called ‘lovers of painting’—were first admitted as a category of member to the Guild of St Luke, the artist’s guild in Antwerp. So it’s a recognition that art isn’t just about making. It’s about appreciating and evaluating and discussing. And that’s really what this genre meant to be about. It’s showing images that cognoscenti could stand in front of discussing differences between style, differences between manner, differences between treatment of themes.

CORDOVER: While I agree completely that this genre of painting—Flemish gallery painting—is precisely as you’ve described it, this work has such striking differences from essentially all the other Flemish gallery paintings that we’ve looked at because it doesn’t have cognoscenti within it and it isn’t principally about a particular collection of either art objects or other kinds of objects—musical instruments or artificialia or naturalia of any sort. It’s about knowledge.

MARR: I think this is essentially a hybrid. Yes, you’re quite right—there are no cognoscenti actually in the picture. I don’t think that that means that this isn’t an image that should be thought about in terms of cognoscenti and appreciation.

WESCHLER: This reminds me of David Hockney, who has recently taken to painting these landscapes which he calls his “figure paintings”. And if you say to him, “But where are the figures?” he replies, “You are the figure.” In the same way, in answer to the question of where are the cognoscenti—you are the cognoscenti.

MARR: And it is also about knowledge—but it’s about lots of different kinds of knowledge. I think there’s no doubt that knowledge of the cosmos and how the world fits together is a key theme. But I think that we shouldn’t forget that this is also about recognition of the styles of different painters. So I think it’s about—going back to arts and sciences and how they’re allmixed up—I think this is an image about different kinds of knowledge.

GORMAN: You could say the picture is a machine to produce cognoscenti

excerpt from A Mysterious Masterpiece: The World of the Linder Gallery (Fondazione Palazzo Strozzi/Alias, 2009)

Disegno from the Linder Gallery

It is by no means clear whether the figure of Disegno in the Linder gallery is intended to be generic or a specific portrait.  Michael John has suggested Kepler as a possible candidate – which is certainly plausible, although I have yet to be convinced of the similarity between known portraits of Kepler and the features of the Linder gallery figure, and (frustratingly) there is no evidence that either Oddi or Linder was especially interested in Kepler and his works. An alternative possibility is that the figure of Disegno is in fact modelled on Mutio Oddi’s first tutor in the visual arts, the famous painter Federico Barocci of Urbino.  Barocci’s features, as depicted in his self-portrait of ca. 1600 are close to those of Disegno in the Linder gallery, if we imagine Barocci 20-30 years older (for the gallery was painted in the late 1620s).  Barocci would have been an ideal model for Disegno – he was internationally renowned as a master of design and  was the brother of the celebrated mathematical instrument maker, Simone Barocci, whose works Oddi distributed in Milan to patrons and friends – including Linder.  In fact, as Ian Verstegen has shown in a recent article, Federico used his brother’s instruments (notably the reduction compass) in making his drawings and paintings.  Thus, Barocci could be thought of as a figure for whom mathematics underpinned drawing, and the arts in general.  Oddi – who was exiled from Urbino – was always eager to promote his homeland (indeed, he circulated Barocci drawings in Milan).  What better way of doing this than by incorporating one of its greatest (but recently deceased) artists into the painting he helped to devise?  Just a thought…

Federico Barocci, Self-portrait (ca. 1600)

Cornelis Drebbel's Perpetuum Mobile, detail from Hieronymus Francken the Younger, The Archdukes Albert and Isabella Visiting a Collector's Cabinet, The Walters Art Museum, Baltimore. Compare the shadowy device at no. 43 in the zoomable image of the Linder Gallery

By all accounts, Drebbel’s instrument combined two features, first, a self-winding astronomical almanac showing the date and the phases of the moon, and second, a cylindrical ring in which water moved endlessly to and fro. Even if the Perpetuum Mobile was only a simple air thermoscope (relying on temperature changes), or at best a crude baroscope (subject to changes in air pressure), Drebbel invested it with great mystery and great value, and saw it as a confirmation of the principles he elaborated in his Ein Kurßer Tractat von der Natur Der Elementen first published in 1608. Although clearly his claim was unfounded, perhaps we at least to try to understand what he thought he was doing when he speaks of the instrument’s secret as ‘the fiery spirit of the air’. Perhaps the glass cylinder was filled not with mere air, but with oxygen produced by heating saltpetre, or nitre, which Drebbel was convinced held the secret to chemical transformations of many kinds. As Jennifer Drake-Brockman astutely observes, Drebbel stands on the threshold between two ways of looking at the natural world. As she writes ‘On the one hand, were those philosophers, including Drebbel himself, who explained the machine in mystical or alchemical terms, and whose mind-set might be described as the Rosicrucian tendency; their thinking was ultimately grounded in the Aristotelian universe, the building blocks of which were the four elements. On the other hand, were the exponents of the scientific tendency, whose efforts were directed towards an understanding of observed physical phenomena and to whom the Aristotelian worldview was increasingly an irrelevance; […]’. Drebbel’s alchemy was indeed Aristotelian, and he accorded nitre a special significance as part of Paracelsus’s tria prima of Mercury, Sulfur and Salt, hence his experiments with cooling, underwater travel, explosives and of course, the Perpetuum Mobile.

Allegorical figures, detail from Linder Gallery

The laurel wreath and sun-pennant worn by the young woman correspond to the attributes of Virtue, according to Cesare Ripa’s Iconologia, a reference text much consulted by artists. If she represents the Arts, perhaps exhausted from her labours in creating all of the paintings and sculpture in the room, then who is the man? The impressive array of astronomical instruments, mathematical tools and diagrams in the painting would seem to suggest that he has something to do with science. The books on the table by Kepler and a physical resemblence to Kepler’s known portraits suggest that the man may be intended as a likeness of astronomer Johannes Kepler. But if so why would a young woman representing the Arts be lying in Kepler’s lap?

There is another painting, now unfortunately lost, which shows a similar composition of a woman representing Painting resting in the lap of an old bearded man. In that painting the old man (with a flaming crown) appears to represent “Disegno” — design or drawing, considered in the seventeenth century as a universal skill embodied in any form of measurement or proportion, from perspective drawing to the measurement of the position of the stars.

Anonymous, Gallery Interior with Personifications of Pictura and Disegno

So one reading of the allegorical figures in the Linder Gallery is a play on words: “Painting “rests on” Drawing”, or to flesh it out more fully, “The Arts and Virtue rest on Design”, where design includes the sense of moral purpose (as in the phrase “by accident or by design”). This kind of punning and emblematic word play was extremely popular in Flemish painting of the seventeenth century. But why would the astronomer Johannes Kepler be used to represent Design?

There are a few possibilities here:

First, perhaps the male figure is not in fact intended to be Kepler, but just a generic personification of Disegno. That’s possible, but I would suggest, apart from the resemblance and the other references to Kepler in the painting, that the careful way his face is painted strongly follows the conventions of portraiture.

Second, perhaps the painting (informed by mathematician Muzio Oddi) is deliberately putting forward a highly mathematical vision of Design, arguing for the importance of a deep understanding of geometry, astronomy and astrology to all the arts. In this case, if you wanted a person to embody mathematical skill in the late 1620s, Kepler as the Imperial mathematician who had just published the most important planetary tables for more than a century seems like a pretty good candidate. However, in spite of the very clear references to Kepler in the painting, we have yet to discover any direct links between Muzio Oddi or Peter Linder and Kepler — the search continues.