The Linder Gallery » Paintings

New publication on gallery interiors

Alex — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 19:44:30 +0000

Just published, a special issue of Intellectual History Review, edited by Alexander Marr, on the topic of seventeenth-century gallery interiors:

http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/title~db=all~content=g919679010

When art becomes art – Excerpt from A Mysterious Masterpiece

michaeljohn — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 09:51:11 +0000

WESCHLER: Taking it one step further, I would also argue that this is the moment when art starts being art as opposed to being science. For all of your claims that the old man and the woman should be read principally iconographically — that they represent this or they represent that and so forth — there are times when a cigar is only a cigar, and there is something quite moving about that girl asleep on the lap of that old man—something crying out to be seen not just as a symbol, but as a relationship between two human beings. Thirty years from here you’ll be getting Vermeer with his insistence on the substantive presence of the sitter as a person and not as a genre and not as a symbol, not as a puzzle — not as anything other than a person.
And I think that’s already beginning to happen in a time like this.

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)

Iconoclasm in the Linder Gallery?

michaeljohn — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 20:01:26 +0000

In the lunette above the window out over the garden in the Linder Gallery you can make out some people with donkeys’ heads engaged in wanton acts of destruction. They are smashing lutes and globes and removing paintings from the wall. These “iconoclastic donkeys” are often found in Antwerp paintings of galleries of the early seventeenth century, representing ignorance destroying the arts and sciences and also perhaps harking back to the Antwerp iconoclasm of 1566, which had a profound effect on the artists of the city. Some of the iconoclasts appear to be wearing clerical robes and have human faces. It is interesting that the grisaille effect (unique among representations of iconoclasm) gives one the impression that the iconoclasts themselves are “painted out” of the gallery, not on a par with the other paintings shown.

Ignorance destroying the arts and sciences -- Detail from Linder Gallery

Iconoclastic donkeys, detail from a painting by Hieronymus Francken

The Windsor Drawing: A Sketch for the Linder Gallery?

michaeljohn — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 15:48:10 +0000

The Royal Collection in Windsor Castle contains a drawing (RL 12983) showing the interior of a picture gallery that bears a striking resemblance to the Linder Gallery, showing a similar architectural space. There are some key differences though. For example, the ceiling of the space in the Windsor drawing is flat, and there is a door on the left hand side. The sculpture and astronomical instruments in the drawing appear different from those in the painting.

Windsor Drawing (RL 12983)

Perhaps the most intriguing difference between the drawing and the painting is that the drawing shows a more conventional grouping of three connoisseurs in conversation instead of the allegorical figures shown in the painting. Could this be the preparatory drawing on which the painting was based?

There are several reasons to think so. For one thing, several of the paintings shown on the walls in the drawing appear to be rough compositional sketches for the paintings shown in the painting. For example if you look at the sketch of the Nymphs and Satyrs in the upper left of the drawing you see a nymph in the centre reaching up with her right arm, and a satyr reaching down, whereas in the finished painting there is a nymph in the left foreground reaching up with her left arm. Similarly in the sketch for Belshazaar’s Feast, one sees King Belshazzar seated on the left, with servants bringing exotic foods including a peacock pie. In the finished painting the peacock pie is already on the table.

Comparison of Belshazzar's Feast in drawing and painting

This suggests that the sketches in the drawings are quick compositional sketches for the final paintings. It also suggests that the paintings on the walls of the Linder Gallery are not copies of real works but original compositions in the style of well known Flemish, Dutch and Italian artists of the time (if you were copying an existing painting, surely you wouldn’t change the composition?).

So it appears that the Windsor drawing is prior to the Linder Gallery, and also that the paintings on the walls in both are imaginary works. The perspective scheme of the Windsor drawing is also identical to that of the Linder Gallery, and technical analysis of the painting has shown a perspective underdrawing which shows this even more strongly.

Detail of Windsor Drawing

Another interesting feature of the Windsor drawings is the three conversing figures. The book A Mysterious Masterpiece contains a suggestion as to their possible identity. The figure on the right is identified as Antwerp’s most famous painter, Peter Paul Rubens. The figure on the left is identified as Peter Linder, the German merchant who was the patron of the Linder Gallery, and it is suggested that the central figure is Anthony van Dyck, who worked in Rubens’ studio. It is possible that the Windsor drawing was created to memorialize a visit Linder made to Antwerp, during which he met Rubens, van Dyck and the painter (still unknown) of the Linder Gallery.