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Editor’s Note: Of Amorous Dogs, Signatures on Sashes, and Drawing While Dancing

2021; University of Chicago Press; Volume: 40; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1086/716325

2328-207X

John Cunnally,

Historical and Literary Studies

Previous articleNext article FreeEditor’s Note: Of Amorous Dogs, Signatures on Sashes, and Drawing While DancingJohn CunnallyJohn Cunnally Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditEmailQR Code SectionsMoreAs editor I’ve had the opportunity to read hundreds of reports by peer reviewers explaining their reasons for accepting or rejecting an article submitted to Source, justifying their decision with a wide variety of criteria or systems of value. By far the best and most compelling reason for clicking the “Accept” option can be summed up in the statement “This essay made me look at X in a different way than before,” X being the artist, painting, statue, building, or motif examined by the author of the article. There is something akin to alchemy in this power to transform the visual experience, for it often changes lead into gold, and we hope the reader will find this kind of magic in all of the writers presented here. For example, James Grantham Turner takes as his subject a drawing by the Mannerist master Parmigianino in the Louvre, labeled by the experts up to now as a “Young Boy Who Pushes Away a Dog Who Mounts on His Leg.” Turner demonstrates that far from being the mildly amusing theme of a child reacting with awkward annoyance to an overly affectionate pet—a motif worthy of a Precious Moments figurine—Parmigianino’s drawing is an audaciously erotic scene in which the boy (no child but one of the attractive garzoni or young men employed in the workshop) encourages an amorous bitch and participates in this inter-species sexual encounter with his own self-stimulation.A little-known Quattrocento drawing illustrating a manuscript of Petrarch’s Trionfi is the subject of Jonathan K. Nelson’s essay. The drawing depicts the triumphal chariot of Love as described by the Italian poet, with Cupid riding aloft, surrounded by his enchained captives, including Caesar and Cleopatra, Mars and Venus, Jupiter, Hercules, and many more. Especially innovative is the draftsman’s decision to show the four horses advancing head-on toward the viewer, instead of employing the side view seen in other versions of this subject. (The most likely antique sources for this frontal image were Roman coins and engraved gems collected by Renaissance antiquarians, showing the quadriga of Apollo as Sol, the sun god.) While some connection to Botticelli’s workshop has been suspected by earlier researchers, Nelson is able to attribute the drawing directly to the master’s hand, thanks to new codicological evidence and minute visual analysis.Much has been written about the famous signature of Michelangelo carved on the strap or sash that crosses Mary’s breast in the Roman Pietà, beginning with Vasari’s dubious tale of how the artist sneaked into St. Peter’s basilica at night to chisel his name on the statue by lantern-light, irritated because no one acknowledged his authorship. The story is absurd, of course, because the conspicuous placement of the strap, and its wide girth, indicate that it was designed to carry an inscription from the beginning. William Wallace here adds to the sashology an essay revealing the significance of the central portion of the inscription—BONA—arguing that these were the first letters to be carved. In this way Michelangelo reveals an obsessive concern for the Buonarotti family’s status and well being, for he situates his family name directly over the Virgin’s heart.In an earlier issue of Source (Winter 2021), Troy Thomas examined the way Caravaggio illuminated his subjects, demonstrating that the painter often combined objects and models that were lit by different means—candlelight, direct sunlight, and indirect diffuse light, creating a pastiche of inconsistent illumination. In this issue Thomas turns his attention to Caravaggio’s spatial composition, showing (via an analysis of the Hermitage Lute Player) that the painter was equally cavalier in his use of perspective and foreshortening, with objects revealing diverse vanishing points and incompatable proportions. For example, the violin is too small in relation to the boy and the flowers too large when compared with the fruit. Yet, as Thomas points out, these apparent mistakes may have been calculated to produce a more harmonious composition and enhance the expressive content, not unlike the way Cézanne distorted his tables, apples, and bottles to achieve a dynamic construction full of inanimate drama. Once again our perception of the old masters is improved by our appreciation for the modern ones.The French Jewish painter Édouard Brandon is best known for his scenes of synagogue interiors and elderly rabbis instructing young children, painted in the style of his teacher Corot. Brandon’s earliest important commission, however, which helped establish his reputation, was a series of murals depicting the life of the medieval mystic St. Bridget of Sweden, designed for her church in Rome while Brandon was studying in that city in the 1850s. As Marsha Stevenson points out, critics were impressed by the apparently sincere Catholic sensibility displayed by this Jewish artist. We wonder if the young painter made a calculated decision to choose this subject in order to facilitate the success of his later career, which saw him winning prizes at the Salon and making important connections in the Parisian art world. These connections included the friendship of Edgar Degas, who, in spite of his notorious anti-Semitism, exchanged paintings with Brandon and invited him to participate in the first Impressionist exhibition.Lucy Whelan continues her analysis of “Pierre Bonnard’s Books” with an essay discussing the significance of the painter’s personal library, left at his house in Le Cannet when he died in 1947. Many items in this miscellaneous collection of fiction, nonfiction, art magazines, and catalogues can be directly related to Bonnard’s oeuvre or to events in his career, for example, the novels that explore family drama and erotic relationships like those evoked by his paintings of domestic interiors. But what can we make of two treatises on the biology and behavior of fish, including one by the eminent ichthyologist Louis Roule (1861–1942), chair of zoology at the Sorbonne? Is it possible Bonnard and Roule were friends when the painter lived in Paris, or perhaps the zoologist was a collector or admirer of Bonnard and sent him these books as a gift? Bonnard’s library, as Whelan observes, illuminates “the unpredictable way in which a human life becomes entangled with the world.”Avant-garde dancer and choreographer Trisha Brown is the subject of Susan Rosenberg’s essay, focusing on Brown’s experiments in creating a fusion of dance and drawing during shows at Montpellier and Philadelphia in 2002–3. Brown created a series of drawings on large (10 × 8 feet) sheets of paper taped to the floor, on which she performed improvisational dances while grasping charcoal and oil sticks in her hands and feet, in effect transforming herself into a human pencil. By thus erasing the distinction between operator and instrument, Brown seems to be paying nostalgic homage to the Action Painting of Jackson Pollock and his colleagues fifty years earlier, and it should not surprise us that the images produced in these performances of It’s a Draw are described by Rosenberg as “organically shaped totemic forms,” reminiscent of the art of that period. Previous articleNext article DetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Source Volume 40, Number 4Summer 2021 Sponsored by the Bard Graduate Center, New York Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/716325 Views: 684Total views on this site © 2021 Bard Graduate Center. All rights reserved.PDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.