Baroque

                                            

First off,  I promise I am not a serial killer with my choosing yet again a decapitated painting to do my art review on.   I chose this piece because I loved the movie Clash of the Titans and there is a great fight scene in the movie with an actress playing Medusa.   I also went to nursing school and did post mortem care often in the hospital setting.  I find it interesting what artists get wrong and right when it comes to painting death.   Last week I analyzed the Renaissance piece the Head of John the Baptist, and after reviewing the Head of Medusa I noted one main difference between the two. In the painting from last week, the peoples faces were more expressionless whereas in this painting, the severed head looked overly dramatic.  

     While looking for a baroque painting to blog on,  I first typed into google “Baroque Famous paintings”. Two artists that I recognized were Rembrandt and Rubans.  I honestly couldn’t tell anyone what I liked about a Rubans painting over Rembrandt.   I had just recognized the names of the artists so I looked at both.  I noticed that many of the Rubans paintings that I liked have layers of bodies with tons of stuff going on.  Now this is an artist that I could spend an hour looking at his work.  I love all the stuff going on.  It’s like a 17th century Where’s Waldo?  I like his paintings so much I kept Googling stuff about him.  

Research-

Things I found out with my internet research were the following.

-1403 pieces of his work exist today.

-He was born in the Holy Roman Empire which is now Germany.

-He was a Flemish artist.

I had to Google a lot of things like- “What is the difference between Flemish and Dutch.  Flemish tends toward French pronunciations and Dutch has more of an English feel.

-I lived in Germany on Ramstein Air Base in the 2000 and didn’t recall a country named Flanders so I had to go back to Google.  Country territory has changed a lot and it looks like the Netherlands /Holland, France and even some parts of Belgium were all part of this area. 

-Julius Caesar had been in the Flemish region.

-The Head of Medusa was painted in 1617-1618. It is oil on canvas and was painted at the Antwerp School in Antwerp Belgium.  The snakes in the painting have been attributed to the painter Frans Snyders.

-The painting is currently located at the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna. Room XIII on the first floor.

Some Interesting information about Peter Paul Rubens.

- He was born June 28,1577 in Siegel, Germany and died May 30,1640  in Antwerp, Belgium. 

-He was one of 6 children.  His father was a lawyer and his mother was an heiress and writer.  He surpassed all his fellow students in Cologne where he went to school. 

A very interesting fact that I liked was that Leonardo da Vinci supposedly painted a picture of Medusa but it is a lost early work which was mentioned in the inventory of the Medici and vividly described by Vasari in 1568.

The story of Medusa,

     The story of Medusa was that she was a proud virgin with beautiful hair but was raped by Neptune in Athena’s temple. Athena punished her for desecrating her temple and turned her beautiful hair into a head of snakes and a gaze that turned men to stone.  

Like Really?  Blame the rape victim?

What I noticed about the painting. 

     Where to start with this painting, all of the snakes have different patterns, textures and sizes. Some of the snakes look slick while others look rough. One is biting her forehead. Another is eating a thinner snake. Some of the snakes seem to be giving birth; the blood from the severed head seems to be turning into snakes in some places.  Some of the snakes have heads at both ends.  There are spiders and a scorpion crawling around the head.  Even the sharp precision of the decapitation of her head leads one to believe that the head was severed by a blade that isn’t shown in the painting.  Most injuries that could cause a limb or head to be severed would be twisted, smashed or ripped and not given such a precise line if not done with a sharp instrument. There is so much motion going on with all of the snakes going in different directions. I noticed that the snakes look like the curls of a beautiful head of hair without my glasses, but those curls are the twists and turns of the bodies of snakes. The remainder of her dress is iridescent. Her death seems to have just happened as the snakes attached to her head have yet to die with her and the blood is still dripping, turning into more snakes. I imagine that it is sunset and the last rays of light are lighting up her face.

  

     

        Medusa’s eyes are focused in a downward direction with a fixed stare of a deceased person. Her lips are gray and dark and she has lost all color of life and has a pale bruised look in death.  Medusa seems to have hair mixed in with the snakes.  The background of the painting is very dark whereas the face of Medusa and snakes are painted very light.  

This painting is a little too gruesome for my home but its definitely a masterpiece that I could look at for a long time. There are so many details and things I noticed the longer I looked at it. I really enjoyed a lot of the Baroque art I looked at. I can imagine why people of that time were so excited about the art that was coming out. I love this piece and can imagine myself being excited about Greek mythology if I would have seen this as a child.

     I think the expansion of scientific knowledge influenced Ruban’s work on this piece.  The corpse of Medusa’s head along with the dissection of the head are very accurately detailed.  The look of the head being pale with shadowing caused by the lack of blood in the face reminded me of the look of a real deceased person.  The head is anatomically correct with the veins being in the correct place in the neck.  I think this took observation and research.  I know from nursing and doing post Morten care eyes are frequently open at death because there is no longer muscles holding it closed.  The pupil is enlarged and there is blood coming from the nose.  All of these things really do happen at death  and I feel like there is a strong scientific influence.  

Extra Credit- I compared Ruban’s painting with Leonardo Da Vinci, Lady With An Ermine, C.1489-1491 Milan

     The movement of the paintings is so different. In The Head of Medusa The snakes are all moving in different directions and even the blood is changing into snakes.  She has a startled expression on her face that if still alive she couldn’t hold long. There is no hinting at a smile or facial expression.  It’s action, drama and exciting.   The placement of the severed head is angled and off centered but still balanced in more of a diagonal.  

     The Leonardo Da Vinci, Lady With An Ermine painting is a perfectly centered oil painting.  She is half turned.  One of Leonardo Da Vinci’s finger prints was found in this painting.  I found that fact really exciting and wanted to share that.  The posture is stiffer and the facial expression hints at emotion where the Baroque painting face of Medusa is overly dramatic with surprise and death.  It is more linear.  I think that this painting is really amazing for the period but I can see the differences from a Baroque period piece.

     They both are masters and both paintings look like realistic depictions of people.  Both paintings show really good depth with light and shadow.  There is an atmospheric perspective with the clarity of the background in the Medusa painting.  In the painting with the Lady With An Ermine, the painting has just a dark background but I do see the fading of her right elbow and the beads in her necklace getting closer together and smaller creating depth and creating a more linear  

“Antwerp.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 21 Feb. 2022, https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antwerp. 

The Head of Medusa Peter Paul Rubens and Frans Snyders. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/262884566_The_Head_of_Medusa_Peter_Paul_Rubens_and_Frans_Snyders. 

The Head of Medusa, 1617-1618 by Peter Paul Rubens, https://www.peterpaulrubens.net/the-head-of-medusa.jsp. 

James C. Harris, MD. “The Head of Medusa.” JAMA Psychiatry, JAMA Network, 1 June 2014, https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapsychiatry/fullarticle/1873914. 

“Medusa.” Medusa by Peter Paul Rubens, https://www.peter-paul-rubens.org/medusa/. 

Rubens, Peter Paul. “Head of Medusa.” Obelisk Art History, https://arthistoryproject.com/artists/peter-paul-rubens/head-of-medusa/.