“Arasse was a terrific writer with a brilliant mind and this book is redolent with wit and intellectual authority. He has a wonderful way of asking questions, of taking the reader with him on his intellectual journey. In this case each journey begins with the problem posed by a single prominent old-master painting, and ranges widely from there across interpretive and historical concerns. The informal, speculative, and performative quality of Arasse’s voice in these pages will help assure the book’s wide appeal and accessibility.”–Marc Gotlieb, Williams College

Daniel Arasse (1944-2003) was professor of art history at the Sorbonne, director of the French Institute in Florence, and director of studies at l’Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales. His many books include Vermeer (Princeton), Botticelli, and Anselm Kiefer.

TAKE A CLOSER LOOK

By Daniel Arasse, ALYSON WATERS

PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS

Copyright © 2005 Éditions Denoël
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-691-15154-0

Contents

Cara Giulia Mars and Venus Surprised by Vulcan, Tintoretto…………….1The Snail’s Gaze The Annunciation, Francesco del Cossa………………..17Paint It Black The Adoration of the Magi, Bruegel the Elder……………39Mary Magdalene’s “Fleece”…………………………………………..71The Woman in the Chest The Venus of Urbino, Titian……………………89The Eye of the Master Las Meninas, Velázquez…………………………129Illustration Credits……………………………………………….161Index…………………………………………………………….163

CHAPTER 1

Cara Giulia,

You may find this rather long letter surprising, even a bit irritating.I hope you won’t be angry, but I have to write to you. As I told yousomewhat brusquely, I cannot understand how you sometimes look atpainting in such a way that you don’t see what painter and painting areshowing you.

We have the same passion for painting, so why, when it comes to interpretingcertain works, are our interpretations so dissimilar? I’m notsaying that works of art have only one meaning and so there’s only one”good” interpretation. Gombrich said that, and you know my thoughtson the matter. No; what concerns me is rather the sort of screen (madeup of texts, quotations, and outside references) that you sometimesseem to want—at all costs—to put up between you and the work, asort of sun filter to shield you from the work and safeguard the acquiredhabits on which our academic community agrees and in whichit recognizes itself. This isn’t the first time our opinions have differed,but this time, I’m writing to you. Not really with the hope of winningyou over to my point of view, but perhaps with that of making youquestion your firmly held beliefs, and of shaking up certain convictionsthat, in my opinion, are blinding you.

I’m not going to bring up Jacopo Zucchi’s Amor and Psyche. Therewould be, as you can imagine, a lot to say about it after the interpretationyou proposed last month. Perhaps some other time. I will onlymention here your lecture on Tintoretto’s Mars and Venus Surprised byVulcan. Several times you hit the nail on the head and you made me seewhat I hadn’t seen. For example, you are right to say that Vulcan, leaningover Venus’s naked body in the bed, is reminiscent of a satyr comingupon a nymph. I like that idea of the husband’s unanticipated desirewhen he sees his wife’s beautiful body. But the conclusions I draw fromthis are not the same as yours. Likewise, when you say that the eroticismof this body, generously exposed to view, encourages women wholook at the painting to identify with the goddess of love, you’re off toa good start. When, however, under the pretext that only Vulcan isworthy of esteem, whereas Venus is ashamed and Mars ridiculous, youinterpret this to mean that this encouragement is a moral one and thatTintoretto uses the power of the picture and the seduction of his paintbrushto channel female desire (these are not your words, but they’reclose), I just don’t get it.

For example, you say that Venus, caught in the act, is trying to concealher nudity. But what makes you think she is not, on the contrary, tryingto reveal it to seduce Vulcan? Why couldn’t there be some humor inthis painting? I have the feeling that you—ordinarily so cheerful—didnot want to “do” art history joyfully. As if it were your professional dutynot to laugh or even smile, which would not be “serious.” Serio ludere,play seriously: yet you know this proverb from the Renaissance, and theRenaissance’s taste for laughter and paradox. It’s as if in order to be takenseriously you had to take yourself seriously, to be seriosa and not seria, asyou say in Italian, to show your credentials to those cemetery guardianswho cloak themselves in the so-called dignity of their discipline and, inthe name of cheerless scholarship, never want us to laugh when we lookat a painting. You, Giulia, seriosa? Oh, please!

So, if you haven’t already tossed this letter out, let me start over. Iagree that in this painting Tintoretto has an unexpectedly new takeon the hackneyed theme of “Mars and Venus Surprised by Vulcan.”Usually, Mars and Venus are naked, lying together in their adulterousbed, caught in the web that Vulcan, forewarned by Apollo, drops onthem. There’s none of that in the painting in Munich. Venus is indeednaked, and she’s stretched out on the bed. But she is alone. Mars is hidingunder the table, wearing his armor, his helmet on his head, whileVulcan, with one knee on the bed, is raising the sheer cloth that concealshis wife’s sex. Next to him, under the window in a cradle, Cupidis sleeping soundly. The subject had never been treated like this beforeand never would be again. According to you, by representing it in sucha paradoxical way, Tintoretto, using a counterexample, wanted to paytribute to the merits of marital fidelity. This wouldn’t be the first timeVenus’s infidelity would be used to frighten newlyweds.

Granted. To support your thesis, you cite a number of texts publishedin Venice condemning both adultery and erotic images. NowI’m confused. It’s not because these texts exist, or even because theywere published at the same time the painting was painted, that theynecessarily contribute to explaining it. That would be too easy. Opposingattitudes and viewpoints can exist simultaneously in a given society.You know that as well as I do. To support your viewpoint, you wentso far as to suggest that the painting could be alluding to an episodein Tintoretto’s private life and was addressed to his young wife. Butthat’s going much too far. First of all, we know nothing about such anincident in Tintoretto’s life and, if the painting can be dated to circa1550 (and you yourself proposed this), that was probably the year Tintorettogot married: he was thirty-two years old. It’s not because hewould wind up some forty years later resembling his Vulcan that youalready have to see here a veiled self-portrait, or even Tintoretto’s representativein the painting. Okay?

Now I’m getting to the main point. Your interpretation relies ona simple principle, which you laid out in approximately these terms:Tintoretto’s Mars and Venus Surprised by Vulcan is not a usual representationof the subject, so it must be an allegory. That’s cutting a fewcorners, wouldn’t you say? Everything that is unusual is not necessarilyallegorical. It may be sophisticated, paradoxical, parodic, whatever.Comic, for example. You pointed out that Mars was ridiculous, halfhidden under the table with his helmet on his head. But you raced tothrow a moral blanket over this farcical situation. According to you,Mars’s ridiculous position demeans the lover in order to highlight themelancholic dignity of the scorned, old husband. But what melancholicdignity? Vulcan is just as ridiculous! Take a look! What is thisscorned husband really doing?

What is he looking for between his wife’s thighs? Proof of what?Traces of what Mars may have left there? Okay, I’ll drop it. His gestureand his gaze make me think of one of Pietro Aretino’s naughty pranksrather than of some moral counsel. In fact, the way Tintoretto presentshim to us, poor Vulcan is not only lame but after so much poundingon his anvil, he must have become deaf as a doorknob, too. Look at theevidence: he doesn’t even hear the dog. And yet, the dog is making a lotof noise, yapping away to indicate where Mars is hiding. A nasty littlepiece of work, that dog! But Vulcan doesn’t hear a thing. And do youknow why? Not so much because he’s deaf, but because he’s got otherthings on his mind.

At this precise moment (and Tintoretto has done everything toshow us that he’s representing a single moment), Vulcan forgets whathe has come looking for. He’s distracted. What he sees between hiswife’s thighs makes him blind (and deaf) to everything else. That’s allhe can see, that’s the only thing he can think about anymore. I’m notmaking this up. Just look in the large mirror behind him to see what’sgoing to happen next.

And let me say a few words about this mirror. You didn’t mentionthat it was oddly positioned. Not only does it block part of the windowfacing us, but it’s set very low against the wall, practically at the heightof Venus’s bed and lower, in any case, than the cradle where Cupid issleeping. In fact, if you look closely, it’s not hanging on the wall; it mustbe resting on a piece of furniture concealed from our gaze by the tableunder which Mars has hidden. What’s it doing there? What’s the pointof placing a mirror so low? To reflect Venus’s lovemaking? It’s possible.I don’t doubt you could find this sort of setup in sixteenth-centuryVenice. But this hypothesis leads us even further away from a moralizingdepiction. Unless it’s not really a mirror. You said it could possiblybe Mars’s shield. In that case, it’s a bizarre kind of shield. It’s not just itssize that bothers me (it’s really huge), it’s also, and especially, the factthat it can be used as a mirror. I thought it was Perseus’s shield thatwas smooth and polished to the extent that it could petrify Medusa.True, Aeneas also had a mirror-shield, as Erasmus Weddigen remindsus in relation to this painting. It was an enchanted shield, made by theCyclops, and it allowed the future, grandiose destiny of Rome to appearon its surface. This juxtaposition is arbitrary (indeed, you didn’teven mention it), but it works for me. Precisely because of what we seein Tintoretto’s mirror-shield. You only mention the reflection (barelyvisible) of a second mirror, “offstage,” on our side of the scene. Thiswould be Venus’s makeup mirror, located on the edge of the bed andreflected in Mars’s shield (a lovely image, by the way, of shared desire:the woman’s mirror reflected in the man’s shield, which transforms itinto a mirror of love). Weddigen also mentions this offstage mirror,but since you didn’t say anything about his text, I am putting aside theoptical reconstruction he proposes and the conclusions he draws fromit. They are very different from yours, but it doesn’t matter. For you,this mirror that we don’t see, this hidden mirror, is what allows Venusto see Vulcan arrive from behind even though her back is turned to thedoor—and you brilliantly contrasted this mirror, instrument of deceit,to the other, leaning against the wall, revealing the truth. Granted. Butwhat truth are we talking about?

Both you and Weddigen speak a great deal about Venus’s reflectionin the mirror of Mars’s shield. I certainly am not one to object to yourinterest in a barely visible detail. But neither of you say anything aboutwhat is clearly apparent in this same shield: Vulcan, seen from behind,leaning over Venus’s body. But take a closer look: it’s an odd reflection,strange, abnormal. And here’s why: From his gesture nearest to Venusto his reflection in the mirror, Vulcan’s position has changed. Look! Inthe foreground, only his right knee is on the bed; his left leg is stretchedout, a bit stiff (that’s only natural; he limps), and his left foot is on theground, quite far from the bed. In the mirror, on the contrary, as wecould see quite clearly in the detail you projected, Vulcan seems to havehis left knee (which has become his right knee in the reflection) restingon the edge of the bed. I don’t think for a second that this is due tosome clumsiness or carelessness on the painter’s part. Quite the opposite,in fact. Facing us, in full view, the mirror shows us what is goingto happen the instant after the one that is depicted in the foreground:Vulcan is going to climb on the bed—and we can easily imagine whatwill occur next. Does that seem preposterous to you? It shouldn’t; if it istruly Mars’s mirror-shield, it functions like Aeneas’s to show us the (verynear) future of this comic scene. And if, as you believe, it’s a mirror thatreveals the truth, it’s pointing to what we are supposed to learn from thescene we are seeing, the moral of the fable. What remains to figure out iswhat truth, what moral(ity) we’re dealing with here.

What, in fact, is happening to Vulcan? He came to interrupt thenot-yet-begun lovemaking of Venus and Mars. However, rather thanlistening to the dog, he goes looking for the proof of his alleged misfortunebetween his wife’s thighs. But, according to what the mirrorshows us, what he sees makes him forget everything else. He is underthe spell of his wife’s sex, and he finds himself—these are your words—arousedlike a satyr coming upon a nymph. Weddigen, for his part, suggestsTarquin about to rape Lucretia. On the surface, this connectionis paradoxical—after all, Vulcan and Venus are married and she is theunfaithful one. But in fact it’s rather clever, because the fit of sexual passionin which Vulcan is caught is very explicit in the preliminary studyfor the painting in Berlin: in the absence of Mars, Cupid, and the dog,Venus seems to want to flee, whereas Vulcan wholly resembles a rapistabout to act. In the painting, the context of this typical pose makes itlose its explicit violence: Vulcan is no longer (in the foreground) anythingbut an old man who is still virile (in the mirror). As I see it, this(rare) gap between the scene and its reflection is essential to the ideathat Tintoretto had of his painting, to what was called his invenzione,which condenses the comic center of the painting and the moral thatcan be drawn from the comic scene that Tintoretto imagined, usingOvid as his starting point.

Because this painting is funny. Pardon me for harping on that, Giulia,but I must, because it never even occurred to you—sorry if I’mbeing a bit heavy-handed here. Mars is ridiculous, hiding under thetable like a lover in the closet. Vulcan is comical, letting himself becaught once again, blinded by Venus’s fente. The little runt of a dog iscomic as well, barking away furiously in vain. Even the sleeping Cupidis comic: exhausted by his own efforts, he defeats himself (not Omniavincit Amor, but Amorem vincit Amor). The glass vase on the windowsillis more subtle because it is no doubt more irreverent: you have tosmile because it irresistibly calls to mind the transparency of the virginvase of Mary “who never knew a man.” And even the perspectivalconstruction could play a latent comic role: it dramatizes the scene byleading our gaze toward the door where Vulcan came in, but in thesame glance, with a movement emphasized by Mars’s pointing indexfinger, guides our eyes toward the forge that has obviously gone cold.Whose “forge” is it? Is it Vulcan’s? Or is it Venus’s, which Vulcan, havingallowed it to stop burning through his own fault, must attempt toreignite?

Finally, Venus is the only one who is not really funny. No doubt shefinds herself in an uncomfortable position; she risked humiliation andridicule. But once again, and contrary to what Ovid says, she will getaway with everything with the tiniest of effort, or at the smallest price.How much does it cost to sleep with Venus? What gift will her satisfiedhusband offer her? In any case, it isn’t on this occasion that Vulcan willcatch her in the act and make all the gods laugh at her expense. He’llbe so busy that he won’t see or hear Mars tiptoeing out in his armor.So if this fable has a moral (racy and chauvinist, of course), this is it:women are all alike—harlots, cheating seductresses who betray us men,who exploit our blindness, who play with us and our desire, who leadus by the nose (or rather, by the sex) and drag us all down to the level ofeither young oafs obliged to hide under a table or contented cuckolds.

So, my conclusions are radically different from yours. You might saythat all this is amusing, clever, fine and dandy, but it’s only my subjectiveinterpretation, and I have no text to support what I am saying.Wrong! Because of you, thanks to you, in order to write to you andfor you to take me seriously, I went looking for the literature. It didn’ttake me long to find it. But the credit doesn’t belong to me. It belongsto Beverly Louise Brown, who refers to a multitude of texts againstmarriage published at the time in Venice, in the tradition of Juvenal,Boccaccio, and Erasmus. She cites Anton Francesco Doni, LodovicoDolce, and the farces, stories, and other commedie erudite whose charactersare mismatched couples, betrayed husbands, and ridiculouscuckolds. Her article is faultless and, in all honesty, the context she providesseems more pertinent, more convincing than the references youused. But, deep down, it doesn’t matter. What I find more significantis that I don’t need texts to see what’s happening in the painting. Mystudents can attest to this: I’ve been talking about paintings this wayfor a long time. This is perhaps the main thing that sets us apart. It’s asif you started from the literature, as if you needed texts to interpret thepaintings, as if you trusted neither your eyes to see nor the paintings toshow you what the painter wanted to express.

Another thing. You wanted at all costs to find a matrimonial themein this painting. Sure, why not? Painting a painting against marriageis still treating a matrimonial theme. But you want a “matrimonial”painting to exalt marriage. That’s nothing but a received idea, the disastrousconsequence of the (Anglo-Saxon to begin with, I believe) maniaof seeing “wedding portraits” in every painting of naked women. Atfirst, this hypothesis was not wrong, and it led to some good results. InRenaissance Christian society, after all, it was marriage that legitimizedsexuality. (Marguerite de Navarre said it was a “cover.”)
(Continues…)Excerpted from TAKE A CLOSER LOOK by Daniel Arasse, ALYSON WATERS. Copyright © 2005 Éditions Denoël. Excerpted by permission of PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS.
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