I have wanted to create a blog post about a few paintings that I absolutely love for a long time. It has taken quite a while to get going with it, largly because the thought of narrowing down my choice has been so daunting; there are firstly so many artists that I find incredible and inspiring, and then to choose just one example of their collection has been practically impossible. I have therefore come to the decision that instead of just one looooong post about a few of my favourite paintings, I will turn it into a series! I will write perhaps one or two in this series per month, and each one will focus on a different painting.
I have also struggled a little with how I want to talk about my favourite paintings. I am not so interested in the very strict, academic interpretations of somewhat pretentios art buffs! Of course, this can be interesting, and if you see a painting in my series that you like, I would definitely encourage you to read about it in more detail. But for me, I didn't want to write a long essay about each of my choices of paintings, but instead write about what I love about them and why, what moved me. Paintings can be hugely personal, they can mean different things to different people and they are definitely very emotional pieces of art that, I think, really come from the heart of the artist, and this is what I wanted to write about on my blog.
The painting that I have chosen for the first post in this series is 'The Ambassadors' by Hans Holbein the Younger.
This painting was shown to me in one of my first lectures at the Royal Academy of Music in London, when I was 18. It was a class about historical context in music and we talked about how art, architecture, dance, music and literature developed together throughout history. When the professor first brought up an image of the painting, it was at the end of the lecture and he said our homework for next week was to find the secret in the painting. We were all busy packing up and I'm pretty sure I had one foot already out the door at that point so I really didn't even think about it (and needless to say, forgot completely about that homework!). But when I found out the next week what the secret of the painting is I was totally flabbergasted!
So I will ask you now - can you see anything unusual in this painting? Something that maybe doesn't fit or you that can't quite make out? Well, I will tell you - that weird image you can see in the centre of the painting at the bottom is a distorted skull! Can you see it now? This was painted in 1533 - what was Holbein doing putting a creepy, weird, angled skull in his painting of two men, a rich landownder (on the left) and a bishop (on the right)?
There are so many interpretations of this painting, and lots of things to talk and think about. There's the contrast between the secular man versus the religious man and the broken string of the lute that could represent this. There are the globes and the oriental carpet on the upper shelf that could signify worldly views. There's also the religius hym book that is open on the lower shelf and the opposing scientific objects on the upper shelf. Nobody really knows what Holbein intended with any of these things, but the biggest mystery of all has to be the skull. Did he want to put a puzzle in his painting? Something that you could only see from a certain angle? Was he trying to separate the painting into three different levels, as one interpretation suggests, with the heavens at the top, the living world in the middle, and death at the bottom? Was the painting intended to be hung in a staircase, which makes sense of the angle of the skull? OR was Holbein just merely showing off his skill as a painter?!
The deatil of the painting is just amazing too. I love the moasic floor and the texture of the clothes, the silk and the fur - it could almost be a photograph. This painting hangs in the National Gallery in London and I absolutely recommend you to go and see it, because in real life these details are even more astounding! And, for now at least, the gallery is free, so even if you just have 20 minutes to pop in and look at this one painting, I promise you it's worth it!
I love this painting because it is so skillful and artistic but also so challenging of ideas at the same time. Holbein has created a work of art that is not just beautiful but that is also a puzzle, that's, in a way, scary and full of questions. It holds so many secrets - I wonder what else could be hiding in the painting that maybe only Holbein knows about and is laughing at us for not being able to see!
Labels: Culture
