Five Late.pdf
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Five Late Byzantine Panels and Greco's Views of SinaiAuthor(s): D. Talbot RiceSource: The Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs, Vol. 89, No. 529 (Apr., 1947), pp. 92-94
Published by: Burlington Magazine Publications Ltd.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/869452Accessed: 25-04-2016 17:04 UTC
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The Landscape Background in Rubens's St. George and the Dragon
the great palaces which formerly bordered the Thames
between Westminster and the City of London, and
occupied a strip of ground extending from the western
extremity of the Strand down to the River between
Suffolk (later Northumberland) House and Durham
House. Its only surviving relic, besides certain street
names in the locality (Villiers Street, Buckingham Street,
etc.), is the famous Water Gate designed by Inigo Jones.
Gerbier's dwelling is known to have been situated on
the E. side of the Strand gateway to York House.12
From its position on the N. bank, just where the
Thames makes a sharp bend to the E. below Whitehall,
the York House estate could well have been the place
mentioned above from which, it is thought, Rubens
saw the various buildings that he introduced into the
background of his St. George ; and indeed, lodging at
Gerbier's house, these landmarks must have been to his
eye amongst the most familiar inf London.13 In this
connexion it may be noted that in the background of the
central and earlier portion of the Gerbier Family Group,
which was painted in England at about the same time as
the St. George, there appears between the columns a
building, also at the water's edge, which, though less
well defined, is not unlike the suggested Lambeth
Palace in the latter picture.
Though there is in the Print Room at Berlin a drawing
for some of the figures and horses in the St. George, no
studies for the architecture or landscape in the back-
ground are known to exist, so it is impossible to tell
whether the artist worked these London elements into
his composition from preliminary sketches, or whether he
painted them direct on to the canvas. In either case the
level on which they appear in the picture gives the
impression that Rubens saw them from an upstairs
window ; and it is tempting to think that this window
may have belonged to the room at Gerbier's, or in
another part of York House, where the artist lived or
worked, and where he may have been inspired to give a
London setting to his glorification of our national Saint.
12 A drawing of York House by Hollar, in the Pepysian Library,
is reproduced in the L.C.C. Survey, vol. XVIII, pl.2(b) ; its site is
given on a modern plan, Idem, p.ii.
13 Cf. B.F.A. Club Exhib. Cat., Early Drawings and Pictures of
London [1920], p.52, No. 91, and pl. XXXVIII, which is a late
seventeenth century painting of Westminster from below York Watergate
(Coll. Mr. E. C. Grenfell).
FIVE LATE BYZANTINE PANELS AND GRECO S
VIEWS OF SINAI BY D TALBOT RICE
HE five small panels illustrated in
PLATED are framed together in the follow-
ing order ; The Annunciation; Mount Sinai ;
The Resurrection; Christ, St. Catherine and St.
Mercurios; and, lastly, The Transfiguration.
All the scenes except for the Mount Sinai are
identified by inscriptions, as are the Archangel
Gabriel, St. Catherine and St. Mercurios and the
bust of our Lord above these saints, which bears the
title The Just Judge. '
The iconography of the three principal scenes,
The Annunciation, Resurrection and Transfiguration, calls
for no special comment. The panel bearing Christ,
St. Catherine and St. AlIercurios is however unusual, and
the view of Sinai is especially interesting. They were
no doubt included owing to the fact that the church
for which the icons were intended was dedicated to
St. Catherine, who was renowned as patron of the
famous Sinai monastery. The icons were probably
intended for the upper row of an iconostasis, and
other scenes, such as some of the other major feasts
of the Church, that is, essential scenes from Christ's
life, or perhaps even scenes from St. Catherine's life2,
may well have been included in the series.
The panels are not dated, but they are to be
assigned with little doubt to round about the year
I6oo. An icon of the Annunciation in the Benaki
Museum at Athens, which is closely akin, is signed
Ioannou Kypriou, and bears the date 1581.3 Another
panel in the same collection, which shows the
Anastasis, is again closely similar, though its Style
suggests a rather later date than that to be assigned
to Mr. Blunt's panels ; it is dated by Xyngopoulos
to the middle of the seventeenth century.4 Quite a
number of icons in other collections in Greece,
notably an Annunciation in the Herakopou collection
at Athens,5 are again similar in style. The place of
their execution was very probably Salonica, where a
school existed from early to quite late times which
showed something of that high quality of workman-
ship that distinguished the work of Constantinople.
Great attention was paid to detail, and a manner
characteristic of this, the second city of the Empire
in later times, was developed, which shows an
elegance absent in work of the other local schools of
Greece. The location of schools of icon painting at
this late date is however by no means easy, and until
a great deal of further study has been undertaken, it
is not possible to do more than hint at the probable
location of the school to which Mr. Blunt's panels
belong
The combination of Saints in Mr. Blunt's panel,
showing Christ, St. Catherine and St. Mercurios is
unusual. St. Catherine is clothed in royal costume,
1 It has unfortunately proved impossible to include the inscrip-
tions in Greek.
2 Those indicated in the Painter's Guide are :-(i) The Saint
learning from her confessor. (ii) Christ averts His face from St.
Catherine because she is not baptised. (iii) The baptism of the
Saint by her confessor. (iv) The Saint receives a token of Her
betrothal from Christ. (v) The Saint speaks boldly to the Emperor.
(vi) The Saint disputes with fifty philosophers. (vii) The Saint is
fastened to the wheel. (viii) The beheading of the Saint. See
DENYS OF FOURNA ; The Painter's Guide, edited by Papadopoulos
K6ramaeus, St. Petersburg [Igog], p. x85. It has been in part
translated by M. STOKES: Christian Iconography, London [2892].
See Vol. II, p. 370.
3 A. XYNGOPOULos : Benaki Museum : Catalogue of Icons, Athens
[1936], No. 7, Pl. ga. The catalogue is in Greek.
* Loc. cit. No. 6o, pl. 37.
5 This icon has not been published. A photograph of it is in the
writer's possession.
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A-MOUNT SINAI. BY EL GRECO. PANEL, 41 BY 47.8 CM. (BARON
FRANZ VON HATVANY, BUDAPEST
B-DETAIL OF D. HEIGHT, 21 CM.
C-MOUNT SINAI. BY EL GRECO. PANEL,
37 BY 24 CM. (PINACOTECA, MODENA)
D-THE ANNUNCIATION ; MOUNT SINAI; THE RESURRECTION ; CHRIST, ST. CA THERINE AND ST. MERCURIOS;
THE TRANSFIGURATION. BYZANTINE PANELS, PROBABLY PAINTED AT SALONICA ABOUT 1600. OVERALL SIZE,
INCLUDING FRAME, 30 BY 88 CM. (MR. WILFRID BLUNT)
FIVE LATE BYZANTINE PANELS AND GRECO S VIEW OF SINAI
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Five Late Byzantine Panels and Greco's Views of Sinai
with the martyr's palm in her left hand and in her
right a spear, with which she transfixes a crowned
figure, symbol of pagan tyranny.6 St. Mercurios
also transfixes a pagan tyrant ; the figure probably
represents that of Julian the Apostate.7 The in-
scription associated with the figure of Christ usually
accompanies Him when He is shown in the Last
Judgment. The whole composition is thus probably
to be interpreted as symbolic of the Victory of
Christianity over pagan tyranny and of the fate
awaiting the unjust oppressors of the Faith.
The other panel, that showing Mount Sinai
[PLATE B], is of special interest owing to its close
similarities with two renderings of the same subject
by El Greco, one on the Modena altarpiece [PLATE
C], the other on a panel in the Hatvany Collection
in Budapest [PLATE A]. The former is usually
dated to 1567 or 15688 ; the latter to between 1571
and I576.9 The close relationship of the iconography
of all these renderings is clear from a glance at the
plates. Especially noteworthy is the almost exact
similarity of the angels and tomb at the summit of
the right-hand mountain, of the monastery itself,
and of the travellers arriving on camels in the right
foreground. It is clear that El Greco and the painter
of the icon followed the same model, and it is equally
clear that this model is to be sought in the Byzantine
world and not in the West; the character of the
mountains, the nature of the composition, and,
indeed, the whole comprehension of the subject are
all essentially Byzantine. The mountains are
paralleled in numerous Byzantine paintings from
the thirteenth century onwards, and the similarity of
outlook, though less easy to define in words, is none
the less clearly to be discerned when a number of
later Byzantine paintings on wall or panel are com-
pared. Greco's two paintings are, in fact, not only
close copies of some Byzantine iconographical
model; they are, in addition, painted with all the
feeling of a Byzantine artist.
In the Hatvany panel Greco's own individual
style shows perhaps rather greater development than
in the Modena picture. In the former the mountains
are rather heavier and the figures more substantial ;
in the latter all is still conceived in that symbolic,
abstract manner characteristic of the true Byzantine.
The Byzantine character of Greco's Sinai pictures
has already been pointed out by more than one
writer.1' But hitherto the only Byzantine parallels
available for comparison have been in the form of
engravings, done in the West, but Byzantine in
character. The earliest, dated I566, appeared in
Christopher FUirer's Itinerariumll ; but it is rather
more Western in style, and though based on the same
model, has deviated quite considerably from it.
The next was produced at Lvov in I688 ; it is very
closely similar. The last, an engraving preserved
in the Sinai library, is dated 1736 and is again
close to the Byzantine model.12 But Mr. Blunt's icon
iow provides us with a more satisfactory piece of
evidence, since it is unquestionably Byzantine, is of
much the same date as the Greco paintings, and
obviously follows an earlier iconographical proto-
type. It takes its place, beyond possibility of doubt,
in the evolutionary chain of this scene. One day,
perhaps, a wall painting, panel, or manuscript
illustration will be discovered, dating from the
fifteenth, fourteenth or even the thirteenth century
showing us an earlier link. Till that day we can only
reconstruct its appearance in our own minds with
the aid of the later copies that survive.
* The wheel, normally associated with St. Catherine in the West,
is not usually included in Byzantine iconography.
'According to a legend prevalent in the Byzantine world, St.
Mercurios was called upon to slay the Emperor Julian the Apostate,
and did so in battle, with a spear. See H. DELEHAYE ; Les Legendes
grecques des Saints militaires, Paris [9gog], p. 96 ; or JAMESON : Sacred
and Legendary Art, London [1900oo], Vol. II, p. 762.
8 See R. PALLUCCHINI : Un politico del Greco nella R. Galleria
Estense di Modena, in Bolletino del Ministero della Educazione
Nazionale [March 19371, PP- 389-392.
* It is dated to about 1571 by M. LEGENDRE and A. HARTMANN :
Domenicos Theotokopoulos, called el Greco, [1937], pl. 481. GOLD-
SCHEIDER : El Greco, [1938], pl. 14, assigns it less definitely to 1571
to 1576
10 F. RUTTER : El Greco, London [1930], p. 27. R. BYRON and D.
TALBOT RICE: The Birth of Western Painting, London [x930], pp. 195 f.
and pls. 90 to 93-
11 Also reproduced in E. S. BATES : Touring in I6oo, London [191 I],
plate facing p. 222. I am grateful to Mr. Wilfrid Blunt for calling
my attention to this plate.
1 BYRON and TALBOT RICE : op. cit., pls. 90, 91 and 92.
NOTES ON SOME PAINTINGS FROM THE
STRASBOURG MUSEUM BY P. WESCHER
Exhibition of the Art Treasures of
trasbourg was opened at the Bile Museum
n January i8th. The earliest paintings
hown were the two panels of the Education
of Mary [PLATE I, A] and the Doubts of
Joseph by the master who has been named after his
charming Garden of Paradise, in the Stfidel-Museum at
Frankfort. Since Ilse Futterer' published these two
pictures, which are parts of a lost altarpiece, and
ascribed them to this master, they have been cleaned
and transferred from the hospital of Saint Mark's to the
Museum of Strasbourg. Now they can be seen to
possess the same quality as the Madonna of Solothurn, the
Annunciation of the Reinhard Collection at Winterthur
and the other works of the artist. The catalogue dates
them about I4Io, but between 1420 and I430
would be more accurate. As the only works which,
through the centuries, have remained in their original
setting, they are of special historical interest.
Although most of the religious panels at Strasbourg
were destroyed by the iconoclasts in the Reformation
of 1525, a few have survived and gradually have been
grouped together. Two groups, ascribable to two
1 Jahrbuch der preussischen Kunstsammlungen [1928], p. 187.
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