Στο Κάτω Γραικικό Τζουμέρκων, στην κοινότητα Γουριανά υπάρχει μια χωμάτινη διαδρομή (περίπου 3 χιλιόμετρα) που σε πηγαίνει στη Μονή Χρυσοσπηλιώτισσας.
Μονή Χρυσοσπηλιώτισσας, Κάτω Γραικικό, Τζουμέρκα, Φωτο: Νίκος Μορόπουλος
Σήμερα υπάρχει μόνο η εκκλησία, χτισμένη στον χώρο που παλιά ήταν το μοναστήρι. Φθάνοντας στον χώρο, η πινακίδα σε στέλνει σε μια κατωφέρεια που στο βάθος της βρίσκεται ο ναός.
Μονή Χρυσοσπηλιώτισσας, Κάτω Γραικικό, Τζουμέρκα, Φωτο: Νίκος Μορόπουλος
Υψόμετρο περίπου 900 μέτρα, καταπράσινα όλα. Η εκκλησία είναι μονόκλιτη σταυρεπίστεγη θολωτή βασιλική με τρούλο, ο πιο διαδεδομένος τύπος ηπειρωτικού ναού κατά την Τουρκοκρατία.
Μονή Χρυσοσπηλιώτισσας, Κάτω Γραικικό, Τζουμέρκα, Φωτο: Νίκος Μορόπουλος
Η εκκλησία χτίστηκε τον 11ο αιώνας, καταστράφηκε κάποια στιγμή, και – όπως δείχνει η αναμνηστική πλάκα – ξαναχτίστηκε το 1663.
Μονή Χρυσοσπηλιώτισσας, Κάτω Γραικικό, Τζουμέρκα, Φωτο: Νίκος Μορόπουλος
Ο βράχος αγκαλιάζει την εκκλησία, και αφήνει ένα μικρό πέρασμα για να φτάσει ο επισκέπτης σε ένα κοίλωμα όπου κατά την παράδοση βρέθηκε η εικόνα της Παναγίας που εδωσε το όνομα της στην μονή.
Μονή Χρυσοσπηλιώτισσας, Κάτω Γραικικό, Τζουμέρκα, Φωτο: Νίκος Μορόπουλος
Σήμερα στην εσοχή υπάρχουν εικόνες προσφορές των πιστών. Οι τοιχογραφίες του ναού έγιναν το 1801.
Μονή Χρυσοσπηλιώτισσας, Κάτω Γραικικό, Τζουμέρκα, Φωτο: Νίκος Μορόπουλος
Δεν υπάρχει καμπαναριό, μόνο αυτό το λιτό σήμαντρο με την καταπληκτική θέα απέναντι.
Μονή Χρυσοσπηλιώτισσας, Κάτω Γραικικό, Τζουμέρκα, Φωτο: Νίκος ΜορόπουλοςΘέα από τη Μονή Χρυσοσπηλιώτισσας, Κάτω Γραικικό, Τζουμέρκα, Φωτο: Νίκος Μορόπουλος
Christ’s Passion is the pivotal event for Christians all over the world. This is the reason that it has been the subject of so many works of art. Today I present the relevant works of art from the collection of one of the great small museums of the world, the Thyssen Bornemisza Museum in Madrid, Spain.
Important note: All the pictures (except one) are from the archives of the Thyssen-Bornemisza museum and are presented here for non-commercial purposes. All readers of this post are kindly requested to respect this condition of use.
UGOLINO DI NERIO (Ugolino da Siena)_La Crucifixión con la Virgen, san Juan y ángeles, c.1330-1335_ 412 (1968.3)
The earliest and first work in this review is “The Crucifixion with the Virgin, Saint John and Angels”, by the Sienese artist Ugolino di Nerio, or Ugolino da Siena. The panel was part of an altarpiece in a church in Florence, Italy.
Tempera and gold on panel. 135 x 89 cm.
The composition is minimal, illuminated by the golden background, which gives to the painting a metaphysical dimension. The Virgin and St John turn their faces to the right of the picture, counterbalancing Jesus’s face which turns to the left. I particularly like the angels as they fly around the cross.
Descent from the Cross, Anonymous German (Middle Rhine), c. 1420.
Oil on panel. 62 x 30 cm
In stark contrast to the Crucifixion of Ugolino di Nerio, “The descent from the Cross” of the anonymous German painter is characterized by a complex composition and a realism that cannot be escaped. Notice that there is no scenery in the background.
AN. VALENCIANO hacia 1450-1460_La Crucifixion_94_(1976.1)
The Crucifixion, Anonymous Valencian Artist, c. 1450-146
Oil on panel. 44.8 x 34 cm
Although the palette of the painting is austere, earthy and on the dark side, this is a painting with complex composition and expression of emotions. I cannot help but adore the landscape in the background, a clear reference to the Northern European school of painting.
UCCELLO, Paolo (Paolo di Dono)_La Crucifixión con la Virgen, los santos Juanes y san Francisco, c.1460-1465_ 411(1930.118)
The Crucifixion with the Virgin, Saint John the Baptist, Saint John the Evangelist and Saint Francis,
Paolo Uccello, c. 1460-1465
Tempera on panel. 45 x 67 cm
Back to the minimalism of tempera. What shines in the otherwise grim composition is the golden Cross and the garments of the Virgin and St John. The horizontal (2 figures on the left, two on the right of the Cross) and vertical (dark sky at the top, dark ground at the bottom) symmetry is the highlight of the composition.
DAVID, Gerard_La Crucifixion_125_(1928.3)
The Crucifixion, Gerard David, c.147
Oil on panel. 88 x 56 cm
The Flemish painter Gerard David here shows the clear influence of Rogier van der Weyden among others. The palette of the bluish colors in the landscape announce the arrival of Patinir.
Lamentation Triptych, Master of the Legend of Saint Lucy, c. 1475
Oil on panel. Central panel: 75 x 61 cm; lateral wings: 75 x 27 cm
A Crucifixion triptych from the North, with the characteristic color palette, and the bluish landscape. The influence of Rogier van der Weyden and his period is clear.
BRAMANTINO (Bartolomeo Suardi) _Cristo resucitado, c. 1490_61 (1937.1)
The Risen Christ, Bramantino, c. 1490
Mixed media on panel. 109 x 73 cm
The risen Christ is a rare subject, and here we have one painting of it. But this is not a happy Christ, there is no triumph, no joy, here we have a tormented Christ who is still feeling the horror of crucifixion, and the background is a ruined building of the classical period. The full moon is up in the sky, but the light is minimal. This is a dark, sad, painting. One of my favorites!
GRECO, El (Domenico Theotokópoulos)_Cristo abrazando la cruz, c. 1587-1596_169 (1930.28)
Christ with the Cross, El Greco, c.1587-1596
Oil on canvas. 66 x 52.5 cm
El Greco here gives us a picture of the face of Christ, before the Crucifixion, at the height of His torment. It is a stunning painting, because the painter accomplishes so much with so little. Literally minimal, only the red garment appears on the canvas.
ZURBARAN, Francisco de_Cristo en la Cruz, c.1630_ 447 (1956.8)
Christ on the Cross, Zurbaran, c. 1630
Oil on canvas. 214 x 143.5 cm
This is a picture that reminds me of a similar painting by Velazquez (in the Prado) and another one by Goya (also in Prado). It must have been popular and this is the reason there are so many around.
RIBERA, José de_La Piedad, 1633_ 336 (1984.12)
La Pietà, Jose de Ribera, c. 1633
Oil on canvas. 157 x 210 cm
Wonderful, dark, strong, minimal painting.
DYCK, Anton van_Cristo en la Cruz, 1627_(CTB.1995.26)
Christ on the Cross, Anthony van Dyck, c.1627
Oil on panel. 105.3 x 73 cm
Compare this painting to the Crucifixion by Zurbaran. This is dynamic, almost live, you can feel the torment and the escaping life out of Christ’s body. Wonderful.
Christ on the Cross, attributed to Anthony van Dyck
Christ on the Cross, Anthony van Dyck, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
This is a black and white chalk drawing in the Metropolitan Museum of New York, apparently done before the painting in the Thyssen.
Here our little journey in the Thyssen collection ends. I hope that you have found at least one picture that you liked. Happy Easter!
The migrant crisis has reached an acute state in Greece and Europe for more than one year now. Millions of people from Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, and other countries are flooding Greece aiming to continue their journey to other European countries. Some 45,000 of them are now stuck in Greece, after the northern borders of the country have been closed. Approximately 14,000 of them are in the area of Idomeni, a village of 150 inhabitants.
Photo: Hundreds of people arrive at the passport office in Kabul to apply for new travel documents. SLOBODAN LEKIC/Stars and Stripes
Images of the migrants stuck in Greece near the border with FYROM (Macedonia) are all over the news. On the 17th March 2016 the EU leaders met and finalized the EU proposal to Turkey to stem the flow of migrants to Europe. An agreement was reached with Turkey on the 18th March 2016. According to the agreement, every migrant arriving in Greece after the 20th March 2016 who does not qualify for asylum in a European country will be returned to Turkey. In exchange, a Syrian refuge who is in Turkey and has not attempted to cross illegally to Greece, will be given asylum to a European country. There is a cap to this, of 72,000 people. There are significant implementation issues for the agreement to run smoothly. However, the big question remain: “Can the flow of migrants from the Middle East to Europe be stemmed?”
It is obvious that the European leaders and their advisors think that the flow can be stemmed. The deal with Turkey is structured on the basis of this hypothesis. Why is this the case? How can this be proven to be a reasonable assumption?
Quite simply put, the flow can be stemmed provided that the causes of the massive migration can be addressed so that migration is no longer the path to the future for millions of people. It is therefore essential that we know which are the causes of the migration, and that we examine how they can ills behind creating them can be cured.
The war in Syria has made the whole phenomenon look like a mass exodus of people from the battlefields of the Syrian war. This is the explanation that best suits the European Union’s agenda. The war stops, therefore the migration flow declines and eventually stops. All we need – in this case – is to stem the flow from Turkey to Europe and wait until the flow stops.
Photo: Boy on a destroyed tank in Kobane, Syria. Yasin Akgul/AFP/Getty Images
Before I proceed I would like to clarify the terminology. Following the BBC, I use the terms migrant and migration to describe the phenomenon. I suggest that the word refugee is not needed, as it creates confusion and obfuscates the phenomenon at large. A migrant is a person who decides to leave their country of residence in order to move to another country. No matter what the reason is, political persecution, economic need, or something else, the migrant is a man determined to move and seek asylum in another country.
The confusion with the terminology arose out of the need qualify a migrant as a refugee in case the reason for their decision is political persecution.Being a refugee qualifies the migrant for automatic granting of asylum by the receiving country, whereas a simple migrant who, say, emigrates in order to make a living (so called financial refugees) has no right to asylum whatsoever and is not accepted.
In order to establish the causes of the phenomenon, we must make sure we have the facts relevant to it. Lets begin with the country of origin.Where do the migrants come from?
The origin countries
According to Frontex, there were 1.83 million “illegal border crossings” into Europe in 2015 compared to the previous year’s record of 283,500. As we see in the Eurostat chart above, the three top origin countries of the migrants are Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq. A total of 363,000 Syrians fled the war and entered Europe seeking asylum.
So far we have established one probable cause for the migration. The war in Syria. Assuming that this is the only cause, we have an issue to deal with in our analysis. How do we explain the migration from Afghanistan and Iraq as a result of the war in Syria?
Before addressing this issue it would be useful to gather some facts on the migration from Afghanistan and Iraq.
Afghan refugees walk through a beach where they will wait to board a dinghy sailing off for the Greek island of Chios, while they try to travel from the western Turkish coastal town of Cesme, in Izmir province, Turkey, March 6, 2016. REUTERS/Umit Bektas
Afghanistan
The Afghanistan population is approximately 33 million. Male life expectancy is 59 years, and female 61 years. Unemployment is over 50%, while 38% of the population lives below the poverty demarcation line.Afghanistan is practically a country whose economy is destroyed and more than one third of its territory is under the control of the Taliban insurgents.
Eurostat figures show that 178,000 Afghanis entered Europe in 2015 seeking a better life.
Slobodan Lekic writes in “Stars and Stripes”:
“Afghans are now the second-largest contingent of migrants heading for Europe, after Syrians but ahead of Iraqis fleeing from the murderous Islamic State jihadis in the Middle East, according to the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees and the European Union’s statistical agency. But exact numbers are difficult to come by because many of the Afghans heading east have already been living as refugees outside Afghanistan’s borders. A good proportion of those traveling to Europe live in Iran, where some 900,000 Afghans have resided since the 1990s.”(1)
Dasha Afanasieva reports on the Afghanis in Turkey:
“The EU is not even discussing these issues and is exclusively focused on Syria,” Kati Piri, the European Parliament’s rapporteur for Turkey, told Reuters last month.
“Even if the Syrian crisis would be solved tomorrow, there would still be a serious refugee crisis, with a large number of refugees in Turkey who don’t have access to their rights.”
Afghan migrants in Turkey interviewed by Reuters said that over the past few years they had been denied interviews with U.N. refugee agency UNHCR that would formally determine their refugee status, a key step in the journey to being resettled.
Polat Kizildag, program coordinator at ASAM, an organization which registers asylum seekers in Turkey, said they were generally told they were ineligible because Turkey was the third country on their journey and the expectation was that they apply for refugee status in their second, in many cases Iran.
Human rights groups have said Iranian forces deport thousands of Afghans without giving them a chance to prove their asylum status and that they are pressured to leave the country.
“More than 63,000 Afghans came to Turkey last year, a sharp rise from 15,652 in 2014, according to ASAM (an organization which registers asylum seekers in Turkey), counting only those who registered. Some came directly from Afghanistan, others from Iran, where they had tried unsuccessfully to settle.(6)
Iraq
Iraq has a population of approximately 37 million people and its oil dependent economy is in a terrible shape. In her NPR report, Alice Fordham says:
“Everything seems to be working against the Iraqi economy. The government is waging a costly war with the Islamic State while dealing with falling oil prices, millions of displaced citizens and staggering costs for reconstruction of cities ruined by fighting.” (7)
Add to this the effects of the civil strife and you have the makings of an explosive situation. According to a report by the International Organization for Migration, more than 3 million people have been displaced in Iraq by violent conflict since January 2014. Dominik Bartsch, the U.N.’s deputy humanitarian coordinator in Iraq, said 10 million people were expected to need humanitarian support by the end of the year in that country, where 3.2 million were already displaced. (4)
In the past years there has been migration within the region, which is now becoming migration to Europe. In a New York Times article, Ken Arango wrote in September 2015:
“Adnan al-Azzawi, 45, was in Damascus, Syria, from 2004 to 2011, and then returned to Baghdad. He recently sent his family on the migrant journey, and they wound up in Belgium. He hopes to join them soon.” (3)
The mix of the origin countries is changing
Since September 2015, the mix of migrants by country of origin has changed significantly. The extensive quote below is from Chris Tomlinson’s article (5):
The number of Syrian migrants is falling, while the number of Afghans, Iraqis and West Africans continues to grow, according to the European Union’s (EU) Frontex agency.
The organisation, which is tasked with monitoring and controlling movements around Europe’s borders, has revealed that the new wave of migrants aren’t necessarily fleeing conflict, but rather “aspiring” for a better economic situation, according to two agency reports.
The first document talks about migration coming through the Greek islands from the Middle East. They state that in recent months the percentage of Syrian migrants is decreasing.
According to the agency, although Syrians represented 56 percent of the illegal migrants that crossed into Greece in 2015, by December that number had fell to 39 percent.
The report also said that Iraqis and Afghanis as a percentage of the migrants had dramatically increased with the share of Iraqis more than doubling from 11 percent in October to 25 percent by the end of December. Afghani numbers also have increased to one third of migrants crossing into Greece.
Photo: The Aigli Hotel, a bankrupt resort near Thermopylae Greece, is now an official migrant center. Sergey Ponomarev for the New York Times.
First conclusions
What we can conclude from the Iraqi situation is that the tide of migrants will become stronger. When 10 million people are displaced and in danger of their well being, the tide will not only be big, it may also be unstoppable.
If the findings of the Frontex reports are valid, the wave of migrants from the Middle East to Europe will continue to come strong, contrary to the views that it will stop once the Syrian war is over. The reasons behind the migration are not restricted to the geographical territory of Syria, nor are they confined to fully blown war. There is an intense feeling of insecurity both in Iraq and Afghanistan, and this feeling is not going away if we believe the relevant reports.
If insecurity drives the migration, this is not strictly a political issue. It is also an economic issue, and it is related to demographics.
Given all of the above, the migration crisis facing the Middle East and Europe is here to stay. And this raises a lot of questions regarding the adequacy of the EU – Turkey agreement regarding the flow of migrants. If the migration tide is not just the result of a war in Syria that is going to end, what are the chances that an agreement to control the flow of migrants from Turkey to the EU will prove to be totally inadequate?
European politicians have developed a piecemeal approach to tackle issues, no matter how big or small they are. As the collapse of the American financial system in 2008 has shown us, piecemeal measures do not work when the issue is a big crisis that transcends the ordinary. The Europeans do not seem to have learned this lesson. If we judge from the way the Greek crisis is being handled, the piecemeal approach thrives.
Is this going to work in the migrant crisis facing Europe? I do not think so. A year from now the situation in Greece will be intollerable, with many more migrants stuck in the country unable to move either to Europe or back to Turkey. The northern borders of Greece will continue to be closed for the migrants.
And what is the worst of all, the economic conditions that make migration inevitable also fuel insurgency in the Middle East.
Sources
(1) Afghans join Syrians, others migrating to Europe, by Slobodan Lekic. Stars and Stripes. Published: September 18, 2015.
I was introduced to the work of Renato Guttuso back in 1996, when Whitechapel Gallery in London exhibited some of his paintings.
Today I pay tribute to the great realist painter, whose vibrant colors remind me of the Mediterranean, the Sea, the Countryside, the smells and the tastes.
Crucifixion, 1941
Crucifixion was the painting that led the Vatican to declare that Guttoso was a pictor diabolicus, a devilish painter.
Crucifixion – detail
The naked Mary Magdalen leans on the crucified Jesus.
Only the Holy Mother is dressed in her blue gown.
Crucifixion – Guard
The Roman guards are riding their horses naked.
The influence of cubism is felt all over the landscape and the almost sculptural bodies.
Landscape with Lovers (pastel on paper);Guttuso, Renato; pastel on paper; 600 X 419;Estorick Collection, London
The “Landscape with lovers” is another type of landscape. Guttuso here is almost poetical. And I like this more than the loaded and symbolic and rebellious “Crucifixion”.
The market of Vucciria in Palermo is one of the most colorful places on this Earth. Guttuso painted it in a glorious way.
La Vucciria, 1974
“The Vucciria market, Guttuso said, was one of his first discoveries when he moved to Palermo as a student in the early 1930s. “When I began to paint, among my first subjects were those colors, those planes of light.” But his great painting of the market was not done until 1974, when he was living in Varese, Lombardy, “under the pallid light of the north.” He said the picture was “a great still life” imbued with all the noise, the energy and the violence of “the markets of poor countries.” In order to paint from life, Guttuso had an agent ship him the eggs, the cardoons, the tuna, by air from Palermo to Milan. He then persuaded a local butcher to loan him a side of beef “for no more than two hours” so he could sketch it into the composition. The minutes ticked by, and then the hours. The butcher was counting how long his beef would survive without refrigeration. Guttuso, meanwhile, was molding those ribs and haunches into his most powerful memento mori.” (1)
La Vucciria – detail
The curves of a Sicilian woman blend with the cuts of swordfish.
La Vucciria – detail
The beef carcass demands respect, next to the feeble rabbit.
La Vucciria – detail
Cheese and cured meets are plentiful.
This is why I consider Guttoso primarily a painter of the Senses. Looking into these details one cannot help but sense with her whole existence the magnificence of the goods of the market and the pleasure of being alive.
Portrait of Mimise with Red Hat, 1940
You smell the rose, you sense the presence of Mimise, even though she is looking down. The sensual overflows and overpowers everything else. Guttuso does this almost magical transformation by using colors as he has perceived them since he was born in 1912 in in Bagheria, near Palermo (Sicily).
Guttuso was a communist, and a member of the Italian Communist Party (PCI).
He was aware of the impact of technology on everyday life, and he painted it in his own unique way.
Telephones, 1980
In 1946 with Birolli, Vedova, Morlotti, Turcato and others formed the group Fronte Nuovo delle Arti. Made frequent visits to Paris to study modern French art and for a time was influenced by Picasso. Many of his works have been inspired by the poverty and struggles of the Sicilian peasantry. His later works also include large paintings of the student riots in Paris in May 1968, the funeral of the Italian Communist leader Togliatti. (2)
Santa Panagia (Sicily) 1956 by Renato Guttuso 1912-1987
I close this short tribute with another landscape painting. Santa Panagia, in Sicily. “Viale Santa Panagia is a street which runs through the ancient Greek quarters of Tyche and Akradina in Siracusa, a Sicilian city that Guttuso was fond of and visited frequently in the 1950s.” (Tate Gallery).
After Grunewald’s Crucifixion, come the depictions by Francis Bacon.
A self-professed atheist, he has painted over and over again the subject of Crucifixion, two of which I have already presented in Crucifixion II.
Today I extracted from his “Sylvester Interviews” (1) material relevant to the Crucifixion and present it dressed with relevant pictures.
Georgia O’Keefe, Black Cross, New Mexico, 1929, Oil on canvas, Art Institute of Chicago
Interview 2
David Sylvester (DS): Is it a part of your intention to try and create a tragic art?
Diptych with the Virgin and Child Enthroned and the Crucifixion, 1275/80, Art Institute of Chicago
Francis Bacon (FB): No. Of course, I think that, if one could find a valid myth today where there was the distance between grandeur and its fall of the tragedies of Aeschylus and Shakespeare, it would be tremendously helpful. But, when you’re outside a tradition, as every artist is today, one can only want to record one’s own feelings about certain situations as closely to one’s nervous system as one possibly can.
Francescuccio Ghissi, The Crucifixion, c. 1370, Tempera on panel, Art Institute of Chicago
DS: There is of course, one great traditional mythological and tragic subject you’ve painted very often, which is the Crucifixion.
Jacques de Baerze, Corpus of Christ from the Altarpiece of the Crucifixion, 1391–99, Walnut with traces of polychromy and gilding, Art Institute of Chicago
FB: Well, there have been so very many great pictures in European art of the Crucifixion that it’s a magnificent armature on which you can hang all types of feeling and sensation. You may say it’s a curious thing for a non-religious person to take the Crucifixion, but I don’t think that that has anything to do with it. The great Crucifixions that one knows of – one doesn’t know whether they were painted by men who had religious beliefs.
Lorenzo Monaco, The Crucifixion, 1390–1395, Tempera on panel, Art Institute of Chicago
DS: But they were painted as part of Christian culture and they were made for believers.
German (Rhenish?), Triptych of the Crucifixion with Saints Anthony, Christopher, James and George, c. 1400, Tempera and oil (estimated) on panel, Art Institute of Chicago
FB: Yes, that is true. It may be unsatisfactory, but I haven’t found another subject so far that has been as helpful for covering certain areas of human feelings and behavior. Perhaps it is only because so many people have worked on this particular theme that it has created this armature – I can’t think of a better way of saying it – on which one can operate all types of level of feeling.
Taddeo di Bartolo, The Crucifixion, 1401/04, Tempera on panel, Art Institute of Chicago
DS: Of course, a lot of modern artists in all the media faced with this problem have gone back to the Greek myths. You yourself, in the Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion, didn’t paint the traditional Christian figures at the foot of the Cross, but the Eumenides. Are there other themes from Greek mythology that you’ve ever thought of using?
Austrian or Bavarian, The Crucifixion, 1494, Oil on panel, Art Institute of chicago
FB: Well, I think Greek mythology is even further from us than Christianity. One of the things about the Crucifixion is the very fact that the central figure of Christ is raised into a very pronounced and isolated position, which gives it from a formal point of view, greater possibilities than having all the different figures placed on the same level. The alteration of level is, from my point of view, very important.
Martin Schongauer, The Crucifixion with the Holy Women, St. John and Roman Soldiers, n.d, Engraving on paper, Art Institute of Chicago
DS: In painting a Crucifixion, do you find you approach the problem in a radically different way from when working on other paintings?
Albrech Durer, The Crucifixion, from The Large Passion, 1498, Woodcut on cream laid paper, Art Institute of Chicago
FB: Well, of course, you’re working then about your own feelings and sensations, really. You might say it’s almost nearer to a self-portrait. You are working on all sorts of very private feelings about behavior and about the way life is.
Lucas Cranach the Elder, The Crucifixion, 1538, Oil on panel, Art Institute of Chicago
DS: One very personal recurrent configuration in your work is the interlocking of Crucifixion imagery with that of the butcher’s shop. The connection with meat must mean a great deal to you.
Francisco de Zurbaran, The Crucifixion, 1627, Oil on canvas, Art Institute of Chicago
FB: Well, it does. If you go to some of those great stores, where you just go through those great halls of death, you can see0 fish and meat and birds and everything else all lying dead there. And, of course, one has got to remember that there is this great beauty of the color of meat.
Boetius Adams Bolswert, The Crucifixion, 1631, Engraving on ivory laid paper, Art Institute of Chicago
DS: The conjunction of the meat with the Crucifixion seems to happen in two ways – through the presence on the scene of sides of meat and through the transformation of the crucified figure itself into a hanging carcass of meat.
Marc Chagall, White Crucifixion, 1938, Oil on Canvas, Art Institute of Chicago
FB: Well, of course, we are meat, we are potential carcasses. If I go into a butcher’s shop I always think it’s surprising that I wasn’t there instead of the animal. But using the meat in that particular way is possibly like the way one might use the spine, because we are constantly seeing images of the human body through X-ray photographs and that obviously does alter the ways by which one can use the body.
Francis Bacon, Crucifixion, 1933, Tate Gallery, London
Postscript 1
Bacon had spoken of how people come away from the Grünewald Isenheim altarpiece ‘as though purged into happiness, into a fuller reality of existence.’ Whether this was true for him too as he faced the last months of his life, we may never know. In the last triptych he painted in 1991, he steps off the earth into the darkness of one of his black rectangles, looking out from a reflective, haunted self-portrait. ‘You don’t know what it’s like to be eighty and alone at midnight,’ he said to his godson Francis Wishart. But it cannot be insignificant that, knowing he was critically ill, he chose to be admitted to a Catholic convent where he died with a crucifix hanging on the wall behind his bed. He was cremated to taped Gregorian chant, in a coffin with a metal cross on the lid. (2)
Francis Bacon, Crucifixion, 1965
Postscript 2: Bacon’s Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion c. 1944
When this triptych was first exhibited at the end of the war in 1945, it secured Bacon’s reputation. The title relates these horrific beasts to the saints traditionally portrayed at the foot of the cross in religious painting. Bacon even suggested he had intended to paint a larger crucifixion beneath which these would appear. He later related these figures to the Eumenides – the vengeful furies of Greek myth, associating them within a broader mythological tradition. Typically, Bacon drew on a range of sources for these figures, including a photograph purporting to show the materialisation of ectoplasm and the work of Pablo Picasso. (4)
Francis Bacon, Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion c.1944, Tate Gallery, London
Second Version 1988
Part man, part beast, these howling creatures first appeared in Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion, which Bacon painted during the Second World War. One critic described that picture as a reflection of ‘the atrocious world into which we have survived’. Bacon identified his distorted figures with the vengeful Greek Furies, while the title places them in the Christian context of the crucifixion. In this version, painted in 1988, Bacon changed the background colour from orange to blood red, and placed more space around the figures, plunging them into a deep void.
Francis Bacon, Second Version of Triptych 1944 1988
Postscript 3: Bacon’s Final Triptych, 1991
In Bacon’s final triptych, made at the end of his career, a composite figure steps in and out of stagelike spaces. Seemingly nailed to the canvas are closely cropped headshots of Bacon’s face, at right, and, at left, that of a Brazilian racecar driver, placed above muscular lower bodies. The triptych form is rooted in Christian religious painting; the center panel is traditionally reserved for the object of devotion. Here, an abject mass of flesh spills forth from the black niche. Bacon said his triptychs were “the thing I like doing most, and I think this may be related to the thought I’ve sometimes had of making a film. I like the juxtaposition of the images separated on three different canvases.” (3)
Francis Bacon, Triptych, 1991, Oil on canvas, The Museum of Modern Art, New York
Postscript 4
For me the Crucifixion is the agony and ecstasy of life. I do not have much time for Resurrection. This is like the good ending of a Hollywood film. It is not the miracle that I do not buy in. It is the modern day interpretation that, after all, there is a good ending in life, that there is life after death.
Sources
(1) David Sylvester, Interviews with Francis Bacon, Thames and Hudson
It is almost ironic that one of the bloodiest chapters of Sheikh Bedreddin’s rebellion in 1416-1420 was written on the Karaburun peninsula, in the Aydin province, 90 km west of Smyrna, or Izmir, the theater of a huge humanitarian disaster in 1922. I wrote about this in the previous post. Now, trying to console my self, I pay tribute to Sheikh Bedreddin, a Sufi preacher and rebel in the first half of the 15th century.
Karaburun peninsula
“Share all you have apart from the lips of your beloved one”
(attributed to) Sheikh Bedreddin
Sheik Bedreddin (or Bedrettin, or Badraldin), was born in the town of Simavna (or Simavne, today in Greece, municipality of Kyprinos, locality of Ammovounio), in the southwest of Edirne (Adrianople) around 1358, the son of a gazi (warrior of the Islamic Faith) and the daughter of the Byzantine commander whose fortress he had captured.
He studied in Adrianople and Bursa, and then he studied philosophy and law in Konya and Cairo he had gone to Ardabil in Ajerbaijan (today in Iran) which was under Timurid domination and the home of the mystical Safaviyya order founded by the Kurdish mystic Sheikh Safi-ad-din Ardabili (1252–1334).
Mawlānā Rumi’s tomb, Konya, Turkey
“The Ottoman seraglio in Bursa and/or Adrianople in the fourteenth and the fifteenthcenturies was open to literary circles interested in Ottoman–Christian interaction. A Sufi and lettrist teacher such as Bistami advertized that he had spent time in Chios ‘with thelearned and virtuous of the Christians’. Sheikh Bedreddin also sought to utilize connections with the Christian world. Owing to the common emphasis laid on psychophysical askesis by both Hesychasm and Sufism and the dissemination of the Greek language, Islamic mysticism could conveniently accommodate crypto-Christian tendencies.Christians and Muslims, Greeks and Turks met on an esoteric and spiritual level and the graecophone Jews (Romaniotes) often assumed the role of mediator. It is no coincidence that the pillar of Roman Orthodoxy, Gregory Palamas, reflected upon his discussions with the mysterious Chionai he met during his Turkish captivity in 1354 to the effect that a symphonia between mystical Islam and his notion of Orthodoxy was only a questionof time. Moreover, adherents of both Bektashi and Hurufi devotions and incipient sectarianisms were familiar with eastern Christianity, directly or indirectly initiating the secret islamization of Christian monks.” (1)
Sheikh Safi al-Din’s tomb
Sheikh Bedrettin had a great feeling for social justice and freedom. He was an adherent of a democratically elected governing model and defended the oppressed Turkish, Greek and Jewish poor people.
Carrier of a mystical universalist tradition with links to Muhyiddin Ibn ‘Arabi,Rumi and Haji Bektash, Sheikh Bedreddin proceeded to an attempt at unifying the three Abrahamic monotheistic religions into a universal religion destined to subvert the Ottoman establishment. Bedreddin’s mysticism had deep roots extending beyond theimmediate Islamic framework.
Haji Bektash Veli (1209–1271)
I open a parenthesis here in order to say a few things about Haji Bektash and his teachings.
Haji Bektash Veli ‘s philosophy was based on love for God, love for humanity, tolerance, sharing, social peace, and honesty. He continuously emphasized the importance of knowledge, wisdom, honesty, tolerance, brotherhood, unity, friendship, and morality. He approached religious and Sufi issues clearly in his book Makalat, which was written based on “four gates” and “forty authorities.” The four gates represent Sharia, Tariqa, Marifa, and Haqiqa, and the forty authorities represent the understanding accepted and followed by Turkish Sufis.The Sufism movement, which started with Ahmed Yesevi in Turkistan, inspired Haji Bektash Veli, Rumi, and Yunus Emre in Anatolia. These three people, being more advanced than their contemporaries, laid the foundations of Anatolian tolerance and understanding.
Those who attended Haji Bektash Veli’s lessons and conversations and followed his path were called Bektashi. Bektashism is an Alevi Sufi order that represents Haji Bektash Veli, and this order has been accepted in the Balkans, Albania, Greece, Bulgaria, Bosnia, Kosovo, Macedonia, Hungary, and Azerbaijan. Bektashism is a teaching that focuses on “the human.” Its aim is to reach a level of competence and perfect human status known as Insan-I Kamil, and a training process is essential to reaching this level. The system can be summarized by saying, “Be the master of your hand, waist, and tongue.” It requires free minds that are always thinking. Their philosophy is far from fanatical, and it requires a loving approach toward God. The collaboration of both men and women is highly crucial in this philosophy.
Close parenthesis.
Musa Çelebi (?-1413)
Bedreddin developed pantheistic ideas, building on the work of Ibn Al’ Arabi on the “Oneness of Being”. Ibn Al’ Arabi never used the term, but the idea is implicit in all his writtings.
“The doctrine of “Oneness of Being” sought to eliminate the oppositions which framed life on earth – such as those between religions, and between the privileged and the powerless – which were considered to inhibit the oneness of the individual with God. The struggle for oneness gave the mystic an important role for it was he, rathen than the orthodox cleric, who had the wisdom, and therefore the task, to guide man to union with God ” (2)
Though his religious universalism was not necessarily incompatible with his role as head kadi (military judge) under Musa Çelebi (1411–1413), it appears that at a time of economical and political instability his mystical-reformist movement grew fast in the European part of the Ottoman Empire.
Musa Çelebi’s rule soon encountered problems.
“He began to resent the power and wealth gained by the gazi chiefs through booty and timars, and turned increasingly to the servants of the palace (kapikullars), transferring positions and timars to them, while ordering the gazis to stop their raids into Christian territory. At the same time, Beddredin’s doctrines, while appealing to the impoverished masses, were abhorrent to the orthodox religious leaders and Turkish notables alike, so that the latter began to plot to eliminate the regime as rapidly as possible. The conservative religious leaders openly criticized Bedreddin as heretic and demanded that Musa remove him. This doctrine was potentially highly subversive of evolving Ottoman efforts to establish through conquest a state with Sunni Islam as its religion and their eponymous dynasty at its pinnacle.” (3)
In 1413 Mehmet I (reign 1413 – 1421) overthrew Musa Çelebi and crowned himself sultan in Edirne. He restored the empire, and moved the capital from Bursa to Edirne
Mehmed I Celebi
Mehmed I exiled Sheikh Bedreddin to Iznik. At the time, Bedreddin had already achieved considerable mass following, and the economic consequences of a long period of military campaigns added to his popularity among the impoverished. From Iznik Bedreedin worked to rebuild his order, sending out preachers to spread his message and organize secter cells of supporters.
Afraid of what Mehmed I might do to him in his Iznik exile, Bedreddin fled to Samsum in 1415, hoping to get support from the Candar (Jandar) beylik (principality). However, the beylik smelled trouble and sent Bedreddin away to Rumeli, in Wallachia, where Mihail, Mircea’s son was the ruler. Mihail gave Bedreddin material support to raise a revolt in the European part of the Ottoman Empire.
The Rebellion of 1416, probably the largest in Ottoman history, began in 1416 and took place on two fronts—the western coast of Anatolia and the Zagora region of Bulgaria.
Sheikh Bedreddin
While Bedreddin was preaching in Rumeli, his supporters raised several revolts in Anatolia. It seemed very likely that a popular protest might sweep the Ottomans out of Anatolia altogether.
Sheikh Bedreddin’s revolt was short lived.
After the revolt was put down, Bedreddin was judged and executed in 1420 at Serez (Serres), accused of distrurbing public order by preaching that property must be communal and that there was no difference between the various religions and their prophets.
He was buried in Serres. His remains were transferred to Turkey in 1924, at the time fo the Greco-Turkish population exchange, but did not find a final restin gplace until when they were burried in the graveyard around the Mausoleum of Sultan Mahmud II, near the covered market (bazaar) in Istanbul.
Sheikh Bedreddin’s Tomb
The Turkish poet and Nobel Laureate Nazim Hikmet wrote a poem inspired by the rebelious Sheikh “The epic of Sheikh Bedreddin”.
Returning to the lake,
Bedreddin spoke to himself:
“That fire in my breast has ignited
And is mounting with each day.
Even were my heart forged of iron,
It could not endure this fire. It would melt!
The time for me to emerge and burst forth has come!
The time for we men of the land to rise up
And conquer the land has come!
And we shall see confirmed
The strength of knowledge, the secret of Oneness!
And we shall see canceled
The laws of all nations and religious sects!”
Nazin Hikmet
Sources
(1) Sect and Utopia in shifting empires: Plethon, Elissaios,Bedreddin, Niketas Siniossoglou, University of Cambridge, Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies Vol.36 No. 1 (2012) 38–55
(2) Osman’s Dream, Caroline Finkel
(3) History of the Ottoman Empire and Modrn Turkey, Volume 1, Stanford Shaw
Σημερα ειναι Δεκαπενταυγουστος. Αντιγραφω απο το βιβλιο “Προς Εκκλησιασμο” του Νικου Γαβριηλ Πεντζικη.
Today is the 15th of August and in Greece we celebrate the Dormition of Theotokos. I quote from the book “Attending Mass” of Nikos Gabriel Pentzikis.
Ιδου τωρα μια εξαιρετικα εντονη μνημη της παιδικης μου ζωης. Δεκαπενταυγουστο. Γιορταζε η μητερα μου. Ο πατερας της εκανε δωρο μιαν ασημενια τσαντα, απ’εκεινες που συνηθιζονταν τοτε, ωραιοτατη, με παραστασεις επι του συμπαγους φυλλου του κλεισιματος αρχαιων εναλιων θεων. Το σπιτι ειχε γεμισει κοσμο που ερχοταν να ευχηθει. Ο νους μου γεματος θαυμασμο πανηγυριζε. Υστερα σαν ολοι εφυγαν πηγε ο νους μου πως θα γινοταν η Δευτερα Παρουσια. Αναλογες συγχυσεις του γεματου συγκινηση αμεσου προς το αιωνιο, αναφερθηκαν και σχολιασθηκαν πολλες, απο τους μελετητες της νοοτροπιας των πρωτογονων, που συχνα διαβιουντες επι γης συμβαινει να μπερδευουν ζωντανους και νεκρους.
I present to you now an extremely vivid memory of my childhood. Fifteenth of August. My mother’s nameday. Father made her a present, a silver handbag, the kind that were in fashion, very nice, with presentations of ancient gods on the hard cover. The house was full of people visiting to honour her nameday. My mind full of admiration was in celebration. When all the visitors left, I thought in my mind that Second Advent was coming. Similar confusions of the immediate felling with the eternal have been reported and commented upon by scholars studying primitive cultures, where it happens quite often that living people confuse the living with the dead.
Η Παναγια Κορη, δεχθεισα το αχωρητο Φως, συμβολικως παρισταται υπο της Σεληνης με το κονιορτοβριθες εδαφος. Ελπιδοφορο παραδειγμα οτι ο χους εκ ού προερχομαστε και εις τον οποιο καταληγουμε, συνδεεται δι’ αγαπης προς το φως, ωστε να μπορουμε πρεσβειαις της Θεοτοκου Παρθενου να ευχομαστε, υπερ των προσφιλων κεκοιμημενων, γεματοι ελπιδα.
The Holy Daughter having received the uncontained light, is shown on dustry earth under the Moon. It is a hopeful sign that the dust form which we come and to which we end, is linked through love to the light, so that we can pray, through the mediation of the Virgin Theotokos, full of hope, for the beloved ones who have already slept the long sleep.
Giandomenico Tiepolo (1727-1804) was the son of Giambattista Tiepolo, a master of painting.
He never achieved the status and fame of his father.
San Polo Church, Venice
However, between 1747 and 1749 he painted “Via Crucis”, the stations of the Cross, in the Oratory of the Crucifixion in the Venetian Church of San Polo. In the same period he also etched the sequence of prints with the same title.
This sequence of 14 paintings is for me the most moving sequence of Christ’s path to the Cross and the Beyond.
Inside the San Polo Church (when I visited) there were on display only some of the 14 paintings, the ones I photographed and have included here.
To my delight, I discovered some of the etchings on paper at the Art Institute of Chicago, which I also display here. Although they do not form a complete series, they supplement the paintings very nicely.
I followed the numerical sequence for both the prints and the paintings.
Frontispiece to Stations of the Cross, c. 1748, published 1749 (Art Institute of Chicago)
Frontispiece to the set of etchings
Station I: Christ is Condemed to Death, plate one from Stations of the Cross, c. 1748, published 1749 (Art Institute of Chicago)
Station I: Christ is Condemed to Death
Station II: Christ Receives the Cross, plate two from Stations of the Cross, c. 1748, published 1749 (Art Institute of Chicago)
Station II: Christ Receives the Cross
Station III: Christ Falls Beneath the Cross for the First Time, plate three from Stations of the Cross, c. 1748, published 1749 (Art Institute of Chicago)
Station III: Christ Falls Beneath the Cross for the First Time
Station IV: Christ Meets his Mother, plate four from Stations of the Cross, c. 1748, published 1749 (Art Institute of Chicago)
Station IV: Christ Meets his Mother
Station V: Christ is Helped by Simon of Cyrene, plate five from Stations of the Cross, c. 1748, published 1749 (Art Institute of Chicago)
Station V: Christ is Helped by Simon of Cyrene
Station VI: Christ's Face is Wiped by St. Veronica, plate six from Stations of the Cross, c. 1748, published 1749 (Art Institute of Chicago)
Station VI: Christ’s Face is Wiped by St. Veronica
Station VII: Christ Consoles the Weeping Women, plate seven from Stations of the Cross, c. 1748, published 1749 (Art Institute of Chicago)
Station VII: Christ Consoles the Weeping Women
Station IX: Christ Falls Beneath the Cross for the Third Time, plate nine from Stations of the Cross, c. 1748, published 1749 (Art Institute of Chicago)
Station IX: Christ Falls Beneath the Cross for the Third Time
Painting IX: Christ Falls Beneath the Cross for the Third Time, San Polo Church, Venice
Station IX: Christ Falls Beneath the Cross for the Third Time
Painting IX - Detail: the crowd
The crowd is shown full of anticipation.
Station X: Christ is Stripped of His Garments, plate ten from Stations of the Cross, c. 1748, published 1749 (Art Institute of Chicago)
Station X: Christ is Stripped of His Garments
Painting X: Christ is Stripped of His Garments, San Polo Church, Venice
Station X: Christ is Stripped of His Garments
Painting X - Detail
The elder
Painting X - Detail: Mother and Daughter
Mother and daughter observing
Station XI: Christ is Nailed to the Cross, plate eleven from Stations of the Cross, c. 1748, published 1749 (Art Institute of Chicago)
Station XI: Christ is Nailed to the Cross
Painting XI: Christ is Nailed to the Cross, San Polo Church, Venice
Station XI: Christ is Nailed to the Cross
Painting XI - Detail: Christ
Christ unconscious
Painting XI - Detail: Crowd
The watching crowd
Painting XII: Crucifixion, San Polo Church, Venice
Station XII: Christ crucified
Painting XIII: Deposition, San Polo Church, Venice
Station XIII: The deposition of Christ
Painting XIII - Detail
Deposition detail
Painting XIV - Entombment, San Polo Church, Venice
Following the trail I started with Titian’s “Pieta”, today I go a few years back to meet another Genius and Master, Donatello.
Donatello's statue outside the Uffizi Gallery in Florence
As I read in PBS’s web site:
“Donatello was not a popular person, but in his sculptures he managed to capture life itself. Every look and gesture was rich in humanity and personality. He was known to mutter “speak, damn you, speak!” at his figures as he worked.
In 1434, following his triumph over the enemies of the Medici, Cosimo requested a special commission from his friend. A statue of an Old Testament hero, symbolizing triumph against the odds. Donatello’s bronze “David” broke all the rules.
Donatello: Davis, Museo Nazionale del Bargello, Firenze
A playful, sensuous, and androgynous hero, “David” was the first life-size nude to be cast in bronze since Classical times.
In the 1450s Donatello began work on a terrifying statue, the most vivid of his career. The “Penitent Mary Magdalen”, carved for the baptistry of Florence, is an eloquent vision of fear and decay, perhaps brought on by the realization of Donatello’s own mortality.”
( The material of the previous paragraphs comes from the web site of USA’s Public Broadcasting Service, PBS.)
Donatello: The Penitent Mary Magdalene, Museo dell'Opera del Duomo, Firenze
From David to Mary Magdalen. It is a path of life.
Mary Magdalene has been the subject of many paintings and sculptures.
Titian: The Repentant Mary Magdalen
Titian has painted a portrait of Mary, which is in the Gallery of Palazzo Pitti, a few hundred meters away from Donatello’s sculpture, which is in the Duomo Museum of Florence.
What a contrast between Titian and Donatello’s interpretation! Is it only Titian portraying Mary as a young woman, repentant or not?
El Greco: Mary Magdalene in penitence
Not really. Look at El Greco’s interpretation. Mary is young, very young, beautiful, with long hair that envelopes her body.
Donatello: The Penitent Mary Magdalen (detail)
The hair is the only common element between Titian’s and El Greco’s paintings and Donatello’s sculpture.
Donatello: The Penitent Mary Magdalen (detail)
Donatello wanted Mary to be an old woman. A woman approaching the end of her life.
Donatello: The Penitent Mary Magdalen (detail)
A woman whose face is pierced by the bones, whose eyes inhabit open dark holes, whose mouth is almost toothless.
Donatello: The Penitent Mary Magdalen (detail)
Her hands are almost forming a prayer pair, but not so. It is as if she was going to pray but she changed her mind as the hands were coming together, but not touching yet.
Donatello: The Penitent Mary Magdalen (detail)
The aging woman is standing firmly on her feet. As disconcerting her hace and overall condition may be, she is standing with confidence and without any weakness. She is almost “relaxed” when it comes to her feet.
This in my view is the key to “reading” the work. Reading the body.
Donatello: The Penitent Mary Magdalen (detail)
As the eye travels from the face to the torso, the hands and then to the feet, the ambivalence of the artist manifests itself in a comprehensive way.
This ambivalence is the distinctive feature of the work, a feature that differentiates Donatello’s interpretation from Titian’s and El Greco’s.
In both paintings, Mary is a person wiht a clear attitude and stance in life. Repentant in Titian’s painting, full of devotion in El Greco’s.
But in Donatello’s sculpture, Mary may be skinny and appearing in a state of departure from the worldly affairs, but at the same time she is not fully wholy absorbed by her devotion or repentance. Her body language expresses ambivalence and the coexistence of the worldly stuff with the heavenly. This is what I find amazing in this work. Donatello either consciously or subconsciously is a Modern Master in this work, as he depicts Mary in the state of inner conflict, in the state of Being and Being Not.
What Donatello may have started as a work that would portray his fear of Death, his anguish of getting old, was transformed in the creative process to a work that is full of Life, as Life is ambivalence and contradiction and conflict.
Today I want to honor the centuries’ old ties between Byzantium and Venice, by kneeling in front of the “Mesopanditissa” Madonna, a 12th or 13th century Byzantine icon that was brought to Venice in 1669, after Candia (Herakleion) fell to the Ottoman Turks. The picture is kept in the main altar of the Church of Santa Maria della Salute (Holy Mary of the Health). Lets start with the historical background.
Santa Maria della Salute is one of the jewels of Venice. Baldassare Longhena was 32 years old when he won a competition in 1631 to design a shrine honoring the Virgin Mary for saving Venice from a plague that in the space of two years (1629-30) killed 47,000 residents, or one-third the population of the city. Outside, this ornate white Istrian stone octagon is topped by a colossal cupola with snail-like ornamental buttresses and a baroque facade; inside are a polychrome marble floor and six chapels.
The Byzantine icon above the main altar has been venerated as the Madonna della Salute (Madonna of Health) since 1670, when Francesco Morosini brought it here from Crete. The icon and other holy relics, were brought to Venice by Morosini when Crete fell to the Ottoman Turks.
It was the jewel of the Church of Saint Titus in the center of Candia, today’s Irakleion. Morosini also brought to Venice the remains of Saint Titus. They were kept in Saint Mark’s Basilica until 1966, when they were returned to Crete.
Above it is a sculpture showing Venice on her knees to the Madonna as she drives the wretched plague from the city.
I must confess that the baroque sculptures surrounding the Madonna did not impress me, but they are not in any way obstructing the view of the magnificent icon.
The Madonna is serene, understanding, can absorb the pain of the whole world. The Holy Child is contemplative.
The icon is at home in the magnificent Church. It stands next to Titian, Giordano, Tintoretto, like they are its most natural companion.
This is the glory of Byzantium, glory that remains alive and strong in Venice. More on the subject will follow.
