This blog is dedicated to the places I went and adventures I had with Jan leading the group. The first of these adventures was to the Central Cemetery in Vienna. The cemetery was opened in response to Vienna growing to over one million inhabitants in the late nineteenth century and was opened in 1874 to accommodate the other scattered cemeteries that had become too small. The cemetery houses many high profile Austrians such as Beethoven, Schonberg, and of course Falco (who we unfortunately could not find L). Personally what I found most interesting was the old Jewish section. This section was reserved specifically for Jews until 1938 when the mass deportations began during the German occupation of Vienna. The cemetery, grounds, and tombstones are extremely well groomed and maintained for the most part. However, the old Jewish section is strangely not kept up. Outside of a small walkway that looks like it is cut back about once a month, the grass is anywhere between knee and head high with the tombstones in a state of great disrepair. It’s interesting that the cemetery pays for people to dig up everyone’s coffin to be reburied in order to make room for more corpses, yet they don’t maintain the grass or tombstones in the old Jewish section. This section was in large part destroyed during the Kristallnacht during the Nazi invasion, although roughly 60,000 were left unharmed. The overgrown graves symbolize the old Jewish population in Vienna, represent the significant gap in their history in Vienna, and of course commemorate the circumstances by which the Jewish presence in Vienna ended in 1938.
Revisiting the Kunsthistorisches Museum with Jan was an extremely valuable experience because the first tour with the red haired, green clothed guide was less than effective for understanding the cultural and historical value of the museum. Jan catered her tour specifically to our understanding of the foundations and differences between Reformation and Counter Reformation artists. The first artist we examined was Caravagio. He served as a prime example of one sect of the Counter Reformation artists in his depiction of the crucifixion. This painting is extremely stripped down and simplistic and seems to really focus on the scene at hand, not over exaggeration or lavish detail. I think this speaks a lot to the purpose of the Counter Reformation and its art as a whole. These artists, and more importantly the clergymen who hired these artists, are trying to educate the masses with these paintings about important biblical and religious scenes as a whole.
Pieter Aertsen’s Vanitas-Stilleben is another manifestation of Counter Reformation art only this time as a Catholic living in the Protestant Netherlands. Aertsen specialized in still life paintings, but with Catholic elements or overtones. During the period Catholics were tolerated, but controlled in the Netherlands, so Aertsen had to be almost subtle about his religious expression in his art. In Vanitas-Stilleben, Aersten puts the religious scene in the background of his painting, like in many of his other works, to display what he wants to show as most important. The still life of various foods, especially featuring the slab of meat, acts as a veil for his deeper message and overall religious beliefs. I think this work and Aertsen’s style as a whole is extremely important for not only understanding this sect of Counter Reformation art, but also how the treatment of Catholics in the Netherlands manifested in the art of the region. While Aertsen’s Catholic beliefs were tolerated they were not widely accepted like Protestantism, just as Catholic elements are present in this painting, but not the subject of the work as a whole.
Peter Paul Rubens represented a much different style of Catholic sensibility in his paintings during the Counter Reformation. Rubens was a very devout Catholic living in Antwerp, Belgium during the period and was actually a diplomat and ambassador to Spain and England. Rubens really admired Caravagio’s style yet had adhered much more to the lavish and baroque style of traditional Catholic art. For example, his painting Glory of St. Ignatius of Loyola (1616), does not exhibit the stripped down simplicity of Caravagio’s work in his depiction of the scene. Rubens style is a manifestation of the adherence to the magical and mythological foundations of Catholic teachings in traditional Catholicism that held over during the changes of the Counter Reformation. While many Counter Reformation artists like Caravagio simplified their paintings in order to simply educate the illiterate masses and counteract the attacks mysticism brought by the Protestant reformation, Rubens in essence adhered to traditional Catholic sensibility. I feel like this split in artistic style was a cultural manifestation of the internal conflict going on within the church. While the Catholic Church was an entity of great tradition and adherence to their magical and miraculous aspects of their teachings, they were forced to reform under the attacks of the Protestant Reformation. Significant changes were made, but its clear that traditionally Catholicism and the art that represented it was not completely abandoned in the seventeenth century.
Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn represents the clear opposite end of the artistic and belief spectrum from Rubens and other Counter Reformation artists. Rembrandt was a Dutch Protestant whose art exemplified many the cultural impact of the Reformation on European culture. Rembrandt was most famous for his portraits and more specifically, his depiction of the human condition. This artistic style reflects many of the foundations of Protestantism and the departure from Catholic ritual. Catholicism rests upon the need for the clergy to aid the individual in findings salvation while Protestantism puts much more emphasis on the individual’s ability to find salvation through scripture. Rembrandt’s Portrait of Titus Reading exhibits these major foundations of Protestantism. Rembrandt depicts Titus as a very ordinary individual doing nothing more than reading a book, but the greater symbolism here is what makes the painting an essential piece of Reformation artwork. The emphasis on the individual and that individual’s ability to read were the foundation of Protestant worship. While it’s not clear if Titus is reading the Bible here it does serve as a powerful symbol of both the power of the individual to read and learn and the overall emphasis on the common man, rather than the clergy.
Hans Baldung Grien, a disciple of Albert Durer, was a German Protestant painter who exemplified a different sect of Protestant sensibility than Rembrandt. While Hans Baldung Grien never officially converted to Protestantism, his artwork definitely symbolizes the values and sensibility of the Reformation. His adherence to Catholicism can probably be attributed to his influences. Being a disciple of Durer and living in different many different parts of Germany might have made his conversion difficult in a social sense, but Protestant values still manifest in his artwork. The painting that I feel really exemplifies this sensibility in the Kunsthistorisches Museum is his Three Ages of Woman and Death (1510). While this painting does have specific Protestant elements depicted here, it subtly communicates a powerful message about the depiction of life and death. The painting shows a skeleton holding an hourglass over a young woman and baby, symbolizing the ominous nature of death. The important thing about this painting is that it is not religious in any way while still depicting elements of life and death. These two issues were previously, in large part, before this era, depicted only in a religious context because the Catholic Church held virtual complete control over the issue of life and death in its teachings. While the Protestant Church still obviously had a huge impact on the perception of life and death in everyday life, their ideology did monopolize the issues within the church as the Catholics did. On the whole, this painting shows yet another Protestant emphasis on the individual and functions to imply the relationship between the person and life and death without the intervention of the clergy, as in the Catholic faith.
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