We began our tour of the Belvedere by examining the altarpiece that depicted the story of the passion and crucifixion. While the altar was very beautiful and a great spectacle of 15th century artwork, I believe the piece really exemplified a much more important message concerning the artwork of the Middle Ages. This altarpiece, and nearly all artwork of the era was not about creating new artistic styles or capturing certain elements of beautiful scenery, but rather simply about glorifying God. I think this principle is exemplified best in how in the Belvedere Museum, committed to art and its preservation, the artist is unknown. If the emphasis on the glorification of God wasn’t apparent enough already, the fact that the artist did not even recognize himself shows just how little importance there was in the painter.
After our introduction to the museum we progressed upstairs and saw how exactly how the Reformation and Counter Reformation impact both artistic style and the position of the artist in society. Since the Catholic Church acted as the major employer of artists leading up to the Reformation (such as the artist who crafted the altarpiece on the first floor of the museum), there was a huge loss of income for the painters who elected to leave the church to convert to Protestantism. This was largely attributed to the belief set of Protestantism in that they did not share the Catholic Church’s love of lavish and decorative churches. The simplistic and relatively undecorated churches of the Protestant faith did not call for the services of painters as the Catholic Church had before the Reformation. This prompted the formation of a whole new hierarchy of painting now that everything could not simply be of the religious genre. The new hierarchy formed as follows from most acclaimed to least: history, genre, portraits, landscapes, and still life. Portraits began to come into style during this period both because of the absence of the need for church artwork for the Protestants and the growing ambition to look more like the nobility in the 16th century. Before this time period, hiring painters for personal portraits was reserved for the very wealthy, but now with the excess of painters alienated by the Reformation there was a greater ability for lower classes to have portraits painted. Having portraits painted thus became a way for both people to try and attain a greater feeling of nobility and an employment opportunity to painters.
This concept of using portraits to emulate a greater social status is exemplified in one of the portraits we saw done by Marguerite Gerard. It appears here that the family is trying to convey multiple messages in the style they had their portrait done in. The family, judging by the dress and interior of the house, does not seem to be of the highest social class so it would appear they are trying to emulate a higher class through the commissioning of a portrait. The portrait also seems to convey a religious message. The mother, father, and infant baby are arranged in a way that mirrors the Holy Family with the baby as Christ. This is somewhat of a stretch to compare the two, but it shows how even in portraits that are supposed to be completely secular, religion still has an influence on how people want to be portrayed.
Landscapes became very popular during the Renaissance as a secular subject matter for painting and this style is still popular today, although painting during the Renaissance was considered the lowest form of art and music the highest. This was attributed to the lack of material and substance associated with music, thus making it a rarity and of great desire. I find this particularly interesting because of the fame that artists once had in figures like Michelangelo and Leonardo Da Vinci when the Catholic Church controlled art, but now with the secularization of artistic expression, musicians gain the most fame.
I found the collection of Casper David Friedrich particularly interesting for how he depicts the power of God in nature. His romantic style exemplified his call to essentially “get back to nature”. He was originally a Catholic, then converted to Protestantism, but ended up converting back to Catholicism out of his desire to return to the prominence of art and culture associated with the middle ages. The specific painting that we observed evoked Christ on the cross, but strictly as elements of nature. I think this really symbolizes the departure of reason and logic that dominated the Enlightenment and the move towards emotional artwork during the Romantic period. This desire of Friedrich to evoke elements of the middle ages is displayed here in the religious overtone of his landscape while abandoning the principles of human dominance over nature that consumed artistic expression in the Enlightenment.
I found the art of the Biedermeier period particularly interesting and supplemental to our observation of the Ringstasse architecture. The Biedermeier is one of the few artistic periods that has a definitive beginning and end (1815-1848). The style was essentially a retreat into family and centered on a middle class life that closely mirrored the artistic style of the 1950s in the United States. Both styles were attempting to counteract societal tensions following the age of Napoleon and in response to the Cold War, respectively. The Biedermeier attempted to exhibit traditional family values with the father being the head of the family and taking care of his wife and children. This marks a departure from the Romantic style of Friedrich where nature is a powerful and uncontrollable act of God where in the Biedermeier it is a retreat to be enjoyed by the family.
The Jacques Louis David painting of Napoleon served as an interesting contrast to the previous styles we had seen and also served to exhibit the impact politics can have on art. David became famous both as a huge proponent of the French Revolution and as Napoleon’s private painter. David tied himself so closely to both the revolution and Napoleon that much of his fame died out with Napoleon after his fall at Waterloo. I see David as an extremely important figure because he himself was an exposition of the impact of politics can have art, much like the impact that religion had on artists previously discussed in association with the Reformation and Counter Reformation.
The section on Impressionism in the Belvedere was one of the most interesting because of their extensive collection and individually famous pieces. Monet was clearly the father of impressionism, which revolved around communicating a certain type of impression upon a viewer rather than simply a certain subject matter or message. In this style brush stokes and the paint itself became more important that it ever had before. These paintings were essentially supposed to be blurry and then come into focus after moving far away.
The Klimt section is extremely impressive and is of course headlined by his masterpiece, The Kiss. Klimt became consumed with Impressionism after the university scandal where he stopped producing artwork for the Ringstrasse and its style. His impressionistic style definitively worked to bring back the two dimensional style of art that had been previously dominated by a three dimensional style in the previous eras. The Kiss is one of the most important and famous paintings in the western world. It is intended to be a celebration of love where the bodies of the man woman are merging into one with little ability to discern their respective figures. This painting is true exhibition of the Secession as dimensionalism is completely negated to counteract the strict adherence to it in the Biedermeier. The messages here are conveyed through symbolism where the man appears to have large cubic and block like figures on clothes that are contrasted by soft, luscious, and round figured on hers. Personally, I like The Kiss. At first I did not really understand it because there is such an absence of direction and boundary in the painting, but I think that On the surface, the painting seems to just be a man kissing a woman, but the deeply impressionistic style conveys a feeling of emotion unlike most paintings. The impressionistic style is perfect for the communication of such a deep feeling of love. I feel like the basis for impressionism, in which a person is supposed to observe it close up and then step away and see how the colors and paint materialize for them individually, caters perfectly for this painting. Klimt’s ability to yield the foundations of impressionism and combine them with such a subjective element as love effectively makes The Kiss the timeless piece of artwork it has become and always shall be.
The German word of the day is fussball and it means ‘soccer’
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