The Empress Theodora with her Retinue, c.547, in the church of San Vitale, Ravenna
Myriads of tessarae, precisely,minutely fitted,
Shining, bedded on uneven mortar ground,
Reflecting the light at countless slants,
Composed by unknown masters;
Here it was placed to impress the Ravennans
With the majesty and power of the Byzantines,
Recent conquerors of the city.
Theodora stands high above, looking ahead,
In bejewelled triple diadem with long pearl-chains,
And silk cloak of Tyrian amethyst purple,
Beneath a baldachin, elongated and seraphic,
The bear-tamer’s daughter, the bawdy burlesquer,
Exalted among saints and apostles,
Golden nimbus behind her head.
Processing ahead of her stately retinue,
Across the fountained green,
She bears a communion chalice to the church,
While an official draws back the drape from a portal,
Revealing darkness behind the golden glow.
At the Empress’s right stands her confidant, Narses,
That slight and sickly eunuch,uneducated yet clever,
Born an Armenian slave,he had climbed to eminence
Through toil and loyalty, in politics and war,
Standing here modestly, knowing his place,
Arms concealed beneath his cloak.
Fear of rivals and pretenders,
Court intrigues, popular uprisings and coups d’etat
Never ceased to trouble their sleep,
As they aided Justinian in his ambition
To restore the lost borders of the Roman Empire.
Here Theodora fixes us with large dark eyes,
Set in a tense narrow face, no longer young,
Ill, and tormented by burdens of state,
Her husband’s equal partner and beloved.
Where now the girl who had performed on the stage
In bawdy revues, flaunting her beauty,
Winning applause with her comic striptease?
Her Majesty comports herself with dignity,
Good sense and majesty, and indomitable resolve:
As in that year when mobs were rampaging
Through Constantinople, razing whole quarters to the ground,
And besieging the palace, as all around her
Debated flight and exile, only Theodora
Stood firm, refused to flee and urged her husband
To fight, “I shall never take off the purple,” she vowed,
“Nor shall I ever see the day when those around me
Do not address me as empress. The purple
Will make a good shroud.” Strengthened by her hand,
The generals quashed the insurrection.
There,at Theodora’s left,stands her friend Antonina,
Chatelaine of the palace,
Domineering wife of General Belisarius.
No greater ally had the Empress
In ensuring the loyalty of the army
And in quelling intrigues,and running spies,
The two women plotting together
To eliminate any obstacle in their way,
Setting cunning traps for foes and upstarts,
Making sure to see them executed.
And then,on her knees,in church,she would see
Christ before her,above her,one indivisible god,
With nothing base and human in him,
As the foolish churchmen taught;
Let the Pope call her a heretic,
But she would win him in the end,
And all his weak tribe of men!
Miniature for the Month of January from the Très Riches Heures of the Duke of Berry, c.1415, by the Limburg Brothers
Illuminated vellum page, sumptuous and brilliant:
Determined to collect the very finest books,
The Duke of Berry commissioned this one
As a prayer book to be used in his devotions.
The three Flemish Limburg brothers he had hired
For his miniaturists’ workshop,
And lavished gifts and favours on them,
Anxious to keep them happy in his service:
For Paul, the eldest brother, he even arranged
For an eight-year-old girl to be kidnapped
And brought to him, against her parents’ wishes.
A New Year gathering hosted by John, Duke of Berry,
At his Paris palace, the Hôtel de Nesle,
On 1 January 1413;the elderly duke is seated
Beneath a baldachin, the uncle of the king of France,
Robed in gold-embroidered blue,
With the baldachin adorned with the fleur de lis
And the ducal emblems, the bear and the swan.
Guests crowd around,warming their hands at the fire;
In the background hangs a tapestry of the Trojan War,
Soldiers armed in fifteenth-century style;
The duke is in his element, surrounded by all he loves-
Loyal friends, servants and dogs, fine raiment,
Costly gold plate, and gourmet foods,
(It was he who introduced truffles into French cuisine).
The first day of the year was his special feast,
When kings and princes of the blood royal
Exchanged precious jewels and gave their courtiers
Large rewards for their loyal service;
And, in return, his allies and liegemen
Competed to please him with appropriate presents.
Munificent beyond his means, forever in debt
To his ambitions, Berry never hesitated to lavish
Yet more funds on the grandest entertainments,
Determined to be the most stylish of noblemen,
To outdo all his niggardly rivals in splendour.
How could it ever be deemed a waste
To expend treasure, however exorbitant,
On building palaces and monuments to oneself
That posterity will marvel at, witnessing
What a paragon among rulers can achieve.
He erected one palace after another,
Each grander, larger, more costly than the last,
With a new elegance unlike the stolid castles
Of his peers; slender-towered beauties,
With pointed roofs and stonework most ornate.
So ruthlessly did he tax his territories
To fund these dreams, that the cities rose up
Against him, detesting this no-good bastard
Who conducted the king’s affairs
With such arrogance and avarice,
In love with his own devious diplomacy,
In times of plague and war,when France
Lay waste, abandoned to her plight.
Berry loved dogs more than any human being,
And, here,in the picture,his greyhound sits,
Being treated like a prince by its attendant,
While, among the dishes on the banqueting table,
The duke’s two small Pomeranian spitzes,
Wander freely, pampered beyond reason.
There, among the richly garbed guests,
The man in plain woolen cap,looking on,
Is Paul of Limburg,sneaking himself
Wryly into the scene.
At this festivitiy, the Limburg brothers
Jokingly gave the duke a present:
A dummy book, made of wood,
Bound in white velvet and gilded silver clasps,
With no pages and no writing inside.
Shortly after this very miniature was painted
The Limburg brothers and the duke of Berry
All died, leaving the Book of Hours unfinished,
While France was plunged into disaster,
As civil war erupted anew, and the English
Invaded, and made most of France their own.
The Adoration of the Lamb, Hubert and Jan van Eyck, 1432
Now the second paradise:
God’s chosen people dwelling, resurrected
On earth, in a perfected landscape,
The dove of the Holy Spirit winging above,
Bestowing its rays in benediction.
Standing, kneeling or approaching in procession,
From the four cardinal points
Come saints and martyrs; prophets and people
Who lived before Christ; high churchmen
And women, too,so low in the world’s esteem;
With, in the centre, the bleeding lamb on an altar,
And in the foreground risesthe scintillating
Fountain of everlasting life.
Beyond those lush fields stands a city,
The new Jerusalem, descended to earth,
Geometrical and radiant,
Where God’s elect may live blessed lives
Of contemplation and prayer.
The heavenly city resembles Ghent itself,
Progressive in industry,prosperous
From commerce and taxation,
Where the van Eycks painted this canvas
And installed it as an altarpiece
In St Bavo’s church; commissioned by burghers
Avid to see their hometown exalted.
The brothers’ were the first hands dipped
In oils,the first to lay down depths of lustre
With sudden new skill and perspective.
Potsdamer Platz, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, 1914
Midnight: figures totter at awkward angles
Across a tilting crooked world,
Robotic, zombie-like, almost colliding,
Green and weird, disturbed and disturbing.
Simultaneously from different planes,
Their curves and acute angles clash
In tension, the figures hurry to and fro,
In constant motion, averting their eyes
From each other, their bodies atrophied.
The two cocottes in feathered hats
Walk with regal dignified air,
Temple prostitutes of Berlin;
One advances towards the viewer
With impenetrable green mask
Through the gas attack of time.
From a pavement cafe Kichner watches
The world disintegrate;the freedom
He craves is being smelted into a bullet
Which will end in his own heart.
Paris Street, Rainy Day, Gustave Caillebotte, 1877
Criss-crossing at the intersection
On broad empty avenues under uniform facades,
They hurry over wet cobblestones, shielding themselves
With umbrellas from the rain and from each other,
Absorbed in their own private thoughts,
Careful not to look at anyone.
In the foreground a couple are walking together,
Looking away from one another,
The woman veiled like an Arab, -
With the luminous dot of a pearl in her ear
Catching the eye, like a fierce distant star,
Brighter than anything else in the picture.
It is Haussmann’s geometry
Of long straight lines and symmetry,
Designed to quash rebellious hearts.
No more history and mythology:
Caillebotte,ensconced inside a carriage,
Selects his angle and sketches,
Teasing out equations from the hurly-burly,
Peering through the rain.
Women of Algiers in their Apartments, Eugène Delacroix, 1834
He was one of that generation
Reared on tales of heroism and glory,
Cheated and disillusioned
By the drab reality of their world
Ruled by Bourbons, bankers and merchants,
Oppressed by boredom and melancholy.
In the delirium of North Africa,
He wandered violently happy,
The enemy in his lungs suppressed,
The evil moods forgotten,
Sketching quickly surreptitiously all the time,
A dangerous image-maker
Among the iconoclasts.
This bestial dirty ignorant treacherous chaos
Was wondrous colour and abundance
To his heretical eyes.
Back in his Paris studio,surrounded
By sketchbooks,he fabricates a Barbary
Enticing to European tastes,
The harem he visited in Algiers
Made colour,mystery and luxury incarnate,
A vision of escape,portrayed
With painstaking accuracy and fakery.
Indolent and passive, the women
Loll in their forbidden demesne,
Chatting and smoking,awaiting the master,
Provocative under sheer cloth.
Carefully he finishes the profile
Of the woman with the hookah,
Drawn from his studio model’s face;
And traces a farrago of Arabic and invention
On the panel behind the negress.
The Sharper, Georges de La Tour, c.1630
With only looks and gestures they communicate,
The gamblers at the table,
Playing for high stakes.
A heap of gold coins sprawls before the young gentleman,
The greenhorn about to be fleeced,
While the cardsharper opposite secretly produces
A hidden ace of diamonds from behind his back,
And leans nonchalantly forward,bent
On correcting the errors of fortune,
So apt to award the world’s riches
To the talentless and undeserving.
Gazing out,he makes us his accomplice,
Villains all,doomed to lose a thumb or hand
If caught,be branded,or led to the scaffold.
Isn’t it worth it,for those moments of victory
When one holds just the perfect cards in one’s hand,
And holds the world to ransom?
(This,perhaps,is the artist’s own visage,
Relishing his own wiles in wartime,
A baker’s son with a noble wife,
Grown rich and renowned,but not above
A little profiteering and speculation,
His arrogant temper likes to vent itself
On knaves and pests, chastising them
With his fists,as he curses his way
To distinction, trampling his inferiors
Just as those armies plunder and battle
Across the burning land.
Between them the courtesan, who lured the lad here
With her beauty,slyly signals with white manicured hand
To the sharper to play his hidden ace
As she casts him a calculating sideways glance,
While a maid pours red wine
Into Venetian crystal glasses
To befuddle the victim all the more.
In times of war,plague and famine,
What harm is there in a little sport,
To forget one’s woes at the gaming table?
What a fine gentleman,chubbycheeked and pouting,
Resplendent in shiny pearl-grey jerkin,
Richly embroidered in gold and silver,
With shoulder bands of red silk,
His cuffs delicately pleated and trimmed in black gold...
Once they have robbed the little ninny,
Theywill strip him of those pretty threads as well!
Lucifer himself invented games of chance,
With a pack of cards to be his missal.
Nothing pleases him more than to gamble for souls.
Gabrielle d’Estrées and One of her Sisters, School of Fontainebleau, c.1600
The two witchy sisters sit up in the marble bathtub,
Framed by the baldachin’s red silk curtains,
Bathing in milk or wine to preserve their youth,
Perfectly coiffed and made up,bedizened with pearls.
What do they care if the Church condemns bathing
As licentious and immoral,a dangerous innovation?
Nor do they heed astrologers who advise that baths
Be taken only when the moon is waning.
They know,of course,that Satan himself
Loves to fornicate with witches in the bathtub
And show them,reflected in the water,
Their future husbands’ faces.
No such warnings deter them,so wilful are they.
And after all,even goddesses,are wont
To emerge from springs and rivers,
Even as court beauties vie for the services
Of the finest painters to portray them
Rising naked from the primordial waters
In the Italian style.Such things enhance one’s prestige.
Gabrielle and Julienne are no slouches:
Self-advancement is their expertise.
Gabrielle is the ideal beauty,and knows it:
Religiously she dyes her famous hair blonde
With acid tinctures and sunlight,
Maintains a nacreous translucent complexion,
Applying a thick white cosmetic mask each day,
Plucking her eyebrows,rouging her nipples and lips.
The proof of her supremacy is that so many
Hate her,curse the king’s slut as an evil witch,
A nymphomaniac,possessed by the Devil,
Her rank hole belonging to his icy cock.
That long straight smooth sturdy body
She forces into the tightest corset,
Obliterating bosom,hips and waist
With the discipline of a natural soldier.
All France know what whores they are,
All the women of that malignant clan,-
Cock and cash is all they live for!
Hard to say which of them is worse,
Gabrielle or Julienne, the duchess of Villars,
A woman who cannot go one day
Without a good rogering and pursues any man
She fancies without restraint.
Sweet,how they share the tub :
Julienne playfully tweaks her sister’s rouged nipple,
As they both look out insouciantly,
Playing the innocent,
Gleefully planting lewd thoughts in our minds.
Perhaps Gabrielle is pregnant again,
Having already borne the king several children
And secured his affections and honour,
Rewarded by him with gold and titles,
And treated by all as a queen,
The hem of whose robe all must kiss.
See,on her finger she wears the engagement ring
Given her by Henri IV.
She died in childbirth before he could wed her,
The year before this work was painted.
Some believed she had been poisoned,
So hated was she by the people of France,
For her hedonism and extravagance
While the country suffered civil war,famine and pestilence.
In the background of the picture
A woman is sewing at a table by the fireplace,
With a green-velvet-covered coffin beside her,
And a dark mirror above her head.
The Fountain of Youth, Lucas Cranach the Elder, 1546
It might be a Swiss spa,this pool
Where the women bathe and rejuvenate
Their ageing flesh,heal their ailments
By the grace of God.
With a mocking eye,the ancient artist,
Longing for health and vigour,
Made this painting
For a male patron to enjoy
The naked young women cavorting
In the waters.
This is how the ecosystem works:
Into one side of the pool decrepit crones
Totter and are carried, praying for a miracle,
And, immersed in the waters, turn
Into frisky young beauties,
Wallowing with mad delight like children,
Then emerge on the other side
As rejuvenated maidens,
Welcomed by affluent old gentlemen
Waiting simply there to woo them
And find new wives in their later years.
Lot and his Daughters, Netherlandish Master, c.1530
Lot and his daughters
Are celebrating their blessed escape ,
Having set up camp with luxurious tents,
While in the background the city burns.
Fire rains down from the night sky;
Buildings tilt and collapse;
Ships break up and sink in the harbour.
A world destroyed by lust
That only lust can save.
A sudden widower,randy and drunk,
Lot sits fondling one of his reluctant daughters,
While the other dutifully pours out more wine.
Whoever painted this knew that he lived
In the Last Times,that Sodom would soon
Be punished for its depravity.
And yet he must go on working all the same;
Keep at his painting,his prayers.
The Melun Diptych, Jean Fouquet, c.1456
Etienne Chevalier, the royal treasurer,
The donor of this work,kneels in prayer,
With St Stephen, his patron saint, standing beside him,
In blue dalmatic with gold braid, holding the Gospels
And one of the stones with which he was martyred,
Ready to intercede for Chevalier with the Virgin Mary,
Hovering on her throne borne by angels,
A pagan goddess of disturbing glamour,
One of her plump provocative breasts exposed.
In her lap sits the infant Jesus, pointing his forefinger
Towards chevalier, to indicate that his prayer
Is heard and he may hope for divine clemency.
For centuries this diptych hung above the tomb
Of Etienne Chevalier in the church of Notre Dame
In his birthplace, Melun,intended to preserve
His memory in perpetuity,
Together with the masses said every morning
For the repose of his immortal soul.
The treasurer,in a maroon fur-lined robe,
Kneels in a palatial hallway,
Like those in his Paris mansion.
The king liked to have such talented commoners
In his service,owing all to his favour,
And taking his side against the nobility
With their ceaseless intrigues and revolts.
With Chevalier’s help,Charles VII
Finally drove the English from France,
As the treasurer procured the vast sums
To finance the long military campaigns
And once even lent the king money himself;
Though he amassed a great fortune of his own,
Chevalier was known to be honest and incorruptible,
A good man amidst a court of cheats and liars.
Marmoreal and mesmeric is the Virgin’s skin,
Her eyes cast downward,a seductive statue,
Modelled on the king’s mistress, Agnès Sorel,
A great champion of Chevalier’s career,
And possibly his secret lover as well;
Called the greatest beauty in the world,
She,alone of all women,was permitted
To appear before the court at tournaments
Mounted on a stallion,in gleaming silver armour
Studded with jewels, an Amazon;
While in church she artfully displayed pious anguish
Over her sins,yet wearing extravagant robes
With lace headdresses and prodigious trains,
Her décolleté scandalously low , even showing the nipples.
The king was utterly beguiled by her
And heeded her counsel in matters of state,
For she alone could rouse him from lethargy
And inspire him with the courage and will to act,
To fight on till the English were vanquished.
She died before this picture was painted,
In childbirth, still young,her powers at their full,
And even if she was a sinner,was remembered
With holiness,as the mistress of a king.
St Jerome, Antonello da Messina, c.1460-1475
In Messina Antonella painted this canvas ,
Stuck in a godforsaken backwater,
Far from the cities he yearned for,
Far from Florence with its patrons and scholars
And the Naples of his prentice years.
In this port he spent most of his life,
Watching the ships come and go
In all directions,a stonemason’s son
Born with a craftsman’s passions.
He had studied well the Flemish masters
And felt the exotic glamour of detail,
The plenitude of everyday objects.
His southern heart,bred on superstition,
Battened on perspective,this new sorcery
Extending men’s powers with its grace;
He must unite north and south in his body.
Look into this building and beyond,
Through vaults and shadows
To the lion limping towards Jerome,
One thorn-stricken forepaw drawn up,
For the saint to nurse.
In the distance are mountains and rivers,
And the towers and white walls
Of Messina, citadel of the Devil,
The dungeon of the flesh,
While in the east stretches the desert,
A wilderness of trees and hills,
The ascetic’s paradise, where he may liberate
His soul through solitude and prayer.
Dead centre of the painting the saint himself
Sits, reading in his cell,
Red-robed like a cardinal;
Forerunner of humanists,lord of translators,
The man who had meditated for years
In the Syrian desert,struggling with desire..
Practising his Flemish techniques,
Antonello bound his pigments with oils
In the foreground we see a peacock,
The paradisal bird of Christ,
Herald of eternal life,a bowl of water
Set beside him like baptismal font;
On the left a partridge opposes,
The thief of other birds’ eggs,
The devil setting traps for the young.
The Ship of the Argonauts, Ercole de’ Roberti/Lorenzo Costa, c.1480/1490
The sails are full, the ship casts off,
The crew gaze back to the rocky fantastical shore;
The dark vessel hovers over the milky sea;
In the stern stands Hercules, with lion’s fell
Over his brawny shoulder and club in his fist;
Faithful beside him stands young Hylas,
His squire and lover, and in the forecastle
Jason, the captain,keeps watch;the adventure
Is under way,the Golden Fleece yet to be won.
The Argo flies the red and white colours
Of the Estes,the same their jockeys wore
In races,dashing to victory or hell.
This picture ,painted in Ferrara,
Once adorned a noble bridal chest
That carried the dowry to the groom’s house
Then was placed beside the connubial bed;
A chest commissioned by the Estes,
Marrying off Duke Ercole’s eldest daughter
To Francesco Gonzaga of Mantua,
With the nuptial ceremonies also arranged
By Ercole de’Roberti himself.
Such was the Estes’ beloved impresa:
Ships sailing before a strong wind
The emblem of their pride and power,
Blazoned on frescoes,paintings and coins;
From Hercules they claimed descent,
Shrewd despots, exploiting their position
In the Po delta,developing the port
And ruling the river and its wealth,
Levying customs duties on all trade,
And keeping profitless war at bay,
Playing off the larger powers against each other,
Forever changing sides to suit themselves.
No other state in Italy enjoyed such order.
A small marshy backwater had been turned
Into a capital of culture and style,
Where artists evolved apart from the world,
Oblivious to vogues and innovations.
Despite the dull efficiency of cannon,
The Este condottieri saw themselves
As knights on legendary steeds,charging
To Arthurian glory;they could not resist
Voyages,pilgrimages and adventures,
To embellish their honourable name.
The Tempest, Giorgione, c.1507
To their country houses they always returned,
To the pastoral idylls read about in books,
As if they, Venetian patricians, could share
The simple happiness of shepherds.
Giorgione was a favourite: they hung
His works in their private apartments,
And he played the lute at their salons,
His watchful eyes fading into dream.
How he delighted in his ciphers,
Disguising the too-precious meanings,
The truth known,if at all,only to him.
To keep them guessing was his passion,
To make them argue over interpretations.
They could deem themselves initiates,
Yet never be sure of their rightness.
He,too,in the end,could only accept
The miracles as they revealed themselves,
One thing growing out of another
With mysterious connection and grace,
Sudden and timeless,just colour,after all.
The lightning bolt illuminates
The shepherd standing calmly to one side,
Observing the naked woman, child at bosom,
While she looks questioningly out into our eyes,
Broken columns lit up behind..
The Miraculous Draught of Fishes, Konrad Witz, 1444
He has risen from the dead and must prove it.
He stands upon the water, on Lake Geneva’s southern shore,
With the Petit Salève, the Môle Pointu, the tops of the Voirons,
And the summit of Mont Blanc behind;
As Peter and other disciples draw up a net full of fish
From the spot where he told them to cast;
The topographic detail all minutely accurate,
As observed by Witz,feeling the space in his hands,
Portraying this idyll as a tribute
To Amadeus VIII, Duke of Savoy.
Who had consolidated his lands through strategic treaties,
Married into the Burgundian dynasty most shrewdly,
And extended his influence south of the Alps
By wedding his own daughter to a Visconti.
Amadeus ran a model system of government
And,with dignity,aged fifty, his powers-at the full,
Handed over his state to his two sons,
Left his luxurious court at Chambéry
And withdrew to a monastery on Lake Geneva,
Where he lived a pious hermit’s life.
Though he kept out of the tedious everyday business,
He retained some of his old authority,
For his sons still needed his counsel and approval,.
Honoured as a judious ruler and pious son of the Church,
Amadeus was elected Pope by the Council of Basle,
And so was crowned as Felix V,
Choosing the arms of Savoy, a white cross with broad arms.
But the Pontiff in Rome refused to be supplanted
And so the Church was split between two rivals,
With more and more countries declaring their allegiance
To Rome, until,accepting fate,Felix V stepped down,
Only to die two years later.
This figure of Peter swimming ashore to Jesus,
Is modelled on Amadeus himself.
Was this painting commissioned by Felix V himself?
Or perhaps by the Bishop of Geneva,
Whom Felix V elevated to cardinal after his coronation?
There were others,too,who had done well
Out of the schism,and who loved Savoy.
Konrad Witz both adored and renounced the visible,
Determined to guide the viewer back to God,
From here,from now,from Geneva,by the lake.
Ludovico Gonzaga and His Family, Andrea Mantegna, c.1470
Gold-embossed leather curtains are drawn back to reveal a terrace:
The Gonzaga clan,dressed in gold spun cloth, is assembled
Before a marble screen among the lemon trees.
Ludovico sits with a letter in his hand, conferring with a secretary,
And his wife, Marchioness Barbara of Brandenburg has a little son and daughter at her knee,-
The children thin and pale and sickly.
Sombre officials in dark clothes stand beside haughty flamboyant courtiers;
Rubino, the marquis’s dog, sits under his chair, and a dwarf stands next to the Marchioness.
Though their small domain is modest compared to Venice and Milan,
And Mantua,their capital,, marshy and insalubrious,
Though they suffer from gout,rickets,malaria and poverty,
They present themselves as a grand and mighty clan.
Ludovico makes great efforts to attract the best artists and architects to his court,
And for three years tries to coax young Mantegna into his service;
Astonished by his frescoes at Padua,
Until the artist,reluctant to tie himself to tedious routine,
Relents at the promise of riches and titles,
But above all because of the marquis’s cultivated taste and respect.
With this fresco Mantegna transformed a small reception room in the Ducal Palace,
Seeming to extend its space through the walls and ceiling,
This Ludovico in the fresco is an old man,
In a simple housecoat, without fineries,
Worn out by his long reign and ill health;
Once a successful condottiere, he had no interest in war and booty ,
But peace was a luxury he could seldom afford,
Forced to command the armies of both Venice and Milan,
Whichever offered the highest fee.
For he had a lavish court to maintain,and a stable of horses.
Here, in the picture,-this white-haired old man-
Is Vittorino da Feltre, Ludovico’s old teacher and court librarian,
Whose famous School for Princes attracted pupils to Mantua
From all over Italy, including many future rulers.
Which of them might become Vittorino’s ideal,
The uomo universale,the whole man of vigour and spirit,
Rich in both Christian duty and classical values,
A ruler who would make himself immortal
By honouring great men and high principles?
Well might it be Ludovico himself,that paragon of intellect
And action,the champion of his city,his family and his lands,
The lover and patron of arts and ideas.
His two eldest sons, posed either side of Vittorino,
Were brought up in the same spirit,
Federico, the heir, -whose hunch back is hidden-
Reigned as both soldier and patron of the arts,
While Francesco, obese and sickly, became a cardinal
And sired a great collection of Classical antiques.
The dwarf in their midst, some say, was a daughter
Of the reigning couple,for all manner of defects
Cursed the Gonzagas,generation after generation,
Borne with stoicism and prayer.
The Birth of Venus, Sandro Botticelli, c.1486
The waves,the trees,the roses floating to earth,the robes ,the tresses of Venus, the wind blows through all;
Aphrodite, wave-born, riding a breath of wind,
Approaches the shore on a seashell,
The fruit of anatomical studies and Classical models,
With the influence of Greek sculpture in the way her weight rests on one leg,
In the curve of her hip, in her shielding of her pudenda;
After a thousand years, a pagan nude has come forth again,
In accordance with the canon of Polyclitus.
Onshore the Hora waits to receive the goddess,
Red roses wound round her waist, anemones at her feet and a cornflower-spangled dress,
Holding out a purple gown for the goddess, swaddling for newborns,shroud for the dead.
The painting was intended for a country villa outside Florence,
For a banker reposing after business in the cool shade,
Preferring a light-hearted theme to sombre religiosity.
Brush in hand,Botticelli felt the gods in his limbs,
The splendour of antique gems engraved with Roman goddesses,
And humanists’ translations of the Classics,
He sealed this talisman wth the elements,
And set it free to do its work..
He could not know how it would end:
His life cast on the Bonfire of Vanities,
The angelic images returning as demons,
As he tossed by night alone on his hard bed.
The Death of Procris, Piero di Cosimo, c.1500
In the marshy meadow she lies among flowers,
The maiden bleeding from her wounds,
Wrapped in red and gold veil;
A faun bends over her.A hunting dog sits at her feet.
Three hounds roam the heron-sentinelled shore beyond-
One white, one black, one red-brown,-
And a swan sails on the water,
In the dreamy dawn light,
With no vanishing point.
So it ends, a tale of jealousy and mistrust,
Of happiness wantonly destroyed.
What possessed poor Cephalus,newly wed,
To test his bride’s faithfulness by courting her
Disguised as another man?
Was it her fault she wavered and was tempted?
Ashamed and enraged when she learned the truth,
Procris fled to the forest,to Diana’s protection,
But was horribly slain by her own husband’spear
As she spied on him out hunting
And he mistook her for an animal in the bush.
Piero could not get them out of his head:
The Bitch of Coracesium and the Armenian Hound,
The solid and the volatile states of matter,
That he might by his mind’s fire fuse into the swan.
He prayed to Hermes Trismegistus to lead him
Through the underworld,armed with arcane sciences,
In search of immortality and the Philosophers’ Stone.
Locked up indoors,reclusive among the filth,
Boiling fifty eggs at a time to keep him going,
The young brave grew weird and morbid,
Could hardly even remember the festival of 1511,
When he created an enormous chariot for Lorenzo de’Medici,
Bearing a huge figure of Death, scythe in hand,
Surrounded by tombs,which,when the procession halted,
Opened to let skeletons leaptout and sing Grief, Woe and Penitence
To the shocked and delighted crowd.
The Haywain, Hieronymus Bosch, c.1485-1490
Did he feel himself persecuted by demons
With only his art for exorcism?
Or was it the Church he must keep at bay?
Perched high atop the cart,
A lutenist and a young couple are making music,
Flanked by an angel, beseeching Christ in heaven,
And a devil, interrupting the love songs
With a blast of his trumpet nose.
Halfconcealed in the bush is a kissing couple,
Spied on by a peeping tom,
While an emperor, king and a pope ride behind the wagon,
And men and women scramble to plunder the hay,
Fighting each other for it,falling under its wheels.-
The wagon is pulled by demons from the underworld,
With people streaming out of a mound of earth with a wooden door .
Between paradise and hell..
Onward it rolls,the haywain,into the future,
Towards the day of reckoning,
Attracting thieves,gluttons,mountebanks and corrupt clergy,
While Bosch fills his hands with prayers and proverbs,
An anti-Pope of shadows and spiderwebs.
In St John’s Church,
He kneels before the wonder-working Virgin,
And the cosmos shrinks to a candleflame;
Leering devils and monsters circle around,
Determined to lure him to perdition.
The Last Days are imminent,
Heralded by plagues and floods,
And men are in terror,
Knowing how greatly they have sinned.
Poor man,more likely to fall into the sty
Than to rise with the angels!
Every event seems an omen of the Antichrist.
Hell is here and now,the monstrous engine
Of retribution,mutilating and consuming
Its victims,tormenting them with infinite ingenuity,
Each vice receiving its just punishment.
The laws of God are turned on their heads.
The Battle of Issus, Albrecht Altdorfer, 1529
Under the dragon-dark and thunderous sky,
The immense maelstrom seethes and swirls,
Armageddon’s legions fighting to the death,
Golden-armoured Alexander at the centre,
Pursuing the fugitive Darius’s chariot
With lance held high,the soldiers dressed
For the sixteenth century,the enemy
More like Turks than Persians.
Who can doubt that mankind now lives
In the seventh and final age,
Damned by its own corruption and evil?
Even the greatest men on earth can do nothing
To alter the predestined end;
God alone disposes what must be.
Even as the gallant and illustrious Greeks
Defeat the East and initiate the next grand era,
They move the world further towards its doom,
True to a religion of which they know nothing.
Duke Wilhelm IV of Bavaria,viewing
The work he commissioned to glorify
The Classical heroes of his boyhood dreams,
Can only turn away with a shudder
And hurry to the Saviour in his chapel.
Venus of Urbino, Titian, c.1538
From an old man a young man demanded truth.
Guidobaldo della Rovere, the Duke of Urbino’s son,
Commissioned this work, in his twenty-sixth year,
From venerable Titian ,the most famous of artists,
To mark his wedding.
Who was she,the model? Titian’s own mistress,
Or a prostitute?There she reclines, on the four-poster,
Coyly concealing with one hand her mons veneris,
Clasping in the other a bouquet of roses.
On the window ledge stands a pot of myrtle,
A promise of constancy in marriage.
At her feet sleeps a lapdog.
Titian emphasises her right shoulder,
Her small round firm pert breasts,
The gently rounded belly, fertile and alluring,
Her nudity,plain and real,
With her drab fully clothed servants busy in the background,
The maid’s rump towards us as she rummages in a chest.
This Venus meets your gaze,expecting admiration,
She knows the age of mythologies is over.
Your eye moves with Titan’s hand and eye,
That cantankerous moneygrubbing speculator
As in love with property as with paint,
A ruthless opportunist of the heart,
Practising the science of the senses
As he gazes out from his window across the lagoon,
To the Dolomites,his birth,his death.
Dream of a Sunday Afternoon in Alameda Park, Diego Rivera, 1948
All the ages of Mexico are happening simultaneously,
Right here on Sunday afternoon in Alameda Park,
Where people sit, stroll, chat and picnic.
Everyone is here: the famous and the obscure, figures from myth and religion,
And Diego Rivera’s own family,
And ordinary citizens, Indians, farmworkers, the poor.
A thin boy is picking the pocket of a well-dressed gentleman,
An Indian woman in a yellow dress is striking a provocative pose,
A policeman is expelling a family of Indians from the park,
And a pink hot air balloon floats above all their heads,
Carrying their hopes into the clouds.
Hernán Cortés stands there with bloody hands,
The heroic slaughterer,the subjugator and annihilator,
Courageous and cruel in equal measure.
Beside him is Fray Juan de Zumarraga,
Who set about converting the Indians to Christianity,
Burning their sacred books.
And the condemned of the Inquisition wait in their tall pointed hats,
Before the flames in which they will perish.
This mural was intended for the dining room of the El Prado hotel,
But scandal and protest put paid to that,
It had to be hidden behind a wall for years.
Only after Rivera changed the small inscription “God does not exist”
Written on the piece of paper held up by Ignacio Ramírez,
Was it allowed back out on display:
We see,too,the Emperor Maximilian,who was soon deposed and shot,
And President Madero,who was soon deposed and shot,
And Zapata,the hero on horseback,the bringer of justice,
Another man betrayed and murdered in the end,
Although he,at least,was rumoured to be immortal
And would one day surely return to save the poor.
There has aways been a lot of deposing and shooting,
Perhaps a little too much.
In the centre Rivera portrays himself as a plump little boy,
In shorts and straw boater,
With a frog and a snake poking out of his pockets,
While his future wife Frida Kahlo stands beside him,
Layng her hand protectively on his shoulder.
Death,that good neighbour,that friend and reveller,
Stands, dressed as a woman in a plumed hat and feather boa,
Holding the hand of the boy Rivera on one side
And that of José Guadalupe Posada on the other,
The first two Mexican artists to free themselves from European art.
There is no grief here,only celebration,
The dead enjoy a party as much as the living,
Or maybe more,maybe more.
Metropolis Triptych, Otto Dix, 1928
Everyone was mutilated,and no-one was beautiful,
And those who danced most were the saddest of all,
In the city of the disillusioned,the crippled,the obscene.
They were frenzied and apathetic,exhilarated and despairing,
They had thrown off their uniforms but the war was not over,
Only the trenches were invisible now
And no-one was handing out medals.
The nightmares continued,nearly every night,
You might piss yourself uncontrollably
Or cry like a baby
Or paint pictures like Otto Dix.
He was that man in the frame,disfigured,with wooden legs,
Hobbling along,crucified, on crutches.
The Negro jazz musician throws his head back, laughing,
And swallows the world with insatiable appetite.
The revellers in the club seem bored and detached,
The shorthaired streamlined boyish flappers,
The ostrich-plumed vamp in heavy mascara,
Free to enjoy their own self-disgust,
Laughing romance and chivalry in the face,
Far too sophisticated for all that.
Berlin could never be home again:
Nothing could ever be safe and cosy again.
You could not tell left from right,or north from south.
You just knew there was something else coming,
That this was not the end of it, not yet.
Everywhere is fake and uncomfortable:
The garish lighting in the dance bar,
The brothel lights infecting the cobbles,
Bits and pieces of the streets and buildings
Are piled on top of each other,haphazardly,
Everything is too close together or too far apart.
Christ’s Entry into Brussels, James Ensor, 1888
Here comes the carnival parade,with flags and banners,led by a military band,
This remorseless mass of faces advancing in a nightmare,
Calling for revolution and social justice,
And one wonders if Christ is truly leading the oppressed
Or has somehow got caught up in it all by mistake.
He wears the artist’s own bewildered face,
Isolated even amid the crowd.
Ensor never missed the Ostend carnival,
Mingling with the masked crowd in fancy dress,
Seduced and terrified by the grotesques,
The ugly philistines he suffered from every day.
With pencil and brush he took revenge,
Showing the brutes their own savage faces,
What did he know of friends or women?
He was always himself,alone.
He had come to deliver the people
And found himself derided and ignored.
Even the Son of God would find that annoying.
So let the critics crucify him,
His greatness would triumph in the end.
In front of Christ the brass band march,
Proudly proclaiming their righteousness,
When in truth they are His enemies,
Playing Pontius Pilate’s favourite tunes.
The Turkish Bath, Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, 1863
An old man of eighty-two,proud
Still to feel the passions of youth,
He worked on as hard as ever at his easel,
Concentrating a life’s work in one canvas,
A theme brooded for half a century
Until the time was right…
He did not even need a single model,
Having amassed a huge collection
Of sketches over the years,women held
In mind for the secret constant purpose,
Returning again and again to these figures
With pen and brush…
A vision of nude beauties,relaxing,chatting,
Drinking coffee and sherbert,
Attended by slave girls,
In an Orient he had never visited,
United by the Golden Section,
In Classical harmony,luxury and ease.
These were the women he loved:
Thick-necked,full-bodied,
With large dull eyes and round limbs,
Dreamy and lethargic,
In whom he felt the fulsomeness
Of nature,and glorious health,
Were disapproving quacks diagnosed them
As “possessing the symptoms
Of a thyroid disorder”.
The Massacre by the Triumvirate, Antoine Caron, 1566
Soldiers pursue their prey across the open square,
Cutting them down and setting their heads in a row,
The victims try in vain to flee up flights of steps
And across the rooves,while the gloating triumvirs
Sit passing judgment on their enemies and watching
Their agonies with glee,among the triumphal arches
And grand buildings of ancient Rome,just as described
By Appian in his History,following Caesar’s murder.
A stranger to Rome,Caron worked from engravings
By other artists,positioning the buildings at random,
Making errors of scale,in this his first large canvas,
Determined to impress his client at all costs
With sensational style, contrasts and surprises
To suit a violent world;the shorn-off heads
And gutted corpses glare with lurid colour,
The murderers pose elegantly under banners
In a courtly spectacle of their own imagination,
Their gestures exaggerated and mannered.
The vast frantic teeming square seems weirdly empty,
As desperate figures race through serene grandeur
Of symmetrical terraces and staircases,
An architecture of balance and permanence.
Atrocities were all the rage in those days.
At the court of Catherine de’Medici,Caron observed
Fanatics conspiring to inflame religious wars,
Exploiting France’s ills to their own ends,
Even as they presided over murders and massacres,
The generals,Catholic and Huguenot alike,
Loved to commission paintings of their hecatombs
With themselves as heroes,revelling in spectacles
Of cruelty and horror,executed to their orders.
Wearily,gratefully,Caron undertook his task.
As they dipped their hands in blood,so he his brush.
Caesar Augustus and the Tiburtine Sybil, Antoine Caron, c.1580
Amidst civil war and poverty, the French court stages a festival,
A distraction from unwelcome realities:
In the grounds of the Tuileries, two armoured knights joust,
While a bargeful of musicians and singers nears the riverbank.
And a crowd enjoy a play performed on an estrade,
By actors in Roman costume,
The Mystery of the Incarnation and Birth of Jesus Christ.
It is the scene where Caesar Augustus, kneeling in purple gown
And laurel wreath, consults the Sybil of Tiber,
Begging her to predict the fate of the Empire,
Whereupon she points to the heavens,-
There, the Virgin and her child appear in a nimbus,
A new era promised in their eyes.
To demonstrate the majesty of the young king, Henri III,
Munificent patron of court festivals,
Caron paints this work on the Queen Mother’s orders,
A talisman made to her specifications.
Catherine de’Medici herself holds the centre of the painting,
A woman to her children, and to power,
Unashamed in her murders and assassinations,
Tirelessly arbitrating between Catholics and Huguenots,
Skilled in using others’ passions and interests to her own ends.
She alone adored her son,that effeminate ninny,
So unloved by his people,and his court;
To distract sectarian leaders from fighting
She kept them busy with feasts and masquerades,
With court balls and tournaments and plays,
Designed with endless care in minute detail
To showcase the king with myth and allegory,
By teams of the finest artists, architects and craftsmen.
Here,the young king watches the joust,
Seated with his favourites, handsome foppish catamites,
With whom he loves to carouse in women’s clothes
Before he returning,penitent,to spiritual exercises.
See,how the French court rivals ancient Rome,
Classical edifices, columns,arches and temples
Erected to laud the monarch, by sympathetic magic.
The artifice is perfect,disproportionate,real and unreal.
In the background a nude female figure poses on a well,
Spouting oil from her breasts, a shining mirror balanced
On her head, the fulfilment of a prophecy,
Such as Catherine de’Medici had read of
In the Sibylline Books she kept by her bed,
Consulting them fervently for guidance at all times.
She herself identified with the Sybils,
And built an observatory next to her palace
Where astrologers were invited to work,
And were consulted,along with necromancers,
As to the auspicious times and places for her festivals,
To ensure the most potent sympathetic magic
And sway her chosen guests to her designs.
Judith and Holofernes, Caravaggio, c.1599
Determined and disgusted,she grits her teeth
And gets on with the job,
Measuring her force and holding aloof
From the victim,beautiful and demure,
As she saws the defenceless Assyrian’s neck,
His eyes staring out of his head,still alive
And in mortal dread,mouth wrenched open
In a scream.The ecstasy of the kill
Enacts its grim seduction.
Out of the darkness the images arise,
Into the darkness they return.
Again and again,Caravaggio returns
To the matter of beheading,
Sticking out his own neck for the blade to fall.
He was drawn to public executions always,
Observed the condemned’s last moments
With fascination,while bandits marauded
Across the countryside,ravaging the villages
Of peasants ruined by taxes and bad harvests.
Before long he will leave his easel
And head out onto the streets once more,
Looking for action,his sword at his side,
Ever more erratic as the work grows scarce,
With churchmen offended by his brutal style,
So far from their dignified canon.
Nobleman’s privilege had turned to furies
In his head,as she struck and struck
At shadows with his dagger,his sword,
Wretched nobody claiming rightful eminence
With his hands,mad to murder
His own torments or throw his life away
On a wager.Genius,on the lam
And on the run,would see him perish
Alone, a friendless dog left to bleed.
The Banquet of Cleopatra, Giambattista Tiepolo, 1746/50
Mesmerised, the assembled guests gaze at Cleopatra,
About to win her wager with Antony
That she could devour ten million sesterces at one meal:
She holds up one of her own pearl earrings,
Poised to dissolve it in vinegar and swallow,
Before the astonished Romans at her table,
A spectacular dénouement to the grand opera.
The whole banqueting hall of the Palazzo Labia
Was frescoed by Tiepolo with the life of Cleopatra,
The great seductress and extravagant heroine
Of the Venetians,squandering their wealth
With abandon.So had the Labia,distinguished
Neither in politics nor war,achieved renown
By profligacy,commanding the golden plates
Of their dinner guests to be thrown out of the window
Into the canal when their banquet was over.
Watching the scene, Tiepolo has depicted himself
And Girolamo Mengozzi Colonna, an expert in frescoes,
His collaborator on this commission,
Who transformed the hall into an apparition
Of splendour and endless space,by means
Of painted illusions,and phantasmal architectonics.
Howthe Labia delighted in the miraculous game,
Preferring the facsimile of marble to real stone,
And brilliant artifice to stolid representation.
They scorned all solid things as fripperies,
And made each day a carnival for fools.
