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Marmion, Adam and Eve in Paradise, 1455-60, from book on the Seven Ages of the World, Robert Baldwin Associate Professor of Art History Connecticut College New London, CT 06320 [email protected] (This essay was written in 2009.) Three important issues stand out for me in this image, the first tied the book as world history and the second two to the distinct features of the image, especially its hierarchical order, on the one hand, and its groundbreaking naturalism, on the other. I. The Seven Ages as World History History as we know it was a category if literature invented by the ancient Greek as and Romans. It died out in the Middle Ages, replaced by different forms of historical writing such as the chronicle, which focused on local events and family history/genealogy and world history, which developed highly abstract narratives dividing all history into a few major periods governed by great rulers or powerful institutions. World history also looked for overarching principles of time unfolding according to Divine Providence and culminating in the present with its glorious rulers or institutions. In that sense, world history could also be called God’s history as it unveiled the master plan guiding all human affairs. In sharp contrast, the history invented by Greco-Roman writers and revived in the Renaissance focused on the secular lives of powerful men (and some women), on their decisions, actions, and consequences in the public sphere of politics, diplomacy, and warfare, and on the great political, military, economic, and social developments. Assuming a universal human nature, such history used the past to develop an edifying arena of virtues and vices and living examples (to emulate and to avoid) allowing readers a wider range of human experience and thus a shortcut to a superior judgment, wisdom, flexibility, and practicality. This history, as we still know it, was largely secular in both its materials and its higher purposes. It avoided the wild historical leaps, fanciful comparisons and typologies, and focus on a metaphysical deity pulling the strings. Whereas medieval world history gave most authority and credit to God, classical and Renaissance history gave almost all the credit as well as the blame to human beings acting freely as independent agents of their own success and failure. Such historical writing did not exist in the fifteenth-century North because it came with Italian Renaissance humanism which arrived only after 1480 and didn’t really take hold in the curriculum until after 1500. With its universalizing temporal dimension – the history of all time and human existence – and its subordination of the major epochs to rulers or institutions - world history appealed to rulers and church officials in the Middle Ages. (Along with many other forms of medieval culture like chivalry, world history continued into the Renaissance, invariably mingling with newer humanist forms of history and blurring the differences between classical and Renaissance history, on the one hand, and medieval historical writing, on the other. For more on this, see the reading “Baldwin, Humanism History”.) Unlike classical circular time, Medieval Christian time was linear, following the Biblical model which runs from Creation to end of time in Apocalypse. Medieval time was not haphazard as everything important followed God’s plan for the unfolding of human existence. This teleological approach to time allowed medieval writers to create elaborate connections between different periods so that all important events foreshadowed later developments just as all later occurrences were connected to earlier prophesies and happenings. Here medieval world history borrowed on the early Christian idea that everything in the New Testament was prophesized in the Old Testament and that all previous history, Jewish and pagan, culminated in a triumphant Christianity which replaced earlier religions. With all time divided into seven ages, this book exemplifies Medieval world history. Most Medieval world history divided time into some mathematically appealing schema such as three, four, six, seven, or twelve periods. Church culture often divided time into three periods – everything before Christ under the Jewish or pagan law, the period during Christ’s life, and everything after Christ’s life until the end of time, that is, the period of the Church. Three periods went well with the Trinity. Four periods went well with the four seasons. Seven periods connected with the seven planets. And twelve periods connected with the twelve astrological signs and months. While each world history offered its own version of these mathematical schemas, all of them affirmed a metaphysical idea of time unfolding purposefully according to God’s plan. Thus our manuscript illumination illustrates the first period in world history – the perfect origins of life before the Fall when the world was still obediently under the control of God the Father. He appears here in the celestial sphere, enthroned and ruling. His presence exemplifies the politics of Medieval (and Renaissance) world history, with each epoch placed securely under the government of a powerful ruler or institution. To see world history here in visual terms, we should compare the unfolding of a linear, universal, all-encompassing time to Marmion’s handling of space which descends in every widening, cosmic circles from God’s celestial throne. Just as God presides over all time, so his visual power unfolds in ever-widening circles throughout the spherical cosmos like solar rays from the rising-setting sun over a natural landscape (as seen here). The solar theme is underscored in the orange and red spheres surrounding God and the fiery color of his robes. Understood this way, the formal structures of the image affirm the fixed politics of world history as a medieval form of court or church culture. II. The Cosmic Order of the Natural Sphere Marmion’s image also affirms the Medieval courtly-Christian cosmos as an orderly and harmonious hierarchy with everything in its proper place. As discussed in class, the Labors of the Months emerged as a secular theme within church culture, public and private, including the grand stained glass windows and portals of Gothic cathedrals and the small illuminations of private prayer books (Books of Hours). Court culture also patronized this theme in a more secular context after the late 14th century, as did burgher culture in the mid sixteenth century (Bruegel’s large landscapes). As with late Medieval and Early Renaissance depictions of the Months, Marmion’s Adam and Eve in Paradise offers an image of the orderly, harmonious, and hierarchical cosmos with God the Father in the celestial sphere, Adam and Eve located below in the terrestrial sphere, and below them, the irrational sphere of beasts and fowl. Putting aside for now the symbolism of individual animals, we should see how Marmion used them to affirm the enduring Western idea of a hierarchical universe. Remember that God made Adam and Eve in his image and immediately gave them dominion over the animal world, charging Adam in particular to name the beasts. And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth. (Gen. 1:26-28). ... And out of the ground the Lord God formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air; and brought them to Adam to see what he would call them: and whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof. (Genesis 2: 19) Interestingly, the one animal left out or minimized is the serpent. (Do I see a snake crawling at Adam’s feet?) As the animal who will upset the natural hierarchy and drag Adam and Eve down to the level of “bestial” appetites, his apparent absence (or minimizing) underscores the idyllic qualities of this landscape. Yet all is not perfect for Adam holds the forbidden fruit and gestures toward Eve. III. The New Naturalism of the Early Renaissance Marmion’s Adam and Eve in Paradise is ground breaking in its naturalism as a landscape, in part through the partial use of one–point perspective. Invented by early Renaissance artists in Italy around 1410, this new system for making deep, plausible spaces quickly spread into Northern painting by the 1440s. It was the only innovation of the early Italian Renaissance which spread North in the fifteenth century. The new Italian interest in classical art and architectural form arrived only at the end of the fifteenth century with Dürer and didn’t appear widely until 1515. Admittedly it is harder to see one-point perspective in a landscape. Its effects are much more striking with architectural and urban scenes. Nonetheless, one-point perspective structures the landscape which recedes properly toward a horizon rather than rising vertically. I also see a new naturalism in the lush topography of the natural setting and in the inclusion of animals which extended the world of nature with a richer vocabulary of terrestrial particulars. At the same time, Marmion avoided packing in too many animals, as seen in some earlier representations, presumably because such crowding would have ruined the geometric simplicity of his composition. One might even note the accurate description of all the animals but the lion, which Marmion had never seen. Lush Landscape, Pastoral Traditions, and Nature’s Beauty as a New Naturalism While Paradise was always known for its lush beauty, most earlier fifteenth-century images failed to develop lush or beautiful settings. Here we need to see the beauty of Marmion’s nature as yet another element in the new naturalism. It may also be that Marmion borrowed this sensual beauty from a courtly visual tradition where lush gardens of love and amorous pastoral were more traditionally established and where amorous couples frequently appeared. Replace the amorous shepherd and shepherdess with Adam and Eve and the result might look like Marmion’s image. Despite signs that the artist worked to extend the naturalism of his fifteenth-century predecessors, the “progress” in this direction remains somewhat limited. The one architectural motif – the throne of God – shows no one-point perspective either because Marmion didn’t understand it fully or because he deliberately made the celestial realm appear flattened and otherworldly. Further examination of the radiating cosmic circles now makes me retract the comment made in class that these circles are spherical in accord with one-point perspective. Furthermore, Marmion’s nudes show no interest in close observation or proper proportion, not to mention the classical nudity beginning to appear in Italian Renaissance art in the 1460s (Pollaiuolo). Marmion’s Adam and Eve remain the elongated, Late Gothic stick figures seen everywhere in fifteenth-century Northern art right through Bosch (d. 1517). His naturalism is most striking, then, in the world of landscape description, light and color, and landscape perspective. A More Particular World of Animal Symbolism To my mind, the only important animal symbolism here is that discussed above in section II on cosmic hierarchies (God – mankind – animal). To fuss over the individual symbolism of each animal included by Marmion is to risk getting lost in nit-picky details and to miss the larger issues. To be sure, the history of art offers images with very important symbolic details such as Bronzino’s Father Time, Venus and Cupid. But Marmion’s image is not one of them. While urging you NOT to get sidetracked on petty symbolic details in this course, let me also explain briefly what these particular animals probably meant (as best as I can determine). The rabbit was known for fertility and frequently appeared in fifteenth-century Northern pastoral love scenes, for example the tapestries of the Lady and the Unicorn. Placed next to Adam and Eve, the rabbit presumably refers to the fertile and fruitful nature of Paradise and, more generally, to the lust which overwhelmed Adam and Eve after they ate the forbidden fruit (according to medieval theology). For the same reason, Dürer later included a rabbit in his 1504 engraving of Adam and Eve. The swan was an aristocratic bird favored in courtly emblems and heraldry for men and women and appears as such on the red banner directly above the Duke of Berry and on his golden salt cellar in the Limbourg Brothers’s January. Here the swan adds to the courtly beauty and elegance of the whole landscape. (A dirty pig would have been out of place in Marmion’s luminous and tidy nature.) Although the swan was known for its heavenly music, musical symbolism does not seem relevant here. Finally, the swan was associated with aristocratic women for a variety of reasons which you will be discussing in an upcoming writing assignment. This seems important here given the swan’s placement next to Eve, the direction of its gaze, and the position of Eve’s left hand which connects her visually with the swan. The drinking stag is an icon of Early Christian art tied to Psalm 42 where the soul panting after the lord is compared to the hart (stag) drinking from the water. This metaphor was well known in Christian theology and appeared in illustrated manuscripts of the Bible (especially the Psalms) and in illuminated Books of Prayer such as Jean Colombe’s miniature of King David in the Duke of Berry’s Trés Riches Heures. Finally, the lion appears as a tamed beast here, underscoring the perfect harmony of Paradise. The Western Tradition of Animal Allegory and Nature as a Symbolic System From classical antiquity through the seventeenth century, natural science, philosophy, and theology all developed comprehensive allegorical interpretations of the natural world. That is, writers and artists interpreted the world as a coherent system of interlocking references, parallels and contrasts, macrocosms and microcosms. Every animal was thoroughly allegorized in classical natural science in the sense that each was associated with a rich series of fables and moral qualities. Medieval Christian writers extended this tradition with a new layer of specifically Christian allegorical significance. With the rise of vernacular writing in the 12th century, one of the more popular late medieval vernacular texts were compilations of animal lore called Bestiaries which broadened and extended animal lore. Even today, we unconsciously assume an allegorized animal world when we refer to the timid hare, the brave lion, the sly fox, the lecherous goat, the gluttonous pig, the fearless eagle, the faithful dog, and so on. Renaissance Naturalism as Allegorical Vision This leads me to a general point on allegory and naturalism. The rise of a new naturalism in the Early Renaissance is not the end of “medieval” allegory. On the contrary, Renaissance naturalism offered a new way to allegorize the world by introducing and carefully organizing a rich, densely packed field of symbolic details. We have already seen this in the Labors of the Months where the many details worked to affirm feudal social and political hierarchies for courtly viewers. The more secular detail and ”observation” in those works, the more true courtly values became simply by imbedding themselves deeply in a richly “described” empirical world grounded in a seemingly everyday life. To better comprehend how naturalism tends to be allegorical (especially between 1300 and 1700 when allegory ruled Western thinking as a principle of nature), we might remember that naturalism is always selective. And in its selectivity, naturalism creates a interpreted world skewed toward the values of dominant social groups (patrons and audiences). In short, artistic naturalism necessarily encodes and disguises (naturalizes) the shaping values of its audiences. See in this light, all Renaissance (and Baroque) naturalism is inherently “allegorical” especially if we broaden the term “allegorical” to include any tendency to impose moral, political, social and religious significance on earthly things and events. Modern Science and the End of Allegory as a Ruling Cultural Principle While some allegorical tendencies continue in modern art and popular imagery, the age of allegory as a ruling principle of culture lasted until the end of the seventeenth century. It died in the early to mid eighteenth century as an emerging modern science demolished most of the earlier, allegorical, astrological, theological, and symbolic interpretations of the natural world including the fundamental idea that the cosmos was a fixed and stable hierarchy with noble mind ruling base matter.