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While in an art museum in the Netherlands last fall I noticed a sign on a cork board  advertising a special Exhibit at The Hermitage Museum of Amsterdam.  I was excited to see that it was a show of work by an nineteenth century artist whose work I have long been drawn to, Caspar David Friedrich.  I was privileged to see 6 drawings and 9 paintings by the artist and spent a long time in front of them a few days later on my last half day in Amsterdam.

Moonrise over the sea was completed in 1821, and presents a beautiful, yet contemplative scene.  I noticed several triangles in the scene.  There is a triangle where the points include the large anchors in the front, the two women sitting on a rock, and the two men standing on a rock further into the sea.  There is also a triangle between the moon, the anchors, and the men, or the moon, men, and women.  I point out those physical triangles to set the stage to point out the triangle that I think is most important.  That is, the triangle between the one viewing the picture, in this case me, the people in the image, and the moon.  The contemplation of the ones in the picture is echoed by me as I look at the painting.

Sunset (Brothers) is a tiny painting compared to some of the larger ones in the room, yet it has a great presence.  The landscape is simple with a warm glow of dusk.  The water reflects this fading light.

On a Sailing Ship is full of youthful love.  This painting was done in 1818 and 1821.  A couple clasps hands as they peer off the bow of a ship at a distant city or port.  Is the sky golden with the morning light of their relationship?  This painting is said to be completed after Friedrich returned from his honeymoon.  Unlike a number of paintings by Friedrich, where the human figures seem alone in the presence of others, this couple appears connected in their thoughts.  The couple are linked to each other, and they are related with their surroundings.

Swans was painted before 1832 and depicts two swans encased in foliage.  There is a sliver of moon sending out light into the scene. Why swans?  Perhaps because they are known for forming ties and staying with one partner for life.

In the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, the Rotterdam art museum, I saw many good works of art last fall including the interesting piece by René Magritte entitled La Reproduction Interdite.  In English, the title translates to “Not to be Reproduced.”  Magritte is one of the surrealist painters that I appreciate.  I am intrigued by the way in which he see the world and the interesting poetic nature to his work.  The book, in the painting, is in an accurate position  while the man remains the same.  The man remains anonymous, although the painting was painted as a portrait.

I pointed my camera to the ceiling of Sint Jan Cathedral (Saint John) to get a detail shot of a rib vault.  A man approached me and began to talk about the ceiling, first in Dutch and then in English.  The man, J. Dirks, had done extensive sketches and research on the older ceiling paintings from the 1500s.  The older paintings had been covered with white paint during the reformation and then in the 1800s someone had painted a vine design over the white paint.
In broken English, he showed me where to point my camera to find the people and animals that had been revealed through restoration to once again look down upon the parishioners  and tourists below.  He allowed me to look at his drawings, photographs, and notes he had on the subject.  He was very kind and spent time showing me the ceiling in the nave and one of the wings.  He discussed the history, how part of the ceiling had burnt down and therefore had none of the paintings from the 16th century.  Due to the curvature of the ceiling we had to walk to different parts of the chapel in order to see the different designs.  I had to hold the camera very still and try to rest it on the pews in order to get a discernible picture of the far off images in the dim church.  For someone who is willing to look, there are secrets in the ceiling of the Sint Jan church in ’s-Hertogenbosch, The Netherlands.

My day in Den Bosch began by going to the Bosch museum (Noordbrabants Museum, ’s-Hertogenbosch, The Netherlands).  The museum was small, but had a number of paintings by or in the same style as the famous artist from the city, Hieronymus Bosch.

Of the older paintings in the Noordbrandts collection, several contained buildings that were cut in half resulting in the interior of the building being exposed.  This technique of displaying the unseen is not as popular in contemporary fine art today.  When I see that type of image I think of cartoons.  But why not leave out a front wall of a building?

One of the artworks in the museum that I particularly became interested in was Interior van een kerk (Interior of a church) by Pieter Neeffs de Oude, completed between 1635-1645.  The walls of the church lead the eye up the painting.  The artist used the light to lead the viewer’s eye to the priest, the candles, and a painting.  It has a simple beauty to it, yet it portrays the whitewashed church after reformers had cleansed it of iconography.  The artist and historian in me cries out at the damage to the art and artifacts.
Later I went to see the Bosch cathedral Sint Jan which was whitewashed at one time.  The ceiling has been restored to some extant and one can see the designs on it that were original.

The Mauritshuis museum in The Hague, Netherlands is designed with many protruding panels giving a room more wall space then it might otherwise have.  While walking around the museum, I looked with anticipation around each protruding panel for the works of art that would be displayed in these alcoves.  On one of the walls, I found The Goldfinch by Carel Fabritius.  This small, unassuming work would not usually catch my eye, however when I saw it there was a rush of recognition.  It was not the work itself that drew me to it, but the memories surrounding it.  I recognized having studied it in school and the loneliness of being in a foreign land melted away as I saw something that connected me to my life at home.
There is something so quiet about this painting, which was done in the last year of the young artist’s life.  There is a lightness of spirit, perhaps due to the bright simple background.

There is a thread of thought that scoffs images, stories, and other communications which tell a story in a historically inaccurate way.  Those who follow this thought pattern would tear apart Pieter Brueghel II’s Census at Bethlehem completed in 1605. I spent some time studying this painting last fall while in the Bonnefantenmuseum, Maastricht, The Netherlands.  This painting is referring to the Biblical and historical account where Caesar Augustus called for a census to be taken of the people in the Roman Empire.  People had to return to where their family originated.  In the Biblical account this is why Mary and Joseph, who lived in Nazereth, were in Bethlehem when Jesus was born.  Bethlehem is a Jewish city from the time of the Roman Empire right?  Well not in Brueghal’s image.  His Bethlehem is complete with medieval Belgian city, a Northern European castle, snow on the ground with a snow ball fight, a Christian church (before Christ was born?), and a wild boar (definitely not Kosher) being slaughtered.  Not quite the accurate picture of Bethlehem as we imagine it, however, consider the original audience of the image.  Consider that the audience could relate to the setting, and that most who viewed the picture had probably never traveled very far from their home city in their life.  Without pictures of what far away places look like, one tends to consider everywhere the same as where one is.  Also, the story takes upon itself the life of the common man.  The story becomes integrated into the the 17th century Dutch life and not a pious thing above their reach.  Is the story more authentic* when it is historically accurate but unrelated to the culture in which it is told, or is it more authentic* when it is told within a culture taking on meaning that those viewing the image can understand?

*I am using the word authentic and not the word accurate.

While walking through the Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam, The Netherlands, the painting, Jerusalem (Golgatha, Consummatum Est, Crucifixion) by Jean-Léon Gérôme caught my eye.  It did not catch my eye because of the style, but due to the treatment of the subject.  This is an interesting painting because it is the classical crucifixion theme redone in a way that I have not seen before.  The cross itself is not visible.  Instead one views the shadows of the three laden cross as they fall across the rocky ground.  Christ is not in the picture, but does that weaken the story?  There are symbols of the darkness that clothed the day for three hours according to the account of the event in Mark 15:33.    Jerusalem is lit up in the background and darkness like a curtain is falling (or lifting) from the right upper corner.  The darkness blocked the light and there is a shadow that divides the city of Jerusalem from the place of the skull. One sees a distant caravan of people walking in the background.  They are passing by the scene, rather than crowding around the crosses as is pictured in other versions of the story.  The shadows of the crosses stretch lonely across the foreground.

While in the Neue Pinakothek, Munich, Germany another more contemporary crucifixion and rather graphic image by Lovis Corinth, captured my attention.  His work is entitled The Red Christ and was completed in 1922.  This Christ has depleted outstretched limbs complimented with thick red blood.  The support is covered with swirling areas of color and large areas of paint.  Out of this mess is an experience of the horrific moment that Christ was stuck with a spear.  A crowd is depicted around the cross, with all but one or two figures indistinguishable.  Out of the works in this post, this piece, best depicts the horrific nature of the death on the cross.

These are four different scenes of the same story.  The paintings were done in four different centuries over five hundred years.  Style changed.  The message had different emphasis, but the story is the same.

Art has the power to teach us something new about the mundane in life.  Sometimes art portrays the beautiful, sometimes the ugly.  This past fall when I had the opportunity to walk through several museums in the Netherlands and Germany, I came across four paintings that presented the biblical account of the crucifixion of Christ in unexpected or at least different ways.  They present four artist perspectives from painters who lived in four different centuries.
Perhaps the oldest Crucifixion image that entranced me while visiting museums last fall was a painting done in 1512 by Hans Baldung, The Crucifixion.  I found it in the Gemaldegalerie museum Berlin, Germany.  Partially, I was caught off guard by the interpretation of the cross being an actual tree stump instead of a slab of wood.   The closer I looked the more I captivated I was in the anguished face of the girl who clung to the foot of the cross.  This is most likely a portrayal of Mary Magdalene who is often portrayed in medieval Christian art as a symbol of a penitent sinner.  Her emotion and posture attracted me to this particular image.

There was a series of paintings that Rembrandt van Rijn did concerning the life of Christ in the Alte Pinakothek Museum in Munich, Germany.  I may mention the series later, but one in the series was of the crucifixion.  This painting is interesting because it captures the moment when the cross is hoisted into an upright position.  While two thugs push and pull it into place,  there is a third figure bracing the cross.  The third figure is a self-portrait of Rembrandt.  He is placing himself among the others who are crucifying Christ.  He is saying that he, like them, is a sinner.

(Rembrandt is in the center near Christ’s feet)

I found this interesting sculpture, Circular Road by Robert Long,  in the Kröller-Müller Museum last September  (2008).  It is a simple abstract sculpture that has a name which guides the viewer’s  interpretation of the abstract form.   My eye follows the pieces around in a road that takes the long way to the point of destination.  The road is a journey and not the path of convenience?    Perhaps the road is full of dead ends and places to turn around?

While wondering through Het Rembrandthuis Museum, in Amsterdam, The Netherlands last autumn, a painting caught my eye.  The walls of the Rembrandt House were covered with paintings salon style, and although it was hard for the eye to isolate any image, this particular painting caught my attention and held it.  The painting, The Last Supper, by Gerbrand van den Eeckhout (1664) , was on loan to The Rembrandt House Museum from the Rijksmuseum.  The painting resembles Rembrandt’s style because the artist was not only a pupil but also a friend of Rembrandt.  Another interesting thing about the painting was the  way that the artist reinterpreted the subject matter.
The tone of  “The Last Supper” is very intimate.  This is a common subject matter for classical artists, and Eeckhout paints it in an intimate manner that may have been influenced by Rembrandt’s The Supper at Emmaus (1648).  The setting is similar.  Both images have an intimacy to them.  The lighting that shuts the edges of the canvas out of the scene creates this intimacy.  Also, in each painting, there are people in the painting that have their back to the viewer.  This closes the group in the painting and makes us who are viewing the scene feel like we are outsiders.  I have always imagined that the last supper would have been an intimate gathering and not a staged scene where all members are following stage rules and not allowing their backs to be toward the audience.

The Last Supper, Gerbrand van den Eeckhout

The Supper at Emmaus, Rembrandt Van Rijn