I have this fabulous drawing board that my boyfriend's father dug out of his garage. It is painted scrap wood, 3/4" thick and approximately 19"x20". I was itching to start a new painting, but before doing so I wanted to deal with this ~6"x3" scrap of watercolor paper that had been taped to the board for months. I no longer remember whence it came, but watercolor paper is precious, so I obviously felt that sticking it to my drawing board would make sure I used it. Well, I finally did.
For years I have wanted to paint some detail from one of the few extant pages of the Belleville Breviary, which was illuminated by the great 14th-century Parisian miniaturist, Jean Pucelle. Given that the project before me involved using a small slip of paper simply to avoid throwing it away, I felt the time may have arrived to pay my homage to Monsieur Pucelle.
On the bottom of the breviary's December page appear two figures, one haloed and one not, and they stand beside a pile of tumbling down bricks.
The fabulous Michael Camille tells me that the haloed figure is an apostle and the non-sanctified individual is the prophet Zachariah. Zachariah holds a banner that says, "I will raise up thy sons." (Zachariah 9:13). In echoed answer to this Old Testament scripture, the apostle's banner bears the words, "Resurrection of the flesh, life eternal," which are the last two articles of the Apostles' Creed. And each man holds a brick from the destroyed Temple, which is at their right.
The point Pucelle sought to make with this image concerns proving a correspondence between the Old and New Testaments. Medieval theologians put a lot of sincere thought and textual analysis into finding passages from the Old Testament that seemed to correspond to, indeed to presage, passages from the New Testament. As it is with language, "facts" and history: you find what you seek, the question asked is the question answered, and medieval scholars found proof after proof that the New Testament was somehow prefigured by and foretold in the Old Testament. Personally, I like to think about this medieval project of correspondences by reference to reader response theory; in order to reflect that much of the meaning we take from a text derives from us as readers rather than from the text itself.
At any rate, I loved this delicate image, but was not a huge fan of the scriptural meaning with which Pucelle had endowed it. I knew I wanted to change the meaning of the image, while preserving the image. I guess that makes my project similar to the medieval theologians about whom I just spoke. I derived meaning from elsewhere and imposed it on the painting. But I did so after I had almost completely finished the painting. Here are a couple of sketch and early process pictures taken when I still had no idea who these figures would become for me. (The leafy border design is certainly inspired by Pucelle, but is my own composition.)
Finally, I began to concoct my own game of correspondences. Scholar after medieval scholar would read and admire the works of pre-Christian (a.k.a. pagan) authors and yet they would tread a careful path in discussing their admiration for or mimicry of said authors. The writings of classical poets predated Jesus, just as did the Old Testament, but medieval scholars seldom played the same game of correspondences with classical literature that they did with the Old Testament. They could less readily sanctify it by imagining that it actually prefigured Christian scripture.
For one thing (and I am being very general here), classical writings came from a wildly different spiritual and cultural milieu whereas, to Christian minds, the culture of the Old Testament spawned and was subsumed by the culture of the New Testament. For another, many of the social values and basic assumptions about the world represented in classical literature directly conflicted with the mores and teachings of medieval Catholicism. These disparities did not, in every case, keep medieval scholars from seeking correspondences between pagan writers and Catholic scripture, but the relationship between pagan and Catholic thought remained a sticky one often approached with trepidation by medieval writers. At least until the great Thomas Aquinas tackled Aristotle, many medieval scholars happily read classical authors but did not talk very much about them, unless it was to caution against letting the beauty of classical poetry blind one to the errors of pagan viewpoints.
One such author was the renowned bishop, Saint Gregory of Tours. Like any sufficiently educated man of his day (not to mention one from an august family, who was certainly being groomed for high positions), Gregory would have read mostly scripture and Christian authors, but likely would have been exposed to a number of classical non-Christian authors as well. He certainly read one of the more popular pagan authors of the Middle Ages, Virgil.
As I began to think about these two men, Gregory and Virgil, I considered the opera magna for which each became primarily known; the Aeneid on the one hand, and the Historia Francorum on the other. Virgil's Aeneid recounts the legendary heroic, tragic and divinely sanctioned adventures of Aeneas from the Trojan War to his ultimate founding of Rome. Whether written to praise or criticize Augustus, the Aeneid certainly celebrates Rome herself. Gregory's Historia Francorum chronicles events from the Creation through the Christianization of Gaul and the reigns of Frankish kings, whom Gregory himself knew. Again, like Virgil with Augustus, if Gregory's relationships with the Frankish kings were not always untroubled, in the Historia he ultimately seeks to praise Gaul herself.
I see, probably because I seek it, some correspondence between the scope and spirit of the Aeneid and of the Historia Francorum. I decided immediately that I had painted, not an apostle and Zachariah, but Gregory of Tours and Virgil. Now I had to figure out what they were saying to each other. That is, what to put on their banners? A college Latin professor made sure that the opening lines of the Aeneid occupy a readily accessible portion of my memory: arma virumque cano, "I sing of arms and men". It places the reader directly in a world of battle and conflict and proceeds to tell the reader how the forces of destruction can also act as forces of creation. Empires fall so that empires may arise. Obviously this line would grace Virgil's banner.
Imagine my delight when looking to the opening of the Historia Francorum, I found these words: scripturus bella regum, "I am about to write of the wars of kings". I had certainly found my correspondence. Gregory, too, immediately places his reader in a place of conflict and, as we know, he ultimately shows his reader how such conflict created a powerful kingdom. Struggle and battle do not merely destroy, but also generate. Additionally, both authors draw attention to themselves as narrators right away: "I sing..." and "I am about to write..." I love this early somewhat unselfconscious insertion of author's self into narrative. I know the conceit figures in most medieval works, but here the practice comprises shared ground between the ancient and medieval. So I finally had text for my banners. I knew what my figures were saying to each other. They were discoursing on states and men, on war and power. It also became an easy stretch to imagine the pile of bricks as the ruins of Troy, for growth is predicated on destruction. And, in good medieval fashion, I labeled my figures as well.
This most difficult problem solved, I set about creating an appropriate frame for the piece. I procured some birch balsa wood, stained it, and mounted the painting. I then decorated the frame with an original design. I thought the whole thing came out quite nicely and I loved the mental journey its creation occasioned for me.
For more arts and crafts, visit The Celery Museum's Etsy page.
0 comments:
Post a Comment