Video: What people are made of: non-standard works of artists
2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55
Grotesque costumes of crafts and professions are an original genre of painting and graphics that attracted artists from different countries and eras.
The grotesque - a combination of unexpected and bizarre, overly exaggerated and often fantastic images - is a typical technique of baroque art. Of particular interest is the genre of the collective portrait, composed of the things belonging to the person being portrayed. Following the principle “I carry everything with me” (lat. Omnia meum mecum porto), the artists created whole collections of visual metaphors of the human body.
The Italian master Giuseppe Arcimboldo is traditionally considered the founder of the genre. Hence the generalized name of such works - "arcimboldeski". The famous painting "The Librarian" presents a skillfully painted anthropomorphic figure, composed of book volumes.
This image is interpreted as a fantasy portrait of the Austrian historiographer Wolfgang Lazius or as an allegorical irony over the idea of a world catalog of books embodied in the Bibliotheca universalis by the Swiss scientist Konrad Gessner. Some experts see the picture as a non-trivial mockery of thoughtless book collecting and mechanical accumulation of knowledge.
Giuseppe Arcimboldo Librarian, 1562. Source: commons.wikimedia.org
Art critics consider grotesque costumes to be subtle satire, the prototype of caricature. This version is confirmed by an anti-Catholic leaflet issued in 1577 by the Swiss Protestant draftsman and engraver Tobias Stimmer.
In the pretentiously grotesque image of the Gorgon Medusa, none other than Pope Gregory III appears. His whole figure is a pile of items of Catholic church utensils. The monstrous head is framed with satirical images of animals illustrating the vices of the clergy. In one company with a predatory wolf, a lustful pig and an avaricious goose, there was a bespectacled donkey, which stares at a book, feigning learning.
Tobias Shtimmer "Head of the Gorgon", 1670. Source: commons.wikimedia.org
In 1624, the Italian printmaker and painter Giovanni Battista Bracelli published a collection of 47 prints, Bizzarie di Varie Figure. Among the bodily cubic figures there are allegories of crafts: a bricklayer, a barber, a grinder, a bell ringer. The richness of colors and roundness of the contours inherent in Archimboldo's manner are replaced by emphasized schematism and severity of lines, vividly recalling the primitive mannequins that were used by artists at that time as visual teaching aids.
Giovanni Battista Bracelli "Bizzarie di varie figure", 1624, sheet 27. Source: internationaltimes.it
Giovanni Battista Bracelli "Bizzarie di varie figure", 1624, sheet 45. Source: internationaltimes.it
Bracelli's idea is continued by the graphic series created around 1695 by the French master Nicolas de Larmessen, known as Costumes grotesques, Les costumes grotesques et les métiers, Habits des métiers et professions.
Initially, it consisted of 97 stylized portraits of representatives of various specialties. Here are no longer "come to life" craft tools and attributes, but fantasy costumes, which can be used to study professional classes. Perhaps, in addition to the grotesque, these images also had a satirical meaning or served educational purposes.
Nicolas de Larmessen, Personalifications of Medicine, Pharmacy and Surgery, 1695. Source: commons.wikimedia.org
The grandiose figure of the healer is composed of the works of Hippocrates and Galen, the medieval treatises of Avicenna and Races, and other medical luminaries. From the mouth of the doctor come medical appointments and prescriptions in the form of lightning: “Enemas. Bloodletting. Laxatives. Emetics ….
Nearby on the table are a flask of urine, a steaming bowl of some kind of medicine, and a recipe with a list of medicinal herbs. On the head of the pharmacist there is a distillation cube or distillation flask, on the chest there are bags of medicinal oils, the legs are made up of jars of creams and syrups. The personification of the surgeon consists of bandages, forceps, clamps, medical mirrors …
Nicolas de Larmessen "Artist's costume". Source: commons.wikimedia.org
Nicolas de Larmessen "Attorney's suit". Source: commons.wikimedia.org
A more recent, but no less expressive example is the collection of color prints by the German artist Martin Engelbrecht. These are a kind of revived emblems of the components of professional skill. Here is a bookseller in a luxurious bibliotheque. And here is a dapper bookbinder, constructed from bookbinding tools, ready-made and not yet bound books. Instruments were often numbered and signed at the bottom in several languages.
Martin Engelbrecht, The Personification of the Bookselling, circa 1730. Source: rijksmuseum.nl
Bookbinder's costume, engraving by an unknown master from the original by M. Engelbrecht, 1708-1756. Source: rijksmuseum.nl
The grotesque costumes reflected the very essence of the intellectual atmosphere of the Baroque in its tireless pursuit of a systemic comprehension of the world, complex interconnections and eternal change.
Every thing was endowed with a symbolic meaning and served as a visual illustration. It is also a special aesthetics of surprise, based on witty mixing and bizarre combination of objects and details. However, the confusion - even the most unexpected - was understandable in meaning. An integral object should have been unmistakably guessed in it.
Martin Engelbrecht "The Butcher's Suit". Source: commons.wikimedia.org
Martin Engelbrecht "The Gardener's Suit". Source: commons.wikimedia.org
The genre of grotesque costume also attracted artists of later times. In the early 19th century, London-based publisher Samuel William Force published a series of exquisite aquatints, Hieroglyphs, with fantasy depictions of professions. Musician, hairdresser, florist, cooper, writer - their heads are made of recognizable instruments.
Hatter, Cooper, Blacksmith, Carpenter, circa 1800. Source: wellcomecollection.org
Florist, writer, musician, hairdresser, circa 1800. Source: wellcomecollection.org
In 1831, the English graphic artist and medical scientist George Spratt released a series of grotesque "personifications" in the spirit of Archimboldes. The figures of people are composed of materials and attributes of their crafts or objects with which they are associated. The drawings were printed by the famous London lithographer George Edward Madely and were a resounding success, astonishing the public with their artistry and originality of design. Spratt's colored lithographs remain coveted collectibles to this day.
A physiognomist with a body of faces diagnoses the characteristics of people by referring to an illustrated guide. Apothecary's hat - a mortar with a pestle for grinding preparations; arms and legs - medicinal jars-bottles; coat - in the form of a measuring cylinder and a cutter for tablets.
George Spratt "Physiognomist". Source: commons.wikimedia.org
George Spratt The Wandering Apothecary. Source: commons.wikimedia.org
The multi-colored figure of a mineralogist is composed of rocks. And the mobile library - hello to Engelbrecht! - is a graceful female figure made up of books. Such libraries (eng. Circulating library) allowed reading literary novelties and specialized publications for a fee.
George Spratt Mineralogist. Source: commons.wikimedia.org
George Spratt The Circulating Library. Source: commons.wikimedia.org
Andre de Barro "The Bookseller", late 20th century. Source: artchive.ru
Baroque wit is also in demand in contemporary art. The current variations of Giuseppe Arcimboldo's motives are the works of the French surrealist painter Andre de Barro.
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