Alberti’s Window

Tonight I finished reading Dark Water (by Robert Clark) as part of Heidenkind’s Art History Challenge. This book focuses on the 1966 flood in Florence which ruined and threatened many works of art. I liked a lot of things in this book, particularly in the middle section where Clark discusses damaged art/books and restoration techniques. I have to admit, though, that Clark’s writing style and half-baked themes about Icarus/water/Ruskin were annoying.

Anyhow, I was most fascinated about how much damage was caused by this flood (which was around 20′ deep in some areas). Clark writes that some 14,000 moveable artworks were damaged or destroyed.¹ The Biblioteca Nazionale also suffered extensive damage; 1.3 items needed restorative work and 8 million catalog cards were inundated.² It was also interesting to read about the innovative things that art/museum directors did to save pieces of history and culture – I particularly enjoyed reading about how the science museum’s director escaped the flood by walking along the roof towards the neighboring Uffizi gallery, while cradling Galileo’s telescope in her arm.

Here are some pictures taken right after the flood (by LIFE photographer David Lees):

Interior of the Basilica of Santa Croce, 6 November 1966
(Look at all that mud!)Moving Paintings in the Piazza Signoria, 6 November 1966Flood Damaged Books, 1966

Damaged Documents Hanging on Racks, 1966

Pretty crazy, huh? Does anyone have any recollections from when this flood occurred?

A large portion of the book discusses the destruction and restoration of Cimabue’s Crucufix from Santa Croce (c. 1288). Water damaged a good portion of the painting, and it took about ten years for the huge piece to be restored (partially because the wooden cross had absorbed so much water). There was a lot of controversy as to whether the cross should be restored at all, since there was so much damage. Ultimately, it was decided that overlapping trateggio (hatching applied with a fine brush) would be placed in the damaged areas, so that the viewer could see the damage but also get a sense of the original composition. I know that some restorers still disagree with how the Crucifix was restored, but it seems to me like the restoration team did a their best, given their limitations.

Here’s a picture of the original crucifix (photographed before 1966):

And here are two post-restoration photographs (the first one is from 1977):

What do you think of the restoration? Do you wish that the area was painted over to give a semblance of Cimabue’s original work, or do you like that the restoration recognizes the damaged areas?

All in all, Dark Water was a pretty interesting book to read. I found the beginning and end of the book to be a little boring, but the bulk of the book was quite fascinating.

1 Robert Clark, Dark Water: Flood and Redemption in the City of Masterpieces (New York: Doubleday, 2008), 162.

2 Ibid., 225.

Have you heard the story of how Thomas Jefferson was nearly killed by the artist John H. I. Browere? The elderly, retired statesman and ex-president was approached in 1825 by Browere, who asked to be allowed to take a life mask of Jefferson. Apparently, Browere was not very skillful; the plaster hardened too quickly, which impaired Jefferson’s breathing and ability to cry out for help. Luckily, Jefferson’s hand was resting on a nearby chair, and he was able to bang it on the floor to bring attention to his distress.

To make matters worse, Browere did not apply enough oil on Jefferson’s face, so the plaster stuck to the frail man’s face. Browere had to use a mallet and chisel to break the plaster off of Jefferson’s skin, and the ex-president reportedly groaned and even sobbed during the whole ordeal.¹ When discussing the removal process, Jefferson wrote in a letter that “there became a real danger that [my] ears would separate from [my] head sooner than from the plaster.”²

Poor man. It’s no wonder that Jefferson wrote in the same letter, “I now bid adieu for ever to busts and even portraits.”³

The above photograph of this infamous life mask was taken in 1939 by LIFE photographer Bernard Hoffman. Jefferson’s expression doesn’t look to happy – and can you blame him? The man couldn’t breathe!

Understandably, Browere didn’t have the greatest reputation. He was called an “itinerant sculptor” by Dumas Malone and a “vile plaisterer” by Jefferson’s granddaughter.⁴ Artists in the American Academy (i.e. Trumbull) and National Academy were opposed to Bowere, too.⁵ It seems, though, that the ambitious writer Charles Henry Hart was able to overlook all of Bowere’s faults. In 1899 Hart published a thorough examination of Bowere’s life casts in a book, and he even went as far as to call Bowere an “ingenious” man.⁶ (No doubt such a statement reflected well on Hart, who credited himself with rediscovering the artist.) Hmph.

Granted, I do think it is really fun to see life casts of so many prominent members from American history. In that aspect, I’m appreciative of what Bowere did. (If you are interested, you should look at some of the life casts in Hart’s book, found online here). As an artist, though, Bowere definitely was lacking in skill. After all, he almost killed one of the Founding Fathers through his incompetence.

Let’s end this post with a more pleasant portrait of Jefferson, shall we? At least Jefferson appears to breathe freely in this bust:

Houdon, Thomas Jefferson, 1789 (Museum of Fine Arts, Boston)

1 Annette Gordon-Reed, The Hemingses of Monticello (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2008), 626.

2 Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, 18 October 1825, in Smith, Republic of Letters, 3:1942-43. See also Gordon-Reed, 627.

3 Ibid.

4 Gordon-Reed, 626.

5 Charles Henry Hart, “Life Masks – Those Browere Made of Great Americans. Charles Heny Hart’s Comments on Them.” New York Times, 8 April 1899. Copy of article can be accessed here.

6 Charles Henry Hart, Browere’s Life Masks of Great Americans (Doubleday & McClure Company, 1899), x. Citation can be accessed online here.

I have been thinking a lot about Vermeer’s The Milkmaid (c. 1660) lately, mostly because of the publicity given to the current special exhibition at the Met. The last time The Milkmaid was on display in the United States was the 1939 World’s Fair. Curator Walter Liedtke has given this painting a very unusual and provocative interpretation, which I first learned about on a recent post by Lee Rosenbaum (CultureGrrl). You can read Liedtke’s discussion here, and also listen to a short radio interview with Rosenbaum here.

Liedtke thinks that the milkmaid can be interpreted in a more suggestive light, partially because of the inclusion of a foot warmer (a popular symbol for arousal in Dutch 17th century art) and the image of Cupid (on the tiles next to the foot warmer, shown above).

When I first heard of this interpretation, I guffawed and immediately thought of this newspaper cartoon that appeared in 1907:

This cartoon appeared in the Dutch publication, Het Vaderland. It was drawn at a time when Vermeer was gaining a lot of international attention. Prices had become so high for “Vermeers” that only American millionaires could afford to buy them. For example, Henry Clay Frick bought three Vermeers for his personal collection and home (which is now a museum in New York). The Dutch began to be concerned that The Milkmaid, which had been in the collection of an Amsterdam family for almost a century, would also be bought by the Americans. This idea of Americans snatching up all of Vermeer’s paintings is embodied in this part of the cartoon, where Uncle Sam is courting “Holland’s best-looking milkmaid.”¹

Anyhow, I keep thinking about this cartoon and Liedtke’s interpretation. With an American art historian interpreting the maid in a more sexual light, it now seems as if Uncle Sam is making a sexual proposition in the cartoon. (Yikes!) I wonder what Dutch scholars are going to think of this new theory. Maybe they’ll think that Liedtke Uncle Sam is a scuzz bag.

Or maybe not. In all honesty, though, I have found Liedtke’s theory to be interesting and semi-compelling (despite my initial reaction). I have never noticed the milkmaid’s foot warmer before, but I have seen foot warmers in a lot of other Dutch paintings. At just about the same time that Vermeer painted The Milkmaid, Jan Steen included foot warmers in many of his moralizing paintings, like The Lovesick Maiden (c. 1663-65) and The Doctor’s Visit (c. 1660). Here, the morality of the young girls are called into question by the presence of foot warmers (which suggest arousal because a girl is warmed underneath her skirt). Although Vermeer may have included the foot warmer to create a realistic scene (Henry Rand argues that the foot warmer indicates that the milkmaid’s “kitchen is not properly heated”), I think it is probable that there is symbolic significance.² After all, Vermeer included symbols in his other paintings, so The Milkmaid is probably not an exception.

What do other people think about Liedtke’s interpretation? Is the milkmaid naughty or nice? Do you think people will get upset with Americans for desecrating this popular symbol of the Dutch Golden Age? Maybe we’ll have to wait another seventy years (or longer!) before the Dutch will let us borrow one of their masterpieces again.

1 Emma Barker, Nick Webb, and Kim Woods, eds., The Changing Status of the Artist, (London: Yale University Press, 1999), 214. Ultimately, the Dutch government voted for funds to acquire The Milkmaid, so that the painting would stay in Holland. To see the other half of the cartoon, in which the milkmaid decides to choose a Dutchman as her suitor, click here.

2 Jonathan Janson, “What is the Milkmaid Cooking?” available from http://www.essentialvermeer.com/catalogue/milkmaid.html; Internet, accessed 15 September 2009.