Seeing Renaissance Pillows: a Short Bit on an Unnecessary Topic

JF Ptak Science Books LLC  Post 626  Blog Bookstore

Evelyn, a dog, having undergone
Further modification
   Pondered the significance of short-person behavior
In pedal-depressed panchromatic resonance
And other highly ambient domains...

“Arf” she said.
—F. Zappa, One Size Fits All (“Evelyn the Modified Dog”)

I was going to write something completely different about these images for this post—but I fell completely into the beds of these paintings—actually, I missed the beds and made straight for the pillows.  I really didn’t have anywhere to go with this--no point, no cozy tie-ups—and when I told about my wife Patti Digh about this problem she wisely told me to forget about a point, and “send it out into the world”.  (Patti has no doubt that the subject of this post sounds like an unending and probably unendurable doctoral dissertation.)  And so when faced with my own set of sensory inputs that couldn’t come to some sort of comprehension, “arf”  sounded pretty good.

The first image is an oil on canvas (transferred from wood) by Garofalo (Benvenuto Tisi da Garofalo, Italian, Ferrarese, 1476?–1559) called Saint Nicholas of Tolentino Reviving the Birds and painted around 1530. The man in the bed is a deathly sick St. Nicholas, an Augustinian monk, who was attended by no fewer than six of his brethren.  They are shown offering him a plate of roasted birds, but Nicholas, a vegetarian, rose from his bed and in rejecting the food brought the birds back to life.  We see that long, bed-width pillow with a small cozy on top of it

In another painting of another Nicholas, Bicci di Lorenzo’s (Italian, Florentine, 1373–1452) Nicholas Providing Dowries (date 1433–35), we see the Bishop of Myrna in Asia Minor Nicholas pushing bags of gold through a transom and into a house. Sounds a little like St. Nick of Christmas lore, though this St. Nick was providing the dowries to three daughters of a destitute man unable to provide his offspring with money of his own. (Not having money for a dowry was a major deal in these times—without the money the women probably would not have been able to marry, forced to other not savory means for providing money for their daily needs to survive.  Here again we have a big red bed, with a bed-width pillow, and the smaller pillow on the top of it all.

The last example belongs to Vittore Carpaccio (c. 1460 – 1525/1526), in his The Dream of St. Ursula (painted 1495).  Again, the same:  red bed, big pillow (though no little fellow is visible).  There is a strange small ball-like object near her head at the base of the pillow, and her slippers are where they were when she stepped from them into the bed.  It looks like she has six books in her work area at the back of the room (as well as an hour glass on the desk).   There is a problematic burst of light on the ceiling from the high window to the left of the door—it doesn’t seem likely that this splash of light could be on the ceiling given the shadows in the room.  Oh well. 

And so.  There are more examples of these pillows, but we probably don’t need to look at more right now—just noticing them is probably enough. Sometimes finding interesting detail in the detail leads somewhere, and sometimes not. There is a continuing thread in this blog that looks at the importance of incidental detail in art, though today’s  post chooses the “sometimes not” option.

 

 

 

 

 

Comments

[Veach]

When I look for the "problematic burst of light" I see two arched windows with a higher round window at the 'back' of the room (from our standpoint) and the same three-window configuration on the right wall (from our standpoint). The sun is shining through all the windows/door on that wall, behind the 'angel'.

For me, however, the potted plants and half-screen in the back windows appear to be intentionally 2-dimensional and lack any shadowing or depth.

[John Ptak]

AH. The "problematic" bit for me is the light on the ceiling coming from that third (top) window on the right. I agree with the potted plants at the back of the room--I don't know what's going on their with their flatness.

[Jeff]

Well, John, if we discount that it's a dream and insist that the laws of physics must apply, then we can accept that there is a host of other angelic beings outside the door, brilliant ones, which would account for the light on the ceiling. Or, the inside of the window box is painted with a bright, reflective surface. And the potted plants are merely painted on screens closing the room off from the next. The ball below the sleeping woman's head is the little dog's tennis ball. All domestic dogs have tennis balls. Q.E.D.

[John Ptak]

Okay, I get the angels outside the door and the light etc., and the window boxes and reflective paint and flat surfaces. Okay, I'll give you that. But how come Ursula has the doggie's ball next to her pillow? Seems a little needy, to me. I mean, its the *dog's* ball. Maybe the dog was bad. Taken away. Bad dog. But what if that dog was a cat? Ursula is buried with 11,000 virgins. Maybe the ball is a skull?