Your paper will be a formal (i.e., visual or stylistic) comparison of the two paintings listed below, both representing the Virgin Mary and the Christ Child. It is NOT a research paper in the sense that you will be concentrating on ‘close looking’ at images of the paintings, and the only contextual information you need is what you know from the Gardner text ( Gardner’s Art Though The Ages 15th edition). Below is the identifying information for both paintings:
Rogier van der Weyden
Netherlandish, c. 1399/1400-1464
Virgin and Child, after 1454
Oil on wood
The Edith A. and Percy S. Straus Collection
44.535
Antoniazzo Romano
Italian (Roman), c. 1430-1512
Virgin and Child with a Donor, c. 1480
Tempera and gold leaf on wood
The Edith A. and Percy S. Straus Collection 44.551
Your paper will be a visual comparison of this fifteenth-century Netherlandish painting with this fifteenth-century (Early Renaissance) Italian painting. Both are small devotional images, perhaps meant to be kept in the patron’s home or in a small chapel. Since Rogier van der Weyden is discussed in the Gardner text , you should spend some time writing of the Houston painting in relation to what you know of his other works. You might refer to specific paintings, for example, The Descent from the Cross in the Prado, Madrid. (I will come back to this point in my last question below). Antoniazzo Romano is not mentioned in the Gardner book: he was an important painter of this period in Rome, influenced by a number of painters, including the Florentine Domenico Ghirlandaio.
Your overarching theme is a discussion of the distinctive style of naturalism or realism in painting that developed in northern Europe versus the artistic style of Italy in the fifteenth century, using these two works as examples. (You may also refer to other works of art illustrated in the Gardner text to make your points by way of comparison.) How is Van der Weyden’s realism different from Romano’s? Is it perhaps somewhat more attentive to the depiction of small details than the Italian work? How might you relate the naturalism, spatial qualities, and use of light and shade in Romano’s painting to the general visual character of art Renaissance Italy, including certain features like the invention of linear perspective? That is, how does Romano’s work fit in to the progressively more naturalistic quality of 15th century Italian art compared to Italian art in the preceding couple of centuries? (Note the cast shadows in Romano’s painting.) Note also, however, at least a couple of “unrealistic” aspects of Romano’s painting: the miniature figure of the patron/donor, and the ‘adult’ posture of the infant Jesus, who seems to be able to stand almost on his own. How might you relate Romano to the classical tradition in Italian Renaissance art? Note here the particular idealized form the figure of the Virgin has, as well as the contrapposto stance of the Christ child.
In the visual comparison of these two paintings, also think about the difference in medium: Van der Weyden’s is in oil, Romano’s in tempera. How might this affect the visual qualities of each? Consider, for example, the intensity of the colors, the relative opacity or translucency of the pigments, and how the artists model their figures in light and shade (note the use of hatched lines in Romano’s painting). Are there other visual qualities and features of these works strike you as significant?
Consider also Van der Weyden’s particular reputation for the depiction of human emotions: how is this exemplified in the Houston painting? And how is this depiction of emotion similar or different from that in other examples of his work in the Gardner text? Does Romano also seem interested in articulating an emotional relationship between mother and child in his painting, and if so, how does he express this? In this respect, how is his painting similar or different from Romano’s? And for both paintings, how do the figures, in their body language and facial expressions, establish a connection with the viewer? How do you think this connection expresses the religious/devotional function of both these works?
Your paper should cover all the points mentioned, but not necessarily in the order I give them. You should not write the paper as a list of separate, unrelated answers to these questions, but as a unified essay, with a clear thesis statement in the introductory paragraph and a coherent argument. Your visual observations must all relate to aspects of that argument: do not simply offer visual descriiptions of the painting with no underlying point. Some of your visual observations of a painting may be highly specific to that work; others will be relative; that is, they will only make sense when you compare one painting to another. In this assignment we are not only trying to find out things that are true about a particular painting in an “absolute” sense, but also train our eyes to recognize stylistic differences/variations between paintings from different artists and different cultures. Try not to make value judgments about the paintings. This paper is NOT about whether you prefer one painting over the other, but about sharpening your understanding of the distinctive qualities of each work. Certainly, one of the points of this paper is to think about how there are multiple types of “realism” in different artistic traditions.