• printer friendly
• mail this article
• iPod format
• digg

"Captured Emotions"

The Getty CenterRUNNING UNTIL MAY 3

Back in the days when looking at a painting was the poor folk’s equivalent of reading a book, depictions of biblical stories had to give the psychological insight found by reading through a couple of chapters of text.

Beginning with the Bologna school of Baroque painting, artists refined the Renaissance sensibility of artists like Raphael, and began probing the inner psyche of their subjects.

Captured Emotions, now at the Getty Center, is an exhibit of some of the most important paintings of the Bolognese school never before seen in America.

The leaders of the Bolognese movement, the Carracci family, are well represented in the exhibit. One of the early masterpieces by Annibale Carracci, the “Madonna Enthroned with Saint Matthew,” can be seen at the center of the main room. It shows in contrasting colors the differing personalities surrounding Christ. Saint Francis is shown in black clothing in a penitent pose, while Saint John the Baptist has a hilarious suntan, and points enthusiastically at the Virgin. Carracci has begun to probe the personalities of these biblical heroes as opposed to simply telling the story.

Another set of masterpieces from the Dresden collection are the Seven Sacraments by Giuseppe Maria Crespi. If the Renaissance was seen to be idealization, then Crespi’s best known works are the beginnings of realism. In the painting on baptism, both the mother’s joy and solemn religiosity can be read from a sideways glance as she places her hand on the baby, as if it’s a sacred object. Crespi’s works are so unlike anything else in this exhibit in its severe realism, but they also push to reveal the emotions and thoughts behind the faces, much like the other works of the Bolognese.

One interesting installation is the comparison of three different paintings of the same story by Carlo Cignani, Simone Cantarini, and Guido Reni. These Bolognese artists were each asked to paint a story from the Old Testament, Joseph’s rejection of the advances of Potiphar’s wife. In contrast to the other two depictions, Guido Reni’s painting stands out by showing Potiphar’s wife not as an inflamed, loveless wife, but as a woman genuinely in love with Joseph. There’s a tinge of despair in her eyes as she gazes longingly at the discretionary Joseph. Reni, much neglected after being much criticized by 19th century art critics, is recognized today as one of the leaders of the Bologna movement.

Perhaps the most psychological of all the portraits in the exhibit are those of Guercino, one of the maverick Bolognese artists who didn’t study with the Carracci. Most memorable are his biblical scenes. In “Lot and His Daughters,” the females pour wine for their father while hiding a secret plot to get him drunk so they can continue their race by committing incest. The expressions of the daughters are subdued but vigilant. No other painting in the collection has the same tension in so simple a scene as the pouring of wine.

In “The Return of the Prodigal Son,” one of several depictions of the subject by Guercino, the father’s embrace of the lost son is nurturing, yet severe. His left hand can be seen at the edge of the painting both bringing the son back and also shielding him away from worldly temptation. The son is looking away, not directly at the father, a revealing insight into the reality of reunions. Only the servant in the background is looking directly at the viewer, almost as if he is telling us the story.

This painting is one of the high points of the Bolognese school, as Guercino was its ultimate successor.

– ray lc