Philoctetes and Compassion for Hercules on the Pyre

According to the most common legend of Hercules' death, no one but Hercules' friend Philoctetes,  son of King Poeas of the city of Meliboea in Thessaly, would light his funeral pyre. For his compassion, Philoctetes  received Hercules' bow and arrows.

Later, Philoctetes as one of the many eligible Greeks who competed for the hand of Helen, the Spartan princess, was required to participate in the Trojan War to reclaim Helen for Menelaus when she was stolen away by Paris.  On his way to the Trojan War, Philoctetes was bitten by a snake that Hera sent to molest him as punishment for his service to Hercules. The wound festered and began to smell so his Greek companions stranded Philoctetes on the island of Lemnos. 

When the Greeks reached Troy, Helenus, the prophetic son of King Priam, revealed under torture that one of the conditions for the Greeks to win the war was that they needed the bow and arrows of Hercules as some of the arrows were those dipped in the poison blood of the hydra. So Odysseus led a group back to Lemnos to retrieve Hercules' weapons and discovered Philoctetes was still alive. Odysseus tricked the weaponry away from Philoctetes, but Diomedes refused to take the weapons without the man. A deified Hercules came down from Olympus and told Philoctetes to go with them and he would be healed by the son of Asclepius and win great honor as a hero of the Achaean army. In some versions of the legend, Philoctetes is the archer, using Hercules bow and poisoned arrows, that ultimately killed Paris.

Image: Hercules on the Pyre by Guillaume Coustou the Elder, 1704, The Louvre, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons contributor Marie-Lan Nguyen (2006)

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Before the Gracchi - Lycurgus of Sparta: Early Land Reformer and the Father of the Great Rhetra

Image: Lycurgus, his arm bearing his shield raised above his head enters the city in a gold chariot pulled by white bulls, his soldiers around him, and a young man running with white hounds in the left foreground. This graphite, pen and grey ink detailed watercolor heightened with touches of white bodycolor and gum arabic was produced in 1797. Image courtesy of the Trustees of the British Museum.

Lycurgus was the quasi-legendary lawgiver of Sparta who established the military-oriented reformation of Spartan society in accordance with the Oracle of Apollo at Delphi. All his reforms promoted the three Spartan virtues: equality (among citizens), military fitness, and austerity and were contained in an oral constitution known as the Great Rhetra.

According to Herodotus, at some time before the reigns of Leon of Sparta and Agasicles about 590 BCE, the Spartans "had been the very worst governed people in Greece" until Lycurgus consulted the Delphic oracle and was provided with an entire constitution which Lycurgus took back and implemented. Lycurgus was the younger son of the Eurypontid king, Eunomus. He was thus passed over for the throne in favor of his brother, Polydectes, but the latter died. Although Lycurgus was offered the throne, his dead brother's wife was pregnant so Lycurgus became regent for the child when it was born. But Polydectes' wife and her relatives envied and hated Lycurgus and accused him of plotting the death of the infant, Charilaus.

So Lycurgus surrendered his position of authority and went on a legendary journey to Crete where he studied the laws of Minos and met the celebrated composer Thales, who, like Orpheus, could sooth the masses and inspire his listeners to become better people. From Crete, Lycurgus traveled to Asia Minor, Egypt, Spain, and, some say, even India. In Ionia he studied the lessons of statecraft and morality in the works of Homer and compiled fragments of them and expounded the lessons widely. According to Plutarch, Lycurgus was inspired by the Egyptians with the idea to separate the military from common laborers and this was the reason later Spartan warriors were not allowed to practice manual crafts. When Lycurgus was finally recalled to Sparta, he, like the Gracchi centuries later in Rome, prescribed land reforms to redistribute wealth more equally among Spartan citizens.

"For there was an extreme inequality among them, and their state was overloaded with a multitude of indigent and necessitous persons, while its whole wealth had centered upon a very few. To the end, therefore, that he might expel from the state arrogance and envy, luxury and crime, and those yet more inveterate diseases of want and superfluity, he obtained of them to renounce their properties, and to consent to a new division of the land, and that they should all live together on an equal footing; merit to be their only road to eminence." — Plutarch, Lycurgus.

Lycurgus was also credited with the development of the agoge for the education of children and the institution of common mess halls, the sussita, that required all Spartan men to eat together and provide the shared meals through the monthly contribution of a bushel of meal, eight gallons of wine, five pounds of cheese, two and half pounds of figs, and a small amount of money to purchase meat or fish. Even kings were not exempt from the daily ritual and expected contributions.

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Pierre Olivier Joseph Coomans: Gifted Belgian artist of the Neo-Pompeian genre

As often happens, when I was looking for images to illustrate my Ancient Wisdom post yesterday and came across that endearing painting of a little boy frightening his little brother with a Roman tragic mask by Belgian painter Pierre Olivier Joseph Coomans, I noticed that despite his prolific body of work, Coomans did not have a biography on English Wikipedia so I spent all day yesterday and this morning researching and writing a biography for him including a gallery of his work. I discovered he had a very eventful life. His work was already exhibition quality by the time he was 16 years old. After studying at the Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp, he was commissioned by Queen Marie-Louise to accompany Marshal Thomas-Robert Bugeaud to Algeria where he spent several years as a military painter. Then he was dispatched to the Crimean War serving on the staff of General Aimable Pélissier. He eventually contracted cholera on the battlefield and went to Greece, Turkey, and Italy to recuperate. He wound up moving to Naples in 1860 and became enthralled by the excavations taking place in Pompeii and from that point on concentrated his talents on depictions of ancient Roman life.

I found and added another eight more images to his works on Wikimedia Commons. I just wish I could have found more of his earlier historical paintings.

So here's today's "hot off the press" biography with a gallery of Pierre Olivier Joseph Coomans' paintings (I even had to translate one of the main sources from French first!) The painting below is "Last Hours of Pompeii in the House of the Poet" painted in 1869. It brought over 60,000 Euros in a recent auction.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre_Olivier_Joseph_Coomans

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Tullio sculptures demonstrate antiquity's influence on Renaissance Art

When I glanced at the images of some of the sculptures in the new exhibit, "An Antiquity of Imagination: Tullio Lombardo and Venetian High Renaissance Sculpture" at the National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C., I could hardly believe I was looking at Renaissance sculpture and not Roman funerary art (except for the bared breasts - the ancient Romans were a little more modest than that!).

"Carved from a single block of marble in high relief, this double portrait is so deeply undercut that the two figures appear almost in the round. Traces of applied color survive on the eyes, the lips, and the background, which was once black. The intense emotions of the pair, who do not look at each other, remain a mystery. Was this work a memorial, emulating Roman funerary reliefs of married couples? An ancient love story, perhaps with a tragic conclusion? A pair of idealized contemporary portraits in antique guise? At a time when even formal portrait busts were rare in Venice, this ambiguity may have been part of Tullio’s appeal. The prominent signature was inscribed at a point perhaps meant to be at the viewer’s eye level." - National Gallery of Art.

This tomb sculpture would have looked quite natural along side the collection of ancient funerary art I saw this past spring displayed in the new tunnel gallery of the Capitoline Museum in Rome or in the halls of the Getty Villa like the first century CE grave monument of the freedman Popillius and wife Calpurnia [right] I photographed there.

Grieving was actually regulated by the Roman state.

Pompilius Numa, the legendary second king of Rome (c. 715-673 BC), was credited with creating the basic framework for Roman public religion and the grief process.

Numa himself set out rules for the periods of mourning according to age and time. So, for xample, there was to be no mourning at all for a child of less than l year; for a child older than that, up to 10 years old, the mourning was not to last more months than it had lived years; and the longest time of mourning for any person was not to exceed 10 months. This was also the time set for
widowhood for women who had lost their husbands, and any woman who took another husband before this time was out was obliged by the laws of Numa to sacrifice a cow with calf. - Plutarch, Numa 12.

Paulus further interpreted the mourning laws of the Twelve Tables in a legal opinion in the late 2nd c. or early 3rd c. AD.

"Parents and children over 6 years of age can be mourned for a year, children under 6 for a month. A husband can be mourned for 10 months, close blood relatives for 8 months. Anyone who acts contrary to the restrictions is placed in public disgrace. Anyone in mourning ought to refrain from dinner parties, jewellery and other adornments, and purple and white clothing." - Paulus, Opinions 1.21.2-5

Although Roman males were expected to keep a "stiff upper lip" when it came to mourning one's lost loves, I could easily imagine an inscription quoting a line from the Roman poet Tibullus, "May I look on you when my last hour comes; as I die, may I hold your hand in my failing grasp."

The exhibit also features the bust of a grieving heroine, with head tilted slightly, by Antonio di Giovanni Minello, a great admirer of Tullio Lombardo [left]. It reminded me of a Roman Imperial Period sculpture of a goddess at the Palazzo Altemps, Museo Nazionale Romano [below right].

"The sculptor’s admiration for Tullio is suggested by the tragic expression, seminude treatment, and intricately winding hair, which is raised in relief in some places and incised into the marble in others. The medallion above her forehead is based on a famous ancient gem. The Trojan hero Aeneas is among the identities proposed for the seated figure in Minello’s version. If it is he, the woman would be his grief-stricken lover Dido, queen of Carthage, whom he abandoned." - National Gallery of Art.

A relief of Mars (left) by Tullio's younger brother, Antonio Lombardo, seems to have been inspired by the Ludovisi Ares or the seated warrior thought to be the pendant to the Ludovisi Ares [below right], a second century BCE copy of a Greek original, also on display at the Palazzo Altemps in Rome.

"This deeply undercut high relief reflects a type of small sculpture developed by Tullio Lombardo’s younger brother Antonio for the luxurious private chambers of the Duke of Ferrara. Reliefs like this one, with single figures based on ancient myth, history, or philosophy, soon gained popularity among collectors. Here, the ancient Roman god of war, full of an energy echoed by his windblown drapery, appears amid his divested armor. Some believe this relief was made to be paired with a marble version of the bronze Peace. Others argue that the inscription refers to Mars’ amorous exploits and that a more likely pendant would be Venus, the goddess of love." - National Gallery of Art

Tullio Lombardo, also known as Tullio Solari, was born into a family of sculptors in 1460. After studying in Rome, he returned to the family business that had been established in Venice after a short sojourn in Padua. Building upon his father's style, Tullio developed a more natural form with fluid lines.

The Lombardo family branched out into architecture as well, building the Church of S. Maria dei Miracoli, and contributing to numerous other structures, including the Church of S. Giobbe and the Scuola di S. Giovanni Evangelista.

In Venice the Church of SS. Giovanni e Paolo [Zanipolo] contains two sculptural works of Tullio: the Monument to Doge Pietro Mocenigo, executed with his father and brother, and the Monument to Doge Andrea Vendramin, an evocation of a Roman triumphal arch encrusted with decorative figures, which appears to be Tullio's work alone. To Tullio are also attributed the Funeral Monument of Cav. Marco Cornaro in the Church of SS. Apostoli and the frieze in the Cornaro Chapel of the Church S. Maria Gloriosa dei Frari. - More: Boglewood.com

"The Lombardos' church monuments reflected the latest Florentine ideas about reviving classical antiquity through statues inspired by archaeological finds.

The exhibit displays only four sculptures known to be solely carved by Tullio, but these are enough to demonstrate his enormous talent. The most striking are marble reliefs portraying two couples, each figure carved so deeply as to resemble a freestanding bust set against a block of stone.

With its rounded faces, glancing eyes and curly hair, the earlier work from around 1490-1495 reveals Tullio's close study of Roman funerary reliefs and other ancient sculptures. However, its depiction of a toga-clad man and bare-breasted woman isn't just a dry copy but is infused with the psychological intrigue of a Giorgione or a Titian.

The pairing suggests a bridal couple doomed to separation, since the figures seem to occupy different worlds. They do not face one another but stare in opposite directions, their full lips parted as if sighing at an unseen presence. - More: The Washington Post

The exhibit is tiny - only a dozen sculptures - but well worth a look if you are planning a visit to the National Gallery anytime soon. The exhibit will be on display until October 31, 2009.

Read more about it!







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Etruscan Treasures from Tuscany new exhibit at SMU museum in Dallas

Wonderful Etruscan grave goods loaned from the Florence Archaeological Museum in Italy are on display now at the Meadows Museum of Southern Methodist University in Dallas. The exhibit runs through May 17. Once again, because of a conflicting schedule, I won't be able to take the opportunity to view these exceptional objects!! Very frustrating!

[Image - Ritual Cart, second quarter of 7th c. B.C., Bronze. From Vetulonia, "Circolo dei Lebeti." Florence, National Archaeological Museum]

If any of you can make it to Dallas to see these treasures, be sure to stop by the Dallas Museum of Art as well as they have a very diverse Greco-Roman gallery including a large collection of gold Etruscan jewelry like these 5th-3rd century BCE gold grappolo earrings.

The Florence Archaeological Museum holds what is arguably the finest collection of Etruscan art in the world, and some of the choicest objects from its collection will come to the Meadows. These extraordinary objects illustrate every aspect of Etruscan life and afterlife over almost a thousand years. The Etruscans were ruled by a theocratic elite that controlled every aspect of Etruscan life; priest/magistrates were believed to be skilled at interpreting the will of the gods. The exhibition will include ritual objects, such as votive bronzes offered to the gods in sanctuaries, or objects used for interpreting the will of the gods, such as the still-mysterious Magliano lead disc. The exhibition also will include an entire temple pediment—the terracotta decoration for the front of an Etruscan temple—showing that the Etruscans were masters at working terracotta as well as bronze (the Etruscan skill at creating decorative objects in bronze was much admired by the Greeks, and adapted by the Romans). Additionally, a multitude of objects will be shown from Etruscan tombs: sarcophagi and ash urns, guardian animals and demons, as well as the splendid gold, silver, bronze, ivory, and ceramic objects that were deposited in the tombs of the wealthy. Especially impressive is the gold jewelry, so technically advanced that it is difficult to reproduce today.

Fifteen years of excavation at the Etruscan site of Poggio Colla will also be displayed in an accompanying exhibit, New Light on the Etruscans. Overseen by Dr. P. Gregory Warden, a classical archaeologist and University Distinguished Professor of Art History at SMU, and Dr. Michael L. Thomas, archaeologist and Senior Research Associate at The University of Texas at Austin, the site, first excavated from 1968 to 1972 by Dr. Francesco Nicosia, the former Superintendent of Archaeology in Tuscany, was reopened in 1995.

"Archaeological evidence suggests that Poggio Colla was occupied from as early as 650 B.C.E. until at least 187 B.C.E. The site centers on the acropolis, a roughly rectangular plateau of one and a half acres at the summit of Poggio Colla. Excavations have found strong evidence that the acropolis was a sanctuary and have identified a building and an altar associated with the structure. The building’s form evolved from a modest hut-like structure in the seventh century B.C.E. to a monumental complex with stone foundations and tile roofs by the time of its destruction in the second century B.C.E. Since 1995, excavations have unearthed five stone column bases and other parts of a monumental building that are a testament to the scale and importance of this rural sanctuary at the frontier of the Etruscan world...

...Excavators discovered a large circular pit, at the center of which was placed a sandstone cylinder, possibly the top of a votive column or altar. Carefully situated near the cylinder were two sandstone statue bases, the larger of which is inscribed with the name of the aristocratic donor. Buried alongside these objects were a strand of gold wire, a purposely broken bronze implement, and two bronze bowls that had been used to pour ritual libations, as well as the bones of a sacrificial animal. This unique religious context allows us to reconstruct the actual rituals and actions of the priest/magistrate who presided over the ceremonies....

...a habitation and center of ceramic production [was] discovered in a field below the acropolis of Poggio Colla. The structure includes a room with a circular hearth surrounded by cooking vessels. A terraced outdoor work space preserved several carbonized post holes, perhaps the remnants of wooden drying racks surrounding a large fire pit. At the southern end of this terrace, set into a pit up against a terrace wall, excavation uncovered a deposit of unusual stands of a type usually used for banqueting. At the opposite side of the building were the remnants of three kilns. These teardrop-shaped kilns were used to produce simple fine-ware bowls of at least three different sizes."

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"Pompeii and the Roman Villa" exhibit opens October 18 in Washington D.C.

In the first century BC, the picturesque Bay of Naples became a
favorite retreat for vacationing emperors, senators, and other
prominent Romans. They built lavish seaside villas in the shadow of
Mount Vesuvius where they could indulge in absolute leisure, read and
write, exercise, enjoy their gardens and the views, and entertain
friends. The artists who flocked to the region to adorn the villas also
created paintings, sculptures, and decorative arts for the residents of
Pompeii and nearby towns. Pompeii and the Roman Villa
presents some 150 works of sculpture, painting, mosaic, and luxury
arts, including recent discoveries on view in the U.S. for the first
time and celebrated finds from earlier excavations. Exquisite objects
from the richly decorated villas reveal the breadth and richness of
cultural and artistic life, as well as the influence of classical
Greece on Roman art and culture in this region. The exhibition also
focuses on the impact that the 18th-century excavations and rediscovery
of Pompeii and Herculaneum had on the art and culture of the modern
world.

Organization

Pompeii and the Roman Villa: Art and Culture around the Bay of Naples is
organized by Museum of Art, with the cooperation of the
Direzione Regionale per i Beni Culturali e Paesaggistici della Campania
and the Soprintendenza Speciale per i Beni Archeologici di the National Gallery of Art, Washington, in association
with the Los Angeles County Napoli e
Pompei.

Schedule

National Gallery of Art, October 19, 2008–March 22, 2009;
Los Angeles County Museum of Art, May 3–October 4, 2009

For those of you that cannot attend either of the venues, a DVD about the exhibit will be released October 28, 2008 from MicrocinemaDVD with a list price of $19.95.

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Nice video clip of Roman Art From The Louvre Exhibit

Here's a nice video clip of some of the pieces included in the exhibit, "Roman Art from the Louvre", that is now on display at the Oklahoma City Museum of Art. I was fortunate to see the exhibit when it opened in the US at the Seattle Art Museum in February.

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Encaustic Art Makes Comeback

I was interested to note that a major art museum is featuring an exhibit of encaustic art. My favorite ancient application of the art form is, of course, the Fayum mummy portraits of Egypt. I also read that Julius Caesar once paid the equivalent of 1/4 of a million dollars for an encaustic painting for his villa.

"The new Marin Museum of Contemporary Art is sponsoring Re-Newal, an exhibition that focuses on contemporary art using wax. Juried by Bob Nugent, Re-Newal includes more than fifty works from artists who are members of International Encaustic Artists.

Enkaustikos-the name means "to burn in." The ancient Greeks gave the art of painting with hot beeswax more than a name, they gave it a form. The exact timeline is unclear, but at a point some three thousand years ago, Greek shipbuilders began experimenting with uses for heat and wax other than simple hull caulking. By adding pigments for color, and resin for hardness, they created a painting medium like no other. Before long, encaustic could be found everywhere, from painted ships to depictions of everyday life on urns and lifelike colors applied to statuary.

Encaustic painting weaves in and out of art history, gaining prominence for a time, then slipping back into the shadows for centuries. A thousand years after the Greek shipbuilders discovered it, Egyptian painters resurrected the medium, crafting exquisite portraits to decorate the mummy after a patron's death. In the seventh century, veneration of a Byzantine icon made of beeswax, using the ashes of Christian martyrs for pigment, was credited with saving Constantinople from attack by the Persians.

Fast-forward to the mid-twentieth century. Almost single-handedly, artist Jasper Johns reintroduced encaustic to the art world. Since that time, it has steadily gained acceptance. The medium's popularity has begun picking up momentum rapidly in the last decade. It's no wonder that we keep revisiting this ancient art form-few others can match its versatility, both in technique and result.

Re-Newal will be on view at MarinMOCA at 500 Palm Drive, Novato, CA from September 29-October 27."

I found a website for aspiring encaustic artists that sells supplies and features a gallery of modern encaustic art. I notice modern encaustic artists have incorporated the use of a hot air blow dryer to create unusual effects. I found this image entitled "Purple Dawn" particularly interesting.
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