Sibyls in Secular Art
Fig. 80. Libyan Sibyl, Orazio Gentileschi, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (c. 1620).
During the sixteenth century, the theme of sibyls in art was popular all over Europe, especially in Italy; however, the sibyls became less prevalent in Christian art during the 17th century. As a result of the Protestant Reformation and the Catholic Counter Reformation, the new subject matter in religious art was dictated by theologians who were not humanists. After the Council of Trent (1546-1563), an official artistic program was established by the Catholic Church. Art was valued primarily for its didactic purpose since the majority of people could not read. It was decided that saints and martyrs in horrific scenes of torture represented church doctrine more clearly than the mysterious sibyls that could be associated with paganism and humanism.
Although the sibyls lost their status as a religious subject of art after the sixteenth century, the fascination with sibyls did not vanish from secular art. In the seventeenth century, there are many portraits of women in the guise of a sibyl. For example, about 1620, Orazio Gentileschi painted a portrait of a young woman as the Libyan Sibyl (Fig. 80). She is wearing a turban and holding a scroll in her right hand. Since the Libyan Sibyl also prophesied in Egypt, there are hieroglyphs on the stele, an upright stone slab on the left side that is obscured in the photo. The sibyls were rarely depicted in Christian art in the seventeenth century, but they did not vanish completely, neither did humanism. To Renaissance scholars, the sibyls were not only legendary figures; they also represented the humanistic aspect of Renaissance ideology. This was the reason for their popularity and the cause or their decline as a subject of art.
The woman in the Baroque period painting may be Artemesia Gentileschi, the artist's daughter, who was also a renowned painter. She was the first woman to enter the Academy of Design in Florence (1614). She accused the artist Agostino Tassi of rape, and during the trial she had to submit to torture while being questioned. The device that they used was called sibille (Italian for sibyl). It had metal rings that were tightened around her fingers with a cord(s). It was probably called a sibyl since it was used to find the truth.
High Baroque Style
Fig. 83. Sibylle, Guido Reni, oil on canvas (1636), Bologna, Italy, Pinacoteca Nazionale.
Guido Reni studied art in Bologna with his fellow apprentice, Domenichino (see above), and they both worked under Annibale Carracci in the gallery at the Palazzo Farnese, Rome. Carracci, a painter from Bologna, was one of the leading figures in the Bolognese School. The style is known as Baroque Emilian classicism.
He was the Master of two studios in Bologna, which had about 200 students. His influence was widespread and many copies/engravings were made from his work. This was a late painting for Guido, who died in 1642. The dramatic lighting in this picture is Caravaggesque.
Guido was a contemporary of Guercino (also from Bologna, see below).
Spanish Baroque Period
Fig. 88. "A Sibyl," Diego Velázquez (c. 1632), Museo del Prado, Madrid, Spain.
Diego Rodríguez de Silva y Velázquez was his full name. He was “the most important Spanish painter of the 17th century” and he is “universally acknowledged as one of the world’s greatest artists” [6]. He was born in Sevilla, Spain in 1599, and became a painter’s apprentice in the workshop of Francisco Pacheco at the age of 12. Five years later, he married Francisco’s daughter, Juana. Inventory records from the Royal Palace of La Granja in San Ildefonso, Spain, dated 1746, include this painting and mention the likeness of the model to his wife Juana. At that time, this painting was attributed to Diego who seldom signed (or dated) his paintings, and it was dated ca. 1632. Several of his paintings are thought to include portraits of himself and family members [7]. His painting style is naturalistic because he used live models and did not idealize them. In Fig. 88, the Sibyl’s hair, in particular, is a tour de force in terms of being realistic. The pearls were added later.
In 1624, Diego became the official court painter for King Phillip IV, and moved to Madrid. From 1629-1631, he took leave from the king’s court to travel in Italy, where he studied artists such as Tintoretto and Titian in Venice, and the works of Michelangelo and Raphael in Rome. Because he lived in Rome (at the Vatican when he first arrived) and studied Michelangelo, he was familiar with the Sibyls in the Sistine Chapel.
After he returned to Spain, he began the most productive period of his life. The Sibyl in Fig. 88 was completed at this time (ca. 1632). The figure is holding a blank tablet and looking into space, which adds mystery to the painting. She appears to be waiting for inspiration before she writes.
About 16 years later, Diego completed another picture of a sibyl with a blank tablet (see Fig. 89 below).
Tabula Rasa (Blank Tablet)
Fig. 89. "Sibyl with Tabula Rasa," Diego Velázquez (c. 1648), Meadows Museum, Dallas, Texas.
In contrast to Italian Renaissance and Baroque art, the sibyl in this painting is simplified. Art historian, Simona Di Nepi, wrote about Velázquez’s “habit for employing unexceptional looking models to sit for classical subject matter and for rendering their features in a realistic unidealized matter.” [8] In Diego’s painting (Fig. 89), there is no costume, and her face is somewhat hidden from the viewer. Instead of a turban, her hair appears disheveled as if she has dropped everything and picked up the tablet.
Her lips are parted as if she were speaking (like Michelangelo’s Delphic Sibyl), and she is pointing to something invisible (to the viewer) on the board. The blank tablet could mean the painting is unfinished, but that is unlikely according to scholars.
The composition is similar to Fig. 88, which led art historians to entitle the painting, Sibyl with Tabula Rasa. Both paintings of sibyls with a blank tablet could be a reference to the philosophical concept of tabula rasa, a Latin phrase which means “clean slate.” It is a wax writing tablet that was used by the Romans that could be wiped clean like a blackboard by heating/melting the wax and scraping off some of the wax with a stylus in order to provide a clean slate.
In Aristotle’s treatise, De Anima or On the Soul (4th century BCE) he developed the philosophical concept of tabula rasa when he wrote that an “uninscribed tablet” is meaningless without an inscription, and that is comparable to the mind which has no mental content until there is a thought. He believed that “all knowledge comes from experience or perception.” [9]
Tabula rasa became an important theory of knowledge in 1689 (after this painting was executed in 1648), when John Locke, and English empiricist, wrote An Essay Concerning Human Understanding. In this essay, Locke disagrees with Aristotle’s theory and he states that the mind is not “literally blank or empty prior to experience,” because the mind has an “innate power of ‘reflection’ (awareness of one’s own ideas, sensations, emotions, and so on).” Various theories about tabula rasa influenced “British and subsequently Anglo-American analytic philosophy through the mid-20th century.” [10]
The American painter and teacher, Robert Henri, said, “Velázquez was a man in love with humanity. He had the utmost respect for the king, the beggar and the dwarf. He must have felt and willed all that he did. He did not have to deviate from nature for he could see the beautiful in nature.” [11]
Landscape Painting in the 17th c.
Fig. 94. Coast Scene with Aeneas and Cumean Sibyl, Claude Lorrain (1673), London, British Museum.
Claude Lorrain was from Lorraine, France, but he lived most of his life in Italy. He was one of the first successful artists to concentrate on landscape painting. He included the sun in many of his landscapes, as he has done in this drawing. Known traditionally as simply Claude, he made numerous drawings of classical subjects with pen and brown watercolor washes.
When he first lived in Rome, he worked for Agostino Tassi, who had a large workshop. Tassi is best known for assaulting the artist, Artemesia Gentileschi (see Fig. 80).
Fewer Images of Sibyls in the 18th c.
Fig. 95. Sibyl, Antonio Maria Zanetti, chiaroscuro woodcut (1724), Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TX
The original woodcut was designed by Guido Reni and engraved by Bartolomeo Coriolano in the 17th c. Guido and Bartolomeo were both active in Bologna during the Baroque period. In fact, Bartolomeo was an apprentice in Guido's workshop. He also made woodblock prints from the designs of Guercino and Carraci. He followed the German style of printing, which uses two blocks. One block is engraved with lines and shadow, and the other is tinted with brown.
Count Antonio Maria di Girolamo Zanetti was called Girolamo. He was a Venetian artist, engraver, and art dealer in the 18th c. He bought a large collection of Rembrandt etchings in London. Girolamo was a prolific printmaker, and he produced many prints that were designed by famous artists.
During the eighteenth century, there are relatively few works of art that depict sibyls. Next, we return to Mexico, where the High Renaissance style arrived late.
Neoclassicism in the 18th c.
Fig. 98. Sibyl, Angelica Kauffman (c. 1781-1782), Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, Dresden, Germany.
Maria Angelica Kauffman was born in Chur, Switzerland in 1741. Her father, Johann Joseph Kauffman, was a successful Swiss muralist. She traveled with him and she was his assistant. The highlights of her impressive career follow:
1756 - At the age of fifteeen, Angelica studied painting in Milan which led to work in Venice, Rome and Naples.
1763 ca. - Painted a sibyl after Domenichino's "Cumaean Sibyl" (Fig. 81, 1616-17). Angelica's painting is located in the National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington DC, and it can be viewed here:
1765 - Elected to Rome's Academy of St. Luke at the age of 24.
1766 - Moved to London, where she became a prolific portrait painter and a founding member of the British Royal Academy (R.A.).
1775 - Painted a sibyl after Guercino's Persian Sibyl (Fig. 84, 1647), which can be viewed here:
1782 - Married the painter Antonio Zucchi (2nd marriage) and settled permanently in Rome. Completed the painting of a sibyl (Fig. 98), also known as "Young Lady as a Sibyl." Figure 98 is an antique book print in the Galleria collection, dated 1905. To see the original painting in color (oil on canvas), click here. It is located in the Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister (Old Masters Gallery), Dresden, Germany.
1787 - Angelica was "the most famous and most successful living painter in Rome," [12] and her studio was a gathering place for artists and poets.
1807 - When she died, she had the most lavish funeral procession in Rome since the death of Raphael. It was designed and directed by Antonio Canova, a prominent Neoclassical sculptor.
Angelica was a friend of Johann Goethe, a German writer and art critic. He said, "no living painter surpasses her either in grace of representation or in the taste and capacity with which she handles her brush." [13]
Angelica Kauffman Followers
Fig. 99. Sibyl, after Angelica Kauffman, 19th c. drawing. Private collection, Germany.
This chalk and charcoal drawing is a copy of Fig. 98. In the 19th century, it was a common practice to copy master paintings and make visual improvements in the process, especially when the copies were mass-produced as collotypes or lithographs.
After the 17th century there are noticeably fewer paintings and statues of sibyls. However, in Part IV, we move into the 19th century, where images of sibyls make a powerful comeback.
END OF PART III