French Romanticism
Fig. 101. Madame de Staël by M. Eléonore Godefroid, before 1849 (after François Gerard, 1810).
In this portrait of Madame Germaine de Staël, she is wearing an Orientalist turban, which is a sibylline attribute. The Turkish style turban was fashionable in Europe from the 15th to 18th centuries, known as turquerie (or Turkery) vogue. The turban reflects her interest in exotic clothing from distant places, such as Turkey, the center of the Ottoman Empire at this time. Germaine frequently wore flamboyant costumes and the turban was her signature.
She is holding a twig and more research needs to be done to identify the meaning of the delicate branch. Is it, like an olive branch, a symbol of peace in the midst of the French Revolution, which she supported? There is no doubt that the costume and props where carefully chosen by Germaine to represent her social position as a woman of letters.
Madame de Staël (1766-1817) was a famous French-Swiss writer and political activist who lived in Paris during the French Revolution. She is known as one of the first great women political thinkers. She held a literary and political salon where leading poets and intellectuals gathered. At that time, she earned the moniker, “the woman whom Napoleon hated the most.” She published political essays and novels which annoyed and embarrassed Napoleon, who seized power in 1799. In 1803, he had her banished to a distance of 40 miles from Paris. When her novel, Corinne, or Italy was published in 1807, he had her banned from all of France. The novel infuriated Napoleon because she glorified Italy, while ignoring France. She was finally able to return to her beloved Paris after Napoleon fell in 1814. She died a few years later.
In the semi-autobiographical novel, Corinne, or Italy, the protagonist is an acclaimed poet, artist, actress and dancer throughout Italy. She is a super-human genius who vacillates between a female/male and sibyl/prophet (in a female body). She states that God speaks through the sibyls and prophets. We know that Madame de Staël was familiar with Domenichino’s Cumaean sibyls (in Part III, Figs. 81-82), because there is a reference in Corinne.
The original portrait of Madame de Staël was completed in 1810, while she was in exile, just a few years after Corinne was banned. It is my supposition that Madame de Staël is posing as the heroine of her book, Corinne, and she envisioned herself as a political sibyl.
Search for the truth is the noblest occupation of man; Its publication is a duty.
— Madame de Staël
American Neoclassical Sculpture
Fig. 102. Libyan Sibyl, William W. Story, marble statue, Metropolitan Museum of Art, NYC (1861).
William Story, an American sculptor, was born in Salem, MA (1819). He graduated from Harvard Law School in 1840. Ten years later, he was living in Rome and eventually Vallombrosa, Italy, where he died in 1895.
The sibyl is deep in thought and holding a scroll with her prophecy. The crest of her ammonite-shell headdress is decorated with a tetragrammaton that denotes the Supreme Being, who speaks through the sibyl. Hanging from the beaded necklace is the seal of King Solomon, a hexagram that is also known as the Jewish Star of David. The interlocking triangles symbolize the interrelationship of natural and spiritual worlds. There was a Jewish/Hebrew Sibyl who prophesied in and around Jerusalem and she could have traveled to the Sanctuary of Apollo in Cyrene, Libya, an ancient Greek colony in the N. Africa region. As you may recall, the Libyan Sibyl represented Africa in Part I, Fig. 37. William described this statue as his “anti-slavery sermon in stone,” and he was inspired by events leading up to the Civil War. In this context, the sibyl foresees the war and the future for African people.
The body of the statue forms a backward "S," probably inspired by Michelangelo's Libyan Sibyl (Part II, Fig. 63). The nudity is unusual but there are other examples. In William Turner’s Bay of Baiae, with Apollo and the Sibyl (Fig. 100), Apollo (left) is wearing a laurel wreath on his head and long red tunic. Since he is the god of music, he is holding a harp. He is having a conversation with the Cumaean Sibyl (right) because he is also the god of truth and prophecy. She is seated and nude from the waist up in a fashion very similar to Story’s design. It’s possible that William Story saw William Turner’s painting in Europe before he carved the Libyan Sibyl.
Replicas exist in the National Museum of American Art, Washington, D.C and the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, GA.
Pre-Raphaelites
Fig. 107. Sibylla Palmifera, D.G. Rossetti, (1866-70), Lady Lever Gallery, Port Sunlight, England.
Dante Gabriel Rossetti, called Gabriel and DGR, was one of the founders of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood (later known as Pre-Raphaelites) in 1848. The movement began while Rossetti attended the Royal Academy, London. He and other artists revolted against the Post-Raphaelite art aesthetic during the Victorian era. The group included English painters and poets and a famous art critic, John Ruskin. The artists, including Rossetti, used old master painting techniques. They painted from nature and used live models.
In Rossetti's mature period, beginning in 1866 when he received a commission for this painting, he became overtly influenced by Venetian Renaissance paintings by Veronese (Paolo Caliari) and Titian (Tiziano Vecellio), who created sumptuous colors and textures. He was also influenced by Jan van Eyck and the fine detail in Early Netherlandish paintings. The modern artistic theory of these artists resulted in paintings with intense colors and complex compositions with an abundance of detail. The Sibylla Palmifera, an oil painting, is a perfect example of this style. The vivid color palette is primarily three colors: red, green and gold. The richness of the red silky gown against a golden background is directly related to Titian's use of color.
The Sibyl is seated on a throne in a temple and she is looking outside the picture plane at the viewer. The model is Alexa Wilding, who posed for many of his paintings. She is holding a palm like an ornamental scepter. On the left, there is an emblem of love (blindfolded cupid) and, on the right, an emblem of death (skull). In addition, there are: hovering butterflies (symbols of the soul); a circlet of roses on the love side; a wreath of poppies on the death side, a winged sphinx; a three-headed creature; a burning lamp; and an incense burner. This allegorical painting has an overabundance of detail. The details, combined with the ambiguous spatial structure of the niche and architecture behind the figure has the effect of horror vacui, and the artificial details distract from the naturalistic figure.
The title, Sibylla Palmifera, is a reflection of the artist's inventive spirit, and it may have been an afterthought. The painting represents 'Soul's Beauty,' which is the title of a sonnet that DGR wrote to accompany the painting. It begins, as follows:
Under the arch of Life, where love and death,
Terror and mystery, guard her shrine, I saw
Beauty enthroned; and though her gaze struck awe,
I drew it in as simply as my breath….
— Dante Gabriel Rossetti
Pre-Raphaelites - Second Generation
Fig. 108. Delphic Sibyl, Edward Burne-Jones, 1868. Manchester City Art Galleries, England.
Sir Edward Burne-Jones was a contemporary of Gabriel Rossetti, and he was a leading painter in the Second Generation of the Pre-Raphaelite movement in London. Edward traveled to Italy in 1862, where he studied classical and Renaissance art.
Seven years after Burne-Jones completed the Delphic Sibyl, he painted the Tiburtine Sibyl (see Fig. 109). The preliminary drawing (Fig. 110) was made with pencil, black chalk and pastel, heightened with gold paint on paper.
Academic Art
Fig. 111. Sir Lawrence Alma Tadema, On the Way to the Temple, oil on canvas (1882).
Lawrence Alma Tadema was a Dutch painter, who studied art at Antwerp Academy in Belgium (1852-58). After he visited Italy in 1863, he painted numerous scenes from Greek and Roman antiquity. He moved from the Netherlands to London in 1870, became a British citizen and associated with Pre-Raphaelite painters. In 1882, nearly three years after he became a full Academician and he was elected to the Royal Academy of Art. He submitted `On the Way to the Temple' to the Academy as his required diploma picture.
The priestess in the foreground is seated next to her tripod and a Greek vase (Attic Black Figure Hydria, used to transport and store water). She is holding a bronze statuette that she is offering to sell to the viewer. The animal skin in the foreground is perfectly executed, which softens the picture. In the background, music-making priestesses enter a Doric temple.
Sir Lawrence was known as a "marbellous artist" because of his skill at painting marble, and his followers were known as "The Marble School." In the next section, we present one of Alma Tadema's famous pupils, John Collier, who is also associated with the Pre-Raphaelite movement in London.
English Romanticism - Late 19th Century
Fig. 112. Priestess of Delphi, John Collier, oil on canvas, Art Gallery of South Australia (1891).
The Delphic Sibyl in this painting appears to be multi-tasking in order to cover the four elements. While holding a laurel branch (earth) in her left hand and a dish of (water) from a sacred spring in her right hand, she is sitting on a tripod that is strategically positioned over a crevice that is emitting smoke from a (fire) below, and she is in a trance-like state from inhaling the vapors (air) as she prepares to receive the Oracle of Apollo.
John Maler Collier painted a wide range of subject matter and he was one of the most successful portrait painters in London, which included royal portraits. (The model for this painting is unknown.) John painted in the style of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. This is evident in his use of vivid color, dramatic lighting, and Greco-Roman themes.
Victorian Classical Art
Fig. 113. Sibyl, Frederic Leighton, oil on canvas (before 1896), private collection.
Sir Frederic Leighton was knighted in 1878 at Windsor Palace and he was also known as Baron Leighton. At age 24, Frederic studied art in Florence and was influenced by Italian Renaissance artists such as Michelangelo and Titian. In 1860, he moved to London, where he associated with the Pre-Raphaelite artists. In 1878, he became President of the Royal Academy until his death in 1896.
In the late 19th century, when Sir Frederic and other British artists painted sibyls, there was a lot of public interest in Greek culture. At this time, Sir Frederic began painting more mythological paintings and fewer historical paintings. Frederic and the Pre-Raphaelite artists experimented with using one color or very few colors in their palette.
The sibyl is seated in a cave, with her tripod and scrolls, looking out of the picture plane at the viewer. Her pose is a relaxed S-curve, probably influenced by Michelangelo's Libyan Sibyl from the Sistine Chapel Ceiling (Part II, Fig. 63).
19th Century Mythological Art
Fig. 114. Fatidica, Lord Frederic Leighton, oil on canvas, 1894, Lady Lever Art Gallery, England.
The figure in Frederic Leighton's painting of Fatidica is also Michelangelesque. Fatidica means 'fateful' in Italian. She was a Roman goddess who possessed prophetic powers, like the sibyls. She is seated on a throne and leaning on her tripod. Instead of scrolls, there is a laurel wreath on the floor, an attribute of Apollo. The figure is wearing pure white, probably due to her status as a goddess.
The model may be Dorothy Dene, who posed for many of his paintings. Dorothy is known as the person who inspired George Bernard Shaw's character Eliza Doolittle in his play Pygmalion, later made into the movie, My Fair Lady. In this painting, the body language and facial expression makes her appear slightly perturbed.
Late Neoclassicism
Fig. 115. John W. Godward, The Delphic Oracle, oil on canvas (1899). Private collection.
The Delphic Oracle was a high priestess in the Temple of Apollo in Delphi, Greece. She was the most powerful woman of the classical world, beginning in the late 7th century BC and continuing until 4th century AD, when the shrine was closed by the Christian Emperor Theodosius. The oracle was also called "Pythia" because, in mythology, Pytho was the original name of Delphi. Some of her prophecies were ambiguous and difficult to understand, but the oracle consistently advocated peaceful, non-violent, courses of action. According to Cicero, no military expeditions were undertaken without the sanction of the oracle.
John William Godward painted Delphica as a young woman because the earliest oracles were virgins. After one of the young priestesses was sexually assaulted, a law was passed in Greece which required the oracle to be at least 55; however, the elderly oracles were also required to live a chaste life (like a nun) in order to unite with the god Apollo.
The statuesque figure is inside a temple, seated on a tripod over a crevice that is emitting smoke. The artist uses full-frontal nudity to capture the moment after the priestess bathes in a Castalian Spring. This was a traditional practice, prior to the ceremony in the temple. She wore a modest white dress, which is intentionally missing in this painting. She has the laurel wreath of Apollo on her head. In ancient times, it was believed that Apollo lived among the laurel trees. For that reason, the laurel leaves were considered to be from a holy plant. Although the body language is open and direct, her eyes are purposely obscured, which adds mystery to the painting.
John William Godward was a Member of the Fine Art Society of London, England. He was influenced by Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema (See Fig. 111) and the “Marble School.” As the neo-classical style became less popular and Godward struggled to sell his paintings, he fell into a depression and committed suicide in 1922.
In the 1920s, neo-classical art became unpopular, including pictures of sibyls, because the themes had been overworked. For that reason, we take a giant leap into the 21st century in Part V.
END OF PART IV