My prior Art posts can be found HERE.
How do we move away from being a civilization that produces art that causes comments like, “my five year old could make this,” back to being one that creates beauty and inspires deep questions? We must reject modernity and embrace tradition. To embrace tradition, we must first learn about it..
Let’s study art history together.
Pentecost
| Artist | Jean Restout II |
|---|---|
| Year | 1732 |
| Medium | Oil on canvas |
| Dimensions | 465 cm (15.2 ft) in height and 778 cm (25.5 ft) in width |
| Location | Louvre Museum, Paris |
This art describes thte famous event from the New Testament’s Book of Acts, in Chapter1 and 2:
1 12 Then they returned to Jerusalem from the mount called Olivet, which is near Jerusalem, a Sabbath day’s journey away. 13 And when they had entered, they went up to the upper room, where they were staying, Peter and John and James and Andrew, Philip and Thomas, Bartholomew and Matthew, James the son of Alphaeus and Simon the Zealot and Judas the son of James. 14 All these with one accord were devoting themselves to prayer, together with the women and Mary the mother of Jesus, and his brothers.
[…]
2 When the day of Pentecost arrived, they were all together in one place. 2 And suddenly there came from heaven a sound like a mighty rushing wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. 3 And divided tongues as of fire appeared to them and rested on each one of them. 4 And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance.
This is a pivotal event in the history of Christianity (and by extension the world) and the central figure of the painting is Mary, the Mother of Jesus.
One thing that jumps out at first glance is her stance and her posture. She’s wearing red and blue. These are the colors that both Jesus and Mary were customarily painted in, for most of Church history. The colors are said to symbolize their human and divine/sinless natures. (You can extrapolate from that why this type of depiction of Mary might not be liked by those modern day Protestants who do not believe the Virgin Mary was sinless.) Yet, that was the almost universal view for most of Church history, and we see it reflected in the art depicting her.
If you pay attention, you’ll notice that Mary exclusively is wearing blue. The others present have red, as she does, but she’s the only one in blue. This implies a uniqueness of her, among the others in the room.
Mary’s posture is a bit more enigmatic. Her clasped hands indicate humility, and yet there is something in her posture that points us toward her feeling overwhelming joy. The light above, pointing directly at the Blessed Mother, is indicative (with the context clues from the text) of the arrival of the Holy Spirit. Mary, the Mother of Jesus, is unique then among everyone in the painting. She is the only one present who had previously been indwelt by God. The arrival of the Holy Spirit is something like restoration for her. She thus served as an example to everyone else for how to recieve this, because she did so joyfully and with experience.
One other thing that jumps out to me, in this work, is that it has a very triangular / pyramidal quality. Our eyes are drawn to the light at the top of the painting, and then our view is spread out and diffused across the room, from the top down. This is very much how light acts and it works to direct our attention in the way that artist wants.
Given the attention on Mother Mary, you should probably not be too surprised that the artist is French Catholic.
(more via wiki)
Jean Restout the Younger (26 March 1692 – 1 January 1768) was a French artist, who worked in painting and drawing. Although little remembered today, Restout was well-respected by his contemporaries for his religious compositions.
Biography
Restout was born in the city of Rouen in Normandy on 26 March 1692. He was a son and pupil of Jean Restout the Elder, a church painter from Caen. His mother, Marie Madeleine Jouvenet (c. 1655 – before 1729), was also an artist and a sister of the famed painter Jean Jouvenet.
Jean Restout the Elder died suddenly in 1702 and thereafter two of his brothers, the artists Jacques and Eustache, cared for the ten-year-old Restout. In 1707, following their introduction to one another by Eustache, Restout entered Jouvenet’s studio in Paris. He rose to a position of some importance while there, even assisting his uncle in the completion of his last commissions. Furthermore, Jouvenet gave Restout the majority of his many drawings, a number of which were figure studies.
On 29 May 1717, Restout was admitted to the Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture as an agréé or associate following his submission of the painting Venus Ordering Arms from Vulcan for Aeneas. He evidently prepared an additional, complementary work for the Academy entitled Venus Presenting Arms to Aeneas. Both paintings may have been composed in anticipation of that year’s Prix de Rome competition, but apparently Restout only thought about entering the contest as he was not among the April finalists.
Restout’s career as a religious painter began in earnest in 1730, when he received a dual commission from the Benedictine abbey at Bourgueil near Chinon. Both paintings, the Ecstasy of St Benedict and the Death of St. Scholastica, center around monastic figures.
In 1729, Restout married Marie-Anne Hallé (1704–1784), daughter of Academy painter Claude-Guy Hallé. In 1732, she gave birth to their only child, Jean-Bernard Restout. He, like his father, had a successful, though rather conventional, painting career: he won the Prix de Rome in 1758, was admitted to the Academy in 1769, and exhibited regularly at the Paris Salon.
Restout died in the Louvre Palace on 1 January 1768. His late baroque classicism rendered his altarpieces, such as the Death of St. Scholastica an isolated achievement that ran counter to his rococo contemporaries.
For a great review of this painting, with some background on Restout’s other works, please let me direct you to the following:
