The Veiled Christ

When you think of marble statues, words like powerful, imposing or dominating probably come to mind. The association of adjectives like these with marble statues makes perfect sense. Marble statues are, after all, enormous carved blocks of stone.

There is one marble statue, however, that stands apart from the rest. One statue that makes people think of words like breezy, delicate and gentle. That statue is Giuseppe Sammartino’s Veiled Christ.

The Veiled Christ is one of three incredibly unique marble statues found in the Sansevero chapel in Naples. All three statues forgo the traditional concepts of marble sculpture and instead create incredibly delicate compositions that make marble appear like shear cloth or netting.

The first statue is Antonio Corradini’s Chastity in which a woman symbolizing chastity, is depicted draped in a delicate sheer material. Through this sheer material, the details of her face and body can be seen with perfect clarity as if Chastity weren’t a single piece of carved marble but a sheer piece of cloth draped over a marble statue.

The last of the statues is Francesco Queirolo’s Disenchantment, which depicts a man freeing himself from a mesh net. Also carved from a single piece of marble, it is almost impossible to imagine the amount of skill it took Queirolo to carve the netting out of marble and yet he did it.

As impressive as both Chastity and Disenchantment are, the masterpiece of the Sansevero chapel is Giuseppe Sammartino’s Veiled Christ. Surpassing the technical skill of both Chastity and Disenchantment while adding an intensely powerful and emotional undertone, Sammartino’s Veiled Christ is not only the masterpiece of the Sansevero chapel but also one of the world’s greatest sculptures.

A depiction of the body of Christ covered in a burial shroud, the Veiled Christ gives viewers an intensely personal view of the effects of the Crucifixion. Through the burial shroud, we can see the wounds inflicted upon Christ throughout the Passion. We can see the holes in his hands and feet where they were pierced with nails. We can see the scratches across his body. We can see the veins bulging as an effect of rigor mortis.

Despite being carved of a single block of stone, Sammartino’s Veiled Christ truly appears to be a man under a burial shroud. Yet unlike Corradini’s Chastity, Sammartino’s Veiled Christ was carved with as much emotion as technical skill.

A relatively ignored masterpiece in a relatively ignored art capital, Giuseppe Sammartino’s Veiled Christ is just one of the many reasons to include Naples on your next tour of Italy. And when you get there, remember that the breezy, delicate and gentle works of art you are viewing are in fact solid pieces of cold marble brought to life by the skilled artists of the Sansevero chapel.

Mona Lisa and Her Mystic Smile

Are you warm, are you real, Mona Lisa?
Or just a cold and lonely, lovely work of art?
- Nat ‘King’ Cole

What is it about Leonardo DaVinci’s painting that fascinates us so much? Why do historians write books about it? Why do musicians write songs about it? Why do we continue to stare at this painting, 500 years after it was made?

The simple answer is that the Mona Lisa continues to fascinate us because it is famous. And yet, despite 500 years of celebrity, we know very little about the Mona Lisa. In fact, almost every facet of the painting and its history is the subject of some sort of scholarly debate. Even the paintings name is controversial.

In this country, we know Leonardo Da Vinci’s famous painting of the smirking woman as ‘Mona Lisa’. But in Italy, she is known as ‘La Giocanda’ or ‘Monna Lisa’. ‘La Giocanda’ is a reference to the last name of the woman in the picture. According to Giorgio Vasari, a Renaissance biographer of Leonardo Da Vinci, a Neapolitan woman named Lisa Gherardini was the model for the famous painting we call ‘Mona Lisa’. Gherardini was the wife of a Florentine businessman name Francesco del Giocando. It is not known who commissioned the painting, but the belief is that the woman in the Mona Lisa is a real woman, Lisa Giocando.

The name Mona Lisa also comes from the name of the model. In Italy during Renaissance times, women of respect were referred to as ‘mia donna’, or ‘my lady’. This expression of respect is often shortened to ‘monna’, just as ‘my lady’ is contracted to become ‘ma’lady’. So the name Mona Lisa is simply an Americanization of Monna Lisa, or Lady Lisa.

That is one theory as to who the woman in the painting is. Another theory is that she is Leonardo Da Vinci and that the painting is a self portrait. Popular as this theory is among some people, there is no evidence to back it up. Another theory is that the painting is of Isabella of Aragona. Isabella married the Duke of Milan, who died after falling off of his horse. Some believe that after the death of her husband, Isabella married Leonardo Da Vinci in secret. There is only circumstantial evidence to support this theory.

Beyond the debates about who Mona Lisa is and what we should call the painting, there is further controversies revolving around the picture. There are rumors of Leonardo Da Vinci painting multiple Mona Lisas. Some even depicted the subject in the nude. The Mona Lisa was a major breakthrough for its time and was immediately copied by artists trying to learn Leonardo’s technique. For this reason, there are various versions of the Mona Lisa almost as old as the original, floating around. Some claim to be Leonardo’s own work, but only the painting we know as the Mona Lisa is recognized as being Da Vinci’s.

Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa inspired so many imitations from its unveiling because it revolutionized portrait painting. First, the woman is depicted from the waist up, not from the shoulders up as was typical for the time. Second, the landscape behind her is a detailed landscape that is as thought out and well executed as the woman. Again, this was not the norm for the time.

The most important reason why the Mona Lisa caused such a sensation was Da Vinci’s use of sfumato. Sfumato is the blending of shadow to create realism. Nowhere on the Mona Lisa can you find a border or hard edge. Da Vinci invented a new technique for painting that created strikingly realistic figures. This is why the Mona Lisa is famous. Before her, paintings were two dimensional, flat representations of people. But the Mona Lisa, she could almost wink at you.

Since her unveiling, the Mona Lisa has inspired admirers and critics. This love/hate relationship that the art world has with her has led to an even greater celebrity. At the beginning of the 20th century, the painting was actually stolen and Pablo Picasso was interrogated as a suspect. In the middle part of that century, vandals doused the Mona Lisa with acid and threw a rock at her. Later, she was sent on a global exhibition where the lines were so long that, in Japan, viewers were given no more than two seconds to stand before her before being ushered on.

The Mona Lisa is a cultural icon, a watermark in the Western Civilization. She reveals to us as much about artistry as she does about the cult of celebrity that engulfs us all. Love her or hate her, you cannot deny her. She is real, much more than a cold and lonely, lovely work of art.

Art Deco and Italian Pride

In the time between World War I and World War II, an artistic movement known as the Novecento was born in Italy. Artists of the Novecento looked back nostalgically at the values and lifestyle of pre-war Italy, while dreaming of an Italy that would once again be a world power.

Leonetto Cappiello was one such artist. A sought after caricaturist and cartoonist living in Paris before the war, Cappiello returned to Italy, became a part of the Novecento and helped to create Italian Art Deco. One of the first and greatest Italian Art Deco poster artists, Cappiello took on every commission as an opportunity to espouse his Novecento beliefs and promote Italy. His posters, though streamlined and simple, often contain subtle underlying meanings.

In Florio Cinzano, an advertisement for two Italian liquors, Cappiello depicts two zebras leaping across the page in front of a bottle of Florio and a bottle of Cinzano. One of the zebras is depicted in traditional black and white while the other is depicted in bold orange and red. This is the first time an animal is depicted in imaginary colors in the history of western art, and Cappiello depicted the zebra this way for a reason.

As a Novecento artist, Cappiello wanted to create art in his own unique style. Yet unlike his French contemporaries, he did not want to do so at the expense of his nation’s artistic legacy. The black and white zebra represents Italy’s past, glorious and beautiful. The orange and red zebra represents Italy’s future, based on the past, yet new and different.

Another classic Cappiello poster is Isolabella. In this work, Cappiello took the Arlechino figure from the Commedia Dell’Arte and transformed him into a sleek and sensual woman. This woman is almost mystical and commands a line of liquor bottles to swirl around her.

Each bottle can be taken to represent a contribution the Italian people have made to western civilization. The woman, a modern reincarnation of a Renaissance figure, showcases Italy’s many contributions. But she does so with her hand over her breast, in a gesture of humility. She wants no credit for her contributions but no one can deny their existence.

Cappiello would go on to create over 1,000 posters in the Italian Art Deco style throughout his career. His influence can be seen in a generation of Italian and European artists. As the style he helped to create became more commercialized, he took commissions from French firms as well as Italian companies. But it was his work for the nation of Italy that was so groundbreaking and inspirational as to earn the respect and admiration of his peers and art critics. That respect and admiration continues to this day, which is why Leonetto Cappiello is a master Italian artist.

The Wedding Feast At Cana

When Jesus of Nazareth transformed water into wine at a wedding feast in the city of Cana, it can only be assumed that the wedding was a humble affair. The son of a carpenter and a known associate to some of the poorest people in the land, Jesus of Nazareth wasn’t likely to have been a guest at a formal banquet. And yet that is exactly as the Venetian painter Paolo Veronese depicted the wedding feast at Cana in his masterpiece of the same name.

Along with the artists Tiziano and Tintoretto, Paolo Veronese was one of the founders of the Venetian School, a movement in art that occurred as part of the Italian Renaissance. The movement is best known for the sumptuous colors used in many of the paintings. It is the coloring of The Wedding Feast At Cana that most people notice first. Vibrant, bold colors contrast against each other below, while pure white marble thrusts upward into a brilliant azure sky above.

The Wedding Feast At Cana is not considered to be one of the greatest paintings of all time simply because its colors are so beautiful. The talent exhibited by Paolo Veronese in creating the painting isn’t the reason either, though the painting is expertly executed. No, The Wedding Feast At Cana, like so many other paintings, is so well regarded because of its meaning.

In the painting, we see Jesus of Nazareth not as a guest at a wedding feast, but as the host, sitting at the center of the table. Surrounding him are various figures that would be found at a wedding, including guests, entertainers and servers. Above Him, a lamb is butchered, symbolic of the sacrifice Jesus would make in just a few years. But above the butchered lamb is a clear blue sky where three birds fly. Symbolic of Heaven and the Holy Trinity, Veronese shows that eternal life comes above any sacrifice, even the sacrifice of Jesus.

This subtle symbolism gives the painting meaning, a meaning that becomes even clearer when you consider the setting of the painting. From the Renaissance architecture to the costumes and even the musical instruments, this painting is set in the time of Veronese, not the time of Christ.

Why would Veronese depict a traditional story about Jesus of Nazareth in such a contemporary setting? Possibly, he wanted viewers to connect with the life of Christ in a personal way. He wanted them to not view Jesus of Nazareth as a historic figure from a long time ago but as the living God, relevant in the beginning, now and forever.

Paolo Veronese would go on to paint many other beautiful works, some even more beautiful than The Wedding Feast At Cana. However it is The Wedding Feast At Cana that is regarded as his masterpiece, The symbolism and daring retelling of an ancient story in a contemporary setting combine with Veronese’s skill and color choice to make The Wedding Feast At Cana not just his masterpiece, but one of the greatest masterpieces of all time.