THE DOUBTING THOMAS CONSOLE

THE DOUBTING THOMAS CONSOLE

by Joan K. Yanni  

With the return of the Doubting Thomas Console (49.76) after a two-year session with conservators, a brief reminder of the background of the piece is in order.

The 12th century limestone console was purchased in 1949 at the auction of art dealer Joseph Brummer’s collection.  Isabel Herdle, then assistant director to the Gallery, chipped a piece of its surface as she accidentally backed into it, and realized that the sculpture was polychrome beneath its whitewashed surface. To capture it for the Gallery, she not only threw her raincoat over it, but sat on it.  The fact that we have the console proves that her ruse worked.  She spent the next year removing the whitewash with Q-tips.

There was one more crisis for our console to overcome: that of authenticity.  The French art historian Leon Pressouyre, while teaching a term at Yale, saw a picture of the Doubting Thomas in a Gallery handbook and recognized it as coming from Saint Martin de Candes, a church in southwest France.  However, an identical console was in place in the church.  One was a fake.  The art historian came to Rochester to examine our Doubting  Thomas

and declared it to be authentic.  The church had been renewed in the 1880s and the original replaced with a reproduction!  (Further details can be read in Volume VIII of Porticus or Betsy Brayer's MAGnum Opus.)

The story of St. Thomas can be found in the New Testament gospels, in particular John 20:16,17.  After the Resurrection, Jesus appeared to his disciples in a locked room.  Thomas was not with them at the time, and he refused to believe that Jesus had appeared to his friends.  (Thus the term "Doubting Thomas" originated.) "Unless I see the marks of the nails and put my hand into his side, I will not believe," he said. The next time Christ appeared to the apostles, Thomas was with them.  "See the wounds from the nails in my hands and feet, and put your hand into my side, Thomas," said Jesus.  Thomas was convinced.  Our console shows Jesus, Thomas, (now headless, but kneeling and putting a finger into Jesus’s side) and Peter (with a key, of course), plus two unidentified apostles.

A console is not a freestanding sculpture, but an architectural element: a decoration for the end of a vault rib in a medieval church.

April 1989

The Doubting Thomas

REDISCOVERED: OLINSKY,BRACHT, VOLK

REDISCOVERED: OLINSKY, BRACHT, VOLK

by Joan K. Yanni

The 1913 retrospective exhibit, which ended in November, brought memorable experiences for the curatorial staff and was the source of three paintings newly-hung in the Gallery.

Ivan Olinsky's A New Arrangement came to us through exhibition organizer Marie Via's contact with the Olinsky family.  Since a work by Olinsky had been in the original 1913 exhibition, Marie looked for a work by the artist for her retrospective.  She finally decided to borrow an Olinsky from the Detroit Institute of Art, but the daughter and son of the artist had become interested in having one of their father’s works in the Gallery’s permanent collection. Also, the daughter’s grandson just happened to be graduating from the University of Rochester!  The curator of American Art Patti Junker was invited to look over five of Olinsky’s works and choose one.  A New Arrangement, the painting she chose, is an excellent Olinsky, and typical of portraits painted at the time.  Its subject is a model with a 1920s hair-do and an eye-catching red dress. The picture was documented by a grandson of the painter who is a professor at the City University of New York.

A New Arrangement

The painting Morning Star by Eugen Bracht, a gift of Mrs. James Sibley Watson, had been in the original 1913 exhibit but was badly in need of cleaning.  Mr. and Mrs. Michael Watson donated funds for its conservation and it appeared in the 1913 retrospective.  It was also chosen for use as UR President and Mrs. Dennis O'Brien's 1988 Christmas card.

Morning Star

The third "1913 connection" is the Douglas Volk painting of his daughter Marian Douglas Volk Bridge.  Though there was a Volk painting of Marian in the original 1913 exhibit, it was not this Volk.  Our painting was bought at a 1915 Gallery exhibit and presented to the Gallery by Mrs. George Dickman, a friend of Mrs. Watson.  Coincidentally, Marian's painting arrived in Rochester ten years before she herself moved here—in 1926 when her husband, Dr. Ezra Bridge, became director of Rochester's Iola Sanitarium. 

Mrs. Bridge was not the typical society matron that the painting conjures up.  She was introspective, loved gardening, music and reading, and, despite the fur stole she wears in the portrait, had become an animal activist and a vegetarian long before these stands were popular.  The painting had been in Registrar Sandra Markham's "missing" file, but since everything has to be somewhere, and since it was needed for the 1913 retrospective, Sandra contacted Gertrude Herdle Moore and Isabel Herdle, who remembered that it had been lent to the Eastman School of Music—probably in the '20s, a time when many paintings were lent to University buildings.  Sandra went to examine the Eastman dorms - and found the picture in the South Lounge, very dirty and with several considerable tears in it.  Don Manfredi of West Bloomfield did the conservation in record time—in time for the 1913 retrospective.

The Artist's Daughter, Marion 

Batavia by Esteban Vicente, was brought back from City Hall where the Gallery once had paintings on loan.  Vicente is an abstract impressionist still working today; since he is Spanish, the locale is probably NOT our local Batavia.   (See article dated May 2007.)

Batavia

Charles Gruppé's Harbor Scene is a painting of Gloucester, Mass., given to the Gallery by St. Paul's United Church of Christ in Irondequoit.  Since the church in which it was hanging was about to be torn down, its pastor decided it should be preserved in our Gallery.  Other paintings by Gruppé, one of the leading landscape painters of his day and a member of the Rochester Art Club, can be seen in Oak Hill Country Club—and in some private homes in the area
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A SALEM STERNBOARD

A SALEM STERNBOARD

by Libby Clay

A sternboard from a frigate originally out of Salem, Massachusetts, came to the Gallery as a memorial gift of friends of Charles A. Carruth.  The frigate, her sailing days over, had been in dry dock in Mystic, Connecticut, and the sternboard was all that was salvaged when the ship was destroyed in a devastating fire..

The shipping industry was one of the mainstays of the economy of the burgeoning American nation, providing contact with the rest of the world and forming the base for many personal fortunes.  Wooden sailing vessels were constructed in seaboard cities from Maine to South Carolina. When the shipbuilders had completed a vessel, the ship carvers took over and added embellishments.

The chief category of marine decoration was the figurehead, at the front of the ship under the bowsprit where the sides converge.  Visually they were an extension of the bow and relied on contour and silhouette for their impact.  It was a stirring sight to see them soaring above the rolling seas when propelled by a swiftly moving prow.

Next in importance after the figureheads were the sternboards and archboards, which announced the name and home port of the vessel. The sternboard was a broad, flat surface, most often decorated with an eagle.  It also served as a vehicle for personal portraits—the owner's wife, daughter, or the owner himself.  The MAG sternboard shows a young, curly-haired girl holding a large shield with the coat of arms of the Derby family.  This sternboard graced the sterns of two frigates:  the Derby vessel and the ship Angela.  American ship carvers probably learned their craft through practical experience, with the work of English craftsmen serving as their first models.  Whereas European carvings tended to be of oak or other hard woods, Americans preferred the soft native pine. Pine was more easily worked and was more suited to the American carver's inclination to model surfaces in broad planes, paying less attention to elaborate detail than to the large sweep of the silhouette.  A skillful carver was his own best advertising, for his work was seen in the harbors of the world.

Each ship required a different kind of carved decoration, designed to suit the individual taste of the owner and adapted to the basic structure and function of the ship A Whaler, for instance was built for utility and was relatively small, deep and strong. The figureheads were likewise small and plain.  Clipper ships, built for speed, were long and slender.  Their figureheads, designed to be extensions of the prow, were often women with hair thrown back and hair flying in the wind—the most glamorous of American ship carvings. .

Military vessels were lavishly decorated, for they represented American naval power.  Eagles and patriotic motifs were commonly used, including representations of American presidents.

By the close of the nineteenth century, the use of iron and steel as shipbuilding materials brought about a decline in ship carving, for the wooden parts were difficult to install on metal ships.  In 1907 the US Navy ordered figureheads removed from all its ships and dealt the deathblow to this art form.

MYCENAEN KRATERS

MYCENAEN KRATERS

Few objects in the Gallery's collection of classical antiquities are as important as the Mycenaean Greek kraters in the Ancient Gallery. (Both are not always on view.) These wine-mixing bowls are known to have been found on Cyprus and acquired by the diplomat Frederic Morgan between 1901 and 1903 when he was First Consul of the American Consulate in Cairo.  The origin of the kraters, however, may lie in early Greece before the age of Homer.

During the Bronze Age an advanced civilization arose on the mainland of Greece.  Its people were grouped into city-states, the most

important of which was Mycenae.  The Mycenaeans conquered the older Minoan civilization off the island of Crete around 1450 BC, and thereafter dominated the entire Aegean Sea.  They traded widely in the eastern Mediterranean and were particularly influential on the island of Cyprus.

The Gallery's kraters, depicting war chariots on the march, belong to a very late phase of the Mycenaean style, dating from the thirteenth century BC.  After this time the Mycenaean civilization mysteriously collapsed.  Scholars do not agree whether the kraters were made in Greece and exported to Cyprus or were created in Cyprus by Greek-trained artists.  Since the smaller of the two is decorated in Cypro-Minoan script, however, an origin in Cyprus may be more likely.  Though reassembled from fragments, the two kraters retain their perfect shape and most of their original painting.  The simplified depiction of the horses and riders— one horse body with two heads, two tails, two sets of reins and two riders in the chariot—are very different from the naturalistic figures and plants characteristic of Mycenaean art of two centuries earlier.  Their large size and formal elegance convey the assurance of Europe's earliest great civilization. 

(from an article by Donald Rosenthal, Gallery Notes, September, 1980)

Mycenaen  Krater

BEARD: NIGHT BEFORE THE BATTLE

BEARD: NIGHT BEFORE THE BATTLE

Monica Marcotte describes an interesting experience during the writing of her paper for the provisional docent program on James Beard's The Night Before the

Battle (78.15).  While in the Gallery studying the painting, she met a woman who said she was the great-great granddaughter of the painter.  Her name was Joan Wing, and she confirmed that a brother and four sons of Beard also were artists and that one of the sons (Daniel) was the father of the Boy Scout movement in America.  She said that Beard did a great many animal pictures, particularly of family dogs.  Wing related that her mother knows all the family history and still owns several of Beard's paintings.  Most of the information about the Beard artists is in the art gallery in Painesville, Ohio, where the artist lived for a time beginning in 1923.

MORTIMER SMITH: HOME LATE.

MORTIMER SMITH:  HOME LATE

by Joan K. Yanni

Mortimer Smith's Home Late (75.139), expertly restored and returned to the Gallery's American painting section, was painted in 1866.  It shows a young boy entering his home at a late hour with his skates in his hand.  The moonlit, wintry evening seen through the open door contrasts with the warm, though humble, interior.  The cabin is candle-lit, with simple, frontier furniture; some meat, which is curing, and a flint-lock rifle hang from the ceiling.  The boy’s father is lighting his pipe with an ember from the fireplace, and careful looking will reveal a dog and cat in the darkness.  There is a basket with knitting on the table near the door—indicating the presence of woman in the family.

Home Late is Smith's first known painting.  Only four paintings have been located out of a possible 48 listed in his probate will.  The curious awkwardness in the proportions of the figures in Home Late suggests that the artist was self taught.  Smith was born in Jamestown, NY, moved to Detroit in 1855, and became well known for his home scenes and winter landscapes.  He was an avid photographer, and a number of his paintings may have been created from photographs he made.  Smith was most prominent as a Detroit architect, however, and it is assumed he was trained in his father's firm.  Architecture was his vocation, painting his avocation

Home Late

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PRATT'S CAPTAIN JOHN BARRY

PRATT’S CAPTAIN JOHN BARRY

Nathan Pratt’s Captain John Barry (81.22) was on view at the Gallery for the first time in 1966.  In case you’ve forgotten, Barry, an Irishman who settled in Philadelphia, was commander of the frigate Alliance , which outfought (and outsmarted) three British ships in the last naval engagement of the Revolution.  He won Washington’s personal congratulations for his gallantry.

The painting came to the Gallery through the descendants of Peter Barry, relative of the naval hero and an early Rochester mayor.  It was recently cleaned at Oberlin College.

Captain John Barry

ALEX KATZ

ALEX KATZ

by Joan K. Yanni

Alex Katz, creator of the newly-installed Twilight is a unique, unorthodox painter of modern life.  His subjects—always familiar, usually affluent—drink at a party, smoke, sunbathes, dine.  They wear casual, elegant clothes.  Yet Katz makes them somehow different.  His outwardly placid images are caught in a specific instant in time, in the middle of a gesture.  His pictures are flattened, angular; often strange, unstated undercurrents are caught on stiff, smooth faces.  Katz desires to jar and surprise the viewer by presenting the ordinary or mundane in a major way:  ultra large scale, simplified forms in painted-out backgrounds give his work maximum visual impact.

Katz was born in 1927 in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn.  He attended Cooper Union Art School, The Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Maine, and studied with Henry Varnum Poore.  He first attempted large, cropped images when influenced by Kline and deKooning.

He works quickly, to achieve smooth canvases with casual strokes that disappear into a crisp, impersonal precision.  He became well known in the 1950s art scene, and his pictures have held up well.  In 1987; last year the Whitney held a Katz retrospective. 

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A series of serigraph prints by Katz was donated to the Gallery by Lewis Norry and his wife Jill Katz Norry (no, she is not related to the artist!) in 1995.  The serigraphs, titled Alex and Ada Suite, (the 1960s to the 1980s) are all portraits of Katz and his wife done in the artist’s unique, simplified style. They are larger than life, impersonal and without background. Their size and close croppings demand a second—and third—look.(April 1996) 

Ada in Hat

                            

TWO ST. JOHNS: EVANGELIST AND BAPTIST

TWO ST JOHNS: EVANGELIST AND BAPTIST

by Joan K. Yanni

(Editor's Note: Our new statue of Saint James (94.49), recently installed in the Fountain Court, calls for an explanation of the Pilgrimage Route.  Maureen Basil has written one for us.)

Both John the Evangelist and John the Baptist figure prominently in MAG—and in all Christian—art.  Who are they and why are they so important?

John the Evangelist was one of the apostles of Jesus, said to be the most loved and the only one of the twelve who did not forsake Jesus during his trial and death.  John is often pictured standing sorrowfully at the foot of the cross, where the dying Jesus asked him to be the guardian of his mother Mary.  John wrote the fourth gospel, three epistles, and the book of the Apocalypse.  He lived to an extreme old age, surviving all his fellow apostles, and died in Asia Minor about the year 100.

Remember the symbols on the baptismal font in the Fountain Court?  They represent the four evangelists.  The angel is St. Matthew; the lion is St. Mark; the ox, St. Luke; and the eagle, St. John. (Use the mnemonic ALOE to remember.)

John the Baptist has a longer history.  He was the son of Zachariah, the figure in the MAG 14th-century fresco, and his wife Elizabeth.  John was said to be conceived miraculously in their old age. Elizabeth was the cousin of Mary, the mother of Jesus; and Jesus and John are often seen together as children with Mary in Renaissance and later paintings.  John's mission was to announce the coming of the Messiah, and he prepared for it by living in the desert and preaching.  He is usually pictured wearing a camel's hair shirt and often carries a staff or scroll with the words "Ecce Agnus Dei," (Behold the Lamb of God).”  Around the age of 30 John went into the country near the Jordan

River, where he preached penance and baptized penitents with water from the Jordan.  With the baptism of Jesus, John's mission was accomplished.  However, he continued to teach and incurred the anger of  Herod, the Judean ruler, when he denounced Herod for marrying Herodias, the wife of Herod’s half-brother.  Herod had John thrown into prison.  Herodias, fearing John, encouraged her daughter Salome to win Herod's favor by dancing for him and then to ask for the head of John in return.  John was beheaded about 27 AD.

The figure of John the Baptist in his camel hair shirt is prominent in our Nardo di Cione altarpiece and in our Madonna and Child Enthroned with Saints.

Momotara: A Japanese Legend

MOMOTARO: A JAPANESE LEGEND

The "devil scroll" (63.25) in the Asian Gallery illustrates an old Japanese legend: 

A poor hardworking old man and his wife, who had prayed all their lives for a son, were sent a baby boy by the gods.  They called him Momotaro, meaning son of a peach, because he came to them inside a peach.  He grew to be a strong, brave, and wise young man.

One day he said to his parents, "There is something important I must do, but have patience and I will return to you.  I must travel to the island of devils, who have been robbing and killing people for many years; I believe I can conquer them and return their plunder."

The next day he set off for the island of the devils.  During his travels he met a large dog, a monkey, and a pheasant, all of whom asked to join him on his mission.  The dog marched first, carrying a flag; next came Momotaro with an iron war fan; behind them came the monkey, carrying a sword; and last, the large pheasant.  Finally they came to the sea.  Momotaro secured a ship and they set sail for the island.  After sailing for some time, they came to an island with a large castle in the center:  the island of the devils. Momotaro made his plan.  He told the pheasant to fly to the castle and engage the devils in battle.  So the pheasant flew over the devils and cried, "The great Japanese general Momotaro has come to capture your stronghold.  Surrender or we will kill you."  The devils looked up, saw the bird, and began to laugh.  Then they tried to attack the pheasant with their horns.  But the bird dodged them so fast that all they did was hit one another in the head with their horns until they were exhausted.

Meanwhile Momotaro and the dog landed the ship and walked up the path to the castle.  They joined the pheasant in his attack.  The three of them fought so hard they seemed to be one hundred; and that is how Momotaro conquered the devils.

Momotaro found all the treasures that had been stolen from the people and returned them; he freed the captives he found on the island.  He, the dog, the monkey and the pheasant returned home as heroes.

In Asia, the peach is symbolic of life.  Momotaro is the heroic self in all of us.  We must release that self and subjugate the devils within ourselves.

(Research by Diane Tichell)

ST. ANDREW

de VORAGINE’S STORY OF ST. ANDREW

          by Joan K. Yanni

If you have noticed the strange woman in the painting Episode in the Life of St. Andrew in the Northern Renaissance room, you may have wondered what was going on.  The painting depicts a story about St. Andrew related in The Golden Legend by Jacobus de Voragine.

A bishop who had great devotion to St. Andrew and who led an exemplary life was noticed by the devil, who decided to lead him astray.  The devil turned himself into a beautiful woman who appeared at the bishop's door asking for help.  The good bishop took her in, gave her shelter, and was about to succumb to her charms when a stranger knocked at the door and asked for aid.  The bishop was about to admit the stranger when the lady protested, saying he could be an evil one.    She suggested asking three questions to test him.  He answered all correctly until the last:  "How far is the distance from heaven to earth?"  The stranger responded, "Go ask that of the one who sent thee, for he knows better than I.  He measured it when he fell from heaven to the depths."  At these words the woman/devil disappeared, as did the stranger.  The bishop suddenly understood all that had happened and prayed that God might reveal the identity of the one who had saved him.  That night God revealed in a dream that the pilgrim had been St. Andrew.

The painting takes some liberties.  In the story, St. Andrew did not enter the room of the bishop, but the painter shows him there. He also shows the woman turning into a devil, with feet and hands becoming claws.  The meaning of the pan that the servant is holding is unclear.  Perhaps a devil's face would be reflected in it.

NATHAN HALE

MACMONNIES’ NATHAN HALE

                                                                                By Joan K Yanni

The bronze statuette of Nathan Hale, acquired in 1986, is a replica of an 8-foot tall statue in City Hall Park, New York City.  (Author Theodore Dreiser noted that this statue was "one of the few notable ornaments in New York.")  The sculptor of the piece was Frederick MacMonnies (1890-1937), an artist who was born in Brooklyn, studied in Paris, and exhibited at the Chicago World's Columbian Exposition in 1893.  The Gallery has a self-portrait of MacMonnies in its collection.

Did you know that Hale was only 21 years old when, on a mission for General George Washington, he was captured by the British and hanged as a spy?  His final words were "I regret that I have but one......."  Remember?

LEDA AND THE DWARF

HARRER: LEDA AND THE DWARF

by Joan K. Yanni

Leda and the Dwarf

Diane Tichell talked with Honore Sharrer about Sharrer's painting, Leda and the Dwarf in the collection of the MAG (Memorial Art Gallery in Rochester, NY) and gathered some information about the work.  There is no "story" in the painting.  During the time it was painted, abstract expressionism was popular.  Sharrer decided that she would turn reality around, as the abstract expressionists did, but in her own fashion.  She placed the woman on the horse backwards.  The other items in the painting?  "Some are personal.  Sharrer loves painting metal and jewelry. Thus, both are in the painting.  A picture in a newspaper of a farmer, standing in an impoverished yet fruitful field and holding a chicken, inspired the dwarf (though the figure is from Velazquez).  The tea set?  Just a happy, dancing teapot she had in her childhood.  She had it set on a milking stool at the opening of her show in NYC.  The pin?  Personal.  Didn't you ever (in your youth or otherwise) have anything held up by a safety pin?  Sharrer is a realist painter, almost photographic.  Her juxtapositions are the confusing element in her paintings.