THE THREATENING WAVES
by Joan K. Yanni
Exorcism of the Waves (52.2) is the noisiest painting in the Gallery. The crashing of waves, the sound of thunder and lightning, the screams of men struggling to escape the oncoming water, the incantations and prayers of the monks—these sounds all add to the scene of a violent nature and the futile struggle of overpowered man. Magnasco, the artist, shows us the sinking boat, a body in the foreground floating on the water, a half-naked man struggling to get out of the sea, carrying what appears to be a bundle of clothes and belongings, and two monks, one holding a raised cross, the other kneeling, head to the ground, beseeching heaven for help. It is a violent, powerful, emotional painting.
Here Renaissance serenity and balance are gone. The painting is unusually violent even for its time. Quick, staccato brush strokes fly over the canvas, creating the tumultuous waves that hurl themselves on the shore, enveloping the men and boat below. Can the monks do anything to rescue the helpless fishermen? One of them is attempting to exorcise the waves.
The dictionary defines exorcism as the expulsion of evil spirits from persons or places by adulations, prayers and ceremonies. All religions recognize the battle between good and evil. Peoples of the ancient world believed in the power of spirits and that a person could be taken over by an evil spirit. They depended on potions, spells and chanting—and sometimes the help of ancestor spirits—to expel this evil, sometimes called the devil. In some passages in the New Testament Jesus is described as expelling evil from those possessed. The recent film The Exorcist presented a sensational story of possession by the devil. In today's Catholic Church, if exorcisms are performed at all, they are performed by priests with permission of a bishop. Does modern man believe in the devil? In evil, yes; in the devil, perhaps. Can the devil take over nature as well as man? People of Magnasco's time believed that it was possible. In this painting, the artist presents evil through tumultuous waves, and shows a monk, through prayers and his cross, attempting to dispel the evil and return calm and peace to the sea. Does he succeed? What do you think?
Alessandro Magnasco (Mun yas ko) was born in Genoa in 1667. Some biographies say he studied with his father Stephano, a painter; others say his father died when Alessandro was a small child. Whatever the truth, he went to Milan while in his teens and entered the workshop of Flippo Abbiati. His early works were influenced by the dramatic art of 17th- century Lombardy with pronounced contrasts of light and dark. In his early work he specialized as a "figurista," creating small human figures to be inserted in landscapes or architectural settings of other painters. He also began collaborating with landscape painter Antonio Francesco Peruzzini and other specialist painters. Not until the 1720s did he begin to create the landscapes and ruins that provide the setting for his figures. However, even in his early paintings one can see the quick brush strokes and darting flashes of light that define his work.
From about 1703 to 1709 Magnasco was in Florence, where he and Peruzzini worked for Grand Prince Ferdinand de' Medici and his court. The court culture and the Medici collections of art introduced Magnasco to a variety of subjects and styles, and he began to experiment with a wide range of themes. He found inspiration in prints and enjoyed the ironic genre paintings by Dutch and Flemish artists. The humorous Hunting Scene, a painting of the artist and his friend Sebastiano Ricci on a hunting expedition with Ferdinand de' Medici and his court, (now at the Wadsworth Athenaeum in Hartford, CT) was no doubt influenced by the Dutch. Many of his works from this period are in the Uffizi and Pitti in Florence.
Magnasco returned to Milan around 1707 where he worked for the Lombard aristocracy and continued to collaborate with Peruzzini. He also experimented with new subject matter. His clients now included aristocratic and progressive families around Milan, and his works suggest a participation in their intellectual debates. Protests against corruption in the monastic orders, religious intolerance and social prejudice—ideas of the Enlightenment in France and northern Europe—began to show themselves in his work. He painted Satire of the Nobleman in Poverty and The Synagogue at this time.
He returned to Genoa in 1735, and remained there until his death fourteen years later. MAG's Exorcism of the Waves was painted there. His work shows contact with the Genoese school in which his father had trained, in its rhythmic brushwork and flowing drapery and gestures. Yet Magnasco continues to avoid the bright, softly glowing colors of Genoa. His swiftly executed brush strokes are filled with tension, and there is no serenity in his subjects. His paintings illustrate, particularly in his final years, his deeply felt moral judgments against the errors of his time, as in the Arrival and Torture of the Prisoners and The Embarkation of the Galley Slaves in Genoa Harbor. In Entertainment in a d' Albaro Garden, he rejects Rococo frivolity, showing the petty and futile life of an aristocratic family. His Sacrilegious Theft, completed in 1731, depicts the Virgin putting to flight thieves who had broken into a church by night, and seems to anticipate Goya's frightening skeletons and macabre atmosphere. In his final years, Magnasco's rapid brushstrokes continued, but now suggested fleeting effects of light and dissolving solid forms, as in Supper at Emmaus. He died in 1749.
Magnasco was quite successful in his lifetime, as indicated by the large number of works by pupils and copyists that imitate his paintings. He was forgotten during the 19th century, but rediscovered in the early years of the 20th century by Benno Geiger, who compiled a catalogue of his works.
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