Judith Leyster Saves the Day (An Addendum of Sorts)

The Cheerful Drinker (or Jolly Toper), 1629, Judith Leyster. Geometry: 2022, DS.

"One perk is that I keep finding golden spirals in paintings... specifically from the Netherlands (in recent weeks)... and all of them from the 1600s (amongst some real Plague Years). Judith Leyster was a painter from an earlier part of that century, however, and one I didn't expect to find as it's unlikely that she and the other artists (who may be theoretically involved) ever crossed paths. While they were just blooming, Judith Leyster had already been cut down and claimed by matrimony, children, and, at the age of 50, death.

(Update 4/11/22) Note: Due to new information regarding the Italian painter, Caravaggio (1571-1610), Judith Leyster's involvement with pentagonal geometry becomes increasingly feasible.)"

- Quoting myself from the post: Judith Leyster and a Double Golden Spiral. (Added: 8/27/22) Inset right: Another spiral position for the Jolly Toper (above).  Also, Leyster is known for her puns using graphic symbols. Question: does the line-up of objects in the foreground (lying diagonally across the table) represent a word?

***

It's an odd thing, but whenever I find myself deeply involved in a specific subject, very often certain books will synchronistically fall into my hands which, upon opening, just happen to address the things I had recently been researching. The latest book - which appeared one day this week in the library's "Free Books" bin - was this gem: The Age of Rembrandt and Vermeer by J.M. Nash, 1972... that is, a book about the Dutch Golden Age!

But, there's another book, too, a novel - The Last Painting of Sara De Vos by Dominic Smith - which also fell into my hands in the same way. "Sara Vos" is a fictional character based on an actual artist from the Dutch Golden Age, Sara van Baalbergen, who, according to Wiki, was the first female member of the Haarlem Guild of St. Luke (Judith Leyster came a little later). As for her artwork, tragically: "No known works survive."

Anyway, so, while researching Sara I found an amazing spiral by Leyster - in this article - which has been posted above. And, really, finding this perfect spiral made my day. It immediately struck me as a confirmation: yes, Judith Leyster did know of the GTS... and (via the J.M. Nash book) I may have picked up a clue as to her source of knowledge...

 

In the Shadows of a Golden Age: the Bentvueghels - Part II

Boy Blowing Soap Bubbles, 1663, Karel Dujardin. Geometry: 2022, DS.

"Drawn to the eternal city for its reputation as the birthplace of the Baroque movement, the ragtag group quickly earned a reputation for their drinking and brawling, as much as for their art. A print in the British Museum depicts one of their raucous initiation ceremonies: the newcomer with a candle up his backside. The names of the group’s members can still be seen hacked into the walls of the fourth-century Church of Santa Costanza in Rome, which used to be known as the Temple of Bacchus.

Despite their wine-sodden reputation, many of the Bentvueghels became successful artists in Rome. Fusing Dutch Golden Age influence with the revolutionary, realist style of painting that Caravaggio had championed in Italy at the beginning of the century won them many important patrons and commissions, often from the ecclesiastical elite.

Similarly, when they returned to their homelands in northern Europe, they exploited the Italian influences they had acquired with great success."

- From the Christies' page: Who were the Bentvueghels?  The painting (inset left) documents an alleged Bentvueghel initiation and has been reposted (see Part I).

“'There was a tavern nearby and the artists would come in the early hours after a night of drinking and pray to what they believed was Bacchus’ tomb. They often carved out the name of a new arrival in Rome, as a form of homage.”

Adrift in the big city, the young arrivals formed communities or fraternities, rather like medieval brotherhoods. Only while their predecessors went to church in procession to escape hell or avoid purgatory, these young men dedicated themselves to Bacchus, revelling in their vices and spending their time in brothels and taverns rather than churches. The Dutch artist Pieter van Laer, nicknamed Il Bamboccio, combined business with pleasure by running a tavern. With other Flemish artists, he was a member of the Bentvueghels or birds of a feather.

After being “baptised” – with wine rather than holy water – the new entrant received a nickname, usually a descriptive one. Cornelius Van Poelenburgh became the Satyr, and Dirck van Baburen was Beer Fly. Sometimes imagination failed and poor Gerard van der Kuijl was simply dubbed Arse. Van Laer founded a rival brotherhood named Bamboccianti after his own nickname, meaning puppet or clumsy in reference to his disability.

The artists, despite their love of drink and debauchery, were educated. They would have read Terence and knew that, Sine Cerere et Bacco Venus friget (without food or wine, love cannot flourish). When they were arrested for being drunk and disorderly, they would explain that their excesses were part of their education. “I only wanted to improve my Italian,” pleaded the French painter Jean Ducamps when accused of practicing forbidden sports with native Romans..."

- From the Guardian article: The Baroque Underworld: Vice and Destitution in Rome review – high art and low life in the Eternal City. Note: according to Wiki, Jean Ducamps was Flemish, not French, as is stated in the quote.

Inset right is another spiral position in the Manfredi painting shown previously, Bacchus and a Drinker.  Again, see Part I. Strangely enough, in this spiral placement, the spiral terminates into the mouth of Bacchus as opposed to the mouth of the drinker, as one might expect; possibly implying that, in the act of imbibing, the drinker inadvertently satiates the god, Bacchus, also referred to as Dionysus.

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Karel Dujardin (1626 - 1678)

Karel Dujardin  - code name: "Barba di Becco" (goat-beard) - was born in Amsterdam. At some point between his first trip to Venice and his second trip (when and where he "unexpectedly" died), he married an older woman in France to help pay debts he accrued there. Needless to say, she was abandoned when he returned to Italy. His self-portrait is inset right.

I think Boy Blowing Soap Bubbles is possibly one of the most charming spiral designs I've used in this post and I've featured two other spiral placements below.

Beneath the Boy... is another Dujardin painting: Tobias and the Angel. I have two spirals for this image as well, but, as I think the one shown is the better one (and this post is fat with images), I'll place it aside.

Incidentally, in the large painting (seen inset above) - the Bentvueghel initiation - there are not one but two men, one on each side of the painting, who seem to resemble Dujardin's self-portrait... to which I have no explanation!

The two spirals (above) really need no explanation, but note the triangle in the one on the left; it connects the positions of the boy's hands with the top of his swirling mantle. It is a golden measurement.

Tobias and the Angel, 17th century, Karel Dujardin. Geometry: 2022, DS.

                         

Above are two spiral placements in Dujardin's Hagar and Ishmael in the Wilderness, circa 1662. Take your pick! While I realize that some of you may feel that several spirals in one painting weakens my argument, the reality is that multiple spirals - while it is unlikely the artist planned them - are really artifacts of one spiral... proving that the "gold" in a painting really is distributed evenly throughout the image... as the pentagram is, in a sense, always a fractal of an entire golden field of pentagrams.

Below the jump: a few of Nicolas Régnier's amazing spiral paintings.

In the Shadows of a Golden Age: the Bentvueghels - Part I

Young man singing, 1622, Dirck Jaspersz van Baburen. Geometry: 2022, DS.

(Well, cats and kitties, I'm back... bringing to you what is probably my last post featuring spirals in paintings from the long past. It was a wonderful rabbit-hole-journey, but I think I've finally come to the end of this particular tunnel... and that's the good news! There are a number of images and bits of info to document though, and experience tells me that it will take 2-3 parts to cover them all, but, I feel pretty confident about this material, so, well, I'm just aiming for a "job well done" and hoping some of you, at least, will find it worth the bumpy ride!)

"Rome’s artists’ guild, the Accademia di San Luca (of which Cardinal Del Monte became patron in 1596), dates to the late 15th century, but the diverse, cosmopolitan nature of Rome’s artistic population gave rise to other more informal groups. Most prominent of these was the Bentvueghels (Birds of a Feather), whose Flemish name reflected the fact that it was dominated by Flemish and Dutch artists, but there were also members and associates of other nationalities, such as Valentin de Boulogne and Nicolas Régnier, as well as local Italian artists who contributed to the group’s often unruly activities.

Indeed, the so-called Bent became a bohemian epicenter of drunkenness and debauchery. Their presiding deity was Bacchus, inventor of wine and god of both liquid and artistic inspiration. The exhibition opens with several celebratory images of Bacchus, including the Caravaggesque “Bacchus and a Drinker” by Bartolomeo Manfredi and Dirck van Baburen’s “Pan,” almost certainly a self-portrait of the artist in the guise of this Greek deity famed for both his music and sexual prowess.

These works are accompanied by lively sketches of contemporary Bent artists, attributed to Leonaert Bramer and another — anonymous — Dutchman. Their subjects included Claude Lorrain, capacious wine glass in hand, and the Italian Caravaggesque painter Artemisia Gentileschi, dressed as a male and sporting a false mustache.

...Despite being rewarded with substantial sums for their work, both Guido Reni, who was addicted to gambling, and de Boulogne ended up in paupers’ graves. Giovanni Baglione, Lorrain and Manfredi all fathered illegitimate children, and Giovanni Lanfranco, Nicolas Poussin and van Laer were to die of syphilis. These artists spent their everyday lives in close proximity to the poor, the marginalized and the criminal, rubbing shoulders with them in cheap lodging-houses, taverns, dark drinking dives, gambling dens and prisons. This not only gave them an intimate knowledge of Rome’s underworld but, evidently, fostered in them a sense of fellow feeling, even respect, for its inhabitants."

- Excerpts from an enlightening NY Times article: Painters of the Dark Side of Rome. The painting inset left is (the slightly unsettling) Bacchus and the Drinker by Bartolomeo Manfredi.

***

I suspect that, after all is said and done, to discover the actual source of all the mysterious "gold" present in Dutch Golden Age paintings, one needn't look any further than that underground society of bohemian artists living in Italy - those odd "birds of a feather" - the Bentvueghels. Back in the days of Lachtropius, when I first discovered mention of them, I intuited they might be an important clue - especially in light of their connections with Italy (possibly the "home" of the golden triangle spiral) (GTS) - but after taking some time to analyze a number of the Bentvueghel painters and their images, I now think its possible to draw some conclusions. (!)

At first glance, the Bentvueghels seem like no more than a rowdy bunch of a decadent, male artists who enjoyed an exclusive fraternity... more or less a parody of a masonic lodge (before the latter even formally existed). So, ones first impression is that it was a boy's club for men set in post-Renaissance Italy; doubtlessly a sunny artist's playground for those journeying from northern Europe.

Initiation of a new Member of the Bentvueghels in Rome, 1660, Artist unknown.

But, perhaps, the Bentvueghels' theatrical flamboyancy - see painting above (and engraving to your right) - was a smoke screen... hiding activities of a more serious nature. We will never know. If their activities were a ruse, certainly a number of critics fell for it and regarded them as anything but serious artists or even members of an authentic art movement.

Regarding the golden ratio and my own analysis, however, well, the evidence is kind of intriguing. While there were group members who (seemingly) used the pentagonaI spiral (either knowingly or unconsciously) - I have, thus far, counted 12  - there were others who apparently did not.  Of those who did, some were also Caravaggisti... and, as we've seen, Caravaggio was the go-to "golden" expert of his time. And, yet, not all of the Bentvueghel Caravaggisti seemed to use the spiral. So, there's that mystery.

And, then, there are further complications. At least 6 of the artists left no surviving work, so, those artists are, for the most part, lost to us. Moreover, it seems, for whatever reason, the Bentvueghels themselves were not exactly "survivors", most dying in early middle age and a number - at least seven - dying much younger. A few made it past 60 and led fairly normal lives, but these, apparently, were the exception and not the rule...