"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..."
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.
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.
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Nicolas Régnier (1591–1667)
Due to my misinterpretation of a paragraph from the NY Times article (linked to at the beginning of this post), I included
Régnier to this list where apparently he does not belong. While he was an associate of Valentin de Boulonge, a member of the Caravaggisti and a follower of Manfredi he was not a Bentvueghel.
Ironically enough, although I had skimmed through his Wiki entry initially, what tipped me off to my mistake was re-reading that
Nicolas Régnier had married, had sired children and had lived past the age of 70;
not a typical Bentvueghel MO!
Inset right is a detail of this
self-portrait.
Oh well, I decided to include him in the list anyway, mostly so I could post his version of
David & Goliath below. But, I've since found a number of lovely images by him, so, don't be surprised if another appears.
As predicted, I could not resist adding more of Nicolas Régnier's work here; it is, in a word, spectacular! However, along with all the other examples of spirals in the images presented in this series - including David... above and the images below - my placement is not always spot-on. As it happens, my blogging time these days is, unfortunately, very limited, and very often the image itself was cropped at some point in its history, limiting my accuracy unless I replace the lost image area. Sometimes I do, but it's a guessing game.
That being said, I'm going to take the liberty of assuming you're all with me on this: as spiral images alone, they are stunning.
The image above really knocks me out. Hero's out-stretched arms are, I believe, a first in the history of painting... a measure by which all measurements should be made. ;-)
Meanwhile, the spiral connects the figures in the foreground with the mountains in the background. Hero's gown couldn't be any other color except gold!
Note: I'd be curious to see the spiral flipped in the image above. And it could be flipped two ways... but, no, I won't do it. I'll hazard a guess that if flipped horizontally, it would terminate in the center of Hero's chest... maybe. ;-)
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Cornelis Schut (1597 - 1655)
Cornelis Schut - code name: "Broodzak" (bread bag) - was born in Antwerp, in the Duchy of Brabant. He is an actual example of a Bentvueghel who did marry (twice) and have children. He was not, however, a follower of Caravaggio or Manfredi and it seems he was a student of Peter Paul Rubens.*
The Martyrdom of St. George (above) does not depict St. George as the dragon-slayer most Christians are familiar with, and I'm not sure if the spiral terminating around his hand is just a design element or has some other meaning. Apparently St. George was tortured in a variety of ways, but Wiki does not elaborate.
The spiral could be larger if image area is replaced at the top of the painting. What clued me in about this spiral was the very obvious central triangle. When in doubt, look for the triangle.
Above is Schut's Vulcan's Forge. I wasn't sure about this spiral at first, but it has a number of things going for it... especially the way it coils around the cave's entrance and terminates around the brim of the boy's hat.
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Domenicus van Wijnen (1658 - 1700)
"Once a member, van Wijnen painted under the name of Ascanius, the son of Aeneas, also Aescanius or Askaan. Few of his works have been dated, but most of those which survive seem to have originated during the decade that he spent in Rome, and centred on the theme of witchcraft...
...Van Wijnen explores the theme of witchcraft further in The Witches’ Sabbath by Moonlight, which is set in a moonlit Italian landscape. This combines many of the now-classical symbols associated with ‘the dark arts’, and is taking place at an outdoor altar set up at the foot of the gallows, on which a dead body hangs."
Note that once again we have two possibilities for a spiral.
Domenicus van Wijnen (code name: Ascanias) is kind of the wild-card amongst the Bentvueghels and there is little information about him on the web. That being said, unlike most of his Bent comrades, his subjects matter was arcane, cosmic, and off the "beaten path." Quoting the author of the article (linked to above), Van Wijnen was "radically original;" a visionary artist who was more drawn to witches, faeries, and astrology than he was to conventional religious matter.
He was also a circle-maker, so, there is a number of spirals in his paintings, and it wasn't difficult to find the golden arrangements in the The Witches Sabbath... above.
Below, however is a painting (with the long title of): Astrologer Observing the Equinox and a Scene of Parting Adonis and Venus (c 1680) and in it is an arrangement of GTSs I haven't seen before.
First, we have a smaller GTS that passes through the quill in the astrologer's hand, follows the slope of his arm, shoulder, and head and finally terminating around the skull lying on the table in front of him.
Below, a larger spiral seems to have been made, beginning at the same point as the former, which effectively envelopes all the figures. This could be a case where one spiral is merely an artifact of the other but, if so, I've never seen it so clearly defined..
And that brings us to the end of Part II of In the Shadows of a Golden Age: the Bentvueghels. In Part III we will meet one last Bentvueghel and 2 female students of his... plus a woman we've met before... and a few snails. In case you haven't already guessed, the post is devoted to the Dutch flower painters; you will love these (many) spiral paintings!
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* Peter Paul Rubens is hardly a name one might expect to find amongst the Benvueghels, but, upon discovering that he was a mentor to one of them, I wondered... and, sure enough, there seems as if here, too, was a spiral connection.
Perhaps, the last line of this paragraph from his Wiki entry gives us a clue:
"In 1600 Rubens traveled to Italy. He stopped first in Venice, where he saw paintings by Titian, Veronese, and Tintoretto, before settling in Mantua at the court of Duke Vincenzo I Gonzaga. The colouring and compositions of Veronese and Tintoretto had an immediate effect on Rubens's painting, and his later, mature style was profoundly influenced by Titian. With financial support from the Duke, Rubens travelled to Rome by way of Florence in 1601. There, he studied classical Greek and Roman art and copied works of the Italian masters. The Hellenistic sculpture Laocoön and His Sons was especially influential on him, as was the art of Michelangelo, Raphael, and Leonardo da Vinci. He was also influenced by the recent, highly naturalistic paintings by Caravaggio."
Below are two pieces by Rubens. The first is Old Woman and Boy with Candles (found in his Wiki entry). The second is a drawing I may have scanned from a book, eventually misplacing my notes. I can't find it online.
The spiral in the first image (the painting) seems especially tight... and the relationship with the triangle amazing.
I may not have posted the second (drawing), had the spiral not terminated so precisely around Christ's head!
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| The Lamentation of Christ, Peter Paul Rubens. Geometry: 2022, DS. |
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