The Dürer Files: 1b. Hendrick Goltzius & The Gods of the Golden Egg (Completed 9/14/24)

Sine Cerere et Libero friget Venus (Without Ceres and Bacchus, Venus Would Freeze),
1600-1603, Hendrick Goltzius. Geometry: 2024, DS.

"When Goltzius created this so-called "pen painting," which combines pen and ink and brush with oil color, it caused a sensation in Europe and was immediately purchased by Emperor Rudolf II for his collection in Prague. Without Ceres and Bacchus, Venus Would Freeze, c. 1600-1603, marks the critical moment when Goltzius, the most famous draftsman and printmaker in Europe, turned to large-scale painting."

- Via the Philadelphia Museum of Art page: A Masterpiece in Focus, a short article describing the unusual painting featured above and inset left which the museum acquired in 1992. Apparently, after the Dutch artist, Hendrick Goltzius (1558-1617), completed it - and Goltzius was so secretive about his methods he never allowed anyone to see his work at an incomplete stage - it was snatched up by Emperor Rudolph, the "Mad Alchemist" of Prague. There's more to add to this post regarding Rudolph, but, suffice to say, he was also an avid collector of works by Albrecht Dürer. Meanwhile, Dürer was an artist that Goltzius felt motivated to "surpass," with the same competitive enthusiasm the old Master, himself, expressed regarding the Masters of his own time. 

So, did Goltzius surpass Dürer? Well, we shall investigate. But, before we go much further, allow me to mention that my first golden egg was found in Goltzius's odd Venus painting. Of the four golden eggs I've found, this appears to have the most perfect - albeit static - form. Interestingly, it is configured with the same arrangement of pentagrams as the former golden egg found in my previous file. But, note the star's differing orientation  (inset right).

The two ovoids are very similar; in some images they are almost interchangeable. The difference is shown inset right and below with phi-shells. I favor Ovoid 1 as superior in the Venus... image, but Ovoid 2 has a few things going for it, too.

So, which is the true ovoid in this painting?

Ovoids 1 & 2

In the last analysis, it doesn't matter. For Europeans living at the turn of the 16th/17th centuries, Without Ceres and Bacchus, Venus Would Freeze caused "a sensation." It seemed to possess a kind of mojo. And one thing I'm going to be asking throughout this post - the bottom line - is whether or not the presence of phi in art, specifically via the pentagram, lends the work in question a certain kind of indelible magic... and why that might be. Keep in mind Dürer's iconic Melencolia I, Botticelli's Venus, Caravaggio's Amor, or that mysterious Italian lady painted by Leonardo da Vinci.*

Without Ceres and Bacchus, Venus Would Freeze is a weird (but charming) image, but it might be helpful to know something about the gods involved in this oddly luminous, intimate scene... thereby, learning a few things about Goltzius (& Dürer) as well...

The First of May

Fetal Venus & Her First Dove (sketch #1) - digital - 2024, DS.

I am sorry for the delay with posting. I must have totally revised the intended post several times this past month, but it is still stalled; it may never be published on this blog. Meanwhile, in the real world... well, let's face it, if it's not one existential crisis, it's another... or, perhaps, one on top of the other... a parfait of stress factors.

As I write, however, it is May Day... which means two very different things, depending upon who you are and where you live. For some it is International Worker's Day. For others its a banking holiday. But, for many of us, it's the daytime leg of the ancient Celtic holiday of Beltane/May Day... specifically those of us in the Northern hemisphere. In the Southern hemisphere, Samhain is celebrated, (if  I'm reading this correctly). And, this provides us with an interesting symmetry.

For some reason, things always seem a bit more peculiar around the April/May cusp for me, and I don't think it's an astrological phenomenon. Beltane and the Germanic Walpurgis Night (see St. Walpurga) are very much like Samhain (or Halloween) in that the veil between the living and the dead is at its thinnest; the difference being that the dead who walk on Beltane night are seeking rebirth. Perhaps, they're hoping they'll be conceived on May Day... a very Venus/Aphrodite day, due to the planet's astrological rulership over the sign of Taurus the Bull, and Aphrodite's role as fertility goddess. However, while May Day evokes chaplets of spring flowers and circling around maypoles, Beltane, the nocturnal leg of the holiday, is a fire festival. The following quote was sourced from James Frazier's classic, The Golden Bough:

"The people believed that on that evening and night the witches were abroad and busy casting spells on cattle and stealing cows’ milk. To counteract their machinations, pieces of rowan-tree and woodbine, but especially of rowan-tree, were placed over the doors of the cow-houses, and fires were kindled by every farmer and cottar. Old thatch, straw, furze, or broom was piled in a heap and set on fire a little after sunset. While some of the bystanders kept tossing the blazing mass, others hoisted portions of it on pitchforks or poles and ran hither and thither, holding them as high as they could. Meantime the young people danced round the fire or ran through the smoke shouting, 'Fire! blaze and burn the witches; fire! fire! burn the witches.' In some districts a large round cake of oat or barley meal was rolled through the ashes. When all the fuel was consumed, the people scattered the ashes far and wide, and till the night grew quite dark they continued to run through them, crying, 'Fire! burn the witches'."

Apparently, in the 18th century, the Beltane fires were meant to metaphorically burn witches. Possibly, in previous centuries Beltane fires literally did burn witches. It's not really clear to me. But, it is ironic that it is the Wiccans and "heathens" (of the future) who've essentially revived the bonfire tradition... and ran with it!

However, we've moved past the night into the prettier and more benign May Day. Wiki, in the Beltane entry, describes the traditional May Tree or May Bough as being a: " a small tree or branch - typically hawthorn, rowan, holly or sycamore - decorated with bright flowers, ribbons, painted shells or eggshells from Easter Sunday... The tree would either be decorated where it stood, or branches would be decorated and placed inside or outside the house... the tree would remain up until May 31st. The tree would also be decorated with candles or rushlights."

Lovely.

Enjoy your holiday!

***

Regarding the two images above - Fetal Venus With Her First Dove (above), and Fetal Dove with the Planet Venus (inset right) - both are sketches I made earlier this year when I possessed a more competent graphics program. I no longer do and am not sure when I will, so, these images will have to stand for the originals; I just wish they were the images I originally had in mind. (Note: Phi shells look as if they were designed for the embryonic; don't you think?)

What I failed to mention in this post, however, is that my "fetal" images had an actual precedent, and my original idea was to post my embryonic Venus images along with the image that inspired them (posted after the jump). It's interesting to juxtapose spiral images of Venus from various periods. And, considering she's been an artistic subject for almost 3000 years, there's a lot of images to cover; I may as well start now!

(Continued...)

Pentagonal Venus: the φ (phi) in Αφροδίτη (Aphrodite)

A detail of Sandro Botticelli's Birth of Venus (1485), the Uffizi.  Geometry (G): 2023, DS.

"For Plato – and so for the members of the Florentine Platonic Academy – Venus had two aspects: she was an earthly goddess who aroused humans to physical love or she was a heavenly goddess who inspired intellectual love in them. Plato further argued that contemplation of physical beauty allowed the mind to better understand spiritual beauty. So, looking at Venus, the most beautiful of goddesses, might at first raise a physical response in viewers which then lifted their minds towards the godly. A Neoplatonic reading of Botticelli's Birth of Venus suggests that 15th-century viewers would have looked at the painting and felt their minds lifted to the realm of divine love."

- Via the Wiki entry for Botticelli's Birth of Venus.

"The patron who commissioned the Botticelli painting for his country villa was a member of the rich and powerful family of the Medici. Either he himself, or one of his learned friends, probably explained to the painter what was known of the way the ancients had represented Venus rising from the sea. To these scholars the story of her birth was the symbol of mystery through which the divine message of beauty came into the world. One can imagine that the painter set to work reverently to represent this myth in a worthy manner. The action of the picture is quickly understood. Venus has emerged from the sea on a shell which is driven to the shore by flying wind-gods amidst a shower of roses.

...Botticelli's Venus is so beautiful that we do not notice the unnatural length of her neck, the steep fall of her shoulders and the queer way her left arm is hinged to the body. Or, rather, we should say that these liberties which Botticelli took with nature in order to achieve a graceful outline add to the beauty and harmony of the design because they enhance the impression of an infinitely tender and delicate being, wafted to our shores as a gift from Heaven.

 ...Gold is used throughout the painting, accentuating its role as a precious object and echoing the divine status of Venus. Each dark green leaf has a gold spine and outline, and the tree trunks are highlighted with short diagonal lines of gold."

- Excerpts from an 1996 online article regarding Botticelli's Birth of Venus. The article also mentions that the centers of all the roses flying in the sky are also gilded. The head of Venus (inset right, above) is found in the Wiki article. Yes, there's real gold in her hair and skin, too.

Her lovely face is almost a necessary detail to include with the full image because, in the reduced full mages online, her sweet, pensive expression is wholly lost. Botticelli's Venus is an unusual depiction of the goddess. Obviously, she's a young woman, but she is strangely wistful and somehow genderless. If you took away the volumes of strawberry blonde hair and the plucked eyebrows, she could easily be a young man or boy. (I also discuss her here.

 ***

As it turned out (pun intended), the first golden spiral painting I posted on this blog - and what became, more or less, an introduction to the Phi series - was Sandro Botticelli's Cestello Annunciation. At the time, although completely in awe of his two "nested" golden spirals, I was not yet sure what to make of them. Were they simply artifacts of an overall algorithmic spiral design or were they intentional?

Oddly enough, at that time, after doing a quick analysis of a number of Botticelli's paintings, I came to the conclusion that it was impossible to know for certain of the Italian painter's knowledge of the golden ratio; he used a lot spirals of varying descriptions! Although I gave his iconic Venus several glances, I didn't detect the spiral I was looking for... possibly being distracted by that pair of overly large, winged Winds (one of whom may be Zephyrus) hovering in (what appears to be) the foreground (left).

And, then - just this past week - I happened to note the strangely triangular shape of Venus's upper body in the image... specifically accented by her abnormally sloping shoulder. This shoulder, incidentally, has been noted by critics in the past and is considered a (enigmatic) flaw.

But, could there be another explanation, I wondered?

And, then, I found the golden triangle... and it's accompanying pentagonal artifact: the golden spiral... a beautiful spiral, indeed! But, it's optimum placement entailed one teensy, weensy tweak: the triangle needed to be rotated (to the left) by 1 degree. Such a small matter, one might surmise; the slightest skew... and, yet, it's influence lends to the overall preternatural ambience, tension (and, imbalance) of the image. Without it, Venus would not mystify us... her scallop shell "boat" would not sail so seamlessly into our dreams...

Google Celebrates Judith Leyster

 

Today's Google Doodle celebrates Judith Leyster... a lovely surprise to find on a Monday morning. It's kind of like, Judith Leyster Saves the Day... again!

The Gentileschi Spirals... and a series Afterword

Young Woman Playing a Violin, 1612, Orazio Gentileschi. Geometry: 2022, DS.

"Orazio Lomi Gentileschi (1563–1639) was an Italian painter. Born in Tuscany, he began his career in Rome, painting in a Mannerist style, much of his work consisting of painting the figures within the decorative schemes of other artists. After 1600, he came under the influence of the more naturalistic style of Caravaggio. He received important commissions in Fabriano and Genoa before moving to Paris to the court of Marie de Medici. He spent the last part of his life at the court of Charles I of England. He was the father of the painter Artemisia Gentileschi."

- Introduction to the Wiki entry for Orazio Gentileschi, generally referred to as a Mannerist.

 

"Michelangelo once gave this advice to his pupil Marco da Siena, that one should always make the figure pyramidal, serpentine, and multiplied by one, two or three. And in this precept, it seems to me, is contained the secret of painting, for a figure has its highest grace and eloquence when it is seen in movement—what the painters call the Furia della figura. And to represent it thus there is no better form than that of a flame, because it is the most mobile of all forms and is conical. If a figure has this form it will be very beautiful...The painter should combine this pyramidal form with the Serpentinata, like the twisting of a live snake in motion, which is also the form of a waving flame... The figure should resemble the letter S... And this applies not only to the whole figure, but also to its parts...The figure will not appear graceful unless it has this serpentine form, as Michelangelo called it."

- Via this link (posted previously) regarding the Mannerist's S-curve or Figura serpentinata. The engraving inset right is the given example of this figure found at the beginning of the Wiki entry. The golden embellishment is my own. I first mentioned the Serpentinata in a footnote in Part III of the Bentvueghel series. I was confused about it then and am confused about it now. Was it or did it become a code word for the golden spiral?

(Note: I think the figura serpentinata directly above has another spiral going in the opposite direction. Sadly, I am not able to test this; my main computer is currently sitting in the trunk of my car which is currently sitting in the place it was towed yesterday morning after the accident. Physically I'm okay but the car isn't and this is seriously bad, as you might imagine. I will persevere with this post but it may take me longer than usual. Shit happens. Sorry, but I'm in need of a miracle.)

***

(Update 10/3/22: In my first note - above - I had just had a freak car accident - while blinded by the sun, I hit an aluminum streetlight in the center of the highway - and totaled my "mobile home."

But, that wasn't the end of the nightmare.

While at the towing facility - a facility I was assured was safe - someone broke into the trunk of my car and stole my relic of an Imac In other words, they stole all my original graphic files from the past 10 years or so... up to and including those of the present day, that is, my pentagonal spiral work.

As you might imagine, there have been many reasons that blogging has become next to impossible. Nonetheless, I have written a little of the text for this post. See below.)

***

It probably goes without saying that this blogger (moi) seemingly became addicted to the pentagonal golden spiral in some strange way over the past 6 months.  Well, it would have to be strange, wouldn't it? As a geometrical figure, the golden spiral is merely the combination of a series of triangles and a series of circles in a specific proportion to one another, aligned in a specific way; what's to get addicted to? A mathematical proportion? Can one get really get addicted to a mathematical proportion?

Apparently.

I find I keep coming back to the blog to reassess the spirals I detected in the numerous examples of Renaissance and Baroque paintings I posted- well, that's my excuse anyway - but, using a different set of brain cells, I realized I possessed an ulterior motive. The addict's motive: pleasure... although (presumably) on a non-physical, abstract level.

So, we're back to the word "strange." How strange?  Strange enough to compel this addict to draw spirals through 69 paintings while said addict's actual, physical life was on the fast track to Hell. (See introductory paragraphs).

But - despite present,  perpetual, real-time preoccupations - I still have to wonder about the 33 European artists in whose paintings the spiral was found. It seems they lived during a period of (roughly) 200 years - predominantly during the Baroque period which, in turn, lay on the cusp of the Age Enlightenment (1680–1820)... that is, when scientific inquiry was in its infancy in the western world.

Now, this specific period in history might be a factor in our inquiry... then again it may not; it depends upon how we classify these artists and their spiral paintings. It shouldn't be difficult; there are actually only 2 ways to go in this analysis: the artists in question either deliberately designed some paintings with the spiral in mind or they didn't.

Keep in mind that the spiral was also present in Baroque ornamentation (inset left) and possibly somewhere in Baroque music, too.  So, were the artists, artisans, and musicians completely aware of its proportions and using it as a measure of perfection and beauty? Or, was the proliferation of golden spirals (at that time) an almost paranormal thing... a variety of subliminal meme... an unconsciously recognized icon which was possibly a presentiment on the part of an artistic community who were, without noticing it, heralding an evolutionary phase of a whole society?

And, this brings us to the Gentileschi spirals. Specifically, Orazio's, although we'll look at Artemisia's, too. But, Orazio's Young Woman Playing a Violin is similar - and as spectacular - as Judith Leyster's Jolly Toper especially because the spiral is so in-your-face; you can't possibly miss it. More to the point (literally) is that although the spiral I located is somewhat smaller than it could be, where it and the triangle falls on the bow is simply too remarkable to be, shall we say, a natural occurrence and this convinces me that Orazio, like Judith, must have been consciously aware of what he was doing. The spiral is too tight to be a happy accident. Moreover, Orazio has given us another example (below the jump) but, as I have no graphics program on this laptop, you're going to have to work this spiral out for yourself...

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

A 'sotto bosco' with mushrooms, butterflies, a dragonfly, a snake and a lizard, 17th century,
Otto Marseus van Schrieck

"Maria Sibylla Merian is celebrated for her caterpillars and butterflies; Van Schrieck, an equally distinguished butterfly painter, preferred toads, lizards and snakes. In fact, this voracious reptile hunter earned the sobriquet “Snuffelaer” (snuffler) because of the time he spent sniffing around in the undergrowth looking for his beloved models, allegedly even subjecting them to his kisses. And they loved him back: the denizens of his personal menagerie at his modest country house outside Amsterdam’s St Anthony Gate – he called “the land of snakes” – would even hold a pose, patiently wrapped around his maulstick (resulting in the coiling figura serpentinata in his paintings)...

The catalogue’s four essays and 36 mini-essays contextualize Van Schrieck within the artistic and scientific communities of his day, capturing the intersection of art, science and the occult when the boundary between them was still porous, and rehabilitating him as a man of science rather than a mere “curiosity”. Their task is not difficult because their subject was prescient in his passion for accuracy and empiricism (he used a microscope, rare at the time), and he collaborated with scientists in one of Europe’s leading intellectual centres. However, his scholarly side did not keep him from painting fantastical landscapes with improbable plants..."

- From the article: Otto Marseus van Schrieck: introducing the inventor of the 'forest-floor' still-life, written in regards to an exhibit (and accompanying catalogue) of Schrieck's work at the Staatliches Museum Schwerin and Rijksmuseum.

Snuffelaer, or "ferreter" was actually Schrieck's "Bent" code-name. What I found particularly intriguing in the article, however, was mention of a figura serpentinata, an art term I'd never heard before.*

***

The Flower Painters

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(As it happened) when I first spied Otto van Shrieck's strange little mushroom composition (above), I intuitively knew it would be the initial spiral image for this post. Not that its spiral was immediately  (visually) evident - it wasn't - but it's as if could almost hear it... a little fugue of musical notes and correspondences... and, sure enough, there was not merely a spiral winding its way though the shadows on the forest floor but an extraordinary spiral and the first example of its kind... a virtual orchestration! The actual serpent in the painting may as well be an afterthought.

But, then Otto van Schrieck was a fairly extraordinary man. Nicolaes Lachtropius was one of his followers, as well as Willem van Aelst (the second Bentvueghel presented here). And, it is with Van Aelst (1627-1683) that we will find our greatest number of golden spirals... almost always accompanied by that small creature that originally inspired this present inquiry: the snail!

A selection is below the jump.

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.

________________________________________________________________

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...

The Golden Series - Contents (Updated 10/3/24)

 The Golden Series

Phi, the Pentagram & the Golden Spiral

(An informal investigation regarding the role of the pentagonal golden spiral in art history from the ancient, classical period till the present day... observations and discoveries recorded in real time.)

Posts are listed from earliest to most recent.

Reflections on Water

Fractal Unit 5

Botticelli & the Spiral

2022 - A Tentative New Year

The Power of Love

Nicolaes Lachtropius & the Golden Spiral

Five of One, One of Five

Judith Leyster and a Double Golden Spiral

Carlo Crivelli and the "Queen of Heaven"

Caravaggio's "Golden" Boy(s)

The Golden Egg

"Da Vinci" and Other Codes - Part 1

"Da Vinci" and Other Codes - Part 2

A Virtual "Can of Worms"

Albrecht Dürer and the Divine Ratio (Part I)

Albrecht Dürer and the Divine Ratio (Part II) - Dürer Reconsidered

In the Shadows of a Golden Age: the Bentvueghels (Part I)

In the Shadows of a Golden Age: the Bentvueghels (Part II)

Judith Leyster Saves the Day (An Addendum of Sorts)

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

The Gentileschi Spirals... and a series Afterword

Chasing Ancient Pentagrams: the Roman Dodecahedrons

Samhain, 2022; Leonora Carrington and the Philosophic Egg

Chasing Ancient Pentagrams Part II: The Quintessence: The Egyptian Duat

Chasing Ancient Pentagrams Part III: The Quintessence -The Fellowship of Pentalpha

Hygeia & the Pentalpha (post abandoned)

Venus in the Dovecote (Part I)

Venus in the Dovecote (Part II): The Ancient Sanctuary

Pentagonal Venus: the φ (phi) in Αφροδίτη (Aphrodite)

Gustave Moreau's Golden Venus

Five Spirals for December - #1 "Night Flight" by Michael Parkes

Five Spirals for December - #2   "Princenza Hyacinta" by Alphonse Mucha

Five Spirals for December - #3 One Winter's Night... by Erté

Five Spirals for December - #4 The Vision of St. Cecelia by Orazio Gentileschi

Five Spirals for December - #5 Song of the Morning by Nicholas Roerich

A Belated Christmas Spiral: The Annunciation by "Juan de Flandes"

The Heart Nebula & the Flaming Heart of Venus

The Universe in a Phi Shell

The Paisley Pattern & the Golden Meme

An Auspicious Day

The First of May

The Mirror of Venus: 5 Keys

The Dürer Files: A Series Introduction

The Dürer Files: 1. "Melencolia I" & The Golden Egg

Interlude with a Fallen Angel

The Dürer Files: 1b. Hendrick Goltzius & The Gods of the Golden Egg

The Dürer Files: 1c. The Bees & Keys of House Barberini

The above list is ever-changing... updated with live links as the intended posts are published.

Judith Leyster and a Double Golden Spiral

 

A Boy and a Girl with a Cat and an Eel, 1635, Judith Leyster. Geometry: 2022, DS.

"Artist Judith Leyster wanted to follow her star as a painter. Her name even spelled it out - Leystar means "lodestar" or guiding star in Dutch. When she signed a painting, Judith made a visual pun, adding a JL monogram and attaching a star to it.

Born in 1609 in Haarlem, Judith won wide acclaim in her time - a reputation that went into eclipse at her marriage and, by her death (around 1668), had vanished almost completely. Funny, just like many of her paintings..."

- Via Uppity Women of the Renaissance, 1999, Vicki Leon.  Leon is referring to the fact that after Leyster's death her paintings were not identified for 200 years - and attributed to a male artist instead - despite the fact that her signature was present. In other words, that story... and we've heard it before.

"A Boy and a Girl with a Cat and an Eel is a 1635 oil painting by Judith Leyster that is now in the National Gallery, London.

Academic interpretation
There have been various interpretations of Judith Leyster's A Boy and a Girl with a Cat and an Eel by different scholars. Some, such as Neil McLaren, have argued that it represents the Dutch proverb "Een aal bij de staart hebben" (or "to hold an eel by the tail") meaning that you do not get to hold onto something just because you have it. This moralistic interpretation is supported, Cynthia Kortenhorst-Von Bogendorff Rupprath says, by the eye contact with the viewer made by the little girl in the painting as she wags her finger."

- Via the Wiki entry for the painting by Judith Leyster ((July 28, 1609 – February 10, 1660) above. Of course, this interpretation doesn't really fly... that is, if anyone (who isn't blind-folded) actually looks at the painting. For instance, does the woman (inset right) look remotely like a little girl? True, she is quite small and Leyster refers to her as a "girl," but if you look at the skin on her face and hands, you soon realize she can't be a day under 50. And you'll also notice that she is not looking directly at the viewer, but slightly off to the right side... as if she's pointing to something else - also to the viewer's right - and possibly out of the frame.

Then, there's the glass eel... held up - by it's neck (upper body), not it's tail (lower body) -  by a "boy" who may be her son... or grandson, although he doesn't look like a child either (note his teeth and hands). All in all, this painting may be another "pun" by Leyster... something about deceiving the eye... but it has nothing to do with morality... or with brutality towards cats (another academic theory). So much for expert opinions... similar to the expertise which somehow missed Leyster's signature on paintings for 200 years!

***

Wow, this is my 3rd (intensive) post this month; it must be the first time this has happened in 2 years (also known as the "plague" years). And, I'm back sooner than I expected... but, not because this is an ideal time for a new post. Hardly. The order of the day seems to be a strange chaotic brew - cooked up by trolls and served-up by artificially intelligent clowns -  under the Big Top. In other words, I seem to have my own personal Circus-from-Hell thing going on these days which defies all non-metaphorical description. The weird thing is, this existential maelstrom has it's perks. Perks that just happen to work in my creative life... but, not at all in my corporeal existence.

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. See here.)

She sometimes signed her paintings with a star. The reason given is that her surname means the "lode" or pole star. But don't you bet she loved stars anyway? A lot of people love star symbols and rarely think about their geometry, but I think Leyster may have...if the GTS in her painting (above) means anything.

Or, perhaps, I'm referring to the GTS below...

 

Same painting, flipped GTS. (Click to enlarge.)

Yes, it looks like there might be a double spiral thing happening - and its the first of its kind I've seen - a mirror spiral!

But, I wouldn't be convinced unless I found the correct spiral; one that could "mirror" itself. It'd have to be of identical size and level of placement in the painting to do so...

Nicolaes Lachtropius & the Golden Spiral

Still Life with Flowers, Nicolaes Lachtropius, 1667   (Geometry: DS, 2022)

 

"In the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, this flower still life is one of the paintings made by Nicolaes Lachtropius. This painter was active from 1656-1700 in Amsterdam, and Alphen aan den Rijn. The description says “On a marble plinth a vase with a bouquet of roses and poppies. Between the flowers some butterflies, on the [edge of the] plinth a snail.” This oil-painting is signed “N. Lachtropius Anº 1667.″

The snail is very naturalistically painted, and is a dextral specimen of Cepaea nemoralis (L., 1758)."

- Via this page from a wonderful blog by a Dutch Malacologist entitled "Hunting for Snails" which charts the extensive history of snail images going back as far as the Roman Empire. In other words, it is the PERFECT blog! It was also one of my early influences when charting the course of this "golden" journey (so, Bram, I thank you).

 

"According to the RKD he was a flower still life painter who followed Otto Marseus van Schrieck.. He worked in Amsterdam, The Hague and in Leiden and was last registered in Alphen aan den Rijn."

- The sum total of Wiki's entry for Nicoleas Lachtropius.

 

 ***

 

Well, three's the charm (as I've said in the past) and, between the time I uploaded the image (above) and finished this third attempt at the accompanying text, I made another possible discovery. That is, it seems that several Dutch artists from this period (17th century)- and each of them (historically) in contact with the other - were not using the Golden Rectangle Spiral (GRS) as I had first concluded, but were utilizing the Golden Triangle Spiral (GTS) which I had neglected to substantially test because, at the time, I did not have an accurate GTS template.* Afterwards, when I finally did, I did a quick analysis but, after much labor with the GRS, I almost didn't want to know. Anyway, the "big reveal" will take place later in the finished series. This post exists just to give you an idea of what I'm aiming for, and to show another way in which the GTS can be utilized. See the (Botticelli spiral). (Don't worry, there won't be a quiz.)

That being said, the image above has been modified from the original: I gave it more space at the top.** But, don't be alarmed. Below is the actual .jpg of Nicolaes Lachtropius's painting from the museum's collection. And, as you see, there is no deception; the GTS still stands and in a very similar relationship. In fact, it's a gem. It connects almost every major element of the painting - excluding one red poppy (possibly an imitation) and a yellow snail - and it even curls through the artist's decorative signature. And, yet, it is the presence of the lowly snail which - if my hypothesis  is correct - gives the game away... and is the key to the artist's ulterior motive. Its ornate shell is, in fact, the symbol of the artist's modus operandi: "I have followed the spiral" or, what Albrecht Dürer referred to - two hundred years previously and in the "craftsmen language" - as the "Schneckenlinie" (the "snail-line"). (Via Dürer's Wiki entry.) (And, yes, I'll be discussing Dürer later, too.)

Inset right is a reduced version of the spiral (in the original painting). Note that it's innermost coil no longer winds around the pale pink rose but wraps around the small inset bud.

Which is the beauty of the Golden Spiral. You can size it and shift it, but the porportions, and its relationship to the image and design stays the same. Apparently, when the design is Golden, it's always Golden and the gold is found evenly distributed throughout the painting.

And, yet, it must be said, one might not find Lachtropius's design particularly harmonious or pleasing to the eye. Instead it might seem oddly unsettling, although intriguing (and somewhat kinetic)... but, if we can agree the artist did utilize the spiral, we might still question: why?

First of all, try not to see this as a contrived, mechanical design. It isn't. But, it might be in code... a code which impresses upon certain viewers - those in "the know" (specifically other artists) - the expertise of the artist in achieving an almost arcane and "sacred" harmony with a secret, embedded spiral.

Can we test this?