History research paper (Final)
Churou Wang
This research paper aim to investigate the emotional content in one of Gerard David’s paintings. The Deposition is now exhibited in the Frick Museum in Manhattan New York. It was painted in ca. 1945-1950, using oil on linen panel. The dimension is 56 1/8 inches by 44 1/4 inches. It is a piece of Northern Renaissance painting. David presented a tragic scene of Christ coming off the cross with a mourning crowd. I will show, in this painting, the sophisticated humankind emotion is presented by the arrangement of the figures, the color implement, and the psychology behind the framing of the image .
The Deposition has a diagonal composition, leading the viewer to read the painting from the cross ladder to Christ’s hands and the lady who is holding his hand. It gives a strong visual narrative focus with Christ at the middle as the main character, and people around cherishing him and moaning at his death.
Artists in the Renaissance period paid attention to the true anatomy. This is a big distinguishing characteristic from Medieval art, when they were appreciating the anatomy of the naturalistic body. The Renaissance artists gained the knowledge of naturalism, so the figures in this period were fairly realistic. In the image of The Deposition, the skin of the Christ was tightly wrapped on his bone structure. The detailed expression of the ribs and the clearance of the veins emphasize the contrast of death of Christ with the lively crowd.
Figures in the painting are individualized. The viewer can differentiate each person and the effect of this creates a sense of naturalism, which is one of the characteristics of Renaissance period painting. Though the scene established a non-idealized image, the position of figures are arranged carefully by Gerard David. The cross divides Maria from the crowd. The cross and the landscape behind Maria illuminates a frame. Therefore, she is out of the diagonal composition. Compared to the tightness of the crowd at the left side of the cross, the weeping gesture of Maria stands out from the painting. Among all frowning figures, some are mourning, some are stunned and sad. Maria was wiping her tear with her right hand. The power of tearing becomes the most dramatic action in the whole painting. As the mother of Christ, she feels a strong connection with him. The image of a caring, and loving mother is surely stated in the painting.
From direct observation of The Deposition, the color palette is based on green, red, blue, and gray scale.
The fine art technique of “Chiaoscuro”, “light-dark” in Italian; meant to be the way artists presents light and shade to form a 3D illusion of the drawing. The shading on the drapery is one of the great example of “Chiaoscuro”. The shape of the drapery creates a sculptural illusion, very solid and suggests volume of each individuals. Beside the drapery on the garments, the hue of the further objects get lower saturation, vice versa. Last but not least, the shadow on the ground makes the scene more convincing.
In this painting, green has been used on the garments and background landscape. However, according to the artist’s intention, he differentiates greens for multipleuses. On one hand, the clothes of the crowd wearing is different from what Maria has. They are close and subtle. The saturation of Maria’s is slightly higher than the others; giving a “spot-light” to Maria. This works similar to the “framing” that has been discussed above. It’s reasonable to assume that the artist meant to highlight Maria for her dramatic emotional moment. The green of the crowd was in shade because of the cross and the Christ, and visually the green of them is less dominant, while Maria is covered with green for the outwear.
Red color is also essential to the emotion touch of the painting. It is used mainly on garments, small touch on the accessory of the green dress lady at the back. The man on the ladder, who’s carrying Christ, has worn a ox-blood red outwear. The color is not in high saturation. However, due to its richness it reaches, it immediately catches the audience attention to the center. It creates a contrast and being a supportive background of the front figure, Christ; with his light pale flesh color. In addition to this perspective, red brings to the idea of warm and cold color. In the sense of strong contrast, Christ has apparently cold skin tone, but everyone else around him are in warm pinkish flesh tone.
Furthermore, the color blue serves the image with strong emotional content. It has been used on the head of the man on the right, the cloth underneath the Christ, the dress of the woman holding the Christ’s hand, and the background. The blue on the hat doesn’t attract attention due to its dullness. However the blues which show on the dress, the cloth and the background expose the tight bond with white. The cloth at the center has similar impact with the red jacket. It supports the pale sharp tone of the Christ’s body, cold and bright. However, it doesn’t take over the importance of the main figure. Instead, it brightens up the center of the image with its brightness. Other than the cloth, the blue of the dress work with the white head cloth on the mourning women. Different with the previous example, this one makes great contrast with the whiteness with its darkness. The background blue effect is slightly different. It is more homogeneous with the white. The landscape at the back shows a faded deep scene. Blue at the top of the sky and the landscape function as the shade of white in between them, creating a depth for the background. Meanwhile, the blue tint echoes the tragic atmosphere of this painting, which leads the audience to think about the cold body of dead Christ.
Beyond the color language Gerard David used in his art work, the symbolism could not be missed. The weather with a darkening sky in the scene arouse the darkness of the whole scene, heightening the emotional content of being sorrow, death, mourning. While the dead body at the center and the distressed facial emotions settle the main tone of the image, the use of color in the sky functions as the adding layer for the atmosphere, which constantly flow all around the surface to remind the viewers with its heaviness. At the same time, the grey scale of the cloud presses the focal point of the painting to the center. Without it, the focus would be lifted from the middle area, so then the image would be unbalanced with a convex fluidity.
The skull and bones on the foreground are straight forward indications of the death theme. Because the place these skeleton pieces are placed, the overall image has been divided into three parts from top to bottom. The sky, the crowd, and the skeleton shadows the heaven, the man’s world, and the underground.
The topic of Christ’s deposition varies from artist to artist. The allocations of each figure on the page suggest different themes. This happens to many of other Renaissance period painting, which all share the common tradition of artists telling multiple stories on the same panel. In this case, among most of the deposition type painting, for example, Robert Campin’s and the one from Rogier Van der Weyden, the crowd could be divided into a mourning group and a corpse-detaching group. In Robert Campin’s vision, he used a very clearly distinguishes between the physical event and psychological effect, “ with fact on one side and feeling on the other”. On the right side, there is the fainting Mary, sad women mourners, and angels. At the left side of the division by the cross pole, men are supporting the Christ body while detaching. The Christ is not the division, nor the main topic. Instead, the painting was more about the reaction of the people around him. In the book Early Netherlandish Painting, the art historian Otto Pächt explained his opinion about van der Weyden’s The Deposition. “Rogier alters the central motif of the lowering of the corpse in such a way that Christ—seemingly as a natural consequence of the situation—assumes a variant of the attitude of crucifixion. ” Different from the previous version which was divided by the pole, this Deposition visual suggests to the viewer a diagonal division by the body of the Christ. Among all three Depositions, there are skulls at the foreground. Furthermore, there is a detail that some of the figures on these paintings don’t wear shoes, or lost them. According to the Campin’s Deposition, there is a pair of shoes at the right bottom corner. Small details like this helps illustrate a chaotic situation at the time, and it is a strong denial of the emotion of a calm death, but emphasized more the tragedy.
As this paper has mentioned earlier about the landscape forcing the focal point and the balance of the painting, when observing Campin and Van der Weyden’s Depositions, both of them have some element at the both upper corners. Campin chose the angels, and Van der Weyden framed his painting using an unusual reverse T shape. The addition of these elements example restrain viewers’ attention to the center and depress the whole image with no barely empty space on the panels. No matter how unique every painter think of the Deposition, the sadness and the depression of the scene are common agreements.
Bibliography
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transition. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1998.
Gombrich, Ernst H. Studies in the art of the Renaissance. Oxford: Phaidon, 1975.
Harbison, Craig. The art of the Northern Renaissance. London: King, 2012.
Pächt, Otto, and Monika Rosenauer. Early Netherlandish painting: from Rogier van der
Weyden to Gerard David. London: Harvey Miller, 1997.
The Editors of Encyclopædia Britannica. “Chiaroscuro.” Encyclopædia Britannica.
October 13, 2015. Accessed November 13, 2017. https://www.britannica.com/art/chiaroscuro.
