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The art of
meditation: Contemplation. Not the zoning out to
nothingness, but instead the freedom of letting your mind wander
towards focus, the honing in to discover. Meditation
literally means ‘thinking over,’ the act one of reflection,
of pondering subtleties....and like Proust (and this we learnt
from
Alain de
Botton),
we sometimes favor the introspection of looking at a reproduction
of a painting for long, long minutes to the mad scramble of
negotiating the crowds at museums.
And so, we
stopped to contemplate Parmigianino’s
Madonna with
the Long Neck,
(click the picture above for a detail view) one of the most famous Mannerist paintings. Mannerism (from
maniera or manner in Italian), a 16th century movement
following the High Renaissance, and essentially the beginning of
that thing known as personal style, the emergence of the first
Modernists one might say. One could no longer look at a
piece of art, and not think of the painter. The personal
signature. Interpretation. Mannerism began with
Raphael and Michelangelo (the Sistine Chapel with its figures in
poses that are stylized and unnatural but so very lovely), and
includes El Greco (his figures with their elongated proportions),
and Benvenuto Cellini (the famous salt cellar in gold and enamel
where land and ocean intermingle). It was a sophisticated
and knowing tweaking of the Classical vocabulary in art,
architecture, and sculpture—notions of symmetry, naturalism,
realism, proportion, perspective, orders all transformed, but to
advantage.
Parmigianino
takes the commonplace and sedate, that old standard of art, the
Madonna and Child, and imbues it with loveliness as well as more
than a hint of sensuousness. The swanlike slenderness and curve of
neck, the long splayed fingers—length here is exaggerated to imbue
a sense of grace and sinuosity. Willowy and sylphlike,
perfect oval of tilted head, she holds the child, who is a rather
large baby and could almost be cherub or Cupid. Even the angels
all crowded in on the left are svelte creatures; the right hand
side of the painting is balanced by a long column without a
capital, and a miniature St. Jerome with a scroll in his hand.
Proportion, symmetry, and perspective thrown to the winds.
Sensuousness is emphasized. The wet drapery technique
emphasizes both breast and navel. There is the long lissom
leg of an angel on the extreme left. And then there are the
religious allusions. Medieval poems compared the Madonna’s neck to
an ivory tower or column. Madonna del Collo Lungo as it is
known in Italian. Vasari also noted a cross on a vase that
one of the angels holds, but apparently that can barely be seen
now. The child with a certain lifelessness of form could
also be seen as alluding to the Christ in Michelangelo’s Pieta.
This painting
then that is so very beautiful, and all because of its
distortions. The composition more harmonious because of its
asymmetry, the Madonna more exquisite because of the unnatural
slenderness and curve of neck. In the end,
after meditating on Mannerism, on all things beautiful with long
slender necks—swans, giraffes, old Islamic glass bottles—we think that one
must have the vocabulary to be able to truly splatter paint or
words with dexterity, to break the rules with anything bordering
on brilliance one must first master the language.
Contemplate:
Explore the
paintings of Parmigianino Online
Visit:
Florence and the Uffizi Gallery
Read:
How Proust
can Change Your Life, Alain de Botton
Tags:
food travel italy
museums
sculpture
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One of the
ignudi
in a stylized pose, from Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel |
