ENDNOTES page 240

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2 illustrations: on the right-Sleeping Venus (1510), Giorgione

on the left-Bacchus and Ariadne (1520-23), Titian

Giorgione_-_Sleeping_Venus_-_Google_Art_

<B> Deposition of Christ (1547), Veronese

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Grunewald (tragic clouds): *

the Isenheim Altarpiece (1512-16), 2 sets of wings, displaying 3 configurations. The outer wings were opened for important festivals of the liturgical year. They reveal 4 scenes: the left wing represents the Annunciation during which the archangel Gabriel comes to announce to Mary that she will give birth to Jesus, the son of God. The Virgin Mary is depicted in a chapel to indicate the sacred character of the event. In the central corpus, the Concert of Angels and the Nativity are a unified concept: the viewer witnesses Christ's coming to earth as a new-born baby, to combat the forces of evil personified by certain of the angels. A number of symbols provide keys to aid in interpretation: the enclosed garden represents Mary's womb, a sign of her perpetual virginity, the rose bush without thorns refers to her as free of original sin, the fig tree symbolises mother's milk. The bed, the bucket and the chamber pot underscore the human nature of Christ. Above Mary the artist give us a sky dramatically light with dark clouds, blue and golden rays. Lastly, the right wing shows the Resurrection, Christ emerges from the tomb & ascends into Heaven bathed in light transfiguring the countenance of the Crucified into the face of God.

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the Netherlanders(tragic clouds): *

Joachim Patinir (1480-1524) history & landscape painter, from the area of modern Wallonia, worked in Antwerp (the centre of the art market in the Low Countries). He was a pioneer of landscape as an independent genre and he was the first Flemish painter to regard himself primarily as a landscape painter. He effectively invented the world landscape, a distinct style of panoramic northern Renaissance landscapes which is Patinir's important contribution to Western art.

below: Landscape with Charon Crossing Styx 1515-24; classical subject related by Virgil (Aeneid) & Dante (the Inferno) at the centre of the picture within the Christian traditions of the Last Judgment and the Ars moriendi. The larger figure in the boat is Charon, who transports the souls of the dead to the gates of Hades. The passenger in the boat, too minute to distinguish his expressions, is a human soul deciding between Heaven, to his right (the viewer's left), or Hell, to his left. The river Styx divides the painting down the centre. Patinier uses a "world landscape" composition with a 3-colour scheme, moving from brown in the foreground, to bluish-green, to pale blue in the background. This format provides a bird's-eye view over an expansive landscape. He also uses colour to visibly depict heaven & hell, good & evil. To the viewer's left is a heavenly place with bright blue skies, crystal blue rivers with a luminous fountain and angels accenting the grassy hills. On the far right of the painting is a dark sky engulfing Hell and the hanged figures on its gate. Fires blaze in the hills. The foreground of the painting consists of brown rocks in Heaven and brown burnt trees in Hell. In the middle-ground is the river and the grasslands in bright hues of blue and green. The background, which is cut off by the horizon line of the darker blue river, is a pale blue sky highlighted with white and gray clouds. This compositional form, crowded left and right sides bracketed by hills, pushes the viewer's eye into the open space in the middle and reinforces that the men in the boat are the main focus of the painting.