IKON

It is universally accepted that theatrical considerations, which constituted an important component of tomb design since the appearance of medieval wall monuments, reached a summit in Baroque sepulchral art. A significant step in this development, hitherto overlooked, occurred in Naples in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth century. The article explores some Neapolitan sepulchral projects of this period, in which the combined use of liturgy, of space design and of free standing effigies created new iconographies based on the drama of daily masses.

The coffin portrait developed in the Polish – Lithuanian Commonwealth in 17^th and 18^th century. These realistic images of deceased persons were put on coffins during funeral ceremonies. The tradition to make such pictures was conceived and observed almost exclusively among the nobles and constituted a part of lifestyle and ideology of this social stratus, known under the name sarmatism. The funerals of noblemen in the later modern period turned into shows of luxury which lasted for days. The churches were decorated with castri doloris, designed especially for this occasion, and the funeral itself was adorned with symbolic acts played by hired actors. An important part of this decorum was provided by the portrait put on the narrow end of the coffin, overlooking the crowd gathered to mourn the deceased. The oldest preserved object in question, oval in shape, was made for King Stephen I Báthory (died 1586). It was deposited on his tin sarcophagus and buried in the monarchs’ crypt at the Wawel castle in Cracow. The second link in the evolution of the coffin portrait is constituted by the image of Adam Sędziwój Czarnkowski (died 1627) from the church in Czarnków. It has a rectangular form with the upper edge formed by an arch. The typical, polygonal form (mostly irregular hexagons) emerged shortly before mid-17^th century.

The author investigates the 1765 castrum doloris for Emperor Francis I, designed by Mauro Tesi and commissioned by the Illyrian-Hungarian College in Bologna. The article is focused on the context of its commission and its iconography.

Quando nel 1835-37 l’anziana pittrice francese Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun (1755-1842) pubblica i tre volumi dei suoi “Souvenirs”, ripercorre all’indietro l’esperienza di una biografia d’artista vissuta attraverso le principali corti di Europa nell’età della Rivoluzione Francese e dell’Impero napoleonico. Ritrattista di sovrani, acuta indagatrice di un’umanità in azione fatta di volti, gesti, sguardi, nel racconto apologetico dei suoi ricordi Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun si confronta con il tema drammatico della morte nel momento della caduta irreversibile dell’Ancien Régime, un universo a lei familiare e amico, protettivo e rassicurante. Se allo scoppio della Rivoluzione Francese Jacques-Louis David fa della morte l’icona esemplare per gli eroi della nuova Storia, Élisabeth guarda con orrore a questo soggetto, impossibilitata a fissare la tragedia della fine di un’epoca. Ma in lei il rifiuto della morte non è solo il pretesto per negare la sconfitta di un modello politico fondato sul privilegio: per un ritrattista la morte rappresenta infatti la negazione di quanto la pittura e la teoria artistica andavano affermando da oltre tre secoli, a partire dalle esperienze sulla fisiognomica di Leonardo da Vinci. Così, nel racconto letterario la penna dell’artista registra la morte e allo stesso tempo la sua impossibilità di essere tradotta con il pennello.

In the story of her Souvenirs (1835-1837) the old painter Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun (1755-1842), recalls the portraits of European aristocracy long journey to the outbreak of the French Revolution. Away from France, the painter thinks with anxiety the fate of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette. Clery, a servant of the king in the Temple prison, in a long letter urges her to do a painting that represents the last moments of the rulers. But the pain is too strong and Élisabeth abandons the plan. The refusal expressed by the artist on this occasion provides an opportunity to investigate the special relationship that the portrait shows towards the death. The years of Revolution and Terrorism coincide with particular increase of the representation of death in visual arts. The death of the sovereign is represented with dignity and without any compassion. This is the case of Jacques-Louis David, which he recorded by the contempt in the image of Marie Antoinette led to execution. For David, champion of the revolutionary motion, true martyrs are Marat or young Bara. This is how new iconography is formed: in reading secular history, the revolutionary hero’s sacrifice takes the place of martyrdom of the saint. Seen as perpetrators or victims, the protagonists of the Revolution and the Terror are thus immortalized in the moment of death. The paintings, the funeral ceremonies with the display of bodies, the practice of the cast of the death-mask are increasingly frequent in those years. The guillotine is a true “portrait machine”. Faced with this proliferation of images of death Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun seems to withdraw. She is essentially a portrait painter and she describes humanity woven of faces, gestures and looks. Elisabeth describes the dead body of the Empress Catherine II of Russia, refusing to look at the face. The face of a dead person must not, in fact, remain in the memories of a portrait, because it no longer corresponds to what was in life. Elisabeth Vigée Le Brun left some descriptions and guidance in her Souvenirs: death distorts the faces beyond recognition and it carries with it the true essence of people. The artist painted many portraits during her long career: portraits in action, caught almost by surprise, suspended while persons write, sing, enjoy, walk, smile ... This is precisely what a good portrait painter has to do - reveal the soul. The death may exist, but only as an anecdote: a portrait of death is simply impossible.

Referring to the representation of Death in modern art, this article argues that there are two distinct approaches to the subject, one iconographic and the other esthetic. Furthermore, while the iconographic method stresses the concept of beauty and harmony in dealing with spiritual topics, the second method based on esthetics focuses on the concept of the “tremendum” to elicit spiritual reactions in the observer by means of unsettling uses of motives and colors. It is argued that the emphasis on the “tremendum” is based on specific esthetic rules already used in the Renaissance and has come to identify the approach of contemporary art. Finally, through the use of color the artists emphasizing this second approach have been able to give a time-flow dimension to their paintings, capable of creating a connection between their own suffering and spiritual angst and those of the observer. As well exemplified in the work of Rothko, the artist attempts to bring the image inside the observer who by his own psychological and spiritual involvement contributes to give meaning and life to the image itself.

Libeskind’s Jewish Museum Berlin (1988-1999) and Eisenman’s Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe (1997-2004) strive to “tell a story” by means of architecture – a story that cannot be told, for it is “unique and inexplicable”, that “defies representation”. Therefore, they created two places where the emotional content of this story can be re-experienced directly and the memory of it perpetuated forever. The story of the Holocaust calls for a special kind of monument, a “counter-monument”, which, however, also carries a specific political significance.

Hector dies twice, firstly in the heroic and secondly in the knightly world. With Homer his death is tragic. For passion, which turns the tide in its own favour, therefore Hector decides to fight with Achilles, is regarded as a mistake, but not moral. Furthermore Homer does not mention the possibility of important life beyond. The most noble eternity is promised by “beautiful death”, which enables the hero, godlike in deeds and appearance, to live on in the memory of the community. Here the body as a medium of actions and an expression of individual is essential. Medieval Hector is completely idealised, so he can not become a victim of passion, which gains negative meaning, but dies because of set of circumstances, that are autonomous. Nevertheless his death isn’t tragic, for tragedy and Heaven or choice cancel each other out. “Beautiful death” is replaced by “aesthetic death”, which denies the body as problematic and stresses out the perfection of soul, which is divine not only in appearance, but also in existence.

The tombstone of Andrew Szécsi, bishop of Transylvania (1320-1356), stands at the meeting point of several contemporary artistic phenomena in the history of Central European sculpture. One of them is the spread of the figural type of tombstone among clerics in Central Europe around the middle of the fourteenth century, the earliest example of which is Andrew Szécsi’s tombstone. Its local artistic context can be reconstructed: the tradition of making episcopal tombstones in the fourteenth century in Gyulafehérvár, capital of the Transylvanian bishopric. Within this tradition, Andrew Szécsi’s tombstone represents a remarkable change. It did not only introduce the new type of figural tombstone, but also re-formed it with a consciously chosen set of iconographical and stylistic features, forming thereby a “new image of the episcopal dead” in Gyulafehérvár, an image that was variously adapted and re-worked on the tombstones of Bishop Andrew’s successors.

The article discusses the representations of Death as a skeleton in the late 17^th and the middle of the 18^th century in north-western Croatia. The western wall of St Joseph’s chapel in the Franciscan church of St John the Baptist in Varaždin holds the figures of Death as a reaper and Death with arrow and hourglass which, surrounded by two angels holding upright candles, carry the message of memento mori and the promise of eternal life. These sculptures were made by an anonymous artist commissioned by the merchant Daniel Praunsperger. In 1758, as part of the restoration of the St Peter’s chapel in Gotalovec, the preapositus of the Zagreb cathedral and the Belgrade bishop, Stjepan Puc, commissioned the installation of the main altar in front of the Gotal family tomb. According to the commissioner’s wish, Joseph Stallmayer sculpted the figure of Death which, tearing apart the deceased family’s coat-of-arms refers to the transience of human life and pro memoria, to the memory of the Gotal family.

Dubravko Lovrenović, Medieval Tombstones and Graveyards of Bosnia and Hum, Rabic, Sarajevo, 2010