"Respect"

 

Portrait of an Old Woman

Artist:  Hans Memling         Date:  c.1470   

Artefact:  Oil on Panel  

Dimensions:  10⅜ " X 7"  /  26.5 x 18 cm

Location:  Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas, USA

     "In the 1460s Hans Memling (1430-1494) established himself in the Flemish city of Bruges, where his talent was rewarded with a stream of commissions. Many of these were for portraits, a genre in which the painter excelled. At a time when Italian portraitists were still producing profiles, Memling poses the sitter for a three-quarter view. Typically, the sitter's eyes do not engage with the viewer, looking down and to the side with an implication of piety. Memling habitually set his subjects in front of a landscape, whereas here the background is plain greenish-blue. This portrait exemplifies Memling's technical brilliance, especially the highlights that model the strong nose and the folds of cloth. The composure that characterizes Memling's art presumably suited his subjects' view of themselves. There is a firm self-satisfaction in these features, as at the confident awareness of virtue."

(Reg Grant, 'Portrait of an Old Woman', in Stephen Farthing (Gen. Ed.), 2016, 1001 Paintings you must see before you die, Pier 9 (Allen & Unwin), p. 104)

If I were wanting to describe the impression this Early Renaissance painting makes on me, I could use the phrase 'honest realism'. And if I was seeking an older representation of this effect, a fore-runner to the dignity and respect embodied in this 'old master', I might do no better than go back a further 1,200 years, to Roman Egypt and the 'Fayum Portraits'.

Portrait of a Woman

Artist:  Unknown       Date:   3rd century AD

Artefact:  Encaustic (wax paint) on Fig wood

Dimensions:  21⅝" X 13⅜"  /  55 X34 cm

Location:  Department of Egyptian Antiquities, Louvre Museum, Paris, France

The woman's head is turned towards the viewer but the eyes are slightly averted. By diverting the sitter's gaze in this subtle way, the portrait avoids any suggestion of haughtiness or arrogance, while retaining an expression of quiet assurance and self-respect. 

  

     "This sarcophagus portrait is from the Fayum region and was painted in the Greco-Roman period. The word 'Fayum' refers to a very fertile region southwest of Cairo. It was centered around an artificial lake, Lake Qaroun, an ambitious engineering project dating from the twelfth dynasty, built in a natural valley. 

      The people of the Fayum Valley came from Egypt, Greece, Syria, Libya, and other areas of the Roman Empire. They grew crops including wheat and barley; the fish from the lake was considered a great delicacy throughout Egypt; and under the rule of Amenemhet III the area became famed for lush gardens and abundant fruit trees.

      Today the region is known for the number of papyrus documents unearthed during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, as well as for the many 'Fayum portraits' uncovered by archaeologists. These life-size portraits were apparently used to decorate homes, as well as being employed for funerary purposes. The encaustic technique involved melting wax and mixing it with pigmentation and perhaps linseed oil or egg, then applying it like paint on to wood or linen.

      This painted portrait looks surprisingly modern. The woman's clear eyes and prominent nose and the artist's careful depiction of the jewelry suggest that this was painted to be a recognisable portrait. Art historians often credit the Fayum region with the birth of realistic portraiture and the many portraits uncovered in this region represent a time of ground breaking artistic experimentation."

(Lucinda Hawksley, 'Portrait of a Woman', in Stephen Farthing 2016, as above, p. 33)

"Portraits of Women in Egypt, 1800 years Ago.

      These paintings were found all along the Nile, but are commonly known as 'Fayum portraits' as they were first discovered in large numbers in the Fayum region of Egypt in the last quarter of the nineteenth century.

     They were painted on wooden panels from live models, and reused on the person's mummy after his or her death, replacing the Egyptian mummy masks that had symbolized the rebirth of the deceased in the afterlife. They were first used in this way in the reign of Tiberius (AD 14-37), in the early Christian era when Egypt was already under Roman rule.

      These extraordinary works of art, preserved in the dry climate, are the only surviving examples of portrait painting in the ancient world, and show us the multiple faces of a whole society."

(Sixth Louvre-DNP Museum Lab presentation, <museumlab.eu/exhibition/06/about.html>)

      "A majority of images show a formal portrait of a single figure, facing and looking toward the viewer, from an angle that is usually slightly turned from full face. The figures are presented as busts against a monochrome background. The individuals are both male and female and range in age from childhood to old age.

      The majority of preserved mummy portraits were painted on boards or panels, made from different imported hardwoods, including oak, lime, sycamore, cedar, fig, and citrus. The wood was cut into thin rectangular panels and made smooth. The finished panels were set into layers of wrapping that enclosed the body and were surrounded by bands of cloth, giving the effect of a window-like opening through which the face of the deceased could be seen.

      The encaustic (wax painting) images are striking because of the contrast between vivid and rich colours, and comparatively large brush strokes producing an 'impressionistic' affect."

(<en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fayum-mummy-portraits>)

Portrait of an Old Man

           'Portrait of an Old Man'                                          'Portrait of an Old Woman'

            Hans Memling (ca, 1475)                                      Hans Memling (c. 1480)

                    Oil on wood                                                           Oil on wood

          10" X 7¼"  /  25.4 X 18.4 cm                                   10⅛" X 7"  /  25.7 X 17.8 cm

          Metropolitan Museum of Art                                       Museum of Fine Art

             Fifth Avenue New York                                               Houston Texas

        (Bequest of Benjamin Altman)                               (Edith & Percy Straus Collection)     

 

     "[Memling] painted a large number of stand-alone portraits in which the sitter's hands rest delicately on a painted parapet, evidence of Memling's interest in the relationship between the sitter and the frame. The sitter in the Straus portrait [i.e.  the  Portrait of an Old Woman] originally held such a pose before the hands were later painted over ['a cleaning and removal of later retouching in 1998 revealed a hint of the hands beneath the fur collar']. The Straus panel has suffered much damage in addition to the later repainting. It has been cut on all four sides, giving the space a much tighter appearance than it would originally have had.

      The Straus panel is likely a companion to  the Portrait of an Old Man in The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York ... If the dimensions of the Straus panel were extended to match those of the New York portrait, the relationship of the figures to their surrounding space would be quite close. The original pose of the woman, with folded hands, would also mirror the pose of the man in the New York painting. Although it has been suggested that the Straus and New York panels were cut from a double portrait, technical examination has revealed this to be impossible ['the New York portrait has only been trimmed on three sides. The original painted edge, or barbe, on the right side of the portrait remains intact and thus could not have been at the centre of a double portrait'].

     The identity of the sitter [for the Straus portrait] is unknown. The fur collar on her cloak indicates she is a woman of some means. The gently arched eyebrows, downcast eyes [sic], and firm but tranquil set of the mouth suggest patient forbearance. Portraits such as these functioned to commemorate their sitters for posterity, but they do so without the obvious declarations of social status that jewelry, family crests, and an elaborate landscape background would have provided. The Straus panel and its companion seem rather to celebrate a long life well lived, Memling having captured both the dignity and the fatigue of his aged sitters."

(Michelle Packer, The Straus Collection, Item 44.530, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas)

Further evidence that these two portraits are of essentially bourgeois subjects, people of the merchant class rather than nobility or clergy, is provided by the hands (extant in the Old Man but painted over in the Old Woman). These sitters' hands are neither holding up sacred objects, or clasped together in the attitude of prayer, both standard methods of signalling especial piety in early Renaissance painting. The couple are soberly dressed according to the contemporary fashion for respectable church-going people, not in the costume of 'holy orders'. (The head-piece of the Old Woman is not a nun's cowl. The hair-cut of the Old Man is not a monk's tonsure).

  

Chronology for Portraits of Women

   This time-line of Hans Memling's female portraits places the Portrait of an Old Woman in some sort of context relevant to his similar works. It is based on a chronology developed by Gijsbert den Boggende in a Masters Thesis from 1975, so it is presumably dated. Nevertheless, it generally agrees with more recent estimates (2019, Lasse Hodne, 'Memling's Portraits of Christ', AAEAHP, 31, 245-258), that "roughly one third of the generally accepted Memling oevre consists of independent portraits" ("his favoured medium was small scale oil paintings on oak panel ...More than a third of his extensive surviving oevre are portraits").

   Boggende identifies 31 verified examples and 5 doubtfuls (Hodde claims 36 certain and 5 or 6 doubtfuls). Of the 31 portraits that Boggende dates according to stylistic differences, only 5 subjects  are women, and all of these seem to have been part of a couple. The husbands and bridegrooms tended to be successful middle class. Tomasso Portarini was a banker for Medici at Bruges, and Willem Moreel was the city's mayor. The Old Man (un-named) and the Elderly Man (Willem Vrelant) look like 'retired burghers', or leading citizens at least.

   The time elapsed between first (1472) and last (1487) portraits is a decade and a half, during which fashions in representation probably changed. For example, the early paintings had a plain or neutral background whereas the later subjects are portrayed against quite detailed landscapes. 

   Interestingly, only the older couples are painted with their hands at rest in these pictures. The rest of the figures have their hands 'steepled' for prayer. This may reflect a more formal purpose for the younger couples, related to religious imagery (panels as part of a hinged triptych for instance), or a desire by aspirant businessmen to establish localised reputations for 'reliability' and social conformity. 

   Memling himself was recorded in 1473-74 and 1475-76 as being a member of the religious confraternity Onze-Lieve-Vrouw-ter Sneeuw (Our Lady of the Snow), suggesting he had become a respected member of the community quite soon after moving to Bruges and applying for citizenship in 1465. An obvious way to gain acceptance and promotion in civil society was to signal spiritual zeal. The Old Woman was one of those who felt free of such ambitions and consequent anxieties.