Invitation to Art; Mother and Child; 28; Invitation to Art: Mother and Child

Now. The beginnings of life that indeed mysterious its continuance is the fundamental miracle which inspires both one and all. When scenes with the eyes of artists both wonder and a whole lot of vision. So that mother and I will separate. And yet one. Touch the mystery and move us with a complex of feelings which is both familiar. And right. The mother and child. One of the great teams and west are not. Because it is only in the West where Christianity emancipated women that motherhood is bad. Its art is leaving evidence of this fact. But now there is wonder in beginning the beginnings of art as well as the beginnings of life. And with Giovanni de Paolo we are at birth a beginning and the name is the last great Gothic artist

of Italy the Gothic with all that sense of wonder as if discovering the world around it for the first time. But he also overlaps into the Renaissance. Renaissance which with its tremendous impulse of curiosity perhaps destroys one when the. Curiosity of the good things to begin with and talking about Giovanni DiPaolo. And in this version of humility come down from heaven to exist in the world of men. There isn't a past weakness. As if the world were still young. And everything that to see were still great. With. Discover. Now she sits in one. Garden surrounded with troops and that's the symbolism dirt of the medieval mind because they are called the Song of Solomon which said a garden and closed is my sister my sparrow. A spring shut up. A fountain sealed by plants that are not to have been grown ups with pleasant groups speaking staff and with

all three years of frankincense and arrows with all the spices. And that are some of the feeling of this picture and its richness too because the medieval world is a rich world where objects mean more than simply themselves as they are themselves and they also mean something they have a double front. END. This is just wonderful you know it it really it really has a tremendous we use and it's interesting to all look at the man who painted Giovanni to pose but he was quite a character. And he lived until 8:00 you married at 38. And the 18 years of his life cover nearly the whole of the 15th century and Sienna. Essentially Wendy and I was and Klein. And doesn't apply and there is often a certain selective refinement of what is passing. So it is in the art of Giovanni the poem now is Art is an art of softness.

It never goes in deep and excavate space No it stays on the surface and ought to serve as an autumn line and watch the line out of line and more to recreate within its contours and moment which is almost saying it is marvelous and tender and there is no hint of grossness to the stern the meditation of this mother. As a wonder to the heavily indebted to see in these eyes and look at their hands as they become soft and burn less and seem to melt into whatever they touch. Here is all the dreaming sweetness of see in the USA and the colors and studied it's pretty sure and attempting to find a sophisticated craft to produce this effect of innocence. Well this is the Gothic world. And here is a world and towered city which in itself may be part of the litany of prose to the verge of these wonderful poetic phrases of survival of the Covenant going to heaven and in disgust the world can sense and feel the first gropings of

men. Outward to the world around him. We discover a new landscape. And follow the river among the few lines of music stand at attention and roam the crops of triangle or rock up there ball coming up like teeth to the ground. And then up around the margin of this world shaped like a sphere. The artist telling us consciously before the astronomers had proved it. That the world is round. And then. At the pinnacle of the globe. That. The symbol of the Holy Ghost. God over all permeating this natural world to give us a symbolism to every object. And in the Gothic there is a profusion of symbolism to match the adornments of the Hindu gods. And now we're talking about. The Oriental art. And the art of the Orient. And it's interesting that we do will because. Just look at there's a man and these flowers these strawberries and flowers are painted

like an Indian not a Persian miniature. And you can see something of the influence of that in the way the virgin is flatly placed against her background. And it's interesting fascinating indeed to see the way that we discover there was cameras there was trade between CNN and the audience at this time. It's fascinating to see the way influences bleed out kind always through and now we can go back or forward from this month. We can go forward to the full flood of the Renaissance where the Giants take shape and selection loved. Donatello Michelangelo and stand beside their pictures. People we know. Oh we can go back. To a world where the artists are anonymous where they dissolve away. Leaving only behind them as evidence that they live the tall there are. We shall go backwards and step over a century. It's more exciting to do that. Back into this dark and anonymous medieval world a world it's so difficult to get into the hardest of all worlds

to bring to light because it is a world of faith. A world of belief and ours is not. So that we always have the impression of being on the outside looking in. We never were in it as we can be in the Roman or the Greek Are there were no sons worlds. And here we go back to one of the first impulses of what the child inclines towards a mother. And the world has dissolved away from the background and the Virgin of humility it was all around you and it is not that it dissolved away the gold which throws one's mind back. To Byzantium and now we are beginning to touch the infinite. And here we are at the roofs of European art where the growth is in us and the seed has within it the future just as the acorn goes in at the top. Perhaps I should get some landmarks in this period a few years after this picture was painted just to die. The first great giant. 13:30 7 11 years after the empty.

Ambrosial not in the city who painted this and his brother both died. In the Black Plague. And in that same year Petrarch loses his lawyer. And that's the same year or two that a group of young men and women ride away from the play go from Florence and recite to each other according to the catchy Oh. What a camera they use however or bring us towards the modern world we want to go backwards and light up this darkness to its own. And here we have the flowered in which a row which brings one back to the flowering richness again Medieval art. And see the way the hand comes out from under their robe a flex as if there were no space on it and yet the end seems fairly solid it crosses the red of the Madonna spoke again to the wooden figure of the child yet lightly bit of life in the spoon and the wonderful faces are pressed together. That opens close by the arm of the child. The over was taken up again in the eye and CNN's Art often

seems an art of shallow overland parabola which. Echoes silently and can hear the two faces into an image shot dead. Hushed wonderfully quiet and still the Sienese art is like a quiet tender and remember we mentioned CNN in the early and well you have a Madonna stirs with Oriental detachment pass the child past all thought into the infinity of which she is. And now ambrosia has another unique moment here for he of all the seniors of this time he feels most the warming and human impulse that came into the world with the same fences of Assisi the most lovable of stones who brought to men a new awareness of himself and of the world around him and not only of his relationship to God alone. And so from this impulse the child becomes human from the mystic and to God here becomes man and six the protection of his

mother. Just as a human child. And here we've got a unique moment in which two worlds need to the medieval and modern the world of the spirit the world of the flesh. The now and the hereafter. Well now since we are going backwards in time again. Let's be more aware in this in this picture of. The parts that come from the medieval world rather than the attempt that dimension and solidity which bring one forward to the world of the Renaissance. So let's forget perhaps something of the solidity that ambrosial done from Giovanni Hassan and we're stepping over centuries we're going backward. We're going backward to the 12th century. And we need many landmarks on our way. This is the time of the Crusades the first to say it in 10 95 the second and eleven forty six and it's a time of giants. To Peter Rabbit who died in eleven forty two

The rationalist in star crossed lovers the only gentle lover. And his enemy at a time of another giant that he didn't father and same Bernard of who brought him to destruction and contemporary with St. Bernard is this. And it's apt that it should be because sent Bernard was a man who as far as I know although he opposed the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception. His voice never ceased to praise the Mother of God. And with this tool we come to a rock solid exists with all the uncompromising definiteness of an article of faith. It's gotta contain power and force her to strike one in the same way as a person who say's. I believe and after that. There is nothing to be said this is solid to the core. It's up stone and it's color that remains of it remain around blue for the Virgin and not and for the child. Well let's go around to the

front of this and discover how to do that though the mother and child in flying towards each other with a gesture which is human. Get this through beyond and past each other into the infinity of which this child is king. You know the eye is always telling us things if we only pay attention to it and in this we see that the head is gated and live and we see that the legs are too long for the party and we see the shoulders are too wide and the fact this is disproportionate and it is the plastic world in the world of the Renaissance which brings us an ideal of proportion with the Romanesque we find loops in many other things many many of the groups a ticket of them and the Romanesque finds its roots in arts which stretch from the east in the art of the steps to the limits of the West. The known world the art of the Kips And these are vital arts arts which twist and intertwine arts which have a teeming energy and fecundity in the

old vitality. They never seem to end up poles like Celtic art which France was only as described as. Their elaborate insane dreams and let disciplined effort effervescence of the imagination. All these lies in part. Behind Romanesque art but there is something else. To see the way that this shoulder rises like a rock through water through these folds here and how they seem to atrophy and become merely lines which take on a life of their own. And here in this mystical the medieval twelfth century we discovered an echo of the ancient world in the mind just cast back in one shock of a call. To the Roman world. Romanes. Roman and we stand for a moment in the harsh sunlight of Rome where everything is real perhaps to view faith

belief to illuminate them. How can we. Well there is a poem written by an Irish poet way back to the ninth century translated by Robin flower. Wonderful now which gives us some of the simple feeling of this and Saint Peter prayed that the child would come out of heaven so that she could nurse and for one night. And. The poet has us beat baby angel relying on my parrot learned which months me to deny the all things live on though they came my friendship craving sons of princes and of kings not from them. My SO saving but to tiny music playing virgins sing your tune for numbers paying your little tribute so are my breasts. Baby is it slumbers yet in heaven

itself you know. We are in transition we are in movement again. Now we step. From the romanist into the Gothic world and all at once there is a tremendous change in a just changing its mind and art faithfully follows the change no not follows it. If it embodies it. It is the chain. This Madonna still sits front and almost in a Romanist. And there's tremendous form of dignity that comes even through the weathering of the stone where the Gulf of life is quickened in look at the child who is here. What must have been the globe of the world. Then move up to this face to see more clearly. The small fluttered. With compressed lips. And this is a face in transition to the gulf and with the impulse of the gothic. This impulse. With its feet on the ground among real things on its head in the air like yours

cathedrals that rose with its impulse the mother stands up and as she does that is a change it. Buttresses out like this. The elbow which is placed here supporting the child in a movement which is completely natural completely human. And now we have the sculpture completely and because here. The model seems to well be subject to His Will the grace of the movement. It dissolves away all memories of the hieratic romanist stone now loans and movies to his will as we said and the face this margin seems about to break into the Gothic smile this margin and this admits at last the memory of the feminine and the merely human in the shadow Why is a tiny rosebud of a mouth and a bland smooth face. Them or those of a woman. Now all those features and this is the woman who becomes the mother of the medieval world whose praise begins at this time in the medieval

legend a mystical Rose Morningstar helped of the second refuge of sinners comfort out of the afflicted. This is the woman who 10 in this balanced moment. There is both familiarity and all in it and it's to inspire affection a sort of human affection. You see them as a child who is the flowers he's broken from the stem that she needs. And there's a lightness about the child that is the way that the sculptures portrayed in the 14th century with the band and this is the origin of whom Henry Adams wrote in his great book on the Gothic they knew about it that people knew heart as well as they knew their own mothers in the jewel in a crowd in every stitch and embroidery in our many of them. It's every color every photo every expression on the perfectly familiar features of her grave in the face familiar from earliest childhood. To the last agony and the

joy and every sorrow and every danger and every act and almost in every thought of life the virgin is present. Well now let us step back to the 15th century that we left it a short time ago and we have described a perfect storm and we end up now in Flanders and that is a natural transition because the art of Flanders has its beginning and the Gothic miniature. And here is an eye which see is an idea that has washed so miraculously appear as if it would show us the world and the reflection of a bubble. And this is you know sons wonder all sophistication tenderness and all that wonderful and it has at the same time a sort of classic strength. This is this is a great picture of one of the greatest you'll ever see and you know to need Gertrude Stein to describe it really because you're a painter is painting the picture of a painter. Painting the voyage.

Through the Eyes a version of the end of the Eden we see Saint look hating the thought Well now this is. And I discovered in the world around it for the first time so that it's seized with a tremendous planet. It concentrates everything as if everything would pass through and then it is faithful to nature but not its way as Michelangelo charged in the famous passage. Well now since this is the tradition and in the great tradition of Flemish art it's a window on the world. So we will take a journey into this picture. We will step into this world and discover in it pictures within pictures as here these two marvelous doodle figures in the background leaning over the battlements and see the woman with the Gothic tilt to that and to see the way the two head dresses are black and white. They make a sort of point and counterpoint which helps and supports the center of this picture. When you look at it from a distance see it's in things like this. And first quality comes out

and this is done you don't reason. And then up a winding stretch of river. Tom in distant lands God will tell you today about it he has one of the first of landscapes and also we find a space in which you feel you could have a footing. You can walk into this picture and breathe it out and then we pass over that pillar. Which springs the eye back in space. You see it coming in to the margin of the room with a bump. It's a pillar which holds up this picture too. And then across to the street there life continues unaware of the presence of death. And yes you need them sent to the life of the town and 500 years ago and then up above it you know swells into that hill you see there with the row of trees on it and there's a great quietness and stillness about all this background which creates a against which the main event takes place. And all those numerous details they don't war with one another and they are

suddenly like bricks man on the other to create the total effect. This is a man who in the one in the three years you can still see the work and look at the detail of the tapestry here it could almost be woven from this description. And then. Here in all its Flemish smallness is the head of the village and he looked downcast eyes and the dirty expression betrays motherhood. This is a face which vendor Vaden invented for his village and this is the face that for generations after other painters use for the forgery. But we are looking at the facts in all its freshness of what was to become the type and this is one of the most tender moments in all of it. It's one which searches with great sensitivity into the ambiguous relationship between this mother and this child this child was both God and man. They also master of the world yet by his incarnation imprisoned

and helpless in infancy by the belief that the elegance and delicacy of the fingers again we saw this in the lot in the city. And they seem so often been listened to take on the very roundness and shape of what they are and here's the engine still an infant yet with some of the dignity of kingship. And you see the spreading toes there of the authenticity of real observation just like watching a real child and their hands gesture too is a little ambiguous. It's in part a blessing in part the jerky movement of an infant's fingers that would see anything. And hear really is a miracle in this we have an entire nation in art because the Virgin and Child are taken down from heaven and they become flesh and blood. They exist in a world which we can share. We can walk into it in its light. In its space and breathe that air. And that is a sharing between the observer and what is absorbed. And that we've forgotten all about saying look and he's one of the most fascinating people. His

Gospel is the best literature. Of the fall. And is a painter and you know he's a painter because he describes some events with tremendous vividness the Incarnation the Annunciation all these are described in a few words with a touch of a master. And he's also a doctor. He's a doctor and he's an artist things which both train the items are. And since he's a doctor he's interested in the medical aspects of the medicals. And they often use a medical turn of phrase which shows that he knew his Gaylan And his pocket case. Well now let's look at your years of other graying deep face as it is I see what afflicting the the mystery of what it looks like. And there are the wonderful Gothic folds of his robe. This guy again. Which we will now leave. We have been talking about the Gothic we've been talking about the Romanesque they are merely in it's merely labels for the great change which they name. First of all there is the great event then we name. Now we're going to leave the medieval

world where we have been in the slightly ambiguous position like the artist the artist has been dealing with a child who is both human and divine. Well now we will come to a child which is merely human and deal with it in a merely human way. Here. We come in the 18th century tool. Well sophistication and sweetness which have lost all or an wonder so that it becomes here a little ploy and with a dragon. We get a confection that didn't bite like a wedding cake but it's a good wedding cake I mean it takes a lot of skill to hold this together in its older frame and to make everything stick in its position. This gay butterfly of a man who who. It's against the iron curtain of the French Revolution. Well now. Since we're dealing with Mother and Child we'll. Look at it's merely

human essence. The child is vulnerable helpless and that's the key to it all. It inspires protection in the mother and. There is one woman who was obsessed with this relationship of mother and child relationship which she herself was never to know. And by the way. The most poetic thing poets seem to leave for mother and child because they don't write poetry about it but the most poetic thing I ever heard about mother and child. Was that about a woman who described the beginnings and stylings of life. And she said it was like. Holding in the hand and feeling the shattering of a little bird that's very beautiful. Well here is America's sense image of mother and child. And she has a world which fills up this lively art of lying and pattern which she got from the Japanese. And there they are one flesh mother and child turning towards each other an emotion which is entirely human. But

how in our age when everything is so confused bewildered and difficulty is a modern artist who raises up to meet the problem of a Madonna and child as distinct from the mother child. The Madonna and child should have an austerity. And a nobility and even the touch of grandeur that is not present in the every day Mother and Child idea. So say it anymore. And here is this answer. To mother and child. And above all else it is in space and shape it displaces air with a solidity so that this appears solid and concentrated to the core. It's wonderful. He himself said. Since stuff like. European art has been overgrown with moss with wheat which conceal shake well here a hue of the use shake it if you close it completely so that. This comes through the slight soles and through things of the drapery

like a rock can with one shock over coal. We are back in the Romanesque well. Almost. You're coming to it formally. As before we came to it through thick and she sits as anymore said it. As if she could sit in that position for ever. And yet as of course she must. Well we have described a perfect circle in the medieval world and from that we have drawn attention to three points which are taking us to the model. Theme has been mother and child as seen through the eyes of octaves and both mother and artist. They show us something in common. Their creations both with depth and to take on a life of their own independent of books. The who.

This National Educational Television.