Paolo Galliari Veronese residing in the parish of Saint Samuel, called to the Holy Office 18 July 1573 and asked his profession before the sacred tribunal…

Answer. I paint and make figures.


Question. Do you know the reasons why you have been called here?
A. No.
























Q. Can you imagine what those reasons may be?
A. I can well imagine.


Q. Say what you think about them.
A. I fancy that it concerns what was said to me by the reverend fathers, or rather by the prior of the monastery of San Giovanni e Paolo, whose name I did not know, but who informed me that he had been here, and that your Most Illustrious Lordships had ordered him to cause to be placed in the picture a Magdalen instead of the dog; and I answered him that very readily I would do all that was needful for my reputation and for the honor of the picture; but that I did not understand what this figure of the Magdalen could be doing here; and this for many reasons, which I will tell, when occasion is granted me to speak.


Q. What is the picture to which you have been referring?
A. It is the picture which represents the Last Supper of Jesus Christ with His disciples in the house of Simon.


Q. Where is this picture?
A. In the refectory of the monks of San Giovanni e Paolo.


Q. Is it painted in fresco or on wood or on canvas?
A. It is on canvas.


Q. How many feet does it measure in height?
A. It may measure seventeen feet.


Q. And in breadth?
A. About thirty-nine.

Q. How many have you represented? And what is each one doing?
A. First there is the innkeeper, Simon; then, under him, a carving squire whom I supposed to have come there for his pleasure, to see how the service of the table is managed. There are many other figures which I cannot remember, however, as it is a long time since I painted that picture.


Q. How you painted other Last Suppers besides that one?
A. Yes.


Q. How many have you painted? Where are they?
A. I painted one at Verona for the reverend monks of San Lazzaro; it is in their refectory. Another is in the refectory of the reverend brothers of San Giorgio here in Venice.


Q. But that one is not a Last Supper, and is not even called the Supper of Our Lord.
A. I painted another in the refectory of San Sebastiano in Venice, another at Padua for the Fathers of the Maddalena. I do not remember to have made any others.


Q. In this Supper which you painted for San Giovanni e Paolo, what signifies the figure of him whose nose is bleeding?
A. He is a servant who has a nose-bleed from some accident.





















Q. What signify those armed men dressed in the fashion of Germany, with halberds in their hands?
A. It is necessary here that I should say a score of words.


Q. Say them.
A. We painters use the same license as poets and madmen, and I represented those halberdiers, the one drinking, the other eating at the foot of the stairs, but both ready to do their duty, because it seemed to me suitable and possible that the master of the house, who as I have been told was rich and magnificent, would have such servants.


























Q. And the one who is dressed as a jester with a parrot on his wrist, why did you put him into the picture?
A. He is there as an ornament, as it is usual to insert such figures.








Q. Who are the persons at the table of Our Lord?
A. The twelve apostles.


Q. What is Saint Peter doing, who is the first?
A. He is carving the lamb in order to pass it to the other part of the table.


Q. What is he doing who comes next?
A. He holds a plate to see what Saint Peter will give him.


Q. Tell us what the third is doing.
A. He is picking his teeth with a fork.


Q. And who are really the persons whom you admit to have been present at this Supper?
A. I believe that there was only Christ and His Apostles; but when I have some space left over in a picture I adorn it with figures of my own invention.


Q. Did some person order you to paint Germans, buffoons, and other similar figures in this picture?
A. No, but I was commissioned to adorn it as I thought proper; now it is very large and can contain many figures.


Q. Should not the ornaments which you were accustomed to paint in pictures be suitable and in direct relation to the subject, or are they left to your fancy, quite without discretion or reason?
A. I paint my pictures with all the considerations which are natural to my intelligence, and according as my intelligence understands them.


Q. Does it seem suitable to you, in the Last Supper of our Lord, to represent buffoons, drunken Germans, dwarfs, and other such absurdities?
A. Certainly not.


Q. Then why have you done it?
A. I did it on the supposition that those people were outside the room in which the Supper was taking place.


Q. Do you not know that in Germany and other countries infested by heresy, it is habitual, by means of pictures full of absurdities, to vilify and turn to ridicule the things of the Holy Catholic Church, in order to teach false doctrine to ignorant people who have no common sense?
A. I agree that it is wrong, but I repeat what I have said, that it is my duty to follow the examples given me by my masters.


Q. Well, what did your masters paint? Things of this kind, perhaps?
A. In Rome, in the Pope’s Chapel, Michelangelo has represented Our Lord, His Mother, St. John, St. Peter, and the celestial court; and he has represented all these personages nude, including the Virgin Mary, and in various attitudes not inspired by the most profound religious feeling.


Q. Do you not understand that in representing the Last Judgment, in which it is a mistake to suppose that clothes are worn, there was no reason for painting any? But in these figures what is there that is not inspired by the Holy Spirit? There are neither buffoons, dogs, weapons, nor other absurdities. Do you think, therefore, according to this or that view, that you did well in so painting your picture, and will you try to prove that it is a good and decent thing?
A. No, my most Illustrious Sirs; I do not pretend to prove it, but I had not thought that I was doing wrong; I had never taken so many things into consideration. I had been far from imaging such a great disorder, all the more as I had placed these buffoons outside the room in which Our Lord was sitting.


These things having been said, the judges pronounced that the aforesaid Paolo should be obliged to correct his picture within the space of three months from the date of the reprimand, according to the judgments and decision of the Sacred Court, and altogether at the expense of the said Paolo.






“Et ita decreverunt omni melius modo.”
(And so they decided everything for the best!)










Translation from the Italian by Charles Yriarte
published, among other places in Francis Marion Crawford’s Salve Venetia, New York, 1905. Vol. II: 29-34.









Veronese simply changed the title of his painting from ‘The Feast in the House of Simon’ to ‘The Feast in the House of Levi’. There is an earlier canvas by Veronese called Feast in the House of Simon - it’s slightly smaller at only 710cm wide and includes two dogs ‘centre stage’ but none of the other characters objected to by the inquisition and as a Magdalen is also present that seems to have made this earlier canvas acceptable.

Izanami and Izanagi

Izanami and Izanagi Creating the Japanese Islands

Izanami and Izanagi Creating the Japanese Islands
Original Title: Izanagi o motte Izanami o saguru no zu
Japanese, Meiji era, mid-1880s
Kobayashi Eitaku, Japanese, 1843–1890

Image: 126 x 54.6 cm (49 5/8 x 21 1/2 in.)
Overall: 226 x 78.9 cm (89 x 31 1/16 in.)
Hanging scroll; ink and color on silk








The last couple, forming the fifth generation, are Izanagi and Izanami, appellations signifying the male Kami of desire and the female Kami of desire. By all the other Kami these two are commissioned to “make, consolidate, and give birth to the drifting land,” a jewelled spear being given to them as a token of authority, and a floating bridge being provided to carry them to earth. Izanagi and Izanami thrust the spear downwards and stir the “brine” beneath, with the result that it coagulates, and, dropping from the spear’s point, forms the first of the Japanese islands, Onogoro.






This island they take as the basis of their future operations, and here they beget, by ordinary human processes–which are described without any reservations–first, “a great number of islands, and next, a great number of Kami.” It is related that the first effort of procreation was not successful, the outcome being a leechlike abortion and an island of foam, the former of which was sent adrift in a boat of reeds.






The islands afterwards created form a large part of Japan, but between these islands and the Kami, begotten in succession to them, no connexion is traceable. In several cases the names of the Kami seem to be personifications of natural objects. Thus we have the Kami of the “wind’s breath,” of the sea, of the rivers, of the “water-gates” (estuaries and ports), of autumn, of “foam-calm,” of “bubbling waves,” of “water-divisions,” of trees, of mountains, of moors, of valleys, etc. But with very rare exceptions, all these Kami have no subsequent share in the scheme of things and cannot be regarded as evidence that the Japanese were nature worshippers.







A change of method is now noticeable. Hitherto the process of production has been creative; henceforth the method is transformation preceded by destruction. Izanami dies in giving birth to the Kami of fire, and her body is disintegrated into several beings, as the male and female Kami of metal mountains, the male and female Kami of viscid clay, the female Kami of abundant food, and the Kami of youth; while from the tears of Izanagi as he laments her decease is born the female Kami of lamentation. Izanagi then turns upon the child, the Kami of fire, which has cost Izanami her life, and cuts off its head; whereupon are born from the blood that stains his sword and spatters the rocks eight Kami, whose names are all suggestive of the violence that called them into existence. An equal number of Kami, all having sway over mountains, are born from the head and body of the slaughtered child.






At this point an interesting episode is recorded. Izanagi visits the “land of night,” with the hope of recovering his spouse.(1) He urges her to return, as the work in which they were engaged is not yet completed. She replies that, unhappily having already eaten within the portals of the land of night, she may not emerge without the permission of the Kami (2) of the underworld, and she conjures him, while she is seeking that permission, not to attempt to look on her face. He, however, weary of waiting, breaks off one of the large teeth of the comb that holds his hair (3) and, lighting it, uses it as a torch. He finds Izanami’s body in a state of putrefaction, and amid the decaying remains eight Kami of thunder have been born and are dwelling. Izanagi, horrified, turns and flees, but Izanami, enraged that she has been “put to shame,” sends the “hideous hag of hades” to pursue him.






He obtains respite twice; first by throwing down his head-dress, which is converted into grapes, and then casting away his
comb, which is transformed into bamboo sprouts, and while the hag stops to eat these delicacies, he flees. Then Izanami sends in his pursuit the eight Kami of thunder with fifteen hundred warriors of the underworld(4). He holds them off for a time by brandishing his sword behind him, and finally, on reaching the pass from the nether to the upper world, he finds three peaches growing there with which he pelts his pursuers and drives them back. The peaches are rewarded with the title of “divine fruit,” and entrusted with the duty of thereafter helping all living people (5) in the central land of “reed plains” (6) as they have helped Izanagi.





Notes
1 It is unnecessary to comment upon the identity of this incident with the legend of Orpheus and Eurydice.

2 It will be observed that we hear of these Kami now for the first time.

3 This is an obvious example of a charge often preferred against the compilers of the Records that they inferred the manners and customs of remote antiquity from those of their own time.

4 Again we have here evidence that the story of creation, as told in the Records, is not supposed to be complete. It says nothing as to how the denizens of the underworld came into existence.

5 The first mention of human beings.

6 This epithet is given to Japan.







This curious legend does not end here. Finding that the hag of hades, the eight Kami of thunder, and the fifteen hundred warriors have all been repulsed, Izanami herself goes in pursuit. But her way is blocked by a huge rock which Izanagi places in the “even pass of hades,” and from the confines of the two worlds the angry pair exchange messages of final separation, she threatening to kill a thousand folk daily in his land if he repeats his acts of violence, and he declaring that, in such event, he will retaliate by causing fifteen hundred to be born.






In all this, no mention whatever is found of the manner in which human beings come into existence: they make their appearance upon the scene as though they were a primeval part of it. Izanagi, whose return to the upper world takes place in southwestern Japan (1), now cleanses himself from the pollution he has incurred by contact with the dead, and thus inaugurates the rite of purification practised to this day in Japan. The Records describe minutely the process of his unrobing before entering a river, and we learn incidentally that he wore a girdle, a skirt, an upper garment, trousers, a hat, bracelets on each arm, and a necklace, but no mention is made of footgear. Twelve Kami are born from these various articles as he discards them, but without exception these additions to Japanese mythology seem to have nothing to do with the scheme of the universe: their titles appear to be wholly capricious, and apart from figuring once upon the pages of the Records they have no claim to notice. The same may be said of eleven among fourteen Kami thereafter born from the pollution which Izanagi washes off in a river.





Note
1 At Himuka in Kyushu, then called Tsukushi.

Basho Haiku





The leafless cherry,
Old as a toothless woman,
Blooms in flowers,
Mindful of its youth.














Pleasure Outing at Mukôjima to View Cherry Blossoms









































Japanese
Edo period
1781–1801 (late Tenmei to early Kansei era)
Hanging scroll; ink, color, gold, and mica on silk
Image: 66.2 x 122 cm (26 1/16 x 48 1/16 in.)
Overall: 205 x 151 cm (80 11/16 x 59 7/16 in.)
© 2009 Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Record of Stone Bell Mountain

by Su Shi








Li Pei, Landscape; Qing to Republic Period.










The Water Classic says: At the mouth of [Lake] Pengli there is a Stone Bell Mountain.





Li [Dao] yuan held that ‘below it, near a deep pool, faint breezes drum up waves, and water and rocks striking one another toll like huge bells.’ Others have often doubted this claim. Today, if one takes a bell or a lithophone and places it into the water, even if there is great wind and waves, he cannot make it ring. How much the less, then, for [common] rocks?





It was not until the time of Li Bo [fl. early 9th century] of the Tang that someone searched for a surviving trace of the phenomenon. Upon finding a pair of rocks by the bank of a pool, he ‘knocked them together and listened. Their southern tone was mellow and muted; their northern timbre was clear and shrill. When the clang ceased, its resonance mounted; the remnant notes then gradually came to rest.’ Li Bo then held that he had found the ’stone bells.





I am, however, especially doubtful of this claim. The clanking sounds made by rocks is the same everywhere. And yet, this place alone is named after a bell. Why, indeed, is that?





On Dingchou day of the sixth lunar month in the seventh year of the Prime Abundance [Yuanfeng] period (14 July 1084), I was traveling by boat from Qi’an to Linru. My oldest son [Su] Mai was just about to leave for Dexing [township] in Rao [county] to take up the post of Pacificator (wei). Since I accompanied him as far as Hukou, I was able to observe the so-called stone bells. A monk from a [nearby] monastery dispatched an apprentice, who carried an ax, to select one or two of the scatttered rocks and knock them [with the ax], upon which they would make a ‘gong-gong’-like sound. I laughed just as I had done before, still not believing the legend.





That evening, the moon was bright. Alone with Mai, I rode a little boat to the base of a steep precipice. The huge rocks on our flank stood a thousand chi high. They looked like fierce beasts and weird goblins, lurking in a ghastly manner and getting ready to attack us. When the roosting falcons on the mountain heard our voices they, too, flew off in fright, cawing and crying in the cloudy empyrean. Further, there was something [that sounded] like an old man coughing and laughing in a mountain ravine. Someone said: ‘That is a white stork,’ I was shaking with fear and about to turn back, when out from the surface of the water rang a loud noise that gonged and bonged like bells and drums unceasing in their clamor. The boatman became greatly alarmed.





I carefully investigated it, only to discover that everywhere below the mountain were rocky caves and fissures, who knows how deep. Gentle waves were pouring into them, and their shaking and seething and chopping and knocking, were making this gonging and bonging. When our boat on its return reached a point between the two mountains, and we were about to enter the mouth of the inlet, [I saw that] in the middle of the channel was a huge rock that could seat a hundred people. It was hollow in the center with numerous apertures, which, as they swallowed and spat with the wind and water, made a bumping and thumping and clashing and bashing that echoed with the earlier gonging and bonging. It seemed as if music were being played. Thereupon, I laughed and said to Mai: ‘Do you recognize it? The gonging and bonging are the Wuyi bells of King Jing of Zhou; the bumping and thumping and clashing and bashing are the song-bells of Wei Zhuangzi. The ancients have not cheated us!’





Is it acceptable for someone who has not personally seen or heard something to have decided views on whether or not it exists? Li [Dao] yuan probably saw and heard the same things I did, yet he did not describe them in detail. Gentlemen-officials have always been unwilling to take a small boat and moor it beneath the steep precipice at night. Thus, none was able to find out [about the bells]. And, although the fishermen and boatmen knew about them, they were unable to describe them [in writing]. This is the reason that [such a record] has not been passed down through the generations. As it turns out, imbeciles sought the answer by using axes to beat and strike the rocks. Then they held they had found out the truth of the matter. Because of this I have made a record of these events, for the most part to sigh over Li [Dao] yuan’s naivete and to laugh at Li Bo’s shallowness.








Trans. James M Hargett,
On the Road in Twelfth Century China, pp. 46–47

About the painting, extracts from the page…



Chinese-painting-pre 1930-item #1006
Painting, ink on paper. Mountains and rivers landscape with pavilions. Entitled, inscribed and signed, with two seals of the artist; 1920 to1930
80.5 x 36 cm (31.7 x 14.1 inches).

Marshall Cavendish issued a series about the great artists when I was younger, which I religiously collected - and still have. Every issue was just as religiously studied and with some of the artists, Van Vogh amongst them, I struggled to understand just what was special about their work.

Wheat Field with Crows, 1890

“In both figure and landscape … I want to get to the point where people say of my work: that man feels deeply, that man feels keenly.”

Letter to Theo van Gogh
21 July 1882

This particular painting, Wheat Field with Crows was a ‘milestone’ for me. I studied the colour plate for all the aspects I could think of - in the end I just sat and looked at it, allowing my eye to wander around the surface. I expect I filled in with many suppositions and assumptions, adding my own cultural interpretation about the ‘murder of crows’ but as I looked, there was so much sadness in this painting that it brought tears to my eyes; I didn’t know paintings could do that. It was many years before I stood before another painting that moved me as powerfully again, after I’d mistakenly thought that that effect was unique to this particular painting.

Garden with Arbor, June, 1881

“What I like so much about painting is that with the same amount of trouble which one takes over a drawing, one brings home something that conveys the impression much better and is much more pleasant to look at … it is more gratifying than drawing.


But it is absolutely necessary to be able to draw the right proportion and the position of the object pretty correctly before one begins. If one makes mistakes in this, the whole thing comes to nothing.”


Letter to Theo van Gogh
20 August 1882

It didn’t convert me into an admirer of Vincent’s work but I wasn’t going to dismiss him when he was the only artist I knew of that could create that effect on me. I’ve ‘bumped up’ against some of his oils since, usually reluctantly, and it’s always been rewarding for what I’ve learnt, if not a totally pleasant experience.

I’d seen a few of his drawings over the years and knew of course, of his reputation as a draughtsman and of all his letters to his brother Theo - but I’d never read any quotations or had any idea of the volume of drawings and sketches he produced - so the examples and quotations here were a delightful surprise to me. I thoroughly enjoyed the glimpses into how he thought about his work from the quotations.

So, in his own words…

Landscape with Willows and Sun Shining Through the Clouds, mid-March 1884

”Corot drew and modelled every tree trunk with the same devotion and love as if it were a figure.”




Letter to Theo van Gogh
c.September 1881









”If one draws a pollard willow as if it were a living being, which after all is what it really is, then the surroundings follow almost by themselves, provided only that one has focused all one’s attention on that particular tree and not rested until there was some life in it.”


Letter to Theo van Gogh
c.15 October 1881

Haystacks near a Farm, 12-13 June 1888

“… you will see when you come to the studio that besides the seeking for the outline I have, just like everyone else, a feeling for the power of color. And that I do not object to doing watercolors; but the foundation of them is the drawing, and then from the drawing many other branches beside the watercolor sprout forth, which will develop in me in time as in everybody who loves his work. …”





Letter to Theo van Gogh
31 July 1882

Olive Trees, Montmajour 1888

”I have been knocking about in the orchards, and the result is five size 30 canvases, which along with the three studies of olives that you have, at least constitute an attack on the problem.


The olive is as variable as our willow or pollard willow in the North, you know the willows are very striking, in spite of their seeming monotonous, they are the trees characteristic of the country.


Now the olive and the cypress have exactly the significance here as the willow has at home.


What I have done is a rather hard and coarse reality beside their abstractions, but it will have a rustic quality, and will smell of the earth. ”






Letter to Theo van Gogh
c.21 November 1889

** More Vincent Quotes, Quotes, Quotes