Their Art Betrays Them

[poliphilo]

 

I was thinking of illustrating the last post with a painting of Hell contemporary with the Religio Medici- and found, not entirely to my surprise, that there weren't any.  Mid 17th century people like Thomas Browne may have thought they still believed in a Hell of demons and material fire but the art of their period gives them away. The idea had become quaint- and had they tried to paint it (in the manner, say, of Van Dyck or Rembrandt) they'd have seen just how quaint it was. They were no longer medieval. The imagery of Bosch no longer held any terrors. They lived in the century of Descartes and Newton- and the life had gone out of a doctrine (along with a lot of other doctrines) that their churches insisted they held onto  but which the spirit of the age -otherwise known as commonsense- told them was just too, too silly. If they were going to go on believing they couldn't  afford to look too closely.... The latest Hellscape by a distinguished artist that still seems convinced by ts own rhetoric is Rubens' Fall of the Damned, painted in 1620- some 20 years before Browne was working on his book. Hell came back into fashion as a subject for art in the romantic era, but with this difference- that the artists were now working at a remove from the subect matter, illustrating literary works- predominantly Dante's Inferno and Milton's Paradise Lost- and borrowing conviction from their authors....

Comments

[cmcmck]

John Martin does the best hellscapes in the 19th century!

[poliphilo]

My vote would go to Blake, but I like Martin too...

With Gustav Dore receiving an honourable mention.