Friedrich Overbeck: ITALY and GERMANY. The myth of Italy through the eyes of a German painter Friedrich Overbeck, Italy and Germany (original title: Sulamith und Mari to )
1811-1828 oil on canvas, 94 x 104 cm, Monaco Munich, Neue Pinakothek
Lesson for students of M2
begin to see how you can describe a picture. Of course we will begin data from external data targets.
's deliveries:
1. Gather information about the author of this picture, F. Overbeck.
2. Ask yourself (and try to answer) to why the original title has been changed (may be irrelevant, but must be documented).
3. Make a painting movement which belongs to the author of the canvas (if it belongs to a current pictorial).
4. The subject (and title) of the framework suggests that painting is a metaphor for Italy and the myth that it had.
5. Ask yourself (and try to explain) because it is a German on a canvas that depicts metaphorically Italy (see biography of the painter)
6. Talking about the myth of Italy for those who are not Italian, framing the discourse in the nineteenth century.
7. Once you have found the information and found the answers, write. If the answers are not found (because impossible to come by), provide its own assumptions.
I start giving you some clues.
The myth of Italy
There is only literature, art as a representative and / or militant. On the
del mito, per quel che è dell’arte figurativa, vorrei esporre la visione dell’Italia – visione idealizzata – quale la intendono i tedeschi che appartengono al gruppo chiamato per dispregio i nazareni [1]. Vedremo in un secondo momento qual è la visione dell’Italia per gli italiani del periodo neoclassico, quello che precede il romanticismo e i moti insurrezionali.
Dicevamo i tedeschi (uso anacronisticamente il termine) e l’Italia. Penso a due quadri dipinti nel primo decennio del XIX secolo, uno, di Franz Pforr[2], ha per titolo Sulamite e Mari a (1811) e l’altro di Friedrich Overbeck[3], ribattezzato Italia e Germania (1811-1828). Both the paintings and vocano in anthropomorphic form the two cultures, the Italian and the Teutonic, according to the canons romantic. But let's put aside the framework Pforr (which still call to check on art books) and let us only to Overbeck.
Beyond the style of the German Nazarenes that "medievalizzano" (forty years before the English Pre-Raphaelites), and technical subjects for their canvases , it is important to note that you configure for a Nordic , the essence of what it evokes the spirit of Italy.
is then that the female figure (Italy can only be a woman) left, we find idealized (though Teutonic hard) some "connoting" the Mediterranean: brown hair, a braided crown collection around the face, a thin red circle and bay leaves frame the face of modest and composed, as Raphael, of Italy. Wearing clothes reminiscent of Madonna by Perugino and Pinturicchio. Italy has the look of the girl down, softly, a symbol of harmony and beauty, the left hand is placed on the lap and the right - as a token of friendship (and perhaps neglect, foster care) - is offered to (and retained by) hands of the other girl, Germany.
The figures are so close together that almost no one sees the landscape behind the profile of the two, because of a broken lock which is not subject to the crown of braids of sweet and shy Italy. On either side, however, and just to the left shoulder of the young, we see a landscape that would be the Mediterranean and if the brush was not always Teutonic. The tops of the mountains evoke the landscapes of Leonardo and the special-ruined castle that is in the midst of what seems to be more than an ocean a lake I would suggest that this is the Lago Maggiore. The trees are not stylized, either in the medieval sense nor in the typically Italianate (think certain pictures "Italian" Poussin), a dark green stain almost shapeless as a backdrop to a minimalist sort of church, as the Italian churches are not usually (but of course the Nazarenes, looking for the churches of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance of the very first).
As for Germany, which here interests me less, I will say quickly that his figure is complementary to the second girl's hair is honey-colored, covered with long curls that come down on his chest is the wreath of myrtle, apparel green. The coat looks like a red cloth which flies to the right of the canvas. A brick boundary wall to the right space that is filled by a sharp village close to those we imagine to be the German streets. Although inches of skin exposed to the eye in the end seem to be the same, you get the feeling that the girl is more covered and Germany, however, her dress is also a heavy fur on board the shoulders. And if Italy is quietly absorbed, Germany seems to speak to her and comfort her in a breath of sweet intimacy.
I made it a good idea of \u200b\u200bwho loves the myth of the North and South, and how the North (Germany) mythologized the South (Italy)? What are its intentions, the clichés work well: anyone look at this picture of two girls having to identify who painted both Italy and Germany who do not harbor the slightest doubt about that. Do you?
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[1] I Nazareni, cfr. per un'informazione rapida: http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazareni
[2] Franz Pforr (1788-1812) è un pittore tedesco. A Vienna, fonda insieme con Overbeck la confraternita di S. Luca nel 1809, l’anno successivo si stabilisce a Roma. Rappresentante dei Nazareni, ricorre al disegno gotico, senza ombre né modellato. Morirà ad Albano Laziale (presso Roma). Il quadro cui faccio riferimento è un olio su tavola, abbastanza piccolo (34 x 32 cm), si trova a Schweinfurt, in Baviera, e fa parte della collezione Georg Schäfer.
[3] Friedrich Overbeck (1789-1869) è un pittore tedesco. Negli ambienti viennesi, la sua arte – debitrice di Giotto e di Masaccio – non piace. Si stabilisce a Roma dove vivrà per il resto della sua vita, proponendo un’arte che rievochi quella dei primitivi italiani. Pittura malinconica, la sua.
©2010 Jacqueline Spaccini
