More Mitelli

Further to this recent Giornale entry, there follow some more etchings by the 17th/18th century Bolognese graphic artist Giuseppe Maria Mitelli. As before, I have scanned these from my copy of Le Collezioni d’Arte della Cassa di Risparmio in Bologna: Le Incisioni; Vol. I., edited by Franca Varignana.

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The first pair of images, above, are drawn from Mitelli’s 1678 series Proverbi Figurati. The first proverb roughly translates as ‘There’s no love without jealousy’, whilst the second says something to the effect of ‘He doesn't know peace, nor does he esteem it, who hasn’t first tried war.’ The eyes and ears patterning the dress of the personification of jealousy in the first image are a distinctive Mitellian flourish.

The third image, above, dates from 1691, and is interesting to me for the way it prefigures another famous etching. Mitelli’s work in general seems to have exerted some indirect, grandfatherly influence on the work of Hogarth, Gillray, Cruickshank, etc., although its satire is seldom as vitriolic, and its caricatures less cruel than those in the later, English print-makers.

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The next pair of etchings (dating from 1686) contrast Gioventù (youth), with Vecchiezza (old age). In the former image, a blindfold Cupid presides over some youthful hi-jinks, while Death lurks behind a curtain in the background. In the latter etching, Father Time brings gifts, including spectacles, a walking-stick and an hourglass, to the elderly couple warming themselves at the fire.

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I’m not sure what exactly is going on in the two mask-themed images above: are they warning of the moral dangers of mask-wearing? The heading on the first, evidently cautionary in intent, reads ‘The mask: cause of many evils.’ And in the second we see a smaller, visor-type mask worn in the ‘English manner,’ a fashion, I presume, that Mitelli disapproved of. These etchings date from 1688 and 1692, respectively.

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The pair of images above are taken from a series of etchings entitled Essemplare per Disegnare (1699, presumably a model-book for would-be artists). In this series, the senses (as above), the four seasons and the three fates are exemplified. Lastly for now, below, is a ‘composed head’ entitled Son testa son paese, case e gente, ‘I am head, I am country, houses and people.’

Click on the images to see them enlarged…

Free CDs, Round Three

For my first giveaway of 2005, I have another 15 CDs that I’d like to dispose of. The deal is the same as before. To lay claim to one of these discs, leave a comment below stating which of them you’d like. Then, send me an e-mail which includes your mailing address. I’ll decide who gets what (it’s almost always first-come, first-served), and will mail out the discs within a week or so. I’ll limit the offer to two CDs per recipient.

1. Vladimir Horowitz’s The Studio Recordings—New York 1985. This recital disc by the then eighty-two year-old pianist features works by Schumann, Scarlatti, Liszt, Scriabin and Schubert. I bought it because I was interested in hearing Schumann’s Kreisleriana in full, although I don’t specifically recall why I opted for this particular recording. As with most of my other encounters with Schumann’s music thus far, alas, I was not greatly moved by it.

2. Carmen-Fantasie, performed by Anne-Sophie Mutter, with the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by James Levine. Another recital disc, this one features virtuoso encore-type pieces, such as Tartini’s Devil’s Trill sonata, Ravel’s Tzigane, and the piece which gives the disc its title, Pablo de Saraste’s Fantasie de Concert sur des motifs de l’Opéra “Carmen.” These are excellent performances, but ones I have not listened to more than twice in the last couple of years.

3. Le Docteur Fabricius, etc., composed by Charles Koechlin, and performed by the Radio-Sinforchester, Stuttgart, under the direction of Heinz Holliger. I bought this disc of rather grandiloquent music by the little-known Koechlin on the strength of a glowing review of it at Classics Today. This is ‘crazy late-Romantic orchestral music at its most extravagant and eccentric,’ and it is indeed interesting, but isn’t something I’m all that keen to revisit.

4. The Complete Cello Concertos of Paul Hindemith, as performed by the Queensland Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Werner Andreas Albert, with David Geringas as the soloist. I’ve mentioned my frustrated exploration of Hindemith’s work before: the music on this disc struck me as rather drab and unwelcoming on first hearing, and I’ve not sought out any more of his music since.

5. Piano Music, composed by Nikolai Kapustin, and played by Steven Osborne. This was another disc I bought blindly, having read some reviews warmly praising this composer’s Jazz-influenced work. It turned out not to be to my taste at all.

6. Valentin Silvestrov’s Stufen (‘Degrees’) are classic poems set to almost infeasibly quiet and introspective music by the Ukrainian composer. They are sung by Jana Ivanilova, accompanied by Alexei Lubimov on piano. Verses by Blok, Pushkin and Mandelstam are amongst those that Silvestrov selected for this cycle. They are very similar to the same composer’s Silent Songs: so similar, to my mind, for this disc to be surplus to my requirements.

7. Hymni: composed by Vladimir Martynov, and played by the Opus Posth. ensemble, directed and led, on violin, by Tatiana Grindenko, and also featuring the voices of Mark Tucker and David James. I have praised Martynov’s work on these pages more than once. Sadly, I found little to enjoy in the pair of religious works presented on this hard-to-find disc: settings of St. Francis’s Canticle of the Sun, and the Magnificat, recorded in live performances.

8. Soundtracks: a compilation of soundtrack spots from Polish movies I’ve never heard of, by the composers Wojciech Kilar and Maciej Malecki. The players are ‘The Studio Orchestra’ and the conductor Jiri Hudec. I bought this because I loved Kilar’s soundtrack for the Polanski movie The Ninth Gate, but found I didn’t enjoy these earlier works of his nearly as much. Some people liked it, though: here’s a positive review.

9. Unwired: Europe is a compilation of eighteen folk-music tracks from eighteen European countries, produced in association with Amnesty International (whether as a fund-raiser, or an awareness-enhancer, it doesn’t say.) I very seldom listen to this kind of stuff, and can’t recollect my reasoning when I picked this up at my local CD store. I found it interesting enough to listen through once, but I won’t be needing it again…

10. Diana Krall: Live in Paris. I enjoy this kind of jazz-for-lightweights, and like Ms. Krall’s voice, but have only taken this disc out of its case a handful of times: someone out there can surely make better use of it!

11. Bring it Back by McAlmont and Butler. I loved their song Yes, and a couple of other tracks from this duo’s first album, but found there was no magic for me in this, their belated follow-up.

12. Interpol’s Antics vaguely reminded me, as it has many others, of Joy Division. It’s been a long time since I’ve actively wanted to listen to Ian Curtis sing: I parted with my cassette copy of Unknown Pleasures in 1998, without regret. I can’t see myself wanting to listen to Antics again, though I can just about recognise its appeal, albeit from a distance.

13. Velocity of Sound, by The Apples in Stereo. This was one of a number of CDs I bought late last year after having very belatedly discovered the marvels that were The Olivia Tremor Control, and Neutral Milk Hotel. Whilst Velocity of Sound is pleasant enough, short, and quite sweet, it fell some distance short of my unreasonable expectations.

14. Of Montreal’s Satanic Panic in the Attic. I bought this in Malmö on the same occasion that I bought the Apples in Stereo CD (above). As I recall, I couldn’t get that purchase approved on my credit card, and had to resort to going out to a Bankomat thingy to get some cash. I probably should have taken it as a sign, & not bothered going back to the record store. I sort-of like one track on this CD, but not the thirteen others.

15. Blueberry Boat by The Fiery Furnaces. Apparently, you either love it or hate it: I didn’t love it…

István Orosz

István Orosz (1951-), is a Hungarian graphic artist who has worked as a theatre-designer and an animator, and has produced numerous poster-designs and series of woodcuts and engravings. His smaller-scale graphic works are notable for their optical trickery, and brain-twizzling Escher-like illusory effects.

Orosz’s works employing anamorphosis (meaning, in this context, the inclusion of images distorted such that they only become clearly visible when reflected in a suitably-shaped and positioned mirror), are the most satisfying and accomplished of their kind that I have seen.

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It is difficult—and pointless—for me to say much about the pictures themselves, but if you enjoy having corners pop in and out, if you like labyrinths, endless stairs, columns that are impossible to count, and if you then begin to think about the play between content and form, you will find rich pasture for your mind to graze - Rene Wanner (source).

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There are more images of Orosz’s work at the Marlena Agency’s site; at the artist’s own, old Geocities pages; at this Russian ‘Impossible World’ site, and elsewhere. I ‘discovered’ Orosz’s work yesterday, in the course some random googling, only later to realise I had seen some of it almost a year and a half ago, courtesy of Signor Mori’s ever-excellent Cipango.

Click on the images above to see them ever-so-slightly enlarged. The images are all copyright © István Orosz, and have been reproduced without permission, only for as long as no-one objects to their presence here.

Max Klinger

I’ve mentioned Max Klinger’s etchings here before, specifically his renowned series Ein Handschuh (A Glove, 1881). Klinger (1857-1920) published several other eye-catching graphic series during the 1880s, of which the following, scanned from the Dover book The Graphic Works of Max Klinger, form a sample. Note that the images below are details: click on them to see the works in full.

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The first two images, above, are from Klinger’s 1880 series Eve and the Future. In this series, three depictions of Eve’s original sin are juxtaposed with three ‘futures;’ imagined visions of that sin’s dire consequences. The first image above, the second future, depicts a demonic figure holding a spear, sitting on an enormous fish he has presumably just killed. One contemporary account conjectured that the demon was meant to personify ‘death that arrives unexpectedly.’ The second image is the third future: a powerfully pessimistic representation of ‘the triumph of death.’

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The third and fourth images are from Klinger’s 1881 series Intermezzi, and are entitled, respectively, Pursued Centaur and Cupid, Death and the Beyond. In these grotesquely imaginative works, Klinger was distantly influenced by Goya, and by ‘the fantasies, often horrific, of early nineteenth-century romantic literature, especially in the work of E.T.A. Hoffmann and Jean Paul.’

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The final two images are from an 1883 series entitled Dramas. In these etchings, the inspiration comes not from the fantastic, but from newspaper accounts of everyday tragedies, or more indirectly from the realist novels of Zola and his followers. Even so, in the first of the two images above, In Flagranti, the lushly-detailed setting of the crime-of-passion depicted lends the image a near-hallucinatory intensity.

Of Winters & Lost Works

I had been waiting for a really cold snap to come along before completing my look at Arcimboldo’s seasons (Spring, Summer, Autumn) with his personifications of Winter, but the weather has not obliged, and, while it has been cold, and indeed is cold today, we’ve scarcely seen the thermometer descend as far as five below zero. Unless the season contrives a late flourish of frigidity, we'll not see skaters on the sea this year, nor scenes like this.

Of the present ‘composed heads,’ the first, of impeccable pedigree, is in Vienna, and is perhaps the first canvas on the subject that Arcimboldo painted, in 1562. It is followed by two other later copies, the former from a set of four seasons made in 1573, and now to be found in Paris; and the latter, of somewhat less well-authenticated provenance, which, provided it has not changed hands in the twenty-odd years since the book from which I scanned these images was published, belongs to a 1572 set of seasons housed in a private collection in Bergamo.

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Several of Arcimboldo’s works are known to have been lost. It is thought that the following prints, published in Venice by one Giovanni Francesco Comocio, in 1567 and ’69 respectively, depict two lost ‘composed heads.’ There is documentary evidence for a canvas of Arcimboldo’s on the theme of Agriculture; and a personification of Cookery was one of a pair of his paintings known to have been in the Müller collection in Prague until WWII.

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A week or two ago, I received an e-mail from Romania—in English and German—inquiring as to whether I knew anything of the whereabouts of another lost work of Arcimboldo’s: his Trojan Horse (below). Alas, I do not, and thus cannot lay claim to the $500 US reward for information being offered. In the unlikely event that anyone reading this knows something relevant, and is interested in the possibility of exchanging this knowledge for money, then by all means get in touch with me, and I will forward the Romanian e-mail address to you. The same person is also looking for information on The Slaughter of Babies by King Herod’s Soldiers, a painting by Giovanni Battista Tiepolo.

As with my previous entries on this subject, my main source for the images, and other information, has been my copy of the 1980 FMR book on Arcimboldo. Click on the images to see them enlarged.

Giuseppe Maria Mitelli

I discovered the work of the Italian graphic artist Giuseppe Maria Mitelli (1634-1718), while compiling my recent entry on figurative alphabets. I took an immediate liking to what I could find this engraver’s inventive, often light-hearted designs, and ordered a book which, I gathered, collected many of Mitelli’s etchings and engravings. The book arrived last week, a stout and rather dowdy volume labouring under the ungainly title of Le Collezioni D’Arte della Cassa di Risparmio in Bologna, Le Incisioni - Volume 1 (The Art Collection of the Mutual Savings Bank in Bologna, the Engravings, Vol. 1). An initial selection of images from this book follow below…

Happily, this book’s appearance was perfectly deceptive, and the images therein were vivid and engaging. Mitelli published several elaborate graphic sequences, not least of which is the bizarre Alfabeto in Sogno (Dream Alphabet), dating from 1683, in which are represented ‘the letters of the alphabet formed of disordered phantasms, and confused images.’

Other sequences of Mitelli’s include a charming set of illustrated proverbs, and, a set depicting Le Ventiquattr’Hore dell’Humana Felicità (The Twenty-Four Hours of Human Happiness) in which twenty-three persons are portrayed, each accompanied by a verse stating his or her claim to happiness, which is answered in each case by a barbed riposte from Death, to whom, moreover, the final image of the set, the twenty-fourth hour, is exclusively devoted. Four images from this sequence follow below: the player, the painter and sculptor, the poet, and the doctor.

Besides these more-or-less humourous series, liberally seasoned with caricature, Mitelli also executed etched and engraved copies of paintings, particularly of the work of Caracci. He also made single prints on various subjects, designed a deck of Tarot cards, and several board games, and issued alarmist propaganda on the occasion of the 1683 siege of Vienna. The last of the present images, below, is entitled Macchina del Mondo (Engine of the World), and is a sardonically literal depiction of society’s hierarchy.

Click on the images above to see them enlarged.

Mimmo Jodice

The latest issue of FMR magazine features some very lovely monochrome photographs of Greek and Roman antiquities by the Italian photographer Mimmo Jodice. I picked out a selection and scanned and uploaded them—note, however, that most of the original images were larger than A4 size, and the following are all more-or-less cropped.

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Jodice, we read, only became a professional photographer from the age of 30. At first, his work was documentary: a socially-conscious presentation of the people & places he knew from the poor, working-class districts of his native Naples. In the 80’s, his lens was first drawn to the time-worn, antiquarian subjects illustrated here.

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…whether they are living, breathing men and women, or motionless statues, it is always Neapolitans or Sicilians whom he photographs: it is still the sunlit Mezzogiorno which provides his inspiration; it is still the same play of light and shade which fascinates him, still the same subtleties of chiaroscuro which he plays upon like a musician—Dominique Fernandez.

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To my eye, Jodice neither celebrates nor romanticizes the past in these images, but rather sympathises with its survivors. He shows us how beautiful ruined and broken things can be.

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These images are Copyright © 1991-96 Mimmo Jodice, and I’ve reproduced them without permission, only for as long as no-one objects to their presence here. Click on the images to see them much enlarged.