Who Rodin Really Created "The Thinker" or "The Mourner": The True Meaning of Famous Works of Art

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

Anyone can easily notice that the topic of grief is very popular with artists. And often modern people do not even know about the history of the origin of some paintings or sculptures and their true meaning.

"Portrait of Venice Stanley, Lady Digby" Van Dyck

It seems that the young woman is sleeping peacefully. Nevertheless, when the Flemish artist Anthony van Dyck in 1633 tried to convey on canvas all the aristocratic beauty of Venice Stanley, Lady Digby, he was actually painting a portrait … of a two-day-old corpse lying on its deathbed.

Distraught with grief to discover that his wife had died suddenly at night, at the age of 33, Venice's husband, Sir Kenelm Digby, asked Van Dyck, the court painter of King Charles I, to paint his departed wife before "the surgeons and coroners arrived."

Anthony van Dyck wrote Venice, Lady Digby on Her Deathbed in 1633 - two days after the woman died in her sleep

Van Dijk set to work, ignoring the terrible changes that occur to the human body after death. On the pale, charming neck of Venice, he drew a pearl necklace, and on the edge of the sheet he scattered rose petals. Digby believed that the painting by Van Dyck, which is now in London's Dulwich Art Gallery, was the crown of the artist's creation. According to him, this "rose" seemed "fading" even at first glance and was supposed to symbolize the death of his wife.

Despite the fact that almost 4 hundred years have passed, it is still rumored that Digby, who was not only a courtier and diplomat, but also an inventor and alchemist, himself caused the death of his wife. Some say that he gave Venice a mixture of viper blood to drink, with which he hoped to preserve its beauty. Others believe that he killed her in a fit of jealousy - after all, he allegedly once said about the notorious licentiousness of Venice that "a wise and strong man can make an honest woman even from a brothel worker." Interestingly, although an autopsy was carried out, its results have not been preserved.

However, Digby found himself devastated by the death of Venice. He wrote to his brother that Van Dyck's posthumous portrait “is the only constant companion I have now. He stands all day in front of my chair and table … and all night by the bed. When the faint moonlight falls on him, it seems to me that I really see her dead."

In other words, according to Digby's letter, the small oil painting of Van Dyck, less than one square meter in size, has become a consolation and comfort to the grief-stricken widower. If the rose in the picture is indeed the "emblem" of the transience of life, the picture itself symbolizes what can be called the art of sadness.

In addition to funerary monuments in churches, which were installed mainly in memory of the deceased, the theme of grief in Western art before the era of Van Dyck, in the Middle Ages and during the Renaissance, as a rule, was found only in religious painting and sculptures dedicated to the tragic story of the death of Christ. …

Michelangelo's Pieta in St. Peter's Basilica

Michelangelo's stunning marble pieta in St. Peter's Basilica is the only work of sculpture he has ever signed. She depicts the grieving Virgin Mary with the dead Christ lying in her lap. This is perhaps the most famous example, but there are many others. For example, one can single out a painting by another High Renaissance artist and friend of Michelangelo, Sebastiano del Piombo. According to experts at the National Gallery, the painting (on which del Piombo worked with Michelangelo) "Lamentation of the Dead Christ" (c.1512-1516) is "the first large-scale night landscape in history", and its moonlit sky perfectly matches the gloomy mood.

Michelangelo's Pieta in St. Peter's Basilica is a famous version of one of the most common images in Catholicism: the Virgin Mary's sorrow over the death of her son

Of course, the traditional theme of mourning for Christ has been portrayed by many famous authors in art history, from Giotto and Mantegna to Rubens and Rembrandt. These are just a few of the thousands of artists who have depicted this biblical scene in one form or another over the centuries. Indeed, the art of mourning has become so ubiquitous that sometimes people forget what they are looking at. The curator of Rodin's new exhibition at the British Museum recently published an article suggesting that the famous French sculpture The Thinker should in fact be called The Mourner. “Look closely at the hand and chin,” said Ian Jenkins, an authority on ancient Greek art. - If this man was thinking about something, he would have covered his chin with his hand in a gesture of thoughtfulness. But in this sculpture, the hand supports the chin. And in ancient Greece it was a gesture of mourning."

"Isle of the Dead" by Arnold Böcklin

Oil painting on wood by Arnold Böcklin "Isle of the Dead", 1880. Its plot is based on ancient Greek mythology. The painting inspired the horror film of the same name by Jacques Tourneur

If you enter the word "grief" into an online search engine of any international museum, it will return many results. For example, in the UK, a search for this keyword on the Tate Gallery website returned 143 works of art on the theme of grief and suffering from different periods.

For example, in the 18th century, artists began to view grief and sadness through the prism of Shakespearean drama. A favorite topic was the death of King Lear's daughter Cordelia. In the 19th century, John Everett Millais's stunningly detailed painting Ophelia (1851-52), for which model Elizabeth Siddal posed for several hours daily in the bathtub for four months, is a famous and highly poetic visual expression of grief. It depicts a Danish noblewoman from Shakespeare's Hamlet who went mad with grief over her murdered father and drowned herself in a stream.

Rodin's The Thinker

Ian Jenkins of the British Museum believes that Rodin's The Thinker should be called The Mourner, since the figure rested his chin on a clenched fist - a clear sign that the person is withdrawn and immersed in his own grief.

Grief was a very important topic for artists during the Victorian era, when a complex "culture of mourning" was popular. In his Art of Death (1991), art historian Nigel Llewellyn notes that "an impressive visual culture of death" was a hallmark of the 19th century.

"Weeping Woman" by Picasso

In the 20th century, artists continued the tradition of their Victorian ancestors to express grief in their works. Perhaps the best example is Picasso's Weeping Woman (1937), which is linked to his epic painting Guernica of the same year, painted during the Spanish Civil War in response to the German aircraft bombing a Basque city. Guernica is considered by many to be the ultimate expression of the collective grief of the 20th century. Of course, there are many examples of other paintings of the 20th century, the theme of which is related to sadness. For example, you can recall a small painting by Lucian Freud, painted by him in 1973 - a portrait of his mother, saddened by the death of her husband.

"Triptych" by Francis Bacon

Francis Bacon painted in the left panel of the Triptych (August 1972) his lover George Dyer, who committed suicide

Francis Bacon's Triptych, which is also on display at the Tate today, has managed to touch upon both personal and public grief. One of Bacon's so-called "black triptychs" was written after the suicide of his lover George Dyer, whose image can be seen in the left panel. Thus, the triptych is an unforgettable and very personal testimony to the painter's suffering (which, incidentally, is depicted in the right panel).

Naturally, two World Wars in the 20th century could not but have an impact on art. Art critics argue that the war had a profound effect on the way artists portrayed grief, compared to the 19th century. Unlike Victorian mourning, where individual families experienced individual grief, almost every family in Europe suddenly suffered.

War memorials

One consequence of this was an official government effort to "create an appropriate visual culture for mourning." The classic, allegorical funerary figures so beloved by the Victorians fell out of fashion. In their place were war memorials that emphasized the common national sacrifice rather than the loss of individuals.

The Cenotaph War Memorial near Whitehall, London, designed by Edwin Lutyens, is an archetypal example of this new approach: Instead of human figures, there is an empty coffin that can be associated with any soldier. Grieving families can use it as a universal symbol.

Taryn Simon made the installation "Occupation of Loss", which was attended by 21 "professional mourners" from different cultures

The versatility of grief is still a theme addressed by contemporary artists. Earlier this year, American photographer Taryn Simon received rave reviews for her live installation Occupation of Loss, staged in an underground hall in north London. For the work, which premiered in New York in 2016, Simon invited 21 “professional mourners” from around the world, including Albania, Azerbaijan, Ecuador, Ghana and Venezuela. The audience could listen to each of these women.