From Karl Keating’s e-letter, dated December 4, 2007:

Let’s say you pick up a book about John Milton’s poetry. The book is handsomely printed, and at first glance it seems that the author knows his stuff. You want to learn about Milton’s poetry, and this looks to be the book you need.

You start reading and find a problem with basic terminology. The author writes that an iamb is a metrical foot of three syllables: short-short-long. Just a typo, you think. He surely knows that an iamb has only two syllables: short-long. Then he writes that a spondee is a foot of two short syllables, when it really is a foot of two long syllables. You wrinkle your nose. Sloppy editing–or is there a deeper problem?

In a chapter about Milton’s sonnets the author begins by explaining what sonnets are. He tells you they normally consist of fifteen lines in three stanzas of five lines. Now you feel even more concerned. This has to be more than just a typo. You know quite well that a sonnet consists of fourteen lines, with an octet of eight lines (divided into two quatrains) followed by a sestet of six lines.

And so it goes, throughout the book. The more you read, the more you wonder how much weight you can give to the author’s explications of Milton’s poems. If he exhibits such elementary errors about poetic forms, can he really have much insight into the interpretation of “Lycidas”?

How not to understand a painting

This was the kind of thing that was going through my mind as I read How to Read a Painting, a handsomely printed book that, according to the subtitle, provides “Lessons from the Old Masters.” The author is Patrick De Rynck. The book is published by Abrams, a well-respected publisher of fancy art books, and the text is translated from the Dutch.

In the preface De Rynck says this:

These days, many museum-goers are no longer sufficiently familiar with the Christian and Classical pictorial traditions on which European painters drew so heavily for so many centuries. What precisely were the Old Masters trying to say in their paintings; and how did they seek to express it? The aim of this book is to make a modest and reader-friendly contribution towards answering those questions. …

The final selection of about 180 paintings offers a concise yet representative survey of five centuries of Western art. The book begins around 1300, as a profound revolution in painting was unfolding in Tuscany, and concludes shortly after 1800, as artists began to shrug off the iconographic traditions with which we are concerned here. … Each entry takes up a double-page spread in which the fully illustrated picture is accompanied by a brief introduction and the discussion of some relevant details.

The layout of the book is very fine, the only problem being that it ought to have been printed in coffee-table-book format. The large pages just aren’t large enough for full images of the paintings, many of which have minute details that can be seen well only on jumbo-sized pages. Other than that, the book looks good and seems authoritative — at least to someone not very familiar with Christian–and specifically Catholic — doctrines.

How do I err thee? Let me count the ways

Let me give some of De Rynck’s bloopers. …

When discussing Albrecht Durer’s “Four Apostles” [also known as “Four Holy Men”], De Rynck notes, correctly, that the painting is mistitled since one of the figures is the Evangelist Mark, who was not an apostle. But De Rynck doesn’t put it that way. He says that Mark “was not a disciple of Christ,” which is not at all the same thing. But maybe this … was a goof by the translator.

Now we’ll turn to things that can’t be blamed on the translator.

Referring to a landscape that shows Charon crossing the River Styx, De Rynck says:

According to medieval belief, the souls of the dead were judged twice. The first judgment occurred immediately after death and determined whether they were destined for the earthly paradise or for purgatory. The divine Last Judgment as the end of the world would then decide their ultimate destination: heaven or hell.

Uh, no. The first judgment, called the particular judgment, determines your ultimate destination. If you’re bound for hell, you go there straightaway. If you’re bound for heaven and die perfectly spotless, you go straightaway to heaven, but most people who are bound for heaven will go first to purgatory, where they will be cleansed of their remaining attraction to sin.

When he talks about Jan van Eyck’s “The Adoration of the Mystic Lamb,” which forms the central panel of the Ghent Altarpiece, De Rynck explains who is represented in each group in the picture:

The fourth and final group represents the Church. The Twelve Apostles — ordinary men, dressed in gray habits–are shown at the front, followed by the prelates who were their successors: popes, bishops, deacons, and martyrs.

Un, no again. While popes and bishops are prelates (Webster’s define a prelate as “an ecclesiastic of superior rank”), deacons and martyrs are not. (While some prelates have been martyred, most martyrs have not been prelates.) What is more, while popes and bishops indeed are successors of the apostles, deacons and martyrs are not. (Again: There have been bishop-martyrs, but most martyrs have not been bishops.)

Then De Rynck comes to Domenico Ghirlandaio’s “The Birth of the Virgin” [also known as “The Birth of Mary”], a fresco I’ve seen. It’s in Santa Maria Novella church in Florence. He says,

This story revolves around the notion of the ‘immaculate conception’: the doctrine that no earthly lust was involved when Mary was conceived. It was necessary to establish her as an utterly pure being, capable of becoming the Mother of God. Since Mary was not conceived in lust, she was free of Original Sin. It was a subject that sparked fierce controversy in the medieval Church.

As well it might have, if that was the right definition of the Immaculate Conception. But Mary’s preservation from Original Sin was not a consequence of her parents’ managing to perform the marital act with “no earthly lust.” Such an idea nowhere comes into the definition of the belief and is in no way a prerequisite for the extraordinary gift given to Mary.

The Trinity: Not as old as you thought

My favorite goof of De Rynck’s comes when he discusses “The Annunciation” by Simone Martini and Lippo Memmi, an image that originally was on an altar at the Siena cathedral. In traditional format, the picture shows the angel kneeling before Mary. Above them are representations of God the Father and of the Holy Spirit. (Well, the one of God the Father is missing, but it is clear where it once was.)

De Rynck explains the event portrayed this way: “The Annunciation marks the completion of the Holy Trinity, comprising the Holy Spirit, God the Father, and the newly conceived Christ.”

What?

This guy doesn’t understand the first thing about the core dogma of Christianity. He thinks the Holy Trinity was unfinished until the Annunciation. What does he think the Godhead was doing during countless preceding eons, waiting for Number Three to show up so the Trinity no longer would be a mere Duo? Apparently it would be news to De Rynck to learn that the Trinity always has consisted of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

That the Second Person, the Son, at a discrete point in time became incarnate by taking on a human nature is quite immaterial to the existence of the Trinity. Christ’s human nature is a created thing. It is added to the Second Person but does not itself become part of the Trinity, properly speaking, since the Trinity is the incorporeal and entirely spiritual Godhead, which is unalterable and can’t be added to. Before the Annunciation the Trinity consisted of three divine Persons and afterwards of the same number.

It pays to do your research…

As you might imagine, when I saw that De Rynck got so many Christian terms and beliefs wrong, my confidence in him as an art historian was not bolstered. Too bad, really. He adopted a good approach when planning his book, but it would have been an approach better suited to someone who knows the basics of the faith. After all, most of the 180 paintings in How to Read a Painting show Christian themes. To understand those paintings, you need to understand the religion out of which they grew and which they try to illustrate. De Rynck just doesn’t have that understanding.

Until next time,