Cincinnati, Ohio – It is Oct. 6, 2010, and I had driven to Cincinnati to meet curator Benedict Leca at the Cincinnati Art Musum. I was full of trepidation, for I had been writing about a Renaissance painting for four years since the day I discovered that an iconic red passion flower, held daintily by the red-haired madonna, was a botanical impostor – a counterfeit – painted perhaps a century later by a mysterious craftsman.
| The
museum, at that
time, removed the
painting from the wall to examine it. Yes, the new world flower had
been brushed onto the
surface decades after the old
world artist, Joos van Cleve, had died. I related the story at http://www.flwildflowers.com/vancleve.
To actually witness this sublime painting, to feel its majesty, was my goal. It is one of three almost identical paintings which I have written about. I had a few hours before an academic conference in Akron, Ohio. I drove south down a slow Interstate, found a hotel across the bridge in Kentucky, and arrived early at the museum, one of the family of white Roman columned buildings in architectural textbooks and which most large cities seem to be refurbishing these days. Generous donors in Cincinnati have seen to it that entry is free to the public. Dr. Leca handed me the file for the painting by Netherlandish artist containing articles and letters including comment by art historians Max Friedlander, and van Cleve biographer John Hand of the National Gallery in Washington. Some material told how the museum acquired the work and its provenance - a history of ownership really only known beginning in the 19th Century
|
 Joos van Cleve, Madonna and Child, courtesy of Cincinnati Art Museum. The iconic passionflower sprouts from the carnation that represents the blood of Christ, from which also proliferates some sprigs of the mint, rosemary, used to perfume funerals in those times.  Hebrew letters can be seen to the right of
the head of the child.
They are written in a script form similar to that of the Torah script penned by a sofer, or scribe. Whoever wrote the letters was skilled in their formation. Knowledge of Hebrew may have been widespread among artists or illustrators who used the name of G-d in Hebrew lettering on many illus- trations prefacing botanical and legal works of the time. This inscription, says in Hebrew, reading right to left, "I am the Lord, your God." |
Would a Jew own this most reverent and Christian painting? Why would he write this message on the breast of the madonna?
The message, if it exists, can be one of salvation and redemption to believing Christians and Jews in the 21st century.
The translation, by a rabbi, has been made for a wide audience, possibly for the first time in 400 years. However, the Hebrew letters are debatable, according to one art critic, who sees them as "pseudo Hebrew" and not recognizable. In fact, the question of whether the letters are simply artifacts of restoration and a kind of cryptomorph, are discussed in our second visit to the musem.
Van Cleve biographer John Oliver Hand at the National Gallery in Washington says that he did not see the Hebrew words or lettering - "I would have mentioned it if I did." He suggests the lettering might have become noticeable if the painting had been cleaned recently. At any rate, these letters are difficult to see, even for someone who might look at the painting intently. They require the right light and angle.
The letters, viewed in a photograph from the museum, are those of the first commandment, according to Tallahassee Chabad Rabbi Schneur Oirechman. They are "anochi hashem" which is usually translated "I am the Lord, your God." As do observant Jews, he uses the word "Hashem" in everyday speech, instead of the word, reserved for prayer meaning Lord, or God. Rabbi Oirechman said the words were not necessarily painted by a Jewish person, and could have been copied from a document. It is written in a Hebrew script, but not necessarily one written by a sofer, or one who writes and corrects Torah scrolls.
If anything, through the rabbi's interpretation, the painting now has a double-edged message. It could be a mandate that Christ is the only Lord, from a Christian viewpoint. The difference between this and other paintings which may have Hebrew words, in the estimation, of this writer is that these words, discovered perhaps after centuries, were like buried treasure intended to be hidden in the folds of clothing or camouflaged.
Hebrew scripts have a history in the visual arts
To many, the Hebrew is a reinforcment of the idea that God is the father of Jesus, something that needed constant reinforcement in the art of the church, and what better to use than the original language of the Bible. The use of Hebrew letters and the familiarity of Christians with Hebrew led to the appearance of many Hebraists during the 16th Century. However, to a Jew who might notice the hidden message, the van Cleve seems likely to present a warning to a Jewish onlooker knowledgeable in Hebrew, that to worship Christ would be a violation of Jewish law.
It is not unusual for Hebrew script to appear in paintings. Gad B. Sarfatti in Hebrew Script in Western Visual Arts finds 261 inscriptions from 1400-1699. He writes that the three objectives of artists who used Hebrew were to attain realism, to mark a person or an object as Jewish, and to show erudition. A special issue of the journal Visible Language Inscriptions in Painting (Volume XXIII, Number 2/3l, Spring Summer 1989) is especially valuable in looking at the meaning of inscriptions. In the publication, Claude Gandelman in By Way of Introduction: Inscriptions as Subversion shows numerous examples of Hebrew script in paintings and discusses the scripts from a semiotic, philosophical viewpoint. Also in Visible Language, Moshe Barasch in Some Oriental Pseudo-Inscriptions in Renaissance Art discusses pseudo-inscriptions written in Hebrew letters and in Kufic. A display of orientalism shows how the new Christian law evolved from the old, he writes.
Real, an illusion or simply an artifact of a restoration?
To art historian Gary Schwartz, however, the letters in the Cincinnati Madonna can't be made out as easily and they are simply "pseudo Hebrew" which he has seen in more than 200 paintings of the time. Schwartz posts a web blog at http://www.garyschwartzarthistorian.nl/ in which examples of pseudo-Hebrew are shown. He objects to the rabbi's interpretation suggests we should do further research into the lettering. Pseudo-Hebrew was used by painters to give the works a verisimilitude and give them more appeal for the market. Our second trip to Cincinnati resulted in further discussion. Museum conservator Per Knutas believes the letters are artifacts of impainting during restoration. In essence, a kind of illusion.
If the rabbi's interpretation is true, and if the letters exist, this lettering is of the First Commandment. It is the first mandate of Judaism, and rejects the idea that there are other gods. To a Jew, having fled the persecution of Spain and Portugal, there would be a deep and abiding meaning to the words "I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery." The rationale for the Inquisition and the hundreds of years of persecution of Jews was their rejection of Christianity, based on the idea that Jesus was the son of God and had extraordinary powers. The Jews believed, and still do, that Jesus may have existed, but in a different fashion, perhaps as a rabbi or one of many claimants over the centuries to be the actual messiah.
It can be found that Sephardim, or Spanish and Portuguese Jews who may have converted to Christianity, eventually found a home in Antwerp, van Cleve's home, where the painting was probably sold on the market. The story of these people, living in Antwerp, may be found in scholarly works, referred to here. Many had continued to practice Judaism. The flower in the painting was altered perhaps a century after the artist died. The madonna must have been a popular pose, as copies exist in the art museum in Kansas City, without the passion flower. Another copy, also without the passion flower, is held by a museum in France. We discuss all three versions known to exist.
Speculating: a dramatic scenario from ages past
Historians tell us that the Spanish sacked Antwerp in 1576. Soldiers were angered because they had not been paid by the Spanish monarch Philip II. It has been speculated that 7,000 residents of the city were dragged from their homes and murdered. Antwerp, in flames, had been one of the foremost trading centers in Europe, influential and rich, especially in its cloth market. Spices from India were even brought down the river by the Portuguese. Those days of glory ended with the fury, and the up and coming city of Amsterdam eventually took over the roles of commercial center of Northern Europe. Conversos and crypto-Jews, as well as outright practitioners of Judaism, came to find their fortunes within the new Dutch empire. Many had perhaps been living in Antwerp.
The camouflaged message, if it exists, in the painting by van Cleve, may tell us of the owner of the painting, perhaps a very religious Christian who wanted to reinforce the message of Christ's geneaology with the passion flower and the words on the bodice. In our imagination, we may see a crypto- Jewish family, attempting to hide beneath the protection of this Madonna. Perhaps this sentence was a code for visitors, or a sign to those who recognized them as more than scratches that they were welcome as co-religionists in the household. The passion flower intensified the Christian religious meaning of the painting, a good cover.
Perhaps the words or letters tell us something of the mystery painter of the passion flower 100 years after van Cleve died. Perhaps these letters were added by the same hand, a Jewish artist who plied his profession secretly, a lone artistic soul, perhaps a Torah sofer or scribe, lost in the mists of history.
The journey seems to begin here. We see the simple, pious, virgin and child, the same woman and child, perhaps a relative of van Cleve, appearing in several of his paintings or those of his workshop in Antwerp. It is said that that van Cleve learned many of his strategies from the work of the master Leonardo. When Leonardo died in 1519 at about 57 years of age, Joos was possibly 39 or 40. The story goes that Leonardo died in France with the king Francis at his side. Ten years later van Cleve was said to be working in the opulent and scandalous court of art connoisseur and bon vivant Francis I. van Cleve biographer Hand suggests the painting might be examined technically by the Cincinnati museum to see if the words are integral to the original work. Perhaps there is a Kabbalistic or mystical connection, he suggests. We flew to Cincinnati to look at the painting under a magnification scope.
The big puzzles remain unsolved:
Whose hand painted the Hebrew letters (if they exist) on the Madonna's bodice? Why?
Is this a real message, five centuries old, meant to tell us a secret about the artist?
The still, quiet lady has kept her confidences through five hundred years of silent nights.
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________
Below is a drawing of the Spanish Fury in Antwerp. The holy and unspoken name of G-d in Hebrew letters appears over the city. This is a public domain engraving of the drawing of the Spanish fury, by Hans Collaert, 1577, which is located in the Museum of Amsterdam.
|
