view, but which we can’t grasp.
Huge swathes of medieval and Renaissance painting fall into this category, with their complex assemblages of symbols we’re no longer able to read. Whether it’s a Biblical scene, or a mythological one, we’re often sorely tested when it comes to the simple business of saying who is who. Apart from scholars, who can distinguish St Catherine of Siena from St Catherine of Egypt, in an altarpiece?
These symbols come laden with meanings and values, which at one time were common property in the culture. When Masaccio or Bellini include them in a painting, they may be obscure to us but you don’t feel the artist is being deliberately misleading, or trying to make a personal point. By the time we get to Hogarth, the great chronicler of the vices and follies of 18thcentury England, there’s been a profound change.
Here the symbols have a satirical edge, and you get the sense Hogarth enjoys teasing the viewer by mixing things that are obvious with things that are baffling. In his painting The Roast Beef of Old England, he portrays a ridiculous bandy-legged Frenchman struggling under the weight of a side of roast beef. That’s an obvious dig at the French, but not many will grasp the meaning of the crow perched on the gate, or the white dove hanging on the inn sign above the cross. The first refers to the treacherous Jacobites, who had found refuge in France. The other is a satirical reference to the Catholic Church, perhaps hinting that Catholics were more adept at tippling than praying.
This semi-obscurity is what allows artists to get away with things that stated baldly in print would be banned. When the Anglican Bishop Warburton saw Hogarth’s Enthusiasm Delineated, he was appalled by its portrayal of lewd preachers and over-excited congregations. But he took comfort in the fact that, as he put it, “the worst parts of it have a good chance of not being understood by the people.”
Turn to the other arts, and you find the same truth applies: anything that we can’t spot or can’t understand is effectively a secret. Music is an especially rich field for “secrets”, because it’s a slippery art form, hard to pin down to a specific meaning. Also, notes can be paired off with letters to spell out messages, which you could never spot without being forewarned. Robert Schumann was obsessed with musical codes, and his music often spells out the name of a current girlfriend. Bach’s name when turned into notes spells out a fournote phrase, which he included in several works, including the unfinished Art of Fugue.
Shostakovich works in a different way, using musical phrases that (according to some) act as coded messages of defiance against the Soviet regime. But is the finale of the 5th Symphony really a grotesque parody of a Stalinist parade? And does his use of Stalin’s favourite tune Suliko in the 1st Cello Concerto really have a subversive edge?
Once you get into meanings, ambiguity and doubt are bound to enter the picture. Which brings me back to Daphne Todd’s portrait. What exactly are those horns on the “obnoxious young gentleman” supposed to signify? They could simply mean he’s as obnoxious as the devil, but let’s not forget adding horns to an image of a man was a way of hinting that the poor devil had been cuckolded.
Perhaps Todd’s revenge is even sweeter than it seems.