TRUTH & beauty AND REBELLION
New exhibit offers breathtaking works from Pre-Raphaelites, old masters
When museum curator Melissa Buron wrote the catalog introduction for the new exhibit at the Legion of Honor, “Truth & Beauty: The Pre-Raphaelites and the Old Masters,” she admitted to some dilemmas.
The seven young Englishmen who founded the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood in 1848 had lofty but “sometimes incongruous” ambitions. The name they chose — referring to the artistic style before the Renaissance painter Raphael — led to “persistent misconceptions.” And eventually, their impact on art history was “elusive.”
If that’s a checklist for problems to be solved, or museum visitors’ questions to be answered, Buron and the museum’s staff have handled them splendidly. The quirky Pre-Raphaelites are carefully documented. Plus, many works by the old masters who inspired them, gathered from across America and Europe, are displayed side by side.
You can come for Victorian-era painters William Holman Hunt and Edward Burne-Jones. But stay for Jan van Eyck, Sandro Botticelli and Fra Angelico, among their predecessors who span the centuries. There’s even a self-portrait by Raphael (whom the Pre-Raphaelites didn’t really dislike, only his less-inspired followers.)
Whatever the stature of the less-
well-known Pre-Raphaelites, with their paintings’ dense symbolism and weighty melodrama, “Truth & Beauty” is a ravishing installation in the Legion’s jewel-toned galleries. It’s as much a “show” as an “exhibit.” It runs through Sept. 30 at the museum in San Francisco’s Lincoln Park.
Initially, the Pre-Raphaelites were rebelling against the state of painting in England in the middle of the 19th century, the style and subject matter reinforced by the Royal Academy of Arts in London. Several were students there, and, astonishingly, they were 19 to 21 years old when they declared their intentions.
Just two years later, they had their first exhibit, which was violently criticized by the establishment, including Charles Dickens in his periodical Household Words. As “Truth & Beauty” shows, their early works focused on nature with a painstaking, meticulous technique. Subjects were often drawn from early religious paintings, themes were meant to be morally uplifting. Figures could be stiff and angular, the “storyline” melancholy. Chaucer, Shakespeare and the King Arthur legend might be their inspirations.
Each of the Pre-Raphaelite painters went his own way eventually, but critics pointed out that many of their paintings became as artificial as the style and substance they organized to protest. And their rebellion is now identified with escapism — to the Victorian era or the earlier Gothic period.
In the exhibit’s first gallery is just one example of the convoluted process: William Holman Hunt’s “Isabella and the Pot of Basil” (1867). In a style that reflects pre-Renaissance Italy and the Netherlands, it depicts 19th-century poet John Keats’ adaption of a 14th-century Boccaccio tale about a woman who concealed her dead lover’s head inside a pot carrying a basil plant.
Dante Gabriel Rossetti, the English-born son of an Italian scholar and political activist, focused on his namesake in a riff on the poet Dante’s muse, Beatrice. His “Beata Beatrix” (1871-72) drew a parallel between Dante’s despair over Beatrice’s death and Rossetti’s own on the death of his wife. The composition features, in separate panels,
both women.
The Pre-Raphaelites’ intensity could sometimes, as an earlier critic said, “carry craftsmanship to the point of compulsiveness.” For Rossetti’s last major picture, “La Pia” (18681881), he asked a fellow artist to send him sketches of the swamps in Italy’s Maremma region for the background.
The elaborate detailing isn’t confined to painting: Edward BurneJones’ tapestry “Pomona” (1886-1920) depicts the goddess of fruit backed by a lavish, if two-dimensional collection of fruit trees and flowers. Two fabric wall hangings designed by William Morris recall tapestries of the past and look forward to the Arts and Crafts movement he helped lead into the 20th century.
Whatever the appeal of the various Pre-Raphaelites, any exhibit in
the Bay Area that features four paintings by the Italian Renaissance master Botticelli and another from his workshop is a must-see. His “Idealized Portrait of a Lady” (circa 1475), depicting Simonetta Vespucci, the most beautiful woman in Florence at the time, is both stunning and subtle compared to the 19th-century portraits.
The other old master paintings offer inspiration now as much as they did to the Pre-Raphaelites. Among them are Jan van Eyck’s “The Annunciation” (circa 1434-1436), with the Virgin Mary in a glowing blue dress; Pietro Perugino’s base of an altarpiece (1500-1505), depicting the Nativity and other scenes; and Fra Angelico’s “The Meeting of Saint Dominic and Saint Francis of Assisi” (1427-1429) in tempera and gold leaf.
Just where the Pre-Raphaelite artists led all this is debatable, as the curator suggests in the exhibit catalog. They were reacting to the Industrial Revolution to some extent, with their emphasis on hand-crafted works and reverence for nature of an earlier time. They helped spur a revival of Gothic design (and architecture) which continued for decades.
In the 20th century, their style was reflected best in bold, melodramatic, densely colored illustrations in magazines and children’s books — which are still revered. I saw “Truth & Beauty” just after visiting an exhibit of original paintings by N.C. Wyeth and Howard Pyle, who illustrated such classics as “Kidnapped” and “Robin Hood.” I could imagine the Pre-Raphaelites looking over their shoulders as they worked.