EPPH - Every Painter Paints Himself

Tips to Tell Art from Illustration

My definition of art, as I've said before, is not as wide as that used by the public and most scholars. I do not believe, for instance, that children create art nor the vast majority of adult painters. True artists paint themselves; they paint inwards and they paint the wisdom of the ages.  

Last week I was in Casa Rocca Piccola in Valetta. The house, open to the public, provides a fascinating peek into local history. It has been continuously owned by one family, members of Maltese nobility who still live there. As I was leaving a small black-and-white engraving of the painting above caught my eye because the shiny bell, hanging from the white dog's collar, stared back at me like an eye. Only a true, poetic artist would do that, I thought. Then I noticed that each dog has one eye fully visible, the other hidden or obscured. That is another common feature in visual poetry to convey the artist’s dual perception: one eye open to the exterior world, one eye closed or blocked for insight. [Themes explained on EPPH are underlined and linked.] Looking further, we see that the furry paw of the little dog rests on the other's snout, its texture like that of a paintbrush. Paws for hands, fur for paintbrushes often convey the craft of the artist and his tools. And these painters, little known to the wider public, often represent themselves as animals. You can look at this image like many examples on EPPH as though the little Maltese, in touching the St. Bernard, is "painting" the other dog. It's a poetic metaphor. The Maltese also has its head turned to look out over its shoulder as artists do when they paint their self-portrait in a mirror. Not only is this a pose with hidden meaning in masterpieces everywhere but it follows that the painting itself must be the surface of that mirror and, thus, the mirror of the artist's mind. It’s a reflection on reflection. Further support for the argument that art and creation are the hidden subject matter can be found in the still-life below the dogs, a collection of Landseer's own tools with which he presumably painted the animals. There are pencils, paintbrush, chalk, even a piece of bread for erasing. Moreover, the color is synchronized as well. The hairs of the actual brush on the table are white (far left) like the dog's paw, the metaphorical brush.

I was surprised to learn that the image was by Sir Edwin Landseer, Queen Victoria's favorite painter who specialized in animals. His work is generally not well regarded by today's critics even though they often have an instinctive feel for the difference between art and illustration. It seems that they have mis-read Landseer. The title, The Lion Dog of Malta¹, is also revealing if given by the artist and should have raised eyebrows. It only refers to the smaller dog and ignores the larger one. That's odd. Why? The lion dog (better-known today as a Malteser) is “the artist” with the St. Bernard as his “painting”. The canine breeds may be significant too. Leonine symbolism can signify the sun or its status as the sacred animal of Apollo, God of poetry. St. Bernard, no mere mountain dog, is a gateway to divinity too and is closely associated with monasticism and inner contemplation. Note also that the seer in Landseer signifies a prophet who has visions.

Back home I compared the dogs to the artist. It was a good guess (something you should try on other pictures) because there are links. Not only was Landseer remarkably hairy like the lion dog but he also looks leonine (right inset). However, since we believe that every painter paints himself the artist must likewise be connected to the St. Bernard. He is too: compare the intensity of each stare (left). And within each comparison of dog and artist the mouths are similar: a long line between the lips in the left-hand pair, compact and less wide in the one on the right. Thus, it seems, Landseer did represent himself as a lion dog "painting himself" as a St. Bernard. None of this would be present in an ordinary painting of dogs and confirms Landseer's status as a visual poet. 

Three hundred years earlier in a famous portrait, Titian had already painted a Maltese raising its paw to its owner, the Duke of Mantua (left), and this conveys a similar idea. The dog represents Titian because, as above, its furry paw is raised like a  paintbrush about to touch, ie “paint”, its owner. Most importantly, the dog’s pose is how Titian painted himself in his final painting (bottom right) with his beard raised like a brush. It is also the pose he used for Mary Magdalene as his alter ego in the act of "painting" Christ (center right) and as other figures elsewhere. Sometimes he inverted the pose which is why, perhaps, it has never been noted.

Titian's female saint, Mary Magdalene, represents the male artist's androgynous mind and is on her knees trying to touch her vision of Christ as though His figure is her own conception. And she is told, in return, "touch me not".² The attempt itself is enough because she is, nevertheless, "painting" Christ who, resurrected, appears in her and Titian's imagination. The other hand of this ex-prostitute rests on her traditional attribute, a cosmetic pot. This pot was often re-interpreted by artists as a paint-pot because just as painters paint their own face in self-portraits so do harlots in mirrors. That's why in another painting of the Magdalene Titian signed the pot itself.³

In his very last painting, the Pietá, intended for his tomb, Titian used the same pose to paint himself as a biblical figure and mythic artist. In the literature on the painting the figure is said to be either Nicodemus or Joseph of Arimathea which makes sense. In the Renaissance both were thought to have been artists. This is no coincidence. Titian’s beard replaces the hairy paw of Landseer's dog and its shape resembles a paintbrush’s bristles too. It crosses the arm of the dead Christ because, like Mary Magdalene, he is "painting" Christ as the archetypal symbol of humanity. In both of Titian’s religious paintings illustrated here Christ is either dead or resurrected and thus in a separate reality from the metaphoric “painter" next to him, either Mary Magdalene or Titian as a biblical artist. They are images of the artist with his art still in the process of creation. Christ is, besides, the iconic figure in both art and Christianity, the traditional symbol for the perfect painting and, as in esoteric Christianity, for the divine inside us. All three images by Titian have long been famous and Landseer would have been well aware that the great Venetian in his portrait of the Duke of Mantua had become a little Maltese. Doing likewise in the Lion Dog, Landseer adopts Titian as an earlier incarnation of his artistic soul. He is Landseer as Titian as a Maltese.

On the level we are discussing - completely unseen by the ordinary viewer - you can be fairly certain that the metaphoric message of poetic art is spiritual whatever the scene resembles or the patron wanted. True art, in general, conveys universal truths about the human condition such as the esoteric message of the Gospels that the only Truth - read, God - is inside us. Indeed, as in art, Jesus teaches his disciples in secret, as he himself stressed.⁴ And his teachings are not Christian alone for they echo and reflect even earlier truths conveyed by other traditions such as neoplatonism, gnosticism, Buddhism and, later, Islam. They are even in tune with Socratic tradition. I do not know how far Landseer goes in this direction but we have dug deep enough into his sentimental Victorian scene to discover that not all is quite what it seems. 

The most important advice here, though, is that you, too, can train yourself to glimpse significant details that separate art from illustration. Then, once aware of the themes on EPPH you will find them in art everywhere. With practice, you'll see them in an instant and even, as I did, in just a monochrome engraving. All I saw at first was a bell that looked like an eye. It rang a bell which opened my eye and led to greater meaning.

 

1. The full title is The Lion Dog of Malta, The Last of Its Tribe. I do not know how the public then would have understood the tag-line but it suggests, on the esoteric level, that Landseer disliked the new artistic trends of his time and considered himself the last in the grand tradition of great masters.

2. Goffen demonstrated how Titian had a special sense of identification with Mary Magdalene, even writing letters to his patrons as though the saint was his personal envoy and intercessor. In fact, as Freke and Gandy show, other men have identified with her too. Rona Goffen, Titian’s Women (New Haven: Yale University Press) 1997, p.8-11, 178, 185; Timothy Freke and Peter Gandy, Jesus and the Goddess: The Secret Teachings of the Original Christians (London: Thorsons) 2002, p. 148

3. See entry on Titian's Mary Magdalene (c.1530-60).

4. As one example, the Gospel of St. Matthew records: “And the disciples came and said unto him: “Why speakest to them in parables?” He answered and said unto them: “Because it is given unto you to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it is not given.….Therefore I speak unto them in parables because they seeing see not, and hearing they hear not, neither do they understand.” St. Matthew 13:10-14