Sebastiano Ricci

Neptune and Amphitrite, ca. 1691-94

Sebastiano Ricci

Neptune and Amphitrite, ca. 1691-94

Oil on canvas. 94 x 75 cm
© Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid

Images of Water

12 Works included on this Thematic Route

Its wide range of symbolic, sociological, literary and aesthetic connotations within the history of Western painting means that it can be approached from the viewpoint of numerous different issues. These include man’s relationship with nature and conquest of it, our vulnerable position midway between the fertility and destruction that give rise to natural resources, spirituality and ancestral rites associated with the elements, the relationship between water and the female, and pure enjoyment of its contemplation.

The present tour of the Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection spans the 14th to the 20th centuries through a selection of “images of water” that will introduce us to a wide range of expressive landscapes. We will be seeing lakes, with their reflections that so fascinated painters, springs and rivers associated with biblical and mythological stories, unknown seas or ones whose raging waters have tested the courage of seafarers to the limit, majestic winter landscapes, ports and scenes of leisure activities. These are just a few of the themes that the painters in question have bequeathed to us, inviting us to reflect on and look at water in the context of our daily surroundings in a new way.

Lorenzo Veneziano
Lorenzo Veneziano
Portable Triptych with a central Crucifixion
ca. 1370 - 1375
Portable Triptych with a central Crucifixion
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Lorenzo Veneziano

Portable Triptych with a central Crucifixion

Our survey begins in the medieval period with the aim of appreciating the sacred significance that water had within Christian religious symbolism.
All the great civilisations of the ancient world grew up around river basins. In addition, in the collective universal consciousness water is associated with the very origins of time and is the fundamental element in all the world’s oldest cosmologies.

From the outset, the dual nature of water played an important metaphysical and religious role in the Judeo-Christian tradition. As Jean Chevalier noted, water is the source of life, the vehicle of purification and the centre of regeneration. It appears in the Old Testament as the source of life in the form of the Four Rivers of Paradise, while its apocalyptic dimension is manifested in the Red Sea and the Great Flood. In the New Testament the act of baptism, “charged with profound significance”, fuses this dual dimension of “giving and taking away life”, signifying regression to the inert world of pre-existence in order to be reborn into a new life.

The episode of Christ’s baptism by immersion in the waters of the River Jordan, which can be seen in the right-hand panel of this 14th century portable triptych, refers to the moment when this Sacrament was first instituted. Lorenzo Veneziano, the leading Venetian painter of the second half of the 14th century, depicts the water as transparent, of a greenish tone and with a curved surface. He painted it in this manner in order to allow the viewer to see Christ’s nudity during the ceremony of baptism, thus alluding to his casting off of the “old raiment” of corruption and sin in favour of a new innocence.

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Ercole de' Roberti
Ercole de' Roberti
The Argonauts Leaving Colchis
ca. 1480
The Argonauts Leaving Colchis
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Ercole de' Roberti

The Argonauts Leaving Colchis

The 15th century was a period of innovations and an “age of discoveries” that marked the end of the medieval period. Advances in engineering encouraged men to conceive of the possibility of controlling the force of water. In particular, considerable advances in ship construction helped to mitigate fear of the unknown realm of the seas.

Ercole de’Roberti and Lorenzo Costa (to whom some scholars have attributed this panel) worked together in Bologna, depicting Greek myths which until that date had only been depicted in allegorical series and with little emphasis on formal aspects. Both the artists of their generation and a contemporary scholarly aristocracy had begun to rediscover the classical myths with the aim of casting light on the darkness of previous centuries. This scene, which was part of the decoration of a nuptial chest or cassone, depicts one of the episodes in the story of the Argonauts written by Apollonius of Rhodes (3rd century BC). Among the oldest of the Greek myths, it narrates the perilous journey undertaken by Jason and the Argonauts when they crossed the ocean to Colchis in search of the Golden Fleece. The year 1474 saw the publication in Bologna of the version of the Argonautica by Valerius Flaccus (1st century bc), suggesting that it was a theme of contemporary interest when this painting was executed in the 1480s.

The Argos, the ship that bore the heroes on their adventure and which had the power of speech and the gift of prophecy, is depicted here as a nave tonda, a large vessel that was commonly used for transporting cargo in the 15th century, particularly in the Mediterranean. Even more interesting and striking is the treatment of the marine landscape, which is a depiction of the Black Sea, shown here as a whiteish, misty setting of a dream-like nature that undoubtedly reflects the idea of sea travel as a journey into the unknown. It is clear that the choice of this subject was not a random one and rather allowed for a rethinking of the role of the hero in the conquest of the planet over the centuries.

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Lucas Cranach the Elder
Lucas Cranach the Elder
The Nymph at the Fountain
ca. 1530 - 1534
The Nymph at the Fountain
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Lucas Cranach the Elder

The Nymph at the Fountain

In order to pursue the idea of water’s symbolic meanings in mythology, we should refer to its association with the concept of the female, an ancient tradition in the majority of world cultures. Since pre-historic times the association of water-moon-woman was perceived as the anthropo-cosmic circle of fertility. Water is thus like a “dissolved woman”: the principal source of primary nourishment and the element that gives life while also bearing death. The positive/negative view of generative femininity in the Greco- Roman tradition gave rise in the medieval imagination to numerous “aquatic births”. During the Renaissance, the secular rethinking of these myths resulted in a shift towards an image of woman as the incarnation of nature.

Among the subjects depicted by Lucas Cranach the Elder (a multi-faceted artist and supporter of Lutheranism) are numerous mythological scenes that allowed him to paint female nudes with the aim of formulating a new, strictly German model that was profoundly different to the Italian type. Cranach’s ideal female type, here applied to a depiction of the nymph Castalia, was a slim, youthful and very sensual one with almond shaped eyes, small breasts and long legs.
Greek mythology recounts that the lesser goddesses of song and poetry (the so-called Muses) as well as the fresh water nymphs (Naiads) would meet near the spring at Delphi. During these encounters Apollo played the lyre while the divinities sang. On one occasion Apollo fell in love with Castalia. This virginal Naiad plunged into the water in order to escape his attentions, for which reason her name was given to one of the most important springs in Greece. The Castalian Spring inspired the gift of poetry in all those who drank its waters or listened to its gentle sound, for which reason it was visited by philosophers and poets in search of inspiration. Its sacred waters were also used to clean the Delphic temples as it was considered a “speaking water” that could prophesy and reveal a profound knowledge of reality.

In Cranach’s painting the water emerging from the rock refers to the transformation of the nymph into the spring, while in the background the deer, partridge, quiver and bow are all attributes of Artemis, whom Castalia served. The text on the cartouche is a Latin poem that reads: FONTIS NYMPHA SACRI SOMNUM / NE RUMPE QUIESCO, meaning “I am the nymph of the sacred fountain. Do not disturb my sleep. I am resting.”

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Jan Lievens
Jan Lievens
Landscape with the Rest on the Flight into Egypt
ca. 1640 - 1645
Landscape with the Rest on the Flight into Egypt
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Jan Lievens

Landscape with the Rest on the Flight into Egypt

Another inherent characteristic of water in its liquid state is its capacity to move in time and space. Water is the material of time, the basis of formal changes and as such, of existence. It is also a metaphor of continuity, of the cyclical and of an idea of infinitely variable repetition that Heraclitus expressed in his well known phrase: “you will never bathe twice in the same river.”

Joachim Patinir, the celebrated Flemish painter and the artist who laid the way for landscape as an independent genre, probably painted this panel in the last years of his life. Through the use of a markedly horizontal format he gives most emphasis in the scene to the landscape. The episode of the Holy Family’s Rest on the Flight into Egypt that Patinir included in this composition was an ideal New Testament theme that allowed him to demonstrate his ability to depict panoramic natural settings and to deploy his gift for observation of realistic detail combined with lyrical fantasy. In the biblical account an angel appeared to Joseph in a dream and told him to flee to Egypt with the Infant Christ and Mary in order to escape Herod’s murderous decree. According to the Gospel account, on their way the Holy Family suffered hunger and thirst. Rather than depicting a Near Eastern desert landscape, which would have been the real setting for such a journey, Patinir locates the Virgin and Child in the foreground by a fountain with Saint Joseph collecting fruit for them from the trees.

We also see their donkey peacefully grazing among the meadows of a fertile landscape suggestive of Central Europe. Patinir’s view transports us to a landscape of gentle hillsides through which a river runs, with a horizon primarily painted in tones of blue. The final elements of water in this work are a small lake with a reflection of a building in it and a stream crossed by a bridge. In Patinir’s vision the bountiful nature of the landscape functions to give shelter to the family while the water offers them rest and nourishment during their wearying journey.

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Claude Lorraine
Claude Lorraine
Pastoral Landscape with the Flight into Egypt
1663
Pastoral Landscape with the Flight into Egypt
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Claude Lorraine

Pastoral Landscape with the Flight into Egypt

Claude Lorrain’s work transports us to the Italian campagna. Lorrain, who was born in France but lived and worked in Italy, was one of the most important representatives of classicising landscape during the Baroque period. In the 17th century in Italy and Antwerp landscape not only evolved into an independent genre but also became a fashionable theme for which there was considerable demand among collectors.

Claude was extremely influential due to his use of a type of landscape that aimed to capture the variety and beauty of nature through first-hand observation, albeit modified by a considerable degree of idealisation. His views frequently include pastoral scenes and bucolic elements, reflecting the evocative spirit of a lost, mythical past but one recalled through an idyllic perfection. This vertical format canvas, which dates from his mature period, includes such references to past time, for example, in the ruins of a classical temple among the vegetation, the striking form of a pyramid with a wall, and a ruined bridge. The artist depicts the Holy Family on their Flight, attended by an angel who shows them the way across a verdant, living landscape. The river is once more a symbol of movement or journey, accompanying human travellers on their way with its flow and giving rise to a wealth of incidental scenes.

Claude locates an area of trees on either side of the composition, which lead the viewer’s eye into the pictorial depth, as does the contrast of the dark foreground planes and the luminous evening light in the background. The presence of water allows for the inclusion of a boat with fishermen at work and a group of cattle drinking. At the same time the presence of this element permits the artist to demonstrate his technical virtuosity in his depiction of the interplay of reflections and in the way in which he creates a sense of depth in the water.

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Sebastiano Ricci
Sebastiano Ricci
Neptune and Amphitrite
ca. 1691 - 1694
Neptune and Amphitrite
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Sebastiano Ricci

Neptune and Amphitrite

In the late 17th century, at the dawn of the Enlightenment, technological advances in harnessing the power of water transformed Europeans’ relationship with this element, turning a necessity into a virtue. This period saw the construction of monumental public fountains with jets, cascades and sculptural elements that recreated classical allegories and deities associated with water, in a way similar to that seen in this painting. The artificial aquatic worlds created by these fountains and by the renaissance of garden design perfectly harmonised with the Baroque emphasis on the pleasures of the senses and on theatrical presentation.
Neptune (or Poseidon), god of the sea, who is easily recognisable here by his trident and his traditional appearance as an old man, had remained a subject of veneration over the centuries despite the Church’s efforts to suppress this cult. In the extensive aquatic mythology of the Greek world, Poseidon was an Olympian god of markedly masculine character, wild and moody, who reigned in the ocean over a group of gods, including Thetis, Nereus and Triton, who were to some extent independent of the others. In general, all the aquatic divinities were considered capricious, capable of performing good deeds but also bad ones according to their whim. They lived longer than the other gods, outside of time and history, and were the deities closest to the origins of the world.
The story of the Nereid Amphitrite, a sea nymph and the daughter of Nereus, recounts how she dared to reject Neptune’s marriage proposal and hid on the sea bed to avoid a second offer, although Neptune eventually persuaded her through the mediation of some dolphins. In this canvas Sebastiano Ricci, an artist from Belluno, Italy, who received commissions from the principal European courts, depicts their wedding. The Nereid and the god occupy a throne that rises above the waves, surrounded by a retinue of putti, Nereids, fantastical beasts and a triton blowing a conch. The piece of cloth that Amphitrite throws to the winds is an attribute typical of the marine gods of antiquity.

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Jacob Isaacksz. van Ruisdael
Jacob Isaacksz. van Ruisdael
Stormy Sea with Sailing Vessels
ca. 1668
Stormy Sea with Sailing Vessels
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Jacob Isaacksz. van Ruisdael

Stormy Sea with Sailing Vessels

In the 17th century nature was exhaustively analysed and progressively stripped of its mythological associations, as a result of which it was freed from previous notions linking it to supernatural forces. Crossing the Atlantic and the circumnavigation of the globe were indications of the real domination of the world achieved by Western cultures.

This canvas by Jacob Isaacksz. van Ruisdael introduces us to the most important maritime empire of the period, which was the Dutch. Following the British victory over the Spanish Armada in 1588, the Low Countries had become the most important seafaring nation in the world. Navigation became its principal economic motor and the sea provided the basis for a prosperous, flourishing lifestyle.

This is the context for the appearance of a large number of depictions of shipwrecks and storms at sea, a particular sub-genre of marine painting that is almost exclusively limited to Dutch painting. In a way these works functioned to revive the image of the elemental power of water to which man had been exposed over the centuries. These dramatic episodes reflect an aspect of a newly selfcreated national image that located man within the context of the forces of nature, albeit conditioned by the conviction that human will, the desire for action and faith in God could overcome life’s dangers.

Van Ruisdael, a precocious artist whose style was influenced by Porcellis and De Vlieger, added a specifically Christian symbolism of a moralising type to the elements in his paintings. In this canvas a group of small boats battle with a storm that makes their hulls keel over. The area of water on the right with protruding wooden poles on which the waves are breaking was a maritime signal indicating a safe place to anchor in a stormy sea. A possible symbolic reading of this element may refer to the journey of life, in which the maritime signal is, “like Christ”, the safe harbour in which to anchor.

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Hubert Robert
Hubert Robert
The Foot-Bridge
ca. 1775
The Foot-Bridge
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Hubert Robert

The Foot-Bridge

The landscapes and scenes of classical ruins executed by the French artist Hubert Robert, one of the most imaginative and admired painters of the 18th century, represent the transition from the Rococo to Neoclassicism. In 1778, three years after he completed this work, Robert was appointed designer of the royal gardens during the reign of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, the only queen to impose her personal taste on Versailles. Characterised by her intellectual independence, Marie Antoinette envisaged a type of living nature that was not imprisoned in hot houses or parterres, aiming to enjoy the pleasures of a simple, rustic life far from royal pomp and ceremony. It is thus easy to understand why she sought out Robert for the creation of some areas in her picturesque garden in the English style that was in vogue at that time.

The present oil is one of a group of views of gardens by Robert. Its oval format suggests that it may have been part of the decoration of a room or piece of furniture. The informal elements in the landscape clearly refer to the above-mentioned type of “English garden”, which was habitually filled with romantic elements such as bridges, walls, areas of vegetation allowed to grow wild and surprising details, marking a clear difference with the “French garden”, which was more geometrical in design.

On a wooden footbridge we see a group of two ladies, a gentleman and a young girl, while further into the pictorial space a fisherman observes with interest the activities of an elegantly dressed painter on the river bank. The painter in turns contemplates the landscape. As a whole the scene constitutes a succession of pleasing elements: a cloudless day with the gentle but lively flow of the water permitting a group of swans to remain in the centre of the pond while in the background the fisherman engage with their labours. All these anecdotal elements appear to be present in order to amuse and entertain the group of elegant aristocrats on the footbridge during their stroll through this setting of “tamed nature”.

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John Frederick Kensett
John Frederick Kensett
Lake George
ca. 1860
Lake George
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John Frederick Kensett

Lake George

From the end of the 18th century, Romanticism introduced a longing for a more symbiotic relationship between man and nature, constituting a reaction to the Enlightenment and to the demythification of nature resulting from the technical and scientific advances of the machine age. Around 1800 landscape painting also embarked on a new era, no longer presenting Sublime views to be appreciated in a serious manner but an expressive, mystical and aestheticised landscape that was often conceived of as a reflection of the divine. In the 19th century nature became subjective and was transformed into a reflection of the interior life of the poet or painter. In works of this type water became the perfect metaphor for this emotional flux.

An important development in the United States was the emergence of the Hudson River School, of which John Frederick Kensett belonged to the second generation. Kensett moved to New York in 1847 and from that date onwards focused on the depiction of nearby landscapes, particularly the Newport coast and Lake George. These works convey the concept of the still untamed and undefiled American landscape as a New Eden. Lake George, one of the Hudson River artists’ favourite subjects, is the largest lake in the Adirondacks. By the 1850s and with the arrival of the railway it had become a new tourist destination. It was a place charged with historical and nostalgic references, while the lake’s placid waters offered the perfect motif for representing the Sublime nature of untamed landscape.

Influenced by the Luminist style of the period, in this work Kensett deploys a soft lighting that gives the scene a dreamlike mood, thus conveying the idea of the purity of this unspoiled place. The reflection of the light on the glassy surface of the water, in itself a symbol of both spiritual richness and life, invites the viewer to relax and to experience a spirit of universal peace.

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Gustave Courbet
Gustave Courbet
The Water Stream, La Brème
1866
The Water Stream, La Brème
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Gustave Courbet

The Water Stream, La Brème

We now return to France in order to appreciate a marvellous river landscape by Gustave Courbet, a controversial, ground-breaking painter who considered that art should be based on the objective observation of the real world. Courbet championed an anti-classical, anti- Romantic, anti-academic, forward-looking and social type of realism.

The Stream at La Brème belongs to the final phase of the artist’s career when he focused increasingly on the landscape of his native region of the Franche-Comté. Courbet offers a scrupulously accurate depiction of a place near Ornans known as Puits Noir (Black Well), which is the exact spot where the stream emerged from among the rocks. The depiction of the reflection of the light on the water, the intense darkness of the well and the luxuriant vegetation all transport us to a multi-sensory environment.

This intense portrait of nature suggests Courbet’s fascination with hidden places and with the sensuality of nature. The way in which the water gushes from the openings and small cracks in the rocks has been interpreted by some scholars as a sexual metaphor. These experts consider that the present work could constitute a parallel in landscape form of Courbet’s famous work The Origin of the World, which he painted in the same year.

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Claude Monet
Claude Monet
The Thaw at Vétheuil
1880
The Thaw at Vétheuil
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Claude Monet

The Thaw at Vétheuil

Impressionism was the first modern art movement to grasp the difficulty of conveying the constantly changing nature of reality through painting. Within this new approach to the passing of time, which arose at the end of the 19th century, the work of Claude Monet, one of the great landscape painters, should be singled out.

Between 1878 and 1881 Monet lived with his wife Camille and their children in Vétheuil, a small town to the north of Paris on the banks of the Seine. Here Monet endured the death of his wife while also experiencing a particularly productive period in his career. It was in Vétheuil that he began to paint his series in which he repeated the same motifs under different atmospheric conditions in order to record the changes brought about by light and time. In addition, Monet was always particularly interested in the ephemeral and changing nature of water, and it is thus easy to understand how he was struck by the thaw of the Seine following the hard frosts of the winter of 1879-80.

The seventeen oils in this series reveal Monet’s preference for horizontal planes. They are painted in a palette of cool tones which, combined with the solitary mood of the landscape, create feelings of silence and abandonment. The impermanence of the ice and the way it is swept along by the river encourage us to reflect on the meaning of continual loss and parting and on the cycle of life. However, the thaw also implies the arrival of spring, charged with new life once again.

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Albert Gleizes
Albert Gleizes
In Port
1917
In Port
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Albert Gleizes

In Port

Our survey ends with one of the most influential avant-garde pictorial movements of the 20th century. Albert Gleizes was part of the Cubist movement in Paris in the second decade of the century, contributing to its theoretical dissemination by writing the first essay on the subject. In addition, he was one of the organisers of the “Salle 41” at the Salon des Indépendants of 1911, which first presented the Cubists to the public. While his early works are close to Impressionism, Gleizes soon became interested in Cubism’s analysis of structure and its use of formal simplification.

During World War I Gleizes succeeded in not being called up and lived between New York and Barcelona. As a result of that experience, In Port reflects a superimposition of realities, recollections and fragments of images that link the two cities’ ports. It is possible to perceive the grid system of Barcelona’s urban layout as well, perhaps, as the pointed, Gothic arches of Santa María del Mar, combined with skyscrapers and the cables of Brooklyn Bridge. The depiction of water, “in this case sea water as the connecting element between the two cities”, regains its ancestral symbolism present since the dawn of time through the avant-garde device of schematisation, expressed as undulations that refer to the fluid movement of water.

Gleizes’s work is technically interesting as some areas imitate stuck down fragments recalling Picasso and Braque’s papiers collés, which were the first manifestations of the definitive break with the traditional boundaries between the surface of the canvas and reality. In addition, Gleizes stuck tiny stones to the surface of the cardboard in a direct and real reference to the ports or beaches that he regularly visited in both the United States and Spain. This manner of using materials marks a further step beyond their traditional representation within the history of painting, allowing us to perceive the future path of endless artistic exploration that would open up in the 20th century.

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