Travel Log | Berlin Day 2: Highlights of the Gemäldegalerie

The Gemäldegalerie is an art museum in the Kulturforum that holds one of the leading world collections in European art from the 13th to the 18th century. I always appreciate painting museums - much more so than museums of objects and artifacts, unless the artifacts happen to be dinosaur bones - and I particularly like to see the art of the place that I am visiting featured, so this seemed like a must-see for me. There were paintings by very well known artists there, the likes of Reubens, Titian, Boticelli and van Eyck, But the highlights below tend to be either paintings that are visually striking to me or that depict interesting stories and/or scene

1. The Martyrdom of St Agatha, Giovanni Battista Tiepolo

St. Agatha was a Sicilian virgin persecuted for her Christian faith. She was imprisioned and tortured, and her breasts were torn off with tongs. Tiepolo depicts her martyrdom here, but the thing that caught my eye was the woman behind Agatha, holding the dress close to the wounds and supporting Agatha's weight as the saint leans back to look at the heavens (probably wondering why god is, in Tyrion's immortal words, such a cunt). The scene is full of violence - the guy who cut off her breasts is standing tall behind the women, his blade still stained with her blood, and a second man (is it a man or a boy?) is holding up a plate with Agatha's breasts. But in the middle of this brutality it is the love and support of one woman to another that jumps out to me - Agatha getting more comfort from the warmth of another human human than from the God for whom she's enduring such torture.

Close-up of one woman holding another as Agatha endures the pain of her martyrdom

2. Self portrait with daughters Henriette Joyard and Marie de Rege in front of the easel, Antoine Pesne

There's something indescribably sweet about an artist who is a father including his daughters in a self portrait, made sweeter still by the fact that the daughters are grown women, and their growing into women didn't create a chasm in their relationship. In fact, it seems like a wonderful family afternoon, and I can almost see them, posing close together in front of a large mirror, talking all the while the father studies his daughters' expressions to commit them to canvas. I would love to set this painting in motion in a movie. 

The daughters both seem happy, and there are dogs in the portrait: the family scene would not be complete without them. The woman who's standing is Henrietta, a painter herself, and her father portrays her casting a studious gaze at his painting - a sign that he respects her artistic aspirations. Is he also her teacher, perhaps? And the father, he seems more contemplative than the girls. Casting a loving look at his daughters in the reflection. Proud of what they have become, happy to have them close to him... Thinking of the girls mother perhaps? I think he must have loved her a great deal, and that has made him even closer to his daughters... Not unlike Belle's father, in Beauty and the beast:

This is the Paris of my childhood,
These were the borders of my life
In this crumbling, dusty attic
Where an artist loved his wife

3. The Fountain of Youth, Lucas Cranach 

 

This one deserves a meniton because of how cool the idea is (and even a little science-fictiony). The square pool is the basin of a fountain and one can see old women walking in on the left and getting out rejuvenated on the other side. Only the women, for some reason. I did some research and apparently the fact that there's only women in the bath is due to the belief that older men would automatically rejuvenate in dealing with young women. Oh wow... It must be convenient to be a man,....

4. The Plague exhibit

Abito contra la mortte, Unknown (1656) - "Rome was struck by the plague in 1656. This broadsheet was distributed as a way of informing the residents about doctors capable of treating the illness

 

This blog used to be called "autopsy room" and my handle at the time was "the plague doctor". I have always been drawn to this figure, and it's not by accident that my mum chose a plague doctor mask as a gift when she visited Venice. You can imagine how amazingly surprised I was when the temporary exhibit at the Gemäldegalerie turned out to be an exhibit about the times of the plague. 

 

Vom Tode II - Blatt 5: Die Pest, Max Klinger (1857-1920) - The text below this drawing described it as a nightmarish scene and I agree completely with that description. I think it captures how scary a hospital room can be, transforming the feelings into images: the wind, the curtains, the crows...

 

Anleitung zur heilung der Pest von Johann Vogt, Unknown (1540) - "The doctor Johann Vogtof Ulm passed these instructions for treating plague down to hsi son, Johann Vogt the Younger. Among other thingsthe text explains that the first two illustrations provide an aid in understanding which symptoms of the plague and smallpox are fatal and which ones are harmless"

Die Pest von Ashod, Jean Baron (1616-1660) - This etching is based on the composition of a painting by Nicolas Poussin, that hangs in the Louvre. It is particularly haunting because of the image in the foreground: a woman felled by the plague and a child next to the body, wanting to suckle at her breast.

Job, from the bible... Just had to put this here...