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A MEMORIAL BY CYPRIAN GODEBSKIOVER THE OCEAN, A SWAN SONG OF ACADEMIC RELIGIOUS SCULPTURE (Wotum Cypriana Godebskiego nad oceanem czyli labedzi spiew akademickiej rzezby religijnej)

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Pienkos A.

Sacrum et Decorum. Materiały i studia z historii sztuki sakralnej

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2010

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vol. 3

9-20

EN

Cyprian Godebski is the author of numerous monuments and tombstones, among others in Austria, Belgium and Russia, but he worked primarily in France. His works can be found in Paris (the best known among them are the headstones of H. Berlioz and Th. Gautier), Monte Carlo and Brittany. Probably the biggest extant work by Godebski, little known in Poland, is the stone group Madone des naufragés [Our Lady of the Shipwrecked] on the Atlantic promontory Pointe du Raz in the westernmost region of Brittany. Godebski, who spent most of his life in France, was connected with numerous ties to this region. Apart from this group, the most visible of this relationship is the bronze monument to general A. Le Flo, Godebski's friend from St. Petersburg (the general was a French ambassador there) in the main square in Lesneven near Brest (1899). Our Lady of the Shipwrecked (1901), commissioned from Godebski by Count de Trobriand, was going to be a private memorial to local sailors, modelled on several similar ex-votos on the shores of Brittany. However, the republican departmental authorities did not issue a permit to erect a religious monument in a public place. The refusal of the authorities was connected with the approaching decision about the separation between Church and state in France. The conflict was particularly severe in Brittany, which was considered the stronghold of traditional Catholicism, but it was also the home country of the philosopher Ernest Renan, an Anti-Christ in the eyes of some right-wing circles. The conflict escalated in 1903, when the so-called sardine crisis hit very badly Breton fishermen and various political camps, including the Catholic Church, tried to use it to expand their influence. Finally Godebski's sculpture was erected thanks to the determination of the Bishop of Quimper, to whom it was presented by the artist as a votive sculpture in memory of his son's death in Tonkin. Our Lady of the Shipwrecked was created in 1901-1903 in Carrara. The ceremonial inauguration of the figure, accompanied by a Mass, took place on 3rd July 1904. It was attended by approximately 20 - 30 000 pilgrims and the bishop attending the celebration paid tribute to Godebski. Madone des naufragés follows ancient tradition of placing crosses and religious figures on mountain tops and coastal rocks. We can find a particularly large number of colossal religious figures in the French sculpture of the 19th century, especially from the period of the religious awakening supported by the government of the Second Empire. Our Lady of the Shipwrecked differs, however, from the huge statues of the Virgin Mary erected at that time in France through its strong realism and lack of obvious allusions to Romanesque, Gothic or Baroque depictions. In contrast to his predecessors, the creators of large, static allegories or saints' figures, Godebski portrayed almost a genre scene. However, what makes Our Lady of the Shipwrecked special, are the non-artistic factors described above. It was erected in the heat of the political and religious fight in France, when the secular Republic was on an anti-Church offensive, leading to fundamental legal decisions. Did the artistic concept of the sculpture, including the undoubtedly most interesting solution of the emotional tension between the sailor and the child Jesus was consciously adopted by Godebski because of this conflict? We do not know that. The creation of the sculpture was initiated by lay people, but finally it was executed under the patronage of the Church, and it eventually turned into a new place of worship of the Virgin Mary in Brittany.

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THE GARDEN OF ARTIST, POET, THINKER. THE TERRITORY OF CREATION (Ogród artysty, poety, mysliciela. Terytorium tworzenia)

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Pienkos A.

Rocznik Historii Sztuki

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2009

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vol. 34

171-198

EN

The garden of the 'artist's house' (artistically created home of a writer, painter, or musician) could be examined in the categories of gardening history, searching for references to typical models or solutions. We know of the influence of gardens of various artists on the solutions introduced in the art of gardening (for instance Alexander Pope or William Shenstone). More often gardens of this type are governed by rules of individual creativity, they have no specific traits and as a rule they do not belong to the history of gardening. From antiquity through Renaissance a garden brought to mind meditation and creation. More than a house it would be the figure/prefiguration of a place of creation and the product of a creation act. It is this role it plays in the 'Mémoires d'Outre-Tombe' by Francois-Rene de Chateaubriand and numerous comments by other writers. Garden as a 'microcosm' makes us redefine the notion of creation. Some of the 'gardening acts' elude thinking in the categories of gardening object. Garden as a place of important rituals can be found especially in the communes from the turn of the 19th and 20th century. Such kind of 'gardening acts' in their anthropological dimension are of crucial importance for understanding the character of the place of creation and the whole artistic activity of an artist. Regardless its size, form, relation to the artist's home, the garden is given a special assent. An artist's grave in his garden should be considered in the same categories. For Carl Linnaeus, Buffon, Voltaire, Goethe, later on also for John Ruskin, gardens were a testing ground in various fields of their scientific and artistic creativity. Claude Monet's creation at Giverny was developed in two inseparable orders: a garden 'was growing for' a painting. Around the same time, yet with no Monet's consistency, made their own gardens and then painted them also Jozef Mehoffer, Max Liebermann, HeinrichVogeler, Edward Atkinson Hornel, or Emil Nolde. The history of gardening as the element of a representative place of artist's residence could be presented in the categories of the history of gardening forms as well as a social history of art. This function is served by gardens in the residences of Peter Paul Rubens, Nicodemus Tessin the Younger, Charles Le Brun, and then later of Franz von Lenbach, Vincenzo Vela, Richard Wagner. Drawing upon the models from the 16th through the 18th centuries, Francis Poulenc, Edmond Rostand and Edith Wharton made their own gardens, nevertheless, with reference to their main field of creativity. A theme of Italian Renaissance inspirations belongs to the most important research tracks to follow when interested in the gardens of the 19th- and 20th-century artists. A 'locus amoenus' could have assumed the form of microcosm, full of personal or historical associations, relating to the interests of the artist. The gardens of Gabriele d'Annuzio, Axel Munthe, Anders Zorn, Vicente Blasco Ibanez became mainstays of private history of culture, characteristic of post-romantic trends.

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MUSEUM-MAUSOLEUM-PANTHEON. THE ULTIMATE POST-ROMANTIC SACRALISATION OF THE ARTIST'S HOME (Muzeum - mauzoleum - panteon. Sakralizacja ostateczna domu artysty po romantyzmie)

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Pienkos A.

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2010

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vol. 64

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issue 2-3(289-290)

207-213

EN

When the cult of the artist reached its apogee during the Romantic era, the microcosmos of the home became a frequent part of archetypical associations: a castle with a turret, an armoury, a magnate's palace with gardens full of sculptures and fountains, a chapel, etc. Such associations situate artists as the spiritual heirs of feudal lords, ruling over a given territory, knights battling for the faith and honour, or priests guarding over spiritual order. Domes, 'knightly' ceilings of 'armouries' and stained glass windows not only granted splendour to the seats of the artists, but brought to mind a sequence of associations with the olden days and the sphere of the sacrum. Some artists settled down in the direct proximity of a sacral building (L. Poliaghi's 'Sacro Monte' in Varese) or directly on the site (A. Munthe on Capri, I. Zuloaga in Zumaya, M. Denis in Saint-Germain-en-Laye). Sacral descriptions of their residences were used outright by, i. a. W. Scott and G. D'Annunzio. Historical models best expressed the glorification of the artist when assisted by eschatological references. Special proof of a cult was the custom, increasingly universal in the nineteenth century, of displaying dead writers and artists in their studios, in the manner of the pompa funebris of the rulers of old (B. Thorvaldsen, A. Wiertz, H. Makart, F. von Stuck). The body of the sculptor V. Vela was on view amongst his masterpieces, comprising an exposition of his oeuvre featured in an octagonal hall at the artist's home in Ligornetto. This installation of a post-Romantic cult of the artist in the central, domed hall of the 'Vela Pantheon', which brought to mind sacral (as well as ancient and Christian!) connotations, lasted for two days. The artist's home and studio became his mausoleum, albeit ephemeral, while the catafalque was depicted on Vela's tombstone in the Ligornetto cemetery. The house, erected on a hillock and surrounded with an Italian garden maintained in the Renaissance style, designed on the ideal ground plan of a square and with the an inscribed central domed hall, served both as a home-atelier and as Vela's museum. Finally, it became his monument. In his home village of Possagno, A. Canova, the initiator of transforming the Roman Pantheon into a monument of great artists, built for himself a church-monument containing his grave. The return of the body (diminished, since certain 'relics' were buried separately in Venice and Rome as a symbol of the veneration of the artist) and the most private fragment of his oeuvre rendered the small locality of Possagno the centre of a cult. The Thorvaldsen Museum in Copenhagen, which brings forth numerous associations with temples, urns and sepulchres, is also the sculptor's mausoleum. The sacralisation of museum space, reconstructing the home, life and works of the artist, was ultimately accentuated by placing an authentic sepulchre of Thorvaldsen within its 'heart', the building's courtyard. Post-Romantic artists were often obsessed with imbuing their residences with maximum contents. This enhanced 'home quality' could assume highly unusual features, best exemplified by the London home-museum of J. Soane. Eschatological allusions appear here upon numerous occasions and upon different levels of literalness or mediation, attaining ironical relief in the concept of a 'crypt' with the tomb of a fictional Padre Giovanni, Soane's alter ego. In this case, the artist's home appears to be both a monastery and a sarcophagus albeit a rebours! It turns out that the architect had actually buried his favourite dog. A 'family' mausoleum, i. e. the tomb of both owners, is the crowning of an axis of the villa-garden premise of R. Wagner's last residence in Bayreuth. Originally, Wagner wished to call his home 'Zum letzten Glück'. The Il Vittoriale complex belonging to D'Annunzio is the zenith of a longing for the sacralisation of the artist's dwelling. The lavish mausoleum, built after the writer's death, towers over the whole complex: the palace/museum/sacral premise is topped with a tomb of the owner and author. The G. Vigeland Museum in Oslo contains an urn with the artist's ashes in a tower situated along the axis of a building that served the sculptor as a home and an atelier, and already during his lifetime was envisaged as a museum. It is worth recalling that the edifice in question is part of Frognerpark, featuring sculptures by Vigeland and comprising a sui generis materialised philosophical-religious treatise. The culmination of reflections on fundamental ideas, conducted by symbolic means, is found in the author's soaring sepulchre. In Oslo E. Vigeland also created a temple of his own cult, known as Tomba Emmanuelle. This enormous sarcophagus, enclosed and devoid of windows, was no longer a home and a studio. On its walls the artist depicted the Way of Life and a syncretic apology of fire, to which he had entrusted his body, previously designing a central altar on which the urn was to rest. The death of the artist and the presence of the ashes of his body, devoured by divine fire, endow ultimate significance to this personal space of life and creation. In homes similar to the above described the functions of the studio and the dwelling seem to vanish under the symbolic burden of a museum, a monument and a mausoleum. They remain, however, an indispensable basis, since all functions are bound together by the sacralisation of the person of the artist.

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1 Konteksty - Polska Sztuka Ludowa

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1 Sacrum et Decorum. Materiały i studia z historii sztuki sakralnej

2 2010

1 2009

3 Pienkos A.

A MEMORIAL BY CYPRIAN GODEBSKIOVER THE OCEAN, A SWAN SONG OF ACADEMIC RELIGIOUS SCULPTURE (Wotum Cypriana Godebskiego nad oceanem czyli labedzi spiew akademickiej rzezby religijnej)

THE GARDEN OF ARTIST, POET, THINKER. THE TERRITORY OF CREATION (Ogród artysty, poety, mysliciela. Terytorium tworzenia)

MUSEUM-MAUSOLEUM-PANTHEON. THE ULTIMATE POST-ROMANTIC SACRALISATION OF THE ARTIST'S HOME (Muzeum - mauzoleum - panteon. Sakralizacja ostateczna domu artysty po romantyzmie)