Baroque Art: Velasquez: Joseph 's bloody coat

In the Muslim, Jewish, and Christian tradition, Abraham, his two sons Isaac and Ishmael, Isaac's son Jacob, and Jacob's son Joseph are patriarchs:  especially favored by a god with insight, foresight, and wisdom.   The whole family, from great-grandfather Abraham to great-grandson Joseph, had an abiding and fierce belief in a god who was immaterial, except for a Voice No One Else Could Hear.  Each of these family members could hear the Voice, which ordered them at times to do terrible things.

A family whose members hear and obey a Voice No One Else Can Hear are now-a-days said, by the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, Fourth Edition, to have a

 Shared psychotic disorder, or folie à deux, [which] is a rare delusional disorder shared by 2 or, occasionally, more people with close emotional ties. An extensive review of the literature reveals cases of folie à trois, folie à quatre, folie à famille (all family members), and even a case involving a dog.

In the religious tradition, however, these family members are said to be holy, worthy of veneration.

We,-- Jew, Christian, and Muslim -- are joint heirs of the Abrahamic tradition.  We have been at war with one another for centuries.  We are at war with one another today.  Perhaps that gives no weight to my belief that the tradition is mad; but I think it does.

Baroque painters loved to paint scenes of grotesque torture.  They especially liked painting Abraham's binding the hands ad feet of his child Isaac and placing him on the alter to be burnt; and they also liked the scenes of Abraham's sending Ishmael into the Wilderness to die of thirst.  Some of these images are in an earlier blog of mine.

This blog focuses on the moment three of Jacob's 11 sons present a bloody shirt to Jacob, claiming their young brother, Joseph, was eaten by a wolf and the shirt is evidence.  The scene was painted by Velasquez in 1630, on Velasquez' return from Rome the first time.

Joseph was a beautiful boy, 11th of 12 brothers.  In the Qur'an, Mohammad is quoted as saying that Joseph had half of the world's beauty; the other half was divided among all of the rest of the people of the world.

Perhaps it's dangerous to be too beautiful.  Perhaps his brothers were jealous.  Perhaps Joseph was a little shit.  In any event, Joseph's brothers sold him into slavery (or, in the Qur'anic version, put him
down a well, where he was found by travelers, who enslaved him, as was natural in those days.)

Here is the scene.

The elder brother, here shown in black, is the central character.

A beacutiful monster.  I think Velasquez intended us to see that.

The two advisers don't believe a word of what the young scion is saying, but who are they to object?

Younger brothers go along, but the one in blue is disturbed, and the one in red is too anxious to be believed.

The puppy dog is not deceived deceived

And what of Father Jacob?  Does he believe his eldest?  Does he know the story is a lie, and is helpless to disprove it?  In the A Qur'an, Jacob, with godly foresight, knows his son will lie, and does nothing, so as not, one supposes, to spoil the story.  At Jacob's age (mine and yours, too, some of you) does he prefer peace above all?  My take:  he knows that his favorite, beautiful son is gone and not to be returned; he is forced to accept the evidence before him, and he doesn't like it at a ll.

[An art historian seemed to take delight in Velasquez' inability to make Joseph's cane lie flat on the rug.  Perhaps the historian had little else to delight him, that day.]

I am not competent to judge the purely painterly qualities of Velasquez' work.  When it is compared with another 16th Century painting . . . .

[Giovanni Andrea de Ferrari, an  Italian painter], Velasquez' work seems to me to be clear, clean, strong,: in short, beautiful and awful at the same time.

Some good, more modern painting and a readable version of Joseph's treatment by his brothers, as told in Genesis, is here.  For one the great works of literature in Western culture, read Thomas Mann's Joseph and his Brothers.  If you haven't read it, or haven't in a long time, it's topical, given our involvement in the Middle East, and is as great as the Velasquez painting.

Here are some of the other 'bloody shirt" paintings:

Ford Maddox Ford, but who is that Disneyesque character lurking behind Joseph?)

Jules Ambroise Francois Naudin (1841)

Joseph sold into slavery:  

Karoly Ferenczy  1900

Joseph sold into Slavery, Cornelis  van Poelemburgh

And a modern, and I think deliberately sexy, one by Edward Knipnes, who won't let me take a large reproduction.  Confound It!

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This is the most interesting of the non-Velasquez Joseph-Jacob paintings.

It was painted by Benjamin Gerritsz, Cuyp.   It comes from a blog of Russian paintings, which contains this description of Gerritsz:

Benjamin Gerritsz Cuyp
Dutch painter
(born 1612, Dordrecht - died 1652, Dordrecht)
Cuyp is the name of a family of Dutch painters of Dordrecht, of which three members gained distinction.
Jacob Gerritsz. Cuyp was the son of a glass painter and a pupil of Abraham Bloemaert at Utrecht. He is thought of today mainly as a portrait painter - his portraits of children are particularly fine - but in old biographies is lauded principally for his views of the countryside around Dordrecht.
Benjamin Gerritsz. CuypRembrandtesque light and shadow effects.
Houbraken stated that Benjamin studied with his half-brother Jacob. Benjamin entered the Guild of St Luke on 27 January 1631, at the same time as his brother Gerrit Gerritsz. the Younger. In 1641 Benjamin gave evidence in a medical affair, which has prompted speculation that he may have trained as a doctor, but in 1643 he is twice recorded in The Hague as a painter, living with other artists. Seventeen of his paintings appeared at auction at Wijk-bij-Duurstede in 1649. At the time of his death, he was living in Dordrecht with another half-brother, who was a glassmaker.

Here are some other of Benjamin's paintings, from the same source:

Abe says that the paintings remind him of Rembrandt, as well they should.

A Rembrandt angel:

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Here are some paintings intended as illuistrations for children's books or to hang, in copies, on church walls; perhaps one such hung on the Yoakum Methodist Church walls when we were youths.  They interest me in their own right, and also because they indicate that religious folks like to see youngsters mistreated:  Father Abraham, you have much explaining to do.

Anna Bilińska-Bohdanowiczowa, 1883:  advanced for its time, isn't it?  Kinda good, too.

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And finally, in England, representing the modern West, with its finely-tuned aesthetic sense:

The West sees the ancient story though its own lenses.  Is it any wonder that Believers want to kill us? 

Is is any wonder that we won't let 'em?

Baroque Art: Velasquez: more on Las Meninas painters

Two of the contemporary  painters who were inspired by Las Meninas.

Bertrand Russell:  "No one would say 'The first president of the United States is the first president of the United States', except one who has an unusual passion for the Law of Identity."  Cristobal Toral may have an unusual passion for suitcases:

I don't know what the suitcases mean to the artist.  The blogs I took the images from are in Spanish and I can't read Spanish.  One reader said they reminded her of Auschwitz.

And the long line of reclining nudes, from the 15th Century to the present day, i scontinued unbroken.

Joel-Peter Witkin, a painter and photographer, has come up with these:

After Manet's Olympia, yet another in the long line of reclining nudes.

Entitled "Depraved or Divine".

And a photograph based in The Raft of the Medusa, here:

I have a particular fondness for this painting by Theodore Gericault, for it nearly persuaded me to become an art historian, against my father's dictate and my art professor's advice.  It would have been a catastrophe equal to the law catastrophe, perhaps.

In any event, here is Witkins version, followed by his own explanation of his photograph:

"There are many parallels to the Raft of the Medusa and the Presidency of George W. Bush. The Captain of the Medusa was an incompetent, a nobleman who owed his appointment to the ministerial favor and not seamanship. George W. Bush is also incompetent, a rich man's son who gained the presidency through favor and deceit, rather than statesmanship. As politician and president, he is a demagogue, a leader who make use of popular prejudices, false claims and promises in order to gain and hold power. Both these men, the captain of the Medusa, Hugnes de Chaumareges and George W. Bush are murderers. The making of the Raft of the Medusa was the result of the "the Captain and many of his senior officers who, caring only for their own safety, brutally commandeered the seaworthy life boats, leaving it to the lower ranks and the soldiers to try their luck on a raft." The abandoned people left on the ship built a raft sixty five feet in length and twenty-eight feet wide out of the masts and beams, crudely lashed together before the Medusa sank.

"One hundred and fifty people, including one woman, were herded into the slippery beams. So closely were the people huddled together that it was impossible to move a single step. Mutiny, murder, cannibalism and madness followed. After fifteen days, only fifteen survived.
The people on the Medusa were victims of class struggle. The people on the Raft of George Bush-his party and regime-are the victims of their own rationale, their conservative elitism, their hunger for political and social power and their unilateral military ambitions. It took a very sick group of people to dream up a phony war from the tragedy of 9/11, against a country which had nothing to do with 9/11.
In my photograph, I want to show the leaders of this regime as royalty without clothes. As the fools they really are.
"The president is seen wearing a McDonalds gold paper crown. His despair is the result of a mind distorted by extremism. By the lies, torture, pain and death he has caused. He is the Lear of all inept politicians. He holds the naked body of "Condi Rice". She is his ideal black woman. His brain-dead muse. Secretary of Defense "Rummy" lies face down nearby, holding his glasses, wrapped in a flag of the nation. Former Secretary of State Powell is pictured dressed only in military epaulets holding the "proof" he presented at the United Nations for justification for the war against Iraq. The vice-president and his wife are shown as an operatic star and diva straining to proselytize their doctrines in song. Barbara Bush is tied to a mast. She holds a 
sun-reflector under her chin-representing her joy in basking in the sunlight of power yet always looking like "The Quaker Oats Man". Near her is a conservative minister trying to hang himself while a sailor performs fellatio on him. Finally, an African American waves the flag of his mother country as he sights the Medusa's survivors, a Chinese junk and a Space Ship."
Joel-Peter Witkin

"Yippee," I say.  "Good for you, Joel-Peter."