Lecture 1: Approaches to European Art
even Delacroix, who was anything but politically engaged, and through his
genius, Delacroix could enable us, long afterward, to share his response
without having experienced the event.Delacroix’s response to a political context was also a profoundly emotional
response. Each of us responds in our own way to events, circumstances,
other persons, places, and experiences. Our response to joy or grief in life
will also be evoked by the portrayals of those emotions in art. A particular
example is our innate human response to a loving embrace, as we see in
Giotto’s Meeting at the Golden Gate (c. 1305) and Rembrandt’s The Jewish
Bride (c. 1668–1669).Giotto’s fresco shows an aged couple, Joachim and Anna, who had been
childless and who have just learned that Anna will bear a child (Mary, who
will become the mother of Jesus). They rush to ¿ nd each other and meet at
the city gate. Although the couple is grouped with others in an architectural
setting, we focus at once on their memorable embrace. In fact, the arched gate
leads our eyes to them, and its curve echoes their embrace. Their separate
bodies fuse into a single loving form. Rembrandt’s painting brings us into
the immediate presence of this Jewish couple, whose names are not known.
They are shown in a profoundly solemn embrace in which they do not even
look directly at each other, yet they are ardently united by tender touch and
by the warmth of her scarlet skirt and his golden sleeve—a sleeve that itself
is the essence of an embrace. The couple in this portrait has been painted in
the guise of the loving Isaac and Rebecca from the Old Testament book of
Genesis; knowing this deepens the meaning of the painting. The emotion in
these paintings is both personal and religious, expressed in different styles,
but equally capable of touching us.As biblical and mythological themes became less common in the 19th
century, the emotional content of art was often more directly related to
individual pleasures and sorrows. Thus, art increasingly reÀ ected the modern
European middle class that arose in the 19th century and turned to their
lives and experiences for subjects and for emotional expression. One great
example may suf¿ ce: Renoir’s Luncheon of the Boating Party (1881). We
feel a satisfying, complete pleasure in Renoir’s famous painting. It seems
so obvious; that is, we understand it—we feel that it speaks our language.