Holy Family with the Infant Saint John the Baptist (Mantegna)

Transcription

In this episode we'll focus specifically on the infancy of John the Baptist which is extremely interesting because if you go back to the biblical accounts, his infancy isn't described at all. No. We said, didn't we, in relation to the Visitation and Baptism picture that the Baptism is the second time they met. This is an imagined earlier stage. An imagined earlier meeting of the young Christ Child and John the Baptist. As a subject for painting, really only by the 15th century does it become popular. And that's because there was an author, a Dominican author called, Domenico Cavalca who must have sensed this sort of absence in the literature. And so he actually wrote a life of John the Baptist in the first half of the 14th century. And this becomes a major resource for artists. They get all these wonderful anecdotal details about what the Baptist got up to. So I thought I'd bring you down to look at this Garofalo painting, he's a painter from Ferrara in Italy and he paints this Holy Family in about 1520. You can see everyone present. You can identify the Virgin on the right hand side holding the young Christ child. On the left, you have both Elizabeth and Zacharias and the young John the Baptist. Here with this wonderful headdress and flowers. He's always got a way with animals too because he's got a bird in his hand, hasn't he? Yes. Actually, that bird is a goldfinch. A symbol of the Passion of Christ and the suffering of Christ. Yes. That's because it was believed according to tradition, that goldfinch swooped down as Christ was carrying the Cross up to Calvary and plucked a thorn from the Crown of Thorns embedded in Christ's forehead and was splashed with his blood and so that's how the goldfinch received that splash of red. Gosh, so that adds a new dark undercurrent to the painting, doesn't it? Yes. On the surface, perhaps all sweetness where the young children are about to embrace but then you realise that actually, the young child is reaching for that goldfinch held by John the Baptist. That ambiguity is very moving in a way because he's got a rather knowing face as if he's wise before his time and he knows what's to come even at this tender age. And both fears it and knows he must also play his part in preparing Christ for it. I feel as if the ambiguity in their gestures is reflected in their standing on that rocking cradle. It's like they're on either side of the seesaw. Exactly, again, that surface is a sweet, tender thing, beautiful child's cradle. Then you realise that actually, it's quite dangerous. It's rocky. And as they both step on it, the balance is going to switch here in this moment where Christ grabs at his future, as it were, in the form of the goldfinch. Things are about to change. This type of object was particularly popular in Florence, actually. Representations of the young John the Baptist and the Christ Child were very popular, specifically the Baptist because he of course, was and still is the patron saint of that city. In the National Gallery, we have a beautiful Bronzino painting made in Florence of the young John the Baptist with the Christ Child which I think we should look at next. Yes, let's. So here's Bronzino's Holy Family. This is painted in about 1540 in Florence, and is a really nice example of that tradition of that popularity of the young John the Baptist. It's the family is contracted and John is really included in the embrace of the Virgin along with the Christ child. You can identify the young Baptist because you see just at the very bottom, his camel hair shirt. He's holding the baptismal cup. But he's also holding some strawberries, proffering strawberries to the young Christ child, you can imagine, in his right hand. And usually, strawberries are associated with the fruit of Paradise. So again this foreshadowing, as it were, or looking ahead to the next narrative moment. You can see, actually, he's lost one of his attributes. It's been taken up by the Christ child, the reed cross. The reed cross. It's as if the things of their future are their present playthings. Just as in Garofalo that we've looked at a moment ago where the goldfinch was a foretaste of things to come, all of these things are anticipating their future. The flowers, the garland of flowers that the Christ Child has on his head. Does that anticipate the Crown of Thorns? I think it must. Again, something sweet but we, the beholder, are completing the picture. We know that there's more. Yes. As soon as we see that reed cross, we'd think of the crucifixion. As soon as we see those delicate, sweet flowers, perhaps celebratory flowers, we think about another crown that the child will wear. There's something, a quite interesting detail that's hard to make out. But in the upper left hand corner, you'll see in the landscape, there seems to me to be some sort of monastic complex. It's not part of the story, but yet it anticipates the time after both the Christ Child and John the Baptist and Elizabeth and the Virgin are dead. This will be the continuing, the remembering of that tradition through ritual, through prayer, the commemoration. While Cavalca doesn't mention these monastic buildings in the early life of John the Baptist, he does mention that the young John was actually present at the nativity of Christ. Here at the National Gallery we own a picture by a Sienese artist called Sodoma that actually represents this very scene. And rather sweetly it also includes the shepherds and in the very distance the imminent arrival of the Magi. Gosh, so the full cast of characters. It's a rather packed composition, yes. Very unlike for example, our Leonardo's 'Madonna of the Rocks', really restricts it down to the main key players and focuses instead on the very close intimate relationship between the young Baptist and the Christ Child. So here's Leonardo's famous Virgin of the Rocks and you can see how it gets its name, this altarpiece, from its extraordinary, almost primordial, landscape that the sacred figures are placed in. And you have the Virgin at the centre and your eye moves beautifully around the painting; is guided through the gestures that Leonardo has created. I love the way the Virgin is reaching her arm over and sort of protectively encompassing the young Baptist but she also seems to be presenting him to the Christ Child here. And you can see that at a later moment, probably by Leonardo himself he realised that the similarities between the Christ Child and the Baptist were such that he had to add additional attributes to distinguish them a little bit. So we have the inclusion of the halo on the Christ Child and the Baptist but also the addition of the cross slung over the young Baptist's shoulder. The similarity of these two figures becomes an issue. It might have been a problem for viewers, exactly, so he had to distinguish them a little bit further. But you can see already he wears little furs and of course the Christ Child would be identifiable by his blessing gesture. It's almost as if in that gesture of recognition and blessing he's acknowledging something that he will later in his life utter that this figure, John the Baptist, is more than a prophet. The similarity too recalls the fact that their birthdays were both celebrated from the very early centuries of the Christian Church, the only two birthdays celebrated by the church until the Middle Ages. And indeed his birthday is placed very specifically at the opposite end of the year from Christ's so significant was he. His is a sort of summer Christmas, it's on the 24th of June, six months away from Christmas Eve. There's a specific reason too because the days after June the 24th, after midsummer, begin to get shorter and the days after Christmas begin to get longer. That recollects the fact that the Baptist must decrease, as he says, in order that Christ may increase. It's a beautiful placing of these birthdays. And as I look at these two children I'm put in mind of the beginnings of their lives, their births. This landscape is extraordinary and no one really other than Leonardo sets his sacred figures in something so otherworldly. But it does call to mind a time before humans populated the earth, before they started their constructions and I wonder if there might also be some allusion to the wilderness? Yes, it's outside time as it were, untouched by human artifice as you say and yet that's also a feature of the earthly wilderness and that's where this young Baptist is going to make his way eventually, begin his preaching and finally baptise Jesus Christ. And it's the wilderness that's the subject of our next episode.