Institute of Art History of the University of Gdańsk
BETWEEN THE PRIVATE AND THE PUBLIC. ARS MYTH-OLOGICA AND ANCIENT STYLISATION IN THE HOUSE INTERIORS AND GARDENS OF GDAŃSK CITIZENS Keywords: Gdańsk, Danzig, modern art, ancient art and mythology – reception, Gdańsk painting, depictions of Venus – Gdańsk, portrait, applied art, goldsmithery, medal-lic art, amber art, art and diplomacy, iconography, icono-logy; 16th–18th century
Mythology-Themed Painting and Sculpture in the Houses and Gardens of Gdańsk Citizens – Introduction
The phenomenon of the Gdańsk iconosphere was in its universality: until ca. the mid-18th century, similar code of meanings can be read in both the programmes of ide-ological façades and the interiors of public and private buildings. This means that the official ‘state-building’ art created under the Council’s patronage was also adopted by the patricians who identified with Neostoic ‘republi-canism’ in their artistic investments. The most popular ideological iconographic programmes included those from the Red Room, interior of the Artus Court and façade of the Golden House (the latter, in spite of having the status of a private foundation with the prospect of a pro publico bono function, had an influence on the façade of the Artus Court and Long Street Gate). However, this is more about the common principle, the system of building a uniform civic ethical model (allegories and emblems expressing moral notions, exempla, “famous men”), that was, how-ever, formulated each time in an original manner, in an individual configuration, as if subsequent conceptors were attempting to outdo one another in their invention and
erudition. Such moralising or even encyclopaedic pro-grammes concerned both the aforesaid fine interiors and façades of patrician houses, individual paintings or series of them, sculpture complexes, as well as tin coffins, virgin-als lids, amber picture frames, cups, mugs. Thus, the anal-ogy between the world and a city-state, between a city and a house with its dwellers, characteristic of the Renaissance socio-political reflection, which was particularly promi-nent in Erasmus’s thought, came to fruition in the city on the Motława. No official art and no private art arose as its antithesis in Gdańsk – at least that we are aware of. Even if we assume, taking into consideration the imperfection of human nature, that the patricians’ attachment to values, declared on the façades of their houses, was partly just (as the name would suggest) a façade, the backstage of thus defined setting – living rooms, studies and chambers of houses – is still going to disappoint those looking for spice and piquancy.
In this present study, we move to a city that was attached to Lutheran or Calvinist piety and system of values, for-mally monitored spiritual life and fined for absence at the Sunday church service; to the city that proposed puritan customs and to the city of formally standard-ised modest attire. A complete evaluation of the position of mythological and allegorical art in the private lives of Gdańsk citizens is impossible, due to the scarcity of both the preserved artistic evidence (works of art in situ, iconographic documentation) and written sources. The lat-ter, predominantly documenting the interiors of eight-eenth-century buildings, barely provide any information on the themes of the collected works of art – they document, with an accountant’s subtlety, the weight of the silverware, rather than its theme; the type of painting support and frames, rather than the painting themes, etc. Testaments
of the Gdańsk citizens, which describe the inheritance rather laconically, demonstrate the owners’ unwillingness to manifest their wealth, or the specific hierarchy of eval-uating objects by heirs, but also the casualness, ignorance and also a purely accounting passion for material wealth of the record-keepers, in which regard the Gdańsk reality did not actually differ much from that of the rest of the country.
Analysis of Selected Mythological Motifs in Gdańsk Paint-ing. Metamorphoses of the Gdańsk Venus
The official introduction of the Reformation in Gdańsk in 1557 does not constitute a turning point in the history of the city’s art; the majority of secular works of art, declar-ing Protestant morality, were created ca. 1590–1625.
The Gdańsk artists spoke of sensual love allegorically at the time, using genre scenes for greater power of per-suasion. Their flair for moralising generally uses satire as a form of critical approach to bodily temptations. In Anton Möller the Elder’s miniature drawing, the erotic feminine charm is immediately extinguished by the Grim Reaper and by Horatio’s apt maxim: MORS ULTIMA LINEA RERUM. Its German prototype, Hans Sebald Beham’s copperplate Death and the Standing Nude (1547), depicts a naked woman with classical curves, embraced by the winged genius of death. The stone block standing to the side has a Roman engraving with the phrase: OMNEM IN HOMINE VENUSTATEM MORS ABOLET. Although the general, van-itas-related meaning of both depictions remains identical, there are notable subtle differences – whereas Beham’s allegory is more universal and humane in its nature, takes place in an Italian scenery and has the all’antica approach to forms, the Gdańsk one is, in a Mannerist way, expressive, overly stylised in the nude part, blunt, with an explicitly relevant message addressed to the citizens of Gdańsk,
which is depicted in the background. This evolution of the theme, observed on a microscale, will symptomatically be closed with a woodcut by Master F.L.M. based upon Anton Möller’s Young Woman and Death (1590), in which Death with an hourglass, crowned with withered leaves, asks a young, fashionably dressed Gdańsk woman to dance macabre. The drawing of the Sixth Commandment, created ca. 1600, by the hand of the aforesaid artist from Königsberg is in contradiction with the courtly elegance of debauchees romping in the Garden of Love, known from the Tablets of the Covenant in St. Mary’s Church – savour-ing of beverages turns into a drunken party, tender touches transformed into obscene gestures, young lovers were replaced with an ill-matched couple. Similarly allegorical erotic depictions from Michael Heidereich’s album excel at coarse erotic associations of a hunting and agricultural variety, with leading motifs of ducklings, foxes, ploughs and fields.
The artistic depictions of the ‘Gdańsk Venus’ in the period of Calvinist dominance in the City Council get negative connotations. In the painting titled by us “Gdańsk Turn of Earthly Events”, we find Venus Voluptas, fatalistic to the city, favouring lasciviousness and debauchery, depicted in the nude, with a burning, arrow-pierced heart in her hand, assisting Superbia. This duo were replicated in a work that elaborates on the aforesaid topic – the companion of Vanity, who sits enthroned in an allegorical painting of it (National Museum in Poznań), is Venus Carnalis, half-na-ked, adorned with jewels and with the familiar attribute of a heart, crowned by Satan with a flaming crown. The god-dess of love serves a similar role in Anton Möller’s Last Judgement, with the inscription CONCUPISCENTIA CARNIS. Venus became a fatalistic figure who led Gdańsk citizens to debauchery; it was her destructive influence that the local
Protestant preachers were tracking down, fighting a hope-less battle against human nature. ‘Children of Venus’ are stigmatised: a patrician woman looking at herself in a mirror held by a devil, a man handing an apple – the attribute of Venus – to his lover (Allegory of Vanity, Herman Hahn’s workshop, Gdańsk, National Museum).
The most interesting iconography among Gdańsk epithala-mia can be found in the one published for the wedding of Mayor Fryderyk Ekler and Anna Flinth. The scene taking place in the interior of a wealthy patrician house is sus-pended between the Gdańsk reality and the world of myth, viewed as a metaphor. Chronos, leaving the house with an hourglass, accompanied by a pair of deadly apparitions, clearly indicates that the newly-weds lived in widowhood before. The elderly Anna Flinth, in her fur hat and black wedding dress is recommended by Juno and Venus with her somewhat grotesquely depicted son, Amor, clad in armour; and Minerva. In this configuration, we would readily attribute the role of Paris to Fryderyk Ekler, if it was not for the fact that instead of the personification of Beauty, Wisdom and Wealth, he chose the elderly Anna Flinth with her gloomy countenance.
The most artistically refined among the illustrations of wedding panegyrics remains the one dedicated to Ehlhard Friedrichsen and Florentyna Linde (1659, design: N.S., engraved by Johann Bensheimer), which is not surpris-ing, given who the bride is – a representative of one of the most eminent patrician families of the city. The cop-perplate, which does not correspond to the contents of the enclosed poem, depicts, against the background of a panorama of Gdańsk, the goddesses providing their patronage to the newly-weds: Venus, holding a pair of tur-tle doves on an arch made of olive branches; and Fortune,
in the version known from ancient Roman reliefs and coins – with the cornucopia with a caduceus shoved into it. Both of them have picked up the symbol of marital love with their right hands – a heart; above them, the Hebrew inscription “Yahweh” radiates light from the heavens. This drawing, noble in its selection of figural motifs, appears to express a wish for the newly-weds to never be abandoned by love and by fortune’s favour, which guarantees affluence.
Ancient Motifs in the Gdańsk Portrait Art
In the modern age, all’antica portraits became a manifes-tation of erudition and intellectual aspirations of the com-missioner; the heroisation formula used in them made the model resemble the valiant and sagacious Roman emperors and heroes. The examples of portraits created for or by Gdańsk citizens, indicated in the text, constitute an interesting illustration of the formulas and trends with regard to the portraits that imitated – in a broad sense – ancient art, or to the presence of ancient motifs in portraits.
Hans Schenck (ca. 1500 – between 1566 and 1572) was the foremost sculptor active in northern Germany, commis-sioned by people such as Albrecht van Brandenburg-Ans-bach in Königsberg, Sigismund I the Old and Krzysztof Szydłowiecki in Kraków, and most importantly Joachim II Hector, Elector of Brandenburg in Berlin, where he settled permanently. Contemporary sources refer to him as ‘Kun-terfetter’. He created many medals and portrait reliefs.
Two works commonly attributed to Schenck are con-nected with Gdańsk commissioners. Portrait of Tiede-mann Giese (ca. 1525–1530, Berlin Jagdschloss Grun-wald), polychrome low relief in limewood (97 x 61cm [3.18 x 2.00ft]). Tiedemann, unlike his brother, Georg, a Gdańsk merchant settled in London, chose the clergy and in 1532 became a priest, and in 1538 the Bishop
of Chełm. Early 17th century sources mention the relief as hanging over the door to one of the chambers of the Lubawa castle in East Prussia.
Tiedemann Giese was depicted in the bust as a burgess of Germanic looks – smooth face, firmly set jaw, sharp and long nose, straight hair. In his left hand, he is holding a skull, his eyes gazing vaguely into distance; in a word, we view the model as a burgess at the peak of his life’s success, who has decided to devote himself to medita-tion upon the ephemeral nature of the world. The image is completed with the building ruins in the background, which take the shape of a Renaissance temple – those pillars and arcades covered with moss (symbol of vanitas) and blossoms signify the ancient heritage reduced to ashes.
The sculptor was inspired by Wolf Huber’s woodcut Ado-ration of the Magi (1520–1525). In Renaissance painting, architecture in the background of that theophany scene was often a pretext for the artists to demonstrate their
‘ancient erudition’, hence the picturesque ruins stylised as ancient triumphal arches or porticoes, enhanced with alle-gorical statues. Seeking deeper religious meanings, those motifs may be interpreted in the categories of the past, in the typological juxtapositions of the Old and New Testa-ments, the Side of Law, and the Side of Grace. Seeing how the ancient-looking ruins were decorated with statues of Greek and Roman deities, the parallel to the triumph of Christianity over pagan religions became obvious.
Another of Schenck’s Gdańsk works is an allegorical por-trait of Hans Klur (Berlin, Staatliche Museum Preussicher Kulturbesitz), a Gdańsk patrician, cartographer, Lutheran.
It is a double-sided relief, likely a medallic model (9.8cm [3.86in] in diameter), engraved in stone from Solnhofen near Eichstaat – a type of soft, sculpturally malleable
limestone. It depicts the councillor and mayor of Gdańsk, shown in half-length, in a pose full of grace and self-con-fidence, undisturbed by the coquettish skeletal Death emerging from behind his back, waving a sickle around and placing an hourglass into the patrician’s hand. Klur disregards that courtship of Death, finding confidence in Divine protection, which is evidenced by the Latin inscrip-tion enclosing his image: AUXILIUM MEUM AD DOMINO, QUI FUNDAVIT CAELUM ET TERRAM. HANS KLUR AETATIS SUE XXXXVII ANNO SALUTIS HUMANAE MCCCCCXXXXVI.
Its meaning is complemented by the depiction of a pelican feeding its nestlings its own blood from its self-inflicted wounds – a well-known prefiguration of Christ the Redeem-er of mankind.
On the reverse, elegance gives way to harsh religious satire – the naked pope, shown in the centre, is writh-ing in pain, coiled around in quite an obscene manner by a snake. The old man has lost his tiara, been left with one shoe and glove on his right hand, with which he is hiding his face from the flames of the baby Jesus’s wrath in His radiant glory. That is not the end to the humiliation of the Antichrist pope (Paul III?) – the Moor to his left is defecating into the tiara; the Turk has lifted his gown to urinate for a similar purpose; to the right, another ‘savage man’ is sticking his naked backside in the air in order to stain the pope’s thigh.
However, in the general context of our discussion, it is the sculptor’s reference to the Hellenist sculpture Laoc-oön and His Sons, creatively transposed on the reverse of the medal, that appears the most interesting. Around the mid-16th century, this sculpture, discovered in 1506, was already well-known, also through drawings (such as Marco Dente’s copperplate). Schenk does not copy it;
he adapts the composition of the sculpture, referencing the figure of a convulsively bent mature man with a muscu-lar body, coiled around by a snake and situated in the cen-tre. Instead of Laocoön’s two young sons, the sculptor arranged two figures each on the sides. Although Laocoön is nominally a positive figure, it was devalued by the Prot-estant art; unlike the Antichrist pope, both characters share the solemn reaction to Divine wrath.
The drawn portrait of mayor Bartholomäus Schachmann against the background of a hung over cloth, the symbol-ism of which has already been discussed, with the hilt of a rapier in his left hand, signifying his military rank and membership in the gentry, with a scarf (mappa) in his right hand – the Roman, and then Eastern attribute of authority – is extraordinary evidence of the aristocratic aspirations of the Gdańsk patriciate. In the portrait of the Gdańsk proconsul, mappa was referenced chiefly as an attribute of ancient consuls.
It is also worth addressing the ancient stylisation of the depictions of Polish rulers by the artists active in Gdańsk. In this case, we are largely dealing with a main-stream formula of the official court art, which was gradually drifting apart from the ancient humane set of ideas until it finally became merely a decorative trendy convention at the close of the baroque.
Willem Hondius, in his Apotheosis of John Casimir – a cop-perplate created on the basis of Adolf Boy’s drawing – depicts an allegorical image of the monarch, sitting enthroned in the company of the personifications of Pru-dence and Magnanimitas, as well as Hercules and Bellona, standing against the background of the niches. The mili-tary glory of the king is expressed by Pheme shown above his head and by numerous panoplies and prisoners of
war, which, together with the trophies and the Common-wealth’s coat of arms, make up the repoussoir of the com-position. An element of heroisation in the ancient style can be found in the Gdańsk medals with the images of Michał Korybut Wiśniowiecki and John III Sobieski. The former, depicted in a coronation medal by Johann Hohn the Young-er, is crowned with a laurel wreath. The reverse shows an eagle on a globe – a motif originating from the imperial tradition (Augustus’s and Marcus Aurelius’s coins). John III Sobieski’s numerous portraits that were created by Gdańsk painters, engravers and medallists popularised the con-vention of depicting “the king emperor in his kingdom” in an ancient-looking karacena (Polish scale armour) with a brassard fashioned into a lion’s head (Hercules’s attrib-ute), with leather straps (pteruges) with the heraldic Pol-ish eagles hanging from beneath it (Izaak Saal’s drawing, 1669). Following the victory in Chocim, and especially
the Battle of Vienna, depictions of the king triumphant in a laurel wreath, karacena armour and draped paludamen-tum became predominant (medals by J. Hohn the Younger, for occasions such as the trip of John III to Gdańsk in 1677, and the same ruler’s victory in Vienna in 1683).
Of particular significance in the Gdańsk context is the fron-tispiece of Reinhold Curicke’s work Der Stadt Dantzig historische Beschreibung (Amsterdam–Gdańsk 1687), with an allegoric drawing attributed to the invention of A. Stech or P. Willert. In it, John III Sobieski was depicted as a Roman emperor, in a laurel wreath, toga and sandals, carried by eagle wings. From the clouds, hands emerge, anointing him with sceptre and crown. Depicted below, on a pedestal with the title inscription, is the enthroned personification of Gdańsk, with a mural crown, the cornu-copia, city coat of arms on its chest and graphic panorama
of the city on the Motława in its hands. It is accompanied below by the allegory of Veritas, conforming to Cesare Ripa’s codification, and a male personification of the ele-ment of water in the distance.
Between Art and Diplomacy. Remarks on the Meaning of Ancient Themes in Gdańsk Goldsmithery, Amber Art and Medallic Art
Objects of art, when used as means of political persuasion aimed at gaining or maintaining privileges, establishing peace, causing renouncement of demands, establishing a beneficial alliance or marriage, obtained a secondary function. To this day, there are several valuable products of Gdańsk goldsmiths in the collection of the Kremlin Armoury, including a giant bowl adorned with decorative metal plates, with a repoussé medallion in the centre, with Hendrick Goltzius’s Perseus and Andromeda. Together with a big bottle, they constituted a gift from the king of
Objects of art, when used as means of political persuasion aimed at gaining or maintaining privileges, establishing peace, causing renouncement of demands, establishing a beneficial alliance or marriage, obtained a secondary function. To this day, there are several valuable products of Gdańsk goldsmiths in the collection of the Kremlin Armoury, including a giant bowl adorned with decorative metal plates, with a repoussé medallion in the centre, with Hendrick Goltzius’s Perseus and Andromeda. Together with a big bottle, they constituted a gift from the king of