Armada Portrait (1588)
- Woburn Abbey, George Gower (?)
- Conveys Elizabeth as triumphant against the Spanish Armada fleet as she intercesses,
confronting the viewer with her victory
- Femininity
o Bows, the biggest of which is on her crotch
‘a blatant display of elizabeth’s virginity’ (Shira West)
o Pearls (Cynthia – the moon)
Also alleged gift of her court lover, Leicester
o ‘I know I have the body of a weak and feeble woman but I have the heart of a
king’
- ‘the regal source of light’ (Schama)
- She holds a globe, and seems to point at Virginia (of which she is namesake),
conveying her global reach all the way to the New World
o The chair to her left (pictorial right) is richly engraved and is typically Dutch
for the time, and it contains a siren (feminine wiles?)
- Crown is in her possession and the entire canvas is richly ostentatious
- She seems to transcend time as the entire Armada narrative unfolds behind her
o A storm hit the Spanish fleet (which was much more powerful and well
prepared than the English), signifying divine will in England’s favour
- Sun motif embellished on her gown suggests she controls the weather
- Her portrait is highly idealised, with her skin appearing unembellished (even though
she is known to have suffered smallpox and had blemishes across her face)
o Lead makeup – beauty standards
o Also the idea that virgin skin does not age
Post – tridentine, and even though England was Protestant, the
artistic influence of the council is undeniable
Benin Bronzes (16-17th centuries)
- Plaque showing the façade of the royal palace – British Museum
- Created during a bout of creativity spurred under the Edo Golden Age as the Oba
had revised Benin’s traditional isolationist policy in favour of opening fruitful trade
links to Europe
o Edo Golden Age favoured craftsmen and the Oba announced that ‘smiths and
woodworkers will never go hungry’, but they were also not allowed to leave
o Came to be known as the ‘slave coast’
o Portugal, Holland, England
Documented by other plaques which show caricatured and
exaggerated features of Europeans
Brass manillas from Portugal
- Benin identity
o Exaggerated African features: lips, wider nose
o Black patina with which the brass is polished exemplifies radiant black skin
o Implicit divine energy of the Oba seen in features such as the king Cobra and
the leopard (every year there was a parade in the city with a leopard)
o Hierarchical scale suggests there to be a stringent social hierarchy
, Four larger soldiers – there wear coral necklaces (a symbol of higher
status as the Oba would gift coral)
Smaller soldiers line up the doorway
o Benin is fertile due to coastal landscape, which is seen in the engraved flora
that is present across the plaque
- 1897 – Oba announced that Benin would cease exporting slaves
o 7 British soldiers soon after were killed in Benin
o Sir Henry Rawson led the punitive expedition which was self-funded by loot
of Benin
o ‘such an astonishing find and among a race so entirely barbarous’ (Hercules
Reed)
o British spectators viewed the pieces with much curiosity, and many failed to
see how such great art could be created by Black people, so much so that
some speculated Benin to be a lost Tribe of Israel
- ‘I first think of the mastery of technology’ but the pieces become ‘politically loaded’
in their context (Wale Soyinka)
- Key example of how identity is fluid and differently understood by different viewers
Susanna and the Elders (1610)
- The most reproduced image from the Hebrew Bible in the Western canon, depicting
a violating scene from the Book of Daniel
- Claustrophobic composition creates pathos
o Pyramidal mass of men at the top heavily draped (chiaroscuro – Mannerist) in
deeply saturated reds and browns
o Repoussoir of red cloak against blue sky ensures they invade the viewers
personal space, so we begin to sympathise with her plight
o She is stuck within the canvas and barred from escape by the stone
balustrade
- There is no flora as other Susanna depictions have – she is not treated as a sexual
object, but as a true victim
- Sensitive treatment of psychology as her face is flushed and stressed, and she does
not intercess the picture plane
o No mirror, as other depictions include – ‘picturing herself how men may view
her’ (Berger)
- Contorted body frame conveys her struggle to get away
o Their heavy drapery directly contrasts her exposure
- Anatomy is renders with a high degree of verisimilitude, perhaps echoing the fact
that could study from her own body, and her male counterparts were to rely on
scholarly studies as they could not directly see the female form (unless they were
married)
- Naked or nude?
o Berger would say she is nude as she is in an unnatural position and ‘to be
naked is to be oneself’
o Clarke would say she is vulnerable and thus naked
o In ‘Ways of Seeing’, Berger directly counteracts Clarke’s viewpoint
- Dated to 1610 but some have argued it has been backdated by one year
- Woburn Abbey, George Gower (?)
- Conveys Elizabeth as triumphant against the Spanish Armada fleet as she intercesses,
confronting the viewer with her victory
- Femininity
o Bows, the biggest of which is on her crotch
‘a blatant display of elizabeth’s virginity’ (Shira West)
o Pearls (Cynthia – the moon)
Also alleged gift of her court lover, Leicester
o ‘I know I have the body of a weak and feeble woman but I have the heart of a
king’
- ‘the regal source of light’ (Schama)
- She holds a globe, and seems to point at Virginia (of which she is namesake),
conveying her global reach all the way to the New World
o The chair to her left (pictorial right) is richly engraved and is typically Dutch
for the time, and it contains a siren (feminine wiles?)
- Crown is in her possession and the entire canvas is richly ostentatious
- She seems to transcend time as the entire Armada narrative unfolds behind her
o A storm hit the Spanish fleet (which was much more powerful and well
prepared than the English), signifying divine will in England’s favour
- Sun motif embellished on her gown suggests she controls the weather
- Her portrait is highly idealised, with her skin appearing unembellished (even though
she is known to have suffered smallpox and had blemishes across her face)
o Lead makeup – beauty standards
o Also the idea that virgin skin does not age
Post – tridentine, and even though England was Protestant, the
artistic influence of the council is undeniable
Benin Bronzes (16-17th centuries)
- Plaque showing the façade of the royal palace – British Museum
- Created during a bout of creativity spurred under the Edo Golden Age as the Oba
had revised Benin’s traditional isolationist policy in favour of opening fruitful trade
links to Europe
o Edo Golden Age favoured craftsmen and the Oba announced that ‘smiths and
woodworkers will never go hungry’, but they were also not allowed to leave
o Came to be known as the ‘slave coast’
o Portugal, Holland, England
Documented by other plaques which show caricatured and
exaggerated features of Europeans
Brass manillas from Portugal
- Benin identity
o Exaggerated African features: lips, wider nose
o Black patina with which the brass is polished exemplifies radiant black skin
o Implicit divine energy of the Oba seen in features such as the king Cobra and
the leopard (every year there was a parade in the city with a leopard)
o Hierarchical scale suggests there to be a stringent social hierarchy
, Four larger soldiers – there wear coral necklaces (a symbol of higher
status as the Oba would gift coral)
Smaller soldiers line up the doorway
o Benin is fertile due to coastal landscape, which is seen in the engraved flora
that is present across the plaque
- 1897 – Oba announced that Benin would cease exporting slaves
o 7 British soldiers soon after were killed in Benin
o Sir Henry Rawson led the punitive expedition which was self-funded by loot
of Benin
o ‘such an astonishing find and among a race so entirely barbarous’ (Hercules
Reed)
o British spectators viewed the pieces with much curiosity, and many failed to
see how such great art could be created by Black people, so much so that
some speculated Benin to be a lost Tribe of Israel
- ‘I first think of the mastery of technology’ but the pieces become ‘politically loaded’
in their context (Wale Soyinka)
- Key example of how identity is fluid and differently understood by different viewers
Susanna and the Elders (1610)
- The most reproduced image from the Hebrew Bible in the Western canon, depicting
a violating scene from the Book of Daniel
- Claustrophobic composition creates pathos
o Pyramidal mass of men at the top heavily draped (chiaroscuro – Mannerist) in
deeply saturated reds and browns
o Repoussoir of red cloak against blue sky ensures they invade the viewers
personal space, so we begin to sympathise with her plight
o She is stuck within the canvas and barred from escape by the stone
balustrade
- There is no flora as other Susanna depictions have – she is not treated as a sexual
object, but as a true victim
- Sensitive treatment of psychology as her face is flushed and stressed, and she does
not intercess the picture plane
o No mirror, as other depictions include – ‘picturing herself how men may view
her’ (Berger)
- Contorted body frame conveys her struggle to get away
o Their heavy drapery directly contrasts her exposure
- Anatomy is renders with a high degree of verisimilitude, perhaps echoing the fact
that could study from her own body, and her male counterparts were to rely on
scholarly studies as they could not directly see the female form (unless they were
married)
- Naked or nude?
o Berger would say she is nude as she is in an unnatural position and ‘to be
naked is to be oneself’
o Clarke would say she is vulnerable and thus naked
o In ‘Ways of Seeing’, Berger directly counteracts Clarke’s viewpoint
- Dated to 1610 but some have argued it has been backdated by one year
