Ash Wednesday

An old favourite of this blog (search ‘Ash Wednesday’), this little masterpiece by the unexpectedly numinous – considering how whimsical he often was – Spitzweg, was painted in several versions.

One came up for sale at a relatively bargain price in 2018, though it’s a bit too dark, I’d suggest.

Here it is afresh, in all its glory, the shaft of sunlight adds to the sense of sensual deprivation, and the long haul, now begun.

Carl Spitzweg, Ash Wednesday, 1860. Staatsgalerie Stuttgart

Unlike the feasts at Easter, as Lent ends, there is no actual biblical subject for Ash Wednesday and Lent. The time Jesus spent in the desert (portrayed astonishingly by Pasolini), is as close as it gets. These days it’s still often very well attended, along with the inevitable #ashtag. It’s real.

Shrove Tuesday

Here we go

A little bit of feasting and celebration before the profound and challenging – at least it should be – season of Lent

Mardi Gras, Shrove Tuesday, Carnival (carne vale, farewell to meat). Today is that day.

Although Russia is suffering understandable reputational damage, Putin is not Russia, and that country is imbued with these ancient traditions. Here is a Shrovetide scene by a modernish artist Boris Kustodiev, who died in 1927 having been rendered paraplegic by TB of the spine. He was from Astrakhan, far from Moscow, and had quite a career in commercial illustration and stage art. It’s set before the Spring thaw, whereas today in the UK it’s (relatively) hot sunshine. He’s good:

Shrovetide, Boris Kustodiev. 1916. Russian Museum, St Petersburg

Perhaps more traditionally, here’s one of the many prints by ‘followers of Hieronymus Bosch’ – Bosch being one of my heroes. The Netherlanders always did gluttony and feasting well. No doubt there’s a lot to unpick here.

A follower of Hieronymus Bosch, 1567. St Louis Art Museum.

And it all kicks off tomorrow – farewell to meat.

#Lent 2021

The Knife usually puts a post out on Ash Wednesday, with an appropriate painting, though not this year. My favourite image has to be this classic from Spitzweg. Apart from anything else it reflects the fact that Lent is often associated with sunny days as we emerge from Winter, but it can lead to a strangely listless and empty feeling, without the levity of a true Spring and Summer.

In any event, Lent is now well underway. The temptation of Christ in the wilderness is the topic. On every level it’s about as far removed from our modern obsessions and interests as you can get. It has an eerie quality to it, with a very blunt confrontation. Pasolini captured it very well, with a charismatic but mysteriously uncredited Satan, whose very feet seem to give off smoke as he approaches. The event is on the face of it entirely unappealing, except for the fact that it chimes with our lived experience, whether or not one is religious: you can’t get true lasting satisfaction with earthly possessions and power. Not so easy to put into practice – a point that Lent recognises.

More uncomfortable truths on this subject from a man who was a witty, educated, popular success as a young man, by all secular and material standards (and a disappointment to his mother, much of the time),the permanently contemporary Augustine of Hippo:

Our pilgrimage on earth cannot be exempt from trial. We progress by means of trial. No one knows himself except through trial, or receives a crown except after victory, or strives except against an enemy or temptations.

Obviously he intends it to fit within a specifically Christian way of life, but who can deny that what he says is true for all of us?

Lent actually reminds me of running a marathon – a cliche, I know – for a specific reason. The marathon would be pretty doable if it was 20 or 21 miles, Lent would be fine if it was 4 or 5 weeks. It’s that extra length that really tests us, and takes us into a different realm of self-sacrifice, discipline and learning to know oneself. Without that pain it would mean so much less.

Ilya Repin: Follow me, Satan, 1903.

Ilya Repin: The Temptation of Christ, c1900

Ilya Repin: The Temptation of Christ, 1896

Ash Wednesday

Finis Gloriae Mundi, Juan Valdes Leal, 1672. Hospital de la Caridad, Seville.

The Knife (me) found himself wandering round Seville 37 years ago, (I’ll drop the third person) on my own, for various reasons. I had no money, very limited tourist information given that the internet hadn’t been invented, and plenty of time. Accordingly I visited a lot of places that I probably wouldn’t have managed had I been with my temporarily absent pals. The Gothic choirstalls and treasury of the mighty cathedral (at one time the biggest building in the world, it was claimed), various back alleys in the old town, the hot exposed walk along the Guadalquivir, and the Hospital de la Caridad, specifically its chapel.

Quite benign from the outside

There are at least two Spains. The coastal tourist one, which is fine, but is a relatively recent invention in its modernity, trashiness and the ubiquity of non-Spaniards, and the slightly out of the way Spain, mostly in the interior. It is steeped in isolation, blazing heat,  dark interiors, Catholicism, silence and emptiness. That’s the one embodied the Chapel of the Hospital de la Caridad, at least it was 37 years ago, when it wasn’t a Top 5 attraction – it is now.

Prominent in its attractions are two large and intentionally disturbing paintings by Juan de Valdés Leal. There is In Ictu Oculi (In the blink of an eye), with Death cockily lording it over his latest prize, and its neighbour, Finis Gloriae Mundi. They are classic memento mori**. Valdés Leal was a real Spanish gothic master of gloom, and his dramatically horrific corpses are on a par with the Italian wax anatomical models of La Specola and Gaetano Zumbo. This eMaze is  a pretty impressive introduction to him.

…above the door

Since standing there in the nearly empty chapel all those years ago, these two paintings have been hanging in a corner of my brain. Finis Gloriae Mundi is basically a take ‘on all flesh is grass’, and of course, sic transit gloria mundi. The two bodies are those of a bishop, and a knight. Then (and still now, perhaps) they embodied the wealthy and the worldly. So why write about it now? Well, Ash Wednesday, as the start of Lent, is a doorway into reflections on life, death, and how we’re often kidding ourselves about what matters, what the future holds, and what it is to truly live rationally.

Ecclesiastes, which apart from the religious element for the Abrahamic faiths, is an astounding work of literature, can usefully be quoted in this sphere, almost at random. It’s notably prominent in the Divine Office at this time of year. Here’s Chapter 2, 11-20:

And when I turned myself to all the works which my hands had wrought, and to the labours wherein I had laboured in vain, I saw in all things vanity, and vexation of mind, and that nothing was lasting under the sun. I passed further to behold wisdom, and errors and folly, (What is man, said I, that he can follow the King his maker?) And I saw that wisdom excelled folly, as much as light differeth from darkness.  The eyes of a wise man are in his head: the fool walketh in darkness: and I learned that they were to die both alike.  And I said in my heart: If the death of the fool and mine shall be one, what doth it avail me, that I have applied myself more to the study of wisdom? And speaking with my own mind, I perceived that this also was vanity.

For there shall be no remembrance of the wise no more than of the fool for ever, and the times to come shall cover all things together with oblivion: the learned dieth in like manner as the unlearned.  And therefore I was weary of my life, when I saw that all things under the sun are evil, and all vanity and vexation of spirit.  Again I hated all my application wherewith I had earnestly laboured under the sun, being like to have an heir after me,  Whom I know not whether he will be a wise man or a fool, and he shall have rule over all my labours with which I have laboured and been solicitous: and is there any thing so vain?  Wherefore I left off and my heart renounced labouring any more under the sun.

As Valdés Leal knew, as we all know, we’re all heading for the same (earthly) fate.

Act wisely, and act now

** the memento mori is still with us. Here’s a beautiful, subtle contemporary example from photographer Erlich Lowi

Ash Wednesday, again

Back to Spitzweg, but see here for other variations…

Carl Spitzweg, Ash Wednesday

…and back to Ecclesiastes (6:12) for a bit of realism: “For who knows what is good for mortals while they live the few days of their vain life, which they pass like a shadow? For who can tell them what will be after them under the sun?”

And right now I’ve got a sore head to ponder, as Lent** stretches out before me

….after Mardi Gras

 

**even The Guardian sees the need