to it – inaccurately, of course – is ‘Gothic’. This constant effort of transcendence results in a mannered, overwrought style; what Gombrich summarises as critical attitudes to Guido Reni might also be applied to Reni’s pupil, that his work is ‘too self-conscious, too deliberate in its striving for pure beauty’. In the
Pygmalion
this self-consciousness and desire for purity, both of form and expression, are the most obvious characteristics. We are struck at once by the remarkable daring of the angle at which the couch is placed upon which Pygmalion and his awaking statue-bride recline. This great crimson parallelogram lying diagonally across the painting from the lower right to upper left corners gives a sense of skewed massiveness that is almost alarming to the viewer, who on a first encounter may feel as if the room in which he is viewing the picture has tilted suddenly. Against the blood-hued brocade of the couch the ivory pallor of the awaking statue seems a token of submissiveness: here ‘Galatea’ (the name does not occur in any version of the myth in classical literature and in this context is probably an invention of Renaissance mythographers) is more victim than love-object. How strikingly this figure displays itself, at once demure and abandoned, sprawled on its back with left knee flexed to reveal where the smooth ivory of the lap has dimpled into a groove, and the right arm with its still bloodless, slender hand flung out; is it the goddess’s inspiration of life that is convulsing these limbs, or are these the paroxysms of fleshly pleasure that the half-incarnate girl is experiencing already and for the first time? And is Pygmalion leaning over her the better to savour her sighs, or is he drawingback in consternation, appalled at the violence of this sudden passion he has kindled? The shocking gesture of his hand seizing upon the girl’s right breast may as easily be a token of his fear as of his desire. Likewise, the gifts of shells and pebbles, dead songbirds, painted baubles and tear-shaped drops of ambergris that lie strewn in a jumble before the couch seem less ‘the kind of presents,’ as Ovid says, ‘that girls enjoy’ than votive offerings laid at the altar of an implacable deity. With what obsessive exactitude has the artist rendered these trifles, as if they are indeed a sacrifice that he himself is making to Venus, whose great, smooth, naked form hovers above the two figures on the couch, dwarfing them. In this portrayal of the goddess – impassive, marmoreal, lubriciously maternal – can clearly be seen the influence of the mannerists, in particular the Bronzino of such works as
Venus, Cupid, Folly and Time
. The overall tone of ambiguous sexuality is slyly pointed up by the triple dancing tongues of flame rising from the sacrificial pyre that burns on the little moss-grown mound visible in the middle distance in the upper right-hand corner of the scene. However questionable they may be in terms of taste, it is in such subtle touches rather than in the larger gestures of this phantasmal and death-drunk work that, to quote Gombrich again, Belli’s ‘quest for forms more perfect and more ideal than reality [is] rewarded with success.’
What affects me most strongly and most immediately in a work of art is the quality of its silence. This silence is more than an absence of sound, it is an active force, expressive and coercive. The silence that a painting radiates becomes a kind of aura enfolding both the work itself and the viewer as in a colour-field. So in the white room when I took up Morden’s pictures and began to examine them one by one what struck me first of all was not colour or form or the sense of movement they suggested but the way each one suddenly amplified the quiet. Soon the room was athrob with their mute eloquence. Athrob, yes, for this voluminous, inaudible din with which they filled the place, as a balloon is filled with densened air, did not bring calm but
Pygmalion
this self-consciousness and desire for purity, both of form and expression, are the most obvious characteristics. We are struck at once by the remarkable daring of the angle at which the couch is placed upon which Pygmalion and his awaking statue-bride recline. This great crimson parallelogram lying diagonally across the painting from the lower right to upper left corners gives a sense of skewed massiveness that is almost alarming to the viewer, who on a first encounter may feel as if the room in which he is viewing the picture has tilted suddenly. Against the blood-hued brocade of the couch the ivory pallor of the awaking statue seems a token of submissiveness: here ‘Galatea’ (the name does not occur in any version of the myth in classical literature and in this context is probably an invention of Renaissance mythographers) is more victim than love-object. How strikingly this figure displays itself, at once demure and abandoned, sprawled on its back with left knee flexed to reveal where the smooth ivory of the lap has dimpled into a groove, and the right arm with its still bloodless, slender hand flung out; is it the goddess’s inspiration of life that is convulsing these limbs, or are these the paroxysms of fleshly pleasure that the half-incarnate girl is experiencing already and for the first time? And is Pygmalion leaning over her the better to savour her sighs, or is he drawingback in consternation, appalled at the violence of this sudden passion he has kindled? The shocking gesture of his hand seizing upon the girl’s right breast may as easily be a token of his fear as of his desire. Likewise, the gifts of shells and pebbles, dead songbirds, painted baubles and tear-shaped drops of ambergris that lie strewn in a jumble before the couch seem less ‘the kind of presents,’ as Ovid says, ‘that girls enjoy’ than votive offerings laid at the altar of an implacable deity. With what obsessive exactitude has the artist rendered these trifles, as if they are indeed a sacrifice that he himself is making to Venus, whose great, smooth, naked form hovers above the two figures on the couch, dwarfing them. In this portrayal of the goddess – impassive, marmoreal, lubriciously maternal – can clearly be seen the influence of the mannerists, in particular the Bronzino of such works as
Venus, Cupid, Folly and Time
. The overall tone of ambiguous sexuality is slyly pointed up by the triple dancing tongues of flame rising from the sacrificial pyre that burns on the little moss-grown mound visible in the middle distance in the upper right-hand corner of the scene. However questionable they may be in terms of taste, it is in such subtle touches rather than in the larger gestures of this phantasmal and death-drunk work that, to quote Gombrich again, Belli’s ‘quest for forms more perfect and more ideal than reality [is] rewarded with success.’
What affects me most strongly and most immediately in a work of art is the quality of its silence. This silence is more than an absence of sound, it is an active force, expressive and coercive. The silence that a painting radiates becomes a kind of aura enfolding both the work itself and the viewer as in a colour-field. So in the white room when I took up Morden’s pictures and began to examine them one by one what struck me first of all was not colour or form or the sense of movement they suggested but the way each one suddenly amplified the quiet. Soon the room was athrob with their mute eloquence. Athrob, yes, for this voluminous, inaudible din with which they filled the place, as a balloon is filled with densened air, did not bring calm but
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