What's the matter with color?

 Carlo Crivelli, Virgin Mary with Child, circa 1480, 

 Pinacoteca Civica Francesco Podesti, Ancona

I am very interested in knowing how the issue about the alleged whitewashed paintings in the Metropolitan Museum of Art will be ending up. I am curious to know how long the trial at the Manhattan Supreme Court will take to get settled. My interest comes from the fact that the four works of art judged as stressful for the American man's sensibility are Italian Renaissance paintings by famous Italian artists. Before any comment could come to my mind, the first thing I did was look for the plaintiff on Facebook and send him a message with a special invitation. A few days later I sent an email to the Met sharing with them the reason why I had gotten in touch with the plaintiff. 

Anyway, this issue brought back to my mind a thought I developed by seeing Italian Renaissance paintings. My thought was reinforced by the Metropolitan Museum spokeswoman Elyse Topalian's statement. She said: “When they were painted, it was typical for artists to depict subjects with the same identity as the local audience. This phenomenon occurs in many other cultures, as well.” 

What I think is that important families in the Renaissance period had their features painted as Jesus Christ, the Virgin Mary, and other saints at least for a couple of reasons: 1. They wanted to be remembered as eternal. It's the game of eternity that keeps all of us out of the picture if we take paintings by the word. Indeed we can refer to Italian Renaissance art with the same terms of communication as most of the time paintings are speaking through rhetorical figures: artists depict a subject expressing something else through metaphors, allegories, and other figures of speech. One of the latest rhetorical figures I have discovered in Italian Renaissance paintings is the so-called 'prolepsis': fruits that tell us about Baby Jesus' destiny as the cucumber represents the resurrection of Jesus. 2. By having themselves painted as religious characters, aristocrats in the Renaissance were keeping them safe from being judged or attacked. They could have these paintings shown in churches and public buildings without arousing jealousy and therefore enemies. The reason for doing this is also that in order not to be attacked we have to go from the general to the individual rather than vice-versa.

I would be interested in finding essays about this subject.  Something scientific about this matter would be highly supportive of this thesis. 

On a more practical level and going back to the American gentleman's legal case against the Metropolitan Museum of Art, I think that one has to take into consideration that the four Italian Renaissance paintings subject to attack belong to our past. They are part of a different period of time than the current one. Therefore the issue is totally anachronistic. Secondly, there is no way we can contrast this attack as there are no works of art belonging to the gentleman's cultural heritage with similar features and about which we could say the same thing. Third but not less important, a work of art's copyright expires if older than 100 years. Therefore the four works of art that the plaintiff wants the Metropolitan Museum of Art to be taken down from their walls have become fully part of our common cultural heritage and deserve to be accepted, if only by way of seniority. 

                                                                    

(to be continued)

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