From anonymity to eternity
Where we wonder how posing for an artist may grant eternal life.
Dear reader, with eight billion of us living today and billions more who lived in this world before us, how many of us can hope to reach eternal life? By that, I mean having, centuries into the future, those alive utter our names, look at our faces, peer into our eyes, and try to sense who we used to be long after we have left this world.
Kings, Emperors, and Popes understood that the best ticket to eternal life was to commission their portraits to great artists. Let's first discuss such an example.
If you put art historians' feet to the fire—please don't—forcing them to reveal the most remarkable portrait ever painted, you may be surprised by the result.
It would not be Leonardo da Vinci or Rembrandt—an excellent choice anyway—Vermeer or any other famous name you may think of. The answer would likely be:
Innocent X, by Diego Velázquez
Imagine how lonely life would be, even when being a Pope, when the words your cardinals use to describe you are hideous, ugly, deformed, choleric, repugnant, as well as vulgar. That your expression is that of a cunning lawyer...
Pope Innocent X eventually agreed to pose for Velázquez. He reportedly said the result was "too true." When you see the painting in real life, he's got an air of Hannibal Lecter thinking of Chianti and roasted liver.
Yet, dear reader, I hope you will trust me as I try to convince you it is one of the most extraordinary portraits ever created.
But should only Popes, Kings, and Emperors be granted eternal life? As discussed in The Little Dancer by Degas, sometimes a person destined for anonymity can become immortal. Let us meet some of these lucky individuals.
Juan de Pareja, a slave who became a painter
To convince the Pope that he could paint great portraits, Velázquez painted Juan de Pareja, his slave and assistant.
Here is what was said:
He made the portrait of Juan de Pareja, his slave and fine painter, which was so like him and so lively that, when he sent it by means of Pareja himself to some friends for their criticism, they just stood looking at the painted portrait and at the original in awe and wonder, not knowing to whom they should speak or who would answer them.
That persuaded the Pope to accept posing for the artist.
Then Velázquez signed Juan de Pareja's freedom, who became a noted artist in his own right. It is no exaggeration to say that this portrait changed the sitter's life and made him eternal.
Consider the odds of an anonymous slave having a portrait comparable to a Pope's. Now, let's wonder at other anonymous persons destined for oblivion who crossed paths with a great artist and sat for a portrait.
National Gallery Security Guards
The National Gallery in London invited twenty-four artists to draw inspiration from the masterpieces in its collection. Some chose paintings by Monet, van Gogh, or Vermeer. But David Hockney, drawing inspiration from Ingres, did not just reinvent a famous painting.
He turned his eye to the people around him, the security guards.
Depending on your viewpoint, being paid to sit surrounded by masterpieces all day can be a privilege or torture. In any case, museums and security guards are also looked at by the people on the walls.
This time, twelve of them were asked to pose for David Hockney. Today, aged 87, Hockney is still in awe at the world around him.
He made these men and women eternal by paying attention to those usually overlooked.
A handyman named Bibi
We are in Paris in 1863, and a poor man takes a coin or two from penniless artists to mop the floor of their studios.
One of them is not even a studio but a horse stable. It leaks, and obviously, there is no heating. The young man who works there with clay is named Auguste Rodin. The old man is known by his nickname, Monsieur Bibi.
The artist notices the face of the handyman and asks him to pose for him. Here are Rodin's words about what he saw in Bibi:
He had a fine head and belonged to a fine race—in form—no matter if he was brutalized. It was made as a piece of sculpture, solely and without reference to the model's character.
I called it 'the Broken Nose,' because the nose of the model was broken.
Rodin later said I have never succeeded in making a figure as good as 'The Broken Nose.'
Bibi was then carved into marble and cast in bronze. He was one of the figures of the Gates of Hell and, according to Rodin, his greatest portrait.
While we do not know his real name, whenever you look at a version of The Broken Nose, you see a man named Bibi who got his ticket to eternity for having posed for Rodin.
A postman named Joseph Roulin
At a time when most people saw the weird, red-haired Dutchman as somewhere between crazy and dangerous, a postman opened his heart and home to Vincent van Gogh.
Vincent doubted, and his new friend encouraged him. Like Rodin with Bibi, Vincent saw a Socratic, philosopher-like face as well as a kind man. Vincent painted his friend's wife, two sons, and baby, granting eternity to his friend and his family.
A Florentine housewife named Lisa del Giocondo
What are the chances that a Florentine housewife would end up eternal? In Renaissance Italy, unless a woman was of high noble rank or the mistress of a ruler, there were no chances whatsoever that they would be talked about and looked at centuries later.
Five hundred years ago, two people destined for anonymity married. The man was a silk merchant, and the woman came from a noble family. She outlived her husband and spent the last years of her life as a nun.
There was nothing particularly noteworthy in their lives except for the fact that they lived a few doors away from a genius named Michelangelo. But this artist did not change their lives; another neighbor, a notary, did.
That lawyer's name was Ser Piero da Vinci. He had an illegitimate son named Leonardo, and you probably heard of him.
The merchant's family asked if anyone could paint his wife's portrait, and Leonardo agreed, possibly as a neighborly favor. As you can easily guess, her name is Madonna Lisa del Giocondo.
She sat for the artist, who never delivered the painting to her husband but kept it, allowing him to keep improving it. In her lifetime, the portrait acquired legendary status.
We do not know if Mona Lisa knew how the picture would affect her posterity.
Yet, long before its accidental fame, the portrait granted Lisa del Giocondo eternal life for a simple reason: it is a Leonardo da Vinci masterpiece. Being portrayed by a great artist guarantees immortality.
To conclude this story, we travel back two thousand years in time.
A young boy named Eutyches
During the Florentine Renaissance, a brilliant man explained, better than I can, the power of a painted face:
Painting contains a divine force which not only makes absent men present, but moreover makes the dead seem almost alive.
Even after many centuries they are recognized with great pleasure and with great admiration for the painter.
The face of a man who is already dead certainly lives a long life through painting.
The portrait above was painted around 1,900 years ago in Egypt. While this type of painting was done in the Greek fashion, it was purely Egyptian.
Look into the eyes of this boy. His name, written on his shirt, is Eutyches. The inscription does not state his age, but he likely was a teenager. While our smart friend said earlier that the dead seem almost alive through painting, this time, it is not poetic license but the reason this portrait exists.
Eutyches' mummified body was right behind the plank of wood. That is because, to ancient Egyptians, the image of a face was magically alive. It meant that mummies, statues, and paintings did breathe, see, and hear.
Tutankhamun's gold mask was not meant to look pretty but to allow him to see outside, breathe, and eat. Like King Tut's mask, this masterpiece is intended as an opening from the afterlife to the world of the living.
Yet, look deeply into his eyes while contemplating what a priest likely said when putting his body into a catacomb:
You live again, you revive always,
You have become young again,
You are young again, and forever.
The same logic applies to Marie van Goethem—Degas's Little Dancer—to Bibi, Postman Roulin, and the lucky ones who posed for great artists. Rodin, Degas, and Velázquez did the hard part, creating masterpieces displayed in museums.
We, museumgoers, can do the easy part of granting anonymous persons eternal life. All we need to do is look into their eyes, read the label, and pronounce the person's name out loud.
That grants them eternal life, which, I trust, would be a Moment of Wonder.
Sources
Leon Battista Alberti, On Painting.
Auguste Rodin, pris sur la vie, Judith Cladel.
Auguste Rodin, l’homme et l’oeuvre, Judith Cladel.
Fayum Mummy Portraits: Striking Ancient Egyptian Paintings.
