The Infant Christ with the "Arma" Christi: François Duquesnoy and the Typology of the Putto

The Infant Christ with the "Arma" Christi: François Duquesnoy and the Typology of thePuttoAuthor(s): Morten Steen HansenSource: Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte, 71. Bd., H. 1 (2008), pp. 121-133Published by: Deutscher Kunstverlag GmbH Munchen BerlinStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40379327 .

Accessed: 06/10/2014 22:02

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

.

Deutscher Kunstverlag GmbH Munchen Berlin is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extendaccess to Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 198.105.45.121 on Mon, 6 Oct 2014 22:02:09 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=dkgmb

http://www.jstor.org/stable/40379327?origin=JSTOR-pdf

http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp


Miszii 1.1;

MORTI \ SllIN II WSI N

The Infant Christ with the arma Christi: Francois Duqucsnoy and the Typology of the Putto

1. Cornelis van Mildert, Christ Child with the Crown of Thorns, ca. 1645-55, terracotta. Baltimore, Walters Art Museum

A terracotta of the infant Christ in the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore portrays the child seated on a drapery spread out on a base resem- bling flat, stony ground (fig. i). His right hand is stretched forward to touch the crown of thorns that lies entwined in the drapery in front of him.

Next to it are placed other instruments of Christ's passion: a hammer, nails that are bent as if they had been pulled from the cross, and a whip. The provenance of this unpublished piece is unknown, but most likely it was purchased by Henry Walters (1848- 1931).1 The present study

Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte 71. Band/ 2008 I2I



2. Hicronymus Wierix, Christ Child Walking •ivith the Cross, engraving, 9.5 x 6.6 cm. Brussels,

Bibliothcquc royale de Belgique, Cabinet des estampes, inv. No. A. 1 105

argues that the terracotta was executed by the excellent but little studied Antwerp sculptor Corne- lis van Mildert (1613-68). The image of the seated

Christ Child meditating on the arma Christi origi- nated in Rome in the second part of the 1620s or in the following decade in the circle around Fran- cois Duquesnoy (1597- 1643) and Nicolas Poussin (1 594 - 1665).- While the novel motif had theological implications its particular treatment by seventeenth-century artists was tied to a broader interest in the expressive qualities of the infant body.

Devotions to the Christ Child in Counter Re- formation Europe were accompanied and rein- forced by a wealth of pictorial representations. These included a series of anachronistic and therefore topical images that linked the little Jesus to his future sacrifice by representing him with the instruments of his passion, such as images of Christ lying asleep on the cross.3 The idea that the via cruets began with Christ's in-

fancy was rooted in the works of medieval theo- logians. Emile Male has called attention to the familiarity to the post-Tridentine era of Thomas Aquinas' notion of how Jesus' thoughts from the moment of his incarnation had been directed towards his redemptive sacrifice on the cross. In De imitatione Christi Thomas a Kempis described how Christ's sufferings began with his first childhood.4 Such ideas were given literal expression in a series of emblematic engravings by Hicronymus Wierix (15 53-1619) showing Christ as a little boy walking with the cross as if on his way to Golgotha (fig. 2).*

1 The file card for the object in the museum (inv. no. 27.374) attributes it to Francois Duquesnoy. For Henry Walters as a collector see Eric M. Zafran, Fifty Old Master Paintings from the Walters Art Gallery, Baltimore 1988, 10-14; William R. Johnston, William and Henry Walters, the Reticent Collectors, Balti- more/London 1999, 112-220. Conservator Julie Lauf- fenburger at the Walters Art Museum, whose scientific analysis of the statuette with its traces of gilding is forthcoming in the Journal of the Walters Art Museum, generously shared her research with me. The close examination of terracottas in the Casa Buonarroti in Florence and the Statens Museum for Kunst in Copen- hagen was made possible through the kind assistance of Pina Ragionieri and Peter Norgaard Larsen respective- ly. Rosemary Trippe provided valuable comments and criticism.

2 See chapters one and two of Elizabeth Cropper and Charles Dempsey, Nicolas Poussin: Friendship and the

Love of Painting, Princeton/Chichester 1996. For Du- quesnoy see: Antonia Nava Cellini, 'Francesco Duques- noy, Milan 1968; Marion Boudon-Machuel, Francois du Quesnoy 1597-1643, Paris 2005.

3 Emile Male, Lart religieux de la fin du XV le siecle, du XVIIe siecle et du XVIII siecle: Etude sur Viconogra- phie apres le Concile de Trente, Paris ̂1951, 325-332; The Illustrated Bartsch, vol. 40, Italian Masters of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, ed. Veronika Birke, New York 1982, 226 f.; Klaus Lankheit, Die Modellsammlung der Porzellanmanufaktur Doccia: Ein Dokument italienischer Barockplastik, Munich 1982, 127, no. 10; Stephen Pepper, Guido Reni: A Complete Catalogue of His Works with an Introductory Text, Oxford 1984, 296, Appendix 1, no. B8; Oreste Ferrari, Sul tema del presagio delia Passione, e su altri connessi, principalmente nell'eta della >riforma cattolica<, in: Sto- ria delVarte 61, 1987, 201-24; Francois Souchal, French Sculptors of the 17th and 18th Centuries: The Reign of

ill Zeitschrift IÜR KuNSTGtscHiCHTi-; 71. Band/2008



One group of images that associated the infant Christ with the instruments of his passion were scenes related to the Flight into Egypt, in which the proto-martyrs slaughtered by Herod appear in the sky as little cherubs. That subject is allud- ed to in Pietro Testa's allegorical etching The Dream of Joseph (fig. 3) of ca. 1635-37, where the cross that the Christ Child embraces is sur- rounded by the flying souls of the innocents. An available source in seventeenth-century Rome that gathered the different traditions of inter- preting Jesus' childhood in the light of his passion, including the escape to Egypt, was Fran- cesco Sansovino's translation of Ludolph of Saxony's Vita di Giesu Christo, first published in 1 570.6 The dedicatory inscription to Cassiano dal Pozzo accompanying Testa's print exemplifies such ideas: »On the flight to Egypt to remove himself from Herod's wrath the blessed Jesus, while still a child, began to tread the wearisome path of his first anguishes. At the same moment as the angel brings Joseph the message of the flight is depicted that Christ actually embraces the cross, given to him by the Father since eter- nity and accepted by him at the moment of his conception.«7

Testa's etching with its explanatory inscription provides a further dissemination of the theology underlying the imagery of the Christ child accompanied by the arma Christi.

The type of infant portrayed in Testa's print had been introduced by Poussin and Duquesnoy in the mid- 1 620s on the basis of their study of the cupids in Titian's Feast of Venus, then in the Villa Ludovisi in Rome.8 With a point of depar- ture in the writings of such Seicento theorists as Giovan Pietro Bellori, Giovanni Battista Passeri, and Duquesnoy 's pupil Orfeo Boselli, Anthony Colantuono has analyzed the typology of the putto moderno (named so by Boselli) in baroque art.9 With its proportionally large head, unde- veloped facial features, dimpled limbs soft with baby fat, and swelling stomach this type of putto was an infant hardly more than one year of age. In this respect it differed from the slightly older and therefore more developed putto antico (again Boselli's term), known from ancient sculpture and the paintings of Raphael. The baroque au- thors described the new putto moderno as clearly too young with respect to its physical and mental capabilities, considering the actions it was portrayed as doing. It was, however, more graceful than its slightly older relative, and, more im- portantly, it embodied a concept of tenderness (tenerezza), moving the beholder towards such a state.10 Because of this rhetorical efficacy, when pictured in amorous or elegiac contexts the beholder would either be touched by the sweet- ness of the playful putti or be moved by the sight of infants struck by grief, even though they

Louis XIV, vol. 3, Oxford 1987, 400-401; Pierluigi Le- one de Castris and Mariella Utili, in: exh. cat. La Colle- zione Farnese: La Scuola emiliana: i dipinti, i disegni, Naples, Museo e Gallerie Nazionale di Capodimonte, Naples 1994, 131-33; Davide Bonzato, Adriano Mari- uz, and Giuseppe Pavanello (ed.), Da Padovanino a Tiepolo: Dipinti dei Musei Civici di Padova del Seicento e Settecento, exh. cat., Padua, Musei Civici, Milan 1997, 356f.; Boudon-Machuel (as note 2), 341 (R.4).

4 Male (as note 3), 329; Thomas a Kempis, De imitatione Christi, 2.12.2, 3. 1 8. 1.

5 Mane Mauquoy-Hendrickx, Les estampes des Wienx conserves au Cabinet des E tamp es de la Bibliothèque Royale Albert Ier, Brussels 1978, 1:86-88, cat. 483-87, plates 62-63.

6 Elizabeth Cropper, Pietro Testa 16 12 -1650: Prints and Drawings, exh. cat., Philadelphia, Philadelphia Mu- seum of Art and Cambridge, Mass., The Arthur M. Sackler Museum, Philadelphia 1988, 46-49.

7 My translation. »Fuggendo il benedetto Giesú, ancor fanciullo, in Egitto, per alluntanarsi dalPira d'Erode, cominciò à calcare il faticoso sendero de* primi affan- ni;/ onde nelPistesso punto, in cui 1' Angelo portó l'a- viso delia fuga à Gioseppe, si rappresenta ch'egli in ef- fetto abbracciasse la croce decretatagli ab eterno/ dal Padre, et accettata da esso nel primo instante delia sua Concezzione.«

8 This section is based on Anthony Colantuono, Ti- tian's Tender Infants: On the Imitation of Venetian Painting in Baroque Rome, in: / Tatú Studies 3, 1989, 207-34.

9 Ibid.; Orfeo Boselli, Osservazioni della scultura an- tica dai manoscritti Corsini e Doria e altri scritti, ed. Phoebe Dent Weil, Florence 1978, Ms. Corsini fols. I24r-i25v, I43v-i47r. Boselli's manuscript was composed around 1657.

10 Colantuono (as note 8), 214-21.

Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte 7 1 . Band / 2008 123



3. Pietro Testa, The Infant Christ Embracing the Cross (or, The Dream of Joseph), ca. 1635-37, etching, 36 x 29.6 cm. San Francisco, Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco,

Achenbach Foundation for Graphic Arts, 1963.30.36464

124 Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte 7 1 . Band / 2008



clearly were too young to experience such an emotion.

Bellori praised Duquesnoy's version of the putto in the following terms: »Francesco con- ceived an Idea of the forms of putti by means of the study he made of Titian and of nature; indeed, he searched out the most tender infants that he could find - even infants still in swad- dling - so much so that [in his sculptures of putti] he came to soften the hardness of the marble itself, making it seem to be of milk rather than of hard stone.«11

In this passage Duquesnoy's sculpted infants were perceived as a performance of artistic bril- liance through the transformation of stone into soft flesh, appealing to the sense of touch.12 The reference to maternal milk positioned the nur- turing of a real infant as a metaphor of the sculptor's art that called attention to the natural- ism of Duquesnoy's putti. How crucial that aspect was to the putto moderno was revealed when Bellori continued to censor those of the artist's imitators who made the heads of their infants too large and the stomachs bloated, there- by exaggerating and distorting the ideal pro- portions that should be founded on the study »of Titian and of nature.«

Duquesnoy was likely the inventor of the motif of the seated infant Christ beholding the instruments of his passion. Late in his life Fran- cois Girardon (1628- 171 5) published his collection of statues in a series of engravings known as the Galerie du Girardon. Plate four includes three different statuettes of the little Christ described as being by the hand of Duquesnoy,

4. Nicolas Chevalier after Rene Charpentier, engraving. Detail of Plate IV from the Galerie du

Girardon (Paris, n.d.)

which the French sculptor likely acquired while in Rome in 1668. '3 A bronze figure represents him lifting up the crown of thorns for contem- plation (fig. 4). In order to protect his hand he holds on to a piece of the cloth on which he is seated in allusion to the Holy Shroud.14 Two more figures, one of gilded bronze and one of terracotta, depict Christ gazing at the cross (fig. 5, 6). None of the three statuettes have sur- vived, but it is of interest to notice that the terracotta in Girardon's collection conforms in the reverse to a figure painted by the Poussin- follower Karel Philips Spierincks (ca. 1600-39) (fig. 7).15 The painter from Brussels arrived in

11 Ibid., 216: »Conccpí Francesco una Idea intorno le forme de' putti, per lo studio fatto da Tiziano c dal naturale; se bene egli ando ricercando li piú teñen sino nelle faseie, tanto che venne ad ammollire la durezza del marmo, sembrando essi piú tosto di latte che di macigno.« Giovan Pietro Bellori, Le vite de' pittori, seultori e arebitetti moderni, ed. Evelina Borca, Turin 1976, 299.

12 See also the study by Andrea Bolland, Desiderio and Diletto: Vision, Touch, and the Poetics of Bernini's Apollo and Daphne, in: Art Bulletin 82, no. 2, 2002, 309-30.

13 Nos. 36 and 39 on plate IV in the Galerie du Girar- don. See Francois Souchal, La collection de sculpteur Girardon d'apres son inventaire après décès, in: Gazette des beaux-arts 82, nos. 1254-55, *973> 2> 5^; idem in: Tbe Dictionary of Art, 12:727; Jennifer Mon- tagu, Gold, Silver and Bronze: Metal Sculpture of tbe Roman Baroque, New Haven/London, 1996, 5; Boudon-Machuel (as note 2), 71, 3091. (In. 88-90).

14 A variation of this figure appears among the cherubs handling the arma Christi in Claude Mellan's fron- tispiece after Jacques Stella to Thomas à Kempis' De imitatione Christi, Paris 1640.

Zeitschrift iür Kunstgeschichte 71. Band/2008 125



5- Nicolas Chevalier after René Charpentier, engraving. Detail of Plate IV from the Galerie du


6. Nicolas Chevalier after René Charpentier, engraving. Detail of Plate IV from the Galerie du


7. Karel Philips Spierincks, The Infant Christ Seated with the Cross Attended by Angels, 1630s,

oil on canvas. Private Collection

Rome in 1624, and by 1630 he was sharing quar- ters with Duquesnoy. Like Poussin, Testa, and Duquesnoy he enjoyed the patronage of Vincen- zo Giustiniani and was among the draughtsmen hired to work on the Galleria Giustiniana (ca. 1631-37), the publication of the marquess' collection of ancient sculptures. In the painting, the instruments of the passion are piled up in the foreground while the crown of thorns is held by one of the angels above. By basing his figure of baby Jesus on Duquesnoy 's, Spierincks paid homage to his friend.

A second variation on Duquesnoy's Christ figure was created by Artus Quellinus the Elder (1609-68), who had studied with the sculptor while in Rome during part of the 1630s (fig. 8).16

15 Sold at Sotheby's, Paris, June 23, 2004, lot 2. For Spierinck see Silvia Danesi Squarzina, A >Hagar and the Angel< by Carel Philips Spierinck in Potsdam, in: Burlington Magazine 141, no. 1155, 1999, 349-51; Boudon-Machuel (as'note 2), 25.

16 Joachim von Sandrart, Academic der Bau-, Bild und M ahler ey- Künste von i6y$, ed. Arthur Rudolf Peltzer, Munich 1925, 236; Estelle Lingo, The Greek Manner and a Christian Canon: Francois Duquesnoy's Saint Susanna, in: Art Bulletin 84, no. 1, 2002, 65 - 93, here 6y.

l2-6 Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte 71. Band/2008



8. Artus Quellinus the Elder, The Infant Christ with a Cross, ca. 1645-55, terracotta. Copenhagen, Statens Museum for Kunst

Until 1 71 3 the Christ Child with the Cross be- longed to the collections of the Dukes of Schleswig-Holstein-Gottorf, and it was described in an inventory of Gottorf Castle of 17 10 as part of a group of small terracottas by »Quel- lin.« It has been pointed out that the piece was derived from Duquesnoy's prototype published in the Galerie du Girardon (fig. 6).17 The baby reveals Quellinus as sharing Duquesnoy's particular gift for rendering the fleshy putto moderno. Despite the close proximity of Quellinus' statuette to the art of his former mentor in Rome he also included gestures that firmly pointed to his particular authorship. The drapery, I would argue, plays such a part. Bundled up under Christ's right arm, the cloth, carefully lined with

fringes, is modeled with a wealth of small in- tricate folds. The style is markedly at odds with the graceful flow of draperies as found in both ancient statuary and the works of Du- quesnoy, and Quellinus' treatment of the cloth has a realistic quality which by the mid-century had become among the signature features of his art.

The terracotta in Baltimore is yet another tender putto of the Duquesnoy-type utilized for the particular motif with the Christ Child (fig. 1). As such it testifies to the reputation of the most famous Flemish sculptor of the seventeenth century, whose art had become known outside of Italy through statuettes, plaster casts, and copies.18 Like the statuette in Copenhagen, the

17 Harald Olsen, /Eldre udenlandsk skulptur, Copenha- gen 1980, 1:97-100. See also Francis Beckett, Bra^ndt- lersfigurer af den addre Quellinus, in: Kunstmuseets Aarsskrif 4, 1917, 29-34; Albert Erich Brinckmann, Barock-Bozzetti: Niederländische und französische Bildhauer, vol.2, Frankfurt am Main 1925, 34-35; Viggo Thorlacius-Ussing, Billedhuggeren Thomas Quellinus, Copenhagen 1926, 5-13; Heinz Spielmann and Jan Drees (ed.), Gottorf im Glanz des Barock: Kunst und Kultur am Schleswiger Hof 1 544 - 17 13,

exh. cat., Schleswig, Schleswig-Holsteinisches Lan- desmuseum, vol. 1, Die Herzöge und ihre Sammlun- gen, 527, cat. 79, and vol. 2, Die Gottorf er Kunstkam- mer, 230, Schleswig 1997; Bente Gundestrup, The Royal Danish Kunstkammer, Copenhagen 1991, 1:346 (779/547). The terracotta was not mentioned in Juliane Gabriels, Artus Quellien, de oude: »Kunstryck hclthowwer« , Antwerp 1930.

18 Boudon-Machuel (as in note 2), passim.

ZEITSCHRIFT FÜR KUNSTGESCHICHTE 71. Band / 2OO8 1 2J



9. Josse de Corte after Cornelis van Mildert, Christ Child, 1648-51, marble, fragment.

Antwerp, Cathedral

piece has the character of a finished modello that may or may not have been intended for a carved or cast version. On the basis of stylistic clues I here attribute the work to Cornelis van Mil- dert.19 It is generally presumed that after the death of his father Hans van Mildert ( 1 588 -

1638), Cornelis took over his workshop in Ant- werp. Having produced monumental statuary and architectural designs for churches in the southern Netherlands, Cornelis entered the service of Archduke Leopold Wilhelm in 1655. The

terracotta in Baltimore reveals striking similari- ties with a fragment from a Virgin and Child group in Antwerp Cathedral (fig. 9). For the south transept of the cathedral Van Mildert in 1648 was commissioned to execute the porch, which was built 1649-51. Above in a niche was placed a marble statue of the Virgin and Child.20 Remaining today are the head of the Virgin and the head and torso of the Christ Child. The painter Jacob de Wit (1695 -1754) noticed that Josse de Corte (1627-79) had carved the sculpture in the workshop of Hans van Mildert [sie] under his guidance, mistaking the father for the son. De Wit pointed out that the Virgin imitated Duquesnoy's Saint Susanna in S. Maria di Loreto in Rome.21 He could also have mentioned the assimilation of models by Duquesnoy in the figure of the Christ Child.

In the sculptures in Antwerp and Baltimore the little Jesus is depicted with thick wavy hair and characteristic physiognomies. In both works the large almond-shaped eyes are animated through shadows cast by the brow and the fine diagonal folds in the flesh under the eyes. In the terracotta, the facial expression of the Christ Child can, for lack of a better term, be described as »infantile concern.« That expression was changed into one of grief in the putti serving as caryatids on the epitaph of Albert Rubens and Clara del Monte, both deceased in 1657, which Van Mildert executed for the Rubens family chapel in Sint-Jacobskerk in Antwerp (fig. io).22 The characteristic facial features .of Van Mildert's putti reappear in stylized form in the cherubs serving as architectural ornaments on keystones and capitals on the monumental altar of Our Lady in the former Jesuit church in Bruges, a project which the artist received payments for in i657.23

19 Recent studies that consider Cornelis van Mildert include: Jean Luc Meulemeester, Cornelis van Mildert en het O.-L.-Vrouwealtaar in de Sint-Walburgakerk te Brugge, in: Jaarboek van het Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Künsten te Antwerpen, 1984, 253-69; Stefaan Grieten, De ijde-eeuwse afwerking van de Antwerpse

kathedraal. Nieuwe 'gegevens over Hans en Cornelis van Mildert en over Robrecht en Jan de Nole, in: Jaar- boek van het Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Künst- en te Antwerpen, 1993, 227-85. For Flemish terracottas see Claire Baisier et al. (ed.), ijth and 18th Cen- tury Terracottas: The Van Herck Collection, trans. Ste-

128 Zeitschrift iür Kunstgeschichte 71. Band/ 2008



io. Cornelis van Mildert, Funerary Monument of Albert Rubens and Clara del Monte, 1657. Antwerp, Sint-Jacobskerk

phen Judd et al., exh. cat., Antwerp, Koninklijk Muse- um voor Schone Künsten, Antwerp 2000.

20 Marguerite Casteels in: La sculpture au siede de Rubens dans les Pays-Bas méridionaux et la princi- pauté de Liege, exh. cat., Brussels, Musée d'Art An- cien, Brussels 1977, 246-47; Stefaan Grietens in: The Cathedral of Our Lady in Antwerp, ed. Willem J. Aerts, Antwerp 1993, 134. The fragments of the Vir- gin and Child group were initially published as being by Artus Quellinus the Younger. Hugo Kehrer, Über Artus Quellin den Jüngeren, in: Belgische Kunstdenk- mäler, vol. 2, ed. Paul Clemen, Munich 1923, 259-80. No work by Cornelis van Mildert nor any work with an iconography related to the terracotta in Baltimore was mentioned in the 1659 inventory of the arch-

duke's collections. Adolf Berger (ed.), Inventar der Kunstsammlungen des Erzherzogs Leopold Wilhelm von Österreich nach der Originalhandschrift im fürstlich Schwarzenberg'schen Centralarchive, in: Jahrbuch der kunsthistorischen Sammlungen des aller- höchsten Kaiserhauses 1, 1883, lxxix-clxxvii.

21 Casteels (as note 20), 246-47. For Josse de Corte (Giusto le Court) see Andrea Bacchi in: La scultura a Venezia da Sansovino a Canova, ed. Andrea Bacchi, Milan 2000, 741-44.

22 Cynthia Lawrence, The Epitaph of Arnoldus Lun- den, Jr.: Notes on a Monument from Rubens's Circle, in: Jaarboek van het Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Künsten te Antwerpen, 1992, 66-89, here 79.

23 Mculemeester (as note 19), 263-69.

Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte 71. Band/ 2008 ^9



ii. Annibale Carracci, Pietà, 15 99 -1600, oil on canvas. Naples, Museo Nazionale di Capodimonte

In some crucial aspects Van Mildert's engage- ment with Duquesnoy differs from that of Quel- linus. While the Jesus figures of Duquesnoy and Quellinus support on one arm, nothing seems to keep Van Mildert's child in place. The left hand holding on to the drapery is a reference to the

Holy Shroud, and the position of the arm creates a gracefully balanced counter-movement to the outstreched right hand. It does not, however, provide any support for the seated pose. The child's lower lip and chin are strongly receding, which, when seen from the side, appears as a distortion. Clearly the figure was intended to be viewed from the front, and from that angle the

modeling of the face places emphasis on the open mouth (characteristic of a baby observing some-

thing) by adding shadows. Such liberties regard- ing pose and the prioritizing of optical effects from a single point of view never appeared in the works of Duquesnoy and Quellinus. Van Mil- dert, it seems, was more concerned with Duques- noy's style than with the artistic principles on which it was based, grounded in the study of classical antiquity.

In recent years scholars have emphasized the function of images to meditative practices in

post-Tridentine Europe as promoted by the

Jesuits in particular.24 The depiction of the Christ Child contemplating the arma Christi could function as an object of meditation, considering that such an act was included in the represented subject. The beholding of the work of art therefore in itself served as an imitado Christi. Me- ditations on the image of the little Christ would

24 Pamela M. Jones, Federico Borromeo and the Ambro- siana: Art Patronage and Reform in Seventeenth- Century Milan, Cambridge/New York/Oakleigh 1993, esp. chap. 2; several studies by Walter S. Melion, including: Pictorial Artifice and Catholic Devotion in Abraham Blomaert's Virgin of Sorrows with the Holy Face of c. 161 5, in: The Holy Face and the Para- dox of Representation, ed. Herbert L. Kessler and Gerhard Wolf (= Villa Spelman Colloquia, vol. 6), Bologna 1998, 319-40; Ad duetum itineris et disposi- tionem mansionum ostendendam: Meditation, Voca- tion, and Sacred History in Abraham Ortelius's Parergon, in: The Journal of the Walters Art Gallery 57, 1999, 49-72; introductory study in Jerome Nadal, S.J., Annotations and Meditations on the Gospels, vol. 1, The Infancy Narratives, trans, and ed. Fred- erick A. Homann, S.J., Philadelphia 2003; Jeffrey Chipps Smith, Sensuous Worship: Jesuits and the Art of the Early Catholic Reformation in Germany, Princeton/Oxford 2002, 40-52; Leopoldine Prospe- retti, De stille minne: Forest Imagery and Divine

Love in a Devotional Image by Jan Brueghel the Elder, in: Emblemata Sacra Conference: Rhetoric and Hermeneutics in Illustrated Religious Literature, 27- 29 January 2005, Catholic University at Louvain, Turnhout (forthcoming). See also Robert Suckale, Arma Christi: Überlegungen zur Zeichenhaftigkeit mittelalterlicher Andachtsbilder, in: Städel-Jahrbuch, Neue Folge, 6, 1977, 177-208.

25 In her fundamental study Boudon-Machuel notices the ease with which Duquesnoy 's single figures of putti served different iconographies, both secular and sacred. When commenting on the Christ Child holding the crown of thorns she states that »the religious sense has escaped.« I draw different conclusions. Boudon-Machuel (as note 2), 71.

26 Donald Posner, Ann'tbale Carraca: A Study in the Re- form of Italian Painting around 1590, London 1971, 2:52, cat. 1 19; Annibale Carracci e i suoi incisori, exh. cat., Rome, Istituto Nazionale per la Gráfica, Rome 1986, 205-08; Pierluigi Leone de Castris and Mariella Utili, in: La Collezione Farnese (as note 3), 131-33.

130 ZiiTSCHRiiT IÜR Kunstgkschichti: 7i.B«ind/2oo8



not only reveal theological wisdom but also place the beholder in a deeply emotional state when experiencing the child's foreknowledge of the passion. In the examples of this iconography discussed so far, the putto moderno has featured exclusively. Seeing the torture instruments next to an innocent baby, the affective embodiment of the idea of tenderness, would have inspired the beholder to tears in a way that was different from images of the adult suffering or dead Christ.2*

Van Mildert might have studied the right angel in Annibale Carracci's Pietà (which he could have known from a painted or engraved copy) for the motif of the outstreched hand touching the crown of thorns (fig. 11).26 Bellori, who had admired the painting in the Palazzo Farnese in Rome, saw in the angel on the right an empa- thetic experience of Christ's sufferings through touch next to the Virgin's grief experienced through the sense of sight as she beholds her dead son.27 In his influential Spiritual Exercises, published for the first time in 1548, Ignatius Loyola famously urged to an imaginary use of the five senses when considering the life of Christ from the moment of the annunciation to his death.28 Approached as an object of meditation in the light of the Jesuit treatise, Cornelis

van Mildert's Christ Child with the Crown of Thorns communicates an experience of physical pain through the soft infant. The thematization of the sense of touch in the context of the arma Christi had also been explored by Testa in his Trinitarian etching, which Van Mildert could have been familiar with (fig. }).29 The placing of hands on the cross pictures devotion as a sensory experience, and one of the flying angels even raises a finger towards the crown of thorns sus- pended from the cross as if to feel its thorns.

Among the examples of the new Christ Child iconography in the seventeenth century one prominent version defied the symbiosis of putto moderno with the particular subject matter. During his visit to Paris in 1665 on the invitation of King Louis XIV to work on designs for the Louvre, Gianlorenzo Bernini (1598- 1680) was accompanied by his son Paolo (1648-72). Under his father's supervision, and with his assistance, Paolo carved a marble figure of the Christ Child holding a nail (fig. 12). Gianlorenzo had almost certainly thought out the motif, which he described as the child meditating on a nail found in Joseph's tool-box, the drapery being one of the Virgin's veil.30 The pointing of the nail towards the palm of his hand is proleptic of his death on the cross. Bulky and vigorous, the child is lea-

27 »[...] la Pietà con la Vergine a sedere al monumento, la quale con una mano sostenía in seno la testa del fi- gliuolo morto ed apre Paltra, aguardándolo con do- lore. Fecevi con moka espressione un angioletto che tocca col dito una spina della corona e doulsi della puntura.« Bellori, ed. Borea (as note u), ioo.

28 Saint Ignatius of Loyola, Personal Writings, trans. Joseph A. Munitiz and Philip Endean, Harmonds- worth 1996, 305-308.

29 The popularity of Testas prints in the seventeenth century is discussed in Francesca Consagra, The Mar- keting of Pietro Testa's >Poetic Inventions<, in: Crop- per (as note 6), lxxxvii-civ.

30 Paul Fréart de Chantelou, Journal de voyage du Cavalier Bernin en France, ed. Milovan Stanic, Paris 2001, 100. See also Cecil Gould, Bernini in France: An Episode in Seventeenth-Century History, London 1 98 1, 100; Walter Leo Hildburgh, A Signed Marble Cupid Perhaps by Paolo Valentino Bernini, in: Bur- lington Magazine for Connoisseurs 81, No. 476, 1942, 282- 84; Marc Worsdale, Le Bernin et la France: Un

>tableau de marbre< et les compositions de gravures de devotion, in: Revue de Vart 61, 1983, 63-64; Helga Tratz, Werkstatt und Arbeitsweise Berninis, in: Römi- sches Jahrbuch für Kunstgeschichte 23-24, 1988, 397- 485, here 420; Jennifer Montagu, Roman Baroque Sculpture: The Industry of Art, New Haven/London 1989, 6-7; Andrea Bacchi (ed.), Scultura del y6oo a Roma, Milan 1996, 784. For Bernini in France see also Irving Lavin, Past-Present: Essays on Historicism in Art from Donatello to Picasso, Berkeley/Los Angeles/ Oxford 1993, 139-61; Tod A. Marder, Bernini and the Art of Architecture, New York/London/Paris 1998, 261-81; Chantal Grell and Milovan Stanic (ed.), Le Bernin et VEurope: Du baroque triomphant a Vage romantique, Paris 2002, passim; Dietrich Erben, Paris und Rom: Die staatlich gelenkten Kunstbeziehungen unter Ludwig XIV (= Studien aus dem Warburg- Haus, 9), Berlin 2004, 51-135.

Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte 71 . Band / 2008 131



12. Paolo Bernini, Infant Jesus Holding a Nail, 1665, marble. Paris, Louvre

ning on the tool box that juts diagonally into the beholder's space. The over life-size figure is im- bued with a monumental character that is en- hanced by the way in which it overlaps the frame. With the hollows of the pupils, a device common to Gianlorenzo, the look on the face of the little Jesus can at best be described as star- ing.

The statue of the infant can be construed as an act of competition on the part of Gianlorenzo with Duquesnoy's then so famous ideal of the putto. One testimony to Duquesnoy's renown at the French court was the past attempts of the French administration in drawing excellent artists from Rome to Paris.3' Among the sculptors Duquesnoy was asked to enter the service of

31 Domenico Bernini, Vita del Cavalier Gio. Lorenzo Bernini, Rome, 171 3, reprint, Munich 1988, 69-71; Filippo Baldinucci, Notizie dei professou del disegno da Cimabue in qua, ed. Ferdinando Ranalli, vol. 4,

Florence 1846, 287, vol. 5, Florence 1847, 606; Gould (as note 30), 7; Jennifer Montagu, Alessandro Algardi, New Haven/London 1985, 1:78-79; Boudon-Ma- chuel (as note 2), 172-74.

132 Zeitschrift iür Kunstgeschichte 71. Band/ 2008



Louis XIII in 1639, and the same year the invitation was extended unsuccessfully to Alessan- dro Algardi. In 1644 Bernini received an official invitation, though he declined. The previous year Duquesnoy had agreed to go to Paris, where he would have had residence in the Louvre and held the position as superintendent of a French acad- emy of sculptors. He died that year in Leghorn.

A second factor that might have inspired Ber- nini's paragone with Duquesnoy was seventeenth-century attitudes towards the two sculptors. Some critics compared Bernini unfavorably with the Fleming, even if indirectly so, for pre- sumably not following the example of the ancients. The most extreme expression of this critical discourse was Bellori's Le vite de3 pittori, scultori e architetti moderni of 1672, which included sections dedicated to both Duquesnoy and Algardi but none to Bernini.32

Paul Fréart de Chantelou recorded a verbal exchange over Paolo Bernini's sculpture between

Gianlorenzo and the French King on October 5, 1665. During a visit to Bernini's studio the king praised the figure of the Christ Child and mar- veled at the fact that it was executed by such a young person. Bernini could tell that it was a gift to Queen Maria Theresa since it was important that pregnant women beheld »noble and agree- able objects« as the sight of these would affect the child positively. In agreement with this ancient and common belief the king responded that the little Dauphin resembled the Christ Child in a picture of the Virgin and Child in the queen's chamber at Fontainebleau.33

In light of this exchange the statue can be seen to thematize ideal offspring in relation to its subject matter, young creator, and intended effects on the queen's pregnancies. The marble Jesus does not show a saddened infant that moves the beholder to tenderness, but rather an energetic and forceful baby, capable of invigorating and ennobling the blood line of the Bourbons.

32 Catherine M. Soussloff, Imitatio Buonarroti, in: The Sixteenth Century Journal 20, no. 4, 1989, 598 f.; Cropper/Dempsey (as note 2), 45; Maria Giulia Bar- berini, Giovan Pietro Bellori e la scultura contempo- ránea, in: Uidea del bello: Viaggio per Roma nel Sei- cento con Giovan Pietro Bellori, ed. Evelina Borea and Carlo Gasparri, vol. 1, exh. cat., Rome, Palazzo delle Esposizioni, Rome 2000, 121-29; Marion Bou- don-Machuel, L'antithese Bernin-Du Quesnoy dans la littérature artistique française des XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles, in: Grell/Stanic (as note 30), 325-49; idem (as note 2), 177-83. On Bernini's self-conscious diver- gence from ancient sculpture: Frank Fehrenbach, Ber- nini's Light, in: Art History 28, no. 1, 2005, 1-42, here 6-7.

33 Chantelou (as note 30), 224, 334: »Après, Sa majesté s'est approchée du petit Christ du signor Paolo et Ta extrêmement loué, disant qu'il ne se pouvait ríen voir de plus beau, quoique ce füt Pouvrage d'un garçon de dix-huit ans. Le cavalier s'étant approché a dit qu'il l'a destiné à la Reine, et qu'il importe que les femmes, pendant leur grossesse, voient des objets nobles et agréables; qu'il a un de ses enfants qui ressemble à ce- lui d'un tableau qui est dans la chamber de sa femme, et qu'elle regardait souvent pendant sa grosesse. Le Roi a pris la parole et a dit que M. le Dauphin ressem- blait à l'enfant d'un Vierge qui était dans la chambre de la Reine à Fontainebleau.«

Abbildungsnachweis: 1 The Walters Art Museum, Baltimore. - 2 Bibliothèque royale de Belgique, Brussels. - 3 Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, San Francisco. - 4-6 Photo from Boudon-Machuel (as note 2). - 7 Sotheby's, Paris. - 8 Statens Mueum for Kunst, Copenhagen. - 9, 10 KIK-IRPA, Brussels. - 11 Fototeca - Soprintendenza Speciale per il Polo Museale napolitano. - 12 Reunion des Musées Nationaux / Art Resource,

NY.

Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte 7 1 . Band / 2008 j j j



Documents

The Infant Christ with the "Arma" Christi: François Duquesnoy and the Typology of the Putto