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EXCERPT FROM
Annotated Art Essay 3
Detailed Analysis of
Holbein’s Sir Thomas
More
Copyright © 2005 Dianne L. Durante. All
rights reserved.
Do not reproduce or distribute without written permission of the author.
This essay is an informal transcript of part of a lecture given in 1996.
Images
These are the paintings referred to in the text. If you have a good printer, you might want to print copies before you begin, so you can easily arrange the images side by side.
- Holbein the Younger, Sir Thomas More. Frick Collection
- Piero della Francesca, Augustinian Nun.
Frick Collection
http://www.davidrumsey.com/amico/amico757149-119244.html (a ridiculously tiny image, but the Frick site doesn't offer any image at all) - Raphael, St. Catherine. London, National
Gallery
http://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/collection/guides/catherine.htm - Holbein the Younger, Henry VIII. Rome,
National Gallery
http://www.mezzo-mondo.com/arts/mm/holbein/HOH011.html - Memling, Portrait of a Man. Frick Collection
- Stuart, George Washington. Frick Collection
- Holbein the Younger, Oliver Cromwell. Frick
Collection
http://gallery.euroweb.hu/html/h/holbein/hans_y/1535/8cromwel.html
Essay
Suppose I show you Holbein’s Sir Thomas More and tell you, "Take out a sheet of paper. You have 5 minutes to identify the theme of this painting and support your claim with concrete details from the painting." To use one of Barbara Walters' favorite phrases, "How does that make you feel?" Annoyed? Anxious? Uncomfortable?
That's how many people feel when discussing paintings, and it’s an entirely appropriate reaction. What I've asked you to do is leap from the concrete details that you see in a painting to an abstraction, the theme, without knowing how to do so. That’s bad methodology.
This essay is a detailed illustration of how to proceed from concretes such as "His hat is black" to more general statements, and finally to the theme, the abstract meaning, of a painting. For more on the value of identifying the theme (rather than, say, the subject), see Annotated Art Essay 1: "Subject vs. Theme: Paintings of Oedipus and the Sphinx by Ingres and Moreau" at http://www.forgottendelights.com/Annotated%20Art/01OedipusSphinx.htm . For more on the purpose of analysis in general, see Annotated Art Essay 2: "Why Do Detailed Analysis of Paintings or Sculpture?" at http://www.forgottendelights.com/Annotated%20Art/02WhyAnalyze.htm
NOTE: In the lecture presentation of this analysis, I didn’t mention the names of Sir Thomas More, Henry VIII or Oliver Cromwell until the end of the lecture. It was much more interesting to sort out More’s character without any literary or historical associations. Unfortunately the no-name-calling became too complicated in the written version.
First impressions
Holbein’s Sir Thomas More is roughly 2 feet square; the man's face is somewhat under life-size. This is important to notice because we’re studying a real object, not merely a photographic reproduction. If More’s head were twenty feet tall, like old Russian posters of Stalin and Lenin, that would radically change the way you perceived the sitter. ...
END EXCERPT
NOTE: This essay is no longer available for purchase as of 5/16/07. In revised form, it will appear in a forthcoming issue of The Objective Standard.
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