Rocznik Historii Sztuki (22.1996)

108

ANDRZEJ PIEŃKOS

by Gérôme is so excessive, the absurdity of death is so complète, that we have an impression as if the artists wanted to enlight
the spectator as to the existence of conventions leading to evoid the tabu. So they show the history as a transistory concrète, in
opposition to the Goya's picture The exesution of 3rd May 1808, a picture of a history rooted in eternity. A manifestation of death,
deprived of heroism and a moral or political sensé are also the suiciders in a sculpture by A.Cecioni and a picture by Manet.

Desease and death in poor families, dying workers and peasants are the favourite subjects of the social realism in the cadre
of that one сап find nearly identical représentation conventions as in the case of historical peinture; the same are the reasons of
présentation of death: melodramatic and sentimental, objectivistic (or critic), more uncommonly sensational. The last two justifica-
tions are usually met together in the pictures presenting the death coming to poor persons not in the convention of „a deathbed" but
in the hell of the slave labour (it is also the case of the pénal colony scènes).

In the religious painting of the 19th century there appear sometime quite peculiar motives giving a chance of a refined picture
of death. A great popularity gains a motive of resuscitation of the Jair's daughter an of the son of the widow of Nain. The motive
of Virgin's falling asleep becomes in a secularized iconography a genre scène; the same сап be said about the scènes of death of
saints or of the first Christians. A true career in the 19th century was made by a motive of the lament of the first parents after Abel,
having for artists a more „human" dimension than mourning after Christ. This motive appeared sometime independent and became
just a présentation of a human corpse (G. Dupré). More often than Crucification, Entombment, not to speak about the Résurrection
there appears in the 19th century art a picture of dead Christ: a dead body of a man is a motive in that a realistic tendency сап be
fully expressed, without a need to introduce „dubious" éléments. Thèse pictures seem to compete in the race for an idéal, being in
this case Christ in the tomb by Holbein. Pieta by H. Flandrin with a Holbein's arrangement of a stiff body with straight posed head
évoques an impression of a direct contact with the corpse, with the concrète dead body. The work by Holbein was examined among
others by Bôcklin, F. Hodler, Munkàcsy, L. von Lfftz, von Stuck, Klinger and K. Kollwitz. The différence between the works of
religious iconography and social allégories is not perceptible in the pictures inspired by the image of the dead Christ.

Marat by David, Rue Transnonain by Daumier, works showing the actual reality through the schemes of religious représen-
tation - announce a dream of the realism of a synthesis of présentation of the death of Christ and of a corpse - a dead organism,
a syntesis successful for Holbein. However попе of thèse paintings could lead to the ultimate matters. Eschatic conflict is being
substituted, in the framework of such a limited reality moderne by a social and ideological drame, or „a tragedy of artistic measures"
(as in the images of the dead Christ by Manet and W. Triibner).

The picture by Manet The dead torreador, through which the painter emulated the présentations of corpse in works of
Gérôme, is an évidence of an iconographie indifferentism of the realism towards the death. Dead Christ, Caesar, Communard (of the
later drawings by Manet) or torrero are the same pictoral „objects".

Tombstones - a great mass of artefacts devoted to death, only rarely show the artistic interest in the nature of this limitary
expérience. In a paradoxal way they confirm the pushing of death into the sphère of tabu: they show great expenditures of forces
used by the culture to „talk down" the death with the help of a developped semantic side. Even the monument of General Cavaignac
by F.Rude, being no noubt a présentation of a body of a concrète man, bases on a well known in France iconographie convention
- gisant. This pattern, after ail in accordance with the principle of clasieizm so dear to this artist, neutralizes to some extent
symptoms of agony, gives a heroic expression to the image of the corpse. The unparalelled works in the 19th century sculpture are
the medallions by A. Préault from the tombstones of the actor Ph. Rouvière and of Mickiewicz. Into a scheme of a portrait tondo
an action has been introduced: dying. Préault has totally withdrawed not only from the sépulcral tradition of a portrait (idealized or
realistic), but also from ail the monumental conventionalization of death in the 19th century. The uncomonness of the image does
not consists in its privacy but in the commémoration of the moment it was improper to commemorate in that epoch.

A motive of a painter painting a dead child was common in literary and derived from them pictoral works. A story by Vasari
about Signorelli painting his dead son and another version of the motive: Tintoretto painting his dead daughter have been presented
by many 19th century artists. None of thèse works however did not put a question of painting death; They are the sentimental
versions of a motive of „secular lamentation" or of a „deathbed". A similar situation - an artist painting his dead child - we сап meet
in many literary works of the 19th century (e.g Aquis submersus by T. Storm, Sentimental éducation by Flaubert, The Madonna of
the future by H.James). The most famous rédaction of the topos gives the novel by Zola The Masterpiece. The painter is put here
before a choice between the „human" reaction and an „artistic" one. Painting the death the painter-naturalist runs however after the
„objective reality". A confusion in the face of such an attempt finds its expression in the growing in the 19th century ossification
of the conventionality of a picture of a dead person (e.g. a chronicie of the death of Chopin by T. Kwiatkowski). This confusion
could disarm artistically an artist or make him submit to a tabu with the help of an exubérant form. N. Dubreuil-Blondin has
pointedly qualified the last solution in relation to a picture Camilla on her deathbed by Monet: „the portrayed body dies to revive
as a pictoral body". In an opinion of M. Warnke Monet might have been still more artistically paralysed by the consioussness of
realizing a literary conventionality a well known topos. Another famous work of naturalism, Dying Mazzini by S. Lega shows by
a completely différent situation and artistic resuit an application of a similar escape to an extremely formalized picture.

The complicated conventionalism of the 19th century art should be understood in two planes: first, we have here to do with
a continuation, intersection and long-lived degeneration of traditional pictoral conventions in the limits of particular typical sche-
mes; second - with an imposition on thèse pictures an exubérant form by a mechanizm of a cultural tabu. In présentation of death
in the 19th century two éléments of the modem art fuse together: an objective, „neutral" image and the need of a strong suggesti-
veness of the form having to give an authonomic picture. Their apparent contradiction disappears bearing a tendency, growing in
the naturalism and later on in symbolism, going towards an autorepresentation, or even of an excess of the form having a character
of a substitute. Both tendences resuit from the same obligation of a so strong représentation of the reality that it revives on the
picture, getting a still more important purpose. The realism is a fight for the domination of art in the reality reduced owing to effotrts
of the post-enlightment philosophy of life, for création of a properly valuable, having its own „truth" ersatz of thèse reduced