The vanity of exploration - or, The discovery of Bouvet Island prefigured?

This spring, I am teaching a course on utopian thinking in the Middle Ages. The course is designed for MA students, and to prepare a good foundation for delving into details and focusing on specific themes within the vast umbrella of the course's main topic, my co-teacher and I have dedicated the first seminars to a chronological walkthrough of utopian material, ending with the Early Modern Period and stopping around 1750 for purely practical reasons. One important reason for bringing the early modern material into discussion with the medieval texts, was to highlight how increasing geographical knowledge affects the way utopian places are imagined, and where they are placed on the map.  

Thinking about the development of cartography and geographical knowledge, I was reminded of a detail I noticed in a painting I had the pleasure of seeing up close in January, namely Antonio de Pereda's allegory of vanity, exhibited in Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna. The painting is an exquisite example of the vanitas genre, one of my favourite types of paintings, as it combines the exuberant display of skill typical of the still life with the sombre and melancholic note of the memento mori artwork of the Late Middle Ages. The genre takes its name from the Book of Ecclesiastes, which is an immensely beautiful and human reflection on the pointlessness of human endeavour: All is vanity, all is in vain. Since part of the point of a vanitas painting is the juxtaposition of numerous and often contrasting pursuits, the genre also offered artists an opportunity to show how skilled they were at drawing complicated things, while also adhering to the iconographical standards of the genre (such as a skull, an extinguished candle, and an hourglass with all the sand in the bottom).       

Antonio de Pereda (1611-78), Alegoria de la vanidad (1632-36)

Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, Inventory no. GG 771

One detail that particularly fascinates, and pleases, me about Antonio de Pereda's rendition of the vanitas motif, is the way that he has rendered the globe, a detail I only properly realised when I was standing right in front of the painting. As seen below, the globe is placed on its side - its imagined side, rather - with north facing east and the west facing north. The hand of the genius representing the passing of time and the eventual pulverisation of all things mortal and temporal, is pointing towards the tip of the African continent, to a point between Africa and Antarctica. 

The detail is particularly interesting to me in light of the time when the painting was made, namely the 1630s. At this time, the Portuguese had spent generations mapping the coastlines of Africa and the Indian Ocean World, and there had been great strides in cartography. Madagascar - which was merely  a a rumour to medieval Europeans, if even that - is slowly receiving its actual shape, and the interior of Africa is mapped in the minds of European traders through stories encountered in the great Swahili trading cities such as Sofala and Mombasa. Indeed, if we look very closely on the globe in Pereda's painting, we see that the map of Africa represents two cartographic stages, with an earlier phase rendered in a strong green colour - reminiscent of the way Africa is depicted in early sixteenth-century maps - and a more modern, broader outline in weaker grey-green colour, which seems to represent the extent of Africa as known by modern cartography. Further south, moreover, is the great southern continent that was hypothesised by numerous cartographers throughout the medieval and early modern periods. This was a continent expected to exist to the south of Africa, based on the knowledge that the earth was round, and that the lower hemisphere should resemble the upper in climate, and perhaps also in having a large continent that would correspond with Eurasia. It is important to note, however, that by the time Antonio de Pereda painted this allegory, no European had been far enough south to ascertain the existence of this continent.   

In light of Antonio de Pereda's own times, and the increasing cartographic knowledge of the era, how are we to understand the way that the globe is included and rendered in the painting? While I do not know for certain, I suspect that in an age when voyages for trade, domination and conquest were still an important part of the geopolitical and even everyday life of Europe, the mapping of distant shores would be a natural part of the register of motifs that could emphasise the pointlessness of human endeavour. That the outline of Africa is rendered in two versions might be understood as a shorthand of the recent cartographic development of Pereda's times, which, ultimately, is as pointless as the game of cards or the possession of jewelry, since it does not ensure humans that eternal peace and afterlife which can only be attained through spiritual pursuits. Essentially, the painting seems to say: Yes, we know more about the world, but so what? 

 

One detail in the rendition of the globe is particularly amusing to me, as it is a pure coincidence. The finger of the genius is pointing to a location between the southern tip of Africa and the great southern land, the Terra Australis, that corresponds roughly to what we know now to be Antarctica. If we look at a modern map of this area, the finger is placed on, or at least very near, Bouvet Island, known as one of the most isolated places in the world. The first known sighting of Bouvet Island, currently under the jurisdiction of Norway, happened in 1739 during a voyage under Jean-Baptiste Charles Bouvet de Lozier (1705-86), and the first known landfall happened in 1822 by American whalers. Consequently, Antonio de Pereda did not know about Bouvet Island, and the placing of the genius' finger is purely coincidental. But it pleases me to think about how human speculation and imagination very often does manage to envision the real world despite lack of certain knowledge.      

Lecture: Science, faith and superstition in Utopia

 

Last Tuesday, February 20, I had the honour of giving a lecture in the lecture series of the Science, Faith and Superstition seminar series, hosted by the University of Belgrade. My lecture highlighted various continuities in the way that medieval and early modern texts about ideal societies or exotic locations were imagined or formulated. The lecture was recorded, so I'm pleased to share it with all of you.  

Science, faith and superstition in Utopia

Saint Catherine of Alexandria in Vienna

The past few months have been a blur of travels and museum visits, so I am still sorting through the photographic souvenirs to decide which wonders to share, and when. When working my way through a museum, my eye is often caught by the unfamiliar, unknown or unusual, and so I am more likely to capture an artefact of which I have not heard before. Part of this impulse appears to be either rooted in or otherwise related to my scepticism towards canon formation, and the typical focus on the big famous items that museums often tend to embrace when marketing their collections. 

Today's overlooked jewel comes from the medieval collection of Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, an institution most famous for its late-medieval paintings - what some call "Renaissance" - but where one can also find some absolute treasures that once adorned various churches and chapels. One such treasure was a wooden bust of Saint Catherine of Alexandria, attributed to Michel Erhard (active c.1469-1522), holding a fragment of wheel intended for her torture (but broken by an angel before the torture could commence). 

The sculpture can be called a minor treasure in that it is not in any way highlighted in the museum's collection - at least not that I could see - and because it was just one item out of many in the unjustly downplayed medieval section of the museum. Yet this relative obscurity is deceptive, because Michel Erhard is one of the most famous Gothic sculptors active in the late-medieval German-speaking area, and we should imagine that the bust was originally a revered work of art, enjoyed not just because of its obvious beauty and craft, but also because of its association with a feted artist. 

The bust of Saint Catherine of Alexandria in Kunsthistoriches Museum is a good reminder of how beauty might very well be objective to some degree, yet that objectivity pales in the absence of a subjective marker of quality, such as fame. So when the fame once attached to the item has faded, so the artwork - despite its artistic qualities - fades into a relative obscurity.   

Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, KK 9938

 

Saint Olaf in Frogner Church - medievalism as a form of protest?

 

This weekend, I attended a service at Frogner Church in Oslo. It is a beautiful structure, consecrated in 1907, and built in a neo-Romanesque style that was very common in Scandinavia around the turn of the century. The fondness for this style should probably be understood in light of the wider cultural framework of medievalism at the time, a framework in which the medieval past was used as a pool from which to draw resources for building a national identity, and thereby positioning Norway in a wider historical and geographical setting. The medievalism of late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth century Norway was expressed in many different ways. Various such expressions were often relying on a lot of the same motifs or figures, but the medieval elements seen as uniquely Norwegian could often be blended with medieval elements from elsewhere. In the case of Frogner Church, we see how some various aspects of the Norwegian medieval past has been melded into one. 

The first of these aspects that came to my attention was a wooden figure on a plinth on the southern side of the nave, just beneath one of the two galleries of the church. The figure, as seen below, shows Saint Olaf with one foot on a vanquished person, while his hands are resting on the sword whose point is placed just atop the person underneath the saint. The identity of the saint-king is made clear from an inscription in gold on the foot of the statue. This motif - of Olaf standing on a figure, a so-called underlier - is widely common in Scandinavian medieval art, and one of the most recognizable iconographical features in the entire medieval Nordic sphere. As far as I know, the earliest surviving example of this motif dates from the early thirteenth century.

The statue in Frogner Church is clearly meant to tie into the medieval motif, but it also shows itself as a product of a different time, a time that had its own ideas about the medieval past. The statue is, in other words, not so much a continuation of a medieval motif, but an adaptation of it. There are two elements that point us in this direction. First of all, the saint-king carries a sword, which he uses to subdue to defeated opponent. To my knowledge, this combination of iconographical features does not appear in medieval art. Olaf is typically seen holding an axe, which became is primary attribute at a very early stage, possibly already in the mid-eleventh century. The sword is very rarely associated with Olaf, and, as far as I know, never in the motif of trampling an enemy underfoot. 
     

The second modern feature of the statue is the shape of the underlier. In medieval art, this figure is typically a human of uncertain identification (especially in the thirteenth century), or a dragon with a human head (mainly fourteenth century onwards). The figure in Frogner Church, however, is holding a hammer, which suggests that this is the Norse god Thor. The statue is, in other words, intended to summarize Christianity's conquest of Paganism in Norway, exemplified by Saint Olaf forcefully replacing the god of thunder. While medieval Norwegians did indeed emphasize Olaf's violent expulsion of Pagan elements during the Christianization period - an idea possibly invented in the twelfth century, as part of the Norwegian Church's efforts of identity-construction - this expulsion is not, from what I know, expressed as a battle between a saint and a god. Consequently, the scene in Frogner Church looks very much as an ecclesiastical response to the ongoing enthusiasm for the Norse Paganism that was part of the medievalism of the era, where the pre-Christian elements were made to represent Norway and confer antiquity and glory on a nation eagerly expending time and resources to construct an identity.  

Another feature of Frogner Church that makes me suspect some sort of ecclesiastical reaction to the ongoing medievalism of the time, is the exterior. The neo-Romanesque features of the tower and the front are both strongly reminiscent of an actual medieval church in Oslo, namely that of Old Aker Church, which is heavily restored yet contains some surviving features from the twelfth century. The Romanesque style is a marker of European belonging, since it is an architectural vogue imported from abroad, and initially performed in Norway by foreign masons. The use of neo-Romanesque for the church exterior can be understood as a nod to Old Aker Church, by which the new church draws prestige from an earlier church, and provides a sense of continuity, which in itself is an important element of identity-construction. Furthermore, however, it might also be that the use of neo-Romanesque serves the same purpose as the statue of Saint Olaf in the nave, namely to signal a European belonging and to mark a certain distance to the enthusiasm towards the Pagan Norse heritage. 

If I am right in thinking about these features as a pushback against the Pagan aesthetic, it is nonetheless doubtful whether a lot of people would have the toolkit for decoding this protest message. Yet this does not in and of itself mean that the protest would not have been legible to a certain section of society, whether it would be academics, clerics, or others. 

The moon over Saint Rupert's Church

In the middle of January, I spent ten days in Vienna as part of a work-stay organized by the project where I am currently working as a postdoctoral researcher. The days in Vienna were quite intense, as there were a lot of different work-related tasks that needed my attention, and so there were only a few times I could really indulge in the many different sights of the city. With what time I had, however, I still managed to take in quite a lot of things big and small, and I hope to delve deeper into some of them in future blogposts. 

One of the highlights for me was the Church of Saint Rupert of Salzburg, das Ruprechtskirche, which is situated close by the Danube canal on the northern edge of the old city centre, the so-called Ring, where we were staying. The church is dedicated to the patron saint of Salzburg, the seventh-century bishop Rupert, who is also considered to be its founder. In the Later Middle Ages, he became the patron saint of salt miners and salt traders, and in art he is frequently depicted holding a salt cellar. Saint Rupert's Church in Vienna is believed to have been built close to where the salt traders had their stalls and headquarters during the medieval period. 

The Church of Saint Rupert became something of an obsession of mine during my days in Vienna. Partly, this obsession stems from my constant fascination with saints, and since I knew very little about Saint Rupert prior to my arrival in Austria, the tantalizing opportunity to learn more was impossible to resist. Another part of the obsession came from the fact that the church is believed to be the earliest church in Vienna - dated to the eighth century - and, more importantly, that part of the church retains some elements from the twelfth century, namely the tower and the northern wall. Despite these objectively good reasons for my fascination with the building, I think one aspect that was just as important was the rather ludicrous feeling of ownership that came from the chance act of stumbling across it as a friend and I were wending our way through the streets in search of a good place to eat. This happened on the first day, just shortly after the hotel check-in, and as I had not done much to prepare for my trip by reading up on Vienna's history, the sudden appearance of a church with unmistakably Romanesque elements - my favourite architectural style - was both arresting and exciting. 

Since the church is closed most days, except for Fridays and special occasions, I had to wait a full working week before being able to see the inside of the building. Although I was assured by another friend that the interior was much less interesting than the exterior, I could not help feeling a certain yearning to get inside, not because I expected the interior to be full of exciting details, but because I steadily built it up in my head as a unique chance to see something medieval in a city whose remaining architecture is mostly eighteenth-century and later. 

I did eventually get inside, and I managed to go twice. And while the church does not hold many exciting details, there turned out to be plenty of them to explore. For the present blogpost, however, the interior will have to wait, and I will instead provide you with some examples of the kind of pull that this building exerted on me, as I walked past it a few times during January afternoons under a waxing moon. In the combined light of the city and the moon, the Church of Saint Rupert acquired an aura of peace and stability, as of time having turned to stone, and it lay like a promise in the folds of city, in marked contrast to some of the more ostentatious buildings that have become famous hallmarks of Vienna. I have always preferred the Romanesque simplicity to the exorbitant Baroque, and although I also appreciate the latter in many of its forms, the different space offered by the Romanesque is always preferable to me - and I say this, knowing full well that Romanesque churches and cathedrals in their original state would have been both ostentatious and gaudy, and quite different from their current surviving forms. In short, the Church of Saint Rupert became something of a point of orientation for me during my days in Vienna, and I treasure the memories of its beauty and gravitas.  

My quest for Austrian poetry

 

Wednesday, I came back from a ten-day trip to Vienna. For the most part, it was a work-stay, where I and some colleagues spent our time preparing for a workshop in the city, and giving each other feedback on drafts of articles and applications. Luckily, however, there was still time to do some extracurricular activities, and my days were marked by a quest for books. Whenever I am in a country whose language I can read, I want to buy some reading materials, both as a souvenir and as a way to learn more about the country. Moreover, books are also excellent for establishing a stronger bond to the country in question by reading them in various locations, something which always makes me feel more connected with the surroundings, be it a city, a part of the wilderness, or the country in general. 

When I arrived in Vienna, I had not read any Austrian literature, so I sought out some bookshops to acquire a volume of poetry. In most cases, when embarking on the book-world of a new country, poetry is my first port of call, both because it is a genre of writing that I deeply love, but also because poetry sometimes catches nuances in a culture in a way that novels do not. This time, however, there was also a practical aspect to my focus on poetry, as I had packed a small suitcase and could only negotiate a few new purchases. The lack of space in my luggage further narrowed down my options, as large volumes of collected poetry were out of the question. 

The quest started well, or so I thought. At the bookshop Morawa - which I was recommended by a friend - I communicated my needs in a very poor German, which reminded me that I was out of practice, but also that when searching for specific words, my brain slides into Spanish, which makes the situation much worse. The situation was also hampered by my complete lack of knowledge about Austrian poetry. In any case, I was shown a thin book with poems by H. C. Artmann, and I left the bookshop thinking that I had now found something that could accompany me in my exploration of Viennese cafés. Unfortunately, however, I later realised that the book in question was a posthumous selection from various collections, and not an original unit. Personally, I do not like such anthologies, and I do not count them as standalone books. Consequently, my quest started again, and it led me through several bookshops without yielding any satisfactory results. Luckily, on my second-to-last full day, I happened to pass by another bookshop that I had not seen before, Franz Leo & Comp., and walked in. By this time, I had exercised my German by repeated use, and I had also understood that I needed to be as clear as I could about the parameters of my quest. Yet despite these improvements, I have only the diligence of the two shopkeepers to thank for the book that finally ended my quest, namely a volume of the collected poetry by Ingeborg Bachmann, which was sufficiently non-voluminous to fit in my luggage. I left that bookshop in a state of elation.       

My quest for Austrian poetry brought me in contact with several of Vienna's bookshops, and these visits afforded me glimpses of the number of exciting books available there, so now I know that when going back, I need to bring a larger suitcase, and set aside more time to trawling the available vendors. 

Saint Sebastian in Vienna Cathedral

Today is the feast of Saint Sebastian, a saint with whom I am inexplicably fascinated - inexplicably because I cannot define exactly what fascinates me about him and his cult. While his historicity is widely regarded as doubtful at best, at least by modern scholars, his iconography has left a massive imprint in the history of medieval and early modern art. Part of the success of his cult - success here understood as longevity and widespread fame - can be explained by his status as a plague saint, a patronage that continued to be relevant in Europe throughout the Late Middle Ages and the Early Modern Period. Consequently, I am always happy to see a representation of Saint Sebastian on my travels, but very rarely surprised by such encounters. Today, I met him again. 

As I am writing this blogpost, I am in Vienna for a work trip, and this Saturday is the first day where I have been able to do some real sightseeing. One of the main sights that I wanted to see was the Vienna Cathedral, the Stephansdom, dedicated to Stephen Protomartyr, which was consecrated in 1147, ten years after the building work commenced. The cathedral is an overwhelming and beautiful building, with a lot of wonderful architectural and iconographical details, and one can easily get lost if one tries to see all of them. Since this is my first time in Vienna, and since most of my time has been taken up by work, I had not planned my visit very carefully, and ambled about the church space as someone coming into a different world, not really knowing what to expect. This kind of exploration by accident, as it were, has its benefits, because sometimes you see details that are not necessarily highlighted by the available literature. One such figure was that of Saint Sebastian, placed in a niche high above the floor of the nave, not difficult to notice yet also not difficult to miss. 

The beardless, contorted, perforated figure was a familiar sight. I have as yet found no information about when this figure was made, or by whom, but it looks perfectly in tune with the ideals of sixteenth-century Mannerism with its slightly exaggerated movements and bending bodies. In its iconography, the Sebastian figure in Vienna Cathedral follows the typical standard established in fifteenth-century Italy, and which continued to be followed well into the seventeenth century, and arguably into our own times. The figure was a lovely, if grotesque, reminder of the ubiquity of Sebastian's cult, and the iconographical continuity with which he is represented.