Thursday, April 24, 2003

Weekly Art History Lesson: Still mourning the loss of linkage to JAMA’s weekly art history lesson. So, with yet more apologies to Dr. Southgate, here’s another Medpundit attempt at a substituion.

This week’s selection was inspired by a patient I recently had in the hospital who was hallucinating. Or, as she preferred to put it, having “vivid day dreams.” She told me one morning that Titian (1485-1576) had come into her room the night before and had dinner with her. I couldn’t resist asking her what he was like. “Egotistical, but interesting,” was her answer.

That is, in all likelihood, an apt description of the man. He was no starving artist, but one in great demand by the rich and powerful -noblemen, popes, and kings. One contemporary described him as the man who decorated “all of Venice, or rather all of Italy, and other parts of the world.” His career spanned over eighty years, beginning when he was apprenticed to an artist at the age of 10, and only ending at his death from plague at the age of 91.



Painted around 1515, The Madonna of the Cherries is one of his early, independent works, when he was no longer working as a member of someone else’s studio. It shows the Madonna in the usual loving pose with her Infant. At the lower right hand corner is a second child, John the Baptist. In the background are two, darker figures. To the left, her husband, Joseph. To the right, the Baptist’s father, Zacharias.

Mary holds in her left hand a bunch of cherries. With her right hand, she supports the Christ child as he thrusts yet more cherries upon her, in the typical exuberant fashion of a toddler. Cherries were once a common accompaniment to images of the Madonna and Child. They were considered the fruit of Paradise and a symbol of virtue. They play a prominent role in the Appalachian folk ballad, The Cherry Tree Carol, which portrays what might have happened when Mary told Joseph she was pregnant. As they walk through an orchard, she asks him if he would pick some cherries for her, because she’s hungry and she's going to have a baby. His reaction is all too human. In a rage, he tells her to have the father of her baby gather her cherries. The unborn Child intervenes and makes the cherry trees bow down to offer her their fruit. Seeing this, Joseph suddenly understands the mystery before him and asks for her forgiveness, and God’s.

In the Madonna of the Cherries everyone seems to be contemplating their own personal miracles. Zaccharias gazes intently on the miracle of his son, conceived in his old age, while Mary’s sole focus is on her Child. John the Baptist, like any child of two, is focused on those cherries. But it’s Joseph who is the most interesting. He looks not at his stepson, but at his wife, and not with anger or amazement, but with what can only be described as love and devotion. Of all the saints, Joseph is perhaps the most deserving of that title. It couldn’t have been easy going through life known by his neighbors and relations as a cuckold. Then, to have the child he supported so devotedly grow up to be an itinerant preacher spouting crazy, new religious ideas. Well, that would be more than most people could bear. Yet, at least as legend has it, he remained a constant and devoted husband and step-parent.

Titian’s success lay largely in his ability to portray the mythic in realistic fashion, to bring the legends of religion and mythology to life and make their lessons relevant to his viewers. In The Madonna of the Cherries he succeeds beautifully in bringing home the lessons of the story behind the Holy Family.

And my patient? Her equally realistic daydreams were caused by her medication. All it took was a little adjustment, and they were gone. No more dinners with Titian. Now she's complaining of boredom.

UPDATE: A reader makes this point about The Cherry Tree Carol:

Please note that The Cherry Tree Carol is of medieval origin. Appalachia, closer to its Anglo Saxon roots that the rest of us, inherited this lovely carol--with its understandably irritable Joseph--from its forbears.

Quite true. And if you'd like to learn more about the Anglo-Saxon roots of American folkways, I highly recommend Albion's Seed.

 

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