Ceremony & Setting in the Sacraments II

SECOND PART of 

copy of parts of Chapter IV from ‘NICOLAS POUSSIN & THE SEVEN SACRAMENTS’ 1968. PhD thesis ,

University

of

Edinburgh

, by Anthony S.G.Green. With new notes & comments in [  ]. The gist of the original footnotes, sometimes rather perfunctory, are included in the text in { }.

2. The triclinium & early Christian ritual in the Sacraments.

[A substantial part of this appears in revised (&, I believe, improved) form in my book ‘Nicolas Poussin paints the Seven Sacraments twice’, Paravail, 2000. Its starting point is the well-known article by Anthony Blunt, The triclinium in religious art, Journal of the Warburg Institute, II, 1938-1939, pp 271 ff. After reading through the sources he mentioned, I added one more: by the Jesuit J. Burlengerius (Boulenger) De Convivii libri quatuor.

Lyon

, 1627. Reprinted in J.Graevius. Thesaurus Antiquitatum Romanum, XII,

Leiden

, 1699 & a careful reading of J.B.Casale’s on ancient rites, the 2^nd edition, 1681, which is a brilliant work of condensation and summary of much important contemporary writing. Many happy hours in The British Museum Reading Room, during University vacations, and in term-time, The National Library of Scotland and the invaluable

University

of

Edinburgh Library

.

I omit the summary of the history of the literary sources, beginning with the revival of Vitruvius, G. Mercuriale’s, De Arte Gymnastica of 1569, with later editions in 1573 and the B.M.’s 1601 which I used. 

The main thrust of the thesis was towards restoring to Poussin what was almost everywhere being denied him in the post-WWII years, that the paintings had any serious connection with religious thought. Poussin’s mind was submitted to a process of ideological x-ray and found to be rationalistic, probably libertin, formalistic, Stoical, and antiquarian. The usual sources that had been cited were the well-known classical Roman sarcophagi with the Death of Meleager and Renaissance painting, which tended to support this view. Thus his mind was supposed far removed from irrational, mystical, typological, superstitious Baroque religiosity.

This was, in my view, a crippled position from which to write about the paintings of the Seven Sacraments. As it turned out, with a little research, important sources both visual and literary for the paintings were certainly to be found in Jesuit inspired book-illustrations of the Sacraments, in the illustrations of those remains of early Christian antiquity regarded as holy relics, the catacomb paintings and sarcophagi, in G.Bosio’s Roma Sotterranea; and possibly in the mosaics in S.Maria Maggiore and the wall-paintings in S.Paolo fuori le Mura. That some of these were dependent on drawings in Cassiano dal Pozzo’s Museum Cartaceum, I did not then know. It will now be seen how much of the imagery of the Sacraments paintings that had been ascribed to pure antiquarianism, to satisfy the supposed desires of his patrons, was in fact inspired by an antiquarianism that served definite purposes in the Propaganda Fide of the Counter-Reformation, especially in the Biblical commentaries and the closely related antiquarian discourse of the Jesuits and Oratorians.

It was several years before I realized that this research, while showing another side to Poussin’s sources, did not address the more fundamental issue, that it is doubtful whether what was found by this kind of x-ray technique was indeed the mind of the painter. It can, in my view, only do so, when it traces how the source material is brought to bear on the process of painting. That issue was everywhere evaded.

Now, as they say, read on.]

The additional plates in the later editions of De Arte Gymnastica were included to illustrate an addendum to the text. Mercuriale showed that the literature on the triclinium had become very extensive since his first edition. He mentions by name a number of Jesuits who had adopted his ideas for the illustration of Gospel scenes. The Cardinal of

Toledo

and Jean Maldonat [Maldonatus, S.J.] in particular had striven to introduce the [triclinium] motif to painters, who were reluctant to use this new iconography for their paintings. [Blunt’s view that it was rare in painting because it might have been heterodox, won’t hold. The Jseuits promoted it.] Later at the beginning of the seventeenth century, one of Maldonat’s pupils, Louis Richeôme, continued the struggle to introduce the motif to painters. Mercuriale also mentioned the work of Fulvio Orsini, the Farnese librarian. Orsini had edited one of the most famous treatises on the triclinium, the De Triclinio of the Spanish Jesuit, Pedro Ciacon (Ciacconius) in 1599, with some additions of his own. Ciacon had died in 1581. He, like Mercuriale, was one of the Farnese circle of antiquarians in

Rome

, having worked as  a theologian at the

Vatican

in his later years.{For antiqaaurianism of this period see E.Mandowsky & C.Mitchell, Pirro Ligorio’s Roman Antiquities,

London

, 1963, and for much bibliographical material. Mercuriale might have been listed by them as one of the members of the Farnese circle, on his own testimony – p.89 of the 1610 edition}. Mercuriale comments at greater length on the writing of Alfonso Salmeron, another Spanish Jesuit, one of St Ignatius Loyola’s original ten companions {Mercuriale, pp 88-89}. Salmeron after a long and active career, had finally settled down in

Naples

and in the last fifteen years of his life wrote his Commentarii in Evangelicam Historiam [a Gospel commentary as History, in related form to that adopted by the Oratorian Cardinal Baronio’s Annales Ecclesiatici, 1590.]  Salmeron died in 1588, seven years after Ciacon. {There is a summary of P.Ribadaneira’s account of Alfonso Salmeron prefaced to A.Salmeronis Toletani…, Commentarii inn Evangelicam historiam … Cologne, 1602. [The edition I read from]} His comments on the triclinium in relation to the feasts of the Bible are lengthy and similar in many respects to those of Ciacon. It is difficult to discern the priority of these two. Mercuriale pretended to believe that Salmeron’s work was independent of his own, and therefore provided confirmation of its validity. [Footnote omitted, already covered.] Another treatise similar to salmeron’s was that of Boulenger (Burlengerius). He was a French Jesuit, a controversialist, who had been involved in controversy concerning the Eucharist. His treatise, De Convivii of 1627, is one of the lengthiest accounts of the subject, and like Mercuriale’s book deals with many aspects of ancient eating habits.

The Jesuits had be primarily concerned with the interpretation of the feasts in the Bible, and of the Last Supper and the Feast in the House of Simon in particular. Mercuriale’s purpose had been a medical one and his addendum in his later edition merely summarized the arguments of the theologians. His intention was plainly to confirm his general argument about the triclinium. Theirs was to arrive at the theological meaning of the Gospel texts.

Mercuriale’s treatise was one of the main points of departure for the dissemination of the triclinium motif in

Europe

, and (according to his own account, it was the first). The use to which it was put was not perhaps what he had originally anticipated. His antiquarianism was translated ino counter-reformation terms. Its wholesale adoption in Jesuit Biblical commentary demonstrates that antiquarianism and religious thought were not exclusive categories in the Counter-Reformation period. For the religious they were one and the same thing. Mercuriale;’s comments in the addendum also show that it was the Jesuits above all who wished to propagate the new religious iconography among painters, in fulfillment of the Council of Trent Decree on the Arts, 25^th Session. This insisted that pictures should provide a truthful account of Biblical history and that the clergy should take an active part in decisions about iconography. Poussin’s dependence on this tradition [the use of the triclinium] is therefore not proof of his indifference to Christianity, or of a cold, antiquarian detachment, but of his involvement in a project dear to the

counter-reformation

Church

and to the Jesuits in particular. This is not intended to imply tht Poussin adopted a Jesuit point of view. The influence of the Jesuits on Poussin can only be seen in terms of the results of their participation in Christian humanism. Nevertheless Poussin’s Sacraments cannot be abstracted from their environment and Jesuit writing on antiquities was an important part of the culture of the seventeenth century.

[The detailed discussion of the triclinium motif & the following section 3 on Penitence and foot-washing ceremonies appear in revised form in my Poussin’s Sacraments book. I will add to this soon the long section 4 “Poussin’s typology” which was largely omitted from the book, since it has much to do with the Moses pictures and Egyptian antiquities.]

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