Now synonymous with Russian music, the name “Tchaikovsky” once attracted controversy in his native country and beyond. Listeners ever since his lifetime (1840-1893) have tussled over how Russian or Western his music is, how innovative or traditional it is, and how much it reveals his personal life. From his ill-fated marriage to his untimely death, Tchaikovsky’s life has been persistently read into his music, but is music just a diary of feeling? What made Tchaikovsky remarkable, and how did he come to compose some of the world’s best-loved music? These five foundational compositions track the volatile trajectory of a tragic genius who revolutionized classical music while wrestling with his own internal

1. Piano Concerto No. 1 in B♭ Minor, Op. 23 and the Triumph Over Rejection

Firstly, it’s important to understand the conditions for Russian composers in the mid-19th century, when Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, born in 1840 and initially trained as a lawyer, began to write music.

No Russian composers were known worldwide, nor even across much of Russia itself, until the success of the opera composer Mikhail Glinka in the first half of the 19th century. By and large, Russian composition encompassed folk and sacred music, whose composers were not as prominent as those of classical music or what is sometimes called art music (such as operas, symphonies, concerti, and sonatas), to be played for contemplation, leisure, and entertainment.

The pianist and composer Anton Rubinstein is a good example of the exodus of musicians from Russia at this time due to lack of opportunity, having made his name in Western Europe where patrons and institutions were more readily available to support music. Returning to Russia in mid-century, Rubinstein was determined to change the musical landscape. He set up Moscow‘s Russian Musical Society in 1859 and the St. Petersburg Conservatory in 1862, where he and his brother Nikolai taught, among others, the young Tchaikovsky.

Tchaikovsky’s First Piano Concerto was written for Nikolai Rubinstein, a piano virtuoso like his brother (concerti are traditionally three-movement showpieces written for one solo instrument backed by an orchestra). But Rubinstein initially disparaged the piece and refused to give its debut performance. Possibly, this was to do with the unorthodox but distinctive horn introduction to the first movement, which takes place not in the piece’s key of B♭ minor but in its relative major, D♭ major. Rubinstein branded the piece messy, derivative, and, worst of all, unplayable.

Tchaikovsky (refusing to submit to Rubinstein’s demands to alter the piece) sought another pianist, Hans von Bülow, who ended up premiering the piece in Boston in 1875, where it was a great success. Although Rubinstein soon came around, the incident with the First Piano Concerto was just the first time Tchaikovsky would find greater success abroad than at home and stir up debates about what Russian composition ought to sound like.

2. Swan Lake and the Melancholy of Forbidden Love

Both Tchaikovsky’s most famous work and one of the most famous ballets of all time, Swan Lake tells the tragic tale of the love between Prince Siegfried and Odette, a beautiful woman who has been turned into a swan by an evil sorcerer.

While trying to break the curse, Siegfried is led astray by Odile, the sorcerer’s daughter and Odette’s doppelgänger. The ballet’s apotheosis is Odette’s heartbroken vow to die following Siegfried’s betrayal rather than remain a swan for eternity, and Siegfried’s resolution to join her in plunging into the lake.

Swan Lake unites a timeless story of impossible love with the enchantments of fairy tale, a visually entrancing spectacle (with particularly demanding roles for the ballerina portraying Odette and, often the same person, Odile), and some of Tchaikovsky’s most beguiling music. That said, it was not a roaring success on its premiere in Moscow in 1877. Initial critics took issue with the ballet in part because it was a little too German for their liking.

Swan Lake did have various German influences. Reports differ as to the author of the ballet’s original libretto, but the story has much in common with German fairytales, and with other nineteenth-century ballets from France, for instance, which tended to be set in Germany. This reflects Germany’s prominence in this period within the Europe-wide movement towards rediscovering national myths, legends, and fairytale or folk material—Richard Wagner‘s four-opera cycle, Der Ring des Nibelungen, was a notorious and epic revival of German legend.

Tchaikovsky was influenced by Wagner’s operas, which feature a hero named Siegfried who unwittingly betrays his true love, and which elsewhere (in Lohengrin and Parsifal) use the swan as a symbol of innocence, purity, and sacrifice. Like Wagner, Tchaikovsky dotted leitmotifs throughout his score, associating a passage of music with a specific character or idea, even giving each main character their own key. The plaintive Swan Theme, played on the oboe in B minor (the key associated with the Swan Maidens), is now one of the most beloved passages in Tchaikovsky’s oeuvre, but at the time contributed to critical opinion that the work was too Wagnerian.

Another German influence on the ballet was Wagner’s friend and patron, King Ludwig II of Bavaria. Ludwig styled himself as a Swan King during his increasingly reclusive life, bedecking his castles (including Neuschwanstein, or New Swan Rock) with swan imagery drawn from fairytales and Wagner’s operas. The association was later compounded when Ludwig, in mysterious circumstances, died by drowning in a lake.

Tchaikovsky may have seen Ludwig as a prototype for Prince Siegfried, who is not only enamored by a swan maiden but, at the beginning of the ballet, highly averse to marriage. In Ludwig’s case, and Tchaikovsky’s own, though neither could voice it openly, this aversion to marriage was a result of their homosexuality, and audiences of Swan Lake have long interpreted its story of thwarted love as a coded expression of gay desire (Tchaikovsky’s homosexuality was an open secret in his lifetime, more on which below). This has led to reinterpretations such as Matthew Bourne’s 1995 all-male staging of the ballet.

3. Eugene Onegin and the Reflection of Life’s Pathos

Tchaikovsky tended to work quickly once he had fixed on an idea. Full of excitement, he completed Swan Lake in a year. It took even less time to write Eugene Onegin, an opera first performed in 1879. In 1877, he wrote to his brother that he had more or less drafted the entire outline in one sleepless night after someone suggested he adapt Alexander Pushkin‘s novel of the same name. By early 1878, the whole opera was written.

In choosing a magnum opus by Pushkin, one of Russia’s most revered literary figures, Tchaikovsky signaled a dedication to Russian source material that may have been intended to contradict some of his detractors.

Since around 1862, the year Anton Rubinstein founded the St. Petersburg Conservatory, the Russian music world had been disrupted by a group of young, idealistic, self-taught composers known as The Five (or, as their champion critic Vladimir Stasov crowned them, the moguchaya kuchka, or Mighty Handful). These five men, Mily Balakirev, César Cui, Modest Mussorgsky, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, and Alexander Borodin, wanted to challenge the primacy of Western compositional techniques and steer Russian music towards the current of musical nationalism then beginning to spread throughout Europe.

As mentioned already, Russian musicians at mid-century often found their fortunes abroad, and favored a cosmopolitan approach to composition. The Five took aim at academic musicians, such as Tchaikovsky, whose talents had been nurtured in conservatories founded on Western traditions. They called for Russian music which incorporated folk material, reinvigorating tunes collected from across the Russian empire, and following programs (that is, being based on specific texts) about Russian stories and characters.

Eugene Onegin was not Tchaikovsky’s first opera nor his first attempt at tackling a Russian story, but it was the first time he had felt truly inspired by his text. Friends and family remarked that Eugene Onegin was an unusual choice for an opera, since it was relatively lacking in action, but Tchaikovsky insisted that Pushkin’s poetry would serve him well in crafting a work of high art.

Seemingly no more than a tale of a pair of jealous lovers, a fatal duel (an echo of Pushkin’s own life), and a later meeting between Onegin and his love, Tatyana, who has become a rich woman after rejecting him, the opera is full of passion and pathos. It also seemed to resonate with the composer’s own life. During its composition, he received a love letter from a former student, Antonina Miliukova, resembling a scene in the opera in which Tatyana sends Onegin a love letter. Preoccupied with a worry that he, like his opera’s hero, might act “incomparably basely” towards someone who loved him, he married Antonina.

The marriage was over long before Eugene Onegin premiered. Marriage, attractive to “shut the mouths” of those whispering about his homosexuality but otherwise an impossible prospect, caused Tchaikovsky a nervous breakdown, and the two lived together for under two months before separating.

Eugene Onegin may have been a series of episodes centered on a small cast of characters and their emotional lives, rather than high drama, but Tchaikovsky was drawn to the story because of the simplicity and universality of these emotions. Although it once again took off outside Russia first (particularly under the baton of Gustav Mahler), it is now widely performed both inside and outside Russia, testifying to its composer’s ability to bridge the divergent schools of thought about composition in his day.

4. The Nutcracker as a Bittersweet Escape From Reality

Many of Tchaikovsky’s works, including an early version of Swan Lake, had their origins in compositions for his family, with whom he was very close. His most family-oriented work, though, is the ballet The Nutcracker, indelibly associated with Christmas for children across the globe.

First performed in 1892, The Nutcracker was based on a story by Alexandre Dumas which was itself an adaptation of an original story by E. T. A. Hoffmann. While Hoffmann’s stories often have an undercurrent of the uncanny which might disturb us as adults, The Nutcracker and the Mouse King was nevertheless full of delectable delights just waiting to be put on the stage, from the title character (a model soldier which comes to life) to a battle between the toy soldiers and the Mouse King, to the heroine Clara’s travels in the Land of Sweets.

The Nutcracker is in the ballet-féerie, or fairy-ballet tradition, in which emphasis tends to fall on spectacular stage effects and sumptuous, sugary accompanying music. In 1924, fellow Russian composer Igor Stravinsky defended The Nutcracker against the negative connotations of ballet-féerie, calling its orchestration “so delicate and so original” (Hess 2001, 190). He went on: “Tchaikovsky is very easy, and for this reason he has been considered common. In reality, he is the most Russian composer of all the musicians of my country.”

Certainly, The Nutcracker contains Tchaikovsky’s most “easy” music, and has made him “common” in the sense of widely appreciated, especially after much of its score featured in the 1940 Disney movie Fantasia. The ballet is replete with melodies which demonstrate the composer’s unparalleled ear for a tune, from the divertissements (short, light pieces of music) representing different sweets to the “Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy.” This latter piece is notable for featuring the celesta, a keyboard instrument with a bell-like sound which Tchaikovsky had heard while traveling in Paris.

It was also in Paris, in 1891, that Tchaikovsky heard of the death of his only sister, Sasha, and this may have had an influence on his representation of the young girl Clara in The Nutcracker, as he remembered idyllic festive seasons from his own childhood. There is real pathos in the pas de deux performed by the Sugar Plum Fairy and her cavalier, who act as stand-ins for the Nutcracker and Clara in her childish imaginings, as she realizes her adventures have been but the dream of an enchanted Christmas Eve; all to the tune of one of Tchaikovsky’s most heart-rending melodies.

5. Symphony No. 6 in B Minor, Op. 74 and the Haunting Pathétique Requiem

No piece in Tchaikovsky’s oeuvre has invited more speculation about the links between life and work than his Symphony No. 6, often known by its subtitle, the Pathétique Symphony. But even starting with the title, we run into problems of interpretation. The French word pathétique, conveying pathos and tragedy, was a translation of the Russian word pateticheskaya, which more closely suggests high emotions and passion. Should we hear the piece as simply passionate, or specifically tragic?

Then, still before we get to the music, we have the symphony’s dedication to Tchaikovsky’s nephew Vladimir Davydov (nicknamed Bob). In the last five years of his life, Tchaikovsky grew especially close to Bob, writing besotted letters which included lines like: “If you do not want to write, at least spit on a piece of paper, put it in an envelope, and send it to me,” and “The thought that this paper is going to be in your hands fills me with joy and brings tears to my eyes.”

It has been common to interpret the Sixth Symphony as an expression of Tchaikovsky’s homosexual desires. E. M. Forster interpolated it throughout his gay novel Maurice, published in 1970, with one character jokingly calling it the Pathic Symphony, a tongue-in-cheek reference to an archaic classical term for gay men.

Moreover, listeners have heard the symphony as representing Tchaikovsky’s anguish over these feelings, specifically because he and Bob could not be together, and more generally because he could not be openly gay.

This accounts, some say, for the symphony’s first movement interpolating funereal music from the Russian Orthodox tradition, its devastating fourth and final movement, marked adagio lamentoso, and its ending with the direction morendo, or “dying away.” It was unusual for the fourth movement to be slow, rather than the second, as customarily, and even more unusual for this fourth movement to end on a dying minor chord.

Other listeners, such as the critic Richard Taruskin, have argued against over-determining the symphony in terms of Tchaikovsky’s homosexuality. The Russian Silver Age of the late 19th century was backed by the aristocracy, among whom homosexuality was prevalent and largely tolerated as long as it was discreet. Taruskin argues that this attitude was extended to artists they patronized, such as Tchaikovsky. The composer’s friends and family were aware of his orientation (his brother Modest was also, more openly, gay) and some have commented that, with the exception of the anguish over his marriage, Tchaikovsky lived a relatively comfortable, if covert, gay life.

For Taruskin, a far more important factor in responses to the Sixth Symphony (including reviews branding it hysterical and effeminate) was not the composer’s sexuality but his nationality. Accusations of effeminacy in the Sixth Symphony came largely from English-language reviewers, who found Tchaikovsky’s music too Russian. Meanwhile, we saw from the responses to Swan Lake that critics were more concerned with German influences than possible gay subtext.

Nonetheless, both sympathetic and hostile listeners continue to associate the Sixth Symphony with Tchaikovsky’s personal life because the composer died in suspicious circumstances just seven days after conducting its premiere in 1893. The symphony’s second performance shortly afterward was thus open to far more morbid interpretations, coupled with the ‘dying’ tones of the music itself, and these have continued to stick.

Officially, Tchaikovsky was said to have died of cholera after drinking unsafe, unboiled water at a restaurant. This was called into question at the time in Russia, perhaps partly because cholera was stigmatized as a lower-class disease and such a prominent cultural figure could not be seen to have succumbed to it. Some questioned how Tchaikovsky had obtained unsafe water at the restaurant during a cholera outbreak.

Rumors quickly spread that Tchaikovsky had either been poisoned or ordered to kill himself by a “court of honor” or the Tsar because of his homosexuality. However, the widespread tolerance of homosexuality among the aristocracy and those they patronized calls this theory into question, especially since, by 1893, Tchaikovsky was one of Russia’s foremost cultural representatives, having received an honorary doctorate from the University of Cambridge and conducted his music at the grand opening of the Carnegie Hall in New York.

Others suggest that Tchaikovsky killed himself because his feelings for Bob had become intolerable, an anguish audible in the Sixth Symphony, with its dedication to the unattainable beloved. But how did Tchaikovsky know where to obtain unsafe water and that it would certainly kill him? How can this be reconciled with a story Taruskin narrates of the composer, shortly after conducting the symphony’s premiere, rejecting the horrors of mortality and stating, “I feel I shall live a long time”?

Whatever the truth of Tchaikovsky’s untimely death aged just 53, which may never be definitively explained, the Sixth Symphony or Pathétique remains a bittersweet, exceptionally haunting work, regardless of whether we wish to hear it in light of his homosexuality, his turbulent relationship with Russian national identity, and his subsequent death, or whether we choose to just listen to the music.

Source

• Hess, Carol (2001). Manuel de Falla and Modernism in Spain, 1898–1936.

The name Vincent van Gogh brings to mind intense and vividly colored paintings, but it also conjures the image of a tormented man cutting off his ear with a razor inside his house. Both images are true and overlapping, as this Dutch artist continued painting until his last days before committing suicide. The chaotic paintings made during his final weeks, particularly the work Wheatfield with Crows, appear to have been painted by a madman who knew that his end was close. But is this a historical fact?

The Last Weeks in Auvers-sur-Oise

Van Gogh suffered his first mental breakdown in December 1888. After having an argument with his friend and peer Paul Gauguin, the Dutch artist cut off his ear with a razor in his Yellow House in Arles. He was admitted into the hospital the next morning but had little recollection of the whole event. As his mental state became more unstable during the next few months, Van Gogh decided to willingly admit himself into a psychiatric hospital in Provence in May 1889. He stayed at the asylum under the supervision of professionals until May 1890, after which he moved to a small artists’ village near Paris called Auvers-sur-Oise, his final destination. In Auvers, Van Gogh lived in a rented room in an inn, and his health was supervised by a homeopathic physician named Paul Gachet.

Van Gogh would visit Gachet multiple times a week, so the two became close friends, especially as the former suspected that the doctor was suffering from the same “nervous ailment” as him. His days in Auvers were filled with productivity as he immersed himself in painting. Doctor Gachet encouraged him to keep working, and being fascinated with the beauty of Auvers, Van Gogh clearly agreed, as he stated in a letter to his brother Theo, “Auvers is decidedly very beautiful. So much so that I think it’ll be more advantageous to work than not to work, despite all the bad luck that’s to be foreseen with paintings.”

The artist continued planning paintings, making small sketches in his letters and looking for new subjects throughout his time in this village, and most of the works executed here are landscapes capturing the character of this northern village. But despite making efforts to be productive and take care of his health, Van Gogh was dreadfully aware of his psychological problems that had persisted despite his stay at the asylum.

His early days in Auvers were optimistic as he wrote to his brother, “I still believe that it’s above all an illness of the south that I caught, and that the return here will be enough to dispel all that.” However, this optimism disappeared quickly. Van Gogh had moved to Auvers toward the end of May, and only two months later, on July 27, he walked into a field and shot himself in the chest with a revolver. Wounded, he managed to walk back to his room at the inn, only to pass away on his bed two days later, on July 29. He was 37 years old at that time. Van Gogh’s death by suicide has remained a long-discussed historical incident, and his paintings from Auvers are often viewed as containing clues of this tragedy.

Vincent’s Turbulent Wheatfields

Not only did Van Gogh continue painting during his final weeks in Auvers, but he also attempted to experiment with different formats and wider canvases. Some of the major works that the artist made during this period include a series of twelve paintings depicting a wheatfield made on canvases measuring 20 in x 40 in. The painting Wheatfield under Thunderclouds is a famous example from this series, composed of serene blues and greens, depicting a peaceful yet empty landscape. Van Gogh described these paintings in a letter to Theo from July 10, writing, “They’re immense stretches of wheatfields under turbulent skies, and I made a point of trying to express sadness, extreme loneliness.”

The canvas that is frequently cited as the most prominent indication of Van Gogh’s declining mental state is Wheatfield with Crows, made in July 1890. Often understood as his last painting, it depicts a turbulent landscape of wheatfields with crows flying under a dark blue, stormy sky. The harsh brushstrokes, combined with saturated, intense colors, give this painting an unsettled effect, with the deep blue of the sky contrasting with the bright yellow wheatfield and the green-and-red pathway. The winding path appears to be a dead end, and the crows flying overhead appear ominous. These turbulent wheatfields comprise an important part of his oeuvre, shedding light on his artistic development that persisted during his final weeks. However, these works were not the only paintings that Van Gogh made in Auvers.

Other Paintings From Auvers

Right after describing the wheatfield canvases in his letter to Theo, Van Gogh mentioned another painting he was working on called Daubigny’s Garden. It shows a blooming garden at the house of the French painter Charles-François Daubigny. The painting is a serene landscape, flooded with vivid shades of green. The forms and brushstrokes are dynamic and exhibit a lot of character, typical of Van Gogh. He painted another similar canvas as well as a smaller study of this scene during this period.

With calmer brushwork, lighter colors, and a peaceful scene depicting the restful beauty of nature, these paintings of Daubigny’s garden elicit an effect distinct from Wheatfield with Crows. They are less popular than the latter but shed light on an important period in Van Gogh’s artistic development. In addition to the garden, Van Gogh also painted several portraits in Auvers, including two of Doctor Gachet and one of his daughter Marguerite Gachet, as well as two paintings depicting Gachet’s garden. But the work that researchers actually consider to be the last painting Van Gogh ever made is called Tree Roots. This work is made on a wide canvas and is composed of strong lines and vivid colors, adding visual intensity to the subject of exposed roots and trunks of trees entangled on a slope.

Paintings as a Signal of His Death?

It is true that Van Gogh was suffering toward the end of his life. He had poured almost ten years into a career as an artist and produced around 2000 paintings and drawings, and yet, he had managed to have only one major sale in his lifetime: The Red Vineyard, made in 1888. Unable to earn a living from his profession, Van Gogh struggled financially and had to rely on his brother. Theo was working at the art dealership Boussod, Valadon & Cie in Paris and earned enough to support his household as well as his brother. But unhappy with his circumstances, he began toying with the idea of leaving his position to start his own business as an art dealer in July 1890. This presented the fear of financial instability for both Theo’s family and Vincent, which was aggravated due to the ill health of Theo, his wife Jo, and their baby during this time. Van Gogh had expressed his regret about being a financial burden to Theo on multiple occasions, and these new circumstances must have intensified his anxiety.

It is possible that Van Gogh’s anguish during this period translated into his work, but there is no clear evidence that his last paintings hint toward his death. For example, the paintings of wheatfields, which are often cited as a clear indication of his impending suicide, don’t have a singular interpretation. Despite appearing chaotic and signifying loneliness, Van Gogh also considered them to be visual expressions of what he considered “healthy and fortifying about the countryside.” Moreover, exploring paintings apart from the wheatfields paints a different picture, as works such as Daubigny’s Garden and Marguerite Gachet in the Garden appear calmer and more peaceful.

This mystery is particularly highlighted when we look at Van Gogh’s letters from this period, which point toward a productive artist experimenting with new formats and searching for a studio space to continue his practice. In a letter from June 3, 1890, he wrote, “But anyway, I live from day to day – the weather is so fine. And my health is good, I go to bed at 9 o’clock but I get up at 5 o’clock most of the time.” Viewing Wheatfield with Crows in particular as the final canvas signaling his death is only a popularly held belief that supports the narrative of the tortured artist. In reality, it is difficult to say when Van Gogh had begun planning his suicide, or if he did so at all.

Despite the visual and textual sources available to us, it is not possible to fully understand Van Gogh’s mental state during the days before his death. He may have expressed his anguish through his paintings, but that is only one interpretation. It is even more improbable to recognize what the artist was thinking or feeling when painting a particular canvas. It is only after his work became popular posthumously that the myth about his last paintings as visual suicide notes was amplified. The actual story of Vincent van Gogh is more complex and layered. Based on his letters from his final weeks, his mental state fluctuated constantly. On good days, he was optimistic about the future, but during his difficult days, he often expressed hopelessness and uncertainty. Nevertheless, despite his struggles, Van Gogh’s legacy is not merely a sensationalized story of a mad and tormented genius, but rather, his legacy consists of a massive oeuvre marked with technical innovation and a unique style that forever changed the course of European modern art.

St. Peter’s Basilica, with its huge dome and imposing façade, sits behind hundreds of statued colonnades in the Piazza San Pietro, welcoming all into Vatican City. Today, it’s one of the most recognizable buildings in the world, drawing millions of tourists and pilgrims every year.

However, its design and construction were constantly threatened by the sack of Rome, a rapid succession of popes (21, to be exact), and a constantly shifting artistic vision brought by the several major architects who headed the 120-year project.

What Is St. Peter’s Basilica?

St. Peter’s Basilica is a Catholic Basilica that stands directly over St. Peter’s tomb in Vatican City. During Pope Julius II’s reign (AD 1503-1513), the original St. Peter’s Basilica, built by Constantine in the 4th century AD, was crumbling. Because of the location’s importance, Julius II desired a replacement basilica. Known for his extraordinary patronage of the arts, Julius II wanted the new St. Peter’s to be an unparalleled monument to the Catholic Church’s Apostolic authority on Earth.

While the project outlasted Pope Julius II (and 20 other pontificates), his desire for a legendary monument was fulfilled. The Basilica dominates Rome’s prodigious skyline. Its dome, the largest in the world upon completion, points towards heaven. When viewing it from the Piazza San Pietro, one almost feels heaven pointing back. St. Peter’s is the product of 120 years of construction and many architects whose visions encapsulate the Renaissance’s humanistic ideals and the Baroque’s liturgical emphasis.

1. Donato Bramante (AD 1506-1514)

Donato Bramante was the architect Pope Julius II selected to begin the new St. Peter’s. Born in Urbino to farmers, Bramante trained as a painter at the legendary Umbrian school before going to Milan, then Rome, later becoming the papal architect. By the time Julius II tasked Bramante with designing St. Peter’s, he was one of the foremost names in High Renaissance architecture.

Renaissance ideals emanated from Bramante’s design. Valuing perfect symmetry, Bramante opted for a Greek cross with four arms of equal length, rather than the disproportionate Latin cross with one arm stretched. Inside, the Greek cross’s harmony elevated the human experience of the liturgy; the altar was centralized rather than at the front, allowing all to participate equally. A small dome sat atop each of the cross’s arms, with a giant, Pantheon-like dome crowning the convergence, and it was centralized, with all sides conjoining directly over St. Peter’s tomb. This represented the completeness of Divine harmony and the centrality of the Apostolic Church. Sadly, the aged Bramante died over a century before St. Peter’s completion.

2. Raphael (1514-1520 AD)

Bramante died in 1514, a year after Pope Julius II. The next Pope, Leo X, was more interested in general artistic patronage than in preserving Bramante’s design. He gave St. Peter’s to a team of architects, including a young prodigy, Raphael, another Umbrian-trained artist.

Raphael’s unique voice quickly became the dominant one. He appreciated Bramante’s idealism, but recognized some practical flaws in his design. St. Peter’s was a church, after all, not simply an architectural temple. He stretched the cross’s eastern arm into a long nave, changing Bramante’s Greek cross into a Latin one. The extended nave allowed for longer liturgical processions and more visibility for the lay congregation. It also provided more space for the myriad clergymen who would inevitably pack the Basilica.

Raphael’s practicality did not destroy Bramante’s idealism. He simply realized it into a usable design; the large, central dome still defined the structure, and most of the harmony remained. Unfortunately, Raphael died at 36, only six years into the project.

3. Antonio de Sangallo the Younger (AD 1536-1546)

It wasn’t until 1536 that Antonio De Sangallo the Younger was given full control of St. Peter’s. Political tensions were high. The Reformation roared, culminating in the sack of Rome, which slowed the construction and design of St. Peter’s Basilica to a near stop.

Once the tensions cooled, Pope Paul III wanted the Basilica finished. Sangallo, who trained under Bramante, was a well-known architect at the time of his appointment. His design synchronized Bramante’s centralized core with Raphael’s longer nave, while preserving the giant dome. Concerned with stabilizing such a monumental dome, Sangallo thickened the walls and added massive piers. He added some of his own flair as well, like a more elaborate façade and large corner towers.

While Sangallo attempted to preserve the best of his predecessor’s designs, he ultimately diluted much of the High Renaissance harmony and symmetry for practicality and systematization; Sangallo wanted to complete the Basilica, not ponder it. His design became ornate and heavy, with fortress-like walls, evidenced in his highly detailed wooden model, which still survives today. Sangallo’s laden design drew criticism from artists and architects, and its complexity slowed construction. Ultimately, Sangallo died with his vision unfulfilled and unrealized.

4. Michelangelo Buonarroti (1546-1564)

Michelangelo was one of the loudest and most esteemed critics of Sangallo’s design. He thought St. Peter’s should return to the Renaissance idealism that he had by this time perfected through sculptures like David and paintings like those at the Sistine Chapel. Thus, when Pope Paul III selected Michelangelo to take over the project, he completely overhauled it.

Known as the best sculptor of the age, Michelangelo—who trained in the Florentine palace of the Magnificent Lorenzo de’ Medici—used his expertise to carve the Basilica as if it were out of a single block of marble. He returned to the harmonious Greek cross design, removing Bramante’s outer domes and stretching the central dome higher and wider than before. This, to the pious Michelangelo, presented the authority of God’s Church reaching towards the heavens from the very tomb of the apostle appointed by Christ himself.

Supporting the titanic dome while retaining its beauty was a puzzle Michelangelo’s predecessors failed to solve. Bramante’s dome was smaller and required less support, and Sangallo’s dome was supported by thick walls and ugly support systems. Michelangelo, combining his engineering expertise and keen aesthetic eye, connected multiple support systems in ways that had not been seen before. He adopted the double-shelled dome structure of fellow Florentine Filippo Brunelleschi’s Florence Cathedral (separating the inner dome from the outer dome) to make St. Peter’s dome lighter and easier to support. Michelangelo thickened support columns while retaining their beauty and used chains as tension rings to ensure the dome did not expand and collapse over time.

Though Michelangelo died before the Basilica’s completion, his vision and design are primarily what we still see today.

5. Giacomo della Porta

After Michelangelo’s death in 1564, the management of St. Peter’s was given to Domenico Fontana and Giacomo Della Porta, with della Porta being the most notable. He was a pupil of Michelangelo and an influential sculptor and architect in his own right. He is responsible for some of the most definitive structures in Rome, such as the Gesù façade and the Villa Aldobrandini. 

Porta oversaw the completion of St. Peter’s dome. He stayed mostly faithful to his mentor’s design, only slightly altering the curvature to improve stability and ease construction. Porta ensured St. Peter’s Basilica retained the harmony and proportion of Michelangelo’s design. It’s thanks to his ability not to force his own ideas onto the Basilica that it retained the form we see today.

6. Carlo Maderno

Pope Paul V assigned St. Peter’s Basilica to Domenico Fontana’s nephew, Carlo Maderno. Maderno trained in Rome as a stucco worker and marble carver under his uncle. At the time of Maderno’s appointment, the Catholic Church had formally recognized beauty as a way to win Protestants back. This Counter-Reformation art formally shifted the zeitgeist from Renaissance humanism to the more liturgically focused Baroque.

Maderno again elongated the eastern nave to be more liturgically focused, shifting Michelangelo’s Greek cross to a Latin cross. His reasoning was similar to Raphael’s when changing Bramante’s cross: to make St. Peter’s not only the artistic and symbolic heart of the Church but a beating one.

The stretched eastern nave allowed for longer, more illustrious processions to the central altar; everything flows in Baroque architecture. It also opened the Basilica to accommodate larger crowds during major feasts like Christmas and Easter. This change emphasizes traveling the narrow path to Christ, rather than Bramante and Michelangelo’s equal pathways, which emphasized human experience.

Maderno widened the façade, placing defining Corinthian columns and pilasters, which added drama and depth, but also made Michelangelo’s dome slightly less prominent. Maderno also added a central balcony, the Loggia of the Blessings, from where the Pope addresses the world. Maderno, to the praise of some and the distaste of others, successfully transformed St. Peter’s into a liturgical drama. His design attitude reflected the Church’s: that perhaps Renaissance ideals placed a profane shroud over the sacred, and that only the liturgy could lift the veil.

Maderno was the final architect for St. Peter’s, overseeing its structural completion and its consecration under Pope Urban VIII.

7. Gian Lorenzo Bernini

While Maderno completed the Basilica, Gian Lorenzo Bernini is responsible for the dramatic way one approaches and experiences St. Peter’s today.

Bernini trained as a sculptor under his father, Pietro Bernini. By his teen years, he was considered a prodigy. His style was of the new Baroque style: theatrical and emotional, with a dramatic immediacy that clashed greatly with Renaissance restraint. He was the artist of the new era and the clear choice to finish St. Peter’s Square (Piazza San Pietro).

Bernini choreographed the experience of St. Peter’s Basilica into liturgical theater. Before Bernini, one would approach Maderno’s imposing eastern façade immediately: no gravitas, nothing uplifting you from the mundane Roman streets. Bernini changed this. He turned Piazza San Pietro into a large oval courtyard encircled by huge Roman columns. Sublime statues of early Christian martyrs, founders, and eminent figures line the top of the colonnades like maternal arms protecting the faithful within and welcoming all without into the epicenter of God’s kingdom on earth.

As one walks through the gates into the Basilica, a towering baldachin (canopy) can be seen in the distance, enshrining the central high altar. The bronze draws one’s eye as it juxtaposes with the bright interior. As one gets closer, details emerge; spiraling columns flanked with angels reach, almost grow, upward. Bernini’s baldachin bridges the heavenly glory of Michelangelo’s dome above and the earthly primacy of the Church in St. Peter’s tomb below. Between sits the high altar, the table where the two become one in Communion when the wafer is consecrated to become Christ Himself. Consecration is the reason for the liturgy and the apotheosis of Bernini’s drama.

From Gombrich to Pollock, several books have made waves and started conversations in the art world. In the rich tapestry of discussions on art, there is something fascinating about entering the minds of artists themselves. In written form, many artists have given their interesting inputs on life, art, creativity, and society.

If you enjoy a good book about art, why not try some writings about artists in their own words? Here is a list of some iconic books written by famous artists to add to your reading list.

1. “The Interaction of Color” by Joseph Albers

To start things off, let’s go with a classic. Joseph Albers’ The Interaction of Color is a well-known work among painters, students, and professors—so many people even read the book before becoming familiar with Alber’s own work as an artist. First widely published in 1971, at a time when painting was losing space to the innovations in conceptual art, The Interaction of Color was a work that took color theory to new depths. Filling a complicated space between technique and philosophy, science and poetics, Albers’ book remains fresh and relevant decades later. It’s a book recommended not just for artists but for anyone looking to understand in greater depth topics such as the nature of human perception, vision, and our relationships to a uniquely relevant aspect of life—color.

2. The Letters of Vincent van Gogh

Vincent van Gogh is one of the most beloved names in the history of art. The often beautiful, often harrowing bumps in his life are well-known, and one particular aspect of his character was that Van Gogh was a prolific letter-writer. Historians believe he wrote over three thousand letters in his life. Luckily for us, many of them have lasted to tell tales.

Most of Van Gogh’s surviving letters are communications with his brother, Theo van Gogh. In them, the artist reveals fascinating insights into his troubled life, his views on love, happiness, malaise, and, of course, art. His letters are a fascinating window into the process of his paintings and the evolution of their production. It is not only his work that is highlighted in Van Gogh’s writing; in them, we get a unique view of the time period and the revolutions happening in art and society. It is an incredible read for anyone interested in 19th-century art and the changes that the century brought.

Many different compilations of Van Gogh’s letters have been published over the years, the most popular being Penguin Books’ The Letters of Vincent van Gogh. In the 2000s, the Van Gogh Museum published many of his surviving letters and documents, which can be accessed through the museum, in their book Vincent van Gogh: A Life in Letters. 

3. “Between Lives: An Artist and Her World” by Dorothea Tanning

Known for her beguiling paintings and sensorial sculptures, multi-technique Surrealist Dorothea Tanning also wrote a handful of books. Like her visual work, Tanning’s writing is similarly sensual and involving. Tanning, who lived to be 101 years old, was one of the last and most interesting Surrealists we ever had. Her books ranged from poetry to memoirs to fashion and the in-between. In 1986, she released her first memoir, Birthday, which mostly relates to her relationship with fellow artist and surrealist Max Ernst. In 2001, Tanning released an expanded version of Birthday, named Between Lives: An Artist and Her World.

Larger in scope and even richer in language, Between Lives takes the reader into the mind and significant life (and loves) of Dorothea Tanning. Much like her art, Dorothea Tanning’s writing has a deep influence from Gothic romances and fairy tales: her writing is highly imagistic, layered, and sumptuous, whether Tanning is talking about her restrictive upbringing or recounting enduring and passionate relationships. The words certainly do come alive in this fascinating look into the mind of a great artist.

4. “How to See” by David Salle

David Salle’s 2016 book How to See: Looking, Talking, and Thinking About Art is more than a purported collection of essays. Salle, a preeminent painter since the 1970s who works in multi-layered, multi-textured images, brings those layers to his writings to create a singular art book.

Through the eyes of the artist and with input from others such as Jeff Koons, John Baldessari, Roy Lichtenstein, and more, How to See inverses the usual logic of art criticism; Salle’s How to See is less concerned with the concepts, the why and the what does it mean, and more interested in the what it is and how and what is the impact of an artwork. It has been compared to critic John Berger’s book Ways of Seeing, as a response to the conversation between critics and artists.

How to See is an almost immersive experience. It looks at art and the world the way a scientist might reverse engineer a machine to understand what makes it work, all the while traversing art history and theory in a humorous and approachable way.

5. “AFRICOBRA” by Wadsworth A. Jarell

The AFRICOBRA Collective was a collective of Black artists founded in Chicago in 1968 that redefined the standards of what the largely white art establishments dictated in the midst of civil rights movements in the United States. Painter, printmaker, sculptor, and founding member of AFRICOBRA, Wadsworth A. Jarrell tells the story of the collective, spanning its history, practices, philosophies, and impact on the art scene of the 1960s and beyond.

AFRICOBRA, the novel, is not merely a biography of a collective but a testament to their work, the recognition of Black American culture and art, and an insight into the artists’ views on different forms of art, society, justice, and life. A highlight is a close look at the creation of the famous Wall of Respect mural in Chicago, a paradigm-shifting work that predates even the foundation of the collective.

6. “Secret Poetics” by Helio Oiticica

Helio Oiticica was a highly influential contemporary artist of the 20th century who helped shape interactive art and installation in its earliest forms. He’s had a tremendous impact on painting, film, and sculpture in Brazilian art. Though his penetráveis, bólides, and wearable parangolés became well-known pieces that marked contemporary art, Oiticica’s writing is less familiar to audiences at large. Oiticica wrote many essays, which have been featured in many art books and overviews. But one book stands out: his collection of poems, Secret Poetics.

Secret Poetics collects different types of writing. It comprises secret poems the artist wrote by hand between 1964 and 66, during a time of many transitions in his life and his artwork. Translated into English for the first time in a bilingual edition, Secret Poetics shows us an almost unknown facet of an artist of many faces and sheds light on how these musings on memory and human relations intertwine with his later work. Secret Poetics was translated and edited by Rebecca Kosik with commentary by Pedro Erber, who further reflects on the nature of Oiticica’s written art and its influence on the artist’s own body of work.

7. “The Art of Behaving Badly” by The Guerrilla Girls

The Guerrilla Girls is an anonymous artist collective formed in 1985 in New York City. The collective is comprised of feminist artists who dedicate themselves to criticizing the patriarchal and oppressive contradictions of the art world, seeking to “expose gender and ethnic biases and corruption in art, film, politics and pop culture.”

Well known for their interventions, urban or otherwise, and protest art, most readers will probably be familiar with their groundbreaking Do Women Have to Be Naked to Get Into The MET. Museum? banner, but the Guerilla Girls also have quite a few books under their gorilla masks. In the 1990s, they tackled art history and its biases in The Guerilla Girls Beside Companion to the History of Western Art. They even wrote about the medical history of hysteria in The Hysterical Herstory of Hysteria and How It Was Cured: From Ancient Times Until Now (2016). Their latest book, Guerilla Girls: The Art of Behaving Badly is characteristically fun and subversive. The Art of Behaving Badly is a panorama of the collective’s impressive history, giving us insight into the past 35 years of art, activism and their always creative ways of fighting social biases.

8. The Diary of Frida Kahlo: An Intimate Self-Portrait

With an artist as immortally famous as Frida Kahlo, it can be hard to distinguish fact from fiction and not get caught in myth-making. Much like Van Gogh’s letters, in Kahlo’s Diary, we get to see in a multimedia format the self-portraits of the likes of Frida Kahlo painted in life—and even deeper.

A collection of stunning illustrations, notes, musings, journals, and essays, The Diary of Frida Kahlo spans the last ten years in the life of the artist, a work that is both human and larger-than-life. Through both writings and drawings, we are brought into Frida Kahlo’s innermost thoughts. We flow through words about her art, her tumultuous marriage with fellow artist Diego Rivera, her feelings on her peers in the art world, her philosophy, politics, and her country, and we get deep insight into Kahlo’s humor, her pain, and resilience. The edition includes editing and a foreword by Carlos Fuentes, who provides further insight and reflections on Frida Kahlo’s history and legacy, as well as lesser-known illustrations painted by the artist.

Jane Frances Elgee was born on December 27, 1821, in Dublin, 20 years after Ireland lost its independence to Great Britain. Her parents were Charles Elgee and Sarah Kingsbury. She and her three siblings grew up in a middle-class Protestant household that was conservative and unionist. These were political views Jane would spend her adult life rebelling against.

Who Was Jane Wilde or Speranza?

Jane’s family was of English and Irish heritage, but she had a vivid imagination. She claimed to be of Italian heritage, stating that her last name was a corruption of Alighieri and that she was descended from Dante Alighieri himself. Jane Frances Elgee presented herself as Jane Francesa Elgee. Then she went one step further, writing under the pseudonym Speranza.

As a young girl, Speranza learned English, Greek, Latin, Italian, French, and German. Over time, she added Spanish and Portuguese to her repertoire. These languages proved useful to Speranza’s work as a translator and writer.

Though not well-traveled, knowing many languages meant Speranza could situate the struggle for Irish freedom within the larger context of independence movements spreading across Europe in the 1830s, but her broad horizons did not quite extend so far as to champion the cause of abolitionism in the US, and in fact, she was a Confederate sympathizer. Her brother, Confederate Judge John Kingsbury Elgee, not only enslaved men and women in Louisiana, but he also signed Louisiana’s Order of Secession in 1861 and helped design Louisiana’s Confederate flag. Speranza’s nephew, Charles LeDoux Elgee, fought and died for the Confederacy. Speranza used slavery as a rhetorical device in her poems, writing with outrage about England’s enslavement of the Irish people. Yet she mustered neither outrage nor compassion for those who were enslaved in the United States.

“The Nation” and the Young Ireland Movement

Speranza translated poetry from German, French, Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese for a radical Irish political journal, The Nation. Charles Gavan Duffy, Thomas Osborne Davis, and John Blake Dillon were the three co-founders of The Nation. Duffy and Dillon were also the founders of the Young Ireland movement.

The Nation advocated against Britain’s colonial oppression of Ireland. It employed militant Irish nationalists like Mary Anne Kelly O’Doherty. Some writers for the journal were members of Young Ireland, a political movement that gave voice to the cause of Ireland’s independence from Great Britain. In choosing Young Ireland as the name for the movement, its founders were aligning themselves with other nationalist independence movements that emerged in Europe in the 1830s and 1840s, such as Giuseppe Mazzini’s Young Italy, as well as Young Germany.

At the time Speranza wrote for The Nation, Ireland was in the grip of a devastating catastrophe. A fertile agricultural land, it exported wheat, oats, barley, and other crops to feed the people of other nations. Subsistence farmers, the Irish were dependent on the potato to feed their families. Other crops were sold to pay rent to absentee landlords. Speranza railed against these landlords and the misery they caused in her poem, “The Faithless Shepherds.”

The Famine Poems

A blight struck the potato in 1845, causing crop failure. Over the next few years, the blight would haunt the Irish farmers, returning and causing additional crop failures, and then a typhus epidemic struck the country in 1847. The Whig-led Westminster government in Britain took a non-interventionist approach to the catastrophe, one that aligned with its laissez-faire economic policy. Over the next ten years, more than a million Irish men, women, and children died of starvation and famine fever. Another million fled to Liverpool. An additional two million Irishmen emigrated to the United States to avoid starvation.

The tragedy of the Potato Famine would be the impetus behind Speranza’s Famine poems. As the conditions of the Irish people became more dire, Speranza’s writing became more radical, seditious, and violent. Her poems were a cry of lamentation for her country and a call for divine judgment against Britain.

In “The Famine Year,” the poem opens with an account of the desperate plight of the Irish people and the reasons for their misery. The poem concludes with a warning saying that vengeance is coming, that it is unavoidable, and it will come from God.

In the poems “France in ‘93” and “The Fall of Tyrants,” Speranza looks to the French Revolution as a model of what could take place in Ireland. Ultimately, she hoped that her writing would incite an Irish uprising against British rule, much like the French uprising against the nobility and clergy.

Jacta Alea Est

In 1848, while France was being convulsed by another revolution, Speranza’s most polemical piece of writing yet appeared in The Nation. The editorial was titled, “Jacta Alea Est.” No longer content with waiting for God’s judgment, the editorial called for an armed rebellion against the British. Speranza wrote:

The Irish nation has at length decided. England has done us good service at last. Her recent acts have taken away the last miserable pretext for passive submission. She has justified us before the world, and ennobled the timid, humble supplication of a degraded, insulted people, into the proud demand for independence, by a resolved, prepared, and fearless nation… Oh! for a hundred thousand muskets glittering brightly in the light of heaven…

 

Even as you read these weak words of a heart that yet palpitates with an enthusiasm as heroic as your own, and your breast heaves and your eyes grow dim with tears as the memory of Ireland’s wrongs rushes upon your soul – even now lift up your right hand to Heaven and swear – swear by your undying soul, and by your hopes of immortality, never to lay down your arms, never to cease hostilities, till you regenerate and save this fallen land.

By this point, The Nation’s office had already been raided by the government. Editor Charles Gavan Duffy was arrested and imprisoned for treason and sedition. After “Jacta Alea Est” was published, the editorial was incorrectly attributed to him. The editorial’s title, which means “the die is cast” in Latin, is a phrase that indicates a point of no return has been reached. The phrase was spoken by Julius Caesar when he crossed the Rubicon. The government in Westminster then suspended Habeas Corpus, probably out of concern that Ireland might become part of the 1848 revolutionary wave.

Duffy was tried no less than six times. According to her own account of what transpired, Speranza attended Duffy’s trial. When Duffy was accused of writing “Jacta Alea Est,” Speranza stood up and claimed authorship, making herself a public figure, which women in the Victorian Era were not supposed to be. Rather than prosecute a woman, the court dropped the charge.

The Literary Salon and Mary Travers Scandal

With the trial behind her, Speranza continued working as a writer, poet, and translator. Her most influential work was the translation of J. W. Meinhold’s novel Sidonia von Bork. Retitled Sidonia the Sorceress, Speranza’s translation was read by a who’s-who of the art and literary world: Pre-Raphaelite Dante Gabriel Rossetti, novelist Charlotte Brontë, and literary critic Walter Pater all read it. Speranza’s influence would only continue to grow after her marriage to Dr. William Wilde and the founding of their literary salon at their home in Dublin. Speranza had three children with Dr. Wilde: William “Willie,” Oscar, and Isola. An unusual practice for the time, their children were welcomed at the weekly literary salon.

During this time, Mary Travers, a patient of Dr. Wilde who had become a family friend, was rapidly becoming an enemy by initiating a relentless campaign of harassment against the Wildes. After accusing Dr. Wilde of rape, she demanded money. When he refused to pay, Mary attempted to sabotage Dr. Wilde by creating private and public disturbances. She overdosed on laudanum at the Wilde’s home. She impersonated Dr. Wilde’s wife by writing damning pamphlets about him under the name Speranza. She even followed Speranza from Dublin all the way to Bray, a distance of 13 miles.

Finally, Speranza wrote a letter to Mary’s father informing him of her conduct. In response, Mary Travers sued Jane for libel and £2,000 in damages. The 1864 trial was covered by The Irish Times. The proceedings were at times theatrical and at other times farcical, but Speranza won in the court of public opinion. Instead of £2,000 in damages, Mary Travers was awarded one farthing, which amounted to one quarter of a penny.

Jane as Lady Wilde

Ironically, the trial took place during the very same year that Dr. Wilde was knighted by the English Crown. This meant Speranza was now Lady Wilde.

Though a second trial was behind her now, the ensuing twelve years were difficult for Speranza. She lost both her daughter and her husband. Her eldest son, Willie, experienced financial difficulties due to his alcoholism. Dr. Wilde left the house she lived in to Willie, who sold it out from under his 58-year-old mother. Having no other recourse, Speranza had to relocate and work as a freelance writer.

After publishing the anti-English pamphlet The American Irish, she moved to London. There, she wrote articles for The Saint James’s Magazine, the Pall Mall Gazette, and other publications. She found a publisher for her books, like Driftwood from Scandinavia, Ancient Legends, Mystic Charms, and Superstitions of Ireland, and Notes on Men, Women and Books. She resumed her literary salon, which included among its guests George Bernard Shaw, W. B. Yeats, Eleanor Marx, Robert Browning, as well as her son, Oscar. She also invited Jefferson Davis, the defeated and disgraced former President of the Confederate States of America, to her home.

Jane Wilde and Oscar Wilde’s Trial

Oscar helped his mother financially over the years. By this point, his literary career outshone his mother’s. However, his fall was imminent. Oscar was in a relationship with Lord Alfred Douglas, the son of the Marquess of Queensberry. This enraged the Marquess, who then provoked Oscar into suing him for libel. The trial did not go as Oscar had hoped. Queensberry was found not guilty.

Oscar was arrested and charged with “gross indecency,” but Speranza never abandoned him. While Oscar was out on bail, no establishment would rent him a room. He ended up staying in his mother’s small apartment. Found guilty, Oscar was sentenced to two years of hard labor in prison. Speranza would never see her son again. She died one year later in 1896.

Throughout history, many works of art have traveled difficult journeys. Misplaced by war and revolution, these works of art have found themselves transported into completely different settings than originally intended, often by underhanded or perilous means. One of the most memorable examples of these types of works of art is the Madonna of Bruges by Michelangelo Buonarroti, created in the early 1500s.

While the history of this sculpture is fascinating, having survived both the French Revolution and the Second World War, equally fascinating is the work of art itself, which stands apart from contemporary depictions of the Madonna and Child during the Italian Renaissance.

Breaking the Rigid Rules of the Renaissance Madonna

Michelangelo’s Madonna of Bruges was created during the Italian Renaissance, a period of great artistic innovation and creativity. Originating in the 14th century in Florence, the Italian Renaissance saw the fine arts becoming more lifelike in appearance, with artists embracing such techniques as foreshortening and chiaroscuro. Under the Catholic Church that dominated Italian Christianity at the time, much of the art of the Renaissance is deeply intertwined with Biblical narratives.

The image perhaps most strongly associated with Catholic Italian Renaissance art today is that of the Virgin Mary holding the infant Jesus, commonly referred to as the Madonna and Child.

While works of art featuring the Madonna and Child can be traced as early as the 6th century AD, during the Italian Renaissance, the Virgin Mary’s devoted faith and purity of heart had come to represent an ideal Catholic woman strove to emulate. The evolving nature of art in this period affected how the Madonna and Child were depicted in paintings and sculptures.

Traditional representations of the two figures seated on a throne remained popular during the early phases of the movement, with heavy emphasis on the use of sumptuous substances such as gems embedded in the canvas.

During the Renaissance, more and more artists strove to humanize the characters, representing them as a real mother and son. It was against this landscape that Michelangelo created his Madonna of Bruges, driving the evolution of depictions of the Madonna and Child in art forward in unprecedented ways.

The Beauty of the Bruges Madonna

By 1503, the year Michelangelo began work on the Madonna of Bruges, the artist was no stranger to depicting the subject of the Madonna and Child. Around the year 1491, Michelangelo created a work of art known as the Madonna of the Stairs, which featured a Madonna and Child scene.

The artist’s first completed sculpture, it depicts the Madonna in profile, with the nestled Christ Child’s back turned to the viewer. Here, the artist seems to have been focused mainly on materiality and less on emotion, with the figures appearing flowing and ethereal in spite of the fact that they are made of marble. Underlining this emphasis is a scene of stone masons or sculptors visible in the background.

More famously, Michelangelo created a monumental sculpture of the Pietà (seen above), a scene in which the Virgin Mary cradles the body of Christ, in 1499, for Cardinal Jean Bilhères de Lagraulas. Here, emotion is a far more important element of the sculpture, as the Madonna lowers her head in grief as she clutches the body of her dead son. At the same time, she extends one of her hands in reverence, demonstrating her devotion to the will of God in spite of the pain she is suffering.

In many ways, Michelangelo’s Madonna of Bruges appears to be a fascinating prequel narrative to that of his Pietà. In both scenes, Mary embraces her son, in this instance, holding Jesus as a small child.

While in the Pietà, Jesus is motionless in death, the child in this sculpture actively seems to be trying to relinquish Mary’s grasp and step forward. Mary herself appears to be gently allowing her son to take these first steps, her face somber in a concession of what will happen when Jesus reaches adulthood.

The complex emotions of the scene, in which Jesus appears to express curiosity about the world coupled with Mary’s heavy-hearted expression in response, are what make the sculpture memorable to scholars and admirers of Renaissance art to this day.

This insightful depiction of the relationship between Mary and Jesus Christ was unlike any other that had come before it and marked a major step forward in the realization of these figures as beings with deep emotions. It would influence further depictions of the Madonna and Child for hundreds of years to come.

Also adding to the sculpture’s appeal was its sense of asymmetry. Prior Madonna and Child scenes, both in painting and in sculpture, had adhered to a strict sense of rigidity and balance. Here, the two figures interact with each other in an extremely naturalistic and lifelike way, again adding further strength to the sculptor’s vision of a real mother and son.

The Deal That Created the Masterpiece

But how did this innovative sculpture come into existence? Who commissioned Michelangelo for it, and what was the intended purpose of the sculpture?

Many facts surrounding the sculpture’s creation are a mystery. What is known is that it was commissioned by two brothers named Jean and Alexander Mouscron, whose family fortunes had been made by selling textiles throughout Europe.

Once the sculpture was completed, it was placed in a chapel dedicated to the wealthy Mouscron family at the Church of Our Lady in Bruges, Belgium. This chapel was intended to be used as a sort of interment chamber for the Mouscron family and its future generations, and the sculpture was meant to elevate the chapel into a sophisticated and reverent space. Interestingly, it is the only statue by Michelangelo that was sent to another nation outside Italy before his death.

It is unclear how the Mouscron brothers initially made contact with Michelangelo and why Michelangelo accepted this particular job from them. It is known that Michelangelo was paid twice by the Mouscron family for the sculpture, once in December 1503, and again in October 1504. Little further documentation exists on the relationship between the artist and his two patrons.

However, it is important to note that at the beginning of the 16th century, Bruges was an important exporter of textiles throughout Europe and the rest of the world. Because of its prosperity, many businessmen from the Italian peninsula had taken up residence in Bruges. It could have been possible for the Mouscron brothers to have learned about Michelangelo through one of their Italian neighbors in Bruges, or through business trips throughout the Italian peninsula.

Either way, their commissioning of the sculpture has fascinated art historians due to its evidence of the interconnectedness of Belgium and Italy’s economies.

Perilous Journeys and the Nazi Theft of the Madonna

Today, the Madonna of Bruges conveys a sense of majesty and serenity to all who view it. However, its history since it was originally transported to Bruges in the early 1500s has been far from tranquil. In the early 1790s, for instance, Bruges was conquered by French revolutionary troops, who had succeeded in completely overtaking the nation of Belgium by 1794.

Previously, Belgium had been ruled by the powerful Habsburg family from their seat in Austria, but the nation now fell into the hands of the Habsburgs’ revolutionary enemies. As part of their plans for controlling Bruges, the French revolutionaries demanded that the best works of art in the city be sent to Paris.

The Madonna of Bruges was one of many works of art claimed by the French during this period. Over 20 years later, in the aftermath of Napoleon’s crushing loss at Waterloo, the work of art was finally given back to the Belgians.

The sculpture was seized again during the Second World War, this time by the Nazis. In 1944, as the Allied forces liberated growing sections of Europe, the increasingly desperate Nazis stole the Madonna of Bruges.

Smuggled out of Belgium hidden in a Red Cross truck, the Madonna of Bruges was then placed in a salt mine known as Altaussee along with numerous other works of art.

The sculpture was later recovered by American President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s “Monuments Men,” whose story has been recounted in a 2014 film of the same name. A band of art experts deployed to locate works of art seized by the Nazis, these individuals officially served as part of the Monuments, Fine Arts, and Archives Program.

Today, the Madonna of Bruges can still be viewed in its original home at the Church of Our Lady in Bruges, largely thanks to the efforts of this dedicated team.

The Sculpture That Stunned a Continent

Michelangelo’s Madonna of Bruges had a major impact on the lives of artists for centuries to come. The German artist Albrecht Dürer, for instance, is known to have viewed the sculpture in person and held it in high esteem.

It is possible that Raphael, one of Michelangelo’s Italian Renaissance competitors, also saw the sculpture or heard about it, as some of his Madonna paintings depict the infant Jesus in a similar manner to Michelangelo’s.

In tandem with its influence over individual artists, the Madonna of Bruges today serves as a reminder of Michelangelo’s own personal creativity and vision. Today, Michelangelo is most famously associated with works such as his paintings on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel and his monumental sculpture of David.

The Madonna of Bruges demonstrates that even for the Mouscron family’s small personal chapel, Michelangelo’s talent and emotional sensitivity embodied characters and personalities in ways that no other artist before him was able to achieve.

To many visitors to Paris today, the Sainte-Chapelle is an unmissable destination. Situated on the Île de la Cité, it stands as an iconic example of Gothic architecture. Visitors cannot help but be drawn in by its intricate, jewel-toned stained glass windows, which cover most of the walls of the upper chapel. Immersed in the beauty and light of the Sainte-Chapelle, it is easy for visitors to feel transported to a time centuries past.

While the chapel’s beauty may feel eternal, it nearly fell into total disrepair in the aftermath of the French Revolution, which actively sought to eliminate all symbols of both the monarchy and the Catholic faith from France.

The Construction of Sainte-Chapelle

The Sainte-Chapelle came into existence during the reign of Louis IX, who was France’s king from 1226 to 1270. Louis IX is remembered for being one of France’s most pious rulers, even being named a saint by Pope Boniface VIII after his death.

To many observers, the king’s reputation for piety was cemented in his lifetime through his acquisition of several relics of profound importance to the Catholic faith. In the late 1230s, Louis IX bought the Crown of Thorns that supposedly adorned the head of Christ, considered by Catholics to be one of the holiest of relics, from Emperor Baudouin II of the Latin Empire of Constantinople. Baudouin’s kingdom was in financial trouble due to sieges from foreign powers, and he hoped that money from Louis IX would aid him in protecting his country.

Louis IX acquired the Crown of Thorns for a price of 135,000 livres and continued to purchase other relics from Baudouin II, including the purple robe of Christ and a section of the cross used to crucify Him. These relics arrived in France between 1239 and 1241.

In order to elevate and reverence the relics in the way he believed that his faith demanded, Louis IX decided to build a new chapel to house them. This chapel, which became the Sainte-Chapelle, was constructed in proximity to the king’s palace in Paris. It was built with the express intention of serving as a place of worship for the monarch and his family. Scholars are unsure as to the exact identity of the chapel’s architect, but some have speculated that the man could have been Pierre de Montreuil, a highly influential Parisian architect of the Gothic Rayonnant style in which the chapel was built.

The Sainte-Chapelle was officially consecrated in 1248, and the relics it contained were preserved in a massive gilt reliquary that was nearly three meters long.

The Sainte-Chapelle and the French Revolution

In the years after its construction, the Sainte-Chapelle did not remain untouched by weather and calamity. In the seventeenth century, for example, the chapel’s roof had to be rebuilt after a fire. In the same century, the lower chapel was flooded, causing it to need repairs. None of these events, however, was as catastrophic to the Sainte-Chapelle as the French Revolution.

In addition to its elimination of the French monarchy, proponents of the French Revolution actively sought to curb the influence of the Catholic Church, which was perceived as being a major player in the oppression of the nation’s Third Estate. In 1789, all land and possessions belonging to the Catholic Church were claimed by the revolutionary National Constituent Assembly, and clergymen were later forced to publicly swear loyalty to the new state. These developments included the reworking of the Sainte-Chapelle into a secular establishment.

Originally intended for demolition in 1790, by 1793 the chapel had become a storage facility for flour and a backdrop for political meetings. Any imagery in the chapel that recalled the French monarchy was removed, and the chapel’s spire, which was carved with a royal coat of arms, was completely torn down.

Many objects from the interiors of Sainte-Chapelle were destroyed, including the massive reliquary where the relics were stored. A number of the objects that survived were rescued by curator Alexandre Lenoir, who placed them in a museum known as the Musée des Monuments Français. As for the Crown of Thorns, it was stored in France’s National Library for most of the Revolution, until it was given back to the Catholic Church in the early 19th century.

Even after the French Revolution ended, Sainte-Chapelle continued to suffer damage, as, starting in 1803, the chapel was used to store archives. The addition of shelves to the chapel seriously damaged its massive stained glass panels, hundreds of which were removed from the building. Many of those that were removed were ultimately sold to collectors.

Saving Sainte-Chapelle

As the 19th century progressed, European attitudes towards historic monuments, particularly those in the Gothic style, began to shift. Proponents of the Romantic movement in particular began to see Gothic architecture as evoking a beautiful and mystical and time long past. As a result, attitudes towards a restoration of the Sainte-Chapelle grew increasingly enthusiastic.

After architect Jean-Baptiste Lassus publicly presented drawings of proposed restorations to the Sainte-Chapelle in 1836, work began on the chapel in 1840. Many influential architects were involved in the project in addition to Lassus, including Félix Duban and Emile Boeswillwald. Perhaps most notably of all, the famed architect Eugene Viollet-le-Duc, who had helped to restore Notre-Dame de Paris, served as an advisor on the restoration work. Viollet-le-Duc’s vision was crucial for the project, as his unique approach to the restoration of historic buildings shaped much of what was achieved.

For the team working on the restoration of Sainte-Chapelle, the whole was far greater than the sum of the parts. Instead of simply trying to salvage what was left of the chapel, it was their goal to recreate the chapel in the most all-encompassing manner they could conceive. This approach was particularly apparent in how the chapel’s stained glass windows were handled. The glass in the windows that remained was meticulously restored so that it might retain its historic beauty.

As for the glass that had been lost or destroyed, the restoration team thoroughly researched its original, 13th-century appearance so that they could recreate what had been there before as closely as possible. As a result, the stained glass of Sainte-Chapelle is now remembered as some of the most iconic in European Gothic architecture.

Sainte-Chapelle’s Architecture

What ultimately remains of Sainte-Chapelle’s architecture is an eclectic mix of the remnants of the chapel’s past. While many elements of the chapel were created in the 19th century, during the restoration process, others can be traced to the 13th century when the chapel was originally built. The exterior of the chapel, in particular, is rife with architectural features created in the 19th century.

For example, the chapel’s steeple is a 19th-century addition created under the supervision of architect Jean-Baptiste Lassus, patterned after a steeple that the chapel was known to have had in the fifteenth century. Many of the sculptures on the exterior of the Sainte-Chapelle, including the sculptures on the portal of the western facade and the sculptures of the king and his bishops on the eastern end, were created in the 19th century as well.

The interior of the Sainte-Chapelle is divided into two stories. The lower section, known as the lower chapel, was used by the king’s servants and the everyday members of the congregation. Here, the stained glass windows and much of the paintwork, come from the 19th-century restoration.

Nevertheless, historical features still remain. Above a door, a painting of the Annunciation can be found dating back to the 13th century. This work of art was uncovered and retouched to resemble its medieval design during the later restoration. Meanwhile, the upper chapel, where the sacred relics were housed and worshipped by the king and his immediate family, contains a great deal of nineteenth-century paintwork on elements such as the quatrefoils. At the same time, many of the sculpted columns, which feature detailed natural imagery and representations of the Biblical apostles, can be traced back to the 13th century.

The Sainte-Chapelle’s Stained Glass

The most memorable aspect of the upper chapel is undoubtedly its 15 stained glass windows. Between 13 and 15 meters high (40 to 50 feet), these windows are particularly remarkable due to the fact that two-thirds of them originate from the period in which the chapel was built. Most of the others, as stated previously, were created in the 19th century with the goal of recreating the originals as closely as possible. Given the context in which the chapel was built, it is hardly surprising that these windows contain a great deal of imagery related to the royal family of France, such as coats of arms.

This imagery is carefully woven throughout a complex, historical narrative beginning with the creation of the world and continuing through Louis IX’s reign. Specifically, the main windows, which line both sides of the chapel, recount Biblical history from the Old Testament to the New Testament, with the addition of a narrative of how Louis IX acquired the relics he placed in the chapel.

A massive rose window created in the 15th century in the Flamboyant Gothic style, contrasting the Rayonnant Gothic style of the original chapel, specifically depicts scenes from the Book of Revelation. Further windows found in the liturgical choir depict the life of Christ, as well as scenes from the lives of John the Baptist and John the Evangelist.

Evidently, these windows are rich with detail, containing an overwhelming number of narratives within their lead framework. The end result of this intensive detail is the rainbow of colors that the windows refract into the chapel, turning the natural light of the outside world into a glittering kaleidoscope of reds, blues, purples, and more.

While to modern eyes the individual details of each window may seem evasive, what is significant is that they continue to successfully convey to visitors the profound devotion and reverence the chapel was originally meant to evoke in worshippers. This profound spirituality, transmitted from the 13th century to the present day, is a reminder of the chapel’s survival. In spite of the threats the Sainte-Chapelle has faced over the centuries since its construction, as well as the losses of its relics, its sacred beauty continues to touch the hearts of visitors into the present day.

Like many veterans, Kurt Vonnegut was disillusioned by his experiences in World War II. The firebombing of Dresden in 1945 proved particularly influential on Vonnegut’s writing. He could no longer rely on traditional literature to adequately explain modern life. Instead, he filled his novels with time-traveling veterans, lethal futuristic inventions, and indifferent alien races to critique modern life. Across some of his most famous works, such as Slaughterhouse-Five, Cat’s Cradle, Player Piano, and Breakfast of Champions, Vonnegut used science fiction not as escapism from society, but as a means of critiquing its contradictions and absurdities.

Why Absurdity Served as the Ultimate Weapon Against Post-War Conformity

The economic prosperity of post-World War II America in the 1950s encouraged Americans to embrace consumer culture, pursue a romanticized suburban lifestyle, and put their faith in institutions. Meanwhile, the Cold War loomed in the background with the threat of nuclear war. A society that claimed technology could improve life via consumer appliances, cars, television, and space exploration could also create the possibility of destroying civilization. Rather than search for explanations or moral certainty in a culture that celebrated individual freedom while encouraging conformity, Vonnegut embraced a worldview in which the universe was indifferent to human concerns. His fiction was punctuated by catastrophic events, acts of random suffering, and cosmic indifference, all blended with dark humor. Vonnegut was not merely expressing hopelessness, but creating a coping mechanism.

Through absurdism, Vonnegut enabled readers to confront bleak realities without succumbing to despair. Traditional literary realism failed at this. The horrors of World War II, the atomic bomb, and a bureaucratic system responsible for mass destruction challenged conventional assumptions about human progress and rationality. These topics could not be translated with traditional literary techniques, like a linear narrative, chronological timeline, and coherent protagonist. Realism had the capacity to detail events. Yet, it failed to capture their true absurdity. Vonnegut turned to science fiction and speculative storytelling techniques. Time travel. Alien races. Imagined technologies. All of these topics permitted Vonnegut to explore truths around war, conformity, and human behavior that traditional literary realism alone was unable to fully express.

“Slaughterhouse-Five” Weaponized Alien Abduction to Process Real Wartime Trauma

Drawing inspiration from his personal experiences as a prisoner of war following the firebombing of Dresden in 1945 during World War II, Slaughterhouse-Five follows the life of Billy Pilgrim, a fatalistic American soldier and chaplain’s assistant. In the novel, Billy becomes “unstuck in time,” moving unpredictably through time between moments from his past, present, and future.

The Tralfamadorians are central to the novel. They are an alien species from the planet Tralfamadore who possess the power to see in four dimensions, simultaneously viewing all moments in the space-time continuum. They universally adopt a fatalistic worldview. Death means nothing to them. It is not an end, but merely a fixed moment rendering them emotionally neutral. This philosophy is encapsulated in the repetitive phrase “so it goes,” which follows every mention of death in the novel.

The Tralfamadorians function as a metaphor reflective of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). Billy Pilgrim’s distorted perception of time is representative of a mind trapped in the past and present, unable to fully escape trauma. This is much like the experiences of soldiers returning from war who involuntarily re-experience violent or distressing memories outside of chronological order. By imagining a perspective in which all events are predetermined and equally insignificant, Vonnegut uses the Tralfamadorians to undermine religious and philosophical narratives that seek to justify the horrors of war.

In Slaughterhouse-Five, soldiers are not portrayed as disciplined heroes, but as frightened and confused individuals caught in systems beyond their control. Vonnegut critiques both the experience of combat and the systems that romanticize it afterward. The novel opposes traditional narratives and patriotic rhetoric by presenting war as chaotic and arbitrary, where instances of bravery are accidental or ultimately insignificant.

“Cat’s Cradle” Exposed the Deadly Hubris of Unchecked Scientific Progress

Vonnegut extends his critique by satirizing the ethical responsibility of the scientific community during the nuclear arms race in his novel, Cat’s Cradle. The novel suggests that scientific progress operates independently of moral responsibility, with technological advancements operating with little regard for human survival.

Ice-Nine is a fictitious substance capable of freezing any liquid water it comes into contact with. It was created by Felix Hoenikker, a Nobel Prize-winning physicist who was depicted as amoral and detached towards anything other than his own research. Ice-Nine is therefore a symbol of technological advancements devoid of ethical constraints. After an airplane crash causes a palace cliff to collapse, the frozen body of dictator Papa Monzano—who had committed suicide by ingesting Ice-Nine—falls into the ocean, instantly freezing the world’s waters.

Similarly, Ice-Nine functions as an absurdist extension of the threat of the Cold War and anxieties revolving around nuclear weapons. Like the atomic bomb, Ice-Nine represented a point of no return. The novel’s bleak conclusion is representative of Vonnegut’s concerns that scientific detachment and institutional competition could inadvertently cause global annihilation without deliberate intent.

Other than critiquing the scientific community, Vonnegut introduces a fictional religion known as Bokononism, the native religion on the island of San Lorenzo. It is based on the ideology of enjoying life through the belief in harmless untruths. Followers of Bokononism therefore find comfort in narratives that provide meaning and structure in an otherwise chaotic world.

This invented faith allows Vonnegut to satirize both institutional religion and political ideology. In doing so, Vonnegut raises a broader question throughout the novel: are the scientific, religious, and political systems constructed by humans a tool for understanding reality, or simply mechanisms that help them survive reality?

Dismantling the American Dream Through Techno-Pessimism in “Player Piano”

Unlike later critiques of war and scientific advancements, Vonnegut’s debut novel, Player Piano, critiques the structure of industrial capitalism. The novel is set in a dystopia in which automation systems have allowed factories to operate with only a few human laborers. This creates a divide between the upper class, engineers, and managers who keep society afloat, and the lower class, who have been replaced by machines.

While automation is presented as a means of improving productivity and reducing human effort, Vonnegut critiques its social consequences. The novel’s protagonist, Dr. Paul Proteus, is the manager of Ilium Works, a highly automated manufacturing complex in the fictional city of Ilium, New York. Despite his status, Paul becomes increasingly dissatisfied with a system that measures human worth according to technical usefulness, leaving large numbers of the population redundant or reassigned to meaningless roles. The dissatisfaction Paul experiences is heightened when he visits the “Homestead” section of Ilium, where workers replaced by machines live out their lives in mass-produced houses without purpose, dignity, or class mobility.

Contemporary anxieties revolving around artificial intelligence and the devaluation of human worth mimic the concerns Vonnegut raised in Player Piano decades prior. Consequently, a society that worships efficiency risks eliminating the very human value it claims to enhance. This danger is embodied in Paul, who, despite holding a high status, becomes increasingly alienated, ultimately leading to his arrest and trial. Vonnegut illustrates how a society centered around machines treats dissent as a threat. This suggests that technological progress alone is unable to provide meaning and that a civilization valuing efficiency over everything else risks reducing human beings to expendable components in a larger system.

“Breakfast of Champions” Targeted Commercialism and Mental Illness in Free Markets

By the time Vonnegut published Breakfast of Champions, his critique of modern society had expanded beyond war, science, and automation to encompass American consumer culture itself. Throughout the novel, Vonnegut inserts himself into the narrative, includes his own illustrations, and repeatedly draws attention to the artificiality of fiction by referencing his other works.

The novel follows the lives of Dwayne Hoover and Kilgore Trout, a car salesman and struggling science fiction writer, respectively. Trout is widely considered Vonnegut’s literary alter ego. Despite publishing hundreds of novels and short stories, Trout believes himself to be a largely unknown writer, making a living from installing aluminum storm windows. Trout is representative of Vonnegut’s beliefs that ideas and messages are often overlooked because of the medium through which they are delivered. This emphasizes how capitalism devalues creative human labor. Trout is so alienated from his own work that he is completely unaware that anyone reads or values his stories.

Dwayne Hoover, however, is a wealthy business owner. Despite the idea of success Hoover possesses, he is left mentally unstable because of how capitalism has decimated his sense of purpose. After meeting Trout, Hoover reads one of his novels, believing it to be reality. He becomes convinced he is the only being in the universe with free will and that everyone else is a robot. This belief turns Hoover violent, causing him to injure his son, secretary, and Kilgore Trout. Hoover’s deteriorating mental health suggests that prosperity alone cannot provide fulfillment, particularly within a culture that prioritizes consumption over human connection.

Therefore, Breakfast of Champions ultimately stresses that the greatest threats to humanity are not alien invasions or futuristic technologies, but the destructive impulses embedded in everyday society. Vonnegut’s absurdist science fiction was never about predicting the future as much as it was about exposing the flaws of the present for readers to confront before they became impossible to ignore.

When Vincent van Gogh made the decision to pursue art professionally in 1880, he was 27 years old. He was familiar with Dutch realist paintings and had a fondness for artists like Rembrandt. He had strong opinions that led him on a long journey to discover his own unique style after years of experimentation. During the last years of his life, Van Gogh had worked out exactly how he wanted to compose his forms, lines, and colors in order to create a work that conveyed the essence of the subject.

What Makes Van Gogh’s Style Unique?

One of the key reasons Van Gogh’s art gains the admiration of its viewers is due to his unique style. The Dutch artist worked tirelessly to improve his technical skills in handling line, form, and color, but his works are not merely technical masterpieces. A common comment about his paintings is how passionate, bold, and colorful these canvases are, and how they stir up intense emotions among viewers. This is exactly what Van Gogh emphasized as an important aspect of art and instilled in his own work by shaping his style around his subject. With each painting, the artist attempted to capture the “character” or “essence” of the subject.

He did not paint accurate imitations, but amplified the most striking qualities of his subjects in the painting. For example, a painting of peasants conveys their difficult labor and connection to the earth through dark colors and exaggerated ruggedness in their faces, while a still-life painting of sunflowers uses the brightest, most vibrant yellows that convey the illuminating presence of the flowers in a room.

Although Van Gogh is today regarded as a genius due to his incredible skill in identifying and conveying the essence of his subjects, his style kept evolving throughout his career. His work can be classified into different periods due to varying stylistic qualities, particularly in the way he approached color. The improvement of his technical skills over the years, combined with a clearer idea of the direction he wanted his art to take, resulted in a unique and stylistically diverse oeuvre that has gained global acclaim.

Nuenen (1884-85)

After moving around different cities in England, Belgium, and the Netherlands during the early years of his life, Van Gogh finally arrived in the town of Nuenen in the Dutch province of North Brabant in December 1883. His father, a Protestant minister, had his parish in this town, so Van Gogh moved into his parents’ house. He had set his mind on becoming an artist and set up a studio behind the house. Although the artist was still contemplating his stylistic choices, he was sure about one thing: he wanted to paint peasants in their regular settings.

One of his greatest artistic inspirations was the French realist painter Jean-François Millet, whose oeuvre consisted largely of depictions of peasant life, such as the renowned painting The Gleaners (1857). And so, most of Van Gogh’s work from Nuenen, painted between 1884 and 1885, depicts peasants working in the fields or inside their homes.

Keeping in mind his resolve to convey the feeling of peasant life over an accurate imitation of reality, he relied on dark, dirt-like colors and exaggerated forms of the figures. He justified his reason for this stylistic choice to Theo in a letter from 1885, writing, “For my part, I’m convinced that in the long run it produces better results to paint them in their coarseness than to introduce conventional sweetness.”

Van Gogh’s efforts in honing his style as a peasant painter took up most of his time in Nuenen. He continued working with somber colors that he considered fit for his subjects, and the evolution of his style in Nuenen was guided by his intention to create honest and authentic peasant paintings. In 1885, his efforts finally resulted in a finished project that he called The Potato Eaters. This painting is hailed as a masterpiece by Van Gogh, showcasing his intentional stylistic choices. The dark room with only one light source, the almost animal-like features of the peasants’ faces, and the color palette resembling “a really dusty potato” together convey a feeling of the everyday life of peasants spent working on the land and eating from it.

Paris (1886-87)

From 1886 onwards, Van Gogh’s style changed completely. This was the period when he lived with Theo in Paris, with the aim of better acquainting himself with avant-garde developments in art. For the first time in his life, he witnessed the bright canvases of the Impressionists, which stood in stark contrast to the Dutch realist tradition he had thus far been familiar with. Impressionism was well-established in Paris by the 1880s, and avant-garde developments in art were being sustained by the next generation of artists, primarily Paul Gauguin, Émile Bernard, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Georges Seurat, and Paul Signac. Van Gogh quickly befriended these artists and took an interest in the various stylistic techniques they were working on.

The artist was also introduced to Japanese woodblock prints in Paris, which had gained immense popularity in Europe during the 19th century. Most importantly, Paris transformed his palette as he began experimenting with color theory that dictated that certain colors are complementary to each other and enhance each other’s intensity when placed together. This idea resulted in Van Gogh’s intensely vivid paintings during his mature years.

Being exposed to a number of different styles and approaches to art, Van Gogh’s works from Paris suggest an experimental phase. Apart from color, one of the primary elements that the artist focused on was the simplification of form as well as the flattening of the picture plane. These were key compositional techniques in Japanese prints and informed Van Gogh’s later development. Abandoning the realist tendency to instill depth in a composition, Van Gogh created two-dimensional compositions and simplified his forms, as can be seen in the painting Carafe and Dish with Citrus Fruit (1887). This painting also shows the table with the carafe and lemons arranged diagonally. This kind of perspective based on diagonal lines was typical of Japanese prints and became another stylistic choice that Van Gogh implemented in later works, such as in the painting The Bedroom from 1888.

These stylistic choices were accompanied by a change in Van Gogh’s brushwork. Realist painting called for inconspicuous brushstrokes that blend into the larger composition, while French avant-garde artists, including the Impressionists, painted with distinctly visible brushstrokes. Artists like Georges Seurat and Paul Signac, for example, painted using the pointillist technique wherein unmixed color was applied to the surface in the form of dots and small dashes.

Van Gogh experimented with this technique in paintings such as View from Theo’s Apartment (1887) but did not fully commit to pointillism as a stylistic direction. Instead, he modified it to fit his own artistic vision. This can be seen in paintings like Apples and Grapes from 1887 that feature small dashes in some places but the works are not entirely composed of the pointillist technique. Further, Van Gogh began painting with impasto in Paris by applying paint thickly on the surface, which is by far one of the most characteristic features of his style and remained an integral part of his creative process.

Carrying all this new knowledge, Van Gogh left Paris in February 1888 for a quieter life in the countryside. His destination was the city of Arles in the Provençal region of France, where he lived for over a year. His time in Paris formed the foundation for the development of his mature style, which was a combination of the stylistic techniques of his peers and his own artistic vision.

Arles (1888-89)

The Arles period stretched from February 1888 to May 1889. Within the span of one year, Van Gogh managed to produce around 200 paintings, including some of his most famous masterpieces such as Sunflowers and Café Terrace at Night. The artist discovered light on the Impressionist canvases in Paris and Arles provided him with the perfect setting to add light to his own work. The region received an immense amount of intense sunlight that illuminated the entire land. Van Gogh’s paintings in Arles feature many vivid colors, most of all yellow, that intend to capture the brightness of the Arlesian landscapes, as he once described in a letter: “Sunshine, a light which, for want of a better word I can only call yellow — pale sulfur yellow, pale lemon, gold. How beautiful yellow is!”

Van Gogh’s style in Arles also became more intentional as he found a direction for his work after exploring different techniques in Paris. He continued experimenting with color theory in Arles, which became easier due to the abundance of colorful subjects readily available to him. His fascination with Japanese prints also grew, and he continued incorporating the Japanese approach to form and perspective in his own works, for example, in The Yellow House. This painting does not feature stippling, i.e., the use of dots and dashes as per the pointillist technique, and is instead composed of flat sections of color, a flat picture plane, and strong lines. These elements were characteristic of the Cloisonnist style, inspired by Japanese art and pioneered by his peer Emile Bernard, as well as implemented by Paul Gauguin. Van Gogh painted in this style on many occasions in Arles; examples include Sunflowers and The Zouave. 

Although an important period in Van Gogh’s stylistic development, the time in Arles was also fraught with difficulties. Van Gogh suffered his first major mental breakdown in December 1888 and was admitted to a hospital. The first half of 1889 was spent going in and out of hospitals up until May, when he voluntarily admitted himself to a psychiatric hospital in Saint-Rémy, where he stayed for a year. In 1890, he was discharged from the hospital and moved to an artists’ village near Paris called Auvers-sur-Oise. Despite these circumstances, Van Gogh never abandoned painting and remained consistent in his efforts to hone his style. He maintained his fascination with the compositional techniques of Japanese prints, cloisonnism, pointillism, as well as impasto, creating works with stylistic and coloristic diversity

Van Gogh in Saint-Rémy and Auvers-sur-Oise (1889-90)

In Saint-Rémy, Van Gogh returned to his experiments with stippling, which is featured in a large part of his paintings from this period, such as The Starry Night, Olive Grove, and Country Road in Provence by Night. These works demonstrate how the artist started employing undulating lines more often, a feature that intensified even further in 1890. Paintings leaning towards the cloisonnist and Japanese style were still being made during this period, but the use of small dashes became a prominent feature of Van Gogh’s style in 1889 and 1890. Painting with small dashes became a significant stylistic element in the last few months of his life, which were spent in Auvers, as can be seen in Portrait of Doctor Gachet and Daubigny’s Garden.

However, the artist did not exclusively rely on stippling, but instead attempted to merge different styles. Van Gogh’s works from Auvers also appear more passionate and spontaneous, something that has often been linked to his mental state at the time. While there is no conclusive proof for this connection, the artist’s style certainly became more confident during his mature years.

Both avant-garde artists and realist painters inspired Van Gogh, playing a key role in his stylistic development, but the manner in which the artist assimilated this knowledge into his own artistic vision is what resulted in the unique stylistic character of his paintings. The choice of subjects remained a key factor in determining his stylistic choices, which were ultimately a medium to create emotionally expressive paintings that convey the essence of the subjects.

Van Gogh’s oeuvre boasts 2,000 paintings and drawings made over a period of 10 years, with a majority of these works revolving around nature. Having spent most of his life in the countryside, the artist immersed himself in capturing natural subjects and even developed a spiritual relationship with nature later in life. However, most of his paintings of the countryside depict landscapes and peasants. Works featuring animals are rare, despite their ubiquitous presence in these areas.

Animals as Subjects in Modern Art

Even when they do appear in Van Gogh’s works, animals are mostly confined to background spaces as supporting elements and rarely function as central subjects. Still, animals do make an appearance in paintings wherein the artist saw it fit to include them.

Painting landscapes of the countryside depicting fields and farms has been a common tradition in European painting and has naturally led to many works featuring domesticated animals such as horses, cows, donkeys, herds of sheep, ducks, etc. In the second half of the 19th century, the Hague School of painters from the Netherlands sustained this tradition with paintings such as The Return of the Flock, Laren by Anton Mauve.

Animals can also be seen in many Impressionist paintings, such as in Edouard Manet’s A King Charles Spaniel from c. 1866 and Mary Cassatt’s Young Girl at a Window from c. 1883-84. The Post-Impressionist artist and Van Gogh’s peer Paul Gauguin too gave space to animal subjects in his paintings such as in his 1885 work Landscape with Cows in an Orchard and Still Life with Puppies from 1888.

Animals were also a common subject in Japanese woodblock prints called ukiyo-e that gained popularity in Europe in the 19th century. Many Impressionist and Post-Impressionist artists took inspiration from Japanese composition techniques to develop their own style, and Van Gogh was particularly fond of these prints. Pet animals such as dogs, cats and birds as well as wild animals made several appearances in ukiyo-e prints. They served different purposes: certain animals were associated with religious beliefs, sometimes animals served as decorative motifs and other times they held personal meaning, such as the depiction of pets. As Van Gogh was an avid collector of Japanese prints and even made several repetitions of them with oil and canvas, he would have been familiar with this subject matter and how it was portrayed by Japanese printmakers.

Van Gogh’s View

Painting animals in some shape or form was therefore common amongst the artists that Van Gogh considered to be his peers. But despite the frequent consideration of fauna as a subject of painting by his fellow artists, Van Gogh was not always keen on doing the same in his paintings. While his primary interest lay in painting country life just like his tutor and a member of the Hague School, Anton Mauve, Van Gogh’s works focused on the people of the land. He was largely absorbed by the task of capturing the life of the peasants who worked on the land and made a large number of drawings and paintings featuring this subject in a very specific style as is evident in the painting Woman Lifting Potatoes from 1885.

Describing the effects he intended to achieve with his peasant paintings, he wrote, “You see, I really have wanted to make it so that people get the idea that these folk, who are eating their potatoes by the light of their little lamp, have tilled the earth themselves with these hands they are putting in the dish, and so it speaks of MANUAL LABOUR and — that they have thus honestly earned their food.”

During the time he spent at his parents’ house in Nuenen in 1884-85, Van Gogh’s efforts resulted in 50 portraits of peasants from the province of Brabant in the Netherlands, as well as his masterpiece The Potato Eaters. This interest in painting peasant life was in part a result of Van Gogh’s admiration with the French artist Jean-François Millet who gained recognition as a painter of peasant life in the 19th century. Van Gogh comments on Millet and his work in multiple letters written throughout his life and made numerous repetitions of his paintings. He explained his dedication to painting peasants in a letter to Theo from 1885: “When I say that I’m a peasant painter, that is really so, and will become clearer to you in future; I feel at home there. . . I’ve become so absorbed in peasant life by continually seeing it at all hours of the day that I really hardly ever think of anything else.”

Despite spending a great amount of time in fields and natural settings in order to capture the subject of the peasant, Van Gogh paid significantly little attention to the animals populating these areas. While paintings of animals are few and far between, they are not entirely absent from his oeuvre. He gave special attention to fauna in some paintings, usually because he was visually intrigued by the subject or because the animal added character to the scene he was portraying. A few of the paintings also focus on animals not usually found in farms or everyday settings. Let’s analyze Van Gogh’s works of art that feature animals!

“Oxcart” and “Cart With Black Ox” (1884)

This painting dates back to Van Gogh’s early years as an artist that he spent at his parents’ house in Nuenen. He started taking art seriously as a profession at the age of 27 and initially began working with making sketched copies of paintings by Rembrandt or Millet as well as studies of laborers. While Impressionism was already a well-established movement in France by this time, Van Gogh did not witness a painting with light and bright colors until 1886.

He stuck to the traditional rules of Dutch art that he had observed with great attention in his own works,  visible through his use of dark colors and inconspicuous brushstrokes in Oxcart and Cart with Black Ox. Both paintings depict an ox hitched to a cart as its central focus. One animal is red and white while the other is black with white legs. The background hints towards a field setting, although it does not consist of many details.

Paintings such as these, with the animal as the main subject, are not typical of Van Gogh, but it is possible that the artist was practicing his command of colors and the brush by painting these as studies. These compositions also allowed him the opportunity to practice painting complex mechanisms such as that of the cart, something that he also attempted in the several paintings and drawings of weavers on a loom that he made in Nuenen. The painting Oxcart was most likely a reference to a work by his teacher Anton Mauve titled Oxcart on a Country Road from 1867.

Flying Fox (1885)

This painting of a flying fox made in 1885 is an isolated subject in Van Gogh’s oeuvre. The work depicts a taxidermied fruit-eating bat from a tropical region with its wings fully expanded outwards, as if in mid-flight. The fact that this animal is not alive and is rather stuffed is evident from the posture of the creature that appears to be on display. At the same time, Van Gogh did not depict it within an enclosure, perhaps to give the effect of the bat flying in its natural setting.

Either way, this species of bat was not native to Europe and rare animals like these would be brought into the continent as collector items. Access to such a subject was likely possible through Van Gogh’s friend Antoon Hermans who lived in Eindhoven and had a collection of 300 rare animals and birds. In Flying Fox, the surroundings of the bat are dark and blurry with only one light source placed directly behind the animal to illuminate its wings.

“A Crab on Its Back” (1889) and “Two Crabs” (1889)

These two paintings featuring crabs demonstrate that Japanese prints did inspire Van Gogh to paint animals. These prints featured this subject and the artist attempted to create his own rendition of it in these two paintings. Crab on Its Back featuring a single crab was painted when Van Gogh was living in Arles. During this time, he was experimenting with the rules of color theory set out by Charles Blanc which is evident in the palette of this composition. The crab is painted with different shades of red and the background is a vibrant green. According to color theory, red and green are complementary colors that enhance each other’s vividness when placed next to each other.

Two Crabs, painted in Arles during Van Gogh’s stay in Provence, depicts two crustaceans, with one flipped on its back. It is unclear whether Van Gogh painted two different crabs or the same crab twice in the same composition. Nevertheless, these paintings are examples of the artist’s grasp of color theory as well as his ability to depict the complex anatomy of a crab. The fact that he chose to paint this animal on two different occasions suggests that the subject was compelling enough to satisfy his artistic curiosity.

“Giant Peacock Moth” (1889)

This painting of a Peacock Moth native to Europe was made during Van Gogh’s one-year stay at the psychiatric hospital in Saint-Rémy in the Provence region between 1889 and 1890. As he was not allowed to leave the premises of the hospital as a patient, he spent most of his time looking for subjects in the walled garden of the institution which is where he first discovered the Peacock Moth. He chose the subject very intentionally and found it to be visually intriguing and worthy of painting. This was not often the case with his paintings of animals, which is what makes this work interesting.

Describing his encounter with the animal that he remarked as being quite big in size, he wrote to Theo: “Yesterday I drew a very large, rather rare night moth there which is called the death’s head, its coloration astonishingly distinguished . . . To paint it I would have had to kill it, and that would have been a shame since the animal was so beautiful.”

It was not common for Van Gogh to impart such a detailed description to an animal from an artistic perspective. He ultimately could not let go of the subject and used his drawing of the moth as reference for the painting. This was one of many works that he painted in the garden of the hospital at Saint-Rémy.

Van Gogh’s “Cows” (1890)

Even though Van Gogh had this subject readily available in the countryside, the painting Cows from 1890 was painted as a copy of a print. At the time, Van Gogh was living in Auvers-sur-Oise which was an artists’ retreat close to Paris. He was staying there under the supervision of Doctor Paul Gachet, a physician and amateur artist who was well-known among the artist circles in Paris. Gachet used to make etchings under the pseudonym Paul van Ryssel with an etching machine in the attic of his house.

He made an etching of the painting Study of Cows by Jacob Jordaens, which then served as a reference for Van Gogh’s painting. This process of painting a copy from another copy was a fairly new exercise for the artist, but making drawings and paintings after other artworks was a common practice for the artist.

In Cows, Van Gogh used bright greens, yellows and browns. The contrasting yet harmonious colors, the bold use of line as well as the unique interpretation of forms renders Cows as a testament to Van Gogh’s development as a modern artist that is especially noticeable when compared to his handling of the similar subject of oxen in Nuenen.