Denis Painting Of Orpheus And Eurydice example essay topic

As an idealist, I often find it easy to symbolist and epitomise objects and characters so as to represent something, an ideal or a thought, or even forms of art or higher-thinking. It is more enjoyable for me to see an object, like a crucifix for example, to perhaps hold special properties, to be a symbol of Christian faith, and to be holy and blessed from God in its own right. Indeed, there is a plethora of veritable proportions of symbols and images that have come to epitomise and represent their chosen domain, be it the arts or religion or emotions or action. Many idealists have composed works on the ideals of love for example, or the ideals of philosophy; the ideals of chivalry are one such example. Almost anything imaginable has an idealistic thought to it, a symbol that represents it. And are there ideals for music?

Yes. When one thinks of the absolute pinnacle of the musician's craft, the highest achievement a musician could attain, one might suggest that Beethoven or Mozart, or many other artists, represent such. One would be wrong; in a sense. While all these artists have created works that could be said to be the best ever, ideologically, they represent little. In an idealist's world, the greatest musician to ever live would be able to move the very earth with the bass from his great instrument, to ascend into the heavens with treble tones of magnificence and splendour. He would be able to charm man and beast alike, to enteral them within his captivating melodies.

And such a person does exist, though only in the fiction of the human mind. Orpheus, the personification of music. In this article we will see the original myth, Orpheus in Hades as composed by the idealist Ovid, and but transformed to represent Metamorphosis, or change. Next, we will glance at an adaptation of Ovid's work, in the Romanticist song "Ode for St. Cecilia's Day" by the idealist John Alexander Pope. Afterwards, we will study the idealist painting Orpheus and Eurydice, by the French symbolist artist Maurice Denis (more-EES de-NEE). In each we will look at the author and his society, how this affected his work, and how he has adapted it to suit his ideological needs.

To begin with, we must seek the source (see Appendix A. ). Whilst the myth was probably originally recorded during the Greek-Classical period (500-323 B.C.) it was adapted by Ovid to the Roman Pantheon and placed in his book of poetry, Metamorphoses, around 8 A.D. In this book Ovid adapts a collection of Greco-Roman myths, using change as his theme, to represent certain ideals; like the all-time favourite, love. To understand the stance he places upon his work, and before we can analyse it literally, we must understand him as a person and the society he lived in. Ovid^1 was born in Sumo, in the Apennines east of Rome, on March 20th 43 B.C. He was sent by his father to study law in Rome but instead was caught up in the fanciful and graceful verse and literature that abounded throughout the city at the time.

^1 The name by which Publius O vidius Naso is commonly known as. Against the wishes of his father he pursued a career as a poet. In any event, he proved quite good at composing verse, and by the age of 20, was writing to appreciative audiences, and by age 30 was one of Rome's most successful poets. But at the age of 50, his life was turned around when he was sent in exile, by order of Emperor Augustus himself, to Tomis^1, on the shores of the Black Sea. The exact reasons for his exile are unknown, as Ovid himself, perhaps out of embarrassment or for his own protection, deliberately obscured them. Ovid merely referred to a mistake and poem of his.

Some historians believe it may have been the Ars Amato ria an erotic play about love. For whatever the reasons, he died in Tomis around A.D. 23, at the age of 60. Many of his poems are elegiac and reflect his laments on being exiled. Ovid's period of time was one of both upheaval and great cultural advancement.

He was born one year after Gaius Julius Caesar's death, a time which saw many civil wars waged in and around Rome. Soon after though, Julius Caesar's nephew Octavian, later to be known as Caesar Augustus, wrested control of Rome from his enemies, and after the defeat of a member of his former triumvirate, Marc Antony, the senate elected to give him emergency control of Rome, and under his rule came the Roman Empire. During this time great advances were made in the fields of religion, art, music and literature. Great writers such as Virgil, Horace, Livy and Ovid were all living under the emperor's patronage.

This was the stage for Ovid's many literary masterpieces, and no doubt the upheaval and reformation taking place all around him influenced and formed his ideals of change and metamorphosis. As aforementioned, Ovid's themes centre largely around change, and his ideals of change. In Orpheus and Eurydice we can see the natural order of events being changed. In particular, Ovid prefers to use a symbolic, and ultimately ethical, form of love to show his change.

Orpheus's love for Eurydice is so great and so pure that he actually bends the laws of nature; laws laid down by a stern and cold god no less, and manages to extract her from the bowels of Erebus. He does this through his music^1; music so pure and so artfully weaved that he is able to captivate and entrance even rocks and trees. It is a happy thought that humans may, for the sake of a loved one, be able to bend and even break the very laws of nature. This "breaking of the rules" that Ovid likes to manifest throughout his works is an ideal in itself, and this is why it represents change; change from reality. Throughout the myth we can see the greatest and mightiest love any human can have for another, yet there is an inconsistency. The end is very tragic, and not as happy as one would like to think.

This is one of Ovid's great skills. By building the emotions of the reader using ideals, Ovid then sets the stage for a dramatic change in the emotions of the reader. This is what makes his stories so interesting and engaging to read. Ovid also employs a different style of poetic verse in Orpheus as well, us a dactylic hexameter rather than his standard elegiac format. And so we can see here in our first text how Ovid was concerned or rather preoccupied by the radical changes occurring around him, and thus why he has chosen to highlight the ideals of change in the myth.

His works nearly rivalled the popularity of the Bible in the Middle Ages, and would create a trend in art and literature that has lasted up till today. ^1 Though Orpheus spoke to Hades and gave his speech, he did so to the accompaniment of his lyre, as was common for musicians in Ovid's day. Ovid's works on change have since changed themselves, and many adaptations on his themes and ideas have since surfaced. One such was made by an Englishman named John Alexander Pope.

In his "Ode for St. Cecilia's Day" (see Appendix B.) Pope uses the ending of Orpheus in Hades as the backdrop for his song. To analyse this more modern adaptation of Orpheus and Eurydice we must first examine John Pope's background. Pope was born the son of Alexander Pope and his second wife, Edith Turner, in London, England, 22 May, 1688. His parents were both Catholics, and he lived and died in the profession of the faith to which he was born.

His father was a linen merchant in Lombard Street, London, who before the end of the seventeenth century retired on a moderate fortune first to Kensington, then to B infield, and finally to Chiswick, where he died in 1717. Soon after this event Pope with his mother removed to the villa at Twickenham, which became his permanent abode, and which, with its five acres, its gardens, and its grotto, will be forever associated with his memory. As a child he was very delicate, and he retained a constitutional weakness as well as a deformity of body, due to tuberculosis, all through his life, which made his stature very diminutive. His early education was spasmodic and irregular, but before he was twelve he had picked up a smattering of Latin and Greek from various tutors and at sundry schools, and subsequently he acquired a similar knowledge of French and Italian. From his thirteenth year onward he was self-instructed and an extensive reader. Barred from a political and to a great extent from a professional career by the penal laws then in force against Catholics, Pope did not feel the restraint very acutely, for his earliest aspiration was to be a poet, and at an exceptionally youthful period he was engaged in writing verses.

His first idea was to compose a great epic, the subject that presented itself being a mythological one, with Alcan der, a prince of Rhodes, as hero; and perhaps he never wholly relinquished his intention of producing such a poem, for after his death there was found among his papers a plan for an epic on Brutus, the mythical great-grandson of Aeneas and reputed founder of Britain. Pope was to die at his residence in Twickenham, on the 30th of May, 1744. By the time Pope was born, England had already been through a great upheaval, in which Catholics were discriminated against and persecuted. Pope, however, remained a devout Catholic, and his works had the same religious bent.

At the time Artistic and Literal works were in the early stages of a reformation. Whereas the Enlightenment started with a select elite to then filter down to the masses; Romanticism was much more dramatic, and was much more widespread in its origins and influence. Romanticism began in Northern Europe, in England and Germany. It was a radical rejection in the Neo-Classical Style, a revival of Ancient Greco-Roman art and literature works. It was also a large rejection of Enlightenment theories, in which science and logic dominated culture and art.

These activities set the tone for one aspect of Romanticism: the belief that products of the uncultivated popular imagination could equal or even surpass those of the educated court poets and composers who had previously monopolized the attentions of scholars and connoisseurs. Rejecting the Enlightenment ideal of balance and rationalism, readers eagerly sought out the hysterical, mystical, passionate adventures of terrified heroes and heroines in the clutches of frightening, mysterious forces. Pope's Ode was done in a romantic style, and this is most probably evident because he is a Catholic. In England at the time Pope would have been persecuted by his beliefs. He was to be one of the first romanticists, most likely because he wanted to lash out at his aggressors, the Enlightenment theorists.

Pope used his Ode not only to celebrate St Cecilia, a highly respected musician, but to show his ideals about romanticism. Pope uses in his Ode some forms of repetition, mostly to create emotion and invoke passion in his readers. It can also be seen that Pope uses the ideals of love evident in Ovid's work. Pope also uses a present tense to envelope his readers in a sense of empathy, as though they are witnessing the events unfold as they read. It can be seen that though John Pope and Ovid are years apart, their themes and ideals remain largely the same, that of Ethical Love, Orpheus as a great musician, and his music being the way he expresses his love; and the theme of change. Ovid uses his change in the literary plot of his writing, the change of natural order; whilst Pope uses change in the style of his writing, being influenced by the reformation occurring around him.

Pope is almost using this work as a means of reforming the ideals and trends that have caged him as a Catholic. Another more recent adaptation of Orpheus can be seen in the painting by Maurice Denis, entitled Orpheus and Eurydice (see Appendix C. ). In this work we can see how Denis has adapted the Orpheus myth and used to represent something, to be Symbolic. Denis was a part of the reformation group known as Symbolists. But before we can see where he has changed the used this, we must understand where he is coming from. Maurice Denis was born in Granville, France, on the 25 Nov 1870.

He was an adept painter, designer, printmaker and theorist. Although born in Normandy, Denis lived throughout his life in Saint-Germain-en-Lake, just west of Paris. He attended the Llc " ee Condorcet, Paris, where he met many of his future artistic contemporaries, then studied art simultaneously at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts and at the Acad " emie Julian. Through fellow student Paul S'erusier, in 1888 he learnt of the innovative stylistic discoveries made that summer in Pont-Aven by Paul Gauguin and Emile Bernard. With S'erusier and a number of like-minded contemporaries at the Acad " emie Julian-Pierre Bonnard, Paul Ranson, Henri-Gabriel I bels and others-Denis found himself fundamentally opposed to the naturalism recommended by his academic teachers.

They formed the NAB IS, a secret artistic brotherhood dedicated to a form of pictorial Symbolism based loosely on the synthetic innovations of Gauguin and Bernard. Denis's first article, 'D'efinition du n'eo-traditionnisme', published in Art et critique in 1890 (and republished in Th " eor ies), served almost as a group manifesto and gave a theoretical justification for the practical and technical innovations of the Pont-Aven school. With its opening statement, "It is well to remember that a picture, before being a battle horse, a nude woman, or some anecdote, is essentially a flat surface covered with colours assembled in a certain order". Denis contributed to the development of a formalist, modernist style in the 20th century. The bold experiments in flat paint application and anti-naturalistic colour that characterized his early Nabi work seemed to prefigure later abstract initiatives. Both as an artist and as a theorist, however, Denis retreated from the radical position he had adopted as a student in 1890.

He had never denied the importance of subject-matter, and in his later painting he devoted himself to the revival of religious imagery. Denis was a Symbolist. Symbolist poets and writers were united by an interest in the mystical and spiritual aspects of art. They often produced expressive, enigmatic images; and tried to represent a concept, ideology, or thing through association, resemblance, or convention. Denis believed, for example, that painting could have musical qualities and that colour, line, and form could convey a sense of rhythm and harmony. Denis' painting of Orpheus and Eurydice can be analysed according to the elements and principles of design.

In the picture, Denis primarily tries to achieve the principle of harmony through the use of colour and shape. Remember that Denis believed that other forms of artistic practices, such as music, had elements in art; and vice-versa. So the choice of his content, that of Orpheus, was a good one, as he represents the ideology of the musicians craft. Using the colour clue, and variations of the colour such as green and purple, create a cool feeling, of inaction and peace, the elements of harmony. Also evident is the shape created by the people in the picture, a ring. A symbol often associated with harmony, and eternity.

The ring also has "musical"^1 properties to it, as it naturally draws an onlooker's eye around the entire painting; this is done by the repetition of people in a certain shape, the same concept as that of a rhythm in musical terms. Though again, one can detect a certain inconsistency in the paintings structure. There is a gap in the bottom right corner. This seems to be a dramatic ploy, very similar to Ovid's way of changing emotions, which Denis has used to create an effect of mystery. Who belongs in that space?

Is it Orpheus, strumming his lyre in the centre of the circle; or Eurydice, caged by an arch of foliage, and separate from the group? Or is that space intended for us, the onlooker, just as in Pope's use of present tense? There is definitely a symbolic value in that and in most of the painting, but like in most art, it is often objective, and depends on the viewer looking at it The painting has many similarities to both Ovid's and Pope's versions of the myth. And the themes and ideals are remarkably similar, such as Orpheus being the ideal of Music, Eurydice caged and taken from him, but mostly of change. In each different text, we as the viewers receive a different type of change, a different perspective of it.

Ovid's shows us change in the literary and grammatical sense. John Pope shows us his own change and his own reformation. And Maurice Denis shows us the change in ourselves, and how symbolic meanings are objective, and how they may change according to the perspective and viewpoint of those who view them. Each one of these artists was an idealist, a man who dreamt and could see a way, that while not ultimately possible, was perfect. A way of seeing natural laws and everyday life and ordinary people as having the potential to be something perfect, even if it could only be expressed in their own fictional masterpieces.

^1 It has now been proven that many elements and principles of design have functions in other areas or the arts, such as music. Appendix A Orpheus in Hades: OVID, Metamorphoses, Courtesy of Bullfinch's Mythology Appendix B Excerpt from Ode for St. Cecilia's Day, John Alexander Pope "But soon, too soon the lover turns his eyes; Again she falls, again she dies, she dies! How wilt thou now the fatal sisters move? No crime was thine, if 'tis no crime to love. Now under hanging mountains, Beside the falls of fountains, Or where Hebrus wanders, Rolling in meanders, All alone, He makes his moan, And calls her ghost, For ever, ever, ever lost! Now with furies surrounded, Despairing, confounded, He trembles, he glows, Amidst Rhodope's snows.

See, wild as the winds o'er the desert he flies; Hark! Ha emus resounds with the Bacchanals' cries. Ah, see, he dies! Yet even in death Eurydice he sung, Eurydice still trembled on his tongue: Eurydice the woods Eurydice the floods Eurydice the rocks and hollow mountains rung". Appendix C Orpheus and Eurydice, 1910, Maurice Denis, Oil on Linen.