Mid-Morning Art Thread [Kris]

The Fire of Troy
Frederik van Valckenborch

A lot of Frederik van Valckenborch’s work seems to consist of wide, sprawling, detailed landscapes and populated with melodramatic human figures. They have dominant foregrounds with supporting middle- and backgrounds. I got the impression that he was particularly interested in intense subject matter, such as wars or tragedies. A source I read categorizes his style as Mannerist, the period of art history immediately following the High Renaissance where artists experimented with the rules and innovations of art developed during that earlier era. The intense drama of The Fire of Troy, its swirling forms and color, and figures melting into others, also foreshadow the coming Baroque era.

In The Fire of Troy, van Valckenborch creates a scene of terrible slaughter. This is the very end of the Trojan War. The Greeks have emerged from the Horse and rampage through the city at night, catching the Trojans totally by surprise. The main scene is in the foreground center left. Warriors attack a group of women and girls who will be taken back to Greece as slaves. All the males of the city, adults and children, will be killed.

Behind this group is the battle. The Greeks flow like a flash flood from the Horse into the city while the Trojans try to dam the flow. There is panic and chaos. This section is interesting to me. At first, it was hard to tell which way the action was moving. When I first looked at it, it looked like the mass was charging from upper-left to bottom-right. Then when I refocused my gaze, it switched, going from bottom-right to upper-left. Looking closer, I saw that this flood has currents. Some groups charge to the right, some countercharge to the left — and slicing through the mass is a troop of cavalry. It is chaos and it highlights the confusion of battle and the realities of open, hand-to-hand combat. It’s a neat effect and it gives The Fire of Troy energy and noise.

The Trojan Horse in the background is almost lost in all the chaos. It’s a small, tan shape that blends into the scenery. It is the source of the action, though. The raging flood flows from it and around it. If you embiggen the painting, you can see Greeks still emerging from the Horse. It gives the effect that the Greeks just keep coming with no end in sight. It’s a neat detail.

The confusion of battle is replicated in van Valckenborch’s technique. His loose brushstrokes complement and exaggerate the action on the ground. Fire becomes a raging inferno when painted like this. It feels hot and out of control. The limited use of color helps, too. The Fire of Troy is a night scene lit by the fire, so the colors are mostly yellows, oranges, and some reds. They glow against the blackness.

I like the details of this painting. The main scene of the warriors and women in the front is complemented by others: the Greeks descending from the Trojan Horse, the cavalry battle in the middle, the screaming women on the balcony to the right, the architecture, etc. The flow of the action leads my eye around to take it all in. My favorite scene, however, might be the black and red group of buildings near center right. I really like van Valckenborch’s use of silhouette to brighten the flames, and the red glowing through the windows flickers. It looks like something out of Dante and compounds the horror and tragedy of the scene. Van Valckenborch then added groups of people fleeing in panic from this blaze into the heart of the slaughter. It is Hell. This black and red contrasts with the large area of yellow and white to the left, enhancing both.

There are a few things that feel off about this painting. The perspective is wrong. Distances and scale also feel inaccurate. Since Mannerists liked to play around with the viewer’s expectations, Van Valckenborch could be using these distortions to create a sense of imbalance in the viewer in another attempt to depict the realities of war.

The cityscape itself is a fantastical Renaissance setting. The real Troy was a late Bronze Age fortress without elaborate Romanesque architectural details such as domes. It isn’t a contemporary city either. It’s something Van Valckenborch made up. He seems to fill his city with references to specific monuments, however. The columns dotting the scene are similar to the Column of Trajan. The large round building in the left background behind the Trojan Horse looks like an exaggerated version of the Temple from Raphael’s The Marriage of the Virgin. It was common for artists to use contemporary or familiar places and props as sit-ins for their ancient subject matter. Notice that the armor of the soldiers is not period specific either. Van Valckenborch clothed his figures in a mixture of styles and time periods. He needed a powerful city and two powerful armies. For art like this, historical accuracy is secondary to the message: the drama and climax of a great story and the fall of a great city.

posted by Open Blogger at 09:30 AM

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