This mysterious painting of an open hand dates back to 1633 according to one of the many inscriptions on the canvas.  Measuring 49 inches high, 28 inches wide, this intriguing painting contains multiple cryptic Latin phrases and is of uncertain origin.

According to Dr. George Szabo, former director of the Lehman collection at the Metropolitan Museum of Art,  the painting is probably a unique example of an instructive work of art that may have adorned the study of a Late Renaissance patron with a strong bent to the philosophic or scientific. The lettering and numerals, being highly accomplished ,leads one to believe that it probably was painted in one of the leading Italian centers with a strong tradition of calligraphy.

The hand is pictured with a cuff at the wrist, meaning it is most likely secular, as the hand of God would not be clothed.

The Latin phrase positioned at the bottom of the piece: “Omnia in mensum numo et ponderi disposuisti Sap. Cap 11.” is a quote from Wisdom 11: “You  arranged them all according to their weight and number”, which was famously to be taken up as a motto by Sir Isaac Newton. Also noted is the deliberate punning found within the language which was a didactic device used at the time.  The Latin phrase “Ancipit. a .B. anna 1633.” translates; “this painting was begun in ‘B’ in 1633″ lending the extraordinary image an even greater sense of mystery.

The image of the hand formed part of the complex symbolic vocabulary of seventeenth century alchemical illustration. The true meanings of such “Hermetick Emblems” were known only to the initiated. Though it resembles various images of hands from the same period, such as those in Kircher’s Musurgia Universalis and in Agrippa von Nettesheim’s De occulta philosophia, such hands usually bear planetary symbols. We are still looking into what the word and number combinations on our painting mean, and would love to hear your ideas!

_{A special thanks to Dr. George Szabo and Clare Gibson for their input.}

The painting has been attributed to the artist Peter Hartover by John Harris in his seminal study The Artist and the Country House. The style and arrangement of the figures in the foreground are comparable to the group of Sir John and Lady Swinburne receiving guests at the gates of Capheaton in Northumberland as depicted in a painting known to be by Hartover and dated 1674. Hartover is known to have been the partner of one Robert Crossby ‘of London’, but a series of views signed by him or identifiably in his style, reveal that he later spent some time working in the north east of England.

Sir William Bowyer’s alterations transformed Denham into the largest of all known ‘artisan mannerist’ houses and, as the painting records, provided a statement of considerable and unusual grandeur. The brick façade was organised around the motif of repeating columns, each with a prominent stone capital, which took the form of a giant order to the wings, whilst the whole was surmounted by a handsome parapet supporting twenty-four busts. These were later transferred to the house and gardens of Sir Roger Hill’s building, which can be seen below in a painting circa 1705, possibly by John Drapientier.

These magnificent pictures represent an examples of the form of the house painting, which was at this date still in the early stages of its development. At around this time families began to commission such paintings either from pride in their possessions, as a depiction of major architectural alterations or as a record of an old family home before its replacement by a newer building.

A photograph taken June 29, 1925 depicts Denham Place as it stood in the 20th century, the house appearing in form much as it did in the Drapientier painting.

]]> http://www.carltonhobbs.net/art/paintings/denham-place-buckinghamshire/2010/02/09/feed/ 2 http://www.carltonhobbs.net/art/paintings/life-and-death-contrasted-vanitas/2010/01/04/ http://www.carltonhobbs.net/art/paintings/life-and-death-contrasted-vanitas/2010/01/04/#comments Tue, 05 Jan 2010 01:41:59 +0000 Carlton Hobbs Blog http://www.carltonhobbs.net/?p=1738 You might remember our Halloween blog, “Trick or Treat,” in which we focused on a number of artworks that feature skeletons. The last work we mentioned was full of quotes and symbolism, and we’re back to tell you a bit more about this curious picture.

This engraving is titled Life and Death Contrasted, or, An Essay on Woman. It belongs to the genre of symbolic still life painting known as Vanitas (Latin for “vanity”) intended to remind us of our own mortality and the transience of earthly possessions and vices. Like Memento Mori painting (from the Latin “Remember you will die”), the most popular symbols found in these works are skeletons or skulls, but they may also include symbols of vanity (such as mirrors and musical instruments), expressing the emptiness and worthless nature of worldly goods.

Here a lady is depicted in two halves, shown both in life and in death. On the left she is represented in elaborate aristocratic costume, standing in a garden and surrounded by her earthly pleasures and holding a fan. The superficial trappings of a life of leisure and gambling lay at her feet, including playing cards, books and papers instructing on gaming and masquerade. On the right we see only her skeleton  standing within a cemetery with worms coiling around a skull and bone at her foot.  She holds an arrow in her hands, used to symbolize death. The arrow is sometimes also used to represent disease, specifically the Plague.

Beside the skeleton stands an obelisk inscribed with proverbs, bible verses and sermon excerpts decrying worldly pursuits and reminding us, and women in particular, that “she that liveth in pleasure is dead while she liveth” (1 Timothy 5:6) and that they should be wary of their mortal pursuits while striving toward heavenly salvation.Other phrases contained on the obelisk come from the “Gravedigger Scene” of Shakespeare’s Hamlet (5.1): “Now get you to my lady’s table and tell her, let her paint an inch thick, to this complexion she must come at last.”

Another author represented is the Reverend James Hervey (1714-1758), and Anglican Divine and zealous writer, whose oeuvre influenced the work of artists like William Blake. The excerpt on the obelisk comes from his 1746 volume Meditations Among the Tombs: “One night, Corinna was all gaiety in her spirits, all finery in her apparel, at a magnificent ball. The next night, she lay pale and stiff, an extended corpse, and ready to be mingled with the mouldering dead.”

Perhaps something to reflect upon at the beginning of this New Year…

Figure 1

September has arrived and school is in session! What better way to mark the beginning of the academic year than with a little lesson on Arithmetic, one of the seven Liberal Arts.

The seven Liberal Arts— Grammar, Rhetoric, Logic, Geometry, Arithmetic, Music, and Astronomy— were introduced in classical antiquity as the fields of study appropriate for a freeman’s education.  From the Middle Ages, the Liberal Arts constituted the curriculum at Western universities, their focus on intellectual discourse distinguishing them from the practical arts of craftsmen and laborers. Artistic depictions of the Liberal Arts were based on an allegory by the fifth-century writer Martianus Capella called On the Seven Disciplines or Satyricon, in which the seven Arts were personified as maids serving the bride Philology upon her marriage to Mercury.

Figure 2

A painting in the Carlton Hobbs collection by Jonas Arnold of Ulm, Germany, depicts a 17th century allegory of Arithmetica (figure 1).  Arnold (d. 1669) was a designer and engraver, and court painter to Count Starhemberg in Linz. His portraits of the participants in the Count’s yearly carnival constitute a valuable cultural and historical record. In this allegory, the figure of Arithmetic is seated at a table holding her defining attribute, a tablet covered with figures on which she is writing (occasionally she is shown with an abacus instead). She is dressed in sober period garb, complete with pomander, the silver vase filled with perfumes hung around the waist by a chain. The wall behind her is made up entirely of shelves, drawers and slots; the slots are labeled with the alphabetized names of cities in Germany and Italy and contain letters or papers. The shelves containing red ledgers are labeled above “New Debit Ledgers,” “Old Debit Ledgers,” etc.

Figure 3

Figure 4

To the right is a pipe organ, which may serve as a reminder of the mathematical basis in Music. On the left, a screw press sits on the floor. Similar to the Dutch stamper press, these machines were typically used for oil extraction. However, the screw press also resembled rudimentary versions of the printing press and was furthermore used in book binding, which appears to be its function in this painting.

Other early depictions of Arithmetica include a late 15th century fresco by Pinturicchio in Palazzi Pontifici, Vatican (figure 2); an illustration in Gregor Reich’s 1503 work Margarita Philosophica (figure 3); and the  16th century engraving Allegory of Arithmetic by Hieronymous Cock (figure 4).

Mond. Julius Grimm, 1888.

Grimm knew of the Grand Duke’s fascination with astronomy and embarked on an ambitious project to produce an oil painting of the moon, based on his photographs, to be presented to him. On 16 July 1888 he wrote to the court of his decision to produce for His Royal Highness “using the latest photography… a larger picture of the full moon in oils, partly from photographs and partly from nature, on the surface of which all the craters and seas are represented with the greatest precision.” The detail is so sharp, one really does feel that they are standing before a photograph!

Julius Grimm at his telescope. (Photo courtesy of the Grimm family.)

Grimm’s 1888 painting, which has a highly textured surface and depicts shadows cast on the surface of the moon by the moon’s own craters, represents the moon in an extraordinary way that can never be seen in reality. During a full moon, the light of the sun comes from behind the observer and thus there are no shadows. Grimm’s representation features an arrow to the left of the moon, which indicates the direction of illumination he adopted. For Grimm, the issue of lighting the painting was critical and in a letter to the court he revealed that the arrow also indicated the direction from which his work should be illuminated. “The picture,” Grimm wrote, “should only be hung or positioned, that the light falls onto the picture from the side where the arrow is positioned, because otherwise, in the case of incorrect lighting, the effect could be completely lost.” We’ve experimented simply with a flashlight, and the effect really is something to be seen!

Grimm’s work received academic praise across Germany and this fabulous painting is a testament not only to his contribution to the selenographic field, but also to the vivid artistic insight that imbued his presentation of scientific imagery. We’re happy to share this lunar masterpiece in celebration of the Apollo 11 moon landing!

To read a more complete history of Grimm and his painting, please visit our website.