When my friend Örjan asked me if I knew of any artists who had written about art and then specifically dealt with their own artistry, I couldn't find any names that he didn't already know. However, when I a few weeks ago rummaged through the books in an antiquarian bookshop I found a book with texts by Federico Zuccari (1539 –1609).

Zuccari and his older brother Taddeo were in their time well-known artists. In Rome, their paintings can be found in many palaces and churches. In my opinion, Federico is the more versatile of the two, while Taddeo comes off as rather awkward.

Federico shifts between different styles, often elegant, although rather inconspicuous, at least compared to great masters like Titian and Raphael. Despite this, by Titian’s death in 1576 Federico Zuccari was by several art connoisseurs regarded as Italy's foremost artist.

Federico worked for Italy’s leading princely houses, for the Pope in Rome, Philip II in Spain and Queen Elisabeth I in England. Wealthy and influential, he built a palace in Rome next to the Church of SantissimaTrinità dei Monti located by the crest of the Spanish Steps. Due to its bizarre frescoes, windows and portals, Zuccari's residence was called Casa dei Mostri, the House of the Monsters.

Federico Zuccari was a controversial and easily hurt man, who constantly managed to make himself uncomfortable. However, impetuousness, diligence and zeal for work made him sought after by a variety of employers. Furthermore, he was a tireless self-promoter and diligent writer. A drawing by Federico shows him and his brother working on a fresco at a Roman wall, while an admiring Michelangelo holds his horse to have an appreciative look at their work.

Michelangelo was Federico’s great role model and he was eventually by Pope Gregorio given the honorary commission to complete Michelangelo’s work in the Pauline Chapel, where cardinals gathered to elect a new pope and where, twenty years earlier Michelangelo had in 1549 completed his last paintings - The Conversion of Saul and St . Peter's Crucifixion.

Another task Federico carried out in the shadow of a great genius was the frescoes under the famous dome which  Brunel1eschi in 1436 had struck over the cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore in Florence. After its completion its interior had been left whitewashed in anticipation of its 3,600 square meters becomimng adorned with a fresco. It was first in 1571 that this assignment was awarded to Giorgio Vasari, though he died after two years. Vasari had by then covered a third of the surface with his paintings. A year later, Francesco Medici decided that the thirty-five-year-old Federico Zuccari would complete the work, something which he achieved  in less than five years.

The result was not at all appreciated by the Florentines. They were shocked by the glaring obscenities of the infernal scenes where rammish sinners by grotesque devils were sodomized with burning torches.

It was also considered something of a gross sacrilege when Zuccari, with a startling headdress and a palette in one hand prominently , portrayed himself and members of his family among the celestial hosts.

Lampoons were written and many argued that the demonic scenes should be painted over. Zuccari feigned unconcern and through his arrogance and wicked sense of humour he attracted  even more scorn upon himself A contributing reason for the Florentines’ dislike of Federico Zuccaro may also have been that het often expressed his disdain for what he called the “Florentine manner”. He came from the small, provincial town of Sant'Angelo in Vado in Marche. The Florentines in particular, but also the Romans, were also annoyed by Zuccari's sleight of hand and the scattered presence of his diverse works. It became a saying that when someone dismissed a mediocre work, which master they did not know, they did so with the words: “Surely made by a Zuccari”

Federico liked to excel with his literary culture and knowledgeable references to classical writers. When Cardinal Alessandro Farnese in 1569 fired him from the construction site of his palace in Caprarola, Zuccari spread a number of engravings alluding to the ancient story about The Calumny of Apelles (which earlier had been famously depicted by Botticelli). The depiction of this incident  alludes to an artist being judged  by an ignorant prince with donkey ears, an allusion to Midas who preferred the art of Marsyas to that of Apollo.  In  Zuccari’s etching Midas has the appearance of and Alessandro, who acts on the advice of personifications representing Calumny , Ignorance, Suspicion, Fraud and Conspiracy. The motif was originally described by Luciano of Samosata (120-180 AD) and was one of Federico's great favourites and he made several versions of it.

During his time in Rome, following the completion of the Florentine frescoes, Federico was commissioned by Paolo Ghiselli, papal scalco, i.e. a high-level chef in charge of the papal kitchen. Ghiselli was eager to announce his elevated social position by paying for a fresco intended to adorn a chapel in Santa Maria del Baraccano, situated in his and the Pope’s hometown, Bologna. The subject was San Gregorio's Procession to Prevent the Plague in Rome. The Pope, Ugo Boncompagni, had chosen Gregorio as his papal name.

Zuccari devoted great effort to the realization of this prestigious work of art, evident from the many drawings that have been preserved. However, his proposal was not liked, probably because it was fiercely criticized by Bolognese painters who wanted to protect their city’s art market from “alien” encroachment.

Zuccari was not paid for his work. An unsigned note declared that his proposal was “fuzzy” and “undignified”. The artist became enraged and on the annual feast of Saint Luke, patron saint of Rome’s artists, he unveiled a large canvas in Chiesa dei Santi Luca e Martina in Rome’s Forum.  Zuccari called his work Porta Virtutis, Gate of Virtue.

To his fellow artists and a general public, Zuccari explained the painting's allegorical allusions. However, the intention was obvious to everyone, not least because the ambitious chef, Paolo Ghiselli, was shown in the foreground of the painting, naked and accurately portrayed, wearing the unflattering donkey ears of King Midas and surrounded by malicious, cunning animals, such as aq wild boar and a fox, as well as ominous and repulsive figures, such as Envy, represented as a terrifying and ugly witch, who with sagging breast and entwined by poisonous snakes is lying on the ground while she clings to Ghiselli's leg, in the company of other deformed characters, such as Malice and Defamation. In the centre, Zuccari's work is defended by an imposing Minerva, who advances towards the viewer while blocking the entrance to the Garden of Virtue.

Ghiselli, deeply offended by the insult, succeeded in having the painting confiscated. Scandalized, the chef then turned to his employer Gregory XIII and Zuccari was sentenced to lifelong banishment from Rome. He moved first to Florence and then to Venice. However, at the insistence of prominent Roman artists, Zuccari was pardoned five years later and was then able to return to Rome in triumph.

In 1591, The Roman Senate gave him the hereditary title of Roman Patrician, proclaiming that  it would be inherited by his descendants. In 1595 Zuccari was appointed leader for life of the Academy he had founded in Rome and shortly before his death in 1609 Zuccari was ennobled.

Vulnerable and ambitious, Zuccari was a master of self-promotion. By publicly exhibiting his works and ensuring that any criticism directed at him could be inflated and remade as artistic spectacles, he ensured that his name was on the lips of art connoisseurs and patrons. He knew that through an intellectual appearance as an art historian and classicist he could contribute to raising the social position and general status of artists. It was to that end that he founded Rome’s Academy of Art, so young artists could not only be taught advanced artistic skills but also be endowed with an excellent literary and philosophical education. In time, Zuccari became famous not only for his artistic skills but also as an influential writer and sophisticated philosopher of art,  in the wake of Aristotle and Plato.

His books were constantly reprinted – Lettere ai Principi e Signori Dilettanti di Disegno, Pittura, Scultura e Architettura, scritte dal cavalier Federico Zuccaro, all'Accademia Insensata con un lamento per la Pittura, opera di lui stesso and Idea de Pittori, Scultori e Architetti, i.e  "Letter to Princes and Art Lovers Concerning Drawing, Painting, Sculpture and Architecture, Written by Cavalier Federico Zuccaro, to an Insensitive Academy, with a Complaint on the State of Painting, a Work of His Own" and "An Idea of Painters, Sculptors and Architects."

It was extracts from these books I found in the antiquarian bookshop. As a point of departure  Zuccari applied theories that flourished through  Neo-platonic findings  among contemporary humanists and introduced what he called his concetto formula. According to Zuccari, il concetto was an inner “drawing” created in the mind of an artist. A “mirror image”, which in both dreams and consciousness reflects the objects that our vision carries into our interior, where they are embellished and “deepened” by our imagination. .

God does not reflect anything - he creates. Nature is and remains exactly as God created it. It is real, tangible, but what man creates are “artificial” mirror images, rendered with more or less great “artistic skills”. Art is thus “a copy of nature”, though not das Ding an sich, the thing in itself. All art is an interpretation.

There are several manners in which nature might be interpreted/depicted.  One is the exact representation, what Zuccari calls “a reproduction of an external image”, i.e. God's creation/nature. As an imitation of an already existing reality, such an “interpretation” becomes nothing more than an “imitation”, the art of a monkey, which only presents what God has already created. Man is not God and therefore his art should be no more than “human” art, it cannot pretend to be at the same level as God’s creativity..

Zuccari distinguishes three stages of human concetti – an  image of reality that a skilled artist has been able to create within himself and present to his audience. An art that  radiates a detailed, perfectly produced/designed mirror image of the reality it he depicts - people, landscapes, animals and nature. This skill is nonetheless inferior to what Zuccari terms as an “artistic image” through which the soul has transformed a painters impressions into "a rare, artistic image" that reshapes and deepens our view of God’s Nature.

However,  the greatest, most truly human art is La bella pittura – something that is more than just “a craft”. It is through La bella pittura that an artist’s true greatness becomes evident, when he, like Michelangelo, is able to creates an art that is far more than an ”imitator, or flatterer of nature", when art becomes something completely new, something never seen before. Enriched, transformed by astonishing inventions, fantasies and ghiribizzi, rarities.

Of course, Zuccari counted himself as one of those divinely blessed artists, something he proved through his Florentine frescoes and numerous illustrations for Dante’'s Commedia.

A true artist is able to look into the depths of his own soul, the place where God’s true spirit reside. His Creative Power. Inside his own mind, a sincerely searching artist is dazzled by the divine spark we all carry within us. The source of life. If such an artist manages to capture even a fraction of the creative ligh,t and reflect it in his art, he thereby becomes more praiseworthy than his less talented colleagues. Such an artist creates tastico, the highest stage of art—the external, innovative, eloquent, rare image that perfects all that an unbridled imagination can envisage. In such Bella Pittura, the three concetti of the soul are united – craftsmanship, originality and the God-given creative spark. This, according to Zuccari, is the at the core of true humanism, the one which makes us humans unique –  the fact that we are created in the  image of God.

A forma spirituale which, through colour and line, unites the universal with the personal/the particular and thus expresses the divine spark with human nature. Angels cannot accomplish this, they are part of God’s Nature. They lack sensitivity, a nature of their own and thus also concetti.

By being able to create artistic images within oneself, man differs from God. God is perfect. In His existence, through His substance, He includes everything. All that is in God – is God. Man, on the other hand, carries within himself a multitude of unrealised possibilities; images, comparisons, creative elements. A kind of confusing chaos that constantly strives towards perfection, but never achieves it. A curse, but also a joy. The happiness of being. A contentment  that actually is the greatest delight  within human creation. God’s gift to us humans.

In art, natural forms are transformed into matter, revealing human indeterminacy and the confusion that different sensory experiences give rise to. We can never achieve, never experience the clear order of nature/God, but we might discern something of the idea behind it all, how the immensity of God’s  might be conveyed through an art able to make our lives, our waiting for perfection, bearable.

Enough of theory – now let me leave all that behind and get down to the essentials … the viewing of art. That I became by Zuccari’s speculations was probably because he hinted at something that had always captivated when it comes to art - its distinctiveness, the sense of alienation it provides. How its special position alongside everyday life opens gates to a parallel reality. A subtle presence where terror and safety exist side by side in a flamboyant, strangely joyful world that both is present and non-existent, talking to something that lives in my interior, to my concetto.

For as long as I can remember, there has existed images within me, things I have seen in books and on walls. They have grown within me and become part of my dreams and fantasies. Often they are both terrifying and exciting. There are, of course, Disney's queens of hell.

However, the image that most clearly reflects my childish entry into the world of art was a reproduction of John Bauer’s Out into the Wide World, which hung in my mother's girl's room in her childhood home. The little boy who, on his impressive runner, looks out over the enchanted world of fairy tales carried with him everything I loved about art.

My grandparents were fond of the Finnish-Swedish Zachris Topelius's (1818-1898 poems and stories and it was in their large house in Stockhom’s lush suburb Enskede that I became familiar with Topelius’s saga Sampo Lappelill, a delightfully eerie story about how a small Sami boy during the longest night of the midwinter witnesses how the mighty Mountain King Rastekai gathers all the animals of the North to announce his intention to extinguish the sun. Rastekai wants to kill Sampo Lappelill, supported by  his fierce trolls and  predators he tries to annihilate the troublesome witness and a wild chase over snow-glittering mountains begins. However,  on the back of the golden-horned reindeer Hiisi, Sampo manages to escape the terrifying Rastekais. Time and again I returned to the fascinating illustrations of this thrilling story.

They reminded me of the eerie ghost hunt in Goethe’s Erlkönig that Grandfather told me about and showed pictures illustrating the gruesome poem:

My father, my father, he seizes me fast,
For sorely, the Erl-King has hurt me at last.

The father now gallops, with terror half wild,
He grasps in his arms the poor shuddering child;
He reaches his courtyard with toil and with dread,
The child in his arms finds he motionless, dead.
 

He also told me about Faust and the mysterious tale of Undine, the Water Spirit.

Shakespeare's stories

and Arabian Nights:

If the Arabian Nights shimmered with all the lures of the Orient, Finland became through Topelius, but mainly through the Moomin trolls and the Kalevala, home to all kinds of exciting natural mysteries.

The fairy-tale forests extended east into Alexander Afanasye’'s fairy tales, evocatively illustrated by Ivan Bilibin (1876-1942)

and south to the black, German forests of the Brothers Grimm, in the depths of which the man-eating witch from Hansel and Gretel had her abode.

Doré and Perrrault brought me to the forests and medieval castles of France

and its Parisian salons, peopled by Grandville’'s insect people.

In Enskede, there were also the drawings in Åhlén and Åkerlund’s story collections Bland tomtar och troll, Among Gnomes and Trolls. They came out at Christmas time and I read them with great fascination. First of all, the earlier editions with illustrations by John Bauer (1882-1918), which I found in Grandfather’s bookshelves.

But I was also charmed by Einar Norelius’s (1900-1985) pictures in later editions. In particular, I was drawn to a strange image of his depicting mysterious forest demons performing a nocturnal ring dance around a lugubrious tower in the depth of the Nordic forests.

I also read the later stories and was then captivated by Hans Arnold's (1925-2010)  illustrations,

which then appeared in several of the horror stories that I have read since then,

often attracted by more or less suggestive illustrations.

Science fiction:

Fantasy:

and of course exotic horror stories, as in the collection of stories below, otherwise unknown to me, in which I was particularly fascinated by a story about how a captain on a slave ship was bitten in the throat by a female slave. The wound became infected, rotted, grew and eventually turned into teeth, lips and tongue, which through demonic whispering drove the captain into insanity.

That  my great interest in fairy tales, eventually attracted me  to depictions of horror was probably a completely natural development. Fairy tales are generally filled with subtle horror and I didn't mind that at all. I was fascinated by dreadfulness.

Thrilled and chocked when Knight Bluebeard’'s wife finds the room with her murdered predecessors. I couldn’t explain why when my school teacher angrily wondered why I had made a drawing of hanged women whose blood dripped onto the basement floor..

It was not until Bruno Bettelheim’s The Uses of Enchantment: The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales aooeared in 1975 that I found a rasonable explanation to my fascination with horror. Bettelheim explained that it was wrong to gloss over and correct the horror ingredients of folktales. They actually help children to confront difficult existential problems, such as separation anxiety, Oedipal conflicts and sibling rivalry. The extreme violence and nasty feelings in many fairy tales serve to deflect anxieties that often harass children, breeding their fantasy and imaginations,

Bettelheim turned out to be a fabulist as well. Someone who created a fairy tale of his own life - it turned out that it was not true that he acted as an "educator and therapist for severely disturbed children", neither had he been a friend and disciple of Freud.   In fact, Bettelheim was not even a psychologist. He had only taken three introductory courses in psychology. As he wrote himself:

We must live by fictions – not just to find meaning in lifer but to make it bearable.

Nevertheless, I found Bettelheim’s book to be interesting, even if he had  plagiarized much if it from a certain Julius Heuscher.

After Bettelheim it was not entirely wrong to appreciate horror stories and, like several of my generational comrades, I was both attracted and frightened by Disney's masterpiece. The nasty queens in Snow White and Sleeping Beauty were present in my dreams.

and so were evocative images from, for example, Disney’s  Pinocchio. When I in the middle of the night woke up alone in a deserted house, memories remained from when Pinocchio woke up in Mangiafuoco's circus wagon and found the marionettes swaying back and forth like Bluebeard’s hanged and bloodied ladies.

Incidentally, I have read Carlo Collodi’s Le aventure di Pinocchio. Storia di un burattino, several times. A picaresque novel that never ceases to fascinate, not least through its eerie atmosphere. Like when the confused abd lonely Pinocchio in a dark forest finds himself in front of the Blue Fairy’s house:

At the noise, a window opened and a lovely maiden looked out. She had azure hair and a face white as wax. Her eyes were closed and her hands crossed on her breast. With a voice so weak that it hardly could be heard, she whispered:

"No one lives in this house. Everyone is dead."

"Won't you, at least, open the door for me?" cried Pinocchio in a beseeching voice.

"I also am dead."

"Dead? What are you doing at the window, then?"

"I am waiting for the coffin to take me away."

Someone who captured the disturbing moods of Pinocchio; the poverty, the cold and oddities, is the Italian illustrator Roberto Innocenti (1940-)

Pinoccichio has over the years attracted a large number of artistsm, among several  film directors (there are at least thirty Pinocchio films). In addition to Innocenti, I should perhaps mention another Italian master illustrator - Lorenzo Mattotti, who, in addition to Pinocchio, has illustrated a number of classics.

His interpretation of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is characterized by a kind of maddening dynamic.

This is far from the creepy, menacing darkness of Corrado Roi’s (1958-) depictions of the Apocalypse and the terrors of  modern Italian horror magazines.

Italian art history presents many examples of what Zuccari named La Bella Pittura, in the sense of a sublime horror sprung from an artist´s concetti. Zucarelli's contemporary, the Sienese Domenico Beccafumi (1486-1551), did for example frighten  me when, in his painting The Fall of the Rebellious Angels, which I was confronted with  in Siena’s Pinacotheca. In it I discovered the cellars of Hell and in one of the corridors a demonic flame appeared to move rapidly towards the viewer. I don't really know why I felt a cold chill down my spine, but assume I had seen something similar in a nightmare.

Another nightmarish sensation seized me when I in Girolamo Savoldo's (1480-1548) The Temptation of St. Anthony  discovered a naked, corpulent man carrying a terrifying monster on his back.

The eccentric Neapolitan Salvator Rosa (1615-1673) tried to survive as an independent artist, freed from the demands of patrons, the Church and other controlling purchasers, ti that end he occasionally exhibited his works of  art along the streets of Rome and Naples, at the same time as he made himself known as author of several socially critical writings. Perhaps to appeal to a sensationalist public, Rosa excelled in horror depictions with witches and monsters appearing within in a dark and threatening universe.

Rosa's gloomy landscapes might be considered as a world seen through a temperament and may the landscapes of the Dutch Jacob van Ruisdal (1629-1682).

Rosa’s and van Rusidaì's pictorial worlds are images of God's nature, depicted as in the fresh air, quite different from Piranesi’s (1720-1758) dungeons. They are, far from cramped and suffocating, rather intricate and endless, like labyrinths encountered in dreams, without openings and exits they seemed to include the edntire world, places of torture and despair.

Like Rosa’s paintings, Piranesi’s carceri were part of an evil world without mercy and to that extent they were also images of their own cruel times  with their wars, famine and governmental abuse, like Alessandro Magnasco’s (1667-1749) sepia brown worlds of cemeteries, monasteries , torture chambers and slaughter.

The worlds of Grimmelhausen (1621-1676) and Jaques Callot, (1592-1635) were also grotesque dream worlds  mixed with icy depictions from a merciless era of religious wars and unjustified violence.

A world that was also Goya’s world, filled as it was with witches and demons. 

A mute but still roaring, oppressive nightmarish world where Reason sleeps, leaving the field open to demon the mind mixing with an all-too-tangible reality, without grace, salvation, or pity.

A hell far worse than what a visionary Dante could dream up and express, but cruelly present to a front-line soldier or holocaust victim. 

A place where the entire world is a prison, a torturing chamber, that, like Piarnesi’s dungeons, but a nauseating reality, which, unlike them is cramped and deadly.

A world harsh, merciless and demonized  like those of Magnasco, Callot and Goya are depicted by artists such as the Polish Zdzislaw Beksinski (1929-2005),

or the Slovenian Marko Jakše (1959-)

Such works of art seem to arise from Zuccari's cocetti and constitute a part of what he calls La Bella Pittura, There we find in Ferrara San Giorgio fighting the dragon in Cosme Tura's (1403-1485) marvelously sharp, unforced, 

winding movement.

The Danish Christoffer Eckersberg's (1783 -1853) moonlit night in Copenhagen where a man runs along Långebro to rescue someone we cannot see.

Rerthel's Death inspects its victims at a barricade from 1848.

A gloomy, misanthropic and misunderstood Alberto Martini (1876-1954) digs in Milan among his peers from literary history and depicts their anguish through the lens of his own agony.

All the while Leon Splilliart (1881-1946) sleeplessly wanders along Ostend's empty streets, quays, piers and beaches.

At night it is desolate and empty in Belgium's cities and parks, where we find Degouve Nunqes (1867-1935)

Xavier Mellery (1845-1921)

Ferdinand Knopff (1858-1921)

Carel Willink (1900-1983)

Paul Delvaux (1897-1994)

and René Magritte (1898-1967):

When the day dawns, Johannes Moesmans (1909-1988) The Rumour  cycles in naked with a violin on the luggage rack

And the struggle for existence can begin again, as when James Ensor's (1860-1949) skeletons fight over a smoked herring.

Anxiety and loneliness also thrive in the East, for example with Alfred Kubin (1877-1959)

and František Kupka (1871 -1957) in Prague.

Artists who seem to walk along the Germans’ trodden paths

One of  Swiss Johann Henri Füssli's (1741-1825) four versions of his expressive Nightmare now hangs in Goethe’s house in Frankfurt, though  it never belonged to the great author. Had he had it one been in his bedroom, perhaps it would have given rise to nightmares like those that Max Klinger (1857-1920) so skilfully depicted in his absurd series of etchings Paraphrase über den Fund eines Handschuhs.

or Franz von Stuck's (1863-1928 visions of hell and war.

A senseless devastation Germany  was repeated time and time again, during so called religious wars, which the  East German Werner Tübke's (1929-2004 has depicted through a an immense panorama in Bad Frankenhausen , sometimes referred to as the Sistine Chapel of the North. 

or the merciless misery of the post-war period depicted by Otto Dix (1891-1969)

Then the war came back with a vengeance. Worse than ever, with such desperate ferocity that art was no longer sufficient to depict it, although much like Ferlix Nussbaum's art in the Shadow of Death reeks of horror and anguish. He was murdered in 1944 in Auschwitz.

Nussbaum was a helpless victim of Nazism’s brutal mass slaughter. Even before he was wiped out, his art had hinted at what was to come. It is curious that even an artist who eventually joined the Nazi Party practiced a dark, lugubrious art, filled with premonitions of coming disasters.

The Austrian Franz Sedlacek (1891-1945) was connected to an art direction called the New Objectivity. A sharp, detailed art, which through its detached coldness, portrayed a cynically harsh view of humanity. As writtens in Christopher Isherwood’s introduction to his Farewell to Berlin: “ I am a camera with its shutter open, quite passive, recording, not thinking.”

On June 30, 1938, Sedlacek joined the NSDAP and the following year he volunteered in the Second World War. He distinguished himself as a bold front fighter in Norway, as well as in Stalimgrad. Sedlacek escaped unscathed from the Russian hell and re/appeared during the final Polish battles, although he disappeared without a trace during the last months of the war.

In its menacing, compact darkness, Sedlacek’s gloomy art is undeniably fascinating

There is with Sedlacwek a threatening, constant waiting for something – a foreboding of war and misfortune, a gloomy preparation that I also found in some paintinbgs of the Swede  Ola Billgren (1940-2001) 

and the German  Richard Oelze (1900-1980).

The shadows of the war hover compactly above  much European art. For example among  members of the so-called Vienna School of Fantastic Realism with artists such as  Anton Lehmden (1929-2018) 

Rudolf Hausner (1914-1995)

and Arik Brauer (1929-2021)

The decay of Germany's bombed-out cities seems to have been predicted in Monsu Desiderio's (François de Nomé 1593-1620 and Didier Barra 1590-1656) enigmatic cityscapes

  and Félicien Rops’s, (1833-1898) syphilis-infected prostitutes.

The concetti of Zuccari’s  inner space contains a lot of madness as well. 

Several artists have entered there never to return again. Thinking of the Swedish artist Carl Fredrik Hill's (1849-1911) torments.

How he, who was once one of the foremost landscape painters of his time and country, when he was diagnosed with  a severer mental illness and began to paint and draw "in his defence" and seemed to want to protect his landscapes in the interior of La Bella Pittura. Her made least four drawings a day  and more than 3 000 of them are preserved.

At the same time, the Norwegian landscape painter Lars Herterveg’s (1830-1902) mind darkened and his landscape depictions became increasingly strange.

There are still artists around the world whose perception of reality has been broken and changed after they have stepped into the inner room of their imaginationand often ended locked up within mental hospitals. This happened, for example, to the Norwegian painter Bendik Riss (1911-1988)

and the Dane Luis Marussen (Ovartaci) (1894-1985).

Now let's leave the inner rooms of these broken geniuses and enjoy an example of Raul Dufy's (1877-1953) art. A few days ago I passed a gallery that presented Dufy as Il pittore della gioia. The artist of joy.

I found this to be a true statement. When I got to see Dufy's paintings, I became enlivened and remembered a poster that I had for several years had pinned on the wall in one of my boyhood rooms. It was an advertisement for SNCF, The Société nationale des chemins de fer français,  France's national state-owned railway company. It is a dream image of Normandy. How often had I not looked at this summer picture,e with its old house, overgrown garden with inviting garden furniture and a grazing cow. A cyclist passes on a quiet road and along the river steamboats can be glimpsed. Summer peace, warmth and greenery. How many times had I not dreamed myself into that painting?

Bettelheim, Bruno (1975) The Uses of Enchantment: The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales.  New York: Vintage Books. Cleri, Bonita (1997) Federico Zuccari: le idee, gli scritti: atti del Convegno di Sant' Angelo in Vado. Milan: Electa.

När min vän Örjan frågade mig om jag kände till någon konstnär som skrivit om konst och då speciellt behandlat ett eget  konstnärskap kunde jag inte finna några namn som han inte redan kände till. Men, då jag för några veckor sedan rotade bland böckerna i ett antkvariat fann jag en bok med texter av Federico Zuccari (1539 –1609).

Zuccari och hans äldre bror Taddeo var på sin tid välkända konstnärer. I Rom finns deras målningar i en mängd palats och kyrkor. I mitt tycke är Federico den mest versatile av de två, alltmedan Taddeo framstår som tämligen tafatt.

Federico skiftar mellan olika stilar, ofta elegant, fast dock tämligen intetsägande, i varje fall jämfört med de stora mästarna Tizian och Rafael. Detta till trots betraktades han vid Tizians frånfälle 1576 av flera italienska mecenater som Italiens främste konstnär.

Federico arbetade för Italiens förnämsta furstehus, för påven i Rom, Filip II  i Spanien och drottning Elisabeth I i England. Förmögen och inflytelserik uppförde han i Rom ett palats bredvid kyrkan Santissima Trinità dei Monti belägen vid Spanska trappans krön. Genom sina bisarra fresker, fönster och portaler kallades Zuccaris bostad för Casa dei Mostri, Monsternas hus.

Federico Zuccari var en kontroversiell och lättsårad man, som ständigt lyckaders göra sig obekväm. Framfusighet, flit och arbetsiver gjorde honom dock eftertraktad  av en mängd olika arbetsgivare. En outöttlig självpromotör och flitig skribent. En teckning av Federico visar hur han och brodern arbetar med att pryda en romersk yttervägg med fresker och hur en beundrad Michelangelo håller in sin häst för att uppskattande betrakta deras arbete.

Michelangelo var Federicos stora förebild och han fick av påven Gregorio hedersuppdraget att fullfölja Michelangelos arbeten i Paulinska kapellet, det kyrkorum där kardinalerna samlades för att välja en ny påve och där Michelangelo, tjugo år tidigare, 1549  hade fullbordat sina sista målningar – Saulus omvändelse och  St. Peters korsfästelse. 

Ett annat uppdrag som Federico utförde i skuggan av ett stort geni var freskerna under den vittberömda kupol Brunel1eschi slagit över katedralen Santa Maria del Fiore i Florens. Den hade fullbordats 1436, men insidan hade lämnats vitkalkad i väntan på att dess 3 600 kvadratmeter skulle prydas med en fresk. Först 1571 gick uppdraget till Giorgio Vasari, men denne dog efter två år. Han hade då med sina målningar täckt  en tredjedel av ytan. Ett år senare beslöt Francesco Medici att den trettiofemårige Federico Zuccari skulle fullborda verket, något han gjorde på mindre än fem år.

Resultatet uppskattades inte alls av florentinarna. De chockerades av helvetescenernas iögonfallande obsceniteter där lastbara syndare med brinnande facklor sodomerades av groteska djävlar.

Det ansågs även vara ett grovt helgerån då Zuccari, med en uppseendeväckande huvudbonad och en palett i ena handen, på en framträdande plats bland himlaskarorna framställde sig själv och medlemmar av sin familj.

Smädeskrifter skrevs och många hävdade att djävulsscenerna borde målas över. Zuccari låtsades oberörd och drog på sig än mer smälek genom sin arrogans och elaka humor. En bidragande orsak till florentinarnas ovilja mot Fedrico Zuccaro kan ha varit att den stöddige konstnärens ofta uttryckte sitt förakt för det ”florentinska maneret”. Själv kom han från den lilla staden Sant'Angelo in Vado i Marche. Speciellt florentinarna, men även romarna, irriterades av Zuccaris flyhänthet och den spridda närvaron av hans mångfaldiga verk. Det blev ett talesätt att då någon avfärdade ett mediokert verk vars mästare de inte kände till så gjorde man det  med orden: ”Säkert gjort av en Zuccari”.

Federico excellerade gärna med sin litterära kultur och kunniga referenser till klassiska skribenter. Då kardinal Alessandro Farnese 1569 sparkat honom från byggarbetsplatsen i Caprarola spred Zuccari ett antal gravyrer som anspelade på en antik förebild - Förtalet av Apelles i vilken en konstnär anklagas av en domare, med åsneöron och Farneses utseende, som agerar på inrådan av gestalter som representerar Förtal, Okunnighet, Misstänksamhet, Bedrägeri och Konspiration. Motivet som hämtats från en beskrivning av Lukianos av Samosata (120-180 e.Kr.) var ett av Federicos favoriter och han gjorde flera versioner av det.

Under sin tid i Rom, efter fullbordandet av de florentinska freskerna, fick Federico ett uppdrag av Paolo Ghiselli, påvlig scalco, en kock på hög nivå, ansvarig för påvens kök och därmed ivrig att understryka sin nya sociala ställning genom att bekosta en fresk som skulle pryda  kapellet  Santa Maria del Baraccano i hans och påvens hemstad, Bologna. Ämnet var San Gregorios Procession för att Hindra Pesten i Rom. Påven, Ugo Boncompagni , hade valt Greogrio som sitt påvenamn.

Zuccari ägnade stor ansträngning åt altartavlans förverkligande, vilket framgår av de många teckningar som finns bevarade. Hans förslag gillades dock inte, förmodligen för att det kritiserades häftigt av de bolognesiska målarna som ville skydda stadens konstmarknad från "utländska" intrång.

Zuccari fick inte betalt för sitt arbete. En osignerad skrivekse förklarade att verket var ”luddigt” och ”ovärdigt”. Konstnären blev rasande  och vid årshögtiden för den Helige Lukas, skyddshelgon för stadens konstnärer,  avtäckte han i Evangelistens kyrka i Rom en stor duk.  Zuccari  kallade sitt verk Porta Virtutis, Dygdens port.

För sina konstnärskollegor och en intresserad allmänhet förklarade Zuccari tavlans allegoriska anspelningar. Avsikten var dock uppenbar för var och en, inte minst för att den äregirige kocken, Paolo Ghiselli som  i målningens förgrund visades, naken och exakt porträtterad, försedd med  Kung Midas föga smickrande åsnöron och omgiven av ondsinta, listiga djur, som vildsvin och räv, samt olycksbådande och motbjudande figurer, som Avunden, framställd som en anskrämlig häxa  som med hängbröst och omslingrad av giftormar liggande på marken klamrar sig fast vid Ghisellis ben, i sällskap med andra deformerade karaktärer, som Illvilja och Ärekränkning. I mitten, försvaras Zuccaris verk av en imposant Minerva som avancerar mot betraktaren och spärrar ingången till Dygdens trädgård.

Ghiselli, djupt kränkt av förolämpningen, lyckades få tavlan konfiskerad.  Skandaliserad vände sig kocken sedan till sin arbetsgivare Gregorius XIII och Zuccari dömdes till livstids förvisning från Rom. Han flyttade först till Florens och sedan till Venedig. Fem år senare benådades dock Zuccari, på enträgen begäran från framträdande romerska konstnärer och kunde därefter i tirmuf återvända till Rom.

Den romerska senaten gav honom 1591 herederstiteln Romersk Patricier och beslöt att den skulle ärvas av hans ätltingar. 1595 utsågs han till livstids ledare för den av honom instiftade konstakademin i Rom och strax före sin död 1609  adlades Zuccari.

Den lättsårade och ärelystne Zuccari var en självpromotionens mästare. Genom att offentligen ställa ut sina verk och se till att all krtitik som riktades mot honom kunde blåsas upp och omskapas till konstnärliga spektakel försäkrade han sig om att hans namn var på konstkännares och mecenters läppar. Han visste också att genom en intellektuell framtoning som konsthistoriker och klassicist kunde han bidra till att höja konstnärernas sociala status. Han grundade Roms konstakademi i avsikt att förse unga konstnärer inte enbart med fördjupad konstskicklighet utan även litterär och filosofisk bildning. Med tiden blev Zuccari berömd inte enbart först sitt konstnärliga kunnande utan även som en inflytelserik författare och sofisitkerad konstfilosof i Aristoteles och Platons efterföljd.

Ständigt omtryckta blev böckerna Lettere ai Principi e Signori Dilettanti di Disegno, Pittura, Scultura e Architettura, scritte dal cavalier Federico Zuccaro, all'Accademia Insensata con un lamento per la Pittura, opera di lui stesso och Idea de Pittori, Scultori e Architetti. “Brev till fustar och konstälskare rörande teckning, målning, skulptur och arkitektur, skrivna av Cavalier Federico Zuccaro, till en okänslig Akademi, med en klagan över måleriets tillstånd, ett verk av honom själv” och ”En idé om målare, skulptörer och arkitekter”.

Det var utdrag från dessa böcker jag funnit i antkvariatet och jag läste med intresse Zuccaris fundringar kring konst och fantasi. Zuccari utgick från de teorier som i nyplatonsk anda frodades bland samtidens humanister. Han introcucerade vad han kallade sin concetto formel. Enligt Zuccari var il concetto en inre ”teckning” som skapats av konstnären. En ”spegel” som i såväl dröm som medvetande reflekterar de föremål som seendet, buret av ”föreställningar”, bär med sig in i vårt inre.

Gud speglar ingenting – han skapar. Naturen är sådan som Gud skapat den. Den är verklig, påtaglig, men vad männsikan skapar är ”artificiella” spegelbilder, framställda  med mer eller mindre stor ”konstskicklighet”. Konsten är således ”en kopia av naturen”, inte das Ding an sich, saken i sig. All konst är en tolkning.

Det finns flera former av naturtolkning. En är den exakta avbildningen, vad Zuccari kallar för  ”en avbildning av den yttre bilden” dvs. Guds skaplese. Som en imitation av en redan existerande verkligheten blir en sådan ”tolkning” ingenting annat än en ”efterapning”, en apas konst, som  enbart förevisar vad Gud redan skapat. Människan är inte Gud och därför bör hennes konst inte vara förmer än en ”människas konst”, hur skickligt hon än lyckas imitera Guds skapelse.

Zuccari urskiljer tre steg av concetti – den bild av verkligheten som en skicklig konstnär skapat i sitt inre och som utstrålar en detaljrik, fullkomligt framställd/utformad spegelbild av det han avbildar – människor, landskap, djur och natur. Denna skilcklighet är likväl undermålig vad Zuccari benämner den ”konstnärliga bilden” genom vilken själen har transformerat de naturliga intrycken till ”en sällsam, konstnärlig bild” som omskapar och fördjupar vår syn på Guds Natur.

Men den största, sannast mänskliga konsten är La bella pittura – ursprunget till något som är förmer än enbart ”ett hantverk”. Det är genom en sådan konst som en konstnärs storhet blir uppenbar, då han likt Michelangelo skapar en konst som är långt mer än en ”efterhärmare eller smickrare av naturen”, då konsten blir till något helt nytt, något aldrig skådat. Berikad, förvandlad genom förbluffande inventioner, fantasier och ghiribizzi, sällsamheter.

Givetvis räknade sig Zuccari som en av dessa gudabenådade konstnärer, något han bevisat genom sina florentinska fresker och talrika illustrationer till Dantes Commedia.

En sann konstnär förmår blicka in i djupet av sin själ, den plats där Guds sanna ande vilar. Hans Skaparkraft. I sitt inre bländas en uppriktigt sökande artist  av den gudgnista vi alla bär inom oss. Livets källa. Om en sådan konstnär förmår att skildra en bråkdel av det skapande ljuset och spegla det i sin konst blir han därigenom mer berömvärd är sina mer talanglösa kollegor. En sådan artist skapar tastico, konstens högsta stadium – den yttre,  innovativa, talande, sällsamma bild som fulländar allt vad en ohämmad fantasi kan föreställa sig. I en sådan Bella Pittura förenas själens tre concetti – hantverkskicklighet, oiriginalitet och den gudagivna skapargnistan. Detta är enligt Zuccari den sanna humanismern, mänskligheten, den som gör oss människor unika – till Guds avbild.

En forma spirituale som genom färg och linje förenar det universella med det personliga/det särskilda. Det gudomliga med det mänskliga. Änglar  kan inte åstadkomma detta, de är ju en del av Guds Natur. De saknar sinnesintryck och därmed även concetti.

Genom att i sitt inre förmå skapa sig konstnärliga bilder skiljer sig människan från Gud. Gud är perfekt. I sin existens, genom sin substans, innefattar Han allt. Allt som finns i Gud – är Gud. Människan, däremot, bär i inom sig en mängd icke fullkomnade möjligheter; bilder, jämförelser, skapande element.Ett slags ofullkomligt, förvirrande kaos som ständigt strävar mot perfektion, men aldrig uppnår den. En förbannelse, men också en glädje. Lyckan i att finnas till. En lycka som är som störst i det mänskilga skapandet. Guds gåva till oss.

Inom konsten omformas naturliga former till materia, slumpmässiga och urskiljbara, men avslöjar därmed även  den mänskliga obestämdheten och den förvirring som olika sinnesupplevelser ger upphov till. Vi kan aldrig uppnå, aldrig uppleva naturens/Guds klara ordning, men aningen om att den finns, hur den kan förmedlas genom konsten, gör också våra liv, vår väntan på fullkomligheten, uthärdlig.   

Ja, ja, låt mig nu lämna allt det där därhän och övergå till väsentligheterna – konstbetraktrandet. Att jag fascinerades av Zuccaris teorier berodde antagligen på att han antydde något som alltid gripit mig genom konsten – dess särprägel, utanförskap. Hur dess särställning vid sidan om vardagligheten öppnar portarna till en parallell verklighet. En subtil närvaro där skräck och trygghet existerar sida vid sida i en prunkande, sällsamt glädjefylld värld som både finns och inte finns, som lever i mitt inre, i min concetto.

Så länge jag kan minnas har det inom mig funnits bilder jag sett i böcker och på väggar. De har vuxit inom mig och blivit en del av mina drömmar och fantasier. Ofta var de såväl skrämmande som spännande. Där fanns givetvis Disneys helvetesdrottningar.

Fast den bild som klarast speglar mitt barnsliga inträdande i konsten värld var en reproduktion av John Bauers Ut i vida världen, som hängde i min mors flickrum i hennes barndomshem. Den lille pojken som på sin imponerande springare  blickar ut över sagans förtrollade värld bar med sig allt det jag älskade i konsten.

Mina morföräldrar var förtjusta i Zachris Topelius dikter och berättelser och det var i deras stora hus i Enskede som jag blev bekant med Topelius saga Sampo Lappelill, en härligt kuslig berättelse om hur en liten samepojke under midvinterns längsta natt blir vittne till hur den mäktige Fjällkonungen Rastekais samlar alla Nordens djur för att förkunna sin avsikt att släcka solen. Då han blivit varse Sampo Lappelill försöker Rastekais och hans undelrlydande rovdjur oskadliggöra det besvärande vittnet och en vild jakt över snöglittrande fjäll tar sin början, men på den guldbehornade renen Hiisis rygg lyckas Sampo undkomma den förskräckande Rastekais. Gång på gång återväde jag till sagans fascinerande illustrationer.

De påminde mig om den kusliga spökjakten i Goethes Erlkönig som Morfar berättade för mig och visade bilderna till.

Min far, min far, han hårt i mig tar,
älvkungen gjort mig så illa, far!

Sin häst han rysande sporrar i hast
och håller det kvidande barnet fast.
Sin gård omsider når han med nöd.
Då låg i hans armar gossen död.

Han berättade även om Faust och den mystiska sagan om Vattendanden Undine.

Shakespears berättelser

och Tusen och en natt:

Om Tusen och en natt skimrade av all Orientens lockelser blev Finland genom Topelius, men främst genom Mumintrollen och Kalevala hemort för allsköns spännande naturmystik.

Sagoskogarna sträckte sig österut in i Alexander Afanasyevs sagor, suggestivt illusterade av Ivan Bilibin (1876-1942).

och söderut till Bröderna Grimms svarta, tyska skogar i vars djup den människoätande häxan från Hans och Greta hade sin hemvist.

Doré och Perrrualt tog vid i Frankrikes skogar och medeltida borgar

och dess parisiska salonger befolkades av Grandvilles insektsmänniskor.

I Enskede fanns också teckningarna i Åhlén och Åkerlunds sagosamlingar Bland Tomtar och Troll. De kom ut vid jultiden och jag läste dem med stor fascination. Först och främst de tidigare upplagorna med illustrationer av John Bauer, som fanns i Morfars bokhyllor.

Men jag tjusades även av Einar Norelius  bilder i senare upplagor. Speciellt fäste jag mig vid en märklig bild med mystiska skogsdemoner som utförde en nattlig ringdans kring ett lugubert torn i Ödemarken.

Jag läste även de senare berättelserna och greps då av Hans Arnolds illustrationer,

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som sedan dök upp i flera av de skräckhistorier som jag allt sedan dess har läst,

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ofta ditlockad av mer eller mindre suggestiva illustrationer.

Science fiction:

Fantasy:

och givetvis exotiska skräckhisorier, som i nedanstående för mig i övrigt okända samling berättelser i vilken jag speciellt fäste mig vig vid hur en kapten på ett slavfartyg av en kvinnlig slav blev biten i halsen. Såret infekterades, varade, ruttnade, växte och förvandlades till tänder, läppar och tunga som genom demoniska viskningar drev kaptenen till vansinne.

Att jag genom mitt sagointresse attrraherades av skräckskildringar var antagligen en helt naturlig utveckling. Sagor är i allmänhet fyllda av subtil skräck och det var inte alls mig emot. Jag fascinerades av skräcken.

Chocken då Riddar Blåskäggs hustru finner rummet med hennes mördade föregångare fann jag enbart fascinerande och jag kunde inte förklara varför så var fallet när min skollärarinna upprört undrade varför jag gjort en teckning med hängda kvnnor vars blod droppade mot källargolvet.

Det skulle dröja tills Bruno Betteleheims Sagans förtrollade värld kom 1978 som jag fick en tämligen rimlig förklaring till min skräckfascination. I den boken förklarade han att det var fel att skyla över och tillrättalägga folksagornas skräckingrediener. De hjälper nämligen barn att konfrontera sig med svåra existeniella problem, som separationsångest, oedipala konflikter och syskonrivalitet. Det extrema våldet och de otäcka känslorna i många sagor tjänar till att avleda sådant som mycket väl kan hända i barnens föreställningsvärld,

Bettelheim visade sig vara en fabulist även han. Någon som skapat en saga av sitt liv – det visade sig nämligen att det inte alls stämde att han verkat som ” pedagog och terapeut för svårt störda barn.” I själva verket var Bettelheim inte ens psykolog. Han hade enbart tagit tre introduktionskurser i psykologi. Men vad gjorde det? Det innebar inte alls att jag ogillade hans bok eller ansåg att han haft fel.

Det var alltså inte fel att uppskatta skräckskildringar och likt flera av mina generationskamrater lockades jag och skrämdes jag av Disneys mästerverk. De otäcka drottningarna i Snövit och Törnrosa var närvarande i mina drömmar.

och så var suggestiva bilder från exempelvis Pinocchio. Då jag ensam i ett öde hus vaknat upp mitt i natten fanns minnen kvar från då Pinocchio vaknat upp i Mangiafuocos cirkusvagn och finner marionetterna vaja fram och tillbaka, som Blåskäggs hängda spöken.

För övrigt har jag flera gånger läst om Pinocchio, denna italienska pikareskroman som aldrig upphör att fascinera, inte minst genom sin kusliga stämning. Som då den förvirrade, ensamme Pinocchio i en sagoskog finner sig framför den Blå Féens hus och hon öppnar ett fönster, blickar ner mot den arme Pinocchio och förklarar:

”I det här huset bor ingen. Alla är döda.” ”Men, du kan öppna dörren för mig.” bad Pinocchio gråtande.”Jag är också död””Död? Men vad gör du då där i fönstret?” ”Jag väntar på kistan som man ska bära bort mig i.” När hon sagt detta försvann hon och fönstret stängdes ljudlöst.

Någon som fångat de oroande stämningarna i Pinocchio, fattigdomen, kylan och märkvärdigheterna, är den italienske illustratöre Roberto Innocenti (1940-) 

Pinoccichio har genom åren lockat en stor mängd konstnärer och inte minst filmregissörer (det finns minst trettio Pinocchiofilmer). Föruom Innocenti bör jag kanske nämna en annan italiensk mästerillustratör – Lorenzo Mattotti (1954-), som förutom Pinocchio har illusterat en mängd klassiker.

Hans tolkning av Dr Jekyll och Mr Hyde präglas av en ursinning dynamik.

Fjärran från det stilla, hotande mörkret i Corrado Rois (1958-) skildringar av Apokalypsen och skräcken i moderna italienska skräckmagasin.

Italiensk konsthistoria uppvisar en mängd exempel på vad Zuccari benämner La Bella Pittura, i meningen en skräckblandad subtilitet som tycks sprungen ur konstnärernas inre. Zucarellis samtida den sienesiske Domenico Beccafumi (1486-1551) chockade mig exempelvis då jag i hans tavla De upproriska änglarnas fall, som jag såg I Sienas Pinakotek, upptäckte Helvetets källarlokaler. I en av gångarna tycks en demonisk eldslåga snabbt röra sig mot betraktaren. Vet inte riktigt varför jag kände en kall kåre längs ryggraden, tror att jag i en mardröm hade sett något liknande.

En annan mardrömslik sensation grep mig då jag i Girolamo Savoldos (1480-1548) St. Antonii hemsökelse fick syn på en naken, korpulent man som pä sin rygg bar ett anskrämligt monster.

Den originelle napolitanaren Salvator Rosa (1615-1673) försökte dra sig fram som självständig konstnär, frigjord från mecenaters krav, och ställde därför emellanåt ut sin konst längs Roms gator, samtidigt som han gjorde sig känd som författare till en mängd samhällskritiska skrifter. Kanske för att tilltala en sensationslysten public excellerade Rosa i  skräckkskildringar med häxor och monster i en mörk, hotad värld.

Rosas dystra landskap kan betraktas som världen sedd genom ett temperament och så även holländaren Jacob van Ruisdals (1629-1682) landskap.

Rosa och van  Rusidals bildvärldar befinner sig mitt i  Guds natur, i den friska luften, annat var det med Piranesis (1720-1758)  fängelsehålor. De är knappast trånga och kvävande, snarare invecklade och oändliga, likt drömmars labyrinter, utan öppningar och utvägar tycks de innefatta hela världen, platser för tortyr och förtvivlan.

Likt Rosas tavlor var Piranesis carceri del av en ond värld utan nåd och i så måtto var de även en bild av sin samtids krig, väld, svält och övergrepp, likt Alessandros Magnasco (1667-1749) sepiabruna världar med deras kyrkogårdar, kloster, tortyrkammare och stridsscener.

Grimmelhaussens och Jaques Callots världar där groteska drömvärldar blandas med iskalla skildringar från en skoningslös tid av religionskrig och omotiverat våld.

En varld som även var Goyas värld, fylld med häxor demoner. 

En stumt vrålande, tryckande mardrömsvärld där Förnuftet sover och lämnar fältet fritt för demoni och en alltför påtaglig verklighet, utan nåd, frälsning och medlidande.

Ett helvete långt värre än var en visionär som Dante kunde uttrycka, men högst levande för en frontsoldat eller holcaustoffer.

Ett fängelse som likt Piarnesis källarhål saknar utvägar men som till skillnad från dem är trångt och kvalmigt.

En värld hård och skoningslös som Magnascos, Callots och Goyas, liksom den hemsökt av demoner och missfoster, oändlig utan nåd och slut skildras av konstnärer som polacken Zdzislaw Beksinski (1929-2005),

eller slovenen Marko Jakše (1959-)

Samtliga integrerade delar av Zuccaris Bella Pittura, hans inre concetti. Där finner vi i  Ferrara San Giorgio kàmpa mot draken i Cosme Turas förunderligt skarpa, otvunget slingrande ròrelse.

Eckersbergs månklara natt i Köpenhamn där en man springer längs Långebro för att undsätta någon vi inte kan se.

Alfred Rerthels Död inspekterar sina offer vid en barrikad från 1848.

En dyster, misantropisk och oförstådd  Alberto Martini (1876-1954) gräver i Milano ner sig bland sina gerlikar ur litteraturhistorien och skildrar genom sin egen våndas lins deras ångest.

Alltmedan Leon Splilliart (1881-1946) sömnlös vandrar längs Ostendes folktomma, kajer, pirar och stränder.

Om nätterna är det ödsligt och tomt i Belgiens städer och parker, där vi finner Degouve Nunqes,

Xavier Mellery 

Ferdinand Knopff,

Carel Willink,

Paul Delvaux,

och Magritte:

När dagen grytt cyklar Johannes Moesmans (1909-1988) Rykte naken in med en fiol på pakethållaren

Och kampen för tillvaron kan åter ta sin början, som då skelett hos Ensor slåss om en böckling. 

Ångest och ensamhet frodas även i Öst, exempelvis hos Kubin

och Kupka i Prag.

Artister som tycks vandra längs tyskarnas upptrampade stigar.

Schweizaren Johann Henri Füsslis (1741-1825) fyra versionerf av sin expressiva Mardröm hänger visserligen i Gothes hus i Frankfurt, men den tillhörde aldrig den store diktaren. Hade han haft den I sitt sovrum kanske den hade gett upphov till mardrömmar lika de som Max Klinger (1857-1920) så skickligt skildrat I sin absurda etsningsserie Paraphrase über den Fund eines Handschuhs,

eller Franz von Stucks (1863-1928)  helvetes-och krigsvisioner.

En meningslös förödelse av Tyskland har upprepats gång på gång, bland annat under de så kallade religionskrigen, som östtysken Werner Tübke (1929-2004) har tolkat genom ett ofantligt panorama i Bad Frankenhausen, ibland kallat Nordens Sixtinska kapell.

eller efterkrigstidens skoningslösa elände hos Dix.

Sedan kom kriget tillbaka. Värre än någonsin, med en sådan förtvivlad grymhet att konsten inte längre räckte till för att skildra den, även om mycket som i Ferlix Nussbaums konst i Dödens skugga stinker av skräck och ångest. Han mördades 1944 í Auschwitz.

Nussbaum var ett hjälplöst offer för nazismens brutala masslakt. Redan innan han utplånades hade hans konst antytt vad som skulle hända. Märkligt är att även en konstnär som sedermera  anslöt sig till Nazistpartiet utövade en mörk, luguber konst, fylld av föraningar om en kommande katastrof.

Österikaren Franz Sedlacek (1891-1945) var ansluten till en konstriktning som kallades den Nya Sakligheten. En skarp, detaljrik skildringskonst som genom sin kyla skildrade mellankristidens cyniskt hårda människosyn och skarpa iaktagelseförmåga. Som det står i Cristopher Isherwoods inledning till hans Farväl till Berlin: “Jag är en kamera med öppen slutare, helt passiv, mekaniskt registrerande”.

Den 30 juni 1938 anslöt sig Sedlacek till NSDAP och året efter drog ha ut som frivillig i Andra Världskriget. Han utmärkte sig som djärv frontkämpe i såväl Norge, som i Stalimgrad. Sedlacek klarade sig oskadd ur det ryska helvetet och dök upp under de polska slutstriderna, fast han försvann spårlöst under krigets sista månader.

I sitt hotfullt kompakta mörker.är Sedlaceks dystra konst onekligen fascinerande

Det finns hos honom en hotad väntan. På krig och ofärd, en dyster förberedelse som jag även funnit hos Ola Billgren (1940-2001) och Richard Oelze (1900-1980).

Krigens skuggor vilar kompakt over Europas konst. Exempevis hos medlemmarna ï Wiens så kallade Skola för fantasiskk konst, med konstnärer som Anton Lehmden (1929-2018) 

Rudolf Hausner (1914-1995)

och Arik Brauer (1929-2021)

Förfallet I Tysklands sönderbombader städer tycks ha förutspåtts i Monsu Desiderios (François de Nomé 1593-1620 och  Didier Barra 1590-1656) gåtfulla stadslandskap

eller Félicien Rops (1833-1898) syfilismittade prostituerade.

Zuccaris slutna rum gömmer mycket vansinne

 och flera konstnärer har trätt in där för att aldrig återvända. Tänker på Carl Fredrik Hills (1849-1911) plågor.

Hur han, som en gång varit en av sin tids främsta landskapsmålare, då han trätt in sin sinnesjukdom började han måla och teckna “till sitt försvar” och tycktes vilja skydda sina landskap i La Bella Pitturas inre rum.  

Vid samma tid förmörkades den norske landskapsmålaren Lars Hertervegs (1830-1902) sinne och hans landskapskildringar blev allt märkligare.

Fortfarande finns det runt om i världen konstnärer vars verklighetsuppfattning brustit och då de stigit in i sin fantasis inre rum har de samtidigt spärrats in på mentalsjukhus. Det hände exempelvis  normannen Bendik Riss (1911-1988)

och dansken Luis Marussen (Ovartaci) (1894-1985).

Låt oss nu lämna dessa brustna geniers inre rum och avnjuta ett exempel på Raul Dufys (1877-1953) konst. För någon dag sedan passerrade jag en utställningslokal som presenterade Dufy som Il pittore della gioia. Glädjens konstnär.

Faktum är att jag fann det vara ett helt riktigt påstående. Då jag ficks se Dufys mälningar blev jag glad och mindes en affisch som jag under flera år haft på väggen i ett mitt pojkrum. Det var en reklam för SNCF, de franska järnvägarna och en drömbild av Normandie. Hur ofta hade jag inte betraktat denna sommarbild med sitt gamla hus, igenvuxna trädgård med inbjudande  trädgårdsmöbler och en betande ko. En cyklist passerar och längs floden skymtas ångbätar. Sommarfrid, värme och grönska. Hur mänga gånger hade jag inte drömt mig in i den tavlan?

Bettelheim, Bruno (1978) Sagans förtrollade värld: folksagornas innebörd och betydelse.. Stockholm: AWE/Geber. Cleri, Bonita (1997) Federico Zuccari: le idee, gli scritti: atti del Convegno di Sant’ Angelo in Vado. Milano: Electa.

Italy is an inexhaustible source of all kinds of unexpected experiences – culinary, as well as cultural. I open the door to something that has fleetingly interested me and impressions, memories, dreams and a host of other phenomena rush over me. Like when a month ago, together with my American friend Joe, I visited Florence and was confronted with Donatello’s art. An exhibition about his life, works and influence was presented in the palaces of Strozzi and Bargello.

I had previously visited Florence many times and in churches and museums been confronted with Donatello’s work, read about the Master and heard my art professor tell about him, but I had never seriously realized the extent of Donatello’s genius. The great and revolutionizing influence he had had on his followers. I once again realised the astonishing moment in human history during which he and his good friend Brunelleschi constituted the eye of the hurricane. Donatello with his sculptures and reliefs, Brunelleschi with his theories about the central perspective and the dome he created above Santa Maria del Fiore.

The two friends had visited Rome together, where Donatello had been overwhelmed by the presence of cultural treasures left behind by past times; the imaginative richness, balance and perfect harmony of the Greek and Roman statues and sarcophagus reliefs, this while Brunelleschi (1377-1446) in detail studied ancient arch techniques and immersed himself in the writings of Vitruvius (80-15 BC).

Brunelleschi was the more theoretically/mathematically versed of the two geniuses, while Donatello was a consummate artist/craftsman, with an intuitive sense of the expressions his art would take to satisfy his clients’ expectations, and more than that – astonish them. Donatello’s contemporaries often pointed to his lack of education, claiming that he was barely literate. I doubt if this is really true, assuming it was a myth intended to suggest that his genius was God-given, just as Muslims often state that Muhammad could neither read nor write, thereby implying that his teachings were forthwith dictated by God.

Donatello, actual name was Donato di Niccolò di Betto Bardi. Donatello is a diminutive, an epithet given him due to his small stature. He was born in Florence 1386, as the son of Betto Bardi, whose occupation was listed as “wool carder”, although he also occupied himself as goldsmith. Wool carder could mean that Bardi was a proletarian, though it could also mean that he was owner of a wool carder manufactory, something that seems to be indicated by the fact that he was a Guild Master. The guild he belonged to would then have been the powerful Arte della Lana, a craft association that included wool manufacturers and wealthy merchants involved in Florence’s flourishing wool industry.

During Donatello's lifetime, the wool business employed no less than 30,000 workers, a third of the population of Florence, who annually produced 100,000 metres of textiles and clothing.

The buyers and exporters of wool and cloth was over time able to amass large fortunes, which they used to lend at interest to various European rulers. Most of these bankers were organized within a guild called Arte di Calimala. The strange name Calimala, Calm Her, came from the name of the street where Arte di Calimala’s headquarter was located. Through their wealth, members of this guild were able to influence and manipulate the rulers of Florence. Most influential among the members of this particular guild was the Medici family.

A picture in an Italian comic book illustrates the state of affairs in Donatello’s Florence. Donald Duck is toiling away shearing sheep and collecting wool while his Uncle Scrooge is counting the money he has received through wool sales and banking.

Like several other northern Italian trading cities, Florence was during Donatello’s lifetime governed by an assembly called the Signoria. Its nine members were chosen from the city’s leading guilds. Six of them came from guilds called Priori, i.e. the six ancient and most powerful guilds, among them the Arte della Lana and Arte di Calimala. Two additional members were elected from the fourteen ”minor” guilds. The ninth member of the Signoria was named Gonfaloniere di Giustizia and served as its chairman. He was elected every two months, not by lot but by members of the outgoing Signoria.
 

One of the several peculiarities of this form of government was how the members of the Signoria were elected and the short time they served as decision makers. The names of all guild members over the age of thirty were placed in eight leather bags. Every two months these sacks were carried out of the church of Santa Croce, where they were kept and during a short ceremony the names were drawn at random. Only men who were not in debt could be elected, moreover they would not have had a seat in the Signoria during the past year and they could not have any family ties to the men who had served during the previous term. Immediately after their election, the nine members of the Signoria were expected to take up residence in the Palazzo della Signoria, which facade was adorned with the coats of arms of the guilds. There they would stay for the two months that their mission lasted.

That's how it all worked in principle, but over time intrigues and manipulations confused the already complicated system and power effectively came to rest with the Gonfaloniere di Giustizia, an office that came to be dominated by the increasingly powerful Medici family. However, this did not mean that the guild system and its influence on Florence’s power game disappeared. For several centuries, the Signoria continued to dominate the economic and political life of the city.

The Arte della Lana, of which Donatello’s father was a member, controlled the entire process from the raw, packaged wool that on a daily basis arrived in the city, to the finished textiles produced at looms scattered among private homes and manufactures located within the city walls.

Like other guilds, the Arte della Lana coordinated and controlled the activities of its members; guaranteed the quality of the production, set prices, regulated wages, checked the training of journeymen, tested and decided who should be awarded a master craftsman's certificate.

Each guild had its patron saint, while its board resided in a palace, generally they also supported and paid for Catholic masses and the maintenance of a specific church. The mighty Arte della Lana resided in an impressive palace in the very centre of the city, its patron saint was St. Stephen and its church was none other than Florence’s Duomo – Santa Maria del Fiori.

In niches around the Chiesa di Orsanmichel, there are statues of the patron saints of the various guilds. Arte della Lana’s St. Stephen had been sculpted by Lorenzo Ghiberti, in whose renowned bottega Donatello at the age of seventeen had been accepted as an apprentice.

During Donatello’s lifetime the bottega system was well developed in Florence and the city counted on anumber of master bottegas. A bottega was more than an artist's studio, more than a place of learning for future masters and could best be described as a workshop that, under great competition, delivered commissioned work to various patrons. Much of the work was governed by strict routines marked by extremely important craftsmanship and tasks which depended on clients’ requirements, lack of time when it came to the execution of the complicated works, as well as the guild system’s production control and detailed regulations.

In particular, the maufacture of paints was an essential part of a bottega’s activities and for that reason Florentine painters belonged to one of the six most powerful guilds that made up the Priori – Arte dei Medici e Speziale, the Crafts Association of Doctors and Apothecaries, i.e. an association of specialists who made and used drugs and various decoctions. In addition to artists, the Arte dei Medici e Speziale also included shopkeepers who sold spices and textile dyes.

Each bottega produced its own colours. Paint production, as well as the careful preparation of canvases and specially treated wooden boards which constituted the base/groundwork for paintings, were labour-intensive processes handled by the bottega’s apprentices.

Colour pigments came from a variety of sources. They could consist of different types of soil containing minerals and clay, such as Raw or Burnt Sienna and Burnt Umbra. The pigments were often based on toxic substances such as mercury, lead, sulfide, tin, and cinnabar. They could also be constituted by very expensive imports such as Indian Yellow, which was made from the urine of cows fed on mango leaves, or most expensive of them all – the blue stone, lapiz lazuli, which was brought to Florence from Badakshan by the upper reaches of the river Amu Darya. To obtain the best pigments, artists were often forced to experiment on their own, or to gain such high esteem that patrons were willing to pay for their access to coveted and expensive pigments.

The pigments had to be grinded down to small, fine grains by using a runner, a cone-shaped stone with a flat bottom surface that was used to crush the pigments against a smoothened stone slab. When the pigments obtained the right grain size, they were compacted into a paste, by adding different binders. During Donatello’s time, the most common binder was egg yolk mixed with water – tempera. An alternative was to add oil, usually from linseed, to the solution, thus making it dry faster and permitting application to softer surfaces like canvas, instead of the commonly used base made of pine or poplar. Other common binders were beeswax and casein.

The artists’ workshops also produced various forms of varnish. The medieval name for varnish was the Latin word veronix, which gave rise to today's vernissage, the opening day of an art exhibition. During the Renaissance, this meant that when the varnish had dried the work of art could be considered completed and thus presented to the client. If the client rejected the result, it could mean a great loss of prestige for the bottega, as well as a serious financial setback.

Within a bottega, the hard-working apprentices were called garzoni, boys. Donatello’s entry as a garzone in the bottega of Master Lorenzo Ghiberti took place at an unusually old age. Generally, most garzoni accepted into a bottega were around ten years old. They were entrusted to their Master’s care. He nurtured, disciplined and taught them and they were considered to be part of his household. They lodged and ate together with their master’s family. Several garzoni did not advance from working with colours and panels, but the most skilled and enthusiastic of them were by the master taught to sketch, read and wtite, and could finally be allowed to participate in the completion of his works of art. Gradually, the most skilled garzoni were entrusted with more important tasks than the painting of decorative details and completion of the master's contours, or the colouring of previously delimited surfaces.

The guild required a master to provide his garzoni with an accartati, contract, and a fixed salary, the latter was usually quite modest—generally five or eight gold florins in a year, compared to a skilled labourer’s wages of about thirty-five florins within a year. At the end of his apprenticeship, a garzone could be offered to undergo a journeyman’s test. If he succeeded he was declared a journeyman and thus the opportunity to offer his services as an independent artist, though a journeyman was not allowed to establish his own bottega. That required membership in the Arte dei Medici e Speziale.

Guild members provided membership if a journeyman could present a Masterpiece (from which our contemporary word originates) that was accepted as such by selected guild members. If the jorneyman was accepted he was appointed Master of Arts and through a specific certificate he was thus granted the right to open a bottega of his own. First, however, a would-be Master had to prove he was the recognized son of a guild-member and willing to pay an entry fee, as well as signing a contract stipulating that he accepted the guild’s statutes and committed himself to submit an annual contribution to the guild’s common coffers.

The strict work discipline, fixed routines, the practical work that attached great importance to every single detail, the rigorous quality control of the guilds, fierce competition, the cooperation between a Master and his garzone, as well as the team spririt reigning within the guilds contributed to the fact that many Renaissance artists at an early age became exceptionally skilled craftsmen.

The earliest work of art that attributed to Donatello is a David he in 1409, at the age of twenty-three, carved in marble. The work had been paid for by Arte della Lana, the guild to which Donatello’s father belonged and it was intended to adorn one of the buttresses of the Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore. However, it was not placed there because the guild members thought it was too small to be appreciated from ground level. The statue thus remained for several years in a bottega before the Signoria in 1416 brought it to its palace and placed it on a pedestal with the inscription: “To those who bravely fight for the defence of the motherland, the gods provide help, even against the most terrible enemies.” Apparently, the city counsellors thought that the young, bold David could serve as a role model for defenders of the Republic.

Criticism has been harsh while judging this first known work by Donatello. It has been written that the dimensions are wrong, that the whole work gives a ”formal and bland expression.” This David of his has been mercilessly compared to Donatello’s later skills and declared to be quite uninteresting.

Having now seen it in real life, I arrived at a different opinion. Considering the circumstances that predisposed the manufacture of the statue, it is certainly a masterpiece. David rests his left hand by his side while he, positioned in an elegant contraposto, triumphantly lifts his long robe to reveal Goliath’s severed head, which rests at his feet – still with both sling and stone embedded in the skull. Despite the distance from which the sculpture would be viewed, the grotesque head is fashioned in great detail and prominently presented, with its closed eyes and half-open mouth, through which the dead giant’s tongue can be glimpsed. The killing stone has penetrated the forehead, the congealed blood is difficult to distinguish from clumps of tangled hair.

There is no doubt that the arrangement was intended to adorn a buttress and thus be viewed from below. It all seems to be striving upwards. The gesture of the left hand opening the garment makes the head of the defeated Goliath seem closer to us than the rest of the of the statue. It looks like the gory head has been placed in a cave formed by the robe. At the same time, the opening in the mantel is reminiscent of a flame striving upwards, making the entire sculpture, with its Gothically curved movement, remind us of earlier madonna-sculptures carved from ivory and thus being adapted to the curvature of the elephant’s tusk. Through their elegantly curved movements, these Virgins and their child seems to be lifted up towards heavenly heights.

David’s oversized right fist, which has often been criticized, and his relatively small, and not so empathetically characterized, head, underline the impression that the sculpture was to be viewed from below and from a great distance. Considering all this, I got the impression, particularly since the sculpted details cannot be discerned from afar, that Donatello’s David was in fact his “Masterpiece”, his entrance exam to a guild. Since Donatello at the time was active in Ghiberti’s workshop, which master was better known as a sculptor than a painter, it is possible that the guild which he entered as a recognized master was the Arte dei Maestri di Pietra e Legname, the Guild of Master Stonecutters and Wood Carvers.

Donatello's good friend and peer Nanni di Banco, who together with Donatello had been given the task of decorating Il Duomo’s buttresses, did seven years later make a famous sculpture group, which impressed his contemporaries and became a great inspiration for Donatello (who probably assisted di Banco with the manufacture) – Quattro Santo Coronati, Four Crowned Saints. These four martyrs, whose names were unknown, are by tradition said to have been Christian sculptors who under the Roman Emperor Diocletian refused to make sculptures of “pagan” gods and therefore were placed alive within sealed lead coffins and thrown into the Sava River in present-day Serbia. They had since then been invoked as patron saints of sculptors and were of course the obvious choice of the Arte dei Maestri di Pietra e Legname to adorn its niche on the church di Orsanmichele.

In 1405 Nanni had been appointed master of the aforementioned guild. The four figures are masterfully arranged within a shallow semi-circular niche, where, through glances and discreet movements, they seem to be involved in a conversation. The solemn gestures, the toga-like clothing and the volume of the bodies testify that Nanni was influenced by ancient Roman sculptural art.

Donatello’s marble statue of David had, during the exhibition at Palazzo Strozzi, been placed in the same room as another youthful work by Donatello – the Crucifix in Santa Croce. It hung next to Brunelleschi's crucifix from Santa Maria Novella. The reason for this was surely an anecdote in Giorgio Vasari's (1511-1574) anecdote in his Le vite de’ più eccelenti pittori, scultori e architettori, The Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors and Architects.
 

For Santa Croce, Donatello had “with infinite patience” carved a wooden crucifix, which he proudly displayed to his friend Brunelleschi, who, however, after Donatello’s enthusiastic descriptions, had expected something better and thus could not help to smile. The disappointed Donatello sensed his friend’s displeasure and asked him, in view of their great friendship, to tell him what he really thought of the crucifix. After some hesitation, Brunelleschi once again looked intensely at the crucifix and stated: “You have put a peasant on the cross and not Jesus Christ, the most perfect man ever born.” Bitterly, because he had after all expected praise, Donatello replied: “If it was as easy to make something as it is to criticise, my Christ would really look to you like Christ. So you get some wood yourself and try to make one yourself.”

Without a word, Brunelleschi nodded and left the church. Not revealing it to anyone, he set about making a crucifix with the aim of surpassing Donatello’s creation. After several months’ of hard work he produced, with great perfection, a work which, according to him, was superior to Donatello’s crucifix.

One morning Brunelleschi invited his friend Donatello to dine with him. Donatello naturally accepted the invitation and they walked together towards Filippo’s house. As they passed the market, Brunelleschi bought some ingredients for the dinner, and after stating he had a couple of more errands to run he gave the market goods to Donatello and asked him to take them to his bottega. When Donatello entered the workshop, he found Filippo’s crucifix stategically placed in perfect lighting. Overwhelmed with surprise and admiration, Donatello dropped the apron in which he had placed the eggs, the cheese and other items brought from the market. At the sam moment, Filippo arrive and found his friend standing among the broken eggs, lost in thoughts and apparently stunned by suprise. Laughingly, Brunelleschi asked: “What’s your design, Donatello? What are we going to eat now that you’ve broken everything?” “Myself,” Donatello answered, “I’ve had my share for this mornig. If you want yours, you take it. But no more, please. Your job is making Christs and mine making peasants.”

It is a quite subtle anecdote and Vasari’s anecdote has for posterity come to characterize differences between Brunelleschi’s and Donatello’s art. It has time after time been commented upon by various art critis.

The difference between the two representations of the dying Christ is actually not that great. It is clear that the two wood carvers found their inspiration in Giotto’s Triumphal Crucifix in Santa Maria Novella. Painted in 1288, it was more than a hundred years old when Donatello and Brunelleschi made their crucifixes.

Giotto was inspired by Franciscan spirituality, which more than paying hommage to his glory and sublimity, or inhuman suffering, had emphasized Jesus’ humanity, love and poverty. Giotto’s crucifix thus depicted a dying man, with a realistically rendered body. There are no signs of barbaric beatings or physical suffering. Christ wears no crown of thorns and the only wounds he exhibits are from the spear thrust into his side and the nails hammered through his hands and feet. Maybe he is already dead.

It is in the expressions of their faces that the biggest differences between Donatello’s and Brunelleschi’s versions of the crucified Jesus become most apparent. It may be an illusion, though I assume that Donatello’s Jesus is closer to us than Brunelleschi’s Christ, with his tired, but still gentle gaze under almost closed eyelids, a half-open mouth with a swollen upper lip. His more prominent cheekbones and high forehead. The face, despite its lack of external damage, seems to bear witness to how an ordinary person exposed to contempt, betrayal and grotesque bullying is close to leaving his earthly life, but despite all this, Jesus’ tired face radiates forgiveness and human love.

Giotto’s Jesus is emaciated, at least compared to the more fleshy and muscular bodies depicted by Donatello and Brunelleschi. The latter’s Jesus, however, seems to be slimmer built than Donatello’s. Brunelleschi’s Christ has the same bent legs as Giotto’s, while the stretched legs of Donatello's Jeusus figure rest more heavily against the stem of the cross. Brunelleschi’s Christ has a small crown of thorns, though like Giotto’s Jesus, Donatello’s is lacking one.

It is in the expressions of their faces that the biggest differences between Donatello’s and Brunelleschi’s versions of the crucified Jesus become most apparent. It may be an illusion, though I assume that Donatello’s Jesus is closer to us than Brunelleschi’s Christ, with his tired, but still gentle gaze under almost closed eyelids, a half-open mouth with a swollen upper lip. His more prominent cheekbones and high forehead. The face, despite its lack of external damage, seems to bear witness to how an ordinary person exposed to contempt, betrayal and grotesque bullying is close to leaving his earthly life, but despite all this, Jesus’ tired face radiates forgiveness and human love.

Jesus’ heavy body lacks in Donatello’s rendering the slender elegance of Brunellschi’s personage. Like in Donatello’s version, Brunelleschi’s Jesus does not present many signs of having been brutally beaten and abused. However, in comparison with Donatello’s Jesus he has an air of refinement and sensitivity. A true aristocrat, or rather a superman’s submissive resignation under God’s omnipotent will. His eyebrows are sharply defined, the nose narrow and the cheeks soft and smooth.
 

Donatello's Jesus is closer to us in the sense that he endowed with the build of a manual labourer, like the construction worker Jesus probably was before he was convinced that he had a God-given mission (the Greek word tektōn the term used for Jesus’ occupation could mean craftsman, in the sense of a builder working with both wood-work and stone masonry). His figure and face indicate signs of the everyday life of such a man, with all the brutality and closeness to life that seems to be lacking in Brunelleschi’s nobleman. Vasari’s account of Brunelleschi’s judgment is to this extent entirely correct. Donatello’s Jesus is indeed reminiscent of a peasant, someone who has not only been crucified according to the Gospels, but furthermore been subjected to mob violence and the street contempt shown to powerless and/or deviant people.

Why does Vasari, while comparing him with Brunellschi's representation, seem to underestimate Donatello’s Jesus? Perhaps because Vasari in all the artist descriptions emphasized his appreciation of an artist’s ability to link physical beauty with creative skill and thus succeeded in imitating God’s creative power and originality in his/her works.

According to Vasari, a skilled artist is, unlike a farmer, a Creator, someone who, in accordance with the words of the Book of Revelation: “And he who was seated on the throne said, ‘Behold, I am making all things new’” mirrors God’s creative and innovative powers. A view that was not at all unusual among Renaissance intellectuals who often saw themselves as more than farmers. They were “citizens”, townspeople who, unlike the down-to-earth peasants, could appreciate the subtleties of philosophy and religious faith, far from the superstition and brutality that prevailed among the toilers of the earth. In fact, many Florentines harboured a deep-seated distrust and even fear of the peasantry who surrounded the city. In his Ricordi, Memoirs, Donatello’s contemporary, the wealthy cloth merchant Giovanni di Pagolo Morelli, stated that “there is no single peasant who would not be willing to come to Florence to burn the city down.” In other words, in an early work such as the crucifix in Santa Croce, Donatello already sreveals his skill in reshaping the art that dominated his time, in a new, revolutionary and life-like manner.

After finishing his crucifix, Donatello goes from strength to strength. Constantly varying and deepening the possibilities of his studies of ancient art combining them with an awareness of the innovations made by his contemporary artist colleagues. The powerful patron Cosimo de Medici caught sight of him and during his long life, during which Donatello was feverishly active until the end, he was never without constant, new assignments. In addition to his superb skills and unexpected gifts, Donatello, unlike many other artists, was known to be a modest, kind and extremely generous person.

It is through the subtle characterisation, the vitality and psycholgical depth of his motifs that Donatello has been hailed for an undeniable mastery. Shortly after returning from his study trip to Rome in 1433, in the company of Brunelleschi, Donatello created in Santa Croce his Annunciation, as a monument for the family tomb of the powerful Cavalcanti clan.

The angel and Virgin are executed in high relief in front of a partially gilded background in the form of a closed gate. They are depicted in the moment just after Gabriel’s appearance. The Virgin, placed in front of a lyre-shaped chair, has risen in surprise after sitting reading a book, which she still holds in her hand. The youthfully beautiful Madonna puts one hand to her chest and her graceful, gothically curved figure vaguely suggests that she has for a moment intended to escape from the apparition. The exquisite drapery of the dress follows the movement of the legs to the left, out of the picture, but at the last moment the maiden has controlled her emotions and turned towards the angel.

Gabriel kneels in front of the Madonna, who he almost shyly looks up at. It seems that with his slightly turned head, humble appearance and searching gaze, he wants to capture Maria’s unconditional attention. The scene breathes a bright, lively interplay between the portrayed figures, who animate their emotions with gestures and facial expressions. Donatello has succeeded in giving Maria’s nobly refined face an expression of quiet surprise, marked by both gratitude and humility.

Donatello avoided traditional elements such as the dove of the Holy Spirit and the lily, or olive branch, in the angel’s hand. The symbolic language is limited and subtle, like the book of Mary alluding to the Bible’s predictions about the coming of the Messiah and the closed gate in the background, suggesting the chastity of the Madonna.

Donatello never repeats himself and constantly surprises. Five years before the Annunciation in Santa Croce, Donatello, together with his colleague Michelozzi, had executed a sumptuous funerary monument for the still living Cardinal Rainaldo Brancacci. Brancacci was a sly, political vane and it appears rather strange how ecclesiastical princes like him could have the audacity to like ancient pharaohs erecting extravagant memorials over themselves. So be it, because after all, we have such self-adoring narcissists to thank for the astonishing masterpieces of several Renaissance geniuses.

I

On the Brancacci sarcophagus, Donatello executed one of the stiacciatore reliefs admired by his contemporaries. Stiacciato is a technique that makes it possible for a sculptor to create a so-called recessed relief with a depth of only a couple of millimeters. To gradually reduce depth from foreground to background an illusion of greater depth is created. Donatello must have learned this technique from his master Ghiberti, who used stiacciato in his occasionally depth-perspective reliefs on the famous Paradise Gates of the baptistry of Santa Maria degli Fiori

In his Ascension of the Madonna, Donatello portrayed an elderly, perhaps tired and worried woman surrounded by gracefully hovering angels. I come to think of the whirling of the Rhein daughters in the introduction to Wagner’s Das Rheingold.

Returning to Florence, Donatello created several portraits in the Roman Antique style, difficult to distinguish from Greek and Roman models.

Or penetrating, highly original studies of contemporary men:

For one of the niches in Giotto’s tower next to Santa Maria del Fiore, Donatello executed an Old Testament prophet – Habakkuk. The gloomy and tormented man who called out to God with the lamentation:

How long, Lord, must I call for help, but you do not listen? Or cry out to you, “Violence!” but you do not save? Why do you make me look at injustice? Why do you tolerate wrongdoing? Destruction and violence are before me; there is strife, and conflict abounds.

The misanthropic man depicted by Donatello and popularly called Il Zuccone, the Bald One, had as its model a now forgotten artist, wealthy man and opponent of the Medici family – Giovanni de Barduccio Cherichini. The sculptue became immediately popular among the Florentines, who were taken by the old man’s serious attitude, as well as the great skill and realism with which the statue had been executed.

Vasari states that it was Donatello’s favorite work, and that he got into the habit of swearing his oaths by saying: “By the faith I have in my Zuccone,” and that while he was working on on the statue he would look at it and keep muttering; “Speak, damn you speak!”

Donatello increasingly distanced himself from the fashions of his time. His insightful studies of well-known saints became increasingly realistic and unexpectedly bold. As an aged and worn-out Mary Magdalene depicted in all her frailty, with an emaciated body, wated through devastating penance.

So different from his St. George, which was commissioned by the armourers’ guild to adorn their niche in the Chiesa di Orsanmichele. The niche Donatello was assigned was unusually shallow and thus the sculpted a figure that partially emerges from it and it can thus be seen from several directions.

It is an individual who steps forward, alert and tense. St. George has not yet attacked the dragon, which presence spectators sense behind their backs. The warriuors’s feet rest firmly on the ground, but his right foot is slightly extended and the posture thus harmonizes with St. George’s worried facial expression. He does not exude defiance and can hardly be assumed to guard anything. His shield is at rest, but we nevertheless get an impression of courage and determination. A determined preparedness for a difficult task that could have a fatal outcome for himself.

As expected, St. George is encased in a sinuous and exquisitely chiselled shell of leather and metal, after all it was the armorers’ guild that hade commissioned Donatello to create a bold and heroic Saint George. Despite this, there is an air of defenselessness about the lonely saint, well aware as he is of the great danger he will soon be exposed to. However, this does not prevent his whole figure from being characterized by a nervous energy. We are unsure how long he will sustain this tension. Soon he must attack, … or retreat.

Nervousness and hesitation characterize the tense face; the furrowed brow and the worried look. Unlike Donatello's marble David, St. George is in his niche almost level with the viewer who can thus be directly confronted with his anxious preperaedness. Soon he will overcome all his doubts and thus becomes an image of one of the virtues that the Florentines liked to attribute to themselves – Prontezza, an ability to be prepared to face every threat and adversary with elevated calm.

The relief under St. George is executed in exquisite stiacciato through which the loin of his horse appears to be closer to the viewer than its head. The dragon, St. George and the Virgin, who is rendered in elegant Gothic curvature, are sharply plced against a central perspective background, where the wild nature, which cliffs and caves are the dragon’s home, are juxtaposed to the ordered, urban landscape behind the Virgin – culture and order in contrast to the unbridled evil of nature.

Soon Donatello utilized the stiacatto technique for increasingly sophisticated representations. With a background of symmetrically constructed areas created through a perspective combined with empty surfaces, he harmonizes the actors with a space that both encloses them and opens behind them. Dramatically concentrated, and at the same time dynamic depictions that as in snapshots captures eventful processes, through which emotional energy is reflected through the actors’ body language.

A relief on a baptismal font in Siena shows the turbulent scene when a kneeling executioner during a banquet on a plate is handsing over the severed head of John the Baptist to Herod. The drama of the main incident is strongly emphasized and psychologically nuanced. The various reactions to the blood-stained head are reflected as captured in a wave of horror and disgust, which to the right subsides around an unaffected Salome who seems to have just finished her fatal dance.

The depth of the image is divided into several planes – foremost where the executioner holds out the dish with John’s severed head, small children flee at the sight of the terrifying head while the unemotional Salome in a pleated dress that seems to refer to the wild dance she previously has performed before Herod

The other side of the table forms another plane in which Herod recoils in disgust when he is offered grotesque of a severed head, while his wife Herodias, with a giving gesture indicates the cut off head she has persuaded her daughter to request from her stepfather as a condition for perfroming her arousing dance. A void has opened up around Herodias and her explanatory attitude, her nasty request has aroused disgust and repudiation among those around her. At the other end of the table, one of the diners covers his face with one hand as he turns away in repulse of the bloody spectacle.

On a plane behind these people we glimpse the musicians who have accompanied Salome’s dance and at further away we glimpse how the executioner hands over the head of John the Baptist to Herodias and her daughter. The lively, and highly original, presentation of a commonly known scene probably shocked the spectators who were confronted with it. There was no elegant sophistication here, but an unprecedented brutal realism. A flash of presence through which the artist conveyed an impression that he had actually witnessed what he described.
 

Donatello did not only use the stiacatto technique to present crowded and dramatic scenes. He also created intimate, devotional setting, such as this one where a deceased Jesus is lifted up by mourning angels.

Or a number of sensitively depicted Madonna images reflecting a tender love between mother and son.

On an exterior pulpi by the facade of the Cathedral of Prato, he depicted a joyfully unrestrained horde of dancing little angels. Such pulpits were used by famous preachers who, like rock stars, moved from town to town and attracted large audiences through their virtuoso preaching

It is difficult to imagine how austere orators and sombre revivalists preached their deeply religious messages of divine punishment and Christian restraint from a rostrum adorned with bacchanalian, dancing cherubs.

Inside the slightly congested basilica of Padua, Donatello gave vent to his original and imaginative art. Behind the high altar we find, for example, a representation of one of Sant Antonio’s miracles. In its scenic grandeur it reminds of some historical cinemascope film produced in Hollywood. The cinematic impression once again provides an impression that Donatello actually witnessed the vivid scene he is rendering.
 

What Donatello illustrates is a somewhat silly, but at the same time politically cahreged legend. The Pataria was a 11th-century movement aiming at reforming the clergy by enforcing papal sanctions against simony, challenging clerical control of the Eucharist, as well as it tried to outlaw clerical marriage and concubinage. The movement caused some armed rebellions which were soon put down and Pataria eventually was declared to be an open and punishable heresy.

According to legend, a miller named Bonvillo denied the celestial and miraculous nature of the Eucharist, namely that the belief that during Mass the wine and bread actually were transformed into real flesh and blood. He challenged San Antonio by keeping his mule confined for days without feeding her. Then he would take her to the square in front of the catedral and a multitude of people and put some tasty fodder in front of her. At the same time, San Antonio would rise a consecrated oblate for the mule to see. If the animal knelt before the host and ignored the pile of clover and other appetizing things, Bonvillo promised that he would never again utter any disbelief in the miracle of the holy mass.

Antonio accepted the challenge and on the agreed day the saint showed the host to the mule with the words:

If indeed what I hold my hand is the human fleash of our Creator, I command you, dumb animal, to humbly approach Him and show Him due reverence.

Scarcely had Antonio finished his sentence than the mule, to the astonishment and jubilation of the people, ignored the appetizing food, bowed her head and knelt before the sacrament and incarnation of Christ’s body.

Perhaps a certain humor can be sensed through Donatello’s large-scale representation of of a multitude of the people showing astonishment at the miracle of the kneeling mule.

Among the evangelist symbols that also adorn the main altar of the Basilica San Antonio di Padua, the lion of Mark undeniably makes an amusing impression, humanized as it is with an individualized expression of concentration and authority.

The Madonna, enthroned in front of the altarpiece’s crucifix, stands in front rather than sits on her throne. She appears to be leaning forward, an impression reinforced by her thrusting head which lends intensity to the forward movement. She holds the baby Jesus in front of her, as if she wants to demonstrate it to the congregation. The chubby child turns to us with a gesture and facial expression that seem to free him from his mother’s hold. The treatment of the bronze is exemplary – shiny, smooth and hard.

Right next to the Basilica di San Antonio, the condottiere Erasmo Stefano da Narni, called Gattamelata (the Honey Smoth Cat) is in a powerful manner urging his magnificent steed forward. In earlier (painted) equestrian depictions, of which Ucello’s and del Castagno’s frescoes are the most famous, the huge horses appear to be more prominent than their riders.

With the ancient Roman equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius, who was probably Donatello’s main model, the roles appear to be reversed. The horse is truly magnificent, though the emperor seems to outsize it.

Gattamelata’s horse exudes calm and massive power. The general’s posture and facial features express confined, but intense activity. His grim expression does not indicate any unleashed warrior frenzy, but rather careful calculation, control and concerted preparedness.

In his sculpture, Donatello has depicted Gattamelata as he leads his troops during a battle. Command staff and sword form a diagonal that cuts out the commander at an angle to the plinth, thus drawing the viewer’s attention to his reflection and overview. Compared to previous equestrian statues, there is a realistic renewal here, a dignity and formal effect that is nevertheless based on previous representations.

Donatello made several detailed horse studies and in Naples there is a magnificent horse’s head which, in the exhibition in the Palazzo Strozzi was placed next to a copy of a head from the four ancient bronze horses that adorn the facade of St. Mark’s Basilica in Venice. They had been stolen from Constantinople in 1204 and since then thay have been an inspiration for various artists.
 

Gattamelata is a free-standing sculpture, one of the few previously created after Roman Antiquity. In many ways, Donatello's revolutionary art was a renewal of ancient Roman-Greek art, which has made some art connaiseurs to believe that some of his art works actually originated from ancient Rome. However, not his most famous work – the free-standing bronze sculpture of David.

As of 1437, the Medici were the most influential family in Florence and largely controlled the city and its Signoria. For several centuries, the Medici gathered at their court Italy’s foremost artists, writers, humanists and philosophers. Of course, this gave glory and prestige to the increasingly powerful and wealthy Medici clan, but possibly their patronage of art, music and literature could also be considered a gesture of appreciation of their hometown and its citizens.

Donatello was held in high esteem by Cosimo de Medici, the leading man of the Florentine moneyed aristocracy, who assumed an unofficial position as ruler of the city republic. In 1440 he ordered from Donatello a “free-standing statue”, a figure in the “antique” spirit, completely sovereign, unbound by any decorative tasks.

The result was astonishing. Donatello’s David was placed in the garden of the Medici Palace and its shocking originality aroused astonishment and admiration. The heroic youth is almost completely naked, and it is only Goliath’s fearsome, armored head at his feet that suggests this is the David of the Old Testament and not some Greek god.

With an enigmatic smile, the elegant youth poses with one foot on Goliath’s severed head. It is the moment after his defeat of the giant. The boy has a strong physique, though provides the spectator with a remarkable “feminine” impression. David’s slender build contrasts with the large sword he holds in his right hand.

His nakedness suggests that David defeated Goliath not through physical strength but due to God’s intervention. This is not the case, as it was with Donatello’s St. George of a moment of vigilance and nervousness, but about relaxation and reflection. The young man’s face is calm. His facial muscles are completely relaxed and a mysterious smile plays on the slightly open mouth. There is a subtle pride in his expression, not boastfulness but rather a reflection of inner thoughts. We are not confronted with a triumphant superhero holding aloft a sword and a severed head. Instead, we meet a contemplative face and relaxed body.

The body position indicates a calm confidence. David rests standing, seemingly carelessly, but nevertheless harmoniously, with the weight placed on the right leg. It is a classical counterpose, well known through Polykleitos’ Doryphoros, Spear Bearer, which since its creation in 440 BC. has been admired and copied as the epitome of harmony, dynamism and balance. Not least in poses taken by modern film actors, such as the young Marlon Brando and several other Hollywood stars.

At the same time, in Donatello's David there is something of the sliding line rhythm of the Gothic, from the brutally severed head along the body up to the shoulders and the long hair. A gliding upward movement that meets and interacts with gently falling rhythms in the hat, arms, crotch and legs. A continuous pulse seems to run around the entire sculpture, a constant succession of clearly chiseled silhouettes around hard, solid matter. Freed from all supports and surrounding ornaments, structures and contexts, an individual appears, who with a unique physicality, allows himself to be viewed from all angels. In my opinion, Donatello’s David is far more harmonious and complete than Michelangelo’s more famous and admired free sculpture of the young David.

The tradition-breaking, uniqueness, but still antique-applying quality of Donatello’s David has made several “experts” declaring it to be the first free-standing sculpture in history after Antiquity and a kind of talisman for the Renaissance. An opinion I perceive as an example of a coomon, casual condemnation of the greatness of medieval art. I do not see the Renaissance as a break with earlier art, it is rather a superb part in an unbroken chain of masterpieces. The psychological depth Donatello conveys in his art is also present in medieval artwork.

On our walk to Donatello’s David in the Bargello Palace, we passed several exquisite Byzantine ivory miniatures. This meticulously executed craftsmanship, with its perfect dynamics and harmony within confining spaces, reminded me of an ivory miniature made in Lorraine sometime in the 11th century that I in 1973 first saw in East Berlin’s Bode Museum and I since then I have often thought about it.

The figures are pressed against each other in a round-arched niche. The ivory carver has masterfully arranged the entire image surface and balanced Thomas the Doubter and Jesus against each other with perfect clarity, rhythmic power and saturated expressiveness. With his back to the spectator, the Doubter climbs upwards while he clings to Jesus. In anguish and doubt, he tears at Christ's mantle and with his fingers dig deep into the exposed wound. Thomas’ intrusive clinging is contrasted with Christ’s calm. With raised arm he exposes his wound and harmoniously fills the roundel of the niche while he is serenely watching the upset Tomas. Jesus exoresses concerned participation, patience and pity. Here, through gestures and interplay, there is profound psychology at play, just as in Donatello’s best works.
 

Perhaps one might consider medieval crucifixes as free-standing sculptures. For example, Helmsted’s bronze crucifix from the latter part of the 11th century,

or Bishop Gero’s crucifix in the Cologne Cathedral. Carved sometime between 970 and 1000, it is history's first preserved, wood-carved monument and already perfected in its representation of Jesus’ already dead and prostrate body.

The statue of St. Teodore in Chartres gives an heroic an impression similar to Donatello’s St. George.

Pierre de Montreuil’s Adam from the begiining of the 13^th century, which is now in the Musée de Cluny in Paris, can actually be considered as a free-standing sculpture, produced in a perfect Greek-Roman antique spirit.

The Defeated Synagogue in the Strasbourg Cathedral is as poignant psychological study as those created by Donatello.

So are the prophets of Bamberg. Jonah’s face bears comparison with Donatello’s Il Zuccone.

The Rider in Bamberg is certainly not as dynamic as the Gattamelata sculpture, but is nevertheless endowed with a calm and noble grandeur.

Uta von Ballenstedt in Naumburg has a mysterious and withdrawn air about her and thus stands in stark contrast to the wonderfully realistic representation of the lush and happily smiling Queen Adelaide of Burgundy, made 1260 in Meissen, although it looks so fresh and new that I doubted whether it could actually be that old.

The lively relief of the Last Supper in Naumburg is as skillfully executed and varied as any of Donatello’s reliefs.

Bishop Hohenlohe’s imgae from 1350 in the Bamberg Cathedral leans towards us and like the figures in Donatello’s artwork he provides us with a vivid, unique and idiosyncratic impression.

Despite a realisation of the greatness of medieval art, I nevertheless dare to say that Donatello’s contribution is both different and revolutionary. His astonishing blend of tradition and modernity was, after all, something entirely new.

Medieval artists never ceased to seek inspiration from the sources of the classical art of Byzantium and Rome, though their output was overshadowed by a spiritual outlook. A presentation of ideal conditions, largely disconnected from Antiquity in the sense that Augustine gave as the task of art – uti non fruti, to use but not enjoy. The medieval Christian ideal of God allowed the flesh of Antiquity to be resurrected in a declared form, purified in the fire of faith, bearer of a message about the Kingdom of Eternity beyond the limits of the visible.

Contrary to such a mindset, Donatello’s work has a worldly anchoring. Even when he portrays saints and madonnas, he does so in a personal and intimate way. A reality seen through a temperament and sometimes, as in the statue of David, he lets himself loose in a way that seems to be completely freed from Judeo-Christian tradition and thinking.

In the exhibition in the Palazzo Strozzi, one of Donatello’s strangest works was exhibited on a pedestal. It was for a long time widely considered to date from Roman Antiquity, although Vasari and some of his contemporaries carrectly identified it as a work of Donatello. Vasari describes the sculpture as:

a bronze Mercury, standing three feet high in full relief and clothed in a curious fashion.

Cupido-Attys is undeniably bizarre. A remarkably skilfully made study of a child’s body, whose proportions, contrary to medieval methods of representation, cannot be considered to be those of a miniature adult. Part of the puzzling character of this statue originates in the juxtaposition of a variety of classical motifs—wings like a cupid, a small goat's tail like that of a faun, winged sandals like those of Mercury, and what seems to be an allusion to the Bacchus Child and other fertility-suggesting creatures which during Antiquity, often were depicted in the form of babies, cupids and putti.

The strange clothing that exposes the boy’s genitalia, the raised arms and above all the face, where the burnished bronze, chubby cheeks, dimples, a half-open, smiling mouth – all this gives an impression of movement, a fleeting, excited feeling allluding to ancient models of bacchanalian, unrestrained freedom, expressed in the raised arms and the swinging, dancing movement.

However, even though the statue has been interpreted as an expression of the free-spirited joy of the Renaissance, by me it provides a sneaking sensation of unease. Through the strange pants that expose his genitals and the boy’s vitality, his apparently cheerful liveliness, the whole arrangement seems to be charged with an ill-concealed erotic energy, an air of distasteful pederasty. Behind Cupido-Atty’s consummate realism, the masterful execution of details, a sense of discomfort might be felt, something menacing, unhealthy and disturbing. The boy, in the midst of all his implied joie de vivre, seems able to do harm – to himself and others.

At the age of seventy-five, Donatello created a representation of Judith in the process of cutting off the head of Holoferenes. Judith stands upright, her sword is raised, while she with a firm grip on his hair lifts up the lifeless tyrant’s body. Calmly and methodically, she prepares to severe the brutal old man’s head from his body, acting with the calm of an everyday butcher. For several years, the sculpture was placed in front of the Signoria’s palace, as a symbol of the Republic’s contempt for autocrats and tyrants.

Donatello’s last masterpieces, executed when he was approaching the age of eighty, are the bronze reliefs on the so-called pulpits in the Florentine church of San Lorenzo. “So-called”, because these are probably not pulpits, but rather intended to be sarcophagi, even if were not used as such, but lifted up on pillars to be used by pulpits.

Vasari wrote that Donatello in the ned became increasinly senile, though there is not the slightest sign of this in the execution these reliefs, which are characterized by the same monumental realism as the altar reliefs in Padua. Hoever, here the realisim even stronger than before, perhaps even characterized by an old man’s disillusionment. As in the his representation of St. Lawrence’s martyrdom during which he with with a long pole attached to his neck by an excutioner is mercilessly ressed down into violently blazing fire. The spectators seem to be quite unmoved by the horrid spectacle. A Roman soldier holds his shield in front of him, as if to protect himself from the heat of the fire.

In another impressive scene, the three women descend to visit Jesus’ tomb. There they are met by an angel who announces that he has risen. The eldest of them seems to be clinging to a pillar, overwhelmed as she is by the startling message, while another woman, whose face is hidden by her cloak, with a lamp in her hand, descends the steps of the rock tomb. She seems not yet to have perceived the angel’s presence.

The reliefs are so high up that it is difficult to make out any details. I was amazed at the sight of a servant who, during Pilate's confrontation with Jesus, holds up the bowl of water in which the prefect is to wash his hands, a symbolic act to show that he is not guilty of the death sentence he pronounced. But ... with my neck strained, I tried to focus my gaze on the servant’s head. Did I see right? Did he really have two faces?

When I got home I rummaged through my art books and found that this was indeed the case. It looks as if Donatello was trying to create a sense of movement. With one facial movement, the servant calmly turns to Pilate, while the other seems to be turned to Jesus, in surprise at his presence or what he he saying.

The art historians I conulted commented on the double face by making a lot of comparisons with similar images, not least ancient Janus’ faces. It seems to me that they got lost in complicated explanation, which in at least two of them resulted in the opinion that the double countenance of the servant reflects Pilate’s hesitancy, his reluctance to make a firm decision and stick to it.

It may well be a plausible explanation. How, to me, Donatello’s double-faced servant might be a bold and successful attempt to create movement in art through duplication.

Already in ancient times, a Stone Age artist succeeded in admirably creating a boar’s gait in the Spanish cave of Altamira using a technique a technique of doubling features.

It would take thousands of years before Italian Futurists succeeded in creating a illusion of movement, like Balla in his representation of a dog’s brisk walk with its master. Or Boccioni when he fills the space of an entire painting with the illusion of movement, while the face of a woman leaning forward is doubled in what appears to be a window reflection.

Once again, one of my blog posting has grown beyond its limits. However, it was hard to hold back all the thoughts that my meeting with Donatello in Florence gave rise to. The realization of his modernity, vitality, inventiveness and unimaginable skill was undeniably staggering and will stay with me for a long time.

Vasari wrote:

He was superior not only to his contemporaries but even to the artists of our own time […] Artists should, therefore, trace the greatness of the art back to him rather than to anyone born in modern times. For as well as solving the problems of sculpture by executing so many different kinds of work, he possessed invention, design, skill, judgement, and all the other qualities that one may reasonably expect to find in an inspired genius.

Harris. Jim (2011) ”Defying the Predictable: Donatello and the Discomfiture of Vasari,” in Harris, Jim, Scott Nethersole and Per Rumberg (eds.) ‘Una insalata di più erbe A Festschrift for Patricia Lee Rubin. London: The Courtauld Institute of Art. Levey, Michael (1967) Early Renaissance. Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin Books. Martina, Guido och Giovan Battista Carpi (1983) “Messer Papero e il Ghibellin Fuggiasco,” in Topolino, n. 1425, 20 marzo. Pagolo Morelli, Giovanni di (2019) Ricordi: Nuova edizione e introduzione storica. Florence: Firenze University Press. Pfeiffenberger, Selma (1967) ”Notes on the Iconology of Donatello’s Judgement of Pilate at San Lorenzo,” in Renaissance Quarterly, Vol. 20, No. 4. Poeschke, Joachim (1993). Donatello and his World: Sculpture of the Italian Renaissance. New York: Harry N. Abrams. Vasari, Giorgio (1988) The Lives of the Atists. London: Penguin Classics.

Italien är en outsinlig källa för allsköns oväntade upplevelser – kulinariska, såväl som kulturella. Jag gläntar på dörren till något som flyktigt intresserat mig och plötsligt forsar intryck, minnen, drömmar och en mängd andra fenomen över mig. Som då jag för en månad sedan tillsammans med min amerikanske vän Joe besökte Florens och där konfronterades med Donatellos konst. En utställning kring hans liv, verk och influens på en mängd efterföljare efterföljare pågick i Palazzi Srozzi och Bargello.

Förvisso hade jag tidigare besökt Florens och i olika kyrkor konfronterats med Donatellos verk, läst om mästaren och hört min konstlärare Aron Borelius berätta om honom, men jag hade aldrig på allvar insett vidden av Donatellos genialitet och hans stora betydelse för sin eftervärld. Det häpnadsväckande moment i mänsklighetens historia under vilket han och hans gode vän Brunelleschi utgjorde orkanens öga. Donatello med sina skulpturer och reliefer. Brunelleschi med sina teorier kring centralperspektivet och kupolen han lät slå över Santa Maria del Fiore.

De båda vännerna hade tillsammans besökt Rom, där Donatello omtumlats av antikens kulturskatter; statyers och sarkofagreliefers fantasifulla rikedom, balans och fulländade harmoni, alltmedan Brunelleschi (1377-1446) ingående studerat den antika valvtekniken och fördjupat sig i Vitruvius (80-15 f.Kr.) skrifter.

Brunelleschi var den mer teoretiskt/matematiskt bevandrade av de två genierna, medan Donatello var en fulländad konstnär/hantverkare, med en intuitiv känsla för de uttryck hans konst skulle anta för att tillfredsställa beställarnas förväntningar, rummets förutsättningar och hans egen självkritiska hållning. Donatellos samtida pekade ofta på hans brist på bildning och påstod att han knappt var läskunnig. Jag tvivlar och antar att det var en myt som togs till intäkt för att hans genialitet var gudagiven, liksom muslimer ofta säger att Muhammed varken kunde läsa eller skriva, för att därmed antyda att hans lära var direkt dikterad av Gud.

Donatello, hette egentligen Donato di Niccolò di Betto Bardi. Donatello är ett diminutiv, ett epitet som kom sig av att han var liten till växten. Han föddes i Florens 1386 som son till Betto Bardi, vars yrke angivits som “ullkardare”, fast han ägnade sig även åt guldsmide. Ullkardare kan betyda att Bardi var proletär, men kan också innebära att han var föreståndare för en en ullkardarmanufaktur, något som tycks bevisas genom anmärkningen att han var skråmästare. Det skrå det kunde röra sig om vore så fall det mäktiga Arte della Lana, en hantverksförening som omfattade yllefabrikanter och köpmän verksamma inom Florens blomstrande ylleindustri.

Under Donatellos livstid sysselsatte verksamheten kopplad till ull inte mindre 30 000 arbetare, en tredjedel av Florens befolkning, som årligen producerade 100,000 meter textiler och kläde.

Uppköparna och exportörerna av ull och kläde tillskansade sig med tiden stora förmögenheter, som de använde till att med ränta låna ut till olika europeiska makthavare. De flesta av dessa bankirer var organiserade inom ett skrå kallat Arte di Calimala. Det märkliga namnet Calimala, Lugna henne, kom från namnet på den gata där Arte di Calimalas högkvarter var beläget. Genom sin rikedom kunde medlemmar i dettta skrå påverka och manipulera Florens styresmän. Mest inflytelserik bland skråets medlemmar blev sedermera familjen Medici.

En bild i en italiensk serietidning illustrerar utmärkt förhållandet – Kalle Anka sliter med att klippa får och samla in ull alltmedan Farbror Joakim räknar de pengar han fått in genom ullförsäljning och bankirverksamhet.

Likt flera andra norditalienska handelsstäder styrdes Florens under Donatellos levnad av en församling kallad Signoria. Dess nio medlemmar valdes från stadens ledande skrån. Sex av dem kom från skrån kallade Priori, det vill säga de sex äldsta och mäktigaste skråna, bland dem Arte della Lana. Två medlemmar valdes från de fjorton mindre skråna. Den nionde medlemmen benämndes Gonfaloniere di Giustizia och verkade som ledare för Signorian. Han valdes varannan månad, dock inte genom lottdragning utan av den avgående Signorians medlemmar.

En av flera märkvärdigheter med detta styrelseskick var hur Signorians medlemmar valdes och den korta tid de verkade. Namnen på samtliga skråmedlemmar över trettio år lades i åtta lädersäckar. Varannan månad bars dessa säckar ut från kyrkan Santa Croce, där de förvarades och under en kort ceremoni drogs namnen slumpmässigt fram. Endast män som inte var skuldsatta kunde väljas, dessutom skulle de inte ha suttit i Signorian under det gångna året och de fick inte ha något familjeband med de män som verkat under den tidigare mandatperioden. Omedelbart efter det att de valts förväntades de nio styrelsemedlemmarna bosätta sig i Palazzo della Signoria, vars fasad var prydd med skrånas vapensköldar, där kom de att stanna under de två månader som deras uppdrag varade.

Så fungerade det hela i princip, men med tiden förvirrade intriger och manipulationer det redan komplicerade systemet och makten kom i realiteten att vila hos Gonfaloniere di Giustizia, ett ämbete som kom att domineras av den allt mäktigare Medicifamiljen. Detta innebar dock inte att skråväsendet och dess inflytande på Florens maktspel försvann. Under flera århundraden fortsatte Signorian att dominera stadens ekonomiska och politiska liv.

Arte della Lana, där Donatellos far var medlem, kontrollerade exempelvis hela processen från den råa, emballerade ullen som dagligen strömmade in staden, till de färdiga textilier som tillverkades vid vävstolar utspridda bland privathem och manufakturer inom stadens murar.

Likt andra skrån samordnade Arte della Lana sina medlemmars aktiviteter; försäkrade sig om kvalitén på produktionen, fastställde priser, reglerade löner, kontrollerade utbildningsgången hos gesäller, samt prövade och beslutade vem som skulle förlänas ett “mästarbrev”.

Varje skrå hade sitt skyddshelgon, dess styresmän residerade i ett palats och i allmänhet stödde de och bekostade mässor och utsmyckningar i en specifik kyrka. Det mäktiga Arte della Lana förfogade över ett imponerande palats i stadens centrum, dess skyddshelgon var Skt. Stefan och dess kyrka var ingen mindre är Florens Duomo – Santa Maria del Fiori.

I nischerna framför den Medicidominerade Chiesa di Orsanmichele fanns statyer av de olika skrånas skyddshelgon uppställda. Arte della Lanas Skt. Stefan hade där skulpterats av Lorenzo Ghiberti, i vars välrenommerade bottega Donatello vid sjutton års ålder hade börjat som gesäll.

Under Donatellos livstid var bottegasystemet väl utbyggt i Florens och staden räknade med en mängd mästerbottegas. En bottega var mer än en konstnärs-studio, mer än ett lärosäte för blivande mästare och kan väl snarast beskrivas som en verkstad som under stor konkurrens levererade beställningsarbeten till olika mecenater. Mycket av arbetet styrdes av stränga rutiner präglade av hantverksmässiga ytterst viktiga rutiner som i sin tur var beroende av beställarnas krav, tidsbrist då det gällde utförandet av de komplicerade arbetena, samt skråsystemets produktionskontroll och detaljerade regelverk.

Speciellt tillverkningen av färger var en väsentlig del av en bottegas verksamhet och orsaken till att Florens konstnärer tillhörde ett av de sex mäktigaste skrån som utgjorde Priori – Arte dei Medici e Speziale, Hantverksföreningen för läkare och apotekare, alltså en sammanslutning för specialister som tillverkade och använde sig av droger och olika dekokter. Förutom konstnärer ingick även butiksägare som sålde kryddor och textilfärgningsmedel i Arte dei Medici e Speziale.

Varje bottega framställde sina egna färger. Färgframställning, samt den noggranna prepareringen av de dukar och specialbehandlade träskivor som utgjorde underlaget för målningarna var en en arbetskrävande process som tillföll bottegans lärlingar.

Färgpigmenten kom från en mängd olika källor. De kunde utgöras av olika jordarter innehållande mineraler och lera, som Rå eller Bränd siena och Bränd umbra. Pigmenten var ofta baserade på giftiga ämnen som kvicksilver, bly, sulfid, tenn och cinnober ett mineral som är en blandning av kvicksilver och svaveldioxid. De kunde också vara mycket dyra importprodukter som Indiskt gult, som tillverkats av urin från kor som utfodrats med mangoblad, eller dyrast av dem alla – den blå stenen, lapiz lazuli, som fördes till Florens från Badakshan vid Amu Darjas övre lopp. För att erhålla de yppersta pigmenten tvingades konstnärer experimentera på egen hand eller vinna så pass stor uppskattning att beställarna var villiga att bekosta åtkomsten av eftertraktade pigment.

Pigmenten måste rivas, det innebar att de maldes ner till små, fina korn genom att finfördelas med hjälp av en löpare, en kägelformad sten med plan bottenyta som malde dem mot en flat stenhäll. Då pigmenten fått den rätta kornstorleken revs de samman till en pasta, genom tillsats av olika bindemedel. Under Donatellos tid var det vanligaste bindemedlet hela ägg, eller enbart äggvita – tempera, men man använde även bivax, kasein och olika oljor, främst linolja. Konstnärsbottegerna tillverkade även olika former av fernissa och lasyr. Det medeltida namnet för fernissa var det latinska ordet veronix, som gett upphov till nutidens vernissage, dvs. öppningsdagen för en konstutställning. Under renässansen betydde det att då fernissan torkat kunde konstverket presenteras för beställaren, om denne underkände resultatet var det för bottegan såväl en stor prestigeförlust, som ett ekonomiskt bakslag.

Inom en bottega kallades de hårt arbetande lärlingarna garzoni, pojkar. Donatellos inträde som garzone i den uppburne Mästaren Lorenzo Ghibertis bottega skedde vid en ovanligt hög ålder. I allmänhet var de flesta garzoni som accepterades i en bottega i tioårsåldern. De anförtroddes i mästarens vård. Han fostrade, disciplinerade och undervisade dem medan de var en del av hans hushåll, där de logerade och åt tillsammans mästarens familj. Flera garzoni avancerade inte från att arbeta med färger och pannåer, men de skickligaste och mest entusiastiska av dem fick av mästaren lära sig skissera, läsa och slutligen även medverka vid konstverkens fullbordande. Efter hand anförtroddes de alltmer betydande uppgifter än framställandet av dekorativa detaljer och ifyllande av mästarens konturer, eller anläggandet av av tidigare fastställda färgytor.

Skråna krävde att en mästare skulle ge sina garzoni ett accartati, kontrakt, och en fast lön, den senare var oftast blygsam – i allmänhet fem eller åtta guldfloriner under ett år, att jämföras med en utbildad arbetares lön som var omkring trettiofem floriner per år. Vid slutet av lärlingstiden kunde en garzone beredas ynnesten att få genomgå en gesällprov. Om han lyckades med att förklaras som gesäll kunde det ge dem möjligheten att erbjuda sina tjänster som självständiga konstnärer, men de tilläts inte driva egna verkstäder. För det krävdes medlemskap i Arte dei Medici e Speziale något som i konstnärernas fall krävde att skråmedlemmarna visade sin uppskattning av ett Mästerverk (varifrån vårt samtida ord härstammar) och att en gesäll därigenom kunde utnämnas till Mästare, Maestro dell’arte och därmed rätten att öppna en egen bottega. Först måste dock en blivande Mästare bevisa att han var erkänd som son till en tidigare medlem av ett skrå och betala en inträdesavgift, samt skriva ett kontrakt som innebar att han accepterade skråets statuter och förband sig till en årlig inbetalning till dess gemensamma kassa.

Den stränga arbetsdisciplinen, de fasta rutinerna, det praktiska arbetet som lade stor vikt vid att varje detalj var så perfekt som möjligt, skrånas stränga kvalitetskontroll, den hårda konkurrensen, samarbetet mellan mästaren och hans garzone, samt den stora kårandan var säkerligen orsaker till att renässanskonstnärerna blev så skickliga och mognade som artister vid en tidig ålder..

Det tidigaste konstverket som kan härledas till Donatello är hans David, som han 1409 högg i marmor vid tjugotre års ålder. Arbetet hade bekostats av Arte della Lana, det skrå som Donatellos far tillhörde och var tänkt att pryda en av katedralen Santa Maria del Fiores strävpelare. Den placerades dock inte där emedan skråets medlemmar tyckte att den var för liten för att kunna uppskattas från marknivå. Statyn blev således under flera år stående i en bottega innan Florens Signoria 1416 förde den till sitt palats, placerade den på en piedestal med inskriften: ”Till de som tappert kämpar för fosterlandet försvar ger gudarna hjälp, även mot de mest fruktansvärda fiender.” Uppenbarligen tyckte stadens rådmän att den unge, djärve David kunde tjäna som förebild för Republikens försvarare.

Kritiken har ofta varit nedlåtande då det gäller detta första kända verk av Donatello. Det har skrivits att dimensionerna är fel att hela verket ger ett ”formellt och intetsägande uttryck”. Denne David har skoningslöst jämförts med Donatellos senare skicklighet och förklarats vara tämligen ointressant.

Efter att nu i verkligheten ha fått ett tillfälle att betrakta Donatellos Davidframställning på nära håll har jag fått ett helt annat intryck. Med tanke på de omständigheter som predisponerade statyn är den förvisso ett mästerverk.

Vänsterhanden håller David vid sidan, medan han placerat sig i en elegant contraposto lyfter han triumfatoriskt sin långa klädnad för att därmed avslöja Goliats avhuggna huvud, som vilar vid hans fötter – fortfarande med såväl slunga som sten inborrade i skallen. Trots det avstånd från vilket skulpturen skulle betraktas är det groteska huvudet detaljrikt och framträdande presenterat, med sina slutna ögon och halvöppna mun, genom vilken man skymtar den döde jättens tunga. I pannan sitter den dödande stenen inborrad, det stelnade blodet är svårt att skilja från hårsvallet.

Det framstår klart att arrangemanget var tänkt att pryda en strävpelare. Det hela tycks sträva uppåt. Vänsterhandens gest som öppnar dräkten gör att den besegrade Goliats huvud tycks vara närmre oss än Davids uppåtsträvande gestalt. Det tycks i klädnadens djup vila som i en grotta. Samtidigt påminner klädnadens öppna, spetsiga flik om en svart eldslåga som strävar mot höjden. Det gör hela skulpturen som med sin gotiskt svängda rörelse påminnaner om de tidigare madonnaskulpturer som utförts i elfenben och därigenom anpassats till elefantbetens kurvatur. Genom den elegant böjda rörelsen tycktes Jungfrun och hennes barn lyftas upp mot himmelska höjder.

Den överdimensionerade högernäven, som ofta kritiserats och Davids förhållandevis mindre och inte så inkännande karaktäriserade huvud understryker intrycket av att skulpturen skall betraktas underifrån och från stort avstånd. Med tanke på allt detta fick jag intrycket att eftersom skulpturens detaljer inte kan urskiljas från långt håll så utgjorde Domnatellos David i själva verket ett ”mästerverk”, hans inträdesprov till ett skrå. Eftersom Donatellos vid tilläöllet arbetade i Ghibertis verkstad, vars mästare var mer känd som skulptör än målare, är det möjligt att det skrå i vilket han invaldes som mästare var Arte dei Maestri di Pietra e Legname, Stenhuggarmästarnas och träsnidarnas skrå.

Donatellos gode vän och jämnårige Nanni di Banco, som tillsammans med Donatello hade fått uppgiften att pryda Il Duomos strävpelare gjorde sju år senare en berömd skulpturgrupp som imponerade på samtiden och blev en stor inspiration för Donatello – Quattro Santo Coronati, Fyra krönta helgon. Dessa fyra martyrer vars namn var okända skulle enligt traditionen ha varit kristna skulptörer som under kejsar Diocletianus vägrat framställa skulpturer av romerska gudar och därför placerats levande i förseglade blykistor som slängts i Savafloden i nuvarande Serbien. De hade sedan dess åkallats som skulptörers beskyddare och var givetvis Arte dei Maestri di Pietra e Legnames självklara skyddshelgon.

Nanni hade 1405 blivit utnämnd till mästare inom ovannämnda skrå och det var för dess räkning som han utförde sin skulpturgrupp för kyrkan Chiesa di Orsanmichele. De fyra gestalterna är mästerligt arrangerade inom en grund halvcirkelformad nisch, där de genom blickar och diskreta rörelser tycks vara inbegripna i ett samtal. De högtidliga gesterna, togaliknande klädnaderna och kropparnas volym vittnar om att Nanni påverkats av Antikens skultpurkonst.

Donatellos marmorstaty av David hade under utställningen i Pallazzo Strozzi placerats i samma rum som ett annat ungdomsverk av Donatello – Krucifixet i Santa Croce. Det hängde bredvid Brunelleschis krucifix från Santa Maria Novella. Orsaken till detta var säkerligen en anekdot i Giorgio Vasaris (1511-1574) anekdot i hans Le vite de´più eccelenti pittori, scultori e architettori, De mest utmärka målarnas, skulptörernas och arkitekternas liv.

För Santa Croce skar Donatello ”med oändligt tålamod” ett krucifix av trä som han stolt uppvisade för sin vän Brunelleschi, som dock efter Donatellos entusiastiska beskrivning hade väntat sig något bättre och inte kunde låta bli att småle. Den sårade Donatello anade vännens misstycke och bad honom att med tanke på deras stora vänskap berätta vad han verkligen tyckte om krucifixet. Efter en viss tvekan såg Brunelleschi mot krucifixet och konstaterade: ”Du har satt en bonde på korset och inte Jesus Kristus, den mest fullkomliga man som någonsin fötts”. Bitter, eftersom han trots allt hade förväntat väntat sig beröm svarade Donatello: ”Om det vore lika lätt att fördöma något, som att själv skapa det skulle min Jesus inte se ut som en bonde. Ta du själv lite ved och försök göra ett krucifix.”

Utan ett ord lämnade Brunelleschi kyrkan och utan att avslöja det för någon satte han igång med att tillverka ett krucifix med syftet att överträffa Donatellos skapelse. Han åstadkom efter flera månaders arbete, med stor perfektion, ett verk som enligt honom var vida överlägset Donatellos krucifix.

En morgon bjöd Brunelleschi in sin vän Donatello att äta med honom. Donatello tackade givetvis ja till inbjudan och de gick tillsammans mot Filippos hus. Då de passerade marknaden köpte Brunelleschi några ingredienser till middagen och eftersom han sade sig ha ytterligare ett par ärenden som omndelbart måste uträttas gav han marknadsvarorna till Donatello och bad honom ta dem till sin bottega. Då Donatello kommit in i verkstaden fann han Filippos krucifix effektivt placerat med en perfekt ljussättning. Överväldigad av förvåning och beundran, släppte Donatellos förklädet i vilket han placerat äggen osten och de andra varorna han burit med sig från marknaden. Då Filippo, kom in och fann han vännen stå vilsekommen och häpen bland de krossade äggen. Skrattande frågade Brunelleschi: "Vad håller du på med, Donatello? Hur ska vi nu kunna äta något när du har tappat allt?" "Jag," svarade Donatello, "har fått nog. Om du vill ha något, ta det. Dig är det givet att göra Kristus, och mig bönder."

Det är en tämligen underfundig liten historia och Vasaris berättelse har för eftervärlden kommit att karaktärisera skillnaden mellan Brunelleschis och Donatellos konst och har kommenterats ett otal gånger.

Skillnaden mellan de två framställningarna är egentligen inte så stor. Det framstår klart att de två träsnidarna fann sin inspiration i Giottos triumfkrucifix i Santa Maria Novella. Målat 1288 var det mer än hundra år äldre än de krucifix som Donatello och Brunelleschi skapade. Giotto var inspirerad av den franciskanska andligheten som mer än hans ära och upphöjdhet, eller omänskliga lidande, hade poängterat Jesu medmänsklighet, kärlek och fattigdom. Giottos krucifix framställde därmed en döende människa med en realistiskt framställd kropp. Hos honom finns inga spår av barbariskt prygel och tortyr. Han bär ingen törnekrona och de enda sår han uppvisar är från spjutsticket i sidan och spikarna i händer och fötter.

Det är i ansiktenas uttryck som den största skillnaden mellan Donatellos och Brunelleschis jesusframställningar blir mest tydlig. Det kan vara en illusion, men jag tycker att Donatellos Jesus genom sin sin trötta men likväl milda blick under nästan slutna ögonlock, en halvöppen mun med svullen överläpp, sina mer framträdande kindknotor och höga panna är oss närmre än Brunelleschis Kristus. Ansiktet tycks, trots sin brist på yttre skador, vittna om hur en vanlig människa utsatt för förakt, förräderi och grotesk mobbing är nära att lämna jordelivet, men trots allt detta det utstrålar Jesu trötta anlete förlåtelse och människokärlek.

Giottos Jesus är tämligen utmärglad, i varje fall jämfört med de mer muskulösa kropparna skildrade av Donatello och Brunelleschi. Den senares Jesus tycks dock vara smäckrare byggd än Donatellos. Brunelleschis Jesus har samma böjda ben som hos Giotto, medan Donatellos kristusfigurs sträckta ben vilar tyngre mot korsets stam. Brunellschis Jesus har en liten törnekrona, men likt Giottos Jesus saknar Donatellos en sådan.

Donatellos Jesus är oss närmre i så måtto att han är förlänad med en kroppsarbetares gestalt, likt den byggnadssnickare Jesus i själva verket var innan han fick sin uppenbarelse och sitt gudagivna uppdrag. Hans gestalt och ansikte uppvisar tecken på en sådan mans vardagsliv, med all den brutalitet och livsnärhet som tycks saknas hos Brunelleschis ädling. Vasaris berättelse om Brunelleschis omdöme är i så måtto helt korrekt. Donatellos Jesus påminner verkligen om en bonde, någon som inte enbart i enlighet med evangeliernas berättelser har korsfästs, utan dessutom utsatts för pöbelns våld och det gatans förakt som visas maktlösa och avvikande människor.

Varför tycks då Vasari, medan han jämför honom med Brunellschis framställning, underskatta Donatellos Jesus? Kanske för att Vasari i samtliga konstnärsskildringar poängterar sin uppskattning av en konstnärs förmåga att sammanlänka fysisk skönhet med kreativ skicklighet och därmed i sina verk lyckas efterlikna av Guds kreativa kraft och originalitet.

En skicklig konstnär är, enligt Vasari, till skillnad från en bonde en Skapare, någon som i enlighet med Uppenbarelsebokens ord förmår göra “allting nytt”. En syn som inte alls var ovanlig bland Renässansens intellektuella som ofta betraktade sig som förmer än bönder. De var “medborgare”, stadsbor som till skillnad från de jordnära bönderna förstod att uppskatta filosofins och den religiösa trons subtiliteter, fjärran från den vidskepelse och brutalitet som var förhärskande bland jordens arbetare. I själva verket hyste många florentinare en djupt rotad misstro och även rädsla för de bönder som omgav staden. I sina Ricordi, Minnen, fastslog Donatellos samtida, den förmögne klädeshandlaren Giovanni di Pagolo Morelli, att ” det finns ingen bonde som inte vore villig att komma till Florens för att bränna ner staden”. 

Med andra ord, i ett tidigt verk som krucifixet i Santa Croce visar sig Donatello redan sin skicklighet i att på ett nytt, revolutionärt och livsnära sätt omgestalta den konst som dominerade hans samtid. Efter sitt krucifix går Donatello från klarhet till klarhet. Ständigt varierande och fördjupande de möjligheter som hans studier av antik konst i kombination med en medvetenhet om de innovationer hans samtida konstnärskolleger gjorde. Den mäktige mecenaten Cosimo de Medici fick ögonen på honom och under sin långa levnad under vilken Donatello in i det sista var febrilt verksam saknade han aldrig ständigt nya uppdrag. Förutom sin suveräna skicklighet och oväntade franställningar var Donatello, till skillnad från många andra artister, känd för att vara en blygsam, vänlig och ytterst generös person.

Det är genom sin subtila karaktäristisk av sina motiv som Donatello blivit hyllad för ett obestridligt mästerskap. Strax efter återkomsten från sin studieresa till Rom 1433, i sällskap med Brunelleschi, skapade Donatello i Santa Croce sin Annunciazione, Tillkännagivandet, som ett monument för den mäktiga klanen Cavalcantis familjegrav.

Ängeln och jungfrun är utförda i hög relief franför en delvis förgylld bakgrund i form av en stängd port. De skildrs i ögonblicket strax efter Gabriels uppdykande. Jungfrun, som placerats framför en lyrformad stolsrygg, har överraskad rest sig upp efter att ha suttit och läst en bok, som hon fortfarande håller i handen. Den ungdomligt vackra madonnan för en en hand mot bröstet och hennes gracilt, gotiskt svängda gestalt antyder vagt att hon för ett ögonblick tänkt fly uppenbarelsen. Dräktens utsöka drapering följer benens rörelse åt vänster, bort ur bilden, men i sista stund har jungfrun kontrollerat sina känslor och vänt sig mot ängeln.

Gabriel knäfaller framför madonnan som han i det närmaste blygt blickar upp emot. Det verkar som om han med sitt lätt vridna huvud, ödmjuka framtoning och sökande blick vill fånga Marias obetingade uppmärksamhet. Scenen andas ett ljust, levande samspel mellan de framställda gestalterna, som med gester och ansiktsuttryck animerar sina känslor. Donatello har lyckats förläna Marias ädelt förfinade ansikte ett uttryck av stilla förvåning, präglat av såväl tacksamhet som ödmjukhet.

Donatello undvek traditionella inslag som den Helige Andes duva och liljan, eller olivkvisten, i ängelns hand. Symbolspråket är begränsat och subtilt, som Marias bok som anspelar på Bibelns förutsägelser om Messias ankomst och bakgrundens slutna port som antyder Madonnans kyskhet.

Donatello upprepar sig aldrig och överraskar ständigt. Fem år innan Bebådelsen i Santa Croce hade Donatello tillsammans med sin kollega Michelozzi för den fortfarande levande kardinalen Rainaldo Brancacci byggt ett överdådigt gravmonument. Brancacci var en slug politisk vindflöjel och det framstår som tämligen märkligt hur kyrkofurstar som han hade fräckheten att över sig själva, likt forntida faraoner, resa extravaganta äreminnen. Det får vara hur det vill med den saken eftersom vi trots allt har sådana självförgudade narcissister att tacka för förbluffande mästerverk utförda av flera renässansgenier.

På Brancaccis sarkofag har Donatello utfört en av de stiacciatoreliefer som beundrades av hans samtid. Stiacciato är en teknik gör det möjligt för en skulptör att med enbart ett par millimeters djup skapa en så kallad eller försänkt relief. Att gradvis förminska djupet från förgrund till bakgrund skapa illusionen av större djup hade Donatello säkerligen lärt sig av sin mästare Ghiberti, som använt sig av stiacciato i sina ofta djup-perspektiva reliefer på de berömda Paradisportarna till Santa Maria degli Fioris baptisterium.

Donatello framställer i sin madonnas himlafärd en äldre, kanske trött och oroad kvinna som omsvärmas av graciöst svävande änglar. Osökt kommer jag att tänka på rehndöttrarnas kringvirvlande i inledningen till Wagners Das Rheingold.

Återkommen till Florens skapade Donatello ansikten i antik stil, svåra att skilja från grekiska och romerska förebilder.

Eller inträngande, ytterst originella studier av samtida män.

För en av nischerna i Giottos torn bredvid Santa Maria del Fiores utförde Donatello en gammaltestamentlig profet – Habakkuk. Den dystre och plågade man som anropade Gud med orden:

Herre, hur länge ska jag ropa på hjälp utan att du hör, ropa högt till dig över våld utan att du räddar? Varför låter du mig se ondska, och hur kan du själv se på sådant elände? Fördärv och våld är inför mig, det uppstår tvister och gräl.  Därför blir lagen utan kraft, och rätten kommer aldrig fram. Den ogudaktige omringar den rättfärdige och rätten förvrängs.

Den misantropiske mannen, som av populärt kallas Il Zuccone, Den skallige, hade som förebild en numera bortglömd konstnär, förmögen man och motståndare till Medici familjen – Giovanni de Barduccio Cherichini. Den blev omedelbart populär bland florentinarna som greps av den gamle mannens svårmodiga uppsyn och hållning, samt den stora realism med vilken staty utförts.

Vasari påstår att det var Donatellos favoritverk och att han fick till vana att svära sina eder genom att säga: ”Vid den tilltro jag för min Zuccone”, och att medan han skulpterade sitt verk gång på gång ropade: ”Tala! Tala!”.

Donatello avlägsnade sig alltmer från tidens mode och hans insiktsfulla studier av välkända helgon blev alltmer realistiska och oväntat djärva. Som en åldrad och sliten Maria Magdalena framställd i all sin skröplighet med en avmagrad kropp, späkt av förödande botgöring.

Så skild från hans Sankt Göran som av rustningmakarnas skrås beställts för att pryda en nisch i Chiesa di Orsanmichele. Den nisch Donatello anvisats var ovanligt grund och därmed träder den skulpterade gestalten delvis ut från den och kan därmed ses från flera håll.

Det är en individ som stiger fram, vaksam och spänd,. Sankt Göran har ännu inte gått till anfall mot den drake som åskådaren anar bakom sin rygg. Fötterna vilar stadigt mot marken, men den högra foten är lätt framskjuten och hållningen harmoniserar därmed med oroade ansiktsuttrycket. Det är inte trots som helgonet utstrålar och han kan knappast antas bevaka något. Hans sköld är i vila, men vi får ett intryck av mod och beslutsamhet. Beredskap inför en svår uppgift som kan få en dödlig utgång.

Som väntat är han inkapslad i ett slingrande och utsökt cisileratcililserat skal av läder och metall, det var ju rustningsmakarnas skrå som gett Donatello uppgiften att skapa en heroisk Sankt Göran. Trots detta står det en air av skyddslöshet kring det ensamma helgonet, väl medvetet om den stora fara han inom kort skall utsättas för, men detta hindrar att hela hans gestalt präglas av en nervös energi. Vi är osäkra om hur länge han kan upprätthålla denna spänning. Inom kort måste han gå till attack, eller dra sig undan.

Nervositet och tvekan präglar det spända ansiktet, den rynkade pannan och oroade blicken. Till skillnad från Donatellos marmordavid är Sankt Göran i sin nisch nästan i jämnhöjd med åskådaren som därmed direkt kan konfronteras med hans ängsliga beredskap, som trots allt slutligen övervinner all tvekan och därmed blir till en sinnebild för en av de dygder som florentinarna tyckte om att tillskriva sig själva – Prontezza, en förmåga att med upphöjt lugn vara beredd att möta varje hot och motgång.

Reliefen under Sankt Göran är utförd i utsökt stiacciato genom vilken länden på hans häst tycks vara närmre åskådaren än dess huvud. Draken, Sankt Göran och Jungfrun, framställd i elegant gotisk kurvatur, är skarpt utförda framför en centralperspektvisk bakgrund, som kontrasterar den vilda natur vars klippor är drakens hemvist mot stadslandskapet bakom Jungfrun – kultur och ordning i motsats till naturens otyglade ondska.

Snart utnyttjade Donatello stiacattotekniken för alltmer sofistikerade framställningar. Med bakgrund av symmetrisk uppbyggda rum och rymd skapad genom perspektiv kombinerat med tomma ytor, levandegör han motsägelsefria rektioner mellan bildernas delar, mellan aktörerna och ett rum som både omsluter dem och öppnar sig bakom dem – en dramatiskt koncentrerad och samtidigt dynamisk skildringskonst som i ögonblicksbilder fångar händelserika förlopp, genom vilka känslodynamiken speglas i aktörernas kroppsspråk.

En relief på en dopfunt i Siena visar den nyansrika scen som uppstår då en knäfallande bödel under ett gästabud på ett fat överlämnar Johannes Döparens huvud till Herodes. Huvudhandlingens dramatik är stark framhävd och psykologiskt nyanserad. Reaktionen inför det det blodiga huvudet avspeglas i en våg av skräck och vämjelse, vilken mot höger stillnar kring Salomes oberörda gestalt. Hon tycks precis ha avslutat sin fatala dans.

Bilddjupet är uppdelat i flera plan – främst bödeln som räcker fram fatet med Johannes avhuggna huvud, småbarnen som flyr från det skräckinjagande huvudet och den kyliga Salome i en veckrik klädnad som tyckas antyda den vilda dans hon tidigare utfört inför Herodes.

Bordets andra sida utgör ett annat plan där Herodes i avsmak ryggar tillbaka inför det avhuggna huvudet, alltmedan hans hustru Herodias med en givande gest för sin make förevisar det avhuggna huvudet som hon övertalat sin dotter att begära av sin styvfar som tack för sin upphetsande dans. Det har uppstått en tomhet kring Herodias och hennes förklarande attityd, som om hennes otäcka begäran väckt avsky bland hennes omgivning. Vid bordets andra ände täcker en av middagsgästerna med ena handen sitt ansikte alltmedan han i vämjelse vänder sig bort inför det blodiga spektaklet.

På ett plan bakom dessa personer skymtar vi de musikanter som oberörda har ackompanjerat Salomes dans och längst bak ser vi hur bödeln överräcker Johannes Döparens huvud till Herodias och hennes dotter. Den livfulla, originella framställningen chockade antagligen de åskådare som konfronterades med den. Här fanns ingen elegant sofistikation utan en tidigare inte skådad brutal realism. En ögonblicksbild genom vilken konstnären förmedlade intrycket av att han verkligen bevittnat vad han beskrev.

Donatello gjorde inte bruk av stiacatto enbart för att framställa folkrika dramatiska scener. Han skapade även intima andaktsbilder, som denna där en avliden Jesus av sörjande änglar lyfts fram till beskådande.

Eller en mängd känsligt skildrade madonnabilder som speglar den ömma kärleken mellan mor och son.

Han skildrade på en yttre predikstol, vid sidan av fasaden till Katedralen i Prato en glädjefylld frisläppt hord av dansande småänglar. Sådana predikstolar nyttjades av berömda predikanter som likt rockstjärnor drog från stad till stad och genom sin virtuosa predikokonst lockade till sig stora åhörarskaror.

Det är tämligen svårt att föreställa sig hur stränga vältalare och dystra väckelsepredikanter spred sina djupt religiösa budskap om gudomliga straff och kristen återhållsamhet från en talartribun prydd med backanaliskt uppspelta, dansande keruber.

Inne i den lite väl överlastade basilikan gav Donatello utlopp för sin originellt fantasirika konst. Bakom högaltaret finner vi exempelvis en framställning av ett av Sant Antonios mirakler. Den påminner i sin storslagenhet om en scen från någon historisk cinemascope-film producerad i Hollywood. Återigen ges här ett filmatisk intryck av att Donatello verkligen betraktat den livfulla scen han återger.

Vad Donatello illustrerar är en något töntig, men samtidigt politiskt högaktuell berättelse. Pataria var en 1000-talsrörelse som syftade till att reformera prästerskapet genom att tvinga fram påvliga sanktioner mot simoni, ifrågasätta prästernas kontroll av nattvarden och förbjuda prästerliga äktenskap och konkubinat. Rörelsen orsakade en del väpnade uppror som snart slogs ner och Pataria förklarades vara ett öppet och straffbart kätteri.

Enligt legenden förnekade en mjölnare vid namn Bonvillo eukaristins natur, nämligen att vin och bröd under mässan verkligen förvandlades till blod och kött. Han utmanade San Antonio genom att hålla sin mula instängd i flera dagar utan att mata henne. Sedan skulle han ta henne till torget framför folket och lägga lite foder framför henne. Samtidigt skulle San Antonio placera hostian framför mulan. Om djuret knäböjde inför hostian och ignorerade högen med klöver och annat aptitligt lovade Bonvillo att han aldrig mer skulle visa vantro inför mässundret.

Antonio accepterade utmaningen och på den överenskomna dagen visade helgonet hostian för mulan med orden:

Om jag verkligen håller vår Skapare i handen beordrar jag dig, arma djur, att med ödmjukhet närma dig Honom och visa Honom vederbörlig vördnad.

Knappt hade Antonio avslutat meningen förrän mulan till folkets förundran och jubel ignorerade den aptitliga födan, sänkte sitt huvud och knäböjde inför Kristi kropps sakrament.

Kanske kan en viss humor anas genom Donatellos storstilade framställning av folkets förundran inför miraklet med den knäfallande mulan.

Bland de evangelistsymboler som även pryder Basilica San Antonio di Paduas huvudaltare ger onekligen Markus lejon ett roande intryck, förmänskligat som det är med sitt individualiserade uttryck av koncentration och auktoritet.

Madonnan, som tronar framför altaruppsatsens krucifix, snarare står framför än sitter på sin tron. Hon tycks luta sig framåt, ett intryck som förstärks av hennes framskjutna huvud som förlänar intensitet åt den framåtriktade rörelsen. Hon håller Jesusbarnet framför sig, som om hon vill förevisa det för menigheten. Det knubbiga barnet vänder sig till oss med en gest och ett ansiktsuttryck som gör att han tycks frigöra sig från sin mors grepp. Behandlingen av bronsen är föredömlig – skinande, slät och hård.

Alldeles intill Basilica di San Antonio driver kondottiären Erasmo Stefano da Narni, kallad Gattamelata (den Honungslena Katten) på en hög sockel fram sin kraftiga springare. I tidigare (målade) ryttarframställningar, av vilka Ucellos och del Castagnos fresker är de mesta kända, tycks de väldiga hästarna vara mer framträdande än sina ryttare.

På den antika ryttarstatyn av Marcus Aurelius, som antagligen var Donatellos främsta förebild, tycks rollerna vara omkastade. Visserligen är hästen magnifik, men kejsaren tycks vara större än den.

Gattamelatas häst utstrålar lugn och massiv kraft. Generalens hållning och ansiktsdrag uttrycker en hopbiten, intensiv aktivitet. Hans bistra uppsyn tyder inte på någon lössläppt krigarkraft, snarare på noggrann planering, kontroll och sammanbiten beredskap.

Donatello har i sin skulptur framställt Gattamelata medan han anför sina trupper under en strid. Kommandostav och svärd bildar en diagonal som i vinkel mot sockeln skär ut härföraren och därmed får betraktaren att uppmärksamma hans reflexion och överblick. Jämfört med tidigare ryttarstatyer finns här en realistisk förnyelse, en värdighet och formverkan som likväl bygger på tidigare framställningar.

Donatello gjorde flera ingående häststudier och i Neapel finns ett magnifikt hästhuvud som på utställningen i Palazzo Strozzi placerats bredvid en kopia av ett huvud från de fyra antika bronshästar som pryder fasaden på Markuskyrkan i Venedig. De hade 1204 rövats bort från Konstantinopel och sedan dess varit en inspiration för olika konstnärer.

Gattamelata är en fristående skulptur, en av de få som tidigare skapats efter Antikens tidevarv. I mångt och mycket innebar Donatellos revolutionerande konst en förnyelse av den antika romersk-grekiska konsten, något som gjorde att en del av hans verk senare antogs härstamma från det antika Rom. Dock inte hans kanske mest berömda verk – den fristående bronsskulpturen av David.

Från och med 1437 var Medici den mest inflytelserika familjen i Florens och kontrollerade i stort sett staden och Signorian. Under flera århundraden samlade Medici vid sitt hov Italiens främsta konstnärer, författare, humanister och filosofer. Givetvis skedde det för att ge glans och prestige åt den allt mäktigare och förmögnare Mediciklanen, men möjligen även kunde deras gynnande av konst, musik och litteratur även betraktas som en gest av uppskattning av hemstaden och dess medborgare.

Donatello uppskattades livligt av Cosimo de Medici, den florentinska penningaristokratins ledande man, som intagit en inofficiell ställning som stadsrepublikens härskare. 1440 beställde han av Donatello en ”fristående staty” där gestalten i antik anda framträder helt suverän, obunden av dekorativa uppgifter.

Resultatet blev förbluffande. Donatellos David placerades i Medicipalatsets trädgård och dess chockerande originalitet väckte häpnad och beundran. Den heroiske ynglingen är helt naken och det är enbart Goliats anskrämliga, bepansrade huvud vid hans fötter som antyder att det rör sig om David och inte någon grekisk gud.

Med ett gåtfullt leende poserar den elegante ynglingen med foten på Goliats avhuggna huvud, precis efter att ha besegrat jätten. Pojken har en stark fysisk och ger ett anmärkningsvärt ”feminint” intryck. Davids slanka kroppsbyggnad kontrasterar till det det stora svärd han håller i högerhanden.

Nakenheten antyder att David besegrat Goliat inte genom fysisk styrka utan genom Guds ingripande. Här rör det sig inte, som fallet var med Donatellos Skt. Göran om ett ögonblick av vaksamhet och nervositet, utan om avspänning och eftertanke. Ynglingens ansikte är lugnt. Ansiktsmusklerna är helt avspända och på den lätt öppna munnen spelar ett mystiskt leende. Det finns en subtil stolthet i uttrycker, inte skrytsamhet utan snarare en spegling av inre tankar. Vi konfronteras inte med en triumferande superhjälte som håller svärd och avhugget huvud högt. Istället möter vi ett kontemplativt anlete.

Kroppsställningen visar på en rofylld självsäkerhet. David vilar stående, till synes vårdslöst men likväl harmoniskt med tyngden lagd på det det högra benet. Det rör sig om en klassisk kontrapose, välkänd genom Polyklitos Doryphoros, Spjutbärare som sedan den skapades 440 f.Kr. har blivit beundrad och kopierad som sinnebilden av harmoni, dynamik och balans. Inte minst i poser intagna av moderna filmstjärnor som John Wayne och andra machomän från Hollywood.

Samtidigt finns det hos Donatellos David något av gotikens glidande linjerytm, från det brutalt avhuggna huvudet längs kroppen upp till skuldrorna och det långa håret. En glidande uppåtriktad rörelse som möter och samverkar med lugnt fallande rytmer i hatten, armarna, mellangärdet och benen. En fortlöpande puls som löper kring hela skulpturen, en ständig följd av klart utmejslade silhuetter kring den hårda, fasta materian. Frigjord från alla stöd och omgivande ornament, strukturer och sammanhang framträder här en individ som med en unik kroppslighet låter sig betraktas från alla håll. I mitt tycke är Donatellos David långt mer harmonisk och fulländad än Michelangelos mer berömda och beundrade friskulptur av den unge David.

Den traditionsbrytande, unika, men likväl antikanspelande kvalitén hos Donatellos David har gjort att den deklarerats vara historiens första fristående skulptur efter Antiken och en slags talisman för Renässansen. En åsikt jag uppfattar som ett slentrianmässigt fördömande av storheten hos Medeltidens konst. Jag ser inte Renässansen som en brytning med tidigare konst, snarare en suverän del i en obruten kedja av mästerverk. Det psykologiska djup Donatello förmedlar i sin konst är även närvarande i medeltida konstverk.

På väg mot Donatellos David i Bargellopalatset passerade vi flera utsökta, bysantinska elfenbensminatyrer. Detta minutiöst utförda hantverk, med dess perfekta dynamik och harmoni inom begränsande utrymmen, fick mig att minnas en elfenbensminiatyr tillverkad i Lorraine någon gång på 1000-talet som jag 1973 först såg i Östberlins Bode Museum och ofta tänkt på sedan dess.

Gestalterna pressas mot varandra i en rundbågig nisch. Elfenbenssnidaren har mästerligt disponerat hela bildytan och balanserat Tomas Tvivlaren och Jesus mot varandra med perfekt klarhet, rytmisk kraft och mättad expressivitet. Med ryggen mot åskådaren klättrar Tvivlaren uppåt och klänger sig samtidigt fast vid Jesus. I ångest och tvivel sliter han i Kristi mantel och gräver djupt med fingrarna i det blottade såret. Tomas påträngande fastklamrande kontrasteras mot Kristi upphöjda lugn. Med lyftad arm blottar han sitt sår och fyller harmoniskt nischens rundel medan han med bekymrat deltagande, tålamod och förbarmande betraktar den upprörde Tomas. Här finns genom gester och samspel en djuplodande psykologi, precis som i Donatellos bästa verk.

Kanske kan man betrakta medeltidens krucifix som fristående skulpturer. Exempelvis Helmsteds bronskrucifix från 1000-talets senare del,

eller Biskop Geros krucifix i Kölnerdomen. Skuret någon gång mellan 970 och år 1000, historiens första bevarade, träsnidade monument och redan fulländat i sin framställning av Jesus i dödsögonblicket nersjunkna kropp.

Statyn av Skt. Teodore i Chartres ger ett minst lika hjältemodigt intryck som Donatellos Skt Göran.

Pierre de Montreuils Adam från mitten av tolvhundratalet som nu finns i Musée de Cluny i Paris kan faktiskt även den betraktas som en fristående skulptur, framställd i en fulländad antik anda.

Den Besegrade Synagogan i Strasbourgs katedral är en lika gripande psykologisk studie som de Donatello skapade.

Så är profeterna i Bamberg. Jonas ansikte tål en jämförelse med Donatellos Il Zuccone.

Ryttaren i Bamberg är visserligen inte så dynamisk som Gattamelataskulpturen, men har en lugn och ädel storhet.

Det har även Uta von Ballenstedt i Naumburg. Mystisk och tillbakadragen står hon i skarp kontrast till den förunderligt realistiska framställningen av den frodiga, glatt leende Drottning Adelaide av Burgund, gjord 1260 i Meissen, fast den ser så färsk och ny ut att jag tvivlade på om den verkligen kunde vara så gammal.

Den livliga reliefen av Den Sista Nattvarden i Naumburg är lika skickligt utförd och varierad som någon av Donatellos reliefer.

Biskop Hohenlohes skulptur från 1350 i Bambergs katedral lutar sig mot oss och ger som gestalterna i Donatellos konst ett levande, unikt och egensinnigt intryck. En imponerade, underligt närvarande porträttstudie .

Trots en insikt om den medeltida konstens storhet vågar jag likväl påstå att Donatellos insats är både annorlunda och revolutionerande. Hans förbluffande blandning av tradition och modernitet var trots allt något fullkomligt nytt.

Medeltidens konstnärer upphörde aldrig att söka inspiration vid den klassiska konstens källor i Bysans och i Rom, men deras produktion överskuggades av ett andligt synsätt. En framställning av ideala tillstånd, i stort sett frikopplad från Antiken i den mening som Augustinus gav som konstens uppgift – uti non fruti, att nyttja men icke njuta. Medeltidens kristna gudsideal lät Antikens kött återuppstå i förklarad gestalt, renat i trons eld, bärare av ett budskap om Evighetens rike bortom det synligas gräns.

I motsats till ett sådant tänkesätt har Donatellos verk en världslig förankring. Även då han framställer helgon och madonnor gör han det på ett personligt och intimt vis. En verklighet sedd genom ett temperament och ibland som i Davidstatyn släpper han sig lös på ett sätt som tycks vara fullständigt befriat från judisk-kristen tradition och tänkande.

I utställningen i Palazzo Strozzi fanns på en piedestal ett av Donatellos underligaste verk. Det ansågs allmänt länge som härrörande från Antiken, även om Vasari och några av hans samtida hade identifierat det som ett verk av Donatello. Vasari beskriver skulpturen som

en metallisk Mercury av Donato, en och en halv arm hög, rundlagd och klädd på ett tämligen bisarrt vis.

Cupido-Attys är onekligen bisarr. En anmärkningsvärt skickligt gjord studie av en barnakropp, vars proportioner, i motsats till medeltida framställningssätt, inte kan betraktas som en vuxen människa i miniatyr. En del av statyns förbryllande karaktär finner sitt ursprung i sammanställandet av en mängd klassiska motiv – vingar som en Cupido, en liten getsvans som på en faun, bevingade sandaler som hos Merkurius, och vad som tycks vara en anspelning på Bacchusbarnet och andra fruktbarhetsantydande varelser som under Antiken ofta framställdes i form av spädbarn, amoriner och putti.

Den underliga klädseln som blottar pojkens genitalier, de upphöjda armarna och främst ansiktet där den blankpolerade bronsen, de bulliga kinderna, skrattgroparna, den halvöppna, leende munnen – allt detta ger ett intryck av rörlighet, en flyktig, upphetsad känsla som samverkar med de antika förebildernas backanaliska, hämningslösa frihet, uttryckt i de upphöjda armarna och den svängande, dansande rörelsen.

Men, trots att statyn har tolkats som ett uttryck för Renässansens frimodiga glädje, skapar den hos mig en smygande olustkänsla. Genom de underliga byxorna som blottar genitalierna och pojkens vitalitet, hans glada livlighet tycks hela arrangemanget vara laddat med en illa dold erotisk energi, en air av osmaklig pederasti.

Bakom Cupido-Attys fulländade realism, detaljernas mästerliga utförande finns ett obehag, något hotande, osunt och oroväckande. Pojken kan mitt all sin antydda livsglädje göra skada – för sig själv och andra.

Vid sjuttiofem års ålder skapade Donatello en framställning av Judith i färd med att hugga av Holoferenes huvud. Judith står upprätt med lyftat svärd medan hon med ett stadigt grepp i hans hår lyfter upp den livlöse tyrannens kropp. Lugnt och metodiskt bereder hon sig att liksom en alldaglig slaktare skilja den brutale gubbens huvud från hans kropp. Skulpturen var under flera år placerad framför Signorians palats, som en sinnebild av Republikens förakt för envåldshärskare och tyranner.

Donatellos sista mästerverk, utförda då han närmade sig åttioårsåldern, är bronsrelieferna på de så kallade predikstolarna i den florentinska kyrkan San Lorenzo. ”Så kallade”, eftersom det antagligen inte rör sig om några predikstolar utan snarare om sarkofager som inte använts som sådana utan senare lyfts upp på pelare för att brukas av predikanter.

Dessa reliefer präglas av samma monumentala realism som altarrelieferna i Padua, men här tycks framställningarna vara än mer realistiska, kanske till och med präglade av en gammal man illusionslöshet. Som i framställningen av Skt. Lars martyrium under vilket han av en bödelsdräng, på befallning en kejsares bjudande gest, med en lång stång gripit tag om Skt. Lars hals och obarmhärtigt pressar honom ner i våldsamt flammande eld. Åskådarna tycks oberörda av spektaklet. En romersk soldat håller skölden framför sig, som för att skydda sig mot eldens hetta.

I en imponerande scen stiger de tre kvinnorna ner för att besöka Jesu grav. Där möts de av en ängel som förkunnar att han är uppstånden. Den äldsta av dem tycks klamra sig fast vid en pelare, överväldigad som hon är av det förbluffande budskapet, alltmedan en annan kvinna, vars ansikte är dolt av hennes mantel, med en lampa i handen stiger nerför klippgravens trappa. Hon tycks ännu inte ha uppfattat ängelns närvaro.

Relieferna sitter så pass högt upp att det är svårt att urskilja några detaljer. Mest förbluffad blev jag vid åsynen av en tjänare som under Pilatus konfrontation med Jesus håller upp den vattenskål i vilkenprefekten skall två sina händer, en symbolhandling för att visar att han inte är skyldig till den dödsdom han uttalat. Men … med uppåtsträckt hals försökte jag fokusera blicken på tjänarens huvud. Såg jag rätt? Hade han verkligen två ansikten?

Då jag kommit hem rotade jag bland mina konstböcker och fann att så verkligen är fallet. Det ser ut som om Donatello försökt framställa en rörelse. Med den ena ansiktsrörelsen vänder sig tjänaren lugnt mot Pilatus, medan det andra tycks vara vänt mot Jesus i förvåning över hans närvaro eller vad han sagt.

De konsthistoriker jag läste och som kommenterat det dubbla ansiktet gör en mängd jämförelser med liknande dubbelansikten, inte minst antika Janusansikten. I mitt tycke tycks det som om de förlorat sig i komplicerade förklaringsmodeller, som hos minst två av dem utmynnar i åsikten att tjänarens dubbla anleten speglar Pilatus tvehågsenhet, hans ovilja att fatta ett fast beslut och stå vid det.

Det kan mycket väl vara en trovärdig förklaring. Men, för mig tycks det vara ett djärvt och lyckat försök av Donatello att genom dubblering framställa rörelse i konsten. Redan under forntiden lyckades en stenålderskonstnär att i den spanska grottan Altamira på ett beundransvärt sätt med en sådan teknik framställa ett vildsvins gång.

Det skulle dröja tusentals år innan de italienska futuristerna lyckades skapa samma rörelseillusion, Som Balla i hans framställning av en hunds snabba promenad med sin husse. Eller Boccioni då han fyller en hel tavlas utrymme med rörelseillusion, medan en framåtlutad kvinnas ansikte dubbleras i vad som tycks var en fönsterreflex.

Återigen har ett blogginlägg vuxit över sin bräddar. Men, det var svårt att hålla tillbaka alla de funderingar som mitt möte med Donatello i Florens gav upphov till. Insikten om hans modernitet, vitalitet, uppfinningsförmåga och ofattbara skicklighet var onekligen omtumlande och kommer att stanna hos mig för all framtid.

1568 skrev Vasari:

Donatello var överlägsen inte enbart sina samtida utan även vår egen tids konstnärer […] de bör därför spåra konstens storhet tillbaka till honom, snarare än till någon som fötts i modern tid. Ty bortsett från att han, genom att utföra så många olika slags arbeten, löste  skulpterandets  problem,  ägde  han uppfinningsrikedom, känsla för formgivning,  hantverksskicklighet, omdöme och alla andra egenskaper som man rimligen kan förvänta sig att finna hos ett inspirerat geni.

Harris, Jim (2011) ”Defying the Predictable: Donatello and the Discomfiture of Vasari,” in Harris, Jim, Scott Nethersole och Per Rumberg (eds.) ‘Una insalata di più erbe A Festschrift for Patricia Lee Rubin. London: The Courtauld Institute of Art. Levey, Michael (1967) Early Renaissance. Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin Books. Martina, Guido och Giovan Battista Carpi (1983) “Messer Papero e il Ghibellin Fuggiasco,” i Topolino, n. 1425, 20 marzo. Pagolo Morelli, Giovanni di (2019) Ricordi: Nuova edizione e introduzione storica. Florens: Firenze University Press. Pfeiffenberger, Selma (1967) ”Notes on the Iconology of Donatello’s Judgement of Pilate at San Lorenzo,” i Renaissance Quarterly, Vol. 20, No. 4. Poeschke, Joachim (1993). Donatello and his World: Sculpture of the Italian Renaissance. New York: Harry N. Abrams. Sandström, Sven (1965) Renässansskedet. Stockholm: Natur och Kultur. Vasari, Giorgio (1971) Lives of the Atists. Harmndsworth. Middlesex: Penguin Classics.

During my youth’s frequent cinema visits I used to smile at a commercial occasionally presented before the film began – a crane striding in a bog while the speaker voice stated: “Some people like to watch birds pecking in swamps.” Suddenly the bird explodes and disappears into a cloud of smoke with the comment: “But, we like cinema!”

Maybe it was like that, I liked cinema more than bird watching. The main reason was possibly that I did not have a proper pair of binoculars and did not pay any serious attention to the nature surrounding me, never far away since I lived in a small town. However, currently one of my biggest pleasures is to walk alone through the forest around our house by a lake in southern Sweden, listen to the birds and occasionally catch a glimpse of them. Nevertheless, my familiarity with these marvellous creatures mostly comes from books.

Ever since my childhood, I have been fond of bird books. My grandfather had three elegant leather leather bound volumes – Svenska fåglar efter naturen och på sten ritade I-III. Med text av professor Einar Lönnberg och 364 kolorerade planscher av bröderna von Wright, Swedish Birds Drawn after Nature and litographed I-III. With text by Professor Einar Lönnberg and with 364 Coloured Plates by the von Wright brothers. The books were originally published in 1838 and the magnificent illustrations were made by three Swedish-Finnish brothers. I do not know where Grandpa’s von Wright books ended up after his death and I must state I miss them quite a lot. I often sat curled up in one of Grandpa’s armchairs with one of the large volumes in my lap. It is difficult to explain the fascination I felt while looking at these wonderfully clear and strangely beautiful bird pictures. Perhaps it had something to do with a meticulous immersion in details and the wonder of birds.

As I flip through such exquisite bird books as the Wright brothers’ masterpiece, I come to think of the title of one of the Portuguese author António Lobo Antunes’ novels – Explicação dos Pássaros An Explanation of Birds. Many have tried to do just that, but it is an impossibility, as difficult as explaining what life is about, therefore I find the Swedish translation of the book title to be more adequate – Explain the Birds to Me. I assume what made Lobo Antunes choose such a title for a novel about a man's inability to accept what happened to him in his life, was the impossibility to explain the mystery of birds, those often beautiful, winged and well-sung creatures. The novel deals with the protagonist’s mother’s death in cancer, his alienation from his own family, how he shot away his first wife and their children, his shaky political stance and difficulties in understanding his new wife. The birds thus become an image of us all, their inexplicable existence as a symbol for our strange choices, subterfuges, and misbegotten ideas. Life as an impossible project.

Even as a child when I sat with Grandpa’s big bird book in my lap and through the large windows could look out across his flamboyant flower mountain and its backdrop of tall pine tress, in which magpies jumped around and screamed in a way that always makes me remember Tallebo, Home of the Pines, which Grandpa called his house and garden. I suspected that there was a mysterious relationship between me and the birds. A feeling that took hold of me when I from my friend Örjan received a facsimile edition Olof Rudbeck the Younger’s Swedish Birds as a gift for my sixty years birthday. Rudbeck's book, which he began to draw and write as early as 1693, is endowed with the same attention to details as the von Wright brothers’ masterpiece, which appeared 150 years later.

I have also enjoyed John Audobon’s (1785-1851) The Birds of America, which I in 1981 was acquainted with in the 

library of the Instituto Cultural Domínicano Americano, where I often nested during my years in Santo Domingo. 

For hours I could sit in the Institute’s library immersed in admiration of Audobon’s depictions of birds, which harmonized the animals with their surroundings; the flowers, the trees, the water and often also dramatizing their existence within carefully portrayed environments.

That I found Audobon in the Dominican Republic was an interesting coincidence, since he was born in the neighbouring Republic of Haiti, during a time when it was a French colony called Saint-Domingue. Audobon’s father owned a slave-run sugar cane plantation. Already as a six-year-old child Audobon was forced to move to France, together with his father and siblings. The ruthlessly exploited and tormented plantation slaves, with whom John’s father, like so many of his slave-owning friends, had a multitude of children, had revolted and no white man could any longer feel safe in the rebellious Saint-Domingue. An eighteen-years-old Audobon then left France for the United States.

Considering our contemporary condemnation of the artistry of nasty people I would actually not be able to enjoy Audobon’s mastery, as little as it is now permissible to admire films by the paedophile Roman Polanski. Unfortunately, I cannot help surrendering to Audobon’s exquisite art (and also appreciate Polanski’s films), even though he was obviously a rather unpleasant person.
 

Audobon was certainly a genius, whose contribution to ornithology and art is invaluable, though he was endowed with a complex character and was repeatedly committed to a contemptuous behaviour, which even by the lax standards of the time was quite indefensible. He was accused of lying, academic fraud and plagiarism. He enslaved black people and wrote critically about emancipation. Audobon stole human remains and sent skulls to a colleague, who used them to, through his “scientific research”, prove that white-hued persons are superior to “non-whites”.

In the United States, Audubon spent more than a decade as a businessman in Kentucky, where he owned a thrift store in the city of Henderson and also was engaged in the slave trade. For some time, Audobon was relatively successful, but in 1819 he was imprisoned accused of bankruptcy and fraud. Released, Audobon travelled through the wilderness of the United States, hunting and depicting its bird fauna. Well aware of the English’s romantic craze for nature depictions, he sailed to England in 1826, bringing with him an impressive portfolio of life-size bird depictions and his fortune was made. Audubon became a wealthy and admired man.
 

It was in Santo Domingo I became familiar with Audobon’s life, coming across an odd character named John Chancellor, who was also afflicted by a fair dose of racism. Chancellor bought and sold antiquarian books about Haiti and the Dominican Republic and gave me two biographies he had written; one about Wagner and one about Audobon. Unfortunately, both monographs were based on inadequate research and I later found quite a lot of inaccuracies in them. Nevertheless, I appreciated that Chancellor gave me the books and they became the gateway to better and more detailed reading about these two, undeniably unpleasant and prejudiced geniuses.

Back to the birds. During a long life I have become acquainted with several bird watchers. In the Swedish town of Lund, for example, I had a neighbour who worked as “developer” at Tetra Pak, a Swedish-Swiss multinational food packaging and processing company, though his immersive interest was to wander around the Scanian plains, or in lush forest groves, to record bird sounds. He had a large number of tapes and from time to time he played them for me to demonstrate how birdsong differed from area to area, almost like human dialects. I had a hard time distinguishing the tiny nuances, but nevertheless found it fascinating that someone to such an extent could be engaged in a scrupulous analysis of birdsong.

A few years later I read Edward Grey’s The Charm of Birds, since Lord Grey in his book demonstrated an unusually large and lively interest in birdsong, the Swedish book title had the somewhat more adequate title Birds and Birdsong. Lord Edward Grey, First Viscount and Third Baronet Grey of Fallodon, was between 1905 and 1916 British Foreign Secretary. Despite an obvious lack of knowledge of foreign languages and a distaste for diplomacy he was nevertheless a committed and skilled negotiator, who unfortunately became entangled in the run-up to World War I.

It was Lord Grey who at the outbreak of that war made the classic statement: “The lights go out all over Europe; we will not see them lit again during our lifetime.”

When the war ended, Lord Grey stated that his prediction had been correct in the sense that the consequences of the war had damaged an entire European generation and these wounds would surely be reopened once again. However, he had by then retreated to his favourite pastime – fly fishing in the crystal-clear, water cress covered Itchen, which flowed through his property in Hampshire, while he listened to the birdsong in the dense greenery by the riverbanks. What fascinated me when I read Lord Grey's well-written book was his ability to stimulate an attentive interest in birdsong.

He captured the feelings that spring grants me in the forests around our Swedish home – the half-hour before sunrise when “like morning stars all the birds sing together”, which Lord Gray described as jubilant euphony. In this choir he distinguished the beautiful voice of the wood warbler. A slender, small bird which discrete colours harmonize with newly sprouted beech leaves:

The soft green and yellow colours of the bird are in tone with the foliage, and its ways and movements and general happiness animate the beauty of young beech leaves: wonderful and perfect beyond description as this beauty is, the presence of a wood-warbler can still add to it.

According to Lord Gray, the wood-warbler has two tunes in his repertoire. Clear and joyful tones that tremble in short intervals and are repeated again and again. They are inter-weaved with a clear and very beautiful song, repeated ten times in slow succession.

Lord Grey assumes that the impression a human listener obtains from these melancholic tones is that they express a deep sadness. The tone is pathetic, there are tears in the wood warblers song.

In May, the birdsong in Lord Grey’s lush forestlands was taking on a new meaning. For overwintered birds the arrival of spring means a reawakening of life, while the songs of migratory birds announce their arrival. Each and every bird is through his song assuring that he is reanimated, or has returned home, is choosing his territory, searching for a mate and a place to build his nest.
 

The singing at dawn becomes a “tapestry translated into sound.” It starts with a few muted notes of thrush song, waking up the tits and soon “sawing notes, bell notes, teasing notes” fill the air, the song of mistle-thrush, merle and mavis, maybe also the rounded notes of an owl, and above it all rises the voice of the blackbird; warm and clear “light as amber among the sharper flood of song.” A vocal attire constituted of innumerable stitches of sound.
 

Lord Grey nurtured a special love for the wren. According to him, its song is not the best, though its “a good song , clear, distinct, musical and pleasant; it is elaborate rather than simple and is well turned out.” The impression of the wren’s song is enhanced by its distinctive appearance and specific character. Even though it is a bird of insignificant size, it has resolutely protruding tail feathers and a violent temper. Lord Grey watches the arrogant little bird during its spring mating season and gets the impression that the song of the wren contains more of challenge and triumph, than love. He surprises two male wrens, which on his lawn are involved in such a violent battle that they ignore his threatening presence. When one of them finally emerges victorious from the fight and the defeated bird has retreated, the victor flies to a nearby bush and from where he fills the air with a triumphant song.
 

In the birds’ dawn choir, Lord Grey distinguishes the blackcap’s voice, so perfect and moving that he considers it to be among the foremost English songbirds. The blackcap’s singing is loud:

exceedingly sweet, but also spirited: it is not very long, but is frequently repeated: there is a great variety, but the thing done is absolutely perfect. There is not a note that fails to please or to be a success.

The garden warbler’s song is also beautiful, but it seems as if that bird can never completely clear its throat and let out sounds as pure and free as those as the blackcap. However, in one respect the garden warbler is superior to its rival – his by all means beautiful song is more enduring, it lasts longer.
 

Lord Grey asks his readers to listen attentively to the birds triumphant dawn choir and above all notice how the blackbird’s euphony add life and soul to the entire symphony. According to Lord Grey it is impossible to explain why the blackbird’s singing surpasses any other bird’s. Why it means so much to us humans. He suggests that it might be due to a sense of “familiarity” conveyed by the blackbird’s song. The tunes of other birds are for sure quite pleasing, though the song of the blackbird directs itself to the soul of its listener. It touches deep-seated emotional strings, which ultimately unite us with the pitch-black bird. But alas,the euphoria is limited. The blackbird gives us barely four months of bel canto. He begins singing regularly by mid-March and before the end of June he falls silent. In July we might listen to the last spring tones coming from mavis and robin, but the farewell to these birds is not as melancholy as listening to the tones of the last blackbird, knowing that a long time will pass until we hear them again.
 

During autumn we listen to the owls’ desolate screams and hooting, sounding as if they were harbingers of something threatening and mysterious. Almost as sonorous as the solitary, enigmatic sound of the bittern. The owl’s scream consists of a long, calm and fine tone, which pauses for four seconds, to be followed by a drawn-out tone, which at first vibrates and then culminates at a soothing, full volume. The owl’s cry gives life to the forest and it would be unsettlingly quite if it ceased.
 

When I read Lord Grey’s careful descriptions of how nature and the behaviour of its inhabitants, the birds, is changing in accordance with nature’s course, I am reminded of the forests’ powerful breathing which I perceive during solitary forest walks, or while rowing across our lake in Swedish Göinge.

Deep down in my mind, I am upset about all kind of killing – war, slaughter, hunting, even fishing, though I nevertheless enjoy talking to fishermen and hunters and have often heard them describe how their waiting for prey unites them with their immediate surroundings. How sitting still and quite during the long waiting of their hunting sessions makes them realize how much that generally is hidden from sight and hearing. How our threatening presence in forests and groves arouses fear and suspicion among the animals, making them hide and become silent.

While we thoughtlessly walk through forests we see very little of all the life within them. Maybe we catch a glimpse of a few small birds, surprises a deer or a hare, though they quickly escape and hide among bushes and burrows. Upon our arrival alarm signals are, unknown to us, sent out and animals quickly disappear from our sight. However, we are constantly observed by the wild life, which might be in constant fear, anticipation and even excitement.

If, on the other hand, we sit down and silently scrutinize the surrounding nature we will soon discover how shy and easily frightened animals forget about our presence and resume those activities we previously have disturbed them in. Squirrels and rabbits appear, birds sing and thrushes rustle in the dry leaves around us , soon we might see how a moose or a small flock of deer appear.

What I find endearing in in people able to describe painters, and then perhaps mainly in birdwatchers, is how they patiently pay attention to “the little life”. The great patience of ornithologists, a quiet and silent wonder at the life around them, a respect for nature that makes them incapable of harming the creatures living there. It is enough for them to look at the rich life that surrounds them. Yes – several of these nature observers are obviously able to transform their activities into a part of their own life.

That’s probably why I find pleasure in reading and flipping through nature writers/artists’ books. For example, the Swedish writer and artist Gunnar Brusewitz, who among his many works of art designed the diplomas for the Nobel Prize in Literature, but his most famous works are a large amount of illustrated books, dealing with nature and animals.

I am particularly fond of his Diary from a Lake and Waterside Reflections, in which he based upon sceneries from his artist’s cottage by the lake-shore of Sparren, in the Swedich landscape of Roslagen, follows the changes of seasons and the passage of the years. With a view towards the four quarters he portrayed with skill and empathy the flight and presence of birds and the four-legged animals which walked past his haunt. Through Brusewitz’s books I perceive the scent and sound of the forest, the warmth or coolness of the air.

More minimalist nature studies were done by another artist, Björn von Rosen, who in his Conversation with a Nuthatch described his “platonic friendship” with a small bird, which I, by the way, after giving a lecture about it when I was in the fourth grade always have felt an affinity with.

Björn’s and the nuthatch’s relationship began when the blue shimmering little bird approached the artist’s windowsill while he for several months was bedridden in a troublesome illness. Björn’s wife got the idea to open the window towards the winter landscape outside, fill empty matchboxes with cookie crumbs, hemp seeds and pieces of cheese, placing them on the windowsill so Björn from his sickbed could enjoy watching how birds came to visit and devour the procurement.

A particularly prominent guest was a constantly recurring nuthatch. One morning when Björn von Rosen opened the window and held out his hand with some cookie crumbs in the palm, the nuthatch placed itself on his fingers and began to nibble the crumbs. With a shudder of pleasure the convalescent experienced how “the feeling of her small dry claws lingered on the skin of my fingertips while I returned to my sickbed.” This episode became the prelude to a daily routine which consisted of Björn getting up from the bed, opening the window, stretching out his hand and immediately becoming visited by the nuthatch, eating crumbs from the palm of his hand.
 

When Björn had recuperated and together with his two bassets resumed his daily walks, the nuthatch followed him, jumping from branch to branch. Eventually the bird demanded only cookie crumbs. If it turned out that Björn only had bread crumbs in his hand, she contemptuously threw them away with a jerk. Eventually, the nuthatch’s mate also appeared. He was interested in nut crumbs, but at first he did not dare to grab any from Björn’s outstretched hand, though he soon became as fearless as his wife.

Björn’s friendship with the two nuthatches and their children continued for nine years and in his book he described small episodes and reflections concerning the lives of these small birds, and what he assumed to be their way of thinking.
 

When I read books like those written and drawn by Brusewitz and von Rosen it happens that I envy avid bird watchers, for example my friend Magnus who had a house built for himself and his family in the southernmost Swedish beach town of Falsterbo, with an upper room filled with bird books next to a terrace from which he with his binoculars can watch the rich bird life. Forester as he is in service of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), Magnus has had ample opportunities to get acquainted with the bird life in different parts of the world, while I remain an incorrigible and ignorant amateur, who watch birds in books and through my computer.

It was not impressions from any small birds that made me write this blog post, but a recent visit I and Rose made to Abu Dhabi. Together with our friend Lupita, who had been living in the country for a few years, we paid a visit to the Zayed Heritage Center, a museum dedicated to Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan (1918-2004) Father of the Fatherland, who in Abu Dhabi is venerated with a devotion of saintly proportions. He was the main driving force behind the formation of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), which in 1971 united seven emirates along the coast of the Persian Gulf. He became the Union’s first Ra'īs, President, a position that Sheikh Zayed kept for 33 years, from the founding of the UAE until his death in 2004.

In 1966, Sheikh Zayed deposed his brother Sheikh Shakhbut and thus became the undisputed ruler of Abu Dhabi. He had previously realized the importance of obtaining the full support of the people in exchange for improvements in their standard of living – jobs, fixed income, social safety nets, general health care, free and obligatory education for all. After the British withdrawal in 1967 (they had controlled the impoverished emirate since the early 19th century), Sheikh Zayed opened his country to a massive immigration of skilled workers, along with a clause in the constitution stipulating that an immigrant could apply for citizenship only after proving that he/she spoke fluent Arabic and had lived in the country for at least 30 years. However, Sheikh Zayed also stated that “guest workers”, apart from the right to vote and becoming involved in politics, would have the same rights and obligations as citizens of the Emirate.

Compulsory schooling for boys and girls was introduced, universities were founded, religious freedom was established, although state censorship of all media was maintained. Roads were built and public access to drinking water and health care was secured. In particular, Sheikh Zayed renegotiated the oil concession agreements, ensuring that Abu Dhabi obtained the lion share of revenues from all oil- and gas production, thus putting an end to the British monopoly on oil extraction, paving the way to the United Emirate’s enormous wealth. The UAE currently has an annual GDP of about 400 billion USD, a third of which comes from oil revenues, of which Abu Dhabi controls 94 percent.
 

When Sheikh Zayed in the mid-1960s gained total power over the country, Abu Dhabi had no paved roads, no hospitals, no schools (except for a few boys and men who attended a Qur'anic school, 98 percent of the population was illiterate). It was an even worse backwater than before since cultured pearls had put a stop to revenues from pearl fishing, which previously had been virtually the only source of the Emirate’s export revenue. Abu Dhabi’s capital consisted of a stone building that sometimes housed representatives of the British government and some huts gathered around Qasr Al Hosn, the Nahyan family’s Fortress/Palace.

I thought about this as I stood by the panoramic windows of Lupita’s and Dino’s apartment on the fifty-second floor of one of the impressive Ethiad Towers, enjoying a view of the azure-blue waters of the Persian Gulf. In a distant haze I discerned Qasr al Watan, the newly built Emirate Palace and site of the UAE Government, actually one of the most beautiful buildings I have ever visited. It was hard to believe that in just fifty years, this lavish, well-organized, extremely clean, and secure nation had risen from the sands of a dirt-poor Bedouin kingdom. After all, it was no wonder that the nation revered the unparalleled Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan.
 

We were the only visitors to the Zayed Museum. Its manager, a friendly, elderly man who had known the Emir personally, offered us tea and gave me a magnificent book about the archaeology of the Emirate. The museum was filled with all imaginable curiosities left from the Sheikh’s legacy. What fascinated me most was the amount of pictures and objects which bore witness to Sheikh Zayed’s immersive interest in falconry.
 

The main reason for my interest in this activity was that I had previously visited several of Frederick II's (1194-1250) castles and forts in southern Italy and thus had come to read something about his great passion for falconry. Another reason for my sporadic falconry interest emerged from the fact that when I more than ten years ago was working at the UNESCOs Department of Intangible Cultural Heritage a colleague of mine told me she was, among other things, working on an application for including falconry in the Organization’s Representative List of Humanity's Intangible

Cultural Heritage, an effort that finally became completely realised a year ago. She had asked me to write something about the gender aspects of the application and I then found that women had been intensely engaged in falconry, especially in the Far East and Central Asia, though it had also been a popular pastime among aristocratic ladies during the European Middle Ages.

We find, for example, falcon-hunting women in the so-called Tymouth Hours, an “Anglo-Norman” prayer book from the 1330s, in which each page is illustrated with everyday scenes, which generally has nothing at all to do with the text.

At UNESCO, I read a medieval poem by a writer who was active in Sicily by the end of the 13^th century, now known as Nina the Sicilian, Nina from Messina, or Dante’s Nina. Her sonnets are recorded in a manuscript in the Vatican Library (Codex 3793) in which someone by the end of the 13^th century copied 137 ”songs” and 670 sonnets. Several of these belong to the so-called Sicilian School of Poetry written in Italian and preceding the somewhat later Tuscan School, with giants like Petrarca and Dante.
 

Nina’s sonnets are included in the part of codex 3793 which their copyist described as written by ”unknown” authors (the free andclumsy translation below is mine):

 Tapina me che amava uno sparviero,         Alas, I who once loved a falcon,

Amaval tanto ch’io me ne moria                so much I could have died from love.

A lo richiamo ben m’era maniero,             When I called him, he was obedient.

Ed unque troppo pascer nol dovria            I fed him, not too much but enough.

Or è montato e salito sì altero;                  Now he has fled and reached

Assai più altero che far non solia;             heights I do not know,

Ed è assiso dentro a un verziero,               there he sits in a birdhouse,

E un’altra donna l’averà in balìa.             for by another woman.

Isparvier mio, ch’io t’avea nodrito;          Oh, my falcon, which I raised.

Sonaglio d’oro ti facea portare,                 I gave you golden bells to carry,

Perchè nell’uccellar fossi più ardito         so no bird would harm you.

Or sei salito siccome lo mare,                   You rebelled, like a stormy sea.

Ed hai rotto li geti e sei fuggito,               You destroyed your ropes, tore yourself free,

Quando eri fermo nel tuo uccellaro.         as soon as I had taught you how to hunt.

As with several other troubadour singers, and even contemporary Persian Sufi poets like Jalal al-din Rumi, Nina’s poetry is ambiguous in the sense that it describes earthly love against a religious backdrop. The poem’s ”other woman” could just as easily have been the Virgin Mary who received the deceased lover/falcon in her Paradise, as an earthly woman with whom the lover/falcon had forsaken the poetess.
 

Early records indicate that Nina was a young lady favoured by Frederick II’s mother, Costanza d’Altavilla, daughter of Sicily’s Norman ruler Ruggero II and married to his successor, the ruthless German-Roman emperor Henry IV of Hohenstaufen.

Costanza d’Altavilla died when Frederick was only five years old, though he grew up in the refined court environment created around his mother. Frederick was a rather skilled sonnet poet, who in his poetry praised the courtly love of his time. Although he wrote extensively on falconry, none among Frederick’s surviving poems does, like other Sicilian poets, mention falcons and falconry as symbols of love between man and woman. Falconry was in several Medieval, aristocratic circles considered to be the most perfect occupation of court life. For many men and women, it was an almost immersive passion, often sublimated in erotic depictions and verse.

This is evident, for example, in several illustrations of Codex Manesse, a Liederhandschrift (a manuscript of songs) compiled in 1304 for the wealthy Manesse family in Zurich. The manuscript contains works by 135 Minnesänger, German troubadours, each of whom is presented with one or more poems, exquisitely illustrated with 137 hand-painted miniatures.
 

The refinement and connection of falkener culture with eroticism is prominent in one of Decamarone’s short stories. This collection of tales, which in 1353 was published by Bocaccio in Florence, is not unique in the sense that a collection of more or less well-known fairy tales and legends is presented as if they had been told in a small, refined, aristocratic society, was a fairly standardised literary ploy. Decamarone’s fame is mainly linked to the elegance and stylish ease with which Bocaccaio tells his stories. This is evident in the introduction to the ninth story on the fifth day a spiritual company of aristocratic gentlemen and ladies are telling each other, after isolating themselves from the plague in Florence in a rural manor:

You are to know, then, that Coppo di Borghese Domenichi, who once used to live in our city and possibly still lives there, one of the most highly respected men of our century, a person worthy of eternal fame, who achieved his position of pre-eminence by dint of his character and abilities rather than by his noble lineage, frequently took pleasure during his reclining years in discussing incidents from the past with his neighbours and other folk. In this pastime he excelled all others, for he was more coherent, possessed a superior memory, and spoke with greater eloquence.

The story that Bocaccio puts in Borghese Domenichi’s mouth tells about the young, handsome and wealthy Federigo, who is engrossed by an all-consuming love for the “most beautiful and pleasant” lady in Florence; the chaste, high-minded Lady Giovanna, who unfortunately married to another man. For the sake of his love and to win Giovanna’s attention, Federigo wastes his wealth on exquisite spectacles, tournaments, Catholic masses and sumptuous dinners. However, Lady Giovanna, remains faithful to her husband and only devotes a distracted interest to Federigo and his activities. As a result, Federigo ruins himself and ends up living frugally in a small country house where he tries to turn his passion for Lady Giovanna into an immersive interest in falconry. The only wealth he has retained is a beautiful, perfectly trained gyrfalcon, which is admired by his entire neighbourhood.
 

When Lady Giovanna’s husband dies, she retreats to her deceased husband’s country estate, bordering Federigo’s plot of land. Her son is captivated by the neighbour’s falcon and follows him during his daily hunts. However, the youngster becomes seriously ill. When a despairing Lady Giovanna perceives how her son fades away day by day she asks what he possibly might assume would cure him from his distress. After several days of hesitation, he reveals that a wonderful gift might get him on the road to recovery. When Lady Giovanna urges her beloved son to mention such a gift, he answers “Federigo’s gyrfalcon”. Lady Giovanna, well aware of Federigo’s longing for her love, leaves for the forsaken lover’s cottage with the intention of persuading him to give her his falcon.

When Lady Giovanna arrives, in company with her refined ladies-in-waiting, the confused and overwhelmed Federigo tries imagine what sumptuous meal might through her stomach reach the coveted woman’s brain and win him Lady Giovanna’s loving attention. He spends his last pennies on a delicious dinner, but at first he does not have enough imagination to be able to figure out what he should present as an irresistible main course. It must be something wonderful, something almost beyond human imagination. He comes up with the thought that only a dish which in itself signifies, or even includes his great love and passion for Lady Giovanna might through her delight turn her tender passion towards him. His gaze falls on his pampered and well-fed falcon. Federigo twists the bird’s neck and lets his temporarily hired master chef prepare it.

And, miracle of miracles – the sumptuous meal makes Lady Giovanna mild-tempered and she looks gratefully, almost lovingly, at the deeply moved Federigo. Finally, she dares to tell her host that her son is dying, but that she imagines that he would recover if Federigo gave him his gyrfalcon as a gift. The desperate Federigo is forced to admit that they have just eaten the bird. Lady Giovanna becomes appalled when she realizes that all her hope for her son’s recovery is gone and he actually dies after a few days. Nevertheless, deep down in the depths of her heart, Lady Giovanna is greatly moved by Federigo’s desperate attempt to win her love and his sacrifice of the beloved gyrfalcon has indeed finally awakened her love for him. She marries Federigo who now becomes a wealthy man and when he has reached the goal of his fervent desire he also turns into an enterprising and frugal husband.

For centuries, even millennia, falconry has been both an immersive occupation and a source of prestige within sophisticated court circles around the world, possibly with the exception of ancient American civilizations, like those of the Mayas and Incas.

In China, there are a number of historical testimonies, in the form of literature, poems, paintings and porcelain. proving falconry’s great popularity within court culture.

Chinese falconry was inseparable from politics and power. Written documents dating back to 700 BCE bears witness to the importance of falconry. Especially during the Tang Era (618-907 CE), Falkener culture flourished and was highly esteemed among the Empire’s potentates – emperors mandarins and warlords. Here as well, there was a connection between eroticism and falcons, as in Chang Hsiao-p’iao’s poem from 826 CE:

The Lay of the Hungry Hawk

She imagines the plain afar

where the hares are plump just now:

She turns her horned bill a thousand times

and shakes her feather coat:

Just let her peck loose

this knot in her silken cord …!

But unless she got the call of man

she would not dare to fly.

The poem clearly alludes to women’s longing for freedom, which is, however, limited by the control their husbands has over their lives.

For centuries, Falkener culture continued to flourish at Chinese courts. Below are some falcon portraits of the versatile Jesuit Giuseppe Castiglione (1688-1766). He came from a wealthy Milanese family and when he joined the Jesuit order, Castiglione was already a skilled artist. At the age of twenty-eight, he was introduced to the Imperial Court in Beijing, where his art was much appreciated. Castiglione had soon learned Mandarin and adapted his Western painting technique to Chinese taste. Castiglione's hybrid art came to form school, especially through his magnificent animal representations

Falconry arrived from China to Korea around 200 CE and from there the tradition was passed on to Japan.

The first Japanese written evidence for falconry dates from the 6^th century CE and soon a unique and sophisticated court culture had developed around falcons and hawks – Takagari. A tradition especially linked to the Shinto religion and often expressed in the hunting societies’ beautiful costumes and aesthetically pleasing paraphernalia. A specific, ritual falconry was cultivated within various “schools” such as Suwa-ryu and Yoshid-ryu, which cherished a solid knowledge of everything concerning birds of prey, both domesticated and wild, and , for both men and women a profound familiarity with falconry became a status symbol .

In India, falconry had been practised in aristocratic circles as early as 600 BCE, but it was not until the reign of the Mughals (1526-1858) that the sport developed into a passion among wealthy men and women.
 

Falcons and other birds of prey were not only symbols of a desire for freedom and eroticism, but also of ruthlessness and war. The screaming of falcons and hawks as they flew in front of attacking armies was a call for bloodshed and a search for glory on the battlefields. Already 220 BCE, the poet Sung Yü stated that autumn is a

season of desolation and blight,

the avenging angel,

riding upon an atmosphere of death.

However, a thousand years later, the warrior poet Lu Yu glorified autumn as a heroic time of falconry and commemoration of ancient Chinese victories over Tatar invaders:

Swift falcons leave the gauntlet with sturdy talons and beaks

and bold men fondle their swords with frenzied spirits.

There are many indications that falconry originated in Central Asia, among peoples called Huns, Mongols or Tatars. Among these peoples, falconry was practised more than 3,000 years ago and birds of prey are of great importance in Central Asian and Siberian shamanism.

Shamans are believed to be able to change their demeanour and use paraphernalia and costumes mimicking birds of prey and in trance widely around the world, even to realms unknown to us living people.

Among Mongolian khans, falconry achieved a high level of refinement and creativity. Mongolian falconers use several different species of birds of prey, including large and complicatedly trained birds, such as eagles. During their extensive military campaigns, Mongol armies used such to hunt for provisions and as a relaxation between battles. At the time of Marco Polo’s to Kublai Kahn’s court (1275-1292) there were 60 officials who only dealt with the management of the emperor’s hunting falcons, as well as 5,000 hunters and 10,000 fully employed falconers.

Being fierce conquerors many Mongols did probably not regard the peregrine falcons as images of freedom and love, but as bloodthirsty predators who fought in their service.

In the 1998 Disney film Mulan, the murderous leader of the invading Hun Army, Shan Yu, has a ruthless Tatar falcon, Shan-Yu, as his only trusted and perhaps even respected “friend”.
 

The obvious, almost passionate love that avid falconers show their falcons seems to reflect a great admiration for birds of prey’s ability to adapt to the nature surrounding them. These birdmen seem to nurtures a desire to see and experience the world through a falcon’s eyes and instinct. Among some of them, there may also be an exciting feeling of being able to engage, in an almost identical fashion, participate in the falcon’s hunt for prey, a fervent desire to gain some of its instinctive strength and ruthlessness, which has nevertheless been subjected to their human owners through training.

The author Terence Hanbury White (1906 - 1964) author of The Once and Future King, a skilfully retold King Arthur saga, was born in Bombay and had an unhappy childhood. His alcoholic and moody father was District Superintendent of Police, while his mother was an emotionally chilled lady. The couple soon divorced and the young White was sent to an English boarding school where his emotional misery continued unabated.

As an adult, White fought against his homosexuality and other sexual tendencies. He wrote:

All I can do is behave like a gentleman. It has been my hideous fate to be born with an infinite capacity for love and joy with no hope of using them.

An acquaintance stated that T.H. White: “did not fear God but was fundamentally afraid of humanity”. In 1946, White settled on the canal island of Alderney and became increasingly alcoholic over time. It was at Alderney that he wrote the book The Goshawk, which is about how the young White after reading the lines in an old book about falconry “and the bird returned to its wild state”, became obsessed with the idea that maybe he too could be transformed to "a free savage". He got a pigeon hawk from Germany. The bird was “cruel and free”. White came to the conclusion that the only way to tame the hawk would be to deprive it of sleep, which resulted in White also came to suffer from insomnia. According to him, man and bird ended up in a common state of delirium, attraction and repulsion. It could be likened to a love affair. White never managed to tame his hawk, nevertheless he found that there was a connection between humans and animals that could be both liberating and painful.
 

An immersive passion for falcons, and especially valuable gyrfalcons, seems to be particularly alive in Abu Dhabi, something that not only the Sheikh Zayed Museum bore witness to, but also the emirate's eminent falcon hospital.

A place where sick and injured falcons receive excellent care in operating theatres and individual air-conditioned rooms, with place for more than the 200 falcons, which are cared for there, in addition to the 11,000 birds of prey visiting the hospital each year. The hospital’s German manager, Margit Müller, explains:

Falcons are fascinating, each has its own special, independent character, the way they express themselves is completely unique, almost magical. In Arab culture, they are not considered pets, but are rather considered to be family members who should be raised and cared for as such. They live with the family, have their own seat in the living room and many even sleep in their owners’ bedrooms.

The Falcon Hospital also evaluates falcons and hawks on the basis of their strength and health. The judgement of medical falcon authorities is of great importance in a country where falcons are an exclusive status symbol. Gyrfalcons (Falco rusticolus) are the largest falcon species and their natural habitat is mountains and tundra. The Icelandic gyrfalcon is considered to be especially valuable. The large island occasionally went by the name Falcon Island and the white gyrfalcon can be seen on the top left of the Icelandic Republic’s coat of arms.
 

The white gyrfalcon is the most expensive falcon variant. A thoroughbred gyrfalcon can be worth more than 150,000 USD. In November 2021, the young gyrfalcon Shaheen was in Libya sold for 450,000 USD.
 

Valuable falcons are tenderly cared for by their wealthy owners and several of them even take their falcons on air travels, especially when it comes to introducing them to a particular game. Above all, a kind of desert birds called Houbara Bustard (Chlamydotis undulata). Theses are nomadic birds moving around arid areas in North Africa, the Arabian Peninsula, being rare in most parts they are especially numerous in Afghanistan.

The presence of houbaras in that country was leading to a near catastrophe for the Emirates’ wealthy sheikhs, several of whom, especially Abu Dhabi’s Sheikh Kalifa bin Zayid and Dubai’s Sheik Makhtoum, who along with other gyrfalcon aficionados each year are travelling travel to the houbara hunting ground in southern Afghanistan. border areas to Pakistan. Bin Laden used to haunt this particular areas and since he had grown up in Saudi Arabia’s Bedouin tradition and he was also a falcon aficionado.

In late February and early March, houbaras gather in hard-to-reach, arid areas south of Kandahār. During the hunting season, and perhaps they still do, wealthy sheikhs of the Arabian Peninsula flew with their falcons into Afghanistan’s relatively houbara-dense areas and set up luxurious tent camps there. In February 1999, the CIA’s Bin Laden Tracking Team announced that satellite images had convinced them that their most-wanted terrorist was moving around the falconers’ tent villages and was possibly even hunting together with the sheikhs. Gary Schroen, CIA’s site manager in Riyadh and leader of CIA’s Near East Division, recommended that the entire tent city should be bombed:

Let's just blow everything up. And if we kill bin Laden, and five sheikhs in the strike, I'm sorry. But, what do they have to do with bin Laden? He’s a terrorist. If you lie down with the dog, you wake up with fleas.

It was extremely close that the UAE Sheikhs became victims of their falconry passion. However, at the last minute Richard Clarke, National Coordinator for Security, Infrastructure Protection and Combating Terrorism, advised against the attack. Clarke was closely acquainted with the UAE’s powerful emirate families, especially the Abu Dhabi Nahayan clan, and he was well aware that the UAE’s ports, oil and gas were essential to U.S. warfare. Clarke could thus easily overlook the fact that falconry blinded its practitioners to such a degree that they did not care if skilled participants in their hunting teams were terrorists. It was hunting and not politics that mattered, at least during the limited time when houbaras gathered in Kandahār's desert regions.

All those who had lived with Arabs upholding ancient Bedouin traditions knew how important Falcons could to them, especially among wealthy and powerful men. Abdelrahman Munif, a Jordanian-born Saudi who worked in the Middle East oil industry, wrote a fascinating five-part story about how oil had changed life on the Arabian Peninsula, corrupting its leaders through luxury and abundance. It is an extensive work in which each volume contains more than six hundred pages. Only the first two parts of Munif’s Cities of Salt have been translated into English.

It’s a fascinating read. The story progresses at a calm, patient pace, almost providing the reader with a feeling that he/she is travelling through the desert on a patient, arduous camel. Munif’s stories are filled with a peculiar symbolism. They have no heroes, thougfh thousands of characters and names pass by, creating a dense web of voices and legends, this while modernity relentlessly changes and transforms everything. Munif declares that ancient traditions have been falsified to such an extent that they now can be used as a defence of totalitarianism, corruption and subtle oppression. His novels are banned in Saudi Arabia, but available in the UAE.
 

An episode in the first novel tells about how an emir arrives at the fictional port city of Harran. He is disapproved of by the city’s Arab population, while the oil-exploring Americans and cunning, local businessmen swarm around him. The emir claimed that he had come to the city to do justice and implement law and order, though it soon became apparent that he primarily wanted to enrich himself by conspiring with the Americans and he only distractedly listened to wishes and demands coming from the urban population.

Dabbasi, the city's most crafty merchant, gained a reputation for being a devil since he knew how to manipulate the Emir:

because from the minute he started talking about hunting, the emir underwent a total transformation—when he listened to Dabbasi’s stories, he became like a small child and asked him to sit down by his side.

Dabbasi had observed how several of the emir’s men kept pet falcons on their wrists and lovingly caressed and talked to them while the emir sat uninterested judging the people of Harran. Dabassi had then in a loud voice suddenly declared that the areas around Harran were well known for their houbaras, which appeared during the winter months. The emir’s face lit up and he became extremely attentive to everything Dabassi said about falconry. When Dabbasi had captured the emir’s interest, he was able to convince him that it was good politics to listen to the locals before he negotiated with the Americans. “Truth is truth and the natives are closer to us than the strangers” stated the emir before he once again turned to Dabassi and with him immersed himself in conversations about houbaras and gyrfalcons. When the emir finally took farewell, it was from a benevolent urban population and when he had mounted his camel he turned to Dabbasi with the words: “When winter comes and it is as harshest, then I will come back and we ride in search of all the hunting grounds you mentioned. ”

Sir Wilfred Patrick Thesiger (1910-2003) was born in Addis Ababa as the son of the British Consul General. At the age of eighteen, he was sent to England and educated at Eton and Oxford, where he mainly studied history. In 1930, he was invited to Ethiopia by his father’s friend Haile Selaisse. On the Ethiopian Emperor’s behalf, Thesiger made several research expeditions. During World War II, Thesiger commanded Ethiopian forces fighting the Italians, as well as Druze military units fighting the Vichy regime in Syria. After the war, Thesiger was active in the fight against migratory grasshoppers on the Arabian Peninsula and lived with the Bedouins he followed on their migrations through the vast desert area of Rub al-Khali – the Empty Quarter.

In his book Arabian Sands from 1959, Thesiger describes a timeless area with people who lived the way they had done for thousands of years. He participates in raids against hostile Bedouins, is hunted and captured by bandits, his travelling companions are threatened with blood revenge, slave hunters are in pursuit of lonely wanderers. Thesiger encounters hospitable sheikhs, revered by their subordinates while they surround themselves with harems, slaves, valuable camels and gyrfalcons.

Thesiger wrote that he his craving for adventure had been established during his Ethiopian youth. In his old age he wrote how overwhelmed he once had been while watching tribal warriors returning from battle:

I had been reading Tales from the Iliad. Now, in boyish fancy, I watched the likes of Achilles, Ajax and Ulysses pass in triumph with aged Priam, proud even in defeat. I believe that day implanted in me a life-long craving for barbaric splendour, for savagery and colour and the throb of drums.

After crossing Rub al-Khali, Thesiger reached in 1948 the village of Muwaiqih in the oasis of Buraimi, the domain of Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan. He looked forward to meeting this sheikh, who was much talked about among the Bedouins, who appreciated him for his open, informal manner, steadfast character, cunning and physical strength:

Zayed is a Bedouin. He knows camels and rides like one of us, he is a good marksman and knows how to fight.

When Thesiger asked for the sheikh, he was told that it was a good idea to talk to him when "he is sitting", i.e. when he was heading a majlis, legislative council or assembly. Thesiger found the sheikh as he simple, traditionally dressed and barefoot sat directly on the sand, surrounded by thirty men. When he saw Thesiger approaching, Sheikh Zayed got up and invited the Englishman to sit down on a rug in front of him, while he respectfully sat down on the sand again.

He had a strong, intelligent face, with steady, observant eyes, and his manner was quiet but masterful. He was distinguished from his companions by his black head-rope, and the way he wore his head-cloth, falling about his shoulders instead of twisted round his head in the local manner. He wore a dagger and cartridge-belt; his rifle lay on the sand beside him.

Thesiger and Sheikh Zayed became good friends. He lent the Englishman his famous white camel Ghazala. Thesiger returned to Muwaiqih on several occasions and stayed there for extended periods. On one occasion, he followed Sheikh Zayed and his men during a several-week long hunting expedition, when Zayed displayed his great familiarity with all the intricate elements of falconry. He explained to Thesiger that hunting with falcons is the noblest sport in existence, since an experienced falconer feels united with his falcon. He sees and thinks like the hunting bird. This is a completely different feeling than aiming at an animal and shooting it down with a rifle. Just as Dr. Müller at the Abu Dhabi Falcon Hospital Thesiger got he feeling that an avid falconer considered his favourite falcon almost as a family member. Falconers slept with their falcons perched by their beds, and when Zayed’s men sat talking with Thesiger, they had often brought their falcons along with them, caressing and whispering to the birds.

When Thesiger in 1977 met Sheikh Zayed for the last time, he had become one of the richest men in the world, but according to Thesiger Zayed constituted to be just as respectful and politely accommodating as he had been thirty-five years earlier. Although he now lived in a palace, Zayed was still surrounded by his falcons and as often he could tried to ride out for falconering in the desert.

As was the case for Sheikh Zayed, Frederick II of Hohenstaufen's falconry was the result of a centuries-old tradition. His Norman Viking ancestors had been avid falconers, something that several runestones bear witness to, for example the Norwegian Alsted Stone.
 

At the Böksta Stone close to Swedish Uppsala, we discern how a mounted hunter, followed by a man on skis, kills a moose attacked by his dogs and falcons. On top of the stne is a depiction of a hawk with mmenasing claws.
 

This depiction makes me think of the Swedish landscape Jämtland’s strange coat of arms, based on a seal created in 1635 by order of the Danish king Christian IV, though the difficult-to-interpret motif may be much older than that. I wonder if the coat of arms might be related to the picture on the Böksta Stone, which is said to be a representation of the ski- and hunting god Ull, whom the Danish chronicler Saxo Grammaticus (1160-1206 CE) is telling us about.
 

In Nordic myths and legends, there were plenty of birds of prey. The Danish king Rolf Krake is said to have had a hunting hawk named Hábrók, who during a battle near Uppsala is said to have killed no less than thirty of the Swedish king Adil the Mighty’s hunting birds. Like Normans and Mongols, the Vikings thus seem to have brought their falcons with them in battle, as well as in everyday life.

The Norwegian king and later canonized Olav Tryggvason, who by the way was born in Kyiv and there converted to Christianity under Valdemar I, is said to have had a violent temper. He angrily grabbed his sister Astrid’s beloved hunting hawk and plucked the feathers from it after Astrid had refused helping him to propose to a woman who would allow him to enter into an alliance with one of his many enemies.

However, the Russian icon below does not depict Saint Olav, but the saint Tryphon, whose name means "softness/sensitivity". In Orthodox Christianity, Tryphon is worshipped as a protector of birds and prayers are directed to him asking for protection against attacks by rodents and grasshoppers. Before he became a saint in the 200s, Tryphon took care of geese in the Phrygian town Kampsade, but when the Viking Valdemar I introduced his cult in Kyiv, he became a protector of falconers and carries a merlin.

Incidentally, in Nordic legends, hunting hawks are mentioned more often than falcons, which were used more by Normans and Russian Vikings. This was because the more expensive and better-regarded falcons hunted in the open, while in the deep Scandinavian forests, hawks were much more skilled hunters. It is mentioned that the northerners also used owls as hunting birds.

King Gautrek of Västergötland always had his hunting hawk with him and when his beloved wife died, he left the throne to his son and sat mourning on her burial mound, while the hawk brought him food.

Birds of prey are often found in Viking graves, with both deceased men and women. These animals were probably their beloved hunting birds, but the practice to bury them with their masters might also have had a religious significance. In Norse mythology, birds serve as messengers and link humans with different worlds, not least the realms of life and with those of death. Famous are the ravens of the Norse god of death and wisdom, Odin – Hugin and Munin, who carried him messages from all over the world and whispered in his ears. Hugin means “thought” and Munin “memory”.
 

These two ravens also had a sinister aspect in connection with the fact that they were scavengers and thus also connected to Odin’s role as a feared god of death. The Icelandic poet Torbjörn Hornklof wrote in a poem to the Norwegian king Harald Hårfagre:

Croaking ravens, say,

whence have you come,

with bloodied beaks,

early in the morning?

Flesh stick to claws.

From throats –

foul cadaver stench.

This night you alighted

within a harvest of corpses.

On top of the crown of the world tree Yggdrasil sits the eagle Hreasvelgr, the Corpse Devourer, by flapping his wings he brings deadly tempests. Like Odin, Hreasvelgr has his trusted messenger and informant, the hawk Väderfölne, who rests upon his head.

Hreasvelgr has a twin, the eagle Are, who on behalf of the goddess of the Abyss of the Dead, Hel, picks up those who have been sentenced to death by the Thing, governing assembly among the Vikings, and brings them down to down to the excruciation pits in Helheim.

Birds know and see more than humans, something the hero Sigurd Fafnersbane experienced when, after killing the dragon Fafner and on the advice of Fafner's treacherous brother Regin, was frying Fafner’s heart in open fire. Regin wanted to eat the heart as a reward for helping Sigurd to kill Fafner. However, when Sigurd with his index finger touched the fried surface of the heart and then put it in his mouth to taste, he heard sparrows chirping in a bush

– Sigurd is sitting there frying Fafner’s heart. If he were to eat it himself, he would be the wisest of all humans.

The quest to become one with the birds, and especially with the falcon, this amazingly skilled hunter, is something that has crossed the mind of several men and women who have breeding and training hawks and falcons. The Vikings brought their hawks and falcons across, bringing them with them on travels to Russia, Ireland, England and Normandy and if they seettled there they continued with their falconry.
 

Wilhelm the Conqueror was an avid falconer and on the Bayeaux tapestry, which tells of the Norman conquest of England, several falcons and hawks are depicted. The descendants of the Normans carried their falcons further on to Sicily and the birds also accompanied them on their crusades. In the Outremer, the Crusader States, the Norman aristocrats for certain encountered like-minded Muslim potentates who just as them were avid Falconers, and they they did exchange their interests and experiences.
 

The Norman-German emperor Frederick II of Hohenstaufen claims in his sumptuous book De arte venandi cum avibus, On the art of hunting with birds, that falconry is the most refined sport in existence. It is a way to get to know and become one with nature, a spiritual exercise that also is a form of meditation, an art-form and a science. The traditional hunting with weapons and dogs appeared to Frederick as brutal and tumultuous, falconry, on the other hand, was based on a subtle interplay between bird and hunter creating a relationship between man and nature, reaching its most exquisite dignity in the falconer’s art, where he, his horse and dogs all become subordinates to the noble falcon.

For Frederick his admiration of birds of prey almost becomes a symbol of Cosmos, a powerful life force emanating from an unaltered, unbound nature. He regards birds of prey as aristocratic beings associating them with earthly rulers, almighty princes like himself – the German-Roman Emperor, the most powerful ruler of of this world.

Such thought reminds of the role of the falcon in ancient Egypt. There the falcon god Horus, the son of Osiris, was the maintainer of universal order. His all-percieving eyes were likened to the life-giving sun and the time-controlling moon. Horus was intimately connected with the Pharaoh, the earthly ruler as guarantor of cosmic and accordingly also human order. The eye of Horus became the symbol of all Egypt, of the life-giving Nile, of an orderly Cosmos, of the annual Nile floods, of rain and budding fertility. Horus appeared in symbiosis with Pharaoh and was thus identified with him, while the falcon god acted as the ruler's divine protector, a guarantor that he was under the protection of the Cosmos. A way of thinking which seems to fit well with the Christian notion of Jesus Christ, who is simultaneously regarded as God the Father and his Son, heavenly maintainer of justice and order, a protection against evil and the forces of chaos.

Frederick could in many ways be likened to a pharaoh. Like such a ruler, he lived in harmony with nature. Pharaoh ruled over nature in the form of his control of the Nile’s annual floods, which under his supervision were regulated by organized work and constructions of dams and canals, while he, in his own glory and power, as well as Cosmo’s guarantor built temples for the gods and palaces to himself. Frederick was also an observer of nature's changes, and as one of the world’s first environmental conservationists he set aside large tracts of land, which were to be protected and left untouched for the benefit of wildlife. An initiative that may be linked to his immersive interest in falconry. Frederick wanted to preserve natural areas so that the birds of prey could thrive and multiply.

Likewise, several of his magnificent buildings can be linked to his interest in falconry. I became fascinated by Frederick when I several years ago visited his Castel del Monte. On a hill with views in all directions of the surrounding landscape, shining white against a clear blue sky. A perfect octagon with eight towers, even those with eight sides. Harmoniously and majestically the castle dominates its surroundings. Like a huge imperial crown, it is set on top of a flourishing hill, a symbol of the emperor’s power and control over his reign. However, Castel del Monte is actually neither a castle, nor a palace. It lacks a moat and a drawbridge. In fact, it is an oversized hunting lodge, from which towers Frederick was able to observe the flight of birds of prey and release his own hunting falcons.
 

Frederick II was in many ways a strange man. In his basic book The History of Biology, which was published between 1920-1924 and translated into a variety of languages, the Swedish botanist Erik Nordenskiöld concisely summarized Frederick’s personality and contribution to biology, which he considered to have been of great importance for ornithology as a science:

Italian in his upbringing, semi-oriental in his habits and way of thinking, he gathered around him learned men from both East and West. He had Aristotle’s writings translated from Greek into Latin. Fredrik’s writing about falconry is so much more than just an account of hunting, it is a comprehensive account of birds' anatomy and habits.

The remarkable Frederick II, who during his lifetime was called Stupro mundi et innovator, Miracle of the World and Innovator, was during his fifty-six years of life almost incomprehensibly active in a number of areas. His many and varied achievements were far from being limited to falconry and his learned observations of and explanations about the life of birds. Frederick’s political career was characterised by disputes over his German, Italian, and Oriental claims, and was marked by constant sieges, battles, and crusades, born out of endless intrigues of a religious, social, and geographical nature. Particularly prominent were his ideological and political clashes with the pope. Frederick could be likened to a storm-carried bird of prey flying above the centre of Europe and the the Levant.
 

Judged by a modern yardstick, he was also a frivolous pleasure seeker, unfaithful and tolerant, with a vast amount of concubines who in his palace in Lucera, in accordance with oriental custom, were kept in seclusion and supervised by eunuchs.

He wrote about and studied mathematics, architecture, natural sciences and philosophy, reading and speaking Latin, Italian, German, Arabic, French and Greek. One of his special interests and expertise was medicine and he reformed the ancient medical school in Salerno, while he decreed that all medical doctors had to be examined and registered. In 1224, he founded the University of Naples, the first in Europe with established statutes and curricula. Music and literature flourished at his court and together with Muslim and Jewish sages he explored the mysteries of nature, not least through autopsies of humans and animals. His sceptical, practical and inquisitive character was formulated in one of his mottos Ea que sunt, sicut sunt, that which is, is as it is, a critique of theological hair-splitting. He was engrossed in nature studies. As soon as time was given him away from all the political struggles, wars and intrigues, he sought out nature.
 

In Ferderick's bird book De Arte Venandi Cum Avibus, there is a random picture of a man who has taken off his clothes and swim in a lake, or pond. Maybe a portrayal of Frederick himself. How he relaxes from all his worries and striving. The picture makes me think of a picture of Noman Rockwell showing how on a hot summer day travelling salesman has left his car to take a refreshing dip in a river.
 

Frederick intensively studied the behaviour of animals in the wild, as well as in captivity. He owned a large exotic menagerie with elephants, lions, cheetahs, dromedaries, camels, monkeys, a variety of birds of prey and most amazing of all – a giraffe, a white peacock and a polar bear. During his numerous travels Frederick often brought with him, as in a circus entourage, animals from his zoo. Of course, since it amused him to deal with the animals, but also to attract and impress other potentates. It happened that he passed through towns and villages, exposing his exotic beasts animals as if they were part of a circus spectacle.

The giraffe was a great success throughout Europe, while the white peacock and polar bear impressed the Muslim potentates he negotiated with in Palestine – he managed without bloodshed to guarantee that the holy sites were reopened to Christians and he became, with the consent of the Muslims, in any case of their temporary rulers, King of Jerusalem. He obtained his giraffe from the Caliph of Cairo, in exchange for his polar bear.

A great admiration for Frederick lives on, especially in southern Italy where he is hailed as the First European. However, this enthusiasm for the German-Roman emperor is not shared by the modern of the crusade chronicler, Steven Runciman, who wrote:

His was a handsome man, not tall but well-built, though early inclined to fatness. His hair, the red hair of the Hohenstaufen, was receding early. His features were regular with a full, rather sensual mouth and an expression that seemed kindly till you noticed his cold green eyes, whose piercing glanced disguised their short-sightedness. […] He was well versed in philosophy, in the sciences, in medicine, in natural history, and well informed about other countries. His conversation, when he chose, was fascinating. But for all his brilliance, he was not likeable. He was cruel, selfish, and sly, unreliable as a friend and unforgiving as an enemy. His indulgence in erotic pleasure of every sort shocked even even the easy standards of Outremer [the Middle Eastern crusader states]. He loved to outrage contemporaries by scandalous comments on religion and morals. […] He saw no harm in taking interest in other religions, especially Islam, with which he had been in touch with all his life. Yet no ruler persecuted more savagely such Christian heretics as the Cathars and their kin.

Behind everything and everywhere was falconry, during Frederick’s travels, his conversations and wars. At one point, a siege ended in disaster as Frederick and his entourage left their camp under inadequate surveillance after embarking on falconry. The enemy broke the siege and destroyed Frederick’s camp. During his free time, Frederick studied the birds and wrote on his De Arte Venandi Cum Avibus, read the works of Arabic falconers and discussed their findings with the Muslim scholars he had in his service, it is possible that he also drew the book’s unique illustrations because he was also known as a knowledgeable artist.
 

Although the bird reproductions are far from being as detailed and realistic as those of Rudbeck, Audobon and the von Wright brothers, they have a decorative and unique charm.
 

It is far from only falcons and hawks that Frederick described and depicted.

He also presented the people who cared for and trained the falcons.

He described how the hunt was carried out and how the riders leave their castles at dawn. It was mainly falconry on horseback that fascinated Frederick.
 

The German-Roman emperor did through his interest in falconry probably strive for a sense of liberation within his multifaceted existence. It is possible that he, like several other bird fans, identified with his hunting falcons – dreamed of becoming like a falcon. Someone who definitely seemed to wish for this was the solitary, myopic and singular John Alec Baker (1926-1987). It may seem that this man was the exact opposite of the powerful, well-known and admired Frederick II of Hohenstaufen – a fairly anonymous clerk at The Automobile Association's, AA’s local branch in Chelmsford, the capital of Essex County, north-east of London. AA provides vehicle insurance, driving lessons, crash protection, loans, car advice, and road maps. J.A. Baker lacked a driver's license, he did not even have a TV in the frugal home he shared with his wife Doreen in central Chelmsford. Doreen also worked at AA. The couple was childless and John Alec remained in Chelmsford all his life. Even his wife described him as “something of a hermit”.
 

But, there was something that united John Alec Baker with Frederick II of Hohenstaufen and Sheikh Sayed of Abu Dhabi – the falcons. This despite the fact that he never owned or tried to tame a bird of prey. Like Frederick II, Baker obviously wanted to be one with nature and with great patience he approached the peregrine falcons he was fascinated by. According to him, the peregrin regarded all other beings as threatening, as prey, or even harmless. It was especially difficult for a human being to appear as an inoffensive being, because to the animals we appear as killer “stinking of death. We carry it with us. It covers us like frost. We cannot tear ourselves away from it.”

It was important to approach the extremely astute peregrine falcon as quietly and unnoticed as possible:

To be recognised and accepted by a peregrine you must wear the same clothes, travel by the same way, perform actions in the same order. Like all birds, it fears the unpredictable. Enter and leave the same fields at the same time each day, soothe the hawk from its wildness by a ritual of behaviour as invariable as its own. Hood the glare of the eyes, hide the white tremor of the hands, shade the stark reflecting face, assume the stillness of a tree.

Baker wanted to be as close to the peregrine falcon as possible. He had no desire to own it, to master it. It seems that he instead wanted the falcon to dominate him, almost like an unrequited love, a passion. Baker enjoyed and was tormented by this hopeless love, bound as he was to an awkward, unsuitable human body. A spectator who tried to think like a falcon, to be like a bird of prey, but utterly unable to leave his human body behind, to deny his essence as a human being, his human distinctiveness. It is not possible to fly, to see, to feed like a falcon. Baker seems to have avoided human company, aware of his extreme myopia and a clumsiness which was exacerbated by an inexorably aggravated rheumatoid arthritis. During his childhood he had been ill and as a teenager he was after a nervous breakdown admitted to a hospital for three months, the result of an unfortunate love story.

As often as he could, the extremely myopic John Alec walked, or cycled, out into the fields east of Chelmsford. Along the lush banks of the river Chelmer, he reached Essex’s fertile and gently undulating agricultural landscape, sloping towards the mouth of the Blackwater River, by the shores of the North Sea.
 

With great patience and sharp observation, John Alec followed the bird life through his binoculars. By correcting his unfortunate myopia the binoculars endowed him with something resembling a “falcon’s vigilance”.

In open fields and swamps John Alec thoroughly studied the peregrine falcon’s patient watchfulness, its flight, its habits, its hunting, bathing, and mating. In his book, like Brusewitz and Lord Grey, John Alec meticulously recorded the changes of nature, the shifts and light of the days and especially the dawn; the weather, the wildlife, the scents and the plants. As a common thread through his dynamic and occasionally metaphorically exaggerated depictions, which largely follows day after day from October 1962 to April 1963, there is the constant presence of the peregrine and John Alec’s almost total identification with the bird.

In detail he describes the peregrine’s hunting behaviour. Investigating remains of its prey, which condition he carefully records, in detail describing how the peregrine had torn its victim to pieces and what parts of its flesh it has devoured. John Alec described a world where the existence of birds of prey is characterized by various forms of killing. His accounts are almost completely free from the propensity for a humanization of animal behaviour that often accompanies romantic depictions of nature.
 

In fact, J.A. Baker’s ten years of diligent study of the peregrine falcon is a thorough, though not entirely accurate, distillation of what takes place during an autumn and winter during which he realized his intention to study the peregrine as detailed as a lone human being was capable of:

Wherever he goes, this winter, I will follow him. I will share the fear, and the exaltation, and the boredom, of the hunting life. I will follow him till my predatory human shape no longer darkens in terror the shaken kaleidoscope of colour that stains the deep fovea of his brilliant eye. My pagan head shall sink into the winter land, and there be purified.

Fovea is a depression in the retina of the eye’s centred vision. In a peregrine falcon, the fovea is much more developed and effective than in humans. J.A. Baker’s (it's typical of John Alec to hide behind the initials J.A.) the mentioning of the fovea is symptomatic of his detailed descriptions. It might seem to be tiring and too cumbersome for someone who has not personally experienced the subtle shifts of nature, but for such a person Baker’s writing style might have an almost hypnotic effect.

In his strange book, John Alec hardly says anything about himself, other than his observations of landscapes and birds, his concern about human’s reckless damage to nature and their guilt for the extinction of peregrine falcons. Occasionally there something that may be described as anxiety, even contempt,occurs while Baker fumes about human’s damaging encroachment on nature. John Alec’s longing to become a peregrine falcon often returns in text:

I shut my eyes and tried to crystallise my will into the light-drenched prism of the hawk’s mind. Warm and firm-footed in long grass smelling of the sun, I sank into the skin and bones of the hawk […] like the hawk I heard and hated the sound of man, that faceless horror of the stony places. I stifled in the same filthy sack of fear.

Such a longing to become a bird has often been described in literature and film. While teaching at the International School in Hanoi for a time, one of my colleagues was Camille Du Aime, a large American lady who grew up on a riverboat on the Seine in Paris:

It was a rather miserable and leaky boat. I cannot say I enjoyed it. My parents were bohemian and while I was with them my father tried to make a living as an artist. He had traumas after his participation in World War II and tried through his art to drive away his demons. It was only at long last he found his right element in writing novels. He became rich and famous, but then it was too late for me.

Camille's father, Albert William Du Aime (1925–2008), wrote under the pseudonym William Wharton and Birdy, his first novel, written when he was over fifty, became an instant success and like his following novels Dad and A Midnight Clear, Birdy became a critically acclaimed film (Wharton published more than ten books).

Birdy deals with a sensitive, somewhat neurotic young man who dreams of being free as a bird. Typical of his behaviour is when, after a clumsy and unsuccessful act of love with a beautiful girl, he returns home to a birdhouse he had built in his room and lying naked there imagines how he flies around in his room, through the house and out into the world.

After being summoned to the war in Vietnam, Birdy is wounded in the face and then suffers a severe trauma, is admitted to an asylum where he, through his bird fantasies, builds a mental wall around himself. A wall that not only excludes him from painful war memories, but also from all dealings with other humans and a normal life.

The talented film director Alan Parker, who made the film Birdy in 1984, called Wharton’s book a “wonderful story” and initially wrestled with how to portray it:

I did not know how I could take the lyrical tone of the book and turn it into cinematic poetry, or if an audience really wanted to see such a work.

At the 1985 Cannes Film Festival, Parker's film won the Grand Prix Spécial du Jury.
 

Birdy and several other works, both novels and scientific accounts,
 

as well as films, describe human affinity to birds, and especially falcons and hawks.

Alejandro Iñárritu’s multi-faceted film Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) has, through its ability to connect realism with an inner drama affecting reality and thus reshaping it, has by some critics been considered as a successful attempt to transfer Latin American magical realism into film. Iñárritu’s movies has furtermore been compared to Fellini’s 8 ½ since it depicts the world of an artist/director, both from the outside and from within, and how a writers’ block is transformed into successful art.

Iñárritu explained:

What this film talks about, I have been through. I have seen and experienced all of it; it’s what I have been living through the last years of my life.

To me, Birdman reflects quite a lot of what I have been writing about in this blog entry. For example, how it, like António Lobo Antunes Explain the Birds to Me realistically depicts a confused individual’s struggle with himself and his past life, all against a background of the birds’ inexplicable beauty, beautiful song and “freedom”, which nevertheless is entirely driven by instinct. In the case of Birdman this is about the actor Riggan Thomson’s struggle to break out of the cage created by his role as the superhero Birdman. A story marked by a similar insoluble conflict as the one of John Alec Barker who desired to become a peregrine falcon. A desire/illusion that finds its outlet in creation. In Barker's case it became a book, by Riggan Thomson a realistic play with him in the leading role, with Alejandro Iñárritu – a film.
 

In general, these works revolve around obsessions and border areas between fantasy and reality. Barry Hines’ (1939-2016) novel A Kestrel for a Knave, is however an entirely realistic novel set in the mid-sixties in a greyish mining town located in Yorkshire. The novel's strange title, A Kestrel for a Knight, emanates from a list in a manuscript from the mid-15^th century, The Booke of Hawkyng by Prince Edwarde Kyng of England:

An Eagle for an Emperor, a Gyrfalcon for a King; a Peregrine for a Prince, a Saker for a Knight, a Merlin for a Lady; a Goshawk for a Yeoman, a Sparrowhawk for a Priest, a Musket for a Holy Water Clerk, a Kestrel for a Knave.

The novel depicts an obstinate fifteen-year-old, Billy Kasper, who will soon leave secondary education and enter working life. He comes from a poor, fragmented home with an easy-going, vulgar mother and a brutal half-brother, who works down in the mine shafts; in his spare time a woman chaser, drunkard and gambler who regularly beats up his little brother. Billy has a past as a punished member of a criminal boy gang, which now haunts him. School is a nuisance and least of all Billy Kasper wants to go down the pit, working in the mines. He is only happy when he wanders around in the nature surround the gloomy mining town.

Billy is a sensitive and attentive boy, who against all odds has managed to preserve his joy and self-respect. During one night, he climbs, while endangering his life, up the wall of a ruined monastery and steals a kestrel chicken. With the help of a book he stole in a book store, Billy trains the bird to become a skilled hunting hawk. Kes, as he calls his kestrel, becomes for Billy an escape from his miserably circumvented and shabby existence. Through his patient training of Kes and his liberating hunt with his bird of prey, Billy’s self-confidence is strengthened, though he remains a stranger within the biased and vapid society that surrounds him.

It is a deeply moving and masterfully told novel which, given my past as a teacher, made quite an impression on me. The soul-destroying teaching, with its punishments and total failure to find the goodness, strength, willpower and search for security within an impoverished, bullied and abused boy, might torment any teacher with a love for his/her calling and obsessed by the joy of teaching.
 

A skilfully portrayed episode is when Billy Kasper is by an empathetic teacher convinced to enthusiastically tell the class about his falconry. After embarrassment and hesitation, Billy is seized by his subject and thus enchants the entire class, impressing the teacher who eventually seeks out Billy as he hunts with his falcon in the fields outside the town. The teacher realises that his student is a unique person, whose interest has opened up the world to him and might be a means to leave the boredom and bullying in a mining town immersed in bleak hopelessness, insecurity and poverty.

A Kestrel for a Knave contains both humour and joy, but it is nevertheless deeply tragic in its depiction of how a basically good and imaginative boy is constantly threatened with suffocation, enclosed as he is by a brutal and incomprehensible environment.

And now back to the introduction: “Some people like to watch birds pecking in swamps. But, we like cinema!” For me it is a truth with modification – of course I like to watch movies, but as my blog post hopefully has indicated, despite my ignorance of the subject, I am also fascinated by bird watching – the respectful observation of these strange creatures. The birds that give life and meaning to our existence.

I recently read A Kestrel for Knave and it was my admiration for that novel that led me to my thoughts about birds. That I once bought the novel was because I in 1970 had watched Ken Loach’s Kes - the Falcon, at the cinema in my small home town and the experience has lingered in my memory. I have not seen the film again, but will now try to get hold of it, especially now when I have read the novel and learned that Loach made the film together with the author Barry Hines. The reason for the collaboration was Loach’s opinion that ”I have never read a novel where every scene could be transferred to film with such ease.”

Al Fahim, Mohammed A. J. (2013) From Rags to Riches: A Story of Abu Dhabi. Abu Dhabi: Makarem. Antunes, António Lobo (1995) An Explanation of Birds. New York: Grove Press Audobon, John James (2001) The Birds of America. New York: Welcome Rain Publishers. Baker, J. A. (2004) The Peregrine. New York: NYR. Bocaccio, Giovanni (2003) The Decamaron. London: Penguin Classics. Coll, Steve (2005) Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan and bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001. London: Penguin. Davidson, Hida Ellis (1990) Gods and Myths of Northern Europe. London: Penguin. Gresti, Paolo (ed.) (1992) Sonetti anonimi del Vaticano lat. 3793. Florens: Accademia della Crusca. Grey, Lord of Fallodon (2001) The Charm of Birds. London: Orion. Hines, Barry (2000) A Kestrel for a Knight. London: Penguin Modern Classics. Kroll, Paul W. (2018) Critical Readings on Tang China: Volume 3. Leiden: Brill. Munif, Abdelrahman (1987) Cities of Salt. New York: Vintage International. Runciman, Steven (2016) A History of the Crusades II: The Kingdom of Acre. London: Penguin Classics. Tay, C.N. (1979) ”Two Poems of Mao Tse-tung in the Light of Chinese Literary Tradition,” in The Journal of Asian Studies, Vol. 29, No. 3, Thesiger, Wilfred (1991) Arabian Sands. London: Penguin.Wharton, William (1980) Birdy. New York: Avon Books. White, T.H. (2007) The Goshawk. New York: NYRB Classics. Wood, Casey A. och Marjorie Fyfe (eds.) (1969) The Art of Falconry Being the De Arte Venandi Cum Avibus of Frederick II of Hohenstaufen. Redwood City CA: Stanford University Press.

Under min ungdoms flitiga biobesök brukade jag småle åt en annons som emellanåt visades innan filmen började. Man fick se en trana som stegar runt på en myr alltmedan speakerrösten konstaterar: “Somliga gillar att titta på fåglar som pickar i träsk.” Plötsligt sprängs fågeln och försvinner i ett rökmoln med kommentaren: “Men, vi gillar bio!”

Kanske var det så, att jag gillade bio mer än fågelskådande. Främsta orsaken var möjligen att jag inte ägt en ordentlig kikare och inte på allvar uppmärksammat naturen omkring mig. Dock är ett av mina största nöjen att ensam vandra genom skogen kring vårt hus i Bjärnum, lyssna till fåglarna och emellanåt fånga en skymt av dem. Trots det har min vänskap med dessa märkliga djur för det mesta präglats av böcker.

Ända sedan barndomen har jag uppskattat fågelböcker. Min morfar hade tre eleganta skinnband: Svenska fåglar efter naturen och på sten ritade I-III. Med text av professor Einar Lönnberg och 364 kolorerade planscher av bröderna von Wright. De skapades ursprungligen 1838 av en finländsk brödraskara, vart Morfars upplaga tog vägen vet jag inte. Ofta satt jag uppkrupen i en av Morfars fåtöljer med en av de stora volymerna i knäet. Det är svårt att förklara den fascination jag kände inför de förunderligt klara och sällsamt vackra fågelbilderna. Kanske hade det något att göra med försjunkandet i detaljåtergivningen av de förunderliga fenomen som fåglar utgör.

När jag bläddrar i så utsökta fågelböcker som bröderna Wrights mästerverk kommer jag att tänka på titeln till en av António Lobo Antunes romaner – Förklara fåglarna för mig. Många har försökt göra just det, men det är en omöjlighet, lika svårt som att förklara vad livet är. Något som jag tror fick Lobo Antunes att välja en sådan titel på en roman som handlar om en mans oförmåga att acceptera vad som hänt honom i hans liv; moderns död i cancer, hans främlingskap inför sin egen familj, hur han skjutit från sig sin första hustru och deras barn, hans vacklande politiska ställningstagande och svårigheter att förstå sig på sin nya hustru. Fåglarna blir därmed till allas och en vars sinnebild av sin oförklarliga tillvaro; våra underliga val och ställningstaganden. Livet som ett omöjligt projekt.

Redan då jag som barn satt med Morfars stora fågelbok i knäet och genom de stora fönstren kunde se ut över hans prunkande blomsterberg och dess fond av höga tallar, i vilka skator hoppade kring och skrek på ett sätt som alltid får mig att minnas Tallebo, som Morfar kallade sitt hus och trädgård, tyckte jag mig ana att det fanns ett släktskap mellan mig och fåglarna. En känsla som fortfarande kunde gripa mig då jag av min vän Örjan i sextioårspresent fick en faksimilupplaga av Olof Rudbeck den yngres Svenska fåglar som påbörjades redan 1693 och som även den är förlänad med samma detaljkärlek som bröderna von Wrights 150 år senare mästerverk.