英検1級に出そうな単語-Orazio Gentileschi's Finding of Moses in 10 minutes
今回は美術編です。
経済、科学より楽しいです笑
本編には関係ないですが、
寄付のお願いが気になります。
今は、どこも予算が厳しいのでしょうね。
Caravaggioの方が人生も作品も面白いですが、
話が長いので、そちらはおまけです。
"curator;(博物館などの)専門職員、学芸員"
"immense;巨大な、素晴らしい"
"goldsmith;金細工師"→"blacksmith;鍛冶屋", "locksmith;鍵屋"
"forcefully;力強く、強烈に"→"forceful;説得力のある、強烈な"
"chiaroscuro;絵画の明暗"
"naturalism;自然主義"
"refinement;洗練、上品、優美"→"refine;精製する、磨きをかける"
"pinnacle;頂点、絶頂"
"Old Testament;旧約聖書"→"New Testament;新約聖書", "testament;証拠、遺言、聖書"
"edict;布告、法令、命令"
"bullrush;イグサ"
"satin;サテン"
"sheen;光沢"
"fabric;生地、布"
"texture;織り方、生地、手触り、食感"
"infant;幼児"
"maiden;娘、乙女"
"wriggle;くねらせる"
"fetch;呼んでくる、持ってくる"
"kneel;ひざまづく"
"theatrical;わざとらしい、芝居がかった、演劇の"
"reminiscent;連想させる、思い出させる"
"ode to A; Aの詩"
"collaborate on;共同でやる、合作する、協力する"
"culmination;集大成、最高点"
"provenance;起源、出所、由来"
"pedigree;血統"
"loan to;貸し出しをする、貸し付ける"
"transformative;斬新な、変革の"
"transcend;しのぐ、勝る"
"patronage;後援。引き立て、ひいき"
全文
00:00
Welcome to the National Gallery. My name is Letizia Treves and I'm the
00:04
Sassoon Curator of the Later Italian Paintings and today I'm going to talk to
00:08
you about this immense canvas behind me by Orazio Gentileschi.
00:12
It is The Finding of Moses, and some of you may be aware that we launched our
00:18
fundraising campaign because the National Gallery has been given a really
00:21
exceptional opportunity to acquire this picture and we have until the end of the
00:25
year to find the necessary funds to make this picture ours and make its permanent
00:31
home here in Trafalgar Square. Now Orazio may not be as familiar to many of
00:37
you as perhaps his daughter Artemisia, and you'll remember we bought our first
00:42
painting by Artemisia just in 2018 and she hangs just across the room, her
00:47
'Self-Portrait as Saint Catherine of Alexandria', and she will be featuring in
00:51
a major show I'm preparing for next spring. Orazio, apart from being just
00:56
her father and her teacher was a very significant artist in his own right in
01:01
the 17th century. He was actually born in Pisa in a family of artists. His father
01:06
was a goldsmith, his brother Aurelio was a painter as well, and he lived a very
01:12
long time. He died in his 70s and during the course of his career his style
01:16
changed enormously, and his very very long career spanned some key moments in
01:21
sort of art historical changes so his early works look very mannerist, still
01:26
very much rooted in a 16th century tradition, but as a boy he moved to Rome
01:31
and he met Caravaggio. So in the very early 1600s, the impact of that meeting
01:36
and of meeting this incredible revolutionary artist in Rome was
01:40
immediately seen in Orazio's styles. So his pictures become much more forcefully
01:47
lit, taking on this chiaroscuro for which Caravaggio is very famous, very
01:52
naturalistic, so he, like Caravaggio, famously painted directly from live
01:56
models. But after about 1610 his pictures assumed a sort of softer naturalism.
02:02
They're still very naturalistic, he still very much observes the world
02:06
around him, paints from real models, but there's a kind of gentleness to his
02:11
pictures and there's an increasing sense of
02:14
refinement and elegance, the pinnacle of which he achieves towards the end of his
02:19
life, when he comes to London. Orazio works first as I said in Rome, in Genoa,
02:24
in Turin, in Paris, and then he's invited to London where he spends the last
02:28
twelve years of his life at the court of Charles I as court painter, and
02:33
it is here in London that he paints 'The Finding of Moses'. The subject is of
02:39
course an Old Testament subject, and following Pharaoh's edict that all
02:45
newborn sons of Hebrews should be killed. Moses is placed by his mother in a
02:50
basket and hidden in the bullrushes on the River Nile. The baby is found by
02:56
Pharaoh's own daughter, and there she is in the centre. You can tell it's Pharaoh's
03:00
daughter because she's covered in jewels, she's wearing this glorious silk gown
03:04
this yellow satin gown and look at the beautiful silk sheen of her under skirt.
03:08
I mean, Orazio really achieves such technical skill, it's one of the things
03:12
he's greatest at. This painting of fabrics and textures and sheen on silk
03:16
and it's something you really do see in this picture, and this beautiful colour
03:20
palette as well. These very delicate shot colours. Look at the the two-toned purple
03:26
that turns blue in the light. I mean it's something that is very particular to Orazio
03:30
and something he really, you know, achieved enormous skill in doing. So
03:34
there she is, Pharaoh's daughter, and she's pointing at the infant Moses who's
03:37
being brought to her by one of her hand maidens who's half undressed because
03:41
they've been bathing in the River Nile. And whilst pointing at the baby who's sort
03:45
of wriggling in the baskets, very naturalistic baby you feel this is based
03:48
on a real baby, she actually turns to this woman here who's not dressed nearly
03:54
as splendidly and this is actually Moses's mother. So what happens is when
03:58
she places Moses in the basket she sends her daughter Miriam, Moses' sister to
04:03
keep an eye on him, and when Pharaoh's daughter finds Moses
04:06
Miriam comes forward and offers to find somebody to help nurse this child and
04:11
she actually goes to fetch her own mother, so Moses's mother, and that's what
04:15
is here, and we know it's her because also her shirt is unbuttoned suggesting
04:19
she's about to nurse the infant, and you can see Miriam is more small in scale.
04:24
She's a girl so it's obvious that she's kneeling before
04:27
the Pharaoh's daughter and also indicating her brother. The other
04:31
interesting thing about this picture is it's all about gestures. It's very
04:34
theatrical. It's like these figures are set on a
04:36
stage, not just the light, the costumes, but the whole setting of it, it feels
04:40
very theatrical. And as I say, you follow their hand gestures, and our
04:45
focus is very much on this infant wriggling in the basket and you see the
04:50
figures pointing out of the picture not really clear what they're pointing
04:53
towards. And the clue to that is really where this picture hung originally. So
04:59
the picture was painted whilst Orazio was at the court of Charles I,
05:02
but it was actually intended for the King's wife, the Catholic Queen Henrietta
05:06
Maria, and the painting hung in the Queen's House at Greenwich. The house
05:11
still stands there today, and the picture originally hung in the Great Hall which
05:15
is this incredible cube, the sort of 12 meters wide deep and high, and the
05:20
picture once hung there, and almost certainly hung on the west wall and what
05:24
they're actually pointing towards is a window, and through that window you can
05:29
still see the River Thames. And in fact if you look at this countryside this
05:33
little glimpse of countryside right here that really has nothing to do with Egypt
05:37
where this scene is actually set, that is very reminiscent of an English
05:41
countryside. So this picture is something that obviously had more meaning in the
05:46
sort of specific site for which it was probably made and certainly the site in
05:50
which it hung in the 17th century. Now the picture hung across another painting
05:56
by Orazio, today in Bilbao, and beneath a glorious ceiling an elaborate ceiling
06:01
decoration also by Orazio, so it's a sort of ode to Orazio, this whole space
06:06
belonging to the Queen. And this ceiling painting was his last great sort of
06:10
Commission in London. He died very shortly afterwards in 1639 and it is
06:16
thought that his daughter Artemisia who also came to London may have helped
06:20
collaborate on that, or bring at least the project to completion in its final
06:24
months. So it is an absolutely key work for Orazio, a sort of culmination of his
06:29
career. I mean no other picture reaches this sort of elegance and the scale and the
06:33
ambition of this picture is really remarkable. We simply aren't able
06:38
nowadays to find Baroque pictures with this sort of provenance with a kind of
06:41
royal pedigree and of this importance. The picture has been on loan to the
06:46
National Gallery for almost 20 years, so you'd be forgiven for thinking it was
06:50
ours already. But we really do feel it's a picture that would be transformative
06:55
for our collection. Until last year, of course, we didn't represent Artemisia and
07:00
we still don't represent Orazio in the Collection. It would be a
07:05
key work just in the context of the Italian Baroque collection, but it also
07:09
transcends that. This is the sort of picture that really goes beyond a school
07:14
and a period, because Orazio, alongside
07:16
Anthony Van Dyck and Peter Paul Rubens, who were also invited to the court of
07:21
Charles I, he really stands up there with these international artists
07:25
diplomats who really represent this, you know incredible moment in British
07:29
history and in British artistic patronage because there was no monarch
07:33
really since Charles I who collected art so voraciously but also
07:38
commissioned it. So it's important to think of this picture not just in the
07:42
beautiful context of the Italian Baroque collection in which we hang it today, but
07:46
really across the collection I just want to remind you that here at the National
07:49
Gallery we have Van Dyke's equestrian portrait of Charles I and of
07:53
course a picture by Rubens, 'Peace and War, also painted for Charles I,
07:58
in that context and it's really in that sort of courtly context that I want
08:02
to invite you to think about this picture. As I say we have until the end
08:07
of the year to raise funds to be able to keep this picture here and I would urge
08:11
you please to donate, however large or small, every donation counts and you can
08:16
do that in the room in the box but you can also do it online. We have seven
08:20
weeks to go but please help us keep this picture here, for free, forever. Thank you.
08:31
Thank you for watching, and if you'd like to make a donation, please go online and
08:35
please help us keep the finding of Moses here in Trafalgar Square on public
08:38
display for free, forever.
08:48
you
