manet and fra angelico

MANET AND FRA ANGELICOAuthor(s): Christopher LloydSource: Source: Notes in the History of Art, Vol. 7, No. 2 (Winter 1988), pp. 20-24Published by: Ars Brevis Foundation, Inc.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/23202415 .

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MANET AND FRA ANGELICO

Christopher Lloyd

It is sometimes disparagingly claimed that too

many articles have already been published on Manet's artistic sources. The implication is that Manet's visual references are so numer

ous that in searching for them, armed with a

photograph in one hand and a volume of Charles Blanc's Histoire des peintres de toutes

les écoles (1861-1878) in the other, the art historian is being no more than self-indul

gent. It is true that frequently the identifica tion of a particular source for a painting by Manet does not necessarily represent a great

advance in our knowledge of his working methods, but these sources are, nonetheless,

Fig. 1 Manet, A Bar at the Folies-Bergere. Courtauld Institute Galleries, London



21

revealing on a cumulative basis insofar as some pattern in the artist's proclivities may eventually emerge.

ticular pose occurs in Italian art, specifically in the treatment of the theme known as

Christ in the Tomb, where Christ stands in His tomb and stretches out His hands to show His wounds. Examples of Christ in the

Tomb can be found in most schools of fif

teenth-century Italian painting. But if Manet did reflect on such a visual prototype, one ex

ample in particular might have come to

mind—namely, Fra Angelico's lunette in the cloister of the monastery of San Marco in

Florence (Fig. 2), painted during the early 1440s.2 Apparently, Manet had some knowl

edge of these frescoes, since he had used the

A Bar at the Folies-Bergere (Fig. 1), which was exhibited at the Salon of 1882, is such an

important painting that an observation about a possible derivation for the main figure may perhaps be allowed.1 The central figure

standing behind the bar looking directly at the viewer is shown in three-quarters length. Her arms are held slightly away from her

sides, and her hands touch the marble slab of

the bar that extends across the whole compo sition. A striking visual analogy for this par

Fig. 2 Fra Angélico, Christ in the Tomb. San Marco, Florence



22

lunette of Saint Peter Martyr Enjoining Silence

(Fig. 3), also from the series in the cloister, as the basis for his amusing Silentium (Fig. 4). This etching, dating from 1862-1864, is one of the wittiest transmutations in the history of art.3 Fra Angélico is only referred to in the introduction to the volume published in 1876 devoted to the Florentine school in Charles

Blanc's famous History (already referred to), but none of the Florentine's works is repro duced. Yet Angelico's reputation was widely extolled in France by such writers as Alexis

Francois Rio in his De l'Art chrétien (ex panded edition, 1861-1867), and engravings of the frescoes in San Marco did exist.4

Manet, however, was almost certainly not in

sympathy with the fashionable mystical ap preciation of Fra Angélico and so may simply have recalled seeing the relevant fresco while

in Florence on his second trip to Italy at the

very beginning of his career in 1857, just as he had executed the etching Silentium retro

spectively.5 Although he made several draw

ings of figures from the fresco of The Mystical Crucifixion in the Sala del Capitolo of San

Marco, there are no surviving drawings of

Christ in the Tomb.6

There is little evidence for the amount of

preparatory work that Manet undertook in

connection with his late masterpiece. An oil

Fig. 3 Fra Angélico, Saint Peter Martyr Enjoining Silence. San Marco, Florence



23

sketch on loan to the Stedelijk Museum, Am

sterdam, and a drawing (now lost) are all that remain. But the differences between the oil sketch and the finished painting are signifi cant, particularly with regard to the central

figure.7 In the oil sketch, the pose of the fig ure is more animated, with the barmaid fac

ing to the left. The final solution, however, involves a much more firmly controlled verti

cal axis. To achieve this, Manet anchors the barmaid more securely within the picture space by imposing upon the figure the simple geometrical shape of a triangle and by mak

ing her stare uncompromisingly out of the

painting. These changes reveal Manet's con cern about organizing the composition more

tightly and engaging the viewer's attention di

rectly. Whether the imposing monumentality

Fig. 4 Manet, Silentium. Etching. Bibliothéque Nationale, Paris



24

of this figure was achieved as the conse

quence of the artist's having recalled An

gelico's fresco is arguable,8 but the undeni able visual analogy between the three-quar ters-length female figure placed behind the bar and Christ standing in the tomb is sug gestive. The space behind the bar, bounded in the front by the marble slab and in the back

by its reflection, is comparable to Christ's

sarcophagus. Admittedly, in Angelico's fresco Christ's head is inclined downward, but in at

least two of the other frescoes in the cloister of San Marco known to Manet (Saint Peter

Martyr Enjoining Silence and Saint Thomas

Aquinas) the viewer is confronted by a chal

lenging stare. If this connection is valid, then some inter

esting questions arise about the interpreta

tion of one of Manet's greatest paintings—a matter that is already being earnestly de bated.9 Such questions, however, lie beyond the scope of this note.

NOTES

1. Exhibited in Paris and New York. F. Cachin, C.

Moffett, and M. Melat, Manet 1832-1883 (New York:

1983), no. 211, pp. 478-482 repr. 2. J. Pope-Hennessy, Fra Angélico, 2d ed. (London:

1974), pp. 202-210.

3. J. Harris, Édouard Manet: Graphic Works, a

Definitive Catalogue Raisonné (New York: 1970), no. 3.

For recent discussion on this print, see J. Wilson, Manet: Dessins, aquarelles, eaux-fortes, lithographies,

correspondance (Paris: Galerie Huguette Beres, 1978), no. 19.

4. For example, P. Vincenzo Márchese, S. Marco

convento dei padri predicatori in Firenze illustrato e in

ciso ... (Florence: 1853). 5. Manet first went to Italy with his brother Eugene

in 1853.

6. For the drawings of The Mystical Crucifixion, see

A. de Leiris, 77ie Drawings of Edouard Manet

(Berkeley; University of California Press, 1969), pp. 45-46 and 93, nos. 2-6 repr.

7. See Cachin, Moffett, and Melat, no. 212 repr. 8. According to the entry for A Bar at the Folies

Bergere in the catalogue of the Paris/New York exhi

bition (see n. 1, above), Werner Hofmann compared the barmaid to "an antique deity" without citing a spe cific source. Unfortunately, the reference given in the

catalogue (namely, W. Hofmann, Nana Mythos und

Wirklichkeit [Cologne: 1973], p. 181) does not appear to be correct, and subsequent attempts to find the rel

evant page have failed.

9. The most challenging interpretation being that of

T. J. Clark, first formulated in 1977 and somewhat re

vised in The Painting of Modem Life Paris in the Art of Manet and His Followers (London: 1985), pp. 205-258.



manet and fra angelico

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