JACOB VAN LOO (Sluis 1614 – Paris 1670)
Venus and Adonis
Signed on the rock in the lower left JV
Oil on canvas
31 ½ x 27 inches (80 x 69 cm.)
YOU CAN”T ALWAYS GET WHAT YOU WANT!
Nostalgia. It is thought to be one of the most important forces in contemporary culture. Nostalgia for music, food, culture - think Neon, cowboy fashion (Ralph Lauren 80’s, 90’s, 00’s), phone cases made to look like cassette tapes, full on nostalgia is in our cultural DNA. As humans, we don’t seem so focused on creating completely new qualities but using the archives of the past – ideas, motifs and aesthetics selected and combined from different periods to create the current one. There are periods of time that society feels defined the artistic world: the Renaissance, the Baroque, the Golden Age. Crowned as times of heightened creativity – which of course they were, these periods were also heightened times of nostalgia themselves.
The images of Greek mythology are some of the most common themes in European Art. Dating from Antiquity through to the Renaissance and even in contemporary art, the trials, tribulations, and conquests of mythological figures has been revisited, revised, and reimagined by some of the greatest artists to ever live. During the Renaissance humanism renewed this interest in Greek and Roman mythology, believing that studying and imitating the classic culture of the ancient Greeks and Romans would produce a cultural rebirth after what scholars saw as the decadent and “barbarous” learning of the Middle Ages.
The Renaissance was a culture re-birth and themes of how humans affected their own surroundings carried art into the age of Baroque. Here the nostalgia is tangible. The style began at the start of the 17th century in Rome, spreading rapidly through the entire of Europe. Encouraged by the Catholic Church as a means to counter the simplicity and austerity of Protestant culture, the Baroque style took all the themes of humanism and drilled down deeper. The overall impressions were movement, emotion and drama with every painting telling a story and sending a message, often encrypted in symbols and allegorical characters, which an educated viewer was expected to understand. Baroque painters worked deliberately to set themselves apart from the painters of the Renaissance. In their compositions they chose the moments of the greatest drama. They wanted their characters to express the emotions that the Renaissance had only touched on but that the great tragedies of antiquity had explored.
The story of Venus and Adonis seemed to incapsulate so many of these beliefs and gave Baroque painters the chance to communicate their ideas of humanism. It ticks all the boxes; movement, emotion and drama. In our beautiful version by Jacob van Loo, the scene depicts the moment when the goddess Venus bids farewell to her lover Adonis, who is about to die in a terrible hunting accident. Adonis’s long flowing locks and Venus’s voluptuous figure create a softness of the characters, making them feel more real. Twisted in a struggle – a fight against fate – the viewer feels the agony of Venus and the arrogance of Adonis. The exact things humanism was intended to highlight. Humans were more than just accepting their destiny, humans could alter their outcome in life, humans could be well, human.
The subject of Venus and Adonis captured the imagination of many humanistic painters. Titian painted a version, and Reubens too to name a few. The Baroque painters had found a favorite subject. One that not only touched on their own beliefs but also triggered nostalgia for a time when actions meant something. It was the idea of being present and in the moment, something touted often in our own society. With the creation of social media, on demand everything (!) and people moving on the street like sheet engrossed in their phone rather than their surroundings, you do have to wonder. Will people look at this as a time of humanism or of darkness and ignorance? It’s a fair question.
29 March, 2023