Dominic Dharam approached the Chazen essay in a different manner than Veronica Thao. Where Veronica offered a politically contextualized reading of two artworks, Dominic developed an analysis anchored almost exclusively in the works themselves, with the exception of a quick reference to an episode from Matthew. This includes a bravura interpretation of a Dutch still life, an infamously esoteric style of painting the interpretation of which requires almost a glossary.
In this essay, I analyze both Bernardo Strozzi’s Christ’s Charge to St. Peter, and Still Life w/ Game, Fowl, and Vegetable by Adriaen van Utrecht. Both were painted with oil on a canvas surface.
When I first stepped up to the Strozzi (1635-1637), I found nothing special about it; it seemed like yet another religiously themed painting. Suddenly, the mood changed as my gaze met the man in the center. He was staring intently back at me! This added a lot of significance considering the title. It is not merely a scene where Christ is handing a golden key, symbolic of his kingdom, but also a scene in which the viewer participates. The viewer is in a way, a voyeur into this event. While this momentous occasion takes place, the man in the center gazes intently at the audience as if asking “Now what are you going to do with the key?” Another man to the left of the frame is turned around, but has that same expectant look, asking the same question out of the corner of his eye. The scene is frozen in that very moment in time, and pulls the the audience headlong into it.
The painting works, because the symbolism is very complete. The key symbolizes the kingdom which Jesus gives to Peter in Mathew 16:18-19, the Church in its infancy; the two men staring at the audience symbolically extends the charge of the key outside of the frame to the audience itself; the columns in the top-left symbolize the looming Roman oppression against the early Church, and the blue sky and empty space in the top-right-third of the painting symbolizes the room and breadth of possible growth. The logic is organic, because Strozzi works from the true meaning of the passage in the Bible: Christ did not entrust his kingdom to Peter alone, but rather to every human being. Most of all the medium of communication is undeniably, unshakable, potent. It is often said that the eyes are the windows to the soul. If anything, the men in the painting peer into one’s soul as if it were a deep pit, searching for what one has done or accomplished with the key.
The second painting does not succeed. It is a still life with a plethora of vegetables and small game set on a table. For me, it is hard to derive much meaning from still life paintings, but this painting is an exception. I have seldom seen still life paintings extended outside of just the subject. It is always contained within the frame. In the [Utrecht] piece, the action seems to want to push out of the frame. The painter may have done this to vividly show bounty or lavishness. A theme of humanity’s dominance over beast and land can also be derived from the fact that some of the vegetables are bundled up in bunches, and some of the animals are bound by the feet.
[Utrecht] may have convincingly delivered a theme of abundance, and even a theme of man’s dominance over nature, but fails when we consider the consequences of that delivery. If there is over abundance because of man’s mastery over nature, then why is the subject seemingly escaping from the frame? A few of the chickens are shown hanging off the table, feet unbound, and one is even hung from a rope, its head outside of the frame. [Utrecht] may have wanted to show abundance, but inadvertently gave power to nature instead. All of the abundance in the still life seems to escape, or be too much for the frame. This in turn argues that for all of man’s “mastery” over nature, it is by no means absolute, or complete.
In conclusion, we can see that even though great skill can be applied to artwork, the measure that separates the wheat from the chaff includes careful thought about space, and the logical consequences of the action. Flemish’s work, although very technically merited, shows how even in constructing one’s own rules in a painting, one has to be careful not to break them in the grand scheme. Strozzi’s work is an example of organic logic, following both the contextual rules in the Bible, and extending them to the audience in a gripping gaze.
