The Moorish Chief , 1878. © 2014 Philadelphia Museum of Art Looking down at us, a tall man in white robes stands in the doorway of an impressive palace. People have marveled at this painting’s details and speculated about its subject for over a hundred years. But no one knows for sure who the man is because this is not a portrait—the artist used a costumed model standing in a Moorish palace. The painting is filled with many realistic details. Look at the man’s clothing: he is dressed in the kind of hooded cloak sometimes called a burnoose and typically worn by Arabs and Moors. On his head is a kaffiyeh (headdress) that almost completely covers a crimson cap underneath. Look for two richly damascened scabbards (decorated sword covers) stuck into his gold -embroidered belt. One scabbard is empty. What is he holding in his right hand? It’s a slender sword, the blade pointed downward like an extension of his muscular arm. The background of this painting is based on the Alhambra, a famous fortress overlooking the city of Granada, Spain. The Alhambra was built during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries by Moors, Muslims from northwestern Africa, who ruled large portions of Spain from 711 CE until 1492. Although Spain is part of the European continent, it is located just across the Strait of Gibraltar from North Africa. The painting probably gets its current title, The Moorish Chief, from the Moorish architecture in the background. But when it was first exhibited in 1878, it was called The Guardian of the Seraglio . Seraglio (“seh-ral -yo”) is the name for the special quarters in a Muslim residence where the women of the household were sheltered from strangers—so this title identified the man as guard of the women in the palace. However, after being purchased by Philadelphia collector John G. Johnson in 1892, the painting was listed as The Alhambra Guard . This title makes sense, since the palace in the background resembles the Alhambra. Finally, when the painting came to the Philadelphia Museum of Art, people began calling it The Moorish Chief. Do you find that these different titles make you see different things in the painting ? Perhaps the painting has had so many different names because people see different stories in it. What title would you give this painting ? The artist, Eduard Charlemont, made the figure and the setting look so true to life—almost more real than a photograph!—that you might wonder how such an amazing illusion could be created with oil paint. To render different textures so precisely, Charlemont used a smooth wood panel as a painting surface instead of canvas. Look at the folds of fabric betwen the fingers of the left hand. Can you see any brushstrokes? To create this detailed figure, Charlemont probably combined information he found in travel books with his studies of live models and with ideas from his imagination. Illusionistic paintings of people from faraway places were extremely popular at the annual Salon exhibitions in Paris. philamuseum.org/education/resources/63.html
Posted on: Mon, 14 Jul 2014 12:52:13 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015