Crucifixion Diptych, 1455, by Rogier van der Weyden.
Crucifixion Diptych, 1455, by Rogier van der Weyden.
Follow in Sly’s steps to see a grand work by Philadelphia’s famous son
One sound reason for visiting Philadelphia is to see the famous painting The Gross Clinic by one of the city's favourite sons, Thomas Eakins. It is at the imposing Philadelphia Museum of Art.
The neo-classical building, brown rather than marble-white, is approached by a great flight of stairs made famous by the first Rocky film. People run up and down them and have their photo taken in front of a bronze statue of Sylvester Stallone. The tradition is also continued by young and old when they make the plaza at the top of the stairs a place for gymnastics and dance.
The museum is a maze that houses an immense collection. The Gross Clinic, painted in 1875, is part of a big collection of work by Eakins, who was born in the city and lived there most of his life except for two years' training in Paris.
His time in Europe polished his skills in perspective and anatomy but he largely rejected the values of European salon painting.
He was his own man. No Greek gods and goddesses or history painting for him. Realism was his god with attendant American idols of science, machinery and his own concept of truth.
The Gross Clinic memorialises one of the city's most accomplished surgeons at a time when effective surgical intervention on the interior of the body was just becoming a major part of medicine.
It is a huge painting about 2.5m high. It shows Dr Samuel D. Gross standing tall to explain his procedures in the midst of a demonstration amphitheatre at the Medical School in Philadelphia.
He has paused from working at the operating table where his assistants are gathered around the patient. He holds a scalpel and there is bright red blood on his hand. The patient's mother is close by but cannot bear to look at the incision which an assistant holds open with a retractor.
To a modern eye the absence of gloves, masks, white gowns and all the trappings of sterile conditions is unthinkable. The surgical instruments lie open in a box. The position of the patient is puzzling. He is lying on his side between the assistants with his thighs at right angles to his body.
His lower legs push forward and display his grey woollen socks. He has osteomyelitis and the incision is to enable bone to be cut from his left leg.
The group of surgeons make a pyramid with the head of the famous man at the peak with the lighting making his hair halo-like around his strong features. The students are lost in the darkness of the theatre but two figures are in the entranceway. One is the artist emphasising he is there to bear witness to the reality and truth of this triumph of medicine. The painting always had admirers but was controversial in its time. The realism was considered shocking, particularly the blood. The work was tucked away in a variety of institutions but was eventually bought for the National Collection for US$68 million in 2006.
By that time Eakins' reputation, once soiled by scandal, had undergone revaluation and both he and the painting were considered among the greatest products of 19th-century America. Philadelphia raised the money and the painting came back to the city.
The vast museum certainly honours great paintings. Among the European works is a large diptych done about 1455 by Rogier van der Weyden. It is given a special setting so it can be seen from a distance through a cloister.
Northern Renaissance painting is often small, intense and crowded with detail. Van der Weyden breaks the pattern. This work is large, simple and powerful, with an almost abstract setting. The background is a wall hung with red drapery. The sky beyond is black. Only a skull and a thighbone establish Golgotha. The crucified Christ hangs from the cross in the moment of death.
The left panel is occupied by the two principal mourners, Mary and John, the best-beloved into whose care Christ gave his mother. Mary has swooned in anguish and is supported by John who stares fixedly at his master. The robes they wear, palest of pink and blue brushed into white, are not the elaborate fabrics such as brocade which feature elsewhere in Rogier's work, but rhythmically eloquent plain garments which link with Christ's agitated loincloth.
The whole is an unforgettable image of intense inward suffering.
Portrait of a Man, 1470, by Antonella da Messin
The Italian Renaissance is well represented too. Antonello da Messina is credited with bringing the technique of oil to Italy where fresco and tempera had been the rule. He made a number of small portraits in oils. One gem in the museum is a portrait of a young man. Da Messina has captured his lively personality and intelligent glance. In a later century he would have been an alert student at the Gross Clinic.
