Petrarch's First Sight of Laura. 1861. Oil on panel. 36 x 32 ¾ inches (91.4 x 83.2 cm). Image courtesy of Martin Beisly Fine Art, London.
Although Cave Thomas is perhaps best remembered for his associations with artists from the Pre-Raphaelite circle, prior to that time he fell under the influence of the Nazarenes in Germany. Germanic influences upon his work continued throughout his career. Despite devoting much of his artistic output to mural painting, a few examples of works by him on a smaller scale are known. Throughout the 1850s, he exhibited successive works at the Royal Academy, including Laura in Avignon in 1852, which The Art Journal described as "a clever work of Pre-Raffaelite character, but with less affection of drawing and proportion." This earlier depiction of Petrarch's muse was one of a number of paintings that the artist produced that pictured episodes from the time of the Renaissance. Other works from this period included scenes from the lives of Savonarola, Boccaccio, and Dante. These paintings have much in common visually with the work of the Nazarenes and with artists like John Rogers Herbert, who tended to favour historical and religious narrative subjects.
Petrarch's First Sight of Laura is one of the artist's most enigmatic, yet thoroughly engaging paintings. It was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1861, no. 553. Unfortunately there are no surviving diaries by Madox Brown for the years between 1859 and 1864, so sadly we do not have Brown's thoughts on one of Thomas's most important paintings. It is mentioned in several biographical notes about the artist, however, having been painted when he was at the height of his creative powers. It goes beyond the usual Victorian treatment of mediæval subjects, conjuring a vivid world of courtly love and Christian piety, full of unexpected detail, and bathed in resplendent colour and light. As a pictured episode from the life of the fourteenth-century Italian poet Petrarch, it sits comfortably alongside better-known images of Dante and Beatrice by artists from within the Pre-Raphaelite circle. Thomas's painting even features as the cover image for some modern editions of Petrarch's Canzionere.
The painting was first exhibited a year after the publication of Thomas's treatise Pre-Raphaelitism Tested by the Principles of Christianity. Although Petrarch's First Sight of Laura is essentially a secular subject, the artist has imbued the composition with religious motifs. The figure of Laura displays benevolence to a beggar woman, whilst her head is bathed in an almost divine light. The poet's first sight of her is one devoid of earthly desire, although he stands between the worlds of Christian abstinence and the attraction of a heavenly beauty. A pair of doves at the bottom corner of the painting symbolise love and peace, but also the Holy Spirit.
The lines that appear in the catalogue for the Royal Academy exhibition in 1861 are taken from Susanna Dobson's 1775 translation of J. F. A. De Sade's Life of Petrarch and accord with Cave Thomas's depiction of the scene.
On Sunday in the Holy Week, at six in the morning, the time of matins, Petrarch, going to the church of the monastery of St. Claire, saw a young lady whose charms instantly fixed his attention. She was dressed in green, and her gown was embroidered with violets. Golden locks waved over her shoulders. Her neck was well formed, and her complexion animated by the tints of nature, which art vainly attempts to imitate…. She was not only magnificent, but elegant, in her dress, particularly in the ornaments of her head, and the manner of tying up her hair; and we have seen she wore a coronet of gold or silver; and sometimes, for variety, a garland of flowers, which she gathered herself in the fields." [Life of Petrarch]
Early reviews of the painting (seen above, in its frame) when it was shown at the Royal Academy were mixed and certainly not extensive. A reviewer for The Spectator merely called it "ably drawn and firmly painted" (587). The Builder only pointed out that it "was amongst the more interesting of the remaining works" (333).
A critic for Punch gave a slightly more detailed appraisal of the painting: "Petrarch's First Sight of Laura, by Mr. Thomas, is aptly placed as a pendant for Mr. Holiday's Dante and Beatrice, and both pictures have their admirers. In the latter, Petrarch is perhaps a little too effeminate in appearance, and indeed seems almost less of a man than his mistress. Laura is pretty enough to justify the supposition that the young poet's devotions that morning at matins were somewhat divided in their object" (49). The Punch reviewer's description of Thomas's figure of Petrarch as "effeminate" may be justified. The artist could have used a female model, or perhaps a male model with something of an androgynous appearance. This attempt to idealise the poet's likeness follows Thomas's practice of giving his principal figures a heightened aesthetic countenance. By contrast the supporting figures within the composition are much more temporal in their demeanour.
It is unknown which source Thomas used for his likeness of Petrarch. Although there are many supposed portraits of the poet, most date from long after his death. Petrarch's costume in Thomas's painting is loosely adapted from one of the best-known supposed likenesses of the poet, popularised by engravings after a portrait by Stephano Tofanelli. The angle of the head, however, is closer to that of Raphael's depiction of what is thought to be Petrarch, standing beside Laura, in The Parnassus fresco in the Vatican Palace. In Thomas's painting the figure of Laura is dressed in green, as described by the accompanying lines from the Life of Petrarch that appeared in the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition's catalogue. Like Thomas's depiction of Petrarch, her appearance also seems to be derived from more than one so-called likeness. One possible source is a portrait of Laura de Noves within Andrea di Bonaiuto's Trecento fresco within the Spanish Chapel of the Church of Santa Maria Novella in Florence. Thomas may also have referenced engraved profile portraits of Petrarch's muse from a much later date.
The other figures within the composition do not appear to be based upon any historical or imagined portraits, but instead must have been painted directly from available models. The artist has meticulously dressed his figures in mediæval costumes. A cowled woman carrying an infant in her arms looks as if she has stepped out of one of Madox Brown's Chaucerian paintings, whilst a boy in the foreground looks out at the viewer with the same diagonal gaze as the boy in D. G. Rossetti's drawing of The First Anniversary of the Death of Beatrice (Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery). The retinue to the left of the principal figures is completed by a bearded old man in profile removing his hat, and a characterful study of an old beggar woman with outstretched hand, receiving alms from the passing Laura. To the right of the composition, a group of monks process through an arched gateway towards the viewer. It is tempting to speculate that their facial features might be based upon friends of the artist. One monk looks a little like the artist Charles Lucy, one of Thomas's closest friends. Another bears some resemblance to Holman Hunt, although it seems unlikely that the latter would feature in one of Thomas's paintings so soon after the debacle surrounding his most recently published treatise, which highlighted the divergent views of the two artists concerning religious paintings.
It is unusual that contemporary reviews of Petrarch's First Sight of Laura fail to mention the obvious influence of the Nazarenes upon the colour, mood, and arrangement of the figures within the painting. Although their work had an impact upon earlier artists like William Dyce and Daniel Maclise, it is possible that Thomas's more recent association with the Pre-Raphaelites meant that the influence of the Nazarenes upon this particular painting was overlooked. William Vaughan's seminal volume German Romanticism and English Art rightly recognises Thomas's place alongside British disciples of German Romanticism, and draws parallels with works by artists like Peter von Cornelius, whose Academy Thomas attended whilst in Munich. The catalogue for the 1994 Heaven on Earth exhibition at the Djanogly Art Gallery, University of Nottingham, observes similarities between Petrarch's First Sight of Laura and that of another German-trained British artist, Frederic Leighton's Cimabue's Celebrated Madonna is Carried in Procession through the Streets of Florence. This is evident not only in the treatment and arrangement of the figures, but also in the painting of the architecture and the bright blue sky. Like Leighton's early masterpiece, Petrarch's First Sight of Laura is also essentially a processional painting, albeit with the movement confined to a more restricted picture space.
A Note on Petrarch and Laura
Francesco Petrarca, commonly known as Petrarch, was born in the Tuscan city of Arezzo on 14 July 1304. He spent much of his early life in the French town of Avignon, where several popes resided during the fourteenth century, the so-called Babylonian Captivity of the papacy. Petrarch studied Law at Montpellier and Bologna, but developed an interest in Latin literature and a passion for writing, corresponding with his friend Boccaccio amongst others. His first large-scale work, Africa, based upon the life of the Roman general Scipio, secured his fame and he became Poet Laureate in 1341. Travelling widely around Europe he collected ancient manuscripts and discovered a collection of Cicero's letters, the Epistulae ad Atticum, which is one of the most reliable sources of information for the period leading up to the fall of the Roman Republic. Petrarch is credited with being one of the first humanists, and also for creating the concept of "The Dark Ages," due to his disenchantment with the era in which he lived. He became Canon at Monselice, near Padua, in 1361. Although his career in the church precluded him from marrying, he is believed to have fathered two children out of wedlock that he later legitimized. Continuing to travel, Petrarch met with Boccaccio in Venice and later in Padua. Petrarch died in the nearby town of Arquà in 1371.
Petrarch's most famous literary work, the Rerum vulgarium fragmenta, included a collection of 366 lyric poems, also known as the Canzoniere. These love poems were inspired by a beautiful woman named Laura, whom he first encountered at the church of Sainte-Claire d'Avignon in 1327. As she was already married, Petrarch was to have little or no personal contact with her. Even her identity is not certain, although she is thought to be Laura de Noyes, the wife of Count Hugues de Sade, an ancestor of the notorious Marquis de Sade. After Laura's death, the poet found the grief even greater than the despair of not being with her whilst she was alive. There are obvious parallels between Petrarch's distant love of Laura and Dante's unrequited love for Beatrice. Through Petrarch's Canzoniere and Dante's La Vita Nuova, the ethics of courtly love were raised to a divine level.
Petrarch's legacy as a writer and a humanist impacted upon many writers and philosophers from successive centuries. His writings inspired nineteenth-century poets like Christina Rossetti, Algernon Swinburne, and Robert Browning. Episodes from the life of the poet and his unrequited muse were of similar inspiration to artists throughout the centuries, in particular Petrarch's first encounter with Laura at the church in Avignon. Thomas's Laura in Avignon of 1852 was not the first painting of that subject to be exhibited at the Royal Academy. In 1840 Henry Nelson O'Neil exhibited The Meeting of Petrarch and Laura at the Royal Academy, no. 505, where it is certainly possible that Thomas saw the painting. O'Neil's interpretation of the subject is very different from Thomas's much later Petrarch's First Sight of Laura. O'Neil places their meeting within the church at Avignon, whereas Thomas has the action take place outside. The verses accompanying O'Neil's painting support Thomas's al fresco picturing of the poet's first encounter with Laura:
It was an ancient custom for the inhabitants of Cabrieres to go on Good Friday to the chapel of Saint Varan, situated on the island formed by the two branches of the Sorgues, to worship the bones of that saint. Laura, with this intention, set out a little before day-break on the morning of Good Friday, April 17th, 1327, and finding herself fatigued, reposed herself awhile under the shade of the trees that grew by the river. It was there that Petrarch, going to the island for the same devotional purpose, first met her, was struck with her beauty and youth, followed her into church, and ceased not to love her during his life. Nature created him a great poet, but Laura made him that of love. — Velatello. [qtd. in The Exhibition of the Royal Academy, p. 28]
O'Neil's painting is very much an early Victorian creation, with little regard for depicting accurate historical dress or hairstyles.
It is possible that Marie Spartali Stillman saw Thomas's painting of Petrarch's First Sight of Laura at the Royal Academy exhibition of 1861, even though she was only seventeen at the time and did not start taking art lessons from Ford Madox Brown until 1864. Her watercolour and gouache painting of The First Meeting of Petrarch and Laura was exhibited at New Gallery in 1890. Stillman's picture is again very different from Thomas's, although Laura is once again shown giving alms to an old woman. For the first time in a depiction of this scene, however, there is some sort of interaction between Petrarch and Laura. The attention to detail in costume and setting is in complete contrast to O'Neil's treatment of the subject from fifty years earlier. Stillman exhibited a number of paintings at the New Gallery on similar themes, including Dante at Verona in 1888, The Enchanted Garden of Messer Ansaldo in 1889, and Dante and Beatrice, scene from the Vita Nuova in 1891.
Thomas also made a watercolour sketch for his painting Petrarch's first Sight of Laura. In 1863 The Art Journal announced that a sketch in watercolours for the painting was to be displayed in London, Manchester, and Liverpool as part of an exhibition organised by the new Society of Painters in Water Colours (28). After the exhibition, individual pictures could be purchased, or would be awarded to subscribers in a prize draw, and the money raised was to be paid towards the Lancashire Relief Fund. A note in The Reader stated that many of the artists would surely lament at parting with their sketches and that "Mr. Cave Thomas's beautiful drawing of Petrarch's first Sight of Laura must also have been given up with regret" (44).
Links to Related Material
- Laura in Avignon, by Cave Thomas (1861)
- The First Meeting of Petrarch and Laura, by Marie Spartali Stillman (1889)
- Laura of Avignon / Petrarch's Laura at Avignon by Eleanor Fortescue-Brickdale (1913)
Bibliography
"Art. Water-Colour Painters – Lancashire Relief Fund." The Reader I (10 January 1863): 43-44.
The Exhibition of the Royal Academy. Vol. 69 (1837). Google Books. Free Ebook.
"Fine Arts. Royal Academy." The Spectator XXIV (1 June 1861): 586-87.
Heaven on Earth: The Religion of Beauty in Late Victorian Art. University of Nottingham, Djanogly Art Gallery, London: Lund Humphries Ltd., 1994.
Catalogue entry for Petrarch’s First Sight of Laura. Martin Beisly Fine Art, London.
"Our Roving Correspondent." Punch, XLI (3 August 1861): 49.
"The Royal Academy Exhibition." The Builder XIX (18 May 1861): 333.
"The Royal Academy Exhibition." The London Review and Weekly Journal of Politics, Literature, Art and Society II (11 May 1861): 558.
"The Royal Academy Exhibition." The Saturday Review XI (25 May 1861): 531-32.
Vaughan, William. German Romanticism and English Art. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1979.
"The Water-Colour Painters' Lancashire Relief Fund." The Art Journal New Series II (1 February 1863): 28.
Created 1 February 2024