Amalfi Cathedral – Aleksander Gierymski | #visual arts

Amalfi Cathedral – Aleksander Gierymski

Aleksander Gierymski's work, depicting a cathedral in the small Italian town of Amalfi, combines three important themes that appeared in the artist's work at the end of his life – his interest in light as the main method of shaping a painting, the church (and the faithful) as a painting motif, and Italy as a place full of picturesque objects.

Even in the 19th century, Amalfi was already known for its tourist-friendly qualities. The town is located on the Amalfi Coast, which to this day still impresses with a view of the hills pressing up to the very seaside. It is also located close to Pompeii (about 40 km) and Naples (about 60 km).

It is therefore not surprising that Gierymski took an interest in Amalfi. Although the painting was made after his return to Paris in 1899, it is undoubtedly the result of the artist's stay in the south of Italy during winter two years earlier. It is worth noting that after the artist's visit to the Amalfi Coast, other paintings were also created – a view of the city itself on the coast (the work is currently lost, known only from photographs) and a sketch of the pulpit in the church in Ravello, a town a few kilometres away from Amalfi. Gierymski was not the only Polish artist who was interested in this part of Italy. Amalfi was also immortalised in the works of Karol Miller, Marian Trzebiński and Cyprian Lachnicki.

The building that particularly attracted the attention of tourists and artists was the 13th-century St Andrew's Cathedral, where the relics of the saint were believed to be located. In 1862, the city was hit by an earthquake, which severely damaged the church's facade. It was reconstructed by the Italian architect Enrico Alvini. Instead of reconstructing the late Baroque facade, an attempt was made to recreate it its original appearance. Thus, the former Arab-Normanesque style, typical of southern Italy, was maintained. In place of a relatively uniform white facade, only varied by architectural detail, various colourful elements appeared, which added a picturesque character to the temple's architecture.

It was the cathedral that became the most important motif of Gierymski's painting. We can see the church and the buildings of the town situated on a hillside. The square in front of the church is partially filled with people. An intensely blue Italian sky towers over it. If you consider the time on the clock to be accurate, the scene takes place around 5:20pm.

The moment captured by Gierymski is the beginning of a sunset, or more precisely, the transition from the so-called ‘golden hour’ (the moment of the most intense sun rays just before sunset) to darkness. Portraying this moment was one of the favourite tricks of European modernist painting. The artists often used this very time of day to show how light can shape elements of architecture or fragments of the landscape.

In the case of Gierymski's work, we have the impression that the facade is vibrant with the light flooding it. Strong sunshine brings out various details, and the cathedral’s decorativeness is what truly determines the exceptional character of this work. This was, by the way, a feature of this characteristic architectural style, then known as the Arab-Norman style. The buildings were supposed to shimmer in the sun in and delight passers-by with the various materials they were made of.

This effect is also enhanced by the visual division of the image into two parts – dark at the bottom and light at the top. This creates a contrast that highlights each of them. So, as we can assume, the choice of the particularly decorative facade of Amalfi Cathedral – seen during the ‘golden hour’ – was not accidental. It was an ideal material for Gierymski, who was then interested in different ways of presenting light in a painting.

The painting technique itself is also interesting. As Ewa Micke-Broniarek wrote in the artist's catalogue published in 2014:

The image draws attention to the heterogeneous structure of the painting layer. The cathedral facade and bell tower, illuminated by the sun, are painted with impasto, repeatedly applied paint, which creates a thick surface with a rich texture. Precisely modelled individual elements of the architectural decoration seem almost three-dimensional, like a bas-relief – in the illuminated parts the paint has a dry and porous structure, in the dark parts it resembles a shiny enamel, which is the result of glaze applied several times. The shaded foreground and the sky have also been textured, but the paint layer is much thinner here. Some figures of the staffage and the lanterns are almost transparent; their outlines have been applied to the surface of the painting after the paint has dried.

Let us take a look at the bottom part of the painting. We can see Italians rushing to the church for the evening service, but also trading under the statue of St Andrew or drawing water from the fountain. Gierymski also focused on details in this part of the composition – despite being immersed in deep shadow, we can see the intense redness of the handkerchiefs that some of the Italians are wearing or the greenery of the sold fruit and vegetables and the whiteness of the architectural details.

The final stage of Gierymski's work is not only his interest in light as an element in bringing out the shapes and colours of buildings, figures or things but also its symbolic meaning. For example, he paints the Roman Piazza Popolo, bathed in the sun, or the nave of St Mark's Basilica in Venice illuminated by sunrays.

As Michał Haake noted, the characters appearing in Gierymski's paintings, especially in scenes related to church interiors, can carry a certain meaning. They are not just staffage, but in a way, they summarise the metaphorical role light plays in a given painting. In the case of our painting, we would see the believers looking at the radiant facade of the church from the gloomy square where daily life takes place.

It is worth noting how Gierymski has framed the whole scene. The painter used a kind of ‘tangentiality’ in the successive layers of the painting, which are arranged one after another. Therefore, although we do not see the whole town situated between the mountains and the sea, we have no doubt what the surroundings are, and that the cathedral and the square are its most important parts.

Originally written in Polish by Jakub Zarzycki, translated into English by P. Grabowski

landscape painting

aleksander gierymski

polish painting of xix century