The Madman's Gallery - The Strangest Paintings, Sculptures and Other Curiosities from the History of Art by Edward Brooke-Hitching is an exploration of art through time, beginning in 38,000BC right up to 2021 and comprises drawings, paintings, sculptures and more. The author makes clear what the reader can expect to find in this illustrated book:
"While the bulk of art history books focus on the revolutionary and traditionally revered works, The Madman's Gallery is intended to offer an alternative guided tour of art history, focusing instead on the oddities, the forgotten, the freakish, all with stories that offer glimpses of the lives of their creators and their eras." Page 10As I was reading the first half of the book, I didn't think it was an eccentric exploration of the strangest artwork and oddities ever made, but now that I've finished I can begin to appreciate the collection as a whole.
The Portrait of Gregor Baci - who was a Hungarian nobleman impaled with a lance during a jousting tournament but who shockingly lived another year with the sawn-off piece of wood entering his right eye and exiting through his neck - sent me off to Wikipedia to find out more.
Looking at the portrait of Federico Da Montefeltro by Piero Della Francesca it's impossible not to notice the notch missing from the top of his nose. The initial injury was the result of a jousting accident in 1450, where an opponent's lance pierced his helmet, shattered his nasal bridge and caused the loss of his right eye. According to historical accounts and medical historians, Federico intentionally had surgeons amputate the remaining bridge of his nose to widen the visual field of his remaining left eye. Jousting is dangerous people!
Religious artworks abound in this collection, and predictably the work of Hieronymus Bosch is included and later the controversial and highly offensive 'work' of Andres Serrano (Immersion) was mentioned but thankfully not included in the book.
I couldn't help wondering what 17th century viewers made of The Miraculous Lactation of St Bernard (1645-52) where Alonso Cano depicted the moment when the twelfth-century St Bernard received a miraculous stream of breast milk from a statue of the Virgin Mary. To me it looks both offensive and utterly ridiculous, making it an understandable inclusion in The Madman's Gallery.
I greatly enjoyed learning about Mr Barker's monster panoramas that caused Queen Charlotte to vomit into a lace handkerchief in Leicester Square in London 1794. They were gargantuan hand-painted 360 degree panoramas that spanned 250m2 and they gave the Georgian population of the time the equivalent of a virtual reality experience as they viewed the various city views, landscapes and battle scenes making some viewers feel queasy.
Francisco Goya's Black Paintings which includes the famous Saturn Devouring His Son (1819-1823) that so shocked and interested me at High School is also included.
However a new to me painting was The Coronation of Ines De Castro in 1361 (c.1849) by Pierre Charles Comte which captures the crowning of the wife of the King of Portugal, four years after her death. The King at the time ordered his deceased wife's body to be exhumed and crowned four years after her death in order to legitimise their children together. What a bizarre event and it definitely makes for a strange painting.
In more recent works, The Artist is Present performed by Marina Abramovic in 2010 at the Museum of Modern Art in New York is included and became the subject of The Museum of Modern Love by Heather Rose years later.
The Madman's Gallery - The Strangest Paintings, Sculptures and Other Curiosities from the History of Art by Edward Brooke-Hitching paints a good picture that will appeal to readers with an interest in art and art history. I'm glad I read it, but I think I preferred his other book, The Madman's Library - The Strangest Books, Manuscripts and Other Literary Curiosities from History.
Carpe Librum!
