Holbein / Thomas More : a hidden dialogue?
“I owe you the truth in painting and I will tell it to you.” ( Paul Cézanne to Emile Bernard, October 23, 1905)
This assertion suggests more than one questions: what is the truth? Is there a speech-act in painting? If so, from the painter? Or from the subject is being painted? From the viewer? All these questions require a reflection on dialogue: is it absolutely fundamental then necessary in all our interactions? Therefore we shall start with a rather quick analysis of the concept of “dialogue”, then we shall consider the sketch of More’s “Family portrait” which survived Holbein’s final painting lost in a fire.
Martin Buber stressed that the dialogue between two interlocutors enables each one to know not only each other but also, and with the same importance, oneself. Therefore, according to Buber dialoguing is an absolute need of communication and knowledge between I and You (“Je et Tu”, Paris: Aubier, 2012). In his analysis Buber shows that the “I” and the “you” could be either oneself or two individuals. This enables one to discover the other and oneself. Finally, we can say that communication concerns at minima 4 individuals although we can see concretely, in this particular situation between Holbein and More, only 2. The painter and More discover in each other and in themselves their constitutive values. But how do they communicate in this special situation: one painting and the other pausing? The tool used between the two men is probably not the language-limited-to-words as Aristotle understands it in “Politics” where he sees it as the only means to communicate and being a member of a community. Jürgen Habermas seems to go along with him in his book “Théorie de l’agir communicationnel” (1981) when he conceives, as Buber did, communication being fundamental for a society and its values. In this case, communication and community depend on each other and man is at its center. For Roman Jakobson, “to communicate” has a parallel meaning as “to envoy, to transmit”. In this case, the linguistic code is not uniform between the individuals, neither is their context.
If the term “communicability” has been already used by Kant in his “Critique de la faculté de juger” (1790) to underline a sensus communis, we owe the meaning of the importance of intersubjective communication to Francis Jacques in his book “L’espace logique de l’interlocuteur” (1985). Through Jacques’ analysis communication becomes a sharing act, thus the dialogue, and our need to create links. On the other hand, if dialoguing helps building out a confrontation of ideas producing an act, we must stress that the dialogue is also a key in drama, a narrative, and in any other work of art if we admit there is a dialogue between the artist and his/her creation, then between this creation and the reader or viewer, or listeners, and so on. Dialoguing is then a key in our development, be it with the usual words of a language or an act, or the creation of a work of art.
Indeed, painting is a language that enables the artist to become an inventor. Robbe-Grillet, in his book “Pour un Nouveau Roman” (1963) writes that a painter has in his mind lines and colors giving him no longer the power to destroy the objects he/ she sees, but he/ she also invents the objects around. The picture shows to the viewer the moment and the moments, the stalled time supposing many others already taken in his/ her privacy. As writes the Japanese painter Hokusai (1760-1849), drawing and painting are penetrating the mystery of objects, whatever they are. The heart of things, the heart of the world. The artist looks for the living point, the only true point, our true point. Then, if language is understood as an association of words and if painting follows a similar road but with lines and colors, at times mixed and confused, both can be seen as a creative and personal expression. In fact, painting is expressing thoughts which will exist only after the completion of the picture, in a timeless movement. Painting is, like language, an ensemble of time and events linked in an infinity of immobilities and nothingness. And these characteristics are experienced in all actors: the subjects, the painter, and the viewer eventually.
Painting is in a way like tracing lines, it is the evidence of the Same, a narcissistic tendency. And it is also the Other because the sign, be it line or point, or a linguistic sign is driving us, always, to the communication point, to the discovery of men in our horizon-of-the stranger, and of whom we are always aware as being the others: awareness of the others for me, inasmuch as my others (Husserl, L’origine de la géométrie, 1974).
As literature, painting digs in its possibilities and its possibles in order to discover this bursting of life in death which would be knowledge’s harmony finally embraced. Because painting is as unachieved as language, or it would be perfection itself… maybe the truth promised and looking for by Cézanne …
In a picture there is the questions’ thickness regarding the nature of the picture, its function and relationship with the painting hand and the painted object. These questions are related with the ones that are still asked about the written text, of what More was a specialist by taste and duty.
The picture’s nature is essentially somehow outside man although in a trajectory toward inner man. Some sort of a loop. Painting has all the characteristics of our creations: its exteriority, its volatility, its arrogance, its independence, and our fascination for it as well as our power on it. It is used by man to expressing the unthinkable thought. Painting looks for the canvas’ life, looks for the understanding, through its formatting, of the painter’s desire, his/her mise-en-abyme. The act of painting is the relation it itself establishes between the painter and the spectator, between the painter and him/herself. It is according to Alain, a moving instant, always somehow unachieved, something unfinished, something of the infinity, belonging to the semantics, but also to the purely human because these lines going toward beyond the canvas always come back to their trace that it develops as the word “end” at the end of a book takes the reader beyond the text and this is well illustrated by the suggestions and changes More wished when looking at Holbein’s sketch. One can say that drawing or painting is a stopped instant, a seized instant. Our mind is captivated by the painting as a whole, jailing the painter’s and the viewer’s imagination. Therefore, representation is an act existing before and beyond conscience as Foucault says in his book “Raymond Roussel” (Paris, Gallimard, 1953.
Let’s see now how we, postmodern viewers of the painting see or read the drawing, mainly the central character and commissioner, Thomas More. Or should we rather say “interpret” the family portrait: Is this portrait going to enrich our knowledge of both the painter and the complex man who was More? But did it first and primarily make both men more knowledgeable of themselves and of each other?
When he arrived in England Holbein was already standing out of the Hanseatic community thanks to his skills as a miniaturist and a portraitist. But working on a large format will give the miniature an impressive monumentality, as the family portrait of the Mores shows. More had probably in mind to leave to posterity a true visual document about the intellectual context of the 16th century, especially the intellectual rich context of his family as a true and great example of a new education. Besides, “More was already enthusiastic about paintings by the standards of the day. There were clearly many works in his home and chapels” as writes Moyle Franny (189). Furthermore, Holbein’s talent as a portraitist gave him a kind of human lens, thus giving a potential superiority of visual art over the written or spoken word, although writing is part of many of his portraits as he often named the characters he painted. Be it as it may, this family portrait shows the spectator a true humanistic influence: past and present taken in the future’s movement. It is within this religious, moral, intellectual, and economic atmosphere that Thomas More is shown in this picture, and in which he also lived daily.
Indeed, Holbein seized this group in a key moment of the development of society. The painter himself was still influenced by the finishing Gothic as we mentioned it, although he was grasping enthusiastically the pictural technique of the new era: precise presentation of the faces and clothes in order to underline the individual characteristics. Holbein the Young and Thomas More truly belonged to the same intellectual and cultural period. Holbein had an excellent knowledge of the importance of Thomas More, and this latter knew also his own importance in the kingdom as well as in his house. Jeanette Zwigenberger in her book “Holbein le Jeune – L’ombre de la mort » ( London : Parkstone Press,1999) stresses very well this reciprocal knowledge. Indeed, she underlines that Holbein, in the drawing that is left for us to see, pictures More seated on his father’s left who stands a little bit behind him. Thomas More is clearly at the center of the painting, his face turned toward a window, therefore looking outside or inside and taken in deep thoughts well away from the other members of the portraits. Who actually decided of the decorum of the picture? Both men, Holbein and More, were well aware of the passing of time: More a deeply faithful man and Holbein at least a man of a Christian society absolutely aware of the passing of time in and of our world. Be it what it is, one can see in the background, almost on More’s head, a clock fixed on the wall, clocking time for the Chancelor and the family. History will make this clock the finger of fate: ten years later this almost idyllic picture of the group will be gone into some blurry memory for each character. The curtain behind the group will never open on another play, another path of life. Curtains on walls as works of art and protection from the cold were common in the aristocratic families of the time. But it might be that it was also a very convenient décor for the painter who had at least an intuition of the passing social condition of the subjects on the picture. Fixing a moment is taking it off its past, and suggesting an uncertain future, a mysterious future. Characters on any painting are out of their daily life. The painter sort of glues them in an environment which is artificial and true at the same time as it helps the viewer not only to an understanding of the social standing in life of the characters but also to desiring to get inside of them. Somehow, environment creates the mystery of the character inciting, thus, the spectator to try to perceive it. The truth of the characters is linked with the closed curtain, is linked with the probably ticking clock and guessed by the travelling painter. Truth is also linked to the intellectual atmosphere of the period and to this well-educated family. This education is illustrated by the books in all the characters’ hands, except for the jester and John and Thomas More, be them Bibles or prayerbooks as in the first sketch, or literature books as in the second sketch. Probably the first version was more in touch with what Holbein knew of the family who deeply practiced Christian faith. That the second version of the sketch shows the religious books (some of them) exchanged with literature books is certainly an example of the inner discussion of More aware of the importance of politics in his life. More was convinced that his children and relatives should look forward to the opening of the world then. Would the absence of book in More’s and his father’s hand be a cautious political gesture? Or showing a kind of paterfamilias superiority?
The setting father and son, tells us probably more about the circumstances of the painting from the point of view of the painter: indeed, it might not have been absolutely More’s doing but rather the painter’s due not only to More’s respect for his father as we already pointed out, but indeed due to Holbein’s own respect for More and what he knew about him in 1527. But what is attracting the viewer’s attention is that Judge John More’s face shows a kind of serenity and an almost mused confidence, well set in his red coat and, one can guess, seated on a comfortable armchair, while his son Thomas, dressed in full attire of his charge as a chancellor, has a very determined, serious, almost closed face to the surroundings and the objectives of his sitting as we mentioned. Thomas More shows here introversion, perhaps doubt, a disquiet and constant research for a sense of life and being. The sharpness and inward look of this portrait contradicts the whiteness of the faces and guimpes of the women around and before him but actually he does not need them. Holbein sensed here the freedom and limits of each character in the group within the traditional, cultural, and social frame defined consciously or not by Thomas More.
Indeed, there is in the picture an atmosphere of freedom, although we must understand it in the context of the epoch. The characters seem to be in the process of arranging, forming a group for the painter. Nothing rigid in them: Judge More is here listening to some information, Mother Iak, the far left character seems to be just entering the room, while Cecily Heron (one of Mores’s daughters) is turning her head back to Dame Alice on the right side of the portrait maybe to make sure she is well posted. Margaret, the oldest daughter of Thomas More seems to have chosen to be seated at Dame Alice’s feet but her posture is slightly turned past Mother Iak, as if she were looking for someone or something outside the picture. As her grand-father and her father, she looks absorbed by some thoughts. Holbein here pictures Margaret truly according to her reputation: a very intelligent lady, completely in harmony with her father’s attitude, somehow an exception in the family. Or is she thinking of her child about to be born? Nonetheless, her serious face, a bit indifferent from the group, is an angle of the intellectual triangle formed by the definitely three great intellectuals of the family: Judge More, Chancelor More, and learned Margaret. The other two men: John, son of Thomas, and Henry Paterson the jester show a particular attitude: John seems to be here because he has to, and dutifully reads a book, probably a prayer book in the sketch we are looking at. Slightly behind and on the left of his father, as he should be, eyes on his reading, apparently out of the commotion of the setting being done, but serious as the heir of such a family should be. The rich thickness and the slightly touching garments of both Thomas More and John his son suggests a sort of tenderness and pride of Thomas More for his son who is whom he must be. At least it is what the traits of the painting seem to underline. Henry Paterson, the jester, is the end dot of the line of the family males. But he is the only one looking straight at Holbein and the eventual viewer. Frowning, just coming in here from the back room where daily life is going on in spite of the event, he seems to question the artist. The jester knows the whole family through his observations. Somehow an unsaid confident, a kind of interface among the family members. His glance at the painter seems to say that now the group is finished, closed. Nobody else is a member of the family.
Of course, More and Holbein certainly discussed the setting before drawing the group. But some details belong to the painter alone: the importance of the curtain and, more, of the clock, the personal gestures of the characters: the glances, the soft and lively postures, these are the results of Holbein’s glance. He knew them all beyond whatever Thomas More showed or have told him. As Henry Paterson says to Holbein and to us: “Here they are, all in a closed group, all unique in this instant, as the clock ticks…” All around Judge John More and Thomas More, the only seated characters (or personages?), serene in this peaceful although a bit impromptu moment under the brush of Holbein who used it as he were a photographer. Consciously or not Holbein saw the life received and shared by all the members of the family and gave thanks for it to both John More and Thomas More. The lightning of life traced by the painter is the expression of his own joy at painting, for himself, for Thomas More, for us viewers in the 21st century. Holbein joins Thomas More’s thoughts in the portrait, a lively portrait of More’s at peace with his faith as in the Seventh poem in the Pageants: “Eternity”:
Me need not to boast, I am Eternity,
The very name signifies well,
That mine Empire infinite shall be.
Thou mortal Time every man can tell,
Art nothing else but the mobility
Of sun and moon changing in every degree,
When they shall leave their course thou shalt be brought,
For all thy pride and boasting into nought.