Hi, everybody. My name is Cecilia.
I'm an art history student at Harvard, as well as one of the Ho family
student guides at the Harvard Art Museums,
and I'm very excited
to have been invited by The Met to produce another are inspired makeup tutorial.
The look you see all my face is my attempt to recreate Bartolomeo
Coriolano chiaroscuro woodcut of a sleeping cupid,
which she created between 1630 and 1645.
Coriolano was a successful 17th century
Italian printmaker working in Bologna and Rome.
He created many prints based on works by the painter Guido Reni,
and this print is one such example. Cupid
The Roman God of desire, love and affection is shown close up his head,
tilting back in his shoulders, rolling slightly forward as he slumbers. His bow,
an attribute of his identity is partially visible in the foreground.
This print is an example of a chiaroscuro woodcut, which is a complex technique
in which two or more woodblocks are inked in different colors
and printed one after the other on the same sheet of paper,
creating an effect that can resemble a wash drawing.
This work was printed from two blocks, but others created
in this medium employ more blocks and colors.
My goals today are twofold.
Number one, to introduce you to this work,
its medium, and its art historical context.
And number two, to offer an exercise in close looking.
I think this act of recreation helps the eye to see more and to see better.
And I hope that by the end of this video, you'll be able to practice close looking
the next time you look at a work of art.
I'll strive to narrate what exactly I see in the print
and how I will then attempt to recreate that on my face.
And I'll offer art historical information
that will hopefully help you make more sense of what you see.
And so without any further ado, let's begin.
Part of what I think makes this
a particularly compelling work to recreate in makeup is its medium.
The Chiaroscuro woodcut technique was invented in Germany
in the early 16th century and soon brought to Italy where it flourished.
The word chiaroscuro is a portmanteau of the Italian words chiaro and oscuro,
meaning light and dark,
which together describe the visual effect that the medium achieves.
Conventional woodcuts are printed from a single block or matrix
that contains all the visual information that is to appear in the printed image.
Woodcut is a relief printing technique, meaning that it is the raised areas
of the block that receive ink and ultimately leave a mark on the page
using a metal tool,
the printmaker has to cut away all the negative space
so that the image stands out in relief on the surface of the block.
This is no different in chiaroscuro woodcuts, but rather than being created
from a single block,
the chiaroscuro woodcut involves
multiple blocks that each contain a different visual information
that is different elements that appear in the final printed image.
Coriolano's Sleeping Cupid was printed from two blocks a line block or key block
that printed all of the black lines
and a tone block that created the effect of blue, gray paper and white highlights.
Although it may look as though Coriolano printed black and white
ink onto a sheet of colored paper, the highlights are actually ornate areas
where the color of the white paper shows through these strokes
would have been gouged out of the tone block
so that the block printed the blue gray ink.
In all but those areas. Chiaroscuro makers usually
though not always printed from lightest or darkest inks.
Despite this, I'm going to start by recreating the black lines first.
I'm worried about smudging the lines I set down,
so I'm going to start with the areas
that I think I'm least likely to go over in successive steps.
I'll start by using an eyeliner pen to recreate those feathery lines
that express the cupids, eyelids and chin, and I'll trace over my lash
line and apply mascara to reflect the wobbly uneven line
with which Coriolano has captured the cupids eyelashes.
An understanding of the process by which this work was created
allows us to develop a finer appreciation of its technical achievements.
The crosshatch shadows, for instance,
would have been highly challenging and laborious to create.
Coriolano would have had to cut out a series of small lozenge shapes
from the woodblock, lining them up
perfectly so that the untouched areas formed a continuous line.
By contrast, you may notice that the white lines in this print appear
to have a freer, sketchier quality to them than the black lines do.
It is much easier to gouge out single strokes from a woodblock than it is
to gouge out everything except for a thin line.
The black and white lines in this image demonstrate opposite relationships
to Coriolano's hand.
The white lines record the motions of his hand,
whereas the black lines evidence the areas he avoided.
All right. So now we have the nose and chin and everything's
probably going to get a little bit more complicated from now on.
As you can see, the figure is
tilting his head back such that the left side of his nose bridge
on the viewer's right is a single straight line.
It casts a shadow in the form of these hatched parallel lines
down the other side of his nose bridge and onto his cheek.
I'm going to recreate those lines with the help of a couple of forks.
I might not be able to get all of those lines exactly.
But I'm going to try my best to capture the way that those lines
splay unevenly down the side of his cheek. While I'm at it I'll
also lay down those short little lines above his eyebrows and on his forehead
that suggests perhaps a gently furrowed brow or a little dips
in the surface of his forehead.
Guido Reni, who produced several paintings of sleeping cupids,
provided the design for this
print and Coriolano transferred and cut it into the woodblock.
It was not uncommon
for painters in Italy at this time to collaborate with printmakers.
Coriolano created some 24 known prints after designs by Reni,
a partnership notable for the artists' close collaboration.
Changing inscriptions on some of the other prints
that the pair issued suggests that Reni and Coriolano alternated in
assuming the responsibilities of initiating and publishing
series of their prints.
This may have allowed them
to share the costs and risks associated with these ventures.
And here we have an approximation of the nose.
As you can probably see, the massive hatching in the center of my face doesn't
look too much like the cupid head on.
But hopefully when I tilt my head back, it looks a little bit more like the work
I forgot to mention
before that I was using black face paint with the brush and the fork.
And now we'll move on to do the side of my face with the same technique.
The right side of the cupid's
face on the viewer's left is lowered and also cast into shadow.
There's more of that hatching, but this time also crosshatching to create
the look of especially dark shadow near the figure's temple and right eye.
After I attempt to recreate those,
I'll move on to capture
that feathery black outline on the other side of the Cupid's face
that begins at about his brow and extends downward to meet his neck.
The collaborative nature of this print's creation may challenge
some commonly held assumptions about the nature of authorship,
which we might conceive of as individual and all encompassing.
The authorship of this work may be understood in some sense
to be decentralized, Reni designed the image,
but Coriolano brought it to life in the medium of print.
This delegation of different phases of the creative process
was the norm for many Italian woodcuts from around this period.
Designers, block cutters, and printers often belonged to different guilds.
The expertize required to create a single print distributed
between multiple individuals serving different roles.
And I think with that, we have just about finished all the black lines.
I think the only black lines remaining are those on and around the mouth,
which I'll say for the very end , because I don't want them to smudge as I talk.
So now we'll move on
to do the white highlights, which I think really animate this print.
the white lines evoke protrusion, bringing forth
the rounded volumes of the nose, the cheek, the swell of the chin.
They exist wherever
the light catches and glints on the high points of the Cupid's face,
I'll use a mixture of white face paint and white eye crayon to recreate
all of those little strokes.
And since the cupid's eyebrows are fully white,
I'll just brush the white face, been through my own brows.
Interestingly, one writer seems to imply that Reni and Coriolano
may not have had a perfectly harmonious working relationship.
In his biography of Guido Reni, the 17th century art historian
Carlo Cesare Malvasia refers to, quote, "the fine engravers in France
whose work satisfied Guido more than did the wood engravings made on three plates
with much effort by Coriolano, who claims to have corrected and improved
many things in his prints and always irritated Guido with them."
End quote. Some scholars now point out that this may more strongly
reflect the biographer's attitude toward Coriolano's work than Reni's attitude.
And there we have it.
I think the only thing left to do is the mouth.
He has these two lines
forming a Cupid's bow that almost looks like a little mustache.
And some are hatching on the lower corner of his mouth where we might even imagine
some drool to be collecting.
The underside of the Cupid's bottom lip is outlined in white, where
it seems to be curling up to catch the light.
But the rest of his half open mouth is outlined in black,
and you can even see a couple of his teeth peeking through.
His top lip is just a little thinner than mine.
So I'm going to make a little adjustment
there and place that line just underneath the border of my own top lip.
Sleeping Cupid may be understood in part as a site of converging multiples.
It is the product of two blocks,
the final image wholly contained in neither as well as the product of
two artists, each of whom
contributed different and interdependent realms of expertise.
Finally, because it was made in multiple impressions,
it also allowed different collectors across Europe to enjoy the same image
at the same time creating a network of shared viewing.
And with that, I think this look is complete.
This is Bartolomeo Coriolano's Sleeping Cupid.
I know I look pretty, pretty startling facing forward right now.
But in any event,
thank you so much for joining me on this deep dive into Sleeping Cupid.
If you enjoyed this video,
hit the like button,
subscribe to The Met's Youtube channel
and comment below, which Met artwork you'd like to see featured next.
And if you haven't seen it already,
check out my previous art inspired makeup tutorial on The Met's YouTube channel.
Finally, if you'd like to share your looks with us on social media,
don't forget to tag us at #MetMuseum and use the hashtag #MetMakeup.
Until next time.
Special thanks to Mark McDonald, the Department of Drawings and Prints
at the Met, and to everyone else who helped bring this video to life.