When representing evil Bermejo came up
with an odd frightening composite being,
but when he paints good his technique is
just as exquisite but instead of
creating a fantastical beast, he works
with the things of this earth. My name is
Daniel Sabrino Ralston and I'm the CEEH
Fellow in Spanish paintings here at the
National Gallery.
Today I'll be talking about this
extraordinary painting of Saint Michael
triumphing over the devil which was
painted in Spain by Bartolomé Bermejo at
about the end of the 1460s. I'll be
trying to answer a question. Why is this
demon sprouting serpents and what does
that tell us about how artists represent
good and evil?
[Music]
Towering over us is the Archangel Saint Michael,
an absolute vision with technicolour
wings and glittering golden armour. He
raises a sword above his head about to
strike down at the demon that he's
pinned against the ground.
In the Book of Revelation, Saint Michael
leads an army of angels into battle
against the devil and his hosts, and cast
them down from heaven. This is the moment
we're looking at here. The defeat of evil
by the forces of good.
Bermejo's demon, the devil incarnate, is a
strange and grotesque creature. It has a
toothy gaping maw and on its head are
two large horns in a forest of spikes,
and then there are those unsettling
jewel-like red eyes,
and then it also seems to be growing a
cactus out of the top of its head. The
more closely you look, the weirder it
gets.
The devil's torso is another face and
its nipples are eyes, and out of that
grinning mouth that opens up on its
stomach, slithers a snake which looks
like it's making its way toward the man
who's kneeling besides Saint Michael. The
snake slides along underneath one of the
devil's hind legs and the upper part of
the leg, which Bermejo shows us upside
down, is another snake out of whose mouth
extends a scaly avian leg.
The devil's upper arms look just the
same, they're snakes that seem to be
either eating or disgorging scaled Limbs,
and if you look up you can see that the
devil has wrapped his spiked tail around
the Archangel's leg. Of course the devil
has wings too, ones that are dull and
moth like, the opposite of Saint
Michael's brilliant ones.
There's something that strikes us now as
a little funny about this serpentine
demon. It's easy to read the expression
almost as a smile of sorts and the
gesture that makes rings a little false,
but in the late Gothic period, when this
panel was painted, this was probably
quite a fearsome image depicting a beast
unlike anyone had ever seen in real life,
and yet because of the extraordinary
detail with which it was painted, a beast
that was plausible, the stuff of
nightmares. This kind of imagery could
have come from print sources or perhaps
even Medieval Bestiaries, which compiled
different kinds of animals and beings.
by creating unnatural creatures composed
of the mismatched parts of different
animals, like this one, artists could
demonstrate their creativity and their
ability to depict evil in new and
terrifying ways.
And the Bible refers to the devil as
both a serpent and a dragon, so there are
already visual models to play with.
Representations of the devil seem to
have been a special opportunity for 15th
century artists like Bermejo to have a
little creative fun.
In a work made by the anonymous Spanish
painter known as the Master of Belmonte,
we see a memorably weird devil that has
some of the same characteristics as
Bermejo's, although it's painted with
considerably less skill.
Bermejo, as we can see in this painting, was an
absolute master of illusionism. One of
the greatest Spanish painters of the
15th century.
He even painted the plants so
realistically that we can be sure of
what they are.
And the plants continue the painting
symbolism. On either side of the devil's
upraised wrist we see foxglove and
Mandrake which both have evil
connotations. The poppy in the lower
right hand corner, whose petals are close
to the colour used for the devil's eyes
and the spots on its wings, was linked
with death and so its placement near the
devil, who is about to be defeated, can
only be intentional.
Bermejo, also known as Bartolomé de Cárdenas,
was born in the city of Córdoba in
southern Spain sometime around 1440. We
don't know exactly when he was born, and
we don't know when he died, but he was
last documented in Barcelona in 1501.
This is just one of two paintings that
he signed in his career.
On the unfolded piece of paper in the
painting are the words Bartolomés
Rubeus. Rubeus is the Latin for red and
it's the translation of his nickname Bermejo,
which means red or reddish in Spanish. He
was an itinerant artist who travelled
widely in search of work all across
Eastern Spain.
While we have scattered information
about his whereabouts throughout his
career, we don't know where he trained
and how he came to develop such an
extraordinary facility for painting and
oil.
The technique which allowed for great
richness of colour and fine detail, had
first been perfected by painters from
Northern Europe, like Jan van Eyck or Hans
Memling.
Bermejo's repertoire of stylistic
effects was highly refined, and it's
almost certain that he had seen
paintings by artists from the low
countries which were collected by
Spanish rulers and Merchants. This
painting is his first documented
commission which he made at the request
of Antoni Joan, lord of Tous, who is
portrayed beside Saint Michael.
Joan requested that Bermejo paint St
Michael, which was likely the centre of
an Altarpiece for the Church of San
Miguel in Tous, a town Southwest of Valencia.
Bermejo's portrait of Joan is incredibly
refined. His grey purple silk gown has
been carefully described, and we can read
most of the lines in the psalter that he
holds.
Another example of Bermejo's utterly
masterful manipulation of oil paint is
the stunning fabric of Saint Michael's
cloak, which has billowing gold and red
Pockets, which create spaces of light and
shadow across the picture.
When representing evil, Bermejo came up with an
odd, frightening, composite being, but when
he paints good his technique is just as
exquisite, but instead of creating a
fantastical beast, he works with the
things of this earth, but heightens them
to the edge of reality. Saint Michael is
surreal.
The figure is graceful and beautiful, and
his body traces a curve across the
centre line of the painting.
He wears a jewel encrusted diadem and
seemingly otherworldly armour.
The armour however is very much real.
The detail that Bermejo has included
makes it probable that he worked from a
real suit of Italian field armour from
the 1460s that had been made for export
to Western Europe.
But he did take some license with his
material. The fact that the armour is
gilded gold across the entire suit, as
well as the plentiful jewels and Pearls
that decorate it, and you can see some if
you look closely at the lower part of
the chest armour which is called a
plackart, and you can see the rubies and
sapphires that alternate along the edge.
This armour, while it was based on reality
goes far beyond it, and similarly the
domed boss on the small shield or
buckler is meant to be rock crystal, an
extraordinarily precious and fragile
material. No earthly soldier would ever
carry anything like that.
Saint Michael fought the devil outside
the gates of the Heavenly Jerusalem and
on the Archangel's chest armour, as well
as just below that a little bit more
faintly, we can see a ghostly outline of
the city's walls. Bermejo likely picked
up this idea from Northern painting. The
astounding sheen of the armour, which is
really just a plain metal surface,
becomes in Bermejo's hands another image,
another piece of decoration. An imagined
divine location which the patron Antoni
Joan looks up at and he hopes that he'll
be able to get to with the help of the
altarpiece.
Whether depicting good or evil, Bermejo's
capacity for invention is astounding.
Combining together mythical and hideous
beasts, he gives us a potent vision of
evil and by suggesting a world more
beautiful than one that could ever exist,
he tells us what he and his viewers
hoped they might eventually see.
Thank you for watching and we'll see you
next time.
[Music]