My King, feel not for Callisto
Do not concern yourself with sympathy Hysterical tears beguiling weaker men
She begs mercy for her own transgression Remember, she has earned her nakedness
Fear not nakedness The Church counsels against sins of the
Flesh. This is neither sin nor flesh Simply a pagan fantasy rendered in oil
Laid upon canvas for your delight My liege,
relish this vision of Diana, She is pale as moonlight,
plump and nude, her chastity unbroken by your gaze upon her breast, sensuous and
beautiful and unveiled for your courtly pleasure
See her pleasure in Callisto's shame Compelling her nymphs to reveal
Humiliation laying with despair, it gives honour to your virility, bears witness to
your majesty My King,
witness this little world of lust Hallowed by gilt framing and
respectable allegory, I ask of your Majesty As I stand before you, recent
heir to Callisto's misfortune. Would you have me similarly uncovered?
Do I have a choice?
Hi, I'm Maz Hedgehog, I am a poet and performer based in Manchester whose work
is genuinely inspired by folklore and mythology. So that's why we're
particularly delighted to have Maz here today, to talk about their response to
the Titian painting, 'Diana and Callisto.' So it's really lovely to be in this room,
where we have these three works by Titian, and we are going to be focusing
on this one here, as we said, the 'Diana and Callisto' and it'd be really
nice, if you're watching this, just taking a moment to look at the painting,
thinking about what you see and what you notice, and we've got the chaste Goddess
of the Hunt, Diana, there, just sitting on this, on this kind of, it's like a throne
isn't it, this kind of throne structure. You get a real sense of the hierarchy
between her and her followers, the nymphs, and she's pointing down to
actually her favourite nymph, or had been her favourite nymph, whose name was
Callisto, and you can see just here, at the bottom side of the painting here,
Callisto, who is being handled by the other nymphs. And this is the moment when
they are showing her pregnant belly to Diana. They're exposing what has
happened to her, and you really get that sense, that pain on her face, the
redness under her eyes, she really is being humiliated and being shamed,
because she was raped. And she's raped by Jupiter, and Jupiter disguises himself as
Diana, and then he rapes her, she becomes pregnant and, of course, they're
not supposed to be having sex. They're supposed to be virgins. Well, with men,
Exactly, exactly, and so we have this moment here, and it really
gives me that kind of 'Mean Girl' vibe, when you look at this, yeah.
They want to ingratiate themselves with Diana, and they're doing
everything they can in order to do this. They're holding her, they're pulling
back that fabric that we can see in
front of her, and it's almost, in a way, we could read this painting as if this is
the rape almost happening all over again. She immediately, she, you know, banishes
Callisto, and she has her transformed into a bear. What was your, kind of,
inspiration and your starting point for creating a poem with this? So I think,
for me, the story of Diana and Callisto, the story of Callisto
specifically, is one one, again, of a woman being punished for a man's misdeeds, and
here you have, again, this deeply humiliating moment for Callisto, you have
Diana being incredibly unforgiving, as she is want to be,
and yet, you know, it is depicted so beautifully, and also think about it as a
series that Titian did do for Philip II of
Spain, where you have, 'Diana and Actaeon' 'Diana and Callisto' and 'The Death of Actaeon',
and, for me, it was quite notable in the way that it almost shows the
relationship between artist and client. Because, obviously, of the paintings that were
commissioned for Philip II, only 'Diana and Actaeon' and 'Diana and Callisto'
were actually delivered. 'The Death of Actaeon' wasn't, and the striking
difference between them is that the 'Death of Actaeon' is much darker, much less
obviously appealing. Whereas, here, you have,
it's quite bright, it's quite light, and you have for me, most notably, acres
and acres and acres of naked female flesh. And I can imagine that Titian,
creating a piece of work for a young king,
wanted to create something for him and delivered to him these paintings that
would titillate. And you have here
the most, perhaps, the most humiliating experience a woman can potentially go
through, and her violation being rendered in a
way that is sexually appealing. So, just thinking
about that idea of that commission for Philip II,
how do you kind of read that in relation to
your, the work that you've created? How do you interpret that?
I think, for me, you know, I am interested in the relationship between artist and
commissioner, partially because I am an artist who gets commissioned. And, you
know, the ideal commissions are, for me, almost ones like these, where I am given
that level of free rein that Titian was, but, I think, whenever I'm
looking at these beautiful paintings and these great works of art, especially the
ones that were done for a specific customer, for a specific client,
I have to wonder, did the painter themselves like it? You know, how did
they see it as part of their body of work? You know, did they look at what we
consider to be masterpieces and cringe a little?
Do they look at these, you know, great works and go
"mmmm, that wasn't, that's not me", or did they love them as much as we
do? And you know, perhaps, in this poem, what I'm trying to do, perhaps, is
bring the gaze, and bring the wants, needs, and desires of the client
into the frames. I think that, you know, it is easy to forget that the artistic
sensibilities of the customer and of the client are often, at least as important
as those of the artist, because it so heavily shapes artists - what we see - I
mean, it's no accident that galleries like these are full and full and full of
pictures of naked white women because that is what the clients and customers
and commissioners wanted from their artists, and so that is what they, that's
what ended up being produced. Yeah, no, I think that's a really important point, in
in terms of that idea of who are these paintings being made for, and who
are they being made by? And, predominantly, they're being made
by men for men, so I think that's a really important point that you've
picked up on. And this idea of the
'poesie', as Titian coined these works, so this idea of poetry
quite literally in paint, and this is what he's trying to achieve.
As the counterpoint to all of the
nudity, is that you have, at the core of it, still a deeply heartbreaking story
that is still being depicted as being the heartbreaking, you know, I see
Callisto and I feel for her. In the poem you get a sense that, for me, as a poet,
the deep sympathy I have for Callisto, and the many Callistos across
mythology, across history, and across the modern day, who experience things like
this day in, day out, and most never end up in the National Gallery.
Yeah, thank you.