Orpheus Charming the Animals vs.

¶ … Orpheus Charming the Animals vs. The Temptation of St. Anthony

The theme of Orpheus charming the animals was a common one in medieval and Italian Renaissance painting. It adopts a common trope of the Orpheus myth, namely that Orpheus was such a skillful player he was able to soothe all of the beasts of the forests. In this version of Orpheus Charming the Animals, rather than the immediate focus being upon Orpheus, the foreground features two fierce cheetahs. The presence of the cheetahs underlines the great singer's power. Their fierce gaze suggests that Orpheus can charm even the wildest beasts, and their foreground positioning suggests that the artist wished to emphasize this fact. The background focus is not upon animals but a wide, pale sky and a hazy horizon that is in direct contrast to the darkness of the grove. Nearly indistinguishable, shaded animals lurk in the smoky, blurry-lined sfumato of the background, but even they, their stillness suggests, are entranced by Orpheus' music.

Orpheus is small and somewhat to the side of the center of the painting. His red cloak is his only distinctive feature and even this is muted by the presence of a red macaw in the trees. With the lone exception of the cheetahs, the viewer gazes at the entire scene as if from a distance and it is difficult to see Orpheus' facial features. His gaze is gentle and impassive. What Orpheus represents is more important than his personal feelings in the scene, and his actions and the story of the painting are just as important as how he appears.

Orpheus is clothed according to the conventions of the period of when the work was composed, creating an even more striking contrast between the domesticity of the human figure playing the music in the focal point of the painting and the wild animals in the fields. The composition of the animals tends locates the more domesticated animals nearer Orpheus, with the 'wilder' animals in the foreground. Orpheus sits near different kinds of dogs, a striking paint horse, and a cat. A camel and a goat are also nearby, representing the slightly less domesticated farm animals. Birds are in the next circle of animals around Orpheus, or are seen flying and perched in the trees. Water buffalo, sheep, and other wildlife are in the distance. Some of the animals gaze directly at Orpheus while others gaze in the distance. Orpheus' 'spell' upon the wild animals is cast in concentric spiral -- the farther out, the farther away from human civilization. Representative animals like the horse and goat are highlighted by glowing light to show the diversity of animal types, just like the cheetah's presence in the foreground.

The painting Teniers' The Temptation of St. Anthony also makes use of a dramatic composition in the interior of the painting. It shows a symbolic 'story' rather than a portrait. The story is famous in the lives of the saints -- while St. Anthony was in isolation, praying the wilderness, he was tempted by images of what he had forsaken as a Christian by the devil and also subjected to physical tortures. Like the symbolic depiction of Orpheus, the saint is than flanked by other images which help tell the story of the life and underline the themes of the painting. In this painting, Teniers portrays St. Anthony sitting in a shaded desert grove. The saint's attention is wholly absorbed in his cross and with his holy books.

"The light source is natural, as with his other paintings of the same subject, and comes from the window to the left, leaving the shadowy creatures who surround St. Anthony half lit" (Kummer 2011). The sky, representing heaven and light is a small circle in the upper left-hand corner of the painting while the majority of the painting is shaded by the curving dome of the cave where the saint sits. The saint, wearing a simple blue robe, is flanked by very real-looking symbolic representations of sins. A buxom woman stands by the saint, representing the lechery with which Anthony was tempted. Devils hover above. Figures dressed in bright colors that are small and have impish expression upon their faces dance around him and engage in sin. However, most of the devils are portrayed as dark figures in the form of winged creatures. This creates a distinct contrast between the saint, the holy light of his practice, and the darkness of evil.

Both paintings feature a contrast of color as well as theme. The supernatural glow of the central saint contrasts with the darkness of temptation, just like the pure light of the music of Orpheus contrasts with the darkness of the wilderness. Both paintings, as well as depicting a subject, thus also convey an ideological point-of-view of the subject. In Orpheus Charming the Animals, even the wild beasts are stilled by the ability of Orpheus to play, reflecting the power of the human art of music. In Teniers' painting, the holy focus of the saint is so pure, even the very real-looking hallucinogenic temptations created by Lucifer contrast with his beatific, radiant light. "Teniers uses a buff colored ground and a thin layer of paint. Teniers was well-known for his subtle range of colors that were painted 'wet on wet'" which intensified the contrasts of light in his works (Kummer 2011).

Space and texture convey the relationships of the characters, given that both paintings tell stories about the subject's lives. For example, the image of the lustful temptation to Saint Anthony is rendered in a flat, matte fashion, as if she were a real, substantial person. Although she looks equally as corporal as Anthony, due to the bright light and lusty flesh tones of the composition, Anthony's absolute indifference convey the strength of his resolve and also the realities of the temptations of the devil. The animals Orpheus sings to are symbolic of their places in the animal kingdom, yet have an individuated quality, from the bright, contrasting color of the paint horse to the glowing smile of the camel that is sharply rendered, in contrast to the softer lines of the rest of the painting.

Both of these allegorical works make use of idealized anatomical depiction. The images of the human frame, in their anatomical symmetry, recall classic images of Greece and Rome, and the classic subject of Orpheus directly references this period. The Renaissance was a time of revival of interest in antiquity, versus the suppression of interest in pagan subjects in the era immediately previous to it. "In the literature of ancient Greece and Rome the artists and philosophers of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries discovered an aesthetic attitude that greatly attracted them, namely, a yearning for perfection based on the desire to create something ideally beautiful" (Seiferth 2011). In Orpheus' symmetrical form and the idealized representations of the animal kingdom, this yearning is manifest.