Love in Renaissance art of Shakespeare, Sidney, Hilliard, and Holbein

¶ … Renaissance Art

An Analysis of Love in the Renaissance Art of Sidney, Shakespeare, Hilliard and Holbein

If the purpose of art, as Aristotle states in the Poetics, is to imitate an action (whether in poetry or in painting), Renaissance art reflects an obsession with a particular action -- specifically, love and its many manifestations, whether eros, agape or philia. Love as a theme in 16th and 17th century poetry and art takes a variety of forms, from the sonnets of Shakespeare and Sidney to the miniature portraits of Hilliard and Holbein. Horace's famous observation, ut picture poesis, "as is poetry so is painting," helps explain the popularity of both. Indeed, as Rensselaer W. Lee observes, the "sister arts as they were generally called…differed in means and manner of expression, but were considered almost identical in fundamental nature, in content, and in purpose" (Lee 196). In other words, the love sonnets of Shakespeare and Sidney and the miniature portraitures of both Hilliard and Holbein share a single artistic nature -- specifically, the love of the poet for his subjects and love of the painter for his. This paper will analyze the nature of poetry ("a speaking picture") and painting ("mute poetry") through the sonnets of Shakespeare and Sidney and the portraitures of Hilliard and Holbein, distinguishing between the painters' and the poets' love for their subjects, and exploring the similarities and differences between the two mediums.

Context

Although the differences between the art of poetry and the art of painting are significant, the two crafts were often described in similar terms during the Renaissance: Forrest Robinson's work on Sidney, for example, emphasizes the visual aspect of the poets' language, and dicta like Horace's were never far from 16th and 17th century artists' and admirers' minds. Moreover, Shakespeare writes in Hamlet the epitomic description of the purpose of art in the Dane's lecture to the players: "Suit the action to the word, the word / to the action; with this special observance, that you / o'erstep not the modesty of nature: for any thing so / overdone is from the purpose of playing" (3.2.17-20). Ultimately, Hamlet tells the artist, the goal is "to hold, as 'twere, / the mirror up to nature; to show virtue her own feature, / scorn her own image, and the very age and body of / the time his form and pressure" (3.2.21-24). Art, therefore, was the mirror by which they saw themselves. The fact that the mirror was used to portray love reflects the primacy given to secular and sacred, humanistic and spiritual, love at the end of the medieval world.

That world, primarily Catholic and unified, had become fractious and religiously pluralized. This fact surely had its effect on how the theme of love was to be portrayed in art. Shakespeare attempted to distill the finer points of love into his sonnets, defining for a revolutionary world what "love is" and what "love is not." Shakespeare's sonnets are infused with a universal sense of both love as ideal and love as everyday reality. Such appeal was not misplaced, and such a distinction, moreover, was not uncommon. Hans Holbein, for example, "did not care if a man was Protestant or Catholic," but did take a special interest in those who were "intelligent, educated and conversable" (Johnson 302). He, like Nicholas Hilliard, specialized in portraying in precise and intimate detail the unspoken words of visual likenesses. What they set out to do in their miniature portraitures was to capture in a visual and highly stylistic way the accurate reflection of men such as the decorated Sir Walter Raleigh and women such as ornate Marguerite de Navarre: people whose lives were of some importance in the shaping of the world around them. These were the new standard bearers of a new age, and the artists' duty was to capture their "virtue" or their "scorn," as Shakespeare so succinctly suggested.

However, it is necessary to remember that the medieval world was an Age of Faith, in which the love of truth was demonstrated by men like Thomas Aquinas, the scholastic who dedicated his Summa Theologica to exploring the relationship between faith and reason. With an emphasis on both revealed and reasoned truths, Aquinas reflected an age in which erotic and philial love was measured by supernatural love. With the advent of humanism during the Renaissance, a radical shift in perspective, away from the supernatural and towards the natural set the framework for a re-interpretation of love with a greater emphasis on eros.

The Poets' Love

Dante dedicated La vita nuova not to his wife but to Beatrice, his first love. Petrarch wrote his famous sonnets for Laura rather for the unnamed mother of his children. Sir Philip Sidney's sonnet sequence Astrophil and Stella was for Penelope Devereaux, "and not his wife, Frances Walsingham," and the majority of Shakespeare's sonnets were to either a young man or a "dark lady" (Greenblatt 129). While each poet represented different aspects of love in art, from eros to agape, the theme of love in any form proved exceedingly popular throughout the Renaissance. At the end of the medieval world and the advent of the modern world, as religious, social, political and economic revolution occurred, the theme of love in poetry was an important bridge between the medieval and the modern.

But "as is poetry, so is painting," and the art of miniaturizing the complex world of the Renaissance in the 16th and 17th centuries became a way for the artist to prove himself. The painter's use of the pen and the poet's use of language were put to the test in a medium that demanded a lot in so little.

Sidney did not hesitate to state the resemblance between the nature of painting and the nature of poetry in his Defense of Poesy. He defined poetry as a "speaking picture," and echoed the sentiment of both Aristotle as well as what would be Hamlet's by stating that poetry "is an Art of Imitation…a representing, counterfeiting, or figuring forth to speake Metaphorically" (Hogan 9). This sentiment may also be seen in Sidney's "Loving in truth…" from Astrophel and Stella. Love was as connected to truth, as objective reflection in painting was connected to the accurate portrayal of real character.

And yet Sidney portrays a subjective character to love, as well. He anticipates the coming centuries in which the nature of art is transformed by the nature of the world around it; in which the forms and modes of expression of the old world are dispatched in favor of new forms of expression and new ideals. That Romance should follow naturally out of the demise of the medieval age and the establishment of Enlightenment ideology should be no surprise for those who understand that idealistic nature of the Enlightenment doctrine, divorced as it was from the rather objective sense of reality dictated by the ancients who came before. Sidney, while emphasizing and promoting objectivity in poetry as well as in painting, implies an altogether different object of his gaze in "Loving in truth…" Rather than looking outward, the poet looks inward, into his own heart, where he might find the proper verses that will speak of his love.

The first line of the sonnet states Sidney's problem in composing a sonnet on love: his verse does not match the truth of his love: "Loving in truth, and fain in verse my love to show." He is unable to set into words the feeling that he wishes to convey to his lover that she might know the extraordinary dimensions of his love. He looks elsewhere for inspiration: "of turning others' leaves, to see if thence would flow / Some fresh and fruitful showers upon my sunburned brain," but fails to find the inspiration needed to fulfill his objective. Instead, he finally realizes, at the sounding of his Muse, to look within himself and therein find the appropriate words: "Fool,' said my Muse to me, 'look in thy heart, and write.'" The introversion of the gaze is significant: it shows that the lover in the new, modern world will not base his love on something real and tangible and good outside himself but rather on the "feelings" and ardor of his own heart. It is a subjective transference. Sidney sets the stage for the change in the nature of both art and love in the modern era.

His contemporary Shakespeare, however, approaches the nature of art and that nature of love in a different way. If Sidney approaches love subjectively, Shakespeare approaches it objectively, describing it in its various manifestations, from erotic to spiritual to fraternal kinds.

In Sonnet 129, for example, Shakespeare gives a harrowing description of sexual addiction removed from all love and propriety: "The expense of spirit in a waste of shame / Is lust in action; and till action, lust / Is perjured, murderous, bloody, full of blame, / Savage, extreme, rude, cruel, not to trust… / Past reason hunted… / Past reason hated." Unlike Sidney's sonnet, this does not turn inward to find the words to give voice to passionate love, but rather looks outward at the effects of love -- specifically, at the effects of love that is not directed to a proper end.

This notion of love having a proper end is important in the sonnets of Shakespeare. It establishes and roots him in the medieval world, which held to the idea of first principles. Love, according to Augustine, and other ancients who helped set the foundation for medieval thought, came from God and was restless until it returned to God. Sin, as Shakespeare describes in Sonnet 129, was misplaced love -- love that was not directed ultimately to the God from which it emanated but rather inordinately to one of God's creations, rather lover or beloved. Love, in other words, had to be ordered, which is what Shakespeare implies in a Sonnet that objectively shows what happens when love is misdirected and given to lust.

However, Shakespeare could just as well show the other sides of love as well. He reflected the ironical aspect in the way lovers treat one another, through knowing and accepted flattery, through silly praises and humble acceptance.

In Sonnet 138, he presents a humorous admission of the lies we tell ourselves to keep the peace: "When my love swears that she is made of truth / I do believe her, though I know she lies, / That she might think me some untutor'd youth, / Unlearned in the world's false subtleties." In each example, Shakespeare provides a deep look into the nature of humanity: he puts a mirror up to nature and reflects human love exactly as it often appears -- without pretension and without affectation.

Shakespeare examines love, again, in two different ways in Sonnets 116 and 130. In the first, love is treated in its most ideal form -- as an uncompromising force (indeed, as the greatest force in the universe); in the latter sonnet, Shakespeare treats love from a more practical aspect: it is viewed simply and realistically without ornament. Yet both sonnets are justifiable in and of themselves, for neither misrepresents love or speaks of it slightingly. Indeed, Shakespeare illustrates two qualities of love in the two sonnets: its potential and its objectivity.

In Sonnet 116, Shakespeare defines love by way of truth. He begins not by launching into a discourse on the nature of love -- but on the nature of marriage, which, he implies, is built on commitment and truth: "Let me not to the marriage of true minds / Admit impediments." If two people are honest and truthful then they will have understood just what is expected of them in their marriage vows -- therefore, the poet sees no reason to object. Love follows on truth, he seems to say.

In fact, this must be so -- for the same principle applies in Sonnet 130. After an entire sonnet of lines in which the poet denigrates his mistress, he still finally refers to her as is his love despite it all, simply because she is unique in and of herself and the other half of his own self. She is full of human faults and failings, but "as rare / As any she belied with false compare."

Still, Sonnet 130, while it alludes to a kind of definition of love in practical and ordinary terms, does not provide as substantial a definition of love as is found in Sonnet 116. Sonnet 116 states that "love is not love / Which alters when it alteration finds, / Or bends with the remover to remove: O, no! It is an ever-fixed mark, / That looks on tempests and is never shaken; It is the star to every wandering bark, / Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken." Here, Shakespeare lays down a series of conditions that must be met before love can be called love -- beginning, of course, with the use of the negative to highlight the positive. To explain what love actually is, he first says what love is not.

First, Shakespeare states in Sonnet 116 that love, once it is applied, can never be moved or taken back -- or else it never was really love in the first place. He implies that love is constant, much like the Apostle Paul does in his epistle. Shakespeare seems to correspond to the Christian principle that love bears all things -- it "looks on tempests and is never shaken." It suffers even the worst that is thrown at it; if it does not, it is not love.

Love, writes Shakespeare, in Sonnet 116, is as permanent as the stars in heaven. It is the guiding principle of all earthly wanderers because it is true and reliable; it may be trusted when mankind's own compasses break or lose the way; it may be leaned upon to get one through the most confusing times and the darkest nights of the soul. Love is, like a star, a light in the dead of night -- and if it goes out, so too does life.

However, love is also something that is invaluable, "whose worth's unknown." It cannot be measured because it is infinite. It can be utilized and men may reach it and enjoy its fruits -- in other words, its "height" may "be taken," and may even be taken rashly and without respect for the awesome nature of love itself. But love that is true will always follow through, it will always be constant, and will not stop when conditions and situations try to oppress. That is the nature of love, as Shakespeare sees it.

The language that Shakespeare employs to express this nature of love is very telling, too. In Sonnet 116, love is equated to a star, to truth itself, to eternity (which cannot be altered by time's effects): "Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks / Within his bending sickle's compass come." Time will do away with all things -- all temporal beauty and attraction. What remains, however, is love -- that eternal bond which lasts even "to the edge of doom." Love does not stop loving after so many "hours and weeks" but continues right on even to death. This is the most important aspect of love -- and it returns the reader to the beginning of the sonnet, which began with the thought of marriage: the marriage vows are "till death do us part" because it is a vow to love and love "bears it out even to the edge of doom."

Furthermore, Shakespeare asserts that this definition is definitive: "If this be error and upon me proved, / I never writ, nor no man ever loved." In other words, what he has just said about love is absolutely true or else there is no such thing as love at all. Indeed, this thought may be seen in Sonnet 130 as well -- where love is seen in its more commonplace practice. Love, according to Shakespeare in Sonnet 130, must be shown to people who fail to measure up to standards of gods and goddesses. It must be shown to average people, whose breath stinks, and whose looks are lost. Love in Sonnet 116 is simply defined for two people proposing to marry. Love in Sonnet 130 is defined for people who are already in a relationship and now must bear it out to the "edge of doom."

Sonnet 130, for instance, builds upon the theme that Time undoes all physical charms and highlights imperfections. The poet plays upon these imperfections and views them clearly and objectively -- and yet does not see them as an impediment to love. Love is, after all, not love that "alters when it alteration finds" -- when it, in other words, finds that what it loved has changed into something else or behaved differently; it continues to love all the same. It is patient, kind, long-suffering, etc.

Shakespeare illustrates the kind of things that love must suffer (and does so humorously in Sonnet 130). The language in this sonnet is different from the more exalted language in Sonnet 116. Here it is simple and even critical: "My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun; / Coral is far more red than her lips' red; / If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun; / If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head." He makes his love out to seem like a veritable freak of nature -- an ugly, unpretty decrepit thing. Yet, none of this moves him to call her anything but his "love," because Love does not alter when it alteration finds.

Shakespeare goes on in Sonnet 130, describing the woman with whom he has a relationship: "I have seen roses damask'd, red and white, / But no such roses see I in her cheeks." Her looks are pale and nothing beautiful. "In some perfumes is there more delight / Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks." Her breath does not smell lovely, the poet states (clearly mocking the romantic poetry of the day, which goes on at length about the wonderfulness of love's object). Shakespeare on the other hand shows the object of his affection as being nothing grand or worthy of exultation: "I grant I never saw a goddess go; / My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground." Any other romantic poet would compare his lady to an angel or some such goddess -- but Shakespeare shows that his lady is a mere mortal who leaves tracks in the earth, signs of her own "fallen" human nature.

Shakespeare emphasizes the mortal nature of his love, just as he emphasizes the positive through the negative in Sonnet 116: "If this be error and upon me proved, / I never writ, nor no man ever loved." With this rhyming couplet, Shakespeare concludes the sonnet, confirming again through negation the nature of love.

In Painting as in Poetry

The poets' use of visual and striking imagery in sonnet form resembles the painter's use of "plain lines without shadowing" that so "delighted Elizabeth, her courtiers and some later poets, notably John Donne" (Palmer 119). The nature of the two art forms was, therefore, similar in the sense that each had to hold the mirror up to nature without ostentation or pomposity, and reflect in an objective manner either the "virtue" as Holbein does in his portrait of More or the "spite" as he does so subtly in his portrait of Henry VIII.

Similarly, Shakespeare captures both "virtue" and "spite" in his sonnets. The nature of the art allows him to step outside the subjective confines of his own heart and view the effects of both good and bad "love." Unlike Sidney, whose sonnets ring with a subjective thrill and sentimental or emotional drive, Shakespeare focuses on love both as ideal and as experienced pleasure. He observes the results of each and captures in line, as adequately as the painter, the shape of experience, the defects of sentiment, the clarity of grace, and the efficacy of virtue.

However, the two mediums are wholly separate in the ways in which the approach their subject. While both, ideally, approach from an objective point-of-view, the painter is limited in his craft by his visual medium. The poet, however, can evoke an entire range of ideas by the mere use of a word or phrase or expression. The painter must rely upon color, line, shape and shadow to effect a small window into his time and place. If he takes care and pain to illustrate his subject as it appears to him, the effect can be impressive, and indeed as valuable as a jewel, as the miniature-portraitures were viewed. But the poet's art could reflect in words more than a time and place. They could touch, if used with genius, the very truths of human nature as deemed to be universal by the medieval world. Those truths would be given a second-tier status as the modern world turned more and more inward, following the style of Sidney and his sentimental love.