Dali House

This post is about a dream. But first, a short film starring Kiki de Montparnasse, who at 14 began her career as a naked model for every artist in Paris back when the 1900s were young. She had some wonderful dreams, not always while sleeping. The clip is from “l’Etoile de Mer” by Man Ray, her long-time boyfriend. Read more about Kiki in this post.

Finished? Let’s proceed.

Google Earth only poked a big enough hole in Madrid’s Prado Museum to see a few paintings, so it’s not surprising that those few — suddenly seen startlingly up close by millions of people — generated a fair bit of natter online.

One of these paintings, now viewable on Google Earth as closely as any professional restorer has seen it, is “Jacob’s Dream” by Jusepe de Ribera, dated 1639. Unfortunately some of the talk about it on the Internet has been as wildly presumptuous as much of the Jewish, Christian and Muslim interpretations of Jacob’s original dream itself.

In fact those opposing interpretations are being repeated now in the context of this painting’s fresh “availability”.

What was Jacob dreaming about? Angels running up and down a ladder connecting Heaven and Earth, everyone agrees. Ah, but what does it signify? It depends on your peacher.

The Jews, who owned the copyright to the story to begin with, were magnanimous. The angels represented people’s souls descending to and ascending from their bodies, which, yes, could imply reincarnation. (That’s going to be a problem for the Christians.)

Or, said the Jewish scholars, the angels are Heaven’s stevedores, hoisting souls on board. Or, hey, maybe Jacob was just dreaming about life’s ups and downs.

The Christians saw no reason for ambiguity: This is obviously a sign from God, right there in the Bible, that Jesus saves. The Muslims said that’s right, except for the part about Jesus — the ladder clearly belongs to Muhammed.

A Valencian, Jusepe de Ribera (1591-1652) — the Spanish call him José, the Italians Giuseppe — was “the Little Spaniard” in the art circles of his day — Lo Spagnoletto. He was the son of a shoemaker, but evidently a successful enough shoemaker to push José toward academia.

Instead (naturally), the boy became a painter and printmaker and travelled to Rome, where one source says a cardinal became his patron. De Ribera adopted Caravaggio’s moody style, joining the Tenebrosi — the shadow-painters. From the rough strokes of this period can be seen the influence he had on Velázquez, the future battering ram of Spanish art.

A bit loose with his earnings too, in 1616 Jusepe sped off to Naples to dodge creditors and marry another painter’s daughter, possibly an arranged deal.

The fact that Naples at the time was Spanish territory and full of Flemish art collectors didn’t hurt his career, either. Commissions puddled up, and he was within a decade the city’s acknowledged boss of all the painters, helped along by a little insider trading on the part of his own artsy cabal, which wasn’t above threatening the competition, if they knew what was good for them.

“The Martyrdom of St Philip known as St Bartholomew”, 1639

Jusepe’s earlier works were thrilling, many saints being martyred in melodramatic settings, but the shadows soon diffused in a more welcoming light, and what could be calmer than a painting of a man sleeping, and having the loveliest of dreams?

He’s gone for bucolic big-time and shown a shepherd, the Prado says. The Book of Genesis doesn’t say the future patriarch of the 12 tribes of Israel came from such humble beginnings — he comes across as more of a ranch owner than a shepherd — but it does seem to hint that Jacob’s dream was a disturbed one thanks to his soap-opera row with his brother Esau, the hirsute ginger jock, over a bowl of stew and fooling the old man into blessing the wrong son.

Jacob hightailed it out of Beersheba and headed for Haran. Somewhere along the way the sun set and he bedded down for the night, resting his head on a stone, which would itself become famous. (Bob Marley comes to mind, often: “Cold ground was my bed last night, and rock was my pillow too.”)

In Jacob’s dream, God stood at the top of the ladder (or possibly beside it, interpreters argue), explained who he was in the great scheme of things and promised Jacob that that very patch of dirt on which he was stretched out would belong to him and his descendants forever.

Except that they’d all be moving around a lot, fanning out in all directions. But not to worry: he (God) was going to be at their side.

Ribera was so mellowed up by the time he pictured the dream that you might not even notice the ladder at first, which is a nice way of handling a subject so ethereal.

In fact the ladder and angels are so subtly rendered that I went looking around the canvas for anything suspicious.

Is this a mermaid?

Is someone dancing in the shrubbery by the broken branch of the tree?

Jacob woke up, uttered the famous phrase, “Surely the Lord is in this place,” and realised, with a fear not foreshadowed in Ribera’s painting, that he’d just had a snooze at Heaven’s Gate, the future horrible movie.

He called the spot Bethel (”House of God”), thus providing a name for hundreds of thousands of quaint little churches in rural North America.

Ribera was living in Parma when he painted “Jacob’s Dream”, a work that’s seen as the best example of his maturity. He covered the whole Jacob saga — Jacob with his sheep, Jacob wrestling with an angel (or man, or God himself, interpreters argue), Jacob conning his dad out of a blessing …

But Jusepe’s health took a lurch to the decrepit and he had to rely more and more on his assistants to keep the painting mill going. He even had to sell his house in 1651, and died the following year in a financial mess.

Jacob lived far longer, of course — everyone in the Old Testament did — but what a life. The soap opera set duration records unmatched until television came along, repeating the same plotline over and over: meet someone’s daughter, who’s really his cousin, marry her, marry all her sisters later, keep tricking everyone …

I think Jusepe had the better dream overall.