A few weeks ago we proposed one brief analysis on the fascinating link between glass artefacts and paintings, from Roman times to the beginning of the modern age. We continue this research today, trying to intercept the symbolic suggestions of glass in the figurative arts between the 17th and the end of the 19th century.
An iconic material
Glass is not just an accompanying element in paintings, aimed at suggesting the economic prestige of the people represented or the patrons who commissioned the work.
It is, in fact, a subject full of symbolic and magical values: an esoteric reflection. A characteristic easily observable in Allegories of vanity, in which the image of the hourglass. This object, where glass is combined with its primary component, sand, recalls the motif ofUbi sunt and of the fleeting nature of earthly experience.
In portraits, glass interacts with the subjects, helping to make paintings of great charm eternal. Think about it The girl with the glass earring by Vermeer (incorrectly known as The girl with the Pearl Earring) which continues, after centuries, to enchant art lovers, thanks to its enigmatic gaze and the marked play of light and shadow, through which the glass earring stands out.
Towards the impressionist season
Moving towards the nineteenth century, not only the pictorial reflections of pre-impressionist and impressionist artists are reflected in the glass, but also the personal stories of the subjects portrayed.
The essence of The Bar of the Folies-Bergère is contained both in the melancholic expression of the barmaid in the foreground (framed in the lower part by a still life of glass), and in the reflections of the great mirror placed behind him. The amazing one slice of life, painted by Manet in the mirror, he succeeds in the complex feat of "wresting its epic side from modern life", as the poet Baudelaire accurately suggested.
Degas' mirrors
And much of impressionist painting plays out in reflections: think of the paintings of women in the mirror by Morisot (Psyche) or Degas (Madame Jeantaud in the mirror), two painters who aimed to subvert the classic idea of portraiture, proposing new and dynamic solutions, dictated by new visual cuts and sealed by the possibilities offered by mirrors, as a symbol of the mutability and illusory nature of reality.
And it is precisely the mirrors or stained glass that complement the graceful movements of the dancers in Degas' paintings. Thanks to this expedient, the French painter manages to deceive the perspective and the vanishing point, offering us an original shot. A masterful example, in this sense, is the famous painting The dance lesson, in which the view offered by the mirror allows us to distinguish the rest of the ballroom, as well as the large window through which natural light filters and through which we can glimpse the Parisian buildings and the sky.
Glass as a message
Degas' ability to describe urban life and its dramas is perfectly summed up in Absinthe. The scene is set in one of the Impressionists' favorite places, the Café de la Nouvelle Athènes, where two customers (a pathetically dressed prostitute and a vulgar bohemian) sit next to each other, made distant by their personal malaise.
The eyes lost in the void of the two characters help to communicate that sense of desperation and degradation which is further amplified by the opaque mirror in which their silhouettes are reflected.
Unlike the reflections of the Bar des Folies-Bergère, those of the Café de la Nouvelle Athènes, faint and confused, communicate a sense of claustrophobia and seem to imprison the two customers in their addiction to alcohol.
In fact, alcohol is the only company they have: a glass of wine in the case of the bohemian and a glass of absinthe, accompanied by a desolately empty bottle, for the pale girl.
A portion of the perspective scheme of the painting is played out in the diagonal that joins the three glass containers, which leads us to linger on the figures of the two patrons and to fraternize with their emotions and their solitude.
Source: The new antique notebooks. The glasses, Fabbri Editore, Milan (1991), artesvelata.it, bibliotecamo.it, wikipedia.org
Image source: Edgar Degas, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
