Poverty

Question 1

Overview

Answer 1

Atiitude towards peasants/normal people in art throughout history, are they depicted and if so, how and why?
So failiar with learning about nobles, reasons for painting peasants?
Perhaps the depictions of peasants were to serve a subliminal purpose in the upper class psyche, to reinstate their status and subconscious feelings of superiority.
Argriculture/workers depicted to show commerce and capitalisation, comfort in the grind of the peasants, aligned with nature, more free?
Depictions of outsiders too such as dwarfs and lepers, comedy?
Often subjects of dance and food and all the things that were considered rowdy and irresponsible, to indicate the primitive past times of the peasants

Question 2

Examples

Answer 2

Velaquez, ‘Kitchen Maid with the Supper at Emmaus’, black kitchen maid marginalised, also painted portraits of black men, giving freedom and status? Appreciating the honest work of the maid? Naturalistic colours and light, seems mundane but perhaps heartfelt?
Popular subject was a saint helping the poor, to aleviate the status and virtue of the saint.

Question 3

Bosch

Answer 3

Often associated the poor with very negative imagery.
‘The Wayfairer/Pedlar’, image of a man holdng a long spoon, linking to argircuture but also a symbol of the devil, on a path surrounded by symbols of death and danger. Perhaps symbolic of the road of life? Stating pedlars/peasants are destined to travel down a sinful road.
In tryptychs, peasants often depicted in hell, in ‘Haywain Tryptych’, people in hell depicted as just wanting some hay, allusion to peasants and farming.

Question 4

Books

Answer 4

Many books written about beggars and their tricks on how to get money from you, comedic and manipulative, stating that there is some deserving poor but ostly undeserving

Question 5

Pieter Bruegel

Answer 5

‘The Fall of Icarus’, depicting a major greek myth, with Icarus out of focus and almost unnoticeable, peasants ploughing and taking care of the land in the foreground. This an ironic and patronising way of stating the simpicity and ignorance of peasants/lower classes. Hinting that framing work is of utmost concern to them and that is all they focus on, simpicity of life that perhaps the nobles were missing?
‘A Peasant Wedding’, colours, rowdiness, etc/ 1566-7
‘Between Carnival and Lent’, comedic depiction of religious subjects, peasants fighting, manic and chaotic, depicting the extremes of life, suggesting the lack of balance in peasants lives, every thing very physical and innate/primal. Gluttony and Starvation contrasting.
‘Corn Harvest’, depicting idyllic life of peasants? For banker

Question 6

Christ Carrying the Cross

Answer 6

Bruegel, Bosch and Raphael all depictning peasants in slightly differnt ways, Bosch always very menacing and devillish/