Minna Torma

Enchanted by Lohans: Osvald Siren's Journey into Chinese Art

Finnish-Swedish art historian Osvald Siren (1879–1966) was one of the pioneers of Chinese art scholarship in the West. This biography focuses on his four major voyages to East Asia: 1918, 1921–1923, 1929–1930, and 1935. This was a pivotal period in Chinese archaeology, art studies, and the formation of Western collections of Chinese art. Siren gained international renown as a scholar of Italian art, particularly with his books on Leonardo da Vinci and Giotto. Yet when he was almost forty years old, he became captivated by Chinese art (paintings of Lohans in the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston) to such an extent that he decided to start his career anew—in a way. He has left his mark in several fields in Chinese art study: architecture, sculpture, painting, and garden art. This study charts Siren’s itineraries during his travels in Japan, Korea, and China. It introduces the various people in those countries as well as in Europe and North America who defined the field in its early stages and were influential as collectors and dealers. Since Siren was a theosophist, the book also explores the impact of theosophical ideas in his work.

The Roles of Art in the Life of a Chinese Literatus (Craig Clunas. Elegant Debts: The Social Art of Wen Zhengming)

This book is an important statement on issues of methodology in art history. It argues with clear, elaborate reasoning and sharp detail for a new implementation of iconography, and, above all, for adoption of a rhetorical and conceptual framework of interpretation. Claudia Lehmann’s insistence on ‘‘iconography’’ although the theory she proposes is not general or abstract, but founded on historical context. Rhetoric is in this case not motivated by the perspective of semiotics, but by the historical environment of Bernini’s works in Rome. Texts foregrounded in this methodological exploration are Jesuit theories on ‘‘persuasion’’ for reasons of faith, and the poetics informed by Counter-Reformation inspiration, for instance Paolo Giovio’s imprese analysis and the concettismo delineated in the poetic theory of Emanuele Tesauro. The premises of the study are stated on the cover, with a title quoting Tesauro, and an image of the impresa of Louis XII of France, as the main symbols for the methodological aspiration of the text. Three works by Bernini are interpreted within the structure of thought known from rhetorical concettismo: the monument to Matilda of Canossa and the statue of Longinus, both in Saint Peter’s; and the Cornaro chapel with Saint Teresa. In this review my statements are based on the Cornaro chapel case. Let’s summarize the structure of thought presented: the viewer or recipient of the installation of figures, motifs, and texts in the chapel becomes stirred by the expressive quality of the decoration to start thinking on the meaning (intentio operis); this process is inspired by amazement and admiration (meravigilia), reactions that the viewer experiences in confrontation with the expression. Admiration is caused by the artist’s genius (ingegno), operative for the power of invention (argutia). The aim of the art work is to lead the recipient’s mind through structures of conceptual ‘‘figures’’ (acutezze). The reasoning implied matches the deductive argument of syllogism. The logical compound is comprised in the rhetorical emblem, in the combination of figure and inscription, related to a longer subscription explaining or commenting the deduction. The predominantly pictorial devices of the chapel decoration ‘‘act’’ as analogies to figures of speech, according to rhetorical terminology and grammar. The representational modes of painting and sculpture are means to create virtual reality as a vehicle for an invisible, intellectual, and spiritual dimension beyond our senses; paradoxically, the spiritual essence becomes perceptible and reachable, through the art forms, as elements of memory and as basis of knowledge concerning the inner truths of Christian beliefs. The main figure scene of the altar shows Saint Teresa and the angel in the act of the ‘‘transverberation’’; this scene has the function of an allegorical concetto, a center of meaning equivalent to the vocabulo (in Tesauro’s terminology).