Gardened By God

Hans Wertinger uses confident, curling brushstrokes to imbue this rustic scene with the vibrancy of nature at the height of summer. The trunk of a sinuous tree reaches energetically beyond the confines of the picture’s fictive frame. A shepherd takes advantage of its shade to shear his sheep—the only moment of calm in this animated painting. Men waist-high in grasses vigorously scythe them for hay. A woman with a tray of fruit on her head makes her way out of the picture to market.

Wertinger uses the broad arc of a wide river to lead our eye to the range of mountains in the background and beyond as it continues its journey through the valley, curving round the conifer-studded slopes. 

Pinpointing the birth of landscape painting in its own right is not straightforward but Wertinger’s images and those of his German contemporaries such as Albrecht Altdorfer (shortly before 1480–1538) began to make landscapes an increasingly dominant feature of their religious and subject paintings. In this image, landscape is the vehicle of the subject: summer itself. 

Wertinger’s image derives from the illuminations of individual months and seasons found in medieval Books of Hours, which regulated Christian worship daily, monthly, and annually. These so-called ‘Labours of the Month’ charted the manual work associated with each month and/or season. Interleaved with the ordained devotions of the Christian year, religious worship and the cycles of nature were inextricably linked. Accompanied by depictions of autumn, winter, and spring, images like this often decorated domestic interiors—for example, in friezes running around the upper part of a room.

The relationship between the figures and the land they cultivate according to its internal rhythm of birth, fruition, and decay is key to this picture’s meaning. The landscape is not simply an abstractly beautiful scene, but it is—as in Hosea—a depiction of the people’s connection to nature, and to God. Hosea’s language is evocative of a lush Mediterranean garden replete with lilies (14:5), olives (v.6), and cypresses (v.8).

Images like Wertinger’s ventured into a secular sphere but they contained a moral meaning: God’s abundance dictated the course of the seasons and the livelihood and pleasure of every member of society. Hosea references the fruits of the communal effort of the harvest—both those that are basic (like grain—translated ‘garden’ in the RSV) and those that are festive (like wine (v.7)).

Twelve blocks of arctic ice ranged in a circle like giant opalescent gems studding the face of a giant clock or watch appear overnight in the centre of European cities. 

The artist, Olafur Eliasson, observed the reaction of passers-by to these unexpected visitors. Initially puzzled or confused—perhaps intimidated—most people were drawn towards the gleaming slabs. First, a tentative touch would cause them to flinch as though they had touched a hot stove; the first shock was just how painfully cold the ice was. Getting closer, some placed an ear to the ice, close enough to hear a gentle fizzing sound.

The ice slabs were in fact blocks of frozen glacial snow compacted over millennia, and that sound was pressure bursting millions of tiny bubbles within, releasing air that had been preserved for 15,000 years. This air, some visitors discovered, had a particular scent. The blocks were tasted too, children and adults compelled to lick the glassy surfaces. Some people, once fully-acquainted with these alien visitors to the metropolis, wrapped their arms around them, a gesture perhaps expressing love, gratitude, or even grief, and one which, as the warmth of the body met the icy block, would cause it to melt more rapidly than before.

Like John Ruskin, whose work is elsewhere in this exhibition, Eliasson is encouraging a direct personal engagement with nature—including (from his twenty-first-century perspective) its decline.

Climate change and its impact on the arctic ice sheets is well-known but largely abstract to most people. The knowledge that Eliasson was attempting to develop with this installation was relational and experiential, not intellectual. Experiential knowledge, like that Hosea is encouraging the Israelites to acknowledge, is, according to the behavioural scientists with whom Eliasson collaborated, essential to provoking action, which is by turn essential for reducing the impact of climate change. The action called for by Hosea and Eliasson in their respective contexts requires a turn away from the perilous enticements of contemporary life.

For Hosea, such enticements alienate us from God. In Eliasson’s work one might see God present within the ice—its ancient air and water symbolising eternity—yet this ice is visibly melting before our eyes.

For John Ruskin (1819–1900), as for the prophet Hosea, God revealed himself in nature, the confirmation of his creative agency.

One of the first exercises put to students in Ruskin’s The Elements of Drawing (1857) was to draw a pebble from the garden. For Ruskin—writer, educator, artist, and social critic—the study of the humblest of nature’s forms would encourage a love and intimacy with it; as he noted, ‘a stone, when it is examined, will be found a mountain in miniature’ (1874: 6.38). Therefore, when faced with the vast, majestic grandeur of the Alps—his most beloved of landscapes—the attention lavished on this single boulder was typical.

Ruskin taught—and practised—an intense scrutiny of the subject of any artwork, with all its subtle gradations of colour and light. It was translated onto paper by the minute application of the finest brushstrokes of body colour (watercolour made opaque through mixing with white). Here he has mapped the colours and patterns of the rock, its craggy edges and bulbous forms, and the effect of light and shade on its textured and rusty surface created through the oxidation of iron within.

The first four verses of Hosea 14 are a call to repentance; the Israelites are reminded of why God has turned away from them. They have made alliances with Assyria and worshipped foreign idols (v.3). Yet, unlike local fertility gods, the God of Israel is the source of the fruitfulness of the whole earth. Hosea stresses the constancy of God’s sustaining provision—‘I am like an evergreen cypress, from me comes your fruit’ (v.8)—and provides Israel with the text for its repentance: ‘we will say no more, “Our God,” to the work of our hands’ (v.3).

This honest reflection marries with Ruskin’s attitude to looking at nature. It must be done with a purity of heart and without idolisation of one’s own ‘artistry’. He warned his readers: ‘you will never love art until you love what it mirrors better’ (1872: 45).

Art, created by humans, is artifice unless it has a spiritual foundation: the perception of nature as the manifestation of the divine. Ruskin’s call for a deep personal relationship with nature reflects Hosea’s exhortations to the Israelites to perceive God in their land and lives.

References

Ruskin, John. 1843–60. Modern Painters, 34 vols (New York: J. Wiley and Sons).

———. 1857. The Elements of Drawing in Three Letters to Beginners (London: Smith, Elder & Co)

———. 1872. The Eagle’s Nest: ten lectures on the relation of natural science to art, given before the University of Oxford in Lent term, The Works of John Ruskin, vol.4 (London: Smith, Elder & Co)

———. 1874. Frondes Agrestes: Readings in Modern Painters (London: George Allen)