What exactly is the “subject-matter” of a painting or piece of sculpture? Is it always just what it appears to be? Sometimes appearances are deceiving, and artists have a “hidden agenda” we don’t immediately recognize. That is what we call the “content” of their work, or sometimes it is described as the “latent content.”

The painter El Greco (1541-1614) lived during a very dangerous time — the Spanish Inquisition — in the city of Toledo. Born Theotocopolus on the Island of Crete, he traveled through Italy studying techniques of Italian masters before settling on Spanish soil.

The principal patrons of art at that time were either royalty (such as supported his Spanish contemporary, Velasquez), or the church. El Greco elected to paint “religious” subject-matter, reflecting the spirituality of a Byzantine heritage (Eastern Orthodox) he had known on the Island of Crete. And thus, his main clients were leaders of the (Western or Latin) church.

One of the artist’s paintings most in demand by churches struggling to combat the impact of the Reformation in the North was a stylized but powerful rendition of the Crucifixion.

However, as ravages of the Inquisition demoralized the Catholic church he served, El Greco’s paintings of the Crucifixion changed almost imperceptibly to include bits of landscape. Growing larger and more prominent, these landscapes began to show landmarks of Toledo, such as the Cathedral, and the artist now placed his adopted city in the shadow of Golgotha.

Eventually, El Greco painted View of Toledo, 1604 (Fig.1-23) without the familiar icon of the Crucifixion to justify his moody landscape. In effect, with no overt reference to the Crucifixion whatsoever, El Greco created an indictment of the city of Toledo as the new Golgotha. That becomes the content of this painting then — the ultimate emotion embedded in its color and form!

Another way of looking at the distinction between subject-matter and content is to distinguish between explicit meaning and hidden, or implicit meaning. Often the artist paints something which is a metaphor for something else. Occasionally, one is not entirely sure what the artist intends by his or her symbolism, and in these instances we can use the terminology manifest content for describing obvious meaning, and latent content for that meaning which must be inferred by the viewer.

A well-known Flemish painter who also felt pressures of the Inquisition was the artist, Pieter Brueghel the Elder, whose country was occupied by the Spanish during his most productive years. Breughel was prevented from painting overt condemnation of the hated occupation for public consumption, but in the privacy of his studio, he rendered Spanish soldiery in the role of Roman legionnaires engaged in the Massacre of the Innocents (1566). The setting is clearly a contemporary Flemish village. (Figs. 1-27 &1-28) Manifest content in this case would be a well-known biblical story, while the latent content condemns painful historical events fifteen centuries later, when oppressors are themselves Christians.

There are also less “decipherable” art works which prompt one to infer latent content. Such a work is Rembrandt’s The Flayed Ox, 1655 (Fig.129). The Holland in which Rembrandt painted was freshly liberated from influence of the Catholic Church, and its wealthy Protestant burghers had little taste for traditional religious subject-matter associated now with the Inquisitors of Spain. Yet Rembrandt, raised by a devout Mother, longed to paint Biblical subject-matter. Under these circumstances, one would seem justified in “reading” Christian symbolism into his painting of a carcass of beef which hangs carelessly outside someone’s kitchen door. Not only does “wonderment” of the kitchen-maid suggest a Magdalene beneath the Cross (see Fig. 1-28), but “irrational” light emanating from within the side-of-beef recalls mystical handling of illumination in the artist’s Descent from the Cross of a few years earlier (Fig.1-29, 165152). Although there is a “rational” light-source depicted as the torch held by a figure supporting Christ, the luminescent mixture of pigment and light enveloping both the figure of Christ and the metaphoric flayed ox are too similar to be

Fig.1-29, Rembrandt’s handling of mystical internal light in his earlier Descent from the Cross (1651-52, left) may presage latent content of The Flayed Ox (1655, Fig. 28, right).

In some instances, latent content may not be intended by the artist. It can be an incidental element in the creative process which simply reflects the artist’s state-of-mind. A possible example of such a controlling state-of-mind occurs in many “city-scapes” by Maurice Utrillo (Figs.1-32 &1-33). If one inspects a series of urban portraits he did of Paris neighborhoods in mid-career (b.1883d.1955), one finds again and again streets that “go nowhere.” Windows and doors are dark and uninviting, and no aspect of human warmth is suggested by sparse pedestrians or mundane activity. Utrillo’s biographers indicate great personal frustration in the artist’s lonely battle with alcohol during much of his lifetime. Perhaps one might speculate that the “dead-end street” of alcohol addiction was encoded in these urban scenes without the artist’s awareness.

On a contrasting note, we might compare landscapes of some early 19th century American painters. (Figs. 1-35 &1-36) Outwardly, these pictures typically describe regions of the Eastern U.S., such as the Catskill Mountains and New England Coast. But literary evidence from the period supports the thesis that many such works embody an almost Utopian, or perhaps “Edenic” idealism. Some Americans of the 1st-half of the 19th century felt this “unspoiled” land was mankind’s new Eden, redeemed from corrupting influences of European monarchism and religious bigotry.

A subtle artistic phenomenon we have come to identify as Luminism (Fig. 1-34) seemed related to this idealism, and flourished especially during the pre-Civil War period as far West as the Missouri River, suggesting this latent American optimism may have traveled widely from its origins in Emersonian New England. The preternatural calm seen in Cropsey’s reflective lake-scene rarely survived the disillusionment of fratricidal conflict.

Discovering layers of hidden meaning beyond overt subject-matter is possibly the single most subtle and rewarding aspect of the artistic process. In some cases, unconscious aspects of a culture’s icons are embodied as latent content.

Take for example the Greek “Apollo” pictured in Fig. 1-37 on the next page. (Apollo simply signifies an archetypal ideal of Greek manhood, a kouros.) The subject (or manifest content) of this work is fairly obvious: a symbol of manhood representing that rich cross-section of Mediterranean cultures which came-to-focus around 550 B.C. on the Greek mainland and surrounding Aegean. “Frontality” and immobility of the marble figure are doubtless a legacy of hieratic Egyptian and Persian images encountered by Greek travelers.

But does such a figure possess latent content? What can one infer from the “Archaic smile” which animates the face of such early-Greek icons (indeed, of many Archaic works from divers cultures?) Some view it as a token of pre-intellectual faith in the “old verities,” for it was soon to disappear as Greek society became more complex and sophisticated [note the sobreity of Polycleitus’ [.underline]#Doryphorus# (Spear-bearer), Fig. 1-39]. And what of the lithe stance of the later image? Does his jaunty _contraposto_ anticipate social and political freedoms evolving as rigorous Doric culture absorbs the orientalizing influence of Ionians coming West from Asia Minor? Can one perhaps find latent “Humanistic” content here, the product of this complex cultural synthesis?

Ultimately, the chief issue involved with latent content may be a matter of profundity. One might well ask the question “Can any art form, whether painting, sculpture or poetry have significant depth when all its meaning is “explicit” on first examination?” Profound creative genius seems to reveal its purpose only in sustained encounter.

Take, for instance, Brueghel’s The Fall of Icarus (Fig. 1-41). On the surface, it concerns “peasant life” in his native Flanders — a plowman by the edge of the sea. But the title Brueghel apparently gave the piece informs us that it also is concerned with classical mythology: the story of Icarus, who dared to create wings with wax and feathers, and succeeded in acheiving sufficient heights that the sun eventually melted his wings and dumped him into the sea.

If “that were it,” it would still be a great treatise on human imagination, will and folly, but Brueghel goes much further: as the flying legs of Icarus disappear beneath the waves off shore, Brueghel notes that this epoch-making event leaves farmer and shepherd engrossed in “business as usual.” And barely more than a half-century after Columbus’ successful voyage of exploration, Brueghel also suggests the irony of human complacency before the infinite universe confronting the great ship below.

The Dutch painter, Vermeer (1632-75), often alluded to the “macrocosm” of the world of exploration with large maps in his interiors, counterbalancing the delicate “microcosm” of the domestic settings of his serene genre scenes. (Fig.1-42) And although his light remains somewhat more “rational” and “external” than that of his contemporary, Rembrandt, the purity and intensity of natural light coming from his open windows is often referred to as embodying latent “Gothic” spirituality in otherwise apparently secular domestic scenes.

Fig. 1-37 (left) 6th Cen. Apollo of Tenea (ca 550 BC) has ephemeral Archaic smile, Fig. 1-38  which vanishes following war with invading Persians. In Fig. 1-39, “Severe Style” of Polycleitus (440 BC) reflects urbane “post-war” culture  detail, Fig. 1-40.

Figure 1-37

Figure 1-38

Figure 1-39

Figure 1-40