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2. Glasses in paintings

3. The first glasses in history, called besicles, appeared around 1280 in Northern Italy.
In 1352 Tomaso da Modena, painted the portrait of cardinal Hugues de Provence with besicles when in reality
he could never have worn them as they had not yet been invented at the time of his life.
Hug lived and died long before his invention ...
But the picture it shows how early was the association between wisdom and glasses.

5. The earliest depiction of spectacles in a painted work of art.
Depicts Cardinal Hugh of Provence, Hugh de St. Cher, at his writing desk
wearing a pair of rivet spectacles
Tomaso da Modena painted the portrait of cardinal with besicles,
but Hugh de St. Cher actually died in the 1260s and could never have
worn spectacles!
Tommaso da Modena
Portrait of Hugh of Saint-Cher
Portrait d'Hugues de Saint-Cher
1351-1352
Chapter House, San Niccolò, Treviso

8. Christ’s apostles visit the Virgin upon her deathbed.
Saint Peter, wearing white robes and the papal tiara, performs funerary
rites, reciting prayers and sprinkling holy water on the Virgin’s body.
Two apostles sit on a wide bench in front of the bed, reading.
The one on the left presses the rivet of his spectacles to his forehead
and brings the book close to his eyes in an attempt to see the text - very
likely the prayers for the dead - a bit better.
Master of Heiligenkreuz
The Death of the Virgin
La Mort de la Vierge
1400
Museum of Art, Cleveland

13. Pentecost ...
the Virgin on the throne,
the two princes of the Church Peter and Paul,
three books
and
the apostle of glasses
"Glasses Apostle" is considered the oldest depiction of eyeglasses
north of the Alps.
Conrad von Soest
Wildunger Altar, Pentecost, panel from the Wildunger Altarpiece, The Apostle of Glasses
Retable de Bad Wildungen, la Pentecôte, Apôtre aux bésicles
1403
Saint Nikolaus Parish church, Bad Wildungen

16. Herlin immortalized the circumcision of Christ by a high priest with
riveted glasses!
The glasses appear here as a "medical auxiliary instrument".
Without his glasses, the high priest would hardly be able to carry out
the "operation".
Friedrich Herlin
Twelve Apostles Altar, detail Circumcision of Christ
Retable des Douze Apôtres, détail Circoncision de Jésus
1466
St. Jakob Church, Rothenburg ob der Tauber

20. The invention of the glasses must have made a strong impression on
Herlin.
This work represents Saint Peter wearing clouants. Unable to stay on the
face alone, this model had to be held by hand.
Friedrich Herlin
Twelve Apostles Altar, detail Reading Saint Peter
Retable des Douze Apôtres, détail Saint Pierre
1466
St. Jakob Church, Rothenburg ob der Tauber

24. the Virgin Mary enthroned with the Christ Child on her lap,
St. Donatian,
Saint George
and
donor Joris van der Paele Van der Paele
The canon is represented with clouants, the first type
of glasses ever invented: two convex glass lenses held by
circles and linked by a nail.
Jan van Eyck
Virgin and Child with Canon van der Paele
La Vierge au chanoine Van der Paele
1436
Groeningemuseum, Bruges

28. the baby Jesus resting on the lap of his mother the Virgin Mary,
the elderly Joseph, listening to one of three men,
the kings
a donkey,
the soldiers menacing
and
the spectators bewildered:
one is wearing a pair of spectacles, with his corrected visual impairment
it seems to devour with the eyes the riches brought by the kings,
just like these companions.
Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Pieter Brueghel l'Ancien
The Adoration of the Kings
L'Adoration des mages
1564
National Gallery, London

33. Saint Thomas, the doubting apostle, the last to arrive, running to ask
Our Lady to leave behind her belt
... and puts on his glasses to see if the Virgin Mary has really ascended
into heaven
Lorenzo Lotto
Assumption of the Virgin
L'Assomption de la Vierge
1512
Pinacoteca di Brera, Milani

36. a market,
a young man prepares the unguents,
an aged holds the head
and
a barber surgeon carrying out a trepanation
(and another patient grimaces grotesquely while waiting his turn ...)
Jan Sanders van Hemessen
The Surgeon, or The Extraction of the Stone of Madness
L'Excision de la pierre de folie
1550-1555
Museo del Prado, Madrid

40. a tax collector looking at the viewer with an angry grimace on his face
and
a town clerk with a stylish headdress and glasses to emphasize
a clear and fair judgment
Marinus Van Reymerswaele
Two tax collectors
Les Collecteurs d'impôts
first half of 16th century
1re moitié de XVIe siècle
National Museum in Warsaw, Warsaw

44. In many depictions of Saint Jerome his glasses sit
on or near his writing desk, as the instrument of the scholar.
However, the appearance of glasses in the images of the saint
are anachronistic: lived and died well before their invention.
In Jerome's case, the anachronism was so persistent that he became
the patron saint of spectacle makers.
Joos van Cleve
Saint Jerome in His Study
Saint Jérôme
1521
Harvard Art Museums, Harvard University, Cambridge

49. the Virgin sitting in her bed, her eyes half closed,
surrounded by the apostles who occupy the entire space of the room
a priest, sketching a sign of the cross seems to give the Virgin the last
sacraments
a kneeling figure with spectacles, book in hand, mouth half open, reciting
prayers
Maître de Santa Clara de Palencia, Master of Santa Clara de Palencia
La mort de la Vierge
Death of the Virgin
1500-1507
Musée des beaux-arts de Lyon, Lyon

53. The cardinal in this work is wearing a model of glasses that was very
popular in 16th Century Spain.
They are held in place with a ribbon that is hooked over the ears,
allowing them to be held in place better than the armless besicles
that were around at the time.
El Greco
Cardinal Fernando Niño de Guevara
1600
Metropolitan Museum of Art, Manhattan, New York

57. a leering, sneering young man,
a disreputable lady lwinks knowingly at us
and
an older woman with glasses;
the 17th century viewer would have easily recognized it: a procuress,
a celestina from Spanish picaresque literature,
depicted with spectacles and a headscarf
Bartolome Esteban Murillo
Four Figures on a Step
Quatre personnages sur une marche d’escalier
1655-1660
Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth

61. a fortune teller, wearing tight pince-nez glasses, reads the palm
of a “miles gloriosus”, who is clearly worried and frightened
by what he hears …
Pietro della Vecchia
A Fortune-Teller Reading the Palm of a Soldier
Un diseur de bonne aventure lisant la paume d'un soldat
1660
Wellcome Collection

65. Yet more formidable ...
a learned matriarch sporting a fantastic monocle - drawing attention
to her eye, and thus the artist's gaze
Anna Dorothea Therbusch
Self-Portrait with Monocle
Autoportrait au monocle
1777
Gemäldegalerie, Staatliche Museen, Berlin

68. The painter, suffering with an eye affliction, was forced to wear glasses
towards the end of his life.
In this work, we can see a pair of armless besicles, a popular design
at the time.
This model clung to the nose, preventing them from needing
to be held by hand, while at the same time preventing the wearer
from breathing through the nose.
Jean Baptiste Siméon Chardin
Self-portrait in glasses
Autoportrait aux bésicles
1771
Musée du Louvre, Paris

71. A few years later, the painter is back, this time with new glasses
that hold on to the face with arms rather than clinging to the nose.
This design was no less inconvenient: they squeezed the temples
and caused headaches, explaining why in a later self-portrait,
we can see that the artist has returned to the first pair.
Jean Baptiste Siméon Chardin
Autoportrait à l’abat-jour et aux lunettes
Self-Portrait with a Visor
1775
Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago

74. a tribute to a friend, the poet Apollinaire …
a “premonitory” target on the temple of the shadow-figure representing
the poet indicates the spot where he would be struck by a shell-fragment
in 1916;
a fish and a shell, the attributes of Orpheus, symbolically refer to poetry,
an art endowed with divinatory power;
a stone bust with black glasses alludes to the blind ancient prophet
Tirésias,
the sunglasses symbolize blindness, which in Greek mythology was
associated with wisdom.
... a man of stone, wearing blind man's glasses.
He looks right at us, however: his blindness is that of the seer, the poet.
Giorgio De Chirico
Portrait (prémonitoire) de Guillaume Apollinaire
Portrait (premonitary) of Guillaume Apollinaire
1914
Centre Pompidou, Paris

79. olga_oes
Glasses in paintings
Les lunettes dans la peinture
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