Journal of Art Historiography (Dec 2020)
Erica Tietze-Conrat, “On leg poses in art history”
Abstract
Originally published as ‘J. J. Tikannen, “Die Beinstellungen in der Kunstgeschichte. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der künstlerischen Motive”, Tom. XLII Nr. 1 of the Acta Societatis Scientiarum Fennicae Helsingfors 1912’, Kunstgeschichtliche Anzeigen Beiblatt der Mitteilungen des Instituts für österreichische Geschichtsforschung, Redigiert von Max Dvořák, Jahrgang 1912 Heft 3/4, Innsbruck: Wagner 1912, pp. 66-69. This book is written so simply and is so pleasantly straightforward that we are tempted to publicly thank the author for such a document of his open humanity; he nowhere suppresses contradictory facts for the sake of his construction, and at every turn lays out the obscurities inherent in the subject. The motifs of the poses of legs in the visual arts are arranged according to characteristic groups: 1. the stance with legs spread, the foot turned to the side and the dance master pose; 2. the stance with knees together; 3. the stance with one foot supported and legs crossed; each of these individual groups is treated in its historical development. The motif of these poses can fill a function as when an executioner stands with his legs apart in order to better wield his axe; on the other hand it can be an expressive motif when a small satyr crosses the supporting leg with his free leg to express his ‘dolce far niente’ as he also does with his inclined small head, his soft body leaning against the trunk of a tree aside from the inactivity of the legs. Yet such a strict distinction is not always possible. There are instances in which a particular pose of the legs has been frequently used without ever having been interpreted as conveying an expression – such as the straddling stance in the Trecento; and then suddenly within the general development of art, the increasing realism during the Quattrocento, the pose began to clearly assume an inherent ‘moral’ context and was used to express this. The motif was savoured. The later generations of artists and spectators were only able to enjoy its perpetuation. In this way it then declined from its character as an expressive motif clearly imparting a concept (in the Filippo Scolari by Castagno, the St. George of Donatello) to a ludicrous distortion of its once so serious implication (pose of Landsknechts). A revival (numerous examples in the work of Jacques-Louis David) can never be achieved without an aftertaste of the caricature once attached to it; we sense that the motif no longer seems comical, but retains a strong tang of theatrical pathos.
