Lorenzo and Jessica

Painted late in Washington Allston’s career, Lorenzo and Jessica demonstrates the artist’s affinity for subjects from the works of English playwright William Shakespeare (1564–1616). It depicts act 5, scene 1, of The Merchant of Venice, in which the solitary newlyweds Lorenzo and Jessica muse on love, moonlight, and the “divine harmony” of the “music of the spheres.” Silhouetted against the glowing twilight sky, the figures recline together on a bank, their paired heads echoed in the twin sections of the palace façade in the left background. Figures and setting are obscured in rich shadows that, like the work’s diminutive scale, emphasize the intimate, private nature of its subject.

Since his student days Allston had been a devotee of theater. Early in his career his interest in painting scenes from Shakespeare’s plays was further stimulated by his friend, English poet and Shakespearean scholar Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834), whom he met in Rome in 1805, and by the publication by English engraver John Boydell (1719–1804) of a group of engravings on Shakespearean themes by various British artists, in 1803. Between 1803 and the 1830s, Allston painted nine subjects from Shakespeare, including two from The Merchant of Venice entitled Casket Scene from “The Merchant of Venice” (1807, Library of the Boston Athenaeum) and Lorenzo and Jessica. Although themes of vengeance and racial strife dominate the play, both of Allston’s paintings are scenes of courtship and love. By removing the lovers from the context of the play, in which Jessica’s elopement with Lorenzo betrays her father, the moneylender Shylock, Lorenzo and Jessica presents the pair as a classic embodiment of romantic love.

The painting’s evocation of sixteenth-century Italy in setting and costume reflects not only the drama’s venue but Allston’s admiration for the art of the Venetian Renaissance. Throughout his career, he drew on the influence of such masters as Titian (Tiziano Vecellio) (circa 1485–1576) and Giorgione (circa 1477–1510) in his landscapes, history paintings, and genre works. He strove to picture a dreamy ideal of the Italian Renaissance itself in many generic figural works showing contemplative, romanticized women in archaic dress. Many of these works share with Lorenzo and Jessica a twilight setting, softened, generalized treatment of forms, and a mood of poetic reverie. In imitation of the Venetian Renaissance painters he revered, Allston used layered glazes to create the softened, shadowy effect that gives Lorenzo and Jessica its romantic, somewhat mysterious character.

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D'une colonie à une collection: le Musée d'Art Américain Giverny fête ses dix ans (From a Colony to a Collection: Celebrating the Tenth Anniversary of the Musée d'Art Américain Giverny), Musée d'Art Américain Giverny, France (organizer). Venue: Musée d'Art Américain Giverny, France, March 30–June 16, 2002.

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