True Sincerity In Simon Vouet’s Aeneas And His Father Fleeing Troy
Simon Vouet’s Aeneas and his Father Fleeing Troy is a piece of art demonstrated through its technical work of detail used to convey emotion and its true sincerity.
Vouet uses contrasting colors and detail to express his emotion of sorrow to his audience, while also being sincere with his piece. While I walked through the San Diego Museum of Art and looked around at the vast amount of pieces, I noticed his painting among the many and was attracted towards it. It depicted a muscular young man, Aeneas, holding on to his very elder father, with his wife and son watching. I noticed how the piece contrasted Aeneas and his father in a way that expressed sorrow for the father. His father’s skin is painted much more pale, illustrating his weakness as a result of his old age. The father has almost lifeless eyes and is holding on to Aeneas as if he would fall down if he wasn’t. On the other hand, Aeneas is depicted as young and strong with fine detail in his muscles. This contrast between the father and son further emphasizes the father’s weakened state and infects the audience with sorrow and pity.
According to Leo Tolstoy, a Russian philosopher, in his book What is Art?, “Art is a human activity consisting in this, that one man consciously, by means of certain external signs, hands on to others feelings he has lived through, and that other people are infected by these feelings and also experience them”. Here, Tolstoy explains that in order for a piece to be art, the creator must be able to effectively communicate their feelings to other people through his piece. In this painting, Vouet transfers his feeling of sorrow to other people by portraying the frail and sad state of the father, thus making his piece truly a work of art. Furthermore, Vouet creates his piece with great sincerity. According to Tolstoy, “...the degree of infectiousness of art depends on three conditions...on the sincerity of the artist, i.e., on the greater or lesser force with which the artist himself feels the emotion he transmits”.
Tolstoy indicates that an important part in determining whether or not a piece is art is whether or not the artist himself truly feels the emotions in their artwork and are trying to express them. This is true for Vouet’s painting, as it was made during the Baroque period, a period that emphasized expressing emotional feelings in one’s artwork.
Vouet was sincere while making this painting as he tries to do what many other Baroque artists did at the time. He tries to portray this emotion of sorrow by painting the exasperated face of the father. Through all these elements, it’s clear that Vouet’s sincerity in creating his painting makes it a piece of art.
