Konrad Witz 2: St. Bartholomew

The connection between Konrad Witz’s paintings and those of Francis Bacon, what makes the former modernistic and the latter classical in his execution, is the way they frame their subjects with planes and lines of perspective: both seek pictorial depth by playing with flatness. Witz’s St. Bartholomew (1435), Ecclesia (1435) and The Synagogue (1435) all cram their subjects into foreshortened rooms or alcoves where the picture surface is the fourth wall; pediments and columns of grey stone and plaster, their corners bevelled, look like modern reinforced concrete. A window, without glass or shutters, in each of the three canvases, seems impossibly angled. Witz is interested in the flat plane of colour (muted behind the vivid drapery), and in the way these planes hit off against each other. St. Bartholomew, curly-haired, bearded, simian, is holding a red-bound, gilt-edged Bible in his left hand, a knife in the other. The hidden hand clasps the knife from under his ornate, jewel-bordered vestment, as though Witz didn’t know how to do hands. The slight menace of this, the deep dramatic shadow cast behind him, as well as the rough paintwork of the face, remind me of other moderns – Magritte, Hopper.