The Romantic Artists' Depiction of Manfred

For my third paper, I decided to draw connections between Byron's poem Manfred and art depicting the poem. It was common for romantic artists to draw on poetry and literature for their subjects; Manfred was a popular subject for painters. I will limit my paper's scope to include only one of these paintings, but I thought I might use this blog post to draw some similarities between the artistic representations of Manfred. Interestingly, the artists of these paintings romanticized Byron's poem by heightening the sublime beauty of nature.

Manfred and the Witch of the Alps, John Martin

Manfred, Thomas Cole

Manfred on the Jungfrau, John Martin

These depictions of the poem bring together the literary and visual representations of romanticism. The landscapes that Byron describes in his poem are larger than life in many ways. One line that stands out to me from Act 3 Scene 4 is when Manfred describes the effect of the moon on his surroundings, "leaving that beautiful which still was so,/ And making that which was not, till the place/ Became religion" (line 38). Even as he contemplates suicide in Act 1, Scene 2, Manfred remarks on the beauty of his surroundings and how humans will never live up to the greatness of nature (lines 37 - 45).

The romantic poets Thomas Cole and John Martin took the romantic descriptions Byron made and translated them into another of the period's popular media: painting. Like in Manfred, nature in these paintings is on an epic scale-- the characters of the poem are only a small portion of the painting, which makes the audience focus on nature the way Manfred did.

I do think the paintings failed to capture the spirit of the poem in at least one way: in Martin's paintings especially, we see a sublime depiction of nature that was not present in the poem. The perfectly blue skies and the rainbow surrounding the witch give the impression that nature is perfect. Cole even included a water sprite on the right of his painting. But, although he praises their beauty, Manfred also recognizes that not everything about nature is picturesque. In Act 1, Scene 2, he writes about the destruction that mountains cause when they fall, "filling up/ The ripe green valleys with destruction's splinters;/ Damming the rivers with a sudden dash," (lines 93-96). In the final scene, as he stands in the tower, Manfred describes his surroundings as "a noble wreck in ruinous perfection," (line 28). For Manfred, much of nature's beauty comes out of destruction. By choosing to portray pristine and sublime representations of nature in their paintings of Manfred, these painters have romanticized Byron's romantic poem.