Night piece

Limbourg brothers : Christ in Gethsemane from the Très Riches Heures des Duc de Berry, 1411–16, tempera on vellum , Musée Condé , Chantilly

A night piece is a representation that shows a nocturnal scene with natural (moon or starlight) or artificial lighting (torch, fire, candle, lamp). In religious representations, supernatural light sources are also possible (divine light emanating from the baby Jesus, among others).

In painting

In painting, the night piece (also known as night picture) is a genre of images and describes a painting or a graphic sheet that shows its subject indoors or outdoors when illuminated at night. The chiaroscuro, the drama or the mysterious and the various light sources play a special role.

The night piece was developed in European painting in the 15th century. At first, works were created for thematic reasons such as the nocturnal birth of Christ (e.g. by Geertgen tot Sint Jans ) or the capture of Christ by torchlight.

Only in the Baroque period did the night piece become a genre of its own. It was painted mainly because of the interesting light-dark contrasts and the drama that goes with it. Night pieces were particularly popular in Dutch painting of the 16th and 17th centuries (e.g. Jan Brueghel , Rembrandt Harmensz van Rijn , Adam Elsheimer , Aert van der Neer )

The night piece experienced a renaissance in romantic landscape painting (e.g. Caspar David Friedrich) and with Vincent van Gogh. Caravaggio's light-dark painting , the chiaroscuro , is a special form of the night piece.

The popular moonlight motifs on postcards around the turn of the 20th century probably stem from the same need for mysterious and romantic lighting conditions.

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  Geertgen tot Sint Jans : Nativity , around 1490, National Gallery , London

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  Correggio : Adoration of the Shepherds (or Holy Night ), 1523–30, Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister , Dresden

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  Titian : Martyrdom of St. Laurentius , 1559, Santa Maria Assunta , Venice

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  Jan Brueghel the Elder Ä. : Lot and his daughters , Alte Pinakothek , Munich

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  Federico Barocci : Last Supper ( institution of the Eucharist ), 1608, Santa Maria sopra Minerva , Rome

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  Adam Elsheimer : Flight into Egypt , 1609, oil on copper, Alte Pinakothek , Munich

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  Georges de La Tour : Penitent Mary Magdalene , 1628–50, National Gallery of Art , Washington

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  Aert van der Neer : Canal by Moonlight , around 1660, private collection

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  Caspar David Friedrich : Two men contemplating the moon , 1819–20, Galerie Neue Meister , Dresden

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  Vincent van Gogh : Starry Night , 1888, Musée d'Orsay , Paris

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  Postcard: Altötting, Bavaria - city view by moonlight

In the literature

The term night piece is also used in the field of literature . Here it is used for works that deal with dark, eerie content, such as B. for a number of stories by ETA Hoffmann (see also: Black romanticism , horror literature , horror literature ). The blank verse poem A Night-Piece by William Wordsworth describes a romantic nocturnal experience of nature.

In music

Nocturne or Notturno is morecommon in musicinstead of the German term Nachtstück , for example in Frédéric Chopin's 21 piano pieces .

literature

• Renate Breustedt: The Origin and Development of the Night Image in Occidental Painting , Diss., O. V., Göttingen 1966

• Mirjam Neumeister, The night piece with artificial light , ISBN 3935590792 , undated , Petersberg 2003
• Ludger Alscher u. a. (Ed.): Lexicon of Art . 1st edition. Volume III, keyword: night piece. VEB EA Seemann Verlag, Leipzig 1975, order no. 505 545 1, pp. 482-483.

Web links

Wikisource: ETA Hoffmann: Night Pieces  - Sources and Full Texts

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Ludger Alscher et al. (Ed.): Lexikon der Kunst . 1st edition. Volume III, keyword: night piece. VEB EA Seemann Verlag, Leipzig 1975, p. 482 .
2. ↑ Christoph Wetzel: Reclams Sachlexikon der Kunst . 1st edition. Philipp Reclam jun. GmbH & Co., Stuttgart 2007, ISBN 978-3-15-010601-3 , p. 326 .
3. ^ Wordsworth German. Retrieved September 9, 2019 .