Masterpiece Theater

John Ringling isn’t remembered as a mad man, but he certainly was a dreamer and a larger-than-life power in anything he set his mind to. His passion revolutionized the circus, and in its turn, show business in general. He saw the raw material in tiny Sarasota that could turn it into the sophisticated city it has become today. He presented his dreams and fantasies to the world. He knew how to thrill and move people.

So how do we factor his art collection into this? It’s a problem that has always puzzled scholars. Back in the 1920s, when Ringling was amassing his collection, forward-thinking, intellectual arts patrons were buying the exciting, thought-provoking works of Picasso and Modigliani. The old guard who still dominated the art world were proud of their already iconic Impressionists. But nobody was proud of their big, old Baroque paintings. They were florid, gloomy, a little too religious. Yet Ringling purchased more than 600 European art works between 1925 and 1930, most of them Baroque. Why?

Was it because they were cheap and took up a lot of wall space? Was it because he didn’t know any better? Did he have bad taste? Or could it be that they intrigued him, spoke to him? That he understood them in a way few people could?

It’s easy to dismiss Ringling as a parvenu who loved glitz and glamour and indulging himself with every luxury imaginable. But he was also an astute businessman and sophisticated connoisseur. He traveled to Europe with his wife, Mable, every year and soaked up information about art from their tours of museums and his own voluminous reading. In fact, the circus king was well-informed and the perfect patron for Baroque art. The two art forms, seemingly so far apart, actually followed the same rules. Given their many similarities, it’s no wonder that Baroque art fascinated John Ringling.

Baroque art was born with a purpose. It was the Catholic South’s reaction to the religious Reformation in Northern Europe. Not unlike their launching a PR campaign in God’s name, the bishops and cardinals declared that from now on, painting and sculpture should leave the rarified, intellectual approach of what was to become known as Mannerism and turn to educating, inspiring and entertaining the masses.

Never had paintings possessed so much drama and movement. Never had they swirled in space, in ways that broke the natural laws, all to make a more dramatic effect. Never were the painted figures so beautiful, so perfect, so glowing, so star-like. And never was the scale so vast. You hardly knew where to look first, there was so much going on. It was like, well, the circus.

This is well illustrated by the four massive paintings that dominate the Rubens gallery at the Ringling. Painted as templates for weavers to produce tapestries, these “cartoons,” as they are called, celebrate the Triumph of the Eucharist, the most important tenet of the Catholic faith. The grandest of them all and the museum’s signature painting is entitled The Meeting of Abraham and Melchizedek. With a showman’s flair, Ringling positioned it as the first thing the visitor sees. It is a prologue of what is to come, a spectacular opening to the excitement and color ahead.

This painting defines what the Baroque means.
Based on a story from the Old Testament, it depicts many references to the Eucharist of the New Testament. It is theatrical in both content—a story within a
story—and in style. It is even being “presented” by a group of angels.

Ringling curator Virginia Brilliant explains how integral these four paintings are to the Ringling collection. “Ringling decided to build a museum, then build a collection, not the other way around,” she says. “He purchased these pieces in 1926, and they literally determined the shape of the building we’re in. Before they went on the auction block, they were displayed at the Duke of Westminster’s Grosvenor House, and that gallery is the same shape, with the same clerestory windows, as the Rubens galleries here.” They are the only large-scale Rubens works in the United States, and undoubtedly Sarasota’s most valuable cultural artifact. “You can’t talk about the Ringling without talking about the Rubenses,” says Brilliant.