Click image for an even larger master piece.
I think this is the most touching painting I know. Blindness surrounded by the beauty of nature and color (in form of a rainbow in the background). But it’s also about the unfairness of life itself. She is blind, her little sister / daughter isn’t.
More? Some articles discussing the painting: Victorian Web, Wikipedia and Millais entry @Artrenewal.org
Click image for more Death and Drama.
In the absence of mass media and the Internet in the old days it could take years or even decades before important scenes were framed and ‘archived’ for the public to see.
Word of mouth was often the only and the fastest ways to get the news. It must have been a strange time compared to our high speed lifestyles.
Just compare this ‘lonely painting’ to all the news, images, videos and dribble that has been written and broadcast about Princess Diana’s death.
Click images for a more stunning Venus.
Once of the most iconic images of European art - and one of the greatest goddesses of all times. If you look around you we are surrounded by fit young and blonde Sisters of Venus these days.
Her breasts are a bit too small compared to the current beauty ideal and her facial expression is also a bit too innocent. We like our woman a bit more slutty these days.
Click image for a larger drama.
Gustave Dore is a giant. He created amazing illustrations and paintings. Too bad that modern publishers hardly illustrate their books anymore.
Click image for more vibrant colors.
Ah, I love these contrasts. Matisse was never afraid to REALLY use color. That’s what I love about him!
Click image for more drama.
Breath taking moment from a great master. Open the big image and get lost in this painting …
Click image for more geometry.
In many Picasso paintings I often wonder if he wanted to insult or make fun of his models? The three ladies on the left are portrait almost realistically and in classic poses. While the two on the right look rather ghastly.
What do you think?
Click image for a larger village.
This must be a weird village - all the people and animals constantly dress up or take drugs. Those colors are just stunning!
Click image for an even mightier Jupiter.
What a monumental moment - although Jupiter (the Roman version of Zeus) looks a bit like wearing a wig? I love Ingres for his dramatic and powerful style. His creations have the same quality like movies - Ben Hur and the like.
You feel like being in the presence of Jupiter - almost touching that godly aura of his. And just in case you are wondering who Thetis is … visit this Wikipedia entry.
More? Ingres on Wikipedia
Click image for a larger wave.
Another classic from one of my favorite painters. This painting feels fresh and vibrant. Her nudity is natural - not extra sexy and not extra horny.
The only thing I want to see now: what happens when that wave hits her? 
Click image for a larger execution.
The drama, the tears, the brutality! I am actually surprised that so many old paintings are pretty bloodless. You rarely see gory scenes like in modern movies. This is especially surprising since those times were pretty bloody, so horrific scenes have been pretty normal to those people - not like us, who see violence and war only mostly on TV or made up movies.
Click image for even bigger gates.
I am a huge fan of Kandinsky: his shapes, compositions and most of all color excite me every time. Good thing he lived here in Munich and I can visit some of his great work in local museums.
Heinrich Heine:
I don’t know what it may signify
That I am so sad;
There’s a tale from ancient times
That I can’t get out of my mind.
The air is cool and the twilight is falling
and the Rhine is flowing quietly by;
the top of the mountain is glittering
in the evening sun.
The loveliest maiden is sitting
Up there, wondrous to tell.
Her golden jewelry sparkles
as she combs her golden hair
She combs it with a golden comb
and sings a song as she does,
A song with a peculiar,
powerful melody.
It seizes upon the boatman in his small boat
With unrestrained woe;
He does not look below to the rocky shoals,
He only looks up at the heights.
If I’m not mistaken, the waters
Finally swallowed up fisher and boat;
And with her singing
The Lorelei did this.
German Original:
Ich weiß nicht, was soll es bedeuten,
Daß ich so traurig bin;
Ein Märchen aus alten Zeiten,
Das kommt mir nicht aus dem Sinn.
Die Luft ist kühl, und es dunkelt,
Un ruhig fließt der Rhein;
Der Gipfel des Berges funkelt
In Abendsonnenschein.
Die schönste Jungfrau sitzet
Dort oben wunderbar,
Ihr goldenes Geschmeide blitzet,
Sie kämmt ihr goldenes Haar.
Sie kämmt es mit goldenem Kamme
Und singt ein Leid dabei;
Das hat eine wundersame,
Gewaltige Melodei.
Den Schiffer im kleinen Schiffe
Ergreift es mit wildem Weh;
Er schaut nicht die Felsenriffe,
Er schaut nur hinauf in die Höh’.
Ich glaube, die Wellen verschlingen
Am Ende Schiffer uns Kahn;
Und das hat mit ihrem Singen
Die Lorelei getan.
Sirens and other watery female creatures seem an endless topic in European myths (like other Rhine Maidens, Mermaids or Siren in general). One of them is is Germany’s Lorelei.
It’s actually a place: a rock somewhere down the Rhine.
Like so many waterspirits she also tempted guys to go into the water and suffer a miserable death.
More? Wikipedia
Inspired by Edosan - who sent me the Heine Poem today.
Click image for a bigger final moment.
I personally like realistic paintings best, when they tell an impressive story in a way no photography could. This is such a painting: real, painful, scary, brutal and without merci. Every element works and transport that sense of final judgement to us.
Take a moment to study all the faces in the image. Wow!
John Singer Sargent has created many trivial paintings like family portraits - but he also created a few magical ones. Whoever Madame X was - Sargent has captured her beauty and fascination well. A dream on canvas.
‘Old school’ European music is often still very confusing to me, especially all the different forms of choir music.
I often have a hard time figuring out the differences between a Motet (started 13th century and survived until the late 19th century), a Chanson (mostly french lyrics, started 14th century) and a Madrigal (Italian origin, mostly secular topics, started 13th century, but was mostly popular around the 16th).
So much about history. But I am still looking for same audio examples about the real differences. Any takers? So far I have found this brilliant map of early European music.
Meanwhile, click and listen to some Madrigal:
Click image for larger version.
Hypatia is one of my biggest heroes and one of the saddest stories I know (from Wikipedia):
Hypatia was the daughter of Theon, who was her teacher and the last fellow of the Musaeum of Alexandria. Hypatia did not teach in the Musaeum, but received her pupils in her own home. Hypatia became head of the Platonist school at Alexandria in about 400. There she taught on mathematics and philosophy, and counted many prominent Christians among her students. No images of her exist, but nineteenth-century writers and artists envisioned her as an Athene-like beauty.
In 391, Theophilus, the patriarch of Alexandria, ordered the destruction of some of the native Roman pagan temples in the city, which may have included the Musaeum and certainly included the Serapeum (a temple for the worship of Serapis and "daughter library" to the Great Library). In the same year Emperor Theodosius I had published an edict prohibiting various aspects of pagan worship, whereupon (although this was part of a wider phenomenon) Christians throughout the Roman Empire embarked upon a thorough campaign to destroy or christianize pagan places of worship.
Hypatia lived during a conflict between pagans and Christians, who were demanding the final destruction of paganism as an imperial institution. Hypatia, herself a pagan, was respected by many Christians, and was even exalted by a few later Christian authors as a symbol of virtue, often being portrayed by them as a virgin until her death.
Theories about the origins of the mob violence that ended Hypatia’s life range from a local, spontaneous Christian uprising tolerated by the Christian Patriarch Cyril of Alexandria over a conflict between Cyril and the city prefect Orestes; to a conspiracy by the Emperor himself; to a lawless, civilian "peasant stock" mob (soldiers are never mentioned) made up of Christians and non-Christians alike, led by a man named "Peter". Another point of view holds that Hypatia was part of a rebellion and her murder inevitable.
Basically she was murdered for religious and political reasons. She is one of the many Martyrs of Science. She died like so many before and after her, because she simply knew too much and was ahead of her times.
Some more information about the painting and the artist here.
Click image for a larger version.
Old European Opera houses are the pinnacle of old nationalist countries. Exquisite design for the upper class and later the emerging rich bourgeoisie. But also the different levels, boxes and seating’s reflect the societies at that time: the king / ruler gets the center of attention and most space - while the prols have to stand somewhere in the back. Design as a reflection of society …
Click image for a larger version.
Even Heroes need support. But not often in our lifes we receive the help of a divine intervention and extra special weapons for the task at hand.
From Wikipedia:
Perseus, or Perseos the legendary founder of Mycenae and of the Perseid dynasty there, was the first of the mythic heroes of Greek mythology whose exploits helped establish the hegemony of Zeus and the Twelve Olympians in the mainland of Greece. Perseus was the hero who killed Medusa.
After some time, Polydectes fell in love with Danae and desired to remove Perseus from the island. He thereby hatched a plot to send him away in disgrace. Polydectes announced a banquet wherein each guest would be expected to bring him a horse, that he might woo Hippodamia, “tamer of horses”. The fisherman’s protegé had no horse but promised instead to bring the head of Medusa, one of the gorgons, whose very expression turns people to stone. The Medusa was horselike in archaic representations (Kerenyi 1959:48), the terrible filly of a mare—Demeter, the Mother herself— who was in her mare nature when Poseidon assumed stallion form and covered her. The issue of her foaling were the gorgon sisters. Polydectes held Perseus to his rash promise.
For such a heroic quest, a divine helper would be necessary, and for a long time Perseus wandered aimlessly, without hope of ever finding the gorgons or of being able to accomplish his mission should he do so.
According to the iconography of the vase-painters, the gods Hermes and Athena came to his rescue. They did not know the way themselves, being of a younger generation of deities, but they knew ancient ones who would know; they led him to the Graeae, sisters of the gorgons, three perpetually old women with one eye and tooth among them. Perseus snatched the eye at the moment they were blindly passing it from one to another and would not return it until they had given him directions. He also received winged sandals, a magic wallet (kibisis), the cap of Hades that made one invisible, also known as the Cap of Darkness, an adamantine sickle such as the one that reaped the genitals of Uranus, and a mirrored shield. With all this, “Like a wild boar he entered the cave” where he came upon the sleeping gorgons. By viewing Medusa’s reflection in his shield he could safely approach and cut off her head. Seeing her own reflection in the shield, the Gorgon herself was turned to stone. The other two gorgons pursued him, but in his cap of invisibility he escaped.
1. Start Audioplayer below:
2. Click image for a much lager version.
3. Sacrifice five minutes of your life to really look at this painting.
If this is a portrait - it’s not very flattering - but very funny. I just love it!
The great Gabrielle Münter - she was once the student of Kandinsky and later his dedicated partner.
She was one of the first members of the expressionist group ‘Blue Rider’ (Blauer Reiter), who tried to express the spiritual transformation of modern society thru their paintings.
What I like about Frau Münter are her vibrant colors and strong expressions. She started Painting in the age of 20 in the Ladies School of Art in Düsseldorf. Frist she just wanted to be an art teacher, but went for the real thing. She was lucky to be able to visit one of the first art school ‘Phalanx’ that was open to women as well. This is where she met Kandinsky.
Her paintings are full of vibrant colors. Life is an orgasm of light and intensive moment in her work.
More? Wikipedia entry
Either Mr. Chagall was constantly on drugs or this was the most wonderful village ever! Great painting …
Soviet Realism - an interesting movement. To bad it was mostly used for propaganda and depicting the usual suspects.
I wonder if this was considered porn during it’s days?