Caravaggio is one of the bad boys of classic art – his life was anything but quiet and peaceful.
So it’s always surprising to see how he mastered topics that were quite contrary to his lifestyle. But maybe he longed in his heart for such a good and quiet life?
From Wikipedia (which has a nice entry about this painting):
The seven acts represented on the painting are the following Corporal Works of Mercy traditionally recognized by the Roman Catholic church, as follows:
On the right appear: (1) the burial of the dead and the episode of the so-called Carità Romana (Cimon’s daughter breastfeeding her father, who was sentenced to life in prison), containing at once the two charitable acts of (2) visiting prisoners and (3) feeding the hungry.
Appearing in the foreground are St. Martin and the beggar, symbolizing (4) dressing the naked. Next to this scene, the host and St. James of Compostela allude to the (5) offering of hospitality to pilgrims. Samson drinking from the ox jaw represents (6) relieving the thirsty. The youth on the ground behind the beggar of St. Martin may also represent the merciful gesture of (7) caring for the sick.
1. Click player below to start the music. 2. Click the image to dive into the art. 3. Study for three and a half minutes this painting.
Another great work of Art by Maestro Draper and once again a highly romantic and loving moment. Two lover who can only share two short moments each day when they pass each other …
This painting has a harsh realism to it – which I find rather intriguing. Many romantic painter can really turn the most dreadful moments into cheesy art, but Pascal Dagnan-Bouveret keep it simple and honest. Character traits not many painters posses, most of them love drama and spilling it all over their canvases …
3. Study for four minutes this great piece of art and all the drama.
John Charles Dollman (1851-1934) is hardly a well known Master and he has only produced a few interesting paintings – but this one of my all time favorites (I think that Chimp near that temptress is just brilliant) .
According to Athanasius, the devil fought St. Anthony by afflicting him with boredom, laziness, and the phantoms of women, which he overcame by the power of prayer, providing a theme for Christian art. After that, he moved to a tomb, where he resided and closed the door on himself, depending on some local villagers who brought him food. When the devil perceived his ascetic life and his intense worship, he was envious and beat him mercilessly, leaving him unconscious. When his friends from the local village came to visit him and found him in this condition, they carried him to a church.
In ancient Roman mythology Aurora, goddess of the dawn, renews herself every morning and flies across the sky, announcing the arrival of the sun. Her parentage was flexible: for Ovid she could equally be Pallantis, signifying the daughter of Pallas,[1] or the daughter of Hyperion.[2] She has two siblings, a brother (Sol, the sun) and a sister (Luna, the moon), and four children, the Winds
Aurora appears most often in Latin poetry with one of her mortal lovers. A myth taken from the Greek Eos by Roman poets tells that one of her lovers was the prince of Troy, Tithonus. Tithonus was a mortal, and would age and die. Wanting to be with her lover for all eternity, Aurora asked Zeus to grant immortality to Tithonus. Zeus granted her wish, however Aurora had failed to ask him for eternal youth. As a result, Tithonus ended up aging eternally. Aurora ended up turning her beloved Tithonus into a grasshopper.
3. Study for three minutes this great piece of art and it’s momentum.
The death of heroes is always celebrated with grandeur and excitement in classical paintings. Sure there are many pieces of canvas that try to cope with pain as well. But there are only a few pieces of art that deal with those left behind.
Maestro Bouguereau presents to us these two women mourning the death of a loved one. But instead of loads of drama and hysteria he leaves us to observe the silent suffering of these two graces. There is no story, there is no name on the grave.
The scene is set in an autumn setting – and no season is more symbolic for the mortality of life.
3. Study for four minutes this great piece of art and it’s beauty.
I am a big fan of Germany expressionists – and Frau Münter is at the top of my list. She is always referred to as Kandinsky’s lover – but she is a great artist by her own achievement. Especially in a time when males still dominated every facet of arts & culture.
There are not many big pictures of her art on the intranets. I guess I have to get myself a book and do some scans.
BTW, many of the expressionists paintings are even more fabulous when you stand before them and I am a lucky bastard, since many of the image of the Der Blaue Reiter are in Munich.
3. Study for two and a half minutes this great piece of art and all the drama.
Maestro Hans Memling is hardly a household name, but his artwork deserves close attention. Although his topics are typical for his day and age – it’s his intensity and skill that impresses me.
3. Study for three and a half minutes this great piece of art and all the drama.
One of the most fascinating things about ancient Greek culture is their insights into the human psyche. Their Gods depict all the basic human desires and archetypes – and western culture is still using these.
Bacchus (which is the Roman version of Dionysus) and Cupid (which is Eros in the Greek original) are certainly still in "use" today. Drinking and lust go very well together.
3. Study for one and a half minutes this great piece of art and all the drama.
Once again a great painting by Maestro Stuck: simple, harsh and effective. But as usual he nails the story perfectly.
Note to all Heroes: beware of the young princess – she has neither the maturity nor the backbone to withstand the temptations of power and sexuality. She’ll be your doom!
Franz von Stuck – who actually lived here in Munich – is one of my favorite painters. His images are strong and mythical. Many of his paintings have nightmarish qualities and often deeply penetrate the viewers psyche.
Picasso always amuses me. He has such a wonderful way to look at the world and reduce it to it’s bare essentials. The head – just a tiny thing with a few holes. A stretched arm to provide comfort. A small dune (?) and two more female hills. Sand and skin are almost the same on the beach.
I just love this painting. It’s such a perfect homage to many old masters and their "boring" still life’s – and it’s such a perfect commentary about our modern times.
Maestro Ligare has painted several images in the same setup, but I like this one best.
3. Study for eight minutes this great piece of art and all the drama.
Maestro Bouguereau has painted a lot of crap – mostly woman more or less dressed. But he also had many great moments, full of drama, insight and pure bliss.
"Homer and his guide" is one such moment. It shows the dignity and vulnerability of the great (blind) author – and the aggression and hate he faces from dogs and enemies (in the background). The scene plays on Mount Ida – and Homer is protected and guided by the goat herder Glaucus. Notice the lyra on Homers back – his instrument as a poet – and his firm posture – like nothing in the world can shake him. The boy seems more afraid than he is – he holds – rather nervously – a big stone in his hand.
It’s also a great scene about compassion and following your path, even when you need outside help and you are despised by others.
The moment is taken from a tale about Homer – as Homer himself seems to be only a fictional character. So the creator of some of the greatest Greek myths – the Iliad and the Odyssey – turns out to be a myth himself.
2. Click the image to also have a closer look at the lady.
3. Study for three minutes the picnic.
I know it’s rude – but I would label Maestro Fragonard as a horny Kitsch painter – but that is exactly why his “Swing” is the best image to celebrate the beginning of spring. And yes, he was a Frenchmen.
Click image for a larger image of the right panel.
Many great paintings like this one are hard to see or show on a blog – because they are painted on walls or ceillings. “Portable” painting on canvas are a modern “trend”.
So Paul Delaroche’s painting of the ceiling of the National School of Fine Arts in Paris is literally a neck breaking piece of art. I can show you only three fragments of the semi-circular painting – you have to stitch together in your mind. Some day someone will make a 3D panorama shot of this.
In 1837 Delaroche received the commission for the great picture, 27 metres long, in the hemicycle of the award theatre of the École des Beaux Arts. The commission came from the Ecole’s architect, Felix Duban. This represents seventy-five great artists of all ages, in conversation, assembled in groups on either hand of a central elevation of white marble steps, on the topmost of which are three thrones filled by the creators of the Parthenon: architect Phidias, sculptor Ictinus, and painter Apelles, symbolizing the unity of these arts.
To supply the female element in this vast composition he introduced the genii or muses, who symbolize or reign over the arts, leaning against the balustrade of the steps, beautiful and queenly figures with a certain antique perfection of form, but not informed by any wonderful or profound expression. The portrait figures are nearly all unexceptionable and admirable. This great and successful work is on the wall itself, an inner wall however, and is executed in oil. It was finished in 1841, and considerably injured by a fire which occurred in 1855, which injury he immediately set himself to remedy (finished by Joseph-Nicolas Robert-Fleury); but he died before he had well begun, on the 4th of November 1856.
The scene is fairly certainly identifiable as Maidenhead railway bridge, which spans the Thames between Taplow and Maidenhead. The bridge, designed by the engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel and completed in 1839, has two main arches of brick, very wide and flat. The view is to the east, towards London.
On the left people are boating on the river, while to the right a ploughman works on a field. The tranquility of these traditional activities contrasts with the steam train rushing towards the viewer, the stark outline of its black funnel clearly visible. In front of the train a hare, one of the speediest of animals, dashes for cover.
Turner’s picture can be associated with the ‘railway mania’ which swept across England in the 1840s. It is also an outstanding example of his late style of painting. Sky and river landscape are dissolved in a haze of freely applied oil paint, to give a striking impression of the contrasting movement of driving rain and speeding train.
3. Study for three minutes this great piece of art and all the drama.
What better way to celebrate Easter than watching some Christian pain porn? Maestro Waterhouse once again proves his sense for drama and half naked ladies with this piece.
Poor little St. Eulalia was just a young girl, when she was brutally tortured and than finally killed for refusing to pay homage to pagan gods. From Wikipedia:
Eulalia of Mérida was a Roman Christian child martyred in Emerita in Lusitania (modern Mérida in Spain) during the persecution of Christians in the reign of emperor Diocletian and his co-emperor Maximian. Others place her death at the time of Trajan Decius (AD 249-51).[2] There is some dispute as to whether Saint Eulalia of Barcelona, whose story is similar, is the same person.[3]
Eulalia was a devout Christian virgin, aged 12–14, whose mother sequestered her in the countryside in AD 304 because all citizens were required to avow faith in the Roman gods. Eulalia ran away to the law court of the governor Dacian at Emerita, professed herself a Christian, insulted the pagan gods and emperor Maximian, and challenged the authorities to martyr her. The judge’s attempts at flattery and bribery failed. According to the Spanish-Roman poet Prudentius of the fifth century, she said:
Isis Apollo Venus nihil est, Maximianus et ipse nihil: illa nihil, quia factu manu; hic, manuum quia facta colit
(Isis, Apollo and Venus are naught, Nor is Maximian anything more; Nothing are they, for by hand they were wrought, He, for of hands he the work doth adore)
She was then stripped by the soldiers, tortured with hooks and torches, and burnt at the stake, suffocating from smoke inhalation. She taunted her torturers all the while, and as she expired a dove flew out of her mouth. This frightened away the soldiers and allowed a miraculous snow to cover her nakedness, its whiteness indicating her sainthood.
Can’t wait for Mel Gibson to make another bloody movie about her.
The painting itself has an unusual symmetry, since the main subject literally falls flat on the lower third of the image. The central space is almost vacant. Compared to most other Waterhouse paintings (where the woman and the tension is located smack in the center of the image) this one requires some “looking” to realize what is actually going on.
3. Study for seven minutes (sorry, a bit longer than usual) this great piece of art.
I am a huge Beethoven fan. This human being was simply amazing and his music still sends shivers down my spine. And I guess I am not alone.
One of the things that pisses me off about Beethoven is that we don’t have any recordings of him playing the piano. It has been reported that he was not only a genius composer but also a master of the black & white keys.
Can anyone please build a time machine and bring back a good recording?
This portrait from Herr Stieler is the only one were Beethoven could be persuaded to sit down and be painted. People noted back than that this portrait was actually pretty close to the van’s passionate self.
3. Study for six minutes (sorry, a bit longer than usual) this great piece of art.
One of the many things I admire about van Gogh is that he had such a passion for people – normal working class people. Before he became a painter he wanted to save souls and lived with the poorest of the poor.
That is why he is one of the first (modern) artists to paint everyday scenes and poverty. But not in a dreadful way – but in the way he saw life: there is almost always beauty of nature around us – no matter if you are rich or poor.
I like the style of the painting, but compared to his other masterpiece ‘Lucretia’ this is pretty lame. The composition is weak, the drama rather pathetic and not worth the death of the great Cleopatra. And the snake is rather puny. The Lady looking at the snake looks more like eating or cuddling it any moment …
Overall this image is way to European and not very Egyptian. I can only suspect that the original buyer wanted to have something with many half-naked ladies?
I am a huge fan of Burne-Jones. His paintings are always touching and very intimate in an almost personal way. Not many painters are able to connect to deeply by using ’simple’ topic.
On this painting Saint George doesn’t come across as the dragon kicking hero, full of testosterone and male desire to save the damsel in distress. He is rather a melancholic-charming fellow. His gaze is almost shy and he seems to feel a bit awkward as well.
I love how Burne-Jones integrated the serpent and the damsel on Saint George’s shield design. Plus the red flag from his lance representing blood or passion in a very subtle way …
I used to love Frank Dicksee – but today he is a bit too much Kitsch for me. But maybe I am denying myself the romance, hope, love and chivalry he so perfectly portrays in his work?
1. Click player below to start the music.
2. Click the image above to dive into the art.
3. Study for three minutes this great piece of art.
If Maestro Dicksee would have been born just a few decades later he would have become a Hollywood director and made such great classics like “The Adventure of Robin Hood” with Errol Flynn, Olivia de Havilland and Basil Rathbone.
I constantly come back to Odilon Redon’s paintings … his colors and stories intrigue me. There always seem hidden layers and myths in his art – although they are mostly composed of ’simple’ elements.
1. Click player below to start the music.
2. Click the image above to dive into the art.
3. Study for three minutes this great piece of art.
Herr Dürer is simply a God of Art. He paints and draws like none other. Too bad his great skills were wasted during the Dark Ages. This is his self-portrait aged 28.
This ‘Allegory of Spring‘ is brilliant and shows Maestro Botticelli at his best. Usually his crowd scenes look flat and confusing – but this one is almost like a modern comic panel.
The Scene is set in in the Garden of Venus – with the lovely Goddess in the center of it all.
1. Click player below to start the music.
2. Click the image above to dive into the art.
3. Study for almost four minutes this great piece of art.
3. Study for two minutes this great piece of art and the battle.
Here is a great description of this painting taken from Euroweb.hu:
Bruegel painted this picture when he was still living in Antwerp and supplying drawings to the engraver Hieronymus Cock. Turning his back on the then-dominant Italian models, he plunges into the then old-fashioned tradition of Hieronymus Bosch’s world. An apparently inextricable mixture of persons and shapes offers itself to our bewildered gaze. Emerging from distant depths in a halo of light, monsters are thrown to earth as from a breaking wave. Angels combat them, led by St Michael, thin as a rake in his golden armour, striking with his sword at the dragon with the seven crowned heads on which he has his foothold.
The combat of the archangel with the fallen angels is described in the Book of Revelation (12, 3-9) and was frequently illustrated from the Middle Ages onwards. In Bruegel’s rendering, the violence is expressed not in the bitter nature of the battle – indeed St Michael and his sparse troops do not appear particularly threatened by the demons – but by the intensity of the fall – infernal and endless – of this crawling, hideous multitude that invades the entire surface of the picture, in a remarkable unity of action which increases its impact. By borrowing minutiously observed elements from the plant, animal, mineral and human worlds and combining them to form hybrid, deformed beings, Bruegel invents creatures that are the most repulsive, but also the most curious and fantastic imaginable. Mussel shells grafted onto a gigantic shrimp, a human head with butterfly wings attached to a shapeless, bloated body, a puffy gnome carrying a sundial and with a plumed helmet on his head, viscous fish with arms, lizard scales, crustacean paws… a seemingly endless list. Within the "mêlée", every element is differentiated by the scrupulous rendering of the textures. With their long, refined silhouettes, St Michael’s allies, elegantly garbed in delicate, luminously coloured albs, are automatically on the side of the Good, in a state of grace that enables them to dominate effortlessly the monstrous hordes, moving around in a clear and azure sky which is in profound contrast with the darkness reserved for the rebels.
Bruegel reveals himself here to be a marvellous colourist, dexterously distributing accents of red, green, blue and white and alternating the dark browns and lighter beige ochres with brio.
Too bad I only have such a small copy of this great painting. For years now I have been looking for a better image to zoom into details. No luck so far. Someone out there who has a larger and better file?
In Maestro Chagall’s little village there is always a story to tell about what happened recently … especially about floating goats and herders in the sky … or that funny neighbor who was almost blown away by the last rain storm …
Why do people paint such great images to ceilings – to break our necks. This image actually makes perfect sense up there – since it all happened in the sky above us.
This is a wonderful depiction of the whole event. Anyone knows the artist?
A more intimate portray of our two heroes testing their wings before trying to escape the King of Minos.
I find this image a bit odd. Icarus looks very feminine on this painting, almost like a female angel taking of his bra / wings. His face looks very soft and his hand gesture are so absolutely gay …
This one looks more like flying lessons from one old angel to a younger one. All very Kitsch. There is no context to the original tale or anything Greek.
Daedalus and Icarus are getting ready to escape the evil king Minos with their newly built wings. Imprisoned in a high tower of the royal palace they get ready to fly away. They are excited, they are nervous. Will they be discovered before they are ready? Will it work? Can they escape? Or will they plunge to death?
A final deep breath and they jump down …
1. Click player below to start the music.
2. Click the image to dive into the art.
3. Study for three minutes this great piece of art and all the drama.
This is one of the most iconic images of the series: the cranky and bend father preparing the young and beautiful son for the escape. Note the wind in the ropes – and especially the black rope behind Icarus as a bad omen of what’s to come.
I also like that Leighton has made some effort to present the Greek theme with the statue in the background as well as including a high place for a better takeoff.
Here Maestro Bruegel shows his great sense of drama as well as humor. Icarus and his death are a sidestory. A guy falling into the sea – so what? Bruegel condemns the young man to a tiny side story. Even the peasants in the image hardly take natice of what is happening.
There is also a Flemish proverb (of the sort imaged in other works by Bruegel):"No plough stands still because a man dies".The painting may, as Auden’s poem suggests, depict humankind’s indifference to suffering by highlighting the ordinary events which continue to occur, despite the unobserved death of the mythic figure Icarus, who is seen drowning in the bottom right area of the sea. In Greek mythology, Icarus was the son of Daedalus, famous for his death by falling into the sea when he flew too close to the sun, melting the wax holding his artificial wings together. The sun, already half-set on the horizon, is a long way away; the flight did not reach anywhere near it.
