Francisco Goya y Lucientes - Saturn

                                                              Saturn - 1821-23

                                                 Prado Museum - Madrid, Spain

In 1819, Francisco Goya y Lucientes (1746-1828) bought a house west of Madrid called the “Quinta del Sordo” (“Villa of the Deaf Man”). A previous owner of the house was deaf, and the name remained apt as Goya himself had lost his hearing in his mid-forties. The artist painted directly on to the plaster walls of the Quinta the series of phychologically brooding images popularly known as the Black Paintings (1819-23). They were not intended to be shown to the public, and only later were the pictures lifted from the walls, transferred to canvas, and deposited in the Prado Museum. The haunting Saturn illustrates the myth of the Roman god Saturn who, fearing that his children would overthrow him, ate them. Taking the myth as a starting point, the painting may be about God’s wrath, the conflit between old age and youth, or Saturn as Time devouring all things. Goya, by then in his seventies and having survived two life-threatening illness, is likely to have been anxious about his own mortality. The artist may have been inspired by Peter Paul Rubens ’s Baroque portrayal of the myth, Saturn Devouring His Son (1636). Rubens' painting, also held at the Museo del Prado, is a brighter, more conventional treatment of the myth: his Saturn exhibits less of the cannibalistic ferocity portrayed in Goya's rendition. Goya’s version, with its restricted palette and looser style, is much darker in all senses. The god’s wide-eyed stare suggests madness and paranoia, and disturbingly he seems unselfcounscious in carrying out his horrific act. However, some critics have suggested that Rubens' portrayal is the more horrific: the god is portrayed as a calculating remorseless killer, who – fearing for his own position of power – murders his innocent child. Goya's vision, on the other hand, shows a man driven mad by the act of killing his own son. In addition, the body of the son in Goya's picture is that of an adult, not the helpless baby depicted by Rubens. There is also evidence to show that in the original image Saturn had a partially erect phallus. In 1823 Goya moved to Bordeaux. After a brief return to Spain, he went back to France, where he died in 1828.

Source: Wikipedia, Karen Morden, Steven Polimood, net

René Magritte - The Human Condition

 

                                                         The Human Condition - 1933

                                                  National Gallery of Art - Washington

"In front of a window seen from inside a room, I placed a painting representing exactly that portion of the landscape covered by the painting. Thus, the tree in the picture hid the tree behind it, outside the room. For the spectator, it was both inside the room within the painting and outside in the real landscape."

René Magritte in 1933

René Magritte (1898-1967) was born in Lessines, Belgium. After studying at the Acabemy of Fine Arts in Brussels, he worked in a wallpaper factory and was a poster and advertisement designer until 1926. Magritte settled in Paris, at the end of of 1920's, where he met members of the Surrealist Movement and soon became envolved with the most significant artists of the group sharing their principles and their unique way of facing art. He turned to Brussels a few years later and opened an advertising agency. Magritte's fame was secured in 1936, after his first exhibition in New York. Since then, New York has been the location of two of the most important retrospective shows - at MoMA in 1965 and at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1992.

"La Condition Humaine", in english, The Human Condition, is one of the many versions Magritte painted on the same theme. The picture is emblematic of the work he produced in Paris during the 1930's, when he was still under the spell of the Surrealists. Generally the name of the painting is valid to refer to two similar oil in canvas Magritte painted. One was completed in 1933 and is in the collection of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, and the other was completed in 1935 and is part of the Simon Spiere Collection in Geneva, Switzerland. A number of drawings of the same name exist as well, including one, at the Cleveland Museum of Art.

Here, Magritte executes a kind of optical illusion. He depicts an actual painting on a landscape displayed in front of an open window and he makes the image on the painted picture match perfectly with the "true" landscape outdoors. In doing so, Magritte proposed, in one unique image, the association between nature and its representation through the means of art. This work also stands as an assertion of the artist's power to reproduce nature at will and proves how anbiguous and impalpable the border between exterior and interior, objectivity and subjectivity, and reality and imagination can be.

Source: Wikipedia, Steven Polimood, net

Rembrandt van Rijn - Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp

Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp - 1632

Mauritshuis Museum - The Hague

By the 17th century, anatomy lessons were performed throughout Europe, each winter, on victims of public hangings. At that time, in European cities, the dissection of bodies was only legal if the subject was a male criminal and considered outside of the Church. The dissections were performed with the consent of the city council, and were a means to collect funds for city council meetings and dinners. All council and guild members (association of craftsmen in a particular trade: judges, surgeons, lawyers, etc)  were required to attend and pay an admission fee.
In january 1632, the famous Amsterdam anatomist and lecture Dr. Nicolaes Tulp also known by his famous ”Book of Monsters”performed his second public autopsy in front of seven members of the Guild of Surgeons. Rembrandt van Rijn  (1606-69) was still a young man when he received this important commission from the guild and it was his first group portrait. The subject of the dissection, and center of focus, is a common criminal. The arrangement of the six heads on the left form an arrow pointing to Tulip's right hand and, curiously, the seventh man holds a list of the participants and links Tulip to the group compositionally.

Rembrandt chose the moment when Dr. Tulip dissected the forearm of the corpse to ilustrate the muscle structure. The painting is anatomically incorrect, but Rembrandt focuses instead on displaying psychological intensity. The eager inquisitiveness of the onlookers is striking, as is their proximity to the corpse given the stench that must have accompanied such dissections. Rembrandt's use of chiaroescuro is often compared to Caravaggio although it is unlikely that Rembrandt had seen a painting by him. He probably learned the technique through Dutch artists who visited Italy and had been influenced by Caravaggio. The staged nature of this painting suggests public dissections were considered "performances".

There is also a moral message connecting criminality and sin to dissection, and an implicit warning that death awaits everyone. In 1656 Rembrandt was commisioned to paint another dissection and firmly established this genre.
Source: Wikipedia, Stephan Farthing, net.

Edgar Degas - The Dance Class

 The Dance Class - 1874

Musée d'Orsay - Paris

Edgar Degas (1834-1917) is regarded as one of the founders of the Impressionists although he rejected the term, and preferred to be called a Realist . He was a superb draughtsman with great admiration for the Old Masters and the work of Ingres. The first part of the 1870’s saw Degas defining his own style. With a clear fascination with human forms he soon revealed his passion for contemporary subject matter, becoming a specialist on the dramatic world of ballet and theater. The artist gave us on his paintings several secret glimpses into rehearsal studios. The viewer general hides with him, in the shadows, watching “through-the-keyhole” the fluid movements of the slim, supple limbs and graceful bodies of the young ballet dancers. Degas has depicted the dancers from unusual angles and viewpoints often painting glimpses either from stage or backstage in a style quite radical for those times. On this particular painting “The Dance Class” he shows us two dancers waiting to be assessed by ballet master Jules Perrot. Degas prepared assiduously by making numerous drawings of dancers posing for him in his studio. His lively brushwork and light, bright colors were typical of the Impressionist movement. Their use of color was partly influenced by Japanese prints, in what it was called in France by Japonism which also made dramatic use of the “cut-off” composition – where the subject is chopped off at the frame – that Degas deploys so cleverly here and throughout his work. Degas, was also heavily influenced by the early years of photography and by overturning traditional compositional rules. This work looks like a snapshot but it is meticulously planned, with the eye drowned instantly to the arresting foreground group of two dancers before being taken into the picture by the receding floor planks. Degas admired the Dutch School and here shows the same ability to combine both traditional and modern approaches giving a new status to everyday life.

Source: Ann Kay, Wikipedia

John Everett Millais - Ophelia

Ophelia - 1851

Tate Collection - London, UK

John Everett Millais (1829-1896) was an English painter and illustrator and one of the founders of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, whose intentions were to produce an art reform by rejecting what they considered to be the mechanistic approach first adopted by the Mannerists who suceeded Raphael and Michelangelo. One of the most famous paintings of the group was produced when the youth enthusiasm was at the peak. With a painstaking attention to detail and love to poetic, symbolism were characteristic traits of their style. Shakespeare was a favourite source of inspiration for all the Pre-Raphaelits. Here, John Everett Millais depicts a scene from Hamlet where Ophelia throws herself in the river and drowns after her father has been killed by her lover. Shakespeare had emphasized the plight of his deranged heroine by describing how she garlanded herself with a variety of flowers, each of which had appropriate, symbolic associations. Millais followed this lead, portraying the blooms, with botanical accuracy and adding examples from the Victorian Language of Flowers. Among others, he included pansies (love in vain), violets (fidelity), nettles (pain), daisies (innocence), pheasant’s eyes (sorrow), forget-me-nots and poppies (death). This final association is also suggested by the outline of a skull, formed by the foliage on the right of the painting. It refers not only to Ophelia’s death, but also to the famous graveyard scene which followed it, featuring Hamelt with Yorick’s skull. Millais’s obsession with accuracy was not limited to the flowers. He spent four months working on the background, at a spot near the Hogsmill River in Surrey, England. The model, too, was obliged to suffer for his art. She was Lizzie Siddall, Dante Rossetti’s future wife. For weeks on end, she posed in a bath full of water, heated from below by a number of lamps.

Source: Iain Zaczek, net, Wikipedia

Michelangelo Merisi Caravaggio - The Head of Medusa - 2d version

Medusa - 1597/8

Galeria delli Uffizi - Florence

I saw this extraordinary painting two years ago when I visited Florence. I became absolutely fascinated by The Uffizi Gallery which has, probably, one of the most important collections of art in the world.
Caravaggio (1571-1610) painted two versions of the Head of Medusa. The first in 1596 and the other presumably in 1597/8. The first version also known as Murtula, due to the poet who wrote about it (48x55 cm) is signed Michel A F, (Michel Angelo Fecit) and was found on the painter’s studio only after his dead. Nowadays it belongs to a private collection whilst the second version, slightly bigger (60 x 55 cm) is not signed and it is in the Uffizi Gallery, in Florence.
The “Head of Medusa” executed by Caravaggio, in 1598, was commissioned as a cerimonial shield by Cardinal Francesco Maria Del Monte, the Medici family’s agent in Rome, after seeing, on the painters studio, the first version – The Metula painting. The purpose of this commissioned was to symbolize the Grand Duke of Tuscany's courage in defeating his enemies. For its subject matter, Caravaggio drew on the Greek myth of Medusa, a woman with snakes for hair who turned people to stone by looking at them.
Medusa was a Gorgon monster, a terrifying female creature from the Greek Mythology. While descriptions of Gorgons vary across Greek literature, the term commonly refers to any of three sisters who had hair of living, venomous snakes, and a horrifying visage that turned those who beheld it to stone. Traditionally, while two of the Gorgons were immortal, Stheno and Euryale , their sister Medusa was not, and was slain by the mythical hero Perseus, the legendary founder of Mycenae and of the Perseid dynasty. According to the story, she was killed by Perseus, who avoided direct eye contact by using a mirrored shield. After Medusa’s death, her decapitated head continued to petrify those that looked at it.
Caravaggio plays with this concept by modeling himself for Medusa’s face – making him the only one who is safe from Medusa’s dedly gaze – and having to look at his reflection to paint the shield in the same way that Medusa caught her own image moments before being killed. Although Caravaggio depicts Medusa’s severed head, she remains conscious. He heightens this combination of life and death through Medusa’s intense expression. Her wide-open mouth exudes a silent but dramatic scream and her shocked eyes and furrowed brow all suggest a sense of disbelief, as if she thought herself to be invincible until the moment. But Caravaggio’s Medusa does not have the full effect of scaring the viewer, since she does not look at us, thereby transferring the power of the gaze to the viewer and emphasizing her demise. Caravaggio displays huge technical achievements in this work by making a convex surface look concave and Medusa’s head appear to project outward.
Sources: Uffizi Collections, William Davies, Wikipedia, net

Jacques-Louis David - Napoleon at Saint Bernard Passage

Napoleon at Saint Bernard Passage - 1801

Kunsthistorisches Museum - Belvedere - Vienna

Jacques-Louis David (1748-1825) was the ultimate political artist. He was a fervent advocate of the French Revolution (1789-99), almost losing his life on the guillotine. Then, in the next wave of political events, he became an equally enthusiastic supporter of Napoleon Bonaparte, using his talent to glorify the new Emperor. This painting commemorates Napoleon’s journey across the Alps in 1800, leading his army on the invasion of northern Italy. The scene was chosen by Bonaparte himself, and instructed the artist to show him “calm, mounted on a fiery steed”. The Emperor’s features are idealized, largely because he refused to attend any sitting. As a result, David had to ask his son to sit at the top of a ladder in order to capture the pose. The costume was more accurate, however, as the artist was able to borrow the uniform that Napoleon had worn at the Battle of Marengo in 1800. First and foremost, David’s painting serves as an icon of imperial majesty. The horse’s mane and the emperor’s cloak, billowing widly in a howling gale, lend a sense of grandeur to the composition while, carved on the rocks below, are the names of Hannibal and Charlemagne (Karolus Magnus) – two other victorious generals who had led their armies across the Alps. As with all the best propaganda, the truth was rather more prosaic. Napoleon had in actually made the journey in fine weather conditions. Similarly, although David based the rearing horse on an equestrian statue of Peter the Great, in reality Napoleon had ridden across the Alps on a mule.

Source: Iain Zaczek and Wikipedia