Category: classical

Alisa Holen

Alisa Holen, Untitled, (Rice Bowls)

Alisa Holen is a ceramic artist and educator in Evansville, Indiana. She is Assistant Chair of the Department of Art and an assistant Professor of Ceramics at the University of Southern Indiana.

Holen holds a Bachelor of Art degree from Ausberg College, a Master’s degree in ceramics and a Master of Fine Arts degree in sculpture with a ceramic emphasis from the University of Iowa. She is active as a presenter in the National Council on Education for the Ceramic Arts (NCECA) Conference and is involved in many local arts activities including founding Empty Bowls Evansville.

Source: el-sabroso

Thutmose III

Statue of Thutmose III (Birthname: Menkheperre), Karnak Cachette, Luxor Museum, Egypt

This statue of Thutmose III, carved from greywacke, a dark coarse-grained sandstone, was found in the Karnak cachette in 1904. His reign was from 1479 to 1425 BC in which he extended the reach of the Egyptian empire during his foreign military campaigns.

Reblogged with many thanks to http://bandit1a.tumblr.com

Source: grandegyptianmuseum

Volodymyr Tsisaryk

Volodymyr Tsisaryk, “Jason and the Golden Fleece”, 2016, Bronze, 58 x 24 x 16 centimeters, Boccara Art Gallery, New York

Volodymyr Tsisaryk is a sculptor from Lviv, Ukraine,  who received his Bachelor Degree in Fine Arts at the Lviv State College of Decorative Art in 1999 and his Masters in Fine Art from the Lviv Academy of Arts in 2001.

Marco Antonio Prestinari

Marco Antonio Prestinari, “Hercules and the Nemean Lion”, Date Unknown, Terracotta, Height 52 cm.

Marco Antonio Prestinari was born in Claino, a village in the Valsolda close to Porlezza, His first recorded works for the garden and nymphaeum of Pirro Visconti’s villa at Lainate, near Milan, are the marble statues of the “Nymph” in the centre of the large grotto in the nymphaeum,, and the “Adonis” originally in the same nymphaeum, but now located in the Louvre Museum. These statues can in all likelihood be dated to the mid 1590s.

The terracotta “Hercules and the Nemean Lion” is a preparatory model for a monumental sculpture in ceppo stone of the “Teatro d’Ercole” of the garden of Villa Arconati at Castellazzo di Bollate, near Milan.

Reblogged with thanks to http://bloghqualls.tumblr.com

Simeon Solomon

Simeon Solomon,  Frontispiece to His Book ‘”A Vision of Love Revealed in Sleep”’, 1871

Solomon’s “A Vision of Love Revealed in Sleep” is an important early gay text, a prose poem,which was privately published in 1871. The image above is captioned “Until the day break and the shadows flee away”, a quotation from the Bible in the Song of Solomon 2:17.

The performance by Neil Bartlett, entitled “A Vision of Love Revealed in Sleep”, was an one-man homage to the life and work of Pre-Raphaelite painter Simeon Solomon. The performance was originally created and performed at the height of the first wave of the British AIDs epidemic in 1987.

Book of Kells

Chi-Rho Page, Book of Kells, 800 AD, Trintiry College, Dublin

The Book of Kells, known also as the Book of Columba, is an illuminated manuscript Christian Gospel book in Latin, containing the four Gospels of the New Testament together with tables and introductory texts. It was created in a Columba monastery in either Britain or Ireland around 800 AD.

The illustrations and ornamentation of the Book of Kells combines traditional Christian iconography with ornate motifs of Hiberno-Saxon art. The existing manuscript comprises 340 folios and, since 1953, has been bound in four volumes. The leaves are on high-quality vellum; the insular script is in iron gall ink, and the colors were derived from a wide range of substances, many imported from distant locations.

The Cho-Rho page dwells almost entriely of the name of Christ, or rather on its traditional abbreviation into the “Chi-Rho” symbol. In this illumination the Chi is the dominant form, an X with uneven arms, somewhat resembling a pair of curved pliers. The Rho stands in its shelter, with its loop turned into a spiral. There is also an Iota, an I, the third letter, passing up through this spiral. All three letters are abundantly decorated, their curves drawn out into flourishes, embellished with discs and spirals, filled with dense tracery and punctuated with occasional animals and angels.

Reblogged with thanks to http://my-ear-trumpet.tumblr.com

Sebastiano Ricci

Sebastiano Ricci, “Bacchanal”, Date Unknown, Oil on Canvas, Los Angeles County Museum of Art

Sebastiano Ricci was an Italian painter of the late Baroque School of Venice, An elder contemporary of Tiepolo, Ricci represents a late version of the vigorous and luminous Cortonesque style of grand manner fresco painting. He painted many works while under the patronage of Duke Ranuccio II, Farnes of Parma, Italy.

John Singer Sargent

John Singer Sargent, “Sketch for Perseus on Pegasus Slaying Medusa”, 1922-1924, Oil and Graphite on Canvas, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

In one version of the birth of Pegasus, the flying horse, it states the horse was miraculously formed when the blood of Medusa’s severed head poured onto the foaming sea, and out of this foam it came. Another version said the horse came out of the slain body of Medusa and upon the horse was a warrior called Chrysaor, born carrying a golden sword.  The Pegasus story states that Perseus gave the head of Medusa to the goddess Athena in gratitude for her help and in reprisal for what Medusa had done to Athena’s temple.

In Sargent’s depiction, he seems to combine the elements of the entire story: the slaying of Medusa, the birth of Pegasus, and the presenting of Medusa’s head to Athena all in one. He also, very cleverly, has kept faithful to the constellation of Pegasus, the stars in the sky aligned correctly to the position of Pegasus in his sketch.

Ando Hiroshige

Ando Hiroshige, “Suido Bridge and Suruga Hill”, Number 63 from the “One Hundred Views of Famous Places in Edo” Series, 1857, Color Woodcut, Chazen Museum of Art

Ando Hiroshige was a Japanes ukiyo-e artist, considered the last great master of that tradition. He is best known for his landscapes, such as the series “The Fifty-Three Stations of the Tokaido” and “The Sixty-Nine Stations of the Kiso Kaido”, and for his depictions of birds and flowers. The subjects of his work was atypical of the genre, whose typical focus was on beautiful women, popular actors, and scenes of the urban pleasure districts of Japan’s Edo period.

In 1856, Hiroshige retired from the world,  becoming a Buddhist monk; this was the year he began his “One Hundred Views of Famous Places in Edo” series.  He died aged 62 during the great Edo cholera epidemic of 1858 and was buried in a Zen Buddhist temple in Asakusa.

Centaur and Lapith

Centaur and Lapith, Metope South XXVII, Acropolis of Athens, Greece

The metopes of the Parthenon are the surviving set of what were originally 92 square carved plaques of Pentelic marble originally located above the columns of the Parthenon peristyle on the Acropolis of Athens. If they were made by several artists, the master builder was certainly Phidias. They were carved between 447 or 446 BC. or at the latest 438 BC, with 442 BC as the probable date of completion. Most of them are very damaged. Typically, they represent two characters per metope either in action or repose.