Category: classical

Francisco de Goya

Francisco de Goya, “Vuelo de Brujas”, 1798, Oil on Canvas, Museo del Prado

“Vuelo de Brujas” or “Witches’ Flight” is an oil on canvas painting completed in 1798 by the Spanish painter Francisco de Goya. It was part of a series of six paintings related to witchcraft that was acquired by the Duke and Duchess of Osuna in that year. The painting decorated the Duke and Duchess’ villa, La Alameda, on the outskirts of Madrid; and eventually it was acquired by the Prado in 1999, where it is displayed today.

The general scholarly consensus is that the painting represents a rationalist critique of superstition and ignorance, particularly in religious matters and notably the violence of the Spanish Inquisition. The accusations of the religious tribunals are implicily equated with superstition and ritualized sacrifices. The donkey seen in the lower right corner is the traditional symbol of ignorance.

Art Deco Radio

Addison 2 “Waterfall” Catalin Art Deco Radio, 1940, Dark Green and Butterscotch

The Addison 2 was made circa 1940 by Addison Industries Limited in Canada. It had an Art Deco unique styling and bold use of color; in this model it featured a marbleized dark green-black case and butterscotch trim.  This streamlined radio design featured the famous “waterfall” speaker grill trim and surround “bumpers” at the base with speed-lines.  A fairly small radio for the period, it measures 10.25 inches x 6 inches high x 5 inches deep.

Bertel Thorvaldsen

Bertel Thorvaldsen, “Jason and the Golden Fleece”, 1828, Marble, Thorvaldsen Museum, Copenhagen, Denmark

Bertel Thorvaldsen created a life-size clay version of this statue in 1803 for the Copenhagen Academy to demonstrate his progress at sculpture. It is considered to be his first great work. This marble version of “Jason and the Golden Fleece” was commissioned by Thomas Hope, a wealthy English art patron. The marble statue, at a height of ninety five inches, was completed in 1828.

Expressing both physical and mental calm, Jason is the prototype of the classical hero. The sculpture is fully balanced: no matter where your eyes fall, you can find a corresponding element. For example, the lance is reflected in the chest strap, the fleece in tree stump. and the curled tip of the helmet in the horns of the ram.

In 1917, Thomas Hope’s  heirs dispersed the holding of his estate at Deepdene, Surrey. “Jason and the Golden Fleece” was acquired by Copenhagen’s Thorvaldsen Museum at the auction.

 

Pieces of the Classics

Photographers Unknown, Pieces of the Classics

“The science, the art, the jurisprudence, the chief political and social theories, of the modern world have grown out of Greece and Rome—not by favour of, but in the teeth of, the fundamental teachings of early Christianity, to which science, art, and any serious occupation with the things of this world were alike despicable.”

Thomas H. Huxley, Agnosticism and Christianity and Other Essays

Antonio Canova

Antonio Canova, “The Sleeping Endymion”, 1822, Plaster Model for the Completed Marble Sculpture

In May 1819, the 6th Duke of Devonshire, on his first trip to Rome, paid a visit to the studio of the most celebrated sculptor of the time, Antonio Canova. He marvelled at what he saw and commissioned a marble statue from Canova, leaving both its size and subject to the sculptor to decide, and paying a deposit in advance.

The marble was roughed out by 1822, when Canova asked for a further £1,500. It was completed before his death later that year. It arrived in London the following year and caused a stir when first displayed at Devonshire House. The 6th Duke, who regarded it as his greatest sculptural treasure, also commissioned a large bronze copy of it from the sculptor Francis Chantrey.

The finished marble “The Sleeping Endymion and His Dog” is located in the Sculpture Gallery of Chatsworth House in Derbyshire, England.

Source: hadrian6

Calendar: May 8

A Year: Day to Day Men: 8th of May

Catching the Last of the Rays

May 8, 1639 was the birthdate of Giovanni Battista Gaulli, the Italian artist of the High Baroque and early Rococo periods.

In mid-17th century, Gaulli’s Genoa was a cosmopolitan Italian artistic center open to both commercial and artistic enterprises from north European countries, including countries with non-Catholic populations such as England and the Dutch provinces. Painters such as Peter Paul Rubens and Anthony van Dyck stayed in Genoa for a few years. Gaulli’s earliest influences would have come from an eclectic mix of these foreign painters and other local artists including Valerio Castello and Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione.

The election of a new General of the Jesuit order, Gian Paolo Oliva, put into motion the artistic decoration of the Church of the Gesù, the mother church of the Society of Jesuits. With Gian Bernini’s support and his guidance thereafter, Oliva awarded the prestigious commission to the 22-year-old Giovanni Gaulli. The original contract stipulated the dome was to be completed in two years, and the remainder by the end of ten years. Gaulli’s main vault fresco was unveiled on Christmas Eve, 1679. After this, he continued frescoing of the vaults of the tribune and other areas in the church until 1685.

Gaulli’s nave masterpiece, the “Triumph of the Sacred Name of Jesus”, is an allegory of the work of the Jesuits that envelops worshippers or the observers below into the whirlwind of devotion. Swirling figures in the dark entry border of the composition frame the ‘open’ sky, ever rising upward toward a celestial vision of infinite depth. The light from Jesus’ name and symbol of the Jesuit order is gathered by patrons and saints above the clouds; while in the darkness below, a fusillade of brilliance scatters heretics, as if smitten by blasts of the Last Judgement. The great theatrical effect here, inspired and developed under his mentor Bernini, prompted critics to label Giovanni Gaulli a “Bernini in paint”.

Gaulli’s frescoes were a tour-de-force in illusionary painting, depicting the church’s roof opening up above the viewer; and the panorama is viewed in true perspective when seen from below. Gaulli’s ceiling is a masterpiece of architectural illusionism, combining stuccoed and painted figures and architecture. Bernini’s pupil Antonio Raggi provided the stucco figures. From the nave floor, it is difficult to distinguish painted from stucco angels. The figural composition spill over the frame’s edges which only heightens the illusion of the faithful rising miraculously toward the light above.

Vincenzo Camuccini

Vincenzo Camuccini, “The Assassination of Julius Caesar”, 1804-05, Oil on Canvas, 44 x 77 Inches, Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna e Contemporánea, Rome, Italy

Considered the leading academic artist of his time, Italian Neoclassic painter Vincenzo Camuccini, born in 1771, created lavish portraits, and historical and religious scenes. Until nearly age 30, Camuccini spent his career imitating the Masters, particularly Raphael. “Death of Julius Caesar” was his first major independent work that incorporated his own style, and his only work aside from his self-portrait that has been widely reproduced. Camuccini was commissioned to create a mosaic for the Vatican and became so popular, he received numerous honors from the Pope, Italian courts and several academies.

The portrayal of Caesar is based upon a bust of the emperor, and is considered to be extremely accurate. The painting lavishly illustrates Caesar’s assassination during a Senate meeting in the Theatre of Pompey on the Ides of March, which a seer had warned him against attending. The Senate killed Caesar because they were threatened by his increasing power. In this painting, he may be gesturing in shock at his friend Brutus, who had also turned against him.

Gilles Guerin

Gilles Guerin, “The Horses of the Sea”, Marble, 1670, Commisioned by King Louis XIV for the Gardens of Versailles

Executed by the sculptor Gilles Guérin (1611-1678) to a design by Louis XIV’s court painter, Charles Le Brun, the horses were just one part of a larger composition that featured another double horse and triton grouping by the Marsy brothers, “The Horses of Apollo Groomed by Tritons”, and a central sculpture by François Girardon, “Apollo Tended by the Nymphs of Tethys”.

Designed to depict the Greek god resting at the end of his daily procession across the heavens in the chariot of the Sun, all three sculptures were carved from the same white Carrara marble and all were destined for the Grotto of Tethys, a whimsical, underwater-inspired pavilion whose interior was decorated with precious stones, shells, mirrors, mosaics, and masks.

Like the other sculptures that were being installed in Versailles’ grounds during the first phase of its construction, such as Charles le Brun’s Fountain of Apollo, which also features the Greek god with horses attended by tritons, the sculptures were intended to draw parallels between the mythological attributes of the sun god and reign of the self-styled Sun King.

“Louis XIV’s idea of identifying himself with the sun was probably his best decision because it has resonated since that time and even to today,” explains Laurent Salomé, director of National Museum of the Palaces of Versailles and the Trianon.

The sculpture is now on exhibit at the Louvre Abu Dhabi.

Luciano Borzone

Luciano Borzone, “Samson in the Temple”, Oil on Canvas, 113.5 x 105 cm, Private Collection

In the 17th century in Genoa there were numberless private clients appreciating the work of Luciano Borzone. Thanks to his lively cultural personality and his many interests – it is widely known he loved fencing, playing the theorbo, and composing verses – the painter established tight relations with the outstanding protagonists of the time, namely Gabriello Chiabrera, Battista Marino and Agostino Mascardi, and with prominent clients from Alberico Cybo Malaspina to Gio. Carlo Doria to Giacomo Lomellini. Therefore Luciano Borzone was an authoritative witness and an active member of the intellectual life of Genoa in the first half of the XVII century, as well as an artist relevant for the development of the local painting school.

Carlo Crivelli

Carlo Crivelli, “Madonna and Child”, 1480, Tempera and Gold on Panel, 37.7 x 25.4 cm, The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Carlo Crivelli was probably the most individual of the 15th century Venetian painters, an artist whose highly personal and mannered style carried Renaissance forms into an unusual expressionism.

Crivelli’s works were exclusively sacred in subject. Although his classical, realistic figure types and symmetrical compositions follow the conventions of Renaissance painting, his unusual overall treatment transforms these conventions into a personal expression that is both highly sensuous and strongly Gothic in spirit. Crivelli’s figures, clad in richly patterned brocades that are painted with an almost incredible attention to detail, are closely crowded together in sumptuously ornamental settings to produce flat, hieratic compositions that are devotional and removed from the world of the viewer.

His unique use of sharp outlines surrounding every form and the excessive pallor and flawlessness of complexion in his figures give his scenes the quality of shallow sculptured relief. There is an exaggerated expression of feeling in the faces of his figures, usually pensive and dreamy but sometimes distorted with grief, and in the mannered gestures of their slender hands and spidery fingers; this expression is closer to the religious intensity of Gothic art than to the calm rationalism of the Renaissance.

In this painting the troupe-l’oeil details are played against the doll-like prettiness of the Madonna. The apples and fly are symbols of sin and evil and are opposed to the cucumber and the goldfinch, symbols of redemption. Crivelli’s signature is painted on what looks like a piece of paper attached to the watered-silk cloth with wax.

Giuseppe Cesari

Giuseppe Cesari, Cavaliere d’Armino, “Battle Between the Horatii and the Curiatii”, 1612-13, Oil on Canvas

Giuseppi Cesari was an Italian Mannerist painter who was much patronized in Rome by the Popes Clement and Sixtus V. He was the head of the studio in which Caravaggio trained upon the young painter’s arrival in Rome.

The image of the painting is taken from a story of the Roman king Tullus Hostillus’ war with the city of Alba Longa. It was agreed by Hostillus and the King of Alba Longa that rather than fighting a costly war between their armies, the conflict would be settled by a fight to the death between six warriors: the Horatii, three Romah triplets, and the three triplets from Alba Longa, known as the Curiatii. Two of the Roman warriors were killed; but the third warrior, after exhausting his three opponents, slew them and took their armour.

Reblogged with many thanks to a great art blog: http://hadrian6.tumblr.com

Calendar: March 3

Year: Day to Day Men: March 3

Warmth of the Sun

The third of March in 1585 marks the inauguration of the Teatro Olimpico designed by Italian Renaissance architect Andrea Palladio. Since 1994, the Olympic Theater, along with other Palladian-styled buildings in and around the city of Vicenza, have been listed together as a United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) World Heritage Site.

Born Andrea di Pietro della Gondola in Padua, Republic of Venice in November of 1508, Andrea Palladio was influenced by Roman and Greek architecture and is considered one of those individuals who most influenced the history of architecture. He trained under noted sculptor Bartolomeo Cavazza de Sossano as an apprentice stonecutter for six years. When his contract was finished,  Palladio permanently relocated to Vicenza where his career was unexceptional until 1538. 

Between 1538 and 1539, Palladio rebuilt the Villa Trissino, the Cricoli residence of poet and scholar Gian Giorgio Trissino who  was engaged in a lifetime study of ancient Roman architecture. Due to his work, Palladio received the formal title of architect in 1541. He took several trips, accompanied by Gian Trissino, between 1541 and 1547 to study classical monuments in Rome, Tivoli, Paletrina, and Albano. As a mentor, Trissino introduced Palladio to the history and arts of Rome as well as bestowed on him the name ‘Palladio’ which means the Wise One. 

Throughout his career in Vicenza, Andrea Palladio designed many villas and governmental palaces. His first construction project involving a large town house was the Palazzo Thiene in Vicenza. After the death of its architect Giulio Romano, Palladio finished its construction. He used Romano’s design for the villa’s windows but altered the facade to express a new lightness and grace. Among the villas attributed to Palladio’s architectural designs are the Villa Pisani, his first patrician villa for a Venetian family, and Villa Cornaro, a villa at Piombino Dese that was a mixture of villa rusticate (country house) and suburban villa with a grand salon designed for entertaining.

In 1550, Palladio began construction on the Palazzo del Chiericati, an urban palace built on a city square near Vicenza’s port. It was designed with a two-story facade with a double loggia divided by rows of Doric columns. Paladio’s Palazzo del Capitaniato, the offices of the regional Venetian governor, was a contrasting design of red brick and white stone. The four brick half-columns of its facade formed a strong vertical element that balanced the horizontal balustrades and projecting cornice at the top. Designed in 1565, the Palazzo del Capitaniato was built between 1571 and 1572.

Ranked among his highest masterworks, the Teatro Olimpico was Palladio’s final architectural design and was not completed until after his death. In 1579, the Olympic Academy obtained the rights to build a permanent theater in the old fortress, Castello del Territorio, which had been both a prison and storage depot for gun powder before falling in disuse. Asked to produce a design, Palladio used the space to recreate an academic reconstruction of the Roman theaters he had closely studied. In order to fit a stage and seating area into the building’s wide and shallow space, Palladio had to flatten the semicircular seating area of a Roman theater into an ellipse.

Andrea Palladio died in August of 1580, only six months after the construction on the theater had started. His sketches and drawings were used as a guide; Palladio’s yongest son, Silla Palladio, and Vicenza architect Vincenzo Scamozzi oversaw the final construction work. Scamozzi contributed several rooms to the design and built the rusticated entrance archway that was fitted into the rough, well-worn walls. As Palladio had not left any plans for the onstage scenery, Scamozzi created trompe l’oeil scenery with oil-lamp lighting to give the appearance of long streets receding into the distance. The full Roman-style wood and stucco backscreen is the oldest surviving stage set still in existence. 

The Teatro Olimpico was inaugurated on the third of March in 1585 by a production of Sophocles’s “Oedipus Rex” with music by composer and organist Andrea Gabrieli. After only a few productions, the theater was essentially abandoned. The scenes created for the production were never removed and still exist in place. The original lighting system of glass oil lamps has been used only a few times over the years due to the risk of fire; they were lit in 1997 for a production of “Oedipus Rex”. 

Due to conservation issues, current performances in the Teatro Olimpico are limited to four hundred attendees. As heating and air conditioning could damage the delicate wooden structure of the stage sets, performances are held only in the spring and autumn. The theater was a film location for the 1979 film “Don Giovanni” and the 2005 “Casanova”.

Ubaldo Gandolfi

Ubaldo Gandolfi, “Mercury About to Behead Argus”, 1770-1775, Oil on Canvas, 218.8 x 136.8 cm, North Carolina Museum of Art

The Gandolfi family—Ubaldo, his brother Gaetano, and his nephew Mauro—were the last great painters of the Bolognese school, which rose to international prominence at the end of the sixteenth century. The confident understanding of human anatomy demonstrated in these paintings reveals Ubaldo’s debt to the Bolognese tradition, which was firmly based on drawing from live models.

Commissioned to adorn the walls of the Marescalchi family’s palace in Bologna, this and a companion painting in the North Carolina Museum of Art collection originally formed part of a series of six works illustrating classical myths. Io was a beautiful princess seduced by Jupiter, king of the gods. To conceal his infidelity from his wife, Juno, Jupiter changed Io into a white heifer. Suspicious, Juno cunningly asked for the heifer as a gift, a request that Jupiter could not very well refuse. His wife placed the heifer under the guard of the hundred-eyed giant Argus (whom Gandolfi wisely decided to depict with only two eyes). Sent by Jupiter to recover Io, Mercury lulled Argus to sleep with music and then cut off the giant’s head.

The two paintings illustrate consecutive moments in the story. In the companion painting, Mercury, wearing a winged cap and winged ankle bracelets, puts Argus to sleep by playing his flute. Here, Gandolfi represents the imminent dispatch of Argus with a touch of humor, as Mercury gestures for the viewer to be quiet so as not to wake the sleeping giant.

Franz Snyders

Franz Snyders, “Still Life with Dead Game, Fruits, and Vegetables in a Market”, 1614, Oil on Canvas, Worcester Collection, Art Institute of Chicago

Snyders was one of numerous Flemish artists active in Antwerp during the early 17th century. His dramatic, nearly life-sized compositions were stimulated on occasion by a collaboration with Flander’s leading artist, Peter Paul Rubens, whose studio was also in Antwerp. Working together on large still-lifes similar to this one, Rubens painted the figures, and Snyder executed the game and produce.

By 1614, the overflowing market scene had become Snyders’s specialty. Snyders has sometimes been called the inventor of the “commercial” still life, in which the viewer becomes a customer, made evident in this painting by the vendor’s gesture of greeting. In addition to its visual appeal, the canvas provides documentation of the open sale of game in Antwerp to middle-class citizens, a result of the liberalization of laws that had previously reserved game hunting and consumption for aristocrats.