Category: classical

Charles Gleyre

 

Charles Gleyre, “The Helvetians Force The Romans To Pass Under The Yoke”, Oil on Canvas, 1858

This romantic painting by Charles Gleyre celebraties the Tigurini victory over the Romans at Agen (107 BCE) under Divico’s command.

The Tigurini were a clan or tribe forming one out of four pagi (provinces) of the Helvetii. The Tigurini were the most important group of the Helvetii, mentioned by both Caesar and Poseidonius, settling in the area of what is now the Swiss canton of Vaud, corresponding to the bearers of the late La Tène culture in western Switzerland. Their name has a meaning of “lords, rulers” (cognate with Irish tigern “lord”).

The name of the Tigurini is first recorded in the context of their alliance with the Cimbri in the Cimbrian War of 113–101 BCE. They crossed the Rhine to invade Gaul in 109 BCE, moved south to the Roman region of Provence in 107 BCE and defeated a Roman army under Lucius Cassius Longinus near Agen. The Tigurini followed the Cimbri in their campaign across the Alps, but they did not enter Italy, instead remaining at the Brenner Pass. After the end of the war, they returned to their earlier homes, settling in the western Swiss plateau and the Jura mountains north of Lake Leman.

Christian August Lorentzen

Christian August Lorentzen, “Model Class at the Copenhagen Academy of Arts”, Oil on Canvas, 1824

Christian August Lorentzen was born in August of 1749 as the son of a watchmaker. He arrived in Copenhagen around 1771 where he frequented the Royal Academy of Fine Arts; but it is unclear whether he received any formal training. From 1779 to 1782 he went abroad to develop his skills, visiting the Netherlands, Antwerp and Paris where he copied the paintings of the masters. In 1792 Lorentzen traveled to Norway to paint.

In a number of paintings, such as “Slaget på Reden” and “Den Rædsomste Nat”, Lorentzen documented key events from the English Wars between 1801 and 1814. Later in his career he mainly painted portraits, landscapes and scenes from Ludvig Holberg’s comedies. As a professor at the Royal Academy in Copenhagen from 1803 and until his death in 1828, he exercised great influence on the next generation of painters such as Martinus Rørbye among others.

François-Léon Benouville

François-Léon Benouville, “The Wraith of Achilles”, 1847, Oil on Canvas, Musee Fabre, Montpelier, France

François-Léon Benouville’s splendidly modelled figure of Achilles intrudes into the space of the viewer. He literally steps beyond the surface of the canvas. Thus, in the painting’s careful attention to the human form and in the precision of its modelling of paint, it fulfils ideally the task of the painted academic figure studies required of Prix de Rome winners.

Benouville’s painting of Achilles, a popular subject for nineteenth-century painters, shows the Greek hero at the moment where, after quarrelling with his leader, Agamemnon, he retreats from battle to his tent in a rage. Humiliated, Achilles refuses to continue fighting with the Greeks, who subsequently suffer a series of catastrophic defeats. As Agamemnon’s envoys enter Achilles’ tent, in the hope of convincing him to return to battle, Achilles springs to his feet, launching into a tirade. With a dramatic realism, Benouville renders this precise, violent moment.

Thanks to http://lyghtmylife.tumblr.com for the image.

Parmigianino

Parmigianino, “Vision of Saint Jerome”, Details, Oil on Canvas, 1525- 1527

The Vision of Saint Jerome is a painting by the Italian Mannerist artist Parmigianino, executed in 1526–1527. It is now in the National Gallery, London, United Kingdom.

The work was commissioned on 3 January 1526 in Rome, by Maria Bufalini, wife of Antonio Caccialupi, to decorate the family chapel in the church of San Salvatore in Lauro. The contract mentioned “Francesco Mazola de Parma” and one “Pietro” with the same name, perhaps Parmigianino’s uncle Piero Ilario Mazzola.

According to late Renaissance art biographer Giorgio Vasari, Parmigianino was working to this painting during the Sack of Rome, and he had to stop when the city was ravaged by the imperial troops. He was able to escape paying a ransom, while his uncle remained in Rome, being able to hide the painting in the refectory of Santa Maria della Pace.

Pordenone

Pordenone, “Pilate Judges Christ”, Detail, Fresco,1520, The Cathedral of Cremona, Italy

Pordenone, Il Pordenone in Italian, is the byname of Giovanni Antonio de’ Sacchis (c. 1484–1539), an Italian Mannerist painter, loosely of the Venetian school. Vasari, his main biographer, wrongly identifies him as Giovanni Antonio Licinio. He painted in several cities in northern Italy “with speed, vigor, and deliberate coarseness of expression and execution—intended to shock”.

He appears to have visited Rome, and learnt from its High Renaissance masterpieces, but lacked a good training in anatomical drawing. Like Polidoro da Caravaggio, he was one of the artists often commissioned to paint the exteriors of buildings; of such work at most a shadow survives after centuries of weather. Michelangelo is said to have approved of one palace facade in 1527; it is now only known from a preparatory drawing.

Much of his work was lost when the Doge’s Palace in Venice was largely destroyed by fires in 1574 and 1577. A number of fresco cycles survive, for example part of one at Cremona Cathedral, where his Passion scenes have a violence hardly repeated until Goya. Another cycle was at the Scuola Grande della Carità in Venice, now the Gallerie dell’Accademia, the main art museum, where he worked with the young Tintoretto.

His life was as energetic and restless as his art; he married three times, and was accused in court of hiring criminals to kill his brother to avoid sharing their inheritance. He perhaps had some influence on later works by Titian and more clearly on Tintoretto, who to some extent took over his position as the leading painter of large mural commissions in Venice. Titian and Pordenone were rivals in his last decade and gossip even claimed that his death was suspicious.

Salvatore Albano

Salvatore Albano, “The Fallen Angels or The Rebel Angels”, Marble, Dark Stone, Bronze, 1893, Height of Marble Group, 154.9 x 147.3 cm, Brooklyn Museum, New York

Born in the southern commune of Oppido Mamertina in May of 1841, Salvatore Albano was Italian sculptor. He was known for his elegant conceptualization of form and his expertise in its execution. 

Albano’s career began at an early age in the Calabria region, where he carved wooden Nativity scenes. Impressed with his talent, he was given a stipend by the regional government in 1860 to study in Naples. Albano initially studied at sculptor Sorbille’s studio in Naples, and then at Naples’s  Academy of Fine Art under its director, the sculptor Tito Angelini.    

As a young man, Albano earned considerable success in 1864 with his marble group, entitled “Conte Ugolino”, which was purchased by the marquis Agostino Sergio. In 1865, the region of Calabria extended his annual stipend of sixty lire for another three years. That same year, Albano won first prize at the Academy of Fine Art in Naples for his “Christ nell’Orto (Christ on the Mount of Olives)”. 

Salvatore Albano submitted two works, “The Resurrection of Lazarus” and “Cain”, to a exposition in Rome in 1867. He had completed by 1869 two more works, a figure of Eve and a bust of the Italian composer Gioachino Antonio Rossini. Albano also relocated to Florence in that year, where he would spend the remainder of his career. While in Florence, he completed several more works in marble, including the “Venere Mendicante”, and two plaster-cast statues, “Mephistopheles” and “Marguerite”, which were exhibited in Paris at the Salon of 1881. 

Albano’s last work was the figurative composition “Fallen Angels”, set on a marble, dark stone, and bronze base. The marble figures of the angels was finished in 1893; the dark stone carved base, which measures 40 x 57 inches, was finished in 1883. Salvador Albano died in Florence in October of 1893 at the age of fifty-two.

Note: In the National de Arta al României (Simu Museum) in Bucharest, there is a statue entitled “Slave” which is attributed to Salvador Albano. 

 

Jacques de l’Ange

Jacques de l’Ange, “Chained Prometheus”, c. 1640-1650, Oil on Canvas 52 x 62 cm, Private Collection

Jacques de l’Ange or the Monogrammist JAD (fl. 1630 – 1650) was a Flemish painter and draughtsman known for his genre scenes and history paintings executed in a Caravaggesque style. The artist was only rediscovered in the mid-1990s as his work was previously attributed to other Northern Caravaggists and in particular those of the Utrecht School.

Annibale Carracci

Annibale Carracci, “Pieta”, Detail, 1600, Oil on Canvas, National Museum of Capodimonte in Naples, Italy

The “Pieta” by Bolognese artist Annibale Carracci is the earliest surviving work by him on the subject. It was commissioned by Italian nobleman Odoardo Farnese, who became a Cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church in 1591. The painting moved from Rome to Parma and then to Naples as part of the Farnese collection.

Painter and instructor Annibale Carracci was active in Bologna and later in Rome. Along with his brothers, Carracci was one of the founders of a leadiing faction of the Baroque style. Based  on the masterful frescoes by Carracci in Bologna, he was recommended by the Duke of Parma to Cardinal Odoardo Farnese, who wished to decorate the Roman Palazzo Farnese.

Carracci led a team of artists to paint frescoes on the ceiling of the grand salon, based upon hundreds of preparatory sketches by him for the major work.. Entitled “The Loves of the Gods”, the frescoes rich with illusionistic elements would later inspire a host of artists. Throughout the 17th and 18th centuries, the Farnese Ceiling was considered the unrivaled masterpiece of fresco painting for the age.

Diego Velazquez

Diego de Velázquez, “Apollo in the Forge of Vulcan”, circa 1630, Oil on Canvas, Museo del Prada, Madrid

Born at the Andalusian city of Seville in May of 1599, Diego Rodríguez de Silva Velázquez was an artist of the Spanish Golden Age who rose to prominence in the court of King Philip IV of Spain and Portugal. His work became the archetype for the nineteenth-century realist and impressionist painters.

Diego Velázquez was the first child of notary Juan Rodriguez de Silva and Jerónima Velázquez who raised him in modest surroundings. As he exhibited an early inclination for art, Velázquez was apprenticed for six-years to painter Francisco Pacheco del Río the founder of Seville’s art academy. His studies under Pacheco included literature and philosophy, perspective and proportion, and, as Pacheco was the official censor of Seville’s Inquisition, the academically strict representation of religious subjects.

In his “Apollo in the Forge of Vulcan”, Diego Velazques depicts the deception announced by the sun god Apollo, who announces to Vulcan that Vulcan’s wife Venus, is cheating on him. The helpers at the iron forge show curiosity and shock.  A young worker on the right, mouth ajar, is particularly comical in his spontaneous reactions. The god Vulcan bends vigorously and is upset.  He’s all the more foolish because the announcement comes while he’s making armor for his wife’s lover, Mars, the god of war.  It’s comedy more than tragedy, and Apollo, a tattle-tale, looks proud and gossipy.

Velázquez shows that he could portray comedy and he could paint real tragedy.   His  brushstrokes capture amazingly realistic textures.  The  fire of the smelting iron, as well as the sheen of a vase and of armor, light up Vulcan’s blacksmith shop.  Furthermore, he has painted the workmen closest to the fire in warmer skin tones, true to the colors that light from a fireplace would reflect on their flesh.” –  Julie Schauer, Artventures

An extended biography of Diego Valázquez can be found in the November 2024 archive of this site.

Antonio Pollatoli

Antonio Pollatoli, “Battle of the Nudes”, circa 1470-75, Engraving, 42.4 x 60.9 cm, National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

“The Battle of the Nudes” or “Battle of the Naked Men”, circa 1465–1475, is an engraving, one of the most significant old master prints of the Italian Renaissance, executed by the Florentine goldsmith and sculptor Antonio del Pollaiuolo, also known as Antonio Pollatoli. The engraving is large at 42.4 x 60.9 cm and depicts five men wearing headbands and five men without, who are fighting in pairs with weapons, pictured in front of a dense background of vegetation.

All the figures are posed in different strained and athletic positions; in this aspect, the print is advanced for this period of the Renaissance. The style is classical; although, the figures are shown grimacing fiercely and their musculature of their bodies is strongly emphasized. An effective and largely original return-stroke engraving technique was employed to model the bodies, which resulted in a delicate and subtle effect.

Jacques Reatu

Jacques Reatu, “Le Vision de Jacob (Jacob’s Dream)”, Oil on Canvas, 1792, Museum Reattu, Arles, France

Jacques Réattu was a French painter and winner of the grand prix de Rome. He was an illegitimate son of the painter Guillaume de Barrême de Châteaufort and Catherine Raspal, sister of the Arles-born painter Antoine Raspal – Antoine gave him his first lessons in painting.

In Paris, in 1773 he was a pupil of Jean-Antoine Julien, then entered the Academy in 1781, with Michel Francois Dandre-Bardon as a patron, he was a pupil of Jean-Baptiste Regnault. In 1790 he won the Prix de Rome, thanks to a work, currently exhibited at the National School of Fine Arts: Daniel faisant arrêter les vieillards accusateurs de la chaste Suzanne. Following anti-French riots of the Roman population, he fled to Naples, from where he could return to France.

Bartolomeo Manfredi

Bartolomeo Manfredi, “Cupid Chastised”, 1607-1610, Oil on Canvas, 175 x 130 cm, The Arr Institute of  Chicago

Manfredi’s “Cupid Chastised” first appearred in art-literature in 1937, when it was published as a newly found work by Caravaggio. There is no date, signature, or inscription on the painted to indicate otherwise. The great Caravaggio expert had already recognized and published it as by Manfredi, when it was acquired in 1947 for the Chicago Art Institute as a Caravaggio.

“Cupid Chastised” was included in the epochal 1951 Caravaggio exhibition in Milan with an attribution to the “School of Caravaggio”. Soon after acquiring the painting, The Chicago Art Institute relabeled it with its current attribution to Manfredi. However, as recently as 1972, it was suggested that it is instead by an unknown Nordic follower of Carravaggio.

Following the example of Caravaggio, Bartolomeo Manfredi chose to depict ordinary individuals in his scenes from the Bible and Greek and Roman mythology. Caravaggio had demonstrated to Manfredi and an entire generation of European artists that such lofty themes could be transformed into events experienced by ordinary people. Employing dramatic lighting and locating the action directly before the viewer, these artists were able to endow their narratives with great immediacy and power.

The depiction of Cupid’s chastisement shows a moment of high drama: Mars, the god of war, beats Cupid for having caused his affair with Venus, the goddess of love, which exposed him to the derision and outrage of the other gods. Venus implores him in vain to desist. Surrounded by darkness, the three figures are boldly illuminated from the left, intensifying the dynamism and impact of the composition.

The sheer physicality of the figures — the crouching Venus, whose broadly realized face strays from the classical ideal; the powerful Mars, whose musculature and brilliant red drapery seem to pulsate with fury; and Cupid, whose naked flesh and recumbent position render him particularly vulnerable—conveys the violent discord of the scene. On one level a tale of domestic disturbance, the story also symbolizes the eternal conflict between love and war.