Tag: mythology

Alexander Rothaug

Alexander Rothaug, “The Death of Achilles”, Date Unknown, Brown Ink and Oil en Grisaille Over Traces of Black Chalk on Canvas, 218.8 x 163.8 cm, Private Collection

Born in 1870, Alexander Rothaug was an Austrian painter, stage designer, and illustrator. He was active in Munich and his native Vienna during the end of the nineteenth- century and the first half of the twentieth. After his initial painting lessons with his father, Rothaug took the position of apprentice in 1884 with sculptor Johann Schindler. 

Between 1885 and 1892, Alexander Rothaug received his training at the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts primarily under Leopold Carl Müller, a painter who displayed his colorist talent to great advantage in Oriental subjects. At the academy, Rothaug also received lessons from genre and landscape painter Franz Rumpler and painter Christian Griepenkerl whose speciality was portraiture and allegorical work drawn from classical mythology. For his academic work, Rothaug was awarded the Lampi Prize in 1888, the Golden Füger Medal in 1889 and, for work during Müller’s historical painting school, the 1890 Special School Award.

After graduation, Rothaug relocated to Munich where he attended its Academy of Fine Arts. He took a position for several years as an illustrator for the satirical journal Fliegende Blätter (Flying Leafs). In 1896, Rothaug married Ottilie Lauterkorn and, a year later, returned to Vienna as a freelance painter. Based on his experience as a stage painter, Rothaug created monumental paintings for theater buildings, ceiling paintings, and a series of large wall-mounted paintings, scenes from Wagner’s “Ring Cycle”, for the Grand Hotel de l’Europe in the spa town of Bad Gastein, Salzburg.

Following a period of study trips to Dalmatia, Bosnia, Spain, Italy and Germany, Alexander Rothaug returned Vienna and became a member of the Vienna Künstlerhaus, an association representing Viennese painters, sculptors and architects. In 1911, an extensive article on Alexander Rothaug and his work was published in the journal Art Revue; two years later, he received the Drasche Award. Alexander Rothaug died in Vienna in 1946. 

Rothaug had a lifelong interest in the depiction of ancient Roman, Greek, Germanic and Norse mythologies. His work blended the Classicism of Vienna’s Academic School with elements of Jugendstil, the German counterpart of Art Nouveau, and the mystic and nostalgic Symbolism of Franz von Stuck, a co-founder of the Munich Secession whose subject matter was primarily drawn from mythology. 

As it is not signed, “The Death of Achilles” could be a preparatory work for a commissioned monumental painting. As the underdrawing can be seen in some areas, Rothaug was likely still working out the specifics of the composition. “The Death of Achilles” may have been part of a larger cycle of images, one either depicting the life of Achilles or events from the Trojan War. Rothaug paid particular attention in all of his works to the complex, carefully detailed musculature of the figures; he had previously published a treatise on the depiction of the human body titled “Statics and Dynamics of the Human Body” in 1933.

Note: In April of 2017, the online Renegade Tribune posted an article written by J. Belenger, entitled “The Mythological Art of Alexander Rothaug”, which contains a biography and fifty images of Rothaug’s work. This article can be found at: http://www.renegadetribune.com/mythological-art-alexander-rothaug/

Top Insert Image: Alexander Rothaug, “The Grim Garden”, 1930, Oil on Canvas

Second Insert Image: Alexander Rothaug, “Apollo Sending Out the Plague of Arrows”, circa 1920, Oil on Canvas, 185 x 236 cm, Belvedere Museum, Vienna

Bottom Insert Image: Alexander Rothaug, “Samson’s Revenge”, 1928, Oil on Canvas, Private Collection

Francisco Martins

The Photography of Francisco Martins

Born in Cascais, a municipality of Lisbon in 1980, Francisco Martins is a Portuguese photographer, illustrator and graphic designer. He developed his drawing skills from a very young age; the focus of his artwork became the human body depicted in a realistic style. Spending long hours drawing faces and bodies, Martins was captivated by the idea of capturing on paper a subject at a particular moment in time, in effect rendering the subject timeless and beyond mortality. 

Throughout his art history studies, Martins felt especially inspired by the works produced during the Renaissance and Late Baroque periods, the Classical art of Europe’s seventeenth-century and the works of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood which included such artists as William Holman Hunt, Dante Gabriel Rossetti and, later, William Morris and John William Waterhouse. Martins was also inspired by the portraits of past monarchs who, considered to have been anointed by God, were depicted in divine postures surrounded by auras of light and magical atmospheres. 

Francisco Martins, drawn to these painting styles and techniques, began to apply these same principles to his own artwork. Along with his love for nature, he has a deep fascination for Greek and Celtic mythology, as well as the folklore of his native Portugal. Martins’s book collection of fairy tales and local lore told by elders around fires on cold nights played an important role in shaping his graphic style. 

Between 2000 and 2004, Martins attended Lisbon’s Institute of Art, Design, Technology and Communication where he earned his Bachelor of Fine Arts in Graphic Design. After graduation, Martins began to experiment in photography. He combined photography with his illustrative techniques to create hyper-realistic illustrations that depicted scenes from ancient myths. As his photographic skills matured, Martins began to focus more on fashion and his favorite form of expression, portrait photography.

Begun in 2016, Francisco Martins’s “LongIsBeautiful” project is a photographic series that celebrates that which is different and aims to break down labels and stereotypes. Primarily it is an attempt to break rigid trends in the fashion industry, elevate the industry’s  fundamental values, and confront society’s rigid expectations of what a man’s image should be. The project also glorifies the image of men in communion with Nature, a communion exemplified by Native Americans and Brazilian and Polynesian native cultures. 

The “LongIsBeautiful” project associates long hair with the sixth sense and sees it as a celebration of the natural world of which we are a part. Societies, especially ancient ones, believed that hair was more than an aesthetic attribute; a person threatened or in danger would feel one’s hair rise up on the back of his neck, an unconscious perception of a warning. The project depicts modern man as a being who recognizes and respects the importance of the natural environment. 

Concurrently with his “LongIsBeautiful” project, Martins began a project entitled “RedIsBeautiful”, a photographic series that was started with the goal of ending the negative stigma that is usually associated with red hair. The rarest of all hair colors on the planet, less than two percent of the world’s population, red hair is often an excuse for bullying, derogatory comments, harassment and even hate crimes. There are high incidents of both depression and suicides among those with red hair due to such occurrences. In Martins’s vision, red hair plays a major role in fairy tales and should be recognized as an exceptional trait. His project hopes to increase self-esteem and shape the fashion world into a more accepting and appreciative industry. 

As an independent artist, Francisco Martins’s work has appeared  in many periodicals including Umbigo Magazine, Egoísta Magazine, DIF Magazine, PARQ Magazine, Computer Arts Portugal Magazine and MC1R Magazine, among others. He has also done photographic work with guitarist Steve Vai for Ibanez Guitars. 

Martins’s work was featured in two compendiums of illustrations from worldwide artists by the German art publishing house TASCHEN. His images appeared in “Illustration Now: Volume 3” and “Illustration Now: Portraits”, as well as in the promotional calendars and diaries. Martins’s work was also featured in the official catalogues for the 2009 Lisbon Offf festival and the 2010 Offf in Paris.

Francisco Martins’s work can be found at his Instagram site located at: https://www.instagram.com/franciscomartinsphotography

Francisco Martins’s Behance site, which combines his three fields of graphic work, illustration and photography, is located at: http://www.behance.net/FrancMartins

Second Insert Image: Francisco Martins, “João David, Cascais”, 2019, “LongIsBeautiful” Project, Black and White Print

Third Insert Image: Francisco Martins, “Chris Pritchard, Cascais”, 2015, “RedIsBeautiful” Project, “NC1R?-The Magazine for Redheads, Issue 5, 2016

Bottom Insert Image: Francisco Martins, “António Godinho, Cascais”, 2018, “RedIsBeautiful” and “LongIsBeautiful” Projects, Color Print

André Durand

Paintings by André Durand

Born in Ottawa, Ontario in 1947, André Durand is a Canadian photographer and painter of Irish ancestry who works within the European Hermetic tradition. At the age of seventeen, he left Canada with his wife Ludmilla to emigrate to Europe. Through its history, Hermeticism was closely associated with the idea of a primeval, divine wisdom that was revealed to ancient sages. Hermeticism remains influential within esoteric Christianity, particularly in the  Christian mystical tradition of Maartinism. The anonymously written 1967 French tome “Meditations on the Tarot”, later edited and published by Robert Powell in 1980, summarizes the theory and practices of Christian Hermeticism.

Best known for his allegorical portraits of such figures as Princess Diane, Durand’s mythologically inspired paintings are the foundation of his work. These pieces display his deep understanding of the rituals and myths of both Christian and Classical traditions. Influenced by Michelangelo, Rubens and Titian, Durand tries to unite his religion with his art; however, he approaches the subject with the objective and philosophical criteria of a Neo-modernist. 

In 1970 André Durand painted a series of images inspired by the dancers of the British Royal Ballet. His 1972 portrait of Irish novelist Elizabeth Bowen, whose work often bears heavily on the psychology of its characters, is housed in London’s National Portrait Gallery. Durand  has also received international acclaim for his official portraits of Pope John Paul II and the fourteenth Dalai Lama.

In 2000, Durand became artist in residence at London’s Kingston Upon Thames University. A major exhibition in 2006, entitled “Durand Wholly Pictures” and which covered six years of work, was displayed in churches and cathedrals in the county of Sussex. These works depicted devotional Christian narratives set in traditional  Sussex landscapes. In November of 2007, André Durand produced his oil on linen “Daniel in the Lions’ Den”; the sale of the painting and its limited edition prints benefited the Demelza Hospice Care for Children, a charity in Kent that provides support to life-limited children and their families.

After his return to Italy, André Durand visited the commune of Torre del Greco in Naples and the coastal town of Sperlonga, known for its sculptures and Roman sea grotto at the Villa of Tiberius. At the invitation of the Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Sperlonga, he opened a studio at the museum as artist in residence for two years. From 2010 to 2012, Durand began a series of round formal paintings on the subject of the Stations of the Resurrection, many of which contain the Grotto of Tiberius in the background.

Durand published several art photography volumes of his work in 2012. Most notable among them is the “Fotograf ando Statue per Anno”, an image collection of the statuary in Sperlonga’s National Archeological Museum. Containing text co-written by the museum’s director Marisa de’Spagnolls, this volume of sculptural work is the only comprehensive photographic archive of the museum’s collection. 

André Durand’s work has been featured in many solo exhibitions in Italy and England. These include, among others, “Frammenti Classici” in 1995 at London’s Archeus Fine Art; the 2000 “Soggetti Italianizzati” at the Galleria Albemarle in London; and “Via Lucis e Lagrime di San Pietro” at Galleria Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome. Durand’s work is in many private collections and the permanent collections of the Scottish National Gallery and London’s National Portrait Gallery. He currently lives and works in Sperlonga, Italy.

Images of André Durand’s work, a manifesto on Neo-modernism, enquiries for commissions, and contact information can be found at the artist’s site: http://andredurandportraits.com

Second Insert Image: André Durand, “Saint Christopher Cynocephalus”, 2010, “Sacred” Series, Oil on Linen, 167.5 x 112 cm

Third Insert Image: André Durand, “Narcissus”, 2001, “Mythology” Series, Oil on Linen, 61 x 48 cm, Private Collection, Rome

Bottom Insert Image: André Durand, “Giordano Bruno Burning”, 2000, “Profane” Series, Oil on Linen, 203.2 x 167.6 cm

Alexandre Denis Abel de Pujol

Alexandre-Denis Abel de Pujal, “Ixion Chained in Tartarus”, 1824, Oil on Canvas, 127 x 157 cm, Louvre Museum, Paris

Alexandre-Denis Abel de Pujol, “Sisyphus Eternally Rolling the Rock”, 1819, Oil on Canvas, 130 x 212 cm, Musée Henri Martin, Cahors, France

Born in January of 1785 in Valenciennes, a northern French city bordering Belgium, Alexandre Denis Abel de Pujol was a French painter. He was the illegitimate son and only child of nobleman Alexander-Denis-Joseph Mortry de Pujol, Baron de la Grave, who served as advisor to King Louis XVI Auguste and was the founder of the Académie de Peinture et Sculpture in Valenciennes. From the age of twelve, Abel de Pujol studied at the Academy and completed his training as a student of Neoclassical artist Jacques-Louis David, regarded in his time as the preeminent painter in France. 

Receiving little support from his father for his studies, Abel de Pujol earned a pension from the city of Valenciennes which allowed him to continue his studies at David’s studio. He also took classes in perspective, anatomy, and architecture at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris. In 1806 at  the age of twenty-one, de Pujol won a first-class medal at the Académie and a second-class medal at the Salon of 1810 for his painting “Jacob Blessing the Children of Joseph”; this painting placed second at the Prix de Rome competition in 1810. 

In 1811, Abel du Pujol won the Prix de Rome with his painting “Lycurgus Presenting the Heir to the Throne to the Lacedaemonians”. Having achieved this award, he was formally recognized by his father and was able to add the name Pujol to his own. Abel de Pujol suffered a period of poor health and depression during his stay in Italy, which allowed him only eight months of study in 1812. Restored to health, he returned to his career in Paris and successfully exhibited mainly history paintings at the Salons.

In 1814, Abel de Pujol won gold medals from both Louis XVIII and Napoleon Bonaparte for his monumental painting “The Death of Britannicus”. A compositional study for the 3.54 x 5.50 meters painting is currently housed in the collection of New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art. His grisaille (gray-monochrome) painting “The Preaching and Martyrdom of Saint Stephen”, intended for the church of Saint Etienne du Mont, was entered at the 1817 Paris Salon where it won the prize for history painting. These awards established his reputation as a history painter and muralist.

Abel de Pujol received several important official commissions, He executed three paintings and a ceiling mural for the royal palace at Versailles, as well as a large, allegorical ceiling mural, entitled “The Renaissance of the Arts”, for the Louvre’s grand staircase, later destroyed in 1855 during the joining of the Palais du Louvre to the Palais des Tuileries. Abel de Pujol also painted many mural decorations for public buildings, such as the Galerie de Diane at Fontainbeau and the Palais de Luxembourg. For the ceiling of the Bourse, Paris’s stock exchange, he executed a series of large-scale grisaille tromp-l’oeil decorations of architectural features and draped nudes.

Throughout his career, de Pujol produced altar pieces and designs for stained-glass windows for Parisian churches such as Saint-Roch, Saint Sulpice and Saint Thomas d’Acquin and the Madeleine. He also did work for the cathedral at Arras and the church of Saint-Pierre in Douai. Included among Abel de Pojul’s last major works are the 1846 “Valenciennes Encouraging the Arts”, a monumental canvas for the town hall of Valenciennes, and an 1852 mural for the ceiling of the staircase of the School of Mining at the Hôtel de Vendôme in Paris.

A successful teacher and draftsman, Abel de Pujol was a member of the Institut de France, a learned society composed of all the sciences and fine arts, and an Officer of the National Order of the Legion of Honor. Among his students were sculptor Alphonse Lami, painter Alexandre-Gabriel Decamps, and Julien Hudson, an American painter and free man of color, thought to be the first African American by whom a self portrait is known. Abel de Pujol died in Paris, at the age of seventy-six, in September of 1861. 

Top Insert Image: Alexandre-Denis Abel de Pujol, “Self Portrait”, 1806, Oil on Canvas, 71 x 55 cm, Musée de Beaux-Arts, Paris

Middle Insert Image: Abel de Pujol, “La Colère d’Achille (The Fury of Achilles)”, 1810, Oil on Canvas, 112 x 146 cm, Snite Museum of Art, Campus of Notre Dame, Indiana

Bottom Insert Image: Alexandre_Abel_de_Pujol, “Self Portrait”, 1812, Oil on Canvas, 56.2 x 46 cm, Musée des Beaux-Arts

Denis Forkas

The Paintings of Denis Forkas

Born in 1977 in Kamyshin, a town on the Volga river, Denis Forkas Kostromitin is a Russian painter whose work explores religious and mythological symbolism in the tradition of ancient Mediterranean art. The son of a military officer, his childhood years were spent in various remote regions of the Soviet states. Forkas’s early nomadic existence with its isolation and lack of comforts led to self-education in artistic training and numerous sensory deprivation experiences, which later had a major impact on his artwork.

With little stimulus from the austere Soviet environment, Forkas eagerly consumed literature on the esoteric worlds of Egyptian and Greek mysticism and mythology. After the iron curtain’s collapse in 1991, new translations of literary works, including the esoteric writings of English occultist Aleister Crowley and French author Eliphas Levi, entered the Soviet states. Forkas studied these new volumes and the literature written by Western philosophers, which became available in the mid-1990s.

After the economic boom in the new century, Denis Forkas frequently visited China as a journalist, interpreter, and commercial representative. After meeting several painting masters in China, he was able to receive formal training for three years in traditional Eastern painting techniques, including those of the Xieyl and Gongbi art forms. 

Xieyl is a genre of Chinese traditional painting worked on xuan paper that uses either ink or layers of watercolor. This genre includes works of calligraphy, poem, painting and seal, of which freehand painting is the most influential and popular. Gongbi is a careful, realistic technique of Chinese painting, often highly-colored, that is worked  on xuan paper. This method uses highly-detailed brushstrokes that delineate details very precisely without interpretation or free expression on the part of the artist.

After leaving China, Forkas settled in Moscow to concentrate on his career path as a professional artist. His early work was inspired by German Expressionism and the late nineteenth-century Symbolist movement, which emphasized the reality of the created paint surface itself. These paintings by Forkas were influenced by the early abstract, experimental works of Wassily Kandinsky that, in an immediate way, were an expression of Kandinsky’s inner feelings.

Denis Forkas’s new work, still in the artistic traditions of ancient Near East civilizations, draw their inspiration from early Renaissance and  seventeenth-century Dutch paintings. Drifting away from the earlier predominant symbolist style, Forkas’s paintings became influenced by the works of Belgian painter Fernand Khnopff, who carried symbolism’s recurring themes into his portraits, and Russian painter Mikhail Vrubel, whose paintings in the latter portion of his life displayed a glowing, otherworldly mosaic effect that fit within the Byzantine tradition.

Since 2007, Forkas has privately taught the techniques of painting and drawing to students and has participated in various local and international exhibitions, including the October 2014 Image Show in London. Forkas has produced many drawings and paintings that have been featured as album covers for international music releases. Currently living and working in Moscow, he has contributed both work and an interview for the esoteric publisher Fulgur Press.

Contact information and a small gallery of work by Forkas can be found at his website located at: www.denisforkas.com

For those interested, a list of album cover art by Denis Forkas can be found at the Encyclopaedia Mettalum site located at: https://www.metal-archives.com/artists/Denis_Forkas_Kostromitin/436114

Second Insert Image: Denis Forkas, “The Hanged Man / Gift of Prometheus”, 2017, Acrylics and Gilding on Paper, 41.5 x 29.5 cm

Third Insert Image: Denis Forkas, “Saglokratlok II”, 2017, Ink and Gouache on Paper, 24.1 x 18.5 cm

Bottom Insert Image: Denis Forkas, “Between Two Worlds (Study for a Recurring Dream of Ichor Baptism Fashioned as a Portico Fresco Cartoon)”, 2016, Acrylics on Paper on Hardboard, 23.7 x 22.5 cm

Paul Manship

Paul Manship, “Actaeon”, 1925, Gilt Bronze, Alexis Rudier Fondeur, 120.7 x 130.8 x 33.7 cm, Cooper Hewitt Museum

Born in December of 1885 in St. Paul, Minnesota, Paul Manship was an American sculptor whose subjects and modern style were largely inspired by classical sculpture. After attending Mechanical Arts High School, he took evening classes at the St. Paul Institute School of Art from 1892 to 1903, but left to work as a designer and illustrator. In 1905 Manship enrolled briefly in the Art Students League in New York City under Hermon Atkins MacNeil, a sculptor trained at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts. 

Soon after his arrival to New York, Paul Manship became an assistant to stone sculptor Solon Borglum, whom he credited as the master who had most influenced him. With money saved, he enrolled at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia from 1907-08 under sculptor Charles Grafly. Moving back to New York, Manship worked at the studio of Viennese sculptor Isidore Konti, where he modeled a decorative relief entitled “Man with Wild Horses”, later shown at the National Academy of Design in 1908.

In 1909 at the age of twenty-three, Paul Manship received a three-year scholarship, the coveted American Prix de Rome, to study at the American Academy in Rome. His early work was influenced by Rodin’s expressive style but, after traveling throughout Italy and Greece, he developed an appreciation for Hellenistic statues and for Egyptian, Assyrian, and Minoan artwork. This affinity for archaic work influenced Manship’s unified linear style of sculpture for which he is well known; his novel approach represented a break from the popular Beaux-Arts style of his former teachers. 

After three years abroad, Manship settled in New York City in 1912, where he began a successful career that would last fifty years. His arresting sculptures, with their freely modeled simple forms and dramatic gestures, were in demand in the New York art world. In February of 1913 Manship had a solo exhibition of his work at New York’s Architectural League. An instant success with critics and the public, it resulted in many private and public commissions. 

This success of Manship’s solo show was followed with two more exhibitions of his work in November of 1913, moving his career briskly forward. A show at the Berlin Photographic Company in 1914 resulted in the sale of almost one hundred of Manship’s bronze pieces. He was honored by his peers for this achievement with a gold medal at the San Francisco Panama-Pacific Exposition in 1915.

Some of Paul Manship’s most notable works are: the set of monumental bronze gates at the entrance to the New York Zoological Park in the Bronx area of New York, erected as a memorial to Paul Rainey; the Prometheus Fountain in Rockefeller Center, New York City, which ultimately became his signature work despite his disappointment with the subject; and the “Time and Fates Sundial” with the accompanying four “Moods of Time”, executed in plaster of Paris, for the reflecting pool of the 1939 World’s Fair in New York City. 

Paul Manship, at the top of his profession, was bestowed with many honors: membership in the Academia Nacional de las Bellas Artes in Argentina in 1944; membership in Paris’ Academie des Beaux-Arts in 1946; membership in l’Accademia di San Luca in Rome in 1952, the gold medal for sculpture by the National Institute of Arts and Letters in New York City in 1945; membership in the French Legion of Honor; and election to president of the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1948.

“I’m not especially interested in anatomy, though naturally I’ve studied it. And, although I approve generally of normally correct proportions, what matters is the spirit which the artist puts into his creation—the vitality, the rhythm, the emotional effect.” —Paul Manship

Jaques Augustin-Catherine Pajou

Jaques Augustin-Catherine Pajou, “Mercure ou le Commerce”, 1780, Detail, Marble, 196 x 86 x 82 cm, Richelieu Wing of the Louvre Museum, Paris

The son of famous sculptor Augustin Pajou, Jacques-Augustin-Catherine Pajou was born in August of 1766 in Paris, France. He was a painter, both of portraits and historical scenes, and a sculptor in the Classical style, with the emphasis on form, simplicity, proportion and the clarity of formal structure. In 1784, Pajou became a student at Paris’ Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture. 

Pajou’s devotion to Greco-Roman art, developed by his later studies in Rome at the Académie Française, was evident throughout his career. For his diploma work at the Royal Academy, he sculpted his “Pluton Tenat Cerbere Enchaint  (Pluto Enchanting Cerebus)”, which was approved by the Royal Academy in 1759 and submitted for admission in 1760. This sculpture is now on view in the Louvre.

Jacques Pajou received a directive from King Louis XVI for the creation of statues to honor great Frenchmen. This led to a succession of work in the 1770s which included busts of naturalist Georges Buffon: Madame Du Barry, the last mistress of King Louis XV; and mathematician and scientist René Descartes. During this time, Pajou also sculpted a statuette of clergyman Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet, a master orator known for his sermons.

Jacques Pajou was appointed keeper of  King Louis XVI’s antiquities in 1777, and commissioned by the King to complete the Fontaine des Innocents in Paris, constructed by architect Pierre Lescot and sculptor Jean Goujon. Originally scheduled for destruction for sanitary reasons in 1787, it was saved, largely by the efforts of writer Quatremère de Quincy, and moved to Paris’ square Place Jaochim-du-Bellay. Pajou’s commission was to create a fourth façade for the fountain, in the same style as the other three, so that the fountain could be free standing.

Titian

Tiziano Vecellio (Titian), “The Punishment of Tityus”, 1549, Oil on Canvas, 253 x 217 cm, Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid, Spain

Born in 1488-1490 in Pieve di Cadore, Republic of Venice, Tiziano Vecellio, known as Titian, was a Renaissance painter, considered the most important member of the sixteenth-century Venetian school. The mythology of Greco-Roman antiquity provided a great body of narrative themes for Titian. Beginning at 1540s, Titian set about visually reconstructing those legends and images. Following his 1546 visit to Rome in his later years, he renewed and deepened his study of the ancient myths. 

In 1548 Titian received a commission from Mary of Hungary, sister of Holy Roman Emperor Charles V  and Regent of the Netherlands, for a series of subjects drawn from Ovid’s description of the punishment of four sinners in Hades. He painted four large canvases of the Damned, depicting Tityus, Sisyphus, Tantalus and Ixion, all of whom were condemned to perpetual torture for incurring the displeasure of the gods. Of these four canvases, only the ones of Tityus and Sisyphus have survived. 

“The Punishment of Tityus”, commissioned by Mary of Hungary, was done during a time when the imperial power of her brother,  the Catholic Emperor Charles V, was in a critical time of confrontation with the Protestant princes, Ultimately after barely escaping capture, Charles V’s political situation compelled him in 1552 to ratify an agreement by which the new Protestant religion was granted equal rights with Roman Catholicism.

Titian’s style in this mid-century was concerned with impressively-scaled figures and dynamic composition of the scene’s structure. The theme in the four paintings, punishment as a determent for wrongs against authority, seems timely for that tumultuous period in history. The drama of Tityus’s punishment was conveyed by Titian’s use of fluid and assertive brushstrokes, the askew figure of Tityus, and its diagonal composition.

Note:  Tityus was a Giant, the son of Zeus and the mortal Elara, daughter of King Orchomenus, ruler of Arcadia. Once grown Tityus, at the behest of goddess Hera, attempted to rape Leto, the daughter of Titans Coeus and Phoebe. Slain by Antemis and Apollo, the protective children of Leto, he was sent to Hades for punishment. Tityus was chained, stretched out, reaching forever for food and drink,  and tortured by two vultures who eternally fed on his liver, which grew back every night.

Svetlin Vassilev

Illustration by Svetlin Vassilev, Unknown Title

Svetlin Vassilev is a painter and book illustrator born in May of 1971 in Rouse, Bulgaria. He studied in the Intermediate Academy of Arts in Plovdiv and then in the National Academy of Arts in Sophia. He has illustrated more than 20 books, using the mediums of watercolor and acrylic paint.

Since 1997 Vassilev has lived in Greece with his wife Ada and their daughters During this time he has illustrated a wide variety of picture books, some of classical stories and some written by modern authors. In 2004, Svetlin Vassilev received the Special National Award for his illustrations of “Don Quizote”.

Kaneko Tomiyuki

Paintings by Kaneko Tomiyuki

Japanese artist Kaneko Tomiyuki was born in Saitama prefecture, 1978. Since childhood, he has been particularly interested in Japanese folklore and the spiritual world. His interest has led him to study in the Tohoku prefecture, which was the birthplace of “Legends of Tono”. As an undergraduate student he studied Japanese style painting in Tohoku University of Art & Design and graduated the postgraduate of the same university in 2009. Even after he finished studying, he continues to “substantiate” mythological creatures such as: yokai, spirits and the gods by painting.

Kaneko believes that the stratum of unconsciousness called the “Manas-vijnana” in Sanskrit (the seventh stratum of the eight within the world of Yogacara) is the origin of “evil” in everyday life, beginning with Yokais and many other evil creatures. Compared to the animalistic nature of the eighth stratum, “Alaya-vijinana”, “Manas-vijinana” is the unique feature of human and the unconscious emotion of attachment. It is always around us and constantly puts us into trickery. However, this unconscious emotion of attatchment is what makes humans human. The human’s strength to struggle is where all art is created, and by intercrossing with localized imagination it has formed as the yokai.

Joseph Blanc

Joseph Blanc, “Perseus”, Oil on Canvas, 1869, Musée d’Orsay, Paris, France

Paul- Joseph Blanc was a French painter who specialized in scenes from ancient history and mythology. He studied at the Ecole des Beaux Arts with Emile Bin and Alexandre Cabanel. He was awarded in 1867 the Prix de Rome in the category of painting for his work “The Murder of Laius by Oedipus” and was named a Professor at the Ecole in 1889. His studio in Montmartre also seved as an art school.

Leigh J Mccluskey

Paintings by Leigh J Mccluskey

Leigh Joseph McCloskey is an American artist, actor, and writer. As an actor, he has appeared in numerous television shows and movies, including a 46-episode stint as Mitch Cooper on the popular American soap opera “Dallas”, and a leading role in the Dario Argento-helmed supernatural horror film “Inferno”.

Leigh J. McCloskey is also a painter. His work delves into ideas of religion, mythology, philo-Sophia and esotericism to string theory, quantum physics and the multidimensional nature of consciousness. He has deeply studied Hermeticism, Alchemy and the Kabbala and presents these ideas in his paintings..

Koshchei the Deathless

Artist Unknown, “Koshchei the Deathless: The Immortal Villian”, Illustration, 1901

His name Koshchei originates from the Slavic word for “bone” and it indicates that Koshchei is bony or skinny in his form. Myths of Koshchei are mostly found in East Slavic lands and scholars there see him as an interpretation of a Slavic god of Death, or a frost sorcerer that has the ability to bring death and frost to anyone that opposes him.

In modern approach on the subject some scholars don’t see him just as a villain but as a force of nature, in other words not necessary that he is evil. Still, in various Russian myths Koshchei is seen as a powerful frost sorcerer, with cunning mind and not so good intentions. In few different fairy tales he turns people into a walnut, or even turns entire kingdoms into stone so folk legends still see him as an evil character.

André Durand

Paintings by André Durand

Born in Ottawa, Ontario in 1947, André Durand is a Canadian photographer and painter who works within the European Hermetic tradition. Through its history, Hermeticism was closely associated with the idea of a primeval, divine wisdom that was revealed to ancient sages. Hermeticism remains influential within esoteric Christianity, particularly in the  Christian mystical tradition of Maartinism. The anonymously written 1967 French tome “Meditations on the Tarot”, later edited and published by Robert Powell in 1980, summarizes the theory and practices of Christian Hermeticism.

Best known for his allegorical portraits of such figures as Princess Diane, Durand’s mythologically inspired paintings are the foundation of his work. These pieces display his deep understanding of the rituals and myths of both Christian and Classical traditions. Influenced by Michelangelo, Rubens and Titian, Durand tries to unite his religion with his art; however, he approaches the subject with the objective and philosophical criteria of a Neo-modernist. 

In 1970 André Durand painted a series of images inspired by the dancers of the British Royal Ballet. His 1972 portrait of Irish novelist Elizabeth Bowen, whose work often bears heavily on the psychology of its characters, is housed in London’s National Portrait Gallery. Durand  has also received international acclaim for his official portraits of Pope John Paul II and the fourteenth Dalai Lama.

In 2000, Durand became artist in residence at London’s Kingston Upon Thames University. A major exhibition in 2006, entitled “Durand Wholly Pictures” and which covered six years of work, was displayed in churches and cathedrals in the county of Sussex. These works depicted devotional Christian narratives set in traditional  Sussex landscapes. In November of 2007, André Durand produced his oil on linen “Daniel in the Lions’ Den”; the sale of the painting and its limited edition prints benefited the Demelza Hospice Care for Children, a charity in Kent that provides support to life-limited children and their families.

After his return to Italy, André Durand visited the commune of Torre del Greco in Naples and the coastal town of Sperlonga, known for its sculptures and Roman sea grotto at the Villa of Tiberius. At the invitation of the Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Sperlonga, he opened a studio at the museum as artist in residence for two years. From 2010 to 2012, Durand began a series of round formal paintings on the subject of the Stations of the Resurrection, many of which contain the Grotto of Tiberius in the background.

Durand published several art photography volumes of his work in 2012. Most notable among them is the “Fotograf ando Statue per Anno”, an image collection of the statuary in Sperlonga’s National Archeological Museum. Containing text co-written by the museum’s director Marisa de’Spagnolls, this volume of sculptural work is the only comprehensive photographic archive of the museum’s collection. 

André Durand’s work has been featured in many solo exhibitions in Italy and England. These include, among others, “Frammenti Classici” in 1995 at London’s Archeus Fine Art; the 2000 “Soggetti Italianizzati” at the Galleria Albemarle in London; and “Via Lucis e Lagrime di San Pietro” at Galleria Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome. Durand’s work is in many private collections  the permanent collections of the Scottish National Gallery and London’s National Portrait Gallery. He currently lives and works in Sperlonga, Italy.

Note: Additional images and information can be found on this site in the July 2022 archive.