No, it is not a picture. Almost like a photographer, a famous painter has captured an image, without people he aware of it. The Night Watch (also known as the Civic Guard marching, or as The Company of Captain Frans Banning Cocq), is an oil painting on canvas on canvas 363 x 437 cm, made in 1642 by Rembrandt Harmenszoon …
Read More »MASTERPIECES OF ART IN THE CENTURIES / ROME – Raphael: The School of Athens
Fifty-eight are the characters depicted in the fresco. Plato and Aristotle are in the center of the composition. Even your eyes – is instantly attracted to these figures, but not randomly, because they are the lines of the floor and the prospect of the building to make possible this colorful magic. As you have observed, the center of the scene …
Read More »MASTERPIECES OF ART IN THE CENTURIES / PARIS – Lucas Cranach The Elder: Three Graces
Lucas Cranach the Elder, was friends with all of the big hitters of his Renaissance Germany: painter Albrecht Durer, reformist Martin Luther, and the various Electors and Emperors for whom he painted. Apart from being a very successful painter, he was a estimable businessman. The Three Graces (small tempera on panel, which measures 37×24 cm), was painted by him around …
Read More »MASTERPIECES OF ART IN THE CENTURIES / AMSTERDAM – Cornelis van Haarlem: Bathsheba at her bath
Cornelis van Haarlem, Dutch Golden Age painter and draughtsman, was one of the leading Northern Mannerist artists in The Netherlands, and an important forerunner of Frans Hals as a portraitist. There was the year 1594, and he painted an oil on convas (height 77.5 cm, width: 64 cm), writing on the left, monogram and date: CCH 1594. It was born …
Read More »MASTERPIECES OF ART IN THE CENTURIES / MILAN – Leonardo da Vinci: The Last Supper
“The Last Supper” is a mural painted on plaster, in tempera, chalk, glue and pitch. In Milan, around 1495, Leonardo da Vinci has embellished a large wall (460 × 880 cm), in the former refectory of a convent, adjacent to the sanctuary of Santa Maria delle Grazie. What you see, you are inspired by a Gospel passage of John, the …
Read More »MASTERPIECES OF ART IN THE CENTURIES / FLORENCE – Sandro Botticelli: The Birth of Venus
The “Birth of Venus”, is not only a tempera painting on linen canvas, a result of the creativity of 172 × 278 cm. Around 1485, Sandro Botticelli realized that wonder for the Medici villa of Castello, but now you can see in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, as an icon of the Italian Renaissance. When you observe that painting, the …
Read More »MASTERPIECES OF ART IN THE CENTURIES / MILAN – Andrea Mantegna: The Dead Christ
In the iconography of the late lamented of the dead man, it is always expected the presence of the “painful”, characters that are beside. This is what happens even in the “Dead Christ”, a picture of the size of 68 × 81 cm, one of the most famous paintings by Andrea Mantegna, where the Virgin Mary, along with St. John …
Read More »MASTERPIECES OF ART IN THE CENTURIES / BERLIN0 & ANTWERP – Jean Fouquet: the Melun Diptych
The “Melun Diptych” is a painting on wood, probably made around 1450 for an altar of the cathedral of Melun, attributed to Jean Fouquet http://meetingbenches.com/2015/08/jean-fouquet-14201481-french-painter-the-master-of-panel-painting-and-manuscript-illumination/ The origin of royal impulse, it was a desire to Charles VII, to perpetuate the memory of Agnes Sorel, his mistress. The diptych – from whom is also the small portrait of the artist, preserved …
Read More »MASTERPIECES OF ART IN THE CENTURIES / URBINO – Piero della Francesca: The Flagellation of Christ
“Flagellation of Christ” is a painting made around 1450 by Piero della Francesca http://meetingbenches.com/2016/02/piero-della-francesca-14161492-italian-painter-a-myth-through-the-centuries/ That painting, made with the technique of tempera on panel, is preserved in the Galleria Nazionale delle Marche in Urbino, hosted in the Palazzo Ducale (extraordinary princely residence of the fifteenth century, commissioned by Duke Federico da Montefeltro, lord of Urbino). http://www.guideurbino.it/en/default.aspx After the apartment of …
Read More »THE INCREDIBLE STORY OF LOVE OF A BAKER’S DAUGHTER – La Fornarina, the never extinguished love between Rome and Urbino
“La Fornarina” is an oil painting on wood, made by Raffaello Sanzio nearly five centuries ago. To admire that fruit of artistic creativity, you have to go to Rome, in the Palazzo Barberini National Gallery. That painting was preserved by Raphael in his studio until his death. For the identity of the model, imagine a girl named Margherita Luti – …
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