General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsHere, again, is your Friday Afternoon Challenge, DUers! Today: “Backstory Redux.”*
What are the backstories that apply to these works of art?
And we dont cheat and guess here...so please dont.
1a.
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1b.
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2a.
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2b.
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3a.
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3b.
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4a.
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4b.
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*With grateful homage to the late Sir Kenneth Clark, whose insights inspired this Challenge.
CTyankee
(63,912 posts)Got some ideas? A guess?
I won't bite you (I promise!)...
seabeyond
(110,159 posts)CTyankee
(63,912 posts)Research, research, research...
CTyankee
(63,912 posts)that's a start.
I love that one best, too. It's why I started with it in this Challenge...so beautiful...
elleng
(130,967 posts)elleng
(130,967 posts)Leonardo!
Some angel.
CTyankee
(63,912 posts)Ah, here's where the "back story" is...
elleng
(130,967 posts)have to spend more time with you!!!
Snowing up there???
CTyankee
(63,912 posts)are you getting much snow?
elleng
(130,967 posts)Boring, but safe.
marions ghost
(19,841 posts)"Virgin of the Rocks"
Leonardo da Vinci
Year 1483-1486
There are two versions.
Also some controversy that the baby isn't Jesus but John the Baptist?
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http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/art/8836162/The-mystery-of-Leonardos-two-Madonnas.html
CTyankee
(63,912 posts)marions ghost
(19,841 posts)1b--The one in the Louvre, earlier. Pointing finger of the angel.
1a--The version in England National Gallery was finished 20 years later. No pointing finger (& other differences)
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A complex history
The Louvre version of the picture was to have been the central part of a polyptych which the Brotherhood of the Immaculate Conception commissioned Leonardo and the de Predis brothers to paint for a chapel in the church of San Francesco Grande in Milan in 1483. The other version, now in the National Gallery in London and known to have formerly been in this chapel, and several archive documents indicate that the Louvre painting was never installed there. Its presence in the French royal collection is attested from 1627, but several clues suggest it may have been acquired much earlier.
The most convincing hypothesis is that the picture, painted between 1483 and 1486, did not meet with Leonardos clients full satisfaction, which enabled Louis XII to acquire it around 1500?1503. The second, replacement picture, now in London, may have been painted by Ambrogio de Predis under Leonardos supervision between 1495 and 1508.
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Another version of the story:
Leonardos second Virgin of the Rocks took rather longer to complete. Begun in the 1490s, it was still unfinished by the turn of the century, when the arrival of invading French troops forced Ludovico from power and heralded Leonardos hasty departure from Milan. The artist would only return in 1506 and it wasnt until 1508 that his second Virgin was (at last) deemed sufficiently finished for final payment to be made.
In truth, the painting still contains mysteries but its secrets are not coded so much as occluded. Because the Louvre has taken an extremely conservative approach to its Leonardos, the French version of The Virgin of the Rocks has undergone little in the way of serious restoration and cleaning. The London version, which has been very recently and extensively cleaned, gives a much truer and brighter sense of Leonardos palette and tonal range. The picture used to be thought inferior to the Louvre version and has even been doubted as an autograph picture by the artists own hand. But the recent cleaning has brought out such exquisite details as the Madonnas gentle, solicitous face and her vividly painted drapery that its hard to believe anyone other than Leonardo could have been responsible. The London picture is more monumental, in that the figures resemble types rather than individuals. The four figures are larger in relation to the overall scale of the panel and form a more emphatic pyramid. The potentially distracting gesture of the angel, pointing at John the Baptist, has been suppressed.
But there are areas where the handling seems more cursory. The rocks are observed with less geological precision, so that they become almost like stage scenery, while the flowers in the foreground have been depicted in a less delicate and more workmanlike style. Luke Syson, curator of the National Gallerys forthcoming blockbuster, argues that such simplifications represent a profound change of philosophical approach on the part of Leonardo that in the later picture, he wanted to place a more idealised Virgin in a more generalised and therefore perfected version of the natural world. That may be true but its also possible that Leonardo, overburdened with work as usual, simply painted the rocks and plants as quickly as he could.
CTyankee
(63,912 posts)"Beautiful as it is, this angel lacks the enchantment of the lighter, more Gothic angel in the Paris version. It embodies the result of Leonardo's later researches in which ideal beauty and classic regularity of chiaroscuro were combined, with a certain loss of freshness, but with an expressive power which almost hypnotised his contemporaries."
But this is text from his book of 1938 so...
I really don't know...I have seen the Paris version at the Louvre (l.a.) and will see the London version (l.b. in late May)....
marions ghost
(19,841 posts)and give us your insights on this question!
CTyankee
(63,912 posts)if I have any insights, I'll let you know!...
longship
(40,416 posts)I recently have become a fan but will probably just sit in the background for a while and enjoy these threads from afar. Maybe I'll know one of them sometimes. Bandwidth limits here.
CTyankee
(63,912 posts)Nothing is out of line here when people are sincerely expressing their view of art...I love to hear about their own responses because art MUST have viewers otherwise it wouldn't exist...
longship
(40,416 posts)I am one of those science geeks, who likes art, but knows next to nothing about it.
Too bad you aren't posting about classical music. But audio is difficult on these forums.
If I have an inkling, I will indeed chime in. But so far I feel fairly overwhelmed.
But, once somebody mentioned da Vinci for #1a, I could kind of see it.
Thanks for your encouragement. I will try.
CTyankee
(63,912 posts)Leonardo is difficult, so I rarely (like never) present him, but this is different. !a. and 1b. are both Leonardos but one precedes the other. THAT is the story. Which is it?
longship
(40,416 posts)Am I right about that? They look the same.
Reminds me of Renoir's "Luncheon of the boating party" where all the females in the scene are the same model.
CTyankee
(63,912 posts)pinboy3niner
(53,339 posts)The backstory:
Andrea Mantegna had a preference for barren, rocky landscapes. In this painting he uses the landscape to emphasize Jesus' emotions of loneliness and fear.
Three disciples are asleep while the agonized Jesus prays to his father. He feels his end is approaching. Mantegna even shows this approaching: in the background Judas and a group of soldiers come to arrest Jesus. To the right the sky is becoming lighter: a new day has come.
http://www.artbible.info/art/large/281.html
marions ghost
(19,841 posts)Bellini Giovanni The agony in the garden
by Giovanni Bellini [Italian Renaissance painter, c.1430-1516]
Agony in the Garden
c. 1465
Tempera on wood, 81 x 127 cm
National Gallery, London
This early work of Bellini is fundamental for measuring the relationship that existed between the two brothers-in-law, Giovanni Bellini and Andrea Mantegna. A fairly strong resemblance links this work with the analogous subject painted by Mantegna in 1459, possibly for Giacomo Marcello, now also at the National Gallery in London. Indeed, both works were for long considered to be by Mantegna. The atmosphere is leaden and rarefied, and the harsh, barren landscape retains some of the strong elemental emotions of the primitives (in fact much of the setting is drawn from an idea of Jacopo's, exemplified by a sketch from his London notebook); the scene has a motionless essentiality. However, beyond the highly forced lines (still not even approaching the urgency of Mantegna's style) the dramatic way in which the two painters approach the subject is different: Mantegna's harsh and embossed in the dark contrast of strong colours; Bellini's more subtly lyrical and humanly resigned.
CTyankee
(63,912 posts)See Christiansen, the Jayne Wrightsman Curator of European Paintings at the Metropolitan Museum in NYC. His "Why Mantegna Matters' in the New Republic http://www.newrepublic.com/article/books/why-mantegna-matters#discusses this phenomenon...
marions ghost
(19,841 posts)From the New Republic article:
"Both Leonardo da Vinci and Mantegna cast a far more critical and even a pessimistic eye on the world around them, and what they saw was ignorance, folly, wantonness--and a lack of recognition of real genius. It is this biting, incisive, exalted mind that gives the art of Mantegna such an extraordinary edge and moral authority. And it is that which makes it very much the antidote to our frivolous and foolish times."
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So I guess the answer would be--Bellini's work is a bit more happy and Mantegna has an edge of pessimism. People like happy.
CTyankee
(63,912 posts)this love we have of Bellinii. And it is not undeserved, actually, IMHO. I really do like that picture and feel it is worthy of our praise.
I just don't really understand the put down of poor Mantegna...(but I don't always like his works...)
marions ghost
(19,841 posts)You know i like both of them but they do have different sensibilities-- just off the top of my head:
--Bellini's is far more emotional and dramatic, more fantastic, lyrical (clouds are great)
--Mantegna's is more technically correct (in the foreshortening), shows a more cool approach, more symbolism (I like his rabbits)
I like both of these versions--but I know the historians have their biases...
CTyankee
(63,912 posts)there is something I really don't like about Mantegna tho, and I can't put my finger on it...
suffragette
(12,232 posts)I like the sense of space and distance in the Bellini. Looking at the different parts of it feels a bit like walking to the different places and gives a sense of time and space between them.
The Mantegna feels crammed or bunched together for me, almost like everything is piled on top of the other or all pushed to the forefront for attention.
Of course, this is from my untrained perspective.
CTyankee
(63,912 posts)I, too, am essentially untrained. I just read a lot. I would like to take a course that explains in more detail the elements of style in drawing/painting/sculpture. sometimes, when reading art criticism, I get lost in the sentences because they speak a language all their own. But some, like Peter Schjeldahl of The New Yorker, just write in ordinary terms that interested readers who are not art schooled can understand. His columns are just wonderful that way...
suffragette
(12,232 posts)What I love about your threads is that I'll look at something I may not have seen before and give some thought to details I likely would not have noticed.
CTyankee
(63,912 posts)to get people interested and doing a bit of research) !
We're good here in the snow. The sun is out and tomorrow it will get up to 40 degrees so we may have some melt off. The flat part of my roof is not endangered the way it was in 2011 (4 feet of snow!). I just posted about getting my dryer vent shoveled out so I can do laundry. Whew!
suffragette
(12,232 posts)Also the joy of recognizing an artist, painting or style when that happens.
Glad to hear you're doing well. Give yourself some relaxing time in there- perfect moment to curl up with some hot chocolate or mulled wine and a good book.
CTyankee
(63,912 posts)marions ghost
(19,841 posts)I knew that 2b was Italian Renaissance and recognised the sleeping disciples vaguely and was casting around for it when Pinboy posted "Agony in the Garden" by Mantegna--so then I looked up "Agony in the Garden" (figuring it could be like #1a/b) and found the painting by Bellini...recognizing the fragment by the distinctive orange robed figure with the head cocked back.
CTyankee
(63,912 posts)that he wanted to rival his brother in law, who was older. Do you like Mantegna or Bellini better as artists?
CTyankee
(63,912 posts)What do you think, folks?
countryjake
(8,554 posts)I haven't the faintest idea whose house (or palace) it apparently is hanging in, but judging by the helmets of the guys in the picture, it must be a Greek depiction. I can't say whether it's Menelaus, Theseus, or Paris doing the abducting, either, nor figure the symbolism of the golden amphora, so it's just my weak guess.
CTyankee
(63,912 posts)CTyankee
(63,912 posts)Like only a couple of weeks ago! Heads up!
countryjake
(8,554 posts)Fancy houses, royal collections, golden pitchers, rapes of goddesses...can't wait to hear the back story for this one!
CTyankee
(63,912 posts)countryjake
(8,554 posts)With the hotel shut for renovation, the auction house Christies announced this week that art experts had decided that the long-ignored canvas was by Charles Le Brun, one of the masters of 17th-century French painting, and that it would be put it up for auction.
The painting, called Le Sacrifice de Polyxène (The sacrifice of Polyxena), dates from 1647. It hung above a desk in the hotel suite where Coco Chanel lived for more than 30 years, and was only discovered to be important last summer, when the hotel shut for a 27-month renovation in the face of stiff competition from newer hotels.
The painting depicts the killing of Polyxena, the youngest daughter of King Priam of Troy, who according to myth revealed the weakness of Achilles heel and thus led to his death. It will be shown at Christies in New York from Jan. 26 to 29 and auctioned on April 15.
read more...
http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/01/25/a-17th-century-masterpiece-discovered-at-the-ritz-in-paris/
I finally found it googling "classical painting in the news", duh! (That's after researching every greek goddess known to man, the Iliad, the Odyssey, and the Aeneid...ask me anything.)
Pretty neat that the painting has been hiding right under everyone's noses for who knows how long!
Well found, countryjake. Such a simple and direct search phrase. 'Tis a lesson to me, me of little faith in humans, who went the negative route and searched for "art thefts January 2013".
countryjake
(8,554 posts)considering that I've sat here for the past three hours re-familiarizing myself with Greek mythology, and Polyxena was NOT included in that study, ha!
It was only after I'd given up on Greece and came back here to read again that CTyankee had said it was "the real deal" that I changed tacks and tried searching "art discoveries in current news" but even her good clue led me nowhere using that phrase. Then I read up on the goddess Minerva and the Medal of Honor for a bit before going back to "in the news".
An evening well spent for me, since my better-half has been watching gruesome mysteries on tv this whole time.
I much prefer mythological murder to actual blood and gore.
longship
(40,416 posts)I thought it looked kind of like Michelangelo, so I gave it a shot.
Here's Night:
Here's both Day and Night:
I have no idea about 3b, but I'd bet it's a mask of the same character.
velvet
(1,011 posts)Last edited Sat Feb 9, 2013, 01:40 AM - Edit history (1)
I'd just identified #3a, and thought I'd better refresh the thread before I posted - and there you were. All I can I can add is that the whole thing is the tomb of Giuliano de Medici.
As for #3b, it looks kinda sorta vaguely familiar, but ...
Edited to add: Over two hours later and I'm still trying to pin down the backstory as well as identify 3b. Ah, but I've read some fascinating articles along the way!! Florentine history, humanists and neoplatonists, evil plots and abstruse iconography ... oh yeah! Love it.
CTyankee
(63,912 posts)hint: 3b is no longer in Florence...
awoke_in_2003
(34,582 posts)I am not very schooled in art, but do appreciate it. I will be checking in on Fridays. Thanks for linking me here.
CTyankee
(63,912 posts)It is a detail from Allegory by Bronzino:
Sir Kenneth Clark theorized that Bronzino, being a Mannerist, paid homage to the mask in Michelangelo's Night. He writes: "Actually Bronzino's masks have a literary significance, for they lie at the feet of Fraud and Folly, and are part of the allegory of passion which is the real subject of the picture."
Allegory is in London's National Gallery, where Clark was once the Gallery's Director back in the 1930s. Clark died in 1983.
countryjake
(8,554 posts)Assuming that she is "Fraud", what is she holding in her right (left) hand...someone's heart?
That is quite the painting; I'd never even heard of Bronzino, so I thank you for this.
CTyankee
(63,912 posts)meme back in the day. Somehow the practice just died out...interesting factoid...
CTyankee
(63,912 posts)Clark's contemporary, John Shearman, disdainfully describes it has having cold, polished and unreal color.
I am put off by the whiteness of some Mannerist paintings, which is why I don't like much of El Greco's works. Also, the elongated bodies, WTH goes with that? Shearman points out that the "the retrieving of energy and organic unity was one of the main achievements of the generation of Caravaggio, Rubens..." and I agree.
If you google Mannerism you'll find some of these disturbing elements of one of its styles. It's a confusing era in art, very short lived in between High Renaissance and Baroque. Some of it is off the wall. But some Mannerists are perfectly fine, from my perspective (see Veronese for instance). But some Rosso da Fiorentino is downright creepy, yet some is quite wonderful...it's like art went through a bi-polar experience of some sort...
countryjake
(8,554 posts)But I think the busy-ness of this painting is why I like it; so much to look at in one fell swoop, with so many different expressions, attitudes, eyeballs, objects, sprawled all over. I hadn't even thought of the pale look of it, til I got up to that woman in the corner who has half a head, also mask-like. Cupid certainly is no cherub in this pic, eh? I can't figure if that is a birdcage or an hourglass on the back of the old fellow with wings. I'm sure gonna google this painting, sooner or later, but my allotted 'puter time is short this weekend.
I've always loved El Greco, tore a print of his "View of Toledo" out of one of my art books when I was a kid and hung it in my bedroom. And I didn't know that he was a Mannerist, either, but did recognize the stark, unreal quality of some of his works. Guess I'll certainly be googling Mannerism now, too.
Thank you, again, I really enjoy your weekly lessons.
CTyankee
(63,912 posts)entanglement
(3,615 posts)I could have sworn intimate familiarity with Bronzino's gorgeous, sensual "Allegory" prior to this (LOL) - I suppose I never did pay adequate attention to the masks. Incidentally, the grim, agonized woman who lurks in the background has always piqued my curiosity. She has been interpreted variously as representing Despair, Unrequited Desire, Madness, Jealousy and even (my favorite) Syphilis!
Great round, as usual
CTyankee
(63,912 posts)but I'm not as big a fan of this painting as you are. There are, however, some Bronzinos that I like. That's another whole conversation...
Hope to see you next week...