I suspect a lot of the search results are photoshops...


http://boards.collectors-society.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=5811238&fpart=1





Nice to see you got your computer fixed, CTyankee!

Got my computer back today but almost screwed up this Challenge midway into posting...dang changes in the set up...but I'm still sick...went to the doc and got strong cough medicine and a Z pack...and I hope you feel as sorry for me as I do for myself! LOL...

Lewis Carroll based the Cheshire Cat on it perhaps?

But the resemblance is so intense that Surely this cat was an influence.

That kitty look quite pleased. lol

influenced Lewis Carroll...

This showed up in my search. Enjoy.

sorry about my cat pic...I didn't realize it would get this kind of stuff (but then I didn't google it, so...)

Actually, you will find it if you try hard enough...but I realize not everyone is as nuts as I am about art...

This is Hogarth's most ambitious portrait of children. He gives the figures in this large painting something of the same frank grandeur found in his portraits of adults, without losing a sense of childish gaiety.

The Grahams' father, Daniel, was Apothecary to the King. The seated boy plays a mechanical organ, as though accompanying the singing of the bird. The youngest child is sitting in a chair with a long handle, beside which is an elaborate basket of fruit.

However, the clock on the mantelpiece is decorated with the figure of Cupid holding a scythe and standing beside an hour-glass, symbols of death. Opposite, an animated cat has climbed the back of a chair and gazes at the caged bird. We know that the baby was dead when the portrait was painted, and this must account for the sombre references to mortality, at a time when many children died in infancy.
http://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/william-hogarth-the-graham-children

Your hint about the right country being England and that the other subjects were less famous than the cat led me to look for English portraits. I kept getting Gainsborough's unfinished portrait of his daughters with a cat. Saw lots of cat paintings, most pretty silly (see above), but enjoyed the search. Thanks again and get well.

Clark was the Gallery's director in the late 1930s and his re-issued and updated book about the "favorites" from that museum is a wonderful and witty read.

I'm reading up on that suseum as I will be going to London in late May and plan to spend the better part of a day in that Gallery and its surrounds (Trafalgar Square).

#5 is Raphael's Madonna della Sedia (aka The Seated Madonna or Madonna of the Chair).

No guessing needed as this hung above the buffet at home for many years.


CTYankee -- please feel better soon! So good of you to get us your latest Challenge in spite of feeling bad!

thanks for the kind words...my doc says it is common with caregivers...but I got my meds!

and gorgeous palette that we associate with Raphael! The colors are rich yet subtle. The effect is sublime.

cuddles the Christ child...

The warm palette and tondo (rotondo/round) format reinforces the sense of love and harmony in the Madonna della Sedia.

...one of Titian's five versions of Danae Receiving the Shower Of Gold.

Of course, the Danae by Titian. Sounds like you studied art history!

A lot of it Italian Renaissance, though, so this one jumped out at me. Upon further research, I'm guessing it's the one with the nursemaid.

Cupid Shaping/Making His Bow, Parmigianino.

room, I find it fascinating as an exercise in Mannerism.

funny...

figure in religious art of the era...

I saw one version of this painting in Vienna. Danae is the mother of Perseus, she was impregnated by Zeus, who came to her as a golden rain.

maybe the Belvedere in Vienna?

Apparently there are several versions of this painting hanging throughout Europe. The version in Vienna is in the Kunsthistorisches Museum.

http://www.austria.info/us/austria-unique-like-you/kunsthistorisches-museum-1471386.html

Vienna in particular has such art and architectural treasures. I almost signed up for a trip to Vienna, Budapest and Prague. But Austria continues to convince that it remains stubbornly unreconstructed in many of its Nazi loving ways. The whole Adele Bloch Bauer controversy where the Belvedere tipped its hand arguing in court that the Klimt painting of Adele belonged to the museum as part of Austria's "patrimony" just made me sick. Since his happened so very recently (the court case wasn't settled until the early part of the this century!) I was just dumbfounded! Of course, the Austrian court did the right thing finally, but what the hell took them so long?

It is subtle and unless one is aware, it will just be excused as nationalism. I agree, it is most prevalent in Austria. Prague has a certain strength against Nazism derived through their occupation but because Hapsburg's Austria created a predisposition and societal control, Nazism fit right in there.

I knew, but other things kept my attention and one tour guide in particular was very informative, but here is where I was subtle. In general they actually have a sense of pride. I would say go for the art and history, if you can keep quiet.

Of the capitals of eastern Europe, Prague was my favorite.

#4 is The Young John the Baptist by Piero di Cosimo.

The clues are the halo and the staff with a cross. John the Baptist is always portrayed with the crossed staff, as an identifier, in religious art.

It took a while of searching for John the Baptist in various ways, until I finally added the word "tempera" in the search. It had the look of tempera on board, so I tried it. Bingo -- it was on the 4th line of images returned in a google search. Apparently, the painting is a mix of both egg tempera and oil paints.

Nice challenge CTYankee! Hope that your presc. cough medicine and Zithro are already at work doing their good work for you!

Hmmm...