Better luck next week

Not by the way where my name came from, but good guess.

I was a night watcher back in 99, saw the Night Watch in 04.

to go through the canals of the Netherlands to visit the little towns where the great masters of Dutch art painted. Quite a trip. Mostly fun and inspiration....in fact, I had a real meltdown in the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam with one of his crows in a wheat field...tears came that I could not hold back...

"Kama! Kama! Kama Sutra with me!"

Every female face is the same woman.




Love it!

I love it, too!

was the artist by chance Jim Henson?

note the contraposto...

oops...you said #3...sorry...

Good Eye.

Recognized the Medusa theme. The Phineas story is a common art theme. It was just a matter of locating the right one.

Hooray! I got one!!!


This is always fun. Even in loss.

I think Carracci and Domenichino worked on this...

But it's fun to snag one once in a while.

It's always fun to play, or to just lurk and learn.


Skäl!!

A warning to fellow and sister solvers: using "nude" in your search terms may be problematic.

One trick I use to exclude a lot of junk from search results is to begin with the term, "classic art."

Hello, CTyankee. I was afraid you'd be so busy preparing for your Tuscany trip that there wouldn't be a Challenge today. I don't know how you find the time to do this, but thankyou!!!

I freakin' love this sculpture...

Looks like a kind of Dido and Aeneas theme.

I love art but know much less than I wish I did. I can recognize the more well-known artist, but not much more. I have learned a great deal on Fridays.

These are all excellent but I love number 6... that sculpture is breathtaking.... can't wait to find out more about it because I don't have a clue.

Appreciate your efforts to post this every week!

Really beautiful, all.

Although, I like the first one least of all and the last one best of all

well

regarding the first one and it relates back to something I mentioned in the past ...

for some reason I am thinking that I heard somewhere that a very long time ago only male models were used for Nudes and when I look at Number One ... I can see why that might have been true.



also, maybe I am confusing this with during Shakespeare's time only Male Actors were allowed on stage.

so, I could be conflating the two.

Art modeling as an occupation appeared in the late Renaissance when the establishment of schools for the study of the human figure created a regular demand, and since that time the remuneration offered has ensured a continual supply. However academy models were only men until the 19th Century, as were the students. The status of nude models has fluctuated with the value and acceptance of nudity in art. Maintaining the classical ideals of Greece and Rome into the Christian Era, nudity was prominent in the decoration of Catholic churches in the Renaissance, only to be covered up with draperies or fig leaves by more prudish successors. The Protestant Reformation went even further, destroying many artworks. From being a possibly glamorous occupation celebrating beauty, being a nude model was at other times equivalent to prostitution, practiced by persons without the means to gain more respectable employment. The costumed models used to create historical paintings may not have been a distinct group, since nude studies were done in preparation for any figure painting.

more at link:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Model_%28art%29

do you know Bellini or was it the "colore" of the Venetian painters...

I just played cheap detective on this one. It wasn't hard to find.

Florence while the colore school developed in the veneto region. Bellinii is from that region and you can see the effect of color emphasis, greater than drawing or design in Florence at the same time. Titian, Tintoretto and Veronese all are mostly in the "colore" school...

I hadn't heard those terms before.

He was clearly in love with Joanne Heffernan, who was Whistler's mistress, but I think it would be misinterpreted here.

It is on display in the Louvre. Have you seen it there?

The Maja is in the Prado (Madrid), which is where I saw it. It is a great museum. Have you been there?

(My Dad was stationed in London as a Naval attaché, and one summer our folks took the whole family across the Channel to tour the Continent.)

And you are SO right. Posting of the Courbet on DU would result in not the "Origin of the World", but more likely the "End of the World", at least as we know it!

The colors are so deep where they should be in the foreground..then contrast with
the colors for her skin...a beauty.

where Bellini painted.

based on the impression they leave on me..my memory. I'm not trained, obviously, lol.

way the painting was rendered, with more emphasis on color than on design. That is why the rich color of the painting draws us in.

But I'm drawing a complete blank.

I found this one just by googling "classical painting cyclops". At first, I'd already gone agoogling for Galatea, while I was searching thru all of the various goddesses trying to figure out #1, but oddly, this painting of her never showed up for me in that search, probably because I also included "putto with torches" along with her name.

#3 is Galatea by Gustave Moreau, oil on wood, ca. 1880.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyphemus

It is quite beautiful, IMO...

Some of you are going to yourself...

...Miley Cyrus' inspiration for 'I Came in Like a Wrecking Ball'.

is that thing at that statue's feet a globe or a bowling ball? Is she Fortuna, Venus, or Cleopatra? Is it a large life-size statue or a tiny little figurine?

This is one hard challenge!

But at least I found a use for the Cyrus pic that turned up in my search results.

which is why I fell off my chair laughing when you posted it!

she is an allegory of a branch of science, which is the name of this sculpture.

Earlier, I found several similar to the one you've given us but either they didn't have the globe or they were marble. One which sold at Christies not long ago was the most like yours but not quite as exquisite and it was a bronze figure of the Grotticella Venus, artist unknown. Then further googling of "Giambologna's Grotticella Venus" gave me more marbles of that same twisted pose but not your beauty.

So, is this the same one?

http://www.frick.org/exhibitions/hill/5

This is a great challenge, CTyankee. I've now learned the meaning of both "Contraposto" and "Figura Serpentinata" and am soon going to figure out how they differ.

Thank you for giving us this wonderful treasure hunt, I love them all.

but that's Mannerism for you. I'm not real fond of Mannerism but Giambologna's sculpture is an exception. I think he's wonderful...

Just got here! Hope you're well, yank!

I'm thinking.

Continuez!

me and Julie, at the cottage, via Samsung!!!

Very pleased.

I just knew you were still up looking for her!

Go look at the one at the link that I posted for CTyankee and see what you think. I've now found three different bronze ones with the globe and a whole bunch of marbles without it, but all with that same figura serpentinata that makes her pose distinct.

(on edit)
Okay, I looked yours up and came up with this:


Giambologna: Venus Urania ~ Bronze
Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum
Photo courtesy of Museo Nazionale del Bargello

http://www.culturekiosque.com/art/exhibiti/giambologna.html

I think you got it!

I spent a lot of time going through tons of copies and imitations, and I don't know how many different versions Giambologna himself did.

Whew, he must have been really revered to have so many copying him, but she is a beauty!

I've found them all now but for number one and I've spent the better part of the day looking for her. Jeesh, I thought sure she was a detail from a Venus and Adonis depiction, cause of the upside-down torches (sign of death) that putto is holding. With her arm out like that, she seems to be trying to stop someone (or something) and I'm just certain that I can see a tiny bit of more going on, to the far right of the painting.

so you don't have to go to Paris to see it...

I know what #6 is but I'm still waiting for her to join in, maybe she'll check back in tomorrow.

she is a goddess...

thought it was too easy. Sleeping Nude is very nice too, but Aurora is so dramatic it caught my fancy!

You get Honors in this course, jake!

while I was trying to find her "Aurora". That one was so "dramatic" that I called my man over to look at it, we both sat here and studied that incredible scene for a long time...I told him that was what I was going to do to him if he didn't quit yapping at me about fixing supper, ha! Of course, I didn't figure out it was the same artist I was looking for, but I did at least think that Aurora was of the Baroque style. I must be learning a little bit.

Thanks again for a good challenge today!

Her Judith is bloodier! Not surprising, given that she was a rape victim as a young woman...

Originally modeled for The Gates of Hell, where it was apparently intended to illustrate a poem from Baudelaire's The Flowers of Evil, this group was abandoned in the final version of The Gates. Rodin gave it a second existence with a title inspired by a story from Ovid's Metamorphoses. The body of Eurydice is recognizable as that of one of the anguished figures that occupy the lintel of The Gates on the left of the Thinker, and it exemplifies Rodin's propensity for exploring the multiple interpretations that a single form can be made to yield. This marble was purchased by Charles T. Yerkes about 1893, beginning what would prove to be more than a century of private collecting of Rodin's sculpture in America.

Metropolitan Museum of Art NYC

And thanks for posting the background note.

1. Artemisia Gentileschi - Aurora

2. Giovanni Bellini - Woman Looking Into a Mirror

3. Gustave Moreau - Galatea

4. Giambologna - Venus Urania

5. Annibale Carracci - Perseus and Phineas

6. Rodin - Orpheus and Eurydice


Thanks, CTyankee, for another great Challenge!