Manet, Painter of Things Still life occupies a substantial place in Manet’s work. Henri Loyrette counts seventy-eight still lifes among the 430 paintings catalogued by Denis Rouart and Daniel Wildenstein, approaching a fifth of the total. The proportion is striking for an artist so closely associated with modern life and the human figure. Still-life objectsContinue reading “Manet and Still Life: The Last Flowers”
Tag Archives: history
Silvestro Lega: Places, People and Ways of Painting
Florence, the Macchiaioli and the problem of belonging Silvestro Lega belongs securely to the history of the Macchiaioli, but not quite comfortably to any shorthand definition of them. That is partly because the Macchiaioli themselves were never a school in the strict sense. They were a loose and sometimes fractious constellation of painters, critics andContinue reading “Silvestro Lega: Places, People and Ways of Painting”
Hidden in Plain Sight VI. Inside the Pontano Chapel
Pisanello, studies for the obverse and reverse of four medals of Alfonso V of Aragon, 1449. Pen and brown ink with ochre wash over metalpoint. Musée du Louvre, Paris, inv. 2317. Image: Wikimedia Commons / Musée du Louvre, Département des Arts Graphiques. The interior as a different kind of text The inscriptions on the exteriorContinue reading “Hidden in Plain Sight VI. Inside the Pontano Chapel”
Corot: A Girl Reading
A young woman sits absorbed in a small book, her head inclined towards its pages in quiet concentration. Corot has reduced the setting to little more than a subdued arrangement of warm browns and ochres, relieved by the white of her blouse and the open pages before her, while the deep red of her jacketContinue reading “Corot: A Girl Reading”
Giovanni Andrea Donducci, detto il Mastelletta (1575–1655): Sacred Stories, Private Pictures and Imagined Landscapes
Giovanni Andrea Donducci, detto il Mastelletta Giovanni Andrea Donducci, called il Mastelletta, was born in Bologna in 1575 and died there in 1655. His career belongs to one of the most crowded and difficult moments in Bolognese painting: the period after the Carracci reform, when the city’s painters were working under the shadow of Ludovico,Continue reading “Giovanni Andrea Donducci, detto il Mastelletta (1575–1655): Sacred Stories, Private Pictures and Imagined Landscapes”
Francesco Lojacono and the Changing Vision of Sicily
Francesco Lojacono (1838–1915), Palermo e il Monte Pellegrino da un terrazzo, 1874, oil on canvas, Novosibirsk State Fine Arts Museum. (Credit: Wikimedia Commons). Francesco Lojacono (Palermo, 1838–1915) occupies a central place in the history of nineteenth-century Italian landscape painting. Working for more than half a century, he transformed the representation of the Sicilian countryside fromContinue reading “Francesco Lojacono and the Changing Vision of Sicily”
Dosso Dossi (1486?-1542): Apollo, Fantasia and Form.
Dosso Dossi, Apollo (c. 1524–1525), oil on canvas, 191 × 116 cm, Galleria Borghese, Rome. “Dosso also knew how to add to his interpretations a certain wit, a sense of contrast, a boldness, that has led him to be associated with Ariosto and the Orlando Furioso. But his visions—enchanted and mysterious, dense with necromantic smoke—’are less aContinue reading “Dosso Dossi (1486?-1542): Apollo, Fantasia and Form.”
Anton Sminck Van Pitloo (1790–1837): Between Rome, Naples, and Northern Europe.
Pitloo, portrait by Pieter van Hanselaere (c. 1814). Source: Wikipedia. Even if one were to grant Pitloo only what is evident in his redemption of landscape from the servitude of mannerism and convention, the arts, newly guided toward a beauty drawn from the true, would owe him immense gratitude. But there is more. Pitloo tookContinue reading “Anton Sminck Van Pitloo (1790–1837): Between Rome, Naples, and Northern Europe.”
Giuseppe De Nittis: Light, Air and Modern Life.
Léontine in canotto/ Léontine in a rowing boat (1874), oil on panel, 24×54 cm, Private collection. Self-Portrait (ca.1883) Pastel on canvas, 114×88 cm, Palazzo della Marra, Barletta. (Credit: Wikimedia Commons). Giuseppe De Nittis: “A happy man who would have wished everyone around him to be equally happy.” Jeanne Mairet, Souvenirs, 1907. De Nittis was aContinue reading “Giuseppe De Nittis: Light, Air and Modern Life.”
Gemito and Mathilde Duffaud – ‘Not Made for Financial Gain.’
Introduction – Vincenzo Gemito and Mathilde Duffaud Mathilde Duffaud, la parigina, was Gemito’s first love—the first profound adult attachment of a foundling child. He met her in 1873 while living with his adoptive parents in the Palazzo del Mojariello in Capodimonte. Mathilde lived on the floor above with the French antiquarian Duhamel. Already known asContinue reading “Gemito and Mathilde Duffaud – ‘Not Made for Financial Gain.’”
