Skip to main content

Posts

Bernini, 'Aeneas, Anchises, and Ascanius', 1618-19

  Bernini, in an early work, depicts three generations escaping the burning siege of Troy, as they appear in the epic Aeneid, by Virgil. Carrying his father on his left shoulder, the hero Aeneas leads his younger son, Ascanius, who shelters behind him. Drawing on sculptural precedent from Michelangelo and Giambologna, the strong verticals, coupled with the emotional intent of the work, mark it as a sculpture which shapes the early oeuvre of Bernini, who would go on to stamp his authority across the Italian Baroque.  There is nothing to indicate the burning city of Troy in Bernini's work, sacked by the Greeks in the Aeneid , yet there is intent, movement and drama throughout the sculpture, as was typical of Baroque works. Despite its ability to be viewed in the round, movement is best felt by a viewer who faces the sculpture from the front, as all three figures are visible from this angle, head on. Although this was a feature which was criticised at the time, it enables all thr...
Post a Comment
Read more
Recent posts

Sean Scully, 'Landline Green and White', 2014

  With a dark bedrock at the base of the piece, leading up to a green, almost translucent horizon at the top, Sean Scully presents his Landline Green White as a collection of parallel lines of colour. As if mapping out the layers of earth up towards the heavens, this series was inspired by the Irish landscape, and evokes the Abstract Expressionists working primarily in New York during the 1960s and 1970s. Despite its simplistic formal qualities and restricted colour palette, Scully still invites a viewer to question the meaning of his monumental painting, whilst using interesting materials to flex his capabilities as an artist, and show the range of oils in only six blocks of colour.  Using aluminium as a ground, Scully instantly takes Abstract Expressionism a stage further through technique, adding a modernist undercurrent to this well-known artistic movement. Giving a shininess to the palette, the aluminium also betrays the painted strokes of Scully's hand, distinct in the u...
Post a Comment
Read more

Pietro Lorenzetti, 'Deposition from the Cross', 1319-20

  Pietro Lorenzetti created his emotionally charged Deposition from the Cross for the south transept of the Lower Church at Assisi. It is a space which likely brought together all the great early Renaissance artists - Cimabue, Pietro and Ambrogio Lorenzetti, Giotto and Simone Martini. However, this depiction of Christ's contorted, heavy, elongated, emaciated form being lowered from the cross above, is surely one of the most memorable frescoes in the space. Not only have the pressed together faces of mother and son subsequently become symbolic of Lorenzetti's oeuvre  itself, but the fresco brings together a sense of naturalism as perpetuated by Giotto, and an intense emotionality that would have surely inspired the devotional onlookers of the fourteenth century.  Sitting within the wider narrative of Christ's life, Lorenzetti's Deposition is arranged towards the left hand side of the south transept, yet the faces of Christ and his mother still remain at the painting'...
Post a Comment
Read more

James McNeill Whistler, 'The Princess from the Land of Porcelain', 1865

  Whistler constructs a world of hedonism, perfectly appropriate for his Peacock Room, in which this painting was originally placed. Depicting a full-length figure, decadently dressed in a sumptuous kimono flowing down her elegant, elongated frame, the artist captures the movements of Aestheticism and art for art's sake popular during the mid nineteenth century, alongside an interest in 'exotic' far Eastern cultures which lead to the rise of Japonisme in artistic depictions.  Currently, the work hangs above the fireplace in the Peacock Room at the Freer Gallery of Art in Washington. However, originally it sat in London, in a space which Whistler constructed with the help of Thomas Jeckyll, for the mansion owned by shipping magnate Frederick Leyland. However, Whistler's artistic eye dominated the project, and as costs rose and designs became more gold, sumptuous and elaborate, Leyland was increasingly irritable in correspondence, famously telling Whistler that he would b...
Post a Comment
Read more

Guercino, 'Elijah Fed by Ravens', 1620

  With Baroque drama, expressive light and shade, alongside a contorted figure crammed into the picture frame, Guercino successfully captures the desperation of Elijah, stretching out his dark purple cloth to catch the food which falls from ravens above him. Based on the lesser known Old Testament narrative, the artist concentrates on the study of an ageing figure to convey his hunger and failing strength, against the fading blue lighting and cool stream below.  The monumental canvas gifts the viewer with a life-size representation of Elijah, whist enabling Guercino to show off the power of foreshortening - with his right knee jutting out towards a viewer, Elijah seems almost to fall out of the canvas towards us, toppling forward and bearing down on us to enhance that monumentality. This also suggests Guercino's debt to Caravaggio when constructing his Baroque canvases, and the torn red sleeve to reveal Elijah's white undershirt was yet another favoured motif of the Cavaraggis...
Post a Comment
Read more

John Melhuish Strudwick, 'Study of a Young Girl', 1849-1937

  Strudwick's carefully, sensitively and delicately rendered pencil portrait proves the awareness of the artist's hand beyond the medium of oil painting, and the importance of a study in his methods of working. Shading is richly worked, to capture a variety of tonal changes across the sitter's face, focusing on her downturned gaze, the gentle folds of cloth around her head and the subtle shadows of her hairline against her features. Not only does it tell a viewer more about the hand of Strudwick, but also about the artistic processes at the time; the creation of a preparatory sketch to create a future work, but which is nevertheless worth exploring on its own as a capable pencil drawing by a later Pre-Raphaelite practitioner. Strudwick is best known for his works which capture the spirit of Waterhouse, Burne-Jones, or John Roddam Spencer Stanhope - In the Golden Days by Strudwick, from 1907, invokes the stacked female figures which Burne-Jones included in his paintings, whi...
Post a Comment
Read more

'Tanagra Figure', late 4C B.C.

  Graceful, petite and delicately moulded, this 4th Century B.C. sculpture, sitting at 14cm in height, is now part of the British Museum's Collection. It is known as a Tanagra figurine, named after the Boeotian town in Greece where many of these types of sculptures were excavated, normally associated with grave markers. This figure may be typical in many ways, yet through the use of draperies, contrasting with the softness of the facial features, alongside the unusual pose, the small object becomes a key example of the unique skill of Hellenistic Greek sculptors, whose names may be lost to history, but whose works live on.  The Tanagra figure was acquired by Charles Merlin, arguably the most important collector of antiquities for the British Museum in the mid nineteenth century. Across a thirty year period, Merlin acquired more than 450 objects for the museum. Most notably, he was involved in the recasting of the Parthenon Marbles - the casts which Lord Elgin has repeatedly us...
Post a Comment
Read more