Art and Eye

  My eye firstly notices the hand wielding the hammer above the unsuspecting man's head. Gentileschi is depicting a new and particularly horrible kind of weapon here instead of the huge sword she gave Judith to slice Holofernes' head off in 1620. The tent peg seems all the more violent, especially as the viewer is looking at the split second before the deed has been committed. Moreover, the gaze of the women (Jael) is focused and calm, making the piece seem unnerving. This is not a moment of hesitation but a snapshot of action - the woman has made up her mind and will commit to this murder. The viewer can only imagine how Gentileschi would have depicted the bloody aftermath, in her usual violent and tenebristic way. The fact that the artist has signed her name in the tomb-like stone above the man is significant - she is signing his life away in this painting, sending him swiftly to the grave.  The body of the man (Sisera) is also interestingly depicted. He lies in a rather effe

My eye is firstly drawn to the violence of the scene. Mantegna has juxtaposed Saint Sebastian's blemish-free and perfect, white skin with streaks of blood trickling from his many wounds. This is foregrounded by the arrow running through his face, straight through his third eye. There are so many arrows that they are difficult to follow them through the body, but the one through the head is deliberately clear. The viewer's eye is drawn towards this because of upwards, agonised gaze of Saint Sebastian himself, looking heavenwards to God. Interestingly, the entire painting has a surprising softness, both in brushwork and colour, considering it is such a violent subject matter. It is an image full of beautiful detail and precision rather than emotion and yet it has agony at its very centre. Saint Sebastian's emotions are clearly depicted on his face, and the brown hair that acts as a kind of second halo to frame his face makes his features stand out even more. The emotions sugg

  My eye is drawn to the void in the centre of the canvas. Darkness is hard to depict well, but in this painting John Martin makes it the heart of the picture. The crumbling, lightning-shattered rocks are tumbling towards paint so black, it is simply a hole in the canvas. It sucks me in, like the other helpless scraps of humanity in the foreground, and the blackness spills forward, overflowing towards the viewer like a river of death. Martin's canvas surrounds the viewer, disorientating them and engulfing them. It is as if they are there in the foreground, scrabbling on the slope and pushing away the bodies to selfishly save themselves.  Martin’s use of scale and perspective emphasise the three dimensionality and endless depth right back to the fierce red burn of the sun in the centre. The painting is huge but it is not all about grand scale – what keeps you looking are the details. In the foreground, the focus is on suffering individuals: the strain on the bodies is agonising, pal