Art and Eye

  In the earliest surviving double portrait in Italian painting, Fra Filippo Lippi depicts a woman and a man, in what appears to be a marriage portrait. From the Scolari family coat of arms held by the man, the two have been identified as Lorenzo di Ranieri Scolari and Angiola di Bernardo Sapiti, who married in the 1430s. With its strong characterisation, interest in space and texture, as well as an intriguing, unique compositional choice, Lippi creates a mode of portraiture where the woman dominates and where she assumes a commanding presence right at the heart of the panel.  Lippi's portrait offers not only a window into marriage, but also illustrates fifteenth century Italy in fascinating detail: his female figure wears a houppelande, a French-inspired garment fashionable at the time, whilst choosing to extenuate her neck and abdomen, the former for beauty, the latter perhaps to signal fertility. From this, it has been suggested that this double portrait may have been creat...

  The pulling apart and pushing together of bodies comes to define Rodin's Fugit Amor,  and much of his  oeuvre from the late nineteenth century. Cast here in bronze, a man and a woman cling onto one another, precariously balanced on a slab of rock, which their undulating bodies seem to grow out from. At once weighted but also weightless, Rodin's small sculpture is infused with Classical references, and becomes a conversion of opposites, symbolising the desperation and ultimate futility of love affairs.  The title translates to 'futile love', already implying a barrier to togetherness or the wasted energy on the attempt which Rodin depicts here. Glistening in bronze, the two bodies become even more anguished and elongated, in a combination of peaks and troughs: the woman lifts her head and torso upwards, hand raking through her hair, whilst the man slides off the rockface, his legs dangling precariously into the abyss. However, they still seem to deliberately fit tog...

  It is difficult for the eye to settle in the busy scene concocted by Durer, based on the story found in the Book of Revelations. The Whore of Babylon occupies the right hand side of the work, accompanied by her many headed monster, facing off against a crowd of onlookers, and being attacked from the heavens above. Despite the monochromatic colour range of the print, shading and varying levels of detail successfully capture the drama and action of the scene, whilst showing off Durer's printmaking abilities which defined the discipline for centuries to come.  Each tuft of grass, each fallen rock, each puffing cloud, are all exceptionally detailed by Durer. In woodcuts, there is only linear and horizontal shading, not cross-hatching as would be found in etching or engraving, but this does not limit the artist's hand in his Apocalypse series. Figures are crammed together on the left-hand side of the work - a crowd of onlookers balancing the many headed monster accompanying the W...

  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...

  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...

  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'...

  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...

  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...

  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...

  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...

  Piero del Pollaiolo's depiction of Faith draws a viewer in through detail. The seated figure remains tantalisingly close, as her foot hovers above the edge of the fictive throne she sits upon. Mapped out by complex, crisp, three-dimensional draperies, Pollaiolo celebrates his astute handling of perspective on the knees of Faith, which push into a viewer's space with surprising force. From the various artistic attributes, to the recessional niche behind the figure, Pollaiolo's panel includes diverse pictorial imagery whilst continuing to drive the central message of devotion home.  Created for the audience chamber in the Tribunale di Mercanzia in Florence, a gathering place off the Piazza della Signoria to resolve disputes between Florentine merchants, this allegorical figure was part of a series of Virtues and is now in the Uffizi. The panel, painted in tempera, with its large size and tilted perspective indicates that it was seen from above, looming over onlookers in jud...

  Charles West Cope's memorialisation of fellow painter Samuel Palmer, who died three years before this work was produced, is a small yet thoughtful etching which pulls a viewer closer. Palmer is aged and stooped, almost swaddled in layers of clothing, and leaning on the back of a chair as if to support himself, yet his gaze remains captivating and knowing. It is an interesting choice by Cope to choose the medium of etching to honour Palmer, and perhaps an oil of the same subject did at one point exist, as this was his favoured material. Training at the Royal Academy and travelling to Paris in the 1830s to expand his artistic knowledge, Cope built a career initially upon copying Old Masters which he then sold, before he created his own painted representations of historical scenes and looked to imagery centred on rural life for further inspiration. Often, he drew on the minute detail and vivid colouration found in the Pre-Raphaelite mode of working: his The Thorn of 1866, for exampl...

  Pale, uninterrupted colours seep, merge and flow together in Krøyer's Summer Evening on Skagen's Southern Beach, painted just before the turn of the century, and depicting the well-known artists' colony in Denmark. It is a painting of peacefulness personified, a quiet, contemplative scene where two figures and the boundless idyllic natural world live together in harmony. Through Krøyer's sweeping brushwork, the artist successfully closes the gap between sea, land and sky, as layers of blue and white bleed together into an expansive natural beauty.  Despite his merging of boundaries, Krøyer maintains an effortless three-dimensionality to his landscape, captured in the use of perspective: placing a viewer essentially on the same plane as the two strolling figures enables the coastline to stretch out before them and us, allowing a viewer to almost become involved in the painting. This additionally furthers the sense of nature's endlessness, as it disappears both ...

  In the dimness of candlelight, Joseph Wright of Derby depicts three figures gazing intently at the Classical nude sculpture in the centre of the work. The viewer joins in this exploration, taking their own seat at the table right in front of the the leaning, contrapposto figure, which seems to be an imitation of the Borghese Gladiator. From light to dark, from flesh to marble, Derby's painting is typical of his tenebristic style, yet here he takes on a new subject that expands beyond his oeuvre of portraits, or even beyond his most well known work An Experiment on a Bird in the Air Pump. Certainly, the work in question bears similarities to the  Air Pump , particularly in the sudden explosion of light cast across the sculpture. Not only does this illuminate the musculature of the lean, stretching gladiator, but it also allows to viewer to catch a glimpse of the faces which surround the table, all of whom are individualised - in fact, the work is even said to include a portra...

  The Laughing Cavalier is a man on the cusp of unseriousness. His eyes follow a viewer around the room, his curled moustache twitches endearingly as if he struggles to maintain composure, whilst his lip is pursed to stop laughter escaping. The pose, meanwhile, is proud and monumental, filling the canvas with a foreshortened elbow and shoulder pushing into a viewer's world, serving to emphasise the silks and expensive dress against the monochromatic background.  Frans Hals was first and foremost a portrait painter. His oeuvre includes wedding portraits of solo male and female sitters, multifigure works including The Banquet of Officers from 1627, yet his depictions often turned to peasants or comical characters, notably his Jester with a Lute now in the Louvre, proving that portrait painters also had range. The Laughing Cavalier remains an equally intriguing work: despite being Hals' most famous piece, the sitter remains anonymous. Yet, the smile is so familiar to a viewer, an...

  Strikingly simple and strongly meditative, Zurbarán's multiple depictions of St Francis, including this example from the National Gallery's collection in London, are uniquely his. Drawing on the lineage of artists who recreated the saint, from Giotto to El Greco and more, Zurbarán's Tenebristic ode to the techniques of Caravaggio gifts us St Francis in an altogether different light.  St Francis' makeshift habit is pieced together from two scraps of cloth, alluding to the extreme life of poverty he chose to lead. Zurbarán may even be drawing more closely from the life of the saint here, a set of stories which are defined by dress and clothing - for example, on the path to sainthood, Francis famously gives his cloak to a poor man, and later, his renunciation of worldly goods is often represented by the stripping of his clothes, both of which are expertly rendered by Giotto in the basilica at Assisi. In true Caravaggisti fashion, Zurbarán includes a rip in the foreshorte...

  A collection of monolithic, monochromatic and freestanding dresses construct Anselm Kiefer's Women of Antiquity series, begun at the turn of the twenty-first century and revitalised by the artist in 2018. Exhibited most notably in his so-called 'studio' La Ribaute, these luxuriously tactile gowns have subsequently travelled across both exhibition venues and the art market. Mytris , who is weighed down by the book which constructs the head of the figure, is one such example. Kiefer, today, is one of the most talked about artists. A slow rise to fame has now blossomed into exhibitions that have drawn on literary references (Finnegan's Wake at the White Cube in 2023), expositions detailing his earlier working life (at the Ashmolean in early 2025), or his connections to canonical artists (Van Gogh/Kiefer at the RA which recently concluded). His colossal canvases suck a viewer in, his colours are captivating, as the artist draws on themes of violence, spiritualism, desolat...

  With an idiosyncratic artistic practice which defies artistic categorisation, Howard Hodgkin's Lovers was eight years in the making. It bleeds out of its dark frame towards a viewer, illustrating a swirling motion of vivid reds and greens which cannot be controlled. Towards the left-hand side of his panel, the artist has captured a more humanised form; a figure in orange curled in a fetal position and protected by the nest of colour illustrated on the opposite side. Perhaps, Hodgkin suggests another example of human love here, through the allusion to comfort, safety and protection. Opposite, he captures untameable human emotion with single sweeps of brushwork, firstly in red, then in green, then red again, exploding outwards with yearning and urgency.  Running away from school to pursue his artistic career, Hodgkin went on to represent Britain at the Venice Biennale, whilst he also won the Turner Prize and earned himself a knighthood. However, he never attached himself to an...

  Tomás Saraceno's interests in spider webs might seem uncannily odd to some viewers, however, to put aside that arachnophobia is to produce intriguing works of art. Boxed in and spectacularly spot lit, the works are confined by an omnipresent curator and the hand of Saraceno is certainly present, yet there is still room for freedom, for uniqueness. Their display in the round enables a visitor to explore for themselves. Simplistically black and white with no fuss, they are mesmeric displays, ritualistic and quietly captivating.  Saraceno has made a name for himself through 'Arachnophilia', a community of researchers striving to know more about the spider web and its uses. However, the artist has also spoken at the Max Planck Institute in Germany, he has created his own 3D models of webs and he works across both media and scale with incredible ease - for instance, in 2022, he transformed 25,000 square feet in The Shed, New York, into a web stretched at both twelve and fort...

  In 1848, Millais created this work based on various literary sources, producing mixed responses at the time. Criticism was aimed mainly at the artist's disregard for academic convention. However more recently, Julie F. Codell so accurately described Millais' Isabella as a work defined by physiognomy, where facial features and gestures can determine a person's inner, true character.  The foil to Isabella's delicacy, politeness and gentleness is her brother. Sitting opposite her and dressed in menacing red, his face is twisted and contorted in anger at the realisation of this love affair before his eyes. The body is strained and clenched, from the hands that grip the nutcracker to the snarling jaw and bared teeth. Isabella's brother in fact becomes more animalistic than even the calm greyhound that obediently sits at her feet. Most impressive by Millais, however, is his capturing of the straining muscles of Isabella's brother, as he reaches out his right leg to ...