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LATE GOTHIC/PROTO RENAISSNACE IN ITALY

Iconography in the International Byzantine Style

Byzantine Madonna Enthroned:

Bodies are de natured- (small heads, almond-shaped eyes, elongated limbs/bodies,
disproportionate, hard edges, defined with lines, etc.)
Mary = Queen of Heaven (on throne and regal)
Christ = miniature adult (not baby-like)
International Byzantine style – spread throughout world because Christianity is prominent
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Byzantine Crucifixion
Christ crucified but not really dead (as if propped up) (not very realistic)
(Get away from God dying as an ordinary man—disrespectful to God)
Byzantine artists don’t really understand science, cross not drawn realistically
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DUCCIO, Ruccelai Madonna, 1311, Siena, Italy
An altar piece- tied to the Byzantine style of iconography
A little bit of a break away from tradition, but still limited difference Byzantine style
Same throne—as if a piece of architecture
Symmetrical
Christ a little chubbier, but still as if a miniature adult
Mary = same standardized, Byzantine face
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CIMABUE, Madonna Enthroned, c. 1285, Florence, Italy
Is overlapping which is a break away from the Byzantine international style, but it is still
symmetrical
Haloes and winged angels
Cimabue was the master and teacher of Giotto who is called the Father of Renaissance painting

LATE GOTHIC/PROTO RENAISSANCE IN ITALY - GIOTTO

Florentine (birthplace of the Renaissance)
Father of western pictorial art
Reason painting became a respected fine art method
Reputation never faltered

GIOTTO, Madonna Enthroned, c. 1310, Florence, Italy

Still very Byzantine—symbols, colors, throne, wing, haloes
Virgin Mary has breasts
Character in her face (not so much of a Byzantine Madonna—she looks like a real woman, not a
almond-faced, standardized woman)
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Limited by the fact that it is an altarpiece—in church and taken very seriously
Jesus has more volume

GIOTTO, Lamentation , c. 1305, Arena Chapel, Padua, Italy

Fresco
From a commission to decorate entire chapel walls and ceiling
Asymmetrical, theatrical, figures have character, drama, volume, and are in a natural setting
Drama pantomimed and emphasized
The angels are doing acrobatics in the sky
Different from Byzantines because is showing Jesus as truly dead
More humanized
Angels are foreshortened—early attempt to make it look like they are coming out of the wall
straight at the viewer
Expressions on the faces are meant to bring out sadness and feeling (manipulation of emotions)

GIOTTO, The Meeting of Joachim and Anna, c. 1305, fresco, from the Arena Chapel
GIOTTO, Frescoes from the Interior of the Arena Chapel, Padua, Italy
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The Bardi Chapel inside Santa Croce, Florence, (frescoes in the Bardi Chapel depict scenes of
the life and death of St. Francis.)

GIOTTO, Death of St. Francis, c. 1320, fresco from the Bardi Chapel in
Santa Croce, Florence

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The upper level of the Basilica of St. Francis in Assisi, Italy after the earthquake of 1997.

Reconstruction of Giotto’s frescoes after the earthquake.

LATE GOTHIC/PROTO RENAISSANCE IN ITALY - Sluter and Wevre

• Reintroduce large-scale in the round

• Slutter = master, Werve = assistant and nephew (a lot of times not mentioned)
• Patronized by the Duke of Burgundy—Phillip the Bold (a king of own territory—
includes Dijon in the south of France)
• They are the equivalent of Giotto with painting to sculpture
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SLUTER & WEVRE, Well of Moses Pulpit, 1395, Monastery of Champmol, Dijon,
France
Looks as if prompted by Greek and Roman sculpture
• Realistic
• Large-scale
• Drapery clothing
Not Italian—sculpted by a Northern European artist (Netherlands)
Inspiration to early Renaissance sculpture
Brings back the pride of art from over a thousand years
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LATE GOTHIC/PROTO RENAISSANCE IN ITALY - Ghiberti
• Son of a Goldsmith (king of craftsmen)
• Used that apprenticeship to go larger and get the guts to enter into a competition

LORENZO GHIBERTI, Sacrifice of Isaac, 1402, competition panel for the baptistery of
Florence
• Leading wealthy nobles decide to hold a competition
• Winner of competition will be set for life (will take about 10 years and will be paid
throughout the time and will be able to live very comfortably)
• Will set the winner in a high position in society
• Philipo Brutalesci (poor sport and goes away to sketch) finds the technique of drawing
and painting with linear perspective
• Rules of competition
o Theme has to be sacrifice of Isaac
o Has to fit in a quatrefoil shape (symbolizes Florence)
o Only one panel to be made
• Ghiberti wins because he uses Baste-relief and because he shows the pathos of the story
(empathy/pity)
• Abraham has the knife at Isaac’s throat and shows the moment that the angel arrives to
stop Abraham
• Depth and drama emphasized

LORENZO GHIBERTI, Competition Doors of the Baptistery of Florence, (Completion of

these doors took more than two decades!), gilded bronze, Florence

LORENZO GHIBERTI, East Doors of the Baptistery of Florence (The Gates of Paradise),
1425, gilded bronze, Florence
• Doesn’t use quatrefoil
• Took 17 years to complete these doors
• Michelangelo was so impressed that he called them the “Gates of Paradise”
• Gilded to look like gold
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• He apprentices a new generation of Renaissance sculptors
o Donatello (most impressive and famous apprentice)
o Michelozzo
o Uchello

Close-up panel from The Gates of Paradise

Close-up panel from the gates of Paradise depicting The Sacrifice of Isaac, again!

LATE GOTHIC/PROTO RENAISSANCE IN ITALY - Donatello

• Entered Ghiberti’s workshop at age 17
• Famous for sculpting large-scale Greco-Roman style sculpture in the round
• Tries to use sculpture as an artform rather than a form of replication
o Changes style to promote certain emotions toward the things/people he sculpts

DONATELLO, Saint George, marble,1415, Florence, sculpted for the niches on Or San
Michele
• George is rigid and stoic, but the emotions and pride of the young knight/hero come
through the style

DONATELLO, St. Mark, 1411, Marble, Or San Michele, Florence

• Gothic and Byzantine tracery to them
• Begins the large-scale sculpture in the round in Florence
• Marble is used again just as it was in Greco-Roman art

DONATELLO, prophet figure, 1423, from the campanile of Florence Cathedral, marble,
Florence
• Different look from Saints Mark and George

DONATELLO, David, 1428, bronze, Florence

• Critics often speculate that he was gay
o Florence had a lot of homosexuality
• About 5’ including the base (very ambitious for the time)
o Has to re-teach himself to do the lost wax technique
o Large scale bronze sculpting cannot be don’t without the lost wax technique—
allows to do the sculpture hollow (or else it cracks from pressure)
o One of the first large-scale bronze sculptures since Greco-Roman times
• David is almost a mascot to Florentines (like David Florence felt threatened by bigger
powers, yet they always emerged victorious—like David)
• David very effeminate
o Story of David—underdeveloped and not strong enough to swing sword or wear
armor (too wimpy to be victorious)
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o Donatello seems to sculpt him as if he is not strong enough on his own to win
against the giant—he is not capable enough
o Because Donatello is such a chameleon to bring out the character of his figures
supports this theory
• Promotes a devout message of God supporting his chosen even if they are the underdogs
• Contraposto- tendency of the Greeks and Romans to sculpt their figures in a weight shift

DONATELLO, Gattamelata (equestrian statue of Erasmo da Narni), c. 1445, bronze,

Padua, Italy
• Says a lot for his work that he has the chance to be brought out of his hometown and be
commissioned and patronized by people in other cities
• A patron would set the artist up (often in their own home) and the only catch is that he
can dictate what the artist will paint—highest pinnacle of success to be patronized by
wealthy member of society
• Florence was in a very vulnerable position—much of the architecture seems to be built
for defense
o Donatello went to Padua in one of the times of crisis
• Gattemalata- nickname of the general
• Important because the horse and the general are both life-size in bronze
• Still displayed outdoors
• Has much detail and scale
• Horse has a foot on an orb is a symbol of the general’s leadership of the world

DONATELLO, Mary Magdalen, c. 1454, gilded wood, Baptistery, Florence

• Brushed with gold—not covered
• Changes style and material to show off the figure’s character
o After repenting to Jesus for her sins
o Goes to the desert and when she comes back from the hardships she is changed
from traditional beauty to a spiritual beauty
o Skins of animals cover her
o About 4 or 5 feet tall
o She is emaciated and wasted—old, haggard Mary Magdalene
o She is now content even though she has gone through such hardships

LATE GOTHIC/PROTO RENAISSANCE IN ITALY – MASACCIO

MASACCIO, Tribute Money, c. 1427, fresco from Santa Maria del Carmine, Florence
• Using linear perspective that he learns from Brutalesci
• Uses atmospheric perspective also
• Real name Tomasino
• One of the founding fathers of the Renaissance
• Influence to Da Vinci and Michelangelo
• Consistent with the light-source
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MASACCIO, Expulsion of Adam and Eve from Eden, c. 1425, fresco from Santa Maria del
Carmine, Florence
• Like in the Greco-Roman times
• Appropriate because they were not ashamed of their nudity until they disobeyed God and
then they became ashamed
• Unusual to have full nudity only allowed because of the story
• Powerful grief in Eve’s face
• Uses dramatic pantomime like Giotto (silent communication of emotions)

MASACCIO, Holy Trinity, c. 1428, from Santa Maria Novella, Florence

• Uses one point perspective (with great mastery)
o Everything comes to point above Christ
• Atmospheric perspective
o In the font = clear
o Father back = more hazy
• First representation of God the father as looking very human (humanistic—to show god
as if he is human)
• A mementomori—the skeleton means that we will all die and we will all have to be
saved.
• Dove of the holy spirit
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LATE GOTHIC/PROTO RENAISSANCE IN ITALY – Fra Angelico

• Florentine Dominican (nicknamed father angelic) (living saint—even in his day)
• Got training as a manuscript illuminator (illustrations for Bibles)
• Always graceful and vibrant

FRA ANGELICO, The Annunciation for San Domenico, Cortona, Italy, c. 1428-32
• Pantomime
• Architecture (scientific perspective)
• Depth
• Byzantine colors (gold)
• Loggia—Florentine architecture (very Renaissance style)
• Holy event in a contemporary, commonplace setting
• Paint has flecks of real gold

FRA ANGELICO, The Annunciation, c. 1435, fresco (from Florence?) moved to the Prado
museum in Spain, (he also worked in Rome, Assisi, Perugia, and Orvieto)
• Very similar to the first annunciation scene

FRA ANGELICO, Temptation of St. Anthony, 1430, (from our MFA)

• Atypical subject matter for Fra Angelico
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• Usually more gentle scenes (this is a semi-horrifying event)
• Devil trying to tempt St. Anthony with gold
• Anthony is repelled by the gold rather than tempted

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LATE GOTHIC/PROTO RENAISSANCE IN ITALY – Miscellaneous

Humanists
• Renaissance in Florence
o Rediscovery of classics
o Outsides influences from trade
o Very rich
o Contact with Mystras
o Building new things (big architecture—find history when digging to set
foundations)
o Medici family
o Want to impress people with the artists who were intellectuals as well as artists
o Plague is economically stimulating
o Pride in collecting art and patronization
• Call Florence second Athens

DOMENICO VENEZIANO, St. Lucy Altarpiece, c. 1445, tempera on wood panel, Florence
• Sacra conversazione- sacred conversation
o Type of painting theme
o People throughout history painted as if they are living at the same time
o Religious characters
• John the Baptist, Saint Francis, Mary, Jesus, local bishop, St. Lucy
• In Florentine loggia
• Mary would be a giant in comparison to the rest of the figures

FRA FILIPPO LIPPI, Madonna and Child with Angels, c. 1460, Florence, tempera on
wood panel
• Father (friar)
• Priest (patronized by the Medici family)
o Had a problem with lusting over women
o Snuck around at night—Medici family locked him in his room so that he would
be more productive
o Church tolerated him because he was such a great painter
o Eventually he is de-frocked
o Takes up housekeeping with his mistress and has lots of children
o Still called Fra even though he is not a priest anymore
• Paints his favorite mistress as Mary, the Virgin
• Everyone knew he was sinful, but everyone loved him anyways
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• Window behind her has a Venetian landscape (dramatic backgrounds that aren’t seen in
Italy)
• Allowed to paint his beautiful mistress as the virgin Mary and the public accepts it (talks
about Florence’s open-mindedness)
• Brings a earthly, natural, sensual, beautiful Virgin Mary

ANTONIO POLLAIUOLO, Battle of Ten Nude Men, c. 1465, (also see his statue of
Hercules and Antaeus on page 717 as an example of this new fascination with tensed
muscles)
• Unusual to use the printing press in this way (use printing press to reproduce high art in
mass quantities)
• Intensely interested in the human anatomy—most likely enjoyed enough distance from
Rome to do the “unthinkable” (studying cadavers)
• Inspiration to Signorelli
• Unrealistic
o Every muscle in every body is tensed dramatically
o Doing this as a study/exercise of the awareness of the human body
o New study of human anatomy

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LATE GOTHIC/PROTO RENAISSANCE IN ITALY – Botticelli

• Botticelli trained Fra Filipo Lippi’s son Filipino Lippi
• Painted wall-frescoes in Botticelli
• Scares very easy—changes beliefs and attitudes easily
• Lived in a time of unpredictability and instability
• Confused spiritually (before Savana Rolla he a fervent Neo-Platonist)
o Famous for nudes (people getting hung for painting/sculpting nudes)
o Botticelli throws many of his own paintings in the Bonfire of the Vanities
• Difficult to know Botticelli- don’t know if going with the crowd or trying to save own
skin
• Renaissance artist in theme, but not in style
o Style not very revolutionary—doesn’t have good perspective and doesn’t use lot
of volume
o Doesn’t use atmospheric perspective
o Style/technique/medium—not very different
o Theme—ideal beauty, Neo-Platonic

BOTTICELLI, Portrait of a Young Man, c. 1489

• Might be a self-portrait, but we have lost name of person in it

BOTTICELLI, Birth of Venus, c. 1482, tempera on 5’ 8” X 9’ 1” canvas, Florence

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• One of the (or the) first person to paint of canvas
• Painted on canvas because this was a commission to fit in a particular space in a wealthy
patron’s villa
• Easier to paint in own study and then transfer it after being done with it (made to look
like a mural, but wasn’t)
• Display in Florence
• Meaning is traceable back to one of the scholars of Mystras
• Depicts the birth of Venus (semen of Saturn with the sea foam)
• Represents the fertilization of mankind by divinity and the birth of beauty in the human
soul
• Stepping from celestial beginning and going into the earthly world
• Flora is going to clothe her because in the earthly world we wear clothes
• Zephyrs are pushing her to shore
• He is not trying for anatomical study and realism—he is trying to formulate a new ideal
of beauty
• Even dehumanizes Venus’s body—neck curves, bones out of left arm, and very white
• Favorite female face—angelic looking beauty (red hair, ice white face)

BOTTICELLI, Primavera, c. 1490, Florence, tempera on canvas

• Most likely painted as a partner piece to the birth of Venus
• The birth of spring
• Ordered by a distant Medici
• Subject may have been suggested by the Neo-Platonist scholars from Mystras
• Flora has flowers coming out of her mouth and Zephyrs behind her
• Cupid is blindfolded an shooting and arrow at the three Graces
• Mercury (randomness) pointing to the golden apples in the trees
• Pale and long limbs on all of them
• Glorified mythological theme (very Neo-platonic)
• Pregnant looking because it is a promise of fertility
• Oranges are Medici fertility (health, wealth, and fortune)

BOTTICELLI, Adoration of the Magi, date unknown, tempera on panel

• Amazingly detailed painting
• Some people in foreground are Medici patrons
• Honors the birth of Jesus and the patronage of the Medici’s
• An looking at us in brown is most likely Botticelli
• More traditional theme

THE HIGH RENAISSANCE IN ITALY - Leonardo da Vinci

• Not many surviving paintings of da Vinci
• A lot of paintings he started and didn’t finish
• He was prone to lose interest in a painting the moment he had resolved it in his own mind
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Virgin of the Rocks, c. 1485, oil on wood panel
• Three dimensional use of triangular composition
o Triangles—most reliable composition in a painting
o Force the viewer’s eye to travel through the painting
o Increases the triangle effect because they are gesturing toward each other
o Obvious foreground, middle ground, and background (emphasized volume)
• Leonardo perfects Massacio's invention of Chiaroscuro
o Chiaroscuro- use of light to highlight some features while throwing other featues
into shadow
o Some figures in sharp focus and some in shadowed obscurity
o Atmospheric realism (John the Baptist’s back fades into obscurity)
o Consistent light source
• Sfumato- smoky or hazy
o Related to Chiaroscuro
o Smudges out the outlines of things making it seem as if the atmosphere is making
them blurred
• Venetian landscape
• The figures are all part of the same landscape and atmosphere
o Treats the light in the background the same way as the light on the figures
o Background and figures are realistic (as if they truly are there)
• They relate to each other as they gesture towards each other
• Picked up the idea of using oil paint from Northern Renaissance painters
• It was new and experimental in Italy (oil paint)

Virgin and Child with St. Anne, c. 1498, oil on wood panel
• Emits grace and beauty
• Varied but not complicated, dignified but still looks spontaneous
o Almost as if a camera caught her in mid-movement
• Logical and unified composition but still looks spontaneous
• Dramatic use of light - figures glow
• Chiaroscuro- helps him to make a focus on certain items
• Not finished- uses under paints of earth colors
• Figures are earthy and human (smiling)

The Last Supper, 1495 - 1498, oil and tempera on plaster, located in the refectory of Santa
Maria delle Grazie, Milan
• This image became a popular prototype for subsequent last suppers.
• Singled out as da Vinci's most impressive work although it had deteriorated due to his
experimental techniques
o This is what hurt the fresco the most
o Mixed oil and tempera paints (don’t mix and stay mixed)
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o Knew he had made a mistake before he finished it (would mold, flake, and
deteriorate plus the climate is not regular)
o Oil lamps and candles used and the bacteria from the smoke and the moisture in
the air makes the decay faster
o Tried to paint on it with varnish to keep it preserved (varnish turns brown)
• Depicts a dramatic moment as Christ announces that one of the disciples had betrayed
him. Each apostle bears a different expression. Judas is in shadow as he clutches a
money bag.
• Christ is emphasized by the window behind him and by the use of perspective lines that
converge behind his head.
o Don’t need a halo—but still surrounded by light
o Tapestries point toward Jesus—everything is turning to him
o Emphasized as the central figure
• Suffered a lot of damage
• In the dining hall of the monastery
• Monastery made into a garrison and a stable
• Judas has the fuzziest face (he is not the most removed from Christ—unlike other
representations) Judas is clutching a money bag.
• In the action of denying they would betray Jesus

Mona Lisa, c. 1503-1505, oil on wood

• Possibly the world's most famous portrait
• Thought to be a portrait of a banker's/merchant’s wife
• Part of the painting has been cut off. She was encased by columns but part of the canvass
has been cut off.
• Masterful use of CHIAROSCURO - it is used to define as well as obscure - creates mood
and mystery (very much a part of her environment)
• One of Leonardo's favorite paintings - he actually completed very few
• Her identity is the subject of great interest and controversy
• Seems to be sensuous—smile (like there’s a secret), as if she is always watching you, she
only has a hint of veil
• Painting is with him when he died—why owned by France and not in Italy
• La Gioconda—Mrs. Gioconda

Embryo in the Womb, c. 1510, pen and ink

Leonardo was a true Renaissance Man: He was a master painter, architect, inventor,
scientist and military defense expert.
One of the first truly accurate anatomical pictures of what happens to bring life into the
world
THE HIGH RENAISSANCE IN ITALY – Raphael Sanzio

La Belle Jardiniere, 1507, oil on wood

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Beauty, grace, harmony, color...
Not a Venetian landscape—more of a Roman landscape
Virgin is dressed like a Renaissance noblewoman
She is a more ideal beauty of the Renaissance period
Raphael finally depicts the infant as cherubic.
The infant St. John the Baptist is cloaked in skins.
Typical Raphael painting

Madonna with the Goldfinch, 1505 - 06, oil on wood

The goldfinch is a symbol of Christ's suffering on the road to Calvary. Legend states that
The goldfinch's breast became red when it was stained with a drop of Christ's blood after
plucking a thorn from Jesus' brow.
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BRIEF INTERRUPTION BY RAPHAEL'S TEACHER, PERUGINO:

Christ Delivering Keys to St. Peter, 1481, Sistine Chapel, Vatican City
• Christ is bestowing the keys of the kingdom to St. Peter, the first "Pope" or father of the
church. This visual depiction of divine appointment directly to the Pope reinforces
infallible and total Papal authority over the church. When have we seen this kind of
imagery before?
• Note the contemporary setting and Renaissance dress in combination with Biblical
figures and costumes.
• Establishes divine, papal authority of the pope (pope is God’s chosen leader, under divine
authority)
• Visual reminder of the authority of the pope
• Implementation of the Sacra Conversazione or Sacred Conversation where various
periods of saints and contemporary patrons and clergy are depicted illogically gathered in
conversation. Notice that his student, Raphael does this in the next two paintings.
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The Marriage of the Virgin, 1504, oil on wood
Raphael is praised for his harmonious and strategic compositions
Rich use of vibrant color
Grace, beauty and tenderness

School of Athens, 1509 - 11, fresco in the Vatican, Rome

His apprenticeship with Perugino is evident here. Can you explain why?
He and Michelangelo influenced each other. It is said that Raphael modeled one of the
seated figures after a similar figure of Michelangelo's creation from the Sistine Chapel
before he had unveiled it. Michelangelo was said to be quite peeved!
Neo-Platonism and Sacra Conversazione (honors the great academic world of Greece)

The Triumph of Galatea, c. 1513, fresco from the Villa Farnesina in Rome
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• It was commissioned by a wealthy banker who managed the finances of the
papal state. Thus, the theme of zestful love and mythological creatures: Galatea
is surrounded by sea creatures and cupids as she flees her lover, Polyphemus
• Not religious—secular commission
•
Pope Leo with Nephews, 1518, panel painting
He was patronized by Popes, the Medici, and the Wealthy and powerful.
Baldassare Castiglione, 1514, oil on wood transferred to canvass
Raphael proves himself to be an excellent portraitist by painting this beloved
writer/philosopher and friend with character and incredible naturalism.

HIGH RENAISSANCE IN ITALY – Michelangelo Buonarroti

Pieta, 1498-1500, St. Peter's
Michelangelo's deep faith is evident here in its tenderness and grace.
Michelangelo was first and foremost, a sculptor although he had many other talents.
He "freed" the image from the stone with a deductive method.
His earlier sculpture is highly polished, refined and idealized.
A maniac attacked it with a sledgehammer in the early 70's, marring its perfection.
She would be taller than him, if they stood up—to intensify the maternal grief
The stone looks like cloth—very delicate
Attributed to Michelangelo—he signed it to make sure everyone knew it was him
This is what gained him respect and fame

David, 1504, marble, 18' high, Florence

The latent power in the sculpture contrasts sharply with the boyish sensuality of
Donatello's David (seems like he can win—powerful stance and gaze, very determined)
In Florence—sees a huge piece of marble—given up by another artist because too large-
scale
Not a perfect piece of marble—had defects and chips missing
Commissioned by the city of Florence (too be way up high on cathedral of Florence)
So impressed by it—thought it would be wrong to display it so far away—displayed in
the most famous, public piazza in Florence
Now in the Academia
Giorgio Vasari finds David’s hand—when it I broken of in a riot (keeps it until he is a
young man and uses it to gain respect and community pride to fix the statue and return
the pride of it to Florence)
It is huge—displayed on a pedestal level with eye level (the perspective is warped so that
it looks best when displayed above eye level)
Hands larger than normal to symbolize latent power

Bound Slave and Dying Slave, 1513-16, marble, 84" high

This sculpture is thought to be expressive of Michelangelo's state of mind during this time
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of his life when he was pressured and overtaxed with papal requests and commissions.
Thinks sculpting is the most inventive and noble art
Supposed to be part of a 40 statue spectacle for the grave of Pope Julius

Moses, 1513-15, marble, 8'4" high, located in St. Peter in Chains, an early Christian church in
Rome
Although old and bearded, Moses exudes awesome strength and power.
Only statue for Pope Julius’s tomb that Michelangelo finished (is on his grave, not in the
Basilica)
Moses has horns—renaissance Christians thought that Moses was supposed to be
overcome by the Holy Spirit and had horns

Tomb of Guiliano de Medici, 1520-34, San Lorenzo, Florence

The Sistine Chapel Ceiling, Vatican City, 1508-12, Fresco

• Everyone was naked (including saints)
• Electric color—very expensive/intense colors
o Uses mannerist colors
• Paints architectural features to look like they are three-dimensional molding
• Subdivision of the ceiling
o Scenes not necessarily related
• Did this out of fear (what would pope do to him if he didn’t agree) and conscience
(refusing the pope)
• Contorted poses pf the figures (also inspires mannerist painters)
Creation of Adam, detail from the center of the ceiling
• God—energy and love (touching life into an apathetic Adam)
• Adam doesn’t even care—god is the one reaching for Adam, not the other way around
• Is more optimistic and characteristic of a younger Michelangelo

The fall of Man and the expulsion From the Garden, 1508-12, detail from the Sistine Chapel
Ceiling
• Shows the before and after part of the situation
• Serpent—almost human torso
• Cowering in fear from Michael the Archangel
• Mix of Christian and Neo-Platonist figures

The Last Judgement: The Sistine Chapel

• Shows a very different Christianity

Dome of St. Peter’s (designed by Michelangelo but altered somewhat by Giacomo Della Porta
after Michelangelo’s death)
• Appointed head-architect on Saint Peter’s in Rome
• Largest dome since the Cathedral of Florence
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• Clear-story windows at the base of the dome (heaviest part of the dome—very
ambitious)
• Feature of the dome (geometric design)

NORTHERN RENAISSANCE
Bergundian Netherlands
• Flanders very rich
• Very busy sailors and traders
• With the money came the patronization of artists
• The themes of the art is limited by those that are patronizing the artist
• Not a lot of secular earthy things in Italy—dictated by the patron
• In Flanders there isn’t a sharply defined noble class (wealthy middle class)
o A lot of the art looks very different
o Reflects middle class/peasant tastes
o More secular, anything goes
o Still-lives and landscapes originate here
o Room for more artists to work
• Concurrent with the Renaissance in Florence
• Not as much a Neo-Platonic renaissance
• Northern Europeans looked to nature rather than the classics for inspiration
• More for realism than idealism
• Oil paint was invented in Flanders
• Hubert and Jan Van Eyck—Flemish brothers who worked and created oil paint and oil
painting
• Not a lot of nudity in Flanders (and if hude it is very naïve—don’t study cadavers_

House of Jacques Coeur, Bourges, France, 1443-1451

CLAUS SLUTER, The Well of Moses Pulpit, 1395-1406, Chartreuse de Champmol, near
Dijon, France. (Yes, we studied this before as a piece that helped reintroduce large-scale
sculpture to early Renaissance sculptors. Well, here it is again. Claus Sluter was a Bergundian
sculptor hired by Philip the Bold of Burgundy to create this ambitious piece. It symbolically
represents a well supported by Moses and five other prophets.

THE LIMBOURG BROTHERS May from the Very Rich Hours of the Duke Berry, 1413,
Illumination page
• The marriage of two noble people
• Has astrological meanings
• Ladies looking pregnant was the fashion of the time (especially of the brides because it is
the promise of fertility)
 16
• Secular art filled with details about the customs of secular life

FLEMISH PAINTERS:

HUBERT AND JAN VAN EYCK, The Ghent Altarpiece (open), 1432, tempera and oil on
wood, from the cathedral of At. Bravo, Ghent, Belgium
• Polyptych
• Has many different panels (was open and closed according to the
• Has outrageous detail
• Fanatical detail
• Take abstract concepts and to physicalize them
• Use of symbols is a common thing in their religious art—disguised symbolism
• Brilliant colors

Detail of the closed back side of the Ghent Altarpiece

Painted to look as if sculpted

JAN VAN EYCK, The Man in a Red Turban, (self portrait?), 1433, tempera and oil on
wood. On the back Van Eyck’s motto is written, “As I can” (but not as I would). A
testimony of his humility and objectivity.
• The white paint is lead based paint that, if not mixed carefully, can crack
• Most likely self-portrait
• Intense humanity and realism
• Men and women often wore turbans (look presentable without washing hair)
•

JAN VAN EYCK, the Last Judgement, tempera and oil on wood, c. 1425

• Heaven – order (colorful)

• Hell – chaos (dull)
• Horrific representation of the Last Judgement

JAN VAN EYCK, Arnolfini and His Bride, 1434, tempera and oil on wood panel
Note the disguised symbolism: St. Margaret, patron saint of childbirth, carved on the bedpost,
the stations of the cross on the mirror, one lit candle representing the presence of the holy spirit,
open window as a symbol of the admission of the holy spirit, fruit representing fertility, the dog
representing fidelity in marriage, the unworn sandals representing sacred ground, the puff of her
dress implying the hope of pregnancy, and the marriage bed. The reflection of unseen witnesses
in the mirror was a great influence later to Velasquez in his painting, Las Meninas.
• Arnolfini Wedding
• It is a genre painting (genre- paintings pf everyday life)
• Is one of the things common to the Flemish school
 17
• Witness to the fact that the wedding took place
• Serves as a historical record—like a marriage contract (to keep a spouse from walking
out on a marriage)
• Promotes the sanctity of marriage (emphasizes that it is a sacrament)
• Wedding night wedding chamber, it is sacred so they aren’t wearing shoes
• Disguised symbolism
• See the couples and the hazy witnesses are in the mirror
• Holy spirit in the one lit candle
• Open window—accepting to the holy sprit—fruit in window = future fertility
• Hands positioned to symbolize possession (man)and acceptance (woman)
• Everything meant to show wealth of family
• His most famous painting
• She seems submissive and he confident
• Is a psychological painting
• His hand up gives the illusion of him confronting the viewer

JAN VAN EYCK, Portrait of Margaret Van Eyck, tempera and oil on wood panel
• Fine detail in the fur and gathering of her dress
• Headdress is fashionable in Flanders

ROGER VAN DER WEYDEN, the Escorial Deposition, c. 1435, tempera and oil on wood
• The most famous artist in Flanders after Jan’s death
• So it seems as if might be a Jan Van Eyck painting except for the feeling/pathos is this
painting
• Pathos—such extreme sympathy that one starts to feel the pain of the one suffering
• Mary is empathizing so deeply that she is mimicking his pain
• Jan Van Eyck is the most famous painter, but Roger has the emotive quality
• Was painted for the Spanish king and it is why it has a Spanish name (reveals how
famous he was in his lifetime) (paints for the Dukes of Burgundy and other kings of the
times)

Portrait of a Lady, c. 1460, oil on wood

• Receded hairline = fashionable
• Fabric = expensive and transparent
• Has an ethereal beauty
• Has a belt with a buckle with a little prayer book attached to it (wealthy women only and
came from Italy)

Virgin and Child, 1454, oil on wood

• Baby Jesus is acting like a baby (grabbing toes)
• Tenderness is shown through
• Not a tiny little pantocrator
 18
• At the museum of fine arts
• Very real and humanistic

HUGO VAN DER GOES, the Portinari Altarpiece, (open), c. 1476, oil on wood
• Does not have a Flemish title
• Painted for the Portinari family in Italy
• Very famous outside of his own area
• Most famous painting of his
• Has the patrons in the painting (they are dictating the content of the painting)
• Etyptric—was made to be a folding altarpiece

HANS MEMLING, The Mystic Marriage of St. Catherine, center panel of the St. John
Altarpiece, 1479, oil on wood
• Saint Catherine of Alexandria
• Brilliant color
• Addition of gold paint
• Meticulous detail
• John the Baptist
• Very Flemish setting (not all—the roman columns)
• Is lusted after by a Roman emperor (rejects his advances and converts the people he
sends to get her to change her mind about being a Christian)
• Tries to kill her multiple ways but it never works until he chops her head off
• She has a vision of marrying Christ (what is depicted in painting)
• Has wheel and ax around her
• She is very learned (has people reading a book to her)
• She is not central—she is kneeling in front of Mary and Jesus the baby is putting a ring
on her finger
• Importance
o Religious painting and religious commission
o Handled differently than the Italian painters (the beauty of the features and the
great detail)
o Italians painters—the spirituality and grace and humanity of the painting is most
important (to the Flemish artist it is all in the details)
o Surrounded by symbols of martyrdom and symbols of life
o The image of female beauty are different in Flanders (less sensual more stoic and
contained)

Portrait of a Man with an Arrow, 1468

MARTIN SCHONGAUER, St. Anthony Tormented by Demons, c. 1480-1490, etching or

metal engraving
 19
• Different from the Italian version (more horrific) not as in control as the Italian version
• German artists—not afraid to show suffering in a literal and violent way
• German artists trained in Flemish school
• Very sensitive way of producing prints of an artists work (metal, not wood)

LUCAS CRANACH, the Judgment of Paris, c. 1528, tempera and oil on wood
• Influenced by Neo-Platonic ways in Italy and Spain
• Are very naïve looking nudes—not very anatomically correct
• Paris judging the beauty of Aphrodite, Athena, and Hera
• Deviates from mythological realism (dressed in medieval and Flemish styles)
• Has Venetian landscapes and bad scales
• Not popular in Flanders

MATHIAS GRUNEWALD, the Isenheim Altarpiece, Crucifixion, center panel, c. 1510

• Very detailed, gruesome violence
• Relentless, painful detail
• Pathos of the people to the left of the cross
• The lamb and the to catch the blood of the lamb when sacrificed
• One figure points to the scene (like a detached narrator)

ALBRECHT DURER, Self Portrait, 1500, oil on wood panel

• Becomes traditional for a person to paint themselves a lot of times through their
career
• He is called the “da Vinci of the north”
• Huge botanist and a true Renaissance man (he has multiple roles: printer, painter,
diplomat, etc.)
• Depicts himself as an academia with a hint of wealth (very fashion conscience)
• German but fits in the Flemish school

Madonna and Child, c. 1505, oil on wood panel

• Does the sfumato like da Vinci

The Four Horsemen, from the Apocalypse series, c. 1498, woodcut

• Woodcut
• Durer was famous for doing hundreds of woodcuts (mostly religious but some
secular)
• Parts that are not carved show the black ink
• Each horseman represents a different aspect of the Apocalypse
• Personifies the abstract (famine = emaciated)
• Example of art on paper in the North
 20
• Impressive imagination and mastery of the printing process
• Printing press = “space age”
• Breaking out of the traditional methods of artwork
• Amazing attention to detail even in his prints

HANS HOLBEIN THE YOUNGER, the French Ambassadors, 1533, oil and tempera on
wood
• Painted at a time when Henry the VII was “cozying” up to Frances I
• An ambassador is very prestigious
• They are surrounded by the symbols of their job—scholarly pursuits such as music and
globes (travel)
• Dressed impressively to show status
• Hans Holbein has produced the first “op” art (optical illusion)
• The strange object on floor is a human skull
• Becomes a court painter for Henry VII

Portrait of Jane Seymour, 1536, oil and tempera on wood panel. This was painted by order
of Henry VIII, King of England. Jane Seymour was his (fifth?) wife.
• Often hired by Henry VII to paint his wives and potential wives (time Henry would
consider marrying someone he never met before)
• Attention to detail is especially appreciated as a court painter (pay attention to the fashion
of the time)
• Very realistic (seems to paint reality with the double chin)

Portrait of Henry VIII, c.1539, oil and tempera on wood panel

• When young Henry is very handsome and manly, but as an older man he is not very
attractive
• Holbein makes him look strong rather than obese
• Flemish attention to detail/flattery = important
• Fashion started by Henry (poufs in the shirt)

The Artist’s Wife with Katherine and Philip, 1528

• Very different from his other paintings
• No longer flattery for the inflated egos of his subjects
• More about the people than the clothing
•
_____________________________________________________________________________

RENAISSANCE – French
JEAN FOUQUET, Charles VII of France, 1444
• Traveled to Florence and brought Italian influence back to France
 21
• th
The best 15 century painter in France
a
Portrait of an Ecclesiastic, 15th c.
• It is a sketch/study rather than a great portrait
• More character and humanism in it
• Don’t know who the subject is

JEAN CLOUET, Francois I , c. 1525-1530, Tempera and oil on wood

• Sent ambassadors to Henry VII of England
• Getting very expensive to go to court
• Importance of fabric and fashion in the court life
• Face flat and naïve
• Looks metallic

ROSSO FIORENTINO AND FRANCESCO PRIMATICCIO, ensemble of architecture,

sculpture, and painting, c. 1530-1450. Gallery of King Francis I, Fontainebleau, France.
• A hunting château
• Grand architecture of France (because of Francis I)
• Deliberately hires artists from different regions
• Each artist has a specific area where they are famous

Fontainebleau Exterior
Fontainebleau Interior

Chateau de Chambord, France, begun 1519, (original plans by a pupil of Giuliano da

Sangallo but later altered greatly by Italian architects)
• Also commissioned by Francis I
• The wealth of France (trying to bring in its own Renaissance

PIERRE LESCOT, west facade of the Square Court of the Louvre, Paris, France, begun
1546. (Part of the Louvre already existed but this addition was a new royal palace.)
• Changed from fortress to a palace of the French kings (then the main quarters are
changed to Versailles)
• Vandalized during the French Revolution
• Then changed to an art museum
• Oldest above-ground part of the Louvre

RENAISSANCE - Flemish
HIERONYMUS BOSCH, the Garden of Earthly Delights, triptych panels, 1505-1510, oil
on wood
 22
• In the Prado museum (commissioned by the Spanish king)
• Also did commissions for Phillip the Handsome of Burgundy
• Very misunderstood works (very surreal)
• Are very religious paintings (even though so not seem to be religious)
• Supposed to have “psychological” content but it does not (silly because they were
deliberately painted with common symbols of his own time)
• Loaded with nudity (still very naïve and flat)
• Unusual for nudity to be in Flemish painting
• Earthly delights – Perverted, human (so much food—gluttony, sexual, strange fruits,
otherworldly and unnatural landscapes)
• Hedonism- having no control over one’s seeking of physical pleasures (no limits)
• Bosch has no faith in humankind (this is what he thinks the world would be like without
God)

Left panel, open, The Creation of Eve

• Harmony in the Garden of Eden before original sin
• Landscape is still surreal and otherworldly
• Nudity still naive

Right panel, open, Hell

• Bosch imagines hell as the place where we will be punished by the instruments we sin
with
• Example (pig with nun’s veil—pig is sexual) nun is turned into a pig because she had sex
and she is still having sex with a man
• Musical instruments (people sinned by listening to bawdy music) (strong belief of the
time that music not for worshipping god was a sin) (dancing was considered sinful)
• People who were gluttons are being punished with food (fruit is a symbol of sex too)
• Big white object (Bosh made it up, Salvador Dali stole this piece of architecture and put
it in his painting)
• Pastiche—when an artist borrows a symbol or motif from another artist
•

The Last Judgment, date?

• Hell is very similar to hell in the previous slide
• The heavenly part is very minimal
• The fires and the burning of the cities in the distance
__________________________________________________________________________
QUENTIN METSYS, Portrait of a Notary, 1510, oil on wood panel
• Similar to da Vinci and is very realistic
• There are symbols of devoutness and scholarliness

A Grotesque Old Woman, c. 1507, oil on wood panel

• Very different from the previous painting
 23
• People are so focused on sin and vanity (attempt to moralize)
• This painting is about the sin of vanity
• This lady is too old for the cleavage and fashionable hairdo (vanity distorts her face, she
is trying too hard to be young)

PETER BRUEGEL THE ELDER, Hunters in the Snow, 1565, oil on wood
• Landscape for landscape’s sake (very weird)
• 1st landscape in the snow
• Eldest of three generation’s of painters (most famous and successful during lifetime)
• Only about 40 oil paintings of his survive
• Paints for the newly-prosperous farmers and lower class
• Not a court painter (does not have to go along with the wealthy people’s taste)
• Paintings are allegorical and symbolic
• Everyone is productive and good (very godly)
• Genre painting of peasants and the lower class (still moralistic elements that is
characteristic of the Flemish school)
• Limited palette—uses limited range of colors (inexpensive colors)
• More affordable art
• People are not the focal point so is considered a landscape still

The Harvesters, 1565, oil on wood

• Harvesting wheat
• Land = extension of God, giving the people the means to survive
• Steeple (always the presence of God)
• Seems very literal, but contains hidden messages

Martyrdom of St. Catherine, c. 1565

• Carpenter in the bottom making the wheel she is rolled on
• The bonfire that doesn’t kill her either
• Is it smoke or the anger of God to the people trying to kill her?

The Peasant Dance, 1567, oil on wood

• New type of subject (homage to the peasants and their zest for life)
• Expression of stereotypes and clichés (drunk men, unholy men, total abandonment of the
dancing)
• Look as if a candid picture (not a modeled action)

Peasant Wedding, 1568, oil wood

• The musicians and revelers
• Abundance of food
• Child sucking her fingers in front
• Wine being passed out
• People coming in still
 24
• Very much a realistic painting
Other artist who paint peasants
• Paint the peasants as slovenly
• The peasants are pictured as unmannerly and indignant
• Different from Bruegel who seems to show the joy of the peasantry and seems to respect
them
•

EARLY MANNERISM – Correggio and Rosso Fiorentino

• Renaissance artists look to nature for inspiration and develop style
• Mannerist painters look to style and develop a manner
• Maneria- means excessive, affectation
• Mannerist painting often:
o Twisting, writhing compositions
o Extreme drama
o Crowded and busy compositions
o Intense/electric colors
o Irrational elements
o Warped proportion
• Mannerist portraits
o More simple than other Mannerist paintings
o Psychological portraits (windows to the soul of the subject)
o Emphasis on the hands and face (hands are windows to the soul)
o Backgrounds are simple but dramatic
o Symbols of intelligence, virtue, or spirituality are often included (adulation of the
subject)
o

CORREGGIO, Jupiter and Io, c. 1532, oil on canvas

• Does not “scream” mannerism
• Has twisting and writhing (complex and not very natural pose)
• Not proportioned naturally
• Very crowded and has the extreme drama characteristic of the Mannerist painters
• Zeus lusts after Io (Hera takes out jealousy on women he lusts after)
• Zeus tries to get around Hera by changing his form
• There is a face in the cloud seducing her
• Very passionate (more sensual nudes than the Renaissance painters)

Mystic Marriage of St. Catherine, c. 1515, (Correggio had not fully developed his
mannerist style yet - note the early date.)
• Not a Mannerist painting at all (St. Catherine of Alexandria)

Martyrdom of Four Saints

 25
• Very much a Mannerist painting (all the characteristics of Mannerism)
• Figures warped, elongated, and twisted (reminiscent of Michelangelo)
• Irrationality (part of one man’s body is red)
• Religious painting, but not restricted by tradition

Portrait of a Gentlewoman, 1517

• Rules change for Mannerist portraiture
• Open bowl = symbol of feminine virtue
• The hands are not that expressive, but they are pale (which was a sign of beauty in this
time)
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EARLY MANNERISM - Pontormo
PONTORMO, Descent from the Cross, 1525, oil on wood, Capponi Chapel, Santa Felicita,
Florence
• Epitome of Mannerism
• Everything characteristic of a Mannerist painting
• Anxiety and drama
• So crowded that it’s irrational
• Head “growing” out of Jesus’ head (because is too crowded it does not seem overlapped)
• Irrational colors (people’s skins are pink and blue)
• Trying to introduce as much color as he can
• On the very tip of his toes (weightlessly even though carrying Jesus)
• Small heads
_____________________________________________________________________

EARLY MANNERISM - Parmigianino

PARMIGIANINO, Madonna with the Long Neck, c. 1535, oil on wood, Uffizi, Florence
• Deliberate warp of Mary
• Element of anxiety toward the baby (child is so much bigger than is usually seen and is
almost falling off Mary’s lap)
• Is unbalance
• People on the left are crowded but there is not one, but a little random Roman man
• There is a column that does not support anything
• Still being painted for commissions
• Band between Mary’s breast is taken from the Pieta
• The elongated finders on the hands
• Very cropped (very severely)

ROSSO FIORENTINO, Dead Christ with Angels

• Would be very much taller than the angels that are supporting him
• Angels are contented and happy
• Christ dominates the composition
 26
• The twits of Christ’s body brings the eye around
• Small heads
• Angels are more human
• They are lowering Jesus on a rope, but looks like a swing
_____________________________________________________________________________

EARLY MANNERISM - Bronzino

BRONZINO, Venus, Cupid, Folly, and Time (Exposure of Luxury), c. 1546, oil on wood,
National Gallery, London.
• Love is wonderful, but it is surrounded by enemies
• Pupil of Pontormo
• Fondled by son, Cupid
• Extreme arching of body (head disjointed)
• Hatred, inconstancy, time, folly, vanity, falseness
• Golden apple – in her hand
• Inconstancy- comedic masks (fickleness)
• Folly- getting ready to throw rose petals
• Vanity- very beautiful, crouching in background with a mirror and a golden apple (hiding
it)
• Father time- old and reaching for them
• Falseness- looks like regret
• Cupid tramples the dove of harmony and purity
• Very much a mannerist painting (seem to glow)
• Message—if love surrounded by all these enemies, then folly is inevitable

Portrait of a Young Man, 1550, oil on wood

•

GIOVANNI BOLOGNA, Mercury, c. 1576, bronze

• He is weightless and the position is illogical (he is twisted in an unnatural run)
• He is a very flamboyant runner

Abduction of the Sabine Women, completed 1583, located in the loggia dei Lanzi, Piazza
della Signoria, Florence.
• Twisting writhing composition with very dramatic positions and pantomime
• Wasn’t meant to be the abduction of the Sabine women it was a study in the entwined
and writhing figures
_____________________________________________________________________________
An Example of Mannerist Architecture:

EARLY MANNERISM – Architecture

 27
GIACOMO DELLA PORTA, facade of Il Gesu, c. 1575-1584, Rome
• Very typical (straight lines)
• Curlicues are very mannerist style
____________________________________________________________________________
MANNERISM IN VENICE - Bellini

GIOVANNI BELLINI, Portrait of a Man, c. 1490, oil on wood, National Gallery of Art,
Washington D.C.
• Not manneristic,

Madonna and Child, 1509, oil on wood

• Very Florentine, not manneristic
• Very human with a Venetian landscape
• Bellini is Venetian

Feast of the Gods, 1514, oil on canvas, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
• Very Bacchanalian scene
• Do not follow the moral/social rules of their time
• Hedonistic enjoyment of life with a busy composition
• Inspires Titian with his Bacchanalian theme and Giorgione
• Teacher of 2 great Mannerist painters (greatest Venetian painters of their rime)

MANNERISM IN VENICE - Giorgione

_____________________________________________________________________________
GIORGIONE, The Tempest, c. 1505, Galleria dell' Accademia, Venice
• One of the most influential paintings in the world
• Giorgione is the first to sacrifice narrative content for mood
• Looks like could tell a story, but it doesn’t
• The reason for this painting is to make the viewer uncomfortable or offended
• Dark weather, uncomfortable way to sit, breast-feeding (do you really have to be nude to
breast feed), the voyeur (shepherd with a dark, ominous face), very close to a very public
setting (no excuse of mythological nudity with the modern setting), she watches us watch
her (confrontational) it makes it even more awkward
• This painting inspires Manet’s Luncheon on the Grass

Adoration of the Shepherds, 1505

• It is shocking because ti forces us into a mood instead of telling a story
• Very traditional painting except for the electric colors

________________________________________________________________________

MANNERISM IN VENICE - Titian

TITIAN, Self Portrait, 1567

 28
• Revered as a painting God

Madonna of the House of Pesaro, 1519, oil on canvas, Santa Maria dei Frari, Venice
• Very religious painting for a church, but has a new energy to it
• Creating manneristic drama with looking up at the scene (like looking at the heavens)

Sacred and Profane Love, c. 1515, oil on canvas, Galleria Borghese, Rome
• Combines philosophy with painting (Neo-platonic philosophy)
• It is allegorical painting of twin Venus
• There is a perfect type of life with a balance of the sacred and profane
• Adoration with lust
• The differing halves of true love (still a neo-platonic theme)
• Earthly and heavenly love
• The heavenly love is the nude Venus (Venus is nude until she reaches the earth and is
clothed in earthly garments) is a pure, natural, unadorned love
• The sacred love is the celestial Venus (she carries the sacred flame of divine love)
• The earthly love is covered in earthly clothes (is also a sign of vanity)
• The profane Venus is the beauty found in the material world (dressed in sign of earthly
vanities)
• Both of the Venuses are considered virtuous and necessary to true love

Bacchanal, c.1519, oil on canvas

• Reminiscent of Bellini’s Bacchanalian scene, but it is taken even further into the theme of
Bacchus
• One figure passed out of the hilltop (reveals the ancient aspect of Bacchus’ worship that
is focused on fertility as well as partying)

Venus of Urbino, 1538, Contrast with similar reclining nudes by Ingres, Manet, and Goya.
• Stereotype of the seductive reclining nude
• Titian lives in a time where nudity needs to be excused in a way (even the excuse of
mythology)
• She is a modern women (a courtesan, the mistress of the Duke of Urbino)
• Makes a very shocking painting
• Using disguised symbolism of loyalty and faithfulness to balance out the shock value
• The dog = fidelity and loyalty
• The servants are rifling through a marriage chest (as if looking for the clothes of her
mistress after her bath)
• The orange blossoms are a symbol of marriage and purity
• These symbols excuse the true nature of the painting
• Titian loads the painting with themes of marriage and purity while this woman is actually
a prostitute

Bacchus and Ariadne, 1523, oil on canvas

 29
• Bacchus sees Ariadne after she is left by Jason of the Argonauts
• He has fallen in love with her
• Serpents are often associated with Bacchus
• Bacchanalian abandonment

The Three Ages of Man, 1511, National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh

• An allegorical painting of the tree stages of man
• Baby with a little angel guardian
• Young man pursued by women
• Old man that is holding skulls in remembrance of death

MANNERISM IN VENICE -

TINTORETTO, Annunciation, 1583-87, Scuola Grande di San Rocco, Venice

• Very different version of the annunciation
• Desperate violence (looks as if a disaster rather than a miracle that is happening)
• Mary is startled—not as is a humble answer to God
• Is a very dark and mysterious version of the annunciation
• The architecture and landscape is crude and ugly
• Breaking of the prototype

Last Supper, 1594, oil on canvas, San Giorgio Maggiore, Venice

 • Away from the da Vinci prototype
• The table is oddly skewed and the atmosphere is filled with ghostly figures
• Instead of painting the holy spirit, paints a lamp that looks similar to a bird
• The halo is not subtle—it is bursting
• It is so chaotic that you can’t see the action of the scene
• Shows things that have no place there (a woman scrubbing the floor and a dog)
• Looks supernatural rather than earthly and human
• A overly dramatic scene of a story
• Tenebrism- extreme light and shadow
• Its supernatural feel is what saves Tintoretto from getting in trouble wit the irreverence he
shows
_____________________________________________________________________________

MANNERISM IN VENICE - Veronese

VERONESE, Christ in the House of Levi, 1573, il on cnavas, Galleria dell' Accademia,
Venice
• Looks as if in a carnival setting
• In a typical Italian home in a typical Venetian party
• Unexpected things—dog licking itself
• The Venetian religious authorities (inquisitionist) got very mad at the irreverence of the
scene
• Still indicated to be religious but was supposed to be called the Last Supper
• Portrayed the Last Supper in the sprit of high carnival
• Because of this painting, he was thrown in the Venetian prison (no one escaped)
• Came up with a compromise to call the painting a different name and pay a fine and go
to jail for a while, but got out of the prison alive (got to paint a lot more and usually with
a religious theme)

Pieta, 1576-82, the Hermitage, St. Petersburg, Russia

• Not controversial
• Seems to be looking at the style of earlier painters

MANNERISM IN SPAIN – El Greco

___________________________________________________________________________
***Although your textbook groups El Greco with the late Northern Renaissance artists, he
really is a Mannerist painter in period and style.

EL GRECO, Self Portrait

• Traveled to Venice to become a student of Titian after first being trained by Greek
Orthodox priests
• Born in Crete
• The youngest Mannerist
 • Leaves Venice to go to Toledo to get away from the many painters
• The Bishop of Toledo reveres him and gives a lot of commissions
• Paints portraits of the wealthy and religious scenes for the bishop
• Style of El Greco--- a lot of black and then electric colors to dramatically contrast the
black
• Elongates faces and bodies of his figures (seems to emphasize the spirituality of the
figure)

The Burial of Count Orgaz, 1586, oil on canvas, 16'x12', Toledo, Spain
• One of the most famous paintings in the world
• Meant to guilt the family of Senor Orgaz into starting their contributions again (was a
request of Senor Orgaz on his death bed)
• Saint Augustine and Stephen lower Orgaz into the grave
• The bottoms half is solemn and very earthly burial scene
• The top half is the passage of Senor Orgaz’s soul into heaven (this is new)
• The souls is depicted as a miniature see-through baby (death into rebirth) and the
entrance to heaven is like a birth canal
• In heaven there is Jesus, John the Baptist, and Mary all waiting for him
• Count Orgaz must be very important for all these celestial beings to be awaiting the
arrival of his soul
• Show Orgaz as a count, a saint in the church of the Orgaz family
• El Greco and the bishop hadn’t agreed on the price (the bishop refused to pay was El
Greco wanted him to pay)
• The panel that was supposed to judge what the painting was worth was all clergy and
subservient to the bishop, but they all agreed that the painting was worth even more than
the asking price of El Greco

View of Toledo, 1597, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, N.Y.

• Mostly El Greco paints figures
• It is unique because it is a nightscape
• The sky is tumultuous with glowing clouds out of the black sky
• Is a spiritual landscape (known for his show of rhythm and movement)

BAROQUE IN ITALY - Architecture

• Baroque stays around through a coupled hundred years as an architectural style for
monarchies
• Kept around for its impression on people (very grand)
• Literally means misshapen pearl
• It is a derogatory term (because Baroque pearls are less valuable) (would have been
gaudy and less classic and pure)
• Baroque style is all about decoration to overwhelming (is a papal mandated reaction to
the Reformation) Protestants get mad at the Christians for being so extravagant
(condemnation of decorative art filled with nudity and art completely for opulence)
 • This is a reaction to the Protestants as a way to “get in their faces”
• Protestants were about subtle and simple, and the Catholic Church is taking the
complications of Mannerism to a whole new level

CARLO MADERNO, Santa Susanna, Rome, 1597-1603, (Doesn't this look familiar?
Maybe like Il Gesu?)

Carlo Maderno, facade of St. Peter's, Vatican City, Rome, 1606-1612. Maderno,
Bramante, Michelangelo, and Bernini all shared in different phases of the planning of St.
Peter's.
________________________________________________________________________

BAROQUE IN ITALY - Sculpture

• Baroque factors:
o Reaction to the anti-classic mannerist style
o Religious movement became an indirect for to the Baroque style (the Reformation
and the Counter-Reformation)
o Baroque art is a powerful weapon against the Protestant Reformation
o Political influence (Louis XIV—French—Phillip IV—Spain) want creations to
reflect their own splendor and majesty (art/architecture becomes testimony to
their greatness)
• Baroque qualities (some start with Mannerism and art brought to extremes by the
Baroque artists)
o Movement
o Energy
o Tension
o Strong contrast (Tenebrism)
o Intense spirituality (ecstasies, martyrdom, miraculous apparitions)
o Sense of infinite space
o Realism, character, individualism
o Landscapes without figures- perhaps inspired by new exploration

BERNINI, Self Portrait

• Transformed Rome and made it Baroque; changed the face of Rome
• Gave Rome its Baroque character (where once it was Ancient Roman and Renaissance)
• Popes and wealthy families of Rome patronized him
• Sculptor, architect, engineer
• Largely responsible for the popularity of the Baroque design (once was derogatory and
started in Italy but spread throughout Europe, especially in palaces)
• Very popular through the 1600 and 1750s
• Many musical people come to fame in this period

BERNINI, baldacchino (canopy?), St. Peter's, Rome, 1624-1633, gilded bronze,

100' high
• Baldacchino – altar canopies (common in grand Baroque churches) covers the most
sacred part of the church
• Saint Peter’s crypt is under the baldacchino, it is made out of brass (many things melted
down to make this structure
• Sculpted by Bernini, the most massive thing made out of bronze (why needed to
scavenge for bronze from everywhere else)
•

BERNINI, Chair of St. Peter (Cathedra Petri), 1656-1666, St. Peter's, Rome, gilded bronze,
marble, stucco and stained glass.
• Is symbolic (not used by anybody) grander than any king’s throne
• Builds a ornate spectacle around the chair (punched a hole in the wall of St. Peter’s)
• Multimedia (stucco, bronze, stain glass, marble)

BERNINI, David, 1623, marble, lifesize

• Movement, tension, energy, intenseness
• In the process of hurling the stone
• The viewer is supposed to complete the motion for David
• Different kind of David (not effeminate like Donatello, not relaxed and confident) David
is more aggressive

BERNINI, Neptune
• Wound up energy, as if twisted in mid-movement (muscles bunched and spear ready)

BERNINI, interior of the Cornaro Chapel in Santa Maria della Vittoria, Rome, 1645-1652
• Does a stage for the sculpture as well as the sculpture itself
• Multimedia opulence

BERNINI, Ecstasy of St. Theresa, 1645-52 Cornaro Chapel, Santa Maria della Vittoria
• Baroque art about emotional extremes
• Heavenly experience (i.e. speaking in tongues etc.)
• Overcome with spiritual euphoria with the presence of an angel
• Scandalous at the time because it seems like she is in sexual ecstasy
• Supposed to look spiritually euphoric but...
• Has a stain glass ceiling in the dome of the niche
___________________________________________________________________________

BAROQUE IN ITALY – Ceiling Frescoes

Self Portrait of Fra Andrea Pozzo, priest and painter of the ceiling fresco listed next:
• And expert on the subject of perspective (wrote a book about it)
• Is a lay brother in the Jesuits (did ceiling frescoes)
Glorification of St. Ignatius, 1691-1694, ceiling fresco in the nave of Sant’Ignazio, Rome
• Looks like it goes on again
• Sense of infinite space in a painting = quadratuara

Mystery slide that I couldn’t omit. It is a ceiling fresco by an Italian artist named Baciccio.
• Triumph of the name of Jesus
• In Il Gesu

BAROQUE IN ITALY – Carracci

ANNIBALE CARRACCI, Coronation of the Virgin, date?, location?

• Famous painter at the end of the 16th century

Salon with Carracci frescoes from the palazzo Farnese, Rome

• One of the wealthiest family in Rome
• It is the vault of the salon (gives sense of infinite space)
• Quadro rippertato—complex subdividing of many different paintings on a ceiling
• Depicted on the ceiling is the loves of the gods and the celestial love governing human
love
• Tromploeil-

Flight into Egypt. This ideal landscape will inspire later romantic landscape painters
Claude Lorrain and Nicolas Poussin
• Simple landscape
• Fleeing to Egypt for safety
• Carracci is often called the father of the landscape (one of hi most famous paintings)
• Buried near Raphael in the Pantheon

BAROQUE IN ITALY - Caravaggio

CARAVAGGIO, The Conversion of St. Paul, c. 1601, oil on canvas, Santa Maria del
popolo, Rome
o Real name is Michelangelo, but called by his hometown of northern Italy
o Intense Tenebrism in this painting
o The Tenebrism is characteristic of all of his paintings
o He was so respected for his painting that he got away with breaking the law and had
many a great painter that try to imitate him (called Carravaggisti)
o Had trouble staying in one place without being kicked out for breaking laws
o Body foreshortened and he’s flailing around in confusion
o We don’t know if the groom protecting him or taunting him (anxiety whether the groom
encouraging the horse or calming it down)
o The horse is twisted awkwardly so we are seeing his ass
 o It seems like a dangerous secular scene than a conversion theme
o There is no logical light source (seems like he is giving off his own glow)
o The surroundings are crude and earthy
o He pulled ideas from the regular people of the world (prostitutes, lovers, beggars,
peasants)
o Does not look like a saintly painting

Calling of St. Matthew, c. 1597-1601, oil on canvas, San Luigi dei Francesi, Rome
o Still very ordinary looking paintings
o Doesn’t explain the light source
o Grand Humanism--- there is an ordinary setting, but there is still a feeling that something
miraculous is happening (spiritual but commonplace)
o Unidealized models used as religious figures

Death of the Virgin, 1905-06, oil on canvas

o Controversy, anger, rejection (parish commission and rejected by the church)
o Supposed to depict the virgin Mary on her deathbed (uses the body of a drowned
prostitute that drowned)
o Paints the prostitute exactly as he sees her: bloated, dirty, deathly colored, not very
reverent at all
o Not a happy scene (it is very grim and very dead)
o The bottom of her feet blackened (the old geezers mourning her)
o Very grim and final
o Reubens convinces the Duke of Mantua to buy the painting (Peter Paul Reubens was a
traveling painter from Flanders) painters were influenced and had a camaraderie between
them
o Eventually Caravaggio eventually had to flee Rome (never got a pardon from the pope)
o Trained by a weak student of Titian

Judith and Holofernes 1599

o Judith looks a little squeamish (Caravaggio’s ideal women)
o “hanky-panky”
o He is waking as she cuts off his head
o Realistic in violence, but unrealistic in her squeamishness
o Light seems to come from the painting

The Card Sharps, 1595, The Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth
o Finally see humor in a painting
o A lot of cheating going on in the gambling scene
o Guy is looking and sending sign language
o Card in hand and behind back
o Prototype for a later French painter that copies this theme

BAROQUE IN ITALY – Artemisia Gentileschi

ARTEMISIA GENTILESCHI, Judith and Maidservant with the Head of Holofernes, c.
1625, oil on canvas
The teacher of Artemisia raped her. She was only 16 (she was very talented). Nobody really
knows if he seduced her or if he really raped her (he told her to stay quiet and he would marry
her). He had a wife she didn’t know about. Artemisia’s father found out, and he charges the
man with rape. He made Artemisia a public pariah (she is seen as a whore). Things happen (she
gets married, has a child, moves to Florence, and gets accepted to the Academia). She is the first
women to go to the Academia. She leaves her husband eventually and takes her daughter
wherever she wants. She is so well known that she can go just about anywhere. She makes a
good living. Artemisia is ready to pay for a good wedding for her daughter (who marries into a
more noble family). He father ends up in England for the king. He writes a pitiful letter to
Artemisia to help him (she goes as a dutiful daughter, and never gets an apology).
She is raped and done wrong by men consistently, but fights her way to prosperity and fame. No
wonder she painted Judith and Holofernes over 40 times. But many of them have not survived.
Judith is still holding the bloody knife. The maid is not a hag to counterpoint Judith’s “delicate
beauty” like in Caravaggio’s painting. Very dramatic. Intense Tenebrism.

Judith Beheading Holofernes, 1620

It takes both Judith and the maidservant to hold him down. He is grasping at their arms.

Self Portrait

Artemisia paints herself painting her painting. She paints herself in action... not as an arrogant
painter.

BAROQUE ART IN SPAIN - Zubaran

ZUBARAN, St. Francis, c. 1639, oil on canvas

•

St. Francis Kneeling, c. 1639, oil on canvas

• Simple, Spartan
• Engrossed in God
• Skull = mementomori
• Patched/torn robes (humble)
•

BAROQUE ART IN SPAIN – Velasquez

VELASQUEZ, Self Portrait

• Gets inspiration from reality
Maids of Honor (Las Meninas), 1656, oil on canvas, @ 10’5”x9’
• Does he credit the princess or does he mock her?
•

Portrait of Philip IV

Surrender of Breda, 1634-35

Feast of Bacchus, c. 1628, oil on canvas

Fable of Arachne, 1657

Francesco Lezcano, 1636-38

Mars, 1636-42
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_
BAROQUE ART IN FLANDERS - Rubens
• Worked for all the courts of Europe
• Spoke 6 languages (well educated and traveled)
• Flanders is a rich region full of trade (which is why Spain wants it)
• Devout Catholic
• Painted more than 2,000 paintings (very famous and wealthy)
• Rubens was the first to create a teaching “warehouse” (assistants to help him on certain
aspects of the paintings he did)
• Would work while looking over the workhouse from a upper story balcony
• Crew does underpainting and specialized paintings
• Anthony Van Dyke (student of Rubens who has to travel to become famous on his own)

PETER PAUL RUBENS, Self Portrait with First Wife, Isabella, 1609
• Daughter of an Antwerp lawyer (she was 17 he was 32)
• One of his early paintings—a different style form the later paintings
• Paints them looking attractive and prosperous (affection between them and makes it a
very genteel portrait)
• Has very hard edges (become softer in later paintings)

Self Portrait with Second Wife, Helene, 1635

• Isabella died so he married Helene
• Consistent taste in women (red hair, pale skin, curvy rather than skinny)
• Wives are often his models (even for some nudes)
• Rubenesque—fleshy with iridescent skin tone, large breast/red hair
• Edges are starting to be softer (more impressionistic)
• The child in the corner is their child
The Judgment of Paris, date?
• Choosing the beauty between three goddess
• Mercury presides as a witness
• Cupid is playing in the corner of the painting
• Messier (ala prima brushstrokes—the superficial layers are the brushstrokes of Rubens
because he is painting more quickly)
• He maps out the painting and does the superficial layer
• Then he does masterful touches (the more important the painting the more time Rubens
spent on it)

Lion Hunt, 1617, oil on canvas

• Very complicated, very energetic
• Typical of Baroque compositions
• Lion hunts have an ancient, mythical connotations (only kings could kill the lions)
• Lions are the king of beasts and so only the most courageous can kill a lion
• Lesser men than the king have already been taken down by the lion
• Extremely violent (also aspect of baroque paintings—realism and death)
• The lions are not easily being overpowered

Arrival of Marie de’ Medici at Marseilles, 1622-25, oil on canvas

• Marie de’ Medici—queen of France and daughter of Catherine
• She had an incredible ego—mother of Louis XIV
• She lives a long time and has a lot of power in the government
• Wants to be remembered for her greatness and power as the matriarch of France
• She wants 25 canvases by Rubens showing her greatness (Rubens did this in 3 years)
• She wants them to be grand baroque spectacles and they are all different
• She is doing simple things and they are glorified so much that they look like spiritual,
divine spectacles
• She is getting off a boat in Marseilles and everyone is there (mermaids and maenads,
angels—Gabriel the messenger, a guard is so overwhelmed that he is on his knees
honoring her)
• Looking regal in white satin and a special gold canopy with the Medici crest (the Medici
pills that are symbolic from when they were pharmacists)
• She is in Marseilles because the pope is there and he is supposed to be the big deal (but
she records the event as if she was the grandest person there)
• She was always putting her own opinion into whatever Rubens was working on (she kept
getting uglier in the paintings because he was so annoyed with her)

Coronation of Marie d’Medici, 1622-24

• She is not kneeling—no humility for her

Portrait of Marie d’Medici

• One of the later ones because she is not as flattered in the paintings (background is so
simple)
 • It is unlike Rubens because he just wants to get away from her

The Garden of Love, oil on canvas

• Courtly love
• Eleanor of Aquitaine
• Becomes acceptable in the noble class and is made into a part of court manners
• Reminds the people that affairs and adultery come out of courtly love also
• On man has an arm around his lady and cupid is pushing the women further into his arms
• On lady is touching a man’s leg as she leans on his shoulder (Oh NO!!)
• Would appeal to the nobles because it flatters them
• Where courtly games came into play (chance for adults to play games that allow flirting
—Valentines’ day, blind man’s bluff etc.)
• Their time is spent on fashion and is centered on having the money to play all the time
(luxurious entertainments and environments)

Daniel in the Lion’s Den, oil on canvas

• Daniel doesn’t realize yet that a miracle is taking place
• The lions are not trying to eat him like they were meant to
• Does colors within colors (lions are realistic and majestic)

BAROQUE ART IN FLANDERS – Van Dyke

ANTHONY VAN DYCK, Self Portrait

• Very young in this painting
• Student of Rubens
• Found greater success in London because he is away from the fame of Rubens
• Makes a good living painting for the wealthy of England
• Famous for casual and momentary poses
• Also famous for flattering his subjects

Charles I Dismounted, 1635, oil on canvas

• The restoration king Charles I
• Hunt paintings are becoming popular at this time in history because they love horses
• The horses are a status symbol so they appealed to the nobles
• Importing foreign horses, building fi

Countess of Clanbrassil, 1636

DUTCH BAROQUE - Franz Hals
• Amsterdam is the biggest city in Europe for trade (gives them a broader inspiration for
their artists)
• A bog middle class that could afford to buy paintings
• Holland is a district inside of Amsterdam and is such a central district that we call the
whole area Holland
• Netherlands—independent, Protestant (Calvinist mostly—reject paintings in churches),
reject the iconography of the Catholic Church, democratic
• Church, royal court and nobility are all gone (open to most anything, freedom of
religion)
• Flanders is more Catholic
• Artists at the mercy of the marketplace (bakers, butchers, blacksmiths) is a very
commercial thing (constant demand for art because everyone hang art in shops)
• Results in a higher quality of art
• Types of art—seascapes, interiors, landscapes, group portraiture, animals and still-life
• In 1610-1670 (Dutch Baroque)
o Realistic in style
o Many common subject paintings (appeal to the middle class)
o Like to play with the capture of light on different surfaces
o Vanitas—still-life that have an assemblage of items that have deep meaning and
they play with the light on the subject (to remind one of certain meanings—many
flowers and fruits because they perish and wilt and it reminds one of the
inevitable demise of the world)

FRANZ HALS, The Laughing Cavalier

• Very visible brushstrokes, even on the face
• That effect is not an accident
• Humor in a portrait at this time is unusual

Merrymakers at Shrovetide, date?

• She is dressed in the best of clothes, but she is in a common tavern with common tavern
drinkers
• They are all drunk (there is one guy singing in the background)
• There is no class distinctions here
• Spontaneity and gesture
 • Shrovetide = the old-fashioned Mardi Gras

Archers of St. Hadrian, c. 1633, oil on canvas, @ 6’9”x11’

• Is a guild portrait—usual looks similar to a groups portrait in a yearbook (all have the
same amount of character and symmetrical compositions)
• Is an example of a particular Dutch genre (guild portraiture)
• This is unique because the composition varies (expressions vary, position while sitting
varies, and have objects that show the interest of the people)
• Solves the guild portrait problem (get paid a lot, but not be someone’s “pet” artist)
• Guild portrait – no one person is in the center because they are one guild (all represented
pretty equally—even light distributed evenly)
• This would be hung in a public place (a public honor)

The Rummel Pot Player, 1618-22, Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth

• A rummel pot player is basically a beggar

• He is playing and is surrounded by children
• Zest for life theme (could not pay for portrait, so Franz must be panting it not for the
money but to show that even the beggars look for happiness in their lives)

DUTCH BAROQUE - Rembrandt

• One of the most prolific artist in history
• He is Dutch, spent most of his time in Amsterdam
• Was famous even as a young man
• Well-educated (exposed to the Italian masters)
• Like Rubens and Van Dyke, he could have been a painter to the nobility (it is how he
started his career) but he risked his position at court to pursue his own ambitions
• Wanted to paint his own inspirations
• Ran his own workshop and studio in the ghetto in Amsterdam (part of the city where the
Jews lived and it was a forceful segregation)
• He liked the humanity of the people and the variety of people in the ghetto (prostitutes,
beggars, common people) used these people as his models in many cases

REMBRANDT VAN RIJN, Self Portrait, 1659, oil on canvas

• Painted over 100 self-portraits
• Painted them through the entire span of his career (shows the development of his career)
• By the time he is an old man he is doing many untraditional techniques (his palette
changes as well as his techniques)
• Uses a lot of brown as he gets older
 • Every painting begins with a layer of brown (everything else is in layers, building up the
painting)
• Scumbling- rapidly brings the brush across the canvas (instead of trying to get every spot,
he is missing parts every time)
• Even paints with a palette knife

The Night Watch, 1642, oil on canvas, 11’5”x14’4”

• A guild portrait—the night watchers are the civic guard organizations
• Very creative and slightly unconventional guild portraits
• Uses an energetic baroque compositions
• Paints them in a moment of action as they prepare to defend the city
• Difficult to explain—
o Illuminated women (crouching in fear for their safety) probably a wife of one of
them
o Larger than life captain gives the orders to the men
o Drummer on the side for the marching beat
• Tenebrism—not usual for a guild portrait
• People who are in this portrait were probably angry (egos in the way because some
people have a lot of light, but some can’t even see the faces)
• Hurt Rembrandt’s career (didn’t want a piece of art, wanted a guild portrait)
• Argument about the final payment for the painting
• Rembrandt didn’t seem to mind so much

Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Tulp, 1632, oil on canvas

• This is an earlier guild portrait
• Physicians’ guild
• Dr. Tulp is the teacher doctor and is dissecting a corpse to teach about the anatomy
• Doesn’t appeal to the general public, but does appeal to the doctors because they are
excited about dissecting
• Everyone seems to be represented pretty equally

Syndics of the Cloth Guild, 1662, oil on canvas

• More normal guild portrait

Sacrifice of Isaac, 1635

•

The Blinding of Sampson, 1636

•

The Jewish Bride, 1665, oil on canvas

•
DUTCH BAROQUE - Vermeer
• Remained in Delft until he was bankrupt at the age of 43
• Died with a wife and 11 children behind
• Uses bright colors instead of the green and browns typical of the time
• They were brighter, clearer and glowed
• They are bright, but he paints mundane, everyday scenarios
• Most of his income is earned as a innkeeper and an art-dealer
• Painting was more of a pastime
• Only painted 35 paintngs
• Controversy—uses camera obscura (look through a pinhole and it sets the scene for the
painting) (lets him see the perspective and can change the things in the painting)
• They are in a “technological” age at the time in Holland
• The paintings look smooth, but up close they are made with a lot of dots and paint
smudges (a lot of texture)
•

JAN VERMEER, Young woman with a Water Jug, c. 1665, oil on canvas
•

Allegory of Painting, 1666

• Relates to The Letter
o Curtain is drawn back and the door is open (frames her)
o Indicates you as the viewer—emphasizes that you are just looking into her life,
not a part of her life
o Is an ordinary scene like you would see passing by the door
o We know is a love letter because it is a lute and behind her is a painting of the sea
(smooth sea, not choppy) paintings of the sea are a symbol of love
o There is not love in the sea because it is not moving, it is stale
• Is a painting with Vermeer as the painter (he is dressed in a costume
• Holds a book and a trumpet and this alludes to Clio, the muse of history
• There is a map that is of Dutch provinces
• Uses frames (curtain drawn) looking in as an outsider into an ordinary experience
• Some say that the light coming in is the light of artistic expression
• This is a big reference to Dutch history (Clio, costume, and map)

A Woman Weighing Gold, 1657, oil on canvas

Milkmaid, 1658-60She is in bright colors and against a clean background

• Doing an everyday task that she is very involved in
 • They can tell that Vermeer removed certain things in the painting (like a map in the
background and a laundry basket on the floor to the right that is replaced with a foot-
stove)
• Stove is a symbol for love, warmth and loyalty
• There are tiles at the bottom of the wall (they have little cupids on them)
• They don’t know the exact meaning of the painting, but the overall feeling is of love and
sacrifice as a servant (master to servant, love for a boy or boss, love from the employer)

Girl with the Pearl Earring, 1665

• Wearing a Turkish costume (a very mature style for him, one of his later works)
• Innocent, beautiful and gentle
• Restored it in 1984 to its original colors

View of Delft, 1660

DUTCH BAROQUE - Heda

WILLEM CLAESZ HEDA, Still Life, 1651
• Show the finest skills of the painter
• Trying to make it looks as real as possible (photorealism and surface detail)
• Vanatas (abundance of life) (symbols of vanity and wealth)
• Looks like an interrupted meal (have an abandoned look) theme of these still life’s
• Momento mori (reminder of death)
• Supposed to remind one that God can strike s dead at any moment
• Appreciate and truly live life to its fullest
• Moralistic paintings
•

Breakfast Table with Blackberry Pie, 1631

• Same goblet (using favorite possessions—make still life interesting)
• There would probably be fruit flies in the paint (any baroque still life)
• This is an example of memento mori—flies hasten the decay process (death and rebirth)
• Sometimes there are butterflies (more a symbol of rebirth)

Detail of Breakfast Table with Blackberry Pie

• Snuff box is holding the key from falling from the table
• Goblet practically glows
_____________________________________________________________________________
_
DUTCH BAROQUE – De Heem
JAN De HEEM, Still Life
• Same characteristics of the Heda still life

Eucharist in a Fruit Wreath

• Alternative to the Dutch still life (not interrupted meal)
• Painting of the Eucharist surrounded by fruit
• Symbolic of life given by the Eucharist

Still Life with Fruit, 1652

• Dutch floral paintings (flowers painting at the peak of its bloom—at the point that it is
already decaying)
• Butterflies, caterpillars

DUTCH BAROQUE – Van Ruisdael

JACOB VAN RUISDAEL, View of Haarlem with Bleaching Grounds, 1665
• Dutch landscape (Ruisdael is the most successful Dutch baroque landscape painter)
• In a time where they can specialize and make a name for themselves
• Landscapes not really popular (landscape for landscape’s sake)
• Makes it more dramatic—
o Makes sky emphasized (enhance drama of the sky)
o Church is behind a scarred landscape rising into the horizon (front is humble)
o Enhances colors
• Makes a name for himself by painting dramatic landscapes (middle classes are attracted
to these paintings

The Castle at Bentham, 1651

• Foreground is darkness
• Romantic looking castle hazy in the distance rising in the horizon (dramatic, romantic)

The Jewish Cemetery, 1655

• One of the first night time landscapes (unusual because it is a graveyard and Jewish too)
• A little scary, but still romantic
• Threatening clouds
• Ruins in the distance and a skeletal tree
_____________________________________________________________________________
BAROQUE ART IN FRANCE – de la Tour
• France is very Catholic
• Monarchy that controls popular tastes in art (not like Holland where it is the general
public)
 • The central wealth in France is controlled by the King
• Paris because the new artistic European center of art (from Florence, Rome, Venice, and
Flanders) remains primary center of the arts until it switches to New York until the 20th
century (because of the wealth of the monarchy it became the center in the first place)
• Greatest art school, most popular types of art and where new types of arts come

GEORGES DE LA TOUR, Mary Magdalene with Oil Lamp, 1635, oil on canvas
• In the time of Louis the XIII and XIV (biggest fans of him)
o Louis XIV is the most lavish monarch France has ever had, but the compositions
and figures in La Tour’s paintings are simplified (moves it to Versailles) (more
opulent and baroque than any other palace)
o Have an empty gallery just for la Tour
• Not very original (caravaggisti steals theme, light source)
• Different from Caravaggio in that he simplifies the figures and the composition
• Vignette—small window literally (focal point is centered with haziness/blackness
surrounding it)
• Figure is smooth and rounded—not complicated
• Momento mori—holds a skull in her lap
• Painting of Mary Magdalene—not the great beauty or emaciated (as if out of the desert)
she is painted simple and rounded (rounded tummy, shoulders, and legs) spiritual in a
simple, humble way
• Moment of her conversion—stares into the flame and her life is changing at this moment
• All that she’ll have left is her soul when she dies one day and so she converts

Cheater with the Ace of Diamonds, 1620-40

• Inspired by Caravaggio—the card sharps
• Has more figures—women
• Looks at us as if we are in on it with him
• Servant is trying to help her mistress cheat (mistress is making hand gestures with maid)
• Takes his lighting and theme from Caravaggio

Christ in the Carpenter’s Shop, 1645

• Humble theme and very simplified
• Reminder that Christ worked with his father—humble profession

Adoration of the Shepherds, 1645-50, oil on canvas

• Typical la tour
• Single light source/humble theme
• Rounded faces and solid surfaces (seems not biblical—looks very ordinary/simple)

Woman Catching Fleas, 1630

• Naivety of the human body (very simple)
• People didn’t take showers every day and fleas were a problem (subject matter sort of
private/vulgar)
 • Painting of such an inglorious task
• Single light source (candle)
• Debasing subject matter

FRENCH BAROQUE – Le Nain

• Le Nain paints a uniquely French genre
• Sentimental narrative scenes
• Paint paintings of the poor for the rich people (do not get a real feeling for the life of the
poor)
• Perspective of the poor for people that do not empathize with these people (almost
condescending)
• Paint them as if they are “quaint”
• They are emphasizing the callousness toward the poor of this time

LOUIS LE NAIN, Four Figures at a Table, c. 1630

• Does not glorify their attractiveness (does not really tell the truth of the peasantry)
• Wealthy people do not buy paintings that tell the truth of the peasantry (if they are
depressing)
•

Landscape with Peasants and Chapel

• No overseer watching them and making them work
• They have all the time in the world to play the lute and sleep and play cards etc.
• In a sense it idealizes the peasantry

The Cart of Return from Haymaking, 1641

• Almost as if the nobles are trying to convince themselves that their societal system wasn’t
wrong (peasant class was well-off not harsh)

FRENCH BAROQUE - Callot

• Some of the first true documentary art

JACQUES CALLOT, Hanging Tree, from the Miseries of series of etchings, 1621 (Early
form of documentary art. It records the atrocities of the Protestant/Catholic conflict of the
Thirty Years War of 1618-48)
• Period of great violence in the name of religion (catholic vs. Protestant)
• New concept—he witnessed a horrific incident and paints it so that others will see it and
know what truly happened
• Letting people know the truth because it is such a travesty (he makes a series of prints
documenting all these things)

Storm in Barcelona, 1612

• Shipwreck that he witnessed
 • There are three ships that are colliding
• There are sharks, fish, and people in the water
• Other ships are in the distance
• Meant to document events so that the leaders will not gloss over the truth

FRENCH BAROQUE – Poussin

• Famous for landscaping
• Known for painting in a maneria magnifica (magnificent manner)
• Paints subjects to look romanticized and “larger than life”
• Idealizes everything
•

NICOLAS POUSSIN, Rape of the Sabine Women, 1634

• This is about the battle of the women being abducted
• Very grand and magnificent (very baroque)
• Very violent but still romanticizes the scene
• Romance is more than just love (glorification of anything)
• The event is dramatic and important (so much emotion of the people involved)

Destruction of the Temple at Jerusalem, 1634

• Same things as the Rape
• Tragic figures being trampled and loaded with historic detail
• Strip the temple of all its riches
• Rome glorified the event because it brought a lot of wealth to Rome

Landscape with Orpheus and Eurydice, 1648

• Known for idealized landscapes, but they always contain a narrative element
• The happier days of Orpheus and Eurydice
•

FRENCH BAROQUE – Claude Lorraine

• Famous for idealizing nature
• Focus on nature rather than old Roman ruins

CLAUDE LORRAIN, Landscape with the Marriage of Isaac and Rebecca

• Everything is harmonious and idealized
• People put the scene into perspective

The Port with Villa Medici, 1637

• Paint architecture in such a detailed way
• More than just a landscape—sense of space and atmosphere
 • Hazy—helps with the sense of atmosphere

Judgment of Paris, 1645

Landscape, but has a narrative/mythological theme
Does not have a dramatic sense to it—no sense of tension or anxiety

FRENCH BAROQUE - Architecture

• It is the inside of Baroque architecture that is so impressive and ornate

FRANCOIS MANSART, Orleans wing of the Chateau de Blois, 1635-1638

• Encrusted to make things even more impressive
• Has a Mansart roof (it is a new style named after the man who invented it Francois
Mansart)
• Chateau—smaller palace for the French monarchy
• Shingles (straight and angled upwards)

CLAUDE PERRAULT, LOUS LE VAU, AND CHARLES LE BRUN, east façade of the
Louvre, Paris, 1667-1670
Combines several elements from different points in history

Façade of the Place of Versailles, begun 1669

• New power base of France (moved by Louis XIV)
• Moving his palace was a good political move for him—everyone else was
inconvenienced by this because they had to come (in style) to plead their case to him
• It kept people at a distance
• Versailles was built on property of his family (great-grandfather’s hunting lodge)
• Had to completely drain the march it was by and then had to get rid of the small hunuting
lodge to make a new palace
• Hires all kinds of artisans to build this place (recruited the finest craftsmen of his time)
• Starts a huge European trend
• Built on to it as years went on

Aerial view painting of Versailles

• One of the first planned out palace built
• Orchard of orange trees
• “greenhouse” of orange trees
• Almost a hundred miles in length
• It was all part of a master plan over a thousand acres

Courtyard
• Where visitors enter Versailles
•
Hall of Mirrors
• One of the grandest spectacles in all of Versailles at this time
• Mirrors are new invention (very expensive to fill the hall with mirrors
• Reflect light from windows to make brighter
• Quadro riportato ceiling
• Even floors elaborate
• Kind would receive people here (great for intimidation)
• Treaty of Versailles signed in this hall

The Royal Chapel

• King would never have to leave his palace (had his own balcony even)
• Gold is everywhere
• Little angels
• Frescoes
• Gilding in the dome
• Chandeliers
• Geometry and complicated floors

Royal Opera House

• Traveling opera troupes would come and perform here
• Very Baroque and opulent (ornate)

Versailles fountains
• Famous sculptors from all of Europe commissioned along with engineers to make the
water flow
• Complex waterworks so they are continually shooting water

Book JULES HARDOUIN-MANSART, Church of the Invalides, Paris, 1676-1706, (part of

the veteran’s hospital set up by Louis XIV for disabled soldiers of his many wars)
• Relative of the man that invented the mansard roof
• Ornate things crusted on the dome
• Louis XIV is known for his loyalty to the soldiers that fought in his war made a special
church for them

ENGLISH BAROQUE –Inigo Jones

INIGO JONES, Banqueting House at Whitehall, London, 1619-22

Interior
• Exterior doesn’t scream Baroque, the interior is more opulent
•
ENGLISH BAROQUE – Christopher Wren
CHRISTOPHER WREN, new St. Paul’s Cathedral, London, 1675-1710
• Second only to St. Peter’s in size
• Architect to Charles I (fire burned the globe theater and the old St. Paul’s)
• Plague going on during his years of bring famous (fire may have helped London recover
from the plague)
• The lead roof that was on the old St. Paul’s melted in the fire
• Charles I values scholars and artists and gives Wren free reign to design a new St. Paul’s
—not only rebuild it
• He is in charge of rebuilding London (street planning to make more aesthetically pleasing
as well as building more buildings)
• Grown beyond its natural grid planning (got more illogical)
• Tried to clean the city also
• Looks classical at first (rectangular structure topped by a dome) but is much more ornate

ROCOCO - Art
• Play on the word borocco and the French words rocailles (rocks) and coquilles (shells)
• Modification of Baroque style used for townhouses and palaces
• Decorative style (interior decoration)
• More elegant and feminine than baroque, but it is just as opulent/decorative
• Primarily a decorating term (furniture, frescoes, rooms, ballrooms) but also affects the
things on display in a room—paintings/sculpture
• Pastel colors are fashionable decorating colors
• It is very romantic (good taste, courtly lose, places for the aristocratic people who are all
for showcasing everything)
• First begins in France (becomes popular first with the French monarchs and spreads to
other countries through the monarchy)
• Doesn’t last very long as a decorating style unless in reference to royal palaces
• Stays for a couple hundred years as the style of the world monarchs (not long as a true
style of art)

Antione Watteau, A Halt During the Chase, 1720

• Hunting painting
• Horses are used to impress
• Even women would be able to join in the fad of horses
• Women’s fashions to revolve around this fad
• Fashionable people of leisure
• Wealthy, beautiful, aristocratic people enjoying fashionable pastimes (this is very rococo)
• Courtly love—flirtatious
• Gentlemanly—helping lady from the horse
• Genteel style (proper, pleasant)
Love in French Theatre, 1714
• Wealthy, bored people (make up games for a pastimes) they are dressing up in costumes
and acting to pass the time
• Entertaining themselves on someone else’s estate
• Outing their own spin on a production
• Gives them an excuse to be flirtatious (maybe even kiss someone they aren’t married to)
• These adults play games because they have nothing else to do
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Jean-Honore Fragonard, The Swing, 1766
• Typical rococo themes and colors
• “Fete galante” elegant party
• Aristocratic, well-dressed young people getting together and entertaining themselves
• It is a fantasy
• Courtly love
• Another level (the servant swinging her and the other aristocrat is looking up her skirt)
• She is deliberately taunting him so that he can see up her skirt (showing her ankle and
flinging her shoe)
• There’s a statue of cupid saying “don’t tell anyone...”
• Commissioned for a young aristocrat (the same one that is in the painting)
• Expresses a pleasure-seeking generation that has took much time on their hands

Blind Man’s Bluff

• Courtly games to entertain the aristocracy (like children)
• Gave members of the opposite sex to touch/grope each other
• Syrupy, pastely colors
• The children are teasing her—misleading her

The Stolen Kiss, 1780’s

• Unusual use of black
• Flirtatious courtly love
• Elegant flirtation
• She is worried that someone will see them
• They are hiding behind a door
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Clodion, Amor and Psyche, c. 1775, terracotta
• Has the rock and shell look to the base
• There is romantic love as the theme
• Very elegant figures (fashionable theme and style)
• They are weightless in their joy
• Frothy and ornamental
 • Clodion made a lot of terracotta statues as well as marble statues (about as big as a Barbie
doll)

ROMANTICISM – French
• Romanticism- not always about romantic love (can include any theme as long as it is
romanticized/idealized/glorified made more emotional than it truly is)
• War, death, landscapes, portraiture, Gothicism, spirit world
• Intensification of the subject—take war and change it from bloody and gruesome to
heroic and noble
• More travel in this time because of the romanticism attached to travel
• Even repulsion can be romantic theme—only has to be emotional and exaggerated
• Starts in mid/late 1700s and end about mid-19th century (the majority, not all)
•

Elisabeth Louise Vigee-Lebrun, The Comtesse de la Chatre, 1789

• Still hard for a women to make a living as a painter
• She is the favorite painter of Marie Antoinette (good thing while Marie still alive, but
with the revolution she was in danger)
• She was kept very busy as a court painter
• She had a way of flattering her subjects (she romanticizes her subjects)
• Romanticizes subjects by flattering them and making hair shiny etc.
• She fled after the revolution (she had a young daughter and no husband)
• She supported herself and her child with her portrait business in London and other royal
courts (eventually returned to Paris after about 20 years)
• Exotic trim to the dress and a turban-like scarf in her hair
• Tends to make her subjects more exotic and romantic with eastern fabrics
• Her father was a portrait artist also (with pastels) and is how she got into art

Self Portrait, 1790

• Features of her women look similar (she paints herself as a painter)
• She is wearing romantic clothing and looks very prosperous

The Countess Golovine

• She looks like she has been caught unawares
• Looks intelligent because she is reading
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Jean-Baptiste Grueze, Broken Eggs, 1756

• Specializes in sentimental narrative (hasn’t died out in France)
• They look very healthy and very silly
• It is trivializes when for this family it might be a tragedy
• The beautiful, young girl peasant was daydreaming and broke the eggs and is getting
chastised by the old women and there is a beautiful man saying—don’t be too harsh
 • The young man is most likely a suitor of the girl

The Spoiled Child, 1765

• He is feeding the dog that he is supposed to be eating (doesn’t seem very realistic that
they are so poor and he is giving away his food)
• It was seen as moralistic before the Revolution came about
• The Revolution came about
• Paintings seemed to be ok with the situation before the Revolution

Jean-Antoine Gros, Bonaparte at Arcole Bridge, 1779

• Jean-Antoine is instrumental in promoting Romanticism
• Shows him as a young general (unusual because most pictures of Bonaparte are about
him when he is older and has gathered a following)
• Shows the energy and determination of Napoleon—young and ambitious, ot older and
already in power
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Theodore Gericault, Raft of the Medusa, 1818 (huge canvas! 16’ x 23’)
He is a romantic painter of great influence. He is a rapid kind of painter even though it looks
very refined. It is based on an actual event in history (caused a huge scandal because it shows the
truth of how these people survived). The captain and the crew left the passengers to die on a
sinking ship. They take all the lifeboats and the other passengers are left to fend for themselves.
They make a raft for themselves. They tied their raft to the lifeboats, but the crew cut them loose
because it was hindering the lifeboat. After 12 days of harsh sun and no food or water, they
resorted to cannibalism (the bodies of the people that had already died from thirst and hunger).
The dead bodies are hanging off the raft. It is artfully arranged to that much is left to the
imagination. The whole composition—in a triangle formation (base of the triangle at the base of
the triangle, and as you get closer to the horizon it gets better and at the top one of the men is
waving down a ship). It shows the peak of despair and also the peak of hope—which is what
makes it romantic.

Theodore Gericault, Insane Woman, (Envy), 1822

Shows the darker side of romanticism—you can see her dementia in her expression. He is
showing something that is shocking—something they didn’t contemplate very often. It is a
psychological painting.
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Eugene Delacroix, Death of Sardanapalus

Friend of Theodore Gericault and they share some of the same thematic influences. Based on a
poem by Lord Byron—a man knows that his city is about to be attacked and decides to kill
everybody in his city instead of being killed by the enemy. The King of Neneva went through
this same experience (also Darius III). Sardanapalus is lying on a divan as his soldiers are killing
his women, horses, and wives all around. He is surrounded by wealth and destruction. It is
violent, but romantic because of the exotic scenery (foreign setting). Theme is – living on the
edge of adventure. (Delacroix infiltrated a harem in Morocco and did sketches and got out again
which makes his painting more real.)

Liberty Leading the People, 1830

It glorifies and propagandizes the French Revolution. There are dead, trampled revolutionaries
that are inglorious (they are stripped of shoes, socks, and pants). They are on a big heap of a
barricade. This is very realistic—based on real events. There is a common looking man with a
saber and a pistol which is strange next to the scholarly looking man with a bowtie (they are not
unified, all sorts of people in the war). There is a crying women and a young boy waving his
pistols in glee. The woman is holding the French banner and is unrealistic (she is depicted as a
Greek victory goddess—the accidental slipping of her dress to look more like a toga). Has the
same triangular composition as the raft picture. (his technique of painting is rapid and not
calculated)

Barque of Dante

Delacroix was influenced by two main things—literature and reality. This painting is influenced
by Dante’s Inferno.

Massacre at Chios, 1822

Chios is an island between Turkey and Venice. This is in the aftermath of the destruction of
Chios. There is a dead mother with an infant trying to suckle. The Turkish came in and
massacred the Christians who were living there. Painted this while it was still in the major news
—very emotion evoking. (The French Salon—lack of resolution and refinement so they didn’t
really approve of him. But he is still shown there which s important because the French salon is
what decides whether a painter is skilled or not)

Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, The Comtesse d’Haussonville, 1845

• Won a scholarship in Paris that is sponsored by the Salon
• The salon is very essential to his popularity
• He lives in a French colony in Rome
• He becomes “adopted” by Napoleon (teacher is David)
• The School of Beautiful Arts and the French Salon approved of him
• These things make him very popular
• Him and Delacroix are enemies because of their difference of opinion in reference to art
• Ingres opposed Delacroix’s admission to the Salon
• Very technical about painting—perfect surface and blending
• He tries to get serenity and harmony
• Even warps his figures so they go with what is fashionable at the time in Paris
• She seems not to have shoulders—sensuous lack of shoulder
• Her skin is white and very fashionable (wearing fashionable clothes, expensive jewelry—
her environment speaks of good taste and wealth)
 • He is counted as being the artist to make and ideal reality—everything is realistic but it is
better than reality (enhanced to be better than real)

Grande Odalisque, 1814

• Similar to Venus of Urbino
• She is an odalisque—a sex slave to a sultan (harem girl)
• We know she is an odalisque—she is surrounded by eastern-style things
• He didn’t get any real exotic experiences like Delacroix, so it is not as realistic
• He has her seductively looking over her shoulder at us
• She does not look real (some parts are warped—the length and curve of her spine)
• Shoulders rounded, skin perfect
• She is not a middle-eastern type of beauty (looks like a European beauty)
• He did a whole series of these painting because they are popular

Joan of Arc, 1854

He glorifies her—and rightly. She was an uneducated peasant woman. The person that no on
would believe, but it happened.

La Riviere
• Warped, but beautiful
• She is wearing ermine fur and long gloves
•

Oedipus and the Sphinx, date?

• Very Neo-Classical
• Where Oedipus is facing the sphinx of Thebes to free the city of Thebes

Portrait of Louis Francois Bertin, 1832

Portrait of Napoleon on the Imperial Throne, 1806

Self Portrait

He is a neo-classicist. Part of it is about recalling Greek and Roman themes. The other part is
about ideal reality. (His teacher is David.) He is heavily patronized by Bonaparte. Bonaparte
himself is an amateur archeologist and artist. This is making a Neo-Classic wave go through
France. It is the new fad. (He does not approve of Delacroix.) There are even Neo-classical
fashions.

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot, Landscape with a Lake, c. late 1860’s

Orpheus Leading Eurydice, 1861

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Gustave Moreau, Jupiter and Semele, c. 1875
•

Close-up of Jupiter and Semele

Salome Dancing Before Herod, c. 1870

•

ROMANTICISM – English
• Type of romanticism started in England (artists of this start with Fuseli)
o New type of romanticism called Gothicism
o Inspired by English novelist (Mary Shelley and the Bronte sisters)
o Gothicism—a romantic view of demons, gods, ghouls, spirits, visions, the occult,
and the grotesque
o It is popular in England because it is a popular writing genre (not a long-term
painting style, but is a long-term writing style)
•

Thomas Gainsborough, Mrs Sarah Siddons, 1785

•

Blue Boy, (Portrait of Johathan Buttall), 1770

The Morning Walk (Mr. and Mrs. William Hallett), 1785

•

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Joshua Reynolds, Colonel H. Coussmaker, Grenadier Guard, 1782

Master Hare,1788

Portrait of Mrs. Siddons as the Tragic Muse, 1784

George Stubbs, Horse Attacked by a Lion, 1763

Horse Frightened by a Lion , 1770

Rosa Bonheur, Self Portrait

The Horse Fair, 1853

Henry Fuseli, The Nightmare, 1781

• A nightmare that everyone can relate to: being vulnerable in bed and subject to the ghouls
of the night
• Explores a subject that is almost taboo (shunned, forbidden)
• She has an incubus on her stomach—a demon that makes women pregnant in their sleep
• She is very vulnerable—we don’t know if she fainted or if she is sleeping
• A horse (a night mare) a real horse that brings the dreams
• She is outnumbered by the demons creatures
• She is in white like a sacrificial virgin with a limp neck
• He paints this theme many time
• Combines fear and sex in one painting

Nightmare
• He body looks very disjointed
• It is another example of the same theme
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William Blake, Ancient of Days, frontispiece of Europe: a Prophecy, 1794, Hand colored
etching
• It is a print, but then he water colored the print to being color into it
• He was trained as an engraver
• Married a grocer’s daughter (he was from a middle class family)
• He emphasizes imagination over reason
• His graphic art is not conventional
• This piece is inspired by Michelangelo’s sonnet (Europe and prophecy)
• He is a deist
• Gothicism still because it goes into the spirit world
• This is a painting of the god-figure in the act of creation (holding a caliper)
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J.M.W. Turner, The Slave Ship

He started with a traditional style, but as he gets older, the hazier his paintings become. This
painting is different from his usually style. You see a ship and then you can barely see the slaves
in the water (after having been thrown in, sometimes with manacles still on). This is a 1873
tragedy, the slaves are thrown into the water because insurance pays for people/cargo lost at sea,
not people who die (in the cargo hold). He displays paintings at the Royal Academy (like the
French Salon). He was a voracious artist—300 paintings and 19,000 drawings are left to
England after his death. All of them are masterpieces.

Sunrise with Sea Monsters

It is very vague—one has to imagine the sea monster. Gothicism because one sees an innocent
landscape and then one sees something that is mean to be horrific.

Ulysses and Polyphemus, 1892

Polyphemus is throwing the rocks at Ulysses. (it is hazy, almost impressionistic)

John Constable, the Haywain, 1821

He is a landscape painter. He is inspired by Claude Lorraine. He studied at the Royal academy.
It was darker and grimmer after the death of his wife. He is admired by the impressionists. He
was an outdoors painter. It is a sense of nostalgia (a type of romanticism). He is not a painter
that paints Gothicism.

Stonehenge, 1836

He is promoting a new type of art—watercolor on paper. Stonehenge looks like it has mystical
powers.

Malvern Hall, 1809

ROMANTICISM - Spanish
Francisco Goya, Self Portrait
• His career spans 4 political periods
o Official painter for Charles III at the age of forty
o Then the official painter for Charles IV
o Shifts loyalties to Napoleon for a time
o Then he goes back to Spain
• Because of his shifting loyalties and the experiences he has of war, he becomes cynical
• He is mistrusted by Spanish authorities because of his politics and his paintings
• He forms his own opinions as an older man

The Family of Charles IV

• On one hand they are flattered through their dignity and apparent wealth
• But on the other hand, They are not flattered
o The king looks a little insane (eyes are a little bugged and face is very ruddy) He
was truly insane
o The queen—looks like she doesn’t have teeth, she looks almost daft
 o The most flattered person is the lady on the farthest right (she was bent in a
strange way so he put a baby in her arms to explain the bending of her back)
o The prince is battling over whether to marry one girl or the other, so one girl is
turned away so you can’t identify her.
• It makes them look pretty stupid and pompous (his other paintings are socially conscious
and condemning of these type of people)
• He took over the same place that Velasquez held
o Like in Las Meninas he paints himself into the painting while painting the portrait

The Third of May, 1808, painted in 1814, (Note: 1808 is part of the title)
• On the 3rd of May 1908 he is documenting a tragedy (the slaughter/massacred of about
5,000 Spaniards at the hands of Napoleon’s troops)
• The massacred started in this village
• The slaughter of innocent people by the French
• It emphasizes the tragedy and injustice of the painting
• His mastery of composition makes this a panting that influences many other paintings
o We don’t see the faces of the soldiers (they are cold and anonymous)
o He makes the sacrifice larger than he should be and glow as if light is coming
from him
o Goya positions the villager like crucified Christ
o The villager is the tragic hero and yet he is so much larger than the other figures
(emphasizes his sacrifice)
o The figures on the ground are falling on top of each other and are on their knees
begging (there is even a friar)
o There is a lantern (traditional for this part of Spain) but the middle figure is more
lighted than the lantern and he is the only one lighted up
o There is a steeple in the background (is god going to get retribution or is God
watching and doing nothing)
• There had been a rebellion the day before

The Second of May, 1808, (Again, 1808 is part of the title)

• Rebellion of poorly armed villagers against the French
• The French gathered anyone that had something that would be considered a “weapon”
and executed them on the spot
• Happens the day before the massacre of the innocent villagers
• So much energy in the composition

Clothed Maja
• Taught himself how to paint by copying other master’s portraits
• He had a portrait commission to paint an important, wealthy, young woman
• He never gives it away (he would display it when he had friends over)
• We dn’t know if it was commissioned (if it was commissioned we don’t know who
would do it)
Nude Maja
• On the backside of the clothed version
• Is he making fun of her (her head looks just stuck on another’s body)
• He might just be painting his mistress who might be the wife of another man and doesn’t
want to reveal her identity

ROMANTICISM – American
• At first there are two types of art in the Americas
o Folk painting (Americana—corn and farms)
 Made by painters not formally trained (European trained)
o European trained artists (maybe working with wealthy plantation owners, but
were trained in the European schools)
 Still kind of snobby—what is best is from Europe

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Benjamin West, Self Portrait
• He was a history painter of George III (famous in England already)
• He becomes known as the American Raphael
• Copley and Trumbull are his students

The Death of General Wolfe, 1771

• A history painting (artist at this time realize that they are witnessing the making of a new
country)
• Battle of the plains of Abraham (battle of the French against the English to gain control
Canada and mostly Quebec)
• French hold the fortress and the English are trying to gain control of Canada
• General Wolfe is an English general
• He is shot in hand, stomach and lung
• Very romantic death—the battle raging around him (Indian guide is watching over him,
people trying to staunch the wound, he dies knowing he won the day)
• Romanticizes war
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John Singleton Copley, Paul Revere, c. 1768-1770

Copley was trained by West. This painting shows European training, but is painting a Colonial.
Revere is shown with the tools of his trade and is very comfortable in the colonial atmosphere—
he is a true colonial man.

Watson and the Shark, 1778

It is set in the Havana, Cuba harbor. He is naked—romanticized detail. He is saved, but he lost
one leg. Watson later became a merchant and a mayor in England. You can see the harbor
behind him. It romanticizes a violent but real event.

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John Trumbull, Death of General Montgomery in the Attack of Quebec, 1786

This documents another British general that died in the effort to gain Quebec. He has a looser
style and it is very dramatic.

ROMANTICISM – Hudson River School Painters

This is the first truly American painting movement. The painters are American and trained in
America. They are encouraging each other to paint the same goal—document the unexplored
American landscape in a glorious way. They mainly canoe up the Hudson River and paint the
unexplored parts of the wilderness there.

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Thomas Cole, the Last of the Mohicans

Cole is the leader of the Hudson River School Painters. There are not a lot of artists in this
school- only about 6 or 7 artists (there are also two generations). He organizes the first wave of
these painters. He is the strongest and most committed of these painters. He elevated nature to
heroic status. The group is also called the cult of nature worship. He emphasizes distance
(colors of the mountains change and grow hazy). There is great atmospheric perspective.

Niagara Falls, 1830

It was unexplored at this time—it was a source of wonder. It is a nighttime waterfall painting.
There are two Indians. There is a sense of luminism—the sense that light is coming from the
landscape on the canvas. Only master painters can do a good luministic effect.

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George Caleb Bingham, Fur Traders Descending the Missouri, c. 1845

His paintings have more of humanity features. He was born in Virginia and he was a carpenter
maker. He was self-taught and also taught himself how to paint. He can be either a genre
painter or a Hudson River painter. He becomes a art professor at the University of Missouri.

The Jolly Float Boatmen

They are dancing on a barge. They are making music with improvised instruments. He
specializes in the pioneer river genre.

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Frederic Church, The Iceburgs, 1861

He is a second generation Hudson River school painter. He was a pupil of Thomas Cole. He
traveled a lot and traveled very far—to the tropics, North Africa, and Greece. This painting is set
in New Foundland. This is a place- I wonder if anyone has ever stood in this exact spot. It is in
the middle of nowhere. First it looks like humanity has never been there and then there is a hint
of the unnatural. It might be a broken snowshoe/wheel—something that is man-made. This
makes you wonder about what happened to the person that left it there.

Niagra Falls, 1857

HRS painters paint things that are not normally encompassed in a camera lens. There are fine-
tuned details even though it is such a large-scale canvas.

Secluded Landscape at Sunset, 1860

There is an amazing attention to detail.

Thomas Moran, Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone, 1872, (84” X 144”)

He is also second-generation HRS. He uses the same techniques as the other HRS painters.
Sometimes he includes Native American figures to bring the scale of the landscape into
perspective.

ROMANTICISM - Architecture
• This is for the wealthy (to make other than serviceable/traditional is expensive)
• Trend of this time—Victorians are crazy about gardens
• Even if they only had a little plot of land they would make gardens
• One is very tended and organized—the traditional type (geometric, organized, controlled)
• The wild, natural look (importing exotic plants and making lily ponds)
• There might be fake roman “ruins” or Gothic cathedral “ruins”

Horace Walpole, Strawberry Hill, 1748

• Son of England’s prime minister (also an earl)
• Strawberry Hill—outside London in the countryside
• He changed the look of the estate to make it look more like a medieval castle
• It looks only somewhat like a medieval castle because he keeps it modernized while
making it look elegant (Victorians are getting used to comfort and castles are not
comfortable)
 • Walpole wants it to look like a castle, but not actually function like a castle
• He has crenellation on the battlements
• He has a turret with the traditional, conical shaped roof
• He has the glass windows (a lot of them—in the style of the medieval castles, but they are
glass so would have been too expensive to have back then)
• Chimneys—not something the Gothic castles would have (terracotta clay)
• There is a mock-moat with a drawbridge
• Inside it is state of art for the time
• He was not a self-appointed architect
• He is the author of the first Gothic novel The Castle of Otranto
• He collected anything medieval to outfit the castle

Lord Burlington, Chiswick House, 1725, façade

• It is so strange--- taking the impressive features of every style of art and put it together
• Roman front, Renaissance windows, modern chimneys
• Very Romantic—seeking to impress and try to draw together impressive, architectural
features

Charles Granier, The Paris Opera House, façade, 1861-74, (although the date is more
recent, the style is still Romantic)
• Architectural features drawn from all times (doesn’t look out of place because it is an
opera house)
• Bronze, tarnished dome (bronze tarnished statues)

ROMANTICISM – Sculpture
Clodion, Cupid and Psyche (French sculptor whose real name was Claude Michel. Often
classified as a Rococo sculptor.)
• It is both rococo and Romantic
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Auguste Rodin, Monument to Balzac, 1897

Rodin makes him look very intense with the deep, dark eyes. It has an amazing presence
because besides the face he is enveloped in a long cloak. He has a large neck, long hair, and
rustic appearance.

Rodin went to Le Petite (he has a mistress names Rose Burette) His mistress becomes very
clingy, bitter alcoholic (she becomes committed to an insane asylum) she wanted more out of the
relationship than he was willing to give

Burghers of Calais, 1886

Calais is a strategic city to get to France (on the coast). Calais is often under siege (because it
was the closes city between France and England during medieval times). Sieges went on for
months and many people died from sickness and starvation. Then the French and English made
a treaty—sacrifice six leaders of the city and the English would make a peaceful end to the siege.
A burgher is a powerful patriarch of a city—these burghers were sacrificed. They go to the gates
of Calais and are expecting to be executed. They get a reprieve from the English queen and they
are remembered as heroic because they were willing to sacrifice themselves for the rest of the
people. He shows them as bedraggled, old, resigned and miserable prisoners of war. The bronze
is green and it makes them look even more hopeless. The people of Calais are mad about this
statue because of the way the burghers are portrayed. It receives an ungrateful reception, but
today it is recognized as a masterpiece. The figures are larger than life—it shows the suffering
and strain that the siege put on Calais. It is realistic and glorifies the suffering of these people.

The Kiss, 1901

Romanticism—romantic love with sexuality and lustful attraction (it is a different approach and
technique to fit the theme of the statue) (they are very classically sculpted and proportion)

The Thinker, 1880

Everyone has seen this. It is romantic because tie nobles mankind. It reminds us that man is
noble because of his intellect (neo-classical theme). Man is capable of greatness because of his
mind and intelligence.

NEOCLASSICISM – Architecture (A Romantic Trend)

• Different genre of Romanticism
• Its origin is in France
• It is a Romantic resurrection of classic art (Greek and Roman)
• It is very obvious to see the emulations in architecture

Jacques-Germain Soufflot, the Pantheon (St. Genevieve) (Paris, France)

• St. Genevieve—the patron saint of France
• It is derivative of the pantheon—has a portico and the dome (but very different kind of
dome)
• It is commissioned by Napoleon because he was very neo-classically inclined
• When he tries to make his new empire, he uses the fashions of the Roman empire (he
ornaments Paris in Neo-classical styles)
• He takes Roman themes and make them bigger and grander
• He takes the Pantheon and makes it fancier
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Thomas Jefferson, Monticello, Charlottesville, Virginia, 1770-1806
• In America, the founders want America to have a certain character
• They settle on the neo-classical designs for their public areas when they start to build
themselves up into a country rather than a colony
 • The classical inspirations are because they want America to be seen as learned
• Thomas Jefferson is the greatest supporter of the neo-classic styles
• He builds his plantation house in Virginia after the Roman pantheon
• He uses locally available materials though
• This period of Architecture is called the federal period (neo-classically inspired)
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University of Virginia, Rotunda Building, 1826, Charlottesville, Virginia
• This was designed by Jefferson as well
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View of the Capitol in Washington as designed by Benjamin Latrobe

• A lot of commonalities with the Pantheon
• Designed things throughout Washington

Benjamin Latrobe, Baltimore Cathedral (Basilica), c. 1804-18

• Another variation on the pantheon
• There are two added “towers” that are not in the original design
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Pierre Vignon, La Madeleine, Paris, 1807-1842

• Build a Greek temple, call it a church
• Napoleon commissioned this
• Napoleon rebelled against traditional Catholicism
• It was build to be universal and non-denominational (Napoleon wanted a state religion
that was all inclusive)

NEOCLASSICISM – Art (Painting and Sculpture)

• Napoleon had some favorite neo-classical (Ingres used to be this)
• It is a reaction against the frivolity of Rococo
• Neo-classical painters show the opposite love of Rococo
• Rococo and neo-classicism are both genres of Romanticism

Jacques-Louis David, Self Portrait

• Teacher of Ingres
• He is the central neo-classical painter of Napoleon
• David’s teacher is a Rococo painter (even though he was trained in Rococo he was a
Neo-classical artist)

Napoleon Crossing the Saint Bernard, 1800-01

• Why Napoleon loves David—he glorifies Napoleon so much
• It looks cold, stormy and kind of forbidding
• Napoleon looks totally unaffected by the cold weather
Oath of the Horati, 1784
• Commissioned by Louis XVI
• Narrative theme from antiquity (Roman antiquity)
• Based on a contemporary play that is inspired by a Roman play
• The Horati—Roman family
o Their triplets are asked to fight the triplets from a family from Alba
o Let the triplets fight each other
• He paints the oath (they are pledging themselves to this battle to the death)
• The women are cringing—they dread sending their men to war
• It is Louis trying to muster up a patriotic sense (serves as propaganda)
• The women show the inglorious aspect of war

Portrait of Mme Recamier, 1800

• She has a neo-classic hairstyle, divan, draping clothing, and even holding a golden apple
• Background very simple- focus on Mme Recamier

Death of Marat, 1793

• Marat was friends with David
• Marat was assassinated on 1793 July (by a female assassin—Charlotte Corday)
• He did not wait to paint the scene
• David saw the murder scene right after Marat was discovered
• Marat—a journalist (promoter of Revolution) he was a deputy and voted for the
execution of Louis XVI
o He lived in the underground because he was controversial political leader (power
shifted often)
o Do not publicly claim to be the leader of one group when the other group could
come to power at any time
o He was not cautious—he printed what he wanted when he wants to (promotes
violence)
o He is living in the Paris sewer—develops a skin condition (she has to find him
and it takes a while)
o She has a knife hidden and she comes upon him in his bath
• He is depicted as writing right when he is dying
• Marat is depicted as a fallen angel/sacrificial figure (unlike the promoter of violence)
• He had to soak in the bathtub a lot because of the skin condition
• It elevated Marat to a martyr like status—Romantic concept
• He was writing the names of the people that were to lead an uprising (she got into his
room by telling him she had information)

Death of Socrates, 1787

• Uses the same color, theme, details
• Narrative
• 5th century Greece
• Died by hemlock—his death ushers in the death of Greece’s Golden Age
 • He is convicted for corrupting the youth
• Philosopher, teacher
• Taught the youths to question everything and to think for themselves (viewed as
subversive)
• Socrates is a hero and a martyr for truth and education
• He chooses to die by hemlock—if the state thinks he is bad, then he has to comply (he
lived by the law and chooses to die by the law)
• If he escaped, then it would contradict his teachings
• He is reaching for the hemlock and the person giving it to him is cringing from having to
do this
• Teaching to the end
• Noble and idealized (political message—political teachers of truth are persecuted)

The Sabine Women, 1799

• Showing the battle where (after 9 months) the Sabine men are coming to get the women
from the Romans
• The Sabine women are stopping the battle
• The women are making peace
• Political connotations (after conflict there is a time where peace is possible and needed)
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Antonio Canova, Maria Paolina Borghese as Venus, 1805-07

• Sculpture of Napoleon sister as the goddess Venus
• She is married of to the Borghese family to gain more influence
• Patronized by the pope (clement XII)
• Catherine the Great tried to steal him away and he refused to go to Russia because he
hated court life
• Pope Pius VII proclaimed him the Marquess of Italy
• She has the Roman fashions
• This was scandalous at the time
• Commissioned by Napoleon and Napoleon II
• Lie Venus of Urbino
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Horatio Greenough, George Washington, 1832-41
Sort of depicted as a Roman God—but has a powdered wig still on

Trying to immortalized George Washington as more than a man (Neo-classic silliness)

THE PRE-RAPHAELITE BROTHERHOOD

They wrote what art was supposed to be like an ideal—so they made a brotherhood so that they
can change the degenerate track of art in these says. They thought art was lacking in morality
(wanted painting to go back to before Raphael). There is one woman who Christina Rosetti—but
she was a poetess. It was a small movement. They want art to return to the purity, morality, and
dignity of painting before Raphael. Painting from the High Renaissance on had become
corrupted. Art has become about cheesy, sensual, lascivious nudity. They do not like the
techniques that have developed (heavy brush techniques, and scumbling). They want art to
promote moral issues—promote morality in humanity. They romanticize the middle ages. It is a
whole package of beliefs, techniques, and values. They do not paint as provisional trained
painters (paint directly on to whiteness instead of painting a base color and building up the
picture and colors). They are reviving panel painting also.

Dante Gabriel Rosetti, Prosperpine

He is the leader of the Pre- Raphaelite brotherhood. It is a painting of his wife Elizabeth Siddle.
The favorite model for the Pre- Raphaelites is Elizabeth Siddle (they also turn models that aren’t
her into looking like her). She is in the role of Persephone holding the pomegranate.

Sir Galahad, 1864

This is taken from Arthurian legend. The Pre-Raphaelite painters are very strict on narrative
details.

Beata Beatrix, c. 1863

Another portrait of Elizabeth Siddle—but it is after she died (she is painted as if in the afterlife).

John Everett Millais, Ophelia, 1852

This is Elizabeth Siddle also. She had to lie in a pool of water for hours fully clothed. From this
experience she got tuberculosis and died. This is the beginning of her death. The painting has an
arched top to it (kind of popular to the brotherhood). It is based on a Shakespearean character. It
is amazingly details with vivid colors. It is very large. It seems as if it has a glow to it.

Edward Burne-Jones, the Beguiling of Merlin, 1874

Amazingly detailed and based on literature (Nimue is beguiling him into sleep) (she learned his
secrets because he was infatuated with her) The faces are beautiful and pure (model looks like
Elizabeth Siddle still, even though she is dead)

The Wheel of Fortune, 1883

Adolphe William Bouguereau, Admiration, 1879

He is French—not English. He paints like the PRB artists, but he really isn’t one of the
brotherhoods. He might be influenced by him. There are Greco-Roman women are fawning
over a little child. He is famous for paintings that celebrate youth, femininity, and health.
Invading Cupid’s Realm

The Gypsies, 1880

The Elder Sister, 1869, (This is in the MFA collection.)

It is a showing of healthy children—a very naturalistic portrait.

Jules Bastien-Lepage, Joan of Arc, 1880

She is near her cottage before she has approached the king. She is shown as the uneducated,
peasant she was. Standing behind her is an archangel looking as if he is ready to guide her.
There is also a girl (Catherine of Sienna). She already looks as if she is being inspired by God.
It shows the impossibility of the situation. It shows a side that other paintings forget—she was a
young girl, not just a hero.

Willam Holman Hunt, Claudio and Isabella

He is one of the more faithful PRB followers. The figures are from Shakespeare.

The Awakening Conscience, 1852

It is different form the other PRB painters. It is not based on literature or the Bible or Medieval
legend. It is a picture of modern-day society. The man is courting her. They are alone in the
parlor. They have been playing a “risqué” song together. At first she was ok sitting on his lap,
but then her conscience makes her get up. It is not how good Christian courting couples behave
(very moralistic). It illustrates the mentality of the PRB artists (trying to recall us to a more
noble time in history).

REALIST MOVEMENT – Miscellaneous Realists

• Modern art is still
• Exposing realities that we are not aware of
• Reveal a part of reality that the artist thinks that society needs brought to its attention
• Borders of shock-art
• Catapults us into the modern-thinking of art
• Photorealism—exactly what you see
• Social realism—prompts impressionism
• Invention of the camera prompts this movement (it is big and complicated technology in
this time—de guerre and Henry Fox Talbot) (evolved from camera obscura) it is a new
invention
• When cameras are first invented—photography shops open and journalistic photography
starts to be developed
• Debate over whether a photo is truly fine art (might push out painting)
• Photograph is cheaper and more readily available to the middle class
• Very awkward at first (one was printed on glass instead of paper)
• The photos are brown and white—they would touch certain parts to have color
 • Photography inspire—documentary art, realistic figures and compositions, more random
compositions
• Industrial Revolution—people are going out of their ancestral land (coming from rural
countryside to get jobs in the cities)
• There is a lot of discontent and anger (poor living conditions and pollutions)
• There are passionate, sympathetic, and angry concerns through this art
• Karl Marx—communist manifesto (everything should be more equal)
• Reveal the concerns and compassions towards the working class through art (Paris
especially)
• There is a new sense of purpose n art (a chance to effect change)
• There are artists that aren’t court painter—starving artist painting for what they believe in
• Artists no longer have to be at the beck and call of a royal family or you need to be
patronized by the wealthy to be successful (can make an impact for its message and
context)

Honore Daumier, Third Class-Carriage, c. 1862

It is not a happy painting—even the pallet is dark, the texture is rough, people are crowded
together, there is a man that seems like he doesn’t think he belongs that, and one lady has to fee
her baby because there is nowhere to go. There is resignation in all their faces—resignation for
their place in life. They are compassionately painted—it is a harsh painting of a harsh life. They
are even taking their children to work because they need the work just to survive. They are
patiently accepting their place in life. Daumier is looking at the suffering of the common man.
It is not a sentimental narrative— it is a compassionate, realistic composition.

Rue Transonian, 1834, lithograph

Lithography—it is a printing technique that gives an unlimited number of prints that are an exact
copy of the original composition (involves slabs of limestone—draw on with a grease pencil—
chemically treat it so that parts that are drawn on accept in and other parts reject ink). All the
prints from this technique look sensitive and detailed. Very few prints of this survive. He is not
just making great art here. He is seeking to reveal an ugly secret (Parisian government tried to
hide). The secret is that on April 15, 1834; innocent residents of a Paris tenement were
mistakenly murdered in their sleep. The mistake is that the police shot the wrong people. It was
a family—a baby, father, grandfather, and a mother. The police were angry and retaliating
because a policeman was shot by a sniper from this tenement building. An anonymous tip led
them to this apartment and they murdered everyone instead of investigating. There is a lot of
tension in Paris (especially between the working class and the aristocracy). The Parisian
authorities try to hide this incident—even having the newspapers forbidden to print the incident.
Daumier is taking a risk by doing this. This is similar to Jericho’s Raft of the Medusa. Jericho
romanticizes this, but Daumier does not at all. It is realistic. He produces it is hundred events to
make sure that it is not kept a secret. It is documentary art. When Daumier gets older, he gets
tired of all the games—he eventually gives up trying to get to people through his works. He is
trying to reveal the horror of these things when he is in his youth. This gives the illusion of a
photograph. Transonian Street is the name of the street this tenement building this was on.
Daumier was in the law court as a young man—a clerk. He is seeing the injustice of the classes
first hand. This cruelty of the law influences his paintings. He was tried and imprisoned for
sedition (drew a character of Louis Philippe as a monster feeding on the money that is taken in
taxes from the poor).

Jean Francois Millet, the Gleaners, 1857

Millet is not really about changing the world. He is from the Barbizon area outside of painting.
He just wanted to paint landscapes of his home area. Because he is painting farmers and
peasants in his landscapes he is lumped in with the social realists. He is misunderstood as a
painter. They think he is showing the dignity of the working-class people. But Millet was just
painting what he knew. After they have gathered the large part of the harvest, the poor were
allowed to come in and get the leftover grains. The gleaners are people who waste nothing—it is
real poverty where they need everything that they can find. This is why people think that
Millet’s paintings are more than just landscapes.

The Sower, 1850

This is the person that is putting the seeds down to begin with. The bourgeoisie threatened the
growing power of the lower class.

Gustave Courbet, the Artist’s Studio, 1855

He is known for revealing reality in a harsh way. He is in the center of a huge studio working on
a new landscape. There is a nude woman behind him. There is a little boy, doy, and cat—which
is inappropriate in this scence. There are interested onlookers—they are his critics and rich
people—they are not his friends. There is a division between those who he considers his friends
(a motel crew that aren’t dressed super nicely and are more relaxed) and those who are
acquaintances (they are looking temporary—getting a look at his things). The nude woman is
there and she seems not to care that so many people are surrounding her. She is comfortable
with her nudity and her onlookers. Courbet had followers of young, male painters because he
had the nerve to do this harsh, blunt realism. Manet was one of the people that admired him.

Burial at Ornans, 1849

This is a burial painting. Courbet really left a mark on the technique of other young artists; he
was even called the “Father of the Realist movement.” He was truly concerned with the reality
of the here and now. Somebody asked him why he didn’t paint angels and he said, “Show me an
angel, and I will paint one.” Everything that does not appear on the retina is outside of the
domain of painting. If you can’t see it, you cannot paint it. He was stoic and brusque in his
rebellion. He built a shed when his painting was rejected by the Paris Salon—it is called the
Pavilion of Realism. It is twenty two feet long. It is not a glorified, spiritual spectacle. It is the
opposite of the Burial of Count Orgaz. Critics said that it was vulgar. They said that it was
filled with bleak tones. They were offended by the gaping hole of the graze. They were saying
that the dog was disrespectful—you are not supposed to bring a dog to a funeral. The guys in the
red are looking bored rather than sad. Some people even look as if they are in the action of
going. Some of the people are chattering and gossiping. The grave digger is waiting impatiently
for the priest to be done. The background is barren and bleak. There is a skull under someone’s
feet.

Photo of American painter, Thomas Eakins

He was a controversial figure—spent most of his life in the United States. He is a truly
American painter. He makes himself a name through portrait painting and Americana (images of
strictly American themes). He is in the head of the art department at Pennsylvania School of
Fine Arts and he makes a mandatory requirement that artists have to take an anatomy and life
drawing course (this is revolutionary). He was ordered by the PSFA to discontinue with these
requirements—no more nude models. He “invited” his students to follow him into the woods,
strip, and draw each other. He got fired for this. He still remained a prestigious artist of this
time.

Thomas Eakins, Between Rounds

Boxing becomes a popular sport in America (the bog spectacles of I were purely American, even
if the sport was not). Boxing at this point in history is very much more brutal than it is today.
The rules were differently (they didn’t have gloves; you win if you knock the other person out).
These boxing matches are illegal because of the gambling and violence. This painting recalls the
harsh background of boxing history in our country. Not since Greco-roman times have the
athletes being the center of art (European tastes ran more to the life of the genteel and luxurious).
He values the sweat, physical exertion, and athletic aspects of boxing. He even studied cadavers.

Portrait of Amelia Van Buren

This is one of his portraits of a wealthy woman. He does what he knows he should do—he
paints her as she wants to be seen—wealthy flattered. She is seated on beautiful furniture. The
wealthy people of America want these paintings to memorialize the people

The Gross Clinic, 1875

The famous doctor Gross—he is doing surgery on a live patient. This is similar to the anatomy
lesson of Doctor Tulp. He is not just showing the surgery with everyone professional; he shows
the mother sitting in the corner and covering her face with a handkerchief. Dr. Gross is in a
surgery classroom. He is teaching the people around him—they are taking notes on the process.
These people are not wearing scrubs or masks. This was rejected from exhibition because of the
harsh realism.

REALIST MOVEMENT – American Realists of the 19th Century

John Singer Sargent, Self Portrait, 1907
He is known as a portrait painter. He uses rough strokes, but when you move away it all comes
together. His technical skill is a realist technique—but he doesn’t reveal hash reality. He draws
himself with a direct gaze and a lot of humanity. He came from a wealthy family and painted
because he wanted to. He is a favorite painter of the Vanderbilt family.
Repose, 1911

This is untraditional. Some parts of his paintings are not even blending. The pose is rare and
untraditional. There are slashes of brushwork.

The Wyndham Sisters, 1899

These are the debutantes of the Wyndham family. They are painted as elegant, feminine,
ethereal beauties. There is a sense of nothingness around them—they are shining out from the
painting. There is luminism in this painting.

Ellen Terry as Lady McBeth, 1889

This is not a good example of realism—it is a more romantic theme.

Madame X (Madame Pierre Gautreau), 1884

She is a wealthy socialite with a controlling mother where appearances are very important. She
had her portrait painting before by Sargent. The earlier portrait is traditional debutante portrait.
This is a later portrait that shows her in a modern, scandalous gown. Neither she nor her mother
is happy at this painting. He paints her very realistically. Her nose is set off by the pose, her
skin looks unnatural, her ears stick out because they are not dusted to look pale, and she is is a
stark environment that does not hint at wealth. The straps were not supposed to be there—they
were painted in because her mother got mad.

Photograph of Henry Ossawa Tanner

He is the first serious, successful black painter. His father was a Methodist minister and his
mother was a former slave. Eakins was his teacher. He admires Eakins, but he knows that it is
difficult in this country because of racial discrimination. He decides to go to Europe because he
thinks that racial barriers are less in Europe. He studied in Paris. He is disappointed at how
difficult it is to be a successful painter in Paris—he is not controversial while trying to get
successful. He moves back to Pennsylvania and decides to just please himself. He paints African
Americans in dignified ways.

Henry Ossawa Tanner, the Banjo Lesson

He paints a grandfather teaching his grandson to play the banjo. The banjo was not something
that a lot of white Americans played. The act of teaching and nurturing is a dignified setting. He
brought an impressionistic technique with him from Paris.

The Thankful Poor, 1894

It is a very stark environment and they don’t have much. They still take a moment to pray and
thank God. “Many of the artists that have represent nigro life have only seen the comic or
ludicrous side of life.”

Photograph of Winslow Homer

He was a Civil War journalist and illustrator for Harper’s Weekly. He paints genre scenes and
Americana after the war.

Winslow Homer, Boys in a Pasture

His art capture the American culture, usually in a nostalgic way. It shows a slice of American
life that is gone—they are not contemporary boys. The boys are wearing clothes that is from an
earlier age and do not have the environment of modernity.

Snap the Whip

It is an ideal example of an artist capturing a piece of American life. It reminds us of part of

history that is over—there is a little red school house in the distance. He is documenting
aMerican life after all that he has captured of war and conflict.

The Gulf Stream, 1899

He is an amazing watercolor painter. His watercolors look effortless. This is a Caribbean scene
—he moved there and retired there. He paints on location—to have a better understanding of the
scene.

Weather Beaten

He is adopting a little bit of an expressionistic technique.

REALIST MOVEMENT – Edouard Manet

Photograph of Edouard Manet

He paints with black and uses flat areas of cover—he does shocking scenes. He is not an
impressionist artist even though he sometimes showed with them. He is called the father of
Modern Art. Art historians dated the beginning of modern art with Manet. He was respected by
impressionists as the leader of the avant garde artists. The impressionists were seen as Manet’s
gang. They shared models, girlfriends, coffee. They lived in Montmartre—the cheap area of
town where the artists would stay. It also had entertainment that was not available anywhere else
—cabaret dancers. The aristocracy would go there when they were “slumming” it. The
impressionists looked at him respectfully because he would translate the works of masters into
modern works with shocking results.

Edouard Manet, At the Follies-Bergerie, 1882

She is a bartender—impressionists would not paint a working girl. She is not looking like she is
happy. She is “fed-up” with being ordered about. We see her from the front and also from the
back through the mirror. This is a nice place—crystal chandeliers. She is not just looking out at
the people—there is a man confronting her. We do not see the man because we are perhaps the
man. There is a costumer standing where we would be staying (gives the psychology of whether
we are the costumer that annoys the waitress). This is a psychological painting. Pieces of it are
impressionistic, but the flat black of her dress and other aspects truly do not conform to
Impressionism. The theme is not impressionistic either, despite impressionistic influence.

Luncheon on the Grass, oil on canvas, 1863, (Realist or Impressionist?)

“There is no such things as bad press.” This painting shocked the public after its showing at the
Salon de Refuses. This is the Salon that takes the art that is refused to go into the Salon de
Beaux Artes. The impressionistic, rebellious artists were getting annoyed with the selectiveness
of the Salon de Beaux Artes. It stunned the audience on moral and technical level—the flat color
patch technique (broad areas of flat, undefined color). The lack of the idealization of her body
made it scandalous—nudity is only acceptable if idealized or has mythological elements. She
has an unnatural white flatness to the color of her skin. This is a play on the Tempest by
Giorgione. The nude in both paintings is watching us. He is reinterpreting a master’s theme
here, but he puts it in a completely modern setting. This setting is what makes it so chocking.
The composition is stolen from a Raphael painting (that no longer exists—it was about gods and
goddesses). This shocks the public—she is irrationally having a picnic nude. The men are not
affected by the nudity. This women is a famous high class prostitute (Parisians knew this
women). It mimics the fete galante theme—they are in a leisurely situation enjoying a picnic.
The Salon de Refuse—did not have much fame before this painting. This painting made such a
fuss that people were waiting in block long lines to get into the Salon. The critics bashed this
painting—color patches was a phrase they coined (it was insulting).

Olympia, 1863

She is the naked picnicker again. She is reminiscent of Venus of Urbino. It is the first modern
nude—very confrontational, not idealized. Emile Zola—he is a scathing art critic. Zola loved
Manet’s work. He said that Manet is a child of the century. It was regarded as vulgar by most,
but people were lining up again for this painting. In Venus Urbino, she was surrounded by
elements to explain her nudity. In this painting, Manet deliberately chooses the wrong symbols
(black cat, not dog of fidelity; servant with flowers from a man, not searching for her clothes; she
has an orchard—vaginal symbol—instead of the orange blossoms to symbolize marriage). She
has a flat body and no real posing of the body.

The Beer Waitress, 1878

This is a slice of reality—she is trying to balance it all at once. It looks photographic (she was
caught by accident). But the theme is not impressionistic—the working class, not beautifully
idealized working girl.

Portrait of Emile Zola

He is surrounded by symbols of who Zola is. Pastiche is has another person art in a piece of art
(an artistic “quote”—there are paintings on the wall and Chinese silk screen). This painting is
being liked “Emile Zola approves of me.”
IMPRESSIONISM – Claude Monet
The art dealer comes into being. This makes it easier to make the kind of art that the artists want
to make. It is easier to sell the art to people who would appreciate it because the art dealer will
promote it in different areas. The collecting of Japanese prints were in fashion in these days.
Japanese prints—flat, different perceptions of composition, compositions are like in a
photograph (awkward, unplanned). The impressionists use the type of compositions of Japanese
prints and photography—they are trying to make new art unlike any that has come before it.
This style of painting was not about creating beauty, except for the themes. The themes are
usually about beautiful people enjoying leisure (one aspect where they are not very realistic).
The other impressionists get their own styles in old age.

Claude Monet, Impression: Sunrise, 1872

This painting gives its name to the whole impressionist movement. He first showed the painting
at the Salon d’ Refuse. It was the first showing of the impressionist-style movement. A critic
was saying—it isn’t even a painting; it is the impression of a painting. It is an instantaneous
impression of something—what the movement is trying to catch. This movement is about the
immediate perceived image and the capturing of light. They are a type of realist—they have an
immediate realism, not a detailed reality but an immediate perception of reality. Monet is the
only steadfast impressionist. Out of the 8 impressionists, he is the only one that keeps to the
impressionist style in his old age. At first he is in poverty, when he has a show in New York he
becomes popular because his style is more appreciated in America (rather than Paris).

Rouen Cathedral, Early Afternoon - Rouen Cathedral, Full Sunlight - Rouen Cathedral, Sunset

Monet painted this cathedral about 40 times. He paints in 20-30 minute increments because of the
different light plays. The black in the picture is actually mixed with other colors—there is no flat
black. He even painted in bad weather.

On the Seine at Bennecourt (The River), 1868

This paining emphasizes the fact that Impressionist artist love to use the theme of beautiful people in
leisure. This is a good example of implying light. Sometimes the lighting effect only lasts for about
7 minutes.

Rue St. Denis, 30th June, 1878

This is a holiday—some kind of state holiday. The impression is of the color and energy. There is a
capture of light—hits the buildings at the top and the bottom is in shadow.

The Grand Canal, 1908

He is painting in wintry, foggy, and late in the day weather.

Green Harmony
This is part of his backyard. After he got more popular as prosperous, Monet is making money and
he gets very good landscaping in his backyard. He goes crazy with his water garden—more complex
and harder to maintain than a regular garden. His backyard is the theme of many of his paintings.
When he gets older

Water Lilies, 1907

His vision is going more out of focus. D’Orsay—where this collection is housed.

Water Lilies, 2

Afternoon in the Garden, 1865

IMPRESSIONISM – Morisot, Cassat, and Calliebotte

Berthe Morisot, Summer (Young Woman by a Window)
She is one of only 2 female Impressionists (she is the granddaughter of Fragonard). She marries
Manet’s brother Eugene. These eight Impressionists are very close socially. She is restricted in
her subject matter because she is a woman (and also because she is a married woman). She only
paints one man—her husband. She paints her family (a lot of the paintings are of her daughter
Julie).

The Cradle, 1872

This is what is available to her. She paints what is easily available and is around her.

The Mother and Sister of the Artist

It is unique because it is indoors. She captures light—even reflected in the mirror behind the
daughter. The black is really indigo blue. It is a very Impressionistic theme—beautiful leisure.

Mary Cassatt, Sleepy Baby, 1910, pastel on paper

She is the second Impressionist female artist. She is considered to be a minor impressionist. She
came from a wealthy American family. She wasn’t content to stay in Pennsylvania. She
becomes friends with the most unsocial of the Impressionist artists (Edgar Degas). She paints
what is more available to her—mostly women and children. She is one of the eight
impressionists. She paints in vibrant mostly pastel colors. She does things that the other
Impressionists don’t often do—pastel drawings on paper. She promotes pastel art on paper into
the realm of fine art; whereas, before the pastel was just for the purpose of a study. Degas takes
her under his wing—he shows her technique in pastel drawing. She is often criticized for being
sentimental (unlike the other impressionist artists). She is simply painting what is available to
her. She seems to make the skin luminous. She is a master of making skin that everyone would
like to have.

The Bath, c. 1892

This is her most famous painting. This is influenced by Degas—the keyhole composition. This
composition is imagining that you are peeking through a keyhole and drawing the people in the
uncentered, skewed perception. It is also influenced by the awkward poses in photography and
Japanese prints.

The Loge

A loge is an opera box. They are sitting at the opera—waiting for the opera to start. She
captures this age—a little awkward, but very excited to get dressed and go out. She has an
affinity for women and children.

Gustave Callebotte, Rainy Weather, 1877

He came from a wealthy family and admired artists and especially the Impressionists. He is not
one of the Impressionist eight. He is a minor impressionist. You can tell it just rained—he is a
master of surface and reflective light. He worked with the Impressionists, but he said that he felt
less worthy than the impressionist eight. He adopts a new calling—to be the patron and collector
of impressionist art. He willed 38 of his impressionist paintings to the government; these were
used as the foundation collection of the D’Orsay. This is the impressionist museum—in a
renovated train station. It captures the effect of light after a rainstorm—on the cobblestones.

The Floor Strippers, 1875

This is not beautiful leisure--- not an impressionist scene, but very impressionist technique. This
is not a traditional impressionist theme. It set to reflect the beauty of the mundane (he showed
the beauty of the play of light on the floor).

IMPRESSIONISM – Edgar Degas

The friendship with Cassatt went down over time. He was really hard to be friends with (he is
misogynistic and rude). He venerates the ballerina, but he is a woman-hater. Cassatt knew all of
this, but she also knew that she could learn from him. His bigotry is what finally broke the
friendship. The Dreyfus case—they picked on a Jewish man because they needed a scapegoat.
He was finally acquitted because the newspapers were so mad about it. He talked to the
newspapers about how bad Jews are and how he must have leaked the information just on the
fact that he is a Jew.

Edgar Degas, The Dance Class

“Women in general are ugly. I show them deprived of their airs and affectations, reduced to the
level of animals cleaning themselves.” The reason he painted ballerinas because they are
working class girls (with day jobs elsewhere). They work to the beat of the taskmaster (who is a
man). He loved to see the women dance at the command of the “puppet-master.” He doesn’t
show them is positions of really being beautiful. He is showing them in awkward positions.
This is because he sees them as trained animals. Even his female nudes are not idealized.

Rehearsal on Stage
Unlike the other Impressionists, degas uses artificial light. He is called the reluctant
impressionist. He did not consider himself to be an impressionist. He outlines, paints with
artificial light, paints indoor, and he doesn’t idealize what he paints. He is categorized as
Impressionistic because he showed with them. He plays with the capture of the light. He paints
the ballerinas from the wings—not from the positions where they would look most beautiful.
Not everything is choreographed and beautiful. He doesn’t paint the perfection of ballet; he is
trying to show the labor of ballet. He is rejecting grace and beauty. He also uses flat black. He
said that “art is not a sport” when asked why he didn’t paint outside.

Waiting, 1882

Making it is the ballet academy is very big step up for a working class girl. This is Degas
painting her in an awkward position and in a awkward angle. Both the mother and the daughter
look defeated. The mother is trying to pay her daughter’s way through ballet school. This is a
work on paper in pastel. He takes pastel to the edge.

Before the Ballet

He outlines—but it is still sketchy and blotchy.

The Tub

Keyhole composition—she is unaware that we are looking at her. He does not idealize the body.
He did several paintings like this—this one is the nicest one. This is a pastel drawing. There is a
lot of black and it is indoors.

The Absinthe Drinker, 1875-76

Absinthe—green liquor—today is not toxic, but back then it really was toxic. This is the alcohol
of choice for the lower class because it is the cheapest of liquors. He deviates from the usual
theme of the impressionists—it is not beautiful people enjoying leisure. It is outlined and
sketchy looking. He is drawing the despondent. Poor alcoholics were often addicted to the
absinthe.

The Rape, 1868-69

She is cowering and he is buttoning his paints while standing ominously in the doorway. This is
new. Never before have we seen this, except in a romantic way. This is very harsh. You don’t
see the violence, but you can imagine—which is almost worse than seeing the actual act. The
bedroom is so sweet and innocent, but the act is so harsh. This is the aftermath of a rape.

Before the Stands, c. 1866-68

He likes to paint horses in racing scenes or before the races. It is an excetion to his usual indoor,
artificial light. He is most famous for his ballerina scenes, but he also painted circuses, cafes,
women at work, opera, and races.

IMPRESSIONISM – Auguste Renoir

Renoir said that — “Painting should be amiable, joyous, and pretty.” His paintings do not
contain the harsh realities of life. His paintings are about beautiful people enjoying life. He was
very poor, but he believed that “life is a perpetual holiday.” He doesn’t need a lot to be happy.

Auguste Renoir, Le Moulin de la Galette, 1876

This is the name of a popular café that still exists today. There are no clear edges—he never
used black. He always used dark blue instead of black. There is dappled light everywhere. This
is moving light. This painting took him six months. He has a very standard face. All of these
people are young and enjoying life.

Luncheon of the Boating Party

They are on a boat. All of the women’s faces look alike. Life is a big, joyous experience.

A Girl with a Watering Can, 1876

The Swing, 1876

There is dapple light everywhere. Prototype features. There are no hard edges or black. They
are dreamlike hazy. They are in fashionable clothing. This is very different from Fragonard.
This is painted in a more classic style than Fragonard’s—handled in a very different style.

The Dance, 1883

Young Girls at the Piano, 1892

Young Woman Bathing, 1888

This is a typical painting of his later style.

IMPRESSIONISM – James Abbott MCNeill Whistler

Photograph of James Abbott McNeil Whistler

He looks like a bohemian rule breaker. He is the artist that first made the bohemian artist role.
He enjoyed rebellion. He even starts to dress like a bohemian. His rebellious attitude that is
expressed through appearance (dressed deliberately against fashion and good taste). He
deliberately mismatches. He always brings a high publicity prostitute with him everywhere. He
is the artist that promoted the doctrine of “art for art’s sake.” The title of his art does not tell the
viewer what it is about—it is vaguer than art before.

Nocturne in Black and Gold, 1874

He is from America and moved to France. He has an impressionist style but is not one of the
impressionist eight. This was a controversial painting because when it was shown a critic said
that it was an insult to call this a painting. Whistler took this guy to court for slander. Whistler
won, but he didn’t win any money. “My painting is the product of a lifetime of experience.” He
completely changes the way art is viewed. The viewer now has the job to consider, discern, and
interpret what a painting is about. This picture is fireworks over a river—it sparkles like
fireworks.

Nocturne Blue and Gold, 1877

Portrait of the Artist’s Mother, 1871

The official title is the Arrangement in Grey and Black Number 1. Art should be independent of
all claptrap. Claptrap is useless frivolity. It is completely devoid of sentiment—there is no
flattery of his mother. The identity of the model is irrelevant because a painting is just an
arrangement of forms. Art isn’t necessarily easy to understand at a glance—and it can still be
good art.

Symphony in White, 1862

He can do something traditional—a young girl in white. But there is still no “claptrap”
surrounding her.

POST IMPRESSIONISM - Divisionism

Georges Seurat, La Grande Jatte, 1884-86
He is interested in the science of color. He is interested in using color in a methodical way. His
type of painting is a type of method painting—he calls it divisionism (painting with dots). The
difference with divisionism and pointillism is that pointillism is paintings with dots (can be done
with a pen) and divisionism is dividing pure color with dots. He does not mix the colors—he
paints blue and green dots and our eyes make the blend. He was so devoted to divisionism that it
takes years to do his paintings. He was criticized for his technique—his figures are very stiff.
The figures are not very developed. He died very young (before his paintings were appreciated).
He uses the impressionism theme, but he is not an impressionist. Post-impressionism is just the
art that immediately follows the impressionists and explores untraditional methods of painting
(not just one style of art).

Bathers, 1884

His figures are still simplified. The dots are tiny.

La Parade, 1887-89

He is experimenting with dividing things in rectangles of colors, has a maple leaf border (roman
art), and almost monochromatic color—white, black, and orange.

Circus, 1891

This was never finished—he was working on it when he died. It was displayed above his coffin
when he died. He died because he was overworked—he didn’t take care of himself anf he got
sick.
The Eiffel Tower, 1889

This is finished, but it is more vague that his other ones.

Paul Signac, the Bonaventure Pine, 1893 (at the MFA)

The dots are about a little smaller than a pea. There are colors other than green in the grass and
tree. It makes the tree more energetic and realistic. Everything is multi-colored. It makes the
painting more intense. The dots are not as small and obsessive as his mentor—Seurat.

Papal Palace, Avignon, 1900

There is almost a monochromatic palette.

Women at the Well, 1900

POST IMPRESSIONISM – Vincent Van Gogh

Portrait of the Artist, 1889

Van Gogh—he is Dutch and lived in Holland as a young man. He didn’t know what to do with
his life. He worked in a bank and other boring, respectable jobs. He becomes a missionary in
Ireland during the famine. He lives in poverty. He just out-of-the-blue decides to be a painting.
His family thought he was unreasonable. They knew that he was probable bi-polar (they knew
he was different). They knew that they couldn’t expect him to live life everyone else. They
patronized him. He fell in love easily with the wrong women. He tries to go with his brother
Theo when he has his heart broken. He goes to Paris and trains himself how to paint. His first
paintings were very conventional. He taught himself by painting other masters’ paintings. He
quickly develops his own technique and develops his own convictions though he never sells
anything. Paris was not the right place for him. He had a dream to start his own artist commune
in Arles. It was very unrealistic because he didn’t have any money (he lived off of his brother).
He makes friends with the Impressionists, but they don’t share his dream. Theo helps Van Gogh
rent a house in Arles, but knows that Van Gogh can’t be trusted to take care of himself. Nobody
offered to be Van Gogh’s roommate though. Gaugin might have been paid by Theo to stay with
Van Gogh. Van Gogh is very excited—he really wants someone there for him because he is
lonely. Van Gogh thinks they will be best friends, but Gaugin loses his patience often and hurts
Van Gogh’s feelings. Van Gogh has a new girlfriend—a prostitute, alcoholic with a baby.
Gaugin leaves him. Van Gogh goes into depression and sends his chopped off ear to Gaugin.
He has manic highs and lows. When he was on one of his highs he would draw so many
paintings forgetting to take care of him. Theo had him hospitalized, but Van Gogh would get
well in the structure of the hospital and then would fall apart when they don’t have that structure.

Self Portrait with Bandage, 188

The Weaver, 1884

This was an earlier work.

Sunflowers, 1888

Van Gogh’s Room at Arles, 1889

The Starry Night, 1889

Harvest at La Crau, 1888

The Church at Auvers, 1890

POST IMPRESSIONISM - Paul Cezanne

Self Portrait, 1875-77

Mont Sainte Victoire, c. 1898-1900

Three more paintings of Mont Sainte Victoire

Still Life, 1890-94

Still life with Apples and Peaches, 1905

POST IMPRESSIONISM – Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec

At the Moulin Rouge, 1892

Dance at the Moulin Rouge

Jeanne Avril Dancing, 1892, pastel

Bar

Couple

Poster for the Moulin Rouge

Toilette

POST IMPRESSIONISM - Fauvism

Gauguin named the use of color syntheticism himself—his color choices were at his whim and
unnatural. Critic called him a fauv—a wild beast with colors.

Self Portrait with Yellow Christ

Paul Gaugin, Four Breton Women, 1886

Where do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going?, 1897

Women of Tahiti, 1891

Spirit of the Dead Watching, 1892

The Meal, 1891

Andre Derain, The Turning Road, 1906. (at the MFA)

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Henri Matisse, Self Portrait
He was taught by Bougeureau and Moreau.

Green Stripe

He goes back to the simplicity of color usage and naivety.

Red Room (Harmony in Red), 1908-09

Woman in the Purple Coat

Dance, 1909

Snail, 1953

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Georges Roualt, The Old King, c. 1916-36

MODERNIST ART – Art Nouveau

ART NOUVEAU-(new art), an innovative European art movement that was popular from about
1880-1910. Art Nouveau design is characterized by curving vine-like lines and highly
decorative architecture, interior design furniture, posters, glass pottery, and textiles. The term
Art Nouveau was derived from Maison de l’Art Nouveau, a Paris shop opened in 1896 by the
dealer, Siegfried Bing.

Paris Metro (Art Nouveau subway entrance)

Paris Metro Closeup

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Victor Horta, staircase in the Hotel Ven Eetuelde, Brussels, Belgium, 1895

Interior of the Tassel House, 1893

Bannister from Victor Horta’s House in Brussels, 1898

Antonio Gaudi, Casa Mila, Barcelona, Spain, 1907

Close-up of Casa Mila

Tiffany Jack-in-the-Pulpit Vase, 1915

Tiffany Lamp

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Aubrey Beardsley, Venus

Salome with the Head of John the Baptist

Illustration for La Morte D’Arthur

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Photo of Gustave Klimt

The Kiss, 1907-8

Judith, 1905

William Morris, Art Nouveau printed cotton fabric, 1884

MODERNIST ART – Art Deco

ART DECO- A style of design popular in the 1920’s and 1930’s. It is seen primarily in
furniture, jewelry, textiles, and interior décor. (It is not a style of painting.) It was a deliberate
attempt to simplify the Art Nouveau style into streamlined forms of elegance and sophistication.
Although coined from the title of the Paris design exhibition, The Exhibition Internationale des
Arts Decoratifs et Industriels Modernes.

William Van Alen, Chrysler Building, New York, 1928-30, spire of stainless steel overall height
1048 feet
Close-up of the spire of the Chrysler Building

Postage stamp depicting the Chrysler Building

Art Deco design book

Art Deco Hotel: Marlin Hotel, Miami Beach, Florida

Salida, Colorado train depot

Evolution of train design resulting in an aerodynamic Art Deco train design

Art Deco product design: the toaster

MODERNIST ART - Expressionism

Expressionism: a style of modernist art in which reality is distorted in order to express the
artists’ emotions of inner vision. In painting emotional impact is heightened by deliberate use of
strong colors, distortion of form, and energetic brushwork. The initial Expressionist movement
began in Germany after World War I and subsequent Expressionist movements evolved in
Dresden (Die Brucke) and Munich (Der Blaue Reiter). This manipulates the viewer into having
a certain reaction. This makes someone recall the emotions of a previous time. Expressionism is
about angst—negative feelings and negative aspects of the world.

Pre-Die Brucke painters who served as early precursors to Expressionism:

James Ensor, Belgian Cathedral, etching 1886

Christ’s Entry into Brussels in 1889

Mask Confronting Death

Edvard Munch, Puberty, 1895

This stage of life is very awkward—everything is changing, but you are neither one thing nor the
other. She is alone and vulnerable in her nudity—she is unsure of herself. This is the
transitional awkward part of a young girl’s life. Every aspect of the painting is to emphasize this
feeling of vulnerability.

The Scream, 1893

He did many versions of this picture. It is a sense of anxiety. It is a type of pathetic fallacy—the
setting mimics the mood of the primary character. The figures are wandering away, they can be
dark and ominous (as if a part of the threat) or they can be seen as impervious. It is the feeling of
amazement of your stupidity—it is a panic that you cannot overcome and have to let out.

Aristide Maillol, the Mediterranean, bronze, c. 1901

Maillol is trying to promote creative and imaginative, not intellectual, classical versions of the
nude. He uses the nude to communicate the idea of inner peace and tranquility. She is not
perfectly formed in a sexual attractive sense, but she is very solid and comfortable. She looks
meditative—she has everything she needs within her. (There are three versions of this statue by
the same title.)

Wilhelm Lehmbruck, Standing Youth, 1913

Kneeling Woman, 1911

He elongates the figure, and sometimes distorts the surface of a figure to communicate
contemplation, reflection, introspection, and spirituality.
MODERNIST ART – Die Brucke

Die Brucke Painters: The first group of German Expressionist painters, founded in Dresden in
1905 and formally dissolved in 1913. Kirchner was the leading member. The artists shared a
common studio, cultivated the medieval guild ideal and also canvassed “bourgeois” support with
a lay membership scheme. The Die Brucke painters were inspired by Cezanne, Gauguin, Van
Gogh, and Munch and by African and Pacific art. Their work was at first characterized by flat,
linear, rhythmical expression and by simplification of form and color. Nolde was also a member.
Litheral translation: The Bridge. These painters see themselves as a bridge between formalism
and the new version of painting—extreme expressionism. They are leading to another form of
extreme expressionism.

Ernst Kirchner, Street, 1907

He believed that his work was a bridge to the future. They claimed that “He who renders his
inner convictions as he knows he must with spontaneity and sincerity is one of us.” It is an
implication that a painter knows he must be one of them. There is conviction but also
condemnation. It is a heavy, deconstructed street scene. They are alone even though the street is
crowded. There are no couples—they are alone despite the crowd. He warps figures to display
their own corruption (in the Street of Berlin—another painting).

Emil Nolde, the Last Supper, 1909

Many of his paintings are religious. He is trained in Dachau. He is known for the naivety of his
expressionism in the purest form.

MODERNIST ART – Der Blaue Reiter

Der Blaue Reiter: A group of Expressionist artists founded in Munich, Germany, in 1911.
Kandinsky and Klee were amongst several German artists who rejected convention and sought
self-expression. Their membership was international and had no characteristic style but they
shared the common motto to express their “inner impulses”. The group dissolved with the
outbreak of WWI, but its influence continued through the Bauhaus school, where both
Kandinsky and Klee later taught. Literal translation: The Blue Rider. Later, Kandinsky and
Klee exhibited their work with Jawlensky, and Feininger throughout Europe and the U.S. under
the title of Die Blaue Vier (The Blue Four).

Wassily Kandinsky, Improvisation 31 (sea battle), 1913

He set the stage for the abstract expressionists of the 40’s and 50’s. He liberates his paintings
from nature. The ones that take more time are called compositions. The spontaneous works he
called improvisations.

Composition VII

Looks like he is making more decisions in it—like in Whistler—you decide for yourself what it
means. It has no clear reality. Painting should be an exact replica of some inner emotion. The
content of his works is up to the viewers’ response.

Composition VIII, 1923

Paul Klee, Twittering Machine, 1922
He promoted spontaneous evolution in his work. It is whimsical. Everyone makes of it what
they will.

Park Near L(ucerne), 1938

Oskar Kokoschka, Self Portrait, 1913

He looks worn out—very dingy colors and thin face. He studied in Vienna. His early work is
depressing and cynical. His disgust is heightened by WWI. He suffered from depression. It is a
faithful portrait of his psyche.

Max Beckmann, Self Portrait

The Night, 1918-19

Departure, 1932-35

MODERNIST ART – Post War Expressionism

Francis Bacon, Head Surrounded by Sides of Beef, 1954

Study after Velasquez’s Portrait of Innocent X, 1953

Velasquez’s Portrait of Innocent X, 1650

Portrait of Arshile Gorky

Arshile Gorky, (American), The Liver is the Cock’s Comb, 1944

Portrait of Willem deKooning

Willem deKooning, Woman I, 1950-52

Seated Woman, 1952

Photo of Jackson Pollock working on a Painting

Jackson Pollock, Autumn Rhythm: number 30, 1950

Number 1 (Lavender Mist), incaustic, 1950

Detail of Pollock’s technique

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Lee Krasner, Celebration, 1959-60

Portrait of Jean Dubuffet

Jean Dubuffet, Monument au Fantome, 1977, Houston, TX

Four Trees, 1972, New York, (five stories high, 25 tons of aluminum!)

MODERNIST ART – Abstract Art

Abstract Art: art which does not directly represent external reality. Art that is not literally
representational but is directly derived from reality. Abstract art may have many different
appearances and techniques (Cubism, Constructivism, Futurism, Supermatism, and Color Field
Painting to name a few) nevertheless it shares a universal goal: the original source of the
painting is a visual or imagined image.

Marcel Duchamp, The Horse, Bronze, 1914, (We will discuss his cubist paintings later.)

Constantin Brancusi, Bird in Space, bronze, 1919

A Muse, 1918

Aleksandr Archipenko, Woman Combing Her Hair, bronze, 1915

John Chamberlain, Dolores, junked car fragments, 1960

Miss Lucy Pink, junked car fragments, 1936, (great title! Why?)

Georgia O’Keefe, Black Iris, 1926

Grey Line with Black, Blue, Yellow, 1923, (at the MFA)

Jack-in-the-Pulpit IV, 1930

Henry Moore, Recumbent Figure, stone, 1938

Reclining Figure, wood, 1939

Postmodernism: a reaction against the elitism and formalism of Modernism. The term became
especially popular in the mid ‘70’s. Postmodernist challenged the narrowness, dogmatic
authoritarianism, the emphasis on originality and inevitable abstraction of art. Still, this term can
be applied to the more recent abstraction artists who go to such extremes, their art is seemingly
nonobjective. Duchamp was the forefather of Postmodernism by creating readymade art.
Artistic originality and autonomy are considered irrelevant since images and symbols lost their
fixed meaning when put in different contexts and are ‘appropriated” and recycled.

The art on this page is classified as Postmodern Abstract art.

Morris Louis, Saf Gimel, 1959

Saraband

Alpha-Pi, 1961

Alpha Theta

Portrait of Mark Rothko

Mark Rothko, Blue, Orange, Red, 1958

Orange and Yellow

No. 10, 1950

Helen Frankenthaler, Bilbao, 1998

Bay Side, 1967

Untitled, 1983

Frank Stella, Nunca Pasa Nada, (nothing ever happens), 1964, (Stella’s motto: “What you see
is what you see.”)

Decanter, 1987, bronze, (MFA)

MODERNIST ART - Cubism

Analytic Cubism: developed by Picasso and Braque. Rather than drawing from on position,
they analyzed the model from every possible angel and then combined these views into one
pictoral whole.

Pablo Picasso, Les Desmoiselles d’Avignon, 1907

Girl with a Mandolin

Georges Braque, Man with a Guitar, 1911

Fishing Boats, 1909, (at the MFA)

The Portuguese, 1911

Fernand Leger, The City, (study), 1919, (combines cubism with more clean, functional,
machine-like lines that were so popular with the Purists)

The Motor, 1918

Marcel Duchamp, The Bride, 1912

Joseph Stella, Brooklyn Bridge, 1917-18, (yes, he is Frank Stella’s father)

Piet Mondrian, Composition with Red, Yellow, and Blue, c. 1937-42, (he called his extremely
minimal style Neoplasticism)

Composition A, 1923

Composition in Blue, Yellow, and Black, 1936

Henri Matisse, The Snail, 1953

David Smith, Cubi XXVII, 1965, stainless steel

Ronald Bladen, Untitled, 1966-67, aluminum

MODERNIST ART – Pablo Picasso

Pablo Picasso, Self Portrait at age 15, 1896

Science and Charity, 1897

Absinthe Drinker, 1901

Sleeping Peasants, 1919, gouache

Olga Picasso, 1923

Carafe, Jug, and Fruit Bowl, 1909, collage

Pipe, Glass, Bottle of Rum, 1914, collage

Three Musicians, 1921, oil on canvas

Verre et Bouteille de Suze, 1912

Guernica, 1937, oil on canvas

Detail of Guernica

Head of a Bull, 1943, assemblage

MODERNISM - Futurism (a type of Cubism)
The Futurist artists were a group of Italian poets, painters, and sculptors who regularly signed
and issued manifestoes declaring revolution in art against all traditional tastes, values, and styles
and embracing the modern age of steel and speed and the virtues of violence and war. They
strove for the effect of momentum and dynamism in their painting and sculpture.

(Eadweard Muybridge, Female Semi-nude in Motion, 1887, time release photograph.

Although this photo is not in itself an example of Futurism, it shows the inspiration for the
Futurist painter)

Marcel Duchamp, Nude Descending a Staircase, 1912, (Although Duchamp was not a futurist,
his attempt to record motion here is a futurist endeavor)

Umberto Boccioni, Dynamism of a Football Player, 1913

Dynamism of a Cyclist, 1913

Study for Dynamism of a Cyclist

Unique Forms of Continuity in Space, 1913

MODERNIST ART - Suprematism

Suprematism: (also called Abstract Formalism) A type of art formulated by Kazimir Malevich
to convey his belief that the supreme reality in the world is pure feeling, which attaches to no
object and thus calls for new, nonobjective forms in art – shapes not related to objects in the
visible world. Suprematism is always very simple, geometric, two-dimensional, and minimal.

Kazimir Malevich, Suprematist Composition White on White, 1918, Malevich stated:

Under Suprematism I understand the supremacy of pure feeling in

creative art. To the Suprematist, the visual phenomena of the objective
world are, in themselves, meaningless; the significant thing is feeling, as
such, quite apart from the environment in which it is called forth… The
Supremasist does not observe and does not touch – he feels.

MODERNIST ART - Dadism

Dadism: An irreverent art movement that grew out of the disillusionment of World War I.
Dada protested all art, modern or traditional, as well as the civilization that had produced it, to
create art of the absurd. Dadist “appropriated” found objects to create “ready-made” art, created
seemingly randomly produced art, and whimsically useless non-art.

Marcel Duchamp, Bicycle Wheel, 1951 (third version after lost original)

The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even (The Large Glass), 1915 1923, Oil lead wire,
foil, dust, and varnish on glass

Man Ray, Gift

Jean Arp, Collage Arranged According to the Laws of Chance, Jean Arp stated: “Dadism is
the revolt of the unbelievers against the misbelievers.”

MODERNIST ART - Surrealism

SURREALISM: The successor to Dadism, Surrealism incorporates the random and
improvisional nature of Dadism with imagery inspired by dreams and the subconscious. The
surrealist explored the inner world of the psyche, the realm of fantasy and the unconscious as
inspired by psychoanalysts Jung and Freud.

Odin Redon, The Eye like a Strange Baloon Mounts Toward Infinity, 1882, charcoal

James Ensor, Mask Confronting Death, 1888

Marc Chagall, I and the Village, 1911

George Grosz, Metropolis, 1917

Henri Rousseau, Myself, Portrait Landscape, 1890

The Dream, 1910

War or The Horse of Discord, 1894

Tropical Storm with a Tiger

Salvador Dail, Persistence of Memory, 1931

Metamorphosis of Narcissus, 1937

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Max Ernst, Elephant of Celebes, 1921

Max Ernst, Europe After the Rain, 1942

Rene Margritte, Le Viol, 1934

Lovers, 1928

Personal Values

Golconde, 1953

Chateau des Pyrenees

Perspective: Madame Recamier by Jacques-Louis David

Jerry Bywaters, On the Ranch, 1941

Rosenquist Photo

James Rosenquist, President Elect, 1960-61

Navigator, Speed of Light, 2000, lithograph

World’s Fair Mural, 1964

M.C. Escher, Drawing Hands

Relativity

Waterfall