Art of theDay!

Post edited by: southern10, at: 05/12/2008 18:54

Post edited by: southern10, at: 05/12/2008 18:58

The Myth of Prometheus

1515 (60 Kb); Oil on panel; Pinakothek, Munich

Cosimo, Piero di

Cosimo, Piero di (c.1462-1521?). Florentine painter, a pupil of Cosimo Rosselli, whose Christian name he adopted as a patronym. There are no signed, documented, or dated works by him, and reconstruction of his oeuvre depends on the account given in Vasari's Lives. It is one of Vasari's most entertaining biographies, for he portrays Piero as a highly eccentric character who lived on hard-boiled eggs, `which he cooked while he was boiling his glue, to save the firing'. The paintings for which he is best known are appropriately idiosyncratic--fanciful mythological inventions, inhabited by fauns, centaurs, and primitive men. There is sometimes a spirit of low comedy about these delightful works, but in the so-called Death of Procris (National Gallery, London) he created a poignant scene of the utmost pathos and tenderness. He was a marvellous painter of animals and the dog in this picture, depicted with a mournful dignity, is one of his most memorable creations. Piero also painted portraits, the finest of which is that of Simonetta Vespucci (Musée Condé, Chantilly), in which she is depicted as Cleopatra with the asp around her neck. His religious works are somewhat more conventional, although still distinctive, and Frederick Hartt (A History of Italian Renaissance Art, 1970) has written that `His whimsical Madonnas, Holy Families, and Adorations provide a welcome relief from the wholesale imitation of Raphael in early Cinquecento Florence'. One of his outstanding religious works is the Immaculate Conception (Uffizi, Florence), which seems to have been the compositional model for the Madonna of the Harpies by his pupil Andrea del Sarto.

The Young Beggar

Oil on canvas (110 Kb); 134 x 100 cm (53 x 39 1/4 in); Musee du Louvre, Paris

Murillo, Bartolomé Esteban

Murillo, Bartolome (1617-82). An artist whose many religious paintings emphasized the peaceful, joyous aspects of spiritual life, Bartolome Murillo was the first Spanish painter to achieve renown throughout Europe. In addition to the enormous popularity of his works in his native Seville, Murillo was much admired in other countries, particularly England. Here his influence can be seen in the paintings of Sir Joshua Reynolds and John Constable, who painted during the 18th and 19th centuries.

Murillo was born in 1617 in Seville. His parents died when he was a child, and he went to live with a local artist, Juan del Castillo. As might be expected, Murillo's early works show Castillo's influence. Under him Murillo learned to turn out religious pictures that were sold to small churches in Spain and in the Spanish colonies in America.

At some point in his life, probably in the late 1640s, Murillo is believed to have visited Madrid. In any case, after 1650 his use of color and light and his natural, human portrayal of figures seems to show the influence of Diego Velazquez. In Madrid, Murillo would also have seen paintings by the Flemish and Venetian masters, and the work he did in Seville between 1650 and his death seems to show these influences, too. Because Murillo did not put a date on most of his paintings, these changes in his style are often used to determine the order in which he painted them.

Among the pictures painted when Murillo was a youth are several affectionate studies of the ragged boys and the flower girls of Seville. His later works are nearly all serene religious compositions, marked by splendid coloring, great technical skill, and pious intensity. One striking characteristic of these works is the illuminated mist, populated with angels and cherubs, that surrounds the central figures. The few portraits he painted are extremely lifelike. In 1660 Murillo helped found a public academy of art in Seville and served as its first president.

In 1681 Murillo was in Cadiz, painting the Espousal of St. Catherine on the walls of the Capuchin monastery there. He fell from the scaffold, and his death on April 3, 1682, apparently resulted from his injuries. Murillo was buried in the church of Santa Cruz in Seville.

Among Murillo's well-known paintings are three versions of the Immaculate Conception. St. Anthony of Padua was another of the subjects that he painted several times. Many people like best the series he painted for the Charity Hospital in Seville. Among these are Moses Striking the Rock, St. Elizabeth of Hungary Tending the Sick, and St. Peter Released from Prison.

The Walk to Work (Le Depart pour le Travail)

1851 (150 Kb); Oil on canvas, 55.5 x 46 cm (21 7/8 x 18 1/8 in)

Millet, Jean-Francois

(1814-75) The son of a small peasant farmer of Gréville in Normandy, Millet showed a precocious interest in drawing, and arrived in Paris in 1838 to become a pupil of Paul Delaroche. He had to fight against great odds, living for long a life of extreme penury. He exhibited at the Salon for the first time in 1840, and married two years later. At this time, the main influences on him were Poussin and Eustache Le Sueur, and the type of work he produced consisted predominantly of mythological subjects or portraiture, at which he was especially adept (Portrait of a Naval Officer, 1845; Musée des Beaux-Arts, Rouen).

His memories of rural life, and his intermittent contacts with Normandy, however, impelled him to that concern with peasant life that was to be characteristic of the rest of his artistic career. In 1848 he exhibited The Winnower (now lost) at the Salon, and this was praised by Théophile Gautier and bought by Alexandre Ledru-Rollin, the Minister of the Interior. In 1849, when a cholera epidemic broke out in Paris, Millet moved to Barbizon on the advice of the engraver Charles-Emile Jacque (1813-94) and took a house near that of Théodore Rousseau. Devoted to this area as a subject for his work, he was one of those who most clearly helped to create the Barbizon School. His paintings on rural themes attracted growing acclaim and between 1858 and 1859 he painted the famous Angélus (Musée d'Orsay), which 40 years later was to be sold for the sensational price of 553,000 francs.

Although he was officially distrusted because of his real or imaginary Socialist leanings, his own attitude towards his chosen theme of peasant life was curiously ambivalent. Being of peasant stock, he tended to look upon farmworkers as narrow-minded and oblivious of beauty, and did not accept the notion that `honest toil' was the secret of happiness. In fact, his success partly stemmed from the fact that, though compared with most of his predecessors and, indeed, his contemporaries, he was a `Realist', he presented this reality in an acceptable form, with a religious or idyllic gloss. Nevertheless, he became a symbol to younger artists, to whom he gave help and encouragement. It was he who, on a visit to Le Havre to paint portraits, encouraged Boudin to become an artist, and his work certainly influenced the young Monet, and even more decidedly so Pissarro, who shared similar political inclinations.

Although towards the end of his life, when he started using a lighter palette and freer brushstrokes, his work showed some affinities with Impressionism, his technique was never really close to theirs. He never painted out-of-doors, and he had only a limited awareness of tonal values, but his draughtsmanship had a monumentality that appealed to artists such as Seurat and van Gogh, who was also enthralled by his subject-matter, with its social implications. Millet's career was greatly helped by Durand-Ruel.

Enfant geopolitique observant la naissance de l'homme nouveau.

I think it was done in 1934. He died in 89 by the way. And if my french is right it means geopolitic child watching the birth of the new man. The title has alot of meaning, and makes the art makes better sense. I like his art. There is alot of it hanging in tattoo shops.