Tuesday, March 31, 2015

Giandomenico

Blind Cupid

These skies full of winged beings were brought into existence by Giandomenico Tiepolo (1727-1804), son of the more renowned Giambattista Tiepolo (1696-1770).

Giandomenico inherited his father's visual vocabulary  the weightless goings-on among clouds; the mythical creatures and caricatures; elderly exotics, magicians, temples fragments. The son did little to alter his father's formulas, contenting himself with faithfully carrying them forward.

Blind Cupid

Blind Cupid

Cherubs

Angels

Centaur and Satyr

Centauress and Satyr

Satyr Family

Heads of Satyrs

Seahorse and Dolphin

Rest on the Flight into Egypt

Magician and Altar

Sacrifice of Isaac
c. 1755

Dance in the Country
c. 1755

All from the Metropolitan Museum.

Monday, March 30, 2015

Granodiorite

Male God
granodiorite
Egypt
c. 1390-1352 BC

The Metropolitan Museum in New York now makes most publications from past years freely available online. Because they do, I could browse the museum's Bulletin and discover Recent Aquisitions : A Selection : 1996-1997. Among the back-stories of the various objects was the following about an Egyptian statue broken apart in ancient times but fated to be put back together again in New York at the end of the 20th century 

"The opportunity rarely arises of reuniting long-separated sculptural fragments to create a virtually complete Egyptian statue. The head of a god, acquired by the Museum in 1919, has long held a prominent position among works from the time of Amenhotep III. The torso, in a private collection for three decades, was only recently recognized as belonging to the head. The attire and the divine war-scepter held vertically in front of the body identify it also as part of a god's statue. The style dates it to the reign of Amenhotep III. Although the surfaces of the two pieces indicate that they spent most of the past three millennia in different environments, the dimensions and the position of the break in each suggested a match. When brought together, they fit exactly. The specific god represented here cannot be determined, since no identifying inscription or attributes are preserved. However, the statue almost certainly belongs to the series of divine images installed by Amenhotep III in his vast mortuary temple, which once stood behind the so-called Colossi of Memnon in western Thebes. The sculptures symbolized the congregation of gods at Amenhotep's heb sed, a festival commemorating thirty years of his reign and intended to rejuvenate the aging king."

Elsewhere on the Met site I discovered that the stone called granodiorite can only be distinguished from granite by proportional analysis of component elements (though one assumes the Egyptians themselves had other ways of making the distinction). I searched for additional Met sculpture from Egypt made of granodiorite. Here are the ones with highest index marks for visual allure 

Goddess Sakhmet
granodiorite
Egypt
c. 1390-1352 BC

Nectanebo II Offers to Osiris Hemag
granodiorite
Egypt
c. 360-343 BC

Pair statue of Neferkhawet and Rennefer
granodiorite
Egypt
c. 1479-1450 BC

Seated Statue
granodiorite
Egypt
c. 1950-1640 BC

Head of the God Amun
granodiorite
Egypt
c. 1336-1327 BC

Sunday, March 29, 2015

Pinky








On Sunday afternoon we played with Mabel's doll named Pinky, the one that came in a box with a large wardrobe of clothes last Christmas. The two of us had to function as a coordinated team in order to make the tiny socks go on.




Saturday, March 28, 2015

Mabel Polaroids











My daughter's weekly Mabel-Polaroids from January through March cover (in only ten weeks) a wide range of the ways life conveys meaning to a four-and-a-half-year-old.

Such as  treats, festivities, milestones, artifacts, friends, adventures, improvisations.

Friday, March 27, 2015

Small Scenes

Eos Pursuing Tithonos
c. 460 BC

Staff photographers at the Metropolitan Museum in New York spend their days pursuing the most revealing angles to allow viewing of the small scenes from myth and life represented on the sloping external curves of the kylix, the wide shallow two-handled drinking-vessel of classical Greece.

Athletes
510 BC

Amazonomachy
c. 540 BC

Youths & Horses
c. 510-500 BC

Men & Youths
c. 480-470 BC

Stylized Eyes with Dancers
c. 520-510 BC

Youths
490 BC

Symposium
500 BC

Symposium
c. 480-470 BC

Symposium
c. 480 BC

Symposium
c. 500 BC

Youths
c. 480-470 BC