Wednesday, April 13, 2016

Skies and their clouds in European paintings, 17th century

Domenichino
Landscape with the Burning Bush
ca. 1610-15
oil on copper
Metropolitan Museum of Art

Photographs of the sky or moving-picture reproductions of the sky have of course proliferated to infinity during the past century or so. Novel perspectives (achieved by additional machinery) supply images of the sky from all-new angles. These quick-to-read two-dimensional facsimiles, by a process of spontaneous aggression, attempt to write over and cancel out with their definiteness and overt beauty those clusters of confusing formless hints supplied directly to humans for thousands of generations by their senses.

This conflict of perceptions had not yet arisen in the 17th century. Skies as represented in European paintings of that period never attempt to set themselves in competition with outdoor reality. Unlike skies on film, these painted skies (products of a long manual tradition) make no claims at all against atmospheric actuality.

Andrea Sacchi
Mythological ceiling fresco with Muses
1629-30
Palazzo Barberini, Rome

Adriaen van de Velde
Golfers on the Ice near Haarlem
1668
National Gallery, London

Charles Le Brun
Ceiling with martial glorification of Louis XIV
1681-84
Versailles

Joost II de Momper
Landscape with sea view
ca. 1623
Prado

Jan van der Heyden 
Amsterdam city view with the old Haarlemmersluis 
ca. 1670 
Rijksmuseum

workshop of Gerrit van Honthorst
Putti and cupids with gardland
ca, 1650
Rijksmuseum

Gerrit Adriaens Berckheyde
View of the Golden Bend in the Herengracht, Amsterdam
1671-72
Rijksmuseum

Philips Wouwerman
Procession of travelers with a carriage
ca. 1660-62
Prado

Claude de Jongh
Old London Bridge from the west
1650
Victoria & Albert Museum

Ludolf Bakhuizen
Beach scene
ca. 1665
National Gallery, London

Jan Frans van Bloemen
Landscape with waterfall
ca, 1700
Prado

Gaspare Vanvitelli
View of Venice
1697
Prado

Frans Snyders
An owl in the sky surrounded by a variety of hostile birds
17th century
Prado