Sunday, October 9, 2016

Italian Painting (1500-1520)

Francesco Marmitta
Madonna and Child with St Benedict and St Quentin
ca. 1500-1505
oil on panel
Louvre

Sandro Botticelli
Mystical Nativity (detail)
ca. 1500
tempera on canvas
National Gallery, London

Luca Signorelli
Christ in the garden of Gethsemane
1502
oil on panel
Museo Diocesano, Cortona

"If there is any causal connection at all between the beautiful and the ugly, it is from the ugly as cause to the beautiful as effect, and not the other way around. To put a complete ban on the concept of beauty would be as damaging for aesthetics as would the removal of the concept of psyche from psychology or that of society from sociology. The definition of aesthetics as being the theory of the beautiful, however, is sterile because the formal character of the concept of beauty tends to miss the bountiful content of the aesthetical. If aesthetics were nothing but an exhaustive and systematic list of all that can be called beautiful, we would gain no understanding of the dynamic life inherent in the concept of beauty. Actually, this concept is only a moment in the totality of aesthetic reflection. It points to something essential without being able to articulate that essence directly. To be sure, if people did not make statements about this or that artefact being beautiful in some manner or other, then all the interest in such an artefact would be unintelligible and nobody, artists and spectators alike, would have any reason to participate in that exodus from the realm of practical ends  in essence, self-preservation and the pleasure principle  an exodus that art by its very nature dictates."

 from Aesthetic Theory by Theodor Adorno (1970)

Andrea Solario
Crucifixion
1503
oil on panel
Louvre

Mariotto Albertinelli
The Visitation
1503
oil on panel
Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence

Vittore Carpaccio
The Annuncation
1504
oil and tempera on canvas
Ca' d'Oro, Venice

Andrea Mantegna
Introduction of the Cult of Cybele to Rome
1505-06
tempera on canvas
National Gallery, London

Giovanni Bellini
Sacra Conversazione
ca. 1505-1510
oil on panel
Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid

Titian
Rustic Idyll
ca. 1507-08
oil on panel
Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University

Andrea Solario
The Lamentation
ca. 1509
oil on panel
Louvre

Leonardo da Vinci
Leda and the Swan
ca. 1510-15
oil on panel
Galleria Borghese, Rome

Vittore Carpaccio
Sermon of St Stephen
1514
tempera on canvas
Louvre

Sebastiano del Piombo
The Visitation
1518-19
oil on panel transferred to canvas
Louvre

Raphael and workshop
Portrait of a young man
1518-19
oil on panel
Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid