Monday, June 12, 2017

Genuine Old Master Paintings on Copper and Stone

Sebastiano del Piombo
Portrait of Pope Clement VII
ca. 1531
oil on slate
Getty Museum, Los Angeles

Hans von Aachen
The Amazement of the Gods
ca. 1590-1600
oil on copper
National Gallery, London

"The relation of this new artistic viewpoint to the problem of space is especially interesting and important.  An upholder of the normative, who feels in a classic way, will take for granted an unambiguous, constructed space in which equally unambiguous fixed figures move and act.  It is not familiar, visual space dissolved in light and air, for the most part optically judged, that the adherent of the normative strives for, but a space which expresses or should express a higher reality purified of everything accidental.  However, the figures of the rhythmic anticlassical painter function otherwise, for in themselves they express neither an established rule of nature, nor any unambiguous relation to understood space.  In a word, for them the problem of three-dimensional space vanishes, or can do so.  The volumes of the bodes more or less displace the space, that is, they themselves create the space.  This already implies that an art of purely flat surfaces is as little involved here as one which is perspective and spatial.  A certain effect of depth is often achieved through adding up layers of volumes of this sort, along with an evasion of perspective.  In the struggle between picture surface and the presentation of depth in space, which is of such vital importance throughout the whole history of art, this is a particularly interesting solution.  A peculiarly unstable situation is created: the stress on the surfaces, on the picture planes, set behind each other in relief layers, does not permit any very plastic or three-dimensional volumes of the bodies to come through in full force, while at the same time it hinders the three-dimensional bodies from giving any very flat impression. . . . In anticlassic Mannerism the figures remain plastic and have volume even if they are unreal in the normative sense, while space, if it is present at all apart from the volumes, is not pushed to the point where it produces an effect of reality. . . . The whole bent of anticlassical art is basically subjective, since it would construct and individually reconstruct from the inside out, from the subject outward, freely, according to the rhythmic feeling present in the artist, while classic art, socially oriented, seeks to crystalize the object for eternity by working out from the regular, from what is valid for everyone."

 from The Anticlassical Style by Walter Friedlaender, originally published as a journal article in Germany in 1925, translated and published in Mannerism and Anti-Mannerism in Italian Painting (Columbia University Press, 1957)

Alessandro Allori
Body of Christ anointed by two Angels
ca. 1593
oil on copper
Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest

Francesco Albani
Madonna and Child with Angels
ca. 1610-15
oil on slate
Pinacoteca Capitolina, Rome

Ambrosius Bosschaert
Bouquet of flowers in glass vase
1621
oil on copper
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Cornelis van Poelenburgh
Miniature portrait of Jan Pellicorne
ca. 1626
oil on copper
Walters Art Museum, Baltimore

Bartolomé Murillo
The Nativity
ca. 1665-70
oil on obsidian
Museum of Fine Arts, Houston

Claude-Joseph Vernet (1714-1789) painted The Four Times of Day as a series on copper (below)  canvases now located in Australia.  The artist executed similar works on canvas for the Paris Salon of 1763, when Denis Diderot wrote  "Lighting effects that couldn't be more beautifully controlled.  Examining these works, I can't get over the special talents, the specific strengths distinguishing them from one another; what results from this?  In the end, you begin to think this artist has every talent, that he's capable of anything." 

Claude-Joseph Vernet
The Four Times of Day - Morning
1757
oil on copper
Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide

Claude-Joseph Vernet
The Four Times of Day - Mid-day
1757
oil on copper
Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide

Claude-Joseph Vernet
The Four Times of Day - Evening
1757
oil on copper
Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide

Claude-Joseph Vernet
The Four Times of Day - Night
1757
oil on copper
Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide

William H. Craft
Portrait of George Stubbs, ARA
1775
enamel on copper
Yale Center for British Art

John Francis Rigaud
Captain Vincenzo Lunardi with his assistant George Biggin
and Mrs. Letitia Anne Sage in a Balloon

1785
oil on copper
Yale Center for British Art

Johann Georg Platzer
Dancing Scene with Palace Interior
ca. 1730-35
oil on copper
Skokloster Castle, Sweden

Johann Georg Platzer
Fountain Scene in front of a Palace
ca. 1730-35
oil on copper
Skokloster Castle, Sweden