Showing posts with label ruins. Show all posts
Showing posts with label ruins. Show all posts

Monday, August 26, 2019

Lambert Sustris (ca. 1515-ca. 1568) - Venice

Lambert Sustris
Judith with the Head of Holofernes
ca. 1548-51
oil on canvas
Palais des Beaux-Arts de Lille

Lambert Sustris
Judith with the Head of Holofernes
ca. 1540-60
oil on panel, transferred to canvas
National Trust, Hatchlands, Surrey

Lambert Sustris
Road to Calvary
ca. 1542-48
oil on canvas
Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan

Lambert Sustris
Noli me tangere
ca. 1548-60
oil on canvas
Palais des Beaux-Arts de Lille

Lambert Sustris
Landscape with Jupiter and Io
ca. 1557-63
oil on canvas
Hermitage, Saint Petersburg

"Another exponent in Venice of Maniera, of a kind that conforms still more recognizably than Schaivone's to the norms of the style outside Venice, is even less than he Venetian in origin: this is Lambert Sustris, an Amsterdamer who came to Venice probably in the middle forties.  We know nothing of his education.  According to Ridolfi he was in Titian's atelier and much employed there in the North European specialty of landscape painting.  He accompanied Titian on his Augsburg trips of 1548 and 1550-51, and remained briefly after Titian left, executing some portraits [examples at the end of this post] that made a skilful compromise between Titian's Augsburg models and a native North European style."

Lambert Sustris
Venus and Cupid
1550
oil on canvas
Musée du Louvre

Lambert Sustris after Titian
Reclining Venus
ca. 1540-65
oil on canvas
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

Lambert Sustris
Dead Christ supported by Angels
before 1568
oil on canvas
Musei di Strada Nuova, Genoa

Lambert Sustris after Titian
Entombment
ca. 1557
oil on canvas
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

Lambert Sustris
Landscape with Shepherd
ca. 1560
oil on canvas
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

Lambert Sustris
Baptism of the Ethiopian Eunuch by the Deacon Philip
ca. 1545-50
oil on canvas
Musée du Louvre

Lambert Sustris
Landscape with Antique Ruins and Bathing Women
ca. 1552-53
oil on canvas
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

"Even in this wholly Italianized guise Sustris retained certain Netherlandish predilections (which he expressed with great skill in his acquired Venetian Maniera vocabulary), especially for small-figure narratives in extensive landscapes.  The paintings of his later years are often sparkling and free in execution, and of a delicacy more precise than Schiavone's; they are more often than Schiavone's responsive to the meanings of their subject matter." 

– S.J. Freedberg from Painting in Italy - 1500 to 1600 in the Pelican History of Art series (London, 1971)

Lambert Sustris
Tobias and the Angel
ca. 1560
oil on canvas
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

Lambert Sustris
Portrait of Wilhelm der Ältere
1548
oil on canvas
Alte Pinakothek, Munich

Lambert Sustris
Portrait of Veronika Vöhlin
1552
oil on canvas
Alte Pinakothek, Munich

Thursday, August 8, 2019

Decorative Paintings, Narrative Paintings

Christoph Unterberger
Study for Ornamental Composition
Ignudi and Grotesques with Allegory of Geometry
1776
oil on canvas
Worcester Art Museum, Worcester, Massachusetts

Christoph Unterberger
Study for Ornamental Composition
Ignudi and Grotesques with Allegory of Painting
1776
oil on canvas
Worcester Art Museum, Worcester, Massachusetts

Christoph Unterberger
Study for Ornamental Composition
Ignudi and Grotesques with Allegory of Poetry
1776
oil on canvas
Worcester Art Museum, Worcester, Massachusetts

Christoph Unterberger
Study for Ornamental Composition
Ignudi and Grotesques with Allegory of Sculpture
1776
oil on canvas
Worcester Art Museum, Worcester, Massachusetts

from An Hymn in Honour of Beauty

How vainly then do idle wits invent,
That beauty is nought else but mixture made
Of colours fair, and goodly temp'rament
Of pure complexions, that shall quickly fade
And pass away, like to a summer's shade;
Or that it is but comely composition
Of parts well measur'd, with meet disposition.

Hath white and red in it such wondrous power,
That it can pierce through th' eyes unto the heart,
And therein stir such rage and restless stour,
As nought but death can stint his dolour's smart?
Or can proportion of the outward part
Move such affection in the inward mind,
That it can rob both sense and reason blind?

Why do not then the blossoms of the field,
Which are array'd with much more orient hue,
And to the sense most dainty odours yield,
Work like impression in the looker's view?
Or why do not fair pictures like power shew,
In which oft-times we nature see of art
Excell'd, in perfect limning every part?

But ah, believe me, there is more than so,
That works such wonders in the minds of men;
I, that have often prov'd, too well it know,
And whoso list the like assays to ken,
Shall find by trial, and confess it then,
That beauty is not, as fond men misdeem,
An outward shew of things, that only seem.

– Edmund Spenser (1596)

attributed to Edward Penny
The Seven Children of Sharington Davenport sketching in a Stage-Set of Roman Ruins
ca. 1750
oil on canvas
National Trust, Lacock Abbey, Wiltshire

follower of Pierre Subleyras
Académie
ca. 1725-75
oil on canvas
Bowes Museum, Barnard Castle, County Durham

follower of Pierre Subleyras
Body of Hector dragged by Achilles around the Walls of Troy
ca. 1725-50
oil on canvas
New Art Gallery, Walsall, West Midlands

Johann Heiss
Minerva presiding over the Arts
before 1704
oil on canvas
private collection

Rembrandt
Minerva in her Study
1631
oil on panel
Gemäldegalerie, Berlin

Guido Cagnacci
Penitent Magdalen
1637
oil on canvas
Chiesa di Santa Maria Maddalena, Urbania

Pieter Lastman
St John the Baptist preaching
1627
oil on panel
Art Institute of Chicago

attributed to Jan Lievens
Vanitas Still Life
1627
oil on panel
Museum de Fundatie, Zwolle

Giovanni Ambrogio Figino
St Matthew writing, guided by an Angel
before 1608
oil on canvas
Chiesa di San Raffaele, Milan

Lucas Cranach the Elder
Hercules dressed as a Woman by Omphale
1537
oil on panel
Herzog Anton Ulrich Museum, Braunschweig

Friday, June 28, 2019

Drawings (Eighteenth-Century Figures and Settings)

Francesco Lorenzi
Drapery Study
before 1787
drawing
Minneapolis Institute of Art

Jean-Baptiste Deshays
Half-figure of a Man
before 1765
drawing
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Francesco Goya
Draped Model from the back
ca. 1771
drawing
Museo del Prado, Madrid

Jacques-Louis David
Figure-study for The Death of Socrates
ca. 1786-87
drawing
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Consider Socrates

                               recumbent
on his cot, draped in a freshly
laundered toga, beard shampooed
and fluffed, the cup of hemlock
in his hand – how, certainly,
the night before, he'd sorted
through his aphorisms, taking
care to jettison any less-than-
cogent thoughts.

                               We all say
we want it to be sudden: a light-
ning bolt to the brain, a stutter
in the arteries, then sleep, or
something like it – our hands still
clutching the rake or an atlas
turned to a map of Afghanistan,
but wouldn't it be better to know?
A three-month

                                         warning
would be nice;  you'd want to burn
those letters nestled in a shoebox
on the closet shelf, finish up
the pint of Seagram's hidden
in the desk's third drawer and
trash the butt-sprung underwear
a derelict would be ashamed
to wear

                        to any accident,
the way, before embarking on a trip
to Buffalo or Budapest, one feels
compelled to mend the toaster,
broken since last New Year's day
and polish up the silver candle-
sticks turned umber on the cupboard
shelf. Some sort

                                       of portent
would be helpful (nothing morbid
or alarming), an angel or your mother,
say, appearing in a dream to whisper
August second, or September tenth,
time enough to put your house
in perfect order before you take
your place among the tidy,
blameless dead.

– Miriam Vermilya (1998)

David Pierre Giottino Humbert de Superville
Académie
1789
drawing
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

Jean-Guillaume Moitte
Kneeling Draped Male Figure
1776
drawing
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Mariano Salvador Maella
Académie
1759
drawing
Museo del Prado, Madrid

follower of Giuseppe Cades
Alexander the Great demonstrating his trust in Philip, his Physician
ca. 1790
drawing with watercolor
Wellcome Collection, London

Anonymous French Artist after Francesco Vanni
Body of St Catherine of Siena carried in Procession
18th century
drawing
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Charles-Michel-Ange Challe
Equestrian Statue of Marcus Aurelius on the Campidoglio, Rome
before 1778
drawing
Harvard Art Museums

François Roettiers
Bacchanal
before 1742
drawing
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Antonio Zucchi
Classical Landscape with Ruined Temple on a Hill and Female Figures below
before 1795
drawing
Art Institute of Chicago

Francesco Guardi
Architectural Fantasy - Figures on a Grand Staircase
before 1793
drawing
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Francesco Guardi and Giacomo Guardi
Partly-ruined Colonnade with Figures
ca. 1780-90
drawing
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Tuesday, June 25, 2019

Made in Italy, 1550-1650 (Drawings)

Benedetto Brandimarti
Sea Dragon
before 1614
drawing
Minneapolis Institute of Art

"Thus he went on growing steadily colder, a tiny planet that offered a prophetic image of the greater, when gradually heat will withdraw from the earth, then life itself.  Then the resurrection will have come to an end, for if, among future generations, the works of men are to shine, there must first of all be men.  If certain kinds of animals hold out longer against the invading chill, when there are no longer any men, if we suppose Bergotte's fame to have lasted so long, suddenly it will be extinguished for all time.  It will not be the last animals that will read him, for it is scarcely probable that, like the Apostles on the Day of Pentecost, they will be able to understand the speech of the various races of mankind without having learned it."

– Marcel Proust, from La Prisonnière (1923), translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff as The Captive (1929)

"Thus he grew colder and colder, a little planet offering a foretaste of what the last days of the big one will be, when first warmth and then life recede from the Earth.  Then there will be an end to resurrection, for however far into the world of future generations the works of men may cast their light, still they will need human beings to see them.  Even if certain animal species stand up better than men to the encroaching cold, and even supposing Bergotte's glory to have survived for so long, at this moment it will suddenly be extinguished for ever.  The last surviving animals will not read him, for it is hardly likely that, like the apostles at Pentecost, they will be able to understand the languages of the various human peoples without having learned them."

– Marcel Proust, from La Prisonnière (1923), translated by Carol Clark as The Prisoner (2002)

follower of Ludovico Carracci
Satyr
ca. 1580-1620
drawing
British Museum

Girolamo Macchietti
Seated Youth
before 1592
drawing
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Matteo Pérez
Flying Angel viewed from behind
1575-76
drawing
British Museum

attributed to Francesco Vanni
Head of a Man with closed eyes
before 1610
drawing
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Francesco Vanni
Study for St Michael casting out Lucifer
ca. 1581-83
drawing
Art Institute of Chicago

Francesco Vanni
Three Studies for
Resurrected Christ adored by a Female Saint and San Silvestro Gozzalini
1607
drawing
Art Institute of Chicago

Francesco Vanni
Two Ecclesiastics - Study for The Disputation on the Holy Sacrament
ca. 1606-1610
drawing
Art Institute of Chicago

Giovanni de' Vecchi
St John the Evangelist
(study for fresco)
1598-99
drawing
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Tanzio da Varallo
Study for the Kneeling Virgin
ca. 1625
drawing
Getty Museum, Los Angeles

Paolo Farinati
Arena at Verona
before 1606
drawing
Morgan Library, New York

attributed to Giovanni Guerra
Design for a Wall Decoration with the Borghese Coat of Arms
before 1618
drawing
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

workshop of Angelo Michele Colonna
Design for Decorated Ceiling with Foreshortened Balustrade
ca. 1650
drawing
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Louis Finson
Diana and Apollo slaying the Children of Niobe
before 1617
drawing
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam