Tuesday, December 13, 2016

Baroque-Era Figure-Painting

Alessandro Turchi (Verona)
David with the Head of Goliath
17th century
oil on canvas
private collection

"Sublime begins to acquire its modern resonances in the seventeenth century when it appears in the translation of a fragmentary Greek text on rhetoric by the anonymous Roman-era author known as Longinus. The first translation of this work, Du Sublime (1674), by Nicolas Boileau, signaled a new interest in the investigation of powerful emotional effects in art. Longinus had declared that true nobility in art and life was to be discovered  through a confrontation with the threatening and unknown, and drew attention to anything in art that challenges our capacity to understand and fills us with wonder. The sublime artist was, according to Longinus, a kind of superhuman figure capable  of rising above arduous and ominous events and experiences in order to produce a nobler and more refined style."

– Simon Morley, from The Sublime (MIT Press, 2010)

Pier Francesco Mola (Rome)
David with the Head of Goliath
ca. 1660-63
oil on canvas
private collection

Andrea Vaccaro (Naples)
David with the Head of Goliath
1631-32
oil on canvas
private collection

Andrea Vaccaro (Naples)
Martyrdom of St Bartholomew
mid-17th century
oil on canvas
private collection

Andrea Vaccaro (Naples)
Martyrdom of St Sebastian
ca. 1640
oil on canvas
private collection

Anthony van Dyck (Flanders)
Jupiter and Antiope
early 17th century
oil on canvas
Museum of Fine Arts, Ghent

Anthony van Dyck (Flanders)
Sir George Villiers and Lady Katherine Manners as Adonis and Venus
ca. 1620
oil on canvas
private collection

Pier Francesco Mola (Rome)
Bacchus overseeing Satyrs crushing grapes
1648-49
oil on canvas
private collection

Dirck van Baburen (Netherlands)
Prometheus chained by Vulcan
1623
oil on canvas
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

Charles Le Brun (France)
Pietà
1643-45
oil on canvas
Louvre

Sébastien Bourdon (France)
Deposition
ca. 1640-43
oil on canvas
private collection

Hendrick ter Brugghen (Netherlands)
Crucifixion with Virgin and St John
1624-25
oil on canvas
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Hendrick ter Brugghen (Netherlands)
Woman playing a Lute
1624-26
oil on canvas
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

Guido Reni (Bologna)
Baptism of Christ
ca. 1623
oil on canvas
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna