Monday, January 2, 2017

17th-century Oil Paintings in Los Angeles

Rutilio Manetti (Siena)
Dido and Aeneas
ca. 1630
oil on canvas
Los Angeles County Museum of Art

Dido  Properly a surname of the Phoenician goddess of the moon, the wandering Astarte, who was also the goddess of the citadel of Carthage.  The name of this goddess and some traits of her story were transferred to Elissa, daughter of of the Tyrian king Mutton (the Belus or Agenor of the Greeks).  Elissa came from Tyre to Africa, where she founded Carthage.  She was flying from her brother Pygmalion, the murderer of her husband, and paternal uncle Sicharbaal or Sicharbas (called in Greek Acerbas and in Latin Sychaeus).  To escape wedding the barbarian king Iarbas she erected a funeral pyre and stabbed herself upon it.  According to the later story, followed or invented by Virgil, the tragedy was due to her despair at her desertion by Aeneas. 

 from Oskar Seyffert's Dictionary of Classical Mythology, Religion, Literature, and Art, published in German in 1882, translated into English in 1891

Pietro da Cortona (Rome)
Saint Martina
ca. 1635-40
oil on canvas
Los Angeles County Museum of Art

Antoine Le Nain (France)
Three Young Musicians
1630
oil on panel
Los Angeles County Museum of Art

Philippe de Champaigne (France)
Saint Augustine
ca. 1645-50
oil on canvas
Los Angeles County Museum of Art

Giacomo Cavedone (Bologna)
Ascension of Christ
ca. 1640
oil on copper
Los Angeles County Museum of Art

Jacob Jordaens (Flanders)
Allegory of the Poet
ca. 1660
canvas
Los Angeles County Museum of Art

Hendrik Goltzius (Netherlands)
Sleeping Danaë being prepared to receive Jupiter
1603
oil on canvas
Los Angeles County Museum of Art

Rembrandt (Netherlands)
Portrait of Dirck Jansz. Pesser
1631
oil on panel
Los Angeles County Museum of Art

Antoine Coypel (France)
Baptism of Christ
ca. 1690
oil on canvas
Los Angles County Museum of Art

Isaac Moillon (France)
Sophonisba drinking poison
1653
oil on canvas
Los Angeles County Museum of Art

Johann Rottenhammer (Germany)
Suffer the Little Children to come unto Me
1607
oil on copper
Los Angeles County Museum of Art

Georges de La Tour (France)
The Magdalene with smoking flame
ca. 1638-40
oil on canvas
Los Angeles County Museum of Art

Luca Giordano (Naples)
St John the Baptist Preaching
ca. 1695
oil on copper
Los Angeles County Museum of Art

Jacques Stella (France)
Jacob's Ladder
ca. 1650
oil on onyx
Los Angeles County Museum of Art

There was a brief Baroque vogue, as seen above, for composing small paintings on a surface of variegated stone, such as this one on onyx.