Monday, December 7, 2020

Beguilements of the Lifeless

Anonymous Artist working in the Alpine Region
Open Missal
ca. 1490-1510
oil on panel
(cut down from larger work)
private collection

Andrea del Sarto
The Eucharist
(detail of Pietà with Saints)
ca. 1523-24
oil on panel
Palazzo Pitti, Florence

Anonymous Spanish Artist
Memento Mori
ca. 1550
oil on panel
private collection

Girolamo Macchietti
Lighted Lamp on a Table
(detail of Charity of St Nicholas of Bari)
ca. 1570
oil on canvas
National Gallery, London

Johannes Torrentius
Still Life with a Bridle
1614
oil on panel
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

The documentary film Mysterious Masterpiece, released in 2016, investigates the life of 17th century Dutch master Johannes Torrentius and his enigmatic Still Life with a Bridle – the only painting from his hand that has survived.  It was found in 1914 in a small provincial town in the Netherlands, where it had served for years as the lid of a raisin barrel in a grocery shop.  How it was made remains a mystery. Traces of oil paint were never found, nor any brushstrokes.  According to the painter himself, he never used brushes.  He lay his panels flat on the floor, mixed his pigments, and when the work was finished, he declared, one could hear the sweet humming of bees above the panel. Torrentius was a libertine and possibly a Rosicrucian.  He was jailed in 1627, tortured, and condemned to twenty years imprisonment for heresy and blasphemy.  Most of his works were confiscated.  After spending two years in jail he was permitted by the Dutch royal family to leave the country as a gesture to serve the art-collecting ambitions of the English king Charles I.  Still Life with a Bridle was painted for Charles and bears his cipher on the back, but was dispersed in the 1650s (along with much of the rest of his collection) after the king's execution under the triumphant Commonwealth.   

– adapted from publicity materials for the Torrentius documentary

Matteo Loves
The Magdalen contemplating a Crucifix (detail)
ca. 1630
oil on canvas
Fondazione Cavallini Sgarbi, Ferrara

Harmen Steenwijck
Vanitas Still Life
ca. 1640
oil on panel
National Gallery, London

Hubert van Ravesteyn
Still Life
before 1691
oil on panel
Guildhall Art Gallery, London

follower of Pieter van Roestraten
Teapot, Ginger Jar and Slave Candlestick
ca. 1695
oil on canvas
Victoria & Albert Museum, London

Adriaen Coorte
Five Shells on a Stone Shelf
1696
oil on panel
Musée du Louvre

Nicolas de Largillière
Portrait of the Duchess of Beaufort (detail)
ca. 1730
oil on canvas
Musée Cognacq-Jay, Paris

Henk Bremmer
Still Life with Books and Chinese Vase
1895
oil on canvas
Indianapolis Museum of Art

Tiffany & Co., New York
The Wade Necklace
ca. 1900
diamonds set in platinum and gold
Cleveland Museum of Art

Koloman Moser (designer)
Wastebasket produced by the Wiener Werkstätte
ca. 1904
painted sheet-metal
Musée d'Orsay, Paris
 
Kurt Schwitters
Untitled (Relief with Red Pyramid)
ca. 1927-30
oil paint on wood-relief, mounted on plywood
Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh