Saturday, June 1, 2024

Occupied Interiors

Gravelot (Hubert-François Bourguignon)
Study - Two Gentlemen standing in the Corridor of a Palace I
before 1773
drawing
Minneapolis Institute of Art

Gravelot (Hubert-François Bourguignon)
Study - Two Gentlemen standing in the Corridor of a Palace II
before 1773
drawing
Minneapolis Institute of Art

Gravelot (Hubert-François Bourguignon)
Study - Two Gentlemen standing in the Corridor of a Palace III
before 1773
drawing
Minneapolis Institute of Art

Gravelot (Hubert-François Bourguignon)
Scene in a Painter's Studio
before 1773
etching
Minneapolis Institute of Art

Vilhelm Hammershøi
Woman standing at a Table
1888
oil on canvas
Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen

Edward Hopper
East Side Interior
1922
etching
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot
Corot's Studio
with a Woman before an Easel

ca. 1868
oil on panel
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Lee Miller
Portrait of Jean Arp, Switzerland
1947
gelatin silver print
Scottish National Gallery, Edinburgh

Bernard van Orley
The Annunciation
ca. 1518
oil on panel
National Gallery of Norway, Oslo

Édouard Vuillard
Maternité
1896
lithograph
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Robert Walter Weir
Taking the Veil
1863
oil on canvas
Yale University Art Gallery

Christian Krohg
Mother at Child's Bed
1884
oil on canvas
National Gallery of Norway, Oslo

Arie Johannes Lamme
Meditation –
a Lady looking out of a Window

ca. 1840
oil on canvas
Victoria & Albert Museum, London

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner
Head-Waiter in Café
1904
color woodblock print
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

John Singer Sargent
Portrait of Margaret Stuyvesant Rutherfurd
(Mrs Henry White)

1883
oil on canvas
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Alphonse Legros
May Service for Young Women
1868
oil on canvas
Victoria & Albert Museum, London

     "There was no end to the predictions of catastrophes: floods, hail of fire, havoc-wreaking disasters that would cause full-scale panic. Fifty-six authors and one hundred thirty-three pamphlets devoted to forecasts and astrological calculations have been counted for the decade 1520-30.  Two obsessions that recur constantly are the end of the world and the destruction of Rome and the papacy.  . . .  And so, while the doctrine espoused by the Medici popes – which in fact was the traditional position of the Church – declared the inviolability of the papal city, everything conspired to make the humiliation of the Holy See and the destruction of the Eternal City a necessary disaster. The collective subconscious in Italy as well as in Germany was stirred up by the popular belief in portents and celestial omens: it viewed the attack on Rome as symptomatic of Christianity's ultimate crisis. For Lutherans, from a religious viewpoint, the symbolic sack of Rome became indispensable to the renewal of Christian faith. The fears and stirrings came to a head in the tension following 1525. Imperial policy, like the pope's, entered into a fatal stage of development in which the details were surprising, but the fundamental ideas remained consistent with the thinking of Charles's entourage: the pope, minister of human souls, had to be subordinated to the emperor, administrator of the world."

– André Chastel, The Sack of Rome, 1527, translated by Beth Archer, 1983 (expanded from the A.W. Mellon Lectures in the Fine Arts, 1977, and published by Princeton University Press and the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.)