Showing posts with label elephants. Show all posts
Showing posts with label elephants. Show all posts

Sunday, August 21, 2016

18th-century Drawings (and Elephant) from Italy

Antonio Basoli
Scene in Arcady
18th century
drawing
Morgan Library, New York

Andrea Locatelli
Landscape with figures
18th century
drawing
Prado

Aureliano Milani
Hilly landscape
18th century
drawing
Metropolitan Museum of Art

Fired at first sight with what the Muse imparts,
In fearless youth we tempt the heights of Arts,
While from the bounded level of our mind,
Short views we take, nor see the lengths behind;
But more advanc'd, behold with strange surprize
New distant scenes of endless science rise!
So pleas'd at first the tow'ring Alps we try,
Mount o'er the vales, and seem to tread the sky,
Th' eternal snows appear already past,
And the first clouds and mountains seem the last:
But, these attain'd, we tremble to survey
The growing labours of the lengthen'd way,
Th' increasing prospect tires our wand'ring eyes,
Hills peep o'er hills, and Alps on Alps arise!

– from the Essay on Criticism of Alexander Pope (1711)

Marco Ricci
Travelers in an Italian Landscape
18th century
drawing
Morgan Library, New York

Gian Paolo Panini
Sack of a city
18th century
drawing
British Museum

Giovanni Battista Piazzetta
Executioner displaying severed head
18th century
drawing
Metropolitan Museum of Art

Giovanni Battista Piazzetta
Studies of hands
18th century
drawing
Morgan Library, New York

Giovanni Battista Piazzetta
Studies of torsos
18th century
drawing
Morgan Library, New York

Giovanni Battista Piazzetta
Youth in profile
ca. 1715-18
drawing
British Museum

Giambattista Tiepolo
Head of a Magus
18th century
drawing
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

Carlo Bianconi
Studies of heads
18th century
drawing
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

Giambattista Tiepolo & workshop
Personification of Fortitude with an obelisk
1760
fresco (detached)
Metropolitan Museum of Art

Rosalba Carriera
Muse
1720s
pastel
Getty Museum, Los Angeles

Giacomo Zoffoli
Elephant
18th century
gilt bronze
Prado

Tuesday, July 14, 2015

Dancing Dogs

Groom Leading Horse

Turkish Rider with Archer and Dog

Head of Horse

Charcoal drawings, ink drawings, crayon drawings, wash drawings by Giandomenico Tiepolo (1727-1804) from collections at the Morgan Library in New York (prime refuge of Italian rococo).

Session of the Magistrates

Quack Dentist

Dead Soldier

Saint Philip and the Ethiopian Eunuch

Punchinello with the Triumph of Flora

Punchinello and Elephant

Marriage Feast of Punchinello's Parents

Dancing Dogs

Assumption of the Virgin

Joachim's Offering Refused

God the Father and Holy Spirit with Dead Christ at Foot of Cross

Trinity in Glory

Study of an Angel

Wednesday, January 21, 2015

Savery

Portrait & biography of Roelant Savery
published by Jean-Baptiste Deschamps
1753

Roelant Savery (1576-1639) was a Flemish-born painter who spent his life in the Netherlands. There, he participated in the merry summertime of cultural creativity that followed the expulsion of the Spaniards. This artist's preference for craggy Germanic landscapes set him apart from the 17th century European mainstream.

Mountainous Landscape with Castle
1609

Crab Fishermen
c. 1610

Courtyard with Beggar Woman
c. 1608

Seated Man, Drawn from Life
c. 1606-09

Seated Woman, Drawn from Life
c. 1603-09

Elephant Rubbing Against a Tree
c. 1608-12

Dapple Grey
c. 1625-30

Landscape with Temptation of St. Anthony
1617

Three Stags in Landscape
1620s

Landscape with Birds
1628

Still Life with Crown Imperial
1624

Flower Still Life
1612

Savery is remembered today less for his landscapes and more for his flower studies (as above). People who study flower studies declare that Savery's flower studies are very good ones. But he is most famous for the pleasure he took in repeatedly painting the Dodo (as below) which humans were successfully driving to extinction during his lifetime.  

Edwards' Dodo
1626

Friday, January 9, 2015

Galerie



In the late 1520s the French king Francis I caused a new gallery to be built at his palace of Fontainebleau. During the next decade the King recruited numerous Italian artists to supply suitably exotic decorations on grand historical and mythological themes. The resulting Mannerist frescoes, much influenced by Michelangelo, boosted the reputation of Francis as a monarch of advanced taste. The two chief painters were Rosso Fiorentino (1494-1540) and Francesco Primaticcio (1504-1570). Retrievable images of the frescoes came supplied with titles in Italian, which I have retained.

Elefante reale

Cleobi e Bitone

Bagno di Pallade

Illuminazione

Lotta tra Centauri e Lapiti

Sacrificio

Morte di Adone

Educazione di Achille

Vendetta di Nauplio





"The most amazing thing about history is how easily it disappears. The dead are truly wiped away; their monuments are used merely to regulate traffic; their books are grassy country graves. Every person who lives is the barbarian of what has just lived. If we look into the past, we find only a stubborn reverberation of images, a droning of harsh voices. And in between are vast opaque zones without sound. The invisible are grateful to us if we perceive this awesome distance, this majestic muteness. They reserve their greatest contempt for those who treat the past with cordial familiarity." 

– Roberto Calasso
The Ruin of Kasch