Showing posts with label purple. Show all posts
Showing posts with label purple. Show all posts

Wednesday, July 16, 2025

Purple Elements

Stephan Krotowski
Irrigal Tabletten
ca. 1910
lithograph (poster)
Kunstbibliothek, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

Kjell Abramson
Family Picture
ca. 1960
oil pastels on paper
Moderna Museet, Stockholm

Martin Kippenberger
Gerd + Martin Kippenberger
Sand in the Vaseline

1986
screenprint (poster)
Museum Folkwangm, Essen

Alessandro Allori
Portrait of a Woman
ca. 1570-80
oil on canvas
Saint Louis Art Museum

Hanne Borchgrevink
Shed
1990
acrylic on canvas
KORO (Public Art Norway), Oslo

Anonymous Russian Artist
Every contribution to the consumer
cooperative is a step on the road to the
Socialist transformation of the countryside

1931
lithograph (poster)
Moderna Museet, Stockholm

Lovis Corinth
Inn Valley Landscape
1910
oil on canvas
Alte Nationalgalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

Roar Wold
Red Room
1972
acrylic on canvas
Nasjonalmuseet, Oslo

Louis-Georges-Eléonor Roy
Figure in Moonlight
1887
gouache on paper
Norton Simon Museum, Pasadena

Josh Smith
Untitled
2012
oil on canvas
Moderna Museet, Stockholm

Sam Francis
Keep Smiling
1974
acrylic on paper
Moderna Museet, Stockholm

Marsden Hartley
White Top Mountain, New Hampshire
1930
oil on board
Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh

Henri Matisse
Moroccan Landscape
1912
oil on canvas
Moderna Museet, Stockholm

Carl Moll
Blooming Lilac in Heldenplatz, Vienna
ca. 1900
oil on canvas
Belvedere Museum, Vienna

Thomas Theodor Heine
Portrait of publisher Albert Langer in his Garden
1905
oil on panel
Lenbachhaus, Munich

Fanny Hjelm
Early Summer Bouquet
1940
watercolor and gouache on paper
Prins Eugens Waldemarsudde, Stockholm

Half a mile outside the village, they embraced for the last time, Kalasiris the men, Charikleia the women, and clasped right hands, praying, amid a flood of tears, that better fortune would attend their parting.  Knemon asked them to forgive him for not accompanying them, having but recently embarked upon the estate of matrimony; he said he would catch up with them if the opportunity arose – but he did not mean it.  Then they parted.  Knemon, Nausikles, and the rest returned to Chemmis, but the first action of Charikleia and Kalasiris was to change their clothes and adopt the guise of beggars, using rags they had ready for this purpose to turn themselves into paupers.  Then Charikleia befouled her face, smearing soot and daubing mud on it to make it dirty, and arranged a filthy shawl skew-whiff on her head so that the edge of it hung down over one eye like a crazy veil.  Under her arm she slung a pouch, apparently to serve as a receptacle for bits of bread and scraps of food, though in fact it had the more important function of containing her sacred Delphic robe and crown and the treasures and tokens of recognition that her mother had laid beside her when she was abandoned.  Kalasiris wrapped Charikleia's quiver in some tattered bits of sheepskin and carried it slung crosswise over this shoulders as if it were merely another bit of baggage.  He unstrung her bow, and, as soon as it had straightened out, he held it like a staff, leaning on it with all his weight; and whenever he saw that he was about to encounter someone on the road, he assumed a stoop even greater than his years compelled and developed a limp in one leg; sometimes he had Charikleia lead him by the arm.

– Heliodorus, from The Aethiopica, or, Theagenes and Charikleia (3rd or 4th century AD), translated from Greek by J.R. Morgan (1989)

Tuesday, August 25, 2020

Renaissance Piety (Narratives and Figures) - I

Giovanni Baronzio
The Nativity and The Adoration of the Magi
ca. 1325-50
tempera on panel
Courtauld Gallery, London

Carlo Crivelli
The Immaculate Conception
1492
tempera on panel
National Gallery, London

Carlo Crivelli
Madonna della Rondine
ca. 1490-1500
tempera and oil on panel
National Gallery, London

Anonymous Italian Artist working in Florence
Virgin and Child with St John the Baptist and an Angel
ca. 1450-1500
tempera on panel
National Gallery, London

Juan de Flandes
Christ appearing to the Virgin with the Redeemed of the Old Testament
ca. 1499-1500
oil on panel
National Gallery, London

Hans Memling
The Donne Triptych
Virgin and Child with Saints and Donors
1478
oil on panel
(formerly in the Devonshire collection at Chatsworth)
National Gallery, London

Hans Memling
The Donne Triptych
St John the Baptist
1478
oil on panel
(formerly in the Devonshire collection at Chatsworth)
National Gallery, London

          Purple –

The Color of a Queen, is this –
The Color of a Sun
At setting – this and Amber –
Beryl – and this, at Noon –

And when at night – Auroran widths
Fling suddenly on Men –
'Tis this – and Witchcraft – nature keeps
A Rank – for Iodine –

– Emily Dickinson (1864)

Hans Memling
The Donne Triptych
St John the Evangelist
1478
oil on panel
(formerly in the Devonshire collection at Chatsworth)
National Gallery, London

Gerard David
Virgin and Child with Saints and Donor
ca. 1510
oil on panel
National Gallery, London

follower of Jan Gossaert
The Magdalen
ca. 1500-1525
oil on panel
National Gallery, London

Quentin Metsys
Virgin and Child with Angels
ca. 1500-1510
oil on panel
Courtauld Gallery, London

Master of Frankfurt
Holy Family with Music-Making Angels
ca. 1505
oil on panel
Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool

Master of Saint Severin
Adoration of the Magi
ca. 1500-1515
tempera and oil on panel
Bowes Museum, Barnard Castle, County Durham

Raffaellino del Garbo
St John the Baptist
ca. 1505
tempera on panel
Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya, Barcelona

Raffaellino del Garbo
Virgin adoring the Child
with St John the Baptist, St Lawrence, and the Magdalen

before 1524
tempera on panel
Christ Church, University of Oxford

Friday, January 20, 2017

Carved Amethysts from Ancient Rome

Intaglio - Profile of a Woman
Roman Empire
1st century BC
amethyst
Hermitage, Saint Petersburg

"Some things are hastening to be, others to have come and gone, and a part of what is coming into being is already extinct. Flux and change renew the world incessantly, as the unbroken passage of time makes boundless eternity ever young. In this river, therefore, on which he cannot stand, which of these things that race past him should a man greatly prize? As though a boy should begin to set his heart on one of the little sparrows that fly past, when already it is gone away out of his sight. Truly the life of every man is itself as fleeting as the exhalation of spirit from his blood or the breath he draws from the atmosphere. For just as it is to draw a single breath and to return it, which we do every moment, so is it to render back the whole power of respiration, which you acquired but yesterday or the day before, at birth, to that other world from which you first drew it in."  

 from Meditations: VI of Marcus Aurelius (AD 121-180) translated by A.S.L. Farquharson (Clarendon Press, 1944)

Intaglio - Bacchante
Roman Empire
1st century BC
amethyst
Hermitage, Saint Petersburg

Intaglio - Medusa
Roman Empire
1st century BC
amethyst
Hermitage, Saint Petersburg

Intaglio - Cockfight
Roman Empire
1st century BC
amethyst
Hermitage, Saint Petersburg

Intaglio - The Goddess Victoria
Roman Empire
1st century BC
amethyst
Hermitage, Saint Petersburg

Intaglio - Apollo
Roman Empire
1st century BC - 1st century AD
amethyst
Hermitage, Saint Petersburg

Intaglio - The Goddess Fortuna
Roman Empire
1st century BC - 1st century AD
amethyst
Hermitage, Saint Petersburg

Intaglio - The Nymph Aura
Roman Empire
1st century BC - 1st century AD
amethyst
Hermitage, Saint Petersburg

Intaglio - Emperor Claudius
Roman Empire
1st century AD
amethyst
Hermitage, Saint Petersburg

Intaglio - Mercury
Roman Empire
1st century AD
amethyst
Hermitage, Saint Petersburg

Intaglio - Krater and Vine
Roman Empire
1st century AD
amethyst
Hermitage, Saint Petersburg

Intaglio - Abduction of Europa
Roman Empire
1st century AD
amethyst
Hermitage, Saint Petersburg

Intaglio - Emperor Commodus as Jupiter
Roman Empire
2nd century AD
amethyst
Hermitage, Saint Petersburg

Intaglio - An Emperor as Hermes
Roman Empire
4th century AD
amethyst
Hermitage, Saint Petersburg

Wednesday, March 9, 2016

European still life images, 17th-20th centuries

Lumière Brothers
Lilacs
ca. 1898
autochrome
Getty Museum, Los Angeles

This is a group of posed objects. They are disposed, for the most part, on level indoor surfaces. What unites them is the absence of human beings, even while the recent presence of human beings is absolutely implied in every case. Nobody can look at any deliberate arrangement of anything for very long without wondering about the arranger. So these pictures of things are also pictures of human presence, but a presence expressed through its immediate absence.

Pieter Steenwijck
Vanitas
ca. 1635-40
oil on canvas
Prado

Anne Vallayer-Coster
Vase of flowers and conch shell
1780
oil on canvas
Metropolitan Museum of Art

Anne Valleyer-Coster (1744-1818) exhibited the flower piece above (or one very like it) at the Paris Salon of 1781. Diderot at the end of his life praised her work, and he was a critic whose praise was never casually bestowed. She painted for the Bourbons before the Revolution and for Napoleon afterwards. The little conch with its amazing red highlights surely is entitled to stand up right this minute and articulate its claim to be recognized as the absolute Platonic paradigm of all painted seashells.

Sebastian Stoskopff
Still life with nautilus, panther shell, and chip-wood box
ca. 1630
oil on canvas
Metropolitan Museum of Art

Pierre Auguste Renoir
Bouquet of chrysanthemums
1881
oil on canvas
Metropolitan Museum of Art

Giorgio Morandi
Still life with bottle
1949
drawing
Clark Art Institute

Giorgio Morandi (1890-1964) drew Still life with bottle in 1949. His work was unfavorably, even harshly regarded by the Fascist officials who ran things in Italy during much of his adult life. In the very middle of World War II, critic Giovanni Scheiwiller felt himself called upon to defend the artist. "No, illustrious censors, a still life can move us because of its intrinsic qualities, for its emotional intensity and for inexplicable mysterious reasons.  ...  No, Morandi's paintings are not  as they are so often recklessly described  "the most authentic expression of artistic impotence" – rather his works document the triumph of the spirit over materialism. ... Morandi is among the few privileged artists with the capacity to produce paintings of pure poetry."   

Fernand Khnopff
Hortensia
1884
oil on canvas
Metropolitan Museum of Art

Andries Benedetti
Table with desserts
ca. 1650
oil on canvas
Prado

Gabriel de la Corte
Mask with tulips and roses
ca. 1690-94
oil on canvas
Prado

attributed to Michel Bruno Bellengé
Vase of flowers in a niche
late 18th century
oil on canvas
Metropolitan Museum of Art

The battered gilt frame above is a trompe l'oeil illusion surrounding the illusionary marble niche in this over-door painting recently attributed to Michel Bruno BellengĂ©. The orderly disarray of the flowers themselves and their apparent weightlessness, the peculiar flat blue-green of the vase, and the playful presentation of the "damaged" frame  all these accord with the taste of Versailles in its final phase under Marie Antoinette.

Pedro de CamprobĂ­n
Pink roses
ca. 1640-60
oil on canvas
Prado

Jan Brueghel the Elder
Tulips and roses
early 17th century
oil on canvas
Prado

Aubert Parent
Vase of flowers with wildlife and vines
1789
Carved limewood relief
Getty Museum, Los Angeles


Grinling Gibbons
Cravat
ca. 1690
carved limewood
Victoria & Albert Museum

Grinling Gibbons (1648-1721) carved the wooden cravat above in imitation of Venetian needlepoint lace. It served no practical purpose except to showcase his miraculous level of technical ability and his wit. In the mid-18th century the object belonged to Horace Walpole and was on display at Strawberry Hill. Curators at the Victoria & Albert Museum repeat a story that Horace Walpole actually wore the cravat in 1769 to receive "distinguished French, Spanish and Portuguese visitors."