This set of eight large watercolors of World War I Airplanes was painted by Riccardo Caviglioli (1895 -1975), an Italian aviator and painter born in Milan. Caviglioli received multiple decorations during World War I, and during his lifetime worked as an aeronautical writer, designer and illustrator for advertising campaigns. Additionally, he wrote a book entitled Austrian-Hungary Aviation on the Italian Front between 1915 and 1918 published in 1930.
Caviglioli’s aviation watercolors were first presented at the Torino Exposition in 1928. His designs represent true historic reconstructions of a glorious past, and through his artistic style he was able to depict the impression of flight, glides, turns and takeoffs. Read more... (252 words, 8 images, estimated 1:00 mins reading time)
Tuesday, February 9, 2010
This painting of unusually large scale (at just over 14 feet long) depicts the entrance front of the great house of Denham Place, Buckinghamshire and has been attributed to the artist Peter Hartover. The painting, which can be dated on the grounds of stylistic comparison with other of Hartover’s works to around 1675, records the appearance of Denham Place after the addition of a vast façade by Sir William Bowyer (1612-79) in the 1650s and before its rebuilding by Sir Roger Hill from 1688.
- Oil painting depicting the front facade of Denham Place, Buckinghamshire attributed to Peter Hartover. Carlton Hobbs LLC.
Read more... (413 words, 3 images, estimated 1:39 mins reading time)
You might remember our Halloween blog, “Trick or Treat,” in which we focused on a number of artworks that feature skeletons. The last work we mentioned was full of quotes and symbolism, and we’re back to tell you a bit more about this curious picture.
This engraving is titled Life and Death Contrasted, or, An Essay on Woman. It belongs to the genre of symbolic still life painting known as Vanitas (Latin for “vanity”) intended to remind us of our own mortality and the transience of earthly possessions and vices. Like Memento Mori painting (from the Latin “Remember you will die”), the most popular symbols found in these works are skeletons or skulls, but they may also include symbols of vanity (such as mirrors and musical instruments), expressing the emptiness and worthless nature of worldly goods. Read more... (427 words, 4 images, estimated 1:42 mins reading time)
Halloween originated with the Celts some 2,000 years ago as a celebration of their new year on November 1st. On the night of October 31st , they celebrated Samhain, when it was believed the ghosts of the dead returned to the land of the living. One of the quintessential symbols of the holiday is the skeleton and this Halloween, we’ve pulled four skeletons out of the Carlton Hobbs closet: Read more... (624 words, 4 images, estimated 2:30 mins reading time)
Tuesday, September 8, 2009
Figure 1
September has arrived and school is in session! What better way to mark the beginning of the academic year than with a little lesson on Arithmetic, one of the seven Liberal Arts.
The seven Liberal Arts— Grammar, Rhetoric, Logic, Geometry, Arithmetic, Music, and Astronomy— were introduced in classical antiquity as the fields of study appropriate for a freeman’s education. From the Middle Ages, the Liberal Arts constituted the curriculum at Western universities, their focus on intellectual discourse distinguishing them from the practical arts of craftsmen and laborers. Artistic depictions of the Liberal Arts were based on an allegory by the fifth-century writer Martianus Capella called On the Seven Disciplines or Satyricon, in which the seven Arts were personified as maids serving the bride Philology upon her marriage to Mercury. Read more... (411 words, 4 images, estimated 1:39 mins reading time)
This remarkable depiction of the surface of the full moon in oil is the work of Julius Grimm (1842-1906), scientific photographer and Hofphotograph (court photographer) to the Baden court, whose greatest contribution to science and photography was in the field of astronomy and more specifically selenography (the study of the moon and its surface). The painting of the moon was presented to Grand Duke Friedrich I von Baden in 1888, a mere 81 years before man set foot on its much-studied surface.
Mond. Julius Grimm, 1888.
Read more... (431 words, 2 images, estimated 1:43 mins reading time)
Painting of Vestal by Pietro Saja, now in the Palazzo Reale, Caserta. Pictured in "Civiltà dell'Ottocento: Le Arti Figurative."
We have just discovered a painting very similar to one of our own, in the book Civiltà dell’Ottocento: Le Arti Figurative. This painting by Pietro Saja (1779-1833), depicting a Vestal condemned to death for breaking her vow of chastity, apparently won the artist great praise and recognition when he presented it in Rome in 1803: within a month Saja was invited to join the prestigious Academy of Saint Luke. The neoclassical sculptor Antonio Canova, another member of the Academy, wrote to a friend to “make many praises of [Saja]… assuring me that he is a youth of highest ability… and that he is going to make great profit and progress.” 1 Read more... (368 words, 2 images, estimated 1:28 mins reading time)
The present paintings combine historic, heraldic, and mythological references. While the central painted portions appear to represent historic figures, the flanking painted areas and carved panels are reserved for mythological elements. All three pictures are rife with allusions to Roman mythology and Virgil’s Aeneid; Maximilian I Holy Roman Emperor (1459-1519) and his grandson, Charles V Holy Roman Emperor (1500-1558), began the precedent of tracing their genealogy to Troy, proclaiming a descendance from Aeneas.
Read more... (513 words, 3 images, estimated 2:03 mins reading time)
This is a preview of The Mythology of the Habsburgs, Part III: Mythological References
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Read the full post (513 words, 3 images, estimated 2:03 mins reading time)
In the largest of the paintings, figured below, heraldic flags and banners are dispersed throughout the central scene:
Read more... (341 words, 2 images, estimated 1:22 mins reading time)
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The Mythology of the Habsburgs, Part I
Fine and decorative art, as we know, is littered with symbolism intended to lend clues about a piece’s history and subject matter. We have recently acquired a fantastic group of three paintings that represent a chapter in the history of the Habsburg dynasty. One large and two smaller in size, the works are most mysterious both in construction and in theme. To begin, each of the three paintings are comprised of a framed canvas; however, they also incorporate hinged polychrome panels of carved relief, which, unlike traditional diptychs or triptychs, are directly integrated into the scenes. These panels open to reveal vivid lacca povera on their undersides, and blank areas on the canvas they conceal. The paintings have been re-lined and it is probable that the pictures were once mounted to the wall, the panels concealing hidden niches where the blank areas are now situated. Read more... (380 words, 4 images, estimated 1:31 mins reading time)
