Wednesday, March 31, 2010
This mysterious painting of an open hand dates back to 1633 according to one of the many inscriptions on the canvas. Measuring 49 inches high, 28 inches wide, this intriguing painting contains multiple cryptic Latin phrases and is of uncertain origin.
According to Dr. George Szabo, former director of the Lehman collection at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the painting is probably a unique example of an instructive work of art that may have adorned the study of a Late Renaissance patron with a strong bent to the philosophic or scientific. The lettering and numerals, being highly accomplished ,leads one to believe that it probably was painted in one of the leading Italian centers with a strong tradition of calligraphy. Read more... (340 words, 1 image, estimated 1:22 mins reading time)
This is a preview of Trying our Hand at Deciphering a Mysterious Painting
.
Read the full post (340 words, 1 image, estimated 1:22 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)
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)
