Just a Second: Linear Perspective
Linear Perspective (noun) A technique for creating an illusion of three-dimensional space in two-dimensional artwork that was invented by Filippo Brunelleschi during the early Italian Renaissance. In...
View ArticleParmigianino and That Huge Baby
It’s not that the Italian artist Girolamo Francesco Maria Mazzola, a.k.a. Parmigianino, was horribly confused and thought that the baby Jesus suffered from a rare disease that made him the size of a...
View ArticleBarocci’s Silent Night
Working near the end of the Mannerist era, Federico Barocci was given to unusual compositions and colors, as is seen in his Nativity with the steep, diagonal recession into space where Joseph opens the...
View ArticleJust a Second: Façade
Façade (noun) From the French word for “face,” a façade is the front of a building that faces the street where people enter. Leon Battista Alberti’s early Renaissance design for the façade of Santa...
View ArticleJust a Second: Pietà
Pietà (noun) A representation of a sorrowful Virgin Mary holding the dead body of Jesus, usually found in sculpture. The most famous example was sculpted by Michelangelo in St. Peter’s Basilica in...
View ArticleDürer’s Snapshot
It looks like this refined watercolor of a clump of turf was done on the spot – the artist, German Renaissance painter Albrecht Dürer, sitting outside in a meadow; however, Dürer painted it in his...
View ArticleGerard David: Oh Man, That’s Gotta Hurt!
This large and impressive painting by Gerard David stops nearly all visitors to the Groeningemuseum in Bruges, Belgium in their tracks. Viewers look upon the two large panels with a mixture of...
View ArticleIn Their Own Words: King Henry VIII
English King Henry VIII to Thomas Cromwell, regarding the reason he ended his fourth marriage to Anne of Cleaves from Flanders with an annulment: “You have sent me a Flanders mare!”
View ArticleIn Their Own Words: Leonardo da Vinci
“It had long since come to my attention that people of accomplishment rarely sat back and let things happen to them. They went out and happened to things.” Leonardo da Vinci
View ArticleJacopo Pontormo’s Strangeness
What’s going on in this painting? The artist didn’t want it to be easy to figure out. An Italian Renaissance painter would have made the subject clear and provided easily identifiable figures in a...
View ArticleJust a Second: Mitre
Mitre (noun) A mitre is a pointed hat worn by bishops and certain abbots in the Roman Catholic Church. In Jacques Daret’s painting of the Visitation, the moment when Mary, pregnant with Jesus meets...
View ArticleSeeing Double Dürers
Albrect Dürer created this lovely woodcut of the shepherds adoring the baby Jesus on the night he was born as part of a series that illustrates the Life of the Virgin. The print demonstrates Dürer’s...
View ArticleHieronymus Bosch’s Butt Music
Late one night, a young woman named Amelia, a college student at Oklahoma Christian University, noticed that Hieronymus Bosch painted music on the rear end of a figure in the scene of Hell in his...
View ArticleJust a Second: Prefiguration
Prefiguration (Noun) The representation of an Old Testament figure as a type or foreshadowing of a New Testament figure. Michelangelo painted an image of Jonah just above the high altar on the Sistine...
View ArticleMichelangelo’s “David” on the Verge
This week, Italian newspaper La Repubblica reported that Michelangelo’s 17-foot tall, marble sculpture of the Old Testament figure David has weak ankles and is on the verge of collapsing. The National...
View ArticleHappy Birthday Albrecht Dürer
Albrecht Dürer Northern Renaissance Artist Albrecht Dürer, German painter, printmaker and theorist, was born on May 21, 1471 in Nuremberg, where he lived for most of his life. His father, Albrecht...
View ArticleMake the Time: Piero di Cosimo at the National Gallery of Art
Don’t miss the retrospective exhibition of works by Piero di Cosimo, Florentine Renaissance master, at the National Gallery of Art. The last time there was an exhibition of Piero di Cosimo’s work in...
View ArticleLeonardo da Vinci: The Hair and The Nose
Live Science reported yesterday that Ross Duffin, a music professor at Case Western University, claims that the figure playing the lira da braccio (a stringed instrument) in a print created by...
View ArticleLevina Teerlinc’s Mastery of Miniatures
Levina Teerlinc is credited with the rise of miniature painting of royals in the 16th century. She was born in Bruges and probably received her artistic training from her father, the well-known...
View ArticleJust a Second: Schiacciato
Schiacciato is the Italian word for “flattened.” In the history of art, it describes a very low relief sculpture, for example those created by the Italian Renaissance sculptor, Donatello.
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