A little piece of art for everyone!

[Johnny S]

Agnolo di Cosimo (November 17, 1503 – November 23, 1572) Florence Italy


Allegory of the Triumph of Venus 1540-1545

[martin48]

I like it, but why here?

[bluesoul]

i think he's trying to liven the place up with some cultural art

[Prospero]

I like it too.... and why not. There are at least two music threads, a movie thread and a very occasional literary thread. So hey - there seems to be room for all kinds of things. (There was even a favourite car thread a few months ago which, mercifully, died the death).

So here is another...This is a painting called The Origin of The World by the post impressionist painter Gustave Courbet, painted in 1886.

[Johnny S]

Every person, gay straight or bisexual, worships a body.
I think that we should also take a look at the bodies in art and how the artists (as dream lovers) worshippped them!

[trish]

Saint George and the Dragon by Giorgio de Chirico

[maaarc]

Matthias Grünewald’s (1470 AD – 1528 AD)
depiction of “The Temptation of St. Anthony"

[Prospero]

An image by the great Viennese secession artist Egon Schiele

[Stavros]

Those of you in the UK or planning a visit may want to consider the Veronese exhibition that is currently showing at the National Gallery in London. I made a trip to see this -expensive- collection of 50 paintings most of which have never travelled before. Paolo Caliari was born in Verona -hence 'Veronese'- in 1528. Veronese is technically a flawless painter which means his work is tediously brilliant, therefore making this relatively small exhibition quite tiring. As it happens, I have a limited taste for altar pieces but was deeply impressed by his portraits -in fact I would rank his skills in this genre along with the masters, such as Rembrandt, Velasquez and Titian. It is a point of interest that the background in his portraits is as spare as found in Caravaggio (born in the decade before Veronese's death in 158), and this I think enables Veronese to focus on the person rather than, say, their possessions and land as one gets in other portraits, notably in the decadent 18th century. Of the classical and biblical themes paintings, one stands out, The Supper at Emmaus (normally in the Louvre)-this odd painting depicts the supper attended by a resurrected Christ, yet throws into the scene, one presumes, the family of the man who commissioned the painting: so that it is The Supper at Emmaus being Witnessed by a Wealthy Venetian and his Family -it may look devotional to them, but there is an almost crazy mis-match between the biblical and the contemporary, yet the arrangement of the figures clustered to the right and the left of Christ, and the foreground of two girls and a dog offers superbly choreographed drama drawn with consummate skill so that the overall effect is actually quite moving, and if the two girls in the foreground seem disinterested in the main event, perhaps that too is an accurate moment in the picture.

The portrait of a Venetian lady, name unknown, is exquisite in its treatment of fabric and colour and to my mind the arms and the hands prefigure the portraits of Ingres.

[martin48]

I was only asking!



Seated Dancer in Pink Tights - Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (1890)