Something Beautiful

Napoleon's Throne

Advent will begin in a couple of days and I'll focus mostly on sacred art throughout December.  I'd like, however, to post just one or two secular items before November closes. 

I'm not much on furniture as a rule.  Nor on royalty.   Take one quick look, however, at Napoleon's Throne Chair at the Google Art Project and I think you'll agree that it's beautiful.    It was made c. 1805 by François-Honoré-Georges Jacob-Desmalter.

Bernini (2 works)

The Google Art Project offers nine works by renowned sculptor Gian Lorenzo Bernini (1598-1680).   Two of those, it seems to me, carry the main honors: 

• Monsignor Francesco Barberini (c. 1623) - So wise and human an expression.


• Pope Gregory XV (1621) - The designs and texture of the pope's cape are simply marvelous. 

 

 

Holy Kinship

This South German wood sculpture of The Holy Kinship strikes me as absolutely wonderful. The fact that one can get so close to it, via Google AP, adds greatly to one's pleasure.

How to make sense of all the figures? It's actually fairly simple. Try these three steps:

1: Mary and Anne, her mother, are in the center with the infant Jesus. Flanking them are Anne's other two daughters, Mary Salome and Mary Cleophas, born to two subsequent marriages.

2: Behind each woman stands her husband. In Anne's case, there are three husbands.

3: Gathered at their feet are six small boys, the cousins who became Jesus' disciples:
       -  Mary Salome's two sons: St. James the Greater and John the Evangelist;
       -  Mary Cleophas' four sons:  St. James Minor, Judas Thaddeus, Simon, and Joseph     the Just.  The last is riding a hobby horse and reaches up to steady himself with his mother's hand.  

It is wonderful how well the artist's colors have held up over the past seven centuries, such that we can still enjoy them today.

Archduke's Gallery

I've always loved works such as Archduke Leopold William in his Gallery, 1650-52, by David Teniers the Younger, which show a roomful of artworks.   This Google Art Project version of the painting enables us to get very close up and to appreciate the artist's fidelity to the various works of the collection.

It turns out that David Teniers was actually employed by the Archduke both as an artist and as a curator.  So we have a series of works depicting the Archduke's collection in various stages and aspects, along with human and canine activities within it.  I've found six so far:  

* The Gallery, 1639 (Schleissheim)

* The Gallery, 1640 (Schleissheim)

* The Gallery, 1641 (Schleissheim)

* The Archduke in His Gallery, c. 1647 (Prado)

* The Archduke in His Gallery, 1651 (Brussels)

* The Art Collection, c. 1651 (Vienna)  (the same painting as the one at Google Art Project, above) 

 

Windows (experiment)

I've been trying to find ways to explore and use the wonderful offerings at Google Art Project.  In fact I might be addicted to it - yesterday I spent hours and hours trying out all manner of searches and approaches.   How to select when everything seems so marvelous?  

For today I'll try a small challenge: choose a topic; post a link to it; then choose just three items to focus on.   That's just three steps, with the last having three sub-parts.  Seems doable.  

1:  My topic, or search term, will be the simple word "window." This idea comes in part from the Rooms with a View exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art a couple of years ago (see slideshow, with 9 works).  The exhibition was both a critical and a popular success.   

2:  Now, enter the word "window" into the search box at GAP.  Result: 62 works of art.

3:  Now for the difficult part - choose just three works out of those sixty-two results to recommend to you. Okay, I'll try.  How about these:   

* At the French Windows: The Artist's Wife, 1867, by L. A. Ring;

* House of a Thousand Windows, 1912, by Alvin Langdon Coburn (photograph)

* Looking at the Van Gogh's Window in the Hockney's Room, 2005, by Nam Kyung-Min.

4:  Finish.   I did it. This was just a small assignment but let me tell you, it was not easy.  Not easy to narrow down my selections to just three.  I had to leave out many of each that I would have preferred to include. Just focusing on these three artists alone, I had to resist linking to others of their works so that you too could see their many accomplishments.

This was a good lesson for me, though. To see that "Less is more" here, as it is in so many areas of life.   Had I not set a limited goal at the outset, I would have attempted so much more and then failed to finish.   I have supplied you with only three -- but I have done that much.  

Carthusian Monk

Yesterday, for some reason, I wanted to post a link to this painting, Carthusian Monk, 1446, by Petrus Christus.   Why?   Maybe because I've been hanging out with monks lately?  (twice a week at a nearby monastery)  Because I've finally begun to understand something about it?   I just really don't know. 

I first came across this work about twelve years ago, in my early years of exploring art on the Web.  At that time I was attracted to it, but also slightly repelled.  There is something about the young man's eyes.  I feel he is both at home in his Carthusian habit and somehow struggling against it.  He is not at peace, as I want him to be.   His beard is also somewhat unsettling to me.  I like a neat beard, not one like his. 

Now, all these years later, this painting has risen, suddenly, and unexpectedly, mysteriously, into my mind again.  I appreciate it much more than I did formerly.  Probably the artist has captured precisely the young man's ambivalence about his life at the monastery.  The very thing that once put me off turns out to be the artist's real achievement. 

I wonder how this young man's life turned out?  I hope it went well and that he died in peace, full of years and goodness. 

Still Life (for Thanksgiving)

Happy Thanksgiving to anyone who should happen by here!   I should probably try to find a Cezanne for today but need to leave for dinner elsewhere.  In the meantime, here is a fine Still Life with Plums by Jean-Baptists-Simeon Chardin -- for everyone but especially for those of us who will be celebrating a vegetarian Thanksgiving.  :-) 

Beatrix Potter's letters

The Morgan Library has quite a wonderful site.  It now has a special section devoted to the charming letters with which Beatrix Potter began to find her way toward her books.  If you're in the mood for a bit of high class whimsy, you'll enjoy them. 

Getty Museum - up close

When did this happen and why didn't I know about it?  For years I've been frustrated that the Getty Museum's marvelous collection was viewble online only in rather small, chintzy images.   It seems that's no longer the case.   Just tonight I discovered that a zoom version of its works is now available. 

Try this Madonna with St Thomas Aquinas and St. Paul, c. 1330, by Bernardo Daddi in its original form, and then check out the zoom: 

*  Original format;
*  Zoom

I think you'll agree that this represents a quantum leap forward at the Getty site, and opens up whole new viewing pleasures there. 

 

Margaret Bourke White (& friend)

Something a little different for today - a photo portrait of Margaret Bourke White and Cat, taken in 1974 in Darien, Connecticut, by none other than Ansel Adams.   It has somehow caught my fancy.  Perhaps it will yours as well?