Thanks to everyone who has stopped by. I apologize that the pictures for Massacio didn’t get uploaded into the post until this afternoon. I’m not sure what happened, but they are there now in all their glory. I have had a wonderful time visiting you all and seeing all the creative things you have done with the A-Z challenge. Some of my favorites so far: Sylvia Writes From Sarah with Joy Scriblet Diary of an Aspiring Writer Scribbling in the Storage Room Jemima Pett Chris Musgrave – Writer in Training Rosie Amber Reflections and Nightmares A Woman’s Wisdom As you can see, variety is the spice of my life. So thank you to all my new blogger friends! 0 0
I’ve only been able to swim in our pool off and on for the last two weeks (the air temp has varied from the low 50s to 80+), but spring has inexorably come to Chapel Hill. I wanted to share this picture of our Japanese weeping cherry tree, which takes my breath away each year, without fail. The blossoms last maybe a week, depending on the temperature, and then comes the hard work of fishing the petals out of the pool. But it’s definitely worth it! 0 0
Please click on Masaccio’s work to appreciate its beauty! Because I could not find an artist with an “N”, I am substituting Masaccio, another great “M.” Tommaso di Ser Giovanni Di Simone or Masaccio is considered the first great painter of the Quattrocento (1400s) of the Italian Renaissance because of his ability to recreate lifelike figures with movement and a true sense of three-dimensionality. He was born in 1401 in a small town outside of Florence. It is unknown where he received his training, but Masaccio moved to Florence in 1420 became a member of the painters’ guild that year and began his career as a professional painter. In Florence he was given the nickname, Maso, short for Tommaso, which means clumsy, messy or lazy Tom, apparently because he had little care for worldly matters. Other than his paintings, there are few records of Masaccio and he died at age 26. He nevertheless had a profound influence on other artists because he was the first to use linear perspective and a vanishing point in his painting. His paintings have a naturalism with color and spatial context; he also employed chiaroscuro, the use of light and dark in contrast, to achieve a sense of volume in modelling three-dimensional objects. It is believed that he was influenced by the perspective of Brunelleschi (see B), the sculpture of Donatello (see D), and the naturalism of Giotto (see G). The Virgin and Child with Saint Anne, is one of the early works attributed to Masacchio, in collaboration with an older, well-known artist, Masolino da Panicale. The division of work between the two artists in this painting is clear: Masolino painted the graceful but rather flat figures of St. Anne and the angels, while Masaccio painted the Virgin and Child, who are solid and robust. Masaccio’s chief work was the decoration of the Brancacci Chapel, where he was commissioned to continue its decoration begun by Masolino. The middle section of the frescos is Masaccio’s: Adam and Eve Driven Out of Paradise and Christ Ordering St. Peter to Pay the Tribute are the best known. Masaccio’s scenes show the influence of Giotto. His figures are large and solid, with face and gestures that express emotion. Unlike Giotto, however, Masaccio uses linear perspective, directional light, and chiaroscuro, which render his frescoes are more convincingly lifelike. For unknown reasons, this duo left the chapel unfinished, and it was completed by Filippino Lippi in the 1480s. The state register of property for 1427 shows that Masaccio “possesses nothing of his own ….that nearly all his clothing is in pawn at the Lion and the Cow loan-offices”. Hence his nickname; he either knew or cared little for the financial side of a career as a painter. Masaccio returned in 1427 to work in the Chapel again, beginning the Resurrection of the Son of Theophilus. It, too, was left unfinished but either restored or completed more than fifty years later, again by Lippi. At around the same time, Masaccio won a prestigious commission to produce a Holy Trinity for the church of Santa Maria Novella. The fresco, seriously damaged over the years, is considered to be Masaccio’s masterwork and demonstrates perfect linear perspective. The Trinity is between the Virgin and St. John, with kneeling portraits of the two donors at the sides. Two other works produced by Masaccio, a Nativity and an Annunciation, have been lost. He left Florence for Rome in 1428, where Masolino was frescoing a chapel with scenes from the life of St. Catherine, but it hasn’t been confirmed that Masaccio collaborated on that work. Masacchio died of unknown causes around 1429. He was only moderately esteemed in his own time, but has been enthusiastically admired after his death, an enthusiasm that has endured for five centuries. 0 0
Ambrogio Lorenzetti (c. (1290-1348) was an Italian painter, who, together with his older brother Pietro, helped introduce naturalism into the art of Siena. You will see the Gothic influence in his artistry but also experiments with three-dimensional and spatial arrangements, foreshadowing the art of the Renaissance. Ambrogio developed into a more realistic and inventive painter than Pietro, which I why I chose him over his brother. The dates for Lorenzetti’s birth and death are not precise because there is little extant documentation. Furthermore, as with many of the artists working in the 14th century, the chronology of his work is debatable. Some of the frescos he worked on with his brother are lost, and only six works can be clearly documented to Ambrogio, covering a period of merely 13 years. Lorenzetti may have trained in the workshop of Duccio, the principal painter in Siena, Florence’s major rival, at the beginning of the fourteenth century. He may also have been influenced by Giotto (see G), who broke with the Byzantine style by drawing accurately from life. One of his earliest attributable works is the Madonna and Child painted in 1319. The Gothic influence is clear in that the image of the Madonna faces the viewer, while the Child gazes up at her. Like Duccio, Ambrogio broke down the sharp lines of Byzantine art and softened his figures. He did not use light and shading but instead employed pattern and color to move the Madonna into a third dimension (note the drape of her gown). In a Madonna and Child painted by his brother Pietro thirteen years later, there is a similar use of pattern and color, but he turns the Madonna’s head to the side in an intimate depiction of an affectionate mother caressing her playful baby, resembling Duccio. Ambrogio is best known for the fresco cycles of Good Government and Bad Government in the Palazzo Publico of Siena. The Allegory of Good Government portrays Justice as a woman, resembling the figure of Mary, Queen of Heaven, the patron saint of Siena. She gestures to the scales of balance, and Wisdom floats over her throne. On her left, a convicted criminal is beheaded; on the right, figures receive the rewards of justice. At far left is Virtue, who is portrayed as a female rather than male, figure. The largest figure is a judge, center right. The judge is surrounded by additional figures, including Peace, with elaborate blonde hair, which was not a natural hair color for Italian women from this region. The Allegory of Bad Government has not been written about as extensively as that of Good Government, partly due to its deteriorated condition. In it, there are personifications of flaws and bad principles. In the middle there is Tyranny, with a demonic appearance and bigger than the rest of the figures. Under its feet, Justice is tied with a broken scale. Ambrogio’s frescoes show a remarkable transition in thought and theme from earlier religious art. For the Annunciation, painted in 1344 for the City Council of Siena, Ambrogio painted the Virgin and Angel with gentle elegance and sweet expression Note the Roman arches and the development of his three dimensional perspective. The Annunciation, Pietro Lorenzetti, 1342 Compare this to the Annunciation painted by his older brother in 1342, where the Gothic style persists, with static figures, a flatter perspective and Gothic arches. The peaceful and gently lyrical temperament of Ambrogio Lorenzetti, particularly in his later paintings, is in complete contrast to his brother’s dramatic style, which never truly emerged from the constraints of his Gothic training. Ambrogio Lorenzetti died, along with his brother, from a plague, probably the Black Death, in 1348. 0 0
Don’t forget to click on the illustrations to enjoy their beauty! Giorgio Giulio Clovio or Klović (1498 – January 5, 1578) was born in Croatia and is considered the greatest illuminator of the Italian High Renaissance, and perhaps the last notable artist in the long tradition of the illuminated manuscript. So exactly what is an illuminated manuscript? You probably immediately think of the Book of Hours, a Christian devotional book popular in the MIddle Ages and the most common type of surviving medieval illuminated manuscript. It is a perfect example of decoration, where initials, borders and miniature illustrations are added to a text. Technically, an illuminated manuscript is one decorated with gold or silver, but the term is now commonly used to refer to any decorated or illustrated manuscript in the Western tradition. The portrait of Clovio was painted by El Greco between 1570 and 1571. In it, Clovio is an old man, pointing to his most favorite book, Officium Virginis or the Farnese Hours, which was decorated by himself. Tradition has it that his dexterity in painting miniatures was so great that he could paint the whole of the Last Supper on a fingernail! Clovio was born in Grižane, a village in what is today Croatia. Where he received his early training is not known, but he may possibly have studied first with the monks at Fiume of Novi Bazar, a town in Bosnia. He moved to Rome when he was 18, where he lived in the household of Cardinal Marino Grimani and studied under Guilio Romano, an Italian painter and architect and a pupil of Raphael. One of Clovio’s his first pictures was a Madonna after an engraving by Albert Durer. Clovio lived an exciting life, travelling around Italy and eastern Europe, following his commissions . In 1523, Clovio went to Buda, to work at the court of Louis II, King of Bohemia and Hungary-Croatia, but returned to Rome when the king was killed in battle in 1526. He resumed contact with Giulio Romano, and studied the work of Michelangelo. Rome was sacked in 1527 and Clovio was captured and imprisoned, during which time he vowed to devote his life to religion if he escaped. Which he did, and moved to Mantua where he entered a Benedictine abbey and continued to develop his talent of painting miniatures. With some help from Cardinal Grimani, he was released from his vows, but apparently continued to follow a somewhat monastic lifestyle. He spent several years in the service of Grimani, executing some of his most beautiful works. He painted with the patronage of such powerful figures as Cosimo II de Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany, and Phillip II of Spain and Portugal, but then returned to Rome. There, he spent nine years completing his masterpiece, the paintings that decorate the so-called Farnese Hours. The Farnese Hours, commissioned by Cardinal Allessandro Farnese, who would become Pope Paul III, was completed in 1546 and contains twenty-six lavishly-detailed full-page miniatures and a few dozen more pages illuminated with elaborate border decorations. Clovio himself recommended to Cardinal Farnese’s attention the young El Greco, a sincere admirer, who painted his portrait. He died in Rome at the ripe old age of eighty; his tomb is in the Basilica of San Pietro in Vincoli, where Michelangelo’s Moses is also found. 0 0
I have made very few book recommendations in the last several years, and this particular book is not my genre. However, I had the pleasure of critiquing it as it was being written, and now that it’s out and is offered as a Kindle Countdown until April 14, I would like to let everyone know about it. The name of the book is Ahvarra, and the author, Brian Lang, classifies this book as both fantasy and urban fantasy, with a little alternative history mixed in. I know some of you like this genre, so here is a summary: The island of Lorenya is slowly being eaten by a black desert known as the Raught, and its inhabitants—both humans and a transforming race known as Ameleons—need a solution. Such a solution may exist in their own world, at the ruins of a battlefield that lies across the treacherous Raught, while another may exist by passing through Ahvarra, the Heart of the World, that connects Lorenya to a mid 21st century Earth. While one Protector of the Heart travels across the barren landscape, encountering dangers and surprises, another travels through the Heart, expecting a small colony. What she finds is a world where technology and virtual reality exceed anything she’s ever known… and where a descendant of Lorenya can help her find a path to her world’s salvation. But how did this world come to be built? What history is locked behind secrets that are hinted at in a journal written over centuries? The key to Lorenya’s survival is found in its history, and these Protectors must bring their shared knowledge together before the Ameleons transform into their aggressive nature and bring their realm to ruin. Can history and technology combine to save one small world? I can recommend this book with enthusiasm. It’s creative and intriguing. Even though I am a murder/mystery novelist, this kept me reading, even when I had to wait several weeks for the next installment! 0 0
Left click on the images to enjoy the beauty! Hieronymus Bosch was born Jheronimus (the Latin form of the name Jerome), and he signed a number of his paintings as Jheronimus Bosch, Bosch being a derivative of the town where he was born and spent most of this life. Bosch is a revolutionary of the early Northern Renaissance; his importance is not only the uniqueness of his work, but also his influence on Pieter Breugel the Elder, a famous Flemish painter during the High Renaissance, known for his landscapes and peasant scenes. From his work, Bosch appears to have been a pessimist and stern moralist. His paintings are sermons, and he chose symbols to represent the temptation of man by earthly evils. Recent scholarship portrays Bosch as one of the first artists to represent abstract concepts in his paintings. There is little information on Bosch’s early life, other than the fact that he was the son and grandson of accomplished painters. Even his date of birth has had to be estimated from his self portrait. The few other personal facts: sometime between 1479 and 1481, Bosch married, and in 1488 he joined the highly respected Brotherhood of Our Lady, an arch-conservative religious group, which mentions him in its official records until the year of his death. Only 35 to 40 paintings are attributed to Bosch, but only seven are signed and none are dated. However, it is easy to trace the evolution of his style and mastery of painting. For example, his early work shows some awkwardness and his subjects are somewhat limited scope, such as Ecco Homo and Cutting the Stone. But even in these early paintings, Bosch had begun to depict the vulnerability of men to lust, heresy, and obscenity. The triptych of the Temptation of St Anthony, painted in 1490, heralds the maturation of Bosch’s artistic abilities. The brushstrokes are sharper, his figures are graceful, there is slight movement, and his colors are more subtle. Most exceptionally, there is an eruption of hellish fantasy, with grotesque demons and a bizarre, fantastic backgrounds to illustrate the temptation of the devil. The Garden of Earthly Delights painted sometime between 1490 and 1510, is Bosch at his best. Painted in oil on oak, it shows the creation of woman, her temptation by the devil, and the fall. It contains unsettling images of sensuality; hordes of nudes, giant birds, and horses frolic in an otherworldly landscape. In no other work does Bosch achieve the complexity of imagery and meaning. Books and theses have been devoted to the decoding and understanding of his imagery! In Bosch’s late works, he painted dense groups of half figures or just heads, pushing up against the plane of the picture. In the Crowning with Thorns and the Carrying of the Cross, for example, you are so near to the image, you are almost participating. During this period, Bosch also painted his most peaceful and untroubled works, for example St. John the Evangelist in Patmos and St. John the Baptist in the Desert. The accounts of the Brotherhood of Our Lady record Bosch’s death in 1516, with a funeral mass in his memory on 9 August of that year. My favorite work? The Conjuror. It was supposedly painted in 1505, but looks to be from his early period. How many times have you yourself seen something like this? 0 0
Remember to left click on the paintings! Adriaen Isenbrandt (between 1480 and 1490 – July 1551) was a Flemish painter of the Northern Renaissance considered to be a significant artist of his period. His work is conservative, in the early Northern Renaissance style. The conundrum lies in the fact that he left no signed or documented works, and, given his tendency to borrow motifs and compositions directly from other artists, definitive attributions are not possible. Isenbrandt may have been born in Haarlem or Antwerp around 1490. The first mention of him is when he bought his burghership (citizenship, membership to the middle class) in Bruges in 1490 and then became a master in the painters’ guild and the goldsmiths’ guild. Although already a Master, he worked in the in the workshop of Bruges’ leading painter Gerard David, a painter and manuscript illuminator, then established his own workshop nearby. The influence of Gerard David shows clearly in the composition and the landscape background of the works attributed to Isenbrandt. Bruges was one of the richest cities in Europe during Isenbrandt’s time, and Isenbrandt painted diptychs (two painted or carved panels hinged together) and portraits for rich traders and merchants. One of his first paintings (c. 1518–1521) was Our Lady of the Seven Sorrows, part of a diptych (two painted or carved panels hinged together) in the Our Lady of the Seven Sorrows Church of Our Lady in Bruges. There are two painting from 1518 that are associated with him, a triptych, the Adoration by the Magi, which was destroyed in 1942 when the church in which it was housed was bombed, and the Portrait of Paulus de Nigro. Compare this with another portrait thought to be by Isenbrandt, Man Weighing Gold. Both seem stereotypical and rather lifeless, but note that they have been done with a soft touch and there is a sfumato (smokey) effect of the contours, a technique of da Vinci. Major artists, such as Isenbrandt, usually created only the main parts of each painting, with the background then filled in by assistants. Thus the quality of a work depended largely on the skill of the assistants, leading to the uneven quality of the work attributed to Isenbrandt. He and his assistants painted many Madonnas. Rest During Flight to Egypt is attributed to Isenbrandt; note the landscape in he background, also in Virgin and Child . All his figures are painted in warm tones and lively colors, set against an idyllic background of a hilly landscapes with castles situated on top of a vertical rock, winding rivers and thick foliage. In this, he appears to have copied both Gerard David and Jan van Eyk. The Mass of St. Gregory and the Madonna and Child show the influence of the Italian Renaissance in its scenery elements such as volutes, antique pillars and ram’s heads. Through these elements he is seen as the precursor of the Renaissance painter Lancelot Blondeel, another Flemish painter, who assisted in a restoration of the Ghent Altarpiece. Madonna and Child Isenbrandt died in Brughes in 1555, a man of considerable means. I 0 0
Water draws me, wherever it is – lake, ocean, pool. We opened our pool this week and I’ve been in it twice already. Its temp now 72, warm enough to do some walking and a few laps, before hypothermia sets in. Too bad the air temps have been in the upper 50s, but if you keep moving, it’s not bad. I always enjoy discovering what the day leaves in the pool. Yesterday, it was a spider the size of a saucer, or so it seemed. I looked up what I saw, and it was a wolf spider. Turns out these spiders are energetic hunters with excellent eyesight. They are solitary and hunt alone in woodlands and suburban gardens, so they’re out there around our house. I am not a fan of spiders, but I respect them and what they do to hold down the insect population, so I picked this one up with a net and set it free on the pool deck. I’ve noticed they can move on the water surface for a while; one lived just inside one of the pool drains last year and grabbed insects as they floated by. A real opportunist! The next thing I removed from the pool definitely gave me the yuck factor: a slug, a shell-less terrestrial mollusk. Their bodies, like ours, are made up mostly of water, and without a full-sized shell, their tissues are prone to desiccation. We have skin, but the slug makes a protective mucus to survive. And yes, this one was slimy! They are most active just after a rain, and it rained hard yesterday, which is why this one was probably on the edge of the pool. I had to look up what they’re good for: slugs play an important role in the ecosystem by eating decaying plant material and fungi. The last thing I found was something which I find every day and which gives me a smile: a pink and gray feather, courtesy of a pair of cardinals that seem to think our pool is a great bird bath. Today, it was a plethora of small, fluffy Cardinal feathers. Can’t wait to see what I find tomorrow! 0 0
Remember to click on each painting to see a larger version and appreciate the beauty. Hans Holbein the Younger (c. 1497 – 1543) was a renowned German artist and printmaker of the Northern Renaissance. He is best known as one of the greatest portraitists of the 16th century but also produced religious art and frescoes. His portraits were usually oil or oil and tempera on wood panels. The Northern Renaissance occurred in the European countries north of the Alps. Its painters traveled to Rome, where the art of Michelangelo, Raphael, and da Vinci had a great impact on their subsequent work. Born in Augsburg, the younger Holbein moved to Basel, Switzerland, in 1515, where the famous Dutch humanist Erasmus lived at the time. He became a member of the Basel artists’ guild in 1519, painting with a unique authenticity that combined his father’s largely late Gothic style with artistic trends from Italy and France. Holbein painted three portraits of Erasmus and also designed woodcuts to illustrate books, such as Martin Luther’s German translation of the Bible. During his years in Basel, it is thought that he visited Italy, because the influence of da Vinci’s sfumato (smoky) technique is visible in some of Holbein’s work, such as Lais of Corinth. Between 1520-1522, Holbein painted the Body of the Dead Christ in the Tomb. Christ’s face, hands and feet, as well as the wounds in his torso, are depicted as realistic flesh in the early stages of putrefaction, which tends to support the idea that Holbein used a dead body as his model. Note also the long and emaciated body with eyes and mouth left open. This painting’s unusual dimensions make it a unique piece, but it is unknown for what it was painted. The factional strife that accompanied the Reformation made Basel a difficult for artists to work, and in 1526 Holbein left for London. During the next two years, he began a long career of portraiture of both nobility and merchantmen, for example, his portrait of Erasmus and the Lady with the Squirrel and Starling. It is thought that the sitter for this latter painting was a lady named Anne Lovell and the starling and the pet squirrel on a chain may have alluded to the Lovell family coat of arms, an example of the fascinating layers of symbolism, allusion, and paradox in Holbein’s art. Holbein returned Basel, where he painted portraits and murals for the town hall, before returning to London for good in 1532. From then until his death, he painted the nobility of the Tudor court, working under the patronage of both Anne Boleyn and Thomas Cromwell. Holbein’s famous portrait of Henry VIII was done during his second stay as well as The Ambassadors, which depicted two visitors to Henry’s court. In 1543, Holbein died in London of the plague. Holbein was unusual in that he founded no school. By the 19th century, however, he was recognized as one of the great portrait masters, and it is through Holbein’s eyes that many famous figures of his day are now ‘seen’. 0 0
