From childhood through old age: Albrecht Dürer, “Self-Portrait” (1484) Albrecht Dürer, “Self-Portrait” (1493) Albrecht Dürer, “Self-Portrait” (1498) Albrecht Dürer, “Self-Portrait” (1500) Albrecht Dürer, “Self-Portrait” (1522)
Tag: Northern Renaissance
The German Origins of Michelangelo’s Pietà
from Thomas Cahill’s Heretics & Heroes: …. [Michelangelo’s] next work displays a grasp of human anatomy seldom seen in the history of art: a Pietà, his first but hardly his last interpretation of the subject. The Italian word has many grades of meaning: pity, compassion, mercy, piety, devotion. Capitalized, however, it refers to a scene […]
Vermeer’s Window on the Left, Vermeer’s Late Afternoon Light
As I’ve written elsewhere: “Except for his earliest work, there were no grand subjects in Vermeer, and very little else but a room and a window; tiled floor and tapestries and carpeted tables; maps and light and exactitude; liquid, lace, poured milk, lute strings and the weighing of pearls; the reproduction by brush and color […]
The Mysteries of Mérode
For some reason the Mérode Altarpiece, painted in the late 1420s by Robert Campin, has become an obsession of mine. I can look at it for hours, and its strangeness never ends. Better than any TV show, I’ve found one of the best uses of a flat-screen is putting the Mérode up on it, and […]
Images: Rembrandt’s Self-Portraits
The number of Rembrandt’s self-portraits alone far outnumber the entire output of many artists. Here is only a fraction of them, but watch him grow up, change, and emerge with many moods. Click on each to enlarge:
The Poet Speaks #2: Leonardo, Williams, Bishop, Meredith, Ashbery
Quotes from all over on art & creativity: [Leonardo] was always less concerned with the finishing of a picture than with its conception. His ideal would consist of imagining the picture and getting someone else to paint it: invention was what mattered most to him. Painting was above all “a thing of the mind.” As […]
