Baroque Painting Research Articles

BAROQUE AND ICONIC ECPHRASIS IN GOGOL'S "TARAS BULBA"

This article discusses the tools verbalization European Baroque painting techniques and Old icons in the Gogol's story "Taras Bulba". Narrative functions of implicit ecphrasis investigated in connection problem relatedness Catholicism and Orthodoxy in the minds of Gogol at the beginning of the 1840s. The purpose of the article analyzes the ways of verbalization and features of non-attributed implicit ecphrasis in the second edition of Gogol's "Taras Bulba" reproducing Caravaggio painting style and Old icons. Method or the methodology of work : Among research material are Gogol's "Taras Bulba" in two editions, the European Baroque paintings and ancient Russian icons. Were applied structural-typological, structural, intertextual, hermeneutical methods. Results: We describe the correlation of ecphrasis in Gogol with referents: the paintings of Caravaggio and Honthorst , and Old Russian iconography . Found that ecphrasis descriptions that appear only in the edition of 1842 are not local segments of the text and form the entire text layers, actively organizing narrative, operating plot and composition. Hidden emplisit ecphrasis is the artistic code, extending the semantic space of the text , the text translation tool of religious and philosophical ideas of the author. Valuable contraposition of baroque and iconic ecphrasis in the story reflects not only the author's reflection on the problem of beauty , inner and outer, but also a reflection of their own style. Application area: The results of our study can be used for lectures on the history of Russian literature of the XIX century, the history of Russian and European culture, cultural studies, specialized courses and electives in the problem of interaction between different kinds of art, as well as material for interdisciplinary humanities research, including in school practice teaching literature and art history.

La ciudad infernal en la pintura

The sights of cities, an important genre of Baroque painting, almost disappeared with industrialization. The painters preferred to look back and to represent other topics. However, the modern city was breaking through in the painting of 19th and 20th centuries. The new image of the city is antithetical to the old veduta and acquired traits of representations of hell.

A quantitative approach to painting styles

This research extends a method previously applied to music and philosophy (Vilson Vieira et al., 2012), representing the evolution of art as a time-series where relations like dialectics are measured quantitatively. For that, a corpus of paintings of 12 well-known artists from baroque and modern art is analyzed. A set of 99 features is extracted and the features which most contributed to the classification of painters are selected. The projection space obtained provides the basis to the analysis of measurements. These quantitative measures underlie revealing observations about the evolution of painting styles, specially when compared with other humanity fields already analyzed: while music evolved along a master–apprentice tradition (high dialectics) and philosophy by opposition, painting presents another pattern: constant increasing skewness, low opposition between members of the same movement and opposition peaks in the transition between movements. Differences between baroque and modern movements are also observed in the projected “painting space”: while baroque paintings are presented as an overlapped cluster, the modern paintings present minor overlapping and are disposed more widely in the projection than the baroque counterparts. This finding suggests that baroque painters shared aesthetics while modern painters tend to “break rules” and develop their own style.

Fantasy Bodies, Imagined Pasts: A Critical Analysis of the “Rubenesque” Fat Body in Contemporary Culture

This article engages with the use of the term “Rubenesque” in contemporary mass culture to affirm the aesthetic viability of living fat individuals by association with the Flemish Baroque painter Peter Paul Rubens (1577–1640) and the fat nudes that he produced. Though a popular means to acknowledge fat beauty and promote size diversity, the “Rubenesque” is also a nostalgic construct that privileges normative fantasies about the value of fat women in previous centuries over contemporary and historical reality, and thus precludes nuanced discussions of how fat intersects with issues such as race, gender, and ability. Ultimately, a brief investigation of the term’s genesis within art historical rhetoric demonstrates that Rubens’ fat nudes, the very standard of comparison, are less depictions that reflect the bodies of actual fat women (past or present) than products of an unattainable beauty myth born in fidelity to the idea of male artistic prowess and a centuries-old conflation of artistic and erotic mastery in western art history.

Mist-lining of a baroque painting

L’article présente la méthode de Mist Lining (doublage par vaporisation) appliquée sur la peinture baroque Jezus med učeniki (Jésus parmi les maîtres) de l’église de la Sainte Trinité de Lubiana. Le choix de la méthode adaptée s’est fondé sur les recherches antérieures et la comparaison avec la méthode de nap-bond-lining, les quantités de colle utilisée, le poids des matériaux ajoutés et la facilité de retrait ultérieur du doublage. Les deux méthodes ont été testées sur divers doublages au regard des deux principes basiques – l’intervention minimale et la réversibilité.

Cuatro nuevas obras del pintor Juan Simón Gutiérrez

A new cycle of paintings representing the Holy Family, the Holy Trinity, the Crucifixion ant the Lamentation of Christ by Juan Simon Gutierrez (1643-1718) was recently discovered at the Cathedral of Cordoba and in a private Cordobean collection. Juan Simon Gutierrez was considered one of the closest follower of the great Sevillian baroque painter Bartolome Esteban Murillo (1617-1682). The physiognomic features of his figures and the “Murillesque” pictorial language of his style has allowed to identify a large number of paintings over the last ten years. This article examines the mentioned canvases which are confronted with the four flemish engravings used by the artist as a source of inspiration.

La Santa Faz, imagen devocional, en los conventos de Toledo

El objetivo de esta investigación es dar a conocer las distintas iconografías y estilos pictóricos de la Santa Faz de los conventos de Toledo. Obras, en ocasiones, anónimas e inéditas. Se lleva a cabo un estudio comparativo de las distintas versiones de esta imagen devocional desde el segundo tercio del siglo XVI a la cuarta década del siglo XVII. Se analizan las diferencias del modelo iconográfi co manierista de El Greco, frente a dos pintores barrocos europeos– Zurbarán, Philippe de Champaigne- y al estilo y la técnica del lienzo del convento de Madres Benitas. La indagación, en archivos y fuentes bibliográfi cas, aporta nuevos datos sobre el parentesco y la relación del coleccionista Andres Passano de Haro con Génova; y respalda la atribución de la Santa Faz del convento de Madres Benitas a Rubens o Van Dick.

Una <i>Aparición de la Virgen con el Niño a san Felipe Neri</i> de Francisco Ignacio Ruiz de la Iglesia: atribución y contexto iconográfico

The author studies a painting of the Apparition of the Virgin and Child with St. Philip Neri , attributing it to the painter Francisco Ignacio Ruiz de la Iglesia and analyzing its iconography in the context of Baroque painting in Madrid.

The sale of the collection of Prince Lelio Orsini in Rome (1698–1706)

Thanks to the discovery of previously unknown documents, the present study is able to reconstruct the sale of the collection of Lelio Orsini, Prince of Vicovaro. Sold between about 1698 and 1706, the collection of paintings and drawings, described by Giovan Pietro Bellori, was formed of Old Masters and important Baroque painters, including Raphael, Polidoro da Caravaggio, Lotto, Carracci, Domenichino, Saraceni and Van Poelenburgh. Many important people from Roman society attended the succession of sales: Padre Resta, Cardinal Albani (the future Pope Clement XI), Marchesa Renzi Strozzi, Princess Giustiniani Savelli, Marquis Pallavicini and the Spanish Ambassador the Duke of Uzeda. An Supplementary Data provides a transcript of the proceeds from the sale.

Vincenzo Dandini Szent Zoerard-András és Borromeo Szent Károly-oltárképe az arezzói Santa Maria in Gradi-templomban

Abstract This study introduces ways to unfold the St. Zoerard-Andrew and St. Charles Borromeo Altapiece of Vincenzo Dandini (1607–1675), the gifted pupil of the famous baroque painter, Pietro da Cortona. Created in 1657, it is still housed today in its original position in the Church of Santa Maria in Gradi at Arezzo, in Tuscany. This painting has its own importance in Dandini's oeuvre, not only because it's his first dated and signed work, but also because of the rarity of the imagery of Zoerard-Andrew in Italy. We can separate two different levels of the image: the Hungarian hermit could be seen as the subject of the cardinal's vision and his role model too. Charles Borromeo was the leading figure of the Council of Trent, and the cardinal archbishop of the Archidiocese of Milan, but had similar fasting and extreme starving practices like Zoerard- Andrew. So Zoerard-Andrew's presence is more interesting in a Camaldolese altarpiece — however they were both Benedictines — than the well-known italian reformator and makes Dandini's work an iconographical challenge. The altarpiece depicts a scene from the life of St. Zoerard-Andrew derived from the Vita Sancotum Zoerardi et Benedicti (c. 1064) by Bishop Maurus of Pécs, when the hermit in the state of swoon lies in the arms of an angel (iuvenis visionis angelice). St. Zoerard-Andrew, first canonised saint of the Hungarian Kingdom in 1083, had an extremely stiff fasting practice, ate only one nut day-to-day in the forty days of the Lenten period. His bodily self-lacerations were the most terrific ways to earn God, he made for himself a wooden crown with stones hanging on four sides and set on an oak-tree trunk surrounded by sharpened canes. Like on Jan Sadeler's etching, he showned with his clever arrangements designed to prevent sleep as his tipical attributes in this period. This essay contributes to find out appointments of Zoerard-Andrew's and St. Charles Borromeo's way of living with the habits of the Camaldolese monks. I mean they were perfect role models for these hermits of the Santa Maria in Gradi. Finally, I demonstrate in my article how could use up their cult in the order's ideology during the Counter- Reformation and how these elements are interwoven in the iconography of the church.

Jordaens and the antique

Jacob Jordaens (1593-1678) was a Flemish Baroque painter whose work has largely been overshadowed by his contemporaries Peter Paul Rubens and Anthony van Dyck. Providing new insight on the artist as well as art historical context for his works, Jacob Jordaens and Antiquity emphasizes his strategic intelligence with respect to imagery and the art market and challenges the common characterization of Jordaens as a bourgeois artist of genre scenes. Jordaens's work is examined as an example of classical culture being introduced into the commercial and intellectual life of Antwerp. He was an artist with an unusual talent for conveying imagery from classical literature, ranging from Satyr and Peasant to Diogenes Searching for an Honest Man. Focusing on the theme of antiquity, this volume features eighty paintings, drawings, tapestries, and sculptures from private collections and major museums, including the Museo Nacional del Prado in Spain and the Statens Museum for Kunst in Denmark.

Baroque, Allegory, Comedia: The Transfiguration of Tragedy in Seventeenth-Century spain. by Kluge, Sofie (review)

Reviewed by: Baroque, Allegory, Comedia: The Transfiguration of Tragedy in Seventeenth-Century spain. by Kluge, Sofie Margaret M. Olsen Kluge, Sofie. Baroque, Allegory, Comedia: The Transfiguration of Tragedy in Seventeenth-Century Spain. Estudios de Literatura 114. Kassel: Edition Reichenberger, 2010. 327 pp. Sofie Kluge’s erudite study Baroque, Allegory, Comedia posits that the Spanish Baroque evolves in equivocal tension between medievalism and modernity and that this ideological conflict generates a unique creative impetus in the literary arts, particularly in the comedia. Kluge views this innovative spirit as an alternative modernity in the realm of aesthetics, one that seeks to resolve anxieties arising from the significant historical transformations taking place in seventeenth-century Spain: bankruptcy, decadence, and the loss of global hegemony, the rise of early modern capitalism, and concomitant societal reconfigurations. Kluge argues that allegory is the primary device by which Baroque artists and critics confront secular materialism, and that they do so by employing allegory’s ambiguous capacities to transfigure the aesthetic pursuits of classical antiquity and Renaissance neo-paganism into morally didactic works that reflect post-Tridentine concerns. Kluge succinctly states that “allegory is an essentially syncretistic mode and its revival at different times in Western literary history is always a symptom of the co-existence of profound cultural contradictions as well as of the endeavour to reconcile them” (287). Thus, Baroque aesthetics turns to allegory in the midst of a historical, ideological crisis in order to assuage the tension between the immanent and the transcendent, the profane and the sacred. While her central thesis may not seem especially novel to some scholars, Kluge’s extensive and meticulous exemplification of seventeenth-century allegory, as well as her elegant form of expression, make this book a valuable contribution to the fields of early modern studies and Baroque aesthetics. Kluge demonstrates an extensive knowledge of Renaissance and Baroque literary works and of the ancient texts with which they are in dialogue. Moreover, her discussion of aesthetics includes an array of written and visual genres from the Golden Age that includes poetics, literary criticism, masterworks of Baroque painting, emblems, and all manner of dramatic expression such as the comedia, autos sacramentales, and seventeenth-century tragedy. This reviewer especially appreciates Kluge’s discussion of desengaño and apotheosis in [End Page 181] Baroque painting, along with a detailed analysis of how the Jesuits made use of ancient culture and myth according to moral-didactic exigencies of the Baroque. Equally instructive is the author’s thorough outlining of the emergence of the comedia as a hybrid, even monstrous, dramatic form in which playwrights reinvent classical topoi such as theatrum mundi and somnium. To exemplify this point fully, Kluge uses select plays of Lope and Calderón and contemporary seventeenth-century criticism to show how both playwrights attempt to appeal at once to the secular and sacred interests of their wide publics. The final chapter of the book, which treats comedy and tragedy in Calderón’s dramatic works, reveals how La vida es sueño simultaneously respects Sophocles’s Oedipus the King but also places increased moral agency in the hands of his protagonist, thus defying Fortune’s tragic determinism. The book’s seven chapters are organized into three central parts, in addition to an introduction and closing remarks, both of which serve to successfully frame the text with thoughtful critical commentary. Kluge dedicates the first two chapters of the book to well-researched and useful discussions of the concept of the Baroque and the history of allegory, properly orienting the reader to the textual analysis that follows. While there is lamentably no index to the book, likely a characteristic of the series or publisher, each of the chapters is divided into smaller sections indicated by page numbers in the table of contents, allowing the reader to make quick consultation of specific topics of interest. Each of the sections of the text is effective as a discreet piece of research, but all of the chapters also flow together with elegant coherence as a full book-length study. Finally, extensive and meticulously detailed footnotes provide the reader with immediate bibliographic references as well as additional textual citations and critical commentary on the primary sources...

Otto Kurz (1908-1975)

Otto Kurz was justly renowned on three accounts, as a scholar, a librarian and a human being. His publications and lectures ranged from ancient and medieval Near Eastern art and culture to Italian baroque painting; he built up the internationally renowned library of the Warburg Institute after the war and, as a human being, he was a role model to those who knew him, devotedly dedicated to his family in difficult circumstances and generously helpful to all.

Maulbertsch és a tragikus festészet. A pápai plébániatemplom Szent István vértanú történetét ábrázoló mennyezetképei

Abstract Special literature ascribes a distinguished role to the Papa cycle in both the late phase of Franz Anton Maulbertsch's oeuvre and in the history of late baroque ceiling painting. Its specific features are interpreted by the authors as manifestations of unfolding neo-classicism and the Enlightenment. The St Stephen cycle is, however, a series of history pictures set into the medium of fresco painting, and accordingly, the mode of rendering adapts to the classic, centuries-old tradition of history painting and is not necessarily the outcome of a period style. The utterances of the client, bishop of Eger Karoly Eszterhazy and Maulbertsch are to be interpreted as reflections upon the rules of this genre. The demand for dramatic unity is already discernible in the formulation of the scheme and recurs repeatedly in their correspondence. The narrative unfolding in the ceiling paintings in Papa can be taken for a painted tragedy of a complex plot based on Aristotle's notions of change of fate (peripeteia...

Barokk festmények a vasvári domonkos templomban és kolostorban

The Dominican church of Vasvár is dedicated to the Apotheosis of the Holy Cross. Its ground-plan and walls preserve its medieval state. The church and convent were fortified in the Ottoman times, but in the mid-16th century they fell into ruin and the monks left. After several owners the building – the residence of troops for some time – was purchased by György Széchényi, archbishop of Kalocsa and restored to the Dominican order in 1684. The monks moved back into the rebuilt convent in 1690. The reconstruction of the church and monastery lasted up to the 1750s. Several pictures of the baroque furnishing of the complex survive; these are presented in the paper. The capture of St John of Nepomuk was the altar picture of a baroque side altar removed from church use in the early 20th century. A major cult evolved around the figure of the martyred 14th century canon of Prague in Central Europe and the Habsburg Empire in the 17–18th century. The main episodes of his life and martyrdom are repres-ented in altar pictures and graphic cycles. The direct preliminary to the Vasvár painting is Jacob Schmutzer's engraving made after Franz Anton Maulbertsch's painting. The other large altar picture shows the Sermon of St Vincent Ferrer. The size of the picture is identical with that of the St John painting – probably it was on an altar across from it. St Vincent (Valencia c. 1350 – Vannes [Brittany] 1419) was a Dominican monk who lived most of his life in Spain as one of the greatest preachers of the 15th century. The animated baroque painting includes several actors of the saint's life. He is frequently depicted in 18th century Dominican churches, e.g. in Prague, Vác, Sopron, Szombathely and Graz. Another two rectangular paintings of the same size and equally standing format with semicircular headings survive in the monastery, both depicting the Holy Virgin. In one The Virgin hands over St Dominic's true image to a Dominican monk (the miracle of Soriano), with St Catherine of Alexandria and St Mary Magdalene as secondary figures. The other shows the Holy Virgin, patroness of Dominican and Hungarian saints. This painting combines the protective, sheltering role of the Virgin in the medieval Virgin of Mercy type with the baroque cult of Patrona Hungariae and the veneration of Dominican and Hungarian saints. In the gable of the shrine of the Holy Virgin the martyr virgin of antiquity St Thecla is depicted with her usual attributes: a palm branch in her right hand and the cross in her left, the tamed lion being by her side. In the gable of the St Dominic altar St Catherine dei Ricci (Florence 1522 – Prato 1590) is depicted in mystic ecstasy. The figure was also tentatively identified as St Catherine of Siena (another stigmatized Dominican nun) but the appearance of the souls in Purgatory clearly refers to St Catherine dei Ricci. The portrait of the second founder count György Széchényi (1592?–1695) was also kept at the monastery. The closest analogy to the portrait is the Széchényi picture in the Nagycenk mansion (owned by the Xantus János Museum, Győr). The sacristy furniture also included oval pictures of two Dominican female saints, St Margaret of Hungary and St Catherine of Siena, and another two of Ss Peter and Paul – the latter two lost now. The painters of the pictures datable to around 1760–70 are unknown; as for the somewhat earlier oval pictures, the name of Vince Sallay, a Dominican painter of Szombathely, may also be considered.

Did Rubens' Delilah have Mondor's disease?

Rubens was a master of European Baroque painting and a practitioner of realism. A female model for his paintings of Samson and Delilah and the Three Graces has apparent right-sided breast abnormalities. Examination of the images shows persistent changes. The clinical scenario suggests Mondor's disease, possibly related to rheumatoid arthritis or chronic infection. Visible breast changes such as distortion, skin retraction and nipple deviation warrant concern and require investigation.

Sustaining a Global Community: Art and Religion in the Network of Baroque Hispanic-American Paintings

The authors analyze the network of Hispanic baroque paintings from 1550 to 1850. They divide the dataset of 11,443 works from Spain and Latin America into 25-year periods in order to study the evolution of the paintings' 211 descriptors. The analysis shows that most of the paintings are linked through genre and theme and that religious Christian themes make up the overwhelming majority of connections among the paintings.

Sobre una serie de cobres flamencos de pintores en la estela de Rubens

We study a series made up of eight flemish paintings that is kept in the monastery of the Comendadoras of Santiago in Madrid. Are signed around 1665, and constitute a complete cycle on the Life of the Virgin. They were painted by and are owed to five artists of the environment entourage of Rubens (1577-1640). Two of the painters that intervened in the series whose signatures had not still been decoded; and we do not forget of putting in relationship to relate each of the eight pieces with the well-known production of its framers. Likewise, with the owed documentary support, reveal the identity of the donor of these paintings to the monastery, Ms. Estefanía de Venegas (+ 1738), countess of Val del Águila and professed nun in it. Furthermore, the study of the group allows to confirm, once again, the repetition of certain Rubens` models by artists of its circle; models that so much fortune would reach in the Baroque paintings of our country.

Caravaggio & his followers in Rome

The Italian artist Caravaggio (1571-1610) had a profound impact on a wide range of baroque painters of Italian, French, Dutch, Flemish, and Spanish origin who resided in Rome either during his lifetime or immediately afterward. This captivating book illustrates the notion of 'Caravaggism', showcasing 65 works by Peter Paul Rubens and other important artists of the period who drew inspiration from Caravaggio; these pieces are the focus of a North American exhibition. Also depicted are Caravaggio canvases that fully exhibit his distinctive style, along with ones that had a particularly discernible impact on other practitioners. Caravaggio's influence was greatest in Rome, where his works were seen by the largest and most international group of artists, and was at its peak in the early decades of the 17th century both before and after his untimely death at the age of 39. Not since Michelangelo or Raphael has one European artist affected so many of his contemporaries and over such broad geographic territory. Essays by an array of major Caravaggio scholars illuminate the underlying principles of the exhibition, reveal how Caravaggio altered the presentation and interpretation of many traditional subjects and inspired unusual new ones, and explore the artist's legacy and how he irrevocably changed the course of painting.

Artemisia Challenges the Elders: How a Women Artists' Cooperative Created a Community for Feminism and Art Made by Women

Artemisia Challenges the Elders:How a Women Artists' Cooperative Created a Community for Feminism and Art Made by Women Joanna Gardner-Huggett (bio) In the early 1970s women's separatist art collectives like Artemisia in Chicago (1973-2003) played an essential role in supporting and nurturing the careers of a whole new generation of women artists. Artemisia was established in 1973 after Joy Poe, then a graduate student at the Art Institute of Chicago, visited AIR, the first woman's cooperative gallery in New York City, that May and concluded the same could be done in Chicago.1 Upon her return Poe enlisted the support of Barbara Grad, Phyllis MacDonald, Emily Pinkowski, and Margaret Wharton, and they formed an interview committee. Together they visited the studios of 150 women artists and then held a subsequent meeting of 40 women, where an additional 15 members were chosen: Phyllis Bramson, Shirley Federow, Sandra Gierke, Carol Harmel, Vera Klement, Linda Kramer, Susan Michod, Sandra Perlow, Claire Prussian, Nancy Redmond, Christine Rojek, Heidi Seidelhuber, Alice Shaddle, Mary Stoppert, and Carol Turchan.2 The gallery officially opened on September 21 at 226 East Ontario Street, placing it in the center of the contemporary art scene. The Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago (MCA), was located across the street, and the commercial galleries Phyllis Kind and Marianne Deson also occupied spaces in the same building.3 Further, Artemisia's immediate neighbor was ARC Gallery, a second women artists' cooperative, and they both sought to challenge the concept of the woman artist as a hobbyist and dilettante by providing a professional venue for their members.4 Taking their name from the seventeenth-century Italian Baroque painter Artemisia Gentileschi (1597-c. 1651), "whose best work had been credited to her father," the members of Artemisia were determined to make their own names known to the art world of Chicago and beyond.5 Artemisia Gentileschi did not merely serve as a namesake for the gallery. The art critic Franz Schulze noted that the members' appropriation of Gentileschi's depictions of heroines engaged in violent acts reflected the group's militant feminist stance in its early years.6 The artist's painting Judith and [End Page 55] Holofernes (1611-12) was used in a 1974 advertisement for a lecture by Judith Shamberg entitled "Attitudes and Obstacles: Women Artists in History." Therefore, it is worth considering briefly how the conflicts facing the female protagonists Gentileschi painted paralleled the societal conditions facing the Chicago women artists, ultimately stimulating the desire to form a community of women artists. Gentileschi's Susannah and the Elders (1610) derives from the Book of Susannah, a book of Apocrypha, where Susannah, who lives in Babylon, is bathing in her garden.7 She sends two maids to fetch oil and perfumes for her bath, and while she is left alone, two elders begin to spy on her. They soon demand that she submit to them sexually, and when Susannah refuses, they threaten to denounce her as an adulterer, a crime punishable by death. Susannah is quickly served this sentence after being falsely accused and eventually is vindicated when Daniel questions each of the elders separately, asking them under which tree Susannah seduced them. Each man names a different one, revealing Susannah's innocence.8 Just as Susannah resists sexual violence, the women who founded Artemisia were no longer willing to comply with their subjugation in the art world and understood that a feminist intervention would be necessary to disarm the masculine power that maintains patriarchal governance structures. By staging this protest, they also found themselves on trial like Susannah, framed as perpetrators rather than victims of the social order. As Jenni Sorkin observed, "Women who chose these routes faced stiff, if not severe social penalties for opting out of traditional social roles and normative behavior."9 The members' challenge, however, was not mounted by singular figures like Susannah; instead they created a collective force, as well as a physical space, where the binary structures that enforce women's subordinate status are eliminated. Therefore, Artemisia Gallery occupies what can be described as a "feminist location." As Martin Beck explains a women artists' cooperative, it understands space primarily as a contested...