Posted on 09/19/2016 11:07:43 AM PDT by BenLurkin
Eugene Delacroix's most famous painting, "Liberty Leading the People," hangs in a revered spot in Paris' Louvre Museum. Inspired by the 1830 Paris Uprising, it has been held up as an embodiment of the French national ethos, and most recently as a justification for the country's controversial burkini ban.
But "Liberty Leading the People" may also have been literally painted with people.
From at least the 16th century until as late as the early 1900s, a pigment made from mummified human remains appeared on the palettes of European artists, including Delacroix. Painters prized "mummy brown" for its rich, transparent shade. As a result, an unknown number of ancient Egyptians are spending their afterlife on art canvases, unwittingly admired in museum galleries around the world.
The use of mummy as a pigment most likely stemmed from an even more unusual use—as medicine. From the early medieval period, Europeans were ingesting and applying preparations of mummy to cure everything from epilepsy to stomach ailments. It's unclear whether Egyptian mummies were prized for the mistaken belief that they contained bitumen (the Arabic word for the sticky organic substance, which was also believed to have medicinal value, is mumiya), or whether Europeans believed that the preserved remains contained otherworldly powers.
What is clear to researchers is that early artist pigments were derived from medicines at the time, and were commonly sold alongside them in European apothecaries. And just as mummy was waning in popularity as a medical treatment, Napoleon's invasion of Egypt at the end of the 18th century unleashed a new wave of Egyptomania across the Continent.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.nationalgeographic.com ...
Marianne must have wondered whether her men were following her, or just trying to catch up.
After the battle, Marianne must have turned & advanced on the men, demanding, “Whoever saw my breasts has to marry me! Who’s it going to be? Come on, don’t be shy!”
She would find herself suddenly alone.
;^)
Painter and painter’s circle of friends and acquaintenances both while alive and after his death.
Why are you even asking? Are you implying the painter was sex-starved or obsessed? Are you implying the naked dead soldier is in your perception some sort of expression of a sexual perversion of the painter’s diseased mind?
Your statements reveal more about your mind than the art of that period.
BECAUSE I DON'T KNOW! And excuse me for even asking, I never realized that I one of the few ignorant people who was never educated in the fine arts such as you..........
Your statements reveal more about your mind than the art of that period.
And your answer reveals you to be one of those elitist pricks who stick up their noses at folks like me who never had your CULTURING.......
Should I bow down in awe and worship you?
Excuse you for asking? Your remark took the thread into the gutter.
It’s like sitting in an art history seminar and watching a hijack of an appreciation of a masterpiece get carried away into a pit of low-class Neanderthals. And in so doing it tarnishes FR as a cesspool for undesirables.
If you have to remark about breasts and naked dead soldiers, go do some homework first before engaging a quorum of debauched minds into your habit of lewd thinking.
The piece of art for discussion in this thread has been recognized as a masterpiece and treasure of French history nearing 200 years now.
It’s also in the news because the Trump campaign is borrowing from it. Thus, your gutter remarks lure in those unrefined, unclean, lewd spirits who give the right caricatures of ‘deplorables’ to what Hillary operatives and supporters are hoping to find evidence of in a premier conservative social media forum.
Congratulations for lowering the bar.
It’s ok to use the vernacular to express disgust at liberal memes and ideas, but it’s never ok to steer to a lascivious path of smutty innuendo when it comes to historical masterpieces that are held as treasures to an ally’s history.
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