ART APPRECIATION THREAD--Vatican tour (the magnificent Bernini altar)

Sweet Briar College ^ | 23 April 2003 | Gwen M. McKinney

[iceskater]

I love that painting. Thanks for posting it.

[iceskater]

That has become one of the things I do when I go to an exhibit I especially like - I buy the book for me!

[AnAmericanMother]

The legend is that before he died, Dali signed thousands of empty canvases to made into prints and lithographs---but that could have been a ruse to sell his afterdeath works for a premium price.

Wouldn't that make the price go DOWN? (It sure did in the case of my print!)

I've heard that story too. Supposedly somebody found a cache of the blank/signed paper.

[AnAmericanMother]

It is very good.

The thing that's always struck me is that the Apostles look like priests and altar boys kneeling at the Consecration.

[Sam Cree]

You are both on the list, thank you.

[Liz]

The central figure in this Dali looks a lot like Gala---Dali's wife---with whom he was obsessed---and who he put into so many of his works.

[AnAmericanMother]

OK! I gotta ask!

Have you read Kipling's short story "Dayspring Mishandled"? As a miniature aficionado it should interest you!

[Sam Cree]

I think Sargent is the one who said that "a portrait is a painting in which something is wrong with the mouth." Apparently a lot of his sitters wanted the mouth adjusted.

Eventually he got tired of doing portraits, but I guess by then he had enough money so that he could paint what he wished.

I have seen some nice watercolors by him, hadn't been aware that he'd even done any until recently. Anyhow, he was a master at that too.

[Joe 6-pack]

Of course I've read it...I'm a big Kipling fan, too...depending on the mood I'm in, my favorite movie of all time is John Houston's "The Man Who Would Be King" with Connery and Caine.

Another writer (and approximate contemporary of Kipling), M.R. James, who many consider the father of the 20th Century ghost story, served as the Provost of King's College, Cambridge, but had been originally trained as an antiquarian and medievalist. A lot of his stories either allude to, or are centered around medieval texts, totems, practices, etc. I don't know if you remember "Friday the 13th - The Series," which aired back in the late 80's early 90's and had little if anything to do with the movies...a lot of their episodes seem to have been patterned after James' stories.

[Joe 6-pack]

I can't believe we're talking about objets d'arte, literature, mystery and suspense and have yet to mention Jonathan Gash's Lovejoy mysteries...

[nycgal]

Please add me to the art ping list. Thanks!

[nycgal]

I have had an idea of an FR art gallery thread, considering that there are so many artistic Freepers. Maybe this ping list will provide the impetus to get one going.

I think setting up an FR art gallery is a terrific idea. I'm also taking watercolor and oil painting classes and post on wetcanvas.com now and then. It's a great source for artists.

[nycgal]

I saw this painting at the Met when I was an art student, many years ago, and it took my breath away. I was told that the model for Mary was his wife.

[Sam Cree]

OK, have placed you on the art ping list, thanks.

I've got to photograph a few more images, then I'll be ready to post an Art Gallery thread. Or anyone else could whenever they want to. I'm not sure exactly which of us are artists, but I know there are a lot.

[Liz]

This small image of the painting whispers the artist's power over his canvas.

(Dali used Gala's image in many of his works.)

[Sam Cree]

Will be out of town until tomorrow evening. I will check my pings then to see if there is anyone else to put on the art ping list.

[Liz]

An Ancient Masterpiece or a Master's Forgery?
By KATHRYN SHATTUCK
NY Times
Published: April 18, 2005

The sculpture "Laocoön," at the Vatican Museums, was unearthed in 1506, but a new theory says it is a forgery by Michelangelo.

A (Lynn Catterson) scholar has suggested that "Laocoön," a fabled sculpture whose unearthing in 1506 has deeply influenced thinking about the ancient Greeks and the nature of the visual arts, may well be a Renaissance forgery - possibly by Michelangelo himself.

The strikingly naturalistic sculpture, 95 1/2 inches tall, depicts a deadly attack on the Trojan priest Laocoön and his two sons by writhing sea snakes dispatched by Athena - or, some say, Poseidon - after Laocoön warned against admitting the Trojan horse during the siege of Troy. It resides in the Vatican Museums in Rome.

Richard Brilliant, Anna S. Garbedian emeritus professor of the humanities at Columbia and an authority on classical antiquities - his works include "My Laocoön: Alternative Claims in the Interpretation of Artworks" (University of California Press, 2000) - said that Dr. Catterson's contention was "noncredible on any count."

For one thing, he said, "she made absolutely no reference to ancient sculptures that could be related to 'Laocoön,' " including a large body of ancient fragments found just before World War II at Sperlonga, a site near Rome where Tiberius had a luxurious villa, that refer specifically to episodes of the Trojan war. Some scholars have also found fault in relating the "Laocoön" to the Michelangelo drawing of a torso, now at the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford.

"To my eye, the Michelangelo drawing does not bear a close resemblance to the torso of the Vatican Laocoön," said Katherine E. Welch, an associate professor at New York University's Institute of Fine Arts and an expert in Hellenistic and Roman imperial antiquities, in an e-mail message. "The latter is distinguished by a vigorous torsion or twist, which is lacking in the drawing."

The "Laocoön" was placed at the Vatican Museums by Pope Julius II not long after it was discovered on Jan. 14, 1506, on the Esquiline Hill. Upon hearing the news, the pope immediately dispatched the architect Giuliano da Sangallo to view it; Sangallo brought along his colleague Michelangelo Buonarroti.

As a young artist under the patronage of Lorenzo the Magnificent, Michelangelo had witnessed the Medici family's willingness to spend considerable sums on ancient Greek or Roman objects, which he would have had ample opportunity to study and perhaps try to recreate, she said. He was an astute forger who earned his Bacchus commission after a carved sleeping Cupid that he had buried in the ground to "age" had been sold to a wealthy cardinal in 1495.

EXCERPTED--Rest here http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/18/arts/design/18laoc.html?adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1113840396-KymdyZFLo6BWNI75eOk4KQ

[Conspiracy Guy]

Glad these sculptures are forgeries. I paid a lot for them.

[NYer]

Thank you for the ping! I am an ardent and devoted fan of Michelangelo - painter, sculptor, architect, poet ... the veritable Renaissance man.

What more fitting visual contemplation for the Cardinals as they convene in the Conclave this week, than this masterpiece by Michelangelo.

Last Judgement

As I recall, the 'hanging flesh' is Michelangelo's self portrait.

[Liz]

Thank you for the ping! I am an ardent and devoted fan of Michelangelo - painter, sculptor, architect, poet ... the veritable Renaissance man. What more fitting visual contemplation for the Cardinals as they convene in the Conclave this week, than this masterpiece by Michelangelo. Last Judgement: As I recall, the 'hanging flesh' is Michelangelo's self portrait.

The Cardinals convene the all-important election conclave amid the magnificence of these works.

More on The Last Judgment (from a Michaelangelo biography)

In Rome, in 1536, Michelangelo was at work on the Last Judgment for the alter wall of the Sistine Chapel, which he finished in 1541. The largest fresco of the Renaissance, it depicts Judgment Day. Christ, with a clap of thunder, puts into motion the inevitable separation, with the saved ascending on the left side of the painting and the damned descending on the right into a Dantesque hell. As was his custom, Michelangelo portrayed all the figures nude, but prudish draperies were added by another artist (who was dubbed the 'breeches-maker') a decade later, as the cultural climate became more conservative. Michelangelo painted his own image in the flayed skin of St. Bartholomew. Although he was also given another painting commission, the decoration of the Pauline Chapel in the 1540s, his main energies were directed toward architecture during this phase of his life.