The Potato Eaters Painting by Vincent van Gogh
Posted by wendyallartpainting2 in January 10, 2010
Two Cut Sunflowers Painting by Vincent van Gogh
Posted by wendyallartpainting2 in January 10, 2010
Starry Night Pen Drawing by Vincent van Gogh
Posted by wendyallartpainting2 in January 10, 2010
Vincent Van Gogh Starry Night Pen Drawing
Painting: Starry Night
Artist: Vincent van Gogh
Medium: Pen
Size: 47 x 62.5 cm
Original Location: Saint-Remy
Year: June 1889
Meseum: Lost (formerly in the Kunsthalle Bremen)
Van Gogh Starry Night Painting
Buy Vincent van Gogh’s Starry Night Painting Reproduction, 75% off retail, only US$39.00!
June 1889 (210 Kb); Oil on Canvas, 72 x 92 cm (29 x 36 1/4 in); The Museum of Modern Art, New York
Jan van der Heyden Approach to the Town of Veere Painting
Posted by wendyallartpainting2 in November 13, 2009
Approach to the Town of Veere by Jan van der Heyden
c. 1665
Oil on panel, 45,7 x 55,9 cm
Royal Collection, London
Jan van der Heyden, who specialized in the painting of townscapes, was born in Gorinchem but moved as a child to Amsterdam. He is said to have been trained by a glass-painter, an apprenticeship which taught him to paint with the extraordinary degree of precision evident in his topographical views. He lived and worked in Amsterdam throughout his life but travelled widely in Holland, Flanders and the Rhineland. He painted many of the towns he visited, producing more that one hundred views of identified places in Holland, as well as of Brussels and Cologne. From the end of the 1660s he was also involved in projects to improve street-lighting and fire-fighting in his native town and provided the illustrations for books on these subjects. In addition to town views, he painted a few landscapes and still lifes.
In the seventeenth-century Veere, a small town in the province of Zeeland, on the strait between Walcheren and Noord Beveland, was an important port which carried on an extensive trade with Scotland. It is seen here from the south-west with the tower of the Great Church prominent on the left: the church was extensively damaged by fire in 1686. Traditionally the figures have been attributed to Adriaen van de Velde but in fact are probably by van der Heyden himself. The artist painted a number of views of the town of Veere seen from slightly different points of view but none are dated and there is no record of when van der Heyden visited the town. There is relatively little development in van der Heyden’s meticulous and delicate style and his paintings are therefore difficult to date with any precision, but this view was probably painted around 1665.
Jan van der Heyden Dam Square, Amsterdam Painting
Posted by wendyallartpainting2 in November 13, 2009
Dam Square, Amsterdam by Jan van der Heyden
c. 1668
Oil on canvas
Historisch Museum, Amsterdam
Van der Heyden explored the city’s unusual corners as in his view of Amsterdam’s New Church seen from the end of the irregularly shaped Dam in strong, late afternoon light that casts long transparent shadows, where we can explore a small street. On one side of the painting, we merely see a little more than a single pavilion of the long, classical fade of the new town hall and on the other only a bit of the weigh house. Among van der Heyden’s numerous depictions of the town hall, not one shows a frontal view of its full fade. For straightforward elevations of the building Amsterdammers called the Eighth Wonder of the World, it is necessary to turn to other cityscapists.
Jan van der Heyden Still-life with Rarities Painting
Posted by wendyallartpainting2 in November 13, 2009
Still-life with Rarities by Jan van der Heyden
1712
Oil on canvas, 74 x 63,5 cm
Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest
Jan van der Heyden was one of the leading architectural painters of his generation and a man of more parts than most Dutch painters. When he was a boy of thirteen his parents settled in Amsterdam; apart from trips to the Rhineland, the northern, and the southern Netherlands he spent his life there. He painted some imaginary cityscapes based on studies done in Germany, which at first blush appear to be true-to-life views, and lovely capriccios which show expert knowledge of the principles of classical architecture. His oeuvre also includes about forty landscapes that reveal a debt to Adriaen van de Velde, who is credited with painting figures in some of his pictures, and a few intriguing still-lifes that can be justifiably categorized as interiors. Van der Heyden is best known for his views of Amsterdam.
Most of van der Heyden’s paintings were done in the sixties and seventies – his work as inventor, entrepreneur, and city official probably slacked his pace. But he continued to paint until the very end. His latest firmly datable picture, Still-life with Rarities, now in Budapest, shows the corner of a ‘Kunstkamer’ in strong even light with meticulous depictions of rarities from the natural and man-made world, but not the collector who assembled them. It is proudly inscribed with his monogram and states he painted it when he was seventy-five years old; he attained that age in 1712, the year he died.
Among the objects displayed in the Kunstkamer, which is most probably a fictive one, are a hanging armour of an armadillo, a copy after an etching of Pietro Testa’s Suicide of Dido above the marble mantle, an inlaid cabinet used for housing treasured coins and natural specimens, oriental weapons, and on the bright red Chinese embroidered cloth that covers the table globes, one terrestrial and the other celestial, and an open Blaeu atlas. Next to the table there is a red damask covered chair that supports a folio Bible open at the favourite passage of Dutch moralists: Ecclesiastes, Chapter I, which begins with ‘The words of the Preacher . . . vanity of vanities; all is vanity. What profit hath a man of all his labour which he taketh under the sun?’ The biblical reference to transience is reinforced by Testa’s Suicide of Dido, a subject taken from Virgil’s Aeneid which can be read as an exemplum of love’s ephemeral nature.
Van der Heyden’s message is obvious and familiar. It is one we have heard from other still-life specialists: preparation for salvation is of greater importance than all the treasures, pleasures, and knowledge that can be derived from this world.
Jan van der Heyden View of a Bridge Painting
Posted by wendyallartpainting2 in November 13, 2009
View of a Bridge by Jan van der Heyden
Oil on panel, 24 x 31 cm
Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten, Antwerp
Jan van der Heyden View of Delft Painting
Posted by wendyallartpainting2 in November 13, 2009
Jan van der Heyden The Dam with the New Town Hall in Amsterdam Paintings
Posted by wendyallartpainting2 in November 13, 2009
Jan van der Heyden The New Town Hall in Amsterdam Painting
Posted by wendyallartpainting2 in November 13, 2009
The New Town Hall in Amsterdam by Jan van der Heyden
after 1652
Oil on canvas, 73 x 86 cm
Musee du Louvre, Paris
This is the second version of the same subject that he completed shortly after the first painting. (The first is in the Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence.) Here the viewpoint is somewhat further to the right and the perspective is different; the foreshortening of the Town Hall’s fa鏰de is less pronounced, and the lantern’s distortion – too strong in the first version – has been corrected.
Meyndert Hobbema Landscape Painting
Posted by wendyallartpainting2 in November 13, 2009
Landscape by Meyndert Hobbema
Panel
Alte Pinakothek, Munich
Hobbema was a Dutch landscape painter. He worked in his native Amsterdam, where he was the friend and only documented pupil of Jacob van Ruisdael. Some of his pictures are very like Ruisdael’s, but his range was more limited and he lacked the latter’s power to capture the majesty of nature.
Meyndert Hobbema Road on a Dyke Painting
Posted by wendyallartpainting2 in November 13, 2009
Road on a Dyke by Meyndert Hobbema
1663
Oil on canvas, 108 x 128 cm
Private collection
Meindert Hobbema was born in Amsterdam and was a pupil there of the landscape painter Jacob van Ruisdael. Ruisdael had moved to Amsterdam from his native Haarlem by 1657 and Hobbema must have entered his studio shortly thereafter. Hobbema’s technique in the depiction of landscape and his choice of forest scenes are derived from his master, but Hobbema’s landscapes do not possess the grandeur or the threatening and even melancholy aspect of Ruisdael’s. Hobbema’s is a reassuringly docile vision of landscape, a town-dweller’s account of the beauty of the countryside. It is an essentially decorative view, an anticipation of the rococo landscapes of the eighteenth century.
The Road on a Dyke shows him placing themes taken from Ruisdael – the pool surrounded by trees, the large over-arching oak dominating the landscape; the country path rutted by the wheels of waggons – in an open, sunlit landscape. The figures and cattle in the right foreground are probably by Adriaen van de Velde, who often collaborated with Hobbema and other landscape painters.
Hobbema’s career is a reminder of how precarious a living was to be made from painting in Holland in the seventeenth century. In 1668 Hobbema was appointed to the post of wine-gauger to the Amsterdam guild of wine-importers, through his marriage to the maidservant of a burgomaster in Amsterdam. Although by no means an exalted position, the job did at least guarantee a regular income, and Hobbema almost gave up painting entirely: However, it was during these years that he produced some of his finest works, including The Avenue at Middelharnis, painted in 1689.
Meyndert Hobbema The Alley at Middelharnis Painting
Posted by wendyallartpainting2 in November 13, 2009
The Alley at Middelharnis by Meyndert Hobbema
1689
Oil on canvas, 103,5 x 141 cm
National Gallery, London
Hobbema painted a narrow range of favourite subjects over and over again. In 1668 he became a wine gauger with the Amsterdam customs and excise, and thereafter seems to have painted only in his spare time. His new position, which he held until the end of his life, probably accounts for the slackening and a certain unevenness in his production during his late decades. A few works of this later period show his compositions broken up into too many detailed areas. The trees acquire an almost linear sharpness, and the pictorial effect hardens.
Yet there are some notable exceptions, one of which almost seems a miracle, because in this work Hobbema not only revives his old grandeur, but surpasses himself as a composer and painter of the Dutch countryside. This is the rightly famous The Alley at Middelharnis. It does not take away from the glory of this picture that there are precedents in Dutch landscape painting that date back for the first decades of the century for the conception of a strongly foreshortened road lined with trees in a wide flat landscape.
Hobbema altered earlier schemes by centralizing the whole composition, focusing interest on the middle and far distance as well as the immediate foreground with its uncultivated grove on one side and an orderly arrangement of saplings on the other, and by the unprecedented height of the lopped, thin trees which carry interest to the towering sky (regrettably, the sky was extensively damaged before the picture was acquired by the gallery in 1871; much of its paint surface is the work of modern restorers). The painting offers a topographically accurate view of the village of Middelharnis on the island of Over Flakee (Province of South Holland) in the mouth of the Maas; the view of the village from the Steene Weg (formerly Boomgaardweg) looks much the same today. This masterpiece is the swan song of Holland’s great period of landscape painting which fully deserves its high reputation.
Meyndert Hobbema A Wooded Landscape Painting
Posted by wendyallartpainting2 in November 13, 2009
A Wooded Landscape by Meyndert Hobbema
1660-65
Oil on canvas, 56,5 x 50 cm
Wallace Collection, London
Hobbema was Jacob van Ruisdael’s most important follower and his only documented pupil. In the beginning the influence of the older master is unmistakable. In 1663 Hobbema’s style gained more independence and, during this and the following years up to 1668, he created a series of masterpieces which gave him an outstanding position side by side with Ruisdael among the great landscapists of Holland.
Hobbema’s outlook on nature is less brooding, more sunny, and vivacious than Ruisdael’s. While the latter favoured compactness of form and composition, Hobbema’s tree groups are less tightly built, and their silhouettes are rather feathery. He likes to open up his compositions with various outlooks into a shiny distance, and his luminous skies of an intense white and blue permeate the whole with sparkling daylight. Hobbema’s painterly touch is more fluid, and the colours are richly varied in an interplay of bright green and light brown, fine greys, and reds. Often an appealing blond tonality prevails.
Meyndert Hobbema Landscape with a Hut Painting
Posted by wendyallartpainting2 in November 13, 2009
Landscape with a Hut by Meyndert Hobbema
c. 1660
Oil on wood, 53 x 65 cm
Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest
Meyndert Hobbema The Travelers Painting
Posted by wendyallartpainting2 in November 13, 2009
The Travelers by Meyndert Hobbema
1663
Oil on canvas
National Gallery of Art, Washington
A friend and pupil of Jacob van Ruisdael, Hobbema and his teacher often made sketching trips together into the countryside near Amsterdam, later using their drawings as studies for paintings. On occasion the same scene would appear in works by both artists, for the old mill in this painting is also found in a painting by Ruisdael in Amsterdam. Even though the scenes might be similar, the paintings would differ greatly in style, for Hobbema approached landscape more as a reporter, and Ruisdael more as a poet.
Rogier van der Weyden Abegg Triptych Painting
Posted by wendyallartpainting2 in November 10, 2009
Abegg Triptych by Rogier van der Weyden
c. 1445
Oil on oak panel, 102 x 70,5 cm (central), 103 x 31 cm (each wing)
Abegg-Stiftung, Riggisberg near Berne
The Abegg Triptych was painted for an Italian gentleman, an unidentified member of the Villa family from Chieri in Piedmont, who were active in banking in the Netherlands. Their coat of arms appears in the glazed window in the left wing. The picture is generally regarded as a late work by one of Rogier’s successors, perhaps not painted until the 1460s, though some of the figures of the Crucifixion were copied as early as 1447 by the Hamburg painter Hans Bornemann, who died in 1475. The costume of the donor and the findings from dendrochronological investigation allow us to date the picture to the middle of the 1440s. Compared to figures in works by Rogier’s own hand the figures here, particularly in the Crucifixion, seem excessively emotional; instead of radiating dignified grief they are uttering loud cries of lamentation.
Once again, the design of the triptych must have been by an assistant in Rogier’s workshop. The figure of the red-robed St. John to the left of the Cross shows how he reworked the master’s figural types to suit his own ideas. The model is St John in Rogier’s Deposition (Prado, Madrid), and it is followed faithfully in such details as the right foot. The folds of the robe, however, are more strongly modeled.
The cloak in particular, very dynamically draped and with a large fold flung backward over the shoulder, gives the figure a sense of agitation that is in tune with the character of this painting as a whole, but not with its model. Similarly, Mary Magdalene’s cloak slipping down from her hips picks up a motif from the Deposition, but combines it with an extrovert gesture foreign to that picture, with the saint suddenly flinging up her arms.
The series of the three panels follows a chronological sequence: the sculptural Annunciation group in the donor’s loggia refers to Christ’s becoming man; in the central panel Christ has just died, and the sun and moon turn dark as His companions break into loud lamentations; on the right Joseph of Arimathaea, Nicodemus, and a servant are approaching with a ladder to take the dead body down from the Cross.
Rogier van der Weyden Annunciation Triptych Painting
Posted by wendyallartpainting2 in November 10, 2009
Annunciation Triptych by Rogier van der Weyden
c. 1440
Oil on oak panel, 86 x 92 cm (central panel), 87 x 36,5 cm (each wing)
Musee du Louvre, Paris (central), Galleria Sabauda, Turin (wings)
The central scene of the Annunciation takes place in a luxurious interior, depicted with convincing spatial feeling. The white lilies and glass carafe symbolize the purity of Mary. The fireplace is already out of use on March 25, Annunciation Day, and has a wooden cover over it. The donor in the left-hand wing (the two wings may be by another hand) was later entirely overpainted, and not very well. The right-hand wing shows the Visitation.
Rogier van der Weyden Bladelin Triptych Painting
Posted by wendyallartpainting2 in November 10, 2009
Bladelin Triptych by Rogier van der Weyden
1445-50
Oil on oak panel, 91 x 89 cm (centre panel), 91 x 40 cm (each wing)
Staatliche Museen, Berlin
In the middle of the 17th century this triptych, known as the Middelburg Altarpiece, was in the Flemish city of Middelburg, founded by the rich Bruges burgher Pieter Bladelin and his wife around 1444. The donor of the work, also known as the Bladelin Altarpiece, is therefore usually thought to have been the founder of the city himself. On the other hand, Middelburg passed into other hands after the death of the Bladelins, who had no children, and there is no evidence that the altarpiece did not arrive there at a later date. Furthermore, it shows only one donor, although Bladelin’s wife was cofounder with him of the new city. The donor depicted, wearing the same fashions as the Duke of Burgundy and obviously a member of the upper classes, must therefore be considered unidentified.
In the centre panel the donor is shown kneeling in an attitude of prayer beside the Virgin and Joseph, adoring the naked Child. In the background is a town, perhaps representing Middelburg, near Bruges. The stable of Bethlehem resembles the ruin of a Romanesque chapel. The painter may have had in mind the remains of the palace of King David, who was reckoned among the forbears of Jesus. In the foreground the building is supported by a single pillar which bulks so large beside the tiny figure of the Child that it must obviously be regarded as symbolic. It can be interpreted both as a symbol of sublime power and of the place where Christ was later scourged.
The message of the centre panel alone would be incomplete without the scenes portrayed on the two wings. The three panels together are an allegory of the world dominion of Christ and show not only the ruler of Middelburg and Brabant but also kings in both west and east paying homage to the Child. Tradition has it that, on the day of Christ’s birth, a prophetess, the Sibyl of Tibur, showed the Emperor Augustus a vision of the Child and his Mother in the heavens. Here the ruler of the West (the Duke of Burgundy) falls humbly on his knees, removes his crown and swings a censer as a token of sacrifice. In the right-hand wing the three kings of the Orient are depicted; deeply moved and fearful, also kneeling before the vision in the heavens; this is the star of Bethlehem, which appears in the clouds with the embodiment of the Child, to guide them on their journey.
Not only in terms of the subject matter but also in the formal composition of the work, the painter has related the side-wings to the central scene. In so doing, he abandoned the uncoordinated scheme of the multipartite altarpiece familiar throughout the Middle Ages. One need only compare earlier works by Rogier van der Weyden such as the tripartite Altarpiece of Saint John the Baptist – to realize the extent of his advance. The bold use of space which the painter makes in each individual scene of the Saint John triptych becomes even more marked in the Bladelin Altarpiece, where the compass of the picture extends over all three panels, and this is also reflected in the abandonment of any dividing architectonic framework.
Rogier was one of the first great painters of the north to visit Italy. Around 1449/50 he must have been in Ferrara, Florence and Rome; and it would have been soon after his return from the south that he received Peter Bladelin’s commission. There are few indications of Italian influence in the Middelburg Altarpiece. It is perhaps to be traced in the left wing, where the attendants, standing stern-faced and silent at the picture’s edge, recall Quattrocento portraits in Florence.
Peter Bladelin (d. 1472), Treasurer to the Duke of Burgundy and founder of Middelburg, donated the altar triptych to the town church. It has been replaced by an early copy; the Berlin Gallery bought the original panels in 1834 from Nieuwenhuis in Brussels, who had previously purchased them in Middelburg.
Rogier van der Weyden Bladelin Triptych (central panel) Painting
Posted by wendyallartpainting2 in November 10, 2009
Bladelin Triptych (central panel) by Rogier van der Weyden
1445-50
Oil on oak panel, 91 x 89 cm
Staatliche Museen, Berlin
The centre of the triptych shows the Nativity of Christ. The donor wore clothes of a similar fashion to those occurring in Rogier’s miniature in the Hainault Chronicle. Apart from the fact that the donor’s coat is not made of costly brocade, it greatly resembles the one worn by the duke in the miniature. Unlike Philip, who as the highest-ranking person present keeps on his hat, the “chaperon,” the donor in the triptych, kneeling before the Christ Child, has removed his, and wears it slung behind him on his back.
The donor of the Middleburg Altarpiece is more closely integrated with the scene than in almost any other Early Netherlandish painting. In his position and attitude he takes the place, within the Nativity narrative, of a shepherd praying, a motif frequent in pictorial tradition. Even in Rogier’s Crucifixion Triptych (Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna), the married couple who commissioned the work are much more obviously outside the events shown, because their attitude of prayer cannot be seen as part of the narrative. But the donor of the Middelburg Altarpiece too is present only in spirit, witnessing the incarnation of God in his meditations. In order to put sufficient distance between him and the Virgin, the artist has resorted to a device already found in the Deposition (Prado, Madrid): the contours of his figure come very close to other items in the pictorial area, but overlap them to a minimal extent. The donor’s head comes short of the ruined wall confining the area containing the Virgin, his hands are close to the outline of her dress but do not quite touch it, and the outline of his coat runs past Mary’s robe with only a very slight overlap. The man is kept within a vertical area of the painting (an effect reinforced by the black he wears), an area also containing the fine town with its worldly bustle that is his real environment, although here, of course, it represents Bethlehem. The gap in the little wall behind the donor on the right denotes the road he has taken away from everyday life in his piety, an idea also suggested by the end of his head-dress lying on the ground.
A carefully calculated equilibrium is perceptible in the composition. There are three large figures on each panel – even the left-hand panel, where the emperor’s two advisers at the back are in fact almost hidden by the one in front. The group around the Christ Child describes an upward-pointing triangle, balanced by a downward-pointing triangle created by the outline of the diagonally placed ruin and the two holes in the foreground, which are set on a slant. This surface pattern in the shape of a horizontal rhomboid, however, also creates depth, since the corner of the ruin projecting forward and the figures graduated in a sequence moving backward interlock spatially. But as usual, Rogier restricts the back part of the stage on which his main figures are set: the back wall of the ruin, the wall of Octavian’s apartment, and the hill behind the Magi all act as visual barriers at about the same depth.
The main purpose of the triangular composition, however, is to emphasize the Virgin Mary, particularly since she is placed approximately on the central axis of the picture. This position might seem natural, but is in fact unusual in depictions of the Nativity, where Mary is generally placed to one side, next to the Child. The dark wall also acts as a contrasting background and forms a kind of baldachin over Mary. This manner of depicting the Virgin was another of Rogier’s successful ideas, imitated by many other artists.
Rogier van der Weyden Bladelin Triptych (left wing) Painting
Posted by wendyallartpainting2 in November 10, 2009
.jpg)
Bladelin Triptych (left wing) by Rogier van der Weyden
1445-50
Oil on oak panel, 91 x 40 cm
Staatliche Museen, Berlin
The scenes in the side panels depict the advent of the Son of God on earth being announced in miraculous visions to the Roman emperor Octavian (Augustus) and to the three Magi. The Christ Child receives the homage of both East and West, that is to say the whole world as displayed in the panorama of the open triptych: the West is symbolized by the Roman empire – which was regarded as the direct predecessor of the medieval Holy Roman Empire – the East by the Magi, and between them stands the Holy Land with Bethlehem, to the medieval mind the centre and navel of the world.
The visions seen by these ruler are taken from a text popular at the time, but never previously illustrated in this form: the chapter on the Nativity in the Legenda Aurea (Golden Legend, a collection of tales of the saints written around 1270 by the Dominican monk Jacobus de Voragine (1228/29-1298). However, there were certain problems involved in illustrating it in realistic detail. It was particularly difficult to present Octavian’s vision of the Madonna on an altar hovering in the sky, not borne up by angels or similar figures. Rogier solved this problem by seating the Virgin on an obviously heavy altar, so closely framed by the opening that she looks almost like a picture within the picture, providing an optical focus. The donor clearly wanted the text of the legend illustrated literally, and he must at first have asked for actual quotations too, although they were eventually omitted, to the benefit of the work as a whole: infrared photography shows that all the scenes originally contained scrolls to hold wording. The left-hand picture, for instance, was to quote the words miraculously heard by Octavian, according to the legend, on seeing the vision: Haec est ara coeli (“This is the altar of Heaven”). However, during the execution of the triptych it obviously became clear that the pictures would make their point even without any explanatory text, and the wording was overpainted. Such a decision cannot have been taken without the consent of the patron who commissioned the altarpiece, and perhaps it may have been made during a conversation between Rogier and his client when the latter visited the artist’s studio.
Hugo van der Goes Adoration of the Shepherds Painting
Posted by wendyallartpainting2 in November 9, 2009
Adoration of the Shepherds by Hugo van der Goes
c. 1480
Wood, 97 x 245 cm
Staatliche Museen, Berlin
Hugo van der Goes painted this work in the closing years of his life, presumably a decade after the Monforte Altarpiece, after he had retired in 1478 into a monastery near Brussels as a lay-brother. The peculiar flatness of the faces and the contrived nature of the whole composition are symptomatic of his later period, in which transitory motifs also become prominent. Although this panel may lack the cohesion of the Monforte Altarpiece, one can still detect in it – particularly in the undignified intrusion of the shepherds – a bold and final attempt by a great artist, who was close to death, to break with accepted tradition in painting and strike out along a new path.
The Virgin and Joseph are kneeling – almost symmetrically placed – on either side of the crib which, viewed end-on, adds depth to the scene. Angels are crowding round behind the crib in order to be near the Child. Through an opening in the wall in the right background one has a glimpse of the shepherds in the fields, receiving the glad news. On the left side of the picture, two of them rush in, baring their heads as they enter. The entire scene is revealed to the observer by two prophets in the foreground, who draw the curtains back and create the illusion of ‘unveiling’ it.
The unusually wide yet shallow format of the picture has given rise to the suggestion that it may have been originally designed as a predella. But such an assumption would presuppose an altar of enormous dimensions, the existence of which could not have remained completely unknown. Besides, there is no evidence of predellas in Netherlandish painting, so for the time being the artist’s purpose must remain a matter of conjecture.
In his Adoration of the Shepherds the painter created something that is far removed from his earlier work, the Monforte Altarpiece. There the composure and dignity of the kings and the natural simplicity of their bearing contrast sharply with the commotion and crowding of the later work, which gives the impression of being somewhat contrived. There is no doubt that the format prescribed by the patron presented the painter with problems of form which were not easy to solve.
Hugo van der Goes Mary Triptych Painting
Posted by wendyallartpainting2 in November 9, 2009
Mary Triptych by Hugo van der Goes
c. 1478
Wood, 30,1 x 23,4 cm
Städelsches Kunstinstitut, Frankfurt
The painting is the central panel of a triptych. It is in its original frame.
Hugo van der Goes Calvary Triptych Painting
Posted by wendyallartpainting2 in November 9, 2009
Calvary Triptych by Hugo van der Goes
1465-68
Oil on wood, 250 x 216 cm
Cathedral of St Bavo, Ghent
Although his working life was very short – a mere fourteen years – it was long enough for Hugo van der Goes to establish himself as a major innovator with a powerful creative imagination. There are fifteen altarpieces and paintings by his hand that are known today. Amongst them is the Calvary Triptych, long attributed to Justus of Ghent (Joos van Wassenhove)). Most experts now agree that it must be the work of Van der Goes.
The central panel of the triptych depicts Christ nailed to a tall cross, with the two thieves to either side of him, tied to their gibbets. They are surrounded by a crowd of figures and horsemen, and the city of Jerusalem is visible in the background. This panel is an impressive work of its own right, but the two panels to either side, which draw their subjects from the book of Exodus, are in many ways even finer.
In the left wing, we see Moses beside a great rock that marks the limits of the foreground area. He is plunging a branch into the bitter waters of Marah to sweeten them, so that the Israelites could slake their thirst. Mothers are giving their children to drink, an old man holds out a bowl to his grandson, and another man is sipping the precious liquid from his cupped hand.
The right wing depicts the episode of the brazen serpent. The people of Israel are marching through a steep-sided valley. Moses has climbed up onto a rocky promontory above them, his stick in one hand. There he complains to Jehovah that the people will not obey him any more, whereupon Jehovah turns his stick into a snake before the eyes of the astonished crowd. The people of Israel, saved by Moses, are used here to prefigure the destiny of the Christian Church, whose people have been saved by Christ.
In the background, the clouds drifting across the sky link the vast landscape into one continuous sweep stretching across all three panels. Shadows are suggested by areas of saturated colour and by the use of cross-hatching. Van der Goes’s drawing is precise, taut and incisive. His palette is bright and vibrant, giving a strong sense of real open-air light. Along with more forthright tones, he delights in blending together delicate colours such as moss green and olive green, wine red, different gradations of blue, and soft pink.
Hugo van der Goes Calvary Triptych (central panel) Painting
Posted by wendyallartpainting2 in November 9, 2009
Calvary Triptych (central panel) by Hugo van der Goes
1465-68
Oil on wood
Cathedral of St Bavo, Ghent
The central panel of the triptych depicts Christ nailed to a tall cross, with the two thieves to either side of him, tied to their gibbets. They are surrounded by a crowd of figures and horsemen, and the city of Jerusalem is visible in the background.
Hugo van der Goes Monforte Altarpiece Painting
Posted by wendyallartpainting2 in November 9, 2009
Monforte Altarpiece by Hugo van der Goes
c. 1470
Oil on wood, 150 x 247 cm
Staatliche Museen, Berlin
The most brilliant work from the early period of van der Goes is the Monforte Altarpiece, named after the town in which it was housed, in a college belonging to a group of Spanish Jesuits, before being subsequently transferred to the Berlin museum. It is a large-scale triptych, of which only the central panel, a long horizontal rectangle, has survived to the present day. A group of hovering angels have been amputated from the top of the panel, and the two wings have disappeared. The theme of the surviving picture is the adoration of the Magi.
The Three Kings and their followers come upon the Virgin, the Holy Infant and Joseph amid the ruins of a palace. A group of villagers observe this extraordinary scene through a gap in the wall. The figures, both actors and witnesses, are all shown on the same scale, whether humble or magnificent. They are neither reticent nor exalted, but react to the event in their various ways, surprised or self-conscious. In the background we can see a few women, some cottages and a river besides which the Kings’ horses are waiting. In the foreground, symbolic flowers – the lily and columbine – and a pottery vessel are depicted with great care. A tiny squirrel is running along one of the beams above the opening through which the villagers observe the scene. Van der Goes has given free rein to his imagination, both in the composition and in his handling of paint, deploying the splendidly rich colours that are so characteristic of his art, mixing blazing reds with the most delicately nuanced shades.
Jan van Eyck Crucifixion Painting
Posted by wendyallartpainting2 in November 9, 2009
Crucifixion by Jan van Eyck
1420-25
Oil on wood transferred to canvas, 56,5 x 19,5 cm
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
The Crucifixion and the Last Judgment (also in the Metropolitan Museum) were the side wings of a triptych, the central panel of which is lost. The attribution to Jan van Eyck is debated.
These two small pictures conjure up a veritable microcosm. Every detail is observed with equal interest – from the alpine landscape to the slender body of Christ and the emotions of the various figures. The raised lettering on the original frames forms quotations from Isaiah on the Crucifixion and from Revelations and Deuteronomy on the Last Judgment.
Jan van Eyck Last Judgment Painting
Posted by wendyallartpainting2 in November 9, 2009
Last Judgmentby Jan van Eyck
1420-25
Oil on wood transferred to canvas, 56,5 x 19,5 cm
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New YorkThe Crucifixion and the Last Judgment (also in the Metropolitan Museum) were the side wings of a triptych, the central panel of which is lost. The attribution to Jan van Eyck is debated.
These two small pictures conjure up a veritable microcosm. Every detail is observed with equal interest – from the alpine landscape to the slender body of Christ and the emotions of the various figures. The raised lettering on the original frames forms quotations from Isaiah on the Crucifixion and from Revelations and Deuteronomy on the Last Judgment.
Last Judgmentby Jan van Eyck
1420-25
Oil on wood transferred to canvas, 56,5 x 19,5 cm
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New YorkThe Crucifixion and the Last Judgment (also in the Metropolitan Museum) were the side wings of a triptych, the central panel of which is lost. The attribution to Jan van Eyck is debated.
These two small pictures conjure up a veritable microcosm. Every detail is observed with equal interest – from the alpine landscape to the slender body of Christ and the emotions of the various figures. The raised lettering on the original frames forms quotations from Isaiah on the Crucifixion and from Revelations and Deuteronomy on the Last Judgment.
Jan van Eyck Madonna and Child at the Fountain Painting
Posted by wendyallartpainting2 in November 9, 2009
Madonna and Child at the Fountain by Jan van Eyck
1439
Oil on wood, 19 x 12 cm
Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten, Antwerp
The small panel is signed and dated on a marbled frame: ‘IOH(ann)ES DE EYCK ME FECIT C(om)PLEVIT AN(n)O 1439′. However, the datation is debated. The painting is assumed by some scholars to be earlier (c. 1425-30) and the 1439 is only the date of completion and framing.
The attention which Van Eyck focused upon the tender embrace of mother and child is characteristic of late-medieval devotion. The artist depicts the paradisiacal garden and other symbols of the Virgin such as the fountain, the rose and the iris. Angels hold up a gorgeous brocade cloth behind the mother and child as a symbol of honour. The symbolism of the colours used in the painting serve to heighten its spiritual message.
Jan van Eyck Madonna in the Church Painting
Posted by wendyallartpainting2 in November 9, 2009
Madonna in the Church by Jan van Eyck
c. 1425
Oil on wood, 32 x 14 cm
Staatliche Museen, Berlin
The asymmetric composition, unusual at Van Eyck, is explained by the fact that this panel was the left wing of a diptych. The other wing is lost but contemporary copies prove the correctness of this assumption.
Recent Comments