Ceiling
of l’Opera Garnier in
The Marc Chagall mural on the ceiling of
the auditorium of l’Opera Garnier. Installed in 1964,
it provoked much heated controversy because it was not in keeping with the
"Napoleon III" style of the original. Furthermore the new mural was
attached in such a way that the old mural (underneath
the new) was permanently damaged. Nevertheless time has softened the
controversy and to the first time visitor, the Chagall has a lightness and
beauty that complements the 19th century decor in a charming (and lasting) way.
Echoing the colorful style dear to Charles Garnier's, Chagall has designed his painting as a living
image of the festive spirit surrounding each performance: luminous, fluid
figures surge forth, contrasting with the gold and red tones of the theatre.
Las Meninas
One of Velázquez's most representative works Las
Meninas (1656, The Maids of Honour), appears to have as a subject the
eldest daughter of the new Queen, Margarita,
However, in looking at the various viewpoints of the painting it is unclear as
to who or what is the true subject. Is it the royal daughter, or perhaps the
painter himself? The answer may lie in the image on the back wall, depicting
the King and Queen. Is this image a mirror, in which case the King and Queen
are standing where we stand? Are they the subject of Velazquez's work? Or is
the work simply a court painting? Much is still in speculation about the true
subject of this masterpiece, and many of the questions that we ask may never be
truly answered.
Created four
years before his death, it is a staple of the European baroque period of art.
An apotheosis of the work has been effected since its creation; Luca Giordano,
a contemporary Italian painter, referred to it as the "theology of painting,"
and the eighteenth century the Englishman Thomas Lawrence cited it as the
"philosophy of art," so decidedly capable of producing its desired
effect. That effect has been variously interpreted; Dale Brown points out an
interpretation that, in inserting within the work a faded portrait of the king
and queen hanging on the back wall, Velázquez has ingeniously prognosticated
the fall of the Spanish empire that was to gain momentum
following his death. Another interpretation is that the portrait is in fact a
mirror, and that the painting itself is in the perspective of the King and Queen, hence their reflection can be seen in the mirror on
the back wall.
The Creation of Adam
The fresco on the ceiling
of the Sistine Chapel was painted by Michelangelo about 500 years ago. It illustrates the Biblical story from the
Book of Genesis in which God breathes life into Adam, the first man.
Chronologically the fourth in the series of panels depicting episodes from
Genesis on the Sistine ceiling, it was among the last to be completed. The
fresco technique requires that the artist paint a freshly plastered wall which
is still sufficiently humid to allow the paint to bond chemically so that when
the plaster dries, the paint is completely a part of the wall. In order to
paint the plaster which dries very quickly, the artist must have a very rapid
and precise techniques of painting. He must clearly know how much he can paint
during the course of the day ('giornata'). It is
possible to identify the extent of the various daily paintings from the plaster
on the borders of the frescoes. From these it is clear that Michelangelo
painted at a remarkably high speed. The creation
of Adam was painted in two weeks.
Le Déjeuner sur l'Herbe
Edouard Manet painted The Luncheon on the Grass originally titled The
“Painters, and
especially Édouard Manet,
who is an analytic painter, do not share the masses' obsession with the
subject: to them, the subject is only a pretext to paint, whereas for the
masses only the subject exists.”
Emile Zola, 1867
Perhaps the
most important of Wassily Kandinsky's paintings from
the decade of the 1900s, it shows a small cloaked figure on a speeding horse
rushing through a rocky meadow. The rider's cloak is a medium blue, and the
shadow cast is a darker blue. In the foreground are more amorphous blue
shadows, presumably the counterparts of the fall trees in the background. The
Blue Rider in the painting is prominent, but not clearly defined, and the horse
has an unnatural gait (which Kandinsky must have known). Indeed, some believe
that a second figure, a child perhaps, is being held by the rider (though this
could just as easily be another shadow from a solitary rider). This type of
intentional disjunction allowing viewers to participate in the creation of the
artwork would become an increasingly conscious technique used by the artist in
subsequent years—culminating in his great "abstract expressionist"
works of the 1911–1914. In The Blue
Rider Kandinsky shows the rider more as a series of colors than of specific
details. In and of itself, The Blue Rider is not exceptional in that
regard when compared to contemporary painters, but it does show the direction
that Kandinsky would take only a few years later.
The Turkish Bath
Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres
(1780-1867). A summation of the theme of
female voluptuousness, attractive to Ingres throughout his life, The Turkish
Bath, was painted in 1862, in the circular format of earlier masters.
The most erotic of all his
works, created at the end of his life, this harem scene combines the figure of
the nude with an oriental theme. Taking
as his inspiration the letters of Lady Montague, who recounts a visit to a
women's bath in
It was Prince Napoleon who
commissioned this harem scene around 1848. The painting was delivered in 1859,
but returned soon afterwards because it had shocked the empress. The painter
continued to rework his picture until 1863, even after he had dated it 1862. It
was only finally revealed to the wider public in 1905, on the occasion of the
Ingres retrospective at the Salon d'Automne, and here
it excited the most avant-garde painters such as Picasso. The Turkish Bath was the masterpiece of Ingres' later years, as
audacious in its subject as it was in its style. The painting can be admired in
the Louvre,
A masterpiece by Michelangelo Merisi
da Caravaggio,
a painter of the baroque era, completed in 1599-1600 for the Contarelli Chapel in the church of the French congregation,
San Luigi dei Francesi in Rome.
The church is located in the neighborhood of Piazza Navona.
Caravaggio represented the event as a nearly
silent, dramatic narrative. The sequence of actions before and after this
moment can be easily and convincingly re-created. The tax-gatherer Levi (Saint
Matthew's name before he became the apostle) was seated at a table with his
four assistants, counting the day's proceeds, the group lighted from a source
at the upper right of the painting. Christ, His eyes veiled, with His halo the
only hint of divinity, enters with Saint Peter. A gesture of
His right hand, all the more powerful and compelling because of its
languor, summons Levi. Surprised by the intrusion and perhaps dazzled by the
sudden light from the just-opened door, Levi draws back and gestures toward
himself with his left hand as if to say, "Who, me?", his right hand
remaining on the coin he had been counting before Christ's entrance.
Johannes Vermeer van Delft (1632-
1675) the painter
of meditative portraits and of poetical domestic scenes was a master of rendering the almost
material quality of light falling on rich textures, on the delicate traces of a
face or on a pearl. Girl with the Pearl Earring won
in the past years a well deserved fame through Tracy Chevalier’s novel and
through the homonymous film; a consuming story of unconventional love and
renunciation in an exquisite patrician environment.
The portrait can be admired in Royal
Cabinet of Paintings Mauritshuis,
Albrecht
Dürer (1471 1528), painter
and graphic artist, was the central figure in the German Renaissance and one of
the most outstanding personalities in the history of art. In the year 1500 Dürer
painted a self portrait in a hieratical pose that up his time was only reserved
for kings and for Jesus, whose features he was emulating in it. This portrait represents his own
interpretation of the biblical figure and his belief in the divine inspiration
as the source of the artist’s creative powers.
The remarkable force of the portrait is emanating from the balanced
focus of the stare.