Sleeping Venus (1508-1510)

Sleeping Venus (1508-1510)


Artist: Giorgione (1477 — 1510)
Title: Sleeping Venus
Deutsch: Schlummernde Venus
Year: between 1508 and 1510
Technique: Oil on canvas
Dimensions: 108 × 175 cm (42.52 × 68.90 in)
Current location: Gemäldegalerie, Dresden

This painting was done by Giorgione in approx. 1509 c. It was unfinished at the time of his death and the sky was later finished by Titian. (Titian also painted a similar Venus, but it was not as agitated and unsettled as Giorgione's nude.) Obviously a painting with underlying erotic implications, this can be seen by the Venus' raised arm (the exposed arm pit a symbol of sexuality) and also the blatant placement of her left hand. The sheets are a silver colour (a cold colour rather than a more commonly used warm tone) and they are very rigid looking (in comparison to Titian's or Velzquez's Venus'). The landscape mimicks the curves of the nude and this in turn relates the human body back to natural, organic object.

Mona Lisa (1503–1506)

Mona Lisa (1503–1506)


Artist: Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519)
Title: Mona Lisa
Italiano: La Gioconda (Monna Lisa)
Français : La Joconde

Year: 1503–1506
Technique: Oil on poplar
Dimensions: 77 cm × 53 cm
Current location: Louvre, Paris


Mona Lisa (also known as La Gioconda or La Joconde) is a sixteenth-century portrait painted in oil on a poplar panel in Florence, Italy by Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci during the Renaissance. The work is currently owned by the Government of France and is on display at the Louvre museum in Paris under the title Portrait of Lisa Gherardini, wife of Francesco del Giocondo. Arguably, it is the most famous and iconic painting in the world.

The painting is a half-length portrait and depicts a woman whose facial expression is frequently described as enigmatic. Others believe that the slight smile is an indication that the subject is hiding a secret. The ambiguity of the subject's expression, the monumentality of the composition, and the subtle modeling of forms and atmospheric illusionism were novel qualities that have contributed to the continuing fascination and study of the work. In 1911, it was stolen and copied; the copies were sold as the genuine painting. It was recovered in 1913.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Mona_Lisa.jpeg
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mona_Lisa


1500s paintings | Leonardo da Vinci paintings | Paintings of the Louvre | 16th-century portraits | Portraits by Italian artists

The Birth of Venus (Botticelli)

The Birth of Venus


Artist: Sandro Botticelli
Title: The Birth of Venus
Bosanski: Rođenje Venere.
Česky: Zrození Venuše.
Dansk: Venus' fødsel.
Deutsch: Geburt der Venus.
Español: El nacimiento de Venus.
Eesti: Veenuse sünd.
Français : La Naissance de Vénus.
Italiano: La nascita di Venere.
日本語: ヴィーナスの誕生
한국어: 비너스의 탄생
Polski: Narodziny Wenus.
Slovenčina: Zrodenie Venuše.
Suomi: Venuksen syntymä.
Svenska: Venus födelse.
Türkçe: Venüs'ün Doğuşu
Русский: Рождение Венеры.
中文: 维纳斯的诞生

Year: 1486
Technique: Tempera on canvas
Dimensions: 172.5 × 278.5 cm (67.91 × 109.65 in)
Current location: Galleria degli Uffizi


The Birth of Venus is a painting by Sandro Botticelli. It depicts the goddess Venus, having emerged from the sea as a full grown woman, arriving at the sea-shore (which is related to the Venus Anadyomene motif). The painting is held in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence.


Origins

In the past many scholars thought that this large picture may have been, like the Primavera, painted for Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco de' Medici's Villa di Castello, around 1482, or even before. This was because Vasari, in his 1550 edition of the Lives of the Artists wrote: "...today, still at Castello, in the villa of the Duke Cosimo, there are two paintings, one the birth of Venus and those breezes and winds that bring her to land with the loves, and likewise another Venus, whom the Graces adorn with flowers, denoting the Springtime." But the Birth of Venus, unlike the Primavera, is not found in Medici inventories of the late-fifteenth and early-sixteenth centuries, which has led some recent scholars to rethink the patronage, and hence the meaning, of the painting. In the last 30 years most art historians have dated the painting, based on its stylistic qualities, to c. 1485-87.


Interpretation

The iconography of Birth of Venus is very similar to a description of the event (or rather, a description of a sculpture of the event) in a poem by Angelo Poliziano, the Stanze per la giostra. No single text provides the precise content of the painting, however, which has led scholars to propose many sources and interpretations. Art historians who specialize in the Italian Renaissance have found a Neoplatonic interpretation, which was most clearly articulated by Ernst Gombrich, to be the most enduring way to understand the painting.

For Plato - and so for the members of the Florentine Platonic Academy - Venus had two aspects: she was an earthly goddess who aroused humans to physical love or she was a heavenly goddess who inspired intellectual love in them. Plato further argued that contemplation of physical beauty allowed the mind to better understand spiritual beauty. So, looking at Venus, the most beautiful of goddesses, might at first raise a physical response in viewers which then lifted their minds towards the Creator. A Neoplatonic reading of Botticelli's Birth of Venus suggests that fifteenth-century viewers would have looked at the painting and felt their minds lifted to the realm of divine love.

More recently, questions have arisen about Neoplatonism as the dominant intellectual system of late fifteenth-century Florence, and scholars have indicated that there might be other ways to interpret Botticelli's mythological paintings. In particular, both Primavera and Birth of Venus have been seen as wedding paintings that suggest appropriate behaviors for brides and grooms.


Style

Botticelli's art was never fully committed to naturalism; in comparison to his contemporary Domenico Ghirlandaio, Botticelli seldom gave weight and volume to his figures and rarely used a deep perspectival space. In the Birth of Venus, Venus' body is anatomically improbable, with elongated neck and torso. Her pose is impossible: although she stands in a classical contrapposto stance, her weight is shifted too far over the left leg for the pose to be held. Moreover, were she actually to stand on the edge of the shell (which cannot be identified as real), it would certainly tip over. The bodies and poses of the winds to the left are even harder to figure out. The background is summary, and the figures cast no shadows. It is clear that this is a fantasy image.

Venus is an Italian Renaissance ideal: blonde, pale-skinned, voluptuous. Botticelli has picked out highlights in her hair with gold leaf and has emphasized the femininity of her body (long neck, curviness). The brilliant light and soothing colors, the luxurious garden, the gorgeous draperies of the nymph, and the roses floating around the beautiful nude all suggest that the painting is meant to bring pleasure to the viewer.


Classical inspiration

The central figure of Venus in the painting is very similar to Praxiteles' sculpture of Aphrodite. The version of her birth, is where she arises from the sea foam, already a full woman.

In classical antiquity, the sea shell was a metaphor for a woman's vulva.

The pose of Botticelli's Venus is reminiscent of the Venus de' Medici, a marble sculpture from classical antiquity in the Medici collection which Botticelli had opportunity to study.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Birth_of_Venus_(Botticelli)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:La_nascita_di_Venere_(Botticelli).jpg


1486 paintings | Botticelli paintings in the Uffizi | Venus Anadyomenes | Paintings depicting Greek myths | Paintings of Venus

Apollo and Daphne

Apollo and Daphne


Description: "Apollo and Daphne" by Piero Pollaiuolo. Painted in the late 15th century.
Date: 15th century (1470s – 1480s)
Author: Piero Pollaiuolo


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Apollo_and_Daphne.jpg

Acca Larentia (1414-1419)

Acca Larentia


1414-1419
Marble, height: 162 cm
Palazzo Pubblico, Siena


This well-preserved figure is from the damaged Fonte Gaia, the Sienese fountain commissioned for the sloping, fanshaped Piazza del Campo on the site of a trecento fountain. Two drawings preserve some of its original features which were altered during its execution between 1414-19. In the 19th century, a replacement was installed and the dismembered pieces moved.

The large fountain included allusions to the city's Roman history and Christian virtues, culminating in the central Madonna and Child. While most of the sculpture was in relief, two freestanding figures formed part of the Roman iconography: Acca Larentia, the goatherd's wife who cared for the young Romulus and Remus, and Rhea Sylvia, their mother.

The figure of Acca Larentia derives from a Roman Venus and has Jacopo's characteristic fleshiness and heavy drapery. The group is psychologically integrated, for as she holds one of the chubby boys who pushes at her breast, the other jumps up to attract her attention. She looks at him with almond-shaped eyes and a smile that suggests life. So successful was the fountain that the sculptor earned the nickname "Jacopo della Fonte".