The exhibit that I viewed at the Philadelphia Museum of Art was one about European Art between the years 1100-1500. This was a series of paintings, sculptures, architecture, and tapestry of the Medieval and Early Renaissance as well as objects from the Middle East. This exhibit was an important part of the history of the Philadelphia Museum of Art because for the first time, Italian, Spanish, and Northern European paintings from the John G. Johnson collection were shown. It gave me a good idea of what the paintings were like in these four centuries and reflected ideas of both the east and the west. As I walked into the first gallery, I saw a wood sculpture that stood in the center of the room. This carving depicted “the crucified Christ, flanked by the Virgin Mary and St. John the Evangelist with Angels holding instruments of the Passion”. It was painted oak and very appealing to the eye. It stood approximately 15 feet in the air. The origin of this sculpture is unknown, but it was found in a Belgium church. This kind of sculpture usually stood at the entrance or at the center of the alter in the church facing the congregation. This image of the suffering Christ relates to the Christian ideas of suffering and Christ’s salvation of all mankind. As I walked deeper into the gallery, I found myself walking through what looked like a church with pillars of stone, stained glass windows, ...
Deposition, by the artist Rogier van der Weyden, attempts to capture the essence of the grief experienced when Jesus’s died on the cross, and to invoke the emotion in the altarpiece’s viewer, thus drawing him/her into the biblical
It is from the Neo-Assyran period during 883-859b.c.e. The highest relief would be its head. The writing was all around the statue in a different writing. It is very big and tall. It is on a good portion of the corner of a hallway. It looks kind of cool with a bull’s body with wings and a human’s head on it. The face is kind of funny because of the beard I guess if long and real even. The human-headed wing bull had five legs.
The Merode Altarpiece is a triptych painting that represents the Annunciation of the Virgin Mary. This work displays the main characteristics of the Northern Late Gothic period. There is so much detail in this work of art. Campin utilizes many symbols in this altarpiec. The setting of the painting is in a Flemish middle class house. The Annunciation theme is being depicted in the central panel. A scene of Saint Joseph at work as a carpenter occupies the right-hand panel. The portraits of the donors are depicted in the left hand panel. Campin failed to understand the scientific perspective. To illustrate, there is no focal point in the painting and the table looks tilted. Campin used no aerial perspective. To illustrate, the background is still very crisp when seen from a distance. The most important aspect of the painting is the symbolism. For example, the lilies represent Mary's purity, the candle represents the Holy Spirit, even the mouse traps represent trapping evil. Campin also made use of bright, rich colors. In the central panel, the drapery of the figures are filled with colors of red and white. Campin has also made a good use of illusion of the space by making the town seem to be far away by distance by making them appear blurry. Furthermore, Campin has created figures that are not in proper proportion. To illustrate, the figure’s head is small and the bodies are big and it seems that if they get will hit their head if they get up. They look very unrealistic. Although they are not in proportion, the figures seem to have very sharp edges. The figures also look very stiff and rigid. In Merode Altarpiece, the light is arbitrary and the figures do not cast any...
Mathias Grunewald (c. 1470-1528) was a German painter who created the Isenheim Altarpiece between 1512 and 1516. This work consists of different wings that fold out to reveal more of the work (Collings, 2007) (including the crucifixion of Christ), is on the display at the Unterlinden Museum at Colmar, Alsace, France, and was commissioned for the Monastery of Saint Anthony in Isenheim, near Colmar. On one of these wings is the figure of Saint Anthony of Egypt, whose temptation has been the inspiration for many works of art as well as literature. Unlike other artists of the Renaissance period, Grunewald’s paintings depict religious figures as artists of the middle ages had done, creating imagery for the Church in Rome. And while the Isenheim Altarpiece, and indeed the Temptation of Saint Anthony, was commissioned b...
The Raising of the Cross is an amazing piece of art and the depth of meaning contained in it is, likely, beyond my grasp. There appear to be many symbolisms in this painting and I have surely overlooked some. The style of this painting is clearly inspired by the Baroque masters of Rubens day and Ruben took the style to a new level that the world had not seen at that time. The other pieces in the series of Ruben’s paintings based around the crucifixion of Christ help to give this painting clarity and to give hints to the figures in the paintings.
This essay will closely study and describe Rosso Fiorentino’s The Descent from the Cross. The painting depicts the process of Jesus Christ being taken off of the cross.
The second exhibit entitled Painting with Fire: Works by Betsy Eby. I didn’t spend much time looking at these pieces. Although uniquely done, with heated colored beeswax, and inspired by music, all the artworks looked almost the same. I understand she was inspired by music, however, it looks as if she was listening to the same song on every piece. I wasn’t very impressed with this exhibit.
Christianity has had a major impact in European history as the majority of the populations were Christians, and as many nations started out as Christendom. Even today, it has a profound impact in the decision making of nations and billions of people who follow its doctrine. Therefore, representing Christianity through the medium of art was an important factor artists had to consider. Many artists decided to paint the scene of the Crucifixion of Jesus as it is considered to be the most important scene for many Christians. Some artists, like Christus, opted for a more emotionally muted route while other artists, like Crivelli, went on to capture the emotional distress of the scene. Neither method is objectively better than the other as both artists
An exhibit I found more interesting was The Mary and Michael Jaharis Gallery of Archaic and Classical Greek Art. The Greek Art is elaborate with many of the statues being large scale. Many of the statues have a deep meaning behind them. Like the statue of Aphrodite it is a full body with animation appearing to be graceful and seductive.
The purpose of paintings is to capture the image of something. Paintings have been around since prehistoric times and span all cultures. Paintings are seen as one image but can convey thousands of different meanings. Before photography, paintings were used to record important events. The Blanton Museum of Art is home to many different types of paintings. The paintings range from different landscapes in America to cowboys to Native Americans. There are five paintings in the Blanton Museum of Art that can convey an image and culture of the American Old West with vivid and detailed images of cowboys, Native Americans, and the landscape represented, which is an important aspect of American culture and the frontier spirit.
In his Crucifixion, with the Virgin and Saint John the Evangelist Mourning (c.1460), a piece within the Northern Renaissance collection of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Rogier van der Weyden portrays a stark image of the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. The right panel of the diptych depicts the gruesome image of a crucified Christ. Weight pulls the emaciated body down into a Y-shape, contrasting the T-shape of the cross it is mounted on. The only movement comes from the loincloth wrapped around Christ’s waist that dances in the wind. Blood visibly trickles from the corpse’s wounds. Behind the body, a red cloth is draped down the grey wall. At the base of the cross sits a skull and bone. The left panel portrays the Virgin Mary swooning in despair as Saint John attempts to support her weight. Her hands are clasped in prayer as she gazes up at her lifeless son. Both figures are clothed in pale draping robes. The vibrant red of the cloth that hangs from the grey wall in the background contrasts the subdued colors of the
Among artists of the Flemish Renaissance, Jan van Eyck painted works of art that made him stick out from the other painters in Flanders during this time, such as Robert Campin or Pieter Bruegel the Elder. His use of light sources and shadows to manipulate the sense of space in his paintings led many to see him as the “hero” of the Flemish Renaissance. He employed the technique of linear perspective in his oil paintings, and was known for paying great attention to the realistic detail of figures and elements in his portraits. van Eyck painted both secular images, such as the Arnolfini Portrait, as well as religious artwork like the Ghent Altarpiece. The focus of this essay is one van Eyck’s paintings, The Virgin and Child with Chancellor Rolin, commissioned by Chancellor Rolin of Burgundy which is currently located at the Louvre Museum in Paris, France. Within this paper, the Flemish oil painting of ca. 1435 will be analyzed in a historical context to interpret its function within a church in Autun, France. Also, the painting will be examined to
Congratulations! You have explored the upper level of the museum. Now for one last adventure, imagine that one artwork could come to life. Which one would you choose and what would happen? This is how I ended the new Family Gallery Guide, my largest project to date at the Philbrook Museum of Art.
The artistic inheritance of the west is strongly identified with Catholic images that were brought upon heavily by the Church’s influence. The eighth and ninth centuries witnessed the growth of a destructive heresy called iconoclasm. Iconoclasm rejected the veneration of images of religious figures, and went as far as to reject the depiction of Christ and the saints in art at all. (115) This idea however, could not take hold, since it ran directly counter to the Catholic understanding of and appreciation for the created world. Woods provides this information to describe the influence and importance of the church in artwork, in which, as I strongly agree, sparked a period that created beautiful paintings, sculptures, stained glass, and illuminated manuscripts; which were major parts during the growth of Western civilization. Theologians referred to Catholic theological in defense of art that depicted Christ, the saints, and the religious scenes that have defined so much of Western artistic life, and broadly, Western Civilization. Woods is describing the influence of the Church, overcoming iconoclasm and having an enormous influence on the arts, which sparked the g...
The first art gallery we entered was by far my favorite. It was well put together and had very extravagant art paintings. Inside a man was strumming his guitar. I loved the ambiance I felt when I walked in. People observed the art in an orderly fashion. There were snacks like cheese, tea, crackers, cookies, and homemade flavored water to enjoy as people reviewed the art displayed on the walls. The art itself was truly breathtaking and breathtakingly expensive as well. I wondered at the time how much art could have costed back in the eras we are studying in class, as composed of