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“Combine” is a term Rauschenberg invented to describe a series of works that combine aspects of painting and sculpture. Virtually eliminating all distinctions between these artistic categories, the Combines either hang on the wall or are freestanding.
The Dutch artist Maurits C. Escher (1898-1972) was a draftsman, book illustrator, tapestry designer, and muralist, but his primary work was as a printmaker. Born in Leeuwarden, Holland, the son of a civil engineer, Escher spent most of his childhood in Arnhem.
Conceptual art is art for which the idea (or concept) behind the work is more important than the finished art object. It emerged as an art movement in the 1960s and the term usually refers to art made from the mid-1960s to the mid-1970s.
Feb 23, 2023 · Picasso made prints throughout his career — his first in 1899, when he was still a teenager; his last in 1972, when he was 90. Experimenting all the while, he produced some 2,400 prints in total, using a wide variety of techniques, most notably etching, lithograph and linocut.
- Overview
- Mona Lisa (c. 1503–19)
- Last Supper (c. 1495–98)
- Vitruvian Man (c. 1490)
- Self Portrait (c. 1490/1515–16)
- The Virgin of the Rocks (c. 1483–86)
- Head of a Woman (1500–10)
- Lady with an Ermine (c. 1489–91)
- Salvator Mundi (c. 1500)
- Ginevra de’ Benci (c. 1474/78)
One of the great Renaissance painters, Leonardo da Vinci continually tested artistic traditions and techniques. He created innovative compositions, investigated anatomy to accurately represent the human body, considered the human psyche to illustrate character, and experimented with methods of representing space and three-dimensional objects on a t...
The world’s most famous artwork, the Mona Lisa draws thousands of visitors to the Louvre Museum each day, many of whom are compelled by the sitter’s mysterious gaze and enigmatic smile. The seemingly ordinary portrait of a young woman dressed modestly in a thin veil, somber colors, and no jewelry might also confound its viewers, who may wonder what...
One of the most famous paintings in the world, the Last Supper was commissioned by Ludovico Sforza, duke of Milan and Leonardo’s patron during his first stay in that city, for the Dominican monastery of Santa Maria delle Grazie. Depicting a sequential narrative, Leonardo illustrates several closely connected moments in the Gospels, including Matthe...
Leonardo’s pen-and-ink drawing Vitruvian Man comes from one of the many notebooks that he kept on hand during his mature years. It is accompanied by notes, written in mirror script, on the ideal human proportions that the Roman architect Vitruvius laid out in a book on architecture from the 1st century BCE. The drawing illustrates Vitruvius’s theor...
Long regarded as a self-portrait, the red chalk drawing of an old man with long wavy hair and a beard has been reproduced to such an extent that it defines how most people think of Leonardo’s appearance. Yet some scholars argue that the figure, with its craggy features, furrowed brow, and downcast eyes, appears much older than the age Leonardo ever...
Based on stylistic evidence, many scholars consider the painting The Virgin of the Rocks in the Louvre the first of two paintings that Leonardo made of an apocryphal legend in which the Holy Family meets Saint John the Baptist as they flee to Egypt from Herod’s Massacre of the Innocents. Leonardo was involved in years of litigation with the Confraternity of the Immaculate Conception, which commissioned the work, and the dispute eventually led Leonardo to paint another version of the subject about 1508, which is now housed in the National Gallery of London.
The first painting shows the ways in which Leonardo ushered in the High Renaissance. Early paintings from this period often depicted figures in linear arrangements, separate from one another, and stiff in form. In The Virgin of the Rocks, however, the figures of the Virgin Mary, the Christ Child, the infant John, and an archangel are arranged in a pyramidal composition, and they not only convincingly occupy a space but interact with one another through gestures and glances. A youthful Mary sits on the ground in a mysterious rocky landscape, not on a throne as so many early Renaissance paintings depicted her. Her body has movement—it seems to sway as she tilts her head protectively toward the infant John, who kneels in prayer at the left, and she looks as if she nudges him over to the Christ Child at the right. Jesus, in turn, blesses John as an archangel, seen in a complex pose from the back, points toward John and glances inscrutably outward at the viewer. Leonardo also notably excluded traditional holy signifiers—halos for Mary and Christ and a staff for John—so that the Holy Family appears less divine and more human.
Head of a Woman, a small brush drawing with pigment, depicts a young woman with her head tilted and her eyes downcast. Her posture recalls the Virgin Mary in Leonardo’s The Virgin of the Rocks, suggesting that the drawing may have served as a model. The drawing’s nickname, La scapigliata, translates to “disheveled” and refers to the young woman’s w...
Many art historians identify the youthful woman in Lady with an Ermine as Cecilia Gallerani, the mistress of Leonardo’s patron, Ludovico Sforza, duke of Milan. The ermine was often used as an emblem for the duke. The woman turns her head to the right, her bright eyes seemingly directed toward something outside the frame. Although the painting has b...
The head-on portrait of Salvator Mundi (c. 1500; “Savior of the World”) made headlines in 2017 when it sold for a record-breaking $450.3 million at auction. The high price was all the more surprising when considering that Salvator Mundi was in poor condition, it had a questionable history, and its attribution was a subject of debate among scholars ...
Housed in the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., the portrait of Ginevra de’ Benci is the only painting by Leonardo publicly displayed in the Western Hemisphere. It is one of Leonardo’s earliest works, finished when he was in his early 20s, and shows some of the unconventional methods he would use throughout his career. Inspired by his Northern contemporaries, Leonardo broke with tradition by depicting the solemn young woman in a three-quarter pose rather than the customary profile, and thus he may have been the first Italian artist to paint such a composition. He continued to use the three-quarter view in all of his portraits, including the Mona Lisa, and it quickly became the standard for portraiture, so ubiquitous that viewers take it for granted today. Leonardo may also have used his fingers when the paint was still tacky to model Ginevra’s face, as suggested by the fingerprints found in the paint surface.
On the reverse side of the painting, a wreath of laurel and palm encircles a sprig of juniper (ginepro in Italian—a pun on the sitter’s name), and a scroll bearing the Latin phrase “beauty adorns virtue” entwines each of the flora. The truncated appearance of the reverse side suggests that the painting may have been cut at the bottom, possibly because of damage from water or fire. Some scholars speculate that the portrait on the obverse would have included Ginevra’s hands and propose that a silverpoint study of arms and hands housed at Windsor Castle may have served as a preliminary drawing.
Jan 13, 2020 · Though probably the most important lesson is that you should ultimately paint for yourself, not for a market or posterity. Discover a gallery of famous paintings by famous artists (and some not quite so famous) to inspire you and to help you expand your painting knowledge.
People also ask
What is the point of the collection?
What does “collection” mean in the Bible?
Why is Paul's collection important?
Oct 11, 2019 · The collection that Paul made was to show God’s reformative work among the Gentiles, to show that the Gentiles were accepting Christ. As you put, “this is not a bribe to the apostles or a payment to them to remain an apostle, but a way to demonstrate the way God has been working among the Gentiles.”
