#16th century european art

[collectionstilllife]

Joris Hoefnagel (Flemish, 1542-1601) • Still Life with Flowers, a Snail and Insects • 1589

[canvasmirror]

Carravagio (Italian, 1571-1610) • Bacchus • c. 1596 • Uffizi Gallery, Florence

This cannot be Carravagio, you say? You are correct. The self-portrait is hidden in the wine flask which is part of the composition of Carravagio's famous Bacchus painting, shown above.

Via an infrared technique called multispectral reflectography, researchers were able to identify a tiny man which they're fairly sure is Carravagio. He's at the easel holding a paintbrush. One can faintly see the outline the head.

More here

“All works, no matter what or by whom painted, are nothing but bagatelles and childish trifles… unless they are made and painted from life, and there can be nothing… better than to follow nature”

– Carravagio

[resplendentoutfit]

Joos van Cleve (Dutch, c. 1485-1540/1541) • Portrait of Eleanor of Austria • c. 1530 • Musée Condé, Oise, France

Details

The Resplendent Outfit: The outrageous, extravagant, sometimes humorous and often beautiful outfits worn by subjects of old portraits; captioned, as an attempt at satire; a little history occasionally thrown in the mix.

Outrageous

Extravagant ✅️

Humorous

Beautiful ✅️

[arthistoryanimalia]

For #GuineaPigAppreciationDay, the two earliest examples I've found of guinea pigs in the European visual record:

1. Painting attributed to Giovanni da Udine, n.d., artist active early 1500s to death in 1564

2. Drawing from the Felix Platter album, collected sometime between 1546-54

Attributed to Giovanni da Udine (Italian, 1487–1564) Head of a Guinea Pig oil on canvas laid on panel 6.5 x 7 in. (16.5 x 17.8 cm.) From Duke's Fine Art Auction catalog, 11th April 2013, Lot 215

Drawing collected by Felix Platter, to be used in Gessner's Historiae animalium. The drawings were made by several artists, mostly anonymous, and were collected between 1546 and 1558 (this one must date to no later than 1554 as it served as a reference for Gessner's woodcut published that year). Bijzondere collectie Universiteit van Amsterdam collection.

[solcattus]

Designs for a Dagger and Sheath, 1543

By Augustin Hirschvogel

[virgocurator]

The Book of Hours, The Trinity

Ink, pigments and gold on vellum

illuminated manuscript, ca. 16th century

[mythological-art]

Odysseus and Circe

Artist: Bartholomäus Spranger (Flemish, 1546-1611)

Date: 1586-1587

Medium: Oil

Collection: Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, Austria

Description

Odysseus travels to Circe's island, where he is warned by Hermes about Circe's magic and given an herb to protect himself. Odysseus ends up sleeping with Circe instead of being enchanted by her. Circe's advice.

[cimmerianweathers]

I went to the museum today.

[artandthebible]

The Nativity

Artist: Lorenzo Lotto (Venetian, c. 1480 - 1556/1557)

Date: 1523

Medium: Oil on panel

Collection: National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, United States

The Nativity

Tradition says that Francis of Assisi created the very first Christmas nativity scene in AD 1223 after a trip to the Holy Land and Christ’s birthplace. So began a new tradition that took root in many Western countries. Today, we can see nativity scenes in front of churches and homes, on street corners, and in pageants every Christmas season.

The word nativity is taken from the Latin nativus, which means “arisen by birth.” A nativity scene is a representation of the night of Jesus’ birth as depicted in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke.

[royalty-nobility]

Maximilian I

Artist: Bernhard Strigel (German, 1460-1528)

Date: Before 1508

Medium: Oil on panel

Collection: Kunsthistorisches Museum Vienna, Austria

Maximilian I, Holy Roman Emperor

Maximilian I (22 March 1459 – 12 January 1519) was King of the Romans from 1486 and Holy Roman Emperor from 1508 until his death in 1519. He was never crowned by the Pope, as the journey to Rome was blocked by the Venetians. He proclaimed himself elected emperor in 1508 (Pope Julius II later recognized this) at Trent, thus breaking the long tradition of requiring a papal coronation for the adoption of the Imperial title. Maximilian was the only surviving son of Frederick III, Holy Roman Emperor, and Eleanor of Portugal. Since his coronation as King of the Romans in 1486, he ran a double government, or Doppelregierung (with a separate court), with his father until Frederick's death in 1493.

[galleryofart]

A Woman Holding an Apple

Artist: Titian (Venetian, 1488/1490 - 1576)

Date: c. 1550

Medium: Oil on canvas

Collection: National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, United States

Description

A striking young woman - with loose, untied hair and sleeves and a richly jeweled but informal gown - returns the viewer’s gaze. In her time, a viewer would have seen her as being in a state of semi undress. She cradles an apple in her hands, which in art often connotes female sexuality.

Despite the painting’s portrait like format, Titian probably did not depict a specific person here. He and other Venetian artists of the day painted many pictures representing beautiful young women, but it is often unclear whether such pictures are meant to be recognizable portraits of members of contemporary society or idealized images of anonymous beauties. Although the images may reflect Venetian courtesan culture of the period, there is no evidence that real courtesans had themselves portrayed in this way. Rather, such pictures may be interpreted as fanciful portrayals of female beauty, designed to appeal to the eyes of the painting’s owner.

[art-allegory]

The Triumph of Truth

Artist: Hans von Aachen (German, 1552-1615)

Date: circa 1598

Medium: Oil on Copper

Collection: Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit, Michigan, United States

On View in European: Medieval and Renaissance, Level 2, West Wing

[art-portraits]

Irene di Spilimbergo

Artist: Titian (Venetian, 1488/1490 - 1576)

Artist: Gian Paolo Pace ( Venetian, 1528 - 1560)

Date: c. 1560

Medium: Oil on canvas

Collection: National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, United States

Description

Irene di Spilimbergo (17 October 1538 - 17 December 1559) was an Italian Renaissance painter and poet.

She is mostly known for an effusive volume of poetic elegies published two years after her death by Dionigi Atanagi and containing 279 Italian and 102 Latin poems, some anonymous, and others either penned or attributed to contemporary cultural figures including Lodovico Dolce, Torquato Tasso, Titian, Girolamo Muzio, Luigi Tanzillo, Giuseppe Bettusi, and Benedetto Varchi.

Irene di Spilimbergo was about 20 years old when this painting was begun. Along with a pendant portrait of her older sister, Emilia, the two paintings were probably initially commissioned in anticipation of the prospective marriages of the two sitters. Instead, with the premature death of Irene two years later, the function of her portrait was suddenly changed to become an elegy for what might have been. The inscription on the lower right reads, “If the fates had allowed.”

[useless-catalanfacts]

This is the Concòrdies, Europe's second oldest pharmacopoeia and the first of its kind. It was printed in 1511 in Barcelona, Catalonia. The first European pharmacopoeia was printed in Florence (modern-day Italy) in 1498 after a larger amount in Islamic countries, but both have some important differences.

A pharmacopoeia is a book that contains the recipes for making medicines, to be used as a reference guide by the apothecaries who made the remedies. The apothecaries were the chemists who made the drugs, specialists in medicinal herbs, minerals, animal products and food.

On August 29th 1510, the king Ferdinand of Catalonia-Aragon gave Barcelona's Apothecaries Association the royal privilege of standardizing the recipes used for making drugs. Before this, doctors diagnosed their patients and told them what drugs to buy, but each apothecary made it in their way, which could have different amounts of each ingredient or different preparations. This could lead to results that weren't as good as expected.

You might have noticed that the book is titled "Concordie apothecarioru[m] Barchin[one] i[n] medicinis co[m]positis liber feliciter incipit" (more or less "Agreement of Barcelona's apothecaries on the compound medicines" in Latin), often shortened to "les Concòrdies" ("the Agreements" in Catalan). It's an "agreement" because the apothecaries came together to write the most effective recipes, which they then presented to the Barcelona Medicine Doctors' Association. Then, the doctors could object or not, and from the agreement between both experts resulted this book.

This is the first pharmacopoeia that was made by the apothecaries' idea, not following orders of a government, and the first pharmacopoeia written for and by the apothecaries (the book written in Florence was made by doctors to tell apothecaries what they wanted them to make). Thanks to their apothecaries' work, Barcelona's inhabitants were the first people in the Iberian peninsula to access homologated medicine. Soon, this book's rules were expanded to all of Catalonia.

The only remaining original copy from the 1511 edition is kept in the Museum of Catalan Pharmacology which belongs to the University of Barcelona. The whole book has been digitalized and is completely uploaded online: here's the link.

[arthistoryanimalia]

#FrogFriday 🐸:

Pendant: enameled gold and ruby ​​toad 1585/1600 (end of 16th c.) H: 7.5 cm (with chain); W: 2.5 cm Musée du Louvre OA 2321

[solcattus]

The bridal jewelry. Venetian women in the 16th century, 1872

By Cesare Dell'acqua