#17th century painters

[mote-historie]

Guido Cagnacci (Italian, 1601–1663), The Repentant Magdalene, detail, circa 1660.

Norton Simon Museum.

The event depicted in the elegant space of this canvas is an episode from the life of Mary Magdalene, the courtesan who renounced her sinful ways and converted to Christianity, following her encounter with Christ in the temple. Mary is shown on the floor, having discarded her luxurious clothes and jewels; her face is reddened from remorse and her body barely covered by a white sheet. Her sister Martha sits on a cushion, calming her, while behind them two servants are leaving the room after having witnessed their mistress’s emotional scene. Cagnacci has also included two allegorical figures to the left. A standing angel banishes a levitating devil, complete with horns and a tail. He lurches toward the window as he flees the room. The combatant figures represent Virtue and Vice as they battle for Mary’s soul at the moment she chooses to embrace her virtuous new Christian life. (x)

[escapismsworld]

"Bellona (detail)"

1633

Rembrandt

[interventionlullabies]

Jan Asselijn, The Threatened Swan, c. 1650

[random-brushstrokes]

Michaelina Wautier - Saint Joseph (1650-1656)

[the-cricket-chirps]

Ferdinand van Kessel (attributed)

The Dance of the Rats

ca. 1690

[lilymelancholie]

Gerard van Honthorst (1592-1656)

A Laughing Violinist, circa 1624

[art-allegory]

Allegory of Astronomy, Urania

Artist: Francesco Cozza (Italian, 1605–1682)

Date: circa 1667

Medium: Oil on Canvas

Collection: Museu Nacional de Belas Artes, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

[collectionstilllife]

Evert Collier (Dutch, 1642 - 1708) • Vanitas - Still Life with Books, Manuscripts and a Skull • 1663

[artandthebible]

The Crucifixion

Artist: Louis De Caullery (Flemish, c. 1580–1621)

Date: 1600-1620

Medium: Oil on panel

Collection: Museo del Prado, Madrid, Spain

The Crucifixion | Mark 15:25-32 The Message (MSG)

They nailed him up at nine o’clock in the morning. The charge against him - THE KING OF THE JEWS - was scrawled across a sign. Along with him, they crucified two criminals, one to his right, the other to his left. People passing along the road jeered, shaking their heads in mock lament: “You bragged that you could tear down the Temple and then rebuild it in three days - so show us your stuff! Save yourself! If you’re really God’s Son, come down from that cross!” The high priests, along with the religion scholars, were right there mixing it up with the rest of them, having a great time poking fun at him: “He saved others - but he can’t save himself! Messiah, is he? King of Israel? Then let him climb down from that cross. We’ll all become believers then!” Even the men crucified alongside him joined in the mockery.

[de-mykel]

Jan van Kessel the Elder. Vanitas Still Life, c. 1665-70.

oil on copper

[solcattus]

Toilette of Belinda, 17th century

By Antonio Bellucci

[dixt]

fresco in chatsworth house, england ⋅ by antonio verrio, c. 1691

[escapismsworld]

The Divine Eros Defeats the Earthly Eros

1602

Giovanni Baglione

[oldpaintings]

Alida Withoos (Dutch, c.1662--1730)

[royalty-nobility]

Artemisa

Artist: Gerrit van Honthorst (Dutch, 1592-1656)

Date: c. 1635

Medium: Oil on canvas

Collection: Princeton University Art Museum, Princeton, New Jersey, United States

Description

Artemisia, a fourth-century B.C. queen in Asia Minor, was said to have built the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus - one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World - to commemorate her deceased husband, Mausolus. She then drank wine mixed with his ashes in order to become his living tomb and an exemplar of virtue. In Van Honthorst’s painting, Artemisia’s retainers marvel at this extraordinary act. Their individual responses vary depending on age and social status, in keeping with the rules for history painting defined by the Italian architect and artist Leon Battista Alberti in his treatise Della Pittura (On Painting, 1435).

[galleryofart]

Girl with a Pearl Earring

Artist: Johannes Vermeer (Dutch, 1632-1675)

Date: 1665

Medium: Oil on Canvas

Collection: Mauritshuis, The Hague, Netherlands

Description

A young woman looks over her shoulder at us. She holds her head slightly to one side, there is a gleam in her greyish-blue eyes, and her lips are slightly parted and moist. On her head is a turban that she has wound from two pieces of material, one blue and one yellow, and she is adorned with a pearl earring. It is from this oversized jewel in the middle of the composition that the painting derives its title.

The painting provides a rich sample of every aspect of Vermeer’s virtuoso painting technique. The face is modelled very softly, not in great detail but with gradual transitions and invisible brushstrokes. The clothing is depicted more schematically and enlivened with small dots of paint suggesting reflected light – one of Vermeer’s trademark features. Even so, the artist has clearly indicated differences between materials – for instance between the white collar, painted in impasto, and the drier paint of the turban, for which he used the precious pigment ultramarine. But the most remarkable detail is the pearl. This consists of little more than two brushstrokes: a bright highlight at upper left and the soft reflection of the white collar on the underside.

Seventeenth-century Dutch girls did not wear turbans. With this accessory Vermeer has given the girl an Oriental air. Images like this were known in the seventeenth century as tronies. Tronies are not portraits: they were not made in order to produce the best possible likeness of an individual. Although there would probably be a sitter, the point of a tronie was mainly to make a study of a head representing a particular character or type. Rembrandt had popularised tronies in Dutch art around 1630. He made dozens of them, often using himself as the model, sometimes wearing a remarkable cap or a helmet.

The pearl is too large to be real. Perhaps the girl is wearing a pearl drop made of glass, which has been varnished to give it a matte sheen. Another possibility, of course, is that the pearl was a product of Vermeer’s imagination. Pearls – both real and imitation – were fashionable in the period from about 1650 to 1680. We often find them in paintings by Frans van Mieris, Gabriel Metsu and Gerard ter Borch.

Girl with a Pearl Earring has been known to the general public only since 1881, when it was put up for auction at the Venduhuis der Notarissen in The Hague. On the viewing day it attracted the attention of the influential cultural official Victor de Stuers, who was there together with his friend and neighbour, the art collector A.A. des Tombe.