#artist is giorgio vasari

[diioonysus]

art aesthetics: dark acadmia

[discoursets]

— red blue dilapidated study space — ⋆˙

[arinewman7]

Saint George and the Dragon

Giorgio Vasari

ca. 1560

[aeaeaexxzd]

From Giorgio Vasari's Libro de' Disegni (Book of Drawings)

[artandthebible]

The Miracles of Prophet Elisha

Artist: Giorgio Vasari (Italian, 1511-1574)

Date: c. 1566

Medium: Oil on Wood

Collection: Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence

Description

This composition is a typical example of a painting for private worship, a genre that was popular with Vasari. The subject is a scene from the life of the Prophet Elisha, who during famine saved his people making edible wild herbs. Elisha is one of the biblical prophets whose miracles prefigured those of Christ. A man in the middle ground carries a basket, because Elisha miraculously multiplied the available food.

In spite of the modest size of the work, the artist insists on elaborating a composition of great complexity and refinement, characteristics which would reappear in the profane paintings of the Studiolo executed thirty years later.

Death in the Pot | 2 Kings 4: 38-41, NIV

Elisha returned to Gilgal and there was a famine in that region. While the company of the prophets was meeting with him, he said to his servant, “Put on the large pot and cook some stew for these prophets.”

One of them went out into the fields to gather herbs and found a wild vine and picked as many of its gourds as his garment could hold. When he returned, he cut them up into the pot of stew, though no one knew what they were. The stew was poured out for the men, but as they began to eat it, they cried out, “Man of God, there is death in the pot!” And they could not eat it.

Elisha said, “Get some flour.” He put it into the pot and said, “Serve it to the people to eat.” And there was nothing harmful in the pot.

[artsandculture]

The Birth of Venus (1483-1485) 🎨 Sandro Botticelli 🏛️ Uffizi Gallery 📍 Florence, Italy

The painting was commissioned by Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco de’Medici, a cousin of Lorenzo the Magnificent. The theme was probably suggested by the humanist Poliziano. It depicts Venus born from the sea foam, blown by the west wind, Zephyr, and the nymph, Chloris, towards one of the Horai, who prepares to dress her with a flowered mantle.

This universal icon of Western painting was probably painted around 1484 for the villa of Castello owned by Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco de 'Medici. Giorgio Vasari saw the work there in the mid-sixteenth century – along with Botticelli’s other well-known Primavera – and described it precisely as "showing the Birth of Venus." The old idea that the two Botticelli masterpieces were created for the same occasion, in spite of their substantial technical and stylistic diversity, is no longer accepted. However, rather than a birth, what we see is the goddess landing on the shore of her homeland, the island of Cyprus, or on Kithera. The theme, which can be traced back to Homer and to Ovid’s Metamophoses, was also celebrated by the great humanist Agnolo Poliziano in the poetic verses of his Stanze. The Venus of the Uffizi is of the “Venus pudica” type, whose right breast is covered by her right hand and billowing long blond hair partially shrouds her body. The goddess stands upright on a shell as she is driven towards the shore by the breeze of Zephyrus, a wind god, who is holding the nymph, Chloris. On the right is the Hora of springtime, who waits to greet Venus ashore with a cloak covered in pink flowers.

The seascape, stunning for its metaphysical tone and almost unreal quality, is illuminated by a very soft, delicate light. Like Botticelli’s other masterpiece, Pallas and the Centaur, the Birth of Venus is painted on canvas - fairly unusual for its time - using a technique of thin tempera, based on the use of diluted egg yolk, which lends itself particularly well to give the painting that aspect of extraordinary transparency, which brings to mind the pictorial quality of a fresco. The figure recalls classical sculpture and is very similar to the famous Medici Venus found in the Uffizi, which the artist certainly knew. The real meaning of this dreamlike vision is still under scholarly debate and investigation but is undoubtedly linked with the Neo-Platonic philosophy, widely cultivated in the Medici court.

Like the Primavera, the Birth of Venus is also associated with the concept of Humanitas,or virtuous Humanity, a theory developed by Marsilio Ficino in a letter to the young Lorenzo. According to the interpretation by Ernst Gombrich, the work depicts the symbolic fusion of Spirit and Matter, the harmonious interaction of Idea and Nature. Nevertheless, the interpretations of this painting of extraordinary visual impact are numerous and diverse. The divine ethereal figure has been viewed as an allegorical representation of Humanitas upon her arrival to Florence, while the nymph holding out the cloak of flowers for the goddess may perhaps be identified as Flora, the same depicted in this masterpiece’s “twin”, the Primavera, where she may be seen instead as the personification of the city of Florence. From this work emerges clear evidence of Botticell’s strive to reach perfection of form that could rival with classical antiquity. It is for this reason that the humanist Ugolino Verino in his work Epigrammata, presented in 1485 to the King of Hungary, Matthias Corvinus, likened the Florentine painter to the legendary Apelles of Ancient Greece.

[wandering-jana]

House of the Renaissance artist Giorgio Vasari. He decorated his own house. Arezzo, Italy.

March 20, 2024

[portrait-paintings]

Andrea Odoni

Artist: Lorenzo Lotto (Italian, c. 1480-1556)

Date: 1527

Medium: Oil on canvas

Collection: Royal Collection Trust, London, United KIngdom

Description

This portrait of the successful Venetian merchant Andrea Odoni (1488-1545) is one of the most innovative and dynamic portraits of the Italian Renaissance by Lorenzo Lotto, recently returned to Venice after thirteen years in Bergamo and anxious to impress possible patrons in Venice. The Venetian collector holds in one hand a statuette of Diana of Ephesus, symbol of nature and idolatry, and with the other he clasps a cross to his chest. One of several interpretations of this gesture is that Christianity takes precedence over nature and the pagan gods of antiquity.

The portrait has aptly been described as one of the finest and most ambitious of all of Lotto's portraits and a deliberate challenge to Titian's supremacy in the field. The portrait was recorded in the owner's bedroom in his house on the Fondamenta del Gaffero by Marcantonio Michiel when he visited the collection in 1532. Giorgio Vasari mentions the portrait 'che è molto bello', which he must have seen when he visited Venice ten years later. The painting was also included in the 1555 inventory of his brother and heir, Alvise Odoni.

The son of a wealthy recent Milanese immigrant to the city, Andrea Odoni was an important member of the cittadini. He built upon the collection which he had inherited from his uncle, Francesco Zio, to become a renowned collector of paintings, sculpture, antique vases, coins, gems and natural history specimens. This portrait was hung in Odoni's bedroom alongside The Virgin and Child with the Infant St John and a Female Saint or Donor, now in the National Gallery, London. The house also contained an unusual combination of ancient and modern statuary, with 'mutilated and lacerated antique marble heads and other figures'. Pietro Aretino (the poet and satirist) wrote to Odoni (in a letter of 1538) that he had recreated Rome in Venice, though elsewhere he describes the splendours of the house in a tone that suggests it overstepped the boundaries of Venetian decorum. Giorgio Vasari called Odoni's house 'a friendly haven for men of talent'.

[camisoledadparis]

GHIRLANDAIO, HUMANISM and TRUTH

“. . . There is no more human a picture in the entire range of Quattrocento painting, whether in or out of Italy . . .” – Bernard Berenson

Among the defining characteristics of the Renaissance were humanism and naturalism.

While many Renaissance paintings and sculptures were depictions of religious or mythological themes, the spirit of the Renaissance hewed toward inquiry and realism.

In the famous Louvre Portrait of an Elderly Man and Boy by Domenico Ghirlandaio, we gaze upon a splendid example from the oeuvre of an artist who transcended painting metaphors and symbols to painting reality.

The art historian Bernard Berenson wrote of this work that “there is no more human picture in the entire range of Quattrocento painting, whether in or out of Italy.”

Domenico Ghirlandaio (Domenico di Tommaso Curradi di Doffo Bigordi, 1448–1494) was one of the most successful portrait painters of the Florentine Quattrocento.

Domenico oversaw a large and successful studio which included his brothers Davide and Benedetto, his son Ridolfo, and which trained many younger artists such as Michelangelo.

The Renaissance biographer Giorgio Vasari said of Ghirlandaio that “from his talent and the greatness and the vast number of his works, he may be called one of the most important and most excellent masters of the age. . . .”

The art historians Archibald Joseph Crowe and Giovanni Battista Cavalcaselle went on to comment that “Ghirlandaio’s life forms, like those of Giotto, one of the great landmarks in the history of Florentine art.”

Ghirlandaio depicts the face of the elderly man here with all of its faults—“warts and all.”

He presents the portrait in a naturalistic and sympathetic fashion, at variance with the physiognomic theory of the era, which maintained a connection between external appearances and internal truths.

The painting portrays an older man in a red robe, embracing a young child also wearing red. They sit in an interior, illuminated against a darkened wall. Behind them at right is a window through which can be seen a landscape, its uneven terrain and winding roads, typical of Ghirlandaio’s backgrounds.

Whereas the Renaissance view of the old man was to focus upon his “old agedness,” Ghirlandaio elevates the man’s wizened face and deformed nose to a tender moment where the elderly man and the child share a common bond—perhaps they are related, a grandfather and grandchild. In fact, the Italian name for this painting is very specific: “Ritratto di un vecchio e nipote” (Portrait of an old man and grandson (or nephew). The Italian word nipote can refer either to a grandchild or a nephew.

[allegorypaintings]

Allegory of Justice and Truth

Artist: Giorgio Vasari (Italian, 1511–1574)

Title: Italiano: Allegoria della Giustizia e della Verità

Date: 1543

Medium: Oil on Panel

Collection: Museo di Capodimonte, Naples, Italy

Description

Allegory of Justice is an oil-on-panel painting by the Italian Renaissance artist Giorgio Vasari . The painting was commissioned on 6 January 1543 by Cardinal Alessandro Farnese for the main room of the Palazzo della Cancelleria in Rome, and was executed the same year. It and the rest of the Farnese collection were later moved to Naples and it is now in the National Museum of Capodimonte.

[acrosscenturiesandgenerations]

▪︎ Judith and Holofernes.

Artist: Giorgio Vasari (Italian, 1511–1574)

Date: ca. 1554

Medium: Oil on panel

[themuseumwithoutwalls]

MWW Artwork of the Day (10/23/24) Michelangelo Buonarroti (Italian, 1475-1564) Copy of "Head of a Faun" (c. 1489) Marble sculpture The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

This is a copy of Michelangelo's first known work in marble, sculpted when he was 15 or 16 as a copy of an antique work with some minor alterations. The original has been long lost. According to Giorgio Vasari's biography of the artist, it was the creation of this work that secured the young Michelangelo the patronage of Lorenzo de' Medici.

[salantami]

Arezzo Centro Storico In the beautiful Piazza Grande in Arezzo, the multicolored covers have covered all the bricks! A wonderful event to raise funds for the fight against tumors made by artists from Arezzo Arezzo is a city in eastern Tuscany, Italy. Known as the city of gold and of the high fashion, Arezzo was home to artists and poets such as Giorgio Vasari, Guido of Arezzo and Guittone d'Arezzo and in its province to Renaissance artist Michelangelo.

Photo by: romina.cicina (IG)

[aeaeaexxzd]

From Giorgio Vasari's Libro de' Disegni (Book of Drawings)

[artsandculture]

Mona Lisa (1503-1517) 🎨 Leonardo da Vinci 🏛️ The Louvre 📍 Paris, France

One of the most iconic and recognizable paintings in the world is the Mona Lisa (ca. 1503-1519) painted by Leonardo da Vinci. The unique appeal of the portrait lies in its enigmatic nature, Mona Lisa’s smile radiates mystery, sensuality and contentment. This was achieved through sfumato, Leonardo’s painting technique that softened the transition between colors. This depth and complexity of expression is the reason the Mona Lisa is regarded as the pinnacle of portraiture. The interest in the portrait was further amplified by its mysterious history: the identity of the sitter, who commissioned the painting, how long Leonardo worked on the portrait and how it entered the French royal collection are all topics of scholarly debate.

It is thought that the sitter was Lisa del Giocondo, the wife of a wealthy Florentine merchant Francesco del Giocondo. For this reason, the painting is sometimes called La Gioconda. The earliest identification of the painting was provided by the Renaissance art historian Giorgio Vasari. In Vasari’s 1550 biography of Leonardo, he wrote about the magnificent portrait of Lisa del Giocondo, which Leonardo worked on between 1503 and 1506. Many were skeptical of Vasari’s account; however, a 2005 discovery at the University of Heidelberg provided compelling new evidence that confirms Vasari’s assertion. In a volume written by the ancient philosopher Cicero from 1477, there was a handwritten marginal by Leonardo’s contemporary, the secretary and assistant to Niccolò Machiavelli, Agostino Vespucci. In the note dated October 1503, Vespucci praises Leonardo’s skill by comparing him to the Greek and painter Apelles, and states that Leonardo is working on a portrait of Lisa del Giacondo.

The Mona Lisa was the earliest example in Italian portraiture that portrayed the sitter in a half-length format. Leonardo presented a new artistic formula: the figure is shown at half-length sitting in armchair in front of a loggia - a gallery or room with one or more open sides. The incorporation of the loggia allowed Leonardo to present an imaginary landscape as the backdrop of the portrait. This significant innovation influenced Leonardo contemporaries: Raphael adopted the composition and pose in his portrait Young Woman with Unicorn (ca. 1506). Still it is important to note that Leonardo was indebted to Flemish portraiture of the second half of the 15th century, particularly the portraits of Hans Memling such as Portrait of Barbara van Vlaendenbergh (ca. 1470-1472) and Man with a Roman coin (ca. 1480).

Leonardo spent his final years in France, where his patron the King of France, Francis I, purchased Mona Lisa for the royal French collection. From 1797, the portrait is on permanent display at the Louvre and is the crown jewel of the museum collection. On the morning of August 22 1911, Louvre employees were shocked to discover that the painting was stolen the previous night. Two years later, Louvre employee Vincenzo Peruggia was identified as the thief. Peruggia claimed his motives were patriotic: he believed Leonardo’s masterpiece belonged in Italy and was caught trying to sell the painting in Florence. After its discovery, the Mona Lisa was exhibited throughout Italy before its celebratory return to the Louvre in 1914.

[sifeeeng]

tagged by @where-the-water-flows hii thank you

last song: ice nine kills - stabbing in the dark.

fave color: blue.

last book: giorgio vasari's the lives of the artists (i am writing my master's degree).

last movie: american psycho.

last tv show: when the phone rings.

sweet/savory/spicy: i love savory things the most, but i never say no to a good chocolate bar.

relationship status: why the fuck do i like men?

last thing i googled: how to make bignè.

current obsession: xiao shunyao has bewitched me body and soul. (let's be honest, are we really over MLC?).

looking forward to: all i am thinking about know is getting my master's degree, but receiving a bit of love wouldn't be bad. NAAAH FUCK THAT ALL I WANT IS TO LEARN MANDARIN. AND ALL THE OTHER LANGUAGES IN THE WORLD.

no pressure tagging: @homiehopper4life @busarewski @thesilversun @omgpurplefattie