Triple Self Portrait
Oils
Norman Rockwell, 1960
Rockwell was an American illustrator, most famous for his idealized depictions of American culture and life. His paintings were featured in Coca Cola ads and on the cover of The Saturday Evening Post for over five decades; a prolific artist, he has over 4,000 known original works to his credit. Due to the often sweet and sentimental representations of everyday life in his art, many critics dismissed his work as kitschy and wasted talent. Rockwell didn't mind, always referring to himself as an illustrator, not a painter. Later in life he did touch on more serious subjects, as shown in his stunning illustration of Ruby Bridges being escorted to a school during segregation, fittingly titled, The Problem We All Live With.
His humble, whimsical sense of humor is well captured by his Triple Self Portrait, illustrated by him as the cover for his biography. The painting shows the artist idealizing and distorting his own appearance, making himself appear more noble than he really is. There are small pictures in the corner of his canvas, self-portraits by other famous artists (Rembrandt, Van Gogh, Durer, Picasso) that had influenced Rockwell's work. The helmet on his easel is a reminder not to be taken in by appearances--he had bought it in Paris, assuming it to be an ancient Greek or Roman artifact...only to discover that all French firemen wore the same helmet.
The Old Guitarist
Oils
Pablo Picasso, 1904
This is another piece from his Blue Period. Often his subjects at this time were prostitutes, beggars, and the other overlooked people of the streets of Barcelona, Spain. This particular painting depicts an old, blind street musician. It exhibits the defining characteristics of this period in Picasso's career--a melancholy mood amplified by not just the expression of the subject but also the cool, monochromatic greys and blues. Many historians, interpret this painting as representing the solitary life and struggles of an artist--a life devoted to art sustains and fulfills the artist, and yet the artist is isolated from society while simultaneously requiring the artist to depend on society to survive. From this perspective, the painting becomes an allegory for human existence and Picasso's critique of society.
Pallas and the Centaur
Oil
Sandro Botticelli, 1482
Botticelli is an Italian Renaissance painter known for his frescoes in the Sistine Chapel as well as various paintings of the Madonna and Child. However, he is most famous for his few mythic works, such as Primavera, The Birth of Venus, and Pallas and the Centaur.
Despite the name of the painting, there is some debate among scholars as to who the woman actually is. The painting was originally named Camilla, an allusion to a virgin warrior and princess from Virgil's Aeneid. Others claim it is Pallas, the Carthaginian warrior and companion to the goddess Athena (or Minerva, if you're Roman), and others say it is Athena herself. Still others say it is Florencia, the embodiment of the city of Florence.
They all agree, however, on the connections between the painting and Botticelli's patrons, the great Medici family. The triple ring on Pallas's gown the emblem of the Medici, and the laurel crown and vine about her arms are a punning reference to Lorenzo de Medici, whose name means "of the laurel trees."
We had a few minor challenges setting this one up. First, we had to make a centaur out of two hairy kids. Jane took one for the team as the horse's...rump. Second, we forged a halberd out of a tomahawk, some duct tape, and a certain infamous spear. (Yes, I know, shocking we don't own one, but don't encourage Rick.)
Girl with Basket of Ribbons
Oils
Christen Brun, 1869
Brun was a Norwegian painter that lived from 1828 to 1905. That is the only information I can find on him, and he has only a couple of paintings accredited to him, including A Basket of Ribbons and A Turkish Girl. What is interesting is that he shares a lot of similarities in style and subject with Guillaume Charles Brun, a French painter who loved from 1825 to 1908 and was known for his paintings of both impoverished ribbon sellers and depictions of the exotic East, namely the Middle East, Algeria, and Turkey. Their painting styles and subjects are so similar that, added to the facts that they are contemporaries and share a name, I'm not 100% convinced they aren't the same person. The painting is even dated to within three years for each artist. However, I'm not an art historian, and if I can't figure it out after a generous 15 minutes of strenuous Google searching, I'm just going to let it go.
Winged Victory of Samothrace
Marble
Unknown, circa 190 B.C.
This is one of the finest examples of true Hellenistic (Ancient Greek) sculpture. Most surviving ancient sculptures are actually Roman copies of earlier Greek statues. Winged Victory is a representation of Nike, the Greek Goddess of--drum roll, please--victory. The statue is a lovely piece of Greek artistry and precision, from the naturally balanced, graceful pose of the goddess to the fine drapery of her windblown clothes. Of the surviving statue, everything is original except for her right wing, which was repaired as a mirror-copy of the left. Scholars have various ideas of how she originally looked, though we will never know for sure--she was broken when found, and several pieces that were found nearby (including one of her arms) were either broken or lost in transit.
Proserpine
Oils
Dante Gabriel Rossetti, 1874.
Proserpine is the Latin name for Persephone, the goddess of spring in Greek myth who was abducted by Pluto (Hades in Greek) and held in the underworld. Since she ate six pomegranate arils (seeds) while she was there, she had to stay with Pluto as his queen for six months in the year, and this was how the Greeks explained the changing of the seasons. While Proserpine was with her mother, the goddess of the harvest, plants would grow and there was plenty of food; when she was in the underworld, her mother missed her terribly and in her depression the plants would wither and die.
Rossetti was a founder of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, and as such his art often had symbolic elements. The vine in the painting, for example, symbolizes Proserpine's memory of the upper world, and the light is giving her a brief glimpse of the world she's kept from. There's a personal element to this for Rossetti as well--he was obsessed with his model, Jane Morris, who was married and therefore as unattainable as the subject of his painting. Like Proserpine, Jane spent summers as Rossetti's muse before returning to her husband in the fall. Rossetti was a poet like his more famous sister, Christina; though not as well known, he often included poems with his paintings. The sonnet for Proserpine is in the upper right corner in English and Italian. In addition to his other works, Rossetti did eight different versions of Proserpine in different colors and media.
La Pieta (The Pity)
Marble
Michelangelo, 1498
A famous and poignant depiction of Mary holding Christ's body. It is unique in several respects. Mary is shown as a young woman instead of a matron of 50, and Christ's wounds are minimized as Michelangelo wanted to emphasize serenity and sanctification instead of agony and death as was common in other interpretations.
It is also unique in being the only piece of art that Michelangelo ever signed. He heard it being attributed to someone else, so he put his own name on Mary's sash (literally--he chiseled "Michelangelo Buonarroti, a Florentine, made this" in Latin). It suffered substantial damage in 1972 when a delusional man attacked it with a hammer; he was quickly subdued by several men, including an American sculptor, but not before the damage was done: Mary's nose and one eye were damaged, and her arm knocked off at the elbow. After careful repair, the Pieta was reinstated at its place in St Peter's Basilica in Vatican City--this time behind bulletproof glass.
Pandora
Oils
John William Waterhouse, 1896.
This recreation is probably the most pertinent to 2020 out of all the art we have done.
The story of Pandora is a theodicy, a story that explains why things are the way they are--in this case, how evil and disease entered the world. Prometheus, a Titan, stole fire from the gods as a gift to humankind. Zeus punished him by staking him to a rock and having an eagle tear out his liver every day and heal overnight. The gods' wrath, however, was not satisfied. Hephaestus created a perfect woman and all of the gods gave her gifts and talents, the last of which was curiosity. They named her Pandora, which means "all-giving." They sent her to earth as a bride to Epitmetheus, Prometheus's brother, and for her wedding gave her a beautiful sealed jar (often mistranslated as a box). After some time, Pandora's curiosity got the better of her and she opened the jar. All the evils and miasmas that could afflict humanity flowed into the world and scattered to the winds. She closed the jar as quickly as she could, but all that remained inside was hope.
Now, because this is Greek mythology, there are a thousand variations of this story. In some of them, Pandora aids the gods intentionally, scattering the evils from her jar. The parallels between Greek Pandora and Christian Eve are intriguing. I love how the further you go back into religions, the more similarities you find, almost as if we have a shared ancestral memory that has been transfigured over the millennia.
Portrait of Anne, Emily, and Charlotte Bronte
Oils
Branwell Bronte, 1834
The Brontes were a literary family in 1830s England. All of the children were precocious writers, creating stories and complicated histories of two fictional kingdoms. Later, after stints as governesses, Anne and Charlotte returned home, where Emily had been keeping house for their aging father, Patrick. Their brother, Branwell, also tried his hand at teaching, but returned home in disgrace after a scandalous affair with his employer's wife. He fell into gambling and alcoholism, and dabbled in painting.
To provide for their family as well as satisfy their literary inclinations, the sisters turned to writing under the male pseudonyms Acton, Ellis, and Currer Bell. After their first novels--respectively Agnes Grey, Wuthering Heights, and Jane Eyre--were met with varying levels of success, the sisters outed themselves as female. Anne went on to write The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, and Charlotte penned several more novels, including Villette, which is considered to be somewhat biographical.
Their triumph was short-lived, however, as Branwell died of tuberculosis in 1848, with Emily and Anne following within months. Alone with her father, Charlotte continued to write until she married; she died within a year of her marriage due to pregnancy complications. She was 39.
This portrait is interesting because Branwell had originally included himself, then painted himself out for unknown reasons. However, as the painting ages and the paint degrades, his self-portrait has started to reappear, almost like a ghost, to take his place among his formidable sisters.
The Execution of Lady Jane Grey
Oils
Paul Delaroche, 1833
Delaroche was a realist painter who specialized in melodramatic historical paintings. He was particularly well known for his attention to historical detail while not glorifying historical figures as was common in Romantic art at the time.
When Henry VIII died, his son, Edward VI, became king. Edward was sickly and died at fifteen. He declared his cousin and fellow Protestant, Lady Jane Grey, to be his heir in an attempt to prevent his Catholic sister Mary or his legally illegitimate sister Elizabeth from taking the throne. Jane, "the Nine Days' Queen," was deposed by Mary and her supporters after only nine days on the throne. Jane was convicted of treason. Mary originally sought to avoid killing her cousin, but Jane's father, the Duke of Suffolk, took part in a rebellion against Mary and her intended husband, Phillip of Spain, with the unspoken intention of placing Jane back on the throne. Mary took decisive action, executing Lady Jane, her husband Guilford Dudley (whose brother would later be romantically linked with Elizabeth I), and the Duke of Suffolk.
The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicoles Tulp
Oil on Canvas
Rembrandt, 1632
A portrait of a real doctor commissioned by the Surgeon's Guild of the Netherlands, this shows Dr. Tulp, a leading anatomist, giving a lesson. He was only allowed to do one dissection a year, and that had to be of a convicted criminal. Due to the rarity of the event, it was treated as a special occasion with students, colleagues, and even the general public invited to watch for a fee. The observers are all portraits of doctors, colleagues of Dr. Tulp who paid to be featured in the painting.
Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn was a painter during the Dutch Golden Age. Unlike most artists of his era, he painted a wide variety of subjects. He was a talented etcher, and his fame was originally because of his prints. His paintings are very complicated ad combine a deep knowledge of his subject matter with his observations of real people and a skillful use of iconography to add layers of meaning and significance to his painting.
The Birth of Venus
Oils
Sandro Botticelli, circa 1485
This painting, one of Botticelli's most famous, depicts Venus, the Roman goddess of passionate love and beauty, being blown to land by Zephyr, the god of the west wind, after her miraculous birth from the sea. Zephyr is helped by a female deity--either Aura, a minor wind goddess, or Chloris, a flower nymph and Zephyr's wife. The woman waiting on land for Venus is most often identified as one of the Horae (Hours), the three minor goddesses of time and season who become Venus' attendants. Venus plays an important part in Roman mythology: in addition to her complicated personification of Roman women's greatest desirable virtues and weaknesses, Romans claimed her as an ancestor. Venus was the mother of Aeneas, one of the princes of Troy; after the fall of the city Aeneas escaped and had many adventures, eventually landing in a new country where his descendants, Romulus and Remus, founded a city that would become one of the world's greatest empires.
Several technical aspects of the painting are worth mentioning. Botticelli was never a realistic painter and was less concerned with anatomy than his contemporary da Vinci, and it shows in his unbalanced, slope-shouldered, anatomically improbable Venus. The proportions of the characters are off and none of them cast shadows. The pigments have aged and darkened over the years, causing the painting to lose some of its brilliant color.
Raising the Flag at Iwo Jima
Photo
Joe Rosenthal, 1945
Our final recreation is based on a wartime photograph from World War II. It shows six marines from the 5th Marine Division raising a flag on Mount Suribachi, Japan, in the early part of the battle of Iwo Jima. Three of the six went on to die in the ensuing battle. This is one of the most iconic images of the war; it won the 1945 Pulitzer Prize for Photography and also was used as the model for the Marine Corps War Memorial in 1954. The memorial stands by Arlington National Cemetery, the final resting place of U.S. soldiers from every conflict dating back to the Civil War.
This looks like a pretty simple set up, and it was. We went to a hill a short ways behind our house, neighbor's flag in hand, and struck a pose--and the wind, which had been gusting all day, suddenly died. We managed to fake it by waving, but it took multiple tries to get the right shot. Naturally, as soon as we packed it in, the wind started up again.
This is one of my favorites. I love the original. It gives me all the feels every time. My family was Army, not Marines, but I had ancestors in every major US war; on my mother's side, the last three generations were soldiers, including her. When this photo was taken in Iwo Jima, my half-Mexican grandfather was fighting in Europe. What a hell of a legacy we were born to as the children of warriors.
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