Tag: Renaissance Art

Sunday Evening Art Gallery — Antonio del Pollaiuolo

~ humoringthegoddess ~ 5 Comments

Antonio del Pollaiuolo (1429/1433 –1498), was born in Florence around 1431, a city that was not only a hub of commerce but also a crucible of artistic innovation during the early Renaissance.The exact details of his early life remain somewhat obscure, but it is widely believed that he was the son of a goldsmith, which likely exposed him to the intricacies of craftsmanship from a young age.Pollaiuolo’s commitment to understanding the human form would later set him apart from many of his contemporaries.This rigorous training laid the groundwork for his future innovations in both painting and sculpture.Pollaiuolo was particularly adept at capturing the human figure in action, which was a significant departure from the more static representations that had dominated earlier periods.His most characteristic works in his main media show largely naked male figures in complicated poses of violent action, drawing from classical examples and often centered on a heroic Hercules.He very often worked in collaboration with his younger brother Piero del Pollaiuolo (1443–1496), and distinguishing their contributions to satisfy modern ideas of authorship has proved exceptionally difficult, so that even though many paintings are just described as by the Pollaiuolo brothers, I took the liberty of assigning them to the main artist.

More of Antonio del Pollaiuolo’s paintings can be found at https://www.wikiart.org/en/antonio-del-pollaiolo and https://thinkofart.com/an-in-depth-guide-to-the-artist-antonio-del-pollaiuolo/.

 

 

 

Sunday Evening Art Gallery — Giuseppe Arcimboldo

~ humoringthegoddess ~ 4 Comments

Giuseppe Arcimboldo (1527–1593) was an Italian painter best known for creating imaginative portrait heads made entirely of objects such as fruits, vegetables, flowers, fish and books.

He was a conventional court painter of portraits for three Holy Roman Emperors in Vienna and Prague, also producing religious subjects and, among other things, a series of colored drawings of exotic animals in the imperial menagerie.Arcimboldo’s conventional work on traditional religious subjects has fallen into oblivion, but his portraits of human heads made up of vegetables, fruit and tree roots, were greatly admired by his contemporaries and remain a source of fascination today.

Art critics debated whether these paintings were whimsical or the product of a deranged mind, but the  majority of scholars hold to the view that given the Renaissance fascination with riddles, puzzles, and the bizarre, Arcimboldo, far from being mentally imbalanced, catered to the taste of his times.Arcimboldo did not leave written certificates on himself or his artwork.After the deaths of Arcimboldo and his patron, the emperor Rudolph II, the heritage of the artist was quickly forgotten, and many of his works were lost.When the Swedish army invaded Prague in 1648, during the Thirty Years’ War, many of Arcimboldo’s paintings were taken from Rudolf II’s collection.His paintings have been cited as precursors to Surrealism and were highly prized by Salvador Dalí and other members of the movement.

More of Giuseppe Arcimboldo‘s wonderfully strange paintings can be found at https://www.giuseppe-arcimboldo.org/ and https://www.wikiart.org/en/giuseppe-arcimboldo.