Tag: Art History | The Pen and Camera

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Reflecting on Frédéric Bazille’s Art and Legacy

Painter Frédéric Bazille is not an impressionist household name in comparison to luminaries like Degas, Gaugin, Monet, and Manet, but longtime art connoisseurs know that he was part of the original group of artists within the movement and that he participated in the first of eight exhibitions as a founding member. Bazille had close ties to his fellow artists and even shared studio space with Renoir. His artistic output and influence, however, were severely limited due to his untimely death during the Franco-Prussian War in 1870. He was only 29 when he perished on the battlefield.

Two of his paintings speak to me.

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Art and Intellect: A Brief Look of De Ribera’s “Euclid”

In this 1635 oil painting, Spanish Baroque painter Jusepe de Ribera introduces us to an imaginary snapshot of a life shaped by wisdom and hardship, that of an ancient Greek philosopher. The subject could be Pythagoras, but he is more likely Euclid, who wrote his famous treatise on “Elements.”

What do we see? Who are we meeting?

Euclid emerges from the shadows. His forehead is crumbled. His eyes marked with wrinkles, signs of a life lived in intensity. He seems worried, but the lips beneath the unkempt beard purse upward into an exhausted but proud faint smile. His hands hold open a notebook for us to see, a manuscript of sorts. Perhaps he has handwritten it, or perhaps it came fresh off the printing press, which would account for his dirty fingernails. Perhaps, however, as the tattered clothes indicate, he is a learned beggar. In this work of art, dirtiness symbolizes devotion to intellectual pursuits. A man of true science, De Ribera tells us, isn’t a polished intellectual noble.

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Unraveling the Art and Morality of “Lot and His Daughters” in Gentileschi’s Painting

You can’t tell me that in the course of painting “Lot and his Daughters”, Orazio Gentileschi didn’t once think of his own daughter Artemesia, who is famed for her own artistic prowess during the Baroque period. In fact, I speculate that he painted his fraught relationship with her into this painting.

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Spiritual Strokes Beyond Belief: Da Vinci, Caravaggio, and the Sacred Mary – Jesus Duo

My recent domestic travels over winter break brought me to San Francisco’s Legion of Honor, Seattle’s Museum of Art, and the illustrious museum row pair of The Metropolitan Museum of Art and The Frick Collection in New York. These visits, coupled with my weekly docent training at the Getty Museum, where the second half of our days transpire in shared contemplation of art, fully immerse me in a fantastical and sometimes deeply spiritual world. I amble in many hallowed halls of museums, sometimes alone, but often with colleagues or willing loved ones, and now, finally, after many days of exposure, art created long before I walked this earth, uncovered a revelation that I did not think would apply to me: religious paintings are profoundly transformative.

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Who Knows the Master of Saint Cecilia?

Embarking on my second teaching practicum at the Getty—a departure from the grandeur of a mid-18th Century French bed in my first assignment—I find myself floating into a Renaissance painting titled “Madonna and Child,” dating back to 1290-1295. At an initial glance, it seems to be a rather typical church piece, the kind that might tempt you to casually stroll past in a museum due to its ubiquitous and overdone subject matter. In my secular life, untouched by the dominance of any particular faith, I pride myself in maintaining a healthy aversion to valuing a woman’s worth based on the status of her virginity or perceived purity.