17th Century Archive
The famous Spanish painter Franscisco de Zurbaran has drawn some greatest pictures in the history. In his oeuvre, the meditating saint Francis is a major subject. He has drawn various portrait of this saintly personality. A quick glance at the current representation of Saint Francis raises a question in my mind. Why a skull is included in there? And as I thought about the question further, I had some speculations. St Francis kneeling on ground with a skull in his hand, illustrates the deep and cryptic meanings of life and death. Maybe hinting the fact that death and life is contemporary to each other. Artist tried to portray the fact by making St. Francis the representative of life and the skull, of death. Those both […]
Painters often times try to capture the everyday event or a particular custom of the society. Here is one of such painting in which the Dutch painter has captured a moment in which a woman, a matchmaker, is approached by a man with money to get what he desires. The old man on the left seems to be the person who has bought the rich man to the lady matchmaker. There are two ways to interpret this painting. But first, lets understand the symbolism. Symbolism The painting has only one element of symbolism, the lute. The lute in matchmaker’s hands indicates love, sex or woman genitals based on the context, theme or subject. Use of Lute in paintings during the Dutch Golden Age was prominent. And it […]



















(7 votes, average: 4.57 out of 5)

