Western Archive

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In this painting the angels are dressing the dead Jesus. The subject is Byzantine in origin and rare in Western art. The mattress, covered with red velvet is a stylized variant of the “red-stone” relic, formerly in the Byzantine Pantokrator church. According to an apocryphal legend, Christ was lying on this stone when the angels anointed him and covered him with the shroud. The legendary event, shown on the small painting on copper, is supplemented with a liturgical reference: on the altar in the background, we can see a chalice, symbolizing the mystery of the Eucharist. Alessandro Allori works with definite contours, models like a sculptor and paints numerous small details. The painting is signed in the centre of the altar-step: ALESSANDRO BRONZINO ALLORI FACEVA.

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The Sala dello Scrutinio (Voting Hall) is the second largest hall of the Doge’s Palace. The balloting and secret votes of the magistracies and the doge took place in this hall with the very complicated systems that the Venetian Republic had created to avoid intrigues and subterfuge during the elections and, above all, to ensure that the vote could not be bought especially from the poor nobility in favour of its richer equivalent. The iconographic theme of the hall of the Sala dello Scrutinio was inspired by the Venetian naval victories on the Eastern seas shown in the numerous ceiling canvases depicting virtues and symbolic figures. Vassilacchi’s Conquest of Tyre on the wall of the Sala del Scrutinio depicts a historical event which occurred in […]

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The Venus at Bath was commissioned in 1756 and completed c. 1767. Its concept, derived loosely from Giambologna, is much better than the execution, whereby the goddess remains lumpish and her draperies inert and mechanical. However, it was praised by Diderot. This appealed to Madame Du Barry, who obtained the Venus and placed it at Louveciennes, and commissioned in 1772 from the sculptor a pendant of virtually the same subject in less languorous mood: a Diana surprised by Actaeon (also in the Louvre, Paris), completed five years later and then exhibited in the artist’s studio.

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The style of the Flemish painters, who brought with them the new technique of transparent oil painting, was adopted by the court of Castile in the second third of the fifteenth century. Among the pioneers of this style was Louis Alincbrot who painted the complex triptych depicting scenes from the life of Christ. The picture shows the central panel of the triptych which depicts Jesus Debating with the Doctors of the Church, The Road to Calvary, and in the background, The Crucifixion. The left panel depicts The Circumcision, while the on the right has a Pietà, with the sarcophagus for Christ’s burial in the background.

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Alcibar was a famous painter in Mexico in the viceregal period. He painted murals in many cathedrals, and painted portraits of nuns. In 18th-century Mexico hundreds of portraits were produced on the occasion of taking vow of chastity of young girls going to a convent. This painting representing a 16 years old girl belongs to this series.

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