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Essays:

All about a few interesting art pieces.
Salon 1 Stonehenge

Architects believe Stonehenge was built by three groups of people-the Windmill Hill people, the Beaker people, and the Wess-x people. The Windmill Hill people originated in eastern England, and are named after their nearby earthworks and barrows. It is thought that they constructed the large circular furrows and mounds. One of the earliest semi-nomadic hunting and gathering groups with an agricultural economy, they attached great importance to circles and symmetrical design. The Beaker people - so-called because of their tradition of including beakers, or pottery cups, in their graves - are thought to have migrated from Spain. A progressive, well-organized but warlike people, they buried their dead not in mass graves but in small individual tombs marked by mounds called tumuli. The Beaker folk included a range of weaponry in their graves, like daggers and battle-axes - coinciding exactly with the engravings of weaponry found on some of the sarsen stones. The Wess-x People, who appeared about 1500 BCE, were the final builders of Stonehenge. One of the most advanced Bronze Age cultures outside the Mediterranean area, whose main settlements were invariably located close to important road junctions, they controlled trade routes throughout the south of the country.

Salon 2 Laocoon and His Sons

    The Laocoon statue was discovered in January 1506 buried in the ground of a Rome vineyard owned by Felice de' Fredis. One of the first experts to attend the excavation site was Michelangelo. Pope Julius II, a lover of Greek art, ordered the work to be brought immediately to the Vatican, where it was installed in the Belvedere Court Garden. The Laocoon statue had a significant impact on Italian Renaissance art in general and Renaissance sculptors, in particular. It rapidly became one of the most studied, revered and copied works of ancient art ever put on display. 

    The Laocoon statue, standing some 8 feet in height, is made from seven interlocking pieces of white marble. Its exact date of creation is uncertain, although - in line with several inscriptions found in Rhodes dating Hagesander and Athenedoros to some time after 42 BCE - experts now believe that it was sculpted between 42-20 BCE. More importantly, it is not known for certain whether it is an original Roman sculpture or a copy of an earlier Greek sculpture. That said, experts now believe that its three sculptors - Hagesander, Athenodoros and Polydorus - were highly-skilled copyists who specialized in producing replicas of original Greek figures for wealthy Roman customers. Thus, in all probability, the Vatican Laocoon is a copy of a Greek Hellenistic bronze - almost certainly from the Pergamon School, see similar drama, straining muscles and contorted faces in the Great Altar of Zeus(c.180 BCE, Pergamon, Turkey). This conclusion is also consistent with the findings of several renovations performed on the statue. Who commissioned the Laocoon replica is not known.

Salon 3 Chartres Cathedral

    The Chartres Cathedral stands in the town of Chartres, which was of religious importance since ancient times. It was the site of Druid ceremonies, which were held around a well that was later discovered under the cathedral crypt. Later, Gallo-Roman temple stood on the same spot. The early Christians erected a basilica there during the 4th century, and St. Bernard preached the Second Crusade there in 1146. Chartres was also the coronation site of Henry IV in 1594. Dedicated to Notre-Dame, Chartres Cathedral formed strong associations with the cult of the Virgin. 

    The typical Gothic Latin-cross plan includes a wide nave bordered with single aisles, a high vault, open transepts with side aisles, and an apsidal choir with double aisles and five radial chapels. Although this cathedral was rebuilt in a relatively brief period of time, and with a highly cohesive design, there were many slight modifications and deviations in detail included in its construction. It displays hundreds of sculptured religious figures as well as highly complex stained-glass windows.

    The present cathedral is not the first cathedral built on its grounds. It is one of several French Gothic masterpieces built because a fire had destroyed the previous one. After the first cathedral burnt down in 1020, a Romanesque basilica with a massive crypt was built. The cathedral survived a fire in 1134 that destroyed much of the rest of the town, but still burned down on the night of June 10, 1194, when lightning ignited a great fire that destroyed all but the west towers, the façade and the crypt.

    The people despaired when it seemed that the Sancta Camisia had also perished in the fire. But three days later it was found unharmed in the treasury, which the bishop proclaimed was a sign from Mary herself that another, even more magnificent, cathedral should be built in Chartres. Rebuilding began almost immediately in 1194 with the help of donations from all over France. The people of Chartres hauled the necessary stone from quarries 5 miles away voluntarily. Work began first on the nave and by 1220 the main structure was complete, with the old crypt, the west towers and the west facade incorporated into the new building. On October 24, 1260, the cathedral was finally dedicated in the presence of King Louis IX and his family.

 
Salon 4 Bacchanal with a Wine Vat
 
     Mantegna was the second son of a woodworker, but was legally adopted by Francesco Squarcionewhen he was 10 years old. Squarcione drew young local talent to his studio, which some of his protégés, such as Mantegna and the painter Marco Zoppo, later regreted. In 1448, at age 17, Mantegna disassociated himself from Squarcione’s guardianshipand established his own workshop in Padua, later claiming that Squarcione had profited considerably from his services without giving due recompense. The environment of the city of Padua influenced his interests, ideas, painting style, and concept. With the influx of scholars from all over Europe and Italy, an atmosphere of internationalism prevailed and experienced a rapidly growing revival of interest in antiquity. Increasing interest in the imitation of the culture of ancient Rome produced a climate in which feverish collecting of antiquities and ancient inscriptions—even if only in fragmentary form—flourished. Mantegna’s friendly relations with several humanists, antiquarians, and university professors are a matter of record, and hence he may be seen as one of the earliest Renaissance artists to fraternize from a position of intellectual equality with such men. In this way, Mantegna’s lifestyle contributed to the early 16th-century ideal of the artist as one so intimately familiar with antique history, mythology, and literature as to be able to draw easily from these highly respected sources. 
   
    This piece is an engraving on cream paper. There seem to be a total of eight men and four children who are all possibly drunk. Some of the men are sitting on a vat, which is filled with wine, and one child is reaching in to get a drink. There is a tree behing the wine vat where bunches of grapes seem to be hanging from. All men hold something to drink with. The scene consists of two sleeping children in front of the wine vat, and a collapsed man who is caught by another man before he falls into the vat.
    This composition and its companion Bacchanal with Silenus were inspired by antique sarcophagi that were in the collections of the della Valle family and in the Church of Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome, and are prime examples of the way Mantegna's imagination could endlessly reformulate antique sources into entirely original designs. It has been suggested that these prints record a decorative scheme for one of the Gonzaga palaces, it is equally likely that Mantegna made use of the medium to explore his own interests, apart from the demands of the court, and as a way to make his inventions known beyond a narrow circle of patrons. I think this is one of the engravings in which Mantegna explores myths, because Bacchanal is the word for the men who follow Bacchus, who is the wine god. 
 
 Salon 5 Captain John Gell
 
 

     Gell was born in 1740 to John Gell of Hopton Hall. His father's original name was John Eyre but had taken the name Gell when he inherited the Gell fortune. Although his father wasn't born with the name Gell, this Gell was the great Grandson of the parliamentarian soldier, the first baronet, Sir John Gell. The first known reference to Gell's career is when he joins HMS Prince, a second rate ship in the Royal Navy, in 1757 and was promoted to Lieutenant on board HMS Conqueror in 1760, which was  wrecked the same year. In 1776, he was appointed captain of the HMS Thetis. With this ship he served in the American, The Mediterranean and the Channel Fleets until he was given command of the Monarca. This ship was unusual because it had been built in 1756 and for the first 24 years it had been part of the Spanish Navy before being captured by the British at the Battle of Cape St. Vincent in 1780. Gell was under the orders of Sir Samuel Hood to go to the West Indies, but the ship lost its mast in a storm and was obliged to return to Britain for refitting. Gell was off the Indian coast during Sir Edward Hughes' five actions against the French admiral Bailli de Suffren when Gell was in command of the 68 gun HMS Monarca.

Gell and the Monarca took part in the Battle of Cuddalore, which was the last of the American Revolutionary War between the French and a British fleet. Gell returned to Europe in 1784 and was appointed to his last captaincy, of HMS Excellent in 1790. 

     In thisfull portrait, Captian John Gell is captured pointing as something off the canvas. Behind him in the ocean is a ship, which is probably the Monarca because this painting was made in 1785. The sky is filled with either rain clouds or most likely billowing smoke because the war between the French and British fleets has just ended. The smoke can represent the end of the fight because the fire would depict a raging chaos. The water is also very choppy to possibly symbolize a rocky relationship between the two countries. Stuart employed a combination of fine and slapdash brushwork, conveying an image of both heroism and naturalism.

     This is the second of only seven full-length portraits painted by Stuart, and follows the precepts outlined by Sir Joshua Reynolds for blending ideal and individual characteristics in modern portraits. Stuart conveys Gell's heroism with theatrical expression, a real character made ideal through judicious use of fine strokes and sweeps. The painting suggests spontaneity in execution, but is a work of considerable artistic strategy.

     

 
Salon 6 Jo, La Belle Irlandaise
 
 

     

    This painting is of a red haired women named Joanna Heffeman. She is the mistress and model of the artist James McNeill Whistler, and possibly Courbet’s lover. Although dated 1866, the picture was likely started in 1865, when the two men painted together at the French seaside resort of Trouville, and Courbet wrote of "the beauty of a superb redhead whose portrait I have begun." Joanna Heffernan looks towards a mirror she holds in her left hand as she passes her right hand through her hair to hold it back so she can see herself clearlyr. This act can be related to the way Courbet paints: the right hand he holds his brush or hair and palette in his left hand, so the hair she has values to both female and male. The brush is an object of pleasure, like the woman's hair could be to her lover. It draws the viewer into it andinvites the painter.

     Gustave Courbet was born on June 10( My Birthday! ), 1819, in Ornans, France. In the 1850s, Courbet was known as a bold new artist in the Realist school, and he shocked critics and the public with his large-scale paintings showing scenes of everyday rural life. Involvement with the Paris Commune of 1871 meant that Courbet spent the last years of his life in exile in Switzerland, where he died on December 31, 1877.

 
Gary Party Essay: The Symmachi Panel
 
 

     

    This carved ivory Symmachi leaf is one half of a diptych(two-fold image). Its companion piece is now in the Cluny Museum in Paris. Both pieces have inscriptions that refer to the Symmachi and Nicomachi, two aristocratic Roman families prominent at the end of the 4th century, and the diptych represents that some kind of alliance between them, most likely a marriage, such as occurred. The subject matter suggests the diptych may have celebrated an occasion on which women from these two prominent families assumed the priesthoods of the four cults of Ceres, Cybele, Bacchus, and Jupiter. 

     Ivory was used extensively by the ancient Greeks and Romans. They adorned all kinds of objects – doors, caskets, beds, chairs – with plaques of ivory carved in relief. Pheidias, one of the greatest Greek sculptors, and his contemporaries in the 5th century BC fashioned great cult statues out of ivory and gold. Roman artists under the Empire revived the tradition.

Portrait busts and images of conquered cities cut from ivory carried in the triumphal processions of glorious commanders amde up the majority, but almost nothing of these grand antique pieces survived. Apart from some fragments of a statue of Athena in the Vatican, only a number of small, usually rather roughly-carved, reliefs have come down to us. In contrast, there exists a magnificent array of carved ivories from Late Antiquity, from the period about 400–600 AD.

     This diptych was produced in Rome between 388 and 401 AD in Milan. Both wings depict female figures engaged in religious ritual before sacrificial altars. The Nicomachi tablet in Paris is not very well preserved of the pair because of considerable damage in a fire. The ivory is fractured in several places, with some sections of the panel missing completely. The Nicomachi tablet consists of a figure standing before a round altar, holding two lit torches now partially missing. Cymbals hang from a pine tree overhead, which are attributes of the goddess Cybeleand and her consort Attis.

     The Symmachi leaf in London features an ivy-crowned woman sprinkling incense over the flames of a square altar garlanded with oakwreaths. A small attendant holding a kantharos and a bowl of fruit helps her. The oak garlands and the oak tree overhead suggest the worship of Jupiter, while the ivy leaves call on the god Dionysus. The female figures have been variously interpreted as priestesses and as goddesses. The diptych form, at least originally, served as a pair of covers for wax writing tablets.

     The work as a whole has been interpreted as a study in nostalgia: both style and content reflect the values and traditions of an era that was rapidly passing. Just as the majority of the Roman world had rejected polytheism in favor of Christianity, so too it left behind the techniques ofproportion and perspective that characterised the art of its forebears.

 
Salon #7 Parody of the Noh Play
 
 "Hakurakuten"
 

     

    Hakurakuten is a classic Noh play about the intellectual debate on the relative attainments of Japanese and Chinese culture: has the Japanese waka poem achieved superiority over the respected Tang Chinese poem? The play presents this debate in the form of a discussion between Bo Juyi (Hakurakuten) and Sumiyoshi Myōjin, the Japanese god of waka. Harunobu's print is a rendition of this high-minded contest, substituting a Japanese girl for the god of waka and a Korean ambassador for the Chinese poet. He wears a square pendant and an official Korean costume with a high waist. 

This painting is a parody because instead of poetry as the measure of national culture, the opponents face each other with paintings. Despite the pride he feels about the Chinese (or Korean) ink painting, Bo Juyi (or the Korean ambassador) cannot help but place his finger in his mouth in a traditional gesture of envy, a sign of his admiration for his lovely competitor with her painting in the Japanese ukiyo-e style.

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