This densely packed scene centres on the poignant image of the crucified Christ, a subject that Rubens was to return to repeatedly throughout his life. The scene depicts a religious subject, which was popular among Flemish, Catholic artists. The elder son of Pieter Brueghel the Elder, Brueghel the Younger was a Flemish painter famous for his depictions of peasant life in rural settings. This painting is the only work with an autograph signature and date among 15 versions of this composition by Pieter Brueghel the Younger or his workshop.
Adoration of the Shepherds Oil on oak panel, painted circa Anthony Van Dyck was a Flemish Baroque artist, much celebrated both at home and abroad during his life-time and ever since.
Although almost monochromatic, Adoration of the Shepherds brings the young Van Dyck's extraordinary pictorial talents into sharp focus. With a surge in interest in the natural world, from botanical encyclopaedias to cabinets of curiosities, natural specimens served as models for painters seeking to portray a sense of realism and novelty in their work.
The birth of the Still Life genre coincided with the vast increase in trade with the Far East from birth of Dutch East India Company in — with a multitude of new floral specimens being brought back to the avid Dutch consumers. This was evidenced in the outpouring of tulip mania where the introduction of this fashionable flower created a sensation, with the bulbs becoming a highly luxurious and coveted item. Balthasar van der Ast was a painter of considerable versatility and energy.
Though few in number, female artists were nonetheless important contributors to the still life genre, despite the difficulties they faced in making a mark in an art world that was predominantly run by all-male art guilds. Its discovery has traditionally been attributed to a Fleming, Jan van Eyck, the figurehead of fifteenth-century Flemish painting.
He was not alone, however. Though admittedly born in Siegen Germany of Antwerp parents in exile, Rubens was, strictly speaking, a Brabanter who was trained as a painter in Antwerp.
This was the baggage Rubens took with him when he left for Italy in , after enrolling as a master in the Antwerp Guild of St. He gave up his Gothic handwriting and adopted the elegant litera latina , the Italica.
Rubens was a polyglot, and perhaps this, too, is one of his Flemish traits. His letters reveal that he was fluent not only in Italian and Dutch, but also in French, Spanish and Latin. Not surprisingly, his most spontaneous letters were written in Dutch, which was also the language he used to make notes on his drawings and designs. The brilliance of the international style that Rubens developed in Italy consisted of a curious combination of the qualities the Fiamminghi recognized in themselves and the power and insights of the Italian Renaissance.
He thus contributed to the European Baroque in a way that no one else could match. To Rubens, the question of his Flemishness would probably have sounded absurd, for he thought of his artistry as continuous emulation — improving his own style and building on the achievements of others.
It also shows why he continued throughout his life to evolve stylistically, from the exploratory bravura of his younger years to the artistic virtuosity of his late work. There are indications, however, that he did give it some thought. The first element that catches the eye of the viewer are bold and expressive brush strokes. Just like the Italian painters Tintoretto, Titian , he used the phenomenon of light scattering, using a deep gradation of tones.
Warm colours dominate in the foreground with a predominance of browns, which in the background quite rapidly pass through greens to shades of blue.
Thanks to this, the image gains depth and spaciousness. Still lifes are another important subject of the exhibition. As mentioned before, the main purpose of the then Dutch painting was decorating private interiors.
Therefore, colourful compositions correlated with often non-accidental objects and flowers play an important role in the context of local art. Moreover, inspired by Caravaggionism, the mysteries of tenebrism in the paintings of artists such as Barent Fabritius or Pieter van de Venne were realized in the context of still lifes.
The most intriguing thing about this topic is wandering in the footsteps of symbols and allegories. Sometimes it is not easy, because individual objects, fruits, plants or insects carry a hidden message that cannot be deciphered without proper knowledge.
And the exhibition at the museum in Warsaw creates perfect conditions for this. The painting shows a bouquet of lush flowers in a vase accompanied by a shell and a clock. The game between artist and viewers seems fascinating and moralistic at the same time. Our eyesight is attracted by colourful flowers, including tulips symbolizing luxury and desire. It is similar in the case of an exotic shell, the shape of which evokes sexual associations.
These motifs are meant to tempt viewers with their beauty and dignity. The controversial element that changes whole overtone of the painting is the vase, which reflect the church. The Arrival of Marie de Medici at Marseille is one of a large series of paintings commissioned by Marie.
Paintings such as these have been described as the union of the minute detail of Jan van Eyck with the muscular grandiosity of Michelangelo. Whether we like that description or not, the painting demonstrates Rubens' commitment to the use of ancient sculpture as a model for what some call his "painterly vision" of sculpture or his sculptural vision of painting.
He's making paintings -- there's no question about that. But he treats the figures in his paintings as though they are fully three-dimensional. The work also reveals his baroque interest in uniting mythology with contemporary life along with his interest in dynamic compositions with a single focus: in The Arrival , the focus is, as it should be, Marie.
The Abduction : Because we believe that Rubens made this painting for the French court, and because of the complex marriage agreement between the French and Spanish monarchs, the somewhat ambiguous scene in this painting was probably meant to communicate a message about the royal treaty and the purpose of the future royal marriage between the future king of Spain and the sister of the future king of France, and the parallel mating between the king of France and the sister of the king of Spain.
The painting therefore shows us Rubens' interest in reframing the style of Titian and other artists as well as his ability to reframe mythology and use it as a vehicle of communicating political messages. In other paintings, Rubens begins to make the leisure life of the aristocracy an important subject.
This direction will be an important influence on the 18th century although not the only one. By mid- to late 17th century, two directions are beginning to emerge in art: the more heroic tradition associated with Poussin's landscape paintings and continuations of the classical Renaissance, and a tradition which has more in common with Rubens, the influence of Titian on his style, and the love of poetic uses of color and subject matter.
Although the Rococo tradition comes out of the Baroque, it does not accept all of the baroque; in particular, it accepts the interest in creating suggestions of movement, an organic sinuosity in both painting and architecture, an increasingly personalized subject, but it rejects the remnants of the Renaissance classical tradition, the tenebrism of Caravaggio and his followers, and the emphasis on moral narratives.
Two important features of Rembrandt's work are his use of theatricality in the way he "stages" the scenes in his paintings and his application of paint -- creating a deep, almost three-dimensional surface of paint. Yet, if you go the National Gallery of Art and look for some of Rembrandt's paintings, you may notice two things in this respect: 1 he did not do this in all of his paintings; 2 when he did, he chose specific areas of the painting for the thick application of paint, rather than the whole surface.
We might therefore want to consider that by treating the surface differently, he manages to bring our attention to some parts of the painting sooner than to other parts, and that he uses the quality of paint rather than the narrative or the story we see to communicate importance. Although theatricality is not limited to his self-portraits, the fact that he made so many and that he appears to be a completely different person in each does make the element of theatricality clear. At the same time, they reveal a great deal of the artist's psychological make-up at a particular point in time.
Perhaps the enormous distance separating the artist from his overbearing easel in the portrait illustrates this quality. Not only did Rembrandt use paint in a manner which did, at times, show the texture and work of the brush stroke; he centralized the importance of touch in this subjects. Many of his paintings make the hand a focus of attention, using the hand to convey how much of the human's relationship to the world comes from touching.
Touch, he seems to say, is as important to our understanding as what we see. In Return of the Prodigal Son , the father's hands, resting on the son's shoulders and back, create a separate world of unity for the forgiving father and forgiven son.
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