The Gentileschi's

The Penitent Mary Magdalen, ca. 1622 David Contemplating the Head of Goliath, ca. 1610
Artemisia Gentileschi Orazio Gentileschi

Probably the only father-daughter artist team in history, the Gentileschi's were to capture the essence of Caravaggio and the Baroque. I had the pleasure of seeing a lot of both artist's work in Rome a couple of years back, and I always found their paintings moving and vibrant. Artemisia's fame eventually outshone her father's, and even to this day as a feminist icon with a film and a documentary made of her life she inspires women, but the study of Orazio as an influential painter and father needs to be recognized also. Comparing the two very different paintings above we see a stylistic similarity in graceful body language and expressiveness. Where the father and daughter similarities end is in use of light— Artemisia more deeply influenced by chiaroscuro and drama where Orazio favoured vivid colours and subtle dynamism. Artemisia of course would take tenebrism to an extreme with bloody violence but she also maintained her father's sensibility for grace and expressiveness in her other major works.

Madonna and Child, 1610
Artemisia Gentileschi

This painting has a very Rubenesque feel to it, and one of her best Madonna paintings. In a rare display of affection and maternal love, the Christ child gazes up to touch the face of Mary with a sense of maturity and respect beyond his years. Artemisia also shows her ability to utilize color when she wants to. Mary flows nicely in an s-shape with baby Christ counterbalancing, with nice use of red and blue. Despite Artemisia's reputation as bitter and misandrist, here we see a warm and tender side, as she did marry and have children later in life to confirm this.

Young Woman Playing a Violin, ca. 1622
Orazio Gentileschi

This stunning portrait shows a dynamic angle and highly expressive face that is unusually rare for a Baroque portrait. I like how the violin and box form an X. And the use of red and yellow underneath white against a black background heightens the drama. What a tribute to musicians and to women. Orazio deserves credit as a progressive father in an age where women were not taken very seriously at all in the arts.

Judith and Her Maidservant, ca.1615
Artemisia Gentileschi

Figures bathed in warm light against a dark background is not new, but that they are looking away from us off to the right is an interesting twist. Judith must have been a huge inspirational figure for Artemisia as a courageous woman who kills the enemy Assyrian leader without an army, but her own intelligence and a sword. It is difficult to imagine the effect her work must have had on women of her era but I'm sure they would have found her to be a heroine of the arts.

Finding of Moses, ca.1630
Orazio Gentileschi

Orazio has anatomy that is oddly proto-Ingres in this painting. Compositionally the women form a triangle yet with the woman on the far left kneeling in green, her arm pointing to the baby Moses makes the entire figure arrangement into a square along with the woman holding the baby. The Titian inspired skies are evident here, but Orazio's unique drapery and colors makes us stop and observe here. The hands that point around the child form a diamond-shape around him. Note the arrangement of the women here also: two vertical, two horizontal, and three foreshortened in a near straight line. How Orazio manages to create detail in the trees behind them without distracting the foreground drama by sheer use of value and color is a tribute to his underrated genius. Artemisia came from good stock. This was a family that should have continued a lineage of painters...

Orazio Riminaldi

Samson defeats Philistines, 1625 A painter from Pisa, Orazio Riminaldi was a Baroque tenebrist born in 1586 on September 5th. Riminaldi was unfortunately one of many painters who died young, in his case from the plague in 1630, but it is what he accomplished in those brief years that merits attention. Riminaldi's expressive faces and body language, along with superb skin tones and dramatic skies, take his art to a deeper level than some his contemporaries, who were perhaps more cautious in their techniques. Look at the fury of the scene above. It is quite rare in painting to see a pile of bodies with a warrior like Samson no less, stepping on top of one while grabbing the hair of another. And yet Riminaldi manages to make it look majestic and noble. The anatomy of the figures shows foreshortening combined with Caravaggio's chiaroscuro in a tight yet carefully arranged composition. By making it vertical, in a triangular design, it heightens the sense of drama while requi...

Bouguereau

Nymphs and Satyr, 1873 If there is one artist today that hardly needs an introduction, it would be William-Adolphe Bouguereau , supreme giant of 19th century Academic art. Born on November 30, 1825 in La Rochelle on the southwest of France, his talent would define the era he lived in only to fall into obscurity for decades after his death in 1905 until as recent as the early 1980's, shockingly. Today he has the distinction of being lionized by the Art Renewal Center as one of the greatest artists of all time while at the other end of the spectrum vilified by modernists as artificially perfect and sentimental. In fact it is quite rare to see such polarization over an artist of a calibre like Bouguereau, whose bravura is difficult to equal yet at the same time thematically his work admittedly tends toward women and children, a subject matter that sold well and he had endless patience for. Over the vast array of his oeuvre, some 820 paintings, I have tried to fi...

Carl Holsøe, Master of Rooms

The Artist's Wife sitting at a Window in a sunlit Room, ca.1900 Carl Vilhelm Holsøe was born on the 12 of March, 1863 in northeast Denmark. Holsøe studied in Copenhagen and under the Danish Master Peder Krøyer . Unlike many painters who worked outdoors and favored the majestic landscapes of their environment, Holsøe chose the psychological mood of the domestic interior and the way light spills into rooms. Although Holsøe is often compared to his contemporary and friend, Vilhelm Hammershøi , Holsøe is more authentic and less vacant emotionally. His use of sunlight captures the mindfulness of the moment in a way that is reminiscent of Dutch Masters, utilizing the power of quiet and reading as emotionally satisfying and tranquil. In the painting above, his wife sits in a kitchen chair looking out the window. On the table are cups of tea and a teapot that Holsøe gently lights the rims. The drapes are of a texture so thick it almost seems like pastel. Look at the greenish reflect...

beside the easel

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