beside the easel

Madonna della Misericordia by Fra Bartolomeo, 1515 In this article, Bob Duggan discusses how Renaissance Art redefined culture by overturning dogma and challenging religious notions, sometimes vain but always intriguing. Based on the book The Controversy of Renaissance Art by Art History professor Alexander Nagel he explains how Humanism deeply influenced artists of the day yet were criticized for being superficial and distracting people from the intended message. The Art triumphs ultimately after the fall of Savonarola's radical puritanism and paves the way for artists to explore ideas and concepts within the scope of religion and Neo-Platonism that changed the world.

Here's an informative video by Carmen Bambach , curator for the Met in New York on the thought process behind Michelangelo's most famous drawing: http://82nd-and-fifth.metmuseum.org/thinking-aloud

Self-portrait at age 24, 1804 Continuing with the greats of Neoclassicism, Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres was a giant both of France and Europe in his day. Born on August 29, 1780 his father was also a talented artist who encouraged Jean to pursue his vocation, and ultimately he developed a profound respect for Raphael that would influence both his drawing and painting for the rest of his career. A staunch Neoclassicist, he was very apprehensive of the oncoming wind that would become Romanticism , a reaction to the strictness of order and form that Ingres loved so dearly. Ironically, it is Ingres himself who would subtly distort his own anatomy in such a way that would have a deep influence on Modernism less than fifty years after his death. Above we see one of the most youthful and inspiring self-portraits of any painter, which shows both Ingres as a handsome young man and a painter already at a level of a master. One can sense a certain vanity that accompanies artists of such c...

Portrait of a Man (possible self-portrait?), ca.1518 click here for zoomable version One of my favourite Renaissance painters, Andrea Del Sarto, who was called by Vasari as the artist "senza errori"—without errors—represents a Classicism with a poetic sensibility that borrows from Raphael and Da Vinci but evolved into his own brand of genius. Michelangelo was a good friend and one of his biggest fans, ultimately recommending him as a teacher to Vasari himself. Del Sarto has a way of synthesizing beauty and perfection with vivid color and a full-range of values that may have had an influence on Baroque painters much later on. Although another underrated artist today, his work really does have few faults. In fact, he would have made a formidable sculptor, judging by his confident anatomy and figures, with real facial and hand expressions that are hypnotic. The above portrait shows a young man of uncertain identity, yet somehow the prevailing art historians believe it is ...

The Virgin and Child with St. Anne, ca.1510 Yesterday was the 560th birthday of history's greatest artistic genius and polymath, the legend that intrigues and astonishes half a millenium after his time. Leonardo da Vinci. It is difficult to understate the influence this single human being had on art and the world itself, and to still fascinate scientists and artists (and Dan Brown) alike after such a period of time is obviously a testament to his very unique greatness. I want to talk here about why the hype of a centuries old artist is still amazing. (The Dan Brown theories you can read about elsewhere.) His name alone is interesting in itself. Born in a modest farmhouse actually a couple of miles away from the small comune of Vinci, east of Florence— at a time when surnames were already being used for a few centuries— it is indeed interesting that his father and Leonardo's grandfather lived in Vinci all their lives, hence the namesake. Leonardo was the bastard son of h...

Study for Transfiguration, 2011 Last year I decided to do a study of Raphael's St. Andrew from the Transfiguration using coloured pencil for the first time. It's a highly underrated medium for drawing. Rich colours can be built up in layers yet with a softness of tone that doesn't smear like pastel, yet from a distance has the same qualities as a painting. I think if the Old Masters had coloured pencil in their day, they would have made use of it in their own studies. They made extensive use of red and black chalk...this would have given them full-colour without wasting a single drop of paint. In this study I was less patient than typical color pencil artists. Normally, lights are built up slowly and then darks, but I decided to work from dark to light then erase my highlights to create them. Hey, it works. I used Prismacolor in this study but I found Faber-Castel's Polychromos set to be even more rich with pigment and better selection of colours. I buy my colours...

Heads and hands of the Apostles, ca. 1518-1520 Head of a Woman,ca. 1517-20 If there is one artist I wish I could go back in time and meet with...well, there would be too many to mention, but Raphael is the guy I could see sitting down to chat with you over wine and bread. His reputation as well-liked, amiable, smart, and a ladies man puts him in a unique category--Michelangelo was introverted and brooding, easily irascible, Leonardo highly intelligent and easily distracted by his own curiosities, but Raphael is the dude. Combining the knowledge of both, he forms that holy trinity of the Renaissance genius. I admit at first I didn't quite care for his paintings, but after my uncle from Italy bought me a book on him in Italian, Raphael grew on me fast. His draftsmanship had few equals in his day, and his compositions are Classically perfect. It is interesting that he has been adored and reviled over the centuries, and his life is the great tragedy of art history: he died on his...

Drawing is not the form; it is the way of seeing the form. Degas A male nude from behind, c.1630 Gian Lorenzo Bernini In this blog I talk about painting but the importance of drawing cannot be understated of course, and I believe we can learn just as much from studying their techniques of line and strokes as we can from brushstrokes...more in most cases as the drawing is more expressive and intimate. It reveals the personality and character of the artist. The above drawing apparently comes from the period of Bernini's teaching at the Accademia di San Luca in Rome, one of four from the exact same model. This drawing is fairly big for a study, at 55.6 x 42cm (21 x 16 inches). Consider Michelangelo's study for Libyan Sibyl , is only 28.9 x 21.4 cm (11 3/8 x 8 7/16 inches), a small study for a fresco which would be painted several times larger than life size. I can only guess that Bernini was teaching a big class and that maybe his work was on display for students to stud...

I don't think there is any other artist in history who is as well known for painting a massive fresco by himself.The loner. The genius. The perfectionist. The terribilitá. The homosexual (if he was indeed gay, which is still being debated). We think we know him, but we really don't know him at all. His genius was based on a solid training with a fanatical attention to anatomy. His perfectionism comes from a father who was probably pretty hard on him for most of his life. His personality was probably not as dramatic as history conveys him— in fact, I suspect he was quite introverted, preferring to observe rather than talk excessively. Just don't piss the guy off. Even so, the labours of his art reveal he had to have had an inordinate amount of patience, or he would not have been able to deal with the many projects from Pope Julius II and their problems. Although I do love sculpture very much, it's painting that I want to talk about in this blog, and since Michelangelo...