Rusty Gray's ART F200X Blog

  La Tour, Georges de. Saint Joseph Charpentier (or Joseph the Carpenter ). 1640 – 1645 c. Louvre Museum. Paris, France. Georges de La Tour’s Saint Joseph Charpentier or Joseph the Carpenter is an oil painting currently residing in the Louvre Museum in Paris, France. The Council of Trent was the Catholic Church’s response to the protestant Reformation. In 1621 during the final years of the Trent Council, Pope Gregory XV declared St. Joseph’s Feast to be a holy day (Wilson 101) . The proliferation of art and literature with Joseph as the subject exploded. This work is widely attributed to being a result of that Papal decree. The merging of spirituality with everyday life to tug on heartstrings and capture souls was at the very center of what the Catholic Reformation was trying to accomplish in art. It is believed the piece was painted sometime between 1640 and 1645 (Louvre n.d.). It is also thought to have been painted in the Duchy of Lorraine where the artist spent the majori...

  Botticelli, Sandro. Primavera . Late 1470s – early 1480s c. The Uffizi. Florence, Italy. Sandro Botticelli’s Primavera, which translates to spring , is a painting using tempera grassa on wood. The piece currently resides in the Uffizi Galleries in Florence, Italy. It was painted in Florence and was commissioned by Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco de' Medici and his brother Giovanni "Il Popolano", cousins to Lorenzo de' Medici, in the late 1470s to early 1480s ( Spring by Botticelli 2024). This painting embodies the spirit of the Renaissance in several ways. First, the forms depict the impact of humanism with the use of figures from classical mythology rather than biblical themes. Zephyrus transforms a nymph named Chloris into the spring goddess Flora on the right. Venus overlooks the scene while Cupid fires an arrow in the middle. To the far left, we have Mercury poking at the sky with his staff. Just to his right, we see the whimsical dance of the three Graces. We als...

  The Ninth Wave by Ivan Aivazovsky     The Ninth Wave, a visually stimulating piece by Ivan Aivazovsky, depicts a group of seafarers clinging to debris amidst the crashing of waves. The painting currently resides in the State Russian Museum in St. Petersburg, Russia. Aivazovsky completed this oil painting in 1850 (Coyne 2023).  Here we will discuss the three visual elements of line, shape, and color that I believe are best captured in this painting as well as how they inspire awe, and what emotions are elicited. In addition, we will discuss presentation and placement.             The first visual element displayed in this work is Aivazovsky's use of line. Here we can see how lines are used as a show of movement and force. The thickness of the lines near the crescendo shows intensity and then disappears in the sudden chaos of the spray of water. Lines are also used to represent the shear size of the crashing waves by the u...