Thinking About Summer

 Thinking about Summer 

#isaacLevitan #russian 

A DAY IN JUNE ISAAC LEVITAN

Madonna of the Roses

 Madonna of the Roses 

Madonna of the Roses - yes its so very northern with its contrasts of white skin and red roses 

Altdorfer's Resurrection compared to 2 other works

 #Altdorfer #resurrection 

ALTDORFER'S RESURRECTION compared to others

THREE GERMAN PAINTINGS

You might want to compare this resurrection by Altdorfer to the depiction by Grunewald or Bouts!?

Grunewald

Another Blue and White Medley

#classicblue

Here's some more blue and white art to inspire you

Probably one of the best color layouts featuring blue tints hues and shades is this Japanese print !

This Kiitsu painting shows how one area of intense blue and white can centre another wise minimalist near monochrome tonal work

This Chinese Ming ceramic garden stool shows dark blue contrasted with a mid blue and some white.

Vietnamese Ceramics tend to feature a more muted use of cobalt for coloring.

European painting has a different more tonal approach to using blue partly because of the expense of mineral pigments. Notice how the lighter blues contrast with the  near white foreground of fallen snow and the tones of the winter sky in this Sassetta painting.

This image of St Mark uses ultramarine pigment mixed with other colors to guide our eyes across the work from the pale blue sky across his robe down to the book's cover.

To finish our medley - Here's blue in a different medium - mosaic tiles A Byzantine work.

Saint Luke the Painter

#saintluke #illumined manuscript

I do wonder if some of these manuscript illustrations of Saint Luke the Evangelist as a Painter may be early "selfies"

There is a tradition that Saint Luke was also a painter and did a portrait of the Virgin Mary.

Note the grinding stone for pigments in the background and the bull, Luke's symbol.

This is not as strange as it seems. Physicians in the 1st century AD were not always surgeons or pharmacists and might have to do drawings of their patients to send to specialists.

Also Physicians who did make up their own medicines for patients might have to grind herbs and minerals themselves and odd as it may seem this century some of the clays and minerals used by painters were also used for medicine or for making tablets and pills. 

Its also an excellent but simple composition with the curves of the blue scarf curving down from the hat and contrasting with the angles of the easel and shelf and other furnishings.

Blue Mary Three

#bluemary #MaryQueenofHeaven #ultamarineblue

Here's some works in which the blue may be azurite or smalt rather than lazulite or has been mixed with other pigments to darken or lighten the color.

While Blue symbolizes Mary note how the use and placement also effects the composition overall?

I have selected works in 3 different styles and media that span the centuries.

Gerard David Annunciation 

Flemish Gothic Oils 

Fra Angelico 

Italian Renaissance 

Coronation of Virgin 

Tempera 

Finally moving back in time a 6th century Byzantine work !

Wine Working Woman

For our next image in the grapes and wine series lets jump forwards to the Renaissance.

Francesco del Cossa painted this about 1460 and most probably was part of a series of panels originally in council chamber in Ferrara. It has also been attributed to Cosimo Tura, and is now in a Berlin Museum.

Its been called Polyhymnia or Allegory of Autumn but importantly its an excellent example of a young woman worker depicted with grace and strength pausing from her work tending vines.

Wine Pressing from the Tomb of Nakht

#wine #winemaking #winepress #egyptianpainting #tombofnakht

One of the oldest known paintings if not the oldest I've found so far of grape growing and harvesting.

also of interest as it shows ethnic diversity in ancient egypt with two blonde greeks or northerners or two older egyptians with  sun or aged bleached hair ? and the egyptians having coloring and hairstyles that are NOT all identical!

As I'm doing Dionysus over on my metousia blog I thought I might take a look at images of grapes and wine growing and making in other cultures.

Next time some roman imagery.

Abstract by JVartndesign

Copyright Julie Vaux 2013

One of hte reasons I'm behind on blogging AGAIN is that I was preparing a gallery proposla. Alas not accepted! Here's an image of one of the works!

Would you have liked to have seen a larger version of this on canvas?

Let me know?

You can see more of my work at JVartndesign

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