Monday, March 22, 1999

Announcements:

• make sure you have a list of slides for next week's (March 31) midterm exam
• there will be a review of some of the material in this week's section

• technical innovation
• humanitarian element
• especially in self-portraits
• print-making

• Protestant values of no intermediary between Christ and his followers (all Christians)
• Christ gazing at the child at play in foreground
• old woman sitting at Christ's feet listening intently
• setting is an alley in contemporary environment
• use of light to signify Christ's divinity
• human contact
• straining to hear
• Christ appears to blend in

• one of Rembrandt's later works
• considered by some to be his greatest
• based on story in Luke 15:11-32
• wayward son return to the grace of his father, not to be punished, but to be accepted
• illustrates the idea of grace--important to the Protestant faith
• the idea that one must not win God's affection, but it is given as a gift
• once was lost, but now he's found
• depicts a celebration for a sinner who has come back to God
• Rembrandt uses light more subtly
• though it is used to illuminate what is going on spiritually
• is a new way of handling religious themes
• does away with superfluous details
• imposto: heavy layering of paint
• visible on the surface
• a result of working passionately--on an intuitive level

• classical
• ordered
• clarity of form and composition

    "Joseph the Carpenter" Georges de la Tour, 1645

• restrained representations of Caravaggio's style
• restrained chiaroscuro
• depicts Joseph and Christ in a workshop
• illumination comes from both the candle and from Christ
• biblical narrative into daily/everyday life
• less physical than Caravaggio's style
• drains Caravaggio of its expressionism and excitement
• sense of silence
• COMPARE
• Caravaggio's "Sacrifice of Isaac"

• took intellectual approach to painting/art
• looks to High Italian Renaissance for inspiration/influence
• defines French Baroque classicism
• inspired in Rome
• returned to France to head the Academy

• shows himself as artist/scholar
• courtier (like Raphael)
• shows classical image behind him

• reduced composition and figures like Raphael
• three dimensional monumental figures
• pyramidal composition
• severity, seriousness
• not an earthly connection/relationship between mother and child as in Raphael's
• exploring contemporary visual problems
• COMPARE
• Raphael's "Small Cowper Madonna", 1505
• Ara Pacis Monument, 13-9 BCE

• refers to pebbles used to decorate grottos
• style
• elegant
• delicate
• cleverness/wit
• aristocracy's "out-of-touchness" with the rest of the world contributed to the French Revolution
• three most important artists of the period
• Watteau (proto-Rococo)
• influenced by Peter Paul Rubens
• further extends Rubens' style
• color
• brushiness
• frothiness
• influenced by Titian
• color
• Fragonard
• Boucher

• idealized landscape
• invented landscape
• Cythera is mythical
• contemporary shorthand for idyllic place
• unclear whether party is traveling to or from Cythera
• statute of Aphrodite
• almost cinematic quality
• movement
• refers to state-of-mind
• curves throughout (frothy)
• not geometric
• originates Fete-Galante, or aristocratic outdoor party, popular subject
• COMPARE
• Rubens' "Garden of Love", 1638
• similar theme
• but also allegorical/love
• emphasis on color, rather than line