Sentimental paintings about the village children of Frederick Morgan
Today, lovers of sentimental painting are given the opportunity to get acquainted with the magnificent gallery of genre paintings by the English artist Frederick Morgan, who worked at the turn…

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Giuseppe Arcimboldo - a phenomenal artist of the 16th century
This year marks almost 430 years since the death of Giuseppe Arcimboldo, an Italian artist known for his original portraits of fruits, vegetables, flowers and fish. Giuseppe so skillfully portrayed…

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Skillful fakes that museums took for originals
Artistic fakes are a very real threat that museums constantly have to contend with. Fake artifacts appear in many museums from time to time, which can be displayed for several…

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narcissism

High Renaissance Titans: Who They Are and What Their Contribution to Art History

The Renaissance refers to the rediscovery of ideals from classical antiquity. Artists no longer thought about the art of antiquity. Now they had the tools, technology, knowledge and confidence to create in their own direction. In general, the Renaissance was a revolution in realism, when artists and sculptors developed new methods to make their work more realistic.

The High Renaissance also represented a rapprochement of geniuses – an unthinkable wealth of talents concentrated in the same field in the same time interval. While this revival took place in many creative fields – the poetry of Dante Alighieri, the architecture of Filippo Brunelleschi, the scientific experiments of Galileo, works of visual art act as the most iconic representations of the Renaissance. Continue reading

Secrets of self-portraits of famous artists: Reflection in the mirror, portrait-bacon and other oddities

Self-portrait in most cases is an instrument of narcissism, an attempt to leave your image in eternity. But if a genius takes up the matter, his image on canvas can turn into a real masterpiece, which not only perpetuates the appearance of the master, but also puzzles, surprises, fascinates the viewer. For centuries, some of these self-portraits have been knocked out of the familiar notion of this genre, while not losing either their fans or the attention of researchers.

Jan van Eyck, “Portrait of the Arnolfini Couple”

It is from the Renaissance that the development of the self-portrait genre begins – an interest in a person and a person naturally generated the artist’s attention to his own image. But self-portraits in their traditional, academic form did not appear immediately. At first, the masters who wanted to portray themselves in the picture either inscribed their figure in the composition as one of the secondary characters, or became “their own sitters” and the main characters of their works. Continue reading

“Love Letter” by Jan Vermeer: Why the lute is central to the picture
At the first glance at Jan Vermeer's famous painting “Love Letter”, the name seems far-fetched, because the letter itself is hardly noticeable. But the lute in the hands of a…

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Why did the famous socialist realist Heliy Korzhev begin to write mutant-turliks and paintings on biblical motifs
In recent years, in the world of art, interest in the work of Soviet artists has revived. And there was a time when their work was written off to a…

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Beloved woman of Boris Kustodiev, in whose name he overcame hellish pain and created his best works
“Dear Yulik” - that’s what Boris Kustodiev called Yulia Proshinskaya, which was everything for the artist: a faithful and selfless wife, and the greatest love, and a devoted friend, and…

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