American neo-classical sculptures at NY Met

Link to Essay and Images at the Met

or paste this if it fails...

http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/ambl/hd_ambl.htm

Raphael, addendum

Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, Raphael and La Fornarina (1814)

Raphael

Portrait of a Young Woman (La Fornarina), 1520
Image from the Galleria Barberini website

"Remember that Raphael's genius wore out that divinest painter before half his life was lived. Since you feel his influence powerfully enough to reproduce hi miracles so well, it will assuredly consume you like a flame." (334)

Restored Image of La Fornarina from the Frick Gallery 2004
*note the detail of the background as compared to the image above

"And who can trust the religious sentiment of Raphael, or recieve any of his Virgins as Heaven-descended likenesses, after seeing, for example, the Fornarina of the Barberini palace, and feeling how sensual the artist must have been, to paint such a brazen trollop of his own accord, and lovingly!" (337)

Madonna of Foligno, 1511-12

"Some fine morning, I shall come to the Pinacotheca of the Vatican... and what shall I behold? A heap of white ashes on the marble floor, just in front of the divine Raphael's picture of the Madonna di Foligno!" (334)

"We see Cherubs, by Raphael, whose baby-innocence could only have been nursed in Paradise; Angels, by Raphael, as innocent as they, but whose serene intelligence embraces both earthly and celestial things Madonnas, by Raphael, on whose lips he has impressed a holy and delicate reserve, implying sanctity on earth, and into whose soft eyes he has thrown a light which he never could have imagined, except by raising his own eyes with a pure aspiration heavenward." (338)

We will explain these quotations from The Marble Faun and how the paintings were received at the time.

-Brian and Catherine

Ok guys, i was down and out with the flu for wendesday, so last nite i couldnt contact baraw to figure out which projects were taken, so ended up going with St. Peters (sorry people who already posted on it, i'm sure we'll all be able to contribute something different). So i'm including pics that might give some sense of scale to St. Pete's since alot of Marble Faun deals with that aspect. on a side note I've actually been to the capuchian catacombs and st. petes, so i'm gonna see if my dad has any good photos/postcards saved from that trip that i can post here.

-Luke

Bone Chapel, Church of the Capuchins

" The cemetery is beneath the church, but entirely above ground, and lighted by a row of iron-grated windows without glass. A corridor runs along beside these windows, and gives access to three or four vaulted recesses, or chapels, of considerable breadth and height, the floor of which consists of the consecrated earth of Jerusalem"(192)

"But, as the cemetery is small, and it is a precious privilege to sleep in holy ground, the brotherhood are immemorially accustomed, when one of their number dies, to take the longest buried skeleton out of the oldest grave, and lay the new slumberer there instead."(192)

"The arrangement of the unearthed skeletons is what makes the special interest of the cemetery. The arched and vaulted walls of the burial-recesses are supported by massive pillars and pilasters, made of thigh-bones and skulls..."(193)

"...the whole material of the structure appears to be of a similar kind; and the knobs and embossed ornaments of this strange architecture are represented by the joints of the spine, and, the more delicate tracery, by the smaller bones of the human frame."(193)

"On some of the skulls there are inscriptions, purporting that such a monk, who formerly made use of that particular head-piece, died on such a day and year; but vastly the greater number are piled up indistinguishably into the architectural design, like the many deaths that make up the one glory of a victory."(193)

Bone Church, Kutna Hora

The Cemetery of the Capuchins in The Marble Faun reminded me of the Bone Church in Kutna Hora, Czech Republic that I visited when in Prague. During the Plague, there were too many bodies to bury in the cemetery surrounding this church, and so the priest there took the old bodies out and decorated his church with their bones. This is a chandelier he made.

Big View of St. Peter's

More St. Peter's

Guido Reni-11-04-1575 -08/18/1643

Beatrice Cenci

Saint Sebastian-early 1630s

Saint Sebastian - (1617-1619) there are reputedly 7 around this same saint
done by Reni

Archangel Michael and the Demon

Aurora 1614
Fresco
Casino Rospiglioso, Palazzo Pallavicini, Rome

His base was in Bologna, Italy
Baroque style- expressive, flamboyant, dynamic
Reni's works are known for their mythological and religious themes.

St. Peters

Guercino



Dome of St. Peter's




St. Peter's Cathedral



Left Transept



Guido's Archangel

Gargoyles in Gothic Cathedral Churches

Hawthorne wrote: "A Gothic cathedral is surely the most wonderful work which mortal man has yet achieved, so vast, so intricate, and so profoundly simple, with such strange, delightful recesses in its grand figure, so difficult to comprehend within one idea, and yet all so consonant that it ultimately draws the beholder and his universe into its harmony. It is the only thing in the world that is vast enough and rich enough" (Charney, 37.)

Hawthorne writes: “Within the multitudiousness of the gothic style, the grotesque has a special function. By juxtaposition, absurd and sublime images make an ironic commentary on each other and indicate unlooked-for possibilities at either end of the chain of being” (Charney, 43).

"The Dying Gladiator" or "The Dying Gaul"

















































Detail of "The Dying Gaul" showing his Torc (a rigid circular ring or necklace)



































Paperweight! Only $91 plus S&H (a steal at twice the price--impress your friends!)














Cover of an 1833 periodical--from a print






He may also have been painted:











Watch the trailer for "The Dying Gaul: the Movie"
Watch for a moment right at the end for a familiar image...