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Sýnir færslur með efnisorðinu Cimabue. Sýna allar færslur

Rome: Eternal City of Painting

For its central and seemingly endless roll in the history of the Western world, Rome more than earns the nickname of “Eternal City.” For centuries that history has sparked the imaginations of painters around the world hoping to capture some of the magic of the ages. In The History of Rome in Painting, edited by Maria Teresa Caracciolo and Roselyne de Ayala, a team of art historians gathers together the best paintings ever made in tribute to the times of Rome. Working from the central idea that art history can enhance political and social history not only by illustrating events great and small, but also by giving some of the elusive flavor of what it feels to be inspired by the past or the present of Rome, The History of Rome in Painting brings the entire panorama of Rome to life spectacularly as only great painters can. Please come over to Picture This at Big Think to read more of "Rome: Eternal City of Painting."

[Image: Cimabue. Saint Mark and Italy/Rome (Ytalia), c. 1280 (detail). Fresco. Basilica of San Francisco, Assisi, Italy.]

[Many thanks to Abbeville Press for providing me with the image above from and a review copy of The History of Rome in Painting, edited by Maria Teresa Caracciolo and Roselyne de Ayala.]

Paper Trail: Michelangelo in a New, Old Medium

“My beard points to heaven, and I feel the nape of my neck on my hump,” Michelangelo wrote in a poem about his experience painting the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. “I bend my breast like a harpy’s, and, with nonstop dripping from above, my brush makes my face a richly decorated floor.” To accompany that poem, the artist sketched himself at work, stretching up to apply paint to the freshly applied plaster (detail shown above). In Michelangelo: A Life on Paper, Leonard Barkan, a professor of comparative literature at Princeton University, examines how Michelangelo—best known for timeless works chiseled from stone or painted on architectural surfaces—revealed his deepest self on that most fragile of media, paper. By following Michelangelo’s paper trail, Barkan discovers a more versatile artist of both pictures and words who seems more human and strikingly more modern than the Renaissance genius of legend. Please come over to Picture This at Big Think to read more of "Paper Trail."

[Many thanks to Princeton University Press for providing me with a review copy of Leonard Barkan’s Michelangelo: A Life on Paper.]

Eternal Life: Italian Mosaics of the First Christian Millenium

According to Giorgio Vasari’s Lives, Domenico Ghirlandaio—whose frescoes graced the walls of the Sistine Chapel before those of his apprentice, Michelangelo—once called the art of mosaics as “vera pittura per l’eternita” or “true painting for eternity.” Joachim Poeschke’s Italian Mosaics: 300-1300 demonstrates the seemingly eternal life of these pre-Renaissance mosaics, which contain some of the earliest images of Christian art. In this first published survey of the subject, Poeschke analyzes how religion and politics teamed up to produce these glories of artistry in words while allowing stunning photographs of the mosaics to speak for themselves. Please come over to Picture This at Big Think to read more of "Eternal Life."

[Image: Enthroned Madonna and Child between Angels. Nave, north wall. Sant’ Apollinare Nuovo, Ravenna, Italy. Nave, Circa 500 and 560.]

[Many thanks to Abbeville Press for the image above and for a review copy of Italian Mosaics: 300-1300 by Joachim Poeschke.]