Jacopo Bassano: An Artist of Remarkable Originality

Jacopo Bassano - The Last Supper - c. 1546 - Oil on canvas, 168 x 270 cm - Galleria Borghese, Rome (click photo for larger image)Jacopo Bassano (ca. 1515-1592) known also as Jacopo dal Ponte, was an Italian painter who was born and died in Bassano del Grappa near Venice. He took the village as his surname.

Even though Jacopo worked in a small town, he was one of the Veneto's most influential painters in the mid-1500s. A pioneer in genre scenes and landscape painting, he initially trained with his father in the town of Bassano. 

By 1534 he had found his direction in the art of nearby Venice, learning as much from the chiaroscuro and luxurious color of Titian's works as from his teachers. He always stayed abreast of developments in Venetian painting, sometimes borrowing details from Lorenzo Lotto's works in his portraits. Engravings were critical in forming Jacopo's style, particularly those by and after artists like Albrecht Dürer, Raphael, and Parmigianino. 

Local taste required that art illustrate reality, and Jacopo drew inspiration from the simple human scenes, farm life, and changing aspects of nature he observed in his hometown. To Mannerism's energy, extreme movement, and tightly compressed space, he added realism and earthiness. A humble and subtle observer, his sitters may seem unaware of his presence. Increasingly, he used religious and philosophical subjects as pretexts for painting genre scenes and landscapes. Jacopo's workshop was a minor industry in Bassano, and his four sons continued his style into the next century. (Excerpted from the Getty Museum)

Bassano's “Last Supper” (featured here) is one of the masterpieces of 16th-century Italian painting. Instead of the elegant grouping of figures in Leonardo's painting, which inspired it, this dramatic scene features barefoot fishermen at the crucial moment when Christ asks who will betray him, and the light passing through a glass of wine stains the clean tablecloth red. Recent restoration has only now revealed the extraordinary original colors, which had been heavily painted over in the 19th century, when the emerald green and iridescent pinks and oranges were not in fashion.

Sir Anthony van Dyck: A Significant and Prolific Painter

Sir Anthony van Dyck - Entry of Christ into Jerusalem - c. 1617 - Oil on canvas, 151 x 229 cm - Museum of Art, Indianapolis (click photo for larger image)Sir Anthony van Dyck (1599-1641) was a Flemish painter who was one of the most important and prolific portraitists of the 17th century. He is also considered to be one of the most brilliant colorists in the history of art.

Van Dyck was the son of a rich silk merchant, and his precocious artistic talent was already obvious at age 11, when he was apprenticed to a Flemish historical painter. He was admitted to the Antwerp guild of painters in 1618, before his 19th birthday, and  spent the next two years as a member of Peter Paul Ruben’s workshop in Antwerp. Van Dyck's work during this period is in the lush, exuberant style of Rubens, and several paintings attributed to Rubens have since been ascribed to Van Dyck.

From 1620 to 1627 Van Dyck traveled in Italy, where he was in great demand as a portraitist and where he developed his maturing style. He toned down the Flemish robustness of his early work to concentrate on a more dignified, elegant manner. In his portraits of Italian aristocrats—men on prancing horses, ladies in black gowns—he created idealized figures with proud, erect stances, slender bodies, and the famous expressive "Van Dyck hands". Influenced by the great Venetian painters, no other painter of the age surpassed Van Dyck at portraying the shimmering whites of satin, the smooth blues of silk, or the rich crimsons of velvet. He was the quintessential painter of the aristocracy, and was particularly successful in Genoa. There he showed himself capable of creating brilliantly accurate likenesses of his subjects, while he also developed a repertoire of portrait types that served him well in his later work at the court of Charles I of England.

Back in Antwerp from 1627 to 1632, Van Dyck worked as a portraitist and a painter of church pictures. In this period he began to make small monochrome portraits in oil and drawings in chalk of princes, soldiers, scholars, art patrons, and, especially, of fellow artists, with the view of having them engraved and published.

In 1632 he settled in London as chief court painter to King Charles I, who knighted him shortly after his arrival. Van Dyck painted most of the English aristocracy of the time, and his style became lighter and more luminous, with thinner paint and more sparkling highlights in gold and silver. At the same time, his portraits occasionally showed a certain hastiness or superficiality as he hurried to satisfy his flood of commissions.

Van Dyck was one of the most influential 17th-century painters. He set a new style for Flemish art and founded the English school of painting; the portraitists Sir Joshua Reynolds and Thomas Gainsborough of that school were his artistic heirs.

The work featured here is a youthful work of the artist painted when he was a member of Peter Paul Rubens's workshop. The picture was executed in the style of Rubens. 

(Excerpted from the Web Gallery of Art)

Nell Blaine: Perseverance in the Face of Adversity

Nell Blaine - Rooftops, Rain - 1967 - Oil on canvas - 20 1/8 x 26 1/8 in. (50.9 x 60.1 cm.) - Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian, Washington D.C. (click photo for larger image)American Artist Nell Blaine (1922-1996) though not as widely recognized as she should be, stands as a microcosm of post-World War II stylistic tendencies, from gestural Abstract Expressionism to the geometries of pure abstraction, and eventually to a lyrical realism that included still lifes, landscapes, and interior views. 

Importantly, she also played a key social role in gathering artists together to create a vibrant community of painters, poets, and musicians. Together, they created a collaborative environment that opened numerous avenues of exploration. She helped to lay the foundation for future generations of landscape and nature artists by demonstrating how that genre could be brought into the second half of the 20th century. 

Blaine's perseverance in the face of adversity is also a key aspect of her legacy. She suffered from polio but refused to let it end her career. She had to adapt to painting with her left hand and limited range of mobility, as she was confined to a wheel chair. She demonstrated to the world that physical limitations do not have to end artistic pursuits.

In the work featured here, Nell Blaine depicts a series of city rooftops in a range of pastel colors and shades of blue. The surface of the roof that dominates the foreground appears to shimmer in the fallen rain. One of Blaine's striking abilities is to turn mundane, even dirty, things into beautifully colored compositions. (Excerpted from TheArtStory) 

Stuart Davis: Jazz in Paint

Stuart Davis - The Mellow Pad, oil on canvas - 1945–51 - 66.7 × 107 cm. - Brooklyn Museum, New York (click photo for larger image)American artist Stuart Davis (1892-1964) ( https://www.stuartdavis.com ) was a forerunner of Pop Art. He began his artistic career with the New York Realists (more widely known as the Ashcan School) before embracing European modernism following the Armory Show of 1913. Indeed, Davis quit school at age 16 to study under Robert Henri in New York, leader of a group called “The Eight”, which became part of the broader Ashcan School.

“The artist's abstract paintings, infused with jazz rhythm and bold, colorful abstractions of New York's urban landscape or household objects, offer a taste of European Cubism with an American twist. Whether painting in the style of realism or Post-cubist abstraction, Davis's determination to convey something of American political and consumer culture was unwavering.” (The ArtStory)

After the mid-1940s, Davis produced many of his most important works. His paintings are meticulously planned and executed. They also possess a wit and gaiety in contrast to Abstract Expressionism, the style of art dominant at that time. Davis was inspired by taxis, storefronts, and neon signs. The dissonant colors and lively, repetitive rhythms in his work can be seen as visual analogs to the jazz music he loved. The work featured here is an example.

“Because Davis grappled with themes related to popular culture, consumerism, and media through his witty depictions of billboards, tobacco products and household objects, his paintings are now recognized as Proto-Pop. His influence can be seen in the bold, graphic paintings of major Pop artists in America and Britain, including Andy Warhol and David Hockney. Wayne Thiebaud's interest in mass-produced objects and the visual language of advertisements also owes a debt to Davis' art.” (The ArtStory)

Gothic Art: Eclectic and Modern

Giotto di Bondone - Madonna Enthroned (Ognissanti Madonna) - c. 1310 - Tempera on panel - 325 cm × 204 cm (128 in × 80 in) - Uffizi Gallery, Florence (click photo for larger image)With towering cathedrals, resplendent stained glass windows, brilliantly decorated illuminated manuscripts, and iconic paintings embodying shimmering gold leaf, Gothic art attempted to recreate a heaven on earth.

Renaissance artists and writers in the 16th century coined the term “Gothic” and the early art historian Giorgio Vasari infamously reinforced the unfavorable connotations when he referred to Gothic art as “monstrous and barbaric” since it did not conform to classical ideals. It was not until the mid-1700s that the style shed its negative associations. 

Combining aspects of numerous styles and borrowing from numerous traditions (some of them non-western) Gothic art is truly eclectic (like modernism), and was readily adapted to suit regional tastes and tendencies. By the end of the Middle Ages, the Gothic style had become “international” in its spread across Europe, and its emphasis on naturalism sparked the revolution in painting that flourished during the Renaissance, even though Renaissance art would appear to be very different. Even Giotto (who is widely regarded as a Proto-Renaissance painter) followed the Gothic ethic in the work featured here (“Madonna Enthroned”).

Don’t forget to learn more about medieval and Gothic art at Dr. Jill’s upcoming art history class, beginning April 12th and running for six week. Click HERE for more info and to Register!