Maffei: Touches of Mystery and Bizarre Fantasy

Francesco Maffei - Perseus Liberating Andromeda - 1657-58 - Oil on canvas, 200 x 145 cm - Museo del Settecento Veneziano, Ca' Rezzonico, Venice (click photo for larger image)Francesco Maffei (1605 - 1660) was an Italian painter, active mainly in the Veneto, a region of northeast Italy bordering on the Adriatic Sea. Maffei had a refreshingly individualistic style, carrying on the great painterly tradition of Tintoretto and Bassano, to which he added his own note of mysterious and sometimes bizarre fantasy. He painted mythological scenes and allegorical portraits of local officials. The painting featured here comes from the Palazzo Nani. The Tintorettoesque approach of the paintings from the Palazzo Nani reaches a peak of expressionistic tension in the daring perspective view of Andromeda, who appears to have been broken up into a series of disconnected segments.

Artemisia Gentileschi: A Survivor

Artemisia Gentileschi - Susanna and the Elders - 1610 - Oil on canvas, 170 x 121 cm - Schloss Weissenstein, Pommersfelden - This is Artemisia’s first signed and extant work. (click photo for larger image)Artemisia Gentileschi - Judith Beheading Holofernes - 1611-12 - Oil on canvas, 159 x 126 cm - Museo Nazionale di Capodimonte, Naples (click photo for larger image)Caravaggio - Judith Beheading Holofernes - c. 1598 - Oil on canvas, 145 x 195 cm - Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Antica, Rome. This is the painting that inspired Artemisia’s interpretation of the same subject matter (click photo for larger image)Artemisia Gentileschi (1593-1652) was one of the greatest of  the Caravaggesque painters and a formidable personality. In 1610 she painted her first extant signed and dated work, Susanna and the Elders.

In February or early March 1612, Agostino Tassi, employed as Artemisia's perspective teacher, was accused of raping her and subsequently was tried and imprisoned. Perhaps to mitigate her plight, Artemisia married the Florentine Pierantonio Stiattesi, left Rome, and moved to the Tuscan capital.

The dating of some of her most celebrated early paintings remains controversial. These include Judith Beheading Holofernes, a response to Caravaggio's canonical interpretation of the subject. Artemisia signed herself Lomi, her father's real surname, on Florentine works.

Highly regarded, she joined the Accademia del Disegno in 1616 as its first female member. Baldinucci's brief biography describes her prolific activity as a portraitist, though few examples have survived. In

1620 she wrote to Cosimo II de' Medici informing him of a proposed trip to Rome. It is documented that she was there in 1621 and again between 1622 and 1626. By 1627 she was in Venice but later moved to Naples where she signed her earliest securely datable Neapolitan work, the Annunciation (1630, Museo di Capodimonte, Naples). It seems she lived there until her death, except for a sojourn to England in 1638, to assist her elderly father.

Rachel Ruysch: A Master of Floral Delicacy

Rachel Ruysch - Flowers, Fruit, and Insects - 1716 - Oil on canvas, 89 x 60 cm - Galleria Palatina (Palazzo Pitti), Florence (click photo for larger image)Jan van Huysum - Fruit and Flowers - c. 1720 - Oil on panel, 81 x 60 cm - Wallace Collection, London. Notice the lighter background in this work. (click photo for larger image)Rachel Ruysch (1664-1750) was a Dutch still-life painter who, with Jan van Huysum (1642-1749), also featured here, was the most celebrated exponent of flower pieces of her period. The daughter of a botanist and the pupil of artist Willem van Aelst, she worked mainly in her native Amsterdam, but also in The Hague (1701-08) and Düsseldorf, where from 1708 to 1716 she was court painter to the Elector Palatine.

Her richly devised bouquets were painted in delicate colors with meticulous detail, and their artistry and craftsmanship are worthy of the finest tradition of Dutch flower painting. She continued to use the dark backgrounds characteristic of Van Aelst and the older generation long after Van Huysum and other contemporaries had gone over to light backgrounds.

Ruysch lived eighty-five years and her dated works establish that she painted from the time she was a young woman until she was an octogenarian. However, only about a hundred paintings by her are known. Possibly she worked slowly, however as the wife of a portraitist, Juriaen Pool (1666-1745), and the mother of ten children, she may also have had a limited amount of time for painting!

Surprising Records Set At New York’s Old Master Sales

Deaccessioned by the Met and listed in the auction catalogue as by a “Follower of Peter Paul Rubens”, Portrait of a Young Girl, Possibly Clara Serena Rubens (1611-1623), the Artist's Daughter, sold for $626,500 (est $20,000-$30,000) (click photo for larger image)

“Christie’s dominated the January Old Master week in New York with a fistful of record-setting paintings and drawings.”

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Works by both Fra Bartolommeo and Botticelli brought in millions, among other works. It’s good to see these guys doing well (meaning the Old Masters)!

Famous Vermeer Painting Makes Its L.A. Debut at The Getty

Woman in Blue Reading a Letter, Johannes Vermeer, about 1663–64. Oil on canvas, 18 5/16 x 15 3/8 in. (49.6 x 40.3 cm). Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam. On loan from the City of Amsterdam (A. van der Hoop Bequest)

“Dutch painter Johannes Vermeer's painting Woman in Blue Reading a Letter is now on view at the Getty Center for its one and only North American appearance before heading back to Europe.”

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The painting will be on exhibit through March 31, 2013. By all means, try to see it. Vermeer (1632-1675)  is one of the greatest of the Dutch Baroque-era painters--and is held in enormously high esteem--second only to Rembrandt in the view of many scholars.