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Worth Watching
  • Empires - The Medici: Godfathers of the Renaissance
    Empires - The Medici: Godfathers of the Renaissance
    A fascinating and highly entertaining look at one of the most important families of the Renaissance era--the Medici.
  • Sister Wendy - The Complete Collection (Story of Painting / Grand Tour / Odyssey / Pains of Glass)
    Sister Wendy - The Complete Collection (Story of Painting / Grand Tour / Odyssey / Pains of Glass)

    “Sister Wendy Beckett has transformed public appreciation of art through her astonishing knowledge, insight and passion for painting and painters.” This set includes Sister Wendy's Story of Painting, Sister Wendy's Odyssey, and Sister Wendy's Grand Tour. Simultaneously delightful and scholarly--this is a must have for anyone interested in art history.

  • Exit Through the Gift Shop
    Exit Through the Gift Shop
    When British stencil artist Banksy traveled to Los Angeles to work, he came across obscure French filmmaker Thierry Guetta and his badly organized collection of videotapes involving the activities of graffiti artists. Inspired, Banksy assembled them with new footage to create this talked-about documentary, and the result is a mind-boggling and odd film (so strange as to be thought a hoax by some) about outsider artists and the definition of art itself.
  • The Impressionists
    The Impressionists
    A dramatization of the Impressionist movement as seen through the eyes of Claude Monet. Highly entertaining and informative.
  • The Impressionists: The Other French Revolution
    The Impressionists: The Other French Revolution
    A very personal and revealing look at the personalities that created Impressionism.

Entries in Baroque (25)

Wednesday
Feb272013

Elisabetta Sirani: A Talent Gone Far Too Soon

Elisabetta Sirani - Virgin and Child - 1663 - Oil on canvas, 86 x 70 cm - National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington (click photo for larger image)Elisabetta Sirani - Portrait of Beatrice Cenci - c. 1662 - Oil on canvas, 64,5 x 49 cm - Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Antica, Rome (click photo for larger image)Elisabetta Sirani (1638-1665) was an Italian Baroque painter, daughter of Giovanni Andrea Sirani, who had been the principal assistant of the master Guido Reni. Her talent was encouraged by the writer Malvasia, who later wrote an adulatory biography of her in his 'Felsina Pittrice' (1678). Sirani was active by 1655, and by 1662 she had recorded about ninety works, executing at least another eighty before she died at the tender age of twenty-seven. Only a scant few of her portraits has survived. Her religious, mythological and allegorical subjects were painted in full view of a crowd of admirers. Her style is close to that of Reni - idealized, affecting, and somewhat sentimental, but them embody a strong chiaroscuro and fine color. Her sisters Anna Maria (1645-1515), and Barbara (alive in 1678) were also painters. Barbara's portrait of Elisabetta is in Bologna. At age twenty-seven, Elisabetta Sirani came down with an unexplained illness, accompanied by weight loss and depression. Although she continued to work, she remained ill from the spring through the summer, and died in August--at age twenty-seven. Bologna gave her a large and elegant public funeral. Elisabetta Sirani's father blamed her maid for poisoning her Her body was exhumed and the cause of death was determined to be a perforated stomach--what we would deem as gastric ulcers today. Where might her at have taken her?

Tuesday
Feb122013

Diego Velázquez: A Giant of Western Art

Diego Velázquez - Las Meninas - 1656 - Oil on canvas - 10'5" x 9'1" - Museo del Prado, Madrid (click photo for larger image)The most important Spanish painter of the 17th century, Diego Velázquez (1599-1660) is universally acknowledged as one of the world’s greatest artists. The naturalistic style in which he was trained provided a language for the expression of his remarkable powers of observation in portraying both the living model and the still life. Stimulated by the study of 16th-century Venetian painting, Velázquez combined faithful likenesses and characterizations into masterpieces of visual impression, unique in his time. With a brilliant diversity of brushstrokes and subtle harmonies of color, he achieved effects of form, texture, space, light, and atmosphere that aptly identify him as one of the chief forerunners of 19th-century French Impressionism. His very famous “Las Meninas” is featured here.

Friday
Nov162012

Peru’s "Sistine Chapel" Shines Again

The Mudéjar-style ceiling before and after cleaning (click photo for larger image)

In a remote Peruvian village...sits South America’s version of the Sistine Chapel.

An elaborate Mudéjar-style ceiling and a complex scheme of murals have earned the Baroque church of San Pedro Apóstol de Andahuaylillas...its exalted nickname.

Click HERE to read more about the amazing restoration recently completed on this structure.

Monday
Apr092012

The Mystery of Caravaggio’s Death Resolved--FINALLY!

The Conversion of St. Paul, oil on canvas by Caravaggio, 1601; in Santa Maria del Popolo, Rome (click photo for larger image)The Italian painter Caravaggio (byname of Michelangelo Merisi , 1571- c. 1610) whose revolutionary technique of “tenebrism” (dramatic, selective illumination of form out of deep shadow) became a hallmark of Baroque painting. Caravaggio was never a traditionalist--either in his life or his work. He was the first artist to scorn the idealized interpretation of religious subjects that were typical of his day, Instead, he worked with models from the streets and painted them realistically. Saints had dirty clothes and dirty feet--and colors attempted to reveal what life had truly looked like during the time of his subjects. His works caused a sensation--as did his life. And the details of his death have always remained something of a mystery. But...now we know how this great artist met his end. Check out the following article to find out....

Saturday
Jan302010

Van Dyke Painting Fetches 7.25 Million at Auction

Sir Anthony van Dyck, Two Studies of a Bearded Man

ArtDaily.org reports that Sotheby's New York just sold the painting featured here for a grand $7,250,500. Van Dyck (1599-1641) was the most prominent Flemish painter of the 17th century, after Peter Paul Rubens. Indeed, there are some who believe that younger Flemish painters owe far more to Van Dyck than to Rubens. An excerpt from Sotheby's catalogue notes that, "In Two Studies of a Bearded Man Van Dyck paints the same man in bust-length from two slightly different positions: one in three-quarter view looking down and the other full face, glaring out at the viewer. The sitter is an unidentified model whose domed forehead, deep-set eyes and full beard and hair make him an ideal type for a variety of figures in Van Dyck's early religious and mythological paintings, as well as for Rubens's studio compositions.... One of the most remarkable aspects of the present work is the way Van Dyck created two distinct personalities from a single model."

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