Tag: Art Essays
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Art appreciation under the radar
Lawrence ClimoLincoln, Massachusetts, United States I was on my way to an art gallery in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, to view the art of a painter who once lived there, Normal Rockwell. On the way, I stopped first at an exhibit at a local psychiatric hospital where I had once worked. I learned that Rockwell had a…
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Art and alcohol
Giovanni CeccarelliRoma, Italy In the late 1940s Elaine de Kooning, wife of one of the most eminent exponents of American abstract expressionism (Willem de Kooning), commented that the whole art world of her time had become alcoholic. Yet even earlier, perhaps always, drinking and drunkenness had attracted the interest of many artists. In a drinking…
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Diego Rivera and Hernan Cortes
Nicolas RoblesBadajoz, Spain Diego Rivera was one of Mexico’s most famous artists. Nowadays he is also known for his marriage to Frida Kahlo, another great Mexican artist. Born in Guanajuato, Mexico, Rivera was an atheist and a Communist radical who criticized the Mexican government and foreign domination. He created the History of Mexico mural in…
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Abram Belskie: Sculptor of medical medallions
Enrique Chaves-CarballoKansas City, Kansas, United States Abram Belskie was born in London on March 27, 1907. He studied painting and sculpture at the Glasgow School of Art and received a scholarship to further his studies in Europe. In 1929 he moved to New York City, where he assisted sculptor John Gregory for three years in…
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Tobias and the Angel—Miracle or medical?
Elizabeth Colledge Jacksonville, Florida, United States Admirers of Andrea del Verrocchio’s painting Tobias and the Angel (circa 1470–1475) may be unaware of the purpose of Tobias’s journey with the archangel Raphael. The Book of Tobit in the Apocrypha posits a story of love and not-so-miraculous healing in seventh century B.C. Nineveh. Tobit, a devout Hebrew, suffers…
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Monet’s illnesses: Beyond cataracts
Sally Metzler Chicago, Illinois, USA Fig. 1: Claude Monet, Apple Trees in Blossom, 1872, Union League Club of Chicago. Fig. 2: Claude Monet, The Japanese Footbridge, ca. 1922, Modern Museum of Art New York. No other artist in the world is more beloved than Claude Monet (1840-1926), the father of French Impressionism. From Shanghai…
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Ghirlandaio, humanism, and truth: The portrait of an elderly man and young boy
Vincent P. de LuiseNew Haven, Connecticut, United States “. . . There is no more human a picture in the entire rangeof Quattrocento painting, whether in or out of Italy . . .”– Bernard Berenson Among the defining characteristics of the Renaissance were humanism and naturalism. While many Renaissance paintings and sculptures were depictions of…
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Leonardo’s Vitruvian Man
JMS PearceEngland, UK Second only to his Mona Lisa, the most famous drawing in the world of art is perhaps Leonardo da Vinci’s (1452–1519) Vitruvian Man. Leonardo was the illegitimate son of a notary and a peasant girl. He was named after his birthplace Vinci (at Anchiano) near Florence. He became a painter, draftsman, sculptor,…
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Ophthalmology in Regency era China: a portrait of Thomas Richardson Colledge by George Chinnery
Stephen MartinThailand Thomas Richardson Colledge (1797-1879) was an ophthalmic surgeon who practiced in Macao, China, for a quarter of a century in the late Regency era. Colledge’s daughter, Frances Mary Martin (1847-1918) wrote a brief biography of him in 1880.1 It is an absorbing and touching account, and important in relation to an extraordinary medical…