Tag: Art Flashes
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The Madonna of Impruneta: Icons and processions
The Madonna of Impruneta is an icon showing the Virgin Mary holding the infant Jesus. Its origins can be traced to the year 1060, when some woodcutters found it in the woods of Tuscany and brought it to the church at Impruneta. According to an alternative version, a man named Biagio coming back from Rome…
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A WWII artist remembered
Luciano FiumeCanzo, Italy When Hitler launched his invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941, he prevailed on his ally Benito Mussolini to contribute soldiers to sustain his war effort. Three Italian divisions were sent initially and two more in 1942, integrated into the German army fighting in Ukraine and at one stage besieging Odessa. During…
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Feast or famine: Food in the art of Bruegel
Howard FischerUppsala, Sweden “Famine was part of everyday life.”1 Pieter Bruegel the Elder (1525–1569), one of the most accomplished Netherlandish painters, often used peasant life as his subject. The survival of peasant agricultural society depended entirely on the success of their crops. The dream of abundant food, available without working for it, was the theme…
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The physician’s guide to The Garden of Earthly Delights
Nora Fisher-CampbellPortland, Oregon, United States I have returned repeatedly to The Garden of Earthly Delights as a strange and fascinating representation of the human experience. The triptych, painted in the late fifteenth to early sixteenth century by Hieronymus Bosch, depicts a fever-dream vision of Eden, Earth, and the Last Judgement.1 On the left panel, God…
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Auguste Renoir and his arthritis
Renowned for his colorful portraits and landscapes, Auguste Renoir (1841–1919) was one of the greatest French Impressionists. He painted some 4,000 compositions, many still admired all over the world. But during his last twenty years, he suffered from a debilitating illness that greatly impacted his work. As a child, Renoir contracted pneumonia, which left him…
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Interpreting René Magritte’s The Rape
Mirjana Stojkovic-IvkovicBelgrade, Serbia When exhibited by René Magritte in Brussels in 1930, The Rape was covered with a curtain so as not to cause a scandal. It depicts a woman’s face which, instead of eyes, nose, and lips, has breasts, a navel, and pubic hair. Such was typical of the work of this great in…
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Farewell, dear pictures that I have loved so well
For nearly two decades Cardinal Jules Mazarin was the de facto ruler of France and the most powerful person in Europe. Born in Italy in 1602, he worked as a Papal diplomat but offered his services to Cardinal Richelieu and moved to Paris in 1640. When Richelieu died in 1642, he acted as the head…
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Daumier’s doctors
Howard FischerUppsala, Sweden “Comfort the afflicted, and afflict the comfortable.”– Reinhold Niebuhr Honoré Daumier (1808–1879) was a “fundamentally discontented” French social critic, painter, sculptor, and printmaker. He produced over 100 sculptures, 500 paintings, 1000 drawings, 1000 engravings, and 4000 lithographs.1 Balzac said of his work, “There is something of Michelangelo in him.” Daumier hated anything…
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Ensor’s use of emesis in art
Howard FischerUppsala, Sweden The Belgian artist James Ensor (1860-1949) was born to a Belgian mother, Maria Catherina Haegheman, and an English father, James Frederick Ensor. He was born and spent his entire life in Ostend, a summer resort town on the Belgian North Sea coast. The senior Ensor was not successful in business. He had…