Tag: Art Flashes
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A physician examining a patient’s urine
This painting from the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford shows a physician uroscopist examining a specimen of urine in order to determine what was ailing his patient. It is a serious painting, unlike that of Dutch artists such as Jan Steen who regarded uroscopists as quacks and made fun of their pretentious mien and attire. The…
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Los Caprichos
This is engraving number 40 from the Los Caprichos series by Francisco de Goya, published in 1799 and showing a donkey as a doctor attending a dying man in his bed. The doctor wears a watch to count the patient’s pulse but not a stethoscope because this had not yet been invented. It suggests that the…
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Jan Steen: Quack doctors visit lovesick maidens
Like his contemporary Molière, the Dutchman Jan Steen makes fun of quack doctors, often shown in ridiculous costumes visiting young love-sick or pregnant women. In the Lovesick Maiden (Fig. 1, Metropolitan Museum) the diagnosis is suggested by the painting of a Cupid above the door, the bed on the right, and the bed-warmer on the…
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The tooth pullers
Having a tooth pulled in the days before the advent of modern anesthesia and dental techniques could turn out to be a pretty ghastly experience. There was a time when it was done by barbers, by itinerant tooth drawers, or even by blacksmiths. In the village, teeth were often extracted in full view of the…
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The Terme Boxer’s trauma
Seth JudsonLos Angeles, California, United States The cavernous eyes of the Terme Boxer look at me with the same anguish and exhaustion that has intrigued archaeologists and art historians since the boxer was first unearthed in Rome over a century ago. Experts date the bronze sculpture back to the third century BCE, and many have…
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Unlocking the secrets of a bohemian painting
Bernard BrabinLiverpool, England The image By an unknown artist, the Deštná painting in the National Gallery, Prague, depicts Madonna and Infant from a fifteenth century perspective. The Madonna’s attention is directed to the child, within a space surrounded by ellipses, human figures, and two angels processing petitions. Orthogonal lines connect the gaze of these peripheral…
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Huetation
Sooo-z Mastropietro Westport, CT Inspiration can appear unexpectedly just like progress born from sickness. Huetation, inspired by Rebecca Skloot’s book The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks and film documentary The Way of All Flesh took awe from an 8 second visual of mutating cancer cells, displayed with a sequence of 3 images in…
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Portraits of vision: Sir Joshua Reynolds
Sally MetzlerChicago, Illinois, United States The subject of this portrait wears wiry, diminutive round spectacles, lending a distinctly pedantic flair. Yet gazing out is none other than Sir Joshua Reynolds (1723–1792), one of the greatest English painters in history (fig. 1). Sir Joshua headed the Royal Academy of Painters for twenty-four years, and wielded enormous…