Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: realism

  • 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…

  • The last illness of Édouard Manet

    George DuneaJames L. FranklinChicago, Illinois Édouard Manet (1832–1883) was one of the most famous modernist painters of nineteenth-century France. He painted life as creatively and elegantly as he lived in it, translating onto canvas the fashionable salons, racetracks, and picnics of the Parisians.  With one foot artistically in the past and another in the future,…

  • Michelangelo’s David and the anatomical politics of religious art

    Sam ShusterWoodbridge, Suffolk It is impossible to see Michelangelo’s David without marvelling at the way its power and humanity have been fashioned from coarse stone. Apart from its living warmth, there is a unique display of human anatomy, each feature of which stands out in perfection, and together make an image that can be looked…