Stylistic Elements of Art Jan

Stylistic Elements of Art

Jan Brueghel and Peter Paul Rubins "Allegory of Sight" depicts a painting of many paintings, sculptures, and other objects that relate to the visual world. A goddess or a muse sits in the picture's foreground. She has a piece of cloth draped over her shoulder, like a Grecian statue. A small, cupid-like figure addresses her in gesture as they both look at the same work of art. "Allegory of Sight" is a work of art that depicts artworks primarily of the human form and the sculptures and the faces from the paintings appear to gaze upon the figures, and seem almost as alive as the Grecian woman and child. The woman looks like a subject of art in her manner of dress, like a painting or sculpture come to life more than a woman. The title of the work indicates the symbolic nature of the painting.

This work is a visual allegory, not a depiction of real life, something the artist has actually seen. For so many great works to reside in the same area of an artist's studio would be improbable. There are also less prominent objects in the studio that relate to the medium of sight, like a telescope and a globe, that seem out of place in an artist's studio. The scene is everyday in the sense that it could be an attic, but the prominence of great works of art, all housed together, and the dim light that contrasts with the stark light upon the woman and child's flesh takes the work completely out of the realm of the everyday. The lighting also makes the strange whiteness figures more prominent and the gaze of the paintings more lifelike. The vastness of the amount of works that are sprawled within the room makes the space seem huge and vast, as infinite as the nature of the sense of sight that it seeks to depict. The painting strives for a timeless quality, but it seems squarely located in late Renaissance ideals of allegorical painting, and holds true to traditional artistic conventions about the need to convey perfect representation of the human form to show the importance of the sense of sight.

Clara Peeters "Still Life with Flowers, Goblet, Dried Fruit and Pretzels" is a far more humble scene. However, the warm light the title objects are bathed in suggests great significance is given to these objects by the owner and the users of these everyday things. The Brueghel and Rubins painting tells the story of the painting for the viewer, but Peeters' leaves it an open question why the warm bowl of fruit has been assembled, why the handmade pretzels have been positioned with such care. Perhaps it is a festival day, that is why the best goblet is set out for the viewer's perusal and fresh flowers have been cut and arranged to delight the eye.