Caravaggio's Calling of St. Matthew
Caravaggio's The Calling of St. Matthew dates from 1599-1600, in an extremely late phase of the Italian Renaissance. With the glories of Raphael and Michelangelo already belonging to a generation that had passed on, Caravaggio's style emerged out of the final trend of the Italian Renaissance in the sixteenth century, generally known (often derogatorily) as Mannerism. Mannerist art tends to emphasize the artifice of the painting itself, whether through trompe l'oeil or "fool the eye" style visual trickery or distortion of form in human figure in deliberately anti-classical ways in order to emphasize visual expressiveness and novelty. Caravaggio stands as a transitional figure between the Mannerist phase of the Renaissance, and the post-Renaissance movement of the Baroque: to a certain degree, he may be regarded as a late Renaissance school of painting unto himself. We may note, though, that despite Caravaggio's novelty of form, his handling of content in The Calling of Saint Matthew fulfills the standard goals of Renaissance art. Through a close examination of the painting, we may see how Caravaggio illustrates for the viewer a specific Biblical passage, but also follows the specific rules that had been established by the Catholic Church for what was appropriate for depiction in religious art at the turn of the seventeenth century.
It must be noted at the outset that Caravaggio himself -- whose life has been luridly depicted in biographies as one of homosexuality, espionage, and murder -- might seem an unlikely candidate for a Christian devotional painter. But The Calling of Saint Matthew was not only a commission from the Catholic Church, it was Caravaggio's first major commission: one may imagine, therefore, that the young painter would be on his guard to execute his first major job with special care. It is important however to situate Caravaggio's Christian message within its historical context. In 1599-1600, when Caravaggio worked on the canvas, the Reformation and its associated...
Olive Trees With Yellow Sky and Sun: A Formal Analysis Description The first thing that can be noticed about Van Gogh's 1889 painting is that it appears to be divided into two distinct parts: above and below. Above is the bright, yellow sun, taking up the entire space of the sky with its warm blaze. Lighted and fed by this blaze are the olive trees below. The dark green of their leaves,
Released in February of 1939, The Wizard of Oz has become one of the most iconic and enduring motion pictures ever produced. The Wizard of Oz was based on a novel of the same name, but the film has far surpassed its namesake novel by L. Frank Baum in terms of popularity and critical acclaim. The film is a relatively rare example of a situation in which the adaptation to
Art Analysis: Art21 After reviewing the artists from Art21, the artists chosen are Pierre Huyghe and AI Weiwei as the subjects of this paper. The pieces the paper will be "This is not a time for dreaming" by Huyghe and "Forever" by Weiwei. Both pieces are installation pieces although the artists are not classified under the same grouping on the Art21 website. Weiwei is listed as "Featured in Change" and Huyghe
His work can be seen as fitting into a wider context of artists working to represent the France their generally well-off and comfortably middle-class and upper-class purchasers wanted to see and to believe in. The purchasers of Millet's works may never have visited the Normandy countryside for themselves, but they could share in its beauty and its spiritual and moral values through Millet's art and the art of other
Burnham spent most of his life in the early, expanding West in Detroit, Michigan. He worked as sign painter as well as a popular artist of portraits, landscapes, and genre scenes like the Young Artist. Burnham did the Lewis and Clark Expedition from his imagination, and many of his works are stylized and idealized types of Americana. The charm of the young boy drawing on a beer barrel to
Formal Elements: As to its formal elements, one of the most compelling and distinguishing aspects of the Leger work is its volume. Even as a hodge-podge of geometrical shapes spans the canvas without any illusion of dimensionality, the manner in which the painter has layered these shapes does given the impression of a clustered downtown area. Its depth is self-apparent by the sharp and definite lines separating objects as well as
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