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Fact:

Italian artist Benvenuto Cellini ( 1500-1571) was very well renowned in in Italy, even falling under the patronage of Pope Clement VII and the Gonzaga family. Despite his successful professional life, his personal life was very turbulent. After the violent death of his brother, Cellini took revenge killing his brothers assassin. He later attacked a notary and took refuge in Naples, where he went on to kill the goldsmith Pompeo de’ Capitaneis, and his two companions. He was later pardoned by Pope Paul III, however, he soon decided to try his luck and start over in France, where he would eventually enter the service of the French court.

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ancientart

A quick look at: the Archaic smile. How does this slightly creepy smile fit into the scheme of Greek sculpture? Why was it depicted?

The ever-intriguing, yet somewhat terrifying, archaic smile holds its place in the chronology of Greek sculpture, and in the minds of students who have studied art history. A few years ago, in an introductory art history paper I took at university, I still remember the huge image of the Kouros of Tenea shown (photo 1), staring down at the room full of freshmen, and the muffled laughter that ensued.

Greek art historian John Boardman amply describes the smile as an expression of ‘strained cheerfulness’. The smile features predominately on Archaic Greek statues from about 570 to 480 BC, and is characterized by the expression of a smile with a tight, upwards mouth, and a flat curve. This ‘smile’ persists in even seemingly highly inappropriate contexts (for example, note photo 4, where a dying warrior with an arrow in his chest grins broadly out to the viewer).

Following the collapse of the Mycenaean civilization, the Greek Dark Ages saw relative artistic impoverishment. About 600 BC, at the beginning of the Archiac era, we see sculpture in stone reemerge throughout the Greek world. The sculptural works of this era were highly influenced by the monumental statuary of Egypt, particularly evident in their rigid form and posture. However, the Greeks soon developed new manners of sculptural representation -this animated ‘smile’ being one such break from the Egyptian prototypes.

There have been many theories as to why this very distinct smile was depicted in Archaic sculpture. Some writers have suggested that it was a way for the sculptor to indicate that the person is alive (depicting the ‘vividness of life’), or to express a state of well-being or health. Another line of thought is that the ‘Archaic smile’ saw its origin with the technical difficulties the early sculptors experienced in attempting to fit a curved mouth onto the block-like form of kouroi heads. While we may not ever know the true intentions of the iconic smile, it is true that as time progressed, the increasing use of chisels led to the discontinuation of the Archaic sculpture’s block-like characteristic. Accordingly, the Archaic smile was no longer depicted as we know it, but replaced with a more serious, straighter expression of the mouth.

Works used to illustrate post:

Kouros of Tenea, ca. 560 BC, courtesy of & can be viewed at the Glyptothek in Munich, Germany. Photo taken by Richard Mortel.

Limestone male head, late 6th century BC, Cypriot. Courtesy of & can be viewed at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York: 74.51.2836.

Archaic kouros known as the Apollo Milani, ca. 550 BC, courtesy of & can be viewed at the Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Firenze, Italy. Photo taken by Richard Mortel.

Dying Warrior, West Pediment, Temple of Aphaia, c. 490-480 BC. Courtesy of & can be viewed at the Glyptothek in Munich, Germany. Photo taken by Steven Zucker.

matthewsgallery

A smile more mysterious than the Mona Lisa’s?

More art history.

The technique of watercolour was first honed by the English in the 17th century. Watercolor was used by topographers as the pigments are portable and water can be easily found all over the world. Many of the first watercolour artists were actually topographers, such as the famed Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775–1851) who was first trained as an artist by the british military. His Scarborough watercolour and graphite on paper c. 1825 (157 x 225 mm) (located in the Tate in London, England) is a great example of this early technique and further demonstrates why watercolour took off around Europe in the 19th century.

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Fact:

Water soluble ink, such as that used in pens, dates back to 2500 BC as a Chinese invention. The first ink used in calligraphy was composed of black soot mixed with a binding agent, often fish bones turned into glue, with a splash of perfume to mask the smell of the fish.

#did you know #fun art facts #art fact #ink #calligraphy #art techniques and materials #art history

Fact:

Italian - International Gothic/Early Renaissance - artist Pisanello (1395-1455) had so mastered drawing, that he is often credited as breathing life into the medium and one of the major points of inspiration for the use of drawing as a technique throughout the Renaissance.

#fun art fact #art facts #did you know #Pisanello #Italian art #drawing #drawing fact #Renaissance #International Gothic

Fact: Julius Caesar was the only Roman Emperor to have his portrait stamped onto coins during his lifetime.

#fun art fact #did you know #fun art facts #art history #roman history #roman art #roman empire #Julius Caesar #fun fact #art facts #coins #roman coins

It is a city shrouded in myth, swallowed by the Mediterranean Sea and buried in sand and mud for more than 1,200 years. But now archeologists are unearthing the mysteries of Heracleion, uncovering amazingly well-preserved artifacts that tell the stor...

#fun art facts #art facts #did you know #Lost Efyptin City #Heracleion #Egyptian Art

Fact:

Roman Emperor Nero (37-68 A.D.) is perhaps most well known for his building of the Domus Aurea (Latin for Golden House) in the center of Rome at the site of the great fire of Rome. Outside of the lavishly decorated structure (covered in gold leafs, shells, et al.) there was the construction of an artificial lake. After Nero's suicide in 68 A.D. the lake was drained and eventually an amphitheater was constructed from it's remnants. This amphitheater would eventually be known as the Colosseum.

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historical-nonfiction

Rodin’s famous statue The Kiss was originally titled Francesca da Rimini and depicts the thirteenth-century woman in Dante’s Inferno who falls in love with her husband’s younger brother Paolo. Their lips do not actually touch, hinting at their eventual doom.

Fact: On March 10, 1914 a women's suffrage campaigner Mary Richardson took a small axe in the National Gallery in London and attacked Velazquez's Rokeby Venus in order to bring attention to a hunger strike by fellow suffragist Emily Pankhurst.

Above is the newspaper cover from the March 10, 1914 attack.

(Image via: Clark, Toby. Art and Propaganda in the Twentieth Century: The Political Image in the Age of Mass Culture. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1997)

#fun art fact #did you know #diego velazquez #Rokeby Venus #fun art facts #art history #iconoclasm #National Gallery #London

Fact: Considered to by the most remarkable surviving monument of the Antonines dynasty. The Bronze Equestrian Statue of Marcus Aurelius (175 AD) is the only surviving Roman bronze statue. During the Medieval period Europe saw a swarm of iconoclasm. Trying to rid civilization of images which referenced previous periods and pagans, all bronze images from the Pre-Christian Roman Empire were destroyed. This statue survived because it was believed to represent the Roman Emperor Constantine (who reigned in the 300's AD), who is credited with bringing Christianity to Rome. It was only at a later date that historians realized the fault.

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Fact:

Artist Gustave Courbet had over ten paintings accepted by the jury of the 1855 salon. However, the The Artist's Studio (1854-1855) in which Courbet declared his artistic and political choices, was rejected from the group because of it's enormous size (four by six meters). This decision prompted Courbet to organise a personal exhibition alongside the Universal Exhibition, in a building which he had built at his own expense, and which he called "The Pavilion of Realism".

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Fact: Robert Rauschenberg's 1953 Erased de Kooning Drawing, was acquired as a gift to the artist. Rauschenberg originally experimented with erasing his own drawing but decided it would make more of a statement if it was another artist's. He thus went to de Kooning (with a bottle of Jack Daniels) and explained what he was going to do, after going through various books of his work de Kooning settled on a drawing which he deemed, incredibly difficult to erase.

#fun art fact #did you know #art fact #art history facts #de kooning #robert rauschenberg #erased de kooning drawing #art history #fun art facts

Fact: There is much speculation between Ancient Art Historians (and occasionally those of the Renaissance), that the marble statue known as Laocoön and His Sons is not actually a statue by Agesander, Athenodoros, and Polydorus. The sculpture was unearthed in the presence of Michelangelo in Rome. There is a large debate over the fact the this might actually have been Michelangelo playing a prank and creating the sculpture after the original Laocoön described by Pliny.

*For further reading on this debate see Lynn Catterson Michelangelo's "Laocoön"?

#Laocoön #michelangelo #Pliny #sculpture #ancient greece #reniassance #did you know #fun art fact #fun art facts #art facts #art history #Lynn Catterson

Fact:

The symposium scene is a commonly occurring theme in Ancient Art. Commonly, the point of reference is the Ancient Greeks, where their symposium was an all male event full of drinking, music, and socializing. Such as is inscribed on many Kraters from the Archaic period or is outlined in Plato's Symposium. However, Etruscan Symposium scenes were communal events, where men and women, ate, drank, and socialized together, such as in the Banqueters and Musician, from the Tomb of Orcus, Tarquinia, 4th century BC

#fun art fact #art fact #did you know #Ancient art #Ancient Greece #Greek Art #Plato #Symposium #Etruscan #Eutruscan art #Banqueters and Musician #Tomb of Orcus #Tarquinia

Fact:

The current remains of the Athenian Parthenon, are actually remains of the second Parthenon. Before 447 BCE, there was another smaller Parthenon. Unfortunately, this building was sacked and burned to the ground during the Persian attacks of 480 BCE. The Athenians built the new larger Parthenon on the same spot as the previous one. Interestingly, they buried the previous statues yet, reused certain materials for the construction of the new building.

#fun art fact #architecture fact #did you know #greece #athens #parthenon #acropolis #history fact #art history fact

Fact:

In Bologna, Italy between 1274 and 1303 out of 112 paintings of criminals 59 were painted by artists accused of attempted homicide.

#art fact #fun art fact #did you know #artists in italy #Bologna #Bologna art fact #fun art facts #artistic criminals

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