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Fluctuat nec mergitur
Devise de Paris (via the-time-watchers)
Agité par les flots mais ne sombre pas / tossed by the waves but does not sink ― motto present on the coat of arms of the city of Paris.
(via caballerodelatristefigura)
Claude Monet, The Rue Montorgueil, Paris, 1878
“The Rue Montorgueil, like its twin painting The Rue Saint-Denis (Rouen, musée des Beaux-arts), is often thought to depict a 14 July celebration. In fact it was painted on 30 June 1878 for a festival declared that year by the government celebrating “peace and work”. This was one of the events organised for the third Universal Exhibition in Paris a few weeks after it opened, and intended to be a symbol of France’s recovery after the defeat of 1870. As well as demonstrating nationalist enthusiasm, the celebrations of 30 June 1878 were also an opportunity to strengthen the position of the Republican regime, still fragile only a few months after the major confrontations of 1876-1877 between its supporters and the conservatives. It was only two years later, in 1880, that 14 July was designated the French National Day.” (source: Musée d’Orsay)
100 FOLLOWERS!
Happy you all like art history. Ancient Greek, Roman, and Etruscan art to follow for the next two weeks. :)
CH 5: Ancient Greece
WARRIOR VASE, Mycenae, Greece
One of the latest examples of Mycenaean painting is the krater (bowel for mixing wine and water) commonly called the Warrior Vase after its prominent frieze of soldiers marching off to war. At the left a woman bids farewell to the column of heavily armed warriors moving away from her. The painting on this vase has no indication of setting and lacks the landscape elements that commonly appear in earlier Minoan and Mycenaean art. All the soldiers repeat the same pattern, a far cry from the variety and anecdotal detail of the lively procession shown of the Minoan Harvesters Vase.
FEMALE HEAD, Mycenae, Greece
Large-scale figural art is very rare on the Greek mainland. The painted plaster head of a woman, goddess, or, perhaps, sphinx found at Mycenae is exceptional. The white flesh tone indicates that the head is female. The hair and eyes are dark blue, almost black, and the lips, ears, and head-band are red. The artist decorated the cheeks and chin with red circles surrounded by a ring of red dots, recalling the facial paint or tattoos recorded on Early Cycladic figurines of women. Although the large staring eyes give the face a menacing, if not terrifying, expression appropriate for a guardian figure such as a sphinx, the closest parallels to this work in the prehistoric Aegean are terra-cotta images of goddesses.
TWO GODDESSES (?) and A CHILD, Mycenae, Greece
For a shrine within the palace at Mycenae, a master sculptor carved an intricately detailed group of two women and a child from a single piece of costly imported ivory. The women’s costumes with breasts exposed have the closest parallels in Minoan art, and this statuette is probably of Cretan manufacture. The intimate and tender theme also is foreign to the known Mycenaean repertoire, in which scenes of hunting and warfare dominate.
The identity of the three figures remains a mystery. Some scholars have suggested that the two women are the “two queens” mentioned in the inscriptions found in the excavation of the Mycenaean palace at Pylos. Others have speculated that the two women are deities, Mycenaean forerunners of the Greek agricultural goddesses Demeter and Persephone and that the child is Triptolemos, the hero who spread the gift of agriculture to the Greeks.
INLAID GOLD DAGGER BLADE WITH LION HUNT, Grave Circle A, Mycenae, Greece
A dagger blade inlaid with gold, silver, and niello attests to the wealth of the Mycenaean kings as well as to their warlike nature. This one features a scene of four hunters on one side attacking a lion that has struck down a fifth hunter, while two other lions flee. The slim-waisted, long-haired figures are Minoan in style, but the artist borrowed the subject from the repertoire of Egypt and Mesopotamia.
FUNERARY MASK from GRAVE CIRCLE A, Mycenae, Greece
This mask comes from a royal grave shaft. The Mycenaeans used the repousse technique to fashion this mask-- that is, goldsmiths hammered the shape of each mask from a single sheet of metal and pushed the features out from behind. No one knows whether the Mycenaean masks were intended as portraits, but the artists recorded different physical types with care. This mask, with its full beard, must depict a mature man, perhaps a king. It is one of the first attempts at life-size sculpture in Greece.
TREASURY OF ATREUS, Mycenae, Greece
Elite families buried their dead outside the citadel walls in beehive-shaped tombs covered by enormous earthen mounds. The best preserved of these tholos tombs in Mycenae’s so-called Treasury of Atreus, which already in antiquity people mistakenly believed was the repository of the treasure of Atreus, father of Agamemnon and Menelaus. A long passageway (dromos) leads to a doorway surmounted by a relieving triangle similar to that in the roughly contemporaneous Lion Gate, but without figural ornamentation. Both the doorway and the relieving triangle, however, once had engaged columns on each side, preserved in fragments today. The burial chamber, or tholos, consists of a series of stone corbeled sources laid on a circular base to form a lofty dome. After the builders set the stones in place, the masons had to finish the surfaces with great precision to make them conform to both the horizontal and vertical curvature of the wall.
LION GATE, Mycenae, Greece
The so-called Lion Gate is the outer gateway of the stronghold at Mycenae. It is protected on the left by a wall built on a natural rock outcropping and on the right by a projecting bastion of large blocks. Any approaching enemies would have had to enter this 20-foot wide channel and face Mycenaean defenders above them on both sides. The gate itself consists of two great upright monoliths (posts) capped with a huge horizontal lintel. Above the lintel, the masonry courses from a corbeled arch, leaving an opening that lightens the weight the lintel carries. Filling this relieving triangle is a great limestone slab with two lions in high relief facing a central Minoan-type column. The whole design admirably matches its triangular shape, harmonizing in dignity, strength, and scale with the massive stones that form the walls and gate.
HARVESTERS VASE, Hagia Triada (Crete), Greece
The finest surviving example of Minoan relief sculpture is the so-called “Harvesters Vase” from Hagia Triada. Only the upper half of the egg-shaped body and neck of the vessel remain. Formulaic scenes of sowing and harvesting were staples of Egyptian funerary art, but the Minoan artist shunned static repetition in favor of a composition bursting with the energy of its individually characterized figures. The relief shows a riotous crows singing and shouting as the go to or return from the fields. The artist vividly captured the forward movement and lusty exuberance of the youths.
Although most of the figures conform to the age-old convention of combined profile and frontal views, the relief sculptor singled out on figure from his companions. He shakes a sistrum to beat time, and the artist depicted him in full profile with his lungs so inflated with air that his ribs show. This is one of the first instances in the history of art of a sculptor showing a keen interest in the underlying muscular and skeletal structure of the human body. Equally noteworthy is how the sculptor recorded the tension and relaxation of facial muscles with astonishing exactitude, not only for this figure but for his nearest companions as well.
YOUNG GOD, Palaikastro (Crete), Greece
Fashioned from hippopotamus-tusk ivory, gold, serpentine, and rock crystal, the figurine is a very early example of chryselephantine (gold-and-ivory) sculpture, a technique the Greeks would later use for their largest and costliest cult images. The Minoans probably imported the ivory and gold from Egypt, the source also of the pose with left foot advanced, but the style and iconography are unmistakably Cretan. The work is a creation of a sculptor of extraordinary ability who delighted in rendering minute details of muscles and veins. The Palaikastro youth stood alone in a shrine and therefore seems to have been a god rather than a mortal.
SNAKE GODDESS, Knossos (Crete), Greece
This figurine may represent a priestess, but it is more likely a bare-breasted goddess. The snakes in her hands and the feline on her head imply that she has power over the animal world-- appropriate for a deity. The costume, with its open bodice and flounced skirt, is distinctly Minoan. If the statuette represents a goddess, as seems likely, it is yet another example of how juan beings fashion theirs gods in their own image.
MARINE STYLE OCTOPUS FLASK, Palaikastro (Crete), Greece
The sea and the creatures that inhabit it also inspired the Late Minoan Marine Style octopus flask from Palaikastro. The tentacles of the octopus reach out over the curving surfaces of the vessel, embracing the piece and emphasizing its volume. The flask is a masterful realization of the relationship between the vessel’s decoration and its shape, always a problem for the vase painter. The Late Minoan artist also reversed the earlier scheme and placed dark silhouettes on a light ground. Dark-on-light coloration remained the norm for about a millennium in Greece.
KAMARES WARE JAR, Phaistos (Crete), Greece
These Kamares Ware vessels, named for the cave on the slope on Mount Ida where they were first discovered, have been found in quantity at Phaistos and Knossos. On the jar here, the painter applied creamy-white and reddish-brown decoration to a rich black ground. The central motif is a great leaping fish and perhaps a fishnet surrounded by a host of curvilinear abstract patterns including waves and spirals. The swirling lines evoke life in the sea, and both the abstract and the natural forms beautifully complement the shape of the vessel.
SPRING FRESCO, Akrotiri, Thera (Cyclades), Greece
The almost perfectly preserved mural painting from Akrotiri known as the “Spring Fresco” is the largest and most complete prehistoric example of a pure landscape painting. Landscapes-- and seascapes --are key elements of many of the mural paintings found at Akrotiri. In each case, however, the artist’s aim was not to render the rocky island terrain realistically but rather to capture its essence. The irrationally undulating and vividly colored rocks, the graceful lilies swaying in the cool island breezes, and the darting swallows express the vigor of growth, the delicacy of flowering, and the lightness of birdsong and flight. In the lyrical language of the curving line, the artist celebrated the rhythms of nature.
