#luca giordano

[throatoftheworld]

Arachne and Minerva by Luca Giordano, 1695

[ddestroyangels]

The Fall of the Rebel Angels by Luca Giordano, detail, c. 1665

Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

[lionofchaeronea]

Title: The Fall of the Rebel Angels Artist: Luca Giordano (Italian [Neapolitan], 1632/34-1705) Date: 1660-65 Genre: religious art (Roman Catholic Christianity) Period: Counter-Reformation Movement: Baroque Medium: oil on canvas Dimensions: 4.19 m (13.74 ft) high x 2.83 m (9.28 ft) wide Location: Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, Austria

This huge painting depicts the war in heaven between the forces of God and the Devil that ended in the latter's expulsion. The Archangel Michael, distinguished by his colorful armor from the other figures, presses his foot upon the neck of a bat-winged Satan. This may be a reference to Genesis 3:15, in which the serpent (traditionally identified with Satan) is told "I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel."

Luca Giordano, arguably the most important artistic figure of the Neapolitan Baroque, developed a mature style marked by light and color, in contrast to the Tenebrism of the Italian Caravaggisti. His crowning achievement is a vast series of frescoes in the Palazzo Medici Riccardi, Florence, allegorizing the Medici family in the iconographic language of classical myth.

[annemarieyeretzian]

The Abduction of the Sabine Women by Luca Giordano, 1675

I am so fucking obsessed with how ugly this painting is – and particularly obsessed with how ugly the faces of the women are.

This is obviously not a pretty story, referred to as “the legendary rape of the Sabine women”; and although this title (traditionally known as The Rape of the Sabine Women; Poussin, Rubens, Degas, and Picasso title it so, and even Giordano titles it so for seven of his eight versions) of Giordano’s has made it more palatable at first glance, this is the one of the only depictions I have ever seen as an art enjoyer and art historian that doesn’t beautify a story of rape or portray it as anything more than a violent act and a vicious, coordinated attack of warfare.

The Abduction of the Sabine Women is an unbalanced composition, a confusing mass of bodies within a muddied color palette. There are no jewel-like or soft pastel colors to distract or entrance the viewer (the red, yellow, and blue of Baroque are still present, but undeniably muddled). Moving along the Gutenberg Diagonal, there is nothing but a smoke-choked sky at the top left and little more than muddy earth at the bottom right. No one is posed prettily, and there is no daintily draped clothing: amidst stretched limbs and writhing bodies, fabrics tear and twist uncomfortably. There are decorative elements, but the pearls threaded through hair and hanging from ears, necks, wrists, and ankle only serve to highlight the desperate wrestling of bodies. No women half-heartedly struggle with – before succumbing to – muscular soldiers whose bodies and faces make them look more heroic than horrific (looking at you, da Cortona). Incredibly, we see none of the men’s faces fully. We see the women’s faces, not beatific or plaintive but contorted in anger and grief and pain. The central Sabine woman – though she isn’t placed in the center, which intentionally unbalances the composition – is fighting with her entire body, and her face is ugly with fear. Each of the women is an active figure: every single one of the women in the forefront has a hand up, gripping or pushing or raised in protest.

I am especially fascinated by the old woman (the eldest in the picture by far, depicted as a sinister-looking crone) who is attempting to stop the man raping one of the women and to save the woman being raped. The old woman has, arguably, the most agency and motion in the painting: she grabs and pushes the man while she simultaneously grips and pulls the Sabine woman. She is a particularly muddled figure: her headscarf and hair are indistinguishable, her skin is much darker than the skin of all the other women, her clothing seems more black than the blue of Baroque, her station in life and status in society is lesser than that of all the other figures present; and yet, she has the most immediate effect on the scene, fighting and aiding – all the way from the leftmost side of the painting and half-hidden by the two figures, one she struggles to prevent and one she strives to protect – at the same time.

[charnel-grounds]

Memento mori (Nunc est Bibendum)

— circle of Luca Giordano, oil on canvas, 17th century

[ducissatenebrarum]

The Fall of the Rebel Angels late Baroque Luca Giordano, in c. 1666, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna.

[7pleiades7]

The Fall of the Rebel Angels, (Detail), (1660-66), by Luca Giordano (Italian, 1634 – 1705)), oil on canvas, 4.19 m (13.74 ft) x 2.83 m (9.28 ft), Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

[venustapolis]

The riches of the sea with Neptune, tritons and two nereids (Luca Giordano, 1684)