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Art does not exist in a vacuum, but is rather only one part of the historical record. Just as people comment on our modern standard of beauty today, so does early modern writers on theirs. Fortunately, Baroque art dates from a recent enough period that the historical record is extensive.
For example, a 17th century commentary on a Van Dyck portrait of a ...
43
It's the Wedding at Cana.
The text is in Swedish, written with Gothic script (this was common up to the end of the nineteenth century in Sweden). The text is
... madd [sic!], som blir smakelig. Om Bröllopet i Kana i Galileen. JOHannis 2 Kap
In English
... food that becomes well tasting. About the wedding in Cana in Galilee. Chapter 2 of John.
The ...
37
This a picture called
"La foire du Lendit" Pontifical de Sens, France, 14th century
BnF Ms. Latin 962, fol. 264
Source: Medieval Trade and Travel: Home
And can be dated with additional detail to found here.
That image is at the source here, at the Bibliothèque nationale de France:
La foire du Lendit
Pontifical de Sens, France, XIVe ...
26
A lot of the paintings were commissioned as portraits, why would people pay for themselves to be depicted in an ugly way?
Wealth nowadays is associated with a slim, tanned, and shaped body because those are traits of people who have enough free time, and money to achieve it. In that period, it would be the reverse, being more on the fat side would require ...
25
It's obviously not due to lack of talent. It's important to ask first whether the ancients even aspired to photorealistic paintings. Consider that the ancients were adept at a form of artistic representation that was even more "realistic" than a photorealistic painting: sculpture. Even the Egyptians, famous for their stylized two-dimensional art, where quite ...
24
The image shows shows the Fair at Lendit in France. It is taken from a 15th century manuscript held at the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris France.
MS Latin 962 folio 264.
The suggested date for the manuscript is 1405-1410, which should help narrow down your research.
The whole manuscript has been scanned, and is available online.
From the description:
...
21
Acknowledgement: this answer owes a debt to some of the comments posted under the question and under this answer, especially Kimchilover.
There is conclusive evidence that all three images are from after the 1789 revolution and strong evidence that at least one was made no later than 1834. However, there appears to be conflicting evidence on a more precise ...
21
This is an example of decorative marginalia, which is quite common on medieval manuscripts. Sometimes the marginalia relates to the context of the subject of that page of the manuscript, but often it appears to have been quite random.
One fairly well-known group that I'm personally particularly fond of is the so-called animals at war which includes images ...
17
I have dealt with this question in my article, "Nudity as a Costume in Classical Art," in American Journal of Archaeology 1989, which can be accessed either through JSTOR or through Academia.com, under my name. I am also editing a multi-author book, Nudity as a Costume in the Ancient Mediterranean, where I take up the subject of Greek nudity again.
The ...
17
John Everett Millais, "Self Portrait" - 1880, Uffizi Gallery Florence
John Everett Millais
16
According to many Hellenistic accounts, photo-realistic painting was well developed and popular at that time. The legend says that an artist made a picture of a boy with some fruits, and it was so realistic that the birds tried to peck the fruits. The artist however considered this a failure, because the birds who did recognize the fruits as real, were not ...
15
Based on your reading of the signature I did some googling and can offer the hypothesis (just a guess, really) that the artist might be Rudolf Claudus. He was a naval painter of note who was particularly active in Italy during WWII so the timeline fits well.
I am not any kind of expert on art so I cannot say with any degree of authority whether your ...
14
Lowbrow culture have always existed in human society, they're just not necessarily that well preserved in the historical record, or in modern popular consciousness. Jokes about sex, farts, penises, and bodily functions in general were particularly common.
A mainstay of medieval entertainment was fart jokes, which seem to be popular throughout human history. ...
14
I understand that there are four surviving accounts of de Soto's expedition.
Three of those accounts were written by survivors:
Rodrigo Rangel or Ranjel, who was de Soto’s personal secretary;
Luys Hernández de Biedma, the Spanish King’s representative;
and an individual known as the “Gentleman from Elvas”, who is
believed to be a Portuguese mercenary ...
13
After going through every Roman Emperor, I found only six who served over a year and did not have a bust or statue in known existence. Here is the list:
Glycerius
Anthemius
Majorian
Julius Nepos
Libius Severus
Aurelian
My basic methodology for finding this list was
Open every emperor Wiki page who served over one year and hope Chrome doesn't crash
Close ...
13
The reason there are errors you can't reconcile is that this is not painted from life. This is a lady of 1850.
After this the hoop skirts only get bigger.
This is a gentleman of 1855, who wears trousers and a frock coat.
The people you see here are from decades earlier. The gentlemen wear swallowtail coats with breeches and stockings. The women wear the ...
13
From this website http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/clothing-ii , in a section concerning historical clothing it goes into length on several styles of headgear. This style falls under the designation 'tiara'.
In any event, the tiara had a top like a hood, often lined inside with
luxurious animal fur. Ordinarily it was worn flat, either pressed down
...
13
Q How do we know baroque art depicted obese ladies because of a different ideal of beauty?
Do we really?
We don't. The anthropological constant to be observed is: "women are considered 'attractive' if: young and healthy" (both more or less relating to fecundity; Whether socio-biological, evolutionary, or just cynical):
Differences in the historical record ...
12
Who is the person whose face is painted in the top-right corner?
Why does this person is so important that has deserved to be showed on that cover?
José Martí, a Cuban national hero. Castro quoted Martí's works both as an inspiration and as justification for the revolution in his 1953 trial and called Martí the "apostle of the revolution".
Conversely, ...
12
The USSR was created in 1922 so the first one for sure cannot be from 1918. The cited first article of the constitution belongs to the constitution of 1936. The image clearly attributes it to the constitution (by small font below the phrase it says "from the constitution of the Soviet Union" and the entire phrase is in the quotes. So my guess is that the ...
12
Roman senators sat on benches while the consuls had the privilege of sitting on curule chairs (which are not shown in the fresco).
In addition to the arrangement of the seating, Cesare Maccari's Cicerone denuncia Catalina contains other errors, among which are the location of this particular meeting and Cicero's (apparent) age. The seating depicted is the ...
11
The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York has a great page on this exact topic. The key ideas why there is so much male nudity are two-fold:
the Greek reverence for athletic competitions,
and the athletic male as the pinnacle of those athletic competitions.
Because the Greeks felt that sport was such an important part of what was good about humanity, and ...
11
On very many statues from antiquity exserted parts are broken, in most cases hands, but noses are also very often. The purely mechanical reasons are evident. There are no reasons to conclude that this statue was defaced.
Here is one example of the many:
They say this is Cleopatra VII. I do not think anyone hated her so much as to break the nose on her ...
11
I can't speak to any of the other gloved animals, since you dont present them or link to them, but your figure is a part of a document referred to as the Maastricht Hours, and contains many figures which display both human and animal-like forms.
...and the opposite page:
I wouldn't attach any special significance to a glove on the tail of a creature , at ...
11
SHORT ANSWER
As with most such images in medieval manuscripts, it's hard to tell. The artist may not have intended any particular meaning, but I've listed some possibilities at the end of the long answer.
LONG ANSWER
There are many such strange illustrations in medieval manuscripts, especially in the margins (known as marginalia). In many (maybe most) ...
11
The painting is quoted on the back cover of the book as "So Bright and Delicate", oil on canvas, by Aaron Robinson, 2009.
Source: the Amazon preview of the book. (https://www.amazon.co.uk/So-Bright-Delicate-Letters-Classics/dp/0141442476#reader_0141442476)
His website, for anyone interested: http://aaronrobinson.net/
His wordpress blog: https://...
11
There are many theories & interpretations, but relatively little evidence to support most of them. Of course, there are no written sources from the Ubaid period to support them.
You are absolutely right that there hasn't been a great deal of published material on the subject. However, a good, and relatively recent (2006), paper on the subject is A ...
10
It's the same statue, the armour is removable.
The statue is today kept at the Museo Nacional Del Prado:
The Emperor stands over a nude figure representing Fury, which takes the form of a mature man in chains with an angry and hateful expression. Fury holds a lit torch in his right hand. The group rests on a base covered with arms and military trophies, ...
10
The Catholic Encyclopedia (not the most unbiased of sources) states:
He appeared before the tribunal of the Inquisition at Toledo in 1582,
as interpreter for one of his compatriots who was accused of being a
Moor
El Greco, by Michael Scholz-Hänsel, goes into rather more detail, saying
Between May and December 1582, El Greco served as an ...
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