I finished reading about the fifteenth century in Europe last night and I loved reading about Dürer as I always admired his self portrait, I mean we did that in high school and it is not easy at all and I feel like Dürer even brought his own character into it and not just painted his face, idealising his features, I mean we cannot be sure about that but I feel that what Dürer said and wrote in his life time reflects in his paintings – honesty, individuality and being a true master of art. Jan Van Eyck was another artist who did amazing work and all the details in his paintings, it’s incredible, for example that we as the spectator can look underneath Adam’s foot in his painting „Adam and Eve“, and I love how he made people look real with the colour of their skin tone and the setting in which he showed people. What is also very interesting is that oil colours were ‘‘invented“ and artists started using it instead of the very fast drying paint tempera which dried within minutes, the oil paint gave the artist the opportunity to work slowly, built colour up, work on the details instead of rushing over the painting, needing to idealise the body or face. What is also very interesting for me is that Jan Van Eyck used not only linear perspective but also aerial perspective which meant to let things in the background fate away and paint them in a more translucent way and made his paintings look very naturalistic and realistic. What is also said about Van Eyck is that his paintings had a "unique jewel-like quality" (p. 425, Honour&Flemming, A World History of Art, Lauren King Publishing, London, 2009).
Today I am going to annotate a Renaissance image and I was looking forward to this exercise as I am very fond of Renaissance paintings and art, it was my favourite section in the Galleria degli Uffizi and I found greatest pleasure in taking my time to look at every detail of a painting. It’s been a few years since I’ve been there but what was said about Van Eyck’s painting that they had a jewel-like quality I feel like a few paintings actually have that glow from within from the Renaissance time and I wonder if it is just the use of specific pigments in the colour they mixed.
I’ve just finished the developed annotation of an image and I chose the one that I annotated for a Renaissance image as it was the most interesting one to annotate for me so far.
I sometimes find it hard to analyse works of art using the internet, books, postcards et cetera because I am not able to actually see the brush strokes or go closer to the painting to see more detail, I rely on the quality of an image and if I am lucky I can find a very good quality of an image online which allows me to zoom into the picture. As I am living in a rural area I have to think about the original works of art that I’ve seen in the past when travelling to Italy, London, Australia, etc.
What I also find very interesting is to see how the techniques developed over the centuries and how some things stayed the same and how people valued the same. In ancient Greek when they started to make sculptures more naturalistic in their movement and how in Roman times they carried that on and how in early Renaissance painters and artists go further and paint people without idealising the people shown in their paintings. I also find it very interesting how the paintings, sculptures developed as far as what they show. In ancient Greek and Rome there are still lots of images of gods and the stories about gods and emperors, through bringing Christianity into the mix people started painting saints and stories from the bible. Some things survived through all the centuries for example showing of astrological signs in paintings or sculptures. Also showing gods or saints has the same roots, people want to tell the story of their “religion” or what they believe in.
I feel like in late Renaissance in the time when Dürer became more famous the expressions of individuality and expressing one’s own perception of things became more and more although still scenes from the bible or saints or Madonna with child were the images that were portrayed a lot.
It was very interesting to learn about all these things and I feel like I know have a better understanding of art today already – seeing how painting techniques or inventions like oil colours still affect people’s lives and how a lot of artists use oil colours for the same reason as people did back then. Or the discovery of linear and aerial perspective is such a great thing for everybody today, it is almost normal to learn it in art class in school.
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