Lecture 27Genre PaintingRich patrons purchased this type of work; very popular.Very little work at this time was directly religious or heroicDiego VelazquezWater Carrier of Seville (1619)Focused on the elementally artful in day-to-day life.This image is simply of a man in Seville selling water, assisted by a young boy. That is all.Expresses dignity to even the “lowest of tasks”Emphasis on realism (Pearls of water on the vessel). Hyper-realisticTenebrism is a reminder of Caravaggio’s workThe Surrender at Breda (1634-5)Commissioned by Phillip IV80 year war. Justin of Nassau and AmbrogioSpinola meet in the middle.The Siege of Breda (1624) also portrayed by Jacques CallotLas MeninasDwarf-like woman (common at court, very uncommon)Foregrounds the way in which painting can represent and play with reality.Beginning of impressionism.Jean-Antoine Watteau (1628-1721)The Pilgrimage to Cythera *1717)Introduced the notion of the escapularal. Island is “Magic”Very rich, and elegant painting.Everything is delicate in this style ; balance between masculine and feminismIsland of dreams and wishes: Where we are always happy and our dreams are fulfilled.Mezzetin (1718-20)Middle tints, mixed colors.Figure is singing a love song.Speaking of inanimate sculptures (Stand-in for living figures)Sadness with a certain degree of pleasureNo precise contours in the background: ushers in a dreamy mood.L’Indifferent (1717)Figure allegorically represents indifferenceOffers himself, even perhaps sexually, to the viewer as he preforms.Pose is dancer-like, and abandons the counterpoise that was common in antiquity and the renaissance.Impressionistic: Patches of indistinct colors that create a visual illusion.OtiumWednesday, April 1Jean Antoine Watteau (1721) The Signboard of GersaintHas an allegorical affect, almost pretentious.Shows wealthy people, connoisseurs. Blonde man is observing a painting of nudes, most likely studying the quality of the brushstrokes.Narcissism plays a huge part in this painting. Many of the figures are looking at themselves in mirrors.Francois Boucher, Diana Resting After the Bath (1742)Rococo paintingBackground is related to a Utopia (nowhere)Intimate and eroticShe is painted as a virgin, a life very intentionally without men.Painting is non-narrative in the traditional sense.Fabric is decorative; simply in the image to be beautiful.Even the dead animals in the corner are beautified.Francois Boucher, Rape of Europa (1734)In the story, a god in love with Europa turned himself into a bull and came down to the valley where she and her maidens bathed. He was such a beautiful bull that Europa and her maidens sat on and around him, and he roared off with her.Extremely sexual overtonesCupids are fat, lazy, and simply dropping arrows (otium)Some of the cupid-babies even have cellulite.Jean-Simeon Chardin, The Governess (1739)Middle/upper-class that is a little more strung up. Paintings focus on virtue and how one should behave.Duchess is telling a young boy to put away his toys.Emphasis on children: infant mortality was high, but lowering. So mothers would grieve when their babies died.Affection for children is more evidentLocus amoneus (the place of love/pleasure)Riots of roses- roses everywhere.The ontology of the space is peculiar. Nothing is substantial, and the scenery seems fairy-tale like.Lover must “storm the castle of love”- sexual overtones, of course.Friday, April 3rdFrick Mansion, New York CityMadame Du BarryPortrait is very informal; she portrays herself as almost rustic, even though she is quite the opposite.Hat, lace, evokes the pastoral image. Pretending she’s a milkmaid?Locus amoenus (cont.)Mock heroic: undermines, subverts the heroic gene. Subversive.Has a foreground but not really a background- “stages” an environment.Trees erupt in the background, as if they were fountain blasts of water.Renaissance traditionCut stump: A motif that in a story, lighting comes down and breaks a stump: a metaphor for the power of love, and how it can be subversive and interrupting.Landscape is being used rhetorically: dark, shadowy portions that disappear are both a sexual innuendo but also represent the unknown.RosalbaCarriera, Self Portrait with the Portrait of the Artist’s Sister (1740’s)Portraits are the leading form of visual art at this timeAge of egotism for the new richPortraits were not only for the aristocracy, but also for the middle class.RosalbaCarriera, Fire (from a series of the four elements) 1746Cult of sensibility: sensations, passions, emotionsA desire to travel the world. It was fashionable to cry in public.Antonio Canaletto, Piazza San Marco, Venice (1720)Francesco Guardi, View of The Venetian Lagoon (1770’s)Actually captures the atmosphere of VeniceHumans have an emotional response to landscapesMonday, April 6thGiovanni Battista Piranesi, Carceri (1761)A lot of prison reform was going on at the timeThe Arch of Drusus (1748)Etching is of something lost, but perhaps re-achievable.Used his prints to advertise what Rome looked like (made it a lot more ruinous than in real life at the time)Visual arts at this time take a different identity, without religious motifs.Antonio Canova, Cupid and Psyche (1787-93)Beginning of neoclassicismSmooth skin, sharp contours.In the story, Psyche is dying, and cupid must give her a kiss to revive her.She is unconscious, and he is breathing life into her.Erotic overtones, but it is acceptable because it is mythological.Filppodella Valle, Cupid and Psyche (1732)Different interpretation. Strange.Antonio Canova, Pauline Borghese as Venus (1808)She was the sister of Napoleon, and if she were to marry, Napoleon would give the couple a lot of money. Known to be a very scandalous couple: multiple affairs on both sides. Pauline was infamous in her own time.Forehead to the tip of the nose almost seems to be a straight line.Hair is gathered in the modern Empire style.She is holding an apple (reference to venus)Pose also shows Neo-classicism.Sir Joshua Reynolds, Portrait of the Artist (1780)Portrays him, upon receiving his doctorate in Civil Law from OxfordLady Sarah Bunbury Sacrificing to the Graces (1765)Evokes/ re-creates antiquityClassical architecture, classical garb.Thomas Gainsborough, The Morning Walk (1785)Sensibility, romanticism, and RococoAlmost vaporous effectFor the wealthy.TheophileGautie, “Strange, retrospective sensation, so intense is the illusion it produces of the spirit of the 18th century”ARTH 112 1st