A coffee with Art

Sit down with me, just for the time of a good black espresso. Let's have a quick chat about Art.

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Andrea Mantegna - Triumph of Virtue (c. 1502)

on July 28, 2020

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Nicolas Poussin - Landscape with Polyphemus (1649)

An apparent, banal landscape. Art History is full of it. But nobody has the mythical, historical and mythological charm of this. Nicolas Poussin's painting is mythological. Mythical figures hidden in the bushes. A Polyphemus who seems an integral part of the mountain. Without a doubt we are faced with a vision and an invitation. We live in a world that is formed on the myth, let's see it in everyday life. They are not simple stories, it is the explanation of our being.

David BOMBERG - The mud bath (1914)

The mud bath 1914 Oil painting on canvas (152,5x224 cm) Tate Gallery, London ******* At first glance, it seems that this painting does not have the slightest figurative intention. In truth, the work is intended to represent a public bathroom frequented by the Jewish community of Whitechapel in London. The blue and white lines and figures make up the jumping figures that gather around the pool, represented by the red rectangle and seem to surround the dark central pillar. The angular forms are used by our painter to express the vitality and dynamism of the twentieth century and the enthusiasm for recent industrial development. Bomberg, the son of Polish immigrants, was one of the founders of the London Group, an association founded in 1913 for the organization of shows and exhibitions. Although Bomberg kept his distance from Cubists, Futurists and Vorticists, groups active at the time, his work can easily be identified with some of their theories. By 1920 Bomberg moved from geomet...

Pietro Perugino - Apollo and Marsyas (c. 1495)

The Master from Perugia, who deserves more space in the world of art, was not a trivial and easy to read painter. The first criticism is based on the falcon that seizes the prey to interpret the painting as an Apollo listening to Marsyas, in the competition that obviously will win the beautiful Greek god. Marsyas was a satyr, does the painted one seem a satyr?!? A more current (and perhaps more precise) interpretation sees the young pastor Dafni intent on playing the young (in Greek it means laurel, from laurel comes Lorenzo). A beautiful allegory wanted by Lorenzo the Magnificent? Likely. What is certain is that the two figures are copied from two great works of the past signed by Praxiteles and by the school of Lisippo.

Lorenzo Lotto - Portrait of two spouses (1523-1524)

A nice portrait of a couple to celebrate a union. That it is also a happy union is a bit difficult to say, but from the faces it would seem serious. When you want to insert a symbol in a portrait, then you must expect the doors of guess and meaning hunt to open. The man points to a squirrel that remains in the dark and one must struggle to see it. What is represented? You do: lust, according to a medieval legend when the food is scarce the squirrel drives out the female or domestic prudence. The possibilities are not lacking. But man holds a sheet of paper where it is written in Latin: man never. The hypotheses are and will remain open, the solution is a certainty only for the couple.

Claude Lorrain - The Gulf of Baia with Apollo and the Cumana Sibyl (1650-1660)

Pictorial whims, which combine a truly existing landscape with true ancient ruins but not exactly where they are painted. All this creates an image of grandeur of a past that no longer exists but that we can continue to forget. A past that is made even more unstable by the human / divine figures present. Apollo (who often lent his image to the Christian Jesus) reminds us that his beauty will never be a vanitas because it does not decay. Death, immortality and the passage of time ...

Claude Monet - Woman in the Garden (1867)

The poetics of the Impressionists have been expressed by many but Monet is the one who makes it more complete and manages to embody it at best. A home painting, where a relative walks in the garden of his home in Le Havre. Nature is rendered in a photographic way in its depth created by a pure and clear light and by bold and well-defined shadows. The center of the composition is on the side, to increase the depth. The white of the woman is the real protagonist, so much so that Monet had an afterthought, on the right of the white dress there was a man, who was removed to give the right prominence.

Claude Monet - Pond in Montgeron (1876-1877)

Monet breaks all the rules of painting based on light, shape and color; sets the hues of Nature without asking which real object they belong to. We begin to lose the hegemony of the object; only the sensations that are imprinted on his retina are reproduced. The brush strokes are as vigorous as only light can be. A decorative work in terms of size, shape and subject. With a surprise: cherchez la femme!