A coffee with Art

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Correggio - Portrait of a lady (c. 1519)

on April 20, 2020

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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.

Domenico Fetti - Portrait of an actor (1623)

The Italian lesson learned from Rubens and enriched by the vision of Northern Europe, returns to Italy. Domenico Fetti is strongly influenced by Rubens who was trained in Italy. The portrait is enriched by the attention to detail and fabrics typical of the northern countries with an all-Italian (better, Venetian) attention to color and chiaroscuro. Who is this actor? The beauty of portraits made anonymous by time is that you can play guesswork. Two are the most popular names: Claudio Monteverdi and Tristano Martinelli. It really doesn't matter. More interesting is to think of Mantua, the court where Domenico Fetti finds a home and where culture explodes.

Claude Monet - Waterloo Bridge (1903)

Monet dedicates a work to his beloved fog, which he called "mysterious cloak". When he could, especially in winter, he went to London to paint. His Thames has been portrayed several times from the room on the fifth floor of the Savoy hotel. A painting where immateriality, pure poetry is the master.

Giacomo BALLA - Flight of swallows (1913)

Flight of swallows 1913 Tempera on paper (51x76 cm) Museum of Modern Art, New York ******* We are looking with the painter out of the window, as a flock of swallows swirls by. The moving image is as if it were fixed in sequence in Giacomo Balla's retina and he has done nothing but bring it back to the paper. We note the shutter, rigid in its fixed presence, which strongly contrasts with the fluid motion of the swallows. Between 1912 and 1913, Balla created several works dedicated to swallows and their flight during his stay in the German city of Düsseldorf. This subject is the perfect manifesto for futurist art dedicated to dynamism and speed, which is considered the maximum expression of the modern world. These futurist ideas were presented in 1010 when Balla signed the futurist manifesto together with Gino Severini, Umberto Boccioni and Carlo Carrà. The technique used to create the movement is very similar to the frame imprinted on film. Balla got tired of Futurism and in 1931 ...

Pierre-Auguste Renoir - Jeanne Samary standing (1878)

Renoir has in its palette an infinite quantity of whites and shades of colors so soft that they can afford to create a painting with very reduced color ranges. There are no brush strokes, there are no shades but real color molecules. The sparkling white dress has a plastic and tactile value.

Anton Raphael Mengs - Perseus and Andromeda (1774-1777)

The inspiration perhaps came from a cameo of Mengs' wife, now preserved in the egrmitage. Apotheosis of the Roman collections. Andromeda is the reproduction of a relief from the Doria Panphili collection in Rome. Perseus is inspired by the Apollo of the Belvedere of Villa Albani. Fiero indicates the sea monster killed to free the beautiful Andromeda. Cupid with his torch leaves the stage, already aware of having done his duty.

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!