Art History 101 . . . Without the Exams: Looking Closely at Objects from the History of Art - Softcover

Labatt, Annie Montgomery

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1595348786 ISBN 13: 9781595348784

Verlag: Trinity University Press, 2022

Inhaltsangabe

Why is something a masterpiece? Art History 101 . . . Without the Exams is about revisiting famous works of art that we may have studied in an art history class or seen in a textbook. Each discussion delves into one great masterpiece and asks the questions that help us understand how it has shaped history. What is the piece about? How did the original owner look at this piece? Where was it originally placed? Why is it in this museum now? How did it get famous? From the sixth-century mosaics of Ravenna and the painted bulls of Altamira, Spain, dated 12,500 BCE, to an incense burner from twelfth-century Seljuk Iran, frescoes from a Late Byzantine funerary chapel, and masterworks by Botticelli, Caravaggio, Monet, and Sargent, this book shows readers how to look closely. It welcomes us to the joy of art history—but without the papers, notes, and exams.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Annie Montgomery Labatt is an associate professor of visual studies and the director of galleries and museums at Sweet Briar College in Virginia. She received her doctorate from Yale University. She was the recipient of a two-year Rome Prize and has been a junior fellow at the Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and a Chester Dale fellow at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. She is the author of Art History 101 without the Exams: Looking Closely at Objects from the History of Art, from Trinity University Press, and Emerging Iconographies of Medieval Rome: A Laboratory of Images in the Eighth and Ninth Centuries

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Italian Baroque Art | Caravaggio, The Calling of Saint Matthew (1599-1600) A door opens. A blast of light enters, raking dramatically along the back wall of a seedy room. The appearance is wholly unanticipated―both the light and the unknown visitors, one of whom has a delicate, attenuated, golden halo. Some look, some don’t. The two men at the farthest end of the table huddle over their silver coins, focusing on the count, ignoring the other end of the room. The two men to the right end of the table seem perplexed. And in the middle of the melee, this ship of fools, a man, Matthew, points, stupefied, “What, who, me?” In that instant his life is changed. He has been called. Christ’s gesture affects Matthew, touching without touch, calling without a sound, barely opening his mouth. Nor does Christ linger. His feet are much masked by his companion Peter’s leg and the dark shadows that wait to regain their hold over the room. But if we look closely it appears that he has already turned to leave, feet firmly planted towards the direction of the door. The moment happens quickly, just as it does in the biblical account. Matthew 9:9 reads: “As Jesus went on from there, he saw a man named Matthew, sitting in the tax collector’s booth. ‘Follow me,’ he told him, and Matthew got up and followed him.” Christ’s stance exudes the solidity, power, and confidence in the biblical passage. His pose is quite a contrast to those angular, jumpy, hosed legs at the left. Contrasts are key, and Caravaggio brings those dichotomies to the fore through his use of contrasting lights and darks. The technique is called tenebrism, derived from the word tenebroso, meaning murky in Italian. It is essentially a wildly heightened version of chiaroscuro―the juxtaposition of light and dark that was so beloved by the Quattrocento painters like Leonardo da Vinci. In Caravaggio’s hand, the subtlety of the chiaroscuro gets pushed to the furthest extremes of the spectrum, into the realm of impenetrable, violent darks and surprisingly blinding lights. But 260 don’t expect that light to come with angels or putti or beautiful gleaming virgins. Rather than pinks, gold, and ultramarine blue we have muted maroons, mustardy yellows, muddy browns, and of course pitch black. Rather than a sense of calm, Caravaggio’s paintings make you feel uneasy, shocked, passionate, and inspired. These are the feelings that imbue and charge the Contarelli Chapel, tucked away in a corner of San Luigi dei Francesi, a Roman church situated near the Piazza Navona. The series includes The Calling of Saint Matthew, The Inspiration of Saint Mathew, and finally the frenzied Martyrdom. All were in place by 1602, although The Calling was finished by 1600. These paintings consume the walls of the chapel and reach out into your space, grabbing your attention much like Christ’s gesture grabs Matthew.

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Trinity University Press
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2022
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 1595348786
• ISBN 13: 9781595348784
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 536
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar