“The Colossus” was thought to be one of a series of Franscisco Goya’s most powerful and famous works: the dark paintings. It shows a massive flight of terrified people while a gargantuan giant walks, stomping on his prey. The painting shows the gore and dark subject matter characteristic of the Spanish artist’s latter years. The giant symbolizes Napoleon, a subject Goya frequently returned to as he witnessed the Peninsular Wars.
But unfortunately, the museum in which the canvas resides has declared that the artwork is indeed not by Goya at all, but rather completely painted by one of his assistants. Close inspections may have uncovered parts of the initials “AJ,” which would have stood for Asensio Julia, Goya’s main assistant. Further X-Rays have found minute differences from this and other authentic Goyas. The Prado museum in Madrid made the official removal of the artist’s name on Monday, at least until further notice.
Experts have found parts of many great artists such as Leonardo and Michelangelo were executed by apprentices and assistants, but it’s sad to find out when an entire painting, once thought to be an authentic work by a prominent artist is wholly the work of someone else. If what the museum has found is true, it is certainly the work of a skilled artist to match Goya’s hand and style so closely. Of course, it doesn’t make it so horribly less of a painting, but not on the level of Goya’s other masterpieces.
Priceless still, maybe, but not quite so priceless.
What artist these days wouldn’t want to have their work on a list of highest paid paintings? Unfortunately, the reality is that they don’t call them “starving artists” for nothing. The majority of aspiring new Rembrandts will barely etch out a living from their art, let alone swim in a pile of Benjamins.
To be fair, most of the best artists don’t do it for money. They paint because they have to, even if it means skipping dinner to pay for supplies. Paint flows in their veins. However, the fruits of your labor hitting the financial big-times is one surefire way to measure artistic success, even if it is posthumous (e.g.- Vince van Gogh.)
These are ten of the most expensive paintings sold at auction adjusted for 2008 dollars.
1. No. 5, 1948, Jackson Pollack $149.7 Million
Pollack exploded onto the art scene in 1950s America as his paint splattered onto his canvases. After experimenting with Cubism with relatively mediocre success, Pollack innovated his “paint drip” method, dripping and throwing from sticks and brushes, and the world was fascinated.
The painting was sold in 2006 and remains the most expensive painting ever sold, privately or at auction.
2. Woman III, Willem De Kooning $147 Million
Willem De Kooning was a friend of Jackson Pollack and also belonged to the same New York abstract expressionist movement. Woman III was part of a series painted in the early ’50s with a theme of, you guessed it, women. This one demonstrates De Kooning’s unique style and color palette.
3. Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I, Gustave Klimt $144.4 Million
Adele Bloch-Bauer was the wife of Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer, wealth industrialist and patron of Klimt’s artworks.
The Adele paintings are extravagant examples of Klimt’s beautiful gold leaf methods of combining gold to an oil painting. He is one of the most prominent modern artists to use precious metals silver and gold in paintings. Adele Bloch-Bauer was the only model to have been painted by Klimt more than once.
It sold in a private sale in 2006 for $135 Million, and was the most expensive painting until the Pollack sold.
4. Portrait of Dr. Gachet, Vincent van Gogh $136.1 Million
Portrait of Dr. Gachet, when sold in 1990, held the record for most expensive painting al the way until 2006. Van Gogh painted the portrait of his doctor during his last few months with a melancholy mood, which he thought expressed the inner soul.
We all know van Gogh only sold one painting in his lifetime, but fortunately this never stopped him from being a prolific and innovative artist who, years after his death up till now, remains one of the most popular and well-known artists. It is only fitting that 3 of the top 10 most expensive paintings belong to him.
5. Bal au moulin de la Galette, Montmartre, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, $128.8 Million
Painted in 1876 by Impressionist Pierre-Auguste Renoir, this painting shows the distinctive Impressionist style and technique and the optimism of an up-and-coming young artist ready to tackle the world with his art. Its composition and the openness of the subject matter shine a light on Renoir’s personality.
6. Garcon a la Pipe, Pablo Picasso $118.9 Million
Another frequent name on the list of most expensive paintings is Pablo Picasso, the prolific founder of Cubism, who never stopped changing and innovating his styles. Boy With Pipe shows a Picasso painting of early years, from his “Rose Period,” aptly named for its warm tones and subject matter.
Its place on this list helps to show that Picasso has extremely popular paintings from all his periods, and not just the well-known Cubist paintings. Other Picasso paintings of this period often depict locals, like this boy, clowns and acrobats.
7. Irises, Vincent van Gogh $102.3
The second van Gogh on the list shows a slightly more cheerful, yet just as cool painting portraying a close-up of irises. Van Gogh always painted from nature and surroundings and loved to paint flowers, the most famous being his Sunflower series. Though painted in an asylum a year before his death, this painting shows van Gogh’s release from tension and ability to use art to calm his nerves. He called painting a way to keep from going insane.
The painting also highlights the strong Japanese influence on the artist.
8. Dora Maar au Chat, Pablo Picasso $101.8 Million
This painting shows more of his well-known Cubist style and much more intensity than the Boy With Pipe. The subject is Dora Maar, with whom Picasso had a nearly 30 year relationship. She was his lover and artistic companion and even assisted with the famous Guernica. Contrary to what you may think at the first glance of such an unflattering depiction, to be painted in one of Picasso’s most vibrant and complex portraits is quite the compliment.
9. Portrait of the Artist Without a Beard, Vincent van Gogh $94.6 Million
The third van Gogh on our list is one of many self-portraits executed by the artist. Van Gogh was a prolific painter, and painted constantly everything he saw. During the last two months of his life, he painted about a canvas per day. Painting the auto-portrait only made sense because the model would always be there, and wouldn’t complain too much.
This painting, one of the unique one without a beard, sold at Christie’s Auction house in New York in 1998.
10. Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer II, Gustave Klimt $94 Million
Adele Bloch-Bauer enjoys her status of being the only model to have been painted by Klimt twice, and the second, less extravagantly painted, Klimt work to be on the top ten most expensive paintings.
Some of the best art in history took the status quo and tore it to shreds. Brilliant new ideas are always met with skepticism, doubt, and often anger. When a painter makes such a statement which will change the way the world sees art, the public at first responds clearly. Don’t rock the boat- we like calm waters.
People like their comfortable bubbles and would much rather stay in their zones than explore new horizons. Sometimes writers and painters need to snap people out of their daze. These artists need to drag the masses kicking and screaming and force them to see art history unfold before their eyes. Sometimes this means shocking the hell out of them.
Other times the forgers of new art were better off forgetting about the public and the snide critics with a “damn the torpedoes” attitude. Regardless of each artist’s personal beliefs at the time, we’re lucky to have these brazen pioneers. They often sacrificed their own success for the good of art and many went unappreciated in their day.
Michelangelo
Michelangelo Bounarotti, the High Renaissance painter, sculptor, and architect, was fairly successful in his day. If you saw him you’d say he lived in squalor, unkempt and with raggedly clothing. He avoided social situations like the plague.
Like the man himself, his art was often misunderstood. Julius II’s entourage of cardinals called the naked figures of Michelangelo’s ceiling vulgar and pornographic. The rippling muscles, the veins, the strong masculinity of the figures had no place in what should be an idealized representation of biblical themes, they said. Michelangelo’s response: “Did God no create Man in his image?”
Caravaggio
Not much after the Florentine Michelangelo came Michelangelo Merisi, known as Caravaggio. Besides having the same name as the previous master, Caravaggio had some big shoes to fill as he would also make most of his career painting for the Church.
His art, however, contrasted with the perfect bodies of Michelangelo and instead portrayed his religious subjects exactly how they were- nothing more than human. This, of course, outraged many Church officials who were embarrassed that the dirt was so visible on the peasants’ feet as they knelt before God. Saint John the Baptist (above) is a homage to Michelangelo. It shows how he can create art just as beautiful, but only depicting the street boy posing not so much as saint, but how he was- a gleeful young kid posing in a studio.
Claude Monet
Where could art be today without pioneers such as Claude Monet teaching us to paint as we see and not what we know? When Monet first came onto the art scene, his contemporaries were fixated on emulating the old masters. He instead insisted on painting what he saw- all we see in nature is simply light reflecting off of objects, giving us an impression. Of course he went on to found French Impressionism. This would forever change art history and sculpt art as we know it today.
Vincent van Gogh
Van Gogh- the epitome of the misunderstood genius. His vibrant expressions were like none the world had seen before. It’s such a shame he never found success in his lifetime yet today he is held in such high regard. The people of his time were simply not ready for him. They said his paintings were ugly and wouldn’t look good hanging above the mantle in the living room. Van Gogh gave us so much, such as the ability to feel with our eyes, to not only see the light coming from the lamps in the room, but to swim in the rays which dance around it. There isn’t a painting by the Dutch master which you can’t feel the energy from it.
Pablo Picasso
After Monet gave the world Impressionism, great artists like Paul Cezanne innovated and built on the style to pave the way for 20th century Cubism, which would be co-founded by Spanish artist Pablo Picasso. Picasso’s Cubism philosophy rejected naturalistic approaches to art and broke visual elements down to basic geometric forms.
One of Picasso’s greatest works is the painting Guernica (above), which shows the Nazi bombing of the Spanish town. Nothing found in the newspapers could rival the imagery in this painting. With his cold depiction, Picasso shows the people of the world exactly what it is like for civilians to have their town obliterated in war. The twisted bodies of citizens and livestock writhe in pain and horror as their homes and lives are destroyed. Great artists like Picasso are owed a great deal for successfully portraying the horrors of war to a public which is too often left in the dark of the details.
Thomas Eakins
What we would consider quite tame and prudish by today’s standards was a whole different story in the nineteenth century. Thomas Eakins, Philadelphia artist and professor, was kicked out of his tenure for removing the loin cloth of a model in his art class to show the full anatomy. He accepted his ousting but rejected the attitude behind it. Eakins was not shy of the human body; he was an avid photographer of nudes, himself posing nude.
Besides encouraging the painting of the full human anatomy, Eakins would get himself in trouble with other unacceptable material. This time it happened with his greatest accomplishment, the Gross Clinic (see above), showing prominent Philadelphia surgeon Samuel Gross at work teaching his students his revolutionary surgical procedures. The painting was rejected with strong criticism for its graphic nature. Eakins’ paintings are true realism, unabridged and uncensored.
Wassily Kandinsky
Kandinsky discovered painting late in his life after a career as a lawyer. Posterity thanks him for starting late, rather than never, as he gave the world some of the best and most colorful paintings of the 20th century. Kandinsky painted some of the first purely abstract paintings, thus he could be credited with helping start the Abstract movement. His philosophies concentrated on color theory, symbolism, and spirituality. His paintings often were meant to be like music; you can almost hear it playing while viewing some of his artworks, how they flow and vibrate.
These artists are only a few of world-changing pioneers, of course, but it is the type of artist they represent that is important. None of these men had any idea how their art would turn out. They had the guts to follow their passion and their dream and the world has benefited from their efforts. We should salute those who challenge convention, whether they are successful in the long run or not. Raise a glass to the pioneers!
There’s a fresh face on Vincent van Gogh’s art. It comes in the form of a never before seen portrait uncovered using new X-ray technology under the painting “Patch of Grass.” Dutch scientists were able to use a new technique using “synchrotron radiation induced X-ray fluorescence spectroscopy” to look at the painting. It was suspected of being a repainting, but it was never quite clear exactly what was underneath.
Some masters have been known to repaint over canvases, especially van Gogh, who painted over roughly a third of his paintings. Likely this was an economical desision, as he was known to keep a budget and use cheap materials such as burlap as canvases. Another Old Master known to repaint was Leonardo, who studies have shown has worked and reworked certain areas and under-paintings in a frenzy until he was satisfied. He never really was satisfied, however, and left a great deal of work unfinished.
It’s always exciting to hear of new finds from X-rays on historic masterpiece paintings showing different things underneath. They can give historians a new perspective on the artist’s style and technique, and even their skill level, which can be tracked throughout the course of the painter’s career. The finds can also help to judge whether a work is authentic or not.
Among mistakes and different versions of the finished products, X-rays have revealed interesting surprises like the Dutch word for “sex” under a Rembrandt (subliminal advertising?). Techniques are used to see all the layers of the painting, which was helpful in figuring out that the Mona Lisa’s smile was over 30 layers of paint. It’s amazing how we can get a glimpse of the artist’s methods. We can practically reconstruct the paintings stroke by stroke.
I commented the other day that we can only imagine what paintings the artist could have created if his life had not ended prematurely. This discovery is like seeing something new from the artist, or finding a long lost canvas somewhere. Vincent could never have dreamed that this mysterious woman would see the light of day.
The most powerful and disturbing of all of James Ensor’s paintings is also one of the simplest. In “Scandalized Masks” we see part of an unknown and uncomfortable story. Its muted colors and neutral tones allow us to watch this scene as if it were reality. The setting differs from the other Ensors with their garish hues and vibrant poses. This painting is more like something from a dream you are likely to have. It wouldn’t be so much of a nightmare, were it not for those horrifying masks!
The signature Ensor masks come from working in his mother’s gift shop, which sold costumes and masquerade items for the annual carnival. Early in his career, James Ensor’s paintings were relatively tame, and much adored by the public. At a certain point, with “Scandalized Masks” perhaps marking the transition, his canvases began to lean toward the macabre. Eventually, his paintings were filled with grotesque characters in masks, with living skeletons in a twisted dance of death, and other allegories and parodies of humanity and society.
“Scandalized Masks” is different from the in-your-face political satire such as Christ’s Entry Into Brussels. This setting is plain and mysterious. The man sits at the table, drinking straight from the bottle nearby. The odd thing here is that he wears his mask while he sits, even with no company, even while he drinks. A minute later and– watch out! The woman swings open the door with club in hand, and enters the atmosphere in one terrifying step. She, too, is wearing a mask, and is dressed in costume, returning from destinations unknown.
I imagine this eerie couple wears the masks constantly, as if they are as much a part of them as their own faces. I almost expect one of them to turn a corner real fast and unmask, only to reveal a scarier mask underneath like in Alice, Sweet Alice. Like the scene in that movie, the emotion we’re dealing with in “Scandalized Masks” is pure terror.
Medieval European art is predominantly religious in nature. The landscape, still life, and other genres were subordinate to holy artwork made in the name of God. Most patrons willing and able to pay for an artist’s work were religious leaders from the Church. In order to educate the illiterate congregations of the scriptures and lives of the saints, stories had to be told in pictures on the walls of every chapel, church, and cathedral. In addition to the church commissioning paintings, art was sought by the wealthy and heads of state, who were, incidentally, also very religious. So it’s no surprise we see a dominance of religion in painting and sculpture.
The painting above, “Christ Giving His Blessing,” by Hans Memling was actually painted some years into the Renaissance. In a time when much of the artwork was returning to classical secular themes, Memling was continuing the traditions of Rogier van der Weyden and others in helping to keep Christian subject matter a popular one.
The Christ above is emphasized against a dark background and wearing dark clothes giving the portrait a straight to the point simplicity. The subject is confident, whose eyes are somewhat hypnotizing. The stare seems to pierce into your soul, ready to judge, ready to forgive, while the right hand blesses in the name of the father. The left hand rests on the bottom of the pictorial space, further giving Jesus a presence in reality. Memling’s rendition here is probably the finest of its kind.
OMM 0910
Are there any hardcore George Lucas fans out there? Recognize Christ’s face in any of Lucas’ films? I’ll give you a hint. The cult classic, starring a young Robert Duvall, is about a dystopian future not unlike the visions of Brave New World and 1984.
The movie is THX 1138, about a time when everybody is number, required to stay heavily medicated, and enforced by robot “officers.” If you feel you are not properly sedated and don’t speak up, you can be arrested for “criminal drug evasion.” The Memling Christ painting finds itself as the state-sanctioned deity OMM 0910. Robert Duvall is seen in the shot above and the clip below confessing in a “Unichapel.” Of course, the conversation is recorded and anything you say can get you terminated. Nonetheless, the God feigns interest and repeats a recording ending in suggestions to “buy more and be happy.”
Jesus’ staring eye in Memling’s painting is a perfect example of “Big Brother is always watching you.”
But without going on a rant about my political pessimism (or is it pessimistic politics?), watch the clip, followed by a trailer below it.
Death stares us in the face- as is evident in the above detail of an anonymous French painting. It is around every corner, with the threat to show up in an instant to breathe its icy breath down our necks and snatch our frail lives in its bony fingers. There is nothing we can do to stop it, and sooner or later it will consume each and every one of us.
This image is an example of vanitas, coming from the Latin for “emptiness,” and was a popular theme for painters particularly in Northern Europe during the 17th century. This was a time when the still life was becoming a favorite genre and was no longer considered a low art. Caravaggio said that a well portrayed bowl of fruit is as difficult to paint as a person. This was also a time when many painters preferred to depict scenes of pleasure and leisure. Hence the reaction of the rise of vanitas still lifes.
Vanitas paintings show how vain humanity is. A typical object is the skull, frequently juxtaposed against symbols of human pleasures such as musical instruments. The skull above is a particularly powerful statement as it looks in the mirror with black sockets, searching for meaning- searching for anything. It is a warning of the transience of all life.
It is surrounded by games such as chess and cards. Isn’t life a game or a gamble? We see objects of worldly pursuits such as the sword and money purse with coins, books to represent our thirst for knowledge, tulips to show some hint of our vitality. And yet, no viewer can escape the ominous skull. It is a motionless and unforgiving reminder that all human aspirations, hopes, and dreams eventually lead to the grave. We will all end up as dust. The orange will rot, the tulips will wilt.
I wanted to quick show you this picture that I really liked that I first saw on Lines and Colors, where Charley Parker gives us a good commentary. It is called Barge Haulers on the Volga or The Volga Boatmen and was painted in 1873 by Ilya Repin.
Born in the Ukraine, Repin became an important Russian Realist painter and sculptor with artworks usually making a statement on tensions in the social order. After his death a Repin cult was established which praised the artist for being a progressive. His works were painted in shocking detail which seem to put you in the scene much like a good descriptive book. His were the kinds of paintings which make you feel the heat or shade your eyes from the sun.
He was considered not just a Realist because he could portray a landscape as if you were seeing the actual situation with your own eyes, but because he depicted a real situation in terms of social reality- i.e. the differences in class amongst the subjects. Take Religious Procession in the Region of Kursk, for instance. Here we see all social classes- the raggedy poor and infirm juxtaposed against the finely dressed elite, with the State helping to separate the classes in the form of mounted policemen high and mighty on their “high horses.” The policeman on horseback about to strike the woman is as unnoticed in this painting as any police brutality is. All this while they all can agree on this form of religious worship.
The picture above (click for full resolution) can be seen as commentary on the plight of the peasant class. In amazing detail we see this group of laborers with a lack of supervision- the only hint is the sailors barely visible on the barge itself, who stand and wait.
Clear emphasis is placed on the young one in the center. Though his hands are “working man’s hands,” his spirit has not yet callused as the other men’s have. While the much older workers have a quietness and a just-get-it-done work ethic which comes from a lifetime of hard work, the young lad gazes off open-mouthed and wishes he could be absolutely anywhere else. Meanwhile the old man next to him has learned to mentally escape as he jots down some lines of poetry ignoring the sweltering heat and back-breaking work.
These men are most likely the sailors from the barge or for hire to help tug the ships, but it is not totally clear. They could be prisoners or on a work detail akin to community service. Regardless their situations would be similar. If they are prisoners, no guards’ portraits appear. Either way it reminds me of Van Gogh’s Prison Courtyard where the bourgeois guards in their top hats stand tall and look on at the inmates in their “sunshine call” exercise. The sight of the butterflies fluttering off is similar to the boy’s gaze in the Barge Haulers. It’s the idea of “so close but so far” in both situations.
If Repin had included the top hat elite with the women with their parasols present to enjoy the entertainment, this would indeed have been a more biting social statement. This happened at the battle of the First Bull Run a few years earlier in the states when the rich were delighted to view the battle and watch the lower class young men get slaughtered.
The elite, the wealthy statesmen, and the “haves and have mores” are indeed very much detached from the reality of the lower classes. “Send them all a $600 check and a sack of potatoes,” they say, and everything will be fine. Let them eat cakes.
None of that will ever change. But on the bright side we will always have things to make fun of in our paintings and editorials.
On the mystical island of the ABC series Lost, one of the characters raises the question that the survivors of the plane crash were indeed not survivors at all but have found themselves in hell. “A little hot for heaven, isn’t it?” asks one to the other after it was clear he didn’t get his meaning at first. If it were me, however, the idea of a tropical island for the rest of eternity doesn’t sound half bad.
The ability to ponder our existence is what sets us apart from our close primate relatives. Some of us may smell just as bad as chimps and are almost as hairy, but to question the meaning of life is truly a human capability. For as long as we have had this ability, we have gazed into the heavens and questioned our place in the cosmos, and wondered “Why are we here,” and “What in the hell happens to us when we die?”
Of course, regardless of our religious and spiritual beliefs, we can only make guesses in this lifetime. But leave it to our amazing imaginations and fears to conjure up all kinds of mythical fairy tales, as well as cautionary tales, of what could be waiting for us on the other side. And unless you can bring 2 million SPF sunblock, you’d better not mind roasting a bit if you haven’t lived your life minding your Christian P’s and Q’s. And roasting is only the start of it- then you have harpies, demons, and other hellions ready to have their torturous way with you. Sounds like fun.
With as entertaining an idea like this, it is no surprise that the subject of Hell has been a favorite one amongst artists throughout history, religious or secular.
Hieronymus Bosch and The Garden of Earthly Delights
One of the foremost painters of Hell who comes to mind is the Netherlandish painter Hieronymus Bosch. In his Garden of Earthly Delights, Bosch uses a triptych to portray the Creation on the left, the world partaking in Earthly sin in the center, and the ultimate demise of mankind on the right: Hell. His hell is a unique and gruesome one, filled with demons sodomizing victims with musical instruments, bird/human hybrids eating people only to defecate them into a pit, and hellions taking a break in a saloon made out of the gut of a giant tree man. This is not my type of tourist destination. Joseph Bonaparte in Goya’s Ghosts, while examining the panels, “This is not my type of garden, and certainly not my idea of ‘delights.’”
The River of Styx by Joachim Patinir
Part of the mythology of Hell is that the damned are ferried over the River Styx to Hell by a character called Charon. Charon is shown by Michelangelo in the Last Judgment as arriving at the mouth of hell and forcing his passengers off in a non-negotiable and frightening way. Here Joachim Patinir portrays Charon in a wide-angled landscape with both the land of the living and the land of the doomed visible. You can barely see an unfortunate soul cowering and looking up at his devilish escort.
Dante’s Inferno
Probably the most important and well known pieces of literature on Hell is the Divine Comedy by Italian poet Dante Alighieri. The Divine Comedy is broken down into three parts- Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise. Hell is separated into nine circles leading to the center of Earth where Satan is. Each circle is worse with sinners and their appropriate punishments. Above is Dante and His Poem, by Domenico di Michelino, which shows the poet in front of the gates to Hell.
Seen above is The Barque of Dante by Eugène Delacroix.
Above is quite possibly the darkest and most disturbing paintings by an artist who usually painted pretty girls and angels. It is Dante and Virgil in Hell, by William Adolphe Bougeureau and shows Dante with his guide, the Roman poet Virgil, as they witness some demon’s punishment of the damned.
The Last Judgment
What better place to warn the impending doom of sinners than on the back wall of the most important chapel in Rome? Some years after he painted the ceiling, Michelangelo painted the Last Judgment in the Sistene Chapel. This was the subject of heated debate amongst the cardinals who called the fresco obscene and immoral on account of the naked flesh. One of the painting’s fiercest critics begged the pope to let him tear it down, calling it worthy of bathhouses, and not the Sistene. In response Michelangelo painted the cardinal’s image as Minos, judge of the underworld. When the cardinal complained, the Pope replied that his jurisdiction did not reach Hell, therefore he could do nothing but allow the portrait to remain.
The Prince of Darkness
No article on Hell would be complete without showcasing the star of the show, the Fallen Angel, the Serpent, the Beast, Lucifer, Satan, Great Red Dragon, the Devil. He is a trickster, some say, convincing the world he does not exist. It lies, it coerces, it endlessly wars with Good, Heaven, and God. Artists have rendered the Beast in numerous ways, usually showing it with horns, scales, and red flesh. Above are the Great Red Dragon watercolor paintings by William Blake.
This is Saint Wolfgang and the Devil by Michael Pacher, showing not so much of a monstrous beast but as a slithering and frail Satan, who can be beaten by the strong will of a saint.
Here Michelangelo portrays the devil as a serpent in the garden of Eden on the ceiling of the Sistene Chapel.
Hell on Earth
No one says hell is confined to the afterlife, as Bruegel points out in Triumph of Death.
All of these show a wide variety of the Devil and the fiery afterlife which can only come from our imaginations creating myths and legends as any other tale has been developed. Of course, it being almost May, the summer heat here is humid Pennsylvania would lead to believe that the idea of hell is not that far fetched.
Vince' s ear: your art blog about art, art history, painting, sculpture, drawing, illustration, animation, artists, galleries, museums, and plenty more. Dan Kretschmer is the author of Vince' s ear, and also the author of a book called "Masters of the Renaissance," which takes a look at 18 of the most important artists of the Renaissance in Europe.
The purpose of this art blog is to raise general awareness of art and to share knowledge and interests. The author's goal is to spark interest in as many people as possible, and to inspire them to pursue art to enrich their lives.
