Michelangelo sought to impress with a full-out display of his virtuosity in terms of poses, splashes of color, and creamy drapery. Among his personages on the Sistine Chapel ceiling, there is a group of sibyls, who were prophets from Greek and Roman mythology. He had to compete with the frescoes on the sides of the Chapel that were painted by other illustrious artists of the time, so he resorted to the most bold techniques he could think of. One of his main concerns was to have the finest quality pigment available, and, at the time, pigment production was a complex art done mostly by apothecaries and friars. The blues, whites, and ochres came from clays found in Italy, while the ultramarine was made from lapis lazuli from Afganistan, and the tone depended on how finely or coarsely each one was ground.

The pagan origins of the sibyls were legitimized by their prophesies of Christian events, but there was also a general fascination with the Greek and Roman past and prophesies. Virgil’s Eclogues , for example, include a prophesy were the Cumaean Sibyl hints at a return to a golden age, which gave fuel to contemporary “prophets” to laud the pope’s cultural endeavors. Michelangelo, on the other hand, seems to depict them only in terms of their femininity (or lack thereof, in one case) as though they were models for his decadent drapery. He even pokes fun at the contemporary “prophets” by giving his Cumaean Sibyl particularly rough musculature, while one of the children makes a “fig” gesture in her direction. No one would have seen this slight signal of disrespect from down below, and Michelangelo used that to his advantage to include many such tongue-in-cheek references throughout his work in the Chapel.

More on Michelangelo and the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel

Seascapes were never treated as a separate subject for artists until 17th century Dutch painters developed landscape as a genre that would contend with the portraiture and allegory of the past. Although these seascapes had strong ties to the economic and social climate of the time, they gradually began to explore purely compositional aspects rather than concrete associations. This is especially apparent in the tranquil scenes, such as Hendrick Dubbels’ A Dutch Yacht and Other Vessels, where the distant horizon, delicate clouds, and transparent sails capture an indescribable yet thoroughly immediate atmosphere. Rough, choppy waves perhaps had the familiar appeal of exhibiting an artist’s skill and ability to convey drama, but these still waters moved towards a more subtle notion of light, color, and composition.

Though Courbet always thought of himself as a rebel in terms of painting, his Calm Sea picks up on the Dutch idea of focusing on pure composition over content. Using the relatively new method of plein air painting, he applied his signature textured brushstroke to form clouds that take up the majority of the canvas.

The specialization that came as a result of the flourishing Dutch economy was present, to some extent, in the way art was conceived and distributed. Now, there were many more reasonably wealthy patrons, and the art market sought to satisfy all of those different tastes. The most successful painters were specialists in still-life, landscape, and other areas, and often belonged to that particular workshop. The Dutch were at the forefront of exploration and colonization, so their ships were a source of national pride and prosperity. A rich merchant might have commissioned a painting that portrayed his ship or harbor, and these places were often recognizable.

Turner and calm waters seem contradictory terms, but his Fighting Temeraire exhibits the quiet intensity associated with the calm after a storm. The water may be still, but the wild orange and red brushstrokes have come to symbolize the passing of the British Naval era. While the Dutch started to give landscape a new meaning, Turner takes it to its most emotionally charged level, and gives his brushstrokes full power to evoke the indescribable.

Escher certainly doesn’t make it easy for us, especially when it comes to the tricky subject of reflections and mirrors. Reflections within paintings, literally “paintings” within paintings, add another layer of meaning that is inherently ambiguous and paradoxical. Critics engage in endless debates that try to make sense of both the supposed three-dimensional reality and the two-dimensional nature of the canvas. No one loves a paradox more than Escher, and his Hand with Reflecting Sphere explores how a ball can encompass more information than a flat plane. In true Escher style, he presents the endless, mind-numbing implications of dimensions and reflections in a concise and convincing way.

Before the Mirror is uncharacteristic of Morisot both in style and subject matter. She almost never painted nudes, probably because it was relatively unheard of for women to become painters at the time, much less painters of nudes. Her brushwork is also much more loose and abstract than in her other work.

Vermeer combines light, texture, pattern, and perspective in The Music Lesson in an understated way that exemplifies his skill and meticulous care at involving all of these elements seamlessly. This might be the only mirror in Vermeer’s body of work, and it’s not surprising that he chooses to depict it as though it was just another painting with characteristic subtlety. Some critics say that there is an easel reflected in the mirror (though I can’t seem to find it), but, if that’s the case, it would certainly open up the scene to include another dimension rather than an isolated view.

It’s interesting to see how a slightly altered reflection can spark interpretations of modern alienation and social identity in an attempt to find symbolic reasons for the deliberate distortion of Manet’s A Bar at the Folies-Bergère. Manet casually presents a slightly “off” version of reality that was unprecedented for the Impressionists, but no one has agreed to a distinct explanation. Perhaps it is enough to accept the play of reflections as simply a step away from the direct representation of reality into a more ambiguous one.

Bernini’s Ecstasy of Saint Teresa is not simply a marble sculpture in its own right, but rather one part of a grandiose display of Baroque drama and Bernini’s unsurpassed innovation and skill. The onlookers are members of the Cornaro family, who commissioned the chapel, and by placing them in a theater box, Bernini sets up a relationship between the main sculpture and the viewer as that of a stage and audience. He fused architecture and sculpture in an unprecedented manner that exemplified the Baroque ideals of drama and ornamentation but took them to an even more intense level. The sculpture is unmistakably sexual in nature, which is such a bold move on his part that it fits with the already over-the-top setting.

Box Seats at the Theater by Félix Vallotton takes the opposite viewpoint, and the audience members are now the focus of the painting, gazing down as we observe unnoticed. The angle is strange in the sense that it’s hard to imagine an actual seat where the viewer is positioned, which might have been intentional on the part of the artist. Vallotton’s extensive work with woodcuts seems to have influenced his clean lines and minimal, yet effective, composition. The one shadow coming from the lady’s glove subtly anchors the scene to reality, but such a stylized depiction of a common subject leaves an eerie and unresolved feeling.

Lautrec’s La Loge is characteristic of the artist’s fascination with the Parisian crowd that frequented brothels, nightclubs, and theaters.

The performance was only a small part of the theater experience, and most people went in order to see and be seen. The balconies and box seats, as many of these works depict, were the ideal place to observe who was sitting with whom, who was not attending, and who was wearing what. Mary Cassatt’s At the Opera portrays this dynamic in a way that highlights the compositional nuances that appealed to artists at the time. Looking takes on a more complex meaning, as we are not sure whether the woman is looking at the stage or at someone in the audience, and the man in the distance staring in our direction remains a mystery. Our own viewpoint with respect to the woman is also questionable, as Cassatt further exploits the ambiguity of observation at the theater.

Each brushstroke of Vermeer’s Milkmaid echoes the rustic atmosphere, as the texture of the paint is more pronounced than in his portraits of upper class women. The yellow pigment of the milkmaid’s dress, mixed with touches of brown, is also used in the fur-trimmed jackets of other paintings. Her face, in turn, has tiny dabs of yellow. The brushstrokes are carefully placed, giving a sculptural quality to the forms while delicately integrating the play of light on every surface.

The recurrence of the yellow coat probably means that he owned it as a prop, as it was listed in the inventory of possessions after his death. The woman in The Love Letter also has a golden-yellow gown underneath, and is really the focal point of painting with its complex composition and perspective. The maid-mistress-letter dynamic was a popular topic of the time, but Vermeer’s love of light, color, and subtlety shines through more than anything, giving his work a timeless quality.

In Woman with a Lute, the yellow jacket seems to merge with the light coming from the window, as it casts a subtle glow over the girl’s face, who is most likely his wife or one of his eldest daughters. The yellow and blue color scheme appears in his work repeatedly, and he sometimes used a costly glaze made of lapis lazuli, probably given to him by one of his wealthier patrons.

The yellow jacket always appears with a different interplay of shadow and texture, and A Lady Writing exemplifies the luscious quality of the fabric as it is suffused with a warm glow. Such coats were worn by wealthier women during the cold Dutch winters, and Vermeer paints this particular one with care that strives towards the transcendent combination of light, color, and paint.

The incredibly detailed and skillful carving of Chalchiuhtlicue, an goddess associated with maize, reflects the importance of such a figure and its significance in Aztec culture. (framing her head are two cotton tassels)

This full-length figure, either Quetzalcoatl or a Hauxtec ruler, reflects the fusion of the Aztec and Huaxtec cultures in the patterns and shapes of the clothing.

Originally the headdress of the figure would have had five vertical flower pistils as well as two tassels and rings at each ear. The figure is Macuilxochitl, (whose name means five flower) the god of music and dance.

Van Eyck’s Arnolfini Portrait often inspires observations of the realistic technique and meticulous detail as well as a vague notion that the objects and setting have some sort of symbolic meaning. There is no doubt that van Eyck used an exceptionally complex method of painting, as each layer of translucent glaze explored oil as a new and revolutionary medium. However, in his book Jan van Eyck: The Play of Realism, Craig Harbison suggests that the immediate association with realism as the aim of the artist is a modern notion based on the anticipation of the movement of Realism in the nineteenth century. But even van Eyck’s reality is “selective,” as Harbison calls it, and is not simply a direct translation of contemporary life and belief.

Courbet was known to promote Realism as the pursuit of a “truthful” representation of everyday life, and he seemed to thrive from the criticism of his contemporaries, saying that “it is impossible to tell you all the insults my painting of this year has won me, but I don’t care, for when I am no longer controversial I will no longer be important.”

If the amount of realism is measured by the time devoted to one painting, John Everett Millais’ Ophelia would be worth admiring. It took him five months of working six days a week for up to eleven hours each day to finish this work, as he sought to depict the detailed descriptions of Shakespeare’s character. For much more about it, please visit: Ten-things-you-never-knew-about-Ophelia

Perhaps your preferred brand of realism is the inherent abstraction in watery impressions of light reflecting on water.

Monet painted about 250 portraits of his garden in Giverny, seeking to capture the infinite and intangible variations of atmosphere.

Lempicka’s Young Girl with Gloves evokes that magnetic impression of pop culture that, over time, disintegrates into a geometric arrangement of form and shade. Nonetheless, every smooth fold of her green dress seems somehow relevant to the present, though the abstraction will always keep us guessing.

* the title comes from Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra, Act I

“…and what shall I love if not the enigma.

— Giorgio de Chirico

De Chirico’s paintings may seem incomprehensible, as we try to anchor a thread of reason and recognizability in his compositions. However, it is precisely the combination of precision and ambiguity that hints at reality without directly making the connection. Architecture of nearly empty cities, mannequins, and shadows trigger an inkling that they are part of a narrative, but even a series of similar paintings does not suggest a coherent set of symbolic associations.

Chirico was undoubtedly influenced by the avant-garde movements of the time, and the closest interpretations of his work probably come from references to contemporary plays, books, and philosophies. At the same time, his paintings portray a level of the subconscious that can not be explained in a logical manner, as it “will enter the regions of childhood vision and dream.”

A set of thirty-four thousand pound gold doors might seem extravagant, but in the early Renaissance, they signified everything that made up Florentine commercial and creative pride. Ghiberti’s Gates of Paradise are evidence of the flourishing and competitive art market at the time, as the commercial atmosphere in Florence allowed for an ever-growing number of commissions. In his book “The Renaissance,” Paul Johnson writes that “the standards of craftsmanship demanded and provided in late medieval, early Renaissance times were of a quality inconceivable to the modern age…” In fact, Ghiberti and his workshop worked on these doors for twenty-seven years, and he, like many other prominent artists, were given all the support of the government and wealthy patrons. The panels, depicting Biblical scenes, show the stylistic innovations up to that point in time, including schiacciato relief, linear perspective, and an overall realism that was to develop later in the Renaissance.

The gold folding screens of the Kano school also emerged when the art market started catering to a wider audience that wanted more decorative art, in part, to reflect their bourgeois lifestyle. Just as the previous Renaissance work, the Kano style coexisted, to some degree, with religious institutions, though it adapted to new tastes. The Old Plum, for example, was originally located in a Zen temple and depicted Chinese themes on the other side. These golden folding screens sometimes would have occupied entire walls, offering an impressive sight to anyone who entered. Wealthy patrons exploited the awe-inspiring quality of gold as a manifestation of their power and influence, whether as a set of doors or a paper-thin screen.

Among the Biblical scenes and religious iconography of the Middle Ages, there are some rather fantastical creatures on the pages of illuminated manuscripts and in church windows. The juxtaposition of saints with winged serpents seems contradictory, and art historians have yet to come up with a concrete explanation for their popularity and inclusion. These seemingly secular tidbits have no literal connection to the scenes they were meant to offset, making their existence all the more puzzling.

Some think they were light-hearted diversions from the imaginations of bored monks or window makers, but this seems to be an oversimplification that doesn’t account for their widespread presence. Most people were illiterate and associated religion with visuals more than text, so every detail of medieval art seems highly relevant. On the other hand, taking a more analytical approach and searching for hidden symbolism and social commentary is fruitless, because there is no evidence for how the medieval audience had reacted to hybrid creatures and monsters. Instead, the art historian Andrew Otwell suggests that “they are not meaningless, or merely entertaining, but by themselves they do not contain complete meaning.”

More about stained glass creatures: http://www.vidimus.org/panelOfMonths.html

More about medieval marginalia: http://www.heyotwell.com/work/arthistory/marginalia.html
(stained glass from Christ Church Cathedral in Oxford)