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April 23: Pythagoras, Rubens, and me
Vitality is the first principle of the work of Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, so it seems natural that if he were in a teasing mood he would go after the pallid “Sacred Grove” (1884), an ideal landscape by Pierre Puvis de Chavannes, the noted symbolist. (If a landscape can be considered ideal with so many majorly…
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April 11: Nothing new here
“The quality of mercy is not strained; It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven Upon the place beneath. It is twice blest; It blesseth her that gives and her that takes . . . ” * Or not, as the case may be. Reader Paul Hoffman points out that Hazel Bryan, the white…
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April 4: a favorite: Il Rosso
Giovanni Battista di Jacopo (1494 –1540— known as Rosso Fiorentino–the “red Florentine”) painted this Deposition in 1521, when he was twenty-seven. Goodness! We should all do so well. It’s engaging in several ways. The shapes are crisp and simple. The composition is a lively interplay of diagonals against the severely rectilinear cross and ladders, all…