Month: June 2015

There is so much first rate art available these days, in museums, books, and on the web, that when you encounter a more typical mix of fine and less than fine, as in “Botticelli to Braque: Masterpieces From the National Galleries of Scotland,” recently at the de Young in San Francisco, the experience can be…

The recent show at the de Young in San Francisco, “Botticelli to Braque: Masterpieces From the National Galleries of Scotland,” was a decidedly mixed bag. Here we admire three particularly fine pieces; next week we’ll consider some of the duds and their deadening effect. Particularly fine: “The Reverend Robert Walker Skating on Duddingston Loch” (c.1795)…

Conventions in portraiture are much concerned with identifying social category. These Elizabethans can’t have been interested in making themselves the subject of some artist’s sensitive exploration of personality; they wanted their images to evoke grandeur. The more an earl’s portrait resembled a duke’s, the better he’d be pleased.   The same objective, group identification, applies…