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Portrait Medallion of Gennadios

September 3, 2021

by admin Art Byzantium Early Christian Art Powerpoints Uncategorized

**Portrait Medallion of Gennadios,** 250–300 AD, made in Alexandria, Egypt. Gold Glass, D. 4.2 cm, the MET, NY, USA
https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/466645?searchField=All&sortBy=Relevance&high=on&ao=on&showOnly=openAccess&ft=*&offset=480&rpp=80&pos=510

Will we meet again? He is waiting in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York… musically accomplished, all ‘chiseled’ up… and I have to face COVID traveling restrictions, a long trip, and a rather bad knee… He is Gennadios, a young man from Alexandria whose portrait is simply fabulous… one of my favourite works of Art in the world! Our story goes back to 1977 when, as a University student I visited, for the first time ever New York City, I marveled at the ‘Age of Spirituality’ Exhibition, and I set my amazed eyes on his Portrait Medallion…the rest is part of my life story. Ever since, and every time I visit New York I simply have to see him… These days, the Portrait Medallion of Gennadios, a fine example of Alexandrian ‘Good Life,’ welcomes MetropolitanMuseum visitors to ‘The Good Life: Collecting Late Antique Art at The Met’ Exhibition (May 24, 2021–May 7, 2023)… It’s an invitation I somehow have to meet… https://www.metmuseum.org/exhibitions/listings/2021/good-life-collecting-late-antique-art

Introducing Gennadios, the Metropolitan Museum site reads: This exquisitely vivid image of an educated youth of the powerful port city of Alexandria probably celebrates his success in a musical contest. The medallion worked in gold on dark blue glass, was made to be mounted and worn as a pendant. There is so much more to Gennadios’s story… https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/466645?searchField=All&sortBy=Relevance&high=on&ao=on&showOnly=openAccess&ft=*&offset=480&rpp=80&pos=510

The Metropolitan MuseumPortrait Medallion, thanks to the inscription, and its grammatical variants, ΓΕΝΝΑΔΙ ΧΡΩΜΑΤΙ ΠΑΜΜΟΥCΙ, introduces us to an upper-class young man from Alexandria named Gennadios, a young man most accomplished in the musical art. This portrait served as an exceptional piece of Jewelry, a disk to be framed as a pendant… proudly worn by Gennadios… in the aftermath of a victorious musical competition, one may wonder. Age of Spirituality – Weitzmann, Kurt, ed. (1979), page 287 https://www.metmuseum.org/art/metpublications/Age_of_Spirituality_Late_Antique_and_Early_Christian_Art_Third_to_Seventh_Century

**Portrait Medallion of Gennadios (detail),** 250–300 AD, made in Alexandria, Egypt. Gold Glass, D. 4.2 cm, the MET, NY, USA
https://twitter.com/rubsmontoya/status/1224314731885998080

Worked in gold on sapphire-blue glass… to be specific, the drawing of Gennadios’s face was scratched with a fine point on gold leaf applied to the surface of a thin layer of glass… the Metropolitan Museum Medallion is a masterpiece of portraiture on a small scale. There is a group of similar jewel-like glass medallion portraits exhibited in museums around the world, but none is so exquisitely engraved. Scholars believe a lot of these Medallions come from Alexandria where a tradition in gold glass portraiture, like that of Gennadios’s, was active and popular. The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin, Autumn 1977, page 46 file:///C:/Users/aspil/Downloads/The_Late_Roman_World_The_Metropolitan_Museum_of_Art_Bulletin_v_35_no_2_Fall_1977.pdf

The Gold Glass technique was particularly popular throughout the Roman Empire during the 4^th century AD. Images in this technique were etched in gold leaf and then, the leaf was fused between two layers of glass… like a sandwich! Items of Gold Glass were usually created into circular bottoms of luxurious drinking vessels since the Hellenistic period. A popular practice for the Romans of the later period was to cut out the Gold Glass decorated roundel of a cup and cement it to the wall of a catacomb Grave to serve as a grave marker for the small recesses where bodies were buried. In Rome, where this practice was particularly popular, archaeologists discovered over 500 pieces of Gold Glass used in this way. Decoration themes for Gold Glass items vary from pagan mythology and portraits to purely Jewish or Christian imagery. Chapter 13 Making Late Antique Gold Glass by Daniel Thomas Howells, pp.112-120 https://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20190801105206/https://www.britishmuseum.org/research/publications/research_publications_series.aspx#AllResearchPublications

Here is a wonderful Video on the Gold Glass making technique by the Corning Museum of Glass https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ALNMn6DGQJg

I greatly enjoyed reading: The Ficoroni Medallion and Some Other Gilded Glasses in the Metropolitan Museum of Art by Joseph Breck, The Art Bulletin, Vol. 9, No. 4 (Jun. 1927), pp. 352-356 (5 pages) https://www.jstor.org/stable/3046553?read-now=1&refreqid=excelsior%3Ae1a77ea3960c80fa8029287c7789e3cd&seq=5#page_scan_tab_contents and Portraits, Pontiffs and the Christianization of Fourth-Century Rome by Lucy Grig, Papers of the British School at Rome, Vol. 72 (2004), pp. 203-230 (28 pages) https://www.jstor.org/stable/40311081?seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents

For a PowerPoint on Gold Glass Portrait Medallions, please… Check HERE!

The Labours of the Months: September

August 31, 2021

by admin Art Powerpoints Renaissance

**By an unknown Venetian artist…**
**The Labours of the Months: September,** about 1580, oil on canvas, 13.6 x 10.6 cm, National Gallery, London
https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/italian-venetian-the-labours-of-the-months-january#painting-group-info

Another smell of autumn / sweet sweet smell / of Concord grapes / warming ripening/ ready to burst with flavor / strong urgent smell / lured me closer/ spreading outward /from the makeshift arbor / a plume twenty feet wide / enticing, coaxing / me to linger /luxuriate in its aroma smile at the memory / of other pickings / long ago / Sweet fruit / high above me, / out of reach up in the canopy / formed by wire and bush… lovely and short, by Raymond Foss, a lawyer from New Hampshire who writes poetry in his spare time… a wonderful introduction for my new BLOG POST on The Labours of the Months: September. https://cindydyer.wordpress.com/2007/08/01/harvesting-grapes-812007/

A man in the National Gallery painting sits beneath a tree inform us the Renaissance experts in the London Museum, through which a vine has been trained. A large bunch of red grapes hangs from a leafy stem. He uses both hands to squeeze the juice from another bunch into a wooden vat on the ground at his feet. The grape juice will be turned into wine and possibly stored in the barrel we see being made in an earlier scene. This is a fitting scene for any painting depicting the Labours of the Months and particularly the scene representing September. https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/italian-venetian-the-labours-of-the-months-september

**By an unknown Venetian artist…**
**The Labours of the Months: September (detail),** about 1580, oil on canvas, 13.6 x 10.6 cm, National Gallery, London
https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/italian-venetian-the-labours-of-the-months-january#painting-group-info

Europeans of the Renaissance period created, in various Art media, Calendars of specific religious events celebrated every month of the year. These Calendars were often embellished with scenes of seasonal, agricultural activities and popular scenes of the life of the elite courtiers as well. These iconographic scenes are traditionally called the ‘Labours of the Months’. They can be seen in manuscripts like Psalters, Breviaries, and Books of Hours, sculptural decorations of Cathedrals, and like in the case we explore this year, a set of decorated doors for a Venetian Palazzo. Their artistic rendering and content varies depending on the date, location, and purpose of each artwork

A typical Calendar depicting agricultural Activities present, often but not always, scenes of Feasting for January, Sitting by the fire for February, Pruning trees or digging for March, Planting and enjoying the country or picking flowers for April, Hawking and courtly love for May, Hay harvest for June, Wheat harvest for July, Wheat threshing for August, Grape Harvest for September, Ploughing or sowing for October, Gathering acorns for pigs for November and Killing pigs or baking for December.

The small painting in London presenting September as a man squeezing the juice from a bunch of grapes is part of a special set of Renaissance painted Doors. The unknown artist who created this painting used vivid, bright, luxurious colours, like reds, blues, white and green. He combined simplicity in execution and extravagance in visual effect, creating a charming decorative effect.

For a PowerPoint on the painting under focus at the National Gallery in London, please… Check HERE!

End of the Season by William Merritt Chase

August 27, 2021

by admin 19th century Art American Art Art Student Activities Worksheets

**William Merritt Chase,** American painter, 1849-1916
**End of the Season,** c. 1885, Pastel on Paper, 35 x 45 cm, Mount Holyoke College Art Museum, South Hadley https://www.wga.hu/support/viewer_m/z.html

The familiar rhythm of the cricket’s chirps / Create the soundtrack for each day, / Echoing Summer’s end / And that Autumn’s on her way. / The stifling heat of the summer sun / Is now tempered by the clouds. / Those fluffy, cotton August clouds, / That soft breezes push about. / Shadows falling everywhere / As the sun plays peek-a-boo. / Losing her strength with each new day, / A sure sign that summer is through… / But there’s also a haunting sadness sometimes. / That I feel when those dark shadows fall. / And that my greatest adventures in life / Are just memories, now aroused by those sweet cricket calls. The end of summer, carefree days, is fast approaching… the beginning of the new School year is right in the corner… and I think of Patricia A. Fleming’s Poem for Kids The Summer’s End and the End of the Season by William Merritt Chase. I feel melancholic… just like the lady in the painting! https://www.momjunction.com/articles/poems-about-summer-for-kids_00720909/

I like how perceptively William Merritt Chase’s ideas on how Idle Hours should be depicted is described in the article William Merritt Chase and modern leisure, and presented in ANTIQUES, back on August 29, 2016. Furthermore, an introduction to his life is more than essential to understand his style… That aura of pleasure suffuses Chase’s work and belies the effort he put into creating innovative paintings of modern life. He worked hard to make his art look easy. Born to a middle-class family in Indiana, Chase cobbled together the support of local businessmen to finance his art education in Munich. From 1872 to 1878 he studied at the Royal Academy there, mastering the dark, gestural brushwork of the Munich school and studying the work of the old masters. He sent his paintings back to New York for display, earning admiration even before he returned to the United States in 1878. He immediately took rooms in New York’s most prestigious studio space, the Tenth Street Studio Building, where he established himself at the center of the city’s art world and created an eclectic, European-inspired studio space that announced his reputation as a well-traveled bohemian and an imaginative, creative artist. Soon thereafter, he began to explore modern subjects of relaxation in an innovative style. https://www.themagazineantiques.com/article/idle-hours-william-merritt-chase-and-modern-leisure/

Spending my summers in a Greek sea-front small village, being a teacher who treasures my last days of summer bliss, I feel very close to the End of the Season, by William Merritt Chase in Mount Holyoke College Art Museum. It is one of his early paintings depicting a scene at the beach at the end of the summer season. A woman in fashionable summer greyish attire sits comfortably, leaning over the empty table, at the right side of the composition. She is looking at the distant fishermen whose boat rests on the strand… and the fresh, choppy sea… There are more tables in the composition, the chairs tipped up against them… empty now of holiday visitors. No wonder the title is End of the Season. http://museums.fivecolleges.edu/detail.php?t=objects&type=ext&id_number=MH%201976.9

William Merritt Chase probably painted the End of the Season during a summer visit to Holland as a tribute, according to a critic, to a “Continental watering-place, with chairs and tables upset by the seashore, and a single lonely figure.” This is one of the artist’s earlier pastel paintings, a medium much admired for its dry powdery finish and brilliant colors. Pastel painting was a declaration of modernism in the period, admired by the avant-garde for the way in which its sketch-like character called attention to the artist’s hand. Chase, the cofounder in 1883 of the Society of Painters in Pastel, was a master of it. https://www.themagazineantiques.com/article/idle-hours-william-merritt-chase-and-modern-leisure/

For a Student Activity, please… Check Here!

Maiolica Credenza

August 24, 2021

by admin Art Mythology Powerpoints Renaissance

**Nicola da Urbino,** active by 1520–died ?1537/38
**Armorial Plate (tondino): The story of King Midas (This plate is part of the Isabella D’Este Credenza),** ca. 1520–25, Maiolica (tin-glazed earthenware), Diam. 27.5 cm, the MET, NY, USA
https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/459198?searchField=All&sortBy=Relevance&ft=Nicola+da+Urbino&offset=0&rpp=20&pos=1

Maiolica, the refined, white-glazed pottery of the Italian Renaissance, we are informed by the Metropolitan Museum of Art experts, was adapted to all objects that were traditionally ceramic, such as dishes, bowls, serving vessels, and jugs of all shapes and sizes. It was also used as a medium for sculpture and sculptural reliefs, as well as floor and ceiling tiles. The latter were rectangular, laid side by side across specially adapted joists. Maiolica Credenza is a new BLOG POST about a very special set of plates that connects important people of the Renaissance… Isabella d’Este, Marchioness of Mantua, Eleonora Gonzaga, Isabella’s daughter and Duchess of Urbino, and the artist Nicola da Urbino, a great innovator of the humble art of pottery-making. https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/maio/hd_maio.htm

**Replicas of the twenty-three surviving dishes that make up Isabella D’Este’s Maiolica Credenza by Mantuan artist Ester Mantovani**
https://milano.corriere.it/notizie/cronaca/15_novembre_01/i-piatti-raccontano-rinascimento-mostra-gioielli-isabella-d-este-71ab65c2-80b2-11e5-aac9-59b4cd97071f.shtml

I have had made a credenza (service, of a kind that could be displayed on a buffet) of earthenware vessels and I am sending it… since the maestri of this country of ours (the Duchy of Urbino) have some reputation for good work. And if it pleases Your Excellency I shall be happy and you might make use of it at Porto (Porto Mantovano, Isabella’s country villa) since it is a villa thing (Cosa da Ville)… elegantly wrote Eleonora Gonzaga, Duchess of Urbino to her mother Isabella d’Este, Marchioness of Mantua describing a magnificent gift of maiolica plates by Nicola da Urbino, the Raphael of Maiolica, the most important creator of the maiolica narrative (istoriato) painting. https://books.google.gr/books?id=2i_ADAAAQBAJ&pg=PA172&lpg=PA172&dq=Letter+of+Eleonora+Gonzaga+e+Isabella+d%27Este+on+a+credenza&source=bl&ots=hRCkXjAsnh&sig=ACfU3U08yg2DA0SUvn2Nvmyd4awltOnmMg&hl=el&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiR48z7xM3xAhU3gf0HHWvcBU8Q6AEwEnoECBYQAw#v=onepage&q=Letter%20of%20Eleonora%20Gonzaga%20e%20Isabella%20d’Este%20on%20a%20credenza&f=false

**Gian Cristoforo Romano,** ca. 1465-1512
**Portrait Medal of Isabella d’Este,** 1495-98, Gold with diamonds and enamel, D. 7 cm,
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, Austria

Today I would like to act more like a Curator rather than a Teacher and present you with a site I am fascinated about. It is titled… IDEA Isabella D’Este Archive and I like the way it was founded, how it operates, and the wealth of information on the current topic. I wish I was in Mantua this summer and over gelato, listen to the stories the scholars of IDEA tell… how maiolica… was a popular type of earthenware in sixteenth-century Europe. How… this type of ceramic was fired at a low temperature and covered in a thin glaze that created a white ground for colorful narratives and personal emblems…How the IDEA scholars reunite in their site the surviving twenty-three individual maiolica dishes from Isabella’s credenza for study. Isabella d’Este’s maiolica dishes can no longer be viewed as a single service, and are now divided among museums and private collectors across three continents. By viewing all twenty-three dishes together, researchers have a better sense of service as a whole, in which the individual dishes, painted narratives of Ovid and Virgil, read like pages in a book. https://ideaart.web.unc.edu/idea-ceramics/

For the time being, I put together a PowerPoint of all surviving maiolica plates of the famous Isabella D’Este Credenza… HERE!

Two interesting IDEA Videos on the Isabella D’Este Maiolica Credenza by Nicola da Urbino can be seen… https://ideaart.web.unc.edu/the-illustrated-credenza/

I somehow feel this is the beginning of a fascinating journey…

Off the harbor by Ioannis Altamouras

August 20, 2021

by admin 19th century Art Greek Art Student Activities Worksheets

**Ioannis Altamouras**, 1852-1878
**Off the harbor,** 1874, oil on paper mounted on cardboard, 23.3 x 30.5 cm, Bank of Greece
https://museum.bankofgreece.gr/topoianaforas/modern_greek_art/501_Altamouras_en.html

Emily, / A ship is floating in the harbour now, / A wind is hovering o’er the mountain’s brow; / There is a path on the sea’s azure floor, / No keel has ever plough’d that path before; / The halcyons brood around the foamless isles; The treacherous Ocean has forsworn its wiles; / The merry mariners are bold and free: / Say, my heart’s sister, wilt thou sail with me? / Our bark is as an albatross, whose nest / Is a far Eden of the purple East; / And we between her wings will sit, while Night, / And Day, and Storm, and Calm, pursue their flight, / Our ministers, along the boundless Sea, / Treading each other’s heels, unheededly… wrote for Epipsychidion, Percy Bysshe Shelley back in 1821. Off the harbor by Ioannis Altamouras is a small painting that reminds me of Shelley’s description… A ship is floating in the harbour now… https://www.poetrysoup.com/famous/poem/epipsychidion_(excerpt)_5166

**Ioannis Altamouras**, 1852-1878
**Self Portrait,** 19^th century, oil on canvas, unidentified location
https://el.wikipedia.org/wiki/%CE%99%CF%89%CE%AC%CE%BD%CE%BD%CE%B7%CF%82_%CE%91%CE%BB%CF%84%CE%B1%CE%BC%CE%BF%CF%8D%CF%81%CE%B1%CF%82#/media/%CE%91%CF%81%CF%87%CE%B5%CE%AF%CE%BF:Ioannis_Altamouras_-_self_portrait.jpg

Ioannis Altmouras, an accomplished representative of the Seascape painting genre, is one of my favourite modern Greek painters. Born in Italy, his parents were both artists, Ioannis Altamouras was of Greek/Italian descent. He was the son of Saverio Altamura, an Italian Painter, and Professor at the Naples School of Fine Arts, and Eleni Boukouri from the island of Spetses, who, daringly dressed as a young man, studied Art in Italy, at times, under the tutelage of her future husband Saverio. Between 1857 and 1859 his parents separated, and Eleni took her two older children and returned to Greece, where she raised them teaching Art to prominent members of the Athenian society, including the Greek Queen, Olga. Eleni was Altamouras’s first Art Teacher, who, in 1871-72, coached by Nikephoros Lytras, studied at the School of Fine Arts in Athens. Between 1873 and 1876 Ioannis Altamouras was in Denmark, on a scholarship from King George I, where he continued his studies at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts at Copenhagen, close to the great painter of the time, Carl Frederick Sorensen. During the summer of 1876, Altamouras’s revolutionary spirit took him to the fishing village of Skagen, where 40 Danish painters had created the well-known “Skagen Colony”. It was at Skagen where the ideas of Impressionism in his art, took roots, as he spent time outdoors observing, the Skagen open horizon and the interplay of different colors in natural light. Sick with tuberculosis, Altamouras returns to Greece and tragically young, he died, six years later, in 1878. https://www.nationalgallery.gr/en/painting-permanent-exhibition/painter/altamouras-ioannis.html

Off the harbor by Ioannis Altamouras is a small painting in the Art Collection of the Bank of Greece, rarely seen by the public but nicely documented as it was exhibited in the 2018 Exhibition at the Benaki Museum, titled Frames of Reference from the Bank of Greece Collection. I like how it is described… A dull, rainy, and humid seascape is revealed in front of us. Small boats are scattered here and there, schematically defined, somewhat vaguely against the background. A little to the fore, we see a few boats painted in dark colours and contrasting the overall blue-white landscape. Their cross-like shape makes them a point of reference for the entire composition. Sea and sky appear united, in the absence of a clear separating line for the horizon. https://museum.bankofgreece.gr/topoianaforas/modern_greek_art/501_Altamouras_en.html

For a PowerPoint Student Activity on Altamouras’s Seascapes, please… Check HERE!

The Byzantine Icon of Panagia Nicopoiou

August 14, 2021

by admin Art Byzantium Student Activities Worksheets

**Icon of Panagia Nikopoiou**, Komnenian period (1081-1185), Wood, 58×55 cm, St. Mark’s Basilica, Venice, Italy https://www.pallasweb.com/deesis/nicopeia-icon-san-marco-loot-from-constantinople-1204-crusade

I like how Chrysa A. Maltezou starts her article “Βενετία κι Βυζαντινή Παράδοση – Η Εικόνα της Παναγίας Νικοποιού” (Venice and the Byzantine Legacy – The Byzantine Icon of Panagia Nikopoiou). Please allow me to paraphrase… It was May of 1797, the army of Napoleon Bonaparte was at Venice’s doorstep, the end of the Venetian Republic was fast approaching and the citizens of La Serenissima were desperate… Their hopes rested on divine intervention and like the Byzantines, a centuries-old memory, the Comnenian Icon of Panagia Nikopoiou, Venice’s Palladium, was placed on public veneration at San Marco’s Basilica…It is only interesting to contemplate how the Venetians, hoping for salvation and victory remembered their ties to the long-lost Empire of Byzantium and its Legacy! https://ejournals.epublishing.ekt.gr/index.php/bz/article/view/3570/3430

Tradition links the Icon of Panagia Nikopoiou to Constantinople and the fateful days of the Fourth Crusade, when according to Giovanni Battista Ramusio (1485-1557) the Icon of Nikopoiou (Bringer of Victory) abandoned by Alexios Mourtzouflos on the battlefield, was captured by the Crusaders… The barons and the Venetians battered the walls and towers day and night without with various machines, and redoubled the War, conducting many great skirmishes from one area to another; it was in one of these that they valorously acquired the banner of the Tyrant but with much greater joy a panel on which was painted the image of Our Lady, which the Greek Emperors had continuously carried in their exploits since all their hopes for the health and salvation of the Empire rested in it. The Venetians held this image dear above all other riches and jewels that they took, and today it is venerated with great reverence and devotion here in the church of San Marco, and it is one that is carried in procession during times of War and plaque, and to pray for rain and good weather… https://www.pallasweb.com/deesis/nicopeia-icon-san-marco-loot-from-constantinople-1204-crusade

**Icon of Panagia Nikopoiou** (detail), Komnenian period (1081-1185), Wood, 58×55 cm, St. Mark’s Basilica, Venice, Italy https://www.pallasweb.com/deesis/nicopeia-icon-san-marco-loot-from-constantinople-1204-crusade

It has been debated, since 1821, whether the Icon of Panagia Nikopoiou, as Nikitas Choniatis mentions in his Χρονική Διήγησις with one brief sentence …ητηςθεομήτοροςεικών, ήνοιβασιλείςΡωμαίωνποιούνταισυστράτηγον, τοῖς ἐναντίοις ἑάλωκεν… is the same Icon Emperor Alexios Mourtzouflos abandoned on the Walls of Constantinople. Giovanni Battista Ramusio thinks so, and writes about it, establishing a tradition that still keeps strong… http://users.uoa.gr/~nektar/history/tributes/byzantine_historians/nicetas_choniates_historia.htm and https://ejournals.epublishing.ekt.gr/index.php/bz/article/view/3570/3430

The Icon itself, presenting Mary holding the Child before Her, is a wonderful work of Art… a fine example of Byzantine iconography. Stark and imposing, it has a compelling effect on me every time I visit San Marco to pay my respects. Conserved in the left transept of the great Basilica, in a chapel of the same name, the Icon of the Virgin was once covered with precious jewels, diamonds, and pearls, now exhibited in the Treasury, following theft and later recovery.

**Icon of Panagia Nikopoiou (detail of the embellished frame)**, Komnenian period (1081-1185), Wood, 58×55 cm, St. Mark’s Basilica, Venice, Italy https://www.pallasweb.com/deesis/nicopeia-icon-san-marco-loot-from-constantinople-1204-crusade

Today, the Icon is enhanced by its Byzantine frame of gilded silver with gold enamels, pearls, and gemstones, of great beauty. The best-preserved part of the Icon is the face of the Virgin, oval in shape, with thick, arched eyebrows, a definite trait of beauty, large eyes, looking slightly to the left, a long nose, and small lips. It is not firmly established when and by whom this amazing Icon was painted. I can only say that it displays extreme delicacy and refinement in the painter’s technique. https://www.pallasweb.com/deesis/nicopeia-icon-san-marco-loot-from-constantinople-1204-crusade

For a Student Activity, please… Check HERE!

**Icon of Panagia Nikopoiou in its Chapel**, Komnenian period (1081-1185), Wood, 58×55 cm, St. Mark’s Basilica, Venice, Italy https://mundusest.wordpress.com/2019/06/19/%CE%B7-%CF%80%CE%B1%CE%BD%CE%B1%CE%B3%CE%AF%CE%B1-%CE%BD%CE%B9%CE%BA%CE%BF%CF%80%CE%BF%CE%B9%CF%8C%CF%82-%CF%84%CE%BF%CF%85-%CE%B1%CE%B3%CE%AF%CE%BF%CF%85-%CE%BC%CE%AC%CF%81%CE%BA%CE%BF%CF%85-%CE%BA/

**Plan of St. Mark’s Basilica in Venice, Italy – marked in red (No. 13) is the location of the Icon of Panagia Nikopoiou** https://www.pallasweb.com/deesis/nicopeia-icon-san-marco-loot-from-constantinople-1204-crusade

The Formidable Queen Tiye

August 9, 2021

by admin Ancient Egypt Art Student Activities Worksheets

**Queen Tiye (probably),** ca. 1353–1336 BC, New Kingdom, Amarna Period, Dynasty 18, Quartzite, 13.3×12.5×12.4 cm, the MET, NY, USA
https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/544693?searchField=All&sortBy=Relevance&high=on&ao=on&showOnly=openAccess&ft=*&offset=0&rpp=80&pos=61

“The long-lost mummy of The Formidable Queen Tiye has been found. Wife of Amenhotep III, mother of Akhenaten, and grandmother of Tutankhamun (?), she has been lurking undetected, virtually under the noses of the Egyptologists, for more than 75 years until Professors Edward P Wente of the Oriental Institute and James R. Harris of the University of Michigan made their spectacular discovery.

The road to the discovery really began in 1898 when the French archaeologist V. Loret came upon three nameless bodies in a side chamber of Amenhotep II’s tomb in the Valley of the Kings. One of these was of a middle-aged woman. Despite the passage of thousands of years her well-preserved face still wore a striking, haughty look, and her head was covered with long, curly, brown hair, that lent a certain sensuality to her face. But there was no clue to the identity of the woman.

Tutankhamun’s tomb was discovered in 1922. In that tomb, in one of a series of miniature coffins, was a lock of Queen Tiye’s hair, deposited as an affectionate memento to accompany the young king on his journey into the beyond. The connection between these two discoveries was overlooked until very recently when Professors Wente and Harris began to prepare a book on the royal mummies of ancient Egypt. While grappling with the problem of the unidentified woman, the idea occurred to them that she might be Queen Tiye. How could they be sure? The lock of hair buried with Tut came to mind, and scientific tests comparing the lock and the mummy’s hair proved beyond doubt that the two belonged to the same person. Queen Tiye was found – and through a discovery of a refreshing degree of certainty. file:///C:/Users/aspil/OneDrive/Blog/Egypt/Queen%20Tiye%20Found.pdf

I love rereading the October 1976 article on the discovery of Tiye’s mummy in the Oriental Institute’s News & Notes (No. 30). Even more so today, as I prepare the presentation of one of my favourite sculptural portraits of Queen Tiye exhibited in New York, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. https://oi.uchicago.edu/sites/oi.uchicago.edu/files/uploads/shared/docs/nn30.pdf

**Colossal statue of Amenhotep III and Tiye with three of their daughters from Medinet Habu in Western Thebes,** 1360 BC, limestone, 7 x 4,4 m, Egyptian Museum in Cairo, Egypt
https://joyofmuseums.com/museums/africa-museums/egypt-museums/cairo-museums/egyptian-museum/statue-of-amenhotep-iii-and-tiye/

When I think of Queen Tiye, I think of Egypt’s golden age, a successful Pharaoh of the 18^th Dynasty, Amenhotep III (1391–1353 or 1388–1351 BC), a sizeable and prosperous empire, great wealth from Nubia and the Levant, and a new era of monument building and artistic expression. I also think of a formidable lady whose influence on the Pharaoh grew stronger over the years. It is interesting how in official statues of the royal couple, she and Amenhotep are the same height, symbolizing a relationship of equals.https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/history-magazine/article/king-tut-grandparents-tiye-amenhotep-egypt-royal-couple

The quartzite head of Queen Tiye in the Metropolitan Museum, in New York, dates from the time of Akhenaten’s reign and it seems to be a statue commemorating the Pharaoh’s (Akhenaten’s) royal family in the new “Amarna” style. The sensitive modeling of the face is typical of the workshop of the sculptor Thutmose at Tell el-Amarna and the existence of gypsum plaster casts excavated in Thutmose’s studio suggests that this portrait may have been part of a group statue depicting Akhenaten with his parents, Tiye, and Amenhotep III. The New York portrait shows an imperious, authoritative, and clever woman realistically rendered yet respectful to her maturity. Tiye’s life is an intriguing chapter in Egyptian history, and the MET’s portrait, scared and broken, intrigues me as well… https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/544693?searchField=All&sortBy=Relevance&high=on&ao=on&showOnly=openAccess&ft=*&offset=0&rpp=80&pos=61

For a Student Activity on The Formidable Queen Tiye Post, please… Click HERE!

Homer’s Summer Night

August 2, 2021

by admin 19th century Art American Art Art Student Activities

**Winslow Homer,** American Artist, 1836-1910
**Summer Night,** 1890, Oil on canvas, 76.7×102 cm, Musée d’Orsay, Paris, France
https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2017/03/winslow-homers-summer-night-examined-at-harvard-art-museums/

Harvard Art Museums’ Elizabeth and John Moors Cabot Director Martha Tedeschi, discussing in an interview Homer’s Summer Night said: One of the things that I think is so successful in this picture, and that I love about Homer in general, is that it evokes things that he could not have possibly painted into the picture, like sound. There are two young women dancing on a porch. That immediately implies that there’s probably music playing. And in fact, an early title of this picture was “Buffalo Gals” after the popular song. So with that title in mind, and looking at the women dancing, you could almost start humming that song to yourself and the lines “Buffalo gals won’t you come out tonight, and we’ll dance by the light of the moon.” There is also the silhouetted group of people to the right of the picture who appear mesmerized by the sound of the crashing waves and the light flickering across the surface of the water. Homer conjures the sound of relentless splashing and churning. You can feel the spray, you can feel that cool breeze coming across that moonlight sea… https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2017/03/winslow-homers-summer-night-examined-at-harvard-art-museums/m

This nocturnal scene by the sea transcends observed reality through a keen sense of poetry and mystery… this is how the Musée d’Orsay experts describe Homer’s Summer Night. The light and shade effects blur shapes, the experts continue while the ghostly silhouettes of two women dance on the shore. Although it may well have been influenced by Courbet’s Waves, the lyricism tinged with mysticism expressed by Homer helped develop a feeling for nature that is peculiarly American. https://www.musee-orsay.fr/en/collections/works-in-focus/search/commentaire/commentaire_id/summer-night-2970.html

**Winslow Homer,** American Artist, 1836-1910
**Summer Night (detail),** 1890, Oil on canvas, 76.7×102 cm, Musée d’Orsay, Paris, France https://twitter.com/linshangon/status/1016569875190374400/photo/1

Winslow Homer is one of the finest 19^th century American Artists. His career started as a graphic reporter during the American Civil War with paintings like Home, Sweet Home, and Sharpshooter on Picket Duty, of 1863, or Prisoners from the Front, of 1866 defining his early career. The late 1860s and the 1870s were, however, the artist’s finest years of artistic experimentation and prolific and varied output. Living and working in New York, but traveling to Paris, in late 1867, for the exhibition of two of his Civil War Paintings at the Exposition Universelle, Homer came face to face with the French avant-garde, and although there is little likelihood of influence, the artist shared their subject interests, their fascination with serial imagery, and their desire to incorporate into their works outdoor light, flat and simple forms (reinforced by their appreciation of Japanese design principles), and free brushwork. https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/homr/hd_homr.htm

For a Student Activity, please… Check HERE!

The Labours of the Months: August

July 31, 2021

by admin Powerpoints Renaissance

**By an unknown Venetian artist…**
**The Labours of the Months: August,** about 1580, oil on canvas, 13.6 x 10.6 cm, National Gallery, London
https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/italian-venetian-the-labours-of-the-months-january#painting-group-info

The quiet August noon has come; / A slumberous silence fills the sky; / The winds are still, the trees are dumb, / In glassy sleep the waters lie / And mark yon soft white clouds that rest / Above our vale, a moveless throng; / The cattle on the mountain’s breast / Enjoy the grateful shadow long / Oh, how unlike those merry hours, / In early June, when Earth laughs out, / When the fresh winds make love to flowers, / And woodlands sing and waters shout / When in the grass sweet voices talk, / And strains of tiny music swell / From every moss-cup of the rock, / From every nameless blossom’s bell. / But now a joy too deep for sound, / A peace no other season knows, / Hushes the heavens and wraps the ground, / The blessing of supreme repose. / Away! I will not be, to-day, / The only slave of toil and care, / Away from desk and dust! away! / I’ll be as idle as the air… wrote William Cullen Bryant and I thought of the tired man in the National Gallery panel of The Labours of the Months: August. https://www.lieder.net/lieder/get_text.html?TextId=24951

The Cycle of the Twelve Months is a favourite theme in the arts of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. Often linked to the signs of the Zodiac, the Cycle of the Months is often perceived as a link between the work of man, the seasons of the year, and God’s ordering of the Universe. As a theme, it recurred in the sculptural decoration of cathedrals and churches across Europe, in illuminated manuscripts like the popular Books of Hours, palace frescoes, and rarely, panel painting.

**By an unknown Venetian artist…**
**The Labours of the Months: August (detail),** about 1580, oil on canvas, 13.6 x 10.6 cm, National Gallery, London
https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/italian-venetian-the-labours-of-the-months-january#painting-group-info

The small panel paintings in the National Gallery are rare and special. They document life in the Veneto area, with the peasant activities and duties to their land. They also depict a vivid landscape, romanticized even then, from bare and covered with snow, to rich and fertile, to autumnal, covered with fallen leaves. The twelve small panels in London were part of a set of painted Venetian Doors. They combine simplicity in execution and extravagance in visual effect! The paintings, very small in size, about 13.6 x 10.6 cm, were achieved in vivid, bright, luxurious colours, like “ultramarine blue for the sky, strong vermilion and red lake for the clothing, with rich greens and yellows in the landscape. The restricted and repeated use of colour gives the group of little pictures a charming, decorative simplicity. All but one of the scenes show a man working outdoors on what appears to be the estate of a large villa, seen in several of the paintings, at the foot of the distant blue mountains.” https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/italian-venetian-the-labours-of-the-months-january#painting-group-info

The National Gallery experts believe that the labourer in this scene, which may represent August, is so exhausted that he has fallen asleep. He sits beside a tree, his head resting on his crossed arms, his elbows on a stone bench, his eyes shut. Perhaps he has been picking grapes or fruit. https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/italian-venetian-the-labours-of-the-months-august

For a PowerPoint on The Labours of the Months at the National Gallery in London, please… Check HERE!

Teaching with the Kritios Boy

July 26, 2021

by admin Ancient Greek Art Art Education Powerpoints Student Activities Worksheets

**Kritios Boy,** 480 BC, Marble from the island of Paros, Height: 116.7 m, Acropolis Museum, Athens, Greece https://www.theacropolismuseum.gr/en/youth-statue-kritios-boy

Teaching with the Kritios Boy is a set of student activities and worksheets inspired by an awe-inspiring work of art created by a remarkable artist, a daring creator, and an amazing innovator! According to the Acropolis Museum experts, The statue’s torso was found in 1865-1866 southeast of the Parthenon, while the head in 1888 near the south walls of the Acropolis. It is one of the most important works of ancient Greek art and the most characteristic of the so-called “Severe Style”. Archaeologists have dubbed it the “Kritios Boy”, after the name of the sculptor believed to have created it. The “Kritios Boy” is depicted standing in the nude. He supports his weight on his left leg, while the right one remains loose, bent at the knee, in the characteristic posture of the “Severe Style”. His expression is solemn and his eyes, which were originally crafted from another material, have not survived. His hair follows the shape of his scalp and is tightly gathered around a ring with a few scattered strands falling on his temples and the nape of his neck. Traces of red dye are preserved on his hair. The attribution of this statue to the sculptor Kritios is based on the similarities it presents with the statue of Harmodios from the bronze group of the Tyrannicides, a work of Kritios in collaboration with Nesiotes. This group, known to us today through marble copies of the Roman period, was erected in the Ancient Agora of Athens. Who does this statue portrays, however, is not known. Some scholars believe he represents a young athlete, the winner of an event in the celebration of the Greater Panathenaia. Others claim he depicts a hero, most likely Theseus. Moreover, they link the dedication of the statue on the Acropolis with the activities of 476/5 BC, when Kimon transferred Theseus bones from the island of Skyros to Athens. https://www.theacropolismuseum.gr/en/youth-statue-kritios-boy

**Kritios Boy – face detail,** 480 BC, Marble from the island of Paros, Height: 116.7 m, Acropolis Museum, Athens, Greece http://ancientrome.ru/art/artworken/img.htm?id=5960

Teaching with the Kritios Boy References, PowerPoint, and Activities…

For a List of ONLINE References on the Kritios Boy TeacherCurator put together, please… Click HERE!

For my PowerPoint on the Kritios Boy, please… Click HERE!

I always feel confident discussing an artist with my students when I prepare my Steps to Success Lesson Plan Outline…

For Student Activities (3 Activities), please… Click HERE!

**Marble statue of a kouros (youth)**, ca. 590–580 BC, Marble from the island of Naxos, (194.6 × 480 BC51.6 × 63.2 cm, the MET, NY, USA https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/253370
**Aristodikos Kouros**, 510-500 BC, Marble from the island of Paros, Height: 1.9 m, National Archaeological Museum, Athens, Greece http://nam.culture.gr/portal/page/portal/deam/virtual_exhibitions/EAMS/EAMG3938
**Kritios Boy,** 480 BC, Marble from the island of Paros, Height: 116.7 m, Acropolis Museum, Athens, Greece https://www.theacropolismuseum.gr/en/youth-statue-kritios-boy

I hope, Teaching with the Kritios Boy, will prove easy and helpful. Do you think it justifies my BLOG name Teacher Curator?