Posts in category: Powerpoints

What is so rare as a day in June? / Then, if ever, come perfect days; / Then Heaven tries the earth if it be in tune, / And over it softly her warm ear lays: / Whether we look, or whether we listen, / We hear life murmur, or see it glisten; / Every clod feels a stir of might, / An instinct within it that reaches and towers, / And, groping blindly above it for light, / Climbs to a soul in grass and flowers; / The flush of life may well be seen / Thrilling back over hills and valleys; / The cowslip startles in meadows green. / The buttercup catches the sun in its chalice, / And there’s never a leaf nor a blade too mean / To be some happy creature’s palace; / The little bird sits at his door in the sun, / Atilt like a blossom among the leaves, / And lets his illumined being o’errun / With the deluge of summer it receives; / His mate feels the eggs beneath her wings, / And the heart in her dumb breast flutters and sings; / He sings to the wide world, and she to her nest,— / In the nice ear of Nature which song is the best? Writes back in the 19^th century James Russell Lowell… and further back, in the 15^th century, an anonymous painter creates The Labours of the Months: June! https://discoverpoetry.com/poems/june-poems/

The Labours of the Months is a theme that frequently occurs during the Late Medieval-Renaissance Period Art. It attracts our attention in sculptural pieces adorning Churches and Cathedrals of the time, striking Vitreaux Windows, amazingly colourful manuscripts, and paintings, monumental, like the eleven surviving panels in Torre Aquila I presented in 2020 (check: https://www.teachercurator.com/?s=torre%20aquila&cat=plus-5-results), or small, like the paintings in the National Gallery, in London, we explore in 2021… month by month… https://archive.org/details/labormonth00webs/page/n9/mode/2up Webster, James Carson – 1905-1989, The labors of the months in antique and medieval art to the end of the twelfth century, 1938, Evanston, Ill., Northwestern University,     and      https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/italian-venetian-the-labours-of-the-months-january

For The Labours of the Months: June, we have an outdoor scene. “A barefoot young man sits holding a sheaf of corn he has cut in one hand and his scythe in the other. The sleeves of his blue jacket are rolled up and a straw hat shades his face, suggesting that this little painting represents one of the summer months.” The National Gallery of Art experts “think it may be June when grain crops are harvested in northern Italy, where this picture was painted.” https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/italian-venetian-the-labours-of-the-months-june

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

Pink, small, and punctual, / Aromatic, low, / Covert in April, / Candid in May,     /     Dear to the moss, / Known by the knoll, / Next to the robin / In every human soul.     /     Bold little beauty, / Bedecked with thee, / Nature forswears / Antiquity. Writes Emily Dickinson, but for The Labours of the Months: May small painting in the National Gallery in London, the feeling is different.  https://www.poemhunter.com/poem/may-flower/

Starting the 1^st of January 2021 and for every month so far, I “travel” to the National Gallery in London and present one, out of twelve, small picture, “painted on canvas and then… glued to a wooden panel. It is possible that (these twelve pictures) were made to decorate the recessed panels of a pair of doors. The paintings seem to have been planned in pairs with the figures facing each other and are currently displayed in two frames in groups of six. They show the ‘labours of the months’ – the rural activities that take place each month throughout the year.” This set of painted Doors 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 panel that represents the month of May, according to the National Gallery experts, “is the most puzzling picture of the series.” Observing the picture’s composition the viewer will see a seated young man, he seems alert and ready to stand up, holding “two rods, with one crossing the other at the top.” He is simply dressed, barefoot but wearing a broad-rimed straw hat, looking, as if he is expecting a nod, coming from someone straight in front of him, to continue the task he is planning to finish. “ It looks as though (the young man) might be making a supporting frame for vegetables or fruit,” the experts suggest, as there seems to be “a tradition in Italy for one of the spring months to be represented by a youth holding crossed branches, often in bud…” ttps://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/italian-venetian-the-labours-of-the-months-may

Whatever our Venetian young man is about to do… Whether or not this is the correct attribution… Enjoy an unpretentious Renaissance painting and Best Wishes for the Month of May!!!

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

Domenicos Theotokopoulos is in my heart. I find him an attractive personality in every aspect… talented, educated, ambitious, curious, adventurous, persistent…  “Art is everywhere you look for it, hail the twinkling stars for they are God’s careless splatters…” he wrote and I think of his Angelic Musicians, shining like flickering stars, in the National Gallery in Athens. http://elgreco.net/el-greco-quotes.jsp and https://www.nationalgallery.gr/en/painting-permanent-exhibition/painting/domenicos-theotokopoulos-el-greco/the-concert-of-the-angels.html

Domenicos Theotokopoulos was a Cretan Greek, born in Handaka-Candia, present-day Herakleion, part, at the time, of the thriving Republic of Venice. Archival research in Venice showed that between 1526-28 his family relocated from Chania to Handaka where in 1541 Domenicos was born. His orthodox-Greek family belonged to the upper-middle class, as his father, Giorgos Theotokopoulos, worked for the government of the Venetian Republic, most probably as a merchant and a tax collector. Very little is known of  Domenicos’s mother and early childhood. He was undoubtedly talented, and his father, realizing it, placed him as an apprentice in a painter’s workshop to learn this profitable trade. The name of his teacher is unknown, but judging from Domenicos’s earliest paintings, he was a great master of the Post-Byzantine Cretan School. Crete at the time was the center of a thriving artistic community and understanding the artist’s early influences and style is important in decoding his later work! https://www.historical-museum.gr/webapps/elgreco/xronologio.php?lang=en

By 1567/8 Theotokopoulos travelled to Venice, by 1570, he was in Rome, by 1576 he moved to Spain and in 1577 the artist settled in Toledo, where he found his spiritual home and remained for the rest of his life. He died on the 7th of April 1614, admired for his unique fluid style, temperamental character and humanist education. One of his friends and admirers, Hortensio Félix Paravicino y Arteaga (1580-1633) the Spanish poet, preacher and a member of the Trinitarian Order, wrote for the artist “O Greek divine! We wonder not that in thy works / The imagery surpasses actual being.” Paravicino also wrote, foreseeing Theotokopoulos’s legacy “Future generations will admire his strange genius, but for centuries he will not be imitated.” http://www.nccsc.net/essays/spanish-style  

I would like the reader of this BLOG POST, titled Angelic Musicians, to focus on two paintings. One of them is in Athens and is titled The Concert of the Angels, the other is in Madrid, and is an Annunciation scene. Now imagine them together and you will see one of the last, if not the last painting, the artist created but never finished. The original painting, an Annunciation scene, was commissioned for the Chapel of the Hospital of St. John the Baptist outside the walls of Toledo. Today, separated, the product of 19h century vandalism, may look slightly odd, but still, enthral the viewer with their unique “beauty.”

The Concert of the Angels in Athens is for me a wonderful depiction of an imaginary, celestial concert, full of energy and vibrato. Domenicos Theotokopoulos, the so-called El Greco, loved music and treated it with respect. The painting in Athens shows a musical ensemble with seven “ecstatic” angels, reading music, singing or playing the spinet, a harp, a flute and a viola da gamba. I wonder what kind of music Domenico enjoyed most, and which musician of his time he favoured… https://www.nationalgallery.gr/en/painting-permanent-exhibition/painting/domenicos-theotokopoulos-el-greco/the-concert-of-the-angels.html

The artist uses swift brushwork and swaying movement in postures and robes to create excitement in his composition. Like tongues of fire, his swirling figures look more like spiritual beings than real bodies…

The colour palette that the artist uses is another distinctive characteristic of his mannerism. The colours are iridescent but bold. He uses oranges in red and green and yellow/gold in blue. Tints and shades are juxtaposed. Values of high or low intensity are treasured. Theotokopoulos’s final Annunciation was never finished but whether you see its upper part in Athens or the actual Annunciation part in Madrid, its expressive power is unquestionable.

For a PowerPoint on Theotokopoulos’s paintings of the Annunciation, please … Click. HERE!

The National Gallery – Alexandros Soutsos Museum – Evripidis Koutlidis Foundation in Athens has uploaded a wonderful (in Greek) Video to watch… https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=316373302403183  

Whan that Aprill with his shoures soote:   When April with its sweet-smelling showers  /  The droghte of March hath perced to the roote,  Has pierced the drought of March to the root,   /  And bathed every veyne in swich licour  And bathed every vein (of the plants) in such liquid  /  Of which vertu engendred is the flour;   By the power of which the flower is created;  /  Whan Zephirus eek with his sweete breeth   When the West Wind also with its sweet breath,  /  Inspired hath in every holt and heeth   In every holt and heath, has breathed life into  /  The tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne   The tender crops, and the young sun  /  Hath in the Ram his half cours yronne,   Has run its half course in Aries,  /  And smale foweles maken melodye,  And small fowls make melody,  /  That slepen al the nyght with open ye   Those that sleep all the night with open eyes  /  (So priketh hem Nature in hir corages),   (So Nature incites them in their hearts)… Geoffrey Chaucer first line for The Canterbury Tales refers to April…   for The Labours of the Months: April cer/gp-aloud.htm

In London, at the National Gallery there are 12 small pictures, “painted on canvas and then each glued to a wooden panel. It is possible that they were made to decorate the recessed panels of a pair of doors. The paintings seem to have been planned in pairs with the figures facing each other and are currently displayed in two frames in groups of six. They show the ‘labours of the months’ – the rural activities that take place each month throughout the year.” This set of painted Doors combines simplicity in execution and extravagance in visual effect! https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/italian-venetian-the-labours-of-the-months-january#painting-group-info

The painting that may represent “sweet-smelling” April, shows  a cooper making a wooden barrel. “He raises his mallet ready to strike the tool in his other hand. The work must be physically hard as he has tied a band of white cloth around his forehead to keep the sweat out of his eyes. The barrel will be used to store wine made from the grapes we see being pressed in September.”     https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/italian-venetian-the-labours-of-the-months-april

Coopers were important craftsmen during the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. They created wooden barrels to store wine, spirits and salted meats, buckets to draw and carry water, wooden bowls and plates for daily use, pails, churns and tubs for various agricultural or home-industry needs. Coopers, like the one depicted in the small London painting, were respected and valued Renaissance professionals.

Depicting the Labours of the Months was a popular artistic theme that was frequently used in the decoration of Cathedrals and Churches, Castles and  Palaces, Psalters, Breviaries and Books of Hours across Europe during the Medieval and Early Renaissance period. Each month, depicting popular activities of peasants or/and the gentry throughout the year were sometimes paired with the Signs of the Zodiac circle. They would be either simple and small in size or large and elaborate, crafted in stone, wood, stained glass, painted in murals or often enough, painted in parchment. Many great Monuments and Libraries in Europe display fine examples of such artefacts for art lovers to enjoy.  http://www.livingfield.co.uk/ages/labours-of-the-months/

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