The Palermo Nativity
This is Caravaggio’s Nativity with St Francis and St Lawrence (1609, some online sources date it earlier but I don’t agree with them),...
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thesufferingartist
Dec 19, 20202 min read
Murder and St Nicholas
Our last two seasonal art posts have been about the Nativity, now we’re turning to St Nicholas. This is stained glass from the south...
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thesufferingartist
Dec 12, 20202 min read
Rembrandt and Joseph's Dream
This week I tried to choose a nativity-related piece that isn’t well known. It’s a Rembrandt called Joseph’s Dream or sometimes Dream of...
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thesufferingartist
Dec 3, 20202 min read
The Cestello Annunciation
The Annunciation has to be one of the most frequently recurring subjects in European art, which made it horribly difficult to settle on...
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thesufferingartist
Nov 24, 20202 min read
The Alexander Mosaic
This will be our first post about a mosaic. I had a mild falling out with mosaics in the second grade when I made a 12x12 of an erupting...
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thesufferingartist
Nov 24, 20202 min read
Three Davids
We haven’t compared pieces lately so this week we’ll contrast three sculptures that draw on the Biblical story of David’s fight with the...
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thesufferingartist
Nov 24, 20202 min read
Violent Triumph or Just Triumph?
If you find the gore of this piece shocking, so did the patron who commissioned it. After one look he almost didn’t make his promised...
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thesufferingartist
Nov 24, 20202 min read
Add Melodrama to your Halloween Season
This is Henry Fuseli’s 1781 piece called The Nightmare. Obviously I posted this because it’s a great seasonal fit with Halloween but it’s...
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thesufferingartist
Nov 24, 20202 min read
Modern Surrealism in the 16th Century
I’ll wager that the name Hieronymus Bosch is not on the tip of anybody’s tongue. But, then again, maybe it is. He may have painted in the...
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thesufferingartist
Nov 24, 20202 min read
Florence, Cellini, and Medici
Perseus with the Head of Medusa is a bronze sculpture completed in 1554 for the Palazzo della Signoria in Florence, Italy. The sculptor...
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thesufferingartist
Sep 29, 20202 min read
Lament for a Stolen Rembrandt
This is Storm on the Sea of Galilee (1633), the only seascape Rembrandt ever painted. The story he drew on appears in the New Testament...
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thesufferingartist
Sep 29, 20202 min read
The Rock-Hewn Churches of Ethiopia
We’ve never done a post on architecture. But as far as I’m concerned, this is sculpture rather than architecture. That’s because The...
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thesufferingartist
Sep 10, 20202 min read
About that Wheat field
Wheatfield with Crows was once thought to be Vincent van Gogh’s very last work. I’ve even heard it described as his ‘suicide note.’...
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thesufferingartist
Sep 4, 20202 min read
Bruegel the Peasant Painter
Pieter Bruegel has long been labeled ‘the peasant painter,’ and not because of his personal socioeconomic status. It’s because peasant...
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thesufferingartist
Sep 4, 20203 min read
The Ghent Altarpiece
Jan (& Hubert) van Eyck’s Ghent Altarpiece (1432) is also known as The Adoration of the Mystic Lamb. It’s a cinematic series of hinged...
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thesufferingartist
Aug 21, 20202 min read
Bernini's First
I hope Michelangelo won’t be jealous at this but Gian Lorenzo Bernini deserves to be considered one of history’s best sculptors. This is...
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thesufferingartist
Aug 21, 20202 min read
Lady Godiva and Her Naked Ride
I’ve wanted to use the word ribald in one of these art posts for a while now so here’s a moderately ribald painting about the English...
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thesufferingartist
Aug 7, 20202 min read
Degas, The Interior
I don’t know how you feel about impressionism but Edgar Degas was one of its leading lights and he didn’t care for the term very much....
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thesufferingartist
Aug 7, 20202 min read
Bacchus and Ariadne
If you remember mythology from school, you may recall the name Bacchus, god of wine. He’s one of two central characters in this painting...
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thesufferingartist
Jul 25, 20202 min read
Caravaggio's Conversion of St Paul
There aren’t too many artists more interesting than Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio. He was named for Michael the Archangel but his...
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