Arts of the Month

  • Lady with an Ermine is a painting by Leonardo da Vinci, from around 1489–1490. The subject of the portrait is identified as Cecilia Gallerani, and was probably painted at a time when she was the mistress of Ludovico Sforza, Duke of Milan, and Leonardo was in the service of the Duke.

    The painting is one of only four female portraits painted by Leonardo, the others being the Mona Lisa, the portrait of Ginevra de' Benci and La belle ferronniere. It is currently displayed in the Wawel Castle, Kraków, Poland. When exhibited in The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, it was described as "signal[ling] a breakthrough in the art of psychological portraiture.

    (source: wikipedia)

  • The Lonely Cedar features a whole lot of stuff I normally can’t abide in painting: a strong scent of mystical symbolism; dry, tempera like application of oil paint; and things that look to deliberately like other things. For instance, in the painting (6 ½ -feet square), a major part of the tree, on the right, looks kike it has a huge four-legged, giraffe-necked woodpecker clinging to it. The base of the tree resembles some kind of animal foot. A mountain in the distance to the left is topped by what seems to be a nipple.

    (source: wikipedia)

  • Young Ladies on the Banks of the Seine (Summer), depicting two prostitutes under a tree, as well as the first of many hunting scenes Courbet was to paint during the remainder of his life.

    (source: wikipedia)

 

Csontváry weeks

  • The Lonely Cedar features a whole lot of stuff I normally can’t abide in painting: a strong scent of mystical symbolism; dry, tempera like application of oil paint; and things that look to deliberately like other things. For instance, in the painting (6 ½ -feet square), a major part of the tree, on the right, looks kike it has a huge four-legged, giraffe-necked woodpecker clinging to it. The base of the tree resembles some kind of animal foot. A mountain in the distance to the left is topped by what seems to be a nipple.

    (source: wikipedia)

  • The picture one of the most puzzling Csontváry company's image. However, the painting animation, dynamic composition, the landscape and figural elements versatility of color because of all the ways Csontváry reproduced works of popular and much in between places.

    (source: wikipedia)

  • In the summer of 1907 Csontváry two cedar picture painted in Lebanon. The lone cedar dominates the landscape, the pilgrimage cedar is also higher than the mountains.

    (source: wikipedia)

  • Csontváry spent spring 1903 in Herzegovina and Bosnia. Spring in Mostar and Roman Bridge in Mostar were inspired by Mostar itself. The view of a bridge over the Neretva, a river of emerald colour water, recalls a dream. Its desolation and silence without a person around symbolise the loneliness and solitude of the artist who attempts to make preterhuman efforts. It is all vain to stick to topographic fidelity or to amalgamate two different approaches in order to create a characteristic picture: the world of fantasy defeats objectivity and the peculiar atmosphere of contours lures one to dream. The bridge, which took 9 years to build from 1556, was exploded in a flash at the end of the 20th century. Csontváry Kosztka was wrong to term it Roman as it was built by Hairudin, a famous Turkish architect. The waterfall, another typical motif of the picture, had a more important role in the view of Jajce. In fact, Csontváry often painted waterfalls. The immense power of water, this element, falling from above, served as a symbol of nature.

    (source: wikipedia)

 

Impressionist painting

Monet: Regatta at Sainte-Adresse

This painting and "The Beach at Sainte-Adresse" (Art Institute of Chicago) were probably conceived as a pair. They are identical in size, and the point of view differs by only a few yards. Sainte-Adresse, the well-to-do suburb of Le Havre, was the home of Monet's father. Destitute, Monet spent the summer of 1867 with his father and his aunt Sophie Lecadre at the cost of abandoning his companion, Camille Doncieux, and their newborn son, Jean. Monet attended his birth in Paris on August 8 and returned to Sainte-Adresse on August 12.

(source: wikipedia)


Monet: La Grenouillere

Monet noted on September 25, 1869, "I do have a dream, a painting ['tableau'], the baths of La Grenouillère, for which I have made some bad sketches ['pochades'], but it is only a dream. Renoir, who has just spent two months here, also wants to do this painting." Monet and Renoir, both desperately poor, were quite close at this time.

(source: wikipedia)


Manet: Music in the Tuileries

Music in the Tuileries is an early example of Manet's painterly style. Inspired by Hals and Velázquez, it is a harbinger of his lifelong interest in the subject of leisure. While the picture was regarded as unfinished by some, the suggested atmosphere imparts a sense of what the Tuileries gardens were like at the time; one may imagine the music and conversation. Here, Manet has depicted his friends, artists, authors, and musicians who take part, and he has included a self-portrait among the subjects.

(source: wikipedia)


Degas: The Dance Class

On this particular painting “The Dance Class” Degas shows us two dancers waiting to be assessed by ballet master Jules Perrot. Degas prepared assiduously by making numerous drawings of dancers posing for him in his studio. His lively brushwork and light, bright colors were typical of the Impressionist movement. Their use of color was partly influenced by Japanese prints, in what it was called in France by Japonism which also made dramatic use of the “cut-off” composition – where the subject is chopped off at the frame – that Degas deploys so cleverly here and throughout his work. Degas, was also heavily influenced by the early years of photography and by overturning traditional compositional rules.

(source: wikipedia)

Support for mobile devices

Please read the QR code on the right side with your mobile device's camera.

The system is capable to present the information not only in "normal" version - optimized for dekstop web browsers -, but in mobile version as well, which is optimized for mobile devices (smartphones, tablets). You don't need to do anything, just open the website on you smartphone, and the system will present the mobile-optimized version automatically. (It is possible to change to full version of course any time.)

It is possible to reach the information stored in the system - object infos, tours, collections, etc. - "directly", by putting a QR code next to the physical object, and reading that by you mobile device's camera. That will automatically open the device's browser and load the particular page with the related data.

Note: Most modern smartphone's camera application already includes such QR code reading function. For those models that doesn't have this as built in feature. there are plenty 3rd party applications available for all main mobile platforms.

Please test this feature by reading the QR code on the right: