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)