Caspar David Friedrich and the Romantics The inspiration for In these Shoes is Wanderer above the Sea of Fog by Caspar David Friedrich, the archetypal image of Romanticism. Friedrich's pictures are often used to illustrate Romantic literature and I remember still the cover of the...
Location: St Patrick's Well Orvieto and Danae The Entrance to St Patrick's Well, Orvieto The Umbrian city of Orvieto and its environs in Latium and Tuscany have provided me with most of my locations for the Belle. Sometimes I realise the image on location, but occasionally this is physically...
Nadia tells her story: "Pleasure is made of simple things. What could perhaps illustrate this best?" The ingredients of a picture: Luxe, Calme et Volupté comes from a line taken from Baudelaire’s poem Invitation du Voyage, but it was a news item about a chocolate confection popular in...
What is it that makes a painting more or less erotic? The subject? The pose? The beauty of the sitter? Surely all three but there are other important elements as well. The “Tepidarium” by Sir Lawrence Alma Tadema, painted in 1881, is made up of a number of elements that would not of...
One of the greatest paintings of the Renaissance, Sleeping Venus is an unusual, not to say mysterious work, even for an out of the ordinary painter like Giorgione. The work was unfinished on his death at 34 of plague to be completed by Titian who then went on to paint similar Venuses of his own....
This is the second photograph I have done based on Ingres’ Grande Odalisque (the other is Casalisca). Ingres is one of those artists who can give a certain comfort to artists who have passed middle age as several of his most famous works were painted towards the end of long life. The Turkish Bath...
The painting Chloe, which could be the most famous artwork in Australia, hangs not in a gallery or private collection but, unusually for a work of art, in a Melbourne pub, Young and Jackson's. The Parisian model, Marie, committed suicide after a tragic love affair aged only 21. After a...
Lautrec was an enthusiastic frequenter of brothels, as were most of his contemporaries, so nothing unusual there; but he painted the women and occasionally their clients. He seems to have had a faiblesse for redheads. No academic nudes these. Henri was not an attractive man: too much...
The lovely shawl made her appear modern to the public of the time - it is Japanese and ‘Japonisme’ was all the rage - it is curious that the addition of clothing to a nude tends to make the subject more risqué - Wilson Steer never dared to exhibit Seated Nude in a Black Hat (1900) precisely...
A legend, possibly based on fact, has it that Phryne, a fabulously rich concubine of outstanding beauty in ancient Greece, was on trial for her life, for murder for which she was assuredly guilty. Her counsel opted for a dazzling defence, literally: he disrobed her in front of the judges....
Botticelli’s masterpiece is a complicated painting and experts still argue over its meaning. It is also a very full painting with the three Graces, Venus, Mercury, Cupid, Zephyr, blowing on the nymph Chloris and the figure she metamorphosed into, Flora, scattering flowers. In 2007...
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