“The author is convinced that it is as proper for painting to criticize human error and vice as for poetry and prose to do so,” proclaimed Francisco de Goya y Lucientes in the Diario de Madrid on Feb. 6, 1799, announcing the publication of Los Caprichos(or “Caprices”), his suite of 80 prints made by etching and aquatint, which were intended to reveal “the common prejudices and deceitful practices which custom, ignorance or self-interest have made usual.”
Continue reading...Old Masters
Talking Pictures: The Scholar-Dealer
November 2009He is America’s preeminent dealer in Dutch Old Master paintings. But with his soft-spoken manner, gray-flecked beard and disarmingly rumpled suit, Otto Naumann looks more like a college professor than a businessman.
Continue reading...Talking Pictures: Maid in Manhattan
October 2009By: Jonathan Lopez As a salute to New York on the 400th anniversary of Henry Hudson’s voyage to America—a Dutch-financed venture that aimed to find the Northwest Passage to the Orient but instead found the waters around Manhattan island—the Rijksmuseum has placed Johannes Vermeer’s famed Milkmaid on temporary loan to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The painting [...]
Continue reading...Talking Pictures: The Great Debate
September 2009By: Jonathan Lopez Which art form is superior, painting or sculpture? On the face of it, this question might seem futile, since there is no right answer. But for artists in Renaissance Italy, the comparison, or paragone, of the arts was a matter of spirited and often invidious debate. The argument usually centered on a single issue—whether [...]
Continue reading...Restoration Hardware
June 2009By: James Panero In September 2000 art conservator Marco Grassi was attending an estate auction in Paris with an old friend, a European private collector. In the warren of salesrooms at the Drouot Hotel, mixed in with the chipped crockery and worn sofas, was a small rectangular painting in a dusty glass case. It appeared to [...]
Continue reading...Talking Pictures: A Holland-America Line
May 2009By: Jonathan Lopez On Feb. 6 the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., announced that it had acquired Bagpipe Player in Profile, by the 17th-century Dutch artist Hendrick ter Brugghen. A sophisticated image, it depicts a rustic musician in antique costume, seated, the brawny mass of his exposed right arm offering a poignant contrast to the [...]
Continue reading...Exhibitions: Going for Baroque
April 2009By: Jenna Curry One evening in 1655, the powerful Barberini family of Rome presented an elaborate theatrical performance for an audience of 3,000. The show concluded with a parade of actors fighting in a mock battle against a fiery dragon. Such ornate productions were not created merely for entertainment purposes; they were also a means to [...]
Continue reading...Essay: Tales of the City
April 2009By: Lance Esplund Dutch weather, much like that of Seattle, is temperamental: A storm is always coming, going or both. And because Holland’s sky—blue, gray, golden, mauve—is so fluid and sweeping, as well as seemingly pressed down to the ground, its architecture and inhabitants appear smaller and more incidental than they actually are. It is not [...]
Continue reading...Pictures at an Exhibition
March 2009By: James Panero As the March 15 opening approaches for his exhibition Titian, Tintoretto, Veronese: Rivals in Renaissance Venice, at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the curator Frederick Ilchman moves from conservation to design to exhibition space with an amiable twitter. Dressed in a natty three-piece suit, he looks as if he just stepped off a [...]
Continue reading...
