SUPPER AT EMMAUS

According to the Gospel of St. Luke, after the death of Christ, two of his disciples traveling down the road to Emmaus met a stranger and invited him to join them.  At supper the stranger blessed the bread and broke it to give to the disciples.  Immediately the disciples saw the stranger was Christ risen from the dead.  

This painting dramatically captures the moment when the disciples realize the stranger is Christ himself. Caravaggio painted this masterpiece in 1601 for a Roman nobleman and avid art collector.  The painting contains all the stylistic elements that Caravaggio is noted for: the realistic figures and the dramatic changes of light and dark, known as chiaroscuro.

This painting is part of London's National Gallery of Art's permanent collection, but in late 2009, the National Gallery lent the painting to the Art Institute of Chicago for three months in return for borrowing a painting by Francisco de Zurbará which would play a key part in an exhibition. During a visit to the Art Institute, I was fortunate to be able to see the painting on display.

Thank you for visiting.

A Great Europe Trip Planner

This post was originally published in my blog Tutti Capolavori on October 16, 2012. 
The photo was taken by me during my visit to the Art Institute of Chicago.

 

CAMERA OBSCURA

In the previous post, I mentioned that Canaletto often used a camera obscura as an aid to creating his drawings and paintings.  Let's discuss what that is...

The principle of the camera obscura has been known since ancient Greek and Chinese time, but it became popular during the Renaissance of the 1500s.  The literal translation of the Latin term is dark room (camera for "room", obscura for "dark").

It works like this: You are in a very dark room on a very sunny day.  Cut a small hole in a window cover and look at the opposite wall.  What do you see?  Magic! There in full color will be a view of outside the window upside down! This magic is explained by a simple law of the physical world.  Light travels in a straight line and when some of the rays reflected from a bright subject pass through a small hole in thin material they do not scatter but form an upside down image on a flat surface parallel to the hole.  With mirrors positioned inside the room the image could be flipped 180 degrees and reflected right-size-up onto a surface for tracing onto a canvas.

In the image above you can see how an artist would use the camera obscura to help create his painting.  The reflected image inside the camera obscura not only miniaturizes the scene reflected, but it also intensifies color, and highlights and increases the contrast of light and dark areas.  The image could then be traced to create an accurate sketch and be transformed into a painting.  

In the mid-17th century the portable camera obscura was developed and became the basis of the photographic camera.

Thank you for visiting.

A Great Europe Trip Planner

This post was originally published in my blog Tutti Capolavori on July 6, 2012.

VIEW OF THE RIVA DEGLI SCHIAVONI, VENICE

Venice, with its light and architecture, its canals and people, was a subject of endless fascination and exploration for Giovanni Antonio Canal, called Canaletto.  In this painting from the late 1730s, the flicker of light on the water, the gondoliers, and the clearly delineated buildings against a crisp blue sky demonstrate Canaletto's passion for recording the details of his native Venice. Often using a camera obscura as an aid to composition, Canaletto painted his compelling views of Venice primarily for Englishmen, a masterpiece being the ultimate souvenir of their Grand Tour.  This painting hangs in the Toledo Art Museum.

Thank you for visiting.

A Great Europe Trip Planner

This post was originally published in my blog Tutti Capolavori on July 3, 2012. The photo in this blog post was taken by me on my visit to the Toledo Art Museum in May, 2012.

RECREATING AN OLD ART BLOG

This new blog has actually been recreated from an old blog of mine. I originally started Tutti Capolavori back in 2012, but that blog got thrown on the back burner due to trying to keep up with A Great Europe Trip Planner blog and my life.

However, I have decided to recreate it (along with naming it correctly by adding the "I" to the title). I'm going to start out by slowly copying the current posts from the old blog, then writing new posts about my favorite artists and their paintings from my visits to art museums, here in the U.S. and in Europe.

I hope you will enjoy this blog as much as my travel blog. Thank you for visiting.

A Great Europe Trip Planner