Raphael, Italian Renaissance painter of serene grace and beauty

Raphael Sanzio, Italian painter and master builder (Madonna Sistina School of Athens), born in March 28 in Urbino (d. 1520) Gregorian calendar date. Urbino, Italy was a cultural center that encouraged the Arts. Raphael’s father, Giovanni Santi, was a court painter for the Duke of Urbino, Federigo da Montefeltro.

Giovanni Santi, Raphael's father; Christ supported by two angels, c.1490

His father Giovanni taught the young Raphael basic painting techniques and exposed him to the principles of humanistic philosophy at the Duke of Urbino’s court. It was clear from the beginning that Raphael possessed a prodigious talent. His father died when Raphael was 11 and even at that early age, Raphael was able to take over his father's workshop and later, became an apprentice to Perugino, one of the famous painters of the era.

In 1504 he moved to Florence and in 1508 he moved to Rome, where he soon attracted the attention of the Pope and nobility of the city. From 1508 to 1511, he created on of the most famous works of the Renaissance, "The School of Athens, " for the pope.

The School of Athens

The School of Athens (Italian: Scuola di Atene) is one of the most famous frescoes in Renaissance art. It was painted between 1509 and 1511 as a part of Raphael's commission to decorate the rooms now known as the Stanze di Raffaello, in the Apostolic Palace in the Vatican. The Stanza della Segnatura was the first of the rooms to be decorated, and "The School of Athens," representing Philosophy, was probably the second painting to be finished there, after La Disputa(Theology) on the opposite wall, and the Parnassus (Literature). The picture has long been seen as "Raphael's masterpiece and the perfect embodiment of the classical spirit of the Renaissance. (Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_School_of_Athens)

His career falls naturally into three phases and three styles, first described by Giorgio Vasari: his early years in Umbria, then a period of about four years (1504–1508) absorbing the artistic traditions of Florence, followed by his last hectic and triumphant twelve years in Rome, working for two Popes and their close associates.

Red chalk study for the Villa Farnesina Three Graces

 

Sistine Madonna (1512). One of the most famous paintings of the Madonna ever made.

 Dying young (age 37) only enhanced his reputation. Vasari claims that he died of "excessive lust" for his mistress. La Fornaria. Well, it makes a nice story but we will never know. Rome was not the most healthy city in the Renaissance and he could have died from the malarial fevers that were epidemic in the city, typhus, typhoid.. you name it, the Renaissance had it and no way to cure it

La Fornarina, Raphael's mistress

Margareti Luti, or the baker's daughter is in this portrait showing a lot of  bare skin with an oriental style hat plus jewel on her dark hair. Her breasts are bare with the left one partially covered by her hand. Her posture of partially covering the breast and the stomach mirrors that of the classical sculptures that were being discovered at the time.

Her left hand rests between her thighs, the fingers splayed out and outlined by the deep, bloody-red of her discarded gown.  On her left arm there is a narrow leather band on which is the name of the artist – RAPHAEL URBINAS.  On the third finger of her left hand she appears to be wearing a ruby wedding band.  The presence of a ring was only discovered in the early part of the twenty-first century when the painting underwent some X-Ray analysis during restoration and cleaning work and which has occasioned volumes of discussion. Whether or not the painting was of Raphael's mistress or of the mistress of his patron Agostino Chigi is also controversial.

Raphael's tomb in the Pantheon. The Madonna is by Lorenzetto.

After his death, the influence of his celebrated rival Michelangelo was more widespread until the 18th and 19th centuries, when Raphael's more serene and harmonious qualities were again regarded as the highest models.

While his reputation has risen and fallen with the tides of artistic taste, for those who like a certain type of Renaissance religious art, his work has never gone out of fashion.

Complete Works: http://www.raphaelsanzio.org
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raphael
The Met: http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/artist/raphael-raffaello-sanzio-or-santi/ 
Architecture in Renaissance Italy http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/itar/hd_itar.htm 
Leonardo da Vinci: http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/leon/hd_leon.htm 
Renaissance Drawings: http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/drwg/hd_drwg.htm

Clouet. Court painter at the court of Francis I

 

Jean Clouet paints a young Francois I before either one of them had figured out how to do the regal look. Or how to delicately downplay the nose.

Clouet. Another artist with an unknown birthdate. 

A lot of effort from a renaissance portrait painter always went into the clothing. Look at all the rich and fabulous fabrics on King Francis - as benefits a Renaissance king. 

Jean Clouet and his talented son François Clouet collaborate on a portrait of François I, looking fully regal in black & white.

Author, patron, & princess: Marguerite de Navarre, sister of Francis I, in 1527. Has a lovely parrot! Painted by Jean Clouet,

All swaddled up: Louis Charles de Bourbon, Comte de Marle

Another cute kiddo at the French court: young Dauphin François who was to marry Mary (later Queen of Scots) and die young

The future Henri II, loving his puppy as he poses for French court portraitist Jean Clouet. 

Portrait of Marie d'Assigny, Madame de Canaples, 1525

Portrait of Claude de Lorraine, Duc de Guise, painted in 1525 by Jean Clouet.

young Charlotte of France, in 1522.

Eleanor of Austria, Queen of France, in 1530. Jean Clouet brilliantly downplays her Hapsburg nose and chin. He was a master of flattering his wealthy and noble clients. 

Miniature portrait of the handsome Charles de Cossé, comte de Brissac, painted in 1535

François Clouet, (born c. 1515 /20, Tours, Fr.—died 1572, Paris), French painter who immortalized in his portraits the society of the court of the royal house of Valois.

The son of Jean Clouet, he was known also under his father’s byname, Janet, a circumstance that created a persistent confusion between the works of these two painters. François worked with Jean possibly as early as 1536 and replaced him in 1540 as official painter to Francis I. He continued in this office, serving under Henry II, Francis II, and Charles IX. He directed a large workshop in which miniaturists, enamel designers, and decorators carried out his projects. In addition to making portraits, he painted genre subjects, including nude figures (e.g., “Diane de Poitiers”) and theatrical scenes—the latter attested by an engraving, as well as by a picture entitled “Scene of the Commedia dell’Arte.” He also supervised the decorations for funeral ceremonies and for the triumphal entries of the French kings.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Clouet

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Jean-Clouet

https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/435914

William Morris, Arts & Crafts

 

William Morris, photograph, Frederick Hollyer, 1884, England. Museum no. 7715-1938. © Victoria and Albert Museum, London

Few artists left such a wide and indelible mark on the art, culture, and politics of their era as William Morris did on the second half of the nineteenth century. Training first as a priest and then as an architect before abandoning both to realize his visions of medieval arcadia in the company of the Pre-Raphaelites, he moved between artistic and literary media throughout his life. Initially producing paintings in the sweet Quattrocento style of his Pre-Raphaelite contemporaries, most notably Dante Gabriel Rossetti, he soon branched out into architecture and interior design, creating some of the most commercially successful and enduringly admired textile patterns and furnishings in British art history. Towards the end of his life, Morris focused with increasing singularity on the radical political ambitions which had always underpinned his practice, publishing utopian socialist fantasy literature, and consolidating his lifelong work as a poet. When he died in 1896, he had not only left a deep imprint on the century he had lived through, but also laid the groundwork for many of the artistic, architectural and political projects which defined the next.

History has remembered the kings and warriors, because they destroyed; art has remembered the people, because they created’. 

Willliam Morris definitely created. Like many of his peers William Morris was trying to help people in his time find their way in a world moving forward at a very fast pace that was for many like himself, completely overwhelming.

Peacock and bird carpet c.1800s, courtesy William Morris Gallery, London Borough of Waltham Forest

He said ‘The true secret of happiness lies in taking a genuine interest in all the details of daily life’.

During his own lifetime Morris produced hundreds and hundreds of designs for textiles, including tapestries and superb hand woven carpets.

His inspiration for their composition was both nature and the medieval world.

His truly sensational Peacock and Bird Carpet is a beautiful combination of carefully chosen colours for his stunning symmetrical design. The carpet was woven using high quality hand knotted techniques and brilliant natural dyes.

Morris wanted to find a way out of industrial ugliness, back to the joys of creation experienced in the ‘Golden Age’ of English history when Elizabeth 1 (1533-1603) was on the throne.

Challenging industrial age leaders at the time to produce handcrafted goods was indeed a lofty ideal as they were intent on profit over quality.

There was however two realities. The first that it was profit driving the market for William Morris products being sold through Morris & Co, which he founded in 1861.

The second was the aims he and his peers (like art critic John Ruskin and designer Auguste Welby Pugin) extolled ended up being an example of hypocrisy, because so many manufacturers were producing a superior ‘hand crafted’ product in dirty, overcrowded sweatshops, where most of the workers were children.

The exploitation of working class children as cheap labour was vital to the economic success Britain enjoyed during the nineteenth century. For many working class families, it was far more important for a child to bring home a wage than to have an education.

The combination of dangerous working conditions and long hours meant that children were worked as hard as any adult, but without the laws in place to protect them.

Children were cheaper to employ than adults, and easier to discipline. The tide of public opinion changed government legislation in 1844, 47, 50, 53 and 1867, so that no one could employ children under 8.

In 1867 workers between 8 – 13 years of age had their hours reduced so that they would be able to receive 10 hours education per week, again. It would not be until the closing years of the century that the majority of children began to be treated as children, not as miniature adults.

The Red House designed by Phillip Speakman Webb

In 1858 Morris’s friend and colleague architect Phillip Speakman Webb built the Red House for he and his family.

When it was completed in 1860, it was described by British Pre-Raphaelite Painter Edward Burne-Jones (1833-1898) as ‘the beautifullest place on earth’.

Today the house retains many of its original features including furniture by Morris and Philip Webb, ceiling paintings by Morris, wall-hangings designed by Morris and worked by himself and his wife Jane, furniture painted by Morris and Pre-Raphealite painter Dante Gabriel Rossetti, and wall-paintings and stained- and painted glass designed by Edward Burne-Jones.

It was designed to reflect a man’s house was his castle and, for its time, it was completely revolutionary.

To complete the Red House Webb borrowed handmade red bricks from the Tudor period, inserted circular windows from the Italian Renaissance period, as well as small-paned sash windows from the English Georgian age.

Many of the windows are surmounted by pointed Gothic (relieving/set back) arches as described in the treatise of first century Roman architect Vitruvius and used by sixteenth century architect Andrea Palladio.

Its steeply graded roof is reminiscent of chateaux in France and its hand laid roof tiles are made of natural slate. They acted as an electrical insulator, were fireproof and had an extremely low water absorption rate.

The roof allowed water or melting snow to run into wide gutters and be recycled via a ‘well’ in the garden, which symbolically and practically became the ‘font’ of the house.

Stained Glass window at Kelmscott Manor

His ‘middling’ English house was, at least for Morris, a place ‘after his own heart’ a most noble work…more a poem than a house…but an admirable place to live in to’.

It was refreshingly simple and Morris was well pleased with it.

It was a kind of moral architecture if you like, paying tribute to England’s ‘golden age’, while reflecting the needs of a contemporary middle class citizen and craftsman such as himself.

The Arts and Crafts styled building symbolized warmth and shelter, informality and welcome.

House on the Appian Way Burwood, Sydney with Arts & Crafts (Federation) style influences

Between the wars the Arts & Crafts style house, which was also just a little bit fancy, burgeoned out into the suburbs of busy, bustling cities around the world including Australia, calling upon rural traditions too, which signified order and stability.

St John’s Cathedral at Brisbane, Australia was the last Gothic Revival Style Cathedral in the world to be completed (2006). In its precinct is a number of buildings influenced by Arts and Crafts architecture, which was well underway in England when it was first being built (1906).

St Martin’s House (Hospital) in the precinct of St John’s Cathedral, Brisbane, architecture inspired by the Red House of Phillip Speakman Webb in England. The Cathedral itself, designed by John Loughborough Pearson, also an English architect.

They include St Martin’s House, whose style was inspired by the philosophy of arts and crafts movement and The Red House.

Built following World War I of red brick, relieved by detailing in stone, it has a slated high sloping roof, Georgian style sash windows, Italian Renaissance touches, including a Juliet balcony.

There are also some delightful fanciful turret style chimneys at the roofline.

It has the addition of an extended room, surmounted by medieval battlements. Originally the main operating room of the hospital, it has been converted into an office for the current Dean of the Cathedral.

Morris and his associates introduced a new dimension to the reform of design and decoration.

He explored, in particular, the techniques of traditional country furniture because it was not only the debased quality of contemporary furniture that alarmed him, but also the decline of ancient skills needed to produce a quality product.

They produced a line up of furniture designs that were a distinct breakaway from anything else the industrial era had offered.

In America Gustave Stickley was a self appointed standard-bearer for the arts and crafts movement. Through his factory stocked with everything needed to create the home beautiful he promoted and extended Morris’s principles in both an artistic and socialist sense.

He targeted the average American homeowner, whose limited budget called for a subtle marketing technique.

He offered to ‘substitute the luxury of taste for the luxury of costliness’… employing those forms and materials made for simplicity, individuality and dignity of effect.

His magazine The Craftsman evangelized through articles submitted by influential guest writer’s on such issues as style, home décor, urban landscapes and architecture. It was all about the home beautiful, and he supplied everything needed for those seeking to embrace the future in comfort and style.

All his life Morris tried to recreate the idyllic, almost medieval life; self sufficient, financially secure, practical in close contact with nature.  Morris described the Cotswold village of Bibury in Gloucestershire as ‘surely the most beautiful hamlet in England’.

In this he was both inspired and supported by art critic John Ruskin, whose thoughts had a profound influence on Victorian attitudes.

Morris tried to make his vision of beauty, an actual part of everyday life. He saw modern mechanical industry destroying ‘mans natural purpose and sense of life’

John Ruskin said he believed that working with the hands and producing arts and crafts were essential to the moral fibre of the home.

Objects were meant to be fashioned with great pride, integrity and attention to beauty.

He sincerely feared without such a focus the quality of family life would be severely degraded and diminished.

Morris agreed. He said “If I were asked to say what is at once the most important product of Art, and the thing most to be longed for, I should answer, a beautiful House.

And that included everything and everyone inside it.

By now Morris and his family had a retreat in the countryside at Hammersmith overlooking the Thames. Kelmscott Manor with its high pitched roof and its delightful rustic portico sheltering the front door is where he established the Kelmscott Press, the last great enterprise of his life.

Between 1891 and 1898 it produced 53 books (some 18,000 copies).

The books Morris produced were modeled on books of the fifteenth century, such as those of printer Nicolaus Jenson of Venice, whose examples inspired the Roman ‘golden’ font Morris used.

Noteworthy for their harmony of type and illustration, the main priority was to have each book seen as a whole, re-awakening the early ideals of illuminated book design.

He wanted to inspire other printers in standards of production at a time when the printed page was generally at its poorest.

Numerous other presses were set up to perpetuate Morris’ aims, including the Doves, Eragny, Ashendene and Vale Presses.

The enterprise was the culmination of Morris’s life as a craftsman in many diverse fields as he set out to prove the high standards of the past could be repeated – even surpassed – in the present.

William Morris died before the end of the century and he did not live to see the success that the Arts and Crafts philosophy of he and his peers had on both sides of the Atlantic and in British colonies like Canada and Australia.

http://decantdecorativeantiques.blogspot.com/2013/04/why-william-morris-is-still-relevant.html

https://www.vam.ac.uk/articles/introducing-william-morris

https://www.theartstory.org/artist/morris-william/

Yayoi Kusama. Multi talented Woman artist

 

Yayoi Kusama's life is a poignant testament to the healing power of art as well as a study in human resilience. Plagued by mental illness as a child, and thoroughly abused by a callous mother, the young artist persevered by using her hallucinations and personal obsessions as fodder for prolific artistic output in various disciplines. This has informed a lifelong commitment to creativity at all costs despite the artist's birth into a traditional, female-effacing Japanese culture and her career's coming of age in the male-dominated New York art scene. Today, Kusama reigns as one of the most unique and famous contemporary female artists, operating from her self-imposed home in a mental hospital.

A polka-dot has the form of the sun, which is a symbol of the energy of the whole world and our living life, and also the form of the moon, which is calm. Round, soft, colorful, senseless and unknowing. Polka-dots become movement ... Polka dots are a way to infinity.

—Yayoi Kusuma, in Manhattan Suicide 

She began her career in the late 1940’s in Kyoto but in 1957 moved to the United States, inspired by the abstract expressionists. She exhibited her works next to those of Andy Warhol and Claes Oldenburg.

Kusama's happening at the Statue of Liberty, Liberty Island, New York, 1968 / Image courtesy: Ota Fine Arts, Tokyo / © Yayoi Kusama, Yayoi Kusama Studio Inc.

Born into an affluent family, Kusama started creating art at an early age. An abusive mother and a playboy father left her with a lifelong contempt for male sexual behavior. At the age of 13, she was sent to work in a Japanese military factory, spending her teenage years in what she termed"closed darkness" only lightened by the hallucinations of dots and flowers which she began to experience at the age of 10 or so.

In the 1950's she had an early success in Japan, covering every item that she could with what would become her signature polka dots, based on her childhood hallucinations. But she began to feel that Japanese society was too servile and too scornful of women so she left for first France and then, NY City in 1957.

In New York, she connected with the avant guarde, including Eva Hesse, learned how to manipulate her public image through photos of her with her signature colored wigs and heavy make up, as well as colorful, very stylish fashions. However, she did not profit financially and was hospitalized several times from over work. Nevertheless, she was active in arranging numerous public happenings along with performance art and in 1966, participated in the Venice Biennale.

One of the first Infinity Rooms

 In 1973 she returned to Japan where she wrote novels, poetry and short stories. Her art dealer business folded and she again checked herself into a hospital where she eventually took up permanent residence. From this base, she continued to work, producing huge paintings in a "ramped up" style. She was almost forgotten but her career revived in the 1990's with her work in the Japanese pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 1993, a dazzling mirror lined room filed with small sculptures of pumpkins. From this work, she began to use the pumpkin as a form of an alter ego. From that time to this, the number of her successful exhibitions is too long to list. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yayoi_Kusama

Her "Infinity Mirrors' room at the Hershorn Museum was the most popular exhibit in the museum's history, so popular that one person broke one of the pumpkins, taking her own selfie. Somebody should have pointed out to the visitor that she was no Kusama.

https://hirshhorn.si.edu/kusama/

From an almost unknown, she has become the matriarch of truly avant guard art. Her polka dots and infinity rooms have tapped into the zeitgeist of our culture. While most of those who view her exuberant installations have no idea of the profound philosophical ideas behind them - at least consciously- it is hoped that they are responding in at least a subconscious way. Kusama has said that her spots saved her life; perhaps they can also save some aspect of our threatened culture. Her Infinity Rooms allow people to experience space outside of themselves and possibly both quiet and joy (assuming that they take the ear plugs out long enough to actually interact with the work.) During the 60's, she sent a letter to Richard Nixon....."Our earth is like one little polka dot, among millions of other celestial bodies, one orb full of hatred and strife amid the peaceful, silent spheres. Let's you and I change all that and make this world a new Garden of Eden.... You can't eradicate violence by using more violence." 

Kusama fully embraced Warhol's idea of the artist as celebrity, claiming, "publicity is critical to my work because it offers the best way of communicating with a large number of people... avant-garde artists should use mass communication as traditional painters use paints and brushes."

http://www.phaidon.com/agenda/art/picture-galleries/2012/february/02/the-fantastical-world-of-yayoi-kusama/

http://www.phaidon.com/agenda/art/picture-galleries/2011/april/06/to-infinity-and-beyond-with-yayoi-kusama/

http://www.theartstory.org/artist-kusama-yayoi-artworks.htm


https://play.qagoma.qld.gov.au/looknowseeforever/essays/performing-the-body/

https://www.moma.org/artists/3315

https://www.theartstory.org/artist/kusama-yayoi/