Public Domain Image: The abduction of Europa, known by alternate title: De roof van Europa (Ovidius, Metamorphosen II, 833-875), oil on oak panel painting (1632) by the Dutch painter and etcher Rembrandt van Rijn (1606-1669), dimensions 62.2 cm x 77 cm (24.49 in x 30.31 in) located at The J. Paul Getty Museum (Los Angeles), one of the most visited museums in the United States.
Public Domain Photo: Allegorie des Triumphes der Venus (Venus, Cupid, Folly and Time), oil on wood painting(created around1545) by Angelo Bronzino (1503-1572), dimensions 146 cm x 116 cm (57 in x 46 in), located at the National Gallery, London.
Venus, Cupid, Folly and Time (also known by other titles such as ‘An Allegory of Venus and Cupid’, ‘A Triumph of Venus’, ‘Allégorie du triomphe de Vénus’, and ‘Allegoria del trionfo di Venere’), is a painting by the Florentine Mannerist artist Angelo Bronzino (1503-1572), also known as Agnolo Bronzino, Agnolo di Cosimo and Il Bronzino.
There has been extensive scholarly debate on the identity of the figures in the painting, as well as its theme, which may be described as lust, deceit, and jealousy. The figure of Venus, holding the shiny golden apple she won in the Judgement of Paris, is easily identifiable. Venus is being embraced by her son Cupid, sporting his characteristic wings and quiver. The baldheaded, bearded figure is believed to be Father Time.
The identities of the other figures are to be hypothesized. The figure opposite Time, holding the drapery, is variously referred to as Oblivion, and sometimes interpreted as Night and opposing Time. The mask-like face of this figure is symbolic of the image of two actual masks lying at the lower right-hand corner.
The figure rending the hair has been often called Jealousy, an old woman, though the protruding muscles in the figure’s hands suggest it is a man. The young boy with roses and seemingly throwing them at Venus and Cupid is interpreted as Pleasure or Joy. The figure behind him is the most complex, with a face peeping out of Pleasure’s side, giving the impression of an innocent little girl, and interpreted as, ‘perhaps the boy’s companion’. But the strange thing with this girl is that she has her lower body made up of a scaly, snake-like creature and a long tail, suggesting that it can be a personification of Evil or Deception. While she holds a honeycomb or wasp’s nest in one hand and in the other hand there is a menacing creature, possibly a scorpion (with its tail or sting on the upper side), while the lower side looks like a small reptilian animal/ snake. The girl’s palms are also fitted switching positions, her right palm attached to her left arm and her left palm attached to her right arm. Some art critics describe her as "the most sophisticated symbol of perverted duplicity ever devised by an artist..."
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Public Domain Image: Dancer, drawing by Amedeo Modigliani, private collection.
Public Domain Image: Naakt (Nude), drawing by Amedeo Modigliani, private collection.
Public Domain Image: Anna Akhmatova (1911), pencil on paper drawing by by Amedeo Modigliani, located at Apartment-Museum of Anna Akhmatova, St. Petersburg, Russia.
Anna Akhmatova, the pen name of the modernist Russian poetess Anna Andreyevna Gorenko (1889-1966), one of the most acclaimed female writers of Russia. Akhmatova's work ranges from short lyrical poems to intricate works such as Requiem (1935-40), her tragic masterpiece about the Stalinist terror. Her work was censored by Stalinist authorities. She is also noted for choosing to remain in Russia, acting as a witness to the atrocities around her.
In 1910, Anna Akhmatova married the poet and critic Nicolai Gumilev (1886-1921) and the couple spent the spring of 1910 on their honeymoon in Paris, where Anna met the Italian painter Amedeo Modigliani (1884-1920). She fell in love with Modigliani and spent the summer of 1911 with him in Paris. Her first book of lyrical poems, Evening (1912), reflects the influence of this love affair.
Public Domain Image: Self-portrait (1887), oil on canvas painting by Władysław Podkowiński, dimensions 55 cm x 45 cm (21.65 in x 17.72 in), located at Muzeum Śląskie, Katowice in Silesia in southern Poland.
Public Domain Image: Szał uniesień (Ecstasy), oil on canvas painting (1894) by Polish painter Władysław Podkowiński (1866-1895), dimensions 275 cm x 310 cm (108.27 in x 122.05 in) currently located at Sukiennice Museum (aka Gallery of 19th-Century Polish Art at Sukiennice), a division of the National Museum, Kraków, Poland.
Szał uniesień (titled in English as‘Ecstasy’ or ‘Frenzy of Exultations’, also known as ‘La Folie’ or ‘Ekstase’) is the best known painting of Władysław Podkowiński, and which is considered the first work of symbolism in Polish art, which was exhibited in Zachęta in an atmosphere of scandal, and in 1894 it was featured in a Warsaw art exhibition. However, the art exhibition lasted only 36 days because Podkowinski brought a knife on the 37th day and destroyed his work. The painting was later restored after the death of Podkowiński.
Public Domain Image: Akt (Nude) painting (1892) by Władysław Podkowiński
Władysław Podkowinski (1866-1895) was a Polish painter and illustrator. Podkowiński began his artistic training at Wojciech Gerson's drawing school, the Warsaw Academy of Arts, at which he studied from 1880 to1884. After leaving the school, Podkowinski contributed his art to many of the leading art journals in Warsaw. In 1885 along with Josef Pankiewicz, he travelled to the St. Petersburg Fine Arts Academy where he studied from 1885 to 1886. After returning from St. Petersburg in 1886, Podkowiński started his career as an illustrator for Tygodnik Ilustrowany where he became one its most renowned artists.
Władysław Podkowiński’s earliest works comprising watercolor and oil paintings were created during this time, but Podkowiński still considered his art as a hobby, and not a professional endeavor. His early paintings were mainly influenced by Ignacy Aleksander Gierymski (1850-1901), another Polish painter of the late 19th century.
Władysław Podkowiński embraced painting as a profession in 1889, after a trip to Paris where he was profoundly influenced by French Impressionist painters, particularly Claude Monet. Podkowiński’s impressionist works were highly appreciated, and later he was credited for bringing the Impressionist movement to Poland, and many art historians and writers consider him as the founder of Polish Impressionism. But towards the end of his life, his personal life experiences, including an incurable disease of those times, inclined him to shift towards Symbolism. Władysław Podkowiński died of tuberculosis in Warsaw at the young age of 29, which cut short a very promising career, and of course, it was a great loss to the lovers of art.
Public Domain Image: Before a Mirror (Devant un miroir), oil on canvas painting painted before 1912 by the English painter Robert Wiedeman Barrett Browning, also known as Pen Browning (1849-1912).
Public Domain Photo: The Judgement of Paris (Urteil des Paris), oil on wood painting (1636) by the prolific seventeenth-century Flemish Baroque painter Sir Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640), dimensions 144.8 cm x 193.7 cm, located at The National Gallery in London.
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Public Domain Image: Khoisan busy barbecuing grasshoppers (1805), aqua tint by English painter Samuel Daniell (1775-1811), scan from Suid-Afrikaanse Geskiedenis in Beeld (1989) by Anthony Preston, Bion Books, printed in South Africa.
The aqua tint shows a Khoisan (Khoesaan, Khoesan or Khoe-San) family with the man busy barbecuing grasshoppers while his wife is looking on. The name Khoisan is for two ethnic groups of Southern Africa, who share physical and linguistic characteristics distinct from the Bantu majority of the region. Culturally the Khoisan people are divided into the pastoral Khoi and the foraging San.
Public Domain Image: Lady Godiva (1877), oil on cardboard painting by British painter William Holmes Sullivan, dimension 40 cm x 30 cm
Public Domain Photo: The Sleeping Beauty(1921), oil on canvas painting by the pre-Raphaelite English writer and painter John Maler Collier (1850-1934), dimension 91 cm x 112 cm.
Public Domain Photo: Porcelain Vase located at China Sex Museum, in Tongli (or Tong-Li), a town in Wujiang county on the outskirts of Suzhou, China.
Public Domain Image: Simson, an der Hochzeitstafel das Rätsel aufgebend (a 1638 painting depicting Samson's marriage feast in which he delivers the puzzle), oil on canvas painting by Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn (1606-1669), dimensions 126.5 cm x 175.5 cm, located at the Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister in Dresden, Germany.
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When Samson (also spelled as Shimshon, Simson, Shamshoun or Sampson) grows up to adulthood, he leaves his hills people to see the cities of the Philistines, where he falls in love with a Philistine woman and he decides to marry her. On the way to her house to ask for the woman's hand in marriage, Samson is attacked by a lion but he easily grabs it and rips it apart as he is blessed with divine powers, and reaches the Philistine's house and wins her hand in marriage. On his way to the wedding, Samson notices that bees have nested in the carcass of the lion and have made honey. He drinks some honey and gives some to his parents. At the wedding feast, Samson offers the puzzle, "Out of the eater, something to eat; out of the strong, something sweet", to his thirty Philistine groomsmen, and promises them thirty pieces of fine linen and garments, if they can solve it. The puzzle relates to his eating honey, on his second encounter with the lion (carcass). Failed and infuriated, the 30 Philistines tell Samson's wife to discover the answer and tell them, and threatens to burn her and her father's household if she does not do so. On the tearful imploring of his bride, Samson tells her the solution, which she reveals to the thirty groomsmen.
Public Domain Photo: In the Tepidarium (1881), oil on canvas painting by Dutch-British painter, draftsman, etcher and illustrator Lawrence Alma Tadema ( also spelled as Lourens / Laurens Alma Tadema, 1836-1912), dimensions 24.2 cm x 33 cm (9.53 x 12.99 in), located at the Lady Lever Art Gallery, Port Sunlight, Merseyside, England.
PD Image: Sappho geht zu Bett (translated variously as Sappho goes to bed,
Le Coucher de Sappho or The setting of Sappho), 1867 oil on canvas painting by Swiss painter Marc Charles Gabriel Gleyre (generally known as Charles Gleyre, 1806-1874), dimensions 108 cm x 72 cm (42.52 in x 28.35 in).
PD Image: Green Peafowl (Pavo muticus), monograph (1872) of the Phasianidae or the family of the pheasants by Daniel Giraud Elliot (1835-1915).
PD Photo: Green Peafowl (Pavo muticus imperator or Pavo imperator imperator) male
PD Photo: Green Peafowl (Pavo muticus) in the Taipei Zoo, Taiwan
The Green Peafowl (Pavo muticus) belongs to Galliformes, an order of birds containing Turkeys, Grouses, Chickens, Quails and Pheasants. They are known by names such as gamefowl, gamebirds, landfowl, gallinaceous birds or galliforms, peacock, peahen, wildfowl or simply fowl. These birds are found in most of Southeast Asia, and it is the closest relative of the Indian Peafowl or Blue Peafowl (Pavo cristatus) found in the Indian subcontinent.
Males and females of Green Peafowl look almost similar, and it is quite difficult to distinguish their sexes during most part of the year when the males have no visible trains. However, the males of the subspecies imperator (P. m. imperator) and spicifer (P. m. spicifer) are overall bluish green.
Green Peafowl are one of the largest Galliforms in terms of overall length and wingspan but lighter than Wild Turkeys. The male Green Peafowl grows up to 3 meters/ 10 feet long, including its ‘train’ and weighs up to 5 kg/ 11 lbs. The female measures 1.1 meter/ 3.5 feet in length and weighs about 1.1 kg/ 2.4 lbs. Green Peafowl have large wingspans of about 1.2 meter/ 4 feet, and is a better flier capable of sustained flight, unlike Indian Peafowl.
The habitat of Green Peafowl is widely spread in Southeast Asia including India, Bangladesh, Burma (Myanmar), China, Laos, Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, Malaysia, Indonesia (Java). They prefer forests (tropical and subtropical, evergreen and deciduous forests), and are found amongst bamboos, grasslands, savannas, scrubs and farmland edges. It nests on the ground laying 3 to 6 eggs.
Green Peafowl’s diet consists mainly of fruits, invertebrates, reptiles, frogs, and other small animals. Like the other members of its genus, the Green Peafowl can even hunt venomous snakes. Ticks and termites, flower petals, buds leaves and berries are their favorite foods. Their predators include large cats such as the Clouded Leopards, Leopards, Tigers, Jungle Cats and Fishing Cats. The Green Peafowl is an endangered species included in the IUCN Red List.
PD Image: Standing Female Nude Seen from the Back (1800) by French Romantic painter and draughtsman Pierre-Paul Prud'hon (1758-1823)
PD Image: Nana, Female Nude (Nana, nu féminin) 1911 oil on canvas painting by Lovis Corinth, size 47.75 in x 35.75 in (121.3 cm x 90.8 cm) currently located at Saint Louis Art Museum, Saint Louis, Missouri, United States of America
PD Image: The Invasion (1892), with alternative titles ‘Le Guêpier’ literally translated as ‘The Bee’, also known as ‘The Wasp's Nest’, created by the French academic painter William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825-1905), oil on canvas painting, size 83.75 x 60 inches (213 cm x 152.5 cm), private collection.
The painting is signed and dated at bottom-right corner. Bouguereau used to sign his works simply as William Bouguereau, or as "W Bouguereau date" and later as "W BOVGVEREAV 1892", which can be read on the painting above (CLICK on the photo and enlarge it).
Bouguereau’s style was almost as realistic as art could get, almost photo-realistic, and it is felt by art critics that he lost out to impressionists. Though he was one of the most famous artists in his lifetime, later he almost fell to obscurity. His present day supporters include the businessman and art collector Fred Ross (New Jersey), whose Art Renewal Center heavily features Bouguereau's works. It has been reported that currently over a hundred museums throughout the world exhibit Bouguereau's works.
The Fred Ross sponsored Art Renewal Center, www.artrenewal.org, features about 63,000 images in its web site, mostly by academic and classical painters, out of which Bouguereau holds a special place of pride with 226 of his paintings posted there, according to reports.
PD Photo: The Judgement of Paris, Capodimonte porcelain, Capitoline Museums, Rome
Capodimonte porcelain is created by the Capodimonte porcelain manufactory, which was established in Naples in 1743, when the Spanish King Charles (VII of Napoli, V of Sicilia) and his wife Queen Maria Amalia of Saxony instituted the Royal Factory of Capodimonte. Capodimonte porcelain was an emulation of Meissen porcelain.
For the manufactory, the chemist Livio Ottavio Schepers improved the composition of the soft paste porcelain body. The sculptor Giuseppe Gricci and the decorator Casella contributed to the creation of important works of art. Capodimonte is famous for its molded figurines and its decorative modeled flowers on cups and vases. With this factory they gave birth to one of the most famous Italian forms of art.
Image: The poet's tomb (La tumba del poeta) oil on canvas painting by Spanish painter Pedro Saenz (1863-1927).
Pedro Sáenz Sáenz (1863-1927) was a pre-Raphaelite Spanish painter associated with the Malaga school of painting. He was a disciple of Bernardo Ferrándiz and he studied art at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando. Some of his works are on display at the Museum of Fine Arts (Museo de Málaga) in Malaga, Andalusia, Spain.
Image: Pomona (1898), oil on canvas painting, dimensions 81 cm x 42 cm, located at Städtische Galerie im Prinz Max-Palais, Karlsruhe, Germany.
Image: Liegender weiblicher Akt (Reclining Female), 1872-73 oil on canvas painting by German realist painter Wilhelm Trübner (1851-1917), dimensions 61 cm x 72 cm, located at Galerie Neue Meister, Dresden, Germany.
Image: Im liebesgarten (In the love garden) 1899, source; http://www.archive.org/stream/diekunstmonatshe23mnuoft#page/228/mode/2up
Image: Stehender Rückenakt (Standing back act), 1898 oil on board painting, dimensions 101 cm x 40.8 cm, Mr. & Mrs. Trubner, Bellevue (Washington).
