Public Domain Photo: Altamira Cave, located near Santillana del Mar in Cantabria, 30 km west of the city of Santander in Spain, is famous for its European Upper Paleolithic (also called Late Stone Age, for the period broadly between 40,000 and 10,000 years ago) cave art comprising paintings, drawings and polychrome rock paintings depicting wild animals and human hands. The cave along with its paintings has been declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
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.
PD Image: In the Waves (1889, aka ‘Dans les vagues, ou Ondine’, ‘En les onades, o Ondina’, and ‘Undine’), oil on canvas painting by French painter and writer Paul Gauguin (1848-1903), dimensions 92 x 72 cm (36.22 in x 28.35 in), located at The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH.
Public Domain image: Actaea, the Nymph of the Shore (1853 - 1858) - oil on canvas painting by the British painter Frederic Leighton (1830-1896), dimensions 57.2 cm x 102.2 cm, located at The National Gallery of Canada (Musée des beaux arts du Canada), Ottawa, Ontario, Canada.
PD Image: The Wedding of Peleus and Thetis (1638), oil on canvas painting by Dutch painter Abraham Bloemaert (1564-1651), dimensions 193.7 cm x 164.5 cm (76.26 in x 64.76 in), located at the Royal Picture Gallery Mauritshuis, The Hague, The Netherlands.
Public Domain Photo: The Fall of Man (1616), alternatively titled Adam and Eve: the Fall (Genesis 3:1-7), oil on canvas painting by the Dutch printmaker, draftsman and painter of the early Baroque period Hendrick Goltzius (1558-1617), dimensions 104.5 cm x 138.4 cm (41.14 in x 54.49 in) located at The National Gallery of Art located on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., U.S.A.
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PD Images: The triumph of Neptune (Der Triumphzug des Neptun), 1634-1637 oil on canvas painting by the 17th century French classical painter Nicolas Poussin (1594-1665), dimensions 108 cm x 148 cm, located at Philadelphia Museum of Art, 2600, Benjamin Franklin Parkway, Philadelphia, United States. The second image is detail from the original, which is a very large image. Click on them and enlarge for a better view of the images.
PD photo: Le Sommeil (Sleep) featuring two women in bed, a 1866 painting of dimensions 135 cm x 200 cm (53.15 in x 78.74 in) by Gustave Courbet (1819-1877), located at Petit Palais, Musée des Beaux-Arts de la Ville de Paris.
PD Photo: Portrait of Jo (La belle Irlandaise), 1865-1866, Metropolitan Museum of Art, a painting of Joanna Hiffernan, the probable model for Le Sommeil (Sleep) shown above, Femme nue couchée and The Origin of the World (L'Origine du monde), CLICK on the links to view them.
“I am fifty years old and I have always lived in freedom; let me end my life free; when I am dead let this be said of me: 'He belonged to no school, to no church, to no institution, to no academy, least of all to any régime except the régime of liberty” - Gustave Courbet
Gustave Courbet, an unfettered man and an acclaimed artist, was ahead of his times, and the above words reflect that image of him. True, he refused to be identified with any school, church, institution, or academy. When, though as a sign of appeasement to the Liberals, Napoleon III nominated him to the Legion of Honour in 1870, he refused the cross of the Legion of Honour and angered those in power.
In the Salon of 1857 Courbet exhibited six paintings, including the sensational and scandalous ‘Young Ladies on the Banks of the Seine (Summer)’, depicting two prostitutes, as well as the first of his famous ‘hunting scenes’ series. These brought to him both notoriety and sales. These were followed by a series of highly controversial works such as the Femme nue couchée, and The Origin of the World (L'Origine du monde), which depicts female genitalia and they were not publicly exhibited until 1988.
PD Photo: The Source (1862), oil on canvas painting of dimensions 120 cm x 74.3 cm (47.24 x 29.25 in) by French sculptor, painter and draughtsman Gustave Courbet (1819-1877), currently located at Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City.
PD Image: Vertumnus and Pomona (1613), oil on canvas painting by Dutch painter and draughtsman Hendrick Goltzius (1558-1617), dimensions 90 cm x 149.5 cm (35.43 x 58.86 in), located at Rijksmuseum Amsterdam.
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).
Image: The Bather (1868) also known as ‘La Femme dans les vagues’ or ‘Die Badende’, oil on canvas painting by French painter Gustave Courbet (1819-1877), dimensions 65 cm x 54 cm, located at Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
Image: Woman with White Stockings (1861), oil on canvas painting by French painter Gustave Courbet (1819-1877), dimensions 65 cm x 84 cm, located at Barnes Foundation, Merion, PA, USA.
Image: Woman with a Parrot (La Femme au perroquet), oil on canvas painting of 1866 by French artist Gustave Courbet (1819-1877), dimensions 129.5 cm x 195.6 cm (50.98” × 77.01”), located at Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City. When this painting was shown in the Salon of 1866, critics lamented about Courbet's lack of taste and about his model's ungainly pose and disheveled hair. But the work was admired by his contemporary artists.
Image: The Source (1868), also known as La Source or Die Quelle, oil on canvas painting by Gustave Courbet, located at Musée d'Orsay, Paris, France.
Image: The Source (La Source or Die Quelle), oil on canvas painting of 1868 by French Realist Movement painter Gustave Courbet, dimensions 128 cm x 97 cm, located at Musée d'Orsay, Paris, France.
Image: Diana the Huntress (1867), oil on canvas painting by French painter Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841-1919), dimensions 197 cm x 132 cm, currently located at the National Gallery of Art, Washington (D.C.)
Diana the Huntress is a study of the female figure and an expression of Renoir's heightened personal response to female sensuality. This kind of style was the mainstay of the academic tradition. The model in the painting is Lise Tréhot, Renoir's mistress and inspiration for a number of his paintings. As is found in Renoir's early work, there is evidence of the influence of the realist painter Gustave Courbet. Though the subject is mythological, the painting is a naturalistic studio work, in which the figure was carefully observed, modeled and superimposed on a contrived landscape. Renoir just added a bow, a dead animal, and the deerskin to transform Lise into Diana, the mythological goddess of hunting. Also, Renoir used a palette knife to apply his pigments, a favorite technique of Courbet.
PD Image: The Marriage of the Virgin by Pietro Perugino (1500-1504), oil on wood painting, dimensions 234 cm x 185 cm.
The Marriage of the Virgin, the painting by the Italian Renaissance master Pietro Perugino (1446-1524), housed in the Musée des Beaux-Arts of Caen, France, was initially commissioned to Pinturicchio for the cathedral of Perugia. In 1797, the painting was captured and taken to Caen by Napoleon.
The wide perspective of the composition, with a polygonal temple and the aligned composition of the figures on the sides, is related to the Perugino's painting ‘Christ Giving the Keys to St. Peter’ at the Sistine Chapel. Perugino's most famous pupil Raphael painted his own version of The Marriage of the Virgin in 1504, and most critics say Raphael’s work is heavily influenced by this painting and Christ Giving the Keys to St. Peter.
During the Passover festival Jesus Christ came with his followers to Jerusalem where a large crowd came to meet him. Jesus cleansed the Herod's Temple by overturning the tables of the moneychangers who set up shop there. Following this, Jesus celebrated the Passover meal, the last meal Jesus shared with his disciples before his death. It is an event that was later known as The Last Supper, in which he prophesied that he would be betrayed by one of his disciples and he would then be executed. In this ritual supper, Jesus took bread and wine in hand saying, ‘This is my body which is given for you’ and ‘this cup which is poured out for you is the New Covenant in my blood’, and instructed them to ‘do this in remembrance of me’ (Luke 22:7-20).
In The Last Supper, Jesus washes his disciples' feet and gives his farewell discourses, discussing the persecution of his followers, the coming of the Holy Spirit, etc. He says a long final prayer with his disciples before heading to a garden where he knows Judas will show up.
According to the Synoptic Gospels, Jesus institutes a new covenant of his blood and body, the wine and bread. Some Christians describe this as the ‘Institution of the Eucharist’. Others view the Last Supper as later derived from first century Eucharistic practice.
The vessel which was used to serve the wine is sometimes called the Holy Chalice, and has been one of the supposed subjects of Holy Grail literature in Christian mythology. Also The Last Supper has been the subject of many literary works and paintings, of which the painting, The Last Supper, by Leonardo da Vinci is perhaps the best known.
Painting: ‘A Christian Dirce’ by Henryk Siemiradzki - a Christian woman is martyred in this re-enactment of the myth of Dirce. Siemiradzki (1843-1902) was a Polish Academic painter, known for depictions of scenes from the ancient Greco-Roman world and the New Testament.
Nero Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus (15 December AD 37-9 June AD 68), generally known as Nero, was the fifth and last Roman Emperor of the Julio-Claudian dynasty. Christian tradition and other historical sources hold Nero as the first major state sponsor of Christian persecution. The non-Christian historian Tacitus describes Nero as extensively torturing and executing Christians after the Fire of Rome in AD 64. Suetonius also mentions Nero persecuting Christians in the Roman Empire. The Christian writer Tertullian (155-230) was the first to call Nero as the first persecutor of Christians, when he wrote, "Examine your records. There you will find that Nero was the first that persecuted this doctrine".
Nero is also accused as the killer of Apostles Peter and Paul. Bishop Eusebius of Caesarea (275-339) was the first to write that Apostle Paul was beheaded in Rome during the reign of Nero. He states that Nero's persecution led to Peter and Paul's deaths, but that Nero did not give any specific orders. However, some other accounts have Paul surviving his two years in Rome and traveling to Hispania. By the 4th century, a number of writers were stating that Nero killed Peter and Paul.
