Titian's Danae (1550-3)
Giorgio Morandi's Natura Morta (1961)
Juan Sánchez Cotán's Still Life with Quince, Cabbage, Melon, and Cucumber
Gustave Courbet's The Desperate Man
Nicolas Poussin Landscape with a River God
Tiziano Vecellio, Titian was born in the commune Pieve di Cadore, Belluno province, in the Veneto some time between 1485 and 1490, and died in venice on 27 August 1576. The Oxford Online Encyclopedia describes him: The most important artist of the Vecellio family, he was immensely successful in his lifetime and since his death has always been considered the greatest painter of the Venetian school. He was equally pre-eminent in all the branches of painting practised in the 16th century: religious subjects, portraits, allegories and scenes from Classical mythology and history.
The realism in his painting is breath-taking. Titian's late works are described as paintings so bold that Titian's contemporaries described them as painted with brushes "as big as brooms." "Late Titian" reminded us why he was revered by the giants of Western painting -- Rubens, Rembrandt, Poussin, Delacroix, Courbet, Cézanne, and more
Poussin's painting has much mor a mythological feel, and, while great work, simply is not as startling as Titian's Danae. Not to denigrate it, at all; the painting has great features, including the interplay of light and shadows, the mountains dividing it in two, the impressive trees reaching for the heavens.
it was plain that even Poussin's most apparently straightforward investigations of the visual effects of weather were not solely about nature. Instead, they were meditations on larger ideas about the passage of time, morality, mortality, emotion, and more. Transfixed by these complex, compelling landscapes we understood why Poussin was called the "philosopher painter."
Morandi's still life is baffling; I just don't get why it's great art. Ditto Cotan's study. I suppose there are technical accomplishments; I simply do not understand art on that level. To me, art is best on the impression it makes when it is seen.
Coubert's Desperate Man, now here is a startlingly beautiful work of art. The expressiveness of the man's eyes simply astonishes this observer.
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