Baroque Blog

The baroque time period is why I started to enjoy art much more with the separation from church and art beginning to really influence what artists can depict and the availability of their pieces. With that separation comes a decreasing recognition for artists in the wider world unlike the renaissance era which drew attention to the most popular figures such as Michelangelo, Leonardo, and Raphael's. It is that separation from these mainstay artists that I find so appealing. Art becomes so much more commonplace for the average person that it drives for so much more exploration in what art can be. It honestly is hard for me to even pick a favorite style of painting as realism in work holds a strong place in my heart and it becomes widely used in pieces during this era, especially in still life's. Where we see an exploration of detail unlike in any work before in the connection to still life's as we see just how beautiful the real world is. While in the field of genre paintings we can see depictions of everyday life which are so important to history and understanding how the world used to look, even with the stylization. The people within paintings also become so much more interesting and numerous in lifestyle as it is no longer only the superbly wealthy that support artists but the emerging middle class of the time. That is especially clear with the northern Europe's portrait paintings of the peasant folk at the time. This expansion on where, on what, and who art can be made for opens up a creativity that had been shackled by the wealth and power held by the church. It was with the increased wealth spread amongst the lower classes  and the power which the royal families had wrestled away from solely religious control that granted these explorations in the arts. 

 This is to say that if I had to pick a single style of art it would be difficult be it the historical importance of Genre work, or an exploration of who art is made for with the peasant portraits. Yet as this class is asking which pieces I enjoy the most I made the decision to focus on still life paintings. It is within still life’s that realism begins its path to perfection as artists truly begin the growth of there skills in all manners such as the use of colors  in the exacting detail, the way light falls upon an object and shades the environment around it, the way in which pure solid line work is greatest if they are unnoticed,  the sheer realism of the pieces showing the true skill an artist holds.

The paintings that i wish to elaborate on are

Vanitas with musical instruments, fine vessels, books, an extinguished candle, a skull and ears of wheat (1657-1675) by Franciscus Gijsbrechts

    The items within the piece are what brings my attention to it specifically as it pulls away from the common use of food or dinner that a lot of other pieces share. As one looks longer on it there seems to be a story behind the piece of a man who has gathered all that is valuable within his life. As if he is placing out all of what makes that man himself and it is the way in which that person has connected themselves to their possessions while not showing the man that holds me with the piece. Every item within connecting together a life be it his wealth as shown by the vases and cloth, or his hold to keeping himself beautiful with the makeup on the left, their skill with the violin that rests behind the pumpkin, and the books scattered throughout the piece  showing a learnedness. While the piece is not truly telling how it all comes together as a book that only reads chapter titles randomly ordered. The story is still there; it simply rests outside of the viewer's purview of information.

    My takeaway from the piece is that there is a life not only to the way in which the piece arranged with the placement of the objects but life to the story within the piece. So while this piece holds no inner movement the story one can build from the piece gives it a life of its own that is much harder to find in the still pieces of the time.

 Flower basket

(between 1640 and 1684) by Jan van den Hecke; Attributed to Jan van den Hecke

The piece above is another still life I enjoy for the use of colors and the way the painter made use of shading to apply a level of life to the flowers. To make use of so many different colors and yet keep the individuality of the flowers themselves is a challenging task. Yet the artist does so without mudding anny of the flowers even when overlap is present even among the petals of an individual flower. Hecke’s ability to keep this separation comes from his line work upon the flowers themselves as they hold a thickness upon the outer petals. It is a detail that is much more apparent among the petals among the center of the piece as the distinction of the petals become much more distinct. When you approach the flowers along the outside of the piece though such as the large purple flower in the center top his work in detailing becomes much more apparent as he captures the lighting effects upon the striations within the flower beautifully. It is within the effort to capture the smallest of details t5hat i enjoy the works of realism the most as an artist can strive for hours on those parts of a painting that don't hold the attention of the viewer as their centerpieces do. Yet it feels as if the flowers that lay in the dark and sit in the background supporting the mix of color in the front of the peace the greatest amount of detail.

As flowers are a softer shape  compared to fruits it forces the painter to rely less on the shape work you can do with fruits and instead has them more committed to the color within the work to show an accurate representation of the flowers themselves. Another part of the piece that would have  increased the difficulty of it would have been the flowers wilting time thus forcing the artist to work at an increased pace initially in order to make sure they had the correct color pallet and not have the vibrant color of the flowers dull over the time it took to paint the piece.

Still Life, oil on wood

(1634) by William Claesz Heda

This painting grabs my attention for its use of light and the reflections within both the water and the glass as the artist captures the flow of light within the pieces. The way in which he captures the light flowing through the goblet onto the pan behind it and upon the shattered glass or how the light on the goblet holders reflects off of the individual wicks of glass. It is the artist's use of the light that draws most of my attention to the piece. Lighting a scene properly holds so much power that within photography there are hundreds of ways to change how a light source is implemented and the same being true for art. In painting though if one wishes to truly capture how light affects the space the artist must make room for the light itself. I believe in making a duller less full environment when compared to even just the other two still life's Mr. Heda allows for a focus on the light. The piece is not meant to be an examination of t4he objects but on the effects of the light and how it affects objects and gives another level of detail rarely seen. 

Though his use of light is amazing to look through and examine he does fall short on other parts within the piece including the lemon, the table cloths, and the napkin. With the lemon and napkin both pieces feel as if they were added once the rest of the painting was complete behind them or added to cover something up. The lemon's shadow is affecting the platter it is placed upon yet it is receiving light from a different source entirely when compared to the rest of the piece. The napkin shares in the lemon with both odd placement and lighting along with having little effect on the tablecloth other than a light shadowing. The table cloth does lose a lot of detail the closer you get to the left side of the piece as well as it becomes softer and less wrinkled when compared to the right side of it. 

  

 Of the paintings above that I have examined, I believe that I would most want to own Vanitas with musical instruments, fine vessels, books, an extinguished candle, a skull and ears of wheat. It is the details that this piece shines and the individuality of the work when in comparison to the wither still life's of the time that i enjoy the work. The other main reason is that both Flower Basket and Still life, oil on wood are too decadent of pieces to be enjoyed in my current available settings. There is a certain level of liveliness that both of those pieces don’t quite match at the current moment and without it they would contrast greatly with the amount of action where they might be placed. However I have seen both of the pieces fit very well in both the smaller scale museums which explore still life pieces and also as prints within a slower mood decorated home.

“Vanitas.” Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, inc., www.britannica.com/art/vanitas-art. Accessed 21 Jan. 2025.

“Franciscus Gijsbrechts.” Artvee, artvee.com/artist/franciscus-gijsbrechts/. Accessed 21 Jan. 2025.

Wikimedia Commons, commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Jan_van_den_Hecke_-_Flower_Basket.jpg. Accessed 21 Jan. 2025.

 Wikimedia Commons, wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/42/Franciscus_Gijsbrechts_-_Vanitas_with_musical_instruments%2C_fine_vessels%2C_books%2C_an_extinguished_candle%2C_a_skull_and_ears_of_wheat.jpg Accessed 21 Jan. 2025.

Liedtke, Walter. “Still-Life Painting in Northern Europe, 1600–1800: Essay: The Metropolitan Museum of Art: Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History.” The Met’s Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History, 1 Jan. 2016, www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/nstl/hd_nstl.htm. 

The Northern Renaissance

            The Harvesters - Pieter Bruegel the Elder Netherlandish 1565  

The peice was made while he was in the Antwerp painters guild for a merchant

 

    Bruegel’s greater works The Harvesters, The Hunters in the Snow, Children's Games, The Peasant Wedding were made near the end of the renaissance. This allowed his pieces to hold popularity as Humanism had at last gotten strong influence in northern Europe. Along with the reformation was being an active force during his life. The destruction of many Christian pieces of art did strongly affect his pieces, as shown by his high focus on more common things and specifically peasants. His focus on the lower class would lead on to influence a great number of northern artists in the early modern era as his paintings encouraged northern artists to focus on the peasants as he had.

Bruegel’s style of Humanism was rare to find as it didn't have the strong influence of the noble class. The harvest itself was commissioned for a merchant and many of his other works as well thus letting him focus less on displaying the nobles, as was done in the south.

The Harvesters was part of a six part series that went through the seasons of the land and its influence on the peasant folk. The Harvest  “usually said to represent the months of July and August, revels in the drowsy heat of harvest time.”(The Met) holds within many small actions and details showing how busy and full of life the life of the countryside is during the time of harvest. It is within those small details that I find most of my enjoyment as there are more and more little things to discover as you take a closer look at the peace. Some of those include the vase in the bottom left that almost looks to be a bird poking its head out. The people skinny dipping in the pond above the lake. The small bird outlined in black at the center of the main tree. With many more small little things to find within the painting as well. I often find myself looking for those small details within painting as they often feel like the best connection to an artist as they are either telling their own little jokes or stories. 

I also find so much symbolism within the work itself, which as someone who has had to find symbolism in works for school I enjoy it when there are so many options to choose from. If you are to take a look at how the grain is laid about on the ground I find it easy enough to think of them as graves of the people working the fields. Those graves which are being laid out by the people holding the scythes are a classic symbol for death. Or the woman in blue, a symbol tied to Marry simply with the color who is helping to feed those who have been working the field yet isn’t anything herself. These are some of the stronger symbols that can be found yet with the attention to many more lay hidden within the piece.

When it comes to the influence of Humanism within the piece I believe that the focus on the normal actions of the people within the piece shows it best. As humanism is the showing of man in there most casually, the way in which the people are oriented first shows the humanism influence. None on display are thrown about in an awkward fashion except the drunk who by his chiastic of being drunk brings an awkwardness. Choosing to have a person who holds a prominent position as head of the group facing away from the viewer is a strong choice. Simply having people facing away from the viewer simply feels uncommon when compared to other pieces of the time, as if to say the viewer is not of importance but the actions being taken by those in the painting are. The simplicity of those actions are of importance as well as there are none being shown to be above what a human actually is during the time of the harvest, a field worker with lots to do before them and a community working together in order to accomplish the task. Humanism being the exploration of what man is without consideration of god is shown not with the highlighted bodies as many have shown before but in the commonance of the experience stretched out below. Even with the highlight being the actions of the people Brugel still does a good job at displaying the human body through the clothing as shown through his work on the legs of the farmers. Though I believe and it is shown in his other works like  The Haymaking  his skill with the upper body and the heads did lack somewhat. This may more have been due to the price of the commission and the time or effort he dedicated to the piece; as we see with other pieces like The Peasants Wedding a much greater showing of his skill in that department.

    As a final thought, while I would enjoy having a print of The Harvesters in my own home, I do not believe that it would fit with my current design. The piece itself would be better appreciated among other works of his collection in a smaller studio setting. The works work together well and the difference between his work and others who practice Humanism separates it enough to place it within its own collection. If it were placed with works of the southern renaissance it would not contrast enough for the statement to be strong enough for a collection and may in fact ostracize the piece within that style of collection.

“Reformation Timeline.” Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, inc., https://www.britannica.com/summary/Reformation-Timeline. Accessed 17 Jan. 2025.

“Pieter Bruegel the Elder.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 24 Dec. 2024, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pieter_Bruegel_the_Elder#/media/File:Pieter_Bruegel_the_Elder.   Accessed 17 Jan. 2025

Netherlandish, Pieter Bruegel the Elder. “Pieter Bruegel the Elder: The Harvesters.” The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1 Jan. 1565, https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/435809.Accessed 17 Jan. 2025 

Basic Art Principals

 Title: Ravens Landing

Creator: Naochika Morishita

Made in Japanese Branch Fromsoftware around 2020

The piece is from the art book produced in tandem with the game Armoured Core VI Fires for Rubicon made by: Naochika Morishita. This piece is a painting of the world at large and a person who has played the game can recognize multiply in game point from this one digital painting. I enjoy the piece as it expands upon the world that the game is set in and shows the player just how desolated the world is. Even though they tread upon that same landscape within the game the moment that is captured within the piece brings multiple mission locations together and showing how much more of the world is left untouched stuns those who have played the game. That they tread upon that same landscape as many mind boggling structures that hold reign above the player have all been left empty and desolate. The body of a mech at the bottom center of the digital painting can be barely seen as it moves across the landscape. This gives a scaling to the world around as the amount of space left before the form of the mech feels vast from how high up the observer is. It is also how the piece is not centered upon the actions of the Mech but at the world at large as there is a sense of new life coming from the desolated world below the factory. The artist Morishita conveys the new life approach excellency through his use of lighting and space work. It is for both my personal connection to the piece and the story it can tell to those without excessive knowledge of the setting that it holds such a high placement in my mind when it comes to art.

Space- The large amount of emptiness between the main body of the planet and the industrial zone grants room for the lighting of the piece to tell its own story throughout the whole of the area. Without all of the room to play around with lighting elements the piece would feel too compact and dreary unlike the new dawn that is trying to shine through in the factory. In those spaces one can see the moving ash clouds that are being swept up into the air and it  is the movement that those dust particles remain that allow the light to fill the empty terrain.Where that space is taken up it is held by these monstrously large elements like the support column or the smoke stacks as if they are trying to enforce their weakening grasp upon the world below them. The scaling element is done wonderfully in the piece by the tiny little Armoured Core moving across the bottom of the piece. This little robot is the only element other than lighting that shows movement and lets the observer place themselves in that comparatively small mech's shoes as the empty world before it just goes on forever. Where spac3e is taken away by the factory above there is still a feeling of emptiness though that can be attributed to more by the lack of movement is the factory. Yet if the factory was so large the lighting elements that are so important to the piece would be unable to reach through.

contrast/lighting- Many of the brighter elements of the piece are highlights done to show how the industrial landscape is blocking out great amounts of light on the world leading massive shadows stretching across the piece. The light source feels to be reaching through the empty industrial areas and finally touching the world again after being blocked out for so long. And the way the light shimmers off of the sand and smoke coming off of the surface gives it a much gentler touch as if it is establishing that while the sun is returning to the world it is still weak in its touch. The parts upon which lighting has yet to grace gives a feeling of retreat as if the darkness can no longer hold onto those sections and is trying to maintain its form to the best of its abilities. The factory also has few parts that are totally black and instead are browns and reds being a much gentler fade into the yellow/white lighting stretching through. That gentler contrast allows for the factory elements to feel all that much weaker than the planet below  becoming more of an afterthought the longer one finds hidden detail upon the surface below.

Shapes- The world that is shown in the painting has been stripped away of all form and all that is left is what man has brought upon the world. As the only shapes one can easily observe on the surface are that of tube systems for running fuel across the empty plains. Yet up above in the sky is an industrial complex pulling at what most people would think of when they think of a factory. Sat abruptly  front and center are tons of cylinders that are to act as smokestacks in the observer's mind from not only their cylindrical shape but also the formations at which they are set in. Yet with the smokestacks pointing towards the surface it shows how the industries are foisting off their waste onto the planet below and enforcing upon the planet a blank slate covering. One of the strongest shapes in the image is the massive rectangle(or support leg) resting upon the surface being one of the few strong connections the station above has to the planet. With that single strong connection holding the station above to the planet it feels almost out of place compared to the empty land below with it being such a prominent shape. The factory itself hits almost every element though when it comes to how one might think about a factory. Pulling upon the classical smokestacks yet incorporating the rings around them brings a much more futuristic appearance. Those little details of keeping the standard factory look in mind while pushing for a more futuristic look are not so abrupt as to dissuade a viewer, but seem to make perfect sense for what the Morishita wishes to display.

“Armored Core VI Fires of Rubicon.” Bandai Namco Europe, en.bandainamcoent.eu/armored-core/armored-core-vi-fires-of-rubicon. Accessed 16 Jan. 2025.

Https://X.Com/?Mx=2, x.com/?mx=2. Accessed 16 Jan. 2025.

Richard Davidge introduction

 Hi, my name is Richard S Davidge and have lived in Fairbanks Alaska most of my life. I am majoring in mechanical engineering currently, and am in my first year at UAF. I have had experience with the renaissance period of Italian and Germanic art, but am hoping to expand outside of Europe with this course. Having spent most of my life in Alaska I have a passion for getting outdoors be it in the snow, sun, or rain and hope to meet any of you on the ski slopes this season.

Most of my first hand experience with art comes from appreciating that which is done in a 3-d scale through video games and animations that are mostly found online. When it comes to 2-d pieces though much of my experience in recent years has been through storytelling mediums such as manga, high fantasy, and anime. If I do get the chance to go to museums outside of the state like when I am on vacation I usually take them but that is not an often occurrence for me. When it comes to making my own art I usually have stuck to either architectural design, literature, or 3-d modeling as I have found it to be much more entertaining to do art when it is of the 3-d variety.

Dragon mount Covers

O’Brien, Patrick. “Patrick O’Brien Studio.” Patrick O’Brien Studio, 2025, www.patrickobrienstudio.com/ships-at-sea-paintings. Accessed 13 Jan. 2025.

“Dragonmount.” Dragonmount, 7 Dec. 2021, dragonmount.com/gallery/category/6-us-book-cover-art/. Accessed 13 Jan. 2025.