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Showing posts from June, 2023

Baroque Blog Post

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Saint Jerome Writing by Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio (1605-1606)      This Baroque-era piece by Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio depicts Saint Jerome leaned over a script in his study, deep in concentration. The dark shading and highly detailed features of Saint Jerome are characteristic of the Baroque style of painting from the time. Saint Jerome is a Catholic saint from the 300s that had a large impact on the Latin translation of the Bible as well as church doctrine at the time.          I believe that this painting can definitely be seen as awe inspiring. The painting is more or less split into two main parts. There is a dark portion containing a skull, and an illuminated portion containing Saint Jerome and his holy scripture. The dark and skull represents eventual death, and the lighter parts of the painting represent things that live on without dying. The scripture will never die, and Saint Jerome has an eternal soul. The awe inspiring part of this is Saint Jerome's dedi

Renaissance Blog

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  Art Analysis of The School of Athens The School of Athens  by Raphael Sanzio (1509-1511), Vatican City     Raphael's fresco, The School of Athens , captures many of the essential aspects of the Italian Renaissance art style. The perspective and foreshortening of the fresco are used to bring the viewer's gaze to the main point of the art piece: Plato and Aristotle. Sfumato is also used all over the painting to aid the foreshortening in creating the illusion of a three-dimensional space on a flat wall.     The School of Athens  is one of a set of four frescos that were created to represent the "four branches" of knowledge. Fittingly,  The School of Athens  is the fresco that represents the branch of philosophical knowledge. This painting is related particularly closely to the Catholic reinvention of Rome.  The School of Athens  was painted as a fresco directly onto a well in the Vatican Palace. Raphael was commissioned by Pope Julius II, who was famous for his vision

Art analysis of Wanderer Above the Sea Fog

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Art analysis of the  Wanderer Above the Sea Fog Wanderer above the Sea of Fog  by Caspar David Friedrich (1818) in Germany      This painting has been floating around in my mind since my early childhood (albeit in different forms). My first exposure to this painting came in the form of the in-game rendition of it in the popular game Minecraft. Like many young adults these days, it was one of the first games I had ever played, and memories from it have stuck with me for what has now been nearly half my life, and this painting is among those memories. While admittedly the Minecraft version of the painting does not come with much detail I think it captures a surprising level of the essence of the original painting. The posture and coloring alone communicate the solitude and the stark nature of the wanderer against a background of natural colors. Kristoffer Zetterstrand (~early 2000s) (location unknown)      Luckily I was not left with the Minecraft rendition as my only experience of this