GOOSE ART TUESDAYS!!!

From the Metropolitan Museum of Art:

“The jade articles in the case to the right include belt fittings, ornaments for men’s hats, and a seal used by senior officials. One of the belt fittings and a hat ornament both display a scene of a falcon attacking a wild goose. The annual spring hunt for geese (or swans) was an important event for nomadic peoples in North China, beginning with the Khitans of the Liao dynasty (907–1125) and continuing under the Mongols.”

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Unknown Chinese artist

Belt Slide with a Falcon Attacking a Goose, 12th–14th century

demonagerie:

Bibliothèque nationale de France, Latin 757, f. 286v (Martyrdom of St Stephen). Missale ad usum fratrum minorum. Milan, c.1385-1390.

Stoning is hard work.

My favorite part of this is that the man in red so engrossed with this stoning that he’s having some kind of major wardrobe malfunction.

(via caravaggista)

This blog is likely going to be a little slow until school starts up again but I’ll try to keep posting a modest amount of pretty pictures for you all.

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Master of the Triumph of Death

Triumph of Death, c.1330s

Gaddi was a student of Giotto and he paints in a very similar style except he had an obsession with studying the effects of light. His work at the Baroncelli Chapel in Florence, where this scene is from, is his best known art.

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Taddeo Gaddi

Annunciation to the Shepherds, 1327-1330

Small ivory devotional altars like this were popular for those who could afford them throughout the medieval and early renaissance era. They acted as a sort of portable prayer station. This one here shows the popular International Gothic style, as evidenced in the gracefully curved figure of the Virgin, and still contains traces of the polychrome paint that would have originally coloured it.

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Unknown French artist

Tabernacle with Scenes from the Life of the Virgin, 14th century

I’ve been too busy this week to blog regularly so in the meantime, enjoy this gorgeous 14th century Italian altarpiece.

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Lorenzo Veneziano

Lion Polyptych, 1357

This fresco resides in the San Miniato al Monte Sachristy, Florence. Aretino completed a series of works here depicting stories from the life of St. Benedict, a saint closely associated with exorcisms as is evident above. Aretino was a follower of the revolutionary Giotto di Bondone and his influence can be seen in the rounded tube-like construction of the figures.

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Spinello Aretino

Exorcism of St. Benedict, 1387 

It took artists awhile to figure out a way to depict a full grown man lying on his mother without it being painfully awkward looking, as evidenced in the medieval Pietàs above. Michelangelo, with his brilliance at handling complicated compositions, buffs up the Virgin with flowing robes so she can be large enough to hold her son in her lap while still retaining her graceful appearance. 

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Unknown, Pietà, c.1330 

Unknown, Křivákova Pietà, 1390-1400

Unknown, Pietà, c.1400 Bohemian

Michelangelo Buonarroti, Pietà, 1498–1499