Paintings Done By Michelangelo

Caravaggio & Co. coming to Canada

By Paul Gessell

The main summer exhibition at the National Gallery of Canada six years ago was tantalizingly — but misleadingly — titled Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo and the Renaissance in Florence.

Unwary tourists seeing exhibition advertisements undoubtedly anticipated many works by the two Italian Renaissance superstars. Alas, the gallery sported only one drawing by Michelangelo and two by da Vinci, one just mere doodles. Most walls were covered by paintings and drawings from artists largely unknown to the general population. In other words, these were artists not famous enough to see their works routinely reproduced on fridge magnets, T-shirts and tacky statuettes.

This summer, the big show is Caravaggio and His Followers in Rome. This time, the title is not misleading. There are a dozen Caravaggio paintings in this exhibition opening June 17. If you love Caravaggio, this is the summer to swoon. as the sun, with the similarly themed works as the planets orbiting around it.

There will be similarly themed groupings for paintings of card sharps, another for portrayals of youths and musicians, another for individual saints, and yet another on religious scenes. Along with the aforementioned, some other “followers” include Gerrit van Honthorst, Cecco del Caravaggio, Theodor Rombouts and Bartolomeo Cavarozzi.

Goldfarb describes this solar-system type of arrangement as “brilliant.” It will allow visitors to compare the talent of Caravaggio with that of his followers or, one might say, his imitators. And there were imitators, to such an extent that, 401 years after Caravaggio’s death, the experts have difficulty deciding which paintings were done by the master and which by his acolytes. This process is complicated by the fact that Caravaggio sometimes made copies, and not always identical copies, of his own works. And just to get you really confused, Caravaggio experts sometimes give slightly different names to the same painting.

Not all experts are convinced he was bisexual, but most agree he was a counter-culture rebel, a so-called “proto-modernist” who broke with tradition to pave the way for realism. Caravaggio painted people as he saw them, dirty feet and all. Not for him the muscle-bound, idealized bodies of Michelangelo, who was born a century before Caravaggio.

Legend has it that when Caravaggio was commissioned to paint the death of the Virgin Mary for a church altar, he found the corpse of a prostitute to serve as a model. The painting was rejected because of “decorum.” Along with the unsuitability of the bloated model, Caravaggio had transgressed one of the many rigid church rules regarding depictions of Mary: He showed a small length of uncovered leg.

Ollie Sungkar: Renaissance Revisited

The word “renaissance” is identical with the cultural movement spanned roughly from the14th to 17th century beginning in Florence in the late Middle Ages and later spread to the rest of Europe. It is derived from a French word, literally means revival or rebirth after the everlasting war and killing plague. The era also heralded a movement encompassing art, politics, science, religion and many other important aspects of life, marking the end of the middle ages in Europe and the assimilation of other cultures into Europe, particularly Middle Eastern and Greece. It was closely followed by the study of human anatomy for an accurate portrayal in which Leonardo da Vinci is famous for. The ceiling of Sistine Chapel in Apostolic Palace, Vatican City, serves as the canvas for paintings done by Michelangelo. Meanwhile, the worldly renowned masterpiece Mona Lisa and the iconic Vitruvian Man by Leonardo da Vinci eternalize the artist’s name who is also known as an inventor, sculptor, scientist—dubbed as The Renaissance Man. Another point in characterizing Renaissance paintings is Christian and Bible imagery, often in large scale and frequently cycles painted in fresco such as the Life of Christ, the Life of the Virgin Mary or the Life of A Saint. Apart from large altarpieces, small devotional pictures were produced in very large numbers, both for churches and for private individuals. The most common theme is the Madonna and Child. Portraiture became common during the 15th century, often formalised profile portraits but increasingly three-quarter face and bust-length portraits. It was also common to include patrons of art works such as altarpieces and fresco cycles, and the renowned example are those of the Sassetti and Medici families in Ghirlandaio's cycle in the Sassetti Chapel. Portraiture was also a major subject for High Renaissance painters such as Raphael and Titian, continued into the Mannerist period in works of artists such as Bronzino. Artists turned to classical themes along with the growth of humanism, especially to fulfill commissions resulted from the decoration of the homes of wealthy patrons, the best known being Botticelli's Birth of Venus for the Medici. Classical themes were also seen as providing suitable allegorical material for civic commissions, increasingly. Humanism also influenced the manner in which religious themes were depicted, notably on Michelangelo's Ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.

History of art, the Western tradition

The paintings of Michelangelo

Michelangelo Buonarroti

The encyclopædia britannica, a dictionary of arts, sciences, literature and general information

Michelangelo, paintings, sculpture, architecture