2015

S4.E1 ∙ L'astronome, Vermeer, 1668

Wed, Dec 31, 1969

Most of Johannes Vermeer's paintings, when it comes to characters, show women of Delft in a home environment. The artist nevertheless made three exceptions making a man the object of his interest., one of which is "The Astronomer" about a a scientist of his time at his table. This remarkable picture is a valuable reflection of the extraordinary scientific and cultural expansion in the United Provinces in the seventeenth century.

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S4.E2 ∙ La Ronde de nuit, Rembrandt, 1642

Sat, Dec 09, 2017

Everything you always wanted to know about one of the most famous paintings of art history. You will learn, among other things, why it is called "The Night Watch" whereas it is daytime, who are the militiamen represented, why the painting is so huge, why although the subject was treated several times in the Dutch Golden Age, only Rembrandt's work can be regarded as a masterpiece.

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S4.E3 ∙ Le deux mai 1808 à Madrid, 1814, Francisco Goya

Sat, Dec 16, 2017

On his way to Portugal, then allied with the English, Emperor Napoleon stopped in Spain and aroused the anger of the patriots by deposing the king and replacing him with his brother Joseph. From 1808 to 1814, the Spaniards rose up against the French invaders, starting on May 2, 1808, when they attacked the stagecoaches in charge of exfiltrating the royal children to France. When the king of Spain, restored to his throne, commissioned Goya to paint a picture commemorating the heroic struggle of the people, the painter chose the violent confrontation of May 2, in which he expressed all the violence of the assault on the emperor's troops.

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S4.E4 ∙ Femmes à la terrasse d'un café le soir, Edgar Degas, 1877

Sat, Dec 23, 2017

Degas, one of the leaders of the uncompromising Impressionists, chose in 1877 a daring genre scene, close to the photographic snapshot. What he shows us are prostitutes on the terrace of a café on the Grands Boulevards, one of whom is tapping her fingernail against her tooth, seemingly saying "not just that" about a customer's lack of generosity. Zola's naturalism here joins the theme of urban life, a major theme examined by all the Impressionists. In any case, the painting is miles away from the neoclassicism in vogue at the time, at the (claimed) risk of disconcerting the bourgeois.

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S4.E5 ∙ Vue de Varsovie depuis la terrasse du Chateau Royal, Bernardo Bellotto, 1773

Sat, Dec 30, 2017

Born in Venice in 1721, trained by his famous uncle Canaletto, the famous landscape painter Bernardo Bellotto did not stick to the City of the Doges. He was rather the rolling stone kind, traveling from one European court to another (Dresden, Vienna, Munich). In 1764, he accepted an invitation from Poland's newly elected King Stanislaus Augustus Poniatowski later (from 1768) to become his court painter in Warsaw.. Happy to work in Poland at he service of an enlightened monarch he settled down and remained there for 16 years, until his death. This is where, in 1773, he painted an intriguing "veduta" of the Polish capital and the environs of the Castle entitled "A View of Warsaw from the Royal Castle".

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