The tossers - their positions and order of perorations were decided by the toss of a coin and the servile BBC managed to keep Palestine off the agenda- #shame
Old artists have a lumber room of memories, Michelangelo, Christ appearing to his mother, late 1550s from the Ashmolean in the British Museum #michelangelothelastdecades exhibition. Beautiful but a bit ghostlike as are many of the Ashmolean drawings which have had a hard life. There seems to be a memory of the Botticelli illustrations to the Paradiso of the Divine Comedy with Dante and Beatrice, here in Canto five, which Michelangelo almost certainly saw in his youth in Florence as he was connected to the patron and a profound and recognised knowledge of the text. What this gave him was, dead/alive + male/female + floating/fixed- contrast. This memory took him beyond, what is probably the iconographic source in the Dürer small passion. Botticelli resonated with a series of Michelangelo two figure male/female encounter composition going back to the Noli me Tangere for Victoria Colona. I would think this is visual memory rather than a specific reference to the text.as Botticelli was an artist who was particularly significant to him as he broke from boring Ghirlandaio. The figure of Christ is influenced or taken from a hanging suspended wax or clay model a practice which we know Michelangelo used when preparing the last judgement and it looks as if Botticelli did the same #botticelli#dante#michelangelo#beatrice#Ashmolean museum #British muse
Till the end of July with the inspiring exhibition at the British Museum London is the place to think of Michelangelo as creator of altarpieces with the, so called Epifania cartoon displayed beside its the painted realisation by his biographer Ascanio Condivi on loan from Florence. It’s revealing to compare to the Entombment in the National Gallery painted some fifty years before. The compositions have quite a lot in common turning almost swirling around the Virgin and Child and Jesus’ body respectively articulated by turned shoulders and meaningful glances. Both I think gospel narratives or ‘historie’, the Epifania exploring the broader family of connected to the Virgin and St Elizabeth and the Entombment the three Marys. My take away from the British Museum exhibition is that the painting by Condivi is much more considerable work than it is generally held to be and is an authentic and sensitive rendering of Michelangelo’s conception despite being a bit cackhanded. I suspect assuming that the assistants were also involved with painting the Entombment the process of making would have had analogies. Michelangelo was constantly thinking about big altarpieces, as a pupil with Ghirlandaio and later providing Sebastiano del Piombo with designs. Finally the key ellement of his architectural design at St Peter’s and San Giovanni de Fiorentini both turn on constellations of chapels each of which would have required an altar piece. #britishmuseum#michelangelothelastdecades#casabuonarroti#ascaniocondivi no
Design without ornament or period or style reference which is a precondition for modernism. Cristopher Dresser, Toast Rack c1880, - ascribed to Thomas Telford, Gallows Bridge, Brentford, 1820 - William Etheridge, Walton Bridge,1750, - Andre Palladio, two designs for wooden bridges , 1570 #christopherdresser#thomastelford#limyoungwoong#andreapalladio What Etheridge seems to have done at Walton and in the so-called mathematical bridge at Queens College Cambridge is combine the two Palladio designs. #mathematicalbridge#queenscollegecambridge
