Jacopo Negretti, called Palma il Giovane (Venice circa 1548-1628)
The Marriage of the Virgin
Oil on canvas
115 x 105cm (45 1/4 x 41 5/16in).
Private collection
The Marriage of the Virgin is the
subject in Christian art depicting the marriage of the Virgin Mary and Saint
Joseph. Unlike many other scenes in Life of the Virgin cycles (like the
Nativity of Mary and Presentation of Mary), it is not a feast in the church
calendar.
In art the
subject could be covered in several different scenes, and the betrothal of
Mary, with Joseph's blossoming rod, was often shown, despite its apocryphal
origin. Wedding processions are also shown, especially in the Early Medieval
period.
The Golden Legend recounts how,
when Mary was 14 and living in the Temple, the High Priest gathered all male
descendants of David of marriageable age including Saint Joseph (though he
was much older than the rest). The High Priest ordered them to each bring a
rod; he that owned the rod which would bear flowers was divinely ordained to
become Mary's husband. After the Holy Spirit descended as a dove and caused
Joseph's rod to blossom, he and Mary were wed according to Jewish custom. More The Marriage of the Virgin
He painted the new pastoral mythologies and half-length portraits, often of idealized beauties who, then as now, were enticingly suspected of being portraits of Venice's famous courtesans. He also painted religious pieces, in particular developing the sacra conversazioned. In other, secular, groups something seems to occurring between the figures, though exactly what is unclear. All these types of painting were patronized by wealthy Venetians for their homes.
He also painted traditional vertical altarpieces for churches inside Venice and around the Venetian territories on the mainland.
Palma's mature work from the 1520s shows a "High Renaissance style, characterized by his mastery of contrapposto, the enrichment of his high-keyed palette and the development of a dignified and diverse repertory of ideal human types in conservative compositions. More on Palma Vecchio
School of the Lower Rhine, circa 1510-15
THE BETRAYAL OF CHRIST
Oil on oak panel
89.1 x 72.3 cm.; 35 x 28 1/2 in.
Private collection
More broadly, a Judas kiss may refer to "an act appearing to be an act of friendship, which is in fact harmful to the recipient" More on the Betrayal of Christ
Till-Holger Borchert situates this works in the immediate milieu of the workshop of Derick Baegert and his son Jan in Wesel.
Derick Baegert, (?), ca. 1440 - Wesel, ca. 1515, was the head of a family of painters who worked in the Rhineland area in Germany during the last third of the 15th century and the first third of the 16th. Baegert organised a productive workshop in Wesel with his son Jan and Jan Joest, who was possibly his nephew. He also worked in Dortmund, Cologne and Kalkar. Stylistic similarities between his work and that of the Utrecht school suggests that he trained there. In 1476 he is recorded in Wesel, a city where his son worked as an independent master in 1490. Father and son travelled together to the Low Countries in 1482, a fact that is crucial for the evolution of their art. Although he borrowed elements from Netherlandish art, Derick’s style always remained close to that of the late Gothic. He tended to locate his figures in a narrow zone that acts as an intermediary point between the foreground and background. More on Derick Baegert
Master of the Female Half-Lengths
VIRGIN AND CHILD IN A LANDSCAPE, TOGETHER WITH TWO WINGS DEPICTING MALE AND FEMALE DONORS AND THEIR CHILDREN WITH SAINTS SEBASTIAN AND GERTRUDE OF NIVELLES
Oil on panel
central panel: 68 x 41.5 cm.; 26 3/4 x 16 1/4 in.
wings, each: 72 x 19 cm.; 28 1/4 x 7 1/2 in.
Private collection
The works were apparently the product of a large workshop that specialized in small-scale panels depicting aristocratic young ladies at half-length. The ladies are engaging in various activities such as reading, writing, or playing musical instruments and are typically placed in a wood-panelled interior or against a neutral background. Some of the women are represented with an ointment jar, the attribute of Mary Magdalene. To the Master are also attributed a few paintings of mythological subjects and copies of standardized compositions such as the Crucifixion, the Deposition, the Virgin of Sorrows, St Jerome and Lucretia.
There is no agreement on the Master’s identity and the place and period of his activity. Antwerp, Bruges, Ghent, Mechelen and the French court have been proposed for the location of his workshop. Estimates for his period of activity vary from the early to the late 16th century. More on The Master of the Female Half-Lengths
Master of the Female Half-Lengths
THE TWO WINGS DEPICTING MALE AND FEMALE DONORS AND THEIR CHILDREN WITH SAINTS SEBASTIAN AND GERTRUDE OF NIVELLES
oil on panel
central panel: 68 x 41.5 cm.; 26 3/4 x 16 1/4 in.
wings, each: 72 x 19 cm.; 28 1/4 x 7 1/2 in.
Private collection
Saint Sebastian (died c. 288
AD) was an early Christian saint and
martyr. Sebastian had prudently concealed his faith, but in 286 was
detected. Diocletian reproached him for his betrayal, and he commanded him to
be led to a field and there to be bound to a stake so that archers from
Mauritania would shoot arrows at him. "And the archers shot at him till he
was as full of arrows as an urchin is full of pricks, and thus left him there
for dead." Miraculously, the arrows did not kill him.
Sebastian later stood by a staircase where the emperor
was to pass and harangued Diocletian for his cruelties against Christians. This
freedom of speech, and from a person whom he supposed to have been dead,
greatly astonished the emperor; but, recovering from his surprise, he gave
orders for his being seized and beat to death with cudgels, and his body thrown
into the common sewer. A pious lady, called Lucina, admonished by the martyr in
a vision, got it privately removed, and buried it in the catacombs at the
entrance of the cemetery of Calixtus, where now stands the Basilica of St.
Sebastian. More St.
Sebastian
SAINT GERTRUDE OF NIVELLES was born at Landen, Belgium in 626 and died at Nivelles, 659. Both her parents, Pepin of Landen and Itta were held to be holy by those who knew them; her sister Begga is numbered among the Saints. On her husband's death in 640, Itta founded a Benedictine monastery at Nivelles, which is near Brussels, and appointed Gertrude its abbess when she reached twenty, tending to her responsibilities well, with her mother's assistance, and following her in giving encouragement and help to monks, particularly Irish ones, to do missionary work in the locale.
She was known for her hospitality to pilgrims and her aid to missionary monks from Ireland as we indicated above: She gave land to one monk so that he could build a monastery at Fosse. By her early thirties Gertrude had become so weakened by the austerity of abstaining from food and sleep that she had to resign her office, and spent the rest of her days studying Scripture and doing penance.
Devotion to St. Gertrude became widely spread in the Lowlands and neighboring countries.
Another patronage is to travelers on the high seas. It is held that one sailor, suffering misfortune while under sail, prayed to the Saint and was delivered safely. More on Saint Gertrude
John William Waterhouse, (1849–1917
Saint Cecilia, c. 1895
Oil on canvas
Legion of Honor, San Francisco
Saint Cecilia is the patroness of musicians. It is written that as the musicians
played at her wedding she "sang in her heart to the Lord". She is one
of seven women, excluding the Blessed Virgin, commemorated by name in the Canon
of the Mass.
According
to the story, despite her vow of virginity, she was forced by her parents to
marry a nobleman named Valerian. During the wedding, Cecilia sat apart singing
to God in her heart, and for that she was later declared the saint of
musicians. When the time came for her marriage to be consummated, Cecilia told
Valerian that she had an angel of the Lord watching over her who would punish
him if he dared to violate her virginity but who would love him if he could
respect her maidenhood. When Valerian asked to see the angel, Cecilia replied
that he would see the angel if he would go to the third milestone on the Via
Appia (the Appian Way) and be baptized by Pope Urbanus.] After his baptism, he
found an angel standing by the side of Cecilia, and crowning her with a chaplet
of roses and lilies.
The martyrdom of Cecilia is said to have
followed that of Valerian and his brother by the prefect Turcius Almachius. The
legend about Cecilia’s death says that after being struck three times on the
neck with a sword, she lived for three days, and asked the pope to convert her
home into a church. More on Saint Cecilia
John William Waterhouse (April 6,
1849 – February 10, 1917) was an English painter known for working
in the Pre-Raphaelite style. He worked several decades after the breakup of the
Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, which had seen its heyday in the mid-nineteenth
century, leading to his sobriquet "the modern Pre-Raphaelite".
Borrowing stylistic influences not only from the earlier Pre-Raphaelites but
also from his contemporaries, the Impressionists, his artworks were known for
their depictions of women from both ancient Greek mythology and Arthurian legend.
Born in Italy to English parents who were both painters, he
later moved to London, where he enrolled in the Royal Academy of Art. He soon
began exhibiting at their annual summer exhibitions, focusing on the creation
of large canvas works depicting scenes from the daily life and mythology of
ancient Greece. Later on in his career he came to embrace the Pre-Raphaelite
style of painting despite the fact that it had gone out of fashion in the
British art scene several decades before. More on John
William Waterhouse
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