10 Paintings, RELIGIOUS ART - Interpretations of the Bible! by The Old Masters, With Footnotes # 47

Religious art is a visual representation of religious ideologies and their relationship with humans. Sacred art directly relates to religious art in the sense that its purpose is for worship and religious practices. According to one set of definitions, artworks that are inspired by religion but are not considered traditionally sacred remain under the umbrella term of religious art. More on Religious art 

Raphael, 1483 – 1520
The Miraculous Draught of Fishes, c. 1515-1516
Bodycolour on paper on canvas
320 × 390 cm
Victoria and Albert Museum, London

Pope Leo X commissions Raphael to design ten draperies for the lower parts of the walls of the Sistine Chapel. In 1515-16 Raphael creates the cartoons for the wool and silk draperies to be manufactured in Pieter van Aelst's workshop in Brussels. Seven cartoons survive today, and are kept in the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. Four draperies show scenes from the life of Peter, the other six of Paul's.

This cartoon shows the Lake of Gennesaret, better known as Lake Tiberias or the Sea of Galilee. Peter, still known as Simon at the time, has been fishing all night, but has caught nothing. Jesus asks Peter if he can address a crowd from his boat. Afterwards Jesus tells Peter to throw out his nets, which he does. When he hauls them back in, he is stunned to find them full of fish. Peter immediately joins Jesus, soon after followed by his mates James and John. More on this painting

Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino (April 6 or March 28, 1483 – April 6, 1520), known as Raphael, was an Italian painter and architect of the High Renaissance. His work is admired for its clarity of form, ease of composition, and visual achievement of the Neoplatonic ideal of human grandeur. Together with Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci, he forms the traditional trinity of great masters of that period.
Raphael was enormously productive, running an unusually large workshop and, despite his death at 37, leaving a large body of work. Many of his works are found in the Vatican Palace. The best known work is The School of Athens in the Vatican Stanza della Segnatura. After his early years in Rome much of his work was executed by his workshop from his drawings, with considerable loss of quality. He was extremely influential in his lifetime, though outside Rome his work was mostly known from his collaborative printmaking. More Raffaello

Caravaggio (Michelangelo Merisi) (Italian, Milan or Caravaggio, 1571–1610 Porto Ercole)
The Denial of Saint Peter, c. 1610
Oil on canvas
37 x 49 3/8 in. (94 x 125.4 cm)
The Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Denial of Saint Peter. Standing before a fireplace, the apostle Peter is accused of being a follower of Jesus. The pointing finger of the soldier and the two fingers of the woman allude to the three accusations recounted in the Bible as well as to Peter's three denials. The composition is reduced to essentials. The soldier's helmet is taken from a precise model of the early sixteenth century, thus breaking down the fiction of an imagined past. More The Denial

Caravaggio (Michelangelo Merisi) (Italian, Milan or Caravaggio 1571–1610 Porto Ercole)
The Martyrdom of Saint Ursula, c. 1610
Oil on canvas
Height: 154 cm (60.6 in). Width: 178 cm (70.1 in).
Palazzo Zevallos, Naples

Saint Ursula (Latin for "little female bear") is a Romano-British Christian saint. Because of the lack of definite information about her and the anonymous group of holy virgins who accompanied her and on some uncertain date were killed at Cologne, they were removed from the Roman Martyrology and their commemoration was omitted from the General Roman Calendar when it was revised in 1969.

Her legend, probably not historical, is that she was a princess who, at the request of her father King Dionotus of Dumnonia in south-west Britain, set sail to join her future husband, the pagan governor Conan Meriadoc of Armorica, along with 11,000 virginal handmaidens. After a miraculous storm brought them over the sea in a single day to a Gaulish port, Ursula declared that before her marriage she would undertake a pan-European pilgrimage. She headed for Rome with her followers and persuaded the Pope, Cyriacus, and Sulpicius, bishop of Ravenna, to join them. More Saint Ursula

According to legend, Saint Ursula traveled with her eleven thousand virgins to Cologne, where the chief of the Huns besieging the city fell in love with her. When she rejected his advances, he killed her with an arrow. In this depiction, Caravaggio places the two figures improbably close to each other, maximizing the contrast between their expressions: Ursula’s perplexed gaze at the agent of her martyrdom; the tyrant’s conflicted reactions of rage and guilt. Caravaggio includes himself as a spectator, straining for a glimpse, while another figure thrusts his hand forward in an abortive effort to prevent the saint’s execution. The exaggerated contrasts between dark and light seem not merely a dramatic device but a symbolic allusion to sin and redemption, death and life. More on this painting

Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio (29 September 1571 in Caravaggio – 18 July 1610) was an Italian painter active in Rome, Naples, Malta, and Sicily between 1592 and 1610. His paintings, which combine a realistic observation of the human state, both physical and emotional, with a dramatic use of lighting, had a formative influence on Baroque painting.
Caravaggio trained as a painter in Milan under Simone Peterzano who had himself trained under Titian. In his twenties Caravaggio moved to Rome where there was a demand for paintings to fill the many huge new churches and palazzos being built at the time. It was also a period when the Church was searching for a stylistic alternative to Mannerism in religious. Caravaggio's innovation was a radical naturalism that combined close physical observation with a dramatic use of chiaroscuro which came to be known as tenebrism (the shift from light to dark with little intermediate value).
He gained attention in the art scene of Rome in 1600 with the success of his first public commissions, the Martyrdom of Saint Matthew and Calling of Saint Matthew. Thereafter he never lacked commissions or patrons, yet he handled his success poorly. He was jailed on several occasions, vandalized his own apartment, and ultimately had a death sentence pronounced against him by the Pope after killing a young man, possibly unintentionally, on May 29, 1606. He fled from Rome with a price on his head. He was involved in a brawl in Malta in 1608, and another in Naples in 1609. This encounter left him severely injured. A year later, at the age of 38, he died under mysterious circumstances in Porto Ercole in Tuscany, reportedly from a fever while on his way to Rome to receive a pardon.
Famous while he lived, Caravaggio was forgotten almost immediately after his death, and it was only in the 20th century that his importance to the development of Western art was rediscovered. More on Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio

Attr. To François Venant
Crucifixion between the two thieves
Oil on oak panel
34 13/16 X 47 5/8 IN. 88,5 X 121 CM
Private collection

Estimate for €4,000 - €6,000 in Oct 2018

François Venant was a Dutch painter; born in Midellburg in 1591 , buried in Amsterdam on17 March 1636.

François Venant was part of a group of artists called pre-rembranesques, that is to say painters before Rembrandt.

17th century French school,
Christ in front of Pilate
Oil on canvas
92 1/8 X 87 IN. 234 X 221 CM
Private collection

Sold for 5,460.00 € in Mar 2017

John 18:28-40. Then the Jewish leaders took Jesus from Caiaphas to the palace of the Roman governor Pilate. By now it was early morning, and to avoid ceremonial uncleanness they did not enter the palace, because they wanted to be able to eat the Passover. 

17th-century French art is generally referred to as Baroque, but from the mid to late 17th century, the style of French art shows a classical adherence to certain rules of proportion and sobriety uncharacteristic of the Baroque as it was practiced in Southern and Eastern Europe during the same period.

In the early part of the 17th century, late mannerist and early Baroque tendencies continued to flourish in the court of Marie de' Medici and Louis XIII. Art from this period shows influences from both the north of Europe and from Roman painters of the Counter-Reformation. Artists in France frequently debated the merits between Peter Paul Rubens and Nicolas Poussin.

There was also a strong Caravaggio school represented in the period by the candle-lit paintings of Georges de La Tour. The wretched and the poor were featured in an almost Dutch manner in the paintings by the three Le Nain brothers. In the paintings of Philippe de Champaigne there are both propagandistic portraits of Louis XIII' s minister Cardinal Richelieu and other more contemplative portraits of people in the Jansenist sect. More 17th-century French art 

Gortzius Geldorp, LEUVEN 1553 - 1618 COLOGNE
THE VIRGIN IN PRAYER
Oil on oak panel
62.8 x 47.8 cm.; 24 5/8  x 18 7/8  in
Private collection

Estimated for €3,500 EUR - €4,000 EUR in Dec 2022

Gortzius Geldorp (1553–1618) was a Flemish Renaissance artist who was active in Germany where he distinguished himself through his portrait paintings. Geldorp was born in Leuven. Geldorp first learned to paint from Frans Francken I and later from Frans Pourbus the Elder.

Geldorp became court painter to the Duke of Terra Nova, Carlo d'Aragona Tagliavia, whom he accompanied on his trips. He travelled to Cologne with the Duke who was participating in peace negotiations with the Dutch Republic. Geldorp stayed in the city while remaining a companion of the Duke on his travels. In 1610 Geldorp took over the seat of Barthel Bruyn the Younger on the city council of Cologne. Geldorp was a successful portrait painter working for the aristocracy and other prominent patrons. More Gortzius Geldorp

Andrea Vaccaro, NAPLES 1604 - 1670
THE PENITENT MAGDALENE
oil on canvas, 
oval 89 x 73.5 cm.; 35 x 29 in.
Private collection

Mary Magdalene provides a lens to view the role of the feminine in religion and culture over the centuries. She has been variously portrayed as a wealthy benefactress to Jesus and his followers, as a prostitute, as an apostle, as an ascetic, as a contemplative, and as Jesus' companion. In these various roles, she is viewed as an individual, and her individuality allows an exploration of the feminine in Christianity. Her life is reflected not only in the New Testament descriptions of her but also in the Gnostic Book of Mary and the Gnostic Gospels found at Nag Hammadi in Upper Egypt. In the New Testament Gospels, she is identified as the privileged person who found the empty tomb and to whom the resurrected Christ first appeared. Earlier in the Christian Bible, she is described as among the wealthy women who provided material support for Jesus' teaching. In the Book of Mary, she is said to be the most beloved among the disciples and is described there as the female apostle. In the Nag Hammadi Gnostic Gospels, she is referred to as a leader who went forth along with the other disciples in the Book of Thomas and as companion to Jesus in the Book of Philip. More Mary Magdalene

Andrea Vaccaro (baptised on 8 May 1604 – 18 January 1670) was an Italian painter of the Baroque period. Vaccaro was in his time one of the most successful painters in Naples, a city then under Spanish rule. Very successful and valued in his lifetime, Vaccaro and his workshop produced many religious works for local patrons as well as for export to Spanish religious orders and noble patrons. More Andrea Vaccaro

Guido Cagnacci,  (1601–1663)
Martha blames Mary for her Vanity, c. after 1660
Oil on canvas
229 × 266 cm (90.2 × 104.7 in)
Norton Simon Museum, Pasadena

This is no ordinary representation of Mary Magdalene, who became a follower of Christ and later, a saint. Traditionally shown holding a skull and contemplating her morality, here she lies almost naked on the ground, begged by her virtuous sister Martha to abandon her sinful life of vice and luxury. Virtue, a blond-haired angel, chases out Vice, a devil who bites his hand in anger as he turns for a last look at the Magdalene. The painting is a celebration of the triumph of virtue over vice, but Cagnacci takes obvious pleasure in describing worldly temptations – in particular, the attention he lavishes on the expensive costume, beautiful shoes, and jewellery scattered across the floor. More on Martha blames Mary for her Vanity

Guido Cagnacci, (January 19, 1601 – 1663) was an Italian painter of the Baroque period, who produced many works characterized by their use of chiaroscuro and their sensual subjects. Cagnacci was born in Santarcangelo di Romagna, near Rimini. He worked in Rimini from 1627 to 1642. After that, he moved to work in Forlì, where he would have been able to observe the paintings of Melozzo.

In Rome he may have had an apprenticeship with the elderly Ludovico Carracci in Bologna. His initial output includes many devotional subjects. But moving to Venice under the name of Guico Baldo Canlassi da Bologna, he dedicated himself to private salon paintings, often depicting sensuous naked women from thigh upwards. In 1658, he traveled to Vienna, where he remained under patronage of the Emperor Leopold I. He died in Vienna in 1663. More Guido Cagnacci 

Unknown
Unknown woman, formerly known as Margaret Pole, Countess of Salisbury, 
circa 1535
National Portrait Gallery

Blessed Margaret Pole, Countess of Salisbury (14 August 1473 – 27 May 1541), was born August 14, 1473. She was the Countess of Salisbury and she was distantly in line for the throne of England. Being a possible successor to the throne called for danger. She was only three years old when her mother died and a few years later her father died as well.

When Margaret was about eighteen years old, she married a distant relative, Sir Richard Pole. Her marriage was a happy one. She had five children; one of them became a cardinal and later, Archbishop of Canterbury. In 1505, Margaret was widowed.

Then, years later, she became godmother and governess to Princess Mary, daughter of to King Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon. When King Henry wanted to divorce Catherine of Aragon, Margaret’s son, Cardinal Reginald Pole, spoke out against the decision. The entire Pole family was against the divorce.

The king found this insulting and threatening. Because the family was against his decision, they were exiled from the court and stripped of their titles. No longer was Margret a governess to the young princess.

Eventually, she was taken to the Tower of London. And two years later, she was beheaded. Two of her sons would soon die for the same cause.

On December 29, 1886, she was beatified by Pope Leo XIII along with other English martyrs. Her feast day is May 28, the day she died in 1541. She was around seventy years old.  More Blessed Margaret Pole





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