01 Work, RELIGIOUS ART - Interpretation of the bible, With Footnotes - 152

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

Palma Vecchio (c. 1480 – July 1528), born Jacopo Palma and also known as Jacopo Negretti, was an Venetian painter of the Italian Renaissance. Palma is first recorded in Venice in 1510, but had probably already been there for some time. Palma came to follow the new style and subjects pioneered by Giorgione and Titian. After the deaths of Bellini and Giorgione, and the removal from Venice of Sebastiano del Piombo, Lorenzo Lotto and Previtali, before long Palma found himself, after Titian, the leading painter in Venice. 

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

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01 Works CONTEMPORARY Interpretation of the Bible! With Footnotes - 35

Robert Combas, (b. 1957)

The Crusaders or the Crusade, 1986 

Acrylic on canvas 

Signed and dated lower right 

162 x 135 cm

Private collection

Robert Combas is a French painter and sculptor, born May 25, 1957 in Lyon, France and now living and working in Paris.

He is widely recognized as a progenitor of the figuration libre movement that began in Paris around 1980 as a reaction to the art establishment in general and minimalism and conceptual art in particular.

Combas’ own work has always been strongly rooted in depictions of the human figure. The figures are often in wild, violent or orgiastic settings. Usually on large, often unstretched canvases, Combas crowds his flat pictorial space with a teeming proliferation of bodies, street poetry and designs reminiscent of the compulsive patterning in much folk and outsider art. He creates hectic narratives of war, crime, sex, celebration and transgression.

While Combas’ works often seem to carry an element of shock or confrontation, he insists the images are meant to engage the viewer, and their execution in vibrant color and bold, unfettered line communicate a spirit of proletarian camaraderie that offsets the tendency to overwhelm, in the larger works especially. More on Robert Combas

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02 Works, CONTEMPORARY Interpretation of the Bible! With Footnotes - 28

Andrés Serrano
HEAVEN AND HELL, c. 1984

27.5 X 40 in (69.85 X 101.6 cm)

Cibachrome

Edition Number: 9/10

"In Heaven and Hell, Andres Serrano challenges the benevolence of the Catholic Church while also taking on the sexualization of violence against women. The work was made in collaboration with political artist Leon Golub, who appears in the photograph wearing the red robes of a Cardinal, subtly smiling as he looks away from the blood-splattered nude who is bound and suspended next to him. Serrano said of the work, "I'm referring to the relationship the Church has with women, whether they are aware of women as human beings or just take them for granted and dismiss them." - Sotheby's Contemporary Art Auction Catalog - March 9th, 2011

HEAVEN AND HELL II, c. 1984

By Andrés Serrano

27.5 X 40 in (69.85 X 101.6 cm)

Cibachrome

Andres Serrano (born August 15, 1950) is an American photographer and artist who has become famous through his photos of corpses and his use of feces and bodily fluids in his work, notably his controversial work "Piss Christ", a red-tinged photograph of a crucifix submerged in a glass container of what was purported to be the artist's own urine. He is also notable for creating the artwork for the heavy metal band Metallica's Load and ReLoad albums. More on Andres Serrano

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01 Work, RELIGIOUS ART - Witches' Sabbath, with Footnotes - 151

Jan or Frans Verbeeck (Active Mechelen, 16th century)

The Witches' Sabbath

oil on panel

27 ¾ x 37 in. (70.5 x 93.9 cm.)

Private collection

The Witches' Sabbath is a term applied to a gathering of those considered to practice witchcraft and other rites.

Bristol University's Ronald Hutton: "the witches' sabbath represents a combination of three older mythical components, all of which are active at night:  A procession of female spirits, often joined by privileged human beings and often led by a supernatural woman;  A lone spectral huntsman, regarded as demonic, accursed, or otherworldly;  A procession of the human dead, normally thought to be wandering to expiate their sins, often noisy and tumultuous, and usually consisting of those who had died prematurely and violently. The first of these has pre-Christian origins, and probably contributed directly to the formulation of the concept of the witches’ sabbath. The other two seem to be medieval in their inception, with the third to be directly related to growing speculation about the fate of the dead in the 11th and 12th centuries." More on The Witches' Sabbath

Frans Verbeeck or Frans Verbeeck the Elder (c. 1510 – 24 July 1570, Mechelen). There is very little known about Frans Verbeeck. He was a member of the Verbeeck family of artists based in Mechelen. There were about 15 painters recorded in the archives of Mechelen with the name Frans Verbeeck. There were also multiple artists with the name Jan Verbeeck active in Mechelen. Frans Verbeeck is the best-known of the artists in the family.

Frans Verbeeck became a master of the local painter's guild in Mechelen in 1531. He was dean of the guild on multiple occasions including in 1563, 1564 and 1565.

The Verbeeck family formed a dynasty of artists producing a large output of paintings in a workshop with multiple branches. They produced mainly compositions of a small scale using tempera rather than oil. Despite the difficulty of distinguishing between the artists in the Verbeeck group, some works have been attributed specifically to Frans Verbeeck. More on Frans Verbeeck 

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01 Works, RELIGIOUS ART - Interpretation of the bible, With Footnotes - 134

Simone Pignoni (1611 - 1698)

Mary Magdalene 

Oil on canvas

112 x 136.5 cm

Private collection

Mary Magdalene,  literally translated as Mary the Magdalene or Mary of Magdala, is a figure in Christianity who, according to the Bible, traveled with Jesus as one of his followers. She is said to have witnessed Jesus' crucifixion and resurrection. Within the four Gospels she is named more than most of the apostles. Based on texts of the early Christian era in the third century, it seems that her status as an “apostle" rivals even Peter's.

The Gospel of Luke says seven demons had gone out of her. She is most prominent in the narrative of the crucifixion of Jesus, at which she was present. She was also present two days later when, she was, either alone or as a member of a group of women, the first to testify to the resurrection of Jesus. John 20 and Mark 16:9 specifically name her as the first person to see Jesus after his resurrection.

During the Middle Ages, Mary Magdalene was regarded in Western Christianity as a repentant prostitute or promiscuous woman, claims not found in any of the four canonical gospels. More Mary Magdalene

Simone Pignoni (April 17, 1611 – December 16, 1698) was an Italian painter of the Baroque period.

He is best known for painting in a style reminiscent of the morbidly sensual Furini. Reflective of this obsession in his self-portrait, c. 1650, in which he depicts himself building up a plump naked female from a skeleton. 

Described as endowed with a "bizarre and amenable intelligence", Pignoni apparently had a late-life conversion to more pious painting. There is one episode recalled that during a serious illness "because in his life he had focused on studying about female forms, and (now) having resigned himself to the impending infinity, his spiritual father urged him to purge those errors with the flame, and once guided by a good disposition, he suddenly was cured by the Lord." Baldinucci's biography of Furini also recorded a similar, near-death renunciation of his art of the naked figure.

Among his more conventional works are a St. Agatha cured by St. Peter (attributed); a St. Louis providing a banquet for the poor (c. 1682); and a Madonna and child in glory with archangels Saints Michael and Raphael in battle armor and San Antonio of Padua. He painted an Allegory of Peace in Palazzo Vecchio. A Penitent Magdalen that has been attributed to Pignoni is found in the Pitti Palace. In San Bartolomeo in Monteoliveto, he painted a Madonna appearing to Blessed Bernardo Tolomeo. More on Simone Pignoni

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