Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres - Raphael and the Fornarina

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Inspired by: Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres - Raphael and the Fornarina

For Ingres, Raphael was the pinnacle of artistic achievement. Frequently borrowing from the oeuvre of Raphael, Ingres positioned himself as the modern-day descendent of the revered painter. In this painting, we are given a glimpse of the personal life of his idol.

Raphael had a thing for a woman known as “La Fornarina”. She was his model, muse and lover and he painted her many times. According to the biographer Giorgio Vasari, who documented the lives of many of the Renaissance painters, this relationship led to the young artist’s death (aged 37) from “excessive passion”. Here we find ourselves in Raphael's studio. His latest canvas barely begun on the easel before him. La Fornarina

has risen from her pose to embrace the artist, sitting on his knee and looking out to the viewer. Her confident look says he is mine. Raphael’s gaze is firmly fixed on his painting telling us that the artist must not abandon the high calling of art to pursue the pleasures of love.

Ingres was amongst a litany of artist enamored with Raphael and his mistress. Picasso created several etchings, that depict them In flagrante delicto. He added Michelangelo spying on them from behind the draperies or under the bed. And sometimes the Pope is peeping through the keyhole.

To see the original:  https://bit.ly/4q3honz  

Edgar Degas - Waiting

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Inspired by Edgar Degas - Waiting

Hilaire-Germain-Edgar Degas affected disdain toward the improvised outdoor landscape studies for which many of the Impressionists became known. He clung to the habit of drawing on location in preparation for his pictures and insisted on finishing in the studio routinely with models. Degas considered himself a Realist painter. He attempted to paint things as they were, versus how he perceived them to be. Still, the art world considers him an Impressionist artist as he adopted their loose strokes and play on light.
Degas and the ballet are virtually synonymous. Dancers, shown in every phase of their complex and demanding art form, make up more than fifty percent of his abundant output. He created approximately 1,500 paintings, monotypes and drawings.
He was aware, from an early point in his studies, of the exhaustion of the ballerinas, and the extent to which they pushed the limits of their bodies. He was further conscious of the brevity of a dancer’s career. Here the chaperone’s face still displays youthful features, yet she is more than likely an ex-dancer. The younger woman represents what her forlorn looking companion once was.

To see original: bit.ly/3o4o32n