durando-togo

Richard Durando-Togo, Women at the Market, Oil on Canvas, Framed and signed.

Attentive observer, may I challenge you to find some unusual elements in this panel painting? One detail has to do with the symbolic use of color, the other with a later adjustment of the image. Indeed! The Blessed Virgin is not dressed in her usual sky blue cloak, which refers to her purity, but in a red robe. During the Late Middle Ages and early Renaissance, the Virgin often wore such a red garment to refer to the Passion of Christ. After all, the blessing Christ child with his orb would shed his blood for the redemption of mankind. The second strange element catches the eye when one looks closer at the little Jesus. It appears that he was originally depicted completely naked, but got on a transparent loincloth over time. In the past there were several times when nudity in art was subject to some form of censorship. For example, the supervision of Christian art was strongly encouraged by the Council of Trent (1545-1563). This assembly was dealing with the inner-ecclesiastical reform of the Roman Catholic Church. One of the important theologians who followed the council’s guidelines was Joannes Molanus (1533-1585). He did not consider the nakedness of the Christ Child to be edifying and pointed out that children could be endangered in this way. He may have been referring to the dangers of paedophilia. During the 19th century, puritanism emerged. A famous example of a moral preacher was Pope Pius IX...

Willem Muys was a Dutch, 18th-century painter of history pieces, portraits and cabinet pieces. Above all, he appears to have been active as a painter of ‘wallpaper’. Until the mid-18th century, ‘wallpaper’ was not painted on paper but on coarsely woven linen. Wealthy citizens had their mansions or country estates adorned with ‘wallpaper’ with landscapes, exotic birds or chinoiseries. Willem Muys mainly painted ‘wallpaper’, which means that few of his works have been preserved. They are hardly represented in public collections. The works of his sons, Nicolaas en Robbert, both painters, are a little less rare. The painting with Rebecca and Eliezer...

Preparation for Carnival: a three day festival of insatiable eating, drinking and carousing that preceded the forty days of Lent, a period of penitence when the pious drank only wate...

Sir Joshua Reynolds (16 July 1723 - 23 February 1792) was a leading 18th-century English portrait painter and President of the Royal Academy from 1769 to 1792. He was born on 16 July...

Around the middle of the 19th century, the missionary Thomas Savage and the anatomist Jeffries Wyman described a new animal species – the Troglodytes Gorilla – in their Boston Societ...

This charming bucolic landscape bathes in a soft yellow light. A lady on horseback, accompanied by a boy on a donkey, stops near a shepherd. The herd looks at two fishers and quietly...

Tomasz Kozlowski is a Polish artist, born in 1983 in Piotrkow Trybunalski, He lives and works in Lodz. He studied at the faculty of textiles and fashion of the Fine Arts School in Lo...

Tomasz Kozlowski is a Polish artist, born in 1983 in Piotrkow Trybunalski, He lives and works in Lodz. He studied at the faculty of textiles and fashion of the Fine Arts School in Lo...

Jesus and Mary Magdelene Oil Painting Modernist indistinctly signed M....... dated 1955 Dedicated on the reverse and dated 10/4/56 signed Maurice Unusua...

Gossip column, 100x80cm

How are you, 100x80cm , oil\canvas

Kitovras, 120x120cm