Optical principles are straightforward, but can become extremely complex in practice. Examples from Jan van Eyck to Hodler and Signac.
reflections
Before photography, the only opportunity to see your face, painters took advantage of the Venus Effect to break optical rules and show faces that couldn’t have been seen in the mirror.
The hard road to realism: development and propagation of knowledge, how to apply it in paintings, and its benefit on visual art.
An unusual pastel, a couple of fine nocturnes, then some reflections of figures from Caravaggio and Bonnard, concluded by coy self-portraits.
Reflections seen in landscapes from Dürer’s pioneering watercolour, through Poussin and Turner to Monet, Sisley and Neo-Impressionists.
From Dürer and Poussin to Cézanne and Hodler, reflections have been important in many landscape paintings.
Live models for figures, landscape oil sketching in front of the motif, the sensuous nude, narratives with multiple readings, incredibly loose brushwork, and so much more than portraits.
Not his last great painting by any means, but his greatest and most thought-provoking. Where are the royal couple, seen only in reflection, and who is everyone looking at?
Is it just a quirky re-telling of the myth of Arachne and her weaving contest? What do the foreground and background have in common? A superb visual riddle, perhaps.
A sibyl, or an allegory of painting? Maybe the ‘maid of Corinth’ who legends says ‘invented’ painting. And are they spinners, or the story of Arachne?
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