After the Disaster Year of 1672, the art market collapsed. Dutch artists reverted to the more traditional, but their impact on secular themes, and genres including landscapes and still life has endured.
van der Werff
The first modern synthetic pigment, from 1704. Adopted by Canaletto, Hogarth and many others since, and still offered in many paint ranges.
Polyphemus watching the naked Acis, King David watching Bathsheba, two old elders watching Susanna bathing, each of them voyeurs.
First wife of Paris, Prince of Troy, abandoned so he could seduce Helen. When Paris needed her to heal him, she refused then was filled with remorse.
Jupiter rapes an Arcadian nymph and follower of Diana, who is then cast out, turned into a bear by Juno, and almost killed by her son.
Paintings from Rembrandt’s second version to Cézanne and Franz von Stuck show the triumph of privileged male power.
Paris, Prince of Troy, is the perfect pawn in Zeus’s plan for war. He develops a taste for beautiful women, then accepts Aphrodite’s bribe in the beauty contest of the three goddesses.
After the death of his patron in 1716 he remained rich, successful, and for the next century his paintings were rated more highly than those of Rembrandt.
His fortunes changed in 1696 with a visit from the Elector Palatine, who became his patron, and six years later made him his court painter.
Among the 2022 anniversaries are the 500th of the death of Piero di Cosimo, the centenary of the death of Léon Bonnat who taught Sargent and Munch, and the birth of animal painter Rosa Bonheur.
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