Yellow ochre, orpiment, Naples yellow, lead-tin yellow, Indian yellow, chrome yellow, and cadmium yellow – most toxic or at least harmful to someone.
van der Weyden
Miniature landscape views embedded in more conventional paintings were not uncommon during the Renaissance, before landscape was established as a genre.
Born 200 years ago today, he should have been one of the major artists of the 19th century, but died when he had only just turned 37.
From 1450-1650, paintings of ‘Christian sibyls’ who foretold the birth of Christ, became important motifs for painting. Here’s a selection.
Showing two or more scenes from the same story in a single painting (multiplex narrative) is common, effective, and good art. Examples from Masaccio, Memling, Bosch, and more.
Lead-tin yellow features in many paintings of the Old Masters, until about 1750. It was then replaced and forgotten until 1940. Examples in major masterpieces from Rembrandt, da Vinci, Vermeer, and others.
Painters of the early northern Renaissance founded modern Western landscape painting, and developed the first examples of staffage.
Mentor to Gustave Moreau, his brief career showed his brilliance. Claimed by Ingres to be ‘the Napoleon of painting’.
Because these landscape elements are constrained within the overall work, the artist has complete control over them, something reflected in their reading too. Such cameo landscapes are never awe-inspiring, but subjugate to the whole.
I am going to try getting inside the artistic imagination of important landscape painters, and discovering the vision that each had of the landscape. Here are some hors d’oeuvres.
The Eclectic Light Company 