Overview and links to each of the articles in this series looking at shade and shadow in figurative and landscape paintings.
Velázquez
His early paintings of roadside cafes used shadow with great effect, but most was removed from court portraits. Those in Las Meninas are controlled and elaborate.
Piero della Francesca’s common walnut tree, several types by Giorgione, mixed woodland by Albrecht Altdorfer, wonderful examples from the Brueghels, and two plein air oil sketches by Velázquez.
From Jan van Eyck’s Arnolfini Wedding to Velázquez’s Las Meninas, how the skilful use of mirrors can add to a painting in mirror play.
When you see the same face in a mirror that you presume that figure can also see, despite that being optically impossible. An exploration.
Unusual self-portraits painted using mirrors by Courbet, Corinth, Bonnard, Gentileschi, Peeters, and Velázquez.
New series describing and illustrating how reflections have been painted in European and American art, from the early Renaissance to the 20th century.
Hephaistos or Vulcan in classical myth, cheated on by Aphrodite/Venus, and as creator of Pandora. In Bosch’s Last Judgement, and elsewhere.
Example paintings showing instantaneous, multi-image, multi-frame and polymythic narrative, from Poussin to Waterhouse.
A grand castle kitchen, the element fire, Vermeer’s milkmaid, a witch’s kitchen for Faust, a rotund cardinal tasting the sauce, and in a humble apartment in London.
The Eclectic Light Company 