Weekend

The immortal painters

Lionel WIJESIRI

Madonna Litta by Leonardo da Vinci

IF SOMEONE asks me who I you think were the 10 greatest painters of all time, few names will crop up into my mind immediately: Michelangelo, Velazquez, Rembrandt, Picasso, da Vinci, Pollack, Van Gogh, Raphael, Monet and Warhol. But not necessarily in that order! To me there is no “one” best painter. I think many of the above gained experience from some of the others.

I believe a great painter is someone who is a master of the medium and whose works cannot be seen to the eye yet understood by the mind. Take for example, Michelangelo and Picasso. Both had profound understanding of their medium.

The brushworks of both were quite exquisite. Their compositional/design senses were out of the world. Both were great painters. But the basic theme of Michelangelo was humanism while Picasso relished on modernism and subjectivism.

It would be difficult and not ethical to ‘compare’ Michelangelo to Picasso (apples and oranges maybe). Studying the work of the old masters is inspiring.

There’s a lot we can learn by studying their methods, palettes, and techniques. It’ll inspire us and help us to expand our knowledge of their painting methods and approaches. Today let us take a look at four well-known masterpieces and review some revealing observations made by the leading specialists about these works.

Les Demoiselles d’Avignon

The School of Athens by Raphael Sanzio

Les Demoiselles d’Avignon (The Young Ladies of Avignon) is a celebrated painting by Pablo Picasso that depicts five prostitutes in a brothel. Picasso painted it in the summer of 1907.

This painting is regarded as one of the most important in the early development of Cubism. (Incidentally, cubism is a painting style that developed in the early 20th century emphasising the representation of natural forms as geometric shapes seen from several angles).

At the time of its first exhibition in 1916, the painting was deemed immoral. Picasso drew each of the figures differently. The woman pulling the curtain on the far right has heavy paint application throughout. Her head is the most cubist of all five, featuring sharp geometric shapes. It is said that the cubist head of the crouching figure underwent at least two revisions from an Iberian figure to its current state.

The masked figure was derived from African tribal masks with green stripes and sharp edges. The two Iberian figures in the centre were influenced by Iberian sculptures, and are characterised as such because of their prominent ears and wide eyes.

Les Demoiselles d’Avignon by Picasso

Leo Steinberg in his landmark essay “The Philosophical Brothel” argues that the viewer is forced to confront the gaze of prostitutes head on, invoking readings far more complex than a simple allegory that attempts to understand the work.

He suggests the work as a meditation on the danger of sex, the “trauma of the gaze”, and the threat of violence inherent in the scene and sexual relations at large. In July 2007, Newsweek published a two-page article about Les Demoiselles d’Avignon describing it as the “most influential work of art of the last 100 years”.

Madonna Litta

Madonna Litta (by Leonardo da Vinci) is unquestionably one of the loveliest paintings the world has preserved. The finer aspects of smoothness of the figures, colouring of the dress against the serene atmosphere of the landscape and facial expression of child Christ reveal subtle finesse.

This work was done sometime in the 1480s for the Visconti rulers of Milan and soon passed to the Litta family, in whose possession it remained for centuries. The painting was briefly featured in the 2006 film The Da Vinci Code.

The Madonna’s sublime, tender gaze as she looks at her son, and the tranquillity of the distant mountainous landscape, reflect humanist dreams of ideal man and a harmonious life. The painting reveals great harmony in its colouring and composition.

The Starry Night by Vincent van Gogh

This painting was completed at a time when Leonardo was experimenting with different mediums. The style displays the Lombard influence under which Leonardo worked during his first sojourn in Milan; this style is characterised by a very stark modelling of the figures, quite different from the Sfumato of his later works. (Sfumato is the painting technique which overlay translucent layers of colour to create perceptions of depth, volume and form. In his Mona Lisa, for example, art historians have argued over whether or not the Mona Lisa is smiling. This debate is due to the use of Sfumato around her mouth)

The Starry Night

The Starry Night is a painting by Dutch post-impressionist painter Vincent van Gogh. Widely hailed as his magnum opus, the painting is regarded as one of his best. The Starry Night was completed near the mental asylum of Saint-Remy, 13 months before Van Gogh’s death at the age of 37. One may begin to ask what features within the painting are responsible for its ever-growing popularity.

Look carefully! There is the night sky filled with swirling clouds, stars ablaze with their own luminescence, and a bright cresset moon. This sky keeps the viewer’s eyes moving about the painting, following the curves and creating a visual dot to dot with the stars. Below the rolling hills of the horizon lies a small town.

There is a peaceful essence flowing from the structures. To the left of the painting there is a massive dark structure that develops an even greater sense of size and isolation. From a mountain to a leafy bush, the analysis of this formation is wide and full of variety. The painting is indeed a masterpiece and a work of genius.

The School of Athens

The School of Athens or “Scuola di Atene” is one of the most famous paintings by the Italian Renaissance painter Raphael Sanzio. It was painted between 1509 and 1510 as a part of Raphael’s commission to decorate with frescoes the rooms that are now known as the Stanze di Raffaello, in the Apostolic Palace in the Vatican.

The School of Athens shows the greatest philosophers, scientists and mathematicians of classical antiquity. Plato and Aristotle are standing in the centre of the composition at the top of the steps. Their gestures correspond to their interests in the philosophical field - Plato is pointing upwards towards Heaven and Aristotle is gesturing towards the earth.

Diogenes is lying carefree on the steps before them to show his philosophical attitude. To the left, the man leaning on the block is Michelangelo. Raphael’s self portrait is at the far lower-right of the fresco, the young man with brown hair staring straight out at the audience.

On the left of the painting a girl-like figure, dressed in white, is also staring out at the audience. Romantic legend has it that the model was Raphael’s love, Margherita.

All these paintings have certain qualities in common. They have a wonderful sense of stillness and balance. They are complex paintings with many layers of meaning. They are about art and fame; the relationship between a painter and his subject; and between a human being and life.