Salvator Mundi, Savior of the World, is believed to have been painted by Leonardo da Vinci sometime between 1499 and 1510 which is considered by historians to be the beginning of the High Renaissance period. The painting was supposedly commissioned by King Louis XII of France and was later recorded in the possession of the English Kings Charles I and II. How the English acquired the painting is unknown. It was then passed onto the Duke of Buckingham in the 1600s after which his son sold it in 1763. The painting then disappeared for 137 years.
It reappeared in 1900, changing hands a few times without anyone realizing it may be an authentic Leonardo. In 2005 a consortium of art dealers and collectors purchased it with the intent to have it cleaned and restored all the while attempting to prove that it was indeed a Leonardo painting. In 2013 most experts agreed that it was an authentic Leonardo allowing it to be sold for $80 million to Swiss art dealer Yves Bouvier which he quickly resold to the Russian Rybolovlev for $127.5 million. This sale quickly became a legal mess with the resolution not entirely clear.
Somehow the legal issues resolved themselves and the painting came to market again in 2017 selling for $450.3 million, making it the most expensive painting ever sold. After much wild and erroneous speculation, it was revealed that Abu Dhabi’s Department of Culture and Tourism bought the painting. It is currently in storage awaiting the completion of the Louvre Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates.
In 2020 the experts have struck again and attribution of the painting to Leonardo is in doubt. Experience says this debate will continue ad infinitum. Meanwhile an extremely expensive art piece supposedly by a gay painter of Jesus Christ resides in the Arab Middle East.
Sources: Leonardo da Vinci by Walter Isaacson published in 2017. Salvator Mundi by Christies published in 2017. Salvator Mundi by ArtNet published in 2020.
There are only meager snippets of biographical information available on Carsten-Peter Warncke. The inside jacket of this volume on Picasso contains the most detail I was able to find, and I quote it in total below:
“Carsten-Peter Warncke was born in Hamburg in 1947, studied art history, classical archaeology and literature in Vienna, Heidelberg, and Hamburg, and received his doctorate from the last university in 1975. He is Professor of Art History at the University of Gottingen.”
Pablo Picasso was born in Malaga, Spain in 1881 to Don Jose Ruiz Blasco, a painter who taught drawing, and Dona Maria Picasso Lopez. Pablo adopted his mother’s surname somewhere between 1897 and 1901 believing that his paternal surname was too common, plus he was convinced his name needed a double consonant to align with other artists such as Matisse, Poussin, and Rousseau.
Picasso was recognized as a child prodigy at a very young age. He began to paint with oils when he was eight and by the time he was thirteen he was selling his work. At the age of fourteen, he was admitted to the prestigious Barcelona art school: La Lonja. At the age of fifteen he made his official entry into the professional art world, presenting the painting, “The First Communion” at the Third Exhibition of Fine Arts and Artistic Industries in Barcelona.
FootnoteB
In 1900 Picasso exhibited 150 drawings at the Barcelona cafe, “Els Quatre Gats“. The cafe’s name derives from a Catalan expression which means “only a few people” and translates to “The Four Cats”. The expression describes people who are a bit strange or peculiar. The cafe was a popular meeting place for famous artists in the twentieth century including Isaac Albeniz, Gustavo Barcelo, Ramon Casa, Carlos Casegemas, and Santiago Rusinol.
Picasso moved around France and Spain about as often as he experimented with and changed his artistic style. In October of 1900 he moved to Montmartre on the Right Bank of the Seine in Paris to open a studio with Casagemas. Shortly afterward the Paris art dealer, Pedro Manach, offered him 150 francs a month for his 150 aforementioned prints. There is no record of what else was required of Picasso to fulfill the contract, but the contract was either fulfilled or expired at the end of 1902 at which time the painter moved back to Barcelona. Finally, in a Hobbitian maneuver of there and back again, he returned to Paris in 1904 where he stayed until he moved to the French Riviera, initially on a semi-permanent basis, but eventually taking up full time residence in the area in 1952, where he remained until his death in 1973.
FootnoteC
FootnoteD
Picasso was constantly re-inventing himself over the course of his career that spanned three-quarters of a century. He began painting as a realist and gradually morphed into a modern artist laying claim to the greatest surrealist in the twentieth century.
Picasso viewed his art as a diary. He said he had no secrets, sharing his artistic journey with all. He was quoted as saying, “When I paint my object is to show what I have found and not what I am looking for.”
World events, such as war, and personal relationships often influenced his work. Picasso also anticipated the late twentieth century business mindset of “If it ain’t broke, fix it anyway” or more compactly, change for change’s sake. He conceptualized change as “A picture is not thought out and settled beforehand. While it is being done it changes as one’s thoughts change. And when it is finished, it still goes on changing, according to the state of mind of whoever is looking at it.“ This quote has also been paraphrased as “When I know what the picture will be beforehand, why make it?” In the same vein he also stated: “You mustn’t expect me to repeat myself. My past doesn’t interest me. I would rather copy others than copy myself. In that way I should at least be giving them something new. I love discovering things.” Change was religion for Picasso, and he worshiped it.
FootnoteE
Below is listing of the different art periods he laid claim to over the years:
Early Work from 1890-1901: Realistic style influenced by Expressionism and Post-Impressionism. Edvard Munch’s, Expressionist and painter of the 1893 “The Scream“, use of color and various themes resonated with Picasso. Wassily Kandinsky, Expressionist and painter of the 1903 “Blue Rider” moved in the same circles as Picasso and the two likely shared abstract artistic forms and themes. Picasso greatly admired the Post-Impressionist Toulouse-Lautrec with his 1900 “Le Moulin de la Galette” paying homage to Lautrec in style and spirit.
Blue Period from 1901-1904: Monochromatic paintings in shades of blue. Scenes of poverty and despair predominate this period exemplified by one of his most famous paintings from this period; “The Old Guitarist“. The painting, in addition to the characteristic blue, also shows the elongated bodies and fingers which the painter used to evoke emotion and reaction. Poverty and despair weren’t just a stylistic phase for him but a mirror into his personal depression. He was very poor and had lost his close friend Carles Casagemas in 1901. His depression began during his Blue Period and lasted in milder forms till the end of his Cubist Period.
Rose Period from 1904-1906: He used warmer colors than in his Blue Period with more cheerful subjects such as circus performers, clowns, and harlequins. His depression lifted slightly during this period possibly due to his relationship Fernande Olivier, a model and artist that Picasso painted over sixty portraits of. His best-known painting from this period is the 1905 “Boy with a Pipe“. Picasso described the boy, Louis, as an “evil angel” and used the garland of roses on his head to symbolize the blood of the Eucharist. This contrasted with the harsh street life that Louis actually endured along with the innocence of his youth. The garland of roses serves as a powerful symbol in the painting, representing the juxtaposition of innocence and the harsh realities of life. Beauty and thorns, side by side.
African Influenced Period from 1907-1909: He was inspired by African masks and sculptures. During this period, he experimented with geometric forms and shapes. His best-known work from this period is “The Ladies of Avignon”. This painting is considered a precursor to his Cubist Period and tangentially to his Surrealist Period. Art historian John Richardson said that this painting made Picasso the most pivotal artist in the West. Art Critic Holland Carter said that this work changed history. One can never accuse a critic of being subtle.
Cubist Period from 1909-1919: This period is divided into two phases: Analytic and Synthetic Cubism. Picasso’s Analytic Cubism from 1907-1912 combined deconstructed objects into overlapping planes from multiple viewpoints using muted colors. His Synthetic Cubism from 1912-1914 eliminated three-dimensional space and introduced extraneous matter mixed with bright subject colors. One of his better-known works during his Cubist Period is “Glass and Bottle of Suze“.
Neoclassicism from 1919-1924: Picasso returned to a more realistic style after WWI. Art critics at the time insisted Cubist art was a product of Germany coupled with the realization that Picasso’s Cubist art promoter was a German, causing the French to reject not only the style but also casting suspicion on the artist. Additionally, Picasso, being Spanish, did not serve in the French military during war causing public opinion to turn against him. To combat the ill feelings toward him he reverted to a more classical style. One of his better-known paintings during this period was “TheLover” which has the appearance of being lifted directly from a Greek or Roman bath.
Surrealist Period from 1924-1937: During this period Picasso incorporated elements of the subconscious, dreams, and fantasy into his art, exploring new ways to express emotion and reality. He was particularly interested in eroticism, violence, and primitivism. His art emphasized flowing lines and fragmented bodies which are interpreted to represent Picasso’s personal feelings towards his subjects. His anti-war “Guernica”, a response to Nazi bombing of the Basque town of Guernica during the Spanish Civil War is his most famous Surrealistic painting or possibly his most famous painting in any style. If you didn’t know the story behind the painting and what it represents you would still see and feel the violence flowing from the canvas–knowing full well that supreme evil was in progress, seeping and dripping from the canvass in black and white. Picasso’s approach to Surrealism can be summed up with his words, “I paint objects as I think them, not as I see them.”
Later Work from 1937-1973: Picasso continued to reinvent himself over the last quarter century of his life but with less success in the realm of originality. His paintings remained Surrealistic with occasional bursts of Cubism but were becoming more abstract and confusing. He began to reinterpret the old masters and explore love and death in more exacting detail while also branching out into distinctive and different mediums such as collage, sculpture, ceramics, and printmaking.
FootnoteF
Picasso was a prolific artist, orders of magnitude beyond the output of his contemporaries. As a way of comparison, the post-impressionist Toulouse-Lautrec, who was also considered a prolific painter, painted 737 oil paintings, 275 watercolors, 363 prints, and 5,084 drawings over a period of 20 years while Picasso is estimated to have produced 13,500 paintings, 100,000 prints, 34,000 book illustrations, and three hundred sculptures and ceramics over his 75-year career. On just the painting side of the equation Toulouse-Lautrec created, on average, approximately one painting per week while Picasso finished 3-4 paintings per week. Possibly only QiBaishi, a Chinese painter of whimsical watercolors is known to have created more paintings than him.
The last known estimate of Picasso’s total oeuvre is estimated at over $500 million. Considering that eight of his paintings: “Les Femmes d’Alger” (Cubist/Matisse Adoptive–$179.4 million) “Le Rêve” (Surrealist–$155 million), “Femme à la Montre” (Surrealist–$139.4 million) “Fillette a la Corbeille” (Surrealist–$115 million), “Nude Green Leaves and Bust” (Surrealist–$106.5 million), “Boy with a Pipe” (Blue–$104 million), “Femme Assise Pres d’une Fenetre” (Surrealist–$103.4 million), and “Dora Maar au Chat” (Cubist/Surrealist–$95.2 million) exceed that estimate it would not be unreasonable to conclude that his collection may be worth something approaching 10 times that number or more. Additionally, his art increases in value by about 7.5% per year so the skies the limit.
Literary Criticism:
Warncke’s Picasso attempts the Herculean task of encapsulating the prolific artist in a few hundred pages of text and pictures. It fails but it is probably the best that can be done without overwhelming the reader with his enormous oeuvre. The one person that has attempted a thorough compilation of Picasso’s work is Christian Zervos who spent 46 years at the task. He brought together 16,000 of his paintings and drawings into the thirty-three volume “Pablo Picasso Catalogue Raisonne” which sells for 25,000 Euros (about $27,600). It’s still not everything that Picasso produced but probably more than anyone can digest.
Warncke’s book is a useful romp through the 75 years of the artist’s life, but what was most useful, for me, was the year-by-year biographical breakdown of Picasso’s 33,000 days, plus a few, on this Earth in the back pages of this volume. It provided me with a linear sequence of his progression and growth as an artist. I believe he was at the height of his powers during his Blue Period, but the big money goes to his Surrealistic Period.
Picasso Awards:
FootnoteG
Honorable mention from Madrid exhibition of fine arts, 1897
Gold medal from Malaga provincial exhibition, 1897
Carnegie Prize, 1930
Honorary curator of Prado Museum in Madrid, 1936
Silver Medal of French Gratitude from France, 1948
Order of Polish Renascence commander’s cross from Poland, 1948
Pennell Memorial Medal from Philadelphia Academy of Fine Arts, for lithograph “The Dove of Peace,” 1949
Lenin Peace Prize from Soviet Union, 1950 and 1962
Serge Fauchereau, born on Halloween in 1939 in France, is an art curator; art critic; professor of literature, art history, and writing; and author of artist biographies and art styles. Fauchereau has spent his adult life educating the public on, and extolling, 20th century avant-garde painting and sculpture, specifically the abstract and cubist styles.
Cubism – The Woman in Blue – Legar 1912
Abstract art attempts to free visual representations of reality from the concrete, expressing form and color spiritually, emotionally, metaphysically without the chains of perspective, fact, or conclusions. Cubism, a mathematical sub-set within the abstract world, takes the whole of reality apart piece by piece, reexamines and reimages the pieces, giving them their own perspective, color, and frame; and then collects the many pieces into something greater than the one. Sometimes this works.
Paul Cézanne, 19th century French post-impressionist painter, is considered the father of Cubism but not actually a Cubist himself. Cezanne stretched the accepted norms of perspective, giving separate objects within his paintings their own reality, their own commentary. Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque, along, to a lesser extent, with Fernand Leger, took their cues from Cezanne, developing a style that became known as Early Cubism in the first 15 years of 20th century.
Tubism – Three Women – Legar 1921
Contrast of Forms – Legar 1913
Fernand Leger, born in Normandy, France in 1881, was an extrovert who successfully kept his private life hidden from the public, expressing himself exclusively through his paintings and films. His early works, before 1908, were strongly influenced by the French impressionistic painters. Dissatisfied with his impressionistic efforts he destroyed all his paintings from this period.
Moving on from impressionism, he circulated with the Parisian modern art crowd, where he began to experiment with the Cubist style, finishing his initial works, La Couseuse and Compotier sur la Table in 1909. After WWI, in which he served on the Verdun front and was wounded, he developed his own style, a modified form of Cubism which he called Tubism, more a foray into pop art than a formal artistic movement. Beginning in the early 1920s he collaborates and directs art films beginning with La Roue followed by Skating Rink and Le Ballet Mecanique.
Till the end of his life in 1955 he continued to paint, lecture, exhibit and travel, cementing his reputation as pioneer in the world of modern art. His reputation continues to grow with his Cubist Contrast of Forms selling at a Christie auction in 2017 for $70,062,500.
A small coterie of Parisian painters, less than a dozen, mostly French, mostly young and middle class, disillusioned with the elite’s adherence to Neoclassicalism and Romantism, began to experiment in the latter half of 19th century with bold colors and light, loose, broad brushwork and forms, simple, pleasing scenes of everyday life and contentment, landscapes painted in the open air: en plein air, painting what their eyes saw, and their hearts felt. Their style came to be known as Impressionism, a term lifted by an art critic who intended censure and derision from Monet’s painting: ‘Impression, Sunrise’ (shown above right). Impressionism, initially disregarded and rejected by the critics and the public, became the solid foundation for all painting to come; Post-Impressionism, Art Noveau, Cubism, and onto what is today casually labeled modern or contemporary art.
As Impressionism birthed the future of painting in the west, the Realists: Millet, Corot, Corbet, and others created the base for Degas, Manet, Monet to which they added something fresh and enjoyable. Realists painted the world as they perceived it: poor, laboring, dismal, dystopian. The Impressionists kept the Realists’ stage, the world as it is, but added cheerfulness and peace by experimenting with light and form.
Monet’s genre masterpiece, ‘Woman with a Parasol-Madame Monet and Her Son (shown above left), captures his wife and son in a leisurely stroll around a blustery Argenteuil, a suburb of Paris, in 1875. The woman and son are looking down on the painter with her umbrella blocking out the sun creating an impression of light dancing through the clouds and sky, imparting a stark contrast for the shadows below moving across the grass and flowers. The woman’s vail and dress ripples across her face and body in tune with the breeze. The boy is in the background giving the painting an added sense of depth. The detail of the painting (above right) shows the broad brushstrokes, bold colors and contrasts that came to characterize Impressionistic art.
‘The Impressionist’ brings form and substance to the lives of six of the greatest artists of the genre: Pissarro, Manet, Degas, Monet, Renoir, and Sisley, who gave birth to something new.
The other Michelangelo, Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, was born almost 100 years after the Michelangelo of Florence and Sistine Chaple fame, in the northern Italian city of Milian, at the time a part of the Spanish Empire; coming of age as a painter in the dying days of the Renaissance art period and the birth of Baroque, developing and leading a style with an increased attention to detail, lighting, and volume not so much in contrast, but in addition to the scientific realism of the previous 200 years.
Caravaggio took the Baroque art beyond the biblical themes of the Renaissance while retaining the humanism, maintaining naturalism but with detail likely unavailable to painters before him, improving on perspective and volume through the use of light and dark: Chiaroscuro, and giving the subjects an emotional bearing that communicates to the viewer a deportment not obtainable to the first Michelangelo.
The book cover, Judith beheading Holofernes, detail above with full painting shown below, depicts Judith looking down and to the viewers left with a look, according to some, of revulsion and disgust, but my interpretation is one of apathy and possibly puzzlement, as noted by the slight creases between the eyebrows and the bridge of the nose and the minor squint of the eyes. Panning out may add an unquestioning repugnance to the painting but not to Judith’s countenance, it remains one of bemusement, a ‘is this all there is’ to vanquishing one’s enemy, while an old woman looks over Judith’s shoulder concurring, not seeing the gore of the moment but the moral of the act and feeling ‘Good, it is done’. The detail may be there, but the viewers interpretation is still required.
A beautiful collection of Norman Rockwell’s Christmas and winter scenes interspersed with Christmas stories, music, and more that you have experienced and loved since you were a little, wide-eyed tyke waiting for permission to tear into your presents.
The book not only contains some great Rockwell snapshots of Christmas but timeless stories of Christmas cheer, that if you haven’t read you should, just for the heart-warming smiles they will bring to your fuddy duddy lips and cheeks. O’Henry’s Gift of the Magi is here along with Moore’s Night Before Christmas, Dicken’s Christmas goblin short story, Virginia’s, “Is there a Santa Claus?” letter, and the newspaper’s response, all to remind and reinforce why Christmas is the world’s favorite holiday.
This book was first published in 1977, which is the one I have, with various reprintings and content expansions through the years, the most recent edition coming out in 2009. The new edition contains additional Rockwell paintings along with poster size prints that are ready for framing. Merry Christmas.
An art book short on art and long on art history and art criticism.
Piero della Francesca, born in Tuscany in the early 15th century, is regarded as a true master before his time, eerily anticipating post impression by 500 years. Francesca was a major force in inputting perspective into paintings, greatly influenced by an Italian contemporary polymath, Leon Battista Alberti.
Francesca’s greatest works include the painting to the right, Federico da Montefeltro, Duke of Urbino, and the fresco, The Legend of the True Cross, located within the basilica of San Francesco in Arezzo, Italy.
The book contains all surviving paintings by the artist, about 150, which showcase his genius when compared with fellow artists such as Donatello and Brunelleschi, along with extensive research and commentary on Francesca’s life and art.
Godiva is may favorite chocolate. When I have Godiva chocolates in the house I worry about gaining weight but I usually don’t because the rest of the family always, and I mean always, beats me to the box of goodies and gobbles them up before I can over indulge. I know I should hide them, keep them for myself, deny the pleasure to others but that would just be curmudgeonly selfish. I think I can do that.
The art, biography, and history of the Drap family and their boundless love for all things chocolate is contained within the covers of this short, but lavishly illustrated book. The pages of this book bring to life the Belgium family’s chocolate odyssey, beginning in 1926, as they continually generate smiles of gratitude and gastronomic satisfaction for over 90-years. Laid out in opposing columns of English and French, this album of confectionary delight brings to the reader Godiva’s inspiration, their style, and their passion for making everything chocolate. Inspiration from the fashion houses of Paris and Brussels. Style from the Belgium arts university, La Cambre and artists of renown such as Oli-B. Passion for chocolate from the leading Chef’s and chocolatiers of Belgium.
This is a visually captivating book bringing to your eyes what Godiva’s chocolates bring to your palate: sensual, divine pleasure. The book will only take a few leisurely hours of your time, but be forewarned, your desire for Godiva truffles will be magnified a hundred fold.
Illustrated London News Limited, © 2016.
elsToday 