Displaying items by tag: Baroque

A 12-year-old boy had the worst museum visit ever this past Sunday, at Taipei's Huashan 1914 Creative Park. The boy tripped and punched a Paolo Porpora painting valued at $1.5 million as he was trying to keep his balance.

According to Focus Taiwan, the boy was with a guided tour group visiting the exhibition "The Face of Leonardo, Images of a Genius," which gathers 55 paintings by key artists starting from the Italian Renaissance and going up to the 20th century.

When the J. Paul Getty Museum announced in June the purchase of a 17th century bust by Gian Lorenzo Bernini, it was heralded as a major acquisition -- the first sculpture attributed solely to the Italian Baroque genius in the museum's collection.

But now a criminal complaint has been filed in Slovakia in connection with the sale of the sculpture, in which the country's cultural minister claims improprieties in the piece's rather convoluted journey.

The J. Paul Getty Museum has just acquired an important early sculpture by the Baroque master Bernini: a marble bust of Pope Paul V that many art historians did not believe still existed.

Originally commissioned by Cardinal Scipione Borghese, the nephew of Pope Paul V, in 1621, the sculpture was the 23-year-old artist’s first documented portrait of a pope — a subject that would define his career.

Ketterer Kunst has announced a comprehensive Old Masters and 19th Century auction. The sale includes highlights from Italian Baroque and Flemish masters.

Bidders will undoubtedly get most excited about Il Guercino's seminal painting "David With Goliath's Head" (1650). Painted in the hallmark contrasting light and dark style of the baroque era, the artwork depicts David glancing towards the heavens, as if to ask for forgiveness for the brutal killing of Goliath.

The Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center, Vassar College’s art museum, recently made a major acquisition: "The Finding of Moses," a Florentine Baroque oil painting by Jacopo Vignali.

“This work of art stands as a perfect example of the gravitas and decorum of the finest art in Florence,” said James Mundy, the Anne Hendricks Bass Director of the Art Center. He also noted some key aspects of the painting. “The grace of the presentation, the fluid concatenation of gestures, the bravura painting performances in the rich, pearl-encrusted gown of Pharaoh’s daughter and the submerged legs of the attendant, all speak to the mastery of the artist at the peak of his powers,” Mundy explained.

On one side is the Prado, a renowned repository of art and a showcase of Spanish culture that draws huge numbers of tourists. On the other is a brash newcomer, emerging onto the scene in layers of gray granite from a hillside near the baroque royal palace of Spanish kings.

In advance of its opening, the upstart, the Museum of Royal Collections, is insisting that the Prado surrender four paintings, including its top two attractions — “The Garden of Earthly Delights” by Hieronymus Bosch and a sumptuous 15th-century depiction of the descent of Christ from the cross by Rogier van der Weyden.

The Muscarelle Museum of Art is going for baroque with its latest exhibit.

After a series of hugely successful renaissance-themed exhibits, the museum has embarked on a mission to showcase another side of Italy’s rich artistic legacy. "Twilight of a Golden Age: Florentine Painting after the Renaissance" has opened, offering visitors to the museum a chance to see the work of the great Italian painters who followed the Renaissance during the baroque period.

The more than 20 paintings and sculptures contained in the exhibit are on display courtesy Sir Mark Fehrs Haukohl, a private art collector who circulates his gallery of baroque Italian paintings and sculptures through museums in the U.S.

Surface-treatment trials are due to begin this month as part of a £7m restoration of a masterpiece of British Baroque—the Painted Hall in the Old Royal Naval College in Greenwich, south-east London. The “unprecedented” project aims to break new ground in the cleaning and stabilization of wall and ceiling paintings covering 3,700 sq. m and in granting members of the public access to conservation work being carried out 16 meters above the ground.

The soaring hall was designed by Christopher Wren and Nicholas Hawksmoor as a dining room for naval veterans—the “Greenwich Pensioners”—in the seamen’s hospital that became part of the college. It was painted by James Thornhill over 19 years, beginning in 1708.

The Royal Academy is to present the first blockbuster of the year, and expectations are high for this exhibition of Flemish baroque painter Peter Paul Rubens – an artist who painted everything from family portraits to ceilings including at Banqueting House in Whitehall. But the artist is known for his feast of color, violence, eroticism and history that entranced the rulers who paid him to decorate palaces across early 17th-century Europe, and not least his sensuously fleshy female nudes and the term they spawned: "Rubenesque."

The artist was also a scholar, a self-made gentleman and noted diplomat who used his connections with royal patrons to broker deals on behalf of European powers. From the French Romantic painter Delacroix, whose works owe Rubens everything, to Picasso, who claimed to dislike Rubens but was obviously influenced by him, this exhibition promises to be a truly stupendous celebration of a the artist's onfluence; the exhibition will look at how Rubens has inspired of great artists during his lifetime and over the proceeding centuries.

The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts is putting a timely and powerful painting on display.

The museum in Richmond recently acquired "The Visitation" by 17th-century Baroque master Mattia Preti, which depicts the first episode in the life of Christ recorded by Luke.

According to the museum, the painting depicts the meeting of the Virgin Mary with her older cousin Elizabeth following the annunciation by the angel Gabriel. Elizabeth, who was soon to give birth to John the Baptist, recognizes that Mary has been chosen as the mother of the son of God and greets her with a blessing.