09 Sep 2013 | 2 Comments
Art’s Unknown Frown
Artists frown. Constantly. Why? Charles Darwin considered the corrugator, the muscle which results in a frown, as the most remarkable of the human face because it irresistably conveys the idea of mind.1 And that's why, in my opinion, artists hav
23 Nov 2011
Rembrandt’s Hand
We have already seen (in Donatello’s Davids and Goliaths) that Donatello identified with both David and Goliath. Both his giants (in the marble and bronze versions) have double vision, out-sight and insight, the two forms conveyed by one eye o
16 Apr 2011
News of Caravaggio’s Execution
I don’t think anyone has ever noticed that Holofernes’ head in Caravaggio’s Judith and Holofernes is the mirror-image, modeled by someone else, of his own Self-portrait as Medusa from two years earlier. The idea, then, that Hol
01 Mar 2011
A round of cheers for Michael Fried, please!
I have just finished reading Michael Fried’s The Moment of Caravaggio published last year. What a book! A compilation of his A.W. Mellon lectures at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC he applies to Caravaggio the same kind of th
15 Sep 2010
Sense and Nonsense about Caravaggio
Every writer from Caravaggio's day to our own has spoken of the artist's astonishing realism. One critic wrote a century after his birth that Caravaggio:
"recognized no other master than the model, without selecting [as artists
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