24 March 2021

Giuseppe Maria Crespi (attributed). A Shepherdess playing the Flute, ca. 1720 (private collection).


Oil on canvas: 95 x 77 cm (possibly reduced). Auctioned at Sotheby’s London, December 2017. The modern looking composition is due to a restoration. The work is thought to have been part of a larger canvas, as the roughly cut right-hand edge would suggest. Great ear.

More > Giuseppe Maria Crespi at Wikipedia.

20 March 2021

Lisa Brice. Smoke and Mirrors, 2020 (artist’s portfolio).


Ink, gesso, synthetic tempera, chalk, oil pastel, and oil on canvas: 200 x 329.9 cm(!). Lisa Brice (2018): “As a figurative painter it is significant that historical figuration seems invariably created by white men for an audience of predominantly white men. Sometimes the simple act of repainting an image of a woman previously painted by a man – re-authoring the work as by a woman – can be a potent shift in itself. Inserting props such as cigarettes or bottles of alcohol (as seen in Edouard Manet and Félix Vallotton’s paintings), or using strong colour to tweak the slant of eyes or mouth can further transform the figures from objectified to quietly self-possessed, matter-of-fact or provocative subjects”.

Visit > Lisa Brice at: Stephen Friedman Gallery, Salon 94.
More > Lisa Brice at Wikipedia.

11 March 2021

Hugo van der Goes. Diptych with The Fall of Man (‘Diptychon mit Sündenfall’), ca. 1480 (Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna).



Oil on oak: 33.8 x 22.9 cm(!). Complete diptych: 41 x 61.5 cm. In the end things didn’t work out for Van der Goes. He had a mental breakdown and declared himself to be damned.

Visit > Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna.
More > Google Arts & Culture.
More > Hugo van der Goes at Wikipedia.

10 March 2021

Diego Velázquez. Infanta Margarita Teresa in a blue Dress (‘Infantin Margarita Teresa in blauem Kleid’), 1659 (Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna).



Oil on canvas: 125.5 x 106 cm. Margaret Theresa of Spain, the blonde princess as depicted in ‘Las Meninas’ (1656). Given in marriage to emperor Leopold I (who was her maternal uncle and paternal cousin).

Visit > Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna.
More > Google Arts & Culture.
More > Diego Velázquez at Wikipedia.
More > Margarita Teresa at Wikipedia.