All posts by oilpaintinginfow

The Arnolfini After van Eyck

This is the most surprised what I seen which is killing me. Once seeing the fat version, I felt so warm but so gloomy. What a complex mood. But the little cat became in the black color. Due to the black plague in Gothic period, everyone lived with a terrified heart. But we can see a little beautiful blue sky from what Fernando Botero painted. This made us more relaxed.

The Arnolfini After van Eyck
The Arnolfini After van Eyck 1997

This work is a portrait of Giovanni di Nicolao Arnolfini and his wife, but is not intended as a record of their wedding. His wife is not pregnant, as is often thought, but holding up her full-skirted dress in the contemporary fashion. Arnolfini was a member of a merchant family from Lucca living in Bruges.

The ornate Latin signature translates as ‘Jan van Eyck was here 1434′. The similarity to modern graffiti is not accidental. Van Eyck often inscribed his pictures in a witty way. The mirror reflects two figures in the doorway. One may be the painter himself. Arnolfini raises his right hand as he faces them, perhaps as a greeting.

Van Eyck was intensely interested in the effects of light: oil paint allowed him to depict it with great subtlety in this picture, notably on the gleaming brass chandelier.

“The Arnolfini Marriage” is a name that has been given to this untitled double portrait by Jan van Eyck, now in the National Gallery, London.

Despite the restricted space, the painter has contrived to surround them with a host of symbols. To the left, the oranges placed on the low table and the windowsills are a reminder of an original innocence, of an age before sin. Unless, that is, they are not in fact oranges but apples (it is difficult to be certain), in which case they would represent the temptation of knowledge and the fall. Above the couple’s heads, the candle that has been left burning in broad daylight on one of the branches of an ornate copper chandelier can be interpreted as the nuptial flame, or as the eye of God. The small dog in the foreground is an emblem of fidelity and love. Meanwhile, the marriage bed with its bright red curtains evokes the physical act of love which, according to Christian doctrine, is an essential part of the perfect union of man and wife.

The Bride by Gustav Klimt

In The Bride picture, we can see the groom’s sight was taken outside from the round of half-nude woman. But the head of obedient bride leant on groom and slept soundly. Her rosy cheeks and Jane Eyre revealed the serene and happy feel. However groom and bride mixed and touched in body each other, the languid gaze of bride was not on the face of bride. But his gaze threw at the open legs of the half-nude woman at right side in picture. The draft of the woman at right side was unfinished. But her nude upper part of the body, action of the bent open legs and the private part for the women were seen clearly under the unfinished skirt. Before Klimt wrapping up the long gown for the woman, while he painted their nude body at first which seemed to express that he still want to paint the interesting thing under the appearance of respect and elegant. And the things interested him were the women’s erotic and the immanent sexual.

The Bride Unfinished 1918
The Bride by Gustav Klimt

But what we saw was the bride leant on the groom tightly. Coquettish female body images on the left and right directly by the desire of the female body connected to form the whole picture。 Was this like the relationship with Klimt and Emily in true life? Although Klimt for women, the pursuit of desire is so direct and strong, whatever Emily was the tenderest and intimate Süsses Mädel for him forever. Of course, Klimt also realized this. For him, the woman who made him cause the desire, the woman he only can love and never caused the desire were complete different. But Emily was the woman who Klimt can cause the desire. Like the art scholar of history Hans Tietze said Klimt need the love so much. But he also refused the satisfaction. He can not complete certain his own love which made him dared not to take the responsibility of happiness. Every expression in his eyes showed this secret, pain and intense for the love.

The creative background of The bride was in the year before Klimt’s death. At the time, he also felt

creative life.