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Raoul Middleman on the Master of the Osservanza Triptych of St. Anthony
Their separate egos are hereby erased when the two saints conjoin in an embrace, which echoes the cave behind them, a cosmic hug of sorts, clinching the final humanistic coda of this panel.
Gabrielle Vitollo on Nemesis: The Great Fortune by Albrecht Dürer
When I eventually approached the mirror to throw water on my face, I caught a glimpse of Nemesis striding forward in the same direction.
Katie Miller on 'Young Girl with a Dead Bird'
Pupils dilate when we are happy and contract when we are sad. Inky dilated pupils are attractive, which is why most portraits depict their sitter with sparkling black saucers.
Julie Heffernan on El Greco
El Greco emphasizes this theme of separation—head from body, conceptual realm from sensorial realm, upper half from lower half, white from black.
Dear Weather: Buzz Spector on Hobbema, Gainsbourough, & Vermeer
Little popcorn puffs or higher, more distant, cirrus... a shorthand for how the duration of a painting allows for some time.
Altoon Sultan on Piero di Cosimo
There I was, standing in front of this beautiful, tender, poignant painting, unable to stop weeping.
Barry Nemett: Beholding Bonnard on a Vaulted Altar
Over and over again, the sky changed: until it was brand new. Or I was.
David Reed on Caravaggio: Whirlpool - The Martyrdom of St. Ursula
The strange pattern of forms that now obsessed me implied a resolution of that split in consciousness between St. Ursula’s and Caravaggio’s portrait...
Luke Murphy on Robert Fludd
What it tries to contain — an unimaginable nothingness — is so beyond its simple means...
John Dubrow on Titian
I first saw Titian's Flaying of Marsyas in the winter of 1984. I had moved to Brooklyn from the Bay Area just 5 months before, when I heard the Flaying of Marsyas was at the Royal Academy in London for an exhibition on 16th Century Venetian painting. I quit my job, got a cheap flight and flew over.
Clarity Haynes on Domenico Ghirlandaio
Ask me what my favorite painting is — a very hard question since there are so many — and I’ll eventually come up with An Old Man and his Grandson by Domenico Ghirlandaio...
Max Kozloff on Pieter Bruegel and his P.O.V.
Yet this is the prospect given in Bruegel’s “St. John the Baptist Preaching.” Jesus is there, but as a presence he hardly counts and John is too far away to be heard distinctly.
David Molesky on Titian’s The Flaying of Marsyas
Through the double doors that open into the Met Breuer’s inaugural exhibition, I fell into the familiar vortex of a painting I have loved for decades...
Richard Haas on Jan van Eyck
The challenge to an artist to think about his or her influences is such a central one that it immediately sends a stream of thoughts about a seemingly endless number of artists through one’s head.
Gregory Amenoff on Pieter Bruegel
First off, let’s get one thing straight. The Low Countries are aptly named. They’re low. No mountains at all. None!
Elizabeth Huey on Fra Angelico
The predella panel of Fra Angelico’s Perugia Altarpiece envisions the humble yet heroic life of Saint Nicholas, also known as Nicholas the Wonderworker.
James Siena on Albrecht Dürer
Known primarily for his nearly unparalleled work in engraving and woodcut...