Bite 159: Leonardo da Vinci - The Virgin and Child with St. Anne and the Infant St. John the Baptist ('The Burlington House Cartoon'), c. 1499-1500

The Virgin and Child with St. Anne and the Infant St. John the Baptist ('The Burlington House Cartoon'), c. 1499-1500, charcoal on canvas, 141.5 x 104.6 cm, National Gallery, LondonIn this daringly monumental drawing the entangled figures of St. Mary and St. Anne with Jesus and St. John the Baptist dissolve into the canvas, the drawing unfinished.St. Anne points upwards, a reference to Jesus’ destiny, while St. John the Baptist gestures a blessing,...

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Bite 158: Leonardo da Vinci - Drapery Study for an Angel, c. 1495-8

 Drapery Study for an Angel, c. 1495-8, ink on paper, 21.3 x 15.9 cm, Collection of Her Majesty The Queen, UK.Skin beneath cloth, finely detailed in the grandmother of artistic technique: drawing with pencil on paper. Leonardo da Vinci had an uncanny attention to detail and this is demonstrated best perhaps in the huge number of drawings he left behind, many of which are in the collection of the Queens Gallery in London, and a selection...

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Bite 157: Ejnar Nielsen - Man and Woman, 1917-19

 Man and Woman, 1917-19, Oil on canvas, 305 x 177 cm, National Gallery of Denmark"Moons and Junes and Ferris wheelsThe dizzy dancing way you feelAs ev'ry fairy tale comes realI've looked at love that wayBut now it's just another showYou leave 'em laughing when you goAnd if you care, don't let them knowDon't give yourself awayI've looked at love from both sides nowFrom give and take, and still somehowIt's love's illusions I recallI really...

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Bite 156: Ejnar Nielsen - And In His Eyes I Saw Death, 1897

And In His Eyes I Saw Death, 1897, Oil on canvas, 188 x 137 cm, National Gallery of Denm...

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Bite 155: Antonin Mercié - Memory, 1903

Memory, 1903, marble, Ny Carlsberg GlyptotekA cenotaph to lost time, the grieving figure of memory herself is lost in reverie, carved windswept in stone....

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Bite 154: Edward Burne-Jones - The Hours, 1882

The Hours, 1882, Oil on canvas, Graves Gallery, Sheffield, UKSeven maidens, each symbolic of a period of the day, act as melancholy personifications of time passing. A masterpiece of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, The Hours, finely detailed and expertly composed, took 12 years for Edward Burne-Jones to comple...

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Bite 153: Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec - The Bed, 1893

The Bed, 1893, oil on cardboard, 51.3 x 70.4 cm, Musee d'Orsay, Paris"For a long time I used to go to bed early. Sometimes, when I had put out my candle, my eyes would close so quickly that I had not even time to say 'I’m going to sleep.' And half an hour later the thought that it was time to go to sleep would awaken me; I would try to put away the book which, I imagined, was still in my hands, and to blow out the light; I had been thinking...

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Bite 152: Jasper Johns - Map, 1961

Map, 1961, oil on canvas, 198.1 x 312.7 cm, MoMA, New YorkThe idea of a map is broken apart and revealed in its absurdity - America as paint, a country in its entirety represesnted by oil on canvas. The states are barely legible and the outline of the nation even less so. Colours blends from one region into another. Text is integral to the collage. Stecilled letters are signifiers for massive areas of land divided up - scattered populations,...

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Bite 151: Antonio & Piero del Pollaiuolo - Tobias and the Angel, c. 1469

Tobias and the Angel, c. 1469Tobias and the Archangel Raphael are depicted as finely-garbed travellers, a vast landscape stretching behind them. The story is taken from the early Biblical Book of Tobit, written around 100 BC, in which the angel is sent to protect Tobias, the son of the blind Tobit on his trip with his dog to a distant city to collect a sum of money. After a perilous journey - in which they sieze a fish...

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Bite 150: Sir Joshua Reynolds - Cupid and Psyche, c. 1789

 Cupid and Psyche, c. 1789, oil on canvas, 139.8 x 168.3 cm, Courtauld Gallery, LondonCandlelight illuminates the corpse-like figure of the sleeping Cupid. Psyche, seeking to discover the true identity of her lover, sneaks into his bedroom under the cover of darkness. She reaches out her hand, touched with the light of her candle, in surprise or wonder, toward the revealed body of her lover - his wings curled beneath him, the tip grazing one side;...

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Bite 149: Zed Nelson - Dolly Parton, 2011

Dolly Parton, 2011"Well I can't tell you where I'm going, I'm not sure of where I've been But I know I must keep travelin' till my road comes to an end I'm out here on my journey, trying to make the most of it I'm a puzzle, I must figure out where all my pieces fit Like a poor wayfaring stranger that they speak about in song I'm just a weary pilgrim trying to find what feels like home Where that is no one can tell me, am I doomed to ever roam I'm...

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Bite 148: Caspar David Friedrich - Wanderer above the Sea of Fog, 1818

 Wanderer above the Sea of Fog, 1818, Oil on canvas, 94.8 × 74.8 cm, Kunsthalle Hamburg"The painter should paint not only what he has in front of him, but also what he sees inside himself. If he sees nothing within then he should stop painting what is in front of him."                                           ...

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Turning One

I cannot yet say which direction this blog will go in, or even if it will survive its first postings (many blogs don't and Blogger begins to look like a graveyard of forgotten cyber-ambitions). None-the-less I choose to see these points positively: I have an open, indefinite, intangible place from which to muse. It's kind of like buying a Lotto ticket: You know it will almost certainly amount to nothing - but still, you gotta' be in it to win it.                            ...

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