Monday, January 31, 2011

Characters on Canvas

Sweet li'l cutie-patootie 

That is a portrait entitled Old Woman. (The Queen of Tunis) by
Quentin Massys. 
 c. 1513

As it turns out, The Queen makes for a very interesting read here

7 comments:

  1. Yikes! She can never have been a great beauty!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Very interesting painting that seems very contemporary in some sense. The writeup is fascinating.

    ReplyDelete
  3. I think I had a blind date with her.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Yogi - yes! It looks like it's been spoofed, doesn't it? Thank you for clicking the link.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Fascinating image. A little too much honesty from the other end of the paint brush, methinks.

    ReplyDelete
  6. That was very interesting to read especially the fact that as of that period people in general weren't yet aware of the 'norms' of beauty and so found an honest portrayal to be no insult. Of course, I rather think he took this a little further that Durer did with his drawings of ordinary people.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Very interesting stuff! Especially the observations about norms of beauty, and how society then viewed portraits, people who look other than "ideal," etc. Another kind of innocence lost.

    The Renaissance freed us from some kinds of mental and aesthetic tyranny and substituted others. Boundaries, rules, and fetters, with all the troubles they cause, seem to come along for the ride after every major change. Like Godel's proof, which demonstrated that any mathematical/logical system robust enough to include the basic functions of arithmetic will also be able to prove inconsistent or contradictory propositions. Seeds of it's own collapse built in from the start. We don't have the whole story on reality, and we keep trying to make sense of ALL of it with only a partial understanding.

    What do angels see? What do they think of beauty?

    ReplyDelete

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