Link to Post:
http://art-unwashed.blogspot.com/2012/10/mantegna-to-matisse-master-drawings.html
Laura Gilbert reviews the exhibition Mantegna to Matisse: Master Drawings from the Courtauld Gallery at the Frick Collection, New York, on view through Janaury 23, 2012.
"As might be expected in a show that covers art from the late Middle Ages to the early 20th century, the styles and purposes of the drawings are all over the place. There are Leonardo's scribbled studies of Mary Magdalene, Pieter Breugel the Elder's detailed line drawing of a peasant scene that would be used to make a print, and a watercolor by Cezanne meant as a finished piece.... Exceptionally high quality is the glue that holds the show together. So this is an exhibit that presents art as pretty much ahistorical and at its most fundamental -- pure visual pleasure, of which there is plenty."
Link to Post:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/jonathanjonesblog/2011/aug/01/hugo-van-der-goes-trinity-altarpiece
Jonathan Jones blogs about Hugo Van der Goes' Trinity Altarpiece, currently on view in the Scottish National Gallery, Edinburgh.
Jones writes that the Altarpiece is one of Van der Goes' "finest extant works... the paintings reveal a king and queen at prayer, flanked by saints, in a church that is painted in depth - a real, resonant space. The stillness and gravity of the people, the rich details of their dress and the books from which they pray, share the sombre poetic realism of this artist's most famous masterpiece, the Portinari Altarpiece... Spiritual vision and acute realism are mystically at one."
