research beckons

Academics pondering hard.

Tattoo Design: Nec Spe, Nec Metu

A restrained and deliberately classisizing design for a tattoo, derived from an intarsia panel I once saw in the church of San Miniato al Monte in Florence.

The Latin text, on the other hand, I encountered in a monastery in Parma, where it formed part of the decoration painted by Correggio in the Camera di San Paolo. It was the personal motto of that incredible megabitch of the Italian renaissance, Isabella d'Este.

The lines come from Cicero, who observed that the magistrates of Rome should be overcome neque terror nec vis, nec spes nec metus, nec promissa nec minae, nec tela nec faces, i.e. neither by terror nor violence, neither hope nor fear, nor promises or threats, nor arms or fire.

The phrase has been used ever since to characterize individuals of power and authority. Isabella, herself a ruling duchess, certainly possessed both qualities. Whether she lived up to the motto is another story.

The Public Viewing

The Tree on the Heath

That little tree, lonely as a monk on a beach, reminds us that in life perfection is inversely proportional to its duration. Which is a traditional enough theme in recent landscape art. One might think of Kawase Hasui, or Anselm Kiefer.
The green of the tree may signify a sliver of hope in bleak times, as in Casper David Friedrich's Winter Landscape. But it is equally possible that its denuded branches are telling us that hope is fleeting.

From such equivocations art is made.


And therefore, a poem by Bashō:

    This autumn -
why am I growing old?
    bird disappearing among clouds.

Antonella in Rome

Well, in a bed in a hotel in Rome.

Keyhole Session: Medusa

Why not another picture from this week's Keyhole Session?

It's Medusa, post transformation. Still looking pretty, snakes notwithstanding. But the model did do an excellent job of conveying a suitable degree of creepy fierceness.

In reality, her lipstick was a not-very-vivid bluish black. But had I left it that colour, the octopus (or is it Cthulhu?) tattoo would have been the focus of the composition, and we can't have that. If I'd had time for the other dozen tattoos and scarification things might have been different.

Slumber more sweet than toil

Keyhole Session: The Unexpected Present

Earlier this week I dropped in at the monthly Keyhole Session here in Toronto. It had a classical theme, with the models dressed (well, undressed) as Athena, Perseus and Medusa. Good fun all round.

The pose in this drawing was supposed to be Athena transfiguring Medusa into her new hideous form, but it somehow lacked the severity the scene calls for. Nor did she become very hideous.

(Mind you, the repulsiveness of Medusa is a vexed question. The ugly face originally had an apotropaic function, but a host of (male) artists and poets seem to have decided that she remained pretty after Athena's curse, in a snakes-for-hair kind of way. Although not in Clash of the Titans.)

A nice composition, anyway. It was fifteen minutes long, which is never enough for me to finish two figures.

Asleep and dreaming

Sometimes your model falls asleep. In would be a sin not to take advantage of the opportunity.

As you can see, it's an old drawing. Sometimes I wonder whether I've improved at all...

study time

At the library of St.Michael's College, Toronto.

Castel di Poggio

Another castle, this time in the hills overlooking Florence. It's a private residence, and difficult to approach. I was walking up to Fiesole on a drear November day, and took a break to make this sketch.

This one might be another entry in a hypothetical book of boring castles. I'd buy it.

Portrait of a young art historian

Château de Lourmarin

Castles are one of those things that should be interesting. Evocative, mysterious, foreboding. Things like that.

But they speckle the landscape of Europe like ants at a family picnic. Inevitably, some of them are boring.

The Château de Lourmarin is one of the boring ones. Despite its location in one of France's most ostentatiously charming villages, there is really nothing engaging about it. It has a vague association with King Rene of Provence - who was an intriguing man - but he had many castles, most of which are more distinguished than this one.


For those who like medieval things, I should note that it was founded in the 12th century to guard the pass between the greater and smaller Luberon massifs. But the oldest extant fabric dates from 1475, and the renaissance embellishments from the 1520s. There was a further, extensive, restoration in the 1920s, on the part of one Robert Laurent-Vibert, a cosmetics magnate, who perished in an automobile accident before he had time to enjoy his private castle. These days it's a museum. I visited a few years back.


There is another drawing of the castle, with attendant village, here.

Take a shot

Keyhole Session: The Sibyl

A Sibyl or some other pagan witch, looming out of the underworld, rests her hand on the shoulder of a nubile shade.

The drawing was done from life at a Keyhole Session in Toronto last June. I made a few interpretive modifications and found I had a chthonic figure from classical antiquity; whether she's a Sibyl or Medea or someone else I leave up to the viewer. Either way, it's suitable for Halloween.

I visited the Cave of the Cumean Sibyl some years ago. Archaeology cannot, of course, uncover the dwelling of a fictional character, but the place is evocative enough without her, and for her.

Matt

Another life drawing, this time done with a china marker in ten minutes or so. As so often happens, I decided the carpet was as interesting as the naked body. Or perhaps that the naked body was more interesting with a carpet.

kim

Sometimes coffee is not enough.

Mortal things touch my thoughts.

The Aeneid I.461-62:

En Priamus! Sunt hic etiam sua praemia laudi,
Sunt lacrimae rerum, et mentem mortalia tangunt.

A ten minute life drawing.

False Outline

A model on the stand, rendered from life using a china marker and watercolours. She looks rather pensive, but that's the usual "concentrating on holding still" expression you see in so many pictures.

Marcus

The Bleak Shore

For some years in the early 2000s, Tarragon lived in Halifax. Its rather bleak topography served for several landscape paintings. Or seascapes, as in this oil painting of an unladen container-ship passing the oil refinery on the north shore of Halifax Harbour.

It's one of my favourites of Tarragon's landscapes. The economy of the composition serves to suggest both the vast danger of the natural world, which multiplies beyond our capacity to grasp, and how heavily humanity's hand lies upon it.

"In the beginning, sometimes I left messages in the street."

That's what was on the cover of the novel I was reading at the time.

The wild geese at Loseley

I was sitting at a bench in the grounds of Loseley Manor, a Tudor pile a few minutes from where I was staying in Surrey, when towards me came a herd of foraging geese. They were an irresistible subject.

The wisdom of age

A young art historian.

an architectural doodle

It's fairly obvious that I love medieval architecture. So sometimes I make it up.

Although it should be noted that an imaginary history of this imaginary castle, were it to be written, would have to spend a lot of time on its post-medieval reconstruction: the inclined roofs and flat terraces are hardly possible prior to the baroque era and the form of the garden and its terrace suggests the influence of 18th century English garden design. The castle would probably have achieved its current form by the early 20th century. Perhaps it is now the property of a heritage trust, since it is clearly not important enough to be acquired by the state...

It was drawn with a felt marker on a standard piece of 8.5x11" printing paper. There may be a syllabus on the verso.

Oddity loves company

An unusually dressed individual on the Toronto subway.

in Arcetri

An imposing dwelling in Arcetri, a suburb in the hills south-east of Florence much bedecked with palatial houses. The name of this particular villa eludes me, although it's across the street from the Villa Fasola.

I saw it while walking south on the via de Santa Margherita a Montici, en route to the church of the same name. It's right about here, in fact:


View Larger Map

A member of the audience at the 2011 Conference of Canadian Medieval Art Historians.

Dolebat enim cum dolentibus et cum gaudentibus gaudebat

In the process of reading the vita of Saint Balthilde of France, I came across the phrase "dolebat enim cum dolentibus et cum gaudentibus gaudebat." In English: "For she mourned with the mournful, and with the joyful she rejoiced."

An elegant sentiment expressed elegantly, I thought. It stuck with me, and recently inspired this picture:

It began as a small ink drawing, and evolved on my laptop to the image you see here.

For those interested, the Vita Balthidis can be found in the Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Scriptores Rerum Merovingicarum, vol.II, p.482-508. The above phrase is on page 497.

The text was originally written in the seventh century, probably shortly after Balthilde's death in 680. She was an interesting character, who began as a slave girl and ended as queen of France. The many enemies she made along the way proved no impediment to achieving sainthood.

unheard music

Another fast sketch that led to a pleasingly minimalist outcome.

Still Life Painting on the iPad

There are, generally speaking, two camps in the matter of still life pictures. The first employs the techniques of high realism to celebrate lush materialism and the pleasure of materials. Such painting are invitations to touch, as in the work of Mary Pratt or pronkstilleven of the Dutch Golden Age. The second group, on the other hand, is not concerned with the illusion of reality, but uses more painterly and modernist techniques to emphasize harmony and composition. Through their minimalism and open display of brushwork, such works often verge on abstraction. An example here is Giorgio Morandi.

This still life belongs firmly in the second camp. Tarragon used the Brushes app to create it on an iPad.

Still at the airport

San Giacomo in Paludo

Back at the airport

The jet-setting life isn't all that.

Sketchbook Page

Just an old page from a sketchbook, full of random life drawing. A few of the figures are people I knew, others are strangers. I was using a dip pen at the time, which is an awkward way to do quick sketches - you need three hands to hold the pen, book, and jar of ink.
But back in the day everyone had to draw like that, so I suppose I shouldn't complain.

at the airport

Pearson International, to be specific.

Chiasso Cornino

A tiny alleyway in Florence, just up from the Missoni boutique. Done with pencil and watercolour in a postcard-sized pad.

It is places like this, where the scale is intimate but the architecture so armoured and forbidding, that remind me how lucky we are to live to live in an era that includes Pokemon, the Tour de France, and all the other artifacts of stable state infrastructures.

Time for some Powerpoint

Keyhole Session: Bless with both hands

This is from last June. It was done from life with various markers, in about 45 minutes. Which still wasn't long enough to get all the hands finished. The drawing ended up about a foot tall.

Hannah

There is a species of perfect representational minimalism, in which the subject is delineated in such a way that the absences are as important as what is present, and each line in the drawing magically performs the work of seven. Such that nothing might be added or subtracted without detracting from the final production, as Vitruvius or Alberti have it.

It's a rare day that I make something to such standards, but I felt good about this drawing:

It was done with a brush marker from life in about five minutes.

Sur la Route de Serrelles

Several years ago I lived in the French countryside near the dainty town of Montrichard, itself a small burg 30 minutes south of the mid-sized city of Tours. Although the area is afflicted by subdivisions as swiftly and shoddily built as anywhere else, plenty of the local vernacular architecture survives.

The house I lived in dated from the eighteenth century, and had stone walls a full foot thick. Likewise the house in the picture, which was some twenty metres further down the Route de Serrelles. Those walls, incidentally, provided more than adequate protection against German artillery during the Franco-Prussian war.

A cursory glance at the roof of the second building in the picture will demonstrate that this watercolour was never finished. I was summoned, I think, by a gin and tonic. I don't suppose I'll ever return to complete it.

Of course I lied

Everybody Hurts

A model in the studio

Some old-fashioned figure painting with watercolour.

As a general rule I don't like painting highly foreshortened compositions, but this one turned out alright.

Below Thebes

The Egyptian Thebes, not the Greek one.

I make pictures like this, and in my head they're accompanied by some suitably lyrical poem on the theme of things lost and forgotten. In this case, given a subject matter both Egyptian and maritime, a kind of hybrid of Ozymandias and Ulysses.

Although now that I'm thinking about it, a line from Lord Dunsany's The Idle City also comes to mind: "And for how long he is silent. Only the other day I met a king in Thebes, who had been silent already for four thousand years."

Well, perhaps all that is too heavy for such a slight picture. It's a small drypoint, about 6x6 inches, printed in an equally small edition.

At the Conference

A student taking notes at the conference of Canadian medieval art historians. Or maybe she's doodling. People do that sometimes.

It was done with a technical pen, brush pen, and china marker: that's everything I had in my pocket at the time.

This is Michael. He's not dead, despite appearances.

Time for a manicure

Drawn from life in a salon in Toronto with a mechanical pencil.

Lillies

Some lillies I had lying around my apartment.
I rendered them with a brush-pen and used the computer for the colours.

I can't draw things like this without thinking of Hokusai. It's bad for the self-esteem.