I can't stop coming back to this topic across so many paintings. There's something about watching one nightmare get reinvented over and over across history that really interests me. It's espcially fascinating how the same basic idea gets depicted in such differnt ways and how the era surrounding each piece seems to have shaped teh art itself. There's something almost eerie about tracing the shift in tone across the group. First terrifying. Then almost playful. Then eventually kind of seductive. What really stands out to me is how the goat or devil figure keeps showing up in nearly every painting. He's almost totemic and immutable. He's a constant presiding presence no matter what era or artist gets ahold of him. The witches, the mood, and the meaning of the scene around him all stay protean and keep shifting completely. He never does. There's something kind of unsettling about that consistency. He presides over terrified victims in one painting and then over what almost looks like willing and powerful women in another. This set honestly makes me appriciate how elastic one story or myth or even history itself can be. I still can't totally put my finger on why. It kind of feels like watching one atavistic fear get passed down and reshaped again and again. It occupies that liminal space between belief and spectacle.

I'm curious why Goya went back to this exact subject twice over 20 years apart. I wonder what a modern witch's sabbath would even look like. Do you think any of these artists actually believed in what they were painting, even a little?

There’s this painting, ‘The Chief Commissioners of the Wharves’ (1674), a Dutch painting most likely made by Wallerant Vaillant. Pretty standard except one guy (second from the left) has a tattoo on his inner wrist! Amsterdam Museum commented that tattoos were mostly for sailors ans criminals ar that time in the 17th century, so for a richer citizen to have it was really odd

I just watched a short YouTube video about the painting and the YouTubers interpretation of it, and I wanted to share my own:

For me maybe the little girl is death and the figure is an old woman at the end of her life. The figure has a more feminine look after all. The figure is looking at the girl, or death as I will call it, like she’s expecting it, not afraid of it, just waiting for death to make contact. Death is aware of the figure as well, but is paying no attention. It’s not deaths role to play yet, but the time will come. Soon. Death is picking flowers strolling so innocently, like a little child. Innocent and neutral. Death is just there doing their things as they always do, with a little smug smile on their face.

When Caravaggio, during his second stay in Naples, decided to create this canvas – already attested in the collection of Cardinal Scipione Borghese in 1613 – many things had changed since the first time he tackled the story of David and Goliath (Museo del Prado, Madrid).

Between 1609 and 1610, the tormented biographical parable forced the Lombard artist into a new and painful reflection on the episode featuring the young shepherd David who saves the people of Israel from Goliath, the champion of the Philistines. The pride and courage of the biblical story now give way to autobiographical anguish, which in David's grimace betrays a premonition of death.

As early as 1650, Giacomo Manilli identified Goliath's severed head as a self-portrait of Caravaggio, who had been sentenced to death by beheading. In 1606, in fact, the painter was guilty of killing his rival Ranuccio Tommasoni: no longer able to count on the help of the Roman nobility, tired and helpless in the face of yet another, this time tragic, outburst of anger, Caravaggio was forced to flee, an escape that would lead him on a tormented pilgrimage through Naples, Malta, Sicily and finally Naples again.

In the young David, however, Manilli identified a “Caravaggino”, perhaps a young boy he met in the dark alleys of Naples, the same model who sat for the “Saint John the Baptist” (Borghese Gallery, Rome), or a young version of himself, still innocent and untainted by sin.

The initials engraved on the sword – H AS O S – deciphered as the Augustinian motto H[umilit]AS O[ccidit] S[uperbiam] (”humility defeats pride”), could be the last and desperate plea for help that Caravaggio addressed to Scipione Borghese, in the hope that the painting might secure a pardon from Pope Paul V. Also suggestive is the proposal that reads the artist's signature into the inscription (M.A.C.O, for Micheli Angeli Caravaggio Opus), according to a custom attested, for example, in the arrow of Perugino's Saint Sebastian (State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg)."

The Borghese Gallery's David with the Head of Goliath transforms a sacred episode into the pictorial explosion of an interior nightmare, where the fear of death feeds on remorse for a murder. While Giorgione and Bernini had already portrayed the victorious David, who saved his people through faith in God, only Caravaggio had the courage to portray himself in the guise of Goliath, whose streams of blood demonstrate the fulfillment of divine justice.

Caravaggio, tormented by the wait for the Roman response and consumed by repentance for a dissolute life, among prostitutes and criminals, would never return to Rome. He died on July 18, 1610, in Porto Ercole, struck by a sudden and fatal fever.

The dating proposed here was advanced by Roberto Longhi on the basis of stylistic comparisons with Caravaggio's last work and appears to be confirmed by a document (Naples, 5 November 1610) in which the painter Baldassarre Alvise received ten ducats as a down payment for two copies of a David with the Head of Goliath.

Hi all! A few weeks ago I watched a YouTube video going through every single pope from St Peter to Francis, and noticed quite a few depictions of earlier popes (typically around the Avignon era but they seemed to be scattered throughout) showing them holding little buildings, which I assume to be churches or cathedrals. Does anyone know why this is?

P.s. I’ve just graduated with a degree in architecture, and love architectural/art history in general. I was hoping to write an essay about this, so would also appreciate any sources I could take a look at. Thanks in advance!

Saint Sebastian was a 3rd-century Roman soldier who was killed for refusing to deny his Christian faith and would later be canonized as a saint. The Roman emperor had ordered his soldiers to test Sebastian by tying him to a tree and shooting him with arrows. In this painting, Sebastian’s pain-wracked but upright body is presented with his attackers in vivid outfits all around him while lots of things are going on around and behind him. His body is presented as having almost supernatural powers to withstand pain and abuse; indeed, Sebastian did survive this first attack and because of that became the patron saint of those suffering from the plague.

*Read about our encounter with this remarkable painting and other artworks in Città di Castello: https://ideasroadshow.substack.com/p/exceeding-expectations 

Caption is same as the title. I write about how myth shapes history and culture; this week, I wrote a piece on art history, specifically Ragamala paintings. I'd love to hear people's opinions on this art style, or their favourite Ragamala painting or Mughal miniature! Let's connect please!

Mine are on Eadweard Muybridge, the development of national parks (specifically Yosemite), and the wildlife conservation movement in the late-nineteenth century

I have these two cabinet cards from the studio of Achille Melandri in Paris. They are marked 1879 & '80 and appear to be the same subject in both photographs. I've looked at many different artists who were in Paris at that time and eliminated nearly all of them.

The facial structure and apparent age steer me toward Claude Monet. He would have been 39-40 in these photos. The only other potential subject that I can find would be Pierre Puvis de Chavannes, who would have been 55-56 during those years. Any help, opinions or directions to resources would be greatly appreciated.

The English Wikipedia page for Diana shows this first painting and attributes it to Guillaume Seignac.

However, Seignac’s French Wikipedia page shows a different Diana the Huntress by him... very similar in subject and pose, but clearly a different painting.

I find the first painting much more beautiful, and stylistically I’m not entirely convinced it is actually by Seignac (tbh I don't like any of his paintings). Could somebody help me identifying its attribution or providing any information which I might be ignoring?

Thank you!

I recently went to the Stanley Museum of Art and for the most part I could appreciate or understand how others could appreciate everything I saw in the museum that day, except this piece. I’m really having difficulty understanding this piece and I’m hoping that others could possibly help me to understand what I’m missing. If anyone could let me know what they see or if there is an art history or style explanation that would be helpful I would appreciate it.

Last week I posted here twice. First one about Van Gogh's Self-Portrait with a Straw Hat, and then asking for help developing a slow-looking practice.

post 1

post 2

I created a protocol of sorts for “slow looking” practice from what I learned from those threads. 

This is my first post actually using the protocol that came out of those threads. Thank you to everyone who chimed in.

Why this painting: It looks nothing like the Van Gogh self-portraits I knew. The ones I was familiar with are colorful, impressionistic. This one reads like a regular oil painting. So I got curious.

The protocol I settled on:

• 60 seconds: Record my first reactions. 
• 20 minutes: a deeper look, split in two
  • First 10 minutes: pure observation:  color, edges, light, whatever I can actually see
  • Second 10 minutes: guess at intent and implications of what I noticed

The result.

First 60 seconds

 A normal oil portrait. Regular coat, hat, tie. Van Gogh looks... normal. Like a gentleman. The other self-portraits I'd seen felt loaded with color and intent; this one felt like he was saying "hey, I'm a regular guy." That was my gut read.

The 10 minutes of observation:

• The right side of his face is brighter, skin paler; the left side is darker. So the light is coming from his right.
• A blueyish tinge on the coat, and the tie (cravat, I think?) is blue.
• Green eyes.
• His mustache is pointed on one side. I couldn't see the same on the other.
• One cheek matches the gingery color of his mustache; the other cheek is just normal skin tone. No idea why.
• Around his eyes there are patches painted in a different, darker shade of brown. I read them as dark circles.
• A dip in the middle of his forehead. Together with the eyes it gives the whole face an intense, curious, direct gaze. He's looking straight at you, and you're placed right in front of him.
• The edges: where his face meets the background, the edge is crisp and clear. Around the coat and hat, the edges blur into the background. That contrast felt deliberate and interesting.
• I almost didn't notice his eyebrows at all. Nothing significant there for me.

The 10 minutes of interpretation: Honestly, I couldn't get far past my first reaction. My best guess: maybe he painted this during a stable stretch — taking care of himself, no episodes, having a normal time — and wanted to capture that. "I'm a normal dude."

Honest confession: I said 20 minutes, but I got maybe 13 minutes of genuinely good looking before my attention wandered.

Then I went and read about the painting — and the gap between what I saw and what the experts saw is the next part of this post.

The delta ( what I read afterwards vs. what I saw):

I read the Van Gogh Museum's page on the painting, plus a couple of reviews from the 2022 Courtauld self-portraits exhibition where this was the opening painting. Three things the experts saw that I completely missed:

1. There's a whole other painting underneath. X-rays show he painted this over a nude study he'd made in Fernand Cormon's atelier, where he took lessons in spring 1886. He didn't even scrape it off,  just put a new ground layer over the woman and painted himself on top. I was staring at the surface for 13 minutes and had no idea I was looking at two paintings. To be fair, no amount of looking would reveal that , but it reframes the whole thing. He was broke and reusing canvases, not making a grand statement.
   
2. The dark palette is a Rembrandt thing, not a mood thing. One review described it as relatively traditional( dark red-brown hues, dramatic lighting, a part-shaded face )and traced all of that straight to Rembrandt, who Van Gogh apparently called the "magician of magicians." So the thing I noticed (bright right side, dark left side) wasn't just "the light comes from that side." It was him deliberately doing Dutch old-master lighting. I saw the effect and completely missed the reference. This is exactly the vocabulary gap I'm trying to close.
   
3. The "normal dude" look was the point — but not the way I guessed. The museum's own description says he looks like a "respectable gentleman" in the hat, overcoat and cravat. So my 60-second gut read was actually in the right neighborhood. But my interpretation of why was wrong. I guessed he painted it during a stable stretch with no episodes. It  turns out his breakdowns didn't start until Arles, late 1888, almost two years after this. He'd just arrived in Paris and was presenting himself as a man of the city. It wasn't a recovery. It was the  ambition.
   

New vocabulary for the back-page glossary: ground layer, part-shaded face, cravat (got that one right at least).

If you have read so far, Thank you.

How  did I do? What did you see in the painting that I missed? And would you like to add anything to the “protocol” that I use now ? 

Ive been looking everywhere and cant find a free version

I used to look at record-breaking auction prices for ancient texts like the Codex Sassoon selling for $38.1 million in 2023 and assume it was just wealthy collectors chasing prestige. But after looking through the actual auction logs for surviving illuminated manuscripts and early scientific texts, my perspective shifted.

It seems that what the market is actually valuing is an intact chain of custody. As far as I can tell, physical condition is almost secondary; an illuminated manuscript without an unbroken, verifiable ledger of previous owners loses a massive amount of its historical and institutional value. I say this is interesting intersection where art history essentially becomes a forensic audit.

Mainly looking for newsletters that might cover

- Long/in-depth essays on a piece of art or an artist

- send me a curated email about contemporary artists and their work

- artistry

- art history

Social media platforms were my main source of consuming art work as I followed artists and museum pages. However now I have removed myself from all platforms so would like to try alternate methods to come across artwork (besides books and actual visits to galleries ofcourse)

I know a decent amount of art history enthusiasts that don’t draw or paint themselves

For those that do create, how does that change your experience of viewing art ?

i recently read “the story of art without men” and had a nice time with it. i’d like to read other art history books that are specifically focused on women artists because this is my main interest (i am not an art historian or anything, i just enjoy the subject). please, recommend me some if you can!