If it’s Friday, it has to be the Friday Afternoon Challenge! Today’s puzzler: The Child Immortalized

Here are some kids whose presences are very famous in the history of art. Can you name the works and the artists that immortalized them?
1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

#4 is Blue Boy (finger in dike)

#6 is Alice in the Looking Glass

Any names of artists come to mind?

Now if you had paintings of Dragons ..............

This has got to be one of the strangest paintings of the Italian Renaissance (Ucello, otherwise a sane painter)!

Dragons are gentle creatures, messengers from the gods, bringing messages of love and are protectors of the ones unable to protect themselves

Love the square horse's hooves, BTW...

before he caught his vision for this painting...

http://www.botany.hawaii.edu/faculty/wong/bot135/lect12.htm

The chances that you would even survive in the plague ridden cities of Italy in those days were pretty bad. I think moldy bread was the least of it...

How are you doing these days?

:toast:

"Reluctant Dragon" is my Desktop at work.

on the Dragon's face.

a la how many Italian artists. This reminds me of Art Nouveau and the pre-Raphaelites, but I don't really know, that's a guess. I've seen Parrish's work in the past, but I need to get to know him better...THANK YOU for giving me this!

If there's another Blue Boy, I can't find it.

:hi:

but am sure I am most likely wrong about that. Hrumpf* These are hard!!!!!

A little oasis of art here...

I know this to be true when I was faced with such hard days...

I'm glad you feel helped. This is usually just a lighthearted take on art and I try to make it entertaining. But art has this way of bringing such new things to you...can't be helped...

Take care of yourself...

I used to love it.

But the last one looks like it's by Mary Cassatt.

But for some reason Gloria Vanderbuilt's name keeps floating in my head. It's not an artists painting of her is it?

Good luck, everybody! :hi:

It's by that Italian guy who painted all that stuff in Italy, right?

you guess which one...

William Merritt Chase

I just love him. I think he is terrific...

his plein air paintings.

A lovely artist, tho...

I should get half a point

But, since that was not forthcoming, I figured that you meant Lewis Carroll "Alice Through the Looking Glass." So, since you did not say so, I did not give you credit.

I am sorry. I don't want to offend you. I am happy to award you that half point because you did, in a sense, have the right answer!

Hooray for you, Angry Dragon!

On edit: this is a painting that the artist himself identifies as a portrait of his daughter, Alice...

:hi:

I was surprised I came as close as I did

edit: and I was thinking of that Alice, it just seemed to fit

ANOTHER HINT: #s 1, 2 and 5 are Renaissance era.

Hi CTyankee.

I haven't seen the answer for #5 here.

Just in case, I wanted to mention that 5 is by Luca Della Robbia. Its a detail from a panel of the Cantoria, whose original home was in sacristy of the Florence Cathedral. (Donatello also had a Cantoria in the sacristy of the cathedral.)

Tough challenge tonight! Excellent!


horseshoecrab

since della robbia's light colored sculptures are so recognizable. But our Renaissance art fans, like you, got a later start...

At first I thought that this panel/sculpture was the "partnership piece" where we'd find the 7th artist! Spent a lot of time trying to prove that it was Donatello and a partner, like Michelozzo but had no luck.

Found something about Donatello having a cantoria in the Forence Cathedral and then TOTALLY STUMBLED on the other Cantoria in that Cathedral. The Cantoria by Della Robbia and bingo! That was our Cantoria for this challenge!

How beautiful!

Della Robbia style is everywhere if you look for it. My husband and I were driving recently and stopped at a light. An apartment building's entrance was decorated with one of those large, sumptuous Della Robbia style wreaths around a round window. We both commented on how much it added to the building's entryway. This is how I usually think of Della Robbia, and was unaware of his Cantoria in Florence. Until now. :-)


Great challenge CTyankee. Tough but great! Thank you!


horseshoecrab

on the outside of the Ospelale degli Innocenti (orphanage) in Florence. You are walking along and look up and there they are! Quite something!

I didn't use it because it is SO easy to find with the google.

The cantoria is right in the same room in the museum of the Duomo with the Donatello. Great to compare the two...they are different in some basic ways...

And yes, Donatello did that wonderful balcony at the duomo in Prato with Michelozzi. What a project! That balcony is mind boggling...

A Boy as Pierrot

era, but I do like this painting....

I'm embarrassingly art-challenged, but am curious as to the time period. See my post below.

Rococo preceded (in France) the Regency period, after the Revolution. Napoleon and all that. There was also neo-classicism in France (David) and then giving way to the Romantic era (Delacroix)...

I've always wondered every time I looked at that framed print/reproduction(?)

They have a good collection of 18th century art and furnishings. One of my "dream trips" is to do a London art tour: National Gallery, Tate, Courtauld, Victoria and Albert...and drop in to see the Wallace...

And yes, that would be a very neat trip to take. For me, it would be more about history then art if I ever had the opportunity, but would probably enjoy those places too.

I hope you get that chance to go someday! :-)

As I said, I can take limited amounts of this stuff before I gag.

I have a framed copy/print(?) of the boy in #4, but never knew who he was. I saw it at a yard sale, and took a liking to it. An impulse buy. I doubt it's worth anything, but maybe the antique frame is?

put on your walls to make the home look posh. Honestly, too much of that period makes me gag, especially the "decorative arts" (i.e. furniture). This painting has a real charm to it, tho. No wonder you liked it. The "dress up" costume of the little boy, sleeves too long, is appealing. He's really a good looking kid, too.

You might want to check out Fragonard's "The Swing" for a REAL dose of over the top Rococo.

But my house is far from posh (lol!) Anyone with good taste would cringe if they saw it, I bet. It is more a less a hodgepodge of decorative things that probably don't belong together, but struck my fancy for one reason or another.

Thanks a lot for your Friday challenges. I enjoy them very much, even though I rarely know any of the answers. I've learned quite a bit from them already. :hi:

it really IS. Remember, this is the art of the Marie Antoinette period! Fragonard was lucky to escape the Terror and go to England and keep his head! All of his "customers" got shortened, as the Brits call the guillotined ones...

Come back next week. It won't be so art heavy...just kind of fun...

I look forward to it!

And no, I knew you didn't mean me personally, but the period. Which btw, furniture-wise I think of as being that very ornate gilded gold fancy-schmancy stuff (the Marie Antoinette/War of 1812 time period, I mean). Am I right? If so, I don't really like that either. It's just way too much.

period. If you google "Coronation of Napoleon" and "Death of Marat" (the dead guy in the bathtub) by David you'll see the difference. David was also a neo-classicist (meaning that he went back to heroic themes of classical Rome). Ingres is another artist in that period. Only a bit later you have the Romantics .. Turner and Constable in England, Goya in Spain, Delacroix (my fave!) in France.

If you want a terrific (and entertaining) show that gives you a fascinating look at these periods of art you can go on youtube and get Simon Schama's "Power of Art" series that ran on PBS. You can do it in bites. He has sections on several of these periods. It is very entertaining (they are "dramatized")and Schama is a wonderful narrator. Great stuff!

Hi CTyankee!

#2 is "The Baptism of Christ" by Verrocchio and his young apprentice, Leonardo DaVinci.

Good to see you CT!


horseshoecrab

(edited to correct spelling)

I'll post all the answers later but #1 is in the National Gallery in London...

CTyankee... eventually I got # 2 by thinking "who draws like this?" in regard to the curly haired angel. Had to be DaVinci. It was a short search after this to find that it was DaVinci's teacher, Verrocchio along with DaVinci and the wonderful "Baptism of Christ."

(At first, when I saw your clue, I thought it had to be the sculpture that had 2 artists! I totally forgot about the concept of painter's apprentices.)


tough, tough tough but I loved tracking it down!


horseshoecrab

:hi:

The girl in the corner.

Dixie Chicks - Travelin' Soldier
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nLBgmbXBOb8

had done, said he simply couldn't paint any more because Leonardo was such a master himself. It was common for apprentices to work on the paintings by the Master artist...

According to one site I read, The Baptism of Christ was Verrocchio's last known painting as well, although his workshop remained prolific in all aspects of the arts.

I read that one of DaVinci's innovations was in getting the folds of material in his subjects just right, so that everything fell into folds naturally. To do this he dipped the material in a watery clay and let it harden in place, so that it was easier to draw and paint the folds exactly right.

The look on that angel's face is so sweet, solemn, and understanding of the moment. DaVinci was such a genius.


horseshoecrab

In fact, it is quite riveting. The kid's eyes are haunting. Do you think that the artist is portraying a terrifying childhood? the green wash, even the freckles take on a terrible meaning...

little romper? That romper is done so delicately, so tenderly.

But,yes, freckles=tears. What a good take on your part...