Fortunately, the paintings were left in tact and visitors to The Clark are able to see these "lewd, immoral" masterpieces from a bygone era.
Hendrik van Balen, Jan Brueghel the Younger & others is an introduction
to the artwork Eric & I are about to explore.
We will be viewing paintings with mythological, religious and historic themes. Some works are set in beautiful landscapes, making nature a major theme. Some paintings are focused soley on the individual(s) in the work. My favorites:
Cleopatra, with the fatal asp
at her breast, was painted by
Guido Reni in 1640.
Flemish artists Denis van Alsloot & Hendrick de Clerck made nature a major
theme in Landscape with Diana and Actaeon, painted in 1608.
The Christian martyr,
Saint Sebastian, is the
subject of this Guido
Reni painting
(1617 - 1619).
"Contemporary" & classic mythology co-exist in Venus with an Organist & Cupid,
painted by Titian (Tiziano Vecelli) from 1550 to 1555.
The revelry of a Bacchic Scene
is captured by Nicolas Poussin
(1626 - 1628).
The grandeur of nature leaps off the canvas in Paul Bril's Landscape of Psyche & Jupiter
with later additions by Peter Paul Rubens (1610 & after 1625).
Rubens' Fortuna is a
celebration of the
female form
(1636 - 1638).
The faces in Jacob Jordaens' The Marriage of Peleus & Thetis (1636 - 38) shows
that every celebration is fraught with tension & undercurrents.
Death of Nessus by Luca Giordano
(1696 - 1697) is one of the
mythical themes the Catholic
Church disapproved of.
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