Friday, May 9, 2014

Paintings Of El Greco And Manet

By Darren Hartley


Following the footsteps of Greek artists, El Greco paintings show mastery in Post-Byzantine art. A great majority of the time El Greco spent in Rome was used to develop a style, adopting elements from both Mannerism and Venetian Renaissance.

El Greco truly blossomed as an artist in Toledo, Spain where the best El Greco paintings were produced. It was in highly expressive and visionary religious works where El Greco truly excelled. Compelling portraits, landscape paintings, mythological works and sculptures by El Greco were also part of his artwork during the rare times he ventured away from the religious genre.

Undulating forms, epic scale and expressive distortions were the notable aspects of El Greco paintings in his later years. The most important element of painting, according to El Greco, is color and because of this, he believes that color should have primacy over form. Dramatization and not description was the focus of his more mature works. His audience is directly affected by his works because of their strong spiritual and emotional content.

Manet paintings depicted everyday scenes of people and city life. Edouard Manet was a leading artist in the transition from realism to impressionism. His most famous works include The Luncheon on the Grass and Olympia.

A portrait showing a young woman called Victorine Meurent, wearing a black ribbon around her neck and a dashingly blue ribbon in her hair, is one of the most arresting among Manet paintings. A constant model for Edouard, Victorine was also the model for one of the most notorious paintings in the world, also attributed to Edouard.

Olympia is a one of the most famous Manet paintings. Victorine was the model for the prostitute featured in the painting, in all her glory except for a black ribbon around her neck and a satin slipper on her foot. She was completely naked again in The Luncheon on the Grass, but in this painting she was surrounded by two men who were fully clothed while enjoying their picnic together. She was featured as a bullfighter wearing very unsuitable shoes in Mlle V in the Costume of an Espada.




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