The Genius of Johannes Vermeer

Johannes Vermeer was a Dutch Baroque painter who specialized in exquisite, domestic interior scenes of middle class life (Wiki). Vermeer is one of my favoritest Renaissance Masters. His paintings are very sedate in their quiet domesticity yet very lyrical and evocative.

One of my biggest loves is...Johannes Vermeer.

From Breast to Beard: Pornography, Extreme Violence and other Weird Stuff in Works of Art from the Renaissance

Master of the Fontainebleau School, Gabrielle d'Estrees and one of her Sisters


Alonso Cano, Miraculous Lactation of St Bernard


Cornelis van Haarlem, Monk with a Nun


Quentin Massys, Grotesque Old Woman


Andrea Mantegna, Saint Sebastian

The holy and the profane, or the spiritual and the corporeal, begun to intermingle in Renaissance life and art. Towards the end of the Renaissance the erotic content became more and more evident. Mannerism produced images where a mythological or allegorical motif appears only as a disguise for erotic contents. Quasi sacred motifs such as Cornelisz's painting The Monk with a Nun were just cover ups for erotica if not almost pornography. This painting was meant for the Prinsenhof (the Princes' Court), which had been set up at the Friars Preachers' Monastery of the Dominicans.

Under the influence of Catholic propaganda, which was advertising the human body as 'sinful' and strictly forbidding any nakedness in Christian iconography, many artists themselves painted over the sinful nudity in their paintings. The Church resisted the spirit of the Renaissance, which had just learned that spirit and body are two sides of the same coin. Its medieval mentality postulated the holiness of spirit and recognized the body just as a part of decaying nature."

In addition to the erotic motifs, we have bizarre and/or extremely violent images including a woman with a full beard nursing a child, a man getting flailed in public and two women violently cutting a man's head off. Aiwaz notes, "The Renaissance cabinet of curiosities consists of unexpected motifs from real and imaginary life that displays, by means of twisted reality, the real spirit, mind and body of the Renaissance man, who is split between medieval superstition and the birth of a new Subject.


Jusepe de Ribera, Bearded Woman


Correggio, Leda with the Swan


Artemisia Gentileschi, Judith beheading Holofernes


Giulio Romano, Jupiter and Olympia


Agnolo Bronzino, Allegory of Lust


Jean Fouquet, Virgin and Child Surrounded by Angels


After Michelangelo, Leda and the Swan


Pieter Huys, Temptation of St Anthony


Jan Gossaert, Virgin and Child
photos and text via Aiwaz

Renaissance Illusion Paintings - Giuseppe Arcimboldo Used Fruits, Trees, Animals, Fish for his Incredible Portraits

Giuseppe Arcimboldo was an Italian Renaissance painter best known for creating imaginative portrait heads made entirely of such objects as fruits, vegetables, flowers, fish, and books — that is, he painted representations of these objects on the canvas arranged in such a way that the whole collection of objects formed a recognizable likeness of the portrait subject. This work is just magnificent!





"Renaissance Mannerist — Giuseppe Arcimboldo, (also spelled Arcimboldi), royal painter and imperial party planner to sixteenth-century Italian emperors; Ferdinand I, Maximilian II, and Rudolf II.



Giuseppe Arcimboldo was born in 1527 and grew up during the High Renaissance. A natural artistic talent landed him a coveted spot as student to the renowned painter Leonardo Da Vinci. Later Arcimboldo accepted a position as Royal Painter in the imperial court. Arcimboldo faithfully served the court for the next 25 years.



Part of Arcimboldo's duties included designing gala events for the imperial family. These were flashy affairs with gilded fountains and rivers of champagne, parades and promenades, flocks of colored birds, music, theater, tons of original artwork, sculptures, and much pageantry. Giuseppe invented many unique special effects for these events such as a enormous hydro-mechanically powered musical instrument which acted like a modern color organ. Arcimboldo called it the "Harpsichord of Color."



Among the services Arcimboldo performed for the Court included the task of producing an endless series of portraits for the imperial family and other heads of state. Since there were no copy or print machines in the sixteenth century every portrait had to be duplicated by hand. It was during these endless hours spent in his studio that Arcimboldo invented the style of painting that would forever separate him from the other painters of the day.





The Composite Head. Giuseppe began to paint tongue-in-cheek portraits of people with rendered clumps of mammals, fish, vegetables and other natural objects. Instead of a nose Arcimboldo uses an elephant to form the shape, instead of an ear, a pelican or alligator, instead of a mouth he uses the shape of a ripe vegetable. His whimsical "composite head" paintings were the hit of his day, and continue to delight art lovers in every generation." sandlotscience

The Paintings of Renaissance Masters Blended with the Images of Superheros

This wonderful and fun website call worth1000 does frequent competitions among it's members involving photoshop. This is the result of a contest they did blending the paintings of Renaissance Masters with that of superheros such as Batman in it's incarnation as The Black Knight, Spiderman, and Catwoman among others. This stuff is really well done.


The Son Of Batman is a remake of Belgian surrealist master Rene Magritte’s “The Son on Man.”



“Batman Mourning.” I don't who the Renaissance Master this was copied from


“Poison Ivy Pestering Batman Again.”


“Spiderman.”


“Catwoman”, is based on one of Salvador Dali’s many surrealist paintings.

“The Death of Kent” which is a digital reworking of David’s Death of Marat.


Next we have a representation called “Spiderman and Doc Oc” which was inspired by a painting from the irrepressibly impious Salvador Dali.


“David X Men” which was, off course, was inspired by the world famous statue by Renaissance master Michelangelo.


“The Joker.” This representation was inspired by one of Rembrandt’s many self portraits.
via