While I’m finishing up accessories for my Napoleonic project, let’s talk about the 17th century! I’m interested in 1660s and 1670s baroque fashion, which broadly speaking consists…
Portrait of Countess Louise Henriette of Nassau , painting by Willem van Honthorst . Aquisgrana, Suermondt Ludwig Museum
From Witch Hats to Shoes and Beyond So 1680, my pretty! Whether you know it or not, you’re familiar with 17th century fashion. Our modern ideas of witch clothing trickled down to us from the …
Beauty was an asset, a weapon, and a curse for the ladies of the Restoration court.
Artemisia Gentileschi(1593-1652). Portrait of a Lady
This period was a watershed in the development of History Painting. By the end, due to the dull prescriptions of the academies and the semantic confusion between istoria and history, the genre became
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Veronese's majestic, full-length portrait of the countess and her eldest daughter Deidamia, born in 1545, was originally accompanied by one of her husband Count Issepo (Giuseppe) da Porto and their son Leonida (now in the Palazzo Pitti, Florence). These paintings were most likely installed in their palace in Vicenza, which had recently been built by Andrea Palladio (1508-1580). The portraits would have been placed so that it would appear as if the family were standing in niches inside the palace; however, the floor strip below is a later addition. Veronese was famous for his use of color and mastered the rendering of luxurious textures and fabrics, including the marten's fur. The head of gold and enamel is nearly identical to one in the Walters' collection (57.1982). Marten fur was thought to protect women in childbirth, and in 1552 the countess was pregnant with her daughter Emilia.
The more you research, the more you learn of how little we know. After yesterday’s post I had a discussion with a couple of friends and I learned two nuggets that I feel that I have to share with you as soon as possible. First, Anéa has posted several of her own photos of the Norwegian mantua, with additional information on her Livejournal. The Shrewsbury mantua The Valdemar mantua Second, the Valdemar Castle gown DOES have a pattern! It can be found in a Danish book, Moden i 1700-årene, fra 1690 till 1790 by Ellen Andersen, published in 1977. I’m sure that you understand why it makes me exited. This means that there are patterns for three early mantuas! I was given a photocopy of that book years ago from a friend and I have always assumed I got all of the patterns, but I hadn’t. It also highlights how unknown costume research remains when it isn’t translated to English. I have yet to se the pattern, but I have been informed that even though it has pleated sleeves that look similar to the Shrewsbury mantua, they are set in sleeves and not cut with the rest of the gown as that one is. I find it very interesting that three gowns that are of the same type and also in such a narrow time frame, 1690-1710, seems to be quite different from each other. I look forward to have all three patterns for a better comparison. The Kimberley mantua
From portraits to religious scenes to seascapes and more, here is a list of some of the most beautiful and rarely seen paintings by Rembrandt.
For information on Rubens technique and a bibliography see my Rubens materials page. My palette consisted of pigments Rubens often used: lead white, various raw siennas, ochres and umbers, charcoal black, genuine vermilion, Van Dyck brown, chalk (used as extender), lead-tin yellow (type I), madder lake, and some blue verditer (for the white clothing). Half of the paints were made by me from pigment and cold-pressed linseed oil that I bleached in the sun. Rubens (original, detail) "Infanta's Waiting-maid in Brussels", 1623-25. The Hermitage. Lala Ragimov, copy after Rubens I started by copying a study associated with this painting, an aux trois crayons drawing. Rubens (original) Red, black, white chalks, pen and ink 353x283m Copy after Rubens, Lala Ragimov I compared the hatch-mark directions in the drawing to those in the painting (visible through the transparent shadows and half-shadows of the painting) to help guide my underpainting. The first step was a gessoed panel (calcium carbonate chalk and rabbit skin glue) which I didn't sand enough, so the vertical streaks show up in the final painting (lesson learned). The diagonal streaks (imitating those in the original) come from the egg-oil emulsion imprimatura the recipe for which was kindly described to me by Charlotte Caspers, artist trained as conservator who worked with Rubens imprimatura reconstructions. For good information on streaky imprimatura see "Preparation for Painting, the Artist's Choice and its Consequences.", p79. Some Rubens sketches show the grisaille approach while others exhibit what looks like a "dead-paint" layer, muted local colours in mid and light values. Peter Paul Rubens, "grisaille" approach to an oil sketch Ashmolean Peter Paul Rubens, "dead painted" oil sketch showing muted local colours Getty Museum The pale transparent portrait I was copying gave an impression of a grisaille beginning, so I finished the underpainting in raw siennas and umbers with accents in lead white. Step 1 Lala Ragimov after Rubens Step 1.5... Lala Ragimov after Rubens After that I moved to "dead-paint" (doodwerf) stage, adding unsaturated approximations of local colours to be worked up later. You can observe the dead paint layer on parts of two paintings at the Getty, the Calydonian Boar Hunt and the Return from War. Step 2 face (my take on the dead-paint layer) Finished copy, detail The last stage is adding outlines, final impasto highlights, glazed transparent shadows and dark lines, and finishing the clothes and background (which were done last in Rubens paintings) *** For me copying the masters I admire has always been and continues to be the best way to learn. I would recommend it to beginners and mature artists alike. 1) I strongly recommend making 1:1 scale copies, because if you scale the brush-strokes up or down you lose a lot of information about the technique. When Rubens himself made his numerous copies of Titian and others, he made them to scale. If you are copying inside a museum that has rules about making your canvas bigger or smaller, scale the canvas but not the image. It needs to remain 1:1 for you to learn about brush sizes, shapes; stiffness or softness of the brush hair; the actual width of lines; quality and thickness of impasto; the scale the artist thought needed to produce an effect; the spirit of the work, etc. I believe that it is more informative to copy a detail to scale than the whole work smaller or larger. 2) Works on panel are best to be copied on panel, works on canvas are best on canvas. Pay attention to the weave of the canvas and observe the correct colour of the priming. When in doubt about the priming/imprimatura makeup or colour, reading conservation literature will usually help. More of my copies can be found here. ©Lala Ragimov no artwork or text by Lala Ragimov may be reproduced without her permission. My other posts on topics related to technical art history Inspired by Rubens (Getty Museum page, featuring my work) Copying a Rubens drawing (materials, techniques) Copying a Rubens painting (materials, techniques) Roger de Piles on drawing technique (excerpt in my translation) Jombert's drawing treatise (excerpts in my translation) 1400s-1700s drawing treatises online Painting materials of Rubens; bibliography Renaissance woodcut tools Image gallery: my copies and reconstructions
