Observations on particular works of art. If you would like to contribute please contact David Marshall david@melbourneartnetwork.com.au We prefer that you submit a proposal before submitting the full piece.
A hidden story: Eugene von Guérard’s Mr John King’s station, 1861 Ruth Pullin With the closing of the National Gallery of Victoria’s touring exhibition Eugene von Guérard: nature revealed in Canberra in July of this year it is timely to reconsider rarely seen works in the light of the close analysis made possible by...
Read more »
The Napoleon Exhibition by David R. Marshall The Napoleon: Revolution to Empire exhibition is now on at the National Gallery of Victoria. Here I want to muse a little on a few works that caught my eye at the opening. That this exhibition is about Napoleon is hard to miss, with his name in...
Read more »
Nicolas Poussin, The Crossing of the Red Sea, 1633-34 National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne Poussin’s Crossing of the Red Sea was once something of a problem painting. Indeed, its exact relationship to the pendant Adoration of the Golden Calf (National Gallery, London) has made great fodder for undergraduate essay questions. The two works, clearly...
Read more »
Giuseppe Caletti, David with the Head of Goliath, Birmingham Museums and Art Galleries, c. 1650 The future King of Israel, David, is contemplating the head of the slain Goliath, champion of the Philistines. As the book of Samuel recounts, David hurls a stone from his sling, which hits Goliath in the centre of his...
Read more »
Bernini’s Raimondi Chapel in S. Pietro in Montorio, Rome 1638–48 David R. Marshall The Raimondi chapel in S. Pietro in Montorio is proof of the triumph of sculpture over painting. At 8.30am on a cold winter’s morning, when the church opens, it is the one well-lit part of the church (Fig. 1). Opposite, Sebastiano...
Read more »
What are you looking at? John Weretka Giuseppe Maria Crespi, Ecstasy of St Margaret of Cortona, 1701. Museo Diocesano, Cortona. If Crespi is remembered at all today, it must be for his genre paintings, the subject of an exhibition (Giuseppe Maria Crespi and the emergence of genre painting in Italy) in 1986. Crespi’s The flea...
Read more »
What are you looking at? Lisa Beaven Evariste Luminais, The Sons of Clovis II (1880) in the Art Gallery of New South Wales This is, without doubt, the strangest painting in the New South Wales Art Gallery (Fig. 1). Painted on a heroic scale, with the figures almost life-size, it is impossible to ignore...
Read more »
What are you looking at? A Carracci School Landscape on the lid of a virginal at the Powerhouse Museum in Sydney On display in the Powerhouse Museum, Sydney, at the moment is a virginal, which according to the label is a Bolognese work of 1629, made by a local priest, Vincentius de Taeggiis (85/372...
Read more »
