Marcel Proust (1871-1922): Art in Within A Budding Grove, Part 2: Place-Names: The Place
Art in Proust - Within A Budding Grove, Part 2: Place-Names: The Place
Andrea Mantegna (1431-1506), Crucifixion (ca.1457-1460).
Image source: Wikimedia Commons. Public domain in the USA (pre-1923).
" ... like certain skies painted with an almost Parisian modernity by Mantegna or Veronese, beneath which could be accomplished only some solemn and tremendous act, such as a departure by train or the Elevation of the Cross."
Paolo Veronese (1528-1588), Crucifixion (ca. 1582).
Image source: Wikimedia Commons. Public domain in the USA (pre-1923).
" ... like certain skies painted with an almost Parisian modernity by Mantegna or Veronese, beneath which could be accomplished only some solemn and tremendous act, such as a departure by train or the Elevation of the Cross."
Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin (1699-1779), Boy Building A House of Cards (1735).
Image source: Wikimedia Commons. Public domain in the USA (pre-1923).
" ... the velvet band, the loop of ribbon which would have delighted one in a portrait by Chardin or Whistler ... "
James Abbott McNeill Whistler (1834-1903), Symphony in White, No. 3 (1867).
Image source: Wikiart.org. Public domain in the USA (pre-1923).
" ... the velvet band, the loop of ribbon which would have delighted one in a portrait by Chardin or Whistler ... "
Jean Bourdichon (1457/59-1521), Anne between Three Saints, from the Great Hours of Anne of Brittany (ca. 1503-1508).
Image source: Wikimedia Commons. Public domain in the USA (pre-1923).
" ... brought to mind one of those miniatures of Anne of Brittany painted in Books of Hours by an old master, in which everything is so exactly in the right place ... "
Domenikos Theotokopoulos "El Greco" (1541-1614), Portrait of the Artist's Son, Jorge Manuel Theotokopoulos (ca. 1600-1605).
Image source: Wikimedia Commons. Public domain in the USA (pre-1923).
" ... made her see in such high relief and in the fullest detail everything that there was attractive about him, the contingencies that were obliging him to return home, his difficulties with the customs, his admiration for El Greco ... "
Gustave Moreau (1826-1898), Jupiter and Semele (1894/5).
Image source: Wikimedia Commons. Public domain in the USA (pre-1923).
" ... and, altering the scale of her vision, shewed her this one man so large among all the rest quite small, like that Jupiter to whom Gustave Moreau gave, when he portrayed him by the side of a weak mortal, a superhuman stature."
Titian (ca. 1488/1490-1576), Portrait of Isabella d'Este (ca. 1534-1536).
Image source: Wikimedia Commons. Public domain in the USA (pre-1923).
"She was pleased that my grandmother liked a necklace which she wore, and which fell over her dress. It appeared in the portrait of an ancestress of her own by Titian which had never left the family. So that one could be certain of its being genuine."
Eugène Carrière (1849-1906), Lady Leaning Her Elbows on a Table (1893).
Image source: Wikimedia Commons. Public domain in the USA (pre-1923).
"But what they have got at Guermantes, which is a little more interesting, is quite a touching portrait of my aunt by Carrière. ... ”
Albert Lebourg (1849-1928), Bords de Seine à Chatou (before 1918).
Image source: Wikimedia Commons. Public domain in the USA (pre-1923).
" ... Charlus ... had transferred to his own home much of the admirable panelling from the Guermantes house, instead of substituting, like his nephew, a ‘modern style’ of decoration, employing Lebourg or Guillaumin."
Armand Guillaumin (1841-1927), View of the Seine, Paris (1871).
Image source: Wikimedia Commons. Public domain in the USA (pre-1923).
" ... Charlus ... had transferred to his own home much of the admirable panelling from the Guermantes house, instead of substituting, like his nephew, a ‘modern style’ of decoration, employing Lebourg or Guillaumin."
Jan Gossaert (1478-1532), Adoration of the Magi (1510-1515).
Image source: Wikimedia Commons. Public domain in the USA (pre-1923).
"Save one, whom her straight nose, her dark complexion pointed in contrast among the rest, like (in a renaissance picture of the Epiphany) a king of Arab cast, they were known to me only, one by a pair of eyes, hard, set and mocking ... "
Rembrandt van Rijn (1606-1669), Philemon and Baucis (1658).
Image source: National Gallery of Art. Public domain in the USA (pre-1923).
" ... that amber haze, unsubstantial and mysterious as a twilight, in which Rembrandt picks out here and there a window-sill or a well-head."
Pisanello (c. 1395-c. 1455), Hoopoe (1430s).
Image source: Wikimedia Commons. Public domain in the USA (pre-1923).
" ... little plumed triangles of an unmoving spray delineated with the delicacy of a feather or a downy breast from Pisanello’s pencil ... "
John Constable (1776-1837), Cloud Study (1822).
Image source: Tate Museum. License: CC-BY-NC-ND. Photo © Tate.
" ... so filled with innumerable clouds, packed one against another in horizontal bands, that its panes seemed to be intended, for some special purpose or to illustrate a special talent of the artist, to present a ‘Cloud Study’ ... "
James Abbott McNeill Whistler (1834-1903), Harmony in Pink and Grey: Lady Meux (1881).
Image source: Wikimedia Commons. Public domain in the USA (pre-1923).
" ... a little butterfly that had gone to sleep at the foot of the window seemed to be attaching with its wings at the corner of this ‘Harmony in Grey and Pink’ in the Whistler manner the favourite signature of the Chelsea master."
Unknown Attic sculptor, under the direction of Pheidias (ca. 480-430 BCE). The so-called Peplos Scene, Block V from the east frieze of the Parthenon, Athens (ca. 447–433 BC).
Image source: Wikimedia Commons. Author: Twospoonfuls. License: CC-BY 3.0.
" ... the young bodies which I had seen displaying themselves on the beach, in a sportive procession worthy of Greek art or of Giotto."
Giotto (1266-1337), The Virgin's Wedding Procession (1305).
Image source: Wikiart.org. Public domain in the USA (pre-1923).
" ... the young bodies which I had seen displaying themselves on the beach, in a sportive procession worthy of Greek art or of Giotto."
William Hogarth (1697-1764), John and Elizabeth Jeffreys and Their Children (1730).
Image source: Wikimedia Commons. Public domain in the USA (pre-1923).
" ... walking in front of a person in authority, in all probability her or her friends’ ‘Miss,’ who suggested a portrait of Jeffreys by Hogarth, with a face as red as if her favourite beverage were gin rather than tea ... "
Unknown artist, copy of a drawing by Titian (ca. 1488/1490-1576), Nude in a Landscape (16th century).
Image source: British Museum. License: CC BY-NC-SA 4.0.
" ... it is the age at which we like to caress Beauty with our eyes objectively, outside ourselves, to have it near us, in a tapestry, in a lovely sketch by Titian picked up in a second-hand shop, in a mistress as lovely as Titian’s sketch."
Paolo Veronese (1528-1588), Portrait of a Venetian Lady (La Belle Nani) (ca. 1560).
Image source: Wikiart.org. Public domain in the USA (pre-1923).
"One or two glimpses of a profile against the sea, less beautiful, assuredly, than those of Veronese’s women whom I ought, had I been guided by purely aesthetic reasons, to have preferred to her."
Edouard Manet (1832-1883), Berthe Morisot with a Bouquet of Violets (1872).
Image source: Wikimedia Commons. Public domain in the USA (pre-1923).
" ... made her portrait contemporary with the countless portraits that Manet or Whistler had painted of all those vanished models, models who already belonged to oblivion or to history."
Giotto (1266-1337), Infidelity (aka Idolatry) (1306).
Image source: Wikimedia Commons. Public domain in the USA (pre-1923).
" ... taking a short stroll with Albertine, whom I had found on the beach tossing up and catching again on a cord an oddly shaped implement which gave her a look of Giotto’s ‘Idolatry’ ... "
Vittore Carpaccio (1465-1526), The Meeting of Etherius and Ursula and the Departure of the Pilgrims, from The Legend of Saint Ursula (1498).
Image source: Wikiart.org. Public domain in the USA (pre-1923).
"They had water-tournaments, as we have here, held generally in honour of some Embassy, such as Carpaccio shews us in his Legend of Saint Ursula."
Giovanni Bellini (1429-1507), San Giobbe Altarpiece (ca. 1487).
Image source: Wikimedia Commons. Public domain in the USA (pre-1923).
"And on this instrument with its greater compass they played with their lips, shewing all the application, the ardour of Bellini’s little angel musicians, qualities which also are an exclusive appanage of youth."
Giovanni Bellini (1429-1507), Detail of San Giobbe Altarpiece (ca. 1487).
Image source: Wikimedia Commons. Public domain in the USA (pre-1923).
"And on this instrument with its greater compass they played with their lips, shewing all the application, the ardour of Bellini’s little angel musicians, qualities which also are an exclusive appanage of youth."
James Abbott McNeill Whistler (1834-1903), Symphony in Flesh Colour and Pink: Portrait of Mrs Frances Leyland (1871/74).
Image source: Wikimedia Commons. Public domain in the USA (pre-1923).
" ... making ... of a woman who has seemed to be pink-cheeked and golden-haired a pure ‘Harmony in pink and gold’ ... "
Titian (ca. 1488/1490-1576), Portrait of Laura de'Dianti (ca. 1523).
Image source: Wikimedia Commons. Public domain in the USA (pre-1923).
"'You have the tresses of Laura Dianti, of Eleanor of Guyenne, and of her descendant so beloved of Chateaubriand. ... '"
Michelangelo (1475-1564), Detail of The Last Judgment (1537/41).
Image source: Wikimedia Commons. Public domain in the USA (pre-1923).
" ... like those figures of Michelangelo which are being swept past in the arrested headlong flight of a whirlwind."
Unknown Hellenistic sculptor, Boy with Thorn or Lo Spinario (probably 1st century CE).
Image source: Wikimedia Commons. Author: Sixtus. License: CC BY-SA 3.0.
" ... like those painters who seek to match the grandeurs of antiquity in modern life, give to a woman cutting her toe-nail the nobility of the Spinario, or, like Rubens, make goddesses out of women whom they know, to people some mythological scene ... "
Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640), The Judgment of Paris (1632/35).
Image source: Wikimedia Commons. Public domain in the USA (pre-1923).
" ... like those painters who seek to match the grandeurs of antiquity in modern life, give to a woman cutting her toe-nail the nobility of the Spinario, or, like Rubens, make goddesses out of women whom they know, to people some mythological scene ... "