Tuesday, May 13, 2014

El Greco And Manet Paintings

By Darren Hartley


El Greco paintings show mastery in Post-Byzantine art, following the footsteps of Greek artists. El Greco spent a great majority of his time in Rome developing his style, where he adopted elements from both Mannerism and Venetian Renaissance.

It was in Toledo Spain where El Greco truly blossomed and the best El Greco paintings were produced. The focal point of his work was highly expressive and visionary religious works. He rarely ventured away from this genre but when he did, he produced compelling portraits, landscape paintings, mythological works and sculptures.

Later El Greco paintings were particularly notable for their undulating forms, epic scale and expressive distortions. For El Greco, color is the most important element in painting. In this regard, he declared that color should have primacy over form. He dramatized rather than described in his more mature works. The strong spiritual emotion in his works directly affected his audience.

Depictions of everyday scenes of people and city life are what Manet paintings are all about. In the transition from realism to impressionism, Edouard Manet was considered a leading artist. The Luncheon on the Grass and Olympia are among his most famous works.

One of the most arresting portraits among Manet paintings shows a young woman called Victorine Meurent, wearing a black ribbon around her neck and a dashingly blue ribbon in her hair. Victorine was a constant model for Edouard. As a matter of fact she was the model for one of the most notorious paintings in the world, also by Edouard.

In Olympia, accredited to be among the most famous of Manet paintings, Victorine posed as a prostitute, completely in the nude except for a black ribbon around her neck and a satin slipper on her foot. In The Luncheon on the Grass, she posed as a naked woman surrounded by two fully dressed men enjoying a picnic. In Mlle V in the Costume of an Espada, she posed as a bullfighter in very unsuitable shoes.




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