Leslie Eppler's List: ART

• Christian and Jewish themes are often depicted in her work as well; she combined elements of the classic religious Mexican tradition with surrealist renderings. While her paintings are not overtly Christian they certainly contain elements of the Mexican Christian style of religious paintings. 
   
  

• Quote
  Helen Langdon 1998 HL p.174
  The setting is Matthew s tax office but the scene conjures up the shady atmosphere of long evenings spent gambling or looking armed for adventure in the streets and taverns of Rome.
  The subject is taken from a short passage in the gospel of Matthew (9.9): 'Jesus saw a man called Matthew at his seat in the custom house and said to him 'Follow me ' and Matthew rose and followed him.'
  ...Matthew rich and fashionably dressed as befitted his status as toll-gatherer and publican a coin tucked in the brim of his hat sits at his work table with his louche companions.
  ...Caravaggio sets a world of brilliant colour of bold contrasts of reds greens and golds of the varied textures of velvets rakish feathers and soft fur against the timeless and austere simplicity of Christ and Peter roughly toga-clad and barefoot. He contrasts lightness of gesture and expression with ritual solemnity and the hand of Christ is modelled on Michelangelo's hand of Adam on the Sistine ceiling.
  ...The play of light and shade creates intense drama. The figures are wrapped in shadow and the large area of dark wall over their heads seems to weigh upon them prison-like suggesting man's brief stay in this gloomy world. The darkness is pierced by the shaft of light which falls diagonally across the wall following Christ's hand and brightens the face of St Matthew who turns towards it. It is a moving symbol of divine illumination. Matthew was widely thought of as a sinner whose call redeemed him from the dark abyss of sin. As St John Chrysostom wrote 'Matthew... was a publican living in continual rapine. But he... all at once stripped himself of the mischief and quenched his thirst and followed after spiritual gain'.
  

• counter reformation
• Michelangelo born in Caravaggio in Lombardy not far from Milan was from a good family of the noble line of Amarigi but rose markedly through his great passion for painting
• determined
• And to conclude the question as a matter of fact this man was great at subjects but not at ideals which means that he did not know how to make anything without the actual model before his eyes.
• Caravaggio as he was already called by everybody after the name of his native town w
• ubbed a knight
• owever his haste produced a high fever and it was precisely in Arpino where his enemy was born and called himself after that place that he became ill and died. All the high placed gentlemen of Rome mourned his end because he might still have done much of worth in his art.
• only the old painters accustomed to the old ways were dismayed by this new study of nature; nor did they cease to attack Caravaggio and his style spreading word that he never emerged from the cellars and that lacking invention and design without decorum or art he painted all his figures in one light and on one plane without any gradation: but such accusations did not stop the escalation of his fame.
• hapel of San Luigi dei Francesi. Marino
• But Caravaggio did not at all calm his restless nature by busying himself with painting; after working for a few hours in the day he would appear in town with his sword at his side and behave as if he were a professional swordsman seeming to care for anything but painting. Having fought with a young friend of his over a tennis game they hit each other with their rackets and drew their arms. The young man was killed and Caravaggio himself wounded. Having fled from Rome without money and being pursued he took refuge in Zagarolo with Duke Marzio Colonna where he painted the picture of Christ at Emmaus sitting between the two apostles and another half-figure of the Magdalen.
• Caravaggio was very happy with the honour of the cross and with the praises received for his painting and he lived in Malta respectably and lacked for nothing. But all of a sudden his turbulent nature caused him to fall out of this prosperous state and out of the Grand Master’s favour; because of a very inopportune quarrel with a most noble knight he was put into prison and reduced to a state of misery and fear. In order to regain his freedom he exposed himself to the gravest danger and escaping from prison by night he fled undetected to Sicily with such speed that he could not be recaptured. Having arrived in Syracuse he painted for the church of Santa Lucia which is outside the city on the seashore a picture of the dead Saint Lucy being blessed by the bishop while two men are digging the ground with shovels to bury her.
• With the majesty of art thus suppressed by Caravaggio everyone did as he pleased. What followed was contempt for beautiful things; the authority of antiquity and Raphael was destroyed; and because it was easy to find models and paint heads from life these people abandoned the histories which are the particular province of painting and devoted themselves instead to half-figures which previously were little used. Then the imitation of vulgar things began with filth and deformity being assiduously pursued by some; if they have to paint armour they choose the rustiest; if a vase they do not present it intact but chipped and broken. In copying figures they clothe them in stockings breeches and big caps and they devote all their attention to the wrinkles and defects of skin and suchlike depicting gnarled fingers and limbs altered by disease.
• painters who strayed too far from the imitation of nature needed someone to set them in the right path again; but just as it is easy in fleeing from one extreme to fall into the other it so happened that moving away from mannerism to follow nature too closely painters moved away from art altogether remaining in error and darkness until Annibale Carracci came to enlighten their minds and restore beauty to the imitation
• We must not forget to mention the way he behaved and dressed. Although his clothes were made of the finest materials and velvets when he had put on one outfit he never changed it until it had fallen into rags. He was very negligent in his personal hygiene and he ate for many years on the canvas of a portrait using as a tablecloth morning and evening.

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• Dadaism was the only significant artistic  movement in Germany for decades.
• Dadaism forced artists to declare openly their  position .. . What did the dadaists do? They  said that it did not matter whether a man blew a  'raspberry' or recited a sonnet by Petrarca or  Shakespeare or Rilke, whether he gilded  jack-boot heels or carved statues of the Virgin.  Shooting went on regardless, profiteering went  on regardless, people would go on starving  regardless, lies would always be told  regardless�what was the good of art anyway?
• f that meant anything  it was a disquiet, a dissatisfaction, a delight in  mockery, that had all been fermenting a long  time already. Every defeat, every upheaval gives  birth to such movements.

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• money lenders or of gamblers seated around a table like Saint Matthew and his associates.
• nearly silent, dramatic narrative.
• Christ, His eyes veiled, with His halo the only hint of divinity
• His right hand
• evi draws back and gestures toward himself with his left hand as if to say, "Who, me?", his right hand remaining on the coin he had been counting before Christ's entrance.
• gamblers unaware of the appearance of Death,
• The two boys in the center do respond, the younger one drawing back against Levi as if seeking his protection, the swaggering older one, who is armed, leaning forward a little menacingly
• symbolically their inattention to Christ deprives them of the opportunity
• Saint Peter gestures firmly with his hand to calm his potential resistance.
• In another second, Levi will rise up and follow Christ_in fact, Christ's feet are already turned as if to leave the room.
• cessation of action.
• static medium of painting to convey characteristic human indecision
• Levi and his subordinates, who are involved in affairs of this world, are dressed in a contemporary mode, while the barefoot Christ and Saint Peter, who summon Levi to another life and world, appear in timeless cloaks. The two groups are also separated by a void, bridged literally and symbolically by Christ's hand. This hand, like Adam's in Michelangelo's Creation, unifies the two parts formally and psychological
• and the light behind Christ and Saint Peter, introduced only with them
• hird source of light is intended as miraculous. Otherwise, why does Saint Peter cast no shadow on the defensive youth facing him ?

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