CD cover

This looks like a detail from an 18th century painting, probably French or Italian. Can anyone tell me who the painter is?

Kahlil Gibran

Top: Mother Earth

There's an exhibition of Gibran's paintings at the State Library of NSW, Sydney, until the 20th of February. It's well worth a visit. There are some oils in the exhibition but most works are drawings with washes, a medium of which he was a master. Gibran was a truly deep soul in the spirit of Blake and Michelangelo.

Diana Levin

Autumn, 21 x 20 inches

Portrait of an Artist

Portrait of an Artist, Circle of Angelica Kauffman, 55.3 x 45.7 cm, 18th century.
German

Stylisation

Luis De Morales, c. 1520-1586, Virgin and Child.

Something about the graceful stylisation of anatomy in this work reminds me of William Blake - especially the hands.

Carolyn Pyfrom

I like the abstract qualities of the architectural elements.

John Singer Sargent

14 x 11 inches








There's currently an exhibition of Sargent's portraits of women at the Fenimore Art Museum

Ideology

There's a lot of 19th Century art on this blog. But the intention is not to take sides in the the fight between conservatives and progressives in the art world. For an ideological disclaimer here's a link to one of my other art blogs

Da Vinci

This is a detail of an angel from The Virgin of the Rocks, which I altered digitally so that it made more sense as a composition in itself.

Mary Magdalene

Mary Magdalene, Attributed to the Master of the Mansi Magdalene (Dutch)

The idea that Mary Magdalene was a fallen woman is a complete fabrication by medieval clerics who wanted to make her into an ideal of the penitent  sinner, and so had to turn her life before meeting Christ into something sinful.

She was in fact an incarnation of the Purity of the Divine Feminine, which makes the slurs on her character an even greater wrong.

Mary Magdalene is referred to in early Christian writings as "the apostle to the apostles." In apocryphal texts, she is portrayed as a visionary and leader of the early movement, who was loved by Jesus more than the other disciples.

She is often depicted opening a vessel of ointment (which suggests the vessel of the Spirit, the Kundalini) She is also sometimes shown meditating in the wilderness with a skull in one hand, symbolising the renunciation of the body. These depictions are reminiscent of Indian paintings of Shri Mahakali, the renunciant aspect of the Goddess.

The name Mary occurs in 51 passages of the New Testament. There are several people named Mary in the Gospels. There also are several unnamed women who seem to share characteristics with Mary Magdalene. At different times in history, Mary Magdalene has been confused or misidentified with almost every woman in the four Gospels, except the mother of Jesus. "The idea that this Mary was 'the woman who was a sinner,' or that she was unchaste, is altogether groundless."^[ There is no scriptural or historical evidence that Mary’s relationship with Jesus was anything other than that of a disciple to her teacher, definitely not a lover or wife. Although in the past she has suffered from a case of mistaken identity, Mary Magdalene was never reviled, demeaned or dismissed.

-Wikipedia

Sandro Botticelli

The Virgin Adoring the Sleeping Christ Child

Charles Courtney Curran

Lotus Lilies, 1888, posted on the painting blog underpaintings.

John La Farge 1835-1910

Kwannon Meditating On Human Life

Diego Rivera

Doctora mexicana

Hans Memling - Netherlandish

John Ritchie

Reposted from art inconnu

Baltazar Echave Orio

Anunciacion

William Bouguereau

Mignon Pensive

William Blake

Jerusalem

Not an oil painting, I know, but certainly a beautiful image of the sacred feminine.

William Bouguereau - French

Marchande de grenades (The Pomegranate Seller)

Nora Heysen - Australian

Self-portrait

Michelangelo

The Libyan Sybil

William Bouguereau

The Crab, 81 x 65.5 cm






















Sur la Greve (On the Gravel Beach), 142 x 91.5 cm





















Fardeau Agreable, 112 x 76 cm








Modesty, 160.5 x 72.5 cm

Lu Cong

The viewer may initially read these paintings as photographs, and then notice the painting technique behind the production of the image. While I am not a big fan of photorealism, these beautiful works incorporate the artist's individual hand and vision through subtle stylisation. Lu Cong subverts photorealism through barely perceptible distortions.

Frederic Leighton

May Prinsep

Lluís Graner Arrufi 1863-1929

A Girl with Flowers, 24 x 24 inches

François Verheyden - Belgian

The Celebration, 106.7 x 154.5 cm

Charles Edward Perugini

Oh for the Touch of a Vanished Hand, 77.2 x 54 cm

Waterhouse

Frederic, Lord Leighton

By the Sea

I think this work is hanging in the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney.

Frank Benson

Girl Playing Solitaire

The effect of gold leaf on the screen is beautiful.

Frederic Leighton

Study of a Lady 25.5 x 19 cms

Persian

Persian women gathering around a samovar, 19th-century.

This isn't exactly Western Art but is influenced by it.

Georges Mazilu - Romanian