the new emotional blackmailer's handbook

Monday, April 15, 2024

Leda ... as a theme for an ornamental funerary vase ... The Apulian Red-figure Loutrophoros, Southern Italy, 350.BC-ish

https://www.getty.edu/art/collection/object/103WEG

https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/artifact?name=Malibu+86.AE.680&object=Vase

https://www.theoi.com/Heroine/Leda.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loutrophoros

Sunday, April 14, 2024

When he was fifty-ish ... William Blake got two drawing commissions to illustrate Milton's Paradise Lost ... the first commission was from the Reverend Joseph THOMAS in 1807 ... the second, for a set of much larger sheets, was from Thomas BUTTS ... Wikipedia present the sets very well, although their numbering of Butts & Thomas seems to contain a transcription error at one point ... ... I'd just like to show the first and second versions that have survived as comparable pairs ......

the full text of the wikipedia article seems very helpful ...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Blake%27s_illustrations_of_Paradise_Lost

Thomas 1

Butts 1

Thomas 2

Butts 2

Thomas 3

Butts 3

Thomas 4

There doesn't seem to be a version in the Butt set.

Thomas 5 ( ??? )

Butt 5 ( ??? )

Thomas 6

Butt 6

Thomas 7

Butts 7

Thomas 8

Butts 8

Thomas 9

Butts 9

Thomas 10

Butts 10

Thomas 11

Butts 11

Thomas 12

Butts 12

Monday, April 1, 2024

prob'ly the best celadon moon flask you will ever see ...

https://www.sothebys.com/en/buy/auction/2024/the-dragon-emperor-chinese-art/a-superb-and-possibly-unique-celadon-glazed-dragon

Sunday, March 31, 2024

yatagarasu hopes you've found your easter egg ...

Friday, March 29, 2024

william orpen ... prolific self-portraitist

i never knew his name until, in my late twenties, i was awe-struck by a large allegorical painting in the national gallery in dublin ... only in the age of internet imaging searches did i begin to understand his complex character and dry humour ... i've never thought to assemble his sel-portraits until now ... it might take some time to place them all in order ... many are hastily drawn to be included in letters to his friends ... i get the impression that he enjoyed seeing himself through others' eyes ... etc ... as a war artist he saw terrible things ... he was scrupulously honest in depicting the horrors he encountered ... these experiences were surely traumatic ...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Orpen