How to Analyze and Appreciate Paintings

Copyright, License, Description

Copyright © 2012 Dianne L. Durante.

All rights reserved.

http://diannedurantewriter.com/

[email protected]

This article was originally published in The Objective Standard in Fall 2007. This version includes significantly more illustrations, which have been placed within the text rather than on separate pages.

Cover images: Holbein, Sir Thomas More; Bellini, St. Francis in the Desert; Vermeer, Officer with a Laughing Girl. All in the Frick Collection.

Photo credits: see Chapter 7.

License

This ebook is licensed for your personal use only. It may not be re-sold or given away to others. You may share it in accordance with the terms of the Kindle Book Lending Program. Otherwise, please purchase an additional copy for each person you would like to share it with.

If you are reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please go to Amazon and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Description

Via discussions of Holbein’s Sir Thomas More and Bellini’s St. Francis in the Desert, we work through a series of questions to help you systematically observe the details of a painting, state what effect they have, and set them in the context of the rest of the work. As we go, we work out tentative themes and then a final statement of the theme. Then we evaluate the works in emotional, esthetic, philosophical, and art historical terms. As practice for doing this independently, I include a series of questions on Vermeer’s Officer with a Laughing Girl. The paintings used in this book are mostly in the Frick Collection, New York.

As of 2023, I’m working on a full-length book with more examples: Getting More Enjoyment from Paintings You Love. Check out the Books & Essays page on my website to see if it’s available when you read this. The same method is applied to sculpture in Getting More Enjoyment from Sculpture You Love.

Table of Contents

Copyright, License, Description

License

Description

Table of Contents

Chapter 1. Selectivity (or Why Size and Everything Else in Art Matters)

Chapter 2. Learning To Look at Art

2.1 Holbein’s Sir Thomas More

2.1.1 First impressions

2.1.2 Subject / Story

2.1.3 Objects

2.1.4 Tentative theme

2.1.5 Props

2.1.6 Setting

2.1.7 Attributes

2.1.8 Overview

2.1.9 Theme

2.1.10 A Historical Note on Sir Thomas More

2.2 Bellini, St. Francis in the Desert

2.2.1 First Impressions

2.2.2 Subject / story

2.2.3 Objects

2.2.4 Tentative theme

2.2.5 Clothing

2.2.6 Props

2.2.7 Setting

2.2.8 Attributes

2.2.9 Overview

Chapter 3. Evaluation

3.1 Emotional Reaction

3.2 Judging Content

3.3 Judging Style

3.4 Moral Evaluation of the Person Represented in a Portrait

3.5 Art-Historical Evaluation

Chapter 4. Questions for Vermeer, Officer and Laughing Girl

4.1 First impressions

4.2 Subject / Story

4.3 Objects

4.4 Attributes

4.5 Overview

Chapter 5. Conclusion

Chapter 6. Recommended Readings

Chapter 7. Illustrations: Details about the Works Shown

Fig. 1: Huntington, Cid

Fig. 2: Titian, Pietro Aretino

Fig. 3: Holbein, Sir Thomas More

Fig. 4: Piero della Francesca, Augustinian Nun

Fig. 5: Reni, Immaculate Conception

Fig. 6a: Velazquez, Philip IV of Spain

Fig. 6b: Davids by Bernini, Michelangelo, & Donatello

Fig. 7: Holbein, Henry VIII

Fig. 8: Memling, Portrait of a Man

Fig. 9: Stuart, George Washington

Fig. 10: Bellini, St. Francis in the Desert

Fig. 11: Holbein, William Warham, Archbishop of Canterbury

Fig. 12: Giotto, St. Francis of Assisi Receiving the Stigmata

Fig. 13: Cezanne, Dominique Aubert

Fig. 14: Vermeer, Officer and Laughing Girl

Fig. 15: Leonardo, Last Supper

Fig. 16: Hooch, Messenger of Love

Chapter 8. About the Author, Dianne L. Durante

Chapter 1. Selectivity (or Why Size and Everything Else in Art Matters)

Suppose you were an experienced artist commissioned to paint a portrait of me. To get an idea of what would be involved in the project, consider just one of the countless choices that you would have to make: How will you paint my complexion?

My skin is pale with a few freckles. If you decide to include the freckles, I will appear to be an outdoorsy type and perhaps a little naive, since freckles are often associated with youth and innocence. If you choose to show me by candlelight, the rosy glow will add color to my skin, so I will appear healthy. If you decide to show me under fluorescent lights, I will appear pale and ill. If you give me a heavily veined red nose, I will appear to have a drinking problem. And so on.

The point is that even such a seemingly minor detail as the way in which you represent my skin will convey significant information to viewers about your estimate of me, my lifestyle, my health, my character.

How will you decide the matter? As an artist, you will decide it by asking yourself which of my characteristics (real or imagined) you think are most important and by employing an approach that will emphasize those characteristics. And this is not only how you will decide this issue; it is how you will decide every detail of the portrait, from the style of my hair (a chignon? a Mohawk?) to the way I tilt my head or hold my jaw. More broadly, this is how an artist decides every detail included in any type of painting, from a narrative of historical or mythological events, to a landscape, to a still life.

Selectivity based on an artist’s judgment of what is important is