Arshil Gorki
Unknown portrait of da Vinci brush
It may seem that the legacy of Leonardo da Vinci has many paintings – this artist, who died five hundred years ago, is mentioned too much and too often in the modern world. In fact, only one and a half dozen paintings by da Vinci and a few more works are known, whose belonging to Leonardo’s brush is only supposed. Therefore, any loss of the work of a great artist, as well as the sudden discovery of previously unknown, becomes a sensational event, affecting the history of fine art itself. Moreover, each such episode is reminiscent of a detective story, where there are victims, and criminals, and the hero revealing the secret, and most importantly – the priceless masterpiece of Leonardo. Continue reading
Secrets of the Four Seasons
This year marks almost 430 years since the death of Giuseppe Arcimboldo, an Italian artist known for his original portraits of fruits, vegetables, flowers and fish. Giuseppe so skillfully portrayed these objects on canvas, that their entire combination forms a recognizable similarity of portrait subjects. The art of Arcimboldo, as the most radical and extravagant representative of the mannerism style, is also noteworthy in that he pushed the theme of the parallel between humanity and the natural world beyond new boundaries.
The genre of portraiture has been one of the dominant for many centuries. However, in the 16th century, Giuseppe Archimboldo provided his own vision of this genre, combining it with a still life and surprising his contemporaries with his extraordinary compositional solutions. Continue reading
Musical hoax: Who actually wrote “Adagio” Albinoni
Adagio Albinoni is a truly enchanting piece of music. The melody as if touches the hidden strings of the human soul, is remembered for a long time and then, it seems, sounds inside. At first, no one doubted that the author of “Adagio in G Minor for String Orchestras and Organ” was precisely Tomaso Albinoni. However, musicologists today almost with absolute certainty declare: in fact, a completely different person created the ingenious music.
In 1671, in Venice, in a rather wealthy family of a merchant and patrician Antonio, a boy named Tomaso was born. It is unlikely that the parents then assumed that their son would become a famous composer, and a few centuries after his death he would become famous throughout the world. Continue reading
