historical
10 skillful fakes that museums took for originals
Artistic fakes are a very real threat that museums constantly have to contend with. Fake artifacts appear in many museums from time to time, which can be displayed for several years before specialists realize that this is a fake. For counterfeiters, the high price tags attached to these fakes are often an incentive to continue to create fakes. Art fraudsters often go to great lengths to trick museums into acquiring their work. Some fakes are so good that it is difficult for historians and archaeologists to distinguish them from real things. Among the museums that became victims of fakes is even the famous Louvre Museum, where for many years successful copies were exhibited instead of the originals, and no one even knew about it. Continue reading
Ciphers, signs and self-portraits: How artists of the past signed their paintings
Not every masterpiece of painting contains the signature of the artist. There were reasons for this, both at the dawn of the Renaissance and in the modern era; they are now. Some of the works were “signed” by the masters in unusual ways – symbols in which an indication of the identity of the author was hidden. Bones, butterflies, cats appeared in the paintings for a reason.
Why it was not customary to sign a work before
Having finished work, put your signature in the lower right corner of the picture – a custom that entered the practice of artists during the early Renaissance. Alas, authorship of earlier works is often not possible to establish – primarily because of the lack of signatures on them. Continue reading
VARIETIES OF FIGURATIVE PAINTING
In the XVII century, a thematic or story picture was attributed to the high genre (grand genre) and called the genre.
The high genre included: allegorical, battle, epic, household, historical, mythological and religious genres.
In recent years, in Russia the concept of thematic picture is increasingly replaced by the term figurative.
Figurative began to be called not only the plot composition, but all the works, which depict human figures.
Figurative painting in the allegorical genre Allegorical genre (from Greek. allegoria-allegory) – a genre of fine art, in which a work of art is laid hidden and secret meaning. In this genre, ideas that are difficult to depict (for example, goodness, strength, power, justice, love, etc.) are shown allegorically through images of living beings, animals or human figures with attributes that historically have a symbolic, easy-to-read meaning. Continue reading
