A glimpse into history

Back in 1790, the King of Poland, whose name was Stanislaus Augustus, had the idea of creating a magnificent Royal Collection of Paintings. He ordered art dealers to form it. For five years, they diligently selected paintings for the gallery. However, the year 1795 came and with it the partition of Poland. As a result, the country ceased to be an independent state, and as a result, the king abdicated the throne.
As a result, art dealers, who by that time had already amassed a royal collection, were left without a customer. They were unable to find a buyer for the entire collection at once, and they eventually decided to make it for public viewing. At that time, the National Gallery of London was not a thing of the past, and the British Museum, as believed the art dealers, was too “aristocratic.
In 1807, Noel Desenfans, who had been behind the creation of the Royal Collection of Paintings, died. After that Francis Bourgeois decided to transfer all the collected paintings to the College of Dulchwich, but with one condition: that the paintings were open to the public. So 1811 is considered the founding of the Dulwich Picture Gallery. It was then that it became the first art gallery in London open to the public.

The Dulwich Picture Gallery’s extensive collection

The Dulwich Picture Gallery exhibits works by famous painters, masters from Western Europe. The splendid collection of British painters is astonishing. Most of the gallery is made up of stunning 17th- and 19th-century canvases, but you can also see paintings from other eras. There are works by great artists such as Rembrandt, Paul Ruben, Antoine Watteau and even Raphael.

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The exhibition

The gallery collection includes more than 400 paintings and sculptures from the early 20th century to the present day. All trends in art of that time are represented. The gallery should be visited if only for the masterpieces of Klee, Kirchner, Emile Nolde and August Macke.

The Surrealists, Fauvists and Cubists are also represented in the museum – this collection is one of the ten largest in the world. And among the most significant are 14 works by Picasso.
The museum exhibition is as controversial and controversial as modern art, so it is better to come prepared, so the installations and the gallery’s rooms do not cause confusion.

Architecture

The Gallery of Contemporary Art was designed and built under the direction of architect Oswald Matthias in 1997. The museum building is a four-storey cube with a facade clad in light sandstone and completed with red granite panels on the ground floor. The gallery is connected to the main building of the Kunsthalle by an underground passage.

The Gallery of Modern Art moved out of the Kunsthalle when the collection of 20th century works of art grew and the need for a separate building became urgent.

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History of Botticelli’s Venus

The stunning image of Venus at the brush of the great master is a certain benchmark of feminine beauty, replicated in modern art. Of course, every era had its own types and aesthetic standards, but most experts are inclined to believe that the young goddess in the painting “Birth of Venus” is unimaginably good.

If pagan goddesses existed in reality, perhaps they would resemble this captivating image. During the Renaissance, the image of the bather emerging from the water was popular. Not every sitter that artists of the time might have spied on the shore was deified by capturing on canvas.

There is no reliable information as to whether this was a collective image or a sitter with the same figure actually existed, but this face has a real medieval prototype. The detached, exalted gaze, without any attraction to earthly pleasures, underlines the unearthly origins of Venus, the goddess of beauty and love. The artist additionally painted her hair in gold.

Most likely, the embodiment of unearthly beauty, according to the artist himself and his contemporaries – this is the image from the painting “Birth of “Venus” by Botticelli. One can argue about the shape of the feet and breasts, the thickness and color of the hair, otherwise, the charm of this image is striking. The proportionality of the body, the imperturbability of the face and the general impression of the pose of “Lady Perfect” make an indelible impression. A similar image by the same artist, The Shy Venus, has been preserved.

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The main masterpiece that draws millions of tourists to Paris every year is Da Vinci’s Gioconda (aka Mona Lisa), exhibited in the Louvre collection. Her eyes seem to simultaneously gaze at everyone looking at the portrait from anywhere in the picture gallery. It is worth appreciating the mystical quality of the eyes of the beautiful medieval Madonna, with her hypnotic half-smile and her spaghetti-like cleavage. This is her permanent home, the “Hall of the Gioconda” of Museum No. 711.

Who was the model for Leonardo’s masterpiece?

Da Vinci’s painting of the Mona Lisa is also known as the portrait of Madame Lisa del Giocondo. She is said to have been the young wife of a wealthy Florentine. Leonardo’s contemporary claims that it is Lisa Gherardini, a beautiful noble Italian woman, whose image has become the main “jewel” of the Louvre. She was the wife of Francesco del Giocondo, a well-known merchant of expensive fabrics at the time.

Most of our contemporaries do not consider her a beauty. Art historians insist that every era has its own standard of beauty, and the portrait of Gioconda is one of them. But why is this beauty without eyebrows? Today, that would be considered a serious flaw. Some argue that Renaissance eyebrows were shaved off to reveal a beautiful wide forehead. Others insist that the restorers “messed up”.

One can argue about the standards of beauty, but this image has been stirring the imagination of viewers for 5 centuries. And Leonardo da Vinci himself could not part with “Gioconda”. Even on his deathbed visitors found a portrait of Mona Lisa beside the great master. However, no one can say with absolute certainty whether it was the original or another copy of the famous masterpiece. Until our days there are only two paintings, one in a private collection, the other in the Louvre.

Either way, no one could deny that Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa depicts the same Lisa Gherardini from Florence. The Ritratto di Monna Lisa del Giocondo is the name given to this painting in the registers of the museum. None of the great artist’s pupils has ever been able to replicate that enigmatic shadow of a smile from the Portrait of Miss Lisa del Giocondo.

The mysteries of the “Mona Lisa.”

No one knows what pictorial means were used in the early 16th century, but it seems that the entire Louvre is illuminated by the radiant light of the confident Italian Lise del Giocondo by the brush of the great Leonardo. Perhaps when the portrait was completed, it was even better – the colors had not had time to fade and crack from time.

One thing is clear, the face appears spherical, like a holographic or digitally processed image. The technology of our time was not yet known in those days, and the Ritratto di Monna Lisa del Giocondo is the most famous painting in the world, unmistakably recognizable even to children.

The eyes of the silk merchant’s wife have been watching everything simultaneously for five centuries. It seems that the lady sitting in the chair is about to wink at one of the many visitors to the Louvre, so vivid seems the portrait of Gioconda.

We know for a fact that Leonardo experimented with a new portrait manner, so that the faces on the canvases were not flat, like on cheap paintings. This secret he never revealed to anyone, but we know that he worked in the technique of shading light, blurring the sharp boundaries of outlines. Today Da Vinci’s work is the most visited exhibit in the Louvre’s museum collection, where admission costs at least 17 euros today.

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