IT is plausible that the Renaissance was partly inspired by the opportunity it gave artists to depict attractive young women. In the Middle Ages, the art of pagan antiquity aroused grave suspicion and painters and sculptors were largely restricted to Biblical stories, in which alluring women rarely feature. When they do appear, they are a focus of sin or guilt, from Eve with the apple to the Elders lusting after Susanna. The revived popularity, from the 15th century onwards, of classical literature prompted a new receptivity to the art of ancient Greece and Rome. With that came an unprecedented freedom to depict beautiful women, often unclothed: from heroines of mythology, such as Europa or Danaë, to deities, of whom by far the most important was Venus. Her prominence in Western art over the past five centuries is made strikingly apparent by the fact that, of the 12 masterpieces lent by London's National Gallery to museums around the UK to mark its 200th anniversary, two are depictions of the Roman goddess of beauty, love and procreation: Sandro Botticelli's Venus and Mars, on loan to the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge (to September 10), and Diego Velázquez's The Toilet of Venus, better known as the 'Rokeby Venus', which has been lent to the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool (until August 26).
Nicknamed after the country house in which it hung in the 19th century, the 'Rokeby Venus', the sole female nude by Velázquez, is one of the most admired, discussed and abused paintings of the subject: it was singled out for savage attack by a Suffragette in 1906 because she hated 'the way men visitors gaped at it all day long' (that strike prompted Just Stop Oil to smash the picture's glass last year).
Denne historien er fra June 19, 2024-utgaven av Country Life UK.
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Denne historien er fra June 19, 2024-utgaven av Country Life UK.
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Happiness in small things
Putting life into perspective and forces of nature in farming
Colour vision
In an eye-baffling arrangement of geometric shapes, a sinister-looking clown and a little girl, Test Card F is one of television’s most enduring images, says Rob Crossan
'Without fever there is no creation'
Three of the top 10 operas performed worldwide are by the emotionally volatile Italian composer Giacomo Puccini, who died a century ago. Henrietta Bredin explains how his colourful life influenced his melodramatic plot lines
The colour revolution
Toxic, dull or fast-fading pigments had long made it tricky for artists to paint verdant scenes, but the 19th century ushered in a viridescent explosion of waterlili
Bullace for you
The distinction between plums, damsons and bullaces is sweetly subtle, boiling down to flavour and aesthetics, but don’t eat the stones, warns John Wright
Lights, camera, action!
Three remarkable country houses, two of which have links to the film industry, the other the setting for a top-class croquet tournament, are anything but ordinary
I was on fire for you, where did you go?
In Iceland, a land with no monks or monkeys, our correspondent attempts to master the art of fishing light’ for Salmo salar, by stroking the creases and dimples of the Midfjardara river like the features of a loved one
Bravery bevond belief
A teenager on his gap year who saved a boy and his father from being savaged by a crocodile is one of a host of heroic acts celebrated in a book to mark the 250th anniversary of the Royal Humane Society, says its author Rupert Uloth
Let's get to the bottom of this
Discovering a well on your property can be viewed as a blessing or a curse, but all's well that ends well, says Deborah Nicholls-Lee, as she examines the benefits of a personal water supply
Sing on, sweet bird
An essential component of our emotional relationship with the landscape, the mellifluous song of a thrush shapes the very foundation of human happiness, notes Mark Cocker, as he takes a closer look at this diverse family of birds