Italian Renaissance: Paolo Veronese

"Allegory of Wisdom and Strength" (ca. 1580; top right)
     The female figure of divine wisdom is joined with Hercules, a figure representational of brute force and strength.  I chose this Veronese painting because I was impressed with the body alignment of the woman.  You can follow the weight of her body down the curvature of her spine to her center of weight, around her pelvic region, which is directly centered over her left foot which is supporting her weight.  Wisdom in this imagery is very balanced and modest.  However, the being of strength is shoved off balance and depicted as very obvious and censored with lesser quality garments.  The heads of both figures form and equilateral triangle with the point where their bodies connect at the hip.

"Temptation of St. Anthony" (1552-1553; left)
     I chose this image for the depiction of the man in the center with his arm raised.  I was intrigued by the texture of his back muscles and arm muscles when they are all contracted.  It shows the potentiality of force and the movement of his entire frame towards the older man, Saint Anthony, on the ground in front of him.  I will have to consider the fact that the muscles of the body are comprised of parts that all retract or expand to achieve movement and all can been seen and rendered as individual elements.  The extreme detail on the wrist of Saint Anthony is also very impressive, with the various tendons in tension, and muscles bulging, and even veins pulsing from his aged arm.

 "Allegory of Love: Unfaithfulness" (ca. 1575; bottom right)
     This scene depicts a woan caught cheating with another man and the emotional conflict of betrayal and lust.  The woman figure in this painting is the most interesting for the topic of figurative imagery.  You can folow the axes of her body through the turn of her waistline and the angle of her shoulders and how those two points direct the position of the rest of her body.  The children are a bit out of scale having smaller heads then is typical and looking like shrunken adults in their body proportions, but this is common in Italian Renaissance work.

ru·mi·na·tion - n. 1) A calm, lengthy, intent consideration  2) The act of pondering; meditation.
By precedent, I am referring to the work of past artists who, through experiment and discovery, created a basis, a foundation, from which we have come to understand art and the nature of the visual world around us. 

The precedent which I hope to examine is the nature of the anatomical and figurative towards achieving a higher standard in my own work with guidance and patience.