Jan Gossaert ... his self portrait ... and some others

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jan_Gossaert

... to be continued ... as and when ...

masks ... part 14 ... part XIV ...

 

... to be continued ... as & when ...

OMPHALE ... a strong woman who is given control of Hercules for a year ... i especially like Rubens' version of their relationship, so i asked ChatGPT if omphale's character alters much during the various retellings of her story ... rubens' version is the last of these samples ...

does the character of OMPHALE change much as her myth is retold ?

Yes. Omphale shifts quite a bit depending on who is telling the story, when it’s being retold, and what the author wants the myth to emphasize.

At the core of the myth, she is the queen of Lydia who temporarily owns or commands Heracles after he is sold into servitude. The famous image is the reversal of gender roles: Heracles wears women’s clothing and spins wool, while Omphale may wear his lion skin or carry his club. But the meaning of that setup changes dramatically across retellings.

In early Greek traditions

In older Greek sources, Omphale is often portrayed as:

• powerful and authoritative,
• sexually confident,
• politically legitimate as a queen,
• and capable of controlling even the greatest hero.

The tone is not always mocking. Some versions treat the relationship as transformative for Heracles: his servitude becomes part of his purification after killing Iphitus. Omphale’s authority is real, not just comic.

Ancient authors sometimes frame her as clever, cultured, and civilized in contrast to Heracles’ violence.

In Classical and Roman retellings

Later writers, especially Roman ones such as Ovid, often lean harder into:

• eroticism,
• comedy,
• humiliation,
• and gender inversion.

The image of Heracles cross-dressing becomes a spectacle. Omphale can appear flirtatious, teasing, or manipulative rather than simply regal. The myth becomes a way to explore anxieties about masculinity, desire, and power.

Roman art especially loved the visual contrast:

• the hyper-masculine hero made “soft,”
• and the queen adopting heroic symbols.

In medieval and Renaissance interpretations

Omphale’s character changes again because later European writers often moralized classical myths.

She could become:

• a warning about female temptation,
• an example of male weakness,
• or a symbol of lust overcoming reason.

In some Renaissance paintings and literature, she is portrayed almost as a dominatrix figure controlling Hercules. The emphasis shifts away from her political status and toward the danger of feminine power.

In modern interpretations

Contemporary retellings tend to reinterpret Omphale more sympathetically or psychologically.

Modern classicists, novelists, and feminist readings often see her as:

• a rare example of female authority in myth,
• a challenge to rigid gender roles,
• or part of a more reciprocal relationship with Heracles.

Some modern works treat the period with Omphale as one of the few times Heracles learns restraint, domesticity, or emotional vulnerability rather than constant conquest.

There’s also more interest now in how the myth destabilizes binary ideas of masculinity and femininity instead of simply mocking role reversal.

What stays consistent

Across most versions, a few elements remain stable:

• Omphale is powerful enough to command Heracles.
• The relationship involves reversal or exchange of social/gender symbols.
• Her presence temporarily transforms the hero’s identity.

But how that transformation is interpreted changes a lot:

• purification,
• humiliation,
• erotic play,
• political allegory,
• satire,
• or gender critique.

So Omphale herself evolves from sovereign queen, to seductive controller, to moral warning, to potentially subversive or empowering figure depending on the cultural moment retelling the myth.

 

Oskar Zwintscher ... possibly forgotten because most of his work was inaccessible during the communist tyranny of east germany ... died prematurely aged 46 from pneumonia in 1916 ...

 

the medici-riccardi horse head ... subject to many indignities in the distant past ... now lovingly restored, but with many "cuts & bruises" ...

in 1672, when the head was already two thousand years old, one of the grandest of the medicis had the horse's topknot made into a water spout ... and so the whole thing then got covered in an accumulation of limescale, inside and out ... and then later on, somebody hacked off the limescale with a chisel, you can see the marks all over, especially around the horse's nostrils ... etc etc

https://www.getty.edu/publications/artistryinbronze/conservation-and-analysis/39-salvioli/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IDV3SpsW08Q&t=1854s

Rubens' BIRTH OF THE MILKY WAY ... Rubens and Galileo were good friends ...

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Birth_of_the_Milky_Way

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo_Galilei

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Paul_Rubens

https://www.theoi.com/greek-mythology/star-myths.html

Rubens and Galileo were friends. That didn't stop Rubens from painting this nearly thirty years after Galileo was using a telescope to start making sense of the sky ...

AI Overview

Peter Paul Rubens (1577–1640) and Galileo Galilei (1564–1642) were contemporaries who moved in similar intellectual circles in Italy, with Rubens admiring the astronomer's scientific breakthroughs.

Rubens, a Flemish Baroque painter, incorporated Galileo's astronomical discoveries into his art and featured him in his circle of acquaintances.

Key Connections Between Rubens and Galileo:Friendship and Influence: Rubens developed a network of friendships with intellectuals in Italy, including Galileo, with whom he likely shared a connection through the humanist circle of Gian Vincenzo Pinelli.

Portraiture: Rubens is credited with painting a portrait of Galileo around 1630. Furthermore, Rubens included a figure believed to be Galileo in his work, Self-Portrait in a Circle of Friends from Mantua.

Artistic Representation of Astronomy: Rubens incorporated Galileo’s discoveries into his paintings, such as depicting the planet Saturn with three bodies, reflecting Galileo's astronomical findings. His Apocalyptic Woman includes a depiction of the moon based on Galileo’s Sidereus Nuncius.

Scientific Interest: Both men had interests in the study of light and color, and both were deeply involved with the works of the ancient writer Seneca.

Rubens' work acts as a visual bridge between the Scientific Revolution and Baroque art, showcasing the era's fascination with new astronomical discoveries.

Luca Giordano ... RUBENS PAINTING AN ALLEGORY OF PEACE ... Rubens ... MINERVA PROTECTING PEACE FROM MARS ... and Rubens ... THE CONSEQUENCES OF WAR ... i am not sure if the painting shown on Rubens' easel is a copy or a fiction ... my initial efforts to identify it have been inconclusive

it needs to be said at the start ... this was painted when rubens had already been dead for nearly twenty years ... so i'm guessing its an inspired work of "fandom" ... it was painted in Italy when luca giordano was only 25 or 26 years old

https://www.museodelprado.es/en/the-collection/art-work/rubens-painting-the-allegory-of-peace/e70786a4-6feb-4c9d-b699-7530d5adf516

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luca_Giordano

i'm not sure which of rubens' paintings Giordano could have studied in Italy, but i think he captures much of rubens' flamboyance and energy

rubens ... painted around 1630

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minerva_Protecting_Peace_from_Mars

https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/peter-paul-rubens-minerva-protects-pax-from-mars-peace-and-war#:~:text=The%20painting%20is%20an%20allegory,of%20children%20in%20the%20foreground.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Paul_Rubens

rubens ... painted around 1639

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consequences_of_War

https://eclecticlight.co/2021/01/04/god-of-the-week-janus/

death giving audience ... giovanni battista tiepolo's etching ... long been a favourite of mine

etching published as part of the capricci series in 1785

the artist had already died back in 1770

his son, giovanni domenico tiepolo, had possesion of his works

https://www.rct.uk/collection/807843/vari-capricci

but i didn't know that the V&A have an album of his rough sketches ...

so we can see how this great composition was condensed out of the internal "cloud" of his imagination

https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O944789/death-giving-audience-recto-and-drawing-tiepolo-giovanni-battista/

LAST JUDGEMENT ... plural ... a LAST JUDGEMENTS scrapbook

https://www.hellenicaworld.com/Art/Paintings/en/Part24887.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beaune_Altarpiece

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=igTCJ7TCrOo

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Judgment_%28Michelangelo%29

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Judgment_%28Michelangelo%29#/media/File:Last_Judgement_(Michelangelo).jpg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q724UHh51YU

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Vision_of_the_Last_Judgement

https://www.blakearchive.org/search/?search=vision%20of%20the%20last%20judgement

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yF09Wn34Nc0&t=485s

https://www.museodelprado.es/en/the-collection/art-work/triptych-of-the-redemption-last-judgement/5dec2206-49ea-43e8-9852-bc4caad4f80c

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j3s3X7xvn_8&t=129s

... to be continued intermittently ...

LILLIAN BASSMAN ... painterly photographer and fashion editor ...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lillian_Bassman

 

GHIRLANDAIO ... portrait of a woman who wasn't there ...

Domenico Ghirlandaio (Domenico Bigordi)

Portrait of Giovanna degli Albizzi Tornabuoni

1489 - 1490

Mixed media on panel. 

77 x 49 cm

Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid

Inv. no. 

158

 (

1935.6

)

... this portrait was commissioned shortly after the subject's death during childbirth  ...

the museum notes are copied below ... now read on ...

This superb panel is a fine example of fifteenth-century Florentine portraiture. Artists of the time followed classical dictates: body proportions were idealised while faces left devoid of expression were expected to convey character. In this half-length portrait, the sitter appears in strict profile, with her arms bent and her hands clasped together. In the background, a selection of personal belongings appears within a simple architectural frame. The cartellino to the right bears part of an epigram by Martial and the date of his death in Roman numerals. The model has been identified as Giovanna Tornabuoni on the basis of a medallion by Niccolò Fiorentino showing her likeness and her name. She is also portrayed full length in the Visitation fresco painted by Ghirlandaio for the Tornabuoni chapel in the church of Santa Maria Novella (Florence).

Ghirlandaio began his career as a goldsmith. According to Vasari: “from the habit of constantly drawing, [he] acquired great agility, skill and deftness, so that many say that while he was slow as a goldsmith, when he painted the country people or anyone who passed through his studio he immediately captured their likeness”. Vasari also noted that, “this is demonstrated by innumerable portraits by his hand in which one sees a remarkable lifelikeness”. We find further references by Vasari in his text to Ghirlandaio’s skill in this pictorial genre.

Giovanna Tornabuoni is one of the most appealing and fascinating portraits in the Thyssen-Bornemisza collection. This beautiful image is set against a background with a niche containing various objects referring to the sitter’s refined tastes and character. The jewel with the dragon, two pearls and a ruby, which forms a set with the pendent hanging from a silk cord around her neck, refers to her public life. This dragon brooch is balanced on the other side by the prayer book and string of coral beads that has been identified as a rosary, both of which emphasise her piety and her inner life. In between them is a cartellino with part of an epigram by Martial (XXXII) entitled To a Portrait of Antonius Primus and the date underneath. It reads: “Art, if only you could reproduce the character and the spirit. There would be no finer portrait in the world”.

This image is a classic example of the Florentine Quattrocento portrait in which the sitter poses upright, in strict profile and bustlength with the arms in repose and the hands joined. In the face and body the features and proportions are idealised. In the present example, this is evident both in the lines that create the slender neck and shape of the body and in the expressionless and perfect features. As in other portraits of this period, the ideal beauty used to depict Giovanna Tornabuoni is based on theoretical principles and examples taken from classical antiquity, which artists of this date then combined with the individual features of the particular sitter.

The sitter’s identity was established through medals of her, such as the one attributed to the engraver Niccoló Fiorentino in the National Gallery of Art, Washington, in which Giovanna is depicted in profile with a jewel around her neck and an inscription with her name. The medal was possibly commissioned in connection with her marriage. Ghirlandaio also depicted her in one of the frescoes in the series executed in the chancel of Santa Maria Novella, commissioned by Giovanna’s father-in-law and painted by Ghirlandaio between 1486 and 1490. In these frescoes Giovanna occupies an important position in the episode of The Visitation. Placed to the right of the composition, she is at the head of a line of three figures. Although depicted full-length, her pose, dress and accessories are the same as in the present panel.

Giovanna degli Albizzi, born on 18 December 1468, married Lorenzo Tornabuoni on 15 June 1486. She died two years later, on 7 October 1488, during childbirth. For Jan Lauts the present portrait is prior to the fresco in Santa Maria Novella and may have been the modello for that work. John Pope-Hennessy, however, considered it to be later than the fresco and to be a posthumous portrait in which the date on the cartellino is that of Giovanna’s death. The painting, which was among the possessions of the Tornabuoni family in their palace in Florence, came into the ownership of the Pandolfini family in the 17th century. Later it was in the collection of baron Achille Seillière and the princess Sagan. In 1878 it is recorded in Brighton in the collection of Henry Willet, from where it passed to that of Rodolphe Kann. Acquired by J. Pierpoint Morgan in 1907 it entered the Thyssen-Bornemisza collection from the Morgan Library, New York, in 1935.While it was in the Pierpont Morgan Library an old photograph of the West Room taken prior to 1913 shows the panel in its present frame, displayed on an easel on one side of the room surrounded by other works from the collection.

Mar Borobia

you can examine the gigapixel image in microscopic detail here ...

https://www.museothyssen.org/en/conectathyssen/gigathyssen/portrait-giovanna-degli-albizzi-tornabuoni