If you head to the Lou­vre, make sure you vis­it the Mona Lisa, Venus de Milo, and Lib­er­ty Lead­ing the Peo­ple. But then swing by the Depart­ment of Greek, Etr­uscan, and Roman Antiq­ui­ties. There you might find (no guar­an­tee!) a Roman mosa­ic fea­tur­ing a rab­bit rid­ing a char­i­ot pulled by geese. Dis­cov­ered at Hadri­an’s vil­la in Tivoli, Italy, the mosa­ic dates back to the 2nd cen­tu­ry. About the mosa­ic, the His­to­ry Cool Kids writes:

This kind of humor­ous scene is an exam­ple of asária, a type of ancient visu­al joke where ani­mals behave like humans (anthro­po­mor­phism). Such mosaics were pop­u­lar in Roman domes­tic dec­o­ra­tion, often as floor or wall pan­els in vil­las and bath­hous­es.

This par­tic­u­lar mosa­ic is part of the Louvre’s exten­sive col­lec­tion of Greek, Etr­uscan, and Roman Antiq­ui­ties. It illus­trates how Roman artists loved play­ful or satir­i­cal imagery along­side more seri­ous mytho­log­i­cal and real­is­tic scenes. The rab­bit, a sym­bol often asso­ci­at­ed with fer­til­i­ty and speed, paired with the absur­di­ty of it dri­ving a char­i­ot of geese, reflects both Roman wit and their fond­ness for dec­o­ra­tive exu­ber­ance.

Some schol­ars believe the mosa­ic plays on a line in Ovid’s Meta­mor­phoses: “Cytherea [Aphrodite] was rid­ing in her dain­ty char­i­ot, winged by her swans, across the mid­dle air mak­ing for Cyprus, when she heard afar Ado­nis’ dying groans, and thith­er turned her snowy birds.” But it’s hard to know for sure.

via Messy Nessy

Relat­ed Con­tent 

Killer Rab­bits in Medieval Man­u­scripts: Why So Many Draw­ings in the Mar­gins Depict Bun­nies Going Bad

The Medieval Man­u­script That Fea­tures “Yoda”, Killer Snails, Sav­age Rab­bits & More: Dis­cov­er The Smith­field Dec­re­tals

How a Mosa­ic from Caligula’s Par­ty Boat Became a Cof­fee Table in a New York City Apart­ment 50 Years Ago

Archae­ol­o­gists Dis­cov­er a 2,000-Year-Old Roman Glass Bowl in Per­fect Con­di­tion

More than a few vis­i­tors to Flo­rence make a bee­line to the Gal­le­ria del­l’Ac­cad­e­mia, and once inside, to Michelan­gelo’s David, the most famous sculp­ture in the world. But how many of them, one won­ders, then take the time to view the three oth­er Davids in that city alone? At the Bargel­lo, just ten min­utes’ walk away, reside two more sculp­tures of the young man who would be king of Israel and Judah, both of them by Michelan­gelo’s fel­low Renais­sance mas­ter Donatel­lo. The less renowned, he made of mar­ble in the late four­teen-hun­dreds; the more renowned, of bronze in the four­teen-for­ties, is the sub­ject of the Smarthis­to­ry video at the top of the post.

“For a thou­sand years, the Chris­t­ian West had looked to the soul as the place to focus. The body was seen as the path to cor­rup­tion, and so it was not to be cel­e­brat­ed,” says the video’s host Steven Zuck­er. “What we’re see­ing here is a return to ancient Greece and Rome’s love of the body, its respect for the body.”

And to the Flo­ren­tines of the mid-fif­teenth cen­tu­ry, as co-host Beth Har­ris explains, this par­tic­u­lar body was­n’t just that of “King David from the Bible,” but that of their own repub­lic as well. See­ing them­selves as the David-like under­dog vic­to­ri­ous over the Goliath that was the Duke of Milan, “they felt blessed and cho­sen by God” as the “heirs of the ancient Roman Repub­lic.”

Whether or not most every­day cit­i­zens of the Flo­ren­tine Repub­lic felt that way, the bank­ing Medici fam­i­ly, who effec­tive­ly ran the place for cen­turies, sure­ly must have. Also at the Bargel­lo is anoth­er of the Davids they com­mis­sioned, sculpt­ed in bronze by Andrea del Ver­roc­chio in the four­teen-sev­en­ties. “Ver­roc­chio gives us a very self-assured young man,” says Har­ris, with the beau­ty to be expect­ed of a work of this genre, but also with a cer­tain degree of anti-clas­si­cist ado­les­cent awk­ward­ness. In that, the work con­trasts with Bernini’s, though both artists cre­at­ed a vic­to­ri­ous David, stand­ing over the head of Goliath. Michelan­ge­lo, of course, did things quite dif­fer­ent­ly thir­ty years lat­er, sculpt­ing a David out of mar­ble eter­nal­ly steel­ing him­self for the bat­tle, at just the moment when his colos­sal foe comes into view.

Donatel­lo, Ver­roc­chio, and Michelan­gelo’s Davids all date from the Renais­sance. The oth­er unig­nor­able sculp­ture in this tra­di­tion was cre­at­ed much lat­er, in the six­teen-twen­ties, and also far from Flo­rence. The David by Gian Loren­zo Berni­ni, who would become syn­ony­mous with the dra­mat­ic extrav­a­gance of sev­en­teenth-cen­tu­ry Rome, is “like a spring that’s about to unwind,” as Zuck­er puts it. Unlike when we behold Michelan­gelo’s con­tem­pla­tive ren­di­tion, Har­ris adds, “here, we’re emo­tion­al­ly, bod­i­ly involved,” not just because of the action pose, but also of the phys­i­cal effort evi­dent in the face. This was the Baroque era, when “the Catholic church is using art as a way to affirm and strength­en the faith of believ­ers.” Ideas about the pur­pose of art may have changed in the four cen­turies since, but that has­n’t stopped even the less­er-known Davids from receiv­ing a steady stream of impressed vis­i­tors.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Michelangelo’s David: The Fas­ci­nat­ing Sto­ry Behind the Renais­sance Mar­ble Cre­ation

Michelan­ge­lo Entered a Com­pe­ti­tion to Put a Miss­ing Arm Back on Lao­coön and His Sons — and Lost

How Michelangelo’s David Still Draws Admi­ra­tion and Con­tro­ver­sy Today

New Video Shows What May Be Michelangelo’s Lost & Now Found Bronze Sculp­tures

School Prin­ci­pal, Forced to Resign After Stu­dents Learn About Michelangelo’s “David,” Vis­its the Renais­sance Stat­ue in Flo­rence

3D Scans of 7,500 Famous Sculp­tures, Stat­ues & Art­works: Down­load & 3D Print Rodin’s Thinker, Michelangelo’s David & More

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

It may have crossed your mind, while behold­ing paint­ings of Vin­cent van Gogh, that you’d like to own one your­self some­day. If so, you’ll have to get in line with more than a few bil­lion­aires, and even they may nev­er see one go up on the auc­tion block. This would prob­a­bly come as a sur­prise to van Gogh him­self, who died des­ti­tute — and prac­ti­cal­ly unknown — after an artis­tic career of just ten years. In that time, he man­aged to sell exact­ly one paint­ing, at least accord­ing to cer­tain def­i­n­i­tions of “sell.” Van Gogh did barter paint­ings for food and art sup­plies, and he did accept com­mis­sions, begin­ning with one from his art-deal­er uncle Cor. But as for sales made to non-rel­a­tives through an offi­cial show, we only know of one: La vigne rouge.

Known in Eng­lish as The Red Vine­yards near Arles, or sim­ply The Red Vine­yard, the paint­ing depicts a land­scape van Gogh came across “on a late after­noon walk with Paul Gau­guin on 28 Octo­ber 1888, five days after his friend’s arrival in Arles.” So writes Mar­tin Bai­ley at The Art News­pa­per, who adds that “pick­ing the grapes nor­mal­ly takes place in Sep­tem­ber in Provence, but the har­vest seems to have been late that year.”

To his broth­er Theo, Vin­cent described the scene thus: “A red vine­yard, com­plete­ly red like red wine. In the dis­tance it became yel­low, and then a green sky with a sun, fields vio­let and sparkling yel­low here and there after the rain in which the set­ting sun was reflect­ed.” The artist was not, how­ev­er, moved to set up his can­vas then and there; rather, he paint­ed the vine­yard the next month, from mem­o­ry.

Vin­cent let Theo hang the result­ing can­vas in his Paris apart­ment until he asked for it back in order to exhib­it it in the annu­al Brus­sels show put on by a group called Les Vingt in ear­ly 1890. The Red Vine­yards’ buy­er was one of their num­ber, a cer­tain Anna Boch, the sis­ter of van Gogh’s col­league in impres­sion­ism (and one­time por­trait sub­ject) Eugène Boch. Though she was no rela­tion, Anna did pay full stick­er price for the paint­ing, and van Gogh lat­er expressed some regret about not giv­ing her a “friend’s price.” But what­ev­er it cost her, it was sure­ly a steal com­pared to its val­ue today, after its pur­chase by a Russ­ian col­lec­tor, its rev­o­lu­tion­ary expro­pri­a­tion, and its long Sovi­et sup­pres­sion fol­lowed by proud exhi­bi­tion at Moscow’s Pushkin State Muse­um of Fine Arts — which, owing to the paint­ing’s fragili­ty, won’t even lend it out.

via Messy Nessy

Relat­ed con­tent:

1,500 Paint­ings & Draw­ings by Vin­cent van Gogh Have Been Dig­i­tized & Put Online

Vin­cent Van Gogh’s The Star­ry Night: Why It’s a Great Paint­ing in 15 Min­utes

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

It would be a worth­while exer­cise for any of us to sit down and attempt to draw up a list of our 100 favorite paint­ings of all time. Nat­u­ral­ly, those not pro­fes­sion­al­ly involved with art his­to­ry may have some trou­ble quite hit­ting that num­ber. Still, how­ev­er many titles we can write down, each of us will no doubt come up with a mix­ture of the near-uni­ver­sal­ly known and the rel­a­tive­ly obscure, with paint­ings we’ve been see­ing repro­duced in pop­u­lar cul­ture since birth along­side works that made a strong and unex­pect­ed impres­sion on us the one time we came across them in a book or gallery. The 100-favorite-paint­ings list in video form above by Luiza Liz Bond is no excep­tion.

You may rec­og­nize Bond’s name from her work on the YouTube chan­nel The Cin­e­ma Car­tog­ra­phy, many of whose videos — on David Lynch, on Quentin Taran­ti­no, on ani­ma­tion, on cin­e­matog­ra­phy, on the great­est films ever made — we’ve pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture. Recent­ly rebrand­ed as The House of Tab­u­la, that chan­nel now makes its aes­thet­ic and intel­lec­tu­al explo­rations into not just film but art broad­ly con­sid­ered.

And though paint­ing may not be the art form with which we spend most of our time these days, it’s still one of the first art forms that comes to our minds, per­haps thanks to its twen­ty or so mil­len­nia of his­to­ry. It’s from a rel­a­tive­ly nar­row but enor­mous­ly rich slice of that his­to­ry, span­ning the four­teenth cen­tu­ry to the twen­ti­eth, that Bond makes her 100 selec­tions.

Among them are more than a few paint­ings that long­time Open Cul­ture read­ers will remem­ber us hav­ing cov­ered before: Botticelli’s The Birth of Venus, Bosch’s The Gar­den of Earth­ly Delights, Michelan­gelo’s Sis­tine Chapel ceil­ing, Diego Velázquez’s Las Meni­nas, Frag­o­nard’s The Swing, Goy­a’s The Dog, Manet’s Lun­cheon on the Grass, Sar­gen­t’s Car­na­tion, Lily, Lily, Rose, van Gogh’s The Star­ry Night, Klimt’s The Kiss, Matis­se’s The Dance, Magrit­te’s The Lovers, Dalí’s The Per­sis­tence of Mem­o­ry, Picas­so’s Guer­ni­ca, Wyeth’s Christi­na’s World, and Basquiat’s Unti­tled. These works and many oth­ers con­sti­tute a jour­ney through the “world of high sym­bol­ism and reli­gios­i­ty to a pri­vate space where painters tell their per­son­al sto­ries through images on can­vas,” as Bond puts it. Wher­ev­er art’s next major des­ti­na­tion may be, only human cre­ativ­i­ty can take us there.

Relat­ed con­tent:

A Gallery of 1,800 Gigapix­el Images of Clas­sic Paint­ings: See Vermeer’s Girl with the Pearl Ear­ring, Van Gogh’s Star­ry Night & Oth­er Mas­ter­pieces in Close Detail

14 Self-Por­traits by Pablo Picas­so Show the Evo­lu­tion of His Style: See Self-Por­traits Mov­ing from Ages 15 to 90

The Evo­lu­tion of Kandinsky’s Paint­ing: A Jour­ney from Real­ism to Vibrant Abstrac­tion Over 46 Years

Take a Jour­ney Through 933 Paint­ings by Sal­vador Dalí & Watch His Sig­na­ture Sur­re­al­ism Emerge

1540 Mon­et Paint­ings in a Two Hour Video

The Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art Puts 490,000 High-Res Images Online & Makes Them Free to Use

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.