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.