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Watercolours of the Acropolis: Émile Gilliéron in Athens

Watercolours of the Acropolis: Emile Gillieron in Athens runs through January 3, 2020, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Photo by Eleni Sakellis

While in New York, and if you are an Ancient Greek Art aficionado, the Metropolitan Museum of Art Exhibition Watercolors of the Acropolis: Émile Gilliéron in Athens is a MUST!

Back in 2011, I saw the Historic Images of the Greek Bronze Age: The Reproductions of E. Gilliéron & Son Metropolitan Museum Exhibition, and today I am eager and hopeful, to see the new Exhibition on Gilliéron père work for the Acropolis Archaic sculptures. The Gilliérons are tightly connected with Greek Bronze Age Archaeology. They were astonishing artists, hired by Sir Arthur Evans, to reconstruct the fresco paintings in the palace at Knossos. Their copies of Minoan Frescoes are highly recognizable today, allowing the viewer to accurately observe the fragmentary parts of the original fresco along with their own creative proposal for the appearance of missing elements. The Gilliéron restored Minoan Frescoes, in watercolours or plaster, popularized and spread the study of Greek Bronze Age Art throughout Europe and America. https://www.metmuseum.org/press/exhibitions/2010/e-gilli%C3%A9ron–sons-reproductions-of-art-from-greek-bronze-age-on-view-at-metropolitan-museum

The current Metropolitan Museum Exhibition titled Watercolors of the Acropolis: Émile Gilliéron in Athens features five watercolours that depict architectural sculptures from Archaic Monuments discovered in the Acropolis of Athens.

Three of the largest watercolours depict the Hekatompedos Pediment. The central composition features two Lions tearing apart a Bull. On the left side, Herakles is depicted fighting a Triton and on the right, the Winged three-bodied Deamon, commonly known as “Bluebeard” with the symbols of the three elements of nature in his hands, fills the triangular space masterfully.

The third watercolour presents pedimental sculptures depicting the Introduction of Herakles into Olympos or as described in the Acropolis Museum of Athens, the Apotheosis (deification) of Hercules. This pedimental composition, made in an Attic workshop, belonged to an unidentified small temple. It shows an imposing seated Zeus, a frontally depicted Hera, Hercules dressed in his characteristic lion skin, Iris and Athena, the hero’s divine guardian. The entire composition, as Emile Gillieron shows us, was painted with bright colours, traces of which are still visible today.

The Hydra pediment is the last Emile Gillieronwatercolour in the MET Exhibition. Once more, the watercolour accurately shows pedimental sculptures of great aesthetic value, very descriptive and brightly painted. The Hydra Pediment comes from an unidentified small building on the Athenian Acropolis.

According to the MET, “In the days before color photography, hand-colored drawings and photographs were the principal means of documenting polychrome Greek art.” But “Reproductions and copies fell out of fashion, and Gilliéron’s work… retired to The Met’s basement… and remained in storage until 2015.” Today and after “the conservators’ heroic efforts to rehabilitate these forgotten pieces” we can once more admire the power with which these amazing watercolours “provide a fascinating insight into the sculptures found at the Acropolis as they appeared when they were first unearthed around the turn of the century.”

For a PowerPoint inspired by the Exhibition, please… click HERE!

Bibliography on the Exhibition: https://www.metmuseum.org/exhibitions/listings/2019/watercolors-of-the-acropolis-emile-gillieron and https://www.metmuseum.org/press/exhibitions/2019/emile-gillieron and https://store.metmuseum.org/watercolors-of-the-acropolis-emile-gillieron-in-athens-80046986?mma_source=mainmuseum&mma_medium=metmuseum.org&mma_campaign=watercolors-of-the-acropolis&mma_term=082619&mma_content=watercolors-of-the-acropolis-80046986 and https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search#!?q=Emile%20Gilli%C3%A9ron&perPage=20&sortBy=Relevance&offset=0&pageSize=0

Last Supper in Pompeii

If your Christmas “walking shoes” take you to Oxford, England, go the Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archaeology to see Last Supper in Pompeii, a wonderful Exhibition on the Roman love affair with food and wine! Inspiration for this Exhibition comes from Pompeii, this amazing time capsule of 79 AD Roman life. Dr Paul Roberts, Head of the Ashmolean Department of Antiquities and exhibition curator, says: ‘The evocative names given to the excavations (the Villa of the Mysteries; the House of the Tragic Poet) have inspired everything from Victorian exhibitions, swords-and-sandals romances to countless scholarly works. Our fascination with the doomed people of Pompeii and their everyday lives has never waned. What better connection can we make with them as ordinary people than through their food and drink?’

Last Supper in Pompeii displays 300 objects related to the culinary arts and the role they played in Roman history and culture. Exquisite floor mosaics from the villas of the affluent Pompeiians, frescoes depicting banquets, and statues, fountains or furnishings that decorated famous triclinia, are all present. Precious or humble dining sets and utensils, simple cooking pots and carbonised food that was on the Pompeiian tables when the volcano erupted tell us interesting stories or Roman culinary voyages and cultural connections.

Useful sources: https://www.ashmolean.org/pompeii and https://www.ashmolean.org/article/last-supper-in-pompeii and https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/exhibit-spotlights-roman-delicacies-baked-dormouse-carbonized-bread-180972731/

My favourite Exhibition fresco is titled Distribution of Bread (AD 40–79) and comes from the House of the Baker in Pompeii. It shows a man behind a wooden counter handing a loaf of bread to a man, while a young boy reaches up eagerly. The shelves are heaped with loaves of the typical round Pompeiian bread, archaeologists even found carbonized one in its entirety. Scholars today believe that the fresco represents a politician’s free distribution of bread (annona) rather than a baker selling his loaves from a food stall.

The Distribution of Bread is a fascinating Pompeian fresco. I like the artist’s ability to create a sense of depth and space through a diagonal composition, his choice of earthy colours with touches of white and aubergine purple to accentuate the depicted figures. I also like the anecdotal details… the well-crafted wooden stall, the herringbone woven basket painted on the left side of the fresco, the abundance of displayed bread loaves… most of all, I like the human touch, the boy, impatient and eager to get his part of the Distributed Bread!

Bibliography of the House of Baker and the Distribution of Bread fresco: https://www.pompeiiinpictures.com/pompeiiinpictures/R6/6%2003%2003.htm and http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/ancient/romans/daily_life_gallery_02.shtml and https://www.ancient.eu/image/10622/sale-of-bread-fresco-pompeii/

An Activity students will enjoy is… HERE!

For a powerpoint prepared for the Exhibition, please… click HERE!

Hercules and the Lion of Nemea

The 6th to 7th century Constantinopolitan Silversmiths were great masters of their craft. Inspired by Greek Mythology, and stories of the Old or the New Testament, they created unique artworks equally important to their monumental counterparts. The 6th-century silver Plate in the Bibliothèque Nationale de France depicting Hercules and the Lion of Nemea beautifully exemplifies their fine workmanship.

The contest between Hercules and the fierce beast takes a central position, within a typical landscape of the time, simple, yet full of “antique” landscape motives. A bending tree to the right complements the shape of the silver plate, while to the left, a pedestal supporting a vase, balances the composition, adding stability.

Hercules, nude, massive and muscular with a thick neck, a heavy jaw, large eyes and curly hair, is depicted grasping the Lion by the neck, his hands disappearing into the beast’s luxurious mane. He is the undoubted winner of this fierce fight. The Lion is equally massive but succumbs to Hercules’s power. His foreleg, limp and weak, rest on the hero’s thigh, his grimacing face, a picture of exhaustion.

The unknown artist of this silver plate of Hercules and the Lion of Nemea illustrates a well-liked mythological story, popular during antiquity and the Byzantine period that followed. The plate was found in Italy in the Massa-Carrara area of Tuscany in 1771. It is dated ca. 500-600 AD. It was acquired by the Bibliothèque Nationale de France in 1890 and is part of its Département des Monnaies, Médailles et Antiques. The Plate was part of the spectacular “Ancient Luxury and the Roman Silver Treasure from Berthouville” Getty Villa Exhibition of 2014-15.

Bibliography: http://medaillesetantiques.bnf.fr/ws/catalogue/app/collection/record/ark:/12148/c33gbq9kr and https://www.metmuseum.org/art/metpublications/Age_of_Spirituality_Late_Antique_and_Early_Christian_Art_Third_to_Seventh_Century?fbclid=IwAR2T7bRUIaYH1cUyXgg-0KuAchuDZdxoNABmimn3TAQDhrC1x3V5Ys8Jcnk …pages 162-163

For a PowerPoint the Hercules and the Lion of Nemea, please… click HERE!

Student Activities on the Silver Plate of Hercules and the Lion of Nemea are… HERE!

Cimabue – Giotto – Duccio

Cimabue – Giotto – Duccio, how important are they? You simply have to visit the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, Hall 2 to be more specific, stand in front of these three monumental panels and allow their masters to take you on a trip to the late 13th, early 14th century revolutionary Italian Painting.

According to Giorgio Vasari,“…instead of paying attention to his literary studies, Cimabue, as if inspired by his nature, spent the whole day drawing men, horses, houses and various other fantasies in his books and papers.” Cenni di Pepo, known as Cimabue, is recognized as the last painter of the Italo-Byzantine style. Yet. he is credited to step forward in moving his art towards achieving the first hint of naturalism, paving the way for the next generation of great Italian masters.

O vanity of human powers, how briefly lasts the crowning green of glory, unless an age of darkness follows! In painting Cimabue thought he held the field but now it’s Giotto has the cry, so that the other’s fame is dimmed. Writes about Giotto, the poet Dante in Canto XI of his Purgatorio, and he is so right. Giotto creates “a new kind of pictorial space with an almost measurable depth” and figures that are “volumetric rather than linear” expressing “varied and convincingly human rather than stylized” emotions. Justifiably, Giotto is considered the father of modern European painting. https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/iptg/hd_iptg.htm

“Duccio, painter of Siena and much esteemed, deserved to carry off the palm (of an inventor in the Arts) from those who came many years after him…” writes Giorgio Vasari in his book The Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects. Today, Duccio Duccio is considered to bring through his art elegance, lyricism, and spirituality along with spatial complexity and refined use of colours.

There are two Uffizi Gallery sites you simply need to visit: https://www.visituffizi.org/halls/hall-2-of-giotto-and-the-13th-century/ and https://www.virtualuffizi.com/13th-century-and-giotto-room.html

For a student Activity, my Grade 9 Art History students enjoy… click HERE!

A PowerPoint on the three Madonnas is… HERE!

Telling us goodbye…

They were young and charming, elegant and playful yet sad as they were Telling us Goodbye…

Two of my favourite Ancient Greek Funerary Stele depict a young girl holding a Bird (in the Archaeological Museum of Thessaloniki) or in the case of the Metropolitan Museum in New York, two Birds. Both Stelae were made of Parian marble, around 440 BC.

The Funerary Stele in Thessaloniki “depicts a girl wearing a peplos and holding a dove by its wings with her left hand, while the right one lifts the edge of her garment, to reveal her body.” It is characterized by the superb quality of craftsmanship, a subtle sense of movement, and controlled emotions. Undoubtedly, it occupies a central part in the history of ancient Greek sculpture.

“The gentle gravity of this child is beautifully expressed through her sweet farewell to her pet doves. Her peplos is unbelted and falls open at the side, while the folds of drapery clearly reveal her stance…” The Metropolitan Museum Funerary Stele is the work of a great master sculptor, an artist who manages to enhance the white, translucent Parian marble by creating a “charming composition and delicate carving.”

Both Funerary Stelae grace with their beauty the Archaeological Museum of Thessaloniki (https://www.amth.gr/en/exhibitions/highlights and scroll down to ” Relief Funerary Stele from Nea Kallikrateia”) and the MET in New York ( https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/252890 ).

If you choose to use this Activity for your class, Grade 6 Social Studies or an Introductory Middle School class on Ancient Greek Art, it will be also nice to show Adam Fuss (the Photographer) discussing the MET Marble Grave Stele of a little girl.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art – THE ARTIST PROJECT Video http://artistproject.metmuseum.org/4/adam-fuss/

Examples of student RWAP (stands for Research-Writing-Art-Project) Sketchbooks… HERE!

Telling us Goodbye RWAP (stands for Research-Writing-Art-Project) is… HERE!

The Magic of the Olive Tree

**Vincent Van Gogh,** 1853-1890
**Olive Picking, 1889, oil on canvas, 73.5 × 92.5 cm, Basil & Elise Goulandris Foundation, Athens**

The Magic of the Olive Tree inspired so much Vincent Van Gogh that while in Saint-Remy-de Provence in 1889, he painted at least 15 paintings depicting their beauty! The same magic inspired our wonderful Pinewood Kindergarten Teacher… who organized a Unit to remember!

“The Kindergarten theme on Olives began with the intention of it being a transdisciplinary unit so that the children would learn many facets about it. It was introduced in a simple way – when the children reached the letter O in the English alphabet they decided to remember this letter sound by saying ‘O is for olive’… From there they learned that olives are fruit and that they grow on Olive Trees in Greece. Inspired by short videos showing how olives are picked in late Autumn, the children took a sheet, a stick and a basket and went olive picking on the school grounds. They hit the branches of the school Olive Trees and collected the fruit that fell… So enthusiastic about what they did they decided to capture their experience by making their very own olive tree grove Bulletin Board.”

Pinewood Kindergarten students “listened in awe as they travelled back into mythological times, to when Athena bestowed the gift of an Olive Tree to the Athenians. This helped the children understand what a treasure the Olive Tree is because of all the various gifts that it gives: wood (for heat, furniture), oil ( for cooking, eating, light, fuel) and soap… They tasted both green and black olives, they washed their hands with olive soap, they lit an oil-lamp with olive oil and they made olive bread… They created olive wreaths by counting card leaves and plasticine olives to a given number and learned that in ancient times an olive wreath, just like the ones they had made, were placed on the heads of champion athletes.”

Finally, students “realized how thankful they are for this humble fruit and all it provides. So when it came to Thanksgiving Day the children chose to honour the Olive Tree by writing their messages of thanks inside their olive wreaths and entitling their display, ‘In Greece, we are thankful for Olive Trees’.”

Kindergarten student Bulletin Board Art photographed by Kostas Papantoniou

“O is for Olive” is the amazing Lesson Plan prepared by the school’s Kindergarten Teacher, Mrs. Anna Maria Mathias, with assistance provided by Mrs. Kathy Lekkas. The PowerPoint photos that follow HERE! were taken by the school’s photographer, Mr. Kostas Papapatoniou.

For the purposes of this BLOG, The Magic of the Olive Tree, “teachercurator” put together a PowerPoint on Van Gogh and paintings of Olive Trees… please check HERE!

The new Basil and Elise Goulandris Foundation in Athens has a wonderful Vincent Van Gogh painting of Olive Picking from his 1889 period. Apparently, Van Gogh painted “three versions of this picture. He described the first as a study from nature “more coloured with more solemn tones” (in the Goulandris Collection) and the second as a studio rendition in a “very discreet range” of colours (National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.).” The third painting is at the Metropolitan Museum in New York, and accordingly is “the most resolved and stylized of the three.” The third painting was “intended for his sister and mother, to whom Van Gogh wrote: “I hope that the painting of the women in the olive trees will be a little to your taste—I sent [a] drawing of it to Gauguin… and he thought it good… ” https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/436536 and https://goulandris.gr/en/artwork/vincent-van-gogh-olive-picking

“Bourgeois” Portrait

Your tour of the new Basil and Elise Goulandris Foundation in Athens should start from the 4^th floor… recommends the helpful Museum operator, and I hesitantly followed his recommendation. I was pleasantly surprised! An impressive “Bourgeois” Portrait of Basil and Elise Goulandris welcomed me, setting the tone for what I was about to experience.

Painted four years after Basil Goulandris’s passing, this eye-catching Portrait of the famous art collectors by George Rorris introduces you to the “atmosphere” that prevails in the latest cultural addition to the Athens Museum circuit! It’s grand, elegant yet understated. Basil Goulandris, clad in a dark suit, stands tall and aloof, staring at you intensely. Elise on the other hand, wearing the softest of pink, sits charmingly on an armchair and looks beyond you. They are surrounded by three favourite paintings from their legendary collection and a mirror that holds a secret worth exploring!

Little information is unfortunately provided by the Foundation on the “whats, the hows and the whys” of this painting. I hope, as time progresses, part of their “Permanent Collection” site will get richer with short descriptions and information on each and every one of their paintings. https://goulandris.gr/en/collection/works-of-art and https://goulandris.gr/en/artwork/rorris-george-portrait-of-basil-and-elise-goulandris

Basil and Elise Goulandris were known for their passionate love of the arts. They were avid collectors, famous for their superb “taste” and acute “eye.” ‘I spent months at a time with Basil and Elise when I was a child,’ says Fleurette Karadontis ‘they had no children of their own — they looked on the paintings as their children. The works were a genuine presence in their lives, a constant part of the conversation. Basil might suddenly say: look there, I never realised that the colour of the shirt in that painting is the same as the wall behind that still life. Or he would look at some cubist painting and ask: how many people do you see in it because I think there are three.’ https://www.christies.com/features/A-gift-to-Greece-the-Goulandris-Foundation-10209-1.aspx

For High School level student Activities on the George Rorris “Bourgeois” Portrait of Basil and Elise Goulandris… Click HERE!

Medusa

Medusa was once upon a time an entrancing maiden, the only mortal sister of the three Gorgons, attractive for her beauty originally, feared as an image of evil later, when Athena’s anger turned her into a hideous monster… According to the Roman Poet Ovid (Metamorphoses 4.770), Athena was so fierce in her punishment, Medusa’s hair was transformed into venomous snakes, and her once lovely face, looked upon, petrified the viewer.

To save his mother Danae from the much-unwanted attention of king Polydectes of Seriphos, young Perseus was tasked with the impossible, killing Medusa. Perseus, however, was not alone and helpless in his adventure. He carried with him divine gifts, Athena’s mirrored shield, Hermes’s gold, winged sandals, Hephaestus’s adamantine sword and Hades’s helmet of invisibility. According to Ovid Perseus was successful, Medusa head was cut and ultimately ended up in Athena’s Aegis.

“Medusa in Ancient Greek Art” is a Metropolitan Museum of Art article worth reading: https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/medu/hd_medu.htm

“flee, for if your eyes are petrified in amazement, she will turn you to stone,” wrote Gaspare Mustola, an Italian poet and writer of the 17th century, and Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio painted the most amazing Medusa head of all time!

**Caravaggio,** 1571-1610
**Medusa**, 1597, oil on canvas mounted on wood, 60 cm × 55 cm, Uffizi, Florence

My Grade 3 students love the terrifying Myth of the Medusa and creating a Mask is always a successful Activity! The best Mask by far is offered by the Cleveland Museum of Art… which I use every year with student enthusiasm and great success! https://www.clevelandart.org/sites/default/files/documents/other/MakeaMaskofMedusa.pdf

For a PowerPoint on the student Mask Activity… check HERE!

Leonardo da Vinci

**La Belle Ferronnière** (detail), 1495 – 1499, oil on wood, 62 cm × 44 cm, Louvre Museum, Paris Photo Copyright: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-50127095
…and her mesmerizing eyes

Five hundred years ago, one of the greatest Renaissance Homo Universalis passed away at the Château du Clos Lucé, in the Loire Valley. The Louvre Museum, wishing to commemorate the fifth centenary of the artist’s death, organizes an International Retrospective Exhibition on Leonardo da Vinci and his oeuvre. https://www.louvre.fr/en/expositions/leonardo-da-vinci

The Louvre Museum in Paris holds the largest collection in the world of the artist’s paintings, five of the fourteen to seventeen paintings now attributed to Leonardo, as well as 22 drawings. This collection is the core of the Retrospective that will also present “the latest research findings, critical editions of key documents and the results of the latest analysis carried out in laboratories or during recent conservation treatment by the Louvre.” https://www.louvre.fr/en/leonardo-da-vinci

A unique feature that the Exhibition presents to its visitors is the Virtual Reality experience for the Mona Lisa painting, the first of its kind at the Louvre. Virtual Reality enables visitors to go through the glass-case that protects the Mona Lisa and see minute details within the painting invisible otherwise to the naked eye. https://arts.vive.com/us/articles/projects/art-photography/mona_lisa_beyond_the_glass/ and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Au_UpzhzHwk

The PowerPoint I use for my Art History class on the artist… is HERE!

Reverence for Nature and Tiffany

Reverence for Nature and Tiffany is my latest BLOG Post. It is about an extraordinary Hair Ornament in the MET Collection portraying two Dragonflies and Dandelions. Created in 1904 for Louisine Havemeyer, a great collector of Impressionist Art and one of Tiffany’s most ardent patrons, the Metropolitan Museum Hair Pin is my favourite Art Nouveau piece of Jewelry. https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/2046

When I think of Louis Comfort Tiffany, I think of nature’s power, its brittleness, yet joy. I think of radiance, luminosity and brilliance in colour. I think of superb craftsmanship… as exemplified in the MET’s Dragonfly and Dandelion Hair Ornament. According to Alice Cooney Frelinghuyse in the MET, the Hair Ornament “epitomizes his earliest jewelry designs, which were based directly on modest forms in nature, such as field flowers and wild fruit, as well as his affinity for enamelling and semiprecious stones with unusual colors. The dragonflies rest on dandelion seedballs, one of which is shown partially blown away, underscoring the fragility of nature. Highly skilled artisans conveyed the transparency of the insects’ wings through delicate metalwork filigree. The temporal quality is revealed in the subject: dragonflies rest in one place for mere seconds before flitting away; dandelions disperse into thousands of airborne seeds with the gentlest of breezes.” file:///C:/Users/aspil/Downloads/Recent_Acquisitions_A_Selection_2002_2003_The_Metropolitan_Museum_of_Art_Bulletin_v_61_no_2_Fall_2003%20(1).pdf

For a short PowerPoint on Louis Comfort Tiffany… click HERE!

A Grade 4 or 5 student Activity on Reverence for Nature and Tiffany is HERE!