medievalpoc
laclefdescoeurs: I Mori di Venezia (detail), Cesare Maccari So, I got this message in the ol inbox asking about this post: Hello! I’ve been seeing this post floating around - http://laclefdescoeurs.tumblr.com/post/118906947237/i-mori-di-venezia-detail-ces
laclefdescoeurs: I Mori di Venezia (detail), Cesare Maccari So, I got this message in the ol inbox asking about this post: Hello! I’ve been seeing this post floating around - laclefdescoeurs.tumblr.com/post/118906947237/i-mori-di-ve... - and while I love it, I wish I could find more information about it? I’ve used any number of keywords based on the caption, even translating it to (obviously) ‘The Moors of Venice’, but still: no luck. There’s not even any clues on Maccari-dedicated art archives. Do you happen to know anything about it? Hope all’s well; your work is staggering and so much appreciated. — myloveisaquestion And let me tell you, I really, really tried. I’ve never seen it before, but from looking at it, it appears to be an Orientalist painting, probably Italian, probably c. 1850-1900ish. Nothing depicted rung any symbolic bells for me, either. I ignored the title, since this person already tried that and a lot of the time, titles given are at the discretion of whatever art historian happens to be writing about it (or archivist is entering it into a database) at the time. It’s also labeled with (detail), from which we can extrapolate that it is a detail of a larger painting, which makes it difficult to find through image searches. But I did it anyhow. They turned up two books in French which had used this painting for their covers. The first is about the Italian School of Orientalist Painters (i used google translate on the page): And the second is a book of fairy tales: Now, if you have a way to see inside the first few pages, which Amazon has sometimes, you can see the copyright page where the work used on the cover should be listed (even if it’s public domain). Alas, this was not the case for either of these two books. So, my second tack was to check specific art history and image databases individually for this artist, Cesare Maccari. The most fruitful was Bridgeman Images, which turned up a few paintings by this artist, but I didn’t see the people pictures above embedded in any larger paintings. I also checked the Web Gallery of Art, The Getty, Rijksmuseum, The Met’s Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History, Art History Site Database and Search (which includes links to auction sites which I also looked through), The Getty Research Institute, WikiPaintings, and WikiMedia Commons. The auction sites had some paintings listed, but none matched up with this image that I saw. Now, if anyone really MUST know, has about 27 dollars, and can read French, the answer to this mystery is probably in the first book I linked to up there about the Italian Orientalist painters, although the edition featured on Amazon has a different painting on the cover. It may also only contain the artist, estimated year of production, dimensions, and where it’s currently being held. A lot of information that people might want to know about it like who modeled for it, what the subject is (or is supposed to be), what they’re doing, or why this guy is holding a fishbowl, may never be able to be known. The thing about Orientalist paintings is they’re basically fantasy. They don’t realistically reflect people or cultures they’re supposed to depict (if any); they’re pretty much made up: clothes, people, situations, and places, influenced by whatever impression or ideas European painters formed about “the East”. Any given Orientalist painting, like this one by Ludvig Deutsch (1892), for example: Is it awesome?? Sure!! Is it like 75-90% made up? Yes it is. I mean, same with a fantasy painting like this one: [Joseph Noel Paton; Study for The Quarrel of Oberon and Titania. c. 1849] It’s basically a collection of archetypes, stereotypes, bowdlerized literature and lots and lots of glitter. You have works that are considered more “ethnographic”, like various portraits by José Tapiró y Baró: [José Tapiró y Baró; Portrait of a Moroccan Man Spain, c. 1890] But honestly, I haven’t seen much to convince me that these can be considered accurate representations of culture or fashion. There is plenty to support the hypothesis that the man who modeled for the artist was very handsome, however. ;) And there you have absolutely everything I could figure out and/or extrapolate on regarding the painting in the original post above. If anyone else knows more about the painting above, even what the full painting looks like, feel free to let me know!
laclefdescoeurs: I Mori di Venezia (detail), Cesare Maccari So, I got this message in the ol inbox asking about this post: Hello! I’ve been seeing this post floating around - http://laclefdescoeurs.tumblr.com/post/118906947237/i-mori-di-venezia-detail-ces
laclefdescoeurs: I Mori di Venezia (detail), Cesare Maccari So, I got this message in the ol inbox asking about this post: Hello! I’ve been seeing this post floating around - laclefdescoeurs.tumblr.com/post/118906947237/i-mori-di-ve... - and while I love it, I wish I could find more information about it? I’ve used any number of keywords based on the caption, even translating it to (obviously) ‘The Moors of Venice’, but still: no luck. There’s not even any clues on Maccari-dedicated art archives. Do you happen to know anything about it? Hope all’s well; your work is staggering and so much appreciated. — myloveisaquestion And let me tell you, I really, really tried. I’ve never seen it before, but from looking at it, it appears to be an Orientalist painting, probably Italian, probably c. 1850-1900ish. Nothing depicted rung any symbolic bells for me, either. I ignored the title, since this person already tried that and a lot of the time, titles given are at the discretion of whatever art historian happens to be writing about it (or archivist is entering it into a database) at the time. It’s also labeled with (detail), from which we can extrapolate that it is a detail of a larger painting, which makes it difficult to find through image searches. But I did it anyhow. They turned up two books in French which had used this painting for their covers. The first is about the Italian School of Orientalist Painters (i used google translate on the page): And the second is a book of fairy tales: Now, if you have a way to see inside the first few pages, which Amazon has sometimes, you can see the copyright page where the work used on the cover should be listed (even if it’s public domain). Alas, this was not the case for either of these two books. So, my second tack was to check specific art history and image databases individually for this artist, Cesare Maccari. The most fruitful was Bridgeman Images, which turned up a few paintings by this artist, but I didn’t see the people pictures above embedded in any larger paintings. I also checked the Web Gallery of Art, The Getty, Rijksmuseum, The Met’s Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History, Art History Site Database and Search (which includes links to auction sites which I also looked through), The Getty Research Institute, WikiPaintings, and WikiMedia Commons. The auction sites had some paintings listed, but none matched up with this image that I saw. Now, if anyone really MUST know, has about 27 dollars, and can read French, the answer to this mystery is probably in the first book I linked to up there about the Italian Orientalist painters, although the edition featured on Amazon has a different painting on the cover. It may also only contain the artist, estimated year of production, dimensions, and where it’s currently being held. A lot of information that people might want to know about it like who modeled for it, what the subject is (or is supposed to be), what they’re doing, or why this guy is holding a fishbowl, may never be able to be known. The thing about Orientalist paintings is they’re basically fantasy. They don’t realistically reflect people or cultures they’re supposed to depict (if any); they’re pretty much made up: clothes, people, situations, and places, influenced by whatever impression or ideas European painters formed about “the East”. Any given Orientalist painting, like this one by Ludvig Deutsch (1892), for example: Is it awesome?? Sure!! Is it like 75-90% made up? Yes it is. I mean, same with a fantasy painting like this one: [Joseph Noel Paton; Study for The Quarrel of Oberon and Titania. c. 1849] It’s basically a collection of archetypes, stereotypes, bowdlerized literature and lots and lots of glitter. You have works that are considered more “ethnographic”, like various portraits by José Tapiró y Baró: [José Tapiró y Baró; Portrait of a Moroccan Man Spain, c. 1890] But honestly, I haven’t seen much to convince me that these can be considered accurate representations of culture or fashion. There is plenty to support the hypothesis that the man who modeled for the artist was very handsome, however. ;) And there you have absolutely everything I could figure out and/or extrapolate on regarding the painting in the original post above. If anyone else knows more about the painting above, even what the full painting looks like, feel free to let me know!