Serious gentlemen - portraits by Corneille de Lyon

 

Presumed portrait of Clément Marot,1536.

All the uncaptioned images are portraits of unknown men, only identified in collections as "Man with a Black Hat", "Man with Gloves", etc.

 James V of Scotland, circa 1536-37.

René du Puy du Fou, circa 1550

Henri, dauphin de France, future King Henri II, circa 1536.

Maréchal Bonnivet, 1545.

François de Montmorency, circa 1557.

This is identified everywhere as Charles de France, duc d'Orléans. Why it reads "François... Dauphin", though, I can't explain.

 The duc d'Étampes, circa 1536-40.

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Corneille de Lyon (circa 1500-1510, The Hague - buried 8 November 1575, Lyon), Dutch portrait painter active in Lyon, France from 1533 until his death. In France he is also still known as Corneille de La Haye, and in the Netherlands as Cornelis van Den Haag, after his birthplace, The Hague. Nothing is known of his Dutch youth and he arrived in Lyon in 1533 at the latest. In 1536, he produced portraits of several members of the royal family, and obtained the title of royal painter in 1541. He married the daughter of a renowned printer, François Fradin, thereby acquiring a prominent social position in Lyon society. His business was prosperous until the Wars of Religion, during which time, despite his attachment to Protestantism, he does not appear to have been the victim of much persecution, though he eventually converted, under duress, to the Catholic religion in 1569.

Although he is well documented as the leading painter in this distinctively French style, because he never signed or dated his paintings very few works can be firmly identified as his. Distinguishing his hand from the many other artists working in the same style is extremely difficult; works tend to be attributed to him on grounds of quality alone. Corneille's portraits are nearly miniature in scale, the very largest only being around eight by ten inches. He worked in oil on wood panel, the flesh areas painted very thinly, while the customarily greenish backgrounds are painted more thickly.

Album dédié à Tamar Karsavina par George Barbier et Jean-Louis Vaudoyer, Collections Pierre Corrard, Paris, 1914

L'Oiseau de feu.

Karsavina was something of a legend even during her own lifetime, celebrated for her technique, her intelligence, charm, and wit. In 1914, on the brink of WWI, this album was dedicated to her, in celebration of her career, and highlighting her most important roles. All of those featured in the album were from ballets created and performed under the aegis of Diaghilev and the Ballets Russes: Le Pavillon d'Armide, Les Sylphides, Cléopâtre, Carnaval, Shéhérazade, L'Oiseau de feu, Le Spectre de la rose, Narcisse, Petrushka, Daphnis et Chloé, Thamar, Jeux, La Tragédie de Salomé. 

(It should be noted that the apparent nudity in these images only went as far as the artist's imagination; in reality, the dancers were always fully covered.)

Novelist, poet, and art historian Jean-Louis Vaudoyer - the author of the libretto for Le Spectre de la rose - composed the text, each of the seventeen poems inspired by Karsavina's finest roles. And the great illustrator George Barbier designed the twelve color full-page pochoir plates. 512 copies were printed.

The title page, illustrating her rôle in Petrushka.

Carnaval. With Nijinsky and Adolph Bolm.

Narcisse. With Nijinsky.

Jeux. With Nijinsky and Ludmilla Schollar.

Shéhérazade.

Les Sylphides.

Cléopâtre.

Carnaval. With Nijinsky and Adolph Bolm.

La Tragédie de Salomé.

Daphnis et Chloé.

Le Spectre de la rose. With - famously - Nijinsky.

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Barbier also made another version of La Tragédie de Salomé, I'm not sure for what purpose.

Dreaming of tombs - Egyptian fantasies by Carlos Barahona Possollo

 

Carlos Barahona Possollo (born 1967) is an extremely talented and skilled contemporary figurative/narrative artist. Prolific and widely recognized. His work is almost always inspired by ancient history and mythology, almost always features frolicking and joyfully "indiscrete" nudity, most of it queer, often pointedly erotic. Unfortunately, his models don't really appeal to me much; too much polished pink-and-white gym-body flesh for my taste. And, in general, I think a lot the work is just trying too hard to shock. (I certainly understand and sympathize; many of us artists whose work is stylistically traditional feel a definite pressure to find ways to make it otherwise "edgy.") But I came across these fantaisies du tombeau - most of them a sort of "you are there" at the moment of a tomb's discovery - and I find all the detail and drama rather fun.