David with the Head of Goliath.

[NNadir]

1609-1610

Caravaggio, (1571-1610)

Museo e Galleria Borghese, Rome

[Fran Kubelik]

1. excellent!

:applause:

[NNadir]

2. I'm glad you like it. It's the right day for it, I think.

[Fire Walk With Me]

3. Thank you every day for the beautiful art.

[jpgray]

4. An underdog in alleles along with everything else. Who knew Dave was a ginger?

:hide:

[NNadir]

5. But you have to admit he doesn't look Irish.

Carravaggio was known as a realist, if a brutal realist.

What I hate about so many religious paintings is that invariably Jesus, Mary, and the rest of the crew always are depicted as either Italians or Northern Europeans.

There's hardly ever anything semetic about them, despite the entire Bible being more or less about the Jews.

But here, David looks Jewish, which is a great thing because David was Jewish.

If the model here were a Bar Mitzvah boy, nobody would bat an eyelash.

Of course, even Carravaggio didn't include as he should have, a yarmulke.

[jpgray]

6. Carravaggio rules, I'm just being a dumbass

:D

[NNadir]

7. Being a dumbass is allowed as long as one isn't such a dumbass as to vote for McSame.

As long as you vote against McSame and his panic squad, you're really not much in the dumbass department.

May our future Carravaggio's be painting "Obama Smiting the Repukes."

My son is interested in art. Maybe I'll suggest this topic for exposition.

[ghostsofgiants]

10. No shortage of Obama related artwork out there.

Just browse through the pages of the Juxtapoz website (which is mostly focused on urban/graffiti influenced art).

http://www.juxtapoz.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=4178&Itemid=1
http://www.juxtapoz.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=4166&Itemid=1
http://www.juxtapoz.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=4355&Itemid=1
http://www.juxtapoz.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=4265&Itemid=1
http://www.juxtapoz.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=4229&Itemid=1
http://www.juxtapoz.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=4206&Itemid=1
http://www.juxtapoz.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=4168&Itemid=1

And so forth.

[NNadir]

11. Ah, but these are not the epic paintings I have in mind. Too bad I can't do photoshop or else I'd

suggest something of this famous baby:



One wonders how Delacroix might have painted Wall Street...

[ghostsofgiants]

12. Haha, that's a friend of mine's favourite painting.

Yeah, that'd certainly be interesting.

[NNadir]

14. I've seen it live. It's a huge sucker, but well the Louvre is the Louvre.

The most impressive huge painting I've ever seen live though was Guernica, which I saw many times in its tenure in New York.

Guernica is by far the most powerful painting I have ever saw, but no reproduction on a screen can do it justice.

What is appalling is that the liar Colin Powell stood before the tapestry reproduction at the UN with the tapestry covered over.

When humanity agreed to that staging, it lost something that will never be replaced.

[ghostsofgiants]

8. Goliath looks hung over, no wonder David beat him.

:P

[NNadir]

9. Hungover wouldn't be the right word. He looks dead.

The other day I posted stuff from the, um, well, "eccentric" artist James W. Johnson.

There seems to be a problem with linking to the paintings themselves on the site, but he does have a painting called "Couched Woman with Hangover."

http://www.jameswjohnson.com/vault2/96/96.html



I wonder if Johnson was thinking of Carravaggio when he did this "hangover" painting.

[elshiva]

13. Isn't Goliath really a self portrait of Caravaggio?

[NNadir]

15. I'm not sure of that. He produced the painting hoping for a pardon for a murder he committed.

The Pope awarded the pardon but he died before he learned of it.

Caravaggio was a very strange dude.

[elshiva]

16. I heard it in an art history course at my college that it might

be a self portrait. :shrug:

[NNadir]

17. It could be true. Caravaggio was one strange bird.

He certainly lead a life of intense violence, reflected in his art.

I should not be surprised that he often envisioned himself dismembered.

And still, it's all so beautiful in a terrible way.

[elshiva]

18. The dismembered head of Medusa.

That was another great painting that's related to this.