List #8 Vocabulary

Fleur-de-Lis

A three-petaled iris flower; the royal flower of France. Peter Paul Rubens, Arrival of Marie de' Medici at Marceilles, Oil on Canvas, 1622-1625. In Arrival of Marie de' Medici at Marseilles (FIG. 20-3), Marie disembarks in France after her sea voyage from Italy. An allegorical personification of France, draped in a cloak decorated with the fleur-de-lis (the floral symbol of French royalty), welcomes her.

Treaty of Westphalia, 1648

The Dutch Republic received official recognition of its independence from Spain in the Treaty of Westphalia of 1648. Worldwide trade and banking brought prosperity to its predominantly Protestant citizenry, which largely rejected church art in favor of private commissions of portraits, genre scenes, landscapes, and still lifes. Ended Thirty Years War in 1648; granted right to individual rulers within the Holy Roman Empire to choose their own religion-either Protestant or Catholic 1.) Netherlands gained independence from Spain 2.) Religious toleration 3.) Ended Holy Roman Empire

Grand Manner in Painting

The grand manner consists of four things: subject-matter or theme, thought, structure, and style. The first thing that, as the foundation of all others, is required, is that the subject-matter shall be grand, as are battles, heroic actions, and divine things. Painting based on principles of classicism. Nicolas Poussin, Et in Arcadia Ego, Oil on Canvas, c. 1655. Draws on the rational order and stability of Raphael's paintings and on antique statuary. Landscape, of which Poussin became increasingly fond, provides the setting for the picture. Dominating the foreground, however, are three shepherds, living in the idyllic land of Arcadia, who study an inscription on a tomb as a statuesque female figure quietly places her hand on the shoulder of one of them. She may be the spirit of death, reminding these mortals, as does the inscription, that death is found even in Arcadia, supposedly a spot of paradisiacal bliss. The leading French proponent of classical painting was Nicolas Poussin, who spent most of his life in Rome and championed the "grand manner" of painting, which called for heroic or divine subjects and classical compositions with figures often modeled on ancient statues.

Etching

A kind of engraving in which the design is incised in a layer of wax or varnish on a metal plate. The parts of the plate left exposed are then etched (slightly eaten away) by the acid in which the plate is immersed after incising. Jacques Callot, Hanging Tree, from the Large Miseries of War series. 1629-1633, etching.

Still-life

A picture depicting an arrangement of inanimate objects. Pieter Claesz, Vanitas Still Life, Oil on Panel, 1630s

Burin

A pointed tool used for engraving or incising. Jacques Callot, Hanging Tree, from the Large Miseries of War series. 1629-1633, etching. Callot perfected the medium and the technique of etching, developing a very hard surface for the copper plate to permit fine and precise delineation with the needle.

Camera Obscura

Latin,"dark room."An ancestor of the modern camera in which a tiny pinhole, acting as a lens, projects an image on a screen, the wall of a room, or the ground-glass wall of a box; used by artists in the 17th, 18th, and early 19th centuries as an aid in drawing from nature. Jan Vermeer, Allegory of the Art of Painting, Oil on Canvas, 1670-1675. Historians are confident that Vermeer used as tools both mirrors and the camera obscura, an ancestor of the modern camera based on passing light through a tiny pinhole or lens to project an image on a screen or the wall of a room. (In later versions, artists projected the image on a ground-glass wall of a box whose opposite wall contained the pinhole or lens.) This does not mean that Vermeer merely copied the image. Instead, these aids helped him obtain results he reworked compositionally, placing his figures and the furniture of a room in a beautiful stability of quadrilateral shapes.

Monochromatic

One Color. Frans Hals, The Women Regents of the Old Men's Home at Harleem, Oil on Canvas, 1664. Hals's portrayal of the Haarlem regents. The women— all carefully distinguished as individuals—gaze out from the painting with expressions ranging from dour disinterest to kindly concern. The somber and virtually monochromatic (one-color) palette, punctuated only by the white accents of the clothing, contributes to the painting's restraint. Both the coloration and the mood of Hals's portrait are appropriate for this commission. Portraying the Haarlem regents called for a very different kind of portrait from those Hals made of men at festive militia banquets.

Vanitas

a still-life painting of a 17th-century Dutch genre containing symbols of death or change as a reminder of their inevitability. Pieter Claesz, Vanitas Still Life, Oil on Panel, 1630s