<A>
Rembrandt (yellow-green and blood-red lights):
The red in this work clearly radiates, almost glowing, and provides spatial feeling
Pallas Athena, oil, 1655
<B>
Watteau: *
Watteau lacked aristocratic patrons; his buyers were bourgeois such as bankers and dealers. He is credited with revitalizing the waning Baroque idiom, which eventually became known as Rococo. He is recognized with inventing the genre of fêtes galantes: scenes of bucolic and idyllic charm, suffused with an air of theatricality. Some of his best known subjects were drawn from the world of Italian comedy and ballet. This work is in such an idiom. Spengler remarks that “in Watteau, the ‘Catholic’ blue-green disputes precedence with the brown.”
The Feast (or Festival) of Love (1718–1719)
<C>
Rembrandt landscape: *
The Mill by Rembrandt, 1650 (34” x 41 “). Beside a broad moat, high above the circular scarp of a ruined bastion, stands a windmill with low cottages. The path from the mill leads, on the left, over a little bridge across a sluice, to a landing-post in the foreground. A woman with a child goes down to the water ; a man pushes a barrow upwards. In the centre foreground a woman at the water's edge is washing linen. A man behind watches her. From the right approaches a ferry-boat with the mast down, rowed by a man. To the right on the farther bank, amid dense groves of trees, are some cows, and beyond them a cottage. Evening light. The last rays of the sun illumine the right half of the sky and envelop the mill in their radiant glow.
<D>
other great masters:
Landscape with the Ruins of Mount Palatine in Rome, 1615
