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The skull in The Ambassadors is a signature. Holbein put a skull in most of his works, as a literal signature. His name roughly translate to “hollow bone” so he uses a skull to represent his name instead of signing.
The Arnolfini Portrait is my favourite painting. The detail in it is amazing. Not only is there a reflection in the mirror, but the mirror is surrounded by 12 perfect miniature paintings of the Passion of Christ!!!
In his lifetime, Rembrandt painted about 800 works. Of these, approximately 3,000 are still in existence. (It is estimated that as much as 20% of the art hanging in the world's finest museums are fakes.)
There was an art history class that I had taken in college. The class was interesting and intriguing. It had different types of art in illusions and different periods in which the paintings were created. I learned the different styles of creations and to focus on the paintings that the various artists had created. Most paintings were created in the Mediterrean Era which were in Leonardi Davinci's and Michealangelo's time.
You can actually see the skull in "The Ambassadors" from any format (not just in person) by turning your screen or book and looking at the painting from an extreme angle
The Sistine Chapel is the single greatest "Fuck you" in human history. This video didn't even cover every spite-fueled Easter egg Michelangelo put in there. The best part of it all is that the high quality and sheer detail of the whole thing is a massive middle-finger in and of itself. Michelangelo's passion was always sculpting, not painting, and his chief rivals got him the job with the chapel in the hopes that it would humiliate him and ruin his career. Instead, it made him one of the most celebrated artists of the Renaissance, second only to Leonardo.
Even 100s of years later, it's still a fuck you. Art History 101, The History of Art, "the Sistine Chapel paintings are those colours because he was a sculptor and he painted as if his figures were made from marble". And then, The Vatican cleaned the paintings and aww fuck. The colours are really f'n bright. Annnnd everyone has to buy the new, edited 150th edition of The History of Art. ;)
There's also a mini Jesus in "the ambassadors" using the same illusion. It's a Jesus on the cross in the top left hand corner. I don't know what it means, but still... P cool
The theory is that the painting was more about the machinations in politics and political assassinations than it was about the two subjects who were friends. If you're at all interested, and you have an hour lol, here's an excellent essay about all the imagery in the painting. Back then, nothing was ever painted just because. If you look at the first painting in the video, the marriage by Frans Holbein, everything means something, even the colour of her dress. It's a total rabbit hole to go down, looking at symbolism in classical paintings but it's endlessly fascinating. markcalderwood.wordpress.com/2014/06/13/the-ambassadors-secret/
I liked this list but its most of this is basic ART101. Its hard to miss when the only time we see these paintings anymore is when they are specifically mentioned for the things you thought we would miss.
and the one whose name i cant pronounce. what humility and honesty! some people will try to bucher the name but u didnt. with a great sense of humour, u avoided something that would have made people from Eastern Europe cringe their teeths cos of the wrong pronunciation. awesome!
Fun fact about the Night's Watch: 2 of the people on there were removed from the actual painting. In the Rijksmuseum, part of the top, right and left of the painting were cut off when they were moving it (I heard it's because that was the only way to get the painting inside, but I'm not sure if that's true.) Next to the huge, actual painting is a much smaller version, which shows what it used to look like. There's two people on the left, a bit of space at the top, and the bodies of the people on the right, which were removed when they cut the painting.
they cut it down about 75 years after it was painted when it was moved to the Amsterdam Stadhuis (City hall) and it wouldn't fit the wall it was designated for. It was fairly common to chop off bits of paintings if it didn't fit where you wanted to hang it.
Look for the the play PENTECOST. The poster I saw in 1995 has gods finger on one side & a Browning Hi-Power semi-automatic pistol on the other in a dark version of the Cistene Chapel. It is an amazing play.
I can see where Michelangelo was coming from sticking the stuff in the paintings in the Sistine Chapel, I mean if I had to spend who-knows-how-long painting a church I would be pretty grumpy too.
