Every Thursday, as part of my personal “enriched environment” initiative, I post a piece of art, usually from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which recently released online some 400,000 high-resolution images of its collection. All artwork will show a sun (or sunlight) somewhere.
I won’t name the piece or the artist, but instead invite you to study the art and post a comment addressing one or more of these questions:
- What is going on in this picture?
- What do you see that makes you say that?
- What more can you find?
If you have another idea, run with it.
Special Update! The New York Times website does this same exercise every Monday with a news photo that is uncaptioned and contains no text (click!). The Times asks viewers the same three questions:
- What is going on in this picture?
- What do you see that makes you say that?
- What more can you find?
However, at the end of the week, the Times posts the background information on the picture. So, I’ve decided to do the same. I’ll still post an unlabeled piece of art on Thursday. But return on Sunday (for the Sunny Sundays post!) and you’ll find an update on the artwork here.
Note: To embiggen the image, click on it!
The Trojan Women Setting Fire to Their Fleet
Artist: Claude Lorrain (Claude Gellée) (French, Chamagne 1604/5?–1682 Rome)
Date: ca. 1643
Medium: Oil on canvas
Dimensions: 41 3/8 x 59 7/8 in. (105.1 x 152.1 cm)
Classification: Paintings
On view at The Met Fifth Avenue in Gallery 634
In an effort to end years of wandering after the fall of Troy, the Trojan women set fire to their ships. The clouds and rain in the distance presage the storm sent by Jupiter at Aeneas’s request to quench the blaze. This painting was made in Rome for cardinal Girolamo Farnese. The subject, drawn from Virgil’s Aeneid (V:604–95), must have especially appealed to the learned prelate who returned to Rome in 1643, after years of itinerant service as papal nuncio combating Calvinism in remote Alpine cantons of the Swiss Confederation.
I don’t know what to make of this scene. At first I thought it was about the Sirens from Greek mythology, but didn’t they have wings? It seems some of the women in the picture are pulling one of the boats closer to the rocky shore, which doesn’t make sense. Nobody is on the boats, although someone must be on the sailboat that I can see off in the distance. What myth or folktale does this painting represent?
The most astounding part of this painting for me is the intricate weaving of ropes on all the ships on the left side of the picture. That’s some unbelievable hand-eye coordination on the part of the artist. I could never do that!
Once again the sun is to the left, although it appears to be just below the horizon in this painting. (However, the shadows of the women in the foreground indicate that it’s further to the left.)
The dark clouds in the upper right corner seem to counter the dark ships amassed in the lower right corner. I agree with Paul that the intricate ropes that are painted on the ships, climbing up the masts, are impressive.
I can’t imagine what story this represents, with so many women gathering on the shore and coming out of what look like teepees off in the distance. And yes, if you enlarge the picture you see more ships sailing in the distance.