TU 2009 contents

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/11/Mehterhane.jpg/350px-Mehterhane.jpg
Turkish finale - The Abduction from the Seraglio (Die Entführung aus dem Serail), 1782 by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart ACT III Finale:Turkish Janissary band is singing to praise The Pasha for a change. He, at least, turned out noble and generous in the end. 莫札特歌劇"後宮的誘逃“最終章,讚美國王The Pasha的寬大仁慈
Janissary music was the inspiration to Mozart making turkish style. It's especially when oriental flavor did being popular in 18th-century European society. Ottoman military bands are thought to be the oldest kind of military marching band. The music was for military on wars, special days and the presence of khans (supreme rulers of turkish tribes; “Tuğ” Türk XI. century). In Ottoman, the band was generally known as mehterân (مهتران), though those bands used in the retinue of a vizier or prince were generally known as mehterhane (مهترخانه, meaning roughly, "a gathering of mehters"). In modern Turkish, the band is often termed mehter takımı "mehter team". In the West, the band's music is also often called Janissary music because the janissaries formed the core of the bands.

Friday, January 25, 2013

light in art history

Jacopo Tintoretto
The Last Supper
1592-94, Oil on canvas, 365 x 568 cm
San Giorgio Maggiore, Venice

Light, in both its form-defining and symbolic functions, remained central to the increasingly dramatic naturalism of Venetian painting, never losing its character as the carrier of divine significance that was its special role in the history of Christian art. And to this continuing tradition - which runs from the golden mosaics of Byzantium through the windows of the Gothic cathedrals and the subtle pictorial explorations of the early Flemish masters to the profound radiance of Rembrandt - Titian contributed, literally, a new dimension.


Jan van Eyck had explored the suggestive world of religious symbolism and poetic metaphor but, simultaneously and as part of the same creative impulse, he explored and expanded the limits, expressive and formal, of his own art of painting.3 Indeed, in the art of Jan van Eyck the worlds are mutually dependent. The visual realization of the imagery of light occurred within the technical context of the development of the oil medium, a development that not only made possible the new pictorial iconography but that in turn surely received inspiration from the demands that iconography made upon the painter's imagination. The iconography of light became a function of the oil medium, and it is not surprising that the later development of oil painting continued to inspire painters to investigate the expressive potential of light - and of its inevitable corollary, shadow. Light assumes a particularly full and supple role in the art of Titian, distant but definite heir to the Eyckian heritage as well as to the more immediate models of Giovanni Bellini and Giorgione.

The best survey of light in art history remains in Wolfgang Schone's Uber das Licht in der Malerei, Berlin, 1954. For particular aspects of the tradition, see the useful essay by John Beckwith, "Byzantium: Gold and Light," in Light in Art, ed. Thomas B. Hess and John Ashbery (New York and London, 1971), pp. 67–81, and especially Erwin Panofsky, "Abbot Suger of St. Denis," in his Meaning in the Visual Arts (Garden City, N.Y., 1957), pp. 108–154, and Otto von Simson, The Gothic Cathedral (New York, 1962), pp. 50–58 and passim; also Hans Peter l'Orange, "Lux aeterna: l'adorazione della luce nell'arte tardo-antica ed alto-medioevale," Atti della Pontificia Accademia romana di archeologia, Rendiconti 47 (1974–1975): 191–202. For the later development of the theme, in addition to Meiss, "Light as Form and Symbol," see Jan Bialostocki, "Ars auro prior," in Mélanges de littérature et de philologie offerts à Mieczyslaw Brahmer (Warsaw, 1996), pp. 55–63, and E. H. Gombrich, "Light, Form and Texture in XVth Century Painting," Journal of the Royal Society of Arts 112 (1964): 826–849 (repr. as "Light, Form and Texture in Fifteenth-Century Painting North and South of the Alps," in his The Heritage of Apelles [Ithaca, 1976], pp. 19–35). And see especially the suggestive study by John Gage, "Colour in History: Relative and Absolute," Art History I (1978): 104–130, and his larger survey, Color and Culture: Practice and Meaning from Antiquity to Abstraction (Boston, Toronto, London, 1993). Matters of color are treated on a more prosaic level by Paul Hills, The Light of Early Italian Painting (New Haven and London, 1987).

Millard Meiss's essay on "Light as Form and Symbol"





  • David Rosand, Titian's Light as Form and Symbol, in: The Art Bulletin 57, N. 1, 1975, pp. 58-64


Venetian Painting in the Later Sixteenth Century

By the middle of the sixteenth century, a new generation of painters began to challenge Titian's dominance over Venetian art. The three most important artists to do so were Tintoretto, Veronese, and Jacopo Bassano. While all three painters were influenced by the older master's rich color and painterly brushwork, each developed his own, individual style. A gifted portraitist, Tintoretto is also known for his unusual interpretations of religious subjects. His dramatic use of color and light often cause him to be considered a precursor to the baroque style of the next century. Veronese painted ambitious decorative cycles and is perhaps best known for his large scenes of feasts or banquets. In contrast to the material splendor and operatic compositions of Veronese's work, Bassano's paintings quietly display his greater interest in landscape and pastoral themes.

To reassert Catholic doctrine and strengthen the faith of worshipers, Counter Reformation artists emphasized the role of the saints and sacraments in scenes that involved viewers on a personal, emotional level.

The son of a cloth dyer (tintore), Jacopo Robusti, later called Tintoretto, was born in Venice, where he lived and worked for most of his life. Details of his artistic training are not known, although his early works show the influence of Titian.


National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC

Jacopo Tintoretto

Jacopo Tintoretto Also known as Jacopo Robusti Italian, 1518 - 1594


Life and work:

  • Before 1548
  • 1548–1555
  • 1556–1574
  • 1575 and after
  • Scuola Grande di San Marco
  • Scuola Grande di San Rocco

Working methods and technique
Character and personality
Critical reception and posthumous reputation


St Mark Rescuing a Saracen from Shipwreck

Jacopo Tintoretto
St Mark Rescuing a Saracen from Shipwreck
1562-66, Oil on canvas, 398 x 337 cm
Gallerie dell'Accademia, Venice